Strange Old Lady's page

Old Granny the shopkeeper raises an eyebrow at Xeria then cackles gleefully. For a moment, Xeria feels luckier than normal. "Good for you, sweetie. Have fun!"

Thanks Sunny. Good playing with you all.

Granny snaps her fingers and you disappear from Darkstone, reappearing in her kitchen. She curses at some utensils and pans which immediately begin flying about while she goes to a back room. A few minutes later, she comes back and checks the oven. Then she walks to you carrying a platter heaped with chocolate cookies in one hand a platter heaped with platinum in the other.

You begin to feel something strange and unpleasant as you see the Crucible in the distance begin to glow with power. The life force begins draining out of you and into your scaly opponents! This must be the same powerful magical snare that trapped the life from the surrounding countryside and funneled it into fuel this reptilian horde. The dwarves made a grave mistake when they accepted Kurtulmak's designs. Driven by desperation, you surge forward to take the fight back to your enemies!

Boosted by Lenna, Mira turns into a monstrosity of scale and claw herself! She surges forward and tears the dragon to pieces, moving too fast to see.

Sunny proves indomitable as he heals himself again and again to withstand the blows of the kobold spearmen and strike them down one by one.

Lenna dances around the battlefield, moving her allies about and turning them invisible, leaving the kobolds never certain of where danger will come from next.

Zoltan's powers imbue his allies with might beyond their wildest wishes as his ability to bend the laws of physics tears the enemy spellcasters apart in flame.

Finally, only the ancient kobold remains. Seeing you standing triumphant over the bodies of her followers, she chuckles slightly and speaks in broken common. "Fools. You think you win? You maybe stop us but you never leave Darkstone alive!!!" She pulls out her own ceremonial dagger and plunges it into her breastbone as she falls back upon the artifact.

A flash of green light blinds you and the ground shakes. You hear stones crumble all around. But when your vision clears, you see debris pelting off a wall of force in front of you. Your old friend "Granny" stands in front of you chuckling with her hand outstretched to create the wall. "Well dearies... it seems you did good after all... very good... who wants to go back to my cottage for some cookies?"

Sorry to hear that Lenna. Thanks for playing. Your tactics were excellent. I hope things get better for you soon.

@Sunny and Zoltan: Due to the unfortunate turnover of our players (part of life), I'll bring things to a narrative ending now.

Zoltan, that's a touch spell. You'll have to move close to Sunreturn if you want to cast it. Watch out! Those kobolds have longspears and their limbs seem abnormally lanky!!

Sunny, remember that you are prone. You can't 5 ft step. You can take that attack with a -4 penalty for being prone and stand as a move action, accepting AoOs, then 5 ft step. What would you like to do?

The dragon is definitely in range of Mira, especially given her long arm.

Prevent whom from seeing whom? The statue provides some cover but it's definitely not a solid wall.

Alright, the big finale's finally underway. It's the boss fight of a gestalt dungeon crawl so it's not going to be easy but you guys have a real chance to win this thing for glory.

The door opens and the great white creature comes zooming through it as if it had built up quite a bit of momentum, waiting for the exact moment! But it didn't count on the statue. It tries to swerve aside and fails. In rage, it opens its great max and unleashes a blast of ice on Mira (30 cold damage)! The kobolds on their towers unleash small bolts of force striking Zoltan (13) and Lenna (12) with surprising power! The ancient kobold raises her staff and calls forth a ball of lighting that flies into Lenna, requiring a her to dodge out of the way! Three kobold warriors step up. One of them trips sunreturn while the other two stab him! 23 piercing damage.

DC 15 reflex save or 9 damage Lenna. Everyone, GO!

Sorry you only have 1 round here. Mira's was fine since she could help Sunny move the statue as a move action. Enemy actions coming in a couple hours.

Yes that'll be fine. I'll take team kobold's action later today. Busyish morning.

Statue is 8 ft tall entrance is 10 ft so yeah pretty good.

You can drag the statue. It's heavy but Sunny and Mira can handle it. It's not wide enough to block a 25 ft opening when they open their side of the wall. But you can make it a little harder by blocking the middle.

The north wall of the statue room opens up to a 25 ft wide doorway in the middle of the wall, revealing the boss room on slide 1.

The south wall/door of slide 1 (HQ) forms the north wall/door of slide 2 (the statue room).

So far only Zoltan has taken his action. I'm going to take team kobold's team on Monday so if you want to take an action this round, declare it now. Anyone may bot Mira.

Mira is very busy IRL right now so any ally should feel free to position her. She's certainly willing to help with whatever fight or flight occurs but probably won't be able to post much.

I moved up the second slide so you can position yourselves there.

Any actions to take before team kobold takes its next turn? Feel free to move yourself on the map of the room you are currently in, slide 2, or move into another room.

Lenna, the bad guys are not trapped in their own headquarters.

Sunny, the first slide is where the baddies are. The second slide is where you are. The third slide is the part of the complex you're in.

You hustle back and close the door. You don't hear or observe anything of note.

Zoltan (r1) and the rest (r2) GO!

Yes the door will provide him with cover as he stands behind it.

Adjacent to push the same button he used to open them.

Sure, Mira can teleport while carrying Zoltan. Sunny has to be by the doors to close them. There's no way set up to close them from distance.

Lenna, the previous room is the statue room. It's still included on thr PPT a couple slides down.

The opening is 25 ft across, as displayed. The altar is raised 10 ft above the ground. The ceilings are 50 ft high. Lenna can easily duck right behind the wall opening with a 5ft step back and to her left if she wants cover or to be obscured. She'd still be slightly visible but moving another 5 ft to the left would get her total cover.

This isn't like the baby dragon fight I that, IC, you don't have time to consider every option. People should take their turns and let the chips fall where they may. You've discussed your options. Go for one or the other.

Ah gotcha. Didn't realize that question was directed at me since it was in a significant amount of planning. Yes Mira can pick up Zoltan as a move action then should account for him against her carrying capacity. Zoltan, how much do you weight? Probably 130 lbs minimum.

Go ahead and take your actions for combat. If that action is to double move away, say so and explain where you'd like to go.

The sections of the wall slide apart on their ancient Dwarven mechanism, revealing the old temple to Torag. The grand Dwarven architecture stands here like nowhere else as a testament to the craft of this cavernous city’s late inhabitants. Two towers of stone stand thirty feet high and magnificent despite their crumbling bases while a raised dais holds the altar to the god of the Forge. But in a cruel mockery, a large crucible stands on the altar glowing with heat. An ancient kobold of strange appearance stands before the artifact on the dais. She is very old and seems to have the lighter scales of a normal kobold but her many wrinkles are the darker color of these strange kobolds you’ve been encountering. She shrieks in Draconic as you enter ”Kurtulmak has brought them to us! Link them to the Crucible!”

The kobolds turn to you, suprised but fierce. You see a line of rubble blocking your path straight ahead, a kobold on each of the crumbling towers, and a line of warriors with spears. Two of them have lighter scales and three have darker. You also see, coiling and turning to greet you, a massive, white, serpentine creature with great leathery wings.

Everyone but Zoltan won init. GO!

Oh don't worry, Lenna. Once I get this map ready you'll have a better chance to fulfill your desire... ;)

Hmmm, having a weird technical difficulty. Will update with a map ASAP.

The wall opens when Sunreturn presses the nose. Will a snarl, reptilian forms whirl about in the darkness.

I'll roll init amd start this once my computer cooperates. Probably tomorrow morning.

Zoltan receives a blank result from his spell. You all stare at the north wall and the many different runes covering it.

Hint

Sunreturn notices many roughly carved runes in the wall. Foreclaws, moons, crossbows, kobolds, tails, lizards, dinosaurs, etc. But pulling on the wall doesn't seem to help.

Lenna's gets strong transmutation magic in there and can sense that something is magically transferring massive amounts of positive and negative energy.

While standing near the statue in the center of this complex, Lenna notes small cracks in the center of each of the four walls that indicate those Chambers might open. She also feels like she can almost detect something through the stone to the north. Then her head is crushed with a searing headache for a few seconds.

Ok so I've made the first slide of our map the map of the current area again. The white areas are chambers you've accessed easily. The black areas may be solid stone blocks as far as you know. They may not be. The four walls (sides of the black squares that face inward toward the middle white area) of the middle white area (poltergeist and swarms) are covered in all sorts of runes engraved into them.

You mean the rubble in the hall starting at the Southeast corner of the northeast chamber?

It takes them a little while but Mira and Sunny clear the path to the southeast chamber (bloody skeletons) after a while.

I'll add a little clarification in a few hours if I haven't made it clear what the arrangement is.

Sunreturn believes that the large blocked off spaces in the grid-like area that they spent a lot of time in recently might contain chambers.

It's not really a vital spoiler. I wouldn't put information vital to the plot behind something you can't access. Just keep going as if I didn't say anything.

Btw, I don't mind if you guys pile on guidance, aid another, etc after the fact as long as you give a little more description beyond "my character adds guidance" or "I help."

It doesn't have to be one person hitting this check but cooperation should be RPed a little bit to give it some flavor.

You encounter some grand halls and the throne room but they've been long abandoned. The kobolds do not seem to have had much interest in those chambers. You have still not encountered the Crucible. But you do find some dwarvish writings in a small scrap of parchment tucked into a corner.

The Crucible was a trap by its very design. It took the strength from our people and the land and put it into everything reptilian. The kobolds and raptors began assaulting our outposts days ago. At first, we laughed them off. But they just kept coming. The Crucible itself imbued them with great power to reproduce, grow quickly, and fight to the death. We can't hold them off much longer...

As you head down the north hall, you find many chambers and rooms that seem to house the everyday lives of the kobolds as they raise their young here. Your explorations take quite a while as it is an extensive area carved out by the dwarves over decades. But you don't find anything of interest, unless you're hungry for lizard-on-a-stick.

The weak kobolds and dinosaurs are shocked by the image and noise and begin rushing south past you in a panicked horde. Dozens and dozens more rush south toward whete you entered Darkstone. In Draconic, they yell things about meeting up with some of the hunting parties outside. You notice that the younger ones have darker scales than a normal kobold but not as dark as those of the full-grown kobolds you've fought. It seems like there is a continuous spectrum from smaller and dark to larger and darker.

Lenna heads forward into the tunnel and finds rooms full of elderly kobolds taking care of very young kobolds and other young creatures of many scaly varieties including a young triceratops and some hatchling snakes. They don't seem to notice her.

You mean the far northern tunnel you guys haven't gone through yet, correct?

Lenna's sharp hearing picks up on faint yipping and squeaking sounds.

[ooc]Each of the sorcerers has a cloak of resistance +2 and a heartripper blade, like the one you encountered earlier. In addition, they each have an emerald cloak clasp worth 100 gp./ooc]

You also find a map of the woods on one of the kobolds. It has a kobolds body layout as the compass rose with the nose marking north, the right and left claws marking east and west respectively, and the tail marking south.

The dead kobolds babble on and on after being touched by Lenna's spell. When Lenna touches the young dragon, it speaks in its language "Touch the North button. We need to report."