General Announcement:
The Free City Arena Committee, chaired by Loris Raknian, announced that the Champion's Games will be temporarily postponed to repair damage to the arena and its substructure. The damage was caused when a powerful beast escaped from its cell into the arena itself, interrupting the Parade of Champions Past.
The creature, which was meant to be featured in the popular beast match in the third round, apparently killed its handler and escaped its cell by collapsing the arena floor. No spectators, parade participants or gladiators were killed in the incident, and the Committee assures all that at no time were the spectators in danger.
Loris Raknian extended his gratitude to the gladiator team "The Blink Dogs" for their part in containing the beast, and rewarded their efforts with a special monetary award.
The Free City Arena will use this extended time between matches to acquire a new creature for the beast match, and to conduct a thorough investigation into the circumstances of this incident.
General Announcement:
That's awesome Big Jake! When I saw the title, I knew I would read something very creative, but in the back of my mind I was thinking "how funny would it be to rain out (or more accurately, rain delay) the games"...just plain-ole rain....
In some of my other posts (AoW Obituaries thread), I described how my PCs bit the dust at the blade of Pitchblade. So what happens when a team just up and disappears? I had the Sports Information Director call a news conference for a variety of Greyhawk city sports journalists where the SID disclosed the facts as he knew them (namely that one of the higher ranked teams had up and disappeared without warning or notice, and that if they did not report by a certain time, they would be disqualified).
The new characters the players made had to fight their way through their old characters animated by Zohal to replace undead he had lost earlier.
Thanks... it was fun to write.
Just to be safe: SPOILERS!!!
Okay, that was the "official" announcement after the PCs defeated Bozal Zahol just after he released the ulgurstasta.
The PCs found their way into the middle layer under the arena, after they defeated Pitch Blade, who were trying to stop them. The PCs found their way up into the area above the well, and fought their way into the training room, where they faced Bozal after he was alerted by one of the zombies.
After a bitter fight with Bozal, the ulgurstasta was released and it started striking the ceiling of its cell. The druid sent in a large earth elemental to try to slow it down, and between the earth elemental and a several low strength checks, it took 10 rounds for the ulgurstasta to escape into the arena, just as the PCs were entering the sands.
The party psion sent a mass missive to everyone in range, urging everyone to vacate the arena sands, evacuate the arena, and calling all available gladiators to the arena. The missive, accompanied by several "quakes" in the center of the arena, gave ample time for the parade participants to get away from the center of the arena and begin to exit.
The psion then gathered up the sixty vials of alchemist fire from the storage area (they found it the day earlier) and put them all in a large sack (or maybe it was a bag of holding).
The other party members spent a few rounds determining the creature's resistances to various elements, summoned more elementals (which, we discovered, are very effective against most things with hit points) to attack. The elementals' DR was effective against the d12 damage from the tendrils, and their slam attacks were the most effective damage during the encounter.
The ulgurstasta spent some rounds attacking the elementals, then moved on to the closest PC: the bard. I rolled "1"'s each time I attacked the bard, so no "bard on the barbie." I did use the breath attack, but rolled a total of 5 on the Con damage, which was enough to drop the kender rogue to -9 (who then stablized using a hero point).
The psion eventually used [/i]dimension door[/i] to position himself over the ulgurstasta (the psion also levitates at will) and dropped all of the vials of alchemist fire on it. I know that the description of the tentacles says that no non-magical ranged weapon can reach the ulgurstasta, but I envisioned a bunch of vials exploding on the tentacles, setting them on fire, each vial getting a little closer to the body of the creature. I allowed a generous 15 vials to seep through. (In hindsight I think that was too much, but it was fun to imagine happening.)
We also used this encounter to introduce a new PC (replacing the rogue/shadowdancer that was killed in the Pitch Blade attack), a cleric that was alerted to the possibility of a powerful undead (by Eligos). He entered the arena with a searing light spell.
It was a tense fight, mostly because the PCs had nearly exhausted their resources for the day on Pitch Blade and the encounters with undead and Bozal.
I'm going to use the postponement period for time to investigate the rest of the shrine and role-play advancement into PrCs and allow me time to keep a coherent story in the arena. I was pretty sure that the encounter with Bozal would end up like it did, but I wasn't really sure how the escaping ulgurstasta would play out in the long run.
Raknian thus far has been able to feign ignorance on the happenings with Bozal and the evil shrine, and early investigation indicates that, though there is easy access from his house to the shrine, it appears that the entrance has not been used for some time (due to the pressing demands of the Champions Games, and various techniques that make the secret door appear unused). Using Speak with Dead on Bozal also has shown that Bozal requested the apostolic scrolls from Raknian, and that Raknian was not involved in the summoning or care-taking of the ulgurstasta.
The PCs were stunned to find Kyuss zombies in the Free City, even more surprised the possible ties from a cleric of Kyuss and the Ebon Triad cult in Diamond Lake (they haven't fully investigated the area yet). They don't trust Raknian, but so far all signs indicate that Bozal was behind everything, and that Raknian was simply an accomplice in over his head.
Our next session should be full of amazing discoveries.
So what happens when a team just up and disappears? I had the Sports Information Director call a news conference for a variety of Greyhawk city sports journalists...
I'm going to do pretty much the same thing. Raknian will sweep the truth under the covers and give a statement along the lines that the dwarves were disqualified and ejected from the competition for failing to appear at several mandotory meetings and events.
The truth would possibly hurt the integrity of the games and its future.
The new characters the players made had to fight their way through their old characters animated by Zohal to replace undead he had lost earlier.
That's just mean.
I like it! :)
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The new characters the players made had to fight their way through their old characters animated by Zohal to replace undead he had lost earlier.That's just mean.
I like it! :)
I did the same thing with a drow rogue and bard/barbarian who died in my groups first attempt against the temple of Hextor in 3FoE. Course they hadn't had as much time to get attached to the characters by that point.
I like it too, and frequently post between-game stuff like this for the players' enjoyment. Just prior to the WC encounter with Filge, the PCs put a complete beatdown on Kullen and his boys. They then healed Kullen a little and made/hired him as a meatshield for the observatory. He promptly got skewered by the crossbow-firing skeletons, and the team left him stabilized but unconcious.
They then got the snot kicked out of them by Filge's group (see obituaries) and retreated taking everyone but Kullen with them. When they tried to sneak back in the window later that night, the rogue opened the shutters only to find:
"Heeeeeere's Kullen!" *WHACK!* Zombie Kullen, in fact. They eventually took him out again, marking the third time he'd been put down in 24 hours.