Well, I'm back to running 3.5 D&D with a whole new group. It's one of the best groups I've run for so far, and I'm looking forward to it. The campaign setting is about 30 or so years after my last D&D campaign ended. Several of the players seemed very interested in having a campaign journal, so hopefully you all will get to see the player perspective on all this. So let’s introduce our cast:
Wiz is a human wizard. He is a nice guy and so far the only party member to prove himself to be very good. He grew up on a farm located near the Valley of the Mage. He is a follower of Ian, although not the most devoted one so far. His familiar is a celestial hawk. His desire for knowledge has and probably will again lead him to some dangerous situations. It’ll be interesting to see how he develops.
Droodad is a female human druid (also the only female player). She has so far shown a great fondness for nature and animals, but that doesn’t seem to extend to intelligent creatures quite as much. She is a childhood friend of Wiz, although her family isn’t originally from the area.
Kitty is an anthropomorphic tiger monk. He was captured as a child for experimentation by the father of Ryzzym Jaderanai. When Ryzzym and his companions fought and killed Ryzzym’s father he was freed. He grew up in Furyondy, in the city where Ryzzym created his magic guild.
Sneaky is the son of Ryzzym Jaderanai. He was a drow rogue/sorcerer. He has however quite the game recently.
Silent Man is a swordsage who unbeknownst to the party was raised by goblins. He rarely talks to others, and has yet to tell anyone his name. He does seem to get along pretty well with Kitty. So far the only one to turn in a back story, and weird one. I hope to have fun with it.
Magic Girl is a human favored soul of Ian/warmage and is going for mystic theurge. She is the primary healer of the party, although Droodad is close to as good. The player likes the character, but hasn’t really gotten into the character’s background so far, but still very handy to have around.
Tin Man is a human knight. Tough as nails, but not the most dangerous opponent in the part. He’ll makes an excellent tank once he figures out the tactics for one. He also has some of the worst luck at die rolls I’ve ever seen.
I’ll be posting their adventures so far as the week goes on. Hopefully I’ll be caught up by next Saturday, but we’ll see.
Cap'n I salute your ability to put together groups out of new players. Who is playing with you now?
Cap'n I salute your ability to put together groups out of new players. Who is playing with you now?
Only two person that I know of that you've ever met. Which is Mike who used to game with you, me and Turin. You might remember as the UPS avenger. He is Tin Man, and his dice have been whoring him most of the time.
Sneaky you would know as Phil from when you ran in the morning on Saturdays at the GP2. He quit the game because he is becoming a much bigger fan of 4e than 3.5.
Kitty, Silent Man and Magic Girl are players I met in a game Phil is running on Fridays. I was looking for more players for Rifts so I invited them. The group decided to switch to 3.5 with the player change.
Wiz is a GM at the GP2, he runs a living in Blackmore game. Think RPGA in an OGL setting. Blackmore is still 3.5, but apparently planning to switch to 4e sometime in 2009 or 2010.
Droodad is a friend of Wiz who is also in the Blackmore game. She joined my game after getting to know me a little bit in the Blackmore game. All in all a lot of very good players and it's been fun so far.
At this point the guy who is switching off running the Blackmore game with Wiz is planning to join in about a month. He's mentioned a bard, but not sure what he'll end up with.
I planned to talk to the entire group about doing a campaign journal, but by the time I remember the only people who hadn't left was Wiz, Silent Man and Magic Girl. All three liked the idea and were interested in doing a player journal. We'll see if that happens.
Phil was a fantastic player, and I immensely enjoyed his participation in Saturday morning group when he was with us. Are you down in Dale City again, or are you playing elsewhere? What time do you play? Am I correct that you are playing 3.5 or 4Ed? If I am asked, are you up for additional players presently?
Phil was a fantastic player, and I immensely enjoyed his participation in Saturday morning group when he was with us. Are you down in Dale City again, or are you playing elsewhere? What time do you play? Am I correct that you are playing 3.5 or 4Ed? If I am asked, are you up for additional players presently?
We are still at the Dale City game parlor. My game is roughly from 4 to 10, while the Blackmore game is from 10 to 4, more or less. I'm running 3.5 set in the same setting as my previous two 3.5 games. Currently I have as many players as I am legally allowed to have in that room. If I get an open space I'll let you know.
One thing I need to correct. Wiz is an elf, not a human.
We do have a player not mentioned here. The player played a gnome illusionist named Logan in my last game. So far he was only able to make part of one game session. He had a drow cleric of Nerull who was neutral. If he comes back he is an excellent roleplayer. If he decides that he can't play anymore then I might have a spot open, although I'll want to talk to the other players first.
So our story begins as many things do in the great city of Gorna. It’s a haven for adventurers and many a famous one has gotten their start here. It’s a city of trade and commerce, adventure and excitement. It’s also home to a ton of gold and a crap load of adventurers trying to get a hold of at least some of it. Our brave young adventurers have all come to this city for their own reason. (Wiz and Droodad did not join until the second game session, also I started the characters at 3rd level).
Regardless of how they came here, they all ended up hired by a merchant whose caravan had gone missing. It wasn’t much of a caravan mind you, just two wagons carrying blankets, booze and a few other items for trade. However he wanted them to find it, and was willing to pay handsomely for them to do so.
As they set out the first problem that occurred to them was how in the world they were supposed to find the wagons in the first place. Thankfully one of the more knowledge able members of the party remembered that the type of blankets that were being shipped used a very expensive type of dye. This dye when new had an extremely strong and acrid scent. This should make it easy for Kitty to smell if they could find the right location quickly enough.
After what would have been a day and half by wagon, but was only a hard day’s march by the party, Kitty found where the goods had been moved off the road. They trail led in the direction of some low hills. As the party approached the hills several of them spotted a helmet sticking up just over one of the hills. At this point the party was over 200 feet away.
This was when the party treated me to one of the most impressive displays of disorganization I have yet witnessed. In an astonish lack of tactics, half the party decided to sneak in slowly, while the other half rushed in as fast as they could, and the tie breaker shifted between the two tactics. The end result was that Tin Man and Magic Girl getting there a full round before everyone else. They were followed a round later by Kitty. A round after that Sneaky finally managed to catch up, with Silent Man bringing up the rear a round after Sneaky got there.
Tin Man of course came charging over the hill and struck down the orc sentry. Unfortunately for him the “shaman” threw a bead of force at him. Upon failing his save he became a mere spectator in the carnage that followed.
Magic Girl was not quite so fooling as to go all the way over the hill, so instead a pair of axe wielding orcs ran for her and they ended up playing tag all over the hill. By the time she managed to clobber both of them unconscious with her staff the rest of the fight was over. She was quite thankful for the healing magic granted her, as without it she would have quickly spilled her guts all over the hill.
In the meantime Kitty, Sneaky and Silent Man arrived one right after the other to engage the remaining orcs. They found themselves facing 2 orc fighters, 4 orc archers, an orc chieftain and an orc shaman (who was actually a sorcerer). Kitty quickly cut down the fighters before he was charged by the chieftain. In the meantime Sneaky and Silent Man ganged up on the shaman and more or less ignored the archers who gleefully pegged anyone they could.
Unfortunately for the chieftain Kitty was a very hard target to hit. Unfortunately for Kitty the chieftain was a very tough target (and his dice hate him, not as bad as Tin Man, but close, very close). The slug match went back and forth for a while before the chieftain finally succumbed; of course Kitty was bleeding badly by this time.
Showing a sense of teamwork and skill that had been lacking at the beginning, Sneaky and Silent Man tag teamed the shaman with a great deal of skill. They pressed him closely enough that he couldn’t use his two remaining beads of force, although he briefly considered throwing them in a kamikaze gesture. By the time both the shaman and the chieftain fell to our party’s blows the archer had reached a decision. Saying “screw this” they fled well before the party could turn their attention to the arrows that had been stinging them occasionally.
Searching the hills the party was quickly able to locate the missing wagons, as well as the wagon drivers. The two guards that had accompanied the wagons died defending them, but there were still two men and a woman who had survived the orc attack. Unfortunately for the woman being captured by a group of male orcs far from their tribe is not a pleasant experience for a female. The only person who could get close to her was Magic Girl. Except for the fact that a lot of the booze was missing, the contents of the wagons were undamaged.
The wagon drivers were determined to press on, and suggested that their boss might be willing to throw in a little extra of the party escorted them to their destination.
All in all a good first session. As I have come to realize after play with the group for several sessions, the players have some of the most atrocious luck with die rolls I have ever seen. It almost makes you want to cry sometimes. The only exception is spot checks. They are freaking gods at spot checks. Almost every time I call for a spot check, someone rolls a nat 20. Still just because you can see the danger coming doesn’t mean you can do anything about it. As long as they can’t hit the broad side of a barn, my bad guys will be happy to try and clean their clocks.
Yes I remember that very well, the look on the shamans face when neither he nor his cretins knew I was there until my attack at the shaman with an incredible error of step and posture(fumbling and striking the sword into the dirt at his feet) after Sneaky gained his attention a good start at testing my skills in actuall battle.
Also don't forget I was raised by both a Hobgoblin and an Elf. Yes that is a very strange duo but such is which when the path of the martial artist and the warrior meet with a common goal, the perfection of their fighting arts. They raised me as if I where one of their thier own nephew's. The other students at the temple were like my brothers and sisters and my master's were like my uncles so I treated them as such.
Welcome Gideon, I'm glad to finally find out your name. I look forward to hearing version of events as they happen. I'm still not sure exactly whre I will be taking your backstory, but rest assured that there will be many interesting plotlines coming.
Aye I look foward to writing my own thoughts in the journal. And yes my background is a bit bizarre is it not however I perferr the name Silent Man it is suiting since I have yet to earn the right to bear my own name.
I am also contemplating getting a cool hat like the one in my avatar for my character since the glamored armor works well to disguise it's true form. Hence the hat will do also.
Well our heroes talked matters over with the merchant who survived the orc attack. He still wanted to press on to their destination, and was hoping the party would help them get there. He made a convincing argument that the merchant who hired them would probably pay them extra if they did. So the party willingly set off with the two wagons.
Before leaving the party beheaded the orcs, hoping to collect on any bounties that might be offered. They also searched the orcs thoroughly for any loot. The strangest thing they found was a crude clay tablet on the shaman that seemed to depict a tree. It didn’t match any known religion, but some guessed that it could be something druidic.
They hadn’t gone very far when they noticed two other people well down the road. Kitty and Tin Man headed out to meet them, while Sneaky trailed stealthily along behind. When they got closer the two travelers turned out to be a woman carrying a staff and wearing leather armor and an elven man in robes. Seeing that they weren’t overtly hostile, Kitty promptly started meditating and ignoring everything going on around him.
Tin Man spoke with them for a few minutes and ascertained that they were young adventurers on their way to Gorna to make their fortune. Tin Man offered to let them join this group, and suggested that the groups employer would probably pay them for their time. Thus Wiz and Droodad joined the group.
Even more excitement was waiting for them just a few hours journey up the road. There a group of orcs had set up an ambush. The group was able to spy one of the less cautious orc archers long before the orcs saw the approaching wagons.
The orc archers were set up on a low bluff that was set about 15 feet back from the road. This gave them a good hiding place and an excellent position to shoot from. The 5 foot drop would make it impossible for fighters to charge them. Unfortunately this didn’t work nearly was well when Sneaky, Kitty and Silent Man snuck up on them from behind. Their surprise attack left the archers disorganized and confused.
In the meantime the wagon had continued forward so as not to make the orcs suspicious. While the archers might have been disorganized, the orc warriors in hiding on the other side of the road were still more than ready to spring the ambush. The orc chieftain charge Tin Man screaming in fury and trying to decapitate him with a greataxe. Despite a few solid hits Tin Man is a very tough nut to crack, having a good AC and lots of hit points.
The chieftain had brought with him two squads of warriors. Each squad consisted of four warrior who fought in a line while a lieutenant stood behind them and attacked with a pole arm. While the individual warriors weren’t very dangerous, the teamwork they showed was definite problem for the disorganized adventurers. While one squad charged from the front to tie up Droodad and her horse, the second squad charged from the side to attack the wagon and Magic Girl.
To make matters even worse an orc shaman (a druid this time) stepped out and used entangle to root the wagons in place, preventing them from attempting to flee. While Droodad, her horse and Magic Girl were doing their best to hold their own, they were desperately outnumbered. Unfortunately Tin Man was fairing poorly against the chieftain. While the chieftain was having trouble hitting, especially after a Ray of Enfeeblement from Wiz, Tin Man was doing even worse. He managed to lose his grip on both his primary and backup weapon in fairly short order.
Things likely would have turned out very badly, but Kitty and Sneaky came to the rescue. They had already taken out most of the archers, so they jumped down the small bluff and charged in to help their teammates. With this added help the party was able to disrupt the lines and push the orcs back.
The orc shaman saw this turn of events, transformed into a wolf and charged the wagons to keep Wiz occupied while the orcs tried to rally. This terrified Wiz, which is a normally reaction to finding yourself sharing a small wagon with a very big and angry wolf. A Tasha’s Hideous Laughter (I hate that spell) bought him precious seconds as he desperately attempted to pump enough damage into the shaman to drop him before he recovered from his fit of giggles.
After dropping almost all the warriors the party was able to come to the aid of the Tin Man, who was batter and bruised, but not quite down. The chieftain was strong but he couldn’t come close to matching the entire party, yet he went down swinging and took a good chunk out of several people. The shaman unfortunately never got over his laughing fit, but it was a very near thing. In the meantime Silent Man dispatched the few remaining archers, and wisely elected to take one of them prisoner.
After tying up their prisoner, the party quickly looted and beheaded the bodies. They yet again found one of the strange clay tablets. This time Droodad looked it over. She admitted that it seem druidic but the style did match any druid circle or any type of try that she knew of.
Traveling further on for two days the party eventually ran into goblins, and not just any goblins, but mountain goblins. The mountain goblins are a tribe of goblins living in the foothills west of Gorna. They consider themselves superior to their pathetic, cowardly, stupid lowland cousins. They have also had a peace treaty with Gorna for almost 100 years, since they aided in the great undead war. The goblins patrol their land fiercely so it’s one of the safer places, so long as travelers pay their toll. The merchants who come through here a lot actually keep a running tab that is paid regularly. The toll is higher than many places, but since it’s the only way to the Giant Lands, and it’s one of the safest parts of the trip, merchants pay it more or less willingly. Those who elect not to, soon come to regret it.
The goblins quickly escorted the party to their homes. Apparently the goblins had built two enormous walls that ran for miles in each direction. The walls ran parallel only a few hundred feet apart. In between the two walls the goblins had dug out underground homes. The particular one they took the party two was set aside as an inn for travelers, so it had a lot more headroom than usual. The party found the herb roasted mushrooms to be delicious, and those brave enough to try it thought the spider soup to be excellent.
Here a very elderly goblin shaman came by and healed the poor woman who had been abused by the orcs. Some magic can even cure insanity (I’d love to have that spell in real life). Droodad recognized the goblin as a fellow druid, and the next day she sought him out. He had a few words of wisdom to provide a young druid, but did not offer much more than that.
The next day Tin Man spoke with a goblin paladin (you heard me right, paladin). He was surprised to find a paladin among goblins, but apparently it was a family tradition. The paladin promised to have a masterwork lance made for him, but it would take two days. The party was receiving free room and board, so they didn’t mind staying the two days.
During this time the goblins questioned the orc who was taken prisoner. Some of the players requested and were allowed to sit in on the questioning. He was questioned using powerful truth spells, but he didn’t know much. All he would say was that “the Great Ones” were coming, and the clay tablet was their symbol.
On the second day there, the party was startled by what sounded like an earthquake. There was hug boom and the walls of their underground inn shook. When it didn’t stop but instead continued in a set rhythm they became greatly concerned. It didn’t help matters that all the goblins started running outside. Running outside after the goblins they realized that all the goblins had climbed the walls, but weren’t looking very scared.
Mounting the walls themselves, the party was treated to a terrifying sight. 100 hill giants in armor were marching in phalanx formation. Their steps were falling perfect unison, more than sufficient to shake the group around them.
Back during the undead war some brave adventurers went into the mountains to attempt to enlist the giants as allies. There they found that the giants had developed a real civilization. The giants were more than willing to lend their aid in exchange for some peace treaties. So for the last hundred years giants have been a regular sight among the merchants of Gorna. The giant legion keeps their lands secure and quite safe.
The wait proved very advantageous to the party, as they were able to tag along with a giant caravan headed towards Gorna. This let them return safely and without trouble.
After resting and selling the loot the party had gathered from our encounters with the orcs the sneaky, Tin Man, Wiz and Droodad met with the city council. I do not know the details of what they spoke but I believe it had something to do with the clay tablet we had found. I on the other hand decided to partake of the cities library hopping to further expand my knowledge of the martial world from what little I already knew. Unfortunatly I did not find a great deal but I did discover some very intersting bits of information. The City of gorna did indeed host several schools of combat here but none were as prestiges or as note worthy as the flying school of martial arts. Thats right a martial school that can fly most certaintly something worth looking into.
After everyone had finished running thier errands we met up at an inn where we were given free room and board by the city's councile. Afterwards Sneaky presented us with a few options of "quests" we could undertake in order to gain experience and "funding". Once a little debate on the choice of missions was over we decided to head to the castle of King Oscar Feykill king of the Feykill lands. Apperantly there were some intersting happenings going on in his territory that he requested heros and adventures to look into for him. We departed the very next day on this near week long trip hoping to take a route that could get us there quickly yet safely as well. We were wrong
While travelling down the forest road myself and few other of the party spotted a strange formation in the trees. upon investigating we found that a few trees had taken up strange slightly unnatural growths as discovered by Droodad. Whats more is that the trees looked to be growing at of old decayed buildings that looked to have belonged to a city or colony that was established here almost 600 years ago. I who was up in trees moving around spotted what appeared to be the remains of a keep at the edge of a clearing underneath the shadow of great tree that towered over the rest.
The +4 mighty longbow, does this weapon count as a +4 weapon and the mighty a +1 enchancment or does this count as a +4 composite longbow, for I am trying to figure out the amount we got from selling the weapons?
The +4 mighty longbow, does this weapon count as a +4 weapon and the mighty a +1 enchancment or does this count as a +4 composite longbow, for I am trying to figure out the amount we got from selling the weapons?
The "might +4" is a non-magical property. It adds 800 to the items value if I remember correctly (check the PH). The might is complete seperate from and totally unrelated to any sort of magical property the bow might have. That bow is not magical if my memory serves (I'll trust your notes if they disagree). That means that with masterwork the bow should be work 1100gp plus the standard cost of a composite longbow.
Actually that does make more sense if memory serves with what the mighty property is, Thanks
I'm going to develope just like a still-life movie: one frame at a time.
I'm going to develope like a roll of film: quickly and probably all wet.
I'm going to develope like a train wreck: you don't want to watch but you can't look away.
And most importantly: I'm going to develope a cold =D.
Or at least the people around me will....
Well, having returned to Gorna our young heroes were quite eager to collect their earnings. The merchant was true to his word and then some. He paid them very well both for what they had agreed to and for escorting the wagons to their destination. He also gave them a bounty for the regular orc heads they brought back. For the shaman and chieftain he promised to speak to the council.
The merchant was also quite sure that the council would want to speak to the party. So he offered to let them stay free of charge at dorm maintained by his merchant house for employees who were passing through. It may not be the best of facilities, but free is free.
The council did indeed call the players in to be questioned about the recent orc activity. The players provided them with some rather disquieting answers. A few of the notables took note of our young heroes for future consideration.
Now the heroes were at loose ends. They stayed a few weeks in the city and explored what it had to offer, but the call of adventure soon lured them away. As they were keeping an eye out for future work, word came that King Oscar Feykill of the Feykill mountains was looking for “a brave and heart band of adventurers” to work for him. This caught their eye rather quickly.
They had the option of using the gate system created by the god Ian to travel there quickly, but interestingly decided to hoof it overland. They decided that the extra two weeks travel time would mean more adventure, and especially more exp and loot.
They were right.
In the forests to the north they found quite a lot to do. A short ways into the forest several party members saw the distant forms of dire wolves through the trees, and the party wisely decided to steer clear. They did not steer clear of the loud crashing sound that reached their ears a few hours later.
It turned out to be a bog giant, a rather nasty but not overly powerful breed of giant. Sneaky and Silent Man decided to sneak up on it as Wiz, Magic Girl and Tin Man closed ranks to defend against the brute. Unfortunately for Sneaky and Silent Man, it spotted them coming easily (nat 20 spot check on both of them) and fooled them into thinking it hadn’t (another nat 20 on the bluff check, too bad I couldn’t roll those during the battle). So their attempts to charge the beast from hiding were met with dreadful smites of its spear.
Unfortunately the great brute was swarmed over by the party like piranna’s on a monkey. He struck several might blows, but to no avail. The arrival of Kitty who had fallen behind (the player was late due to work) only sealed the deal.
The party’s celebration was cut short by what sound to be half a dozen more giants approaching. The party was preparing to vacate the area as hastily as possible, when all of a sudden the cries of wolves filled the trees. The party could clearly hear the snarl of wolves and screams of giants nearby, but decided that it was NOT any of their business.
Later as they set about to find a good camp site a dozen dire wolves seemed to simply appear out of the shadows around the party. The very startled party immediately clamped hands on their weapons, but wisely decided not to draw them just yet. The largest of the wolves approached and they heard a voice in their heads. The voice asked why they were here, and they replied that they were merely passing through. The wolves nodded and left, but not before several people noticed a ring worn on the paw of the largest wolf. The spellcasters quickly surmised this to be how the wolf was able to communicate.
The rest of their stay in this forest was uneventful. The second and largest forest they passed through on the way to the Feykill mountains on the other hand was quite eventful. Here as they passed the deepest part of the forest, Sneaky noticed something very unusual. It was hard to make out, but through the trees a bit off their path was a regular vertical line. A line like this is not natural in a forest, so the party diverted to investigate.
Drawing closer they could see that it was ruined wall. Approaching closer still they realized it was at the edge of a ruined city. Surprised to find something like this, they quickly began to explore around. Wiz was able to identify the style of architecture as belonging to a kingdom that was destroyed over 400 years ago. It was around 600 years ago that they had begun expanding southward into the territory the party was now in, and it would probably have been around this time that the city was built.
A more disturbing revelation stole over the party as they surveyed the ruins. The ruins were home to massive trees, which Kitty predicted were around 600 years old. However these huge trees only grew in the middle of buildings and in fact the bigger the buildings, the more trees. Yet there were no trees even close to that size growing in the roads or former courtyards. One very worrisome idea was that the inhabitants of the town had actually been turned into trees.
Eager to get a better view of the land, Silent Man climbed one of the massive trees. From there he spied two crumbling towers much further into the former city. The distance between the towers and their shape was correct for the guard towers at a gate leading into a keep or castle. Beyond the towers was a clearing, although he could see nothing of what was inside it.
The party quickly headed for the towers and clearing, hoping to find out more about what was going on. It was easy to tell when they had reached the former walls of the keep, even though not a single block remained. Enormous trees growing so closely together that they formed a wall of their own had replace the rocks that once stood here. The only party that remained were the two main gate towers. It appeared that trees had tried to grow up through the towers to replace them, but all that remained now was a pair large stumps on the ground floor of the towers. Through the former gate and smaller trees the party could see that a huge circular clearing remained where the castle would have once stood.
As they reached the edge of the clearing they could see that the keep was long since gone. None of the few remaining walls or piles of rubble was more than waste high, yet there was not nearly enough debris present. A keep as big as this one, even if it was only one floor high, would have produced much more rubble. Even more disturbing was that there was nothing growing in the clearing, it was just a huge patch of dirt. Also there was something strange looking about the stones, but they couldn’t tell what from the edge of the clearing.
Sneaky was the first one brave enough to step out into the clearing. He quickly changed his mind when he heard a crunching sound from under the dirt and his foot sank slightly further than he was expecting into the ground. He quickly pulled his foot back, glad to still have it, but nothing bad seemed to happen. Eventually Kitty grabbed a large rock that he dropped into the clearing. The was a very loud crunching sound this time, and the rock sank into the dirt, but again nothing bad happened. Eventually Sneaky worked up the courage to scrape the dirt away and an inch or so down came to layer of glass half an inch thick.
As the party contemplated the grass, Wiz sent his celestial hawk familiar out to survey the clearing. The hawk clearly saw that there was an opening leading down into what used to be the basement of the keep. By this time the party had surmised that some great source of heat had turned the ground in the area to glass. So plucking up their courage they ventured out to see what remained of the area below the castle. As they did so they finally got a good look at the stone that remained. The surface of the rock had also turned to glass, but was now covered with several hundred years of dirt, just like the ground.
The basement of the castle proved to be intact, save for one problem. The stairs down and even the first floor had been made of wood. After 600 years of exposure to the elements, the wood had long since turned to dust. Climbing down a rope they found themselves in what used to be two 10-foot high rooms, and now was one 20-foot high room. There were two passages leading off in opposite directions, and 10 feet up the wall was a third passage, leading off to the side.
The party elected to climb 10 feet back up first and go through the higher passage. This proved to be more a door than a passage as it immediately opened into a huge room. The party surmised that this used to be a warehouse, from marks that still remained on the floor. Unfortunately time had done it work of turning the crates and sacks into huge piles of dust.
On the far wall was what used to be an iron door, and now was simple an upright slap of rust. After an attempt to grab the hand resulted in a handful of gritty rust, the party simply used a staff to clear it out of the way.
The next room was decorated on the walls and floor with mosaics. There were also several suits of armor that had fallen scattered about the room. As Sneaky bravely strode into the room to inspect the mosaic he got a little to close to one of the suits of armor. All of the armor immediately stood up and filled with skeletons that appeared from thin air. There were 8 wearing breastplate, and one in full plate.
Silent Man, Kitty and Tin Man all moved forward to engage the skeletons, who were quite happy to return the favor. The skeleton in full armor made a gesture at Kitty who was struck by a beam which sapped his strength (gotta love ray of enfeeblement), and then strode towards Sneaky, Wiz and Magic Girl who were currently unoccupied.
Silent Man, Kitty and Tin Man threw all they had into felling their foes, but they were too tough to succumb easily. Fortunately the skeletons were find it quite difficult to hit our heroes, although enough blows were getting through that things looked grim.
Meanwhile Sneaky, Wiz and Magic Girl threw everything they had at the leader who was quite happy to let his minions handle the melee characters. He laid into the three brutally, and quickly came close to dispatching all of them. But in their desperation they were able to bring him down just before they themselves were slain. With his fall the other skeletons and their gear crumbled to dust and rust, however the leader’s magical plate mail and sword did not.
The mosaics told the tale of the founding on the city and its growth, but it gave no hint as to the reason for its demise. The party quickly located the two formerly secret doors in the room. Time had not been kind, the wood that help part of the door in place had rotted away and both were now easily visible. In one was a set of stairs that led to the underside of a trap door. After much effort and a loud crack as the glass broke the trap door opened out aboveground.
The other room was once a living chamber, as evidenced by the toilet, but now was home only to piles of dust. Profitable piles in one case. As the torch was brought into the room one party member noticed a small glint in one of the piles of dust. Brushing the dust aside, and sneezing frequently, he found several gems. The party was quite thankful that unlike wood and iron, gems don't rust or rot.
As always any comments, questions, suggestions or anything else is more than welcome.
The party returned once again to the main room and climbed down the wall. Here they once again face a choice between two different directions. (This actually took place over two game sessions. The first one ended right where the previous journal entry does. Wiz was present for the first session, but Droodad was not, this was flipped for the second session.)
First they decided to head North. Here the passage only went for roughly 60 feet before splitting off in a T junction. Sneaky was sneaking up the passageway first to scout it out. As he came to the intersection he could hear muttering to his left. Sneaky’s darkvision was sufficient to see into the next room. There he was a woman in robes with her back to him. She was moving back and forth muttering to herself strangely. Every few moments she would reach down in front of her to pick something up. The only problem with this gesture was that there was nothing in front of her beside a pile of dust. He could see a door in the room past the woman, but decided to save that for later.
Taking a right down the other passage led him into what appeared to have been a dungeon. He quickly grabbed his weapons, expecting some undead horror to leap out and attempt to consume him. Fortunately for him, he was mistaken. In fact there was no evidence that anyone had been in the cells when disaster struck.
Sneaky returned to the rest of the party, but didn’t bother to inform them of the strange woman. Instead the party set off down the remaining unexplored passage. This passageway had several doors leading off it at intervals, each one opening into an apparently empty room. In one of these rooms a sharp eyed party member noticed something hidden in the dusty. After carefully clearing the dust away, they found 6 squat class bottles, stoppered with cork. They were a little confused by the design until one party member recalled that glass is not actually completely solid. Given enough time glass will actually flow, very, very, very slowly. These bottles had not been moved in 600 years, which accounted for the shape. Long ago they would have been wine bottles, still sealed bottles in fact.
One of the more curious party members immediately opened one and took a sip. He was rewarded with a taste of a wine that was truly exquisite. This was stuff vastly beyond what he could afford. While that bottle was shared amongst the party, the remaining bottles were put away to be sold at a later date.
As they continued down the passageway the doors stopped appearing and the walls become rougher and more natural looking. Eventually they came to where a giant root grew across the floor of the stone passageway. At only a foot high it wasn’t much of an obstacle, yet it was worrisome, especially when Droodad was unable to identify the species it came from. Soon more and more roots spread across the passage, making it smaller and more cramped until the party was actually crawling through a small tunnel made of roots. It was actually Tin Man who noticed that the tunnel was starting to slope downwards, and was doing so at an increasing rate. By the time it was at a steep 45 degree angle, they could see it lead to a hole into some bigger space.
Looking down through the opening they could see that the roots had formed a hollow sphere. In the center roots from the top and bottom twisted together to form a pillar in the center of the room. Droodad eagerly lowered a rope down so she could investigate. Kitty and Tin Man followed after her to provide backup. Examining the pillar in the center she could easily see that something had been hacked out of it. Right in the middle of the pillar, where the roots from top and bottom met, was section had been hacked out to reveal and empty space. The sides of the space reminded her of a seed pod, and all the heroes quickly surmised that it had not always been an empty space.
At this point Sneaky informed the group of what he had seen and they elected to go back and see if they could find anything out about, or from, the woman. While the sneakier party members went ahead, Tin Man and a few of the less shadowy characters clanked along behind. Considering the noise made by Tin Man’s full plate, it quickly became apparent that she was paying no attention what so ever to her surroundings.
Moving around her to finally see something other than her back, Sneaky got a rather disturbing view. Apparently a significant portion of the front right side of her skull was missing. This did not point to her being alive, especially considering that there was no blood pouring out of the massive wound. Possibly more interesting was that tiny plants were sprouting from the wound. She also had a fist sized seed hung on a silver chain around her neck.
Realizing that she wasn’t reacting to them at all, the party decided to move around her and explore the room beyond this one. The doorway opened into a smaller room that looked like it might have once been a bedroom. There was a wall safe that might have once been hidden behind a painting or tapestry, but several hundred years had taken care of that.
As Sneaky went to work on the safe, Droodad and Magic Girl decided to satisfy their curiosity by casting detect magic in the direct of the woman and the seed she wore. Their friends were very surprised when the two passed out (the seed detect as MUCH higher level, so they had to make a will save to not be knocked out, they both failed). Sneaky managed to finish with the lock about the time the two casters came back around. In it he found an old metal spell book and a magical pearl.
The party was a little unsure exactly what to do about the woman, but Sneaky had an idea. He watched where she was picking up and putting down imaginary objects and then calmly walked over to stand on the opposite side of the long gone to dust table. Then he quickly reached out, grabbed the seed and yanked hard. The thin silver chain snapped easily and he stepped back as the woman shrieked in rage. Then she fireballed the party.
A fireball was not a good start to things as far as our heroes were concerned. Most of the melee fighters quickly charged in quickly to crowd the spell caster, but Tin Man, having taken the worst of the fireball, elected to stand back and use his bow. Unfortunately some unseen force deflected most of the blade attacks, and even those that hit were not as effective and they had hoped. Of even greater concern to those near her was that one of her spells created a burst of flame around her, harming all those who sought to surround her.
Kitty was able to nimbly avoid the flame, although they were quickly taking a tole on the others (damn evasion). However, Kitty was getting damn tired of whiffing when he tried to hit. So he decided to do something about her and her spell casting. He tried to grab her and hold her and was successful, but as he did so a surge of energy hit him and almost made him lose hold. With Kitty holding her down the others didn’t have to worry about the bursts of flame and found it much easier to lay into her, from here is looked like the fight was all but over. A few second later Kitty tried to pin her and make her helpless, unfortunately a second surge of energy from her scorched him again, rendering him unconscious.
Now freed and able to fight, the party once again faced a powerful and angry spell caster. With some serious effort the fighters were able drive her back enough that Magic Girl could run in and heal the fallen Kitty. Though injured and concerned, Kitty once again dove into the fray and grabbed hold of the woman. He was once again shocked, but not as strongly and he managed to barely withstand the force of it. Tin Man also rushed forward and threw himself into the grapple to help. With these two brave warriors concentrating on holding her down, the others were quickly able to dispatch her.
Examining the woman’s dead body they noticed something interesting about the wounds they had opened in her. They could see what looked like very small plan roots in the wounds. Cutting her open to find out more they discovered that her body was filled with the tiny roots, in fact there was almost more root and then flesh left to her.
They quickly stripped her of her magical gear, including a robe that later turned out to be the source of the shocks that laid Kitty low. Taking the seed they returned to the sphere made by the roots. Droodad carefully place the seed in the pillar where they assumed it had been taken from. They were a little surprised and disappointed when nothing happened. So Droodad simply took the seed with her, wondering what it could be for.
Going back to the surface the first thing they noticed was a 30ft tall tower that hadn’t been there when they went down. Sneaky recognized it as his father’s tower and quickly looked around to see where dad was. Dad was busy examining the glass under the dirt in this clearing. It turned out that he had been scrying on his son occasionally, and this place looked worth of further examination. Despite the massive arrogance he displayed he did purchase the wine the party had found, as well as identifying the magic items. Seeing nothing else of interest, but still filled with question, the party prepared to set back out.
Son of a penguin eater! I just spent 45-60 minutes typing a post only to have it eaten. I'm super-upset.
Son of a penguin eater! I just spent 45-60 minutes typing a post only to have it eaten. I'm super-upset.
Yeah, that happens once in a while. I always type it in word and then cut and paste. Trust me it will save you some screaming in the long run, and give access to spellcheck.
Our brave band of heroes now sets forth from the ruins. They are a little richer, but not much wiser as to what created this place. As they continued on they kept a careful watch for anything else that might wish to make their lives “interesting”.
So they were more than a little surprised to see a stick out from between two trees to examine the party only a short time later as they rested in a clearing. What surprised them wasn’t so much that something might be able to sneak up on them, although they weren’t happy about that, it was the sheer size of the creature. The head belonged to a massive dire bear that stoop more than 20 feet tall at the shoulder. The adventurers were in shock that something that probably massed more than all of them and their mounts put together was able to take them by surprise. (If you have enough hit dice, you can get some amazing skill checks).
Droodad decided that it would be better to be friends rather than dinner, so she relied on her connection with nature to reach out to the bear and befriend it. While she had never attempted to commune with an animal this massive, it proved surprisingly easy. The bear was not apparently hungry, merely curious. It was more than willing to lie down so that she could scratch its neck.
As Droodad examine the enormous creature, she realized that it was very, very old. There were many scars of battle under its fur that attested to the sheer power it possessed. Eventually she grew brave enough to climb on its back. Since it didn’t seem to mind this she was actually able to talk everyone else, with the exception of Tin Man and Magic Girl, into climbing on its back. Once everyone was on its back, it stood up and set off into the woods. Tin Man and Magic Girl mounted up and follow. The followed at a good distance since the horse had no interest in getting close to the beast.
The horse had trouble keeping up as the bear quickly moved towards the edge of the woods that they had been headed for. As the trees thinned out and the forest edge came into sight, the bear laid down and laid its massive head on its paws while the party dismounted.
They had all dismounted before someone realized that not all was well with their ride. Sneaky put his hand to the massive neck to check for a pulse. Apparently this trip had been the ancient creatures last living act. Droodad took this hard (the player couldn’t stop crying) and insisted that they build a low wall of stones around it to honor the fallen creature. While they built the wall they could see a number of other dire bears come to edge of the woods for a few minutes and then leave. As she said a prayer for the spirit of the beast, Droodad carefully and reverently removed two of its teeth.
In a somewhat more subdued tone the party continued to head north. Just before nightfall they came to a place where they could hear the sounds of a number of people talking. Hurrying ahead they rounded a bend to see a camp of dwarves fling the banner of King Oscar Feykill. This was apparently a company of dwarves patrolling the border of the kingdom they had been seeking.
There were a few brief moments of suspicion as they approached the camp, but were quickly welcomed in. There they learned that the kingdom had recent been having trouble with orc raids from the surrounding areas. The border guard had been double, and Oscar himself had come down to assess the situation. In the morning the dwarves would be returning to the camp where he was located, and the party was welcome to accompany them.
They also found that several of the dwarves had set up a friendly poker game. Eventually Sneaky, Silent Man and Kitty would all try their hand at cards. Unfortunately the players in this game were quite skilled. Sneaky managed to make a small profit, but Silent Man and Kitty both lost money. Kitty was actually suckered into a very bad hand, and was fleeced of several hundred in gold.
The next day saw them to Oscar’s encampment. Here they were escorted to see the great king himself. He was not what they were expecting. He appeared to be a statue of a dwarf carved from rock come to live, except that his hair and beard were of real hair sprouting from the rock. His teeth seemed to be made of gold, but one or two party members realized that they were actually pyrite. He invited them to join him for dinner and tell the tails of their travels.
At the dinner Wiz regaled them with stories of what our heroes had seen. Surprisingly when he described the bear Oscar became very interested. He asked if had a long scar on its shoulder, which Droodad had noticed during the ride. He immediately and firmly insisted that Droodad show him where the body was. When she agreed he grabbed her arm and the two sank into the ground.
When they resurfaced they were at the bear’s final resting place. The massive body remained undisturbed. Oscar went over to it, laid a hand on it and said “Ah me friend. I see ye’ve passed on. I wish ye well where ever ye are.”
After saying this he raise his hand and the earth rose up and covered the still form. He stood a few more moments at the massive burial mound before returning with Droodad to the feast. Unfortunately the mood had been broken and Oscar seemed distracted, so soon the heroes sought their beds.
The next morning Oscar insisted that he needed to see what the party was capable of before he could offer them any work. This consisted of a sparring match between them and Oscar. The fight was very short, as it quickly became apparent just how outclassed they were. Still they tried their best, and Wiz actually managed to do a little bit of damage to Oscar with his scorching ray and melf’s acid arrow spells.
Oscar was impressed enough to tell them of several tasks that he would pay well for. To the South East they were having trouble with orcs. He would only pay a bounty on those killed in his lands, but he would pay 50pg per head, and more for a strong fighter or spell caster. North of there, there had recently been a rash of mysterious fires. They hadn’t come close to any homes, but it was better safe than sorry. Finally in the North East there were sightings of trolls. He offered 500gp per head, and 300pg per head of young trolls.
The party elected to do all three. Starting with the orcs in the south and sweeping northward. Sneaky however decided that he had had enough of adventuring, so he would be leaving for greener pastures (this is where the player decided to drop the game).
So the party set off South East to hunt orcs. They planned to try the simple method of simply walking around until they were attacked. Although they did take the precaution of sending Wiz’s celestial hawk familiar ahead to scout. He soon passed word that there were three wagons traveling very, very fast down a road that the party would soon cross. The hawk could see that some of the people in the wagons were bleeding and injured.
Wiz, Tin Man and Droodad were mounted so they spurred their horses forward to intercept the wagons while their unmounted companions followed at a slower pace. The three quickly reached the road and could see the wagons barreling down on them. They decided that the best way to convince the wagons to stop was to simply stand in their way.
While the wagoneers briefly considered simply trampling the party, they reined in just shy of a collision. They quickly explained that they had been set upon by orcs. Desperately outnumber the caravan guards had stayed behind to buy them time, but probably would not be able to buy them much. The orcs should be just moments behind them. Tin Man promptly told them to head on and that the party would stop the orcs.
As the wagons started moving again Wiz send his familiar down the road to find the orcs. He didn’t have to wait long as the orcs were running fast and would be there in a minute or two. The party quickly assembled their ambush. On the right side of the road Tin Man and Kitty climbed trees to hide. In the meantime the rest of the party used a deep ditch that ran parallel to the road as a hiding place. Magic Girl took the precaution of hiding well back of the party and the prospective location of the fighting. Droodad’s horse (her animal companion for now) stayed hidden in the trees, but was ready to run to his master’s aid.
The party could see the orcs running down the road. In the lead was a brawny commanding orc that seemed to be the leader, but strangely enough was wearing no armor. Behind him was a dozen lesser orcs. One orc in full plate armor carrying a composite longbow was bringing up the rear, and despite the armor seemed to have no trouble keeping up with the others.
Unfortunately for the party, some of them were spotted before they could spring their trap. The chief and several other orcs easily saw Tin Man who had not kept his head down enough. The much more observant archer quickly drew an arrow and skewered Kitty. So the battle was joined.
Magic Girl wisely stayed well back from the fight, only using her crossbow to snipe at the fight. Strangely enough Tin Man also decided to stay in the ditch for most of the fight and use his longbow. On the other hand Droodad and Wiz were much braver, and much more clever. Droodad began summoning a bear to deal with the archer, while Wiz used a Tasha’s Hideous Laughter to take the chieftain out of the equation. Kitty jump out of his tree and charged into battle, quickly becoming the first of our heroes to fell an orc. Droodad’s horse charged forward and easily cleared the ditch to become the second heroe to fell an orc.
From here the fight turned vicious with the archer only barely missing Magic Girl before the bear got to him. The bear only lasted a few seconds before the archer’s arrows laid him low. Realizing the archer was the greatest danger Kitty ignored the lesser orcs remaining to charge over to the archer and attempt to grapple him. Unfortunately his first attempt failed and the archer’s counter attack nearly didn’t leave him able to try again. Yet despite the damage done by the archer Kitty survived and a wrestling match quickly ensued.
Meanwhile Droodad and her horse were laying into everyone around them. Magic Girl was taking pot shots at orcs and Wiz was lighting several of them on fire with well placed flaming hands spells. The orc minions were not especially tough, but they did manage to hold the party at bay long enough for their leader to recover from his magic induced giggle fit, and they dealt some damage along the way. Tin Man didn’t stop (badly) shooting arrows and climb out of the ditch until the chieftain stood up.
Where was Silent Man in all this you ask? An excellent question. For some reason he spent over 5 rounds sneaking around the side of the fight before he finally charged in, just about the time the chieftain was standing back up. The chieftain it turned out had a few tricks up his sleeve. As they attacking him he returned each blow in kind (Karmic Strike, Combat Reflexes and an 18 dex will do that). His blows brought several party members to their knees, but in the end to no avail. The damage they managed to deal to him while he was laughing was just enough to keep him from rendering them all into dog meat.
In the mean time Kitty had finally managed to wrestle the archer to the ground and pin him. This made him easy for the party to dispatch. They quickly removed the heads and policed up the loot. They also found another of the strange clay tablets with a tree on it, this one somewhat better made. They decided to rest here for several hours before checking on what happened to the guards that bought the wagons such desperately needed time.
Further down the road they found the remains of another battle. According to the blood and tracks nearly a dozen orcs had been slain here, but their bodies were nowhere to be found. The stripped bodies of the fallen guards were still there. A heal check revealed that one of the guards had actually survived the fight. The party could have saved him had they come immediately.
With this the party turned its attention north to the strange fires. Traveling the rest of the day let them camp near the area where the fires had been occurring. Sometime during the second shift those on sentry saw the glow of a huge fire coming through the trees. Rousing their fellows they quickly headed off to find out what was going on.
It only took a few minutes to find the ranging inferno of a forest fire. They stayed well back, but as their eyes adjusted to the fierce glare the cause of the fire soon became apparent. A vaguely humanoid figure made of flame was calmly walking around in the fire. Droodad and Wiz both quickly recognized a fire elemental.
Droodad was able to use her connection to the natural world to sense its intentions and feelings (I use wild empathy for a lot of things in my game), while Wiz spoke Ignan and was able to speak to it in a language it understood. Between the two of them they were able to communicate with it pretty effectively.
Apparently the elemental had wondered into the material plane by accident and didn’t know how to get back. The forest fire was a result of it being a walking ball of fire in the middle of a flammable forest. Further back in the inferno the party could see a sort of small gateway that must have been how the elemental arrived here. Wiz bravely cast resist energy on himself and walked into the raging inferno. He was able to easily lead it to the portal and it gratefully dived back in. Unfortunately this left the problem of the portal itself.
The party realized that they could not close something like this. So they tied a note to the leg of Wiz’s familiar to take to Oscar. Before the hawk could return, the archmage Ryzzym appeared in the clearing. He said he had been sent to take care of the matter and was easily able to close the portal permanently. He said that it seemed to be a naturally occurring portal. These sort of things happen from time to time, and while this one was larger and more dangerous than usual, it was likely a natural phenomena.
Shortly after Ryzzym left, Wiz’s hawk returned with a message from Oscar. He had sent for magical help to close the portal, and would be rewarding the party when they returned to camp.
How did Tin man get into the tree I thought that was me
How did Tin man get into the tree I thought that was me
Doh, you're right, you were the one in the tree who spent many rounds sneaking around the battle. For the record Droodad is convinced that you were busy taking a dump in the woods.
Nah, to much noise with the battle going on and not enough good leaves to use that weren't poisonous. Beside's some of those orcs looked a little too curious like that archer orc who spotted kitty. To much of a chance of him spotting me while trying to go and then pelting we with an arrow where it counts while the berserker would be busy laughing his head off at that. Embarrassing that would be.
One only goal now remained for the party, troll hunting. And thanks to recent experiences they were tougher than ever and felt ready to take on the world, or at least the part of it Oscar would pay for. So heading further north Kitty and Droodad’s horse tried to smell out the troll trail. They had just found hints of it when storm clouds appeared on the horizon. They had the choice between pushing on and hoping to find the end of the trail before the storm broke, or finding a dry place to camp and hoping the storm wouldn’t wash out the trail.
Our heroes bravely decided to press on. They followed the trail as quickly as possible, confident that they would find the troll’s lair before the storm broke. Unfortunately they were wrong, but only by a little bit. The rain had begun to fall in earnest when Wiz’s hawk came back to report that the ravine they were in came to an end ahead, and that there were several caves. Unfortunately they didn’t know which cave the trolls were in. They tried the simple expedient of having Kitty go into the caves one at a time and smell for trolls. After several wrong guesses, they eventually hit upon the correct cave. Of course the horses didn’t appreciate being in a cave that stank of trolls. Only Droodad’s horse was able to be convinced to come past the entrance.
Kitty and Silent Man decided to scout ahead, of course this was complicated by the fact that Kitty could see in the dark, but Silent Man couldn’t. It ended up with Silent Man holding onto Kitty’s tail as he walked blindly along behind. After scouting down the tunnel a short ways Kitty could see a crude door blocked the way. Through gaps in the wood he could see movement, although he didn’t get close enough to see what sort of movement. He could also tell that the door was smeared with something that smelled vile.
After the party regrouped and debated for a while, an idea was eventually agreed upon. They employed the simple expedient of Wiz walking up to the door and putting a fireball through one of the bigger openings. This annihilated the door, the dozen or so dire rats on the other side, and the second door on the other side of the rats.
From here it was only a short trip further down the passage to a larger cavern. They couldn’t see into the cavern well for several reasons. First off the cave didn’t lead square into the cavern, but actually came in at an oblique angle, making it hard to see anything from the passage, and secondly because they decided not to pull out any light sources. What they could see was that there was some sort of fire in the room, which surprised them considering troll’s vulnerability to fire.
Almost all the party decided to sneak up carefully and slowly, although Wiz and Droodad both pointed out that with the fireball going off chances were good that the trolls knew the party was there. Wiz decided to simply walk around the corner and see what was going on, after all the party didn’t really have any element of surprise.
He immediately found himself face to face with a large troll standing beside a bonfire. The troll had a strange amulet on which showed a sword impaling a human skull. Of more immediate concern was the very large axe the troll was carrying. Wiz tried to take advantage of the situation by announcing that they had come in peace. The troll simply chanted a spell and large amount of water instantly doused the fire. In the sudden darkness Wiz could hear the troll moving.
Several party members at this point pulled out light sources and threw them into the cavern, but no one actually went into the cave to back up Wiz just yet. Droodad went one better and summoned a flaming sphere, which she then had roll right onto the troll. The party was more than a little dismayed when the fire had no affect what so ever on the troll. Wiz then threw a melf’s acid arrow at the troll, which it turns out worked just fine. Unfortunately the troll decided to return the favor by hacking at with its greataxe.
Kitty charged in to protect Wiz from the axe wielding troll, and managed to land a good blow or too, but the Troll moved surprising quickly and was very difficult to hit. Some spells flew out and everyone readied themselves for the fight.
Tin Man moved to the entrance to the cavern, but his armor kept him from going any further, so instead he called out a challenge to the troll (this is the Knight class feature if the enemy fails the save, they must only attack the Knight and no one else). The axe wielding troll ignored him, but the troll they hadn’t noticed who was standing on the ceiling thanks to slippers of spider climbing did. Wiz was looking around while preparing his next spell and luckily noticed the one of the ceiling, so he moved along the wall to try and stay on the edge of the fight.
The party was more than little dismayed to realize they were fighting not one troll, but three trolls! The one of the ceiling leapt onto Tin Man and bore him to the ground, grappling him with ease. In the mean time the third troll who had apparently been invisible appeared beside Wiz and literally knocked his teeth out (I got the “my teef” crit, so he lost 8 teeth). This left Wiz sprawling unconscious on the floor.
(to keep things from getting confusing, Troll A has an axe and is a spellcaster, Troll B was on the ceiling and Troll C was invisible)
While Tin Man wrestled to no avail with troll B that was latched onto him, Silent Man charged in to tie up the Troll C. Droodad moved in to bestow some healing on Wiz, unfortunately this took her a little too close to Troll A, who ignored Kitty to carve huge chunks out of her. Droodad’s horse stepped up and then stepped on Troll B, who was busy with Tin Man. Droodad also tried rolling her flame sphere over Troll C, who like Troll A completely ignored it.
Wiz regained consciousness and quickly crawled as far as he could get from the thick of combat. Magic Girl found her a nice spot at the entrance where she could see the entire battle, but no one could get to her thanks to Droodad’s horse and the wrestling match on the floor. Of course if Troll B should happen to drop Tin Man, Magic Girl would be in serious trouble. She of course started using her new found skill as a warmage to fling lesser acid orbs and any troll in sight.
While troll C was able to land several good hits on Silent Man, he eventually succumbed to the combine firepower of Silent Man and Magic Girl, especially when Wiz sent a few magic missiles his way. The fight wasn’t over yet, as Troll B has mauled Tin Man, eventually flinging him 20 feet and almost rendering him unconscious. Unfortunately for Troll B Droodad’s horse is a vicious fight, who had pounded nearly into jelly. Droodad slipped in behind Troll B to land the blow that rendered him unconscious. Magic Girl used yet another acid sphere to make sure that breath was his final breath.
In the meantime Troll A had been having trouble with Kitty. Kitty was have an almost impossible time hitting, and the troll’s regeneration meant it was almost unhurt. Still it’s companions were down and the party wasn’t. It muttered a few words and sudden the world went dark as far as Kitty was concerned. Now blinded, Kitty tried to use smell and hearing to target his opponent, although this did not work nearly as well. Troll A on the meantime went to work on the remaining party members. He managed to tear into several of them, rendering Droodad, Wiz (again) and Tin Man unconscious, but in the end he just couldn’t stand up to the entire party. Once he fell Kitty found that he could see again. Wiz used an acid splash to finish troll A off when he finally regained consciousness.
From here they were about to explore the cave when they heard movement from the back of the cave. Advancing cautiously they saw two young trolls huddling together in fear in a recess in the back of the cavern. Wiz was the only person there who spoke giant, and decided to try and befriend them rather than execute them. Only Droodad opposed this, saying it would be better to simply leave them to fend for themselves, but didn’t press the point very hard. It took him several hours to convince the young trolls to trust him, but in the end he was successful. Luckily the young trolls had not been able to see the fight from where they were hiding, and the party was kind enough to make sure they never saw the bodies of their parents.
They also took the time to loot the place thoroughly. They were happy to take the ring of invisibility, slippers of spider climbing, monk’s belt and periapt of wisdom that the trolls had used so effectively on them. Wiz was even able to worm the command world for the ring out of the young trolls, who had heard their parent say it before. They also swiped the amulet that troll A had worn, they hoped to find out more about it later. One final item they found, that Wiz was somewhat grateful for was a magical tooth. It apparently was enchanted to provide a minor bonus, but would get stronger if other teeth like it could be found (some 1st and 2nd edition players may be able to recognize that particular item). He was able to get one tooth back, of course he is still missing 7.
(This was the first time for the players running into one of my favorite little surprised, monsters with non-associated class levels. I try not to pull them out too often, but they are just so much fun! This particular troll was a 6th level cleric, and thanks to practiced spell caster was caster level 10. He was able to drop a mass resist energy fire on all three trolls. It is interesting how a party reacts to something like that.
They came to realize tree things here. One is that I am more than willing to throw very nasty and unusual encounters at them. Two is monsters will often use very good tactics and take advantage of stuff like terrain, items and abilities. Third and finally that they really need to work on their teamwork.
A lot of the players have either been playing in living campaigns, different systems or much more straight forward games. They aren’t used to needing to use really good group tactics, but I think they’re learning. It also the first game for many of them that will go on very long term. A lot of them are really looking forward to playing at levels that no game they have been in has gotten to.)
So now our heroes were ready to head back to Oscar’s camp, albeit with a few more passengers than expected.
Getting out of the mountains was fairly easy, but only moments afterwards they heard the approach of a number of people. They warily assumed a defensive stance, but relaxed when the party came into view. It was a large contingent of dwarven soldiers carrying the banner of Oscar Feykill. The party approach, but were quickly warned to stay where they were. It seemed like these dwarves had no heard of the party working for Oscar yet.
As the party made a hurried explanation a dwarven woman came forward, flanked by 4 bodyguards. Despite her very advance years she wore one of the most magnificently crafted suites of plate armor the party had ever seen. She stated that she was willing to accept that they worked for her husband, but she wanted to know exactly what they had been up to.
Realize who they were dealing with, the party was more than willing to tell of their travels. Wiz offered to turn the young trolls over to her, to do with as she felt appropriate. She agreed, and smiled warmly when he brought the young trolls over. Interesting enough they seemed to take to her immediately. Apparently Oscar’s family had just expanded in a way he probably had not expected.
The party generously offered to help escort her to see her husband, since they were headed there anyway. Several the three dozen dwarves who were guarding the queen snickered at this, but the party was allowed to travel with them.
Once back at camp the party reported to Oscar and happily collected their pay. Of course they forgot to mention the clay tablets they had been finding on the orcs, or the strange amulet the troll cleric had been wearing. Two little pieces of information Oscar would have found quite interesting. Oscar also invited them to stay for a while at his kingdom, mentioning that he might have more work them in about a month. The party decided this would be a good time to take a month off from each other and each pursues their own interests for a while.
Upon reaching Oscar’s kingdom each pursued their own agenda for a month, usually ways to make money. Droodad endeared herself to the farms in the area by assisting with crops and farming. During the second week off the farms brought her a creature they had captured trying to make off with a sheep or two. Droodad was shocked that what they brought forth was a young giant eagle, similar to the one her master had had. She was truly grateful for the chance to befriend the magnificent creature.
As they stayed there the party kept their ears open for rumors, and learned about an interesting feature of this mountain. Apparently a tunnel ran deep underground from Oscar’s kingdom to a White Dragon’s lair. Apparently the king had decided that since the dragon wasn’t bothering anyone, he wouldn’t bother it. So he ordered that no one go down there, and set guards just in case. Of course after 100 years with nothing going on, it wasn’t really the best and the brightest of the guards who were assigned there.
So two of the characters decided to see for themselves just what was down there (it’s important to note they went separately, but had the same response to what they saw, at least at first). Wiz and Magic Girl separately snuck past the guards and down the tunnel to see the beast for themselves. After a very long while the tunnel opened into an enormous cavern with a bend in the middle, more or less in an L shape. A few coins and gems could be seen from around the corner. Carefully peaking around the corner both could see the dragon where it slept on its hoard, but any thoughts of trying to slight its throat quickly fled their minds.
The dragon was enormous, by far the largest creature either of them had ever laid eyes on. Its head alone was the size of a school bus. This massive creature was beyond anything they had imagined finding down here. They both snuck back up the passage shaken at having met something so massive.
Magic Girl, was grateful to get away with her skin, and thought no more about it. Wiz however became obsessed. As a wizard he had long been obsessed with the study and manipulation of power and knowledge, and what a massive store of both the dragon must have accumulated. He decided to risk himself for that knowledge. So before sneaking back down again he decided to prove his peaceful intentions by leaving everything he owned behind, right down to his boxers. Once he made it back down to the cave he picked up a single gold piece and closed his eyes to pray.
When he opened them back up again the dragon hadn’t moved. However, it did decide to speak to him inside his head with a voice that made his ears ring and he dropped to his knees from the power of the voice. It told him to put down the gold piece and explain himself.
Wiz proceeded to grovel. He groveled with dignity, and he groveled politely, but grovel he did. He explained his quest for knowledge. Luckily for Wiz dragons like groveling, especially when done with some style. The dragon warned Wiz that his search for knowledge could get him killed, but said that he would provide Wiz with some of what he sought.
The Dragon opened its eyes and stood up. Wiz had not realized how truly enormous it was until he saw it move. It was hard to believe a living thing could achieve that size. As it stood over him he felt compelled to meet its gaze. The last things he heard before a sense of absolute cold overwhelmed all thought was “I will give you the knowledge of ice, the greatest knowledge I have.”
When he came to, he found that he had been rather drastically altered. His hair and skin were now completely white and his eyes seemed to be covered in frost so that no iris, veins or pupils could be seen. Thankfully he could still see just fine. He was back at the beginning of the tunnel. Before the tunnel had been very chilly, now it seemed quite warm. He would discover what else the dragon had done to him as time went on.
(The character at this point gained the cold subtype. The players response made everything worth it. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone that psyched about what happened to their character.)
I believe the response was something along the lines of
=D
Oh man!I actully found the right Forum, Woot.
Oh man!I actully found the right Forum, Woot.
I like this guy's screen name.
Oh man!I actully found the right Forum, Woot.I like this guy's screen name.
Trust me, it's well earned.
Okay, I enjoy doing the sort of posts I’ve been doing, but I’m not really catching up to what is currently going on. So I’m going try and quickly bring things up to speed and then go back to the more detailed posts.
After the party finished their month off they dropped by Oscar’s camp to see if he had any work. He didn’t but did ask Droodad to go visit the bear’s grave with him. It proved to just be an excuse for him to inform the party of the secret mission he had for them.
His wife’s 250th birthday was in about a month and he wanted to get a surprise present for her. He gave them a list of three things he thought would be suitable, two of which he was pretty sure they were strong enough to retrieve. He would only pay for one of them, only if they got it back in time and he would pay more if they kept it secret and didn’t get it there too early.
The party being the greedy bastards they are settled on retrieving a set of adamantine smithing tools with the family crest of Oscar’s wife. They figured that other items that weren’t part of someone’s family legacy they could go and collect for themselves later.
So they headed for the location of the treasure. On the way they found a weird grove of trees planted in three rings, it would kind of look like a bullseye from above. The only one who decided to step inside the rings was Droodad. A large earth elemental appeared and started to attack, but Droodad used her wild empathy to convince it she wasn’t hostile. As she went deeper in larger elementals appeared each time she passed a ring of trees. At the center she discovered what was apparently a druid’s burial mound. The party left it undisturbed.
The only other trouble on the way was a pair of nesting dire snakes, but the party simply detoured around them. Once they got to the cave things got fun. The cave was inhabited mostly by meenlocks. Meenlocks are fun since they can deal wisdom damage at range, d-door every other round, paralyze with a touch and anyone who gets close has to save vs fear or go catatonic. The downside is that they are AC 14, the DC on the saves are low and they only have an average of 16hp.
The first fight with the meenlocks was frustrating for the party. They kept having a nearly impossible time locating the blood things. Between poor lighting, lots of rubble and the ability to d-door the meenlocks were able to hide and run rings around the party. Droodad failed one save against the Wisdom damage, and Kitty got paralyzed at one point, but other than that the fight was more frustrating than dangerous.
They had the choice between heading into the mining section, the residential section or the smithing and refining section. Since they were looking for smithing tools, they unsurprisingly headed for the smithing section. Down here the meenlock were apparently building fires in the forge to get some warmth. The party headed in and easily saw the pair hiding in each corner. They didn’t see the sorcerer standing on the ceiling. Now unlike the other meenlocks the sorcerer had a very high charisma and feats that bumped up the DC on his abilities.
Over the course of the fight the only character to not get paralyzed by fear was Silent Man. Every last one of the others got taken out of the fight for 5-8 rounds by that fear effect. The entire party almost got taken prisoner and turned into meenlocks, which would have really changed where the campaign was headed…..
Still in the end they took him down. Of course all the noise alerted the meenlocks and other nasties in the other area, who were organizing and would soon be setting up an ambush. The players had the option of grabbing the goods and running as fast as possible, or getting ready to fight.
Personally I hate the idea that the players can spend two or three hours outside of the game talking and expect only a few seconds to have passed in the game. So without telling them I gave them a real world time limit to decide before an ambush of all the forces that were left in the place would be set up and waiting for them. They managed to make the decision to grab and run 30 seconds before they would have been screwed. Everyone was at least a bit injured and Droodad’s wisdom was hurting so much that it would only take one more failed save to remove her spellcasting ability. Since everything in here was a sneaky type, walking into that ambush probably would have been a slaughter.
The party decided to head a day and half back to that grove and rest there while they healed up. While they were waiting they were passed by another band of adventurers who were heading to the dungeon they had just been at. The party was not pleased about this, but lucky for them they already had most of the good loot from the place. I decided this was a good place to introduce a rival adventuring group. After all they couldn’t be the only adventuring party in the world now could they. Of course they will be seeing them again.
Since they still had about 2 or 3 weeks before they needed to hand the gift over to Oscar, they decided to hide it in the grove and head south to see if they could find something to do. On the way they found a place of significant natural magic and some special flowers that Droodad realized could be useful. She took some flowers and leaves for later.
They also ran into a caravan of Gypsies. In my campaign the Gypsies are a bit better off than they are in the real world. With their traveling and knowledge of magic and lore they basically buy and sell exotic and expensive goods, especially artwork and magical items. This makes useful to kingdoms, if not always well liked. The gypsies welcomed them warmly and were able to provide a lot of info.
Kitty found out that one of the gypsies had seen other anthropomorphic creatures way to the south in the Olman islands. Droodad found out that one of the other gypsy caravans might know more about the seed she was carrying around. It was at this time that she started meditating with the seed every night. She also found out that the amulet the troll cleric was wearing was the holy symbol of the “mother of monsters”, a godlike being worshiped by monsters sometimes. Also the orcs had apparently been active along the entire length of the mountain range, and huge area, so something big was going on.
When they finally reached the city they were heading towards they didn’t stay there long. The night they got there they were approached by a farmer who was looking for help for his village. Apparently something was creating a crap load of sinkholes in the area. The authorities weren’t interested, but they probably would be come winter time, of course by then it would be too late. He figured that by the time the harvest came around there wouldn’t be any farms to harvest. The party agreed to help out and he let them know he had also gotten the church of Corellian to agree to send some aid as well.
This was how I introduced a new character who I will call Blingy. Blingy is an elven cleric of Corellian who is very concerned with appearance and very arrogant. They player had been here for one session and then couldn’t attend again for a while. It’ll be interesting to see how the character develops, especially considering he character in my previous campaign. Those who read this thread will know him as Logan, the name of the character in that previous campaign, who holds the record for just most flavorful and just plain weird character.
Well the party left the next morning with the farmer and their new cleric to find out what was causing the sink holes. (Wiz missed this session and most of the next due to personal things. Magic Girl’s attendance also hit a low point for other reasons.) They got to the farmer’s house late that evening, just in time to see a sinkhole take out part of his fields.
The first thing they noticed was that the sinkhole didn’t collapse the way sinkholes usually do. It was a lot slower and shallower than it should have been, despite the 5 foot drop. Also those with some knowledge realized that this wasn’t the correct terrain for sinkholes. Checking down in the hole itself they slowly came to realize that there weren’t any rocks in it. That was weird because this is pretty rocky ground. The farmers have to work hard to get it all the rocks cleared out when plowing the fields. They ended up with more questions than they started with.
The farmer offered to let them stay in the barn after serving dinner. Only Blingy and Tin Man actually took him up on it. The others stayed outside either sleeping on the ground or patrolling. At this point on Tin Man and Droodad didn’t have active rings of sustenance, although Droodad had found one on the meenlocks that she hadn’t worn for the full week yet. Blingy did have a ring, but he decided to just rest in the barn loft he and Tin Man had been using as a bed, after putting back on his armor and weapons of course.
Kitty was the first one to hear a sort of splintering sound coming from the barn, Blingy heard it shortly afterwards. Unfortunately Tin Man kept snoring until Blingy kicked him in the ribs. Kitty ran in to see a pair of stone claws emerging smoothly from the earth to crush the support beams of the building. He tried to attack them to keep that from happening.
The thing when it emerged looked like a giant spider made of stone, with a pair of crab-like claws. Strangely enough instead of the horrific mouth they expected, it had a long slender proboscis. Much to their regret they learned the hard way that the proboscis was for eating metal and stone. It would hit a metal weapon or armor and super heat it, then suck up the liquid metal. This of course was very unpleasant for anyone wearing said armor. Blingy almost lost his breastplate, Tin Man did lose his shield, and Droodad sacrificed several daggers trying to distract the thing.
Eventually the party produced a severe enough beating that it retreated underground. They quite rightly figured that this was some sort of earth elemental, considering its appearance, feeding habits and the ability to earthglide. It had apparently been eating such large quantities of stone that it was creating the “sinkholes”. If this thing ever got to a city or mountain it could destroy it in a matter of months. Obviously this thing couldn’t survive for long on the material plane.
They also guessed from how long it took it to attack them that it couldn’t track metal quickly. They weren’t surprised to discover that the blacksmith’s shop had been one of the first sinkholes. So they decided to lay a trap for it. They gathered together a bunch of the farmers tools and placed them near the edge of the local forest. Then climbed in the trees to wait and ambush it. As icing on the cake Droodad used a spell to turn into a small earth elemental as bait.
Turning into an elemental may have been overkill as it attacked quickly and viciously. Unfortunately since it didn’t have fast healing it still had most of its injuries from the previous night. The fight was over shortly and Wiz showed up just in time to get the next to last blow. It wasn’t quite dead, so they wrapped it in several hundred feet of rope to keep it securely bound. Two days later Blingy was able to get some higher level priest of his temple to show up and send it back to the elemental plane of earth.
The farmers of course threw a huge celebration in the party’s honor. They also ponied up what little treasure they had as a reward. This amounted to several bottles of really old alcohol that someone’s grandfather had brought back from adventuring many years ago. There was also a lucky stone that for some reason the party let Wiz take (since he missed most of it I still don’t understand the logic behind it.) Lastly there was some money, which the party refused.
By now it was almost time to get back to Oscar’s with the queen’s present. It took them a few days to get back up that way. They did take time to check on how the other adventurers had faired. They found the bodies and realized how many enemies had still been left. The other party successfully finished looting the place, although not without some trouble.
Fortunately the hidden present had not been disturbed. After retrieving it they headed back for Oscar’s to enjoy their rewards and the Queen’s week-long kingdom-wide birthday party. Oscar gave them each 150 electrum pieces. In my campaign 1 electrum is worth 100 gold, so this was the equivalent of 15,000 gold. At this point some of them were just hitting 6th level.
An important thing to note about my game, I do care about weight encumbrance. This especially matters since metal coins are heavy. The current rule is that each copper, silver and gold coin weights 1oz, while platinum and electrum are ½ oz. This means that 16,000 would weight 1,000 lbs. Needless to say the party has had to actually think about what it takes from them to haul all their treasure. In the most recent session they broke down and split the cost of a portable hole, which is very handy.
The Queen also gave them a reward when she found out that they were the ones who returned her family’s heirlooms just in time for her birthday. She promised to personally forge one item for each of them. If they wanted it made out of Mithril or something like that they would have to either provide it, or pay her the market price for the materials. Considering that she has been famed as one of the world’s best smiths for the last 100 years or so, that is a very big reward in deed. In game terms she would make an item that had special non-magical bonus. A few of the players had commissions for her immediately. Blingy wanted a silvered lance, Kitty wanted some shurikens and Wiz wanted Blue Mithril full plate. I actually have special rules for materials that are unique to my campaign and Wiz is the first to take advantage of that.
At the party they were also joined by two new party members. They will affectionately be referred to by me as Flyboy and Brad. Flyboy is a half-celestial centaur who is a cleric of Gorath, god of adventure. Being half-celestial and a centaur took up his first 5 levels, which as hurt him, but someday it will hopefully work out once he can start buying down his ECL. His minion and eventual cohort is Brad, a winged elf Bard. They joined the party looking for fun and adventure, and they will find it.
The final thing that happened with the party was that someone (I think it was Droodad) FINALLY told Oscar about the clay tablets they had been finding on the Orcs they had killed. He though there was something familiar about it and asked to take one to check. They of course agreed.
The last day of the party he asked the entire party to meet with him. When they arrived at the meeting room he was not alone. There was also a young man in very expensive clothing that Magic Girl recognized immediately as Ian, the god she worshipped. Standing beside him was his wife, also a god, Barbara. The final person in the room was a man in armor depicting the symbol of St. Cuthbert. It was hard to tell what age he was and there was a strange perfection to his features and person, as if there was no possibility of flaw or any hair being out of place. (A former PC who picked up the Axiomatic template along the way.)
This very impressive array of people were gather around the table where an greataxe was on display beside one of the tablets. The axe had a tree carved into it in exquisite detail, and it bore a striking resemblance to the one of the tablets. Apparently the axe had been wielded a long time ago by an orc who managed to kill Ian while he was still mortal with a single blow. The orc also apparently had radiated an anti-magic field. Considering that this was almost 100 years ago, there might not be a connection, but they were far from sure. The party was asked to keep their eyes open for anything more about it, which they promised to do. They were also granted access to Ian’s library, partly as thanks and party in the hope that they might find something others had missed.
Attention to any readers I might have. I could use your help with something. I need to come up with the exact composition for the rival adventuring party that they ran into. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions you all have for them. So far there is a guy who wears pink (he is not gay) and a ranger. There is not a druid. Other than that it is wide open and I use pretty much all 3.5 books exept for the psionics books. I have banned the frenzied berserker from complete warrior and the Crusader from the Book of Nine Swords.
Other than that it is wide open. I'm looking for any suggestions of tactics, classes, personalities and even character sheets if you want to go that far. They are mostly neutral with one or two good aligned, and I might include one person who is evil if they are subtle about it. The party will be meeting them again, probably many times. Sometime they might work togather, sometimes against each other. Eventually they may even fight each other.
Anyone who wants to lend a hand, I hope you have as much fun with this as I plan to.
OOOH this will prove to be an ecellent series of events to keep my eye on.
Can't wait for more
Hmm.... make the fighter or barbarian which ever you have a stone child (from races of stone), but with his skill points put into some flavorful catagories like cooking and play musical insturments and call him Lurch. I think you know where to go from there
From here the party decided to head south towards the marshes to hunt for one of the items that Oscar mentioned as a possible gift for his wife. This one was a supposedly exquisitely crafted slave bracelet in a castle in the marsh filled with undead. (For those who don’t know a slave bracelet is a bracelet with an extra part that goes over the back of the hand and links up with a ring worn on the middle finger.)
The plan was that after getting the bracelet they would head further south towards Monmurg, a city know of its lack of morality and one of the only major ports to engage in the slave trade. For some reason Wiz decided that he really want to buy an enslaved blink dog, set it free and then try to befriend it. It remains to be seen whether or not this will work. From there they want to hire a ship to take them to a place called “Farshore”. Supposedly Farshore has become famous for selling truly exotic mounts, which Blingy wants badly. Also it is in the middle of the Olman Islands, which are rumored to hold more being likes Kitty.
Of course they have to get to the marshes first. On the way there Flyboy and Brad decided to fly about 600 feet up, figuring that they were safer up there. Unfortunately this isn’t always true. On the way south Brad and Flyboy look up just in time to see a quartet of wyverns diving at high speed.
The main saving grace in this fight as far as Flyboy was concerned was the massive range on fireball. The wyverns were diving from such a great height and Wiz’s falcon saw them coming, so Wiz was able to fire off two fireballs before they even arrived. Most of the party headed for the treeline as quickly as possible. One Wyvern barely missed Brad, one wyvern who had been fireballed the worst hit Flyboy so hard that the Wyvern fell unconscious. Because of the huge height of the dive I had the Wyverns dealing an extra 10d6 from “falling” damage, but the Wyverns took half of that extra damage. Blingy almost didn’t make it through this battle, he was hit hard enough by the Wyvern to almost fall unconscious. The party managed to drop the critter before it flew off with him, but it was a close thing.
Eventually they found the wyvern lair and some loot that previous wyvern victims had had in their possession. Before getting to the swap they met a very rude caravan guard who was backed about 60 or 70 men, so the party let the matter pass, although some may have marked him for future attention.
Arriving at the edge of the mash they found a small town with some helpful inhabitants. The party was smart enough to take the time ask the villagers about the swamp and the castle. Turns out the castle was inhabited by a hydra, not undead. The villagers couldn’t say exactly how many heads the hydra had, since no one had tried to get close to it. The party also found out that there is a fungus in the swamps that likes to grow on feet, and they promptly all bought special waterproof socks that would help against that.
He fight with the hydra a bit brutal. The first problem was that they were on a rented barge and not that much dry land to be had. Second problem was the hydra itself, which was a 6-headed hydra with the creature of legend template (see MM2 I believe). This unfortunately meant it was poisonous. With each head dealing str damage poison, several party members found their strength dropping like a rock. Magic Girl lost so much strength that she literally couldn’t stand up under the weight of her coin pounce. She never did take it off, but managed to do some worthwhile spell casting from a sitting position.
Eventually the combined attacks from the party brought the best low, but not before several went unconscious or paralyzed from the bites and poison. They pressed on and spent the night in the ruined castle, reasoning that nothing would be living near a hydra lair, so they should be safe. The logic proved sound in the long run.
Interestingly enough tonight was the first full moon since Droodad began meditating on that seed every night. I had the player leave the room while I described what everyone else saw, since she wasn’t consciously aware of anything that went on. Once I remember how to do spoilers I will post a description of the event. Neither the player nor the character has yet to get a description of what they saw out of the other characters.
They did find the slave bracelet which was of incredible craftsmanship and made out of a very rare metal. It was also slightly in need of repair after being in a hydra lair for several centuries. Droodad convinced the party to let her have the bracelet and she planned to ask the queen to repair it as her special item. They did find a few other treasures, including a cloak that provides cold resistance on command. They put it in Wiz because they thought he looked cold. They still had not learned that he had the cold sub-type now, but I found the irony hilarious. Poor Wiz was at -3 strength from the hydra bites, so it was two days before he could move again.
You could always make them our polar opposites? I'm going to work on some characters regardless.... how many are in this elusive "2nd party?"
What? No mention of how Kitty bravely sprung onto the foul beast's back? I mean sure he missed the first time, but he was in a bad position then (that and getting slammed by one of the heads threw his aim off).
Here's a somewhat cool idea. Give the Pink guy a twin sister or such who's a sorceress or a bard. They can become some Dynamic Duo in it for the riches and glory, and then "Lurch" is kind of like thier butler/bodyguard/caretaker and has been since they were born. pretty awsome teamwork going on their doncha think. Oh and Lurch would also have to wear pink since the twins do too. (hey if your gonna be famous gotta go all out, cronnys included). His name would be "Pinq" and her's "Pant'her", oh and mabey through teh duration of the campaign every time they show up someone else in their group is then wearing pink until they all are wearing some kind of pink. "Go Pink Privateer's". that would realy set the rivalry in motion especially for Droodad and Blingy. But I don't think Pretty Kitty would take to that so well (although it would be hilarious especially if "Pant'her" loved cats wink* wink*)
The magic of Incarnum also looks good, perhaps an Incarnate could be amongst that merry band.
One incident I forgot from the last post was that on the way south they came across a leyline (I’ll put an explanation of that in the campaign setting thread). Unfortunately the leyline was underground, so they had to dig down 20 feet to reach it. Digging down they discovered that there was actually a very week node down there and a large quartz crystal had been there absorbing the arcane energy. They were happy to take the crystal and then instead of reburying the node they basically built a 10 foot wide well with that at the bottom.
They decided to pass the night there so that Wiz could draw on the energy the next morning when he prepared his spells. That night someone noticed a glow coming from the bottom of the well. So Flyboy decided to fly down the well to investigate. At the bottom he could see that a glowing blue fungus had somehow infested the bottom. He of course tried to fly back up, but his flapping caused hundreds of spores to waft upwards. He managed to avoid being poisoned by the spores as did the rest of the party, or so they thought.
The spores were eventually recognized as Aetheric Fungus. It is a type of fungus that grows on the ethereal plane, and feeds off arcane energy. It is very poisonous and can do bad things if it infects arcane spell casters. The party decide to try and burn it to keep if from spread, although Droodad collected some spores in glass containers.
Also Droodad has finally learned what happened to her during the full moon. The other characters saw her and the seed start to glow as the full moon came closer to being directly overhead. Once the moon reached directly overhead they could see that all the veins in her body glowed with an intense light. The light that both she and the seed shed pulsed in time to the beating of her heart. For some strange reason Brad decided to use his bardic skills to try and assist in whatever she was doing. This was not very helpful though.
After beating the hydra the party returned for their horse. At this point they changed plans a bit. Instead of riding for several hundred miles through swamps and hills to reach Monmurg they would head a few days journal in the other direction so that they could take a gate there. It would save them several days, although it would get them in trouble…..
On the way there they met a Manticore, and while it had a few extra hit dice they saw it come from so far away that it was a pathetically easy fight. The next fight was much more difficult.
A few hours after meeting the manticore the party was ambushed by a pair of very large and evil looking tigers (extra HD and the corrupted template from the book of vile darkness). The party was able to kill the tigers, but not before most of them got pretty shredded. Of much greater concern was that some of the damage wouldn’t heal properly (gotta love vile damage). Eventually the party headed out but kept an eye out for any small towns that might have a church they could heal at.
On the next day they saw just such a town. Coming up to it they could see that in the center was a temple of Pelor, a perfect place to acquire healing. They could also see that all the windows in the down were shut tight or boarded up, and there was no one in the streets. They could see people working in the fields. Going in the priest was quite gracious and friendly and more than happy to heal everyone. He didn’t even demand a fee although several characters donated freely.
Coming out and looking around the town for a while, the characters finally became suspicious that something was going on. So Flyboy threw down a detect evil, which picked up something. He couldn’t tell exactly what or where, but an aura of evil covered the whole town. At that point Blingy took a close look at the temple of Pelor and realized that it wasn’t quite a standard design. It was very close, but not perfect. They spent the next 20 minutes or so discussing exactly how to go about confronting the cleric they were not convinced had been entirely forthcoming.
See now the party had a little bit of a problem at this point, although they didn’t know it yet. They were right, the cleric wasn’t on the up and up. In fact he really was evil. Unfortunately for them he also wasn’t stupid. When they had come to him for healing earlier he had tried a Suggestion on the group. Kitty was the only one who failed to save, so when he supposedly healed Kitty he actually just used an illusion to make it look like Kitty had been healed. The cleric also swiped a bit of Kitty’s fur at the same time. The fur served as an excellent focus for a scrying spell, so he was spying on the party as they were discussing what to do.
This gave him plenty of time to prepared and the party was about to learn a very, very important lesson. You never let the cleric have time to spell up. He called on his god to lend him some demons to aid him (I forget which kind, but the ones that have a 2d6 sneak attack, 7HD and are CR 6). He then dropped quite a number of fun little buff spells, but nothing too obvious.
The confrontations did not go well. The party wasn’t taken completely by surprise thanks to Brad casting detect thoughts and Blingy spotting one of the demons. The party fighters were more than a little pissed off about the cleric’s whopping 35 AC. Of course when you have time to throw down 2 magic vestments, shield of faith, righteous might, recitations and a few other goodies that happens. The saving grace for that party was that I decided against giving him a two-handed weapon and power attack.
The party took a little time to rally from their surprise and things looked pretty bad for a while. Unfortuantely the demons weren’t doing that well at hitting and for once Kitty’s dice were liking him. Despite have a 6 point lower grapple bonus Kitty was able to grab and pin the cleric long enough for someone else to coup de grace him. By this point the cleric was already pretty damaged thanks to spells like magic missile that didn’t really care about his AC. Thanks to some piss poor concentration rolls only one of the demons was able to teleport away. Of course it was the demon that had been using a wand of fireballs on the party, so they were a little bitter about that. They did manage to take the priest alive after dropping him to very negative HP.
In the end it was a long, dangerous and tricky fight. The one thing the party did very right was that only Blingy and Flyboy initially entered the church. This let the fighters jump in and keep the demons away from the casters. Between the Demon’s teleportation and tumbling, they could have bypassed the fighters, but that did not end up happening. The coordination among the party is improving. Although the thing that would have helped the most would have been a Dispell Magic, too bad nobody had one.
Exploring the church they found a secret trap door leading down to a tunnel. This was definitely the source of the evil that Flyboy had detected earlier. As they slowly decided into the tunnel the ones in the lead could see that it opened into a larger cave with a floating ghostly figure of a human in armor with the holy symbol of Pelor on his chest.
Instead of attacking the ghost immediately, they stopped to talk with him. He apparently wanted to be freed, but had been given orders to prevent anyone from coming through that entrance. Thinking a little Droodad managed to find a loophole around this. She used a spell to turn into an earth elemental and earthglide through the rock to pop up in the cave behind him. In a small alcove she found the dried out remains of a man wearing the armor of a cleric of Pelor.
The party decided to try and lay the ghost to rest by building a funeral pyre and using knowledge religion to perform a proper Pelorite burial at sundown. This was a good idea since unbeknownst to them the ghost had been given orders to attack them at midnight. The spirit of the fallen cleric appeared over the funeral pyre to thank them for freeing him. Several nice magical items fell off the body and rolled out of the fire, and he said they should take them as his thanks.
This still left the villagers and the source of the evil. The villagers by this point had gotten enough guts together for a few of them to come out and find out what the party was doing. Apparently the priest had taken over the village several years ago. They had tried to resist at first, but if they all banded together the evil cleric would simply disappear. Then the leaders and their families would be found murdered in their sleep. Anyone trying to leave the village would also be killed, so eventually they simply gave up hope. The villagers were very grateful when the party turned the evil priest over to the villagers. The priest did not long survive custody.
Then the party set about finding out just what had been the source of the evil underground. Going further down the tunnel they found a room awash in evil. A number of creatures were in cages in the room, and two empty cages were big enough to have held tigers. In the center of the room was a spring of some sort of black, foul looking ichor. The divine spell casters could easily sense this as the source of the evil in the area. Unfortunately the poor creatures in the cages had been tainted by the evil. Some of them were so far gone they were unrecognizable. The only creature that didn’t need to be put down was a black cat, but something should be done to cleanse the little bit of taint it had already picked up.
The party decided to deal with this in the morning. Instead they spent the night trying to convert the villagers to the worship of their gods. In Blingy’s case this was preaching about Corellian. In Flyboy’s case it was preaching about Gorath, with Brad’s assistance. Both made considerable progress, although Flyboy picked up a slightly larger following.
In the morning the clerics had all the villagers pray to their new gods while Blingy and Flyboy went down to call upon the aid of their gods to cleanse the evil. There both prayed to their gods for aid to drive out the evil. Both players did a very good job writing and then reading off prays and actually playing up the fact that they were clerics. They both felt the power of their god being channeled through them. The black spring surged in response and then exploded upward taking out the roof of the cave. As it splash everywhere it seemed to dissolve or burn away before it could touch anyone. In its place was a spring of pure water.
The location was now holy to both Gorath and Corellian. The two clerics used magic to call for help from their churches and used the two week wait to begin construction of a joint temple. This wasn’t that farfetched since the two gods are allies. The other characters managed to find something to do during those two weeks.
two things I forgot to mention in the posts is that they searched the evil cleric they found a tatoo in the shape of a tear drop on his arm near the shoulder. They figured this was probably a tatoo version of his holy symbol, since they couldn't find one anywhere else.
Also the character found quite a bit of gold in the room with the spring. They sort of divided it between themselves and then several of them turned their share over to the town. As I remember it Flyboy, Blingy and Kitty turned it over. Silent Man, Tin Man and Droodad kept it. I forgot to check whether or not Wiz and Magic Girl kept it.
At this point the party continued their journey on to the capital city of the Grand Marches. They were most of the way there when they ran into a sizable patrol of soldiers. The leader of the soldiers stopped briefly to find out who they were and where they were headed. He was very surprised to hear about what had happened in that village. He immediately detailed several of his men to escort the players to the capital so that they could let the king know what had occurred.
The soldiers were polite, but they set a grueling pace that the rest of the party followed. They reached the capital just before night fall, and found themselves interrogated until early in the morning. The questioning was polite, but long and thorough. The players were then escorted to some very excellent rooms where they feel deeply asleep. They awoke to find servants attending to any needs they had and a request by the king that they join him for dinner.
At the dinner the king turned out to be a youngish man in his mid 20’s. Also at the dinner were the king’s top military advisers, a collection of old and veteran warriors. The king’s first act was to apologize profusely for any rudeness the party may have experienced. He explained that they were very grateful for what the party had done for the kingdom, but that find out the details had taken priority over the proper courtesies.
As a reward he gave each party member a sizeable sum of gold and offered them guest quarters in the palace for as long as they chose to stay. Those who wished for a more permanent home, he would assign a suite in the royal grounds. It wouldn’t be as nice as the guest rooms, but it would be spacious, permanent and above all free. Several characters took him up on this offer. Finally he put his own castellan at their disposal if they had any supplies they needed to buy or any loot they wanted to sell.
The castellan was able to get them some very good deals on item. Blingy spend about 4k on a non-magical suite of plate armor made by the king’s own smith. It was of exquisite workmanship and literally fit for royalty.
Droodad took this time to head back to the druid’s grove they had found and spend some time there working on making her very own Boggin. She used a fang from the dire bear they had met, spores from the aether fungus and the blossom from the crysalis flower. She also used some petals and seed from a dread blossom swarm that the party fought (I forgot to mention it in the posts). She also drew strength from the grove when creating it. The player went a lot of effort on this, detailing how and what she used to make each part of the boggin. Thanks to all her efforts it has ended up as much nastier customer than is normal for a boggin. She named it Oskaar in honor of Oscar Feykill.
Right at the end of making the boggin along came the second full moon during which she was meditating with the seed. This time she was able to connect much more closely with the seed, thanks to the aid of the grove. She was also able to actually remember what happened. Now she glows faintly at night, and the strength of the glow corresponds to the phases of the moon.
The party was now ready to head to Monmurg and from there to Farshore. They used the gates to get there quickly, but as they stepped out they were met by one of the Monmurg city guards. The guard said that he would have to inspect their bags and possibly levy some taxes. The more observant party members, Blingy among them, notice other merchants going through with nothing more than a few quiet words and a handshake with the guards. For some reason there seemed to be a glint of gold or platinum when they merchants shook hands with the guards. Blingy caught on quickly enough and slipped the guard several pieces of electrum. The guard told Blingy that he and his servants were welcome to the city and that a formal inspection was probably unnecessary. The servants comment may have grated on some characters.
They were head to the docks with Wiz went to do his own thing at the slave market. They were most of the way to the docks when they heard a commotion from around the corner. The commotion mainly consisted of some woman swearing profusely in a very loud voice and issuing some vile threats. The party quickly hurried ahead to see the show.
Around the corner they could see a middle aged woman back by 6 sailors shouting at a guardsman backed rather nervously by 5 of his buddies. The woman was brandishing a boathook in his face and issuing threats to do things like “knock out all his teeth and string him up for lonely sailors to use”, punctuated with a truly prodigious amount of swearing. From what the party could gather from the rant the guards had tried to extract a little extra money from the woman for additional mooring fees. They had not counted on her violent responses and seemed to now be looking for a way out before a fight ensued.
Blingy strolled confidently up and told the guard captain “Allow me to handle this”. The guard captain had no idea who this noble elf was, but he knew a way out when he saw it. The captain gratefully turned and escorted his men away.
Blingy proceeded to negotiate passage for his friends to Farshore aboard the woman’s boat. The woman named herself as Captain Amella told him to get himself and “his b*tches” on board the ship. The ship itself was a huge affair, over 200ft long and made of stone. Despite this it seemed to float just fine. The sailors insisted that it was protocol that every person be escorted onboard the ship by a crewman. None of the spell casters made their spell craft check to recognize the forbiddance as they boarded.
Wiz in the meantime found the slave market and got ready to bid on a blink dog or two. There apparently was only one for sail that day, and he was a particularly large specimine. Wiz found himself bidding against a young woman in armor who had a sword hilt on her hip. Just the hilt, no apparently sword attached. The bidding went all the way up to 18,000 before the young lady dropped out.
As Wiz was escorting the blink dog to the ship the woman caught up with him to ask him what his intention were. He explained that it was wrong to enslave creatures, especially ones like a blink dog and that he planned to set it free. She then addressed the blink dog and told it that she thought it would do best to remain with Wiz for a while. As she walked away she recommended that Wiz seek her out sometime. She gave her name as Sandra and said she could be found in Furyondy.
Thankfully he made it back to the ship without further incident and the blink dog has decided to stick around for the time being.
I think the next post will catch me up.
The trip to Farshore was pretty uneventful. The only unusual thing that happened was that Brad had apparently been infected with the spores from the aetheric fungus, but a few cure disease spells cleared that right up. They saw quite a few interesting sights on their way South, but decline to stop and investigate.
Arriving at Farshore they saw one of the biggest statues they had ever imagined. It was an iron statue of a woman riding a griffon over 60ft tall. The harbor actually had a gate on it that appeared to be made out of a turtle shell over 20ft across. The gate used both of the shells to block the harbor, although they were open when the ship arrived.
At the docks Amella was greated by a well groomed Gnoll and a young human girl. There was some hilarity at the table when the elf asked if the girl was hot just before I could say that she looked about 9 years old.
Farshore itself proved to be a huge bustling city. While Kitty set out to find information about his people, Blingy went in search of some sort of new and exciting mount. Silent Man in the meantime had something personal come up. Unbeknownst to his party members, he was searching for the masters of the 8 styles (I know it is the book of 9 swords, but since I banned crusaders and the Devoted Spirit school, it is down to 8). He had a magical scroll that would provide him with hints on where to find them. Upon approaching farshore it revealed the name of the first master Gadja, Master of Talons.
Blingy easily found the area where they were selling exotic mounts and started to see what was available. He decided that what he really wanted was a half-celestial griffin. Unfortunately since the griffins were intelligent beings (thanks to their half-celestial status) they weren’t given to just anyone. In fact the griffins had to actually like the person. Unfortunately the only one who liked Blingy turned out to be a bit of a boozer. This did not sit well with Blingy, and eventually they agreed to let him look at the ones that weren’t quite ready to leave the nest yet. He did manage to make friends with a griffin that would be allowed to leave in about 2 months. It is a young and friendly griffin, and very curious. Some of you may see where this could be a problem…..
Kitty managed to find out some interesting information. On an island to the south, know as the Isle of Beast, there have been reports of lycanthropes. This could be Kitty’s people being mistaken for lycanthropes, actually lycanthropes or even druids seen while shape shifting. Of more concern are the stories of the ghosts of animals haunting the island and driving away or driving insane any who approach.
So the party decided to buy its own barge and row themselves south. It is about a 2 day trip the way they are doing it. The trip starts out well enough, although there is some excitement when a pair of large spined fish attacks the barge. The fish are easily driven off, despite the fighter types getting poked with spines some.
There is some more excitement when the party come around an island and sees that their route is blocked by a whirlpool. This strange vortex has massive amounts of steam coming out of it, and the water around it seems to bubble almost like it was boiling. The party spends several minutes trying to get close enough to figure out what was going on, before giving up and heading back around the island to go another way.
Unfortunately before they are even half way around the island, Wiz looks back and see smoke. It seems to be coming from the island near where the vortex was. He sends his familiar over to look. His familiar reports back that it saw smoke and fire, but couldn’t see anything else. The thing that worries the party is that the fire is heading directly across the island in a straight line and it will reach the other side at the same time they will.
Now admittedly the party could have stopped, gone around a different island or done many other things. Thankfully for me they didn’t, so they did encounter the creature. It turned out to be fire walk, which is an evil creature from the elemental plane of fire. The creature appeared to be a humanoid being composed of white hot liquid metal. Unfortunately for our adventurers standing on a wooden boat it apparently had the ability to hurl globs of molten metal. The metal would actually stick to whatever it hit and splash some.
During this fight half the party spent their time trying to keep the boat they were in from burning. Wiz’s cold spells were the most effective, although he was hit so many times with the liquid metal that after it cooled his armor weighed an extra 25lbs. Silent Man was a bit upset that in his efforts to scrape some of the liquid metal off Wiz his katana was almost completely melted. Lucky for Wiz he thought to put up a protection from fire spell before the fight started. It was the only thing that saved his life. When it died the fire walker left behind metal that contained some of the essence of the elemental plane of fireand could be refined into a form of steel that would be forever hot and burn whatever touched it.
Eventually they did make it to the Isle of Beasts. There they tried the simple expedient of simply walking forward until they met something. In this case that something was a pit trap that both Kitty and Droodad saw before they stepped on it. The party decided to drop it anyway, albeit with no one actually falling in. Looking down into the pit they could see movement and were more than a little worried when the ghost of a tiger floated up out of the pit to attack.
This fight was very, very short. Blingy was second in the initiative order and he used turn undead to scare it away immediately. The party took this time to check the pit trap for the remains of the tiger and was able to come up some very, very old bones that may have once belonged to it. These they carefully buried and Droodad said a blessing over. Their actions did not go unobserved, as they would soon learn.
Traveling further into the island they came to a spot where the trees were a bit less dense. Not exactly a clearing, but as close as this jungle would come. They were more than little unnerved when all around them the ghosts of animals began to emerge from the foliage. Most of the animals were jungle creatures, but a few creatures like bears and wolves that had no place there could be seen. In the trees ghosts of birds of prey began to appear and settle on the branches, watching the party. After a few tense moments humanoid figures could be seen standing up next to the ghosts.
The humanoids were like Kitty, but of many different types of animals. Interestingly enough each figure that appeared was of the same type of animal as the ghost it stood beside. In the trees humanoid birdmen began to land beside the ghost birds, again matching in species.
After drawing out the silence for a time an owlman in a headdress addressed the party. He wished to know why they had come and why they had honored the tiger from the pit trap. They said that Kitty was looking for his people, and that they had wanted to respect the tiger and allow it to be at peace. The owlman said that Kitty was not from here, but he allowed that sometimes their people left the island and could be prospering elsewhere. He was willing to instructed Kitty in the ways of his people and give him a chance to earn his own spirit guide.
He also said some curious things. He stated that three here had guides, two of whom had not found their guides yet. Wiz correctly guessed that he was one of the three and tried to get more information. All that the shaman would say was that Wiz’s spirit was a great and terrible spirit of cold. That it was terrible in the way a blizzard was terrible, not evil, but so powerful and destruction that little could survive its passing.
The party was invited to the village, although they had to agree not to reveal its existence to outsiders. The village itself blended in perfectly with its surrounding. The builders had followed the natural lines and contours of the land and forest and so houses were almost indistinguishable from their surroundings.
Here Silent Man was very interested to overhear a pair of warriors talk about going to train with Gadja. It turns out that Gadja is the trainer and arms master for the village. Gadja himself was a hawkman and subtle clues showed that he was much older than any of his trainees.
When Silent Man presented himself as a student of the 8 school Gadja insisted that Silent Man fight one of Gadja’s students as a test. So Silent Man found himself facing off one on one with a pantherman using the Beast Claws school. The fight was fast and furious. Silent Man’s opponent was stronger and had more accurate attacks, but Silent Man’s extremely high AC proved to be more than enough to compensate, especially since the two were taking a -4 to deal non-lethal damage. Eventually even trying to grapple with Silent Man and bear him to the group met with failure and his opponent was force to surrender. Gadja agreed to spend the next three months teaching Silent Man the secrets of the Beast Claw school.
The party would once again take some time off, three months in this case. Blingy spent most of it setting up a temple to Corellian in Farshore, with Wiz’s help. Silent man of course spent his time in training. Droodad and Kitty both spent time in the village with the shaman. Tin Man agreed to spend a month helping to train the warriors in other ways of fighting if they would teach him to use his bow more accurately. Too bad for me he probably won’t shoot any more party members in the rump. I haven’t yet found out what Flyboy and Magic Girl will be spending the three months on, since they weren’t there last week.
The Shaman used the time to explain a very important belief of his people to Droodad and Kitty. They believe that every being has 4 parts. The first part is the life force, this is what lets a being live. The next is the spirit, which provides the driving force and emotions. The third is the mind that lets a creature think and provides shape for its actions. The final part is the soul, which is eternal and unifies the various parts.
The Shaman’s people believe that they are the animals reborn, but they do not have all the the spirit or life force. The ghosts that each tribes has (which are not true ghosts and are not undead) contain part of the spirit and life force of the animal. A tribesman’s spirit and life force are only complete when he is united with the ghost that contains the rest of him. Then and only then can he be a complete being.
Droodad guessed correctly that thanks to that seed she carries is the guiding spirit the shaman referred to during the first meeting. The Shaman explains that the seed has only a life force, it lacks a spirit, mind or soul to give it shape, motivation and to unite everything. According to the shaman even plants have all four, although their mind is very, very weak. He says that the seed is beginning to look to her to supply what it lacks. Also her life force and the seeds life force are becoming similar. It is not that they are merging, or feeding on each other, but simply that they are becoming more similar. According to the shaman right now she and the seed could separate with no harm, but the long it goes on the more difficult that will be.
The Shaman has said quite a lot to both Droodad and Wiz. The two should be asking themselves just what he means, and even more importantly, does he actually know what he is talking about?
After two of the three months had passed it was time for Kitty to go on his vision quest to receive his spirit guide (yes, I am stealing from the native American tradition, why do you ask?) At the same time Droodad wanted to go on a vision quest to bind either her Boggin or her giant eagle as her animal companion. She is doing it as a quest to get them at a lower level than would normally count as. However the shaman suggested that to get to where they would do the quest they would need the party’s help.
They had to go to one of the smaller surrounding islands and climb up to a cave which would overlook the Isle of Beasts. There was a little excitement on the way there. The first encounter was with a T-Rex, which is a very dangerous opponent. For some reason I don’t fathom Wiz decided to step out in front of the party and ready a frost ray (ie scorching ray) to hit it once it got close. The T-Rex was more than happy to oblige and while the ray did hit, it didn’t even slow the critter down. The T-Rex of course promptly chomped on and swallowed Wiz in a single action. For some reason Droodad’s bogging decided to charge the monster, which of course swallow it as well on the AOO. This did leave it out of AOOs so that the rest of the party could close in and attack.
I don’t know why, but for some reason Wiz’s player seemed to be picturing himself after being swallowed as being in some huge cave of a stomach where he could easily and calmly cast all the spell he wanted without trouble. The truth was that he was in a tight, cramped, crushing gullet that would be doing acid and bludgeoning damage each round. Realizing his plight Wiz managed to nat 20 the concentration check to cast D-door and get out of the monster. In the meantime the Boggin began to gleefully dig is way out of the monster. The T-Rex in the meantime had dropped to half HP thanks to the party ganging up on it. Now animals don’t fight to the death, so it promptly ran away. They managed to get in some parting shots, but they didn’t kill it. Although the boggin managed to dig his way out, and grabbed a ring of blinking it had swallowed on the way.
The next encounter was one I had been looking forward to. I’ve always enjoy Girallons, nasty beasties that they are, and here was a perfect opportunity to use them on the party. Unfortunately for me the GIrallons managed to roll a NAT FREAKING 1 on their hide check. So the party saw them a long ways away. The only reason that the girallons got within 60 feet of the party was that Kitty moved up so he could throw his shurikens. I was so disappointed. Still, advance hit die girallons are even more fun, they shall not be so luck as second time. Mwahahahaha.
So they reached the cave and the party agreed to return in a month to pick up their more spiritual comrades. I still need to do private sessions for the vision quests with the two players, but this Saturday will see us picking up at the end of the 3 months.