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And we started the campaign today. After about fur years of it being in the offing (it really took us that long to work through Night Below, though in that time we've also combined groups (which required finishing another campaign)and played through two other campaigns, so it was on-and-off), finally getting started is something of a relief.
This will be sort of an informal (and possibly infrequent) journal of events, because I do like to brag, I mean discuss the highlights of my games on occasion...
The game:
The party is eight characters - and nine players two of the players are sharing a character. One very rarely makes it down anymore. They've got this little idea that he's got multiple personalities (which means it doesn't matter when he'd played by one or the other and acts different). This was supposed to be a secret, but one of the other player made a flip comment about it (which is of course true), so we just laughed and went with it, though I don't think the other PCs twigged that it's actually for serious...!
The PCs also started out with good stats: base 8, 36 points, point-for-point. (I don't hold with 3.5 or PF's non-linear progression of a linear bonus; if the PC want 18s, they can have an 18s, and they'll need it, because I'll expect them to have 18s!)
The enemies have been modified, by the addition of a) max hit points (mind you, the players are getting that too now) and b) increased numbers and additions of new enemies (often classed enemies) to the mix. (I only award half XP for non "boss" fights anyway; keeps the progression nice and steady.
Boss fights are usually supplemented by my Defiant template: of work of genius, even if I do say so myself, inspired by 4E's Solo monsters. Basically, a Defiant creature gets (pe increment of the template, and there are several that get up to three) a full extra block of hit points. They get one reroll on save (but that effectively gives them a -1 to everything), and they can expend a full undamaged block of hits as a swift action at the end of their turn to get rid of a condition (like Iron Heart Surge should have worked). In addition, if they get hit by any effect that would kill them outright (or stun/paralysed or otherwise spell combat over), they can expend a full undamaged block of hit points to not be affected immediately as a reaction.
This works amazingly well. Really, it's astonishingly great. You can add it on the fly if you need, and it makes boss battles fun. The boss battles actually LAST (because it takes the PCs a while to whittle them down) without having to cripple the boss' offense so as to not TPK. And it means Save or dies are not drama-killers but also NOT useless. (If anything, there is now a good argument for them to be saved as finishers.) I have used it in the last several campaigns and games I've won and it's abolutely top-notch.
The Party
I did my usual with backgrounds - the PCs supply as little or as much as they like (so long as I get a few basics) and I will write up/amend and/or add place names and locations to fit the world, and provide them with Reasons Yu Are Now In Sandpoint. (Generally the more they write, the less I have to do!)
So we have:
Kaddo(k) Jawquvenh-Iignotia: Human male Bard, Shouanti but later brought up by Varisians after his village (camp/whatever) was wiped ut bu hobgoblins. Kaddok is his birth name, Kaddo is his adopted name and his surmnaes are Shouanti and Varisian respectively.
Gavril Nyd: Human male bard, Chelish Korvosan
(Yes, two bards. Kaddo is at least going Thundercaller, and is looking at squeezing in a level of Dragon Shaman, which I have said he needs to get Dragonfire Inspiration so that further down the line, they aren't stepping on each other's toes.)
Kethon Marlek Trat-Bonthewson (Ket; Street name Kevkas The Wary): Human rogue, Chelish Korvosan
Galmard Bugail: Human male Shoaunti Druid. Both Shounti are from the same quah, Shriikirri-Quah (same as Garridan).
Abbondio Heniol: Human male cleric of Desna. As he's 35 and his background was of the "born and lived in Sandpoint whole life" he pretty much knows everyone there. (Naturally, of course he's the least experienced player, but was game enough to have the biggest background, mostly exposition dump!) He knew Nualia passingly well (daughter of the boss), though there is obviously a big age gap.
Thrôllgar, thirdson of Kriegardt Orc Smasher: Dwarf Barbarian. He's from up near the Iron Wolf mountains, from a tribe of Dwarves from a small valley. It used to be a trading post from Janderhoff to the Lands of the Linnorm Kings until is that basically was isolated by the emergance of Irrisen. (Quite proud of that little bit of world-fitting!)
Regis Normun: Human male warblade (and the multiple personaliy guy). And Sandpoint native, he's just come back from his apprenticeship at 16. He went off early with his uncle to appentice during the Chopper attacks (on the night of the third murder, before anyone realised it was a sequence, he went out to a friend's and came back. He thought he heard something and hid, terrified in the alley until morning (he swears is was Chopper). Credible reason for psychological trauma? I think as credible as any!
And finally, Ruamaini Heliarni: Human male Wizard, Varisian.
(I'm mentally calling them the testosterone brigade - not a single female character among them. The Night Below party we've just finished had overwhelmingly more females than males (five to three) (though partly because two of the PCs were NPCs rescued and promoed to PC as we got new players in for the first time in donkey's years.)
My initial set up was to have the PCs in groups; some in one inn, some in the other and the natves in their own homes and then say "right, you get up. What are you wearing, what are you taking with you to the festival, what are you doing, in that order."
I put Kaddo, Gulmard and Thrôllgar in the White Deer and Gavril, Kevkas and Ruamaini in the Rusty Dragon. Abbondio, as a priest of Desna, was assigned as being the butterfly-releasing guy (who has his own house - or possibly lives with his parents). Regis has come home to his family. I told the players to pick two houses without names on and say, "right, that's my house." They decided to be next-door-but-one neighbours and that as such knew each other well enough to meet up. Which was conveniant.
Then I just sat back and made them meet each other and provided some light expository duties (through Ameiko, Quint and Mvashti, the latter two being name-dropped into some of the PCs backgrounds as persons of interest).
By the time our first (roughly two-hour) session was done, I had actually gotten as far as reading the opening speech. (As provided by the community source material - you guys are awesome!)
Victory for roleplaying, I think!
The PCs have formed three loose cliques, based on their starting locations; they've met in the street (bit of finagling on my part, but not really all that much, since I just asked them where they were going and they wandered past). The Sandpoint pair got into a bit of a snit wih Gavril (who didn't trust the directions that they provided to the Sage's house, despite being a worshipper of Desna) and Kevkas (who was asking questions about Chopper, having been given a precie of the events from Ameiko). The barbarian trio - who have really hit it off, by all accounts, first half of evening, I didn't even have to NPC Garridan to talk to them, they were so busy talking amongst themselves - wandered past and Kaddo was unusual enough cause Ruamaini to have a quick chat, before wandering off to see Mvashti.
So, excellent session: with a bit of luck, I can spin out the festival to encompass next week's session (to buy more time for my big order of models to come through, including some RotRL ones - bit bothered about that, it's been nearly two weeks and it doesn't appear to have shipped yet - before starting the goblin attack.
Such a complete change of pace from the endless monster-hacking that characterised the latter two books of Night Below.
Got a few Sin points - I'm being really vicious with assigning them, on the basis that I'd rather have too many than not enough, and the more I assign, the bigger a pattern I build. Sadly, they are all pretty much on the Sandpoint pair (Greed - though I think that actually should be gluttony, lust (talking about the brothel)...
Actually, what do we reckon anti-foreigner sentiment ought to fall under: that's got to be one, surely...! Pride maybe? (No, I don't know why the players decided to go there, but there you go...!)
Several of the characters have come to Sandpoint looking for work (for advanturing really). Any ideas (aside from actual adventuring) I could throw at them for the week or so after the festival before the midden hits the windmill in anger?
Second session... and we got as far as reading the introductory paragraph for the first fight.
PCs spent all eveing wandering around, doing the extra events as provided for on these forums. I got uite a lot on my sins sheet (and not just because I gave a mark for everyone who participated in the game.)
Thrôllgar got himself quite a following in both party and NPCs, gamely tackling every event. They started with the Pixie's Kiss. (Setting the level already, are we PCs...?) Bear in mind he's a Dwarf Barbarian with a Con of 20 and getting a +4 bonus. He went "One! Two!" *thunk* When he recovered, he had another go... One! Two!" *thunk* And thus the legend of "one two thunk" was born. Best anyone managed there was about twelve or thirteen, so no-one really "won" that one.
Then Regis and Abbondio persuaded him to take the Hagfish challenge. I'd set it a DC 15 Will save to even manage to force it down, followed by a DC 20 Fort save to avoid being sick (and a DC 15 to avoid being sick five minutes later and further DC 10 to be able to look at food for the next hour.) Thrôllgar amazingly Dwarfed up and got it down (winning himself 46 Sp, some of which when immediatly ona round for everyone), and even if five minutes later he had to dash outside, it didn't ruin his appetite
They had a fair stab at the Pie Relay, but in two events (one full of PCs) only Regis the Warblade managed to finish (Thrôllgar again managed to lose his pies half way through...!)
Thrôllgar managed to win the bull's eye on the Devil Hunt, made enough anti-goblin comments to get a second free round on the Goblin Toss (which he won), failed appallingly in the dragon races. (Galmard, the druid embarrasingly lost to Kaddo the Bard in that race, much to Regis' dismay, since he'd put a whole GP on the druid...!)
Kevkas won the Lighthouse Smash (despite a couple of attempts Thrôllgar got nowhere with that one).
And that party (and Thrôllgar's entourage of unnamed NPCs - I'm thinking at this point, he's a likely target for Aldern) went to the Cracked Tooth for drinking and carousing for a couple of hours before the unset ceremony. Kaddo sung some traditional Varisian songs (which went down well (25 on the check result), Gavril only managing an enjoyable set of silly songs thereafter), and then Kaddo was persuaded by popular demand to sing about Thrôllgar's exploiuts for general merriment.
So all in all, a hilarious evening (and another week's delay to hope my Pathfinder models come...) Party has more-or-less come together, as they wandered around and played games (mostly just following Thrôllgar as he was politiely dragged about by Regis and Abbondio), which was nice and all set for dealing with the goblins next week.
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I reckon that Pride is the nearest sin attached to xenophobia. Assuming that there's something wrong with outsiders means that you believe that your clique is inherently better than them.
And kudos on Regis winning the Pie Relay! Those DCs do seem to be a bit high upon reflection, so I'm glad to hear someone made it to the end with a full belly!
I reckon that Pride is the nearest sin attached to xenophobia. Assuming that there's something wrong with outsiders means that you believe that your clique is inherently better than them.
And kudos on Regis winning the Pie Relay! Those DCs do seem to be a bit high upon reflection, so I'm glad to hear someone made it to the end with a full belly!
Pride it is, then...
Log:
Today, the party managed the first three combats to clear Sandpoint from the goblin menace.
Kevkas started off not only making the initial perception check, but being in a position to charge and dispatch the first goblin. Regis also did, but spent his time trying to direct the crowd into the cathedral, and passing his mother Abbondio's armour and weapons (that he'd been carrying while the Abbondio did the ceremony). Kaddo sang and then the rest of the goblins arrived.
Now, as this is a much larger party, they had to deal with six goblins, and a Fat, Angry Goblin (Goblin Barbarian).
Abbondio bravely drew his dagger and dispatched one unarmoured, while Thrôllgar and Galmard, Kevkas and Sungmanitu (Galmard's wolf) made short work of the rest. Gavril, not being in a good position - most of the party were in the crowd to start with, kept watch in the other direction, and Ruamaini, having not brought his crossbow, stayed out of it. The Fat Angry Goblin took a good couple of solid hits to dispatch, and the goblins were on form, dealing out handful of hits, the Fat Angry Goblin's most notable one to Thrôllgar.
They had a few round's breather (I bent the rules a bit and let Abbondio shrug into his chainmail with help in half normal donning time), while Regis tried to organise the folk to barricade in the church.
The the second wave hit, with the War Chanter, the six pyromanics and a Manic Goblin (Aotrs-rebalanced Swashbuckler). Gavril picked off the Manic goblin at a safe distance with his bow, before he do anything more than jump on a table and giggle insanely, and both sides closed for the kill. Ruamaini, lacking any kind of range, apologised to the Bards and then, as he spoke Goblin, made a little chant back, in the same metre as the Goblin song (the player actually came up with one, so I made him do an untrained performace check. 11, so not bad! Kaddo mentally noted that, with training, he might be passable...)
The goblins continued to do well, racking up a few more light hits, but splatting as soon as struck. The War chanter failed to Daze Thrôllgar, tripped Abbondio (who rolled really low on his Str check) and then got dazed on two consequtive rounds, by Gavril and then Kaddo (and due to her high AC, it took them a round or two to dispatch her!) Regis killed a few - two with Steel Wind.
They then charged off to the White Deer Inn, to save Aldern, for six more golbins, plus the commando and his dog. Galmard lobbed an Entangle but only two goblins failed their saves (I was on fire with my dice tonight!) One went out and in the 5' space Galmard had left between the Entagle and the Inn - where Aldern was hiding, and started cutting chunks out of him. Abbondio charged forwards, and knobbled one goblin - and then the Commando charged out. Both he and the dog hit, and dealt out 12 damage between them, and the cleric went down!
Regis ran up and gave the dog a good whack, but the commando deftly dodged the dog out of Kevkas' charge. Ruamaini dazed the dog, while Kaddo dashed up to heal Abbondio, and everyone else moved in. Th commando smacked another chunk out of Thrôllgar (who was starting to hurt a bit at that point, even with 17 hitpoints to start with). Regis dispatched both commando and dog with Steel Wind, and the party killed the rest of the goblins easily, once Galmard cancalled Entangle. Thrôllgar was the one who in the end killed the goblin attacking Aldern, and thus making him prime target. (I was leaning towards him anyway, as the option if no others obviously presented themselves, given his following last week.)
The party did a quick check of the north wall, closed the gate and found the ladder, and that was all we had time for this week.
Not a bad result. I was a bit concerned that it might be too easy for the party (bear in mind of course, we've come off a 17th level party!), but it was plenty enough, and the little cuts here and there did tell. I do get the feeling Gavril is going to feel a bit redundant to start with, since Kaddo's (pathfinder bard-modified) Persistant Song feat meant he was only singing for one round and then letting it last for a two rounds. (Still, I did tell 'em that one of needed to get Dragonfire Inspiration at some point if you were going to have two bards...) Party is has done a good job of getting themselves noticed as the heroes of Sandpoint. Didn't award any sin points today, but then it was (mostly) just the three combats today anyway.
Episode Four: Shayliss and Boars...
Picking up from last week, the party was looking around the north end, where they'd found the gate open and the ladder. As they were in the graveyard, I gave them a perception check to spot the looted grave, which they did. They made a spirited attempt to track the goblins, but with only having Sungmanitu as the only tracker, they got about a mile before the trail started to split up.
They returned, had a quick word with Sheriff Hemlock, who was in the middle of conducting his own investigation, and after thanking them for saving Sandpoint, promised to let them know when he'd found out why the north entrace was unguarded. They then retired to the Rusty Dragon on Thrôllgar's insistance (on the basis that Aldern's gratefulness had translated into "free beer!")
(Should I be treating this as gluttony or greed...?)
On the way back, Thrôllgar looked around for a goblin, having promised the chap at the Goblin Toss he'd throw a real goblin into the thing if he found one. He did find one, by tripping over his own feet and face-planting into a goblin corpse. It's didn't bother him though (this was the dwarf who'd quaffed Norah's tank water after all) and, after cutting one ear off to put on his necklace, he deftly lobbed it into the pot, to general (if slightly hysterical) accolades.
While Aldern wasn't around at the Dragon(he was still changing and having striff drink in his room, Thrôllgar bought the first round from his Hagfish winnings and then belted out a little song, which even if I could remember I wouldn't repeat on the boards, as it the first line ended with "kill the goblins, chop them into bits" and the last line was something like "and don't drink the Hagfish or it'll give you the sh..." yeah, I think you get the idea...
(Note: nonBard players that have made up songs on the fly = 2, Bard players that have made songs on the fly = 0...)
Aldern came down, and a night of merriment was had, in which Aldern invited them all to come boar hunting in two day's time. (Galmard did pointedly ask if they were going to eat the boar afterwards, being druid and all...!)
(One of the players regaled us with the tale one when one of his oppos in the forces had once encountered a wild boar in his APC, and had clinked on the head with his shovel (while wisely standing on the vehicle), thinking to take it back for the cooks. The boar was not only not killed, but enraged, and when the oppos' mate came back, he found quite bit of paint chips when it had savaged the APC...)
The next day, the party split up to entertain themselves. The bards went busking. Thrôllgar went to try and get a job as a bouncer, but (as his charisma check, before I even added any circumstance bonuses, was a net 4...) but failed, but got several free rounds in the Hagfish anyway. Galmard went to Madam Mvashti for a reading. I, after saying the warning about prophesies not being all that reliable these days, made him roll percentiles. (I didn't specify what he wanted.) He rolled a 02. Bugger, I thought to myself. Now, as I'd mentally though he wants low, I'll actually have to make some truthful crap up!
So, completely flying by ear at this point, Mvashti told him she saw him and some companions crossing a bridge of skulls, and also a felt him in a cold place of biting winds. (That seemed like as good a truthful vision without spoiling anything I could come up with on the spur of the moment!)
Regis, both of whom's players were away, spent the day with his Mum. (The players, on hearing that they wren't coming, immediately started joking about his third personality, and doing all manner of silly things with him and telling the players when they returned, while I tried not to kill myself laughing. The only thing stopping the multiple personalities being an open secret is the other player's haven't twigged that me and Regis' players are taking it seriously and had planned to from the start.) I mentally swore, since Regis was currently the top of the Lust checklist, and I was planning to sic Shayliss on him (and knowing either of the players, it'd have totally worked, plus there would be the whole "young lad gets seduced by older woman" thing that seemed like it would have been hilarious fun to boot.)
Kevks went to the Sage and ended up starting being schooled on engineering (he'd asked about the possibilty when he'd first met Brogart.)
The Rumaini, our daring wizard, came to my aid, and said he was going to use his new-found glory to to get some ladies. And thus earned him a good full tick in the Lust column, and Shayliss' attention, to my great amusement. Ruamaini bought the whole line, went down into the basement, and was quite happy there wasn't really any rats.
Then Ven came back. Rumaini passed his perception check. I asked him what he was going to do and the player looked at me and said "I'm looking at my character sheet and the only thing jumping out at me is Sudden Enlarge." (Cue five minutes of dirty Metamagic feat puns...)
He made a pathetic attempt to hide (he got about 7, and I told him he was about as well hidden as Thrôllgar in an empty room waving a goblin head.)
He gave up at this point, and tried to brazen in out. Ven stomped down the stairs, and I said to the player "what is your immediate reaction?" And he said something like "do you mind?" or something equally impertient. And thus ended up getting clobbered. I had mentally assigned Ven Str 18 (big, meaty fists), but amazingly, after he belted the wizard the first time, Ruamaini was still standing. Ruamaini's reaction was to say "hey now!" and cast Mage Armour (quite what he expected to do afterwards I don't know...) But Ven simply belted him a second time. As the world went black, he heard Shayliss exclaim "not again, Dad!"
Ruamaini's next memory was waking up with two grand shiners, having been uncerimoniously tossed out of the General Store (anything of his that was taken off immediately thrown out after), just as Abbandio was passing.
(So, don't think there's much of a chance of anything going on with Shayliss after that, unless anyone can suggest something hilariously awesome. But hey, them's the breaks...! Ven, on the other hand...)
Next day, the party trotted over to the Golin Squash Stables with Aldern, to be fitted out with horses. Thrôllgar and Deviren immediatly (Thrôllgar highly approeved on the goblin-ear decor, and thus the picked goblin chief was paraded out. The party were sutiably taken with being bought horses (especially since I remembered Aldern was supposed to be giving them a reward as well.) A couple of them went to buy spears from the Armoury (and get they 20% heroes' discount!) and then they set off. As the session ended, they reached Tickwood.
I made them make survival checks, to see if they could find any boars... Thrôllgar (at this point, I can see this adventure being called Thrôllgar and his Mates, which the townfolks (and Aldern especially) are already thinking... that dwarf has some serious Charisn'tma...) rolled a natural 20 and spotted one. He signalled, military style to Aldern, who looked back qith police incomprehension. So Thrôllgar (with his complete lack of riding skill), shrugged and charged at it with a loud bellow, waving his axe. To his credit, he stayed in the saddle.
The problem was, he missed.
Well, "missed" in that he failed to hit it's regular AC. But he DID hit it's touch AC.
I smiled and pointed out that little anecdote Kaddo's player had told us earlier...
So, as Thrôllgar's headless charge (well not quite yet...) takes him past the boar, he is horribly aware all he's done is made it REALLY mad...!
Episode Five:
The PCs did, eventually, get the boar. Ruamanini started off making their lives easier by hitting it with a good Ray of Enfeeblement, which took some of the sting out of it's attacks. It clobbered Thrôllgar a couple of times, bu the two bards Dazed it a couple of times... No, the real challenge in the fight was the PCs keeping their horses under control. They mostly made their DC 5 guide with knees checks, but it was the DC 20 control mounts which did for most of them: Thrôllgar, Regis and Abbobio all ended up being carried out of combat and having dismout by their reticent steeds...
The one who had the worst time of it was Galmard. The Druid. Who even HAS ride. It took him three attepts to coak it into moving in, and the first one neary had him thrown out of the saddle. (He rolled 1s and 2s...) Given his past track record - with the lizards, I've started called him Animal-Bane...
Regis finally skewered the boar on his spear, and they carted it back for a big feast (during which time Aldern will have nicked something from Thrôllgar...)
I have tried to set them up with something for their day-to-day business.Thrôllgar is now employed as a bouncer at the Fatman's Feedbag (and it took quite some time before I convicned him that this meant that, no, he couldn't drink while on duty, they were not going to pay him in beer, and no, he weaqsn't going to get off in time to go to the Pixir's Kitten, which is a (comparitively) respectable establishment that is not going to be open the moment the local dive finallt closes... Regis is training, the bards have got minor parts in an upcoming play at the theatre, Galmard is familiariing himself with the local area, Kevkas is studing engineering with Brodert, Abbondi has his clerical stuff, only Ruamaini seems at a loose end since there's no library to speak of and Brodert isn't interested in being a free library for him (at least not free of charge...)
A couple of days later, the party was appraoched by Amele Barrett, and they went to deal with Gresgurt (with my brand figues started having to arrive, complete with Paizo goblin commando figure and suitably buffed up with Defiant 3...) The confines of the room meant onlt Thrôllgar, Regis and Kevkas could hit him, though Kaddo provided support with a coulle of Dazes (one of which Gresgurt had to sink with a block of hits point as he failed his save). Thrôllgar started off, in by now typically dramatic fashion, by leaping on the the bed and promptly putting his foot through the floor and nerarly faceplanting onto the goblin. (First attack... natural 1...) He promply lost his temper and went into a rage. Gregurt, for his part, flailed away furiously at the dwarf, but failed to do anything before he was struck down (largely because, between rage, two-handed weapon and bard song, Thrôllgar was on D12+10 - even with a buffed up 30 hits - having lost 10 to that failed daze) he wasn't going to last long. Kevkas finally managed to run the goblin through.
The session finished as Galmard met Shayelu (with figure!) on the road as she wen to her meeting with Hemlock. He's called the party in, and they're quite happy to be keeping an eye on things while he' off down south. (I also offered them free board at the Rusty Dragon (mostly to keep them all in mostly one place, instead of in two groups plus the naties at opposite ends of the town).
The party are now heading back to the Dragon for a goblin discussion with Shayelu.
Ruamaini has decided he's got an eye for the ladies, after last week's event, which is great, because it solidly gives me my Lust guy. I'm actually thinking about gently pushing Shayelu in his direction to see what happens...
Thrôllgar, meanwhile, I think is on balance, gluttony and Regis is probably verging on greed, though that (and the rest of the sins) are less certain so far. Still, five sessions in with at least two clear victims I think is good going!
Episode 6: Against the Goblins
The party spent a while getting the brief from Shalelu about goblins. They spent the next couple of days being visible around Sandpoint, except for Kevkas. He went and got the name of the surviving guard off Hemlock before the sheriff left and tailed that man around. He didn't spot anything especially unusual, though he did observe him talking to Lonjiku Kaijitsu. This caused them to have a bit of a conflab with Abbondio about the Kaijitsu family and the tragedy thereof.
Then Bethana came to them about Ameiko disapperance, and they had the rest of the information (and the handout, which I remembered just as they were about to have to resort to magical means to read, Bethana could translate...!) They went off to the Glass Works. After a quick recon, they picked the lock on the beach door and right away heard the goblins. They booted the door in and went on the attack. There were twelve goblins in all, eight regular, plus two fat angry goblins and two manic goblins (who immeditely grabbed tongs of molten glass). As the party engaged the goblins, one ran off screaing for Tsuto (by name).
The PCs showed an astounding ability to roll all their attack rolls on D6s rather than D20s this combat... Though the goblins didn't do much better, they landed a few solid hits in. Galmard twice managed to miss a prone disabled goblin he was trying to knock unconscious. (I've decided that, in absense of anything else, Galmard is going to be Envy Guy, on the basis that everybody else always does better than him...!)
A round or two later, Kaddo, who was singing by the north door, abruptly cut his song with a gurgle, and Tsuto made a spirited attempt to break his neck. By this point, most of the goblins were dead, so the party swung about to attack him. The goblin that had warned Tsuto charged Ruamaini and delivered rather nasty slash that would have felled a lesser mage, before the raging Thrôllgar.
Tsuto tumbled away and tried to stun Sungmanitu with a solid smack, but failed, and the rest of the party crowded round. And utterly failed to hit anything or even hit the relatively low heights of managing double-digit dice rolls..
Thrôllgar did even better: in an amazing display of poor judgement, was really rather too forceful with his upswing, given his axe was covered in goblin-blood. The party were quite impressed, actually - it was quite a throw, lobbing his greataxe nearly twenty feet over his head, right into the forge... (He rolled a 1 - which for us means (when on your first attack of the round only) "roll again and see how badly you bogged it" - and then another 1. (In fairness, one of the fat angry goblins had managed to hit one of the other goblins earlier in the fight with a fumble nearly as bad...!) This has made Thrôllgar even more angry, especially since he hadn't even bought any other secondary melee weapons, so he's going to have to get in with his fists!
Sungmanitu managed to finally drag Tsuto down, so he's prone, against a wall and surrounded, but not quite ready to surrender yet (another hit or so). We had to stop there, as we were running a little over time (I'd have stopped the round before, but I really expected the PCs to have mopped up by that point!)
By the by, I keep posting this, but without a view counter like on many forums, I've no idea whether anyone is actually reading it or not... Am I just talking to myself at this point? (I don't mind a lack of comments if it's at least providing people with entertainment, but if no-one other than me is reading it at all, I'll stop.)
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I'm reading, Aotrs. I just haven't had anything to contribute to this thread for a bit. As it just so happens, I was going to comment on your critical failure rule. I'd done something like that in the past. I had a reverse critical hit rule - if someone rolled a 1, they committed an error, and had to roll to hit again. If they hit, then it's just a normal miss. If it's a miss, then it's a critical failure, and I came up with some disadvantage based upon how badly they failed. I also had an alternate critical hit rule: on the threat roll, if they rolled a natural 20, not only did they confirm the crit, but they also could roll again to try to increase the multiplier. That continued until they stopped rolling 20s. Naturally, the same thing happened in reverse with critical misses!
I'm reading, Aotrs. I just haven't had anything to contribute to this thread for a bit.
That's cool, I just didn't want to be talking to myself was all! So long as someone's reading, I'll keep going!
As it just so happens, I was going to comment on your critical failure rule. I'd done something like that in the past. I had a reverse critical hit rule - if someone rolled a 1, they committed an error, and had to roll to hit again. If they hit, then it's just a normal miss. If it's a miss, then it's a critical failure, and I came up with some disadvantage based upon how badly they failed.
We've fiddled a lot with fumbles over the years, various methods. (You can blame Rolemaster for it largely, since I graduated from HeroQuest immediately to Rolemaster, and (A)D&D was a distant forth...) I even tried RM-style fumble tables for a bit. It used to be whenever you rolled a 1, but after seeing discussions of it on various forums, I felt that a valid point was raised about multiple attacks. So now only the first attack in a round you can fumble on. Fiating it on a case-by-case basis, I think is also better, having tried the alternatives, as you can give the PCs a break if they're doing really badly or something.
But we'll never give up fumbles entirely, since waaay too many hilarious memories (especially in Rolemaster! Oh, the tales I could tell!) come from them.
And it happens equally on both sides of the screen... (One notable engagement in RM was ever later labelled the Battle of the Fumbles...)
I also had an alternate critical hit rule: on the threat roll, if they rolled a natural 20, not only did they confirm the crit, but they also could roll again to try to increase the multiplier. That continued until they stopped rolling 20s. Naturally, the same thing happened in reverse with critical misses!
Rolemaster was a bit like that, with open-ended rolls: if you roll 96 or above (on D100) you roll again and add (repeat as required), and (on non-attack rolls where you have a fumble range), if you roll 01-05 you roll again and subtract (and if you roll 96 or above then, you roll again and subtract for really bad news! For being theoretically the most "realistic" game we play, RM has generated some of the more outlandish (and frequently hilarious) results out of all of them.
Episode 7
The first thing that happened was the combat paused while everyone, including Tsuto, put on disguises...
(Because we had four of us out of ten turn up; we knew five of them weren't coming, and had had a debate as to whether to carry on or not. We decided we would... and then I found the sixth player wasn't coming at half-past seven while at the venue. This meant that not only were we dividing eight characters among three players, as that player brings the majority of the figures (I can only carry a modest amount in my pack and that is mostly monsters) we were almost out of figures. Galmard's player had about five random figures with him in his dice box, and I managed to scrape a few out of my boxes, but it did meant Ruamaini was a dwarf, Gavril was a lizardman and Kevkas and Kaddo were girls...(Tsuto was a lich!) I was not best pleased. It's okay if people can't make it, but I object to them not letting me know in advance, especially on a day like today. If we hadn't been running a 1st level party in a straight-forward combat, we'd have been screwed. If I'd have known he wasn't coming I could have cancelled or at least made a special effort to bring some more figures from home: if I'd known with enough time, I could even have prepared a wargame or something instead. So, after posting this up, there will be a polite b!*%*++ing going out.)
Ahem.
Anyway, Kevkas stuck Tsuto with a good solid blow (and by 'eck was he lucky he didn't drop him while being a girl or I'd have never let him live it down. Yes. Yes, I AM that petty...) Thrôllgar then punched him (Tsuto flailed away ineffectually with his AoO) and dropped him. They tied him up (getting a pretty good roll on untrained Use Rope), and then tried to work out what to do next. After a few minutes the players remembered they'd not actually searched him! They were rather impressed by the amount of loot for one guy (even more so when I pointed out this was intended for four characters!) They found the journal (handouts as provided by this very forum, thankee kindly!) - and even Thrôllgar could understand nude lady pictures... They managed to piece together (with a bit of exposition from Abbondio) Nualia was clearly not as dead as expected and that she seemed to be doing some sort of Bad Demon Thingy. Meanwhile, Thrôllgar retrived his greataxe head from the furnace...
They dragged Tsuto, unconscious, around while they searched the rest of the building. (Thrôllgar punched him back out every time he thought he might be coming around...) This was a notable dungeoncrawl for two reasons: a) the party went through the rooms in nearly numerical order - that must be a first - and b) Ruamaini proving he missed his calling as a tour guide, as he guessed the function of most of the rooms before they entered it, based on the logical layout. (A clear sign that Paizo clearly thought correctly on the way to plan a factory! Nice job guys!)
They found the stairs last and toddled on down. They found the smuggler's tunnel, but left that for the moment. They found Ameiko, slapped a CLW on her, and up she got. Her first action, once her head had cleared was to say they had to warn her father.
On the plus side, Thrôllgar was prevented from answering.
One the minus side, Ruamaini was very nearly as tactless, replying with "Aaah... I think it might be a bit late to warn him. I've got some bad news. He's covered in melted glass."
Smooth.
So Ameiko had a bit of a breakdown (largely because I'd not read as far as "handles the news stoically" but mostly because I thought that fairly tactless responce ought to make them feel a bit guilty...) Once she had about ten minutes with Ruamaini awkwardly tried to comfort her, she dried her eyes and calmed down (and I'd read the "handles it stoically" paragraph...!) She gave the unconscious Tsuto a good solid kick in the knackers, and then they took her back to the inn.
Tsuto went to the garrison jail, where, after being tied to a chair and Thrôllgar wasn't punching him every so often (poor lad's lucky he didn't get brain damage...) he finally was allowed to come around. Ruamaini tried a few threats (including one of setting Ameiko on him) before making a superlative untrained Sense Motive (nat 20) and realised Tsuto wasn't in the least bit afraid of him or of dying. They gave up on talking at that point, deciding that he was best left to the justice system (as especially pointed out by the DM that the point for vigilanty justice is one well before the prisoners is in the local police lock-up...!)
Thrôllgar punched him unconscious as they left, which merited him a full tick in the Wrath column. I can justify keeping him unconscious while they carted him around because, well, Thrôllgar, but that was definitely uncalled for. Downside, Thrôllgar is now leading the pack in Wrath, and eclipsing his gluttony sins. (I swear, Thrôllgar has acrued more sin marks himself than the entire rest of the party combined!)
Thrôllgar went to the armoury, where he is going to have his axe fixed (hich cost him 8 gp and will take a day). (The other PCs seemed a might put out that Savah addressed him by name - oh, now I think about it, I really must remember to add an envy point to Galmard, actually, that's a good 'un as his player made the remark! Hah, it is useful to do these write-ups!)
The party, not waiting on Thrôllgar's axe, went back down to the smuggler's tunnel (Thrôllgar borrowing a spear from Galmard). They went right for the side tunnel and wandered into the guard cave. The pair of Sin Spawn on watch heard them coming simply miles away (they BOTH got natural 20 on their perception checks!) and hid... The party's generally poor perception rolls meant that even with only moderate hide rolls they avoided detection. Kevkas blundered into the room completely oblivious...
(It didn't help that he, at the lead, had rolled a natural 1, which meant of course his net perception check (as 1 = -10) wasn't even positive...)
Sadly, these Sin Spawn are rather better sentries than combatants, and only managed to hit him once, even though they started flanking him in the surprise round. Thrôllgar charged in - helpfully blocking the door from the rest of the PCs, and gave one a solid stab. Kevkas, recovering, stepped to the side and stabbed it again with his short sword, and then Regis, braving one AoO, stepped in and used Steel Wind and hit that one again. The rest of the party spent that round repositioning (Galmard and Sungmanitu dashing right throguh the middle of the pair, but the other Sin Spawn again failed to hit him as he dashed past.
That was the point we had to leave it. (I'm guessing they won't get much further, since they haven't rested and might start to get a bit low on resources shortly!)
The two Sin Spawn have had a good sniff of Thrôllgar, though Regis is currently standing in the middle of them (and thus flanked); otherwise Thrôllgar is going to find that ending up as centre of attention in this module isn't always a good thing...!
Episode 8: Oh-hohohohohoho!
(Everyone made it this week!)
So, the party dispatched the two Sinspawn in short order (missed with every bite attack, more's the pity!)
They wandered a bit further in and found the actual catacombs. They spotted the statue and went and had a look. Kevkas bravely tied to take the Ranseur. Gavril suggested he checked it for traps first, and then Kevkas looked a bit embarrassed as it was revealed that he doesn't actually have Search... (So it's untrained for him until level 2!) Fortunately, he was able to pull it free and it ended up with Thrôllgar (as there are only two party members that could use it anyway). The party took note of the statue, drew a sketch and took a rubbing of the runes and then headed back to the surface, and the basis they were nearly out of resources, Thrôllgar wanted his axe back and they wanted Brodert (as local sage-guy) to see if he could identify the statue.
Despite a manfull attempt (16 on his roll and his respectible +16 on Knowledge (History)), it escaped even Brodert's skill to identify it, though he did think the runes looked Thassilonian (though his ias in that directin was pointed out!) There was a brief history of Thasslion (and eventually they mad a high enough roll that I gave them the the name "Runelords." Quint did, however point out that, on the one hand, Thassilonian ruins beneath Sandpoint was very exciting, on the other hand, how nasty and dangerous they were and that there was no way he was going anywhere near them until it was safe! (With a quick lesson on the Irespan in Magnimar to illustrate the dangers.)
Thrôllgar got his axe, and the party proceeded back down.
They headed past the shrine right to the Cathedral.
They're still level 1.
Oh dear.
I tried to subtly disuade them, I really did, saying how big and grandiose the doors were, eveything short of "you feel a great sense of foreboding beyond this door!" but they - and Rumaini's player in particular - seemed adamant.
Thrôllgar kicked open the door, and I described the room. Still a chance they would go "maybe we'll come back here later."
Kevkas entered the room.
Oh deary, deary, deary me party...
I was shaking my head at the PCs and having a jolly old laugh at this point, since they were WELL in over their heads. Buffed up for eight characters - eight second-level characters - as she was, Erylium was Defiant 3. So she had four blocks of 48 hits... I knew that at first level, they'd got virtually no chance. Silly party!
Erylium appeared, screamed in fury, used the runewell and made to attack. (Though Gavril noticed she looked worried when she summoned the Sinspawn - a useful piece of intelligence.)
Erylium, havign got top initiative too, flew right above the door, and started with Bane, which all but two of the party saved against. Ruamaini made his Knowledge (Planes) check by plenty (28) and was able to identify her as a quasit. Thrôllgar, realising she was flying well out of reach, grabbed the ranseur and ran right underneath, were he was able to take a swing due to it's longer reach. Ruamaini hit her with a critical Acid Splash. Regis threw his spear - and actually hit!
All of which did virtually nothing to Erylium.
The sinspawn charged Thrôllgar, who, depite a concertedd attempt tpo miss, hit it as it came in and then Sunmgantiu and Kevkas went after the Sinspawn. Kaddo sang and Gavril tried Insideous Rhythm, but she easily passed her save. Galmard threw a Sunstroke at her , but again, I rolled a 16 on the save and she only took a laughable 6 nonlethal damage. Abbondio looked on helplessly, unable to get in to do anything at the moment.
The second round, Erylium cast Cause Fear. I was hoping that I'd make enoguh of them flee that the PCs would get the hint... Galmard and Kevkas both failed, but the rest passed. Ruamaini through another Acid Splash (his second level offensive spell was [Kelgore's] Firebolt, which was of course completely useless) but did another 3 damage.
The party now were realising they were screwed. Thrôllgar yelled for everyone to run and hat he would hold them off, but Regis said he was going to stay behind as well.
Gavril lobbed off another Insideous Rhythm, and this time, Erylium failed. -4 on Int checks and a Concentration check to cast - who's not got Concentration then...? (This was the single most effective move of the battle). The rest of the party (two of them unwilling, but having to run anyway) started sprinting for the exit, Kevkas getting a clawing as he ran past (I took pity on him and let him run out of the door, past the sinspawn and hovering Erylium!)
Erylium, for her part flew away a bit and tried to cast Shield of Faith and failed. At the end of her turn she used a Swift action to I Got Better away the Insideous Rhythm (at the cost of a full block of hit points - like I saidm that was the most effective action of any of the party!) At this point, she was down to aboutn 27/48 of her first block, and had sacrfied another block to shake off the spell, so even then they were making some headway.
Ruamaini's player (who clearly hadn't been paying to much attention, as he was talkiing to Abbondio's player who'd turned up late (he's on a course at the moment, so is dropping by in the last hour or so to pick up his girlfriend (Gavril's player)) expressed surprise at the party retreating. I think his player was in the mindset I wouldn't throw anything at the party they can't beat, which is a notion he was quickly disabused of by the rest of the party, especially since two of them were running away whether or not they wanted too... In the end, he ran as well. Thrôllgar took a step back and felled the wounded sinspawn, and then moved back out of the door. Regis dashed out, and shut it behind him.
The party legged it out of the dungeon, persued by the screeching quasit haklf a round later, stopping only when they realised Erylium couldn't get out into the smuggler's tunnel. Regis lobbed a javelin at her (missing by miles) but it made him feel better. Erylium, for her party, came to her senses and shaking her little fist at the party disappeared back down the tunnel, where presently they heard the doors to the cathedral slam shut.
Round One to Erylium.
Still, the combat was not without gain.
One, the party now know what they are up against.
Two, they have correctly surmised that Erylium is not going to be able or willing to summon and more sinspawn, so next time, she'll be on her own.
Finally, I gave Galmard a Sense Motive (Gavril's player had put her dice away by this point or Gavril would have had one too), which he made, that suggested that before he was afeared, he did notice that despite her rage she was very cautious and nervous as a combatant. And that so long as they didn't go poking around in there again, she would be unlikely to attack the moment they set foot inside the dungeon. (A tacit suggestion that they could expore the rest of the dungeon for those last few XP to level up!)
And no-one died, or took any serious injury.
I am quite confident that at level 2, the party should be able to take her down, especially since they have chance to plan ahead (and have made no secret of that to the players). The doubling of their hits, and those extra few resources will be critical though, in wearing her down.
The major point is ahahahahahaha! They ran like terrified children (some of them quite literally)!
And the point has been made that some fight, they might actually have to retreat from!
Episode 9: Ding!
The party recovered from their panic. They headed down and expored the rest of the tunnels, finding the smuggler's cave but not trying to track the goblins further. (Partly because their tracker is an animal...!)
Despite Galmard's hesitation (and a suggestion by Regis that all went to pub instead), they went back down to the ruins and tried one of the other doors. There they found themselves in the prison. Kevkas checked the platform was safe (all that architectural training paying off!) and went down the stairs. This time, he noticed the sinspawn lurking in the cell! (But not the other three...)
Thence followed a short and brutal fight between the party, who were at about the end of the resources and the four sinspawn. Abbandio - once again - got taken down by a couple of solid hits - including a bite hit! Which his successful save against was largely irrelevant anyway... Thrôllgar took a very solid slash from a claw hit froma diabled and dying sinspawn, which went out trying to claw his throat out. (Because of the whole wrath count thing, when the sinspawn had a choice of whom to go for, they preferred to go at Thrôllgar, after giving him a good sniff.) Then another one came up and hit him with all three attacks. Even Thrôllgar couldn't take that much punishment, and down he went. Though again, dammit, he made his save! (I think I hit a couple of others with the bites, but the low DC meant no-one failed.) Still, the rest of the party made short work of them, the final one being dragged onto the floor by Sungmanitu, whereupon Kevkas was able to walk up and shove a nice critical Sneak Attack up it's face.
(Kevkas has one of our homebrew feats, designed to offer an alternative to the feat-intensive TWF called Assassin's Stroke. It only applies when you are using a single one-handed weapon, but adds +2 damage per Sneak Attack dice. As this is a static bonus, not extra dice, it is multiplied on a crit. The advantage being it requires only the minimal investment of one feat.)
The two on the floor were easily patched up by CLW from Kaddo and Abbondio respectively.
And, finally, in the aftermath, the party got their Ding! of a level up.
After doing the requieste levelling, they decided (well, the spellcasters flatly stated) they were going to rest overnight, and press on again in the morning. (Our rule is you get the level now, but you don't get the daily resources (i.e. spells etc) until you rest. After the third fight in one day though, the casters were about empty anyway!
After a night's rest, aremd with more spells and powers, they have headed into the room full of zombies. Kevkas - now armed with Search skill! - wandered in, checking the lids. Koruvus was carefully waiting in the corridor (he made a natural 20 on his Stealth check) fore the first idiot to come and peer down the corridor (Regis) and he fight began. We only got a round in, but the PC have hacked a few chunks out of him (he's defiant 3 again). Galmard chucked a Wall of Smoke into the corridor, hoping to knobble him - but of course Koruvus is immune to poison and acid, so I figured smoke wasn't going to bother him anyway. Not that it mattered - Regis had organised everyone around the nd of the corridor so that Koruvus would have to step out to fight, and then he'd be flanked. Which he did anyway, since Abbondio and Kevkas were nicely in a line in front of him, ten feet apart. So he stepped forward and breathed. Kevkas naturally just evaded, and Abbondio just made his save verses nausea, so it wasn't bery effective, but you gotta try, right?
That was the point we left it.
I also realised I've been doing the sinspawn a disservice - I hadn;t realised they got Fast Healing 1. As I copied the stats to my stat blocks (I'm running from the PDFs, and I didn't print every thing, only the adventure, the sourcebook and the campaign material), I missed that tucked away in the hp column. It would have made very little difference - though one of them today was disabled, and died when it took that critical chunk out of Thrôllgar. If I've have known that, it would have taken another hit to knobble!
Nevermind, you unlive and learn...!
Just wanted to say that I've enjoyed reading your write ups. Thanks for posting them!
Just wanted to say that I've enjoyed reading your write ups. Thanks for posting them!
Thanks! I shall continue to do so, as long as it amuses people!
Episode 10
Not much to report today...
The PCs chopped up Koruvus in fairly short order, unsurprisingly. They debated for some time what to do about the zombies, and decided that, with the zombie's resistances (Abbondio got a 20 on his knowledge check!) that they weren't going to do anything with them - shooting them with arrows on DR 5/Slashing would use a lot of arrows, and oil would be equally as expensive - and left them alone for the moment.
They explored the levitation sphere room (both bards were able to read the words, meaningless as they were). Kevkas chucked a coin in, then jumped in himself. After nothing horrible happened, he retrieved the stuff from within (book, wand, scroll and an extra wand). Kevkas attempted a blind activation of the first wand - and shockingly utterly failed (at level 2, DC 25 is not your friend), and shocked himself rather badly! Though at least they did idetify it as having some sort of electricity-related effect. (If Ruamaini had made his Spellcraft check, they'd have worked out which spell...) They passed the wine around and drank it (aside from the few that weren't interested) and then headed off towards the washroom. Shockingly, the pair of Vargoilles barely lasted a round (one of them got one action and that was it). Kevkas filled the empty wine bottle with water from the pool, being as it was pure. (I don't know, don't look at me...!)
Then they debated about dealing with Erylium. Ruamaini wanted to rest in the dungeon, but the rest of the party wanted to go up to the inn. Once they decided to do that, I did point out that resting in the dungeon with the creature that could turn invisible might not have been the best idea, anyway...!
They headed up and before resting, trotted over the the Feathered Serpent for identifing the loot. They sold him the book they'd recovered from the levitation room, after a bit of explanatio (and an attempt to sell it for 150gp - sadly for them the wizard made his own appraise check!), and the Shocking Grasp wand once identified (since Ruamaini had no intention of getting into melee and Kevkas - the only other character that could use it - had better things to be doing.) The other wand was a nearly-full Lesser Vigor, which I'd provided for some much-needed out of combat healing!
They spent the rest of the session planning and preparing to deal with Erylium next week.
Unfortunately, to disappoint all my loyal readers (I hope both of you are well...) but there will not be a proper update today, as I will be at a fireworks party, and moreover, about half of the group is away for various other reasons.
I have bought Jade Regent in Paizo's PDF sale (among other things) and have been given serious consideration to running it as a direct sequel (i.e. buffing it all up to 17th-Epic) and have run the suggestion past the players to do either that or a sort of "next generation" story. So far, two have answered and said that they'd prefer the former, so there may even be a sequel eventually...
If they make it that far...
Episode 11: Choke the B...witch!
The party returned to fight Erylium.
Thrôllgar booted the door in, and saw two spiders (one medium and one small) - the fruits of Eryliums's Summon Monster spells. These proved to be nothing more than speed bumps, going down without ever getting chance to act. Erylium was hiding at the top of the room invisible.
The party moved into the cathedral. Kevkas, now the way was cleared, wandered all the way up to the sin pool. The player asked me "can I take an action?" (having made two move actions).
"Depends what it is."
He made a gesture of cutting himself and dropping into the pool.
Hiding my smirk - well, not at all, really - I said "you know what, I'm gonna let you have that one..." Que group facepalm...
(Tp be fair, Kevkas's logic was that as the one who summoned it, he'd control it.)
Erylium cast Resistance on herself from the ceiling, waiting a moment to try and get a better opportunity to attack, while the rest of the party moved into the room and started trying to locate her by perception (which they failed at utterly).
The the sinspawn emerged from the pool, and heavily clawed Kevkas (STILL NO BITE ATTACK!!!) Gavril starting singing. Abbondio bolted over to help, and Sungmantiu ran up the stairs on the other side of the pool to help, too. Galmard made it up about halfway up the steps behind her, and then took a ready action to cast Faerie Fire.
Without a better target (I was gunning for Thrôllgar, since he had most hits, but he was too close to the rest of the party), Erylium dropped down to Galmard and used her trump card, Inflict Moderate Wounds.
Now, it's worth noting that we've considerably[i] buffed the [i]Cure/Inflict line to actual decent damage/healing, ion the basis the heal sCure Moderate (and Inflict Moderate) is now 10+D8/level (max 7D8), so rather than core's pitiful 2D8+3, Erylium was on 3D8+10. Galmard made his save (the other reason I picked him!) and Faerie Fire, because he wasn't going to risk fluffing his Concentration check.
Regis and Thrôllgar charegd into Erylium and started hacking away, dealing a bit of damage (though as a Defiant 3, Erylium had 48 x 4 hits points, plus her DR).
Gavril tried Insideous Rhythm, but this time Erylium (thanks to Resistance) made her save this time.
Abbondio, Kevkas and Sungmantiu finished on the sin spawn. Kevkas, havign defelty shived the Sinspawn up now it was flanked with his sneak attack, then wanted to try and jump on to Erylium. (I didn't tell the player, but as he didn't have a standard action left, he'd have failed.) However, all he managed to do with his lack of Jump skill was leap over the sin pool to the other side of the dias anyway. (Sadly, he didn't fall in, which was what I was half-expecting...)
Galmard took a step back and hit Erylium with [Faerie Fire[/i], negating her invisibility, should she have chosen to use it again.
And, at the top of the next round, here Erylium made her fatal mistake. She attempted to use Cause Fear on Regis (he passed his save) - and didn't move away.
The party hacked at her a bit, but with her AC of 24 (22+ Shield of Faith), they weren't doing much. Regis did the best thing he could and used his Leading the Attack manouver to grant them a +4 morale bonus (+3 on top of the Bard song) to hit, but even so, it didn't help much. Kaddo had the bright idea of using his whip to make a trip attempt (his lack of Improved Trip didn't matter even right next to her as she didn't have any reach, being Tiny), but even her touch AC was too much for him. Ruamaini tried to cast Hail of Stone, but he wanted to cast defensively (in case during the 1 round casting time, she came up to disrupt him) and fluffed his concentration roll.
And then came the killing blow. Kevkas, now only 10 feet away, with Erylium not having moved and still being close to the ground (since she'd had to get that close to slap Galmard), and now possessing a fresh round of action, tried again. He made his jump check adequately. With the bonuses (charging, +1 for higher ground (I was being generous) and the +4 from morale), he easily made his touch attack roll (again, with no reach, she couldn't do anything to stop him). And then it all went downhill for our dear Quasit.
-5 is not a happy number for a grapple check.
Kevkas, who is quite strong (16) easily grabbed her. So, right away, she lost her Dex bonus to Armour class (-5 AC). Glamard tried a Hypothemia (D6 cold damage and be Fatigued, fort negates), but she made her save. Sungmantiu ran halfway down the stairs to where she could attack and hit.
I said "right. If Sungmanitu trips her - as at the moment she's not technically prone - Kevkas can chose to fall prone with her. Cons - Kevkas is prone. Pros - she's prone."
So Kevkas let Sungmanitu pull them onto the floor. -4 AC. The party started moving in and wailing on the poor quasit. She spent her first turn panicking and flailing at Kevkas with her dagger, (she probably would have been better using her claws, with the poison). Regis had a whollop, but missed utterly. Then Thrôllgar dropped his ranseur and diving into the grapple. The party continued to flail away.
She had another swipe at Kevkas - who tried throttling her (to be fair opposed grapple => D3+3+1+D6 is pretty darn good) - and then it came around to Thrôllgar again.
He pinned her.
-4 to AC AND Dex is effective reduced to 0 (-5 AC). So at this point Erylium is now prone (effectively -4 AC), reduced to effective 0 Dex (-10 from her +5 Dex) and pinned -4, for a staggering -18 penalty to AC.
Which I think is a record achivement!
So, now down to AC 6, the party were not having trouple hitting her. The problem was that damned DR and her nearly 200 hit points, not too mention the fast healing - most of them were on D6 damage and dealing very little or nothing, with only Regis and Kevkas (who switched to his sword on the basis that even at -4, it was worth it for D6 instead of D3) doing anything higher. But try as she might, she couldn't untrained Escape Artist out of Thrôllgar's pin (let alone get out of the grapple).
The party then spent more rounds that I was keepinfg track of, standing around her, wailing away. Galmard hit her with a second Hypothermia - she failed her save and thus had to get shot of a block of hitpoints to shake off the fatigue (otherwise we'd have been there all night...!) Ruamaini, after a couple of rounds of standing and watching (sloth point! Sloth point! Also the point I realised I'd somehow missed Sloth of my sins sheet...!), waded in and dropped all four of his Acid Splashes on her.
Finally, as she was weakening, her desparation lent her strength, and he wriggled out of Thrôllgar's pin. He re-established it again, but she wriggled free one last time (noiw down to 1 hit point!) Kevkas gave up stabbing her with his sword (since her AC had gone back up) and throttled her with one final grapple check and - at LONG last, she finally stilled.
The party got up dusted, themselves down, patched up theit wounded comrades (only Galmard and Kevkas were moderately injured, though Abbondio had taken one light hit).
They debated what to do about the sin pool, and decided to come back and deal with it and run it out in the morrow, once they'd rested and refreshed their spells, since the casters were pretty much out.
Thus ended Erylium, in the end strangled to death while in the grips of a smelly dwarf barbarian and his mate...!
(Worth quite a lot of XP though: effectively a CR 7, she was worth 450XP to each party member!)
Episode 12: Dope on a rope
We started the session with a bit of world knowledge. I bought a crap-ton of hard-copy stuff from the Great Golem Sale. I'd been so tempted to a hard-copy of the Inner Sea Guide, since I'd decided I probably would use and it'd be nice to have something that's easier to flip through than my current second-hand kindle (which is pre-touch screen). But the postage from Paizo just put the cost of the whole order up way too much, so in the end, I found one on amazon uk that cost the same but had free P&P and that arrived today. So I showed them the world and Inner Sea map and a rough primer before we started proper.
The party went back outside and rested up. They took Erylium's dagger for identification, and realised they they couldn't sell it, at Sandpoint's gp limit.
They then headed back down with the intention of deactivating the Runewell, as they'd gathered activating it by summon Sinspawn was running it down.
Then they cleared the zombies.
That makes it all sound straightforward doesn't it?
If you think that's how it happened - have you been paying attention at all in these last posts?
First off, Thrôllgar (whose player was back with us this week) was talking about using Erylium's corpse as a handpuppet. Completely seriously, and suggesting "the kiddies will love it! I I was young, we always did that with kittens!"
Cue my first "what is even the hell" expression of the evening.
Oh, he got a full sin tick for that. I had no idea which sin that fell under (wrath maybe?), bvut dammit that was getting a full tick! In fact, I made up an eight sin category the "What the F[redacted]" especially to put a tick in it. (Suggestions for actual categorisation welcome...)
The party, fortuantely for the sanity of the children of Sandpoint, put a stop to that.
Regis' player made a side comment about wondering what would happen if you... ejactulated in it (I paused for thought for a moment), but then Thrôllgar took this as inspiration to urinate into the pool to see if that would have any effect.
And actually did it. And the party let him.
Cue second "what is even the hell."
I decided such an act of flagrant spite was deserving enough to actually boost to pool by a point, to noticable effect and party face-palms...
Then they decided to try pouring holy water in it, so went and bought some and literally poured 25gp down the drain.
Kevkas spat into it (to maybe the slightest effect, but difficult to say if anything happened), and tried waving a torch through the vapours, and then plunging it into the liquid (which extinguished it).
Thrôllgar wanted to throw the corpse in (he was obessesed with that corpse), and there was a brief debate as to whether it would do anything, nearly being twenty-four hours later. (The answer was a DM-adjudicated no, since the bits of blood/ichour that makes it magically potent aren't much good by the time it's been cold and dead that long, as it hadn't been prepared.)
Thrôllgar lobbed the body in anyway.
Regis, tiring of all this making a meal out of things, took his sword and cut himself and splattered "lots of blood" into the pool. As his intention was basically to use more than a few drops to try and drain it faster, I made him take a point of damage, but I also decided to cut us all some slack and have it summon the last two sinspawn at once.
The party took ready actions - and then utterly failed to hit the Sinspawn's terrible AC of 13, accept for Ruamaini, who did a whole point of damage with Acid Splash...
The fight was brief and mostly one sided - though Kevkas got the worst of it. He and Regis were side-by-side when the first one popped up, and seeing as they are both equal in the Wrath stakes (and Thrôllgar was out of reach), I randomised who it went for. Both rounds it survived, I rolled odds for Regis evens for Kevkas and it went for the latter with all six attacks! I hit twice with the bites but - NOOOOOOOO - he saved twice (and once he got exactly 12!)
Afterwards, they went to see Brodert, to see if he could shed any light on the gravity room (he couldn't.) He had done some research, and said that while he couldn't identify the statue they'd found, he did suspect it was one of the Runelords (cue brief explanation of the Runelords, i.e. the seven sins, that they'd ruled Thassilon after Xin and some of the ruled the whole period and other changed over). Ruamaini's player guessed Wrath on the basis of the prisons (though I pointed out that was kinda not a specific things as "the Thasslionians were kinda a@@$@#+s"); though when I read the description of the gravity room for them again, the odd words Kaddo could read confirmed that for them.
Then the decided they ought to destroy the zombies. A task which is actually not that straight-forward, give zombie DR and the depth of the pit. They wanted to burn them, but I pointed out that to do that was actually not going to be that easy - or at least was going to require a lot of money on lamp-oil.
The Thrôllgar - it just had to be Thrôllgar - said "bugger that, tie a rope round me and lower me down, and I'll have the bastards with me ransuer!"
Cue "what is even the hell" three.
Still, this method was at least cheap, I said. "Right," I thought, "well, strength checks - which they can aide another on, starting with the first one, and a Use Rope check (untrained, since no-one has it) to tie the rope tightly enough... One Str check per hole just to make sure he doesn't fall in and off we go."
However, the dangers inherent with playing with a crap ton of engineers became apparent, because all of the holding the rope just wasn't good enough. Oh no. There was talk of some sort of A frame - until Kevkas rolled a natural 1 on his Knowledge (Engineering) check. Then they decided they wanted to put a piton down in the centre, and rig up some sort of system of ropes or spools or something so that Thrôllgar couldn't actually fall lower than his ten foot aiming mark - "which is another, harder Use Rope check" I said.
So, what did they do?
They went up to the top, and asked some sailors to tie the Dwarf up.
No, seriously, WHAT IS EVEN THE HELL!?
I, my expression by this point fixed into one of incredulous disbelief said, "right, Diplomacy check..." Which Kaddo made by miles.
So what happened was they basically went down to the docks and talked to the sailors; the idea was so utterly ludicrous that it actually piqued everyone's interest. Then the better part of the afternoon was lost and pretty much all the sailors and dock workers filtered in as they collectively worked out a way in which to tie the appropriate ropes and knots.
"Ar, no, you don't wanna do it that, this'll be better!"
"Aye! That'll get 'er done, right!"
The party then went down, having had the sailors (who did have Use Rope and made their checks) do the knot-work, and Thrôllgar dispatched all the zombies.
Then they went back up and down to the pub, where Thrôllgar tried to get get free beer (a pint per zombie) for his deeds. I made him make a Charisma check. He got a total of 16. And I said "you know what, sod it. It's Thrôllgar (who has got as much of a reputation among he villagers as he must have in this thread by this point), they were there all afternoon... the sailors buy you your beer!"
The party then spent a while hashing out their next move. Thrôllgar wanted to go and kill goblins and stir up trouble between the tribes, and the rest were agreed at least on the latter part After a bit, I pointed out to them that that line of thinking wasn't going to work, since without someone telling them what to do, they'd be at each oyther's throats normally - it was force, and not mutual pact that kept them together (which is what Shalelu had pretty much said). After that, it didn't take much prompting for them to decide to go to Thisteltop (since Ripnugget was mentioned in Tsuto's journal) to deal with the lynch pin. They toyed with the idea of making a naval attack until they heard from a sailor what Thisteltop was like (i.e. a mostly sheer cliff) and I pointed out the dangers of trying to silently approach via water at night AND climb up the sides and hoping not to attract the attention of the (mostly nocturnal...) Goblins so they didn't spend several happy rounds dropping burning things on the PCs. (You just know that would have brought the whole clan out...!(
They were rather dubious about crossing the preported rope bridge, but decided they'd have to have a proper look themselves.
Galmard lead them into the woods to find the trail.
He got a total of 40 on his Survival check.
After the absolute minimum time (I didn't even roll the dice), Galmard found a Goblin trail and lead them straight there, which is where we left it.
Episode 13: Unlucky for most
The party (after nearly not remebering to pick their DM up from his sister's house where he was this week...!) penetrated into the Thistletop via the briar tunnels. Galmard was especially pleased, since with his Woodland Stride, he could finally be in his element. They went as far as the chamber with the hole, and decided not too investiagte too closely.
Kevkas heard the sounds of something off to their right (the goblin dogs) and to their far left. Galmard - very bravely in my opinion (given he has no Stealth skill - and no Dexterity to speak of) - went off scouting, walking through the walls. The goblin dogs failed to notice him (they don't have scent, according to my stats - though with their allergens, that's proably for the best...! - and rolled poorly to Glamrd's quite respectable 17.) Galmard, emboldened, quietly left and then went further south. to where Gogmurt was.
"Oh dear", I thought. "This is going to end badly...!" But Galmard was exceptionally lucky, as Gogmurt rolled a natural 1 on his perceprtion check. Galmard, noting the presence of the firepelt Cougar, the leather, the spear and general decor, recoignised a contemporary and wisely slunk off quite sharpish!
He then headed left, and went to scout the far end, which was where the refugees were - fifteen of them here. Seven had bows - my initial notes called for five with bows, but I happened to get out seven D&D goblins to supplement my five or so PF goblins, so I thought, "sod it."
And THEN rolled a 2 on the stealth check.
Amazingly, one of them didn't spot him... He was promptly attacked by the goblins. The first three rushed up to him, but given he was still in the walls, I gave him cover and made the goblins take the same checks if they missed as they would have done for being pushed into the walls (i.e. Ref save or 1 damage). They all missed. Naturally...
Then the first pair or archers fired... And promptly sunk a maximum damage arrow... into one of the goblins in front of Galmard (1 on attack roll, followed by a 2 on the "how badly did they bog it" roll.) *skullpalm*
Net result of Goblin attacks: Galmard 0 damage, goblins 7 damage...
The party charged to help. Abbondio was first, and after his move, found himself in the ten-foot squueeze zone between the "rooms" of thorns. The other archers all shot at him, and starting chipping away (my damage rolls were really good, for saying I was only flat D4s!) The party formed up, with the intention of luring the goblins to them. Glamard stayed a round or two, knobbled another golbin wuith his staffm before falling back, as they landed a couple of solid hits on him too.
Most of the remaining battle was conducted at range. As Abbondio retreated, getting a couple more hits, the party was trying to lure the goblins foward, they kept killing the ones that were in a position to do with ranged fire. Galmard (poking his head out of the wall again) dropped a Wall of Smoke, and Gavril a Grease, which didn't help the goblins, and despite the often high cover bonus to AC they were getting, fell quickly to ranged fire. Even Ruamaini and Kaddo managed a couple of ranged weapon kills with heavy crossbow and short bow. Regis even got in with his javelins. Glamard jumpoed out and clobbered nother archer with his spear.
As the two spells expired and the three last archers were left, Kevlas charged in and knobbled one more. Thrôllgar dropped his bow, grabbed his ranseur, and then rushed foward. Unfortnately, he got his ranseur tangled in the vines, and when it slipped out of his hands, the back spring carried the weapon straight back and into Regis' crotch. He xcouldn't have done that intentionally if he'd tried... (Natural 1 followed by 2, followed by a 19...) I gave Regis D3+1/2 Str nonlethal - it was a good hit!)
Kevkas skewered the next one, and then Regis moved foward, grabbing the ranseur, stepping in front of Thrôllgar (who stopped with ranseur reach). He then did vey subtle Steel Wind, and while running the last goblin through and then "accidentally" boshing Thrôllgar with the haft. (I gave this a full D6+Str as if it was a staff attack, since it was completely deliberate. It also earned Regis a full Wrath tick!)
And that was where we left it, with Regis and Thrôllgar rubbing their injuries and exchanging hard glares...
Never a dull moment with Thrôllgar, is there...!
Episode 14: Dogs and Druids
We started off with a big debate on whether ot not we should after RotRL is finished, carry on with the characters in an amped-up Jade Regent or whether it should be run as a "next gen" sort of game with fresh characters, the progent of this party. The players were, irritatingly, spilt right down the middle, with four for and four against and one abstention. So, I laid the ultimatum that, as they hadn't decided, they needed to proceed as if they were going to have to set up a "next gen" and do the requisite roleplaying and lay the foundations. The mandatory requirement I had previously laid down for not doing the high-level was that the majority of the PCs would have continuation with their characters (e.g. siblings, adopted children, actual children) anyway. So I have said that, if I am not satisfied by the time RotRL ends that progress has been roleplayed out, we'll be running high-level anyway. (So it's basically now in their court: they can put the work in, or I will, but it's now totally down to them as to what will happen.)
We started proper as the party dusted themselves off and considered how to deal with the goblin dogs. After some debate, about whether to sneak or rush past to deal with the Gogmurt, they elected to try and distract (if the dogs remained tethered) or lure (if they got free) the dogs with some meat... In this case, bits of dismembered goblin. (While not very nice, I didn't think was especially worthy of a sin point, since the goblin dogs are animals, and it wasn't like the goblins wouldn't have been left to rot or be eatne by scavengers anyway!)
They tossed a few chunks from the narrow passage in the brush nd the goblin dogs started eating, but the ones that had not had any thrown near them got loose. So Kevkas lobbed some more to lure the dogs towards the passage and then Kaddo toom a shot at one. The dogs then, understandably, decided the humans were better meat and went after them. It did not take the party long to mop them up, and Gavril finished the last one with a perfect shot right down the throat.
They then moved off to search for Gogmurt. (I worried them enormously when I glanced at Gogmurt's stats and realised I'd made him a Defiant 2...) Abbondio asked why they didn't send Galmard ahead for more scouting, to which Galmard pointed out that hiding in thorns when other things couldn't get you was one thing, but entirely another when dealing with something that could...
Then the party did something pretty stupid. When the wandered out into the passage between the bridge and Gogmurt's lair, it was immediately obvious that the druid wans't present. And they split up. Abbondio and Kevkas wandered all the way down to Gogmurt's lair, while the rest of the party stood around near Tangletooth's den. Regis, like an idiot, loudly annouced he was going up to watch the bridge.
Gogmurt's tactical decision was thus mde for him, as this provided a simply wonderful attempt for Entangle.
Kevkas had just made a quick but thorough search of Gogmurt's lair, when the first sign it was about to all Go Horribly Wrong appeared as Tangletooth pounced on him, having carefully hidden on command in the shrubs (none of the PCs came close to making their perception checks, which I rolled in secret). As Kevkas was well and truly mauled (four hits, which disabled him), Gogmurt cast Entangle. He placed it slightly above Kevkas and Abbondio, so Tangletooth had free reign, but easily got the entire rest of the party. Despite the relatively low DC, only Ruamaini - Galmard, who was immune - passed the save.
Regis struggled against the spell but couldn't break out. Thrôllgar broke free and headed ten feet out of the twenty towards the egde of the Entangle when Kevkas and Abbondio were. Just in time to see Tangletooth bite the cleric and swat Kevkas down with a claw attack. Simultaneously, the sound of a Flameblade being cast came from the woods - and Thrôllgar was grabbed again by the vines. Kaddo did manage to break free, and moved a bit down towards the lair.
Galmard - the job made rather easier by the whole "flaming sword" thing - zeroed in on Gogmurts location and threw a Sunstroke at him, Gogmurt easily made his save. The rest of the party were struggling to break free. Ruamaini hurled a critically accurate Lesser Sound Orb at Tangletooth, which severely wounded the cougar. Gavril starting singing. Abbondio tried to cast a Cure Light Wounds on Kevkas, but as he couldn't step anywhere safe to do so, he had to cast defensively and flubbed, losing the spell.
Regis again was unable to break free - as he was for most of the fight. Thrôllgar burst free again, and made it past the Entangle[i], right next to the firepelt cougar - to see the long-suffering Abbondio get another bite a claw hit and go down. Oh dear...
Gogmurt had so many choices! Not ten feet from the thicket wall he was sequestered in was Ruamaini. Only ten feet or so north were both bards, and he could have neatly stepped between the pair of them. By this point, I was beginning to get concerned the party were in serious danger, trapped as they were, so he went after the wizard, landing a solid hit with his [i]Flameblade that very nearly dropped Ruamaini outright.
Galmard legged it all the way out of the Entangle and down to the opposite side of Abbondio that Tangletooth, with the intention of grabbing the Wand of Lesser Vigour from the downed cleric.
Ruamaini tried and succeeded with an Acid Splash on Gogmurt, and Gavril took a shot at him.
Kaddo hurled a Hideous Laughter - and this time it took! (There may have been a touch of fiat at this point...) Thrôllgar took down Tangletooth with one solid hit. He then shouted to Gogmurt he was going to skin the cougar and wear him as a cloak. This enraged Gogmurt enough that at the end of his turn, he burnt a hit block and threw off the Hideous Laughter.
Regis half-heartedly threw a javelin at Gogmurt, but between prone, cover, shooting into melee and the entangled penalty, he missed. It remained the only thing he managed all combat, apaert from struggle against the vines... Ruamaini shot the goblin at point-blank with his heavy crossbow, and Gavril shot at him with his bow. Galmard grabbed the wand and used it on Abbondio, who came around (he'd only been on -1).
Thrôllgar raged and charged in, hoping he was going to pass his save and thus actaully reach Gogmurt. Luck was with him again as he did, and landed a very solid strike. And got a stab full of Flameblade for his trouble. Kaddo - still free for the moment - moved into position next to the fallen goblin, and took a swing with his longsword.
Galmard moved on to Kevkas, used the wand, dropped it and then ran up to get into position to attack Gogmurt. Ruamaini landed a critical Acid Splash, while Gavril took anopther shot with his bow. Abbondio, now able to get up and move, used a full CLW on Kevkas. Regis actually broke free and managed to stumble fifteen feet towards the action - only to be entangled again on Gogmurt's action... Thrôllgar hit Gogmurt again very hard, all the while hurling abuse about how he was going to calve him up and urinate on the corpse...
Gogmurt was now in serious trouble. As the Hideous Laughter had dropped him prone, he couldn't run away, nor could he drink a potion without getting hit. Surrender was clearly out of the question, since the raging barbarian was clearly not going to accept it, so with one last scream of defiance, he landed a critical hit with the Flameblade right into Thrôllgar's face. (Sadly, I only rolled absolutely average damage...) Ruamaini landed another Acid splash, and Kaddo landed a paltry hit (though Gogmurt was down to single digits at this point.) Everyone else missed, or were moving into position, so it was Thrôllgar who landed the finishing blow.
The party waited a three or so minutes for the Entangle to die away. While the party looted the corpse - Ruamaini deftly made all thre DC 25 Spellcraft checks to ID the potions. Thrôllgar, true to his word, decapitated Gogmurt and hung his head to his belt (yes, a wrath point, but also fair cop, it's a sort of GW Dwarf Trollslayer-y sort of thing to do) and lugged the firepelt's carcus onto his shoulders (he's serious about that cloak, but again, fair cop!)
The party then elected to rest (seeing as the casters were pretty much out of spells) and there was some debate over the watch order. (In that Kaddo's player is used to the GM rolling randomly to see who's on watch and our group's modus operandi is to have a set watch order written up on the party funds sheet (along with the standard marching order), though this party hasn't got one yet.))
We left it there, after they had a look over the bridge (the alert sentries didn't spot them)... As they're literally going to cross that bridge when they come to it...!
Episode 15: Dope on a Rope 2: Eclectic Boogaloo
No report last week, since I was ill.
We rejoin our heroes after eight hours uninterrupted rest, facing the deadly horror of a 60' wooden bridge.
After eight hours, sadly, the goblins, placed on alert by Ripnugget, after Gogmurt's animal messenger had reached him, had lapsed. (Because goblins.)
So the party were unopposed by the sentries in the waning light of early evening, who were too busy playing cards, killgull or sleeping...
However, the deadly rope bridge proved to be a threat all of it's own, as are many inanimate objects or Things Involving Climb Checks.
Kevkas, for some reason, decided he wanted to climb along the underside of the rope bridge. Which required four checks at DC 20 (mostly because he was upside down, or it would have been much easier.) He decided not to pinion himself to the rope bridge at one end, as I pointed out that if he fell, rather than falling 80' into water, he would pendulum into the cliff-face, which is not nearly as forgiving... Knowing the risk, (with his +8 Climb), he went ahead anyway.
To my utter lack of surprise, he fell off. While I shook my head and rolled my eyes, he attempted to climb back up (on the far side). I ruled the climb there to be DC 18 (I was being generous), and he pitioned himself in as he went up (though he had to use his sword to hammer the pitons in, since he had pitons but no hammer...)
He got halfway up, secured himself and tied himself off, and then tried again,. He got another 15' up and then rolled a 2. I gave him D6 damage from the short stop at the bottom of his rope (after rolling to see if the piton came out). He tried again, and rolled another 2. He didn't fall, but his flailing disloged the piton (I rolled a 5 this time), and then he did fall, and the resulting D6 stop at the last point he'd roped himself off dropped him to negatives...
At this point the party tried the dangerous gambit of Walking Across the Bridge Like A Sane Person. Thrôllgar briskly walked across followed by Regis. Then the player (who was running both Regis and Abbondio, today, we were a bit short) had a sudden brainwave about how the bridge might break if too many people were on it... So he had Abbondio wait until Thrôllgar was across before coming over. (Wise move, wise move!) The two warriors then swiftly lowered the cleric on a rope the 40' or so down to the dangling rogue, who slapped a Lesser Vigour on him and carted him back up, as the party crossed by pairs.
The party heard the sound of distant goblins (from the group playing killgull on the other side of the stockade, and were debating how to enter. Kevkas tried pushing the door open, and found it wasn't locked! (The sentries were still enraptured in the games or asleep.) They cautiously explored the first portions of the stockade. Kevkas headed off to the west watchtower. He'd seen a torch on the east one - need light to see your cards with after all - but not on the west, where the pickle thieves were asleep. A sleep from which they never recovered as Kevkas quietly killed them as they slept. (I didn't constitute this as a sin, being merely practical in inflitration. At the moment...) He then saw the goblins playing killgull (in this case eight goblins - six Thistleop goblins, here Fighter 1s, two commandoes and eight goblin dogs) and the exercise yard where he spotted some goblin dogs of indeterminate number (because of the dead ground of the tower).
The party went to both doors of the yard, carefully opening them and having Thrôllgar say "here doggy!" The Goblin dogs attacked in short order, but as they were neatly funnelled into attacking one at a time, it meant they were easily mopped up.
After the noise died down, the party started trying to pry open Shadowmist's door - and then realised it had gone quiet.
The goblins playing killgull had heard the ruckus ('bout time I rolled a decent perception check...!), and went into stealth mode as they crept back around to the main door.
Stealthy as they were, Ruamaini, standing outside the nailed-up pickle room keeping watch on the entrance, didn't spot the commando peeking his head around the corner four rounds later. And so the first the party knew was when the first commando did a mounted charge right into him and dropped him between a horse-chopper blow and savage goblin dog bite.
Galmard and Sungmanitu were first to respond, legging it out into the entranceway, where only the goblin commando's mounted skill kept Sungmanitu from tripping his mount. Then the rest of the goblins piled in. Gavril, standing in the other door way, started to be badly savaged and dropped to 0, but managed to stagger back out of the way, and Galmard and Sungmantiu found themselves facing several and the final commando, but luckily took fairly minimal damage.
Abbondio and Kevkas rushed to rescue the wizard, while Regis and Thrôllgar had one last go at breaking the door down (and failed).
Galmard tossed out a Wall of Smoke (greatly relieved he made his concentration check) which caught commando two and three goblins and their mounts - all eight of which failed their saves, thus removing them for a good round. Thrôllgar started in on the goblins be that door, with Regis trotting up behind to ineffectually toss javelins (the player's dice were appalling!)
Kevkas, Galmard, a healed-but-staying-lying-down Ruamaini, a Flare from Kaddo and Sungmanitu between them finally took down the first commando and his dog. Sungmanitu, however, was stuck facing two goblins on their dogs. She got away with it the first couple of rounds, but finally, luck was against her and three solid hits dropped her to -9.
After being healed by Kaddo, Gavril tossed a Grease in, with the smoke effectively prevented the now-un-nauseated goblins from getting back in with the pair that had dropped Sungmanitu standing in grease (to their credit, the goblin dogs stayed upright). Thrôllgar and Regis polished off the mounted goblin and mount by the north door and rushed down to help. Galmard slapped a Cure Minor on Sungmanitu, and hauled her still unconscious body out of the fight, as Kevkas and a now raging Thrôllgar fought side by side. They took out one pair, and the next one that charged from the sidelines in fell in the grease, the goblin tumbling off into the greased square behind. Kevkas deftly ran a blade into the prone goblin dog. The commando charged in, but missed.
That is more or less where we had to leave it. Ruamaini is on his feet, and Kevkas and Thrôllgar are facing a line of two mounted coblins and one commando, with one more goblin behind them (as the Grease has expired). The commando is Flare-dazzled and just recovered from being dazed via Ruamaini. The goblin directly in front of Thrôllgar is suffering from Gavril's Phantom Threat, so if Kevkas could hit it, he could get in a sneak attack... the last goblin is just shy of the wall of smoke, but in a position to have a go at Kevkas, so it's only luck keeping him form being dropped himself...!
The bad news is, one goblin and his dog were forced down the corridor to the east by the wall of smoke. Unable to get back to the fight - or to the throne room - he's buggered off downstairs, so Nualia will be made aware of what;s going on, and she won't be as lackadaisical
as Ripnugget (largely because she won't just assume her orders are being carried out...!)
We may meet up next week, otherwise it will be the new year before we have another update.
Episode 16: The Party Gest Rip(nugget)ed a New One
It took about another four rounds for the party to mop up the last goblins and goblin dogs. They didn't take much more damage, but because of the poor positions they were in, most of them were taking ranged potshots, though other party members and into melee...
The end came finally when they took down the commando and his dog, in the middle of the line. Kaddo bravely tumbled in behind one of the two remaining goblins dogs. Abbondio then took the opportunity while it was distracted to cave its head in with one solid blow, and Thrôllgar - using his dagger at this point - ripped up the last one.
They stopped, then, and did a bit of healing. The bards were pretty much out of spells by this point, and Ruamaini didn't have much less, but they decided (somewhat foolishly...) to press on "eh, the cleric's got loads of healing," they said...)
They then spent some time breaking open the shed and therein discovered Shadowmist. (Whose name I decided must have been written on the remainder of his tack, otherwsie giving him a name seemed a bit pointless.) After a couple of not-bad-but-not-good-enough handle animal (Kaddo) and Wild Empathy (Galmard), Galmard tried again with some food and managed to calm the warhorse down. They broke into the pickle store (wondering if his rider might be kept there) and on discovering the grain, brought a load to feed Shadowmist with.
They then proceed to explore up to the north, through to the north stairs - which they wisely didn't go down (Nualia meanwhile was gathering all her minions in the throne room). They didn't even look for the secret door in the latrine (which was odd, since there was a 5' space unaccounted for...!)
Then they went, with the players not really paying all that much attention, to the douible doors that lead to the throne room. Which were, of course, locked.
Kevkas picked the lock, giving the room's occupants plenty of warning. In this case, this consisted of four Goblin Commandoes, Ripnugget and Stickfoot, a Warchanter and... an Archer Commander (a 4th level archer-specialist fighter).
So, Kevkas opened the door, saw the goblins, and took a solid arrow hit from said commander's Masterwork (Small) Composite Longbow...
The party's initial plan was to try and draw the goblins to them as they had before, so the started to form up in the corridor. (They were widely dispersed because the players weren't paying all that much attention to where they were) Thrôllgar at the front, switching to bows to start shooting at the commandoes. They killed one, and Abbondio dropped one prone with a Shockwave.
The Warchanter started singing (not that after the first round I think I ever remembered the singing bonus...!) She hasn't done much else, other than try to [Daze Thrôllgar ineffectually a couple of times, and positioned herself behind the archer commander when he moved into position to see out of the throne-room and down the corridor.
Ripnugget jumped on Stickfoot and trotted fowards, taking a ready action to charge anyone that entered the room: he knew what was coming! He bellowed for his minions to defend him, and then the goblins from the barracks boiled out to attack the PC's flank. Fortunately for the party, they were standing in front of the 5' corridor, so the goblins could only get in one at a time.
Then the Archer Commander opened up with his first Full Attack and put two arrows in Thrôllgar, who was at the front for 14 damage. It was at this point, as the commandoes pulled out there bows too, the PCs realised that the goblins were very happy to play the exchange of ranged fire game.
Galmard and Ruamaini came up, having been furthest away (in the courtyard with the warhorse), the former brining Shadowmist. Galmard then lobbed a Sunstroke at the Archer Commander - and wonder of wonders, for the first time, he failed his save! Being Fatigued took some of the edge off both his attack - and since he was using Composite bow - damage.
Thrôllgar then decided to charge the archer commander (realising that with the intervening commandoes having their bows out, he could rush past them safely).
What he didn't reckon on was Ripnugget, who countered charged him the moment he stepped through the door, dropping him to 3 hits, as mount and rider savaged him. Thrôllgar elected not to complete his charge, preferring rather to stay where he was (where the cleric could get to him) rather than complete his charge.
The goblin commandoes drew their horsechoppers and waded in. For a split second, it seemed Thrôllgar was going down hard - a hit and a crit. Then I realised I was looking at the Rage stats (and they weren't in rage) and that dropped it to just a hit (lucky Thrôllgar). Even luckier, I had rolled minimum damage on the would-have-been-crit, dropping him to zero.
The rest of the party meanwhile were gathering around the corridor entrance (Gavril was singing) and mopping up the goblins as they came charging down.
Then it rolled to the top of the round. Ruamaini put a nice hole in the back wall with his Lesser Sound Orb and then the Archer Commander fired. Thrôllgar luckily only took the one hit (the other was a nat 1!) but he dropped.
Abbondio was fairly close by, so his action for the round was rush foward and slap a Cure Light Wounds on the dwarf.
Kaddo bravely stepped up to the Warchief, hoping to draw some of the fire from to prone Dwarf (since no way in heck was Thrôllgar going to stand up and take four attacks of opportunity!) Thrôllgar, for his part flailed around on the floor, and succeeded in landing a solid hit on Stickfoot (and had he not rolled so poorly, stickfoot might have gone down then.) Ripnugget took a swipe at Kaddo, and Stickfoot continued to bite a Thrôllgar, while the two surviving commandoes flailed uselessly at Thrôllgar - even prone they managed to miss several times.
Finally, the party had manouvered around enough that the goblins were charging out of the corridor into multiple AoOs and Shadowmist was placed in position. The warhorse immediately took his anger out on the goblins, crushing the already wounded one in front of Gavril with one stamp and then smashing the next one to the ground with one massive max-damage critical hit. The party - even Sungmanitu - were impressed! The terrified goblins had a priority target...!
Abbondio tried to heal Thrôllgar again, but fluffed his Defensive Casting check. Bites and the odd commando hit were whittling Thrôllgar back down to 1 hit point again. Abbondio was himself now the Archer Commander's target, but the penalty from fatigue, plus the fact that his was now having to shoot past the commandoes, meant that he effectiveness was somewhat reduced.
Regis moved up to help, swapping places with Kaddo, and hit off a Steel Wind, which finished off Stickfoot and struck Ripnugget. The latter was more angry than hurt (and effortlessly made his ride check to avoid falling), especially since he's a Defiant 2 (48+48+48 hits...) - but it meant Regis had Ripnugget's undivided attention!
Kaddo meanwhile, put an arrow into the Warchanter, who is nearly out of singing rounds anyway...
And there we had to leave it. The party are in trouble. For all his might, Shadowmist is only four hits away from unconsciousness (since they haven't been able to heal the nonlethal damage because it's starvation-based), though there are only two goblins left down there. Thrôllgar is down to one hit, and the commandoes are still wailing on him. Regis has Ripnugget's attention, which with his AC might buy the rest a round or two... But there's still the archer commander to deal with. They - once again - might have to retreat if they're not careful, and I'd be surprised if Thrôllgar doesn't get ko'd again before the fight it out. They are almost if not actually out of healing, bar from potions and their Wand of Lessor Vigour and the casters are pretty much out of spells. It's going to be a rough fight!
This "picking exactly the fight they don't want to pick when they're low on resources" is going to be A Thing this AP, isn't it...?
We will return in the New Year to see how it all ends (and it might all End Horribly...!) as there's no session next week. So Merry Christmas and happy New Year to all of you reading (and hopefully laughing and pointing at the PCs) at home and I'll see you in the new year!
Episode 17: Waning standards...
Aaaand we're back!
Bit thin on the ground today (only four out of the nine made it!) but they finished the combat.
Things started to slip a bit towards the PC's favour. Shadowmist and Sungmantiu took down the last couple of goblins in the rear arc, allowing the party to concentrate on taking down Ripnugget and co.
Ruaimaini burned his last couple of Acid Splashes on Ripnugget, who took a chunk out of Regis. Regis stepped into the room, leaving space for someone else to step in (Kavkas, fairly shortly), so they could start flanking him. Abbondio risked a Concentration check - and succeeded brilliantly, giving Thrôllgar some much need healing. Thrôllgar continued to flail at the commandoes. Kaddo dazzled the archer commander with Flare, which on top of the cessation of singing - the warchanter had run out of rounds - and his fatigue even more pronouced.
The Warchanter's singing ended, she tossed a Daze at Abbondio, who saved. Kaddo had a go at tumbling through Ripnugget, but failed and, as he couldn't easily get to the space to stop (Kevkas was in the way), as it wasn't too drastic a failure, I ruled he simply didn't try to move.
Shortly thereafter, Gavril managed to Daze Ripnugget. Thrôllgar took his chance and managed to stand up (the commandoes missed him badly), and finally managed to hit one and take it down, and then the second one next round. The Warchanter managed to Daze Regis, while Abbondio spent three rounds trying to hit after kicking up Blade of Blood. Regis took a couple of hits from the archer commander, and had to step back to quaff a cure potion. Kaddo, now having no commandoes to block his path, tried to safely tumble past Ripnugget (as opposed to through him), and got a solid hit for his trouble, and also quaffed a potion. The Warchanter came at him with her whip, having run out of other options and promptly got a fatal sling bullet to the skull from Galmard, who had nothing better to do than take potshots at the back.
Ruamaini, however, reduced to his heavy crossbow, shooting through cover and into melee, nontheless landed no less than two hits on Ripnugget, one of them a solid critical!
Regis charged the archer commando, figuring the best way to avoid being shot to death was to get to melee. The commander, up against the wall, couldn't step back from him, so took the AoOs to shoot him, and they hit each other.
Thrôllgar, having now dealt with all the commandos, started hacking chunks out of Ripnugget. Kaddo kept taunting Ripnugget with insults, and Ripnugget finally lost it when Kaddo intimated that Thrôllgar (who fortunately doesn't speak Goblin) wanted to sleep with him. The bard got a dogslicer in the face for his trouble, but before the now-furious goblin chief could finish the job, Sungmanitu finally hit and tripped him. The party then started dealing some serious damage, with Abbondio finally hitting and taking the extra damage garnered from Blade of Bloodand Kevkas, who'd been flailing around, managing to land a blow too, putting Ripnugget ino a very sorry state. Kaddo, feeling brave, grabbed his longsword and took a step in - and ran the blade right through the war-chief's eyesocket. (Beautiful critical.)
Thrôllgar immediately started hacking the goblin's head off for a trophy.
In the meantime, Regis took one more arrow and dropped. Sungmanitu and - with little prompting - Shadowmist charged the commander, followed by Abbondio. (To be fair, Thrôllgar might have helped, but there was then no room and he didn't have the speed to move into the only clear space.) Kevkas did, moved in and landed the final blow the ended the fight.
In the aftermath, Thrôllgar and Kaddo became rather obessed with taking Gogmurt's and Ripnugget's heads and making a standard with the firepelt hide and Thrôllgar's ranseur. The party looted the corpses, and then had a debate about resting up in the throne room. I asked them very seriously if they thought they would be able to fight another significant fight without their spellcasters. For a while, I didn't think I was getting through to them about the fact their rest would emphatically NOT be uninterrupted (as the chances of them tacking Nulia and company in a concerted attack with no magical back-up didn't bare thinking about). Finally, when I reminded them that one goblin had gone down stairs and that they knew there were still goblins in the vicinity, they got the hint and decided to retreat back to Sandpoint. (I let them go, as they were in a pretty rough state and figuring that Nulia would need as much of the rest of her remaining forces to reinforce the position.)
Thrôllgar, in another very solid Wrath point (and possibly a When Is Even The Hell point), placed Ripnugget's corpse on the throne, and defecated on his neck (as he had indeed sworn he would do during the combat). The rest of the party were either amused or disgusted, but didn't stop him...
The party returned to Sandpoint, Thrôllgar waving their impromptu standard, which got them a thumb's up from Shalelu. Ameiko - not unreasonably - emphatically refused to let them bring dead goblin parts inside her inn, so after replacing the ranseur with a stick, they had to leave their standard outside overnight.
Aldern briefly showed up, to drink with them (mainly because I thought about it and to remind the PCs they'd met him.) I had notified Thrôllgar a while ago out of session that he'd discovered a minor piece of his kilt-buckle had gone missing (since there was literally no trickets on his character sheet otherwise to nick!) I was planning to have something else go missing - but then Thrôllgar provided me with an even better opportunity. Thrôllgar was trading up his hide armour for a breastplate, and Aldern "happened" to be passing at the time... And offered to buy his old hide armour off him for 20 gold, so it could be placed on display as a "Thrôllgar museum." Thrôllgar, naturally, readily agreed without a second thought from either character or player, to my secret delight...
Oh Thrôllgar, as I said to the player, post session - to his great discomfort - you are making my unlife as DM so easy...!
Kaddo and Thrôllgar have paid 20gp to have their standard made properly (pelt tanned at the tanner, buying apot to boil the goblin skulls down to the bone - as I said emphatically no-one was going to lend them a pot to do that - and mounted.)
Kevkas bouight a hammer for his pitons and both bards bought both hammer AND pitons, so as to be sure they had enough for next time...!
We left it there. Next week is likely to be mostly levelling up (unsurprisingly, given the XP for the last two combats - if we'd stopped the session between the fights, they'd actually have levelled up from that first one!)
And Nulia will now have to re-plan her defences... And she's not going to be at ALL amused by Thrôllgar's little parting gift!
Episode 18: Crossing that Bridge as they come to it
As I expected, most of the time was spent levelling up. Kaddo has decided he's going to go for the Dragonfire Inspiration (as I recommended one of them did), via Dragon Shaman at level 5. Thrôllgar started heading into Fighterm because his player decided he couldn't cope with not being as optimised as he could be with pure barbarian, and is thus now heading into TWF (to be combined with his existant Pounce and Shock Trooper, which he was going to get anyway).
The party spent some time faffing about - Thrôllgar and Kaddo's player are dead-set on their standard! Thrôllgar decided he absolutely must have a cart, on which to carry beer and mount the standard. So with some general sighs and eyerolling, he bought one. (It's great for me, actually, since it'll drop their overland speed down to the 16mph I calculated the random encounters at, because I completely forgot about them getting horses...!)
They left the cart and barrels of beer at Regis' house (Regis - well, one of his personalities anyway - said they could, but they did fail to ask his mother...) and Shadowmist to heal up from his starvation and headed back to Thistletop.
Kaddo, Galmard and Kevkas went to the edge of the bridge to scout ahead and the first thing they spotted was a pair of arrows whizzing from the eastern guard tower, where the surviving goblins (all four of them!) were on watch. (Nualia was NOT happy with them, so they were being properly alert.) The two commadoes of the original modules were supplemented by a second archer commander and the one goblin left.
The party sprinted across the bridge over the course of a round or two, with Thrôllgar staying to provide covering fire, plus a few shots from some of the others (Kaddo, Ruaimaini) before they rushed across. Kevkas reached the bottom first, followed closely by Regis. The former threw up a grapple and started climbing.
The one regular goblin was dispatched to warn Nualia, while the others continued to shoot at the easy targets on the other side of the bridge, rather than lean out for shoot at those in the dead ground of the building.
When Kevkas popped up, followed by Regis, they found the last goblin dog was up there, too. The archer commado stepped back and shot Kevkas, and the commando next to Kevkas dropped his bow and grabbed his horsechopper and landed a solid hit. Kaddo got into position at the base of the tower and cracked out his new thundercaller ability to Sound Burst the second commando and Archer Commader. Both failed their save (though they maintained hold of their bows). This leaves them in a rather poor position, and I expect the goblins to be mopped up in short order next time.
The one last goblin is off to warn Nualia, though, so I will need to devote some time to organising her defense of the denizens of the lower level for next week!
Episode 19: Villain Revealed
The party mopped up the remaining goblins fairly quickly and uneventfully, except for the Sudden Maximised Scorching Ray Ruamaini used to utterly obliterate one goblin.
The briefly looked around the top layer, but found no-one. They searched Ripnugget's bedroom, and almost all the smart party members got terrible search checks, so it was Regis and Abbondio that found the loot. They once again completely missed the privy not meeting the walls, so they aren't likely to find where that key fits...!
They decided to barricade the northwest staircase up, so nothing could sneak up behind them. (Which, aside from the goblin warning them, gave the defenders ample notice!)
Then they headed downstairs. Regis' player, having gotten bored started walking off and opening doors, without waiting for Kevkas. (Of course, had the party in general and he in particular spent less time talking about non-game things, forcing me to wait for long periods for them to shut up and pay attention...(especially him, since he sat next to me today and I had to shout at him about three times for holding a loud conversation with one of the other players across the table, so I couldn't hear anything).)
(In fairness to Kevkas, he was paying attention and was just about to start checking the doors - indeed, he'd started listening at them. I can see him (him and Galmard's players being the two I've been playing with for twenty years) getting a little bit annoyed at having to wait for everyone to finish talking so we can get on with things. I'm going to have a word with them next week, because I was finding it very difficult, especially as it's getting to the point I'm having to repeat things because people are talking nd I had to shush the group a couple of times.)
Following Regis, they decided not to go into the clearly-dodgy cathedral, saying they should probably leave that for last (I joked that with their luck it would be the exact wrong thing to do this time, while shucking and knowing it was). They ended up headed to the war room, where Nulia had ordered the rest of the defenders (the goblin wives - this time a rehash of several of the 1st level character goblin classes, rather than just generic goblins, for all the good it did) Bruthazmus, Orik and Kyrie. (I used the war room and not the one behind largely because the latter wqas too small.) The bugbear and wizard had taken cover behind the up-ended table, with Orik to the side, blocking the door, and disgruntled wives in a line in front the door.
Regis actually stopped and listened at the door - heard nothing (poor listen check), and then let Kevkas finally past. Kevkas opened the door, and promptly got a Ray of Enfeeblement and longbow arrow to the face, the defenders having plenty of warning.
Kaddo used his thundercaller power again, and out of the whole lot, only Orik made his save against the Soundburst effect. Kevkas scuttled out of the way for healing from the cleric. Orik readied himself, and the rest of the defenders were stunned. Ruamaini moved closer, and lobbed a Ray of Enfeeblement at Orik, Gavril sang and Galmard started summoning. Thrôllgar moved to the front, pasing his ranseur to Regis for the latter to fight from the corridor behind him. Regis promptly used Steel Wind and eliminated the Fat Angry Wife and the Bouncy Happy Wife with one attack.
Kaddo then lobbed a thunderstone, and managed to deafen the bugbear and both remaining wives, though not Kyrie, who promptly cast Mirror Image. Ruamaini used Escalating Enfeeblement on Orik, and reduced him to 8 Str (the player rolled quite low both times).
Abbondio moved up an into the room, but in doing so took both Orik's readied attack action and his attack of opportunity as he moved past and got two solid and painful hits.
Before Orik could do anything, though, Thrôllgar stepped foward, now able to use his new twin War Axes (he started adding fighter levels into the mix, so he can end up with a better TWF for Pounce/Shock Trooper down the line). Hit and a crit. Poor Orik was messily sheered in half. So no surrender for him...!
The animal loving wife whacked Abbondio with a solid hit and the Noisy wife started singing (deafened, she was even more out of tune, which probably was an improvement...)
Galmard's summoned Celestial Dog matrials and took a bite out of Bruthazmus.
It was at this point, the door opened, and Abbondio and Regis had the shock of their lives when Nualia stepped in. She took one look around the room, berated Kyrie and Bruthazmus for not killing the idiots fast enough, then swung around and left. (In fact, she was a bit rattled by Orik being so effortless dispatched, and is rushing down to her lair to get some room.)
(The main reason for the reveal then was largely because Abbondio's player was there. He's on a course at the moment, which means he usually only makes it down for the last hour or so, so I figured I'd do it while he was present.)
Regis, closing his mouth, stepped up and struck the bugbear with the ranseur. The bugbear, starting to lose his cool, dropped his longbow and grabbed his heavy flail. With no elves to vent his anger on, he settled for he closest target, the long suffering Abbondio. One solid thack later and the cleric was down again... (I'm seriously starting to think maybe he should get Sloth, since he spends so much of the combat time KO'd..!)
At that was where we left it.
Episode 20: Sound off
The party continued their battle with Kaddo dropping another Thundercaller Soundburst. The blast killed the last two goblin wives, and stunned both Lyrie and Bruthazmus again - and stunned the celestial dog (which disaptaed next round anyway). Thrôllgar stepped onto Abbondio's corpse, and his two axes tore Bruthazmus to pieces. Galmard followed up to slap a Cure Minor onto Abbondio, and Gavril moved up to try and help him next round. Despite their best efforts, even stunned, Lyrie's Mirror Images kept her alive before she regained her senses.
Kaddo moved to up tap Abbondio with a Cure Light Wounds (pretty terrible).
Lyrie stepped next to the door and then dropped a Cloud of Bewilderment in front of her. Though Thrôllgar, Galmard and Abbondio made their saves, Regis succumbed to the effect. With the table hampering efforts to get to her, and hemmed in by the cloud, only Thrôllgar could take a swing, and only hit images, with the rest of the party's ranged attack just missing. Gavril pulled Abbondio out of the cloud, but, between table and other party members, he had to dump the cleric at his feet. So poor Abbondio could only crawl on his action ten feet into an open space before he could even think about standing up...! Kaddo actually put an arrow into Lyrie, through the images, just before she fled out of the door.
Ruaimaini followed briefly, before becoming distracted by the research room and the scrolls therein. Thrôllgar did pelt after her, hotly followed by the rest of the party. Well, except for Abbondio, who finally managed to stand up to find everyone else had left...
Lyrie, reaching the Hellcat Hall found that Nualia had shut the door to the trapped corridor, and with a sudden concerned mental calcuation (that the pursuing Kaddo was able to spot with a Sense Motive), realised that Nualia was not going to come to her aid, and that she didn't have time to open the door, run through it avoid the trap before the party caught her.
So in a last desparate attempt, she turned round and managed to catch her closest pursuers with a Burning Hands. The party's attacks only managed to whittle away her mirror images (to Thrôllgar's great disgust), as they closed in to surround her. She got off one last Ray of Enfeeblement on Thrôllgar. Kevkas, thinking it might not be a bad idea to take her alive, tried to jump on her and grapple her. Sadly, despite her lack of skill, she actually managed to hit him with her dagger and keep him off her.
Then Ruamaini, not hearing the "take her alive part," put a heavy crossbow into her eyesocket from the back of the party.
The party paused to take stock - first they suspected that the door or beyond it was a trap (though Kevkas couldn't find one on the door itself), second, to let Kevkas and Thrôllgar come un-enfeebled.
They debated about whether to rest (Ruamaini wanted to, because he was nearly out of spells, but the divine casters were pretty much fine). They quickly disgarded the idea of going back to town to rest (as I pointed out Nualia could only reinforce while they were out). They considered barricading themselves in (which would have ensured they wouldn't have gotten a rest, since I'd have sicked her and/or all of the Yeth Hounds on them before they had chance), but eventually decided they could manage one more fight.
During this discussion, they came perilously close to going to rest without actually looting the bodies (which would have meant that one lone Thistletop Goblin hiding with Nualia - that messenger, he's still there! - would have been laden with gear, even if he couldn't use it...!)
In the meantime, Thrôllgar took Bruthazmus's head, but had to be talked out of taking Orik's and Lyrie's by Kaddo, who explained that this was Not Done. So he settled for taking their ears instead...
(Another Wrath mark for him... Before the session, I actually counted... He's got about 40 sin marks (so about 8 full-fledged sin points) in total, which I think is nearly more than the whole rest of the party combined...! Sadly, Thrôllgar's player will be missing the next three weeks or so, since he's off to visit his daughter in Russia, he they have a chance to catch up...!)
After searching the bodies, they decided to head back up to the first level of the dungeon and explore a bit further. They went back and through the cells and found themselves in the temple to Lammashtu, where they saw three Yeth Hounds.
Ruamaini made his knowledge check by miles, and shouted out what they were. As Thrôllgar rushed in to slap one, (and DM finally foujnd his stat page!) he suddenly remembered the damage reduction... Thrôllgar, watching his solid hit simply bounced off, rather sardonically thanked him for the warning... Kevkas dashed around Thrôllgar , leaving Kaddo plenty of space (as they knew what was coming next), and tried to disembowel one, but his blow bounced off it's hide.
Kaddo stepped up again, and threw out another Thundercaller Sound Burst, which stunned two out of the three, as well as obviously hurting them.
(That power is pretty evil at this level, since it effectively gives Kaddo a 2nd level spell for every round of Bardic Performance! A fairly crappy second level spell, admittedly, but at this level - and my bad dice rolls - mean the stun effect is very potent!)
The remaining one bayed with all it's might, but everyone easily made the save (Thrôllgar only just!)
Ruamaini decided to end this sound-off by stepping foward and using his last 1st level spell Lesser Orb of Sound and quite literally blew it apart (critical hit, maximum damage!)
Galmard failed to hit one with a Splinterbolt. The rest of the party were moving in, since they were some distance behind in the cells (with a party of eight, being at the bac is quite a bit of movement to get in!)
Thrôllgar dropped his two war-axes, and grabbed his great axe and took a swing, but missed. Kevkas taking advantage of it's stun and practically disembowled it with a superb strike (maximum Sneak Attack damage!)
Kaddo hit off another Soundburst, which killed that one, but failed to stun the other. Galmard cast Sunstroke on the last hound, fatiguing it. Ruamaini used his last spell bar Detect Magic and hi it with an Acid Splash . It took a swipe at the cleric - Abbondio having missed his swing augmented by Blade of Blood already - and missed. Then Regis stepped up. He used his Emerald Razor with a maximum power attack and took it apart.
And thus ended this chapter... Nualia is now down to one Goblin and her personal Yeth hounds (or hounds, I forget whether I left her with more than one when I upgraded the module). But the PCs will need to have their rest. (And having taken out the other nasty major damage source, they can be allowed to take it.)
But, of course, there's still a few less tractable entities floating around the PCs haven't run into yet...!
Episode 21: Glaive Undertakings
The party retired to the top of the east guard tower to rest. Actually having to set a watch order for the first time, they have elected to go for a ten-hour watch (given all the casters need eight hours) Kaddo, Abbondio and Ruamaini, then Kevkas, then Regis, then Thrôllgar and then Gavil, Galmard and Sungmanitu.
The first watch and Thrôllgar failed utterly to spot The Last Goblin from keeping an eye on them...
The party headed back down the the second dungeon level, and explored through all the quarters. They headed into the storage area, and Kevkas wandered into the Tentamort hunting grounds, where it promptly grabbed him.
The narrow confines again worked against the party, but fortunately, the tentacled menace did appallingly, failing to crush the rogue, and it's weak venom faild to even effect him. By the time it had been struck by a critical Lesser Orb of Sound from Ruamaini, an arrow from Gavril, a sling from Abbondio, and having Kevkas break free from it's feeble grasp, when Galmard's Sunstroke hit it (for maximum damage!), it just dropped out of the ceiling - just missing Kevkas - stone cold unconscious. Regis finally managed to identify it as a tentamort before Thrôllgar finished it off with his axe. Kevkas kicked the corpse out into the sea, and then explored the lair. They picked up the do-hide armour and the short bow, but only appraised them, not Detected them so, at this rate it's likely that they're going to sell the magic hide as masterwork..! The rest of the corpses followed the tentamort out to sea.
The party then headed down. After they removed their barricade, Kevkas searched the corridor beyond for traps. He found none - until he stepped right into the swinging blade trap. While Kevkas desparately dodged swinging blades and Thrôllgar made a few futile attempts to lift the grate, the party spent a good round or trying to work out what to do. Just as Gavril and Kaddo started hammering pitons in, the trap door opened up, and dumped the long-suffering rogue into the pit.
The party then had some time to work out a safe solution. Thrôllgar started by sundering the hafts of the statue's glaives. They pitoned the first portcullis such that when activated, it couldn't descend. Their plan was to trigger the trap, wait until the pit opened, and then quickly hammer a piton in, keeping the trapdoor opened. When they realised about the pressure plate, the decided to change plans slightly, and use a corpse tied to a 5' rope to trigger the trap. In the end, they decided to use Lyrie's body (since if it fell, better a light wizard lady landing on Kevkas than a plate-armoured burly fighter or an even heftier bugbear...!) I elected to let that one pass without a sin tick. They thus managed to extract Kevkas from the pit, which remained pitoned open, the gap covered by the table from upstairs.
They then had the choice of left or right - Kevkas asked which way, and Kaddo said left. There was a brief debate as to whose left (with Kevkas deliberatley turning around to face Kaddo before Kaddo specified the north door.
Kevkas opened it, and found Nualia and her last two Yeth hounds ready for battle. He tumbled in to the left, just behind Nualia and one of the hounds, trying to clear some space. Regis dashed in after, using Steel Wind on Nualia and the left hound. Thrôllgar charged, boosted by Regis' shouting (Leading the charge stance) and pounced, but almost effortlessly, the aasimar deflected the blow that hit without seeming at all bothered.
(She is Defiant 4, s has 54 +54 +54 +54 +54 +8 from false life hits...!)
Gavril started counter-song singing - to circumvent the Yeth hound's bay. Kaddo Thundercalled a Soundburst, stunning one of the hounds. Galamard dropped a Sunstroke on Nualia, but unsurprisingly, she made her save. Ruamaini used Ray of Enfeeblement which dropped her strength by a good 7 points (making her worse off than without her buffs...!) Abbondio just moved up, not having room to get in, but threw off Elation, the first time of so many to come...! (Elation is a stupidly good spell!) Nualia angrily whalloped the dwarf, and her hound bayed - for all the good it did, thanks to Gavril's countersong.
Kevkas tumbled to the other side of Nualia, so that he and Regis were flanking her, and stabbed her. But his blow was quite weak and ill-aimed. Regis struck but failed to hurt the unstunned hound next to him. Thrôllgar started the long process of carving chunks out of Nualia's defences, now with the extra buff from Elation. Gavril continued counter-singing. Galmard hit the now-unstunned right yeth hound with a Splinterbolt, doing feeble damage. (I ticked off another Envy point - Galmard is doing really well in that regard!) Ruamaini hit Nualia with a maximum-damage Escalating Enfeeblement, and she collapsed. Kaddo only just had time to throw a Soundburst on the other side - stunning the other Yeth hound and again doing some damage to Nualia - before the Lammashtu scion snarled at Ruamaini, saying she was going to rip his face off and threw off the effect of the enfeeblement. (Though at the cost of her round's action and a block of hit points.) Abbondio scrambled into the room and up onto the stone shelf on the left, just behind Regis, which was about all he could manage in a single round.
Finally, the right yeth hound bit Kevkas and dragged him onto the floor.
As there we leave it. Nualia is, perhaps surprisingly, down about 50% of her hits points (of course, using a whole 54 to knobble Escalating Enfeeblement helped. But her low AC (17, even with buffs) does her no favours at all! Kaddo is planning to use Hideous Laughter, which of course could go a long way to helping as well.
I suspect the yeth hounds in the end may prove more troublesome...!
(And once again, I forgot that dam goblin! I must have him open the door behind the party anmd attack their rear next week!)
Aotrs,
Just want to say that these have been such a blast to read and extremely helpful as I'm just starting to GM my ROTR campaign. Great work and keep 'em coming!
Thanks! It's always good to know someone's reading!
On then, toi the chaos that follows!
Episode 22: Uninvited Barghests
The party continued their epic battle with Nualia. (Well, it wasn't all that epic, really - I was rather disappointed with her performance, but Ruamaini's Enfeeblements just took the edge off!)
Kevkas flailed at the Yeth hound from the floor, but failed to do anything. Regis took a swing at the stunned Yeth hound on the left side, and regained his manouvers. Thrôllgar raged and started swinging away with his axes at Nualia but only managed one hit, Gavril continued countersinging and Galmard had a paltry go with his sling. Ruamaini started Acid Splashing the left-hand Yeth hound, and Kaddo dropped another Soundburst on the area, once again stunning the hound and doing a little damage to Nualia. Abbondio cast up Animalistic Power on himself and stepped forward. Nualia, screaming unrepeatable imprecations as Thrôllgar, and summoning her Strength power - failed utterly to hit him. The right Yeth hound continued to savage Kevkas.
Kevkas changed targets and made a swipe at Nualia, but again missed. (Missing badly was something of a party theme this evening!) Regis dug out Steel Wind again on the left Yeth hound and Nualia, doing a little more damage. Thrôllgar flailed back at Nualia equally ineffectively. Gavril countersang, Galmard started summoning, Ruamaini used Acid Splash. Kaddo dropped a Soundburst and stunned the left Yeth Hound for the third round in a row (by this point with it's brain leaking out of its ears basically curled in a fetal position...!) Abbondio remembered he'd got a masterwork silver dagger and grabbed it out and took a swing at the left yeth hound - his elevation, from standing on the shelf gave him just enough impetus to hit. Nualia smacked Thrôllgar again. And then the Yeth hound finally succeeded in dropping Kevkas.
Regis attempted to hit the Yeth hound with Sapphire Nightmare Blade. Thrôllgar finally landed a stupendous critical hit on Nualia, who was starting to look actually wounded at this point. Gavril continued countersinging... Galmard's celestial dog materialised - right on top of Kevkas' dying body - and Galmard himself rushed around, past the staggering hound, taking sword-blow from Nualia as he did so, to scramble over the fountain behind Nualia and onto the shelf above the rogue. The dog took a bite at Nualia, but missed. Kaddo dropped yet another Sound Burst. This time, the Yeth hound managed to fight it's way through the stun - just in time for Abbondio to put his dagger into it's eyesocket. Nualia herself made the risky move of casting a Cure Light Wounds on herself and lucked out both in her concentration check and the amount of damage healed. The other hound bit the celestial dog, but failed to drag it to the ground.
Regis switched his attention to Nualia, but he and Thrôllgar failed to achieve anything. Thrôllgar took a step to the right, and now Nualia was neatly flanked both ways - Abbondio and the dog behind her, and Regis and Thrôllgar in front of her. Gavril switched tactics and tried using Grease on Nualia's sword, but failed, leaving Kaddo to take up the countersinging. Galmard slapped a Cure Minor Wounds on Kevkas - a bit of a difficult job, considering he was reaching down from the shelf to a body benetah a snarling celestial dog, but managed it without being bitten by the Yeth hound. Kevkas was still out, but at least stable. Ruamaini used Acid Splash on the remaining hound, but missed. Nualia had a brief face-palm when she remembered she'd actually gotten that big nasty claw for a reason!She still onyl managed to hit Thrôllgar with her sword, however... Abbondio hopped down from the shelf, switching back to his heavy mace and had a crack at Nualia. The last Yeth hound then deftly grabbed the celestial dog by the throat and ripped it open, causing it to disperse.
Regis and Thrôllgar continued to try to exchange blows with Nualia, who was starting to flag. Galmard's second Cure Minor brought Kevkas awake (while the Yeth hound managed to bite it's own tongue triying to snap at him). Gavril tried a Hideous Laughter on the Hound, but failed to affect it. Kaddo switched to Inspire Courage at last, giving the party a much-needed further boost. Nualia struck Thrôllgar - who was starting to get a bit battered. Abbondio had another swipe, but missed again. Ruamiani had basically run out of things to throw by this stage, as had Galmard. The Yeth hound again bit at Kevkas, but missed.
Kevkas and Regis both took a swing at Nualia - only the latter hitting. Then Thrôllgar swing his left axe, and swung his right axe, and they both met in the middle. Unfortunately, the middle was Nualia, who was neatly split in twain. Abbondio finished the battle by dropping his mace, grabbing his silver dagger and charging the Yeth Hound and activating Blade of Blood and rammed his dagger into the second eyesocket of the day.
The party then paused to take stop.
First - a novelty - they were all on their feet (well metaphorical in Kevkas's case) and most of all Abbondio was not only unhurt, but had killed two enemies...!
They elected to rest there, looted the body and started reading through the notes and thus finally understanding the runewells, putting a name to the sinspawn and hearing the name of the Skinsaw Men. Just as they were settling in, That Last Goblin (who I'd forgotten about again) legged it up past them and out into the wide blue yonder, the only surviver of the Thistletop Massecre...
(One of the players muttered something about that coming back to haunt them, I and thought "well, why not - it's sort like he a goblin hero now or something." So sometime in the second half (possibly the final part) there's going to be a souped-up goblin hero to deal with...!)
After a rest, they headed out and spent some time utterly failing to find the entrance to the secret chambers. Eventually, Kekvas took 20 and just barely found it. It took Thrôllgar, of all people, whacking it with his axe before they realised it was stone, not gold. Eventually they put the gold pieces in and gained entrance. They explored the northern two rooms, finding the key and - with the help of Kaddo's translation of the looped message and a superlative knowledge history check from Regis - put two and two together and figured out that the prior statue they'd gotten the masterwork glaive off was Alaznist.
They then opened the door to Malfeshnekor. I made my first slight error in not finding the section where it mentioned him making pre-battle preparations (including casting Invisibilty Sphere) until after I'd described him being in the room. Mentally rolling my eyeglows, I made three perception checks to see if he'd heard them coming, on the basis he cold at least have his other buffs up.
He failed all of them.
With a +16 Perception.
(That -15 through the doors, and he fact he wasn't really expecting anyone (-5) did it, but if any of the rolls had been above low single digits...!)
So the party got the drop on him.
Ruamaini and Gavril managed to work out what he was right away. (As a side note, the monster knowledge checks from the community resources are fracking wonderful!)
Malfeshnekor was standing, minding his own business, in the south-west corner of the room, when the party booted the door in. Ruamaini bravely actually ran into the room to drop another Ray of Enfeeblement (I'm starting dislike that spell!) on Malfeshnekor. Regis rushed to the northwest corner of the room, right in front of the Barghest, taking advantage of the fact there the Barghest was flat-footed. Kaddo started singing, Gavril cast Phantom Threat, which just bounced off. Galmard tried and failed with a Splinterbolt. Thrôllgar spent the round running all the way around the firepit, so he was in a position to start attacking Malfeshnekor from the barghest's right. the following round.
Malfeshnekor, shaking off his shock, half started casting - and then realised he didn't have Concentration - and settled for savaging Regis; something that would have hurt more if he hadn't been Enfeebled, but as it was, ws probably good thing, as he still did 20 damage with two hits. Kevkas moved up to just inside the door and had a swing but missed. Abbondio wisely cast Elation.
Ruamaini, buffed by song and spell, managed to land his Escalating Enfeeblment, and dropped Malfeshnekor's strength further, to a paltry 12 (from 26!) Regis started hacking chunks out of him, actually having a magic weapon. Gavril tried another spell, which just bounced off. Kaddo hurled a Sounmdburst. But aside from the damage, did little else. Thrôllgar raged and started swinging, but failed to do much. Galmard cast Sunstroke, but again Malfeshnekor just shrugged the worst of it off. Malfeshnekor, now considerably weaker, still managed to take a few more chunk out of Regis, who was becoming concerned... Kevkas actually managed to hit the Barghest, and then realised he wasn't going to get anywhere that way with a nonmagic dagger. Abbondio took a ready action to slap a Cure Moderate Wounds on Regis, who was now on 13 hits and needed to retreat - unfortunately, his only route out was through Malfeshnekor's threatened area. Ruamaini's player said something about how not many creatures have combat reflexes anyway (and I looked at Malfeshnekor's stats and laughed.)
Ruamaini hit the barghest with a Sudden Maximised Lesser Sound Orb. Regis, realising he was going to get bitten either way, took a swing, got his mauvers back and them moved back out of thr room to the cleric. He did indeed get a nasty bite for his trouble, but a solid Cure in return. Gavril, running out of ideas, tried a Daze, which unsurprisingly failed. Kaddo did his usual Soundburst - and horror of horrors Malfeshnekor actually failed his Fort save and was stunned. (He is defiant one, so does have a reroll - but as he'd barely even taken 50 damage out of his 120+120, I didn't think it he'd think it was worth it at this point.) Galmard fired off an second Sunstroke, but lightning wasn't going to strike twice... (Though 20 points of nonlethal damage is not something to be sneezed by this point). Thrôllgar actually hit Malfeshnekor, but failed to get through his DR. Kevkas missed with his strike - to his great disgust, since Sneak Attack is about the only way he can get through the DR...
And there we left it - out of one boss fight into the next one!
(There will be no report next week, as it's my panto dress rehersal.)
Very cool to read! Thanks for sharing your game with us.
I'm starting to GM ROTRL (anniversary edition) next week-end. Kind of nervous. Don't want to mess this classic AP.
I raise my beer mug to you for handling so many players!
I don't think I could.
Cheers and keep up the well written storytelling!
Very nice thread sir, look forward to reading more!
And we're back! Panto went well - we made about £1450 for the church!
Episode 23: Feeling Drained
The party continued to hack away at Malfeshnekor. Ruamaini kept blasting until he was out of spells. Kaddo kept dropping Thundercalled Soundbursts - he even managed to stun Malfeshnekor for a second time. Kevkas managed one good Sneak Attack, then feinted but missed with his follow-up strike. Thrôllgar hammered away steadily, as did Regis when he got back in, despite being mauled repeatedly; though with Malfeshnekor's 14 points of Str penalty and Abbondio standing behind him, he managed to bravely tank the hits. Gavril grabbed Kaddo's three flasks of Alchemist's fire and lobbed them into the fray. Malfeshnekor, cornered and lacking a concentration skill to cast defensively, was reduced to attacking Regis in the desparate hopes of taking him down, when he wast stunned. Galmard and eventually Kevkas started using Aid Another to boost Regis' AC and Thrôllgar's attack, as they were out of anything else useful to do.
The end finally came when Abbondio hurled a Shockwave - which Malfeshnekor failed his save on (bear in mind he only needed low single digits to be failing these saves...!) And he went prone. Then the barghest failed his save against the Thundercalled Soundburst for the third time (seriously, he needed, like 5), and was now prone and stunned. Thrôllgar at this point, between []i]Elation[/i] and bard song was now at +8 to attack him (buffs, prone, Aid Another), on top of his rage, verses the barghest's flat-footed AC (minus two, because he was stunned). He dropped Malfeshnekor to 15 hits with two solid hits - and the barghest was now, prone, stunned - and unconscious! (Galmard nonlethal damage finally mattered...!) Kevkas then made his coup de grace - and did 24 damage... Before DR. Hilariously Malfeshnekor made his Fort save, and was thus on 1 hit point. Ruamaini then finished him off with his very last useful spell, Acid Splash for two hits...
The party then decided they kinda ought to rest! They found the secret alcoves and looted the room, and then went to rest up - and level up to 4th.
We managed that in short order enough that the party pressed on. They headed into the crypt, where Kevkas and Abbondio wandered in. Kevkas - being Kevkas - pried open the first casket. He found nothing but bones - and then suddenly, the three shadows attacked. (This was one encountered I hadn't boosted in numbers, and fortunately so!) The party failed their knowledge checks, so they weren't sure exactly what they were dealing with, leading Thrôllgar to charge one and discovering that they were not vulnerable to his nommagic axes.
It was time for the squishies to take the lead! Thrôllgar dwarfully stood his ground, as two of the three shadows attacked him. The third was attacking the cleric. Thrôllgar's strength started to drop - he lost six Strength in two rounds. During which time, both bards and the cleric failed to hit with their Cure Light Wounds spells. Galmard did manage to hit with his Cure Minor and Ruamaini severely damaged on with a hit from his Magma Bolt. It was now Thrôllgar's turn to be Aiding Another (since nothing says that he's not threatening or at least being distracting!) to help his comrades - Kaddo specifically.
Abbondio landed his spell finally, dropping his shadow to 1 hit. Regis flailed away with his magic weapon, but kept missing due to the incorporeality. Kevkas, meanwhile, had legged it to the back and was provising "moral support" by shouting how the rest of the party were doing it wrong... Galmard landed another Cure Minor and then joined him. Kaddo finally hit and dispersed the most damaged shadow fighting Thrôllgar... Abbondio used his Turn Undead, but only managed to make the 1-hit-poitn shadow cower (to be finished off by Ruamaini's ubiquitous Acid Splash shortly thereafter.
And then the last shadow hit. And got a critical. And maximum damage - 12 Strength! And Thrôllgar was suddenly down to 1 strength, and thanking the stars he'd put that new stat point into strength...! (For half a heartbeat, I was afraid I'd killed him!)
Gavril got in, though, and wiped the last Shadow out with a single solid CLW.
At this point, the party had to stop to rest AGAIN, since Thrôllgar was going nowhere... Ruaimaini and Regis in particular, and the party in general, used the opportunity to extract the urine from the nearly helpless dwarf, making the most of it while it lasted. Eight hours later, and three Lesser Restorations later, Thrôllgar was at least on Strength 10...
After they'd rested, Kevkas, while the rest of party were sitting around playing cards (I dunno, they just didn't seem to care) went to inspect the last doors - the ones that lead to the sunkern treasury. He quickly spotted the golden giant helm... And saw it move. I even told him he spotted something vaguely crab-like beneath it, for all the attention he paid it. He stood there for a bit, and then went to borrow the ranseur to hook it out with (Regis told him to get knotted). He was preparing to just sit there and wait until the tide went out. The hermit crab, meanwhile, wasn't too bothered, since he hadn't entered the water (Kevkas went back down the stairs and opened the other door from that side.)
Then Kevkas had the... brainwave... to try and hook the helmet out with his grappling hook. He managed to get the grapple solidly stuck in the helmet - and for the giant hermit crab to take exception...!
How badly he gets mutilated is the question for next week...!
Episode 24: Getting Crabby
Kevkas, while yelling for Thrôllgar, attmepted to see if he could pull the crab up. (He couldn't.) It promptly scuttled forward and grabbed him in it's huge claws (for maximum damage...!)
The rest of the party rushed up. Kaddo had the foresight to use Grease on Kevkas's armour, which would boost his attempts to escape. Ruamaini started his now-traditional Ray of Enfeeblement/Escalating Enfeeblement combo, and Gavril started singing. Regis moved into position, ready to hit it. Kevkas then scrambled free, and the crab started grasping at both him and Regis and grabbed the latter. Thrôllgar moved into to start ineffectually thacking at it with this feeble strength, while Ruaimaii completed his combo, dropping it to 8 strength. Then he and Abbondio stood back and discussed how the rest of the party were doing... "II've done my part," the former said... (Sloth point! Sloth point!) Galmard, meanwhile, had run to the other entrance and dropped Numbing Sphere from the crab's rear, rolling it up to the crab and starting to do do some cold and Dex damage, further dropping the crab's AC. (Whose stats, I realised, were not errata'd when I went through, since it was listing a +1 Dex to AC with Dex 10...!) Kevkas starting stabbing in the voonerables, while Regis tried to get free and the crab failed to crush him. Between Thrôllgar, Kevkas and Galmard's spell, and Regis finally breaking free (and getting to it's opposite side, allowing it to be nicely flanked), they managed to kill it without too much more fuss.
The party then took some time having to hack the crab out of the helmet, looting the treasure chamber and then heading out. The make a cride travois out of their rope and one of the doors, and lugged it all back to Sandpoint. There we had an identifying session. They took the helmet to Brodart, and also showed him the medallion. So I skipped to Skinsaw murders, and gave them the speil on the sihedron rune. (They knew most of the rest of the stuff in that bit about Thassilon already.)
As they divided out the loot, Thrôllgar ended up with Nualia's magic breastplate. I could not resist at this point.
"Just bear in mind," I said, getting Nualia's picture out, "Thrôllgar is now wearing that."
Hysterics ensued. (Normal rules on magic armour be damned, that was just too funny not to do...)
This was compounded by Thrôllgar wanting to go to see Tsuto and brag about how he'd killed Nualia. Especially when he was going to dance in wearing her armour make comments about how her claw was his new backscratcher. (We were all killing ourselves.) He really wanted to get in (but Sherieff Hemlock has actually met and isn't stupid...) He was even trying to get to the window of Tsuto's cell... In the end, I said Tsuto was being taken off for trial at Magnimar (just to get him out of the way), but the player immediatey jumped on that meant being transported in an open wagon. I threw up my hands at this point, and Tsuto went away spitting and cursing and swearing revenge as Thrôllgar Made A Scene...
I then set them all up for down time, working out what they were doing and how they were getting sorted with living costs and such. (Working on the basis that the Rusty Dragon qualified as an average in, because, fracking hell, no-one could afford 2gp a day on hireling wages! Good inn must be freaking amazing...!)
Kaddo and Galvril are working as entertainers, and because they have good perform skills, I let them get a bonus such they are basically paying for the board with that work.
Thrôllgar, actually showing something passing intelligence for once, asked about working ass a bowyer fletcher (in addition to his evening job at the Fatman's Feedbag. So Savah took him on at the armoury, and he';s earning 4 sp/day (enough he's only using spending one per day).
Abbondio and Regis both have houses (or their parent's house) and so with the former's day job as priest and the latter doing whatever his mum needs doing, I assumed that would cover their meal costs.
Kevkas continues to study under Brodert, with the understanding that he gets sent out as consultant when Brodert can't be bothered (which pays his board cost at the Dragon.)
Ruamaini is spending most of his time in indepndant study (i.e writing spells into his spellbook!) but he is also lending a (very-much appreciated) hand to Ameiko, as she has to take over the running of the glassworks.
(At last! We finally are starting to see some of the party working towards Jade Regent! As you may recall, either the party themselves of their next generation will be undertaking that module after runelords is over (rebalanced for high level in the case of the former.) As the party was evenly split on whether they wanted to do high level or not, I made them the ultimatum that if, by the end of Runelords, the majority of the party were in a position to be doing Next Generation (i.e to have progeny) we'd run it at low level - otherwise we'd be doing it at high. Basically meaning that onus is on the players who want to do it at low level to do some work. With the understanding that I expected everyone to be working to that end, just in case I got to it and said, "frack, too much like hard work!" So we are starting to get the baseline, and I need to go starting to look up those relationship rules in Jade Regent!)
Galmard went to the Barrets, to make sure that Amele and Aeren were doing alright.
As the player pointed out to me later, from the metaperspective, this was a really good idea for Galmard's love interest, since she's not an adevnturer herself (so not adding to the number of characters), but either Aeren (who comes complete with backstory) or their children would be ideal for the next gen. With the benefit of time to think about it, I conceded that was a really good idea (I'd been half expecting him to go for Shayliss, and was half shifting her in his direction). So I'm going to need to expand on this. (Suggestions would be welcome!)
And then we got to the real fun...
An off-hand conversation between Ruamaini and Thrôllgar led to Ruamaini suggesting he go to the general store owner (Ven Vinder) and say something to the affect that he'd heard his daughters were "goers." So Thrôllgar, not understanding quite that bit of slang did.
After the ensuing (off-screen)fistfight and a night in the cells, an exasperated Hemlock explained exactly what that meant. Thrôllgar then attemped to go and apologise to Vinder. It did not do terribly, but neither did it go well... I said that (word having gotten round), Thrôllgar had gotten some hard stares from the ladies in question. So he decided to try to apologise to them as well - giving them each a gold piece to go and make themselves look nice. (Because it is Thrôllgar went all's said and done...!)
Regis went with him when they cornered Shayliss, and as Thrôllgar made his apology, Regis handed her some flowers that "Thrôllgar" had also gotten her. Net result, at this point, Shayliss was reasonably sort of flattered (even with the knowledge that Regis was trying to help Thrôllgar), and Thrôllgar got a smile and couple of over-the-shoulder looks as she went away.
(And why not, I thought. Potential love interest No. 3. I was actually half intending to gently push Shayliss towards Ruamaini again, but interesting how things out!)
Katrine didn't react quite so well... An Thrôllgar got a vist from her boyfriend while he was working at the bar. Harker did the usual jealous boyfriend thing of "stay away from my women" while Thrôllgar tried to explain he was only trying to be nice.
At this point, I was jumping up and down excitedly - because of course this sets up Skinsaw murders PERFECTLY. Hell, the party will even have MET the victims and it'll throw some suspicion onto Thrôllgar - who is, of course, Aldern's (rage) victim! It's so neat I couldn't have PLANNED this.
I do not know how I would have run this module so well without Thrôllgar's player gift-wrapping me this sort of thing, it's really amazing!
So, next week, Skinsaw Murders begins and Thrôllgar will find out how much trouble he's in...!
Edit: and when I started looking around for house prices, I found PF actually has a full system for downtime. Huh. I am going to suggest to the PCs that we adopt that! (They, I think, will be fairly pleased, since it means they will be theorheticall bringing in more pennies and we can consider that the Rusty Dragon can go back to Good quality!)
Episode 25: Everybody Tolerates Thrôllgar
First thing, we went back through the downtime with the new rules, and sorted everybody out.
Then, in the evening, twenty-five days later, Sherieff Hemlock showed up with news of the murders and the Skinsaw Murders began.
The PCs met him next morning in the garrison, and Hemlock showed them the note. Thrôllgar, he said, was not a suspect - for a kick-off, of course, Thrôllgar can't actually read or write common...! (Kevkas at one point asked him to identify the writing, at which points Thrôllgar agreed that yes, it was indeed writing.) However, after Thrôllgar's altercation with Ven - no too mention that incdient with the victims - that the townsfolk might not see it that way.
Thrôllgar actually first thought of Aldern (and I thought, "crap, have I been too obvious?") and then watched him talk himself out of that idea. and ti was not brought up again.
The party went down to the mill to inspect the murder site. Ruamaini, when prompted, made the appropriate Grissom one-liner: (of Katrine) "looks like she came here... For some wood."
YEEEEAAAAH!!!!
(Because I am a very sad person, at any point the PCs do anything like inspecting crime-scenes, if they make an appropriately CSI-like one-liner, they get extra XP.)
The party found most of the clues, and became fairly sure it was some sort of ghoul or ghast. Kaddo, actually beat Galmard on the survival (again... Envy point! Envy point!) and Thrôllgar was the one who spotted the claw-marks on Harker's body.
The party quizzed Hemlock thoroughly on the other murders. I used the handout from one of the community resoruces, one spattered with blood and Ruamaini's player spent some time (very accurately) tracing out the words barely visible under the blood. (Kudos to whomever did that resource!) Kevkas then sent Galmard to go and see if he could find any particularly important properties in town that might be part of a scam, thinking this might be part of what got the con men killed - but of course, they found nothing out of the ordinary.
The party recognised the sihedron rune right off, but didn't seem to think too much about it. They also didn't seem to think that Ven or the other miller were worth questioning - which, to be fair, probably is not a bad reading of the situation. So they then retired to the inn and their next move. (Mostly, it must be admitted, because Thrôllgar wanted beer.)
Sadly, the real reasaon was that Thrôllgar Had A Plan. It occurred to him the Ven was in the garrison, so there was no-one else at the Vinder home. So he was going to disguise himself and go and "stalk that girl" (i.e. Shayliss) in case she was in danger.
So. I had him make a disguise check (a charisma based skill, with his Charisma of 6) with no disguise kit (-2). He got a total of 4.
The party paused in mid-meal as Thrôllgar heade down the stairs, wearing his bedsheet, with a hole crudely cut out for his head and the cut-out piece inexpertly tied to his head as a sort of turban. Loking like... Thrôllgar wearing a bedsheet with a hole in it.
Ameiko was gripping the bar so hard she was nearly leaving marks, and developed a significant eye-twitching problem...
Kaddo signalled Thrôllgar over.
"It's me," Thrôllgar said, unecessarily, "I'm in disguise!"
Kaddo then patiently explained why this was, frankly, a really bad idea and that if Thrôllgar wanted to disguise himself properly, he'd need to do something more drastic, like shave his beard. There was a long pause, during which the temperature dropped very rapidly. Kaddo moved swiftly on and suggested that he ought to try making himself look like another Dwarf. Thrôllgar replied his plan was to make himself taller by standing on a box.
And then revised this idea to stilts until Kaddo pointed out that it would actually take some effort to learn to use stilts...
Eventually, Kaddo finally pursuaded Thrôllgar to explain what he wss doing. Thrôllgar explained that, what with Ven being on the clink currently, he was going to stalk Shayliss to make sure he was safe. "It's a what fo you call it? A stalk out!" Kaddo suggested that if that was the idea, maybe he should send someone better suited to it...?
"Well, I wasn't going to take the whole party," said Thrôllgar. "That might look suspicious."
Also, Kaddo, suggested, he might want to replace Ameiko's bedsheet.
"Ah, she won't want it after I've been suing it anyway," Thrôllgar said.
"Point," Ameiko, said. "I was gonna burn it anyway, so no loss I guess. He's not having anopther one though."
"I wasn't using it anyway," Thrôllgar replied cheerfully. "I only use the straw!"
I was killing myself, at this point.
Anyway, Kaddo and Thrôllgar headed off to Shayliss' house, with Kevkas trailing behind. Thrôllgar actually stopped to spent a silver piece getting some flowers. Thrôllgar nearly banged on the door, but stopped and knocked sensibly. Shayliss eventually answered.
Kevkas, meanwhile, unbenowst to his comrades, decided to sneak in the back while she was distracted and search for some clues. He didn't find anything, in the short time he had, but at least he didn't get spotted or anything, as then Thrôllgar and Kaddo wouild have to race in to deal with the intruder...!
Thrôllgar handed Shayliss the flowers and offered condolances. With Kaddo "translating" and smoothing Thrôllgar's utter lack of tact (and terrible charsima checks), Thrôllgar explained that he was there because he was concerned she migt be in danger, and that he was volenteering to guard her. "I can stand outside your house," he said. "I mean, it's just like standing outside the bar which doesn't ay much, so it's not really any different." With Kaddo - who really earned his pay today! helping to explain what Thrôllgar "meant" by that, they left with Shayliss not completely repulsed, so there was that...!
(Give Thrôllgar credit - he's really trying, in his own completely... unique style...!)
The party then headed over to the sanatorium, as the rain started to pour. This marked the first official outing of the Battle Cart, with it's glorious goblin-head standard, everburning torch and now the addition of some of the everburning candle to add a touch of I don't even anymore...
Thrôllgar debated as to whether to take his barrel of beer with him, but eventually elected not too. He did take the Suspicious Axe, though intending to present it to Grayst to see what his reaction was because Thrôllgar. Just because Thrôllgar.
They reached the sanatorium, and Kaddo - even lacking the recommendation letter Hemlock could have given the if they - or the DM! - had thought about it, deftly talked the good doctor into letting the party in. They were taken to see Grayst and correctly worked out he was definitely in the late stages of ghoul-fever. They debated about whether they could get a scroll to cure him, but then I pointed out that would not fix his insanity. (And in nay case Galmard had bauked about being him sent of to run into town in the now lashing rain and back to buy a scroll...) Kaddo went in and managed to get Grayst to babble about Skinsaw man and razor and lots of teeth, but nothing else.
Just as the doctor was about to chase the party out, Thrôllgar barged in to show Grayst the handaxe. Which of course, triggered Grayst right into his message and then lunging to attack.
The party actually showed shocking restraint, and even Thrôllgar only struck nonlethally. Due to the fact they were really pulling their blows (i.e., rolled really crap on damage and Grayst was Defiant 1), it took them a round or two to finally bring him down. But between Thrôllgar using the heft of the Suspicious Axe, Kevkas trying to grapple, Abbondio using his mace, plus a bit of support from the bards (Daze from Gavril, singing from Kaddo and then a Lullaby from Gavril before he realised it affected everyone... (apart from the cleric, who made his save) but they finally knocked him out and headed back to the town.
Kaddo recalled he'd heard of an abandoned manner referred to as the Misgivings before, but couldn't remember it's proper name off the top of his head. Before they could get in and ask (and go haring off the Foxglove manor next day!), they ran into Farmer Grump at the gates as he babbled insanely about scarecrows...
And that's the cliff-hangar for this week!
Episode 26: Massecre of the Scarecrows
The party cajoled Farmer Grump into the Rusty dragon, mjainly due to Kaddo's silver tongue. There, plied with beer, he told his tale. The party went into a debate between Thrôllgar - who wanted to go right now - and the rest of the party, who didn't want to go six miles in the pouring rain at night...
Thrôllgar was pursuaded eventually, and then decided he was going off to stand outside Shayliss' house. Kaddo, thankfully, went and told Hemlock, who went and had a word, suggesting that, again, while he and the party were mostly convinced of Thrôllgar's innocence, not everyone else was, and that standing around outside her house was not going to ease suspicion...
The party set out in the morning, after a debate as to whether to take the cart (they didn't).
(Kaddo's player was quite annoyed that they party would be moving at 16 miles/day on foot (thanks to Thrôllgar and Abbondio) or with the cart and that there were only twice that mounted. I said that a D&D's cart speed was not inaccurate, considering that this wasn't the Roman Empire and b) mounted stuff doesn't move THAT much faster than foot over the long term and that if the PCs wanted to start forced marching and making a fuss about overland speed, I'd be happy to go break out Rolemaster's rules for it if D&D's wasn't sufficient...)
Thrôllgar wanted to stop by Shayliss' house on the way out, but the party and the sight of Ven rapidly approaching the door disuaded him.
The party reached the Hambley Farm in good time, with the now dry and breezy weather not working against them.
Thrôllgar saw the first scarecorew and charged, chopping it in twain. The party, rolling their eyes, just let him. Thrôllgar charged the second one he saw, and then realised... "Hang on, that's not straw on my axes... Whoops."
He'd killed a ghoul of course, but it was a bit of a shock to Thrôllgar that it might not have been and tense few moment while Abbondio checked the body to see if it had been alive before it had been Thrôllgar'd.
Kaddo rode up to another scarecrow, which snapped free of it's restraints and charged, and utterly missed, before deftly being put down by Thrôllgar.
The party then proceeded east round the tracks, now carefully checking (via Regis trying to poke the hood off) eveyr scarecrow to see if it was a ghoul. When they reached the first living human and he began to wriggle - and then called out for help, Thrôllgar had to be stopped from charging in...
The party were unsure what to do. Ruamaini was trying to, with his own lack of tact, explain to the poor man he was going to die shortly, as I could just see them working up to euthenasia. I did not make it easy for them; the chap kept crying to be released and to see his family. But before they could commit murder I had Abbondio (who's player was away) remember he was fairly sure they was a scroll or two of Remove Disease at the cathedral and that Zantus would cast if they got the victim(s) back there. So they cut him down and swiftly moved around the rest of the farm, eliminating the tried up ghouls in short order, trying to find any more victims.
As they came close to the barn, six of the farm's twelve free ghouls charged out to attack them. The fight was short and fairly one-sided. Galmard cried into his beer as he'd not thought to change his spell load out and almost all of his spells were completely useless against Undead. He did break out a Mass Snake's Swiftness, however, which helped considerably. Kaddo in the round of warning the party had, did not dismount, preferring to ready a thundercalled Soundburst, and when one of ghoul's charged him, he has carried out the wayby his terrified horse... Nevertheless, the party chopped through all six ghouls fairly easily in two rounds, with the former barely managing to hit anyone, let alone hurt them with diseaese or paralysis. Abbondio tried twice to turn them - try being the operative phrase, since "please just go away!" and "no, really, if you could go away, if it's all the same to you..." did not help. (2 and then 1 on consequtive turning checks...)
The party then mopped up the last of the trapped ghouls and found the other still-living victim, and next week will deal with the last six ghouls and Rogors.
Episode 27: Persistant Stalker
After a brief debate, standing around the ex-ghoul scarecrow south east of the farm buildings, Kevkas decided he'd go and scout round the back of the farm house. The PCs could see six ghouls milling around in the barn (which I draw as having the doors open, and facing the farmhouse), but couldn't see Craesby, who was hiding in the farmhouse. He spotted Kevkas, despite the latter's efforts at stealth, and managed to hide from Kevkas quite succesfully.
Kevkas entered the back, which I decided was the kitchen. He saw the body, looted the note and the key, and then headed into the next room. This was one that lead back towards the party and was the living room - empty. Kevklas went into the next one - the master bedroom, whose wall was the south-east wall, beyond which lay the party.
Kevkas didn't get very far with his search, as he was ambushed and bitten by Craesby. Sadly, he made both saves but realised he was now only on 7 hit points. So Kevkas decided to dive through the master bedroom window, and let it to the waiting party. He succeeded, though managing to hurt himself further (on a failed Reflex save) on the smashed glass in the process. Craesby wisely did not follow, but disappeared from view.
At this point, the party were motivated into attack, and began to move forwards. Kaddo loosed off a single thundercalled Soundburst, Gavril shot an arrow, and then Ruamaini hit the same ghoul with a Firebolt, wounding it quite heavily. Galmard summoned a wolf and Abbondio headed to heal Kevkas.
The ghouls, for their part, didn't charge once they saw Thrôllgar and Regis standing readied, but instead started moving out of the barn and spreading out to avoid more spell attacks (except for the heavily wounded one, which hid.)
Shortly thereafter, the battle was joined as the party charged into the ghouls. Kaddo starting singing and activated his Iinspirational Boost spell, putting the singing bonus up to +2. Galmard's wolf and Sungmanitu charged one ghoul that had moved to the corner of the farmhouse. (Inside, Craesby was moving towards a door on the south-west wall, not far behind it.)
The fight was pretty brief, with Regis and Thrôllgar carving one to pieces effortlessly, and Ruamaini obliterating another with a Maximised Scorching Ray. Gavril Greased part of the barn, and the hevaily wounded ghoul fell over, never to rise, and succeeded in keeping one other ghoul down for a round. The ghoul's only successes were hitting Galmard's summong wolf twice and paralysing it. And, because of where the party was potioned, when Craesby made his appearance, that was his only target too his first round. The party were quickly moppong up the last ghouls. Gavril activated a Cure Light Wounds but missed the first time (leaving Regis to finish that ghoul), and then headed over as Kaddo dropped a Greae on top of the area where Craesby, one ghoul and the paralysed wolf were fighting. As the ghoul and wolf slipped over, Gavril deftly slapped it with his spell and destroyed it.
Galmard took a step back away from the grease. He reasoned that with Regis and Kevkas now standing next to Craesby, knocking chunks out of him, as the ghoul was pinned by the farmhouse wall on one side, the two in front of him and grease on three spaces around him, he'd be better off out of the way. Abbondio had also wandered off, leaving Craesby a line right to Kaddo and Ruamaini... Provided he didn't slip in the grease and made his acrobatics check. He did both, and charged into Kaddo... and missed completely.
The Regis decided to risk it and do the same. He made his Reflex save! He made his Acrobatics check! He rolled a 1 on his attack roll, followed by another 1! Ruamaini and Kaddo were ever after not quite sure what Regis did, but they were half-convinved he'd somehow managed to carry the grease from the spell on his boots, as Regis managed a flying tackle onto his face at Craesby's feet, taking a solid bite in the process. And failed his second Fort save! Ghoul Fever time!
Kaddo slapped the ghoul with a Cure Light Wounds which, had Craesby not resisted it, would have ended the fight there and then. As it was, Ruamaini stuck his hand right in Craesby's face and incinerated his head with a Scorching Ray point-blank. (Craesby was on about 3 hits at the time, so it was definitely destroyed...!)
The party then found the key on the his body. Gavril utterly and completely failed his Knowledge (Nobility) check to identify it, so the party headed back to town, after Kevkas liberated the now-dead Hambley farm's loot.
Back in town, the party went to Zantus, who cured the two victims. He did have one more Remove Disease, but the party are waiting to see if Regis gets ill before using it on him.
Thrôllgar decided to disguise himself again, and try to take more flowers to Shayliss. His result was as bad as last time, especially since he'd tried to make himself look like and old dwarf wizard. So he ended up wearing the poncho made from the bedsheet again, only this time with flour in his beard and taking the cut off and making into a pointed hat with eye holes cut in it.
(So basically what you had was Thrôllgar wearing an impromptu Klu Klux Klan hat, in a bedsheet, with flour in his beard.)
Naturally, EVERYONE know it was him (especially since he's so obvious in Sandpoint now, everyone gets the +4 bonus...) Kaddo and Gavril followed a safe distance to watch the entertainment, as went and bought and silver piece's worthy of flowers and headed to the general store. He knocked at the door and was met by an extremely unamused Ven Vinder. Ven looked at him and said "Thrôllgar, you have until the count of ten to get out of here before I take that hat and feed it to you." On the count of four, Kaddo hustled up to take the protesting Thrôllgar away, taking the flowers out of Thrôllgar's hand and putting them on the floor (since Ven wasn't going to take them), explaining they were Shayliss. Thrôllgar mused about how he probably should have tied them to a brick and threw them into her window. Kaddo pointed at he would then need to tie a gold piece to it to save the window and thus would be better off just sticking a gold piece through the letter box...
I am somewhat of a loss as to what to do here... Thrôllgar's becoming very stalker-y and I'm not sure what Shayliss' reaction shiuld be. I was leaning towards going for that as his love interest, but crazy-stalker Thrôllgar is not making it easy for me to rationalise that... Suggestions would be welcome!
The following morning (Regis made his first save), Galmard decided to head back to the farm to bring back the body of the only ghoul that wasn't clearly a farm-hand - and then we realised that Craesby's body had been pretty much rendered unidentifiable by that last spell!
The party had forgotten (distracted by Thrôllgar, mostly) about researching "Misgivings" and appeared to have forgotten the key after Gavril failed his check. So when Kaddo muttered to Ruamaini he should have just hit the ghoul in the chest, I commented that might have just melted the key instead... That subtle hint was enough that Galmard went to the Sherieff with the key. Hemlock identified it as being the crest of the Foxglove family.
Galmard asked if they were from around here. Hemlock paused to draw breath, about to explain about the tragedy, when Thrôllgar piped up up "do they live in the Misgiving?" Hemlock looked surprised.
"Yes, actually they do."
Thrôllgar looked even more surprised. Hemlock went on to explain about the tragedy where Vorel went a bit mad and murdered his family about sixty years ago, and the family moved out, and that Aldern had come back recently to fix it up. As he explained that Rogors Craesby had been doing some of the caretaking work, Thrôllgar was in deep thought.
You could see the little hamster wheel running around in his head as Thrôllgar actually started to put it together. (Ruamaini's player commented on monkeys and Shakespeare...) He (correctly) realised that Aldern, who'd bought his armour, of course, had probably also nicked that buckle off his kilt and was the one that was doing dodgy stuff to lure him to the old manor.
I just sat there, saying nothing and smirking.
We left it there: no doubt next week, they party will head down to the manor. I've decided that my choice of who gets what haunt will be firstly decided by which players are there. I'm going to skip haunts on characters whose players are abscent and pick the most appropriate ones from who's actually there. (I suspect Gavril, Regis and Abbondio will probably get away with it!) So we'll see how they handle that!
Episode 28: Rub-A-Dub-Dub, One Rogue in the Tub
The party headed over to the Misgivings. They took the battle cart, which pleased me greatly, since it keeps them to speeds and times I'd pre-calculated...!
Now, for the haunts, I worked on the basis of assigning them to the most fitting characters first, followed by the others, with a bias towards whose players were actually there. (Who got what is revealed at in the spoiler at the bottom of the post.) I'd cribbed some haunting read-outs from the community resources, which made it so much more fun to run this part, as I could hand the player the haunt and either let them or me tell the party what they saw happen.
They passed by the ruins. Galmard noted there was something off about the crows, but couldn't quite place it. Kevkas used his architecture skills to determine the drop to the water.
The party entered by the main doors. After a quick look around (and the paranoia that the manticore was going to attack them), Kevkas headed to the door to the north. Ruamaini and Kado both thought they heard the sound of sobbing, but as no-one else did, they dismissed it. Galmard, menawhile, caught a faint sense of burning in the air...
Kevkas got the first door open (and then I remembered about the forcing) so with a bit more effort for the rogue, the party entered the dancing parlor. Kevkas immediately went to play a key on the piano, because Kevkas.
As soon as he did, Regis started dancing. At first the party were a bit bemused, but as Regis' expression turned into horror, Kevkas ran to the parlor's outside doors, and tried - and failed - to kick them open (I think he intended to get the piano outside and off the cliff). As Regis danced, Thrôllgar ran up to the piano and hacked at it, as Kevkas struggles with the door. Thrôllgar's axes did a pretty good job of ruining the piano, but did not noticably stop the music. (The module says what Ieaha does if they victim is forcibly stopped, but not what happens if the piano is destroyed, so I decided, frack it!) After the forth round of dancing, the music stopped, just as Kevkas kicked the doors open. Regis collapsed in a heap, fatigued and having lost two points of strength.
Kevkas headed into the washroom next, and peered into the tub. The diseased rat actually made its first climb check to get at him and bit him. Kaddo, who had readied an Acid Splash missed as it as it popped out. Sadly, Kevkas made his Fort save, and then Abbondio splashed the rat all over everywhere with his mace.
Kevkas lead the party into the lounge. He spotted the dust footprints and determined to Have Things happen to him (the player having seen Galmard and Regis' player get a scrap of paper) went to interrupt the them. He got a good flash of the memory, but unfortuantely made his Will save, and thus only had a momentary fleeting urge to drag his son Thrôllgar out of the manor. (It would have been hilarious to see happen...!)
He then headed into the dining room. The party didn't pay any attention to the stained glass windows, so whatever.
(I do find it a bit annoying that they talk amongst themselves all the time. I don't mind sometimes, like when I'm dealing with one or two player's actions, but when the DM is reading the flavour text and telling them what's going on it is a bit annoying... I can see I'm going to have a word with them about it before long.)
Kevkas and Kaddo both decided to open the doors which led to the stairs. As the party were not really paying much attention, I had taken to moving their models around (which meant I placed them in whatever random order I could be bothered - their loss, right). Galmard and Ruamaini ended up the other side of the doors openers, which placed them back into the hallway.
Galmard suddenly let out a scream and caught on fire. For a few seconds, the party looked a bit askance, before it set in that, yes, Galmard was very ACTUALLY on very actual fire. Kevkas emptied his water bottle as Galmard stopped, dropped and rolled. Ruamaini was looking for a blanket or rug to smother the flames, but they'd put it out before he needed to.
The party ignored the monkey head, and decided to explore the last two rooms before heading either up or down.
Kevkas went to the drawing room. Seeing the curtain, he borrowed the ranseur (seriously, that was about the party's best ever find! They are forever using it!) to push the curtains aside, and caught a glimpse of Iesha in the glass.
They then went into the library, Kevkas using one door, and Regis the other. They took note of the books and summoned Ruamaini. Kevkas, meanwhile went to pick the book up, and then the scarf. The scarf immediately flew to Ruamaini's neck. Ruamaini made his will save - good for him, he wasn't aparlysed by fear for the appirition! The bad news was, he failed his Fort save, so it didn't do him much good! Efficiently strangled by the scarf, the wizard dropped with a thunk. Kevkas dived forward to drag the scarf off him and found no resistance. Kaddo slapped a Cure Light Wounds on Ruamaini before the wizard could internally hemoharrage to death, and go him back up. Kevkas recognised the value of the scarf, but Ruamaini (who's in charge of party funds) told him that the rogue was going to be the one carrying it...!)
At this point, the party started working out what was going on from their various visions. They haven't figured out who Iesha is - only that Aldern murdered her - and someone else - the library. Galmard was pretty certain that the woman he'd seen in the burning manticore incident was not her, and they are guessing that Vorel is Aldern's grandfather. (Not 100% accurate, but close enough!)
They headed upstairs, using the main staircase. Kevkas entered Aldern's room, and, seeing nothing of interest, starting playing with the toys and sticking his head up the chimmney to see if he could provoke some sort of response. Thrôllgar went in to have a look at what he was doing, and promptly wet himself with another vision.
The party then headed into the Musician's Gallery, where Ruamaini correctly identified the stained glass windows and that they were related to Lich-based things.
Thrôllgar then actually explained about his vision and that the "parents" he'd seen fighting were a red-haired woman and someone who was definitly not Aldern.
He then wandered off and kicked another door in, only to scream with utter terror, his face a mask of utter fear and loathing.
It was the washroom.
Once he'd calmed down, and was reassured that no-one was going to force him to have a bath, he went and had a quick look in the tub. Kaddo looked at the sagging floors and noted it would be a bad idea to get in it. Kevkas - being the architect (something that he used about three times this evening in various places) assessed it and said with confidence it would definitly crash through the floor with the application of any weight.
He then took a running jump into the bath. Thrôllgar just managed to get out in time as the bath crashed through the floor. Kevkas made his Reflex save, and I started to describe how he'd jumped out before it fell, but Kevkas's player said his intention had been to ride it to the lower floor.
Okay...
After a couple of seconds of dead silence, I said, "okay then, you ride the bathtub to the floor! Take *roll* 2 points of damage, then..."
I don't even...!
Well, everything not previously aware of the party is definitely now aware of them...!
I decided that would be a good point to stop while we're ahead...
Episode 29: Mirror the Opposition
The party continued to explore.
Kevklas entered the guest bedchamber, followed by Thrôllgar. When nothing happened, the party tried to work out who should go in to make the hauntings trigger. Kaddo refused first, so Thrôllgar and Regis tried to manhandle him into the room (and failed, embarrasingly. Regis didn't even manage to get a grib, and Kaddo just slipped out of Thrôllgar's grasp.) Kevkas had wandered off to the door to the master bedroom, so Kaddo scuttled off behind him. Thrôllgar tried to lure him into the guest bedroom with a Bluff check and dropping a gold piece and claiming he'd found something shiny. It did not, as you might imagine, work.
Kevkas booted the door to the master bedroom in and went inside. As he surveyed the room and moved over to the painting, Regis and Thrôllgar decided to try bullrushing Kaddo into the master bedroom. Again, embarrasingly, the two burly fighters failed to budge the bard. Kaddo tried to dodge out of the way so as to make them both fall on their faces, but with surprising grace, neither did. Abbondio wandered past them into the room, and he and Kevkas examined the painting.
Seeing as nothing happened, Ruamaini and Regis went in and looked at it next. The latter felt a sudden wave of fear and the former heard a shrill voice shrieking about what he got up to in the basement, but aside from a brief urge to punch a woman in the face, nothing happened.
Regis then took the painting down and showed it to the rest of the party and Thrôllgar got a sudden surge of sadness. Regis put it back, satified, before Kevkas cut it out of the frame and rolled it up. (Greed point...!)
Having found the attic stairs, they headed back to the double doors to the galley. Kevkas went in and started pulling the cobwebs off, as Thrôllgar peered behind him. They both were in the room as the mould exploded everywhere, but sadly both made their Fort saves. The party then had a good look at the paintings, which jogged Abbondio's memory (as I looked a bit harder at the timeline)), allowing him to remember that while the Vorel incident was fifty years ago as stated, the fire-murderey incident was more recent. Kevkas again cut out all the paintings and took the away.
Kevkas went into the bedroom, and then went right up to the desk. He promptly grabbed the dagger and announced he was going to end it all. I made the party make initiative checks, and Ruamaini managed to rush in to try to grab his arm, but got a good stab instead. As Kevkas blinked as his head cleared and Ruamaini slapped him upside the head, Thrôllgar barrelled in to try to punch Kevkas out. The latter just dodged the blow before the rest of the yelled to Thrôllgar that Kevkas had actaully stopped trying to kil himsefl and/or the party...
Galmard and Regis seemed to put together that the person in here had had their throat slit (from the bloostain) and from Kevkas, had done it himself, though I don't think they attached it to Traver yet.
Kaddo was finally pursuaded, as the party were going to head upstairs, to stick his head into the mouldy guest bedroom. And promptly screamed, clutching at his face. As Thrôllgar and Regis were standing right next to him and watching him carefully, I let them have a grapple check (Regis, once again failed!), but Thrôllgar's iron grip prevent Kaddo from hurting himself too badly. (I gave him half damage. Still, two points of Cha damage hurts the bard!)
The party headed up to the attic, quickly clearing the storerooms and bulter's bedroom. They heard the scream and Kevkas rushed down to the door. He failed to open it after a couple of attempts, and as the scream did not re-occur, Regis insisted they explore everywhere else first. Kevkas opened the door to the observatory and had a look inside. Finding nothing, Kevkas wanted to try opening the trap door but Regis was dead set against it, Kevkas tried anyway but failed.
The party were then heading down towards the other room. Well, they said they were, but no-one was moving figures so (not for the first or last time that evening) I told them to put them damn figures where they were (they are getting very lazy at moving the figures, especially when it's important like this.)
Galmard's player moved the figures into position, and Galmard ended up in the observatory with Kevkas, still trying to open the trapdoor, with Gavril in the doorway and Kaddo and Ruamaini behind him, with the rest down the far end oif the corridor.
Galmard had a brief sensation of warmth, and then suddenly felt himself catch fire. With a desparing cry of "not again!" he rushed forward, before Gavril or Kevkas could stop him (initiative checks again!) and leaped out the unbroken window. He avoided getting impaled on the wind-vane, slithered all the way down the roof and finally (as I made his Climb check for him behind the screen, not really wanting to lose a character! - luckily I rolled a 16!) managed to grab the very egde before he fell 300' to his doom. Kevkas tied a rope to the trapdoor and effected a quick rescue. He then had another couple of goes at the trap door before giving in and heading down to deal with the unlocked door to the private study. Inside, he felt a sudden rush of depressing memories and lost a good 5 points of Wisdom (putting him to 5! That's not going to help his impulsive streak!) He did at least managed to find the loot, however...
Kevkas then managed to finally unlock the door to Iesha's room. He went in behind the mirror, and started moving it. Iesha immediately awoke and shouted her warning to Aldern (which I'm pretty sure the players either weren't listening to or ignored/forgot...) She was a bit difficult to recognise with the decomposition (and as she shredded the sheet off), but Kevkas placed she had black hair.
As Kevkas acted first, he backed slowly towards the door, carrying the mirror. He pointed it at her and she once again went torpid. After a few times of moving it slightly to make her move and stop, I decided that (as the party were trying to decide what to do and Abbondio didn't get a good enough Knowledge (Religion) check to work out what she was) Kevkas had had plenty of actions this round and asked Thrôllgar, who was next in initative, what he was doing. He charged. At this point, the mirror stopped working (since it's difficult to look at your reflection while a screaming Dwarf is hitting you with axes.)
I was smiling at this point - I was hoping they'd end up doing something this stupid. Especially since, with the nine of them, they'd be blocking the corridor all the way down; they'd have to fight Iesha without having her to soften up the other monsters!
Galmard moved up and cast Flaming Sphere, but Iesha easily made her save. Abbondio went in and tried Turning her. He got a really good check roll and plenty of damage - and to my surprise, she didn't have turn resistance. Sadly - for them - when I looked up the duration, I also realised that if the Undead can't run away, you can't get within 10' of it without breaking the effect - and as he was standing inside the room, Abbondio was too close.
Iesha took a couple of pathetic swipes at Thrôllgar. Ruamaini lobbed a Firebolt at her, doing some damage, Regis rushed in to land a solid blow. Gavril tumbled past to the only other slot, to hit the revenant with a Cure Light Wounds. Kaddo starting singing, since there was pretty much nothing else he could do.
Kevkas retreated into the observatory with the mirror, having neither space to attack nor being much use anyway against Undead. Thrôllgar and Regis hacked at Iesha, Abbondio asked Ruamaini to get out of the way and readied an action to step back into the doorway (where he was out of 10') and try turning her again. Galmard's Flaming Sphere again failed to do anything, and Galmard backed out of the way. Iesha let out her scream and to my great disappointment, the entire party (sans Sungmanitu who was some distance down the corridor and not involved in the fight anyway) made their saves. Gavril tried another Cure but missed, Ruamaini threw another Firebolt, ran into the observatory, out of the way while Abbondio tried to turn her again and failed.
Kaddo helpfully continued to sing in the background, as there's nothing else he could really do.
That was where we had to leave it.
There may not be an update next week, since we have club AGM next week, and it might take up most or all of the session (depending on whether we actually get enough members turning up to vote on the contenstious club constitution issue or not!)
Episode 30: A Murdering of Crows
And we're back!
The party continued to fight with Iesha. Iesha had clearly gained no real combat skills in her transformation into undeath, and proceeded to flail at them in the most limp-wristed way imaginable. The fact she hit Regis right in the face once (really, really hard) and clipped Thrôllgar's ear was clearly more by accident than design...
Abbondio continued to try to turn her and failed terribly every time, until he ran out of Turn attempts. Kevkas and Galmard did a good job of yelling "go team!" from the back, while Gavril slapped Iesha a few times with Cure Light Wounds, and Kaddo did a bit of healing on the party and an Acid Splash for good emasure, singing all the while. Ruamaini lobbed in a couple more spells. Regis and Thrôllgar eventually put her down, the latter finally hitting with both his axes in a trademark Thrôllgar double-axe-meets-in-the-middle.
I reminded them of what she'd said, but they didn't pay it any heed... They figured out she was the woman they'd seen in the painting, but that was about it.
They decided they better rest (Ruamaini was amost out of spells) and decided to head outside (very wisely! A midnight visit from ghouls or Aldern when low on resources would have offended...)
There, they saw the ruins covered with ravens. Galmard again wasn't sure what they were, but knew it was unatural.
Kevkas decided he'd run at them, to see if they'd fly away or stay still. They took option C - attack!
There were five carrionstorm swarms. I actually missed the part about the PCs getting an AoO as the moved to contact, so that made the fight slightly longer than it might have been. (I realised my mistake later.)
Regis bravely stood his ground - at one point surrounded by four swarms - to provide cover while everyone else started to leg it back to the mansion, before fallign back himself. Galmard and Kaddo got caught in a swarm, however, and both were nausated - sadly before Kaddo could unleash a thundercalled Soundburst. The party fell back to just outside the door, where Galmard, Gavril and Kaddo had made it. Thrôllgar charged back out again, to lend support, and the fight continued with Abbondio and Thrôllgar just outside the door, while the rest of the party fought from the doorway (or stood out of the way in the case of some of the others!) As Kaddo's Soundbursts went off around him, and Thrôllgar got into a deadly murderous pattern with his axes, blendering through the endless stream of crows.
Ruamaini grabbed a scroll of Burning Hands out of his pack, and Gavril stepped out of the doorway, where'd he'd been slashing away with his lognsword, to let the wizard through. This wiped out one of the two remaining swarms.
Thrôllgar then stepped into the zone. (He rolled natural twenty on both of his attacks.) In a stupendous show of axedwarfship, worthy of a song, his axes went into a blur, a deadly inescapable pattern of doom. He did not simply disperse the swarm, but killed each and every one of the carrionstorms with a precise and deadly strike, leaving the party's jaws dropped.
He briefly considered becoming Thrôllgar Ravenbane (until Kaddo pointed out that was still kind of lame). He decided to name his axes instead and it was pointed out that carrionstorm meant he could legitimately go for something like "stormkiller" and get away with it. (I'm not sure what he actually went for in the end.)
The party then went to rest, during which time Abbondio (who had done rather badly in the swarm attacks, taking max damage four out of five times!) had a bit of as think and worked out the timeline - Foxglove Manor (and Vorel) was built about forty years before Sandpoint*, and it was abandoned until Aldern's folks moved back in twenty years prior and a few years thereafter the burning event occurred.
After a quiet rest, the party headed down into the basement. As Kevkas started to search, Kaddo and Ruamaini were chatting about the cracks in the wall, and thus disturbed the rats. The party heard the rats coming, and prepared. The fight was short and one sided - as NOW I discovered about the AoO, the party's readied actions (giving them basically two attacks as the swarm moved in, plus readied thundecalled Soundbursts and the fact the rat swarm were coming out one at a time meant that they went down very quickly with minimum damage (and everyone made their saves agains Vorel's Phage, dammit!)
They looted the kitchen of valuables (which I remembered this time to doulble in value this time, since there ARE eight of them!) and there we left it.
*Sandpoint was explicitly founded "42 years ago" - 4665 - and the Foxglove Manor timeline started in 4624 or something - I suspect that was a bog-up in the module, but whatever!
Episode 31: The Dwarfdamned Batghoul
Our... protagonists continued to scour the basement. They found the wine cellar. Kevkas failed to find any wine left, but Regis made him search fdor secret doors and they found the secret stash. Thrôllgar suggested drinking it, until Galmard pointed out that if he wanted to spend the 150gp (+50% for the original module) it was worth, then he could. Kevkas also pointed out that a fine wine was for a refined palet and that the Dwarf who'd quaffed hagfish water was unlikely to be able to appreicate it...
They ended up in Vorel's workroom, and watched with bemusement as Regis walked straight over to the books and doubled over with agony. Regis only had a brief flash of the man in window having done something wrong and great anger, before his Moment of Perfect Mind kicked in and spared him the worst of the effects. They spent some time going through all the major players in Foxglove manor (and Galmard actually wrote it all down this time...)
Then cleared out the old servant's quarters and then headed into the pit. Thrôllgar was right behind Kevkas. The two of them explained to Kaddo that, even if the fact the stairs were not actually going down, the location of them would have put them right under the manticore in the entrance hall and so it would be physically impossible for them to go up. As he did so, Thrôllgar noticed the rotten smell increase - and then had the vision of Aldern. The rest of the party watched as he got (lightly) mauled with bemusement, and then Thrôllgar explained what he'd seen.
They are not fairly convinced Aldern is dead. And, well, they aren't FAR wrong, are they...!
They headed down into the caverns, and headed the south-west passage, into the ghoul bat's cave. Kevkas, in the lead, rwalised the light was coming from the well, and they assumed that was how the bodies got there. He and Thrôllgar entered the cavern, he to search and Thrôllgar to decapitate the dead bodies.
They were thus taken by surprise as an angry dire bat ghoul dropped on them from the ceiling. It started by savaging Thrôllgar in the surprise round (natural 2 attack, natural 20 confirmation, 10 on 2D6 for 32 damage!). It was also top of the round, so as it hovered, it bit Thrôllgar and showing above animial intelligence, clawed Kevkas. I was on fire at the start - the bite was another[/] natural 20 - followed by a 16 - so Thrôllgar took [i]another 20 damage and was now on 4 hit points. Kevkas took two hits and sme minor damage - and failed but fort saves, leaving him paralysed for 5 rounds.
Gavril started singing, being way at the rear in a narrow corridor. Galmard sent Sungmanitu in to attack, while he cast a Sunstroke - the description of it looking really rather ill not having registered. Thrôllgar went berserk, but completely missed with both axes, and Ruaimani started out with a Scorching Ray, but also missed. Kaddo dropped a thundercalled Soundburst on it for 4 whole hit points. (Out of 96+96...) Regis grabbed the ranseur and stood over sungmanitu's shoulder, landing the first melee hit. And the players gulped when they realised the ghoul bat had AC 24... Abbondio dropped in behind Thrôllgar and used a Cure Moderate Wounds which Thrôllgar much appreciated - especially as bat ghoul bit him again for another 15 or so hits! Sungmanitu took a claw hit, but shook it off.
Gavril at this point, couldn't do much apart from desultorily sling arrows, but between the high AC and the penalty for shooting into melee, he didn't manage to contribute further to the fight, aside from slinging arrows into the bat's general direction for several rounds (he fumbled twice...)
Galmard threw his spear at it, and Sungmanitu failed to hit it with her bite. Thrôllgar actually landed a blow this time, while Regis swung and missed, Kaddo dropped a paltry 1 damage from his Soundburst, Ruamaini missed with his Seeking Ray and Abbondio cured Thrôllgar again.
The bat bit Thrôllgar again, and this time managed to hit and paralyse Sungmanitu for three rounds (meaning she and Kevkas would come out of it ayt the same time). Galmard decided that at this point, he was going to be insanely brave, and walked right under it, taking the savage bite as he did so (and fortunately making his save!) and then took a swing at it. Kaddo had been planning to use Sonic Weapon on Thrôllgar's axe, but there was no way he could get in without squeezing (and given the flying enemy even more bonuses to hit!) So instead he rushed after Galmard, hoping (rightly) that the bat didn't have Combat Reflexes and was able to strike it with a Cure Moderate Wounds. Ruamaini missed with another spell - with a base touch AC of 17 (21 shooting into melee combat), he was struggling as much as the fighters were - Regis continuing to swing and miss, this time embarrasingly with Emerald Razor. Abbondio threw his dagger at it and missed.
Thrôllgar continued to get bitten, though I never managed to get any more really solid damage, and he continued to deal steady damage in return, especially now with Kaddo and Galmard flanking it. The bat clawed Galmard and Kaddo, but both remained unparalysed. Galmard then stepped back and threw off a Mass Snake's Swiftness which gave Thrôllgar, at least, another hit. Regis swung and missed and florished. Ruamaini used a Sudden Maximised Firebolt. Kaddo tried another CMW but missed with his swing. Abbondio used another Cure on Thrôllgar.
The bat, spoiled for choice, continued to eat the tasty, tasty dwarf, struck back at Kaddo twice, but failed to paralyse him. Thrôllgar hit it, Regis hit it with Emerald Razor[i], Ruamaini missed with [Scorching Ray, Galmard grabbed his club and stepped back in to attack it. Abbondio stepped back, not having much else to do.
The bat continued to eat Thrôllgar, but now I was doing only minimum damage. It lashed out at Galmard and Kaddo again, this time paralysing the latter for two rounds. Thrôllgar continued to hack away at it. Galmard missed again, and finally Kevkas and Sungmanitu came out of paralysis. Ruamaini threw his last Firebolt at it. Regis hit it again, and Abbondio stayed out of the way.
The bat bit Thrôllgar again, but again only did minimum damage (making up for my double-crits eariler!) It actually missed Galmard and Kevkas with it's claws - by a mere inch in Galmard's case. In return, both Galmard and Sungmanitu hit it, though dealt a fairly paltry amount of damage. Kevkas missed, Thrôllgar hit the now-steadily weakening bat, and Regis landed another solid strike, leaving it very nearly dead.
It made one last all-out attack on Thrôllgar, but with his axes fending it off, it only managed to gouge his arm with one claw. Galmard and Sungmanitu again tried to finish it, but failed. Thrôllgar then performed his now-signiture finishing move - left axe and right axe meet in the middle.
Kaddo came unparalysed and - while a bit miffed - still had his Cure spell in his hand, and promptly used it Thrôllgar.
The party decided they would have to have another rest as this point, given that Ruamaini was out of spells and the others had used quite a few!
Before that, though, the routed through the corpses and found the bandit. As Thrôllgar had already conveniantly already taken his head off, that was a good bit of evidence to take for the reward to Magnimar. Ruamaini ran a Detect across the longsword and the hat. After some debate, Kaddo was given the adamantine longsword.
Galmard decided he was going to put the hat on. Both Ruamaini and Regis tried to stop him, going s far as grapple checks (the party are just paranoid about cursed items, despite the fact I so very rarely use them...!) But the former is a Str 8 wizard and Regis just wasn't quite fast enough. I asked Galmard what he ws doing exactly and he said he was thinking about trying to look like Thrôllgar. (I mentally commended him for having a good guess. And a good full Envy tick for good measure!) I had him make a Charisma check (not that he knew what it was) and he got pretty good.
So suddenly there were two Thrôllgars. The old Thrôllgar's immediate reaction was "now I have a friend!" Regis tried to grapple the hat off Galmard's head - still fearing a curse, so I decided Sungmanitu had had enough (she is only an animal, after all) and that attacks master ws just Not On. She bit him for a full 9 damage before Ruamaini broke it up.
It was decided that Gavril should have general use of the hat. But Thrôllgar is already wanting to borrow it - an Gavril, sensing hilarity in the offing seems inclined to let him) so that he can use it to get past Ven Vinder and see Shayliss, being disguised as a) Ven Vinder, b) Sherieff Hemlock or c) Shayliss so that he can have sex (the implication being with Ven still in the house...)
I despair of him at this point, I really do.
I shudder to think of Shayliss's reaction - suggestions welcome!
The player said that he was just following instructions in trying to create progeny and that he thought he had a chance. I told him he still might, provided Thrôllgar stops acting like a crazy stalker...!
Episode 32: It All Goes Horrible Wrong
The group headed back down into the caverns. With Kevkas leading the way, they headed into the ghoul cavern, and utterly failed to spot the ghouls. The latter watched and waited from the shadows, as Kevkas headed into the mould cave. He spotted the intact pick and went to fetch it - and ran straight into the yellow mould. He coughed a bit, but felt fine. (And I started a one-minute countdown for the next save.)
The ghouls chose this moment to attack, five of them. Thrôllgar and Abbondio were standing right in front of them, but the ghouls failed to get any purchase on their armour. Ruamaini splashed one, Thrôllgar killed one, Regis stepped in and killed a third. Abbondio took a step back, out of 10' and tried to Turn them again.
(Abbondio's player was actually here today, which was nice - he's been catching the tail end of most of the sessions for a whgile, since he started an evening course that clashed.)
This time, he succeeded! (Sadly, with the Ghoul's Turn Resistance, he could only turn, not destroy them.)
The ghouls fled up the passage towards their compatriots in room 35. Kevkas followed. Now, while the sounds of combat might not have drawn the Goblin ghouls, the sudden shining light at the top of their cavern did. Kevkas didn't hear them to start with, nor did his light reach far enough to see them start their ascent.
The rest of the party rolled up, as the fresh human ghouls came down the corridor from room 35. Kevkas got out of dodge, leaving Thrôllgar to block the passage and start chipping away at the ghouls. As they gathered around the area, Kaddo's light source finally illuminated the whole of the bore and they saw eight goblin ghouls approaching. Galmard dropped a Flaming Sphere on them as he moved up. Ruamaini whipped through as they poured up the spiral path and used his scroll of Lightning Bolt to clear about half of them, with a thundercalled Soundburst from Kaddo putting paid to all but one, which dodged the flaming sphere and Sungmanitu's attack.
Meanwhile, Thrôllgar was hacking away at the ghouls, and the ghouls were failing to hit him with other than the odd glaning blow and Thrôllgar deftly made all the Fort saves. Abbondio then got into position and Turned again, and turned all but one ghoul (which was out of sight) and the last goblin ghoul, which turned and fled back down the spiral until an arrow from Kaddo hit it in the thigh and it plunged to it's death off the edge.
The last ghoul charged Thrôllgar, and proving that Thrôllgar is like catnip for ghouls, got another 20-then-a-20 critical hit! Thrôllgar, as usual, shrugged off the Fort saves (he literally only could fail on a 1), but this ghoul was sturdier, and didn't go down right away - even after Abbondio tried to whack it with his heavy mace - giving it another opportunity to gnaw... taking it's time... not dealing much damage, but savouring the taste of Thrôllgar... before he finally dispatched it.
(Seriously, I think Aldern's influence must have been transferring to all the other ghouls...!)
Thrôllgar, Gavril and Kaddo went to mop up the rest of the now-cowering ghouls (the later using Sonic Weapon on one of Thrôllgar's axes). Kevkas followed the path down to the bore and climbed over the narrow ledge to have a look at the water. As he climbed back, he suddenly went into a coughing fit as the secondary damage of the yellow mould took effect (giving him 4 Con damage), but not quite making him fall into the water.
Once the ghouls were dead, the party assembled by the door and headed into Vorel's lab. Kevkas, at the front, spotted Aldern, who started to plead to be rescued. Ruamaini at this point came foward (as his player started talking to Aldern and I asked him if he was doing so from outside the room), followed by Thrôllgar.
So then the Hurter made his appearance, only to vanish when Ruamaini hit him with a Scoraching Ray. Aldern then babbled out his story for a bit (and I only stumbled once when I mentioned Iesha too early) and the party were less than impressed with Aldern's tale... But at that point, the Skinsaw man emerged and grabbed his mask. As his first action, he stepped forward, and altered himself with the mask to (very, very poorly!) make himself Thrôllgar's mirror.
As the rear of the party suggested moving back out into the bore and luring him Aldern out, Kevkas rolled under the table as tried to take a stab at him. And then Thrôllgar charged him. (Aldern having obligingly moved into a position that made it possible to do so deliberately...) Ruamaini threw another spell. As Regis started in with the Ranseur over Thrôllgar's shoulder, Gavril sang. Galmard cast Mass Snake's Swiftness, though only Thrôllgar managed a hit. Abbondio just moved up, not seeing anything useful he could do. Finally, Kaddo tumbled past Aldern to stand next to Kevkas, with the idea of using Cure spells next round.
Thrôllgar's player (as Thrôllgar was raging and thus not given to introspection) had wondered why he'd shifted himself into Thrôllgar.
He was about to get his answer.
Aldern went at the top of the round, so I said I'd just do his attacks as a bit of a cliffhanger before we ended for the night. I demonstrated the nice net +4 bonus to attack and damage he had to maul Thrôllgar with a war razor hit and a bite.
And Thrôllgar finally failed BOTH Fort saves.
(Natural 1 on the all-important paralysis.)
So Thrôllgar is helpless in front of the monster that want to kill him stone dead!
Fortunately for him, I think Aldern's not going to just coup de grace him (too many peoiple around him for that), he'll just hack away at Thrôllgar. Though the PCs might have to be doing some fast curing all haul him bodily out of the way, since otherwise by the time they kill Aldern, they'll have to pick up Thrôllgar with a sponge...!
I did look at the players and say "so, [experienced players] who have been playing the cleric for the last two weeks... With all the ghouls you've been fighting, it never once occurred to you to load Remove Paralysis...?"
Episode 33: Thrôllgar's Bane
So, we opened with Thrôllgar in dire straits, paralysed in front of the murderer who was obsessed with him, Kevkas under the table to the left, Regis behind the dwarf and Abbondio stood next to the table and Thrôllgar.
Fortunately for the party, travelling all that time with Thrôllgar had clearly inured them to bad smells. (I.e. I forgot about the ghast stench completely...)
Kevkas stabbed at Aldern, doing some minimal harm. Ruamaini lobbed a [Firebolt[/i], but Aldern deftly dodged the explosion. Regis used his Emerald Razor to slash at the ghast. Abbondio hit Aldern with a Cure Moderate Wounds and began a chain of events that meant Aldern fialed his Will save against cures for the next several rounds). Gavril, not having much else to do, shot an arrow at Aldern and missed (as with cover and shooting into melee, the penalties were very high). Galmard, being brave, dashed through, taking a war razor to the throat as he did so. Only the barest of movements kept it from cutting his throat entirely (*another* 20-then-a-20 crit - three weeks in a row!- but sadly only a 2 on the damage roll), but as Aldern did that, Sungmaniti was able to rush past as well, and then turn and bite the ghast. (I forgot about that whole unnatural aura to now I think of it. Nevermind, they were in enough trouble!) Kaddo wanted to grease the area, but there wasn't enough room (and it was pointed out you can grease an object, or a 10' square and there was not a 10' square to cast it in, so if he tried casting it in an area that was too small, the spell would just fizzle; it would not "go up the walls"). He settled for dashing past.
Aldern then proceeded to rip into the paralysed dwarf. He wasn't - fortunately for Thrôllgar - going to sit there and do a coup de grace, but a paralysed target is not a good thing to be when you have Sneak Attack. Thrôllgar took a round 50 damage and - shock of shocks - dropped to -18. Well, metaphorically since he was still locked in place by the paralysis... Thrôllgar failed to stabilise and took a point of damage, bringing him closer to -32, where he would die. Despite the danger, Kevkas grabbed Thrôllgar, pulling him under the table and out the other side. This upset the table (a paralysed Thrôllgar is not exactly an item that fits under a table easily), but Kaddo and Abbondio were able to kick it out their way and into a position where Thrôllgar got at least some cover from it. Kevkas got a nasty slice for his efforts. Ruamaini launched a Seeking Ray, which electrocuted Aldern nicely and also made it rather easier for Ruamaini to land more spells later. Regis took a heavy swing and florished. Abbondio hit Aldern with another CMW. Gavril took another shot and again missed. Sungmanitu bit and tried very hard to trip the ghast, but to no avail. Galmard stabilised Thrôllgar with a Cure Minor and Kaddo cured him with a Cure Moderate, bringing him back up.
Aldern stepped foward, though, to where the table had been, intent on killing the paralysed dwarf. Fortunatly for Thrôllgar, the now -on-its-side table meant he only took two blows, but this dropped him back down to -10. Thrôllgar at least stabilkised himself this time... Kevkas, in desparation, grabbed his nearly forgotton spear and threw it over Thrôllgar's rigid and prostrate form, landing a solid hit. Ruamaini, assisted by his Seeking Ray, hit Aldern with a Scorching Ray. Regis, dropping his Ranseur, grabbed his longsword and moved in to use Emerald Razor again. Abbondio used another CMW - with an exceptional slap-to-the-face as Aldern managed to move his head exactly the wrong way as the blow came in (1 on his Will save). Both did some considerable damage. At this point, they were starting to actually damage Aldern properly to the point he was starting to notice the injuries. Gavril raced up behind Aldern - getting a war razor slice for his trouble - to attack with a Cure Moderate of his own... and missed. But at least now someone was finally flanking Aldern. Galmard cast up Handfire and applied the flame to the fungus patch behind him, hoping, I think, that damaging that would hurt Aldern. Good thought, but no. Sungmanitu again bit, but still couldn't drag the ghast over. And then Kaddo used Cure Moderate Wounds - not on Thrôllgar, but on Aldern. He did some damage, yes, but that meant Thrôllgar was on -10 when it came to Aldern's action...
Two hits... 21 damage. Thrôllgar was down to -31. Oh deary dear.
Kevkas grabbed a potion of CMW and dumped it down Thrôllgar's throat before he could bleed out. (As a rule, we assume that the potions are divided up among the party fairly evenly, and take them out of party funds as needed, rather than make individsuals carry them. Times like this it pays off!) Thrôllgar's paralysis finally wore off... so his unconscious body finally slumped to the floor...!
Ruamaini hit with an another Scorching Ray. Regis landed one more solid blow with his sword, leaving Aldern very unsteady. Abbondio tried a Cure Light but finally botched his concentration check. Gavril used a Pimp-slap of Doom with his CMW - and this time, even making the save was not enough. Aldern finally crumpled to the floor, finally destroyed.
In the aftermath, as they party used the Wand of Lesser Vigour to bring Thrôllgar around, Galamrd burned off the rest of the fungus with his Handfire. Kaddo suddenly had the urge to eat the fungus, but resisted it. While he did so, he, Galmard and Kevkas all saw the puzze box fragments rattle. They started to figure out, from the puzzle box (which they worked out had exploded from the inside) and the fact Kaddo saw a spot of fungus Galmard was sure he already burnt, what was going on. Ruamaini, having cast one Detect Magic over the loot, used a second one and saw the area was still very definintely radiating necromancy magic. They realised they were going to need some spells (some of which they couldn't cast now) to deal with the situation more permenantly.
As they rested up there (and the fungus grew back), they went through Aldern's stuff and were more than a little disturbed (especially Thrôllgar) on all his Thrôllgar stuff. (They elected NOT to take Aldern noble clothes or the Iesha-into-Thrôllgar painting.) They found Aldern's note, but I don't think they have fully digested it yet.
We ended the session there as they reached the dizzy heights of level 5.
[b]Episode 34: Snake in the Grass/b]
The party headed back to Sandpoint to rest and identify items. They blew a couple of thousand gold buying a scroll of Hallow (I waivered the usual gp limit for the sake of arguement) and sent Abbondio back to use it to clear out Vorel's influence whle the rest of them had a day of downtime.
Thrôllgar's plan A was to ask Gavril really nicely to borrow the Hat of disguise. He refused.
Thrôllgar went to plan B. I preprard myself for the worst...
He had a bath, groomed his beard, neatened his hair, bought some new clothes, some flowers and a big slab of nice meat. This generated enough interest that the party, Ameiko and a gathering throng followed him at a safe distance wqhile Hemlock was making preparatory facepalms...
Thrôllgar headed right up to Ven's door and knocked on it. Ven himself answered. Thrôllgar announced that the meat was for Ven, as a peace offering. Thrôllgar pointed out he was a hero now. (In the eyes of the village, anyway, Thrôllgar killed the manic murderer... The fact that he spent most of the fight paralysed is glossed over and indeed it seems that Kaddo's more accurate retelling of the fight did not go down well...! (He rolled for his downtime Perform check and got 3.)) Thrôllgar said that this now meant he was respectable... and that he wanted Ven's respect and extended his hand.
Ignoring Regis' catcalls from the one-in-fourp'nies, Thrôllgar actually managed to convince Ven of his good intentions, and Ven accepted the gift, the flowers for "his lovely daughter" and shook the dwarf's hand. (And the they had a brief bonding moment about that dodgy wizard bloke Thrôllgar hangs round with ("bit of a knob," says the dwarf "y'know 'cos he's got a staff and all that." (Ruamaini - perfectly in ear shot, just shrugged it off.)
So after that astonishing well-reasoned attempt at diplomacy - and a successful one at that! - the party decided to head over to Magnimar to sell stuff and track down Aldern's house.
It was now pretty grim weather, being winter and raining heavily. While they had taken the Battle Cart to carry extra stuff they did neglect to actually CHECK they'd all got tents and as such only Ruamaini and Regis did. So Ruamaini gave his extar slot to the cleric and Regis offered it to Galmard (to both my and Galmard's amusement, since he was absolutely not going to have to worry about being outside...)
In the middle of the forth watch on the second evening of the trip, the rain was simple pouring down. Galmard and Gavril were on watch (with an increasingly miserable wet wolf), but failed to see the Redback Rattlesnake slipping into Ruamaini's tent, having been displaced from its burrow in the rain. It crept up Abbondio's leg, causing him to cry out and try to swat it off - succeeding only in rudely awakening the wizard. It naturally responded by biting him - and while the players fracked about and didn't do anything when I asked them waht they were doing, it bit him again in the confusion. Galmard finally arrived to use his Wild Empathy to gentle chase it outside (though Abbondio nearly ruined it by panicking). Abbondio nursed his leg and made a ntoe to memorise Lesser Restoration for the poison damage in the morning...
(And I realised I nearly forgot about Thrôllgar's ghoul fever... Sadly, he shook it off with little effort.)
The next day, the party saw a group of aurochs passing by into a small copse, so Thrôllgar decided to take a shot at one with his bow. Naturally, one arrow wasn't going to kill it (nor enrage it to the point of charging the party) so all that really happened was he wasted an arrow.
The party finally reached the city. They headed to the Pediment to turn in their bounty, and heard about the recent murders. (Though, because the DM was wrestling beteen the Magnimar source book on an uncooperative kindle and the old source material from the AP and hadn't read ahead with the adventure, the first clerk claimed he'd never heard any such thing...!)
The party went to find somewhere to stay and (as I was struggling with said kindle and thus to find a suitable inn) suggested the Pathfinder Lodge, which I figured would be happy to accomodate adventurers at usual prices even if they weren't members. (Also, it's a good excuse to introduce them to the pathfinders - a group, I pointed out, whose relative importance could probably be measured by the fact that the Golarion rules are named after them...!)
They then headed out to sell their kit and then to dispatch the bards to the Alabaster and Naos disricts to try and find out where Aldern's townhouse is with Gather Information. They have found out, now, so I suspect their next move will be to head there.
That will have to wait a week or two, though, since I am away next week, and there is another club EGM the following week (so we may not get anything done then, either.)
Episode 35: Face(less) Off
Back from holiday (and illnes!)
The party - after determining that they should have had the keys (I must have told them about the keys, but I don't think anyone wrote them down - I cut them a break because it'd been two weeks since), they decided to go in via the front door.
They got as far as the trophy room, before they heard "Iesha" and "Aldern" calling to them from the dining room, welcoming them and saying they'd prepared a meal for them. Kevkas opened the door and saw the dining room. Now, I had the door to the study beyond, and the double doors to the rear porch opened, because I'm getting very conscious that eight party members makes for a tight squeeze in close confines, and they often run out of space to move.
"Aldern" and "Iesha" were standing on the opposite side of the door to the trophy room, 5' apart ("Aldern" thus blocking the doorway to the study behind them.)
The party were suspiscious. Kevkas stepped in and pointed his sword at "Aldern", demanding to knwo what was going on while Kaddo slipped into the space in front of the north closet/privy door. The two Faceless Stalkers did try and bluff, but Kevkas wasn't buying it (on top of the player's own misgivings), so the Stalkers gave up, dropped their disguises and attacked.
Regis stepped right in first, moving in front of "Iesha" in the east end of the room, and made a single attack, but missed. Gavril started out with a song (with her now-improved Inspire Courage). "Aldern" stabbed Kevkas with his sword, doing a fair bit of damage. Thrôllgar stepped into the doorway, in front of the pair (but not between them) and started in on "Aldern", but he also had to kick the table and chair out of the way, so only got in a single swing. Ruamaini shot through from the trophy room and hit "Iesha" with a Seeking Ray, electrocuting her and making it much easier for him to shoot her again. Kevkas stepped around "Aldern" and managed to nick him (both Stalkers were Defiant 2 with 60+60+60 hitpoints). Both he and Thrôllgar were thus relieved to see that the Stalkers - while only scratched by their attacks - were at least bleeding (and thus not being Undead!)
"Iesha" had a swing at Regis, and did some minor damage. Abbondio started out with casting Aid, the most useful bit of which was ten extra temporary hits for the party. Galmard stepped in next to Thrôllgar, in front of Aldern, and Sungmanitu took a sword strike as she went to box "Aldern" in between her master and Kevkas. (Now the only space remaining for either stalker to got was between them, unless "Aldern" backed off through the doorway.) Kevkas and Thrôllgar both noticed that this didn't cause "Aldern" to drop his guard on a perception check (allowing them to surmise they had Combat Reflexes.)
Kadfo did something very brave (and a bit stupid!) He attempted to tumble past "Aldern" to stand behind him. Sadly, as this required a DC 25 Tumble check, he fluffed it - so he stopped in the only place in front of "Aldern" that was free - right between the two Stalkers. Luckily for him, his check was high enough that he avoided the AoO from "Iesha" as he tumbled past, but got a solid hit from "Aldern." He did give Aldern a strike in return, though it was minimum damage (a fact that peeved Kaddo for most of the rest of the fight!)
Regis forced "Iesha" on the defensive with an Emerald Razor. Gavril decided to try and follow suit with what Kaddo had done. He failed his first tumble check - but as he had nowhere to go, he couldn't leave the trophy room. He tried again, and this time, got a 17 (the bards needed 14 and 15 respectively!) and got past.
Aldern turned around and stabbed Kaddo in the kidneys, taking full advantage of his sneak attack. (It was at this point, I realised that that I took make a slam attack as a secondary as well, so I started doing so.) Thrôllgar laid into "Aldern" with his axes, and Ruamaini shot her with a Scorching Ray. Kevkas, given a flanking advantage, gave "Aldern" nasty stab. "Iesha" also then savagely struck Kaddo twice. Even buffed with Aid and with his shiny new Dragon Shaman level, Kaddo went down hard (to -10). Abbondio, unable to reach him, instead cast up Spiritual Weapon (which he'd just swapped in for Elation, since Gavril picked that up as a Bard spell). Desna's Starknife thus started slicing at "Aldern." Galmard and Sungmanitu also attacked, though only Galmard landed a blow. Kaddo failed to stabilise...
Regis hit "Iesha" with a beautiful critical Sapphire Nightmare Blade - between him and Ruamaini, she was getting worn down fast. Gavril had to reach past Aldern in the doorway to cast Cure Moderate Wounds on Kaddo. He forgot to cast defensively - but as I'd ruled he would be getting a swipe anyway, it didn't matter: "Aldern" managed to very nearly get his longsword stuck in the doorframe, so Gavil had no problems bringing Kaddo back to consciousness. "Aldern" attacked Gavril - once the bard was down, he wouldn't be flanked anymore - doing some minor damage with his sword (and not, for example, stabbing Kaddo while he was down, because I'm not totally cruel!)
Thrôllgar kept swinging at "Aldern", while Ruamaini shot "Iesha" with a Ray of Enfeeblement dropping her Strength by 8. Kevkas stabbed "Aldern" again, still able to sneak attack because Galmard and Gavril were flanking him.
(I know that's not strictly correct, but at some point, we got it into our heads that "if one flanks, everyone flanks" somehow, and so I keep consistent to that.)
"Iesha", much weakened, attacked Regis, and managed to shockingly hit twice! Sadly, the damage was paltry, as one might expect. Abbondio's Spirit Starknife actually hit "Aldern," doing some more damage. He then capitalised on the party's advantage by stomping his foor down as he cast Shockwave. (From Relics & Rituals.) "Aldern" actually failed his Reflex save against the 0th level spell, and fell flat on his face. Galmard and Sungmanitu both attacked, Sungmanitu in particular tearing a chunk out of "Aldern's" leg - he was actually quite injured at this stage! Kaddo turned his Power aura back on, then tried a DC 354 Tumble check to stand as free action. He failed, but stumbled to his feet anyway, taking a sword strike from "Iesha", though not a serious one, and stabbed Aldern. ("Aldern," of course, was on the floor...)
Regis made single attack and a flourish, and Gavril gave "Aldern" another stab while he was down. "Aldern" desparately tried from the floor to attack both bards (as standing up into the teeth of no less than six AoOs was suicide!), but to no avail. Thrôllgar switched targets to "Iesha", and she too was now starting to look properly injured. Then Ruamaini's pin-point accurate Lesser Orb of Sound took a huge chunk of our her body and spread it over the rear wall. She staggered, not quite dead yet, but very close to it.
Kevkas coolly assessed the struggling "Aldern" on the floor before him and then took a half step foward and plunged his shortsword defeftly into the stalker's eyesocket.
"Iesha" made on last desperate series of attacks on Regis, narrowly avoiding Abbondio's Spirit Starknife - before the long-suffering Kaddo dealt the final blow and got his revenge.
The party then searched the rest of the house and found Aldern's secret stash. They spent the rest of the evening going over the (community-made) handouts and deciding they need to go and investigate the Seven Sawmill. A quick check with the local businesses and they located the address easily. (I'd actually handed out the GM's map of Magnimar by accident, and it was on there, not that the module even suggested it was hard to find!)
That was where we ended the session.
Episode 36: Saw Losers
The party headed out to the Seven Sawmill. After some debate (during which they questioned how a watermill can work on a tidal river - yer dropped the ball on that one Paizo (and people query why I spend seven weeks learning astrophysics so I can get my new campaign world right)), they decided to simply go up and knock on the door. (The door to the undermill.)
They chap that answered was obstinate (as he told them, they were clearly adventures (they have a freaking banner, for rag's sake!) and that he very much doubted that they wanted any wood, and that their clients were very exclusve.) He was telling the complete truth when they asked him if he knew anything about trips to Absolom and he said no... (Because that entry in Foxglove's ledgers was a front for his payment to the Brothers...) Kevkas decided in the end to use his Knowledge (Architecture & Engineering) to point out all the flaws in the building design.
The cultist made a show of sighing and saying that, fine, he'd let them in to do that if it would mean a quiet life. So the party wandered in, seeing four other chaps walking around. (At this point, I drew the map out, and let the PCs wander around.)The chap directed Kevkas to go and show his mate where to mark thuis structural damage. Which Kevkas did, whereupon the cultist shut the door behind him, and he and two of the others grabbed their war-razors and masks and the other two revealed themselves as Faceless Stalkers...
Thus begins one the more extensive fights. Ruamaini started out with a Fireball, causing one of the cultist's mask to be destroyed, as well as be badly burned. Kevkas stabbed the Faceless Stalker next to him with a good Sneak Attack, which had a go right back it him and hit hard. Kaddo threw off a thundercalled Soundburst which stunned one of the cultists. Thrôllgar then started what would be today a chain of critical hits, carving the unhurt Faceless Stalker in twain.
Galamard and Sungmanitu deftly finished off the mask-burned cultist as he stumbled towards them.
The cultist by the door (cultist number three) legged it upstairs, pursued by Regis and Gavril.
Abbondio hit the Faceless Stalker with Bewildering Visions and it failed the fort save, and thus stood there, nauseated by terrible day-dreams of Desna.
Ruamaini, seeing the situation was in hand, followed Gavril out of the door. Kevkas stabbed the Faceless Stalker again, and then moved back out of the way, and Kaddo stunned it with another Soundburst (I was doing really badly on my saves tonight!) Thrôllgar stepped up and smeared the stunned cultist across the floor.
Galmard and Sungmanitu also rushed upstairs, and the cultist three ran into the lumber collection room and upstairs to warn everyone else. The defenders in the lumber collection room (four more cultists and two more Faceless stalkers) would thus buy time for the upstairs defenders to get ready.
Regis ran around, but couldn't quite make it to the door. Gavril started singing as he moved fowards. Abbondio, downstaits, slapped a Cure Light Wounds on Kevkas.
Ruamaini continued to move up to the lumber collection room. The lower-floor defenders cultists put up their Shield of Faith spells. The two Faceless Stalkers moved out of the door and with one cultist standing on the side of the door, basically formed a "L" shape with 5' between them. They took a swing or two at regis, but didn't achieve anything.
Downstairs, Kevkas and Kaddo hit the Faceless Stalker - still stunned, still nauesated, but left it not quite dead. Thrôllgar, confident they could handle it, started his run up the stairs. Galmard and Sungmanitu made it to to just behind Regis and Ruamaini by the door to the lumber collection room. Galmard tried - emphasis on tryan Icelance, and only missed hitting the wolf and the mage by the narrowest of margins...
Regis stepped foward and hit both Faceless Stalkers with Steel Wind. Gavril, insanely, ran foward to stand between both Faceless Stalkers, and cast a Wave of Grief which managed to hit four of the opposition, though only cultist number six failed his save. Abbondio followed the dwarf up the stairs.
Ruamaini managed to smash a Lesser Orb of Sound into the wall. The Faceless stalkers and Cultists all moved so they could take a hack at Gavril, who was rather badly injured by the Faceless Stalkers, though the cultists all missed (and one of whom took two attacks of opportunity to get into position).
Downstairs, Kevkas finally killed the Faceless stalker, as and Kaddo dashed up the stairs, looked for lever for the machinery. He found it - and pulled it, and found that actually, his health-and-safety analysis hadn't actually been mis-aimed, since the emergancy stop lever broke off in his hand... Thrôllgar and Abbondio continued to run up the stairs.
Sungmanitu killed one cultist, and Galmard lobbed a Mass Snake's Swiftness, which allowed Gavril and Regis to hit the leftmost Faceles Stalker again, and Sungmanitu to trip the cultist just inside the door.
Gavril stabbed the Faceless Stalker in front of him and Regis hit it with an Insightful Strike and brought it down.
Ruamaini hit the other Faceless Stalker with a Firebolt. The downed cultist, despite having no Concentration skill, managed a defensive cast to try and Command[i] Regis to step off the pier. Regis said firmly "no." As Kevkas finally ran up the stairs, the remaining Faceless Stalker went after Gavril again, doing some more nasty damage. One of the other cultists stepped up and tried [i]Command on Regis again for with the same idea, and once again Regis told him where to go...!
Galmard hurled a Sunstroke at the weeping Cultist number six, fatiguing him and making him cry harder. Sungmanitu continued to savage to cultist on the floor. Gavril tumbled and ran to the back of the party out of the way (now on 3 hit poits!) Abbondio made it to the back of the party, finally, and healed Gavril.
Ruamaini's Seeking Ray put long-suffering cultist number six out of his misery. Kaddo hit another Soundburst off, injuring the Stalker and remaining standing cultist. Thrôllgar finally got in, and swung his axes with fervour getting TWO critical hits and shearing BOTH the Faceless Stalker and cultist in half. Sungmanitu finished off the one on the floor, and the area was now clear.
The party thus have now begun moving up stairs to the next room (cultist number three from the door having vanished that way.) What they don't know it that six more cultists, plus four cultits brutes (cultist with another level of fighter), plsu a slightly higher level cultist foreman and of course, Ironbriar awaits them - all buffed up to the gills!
That will have to wait for a couple of weeks however, since I will be away again next week.
Episode 37: Judge, Jury and Executioner...
(You will have to forgive the lack of my usual blow-by-blow - this time it was a long and complex combat of about seven or eight rounds, and even my anal retentive detail memory skill is not sufficient to keep track of it all! So just the highlights then!)
The party continued to press upstairs, Ruamaini checking the Lumber collection room was clear as the rest of the aprty rushed upwards. Kevkas was first into the door of the logsplitter room - whein four cultists, four cultist brutes (additional couple of levesl of fighter) and a foreman (rogue 1/cleric 5) waited, the latter invisible, plus Cultist Number Three in the far corner. Ironbriar and his two guards (more culitists) were waiting upstairs for the right moment to strike - Ironbriar was also invisible.
The battle started off well. Though Kevkas nearly got stabbed by the cultist lurking by the door, when Regis moved into fight a pair of brutes, their attempts to shove him into the logsplitter failed abyssmally. They tried hitting him with Blade of Blood but one of them fumbled so badly, he hit himself. Kaddo kept about four of the enemy stun-locked with Soundburst for a good couple of rounds.
Things started to go less well when Abbondio, who'd charged across the room to attack a cultist, suddenly felt a sharp pain in his back as the Foreman backstabbed him. One of the cultist Kaddo hadn't stunned also moved up, and Abbondio was hit - despite his own attempts to cure himself - by multiple sneak attacks and went down.
The things really started going badly when Ironbriar's guards tumbled right past Gavril and Ruamaini (to be effortlessly dispatched by Thrôllgar), who were outside the room. This lead the way for Ironbriar to walk up to Ruamaini and hit him with a Sneak Attack Inflict Moderate Wounds... which was SO cLOSE to being a critcal, which likely would have killed Ruamaini outright as he failed his save! So he went down. Gavril tumbled into the room, to let Thrôllgar out at at the Justice and dropped the cultist in the corridor with a Hideous Laughter so that the dwarf wouldn't be flanked for good measure.
Kevkas and Sungmanitu kept hacking away at the Foreman, Galmard took down one cultist in wolf-shape and started on the next, with Regis was fighting more or less three brutes and one cultist solo. Fortunately for him, they missed quite a lot, and it was only towards the end they managed to land a trio of hits - but with three lots of Sneak Attack, Regis was starting to look worried.
By that point, though, Sungmanitu and Kevkas had finished off the Foreman and Sungmanitu started work on the forth brute, Kevkas went to help him and they dropped the brutes fairly shortly afterwards.
Kadod, meanwhile, had been trying a lot of other spells. He'd switched his aura to Vigour, and the 1 hit/round Fast Haling proved to be extraordinarily useful, and it mean both Abbondio and Ruamaini stabilised and started to come around.
Ruamani was a bit stuck though. Ironbriar first stepped over his unconscious body and readied a Inflict Serious Wounds to slap Thrôllgar with the moment the raging dwarf predicatbly stepped out the door. He did a grand total of 58 damage, which Thrôllgar was less then pleased about! With Gavril to slap a Cure on him, though he laid into the Justice, but Ironbriar's high AC was proving to be problematic.
For his part, Ironbriar realised he was kind of screwed. With his feeble concentration skill, he wasn't going to get much in the way of more spells off, and without a sneak attack and flanking, with his terrible attack bonus, he was struggling to hit. So he backed off a bit and tried using his mask to Confuse Thrôllgar and suceeded on the second attempt. Sadly, this had the effect of making Thrôllgar act normally the first round, babble incoherently the second round and attack the nearest creature the third.
Ruamaini couldn't do much other than lie there, with first Ironbriar and then Thrôllgar standing on top of him. It was as well the latter did so, though, since with his mask, Ironbriar could see Ruamaini wasn't dead. With Thrôllgar confused, though, he didn't dare risk trying casting a spell or something, and played dead.
Which was as well, as Gavril had a lucky escape that third round; he'd stepped back out into the corridor to start hitting the still-laughing cultist before the spell wore off. The raging Thrôllgar rolled a hit and a critical... And it was touch and go whether they would be on Gavril or Ironbriar... and they both hit the latter.
As we reached the end of the session, the Justice is now looking very grim, having had to sacrifice a hit point block for finally failing a Will save against Kaddo's Hideous Laughter and those two hits wiped out nearly a full block of hit points, less a point, taking him down to half-way through his last block. Galmard is still fighting one cultist (despite him and the now-recovered Abbonsdio - attacking from the floor - attacking and there's one still fighting Regis and Kevkas. The laughing cultist has finally stopped, but Gavril might have to get out of the way sharpish before he gets Thrôllgar'd!
Episode 38: Stole Pidgeons
We started out by confirming that I had indeed missed Gavril's last action last session, so he quickly got out of dodge.
Kevkas moved up and finally put an end to Cultist Number 3, freeing Galmard and Abbondio.
Ironbriar stabbed Thrôllgar, and here I made a bog-up (as Thrôllgar's player was running late). :Looling at his hit point, I assumed Thrôllgar's player was counting his hits up, not down (because sometimes the some of players count it that way) and I was sure I'd hurt him more than I had from last time. So I misread it, and the player who was running him said it put him unconscious. Thrôllgar's player eventually arrived and corrected me, but by which time, we'd run a few rounds. So I said that, yeah, okay, Thrôllgar wasn't actually down, the Confusion spell effect had just made him catatonic or something instead.
(It's been a long week - family problems. Twice this session I made the uncharacteristic mistake of thinking confusing Kaddo's actions with Gavril's (right player - he was playing both - right model, wrong character.)
So, anywat, Thrôllgar dropped catatonic, and Ironbriar had a breather (while Kaddo and Gavril arrowed the last cultist to death) to slap a Cure Serious Wounds on himself. The party were in a bit of a bottleneck. With Ironbriar stood at the west end of a 20' strength of corridor, with the door 15' down, and now two bodies directly in front on him, they were having problems getting to bear, and most of the oparty spent their time milling around uanble to get, with the two bards throwing a few status spells that Ironbriar shrugged off.
Galmard rushed in wolf-form and bite him, but failed to trip him, and Ironbriar stabbed him for a bit of damage. Kevkas popped out behind him and chucked a dagger at the Justice, but (unsurprisingly) it bounced.
Thrôllgar at this point, came around (i.e. the Confusion spell wore off.) (Actually, as we all said, having Thrôllgar not randomly attacking and running about confused was probably a net bonus...) He'd run out of rage at this point, though, with fatigue setting in.
Galmard then ran off out of the way, allowing Thrôllgar to stand up
And now that there wasn't a dwarf lying in top of him and wolf standing on him fighting Ironbriar, Regis was able to pull Ruamaini out so the wizard could get up... and fail to hit with his Unicorn Arrow. (Ironbriar's opportunistic flail completely missed Regis.) The Justice took a step back, around the corner, working on the basis that then he could step out of reach and cast a spell (since his woeful +5 concentration skill made defensive casting a bit of a gamble). Kaddo actaully manged to miss with a thrown flask of Alchemist's fire such that it bounced off the corner and landed at Thrôllgar's feet, splashing him and Kaddo, while Ironbriar ducked around the corner. (I gave him and Regis - who was in the doorway - a Reflx save, since they were both i cover and at the very extreme of the splash area).
Thrôllgar stepped up and landed a solid critical, and undid all the good Ironbriar's healing did him. Ironbriar, realising that his healing wasn't going to save him, made a desparate gamble and cast a Inflict Serious Wounds on Thrôllgar and actually made his concentration check. This did a fair bit of damage to the dwarf - but not enough. Kaddo distracted the Justice by tumbling past him (good time for a high check result!) and then the added flanking bonus meant that - once again - Thrôllgar's left axe and right axe met in the middle!
(I lose more villains that way...!)
The party looted the corpses and came away with quite a lot of loot. 17 masterwork war-razors and 16 skinsaw masks (Ruamaini's player earned himself some karma by reminding me of the chap who got his mask destroyed.) Of course, what they probably don't realise is that that stuff they sold is likely to be bought back by the other elements of the Skinsaw men in due course, but what they don't know...!) They found Ironbriar's notes. Kaddo could read the draconic and the Elven, but not the infernal... And him having to make two DC 25 Dechiper Script checks per day to make any progres would have made it a very long job.
Kevkas found the rookery and Galmard actually managed to bag up the ravens (like you would a falcon or a parrot or something) so they could take them away. They thoughtfully took the feed as well.
There was a brief debate about who would get the rookery's parchement, ink and quill (to my amusement) between Kaddo, Kevkas and Ruamaini, with the former ending up with it.
The party then left the mill. Strangely, concurrently with them leaving, a lit lanturn (because no windows of course) happened to fall into a completely unintentionally stacked pile of sawdust, leaving the Seven Sawmill to accidentally burn to the ground, apparently tragically killing all the workers...
While most of the party went shopping (to be done next week), Kaddo, Gavril and Ruamaini set down to work out how to translate the journal. In the end, we settled on Ruamaini/Abbondio using Comprehend Languages to transcribe the Infernal, so Kaddo (with his Insight dragon shaman aura adding to his check) could try to make heads and tails of it, with Gavril humming encouragement in the background.
I rolled to see how many checks Kaddo would need - good for them, I rolled 3. It still took him a week (during which time the party have moved into Aldern's townhouse, as they now have the deeds); he made such a lot of progress the first two days, but that last bit of the cipher took another five days to crack!) And rumours of Justice Ironbiar's mysterious disappearance did the rounds...
On the first day, though, Galmard used his druidic spells to interrogate the ravens, who told them about taking messages between the elf and the "pretty lady thing" at the tower. Putting that together with that Kaddo has learnt from the journal is enough to point the finger to the Shadow Clock, where we shall head next week.
Episode 39: The Staircrow
Just as Kaddo was finishing his translation of Ironbriar's journal, Abbondio had a dream in which he was climbing a rickity, vaguely detailed staricase, surrounded by butterflies. At the top, he heard a woman's giggle, but a horrible sounding, menacing one and he could feel a powerful magical radiance from beyond. He heard a different soft female voice whisper: "are you prepared...?"
(The DM actually looked up Xanesha's stats and realised, if fully buffed, her AC skyrockets to 34..! So this was a sort of warning to make sure (along with a subtle hint to Ruamaini he might want to get a scroll to fill the obvious gap in his 3rd level spell repatoire) they had plenty of Dispel Magic to hand, because they will absolutely NEED it!)
Thrôllgar, oddly, out of all the party, decided to go and try an find out about the Shadow Clock - and, even more oddly, succeeded! (Natural 20...) He found out about the rumour about the Scaecrow and they recognised the rhyme and started to put two and two together.
They headed over to the Shadow Clokc and went in. They just narrowly missed spotting the Scarecrow hiding. Kevkas correctly assesed both the inside of the clock as structurally sound and the staircase as dubious, and they started to head up, spaced with fivbe feet between them.
Sungmnaitu and Galmard were at the back, so just as Sungmanitu at the very rear took the first step, they were first to spot the Scarecrow as it moved to attack.
Gavril started off using a Targeting Ray to make shooting it easier - and SR: No meant it worked perfectly fine and gave them no clues. The Scarecrow, now within reach, hit Sungmanitu twice and down she went. Kevkas took a shot with his own bow and missed badly. Kaddo began singing and used his Inspirational Boost. Thrôllgar then did something very brave. He was (I stimated ) about ten or fifteen feet from the floor at this point, and a good fifteen feet from the Scarecrow. He briefly considered using his longbow, but then decided, frack it, and that he was going to leap out and try to attack it as he fell.
I said, fine, he'd take falling damage regardless, but if he made the jump check, he wouldn't provoke an attack of opportunity (though he wouldn't count as charging). He rolled a 20. Which, under our rules, counts as 30, which with his net +3 Jump actually hit the DC 30 check for jumping 15 feet with no running start. I gave him the +1 bonus for higher ground for good measure. So Thrôllgar made a mighty leap out, and landed a solid blow on his way down.
Regis ran back down the staircase - past the other party members, cauysing it to crack omniously - to get to where Thrôllgar had been standing.
Ruamaini, a bit closer to the action, fired off a Seeking Ray. Not only did this fail to do any damage, it also healed some of the damage Thrôllgar had done. Ruamaini then had a guess (and a knowledge check) to determine this was probably some form of Flesh Golem.
Galmard ran back down the stairs and as far away as possible as he could, pretty sure he couldn't do anything to it. Abbondio also started moving back down the stairs.
Gavril took a shot at it, but missed. The Scarecrow laid into the (fortunately) now raging Thrôllgar, hitting twice. Kevkas and Kaddo also fired, with similar effects to Gavril. Kaddo also had moved closer, so Sungmanitu was within range and switched to his Vigor aura to stabilise the wolf. Thrôllgar began to hack chunks out of the Scarecrow. Ruamaini then threw a Firebolt at it. While it only did D6 damage - because that much of the spell was SR:No - it was Fire damage, and Ruamaini was pleased to see he'd been right; it was slowed by magic fire. (For nine long rounds, at that...)
Regis and Kaddo, meanwhile, decided that the best option was for Kaddo to cast Sonic Weapon on his adamantine longsword and pass it to Regis, so Regis delayed. Abbondio stepped into range and had a swing but missed, as Galmard cheered from the back.
Gavril now cast Elation, giving the party a further much needed boost. The Scarecrow continued to hit Thrôllgar, but at half the rate. Kevkas fired again, but failed to do anything. Kaddo cast his spell and passed Regis the sword as he moved down and dropped off the staircase, landing smoothly with his Acrobatics. Regis then rushed down the stairs, but couldn't quite reach the Scarecrow to attack it that round (but did use up its attack of opportunity). Thrôllgar continued to slash gouges in it, buffed up quite high now. Ruamaini had one last useful shot with Lesser Orb of Sound before he got his heavy crossbow out. Galmard decided, screw it, and charged in, now flanking the Scarecrow - he even did two points of damage! Abbondio cast up Blade of Blood and took a swing but missed.
Gavril moved a bit closer, down the stairs. The Scarecrow was happy - sort of, it was looking worse for wear at this point - it had a dwarf and it could hit it... Kevkas decided to try some bravery himself, and jumped out from his point on the staircase even higher up (he'd been at the front of the party), tumbled safely down onto the wagon and into position, ready to strike. Kaddo remembered to switch his aura back to Power for damage again, and slipped up to give Thrôllgar a much-needed cure spell. Regis slammed the Scarecrow with a Sapphire Nightmare Blade, while the dwarf and druid continued to hack large and small chunks respectively, out of the Scarecrow's hide. Ruamaini shouted out when he'd learned to use his crossbow, he used to practise of straw targets - and promptly managed a maximum damage hit! Abbondio managed to bash it hard with his still-blooded mace.
Gavril moved around and into attack taking a scythe blow for his trouble, but landing a sharp retort of his own. The Scarecrow continued to slowly batter Thrôllgar to death. Kevkas, on the other side stabbed it hard. Kaddo took a step backwards, and lobbed a vial of Alchemist's Fire right at the Scarecrow and set it burning. Regis used Leading the Attack, making it even easier for the party to hit. Thrôllgar continued to spread bits of Scarecrow over everwhere.
(At this point he was raging +2 to attack +2 damage, Elated +1/+1, Inspired +2/+2, Power aura'd +0/+1, flanking +2/+0 and now had another +4 bonus on top (so +11/+6). He was hitting at max power attack on a 3. He did not miss.)
Ruamaini was reloading. Galmard managed to actually miss, even with all the buffs by rolling a 5, one short of what he needed...!) (Oh, must remember to give him another Envy mark!) Abbondio power attacked to the maximum... and managed to do himself a mischief and pull a few muscles in the excitement.
Gavril hit it again, the Scarecrow hit the long-suffering Thrôllgar. Kevkas stabbed it once more, and it was now looking very very sorry fo itself. Kaddo's Alchemist's Fire burnt out so he tossed a new one in, which merely fizzled - had it burned a little more, it would have killed it. This left Regis to land the final finishing blow and the Scarecrow toppled over. It barely had time to stop twitching before Thrôllgar has its head off to go on his belt, Geralt the Witcher style...!
That ended the session. Next week there are six Faceless Stalkers up top to deal with; double the number because that's just enough to edge them into level 6. I am also going to make a break from my usual drill; post that skirmish, a flight of butterflies will ensure the PCs not only level-up there and then, but will feel refreshed as if they had slept the night. (Normally, I only give you the benits - likes spell slots - after a rest period.)
Basically because, knowing Xanesha's reputation as a TPK'er - especially with pfft Defiant 3 on top! I don't want them going in at less than full strength. Plus, as we will be leaving the AP for a bit at the end of Skinsaw Murders, it does make a nice climax to the this installment of the campaign!
Episode 40: The bells! The bells!
The party slowly climbed up the creaking staircase. About a hundred feet up, they heard the sound of snapping ropes and the bell came cascadin down. It hit Thrôllgar smack dead on the head with a resounding clang (critical!), before rolling over onto Regis and narrowly missing Kaddo.
I took pity on them, and only had a ten foot stretch between Thrôllgar and Regis collaspe. They both made their Reflexes saves and hung on. While Kevkas - at the lead of the party - and Thrôllgar moved a bit forward to give the other some room, Regis pitoned some ropes across and scrambled over the gap. Kevkas kept his eye on what was above, but the party were makign so much noise he didn't spot or hear anything.
Kaddo was next. He attempted the Climb check. (Which, with the rope, was DC 5). He rolled a natural 1. And down he fell. Luckily for him, I rolled pants on the damage, so he was even barely conscious!
Whiel Kaddo climbed back up to join them Regis pitoned ANOTHER rope that the party could tie themselves to so if they fell they wouldn't fall as far. Galmard was next, sending Sungmanitu across to jump. Now, Sungmanitu's Jump is +11 (stats plus base speed), so it was was a sure thing provied that she didn't... Roll a 1. *sigh* I ruled that, as even that meant she got a net +1 (1 is -10 on skill checks) that she maybe hadn't got that far and gave her a Reflex save, which she passed. So basically she made th run up and didn't quite make it and aborted, and managed to scramble back before she weant over. So she tried again. And rolled a 1. *double sigh* Made the Reflex save again and managed it the third time.
Around about this point I told the PCs that the longer they took, the easier it would be. The idea being if they just took ten/twenty, the wouldn't need to roll, since a mere DC 5 check was too much for them...! (Basically because I wanted to get to the levelling up tonight!) And at this point that if the enemy was going to drop another bell, they'd likely have done it by now. So the rest of the party finally just took ten. (With the exception of Ruamaini, who just cast spiderclimb.
They reached the upper portion of the tower and Kevkas spotted six faceless stalkers - four on the stairs, and two precariously balanced on the rafters above the southern bells (or where the south eastern bell had been anyway). The four stalkers on the stairs attempted to flee up to the the gear-room, knowing they (without ranged weapons) were as screwed as the PCs. The two on the rafters had the idea of leaping off to attack the PCs (they were a bit suicidal).
Kevkas hooked his grappling hook around the rafters and scrambled up, while Ruamaini lobbed a Sudden Maximised Fireball. This caught four of the stalkers - the two in the rafters and the two on the southern portion of the stairs. Of them, only the one above the south-west bell, protected by the bell, made its save. The one above where the south-east bell had just barely recovered from the blast when a smirking Kaddo Greased the rafter. With a traditional Wilhelm Scream, off it went. The long drop to the floor obviated any need to work out damage.
Galmard tried a Sunstroke on the one still in the rafters, but it shrugged it off. Thrôllgar, Gavril, Abbondio and Regis moved up and around the stairs (well, Regis mainly stayed where he was because of not being able to get anywhere with his moves that didn't put him next to anyone. The stalker in the rafters made a leap down to attack Thrôllgar, doing itself some damage in the process, and the stairs creaked alarmingly. Three of the stalkers on the stairs made it out of the interior and up into the clockwork room.
As for the other - Kevkas scrambled up onto the rafters, and in a superlatively effortless move, sprinted across them and dropped down right in front of it, stairs creaking. Kaddo stunned it with a Soundburst and Kevkas tried to shove it over the side, but failed abysmally. Kaddo tried again the next round - and still Kevkas, despite trying to just stab it - managed to miss. Ruamaini finally put it out of it's misery with an Acid Splash.
Thrôllgar, meanwhile, swung and missed and stepped back, only for it to step forward again and hit him. He then did his trademark finishing move with his axes and dispatched it.
The party then rushed up the remaining stairs to deal with the last three stalkers in the clockwork room. It was a short and one-sided fight, with the stalker's only success in that one of them hid well enough to lunge out and stab Thrôllgar in the kidneys before he dispatched it with a nearly-desultory blow.
The party were then visited by a flight of butterflies, and whipsered message to "be prepared" and felt refreshed and invigoured, as if they had a full night's rest in but a moment!
The rest of the session was spent levelling up, before we start the final fight of this portion of the campaign when I get back from holiday in a couple of week's time.
Episode 41: Left Axe, Right Axe
Welcome to the final - for the moment - installment of this bit of Rise of the Runelords, Aotrs Style!
The party, refreshed and forewarned, girded themselves. Gavril cast Elation. Abbondio cast Ice Axe and Light of Lunia. Galmard cast Barkskin and shared it with Sungmanitu, and Flame Blade upon himself. Kevkas dropped into his brand new Island of Blades stance. Kaddo cast Sonic Weapon on Thrôllgar's right axe.
Ruamaini gestured to Thrôllgar, who was first up the stairs. The dwarf reached the top... but saw nothing. Kaddo followed cautiously, beginning his new song about burning things, and the party's weapons leapt aflame.
A disembodied voice that neither dwarf nor bard could locate rang around the rooftops.
"You have caused me quite some trouble, vermin! I will take great pleasure in sending your souls to my master!"
They could not see the dark, serpentine shape, invisibly, silently raising her last defensive spell, behind the statue.
Regis moved up behind them, waiting patiently for a chnace to strike.
Galmard cast Blindsight in himself and Sungmanitu and then moved to the rooftop.
And there he beheld Xanesha - five of her - floating about five feet off the floor, with a great shield of force before her, covered with glowing armour and other glittering lights of active spells, and moving far too quickly.
After a gulp, he pointed out the location to the rest of the party. Abbondio, Kevkas and Gavril moved up and spread out. Ruamaini moved up carefully, casting an Invisibility himself from a scroll.
And then Thrôllgar charged! Impressively, despite her invisibility, his swings managed to pop two of her images.
Kaddo kicked up Inspirational Boost, causing blades of the party to burn twice as hot and then tried throwing a vial of Alchemist's fire. His aim was impressive, again popping an image despite the invisibility.
Xanesha for a moment thought about using her mask... and then realised that Thrôllgar couldn't see her. Oh well... she thought and instead struck Thrôllgar three times with her spear and the dwarf's limited brains began leaking out of his head as the blood poured out of his body...
Regis stepped in, using Steel Wind on the now-visible Lamia and manging to take out another image. Galmard and Sungmanitu paused, waiting.
And Abbondio made the most important action of the battle: Dispel Magic. Desna was with him indeed. He dispelled her Mirror Image. He broke her Haste, shivered her Shield and wiped clean her Mage Armour.
(And thus dropped her AC from 34 to a still considerable 26...)
Galmard now sprang into action and moved forward as Sungmnaitu rushed in to strike, jaws aflame. Galmard himself put down a Wall of Smoke in the hopes of nauseating the lamia, but Xanesha, girded against poisons, simply ignored it.
Kevkas deftly moved in, and showing that he'd clearly been paying attention to Regis used Emerald Razor to land a vicious vital strike.
Gavril jogged up and started her own song, now making a inspiring counter point to Kaddo's song of fire.
As Xanesha was contemptuously considering simply flying out of the cloud and into a new positon, Ruamaini sealed her in with his own Dispel Magic, taking her flight and her Divine Favour. Thrôllgar enraged himself into a frenzy and began to strike blow after blow, landing only half of his strikes, but doing considerble damage between Elation, rage and the twin bard songs.
Kaddo moved in to attack, but failed to gain perchase against Xanesha's armoured hide.
Xanesha angrily forgot her mask and simply lashed out at Thrôllgar and Kevkas, striking each once and further deplated Thrôllgar's limited wisdom.
Regis struck hard with an Insightful Strike while Abbondio moved up and unleashed both beams from his Light of Lunia, though only one beam hit and the damage was minimal. Galmard called a Flaming Sphere, but Xanesha again simply shrugged it off. Sungmanitu's flaming jaws found her mark in the Lamia's hide, though Xanesha was simply too big and too strong to be pulled down.
Kevkas struck again, darting between Thrôllgar's blows, using his Burning Blade technique and Xanesha again felt a sharp stabbing pain.
Gavril tried to use her Bone Fiddle spell, but Xanesha again resisted.
Ruamaini struck in with his Seeking Ray, making his job of attacking easier now Xanesha was nicely highlighted. Thrôllgar continued his heavy, deadly swings and shearing away at Xanesha's vitality. Kaddo stepped into the spot Regis had just vacated for him and using his new fire breath, breathed... a rather disappointingly small steam of fire, which stil nevertheless tickled Xanesha's hide.
Xanesha concentrated on Thrôllgar now - perhaps unwisely foregoing her spells to hit him twice more, hoping to drop or incapacitate him, but though the dwarf was starting to have difficultly, he'd been blind drunk often enough it didn't seriously impede his abilities.
Regis struck wildly and missed, but florished his blade to ready himself to strike insightfully again. Abbondio now stepped in, striking the Lamia with a Sudden Maximised Inflict Serious Wounds, and though Xanesha shook off the worst of the effects, the damage was starting to tell.
As Sungmanitu bit again, Galmard used Mass snake's Swiftness and everyone struck the Lamia hard.
Kevkas landed another painful blow, while Gavril moved around to cast a healing spell on Thrôllgar, ready to get into melee himself.
Ruamaini hurled a Ray of Enfeeblement as Kaddo's sword bounced off Xanesha's hide. The weakening Lamia - perhaps a bit panicked and no longer thinking straight - again lashed out at Thrôllgar, but only managed a single stroke, and Thrôllgar's axes continued to land flaming, sonic blow after flaming blow.
Regis lashed in with another Insightful Strike, and truly insightful it was, sending Xanesha reeling from the strike. Abbodio struck with his Ice Axe. Galmard tried now a Sunstroke, which again did little, but Sungmanitu's flaming maw continued to strip through Xanesha's flesh. Kevkas again slammed his short sword between Thrôllgar's blows and widened every wound with murderous precision. Gavril waded in with his own sword, but found no avail against the Lamia's skin.
Ruamaini struck once more with a Scorching Ray, burning the Lamia, whose thoughts were rapidly turning to escape.
But before she could even half-form the idea Thrôllgar, with a roar, took a running jump off the statue next to him.
And right axe swung.
And left axe swung.
And right axe and left axe met in the middle.
With barely time for a last gurgle, the mighty Xanesha fell to the ground in twain.
* * * * * *
And so this part of our story ends.
Xanesha could have perhaps done a little better, though had she risked a defensive cast Dimension Door it might have only gained her a round: perhaps two as the party's buff were just starting to come to the end of her time. But with her defences shorn and the party themselves fully buffed, it was just a matter of time - even with Defiant 3 and thus 600 hit points! The party were at +1 for Elation, +2 for flanking, +2 to bard song and on damage +1 from Elation, +1 from Kaddo's Power Aura, +2 from Gavril's song and +2D6 Fire from Kaddo's Dragonfire Inspiration. Island of Blades gave Kevkas an easy flank from the first round as he stood next to Thrôllgar. Thrôllgar, of course, probably did the largest amount of damage - on top of all the rest of the buffs, he had his own rage bonuses as well. One round he hit three times (right axe, left axe, right axe) - 3 x +11 +3D10 +6D6 Fire +2D6 sonic - and did about 80 damage. Regis got a natural 20 on his second Insightful Strike's concentration check and did a good seventy or so himself. The party could see why Xanesha earned her reputation as a TPKer though - had they not been able to dispel her so roundingly successfully, they'd have been in much more trouble. As it was, they managed it in but a single session.
Next week we're carrying on with a 4E game as a bit of a break (I had said that I was quite happy to carry on to do the next book if they were, but that after 41 sessions (and what must be most of a year of real time) this was a good point for a natural break to do something different.) We shall wrap up the loose ends (do the looting and the information) next week, but essentially, this is the last part for a while.
* * * * * *
So, final thoughts for this portion.
It has been an excellent pair of modules to run. Only really the Clocktower gave me some map problems, as there is a bit of inconsistency between the RotRL source, the Magnimar sourcebook, the floorplans and the pictures... The players picked a bit of fault with the Seven Sawmill as well, starting off with asking how in the heck a watermill on a tidal river would work. (For which I had no real answer other than "well... um... maybe the wheel goes up and down with the tides..?") But otherwise, it has been flawless and great fun.
The players seem to have thoroughly enjoyed it. I think Thrôllgar has pretty much cemented himself as the centre of attention (largely because the player often is, he's just that sort of person!) and I mean that only in a positive way. Thrôllgar's social bumblings have constantly entertained the rest of the group and as I said at the start - he couldn't have handed me a better way to tie in Aldern and the murders at the start if he'd tried. I don't know what it is, but when he comes to strike the final attack, he always seems to hit with both axes. Go figure... I think he must has used that double-axe finishing blow on the majority of the boss monsters!
I haven't had many sin points awarded in the last half of the game, but I think partly that was getting out of the habit and partly the slightly lesser amount of NPC interaction roleplaying - but I think I've got enough of a measure of the characters to assign seven of the eight of them an appropriate sin. I haven't actually counted, by the by, but I'm pretty sure Thrôllgar has got more sin ticks that the entire rest of the party combined...!
I hope you have all enjoyed following this insanity here. I may take up this thread or start a new one when we come back to the Hook Mountain Massecre, time depending, but in any case: thank you for reading!