So, I posted earlier about my hopes to not die in Rappan Athuk. Here's a little update for everyone.
Sadly, this last session, the DM got his first casualty, my Master Summoner. Although I have been raised from the dead at great cost by my faithful companions, my character is scarred forever, for I was sacrificed by priests of Tsathogga to summon an awful monster to batter my would be rescuers.
Long story short, we were plodding through The Gut, and after not staying at a suspicious inn, we found a secret passage leading to a "secret" Tsathoggaian temple. Here, we used a fireball item to toast a room of priests and then got bled dry of resources battling our mirror opposites (two barbarians and a master summoner).
We pushed through some minimally trapped doors to discover another group of evil priests, who subsequently murdered a companion to summon a wraith monster.
We were chased off, but in the confusion, our Druid and Paladin ran a different way, into a dead end. The wraith monster and priests pursued the remaining 3 party members through The Gut for miles until we ended at a Mexican standoff at the sketchy inn.
Sadly, the high priestess got a count on our split party and sent back an underling to eliminate the Druid and Paladin.
Knowing this, I explained to the Cleric and Barbarian, who along with myself had been badly drained by the wraith monster, that we could probably hole up and rest, making our survival likely, but then the Paladin and Druid would likely get murdered.
We decided we either had to fight now to rescue them, or risk them getting murdered in the 15 hours until we could get back. we bribed the inn keeper to poison the priests, and when that failed we attacked. We banked everything on the invisible barbarian rolling above 3 on a leap over a Create Pit to lock down the priestess. She rolled a 3, fell in, the priestess summon a dire bear, and we all got dropped.
Not ones to look a gift sacrifice in the mouth, we were all savagely beaten and trundled up and carried back to the temple.
MEANWHILE: The Paladin and the Druid managed to find a secret door in the deadend and avoided getting caught. Despite getting repeatedly paralyzed by some invisible creature or force, they managed to spend a miserable night among some geysers and successfully blitz out of the temple, not knowing we had been captured and brought back in.
They met a Ranger outside (a new player) who had seen our fight, and opted to flee from the dungeon and walk to our newly purchased farm to try and garner support from our guild for a rescue.
Remembering that there was an enclave of Devils nearby, things took a turn for the sinister, and the party offered some souls (not the Paladin's, despite the Devils' interest) as collateral for a beatdown and rescue mission.
Long story short, as the bad guy army invaded, my Master Summoner was the second sacrifice. Helpless and beaten, I was stabbed until dead. Now we have to contractually deliver a severe blow to Orcus or several souls will be forfeit.
Truly, this is why I love RPG's, despite having my first ever character death in 25 years of playing.
Yeah, screw that inn. That thing has got to be a death trap. The party was all like, "Let's stay here!" and I was all "NO WAY!!!" I wanted to burn the place down, but I could get no legitimate character cause to cause a fight. I have a good guess who the mystery sausages are.
Sounds like a fun game!
It has been! My biggest concern is whether or not I am ruined for other arcane casters. This one, due to his awesome backstory with two other players, has surpassed the legendary Hugh DuVargrave, Gentleman Wizard, as my favorite arcane ever.
The conflict comes from how easy to rock the master summoner is. With a wizard you have to work very hard at low levels to be effective. As a MS, you can do so much that you often have much more time to be in character or metagaming with other players, because you have depth to fall back on.
Get ambushed? Put a bird on it.
I'm glad you guys enjoyed it, you were playing in my part of the dungeon. I will say nothing of the Sketchy Inn. :)
I'm glad you guys enjoyed it, you were playing in my part of the dungeon. I will say nothing of the Sketchy Inn. :)
Developer! Sweet!
It was good content, Matt. We had a very optimized barbarian and a master summoner get duplicated simultaneously, while at full resources. It led to a very challenging encounter in which dozens of earth elementals were battling in and out of the walls, attempting to murder party members and each other, while our enlarged duergar barbarian furiously attempted to beat down not one but two duplicates of herself.
Short of PVP and the Mouth of Doom poop room, I've never seen a party drop from full resources to less than 20% so fast in one encounter. Only the Paladin had a lot, due to lack of smite targets.
Mechanically, we should have rested after that, but RP dictated less prudent actions. I'm pretty sure we've got the equipment now to approach the puzzle beneath.
Our DM has really emphasized the faustian aspect of the devils, which is a first for me and very entertaining.
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The Sketchy Inn was almost the end of my group. Two died there in ways I will not describe.
When they awoke in the morning after resting there they came into the common room and ordered breakfast, one had the sausage.
But in the room ahead of them were four ogres and three goblins.
It was an interesting breakfast to say the least. The second character death was a result of the morning conversation. The whole Inn was one of my favorite encounter areas in the GUT. They never did finish going through the GUT. They were two down after the Inn and just wanted to get back home.