DFRPG Arden Vul Session 8a: Never Trust a Scorpion

Date:

Demmasday, 2nd of Ligarios, 2993 AEP


Weather:

Cool, rainy

Player Characters:

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Based Cosmo)

Michael J. Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Significant NPCs:

Lyssandra and Palteon, wizards of the Arcane Practitioners' Club

Lady Alexia Basileon, ruler of Gosterwick

Freydis, steward to Lady Alexia

Sir Lucia, Knight Commander of the Order of the Azure Shield

Sir Basil and Sir Irene, knights of the Order of the Azure Shield

Alexios, Demetrios, and Zoe, squires of the Order of the Azure Shield

4 giant rats

Phlebotomas Plumthorn, halfling thug boss

Roskelly Winterleaf, halfling thug lieutenant

Unknown human alchemist, working with the halfling thugs

Many halfling thugs

3 small, roughly spherical demons

Gog, varumani (troll?)

Dalton, adventurer

Helga, adventurer (with Dalton)

Isidor, halfling adventurer (with Dalton)

Many bats

Giant bat

Some unknown undead

Last delve, the party found a very heavy and regal-looking magical rod on the richly dressed female corpse in the solarium of the Archon's Palace of Arden Vul.  They brought it to Vael to analyze, but he gave up after finding a couple of enchantments.  They then took it to Lyssandra and Pelteon at the Arcane Practitioners' Club, who identified a bunch more enchantments but said it only had a few charges left, and said Lady Alexia might want it.  The group decided to sell the rod to Lady Alexia, and also sold her the noblewoman's magic shortsword since none of them used a shortsword.

Lady Alexia's steward Freydis asked for a meeting to discuss where the items were found and any other details the finders could share.  Vallium showed up for the meeting and explained that they'd found the rod and shortsword on a desiccated corpse of a nobly dressed woman in the solarium, and that the body had also had a signet ring.  Freydis looked at the signet ring and then asked Vallium to return later, after she had a chance to converse with Lady Alexia.  When Vallium came back, Lady Alexia herself was waiting along with Freydis.  The Green Lady said that the signet ring was definitely from her family, Basileon, and that she would like to buy it if possible.  She also said she thought the body they had found was probably her ancestor Uriel Basileon, the last Archon of the city of Arden Vul before it was destroyed, and that she would appreciate the group showing some of her knights where the body was, so they could give it a proper burial.  Vallium agreed.

The night before before leaving, Uvash cast Bless on Ioannes from the scroll they had found, and then Ioannes cast Bless on the other four PCs using the spell.  Vael made a pile of Continual Light rocks.

Early the next morning, when the party arrived at the Water Gate, there were three Knights of the Azure Shield waiting for them, along with three squires, and a teamster driving a horse-drawn wagon.  The leader of the knights introduced herself as Sir Lucia, a Knight Commander, and said they were tasked with recovering the body of the Archon.  The knights had horses and the PCs did not, so the knights offered to let them ride in the wagon.  (It wasn't much faster than walking, but it was easier.)

Eventually the large group reached the base of the cliff face leading up to Arden Vul.  Sir Lucia detailed a knight and a squire to stay with the horses and wagon, while two knights and two squires roped themselves together before starting the climb up the Long Stair.  Noticing the PCs weren't roped together, Sir Lucia asked if they wanted to borrow any rope.  They did, and roped themselves together, except for Vael who chose to Levitate instead of walking.

The group made it about two-thirds of the way up the Cliff Face without mishap, but then Michael slipped on the rainy trail, and Uvash was unable to quickly steady him.  He looked like he was hurtling over the edge, possibly dragging Uvash behind him, when he suddenly tripped and got stuck behind a root near the edge.  His Bless spell was gone, but had saved him from a possibly fatal fall.  The group continued to the top, and then Ioannes asked the knights for a rest break and cast another Bless on Michael.  The knights stood at near-attention showing off that they didn't need to rest despite the long climb in armor, while Ioannes recovered from casting the major spell.

Fully rested, the PCs led the knights north to the Forum, then west across a bridge to the island, then north to the ruins of the Archon's Palace.  Vallium then chose the same gap in the wall as last time, and led the group back into the solarium.  Archon Basileon's body was where they had left it.  One of the squires pulled a canvas burial sack out of his pack, the Knight Commander said a few words, then two squires packed the corpse into the bag and carried it out.  Vael asked the knights if they needed an escort back to the top of the Long Stair, but Sir Lucia said the path was pretty simple and two knights and two squires should be able to handle themselves, and said their farewells before heading back south.

The group had a discussion of where to explore next.  Going back under the Pyramid of Thoth to deal with the halflings was the most popular idea, but Vael suggested scouting with an invisible Wizard Eye rather than just attacking, as they still weren't sure how many halflings there were.  Everyone agreed, and then they walked to the top of the pyramid, manipulated the statue's arms to uncover the stairs down toward the Glory of Thoth, and went down the stairs to the second landing, about 350' above the halflings.  There Vael stopped to cast Wizard Eye, then cast Invisibility on his Wizard Eye, then send the Wizard Eye downstairs to spy.  He indicated that all this spellcasting would be very strenuous, and would appreciate if Uvash and Ioannes could lend him some energy while he did that.  All the casting went well, and the Wizard Eye went flew down the stairs into darkness.  Vael quickly discovered that navigating a pitch black stairway wasn't easy, even for a flying eye, but managed to avoid slamming the Eye into any walls at high speed, until it could see torchlight ahead.

While Vael was steering the Wizard Eye, a group of four giant rats smelled food and came charging into the room.  Vallium and Michael and Uvash and Ioannes fought the rats, while Vael sat in the corner and focused on not losing his Wizard Eye.  They managed to defeat the rats without anyone sustaining injury, with three rats killed and the last one scurrying away back down the stairs.

Meanwhile, the Wizard Eye emerged into the Glory of Thoth, where Roskelly and five other halflings were standing guard in the shadows near the central statue, watching the various entrances to the room more vigilantly than in the past.  The Eye flew east, through a gap in the portcullis and past two more halflings guarding it.  The corridor went dark again, but there were lit rooms in three directions: east, north, and south.

The eye went east first, and found a room containing a halfling sitting on a bedroll reading and writing letters, two more halflings guarding an entrance to the Great Chasm in the northeast of the room, and a human man taking some notes.  Vael's Eye spied on the human first; his writing seemed to involve some alchemical processes, which Vael didn't understand in detail.  He then spied on the halfling, and saw that this was Plumthorn, reading a letter about how a certain merchant in Newmarket was severely late with his protection money, and writing a short note back instructing that it was time to break some knees.

The Eye went back to the dark crossroads, and then flew north.  The next lit room contained about nine halflings.  Once again there was access to the Great Chasm, and two halflings were guarding it.  Most of the others were sitting around a campfire, talking.  One was writing a letter, which appeared to be of a romantic nature.

Finally, Vael flew the Eye south.  Its view of the torch-lit room to the south was interrupted by some kind of barricade, but it didn't fill the whole passage, so the Eye was able to easily fly up over it.  The room to the south contained many bedrolls, some of them with sleeping halflings inside.  There was a barricade in the southeast corner of the room, guarded by two halflings, and leading to a dark tunnel sloping down.  The Eye couldn't see far enough into the dark tunnel to know what was down there.

Having explored everything he could see, Vael stopped maintaining the Wizard Eye.  After a bit of rest, the group discussed going downstairs and attacking the halflings, but the combination of the vigilance of Roskelly's vanguard, and the number of reinforcements available in the other rooms, made them decide to prepare more and return another day.  They went back up the stairs, out of the Pyramid, and then south to the Forum.  Vael wanted to cast Analyze Magic on the magical bronze doors to the square tower there.

He managed to cast the long spell without interruption, and found that the doors were Magelocked.  There were additional enchantments, but he figured Magelock was enough to keep them out so it wasn't worth spending more time at the doors.  With the doors probably impassible, their other choice for the square tower was to fly everyone up to the roof then descend down the stairs into magical darkness.  That seemed dangerous, so someone suggested going back to the Great Pyramid, down the other staircase, and using the bust of Selket with a scorpion on her head there to teleport to the Great Hall, near the (mostly friendly, or at least more friendly than the halflings) Children of Deino.

They manipulated the arms of the statue of Thoth to point straight up to reveal the less-used entrance, then walked down the stairs.  They expected a pit trap at the end of the hallway, but did not expect the stairs to turn into a ramp and attempt to help them into the pit, as that had failed to trigger last time.  This time, it again failed to trigger for Vallium in the lead, but worked correctly when Michael in the second position stepped onto the trapped stair.  Fortunately for them, both Vallium and Michael reacted quickly when the stairs collapsed under their feet.  Michael jumped back onto the safe stairs, and Vallium, too far down the ramp to reach the stairs, managed to wedge himself between the two walls of the narrow tunnel and hold on until help arrived.  The help was Vael casting a Flight spell on Vallium.  Vallium flew back to the rest of the group, tested to see if he was strong enough to pick up Michael, then carried Michael down the ramp and into the bottom of the pit of bones.  There were no demons there, so Vallium left Michael there and flew back to grab the others, and carried each of them in turn before the Flight spell expired.

Fully assembled, the group continued east into the room with the scary black portal and the bust of Selket with the teleport trap.  This time, instead of one small spherical demon with a lot of teeth, there were three.  Nobody achieved surprise, and the demons charged Vallium and Michael and Uvash in the front.  They killed one of the demons, another escaped through the black portal, and the third disappeared into the portal just as Michael ran his sword through it, so they were not quite sure if they killed it.

Vael suggested searching the room again, but sadly they found no additional treasure.  He then decided to send a Wizard Eye into the black portal to check it out, but lost contact with the Wizard Eye immediately when it went through.  He wasn't sure exactly what that meant, except that they definitely didn't want to go into that portal.  Instead, they formed up by the bust of Selket, and all pulled the scorpion's tail at the same time, expecting to teleport to the Great Hall.

They teleported, but somewhere else!  They were in an underground cavern, larger in every direction than their Continual Light illuminated, with an underground stream rushing by near their feet.  Looking around, they spotted a tent, and a magical circle of paving stones next to an array of 8"x8" stone square frames, just like the one they saw in the ruins of the Archon's Palace.  They were looking for a good spot to cross the water to check out the tent, when a loud voice erupted in broken Archontean.  Who were they and what were they doing in his cave?

There was an 8' tall green creature, like a double-sized goblin, wearing a shiny silver cloak, standing in front of them.  At least it wasn't attacking them.  A long conversation occurred.  His name was Gog, he was a varumani, and this was his cave.  They explained that they had hit a teleporter and he laughed and asked if they had any food.  Ioannes offered some rations and Gog spit and explained that he wanted good surface food, not yucky rations.  Someone made a snide comment about being surprised that this thing spoke Archontean and Gog replied that he probably spoke more languages than they did and they should be more polite.  A quick test revealed that Gog understood at least a few words of both Elvish and Dwarvish.

Ioannes asked if Gog was friends with the halflings and he said that, no, he was friends with the goblins and the halflings were not so he didn't much like the halflings.  But, no, he didn't eat halflings, eating other sentients was uncivilized.  Asked for information, Gog indicated that they should bring food in trade, but quickly pointed around and said that the goblins were to the southeast and they were his friends and nobody should hurt them, and that the Hall of Forty Pillars and the Obsidian Gates were up a hill to the north and that going that way would probably be fatal and not to yell to Gog for help if they insisted on doing it.  Asked if he knew how to get back up to the surface, Gog led them northeast, opened a secret door, and showed them a staircase leading up.  He said it led to a secret door south of the halflings.

The conversation was rudely interrupted by two humans and a halfling falling from the ceiling and hitting the ground a bit to the west.  Gog, not appearing very surprised, walked over to check on them.  The halfling had a broken leg.  Both humans had the wind knocked out of them, but were mostly okay.  One of the humans, a very good-looking warrior, introduced himself as Dalton.  He said that his adventuring party had been just west of the Glory of Thoth, messing with the arms of a statue, when a pit opened up under three of them and sent them down a chute.  His companions were named Helga and Isidor.  Isidor asked if anyone had a healing potion, and Dalton gave him one.  There was a brief discussion about Plumthorn's halfling thugs, who Dalton admitted paying off to be allowed to pass through their territory.  Isidor made it clear that he was a adventurer, not one of Plumthorn's gang.  Dalton asked if anyone knew the way back up, and Gog let the PCs show him the secret door.  Dalton said that they needed to get back to the rest of the group before anyone got too worried, but they should meet again sometime at the Inn of the Broken Head and have a longer conversation.  Ioannes asked if that was in Gosterwick, and Dalton laughed and said it was in the northwest of the ruins, and he had no idea how anyone could get this deep in the Halls of Arden Vul without even finding the Broken Head.  Vael was suspicious.

With the other adventuring party gone, the PCs asked Gog if he was okay with them exploring.  Gog pointed to his tent and an island in the stream and said "leave Gog's stuff alone", and then pointed to the southeast and said "don't hurt the goblins", and then pointed at the water and said "do not destroy environment only take a few fish not all the fish" but indicated that otherwise they could go where they wanted.  They decided to go northeast, where there was a steep slope down about 25 feet, with some old human and goblin corpses at the bottom.  Vallium threw a Continual Light rock down the hill to light the way ahead before they went down.

The slope was steep enough that Vael cast Flight on Vallium again and let him help people down.  Iaonnes checked the corpses for signs of death and saw that one of the goblins had died violently, but beyond that wasn't very sure.  Vael spotted magic and found that one corpse had a small magical silver statue of an eye.  He had no idea what it was, but pocketed it.  The bodies also had a stone axe, a few crystals and pearls that might be worth something, and a scroll of Thothian religious sayings that Uvash thought was worth taking.

The cavern continued northeast.  There were a lot of bats flying around, and there was a shelf to the north, up beyond the edge of their light.  Vael decided to send a Wizard Eye up there to explore, but the last thing the Wizard Eye saw was the mouth of a giant bat chomping it out of existence.  Vael cast Seek Earth for gold to get an indication of which way to go, and detected gold close by to the south.  Much searching for secret doors commenced, and nobody found one.  Vael pulled out the ring of looking through walls and saw a tunnel with piles of gold at the end.  He cast Seek Earth again and decided the gold was up a bit, so used Levitate to search higher.  Eventually the group went back west and found the secret door about fifteen feet up on a wall they had previously passed.  Vael could not figure out how to open it though.  He took turns casting Levitate on everyone, flying them all up, and having them all fail to figure out the trick.  Finally, they resorted to brute force, grabbing the stone axe off the corpse, and bashing the secret door until it caved in.  Somehow this failed to attract any wandering monsters.

The secret door led to a short tunnel with a door at the far end, with no gold visible.  Vael started to suspect the ring was cursed, as the information it provided was not always useful.  Vallium dropped a rope from the tunnel down to the cave floor, and everyone successfully climbed it.  The group listened at the door, heard nothing, and opened it.  On the other side was a Thothian tomb, with a body levitating in the air, wearing a gold helmet and an iron ankh, four Thothian statues lining the walls, and some golden furniture on the other side of the room.  A booming voice said, in Mithric, "You have found me; let me lie."

Ioannes said that he would be happy to let the body lie but there might be treasure.  Vael was pretty sure the statues were stone guardians that would try to kill them, and tried detecting magic.  One of the statues was magic, so he slowly cast Analyze Magic to determine its nature.  Meanwhile Ioannes checked out the gold furniture.  He picked up a gold chair, which turned out to be suspiciously light.  When he sat on it, it collapsed under his weight, revealing that it was just an old wooden chair painted yellow.  The Analyze Magic showed the only magic on the statue was just the sound illusion causing it to yell warnings.

Deciding that maybe the statues wouldn't kill them after all, Vael used Apportation to try to grab the golden helmet from the corpse.  This triggered a trap, with green gas starting to spew from all four statues.  Four out of five PCs immediately ran for the exit.  Vael instead started casting Purify Air spells.  He critically failed the first one, but instantly used his Luck to get a reroll before learning the consequences of failure.  Purify Air was an area spell, and casting one big enough to clear the whole room would be expensive, but his idea was to keep running around the room casting cheap one-hex Purify Air spells until all the gas was gone, like using a large number of tiny car air fresheners to clean a toxic waste dump.  Luckily for him, the trap had a finite amount of gas, and he didn't fail any more spell rolls after his Luck was used up, so he eventually cleared the room of the green gas.  He let the others know that the room was safe, and they all returned.  The golden helmet that had set off the trap turned out to be a fairly cheap-looking bronze helmet with a bit of gold plating.

Vael cast another Seek Earth for gold, excluding the helmet, and detected more gold nearby to the south.  Everyone searched for secret doors, and Vallium found that one of the statues could be moved and there was a door behind it.  Behind the door was a very cobwebby and dusty passage heading east.  Nobody say any huge spiders, so they all went down the passage, into another Thothian room.  There was an inscription on the wall in Mithric: "Knowledge of Thoth and His Mysteries Reveals the Way."

This room had four more statues, of Thoth in his scribe position, arms on knees.  Each had an 8" square hole, and each had a different object on its knees and a different inscription.  One statue had a torch and said "Thoth consumes light."  One had a figurine of a human and said "Thoth consumes the Ka."  One had a scroll and said "Thoth consumes sorcerous wisdom."  The last had a wand and read "Thoth consumes magic."  There was a door on the south wall, but it would not open, even to a lot of force.

Much discussion ensued.  Ioannes tried a Theology roll but didn't get much.  Vael tried a Hidden Lore: Magical Writings roll that told him the light and Ka ones were probably wrong and the wisdom and magic ones were probably right.  Touching the statues did nothing.  Dropping the scroll of Thothian prayers that they had just found into a hole didn't work, and they didn't get the scroll back.  Dropping a Continual Light rock into the hole of the statue with the wand caused a click from the door to the south.  It was unlocked!

They continued south into another small tomb, this one with a lot of Thothian bas-reliefs on the walls, and three sarcophagi, two of them fancier and one plainer.  The west wall had a mural of seven Thothian priests with the biggest labeled "Muirasso."  After a brief discussion, Vallium lifted the lid of the western sarcophagus, and undead started coming out of the walls...

We ran out of time there, and paused just before starting the combat.

GM's Comments:

The PCs helped Lady Alexia recover her ancestor's body, scouted out Plumthorn's gang with Wizard Eye, fought some more rats and small round demons, found that traps and teleporters don't always work as consistently as you'd like, found a new level, met Gog, met Dalton and a couple of his friends, and explored a hidden tomb until they opened the wrong sarcophagus and undead came out of the walls.  A pretty normal week.  Very light on treasure so far, but they're not done yet.

Achievements:

None

XP:

Incomplete, as they haven't made it back to town.  They've done significant exploration and found a little bit of loot, but they don't get credit for it until they make it out.  If they make it back next session, they'll get credit for all the exploration and loot across both sessions.

Next Week: 

For once, I can confidently say what they'll be doing at the start of the next session: fighting undead.  After that, I'm less sure, but I suspect that if they win, they'll try to finish looting the tomb, then try to find a way home.  And if they lose, they'll get to make new PCs.

What Happens if PCs Get Stuck in the Dungeon?

If you run an RPG only when all your players are available, and some of your players have lives outside your game and will have to sometimes miss a session, then eventually your campaign will die due to non-attendance.  (You play week 1, but then you skip week 2 because Alice has work, and you skip week 3 because Bob is sick, and you skip week 4 because it's Clarence's kid's birthday, and by the time week 5 rolls around everyone has forgotten about the game.)

So the obvious solution is to run your game even when only some of the players are available.  And the corollary is to end each session somewhere safe, where you can easily swap out PCs between sessions if necessary.  Then 80% attendance is no problem at all.

Unfortunately, in the eighth session of the Arden Vul campaign, the PCs got teleported somewhere that they didn't have an obvious safe way home from, and then kept looking for treasure right up to the time limit, which included lifting the lid off a sarcophagus with 3 minutes to go in the session.  Opening a sarcophagus at the very end of a session brings very real risks of a fight starting that they can't finish until the next session, and that's what happened.

So how do we deal with PCs ending the session in the dungeon?

First, this is where the correspondence between real time and game time breaks.  The players will return a week later, but for the PCs, no time has passed.  As far as the PCs are concerned, it's still Demmasday the Third of Legarios.  It's still their eighth delve into the Halls of Arden Vul.

Second, as long as the PCs are paused in the dungeon, no XP is awarded, and no previously awarded XP can be spent.  They have whatever loot they found, but they can't easily sell it yet.  They don't get a week of free healing, or a chance to roll Carousing or Research, or time to go shopping, or even an hour to cast healing spells and rest.

Third, there's no easy way to swap PCs in the dungeon.  The ones who are in the dungeon are the ones who will be in the dungeon until they get back to town.  So if a player can't make it next week, they'll have to pick else someone to run their PC.  (At least for the start of the session; if they make it to town partway through the session, they're free to swap PCs.)

Overall, I expect that after this happened once, the players will be a bit more aware that it can happen again, and might somewhat modify their tactics to avoid that outcome.  Then again, they really like loot and XP, and might press their luck again to avoid coming home empty-handed.  It's ultimately up to the players when to go back to town; it's up to the GM to design appropriate rewards for doing so and consequences for failing to do so.

All the Ways the PCs Know They Can Go in Arden Vul

One of the players posted a list of all the ways they could explore next on the campaign Discord.  Here's a shortened version:

• 2 caves behind the waterfall (beneath 35-40' of rough water)
• Ruined tower near the base of the waterfall (ghost)
• Secret entrance 2/3 of the way up the Long Stair, leading to the Great Cavern
• Ruins of the city of Arden Vul
• Northern island
• Multiple watch towers
• Square tower near Forum with bronze double doors
• Square tower (bees)
• Square tower and cistern (baboons)
• Down the Well of Light (baboons and giant 4-armed baboons)
• Pyramid of Thoth, move statue west 
• Halls of Thoth (halflings)
• Great Chasm
• Lever on top of triangular pyramid, teleporter to Well of Light
• Beastman territory
• Stairs down, behind secret door in baboon mosaic
• Chute down, opened by manipulating a statue
• Pyramid of Thoth, move statue east
• Black portal (demons)
• Selket statue, teleporter to Great Hall (beastmen)

At least so far, Arden Vul has a large branching factor.  The PCs choose where to explore, and then instead of having one less choice (as they would if they exhausted a dead end), they usually find a couple more choices.

This makes prepping the dungeon more difficult for the GM, because I can't always guess where players will go next, so I have to have a lot of areas prepared.  This is probably good though, because it gives me incentive to prep more each week, so I'll finish prepping the whole adventure sooner.

I think having a lot of choices is good for players, because if they get stuck in one place they can go somewhere else.  However, it does require players to have good memories, or take good notes, or buy Eidetic Memory, so they don't forget about all those loose ends.

DFRPG Session 7: Why Did It Have to Be Plants?

Date:

Demmasday, 25th of Lucrios, 2993 AEP


Weather:

Cool, light rain

Player Characters:

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Based Cosmo)

Michael J. Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)

Ethereum "Coinbase" Thuringwador, Elf Illusionist (Mercenary) (Archon Shiva)

Significant NPCs:

Mountain Lion

6 Stirges

Pig-Headed Beastman

Several Large Albino Baboons

Assassin Vine

Shambling Mound

Ioannes spent some time reading the Book of Priors the group had found in their last delve.  It was thousands of pages long, written in dense Mithric by a succession of Priors of Thoth, over the years 937 to 1782 AEP.  Amidst all the church records, he found about twelve levels of the Halls described.  There was also mention of two different species conquered by the great Archon Marius Tricodor: the varumani (big strong regenerators) and the heqeti (demon-worshipping amphibians).  He also managed to find a spare healing kit at the Temple of Demma and made a donation to have it reassigned to him.

Vallium went looking for rumors of Plumthorn's halflings, and heard that they were selling "exploration licenses" (confirmed!) and also that messing with them was a bad idea because they had magic wands.

Vael was still tied up in magical research and/or getting his new robes to look right, but Michael had returned from his latest trip into the wilderness.  Short a mage, the group hired the Grudge Brigade leader Coinbase again, since he was available and definitely good at selling treasure, as well as allegedly being able to cast some spells.

The party woke up before dawn on a rainy Demmasday and trudged the usual several hours toward the Ruins.  Nobody slipped on the Long Stair, but a very brave or very hungry mountain lion decided that Vallium, at the back of the group, looked like a nice meal, and pounced on him from behind.  It managed to bite him hard in the back of the neck, but did not account for how thick his armor was, and mostly just hurt its teeth.  Vallium stabbed the big cat to death, and Coinbase reminded them that his minion Goat would pay for corpses of animals he hadn't previously seen, so they stuck the body behind some trees and hoped it would still be there when they returned.

Continuing up the Long Stair to the Ruins, the group had a brief discussion on where to go.  They didn't feel ready to fight the halflings (though as usual they spent some time talking smack about them).  Vallium suggested exploring the islands in the middle of the Upper Swift River.  Ioannes and Coinbase mentioned exploring some more of the ruined city wall and its guard towers.  They compromised by starting with the towers since they were closer, planning to visit the islands later.

Heading east from the entry into the ruins, they inspected a crumbling piece of city wall, then found a mostly intact round tower in the southeast corner.  Four of them were able to climb the more stable looking wall to the east of the tower, but Coinbase failed to climb it and doubled back to the ruined wall to the west, which was easier to climb but looked more likely to collapse.  The two groups entered the tower from opposite sides, and were able to see each other across the mostly empty upper floor of the tower.  They heard noise above, like loud chittering birds.  As they entered the tower, several stirges dove down from above to defend their lair.  The angry birds fought without any tactical sense, just charging at the nearest intruder.  Vallium and Michael swatted a couple down, while Coinbase summoned a semi-illusionary Phantom.  With three of the stirges dead, the others decided to retreat, and they were too fast to catch.  The group searched the tower but found no treasure.  They grabbed a strix corpse to sell to Goat.

Continuing north, they found a ruined square tower containing a large bees nest.  Giving the nest a wide berth, they saw another square tower ahead, and spotted a pig-headed beastman peeking around the corner of the tower at them.  They approached warily, but by the time they summoned the courage to peek around the tower, the beastman was nowhere to be seen.

There was a break in the city's eastern wall, and then another square tower ahead.  When the group got within about 20 yards of the tower, a large white baboon stuck its head out a window and hooted at them, then threw a rock at Vallium.  The rock missed.  A lot of hooting ensued in the tower, and a couple more rocks.  Some more hooting answered from a cistern east of the tower.  The group discussed rushing the baboons, then decided that wasn't a great idea, and backed away.

There was a semi-intact ruin of a manor house to the west.  Most of the group spent about an hour digging through it, while Vallium stood guard.  They didn't find anything particularly interesting; maybe this ruin had already been picked over.  While they were searching, a wyvern flew by to the south, took a good look at them, then flew off to the west.  This time, it didn't try to drop anything on them.

At this point they decided to head northwest and explore the islands.  There was a foot bridge leading from west of the forum to the southern island.  The bridge was only about five feet wide and appeared to be made of iron, so it was impressive that it was still standing.  With some caution they crossed it, and it did not collapse.  They continued north through some nondescript ruins until they saw a ruined palace, with some kind of domed greenhouse still standing in its east wing.  The front doors were also still standing, about fifteen feet tall and black.  As they approached the door, a voice shouted out in Mithric "Stand aside, citizen.  This is not your home."  They tried talking to whoever was inside, but got no answer.  Eventually the voice repeated the same line again, and they decided it was pre-programmed rather than someone actually talking.

The front doors looked sturdy, but parts of the wall had collapsed, so they went around.  They walked into a ruined antechamber that held a couple of desiccated corpses, but no treasure.  They went east to the greenhouse, which was surprisingly intact.  It was about four stories tall, with catwalks crisscrossing the building, a transparent roof that let light in, and plants and even a few trees everywhere.  There was a fountain in the center of the greenhouse, still working.  They poked around looking for something of interest, and something of interest found them.

An assassin vine, basically a human-sized pitcher plant with a couple dozen tendrils for dragging prey into its maw, greeted them with a couple of tendrils each.  They were surprised by this and stood around watching for a couple of seconds while the tendrils grabbed most of them.  Ioannes was as surprised as the rest of them, but he was wearing the Ring of Free Action they found in the Priors' hoard, and the tendrils were unable to get a good grip on him.  Michael, though theoretically as surprised as the rest of them, showed off his Combat Reflexes by rolling a natural 3 on his dodge, jumping away from both tendrils and also snapping out of stun.

The assassin vine was very strong, and managed to knock both Vallium and Uvash prone and drag them forward toward its mouth.  However, the tendrils were not very tough, and everyone started chopping them to release their friends.  Michael chopped the tendril holding Coinbase, freeing the elf to cast a Phantom, which fooled the not-very-smart plant that it was real, and started ripping off tendrils. Ioannes chopped a tendril off Vallium.  Vallium started cutting the tendrils grabbing him, but as the plant dragged him within range of his body, decided to concentrate on the larger target instead, and hit the plant's body hard enough to stun it, causing it to release its grappled victims.  With the plant stunned, Michael ran up, and he and Vallium stabbed the plant from both sides enough to make it stop moving.  The whole group then spent some time making sure it was dead.

Near the dead plant, the group spotted the ancient corpse of what looked like a noble woman.  Ioannes tried to diagnose the cause of death, but the body was too old.  However, there was some kind of huge rod of office, and a platinum circlet, and a signet ring, and a shortsword.  Ioannes was pretty sure both the rod and the sword were magical.  They searched the corpse and also found a few rubies, a key, three small silver ankhs, and a fist-sized chunk of orange rock, which Ioannes thought was magical and the group suspected might be the rumored Arcanum.

After looting the body, the group checked out the fountain, but didn't find anything interesting in it.  They continued to the east of the solarium, and ran smack into another plant creature.  This one was a big smelly bipedal slimy mess.  This fight was a lot faster than the previous one, Vallium hit it quickly and got if off-balance, and then he and Michael and Coinbase's Phantom triple-teamed it.  Ioannes cast Flaming Weapon on Vallium's sword, but the fire didn't seem to do anything to the soggy plant.  However, by then the Phantom had pinned it to the ground, and Vallium and Michael were taking turns chopping off large bits of plant matter.  Uvash joined in and smacked it with his mace and finished it off.  The Shambling Mound had no treasure.

Leaving the solarium and returning to the ruined palace, Ioannes found a magical ring of paving stones, about 6' in diameter, with a rectangular grid of 6 8" by 8" squares nearby.  Vallium asked if the squares were the same size as the glass squares they had found.  They didn't have the glass squares with them, but they looked about the same size.  They searched the palace a bit more, and Uvash found a tapestry of a hunt in decent condition, but otherwise they found no other treasure.

After leaving the place through the hole in the wall, they saw larger bridges east (back toward the forum) and west (to the west side of the Swift River.)  To the east was a plinth with the feet of a large statue, but the rest of the statue was nowhere to be seen.  They crossed and took a closer look, and the feet were sculpted with heavy boots, possibly representing armor.  Someone asked if the feet matched the statue part they'd found in a basin to the east, and they appeared to be about the same scale and material, but since this was feet and the other part was an arm and hand, it would not be possible to fit them together and be sure.

Heading back south toward the Long Stair, Vallium suggested stopping at the obelisk to see if the silver ankhs they'd found matched the indentations on the obelisk.  Sure enough, all three ankhs matched.  However, inserting one didn't cause anything obvious to happen.  They reclaimed the ankh rather than leaving it in the obelisk.  They tend continued south to the Long Stair.  The mountain lion corpse was still where they left it, so they put it in the wheelbarrow and dragged it home for sale.

GM's Notes:

I don't think I ran the stirges very well.  One problem with random encounters is the GM doesn't know what's going to happen until it does, so there's not a lot of time to review the monster description -- but I should do it anyway.  It's worth burning 5 minutes at the start of a long fight to make the rest of the fight run more correctly and smoothly.

The assassin vine, though, worked pretty well.  It was the first monster to achieve decisive surprise against this party.  Fortunately for them, it's not a fast killer -- it takes a while to grapple its victims, then knock them down, then drag them toward its maw, then digest them.

I rolled for whether the shambling mound heard the fight with the assassin vine and decided to join in.  Fortunately for the PCs, it did not.  Getting tag-teamed by both of them at once would have been much harder than fighting them one at a time ended up being.  This week demonstrated that dumb monsters do not always have the best tactics.

Amusingly, none of the monsters they found this session had any treasure (unless you count their bodies), but the dead noble lady's body in the Solarium had a bunch of it.

Achievements:

The Archon's Palace was an Arden Vul Iconic Location

XP: 

• Exploration: 6 new locations explored, good for 1 XP
• Loot: The rubies and platinum circlet they found will be enough for 1 XP each.  If they want to hit the 2 XP bonus loot threshold, they'll need to sell the dead noblewoman's magic rod and/or magic shortsword.  Based on past behavior, they'll probably do that, after identifying them.
• Achievements: 1 XP

Next week:

There was more smack talk about the halflings.  We'll see if they actually decide to fight them, or if they keep exploring other areas.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 6: Good Ghost, Bad Ghost

Date:

Demmasday, 18th of Lucrios, 2993 AEP


Weather:

Warm, sunny


Player Characters:

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Based Cosmo)

Ashe "Goat" Maykum, Goblin Druid (Mercenary) (Archon Shiva)


Significant NPCs:

Camilla, created goat

Other created goats

Created bat swarms 

Created rat swarms

Angry scary ghost

Roskelly Winterleaf, halfling underground toll collector lieutenant
Several halfling toll collectors

3 chasm cephalopods

Jacobus, former Prior of Thoth, current friendly ghost

6 ghouls

Wight

In Gosterwick, Ioannes did some additional research into Lady Alexia's Regalia and found that the Ebon Spear was the actual spear wielded by Arden when she was a mortal warrior hero, thousands of years ago.  Vallium again tried finding rumors about Plumthorn's halfling gang in various drinking establishments, and instead heard something about Ptarmis, a wizard who lived in the fungal caverns.

Michael was still out wandering in the wilderness, and Vael was busy studying (or possibly customizing his new wizard robes), so the group was an adventurer short this week.  They hired Ashe, the goat-summoning druid, from the Grudge Brigade.  There was some discussion on whether to visit the Great Cavern again or bring food to the beastmen, but Vallium suggested avoiding the Cavern since they didn't have a wizard with Levitation to deal with cliffs and water.  Instead they would just go down the Great Pyramid stairs and investigate unexplored parts of the Halls of Thoth. 

They woke before dawn, and walked uneventfully toward Arden Vul on a warm spring day.  At the base of the waterfall, Ashe used a Water Vision spell to see through all the spray, and made out a couple of cave entrances, behind the waterfall and 30 to 40 feet underwater.  While Ashe was staring into the water, Ioannes noticed a crumbling tower near the side of the road, and suggested (via gestures because the waterfall was too loud for speech) that they check it out.

The group entered the remains of the tower.  The top levels had fallen, but the ground level was fairly intact.  Vallium poked around in the rubble and found what he thought was a trap door to a cellar.  Ashe cast Shape Earth to help move rubble out of the way.  Vallium opened the trap door, and a terrifying ghost emerged, yelling something about Settite murderers.

Both Ioannes and Uvash fled in terror.  Vallium was a bit less scared but decided that following them made more sense than dealing with any angry ghost.  Ashe, however, stuck around to have a conversation.  The ghost attempted to possess Ashe, but failed.  It then shot some kind of magical bolt out of a finger and missed.  Ashe eventually gave up on discussion and followed the others out of the tower, surrounded by goats and rats and bats.  The ghost did not pursue outside the tower.

After recovering from their fright, everyone hiked up the Long Stair, with Vallium pushing a new wheelbarrow containing everyone's backpacks.  Nobody slipped.  When they reached the top, the group headed toward the Pyramid of Thoth and managed to avoid any encounters.  They manipulated the statue's arms, read some graffiti, and walked down several hundred stairs to the Glory of Thoth.  There they were greeted by their favorite halfling extortion gang, who collected 25 pieces of silver from Vallium for an Adventuring License for Ashe.  (Roskelly generously allowed the goats and swarms to adventure for free.)

Since Ashe had Water Vision, the group headed south through the gray-green mist to the smelly murky pool, hoping the spell would reveal some treasure.  Sadly, it did not.  Ashe complained about the people who failed to throw coins into fountains, and then threw a single coin in.  Vallium suggested going east to avoid beastman territory.  The group went through a previously discovered secret passage, into a room full of columns that had previously contained some flying jellyfish-like creatures.  There were 3 more of the cephalopods there this time, and they appeared hungry.

A battle ensued, but the jellyfish weren't very tough, and went down fairly quickly to a combination of Vallium's sword blows and Ashe's bat swarms.  One of them did manage to shock a goat before it died.  All the bodies in the room had already been looted, so the group headed east, then north to an unexplored door.  It was difficult to open, but Vallium got some help from Ioannes and the door opened to a long narrow north-south corridor, this one not full of corpses.  Vallium carefully checked for a way to open the door from the other side, then stepped into the passage.  Only a couple of steps in, the floor collapsed under him, revealing a 20' deep pit.  Vallium grabbed the edge of the pit and pulled himself up.  There was no obvious treasure in the pit, and the group decided that this area would be safer to explore with Levitation available.

They doubled back to the column room and took the southern exit on the east wall.  This led to a room with a lot of trash on the floor and a door on the far wall.  The door was very stuck and Vallium had a hard time opening it, so Ashe sent two goats repeatedly ramming into the door until it eventually opened.  (Somehow, all the noise failed to draw any wandering monsters.)  Beyond the stuck door was a room with stone benches on every wall.  Ioannes painstakingly searched every bench, and was rewarded with a secret compartment in the last one he searched.  It contained a bolt of yellow silk, a lantern and oil, and a book written in some language that nobody knew.  They took everything.

A passage led east out of the room.  Following it, they saw a door to the south and a room to the east, and they went east into the room.  It had a mosaic of the stars on the floor, and a sky blue ceiling with stars painted on it.  Ashe thought the stars were the constellation of the Ibis, but the others were less sure.  There were wooden stalls on the walls all around the room, with one larger stall in the middle of the eastern wall, and an exit further north on the eastern wall.  Vallium searched the larger stall, and thought there was a secret door behind it, but couldn't figure out how to open it.  Ioannes suggested searching all the stalls, and after a long search the group found a couple of potions (one of them looking magical, one not; Ashe thought that was was poison), some old silver coins, a fancy ceremonial headdress, a couple more of the magical colored glass squares (green and yellow), and an ancient erotic book called The Seventy-Four Ways of Opening the Lotus, in Mithric, but with pictures.  Once everyone tired of looking at the book, Vallium asked for help figuring out the secret door.  Nobody could find a hidden catch or keyhole, so Ashe told the two goats to again take turns ramming into the door.  After a few smashes, one of them accidentally hit a hidden catch and the door opened.

On the other side of the door was a combination bedroom and study.  A very short translucent figure sat up from the desk and warmly greeted the party with gestures.  They could not hear his voice when he tried to speak, but he apparently understood them.  He pointed at some blueprints on the desk, which said "Tomb of Jacobus, the 52nd Claustral Prior of the Chapter of Thoth."  There was a map there, of three rooms.  Jacobus pointed to the map then pointed to the north.  After a lot of gesturing and nodding and shaking of his head, he got the idea across that this was his tomb and his body wasn't properly buried in it for some reason and he'd like some help with that.  He then pointed to an armoire, and when they opened it, to a hat inside, and then when Ioannes looked at the hat he found it contained a key.  Jacobus pointed to the key and then led the group out the secret door, north, east down a passage to a looted storeroom.  Jacobus pointed to the north wall, then to the key, until the PCs searched and found a secret door.

A short passage led north, then jagged left a bit and suspiciuously dead-ended.  Everyone searched for a secret door in the obvious place, and found one.  Jacobus had stayed behind in the storeroom.  Vallium figured out how to open the secret door, and stepped through.

On the other side was a room full of burial niches and sarcophagi, many of them looted and destroyed.  A couple of ghouls were charging toward the party.  They decided to let the ghouls come to them, allowing a retreat through the secret door if needed.  This tactic lasted a couple of seconds before Ashe decided to send his goats and bat and rat swarms into the room to draw attacks.  Two ghouls were visible at first, and later five more ghouls and a wight were spotted.  Ashe cast a Hail spell between the undead and the party, which meant the undead had to take Hail damage in addition to swarm damage before they could hurt anyone important.  It was a long grinding fight, but ultimately Vallium's sword and the swarms took down all of the undead.  The ghouls landed a couple of hits on Vallium, but failed to penetrate his armor.  The undead managed to kill a couple of the swarms, but Ashe said that was fine and he could just make more.

With the undead gone, the party investigated the room.  There were open double doors to the southwest, facing the Great Chasm.  There was a single tomb with a fancy gisant to the northeast.  And there was a rather short skeleton on the ground near the east wall.  Ioannes went back to get the blueprints, which showed where the secret door leading to Jacobus's tomb should be.  The group found the secret door in the expected spot, went in, and found an unoccupied sarcophagus and a bunch of treasure.  Vallium reverently put Jacobus's skeleton in the sarcophagus, as both Uvash and Ioannes said a few appropriate words.  Jacobus's ghost came running into the room, bowed to everyone, and dived into the sarcophagus on top of his skeleton.  Before disappearing, he pointed to the side of the sarcophagus.  Uvash thought Jacobus was just saying to close it, but Vallium thought he might be pointing to something, and searched.  There was a secret compartment there, containing a belt and a ring.

The party picked up all the portable treasure from the tomb.  This included a locked chest.  Ashe suggested smashing it with goats, but Uvash said that if there was anything fragile inside that might smash it, so they decided to just take the chest and pay someone in Gosterwick to open it.

Discussion of the chest made everyone remember the halflings.  Vallium mentioned maybe just giving them their 10% for once, but Ashe scoffed and suggested using Mystic Mist instead.  The plan was to approch the Glory of Thoth from the northwest entrance, only 10 yards from the stairs up to the pyramid, then cast a big Mystic Mist over the whole northeast corner of the room, and march the treasure out while the halflings were confused by the mist.  One of Roskelly's fighters saw the mist appear, and Roskelly sent a couple of halflings in to investigate, but both ran back out screaming, and then the PCs were up the stairs,  Roskelly was yelling after them, though; this time the halflings knew they'd been cheated of their share of the loot.

GM's Comments:

Three fights this week: quickly running away from a ghost, quickly dispatching some chasm cephalopods, and then a long grindy fight against some ghouls and a wight.  Only Vallium and Ashe got to do much, but the PCs won.  Summoned swarms are pretty powerful, but more combatants mean slower combats.  They found a lot of treasure in Prior Jacobus's tomb, and only had to split it 4 ways, so it was a profitable delve.

Achievements:

Quest: Prior Jacobus's Ghost

XP:

Exploration: 10 new locations explored, for 1 XP.

Loot: That locked (and trapped!) chest was full of coins.  2 XP.

Achievements: 1 XP for giving Prior Jacobus a proper burial.

Next week:

The party has progressed from sneaking treasure past the halflings in deniable ways to brazenly walking treasure past them with obvious magic.  We'll see if they return to the scene of the crime or decide to go somewhere else.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 5: Parleys and The Great Cavern

Date:

Demmasday, 11th of Lucrios, 2993 AEP


Weather:

Cool, overcast, rainy


Player Characters:

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)
Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Based Cosmo)

Sister Valya "Basilisk" Hushbreaker, halfling monk (Mercenary) (Archon Shiva)


Significant NPCs:

Lyssandra Astorion, principal of the Arcane Practitioners' Club

Freydis, steward to Lady Alexia Basilion

Lady Alexia Basileon, ruler of the town of Gosterwick

Roskelly Winterleaf, halfling underground toll collector lieutenant
Several halfling toll collectors

Many beastmen

Count Skleros, beastman military commander

2 ghouls

giant salamander

giant crab

clockwork dragonfly

Ptarmis, strange robed human

3 rock reptiles

Bellringer, goblin sub-chief

2 other goblins

After identifying the magical gem they found in the Pyramid of Thoth as a very valuable Gem of Insight, the group decided to sell it rather than keeping it.  Lyssandra mentioned the Gem to Lady Alexia's steward, Freydis, who invited the party for a meeting to discuss the Gem.  After some questions about the group and the Gem, Freydis arranged an audience with Lady Alexia herself.  Lady Alexia purchased the Gem, and also told the group about her Regalia, four items within Arden Vul that were extremely important to her, and for which she would richly reward the finders.  The Regalia named were the Bone Ring of Jagri-Naz, the Tablet of the Beacon, the Ebon Spear of Arden, and the Iron Circlet of Ghanor.  Lady Alexia did not go into further detail, saying that various delvers with whom she had shared information had failed to find any of the Regalia for years, so she'd prefer that new groups go in with fresh eyes lest flaws in her intelligence led them astray.  Asked if there was anything Gosterwick could do to assist the group with finding the Regalia and other important treasure, there was a general grumbling about a lack of magic items and special purpose adventuring gear for sale in town.  Lady Alexia said that she had some healing potions available for sale and would continue trying to improve the supply of other gear, but that Gosterwick was not exactly Archontos.

Ioannes decided to research the Regalia, but didn't find anything interesting in the Arcane Practitioners' Club's small library.  He also ordered some finer quality leather armor and a new axe.  Vallium spread more coin around the local taverns looking for information, visited Astableon the Scribe and Bookseller to buy a history book, and visited Chairduster's Fine Metallurgy to buy some gold and silver jewelry for dragon tribute.  Vael picked up his fancy new robes and also purchased some mundane adventuring equipment to leave in the ruins.  The group visited all three merchant factors in Gosterwick (Rarities Factor, Prosperity Factor, and Silent Factor) to look for a place to set up bank accounts, and Vael also got a reference to a lawyer who could set up an adventuring company as a legal entity.  Uvash returned from the House of the Gods to join the others on the trip, but Michael was once again out in the wilderness somewhere, so the group recruited the on-call mercenary at the Grudge Brigade, a tiny halfling monk called Basilisk.

They set out for the ruins of Arden Vul early the next morning.  Uvash recommended roping themselves together for safety in case of another slip on the Long Stair, but they didn't have enough rope for everyone.  Vael once again Levitated himself up the cliff face, and Basilisk rode in the wheelbarrow that Vallium was pushing.  This time everyone made it to the top without a slip, despite the rainy conditions.

They decided to first deliver the tribute to the dragon.  The party walked over to the dam and checked that the lock they had installed the week before was intact, stowed some equipment inside the dam, and left the tribute jewelry on top of the dam in a sack as the dragon had commanded.  They then proceeded to the Pyramid of Thoth and manipulated the statue's arms forward to open the safer entrance.

On the large landing room halfway down the steps inside the pyramid, they encountered Roskelly and a couple of his halfling toll collectors.  Basilisk hid.  After a brief conversation, the halflings went back downstairs to their territory, followed by the party.  Vallium walked over to the statue of Thoth and the base of the stairs, put his book in the offering chest, and loudly proclaimed that the offering was in Thoth's name.  Nothing happened.  They added some coins to the offering chest.  Nothing happened.  Vael theorized that maybe a mundane book wasn't good enough and it had to be magic scroll, but they didn't have any, so they recovered their book and coins.

The group proceeded south toward beastman territory.  When they crossed the barricade they yelled out for parley, rather than trespassing.  First a beastman trooper, then a sergeant, came to investigate.  After a brief discussion the sergeant said to wait, and returned a bit later with a beastman leader, Count Skleros, and his honor guard.  Skleros asked if they were the Cheese and Crackers group that had been trying to negotate, and after confirmation asked what they wanted.  Vael said they wanted safe passage through Children of Deino territory and access to any other dungeon entrances that faction might control.  Skleros wanted to know what they could do for him in exchange, and Vael asked what he needed.  Skleros gave a list: for the dragon to stop eating his troops, wood, iron, steel, mushrooms particularly a variety called Cloud Caps, fresh fruits and vegetables, magic items, and coins.  Vael said something about putting a good word in with the dragon and bringing some food next time, which Skleros said was fine, and they would give them safe conduct through their territory and tell them where the entrance was next time.  Vael asked if there was anything they could do today, and Skleros mentioned a small ghoul problem.  A couple of ghouls were in a room near a beastman guard post, and they were barricaded inside so they weren't currently a serious problem, but they were costing the beastmen the use of that room and also terrifying some of the soldiers.  He asked if any of the party were the kind of clerics who would make undead dead.

Unfortunately none of the clerics had undead destroying powers, but Vael had Create Fire, so he asked some details about the room where the ghouls were barricaded and whether anything important was inside.  Told it was about 25 feet square and there were no known valuables there, Vael cast Seek Earth looking for gold or silver inside to confirm.  Finding none, he used the newly found magic ring of seeing through things to look through the door of the room, then tried a large Create Fire to incinerate the ghouls without opening the door.  The first casting of the spell surprisingly failed, but eventually Vael managed to torch the room.  A few minutes later the group formed up and Vallium unbarred and opened the door, revealing a very hot room containing two charred corpses.  Ioannes chopped off their heads just to be sure.  Vael was very tired after incinerating a decent-sized room, but two clerics and a monk all started Lending Energy and pretty soon everyone was rested.

With the ghouls taken care of, Skleros instructed a sergeant to guide the party through their territory to the Great Cavern and give them directions to the exit.  The sergeant and a few troopers led the group across the Great Hall (telling them to run across before any gargoyles above noticed them and attacked), then through several rooms full of beastmen.  One room contained a bunch of parchments, possibly maps, that had been quickly turned upside-down to hide them from untrusted eyes.

At the south end of beastman territory, the sergeant handed the group off to another sergeant who said he was with the Long Range Cavern Patrol.  He said to climb down the cliff, go south until it wasn't possible to go south any more, than go east until they found a cave entrance, then go south and west until they found the exit.  He also said the cliff was infested with giant centipedes, and gave the group a bucket full of nasty smelling paste that he said repelled them.  He led them out to a cage, high in the air above a huge cavern full of glowing mushrooms.  The cage had a locked door leading to a ladder down into the cavern.

Everyone climbed or Levitated down to the cavern floor, then walked south to the top of a cliff, with the sound of running water below.  Vael Levitated down the cliff to scout ahead, and saw a stream with a small island with a worn stone statue on it.  But when he moved closer to investigate, a giant salamander showed interest, so Vael noped back up to the group.  Between them, they had more than 50' of rope, so Uvash tied everyone's ropes together and then tied one end to a spike the beastmen had placed at the top of the cliff, then everyone put on the giant centipede repellent and started climbing down.  (Except Vael Levitated, and the tiny Basilisk rode down on Vael's shoulders.)

Unfortunately, Uvash had critically failed his Climbing roll to set the rope, so the group was unknowingly actually free-climbing, not getting the bonus for the rope.  Fortunately, they all made their Climbing rolls without the bonus, so nobody fell.  Vael flew back up and untied the rope (which detached from the spike suspiciously easily) and returned it to its owners.  No giant centipedes had made an appearance, but nobody knew if that was because the repellent worked.

The group followed the north edge of the stream west until it emptied into an underground pond.  They walked along the north edge of the lake west until they saw a dock with a couple of fresh but unlit torches, and a couple of rowboats.  They lit the torches, which was mostly redundant because their Continual Light rocks were brighter, then continued walking west until they reached the other side of the pond, up against a rock wall.  There was no obvious way around; they needed to swim or boat or fly across.  Nobody in the group had any Boating skill, and they didn't know if they could trust the boats, so Vael decided to Levitate across to scout, with Basilisk on his shoulders.

Flying across, they saw a cave entrance high up above the water, with some interesting crystal formations inside, but did not go in to investigate.  They also spotted a sandy island in the middle of the pond, with a huge crab sitting on the beach, and a bit of apparently magical treasure in the sand.  Finally they spotted a second dock with another rowboat on the south side of the pond.  Vael and Basilisk flew back to the group to discuss their findings, and they all decided that fighting the crab was probably unnecessary and they might be able to scare it off and grab the treasure.

Vael and Basilisk flew back above the crab, and Vael dropped a Create Fire on top of it.  The crab jumped in alarm and then dove into the water.  Once the crab had been gone for a few seconds, Vael and Basilisk landed on the island and picked up three things that looked magical: a shield, a green square of glass, and a rusty suit of scale armor.  The armor was a bit heavy, so Vael cast a separate Levitation spell on Basilisk, who clung to the armor while Vael guided them both back to the north shore.

The scale armor was heavy and annoying to carry, so they decided to cast Analyze Magic right there in the cavern, despite it taking an hour, to see if it was worth the trouble.  While Vael was casting, a beastman came down the cliff to their north, hailed the group, then retreated back north.  Later, an 8" long clockwork dragonfly with blue gem eyes flew up to investigate them silently, then eventually flew away.  Finally, the Analyze Magic was finished, and revealed that the scale armor was not magical.  Vael asked Ioannes for a second opinion, and it didn't look magic to him either.  Vael had apparently critically failed his earlier Perception plus Magery check.  Scowling, they abandoned the rusty armor, but packed away the green glass square and took the magic shield.

Still not trusting the boats, Vael cast Levitation on the entire group and shuttled them all south above the lake.  It was tedious as he could only concentrate on moving one of them at a time, but it was only 20 yards from dock to dock, so the whole operation took less than a minute.  There were paths through the fungal forest to the southeast and southwest.  Following the earlier instructions, they went southeast.   To the south was a platform about 20' high covered with marble pavers.  Vael flew up to investigate, and on top of the platform saw a huge stone chair, containing a human wearing worn wizard robes and years of accumulated body odor.  The man identified himself as Ptarmis, the master of the cavern.  Deciding this guy was creepy, Vael excused himself and flew away.  Meanwhile the others climbed some stairs up to the south end of the platform and saw some huge block rock doors into the rock wall to the south, with no visible handles or keyholes, and a purple glowing light around the doors.

Everyone continued down a path to the east, which eventually became a cave entrance into a rock wall.  The path south was blocked by a cave-in, but Vallium led the group north then east then south down another passage.  The passage opened into a larger room, where they were ambushed by 3 rock reptiles.  The rock reptiles achieved surprise, but their initial Move and Attacks did not hit, and Vallium in front quickly regained his wits and was ready to defend against their next attacks.  Vael threw a Smoke spell to blind and confuse the reptiles.  The reptiles retreated from it while everyone else recovered from surprise.  Vael dropped the Smoke and cast a Thunderclap to try to deafen the reptiles, Ioannes cast Flaming Weapon on Vallium's sword.  Two of the reptiles decided that the Smoke followed by the Thunderclap were scary, and ran away.  The third on stood its ground, until Vallium stabbed and badly wounded it.  It failed its stun check, fell over, failed its consciousness check, and passed out.  The group finished it off then noticed there was a bit of treasure in the cavern: a couple of silver ingots, a potion, a small stone snake head that looked like it was broken off a statue, and a single magical boot.

They looked for the second boot and failed to find it.  Vael cast Seek Magic to try to find the second boot, and the spell said the nearest magic (excluding what they carried) was outside the cave, back in the big cavern.  The group decided to stay on target and left the cave to the south, then took a tunnel generally west.  Turning south, they found 3 goblins in a cave.  One of them spoke some Archontean and indicated that he did not want a fight.  He said that his name was Bellringer, he was a goblin sub-chief, and his group was returning from the Arena 3 levels down when they decided to look for King Weskenim's missing brother Gribble,  when they got ambushed by beastmen and most of them were killed.  He asked if the party had any food or knew a way down to the goblin caverns.  They gave most of their rations to the goblins, but told them that they didn't know the way.  Bellringer thanked them for the food and asked their names, and asked that if they met King Weskenim before he did, to relay the news.

The group left the goblins and continued north and west.  Ioannes was worried they were lost and wondered if they should double back to the Great Cavern, but the group decided to press on.  They found a giant boulder in a cave, and Vael Levitated up and saw that it had a flat spot on top that had been used as a campsite.  They found a passage south, which contained a couple of moldy beastman corpses.  Ioannes said they were too old to determine cause of death, and they had no treasure.  Continuing south, the group found a dead end, with a suspicious amount of graffiti.  The graffiti was in a mix of languages: Archontean, Elvish, and Dwarvish.  They decided to search for secret doors, and eventually found one.  Once they managed to open it, they found the Long Stair was right outside, and they were about two-thirds of the way up.

Vael didn't want to go home without finding the other magic boot, so having found the exit, the group doubled back to the Great Cavern.  Vael then flew up on top of the big rock where Seek Magic had pointed him.  Atop the rock was an old, creepy-looking pillar.  Vael tried inspecting the pillar closely, but doing so made him dizzy.  He backed away and found a hole on the other side of the big rock, leading down past the range of his Continual Light.  He dropped a purple glowing rock inside and saw the rock fall about 80' into another cave.  It was interesting, but a bit scary to investigate right now, so he flew back to the rest of the group, and they went back to the secret door, down the Long Stair, and back to Gosterwick.

GM's Comments:

The group achieved their goals for this week: talking with the beastmen and finding another entrance to the dungeon.  They weren't planning for the entrance to be all the way across the Great Cavern though.  They parleyed with Lady Alexia and Count Skleros and Bellringer.  They set ghouls on fire without opening the door and letting them hit back.  The got surprised by rock reptiles but killed one and scared the others off.  And they avoided every other possible fight.

Achievements:

Iconic Location: The Great Cavern

XP:

Exploration: 25 new locations explored, for 2 XP.

Loot: Magic shield, Flight potion, silver ingots, minus dragon tribute.  Selling the potion was enough for 1 XP.

Achievements: 1 XP for finding (with beastman help) and exploring the Great Cavern. 

Next week:

They are really sick of paying tribute to both halflings and the dragon, so it sounds like they'll be going back to the newly found entrance at the south end of the Great Cavern.  We'll see whether they decide to explore the cavern more or just use it as a route back to the Halls of Thoth.