DFRPG Arden Vul Session 23a: Gelatinous Cube and Slime Kraken

Date: 

Basilsday, 16th of Gerakios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Hot, dry

Player Characters: 

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

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

Michael J. Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Significant NPCs:

Lillian, captured Canon of Mitra

Kronos, Innkeeper at the Sign of the Broken Head

4 Ghouls

Gelatinous Cube

Slime Kraken

Susarra, Archontean fighter

Several Set guards

Vallium formulated a plan to rescue Lillian.  They would avoid the halflings, bribe the beastmen (who rumor claimed had taken Lillian) with food for information on Lillian or for her release, bring her back to the Church of Mitra, and profit.

The first part of the plan went pretty well.  They loaded up their mule with food and took it up to the ruins of Arden Vul.  Not wanting to take the mule into the Halls, they instead took it to the Sign of the Broken Head and paid Kronos for boarding.  They then loaded the food into a wheelbarrow, went down through the basement entrance to avoid the halflings, and headed south toward the beastmen.

On the way, they searched for secret doors in the Thothian burial niches, and found one.  Opening it up found a crypt containing some elaborate sarcophagi and 4 angry ghouls.  The ghouls surprised Michael, but failed to hurt him.  A quick battle ensued, with Michael and Vallium smacking down the ghouls.  The grave goods included a couple of magical white gold rings, a high quality spear, and some silver torcs and alabaster urns.  The party took the light loot and left the heavy stuff in the secret tomb to grab on the way out.

As they approached beastman territory, Vael cast Seeker looking for Lillian.  The spell showed her bound, gagged, and injured, in a prison cell.  It said the cell was somewhere to the northwest, away from the beastmen.  Vael followed up the Seeker with a Trace so he could keep homing in on Lillian.  At that point they decided to turn around and not talk to the beastmen after all, since it appeared they didn't have Lillian.

They went north and west until they reached the room with 3 portcullises and 3 levers.  Vael, who hadn't been there before, wanted to go up the stairs to the south, but Vallium explained that it led to parts of the Well of Light lever that they had not fully explored, and pulled him back on target.  Vael, not wanting to touch anything he didn't have to, used Apportation to move the middle lever and open the middle portcullis.  They then headed west into a maze of catacombs, filled with burial niches whose plugs had been removed.  Knowing it would take forever to search all the niches, everyone kept their eyes open for obvious doors or treasure, but nobody took time to search.

At one point Uvash was in the lead and almost ran right into a nearly invisible form ahead.  He saw some coins just hanging in the air, and stopped before becoming enveloped.  It was a large gelatinous cube.  Uvash backed away and called for help, as the others ran up.  The cube was huge but fairly slow.  Uvash was a bit worried that it might damage his fancy mace, but took a swing at it anyway, and did a bit of damage.  Michael and Vallium ran up and started rapidly hacking at it.  It kept trying to hit them with slimy pseudopods, but didn't aim very well.  Eventually they hit it enough that it slowed down further and stopped dodging effectively, and then they just kept hitting it until it stopped twitching.

There were some coins and gems inside the cube's body, along with a wand.  Michael, wearing heavy armor and a Ring of Free Action, was able to crawl in and grab the gems and wand without getting hurt, but his armor was smoking a bit.  Manually getting all the coins didn't seem worth the risk, but since coins are pretty sturdy, Vael used Create Fire to just melt the remains of the cube to ash, and they picked the coins out of the remains.

They found a door heading south, but it had no obvious handle, did not budge when they tried pushing it open, and appeared too strong to break down without mining tools.  Vael tried using Apportation to push the door in every direction, but his spell failed to move the door.  Giving up, the group resumed walking around the catacombs looking for secret doors.  Ioannes found one to the northwest, but it led to stairs down, and Vael was pretty sure Lillian was on this level, so they didn't go that way.

Giving up on finding another door, they went back to the heavy door, and Vael used Shape Earth to dig a small tunnel through the rock a few yards away from the door.  His first couple of tries didn't go far enough, but eventually he managed to dig a small tunnel through to another room.  Vallium volunteered to crawl through it first, and didn't find anything dangerous in the room, just the bodies of a couple of humans and a couple of ghouls.  Everyone else crawled in, and they looted a shortsword and a ring.  There was a door on the north wall, which led to a short passage and then the door they had been unable to open from the other side.  From this side, it was possible to push it open with enough effort.  However, it closed itself shortly after they stopped pushing on it, and nobody had any spikes to keep it open.

Heading east, they found another room with doors south and east.  The southern door was spiked shut.  Vael confirmed that Lillian was still southwest, so they pulled the spikes and went south.  They saw doors south and west.  The western room was small and completely trashed.

To the south, however, was a very large room, containing a circular pool with a statue of Thoth inside it.  The temple had been thoroughly and deliberately trashed, and both clerics felt like it was a place of negative sanctity.  There was some anti-Thoth graffiti on the walls, and a picture of a crocodile eating an ibis, indicating that the vandalism was probably the work of Settites.  Worse, when Vallium went into the room, a lot of tentacles emerged from the pool to grab him.  Everyone retreated back north out of the room, with Vallium chopping off a couple of the tentacles as he parried their attacks.

After some discussion, the group decided they needed to get past the tentacle beast, but since they now knew it was there, they could buff themselves first.  Vael would cast Great Haste on the fighters, while Ioannes cast Flaming Weapon.  Vael flubbed his first couple of attempts to Great Haste Michael, but the third try worked, and then Michael opened the door and charged south.  He ran right into the pool, not slowed because of his Ring of Free Action, and started cutting off tentacles as the slime kraken tried dragging him under.  At one point it looked like Michael critically failed an attack and crippled his own shield arm, but his Bless spell sacrificed itself and prevented the self-inflicted attack.  A few seconds later, Vallium also came charging into the room at double speed, and now the slime beast was surrounded.  Both Vallium and Michael kept cutting off tentacles, then went after its body.  With all its tentacles gone, the beast started biting with its beak.  Uvash used Divine Grace then followed them into the room, but Michael finished the slime creature off with multiple rapid strikes from behind before Uvash arrived.

With the battle over, Vael was very tired after casting multiple Great Hastes, and Vallium and Michael were tired from fighting.  While they rested, Ioannes started searching and found a magical sheet of yellow glass in the pool.  Rather than reaching into the murky water, he Apportated it out.  After resting, everyone started circling the room and looking for secret doors.  Vael found a secret door in the north wall, with a small empty alcove behind it.  Later he searched in the same spot on the south wall and found a matching secret door and empty alcove.  There were doors in all four corners of the rooms.  Both of the ones on the east side led to ramps up to galleries overlooking the temple.  One of the ramps had a bit of adventuring equipment left on it, and Vallium grabbed some spikes.

The most promising door, in the southwest corner, led to a small passage south, another door, and a cave-in.  The cave in was large enough that Vael did not feel he could use Shape Earth to get past it.  Everyone returned to the temple and searched again for secret doors.  They did not find any, but Uvash spotted an iron key in the fountain, which Vael Apportated out, dried off, and added to their keyring.

Giving up on manually searching, Vael pulled out the Wand of See Secrets and used a charge.  At that point a secret door to the southwest and a peephole high on the west wall became obvious to him.  He ran around the temple while the spell lasted, finding another secret door off the southeast gallery.  He then doubled back north through the other rooms they had searched.  He did not find any more secret doors there.  There was one door to the east which they had not opened, and, caution thrown aside while racing the spell duration, Vael opened it rather than waiting for Vallium and Michael to catch up.  There was an armed and armored woman hiding in the room.  Fortunately for Vael, she did not attack, and instead asked who he was and what he was doing there.  Vael didn't want to talk, as he was trying to find secret doors, but he explained that they were looking for Lillian.  The woman didn't know who Lillian was, but said that her name was Susarra and her friends had been killed by ghouls and she was looking for a way out past the tentacle monster.  When Vael indicated that they had killed the monster and invited her to tag along, she followed him out of the room.

They listened to the southwestern secret door, opened it, and found a room full of trash.  There were some footprints leading from the secret door to the middle of the room, then vanishing.  Everyone started searching for more secret doors.  While searching, Vallium triggered a spear trap.  It barely penetrated his helmet, scratching his face.  Vallium broke the spear in half to make sure that didn't happen again.  They eventually found a concealed door on the south wall.

When they opened the door, a trap went off, and gas started pouring into the room with a loud hiss.  Everyone managed to hold their breath before breathing any of the gas, and then Vael cast a Purify Air to clear the room.  The group went south through the door, and saw some Set guards in their distinctive red scale armor, looking angry.  There wasn't enough time left in the session to fight the battle, so the session ended there.

GM's Comments:

Slime Kraken might be my new favorite monster name.

Gelatinous Cubes are fun, but they're also slow and stupid, so unless they surprise you and get a free attack, or corner you, they're not as dangerous as they seem.

You would think that the combination of Seeker and Trace and Shape Earth would make reaching a prisoner within one four-hour session pretty easy.  Find the prisoner, head toward the prisoner, and if you can't find a way toward the prisoner, dig one.  But four hours flew by this week, despite only finishing three fights.

Achievements:

None

XP:

None until they get back to down, but they explored some new territory and found a bit of loot.

Next Week:

We know they'll be starting the session fighting those Set guards, and then, if they win, presumably resuming the search for Lillian.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 22: The Oracle of Thoth and The Litany of Light

Date: 

Basilsday, 9nd of Gerakios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Hot, dry

Player Characters: 

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

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

Merenuithiel "Lacrymosa" Armaris, Elven mercenary archer (Archon Shiva)

Significant NPCs:

6 ghouls

Yamki, wounded giant 4-armed intelligent baboon

Many large albino baboons

Anaximander, ancient insane cleric of Mitra

Voice of Thoth, ancient god for magic, moons, secrets, etc.

Skeleton cook

Flaming skull

Animated bust of Stamelis, Librarian of Thoth

2 Ibis constructs of Thoth

Ioannes did some research on the copy of the Litany of Light they had found in the Library of Thoth, which pointed to it being a forgery, so he wasn't sure if it was a good idea.  Vael learned the location spells Seeker, Pathfinder, and Trace, and tried using them to find the Troll Lifts and Lillian the missing cleric of Mitra.  Vallium tried and failed to find some magic scale armor, and decided not to put down a deposit on fine-quality scale armor.

Vallium decided the company should try to finish exploring the Well of Light level (except the caves full of baboons), try installing the mirror below the Well of Light, and have Ioannes conduct the Litany of Light if willing and able.  Michael was still off in the mountains somewhere and Uvash had a church emergency, so the shorthanded party hired Lacrymosa the bloodthirsty elf archer.  She asked if it was time to kill the halflings yet, then came along to kill whatever else they needed her to kill.

They got up early on a sunny Basilsday, made good time to the cliff face beneath Arden Vul, then tied themselves together and climbed up the Long Stair (except Vael, who didn't believe in climbing when you could Levitate).  They made it to the top without any problems and hiked to the top of the Well of Light.  Vael cast Flight on Vallium, who carried Ioannes down the Well, while Vael Levitated down and Lacrymosa used Walk on Air to walk down the well as if there were an invisible spiral staircase.  This time, there were no baboon hordes waiting for them at the bottom, so they were able to rest safely.

They went west, then north, and found a door that was spiked shut.  They prepared for battle and Vallium ripped the spikes out.  Opening the door revealed 6 angry ghouls.  A quick fight ensued, where Vallium stabbed the ghouls, Lacrymosa show the ghouls, Ioannes finished off one ghoul with his axe, and Vael supervised while preparing a Great Haste spell just in case they needed it.  They did not.  Digging through the trash in the room found a few platinum coins, a tall bronze magic helmet shaped like an inverted flowerpot, and a wand.  They grabbed the treasure, unspiked a second door into the room for good measure, then continued exploring north and west.

Eventually they doubled back and explored south and west.  They found an empty room, then a room with Continual Light, a fresco of an ibis with orange glowing eyes, a scroll along the wall full of obscure phrases in Mithric, and three blocks of granite shaped like open mouths, with black holes of magical darkness.  They explored the room for a while, until the ibis's eyes flashed and a burst of energy filled the chamber, dispelling all their spells (including all their Blesses, all their Continual Light rocks, and Vael's Levitation) and destroying some of their potions.

After depositing their surviving potions outside the room in case that reoccurred, Vael cast a Light spell into the air, then cast Trace on his Returning Pebble and threw it into the eastern mouth.  He sensed that it teleported way down and northeast, then was still.  A few minutes later, the dispelling effect repeated, taking out both the Light and the Trace.  The Returning Pebble eventually returned, and Vael returned the experiment with the middle mouth.  This time the pebble went down and in the direction he threw it, as if there were stairs or a ramp there.  He waited until the second Trace was dispelled and the Pebble reappeared in his pocket, then returned the experiment with the western mouth.  This one seemed like another teleporter, moving the stone down and southeast.

Meanwhile, Ioannes, re-cast Bless on his other companions, who stayed out of the room to keep from having it dispelled again.  He finally cast it on Vael, and then everyone crawled into the magical mouth.  After going through a brief area of magical Darkness and Silence, they emerged onto narrow stairs leading down, then the passage turned west and they went down some more, until they reached a dead end with a square hole in the ceiling.  Vael re-cast Levitation and popped up into a hemispherical room containing an dais with a magical marble chair and a ibis statue whose wings wrapped around the chair.  In the chair sat a very old, disheveled man who was twitching and mumbling.

Everyone climbed up into the room.  The man did not respond.  Everyone tried talking to him, but he did not respond.  Eventually Vallium pulled the man out of the chair, and then the man noticed them, but did not speak coherently, just babbled about things they mostly did not understand.  It took a lot of prodding to reveal that his name was Anaximander, he was a cleric of Mitra, and he'd been in that chair for a very long time.  Ioannes told the others to pull him out if anything weird happened, then sat in the chair.  He felt a warm layer of air, then a deep voice told him to "Speak Thy Desire."  Ioannes said that he wanted to know the correct way to perform the Litany of Light.  The voice told him that he already had a book that said exactly how to do it, and that instructions could not get much more detailed that that, but maybe he could find a version with more pictures.  Ioannes was then stunned.  After a couple of minutes, Vallium pulled Ioannes out of the chair, and he soon recovered.

The old guy asked a few jealous questions about how Ioannes had gotten answers and said maybe it was a good idea to bring friends along to pull him out of the chair.  While he rocked on the floor, the group went out an exit to the south, into a room with a magic pool, whose water was overflowing the basin and streaming out of the room to the southeast.  Vael cast Analyze Magic, which said that the pool was designed to increase its user's intelligence.  That was enough for Ioannes, who immediately took a drink and felt smarter.  Impressed, Vael also took a drink, but felt sicker rather than smarter, then felt his guts twisting.  Ioannes cast a couple of Stop Bleeding spells and a Major Healing on Vael to help repair the damage, and the poisoning eventually subsided.  Vallium explored the water damage crack, but it wasn't big enough to go far, and he didn't find anything in the water.

Returning to the Oracle room, the group grabbed Anaximander and headed back up the stairs.  They left the dispelling room before it got another chance to ruin their spells, and headed for the Library of Thoth.  There they introduced Anaximander to the animated bust of Stemelis, and let the two ancient guys keep each other company while they explored more.

Vael found a secret door north of the kitchen, which led to a dusty narrow corridor.  In the corridor was a skeleton with a chef's hat and a cleaver, who was angry at the intrusion.  He was only one skeleton though, and Vallium and Lacrymosa finished him off pretty quickly.  The skeleton had a scroll in its hand that turned out to be a recipe for baboon stew, which they took.  Continuing east, they found another secret door at the other end of the passage which led to an area north of the baboon cave.  They saw Yamki, the giant 4-armed baboon they had wounded before, leaning on a stick, standing in the entrance to the cave watching them.  Neither side made any threatening moves, and the group moved away from the baboons.

They went north to a room with a baboon statue and a door they had not tried before.  The door had a picture of an ear on it, so everyone listened to it, but heard nothing.  It was locked, and Vallium pulled out his collection of keys.  The first one he tried fit, and he unlocked the door, but a needle trap was triggered.  He pulled his hand out of the way in time to avoid being pricked, if there was ever any chance of the needle penetrating his armored gauntlets.  After some brief discussion of whether they could try to recover poison from the needle, they decided the risk to reward ratio was poor, and Vallium carefully broke off the needle and threw it into a corner.

The room to the north was large, with columns, a dais in the center, and an opening to the Great Chasm to the east.  Vallium checked out the chasm, while Ioannes and Vael looked at the dais.  There was an ivory oliphant, and a Mithric note that said to "Name Thyself and Whisper They Message and Thou Shalt Be Rewarded in Thine Ear."  Vael complied, but the message he received was some stupid song about 99 flagons of ale on the wall.  Ioannes also tried, and heard a very deep voice saying "Me hide pretty rock in water.  Nobody find it now!"

Looking over the chasm, Vael thought he saw something to the southeast.  He Levitated over the chasm to inspect a creepy magical soapstone idol of some kind of salamander, with empty eye sockets and a gaping mouth.  He came back and cast Flight on Vallium so that Vallium could carry the others over the chasm.  They avoided the statue and explored a cave filled about 3 feet deep in bones.  After not finding anything in the bones for a few minutes, Vael searched for secret doors, and found a concealed exit to the east.   He then cast Seek Magic, then Seek Earth twice, for gold and platinum.  When these spells revealed nothing in this room and platinum off to the east, he suggested they stop searching and go east.

It led to a large round cavern, with a shaft in the middle, in which there was a huge creepy triangular obelisk, clearly crafted not natural.  The obelisk continued up about 20' above their heads, and down farther than their Continual Light went.  Vael Levitated up to the top of the obelisk and saw a pentagram on top, with a metal coffer within the pentagram.  He avoided touching the pentagram and tried Apportating the coffer open, but it appeared to be welded shut.  He looked at the pentagram to see if it looked like platinum, but it looked more like silver to him.  

Vael flew back down, informed the others, then flew down the obelisk about 90' without seeing the bottom.  Not wanting to stray too far, he flew back up, cast Trace on his Returning Pebble, and dropped it.  It fell about 150' before stopping.  Vael then flew down to the bottom and found the obelisk sat in a natural cave, with nothing very interesting within range of his light.  Not wanting to explore solo, he returned to the others.

Leaving the obelisk, they went north down a narrow tunnel until they found two bodies, one wearing slightly glowing orange mail, in front of a stone chest.  As they inspected the bodies, a flaming skull flew out of the wall to attack Vallium.  He parried, and a quick combat ensued, where Vallium kept stabbing it (while not doing much damage, as his sword mostly passed through the flames) and Lacrymosa tried both arrows and her cloak.  Eventually Vallium scored three critical hits in a row and the skull was dispelled.  They searched the bodies and found a small magic silver eye, a few coins, a scroll, and a couple of potions.

Iaonnes went to open the chest but Vael yelled him away and tried using Apportation instead.  That failed because the chest was locked.  Vael thought he noticed some writing on the chest and cautioned the others against reading it.  Eventually he opened the chest with a Lockmaster spell followed by an Apportation, without setting off any traps.  Inside the chest were a bunch of silver coins, a few of the extremely valuable huge ancient octagonal platinum coins, a magic silver torc, another copy of the Litany of Light (this one much shorter and less fancy than the one from the library), a magic pick, and a few potions.

With their desire for treasure temporarily met, they went back to the Well of Light to try replacing the mirror and saying the Litany of Light.  Vael cast Flight on Vallium again so he could ferry the others across the chasm, and then everyone went back to the library.  Stamelis looked ready to have Anaximander taken off his hands, then was disappointed when Vallium just grabbed the huge mirror from behind the stacks and went right back out the door.  Vallium maneuvered the mirror onto the tripod while Vael and Ioannes gave helpful hints.  Eventually they placed it correctly and light went out in all directions, then Vael went to play with some of the secondary mirrors and bounce the light around.

With the mirror in place, Ioannes conducted the Litany of Light.  He went to the four small rooms surrounding the Well of Light, and in each room said the correct Mithric words.  His poor Mithric pronunciation was just good enough to trigger each effect, and he ended up with Infravision, an intelligence bonus, See Secrets, and Invisibility.  Vael and Vallium followed him around and repeated the rituals, and each of them got the same bonuses.  Lacrymosa did not participate.  With See Secrets in effect, everyone started running around looking for secret doors.  They found one northeast of the Ruby Chair, and another one northwest.

They opened the secret door northeast of the Ruby Chair (with the hidden catch on the floor made obvious by Thoth's blessing) and went east into a room, with an apparently accurate magically animated star field on the ceiling (despite it being daytime outside), and a couple of mosaics, one depicting the room with the Ruby Chair, another depicting some unknown large room with a bunch of statues.  They continued east to find a room with a couple of corpses, which Ioannes thought had been killed by some kind of strong impaling damage.  Both were wearing red ceremonial robes and hats.  One had a belt pouch, which they took without opening.  Another was lying on a big bronze key.  One was wearing magic boots.  They took all the loot but left the old rotted robes and hats.

Continuing east, they found a room containing two ibis statues.  The statues unfortunately did not seem to like visitors, and animated and attacked Lacrymosa, the only visible intruder.  Looking at their beaks, Ioannes now had a pretty good idea how the corpses to the west had been impaled.  Invisible Vallium had a free shot at the back of one of the constructs, and hit it squarely, but not hard enough to take it down.  Lacrymosa ran away while rapidly firing arrows, which the other construct dodged with amazing speed.  Ioannes and Vael tried to stay out of the way and stay Invisible.  After a few more tries, Lacrymosa finally managed to nail one of the constructs in the leg, slowing it and knocking it down.  It didn't dodge so well after that, and stopped moving after a few more arrows hit it.  Meanwhile Vallium landed a second, harder hit on the other ibis to slow it, then finished it off.  With See Secrets still running, everyone noticed a secret door on the south wall behind where one of the constructs had been standing, but nobody opened it.

In a hurry to go home, the party took a quick look to the east and saw a dead-end room with some spiral stairs down.  They then doubled back, closing the secret door behind them.  They went back to the Library, retrieved Anaximander, then went back to Gosterwick.  Vallium took Anaximander to the Temple of Mitra to see if they could help him, while Vael and Ioannes went back to the Arcane Practitioners Club to start identifying their loot.

GM's Comments:

That was an exceptionally productive delve.  All the previous visits to the Well of Light level had been interrupted by periodic baboon attacks, but with the baboons apparently herded into the Howling Caves to the southeast, there were fewer interruptions this time, which made exploration easier.

Using a Trace spell on the Returning Pebble was a creative way to figure out what the 3 dark mouths did, without actually risking crawling in.  Vael used a lot of caution this session, not touching the salamander statue or the pentagram on top of the obelisk, and trying to open every container with Apportation rather than his hands, but still got poisoned by the magic pool.

Anaximander seemed too crazy to give the party useful information, but Ioannes still dared climbing into the marble chair that they pulled Anaximander out of, and got an answer about the Litany of Light.

Replacing the mirror and performing the Litany of Light correctly got four useful magical effects with long (but not permanent) durations.  See Secrets revealed three secret doors, two in areas the group had walked past before without searching.  And Invisibility gave Vallium a free rear attack on the ibis construct, which contributed to quickly winning that battle.

Achievements:

• The Rescuers: 1 XP for pulling Anaximander out of the Oracle of Thoth and bringing him back to town
• The Litany of Light: 1 XP for restoring the mirror and performing the full Litany

XP:

• Exploration: About 17 new locations, 1 XP
• Loot: A few magic items plus 5 of those valuable huge ancient platinum coins, 2 XP
• Achievements: 2 XP
• Total: 5 XP

Next week:

They left a couple of secret doors and a staircase unexplored at the end of the session, so they'll probably be back.  Though there was some talk of trying to rescue Lillian, the canon of the Temple of Mitra in Newmarket, now that Vael has some knowledge magic that might make it easier to find her.  (Of course there was also talk of killing Plumthorn's halflings, but pretty much only from Lacrymosa, who always wants to kill the halflings.)

How I'm dealing with friendly NPCs in DFRPG Arden Vul

Arden Vul is full of NPCs, some of them in town, some of them in the Halls.  Some of those NPCs are actually adventurers who might be happy to visit the Halls.  Some are friendly to the PCs, and might be happy to accompany them.

But I'm not generally letting the PCs bring NPC companions into the Halls with them, for meta reasons.  My general rule is that I limit delves to 5 PCs, because each additional player or token slows everything down.  NPCs don't slow things down quite as much as PCs do, because they don't add additional players, just additional tokens.  But they still add significant overhead.  I tolerate this for key PC powers that they paid points for -- the GOAT's summoned animals are annoying to manage, but he's a druid and summoned animals are a major part of a druid's powers so if I allow druids I pretty much have to allow summoned animals.  But I'm not letting PCs buy the Ally advantage (which isn't in DFRPG, only GURPS, so it appears Kromm agrees with me), or pay hirelings to come into the dungeon with them.

So, basically, my rule is that if you rescue an NPC in the Halls, they may stick with the party until you get them back to town, and they may be your friend in town or even let you hire them in town to do non-dungeon jobs, but they're not coming back into the Halls with you.  Because I don't want to deal with a party of 15 dragging the game to a crawl, making it less fun for everyone, and eventually killing the campaign.  Of course like all rules there may be very specific exceptions -- if one particular NPC really wants to do one thing in the Halls, they may ask to come along for one targeted mission.  (As an example, Thalia, the ranger the PCs rescued in Session 21, really wanted to kill the vile 4-armed baboon Umsko.  But since Uvash already killed him, she no longer needs to go back to do that.)

Note that this kind of rule varies from campaign to campaign, and from game system to game system.  If I only had 2 players, I would let them each bring an Ally, and probably have them run each other's Allies.  If I were running a very lightweight system with no VTT maps, I could be freer with NPCs, as they would require less work to keep up with.  So I'm not saying that GMs who allow tag-along NPCs are wrong, just that it's something to carefully consider rather than blindly allow.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 21: The Library of Thoth

Date: 

Basilsday, 2nd of Gerakios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Cool, dry

Player Characters: 

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

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

Sister Valya "Basilisk" Hushbreaker, Halfling mercenary monk (ArchonShiva)

Significant NPCs:

Giant lizard

Many large albino baboons

Isocritis Half-Hand, Archontean wizard

6 baboon zombies

8 logovores

Magically animated head of Stamelis, Librarian of Thoth

Umsko, giant 4-armed intelligent baboon

Yamki, giant 4-armed intelligent baboon

Thalia, Thorcin ranger

Fetch, elderly Archontean slave prisoner

In Gosterwick, Vael paid Creon the pawnbroker to let him know about any particularly interesting items before putting them up for general sale.  Creon let Vael know about a Wand of Air Jet that came in, but Vael declined to buy it.  More graffiti appeared on the town walls, in a slightly different style than the previous graffiti, this time depicting some chickens killing a huge red dragon, then running from tiny halflings.  Vael and Uvash went to the Demmasday market looking for Elven and Dwarven rations.  Neither found what they were looking for, but Octavian's Cucina had some Arden Vul Cakes available, which Vael purchased.  Nobody was quite sure of the origin of the cakes, except that they were occasionally found in the ruins of Arden Vul, were highly nutritious if not very tasty, and lasted forever if kept dry.

Vallium, newly nominated as the Right for Riches Company's official destination planner, decided that they would go down the Well of Light and look for the Library of Thoth.  With Michael still off in the mountains somewhere, they hired Basilisk, the tiny halfling monk with the piercing high-pitched kiai shout.  As usual, Basilisk asked to ride on someone's shoulder rather than walking all the way to Arden Vul on her very short legs.  When they reached the Long Stair, however, she somehow walked right up the side of the cliff.  Vael Levitated, and everyone else climbed up the steep and treacherous path the regular way, without incident.

As they walked north through the ruins of Arden Vul, a giant lizard attempted to ambush them from behind a tree.  Its attempt at surprise failed, and Vallium stabbed it.  Noting the lizard's thick hide might be useful, Vallium skinned it, and Vael used his Levitation to carry the hide up and stow it in the top of a tree.

Continuing north into the Forum of Arden Vul, Vael expressed suspicion about the giant oak tree growing out of the center of the ruined pavement.  Ioannes took a close look at the tree and said it was really old, but looked like a regular oak to him.  Uvash climbed the tree and didn't see anything odd.

As they reached the Well of Light, Vael first dropped several very bright Continual Light stones down the well to try to scare away light-averse baboons.  He then cast Flight on Vallium, who could carry Ioannes then Uvash down the Well.  Vael Levitated down, while Basilisk walked down the side of the well, but both were much slower than Vallium's Flight.  Ioannes, alone at the bottom of the Well, heard the loud hooting of baboons to the east.  He raised his shield and waited, until Vallium returned carrying Uvash.  The three then saw four baboons charge.  Vallium, with Flight still active, counter-charged and shield rushed one, but failed to knock it over.  The four baboons tried to swarm him, as Uvash and Ioannes ran up to help, but Vallium's thick scale armor kept him from getting hurt as he crippled one baboon and knocked another unconscious.  The survivors broke and ran, and nobody pursued, as they waited for Vael and Basilisk to arrive.

Once the group was together and the baboons were out of earshot, they went due south toward where they thought the Library was.  They saw some double doors at the end of the passage.  Everyone listened at the doors, but nobody heard anything.  Vallium went through his collection of keys, and one of them (which had been taken from Gerrilad) unlocked the door.  Opening the door, they saw a Continually Lit library, with 6 hooded figures seated at some nearby tables, a human in robes with one withered hand sitting at a librarian's table in the center of the room, then a row of pillars across the room, and some stacks of shelves filling the southern part.

The robed human gestured for silence and then whispered "Who are you and why are you in my library?"  Vael and Ioannes were not very happy that this guy claimed to own the library, and Ioannes failed to whisper his reply, so the man gestured toward the doors and indicated that they should continue their conversation outside.  When they got near the door he made it clear that he was an wizard, and that this was his library because Gerrilad, the owner of this level, gave it to him.  Vael and Vallium countered that they had killed Gerrilad, so it was their level and their library now.  The man said that, despite that, he was an archmage and they were not and if they did not leave he would have to demonstrate his powers.  Vael took affront and Blinked behind the man, then tapped him on the shoulder.  At that point a potentially fatal electrical shock moved from the wizard's shoulder to Vael's hand, but Vael's Bless spell caused his hand to jerk away supernaturally quickly, as a bolt of lightning arced to the floor instead.

Isocritis the wizard, affronted that he had been flanked and also that Vael had cheated by bringing divine assistance to a wizard fight, waved to his allies sitting around the tables, and the robed forms revealed themselves to be zombified baboons as they scampered to his assistance on all fours.  However, Vallium was directly behind Isocritis, and took advantage of the opportunity by shoving the blade of his broadsword into the kidneys of the wizard while he was distracted by Vael.  Isocritis's spellcasting ability failed to protect him from the mighty stab, and he collapsed, dead.

One of the baboon zombies tried to punch Vael, who Blinked back to the other side of the doors, out of reach.  Vallium, standing in the doorway, started stabbing any zombie within reach.  Uvash and Ioannes both stayed behind the doorway.  8 creatures that looked like baby baboons, who had been hiding within the stacks south of the pillars, ran forward, with one of them yelling "Need New!"

When he recovered from the disorientation of Blinking, Vael cast Grease inside the doorway.  He followed this up with Create Fire in another area, after making sure there were no books there.  The Grease and Fire channeled his allies as much as they did the enemies, though, and Ioannes and Uvash remained stuck behind Vallium.  Basilisk, with her wall-walking ability, suffered no such constraints, as she walked along the wall over the fire, throwing flash nageteppos, then a smoke nageteppo, and continually shouting stunning kiais at the nearest targets, to both stop them from attacking and make them more vulnerable.

As the baboons gradually went down, Ioannes went into the east side of the room around the fire, while Uvash crawled over the Grease into the west side.  The baby baboons kept yelling "Known!" and "Need New!" as they adorably tried to kill everyone.  There was some speculation about what the baboons wanted.  Vael tried speaking Elvish, and the baboons liked that a lot, and all grew a bit bigger.  Fortunately for the Left for Loot Company, the baby baboons didn't have time to get too big before they were all dead.  One of them landed a solid claw hit on Ioannes, but otherwise the party was uninjured.

With the fight over, the group started looting the wizard's body and then searching the room.  There were hundreds or even thousands of books in the stacks, so a thorough search would take forever.  Vael suggested locking the doors and searching until they were done, but Ioannes wanted to go grab the statue head of Stamelis the Librarian and bring him to the library.  The group went east to Gerrilad's quarters were Stamelis was, and while they were there they stuck Isocritis's body in the mulch pit.  Vallium dragged the heavy bust back to the library and set it in a place of honor on the librarian's station.

Ioannes then had a conversation with Stamelis, while Vael searched for secret doors, and Uvash started going through the stacks looking for interesting books.  In addition to the books, Uvash found a large mirror, which appeared to be related to the Well of Light.  Eventually they decided they should go find more treasure, and Vael cast Seek Earth for platinum, which showed there was some platinum a bit northeast.  He then tried finding gold, but the nearest gold was down a level.  He then cast Seek Magic, which revealed some magic in the stacks.  He went and found Isocritis's spellbook.  He tried Seek Magic again and found another spellbook, this one belonging to Tresti Iredell, the half-elven mage they had rescued from Gerrilad's prison.  Not wanting to keep burning expensive spells, Vael went through the stacks looking for more magic books, but failed to find any.  He tried Seek Magic one more time and the nearest magic was a bit to the southeast.  That did not jibe with their map, so they thought there was probably a secret door somewhere.

Heading northeast toward the platinum, the group found a room containing a statue of a baboon.  There was a passage heading south, and they heard the hooting of baboons that way.  They also heard the deeper grunts of giant baboons, giving commands.  They spent a few seconds casting spells to prepare for a combat, then they saw two giant baboons charging toward them from the south, followed by a mass of smaller baboons.

Vael cast Create Fire in the middle of the pack of smaller baboons to split the baboons in half and prevent more reinforcements from arriving.  That left 2 huge and 3 normal-sized baboons still in the fight.  Vallium chopped an arm off Yamki, one of the huge ones, as Basilisk used kiai to stun him.  Yamki realized he had been defeated, and surrendered.  This enraged the other huge baboon, Umsko, who slammed into Yamki from behind in frustration, then charged.  Uvash dodged and parried Umsko's attacks, then Basilisk stunned him.  With both nearby opponents stunned, Uvash made a huge all-out attack targeted at Umsko's skull, connected cleanly, and killed the giant baboon.  That caused all the baboons north of the wall of fire to stop fighting.

Some negotiation commenced with Yamki.  Vael's main argument was that all the baboons could die, or they could peacefully let the party have the run of the level and take whatever treasure they wanted, and the baboons could live and even be provided with food.  Yamki was badly wounded, though, and passed out before the negotiation reached a conclusion.  Uvash bandaged the giant baboon to keep him from bleeding to death, and then the group searched the room to the east.

In the room was a naked human woman, chained to the wall, trying to free herself from her shackles.  Vallium called Vael over asking for a Lockmaster spell, but the woman indicated that Umsko had the key, so they went back to Umsko's body and searched it, then used the key they found.  The woman crawled under a bed and pulled out a lot of equipment that she said was hers, and then hurriedly put on some clothes and some scale armor and started picking up weapons.  She said her name was Thalia, that she was a ranger, and that this was her gear.  She thanked them for freeing her, and said she had a lot of baboons to kill.  They informed her that Umsko was already dead, which calmed her down a bit.  She thanked Uvash for killing Umsko, and managed to not charge through the fire into the remaining masses of baboons to the south.

Thalia found a few other things under the bed that she said were not hers, and threw a scroll case to Vael, and pointed Vallium at a sack (which contained the platinum coins that Vael had detected, as well as some gold) and some potions.  With Umsko's room looted, they crossed the hall to Yamki's room, where they found a heavy ebony chair, which Vael judged as not valuable enough to be worth its weight.  They also found a silver goblet and a small wooden box containing silver coins, a potion, and a magic pebble.  Remembering a previous magic pebble, Vael said to avoid touching the pebble until it was identified, and Vallium just took the whole box.  A pile of rags in the corner surprisingly contained something magical, and Vael pulled out a magic cloak and added it to the loot pile.

There was one more door in the passage, which led to a storeroom.  Inside was an old human man, who was chained to the floor, and cowering at their approach.  Vallium tried Umsko's key again, and it worked.  The man was not thrilled to be freed, and didn't seem to speak Archontean.  He hooted a bit and hid in the corner, then tried running for the door at record-slow speed.  Vallium grabbed the old man, determined to rescue him rather than letting him run off and get killed.  The room was full of various things that the baboons ate, most of which were in no way appetizing to humans, so they didn't take any of them.  But when looking behind some crates, Ioannes spotted a magic bullwhip on the floor, and grabbed it.

At that point the party decided to head for home.  They went north and west back to the Well of Light, then went into the library to see if the mirror fit into the Well.  It did, but they put it back in the Library for now, because they could lock the doors.  Vael once again cast Flight on Vallium, and he ferried most of the others up the Well, in addition to Thalia and the old man.  When they got back to Gosterwick, Vallium took the old man to the Temple of Mitra, who told him that the man's name was Fetch and he had apparently been a slave to the baboons for most of his life, and didn't know many words in any human language.

GM's Comments:

Neither of the random encounters I rolled, the giant lizard or the troop of 4 baboons, were much of a challenge.  I thought the baboons might be a challenge since they attacked when the party was split while moving down the well, but Vallium had too much armor for the baboons to easily hurt him.

Isocritis was a challenge, and he might have killed Vael except for the Bless spell.  But he got himself surrounded, and a surrounded wizard is in deep trouble.  He probably should have stayed behind his baboon zombies, but he was trying to keep the invaders quiet to keep them from making the logovores grow.  With hindsight maybe he should have had a long, loud conversation instead, so that when the logovores appeared they were huge, but he was overconfident.

The logovores were a really neat monster, and the players eventually figured out how they worked (they grow when they hear enough new words) based on the monster name (leaked by Foundry VTT; maybe I need to find a way to avoid showing token names) and the "Known!  Need New!" and the way they grew after Vael spoke Elvish.  But between Basilisk's stunning and Vallium's stabbing, they didn't last long enough to grow to be a real threat.

The 4-armed giant baboons are tough except most of them are too overconfident to use weapons.  Fighting with your bare hands without the Striker advantage is a good way to get your arm cut off by an aggressive parry on your own attack.  If Gerrilad had just taught them to use giant clubs they might have killed a couple of PCs by now.  This is one of the challenges of converting D&D monsters to GURPS; sometimes the flavor carries over but the power level changes.

With more baboons defeated, we'll see if the PCs have the run of the Well of Light level, or if there are still enough baboons willing to fight for their territory.

Achievements:

The Rescuers: 1 XP for rescuing Thalia from Umsko.

XP:

• Exploration: 5 new locations, good for 1 XP
• Loot: Isocritis's and Yamki's and Umsko's stuff.  Not a huge amount, but enough for 1 XP
• Achievements: 1 XP
• Total: 3 XP

Next Week:

I expect they'll come back to the Well of Light and try to finish searching the Library or play with the mirrors or explore more.  But every time I expect them to focus on the same job for two weeks in a row they surprise me, so we'll see.

How I Do Surprise, Initiative, and Turn Order in DFRPG

One of the DFRPG Arden Vul players asked how I do surprise and initiative.  I think I do them pretty much by the rules, but then most GMs probably think that, and yet they still do slightly different things because it's impossible to write RPG rules that are perfect and complete.  (This is the RPG version of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.  If you can write perfectly clear rules for it, it's not complicated enough to count as an RPG.)

I use "Initiative" to mean the order in which combatants move in a role-playing game, and "Surprise" to indicate a special situation at the beginning of some RPG combats where some combatants don't get their normal actions until they recover.  ("Turn order" is a synonym for "initiative.")

GURPS initiative is different from initiative in most other role-playing games. Because there are active defenses, everyone's turns overlap.  Also, because all the turns overlap, there's a fixed turn order for the duration of a combat, rather than constant re-shuffling.  Surprise means that some combatants suffer Mental Stun and lose their turns until they recover, then proceed normally after that.  Dungeon Fantasy RPG slightly tweaks the basic GURPS surprise rules (see Exploits page 26).  I follow the DFRPG rules, but there's a certain amount of GM judgment required.

The first thing to consider is surprise.  There are three possibilities for a two-sided fight: nobody can be surprised, one side can be surprised, or both sides can be surprised.

Rule zero of surprise is that if there's no chance of surprise, you don't roll for it.  If two groups approach each other across clear terrain in broad daylight, you're done.

When there is a chance of surprise, you have to think about whether only one side can be surprised, or both can.  If two groups approach each other across clear terrain in pitch darkness, and one of those groups has Darkvision, they have a chance of surprise and their opponents do not.  Life isn't fair.  On the other hand, if two groups who've both been sneaky both turn a corner at the same time and end up meeting each other at close range, they both have a chance at surprise.

The rules say you can only achieve surprise if you're being sneaky (meaning you move at half speed), or you have some advantage that makes you sneaky by default (like Invisibility).  If you're loud, brightly lit, and stinky, then you don't get to roll.

For a one-sided contest, you roll the sneaky side's worst Stealth versus the other side's best applicable detection roll: Per (a good default if you have no specialized senses or detection skills), Vision (assuming you have a chance to see your opponents), Hearing (assuming you have a chance to hear them), Smell (I don't allow this for humans unless the opponents are extra stinky, but something like a guard dog with a really good sense of smell could use this to detect invisible and silent foes), Observation (if you've trained it up higher than your base senses), whatever the GM agrees makes sense.  If the sneaky side wins they get surprise, otherwise no surprise.

(Note that, for me, worst Stealth literally means the worst Stealth in the group.  I don't use the "part of the problem or part of the solution" rule to let a mostly sneaky group ignore a non-sneaky member, unless they actually take appropriate action like having a quiet person sneak ahead while leaving the loud person behind.  This means that every adventurer should have some points in Stealth, and every adventuring party should figure out how to get the least stealthy person in their group better at it.)

For a two-sided contest, it's a contest of each side's worst Per-based Stealth.  This is a clever way to combine both Perception and Stealth into a single quick contest.  Losing side gets surprised, and on a tie both sides are surprised.  (I don't think I've ever seen mutual surprise in several years of running DFRPG, but it'll happen someday.)

Once you're done computing surprise, you mark everyone who was surprised as Mentally Stunned, and then you do the usual turn order.  GURPS turn order is Basic Speed first, ties in Basic Speed broken by highest DX, and ties in both Basic Speed and DX broken by a die roll.  I also let players freely move down (later) in order, but once they do so, they can't move back up, as that could potentially be exploited to get two turns in a row.  (So, if your slower friend is in your way, you can either take a one-time Wait maneuver to Wait until your friend goes, or you can permanently move below your friend in turn order.  The advantage of the latter is that only some maneuvers are valid after a Wait, while if you just delay your spot in the turn order you can take any maneuver.)

The basic effect of Mental Stun is that you Do Nothing on your turn except roll to recover from Mental Stun, and all your defenses are at -4 as long as you're stunned.  So being surprised can get you killed.  The roll to recover is an IQ roll, with +6 for Combat Reflexes, so a rule of thumb is that dumb combatants need Combat Reflexes.  (Smart combatants might want it too, but they already spent all those points on IQ...)

With FoundryVTT keeping track, I'm happy to do individual initiative.  Groups of identical monsters will all be clumped together in turn order anyway, since they have the same Basic Speed and DX.  If a player controls multiple tokens and they're not clumped together and this bothers the player (because they prefer to move all their tokens together) or the GM (because the player loses focus when it's not their turn and this means getting their attention back more often), then a player can move all their tokens down in turn order next to their slowest token.  But this is definitely a place where house rules are fine -- if you want to do side-based initiative, you can.  You just have to decide whether the side with the fastest member goes first, or the side with the slowest member goes last.

I should also mention where new combatants slot in.  Basically, if you magically summon something in the middle of a fight, I don't let it do anything immediately on the turn it appears, but it slots into its normal spot in the turn order the next turn.  (Summoning sickness from Magic the Gathering in my GURPS?  It's more likely than you think.)  On the other hand, if something comes onto the battlemap from offscreen, it's probably in the middle of a Move maneuver in its first turn (though it could be Concentrate instead if teleportation is involved) and then can take any normal maneuver when its turn comes around again.

Finally, I do not modify turn order due to effects during a fight.  If someone casts Great Haste on you, you get two turns, but they're right next to each other, not spread evenly across the turn order.  (So as long as you know that nobody on the other side took a Wait maneuver, you can cheesily All-Out Attack on your first turn and then take a maneuver that allows a defense on your second turn.)  If you get slowed and only get to move every other turn, you stay in the same place in the turn order, just with a Do Nothing every other time.  If you drop your backpack or pick up a wounded companion and your encumbrance level changes, that effects your Move and Dodge, but you still stay in the same place in the turn order.  The only things that modify turn order are Wait maneuvers (where you temporarily delay your turn until triggered, take your action immediately, and go back to your usual spot in the order), and voluntarily moving down in turn order (which is usually a once-per-combat thing to move after an ally.)

As an aside, I like the DFRPG surprise rules better than the GURPS Basic Set surprise rules, because they make "no surprise" more likely, while in the Basic version, if surprise is possible at all, you only get "no surprise" if the modified d6 rolls are exactly tied.  (So, assuming reasonably close surprise modifiers, only about 1/6 of the time.)  On the other hand, I like that the Basic rules give a reason to have a leader (many PC parties clearly do not) and for the leader to have Combat Reflexes and Tactics and high IQ.  So maybe I'll write my own surprise rules someday that combine the things I like.  But I'm avoiding house rules in Arden Vul, so using my interpretation of the DFRPG rules as written.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 20: The Outer Caverns of Set

Date: 

Basilsday, 26th of Masporios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Hot, dry

Player Characters: 

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

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

Ashe "GOAT" Maykum, Goblin mercenary druid (ArchonShiva)

Significant NPCs:

Creon, pawnbroker

Egrk, caveman

Many other cave people

6 small chasm cephalopods

8 giant boring beetles

8 huge spiders

1 roper

Several unseen humans, including a female human fighter

Summoned manta rays, bat swarms, goats, boars, and warhorses

Vael suggested pushing the group's weekly delves into Arden Vul back a day, from Demmasday to Basilsday, to give an opportunity to shop at Gosterwick's Demmasday market, the biggest of the week.  Everyone agreed, but none of the peddlers at the market this week had anything very exciting for sale.  Vael did find some Delver's Webbing at Creon's Curios, and paid Creon to be notified of any new interesting items that came in before they went on the shop floor.

Michael was off in the woods somewhere, so the Right for Riches company hired the Grudge Brigade mercenary on call, the goblin druid GOAT.  GOAT brought along his recent invention, the Living Wheelbarrow, a wooden wheelbarrow containing enough living plant material that it could be affected by the Levitation spell.  He showed his creation to Vael, who immediately bought one.

The group set out early on Basilsday morning, confusing the gate guards who were used to seeing them every Demmasday.  They approached the waterfall without seeing anything of note, and took the small bridge over the Swift River about a mile south of the falls, to check out the west side of the cliffs and see if they could find Egrk's people.  After a bit of hiking they found a large cave at the base of a cliff, with a couple of primitively dressed warriors with spears standing guard outside.  After some rather unfriendly grunts, some more warriors came out of the cave, one of whom spoke a bit of Thorcin.  After a mention of Egrk's name, someone went to get Egrk.  Ioannes cast Gift of Tongues to enable fluent communication, and explained to Egrk that they were interested in trading for information.  Egrk talked to an older cave person and then said they needed metal weapons, metal tools and (after a female yell from inside the cave) some metal cooking pots.  The party said they'd bring metal stuff to trade next time, and asked if they could have any information now.  Since they had previously rescued him from being baboon chow, Egrk relented and pointed out a few spots on the cliff face.  He pointed at one spot halfway up the cliff and said that both the snake men and the lizard people came out of that one.  He pointed far across the waterfall and said the barking dogs came out of the entrance over there.  He then pointed back to the south and said the blue knights on big horses came from that way, and were jerks.

After the spell expired and communication became difficult again, the party waved goodbye and headed back east toward the waterfall.  Since they had GOAT along, they decided to go behind the waterfall again.  Vael first used Shape Earth to make a hole in the side of the cliff for the wheelbarrow and closed it up again.  GOAT summoned two large manta rays to tow people, and cast Swim and Breathe Water on someone, while Vael had a Ring of Free Action that let him move through water rapidly.  Using the combination of manta rays and magic, the group ran or swam or were towed through the tunnels behind the waterfall, emerging in the grotto.  After a pause for breath, they submerged again and went up some stairs to the north into the dry halls.

Vallium wanted to check out some stairs to the west.  GOAT dismissed the manta rays and summoned some goats and boars and bats, and then the whole group went west to a broken door.  Vallium pulled out his platinum token of Arden and inserted it into a slot next to the broken door, which didn't have any visible effect because the door was already smashed.  They proceeded past a statue of Arden with huge hammers in both hands, surrounded by smashed (and previously looted) corpses.  The statue did not animate.  They went out a door to the north, then started up the stairway up that they had previously found but not explored.

Vael cast Levitation on himself, and everyone else started trudging up the stairs.  When the stairs finally ended after about 700 feet, they emerged into a large circular room that was once tiled in blue and was currently partially tiled in blue and full of fallen blue tiles on the floor.  There was a large magical octagonal pillar in the center of the room, with bas reliefs carved on most of the sides:

• A handsome man with a neat beard, with empty spherical eye sockets
• A stereotypically Archontean looking middle aged woman, with large empty disc-shaped eye sockets
• A monstrous-looking creature that resembled Gog, with an open oval-shaped mouth
• A caricature of a priest of Thoth, with small empty disc-shaped eye sockets
• A goblin with a large hole where its missing nose should be

Vallium had some small gold grooved discs that he hoped might match one of the holes, but they did not.  Everyone went through their small items looking for anything that was an obvious match, but nobody had anything that looked like an obviously good fit.  Someone suggested bringing different kinds of coins and gems next time.

After abandoning the pillar, they explored west but hit a dead-end caved in passage.  They then went south and heard some giant rats scampering ahead.  The cave to the south had a couple of smaller natural pillars, one with some stuff on top.  Vael levitated up and looked at some spikes and ropes and poles without taking them, then noticed and took a healing scroll.  They headed northwest through more rough passages and saw a worked floor to the north.  There was some kind of magical force field blocking entrance to a room to the west, so Vael used Shape Earth to dig a small hole around it, and GOAT went in.  He saw a large basket, a bunch of rope, and a few crates of weapons with Imperial seals.  He opened the crates and found some shortswords, spears, and knives, all of which the group took.  Vael decided to sabotage the ropes, attempting to disguise the damage so that some Set cultist might find out about it by the rope snapping at an inconvenient moment.

Vael sealed up the ends of the tunnel into the storage room, and then the group continued north and saw two statues flanking some stairs leading up and north.  Ioannes and Uvash agreed the statues were Set.  Vallium thought the exit to the cliff might be that way, but Vael (who claimed to have Absolute Direction) said the exit would be to the south.   So rather than going up the stairs, they turned around and went back south, then west.  They found a skeleton with two magic wands, one of them a broken Settite Was stick and the other unknown.  They took both for later investigation and then went south to a chasm, deeper than their Continual Light illiminated.  With Levitation still on, Vael flew out into the chasm to investigate, but saw several small Chasm Cephalopods flying up from below to greet him.  He yelled a warning and flew back north to the others.  A short fight ensued, with the cephaolopods losing, but taking some bat swarms with them.

Deciding that exploring the small chasm solo wasn't the safest idea, they doubled back and returned to the room where they'd found the gear on top of the pillar.  From there they headed south, and saw some bright natural light ahead.  They also spotted a small passage heading east.  They went to the exit and saw a chest containing another large basket along with ropes, pulleys, and red signal lanterns.  They looked out to get an idea of where they were on the cliff face, then Vael decided to sabotage some more ropes.

Heading back into the cave, the group went east down a short passage, filled with slippery purple fungus.  GOAT used his naturalist skills and an Identify Plant spell to ascertain that this was indeed slippery purple fungus, with Mithric name Fungus Slippius Violetus, edible but with no known medicinal uses.  They sat down to rest, but their rest was quickly interrupted by a giant beetle coming to investigate.  It was hungry enough to attack, so a fight broke out.  Seven more beetles joined the fight, but the beetles lost.  There was some discussion of trying to fashion armor out of beetle carapace, so Vallium tried removing some large chunks from one beetle corpse, but didn't do a very neat job of it and ended up with a bunch of small chunks.  GOAT looked closely at the beetles to see if they were natural animals that he might be able to summon in the future, but they were unnatural.

They spotted a hole in the floor, too deep to see the bottom.  Vael dropped a glowing rock into the hole and saw a finished floor about 35' below, covered with more purple fungus.  A minute later, another large beetle appeared to investigate the glowing stone.  They decided not to go down into the hole and face more beetles.  Vael decided they weren't finding treasure fast enough, so he cast Seek Earth looking for platinum, and thought there was some about 15 yards to the northeast.

After some rest, they headed east through some more caves, and GOAT spotted a huge spider staring at him with too many eyes.  As the goblin jumped back, the spider and several of its friends advanced.  Another fight ensued, though the spiders were squisher than the beetles so it didn't last as long.  Uvash got bitten at one point, but fortunately the mandibles did not penetrate his armor, so his poison resistance was not tested.  When all the spiders were dead, GOAT checked to see if the spiders were summonable animals, and was again disappointed to find that they were unnatural.

Vallium, who had borrowed the Ring of Free Action from Vael at some point, waded through the spider webs looking for treasure, and found several corpses (3 human and 3 lizardfolk) wrapped up in webs.  He passed the bodies out to the others for investigation and kept sifting through the webs.  The total take was a few coins, a small soapstone idol, some red Set scale armor, a shortsword, and a letter about someone named Theskelon, with an addendum in different handwriting about his tomb.

After resting, they headed north then west and found a large cavern, with a lot of stalactites and stalagmites, a magical mosaic on one wall depicting a bridge, and a few fresh corpses, one of them half eaten.  While investigating, Vallium felt some sticky ropes hitting him from above, then a large creature dropping and biting him.  The bite was vicious, but Vallium's thick scale armor protected him enough that he was still able to fight back.  The ropes didn't stick because of the Ring of Free Action.  Vallium yelled a warning, and everyone else eventually focused and joined the fight.  The roper attempted to rope Vallum a couple more times before being certain that he was unnaturally slippery and unropeable.  By then Vallium had stabbed it a couple of times, and the roper decided to leave and find an easier lunch.  Vael cast Great Haste on Vallium, enabling him to chase down the roper.  Meanwhile, GOAT summoned a heavy warhorse and sent it stampeding into the monster.  The roper was knocked down and stunned, just in time for Vallium to catch up and stab it several times.  The roper killed the summoned horse, so GOAT summoned another one, but it wasn't needed, as Vallium killed the roper before the cavalry arrived.

Vael thought there were about where the platinum should be, but didn't see any, so he cast Seek Earth again, which said the platinum was inside the roper corpse.  At that point they dissected the beast, and found one huge ancient octagonal platinum coin, along with several gems and a magic ring.  While Vallium and Vael rested, the rest of the group kept chopping up the roper hoping for more treasure, but eventually gave up.

There was a worked passage heading west, blocked by a cave-in.  Vael decided to use Shape Earth to dig a tunnel through the cave-in.  As the tunnel broke through, they heard voices from the other side, yelling for Gordy and Quade to stand guard, and a lot of noise.  Not wanting to get ambushed, Vael made a large Concussion missile and threw it through the hole, and then GOAT sent in a couple of bat swarms to clean up.  A few minutes later, they went through the hole, and found one freshly dead female fighter (with bleeding ears and a fatal number of bat bites) and a lot of dead bats.  There was an interesting (but immovable) frieze of a Settite scene on one wall, and a pile of heavy loot.  The rest of whoever had been there were gone.  They looted the body, and then went through the pile of stuff to find several packs of bulk food, a couple of casks of brandy, a few pelts (one of them surprisingly enchanted!) and a heavy carpet.

They grabbed all the loot and got ready to head back to Gosterwick.  Leaving the room to the west, Vallium spotted a tripwire on the floor, and did not trigger it.  Given a choice between just taking the basket down or climbing down 700' of stairs then going underwater, they decided to take the basket.  However, Vael had sabotaged the ropes, so they first had to repair the ropes.  Once they thought the ropes were sturdy enough, they lowered two people at a time down in the basket, and finally Vael levitated himself down the cliff face.  They dug the wheelbarrow back out of the cliff and used it to bring the pile of loot back home.

GM's Comments:

Vael started the session wearing the Ring of Free Action, but he passed it to Vallium when they reached the slippery purple fungus (because Vael was Levitating so wasn't worried about bad footing).  Vallium was very lucky he was wearing that ring when the roper randomly chose him as the victim, because all the binding rope attacks automatically failed.

Other than the roper, nothing else surprised the party despite their noise and bright lights.  The saw both the beetles and spiders in time to defend themselves, and they were the ones who dug through a caved-in wall, scared whoever was on the other side, and killed their rear guard.

I was amused when they sabotaged both the basket and backup basket, and then decided the basket was the best way home.  Planning!  However, knowing that something is sabotaged and exactly how is a good first step to repairing the damage, so nobody fell.  (They were one critical failure away from the repair failing, but they thought of that possibility and sent the GOAT, who had Levitate, first.)

Achievements:

None

XP:

• Exploration:  20 new locations, good for 2 XP.
• Loot: No really amazing items but a lot of stuff, 2 XP.
• Achievements: 0
• Total: 4 XP

Next week:

I have no idea where they are going, and neither do they.   They discuss it a bit during the week, make no clear plan, and then wing it at the last minute.

At this point they've found the following areas:

• Surface Ruins of Arden Vul
• Basement (they think they have probably fully explored this)
• Well of Light
• Howling Caves
• Halls of Thoth
• Great Cavern
• Caves presumably leading to the Forum of Set
• Gog's Cave
• Bottom of Privy Shaft
• Caves behind the waterfall

They also have the Scorpion Teleporter, which they have used 3 times and ended up in 3 places.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 19: The Pool of Donkey Ears

Date: 

Demmasday, 18th of Masporios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Hot, dry

Player Characters: 

Michael J. Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

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

Significant NPCs:

Several of Kronos's Thorcin guards

Kronos, innkeeper at the Sign of the Broken Head

Lankios, ancient Archontean hermit

Zombie porter

Many stirges

Gray ooze

4 Baboon skeletons

Human skeleton

Several halfling toll collecting gangsters

Ibis-headed guardian of Thoth

Animated statues of Sekhmet and Osiris

Lion construct

Ioannes was not available, so the group visited the Grudge Brigade to hire a mercenary.  The mercenary on call was the annoying elf Coinbase, who immediately started trying to sell everyone on his new illusion-based tactical assistance system and also on the GOAT's new living (and thus able to be Levitated) wheelbarrow, available for sale soon.  As part of his continuing attempt to make friends and influence people, Vallium bought another (regular) wheelbarrow load of food.

When they reached the Long Stair up to the ruins of Arden Vul, Vael and Coinbase decided to Levitate themselves up, while the others roped themselves together and started hiking.  The ropes were a good idea, as Uvash slipped and went right over the edge, but Vallium and Michael yanked him back up.

They pushed the wheelbarrow all the way to the north end of the ruins, where Kronos's guards occupying the northern gate towers hailed them and engaged them in a brief conversation.  Nobody had any significant news to share, so they headed west to the Broken Head.  Kronos himself was outside supervising his staff, and Vallium sold him half of his wheelbarrow of provisions at cost.  Kronos was happy to make the deal and asked if anyone wanted to come into the inn for a drink, but Vael said that they didn't want to drink and delve but might come back later.

The group doubled back east and south near the Pyramid of Thoth, and Vallium showed them the stairs leading down into a nearby ruin.  They left their wheelbarrow by the stairs, and Vallium took everyone north to the room with the altar that had a secret compartment that he had not figured out how to open.  Vallium showed them where the panel was, and how to trigger a poison needle trap.  He expected Vael to magic it open, but instead Vael just figured out the trick and hit the panel in the right spot.  Inside was a bag containing a bunch of small red gems and a small magical silver feather token.

Vallium then took the group east to Lankios's room, but the hermit was not home.  Vallium left a bunch of food by the old man's pungent stew pot, and Vael wrote Lankios a note.  Next Vallium took them west to the room with the zombie porter, warned everyone that there was a friendly zombie inside and not to kill it, and then opened the door.  The zombie once again slowly walked right up to Vallium, and Vallium demonstrated putting a backpack on the porter and then having the porter slowly follow him around wearing it.  They didn't really need the porter, though, so Vallium took his backpack back and closed the porter in the room again.

Next they decided how to deal with the room full of stirges.  Michael had a serpent amulet to protect him from fire, and Vallium had a fire resistance potion, so the plan was to create a bunch of fire and have them fight the stirges from within it, while Vael strategically moved the flames around to torch stirges.  This plan worked pretty well; Vallium and Michael killed a few stirges, Vael's magical fire burned a couple more, and the rest fled up a chimney.  Vael then used Shape Earth to fuse the chimney shut so the stirges couldn't return to the room.  The group then tore the stirge nest apart, finding some coins, some magic incense, a small magic bronze baton, and some adventurer's diary.  Once all the loot was removed, Vael burned the stirge nest.

There were several stone vats in the room to the south, which had been left intact last time.  Vael was suspicious that something might be hidden in one of them, so he had Michael tip the three full vats over, so they could thoroughly search them.  No treasure was found, but the vat full of something spoiled made the whole room stink, to the point where Vael needed to cast Purify Air.

There were two unexplored doors to the west.  One just led to a hallway, and the group walked around a bit completing their map.  Another led to a privy, with the smelly privy shaft going deeper than the range of their Continual Light, and unexpectedly containing ladder rungs.  Nobody felt like climbing down a ladder, but Vael cast Wizard Eye and put a dim Continual Light on it, then sent the Eye down to scout.  The shaft went down about 500 feet.  At the bottom was a natural cavern, with exits east and west, and a paved area to the south containing a sarcophagus and four burned corpses.  One of the corpses had what appeared to be magical mail armor, along with a longsword and a metal shield.

That was enough treasure that they couldn't just leave it, so they discussed whether it would be better to cast Levitation on both Vael and Coinbase, or Flight on Michael or Vallium.  (Vael could not easily maintain Flight on multiple people at once.)  Michael volunteered, so he dropped his backpack and shield to reduce his load, and Vael cast Flight on him.  Michael zoomed down the shaft, and noticed a ring tied to a ladder rung near the top.  Not wanting to waste spell duration, he yelled to the others about the ring and resumed flying down, while Coinbase Levitated down a few feet to grab the ring.  When Michael got to the bottom he looked around a bit, then headed to the corpses to take their stuff.  He quickly grabbed the sword and shield and was partway through removing the mail armor when he saw a gray ooze creeping along the ceiling to attempt to drop on his head.  Michael was much faster than the ooze, so rather than risking a solo fight, he flew around it to the far end of the cavern, waited for it to come get him, then flew back around it to the corpses and finished taking the mail, then flew back around it again and up the privy shaft.

While Vael rested to recover from maintaining Flight, a couple of the others went to fetch the wheelbarrow, put most of the loot in it, and stash it behind a door where other adventurers were unlikely to find it.  Vael cast Seek Earth for gold, and sensed some gold about 15 yards south.  Everyone searched for secret doors on the southern wall, and eventually found one.  It was locked.  Vael found the keyhole but nobody had a key that fit, so he Lockmastered it open.  Vallium opened the door, into a room with a human skeleton with an axe and 4 baboon skeletons.  The skeletons attacked, a brief fight ensued, and the adventurers won, with a shield rush from Coinbase into the human skeleton's back knocking it down and making it stop dodging so effectively, so Vallium and Michael could chop it up.

The room didn't contain the expected gold, so everyone searched for secret doors again.  This time, the secret door was unlocked, and behind it was a small room with a bunch of golden altarware, a small coffer full of silver coins, and a small ivory and ebony statue of Thoth.  They took all the treasure and added it to the pile in their wheelbarrow.  Vael tried another Seek Earth looking for gold, and another one looking for platinum, and a Seek Magic, but all the nearest treasures appeared to be up on the surface or another level, so they decided this one was done.  Vael was unhappy with his empty map, though, so he had the others guard him while he circled the level mapping.  When they reached the pool of sludge, he filled a vial with a sample to check out in the alchemy lab back at the Arcane Practitioners' Club in Gosterwick.

Finally done mapping the basement, the group went north to the spiral stairs down, then down the stairs to the halfling level, then through the illusory wall.  Vallium led the group south through the remnants of the one-way door that he and Thronebreaker had destroyed, then east through the room where they had killed a dust elemental, to a previously unexplored door.  Everyone listened at it, then they opened it and found a room bisected by the Great Chasm, with a narrow bridge crossing it.  Vael and Coinbase Levitated over, while the others carefully crossed the bridge.  To the south was a halfling guard post overlooking the chasm, and they heard the sounds of halflings yelling about their lights and calling more guards.  In the center of the room was a large statue of Thoth in baboon form, with both arms on pins.  There was a door on the north wall and two doors on the east wall, and listening revealed no sound behind any of them.  Someone tried one of the doors, but it was locked, and Vael thought something on the door looked magic.  At that point Vael started manipulating the statue arms into various combinations of positions.  A couple of positions seemed to cause noises far away, or maybe that was just the halflings.  Another position caused a secret door on the east wall to open, and an angry ibis-headed construct of Thoth came out to attack.  The fight was five on one, though, so the construct didn't last very long.  After it was dispatched the group searched the small secret room it had come out of, but found nothing.

Vael went back to playing with the statue arms, and eventually managed to open one of the eastern doors.  They went east down a hallway, then north into a room with three sarcophagi.  Uvash tried a spell to detect undead, and didn't find any.  Vallium took the lid off a sarcophagus, and a bunch of darts flew out at him.  One was directly on target, but his amulet of missile protection caused the dart to curve around him.  Inside the sarcophagus was a mummy.  They tore the wrappings open to find some jade jewelry and a garnet gem.  Vallium repeated the process with the other two sarcophagi, with similar results.  Vael carefully scooped up all the darts into a pouch, hoping whatever black substance they were covered with was worth something.

They continued down the passage to the east and found a huge room to the north, containing 6 large statues and one huge statue.  Uvash identified all seven statues for the group: Sekhmet, Set, and Anubis down the right side; Osiris, Horus, and Isis on the left, and a much bigger statue of Thoth in the north center.  A few minutes after everyone came in, the statues of Sekhmet and Osiris moved into the center of the room and started smashing each other.  The Thoth statue yelled "Halt" in Mithric (which only Uvash spoke, and not well) and both statues froze, with Osiris dropping his (human-sized, magical-looking) flail.  Thoth then yelled something like "a smart one must choose" in Mithric.  Vael could not resist, and picked up the flail.  At that point the lion on top of Sekhmet's head animated into a separate construct and attacked Vael, while the rest of the group found themselves completely frozen in place and unable to act.  The lion construct tried to bite Vael, and in response he Blinked 3 yards straight up, out of its reach.  After making sure there was no way the statue could reach him, he then calmly started dropping acid, Alchemist's Fire, and small Concussion spells onto the statue until it was destroyed.  As the unfair fight finished, the Thoth statue yelled "Halt" again, and everyone unfroze.  Vael felt some kind of divine blessing make him slightly tougher, and kept the flail.

The group continued east, and saw some orange Continual Light coming from a room to the south, containing a fountain.  Breaking their usual directional rules, they headed for the light.  The fountain appeared magical.  Uvash took a sip, and his ears transformed into donkey ears.  This did not appear to affect his hearing either way; he just looked weird.  (Though he had a chain coif, so he really only looked weird if he took it off.)  The rest of the group decided not to take a drink.

Everyone went west from the fountain, then south into a room with 3 more sarcophagi and a bunch of small holes in the floor.  Everyone except Vallium and Uvash stepped out of the room.  Uvash tried to detect undead, and didn't find any.  Vallium opened a sarcophagus lid.  A bunch of spears came out of the floor, stabbing the armored legs and feet of both of them.  Fortunately, none of the spears managed to penetrate their armor.  Uvash left the room, and Vallium climbed up on top of the sarcophagus, out of spear reach, to continue his looting.  The first sarcophagus contained another mummy, along with some rusty mail and a shield.  Vallium unwrapped the mummy to find more jade jewelry.  He repeated the process with the other two sarcophagi, avoiding the spear holes, and got some more jewelry as well as a couple of maces, a scroll, and a small pouch of silver coins.

Judging that they had enough treasure for the day, the group carefully traced their steps back over the chasm bridge, through the illusory wall, up the spiral stairs, and retrieved their wheelbarrow.  They then headed up to the surface ruins of Arden Vul, south to the Long Stair, down the cliff face, and back to Gosterwick.  Their luck held on the hot summer day, and nothing attacked them on the way home.

GM's Notes:

Arden Vul's got 1100 pages of intricate level design with complicated factions and deep history, but it's also got magic pools that can give you donkey ears, like some TSR adventure from 1978 written under the influence of Thoth-knows-what.  Fantastic.

I thought Vael was the PC least suited to the solo combat scenario against Thoth's pet lion statue, but he demonstrated that if you can fly, your opponent can't reach you or run away, and you have any ranged attacks with lots of ammo, you will eventually win.  No style points, but he won.  Also, "up" is a valid direction for Blink if the ceiling is high enough, and this is particularly useful if you have Levitation on.

Achievements:

None

XP:

• Exploration: 9 new locations,  1 XP
• Loot: Some coins and gems and jewels and gold and silver.  A few minor magic items.  The most valuable thing by far was the fine mail armor that Michael dragged up from beneath the privy.  2 XP
• Achievements: None
• Total: 3 XP each.  Vael also got 1 extra HP for the statue fight.

Next Week:

Maybe they'll keep exploring this level and see if anyone else can get donkey ears.  Maybe they'll go back up to the baboon level and look for the Library of Thoth.  Maybe they'll go back down the privy.  I have no real idea at this point, and I suspect the players don't either.