DFRPG Session 41: Theft and Counter-Theft

 

Date:

Tothsday, 27th of Fidios, 2993 AE

Weather: 

Cold, party cloudy, snowy

Player Characters: 

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

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

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Significant NPCs:

Arcane Vengeance, elven adventuring party

Five Fingers of Destiny, adventuring party

Roger the Rapier, mage and leader of the Five Fingers of Destiny

Jenks, halfling member of the Five Fingers of Destiny

Bottleneck, Goblin sergeant

Akla-Chah, Rudishva AI psychologist

Basil, Right for Riches employee

Computer of the Beacon

Many Varuda Zombies

Varuda Guardian statue

Tresti, half-elven mage, working for the Rarities factor

Onyx, cat genius

Many Set guards

Many Set cultists

Stephania, Set High Priestess

Unknown male goblin thief

Unknown female human thief

Several Kaliyani

The Plan:

• Meet with the Five Fingers of Destiny to exchange an ankh key for the secret of the Thoth treasury
• Explore southwest of the Rudishva garden area beyond the Rudishva teleporter

What Happened:

The Right for Riches company had an appointment to meet the Five Fingers of Destiny at noon by the Glory of Weskenim, to exchange an ankh key for the secret of the Treasury of Thoth.  Suspicious and not wanting to be tracked from the Beacon, they hiked from Gosterwick to Arden Vul rather than using their Teleport Rugs.  Halfway down the Pyramid of Thoth to the Glory of Weskenim, they ran into Arcane Vengeance, who were resting after casting some detection spells.

They continued down to the Glory of Weskenim, where the goblins let them enter.  The Five Fingers of Destiny were there waiting for them.  Roger proposed that Bottleneck hold the ankh key, and give it to the Five Fingers after they showed the secret of the Treasury.  This was agreeable to everyone, and Roger gave Bottleneck a gold piece for his assistance.

Roger led both parties east through the former halfling portcullis, then north to the guard room adjoining the Great Chasm.  There he asked Jenks to light up the statue on the other side.  Jenks pulled a sling bullet with Continual Light out of his pouch, and slung it across the chasm into the darkness.  It handed a couple of yards away from the ibis-headed statue of Thoth on the other side.  Roger Levitated across the chasm, with Vael following.  Roger lifted the statue's left arm until it was facing straight ahead, retrieved the Continual Light bullet, and flew back across.

Roger then led both groups west, past the Glory of Weskenim, to the western Thoth ibis statue.  Again he raised the left arm to eye level.  He turned around and went east to the Glory of Weskenim, but as he started his speech, one of the goblin guards ran up to the central ibis statue and raised the left arm.  This caused the statue to slide aside with a loud grinding noise, as Roger glared at the goblin.

Recovering, Roger pulled out the Continual Light bullet and held it up as he want down the stairs, then down a long passage to the northwest.  This led to a room with a smashed Thothian construct.  Roger pointed to the door and said that it had been trapped, but Jenks had found and disabled the trap.  He led them inside to a larger room, with frescoes of baboons on the walls.  He said the room had been full of ancient coins, mostly copper.  He then showed them a secret door on the eastern wall, leading to an empty, undecorated room.  He said the best treasure, including the golden cat statue now owned by King Weskenim, had been hidden there.

The Right for Riches company explored the empty treasure rooms for a bit, and Vael used a charge on his Wand of See Secrets to look for more secret doors, but they did not find anything, and returned to the Glory of Weskenim.  Roger collected his ankh key from Bottleneck, then led the Five Fingers back east toward the Great Chasm, saying they had more exploration to do.

The PCs went back up the stairs through the Pyramid of Thoth, but Arcane Vengeance was gone.  Once they reached the surface, they went southwest then crossed the small bridge over the Swift River to the Beacon.  Everyone but Vael then stepped through the Rug, and Vael scooped up the Rug then Blinked through the hidden roof over the staircase down to the Beacon.

After a few words with Basil, they used the yellow Rudishva identity plaque to activate the eastern teleporter to the secure treasury.  They used the steel bars they had left there to prop the one-way iris door open, then went south through the main treasury, then west through the garden.  There Vallium used a silver identity plaque to open the secret door to the southwest, then led the group down a narrow tunnel, and again used the silver plaque to open another secret door at the end, to the room where they had killed the zombies last delve.

They saw an iris door to the south, and again it opened to Vallium's silver plaque.  Beyond was a narrow passage partly blocked by a rockslide.  As they went through, they heard some hissing conversation to the south.  A group of lizardmen had spotted them, and one of them said something in a language they did not know.  Vael's red command bracelet translated it for him as a desire for peace.  Vael tried speaking and gesturing at the lizardmen, but they didn't understand him very well.  The lizardmen left the room to the east.

After searching the room for a bit and not finding anything, the PCs followed to the east, and spotted some stairs down to the north, the passage continuing east, and a passage south to a loud room.  The loud room contained a couple of gratings, with spinning blades beneath, creating airflow.  Uvash had a few bizarre theories for what those devices did.  Vael called Akla-Chah on the command bracelet, who said they sounded like air circulation fans.  The group bypassed the stairs down and went east then south.  There they found three recently deceased corpses, with some arrows sticking out of them.  A close look at the arrows revealed the arrowheads were bone.  The corpses were mostly looted, but two of them had scroll cases.  Ioannes read both scrolls inside, said one was a mage scroll and the other was a clerical scroll, and took both.

They went north from there, to a large room with a high ceiling, containing many pillars and ledges at different heights.  Two the west were a couple of alcoves containing Rudishva teleporters, but both were disabled, by the combination of a slab of marble placed over the disc on the floor, and a piece of transparent material covering the silver square on the wall.  Vael used Scry Gate on both.  One teleporter led to a dark room, and the other to a dimly lit passage with another teleporter nearby, but nothing else visible.  After a brief discussion, they decided not to re-enable these teleporters yet.  They took a passage northeast, which ended at another iris door.  Vallium's silver ID opened it.

Beyond the iris door was a large octagonal room.  On a plinth across from them was a huge bird statue, about 20' tall, which reacted to their appearance by moving toward them.  Vallium held up the silver card, and the statue turned around and went back to its platform.  He kept an eye on the statue while the others explored the area.  There was an open door to the west, a closed door south, wide passages north and southeast, a pool of water to the northwest, and several dead dwarves on the ground around the statue.  Checking the dwarf corpses, Ioannes was pretty sure they'd all been killed by a large piercing weapon, such as a giant stone beak.  Around the corpses were some weapons, including an axe, a couple of warhammers, and a magic pick.  The dwarves also wore mail, and one had a few gems and a copper plaque with a rough map and some dwarven runes.  Uvash translated the runes, then they took everything and put the weapons and armor in a Bag of Holding.

Leaving the bird statue, they went west down some stairs into a large natural cave.  There was a stream running through the cave, widening to a pool in the center, and there was a pile of bodies in front of the pool, in various unnatural colors.  As Vallium left the stairs, the bodies started to rise, as zombies, but a variety of bright colors.  It appeared they were once bird-men, as some still had beaks and wings.  Vallium and Uvash fought them, while Vael cast first Wall of Lightning to do some damage, then Shape Air to knock the zombies back into the lightning once they came through it.  The combination destroyed all the zombies within a few seconds.  Vallium then dove into the pool and came up with some decayed Rudishva laser weapons, some bronze daggers, and the bones of one of the bird people.  He was very cold, and went through a Rug to to Beacon to dry off by the magic Tripod of Heating.

The central cave was surrounded by many smaller caves high up on the sides.  Vael Levitated up to explore them.  Most were empty, but one contained a few bodies of the bird men.  One was wearing some kind of high-tech full-face helmet with a transparent face plate and holding a laser pistol.  Another held a high-tech dart-thrower.  Vael Levitated Ioannes up, who looked at the bodies and declared that the one with the helmet had died to multiple dart wounds, but it was not clear why the bird men had fought each other, or what had killed the other one.

They flew back down to the main cave, then took a passage north to a worked room with Rudishva architecture.  To the east were a couple more teleporter alcoves.  Vael tried Scry Gate and saw darkness, then tried sending a Continual Light pebble through and found the teleporters did not work.  The central room contained a table with many small machines similar to the one in the Beacon's lounge, which Vael's command bracelet said were NutriVore food machines.  To the west was a container producing heat and light, and holding the skeletons of six baby bird-creatures.  Again the command bracelet was able to talk to the machine, and indicated that it could be turned off or the temperature raised or lowered.

There was an inscribed plaque on the wall, in some alien glyphs that looked somewhat like Rudishvan, but which Vael could not puzzle out.  Ioannes cast Gift of Letters to get a translation "Varuda! We soar ahead of the rest! We locate the enemy! We report! We always serve with faithful loyalty!"

Vael and Ioannes sat down to rest and recover from their spellcasting.  While they were resting, Ioannes heard a message inside his head: "This is Tresti.  Your cat is at the Rarities Factor, freaking out.  He wants to take me back to the Arcane Practitioners Club.  I'll go check that out, after I finish this thing I'm working on."  Ioannes explained the message to the others, and said he had to go back to Gosterwick and check on his cats.  They pulled out the purple Rug, and he and Uvash took the purple Rug back to the Beacon, then tried to take the green Rug back to Gosterwick, but the green Rug failed to teleport them.

Meanwhile, Vael and Vallium retraced their steps back to the Secure Treasury, removed the steel bars propping the iris door open, and took the teleporter back to the Beacon.  Once everyone was reunited, Vael tried the green Rug again, confirmed it didn't work, the cast Seeker looking for the other green Rug.  It wasn't in their apartment at the Arcane Practitioner's Club.  Somehow, it was underground, in a room, where a male goblin and a female human they didn't know were talking to a red-haired middle-aged woman Vael had seen once before, in the Temple of Set.  He followed up the Seeker with a Trace, which said the Rug was down and west, probably somewhere on the Set level.

At that point the Right for Riches company abandoned their previous plans and decided to go get their Rug back.  They discussed the plan of attack a bit.  Frontal assault seemed slow, so they decided to try stealth.  Vallium had an invisibility potion and a flight potion, and Vael had Larel's Cloak and his Levitation spell.  They would go through the Great Cavern to the secret passage leading to the Settite jail, then Ioannes and Uvash would go back to the Beacon through the purple Rug, Vael and Vallium would try to sneak past the Settiite guards to the room with their Rug, then they would do whatever it took to get it back.

There were four Set guards halfheartedly guarding the top of Set's Way between the Temple of Set and the Forum of Set.  Vallium and Vael managed to invisibly fly past them.  However, near the bottom of the stairs, the frost giant head mounted to the wall detected them and started yelling about invisible intruders.  While guards ran up the steps yelling to get someone who could see invisible intruders, Vael cast Lockmaster to try opening a lock in a gate to a side passage leading toward the Rug.  One of the guards almost stumbled into him while he was casting the spell, so Vallium had to attack the guard to protect Vael.  He dispatched the guard with one sword blow, but this caused him to become visible.  Vallium started flying west, with several guards in pursuit.  When he got out of sight he used the Ring of Illusion Disguise to disguise himself as a Settite guard, and then when some guards came around the corner, he pointed north.

This bought enough time for Vael to unlock another locked door to the west.  They went through a large round room with sand on the floor, flying near the ceiling in case something was under the sand.  They went through a couple more hallways before finding the room where the Trace spell said the Rug was.  Vael opened another locked door and they went inside, then set down the purple Rug so Ioannes and Uvash could join them.

They were in a fairly opulent room, with a table with a couple of ewers of wine, a scroll case, an empty armor rack, a writing desk, and some screens blocking off the south end of the room.  Their Rug was in one corner, tightly rolled up.  Vael grabbed the Rug.  Vallium explored beyond the screens and found a bed, an armoire, and a scary devil head.  Uvash drank some of the wine, which appeared to be poisoned!  His dwarven constitution let him survive, and he dumped out the rest of the wine on the floor.

Vael Magelocked the door, and they set out a Rug and started stealing everything small enough to carry.  That included the ewers, the crystal wine glasses, the scroll cabinet, the devil head (which appeared magical), and an entire armoire.  There was some makeup sitting on a shelf.  Rather than taking it, Vallium stepped through the Rug to the Beacon and grabbed some of the poison they had taken from Plumthorn's halflings, then came back and tried to poison some lipstick.

With the room well-looted, Vael used a charge from the Wand of See Secrets to find secret doors, and found two, on the east and south walls.  The one on the east wall was difficult to open, and led to a small room full of treasure.  There were three open stone bins, full of gold coins, platinum coins, and small gems.  Vallium deadlifted each bin and carried it through the Rug to the Beacon.  There was also a magical suit of heavy plate armor, a magic bow, another magic helmet, and a small metal box.  The See Secrets spell revealed a hidden trap on the metal box, so they just left it, in case it might explode or something.

With the treasure room looted, they took the other secret door to the south, which led west, to a room containing several of six-armed snake-men, presumably the kaliyani they had heard bad things about.  The group immediately turned around and closed the secret door, rather than engaging.  They decided to sneak out the same way they snuck in.  Uvash and Ioannes would go back to the Beacon through the Rug, where Ioannes would put on a Ring of Friendly Defense and turn himself blind to make Vallium invisible.  Vael and Vallium would then sneak back up the stairs.  This time, the guards were on alert, hunting for them, but apparently not many Settites could See Invisible, as they flew right past a lot of them.  The magic giant head was still yelling, and the four guards at the top of the stairs were alert but not alert enough to catch them.

When Vael and Vallium reached the Beacon, the group decided that was enough delving for one day, and they sat down to test some Rudishva technology.  Vallium alerted both clerics to keep an eye on him, then took one of the Rudishva Pep Pills.  This made him very fast for a few seconds, then slow and sleepy for a couple of hours.  He wandered into the library to take a nap on the couch.

Vael took a Rudishva laser rifle to the bridge and asked the computer for schematics and instructions until he though he understood the basic operation.  Then he took it out to the stairway where he couldn't hit anyone or anything important, installed a power cell, took off the safety, pointed the laser rifle at a wall, and pulled the trigger.  A bright beam came out and scorched the wall.  Vael draw a target on the wall with chalk and tried another shot, missing the target but getting in the right general direction.  He thought he now understood the laser rifle enough to safely practice with it.  He then repeated the process with one of the laser pistols, a similar but smaller weapon.  The scorch mark it made on the wall was smaller, but otherwise it was similar in operation.

Vael grabbed the belt which the computer had identified as a "personal defense array", asked the computer questions and looked at schematics, then put the belt on and pushed the button.  A shimmering field appeared around him.  He asked Uvash to test it.  Uvash, not wanting to hit Vael with his magical mace, went to get a torch from his bag.  But then Vael realized he could not breathe.  The air inside the field was getting stale.  He reached for the power button, but the field would not turn off.  Quickly thinking, Vael cast a Purify Air spell, which let him breathe while he continued trying to turn the belt off.  It took a couple minutes of fiddling and another casting of Purify Air, but he eventually managed to disable the field, and could breathe again.  He labeled the Personal Defense Array as broken and dangerous.

That was enough playing with high technology for one day.  They waited until Vallium was rested enough to walk, then hiked back to Gosterwick to check on the cats.

GM's Comments:

The sneak attack to recover the Rug went better than I expected.  The PCs were lucky that the room with the Rug was temporarily empty and that the guards kept missing rolls to find them.  (Granted, being invisible and flying above the floor makes you harder to find.)  Using the wand to find the secret doors was also a good move, as they would have been difficult to detect manually.

In addition to running around a scary number of Settite guards, the PCs dodged two potentially fatal traps, the poisoned wine and the defective force field belt.  Saved by dwarven poison resistance and the Purify Air spell, respectively.

It appears the war against the Settites has escalated.  Killing their friend Susarra was one thing, but stealing one of their best magic items really crossed a line.

Achievements:

None

XP:

• Exploration: 17 new locations, 1 XP
• Loot: A lot.  2 XP
• Achievements: 0 XP
• Total: 3 XP

Next Week:

Vallium will not be around, so the war against the Settites will await his return.  In the meantime, the others will talk to their cats and the magic cat statue, try to find out who robbed their apartment for the Settites, make their monthly food delivery to the baboons, and explore more of the Halls.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 40: Taking Command

Date:

Tothsday, 20th of Fidios, 2993 AE

Weather: 

Frigid, party cloudy, snowy

Player Characters: 

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

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

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Significant NPCs:

Rudishva floor cleaning robot

2 Rudishva skeletons

Assassin vine

10 large zombies

Akla-Chah, Rudishva AI psychologist

Basil, Right for Riches employee

Computer of the Beacon

The Plan:

• Explore the rest of the Rudishva Bastion
• Magically scry the Rudishva teleporters
• Explore the Great Cavern at the Bottom of the Great Chasm

What Happened:

Rather than taking their usual week of downtime between delves, the Right for Riches company went back into the Rudishva Bastion the next day.  They had left one of their Teleport Rugs behind in the Bastion, behind the force field, so it was easy to go back.  Vallium went back through the Rug wearing Ioannes's Salamander Amulet, used the yellow card to dismiss the force field, and walked through the fire trap to the conference room.  There the others came through the Rug to join him.  They went north and west and saw the floor cleaning robot sitting in its niche, all done cleaning up the mess they made the day before.  They went east and looked at the high-tech console, but decided not to interact with it yet.

They went back west to an iris door propped open by a burned Rudishva corpse in a blue jumpsuit.  Ioannes examined the corpse and saw that it had been burned in multiple locations by some kind of narrow energy blasts, not by a single large fire covering the entire body.  Inside the room were a couple of manikins of a large human (with leathers, furs, and a spear) and a heqeti (with primitive jewelry).  At the foot of each manikin was a plaque with Rudishva glyphs.  Beyond the manikins, the room contained a bed, a desk, and a wardrobe, all made of some kind of white metal.  There was also some artwork on the wall, an amazingly detailed picture of some colorful stars.

Vallium, Vael, and Ioannes all ran to investigate the wardrobe, and an explosive trap went off, catching all of them.  Ioannes and Vael were severely injured, Vallium less so because of his armor.  Uvash, who had been standing back, ran into to heal Ioannes and Vael before they passed out.  Once he healed Ioannes, Ioannes pitched in to heal the others, and then they drank some healing potions.  At that point, Vael decided to search the room for traps before touching anything else.  He  did not find any more traps, but he found a small panel under the bed with many buttons, each with glyphs that he thought were Rudishva numbers.  They searched the rest of the room and found some Rudishva clothing and some confusing high-tech gadgets.  They took everything portable (including the manikins!) through the Rug back to the Beacon.  The art changed every few minutes to a different picture, and they spent a few minutes looking at the pictures, but didn't figure out how to take the screen off the wall without damaging it, or make it cycle pictures faster, so they left.

They continued west down the hallway and found a storage room, with many mostly empty shelves made of strange white metal.  On the shelves they found a few pieces of waxy paper with Rudishva glyphs on one side, and a few small metal cylinders with Rudishva glyphs on one end.  They took everything for later translation by Akla-Chah.

At the west end of the hall was another iris door, which also opened to the yellow card.  This one contained another desk, another bed, another wardrobe, an orange table, a couple of chairs, and another screen with variable landscape art.  The desk contained a high-tech gadget that matched the description of the Tablet of the Beacon.  It also contained huge, magical, gold and silver -- no, actually platinum -- keys.  And a large egg-shaped device on thin legs with one of the small cylinders sticking out of one side.  Vallium started putting everything into Larel's Sack.

There was another iris door on the back wall of the room.  This one opened to a small room containing a sink with  a spout and two buttons with Rudishva glyphs, an area with a nozzle on the ceiling and a drain on the floor and buttons with the same two glyphs, and a third device with a lid and a single unlabeled button.  The third device contained water in the bowl under the lid.  Uvash declared it looked like a holy water dispenser and drank some of the holy water.  The others were less certain and declined to drink any.  The button on that device flushed the water down the drain and caused the water to refill.  The buttons on the others dispensed hot and cold water.  They decided that the smaller one was for face- or hand-washing and the larger one was for body washing.  They left the bathroom, with Uvash still insisting that the middle appliance was so high quality it must serve a religious function.

They went back east to an iris door on the north wall.  This one also opened to the yellow card.  Within were a couple of huge stone chairs, facing the other way.  Two large horned skeletons jumped up from the chairs to investigate the intrusion.  Vallium waved the yellow card at them, and this worked, causing them to sit back down in their chairs.  At this point the party started examining the room while Vallium kept an eye on the skeletons and kept holding the card up, in case they forgot who he was.  There was a 40' wide shaft to the north, with white marble walls and silvery caulk, going up into darkness.  The shaft was magical.  There were several broken human skeletons in the shaft, some with magical equipment.  Ioannes examined the skeletons in the shaft and decided they died of small-area blunt force trauma, like from multiple attacks with a mace attack, rather than from a single long fall.  Vael saw that the shaft went up to the limits of his light, but did not fly up to investigate farther.

The equipment on the bodies included some magical mail, a magic staff, some potions and scrolls, and a magic ring.  There were also some tiny ancient silver pennies and large ancient gold solidi scattered around.  The group looted everything, while Vallium kept an eye on the skeletons.  There was an exit from the west of the room to another room, containing a pool of opalescent liquid.  Nobody had an empty vial on them, but Ioannes had some back in the Living Wheelbarrow they'd left in the Beacon, so Vael went back through the Rug to get the wheelbarrow.  He used an Apportation spell to dip the vial in the liquid and collect some.  Interestingly, the liquid cling to the outside of the vial as well.  Vael stoppered the vial without touching the liquid and put it in the wheelbarrow for later investigation.

The group all left the room, with Vallium still waving the yellow card at the skeletons to assert his right to be there.  They went east and opened another iris door, which contained another bathroom with the same three fixtures.  They went north to one more iris door, and found another bedroom, with a small portable black mirror, some more of the small cylinders with glyphs on one end, some orange Rudishva jumpsuits, and a bag made of a strange substance, containing several tetrahedrons of unknown purpose.  They once again took everything portable.

With the Bastion searched, they went back to the Rug to the Beacon, dropped off all the items they had gathered, and showed the possible Tablet of the Beacon to Akla-Chah.  She agreed that it looked like the Command Tablet and that if the bridge computer recognized it as genuine, its holder would assert command over what was left of the Beacon.  Vael went to the bridge and plugged the Tablet into one of the slots in the arms of the central chair.  One of the black mirrors on the wall lit up with a nataraja figure, which addressed him in Rudishva as Captain.  He ran back to Akla-Chah, who addressed him as Captain Vael and asked if he needed any information or had any orders for her.  He instructed Akla-Chah that Ioannes, Vallium, and Uvash were also to be treated as officers of the Beacon, and Basil as crew.  He asked if she could translate for the computer, and she said that she could, but that if they spoke Archontean in the bridge for a while, the computer would probably figure it out.

After some time talking to Akla-Chah and the bridge computer, they decided to try to figure out the teleporters.  They all went back through the Rug to the Bastion, then bypassed the fire trap again to the teleporters.  Vael cast Trace on the Returning Pebble, then put it on the silver disc on the floor, then touched the yellow card to the yellow panel on the wall while not standing on the disc.  The pebble disappeared.  Vael concentrated on the Trace and felt that the pebble was almost 1500' up, near the surface.  He went back through the Rug to the Beacon and checked both teleport rooms.  The Pebble was sitting in one of them.  Having verified basic operation, they decided to try again with a live (but expendable) test subject.  Vael and Ioannes went through the other Rug to Gosterwick, then stumbled through the cold from their apartment to the Grain House.  There they bought a live chicken and some chicken feed.  Ioannes was able to restrain it well enough to get it back to their apartment, through the Rug, and back to the Beacon.  Vael put some feed on the silver disk, let the chicken walk onto the disc to eat, then put the yellow card against the panel, causing the chicken to teleport.  Going through the Rug to the Beacon, they verified the chicken was alive on the other disc.  They then put some bricks on a teleporter disc and found that that could not teleport anything onto it while it was occupied.  However, just a small pebble on a disc was not enough to prevent teleporting to it.

Having tested one teleporter, they repeated the process with the other two teleporters in the Bastion and the other teleporter in the Beacon and found that they sent the Pebble to various other places in the Halls.  Done with the chicken, they gave it to Basil to cook for dinner.  Finally, they all went through the one between the Beacon and the Bastion, two at a time.  They then decided to use the other teleporter in the Beacon and ended up in a small room with an iris door along one wall.

The objects in the teleporter room included another pair of large gold and platinum keys, a large horn of some strange creature, some odd item shaped like a Rudishva hand, a Rudishva-sized full body armored suit, several more of the tetrahedrons, another of the high-tech turrets like the ones that had been guarding the entrance to the Bastion (but inactive), a couple more of the small cylinders, and a large high-tech chest that was too heavy to lift.  Everyone hid in the corners, and Vallium pushed the button on the chest.  It opened with a hiss of air.  Inside were shelves containing many rows of small identical-looking boxes.  Vael came over and pulled out one box, which was transparent and contained some seeds, with Rudishva glyphs.  They kept that box to identify and closed the chest.  They took the other items back through the Rug to the Beacon.

The room to the south contained three large bins, but they were empty.  There was a frieze on the wall showing various species of people bringing treasure to the Rudishva.  There was a bit of treasure left in the room, including an obviously broken larger Rudishva weapon, a smaller Rudishva weapon, a magical all-wooden spear, and a bunch of silver and steel bars.

While three of them were investigating the objects, the iris door closed behind them, and they could not open it again, even with the yellow card.  Uvash, on the other side but without the yellow card, could not open it either.  They had the Rug, so they went back through it to the Beacon, teleported back through the teleporter to join Uvash, then opened the iris door again with the yellow card, and this time they put some steel bars from the room through the iris door to keep it open.  (They had previously noticed that Rudishva iris doors would not close on an object or person.)

An iris door on the west wall of the souther room surprisingly led into a huge, magically lit room, containing a garden of many strange plants, with exits in many directions.  As they looked at the garden, Uvash wandered too close to the wrong plant, which sent out some tendrils to try to grab him.  He blocked the attack, and a battle with the assassin vine began.  It was a short battle, as the plant was bad at dodging Vael's Create Fire spell, Vallium's sword, and Uvash's mace.  After a few seconds, the vine was dead, and Vael moved his magical fire out of the garden to avoid burning any more shrubbery.

To the south was a room containing a large swiveling chair holding a Rudishva corpse in a blue jumpsuit.  Surrounding the central chair were many small podiums with black mirrors on top.  The Rudishva had both another yellow Rudishva identity plaque, and another silver one.

West from the garden was some kind of library, with many receptacles for books on the west wall, but only three scrolls remaining, all in Rudishva Glyphik, which they could not read.  There was also a book on a table, which seemed like a work in progress, showing translations of about 250 Rudishva glyphs to Mithric.  A few other desks appeared to have some kind of technological devices built in, but they were inert.

To the north were a few small sleeping cells, each with a bed.  There was also another teleportation disc, this one with a silver panel on the wall.  Vael pulled out the Wand of See Secrets and activated it, then ran around the area to magically look for secret doors.  He found one in the southwest corner of the garden, and one in the southern wall of the eastern treasure building.  Both secret doors opened to a wave of the yellow card.  The one in the southern wall led to another teleporter.  The one in the southwest corner led to an oval passage about 6 feet tall, so a bit tight for a tall human, or very small for a Rudishva.

They followed the oval passage, with Vallium in the lead.  It crossed a small stream that had worked its way through the passage from side to side.  The passage led to a dead end, which Vael assumed had a secret door.  Rather than bothering to search for it, he just waved a yellow card near that wall until a secret door opened.  Beyond was a room full of dead bodies of several types, some Varuda, some Varumani, some Heqeti.  There were also a couple of Varuda pennants on the walls, and some inactive technological consoles.  While they investigated, the bodies woke up and attacked.  They were zombies!  The zombies initially had Ioannes and Vael surrounded, but Ioannes blocked the first attack then ran back to the entrance behind Vallium.  Vael used Blink to escape to the north, then used Larel's Cloak to turn invisible and hide.  That let Vallium and Uvash fight the zombies.  Once surprise was lost, it was a one-sided fight: Vallium killed about eight of them, and Uvash killed a couple more.  When everyone was sure the zombies were all down for good, they searched the room, and found a couple of maps pinned to corkboards on the wall.  They took the maps.

Doubling back to the garden room, Vael sent the Returning Pebble through both remaining teleporters, finding that one went down a ways, and the other just went about 20 yards east.  He used Scry Gate to look through both, and saw that the lower one led to darkness.  After sending a Continual Light rock through, he was that it led to a small room with just the teleporter, off a short corridor with iris doors on both ends.  The other teleporter led to a large, brighly-lit room with at least two other teleporters, a couple of nataraja figures like the one they had guarding the stairs to the Beacon, and a wall of fire.

That felt like enough exploration for one day, so they went back into the closet with the teleporter to the Beacon, removed the steel bars propping the iris door open, and teleported back.  They had a lot of new items to identify.

GM's Comments:

It gets a bit tedious to come up with appropriate descriptions for high-tech objects.  I'll be happy when the PCs are familiar enough with them that I can just say "Rudishva toilet."

I was impressed that Vallium thought to use the yellow Rudishva identity plaque to avoid combat with the skeletons.  It was not obvious that would work, but it did.

I'm continually amused by how the PCs are so extremely careful sometimes, and just rush into danger at other times.

Achievements:

• Regalia: Found the Command Tablet a.k.a. the Tablet of the Beacon: 1 XP

XP:

• Exploration: 14 new locations, 1 XP
• Loot: Lots of Rudishva tech, some magic items, and some coins.  Probably 2 XP.
• Achievements: 1 XP
• Total: 4 XP

Next Week:

• Meet with Roger the Rapier and the Five Fingers of Destiny.  Give them an ankh key for the secret of the treasury of Thoth.
• Explore south past the room with the zombies.
• Explore the other two teleporters in that area.
• Explore the stream.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 39: Diving for the Yellow Card

Date: 

Lunday, 19th of Fidios, 2993 AE

Weather: 

Frigid, party cloudy, snowy

Player Characters: 

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

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

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Thrainor "Thronebreaker" Ironvein, Dwarven mercenary fighter (ArchonShiva)

Significant NPCs:

Roger the Rapier, leader of the Five Fingers of Destiny adventuring company

Wicktrimmer, Imperial goblin merchant

Tresti Iredell, half-elven mage

Craastonistex, green dragon

Two wyverns, pets of Craastonistex

Many goblins

Bottleneck, goblin sergeant running Upper Goblintown

Killik, goblin sub-chief of the Wet Caves

Several slow-moving constructs

Several varumani lift operators

Several monkey-like animals

Large mimic, disguised as a statue

Two high-tech automated projectile-firing turrets

Rudishva floor-cleaning automaton

Akla-Chah, Rudishva AI psychologist

Stamelis, enchanted bust of an ancient Thothian priest

The Plan:

• Use a Clairvoyance potion to spy on Craastonistex's tower
• Follow Temrin's map 
• Across the Sundered Span
• Down the Varumani Lifts
• Down some stairs on the side of the Great Chasm
• North across a lake on the floor of the Great Chasm
• West through the wall on the side of the Great Chasm
• Through some rooms to the Yellow Rudishva Identity Plaque
• Investigate west of the Well of Light

What Happened:

Vallium, Vael, and Uvash went looking for Roger the Rapier.  They found him in the Stunned Acolyte, the nicest inn in Gosterwick.  They agreed to his earlier proposal: if he showed them how he had found the treasury of Thoth, they would give him an ankh key.  Roger tried to just tell them, but Vallium insisted that he actually meet them in Arden Vul and demonstrate.  Roger said it was too cold to travel to Arden Vul today, but he and the Five Fingers would meet them in the Glory of Weskenim at noon in one week, on the 26th of Fidios.

Returning to the Arcane Practitioners' Club, they ran into Tresti, the mage now working for Wicktrimmer at the Rarities Factor.  She said she'd heard the new apartments were ready and she thought she was supposed to get one, but somehow they had managed to cut in line ahead of her and take all four.  She tried to get them to sublease one of the apartments to her in exchange for some utility spellcasting, but Vael said he could already make Continual Light stones and cast Analyze Magic on any items they found.  She then mentioned that she was usually home and could keep an eye on the area and use the Message spell to alert them if she detected any more intruders.  That sounded valuable, and the Right for Riches company agreed to let her sublease one of the four apartments.  She then told them that Wicktrimmer wanted to test his new magic item, Thoth's Palanquin, in the cold and snow, and wanted her to come along, so she wondered anyone had a Ring of Warmth she could borrow.  None of them did.

They picked up Thronebreaker, the door-busting dwarf mercenary, at the Grudge Brigade headquarters, then went through a Teleport Rug to the Beacon.  Vael then blinked Vallium and himself through the roof over the stairs, and after they were sure nobody was watching, they dropped a Rug so the others could join them.  They went south and west to the dam and left some token monetary tribute on the roof, along with a note that they were having a chess board crafted but it wasn't ready yet.  Vael then Blinked inside the dam, and while there drank a Clairvoyance potion and started magically spying on Craas's tower in the southwestern corner of the ruins.  He saw a closed trap door in the roof, a wyvern trying to throw copper coins at chess pieces on the top floor, a sleeping wyvern on the middle floor, a couple of heavy doors on the first floor, and a lot of chests plus the head of a statue of a sorcerer in the cellar.  He did not spot the dragon.

Vael Blinked back out of the dam, then they all walked east then north to the Pyramid of Thoth.  Once they got inside out of the wind it was a bit less frigid and Vael told the others about the tower.  Then ran into a goblin patrol on the stairs, then spoke to Bottleneck in Upper Goblintown.  Bottleneck said things had been pretty quiet lately, with no incursions by Settites or undead.  He reminded them to keep closing doors behind them.  They went south to the Wet Caves, where Killik warned them to move quickly toward the Sundered Span.  They hustled to the east as some slow constructs tried to catch them but failed, then turned around.  They crossed the bridge (including the plank in the middle where the actual stone bridge had been broken) and reached the top of the Varumani Lifts.

The Varumani operator there quoted them a much higher price than previously.  After some diplomatic questioning from Vael, this turned out to be a new first time rider surcharge, as he did not realize they had previously used the Lifts.  He lowered the price to the usual 10 silver pieces per leg, or 20 per person since they each had two legs.  They paid, climbed into the Lift, and were lowered to the Arena level.  The operator there said the Inn was to the north, the Arena was to the northeast, and indicated that if they wanted to continue down to the Varumani level they'd need to take the cross-chasm ferry to the garden island floating in the center of the chasm, walk across the island, continue on the other cross-chasm ferry, then go down on the far side.  They agreed.  The operator then said the cross-chasm ferry only carried four people, so they needed to split into two groups.  Vael said he'd just fly, and the operator seemed skeptical and said that if he hung off the ferry or its cable, he had to pay.  Vael Levitated to the island as the others took the ferry.

The island was a garden of various tropical plants (not normally found this far north), lit by some very bright (but non-magical) globes overhead.  There was a hill in the middle.  The group spent some time walking around looking at the plants, and Vael flew up to look at the light globes.  There was a pool of green water on top of the hill.  Nobody drank any, but they took a sample to look at later.  Vael stopped to cast Seek Earth for gold and platinum and Seek Magic.  He detected gold and magic inside the hill, and platinum back near the varumani lift operators.  They decided not to poke around too much with the varumani watching, and took the next leg of the ferry over to the west side of the Chasm.

On the west side was another Lift operation, with a Lift going down to the varumani level, a giant stone chair, and a gate behind the chair.  The operator here appeared to be in charge of the Lifts, as he had a gold baton of office.  He indicated that behind the gate were scary ice monsters, and didn't recommend going that way.  He said that if they insisted on going back there, he would charge them to open the gate, and suggested also giving him the rest of their money for safekeeping, since they probably wouldn't need it anymore.  Vallium asked about varumani passports, and the operator said they were needed to enter actual varumani territory, but anyone could ride the Lifts as long as they folllowed the rules.  They decided to just take the Lift down.

The next level down had the landing spot for the Lift, but no actual machinery.  It was the end of this line.  There were several ogre guards keeping anyone without a passport from going into varumani territory to the west.  The varumani in charge said they were free to ride the Lift back up, or take the stairs down the side of the Chasm, but could not pass west without a passport.  Vael asked about the process for getting a passport, but the varumani was not very helpful and said they might not be giving out any more.  He said he would ask the thegn next time he saw him.

Vallium led the group down the stairs.  A bit down, Vael spotted some handholds along the wall.  He flew up to investigate, found a hidden door at the top of the handholds, and went past it to find a dead-end passage.  He thought the dead-end passage probably led into varumani territory, so decided not to explore farther.  He came back down and the group resumed going down many stairs.

Eventually, the stairs switchbacked away from the chasm wall to the east then back west, as shown on Temrin's map.  They found a statue of Wadjet where the map indicated there would be one.  It was magical, so Vael analyzed it and found that it could provide protection.  Ioannes beseeched Wadjet for protection and the statue cast a protection spell on the group.  They headed north to some sticky mud flats, then northeast through some mushroom groves, which appeared too regular to be wild.  The mushroom groves ended to the north at more mud.  Seeing the mud would be no fun to traverse, and they needed to cross a lake afterward, three members of the group went back through the Rug, and Vael cast Walk on Air on Vallium so the two could fly above the mud flats then above the lake.  There was a large pillar in the center of the lake, and they went around it to the left.

On the north shore of the lake, they found a stone causeway.  Following their map, they went west, to a plateau covered in trash.  They laid out the Rug and Vael stepped through to get the others.  Everyone searched the plateau, then Vael cast Seek Magic, and found a magic statue buried in the trash.  Digging it out revealed a statue of Chibalba, the ancient Lord of the Deeps.  Analyzing the statue revealed summoning magic, but nobody wanted to try it.  They moved west against the wall and started looking for secret doors.  Vael used Shape Earth to start moving stone away from the wall, making it into a couple of statues.

While resting from spellcasting, they were rudely awakened by several monkey-like creatures, making a lot of noise.  Ioannes tried Gift of Voices but they were animals, not speaking an actual language, so it failed.  One of the monkeys started going for their bags, and Vael decided that was enough and cast Thunderclap.  That scattered the monkeys.

Another Shape Earth revealed a cave to the west.  Vallium went in and found a fallen statue of a human warrior.  Everyone else came in and started searching for secret doors.  Vael found one on the west wall, but not how to open it.  Giving up, he tried a Lockmaster spell, and then all hell broke loose.

The fallen statue turned out to actually be a mimic, which tried to sneak up behind Ioannes and pummel him.  Fortunately Ioannes saw it coming and blocked the blow.  Vallium and Thronebreaker both smashed the mimic, but then secret doors in the north and south walls opened and some kind of technological projectile weapons emerged.  One of them malfunctioned and then spun in place with nothing coming out.  The other one destroyed the mimic, then shot tiny projectiles at Vael, who Blinked out of the way, and at Vallium, whose Amulet of Missile Shield seemed to cause all of them to miss.

Vallium smashed the working sentry machine, while it kept trying to shoot him, and kept missing.  (His friends were fortunate that none of the missed shots accidentally hit them.)  Vael turned Invisible.  Uvash powered up his Heroic Grace.  But before anyone else could help, Vallium hit the turret enough times that it stopped moving and shooting.

Vallium then went north to the malfunctioning turret, and pulled it out of its alcove into the middle of the room.  It kept pointing its barrels at him and making noises, but nothing came out.  Vael used Shape Earth to build a stone box around the turret, as they discussed how to capture it.  But eventually something inside the stone box started working again, and the box started to break as it absorbed many projectiles.  Vallium decided that was enough playing and went to smash the turret, while the others hid around the corner.  It got a few shots off before he broke it, but again his Amulet prevented any hits.

With both turrets and the mimic defeated, they went back to the western secret door, which Vallium's Lockmaster spell had failed to open.  Thronebreaker got out his portable battering ram, asked the others to grab handles and help, and powered up a Power Blow.  He unleashed the kind of damage that would vaporize most doors, but this door was so strong that it only poked a small hole.  Vael saw that the hole was enough to look through, and used a Continual Light stone to see the an unoccupied Rudishva room on the far side.  He used Blink Other to send Vallium across, and then the others used the Rug to follow.

The room contained some kind of technological machine on a desk to the south, with a large chair in front of it.  To the north was a closed iris door.  Following Temrin's map, they ignored everything and went west.  As they did, a small round automaton came down the hall toward them.  It beeped as it approached them.  They let it go and it continued to the door and started cleaning up the mess that Thronebreaker's ram had left on the floor.  Deciding the cleaning device was not a threat, they continued west.

To the south was a room with a large table and six corpses: two Rudishva behind the table, two six-armed creatures near the north entrance, and two amphibian bipeds near the east entrance.  Ioannes looked at the bodies and it appeared all six had severe burn damage, with the two amphibians being more charred than the others.  They searched the bodies.  The Rudishva had several oval identity plaques between them: platinum, silver, sky blue, and the yellow card they had come for.  One also had a rectangular black card.  They also had a couple of long technological artifacts that appeared melted, and a satchel containing two large flasks of unknown liquid.  The other corpses weren't carrying anything.

Vallium investigated to the east, and found a small room with three niches.  Two of them had silver discs on the floor and silver square panels on the wall, and the third was behind some kind of force wall.  Vallium walked in to look closer, then jumped back as a fire trap went off and engulfed him in flame.  He survived without too much damage thanks to his armor, and Ioannes healed him.  Vallium asked to borrow the fire resistance amulet from Ioannes, and went back into the trap.  The amulet was effective and prevented any damage.  Vallium investigated and found that the yellow card dismissed the force field, and behind it was another silver disc on the floor and a yellow square on the wall.  Nobody actually tried any of the discs, as they feared they were teleporters to unknown places.  A minute after Vallium stepped out, the force field reappeared.

Deciding to stop exploring for the day, they dropped a Rug and everyone except Vallium went back to the Beacon.  Vallium then took the Rug into the niche behind the force field where it was less likely to be disturbed, and teleported back.  A few minutes later, Vael went back through the Rug to use a scroll of Mystic Mist for good measure: anyone who got near their Rug would have to deal with fear and confusion.

GM's Comments:

We had a tech failure, with Foundry VTT working fine for the GM but crashing hard when the players joined.  So, after some debugging failed, we played this whole session Theater of the Mind.  Went fine, though I think the players would have preferred a battlemap for the fight.  (After the session, we debugged more and figured out that the Antigravity browser extension seems to crash Foundry.  So if the player who just installed that extension disables it before joining, we should be fine.)

I think the battle with the mimic and the sentry guns was the first three-sided fight of this campaign.  The mimic's plan was to stay still until everyone turned their back, then attack with surprise.  The sentry guns were programmed to stay hidden until someone tried to bash down or magically open a secret door, then shoot them.  It turned out both events happened at the same time, so rather than two distinct battles we got one big mess.

Those sentry guns were quite lethal and I thought it was likely that several PCs could die before Vallium (whose Missile Shield amulet meant he was basically immune to them) finished them off.  So the north sentry gun's critical failure was possibly the luckiest thing that happened to the PCs in this campaign so far.  It rolled an 18 to critically miss, then a 15 on the critical miss table, which is "you strain your shoulder and can't use your weapon arm for 30 minutes."  Sentry guns don't have shoulders, but I ruled this meant it malfunctioned and could not attack for 30 minutes, then would self-repair.  This meant the Vallium only had to fight one working sentry gun rather than two.  Its crucial first round of attacks was targeted randomly and I rolled Vallium, Vael, and the mimic.  After that Vallium was the only one right next to it attacking it, so I ruled a 5 in 6 chance for each attack to shoot Vallium, until the sentry gun figured out that he was un-hittable.  And Vallium smashed it before it figured that out.  Every (automatic) miss still had a chance to hit someone behind Vallium, but I didn't roll low enough for any accidental hits.  They spent a bit too long playing with the other sentry gun, but after it repaired itself and started shooting through the stone box they had built around it, Vallium decided to stop messing around and finished it off.

Thronebreaker vs. the Rudishva Security Door was one of those unstoppable force vs. immovable object problems.  I ruled he needed to do 100 HP to poke a small hole all the way through, and he did.  I don't think they could have actually opened the door without Thronebreaker, so they probably chose the right mercenary this week.

The fire trap was also pretty nasty, but Vallium went first and he has a lot of armor and made his Perception check to sense the hidden trap in time to Dodge, then his Dodge roll, so he wasn't hurt too badly.  And Ioannes has an Salamander Amulet that protects from fire damage, so once they knew it was a fire trap, they could deal with it.

This was a pretty light session in terms of combat (just the one fight) and loot (several Rudishva identity plaques, a few flasks of mystery liquids, and not much else), but they accomplished their goals of scouting the dragon tower and finding the yellow identity plaque, so it was a successful delve.

Achievements:

Iconic Location: Great Cavern at the bottom of the Great Chasm, 1 XP

XP:

• Exploration: 18 new locations, 1 XP
• Loot: not much, 0 XP
• Achievements: 1 XP
• Total: 2 XP

Next Week:

They left a Rug in the Rudishva Bastion, so they're planning on going right back.  In fact, they've decided not to take their usual week of downtime, and will go back the next day, since they have a meeting with Roger the Rapier in a week.  If they finish exploring the Bastion, they next plan to explore the Rudishva teleporters, then open any iris doors they have previously been unable to open.  If they exhaust all of those, they would next explore more of the base of the Great Chasm.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 38: Another Attack on the Temple of Set

 

Date: 

Basilsday, 11th of Fidios, 2993 AE

Weather: 

Cold, snowing

Player Characters: 

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

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

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

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

Significant NPCs:

Wicktrimmer, Imperial goblin merchant

Tresti Iredell, half-elven mage

Jaken, spirit of an ancient warrior

Tuftwillig, sentient ancient oak tree

Bottleneck, goblin sergeant running Upper Goblintown

Many goblins

Many Set guards

Many Set cultists

Several Set acolytes, deacons, and priests

Rolf, enslaved Set prisoner and would-be human sacrifice

Wild boar

Otyugh

The Plan:

• Try to talk to the spirit in the magical burned bones
• Use the scroll of Plant Speech to talk to the ancient oak tree in the Forum of Arden Vul
• Go down through the Pyramid of Thoth, west through the catacombs, and up the rope ladder
• Attack the Temple of Set from the north
• Explore the hole behind the Settite jail
• Explore the western end of the Well of Light level

What Happened:

Renovation of the apartments on the top floor of the Arcane Practitioners' Club was finished.  The Right for Riches company had secured two-year leases on four new luxury apartments, which doubled their previous cost of living.

Wicktrimmer asked for a meeting.  He once again tried to buy a pair of their Teleport Rugs.  After that failed, he asked their opinion of Tresti Iredell, a mage the Rarities Factor was considering hiring.  He then shared information about the thief who had blown himself up in their apartment: the Drome had found that his name was Jarnno the False, and he was apparently a freelance non-guild-affiliated thief from Newmarket.  

Everyone wanted to try talking to the magic bones.  Thinking it might be a good idea to do so in a sanctified place, Ioannes first suggested the Temple of Demma, but didn't want to get in trouble in case talking to dead people was bad, so they decided to use the public House of the Gods instead.  The bones answered, in audible Mithric.  The bones belonged to an ancient warrior named Jaken, who was a companion of Arden and Vul, about 2000 years ago.  He had questions about the future, like whether spears were still the best weapons and whether everyone moved around on flying carpets.  The Right for Riches Company had a few questions about Jaken and the past, then Jaken's spirit said he needed to rest and stopped responding.

They went through a Teleport Rug to the Beacon, then Vael used Blink Other to move Vallium to the surface, then everyone else came through a Rug to join Vallium.  There were no enemies in sight, but it was snowing and nobody wanted to leave an obvious trail from the Beacon, so Vael Levitated and followed behind the group using a Whirlwind spell to disrupt their tracks.

When they reached the Forum, Ioannes used the clerical scroll of Beast Speech (an unusual item, as it's usually a Druidic spell) on Vael, to let him talk to the big oak tree.  The tree actually responded.  It said its name was Tuftwillig.  They discovered a common dislike for Craastonistorex the green dragon and for the undead in the Tower of Scrutiny.  Tuftwillig said, being a tree, he wasn't personally so good at moving or fighting, but might be able to summon some animals to help fight the dragon.  Vael asked if Tuftwillig knew any rocs, and Tuftwillig said that rocks were minerals, not animals, but he might be able to call some bears and crocodiles, though he didn't really trust crocodiles.  Tuftwillig also complained that the Tower of Scrutiny was ugly and blocked his view of the sunrise and should be knocked down, after all the undead inside were destroyed.

After the spell expired, they went north to the Pyramid of Thoth, manipulated the statue arms to open the stairs down, and reached Upper Goblintown.  After being allowed in, they spoke briefly to Bottleneck, who said the Settites hadn't been back for a week.  Vallium led the group northwest to Maat's room, where everyone grabbed another magic feather.  They then went west to the portcullis room, where Vael pulled a lever to open the northern portcullis.  Not wanting to let anything out, Vallium used an Elven Rope to pull the lever from the far side of the portcullis, shutting it behind them.  They went west until they found the trap door in the ceiling, pulled the rope ladder down, and climbed up into the cave with the "Stilicho was here" graffitti.

They headed west across the cave, until they saw a line of Settite guards with bows to their south, below a 20' high cliff.  An archery duel began, mostly featuring Lacrymosa shooting Settite archers in the arms and Settite archers saying "ow!" and dropping their bows.  Meanwhile Vallium lowered himself as far as he could down the cliff, then let go and let his armor absorb the fall, then charged the Settites with his sword.  Uvash followed Vallium down the cliff, climbing more carefully.  Vael cast Missle Shield on Lacrymosa just in case one of the Settites got a lucky hit before losing an arm, but it turned out not to be necessary.  One Settite guard fled east, and the rest died.

The others scrambled down the cliff, and then everyone ran south, where there was a 10' cliff leading to the Signing Stair between the Temple of Set above and the Forum of Set below.  Vallium and Lacrymosa just jumped down the cliff, relying on armor and acrobatics respectively.  They saw the double doors to the the Temple were closed, and lined up ready to attack anyone who opened them.  One of the doors eventually opened, and guards and cultists started pouring out.  Vallium and later Uvash got in a melee with many cultists and guards, while Lacrymosa stood back, peppering them with arrows and occasionally throwing a flash nageteppo to blind them.  Behind the wall of guards and cultists, some other Settites fled.

By the time the fight was over, there were a couple dozen dead Settites scattered about.  Entering the temple, they spotted a sacrificial victim chained to the altar, bleeding but still alive.  All the Settites were gone.  After some conversation revealed that the victim was indeed a victim not a Settite, they freed him and eventually Ioannes took him via Rug teleport to the Temple of Demma in Gosterwick.  Meanwhile Vallium and Lacrymosa attempted to track the fled Settites.  They found a trail leading south through a secret door, then two groups went south and west, and eventually they lost the trail.  They rejoined the others, who were busy looting guards of their armor and weapons and breaking things.  Vael used Shape Earth to topple the giant cult statue (which Ioannes and Uvash had previously looted of its gem eyes) forward onto the altar, causing major damage to both.

Vallium tried to grab the jeweled serpent construct in one of the alcoves, but it animated and tried to bite him.  Deciding his armor was probably thick enough to stop snakebites, he wrestled the snake until he had its head grappled so it could no longer bite him, then took it through a Teleport Rug to the Beacon, and left it in an empty side room behind an iris door where it couldn't bite anybody.

Once the group was done looting weapons and armor and trashing Settite religious objects, they decided to start stealing furniture.  They took two tables and four chairs from a couple of guard rooms, and later took some beds from a room to the south.  They took the furniture through the Rug to the entrance room of the Beacon, where Basil could figure out where to put it all.  On the way out, Vael also used a Lightning spell to kill a wild boar that the Settites had chained up for some unknown reason.

Vallium led the group south to a hole in the floor that they had never explored.  He threw a Continual Light rock in, which revealed a pile of bones.  He jumped in, again trusting his armor to prevent falling damage.  An otyugh that was hiding behind the bones tried to ambush him, but flubbed its stealth attempt and failed to achieve any surprise.  The fight was over very quickly: Vallium stabbed the otyugh several times and it died before Lacrymosa standing in the room above found a clear shot.  Vallium started sifting through the bones, and found a couple of diamonds.  Vael flew down to help search, but didn't find anything else.

The group again tried to find where the Settites had fled.  They found an additional secret door further west, leading to the stairs down to the Forum, and concluded that the remaining Settites had probably run around them while they were fighting or exploring or looting or breaking stuff.  They went to the Settite jail in the southwest, then through the secret door behind a cell, and again visited the area with Rudishva architecture and the Rudishva-style mural with all the faces burned out.  They searched for secret doors again, and Lacrymosa noted a small door on the wall that was different from everything else.  They pushed on it, which popped a secret door open to the west.

Going through the secret door, they spotted a charred corpse in orange robes, a metal chest, and some kind of magical floating disk with a stone slab on it.  Ioannes walked over to check out the corpse, and got shocked by some kind of invisible trap.  Badly wounded, he avoided passing out, and jumped back.  Uvash healed him immediately.  Vael started looking for the trap, and could not find exactly where it was.  He used the Rug to go back to the Beacon and talked to Akla-Chah, who said she wasn't an engineer but explained the basics of electricity and lightning rods, then said she was available if Ioannes needed any therapy after his traumatic injury.  Vael gathered a bunch of Settite maces and tried to build a lightning rod, but didn't figure out how to make it work.  Then Uvash announced the he could cast Resist Lightning, grabbed the Rug, and carried it across the trap.  The shock didn't hurt him, and the others teleported across through the Rugs.

The charred corpse had orange Thothian robes, a few silver coins, and a magical eye.  The chest was empty, but surprisingly light.  The floating disk was about 6 feet in diameter, and the slab of stone on the disk weighed a couple of tons.  There was a picture on the slab of some kind of flying machine, with a ramp coming down to the ground, and Rudishva and Varumani and a bird-creature and a snake-creature on the ramp.  There were also some Rudishva glyphs.

Vael sat down to cast Analyze Magic on the disk, and found that it was a ground-level Levitation device that could be guided with a few Mithric command words.  Some experimentation showed that he could make it stop or go or turn, but not follow him, and not move vertically.  They explored down the dead end tunnel to the east then south, and found a secret door, which led to the passage leading back to the Settite outpost in the Great Cavern.  They then drove the Disk with the stone slab on top through the Great Cavern, down the Long Stair, and back to Gosterwick.  (Ioannes, still not feeling great after his electrical shock, opted out of this trip and instead teleported back to the Beacon.)

GM's Comments:

That was a big fight.  Battles where I'm running dozens of enemies are hard.

Achievements:

1 XP for saving Rolf from being sacrificed and getting him to a safe place.

XP:

• Exploration: 2 new locations, 0 XP
• Loot: weapons and armor, gems, the magic Disk and the stone slab.  Looks like 1-2 XP, depending on what they decide to sell.
• Achievements: 1 XP
• Total: looks like 2-3 XP

Next Week:

I haven't seen a formal plan yet, but there was some discussion of following Temrin's map to the gold Rudishva identity plaque.  There was also talk of continuing to hammer the Settites, or maybe even going after Craas.  We'll see.

Escalating Cost of Living for PCs in Dungeon Fantasy RPG

In the full GURPS rules, your Cost of Living scales with Tech Level and Status.  Dungeon Fantasy RPG doesn't really have Tech Level (it's all Tech Level: Olden Days a.k.a. Tech Level 3 plus whatever your GM thinks is cool).  It doesn't really have Status either.  (Obviously the king has higher status than a commoner, but it's all abstract, not a stat on your sheet.)  So does a PC's Cost of Living stay $150/week forever?

Well, it can if they really want it to.  The Miserliness [-10] disadvantage is available, if you want to play Warren Buffet, a multibillionaire who still lives in a regular house in Omaha and drives an Oldsmobuick.  Most rich people want to spend at least some of that money on fun stuff though.  So in addition to the useful things like magic armor and healing potions, it's reasonable to spend money on comfort items like a house or a horse or a servant.  Or security items like banks and guards.

In DFRPG Arden Vul, the town of Gosterwick has two full-service inns, the middle-class Yellow Cloak Inn and the fancy Stunned Acolyte Inn.  I ruled that the standard PC Cost of Living gets you a shared room (two or three PCs to a room) at the Yellow Cloak Inn and three meals per day in the common dining room.  If you want to eat most of your meals in the upper class dining room, or have a single room or a suite, cost of living goes up.  If you want to stay at the Stunned Acolyte, it goes up more.  If you want the Archon's Suite at the Stunned Acolyte, you can spend a ton.

There's another inn within the ruins of Arden Vul itself, the Inn of the Broken Head.  It's not as nice as the Yellow Cloak, let alone the Stunned Acolyte, but its location makes everything more expensive.  (All the supplies need to be brought up the Long Stair via mule train, with the teamsters paid hazard pay because of the dragon in the area.)  So if a PC wanted to live there full time, they'd pay full cost of living to sleep in a shared bunkroom with strangers, or double for a private room (if one were even available).

Ioannes got himself in trouble with the Yellow Cloak Inn for a critical failure making Continual Light stones, that ended up accidentally casting Continual Darkness on his bedding and freaking out a maid.  So he and Vael decided to move to an apartment at the Arcane Practitioners Club, which explicitly allows spellcasting.  And later, the other PCs decided to join them there.  This initially only cost the regular cost of living, plus the reasonable APC membership fee ($13 per week each).  However, at some point Lyssandra and Pelteon decided that having lower-class adventurer tenants was too annoying, as they did things like drag monster corpses through the hallways.  So they decided to renovate their eight small apartments into four double-sized luxury apartments and charge double the rent.  With only four apartments available, they planned to offer their four least annoying tenants (not the PCs) the first opportunity to lease one -- but Vael subverted that strategy by giving Lyssandra a valuable magic item in exchange for a two-year lease on all four apartments.  So now she's stuck with monster-corpse-hoarding assassin-attracting fireball-trap-owning tenants for a while longer, and has to keep putting up passive-aggressive signs about New Club Rules every time they do something she didn't think she needed to put in the rules before.  But they're paying double their previous cost of living.

In addition to increasing the cost of necessities, players can decide they have more things they want to buy.  At some point the PCs bought a mule to help haul things to and from Arden Vul.  I think they only actually used the mule two or three times, but it cost a couple thousand silver up front, and it costs $30 per week to board and feed at Sakeon's Horse Market.  Recently they hired an employee, Basil, to help take care of their secret base in the Beacon and the two unusual people (a holographic projection of an alien AI psychologist, and an animated statue head of a Thothian librarian) who live there.  Basil works pretty cheap, only $100 per week, but they also pay $75 per week for his room and board.  And another $100 per week to keep food stocked in the Beacon.  The burn rate keeps slowly rising.  And then there's the eccentric stuff, like Ioannes paying Fael the druid $100/week for a Beast Speech spell so he can not only talk to his cat (that's free), but get answers back.

Of course, even relatively rich PCs can't always afford everything they want.  Uvash wanted to build his own church of Zodarrim in Gosterwick, but the price was beyond his current level of funds, so that might have to wait a while.  Maybe if they defeat a dragon and take its hoard...

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 37: Deino and the Eyeballs

Date: 

Basilsday, 11th of Fidios, 2993 AE

Weather: 

Warm, overcast

Player Characters: 

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

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

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Significant NPCs:

Wicktrimmer, Imperial goblin merchant

Fael, half-elven druid

Onyx, cat genius

Avatar of Bastet, ancient goddess of cats

Basil, Right for Riches employee

Many goblins

Many beastmen

Count Skleros, beastman commander

Deino, wizard, mother of beastmen

Gog, exiled varumani

Several orge guards

Roger the Rapier, wizard and leader of the Five Fingers of Destiny

Weskenim, King of the United Goblin Tribes

Skimmel, Reeflik, Palestrim, and Gribble: King Weskenim's advisors

Gog, varumani exile

Fire elemental

8 zombies

Several wizards of some secret faction

Bumpko, giant 4-armed intelligent baboon

Many baboons

The Plan:

• Buy a lot of food
• Meet with Count Skleros
• Feed Gog
• Meet with King Weskenim and collect patches for retrieving the Scepter of the Goblins
• Try to get a new map from Temrin
• Explore both doors near the Pit of Fire
• Explore the hallway south of the Magic Fountain of Donkey Ears
• Investigate the Floating Head
• Say "The Font of Magic" to the Ruby Chair and see what happens
• Search the librarian's quarters, looking for the Secret Library of Thoth
• Explore west of the Well of Light

What Happened:

Wicktrimmer sent a note that he was back in Gosterwick and wanted to meet.  He inquired about Uvash's health and the burglary of their apartment.  The company told him about the second set of Teleport Rugs (which Wicktrimmer immediately tried to buy) and Tikun Thane and the Tower of the Ape.  Wicktrimmer said he'd see if any more information on the burglar was available.

It was the full moon, so the group hired Fael the druid because to cast Beast Speech, and she led them and Onyx the cat outside of town, where her magic worked better.  There they activated the Statuette of Feline Friendship.  A ghostly cat avatar appeared, and started speaking in the language of cats.  Fael translated.  They gave the avatar a gift of fish (which bothered Onyx because that was his fish) and then asked her three questions.  She said there was a hidden temple of Bastet deep under Arden Vul.  She said the people of Bastet would like to recover some of their treasures that had been lost when they had to flee underground during the civil war.  She had no idea where the Regalia were.  The avatar disappeared, and the group then had Fael translate as they talked to Onyx about the burglar, how he'd saved the other cats before the burglar touched the statue eyes and caused a giant fireball in the apartment, and how they don't give him enough of the correct kinds of fish on the appropriate days.

After returning to Gosterwick, they stepped through a Teleport Rug to the Beacon, then walked over to the Pyramid of Thoth.  Descending through the pyramid, they scared off some giant rats.  They briefly spoke to the goblins in Upper Goblintown, who were a bit skittish after a recent zombie attack, and told the party to please make sure all doors were closed and locked to keep undead out.  They went south to the border with beastman territory, and Vallium made noise until a beastman sentry appeared, then went to get Count Skleros for their meeting.

Skleros thanked them again for rescuing his troopers, then indicated that Mother had read the note from the dragon and wanted to meet with them.  He warned them to be on their best behavior and that it was probably safest to avoid eating or drinking anything.  The Count personally lead them through beastman territory, to a northern entrance where he indicated a wire they should avoid tripping over, and through a room full of elderly beastman guards into a yellow-painted room containing a Thothian teleportation circle.  He asked them to wait there while he went into talk to Mother, then slipped through a door.  He came back out a bit later and led them inside.  The large room contained an attractive woman in a yellow dress with various magical accessories, many goats and dogs and rats and pigs and sheep, a few mostly naked men, several magical torches along the walls, and a line of magical braziers with pots boiling over each.  Deino greeted everybody and asked for individual introductions.  She then asked what they could do about that horrible dragon that kept eating her children.  The party asked for her help against the dragon, and Deino was mostly non-committal and said that she could not go outside, but eventually conferred with Count Skleros then indicated that they could send a tagma of troopers along for the battle.  Everyone declined Deino's offer of food and drink.  She asked about cloud cap mushrooms, and Vael said they knew of a possible source and might be able to facilitate trade.  When Deino was done asking questions, she had the Count escort the visitors back out.  Skleros told them they had done well in their meeting.

Everyone then went downstairs to Goblintown to meet with King Weskenim.  In the waiting area outside his chamber they saw Roger the Rapier and the rest of the Five Fingers of Destiny.  Vallium pointed out there were actually six of them.  Roger asked for a meeting off to the side where they would not be overheard.  He congratulated the Right for Riches company on finding the Scepter of the Goblins before him, and said that he was looking for a particular type of key to solve a puzzle and wondered if they had any.  He pulled out an ankh-key, like the ones they had used in the obelisks to open the doors to the Beacon.  The group played dumb and said they didn't have any keys like that.  Vallium pulled out his key ring and showed a collection of about 30 other keys, none of them ankhs.

The king's major-domo Pelestrim came out to fetch the group for their audience.  The king told them that today was a good day to show the Scepter to his people, so he was going to take them all to the balcony overlooking the Goblin Great Hall, pin on their Scepter Finder patches, wave the Scepter at the crowd, and say a few words.  Their job was to look heroic and not say anything.  The ceremony went quickly, the goblins cheered, and King Weskenim went back to his room.  Unable to avoid getting a word in, Vael asked if they could get exclusive access to the Royal Artist Temrin, which made the king laugh.  He did let Ioannes pet his new kitten though.

The group went back upstairs via Gog's cave, and gave Gog some food on the way.  Gog was grateful for the food and shared news that a few other adventurers had been through: the Five Fingers, Dalton's group, Hama and Company, and some sketchy people who didn't tell him their names.  When they reached Upper Goblintown, they tried the command words they had recently found for the floating head.  The head woke up.  Vael told the head to follow him in Mithric, and the head obeyed.  A goblin saw this and ran to tell Bottleneck that King Wesky II was awake.  Bottleneck then sent for one of the king's witch doctors to come up and deal with the floating head.  The witch doctor started leading the head down to the king, but Vael wanted to tag along to see where they put it.  They also heard that the king had another similar floating head, King Wesky I.

They went upstairs again, took a roundabout path around the northern part of the Halls of Thoth, crossed the Great Chasm at the bridge, and reached the Pool of Fire.  There Ioannes again said "Thoth Rules."  This cleared a path through the fire to the golden key.  As he stepped in, the fire creature in the pit telepathically asked if Ioannes wanted to be transported.  Ioannes said no, brought the key to the secret door on the south wall, and unlocked it.

They walked past the broken constructs and the mosaic knots on the floor to two doors.  They took the northern door, which led to stairs up.  They went up around 250' and reached a dead-end room.  Some searching found a secret door into a large cellar full of trash and zombies.  Vallium and Uvash killed the zombies while Ioannes and Vael stood back and watched.  When the zombies were dead they investigated the room, finding a broken staircase, a coat of arms on one wall, and an exit south.  The room to the south contained several newer empty crates, some labeled with the logos of various food merchants.  There was also a trap door on the ceiling.  Vael cast Seek Earth for platinum, gold, and silver.  He followed it up with Seek Magic.  All three metals were to be found southwest, in the direction of the Pyramid of Thoth.  There was magic back in the large room to the north.  They went back to that room and searched through the trash until they found a magical elven rope, then took the zombies' axes and shields and used the Rug to bring all the treasure back to the Beacon.  They then went up through the trap door to the surface, explored the ruin containing the trap door, saw where they were relative to the Pyramid so they could find it again, and went back down.

The other door led to stairs leading very far down, perhaps 900'.  At the bottom was a dead end passage and a feather painted on the floor.  It did not particularly resemble the Feathers of Maat they found on the previous delve.  As they approached the feather, it produced a loud flatulent sound.  Everyone searched for secret doors at the end of the passage, but Vael was convinced there was not one.  Ioannes, who was pretty sure he found one, borrowed Vael's trap-finding kit to try to open it, and broke the probe.  Everyone tried to open the secret door and failed.  Eventually they convinced Vael to give it a try even though he was pretty sure it was just a crack in the rock not a real secret door, but he managed to prove himself wrong.

The secret door opened, and on the other side was a guard room containing several mages and fighters at the ready.  Their leader, a woman, said "it took you long enough to get that open."  She explained that this was their territory, that they could not let intruders pass, but if they turned around and went back up the stairs, she would let them live.  She also said that she knew who they were and that her associate Lukor had been authorized to negotiate with them, but she had not, so they needed to go back to Goblintown and talk to Lukor.  After a few attempts to extract information, the Right for Riches company retreated upstairs.

They went back through the secret door, past the pit of fire, to the one room in the area they had not explored.  It contained a sarcophagus and several frescoes of an ancient heroic spearman.  The lid came off the sarcophagus easily, and inside were a heavy spear, a helmet, some red armor, and a coffer.  The coffer contained some burned bones, which were magical.  The weapons and armor appeared cheap and non-magical, but Vael didn't want to leave anything behind in case they had hidden powers, so they took it all.  Analyze Magic said that the bones could provide protection from evil, and had additional powers.  While Vael was working on the spell, Vallium saw a glimpse of someone in red armor appear around the corner, then run.  The group briefly pursued, but didn't want to abandon Vael, so went back.

The group forgot that there were stairs up nearby, and went all the way back across the chasm and across Upper Goblintown to the teleporting pyramid.  The goblins were a bit panicked; they said some Settites had come in through a locked door and there had been a standoff, but not an actual battle.  The Settites were gone now.  The company went south and west to the indoor pyramid then pulled the lever to teleport to its twin on the Well of Light level.

They first visited the Ruby Chair, where Vallium confidently sat down then said "The Font of Magic."  Nothing happened.  Several other people said the same words from various positions, then re-read the Mithric sign on the floor “Speak the Secret Name and Claim Thy Reward.”  They had spoken a secret name, but no reward had appeared.  Not sure what they were doing wrong, they went south to feed the baboons.  Yamki was not at his usual post, but Bumpko was there, and accepted the monthly gift of food.  He indicated that the Thane had not returned and the baboons were grateful for the return of Bobo and Bifki.

Vallium led them to the library of Thoth, unlocked the door, let everyone in, then locked the door.  They then spread out the Teleporter Rug and methodically loaded all the books into their wheelbarrow, took them through the Rug to the Beacon, and put them in their new library.  Once all the books were on the other side they left Basil and Stamelis to sort them, and went back to the Well of Light.

They went north and west to the librarian's chamber with the fear trap outside.  Aided by Uvash's Amulet of Courage, nobody ran away.  They searched the room again and did a better job this time, finding a secret door on the south wall.  Opening it led to a small room with shelved built into the wall, and a table in the center of the room with a pile of papers on it.  In total the room contained about 40 books and 20 scrolls, plus the scrawled notes on the table.  The notes included a letter from someone named Hellas to someone named Neferet, accusing her of necromancy and stealing some Archon's circlet, and saying that she couldn't have all the books in the secret library because they were secret and her quarters near the Great Hall were too exposed.  They scooped everything up and put it all in a Bag of Holding.  They didn't want Stamelis to see whatever secrets this room might contain, so they decided they would put it in one of the side rooms where he didn't go rather than in their library.

Deciding to explore a bit more, Vallium led them north and west to a door they had never opened.  Behind it was a room containing some trash and some kind of magical clockwork raven.  When approached, it spouted some nonsense.  When Vallium touched it, it shocked him, but not severely enough to do real damage.  Figuring it might be worth some money, they took it back to the Beacon.  They then recovered their Rug and Vael flew it up the Well of Light to the surface, where they could walk to the Beacon.

Vael started sorting through the pile of books in one of the side rooms of the Beacon, which contained the golden teleport panels that they could not activate.  One book was magical, so he looked at that one first.  The first page contained a title.  The next half-dozen or so pages contained vivid pictures of underground scenes, possibly in the Halls of Arden Vul.  As he flipped to the next page, he felt his eyes being ripped out of his face.  He screamed for help, but nobody heard him through the iris door.  He passed out in pain.  Later, he awakened and stumbled out through the iris door, blind and bloody.  Basil found him and ran to get Ioannes, who hit Vael with a couple of healing spells to stabilize him.  With Vael out of immediate danger but still missing his eyes. Ioannes and Uvash went back to Gosterwick to visit all the temples and see which clerics could deal with Vael's problem.  Several clerics had the Regeneration spell, which would cause his eyes to grow back over the course of about a month.  That was inconvenient, so they went to Jador the Just, the head of the Temple of Mitra and the best healer in Gosterwick, who could, with the help of several other clerics to help provide mana, cast Instant Regeneration and have Vael's eyesight back the same day.  The price was steep, but Vael was willing to pay it.  Once he could see again, he resolved to never read a magical book again without first spending an hour casting Analyze Magic to look for curses.

GM's Comments:

The book trap was so hilariously unfair.  Arden Vul is old-school.  Fortunately for Vael, he had enough money to afford high-level healing spells, and friends to lead him to the temple, so he was only blind for a few hours.

That was a high-information, low-combat, low-treasure session.  Until they found the Secret Library of Thoth (which they could have found months ago, if they hadn't missed a secret door, or the note indicating that there was a Secret Library), and got a massive trove of valuable books.  That turned it into a high-treasure-but-we-don't-want-to-sell-it delve, the usual problem.

Achievements:

• None

XP:

• Exploration: 10 new locations, 1 XP
• Loot: Some magic bones and a whole lot of books and scrolls, 1-2 XP depending on what they sell
• Achievements: 0 XP
• Total: 2-3 XP

Next Week:

• Talk to the spirit of the bones
• Use the Plant Speech scroll they found to talk to the tree in the Forum of Arden Vul
• Go through the Crypts of Thoth to the caves north of the Temple of Set
• Attack the Temple of Set, killing and destroying and looting
• Explore the secret door in the back of a cell in the Settite jail, again
• Explore the western Well of Light level