DFRPG Arden Vul Session 63: Angry Constructs

Date:

Basilsday 25th Lucrios, 2994 AE

Weather:

Warm, foggy, rainy

Player Characters:

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

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Significant NPCs:

Basil, Right for Riches employee

Akla-Chah, Rudishva AI psychologist

Watcher Nataraja

Kronos's guards

Kronos, Innkeeper

Estelle, Innkeeper

Many goblins

Bottleneck, goblin sergeant

Killik, goblin chief

Several ogre guards

Palestrim, goblin majordomo

Weskenim, goblin king

Many baboons

Yamki, three-armed giant intelligent baboon

2 Imperial stone guardians

3 Stone golems

4 Orator constructs

Iron golem

The Plan:

• Commission a map from Temrin in the Goblin Market
• Check the Hall of Shrines to see if the force fields have changed
• Continue exploring beyond the fireball-trapped room

What Happened:

Akla-Chah called Vael on the Command Bracelet.  She said that Basil had discovered a hole in the roof over the stairs to the Beacon, and the Watcher Nataraja was gone.  Vael sent Message spells to the other members of the Right for Riches Company to meet at the Beacon.  They went to the entry room and found Basil watching the new hole in the ceiling with his laser pistol ready.

Forgetting he could see through the Watcher Nataraja's eyes, Vael cast Seeker to see where it was.  This gave him a vision of the outside of the Inn of the Broken Head.  Vael and Uvash investigated the hole in the roof and decided it had been dug with tools.  There was some discussion on whether it was safe to go outside and what they'd do if they met the dragon, with half the party deciding it was a good day to kill the dragon and the others wanting to avoid a fight in the open.  Everyone put on their poison-resistance Serpent's Amulets just in case.

Vael sent the others out through the hole with a Teleport Rug, then stayed behind to cast Shape Earth to seal up the hole, then went through the matching Teleport Rug to meet them.  The group then piled some debris on top of the newly sealed hole to camouflage it.  Everyone then walked north around the lake toward the Inn of the Broken Head.  Some of Kronos's guards in a tower along the north wall yelled to them.  The guard explained that some evil statue had chased some of their comrades, and everyone should be careful.  Continuing to the Inn, they saw the Watcher Nataraja aggressively dancing, facing the inn.  Kronos and three of his guards were standing outside the Inn, facing down the Nataraja but not actually fighting it.

Vael used the command word to tell the Nataraja to stand down.  He then spoke with Kronos, who said that some of his men had been looking for treasure in the ruins and had been attacked by this statue.  They fled and it followed them all the way back.  Vael explained to Kronos that the statue was theirs and it was guarding their territory and that he would pay Kronos and his men to forget what they saw and never go back to that island.  Kronos asked to step out of the rain into the stable (also away from his guards) to continue the discussion.  Vael offered a very large bribe to comply with his instructions, and also said to remember the dead Settites and dead halflings before turning it down.  Kronos took Vael's money (actually Vallium's money, as Vallium was the only one carrying that much cash) and then went to give some of it to his men.  Kronos promised that he and his men would never return to that island and would never tell anyone what they saw there.  He also invited the company into the Inn for a free drink.  (Well, a very expensive "free" drink, considering the stack of platinum coins that Vallium had just handed him.)

Ioannes was sad that the Inn didn't have any milk today, and had some water.  The others enjoyed some high-quality locally brewed beer.  Vael asked Kronos about Craas, and Kronos admitted that they'd had encounters with the dragon, and had come to an agreement where they paid the dragon regular tribute in exchange for leaving the Inn and his men alone.  Vael also spoke with Estelle, who told the same story about the dragon.

Vael commanded the Nataraja to follow him, and they all went back toward the Beacon, but stopped at the palace ruins to use the Thothian Teleportation Circle there.  Everyone teleported to the Circle in the Hall of Shrines, with Vallium carrying the Nataraja through the teleporter.  The force fields had not changed since their last visit.  Vael used a Teleport Rug to carry the Nataraja back to the Beacon.  The rest of the group used the Teleport Circle to go near the Red Bridge, then Vallium decided it was too long a walk from there, and had them teleport again to the room next to the Glory of Weskenim.

Their emergence surprised a goblin guard, who raised the alarm, but Bottleneck came over and realized who it was and told the guards to stand down.  The company went through the former halfling portcullis, past the barricade that formerly marked the border between halfling and goblin territory, and down the sloping passage to the Wet Caves.  After a brief discussion with Killik, they continued down the passage to Goblintown.  They took the long, safe way all the way around the perimeter of Goblintown until they reached the Goblin Court.  Palestrim, the king's majordomo, was not in his usual chair outside the King's room.  One of the ogre guards explained that the majordomo was talking to the king and the visitors should wait.

Vael got bored of waiting after a couple of minutes, so used a Message spell to tell Palestrim they were outside and wanted a meeting.  Palestrim came out a few seconds later in a huff, saying that nagging using magic was Not The Correct Protocol but that the King would see them anyway.  He asked them to leave all their weapons with the ogres, though.

King Weskenim was in his room, petting several of his cats.  He asked why they wanted a meeting.  Vael said they were looking to commission a map from Temrin.  The King asked if any of them were married; only Uvash was.  He asked Uvash how many wives he had, and after some sputtering Uvash said only one, as Zodarrim commanded.  Weskenim noted that he had eighteen wives, and the politics of his harem were vicious.  And that, after asking for a group photo, his queen had decided that she wasn't the tallest wife in it, so it had to be redone.  And so Temrin's time would be consumed by that for a while, unless the Queen were bribed with serious jewelry.

Vael offered to speak with the Queen, but Weskenim said that no intact males other than himself were allowed to enter the harem, so Vael would not be speaking with the Queen unless he wanted to become a eunuch first.  Vael declined.  Vael then showed the King his fancy armband and asked if the Queen was looking for something like that.  Weskenim agreed, but said the Queen was a bit shorter than Vael so it would need to be a bit smaller.

Leaving the King's room, the group went to their private guest room within Goblintown.  Vael used the Teleport Rugs to go from there to the Beacon and then to Gosterwick, then met with Chairduster the jeweler to explain the piece he would like to commission.  Chairduster agreed to perform the work, and said that, given the amount of money involved, he could move it to the top of his priority list and finish it within a week if all the necessary materials were available in Gosterwick, or a few weeks if he needed anything brought from Newmarket.

Vael went back to the Arcane Practitioners' Club then through both Teleport Rugs to meet the others in Goblintown.  They retraced their steps back up to the Glory of Weskenim, then used the teleporter on top of the indoor pyramid to the other pyramid near the Well of Light.  They walked east toward the howling caves, when they heard some loud hooting and then a group of four baboons charged them.  As the lead baboon got close, he realized who they were charging, then abruptly stopped, tackled the second baboon, and lead the four baboons running back the way they came.

When the group reached the portcullis near the Howling Caves, they saw a baboon in heating conversation with Yamki.  Yamki said that the baboon was apologizing for almost attacking them; he thought they were intruders, not the Bringers of Food, until he got close.   Vallium said it was fine, and asked if they could go through the Howling Cave to the Chasm.  Yamki said that was permitted, but warned them that the Scary Glowing Orange Room was that way, and to be careful.

The group entered the arcanum geode again, with Ioannes warning everyone that the place might collapse and to be careful, while Vael and Uvash took a quick look for any easily-removed chunks of arcanum.  Finding none, they all continued to the Great Chasm.  Vael cast Walk on Air on Uvash and Ioannes, and everyone Levitated or Air Walked across the Chasm.  The passage leading east showed another baboon staring at them from a nearby cave.  Three of them put on Salamander Amulets to avoid fire damage, while Vael hung back.  When they entered the room, the illusion of the blonde woman again appeared and told them in Mithric to go away.  They ignored her and Vael cast a Lockmaster spell to unlock the secret door, which caused a fireball to go off.  Nobody was hurt because of the fire resistance.  Vael and Ioannes went through the door, and Vael passed Uvash his amulet to carry back to Vallium, so he could safely cross the room.  The illusion of the woman appeared again as Vallium entered the room, but this time no more fireballs went off.  Everyone went down the stairs to the east.

Vael pressed both eyes of the statue, which opened the secret door straight ahead.  They went east down a rough passage to the room where they'd destroyed the Orator constructs a week before.  Vallium asked if they had properly searched the room, and nobody was sure, so they searched it again, and didn't find anything.  There was a portcullis on the far wall.  As they approached it, a couple of statues on the far side of the portcullis animated and started blasting them with Magical Bolts.

Vael cast Blink Other on Vallium then Uvash, to teleport them past the closed portcullis.  Vallium and Uvash smashed the constructs with sword and mace until they stopped firing Magical Bolts.  They didn't find a lever to open the portcullis, so they lifted it instead.  While Vallium held it up, Uvash got a chunk of broken construct to place under it to hold it up while the others crawled under.  When Vael entered the room, with his See Secrets spell running, he spotted a secret door to the north and a hidden button on the wall.  Pushing the button raised the portcullis.  There was also an obvious wooden door to the east.

Vael pushed on the secret door and it just opened, with no tricks required.  This led to another rough passage, which ended in a blank wall.  Vael spotted a stone secret door there, and a button on the floor.  He stepped on the button, and the wall swung open, leading to a narrow balcony inside a huge vertical shaft, with walls of some kind of reflective crystal.  In front of them was a magical statue of a woman, with a plaque saying that she was Placida Gorgitrex, a judge.  Ioannes investigated the statue closely and noticed that the head, of a smiling young woman with short hair, could be moved up and down.  Vael Levitated up and actually removed the head, which was on a pin.

Their Continual Light rocks didn't throw off enough light to see the top or bottom of the shaft, so Vael cast Dark Vision.  This revealed that the shaft went up around 40' and down about 70' from where they were standing.  The bottom of the shaft featured a sandy floor, with some statues on plinths, and some kind of roof over a structure in the center, and four corpses on the floor around the structure.

They decided to explore around the shaft.  They found three more balconies, each with a statue.  Some of the statue heads didn't match the bodies.  They spent some time trying to figure out which head went with which body, and moving the heads around.  When they put the correct head on the correct body, it loudly clicked into place, and would no longer move.  There was also another secret door, near the north balcony, but there was no obvious way to open it.  Vael used a Glass Wall spell to look through the secret door and saw a lever on the far side.  He used an Apportation spell to remotely activate the lever and open the door.

The group went west down another rough corridor, until they reached a large room with three large statues facing away from them.  The statues appeared to be of a man in robes, a woman with long blonde hair, and a snakelike gold dragon.  Vallium Levitated toward the statues.  When Ioannes followed him, actually walking on the ground like some kind of farmer, he detected that the floor was an illusion, by falling through it.  He tried grabbing the floor behind him, but missed, and fell past it.  Vael cast Blink Other, and was quick enough to bring Ioannes back up a few yards, giving him a second chance to grab the floor.  This time Ioannes latched on and then pulled himself up to safety.

Vallium and Vael Levitated down through the illusory floor, and found an empty pit about 60' deep.  The statues were actually on solid ground in the middle of the room.  They flew up out of the pit and near the statues to take a look.  The statue in the middle looked like Priscus Pulcher, and the statue to the north looked like the same blonde woman from the fireball room.  All three statues had valuable-looking gems for eyes.  Vael cast Walk on Air on Ioannes and Uvash again, so they could cross the pit.  When everyone was in the center of the room, Vallium used his knife to pry one of the blue sapphire gems out of the Pulcher statue.

At that point the statues got angry and attacked.  Two of the statues tried magic on Vallium and one on Uvash, but all resisted.  A melee ensued, and Vallium and Uvash eventually smashed all three statues.  When the statues stopped fighting back, they took the rest of their gem eyes.

The room continued beyond the statues.  Everyone looked for, and found, a matching illusory floor pit trap.  This pit was also empty.  Everyone flew over it and down a passage to the west.  It eventually dead-ended, with a secret panel in the ceiling.  Vael noticed that there was a gasket of gum around the panel.  He used Glass Wall to look up through the secret panel, and saw a murky fountain above.  Everyone realized where they were, under the room where they had taken the Mirrors of Life Trapping.  They decided not to bother opening the secret panel and getting wet, and turned around and went back to the balconies around the shaft.

Next everyone flew down to the bottom of the shaft.  When they got closer they realized the four statues in the corners of the room looked like the orator constructs they had fought last week, but were currently dormant.  There were four doors out of the room.  In the center of the room were four columns holding up a roof, and under the roof was a large plinth, holding a huge golden statue of a gold dragon.  Ioannes checked out the corpses on the floor, and decided they had died from falling from a great height.  He noticed that one of the bodies was wearing magical mail armor, which led the whole group to start searching and looting the victims of gravity.

While they were searching the bodies, Uvash was eyeing the gold dragon statue.  Eventually his greed got the better of him, and he asked for the pickaxe from Larel's Sack, then smashed it into the statue's golden eye.  It sunk right in, so the statue was definitely softer than steel.  He removed a chunk of statue and examined it closely, then decided it was iron pyrite, not real gold.  Oh well.

The unprovoked attack on the defenseless dragon statue woke up the orator statues in the corners of the rooms, which all started pelting Uvash with magical bolts.  Meanwhile, the sand to the west of the statue started rumbling and shifting.  Vallium charged the orator in the northwest corner of the room, while Vael followed him to cast buffing spells.  Uvash charged the one in the southwest corner, while Ioannes healed him.  The orators sent magical missiles at everyone, with Uvash getting more than his fair share.  Uvash and Ioannes were both hit a few times and badly wounded.  Vallium reached the construct in the northwest corner as Vael finished casting Great Haste on him, and just slashed it to bits.  Uvash, badly wounded, took longer to wound the southwest statue.

The rumbling sand disgorged a huge iron golem, which came after Vallium with a huge greatsword.  Vallium chose not to parry the huge weapon, dodging it instead.  Under the effect of Great Haste he hit the golem about half a dozen times before it went down.  Meanwhile both Uvash and Ioannes were bleeding a lot and reaching for healing potions.  Ioannes almost passed out, and was saved by his Bless spell, which went away.  Vael used Larel's Clock to turn himself invisible and make the orators stop shooting him, then cast Invisibility on Ioannes as well, and Haste on Vallium to make him even faster.

Vallium ran around the room, killing the two eastern orator constructs while dodging their magical attacks.  Uvash stayed conscious and got a few blows in on the southwestern construct, almost finishing it off, before Vallium came rushing back over and landed the final blow.  With all four constructs and the iron golem down, they took a quick look around the room.  Vael magically spotted a secret door on the eastern side of the dragon statue's plinth, but they decided to come back and open it tomorrow, when they were rested.

They dropped a Teleport Rug on the floor and just teleported back to the Beacon.  When they got there, they remembered that they wanted to test the Mirror of Life Trapping.  (They had found three of them, but had sold two and only kept one.)  Vallium volunteered to be the test subject.  He looked deeply at his reflection in the mirror, and disappeared, leaving a pile of equipment and clothing behind.  Vael used the mirror's command word and managed to make the mirror release Vallium.  (It didn't know him by name, but "prisoner one" worked.)  Vallium looked into the mirror again, and this time Vael tried summoning "prisoner one" to the front of the mirror for conversation.  This worked, and Vallium's image appeared in the mirror.  He was able to talk to Vael, but he was not able to command the mirror to release him from inside, even with the command word.  Vael told the mirror to release him again, and Vallium got dressed.  Vael commanded the Watcher Nataraja to follow him back to the room with the stairs and resume standing guard.

GM's Comments:

That was a lot of angry statues.  The Orator Constructs did a lot of damage, hitting every member of the party with their magical bolts, and severely wounding both Uvash and Ioannes.  The iron golem looked huge and strong and mean, but didn't actually manage to hit with its oversized greatsword before Vallium destroyed it.  The stone guardians and stole golems didn't do as much damage.

Achievements:

None

XP:

• Exploration: 10 new areas, 1 XP
• Loot: They found gem eyes and some loot on the bodies.  Probably 1 XP since they won't sell everything.
• Achievements: 0 XP

Next Week:

They plan to go back to the bottom of that shaft the next day, rather than taking their usual week of downtime.  They want to fully explore the area around the dragon statue, including the secret door and the four doors around the room.  If they finish exploring that area, they will go back to the Well of Light level and continue exploring the tunnels off the Great Chasm.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 62: Behind the Fireball Traps

Date:

Basilsday 18th Lucrios, 2994 AE

Weather:

Warm, partly cloudy

Player Characters:

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

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Significant NPCs:

Basil, Right for Riches employee

Akla-Chah, Rudishva AI psychologist

Mistral, intelligent scimitar

Cers, intelligent scimitar

Yamki, three-armed giant intelligent baboon

Many baboons

3 mantari

10 constructs of Archontean orators

The Plan:

• Explore the Rudishva area near the Hall of Shrines
• Commission a map from Temrin in the Goblin Market
• Visit the Arena

What Happened:

Vallium returned to find that Mistral (the magic scimitar they had found months ago which had until recently been silent) and Cers (the magic scimitar they had recently found in the hands of Cinna Minux) were each suggesting that the other one be melted down or at least disenchanted.  After talking to Mistral, he suggested that maybe Akla-Chah could figure out which one was telling the truth.

It had been a month since they'd brought food to the baboons per the terms of their peace treaty, so the group took a shopping trip to the Grain House and bought a wheelbarrow full of assorted food through the Teleport Rugs to the Beacon, for later delivery to the baboons.

Vael was late for their delve, as he was using a Trace spell to try to find the exact location of another Teleport Rug.  The others left without him.  They went through the Rudishva teleporter to the Secure Vault, then through a teleporter in the Cloister to the Rudishva Transport Hub, then through another teleporter to the area that the Goat's bat had scouted the previous week.  They expected to find a blue granite slab with some circles on top, and standing on the circles would cause the slab to move upwards to another level.

Instead, they found an empty shaft heading up into the darkness, with no blue granite slab.  There was a sigil with four circles on the wall.  They waved silver and yellow Rudishva identity plaques at it, to no effect.  Vallium used the Boots of Levitation to fly up the shaft until he saw the underside of the blue granite slab, but there was no way around it.  He flew back down to the others, then, not having brought the Command Bracelet, used the Teleport Rug to go back to the Beacon to talk to Akla-Chah.

Akla-Chah said the granite slab sounded like an "elevator" which was a Rudishva technological device for vertical transport.  She suggested that if waving a plaque at the circles on the wall didn't work, it might actually be necessary to touch the circles.  As Vallium was talking to Akla-Chah, Vael wandered in, reporting that the Teleport Rug he was looking for was rolled up in a closet somewhere in Lady Alexia's residence, but without actually breaking in he hadn't figured out the exact room.

Vael and Vallium went back through the Rug to the Halls, rejoining Uvash and Ioannes at the bottom of the elevator shaft.  Vael touched the circle on the wall, and eventually the blue granite slab came down the shaft and stopped at the bottom.  They all stood on the slab, and Vael touched the circles on the slab with his foot, and the slab went up.  A few minutes later it stopped and some doors opened, into an octagonal Rudishva-architecture room.

As Goat had reported based on his summoned bat recon, the room contained many chambers that looked like Rudishva-sized coffins, made of plasteel, with transparent windows in the front.  Some appeared to be empty and unpowered.  One appeared to be empty but powered, with some flashing lights and humming sounds, and some tubes carrying some yellow gel back and forth to a vat in the center of the room.  Six appeared to be occupied: two with Rudishva, one with a skinny bald gray unidentified humanoid, one with some kind of rock elemental, one with some kind of black goo, and one with some horribly ugly demon hag.  Looking through the windows, it wasn't entirely clear if the occupants were alive or dead, but no decay was visible so they were either alive or well-preserved corpses.

Vael went back through the Rug to the Beacon to collect a GnuCoder 1000 tablet and the data crystal "Crew Roster (Medical)."  He then started looking at all the Beacon crew members, trying to identify if the two Rudishva present were in the list.  He identified Triv-Lok, a Flight Jemadar, and Talg-Roe, a Gravitics Test Engineer.  He called Akla-Chah on the Command Tablet to confirm this finding and his previous notes about the two.  Akla-Chah re-iterated that Talg-Roe had been cryogenically frozen to slow the process of a terminal a disease that was not treatable with local facilities, and that Triv-Lok had been frozen as punishment for treason, after trying to negotiate a separate peace with the Kaliyani and Heqeti after their attack.  She said that the other humanoid sounded like a Niravairi, and that she didn't have any record of why it was there, but the Niravairi didn't always get along with the Rudishva so it might be a prisoner.  She didn't know about the other creatures in the pods and suspected they might be local to Arden Vul.

They looked at the controls a bit, finding a green button, a blue button, and a yellow button.  (Uvash looked for a big red button to push, but there was not one.)  There was also a screen that was not showing anything, one large card slot, and thirteen small card slots, with six of them containing cards.  Vael read the Rudishva glyphs on the buttons and saw that the green button had a one and a zero, the blue button had the sigil for "open", and the yellow button had a glyph that Vael wasn't sure about, which Akla-Chah eventually confirmed was the symbol for a different kind of "open" in the sense of opening a faucet and letting water flow.  After some discussion, the group decided to not play with the controls today.

Vallium found a caved-in passage leading east.  There was also a passage south and a hole in the wall to the northwest.  Vael turned on the Command Bracelet, looking for technology it could talk to, and saw that the Bracelet had reverted to Rudishva language when he turned it off to change the battery, and was showing a Rudishva glyph he didn't know.  He eventually got it back to Mithric, at which point the icon was replaced by the Mithric word for "construct" in Mithric.  So there was apparently a Rudishva construct of some sort within range.

Vallium went through the hole to the northwest and found a Thothian shrine, with gray walls with strange symbols within them.  The western end of the shrine was blocked by a translucent force field.  Beyond the force field was the Hall of Shrines, with the huge statue of Thoth breathing orange pneuma nearby.  Vallium got one of their two Stones of Passage that allegedly allowed passing through force fields, and walked through the field.  This worked, but the Stone went inert afterward.  Vallium was now trapped on the other side of the force field.  He breathed in Thoth's pneuma, feeling his strength and health diminish but his intelligence and openness to Thoth increase.  He wasn't happy about the decreased strength, and drank a strength potion to compensate.

Vallium walked over to the force field and gestured that the Stone no longer worked.  Vael tried a Blink Other spell, but he felt the force field resist his teleportation magic.  Vael suggested that the others go through the Teleport Rug, then he could use the remaining Stone of Passage to join Vallium, then they could come join them through the Rug.  This worked, and this time the Stone's power was not consumed.

The united group explored the Hall of Shrines.  They saw many statues of ancient Archontean heroes, along with some missing or destroyed statues.  They saw eight shrines off to the sides, with seven of them blocked by force fields and one open.  The open one contained a blue disc on the floor, a statue of Thoth, and a marble table containing some silver (or maybe platinum?) scales.  Uvash ran forward to investigate, but was warned off.  After some discussion, Vael stepped forward onto the blue disc, and felt the room freeze around him while Thoth entered his mind and asked three questions about justice.  Vael answered all three questions, giving the answers he thought Thoth would want, and was rewarded by increased willpower and by the scales on the marble table moving toward him.  He grabbed the scales, which were made of platinum and appeared to be magical.

After some peering through the force fields, the group decided that the open shrine was different from last time, so maybe the force fields changed over time.  Vallium looked for any symbols of time to indicate when that might happen, but didn't see any.  Uvash suggested just staying in the room for a while to see if anything changed, but Vallium said he had just drunk a strength potion and didn't want to waste it, so they should get going.

Everyone went up the stairs, north through a secret door, west through another secret door to the room with the Ruby Chair, and south to the Well of Light.  Looking up, it was a bit too cloudy to do the Litany of Light.  They went through the Rug to get the wheelbarrow full of food for the baboons, then east to the Howling Caves where most of the baboons lived.  Yamki the Three-Armed greeted them there.  He thanked them for remembering that today was food day, and asked if they marked days on the wall like he did.  Vael asked for any news, and Yamki reported that the green dragon had been seen flying near the cliff recently, but fortunately hadn't spotted the baboons who were skillfully hiding.  He also said that several baby baboons had been born.

Vallium suggested that they explore the passages off the Great Chasm on this level.  They walked north and east until they found the bridge over the chasm, and Vael cast Walk on Air on Uvash and Ioannes so everyone could (sort of) fly.  Vallium led the group south to some openings in the chasm they had noted but not investigated.  On the way, three small flying manta-rays with stingers attacked them.  It was a quick fight: Vallium killed two of the mantari, and the third one fled.

The first opening they explored led to a cavern containing a large arcanum geode.  The walls throbbed with orange light.  Vael and Ioannes resisted the urge to stay and investigate the arcanum, but Vael and Uvash took a quick look around to see if there were any lumps of arcanum they could easily take.  Vael found one and Uvash took two.  Nobody had a pickaxe handy, so Vael reached into Larel's Sack to see if there was one there, and there was.  Uvash skillfully mined the three lumps of arcanum, while Ioannes warned that the room was on the verge of collapse and they should get out of there.

Contining down the chasm, they found a rough passage to the east, which led to a four-way intersection, with baboon noises and smells ahead.  Vallium turned left, and found a worked room, with five doors, a lot of baboon dung, and various burned trash on the floor.  As he entered the room, an image of a woman appeared.  She had very long blonde hair and wore a white dress.  She held up her right hand in the universal sign for "stop" and said, in Mithric, “Stop! You are not welcome. Return whence you came and you will avoid retribution. Proceed and you shall die.”  She then disappeared.

The group decided that the combination of burned stuff and warnings meant possible fire traps, so Vallium and Uvash put on Salamander Amulets.  (Ioannes was already wearing one.)  They didn't have a fourth, so Vael stayed out of the room, while the other three went in.  Vallium opened a door, and a fireball went off, not burning them.  He repeated this with the other doors, and got four more fireballs.  Ioannes cast See Secrets and found a secret door on the east wall, with a keyhole hidden in the shadows of a fresco.  Vallium lept into action and expertly tried his entire collection of about 100 keys, none of which fit.  He went to get Vael, passing him an amulet.  When Vael entered the room, the image of the woman appeared again to warn him off.  Vael ignored her and cast Lockmaster on the keyhole, and was rewarded with the click of the secret door unlocking, plus another fireball.  Beyond the door was a dusty staircase down into the darkness.  Uvash went in first, far enough to be out of fireball range, then passed back his salamander amulet, so the other three could proceed without anyone worrying about getting burned.

The group went down a dusty passage for a while, then found an octagonal room with secret doors (easily spotted as Vael had See Secrets on) on three walls and a statue of an archon in the center.  Vael investigated all three secret doors but failed to find a way to open them.  He tried the Glass Wall spell to look through the secret doors, and found that all three were lined with lead to prevent scrying.  He tried casting Lockmaster blind without seeing the lock, in case he got lucky, to no avail.  Giving up on magic, he checked out the statue, and saw that its hands were articulated, like some of the Thoth statues.  He pointed both hands north and the north door opened.

The north door led to a locked wooden door.  Vallium again tried all of his keys, and was again disappointed.  Vael Lockmastered the door.  Beyond was a small octagonal room with three more doors and a pool of murkey water.  Uvash immediately stuck his face in the pool and started drinking.  The water tasted stale and flat, but didn't make him sick or cause any other notable effects.  Vallium, with Vael and Ioannes watching, opened the western door.  It led to a small closet containing only a long mirror on the wall.  The three of them saw their reflections in the mirror, which tried to pull them in, but all three resisted.  Vael told everyone else to look away, then went into the closet with the mirror and spent half an hour casting Analyze Magic.  The spell told him that the mirror tried to imprison anyone who looked at it.  Not wanting to spend more time figuring out the mirror further right now, he went through the Teleport Rug to the Beacon to warn Basil and Akla-Chah about the dangerous mirror that he would be carrying through that nobody should ever look at.  He then took the mirror off the wall, carried it through the Beacon, and set it shiny-side-down on a table in the workshop.

For the other two doors, they were more cautious.  Vael used Glass Wall to look through the doors, so that nobody else would see what was on the other side.  Both contained a mirror like the first one, and he felt both of the mirrors try to pull him in, but resisted both times.  They repeated the same process, where everyone else looked away, while Vael went in, grabbed the mirror while trying not to look at it, and carried it through the Rug.  Eventually he collected all three mirrors.  They then spent a while searching for secret doors, didn't find any, and went back to the statue.

Vael pointed the statue's hands south.  This opened the south door.  A narrow twisty passage had fancy lapis lazuli letters on the floor reading "DENRAWEREWOUY" (except in Mithric), then ended in a blank wall.  Using advanced wizardly code-breaking skills, Vael read this backwards as "you were warned."  They looked for a secret door in the obvious place, didn't spot it with magic, but felt an invisible handle.  Vallium pulled the invisible handle and opened a very well hidden stone door, which led into a ten-foot-wide north-south passage.

The group went south.  After a while they reached a four-way intersection.  They continued for a while through a series of identical looking doors and four-way intersections.  After a while Vael got suspicious, pulled out his chalk, and started writing on the walls.  They proceeded through some doors and found themselves at the intersection with writing, showing that it was probably the same intersection.  They went all four ways and didn't find a way out.  Using Absolute Direction, Vael tried to remember where the secret door had been, and then cast Earth to Air on the wall there.  That made a big enough hole in the wall to show that he had the right place.  They crawled through the hole and went back to the statue room.

The statue's hands would only point north or south, so Vael looked for other interesting features on the statue.  He found that both eyes would depress.  He pushed both at the same time, and the eastern door opened.  This led to some dusty stairs down to the east, then a long windy unfinished cavern passage mostly east, then some finished stairs up.  The stairs led to a room with ten large statues lining the north and south walls.  The statues were all the same middle-aged man, holding a scroll case in one hand and the other hand in a fist above his head.

When Vallium reached the midpoint of the room, the statues all animated and attacked, launching Magical Bolts from their scroll cases at the group.  Vael Blinked away, then used Larel's Cloak to turn invisible.  Ioannes got hit by a couple of bolts, then focused on dodging.  Vallium and Uvash attacked.  Uvash used his Divine Might and Divine Grace to become very fast and strong, then started smashing constructs.  Vallium, weaker than usual due to the effects of Thoth's Pneuma, also smashed constructs, but less effectively than usual.  A couple of the constructs did not dodge attacks, and turned out to be full of poison gas, which was released when they were broken.  However, nobody succumbed to the poison.  Some of the other constructs appeared faster than the others, and preferred bashing with their scroll cases rather than plinking away with Magical Bolts.  Ioannes got bashed hard enough to stagger from his wounds and be at risk of passing out, but Vallium rushed to his defense to parry for him, while Vallium prepared to Blink him out of the way of any attacks.  Ioannes managed to drink a Major Healing potion and end the immediate danger, while Vallium and Uvash finished off the constructs.

At that point the group decided to head back for home.  They went back through the dusty passages to the fireball trap room, then flew back across the chasm, then used the indoor pyramid teleporter to teleport to Upper Goblintown, then flew down the shaft in the floor to the Cloister, where a Rudishva teleporter led to the Beacon.  They had found a mysterious new area and had taken three mysterious magic mirrors, plus some Thothian magical scales.

GM's Comments:

I found it amusing that, in a group with two clerics and a fighter who'd just breathed Thoth's holy pnemua, Vael the non-religious wizard was the one who charged forth to answer Thoth's questions.  But it worked.

This was the third one-way-door trap this group had encountered in Arden Vul.  Without the right magic, they would have been stuck in those intersecting corridors until they died of thirst.  However, with their current set of powers and items, it was just an annoyance rather than a death sentence.

Thoth's Pneuma reducing Vallium's strength made him do significantly less damage than usual.  (Drinking a strength potion was a good counter, but the potion only lasted an hour so it was gone before the big fight.)  However Divine Might made Uvash do more damage than usual, so it mostly cancelled out.

Achievements:

None

XP:

• Exploration: 10 new locations, 1 XP
• Loot: They didn't find a lot of items, but those Scales of Thoth and Mirrors of Life Trapping are valuable.  0-2 XP depending on what they choose to sell.
• Achievements: 0 XP
• Total: 1-3 XP

Next Week:

They plan to visit Goblintown and try to commission a Temrin map to the Bone Ring of Jagri-Nas.  Then they went to visit the Hall of Shrines and see if any force fields have changed.  Finally they will go back to the area behind the fireball traps and continue exploring where they left off.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 61: Exploring Rudishva Teleporters

Date:

Basilsday 11th Lucrios, 2994 AE

Weather:

Hot, sunny

Player Characters:

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

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

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

Significant NPCs:

Fael, Half-elven druid

Onyx, cat

Basil, Right for Riches employee

Akla-Chah, Rudishva AI psychologist

Mistral, intelligent scimitar

Cers, intelligent scimitar

Stone natarajas

6 Kaliyani

Kunda and The Silent, Khumus adventurers

Gribble, goblin prince

Many goblins

Yoburra, varumani ambassador

Dworm, food merchant

The Plan:

• Explore the Rudishva teleporter network
• Meeting with King Weskenim and try to commission more Temrin maps

What Happened:

Vallium was out sick.

Ioannes hired Fael the druid to cast Speak with Animals so he could converse with his cat Onyx.  Onyx informed him that he was happy with the cat-friendly doors in the Arcane Practitioners' Club, but it was wrong for both Pelteon and Wicktrimmer to go out of town at the same time that Ioannes had to go back to the scary cave, leaving Onyx with nobody to talk to but other cats.  He also said that Wicktrimmer's employees at the Rarities Factor weren't nearly as good at picking fish.

Basil warned Vael that he heard noise from inside one of the chests kept in the bridge of the Beacon.  Vael investigated and found Mistral, the scimitar they had found months ago, yelling that he needed to speak to Vallium.  Told that Vallium was unavailable, he said that he would settle for Ioannes.  Mistral informed Ioannes that he detected the prescence of Cers nearby, that Cers was evil, and that Cers must be melted down.  Vael suggested just throwing him in the slime pit, but Mistral said that Cers was devious and would probably figure out a way to survive that then join up with another evil person.

Vael pulled Cers out of another chest to get its side of the story.  Cers said that it could detect treasure and so was more useful than Mistral.  Also that it wasn't a bad scimitar, it had just been charmed by the vampire Cinna Minux, like half the people and monsters in Arden Vul.  Vael said that if Cers shocked him again he'd go into the slime pit, so Cers promised not to shock him, and Vael put Cers in his belt.

They waited for Uvash and hired Goat at the Grudge Brigade for his animal summoning skills.  Vael made sure everyone had a silver Rudishva identity plaque, then they all took the Rudishva teleporter from the Beacon to the vault near the cloister.  They walked across the cloister and took the teleporter to the translocation hub, where there were three other teleporters, two of them unexplored.  Some stone natarajas started hopping in their general direction, but everyone waved their Rudishva identity plaques and the natarajas went back to their niches.

Goat created a bat swarm, then chose one bat as the special one and cast Beast Possession on it.  Vael hit the button on a teleporter and the bat flew in.  A few minutes later it hadn't returned but Goat hadn't awakened, so Vael followed the bat through the teleporter and saw that it was in a small room they had explored previously, with an iris door that led to some slime zombies.  Vael activated the teleporter for the bat and both returned to the hub.  After making a note on his map, Vael pointed to a second teleporter and sent the bat through.

The bat, inhabited by Goat, visited a Rudishva-architecture room with some orange benches around a small empty hole in the floor.  On the far side of the room was a granite slab, with a lapis inlay, showing a large orb with three smaller orbs surrounding it.  The bat landed on the inlay, and this triggered the slab to start rising.  It was an elevator!  The bat rode it to the top, then a door opened, and the bat flew out into a large octagonal room.  In the room were what looked like several high-tech coffins.  Some looked off or broken.  Others had blinking lights and made humming noises, indicating that they were active.  And they had windows, within which some creatures could be seen, sleeping or dead.  The inhabitants included two Rudishva, some unknown hairless gray humanoid, some kind of rock elemental, some kind of hideous woman with claws, and some kind of black goop.

Goat had the bat avoid touching anything and continue flying south.  There was a chasm there, and at the bottom of the chasm was some kind of spherical mechanical construct.  There were also a few Rudishva corpses down there.  The bat avoided the construct and flew across the chasm to another exit.  This led to a natural passage containing a statue of some kind of bipedal amphibian.  Later, the bat avoided some green slime.  Finally, the passage started sloping it down.  The bat kept following it until Goat ran out of energy to maintain the Beast Possession spell, lost his link to the bat, and woke up, exhausted.

Vael cast Lend Energy on Goat, and Goat selected another bat to possess.  This time he told Ioannes and Vael to keep his energy topped up rather than waiting for it to run out.  He flew the bat into the last teleporter, which revealed a small Rudishva-architecture teleport pod, with two teleporters.  It exited to a room full of a bunch of Rudishva technology, with screens displaying Rudishva glyphs that Goat could not read.  There was an iris door, but the bat lacked the identity plaque to open it.  Eventually Vael went through the teleporter after the bat, and brought it back out.  Then everyone went through.  Vael looked at the screens for a while, then they opened the iris door.

On the other side was a large room, containing many vats.  Some were empty, some contained strange liquids, and three contained varumani, dead or sleeping or comatose.  Vael called Akla-Chah on the Command Bracelet to ask about the room.  She said that was probably the room where the crew of the Beacon grew more varumani after the crash.  Vael asked how to work it, but Akla-Chah lacked details.

Eventually they sent the bat through the second teleporter.  It emerged into a Rudishva-architecture room with a bunk bed, three large metal chests, and a lot of bones and junk on the floor.  The bat exited the room into a huge hallway.  Across the hall was a wall of fire.  Continuing down the hall, it had periodic iris doors, and a few niches high up on the walls.  At the end of the hall was a breached barricade and some bodies.  Near the barricade, a side passage led to a huge water tank.  The bat flew up to explore the tank, and found a couple of humans hiding in the water inside it.

Continuing through a narrow side passage, the Goat-possessed bat saw a group of six six-limbed snakelike beings with two fangs each, with weapons and equipment.  Kaliyani.  One of the kaliyani spotted the bat and threw a javelin, which was lethal.

Goat woke up, back in his own body.  He described what he had seen.  The group then decided to explore the area the bat had scouted.  Vael used a Salamander Amulet to walk through the Wall of Fire, then dropped a Teleport Rug to let the others join him.  Beyond the wall was a camp containing many corpses, mostly human but one kaliyani.  There was also an open chest containing a bunch of silver coins, and some bedrolls and backpacks, and a couple of the bodies were wearing armor.  Looting ensued.  When Vael started picking up silver coins, he didn't feel so great.  There was some kind of contact poison on all the coins.  Uvash picked up the chest, and that was poisoned too.  Fortunately both resisted the poison and felt better a bit later.

Continuing north, Vael turned Goat invisible, then they attempted to ambush the kaliyani squad, who had heard them and simultaneously tried to ambush them.  With nobody surprised, Vael cast Missile Shield on himself while Uvash and Ioannes dove behind cover.  The kaliyani threw a lot of javelins at Vael, who tried to make a good show of dodging them.  Two kaliyani spellcasters tried spells, which failed to affect Vael and Uvash.  Eventually the kaliyani warriors ran out of javelins to throw and closed with their broadswords.

Uvash started fighting.  Meanwhile Vael cast Create Fire and Shape Fire and started harassing the kaliyani with them.  Goat, invisible, finished his long casting of a Create Animal for an elephant, which he tried dropping on the heads of three kaliyani.  Two dodged, but one was squished.  The elephant, which survived its fall, then stood up and start charging and trampling and goring and generally wrecking kaliyani.  One of the kaliyani casters got too close to the wall of fire, so Vael used Shape Air to knock it back.  This was successful, causing the kaliyani to go into the wall and burn a lot.

Eventually Uvash and the elephant finished off the last kaliyani.  The party looted the bodies, then picked up javelins from all over the room.  Finally, Vael remembered that Thegn Varboka had a reward for kaliyani fangs, so they ripped all the kaliyani fangs out.  The summoned elephant timed out.  So did the Wall of Fire.

With the kaliyani menace eliminated, the group headed west to the big water tank.  Vael cast Walk on Air on Uvash, so they could both Levitate and/or Walk to the top.  The two humans were not immediately visible, but then Vael spotted one hiding under the water.  Various gestures eventually got them to surface and talk.  Only one of them, a very slim person dressed all in black, did all the talking.  She said that most of their group had been killed by the snake creatures and their line of retreat was blocked by creepy bird creatures, so they were hiding here.  Vael pulled out the kaliyani fangs and explained that it was safe now, and they could get them back to Gosterwick if they could follow directions.  After a bit of discussion, the two climbed down a rope from the tank and went back to the site of the battle with the kaliyani.  They mentioned that someone had looted their companions, but nobody admitted doing it.

Vael said that if they'd agree to be blindfolded and to say the right command words, they could be teleported out.  Some gesturing revealed that one of the pair didn't like to talk, but he eventually agreed to try to say the command words.  After both were blindfolded, Uvash went through a Teleport Rug, then took both Rugs from Akla-Chah's lounge to the entrance stairway where there was less to see.  Vael then had each of the people say the command word to go through the Rug to the Beacon, then Uvash had them say the second word to go through the other Rug to the Arcane Practitioners' Club, then they led them out.  Vael gave each of the adventurers some silver.

Vael and Uvash went back through the Rugs, and Ioannes suggested taking the Goat to the Goblin Forum, since Gribble had been asking about him.  They went back through some teleporters and flew up through the shaft near the slime pool outside the cloister, then took the stairs down from the former Temple of Set to the Forum.  There, all the goblins were exited to see Goat.  One of the guards went to get Gribble from his quarters.  Gribble asked Goat to please drop another elephant on the evil Set statue to break more of it into small commemorative chunks.  With dozens of goblins and several varumani ambassadors watching, Goat did another elephant drop.  Once the elephant was safely gone, the goblins swarmed the broken statue to gather relics.  Vael briefly talked to the varumani ambassador.  The group then decided that was enough exploration for one day, and went back to the Beacon.

GM's Comments:

When a player wants to drop elephants on things, you can spend a lot of time doing physics.  It's not worth it.  Just treat it as a slam attack.

Achievements:

The Rescuers: 1 XP for getting Kunda and The Silent out

XP:

• Exploration: 16 rooms, 1 XP
• Treasure: Some, but not a lot.  Mostly the kaliyani's stuff.  1 XP
• Achievements: 1 XP
• Total: 3 XP

Next Week:

Exploring teleporters has revealed several new areas, so they have a lot of choices of where to explore.  They also still want to visit Goblintown to talk to King Weskenim about a map, and the Court of the Varumani Thegn to get a reward for those kaliyani fangs.  I have no idea what they'll choose.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 60b: Killing Cinna Minux

Date:

Basilsday 4th Lucrios, 2994 AE

Weather:

Warm, stormy

Player Characters:

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

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Significant NPCs:

Basil, Right for Riches employee

Akla-Chah, Rudishva AI psychologist

Cinna Minux, vampire

Brenna Three-Braids, vampire

Joshuel the Binder, vampire mage

Elliana, human thrall of Cinna Minux

Bestial varumani thrall of Cinna Minux

6 Ghouls

6 Chasm cephalopods

Roper

6 Shadows

The Plan:

• Kill the vampires

What Happened:

We resumed in mid-battle, with Cinna Minux and Brenna Three-Braids fleeing in gaseous form.  The only opponents still fighting were Joshuel the vampire mage, Elliana the warrior thrall, and one random bestial varumani.  Vallium and Uvash took Elliana and the varmuani down, and then Joshuel decided the odds were not in his favor and assumed gaseous form to flee.

Uvash still had Great Haste running, so he was able to keep up with the flying gaseous vampires for a while.  Cinna, Brenna, and Joshuel split up and went three different ways.  Uvash chased Brenna, and hit her several times with his pick, but in gaseous form she was diffuse and didn't take much damage.  She eventually escaped up the spiral staircase, formerly guarded by ogres and varumani.  Vael wanted to cast Trace on Cinna, but didn't have line of sight.

The Right for Riches company eventually gave up the chase.  Vael case Seeker on Cinna, and got a vision of him resting in a sarcophagus, in a room full of stuff.  He followed up with Trace, and found that the room was about 70 yards southeast.  They headed south and east.  One room contained six ghouls.  They tried to ambush the party, but got chopped up.

After a lot of searching for secret doors in the direction where Cinna was, Vael tried Glass Wall, and saw that there was a fairly thin wall at the end of a dead-end corridor, leading to Cinna's room.  Vael asked everyone else to step through a Teleport Rug, then Blinked through the wall, then dropped the Rug on the floor.  The others came through immediately.  Vael sensed that Cinna was in the ornate sarcophagus in the south end of the room.  Uvash cast Protection from Evil on Vallium.  Vallium took a Rudishva Pep Pill, and then Uvash and Vallium pulled the lid off the sarcophagus.

Cinna, apparently fully healed, sat up and immediately tried to Charm Vallium again, but the combination of Protection from Evil and Vallium's Luck let Vallium resist.  Uvash and Vallium then started attacking Cinna.  Cinna jumped out of the sarcophagus and started parrying most of the blows, but took a couple of hard ones.  One lucky shot knocked Cinna unconscious, and it was all over.  They took off his Imperial Field Plate armor, then Vallium held a stake near Cinna's heart while Uvash pounded it in.  Deciding that wasn't enough, Vallium then cut off Cinna's head.  Deciding that still wasn't enough, they dragged Cinna's body away from any treasure, took off all his remaining equipment, then Vael used Create Fire to incinerate it.  Nobody was quite sure of the right way to kill a vampire, but staking plus decapitation plus immolation seemed good enough.

The room was full of treasures, including a magical bed, some fancy furniture, and several books.  While Vael and Ioannes sat down to rest, Vallium and Uvash started carrying stuff out through the Rug.  Both Vallium and Vael tried picking up Cinna's magical scimitar, but it shocked both of them, so Vael ended up using Apportation to take it without touching it again.

There was one locked door out of the room.  Vallium tried his whole collection of keys, but none fit.  Vael opened it with a Lockmaster spell, but behind the door was a huge pile of rubble, which started spilling into the room when they opened the door.  Vael considered Shape Earth to remove the rubble, but it would have taken a lot of time, so they just left the rubble, and went out of the room the same way they came in, with the Rug and a Blink spell.

They went to the previously found room with two coffins, but the other vampires weren't there.  Vael cast Earth to Air on the dirt in both coffins to try to make the area less hospitable to the vampires.  They explored the rest of the previous vampire lair, and took the head of a Horus statue from the dining room.  They also found a statue of Wadjet with a snake head.  The snake bit Uvash and gave him a minor cut and Protection from Evil.  Vallium and Ioannes both followed Uvash's lead and took minor cuts for protection spells, but Vael did not want to participate.

Next they went up the spiral stairs where Brenna had fled.  They found a finished stone room but no sign of the vampire.  A passage south led to a door south and passages east and west.  They went west, and found a room with a couple of concentric circles on the floor.  A door west led to a larger room.  As Vallium crossed the center of the room, he felt a minor electric shock, not enough to hurt him.  He warned the others, and Uvash cast Resist Lightning on everyone before they continued.

Another door to the west led to a cavern, with a chasm, crossed by a bridge.  There were three skeletons on the ground, with some equipment including a magic rope.  After looting the skeletons, they went south to some dead-end passages and found some more skeletons and a magic coffer, which they took.  Going back north, they crossed the bridge, but halfway across they were ambushed by 6 chasm cephalopods.  After a few seconds, four of the cephalopods were dead, and the last two floated back down into the chasm.

Vael announced that they should check out the chasm, so he and Vallium Levitated down.  The chasm was about 50 to 60 feet deep, and they didn't find anything interesting in it.  They did spot a rough passage heading east, so they used the Rug to bring the others over that way.

Vallium led the group east through a dry cave, and got ambushed by a roper hanging on the ceiling.  It dropped toward him while extruding sticking tentacle ropes.  He stabbed it, several times, hard, and it died.  Vael remembered that the last roper they'd killed had had gems in its gullet, so Uvash and Vallium immediately started sawing the body apart.  They found four gems and a whole lot of disgusting roper guts.

To the east of the cave was a finished passage, ending in a door.  Beyond the door was a tomb, with a looted sarcophagus on the floor, labeled "Grenfell the Great."  It looked like other tomb robbers had gotten there first, as there was no body nor any treasure.  However, Vael used See Invisible and spotted a large bulge in the ceiling.  Levitating up, he found an invisible sarcophagus there, with an ebony lid on the bottom.  He tried opening the lid, but it was too heavy.  He asked Vallium to come up and showed him where to grab and pull.  Vallium did, and ripped the lid open.  Everything in the sarcophagus -- a mummified corpse, two alabaster urns full of coins, a gold statuette, a magic helmet, a scroll, and two magic wands -- fell to the floor, with the urns and statuette breaking.  However, that was a secondary concern, as the sarcophagus also contained six shadows.  Three of them attacked Vallium, while the others attacked Vael, Uvash, and Ioannes.

The battle against the shadows took a long time, as they were diffuse and thus difficult to injure.  Vallium and Uvash eventually each destroyed one.  Vael declined to fight and instead Blinked away, then went over to Ioannes and cast Great Haste on him.  Fast Ioannes then disengaged from his shadow and cast Affect Spirits on Uvash's pick and later Vallium's sword.  The Affect Spirits spell made the shadows take full damage from attacks, and then the remaining shadows went down very quickly.

The group picked up all the coins that had spilled out of the broken urns, as well as the other treasure.  Vallium cast a Repair spell on the bashed gold statuette, making it as good as new.  They then retraced their steps back to the Beacon.

GM's Comments:

That was a lot of combat.  There were six different fights: finishing up the fight against the vampire minions, the ghouls, Cinna Minux in his lair, the cephalopods, the roper, and the shadows.

Achievements:

None

XP:

• Exploration: 24 rooms (across 2 sessions), 2 XP
• Loot: Lots, and they sold enough for 2 XP
• Achievements: 0 XP
• Total: 4 XP

Next Week:

Vallium is unavailable, so they probably need to find a less violent plan.  They found a book with pictures of the Regalia, so there was talk of trying to get Temrin to make more maps.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 60a: Hunting the Vampires

Date:

Basilsday 4th Lucrios, 2994 AE

Weather:

Warm, stormy

Player Characters:

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

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Significant NPCs:

Basil, Right for Riches employee

Akla-Chah, Rudishva AI psychologist

3 Imp clowns

Invisible stalker

Many varumani

2 Baindara

2 Ogre cooks

Varboka, Thegn of the Varumani

Ashoka, Varumani Court Sorceror

Coelrith, Goblin Alchemist

Jordan, Jeweler

Cinna Minux, vampire

Lesser vampires

Human, ogre, and varumani thralls of vampires

The Plan:

• Take the petrified head of Kerbog Khan to Thegn Varboka for the reward
• Go northwest and kill the vampires

What Happened:

The Right for Riches company took a Rudishva teleporter from the Beacon, worked their way east to the Great Chasm, and then took the Varumani Lifts down to the Arena then the stairs down to the area east of varumani territory.  They encountered some varumani, who asked to see their passports, then let them pass.  They spent some time investigating two large stone chairs, one with a Rudishva glyph on the seat, the other with the glyph apparently scraped away.  Vael sat on one and found that it dispelled one of his spells.  He then cast Analyze Magic to find that the chair had Dispel Magic, Healing, and Apportation magic.

After they finished playing with the chairs, the group went north and down to another level, and entered a large cave with a 40' sheer cliff drop in front of them.  To their right was a crook holding a large bell, and at the base of the cliff was a similar bell.  There was a Mithric poem near the bell: 

"Five for the furious

Four for some fun

Three for trouble

Two to be spun

And One? One is for the lonely"

After some discussion, Vael rang the bell twice, and was teleported to the other bell at the base of the cliff.  He then rang that one twice, and appeared back at the top.  Next he tried four rings, which caused three imps in clown costumes to appear.  They did some entertaining dances and card tricks for a few minutes, then held out a hat, looking for a tip.  Everyone except Uvash gave them some gold, but Uvash did not, so the imps attacked him.  At that point Vallium and Uvash killed two of the imps, and the third disappeared.  Ioannes and Uvash spent some time yelling at each other about this result.

The other options looked less appealing.  But Vael eventually rang the bell three times, and then an invisible stalker appeared and tried to push him off the cliff.  Fortunately for Vael, he had a See Invisible spell running, so he saw it coming.  And he also had a Levitation spell on, so pushing him off the cliff would have only been a minor annoyance.  Finally, he had a Blink spell, so when the stalker approached he just blinked away.  Vael then cast See Invisible on Vallium, so that Vallium could more effectively hit it.  Vallium then stabbed the invisible stalker a lot, while Uvash tried to help, but without being able to see it, wasn't fully effective.  Ioannes cast Affect Spirits on Vallium's sword, but it didn't seem to help him hurt the diffuse invisible stalker more effectively.  He eventually killed or dispelled it.

Deciding that was enough playing with the bells, the group went back up the sloping passage to the varumani level, then went northwest, to a guardpost manned by four varumani and their two baindara pets.  The baindara looked like monkeys, except with small horns and wings like flying squirrels.  They showed their passports to the guards, who let them pass.

Not sure exactly where to go, the group headed west, then opened a few doors at random.  One was a kitchen, with two ogre cooks cooking, and a Rudishva Nutri-Vore food dispensing machine that was turned off.  One was a storeroom full of food, but they didn't take anything.  One appeared to be the quarters of some varumani hunters, who did not appreciate the intrusion.

Continuing west, they found a north-south passage with crude statues of several varumani, with glyphs probably indicating their names.  Some of the statues were decorated with clothing or paint, and one had a human-sized head with a gilded helmet by its feet.

To the south was a large round room with three stone chairs, with Thegn Varboka sitting in the central one, and many varumani standing around waiting to get his attention.  When they entered the room the varumani indicated that they needed to move to the end of the line, but then Varboka saw them and dismissed most of the varumani from the room to give them a private audience, with only Varboka and his court wizard and a few guards remaining.  Varboka asked if the job was done.  Vael said yes.  Varboka asked to see proof, and Vallium pulled out Kerbog Khan's petrified head.  Varboka and the wizard examined the head, then Varboka asked to hear the story of how it happened.  Vael launched into a long and overly complicated tale.  Varboka seemed to believe it, and asked how many power supplies Kerbog Khan had.  Vallium said there were twenty-nine, which was an odd number, and thus difficult to divide evenly.  The party said they'd give Varboka fifteen.  They also said they could charge power supplies, so Varboka would give them an empty one to verify this.  Vael showed Varboka and the wizard the list of Kerbog Khan's blood samples and asked which ones were the Thegn's subjects, so they could return those ones.  The wizard marked the Varumani names on the list.

Varboka asked which reward they would like, and they asked for a repeat of the choices, so the Thegn repeated from memory the items in his hoard that they could choose from.  A long discussion ensured.  Vael asked if they could see just how magical a shield was before picking it, and the Thegn agreed and left the room to the west with a couple of his guards, returning a few minutes later with a guard holding a shield.  Vael spent some time casting Analyze Magic, concluding that the shield was useful but not amazing.  The party failed to choose a reward, asking for the Thegn's permission to choose later.  They also said they would return with the Thegn's share of the power supplies.

With the discussion concluded, the Thegn left, and the party went wandering looking for the exit.  They went north and west and found a porch overlooking the Varumani Market, but a guard yelled at them to get off the Thegn's porch, so they retreated.  They wandered into some apprentice's quarters and had a minor disagreement, ending with a Thunderclap spell.  Ashoka the Court Sorceror came to see what all the noise was about, and told one of the apprentices to escort them to the market.  He took them back to the Thegn's Porch, so they could Levitate across to the market.  The guard started yelling again, but the apprentice said they had Ashoka's permission, which shut the guard up.  Vael cast Walk on Air on the people without Levitation activate so that everyone could cross to the Market.

In the Varumani market, they visited the alchemist and failed to buy or sell any potions.  They then visited the jeweler and failed to buy or sell any jewelry.  They decided not to waste any more time failing to buy or sell anything in any of the other stalls, and continued west to a known area, then west through a cavern, then north to the outskirts of the vampire area.  A bestial varumani warned them not to go that way, but they ignored him.

They found a room that appeared to be a temple to Ptah, the old god of agriculture.  It contained a statue of Ptah and a small field of corn and wheat, growing well despite the lack of sunlight.  Ioannes poked around a bit, then they left.

The spiral staircase formerly guarded by ogres with a cowbell was now guarded by five bestial varumani with a gong.  One ran away to the west, yelling about "intrusers!" in broken Archontean.  The other four stood to fight.  Vallium and Uvash cut three of them down, while another decided to run away and help warn about the "intrusers."  The party followed the fleeing varumani to the west, where they had previously encountered the suspected vampires.

In the same room as before, there were several pale people and a few ogres and varumani.  The leader spoke charmingly about how disappointed he was that these intruders had rudely declined his dinner invitation and killed his guards and his other guards and his other guards and now these new guards, and robbed his friends.  He regretted that they had to die now.  He then told Vallium that he really needed to switch to the winning team and stab his former friends.  Vallium resisted the Charm attempt.

The party moved forward into position, as the varumani and ogres and the vampires' human thralls moved up to meet them.  Meanwhile, all three vampires repeatedly tried Charm.  Vallium was their main target.  He resisted several times, thanks in part to the Protection from Evil that Uvash had cast on him.  He almost failed to resist once, but his Bless saved him.  The vampires also tried Charming Uvash and Ioannes, but they were not affected.  Vael was invisible, thanks to Larel's Cloak, so was not targeted.

As the fight began, Vael Great Hasted Vallium then Uvash, and Uvash used his Heroic Might and Heroic Grace.  They quickly carved through the ogres and most of the bestial varumani.  The human warriors more skilled and better equipped, but Vallium killed one of them.  Vallium and Uvash gravely wounded the lead vampire, Cinna Minux, and one of the lesser vampires, both of whom assumed gaseous form and fled.  Vallium was badly wounded in turn, but Ioannes healed him.

When we ran out of time, the combat was still ongoing.  Team Vampire had a lesser vampire wizard Levitating in the air blasting Vallium with a Wand of Magical Bolt.  They also had a female human warrior with a morningstar and a bestial varumani still standing.   The Right for Riches company was still in pretty good shape, with Vallium somewhat wounded and no longer Blessed.

GM's Comments:

I predicted that the players would take forever to pick a reward from the Thegn.  I thought they would actually pick one though.  "No, we're good, maybe later" was not on my bingo card.

The fight against the vampires was a big one, so I was not surprised that it wasn't finished by the end of the session.  But there were only three opponents left standing when we ran out of time, so maybe it would have been possible to finish with slightly better time management earlier in the session.

Achievements:

None

XP:

We stopped in the dungeon, so none yet.  So far, they have done well on exploration but have found no loot.

Next Week:

Next session should start with the thrilling conclusion of the fight against Cinna Minux's remaining minions.  Cinna Minux and a lesser vampire turned to gas and fled.  Vael has already announced that he intends to use Trace to follow Cinna Minux.  We'll see if that works.