DF Whiterock Session 9: Bugs and Books

Date:

2018-06-22

Weather:

Warm, cloudy, sunny

Player Characters:

Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 188 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 167 (+1) points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 196 points

Significant NPCs:

4 Monstrous Centipedes
1 Giant Praying Mantis
1 Water Hydra, unknown number of heads


It was the longest day of the year, a popular time for travel and festivals.  Durkerle was unavailable while running the Solstice Festival at the Temple of Danethar.  Garreth was unavailable because he drank too much at a slightly less classy festival.  Hugin had left Cillamar to go back home and see his family, who needed to know that he was okay after his stretch as an unwilling guest of the White Talon Orcs.  And nobody was quite sure where Bernard was.

Ibizaber and Polly and Seépravir decided to go back to Castle Whiterock without them, but be really cautious, since there were only three of them and none of them was a big strong heavily armored melee fighter or a healing cleric.  They made some extra healing potions, loaded up a wheelbarrow, and hiked back to the castle on a warm summer day.  Ibizaber stubbed his toe (surprisingly for such a nimble guy, but he'd recently found some Dwarven Deepwine made from some really strong mushrooms) and slowed down progress a bit, but they still made it to the castle in good order.

They decided to stash their wheelbarrow and some of their gear outside the castle, in case they needed to flee.  Then Seépravir started casting spells on herself -- Lighten Burden, Levitation, Keen Vision, and Invisibility.  She also made Ibizaber invisible, but Polly declined, as she said it would go away as soon as she took a shot at something.  And there's no way Polly could avoid taking a shot at something in a situation where invisibility mattered.

Polly wanted to go downstairs and kill more orcs ("orks" in Elvish) but Seépravir and Ibizaber said it would be safer to explore more of the surface instead, and save the orcs for when they had more allies.  Polly didn't argue too long, and they set out exploring, with Holly creeping along visibly, Ibizaber creeping along invisibly, and Seépravir flying invisibly a few yards up.  They went through the gatehouse, around the stable, and past the slavers' tents that they had previously explored.  Polly went into one of the tents and grabbed a free bedroll.  They then continued west to the ruins that the slaver monks had allegedly been exploring.

Searching the ruins, Ibizaber found a silver holy symbol of the Order of the Dawning Sun, and Polly found a gold and ruby ring.  But then four human-sized monstrous centipedes found Polly and started crawling over to eat her for lunch.  After a twinge of Elvish conscience, Polly determined that the centipedes were clearly monsters not natural, and shot one with an arrow, killing it.  Seépravir caught the other three in a Glue spell, they all failed to resist, and they were all stuck in place while Polly shot them.  Ibizaber didn't even bother helping, as it would have required switching weapons and avoiding stepping in the glue, and Polly would have been done killing them by the time he got around to it.  He did, however, think to collect the venom from three of the four centipedes.  (The fourth had been shot right through the poison sac, so there wasn't much left to collect, though Polly jammed the head of an arrow into that poison sac just in case there was some left.)

Just to the north of the tower where the centipedes had attacked, Seépravir spotted a faint, almost vertical, path down the cliff face to the lake below.  It would require a climb rather than a hike, but both Ibizaber and Polly were strong climbers, and Seépravir was levitating, so they headed down to the water.  They looked for caves in the cliffside.  But there was no cave, at least not above the water.  Polly, the strongest swimmer, decided to look under the water.  First she set her bow and backpack aside, then she tied herself to a rope so the others could pull her to safety if needed, and then she stuck her head underwater.  It was pretty dark, so she came back up and asked Seépravir for a Keen Vision spell.  Seépravir suggested Infravision instead, and Polly agreed.  She went under again, and saw some cold blocky shapes that looked like ruined castle walls, far below.  Who builds a castle underwater?  She started swimming down, and then noticed something really big and really far away swimming towards her, fast.

Polly yanked on the rope frantically, and swam hard for the surface while the others pulled her up.  The huge thing got within about 50 feet by the time she hit the beach, and she was pretty sure she saw multiple necks and heads, but didn't have time to count carefully since she was trying not to die.  She kept on going, climbing up the trail a bit to get more separation, before turning around to look again.

Polly paused to look back.  The invisible Ibizaber climbed up a bit, then also paused to look in the water.  And Seépravir flew high over the water and looked down.  Eventually, two reptilian heads breached the surface, scanning the cliff wall for Polly.  They watched her for a while, the three delvers watched back for a while, but nobody started a fight.  Eventually the sea monster went back underwater.  They figured it was some kind of water hydra, and decided to be careful around the lake.
Seépravir noted the location of the trail on her map, but said she would not put it on any maps they offered for sale, wanting to keep it a secret.

After climbing and flying back up to the castle, the three continued exploring to the southwest, then to the southeast.  They found a promising pile of rubble near the (once) top of a fallen tower, but didn't find any thing interesting in it.  They continued circling around to the southeast, and then Ibizaber spotted a suspicious groove in the rock face.  He stuck a knife in there and moved it around until he found a latch.  It was a stone secret door, pretty heavy, which apparently hadn't been opened in a long time.  He managed to drag the door open.  Inside was a small room, containing a skeleton holding a book, and a bookshelf.

Some investigation showed that the skeleton was the dead kind not the undead kind, that it was wearing a silver holy symbol of the Order of the Dawning Sun, and that the book had the same short line repeated over and over in four languages: Common, Elf, Dwarf, and Draconic.  In at least the three languages they could read, it said "Knowledge is the Key."  (None of them read Draconic but they figured it probably said the same in Draconic too.)  They grabbed the book and the holy symbol.  Seépravir spotted something magical among the bones, which turned out to be a bleached driftwood wand, with some words in Draconic etched into the side.  She grabbed that too.  Finally, they started going through the books on the shelves.  All were blank inside and out, with some water damage.  Nobody was quite sure what blank books were good for, but they decided to take them anyway.

With so much stuff to drag, Polly went to go fetch the wheelbarrow they'd stashed outside.  She decided to take the most direct route to the north around the fallen tower, rather than the long way they'd just explored.  And while walking around the rubble, something tried to eat her.  It was a giant praying mantis, significantly bigger than her, and it had achieved total surprise.  Things looked bad for Polly, but someone she managed to dodge its bite, even while mentally stunned.  It took her a second to get her bow out and her wits back, during which time she dodged another bite while frantically backpedaling.  Then Polly screamed for help and started shooting arrows, while her friends started running and flying to her aid.

The mantis was quite fast and agile, but eventually one of Polly's arrows hit it squarely, but didn't go through its thick chitin.  Polly realized she needed to switch to armor-piercing bodkin tips, which, like any good archer, she had plenty of.  She wasn't quite sure where a praying mantis's weak spots were, and the eyes looked like a difficult shot, so she just focused on the center of mass.  Meanwhile the mantis repeatedly tried to grab Polly with its front legs so that it could hold her still and bite her head off.  But she was too fast, and kept dodging.

Seépravir still had Levitate on, so she flew up until she could see over the fallen tower and rubble to where Polly and the huge bug were, and yelled which way to run to Ibizaber.  Then she dropped back to earth, because she could run faster than she could fly, and ran toward the fight, occasionally flying over obstacles.  Ibizaber ran as quickly as he could toward the fight, occasionally needing to acrobatically vault some rubble rather than slowing down for it.  Unfortunately, he was still invisible, so neither of the female elves could see his amazing parkour moves.

At some point the mantis grew tired of chasing the unhittable Polly, and went back to its lair in the rubble.  Polly thought about letting it go -- but was too angry that the thing had tried to ambush and eat her, and decided to keep shooting at it instead.  And that drew the mantis charging back out of its lair, at high speed.  (Did you know that giant praying mantises can fly?  Polly didn't, until then.)  Polly kept plinking it with bodkins, causing small amounts of green blood to leak out each time she hit solidly.  The bug kept trying to grab Polly, then tried just biting Polly.

Eventually the invisible Ibizaber caught up, and tried sneaking up behind the mantis to land a killing backstab.  But it had heard him running, and spun around to look for the new threat.  Ibizaber stopped and went silent, not wanting to give himself away.  Polly kept shooting, plunking the mantis in the back.  Seépravir cast Hush on Ibizaber, not taking any chances on his Stealth skills.  (He was invisible, so it was a bit tricky to target him, but she had heard him a second before, and made a good guess.)

With Ibizaber both silent and invisible, and Polly continuing to drill arrows into its backside, the mantis spun around again to face Polly.  Ibizaber landed a strong blow with his knife into a gap between plates in its exoskeleton, right next to one of the larger arrow wounds.  The huge bug continued to spew green blood, and was starting to slow down, but still wouldn't fall.  The attack dispelled Ibizaber's invisibility, though, so now the mantis knew it had opponents on both sides.

The mantis went a little crazy, spinning back and forth between facing Polly and Ibizaber.  No matter which one it chose, the other was at its rear.  It chose Polly.  Seépravir cast Darkness where Polly was standing.  She could see out, but it couldn't see in.  Polly shot out of the darkness, and the mantis completely failed to understand the concept that arrows could come out of that dark blob.  It didn't get to dodge.  Unfortunately for Polly, she was now out of bodkins.  Her regular arrows hadn't done such a good job of piercing mantis-armor.  While the bug was focused on Polly, Ibizaber kept stabbing at it from behind.

Polly took careful aim with an impaling arrow at the mantis's eye, and just barely missed, hitting its body instead.  Seépravir put another Darkness behind the mantis for Ibizaber to stand in, which he did, as he kept stabbing.  The mantis flailed wildly at the dark blob containing Polly, missing her completely.  Finally, Polly fired another arrow into the bug's eye, and this one didn't miss.  The eyes were unarmored, and the arrow went straight through the eye into the brain, killing the mantis.  It had been a long and drawn-out fight with many small hits needed to wear down the giant bug, but the eye shot ended all that.  Fortunately for Polly, who was almost out of arrows.

The group searched the mantis's lair in the rubble at the base of the fallen tower, finding half of the body of a human monk slaver.  It had a few coins in a pocket and a nice dagger in its boot.  They then started digging through the rubble, and found a trap door leading down.  Ibizaber considered opening it, but Seépravir suggested leaving it alone until next time.  The group fetched both their wheelbarrows (travelling close together this time), chopped the giant mantis corpse in two in case it was worth money, and headed back to town.

GM's Comments:

Only three PCs came, none of them heavy fighters.  That's very dangerous.  The careful decision to mop up the unexplored bits of the surface level made sense for this group.  Seépravir could make everyone invisible, and if they explored the surface in daylight, they didn't need lights to give them away.

The centipedes were total mooks.  Anything with no damage resistance that's vulnerable to impaling damage is archer-bait.  The Glue spell made it just unfair, especially when Seépravir made her spell roll by so much that they had almost no chance to break free.  I made Polly make her attack rolls to kill all four centipedes, but in hindsight I could have just declared them dead.  Good thinking by Ibizaber to collect their poison.  It's not very strong poison (just Monster Drool in DFRPG terms), but free poison is free.  

The path down to the lake is supposed to be hard to find, but this group is really good at finding things.  There was no reason to expect anything quite as nasty as a hydra down in the water, but excellent preparation (rope, Infravision) gave the group time to pull the Polly-bait out of the water before she got eaten.  (But I would have turned her invisible too.)  Underwater fights are really difficult for surface dwellers in GURPS (your weapon skill is limited to your swimming skill, swung weapons take hit penalties and do less damage, you can't breathe, etc.), so it'll be interesting to see if they ever come back to fight it, or keep a wide berth.  In any case, the group now knows that acquiring a boat and taking a shortcut across the lake isn't as safe as it appears.  And that there's a ruined castle down there.

The secret cave was also hard to find, and they found that too.  I'm not going to say anything about the mystery of the books.  Seépravir was pretty psyched to find a wand, though they won't know what it does until they take it back to town and cast Analyze Magic.

Polly going back alone to get the wheelbarrow was not smart.  There was a bit of debate as to reality here, with the other PCs wanting to be closer, but Holly was the only one who'd moved her token in Roll20, and going back through the logs I didn't actually see anyone typing "I'm right behind Polly" or anything, so I went with harsh reality: she's up here alone, and the other two are still back by the cave.  (One huge advantage of an all-text game is that you have logs for everything.  No question of what anyone said.)  That meant she had to fight the giant praying mantis by herself for about ten rounds before they got anywhere near the battle.  I was pretty sure she was dead, especially when it made its surprise roll.  (In hindsight I should have asked if she wanted to use Luck on her Perception roll there; because it was a GM roll she didn't know to ask if she could use it.)  But she made her Dodge even with the -4 for mental stun, and then for the rest of the fight kept making Acrobatic Retreating Dodges.  Given space to back up, and a ranged weapon so you don't mind backing up, and good acrobatics skill, that's a great tactic to have +5 to your base Dodge most of the time.  Polly also had Luck to save her if she blew a dodge or the mantis rolled a critical hit, but she never needed to use it.

The mantis had DR 4, and neither Polly nor Ibizaber does a ton of damage, so that was a problem.  After the first 3-damage hit didn't penetrate, Polly switched to bodkin arrows, which divided its DR in half.  She asked if she knew where its vitals were, but her default Naturalist roll failed, so nope.  When he finally reached the battle, Ibizaber aimed for armor chinks (the mantis wasn't actually wearing armor but I ruled that there were gaps between plates in its carapace which were functionally the same), also cutting its DR in half at the cost of a big hit penalty.  Ultimately I think Polly would have been better off going for eye shots -- not an easy hit at all, but if you hit, lots and lots of damage, a crippled eye, a knockdown roll, etc.  Of course I had the mantis's stats in front of me, while the players had to figure them out, so it's not as easy from their side.  This is one of the interesting things about this campaign for me: because it's using converted D&D monsters rather than stock GURPS/DFRPG monsters, the players never know exactly what their opponents can do.

When Polly shot an arrrow out of the Darkness, I gave the mantis a hearing roll to get a chance to dodge the arrow, and rolled an 18.  So, I ruled that this mantis was just too dumb to understand that arrows could come out of darkness, and that it would never get a dodge roll against such an arrow for the rest of its life.  (That wasn't very long, though.)

They didn't get a whole lot of loot this session (depending on how valuable the wand turns out to be), but they only have to split what they got three ways, so I think they made a profit.  And they found the books and the wand and the path to the lake and the trap door.  So, I think it was a good session overall.

Also, I need to make up rules for selling partial maps.  DFRPG says that characters with Cartography can make and sell maps of what they explored, but if you deliberately leave stuff off the map, what happens?  Obviously you can try (unless you have honorable mental disadvantages like Honesty or Truthfulness and fail your self-control roll to do the right thing), but maybe the buyer gets a chance to Detect Lies or something.  This would also apply to Selling the Tale: if you leave some of the juicy bits off, shouldn't that reduce your odds of getting paid?  After all, the juicy bits are what people want to hear.