Date:
2018-08-10
Weather:
Warm, mostly cloudy
Player Characters:
Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 174 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 207 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 197 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 229 points
Significant NPCs:
Katanya Glimer, Gnome sorceress
Durkerle, Dwarf cleric of Danethar
Cookie, Ogre bouncer
Or'dimisas of Kassantia, Human sage of Delvyr
2 Rasthnums, spiky poisonous rocks
7 Orc Zombies
After a week of training and selling loot and looking for information, Elias, Ibizaber, and Seépravir met at the Inn of the Slumbering Drake in Cillamar. (Bernard and Garreth were out of town on other business, and Polly was out doing something in the woods.)
Seépravir then taken the sheet of paper written in Gnomish, which the party had found in the laboratory of an orcish alchemist, to Katanya for translation. Kat revealed that it was some kind of advertising flier for a gnomish institution of mechanical learning called the Clockwork Academy.
Seépravir had visited the Hall of Worms, a library and temple of Delvyr, looking for information about the Ring of Water Breathing (and possibly other abilities that Analyze Magic wasn't able to discern) that Nemoura the nixie had given the group in exchange for killing a giant crayfish. The sage Or'dimisas was quite impressed with Seépravir's knowledge of Thaumatology, and allowed her free admission to the library as a professional courtesy. But there was no information about the ring to be found. The library did contain a book that mentioned the Clockwork Academy, but only in passing. Its location was specified as "near Castle Whiterock."
Ibizaber had visited most of the taverns in Cillamar, and someone had told him that a secretive league of arcanists congregates at the castle ruins on moonless nights to conduct terrible rituals. But he couldn't remember who told him that. The moon was currently about half full.
Durkerle showed up to collect his share of the loot from the previous delve, then left to serve Danethar in another town.
Elias needed someone to cock his overstrength hand crossbow, and Garreth wasn't around, so he got Cookie, the Inn's ogre bouncer, to do it in exchange for a small tip. Then the three left a message for their friends that they were heading for Castle Whiterock, and set off with Elias pushing a wheelbarrow.
This time they reached the Castle without incident, and then went down through one locked door (they still had the key), two secret doors, and two flights of stairs to the level that had been occupied by the White Roc orcs. Seépravir cast 11 spells: 3 Dark Vision, 3 Invisibility, 3 Mage-Stealth (which allows talking), a Keen Vision, and a Lighten Burden. And the invisible and silent (except when talking to each other to make sure they were still in formation) group started exploring the level, looking for anything they missed before.
Eventually, Ibizaber found some writing on the floor in Orc: a rune and an arrow. None of the three could read it, so Elias cast Gift of Letters, which revealed that the rune said "Danger". Thus warned, the three went that way anyway. At that point, a spined rock on the ceiling (a creature that Quintus the alchemist had identified as a rasthnum, and which Polly the elf had identified as containing poison by drinking said poison), tried to fall on Ibizaber's head. (How it detected him, they weren't sure.) Zaber saw it coming and jumped back, and then a fight ensued. Seépravir dropped some spells to reduce her "spells on" casting penalty, and tried to Glue the rock to the floor, but failed. Ibizaber tried stabbing the rock with his knife, but it dodged. Elias smashed the rock with his very fancy morningstar, and did some serious damage. Seépravir tried Glue again, and it worked the second time. The severely wounded rasthnum stopped struggling against the Glue and reverted to acting like a rock.
...At which time a second rasthnum had moved into position and also tried to drop on Zaber's head. He dodged again, Elias crushed it with his flail for excellent damage, and it quickly stopped struggling. Then the looters went to work extracting treasure: Ibizaber removed the poison from both rasthnum into empty vials, Seépravir borrowed a scalpel from Elias and de-spined one rasthnum, and then Polly, who had just come bounding down the hallway, removed the spine from the other one.
After a quick rest, Seépravir cast Dark Vision on Polly (to avoid having any lights to give them away), and recast Invisibility on herself and Ibizaber, and they resumed exploring. Far to the northwest, the group found two doors they hadn't seen before, and also, nearby, the desecrated altar to Justicia that they had tried cleaning up before, before getting distracted by a fight between Durkerle and a rasthnum. This time, the whole group tried cleaning up the altar, with instruction from Elias. Nobody knew Exorcism, but they figured some elbow grease and heartfelt prayers couldn't hurt. They also moved some orcish archery targets out of the room with the altar, as disrespectful, though Polly couldn't resist shooting one first (and wasted a critical hit on it).
With the altar cleaned up as much as possible, they proceeded to the southern door, which Zaber checked for traps, found was unlocked, and opened. Inside was a huge bed, about 12 feet long. Also a desk covered with papers written in Orc. Polly looked under the best, and found a chest. Ibizaber checked it for traps, didn't find any, picked the lock, and got a sheet of fire in the face. Oops. Fortunately it only singed him a little bit.
The chest contained some coins, a small pretty box which in turn contained a silver and onyx necklace of a bird, and a magical silver and jade flute. Zaber tried playing the flute and made a high-pitched flatulent noise. Seépravir tried playing the flute and made a few pleasant notes. Nothing obviously magical happened either time. Seépravir found a secret door in the southern wall, which led to a small room containing a heavy stone model of Castle Whiterock. The upper level looked familiar, but the model showed a lower level that did not, which looked like it would be under the lake now. Seépravir also searched the chest for a false bottom, and found one, which contained a parchment with a few runes of Orcish.
Having taken everything except the (very heavy) model castle, the group continued to the northern door. This one was locked. Zaber picked the lock, and opened the door. This revealed a large, roughly circular, room, with niches in the walls, containing dead orcs. Or, rather, undead zombie orcs, which started coming out of their niches to attack.
Polly started the fight by shooting an arrow into an orc zombie in mail, and downing it. Ibizaber (still invisible and silent) snuck around behind a zombie to the north to backstab it. Elias got his flail ready to smash zombie skulls. Seépravir invisibly moved into position. And the zombies all charged forward.
Then Polly unluckily dumped her whole quiver of cutting arrows. She decided not to use her Luck and just to rely on impaling arrows for the fight. (They're not as good against zombies.) Zaber backstabbed a zombie in the foot and scored really good damage, cutting its foot off. The zombie hit the floor. Elias whomped on a zombie with his flail. Seépravir noticed that the nearest zombie was wearing a silver necklace, decided it might be important, and tried Apportation to filch it. This succeeded but didn't have any noticeable effect on the zombie.
Polly fired a couple of arrows that zombies were lucky to dodge. Zaber, happy with his foot attack, tried it again on a second zombie and chopped off another foot, but now had two one-footed angry zombies crawling at him. Elias was fighting two zombies, but managed to block two attacks and parry one. (His fancy morningstar is Dwarven, allowing parrying after attacking.)
Not liking the two-on-one odds, Ibizaber decided to All-Out Defend (Dodge) and run away from the crawling zombies a bit, so he could return and fight one at a time. Elias, fighting two zombies, took the wounded one down with a second solid flail hit to even the odds. Polly and Seépravir and two more zombies were in another melee, but both Polly and Seépravir dodged every attack that came close, and Polly kept shooting arrows. Seépravir decided Polly wasn't shooting fast enough and cast Great Haste on her.
Eventually Elias finished his last zombie, Polly took down both of the standing zombies near her, and all that remained were the two one-footed zombies crawling around after Ibizaber. They were slow enough for Polly to dispatch from a distance at her leisure, but both Ibizaber and Elias felt the need to come within range and get another shot in. Then all the zombies were dead for good. Each had a necklace, several had maces and tattered leather armor, and one had a mail shirt. Searching room revealed some stairs down. But the group had enough treasure that they decided to return to town, and save those stairs for another time.
GM's Comments:
Invisibility plus Mage-Stealth plus Dark Vision is a great combination for stealthy exploration. With all of them up, the party can explore with a small chance of being detected, but still talk to each other. (Of course talking increases the chances of being heard.) But with only one mage casting all these spells, eventually the penalty for number of spells on gets ugly.
The three PCs who started the session "forgot to bring any damage". No Garreth, no Bernard, no Polly. But Elias and his super-flail actually put a pretty good dent in the rasthnum. Seépravir's Glue spell wasn't really needed.
Polly rolled 18 on a Fast-Draw (arrow) roll, a critical failure which spilled the whole quiver. I think everyone expected her to use Luck, but she preferred to save it for something more lethal, and just used her other quiver of arrows. That worked out okay, since the zombies weren't super-tough.
Elias has Bless, so now the entire party (including Elias: you can't Bless yourself but there was a scroll) is running around with Bless, for +1 on every die roll. Plus when something horrible happens to one of them, the Bless will prevent it then go away. The combination of Bless, Luck, Seépravir's combo of stealth spells, careful exploration, and good luck on defense rolls means that nobody took any damage this session, except Ibizaber getting burned a bit by the fire trap on the chest. I think that despite their low starting point totals, this group is starting to feel a bit overpowered for the current dungeon level. But, they just found some stairs down, so we'll see if that continues.
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