DF Whiterock Session 26: Daycare Destruction

Date:

2018-11-09

Weather:

Freezing, clear

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 226 points

Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 274 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 262 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 247 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 284 points

Significant NPCs:

Caswallon, Dwarf mining engineer

2 Earth Mephits

Labor rat

3 Giant Soldier Stonebore Ants

4 Guard Rats

8 Juvenile Troglodytes

Winter arrived in the Kingdom of Morrain, with the temperature dropping below freezing for the first time since the exploration of Castle Whiterock began.  The first order of business was for the PCs to buy some winter clothing.  This immediately set off encumbrance panic, as several PCs were right below an encumbrance break point, and heavier clothes would reduced their Move and Dodge.  Seépravir decided to learn the Warmth spell and pair it with a stylish but not very heavy scarf.  Everyone else grudgingly purchased some warm clothes, though a couple of PCs decided to leave them in the wheelbarrow once they reached the dungeon.

Caswallon showed up in the Inn of the Slumbering Drake and announced that the dungeon elevator the group had ordered, to add a shortcut from the surface to the Gnomish Academy, was ready to install on the next warm day.  It's early winter, so nobody's sure when that will be.  The PCs discussed possibly using fire magic to warm up the frozen ground, to avoid possibly having to wait until spring to get their elevator.  Though it's also possible there may be a warm spell.

After some time spent looking for interesting rumors, and looking for Lord Flitwick (who was out of town again), four PCs walked to Castle Whiterock.  They walked very slowly, not accustomed to hiking in the cold, but still managed not to get ambushed by any wandering monsters.

There was some discussion of going back to the air elemental that Zaber hoped was female, but since the group only had 1.5 (the flute, and the lute's strings) of the 3 Sorrowsong Instruments, they decided not to bother disappointing it with lack of progress.  So instead they went back down to the level where they fought some deeper troglodytes last time.

Seépravir cast Invisibility and Mage-Stealth on Zaber, and he went scouting alone for a while.  He found a pit trap, a steel doorknob sticking out of a wall for no obvious reason, and a bell with a Dwarf rune on it.  Zaber's Dwarf isn't the best, but he though the rune meant something like "Leave!"  (Zaber successfully resisted his Curious disadvantage to avoid ringing the bell.)  He also found a big rock that looked like it was blocking a passage.  And he found a cave containing a large number of small troglodytes, guarded by a few giant rats.  But the most interesting thing he found was a big cavern containing a flying dwarf-like creature ordering a giant labor rat to drag junk around.  Zaber reported back to the others, and they decided to ambush the flying thing.

Some sneaking ensued, and everyone did a pretty good job sneaking up on the flying creature, until Elias decided to talk to it and spoiled the surprise.  The creature was not friendly, told Elias to eat its waste products, and told the giant rat to attack.  Polly started shooting arrows at it, but it had the ability to magically parry some of them, and dodged others.  The creature (which Seépravir later identified as an Earth Mephit) breathed some stone fragments at Elias, but he blocked them with his shield.  It then gated in a second Mephit, which wasn't happy about it.  

The giant rat attacked Elias, who parried, and then smashed the rat with his Flaming flail.  Seépravir used Rapier Wit on the summoned Mephit, which was stunned.  Polly shot up a Mephit and crippled a wing, leading to a stun and a crash into the ground.  As Zaber invisibly snuck around, the original Mephit cast a spell to loosen some rocks in the ceiling, and drop them on the heads of Seépravir, Garreth, and (oops) the gated-in mephit.  The attack was only accurate against Seépravir though, and she jumped out of the way.

Zaber invisibly stabbed the giant rat in the eye, with his knife crippling the eye and proceeding into the brain, and knocked it out.  Garreth chopped up the stunned summoned Mephit and hurt it badly enough to make it take 3 death checks, but somehow didn't kill it.  It then disappeared!

Seépravir got close to the original Mephit, stopped maintaining all the spells she could to increase her casting odds, and then cast Death Vision on it.  Her spell worked, which meant the Mephit was stunned with no resistance possible, and that was pretty much it.  Polly shot it and Garreth stabbed it and no more Mephits.  It had three different magic items, a ring and a cloak and a pair of bracers.  The dead rat had a sled.  Zaber searched the room thoroughly and found some coins and gems, as well as a bunch of junky mining tools.  

With the fight over, the group decided to investigate the doorknob.  Zaber tried turning it, but failed.  Garreth started ambling over to apply excessive force, but Polly was closer, and she gave it a try first, and she managed to rip it right off the wall.  The doorknob appeared to be a decoy, hiding a falling stone wall trap, which Zaber hadn't noticed and which fell on Polly.  But she's pretty quick and managed to jump out of the way.

Seépravir went into wizard radar mode and cast Seek Magic and Seek Earth (for gold, silver, and copper) and determined that there was some magic and some silver to the northwest.  But then she was rudely interrupted by 3 Giant Stonebore Soldier Ants which decided to come investigate who'd been making all the noise, with all the fighting and walls and ceilings falling.  The elves don't like fighting natural creatures, so decided not to start anything, and Seépravir used Create Fire to try to scare the ants off.  But the ants weren't afraid of the fire, and started trying to bite people.  At that point the PCs defended themselves, and in a few minutes there were 3 dead Giant Stonebore Soldier Ants.  Garreth started chopping off chitin, looking to see if it was valuable, and the group decided to take one big ant corpse back to town to see if there's anything that Quintus the alchemist wanted to buy.

After fighting the ants, everyone forgot about the treasure to the northwest and decided to go ambush the trogs and rats to the east.  Once again, there was much sneaking.  This time, nobody yelled out a greeting, so the sneaking was more effective.  Zaber and Seépravir were both Invisible, and snuck right past the guard rats into the group of troglodytes, who were playing loudly and smelling up the place.  (Everyone made their HT check against the stench attack, though Elias needed to use his Luck.)  Unfortunately, Seépravir rolled an 18 on her Stealth check to move silently, and made a big noise, which alerted some of the surprised rats and trogs.  This was a cue for the rest of the PCs in the back to start shooting and charging, while most of the trogs and rats were still mentally stunned by surprise.  These particular trogs were juveniles, not as tough as the others, and I broke out the Mook rules, so they tended to go down with one solid hit rather than making all those tedious rolls to avoid crippling and stay conscious and avoid dying.  That made this fight pretty much a cakewalk, despite the numerical disadvantage.

Seépravir got off a Mass Daze, but she only made it by a couple of points (despite burning her Luck: she rolled 3 12s in a row) and the victims rolled pretty well on their resistance checks, so only a couple of victims were dazed.  It didn't matter.  Polly started shooting and Garreth started chopping and Zaber started backstabbing and Elias started flailing and all the rats and trogs were down by the time the session ended.  Zaber searched the room, despite the stench, and found a few coins and a couple of very nice purple corumdum gems.

We were out of time, so the PCs decided to go back to Cillamar, bringing along the portable treasure and also one of the dead ants.  Seépravir rolled a critical failure on her Warmth spell for the trip home, and didn't have any Luck left, but I decided that was a pretty tame spell and we didn't really have time for any demon summonings, so just gave her a few easily-healed points of burn damage.

GM's Comments:

This session was a cakewalk.

The Earth Mephit was pretty tough (solid DR, lots of fun attacks), and even managed to gate in an ally, but numbers matter a lot in GURPS, and 5 PCs versus 3 enemies is typically not a fair fight unless the enemies are truly badass.  Plus its collapsing ceiling trap rolled poorly and Seépravir (the only one it managed to possibly hit) made her Dodge.  The Mephits had good blocking spells (Deflect and Iron Arm), but you can only cast one blocking spell per turn, and Polly and Garreth each typically attack twice per turn, so it was needing to make its Dodge rolls against the second attack, and once it missed one and lost a wing, the death spiral began.  Plus Seépravir is good at stun-locking things with Rapier Wit and Death Vision.  And you don't want to be stunned while you're outnumbered by multiple heavily-armed PCs.

The PCs attracted a wandering monster for once, but I only rolled 3 ants, and it turned out that 3 ants are not enough ants.

The troglodyte daycare encounter was not a fair fight.  Zaber scouted it out while invisible and made a critical success on his stealth roll, for total surprise.  This time Elias decided not to ruin it by yelling.  Seépravir partially ruined it with a critical failure on her stealth roll, but she was still Invisible, and the trogs were busy playing not paying attention, so only a few noticed.  And, they were mooks.  It was pretty much target practice.

So the PCs have cleared out a decent part of the second troglodyte level.  Will they find more challenging opponents in the remaining part of the level?  We'll find out next week.