DF Whiterock Session 27: It's a Lich!

Date:

2018-11-16

Weather:

Freezing, snowy

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 230 points

Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 279 points

Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 267 points

Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 251 points

Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 289 points

Significant NPCs:

7 Giant Soldier Stonebore Ants
Giant Queen Stonebore Ant
Stone Door Golem
Loras, Lich Librarian of the Order of the Dawning Sun

The party gathered at the Inn of the Slumbering Drake in Cillamar to discuss their week.

Seépravir had been researching the Ring of Water Breathing that the nixie had given them as a reward several months ago, but found nothing.  She had also discovered that the writing on the Returning Spear indicated that it was a gift to Elweiss by Koborth.  Elweiss wasn't famous, but Koborth was a famous dragon-slaying general from hundreds of years ago, and a member of the Company of the Black Osprey.

Elias was told by Elder Brother Sampson in the temple of Elyr to keep an eye out for any evidence of the Temple of the Dawning Sun.

Zaber went looking for Lord Granger Flitwick and found that he probably went south for the winter, and had retained a part-time servant to keep his house clean while he was gone.

Garreth bought some snowshoes to improve his movement speed in snow.

Everyone went trudging through the snow toward Castle Whiterock, except that Seépravir floated above it with Levitate.  They chose to go the long way around Lake Whiterock rather than straight over it, not trusting that the ice was thick enough to walk on yet.  It took a long time to get there, but nothing attacked them on the way.

When they arrived at the Castle and got underground, several PCs immediately stowed their winter clothes in the wheelbarrow to save weight.  Seépravir cast Invisibility on Zaber and Polly, Dark Vision on Zaber and Polly and herself, Alertness and Keen Vision and See Secrets and See Invisible on Zaber, Lighten Burden on Elias, and Haste on herself.  Zaber and Polly scouted ahead and Zaber found a big rock that looked like it had been placed to block a passage.  Polly moved it a bit so that they could peek around it, and Zaber saw a huge cave below, full of lots of cat-sized ants, a few human-sized soldier ants, and one huge queen ant.  Eventually one of the soldier ants sensed the moved rock above, and started climbing up to investigate.  At that point Zaber sprinted back to get the others, while Polly covered the small opening with her bow.

It took the ant a while to climb the wall, and by the time it reached the top, Zaber had alerted the other 3 and they had almost reached Polly.  Polly had invisibly stepped back from the ant rather than shooting it, and it hadn't figured out she was there, but it saw Elias, and decided to bite him.  Garreth, standing nearby, had taken a Wait action to attack the ant if it came close, and when it tried to bite Elias, he chopped it viciously, knocking it unconscious.  It screamed first, alerting the other ants that there was trouble up there.

Still invisible, Zaber decided to squeeze past the rock and climb out on the wall, so he could report back what the ants were doing.  The wall was slippery (Climbing-5), but he managed.  He saw a few other soldier ants milling around the queen, then heading off to the north.

Polly moved over to the gap, looked down at the ants she could see, and started aiming.  (She never aims.  Aiming is very optional for Heroic Archers.)  Meanwhile Seépravir saw several ants coming down the hallway behind the group, attemping to flank.  Seépravir stopped maintaining a bunch of spells to lose the -1s for spells on, then yelled out some tactical advice to Polly about shooting them in the weak spot behind the neck.  Polly shot the queen ant there, and hurt her badly, knocking her unconscious.  This made the other ants angry and they started moving faster.

Seépravir tried casting Smoke to block the approaching ants' view, but failed.  Garreth threw a sai at one of the ants, missed the one he was aiming at, but accidentally hit the one behind it, doing minimal damage.  Polly shot an ant next to the queen in the skull and hurt it badly.

Zaber decided that since he was no longer invisible he should get off the wall and crawl back past the rock to be near his friends.  Seépravir Smoked the approaching ants, successfully this time.  One ant ran up to Elias and tried to bite him, but he parried.  Another one tried for Seépravir, but she retreated and dodged.  Still another one went for Garreth, who had his katana in his off hand (because his good hand had just thrown a sai), so he did a retreating dodge away from it.

Seépravir stopped maintaining the Smoke that the ants had just run out of, and made more Smoke on the ants' current locations.  Garreth double-chopped an ant in the smoke next to him, who saw the incoming attacks well enough to dodge both.  Polly shot the injured ant down in the cave by the queen again, and killed it.  Elias tried smashing an ant with his flaming flail, but it dodged.

The ants had to make HT checks for being in Smoke.  They rolled well, so it wasn't a problem, and they all charged into close combat with the PCs.  None of them managed to actually hurt anyone.

Seépravir stopped maintaining Smoke and cast Mass Daze on the ants (note: this was illegal, as Mind Control spells require an intelligent target with IQ 6+, but we all forgot), and Dazed 2 out of 4, essentially making them stop fighting until attacked.  Garreth chopped up an un-Dazed ant and knocked it out.  With his Rapid Strike he also tried attacking the one in Elias's hex, but it dodged.  Because Elias was also in the hex, Garreth had to roll high to avoid hitting Elias.  He rolled low enough to risk hitting Elias, so used his Luck, and then managed to miss Elias, without forcing Elias to make a defense roll.  "Do not accidentally kill the cleric who casts Bless on everyone" seems like a pretty good rule.

Polly fired two arrows at the ant near Elias, but it dodged both.  Elias tried flailing it in the skull, but missed.  An ant tried to bite Polly, but she acrobatically dodged it.  Seépravir cast Death Vision (which she has at 25, for 1s casting time) on the last ant that was still fighting, mentally stunning it.  At that point no ants where still fighting, and we were about to see each ant quadruple-teamed by PCs while Seépravir re-stunned any that somehow managed to survive and recover from stun, so I just called the fight to save another few minutes of brutality.

Quintus had paid $150 for the acid from the first stonebore solider ant the group had brought to him, so the dead ants in the upper corridor were decapitated and their heads thrown in a wheelbarrow.  Then the group had to get down to the cavern below, where the queen ant and a soldier had been taken out by Polly's arrows.

Zaber climbed down.  Polly climbed down, though it required Luck to avoid a nasty 30' fall.  Seépravir Levitated the other three down.  Someone chopped the head off the dead soldier, and the poison stinger off the queen, and then Zaber started looking for treasure.  Zaber found a few copper coins and a valuable silver gravy bowl.  Seépravir found a wand, but it was the cleric kind rather than the wizard kind, so she handed it to Elias.  Elias saw that it had a glyph of Delvyr, the god of knowledge and light, on it.  He started playing with the wand, and managed to set off a Daylight spell.  I made everyone make a HT roll, and Zaber critically failed and had Dark Vision running, so he was blinded by the intense light.  (Daylight isn't really an attack spell, but critical failures are fun, so he got the effect of Flash.)

While Zaber was blinking and trying to get his vision back, Seépravir cast Seek Magic, and spotted a lot of magic southwest and down.  That was enough to get the whole group headed that way.  Polly found a shaft going down, though it was full of dead larva, ant shells, slime, and other junk.  Seépravir, wanting to get to the magic as quickly as possible, started spamming Earth to Air to widen the shaft.  Then everyone headed down.  (By that point Zaber just had a small penalty to his Vision, but his Vision is so high it didn't matter much.)

The group went down a small, stuffy passage, until they saw a huge stone door ahead, with a mouth in the center of it.  The mouth spoke to them and said "Drazzt Onway Ixt My Derangshu Stang Yar Maeron Bub Een Flambran".  The PCs only recognized two words out of that, "My" in Common and "Maeron" in Elvish, which means "Key".  Zaber also noticed some writing around the door, in Dwarf runes, though he couldn't read them.  (Zaber has broken Dwarvish, so he doesn't know all the runes, just the more common ones like Gold and Ale and Men's Room.)

After some random ideas that didn't work, Elias cast Gift of Letters, and could read the runes.  They were in dwarven, but they were in code, so knowing dwarven was not enough.  Elias read out the encrypted text, "ledge reverse two door right key pass connect" in hopes that someone else could figure it out.  (Elias missed his IQ roll to decipher it.)  Zaber gave it a shot, and rolled a 3, a maximum critical success, so he got the correct riddle:

"The key is on the ledge,

But have you the right to know?

Reverse and connect the last two,

To pass the door through."

Of course this was still a riddle to solve, even after passing the first test (read Dwarf) and the second test (make an IQ roll to decipher it).  Polly said "Hey...The mad monk!" remembering something from many sessions ago.  Before Polly could say more, Zaber tried to just open the door.  The mouth tried to bite him, but he dodged it.  Polly then went up to the door and said "Knowledge is the key", which was the correct answer to the riddle (and which found written on the wall by the mad monk long ago, during the session 9, when Polly almost got eaten by a giant praying mantis), but answering the riddle didn't make the door open.

At that point, Zaber was standing too close to the door, and it suddenly decided to open outward and Slam him.  He rolled a 3 on his retreating dodge, for an effortless and impressive hop out of the way.  At that point Elias started looking for a ledge, though there was not one in the room.  He went back to the ant cavern, hoping a ledge there would help, but it did not.  Garreth went along, thinking that maybe a book or scroll from the wheelbarrow would help.

The group had 3 scrolls available: a Mage Light scroll in Dwarf from last session (precious because Mage Light isn't a DFRPG spell so it's hard to find), and Concussion and Deathtouch scrolls that Seépravir just happens to carry around with her just in case.  Seépravir decided that Concussion was the most disposable, and Apportated it over to the mouth in the door, which ate it.  The scroll disappeared but the door opened.

The group wandered through the open door, into a big square room with statues of sword-wielding women in all four corners.  While they were looking around, a skeletal being in wizard's robes walked up and said hello.  Elias immediately recognized it as a lich and freaked out, since liches are very powerful and very evil and they were almost certainly going to die.  The lich asked Elias to turn off the Flaming Weapon spell on his flail, as fire was not welcome here.  Elias ignored this and continued freaking out, telling everyone to run.  Elias noticed that the lich was wearing a holy symbol of the Monks of the Dawning Sun and told the lich to hand it over.  This didn't go well.  Seépravir ended the freak-out by casting Death Vision on Elias and rolling a 4, a critical success, mentally stunning him with no resistance possible.

At that point Polly figured out the statues were Carytid Columns and had a nostalgia moment.  Elias recovered from mental stun from Death Vision and resumed freaking out, so Seépravir cast Daze on him, and won the contest against his resistance roll.  That took Elias out for long enough for the others to have a polite conversation with the lich.

His name was Loras, he was the last member of the Order of the Dawning Sun remaining, he had to turn himself into a lich to avoid dying of old age since he had a responsibility to his Order, and this hidden level was the Order's library.  Loras asked Garreth to take Elias's Flaming flail and put it outside.  Garreth gently removed it from Elias's hand, and the fire went out, which was good enough for Loras.  Loras asked for any history of the area over the last several hundred years, but Seépravir rolled horribly on her History roll, and Loras was not impressed.  He asked the group to bring him history books and/or learned old people.

Loras asked Garreth to supervise the dazed Elias, then led the others to a spiral staircase, which was inside a tower about 150' tall, with bookshelves all along its walls.  Seépravir started asking if she could look at the books, but Loras told her that that would require a trade: bring him books to keep, and in exchange she might be allowed to do research here.  There was a bit more discussion, but then Loras said that it was his daily scrying time and they needed to go, but that they were welcome to return if they brought books.  Also that they should not tell anyone else of the location of his library, and that if they brought any visitors, they should be blindfolded.

The PCs went back up to the ant room, and Seépravir cast Seek Earth for gold, silver, and platinum.  Platinum found a tiny platinum hairpin in the room, which previous searches had missed.  She also did a search for steel, which found a lot of it, way down.  We were out of time, so everyone went back to town.  The ant's treasure made it a moderately profitable session, and of course finding a hidden library guarded by a lich was interesting to some.