DF Whiterock Session 39: Green Slime and the Wight Lady

Date:

2019-02-22

Weather:

Just below freezing, partly cloudy

Player Characters:

Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 327 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 324 points

Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 308 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 342 points

Significant NPCs:

Lady Chauntessa, innkeeper and historian

Ixnay, shoulder dragon

Vulgaris, Minyad druid

The Wight Lady, wight spellcaster

5 Wights

We started in Cillamar, on a not very cold winter day.  Seépravir tried playing her flute to make extra money that she didn't need, and failed miserably.  She also did some research on druidic portals, and found vague rumors about a place called the Far Garden, the essence of all forests, which is allegedly reachable via dimensional gates in some other forests.  There was no confirmation of known gates that actually work, though.  

Garreth returned from his quest to find a martial arts master, without actually meeting one but having heard rumors of a Master Naburu in Galaron.  He also found that his order of balanced sais had come in.

Zaber once again failed to find Lord Flitwick, but heard a rumor about summoning creatures being impossible near Castle Whiterock, and managed to order a potion belt.  Polly found that hard carrot juice was back on the menu, and shared some with Ixnay.  Zaber and Polly decided they needed some twine (for tracking invisible allies, because rope is heavy) and bought some at a bargain price.

Lady Chauntessa made an offer to purchase the huge lions-head mace the PCs had found in the black pyramid, but they decided not to sell it yet in case it turned out to be useful.

Seépravir cast Warmth on everyone, and they hiked to Castle Whiterock without difficulty, except that Seépravir slipped in the snow one time too many and decided to Levitate instead.  Once they reached the castle, she cast Dark Vision on everyone, Invisibility on Zaber and Polly, and Keen Hearing / See Secrets / See Invisible on Zaber.  Not to be outdone, Polly, who is technically a mage, cast Keen Vision on herself and Zaber.

The group decided to go looking for green slime for Vulgaris.  Garreth remembered that it was somewhere in the mine shafts of the lower orc level.  But none of the players remembered exactly where.  Garreth asked if Zaber or Seépravir, who had found the slime previously, could make an IQ roll to remember where it was.  Zaber rolled a 3, a maximum critical success, so I told him that he was sure he remembered exactly where it was.  Which is good because otherwise the PCs would have probably blundered around a cleared level for hours looking for it.  Even with Zaber giving exact directions, the other players had a hard enough time following him, but eventually he led them to the shaft with green slime dripping from the ceiling.  With his perfect memory of its location and magically enhanced vision, there wasn't much chance of him stumbling into it.

Seépravir cast Apportation on a vial, and then floated it up near the slime on the ceiling and tried to collect some.  It took her a few tries, but the failures didn't really matter because there were no PC fingers anywhere near the slime.  I asked for a DX roll to safely cap the vial, and Zaber and Garreth competed to be the one to heroically risk their fingers near slime.  Zaber, with slightly higher DX, eventually made the roll.  There was more slime left, so they repeated the whole process with a second vial.  Then there was hardly any slime left, so the group decided to leave it alone to possibly regrow, in case they needed more in the future.

While in the area, Seépravir decided to cast Seek Magic in case they missed any magic items on that level.  Instead it found that the walls of of the nearby tower where they had (long ago) defeated the cloud giant / orc Drugila were magical.  Seépravir then wanted to cast Analyze Magic, which revealed that the walls were enchanted with some unknown anti-digging spell.  Probably whatever the cloud giant wizards use to keep pesky earth mages out.  At this point everyone else was really bored and Garreth and Polly had started playing catch with sais, so they stopped playing with spells and headed out.

With two potion vials of green slime in Zaber's (borrowed) potion belt, the group went up one level to the top of the elevator, then Seépravir prepared to lower the elevator using the winch then Levitate down after it.  But she critically failed her Levitation spell, and for once decided not to use Luck to avert it.  The critical failure ended up casting the spell on the wrong target, which meant Polly was the one who could fly, which was actually fine, so they went with that.

The bottom of the elevator was right near Vulgaris's mushroom farm, so the group headed over there to trade green slime for access to the gate that was allegedly in her lair.  But they didn't have Elias with them, so they didn't actually want to go through the gate yet, just purchase future access.  Vulgaris agreed to the deal, and also mentioned that they might want to bring some construction equipment and possibly a dwarf since the gate is actually currently a pile of rocks.  Then she took her green slime and headed into her other cave to start making potions.

The group decided to try to finish the river level.  So, with Garreth rowing, they went north down the underground river.  They went through the rocks to avoid the giant clams, and this time no clams attacked them.  Zaber, who had been scouting ahead in the water, climbed back in the boat to go down a waterfall.  The group went past the illusory wall, past the landing that led to the passage to the giant cave with the pyramid, and then reached the end of the river.  There was a dry passage heading north, a small beach to the southwest with a pile of rocks beyond it, and a huge whirlpool sucking all the river water down.  Garreth landed the boat in the dry passage, which only went a few feet then ended in a huge pile of rocks.  It looked like the former path of the river, before it had been diverted down into the whirlpool.

Garreth announced that he wasn't taking the boat anywhere near that whirlpool, so instead Seépravir cast Flight on Zaber so he could fly over and check out the other beach.  He reported that there were a lot of rocks there and it would take forever to move them.  So Seépravir Levitated herself over there then started using Shape Earth to move rocks aside.  After a bit of this, a passage opened, but some creepy undead started coming through it.  So Seépravir re-closed the passage, then Zaber flew back over and carried first Polly, then Garreth across.  (Surprisingly, Zaber can actually lift Garreth at Extra Heavy encumbrance, which is good enough to fly at Move 2.)

When everyone was ready, Seépravir started manipulating rock again, with a goal of getting access to some undead for an unfair fight.  This worked, as one wight popped out while the other four were still behind the rocks.  Garreth, who had been Waiting for just such an occurrence, smashed the wight twice with a katana, re-killing it before anyone else got to help.

Seépravir started shaping the rock again, and this time managed to open a skinny tunnel leading to a trapped wight a few yards back, out of melee range.  This was Polly's cue to fill the defenseless wight with arrows until it stopped moving.  That took four arrows.  Seépravir played with the rock some more, but apparently all the other wights had moved back out of the smash zone, as when the passageway opened back up, three wights and the Wight Lady (a wight with long hair, a breastplate, some boots, a ring, and a flail) were standing well back in a cave, away from all the moving rock.

A slightly less unfair fight started.  Polly shot at the leader twice, but she dodged twice.  Garreth moved up.  The minion wights moved up.  The Wight Lady cast some kind of fear spell at both Garreth and Polly, the only two PCs she could see.  Garreth resisted, but Polly was terrified and decided to hide behind some rocks rather than fighting.  Seépravir Great Hasted herself.  Zaber considered running up to backstab the leader, but instead waiting next to Seépravir to get Great Hasted.

Garreth waited.  Three wights charged him.  When the first one got within katana range, he chopped it up, but it dodged.  Then it tried punching him, but he parried.  Garreth then chopped up another one and killed it.  The Wight Lady, seeing Garreth punishing her minions, yelled "Did she send you? She left me in this cave to die!" and then cast some totally unfair spell on him that melted his organs a bit for 4d damage, which turned out to be 13.  A decent amount, but he has over 20 HP, and he made his Major Wound knockdown / stun check, so his Bless decided it was not worth averting.

Seépravir decided she was tired of watch Polly cower, and cast Dispel Magic.  It worked, and Polly became less scared and started preparing to resume shooting things.  Meanwhile, Zaber invisibly ran up to the Wight Lady at double speed and tried stabbing her in the eye.  Somehow she heard him coming, and somehow she parried the blow with her flail despite him being invisible.  While Zaber complained, one of the surviving wights slammed Garreth.  But he parried, aggressively since its body wasn't a Striker like its hand, and he killed it.  Oops.  Mook wights are not the best tacticians.

The Wight Lady speecified "She makes me do her dirty work and then buries me alive in a cave! And then sends you...mongrels after me. DIE!", and then cast her unfair 4d damage spell again, this time on Zaber, but he doesn't have the kind of HP that Garreth does, and Zaber's Bless decided to expend itself saving him from going below 0 HP.  Garreth hit the Wight Lady hard with his katana, and she rolled a 17 on her death check, and that was the end of that.  The mages noticed that her breastplate, ring, flail, cloak, and boots were all magical, quite a haul if they were useful.

It was pretty late at that point, so the PCs decided to gather up their pile of loot and head back to Cillamar.  They had found some green slime, the end of the river, and a few magic items, not a bad day's work.

GM's Comments:

The green slime would have been a really annoying fetch quest, watching PCs stumble around through mine shafts,  if Zaber hadn't rolled that 3 to remember exactly where it was.  That short circuited things a bit, which was probably for the best.

The fight against the Wight Lady and her 5 minion wights might have been a big tougher if two of the wights hadn't died to earth moving tricks, or if the Wight Lady hadn't failed her very first death check.  Oh well.

Next time, the group has to choose between checking behind the illusory wall some more, going back to the pyramid, checking out other parts of the huge cave past the pyramid, or trying to play with the dimensional gate.  We'll see.

DF Whiterock Session 38: Huge Clay Golem

Date:

2019-02-15

Weather:

Just below freezing, light snow

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles not present, played by GM), Wood Elf Cleric, 270 points

Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 320 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 304 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 338 points

Significant NPCs:

Vulgaris, Minyad druid

Giant Clams (with harpoons)

Huge Clay Golem

We started in Cillamar, except that Garreth was out of town, looking for some kind of teacher.  Zaber did his usual search for Lord Flitwick and his servants, and again failed to find them.  He also did his usual pub crawl looking for rumors, and heard something about an underground vampire lord bartender.

Seépravir researched "Chartrusa's annual plight" and learned that Chartrusa was a mythical warrior who rode in a battle on a magical chariot, and that she is immortalized in a constellation that makes a journey from the east to west every year.  Seépravir also brewed a few potions.

Polly found that the Inn of the Slumbering Drake was all out of hard carrot juice, tried hard beet juice instead, and found that it wasn't as good.

The weather had warmed up to the point that regular winter clothing was enough for prolonged outdoor activities like hiking to Castle Whiterock, but Seépravir cast Warmth on everyone anyway.  They made it to the castle in good order, without encountering anybody or anything.  Elias pushed the wheelbarrow, containing the Wineskin of Many Healing Potions.  After some spell-shuffling for dungeon conditions (less cold, more darkness), everyone walked across the former upper orc level (still unoccupied) to the secret room with the elevator, then Seépravir worked the crank to lower everyone else in the elevator, and Levitated down after them.

Polly wanted to check the minyad's lair for other exits, and Zaber wanted to hit on the minyad, so they went that way.  Vulgaris showed a strong interest in some green slime, or possibly blue slime if they couldn't find any green.  Polly asked Vulgaris if there were any other exits from her area, and she said that there were not, except for the disassembled dimensional portal.  Seeing their interest in the gate, the minyad said that she would allow the group to play with it, in exchange for some green slime or getting her old rapier back.  However, the PCs decided they would wait until Garreth was back to play with any dimensional gates, and decided to go explore the pyramid instead.

There was still a skiff sitting on the nearby underground beach.  Without Garreth available to steer it, Zaber volunteered for boating duty.  He did a fine job, piloting around some rocks near the Giant Clams without hitting any.  Unfortunately, one of the Giant Clams must have been a bit hungry, as it decided to harpoon Elias in the back of the skiff.  Fortunately, it didn't do enough damage to penetrate Elias's armor, and none of the other Giant Clams too a shot.  The group has decided that Giant Clams are Nature and not enemies, and should not be harmed, so they ignored the attack and kept going.

Zaber steered the boat down a small waterfall, and managed to land it at the dock that had been formerly guarded by Derro.  There was no sign of the Derro or anyone else, so the group formed up and went through the concealed door, down a long passage to the huge cave.  This time, nobody attacked them in the huge cave, and they made it to the pyramid easily.

Elias noticed that the big boulder that had slid down the pyramid's north stairs last time was back on top of the north entrance.  So someone, or something, had reset the trap.  Seépravir thought she knew how to get into the pyramid, based on the Chartrusa story, and announced that they needed to mess with the east doors then the west doors.  This time, rather than triggering the trap by jumping on top of the boulder, they would trigger it "naturally" by trying to open the door, and then Seépravir would cast Phase Other on whoever triggered the trap to keep them from being smashed by the huge boulder.  Seépravir first dropped most of her spells on, so that her Phase Other would work on 16 or less.  Then Polly triggered the trap on the east doors, Seépravir kept the boulder from killing Polly, and the east door was still a false door.

Seépravir asked if the Chartrusa constellation was in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere.  It was in the Northern, so she decided they should try the north doors next, then the west doors, and things would open.  So everyone went over to the north door (except Elias who pushed the wheelbarrow around the base of the pyramid and stayed out of where the boulder should fall), and they repeated triggering the trap.  Then they went over to the west door and repeated the process -- and nothing happened.  It was still false doors.

Seépravir was confused that her plan hadn't worked, but both Zaber and Polly suggested the south door as the only one they hadn't tried, so they went to that one.  This time, when Polly touched the door, the rock didn't fall.  And Zaber was able to pick the lock, but the door (a real stone door this time, not a false one) was very heavy, so he needed Polly's help to open it.

Seépravir re-cast Dark Vision on everyone, and a few other spells, and then the group started down the dark stairway into the pyramid.  But a few steps in, Seépravir noticed the mana level dropping.  Keeping all those spells up would no longer be practical in a low mana zone, with -5 to all spell skills.  Also, all the group's magic items except the Ring of Water Breathing (Etc.) seemed to go non-magical in the pyramid.  So Seépravir dropped the Dark Visions and most of her other spells, and Elias used Flaming Weapon to light up his flail (sanctity level seemed normal so his clerical spells still worked fine), and Polly pulled out a couple of arrows with Continual Light on them (cast by Seépravir at skill 20, so they still worked in low mana), holding one and handing the other to Zaber.

The stairs down ended in another heavy stone door, which opened effortlessly, as though it was crafted and maintained by skilled dwarves.  It revealed a huge hall, about 50 feet wide and 80 feet long and 30 feet high, with soft light coming from the ceiling, and lots of picture writing on 3 walls.  Against the far wall stood a huge stone statue of a human male wearing robes and a breastplate and holding a huge mace with a roaring lion head.

Elias noticed that the statue was wearing a holy symbol of the cat goddess Bastetys.  Polly declared that cats are cool, and stopped aiming an arrow at the statue.  Zaber started looking at all the pictures on the walls.  They seemed to tell a story: a plague had come to some desert cities, apparently carried by rodents.  The previous ruler and his priests could not stop it.  But a heroic cat priest came to town, summoned a lot of cats (of all types and sizes), the cats killed all the rodents and stopped the plague and saved the city, and the cat priest was made king, and a giant black pyramid was built.

After finishing looking at all the pictures, Polly decided that there had to be a secret door or something behind the statue, and asked Zaber to search there.  He touched the statue, and the statue started moving, and readied its huge mace.  Polly resumed hostile mode despite kitty cats, and fired a couple of arrows at the statue, but it dodged them.  The statue then charged at Seépravir and tried to crush her with its huge mace, but he retreated straight up (Levitating) and dodged.

Elias, without his usual Lighten Burden 50% running because of the low mana zone, was quite slow, and took a while to charge into battle.  Seépravir tried Rapier Wit on the statue, in Celestial, but it didn't work.  Either it didn't speak Celestial or it didn't think she was very witty.  Polly kept plugging arrows at the statue.  Zaber ran behind the statue.  The statue spun around and tried to smash him.  Zaber rolled a 17 on his Acrobatics roll, but used Luck to fix it (he recently bought his Luck up to Extraordinary Luck so now he gets to reroll every 30 minutes), and then made his acrobatic dodge.  Seépravir Great Hasted herself.  (Because of the low mana this took two turns rather than one.)

Polly shot a couple more arrows into the statue, one hitting its eye (which seemed to be just as hard as the rest of the statue) and the other its torso.  This time it failed to dodge, and the arrows seemed to knock off a little stone.  Zaber, behind the statue, decided to jump on its back and go for a piggyback ride.  He made his Jumping roll and grappled it from behind, though the statue was so much bigger and stronger than Zaber that the grapple had no real effect.

Elias was finally pretty close, and the statue decided to smash him.  First, it started moving faster - - the PCs weren't the only ones with Great Haste.  Then it spent one action closing to within reach, and the second action trying to smash Elias with its huge mace.  Elias blocked with his shield, while retreating.  (DFRPG doesn't have shield damage rules and lets you block huge things with a shield.  I find this cheesy but have not house ruled any changes.)  Elias then used his Heroic Grace to get +5 to DX for 10 turns, transforming from somewhat good with a flail to really good with a flail.  Seépravir cast Great Haste on Elias.

Polly hit the statue with another arrow.  Zaber, still riding piggyback, Fast Drew a sai and tried to shove it through a gap in the statue (aiming for armor chinks).  He rolled a critical attack, double damage, and actually managed to penetrate, though he didn't do a lot of damage.  Still moving super-fast, the statue went after Polly.  She retreated and dodged its first attack, despite rolling a 15.  Its second attack was a Deceptive Attack for -3 to defenses, but she acrobatically dodged that one.  At this point, Elias was finally in attack range, and he attacked the statue 3 times: first an All-Out Attack Double then a regular attack.  Two of the three attacks were critical hits, one for double damage, and the statue seemed extra-vulnerable to crushing attacks, so this tore pieces of clay off, but the statue didn't fall down.

Seépravir gave tactical advice to both Elias (hit it faster) and Zaber (try not to die), while Polly shot more arrows at the wounded statue.  This time, it rolled a 17 on a dodge, falling down.  This could have been bad for Zaber, on its back, if it fell backward, but the dice decided it fell forward.  Zaber jumped off to stay out of the crash site.  Polly fired another arrow into the downed statue, and it stopped moving.

Zaber started trying to pry the inactive golem apart with his sai, and Elias decided to help with his flail.  The statue was hollow, and Zaber found a small urn inside.  It didn't appear trapped, and inside was a small urn.  Inside the urn was a bead, with a hole through it, which Seépravir said was magical.  So they took that.

Seépravir went to the top of the stairs where the mana level was better to rest.  Zaber found a secret door under where the statue used to be, with a huge keyhole that looked like it needed a huge flanged key.  Zaber stuck the golem's mace in there, and it fit.  (Zaber was just barely strong enough to lift it, nowhere near strong enough to use it as a weapon.)  This opened the door, leading to a short crawl under the statue's former base then some stairs down, but the group decided not to go that way yet.

Zaber decided to search the hall some more, and found two vertical rows of holes along the east wall, going up around 20'.  He decided to use the holes to climb up, then searched for a secret door at the top.  He found one, then went to get Seépravir to ask for a Levitation spell.  She cast one on him (rolling a 3, a critical success) and then flew Zaber up there, where he could work on the secret door with both hands without worrying about falling.   He figured out how to open the secret door, and it led to another staircase heading down east into the pyramid.  He also saw some writing on the door, in an unknown language.  Seépravir Levitated Elias up, and he cast Gift of Letters, which told him that the message (in Ancient Sphinx again) was "Retrieve the key, for a chance to defeat part of me."

Seépravir cast Seek Magic, and the nearest magic (excluding known items carried by the PCs) was some magical lights up around the ceiling of the huge hall.  The group managed to carry the huge mace out of the pyramid, load it into their wheelbarrow (which fit in the skiff only because Garreth wasn't there), and headed back to Cillamar.

GM's Comments:

Another light week for loot.  All the group found was the huge mace and the magic bead.  Though they learned a few interesting things, so it wasn't a bad week.

Elias's player was supposed to arrive an hour late, which was why Elias tagged along, but then the player never showed.  I usually have late arriving players' PCs catch the rest of the party partway through the session, but decided that with all the Boating rolls needed to get through the underground river level, that would be a bad idea this time, so I would just run Elias until his player got there.  So he ended up being run by the GM for the whole session, something I normally avoid.  (One of the benefits of usually starting in town is that it makes it easy to run with whoever showed up that week, so nobody ever needs to run PCs for absent players, so nobody has to worry about their PC dying when they're not there.)

The getting-into-the-pyramid puzzle took a long time, and the players still aren't really sure what's going on, but they got inside.  The overhead map of the pyramid with the four staircases and four boulders helps some, but I think I should have also provided pictures of the double door keyholes / cat people / boulder arrangements, to make it a bit clearer.  

The golem was pretty buff, and would have done a lot of damage if it ever managed to hit, but there was only one of it versus 4 PCs, and the combo of high defenses and Luck and Bless worked again.  It wasn't super-vulnerable to arrows, so if Elias hadn't been there it might have been iffy, but once he had Great Haste and Heroic Grace up, that statue was doomed.  Its drawback was that it had Unnatural: Brittle and automatically died at -HP, rather than making death checks.  So they only had to deal twice its (large) number of HP past its (high) DR to kill it, rather than up to 6 times its HP.

The PCs found two secret doors inside the pyramid, one with a cryptic message.  And also some kind of disassembled dimensional gate near the minyad's mushroom farm.  So they have options for next week.  We'll see what they pick.

DF Whiterock Session 37: Cave with Pyramid

Date:

2019-02-08

Weather:

Very cold, windy

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 266 points

Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 323 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 316 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 300 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 334 points

Significant NPCs:

2 Stirge Swarms

3 Trolls

The group started in the town of Cillamar, on a cold and windy winter day.  Garreth took a tour around town looking for magical plate armor and combat masters, but unsurprisingly didn't find either.  His case of custom sais wasn't ready yet, either.  Zaber looked for Lord Flitwick or his servants, but they still weren't around.  Seépravir researched the sigils on Bracers of Force, and found that they were usually there but not always the same design.  Perhaps an homage to the sigils on the original legendary cosmic version.

Both Seépravir and Polly lost their Bless +2 in the last session, and had them replaced by the (much cheaper and easier to cast in the dungeon) Bless +1, but Polly asked Elias (with some Lend Energy help from Seépravir) to cast another Bless +2 for her in town (and paid to recharge his power item).

It was still cold enough that Seépravir cast Warmth on everyone for the hike to the castle.  Zaber had heard a rumor of a huge serpent living within Lake Whiterock, which had been known to crawl up onto land and devour livestock.  That was enough to encourage the group to walk around the lake, rather than taking a shortcut over its frozen surface like last time.

Once they reached Castle Whiterock and got out of the wind, Seépravir dropped the Warmth spells on everyone except Zaber (who needs it for swimming), then cast Lighten Burden on Elias, Invisibility and Keen Hearing and Alertness and See Secrets and See Invisible on Zaber, Dark Vision on Zaber and Polly and herself, and Levitation on herself.

With the preparation done, the group went down one set of stairs, across the first former orc level, through the secret door, and down the elevator to the underground river level.  They found their two skiffs still on the beach where they had left them.  Zaber scouted ahead in the water, Seépravir floated a few feet above the boat, and everyone else got in.

Garreth again managed to pilot the skiff through a group of rocks to avoid the Giant Clams, then down a waterfall without any damage.  Zaber decided to swim the waterfall this time rather than getting in the boat, and managed to avoid hurting himself.  They went pass the illusory wall, then docked again at the north beach where they had found the derro camp last time.

Zaber climbed up to take a quick look, and noticed that the dead derro and both live derro (who had been taken prisoner, interrogated, then freed) were gone.  He also noticed (thanks to See Secrets) a boulder that had been cleverly wedged into the wall, as a crude secret door.  (The whole group had missed this last time.)  Zaber went back to the boat to tell the others, and they decided to investigate the secret passage first, before continuing down the river.

Polly was able to shift the boulder, and then everyone squeezed through and walked slowly down a windy passage, that some thought sloped downward.  (With no dwarves in the group, they weren't completely sure.)  Eventually the passage opened into a huge cave, dimly lit in places by some kind of phosphorescent lichen or mold. The cave was too big to clearly see the ceiling or the other side, even with Dark Vision, though those with it could see far enough to spy a large pyramid to the south.

Zaber scouted ahead, climbed up a slope, and reached some sandy ground surrounding the black pyramid.  Because he was Invisible he handed one end of his rope to Polly, so she could track where he was.  The sides of the pyramid were very smooth, but not quite a 45-degree angle, so they were climbable with enough skill.  The group found they were near the northeast corner of the pyramid, so walked west, looking for an entrance along its north face.  Around the center of the north side of the pyramid, they found a 5' wide staircase heading up, with 2' wide stone walls on each side, and some writing near the base of the staircase, written in odd symbols.  Everyone tried reading it, and when they were all sure they could not, Elias cast Gift of Letters, which told him that it said "Follow Chartrusa’s annual plight, To enter this holy place right" in Ancient Sphinx, a language that nobody had even heard of before.  Nobody had any idea who Chartrusa was either, though Zaber mentioned that it sounded kind of like Chauntessa, their innkeeper and occasional patron.

Garreth suggested visiting the lich librarian to find out about Chartrusa, but Polly mentioned that that was a long trip and would cost the group books and also that it would cause intra-party conflict with Elias, who is not a fan of undead.  So they kept exploring.  First Seépravir cast Invisibility on Polly, then everyone started up the stairs, with the two Invisible scouts in front, then the other 3 about 5 yards behind them.

The stairs went up about 100 feet until ending in a sealed double stone door with two keyholes, flanked by two cat-people statues, holding up a huge stone block.  Zaber searched for traps and thought the big stone block might be rigged to fall and smash intruders.  So Garreth and Elias and Seépravir went down the steps to near the bottom, and Zaber and Polly climbed the pyramid to above the stone block.  Then he kicked the block lightly, but it didn't move.  Then he stomped on it, but it still didn't move.  Seépravir flew sideways away from the stairs.  Then Zaber and Polly jumped on top of the block together, and it fell.  They both managed to jump off the falling block and grab onto the side of the pyramid.  Meanwhile, the huge block was descending rapidly toward Garreth and Elias, using the walls on the sides of the stairway as a ramp.  Both jumped sideways, managing to avoid getting crushed (though Garreth needed to use his Luck to reroll a bad initial DX roll), and both also grabbed onto the pyramid rather than tumbling to the bottom.  So, disaster averted, but only at the cost of a lot of jumping around.

With the trap disarmed, Zaber went back to the huge stone doors and tried their collection of keys in the two keyholes, but none fit.  He then picked both locks, resulting in clicks but no door movement.  He then tried pushing and pulling on the doors, to no avail -- it was a false double door!  Polly tried too, to no avail.  Then Seépravir came up and tried Shape Earth, which failed, presumably due to some anti-magic enchantments on the rock sides of the pyramid.  She also tried Find Weakness, which confirmed Zaber's opinion that it was just a huge block of solid rock with no real weak points, and the door was totally fake.

Annoyed, Zaber climbed around near the top of the pyramid (needing to use Luck to avoid falling) and saw that the next side of the pyramid over also had a similar stone block, held up by similar cat-people statues, with a similar double door arrangement, and a similar staircase down, with similar walls on each side.  Very symmetrical.  The group then decided to walk back down the stairs, and check out the other sides of the pyramid from the bottom.

As they walked around the east side of the pyramid, near the east wall of the cave, Polly thought there was something suspicious about the cave wall that might indicate a secret door, but nobody could find one (even with See Secrets), so everyone figured it was just a funny shaped rock.  Around the midpoint of the east side of the pyramid, they found another staircase that looked about the same, along with writing that looked about the same near the bottom.  

They continued walking, until they reached the southeast corner of the pyramid.  As Zaber rounded the corner, he spotted three trolls, leaning against the south wall of the pyramid in ambush position.  Fortunately for the PCs, Zaber is very hard to surprise, and popped back while yelling a warning.

Most of the PCs were faster than the trolls.  Garreth stepped up into position while fast-drawing a sai, and waited for a target to enter his line of sight.  Polly tried to shoot one in the eye, twice.  It dodged the first arrow, but not the second, and gained the One Eye disadvantage.  It didn't fall over or anything though.  Elias readied his flail and stepped forward.

The injured troll moved closer to Polly then tried to wrench her arm, twice, but she dodged both attempts.  Garreth tried throwing a sai at the troll's vitals, though he wasn't quite sure where they were, so ended up just hitting its torso.  The other two trolls moved up into melee range, and Seépravir cast Great Haste on Garreth.  Garreth stepped up and tried to chop up a troll, who ended up with two crippled arms, but still standing.  (Trolls are tough!)  Zaber climbed up the pyramid, out of easy troll grabbing range, and got his pistol crossbow ready.  

Polly shot the one-eyed troll in the other eye, gifting it with the Blindness disadvantage, and also apparently killing it.  (For the moment, anyway.  Trolls regenerate.)  A second troll tried to grab Polly, twice, but Garreth sacrificially parried for her, twice.  The third troll tried slamming Garreth to get his annoying katana out of the way, but Garreth dodged, and the troll ran past.  It turned as it did so to avoid turning its back to Garreth, but unwittingly turned its back to Zaber instead.

Seépravir flew straight up 3 yards to get out of reach, tried Rapier Wit in Undercommon to stun a troll (which failed), and then cast Death Vision to successfully stun the troll.  Garreth ran up to the unstunned troll next to Polly and cut it four times with his katana, doing massive amounts of damage but somehow not killing it or knocking it out or even stunning it.  Zaber used his pistol crossbow to shoot the stunned troll in the back of the skull, but didn't do much damage.  Polly shot the unstunned troll in both eyes, killing it.

Elias wailed on the stunned troll with his flail twice, injuring it.  Seépravir cast Death Vision on that troll, stunning it again, and at that point it had no hope, since (unless she rolled a 17 or 18 and decided not to use her Luck) she could keep doing that, while the other four PCs attacked the stunned troll at their leisure.  So I called the fight, as the troll went down to a hail of arrows and katana slashes and flailings and possibly even knife wounds.

The troll corpses were regenerating away, but the Polly and Zaber wanted to search them for treasure (especially keys) before burning them.  Unfortunately, they had nothing but loincloths.  Seépravir cast Create Fire and burned all three trolls to a crisp before they could come back to life.

With the trolls vanquished, the party continued west, around the south side of the pyramid.  They saw another staircase up, but didn't bother climbing it.  They also saw some large stalagmites to the south, but wanted to finish with the pyramid before exploring tehm.  They reached the southwest corner of the pyramid, turned north (with Polly yelling to take a wide turn in case of more ambushers), saw that the west side looked about the same as the other three sides, and gave up on the pyramid for now.

There wasn't much time left in the session, so the group decided not to go south to the stalagmites (which were on another map), but instead went north to explore the northern cave wall.  While they were doing that, two swarms of stirges dropped from the sky and tried to suck their blood.  Fortunately for the group, Zaber was once again hyper-alert and warned everyone, preventing surprise.  Unfortunately for Zaber, one of the swarms went for his barely-armored face, and did pretty good damage.  The other one went for Garreth, who was better armored and didn't get hurt as much.

Garreth stepped back and went into All Out Attack (Double) plus Rapid Strike swarm killing mode.  Zaber, realizing his face was by far the least armored part of his body, decided to drop to the ground and turtle, using the ground to shield his face so the stirges would bite him somewhere else.  Elias used his flail and shield to finish off the swarm that Garreth had reduced.  Polly fast-drew her edged rapier and started stabbing the swarm that was biting Zaber, and Seépravir decided to cast a ring of Create Fire around herself to encourage the stirges to bit someone else.

The remaining swarm went for Zaber again, this time biting his hands and feet, but his Bless spell decided to intervene and reduce the attack to minimum damage, keeping his HP above zero.  Garreth ran in and finished off the remaining stirges.  Elias cast Stop Bleeding and Major Healing on the seriously injured Zaber.  Stop Bleeding was enough for the slightly injured Garreth, and then everyone decided to go back to town.  (Seépravir and Garreth toyed with the idea of splitting the party and stopping at the lich's library, but the logistics for that turned out to be too complicated, so they just went to Cillamar with the others.)

GM's Comments:

The players intended to finish exploring the underground river, but got sidetracked by the secret door into the giant cave level...and now they still haven't finished exploring the river.  Maybe next time.

It took a long time to explore the outside of the pyramid, even though they only actually fiddled with one of the four entrances.  Zaber's high Per-based Traps skill saved the day, as that huge stone block would have done a lot of damage if it had falled on the party.  (Even with warnings to get out of the way, most of the group still had to make some combination of DX, Dodge, and Climbing rolls to avoid damage, but those were much easier rolls than if the block had unexpectedly fallen right on their heads.)

Trolls are tough, but they made the mistake of only bringing three trolls to face 5 PCs, and they didn't get surprise, and regeneration only helps so much when you're taking massive piles of damage.  Once again, swarms annoyed the PCs, but it was only two of them, against the whole group, so nobody was in serious danger.

This was the first zero-loot session of the campaign.  There were only two fights, and none of the opponents had any possessions of note.  Nobody was happy about this, but it's not like the PCs are in danger of starving: they can survive the occasional lean session.

Next time, we'll find out if they try to explore the river again, figure out a way into the pyramid, or do something else.

DF Whiterock Session 36: Bat Swarms and Derro on the Beach

Date:

2019-02-01

Weather:

Frigid

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 262 points

Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 319 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 312 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 296 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 330 points

Significant NPCs:

4 Bat Swarms

2 Derro Warriors

Nall'loth, Derro Wizard

The party started in the town of Cillamar.  The most significant news of the week was that Polly's custom (Fine Balanced Elven) longbow was finally ready, letting her kill things even more efficiently.  Rumors included something called a grue that lives deep in dungeons and kills adventurers who don't carry lights, and the foul beasts under Castle Whiterock being the descendents of evil experiments by Ghorrene the Black Eagle, an imperial prince from hundreds of years back who was convicted of deviltry.  Zaber still found no sign of Lord Flitwick or any of his servants, and his town house was dark.

The weather was so cold that neither winter clothing nor a Warmth spell was enough; it required either both, or Arctic clothing.  That kept most of Cillamar's population indoors near a fire, but wasn't enough to deter the PCs from bundling up, begging Seépravir for Warmth spells, and trekking the 30 miles to Castle Whiterock.  For the first time, Lake Whiterock was frozen solid enough to appear to be safe to walk over.  This caused a debate between the cautious types who would rather walk a couple of extra hours to avoid possibly falling through ice or being eaten by the lake hydra, and those would would rather get indoors sooner.  For once, the brave won the argument, everyone walked across the lake (with Zaber in the lead wearing the Ring of Slow Fall and a rope around his waist to yank him out if he fell through, and Seépravir Levitating just in case), and nothing bad happened.

Once they reached Castle Whiterock, everyone huddled in the former Rust Spider tower (one of the few rooms on the surface level with intact walls and roof) to get out of the wind, while Seépravir rested a bit then cast dungeon spells: Dark Vision for 3/5 of the group, See Secrets and Invisibility on Zaber, etc.  Then everyone headed down a level to the top of the secret elevator, then down the elevator to the underwater river level.  It was significantly warmer that far down, enough that the river was still not quite frozen, though it was very close.

Everyone except Zaber piled into a skiff, with Garreth rowing while Zaber (with the Rings of Swimming and Water Breathing and a Warmth spell) invisibly swam ahead, scouting.  As they reached the first fork in the stream, a huge swarm of bats came around the corner and decided the four visible boaters looked like excellent sources of tasty warm blood.  The huge swarm split into 4 hex-sided swarms, two of which randomly decided to get Polly, while the other two went after Garreth.  That was somewhat fortunate for the PCs, as those two have the most HP, and Garreth has reasonable amounts of armor.   The two swarms on Polly rolled very good damage, though, and were lucky enough to randomly hit her unarmored legs rather than her armored torso, so she bled a lot.  Not enough to cause a major wound or a stun, so her Bless stayed up rather than being consumed to avert a hit.  The two on Garreth barely managed to get any damage through his armor, so he was fine.

Garreth smashed some bats using his long knife, though it was only mildly effective against Diffuse opponents.  Zaber, in the water, mostly just watched for other attackers.  Polly pulled out her edged rapier and also started swatting bats.  Elias smashed bats with his flail and shield.  Seépravir experimentally tried Death Vision on a swarm, not sure if it would work.  It seemed to stun a few bats.  There were still a lot of bats remaining.

The remaining unstunned bat swarms flitted around, picking targets and hit locations and random (with a slight skew toward attacking the closest targets).  One went for Seépravir's leg and cut it a bit.  Her newly acquired winter clothing gave her DR1 versus cutting, which helped a little.  Another swarm went for Polly's torso, the only place she has decent armor, and bounced off.  (Bats are dumb.)  The stunned swarm lost its turn, then recovered from stun.

Garreth and Polly stabbed more bats.  Elias squished and swatted more bats.  Seépravir panicked and decided to use Shape Air as a deterrent to any bats approaching her, but it failed because of the combination of many spells on and the Shock penalty from getting bit.  Zaber swam around looking for other enemies.

One of the remaining bat swarms went for Elias's torso and bounced off his heavy armor.  The other went for Seépravir and cut her some more.  The Garreth and Polly's final attacks were enough to disperse the remaining swarms.  Polly considered shooting non-threatening individual straggler bats, but made her roll to resist Bloodlust and decided it wasn't worth the arrows.

With the battle won and Seépravir and Polly both bleeding heavily, Elias cast Stop Bleeding on everyone who was bleeding, and then Polly had a swig from the Wineskin of 26 Minor Healing Potions, turning it into the Wineskin of 25 Minor Healing Potions.  Elias suggested boating to the nearby Hidden Fane of Justicia, whose high sanctity would let him cast Major Healing with a better chance of success (he was maintaining 4 Bless spells, a Flaming Weapon, and a Resist Fire for -6 to spells), but everyone was pretty much fully healed so Garreth instead kept going north.

First they bypassed the giant clams by going through the rapids.  Garreth made his boating roll to avoid hitting any rocks, and Polly threw some dead bats to the clams as they went by.  Then Garreth piloted the boat down a small waterfall.  Further downstream, they went past the illusionary wall, which Garreth spat at as they passed.  Finally, they saw the beach ahead, with some stairs leading up, and another skiff moored there.

Everyone got out of the boat and started up the stairs, but the stairs were very slippery.  And then became very dark, at least for the 2 PCs without Dark Vision spells.  Zaber and Polly made their DX rolls to get up the stairs despite the Grease spell, and then saw a couple of tents, a huge fire, and three derro (one regular sized and two extra large), two of them pointing crossbows at Polly.  They both loosed, and Polly acrobatically dodged the first bolt and regularly dodged the second.

Polly decided to shoot the small Derro, twice.  It deflected the first arrow off its bracer, but failed to dodge the second one, and took a lot of impaling damage.  It was slowed, but not stunned, knocked out, or killed.  Elias tried charging blindly up the slippery stairs, but missed his DX roll and face planted.  Garreth held position at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for Seépravir to cast Dark Vision on him.  Which she tried, but failed.  (She has the spell at a very high level, but had a lot of spells on for a very high penalty.)

At that point, the small derro which had just taken Polly's arrow threw something at Polly.  It was a Concussion spell.  Which Polly dodged easily, but which subjected everyone within 10 yards to a HT-3 roll to avoid stunning.  That turned out to be all the PCs except Zaber.  Seépravir failed her roll, but her Bless prevented the stun, and expired.  Garreth, Polly, and Elias all made their rolls.  The two huge derro re-readied their repeating crossbows, very quickly.

Zaber, still Invisible, ran up behind one of the crossbow derro into backstab position.  It failed its hearing roll to notice him.  Polly shot the derro wizard again, and this time it rolled an 18 on its blocking spell.  Oops!  I didn't bother going to the critical spell failure table until I saw if it was already dead.  The arrow did enough damage for two more death checks, but the tough little wizard made all its rolls.  Then Polly put another arrow into the wizard, which brought it to -5 * HP, and it was dead with no rolls allowed.

Seépravir stopped maintaining a couple of spells (she casts some spells with 1 second duration so that she can quickly drop them when needed) to reduce her penalty, then managed to put Dark Vision on Garreth.  Garreth made his DX check and started running up the stairs toward the huge derro with crossbows.  They both shot at Polly again.  The first one hit, but she acrobatically dodged.  The second one rolled a critical hit, for double damage, which caused Polly's Bless spell to decide that this was a good time to expire and save her from being impaled.  The derro, seeing his absolutely perfect shot somehow miss, started screaming in Undercommon that it was time to destroy the sun so that it would stop cursing him.  

Zaber backstabbed the nearby derro in the neck, and hit, but rolled horrible damage and barely penetrated its mail armor.  He decided not to use his Luck to reroll the damage, saving it for defense.  Polly shot the other derro (not wanting to risk hitting Zaber if she missed the one next to him) and knocked him out, non-fatally.  The one that Zaber just stabbed dropped her crossbow, fast-drew her shortsword, and tried to stab Zaber, but he made his acrobatics roll and then his acrobatic retreating dodge roll.

Garreth threw a brightly glowing (full-power Continual Light) sai at Zaber's derro as he ran up, but missed.  The derro didn't seem to like the light, though.  Zaber tried another neck attack, but the derro parried.  Polly shot the derro, it failed to dodge, and was knocked out, leaving two unconscious huge derro warriors and a dead regular-size derro wizard.

Somehow, both Garreth and Polly made their bloodlust rolls and decided not to murder the derro.  Instead, they tied them up, and started looting.  The loot included magic bracers, mail armor, shortswords, repeating crossbows, a potion, a few coins, and a key.  Zaber searched one tent and found some silk pillows and silver drinkware.  Garreth searched the other tent and found a pewter incense burner shaped like a dragon.

Elias cast Bless (only +1) on Seépravir, and then she cast Seek Magic.  It told her the nearest magic (other than what they already had on them) was a bit to the southwest, back across the river.  She tried again with Seek Earth, looking for gold.  This found some gold under the tent that Garreth had searched.  Zaber searched harder, and found a small locked chest under the tent.  Its lock opened with the key from the wizard's boot, and it contained a lot of coins, some small gold ingots, and a single gray boot.

Polly wanted a Bless too, but Elias rolled a 17.  Fortunately he hadn't used his Luck, so he got to try again and nobody got turned into a newt.  Seépravir determined that the single boot was magic, and wondered why her Seek Magic hadn't found it.

Meanwhile, one of the bleeding derro woke up, and Garreth started interrogating him.  He found out that the dead wizard was named Nalloth, that the boss was named The Impressario, and that they were all dead meat for killing Nalloth.  Also that The Impressario ran an arena called the Bleak Theater where monsters killed each other, and that slaves had been taken there, until the flow of slaves stopped for some reason.  At this point the derro passed out from blood loss.  Elias said that he refused to use holy healing powers on monsters, but deigned to use mundane Esoteric Medicine to keep the prisoner from bleeding to death.  At that point Garreth switched to interrogating the female derro, learning that no dragons had been seen in the Bleak Arena lately but a two-headed giant had.  And that derro really hate the sun and it would burn their eyes out if they went to the surface.  She offered to show them all of Nalloth's treasure if Garreth would let them go, then went into the tent and found an incense box that had been missed, then said "oh you already dug up his chest."

At this point the PCs had a discussion about whether to take the derro back to town, but they decided it was probably true that sunlight would kill them, so they just let them go.  They went back to Cillamar, using the "it's too late for wandering monsters" rule.

GM's Comments:

The bat swarms were a random encounter, and they did some serious damage, due to a combination of good damage rolls, good random targeting rolls, and the party's lack of good anti-swarm attacks.  But nobody died, and the combination of Stop Bleeding spells and healing potions meant they were ready to go again.

The derro wizard had a nice ambush set up, with Darkness and Grease and Concussion ready to go, but Dark Vision is a nice counter to Darkness, and Polly is a pretty good counter to anything that dies from impaling damage.  She dodged all the bolts fired at her except the one critical hit, her Bless averted that one, and that was it for the derro.  Clearly whoever's in charge should have place more than 3 derro there to stop 5 PCs.

Once again the party decided to go back to town after winning one real fight, rather than pressing on.  This kind of slow progress has worked well for them so far, but it might backfire at some point, if they ever fight anyone smart enough to use the time to regroup and reinforce.