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.