DF Whiterock Session 43: The Mummy And His Zoo

Date:

2019-03-22

Weather:

Around freezing, blowing snow

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 278 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 339 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 336 points

Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 320 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 354 points

Significant NPCs:

2 Owlbears

Mummy boss

Dire Lion

Dire Tiger

Huge Python

4 Beetle Swarms

We started in the town of Cillamar.

Seépravir researched the jars of goo, and found that they cure disease and poison and wounds.  (Later discussion revealed that Garreth actually wanted her to research the unknown gross goo in the other jar instead of the magical healing goo.)

Elias re-cast Bless on Garreth and Polly.

Zaber heard a rumor about a castrated ogre soprano who'd wowed the Lord Mayor.  He also heard that Lord Flitwick had hired a bodyguard.

Garreth got a letter back from Master Naburu (or possibly one of his minions?) inviting him to visit the Master after the first blossoms of spring, and to bring alcohol.

Everyone hiked back to Castle Whiterock, down one level of stairs, across the level, to the secret door with the elevator down.  Zaber and Elias both decided to climb down the elevator cable instead of using the elevator like a normal person, and neither fell to his death.  Garreth and Polly climbed in the elevator, and Seépravir started spinning the wheel to lower them -- and then two owlbears jumped out from hiding and tried to eat Seépravir.  This didn't work, as they didn't achieve surprise, and Seépravir (who already had Levitate on) merely ran to the elevator shaft and jumped in, while the owlbears chased a bit then watched in dismay.  (There was some question of whether owlbears could fly, since they had feathers, but it appears at least these ones could not.)

It got worse for them a few minutes later, as Seépravir cast Levitate on Polly, and Polly flew up and filled the owlbears' eyes with arrows from outside grabbing range.  With the brief wandering monster interlude over, Polly spun the wheel to lower Garreth and then flew down to the bottom of the elevator shaft.

The group piled in a skiff, and Garreth made four Boating rolls to avoid dumping anyone in the water.  Once they landed the boat at the far beach, everyone got out and hiked toward the giant cave, then to the pyramid.  They made it to the pyramid, at which point Seépravir declared that she'd rather stay outside in the normal mana zone and maintain spells, and let the others do the icky low-mana pyramid exploration.  She cast Invisibility on Zaber, both because it's useful to be Invisible, and as a two-way warning system.  If Seépravir was in a trouble, she'd stop maintaining it and Zaber would appear and everyone would know to go help her.  On the other hand, if Zaber got in trouble, he'd attack to make the Invisibility go away, and Seépravir would notice that she had one less spell on, and go help them.  Polly then used a shared piece of twine to keep track of Zaber's location.  Seépravir then cast Flight on Garreth, because flying is fun and she can maintain one Flight spell pretty much indefinitely.  

Zaber went inside the main entry hall of the pyramid, and with See Secrets on, spotted a fourth secret door to the northeast that he hadn't seen before.  He also figured out that someone large and barefoot had entered the pyramid, broken pieces off of the clay golem statue, and peed in one corner.  After getting bored with the entry hall, he climbed up the secret door to the southwest to re-explore the Sand Devil's room some more, but didn't find anything interesting, just a lot of sand.  He went back into the secret room and kicked another clay jar.  Polly followed him in, and found another jar she thought was magic, so she had Zaber take that one out to Seépravir.  After getting bored with that room, they went back to the dire desiccated lion room and searched for secret doors some more, but didn't find any.

Eventually, having run out of excuses to re-search the rooms they had already explored, the group had to pick one of the remaining secret doors: north or northeast.  They picked north, a small low door that had been between the statue's legs, before the statue rose up and attacked them and they smashed it.  The door required using the clay golem's huge mace to open, but fortunately Garreth had it.

Zaber went in first, with the other three following, and Seépravir still hanging out by the pyramid entrance resting.  Stairs led down into the darkness.  After a while Zaber found a patch of sand-covered wall on the right side, contrasting with the darker walls everywhere else.  He poked at it and listened to it, but didn't find anything interesting, so kept going down.  A bit further down, he found a pressure plate trap on a step.  He wedged an object in there to keep the plate from triggering, then kept going to the bottom of the stairs, which ended in a featureless door.  There was no obvious handle or keyhole, but there were some levers attached to the trap on the stairs which would open the door, so, after searching for traps and listening at the door, Zaber repurposed those to open it without turning the stairs into a ramp.

When the door popped open, it revealed a large room, containing a dais with a sarcophagus and an undead guy with a mask and a staff.  Zaber (who was Invisible) snuck in.  Garreth (who had Flight) flew in.  Polly fired arrows.  Her very first shot (a bodkin with Continual Light on it) was a critical hit, and the mummy was now a light source.  It dodged her second arrow.  Elias brought up the rear.  The mummy tried to cast some kind of spell, but rolled a 16 and nothing happened.

Garreth flew forward some more, Polly fired a couple more arrows that were dodged, and the mummy re-cast his spell, this time successfully, creating a large area of nasty whirring blades around Polly (and also Zaber, though Zaber was Invisible so maybe that was just luck.)  Polly, two hexes inside the area, needed to make an acrobatic retreating dodge at -4 to escape the blades, and did, jumping backwards.  Zaber, only one hex into the blade zone, just needed a regular retreating dodge, and also succeeded, jumping forwards.  However, now Elias and Polly were now behind the blades, and would remain separated from Garreth and Zaber until the blades went away, unless they felt like risking getting cut up.

The mummy summoned a dire lion, then some beetle swarms.  Garreth used the spear's power to Great Haste himself, then threw the spear at the mummy, and the mummy rolled a 17 on his dodge, tripping over the sarcophagus.  Polly shot some beetles, through the blades.  The mummy used some kind of force effect from his ring to try to knock Garreth back, but Garreth dodged it.  The mummy then summoned a huge tiger, to match the huge lion.  The lion tried to bite Garreth, but he dodged that too.  Some of the beetles started climbing inside Garreth's boots and chewing.

Garreth started chopping the mummy with this katana.  Polly added a couple more arrows.  The mummy, still conscious, spiked his staff into the ground, and it turned into a huge python.  The lion tried to circle behind Garreth and bite, but he dodged it, straight up with Flight.  That also got him out of range of the beetle swarm, which was ground-based.

Garreth chopped the mummy some more.  Eventually, it just vanished into thin air.  At that time the blade spell also went away, but the summoned creatures remained.  Garreth knocked the huge snake out with a single hit.  Polly shot the dire lion in the skull a couple of times and stunned it, but didn't knock it out.  The dire tiger tried pouncing on Garreth, but he acrobatically critically dodged it, leaving the tiger prone and clawing at nothing.  Garreth then hit the tiger twice, hard, and killed it.

Elias boosted Polly up in an attempt to reduce her penalty for firing through the blades.  Polly fired two more arrows into the dire lion, and knocked it out.  At that point the only targets left in the room where the beetle swarms, and they were stuck on the ground while Garreth was flying.  So he flew around above them stabbing away with his katana's reach advantage until the beetles were all dissipated.  When he was out of moving targets, Garreth made sure the lion and python were both dead.  When the python died, it turned back into a staff.

With the fight over, Zaber went over and picked up the mummy's snake staff.  Surprisingly, it didn't like this, and he took 12 points of curse damage for picking it up.  He used his Luck, and reduced the damage to 5 points on the reroll, then dropped the staff.  Not deterred, Zaber went over to check out the sarcophagus, and it rushed him!  He tried an acrobatic dodge away, and failed the acrobatics roll but still made the dodge.  Once he got out of range, the sarcophagus stopped moving.

Garreth and Zaber decided to set up the sarcophagus.  Garreth got his katana ready, and Zaber went to touch it.  When it tried to slam Zaber, Garreth sliced it with his katana, and the sarcophagus stopped moving.  Zaber tried opening the lid, but it was too heavy.  Garreth opened it, and inside was ... nothing.

Elias decided to exorcise the area, just in case.  Zaber helped Polly recover arrows, rolled a critical success on his Scrounging roll, and got all of them.  Not wanting to leave the cursed staff behind, Garreth tied it up in some twine (without touching it) and dragged it behind him.  This sounded questionable, but he rolled a critical success on his DX check, so it actually worked and he avoided taking any curse damage.

It was late, so the PCs all headed back to Cillamar.  They thought they had defeated the mummy and its summoned zoo, but the mummy had disappeared, so they couldn't really be sure.

GM's Comments:

The owlbear ambush was well planned: two on one versus the squishy wizard.  But the squishy wizard is very hard to surprise, and had Levitate ready, and there was no safety fence around the elevator shaft, so once they failed to get surprise, Seépravir just had to jump in the shaft to get away.  At that point the owlbears, who foolishly had no ranged attacks, where Polly-bait.  (She had to make sure they weren't nature, first, but owlbears are clearly magical not natural.)

Should a wizard be more effective maintaining spells from outside a low mana zone than coming inside?  By the DFRPG rules as written, maybe.  I'm not really a fan of a wizard staying outside having no penalties for maintaining spells in a low mana zone, but I didn't want to introduce house rules in the middle of this level, so I decided that, for this particular pyramid, that strategy would work okay.  So Seépravir transformed from local party buffer to remote party buffer.

Elias's player lost his Internet connection halfway through the session, and Elias got trapped behind the blades, so Elias didn't get to do much.  The fight against the mummy and his animal friends was mostly Garreth and Polly, with Zaber staying out of the way and watching.  Thanks to making all his defense rolls while the mummy failed half of his, this worked okay.  Garreth and Polly but a brutal amount of damage into the mummy before it finally ... disappeared.  So, nobody's sure what's up.

So that's one more room of the pyramid explored, and one more secret door found.  Will the PCs manage to finish the pyramid next session?  We'll see.

Time Spent on Travel to the Dungeon

In a traditional megadungeon campaign, where most sessions start in the same town and then move to the same dungeon and then back to the same town, how much time and energy should be spent travelling back and forth between town and dungeon?

Answers in published megadungeons vary.  Castle Greyhawk and Ruins of the Undermountain are right under cities, avoiding all that pesky travel completely.  The Temple of Elemental Evil is about a half-day's walk from Hommlet, and right next to Nulb.  Castle Whiterock is "a full day's ride" from Cillamar.  (Ride!  Clearly their PCs aren't as cheap as ours.)  Rappan Athuk is off in the wilderness somewhere, an unspecified distance from the nearest town, surrounded by brutal wandering monster tables.

Regardless of the game-world distance, what really matters is its effect on play.  If the travel distance is 500 miles but the GM handwaves the trip every session with "you hike to the dungeon and nothing happens on the way," without so much as a random encounter roll, and the time and provisions spent travelling don't matter, then the dungeon might as well be in town.  On the other hand, a 20-mile trip featuring horribly risky terrain and monsters might be as hard as the dungeon itself.  So perhaps it's better to talk in terms of the travel time in terms of percentage of session time consumed, and amount of risk to the PCs.

At one example of the time-versus-risk continuum, imagine a game where mundane travel is impossible, but the wizard has the ability to teleport the entire party to the dungeon instantly, except there's a decent chance of critical failure resulting in a total party kill.  (Let's call this "Star Trek Redshirts.")  Given that scenario, most PCs are going to try to dramatically reduce that critical failure chance as quickly as possible.  (Luck, Bless, more Teleport spell skill, etc.)  If they can't, they're going to make that trip as seldom as possible.  They're going to want to move into the dungeon, or set up a permanent base camp nearby.

At the other extreme, if town is safe and travel to the dungeon is risk- and pain-free, the PCs will probably return to town almost every session.  Town has nice things like rooms, hot food, healers, sages, trainers, and shops.  Unless you have very particular disadvantages (like you're a "monster" that townspeople might try to kill, or you're afraid of crowds, or you're terminally cheap and think that sleeping in a tree and hunting for your food full-time is a great bargain), you're going to want to live in town.  Beyond the shopping and training and such, one great advantage of returning to town is that it makes it easy to swap PCs between sessions.  So if you want to run a "pickup" game with rotating players and/or characters, like Peter's Felltower campaign, easy travel to and from town is the way to go.

Somewhere in the middle, you make travel to and from the dungeon take a non-trivial part of every session, and there's some risk (wandering monsters, bad weather, etc.)  But if the PCs are going to the same dungeon every session, clearly their commute can't be that hard, or they'd stop doing it.  If you want outdoor travel to be a major part of the game, maybe you want a hexcrawl with lots of little dungeons rather than a single megadungeon.

Castle Whiterock is designed for a quick trip from town to dungeon.  The adventure doesn't come with a local area outdoor map, or wandering monster tables.  Clearly, as published, the intent is to move the PCs quickly from town to dungeon, where the fun is supposed to be.  The castle is "a long day's ride" from town.  But the terrain is pretty rough, so horses are only so much faster than walking.  Since the PCs are (so far) too cheap to buy horses, that means a very long day's hike, modified by encumbrance level and whether the slower PCs make their Hiking roll.  Also, there's a lake between Cillamar and the castle, so going over the lake rather than around it is noticably faster.  (Unless something in the lake eats you, of course.)

I could probably just handwave the trip to the dungeon every time, both ways, but I can't resist making the players make some choices about travel.  Do you buy horses?  A wagon?  A boat?  Snowshoes?  Skis?  A sleigh?  A flying carpet?  (Ha, good luck finding one.)  The Flight spell at a high enough level to keep it going for the whole trip?  Winter clothing or Warmth spells?  NPCs to help?  Applicable skills?  And I make them roll Hiking every time, on the way to the dungeon.  (The trip home is often handwaved for out-of-time reasons.)  And I roll for random encounters every time, though it's a not a super-dangerous area, so the odds aren't high of meeting a challenging one.  My goal is that we usually spend about 30 minutes per four-hour game session on town business and travel.  If a non-trivial wandering monster attacks, it might be more.

So far, the answer this group of players has come up with is "we're too cheap to buy horses, and we're afraid of lake monsters, so we walk and we take the long way."  They have a few wheelbarrows for hauling heavy gear and loot overland.  This has worked well enough that I don't see it changing, until Seépravir achieves Flight-25.  (Flight has a 1-minute duration, so if you have to pay even 1 FP to maintain it, that's 5 FP per minute for 5 PCs, not sustainable.  But skill 25 gets the maintenance cost to zero, and at that point why wouldn't you?)

Of course travel to the dungeon is only half the story; I'll talk about travel within the "cleared" parts of the dungeon another time.

DF Whiterock Session 42: The Sand Devil

Date:

2019-03-15

Weather:

Unseasonably warm, partly cloudy, but threatening snow

Player Characters:

Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 339 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 336 points

Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 320 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 354 points

Significant NPCs:

Lord Flitwick, Artist and Clothes Horse

Harda, Magn'gard and Herder of Musicians

Narg, Dwarf Bagpiper

Unknown, Ogre Subwoofer

Franz Mentzer, Lord Mayor and Patriarch of Cillamar

One Huge Dire Sand Elemental

The group started in Cillamar, on the day of the party at Lord's Gate Citadel, where Garreth was invited to sing.  Garreth managed to resist his Compulsive Carousing, and showed up on time, dressed in his fancy red outfit, and sober.  He forgot to show up unarmed, but cheerfully surrendered his hidden knives when asked.

Harda of the Magn'gard informed Garreth that he would be taking the place of an elf lady singer who was unavailable today.  Garreth wasn't great at reading music, so Narg the dwarf played the vocal part on is bagpipes for Garreth to follow, while the ogre harmonized a few octaves down in the shelf-rattling range.  In rehearsal, Garreth sang the part okay.

When brought out onstage to prefer for the Lord Mayor and Patriarch and his noble guests, Garreth nailed it, rolling a 5 on his Singing check.  This bought him a brief friendly conversation with the Lord Mayor, along with a whole silver piece ($20).

Meanwhile, Zaber had found that Lord Flitwick was back in town, and cased out his town house.  The windows were closed, but at some point the Lord himself emerged, alone, and walked toward Mord's Tailor Shop.  Zaber followed him, but somehow Flitwick figured out that he was being tailed, and yelled at Zaber to leave him alone, before going inside for his appointment.

Garreth took the Wight Lady's unholy symbol (of the skull with the blade through one eye socket) to the temple of Daenthar to see if they could do anything with it.  The dwarf priest on duty immediately said they should melt that down.  Garreth agreed, but asked if they would pay him for the privilege, or he had to pay them.  Not missing an opportunity to fill the collection basket, the priest immediately told him that he should throw in some cash for the good works.  Garreth tossed him the silver piece that he had been paid for singing, and the priest offered to let him have the purified lump of steel back, after all the evil was melted out of it and it had time to cool to a safe temperature.

Nobody's pending deliveries (Garreth's epic plate armor, Polly's new rapier, or Garreth's letter back from Master Naburu in Galaron) were available, so everyone decided it was a good time to hike back to Castle Whiterock, and further explore the black pyramid inside the giant cave.  Except Elias, who had church duty and couldn't come along.  Garreth grumbled that with Elias gone he'd have to survive the delve with Bless +1 instead of Bless +2, but went anyway.

The hike to the castle went uneventfully, though the warming temperatures of early spring meant they'd be walking around rather than over the lake from now on.  (Though they already had been for the last few weeks, after hearing rumors of a great lake monster.)  After reaching the castle, 

Seépravir cast a bunch of dungeon spells (and Polly threw in a couple of Keen Visions) and then everyone hiked down one level, across the level to the top of the secret elevator, and then took the elevator down to the underground river level.

Once they reached the underground river, everyone piled into a boat, and Garreth tried dodging the rocks near the Giant Clams, as he had several times before -- and missed a Boating roll for the first time ever.  Not wanting to see what happened if the skiff hit the rocks, he used his Luck to reroll, averting the crash.  But then, piloting the skiff down a small waterfall, that he had also successfully navigated several times before, Garreth missed another Boating roll, with his Luck not yet back.  However, all three passengers in the boat made their DX checks to avoid falling out, and Seépravir (who was actually Levitating just above the boat rather than technically riding inside it, just in case) cast Shape Water to divert the rapids that were about to flip the boat over.  So no real harm was done.  Garreth somehow managed to bring the skiff safely to a stop near the north beach without rowing into a whirlpool or anything, and the group was back on dry land.

The hike through the passage to the giant cave, and then through the northern part of the giant cave to the pyramid, was uneventful.  The south door to the pyramid was still open, and the pyramid was still a Low Mana Zone, prompting Seépravir to ask if she could just cast some spells on everyone else and stay outside.  The others wanted her wizardly wisdom, though, and also didn't want to leave her alone unguarded where trolls might eat her, so she reluctantly came along.  The party had found three secret doors out of the huge entrance hall with the (now dead) clay golem: north (down low, between where the golem's legs and been before it stood up and tried to kill them), east (20 feet up), and west (10 feet up).  They had explored west and killed the desiccated dire lions that way last time, so they debated a bit between north and east, then went east.

Everyone climbed up, except Seépravir who Levitated up, and then they went down a flight of stairs to the east, and were back at a closed stone door with obscure writing on it, which Elias had previously translated using Gift of Letters as "Retrieve the key for a chance to defeat part of me".  The door was locked, but Zaber easily picked the lock, and then Garreth was able to push the stuck door open to reveal a hemispherical room with uneven deep sand on the floor.  Up near the ceiling was a large golden key, inside a glass globe, hanging from the ceiling by a wire.

After much discussion, the plan was to cast Flight on Zaber, have him fly under the globe ready to catch it, and have Polly shoot the wire.  The wire was not an easy target, but Polly shoots moving eye-sized targets regularly and even got to take time to aim this time, so she got it with the first arrow.  The globe fell, and Zaber caught it, without breaking it.  It was heavy enough to hurt his hands a bit, but the magical force field from his Ring of Force negated the damage.  

Polly ran across the sand to recover her arrow, and that appeared to be a mistake, as when she reached the center of the room, the glass globe exploded into fragments.  Zaber was quick enough to avoid being cut by the fragments and catch the key.  Worse, the sand in the room started moving downward through some kind of sand drain under the center of the room, but Polly made her DX roll and wasn't sucked under.  Even worse, some of the sand coalesced into a huge sand elemental and tried to surprise Polly.  Fortunately, she was alert enough not to be surprised.

Most of the group was faster than the sand elemental so went first.  Zaber flew around behind it.  Garreth threw the strange pearly returning spear, with magic strong enough that it still worked in this Low Mana Zone, at it.  The elemental dodged.  Polly backpedaled and fired two cutting arrows at the creature.  It dodged the first, but she rolled a critical hit on the second -- which passed through the elemental doing minimal damage.  This thing appeared to be Diffuse.

The sand elemental then fired a huge cone of sand at Polly.  It was wide enough that the only non-magical way to partly avoid it was with a sideways dodge and retreat, at -2, for half damage.  And full damage was 6d.  Nasty.  Polly made her Acrobatics roll but failed her dodge with a 17, used Luck to reroll, then failed again.  But Polly's Bless decided that she made that dodge after all, and reduced 16 damage to 8, then went away.

Seépravir cast Concussion.  Zaber flew back around to the front of the elemental where he wouldn't get Concussioned if Seépravir threw the missile spell in the most likely place.  Garreth waited for the spear to return.  Polly backed up some more, and again made her DX roll to avoid getting sucked under by the shifting sand.  The elemental blasted Polly with another cone of sand, and he failed to dodge any of the damage again, taking another 19 points.  That was good for half move and dodge, a major wound for a knockdown and stun check, a HT check to stay conscious, and a death check.  She made all her rolls, the death check exactly.  (If she hadn't spent 5 points on Fit, she'd have died.)

At that point Seépravir lobbed the Concussion ball, far enough behind the elemental that it wouldn't take any direct damage, but so that it would be the only one making a HT-3 check to avoid stunning.  Unfortunately for the PCs, the sand devil made its HT-3 check and kept coming.

Garreth activated the spear's Great Haste ability.  Zaber flew around some more.  Polly made her knockout check and her DX check to avoid being sucked under the sand, then took All-Out Defense: Dodge and backed up some more.  The elemental chose Polly as its target again (it was random, but the dice hated her).  Polly survived another death check and another Major Wound stun check.  Seépravir moved forward.

At this point, the PCs decided to try to survive rather than to try to win.  Garreth ran forward to grab Polly.  Zaber flew around.  Polly kept all-out defending and moving toward the doorway.  The sand elemental blasted Polly again, but Garreth heroically decided to play human shield and tried to take all the damage for her.  Fortunately, Garreth is bigger than Polly, and he made his dodge (anti-dodge?) roll to position himself well to protect her, and ate 21 points of damage, minus a bit for his armor, taking a major wound.  Garreth's Bless decided not to intervene, and let him take the damage.  Polly was still alive.  Seépravir cast Levitate on Polly in case she needed magical evacuation.

Garreth dragged Polly toward the door.  Polly helped a little bit, moving at half speed on her own turn.  Zaber flew much faster toward the door, not wanting to be left behind.  This got everyone out of the sand devil's cone of sand range, so it had to take a turn off from trying to murder Polly to move up closer.  Seépravir stayed inside the room and Levitated straight up.

Garreth and Polly and Zaber got through the doorway, and the sand elemental decided to blast Seépravir, the only target left in range.  However, she had a Phase spell, and was able to escape the sand by monentarily gating into another dimension.  This annoyed the sand devil a lot.  Seépravir flew back down toward the door, not quite getting through the doorway.

That was close enough for Garreth, who slammed the door forcefully with Seépravir in the way.  That counted as an attack, so she used Blink to teleport back 3 hexes and avoid getting hit by a door.  (A bit of crushing damage and knockback from the door would have been preferential to 6d from the massive sand cone anyway.)  The door closed, locked with a click, and the sand devil sprayed sand against it in frustration, but the door had been built to be sand-proof.  The retreat had worked, and nobody had died.

At that point the group pulled out the wineskin of many healing potions, and Polly drank 10 doses, a new record.  10d was enough to get her above 1/3 of her full HP, so she was no longer slowed.  Garreth also had a little swig.  At that point there was some discussion of whether to head home, but Seépravir had another idea: go outside the pyramid into the normal mana zone, make a huge Concussion spell, sneak back in, open the door, throw the Concussion at the sand elemental, close the door.  Repeat if needed.

After much discussion, they pulled off this plan, with a slight tweak: after Garreth opened the door Polly would also fire a Continual Light arrow in there, to make sure they could see the elemental.  The plan worked pretty well the first time.  Zaber re-picked the lock, Garreth opened the door, Polly fired the glowing arrow, Seépravir spotted the sand elemental (on the far side of the room) and threw the big (turned out to be 15d) Concussion at it, and Garreth slammed the door.

This was enough Concussion to badly wound the sand elemental, but not enough to kill it.  So everyone climbed back down, went back to the normal mana zone on the steps inside the pyramid entrance, let Seépravir cast another Concussion (only 8d this time), then came back in and repeated the process.  There was a minor hiccup when Polly missed a Climbing roll and fell, but fortunately she was near the bottom when she fell and didn't take any damage besides her pride.  The second time, the sand devil was more alert and ready for the plan, but it didn't matter.  It was too far away from the door to get off a sand cone attack before Seépravir threw her Concussion, and her second Concussion was enough to take the sand elemental below -HP and kill it.  (It had Unnatural: Summoned so died at -HP rather than getting to roll death checks until -5 * HP like a normal creature.)

With the sand devil blown into plain old sand, some wanted to head home, but Zaber was adament that they needed to loot first.  So everyone went back outside to the normal mana zone, and Seépravir cast Flight and See Secrets on Zaber.  He and Polly went back to the sand room, and he immediately spotted a secret door on the far side.  After searching for traps, he opened it up, and found a small room containing hundreds of urns.  Big urns, little urns, clay urns, metal urns.  He opened a dozen or so, but didn't find anything.  Polly (who like almost all elves has Magery 0) detected that one of the metal urns was magic, and pointed it out to Zaber.  It has some kind of white goo inside.  He didn't know what it was, so flew outside with that urn to have Seépravir check it out.  She confirmed that both the urn and the goo were magical, so they decided to take those back to town.  Zaber went back in and searched a few more clay urns, then kicked on to death in frustration, before deciding that clay urns suck and he wasn't going to search about 300 of them while Seépravir and Garreth lounged around outside.  He decided to take the 20 or so metal urns home, and left all the clay ones.

At that point it was getting late, Polly and Garreth were still injured (since they frugally only drank enough healing potions to get out of danger, not enough to heal fully), and Polly had no Bless spell.  So everyone decided to head back to town.

GM's Comments:

Garreth's singing career is going pretty well.  It's good to have something to fall back on if you get too old to kill monsters.  Zaber has Flitwick back in town to harass.

The sand devil was pretty mean.  First, it was diffuse, so most attacks only did 2 HP damage to it.  Second, it had a 6d6 cone attack, with 10 yards range, that could be dodged (at -2, plus possibly another -1 for bad footing) for half damage.  The combination of big damage and hard to kill made it really nasty.  Polly came really close to dying there, but the sand-elemental-proof door made retreat possible, and then abusing the door to lob in Concussions (one of the attacks that isn't nerfed by diffuse) and avoid return fire was a winning tactic.  The sand devil was actually a little faster than Seépravir, so if it had been standing within 10 yards of the door it might have gotten a cone off before she killed it, but it had IQ 8 and no tactics skill, so it was randomly stomping around the room in anger rather than lying in ambush.  Fortunately for the PCs, they surprised it on the first Concussion alpha strike, and it was more than 10 yards away for the second one, out of sand cone range.  So, the sand devil died.

Seépravir really doesn't like Low Mana Zones.  Something tells me she won't be moving into the pyramid, when and if the group manages to clear it.

DF Whiterock Session 41: Return to the Aboleth's Cave

Date:

2019-03-08

Weather:

Below freezing, overcast

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 274 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 335 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 332 points

Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 316 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 350 points

Significant NPCs:

Aboleth Wizard

2 Giant Leeches

Lady Chauntessa, Innkeeper and Historian

Quintus, Alchemest and Wizard

We started in the town of Cillamar, on a cold late winter day.

Garreth received a letter saying that the party at the Lord's Gate Citadel (at which he had previously been invited to sing) is next Thursday and to wear red and arrive early and sober.  He asked Lady Chauntessa where the fancy tailors are, and ordered some fancy red clothes.

Seépravir researched the Wight Lady's holy symbol, a skull with a blade through one eye socket, and found that it belonged to the evil god Mulgrim, and probably wasn't a good thing to be carrying.

Zaber went looking for Lord Flitwick again, and found that his town house was occupied, but didn't actually spot him.  Zaber heard a rumor that the Lord Mayor Franz Mentzer killed a dragon in his youth but never talks about it.  Garreth heard a rumor that Master Naburu once defeated eight opponents while totally drunk, and bought a bottle of the hardest liquor he could find as a gift for Master Naburu.

Garreth and Polly both managed to special order rare items: Garreth a suit of Epic Plate of Weightlessness, and Polly a Penetrating Edged Rapier.

Having concluded their town business, Seépravir cast Warmth on everyone (with one critical success, which I ruled didn't count as a spell on for that session), Levitate on herself, and the group traveled to Castle Whiterock.  They made it there unmolested, though did hear some wolves howling in the distance.  At that point Seépravir dropped the Warmths (except the free one on herself) and cast Dark Vision on everyone.

After some debate, the consensus was to go back to the underground river level, and try to explore the hidden underwater passage off the room behind the illusory wall, where the leeches and skum had earlier been defeated.  A brief trudge through the empty upper orc level of the dungeon, one elevator ride, and four Boating rolls later, the group was at the illusory wall.  Everyone carefully headed down the slippery waterslide passage.  Garreth failed his DX roll and went down it a bit faster than intended, ending up in the cold water at the bottom.  Fortunately it didn't contain any monsters, and he made his Swimming roll, so he was just embarrassed and cold, not hurt.

Garreth asked Seépravir for the Ring of Water Breathing and a Swim spell, then swam over to the secret underwater passage to the northwest.  Seépravir Levitated over to a small rock island near that passage to provide support if needed.  Garreth asked Zaber to throw over some of his twine, and used it to connect himself to Seépravir, saying he'd yank twice if he were in trouble.  Then he went into the underwater passage -- and saw two huge leeches.

Garreth drew his knife and waited to see if the leeches would come at him.  They did, so he backed up into the room where his friends could see (and Polly could shoot) to see if they would follow.  One of them did.  Polly managed to put a couple of arrows into it, despite the penalties (-4 to hit, half damage) for shooting at something underwater.  At that point the leech retreated back into the underwater passage where Polly couldn't shoot it.

Garreth followed the wounded leech back into the passage, and stabbed it with his knife.  Combined with the arrow damage, that was enough to put it under 0 HP, and it failed its consciousness check.  Garreth kept stabbing it until he was sure it was dead.  The other leech was in the back of the cave, not coming forward to fight again.  Garreth swam at it.  The leech had taken a Wait maneuver to bite him when he got into range, and rolled a 4 for a critical hit.  Garreth used his Luck to make it reroll, turning that critical hit into a miss, but that meant his Luck was gone for the next hour.  Which was important, because the Invisible Aboleth Wizard in the cave behind the leech decided that was a good time to use its Mind Control power on Garreth, and became visible in the process.  Garreth got a Will-1 roll to resist, and rolled a 5, resisting easily.

The leech tried biting Garreth again, and he retreated and dodged.  The Aboleth tried another spell and rolled a 5, a critical success.  This meant no chance to resist, but Garreth's Bless intervened to deny the critical success, and then went away.  So now Garreth had neither Luck nor Bless active.  He fled the underwater passage and fled back to the big pool outside, where his friends could see him.  Neither the aboleth nor the leech followed, so there was a break in the combat.  Garreth climbed back onto the short and asked Elias to cast a new Bless on him.  (Only +1, as +2 costs 50 FP so involves a very long and elaborate and fatiguing ritual and a full power item and Seépravir casting Lend Energy a lot, that is best done somewhere safe.)  It took 3 tries (Elias's spell casting rolls are not great while he has -3 for 3 other Blesses up) but neither sea monster interrupted, and eventually Garreth was Blessed again.  Polly had been standing guard with her bow pointed at the entrance to the underwater cave the whole time, and her arms were getting tired.

Garreth tried taunting the aboleth into coming out by saying rude things in Undercommon, but that didn't work.  The group talked tactics for a while.  Sending one person in alone with Swim and Water Breathing didn't seem ideal.  Those spells were too expensive to put on everyone at once, plus bows don't work underwater.  So Seépravir came up with a plan B: dig a dry tunnel to the cave behind the underwater passage, using Shape Earth.  If they had the distance and angle right, it would take a couple of hours of casting and resting to regain FP to make a 6' wide by 6' tall dry entry to the cave.  Before she started digging, Zaber asked Seépravir to cast See Invisible on him, so he could watch for the aboleth sneaking up on them Invisibly.  They decided the best place to start the tunnel was back up the waterslide to the northeast.  Garreth went with Seépravir to guard her while she cast Shape Earth and rested, while the others stayed near the bottom of the waterslide to watch for monsters.

Sure enough, when Seépravir only had the tunnel about a tenth done, a huge Invisible head slowly peaked out of the underwater passage.  Zaber had managed to stay alert enough to see it, despite guard duty being boring.  (I made him roll Will to be a good sentry, since he has Laziness.)  He aimed his crossbow and alerted Polly.  Polly didn't have See Invisible, but fired blind anyway at the area where Zaber pointed, and managed to hit even with the -10 for not being able to see the target.  The aboleth used Deflect Missile to parry it.  But Polly has Extra Attack, and blocking spells can only be used once per turn, and the second arrow was also on target, so the aboleth had to dodge the second one.  Somehow it did, with a huge splash.

The aboleth retaliated by using its Mind Control attack on Polly, figuring her rapid and accurate archery would better be used on the other puny invading land-creatures than on himself.  Polly made her Will-1 roll to resist, by the skin of her teeth, needing both the bonus from her Bless and the bonus from her Cloak of Resistance.  This attack dispelled the Invisibility and let Polly and Elias also see the aboleth clearly.

Zaber decided to join the missile party and fired a crossbow bolt at the aboleth's huge eye.  His shot was accurate, but it dodged.  Polly followed up with two bodkins with Continual Light on them, also going for eyes.  The aboleth Deflected the first one and dodged the second.  (It was rolling really well on the dodges so far.)

The aboleth tried to Mind Control Polly again, and she resisted again.  The leech swam towards the human and elves on the shore.  Garreth headed down the water slide to join the fun, and this time didn't fall.  Seépravir moved down a bit too, and cast Great Haste on Polly to increase the rate of fire from silly to ridiculous.

Zaber put his hand crossbow away (since it takes forever to reload) and drew his knives.  Polly fired four arrows at the aboleth's eyes.  It Deflected the first one, but then its luck ran out with dodges, and it took the other three arrows to its eyes.  The first eye hit caused a stun check, but no stun.  The second arrow, in the other eye, rolled maximum damage and crippled an eye.  The third hit, back to the first eye, caused stun and knockout checks.  Somehow the aboleth made all its rolls and was not stunned, but it was down an eye, slowed (half move and dodge) for being below 1/3 of its HP, and making a knockout check every turn it did anything for being below 0 HP.

The aboleth all-out defended and retreated back into the underwater tunnel, out of line of sight.  The leech kept coming, and attacked Elias.  He had taken a Wait, though, and got to attack first.  He smashed the leech up with his Flaming flail, taking it to 0 HP and also stunning it.

Garreth kept moving closer.  Seépravir cast Great Haste on Garreth.  Polly put some arrows into the leech and made it bleed more, but it was still thrashing.  Elias smashed the leech with his flail again, but didn't quite kill it.  Garreth took the Ring of Swimming from Zaber.  (He still had the Ring of Water Breathing on.)  Zaber moved into Elias's hex to get within knife reach of the leech, and stabbed it.  Then Elias hit it for the third time, and that was finally enough to finish it off.  Blood everywhere.

Garreth swam, quickly, toward the underwater tunnel and the badly wounded aboleth to try to finish it off.  When he got to the tunnel, he saw an amusing sight: the aboleth was unconscious.  (After retreating out of sight, it wanted to cast Invisibility again, but that required a HT check to say conscious first, and it rolled a 16.  Oops.)  Garreth finished it off, with no more dice rolls needed.

Behind the underwater passage was a dry-ish cave, with some stale humid air, and a bunch of glyphs on the walls in an unknown language.  Some of the glyphs appeared to involve precious metals.  Garreth, who was wet and didn't have a Warmth spell on, was getting pretty cold.  He went back to the others, and Seépravir cast Warmth on him to stop the freezing, and then they discussed whether to have everyone swim over, passing the rings around, or whether to finish the dry tunnel.  Everyone swam over, with Polly packing her bow in oilskin first to protect it.  While sliding past the aboleth's corpse, Polly found a magic amulet, and took it.  And Elias found a (non-magical) pearl on a chain, and took that.

When the whole group was in the aboleth's cave, Elias cast Gift of Letters on Seépravir, allowing her to read Aboleth, and she found that the glyphs on the walls were spells.  A lot of spells.  Seépravir cast Warmth on the other three (starting a fire in the cave seemed like a bad idea since there wasn't necessarily a lot of air), then decided to finish the tunnel from this side, avoiding digging through any of the glyphs.  Eventually she finished it, which solved the air problem and also allowed walking rather than swimming out.

Unfortunately nobody had any dry paper to write spells on.  Also, the group suspected that some aboleth bits might be worth money, but nobody was sure which parts.  So, rather than just going back to town and asking and then coming back next week, they decided to have Seépravir cast Flight and Invisibility on Zaber and send him back fast.  (She has Flight at 20 but not 25, so it costs her 1 FP per minute to maintain, so she can keep it going for a while on one person using a combination of FP and ER and Recover Energy, if she's not doing anything else.)

Zaber flew out of the dungeon (at Move 10) without encountering anything, then flew all the way back to Cillamar unmolested, then entered the Inn of the Slumbering Drake, still invisible.  He surprised Lady Chauntessa, who recovered and asked some questions about the aboleth.  Zaber decided to slap himself (gently) to make the Invisibility go away to stop freaking people out, then discussed things further with Chauntessa, then walked over to Quintus's tower and asked if he wanted any aboleth parts.  Quintus said that he'd like the aboleth's head, but that it must be kept wet and cold, and provided some notebooks as a down payment.  Zaber asked if Quintus could make him Invisible again for the return trip, and it turned out that Quintus did know that spell, and grudgingly complied.  

Zaber flew back to the dungeon, Elias cast Gift of Letters on Seépravir again, Seépravir used the Copy spell to copy the spells from the glyphs into a notebook (translating from Aboleth to Common in the process), and then Seépravir made a Surgery roll (using Garreth's Penetrating Katana rather than a puny little scalpel because aboleths are big) to remove what was left of the head in one piece.  Everyone headed back to Cillamar with the aboleth head in a wheelbarrow.

GM's Comments:

The aboleth was the nastiest foe the party has fought so far.  Though less nasty this time than before, since they killed all his skum minions last time, leaving him with only a couple of leeches.  Not having a huge group of skum to command greatly reduced the penalty on his Mind Control ability, though, making the resistance roll Will-1 this time, pretty nasty.  Fortunately for the group, Garreth only failed his resistance roll once and his Bless prevented it, and Polly never failed hers.  Also fortunately for the group, the aboleth didn't know Missile Shield or Reverse Missiles, only Deflect Missile, which only stops one arrow per turn.  Once Polly got some eye shots though, the aboleth was in deep trouble.  Then it rolled horribly on its consciousness check before it could enable its last ditch defensive plan: turn Invisible, make an illusion of itself, send the illusion out to fight and "die", and then sneak out to hide somewhere else on the level and heal and recruit more minions.

Now the PCs think they've totally cleared the underwater river level.  So they get to choose between going back to the pyramid, exploring the rest of the huge cave, or messing around with the alleged dimension gate to some forest realm.  We'll see what they pick next time.

DF Whiterock Session 40: Gelatinous Cube and the Desiccated Dire Lions

Date:

2019-03-01

Weather:

Freezing, overcast

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 270 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 331 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 328 points

Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 312 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 346 points

Significant NPCs:

Huge Gelatinous Cube

4 Desiccated Dire Lions

The group started in Cillamar, where Garreth made a critical success on his (totally unnecessary) singing to earn extra money roll, and got an invitation to sing at a party at the Lord Mayor Franz Mentzer's Citadel in two weeks.

Zaber went looking for Lord Flitwick and found he was still out of town.  Zaber also heard rumors about the dead spirits of an old adventuring band haunting Castle Whiterock.  Seépravir researched cat god pyramids, and found that Basthetys, a minor goddess of cats, was in fact worshipped in an ancient civilization far to the south long ago, and that pyramids were built in that area.  Then Seépravir decided to get some fresh air by scrounging around the Lantern Guard's practice ground for an extra arrow to give to Polly.  (She does this every week.  It's amazing how cheap these PCs are.)

Garreth looked for rumors about Master Naburu in Galaron, and heard that he's a phony and his fighting school is weak.  Undeterred, Garreth asked Seépravir to write a letter to Master Naburu, and then asked Lady Chauntessa who might be delivering letters to Galaron.  She noted that the armorer Tyber Lasir travels there regularly and might be willing to take a letter.  Garreth paid Tyber a visit at the Sign of the Scimitar and Shield, and paid him a couple of silver pieces to deliver the letter next time he's up that way.

Having exhausted everything they could remember to do in town, the group started hiking toward Castle Whiterock on a not-that-cold winter day.  Polly rolled an 18 on her Hiking roll, and decided to use Luck to reroll it rather than risk injury.  The group once again decided to take the long way around Lake Whiterock rather than hiking over the ice, after hearing rumors of giant lake monsters.

There was some debate on where to explore next: behind the illusory wall on the river level, in the pyramid, or through the stalagmites to the south of the pyramid.  The pyramid won, and no wandering monsters appeared on the way there, and no Boating rolls were missed, so we fast-forwarded down to the giant cave.  There Seépravir cast Invisibility on both Zaber and Polly, and they scouted ahead together, using a piece of twine to keep track of each other's location.  They didn't see any enemies, so the whole group eventually headed south toward the black pyramid.  There Seépravir noticed that the falling boulder trap on the north side of the pyramid had not been reset, like it had the first time they set it off.

As the group went around the northwest corner of the pyramid, on the way to the door on the south side, Zaber spotted something transparent and wiggly ahead.  It was some kind of huge cube-shaped wiggly blob, which Zaber had only been able to see because there were some pieces of armor inside it.  Zaber called out a warning to his less-perceptive allies, while Polly started shooting arrows at it, losing her Invisibility in the process.  

Seépravir Levitated straight up to get out of ooze attack range.  Zaber, still Invisible, climbed up the pyramid to get out of the way, then watched the fun.  Garreth retreated, dragging Elias with him.  The cube oozed forward toward Polly, Garreth, and Zaber, while Polly filled it with arrows.

Seépravir decided to slow down the cube by casting a 1d Concussion on it, more for the stun effect than the damage.  The first Concussion didn't stun the cube, but the second one did.  Meanwhile Polly kept firing arrows into it while staying out of its reach.  Eventually, the combination of arrow damage and a bit of Concussion damage was enough to slow the cube's movement.

At that point the fight was pretty much won -- Polly could keep shooting the cube until it died, while running away from it.  But Seépravir decided to have some fun.  She cast Great Haste on herself to get two actions per turn, Levitated to right above the cube so she could just drop Concussions (as a free action) rather than having to use one of her actions throwing them, and then went into stun-lock-plus-2d-damage-every-second mode.  The cube needed to make 2 HT-3 rolls per turn to avoid stun, and once it got stunned it had to lose its next turn doing nothing but recovering from stun, while Seépravir kept re-stunning it and incidentally adding 2d damage every turn.  And it was already below 0 HP and needing to make a HT roll every turn to stay conscious.  This was too much, and the huge Gelatinous Cube eventually lost its structure and shook apart into more of a Gelatinous Stain.

Once it stopped twitching, the PCs switched to loot mode.  There was some armor inside the remains of the cube, and it was possible that its gooey remains were some kind of useful poison or acid, but nobody really wanted to touch it.  It was slowly dissolving the sand underneath it, and when Zaber tried to collect some of the slime, it ate through a glass vial.  It also dissolved the wooden shafts (but not the metal heads) of all the arrows that Polly had fired into it.  It clearly didn't eat metal, but nobody had a metal flask, so they gave up on collecting gelatinous slime to weaponize, and focused on getting the armor out instead.  Seépravir was able to do that using Apportation so nobody had to risk their hands.  Along with the armor pieces, which turned out to be magical (something Seépravir had noticed earlier but not mentioned because she didn't want the fighters getting too excited about treasure and getting slimed), was a non-magical warhammer head (just the head, no shaft), which Seépravir also recovered.  Polly spotted something small and magical inside the slime and had Seépravir Apportate that out too.  It turned out to be a magic ring.  Garreth threw caution to the wind and put it on, but it didn't have any obvious effect.  The magical plate armor (a full suit minus gloves) turned out to be dwarf-sized, to Garreth's disappointment.

The group decided to bury the armor and hammer head under the sand, then continue around the pyramid to the south entrance.  They made it there without further excitement, and went in the open door, to the room where they had killed the clay golem.  It was a low mana zone, so Seépravir started whining about not being able to maintain a dozen spells at once.  All the group's magic items except the Ring of Water Breathing and the Returning Spear stopped working in the low mana zone, though their Continual Light items still worked because Seépravir has that spell at 20.  The sanctity level was normal so Elias's cleric spells still worked, and he had Flaming Weapon on his flail for an alternate light source.

The entrance was on the south wall, and the group had previously found two secret doors; low on the north wall and high on the east wall.  Zaber opined that they had to be missing something on the west wall, and immediately started re-searching that wall for secret doors.  Sure enough, he found one, about 10 feet up, disguised as a picture of a lion in a mural.  He climbed up, searched for traps, didn't find any, and opened it.  It led to a passage going west a bit, then leading to stairs down to the northwest.  The group decided to go that way.  Polly ran right up the wall (she rolled a 4 for a critical success on Climbing), Garreth climbed up and pulled Elias up after him, and Seépravir Levitated.

Everyone went down the stairs, which ended at a stone door.  Zaber searched it for traps, didn't find any, and tried to open it, but the door was very heavy and didn't move at all.  Polly immediately gave it a try, and managed to pry it open.  (She's a lot stronger than she looks.)  Some black sand spilled out the doorway.

Behind the door was a large room with a vaulted ceiling, some kind of huge stone structure with ramps and platforms and ladders and bridges, and four gigantic half-skeletal undead lions lounging on the platforms.  Zaber the alert noticed the lions before they could pounce and avoided surprise.  The fact that the lions were undead quickly stopped any moral objections to shooting the nice kitties, so Polly dropped her quick release backpack then started shooting arrows at one of the lions.  Meanwhile Garreth and Elias started running down the stairs to reach the battle (which required DX rolls to avoid slipping).  And Seépravir Levitated forward and started casting Great Haste on Garreth.  

The lion that Polly had just shot made a mighty pounce from the platform across the room and tried to slam her, but she dodged.  Then put a couple more arrows into it at point-blank range.  Another lion, having spent a turn wiggling its skeletal hindquarters back and forth, pounced at Zaber, but he did a retreating Judo parry to avoid solid contact.  The lion on Polly tried biting her neck, but she Acrobatically dodged it.

Elias missed his DX roll running down the stairs by 1, which was just a little slip costing him 1 hex of movement, not a face plant.  Great Hasted Garreth made it to the bottom then chopped up the lion that Polly had already shot several times, finishing it off.  For his second attack he tried cutting off the face (all he could reach) of the one near Zaber, but it dodged.

A third lion pounced at Polly, and rolled a critical hit ... but she used Luck to turn it into a regular hit, and then Garreth sacrificially parried for her.  She put another arrow into it, putting it below 0 HP, and it failed its consciousness check, falling to the floor.  The fourth lion pounced on Garreth, but he made an acrobatic, retreating dodge, and evaded it.  

At that point Elias had finally reached the battle and he unloaded on one of the undead lions with his Flaming flail to the skull.  Turns out it was vulnerable to crushing damage (good) but had no brain (bad), so this resulted in double damage, not the quadruple damage Elias was hoping for.  That was still enough to slow it, halving its Dodge, and put it below 0 HP into consciousness check range.  It made its consciousness check.  Seépravir spend her turn giving tactical advice to Garreth.  Her advice was to kill the last lion with his katana.  Garreth didn't really need that advice, and proceeded to kill the last lion with his katana.

Interestingly, all three dead desiccated lions dissoved to sand, leaving no bones behind.  The unconscious one was still lying there, so Garreth chopped its head off, and it too dissolved to sand.  When it did, a small object remained, that had been inside its body.  It was a small brass urn with two handles.  Zaber checked it for traps, didn't find any, and opened it up.  Inside were some mummified organs.  Zaber winced and held the urn away from his face, but managed to avoid hurling.

At that point the PCs were in a room with the world's biggest cat tree.  I forced a Curiosity roll on Zaber to avoid playing on it, but he used his Luck to reroll and resisted.  Instead of playing on it, he professionally climbed it and searched for secrets, but didn't find any.  At that point Seépravir was getting weirded out by the low mana level and really wanted to go outside the pyramid, and asked Elias to come with her.  But we were running out of time, so everyone decided to go outside with her.  Then they dug up the treasure they had buried and went back to Cillamar.

GM's Comments:

The huge gelatinous cube was a cool monster, but there's a general rule that, given sufficient space, an archer that can outrun a melee-only combatant who's not totally immune to arrows will eventually win.  The cube wasn't immune to arrows, and Polly could outrun it while turning it into a pincushion, so Polly was going to win unless it had more HP than she had arrows.  Until Seépravir decided it would be more fun to Concussion-bomb it to death from above, also a viable option and one that saved arrows.  So Seépravir got a rare direct kill.

The plate armor with Fortify +2 and Lighten 50% that was inside the Gelatinous Cube is exactly what Garreth has been dreaming of all his life -- but it's dwarf-sized and he's not.  Ha ha!  (Actually this isn't something I did on purpose to hose Garreth -- the armor was dwarf-sized in the D&D 3.5 Castle Whiterock adventure that I converted.)  In DFRPG, using different armor than humans despite both being SM 0 is a called out feature of dwarves.  Sorry, the armor is too short and wide to fit.  It's valuable treasure though.

I thought the desiccated dire lions were cool opponents, but this group of PC just has too much Dodge and Parry and Luck and Bless for the number of attacks the lions could muster per turn.  It didn't help that the lions wanted to play with their food and pounce individually rather than all at once.  The only treasure the group got for beating the four desiccated dire lions was an brass urn full of mummified guts.  Whether that turns out to have any value, well, the players don't know yet.

This week turned out to pretty much be a cakewalk for the PCs, thanks largely to good tactics.  It would have been more fun for me if the players had tried to melee the gelatinous cube.  Probably not as much fun for the players.