DF Whiterock Session 45: Mummy Guts

Date:

2019-04-19

Weather:

Cool, rainy

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 286 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 351 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 348 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 332 points

Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 366 points

Significant NPCs:

Mummy Lord

Dire Lion

Animated Sarcophagus

The PCs started in town, but didn't spend much time doing things there.  Garreth was late, so the others left a note for him saying where they'd be, and traveled to Castle Whiterock.  Seépravir recently reached skill 25 with the Flight spell, meaning she could maintain Flight on the whole party all day for free (except for the -1 to other spells per spell on), but Zaber wanted to bring a wheelbarrow, which was too heavy to carry through the air.  So Seépravir and Polly flew, and Zaber and Elias hiked pushing the wheelbarrow.

They reached the castle without incident, except for one hawk that checked flying Polly out, considered diving on her, but decided she was too big to eat.  Seépravir cast Flight on the other two party members, Dark Vision on everyone but Elias, Invisibility on herself and Zaber, and Alertness / Keen Hearing / See Secrets / See Invisible on Zaber.  Elias cast Flaming Weapon on his flail.  Polly cast Keen Vision on Zaber.  Everyone walked or flew down one level then over to the elevator shaft, and down to the river level.

There was some brief discussion on flying versus boating, but again someone wanted to bring the wheelbarrow, so they took a boat.  Garreth wasn't around to row, so Zaber did so, at default skill.  (He has good DX and Bless so his default is pretty good.)  He managed to navigate the rapids without issue, and the group made it to the northern boat landing, then walked to the giant cave.  Nothing accosted them on the way, this time.

They hiked south to the black pyramid, then around the pyramid to the entrance on the south side, then Seépravir took a seat on the stairs in the normal mana zone, while everyone else went in.  Once again Zaber was told that Seépravir would notice and investigate if his Invisibility went away.

The other three first went back to the room with the reed boat, where they fought the mummy bard.  Polly flew up into the boat and played with the oars, but this didn't accomplish anything.  She didn't see anything magical in the room.  There were some hieroglyphics on the pillars, which Zaber noticed were conspicuously lacking in pictures of cats.  (All the other pictures in the pyramid were full of cats.)  Polly and Zaber eventually found Elias, who had been wandering around the pyramid, checking out the giant cat tree, and got him to cast Gift of Letters so he could read the hieroglyphics.  They formed a riddle:

"Heed my winding rhyme,

to destroy him for all time.

Find vessels sacred three,

Hidden in his tomb from you and me.

The first is clad in clay,

secreted in a vault where it shall stay.

The second wrapped in dried flesh,

his loyal subjects guard it best.

The last is hidden behind golden earth.

Up is where you should search,      

but down is where you will end.

Destroy the three and his body shall bend."

After some discussion, Polly and Zaber decided that the dried flesh one was the jar of guts they got from inside a desiccated lion, that the up/down sounded like the gravity trap in the vault where they found another jar of guts, but they hadn't found a third one.

So first they went back to the entrance hall, which had magical lights on the ceiling, and flew up to check them out.  The lights appeared to be some kind of (permanent, powerful enough to work in a Low Mana Zone) magic torch spells.  But they couldn't find anything secret behind them, even with Zaber's complete suite of sense spells.  

Next, they went back to the room where they killed the sand demon.  Polly brought a shovel, because she wanted to dig through all the sand looking for treasure.  But she didn't find any.  Meanwhile, Zaber resolved to kick all the remaining urns in the secret room full of urns.  (There had been about 300, and the group had taken about 50 of them.)  The GM rolled a 4 (a critical success) on a secret roll to see if Zaber found the right urn, and he did.  He kicked an urn that was hard enough that it injured his foot: solid stone inside a shell of clay.  He asked Elias to heal his foot, but Elias didn't think it was worth using a spell for 2 lousy HP.  Zaber took the jar back to (Invisible) Seépravir back on the entrance stairs.  Seépravir noted that the jar was magical.

Polly opened up all three jars of mummified guts, which was rather disgusting.  Everyone made their HT rolls to avoid nausea though.  Seépravir and Zaber backed up to get away from the smell.  Elias applied some holy water to the guts, which made them sizzle.  He then tried exorcism, which had no effect.  Finally, he hit them with his Flaming flail, which set them afire.  Zaber heard a faint scream from further inside the pyramid.

Seépravir cast Invisibility on Polly too, so only Elias was visible.  All three of them went north and down into the pyramid, to the closed door leading to the mummy lord's lair, flying over the step which Zaber had marked as trapped.  Zaber tried opening the door, but it was locked.  He picked the lock, then pushed the door open.

Inside the room was the mummy lord (alive again, or undead again, or whatever), flanked by a dire lion.  When he saw Elias in the doorway, he cast some kind of fear spell, but Elias resisted.  Meanwhile, the lion charged Elias, and both Polly and Zaber invisibly flew past the lion to flank the mummy.

Eventually the lion reached Elias, and pounced on him.  He dodged, failed, used his Luck, and succeeded.  The mummy tried his fear spell on Elias again, and Elias resisted again.  Elias used his Heroic Grace, and rolled +5 to DX for 13 seconds, transforming from cleric to ninja.  Polly examined the mummy, looking for magic, and decided his ring and breastplate looked magical.  At that point Zaber whispered something to Polly, and Polly whispered back.

The lion tried to bite Elias, who blocked with his shield.  The mummy spun around to where Polly and Zaber were flying around behind him (he had made his hearing roll and heard their whispers), and cast See Invisible.  Elias took two swings at the lion's skull, though it dodged them both.

Right then, Garreth showed up at the entrance to the pyramid.  Seépravir noticed that he looked a bit wet (some Boating issues in the underground river, offscreen) and also had some blood on him (attacked by some stirges in the giant cave, offscreen; the blood was theirs not his), but there was no time to explain.  Seépravir cast Flight on Garreth to boost his Move.  It would still take him quite a while to reach the others.  Seépravir decided to go with him.  Neither of them knew there was a battle going on, yet, though Zaber had told Seépravir about the scream, so she had her suspicions.

Having figured out that the mummy probably knew she was there, Polly fired two arrows at his foot, losing her Invisibility.  The mummy dodged both.  Zaber decided to fly down and try to pickpocket the magic ring.  I let him roll, but the mummy had See Invisible up so his odds of success were not good.  The way the mummy evaded let Zaber know that the mummy could sense him.

The mummy stepped back and cast another spell, Reverse Missiles.  Elias feinted, then brained the lion with his flail.  The feint succeeded by a lot, the lion failed to dodge with the penalty for the feint, the flail attack did great damage (multiplied by 4 for a brain hit), and the lion died.  Polly fired another arrow at the mummy's foot, but this time it came back at her!  She dodged, but that was the last arrow Polly would fire in this battle.

Zaber tried grappling the mummy with Judo skill.  The mummy tried the Command spell ("Fall!") to block, but Zaber made his Will check, and the grapple succeeded.  (This also let the party know that the mummy spoke Common.)  The mummy pointed his magic ring at Zaber, and out came a translucent (but fully visible to Zaber's See Invisible) ram's head to slam him.  Zaber dodged it, without releasing the grapple.  He failed, but then used his Luck and succeeded.  

Garreth, still flying toward the battle, used the Great Haste effect of the pearly spear on himself to double his Move.  Elias moved up toward the mummy.  Once he got in range, he repeated the feint + skull attack combo that had worked on the lion.  It worked on the mummy too, though the mummy was a lot tougher than the lion (good DR, and also no brains), so the attack didn't have much effect.  The mummy did burn a bit though.

Polly drew her rapier, swooped down, and stabbed the mummy from behind.  Unfortunately she didn't roll much damage and didn't hurt it.  Zaber tried breaking the mummy's hand, but his brawling damage wasn't enough.  Elias smashed the mummy with his flail again, doing a bit of damage.

The mummy used its magic ring to slam Zaber again, and this time rolled a critical hit.  Zaber's Luck wasn't back yet, so he took the damage, and was knocked back, losing his grapple.  Fortunately, Zaber made both his stun and consciousness checks.  With Flight, fixing his orientation was easy, and he took a turn to fast-draw a healing potion and guzzle it down, getting him back above 0 HP and no longer in danger of passing out.

Elias and Polly continued tag-teaming the mummy.  Elias's flail did more consistent damage than Polly's rapier, but they both left some marks.  Meanwhile the mummy tried a fear spell on Polly, but she resisted.  Elias tried a shield rush, but the mummy was much stronger than him, and good at slames, and ended up knocking him over.  (But with Flight on, this wasn't a big deal.)  Garreth finally came flying into the room, holding a sai with Continual Light on it to see where he was going.

At this point, the animated sarcophagus that the party had knocked out last time they fought the mummy lord re-activated, and tried to crush Elias.  Elias retreated and dodged, then turned and started smashing the sarcophagus with his flail.  This knocked off more bits of marble, and after a couple of turns of this, the sarcophagus stopped moving (again).

Garreth was not yet within melee range of the mummy, but he was within sai-throwing range, so he threw his sai at the mummy -- not knowing that it had Reverse Missiles up.  He rolled an 18 for a critical failure.  After some thought, he decided to use Luck to avoid the critical failure, but it didn't avoid the spell.  The sai turned around and flew back at Garreth, but he managed to dodge.  Polly stabbed the mummy some more, and Zaber, back in the fight, grappled its ring hand.  The mummy spent its turn breaking free from the grapple, which it did easily, but not easily enough to avoid wasting a turn doing it.

Garreth finally got into melee range of the mummy, and his katana went snicker-snack, but the mummy used its Command spell ("drop it") and rolled a critical success.  Garreth dropped his katana.  But it was held by a lanyard (best $1 piece of equipment in GURPS), so it didn't go far, just cost him a turn to re-ready it.  Meanwhile Polly kept poking the mummy, and Zaber feinted it.

The mummy decided to use its ring on Polly, but she dodged.  Elias, done with the sarcophagus, ran over near the mummy.  Garreth recovered his katana, then double-chopped the mummy.  This time it failed to defend, took a ton of damage, and died.  Both the mummy and the lion vanished into thin air, but the mummy's equipment remained on the floor this time.

Seépravir, who had just reached the battle, turned right back around and flew back to the comfort of the normal mana zone on entrance stairs.  The others collected the mummy's treasure (mask, breastplate, ring, necklace), then decided to go fetch the other mummy's reed boat as well.  It was about 1000 pounds, but Garreth and Polly are both very strong, and they managed to drag it out of the pyramid, at which point Seépravir could cast Lighten Burden on both of them and make it easier to bring home.

At that point, everyone went back to Cillamar.

GM's Comments:

The mummy lord had Supernatural Durability: it couldn't be destroyed until all three of its canopic jars of mummified guts were destroyed.  After the PCs finally got around to doing that, it was just a shadow of its former self, automatically dying at -HP.  But getting it to -HP was hard, since it had a lot of DR and Reverse Missiles.  Polly sometimes did enough damage with her rapier to hurt it, sometimes not.  Zaber never managed to injure it, but he annoyed it into wasting several turns on him.  Elias was able to hurt it pretty consistently, but spent time fighting both the lion and the sarcophagus.  That meant that Garreth, who had no problem at all getting past its DR, got to swoop in and steal the kill.

The pyramid took longer than I expected, but the party finally cleared it.  So we'll see where they go next time.  I suspect, now that it's spring and Seépravir has Flight-25, they'll be itching to visit Galaron, the capital of the Kingdom of Morrain, where Garreth wants to seek out special martial arts training and everyone else wants to go shopping.  Or maybe they'll just continue exploring the giant cave.  We'll see next time.

DF Whiterock Session 44: Mummy Bard in a Boat

Date:

2019-03-29

Weather:

Unseasonably warm, overcast

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 282 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 347 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 344 points

Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 328 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 362 points

Significant NPCs:

Hugin, Human Mercenary

Caswallon, Dwarf Engineer

Caswallon's Mute Assistant, Dwarf Laborer

Mummy Bard

Charithmysis, intelligent rapier

The group started in Cillamar.

Both Garreth's Epic Plate of Weightlessness and Polly's Penetrating Rapier reached Cillamar.  Each paid the balance due and showed off their new equipment.  Polly also bought a pick and a shovel, for use in digging in the pyramid.

Seépravir researched the jar of guts and found that this was related to some ancient religion that removed and preserved the organs of corpses.  She tried using Purify Water as a stain remover to clean a stained potion belt that she'd found in Quintus's trash, but it didn't work as well as expected.  She brewed more healing potions to replace some that had been consumed last delve.

Zaber talked to Hugin to see if he knew who was guarding Lord Flitwick.  Hugin had heard that Flitwick's bodyguard was Gord the Black Dwarf, who had a bad reputation.  Zaber spread some more rumors about Flitwick.

Hugin mentioned that it's good luck to feed Ixnay the shoulder dragon drinks, and gave him a beer.  Polly shared some of her hard carrot juice, and Zaber gave him some whiskey.  That was enough for Ixnay, who took a nap.

Elias tried casting Remove Curse on the cursed snake staff, but it still zapped Zaber when he tried picking it up, so either the curse was too powerful to remove, or he just didn't do a good enough job casting the spell.

For the first time in months, it was warm though to travel with neither winter clothing nor a Warmth spell.  This caused some shuffling of gear to celebrate reduced encumbrance.  The warm weather meant it was finally possible for Caswallon to install another elevator into the dungeon, so the group paid Hugin to guard Caswallon, paid Caswallon the balance due on the elevator, and had Caswallon, Hugin, and Caswallon's mute assistant accompany them on their trip to Castle Whiterock.  Caswallon brought along a mule-drawn wagon full of elevator parts and tools, which greatly slowed the trip to the castle, but nobody harassed the party on the way.

When they reached the castle, the group showed Caswallon the top of the hidden shaft down from the surface to the Clockwork Academy that Seépravir had dug with earth magic, and Caswallon and his assistant went to work while Hugin stood guard.  Not wanting to stand around watching, the PCs went down the stairs into the dungeon, then down the existing elevator to the underground river level, then had Garreth row them down the river to the north beach, then hiked from there to the giant cave.  Nothing exciting happened on the way, so the group continued to the black pyramid.  Seépravir cast Invisibility and Haste on Zaber, Flight on Garreth, then sat down in the normal mana zone at the top of the steps to rest and maintain spells.  Once again, they agreed that if Seépravir sensed Zaber's Invisibility was gone, she should hasten to their aid.

The others moved forward into the great hall containing the broken clay golem, and considered which way to go.  They hadn't explored the secret door to the northeast yet, so they went that way.  Behind the secret door were stairs down to the northeast, which ended in a passage leading east, which ended at a stone door.  Zaber searched for traps and listened at the door, but didn't find anything.  The door was locked, so Zaber picked the lock, then Polly pushed it open.  (Zaber didn't want to, as if anyone saw the door open with nobody visibly pushing on it, that might give away his Invisibility.)

On the other side of the door was a room about 50' square and 50' tall, with a lot of dust on the floor.  Zaber used Tracking to try to find footprints in the dust, but didn't find any.  Zaber's See Secrets found another secret door on the opposite (east) wall, very well hidden.  Zaber and Polly walked to the other side of the room, and then suddenly gravity reversed and both Polly and Zaber flew upward to the ceiling.  (Though nobody saw Zaber since he was Invisible.)  Worse, there were invisible spikes there.  Polly was wearing a Ring of Slow Fall, but it wasn't powerful enough to work in the low mana zone, and didn't help.  Both Zaber and Polly took significant damage smacking into the spiked ceiling; Zaber decided to use Luck to reroll his and take a bit less, but still enough to cripple his left leg and force a consciousness check, which he made.

At that point everyone started looking for rope, and realized they weren't carrying any.  Garreth, with Flight on, started forward feeling for anomolies.  He eventually found a Force Wall halfway across the room.  He tried cutting through first with his sai, then with Elias's flail, but it didn't work.  Zaber drank a healing potion.  Polly crawled along the ceiling to where the Force Wall was, and found that it didn't extend all the way to the ceiling.  Garreth flew back to Seépravir to update her on the situation, then heard yells to come back, and flew back to the rest of the party with the wineskin of healing potions.  He flew up all the way to the ceiling (because Zaber said the pointy parts of the spikes were farther down so ceiling level was safer), then set the wineskin where Zaber could drink some more healing potions.  When he was fully healed, his leg started working again.  Garreth then grabbed Polly and flew her down to ground level next to Elias, who cast Major Healing to fix her up.  And then he flew Zaber down too.  While Garreth was flying around trying to figure things out, the Reverse Gravity trap expired, but Garreth managed to adjust before hitting anything.  The Force Wall also went away.

Zaber tried pointing out the secret door to Garreth, but he was Invisible so Garreth couldn't see this.  Zaber then tried yelling directions, but Garreth couldn't see the secret door without magical help.  Finally, Garreth just flew back to Zaber, picked him up in a bear hug, and flew him over to the wall.  Zaber found a secret keyhole, tried picking the lock, failed, used his Luck to reroll, and opened it.  (Zaber has Extraordinary Luck which resets every 30 minutes.)

Behind the secret door was a 10' by 10' square stone vault, filled with treasure like golden coins, golden cat statues, silverware, and urns.  And Zaber's See Secrets spotted yet another secret door on the far side of the vault.  Zaber declared that he was searching for traps extra-hard, but didn't find any.  Everyone was super suspicious and extra cautious though.  Zaber leaned down from outside the room and grabbed one coin.  The coin turned out to be gold-plated copper, not solid gold, with quite a sharp edge.  Garreth flew into the room, not touching the floor, and grabbed a golden lion statue, a silver fork, and a handful of coins.  He handed them to Zaber, then went in for another pass, grabbing a fancy spear and a gold and obsidian crown.  Zaber wanted to ignore the coins since they were copper, but Garreth wanted to take them since even copper coins are valuable.

Temporarily leaving the coins along, Garreth picked up Zaber and flew him across the vault to the secret door, which Zaber picked open.  At that point the secret door opened, the floor of the vault disappeared, and the remaining sharp coins in the room fell to the bottom of a deep pit, then teleported to the ceiling, resumed falling, and a few pelted Garreth and Zaber.  Back in the big room, Polly used her shovel to catch falling coins and pull them out.  Meanwhile Garreth carried Zaber into the tiny room, which contained a golden jar and a lion's-head mace that Polly and Elias thought looked magic.

Polly collected all the falling coins near the vault's west entrance, but couldn't reach the rest.  So Garreth flew across, borrowed Elias's shield, and held it over his head at an angle to bounce coins to the west while mostly protecting himself.  It required 6 DX rolls and a few points of cutting damage from coins than managed to sneak in around Garreth's armor, but eventually he bounced all the coins toward where Polly could reach them with her shovel.

The jar contained more guts.  Elias said to burn them.  Seépravir didn't want to.  Garreth agreed with Elias.  For now, the group decided to pile up all the treasure near Seépravir, then go down the north passage that led to the Mummy's room, and explore the sand-colored patch of wall on one side of the passage.  Exploring consisted of Garreth bashing it with a pick, until he made a hole in the wall and revealed a passage behind it, with more stairs down.  At the bottom of the stairs was a door with a strange huge bronze lock, consisting of four dials with numbers on them.  Zaber had never seen such a lock before, but he fiddled with it for a long time anyway, and eventually managed to open it.

Zaber pushed the door open.  Behind it was a room featuring some pillars and a large reed boat.  Inside the boat was a women, playing some pipes.  Hearing the music caused everyone to make a Will roll; somehow they all succeeded.  (Though Polly needed Luck.)  Elias took a closer look at the woman and decided (via Hidden Lore (Undead)) that she looked like a mummy.

At this point some mouths appeared on the walls and started reading a rhyme about needing to find three sacred vessels and destroy them to bend his body.

Garreth inched forward toward the woman, who eventually cast some other mind control spell on him using her pipes, but he resisted.  At that point Garreth activated the pearly spear to give himself Great Haste.  Polly decided that was a good excuse to fire an arrow into the woman's eye.  She rolled a 17 on her defense roll, making it look like this combat could be over really fast -- but then it turned out she had Luck and got to reroll her dodge, and succeeded.

Garreth flew up to the boat, fast-draw his katana, and chopped the bard rapidly.  The first hit did some damage.  The second hit was a critical and forced her to drop her pipes.  The third and forth hits also left a mark.  She took enough damage to need consciousness and death checks, but made them.  Then she cast some kind of spell, and suddenly there were 5 of her in the boat, shuffling around to make it hard to see which was which, all drawing a pretty silver rapier.

Elias moved up.  Polly fired a couple more arrows, which were dodged.  Garreth hit two of the images, which were both false ones, as each disappeared when hit.  Zaber, still Invisible, jumped up to the boat and climbed over the gunwale.

The mummy bard tried another mind control spell on Garreth.  He failed to resist, used his Luck, and got a better roll but still lost the contest.  He was about to be mind controlled -- but then his Bless decided to prevent that, dissipating in the process.  Thinking she had succeeded, the bard told Garreth to "kill the archer" in Undercommon.

Polly ran around the boat to line up her shot properly, then fired a couple more arrows and managed to dispel another image.  Garreth decided to All-Out Attack (Double) with Rapid Strike to get a ridiculous number of attacks, but the bard managed to parry and dodge them.  Zaber jumped into the center of the boat and grabbed the pipes.  The mummy stabbed Garreth with her rapier, and he had no defense -- but she didn't do enough damage to penetrate his armor!

Polly took a couple more shots, and managed to dispel the last illusion, leaving only one mummy bard who had to be the real one.  Garreth went for All-Out Attack (Double) again to get 6 swings, but the mummy managed to dodge all 6, but now she was up on the prow of the boat, unable to retreat again without falling off.  Zaber decided to play the pipes, though he didn't actually have an Musical Instrument skill.  The sound that came out was predictably horrible.  Surprisingly, it counted as an attack, and Zaber became visible.

The mummy bard decided to go for Garreth's eye, using All-Out Attack (Determined) for +4 to skill.  Fortunately for Garreth, she didn't quite have the skill to hit it, but hit his unarmored face instead.  This left a mark, but didn't manage to stun him.  Polly took advantage of her temporary inability to dodge by shooting her in both eyes.  The first hit caused a death check that she passed.  The second hit caused a death check that she rolled a 17 on, and the fight was over.

Seépravir came running into the room to see what had happened to Zaber, but by then the danger was past.  Both the pipes that Zaber had grabbed, and the silver rapier, appeared to be magic.  Polly picked up the rapier, and it talked to her, in Elven.  It said to put it down, as she was clearly some kind of woodland beast, not a bard.  In response, Seépravir played a song on her flute.  She initially rolled a 10, a pretty solid success, but then she used her Luck and managed to get a critical success on the reroll.  At that point the rapier identified itself as Charithmysis and asked to be removed from this hovel.

At that point we were out of time, so the group packed up all the treasure, headed for the surface, collected Caswallon and company (who were done with the elevator), and went back to Cillamar.

GM's Comments:

The reverse gravity plus spikes on the ceiling trap was pretty brutal, but defeated by Flight.  (And low falling damage rolls, aided in Zaber's case by Luck.)  The infinite pit full of sharp objects was also defeated by Flight, along with Garreth's heavy armor negating most falling sharpened coin damage.

The PCs who abuse Luck constantly finally ran into an enemy who also had Luck.  It made the fight against the mummy bard last a bit longer, but 4 versus 1 is not a fair fight.  Her only real chance would have been to mind control Garreth or Polly and turn them against their friends.  She tried multiple times, and succeeded twice, but Luck saved Garreth the first time and Bless the second.  There was no time for a third.

The rapier that only works for bards is an interesting find in a game without classes or mandatory templates.  Will it decide that Seépravir is close enough to a bard based on her critical success on a flute-playing roll?  We'll see.

After multiple treasure-light sessions, the group finally hit the mother lode this time.  We'll see if they decide to try to finish off the pyramid, or skip the castle and go shopping instead.