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.