DF Whiterock Session 91: Figuring Out the Stairs

Date:

2020-04-17

Weather:

Cold, session entirely underground

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 421 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 480 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 480 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 474 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High Elf Wizard, 485 points

Significant NPCs:

Talladay Arrowmelt, Halfling chef
Wolfrik, Possessed Duergar guard
6 Ettin Zombies


We started with the PCs still deep within the duergar fortress of Narborg, after the PCs defeated some duergar and stone golems in the Thane's dining room.  It was a large split-level room, with a very fancy marble dining table with gold trim, surrounded by six fancy chairs and a small throne.  There was a mural on the ceiling, featuring three panels.  One showed construction of an underground fortress.  Another showed a war between duergar and drow.  And the last showed a meeting between duergar and a red dragon, with a huge pile of gold and gems changing hands.

Zaber sat in the throne, but, surprisingly, nothing happened.  He then opened a secret door (which he had spotted using See Secrets) and found stairs leading up into a blank wall.  The expected secret door in the blank wall was not present.  There was a small secret panel, concealing a rope.  Zaber resisted pulling the rope, and had Seépravir cast Wizard Eye to investigate the tiny secret shaft.  But the eye just went up to the ceiling alongside the rope, then winked out of existence.

Pulling the rope rang a bell.  A few seconds later, the stairs started to slide sideways.  But they still ended in a blank wall.  After some discussion, Zaber walked to the top of the stairs, into a No Mana Zone, which caused all his spells to be dispelled.  He could no longer fly, or see in the dark, and came back down the stairs, cautiously, to ask for new spells.

At that point Polly looked under the table, and found nothing.  Then she got Garreth to help her left the throne, and found nothing under it either.  She started suggesting putting the throne on top of the table, for some reason, but by then Zaber had found another secret door, and everyone lost interest in playing with furniture.  Behind the door was a winding passage.  Zaber explored it, invisibly, and found a room with three zombie ettins standing in front of three circular crank wheels.  He snuck back and told the others that there were enemies to kill.

Polly flew into the room and started shooting at ettin zombie brains.  The first arrow was dodged, the second killed a zombie, and the third killed a different zombie.  Seépravir Great Hasted Elias, who flew into the room at double speed and slammed the surviving zombie to the ground.  It tried hitting him with two flails from its back, but he blocked one and parried the other.  Elias responded by smacking the zombie in one of its skulls with his flail, seriously wounding it but not knocking it out.  Polly then shot it in the skull for a critical hit, finishing the zombie and stealing Elias's kill.

After the zombies were out of the way, Zaber decided to try spinning one of the wheels.  He just barely managed to budge it.  Polly and Garreth moved up to help, and together managed to spin the other two wheels, which caused a grinding sound.

Zaber went back out in the hall and spotted another secret door.  This one led to another winding passage, then another room with three ettin zombies standing in front of cranks.  Once again, Polly flew into the room, fired three arrows, and killed two zombies.  Elias followed her in, ignored the third zombie, and stuck his face into a skinny passage in the wall, but didn't manage to squeeze in.  The last surviving zombie tried an All-Out Attack (Double) against Polly for a total of three attacks.  Garreth tried sacrificially parrying for her, but failed.  Polly managed to dodge all the attacks, though, using a combination of acrobatics and Luck.   She then shot the zombie in the eye, fatally, and another room full of heavy wheels was out of strong cheap labor to spin them.

Zaber squeezed into the narrow passage that Elias had given up on fitting in.  Somehow, he managed to fit (he made his Escape-6 roll), and found that it led south to a dead end, then northeast to the pantry behind the kitchen.  When he got to the pantry he found Talladay Arrowmelt, the halfling chef who they had met earlier.  He asked the captive cook some questions, but once again the halfling didn't know much useful and just wanted an escort home.  Meanwhile, Garreth used Power Blow to get very strong, and spun one of the wheels by himself.

More searching revealed a second staircase, also leading to a blank wall.  It also featured a hidden panel, and a rope, that rang a bell.  But this bell sounded different than the other one.  This time, pulling the rope didn't cause any stairs to move.

There was one more unopened door.  Zaber opened it, while Polly waited to shoot enemies, but behind the door was just a deep cistern full of water.  Garreth warned that the water was probably poisoned, since duergar are immune to poison and would do that kind of thing.  Seépravir sent a Wizard Eye into the pool, but it didn't find anything interesting, just water.  She then sent the eye up the second set of stairs, and it hit another No Mana Zone and disappeared.

At this point the group discussed using pickaxes to dig holes through stone.  Zaber found another small secret panel near the top of the stairs, with another rope inside.  When he pulled it, another bell rung, twice, in a different pitch, but nothing else happened.  He went to the top of the other stairs and found another secret panel, another rope, and yet another different bell.

Garreth formulated a plan.  He would spin one set of wheels, while Elias and Polly spun the other set, and Zaber watched the stairs, and Seépravir used magic to watch through Zaber's eyes and relay information to the others.  After trying a lot of things, they finally got two sections of a staircase to slide into the right position and created stairs to the level above.  However, the way led through the No Mana Zone, so Seépravir realized that walking through it would dispel the Possession on Wolfrik and free him.

So the whole group went back to the Bleak Theater level where Seépravir's own body was safely Entombed, tied up Wolfrik, then Seépravir un-Entombed herself.  They frog-marched the tied Wolfrik back up stairs, then the whole group went up the stairs, through the No Mana Zone, to a new level.  And when they got there, I realized the Roll20 map for the new level had a problem, and ended the session a bit early.

Next time, we find out what's on the new level.

GM's Comments:

We spent the whole session on two easy fights and one hard puzzle.  There were actually two solutions to the puzzle.  The optimal one was to find the secret panel at the bottom of the stairs (very hard unless you had a See Secrets spell, which makes it automatic), pull the rope to ring the bell to tell the ettin zombies to slide the bottom half of the stairs into position, then find the secret panel at the top of the stairs, pull the other rope to tell the ettin zombies to slide the top half of the stairs into position, then ascend.

Of course, the PCs killed the ettin zombies.  At that point ringing the bells did nothing, and they needed to spin the right wheels in the right order to get the stairs into position.  Fortunately, there weren't that many combinations, so they eventually blundered into the right sequence by brute force and luck.  Also fortunately, they were strong enough to spin the wheels.  (It was a ST-6 roll for one PC, easier if multiple PCs were spinning wheels together -- but Garreth's Power Blow made it almost automatic.)