DFRPG Arden Vul Session 12: First Encounter with the Cult of Set

Date:

Demmasday, 30th of Ligarios, 2993 AE

Weather:

Cool, rainy

Player Characters:

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Michael J. Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Based Cosmo)

Significant NPCs:

Fael, Half-Elven druid at the Grain House

Onyx, disturbingly smart cat

3 feral cats

4 Guards from the Cult of Set

1 Invisible Stalker

Skizz and Burzip, lost Lizardmen

3 Shriekers shrieking

3 Mud People

Ioannes and Thronebreaker adopted the four cats found in the Great Cavern the previous week.  Ioannes paid Fael the druid to cast Beast Speech and speak to the black cat who appeared to be the leader.  He explained that his name was Onyx, that he used to be the familiar of an Elven mage named Lyra, and that Lyra had been killed by a giant lizard while foolishly adventuring without sufficient bodyguards.  He had met the other cats while looking for a way out the Great Cavern, and had survived by adopting their primitive lifestyle of eating mice and small lizards and sleeping in a damp cave, but he didn't like it at all.  He had been trying to find a way out, so they could find a nice wizard to adopt them and provide a civilized existence, but had not yet succeeded until Ioannes and his bodyguards had found them.  He asked Fael if he could be placed with a female elven wizard who was smart enough not to go adventuring, as having his previous wizard killed had been stressful.  Fael smiled and relayed Onyx's message and returned him to Ioannes, who then took the cats back to his apartment at the Arcane Practitioners' Club.

After a brief discussion about whether it was time to kill Plumthorn's halflings the Left for Loot club decided to instead continue exploring the Great Cavern.  They threw away their two-week-old supply of trade food and bought a wheelbarrow full of new food, then pushed it back to the secret entrance two-thirds of the way up the Long Stair.  Leaving the wheelbarrow inside the entrance, they first checked the stone supply chest nearby, but it appeared nobody else had disturbed it in the past week.  Vallium then led them through a series of small cave passages until they emerged into the Great Cavern, full of giant mushrooms.  They walked north to the shore of the lake and then west to the dock, and discussed whether they should take a boat north or fly.  Ioannes mentioned that they hadn't fully explored the southwest corner of the cavern yet, so they followed a path southwest from the dock.

The path eventually revealed a constructed platform about twenty-five feet up the west wall of the cavern, with several humans standing on it, wearing red scale armor and holding crossbows.  The guards told them to go away or get shot.  The party did not want to go away, so the lead arbalist took a shot at Vael, at the same time Vael started casting Missile Shield on himself.  The crossbowman was a bit faster than the caster, and the bolt almost plugged Vael in the chest, but then his Bless spell intervened and made it slightly miss.  Vael did not lose his spell, finished making himself immune to missiles, and then did his best impersonation of a wizard about to cast Fireball in an attempt to draw more shots at himself.

Vael actually cast Flight on Vallium, while the other three crossbowmen took aimed shots at his companions.  None of them got past a shield and actually hurt anyone.  While they reloaded, Vallium flew up and started stabbing one of them, while Michael winged his boomerang at another one.  Meanwhile Uvash ran forward under the platform hoping Vallium would kick down a rope ladder to him, and Ioannes cast Shield on Michael.

Around the time the guards loosed their second bolts, Vael had cast Flight on Michael, who started flying up to join the melee.  Vallium tried kicking the rope ladder down to Uvash while fighting, but failed to do both at once, so Uvash was still standing below in frustration.  The guards dropped their crossbows after their second shots and pulled out maces, but did not have time to ready their nearby shields, so they did not fight very effectively.  Vallium and Michael eventually wounded a couple of them.  By then Vael had noticed Uvash's frustration and cast an Apportation spell to lower the rope ladder.  Uvash climbed up it, with Ioannes behind him.  By the time they reached the top, Michael and Vallium had knocked out three of the guards, with the fourth running down a finished stone passage to the west, carved into the side of the Great Cavern.  With Flight spells still going, Vallium and Michael were both much faster than the wounded fleeing guard.  Vallium cut him badly, and then Michael landed a critical hit and finished him off.

Uvash and Ioannes noticed that, in addition to the red scale armor, one of the guards was wearing a holy symbol of a dog with square ears, a distinct symbol of the proscribed Cult of Set.  After a quick discussion of whether they wanted to take prisoners, the party decided they couldn't afford to leave any Set guards alive, and threw all four off the platform back into the Great Cavern to finish them off and to make it easier to collect their armor.  Michael flew down to strip off their armor, while Vallium stood guard and Vael and Ioannes rested.

The group continued west until the stone passage opened into a storeroom, with sacks lining two walls and a closed door to the west.  They searched all the sacks and mostly found dried mushrooms, though Vael also found a silver plate engraved with a sheep's head.  They took the silver and left the mushrooms, then opened the door and continued west.  They next found a surprisingly nice room, full of comfortable furniture, and with a fire still burning in the fireplace, but with nobody present.  They didn't find any very portable valuables, so they listened to the door to the north.  Hearing nothing, Vallium tried to open it, but it was locked.  Vael Lockmastered it open, and then they went north, down a finished tunnel that turned into a rougher cave tunnel descending to the north.  It ended at a junction, with a door leading north, a caved-in passage to the west, and a very narrow passage northeast.  After checking the cave-in and deciding it was impassable, they went northeast.

Vallium, in the lead, decided to follow the right-hand wall.  This led them to a passage south, into a room whose walls were covered with some softly growing green stuff.  After some discussion, Vael took a sample of the green stuff and put it in a flask for later investigation.  They went north, then southeast, then a passage dead-ended into two lobes, each with a pillar.  The pillars were identical stone pedestals with onyx columns on top, each of which was divided into five sections with various animal faces carved into them, pierced by vertical metal rods like kebabs.  The each section had the same five animals: a snake, a cat, a lizard, a ram, and a winged horse.  It was possible to spin each section.  Uvash recognized this as some kind of combination puzzle, and Ioannes and Vael confirmed that the columns were magical.  Neither of the clerics could think of any theological connection between the five animals, and nobody wanted to start trying random combinations, so they decided to leave the pillars until they found more information.

Continuing to follow the right wall in the twisty maze of cavern tunnels, Vallium led the group into a large cavern with a high ceiling.  While walking through the middle of the cavern, Vallium was surprised by something invisible punching him in the head.  It didn't hit hard enough to hurt him through his helmet and Ring of Protection, but it didn't appear after attacking either.  Vallium tried stabbing the general area where the blow had come from.  He occasionally made soft contact, but the attacker didn't feel very solid, so his sword blows didn't seem to cause as much damage as usual.  Meanwhile his allies looked around trying to find the invisible creature.  At one point Michael though he got a solid fix on its location and chucked his boomerang at it, but to no obvious effect.  Vael decided some area effect magic was in order, so cast Create Fire where he thought the thing was, then Shape Fire to try to move the fire wherever Vallium's sword blows led him.  Eventually the combination of several sword blows and the fire made the thing stop attacking, but they never found a body.

They left the room to the northeast, into a room where two lizardmen were standing with their hands up in a sign of peace.  The lizardmen said something in a hissing language that was presumably Lizardman, and the party responded in various human and elf and dwarf languages, but there was no common language.  Fortunately Ioannes knew Gift of Tongues, and he cast it go gain temporary mastery of Lizardman.  It turned out the lizardmen were lost; they had come up from two levels below, were lost, and could not find their way back to the way they came up, or to the Great Cavern.  Asked why they were here, they first asked if the party were friends with the Settites.  When Ioannes said they didn't like the Settites, the lizardmen revealed that they were here to kill some Settites who had killed some lizardmen.  Their names were Skizz and Burzip.  Ioannes said he could give them directions to the Great Cavern if they didn't mess with their loot and put in a good word with the other lizardmen.  Skizz readily agreed, and the two lizardmen departed, trying to follow Ioannes' directions.

Searching the cave, Vael noticed a magical glyph on the wall in the southwest corner.  He didn't recognize it, and so asked the others if they would give him enough time to cast Analyze Magic.  He did, and found that the glyph protected from wetness and had additional powers.  He cast another Analyze magic and found that it also protected from detection, including scrying.  At that point he was suspicious that someone was using the glyph to hide, but they didn't find anyone.  After some rest, they resumed exploring.

They went northeast, into a cave full of mushrooms.  One of the mushrooms started emitting a high-pitched squeal.  They quickly decided that the noise would give them away and possibly attract trouble, so they turned around and went west.  They entered a cave full of thick white mist.  Vallium didn't like the mist and asked Vael to cast Purify Air.  He cleared the mist, at which point they saw a few exits.  One of them formed a loop back toward the shrieking mushrooms.

Another exit led to a hot room with a bunch of hot mud on the floor.  Someone was immediately concerned that there might be mudmen, so everyone was on guard.  Nobody had a 6-foot, 10-foot, or 11-foot pole, so Vael used his Wizard's Staff to poke the mud while hiding behind Vallium.  That was enough to annoy a mud person, who popped out of the mud and punched Vallium.  The attack was ineffective, and Vallium stabbed it for its affront.  A brief fight started, where that mud person fought Vallium while two more mud people stayed back in the mud and lobbed hot mud balls.  Someone said that mud people were unlikely to have treasure so this fight was stupid and they should all leave.  Most of the group started retreating, but Uvash missed the message and attacked the wounded mud person, and it looked like Uvash might get mobbed by all three mud people.  Fortunately his friends noticed that he was lagging behind and waited for him, and he eventually.  With one of the mud people almost dead, they did not pursue the group out of their muddy cave.

Left for Loot decided that was enough adventuring for the day, and retraced their steps back to the Great Cavern.  The corpses of Set guards were still there, along with their armor and weapons.  They took all the armor and weapons back to their wheelbarrow inside the secret door, then brought it all back to Gosterwick, where they would attempt to sell it without revealing themselves to the Set cult.

GM's Comments:

Running this part of the adventure is still hard, as it's a bunch of little caves connected by a bunch of little winding tunnels and I'm never sure exactly which way the group is headed or what they're about to meet until I check the room description.  They had five different encounters in this session but negotiated with the lizardmen and ran away from the shriekers without a fight, and from the mud people after a brief fight.

This was the first contact with the Cult of Set, which they'd heard a bit about.  It was also their first contact with lizardmen, who they hadn't heard anything about yet.  So they are continuing to expand their knowledge of the Halls and their map, even in sessions where they don't make much obvious progress.

The combination of altitude and superior ranged weapons is a great advantage, but for the second time in this campaign we've seen that Flight spells are a great counter.

Achievements:

None

XP:

• Exploration: 10 new locations, good for 1 XP
• Loot: Just the Set guards' armor and weapons and that one silver plaque, but good for 1 XP
• Achievements: None
• Total: 2 XP

Next Week:

A couple of players will be unavailable, so the others are unlikely to feel strong enough to take a run at the halflings.  I suspect they'll continue exploring the Great Cavern area, or the surface ruins.

My Megadungeon Conversion and Prep Sequence

So you've got a big megadungeon for D&D and you want to run it in GURPS.  The adventure only has GM maps available in black-and-white (or even old-school anti-1970s-photocopier blue-and-white), and you want player-friendly full-color detailed maps in your VTT.  How do you get there?

The first step is to read the whole adventure before making the final decision to run it.  You don't want to start running the first level of the adventure because it started well, without knowing that level seven isn't finished or sucks and then start changing everything at the last minute once you realize you're in a corner.  That way lies Game of Thrones Season 7.  Converting a good adventure is much easier than finishing an unfinished adventure or fully rewriting a bad adventure, so make sure you like the whole adventure (or at least 95% of it with a concrete plan for how to fix the last 5%) before you start running it.  It's well worth a bit of reading to avoid starting something you won't want to finish.

The next part is going back to the start and figuring out the basic challenges at the start of the adventure.  What is the entry point, or in the case of a megadungeon with multiple entrances, what are the most likely initial entry points?  How hard are the challenges there?  Are there any likely first-session TPKs?  If so are you okay with that, or do you want to insert some hard or soft barriers to prevent them, so you don't lose your players before they get invested?  Hard barriers would be something like an unpickable locked door between the PCs and the Totally Out of Depth Boss Monster, where the key is a couple of levels down guarded by a Less Unfair Boss Monster.  Soft barriers would be direct warnings or fuzzier rumors that a certain area is really dangerous; PCs can still go there and get killed if they want, but they can't are slightly less likely to blame the GM.

Once you know how hard the start of the adventure is, you can figure out about how many PCs you want and their rough starting power level.  You need to know this before you start recruiting players if you don't already have them; some spoiled power gamers will want to skip any game where they don't get to start as a demigod, while some old-school hardcore types will dismiss any game where their PCs start already knowing how to walk as too easy for them.  The point isn't to judge anyone's preferred style of play; it's to honestly communicate so that you get players who want to play the same kind of game you want to run, so everyone is more likely to have fun and stick around.  You also kind of need to know this before you start converting the first level of the adventure, so you know where to set challenges.  For example, if you have a D&D module where the adversaries on level 1 are mostly small groups of orcs with 1 hit die, designed to be a reasonable challenge for level 1 D&D PCs, then if you're starting with 125-point GURPS characters, maybe those goblins should have weapon skills in the range of 12, damage low enough that they're unlikely to down a well-armored warrior with a single hit but high enough that the squishy mage feels vulnerable, damage resistance somewhere around 2, maybe some sub-optimal weapon choices like unbalanced knobbed clubs and no shields instead of harder ones like broadsword and shield, and use mook rules so they go down or run away after one solid hit rather than fighting forever like horror movie boss monsters.

Then I think you want to fully convert enough of the dungeon for the first few sessions.  You don't need to convert a whole 15-level megadungeon before you start running it; if you or your players don't love it and you quit a month in, you don't want to have spent months of prep time.  But you want to be far enough ahead of your players that there's no significant chance of them hitting a totally unprepped area.  I think doing 2 or 3 levels is enough to start, depending on how big the levels are, how many accessible entrances there are, how long your play sessions are, and (if you know your players) how likely your players are to crash dive versus make sure the current level is pretty clear before going deeper.

What comes first, the maps or the room descriptions?  Up to you.  You already have both the maps and room descriptions from the original adventure, so you have a place to stand either way.  My advice would be to do one at a time though, as switching modes between editing maps and editing text has a cost.

My choice is to first look for nice VTT maps that other GMs have made available.  If you run a very popular old adventure like Keep on the Borderlands or Ravenloft, they will definitely be out there.  (But it will be harder to find players who aren't already familiar with the adventure.)  If you run something newer or more obscure, they may or may not be.  Also, it's common for GMs to start running a megadungeon and not finish it, so you'll find a lot more level 1 maps than level 15 maps.  Once you find or make map images, keep in mind that you might also need to make time for manually drawing line-of-sight-blocking walls, and adding dungeon dressing, and testing your maps with an NPC token to verify that they really can fit through the narrow passages and the secret doors aren't too obvious.

As far as converting the room descriptions, I see three major phases.  I don't need to convert plain text, as text is universal across game systems.  But I need to convert monsters, and treasure, and ability/skill checks.  I find the skill checks the easiest to convert, so I do those first.  Need to roll 4d6 under DEX to make this climb?  I'll call that a straight Climbing roll (which defaults to DX-5) in my GURPS conversion.  Lifting the lid off this sarcophagus needs a Bend Bars check?  I'll call that a ST-6 check and say there's enough room for up to 2 PCs to participate.  Maybe give a bonus if they use a lever or something.  I don't need to anticipate everything players might do, just give a starting point for the challenge level, so when they do something unexpected my level of needed in-game improv is something like "I'll call that a +3 bonus" rather than having to rethink the whole framework.

Monster conversions basically fall into two buckets: easy and hard.  The easy ones are the ones that someone has already converted.  If there's a common monster like a goblin, there are probably already 7 GURPS versions of it, so I pick one.  I check my piles of official GURPS books, Gaming Ballistic's Nordlond bestiary, the GURPS wiki, Enraged Eggplant's blog, do a web search for "GURPS monstername" in case someone else has it on their blog or it shows up in a forum post, etc.  I might tweak it a bit, then I'm done.  If it's a monster that I can't find an existing conversion for, because it's obscure or sometimes only found in this one adventure, I do it myself, and that's 30 minutes of my life gone.  (More if it's a really complicated monster.)

Treasure conversions also come in two kinds, easy and hard.  For really basic stuff like coins I make up a formula and stick to it.  First I read enough of the adventure to see how generous or stingy it is with treasure, then I make something up like 1 gold piece in the adventure means $1 or $5 or $0.1 or whatever in GURPS dollars, then I can translate the total value back into flavorful fantasy coins and gems.  One caveat here is that it's easier to add more treasure later than to take away treasure you have given, so err on the side of less generous to start and then become more generous if it becomes clear you need to.  Stuff like gems and jewelry is about as easy as coins.  The hard stuff is magic items.  Some of the simpler ones are formulaic, like you might say that a D&D +1 longsword becomes a fine, balanced GURPS broadsword.  But if you have to convert something like a Rod of Lordly Might that has like 7 different powers, it can be tedious.  Note that if something is too annoying, you can just substitute something else.  Your players won't know, and as long as the substitute item is something they like, they won't care.  D&D modules tend to be full of scrolls and spellbooks, which are important in a Vancian system, but not so much in a point-based mana point system, unless they contain secret spells that are otherwise hard to learn.

The other thing to think about is the starting town or towns.  Is town a safe zone or part of the adventure?  What goods and services are available there?  What is in ample supply, what requires an availability roll, and what requires a trip somewhere else?  It makes sense to detail town a bit before starting, as your players might want to take the location in mind before making their PCs.  ("The only temple in town is to Mitra?  What a great coincidence that my PC is a devout, consistently-tithing follower of Mitra!")  I don't think a mostly-safe town typically requires a lot of game mechanic conversions, though I personally convert things like "5% chance of a minor magic item appearing in the market" to "minor magic item appears in the market on 4-" just to use fewer kinds of dice and simplify my VTT macros.

My final conversion tip is the TODO note.  If there's something that's really annoying to convert and you just don't feel like it today, leave a TODO note in your conversion and move on to the next thing.  When you finish your first pass at converting the level, search for TODO and maybe go back and do any that seem important, and leave the others for later.  The point is that you don't have to do everything in order, but you do want to remind yourself if you skipped something so it doesn't surprise you in play.

Once you've got enough of the adventure converted to start playing it, you have to make the decision to actually start.  It's tempting to say "one more level to be safe", and if you enjoy prepping more than playing that's fine, but if you don't it could be painful to prep more than you end up using, so try to find that balance between fear of your players overtaking your prep and fear leaving prep unused.

Once you actually announce the game and start recruiting players, keep in mind that much of the time you previously spent prepping the dungeon will instead go to talking to prospective players, introducing new players to each other, helping players build their PCs, etc.  I find this stage the most difficult part of the process of running a campaign.  When you're just prepping you're just prepping and it's just you and nobody else cares so your decisions have no real impact (yet), and once you get into the swing of a campaign it gains its own momentum and if it's going well the players help you keep it going, but the first time you post in some Looking for Players forum looking for the right 5 players and not being sure if you'll get zero or 50 is a bit tough.

The first few weeks of a new campaign are pretty busy dealing with new players and new PCs and (maybe for some players) new rules, so you might not have much time for dungeon prep.  This is why it's important to prep ahead enough to give yourself some runway.  At some point things calm down: the PCs (or maybe just some of them) survive their first few delves, the players (or maybe just some of them) like the game enough to keep playing, the GM handles things well enough to keep running it, the new players get to know each other and start helping each other so the GM doesn't have to do everything, and you start a regular loop.  For me, running a weekly game, it looks like this:

• Friday: game night.  Send reminders ("Game tonight at 8, get me your updated character sheets by 7 if you want the updates in effect for this session"), do last-minute review of the part of the adventure they're most likely to visit, actually run the game.
• Saturday: Post-game writing.  Write a recap, sum up all the loot found, award XP.  See if any players have immediate responses like "we need to find a wizard we can pay to identify that sword" or "we're definitely going after the lizardmen next week" that can give clues on what to prep next, and add notes to the todo list.
• Sunday: Short-term prep.  Go back through the last session's log and mark dead monsters as dead and taken treasure as gone in your conversion notes; you remember well enough now that you don't think you need to, but you probably won't remember so well when your PCs come back to this level in 6 months.  Resolve any town stuff that can be resolved out-of-game.  Make any short-term changes in the areas of the dungeon affected by the PCs' recent actions.  (Do the ogres put new guards in the upper guard post to replace the ones that got ganked?  Do the oozes to the west take advantage of the portcullis the PCs left open to add themselves to the random encounter table for the east?  Do we need a couple of new rumors to replace some that got used?)  
• Monday: Announce the next session and ask the players who will be available for it, to see if you have a quorum and help you and your players plan ahead.  (Alice: "Bob's not going to be here Friday so we won't have Gronkar the Tanky, so maybe this week is a bad week to do a frontal assault on the gnolls."  Clarence: "Maybe we should consider a scouting mission on the swamp level instead."  GM: "I haven't looked at the swamp level in 6 months but I'll add that to the todo list.")  
• Tuesday-Thursday: Long-term prep.  Once I'm confident that whatever we probably need for this week's session is ready, I can go back to working on the unfinished level 3 levels below the deepest the PCs have been.  For a simpler dungeon you might just go top to bottom.  For a more complicated and less linear dungeon you might be thinking in terms of what unprepped area they're most likely to discover next, rather than just prepping in order.  (You won't always guess right, which is fine.  Make your best guess, and keep prepping something almost every week, and eventually you'll get to all of it.)

In theory, eventually you'll have the whole dungeon converted and prepped, and you can drop the long-term prep part of the weekly loop and only make little tweaks in response to your players' actions, until they finish the campaign.  Now you're on GM easy street, basically running an adventure on rails, like people who run adventures for the systems they were actually designed for without changing anything.  If that gets boring, you can always start converting another megadungeon...

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 11: The Great Cavern Redux

Date:

Demmasday, 23rd of Ligarios, 2993 AE

Weather:

Cool, windy

Player Characters:

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Thrainor "Thronebreaker" Ironvein, Dwarven martial artist (Archon Shiva)

Significant NPCs:

Klisko, badly injured mage

One skeleton

Three mushroom-smoking fire mephits

Four feral cats

Two selenite guardians

Several walking mushrooms

Several giant lizards

Uvash had church and Michael was gone on another hunting trip, so the group felt a bit shorthanded this week, and hired a dwarven mercenary named Thronebreaker from the Grudge Brigade.  Ioannes spent several days taking equine handling lessons from Sakeon the Horse Whisperer, then the group decided to visit the Great Cavern and didn't bring their mule along.  They did grab the leftover food out of the mule's saddlebag and put it in their wheelbarrow, in case they ran into any hungry monsters.  Ioannes rudely dropped the Bless spells he was maintaining on Uvash and Michael, and cast one on Thronebreaker, who had apparently heard from some other mercenary that he could cast it.

The four got up early and hiked from Gosterwick to the Cliff Face, then about two-thirds of the way up the Long Stair to the secret entrance to the Great Cavern.  They found the secret door without problems, and left their wheelbarrow full of food right inside.  They turned left (for loot) and found a cavern containing a padlocked stone chest with the icon of a mailed fist on top.  Vael cast Lockmaster and the lock sprung open, but remained hanging from the chest.  Vael reached out to grab it and the contact poison on the lock seeped right through his gloves and knocked him down.  Fortunately it was not fatal, and Ioannes cast Stop Bleeding while Thronebreaker expressed surprise that a wizard who knew Apportation would ever touch a small object with his bare hands.

Vael stood back up and Apportated the lock off the chest.  Thronebreaker ripped the lid open.  Inside the chest were some rations, torches, javelins, gourd canteens, and flasks of oil.  There was also a leather pouch.  Vael cautiously Apportated the pouch out and flipped it over, and some red mushrooms fell out.  They took the mushrooms and left the rest, figuring they could come back and get it on the way out if they were desperate enough for loot that torches and javelins were worth carrying.

They went back northeast, with Vallium in the lead, until they again saw a statue of a middle-aged man with missing eyes.  They compared the size of the eye holes to the magical silver eye they had found deeper in the dungeon, and concluded that it might fit, but they only had one eye for two eye-holes so they decided to wait until they found another before doing anything.  They continued north to an empty cave, which Thronebreaker investigated with his dwarven Prospecting skill.  He felt some suspicious wind moving through the west wall, and when he tried feeling the wall his hand went right through an illusion.  He stepped through and found a badly burned man sleeping on a bedroll.  The rest of the group crowded in as the man woke up and groaned.  Ioannes cast a Stop Bleeding followed by a Major Healing, which was enough to get the burned man back on his feet.  His name was Klisko, and he said he was a wizard and the sole survivor of a battle to the west.  Some gang of thuggish adventurers had tried to shake down his party in a cavern to the west, and while the heated discussion was ongoing, the thugs' idiot halfling thief had climbed up a statue and attempted to pry out its gem eyes, which caused Massive Fireballs that killed almost everyone in the room.  Klisko had been all the way in the back of the room and so survived the blast, then drank his healing potions and staggered into this cave, where he cast an illusion then went to sleep.

The group had a bunch of questions for Klisko.  The gem-stealing halfling did not appear to match the description of any of the halflings they knew.  His adventuring party did not have a formal name; they had discussed it but not come to a decision.  The leader of his group had been a big fighter named Balthar, with a mustache and a beard.  Yes, he would show them that room, if they could show him a way out.  He said they had been looking for the Tomb of some Sortian named Lycandus, up a wall in the southwest of the Great Cavern, but they had run into a statue door with empty eyes that they could not open, so they had continued south into some room with statues to look for another entrance.

Vael and Ioannes rested for a few minutes while Klisko packed up his bedroll, then Klisko led them west and down a stone staircase into a large room with some decapitated statues lining the north and south walls, a few sarcophagi, a bunch of burned corpses, and a worn statue of some vaguely reptilian creature with multi-faceted amber eyes against the west wall.  Klisko indicated that the reptilian statue was the one the halfling messed with, and the bodies all over the floor were his friends and the thugs that were trying to rob them.  He also pointed to a pile of rocks to the north and said that was the way they came in, but the fireball had triggered a cave-in.  Ioannes felt a sense of unease in the room, like it was dedicated to an evil god.

Thronebreaker walked over to the cave-in and started digging out rocks, then said that it would take days if not weeks of digging to clear the passage.  Vael started looking at the bodies for magic items, and found a couple of potions and a nice long knife, in addition to a non-magical mace and several swords and knives, and a big melted lump of silver.  Ioannes asked if they had opened the sarcophagi, and Klisko said they hadn't started investigating yet when the others came in.  Vael asked if Klisko knew what the silver was, and Klisko thought he remembered one of the bad guys was an evil cleric wearing a silver holy symbol of some kind of dog, so that might be the melted holy symbol.  Klisko asked if they could show him the exit, so they packed up the valuables and walked over to their wheelbarrow near the exit.  Before opening the secret door, Vael asked Klisko not to tell anyone about it.  Klisko agreed, and then walked out the door.  He said he was heading back to Gosterwick to rest.

With Klisko gone, the group left the heavy pile of weapons in the wheelbarrow, and went back to the room with the statues.  Three of the four sarcophagi in the room had already been opened and appeared empty, but the fourth still looked intact.  Thronebreaker used Power Blow for a surge of strength and ripped the lid off.  A skeleton inside the sarcophagus had apparently been waiting a long time for this to happen, and jumped out to attack.  It achieved surprise and managed to lightly wound Thronebreaker with its axe.  A long combat ensued, where the highly skilled skeleton kept parrying and blocking every blow Thronebreaker and Vallium rained upon it, while they parried its axe attacks.  Eventually Thronebreaker got bored with fighting fair and circled behind the skeleton, who did not have  eyes (or even empty eye sockets) on the back of its head.  It could not effectively block attacks it could not see, and they bashed it down until it finally collapsed into a pile of inanimate bones.  The sarcophagus contained a huge ancient octagonal platinum coin, a jade necklace, and a bone scroll case with a magic scroll inside.

Thronebreaker then turned his attention to the statue.  The other three ran to the far side of the room.  Thronebreaker got behind the statue, put his back to the statue and his legs against the wall behind it, used Power Blow, and knocked the statue over.  No fireballs erupted.  The statue was too heavy to bring home, so Thronebreaker decided to decapitate it.  He got Vallium to reluctantly agree to help him roll it so the eyes were facing south away from everyone, then let Vallium run away to safety before he used Power Blow again to decapitate the statue.  Once again no fireballs erupted.  Carefully avoiding contact with the eyes, Thronebreaker picked up the statue's head and carried it to the exit.  When he got near Vael he pretended to throw the head at the wizard, which got the expected reaction.  Instead of throwing it, he carried the head all the way to the wheelbarrow, and set it under the wheelbarrow, hoping that would help shelter the other loot if someone set the trap off.

With the evil temple explored, the party headed back east through various passages they knew led back to the Great Cavern.  They briefly discussed flying up a rock formation that had a hole into the depths they had not yet explored, but eventually decided to leave that for another day.  Instead they went into a cave entrance to the northeast.  They found a baboon head impaled on a spear.  Undeterred, they continued and saw a magical pillar of fire to the east.  To the north, they saw three small fire elementals of some sort, wearing outlandish costumes with purple jackets and orange top hats, and smoking some kind of mushroom cigars.  The fire creatures babbled at them in some language they did not know.  Eventually, one of them threw the almost-spent butt of its mushroom cigar at Vallium.  Vallium picked it up and tried it, which caused him to get a lot dumber and a bit more perceptive.  

While the fire creatures laughed, the group left and went southeast through some more unexplored passages.  They found the decomposing body of what appeared to be an elven woman.  While Ioannes was investigating for signs of death, he spotted a cat hiding in the corner.  He fed some of his rations to the cat, which caused three more cats to come out of hiding and share the feast.  The elf had a magical staff and a pouch with some gems, which Vael took.  They left the cats, but Ioannes resolved to come back for them later.

As Vallium slowly recovered his wits, the group walked north to the shore of the underground lake.  There was still a skiff sitting on the southern dock, so they tried the magic fish-shaped rod that allegedly controlled boats.  This had no effect.  Several people tried the rod in case someone else was doing it wrong, but they eventually concluded that this rod did not work on this boat.  Vael stated that he had no confidence in this boat and would prefer to fly over the water.  He cast Flight on the two heavier fighters and Levitation on the two lighter casters and the four of them flew over the water and up the crystal cavern they had earlier spotted on the west cavern wall above the lake.

Entering the cavern, Thronebreaker identified the crystals as selenite.  Two man-sized creatures made of selenite crystals emerged from the other crystals and started speaking an unknown rock-clickly language, then gesturing at the party.  Apparently meat-people and crystal-people do not use a common form of gestures, as the party had no idea what their gestures meant.  The main gesture was pointing both elbows downward rapidly, which escalated into smashing both into the floor, but the party failed to understand.  Thronebreaker got bored with the communication failures and advanced into the room, trying to intimidate the crystal creatures out of his way.  This worked for a while, but eventually one attacked him.  It missed, but he kept pressing, and eventually a full fight broke out.  The crystal guardians were quite tough, and appeared to regenerate when damaged, but there were only two of them, and Vael cast Great Haste on Vallium, and eventually they were worn down and smashed.  Thronebreaker thought the crystals might have some value, so Vael took some crystals, from the creatures' bodies and from the walls of the cavern.

Continuing to the northwest, they found a humid cave full of giant mushrooms.  These ones were brown, so did not sound like the Cloud Caps the beastmen were seeking.  There was an exit to the southwest, and when Thronebreaker approached it he heard yelling in another unknown language, from what looked like a walking giant mushroom.  There were several more in the cavern to the southwest, in various sizes and colors, and they were approaching with apparent hostility.  Thronebreaker tried his Intimidation skill to scare them off, and was intimidating enough that the mushrooms stopped in their cave and yelled, rather than continuing to advance.  After eyeballing the mushrooms for a while, the group left to the northwest, toward the sound of moving water.

They found a warm, sandy cave, with a pool in the northeast corner and an underground river to the north, flowing west to east toward the lake.  They decided not to cross the water, and went back to the humid cave.  They took another exit to the northwest, crossed under the river, and saw a magic staff stuck into the sand, glowing brightly blue.  Vael looked at it suspiciously, used Apportation to pick it up, then reluctantly touched it.  He set it back down, relieved to find that it was not obviously cursed.  At that point he was juggling 3 staffs: his own, this glowing blue one, and the one from the dead elf near the cats.  He lashed two of them to his backpack.

The group continued north then southeast then southwest, and heard the sound of a bunch of rats.  Vallium investigated and saw rats fleeing into various small crevices.  They had been eating some dead pile of translucent goo.  Mixed into the goo were a few copper coins and what looked like a single magic bracer.  Vael could not ignore the lure of magic so used Apportation to extract the bracer from the goo, then carry it south to the stream, then wash it.  When it looked reasonably goo-free he put it in his backpack.

To the east was a cave with 3 stalagmites, and no stalactites above them.  Thronebreaker suggested that Vael fly up and check the ceiling.  Vael did so and found nothing suspicious.  He used Shape Earth to break one stalagmite and found nothing interesting.  Stumped, he sat down and cast Seek Magic, then Seek Earth for gold.  There was some magic to the southwest, and some gold in this room, under one of the other stalagmites.  Using another Shape Earth he broke it open and recovered a gold ring.  Another casting of Seek Earth found some more gold only a few yards north, so they went that way.

North then northeast through a very narrow corridor was a cave with a giant lizard, guarding a nest.  The lizard was too big to fit through the narrow corridor, which gave the party time to cast Great Haste and Shield spells on Vallium.  Fully buffed, he ran into the room at high speed and started rapidly stabbing the lizard.  Meanwhile, Thronebreaker squeezed through the passage and began attacking at a more normal pace.  Vallium grievously wounded it several times, knocking it down and stunning it, and then Thronebreaker decided to finish it with an all-out attack to the skull with Power Blow.  He split its skull open and destroyed its brain.  The nest contained a couple of giant lizard eggs and one egg made of gold; the group grabbed all three.  There was a suspicious dead end passage to the northeast, so Thronebreaker searched for a secret door in the obvious place and found one.  It opened into the northern end of the Great Cavern, near a beastman observation cage  Vael then suggested that Ioannes try skinning the lizard in case some part of it was valuable.  While Ioannes did that, another giant lizard approached from the northwest, but Thronebreaker intimidated it away.

At this point they were back in the Great Cavern and had some loot, so they decided to go back home.  Vael cast Levitation or Flight on everyone to get them back over the lake.  Ioannes went back to the cave to retrieve the four cats, lured out with lizard meat.  The black cat that seemed to be the leader decided they should all follow the human as long as he kept feeding them, and the other three scared cats followed.

They walked back to the secret door and found their wheelbarrow full of loot and trapped statue head still there.  They put the trapped statue head in a sack to make sure nobody touched the eyes, put the sack in the wheelbarrow, and went back to Gosterwick.

GM's Comments:

Running the Great Cavern is exhausting.  So many locations, so many weird monsters.  Also lots of twisty little passages that sometimes get the player tokens stuck.  I imagine it would be very difficult to map, if not using a VTT.  (My players aren't actually mapping in real life.  I just let them use Foundry's map memory if any of the PCs is mapping in-game, so they do that.)

I was impressed that the PCs avoided robbing Klisko.  They looted all the corpses of his friends and enemies, but showed him the way out as agreed, and didn't even rob him on the way out.

Hilariously, the adventure did not list a value for the statue's amber eyes.  I guess Richard Barton figured that Obvious Mega Fireball Trap That Just Caused a Rare Simultaneous Almost Double TPK Plus Cave-In would be enough to deter all PCs.  He was of course wrong; there is no course of action so obviously dumb that some PC won't try it.  I rolled a random value for the amber eyes, using the values of all the other amber gems in the adventure to establish a range.  (Did you know that "amber" is contained in "chamber", and that PDF viewers without a whole-words-only search option are annoying?  Now you do!)

One of the players noted that the trapped statue head would make an excellent gift for their favorite halflings under the pyramid.  If the eyes had been very valuable and easy to safely remove then I think greed would have prevailed, but it turns out they're not super valuable and not at all easy to safely remove, so we will probably see this play out in a future session, whenever they decide they're ready to fight Plumthorn's halfling gang.

Having Intimidation at a high level is surprisingly effective, at least when the GM allows using it.  For creatures whose reactions are not predetermined, scaring them can sometimes be just as effective as killing them, and a lot faster.  Of course if there are drawbacks: you don't get their stuff, and they're still there when you return.

Achievements:

None

XP:

• Exploration: 13 new locations, good for 1 XP
• Loot: Lots, with the most valuable item being a magic long knife.  Enough for 2 XP if enough is sold.
• Achievements: None
• Total: 3 XP

Next Week:

I think they might actually take a shot at Plumthorn's halflings, if they get a full party.  The lure of Chekhov's Statue Head might be too much to resist.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 10: Baboons, Ghouls, and a Mule

Date:

Demmasday, 16th of Ligarios, 2993 AE

Weather:

Warm, overcast

Player Characters:

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Michael J. Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Based Cosmo)

Significant NPCs:

Sakeon, horse whisperer

Fael, half-elven food merchant

Unnamed large mule

Kronos Kettle-Belly, innkeeper

Estelle, innkeeper

Many large albino baboons

Four-armed intelligent giant baboon

Giant rats

A swarm of bees

8 ghouls

3 ghasts

The Left for Loot or Rich for Riches company decided they needed a mule, so they could haul more stuff up and down the Long Stair.  They went to the Livestock and Horse Merchant in Gosterwick and bought a large mule from Sakeon.  He also sold them a bit and bridle and six saddlebags, but Vale declined the saddle.  They then visited the Grain Hall and bought enough various food to fill the saddlebags.  With their heavily laden mule grudgingly following, they hiked from Gosterwick to the Cliff Face, then up the Long Stair to the ruins of Arden Vul.  From there they continued north and west to the Sign of the Broken Head.  There, they offered Kronos and Estelle a deal: most of the contents of the saddlebags at a reasonable cost.  Kronos out-dealt them and they ended up giving him an even better deal than they intended, but he threw in mule stabling for up to two weeks.

With the mule and most of the food left behind, they decided to visit the baboon tower on the east side of the ruins.  As they approached the tower, the baboons inside responded first with hoots and howls, then with thrown rocks.  Nobody got hit.  Vael cast a Concussion spell that he planned to throw inside the tower to stun some baboons.  Seeing no entrances on the ground level of the tower, just some arrow slits, they decided to climb the partly-ruined city wall to the north and approach the tower from the second level.  A couple of baboons detected their approach and threw more rocks.  By the time they got closer to the tower, there were four baboons throwing rocks through arrow slits from the first floor of the tower and four more throwing rocks down from the roof.  They also heard the much deeper growls of a giant four-armed intelligent baboon inside the tower.

As the party approached the tower, Vael tried throwing his Concussion through an arrow slit.  It was an accurate throw, and a booming noise inside the tower stunned a couple of the large baboons as well as the huge four-armed one, while managing not to stun anyone outside.  Vallium and Michael climbed up the wall, and when they reached the top they were face-to-face with four large baboons.  The baboons mostly continued throwing rocks, but a couple were foolish enough to engage in melee and got aggressively parried.  One baboon bravely tried to slam Vallium off the roof, and rolled a critical hit with excellent damage -- Vallium was knocked off the roof all the way down to ground level, about 30' below.  Luckily for him, the falling damage wasn't too bad and his scale armor absorbed some of it.  

This left Michael on the roof alone fighting four large baboons and the huge one that had just come up the stairs from inside the tower.  Ioannes boosted Uvash up the wall to the roof, them climbed up after him, to help Michael withstand the hooting horde.  Meanwhile, Vael pointed his staff down the side of the wall at Vallium and cast Flight, so that Vallium could rejoin the fight much more quickly.

Michael fought off several baboons, killing one, but took one pretty hard hit from the giant baboon.  Both Uvash and Ioannes cast healing spells on him, while Vallium flew back up to the roof.  A couple more of the large baboons went down, and the giant had one of its four arms crippled.  The larger baboons were having a hard time penetrating Michael and Vallium's armor, and were taking damage from both direct attacks and aggressive parries.

Eventually, as the battle turned against his side, the huge baboon changed tactics and decided to slam Vallium off the roof again.  Unfortunately for him, he missed, and went off the edge himself with a large crash.  He somehow managed to survive the falling damage and even landed on his feet, but Vallium (with the Flight spell still active) chased him down to ground level to finish him off.  Vael first cast a Grease spell under the giant baboon's feet, then a Smoke spell around his head, while Vallium kept stabbing.  Eventually Vallium landed a huge critical hit and knocked the giant baboon unconscious.  The surviving large baboons on the roof and inside the tower fled to the cistern to the east, while Vallium finished off their leader.

The group rested in the tower for a while, then searched it.  The only interesting thing they found were three huge rolled-up tapestries, each about 8'x16' and 100 lbs.  One depicted a battle between wizards and dragon riders.  The second was a multi-panel story about the Fourth Labor of Arden, when she defeated the Berserkers of Westholm.  The final tapestry showed the Seventh Labor of Arden, with Arden and Vul fighting a huge water elemental in a river above a waterfall.  They rolled the tapestries back up, then Vael cast Flight on Vallium again, so he could fly the tapestries back to the Sign of the Broken Head where their mule was.  This was a big production involving three round-trip flights and some Lend Energy spells from Ioannes to help Vael maintain the Flight for several minutes, but it avoided walking.

After more resting to recover from the spellcasting, the group decided to investigate the cistern to the east of the former baboon tower, where they had heard more baboon hooting before.  They spotted an obvious blood trail from the tower to the cistern and then into a tunnel in the side of the cistern, but did not see or hear any baboons.  Everyone climbed down into the cistern.  Michael slipped and suffered some minor falling damage.  Vallium investigated the opening of the tunnel and saw that it was narrow and claustrophobic and continued beyond their light source.

The whole group went down the tunnel, with first Vallium then Uvash in the lead.  There were several side tunnels, but they were all dead ends, so there was one clear path.  There were also a few places where the tunnel widened, but it was very tight most of the way.  It sloped downwards gradually.  After a surprisingly long walk, they heard the sounds of baboon hooting along with some squeaking.  Sneaking ahead, they saw a group of three baboons fighting several giant rats.  They stayed back and let the local wildlife battle, and after the last rat went down, Vallium snuck up behind one of the surviving baboons and stabbed it.  The other one got away.  

The tunnel split into a confusing maze of twisty little passages, some of which diminished to rat size.  Others opened into a huge cave, with a few giant mushrooms and the sound of many many hooting baboons ahead.  There had to be at least dozens of them.  A quick conference ensued, and the group decided to retreat back to the cistern rather than fighting a huge swarm of baboons.  Back at the cistern, Vael cast Shape Earth to plug the tunnel entrance.  It was expensive, because it was worked stone, but his fancy wizard robes helped him draw enough power to successfully cast the spell.  Vallium climbed up the wall of the cistern, then dropped a rope to make the climb easier for the others.  This time, nobody fell.

Thinking about where to go next, Ioannes mentioned there was a tower nearby that they hadn't searched because of a nest of bees.  Vael cast a Windstorm spell centered around the party and used the wind to chase away the bees, and they destroyed the nest.  They searched the ruined tower, but didn't find anything interesting.

Despairing at the lack of loot, Vael cast Seek Earth looking for both gold and silver.  Unfortunately the nearest of both was underground and a bit far.  He then tried Seek Magic, and found some closer to ground level about 50 yards northwest.  The group walked over there and didn't see anything, so he cast Seek Magic a couple more times to triangulate, and decided it had to be under their feet.  There was quite a bit of rubble to dig through, so they walked over to the dam building where they had stored some shovels, and brought those back.  After digging for a while they uncovered a cellar entrance.  The cellar didn't have anything very interesting except a double door to the west and a single door north.  They listened at both doors and heard some scratching sounds to the west.

Vael said he would cast Great Haste on Vallium, and asked both clerics if they wanted to pile on any buffs.  Ioannes cast Flaming Weapon and Uvash cast Shield.  As Vael finished his spell, Michael opened the door, and Vallium rushed in.  There was a group of almost a dozen ghouls and ghasts in there, and Vallium charged in and started chopping them at unreal speed.  Michael and Uvash followed him in, with Uvash pausing a second to invoke Heroic Grace and become supernaturally skilled with his mace.  The fight lasted about five seconds.  Attacking three times per second using the combination of an All-Out Attack (Double) and a regular Attack, Vallium downed most of the undead, with Michael and Uvash each taking down a couple.  Vallium and Uvash each got hit once and briefly stunned by ghoul paralysis, but both quickly recovered.

With the ghouls vanquished, the group searched the cellar and found a copper candelabra and bowls, a heavy round electrum mirror, a couple of potions that looked magical, and a metal shield with the sigil of the Azure Knights that also appeared to be magic.  They took their treasure back to the Broken Head, loaded most of it on their mule, and headed back to Gosterwick.

GM's Comments:

The baboons demonstrated the advantages of terrain and ranged weapons, using the tower and its arrow slits to their advantage.  However, the PCs demonstrated the advantages of armor and weapons versus hide and teeth, as they were able to absorb many attacks from the merely-large baboons without damage, while their own blows tended to badly wound their enemies.  (They were lucky the huge one didn't really connect though, as he was very strong.)

Achievements:

Found the Howling Caves, an Arden Vul Iconic Location

XP:

• Exploration: 5 new locations, good for 1 XP
• Loot: They didn't find a lot, but the tapestries and electrum mirror were valuable enough for 1 XP
• Achievements: 1 XP for an Iconic Location

Next Week:

I haven't heard any concrete plans yet.  There was a bit of the usual discussion about taking down Plumthorn's gang.  They might also try one of the other dungeon entrances they know about, or spend another week exploring the surface ruins.

Does an Inn in a Dangerous Area Count as Town?

Last session, my players found the Sign of the Broken Head, a fortified inn located just ouside the crumbling northern wall of the ruins of Arden Vul.  And one of them asked if it counted as Town.  And my answer was "sometimes, sometimes not."  I should elaborate.

In most fantasy RPGs, Town is where PCs get to exchange money for goods and services, and otherwise interact with NPCs in a relatively safe environment.  I'd say the minimum standards for a place to count as Town are:

• You can rent a reasonably safe and comfortable place to sleep.
• You can buy food and drink.
• You can buy at least basic equipment, like rope and torches.
• You can find training for at least basic skills.
• You can use various abstract skill rolls to brew potions or carouse for rumors or maybe earn some money.
• You can get magic items identified, curses removed, and wounds healed.
• You can sell stuff.
• You can meet new PCs and hire hirelings.

Of course there may be levels to all these things.  A better Town could have better equipment available, more esoteric trainers, the cash to buy more expensive items, access to the really good healing like Resurrection, sages or libraries to give bonuses to Research rolls, etc. 

In this campaign, Gosterwick qualifies as Town.  It's not a completely abstract safe zone: it has a name, it has businesses and NPCs with names, and things can happen there.  But it has the basics.  It even has a few features that not all Towns in all games have, like banking and caravans.

The Sign of the Broken Head definitely isn't a full Town.  It's just a small fortified inn on a dangerous map.  So:

• There is one private room.  If it's available, you can rent it, but it's expensive.  If it's not, you can sleep in the shared bunkroom, unless that's full too.  If they're out of bunks, they'll rent you a spot on the dining room floor.
• You can buy beer or ale, brewed on site.  It's actually good, but expensive.
• You can buy whatever kind of food they have available that day, but it's expensive and there will not be much selection, as they have to carry most of the food up the Long Stair on mules.
• There may or may not be any traders at the Inn that day.  If there are any, you can buy what they have, at the prices they ask.  There will not be a lot of selection, as they have to carry their wares up the Long Stair on mules.
• Finding trainers is unlikely.
• It's too small a place for most Town skill rolls, but there's beer and ale, so Carousing is a possibility.
• Magical and divine services look unlikely, but who knows?  Estelle was wearing a holy symbol of Tychias.

The one surprising thing at this Inn was not one but three different merchant factors, competing to buy statues from the ruins.  So there does appear to be some economic activity beyond selling beer.

The PCs decided to go back to Gosterwick this week, rather than staying at the Broken Head.  We'll see if they keep doing that consistently, or if they start varying where they sleep.  That could get complicated if it splits the party.

DFRPG Arden Vul Sessions 8b and 9: Muirasso's Tomb and the Broken Head

Date:

Demmasday, 2nd of Ligarios and Demmasday, 9th of Legarios, 2993 AEP

Weather:

Cool, cloudy

Player Characters:

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Michael J. Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Based Cosmo)

Merenuithiel "Lacrymosa" Armaris, Elven mercenary archer (Archon Shiva)

Significant NPCs:

Muirasso, wight, former cleric of Thoth

Many zombies

Piercer

Gog, varumani

Roskelly and several halfling toll collectors

Eggbert, Thorcin guard

Kronos Kettle-Belly, Thorcin innkeeper, Sign of the Broken Head

Estelle, Archontean innkeeper, Sign of the Broken Head

Crisarius Three-Legs, Archontean statue broker, Prosperity Factor

Fenitior Stone-Hands, Archontean statue broker, Wisdom Factor

Godric the Wise, Thorcin statue broker, Golden Band

The session began where the previous one paused, with Vallium pulling the lid off a sarcophagus in Muirasso's tomb.  The wight of Muirasso jumped out of the sarcophagus, holding a glowing broadsword, and attacked Vallium for disturbing his unrest.  Meanwhile, a couple of zombies emerged from the bas reliefs in the walls and charged other members of the party.  A long melee ensued, with additional zombies continually emerging from the walls.  Vael cast Grease on the floor, which caused the wight and several zombies to slip and fall.  Vallium stabbed the wight several times, while Michael and Uvash attacked zombies.  Ioannes cast Flaming Weapon and Shield, and Vael followed up with Blur.  Uvash started aiming at feet to knock down zombies that were still standing.  Eventually the wight was inactive and all the zombies were down, and whatever magic or curse had bound the zombies started failing and they lost their will to fight.

Ioannes cast Stop Bleeding on Michael to fix a minor wound, while the rest of the group looted the room.  They took the wight's glowing broadsword and a bunch of ancient silver and copper coins from his sarcophagus, plus a magic jug and a couple of flasks containing bright blue liquid.  Vallium knocked the lid off a second sarcophagus, and some green gas started pouring out.  Most of the group fled the room, while Vael cast Purify Air, which revealed that the gas was coming out of a canopic jar inside the sarcophagus.  Uvash ran into to put the crocodile-head lid back on the jar, which stopped the release of gas.  The third sarcophagus contained another gas-spewing canopic jar, which they handled the same way.

With all visible treasure taken, they searched for secret doors.  They found one in the southwest corner of the room, but could not open it.  Ioannes thought he found another one in the southeast corner, but everyone else thought it was just a line between bricks.  Stuck, Vael cast Seek Earth for gold, and though there was gold about six yards to the south.  They decided to go back to Gosterwick, unload some treasure, and come back with a way to open that door.

Vael cast Flight on Michael so he could carry people down the 15' ledge west of the tomb, and back up a steep 25' slope leading to the stairs up.  While Vallium was leading the group across the cavern, a stalactite detached from the ceiling and smashed into his head.  It was a piercer, nobody saw it coming, and it hit accurately and pretty hard.  Luckily for Vallium, he was wearing a very sturdy helmet, which the piercer failed to penetrate.  Vallium dispatched the piercer while it was lying on the floor in embarrassment.  Meanwhile the group looked up, but the ceiling was past the range of their Continual Light stones, so they couldn't really tell if there were more.  Michael, with Flight still active, flew up to check the ceiling, and didn't see any more piercers.  The group continued to the exit, with Uvash holding his shield over his head Just In Case.

Gog greeted the group on their way through his cave to the secret stairs up.  The group had a long discussion on the stairs, as to whether they should fight the halflings, rush past the halflings, or head to another exit.  They decided to have Vael cast Invisibility on the whole group and try to sneak past.  They circled around to the northwest of the Glory of Thoth, Vael cast Invisibility while Ioannes cast Lend Energy, and then the group realized there was a closed door between them and the halflings and opening it might give them away.  They tried anyway.  One of the halflings noticed the door move and started yelling for reinforcements, but by the time the halflings charged the door the party was past, heading for the stairs up.

They returned to Gosterwick to sell some treasure and give Vael time to learn the Lockmaster spell.  Uvash stayed in town counting his ancient copper coins, so the group hired Lacrymosa the mercenary archer.  She assumed she was hired to kill the halflings and advocated that course of action tirelessly for the entire delve, but the rest of the group was more interested in loot than combat.  They snuck invisibly past the halflings again and headed for the secret stairs down.  Their Invisibility wore off on the way down the stairs, so Gog again greeted them when they emerged into his cave.  They had forgotten to bring any surface food for him, which caused Gog to throw a small tantrum as he stomped away from them, like an 8' tall 2-year-old.

Vael cast Flight on Vallium this time, rolling a critical success that caused the spell to last much longer than usual.  He carried each member of the group down the steep 25' slope and up the 15' wall into the tomb.  This time nothing dropped on their heads.  The tomb looked like nothing had disturbed it in the last week since their previous visit.  Vael cast Lockmaster on the secret door, while Ioannes returned to the other alleged secret door and tried to interest anyone else in helping him open it.  The actual secret door unlocked, and Vallium and Michael led the way into a narrow cobwebby passage.  It took a sharp turn to the left, and then there was a terrifying magical sigil of Fear on the ceiling.  Both fighters were affected.  Vallium saw a giant piercer on the ceiling, definitely big enough to penetrate his helmet and take off his head.  With the Flight spell still active, he turned around and flew out of the passage, over the heads of his allies behind.  Michael didn't get as good a look but knew there was something really scary there and just turned out and ran instead, as they jumped out of his way.  Vallium got a grip on his fear in the sarcophagus room, but Michael made it all the way to the tomb entrance before slowing down.  (He did manage to avoid jumping down 15' and possibly hurting himself.)

Vael stuck his head in the passage, saw the Symbol of Fear, kept a grip on himself, and tried destroying it, but failed.  Ioannes yelled for Michael and Vallium to return.  When they finally did, he gathered everyone into a tight huddle and cast Bravery on the group.  Magically immune to fear, they proceeded down the tunnel, which led to a dead end.  Everyone searched for a secret door at the end of the tunnel, and they found one and opened it.

On the other side of the door was a room containing three chests and some rotted bags full of old coins.  There were also three small gold statues along the southwest wall.  They spent some time sorting through the coins and found a bunch of ancient copper and silver, some heavy ancient gold solidi, and three huge octagonal platinum pieces that would each probably buy a small house.  They then turned to the chests.  Vael used Lockmaster to open them, from six feet away using his Wizard's Staff, and this rendered the poison needle traps on the locks ineffective.  The first chest contained three alabaster and gold canopic jars, one holding a gem, one holding two large keys, and one holding two spell scrolls.  The second chest contained a ring, a mace, a rod, and an amulet, all apparently magical.  The third chest had eight potions.  Along with the three small (but heavy) gold shabti statues, this was a lot to carry, so they decided to head back to the surface.

The group repeated using the Flight spell to ferry the group past elevation changes, went past Gog again, and took the secret stairs up to near the halflings.  Again Lacrymosa advised attack, but the rest of the group decided there wasn't enough time for that right now, and they went with the invisibility plan again.  Everyone snuck as quietly as they could, but Michael blew his Stealth roll and dropped his gold statue on the floor with a loud clang.  A couple of the halflings heard it and came to investigate, but he was still invisible and snatched up the statue then snuck around them the other way.  They did not manage to find him before he made it to the stairs up.

There were a few giant rats waiting in the landing room at the top of the first flight of stairs, but they fled.  The group continued to the top of the Pyramid of Thoth, then south to the dam.  Their padlock was still there, and when they unlocked it they found their wheelbarrow and tools still inside.  They discussed whether to leave the treasure in the dam house while they explored the ruins, or put it in the wheelbarrow and take it with them.  Ultimately they decided that having it stolen from the dam would be the worst outcome, so they put the treasure in a chest and put the chest in the wheelbarrow.

Vallium suggested exploring the northern island in the Swift River.  Michael pushed the wheelbarrrow as the group headed for the bridge to that island.  But when they got close to the bridge, they heard yelling from a tower to their north to stop, and someone shot a crossbow bolt over their head into the bridge.  They approached the tower, where a couple of armed men told them that there were deadly stone constructs on that island who would kill anyone who crossed the bridge, but fortunately the constructs did not leave the island.  Some discussion revealed that the leader's name was Eggbert, and that he worked for a man named Kronos who ran the Inn of the Broken Head, a bit to the northwest.

The group decided to visit the Inn, and followed Eggbert's directions to go west to the river.  Soon enough, they saw the Inn.  The Inn was a fortified two-story building, and there were several smaller outbuildings surrounding it.  There was the head of a large statue of Arden hanging above the front door, and both Vael and Ioannes thought the head looked magical.  Ioannes, Michael, and Lacrymosa stayed with the wheelbarrow, while Vael and Vallium went inside.

Inside the Inn was brightly lit by a couple of Continual Light rocks.  Kronos, a large Thorcin man, was behind the bar, with an Archontean woman named Estelle by his side.  They greeted the party and asked if they wanted beer or ale.  Vael bought a round for the group and carried some outside to the treasure guards, then started asking Kronos questions.  It turned out the Inn had three merchant factors in residence, all competing to buy statues looted from the ruins.  Vael mentioned they had some statues to sell, and within a couple minutes all three factors came rushing down the stairs: Crisarius Three-Legs from the Prosperity Factor, Fenitior Stone-Hands, from the Wisdom Factor, and Godric the Wise from the Golden Band.  Vael interrogated all three about their businesses and services available, and then went to get a couple of the gold shabti statues and said they were available to the highest bidder.  Lacrymosa came inside to help negotiate, and eventually Godric bought all three shabti statues in exchange for some valuable (and much lighter) gems.

Vael went outside and spent the time to cast Analyze Magic on the head of Arden, which revealed that it could speak if addressed respectfully.  He talked to the head and it told him "Restore me!  Courage shall be yours when I am whole and the incantation sung!"

Vael went back in, and he and and Kronos spent some more time asking each other questions.  Kronos revealed that the Forum of Set had an entrance on the west side of the cliff face, but it was considered dangerous.  Vael told Kronos about the bodies they had found on the roof of the tower by the Forum, and Kronos was pretty sure the two humans were his former employee Roger and "Roger's cousin", but had no idea who the halfling with them was.  He also revealed that they had found the head of Arden in the Forum by the oak tree, and had carried it over to the Inn to serve as their sign.  The group ultimately decided to head back to Gosterwick rather than staying at the Inn.  They made it back with their wheelbarrow full of treasure.

GM's Comments:

This was a complicated session.  One long combat against undead, then a lot of tomb raiding including a trip back to town to learn Lockmaster, and three different invisible bypasses of the halflings.  The group was pretty lucky that the piercer that achieved total surprise picked a hard target in Vallium.  Armor is good.  And they finally found the Inn of the Broken Head.

Achievements:

None

XP:

This was complicated, as they finished the previous delve this session, and then did another one.  With one PC swap between the two.

First delve:

• Exploration: 10 new locations explored, good for 1 XP
• Loot: Not that much, but it was enough for 1 XP

Second delve:

• Exploration: 5 new locations explored, 1 XP
• Loot: A massive haul, 2 XP

So those who were there for everything got 5 XP total.  Uvash was only there for the first delve and got 2 XP.  He did get a full cut of the treasure though, despite not helping haul it all out.

Next Week:

There was the usual smack talk about the halflings, but I'll believe it when I see it.  Kronos told them about another possible dungeon entrance to the Forum of Set, or maybe they'll try to explore more of Gog's level, or maybe they'll confuse me and try something completely different.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 8a: Never Trust a Scorpion

Date:

Demmasday, 2nd of Ligarios, 2993 AEP


Weather:

Cool, rainy

Player Characters:

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Based Cosmo)

Michael J. Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Significant NPCs:

Lyssandra and Palteon, wizards of the Arcane Practitioners' Club

Lady Alexia Basileon, ruler of Gosterwick

Freydis, steward to Lady Alexia

Sir Lucia, Knight Commander of the Order of the Azure Shield

Sir Basil and Sir Irene, knights of the Order of the Azure Shield

Alexios, Demetrios, and Zoe, squires of the Order of the Azure Shield

4 giant rats

Phlebotomas Plumthorn, halfling thug boss

Roskelly Winterleaf, halfling thug lieutenant

Unknown human alchemist, working with the halfling thugs

Many halfling thugs

3 small, roughly spherical demons

Gog, varumani (troll?)

Dalton, adventurer

Helga, adventurer (with Dalton)

Isidor, halfling adventurer (with Dalton)

Many bats

Giant bat

Some unknown undead

Last delve, the party found a very heavy and regal-looking magical rod on the richly dressed female corpse in the solarium of the Archon's Palace of Arden Vul.  They brought it to Vael to analyze, but he gave up after finding a couple of enchantments.  They then took it to Lyssandra and Pelteon at the Arcane Practitioners' Club, who identified a bunch more enchantments but said it only had a few charges left, and said Lady Alexia might want it.  The group decided to sell the rod to Lady Alexia, and also sold her the noblewoman's magic shortsword since none of them used a shortsword.

Lady Alexia's steward Freydis asked for a meeting to discuss where the items were found and any other details the finders could share.  Vallium showed up for the meeting and explained that they'd found the rod and shortsword on a desiccated corpse of a nobly dressed woman in the solarium, and that the body had also had a signet ring.  Freydis looked at the signet ring and then asked Vallium to return later, after she had a chance to converse with Lady Alexia.  When Vallium came back, Lady Alexia herself was waiting along with Freydis.  The Green Lady said that the signet ring was definitely from her family, Basileon, and that she would like to buy it if possible.  She also said she thought the body they had found was probably her ancestor Uriel Basileon, the last Archon of the city of Arden Vul before it was destroyed, and that she would appreciate the group showing some of her knights where the body was, so they could give it a proper burial.  Vallium agreed.

The night before before leaving, Uvash cast Bless on Ioannes from the scroll they had found, and then Ioannes cast Bless on the other four PCs using the spell.  Vael made a pile of Continual Light rocks.

Early the next morning, when the party arrived at the Water Gate, there were three Knights of the Azure Shield waiting for them, along with three squires, and a teamster driving a horse-drawn wagon.  The leader of the knights introduced herself as Sir Lucia, a Knight Commander, and said they were tasked with recovering the body of the Archon.  The knights had horses and the PCs did not, so the knights offered to let them ride in the wagon.  (It wasn't much faster than walking, but it was easier.)

Eventually the large group reached the base of the cliff face leading up to Arden Vul.  Sir Lucia detailed a knight and a squire to stay with the horses and wagon, while two knights and two squires roped themselves together before starting the climb up the Long Stair.  Noticing the PCs weren't roped together, Sir Lucia asked if they wanted to borrow any rope.  They did, and roped themselves together, except for Vael who chose to Levitate instead of walking.

The group made it about two-thirds of the way up the Cliff Face without mishap, but then Michael slipped on the rainy trail, and Uvash was unable to quickly steady him.  He looked like he was hurtling over the edge, possibly dragging Uvash behind him, when he suddenly tripped and got stuck behind a root near the edge.  His Bless spell was gone, but had saved him from a possibly fatal fall.  The group continued to the top, and then Ioannes asked the knights for a rest break and cast another Bless on Michael.  The knights stood at near-attention showing off that they didn't need to rest despite the long climb in armor, while Ioannes recovered from casting the major spell.

Fully rested, the PCs led the knights north to the Forum, then west across a bridge to the island, then north to the ruins of the Archon's Palace.  Vallium then chose the same gap in the wall as last time, and led the group back into the solarium.  Archon Basileon's body was where they had left it.  One of the squires pulled a canvas burial sack out of his pack, the Knight Commander said a few words, then two squires packed the corpse into the bag and carried it out.  Vael asked the knights if they needed an escort back to the top of the Long Stair, but Sir Lucia said the path was pretty simple and two knights and two squires should be able to handle themselves, and said their farewells before heading back south.

The group had a discussion of where to explore next.  Going back under the Pyramid of Thoth to deal with the halflings was the most popular idea, but Vael suggested scouting with an invisible Wizard Eye rather than just attacking, as they still weren't sure how many halflings there were.  Everyone agreed, and then they walked to the top of the pyramid, manipulated the statue's arms to uncover the stairs down toward the Glory of Thoth, and went down the stairs to the second landing, about 350' above the halflings.  There Vael stopped to cast Wizard Eye, then cast Invisibility on his Wizard Eye, then send the Wizard Eye downstairs to spy.  He indicated that all this spellcasting would be very strenuous, and would appreciate if Uvash and Ioannes could lend him some energy while he did that.  All the casting went well, and the Wizard Eye went flew down the stairs into darkness.  Vael quickly discovered that navigating a pitch black stairway wasn't easy, even for a flying eye, but managed to avoid slamming the Eye into any walls at high speed, until it could see torchlight ahead.

While Vael was steering the Wizard Eye, a group of four giant rats smelled food and came charging into the room.  Vallium and Michael and Uvash and Ioannes fought the rats, while Vael sat in the corner and focused on not losing his Wizard Eye.  They managed to defeat the rats without anyone sustaining injury, with three rats killed and the last one scurrying away back down the stairs.

Meanwhile, the Wizard Eye emerged into the Glory of Thoth, where Roskelly and five other halflings were standing guard in the shadows near the central statue, watching the various entrances to the room more vigilantly than in the past.  The Eye flew east, through a gap in the portcullis and past two more halflings guarding it.  The corridor went dark again, but there were lit rooms in three directions: east, north, and south.

The eye went east first, and found a room containing a halfling sitting on a bedroll reading and writing letters, two more halflings guarding an entrance to the Great Chasm in the northeast of the room, and a human man taking some notes.  Vael's Eye spied on the human first; his writing seemed to involve some alchemical processes, which Vael didn't understand in detail.  He then spied on the halfling, and saw that this was Plumthorn, reading a letter about how a certain merchant in Newmarket was severely late with his protection money, and writing a short note back instructing that it was time to break some knees.

The Eye went back to the dark crossroads, and then flew north.  The next lit room contained about nine halflings.  Once again there was access to the Great Chasm, and two halflings were guarding it.  Most of the others were sitting around a campfire, talking.  One was writing a letter, which appeared to be of a romantic nature.

Finally, Vael flew the Eye south.  Its view of the torch-lit room to the south was interrupted by some kind of barricade, but it didn't fill the whole passage, so the Eye was able to easily fly up over it.  The room to the south contained many bedrolls, some of them with sleeping halflings inside.  There was a barricade in the southeast corner of the room, guarded by two halflings, and leading to a dark tunnel sloping down.  The Eye couldn't see far enough into the dark tunnel to know what was down there.

Having explored everything he could see, Vael stopped maintaining the Wizard Eye.  After a bit of rest, the group discussed going downstairs and attacking the halflings, but the combination of the vigilance of Roskelly's vanguard, and the number of reinforcements available in the other rooms, made them decide to prepare more and return another day.  They went back up the stairs, out of the Pyramid, and then south to the Forum.  Vael wanted to cast Analyze Magic on the magical bronze doors to the square tower there.

He managed to cast the long spell without interruption, and found that the doors were Magelocked.  There were additional enchantments, but he figured Magelock was enough to keep them out so it wasn't worth spending more time at the doors.  With the doors probably impassible, their other choice for the square tower was to fly everyone up to the roof then descend down the stairs into magical darkness.  That seemed dangerous, so someone suggested going back to the Great Pyramid, down the other staircase, and using the bust of Selket with a scorpion on her head there to teleport to the Great Hall, near the (mostly friendly, or at least more friendly than the halflings) Children of Deino.

They manipulated the arms of the statue of Thoth to point straight up to reveal the less-used entrance, then walked down the stairs.  They expected a pit trap at the end of the hallway, but did not expect the stairs to turn into a ramp and attempt to help them into the pit, as that had failed to trigger last time.  This time, it again failed to trigger for Vallium in the lead, but worked correctly when Michael in the second position stepped onto the trapped stair.  Fortunately for them, both Vallium and Michael reacted quickly when the stairs collapsed under their feet.  Michael jumped back onto the safe stairs, and Vallium, too far down the ramp to reach the stairs, managed to wedge himself between the two walls of the narrow tunnel and hold on until help arrived.  The help was Vael casting a Flight spell on Vallium.  Vallium flew back to the rest of the group, tested to see if he was strong enough to pick up Michael, then carried Michael down the ramp and into the bottom of the pit of bones.  There were no demons there, so Vallium left Michael there and flew back to grab the others, and carried each of them in turn before the Flight spell expired.

Fully assembled, the group continued east into the room with the scary black portal and the bust of Selket with the teleport trap.  This time, instead of one small spherical demon with a lot of teeth, there were three.  Nobody achieved surprise, and the demons charged Vallium and Michael and Uvash in the front.  They killed one of the demons, another escaped through the black portal, and the third disappeared into the portal just as Michael ran his sword through it, so they were not quite sure if they killed it.

Vael suggested searching the room again, but sadly they found no additional treasure.  He then decided to send a Wizard Eye into the black portal to check it out, but lost contact with the Wizard Eye immediately when it went through.  He wasn't sure exactly what that meant, except that they definitely didn't want to go into that portal.  Instead, they formed up by the bust of Selket, and all pulled the scorpion's tail at the same time, expecting to teleport to the Great Hall.

They teleported, but somewhere else!  They were in an underground cavern, larger in every direction than their Continual Light illuminated, with an underground stream rushing by near their feet.  Looking around, they spotted a tent, and a magical circle of paving stones next to an array of 8"x8" stone square frames, just like the one they saw in the ruins of the Archon's Palace.  They were looking for a good spot to cross the water to check out the tent, when a loud voice erupted in broken Archontean.  Who were they and what were they doing in his cave?

There was an 8' tall green creature, like a double-sized goblin, wearing a shiny silver cloak, standing in front of them.  At least it wasn't attacking them.  A long conversation occurred.  His name was Gog, he was a varumani, and this was his cave.  They explained that they had hit a teleporter and he laughed and asked if they had any food.  Ioannes offered some rations and Gog spit and explained that he wanted good surface food, not yucky rations.  Someone made a snide comment about being surprised that this thing spoke Archontean and Gog replied that he probably spoke more languages than they did and they should be more polite.  A quick test revealed that Gog understood at least a few words of both Elvish and Dwarvish.

Ioannes asked if Gog was friends with the halflings and he said that, no, he was friends with the goblins and the halflings were not so he didn't much like the halflings.  But, no, he didn't eat halflings, eating other sentients was uncivilized.  Asked for information, Gog indicated that they should bring food in trade, but quickly pointed around and said that the goblins were to the southeast and they were his friends and nobody should hurt them, and that the Hall of Forty Pillars and the Obsidian Gates were up a hill to the north and that going that way would probably be fatal and not to yell to Gog for help if they insisted on doing it.  Asked if he knew how to get back up to the surface, Gog led them northeast, opened a secret door, and showed them a staircase leading up.  He said it led to a secret door south of the halflings.

The conversation was rudely interrupted by two humans and a halfling falling from the ceiling and hitting the ground a bit to the west.  Gog, not appearing very surprised, walked over to check on them.  The halfling had a broken leg.  Both humans had the wind knocked out of them, but were mostly okay.  One of the humans, a very good-looking warrior, introduced himself as Dalton.  He said that his adventuring party had been just west of the Glory of Thoth, messing with the arms of a statue, when a pit opened up under three of them and sent them down a chute.  His companions were named Helga and Isidor.  Isidor asked if anyone had a healing potion, and Dalton gave him one.  There was a brief discussion about Plumthorn's halfling thugs, who Dalton admitted paying off to be allowed to pass through their territory.  Isidor made it clear that he was a adventurer, not one of Plumthorn's gang.  Dalton asked if anyone knew the way back up, and Gog let the PCs show him the secret door.  Dalton said that they needed to get back to the rest of the group before anyone got too worried, but they should meet again sometime at the Inn of the Broken Head and have a longer conversation.  Ioannes asked if that was in Gosterwick, and Dalton laughed and said it was in the northwest of the ruins, and he had no idea how anyone could get this deep in the Halls of Arden Vul without even finding the Broken Head.  Vael was suspicious.

With the other adventuring party gone, the PCs asked Gog if he was okay with them exploring.  Gog pointed to his tent and an island in the stream and said "leave Gog's stuff alone", and then pointed to the southeast and said "don't hurt the goblins", and then pointed at the water and said "do not destroy environment only take a few fish not all the fish" but indicated that otherwise they could go where they wanted.  They decided to go northeast, where there was a steep slope down about 25 feet, with some old human and goblin corpses at the bottom.  Vallium threw a Continual Light rock down the hill to light the way ahead before they went down.

The slope was steep enough that Vael cast Flight on Vallium again and let him help people down.  Iaonnes checked the corpses for signs of death and saw that one of the goblins had died violently, but beyond that wasn't very sure.  Vael spotted magic and found that one corpse had a small magical silver statue of an eye.  He had no idea what it was, but pocketed it.  The bodies also had a stone axe, a few crystals and pearls that might be worth something, and a scroll of Thothian religious sayings that Uvash thought was worth taking.

The cavern continued northeast.  There were a lot of bats flying around, and there was a shelf to the north, up beyond the edge of their light.  Vael decided to send a Wizard Eye up there to explore, but the last thing the Wizard Eye saw was the mouth of a giant bat chomping it out of existence.  Vael cast Seek Earth for gold to get an indication of which way to go, and detected gold close by to the south.  Much searching for secret doors commenced, and nobody found one.  Vael pulled out the ring of looking through walls and saw a tunnel with piles of gold at the end.  He cast Seek Earth again and decided the gold was up a bit, so used Levitate to search higher.  Eventually the group went back west and found the secret door about fifteen feet up on a wall they had previously passed.  Vael could not figure out how to open it though.  He took turns casting Levitate on everyone, flying them all up, and having them all fail to figure out the trick.  Finally, they resorted to brute force, grabbing the stone axe off the corpse, and bashing the secret door until it caved in.  Somehow this failed to attract any wandering monsters.

The secret door led to a short tunnel with a door at the far end, with no gold visible.  Vael started to suspect the ring was cursed, as the information it provided was not always useful.  Vallium dropped a rope from the tunnel down to the cave floor, and everyone successfully climbed it.  The group listened at the door, heard nothing, and opened it.  On the other side was a Thothian tomb, with a body levitating in the air, wearing a gold helmet and an iron ankh, four Thothian statues lining the walls, and some golden furniture on the other side of the room.  A booming voice said, in Mithric, "You have found me; let me lie."

Ioannes said that he would be happy to let the body lie but there might be treasure.  Vael was pretty sure the statues were stone guardians that would try to kill them, and tried detecting magic.  One of the statues was magic, so he slowly cast Analyze Magic to determine its nature.  Meanwhile Ioannes checked out the gold furniture.  He picked up a gold chair, which turned out to be suspiciously light.  When he sat on it, it collapsed under his weight, revealing that it was just an old wooden chair painted yellow.  The Analyze Magic showed the only magic on the statue was just the sound illusion causing it to yell warnings.

Deciding that maybe the statues wouldn't kill them after all, Vael used Apportation to try to grab the golden helmet from the corpse.  This triggered a trap, with green gas starting to spew from all four statues.  Four out of five PCs immediately ran for the exit.  Vael instead started casting Purify Air spells.  He critically failed the first one, but instantly used his Luck to get a reroll before learning the consequences of failure.  Purify Air was an area spell, and casting one big enough to clear the whole room would be expensive, but his idea was to keep running around the room casting cheap one-hex Purify Air spells until all the gas was gone, like using a large number of tiny car air fresheners to clean a toxic waste dump.  Luckily for him, the trap had a finite amount of gas, and he didn't fail any more spell rolls after his Luck was used up, so he eventually cleared the room of the green gas.  He let the others know that the room was safe, and they all returned.  The golden helmet that had set off the trap turned out to be a fairly cheap-looking bronze helmet with a bit of gold plating.

Vael cast another Seek Earth for gold, excluding the helmet, and detected more gold nearby to the south.  Everyone searched for secret doors, and Vallium found that one of the statues could be moved and there was a door behind it.  Behind the door was a very cobwebby and dusty passage heading east.  Nobody say any huge spiders, so they all went down the passage, into another Thothian room.  There was an inscription on the wall in Mithric: "Knowledge of Thoth and His Mysteries Reveals the Way."

This room had four more statues, of Thoth in his scribe position, arms on knees.  Each had an 8" square hole, and each had a different object on its knees and a different inscription.  One statue had a torch and said "Thoth consumes light."  One had a figurine of a human and said "Thoth consumes the Ka."  One had a scroll and said "Thoth consumes sorcerous wisdom."  The last had a wand and read "Thoth consumes magic."  There was a door on the south wall, but it would not open, even to a lot of force.

Much discussion ensued.  Ioannes tried a Theology roll but didn't get much.  Vael tried a Hidden Lore: Magical Writings roll that told him the light and Ka ones were probably wrong and the wisdom and magic ones were probably right.  Touching the statues did nothing.  Dropping the scroll of Thothian prayers that they had just found into a hole didn't work, and they didn't get the scroll back.  Dropping a Continual Light rock into the hole of the statue with the wand caused a click from the door to the south.  It was unlocked!

They continued south into another small tomb, this one with a lot of Thothian bas-reliefs on the walls, and three sarcophagi, two of them fancier and one plainer.  The west wall had a mural of seven Thothian priests with the biggest labeled "Muirasso."  After a brief discussion, Vallium lifted the lid of the western sarcophagus, and undead started coming out of the walls...

We ran out of time there, and paused just before starting the combat.

GM's Comments:

The PCs helped Lady Alexia recover her ancestor's body, scouted out Plumthorn's gang with Wizard Eye, fought some more rats and small round demons, found that traps and teleporters don't always work as consistently as you'd like, found a new level, met Gog, met Dalton and a couple of his friends, and explored a hidden tomb until they opened the wrong sarcophagus and undead came out of the walls.  A pretty normal week.  Very light on treasure so far, but they're not done yet.

Achievements:

None

XP:

Incomplete, as they haven't made it back to town.  They've done significant exploration and found a little bit of loot, but they don't get credit for it until they make it out.  If they make it back next session, they'll get credit for all the exploration and loot across both sessions.

Next Week: 

For once, I can confidently say what they'll be doing at the start of the next session: fighting undead.  After that, I'm less sure, but I suspect that if they win, they'll try to finish looting the tomb, then try to find a way home.  And if they lose, they'll get to make new PCs.