DFRPG Arden Vul Session 16: Random Scorpion Teleport to the Hall of Judgment

Date: 

Demmasday, 27th of Jelenius, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Hot, dry with a chance of thunderstorms

Player Characters: 

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

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Michael J. Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)

Thronebreaker (Thrainor Ironvein), Dwarven mercenary fighter (Martin)

Chrysalis (Lasselanta Ashcroft), Half-Elven mercenary martial artist (Archon Shiva)

Significant NPCs:

3 undead rats

2 ghouls

Small ball-shaped rolling demon

Gerrilad, Half-Elven druid

Sisko, giant 4-armed intelligent baboon

Trefko, giant 4-armed intelligent baboon

Many large albino baboons

2 large crocodiles

Some kind of goo creature

Njal, Wiskin jailer

Samantha the Red, Archontean fighter prisoner

Tresti, Half-Elven wizard prisoner

Gwelf, crazy Dwarven thief prisoner

Jost, Thorcin barbarian prisoner and member of Dalton's Darlings

Many stirges

Several giant centipedes

Dalton, Archontean fighter and leader of Dalton's Darlings

Jason, Helga, Heliagabulus, Isisor, and Yvette: Dalton's Darlings

With Vael still not back from Newmarket and Uvash still busy trying to set up a new church, the Right for Riches company hired two mercenaries, Thronebreaker and Chrysalis.  After some brief ritualistic discussion about killing Plumthorn's halflings, they decided to go down the less traveled steps into the Pyramid of Thoth and use the Scorpion teleporter, even though they were not sure where it would take them.

They bought a wheelbarrow full of food as trade goods, and walked all the way to the Cliff Face, then climbed all the way up the Long Stair to the ruins of Arden Vul, and reached the Pyramid of Thoth with no significant encounters.  They pushed both of the statue's arms straight up to open the less-used entrance, and didn't even bother spiking it open.  They proceded down the dusty stairs, past corpses they had already looted, until they reached the area where Vallium thought the slide trap was.  At that point Ioannes suggested tying a rope around Vallium, so that if he triggered the trap he would not fall very far.  However, Vallium managed to jump over the trap without triggering it, and the others followed.  They proceded down the stairs, over the closed lid over the Pit of Bones, and over to the probably-false door that they knew would open the pit.

While listening to the door Just In Case, Chrysalis heard what sounded like the skittering of rats above.  Everyone got into ambush position, and put away their light sources since the room was adequately lit by orange Continual Light.  Three undead rats and two ghouls ran into the room, and were not surprised.  They were no match for Vallium Michael, and Chrysalis, though, and the fight was over pretty quickly.

There was some discussion of having Thronebreaker destroy the false door, but someone mentioned that the pit might not open if they broke the mechanism, so instead they opened the false door (which opened the pit lid), then smashed the wall behind it.  This made a dent in the wall but did not reveal anything interesting.  At that point four of them held a rope and lowered Vallium down 25' into the pit.  He didn't find any enemies, just bones, so Michael lowered each of the others in turn.  As the last one in the room above, Michael tied the rope to the doorknob of the false door, then climbed down the rope, while Vallium prepared to catch him if necessarily.  Michael executed both the knot-tying and the rope climbing successfully, so there was no catching necessary.  However, this did cost the group a rope.

After a quick look through the bones at the bottom of the pit in case they missed any treasure, Vallium went east into the room with the scorpion statue.  As expected, one of the small spherical demons immediately came out of the black gate to attack.  Since it was expected, the ambush attack failed, and it was a five-on-one fight.  The demon got thoroughly chopped up, and then the group proceeded together to the scorpion statue.  Wary of possibly being teleported to different places, they all held hands and tried to grab the scorpion's tail together.

They teleported -- and ended up in a placed they had never before entered but had looked into from afar, the Hall of Judgment near the bottom of the Well of Light.  The half-elven druid they had spotted before was standing in front of a giant throne that looked like it had been curved from a single ruby gem.  Once again he was torturing and questioning a prisoner manacled to a post, but this time it was a muscular redheaded woman.  The druid was flanked by two giant four-armed baboons, and several smaller (but still large, about man-sized) albino baboons were watching the show.

Vallium engaged the nearer of the giant baboons.  He quickly cripped one of his arms with an accurate sword cut.  Michael heaved a boomerang, but it was dodged.  Chrysalis used Flurry of Blows to achieve super-half-elven speed, and charged the druid.  Thronebreaker attempted Intimidation, and caused the smaller baboons to hesitate to join the fight.  Ioannes moved up to cast a Shield spell on Michael.

The giant baboon engaged Vallium, but got its huge punch parried and another arm badly injured.  Michael drew his sword to helm, as Ioannes started casting Flaming Weapon.  Thronebreaker ran forward, slowly, to help the prisoner.  Chrysalis started smacking the druid around with her staff, interfering with his attempts to cast spells and direct his minions.

Quickly, the druid was knocked unconscious and one of the giant baboons was down, with a couple of crippled arms and a crippled leg.  This caused the other giant baboon and all the smaller baboons to break and run.  Vallium and Michael then gradually hacked the wounded giant baboon to bits, repeatedly crippling limbs and stunning him until he was all out of arms and legs.  Then Thronebreaker smashed the prisoner's manacles, while Michael cut the bonds around her ankles.

A door opened to the east, and a man charged in, wearing mail and holding an axe and shield, to help save his boss.  Unfortunately for him, with the druid and one giant baboon down and the others fled, he was a bit late and running into an unfair fight.  He took several hits, got knocked down, and then was killed with a blow to the skull from Chrysalis.

Freed from the torture post, Samantha the Red walked over to the ruby throne and hit a hidden stud that she had seen the druid use before.  A hidden pit opened to the southwest, and another to the southeast.  She went to pick up the evil druid and throw him in the pit, but someone asked if they should keep him alive for questioning and someone else said they should at least take off his armor first since it looked magical.  Samantha pretended not to hear the first request but acknowledged the second.  She rolled her eyes, then helped strip the druid.  Once all his gear was off, she picked him up, walked over to the pit, and threw him in.  There were two large crocodiles in the pit, and they were apparently not very trained, as they cheerfully ate their unconscious master.  An inhuman voice echoed out "The Thrice-Born Lingust!", and nobody was quite sure what that meant.  They looked in the other pit, and there was some kind of goo creature with tentacles inside, so they didn't look closer.

Samantha thanked the group for rescuing her, then pointed at the dead guy and said "that's Njal; he was the jailer."  She pointed to the door he came through and said "the cells are over there and there are three other prisoners."  Chrysalis ran in and started looking for loot in the jailer's room.  Vallium had Gerrilad's keys, and used them to unlock three cells and release Tresti the half-elven mage, Jost the Thorcin barbarian, and Gwelf the apparently insane dwarf, who was running around his cage singing silly dwarven drinking songs.  Once released, Gwelf immediately ran to the jailer's room, found the barrel of food, and ate several meals of it, then ran behind the throne and started scooping up coins from a large pile there.  Not wanting to be outdone, everyone else started scooping coins too.  There were three backpacks in the jailer's room, and three of the former prisoners each took one and filled it with coins.  When they were done picking up the coins, they saw an inscription in Mithric on the floor under where the pile had been.  Ioannes thought it said something like "Speak the Secret Name and Claim Your Reward."

The prisoners looked to their rescuers for help getting out, but the rescuers explained that they'd teleported in and didn't really know the way out, but maybe they could get up the Well of Light with Apportation if they had to.  (Neither Ioannes nor Tresti had Levitation.)  While everyone discussed what to do next, someone noticed that Gwelf was gone, and the door to the northeast was open.  Everyone eventually went that way, then west down a corridor, then south then west some more.  Eventually they found some stairs, but they went down rather than up.  There was also a closed portcullis to the west, with a lever next to it.  There were some closed doors around, but someone advised not opening closed doors, as they didn't want any more fights if they could avoid them.  Chrysalis went off exploring on her own, and ran into 6 baboons.  They mobbed her, and she retreated while occasionally smacking one with her staff, while the others rushed over to help.  By the time the rest of the group arrived, one baboon was badly hurt and the rest realized this was not the easy fight they wanted, and ran away.

The group decided to take the stairs down, and found a closed portcullis.  Beyond the portcullis was a room with 3 levers, about five yards out of reach.  Vallium asked if Ioannes could use Apportation to move the lever, but with his low magical aptitude and high number of active Bless spells, he didn't think the odds were great.  Tresti stepped up and said she could give it a try, and managed to move the lever.  The portcullis opened.  A passage lead east, past the fresh corpse of a dead adventurer, which was quickly looted of a few coins and potions.  Continuing further east, everyone saw that they were in territory they recognized, northwest of the Glory of Thoth.

Jost revealed that he knew another exit that Dalton's Darlings used to smuggle treasure out past the halflings, and that maybe they should go that way rather than giving the halflings a cut of all these coins.  Everyone agreed.  Jost led them east, then north.  He then said "watch this" and walked right through the eastern wall.  The others followed him through the illusory wall, into a room with a spiral staircase up.  At the top of the stairs, Jost indicated that everyone needed to run south and look out for stirges and giant centipedes.  Jost protected Tresti and casually knocked a strix out of the air with Njal's axe, as everyone ran south.  They then ran past several giant centipedes and up some stairs, emerging from a ruin just west of the Pyramid of Thoth.

Shortly after coming out of the ruin, they spotted another group of adventurers approaching.  When Jost saw them he was thrilled, as they were his friends, Dalton's Darlings.  Jost ran forward to embrace Dalton, who had assumed he was dead.  After the reunion, Dalton invited everyone over to the Sign of the Broken Head for a drink, while Jost relayed the story of being captured by Gerrilad and his baboons and kept in their jail in his west Thorcin hill accent.  Jost stayed with Dalton's Darlings, while the Right for Riches company took Samantha the Red and Tresti back to Gosterwick.

GM's Comments:

My Internet had gone down during a power outage the night before and was not back up by game time, so I ran this session using my phone as a hotspot for both FoundryVTT and Discord voice.  Ugh.

I was a bit surprised when the players decided on the random scorpion teleporter as their best option, and when I rolled "Hall of Judgment" I thought they might be teleporting into a TPK.  Gerrilad, 2 giant baboons, 6 large baboons, and Njal was not an easy fight, and teleporting in meant they had no line of retreat.  They had a few things in their favor, though.  One, they had brought 4 front-line fighters, an unusually tough group.  Two, Gerrilad was in the middle of a questioning session and was not really ready for a fight.  Three, Njal was in his own room and had to make a hearing roll then get his gear together before he could join.  Four, Thronebreaker has a ridiculous Intimidate skill, which came in handy for scaring away some of the baboons.  Five, and probably most critically, my GURPS conversion of the giant 4-armed baboons did not give them the Striker advantage.  My advice to big strong monsters with hands but no Strikers is to learn how to use a club.  It could save your arms! 

Almost every GURPS mage has Levitation (super useful spell, and cheap to cast if the target is light enough, with the only prerequisite being Apportation, which is itself useful), yet somehow none of the four mages in this group had it.  To be fair, only Tresti was a full-time mage; the others were all dabblers.  And she's an NPC converted from an AD&D module, so she kinda has an excuse of not really being optimized in GURPS.  Still, embarrassing.  Luckily they found another way off the level besides flying up the Well of Light, and so didn't have to fight their way through an entire Planet of the Apes sequel.

Achievements:

• Prison Break: 1 XP for saving Samantha, Tresti, Jost, and maybe Gwelf.

XP:

• Exploration: 15 new locations, good for 1 XP
• Loot: Gerrilad's stuff, Njal's stuff, stuff they found on a dead body, a whole pile of coins: good for 1-2 XP depending on how much of the magic they sell
• Achievements: 1 XP
• Total: 3-4 XP 

Next Week:

Jost showed them a new entrance to the Halls, so maybe they'll try going back that way.  Or maybe they'll play Scorpion Teleporter Roulette again, as it's worked three times in a row.

House Rule: Nerfing the Concussion Spell

The Concussion spell in GURPS Magic and DFRPG: Spells is too good.  It's basically a missile spell that inflicts 1d of crushing explosive damage for each 2 FP you put into it, which is nothing special.  But the side effect is -- everyone within 10 yards must roll vs. HT-3 or be stunned, and then recovering from that stun takes a roll against HT-3.  And there are some bonuses to resist if you have hearing protection, which is pretty rare in most settings that use magic.

So, the list of problems:

• The 10 yard range of the stunning effect is both too large, and too fixed.  It should be smaller, and vary with the amount of energy put into the spell.
• The -3 to the initial resistance makes it very difficult to resist, and this is also fixed rather than varying with the amount of energy put into the spell or the range to the target.
• The -3 to recover form the stun makes it very difficult to recover, and also requires tracking a new flavor of stun.  (GURPS Game Aid for Foundry VTT, for example, has a nice stun counter, but it doesn't have a second stun counter just for Concussion.)

And my list of fixes:

• Leave most of the spell alone.  Casting cost, prerequisites, and type and amount of damage done are all fine.
• The stunning side effect's radius should be the dice of damage in the spell, with a maximum of 10 hexes.  So a 1d Concussion only hits one hex, a 3d concussion hits a 3-hex radius, which means the target hex plus every hex within 2 hexes of it.  And the biggest possible blast radius for a Magery 6 caster with a huge power item who can cast an 18d Concussion is capped at 10 hexes.  (It's a forced circular area, unless the GM rules it is constrained by terrain features that would block sound waves; the caster can't manipulate it into funny shapes to hit more enemies and fewer friends.  It's a Missile spell with a blast radius, not an Area spell.)
• The HT penalty on the initial stun roll should be the number of dice of damage in the spell, capped to the original -3.  So it's HT-1 to resist a 1d Concussion, HT-2 to resist a 2d Concussion, and HT-3 to resist a 3d or larger Concussion.
• The stun should be a regular stun, so the recovery roll should be versus full HT, not a modified HT.

The net effect should be that it's still a good stunning spell, but if you want the original HT-3 effect you need to make it at least a 3d spell (so 6 FP), and if you want the original radius 10 you need to make it at least a 10d spell (so 20 FP).

I think it's still a pretty good spell even with these changes, just not quite as broken.  But I'll give any players who disagree a chance to put their points in a different spell, for a limited time.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 15: The Great Cavern Re-Revisited

Date: 

Demmasday, 20th of Jelenius, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Hot, dry 

Player Characters: 

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

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Michael J. Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)

Ashe "GOAT" Maykum, Goblin mercenary druid (Sharp Frank) 

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

Significant NPCs:

Camilla, primary summoned goat

Various summoned goats, black bears, and bat swarms 

2 rock reptiles

2 giant crabs

3 stirges

giant centipede

6 beastman troopers and a beastman sergeant

2 giant lizards

3 small spotted mushroom creatures

1 large blue mushroom creature

6 emaciated ogres

3 scrags

Michael returned from his latest hunting trip into the mountains, but Uvash was busy trying to convert humans to dwarven monotheism, and Vael was still in Newmarket.  So the Left for Loot / Right for Riches company (I'm not sure anymore which is the real name and which is the alias) again recruited two mercenaries from the Grudge Brigade, GOAT and druid and Lacrymosa the archer.  This time they decided to revisit the Great Cavern, rather than diving behind the waterfall.

Vallium suggested filling their wheelbarrow with food in case they wanted to trade with the beastmen.  They set off early on a hot summer morning, made it to the Cliff Face without encountering anything more interesting than wild goats, and climbed up the Long Stair without problems.  They went in the secret entrance the beastmen had told them about, and followed the usual circuitous path through the eastern caverns.  This time, they ran into a couple of man-sized rock reptiles.  Vallium, Michael, and Lacrymosa made short work of them, while GOAT was trying to maneuver some summoned bears into position to help.  The only thing that went wrong was when Lacrymosa accidentally shot Vallium in the back, leaving a big ugly hole in his armor and a big impaling wound that took Ioannes's Major Healing to patch up.

Leaving the side caverns, they entered the Great Cavern proper, with its giant mushrooms.  After a brief discussion about the odd wizard in his throne, they decided to go north across the lake and explore some more of the eastern caverns.  GOAT cast Water Vision on himself and Vallium, who looked through the now clear water and saw some gold glinting on the bottom, 40 or 50 feet down.  They also saw a couple of giant crabs down there.  Lacrymosa formulated a plan: she would cast Walk on Air and look like food just above the surface, while Vallium dove underwater with the Ring of Free Action and grabbed the loot.

One of the two giant crabs took the bait and came to the surface to eat Lacrymosa, and instead ate several arrows and became crabmeat.  The other giant crab stayed underwater.  Meanwhile Vallium jumped into the lake with his armor on, ran along the bottom until he reached the gold (which ended up being a nice statuette of a dwarf), grabbed the treasure, ran back up the shore until he approached the southern dock, and then swam for the surface.

Lacrymosa ran around on air for a bit longer while the spell lasted, looking for anything interesting.  On the eastern side of the lake she found a very foul-smelling cave up above, but declined to go into it alone.  She ran back over to the small island in the middle of the lake, didn't see any treasure, then ran up to a ledge about 40 feet up on the western side of the cavern, south of the lake.  There, 3 stirges were waiting.  They surprised her and swarmed her.  A couple of them managed to wound her badly, as she retreated and filled them with arrows.  While her friends ran to the general area to try to help, she kept loosing arrows while maneuvering herself above a giant mushroom, so that if she fell she would at least land on something soft.  Vallium drew a knife, Michael drew a boomerang, and GOAT sent a couple of bat swarms up at the stirges, as Lacrymosa finished 2 stirges off.  She passed out atop a mushroom, as the swarm of bats ate the last stirge.  Ioannes cast a couple of healing spells to patch her up, as she apologized for running off alone without orders.

With the stirges dealt with, the group discussed how to cross the lake for a while, and finally piled into a skiff despite nobody having any real boating skill.  Lacrymosa, with her dexterity temporarily boosted from an Agility potion, was nominated as the most qualified boat captain.  The boat wasn't quite big enough to hold all the people, let alone all the summoned animals, so she took two trips, and managed to cross the small lake 3 times without any serious problems.

The next challenge was making it up a 50' cliff without flight magic.  The beastmen had drilled a hook into the top of the cliff to hold a rope, but nobody had a great idea for getting the rope up there, besides climbing.  Lacrymosa tried climbing, but fell off the cliff from about halfway up.  She made an acrobatics roll to reduce the severity of the fall, and Vallium and Michael caught her to cushion the blow some more.  She was still banged up, so Ioannes healed her again.  At that point Vallium decided to try the climb.  He made it about halfway up when a giant centipede emerged from the rock, tried to bite him, and failed to penetrate his armor.  He decided that falling was a bigger danger than the centipede, so ignored it and kept climbing until he made it to the top.  Once he got to safe footing, he drew his sword and chopped the vermin in half.  He then pulled the rope out of his pack, tied it to the hook, and dropped it over the edge -- to discover that he'd brought a 30' rope to a 50' cliff.  He yelled down to see if anyone had more rope.  Someone did, so he climbed down the rope, then down the cliff, grabbed the additional rope, climbed the cliff then the fixed rope, pulled the rope up, tied the other rope to it, and dropped the combined rope down so everyone else could climb up more easily.

With everyone finally at the top, they explored the northwest part of the Great Cavern above the cliff.  They found a bunch more mushrooms and a locked beastman observation cage with a door into the rock wall to the north.  Vallium made a bunch of noise outside the cage to try to attract beastman attention.  A few minutes later one sheep-headed beastman came out of the door into the cage, and asked in very broken Archontean what Vallium wanted.  Vallium told him something that he didn't quite get, so the beastman said to wait and came back with a pig-headed beastman with better language skills.  The second beastman showed interest in Vallium's offer of food, and went to fetch a sergeant and the rest of his banda.  The rat-headed sergeant asked Vallium what he wanted for the food, and Vallium asked if they had any maps of the cavern, but the sergeant said the Long Range Cavern Patrol might but he did not.  Not wanting to carry the food back, Vallium gave it to the beastmen for free in hopes of future goodwill.  The beastmen took the food, said goodbye, and locked the door.

The group walked around a bit to map the area, didn't find anything particularly interesting, then went west to a secret door they remembered from their last visit.  It took a minute to find out how to open it from this side, then they went in to the cavern where they killed some giant lizards last time.  It was empty, but the next cavern to the west contained 2 more giant lizards.  They finished off both lizards pretty quickly, with a Concussion spell then a combination of sword blows and arrows and a few bat bites.  Continuing southwest, they saw a few wounded mushroom creatures, with the large one missing a giant-lizard-mouth-sized chunk from its side.  The mushrooms wanted nothing to do with the group that had just wrecked the giant lizards, and fled south.  The group let them go, and went north up some stairs, into a room featuring a skinny dead ogre impaled on a large spike.

After searching the dead ogre and the rest of the room, they continued west, into a cave whose floor was lined with many, many bones.  They poked around in the bones a bit, but didn't find anything interesting.  However, there was a gold necklace with a red gem, just hanging on the north wall.  This was very suspicious.  But it was also obviously valuable, so they couldn't just ignore it.  Ioannes took a close look and declared that the necklace looked magical.  Vallium got ready to grab it using a blanket, but Ioannes suggested letting him use his new Apportation spell instead.  It took him about 5 tries to cast the spell (mostly because he already had 4 Bless spells up), but he successfully removed the necklace from the wall without anything obviously bad happening.  Vallium then wrapped it up in the blanket and put it in his pack.

Heading south, they smelled cooking meat.  The passage turned east, and then a trap dumped some rocks on their heads.  Vallium, in the front, was wearing a lot of armor, so it didn't hurt very much.  At the end of a passage were six skinny ogres roasting something over a fire.  They grabbed their clubs and jumped to their feet, as Lacrymosa asked the others to make room then threw a Concussion spell into the room.  This was devastating, stunning all six ogres.  She then started filling them with arrows, while Vallium and Michael chopped other ogres with their swords, and some bat swarms flew in to try to help.  Only one ogre managed to recover from the stunning, and he was outnumbered and went down a couple of seconds later.  The thing the ogres had been cooking turned out to be a halfling.  Nobody was hungry, so they went through the ogres' stuff and found some human-sized leather boots, the magical head of a statue (with empty eye sockets), and a sack with some copper coins, a few gems, and a rusty iron necklace.  They took everything except the dead halfling and the ogres' heavy clubs, and went west.  There they saw some feet sticking out under a pile of rocks.  Vallium and Ioannes again said this looked like a trap, but again decided they needed to check it out just in case there was loot.  It was a trap, with another rockfall trap above the fake rockfall trap.  Ioannes was looking up when it triggered, and dove out of the way while yelling a warning.  Vallium had his head down pulling rocks off the body, and didn't manage to dodge the falling rocks, but once again heavy scale armor saved the day and he wasn't hurt too badly.  Ioannes cast a Stop Bleeding spell and the group was ready to go.

They went back north to the room full of bones, then southwest to a sandy river beach.  They saw the underground river running west to the east south of them, and the plinth and legs and feet of a magical statue that seemed to match the head they'd found earlier.  Unfortunately, they did not have the torso.  While discussing the statue, some scrags hiding in the river snuck up to the shore to surprise them.  Unfortunately for the scrags, Vallium and GOAT still had Water Vision spells active, so they easily saw through the water and warned everyone about the scrags, so there was no surprise.  Once again, Vallium and Michael fought with swords while Lacrymosa ran around shooting arrows into the scrags, and GOAT's bat swarms got in a few nibbles.  Two of the scrags went down quickly with grievous wounds, and the third one decided it was time to dive back into the river.  Lacrymosa fired some arrows into the water, but the water was deep enough to slow their flight.  Vallium had the Ring of Free Action though, which let his sword swings work at full speed underwater, so he ran into the river and continued chopping up the surprised scrag until it was knocked out.  All three badly wounded scrags appeared to be regenerating.  Someone first suggested burning them, but nobody had any fire magic.  The next suggestion was to chop their heads off and see if they grew back, and they did not.  With the rude interruption over, the group decided to take the statue head back to Gosterwick with them rather than leaving it here, so that nobody else could take or use it.

They left the beach room to the northwest, and found a room with a few more bones and no treasure.  They went west into a room with some abandoned mining tools and a couple of corpses.  One had a magical shortsword and a magical blue gem eye that resembled the magical silver eye they'd found previously.  The other had a parchment with Archontean writing saying "red-black-yellow-blue-green-white", which Vallium thought had something to do with the colored glass teleportation squares.  It also had a map, of an unknown area with 9 rooms and some stairs up and down.

At this point they decided they'd explored enough and it was probably time to head home.  They went back out the secret door, down the cliff, across the lake, and back through the southeastern side caverns to the exit onto the Long Stair.  On the way home, they saw the wild goats again, but didn't run into anything more dangerous.

GM's Comments:

7 fights in a 4-hour session is a lot.  They went pretty quickly though.

Lacrymosa actually got into quite a bit of danger getting surprised by 3 stirges while 40' above her friends, and was knocked to 0 HP and eventually fell unconscious, but maneuvering above a giant mushroom to reduce falling damage was a nice trick.  And having a good healer like Ioannes nearby means that if you survive the fight, you can be back to full HP in a few minutes.

A flying archer versus non-flying opponents without ranged attacks is just unfair.  The giant crab never had a chance.

The combination of Water Vision and Free Action means that treasure hidden underwater actually gets found and taken.  (A Swim spell would also work, if they didn't have the Ring of Free Action.)

The Concussion spell is just too good.  The damage part is totally fine, 1d per 2 FP with damage dropping quickly away from the center like most explosive missile spells, but nobody actually uses it for the damage.  The "everything within 10 yards has to roll HT-3 or be stunned, then HT-3 every second to recover" is broken.  Too big and too exact a blast radius, too much penalty to the HT roll, and there's no reason this flavor of stun should be 3 points harder to recover from than every other flavor of stun, both in terms of game balance and having a new flavor of status to track.  ("We've had stun counters, yes, but what about second stun counters?")  I think I'm going to nerf it, and let casters learn a different spell if they think that's unfair.

I was amused that they found where the statue head went, but then took it home because they didn't want anyone else using it and finishing the puzzle before they did.  Adventurers are like little kids.

Achievements:

None

XP:

• Exploration: 10 new locations, 1 XP
• Loot: the magic shortsword, gems, gold dwarf statuette, and magic necklace were valuable enough for everyone to get 1 XP and some PCs to get 2 XP, depending on how they split it and how much of the treasure they sell.
• Total: 2-3 XP each

Next Week:

They had the druid along this week so could have gone back behind the waterfall.  They had three good fighters this week so could have fought the halfling toll collectors.  But they chose the Great Cavern instead.  So my guess is they will keep exploring the Great Cavern, but who knows?

New Loot XP thresholds for DFRPG Arden Vul

When I agreed to change loot XP to be based on gross loot rather than net loot after expenses, I told the players that the amount of loot they would need would go up, but didn't give them exact numbers because I was still fiddling with the formula.  Originally I had a table with values that went up every 50 character points, but that was gross -- I'd really prefer a continuous equation to a table.  Preferably a short, simple equation that I could remember.  Anyway, here's what I came up with.

Minimum loot to get 1 loot XP:

min(cost_of_living, current_character_points ^ 2 * $0.01)

The cost of living term is there for very low point PCs.  Even if you only have 50 points, if you don't make enough on a delve to pay your cost of living for the next week ($150 by default in the DFRPG rules, more if you have certain disadvantages that require spending more), you're going to need to get a job to pay the rent, so you're clearly not making it as an adventurer yet.

The other term is what actually matters for my current PCs.  If you have 160 points, square that to get 25600, then multiply that by $0.01 to get $256.

Then earning 2 loot XP takes 10 times the amount you need for 1 XP.  So if $256 gets you 1 XP, $2560 gets you 2 XP.

A quick table of how much you need at a few round numbers, assuming a cost of living of $150/week:

Points	1 XP	2 XP
50	150	1500
100	150	1500
125	156	1560
150	225	2250
200	400	4000
250	625	6250
300	900	9000
350	1225	12250
400	1600	16000
450	2025	20250
500	2500	25000

(Note that the table is just giving some examples; I actually use the equation.)

What counts as loot?  These rules are the same as I was using before, except I'm not subtracting off expenses anymore.

Any negotiable and identified coins and gems that you found for the first time on a recent adventure are counted at full value as soon as you bring them back to town; you don't actually have to exchange or spend them.  (So really the only way you don't get full value for coins and gems is if you lose them before you get them to town, or you mis-identify the value of a gem and sell a $5000 diamond as a $50 cubic zirconium.  Note that being tricked in the other direction won't generate extra XP; the power of positive thinking only goes so far.  But feel free to take a Delusion that you have more points than you really do.)

(The "first time" rule is there to keep PCs who find a gigantic hoard from calculating exactly how much of it they need for 2 XP, only taking that portion of it back to town, hiding the rest, and then returning to the hoard again and again to grab loot in carefully measured 2 XP chunks.  Would Conan milk the system like that?  I don't think so.)

Other valuable items (jewelry, weapons, bottles of wine, scrolls, padlocks taken from chests, ...) generate XP when you sell them and turn them into cash.  If you keep them for use, no XP.  Again, there's a line there.  If you only use them on the way back to town, or fiddle with items to help identify them, that's totally fine: the GM will give you full XP when you sell them.  If you use them on future delves and sell them when you find better replacements, sorry, you don't get XP for the sale value.  Basically, if you've used an item enough that you a reasonable person would no longer be able to return it to a store without feeling bad, it's not worth XP anymore when you sell it.

PCs with average Wealth typically get 40% of new cost as sale value on most items, so the Wealth advantage, which increases the sale value, indirectly helps you earn XP.  Of course it also costs points, so the breakeven point where the advantage pays for itself might be far in the future.  What's really good is convincing one of your friends to buy Very Wealthy and sell your stuff for you.  They'll probably want a cut of the extra value they generate, though.

What's the intent of this rule?  The "gamist" intent is that we're simulating the way the amount of XP needed to go up a level increased at higher levels in D&D.  Because there are no levels in GURPS, we can't have increasing costs to go up a level, so instead we make it harder to earn each XP as PCs get more powerful.  The "motivational" intent is to give PCs a reason to keep looking for bigger and better treasures even if they have enough money to buy whatever they can find for sale in the Gosterwick area.  "Now that the castle is paid off, I'm thinking of going part-time" is totally reasonable, but probably not something Conan would say.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 14: Behind the Waterfall Again

Date:

Demmasday, 13th of Jelenius, 2993 AE

Weather:

Cool, overcast

Player Characters:

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

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Ashe "GOAT" Maykum, Goblin mercenary druid (Sharp Frank)

Sister Valya "Basilisk", Halfling mercenary martial artist (Archon Shiva)

Significant NPCs:

Dire snapping turtle

Lytta / Versania, dirty starving crazy woman with a giant magic belt

Camilla, summoned goat

Additional summoned goats

Summoned bat swarms

Summoned large manta rays

Summoned boars

Large statue with hammer hands

6 Rock Elementals

Vivian, Thorcin chief priest of the Temple of Demma in Gosterwick

Jador the Just, Wiskin chief priestess of the Temple of Mitra in Gosterwick

Vallium and Uvash took a week-long trip to Newmarket.  While there, Vallium saw the town and did some carousing for rumors.  Uvash met the Priest of Zodarrim, Gedric Malachite, who warned him to be wary of dopplegangers.  When they returned, Ioannes told them about the trip he had taken with a couple of the Grudge Brigade mercenaries, behind the plunge pool of the waterfall beneath the Cliff Face leading to Arden Vul.  They decided to revisit the area behind the waterfall, to try to kill the giant turtle that had attacked them and rescue the starving crazy woman they had met there.

Getting behind the waterfall safely required some swimming or fish summoning magic, so they hired GOAT the druid again.  GOAT was very interested in getting a good look at the giant turtle, to see if he could summon more like it.  They also brought along Basilisk, the tiny halfling martial artist.  The night before leaving, Ioannes Blessed everyone and made some Continual Light rocks.  They headed out toward the waterfall early on Demmasday morning.  When the reached the vicinity of the waterfall, Vallium and GOAT spotted some lizardmen climbing down the cliffs west of the waterfall, but they were too high up to be a threat.

GOAT summoned three large manta rays to tow people underwater, and cast Swim on Uvash and Water Vision on Vallium.  Vallium was wearing a Ring of Free Action, which allowed him to pass through the water unnaturally quickly.  Everyone went quickly underwater through the western tunnel behind the waterfall, and emerged in the underground grotto.  The giant turtle was nowhere to be seen, so Vallium went to the side cave to the east and, with his Water Vision, saw the giant turtle there, at the limit of his Continual Light.  The turtle saw Vallium's light at the same time, and charged at him with its mouth open.

A furious fight ensued at the surface of the water.  Vallium fought the turtle while swimming.  He parried its bite and it retreated and dodged his attempt to stab its huge eye.  Meanwhile Basilisk jumped off a manta ray onto the wall of the cavern, where she clung while making repeated stunning kiai screams at the turtle.  Another manta ray charged at the turtle and tried hitting it with its tail barb, but failed to penetrate the tough hide on its flippers.

The battle was a standstill for several seconds, with Basilisk repeatedly stunning the turtle and preventing it from attacking, then the turtle shaking off the stun and managing to dodge Vallium's blows.  Finally Basilisk unleashed a particularly vicious kiai that stunned the turtle for a longer duration, and Vallium managed to stab it deeply through the eye and into the brain.  This was not quite enough to kill the huge turtle, but it did knock it unconscous, and Vallium fatally stabbed before it could recover, and then stabbed it several more times just to be sure.  After it was dead, the GOAT inspected the remains of the turtle, and sadly decided it was some kind of magical dire animal rather than just a large natural animal, so he did not have the power to create more like it.

With help from the manta rays, the group pushed the huge corpse of the turtle west toward the huge statue of Arden and the underwater stairs heading north.  During the operation, Ioannes spotted something on the bottom that he thought might be magic, so he asked Vallium to dive for it.  Vallium pulled up a brooch.  At that point they decided it would make sense to search the whole grotto for valuables.  The Swim spell had expired, so the others rested on relatively dry land while Vallium swam around with the help of his magic ring and Ioannes let a manta ray tow him while he looked for magic items.  They ended up pulling up a silver scroll case, a shortsword tightly wrapped in a bear skin, a small statue of a discus thrower, two small silver tokens with Arden on one side and "Now she must be defended" in Mithric on the other, a small pot of silver coins, a helmet, and an ivory coffer with some candles inside.  Eventually they didn't find any more treasure for a while, and decided it was time to proceed north up the stairs.

The rays towed the group underwater and up the stairs until they emerged into breathable air.  The GOAT had a hard time maintaining the large summoned rays in the unnatural dungeon environment, so dispelled them after everyone was ashore.  He then immediately summoned some boars and bat swarms, which were smaller and easier to keep around.  The group headed north and east, then through an open doorway to a foul-smelling graffiti-covered room.  The crazy smelly starving woman wearing the huge belt was still there, hiding behind a table.  She was generally hostile until Vallium offered some food, then ran up to grab it.  She told them a rambling story about a small, non-demonic turtle that had crawled up the stairs with food strapped to its back, then disappeared but left her the food.  Unfortunately no more food-bearing turtles had appeared since, so she had had to return to the edge of the water to catch fish, and she had spotted the giant demon turtle still lurking in the grotto waiting to get her.  GOAT offered her a deal she didn't believe: killing her enemy the giant demon turtle and giving her all the turtle meat she wanted and a trip back to town, in exchange for her belt.  She didn't believe they could kill the turtle since it was huge and also a demon, so countered with a demand for five more rations and also a birthday cake.  (She'd missed her birthday in the cave so someone owed her some cake.)  Vallium gave her the rest of his rations, but they said they didn't have a birthday cake with them and she'd have to come back to town for that.  GOAT also claimed the turtle was dead and she should come see.  The woman didn't believe him, but ran west then south, then into the large Continually Lit room with the pillars, then opened a secret door that led into the head of the statue of Arden.  From her perch in the statue she looked down at the grotto and saw the dead giant turtle.  She then ignored the group as she repeatedly dove into the water, cut some meat off the turtle with her knife, and hid the meat in some corner of her lair.

While the woman was storing away turtle meat, the party explored west, toward a locked wooden door they had not unlocked last time.  Nobody had any lockpicks, or the key, and they didn't have Vael and his Lockmaster spell along, so after listening at the door and hearing nothing, Vallium gave it a good kick.  The door didn't open, so GOAT started sending his boars charging at it.  One boar suffered a fatal head injury, and a second boar injured itself to the point that GOAT dispelled it, but eventually the third boar managed to smash the door down.  Behind the door were some stairs, eventually leading up to another locked door, this one stone.  The door had a small slot next to it.  Ignoring the slot, GOAT cast Stone Shape on the lower half of the door and created a hole big enough to crawl through.  (Or for Basilisk to walk through.)

Peering through the hole in the door revealed a room containing a large statue of Arden holding two hammers instead of a spear, and a bunch of corpses on the floor.  Most of the bodies were human, but a couple were lizardmen, and one was some kind of large clockwork spider.  They all showed signs of extreme blunt trauma.  GOAT was very tired after shaping the worked stone, so all the spellcasters called a rest to get their energy back before entering the room.

Vallium crawled in, and a voice started yelling something in Mithric.  Ioannes translated it as "present signs of your fidelity and you shall pass."  There were slots on the inside of the wrecked door too.  Vallium checked to see if they had anything that fit the slots, and the tokens with Arden on them that they'd found in the grotto looked like they might, so he slid one in.  The voice silenced.  The door made some clicking noises, but had been too managed to open, so they all had to crawl through the hole they'd made in it.

The statue with the hammers looked menacing, but didn't move.  Vallium and the summoned animals eyed the statue, just in case, as the rest searched the bodies.  They recovered a knit cap that Ioannes thought looked magical, several shortswords, a ring, a scroll case, and a few coins.  There were also some shields that looked usable, but Ioannes thought they were too much bother to take.  They also investigated the spider construct, which looked destroyed, and had some empty storage compartments and no obvious weaponry beyond its clockwork spider legs.  There was a wooden door on the north wall.  Fortunately, this one was unlocked.  It led to a lot more stairs up, apparently enough to lead to a new level, so after a bit of climbing they decided to turn back and continue exploring behind the waterfall.

They went back down the stairs, past the scary hammer statue.  The disembodied voice went off again, warning them to present signs of their fidelity to pass.  Not sure if it was really needed, Vallium put the Arden token in the slot again, silencing the voice.  Everyone then crawled through the hole in the southern door.

They went back down the stairs, north and east past the crazy woman's room, as she continued stowing bits of turtle meat in every hiding place she could think of.  They turned north again, crawled over a barricade and a bunch of old bodies that they looted on their last visit, and reached closed doors to the north and east.  They listened at both, heard nothing, and decided to go east.  The door was unlocked and led to a large room.  It had an amazing 25' tall vaulted ceiling, beautiful teak wainscotting, and twenty large and well-crafted states of various ancient Archontean lumarnies.  Everyone recognized a few of the states, like Arden and Vul and Marius Tricotor.  One of the states had been smashed beyond recognition for whatever reason, and there was an ancient female corpse next to it.  Ioannes inspected the body and saw that whoever she was had died a violent death, with multiple horrible fractures.  The non-smashed statues looked very valuable, but also very difficult to move, as they were about 10' tall and very heavy.

Inspecting the walls, Vallium spotted a hole in the southern wall about 20' up.  GOAT directed a bat swarm to fly in and check it out, and it returned intact.  Basilisk climbed up next, and walked down the 3' tall hole.  She explored south down a rough passage, with widened to about 5'.  Eventually it reached a crossroads with other cave passages going south and east, and a worked stone passage leading west to some stairs leading up.  There was a sconce on the finished wall to the west, with a silver pendant of a Set animal hanging from it.  Basilisk absentmindedly pocketed the holy symbol, then west back to the others to report the passages and that one probably led to a temple of Set, without mentioning the holy symbol.

Someone tied a rope to a goat, who scampered up the wall on its second try.  Once the rope was up there, everyone climbed it, and then crawled south down the passage single-file.  At the intersection they continued south.  The passage eventually changed to some kind of strange white material.  GOAT thought it reminded him of insect chitin.  There were horrible burn marks on the walls and floor near the entrance, as though some kind of huge fire trap had gone off there.  There were also a couple of interesting hexagonal shapes farther down the passage, and at the end of the passage was a strange round metal door.

Suspicious of the hexagons, the group stood back while the GOAT sent a summoned goat down the passage.  When it got within about 5' of the strange hexagons, they exploded violently, sending metal fragments everywhere.  The summoned goat was absolutely obliterated.  The others were out of the blast radius, but did have to dodge some stray metal fragments.  After recovering from the shock of the explosion, GOAT sent another summoned goat down the passage.  Nothing else exploded, and it made it to the door.  The party carefullly walked up to inspect the door.  It was round, and metal, and expertly crafted.  There was no obvious handle.  They didn't hear anything when they listened at it.  There was a raised spot on the wall next to the door, but it did not contain any writing or symbols or a keyhole.  Vallium touched the panel with his armored hand, but nothing happened.  The door looked too strong to bash down, so they decided to come back when they had more ideas or a wizard with a Lockmaster spell.

The group turned back, then turned east to a new cave passage.  It led to a room with some stalagmites and stalactites, which glittered as though they might contain precious metals.  Nobody saw any obvious large chunks of precious metal to take, though, and they didn't have the equipment to start a mining operation, so they continued.  They went south, and reached another room with glittery ore.  However, this one was inhabited, by six beings that appeared to be some kind of earth elementals, who were chewing on the walls.  The elementals didn't appreciate the interruption, and charged at the intruders.

The party fought back.  Ioannes cast a Shield spell on Vallium.  Vallium and Uvash dodged and blocked and parried several blocks from large rock fists, and initially failed to injure the rock creatures.  Meanwhile Basilisk climbed up a wall and started using Kiai to stun some of the elementals, and flash nagateppos to try to blind them.  The rock creatures were skilled and tough and punched rapidly.  They smashed a couple of the GOAT's summoned animals, while he made more.  The creatures in the back that did not have room to engage in melee started picking up and throwing large rocks.  After a few seconds and only a few small wounds inflicted on the rock creatures, the party decided they were overmatched, and that it was time to retreat.  Leaving the summoned creatures behind to cover their retreat, they pulled back in good order, then GOAT used Stone Shape to mostly seal up the narrow passage behind them so the elementals could not easily follow, while Basilisk snuck through a small hole near the ceiling.  They heard the sound of pursuit behind them, but the summons and the stone plug slowed down the elementals enough that the party was able to get out of the cave tunnels before the rock creatures caught them, and the elementals did not pursue them down the rope and back into the statue room.

Deciding it was time to head back to Gosterwick, the group rounded up the crazy woman who was still busy squirreling away chunks of turtle meat, and offered her a ride on the back of a tame manta ray out of the grotto, and then to be taken back to town, where they would buy her a birthday cake.  She agreed, and the GOAT summoned some new manta rays to drag everyone against the strong current out of the grotto.  The woman said her name was Lytta, though she didn't seem too certain.  While she had apparently managed to survive in the cave for years, she was clearly not really suited to life in town, so they took her to the temple of Demma.  Father Vivian said the woman needed stronger healing magic than he knew, and recommended Mother Jador at the Temple of Mitra.  Jador took a look at Lytta and said that she had been mentally scarred by her experience living alone in the cave, trying to catch enough fish to survive while avoiding the giant snapping turtle, but could be cured by Mitra's grace.  Jador cast some kind of Cure Insanity spell, and Vallium made a large donation to the temple.  The no-longer-crazy woman thanked everyone involved profusely, and said that her real name was actually Versania.  She was from the big city of Narsileon on the coast, but had been working as a woman-at-arms for a group intending to explore the ruins of Arden Vul.  She had been fooling around near the plunge pool with some other mercenaries and had fallen in, then been sucked into the grotto by the strong current, and had somehow dodged the turtle and made it up the stairs into the dry tunnels.  She had survived there for years since, terrified of the turtle but needing to occasionally come near it and catch some fish to avoid starving.  She had no idea what to do with her life now except that she had no intention to return to Arden Vul or even get too close to Totey Lake.  In the short term she decided to volunteer at the House of the Gods to thank all of the gods for saving her.

GM's Comments:

The fight against the turtle was never that scary to the PCs once Basilisk started stunning it every turn with Kiai, but only Vallium was effectively attacking it (a manta ray was trying to help but didn't do enough damage to matter), and the turtle kept dodging.  Poor tactics by the PCs made the fight harder than it should have been, but eventually Basilisk rolled a 3 on a Kiai and I ruled it was an extra-strong Kiai that would stun for at least 2 seconds, and the -4 for stun was enough for Vallium to land an eye shot and knock it out.

I wasn't sure if the PCs would ever get around to fully searching the grotto floor, but eventually they did, and with the turtle dead they had the time they needed to find a bunch of stuff.

Boars do not have as much skull DR as goats, and so are at a bit more risk to themselves when smashing doors down with their heads.  I decided not to bother tracking exact damage to the door, since the GOAT could keep summoning more boars and there were no dangerous wandering monsters nearby so there was no real chance of failure, just a question of how efficiently the boars destroyed the door.  So I had each boar roll 3d6 vs. their Forced Entry default, and one of them rolled an 18 to critically fail and kill itself, and another rolled a 16 to hurt itself, and the third rolled well and broke down the door.  (Note: These were just animal-shaped manifestations of druidic nature force.  No actual animals were harmed in this RPG session.  Well, except the turtle, but that was a dire animal.  Also, it tried to eat the PCs first.)

I found it funny that the PCs tried Stone Shape before they tried sticking small objects in the stone door's slots, but whatever works.  In the end they didn't get hammered by the big stone statue so they must have done something right.  I was not surprised that they turned around when they realized the stairs led to another level, as these players tend to be tidy about trying to finish one area before starting another.  (At least during a session.  Between sessions, they often change goals.)

The hexagonal explosive trap was a legitimate chance for a TPK, as it did absolutely horrible damage if you were right on top of it.  But the damage dropped off quickly with distance and the PCs were smart to send in a summoned goat first, and so it was merely a One Goat Kill.

The fight against the six stone elemental creatures was also rough, but after a few turns of figuring out how tough they were, Vallium called for a retreat and the group managed to get away in good order.  Fortunately for the PCs, those big rock things were slower than them, so once they disengaged they weren't going to get caught.  And the GOATs wave of summons helped by soaking up hits and blocking the way.

Finally, they figured a way to motivate Lytta to come back to town with them (food) and a way to make her give up her magic belt (more food).  And they were generous enough to pay for a Cure Insanity for her, though that was only fair after she traded them a magic belt for a rescue and some food.  Her "seeing belt" was identified as a Belt of Dwarvenkind, which granted Night Vision but also other dwarven traits like extra fatigue points, extra lifting strength, poison resistance, and a very nice beard.  We'll see if the PCs keep the belt for its powers or sell it for the loot XP.

Achievements:

The Rescuers: 1 XP each for rescuing Lytta / Versania and curing her insanity

XP:

• Exploration: 8 new locations, good for 1 XP
• Loot: enough for 1 XP if they kept some magic items, or 2 XP if they sold almost everything
• Achievements: 1 XP for rescue
• Total: 3-4 XP depending on what they sell

Next Week:

Of course there has already been talk about going after Plumthorn's Halflings, but that happens every week and so far they have they always backed down.  They still have unexplored territory behind the waterfall, but they probably only feel safe going there if they have the GOAT and his collection of Aquaman spells.  If not, they might explore the Great Cavern or the surface ruins.

First Deliberate House Rule Change in DFRPG Arden Vul: XP Now Based on Gross Loot

I'm trying hard to keep rules consistent across this campaign.  I've found that players hate it when the GM changes things in the middle of the game.  Except maybe if they asked for the change and it's clearly in their favor.

In this case, I'm not sure if it's actually in their favor, but they specifically asked for it, and voted 5-0 for it.  (We currently have 6 players; 1 hasn't voted yet, but 5 is a clear majority.)

The previous rule was that loot XP were based on net profit during the delve.  If you brought $3000 of loot (coins, gems, plus anything else you immediately sold and turned into coins or gems) back to town, but used $500 of potions and rations and arrows during the delve, you got credit for a net profit of $2500, $3000 income minus $500 expenses.  Several players really hated this because it made them not want to ever use any consumable items because that might cost them XP.  (It probably wouldn't, but it could if the expenses pushed them right below a breakpoint, and they wouldn't know for sure until the end of the delve when we ran the totals, by which time it was too late to undrink those potions.)

The change is that now loot XP is based on gross loot found, brought back to town, and turned to coins and gems.  Expenses no longer matter for XP.  If you burn $5000 of potions and scrolls to find $1000 of loot, that's fine, you still get credit for $1000 of loot.  (Of course if you do that too many times you'll be broke, but that's a separate problem.  You may have 99 problems but loot XP won't be one.)

Of course there's no such thing as a free lunch.  The tradeoff is that I'm going to raise the thresholds needed to get 1 XP (a reasonably rich delve) and 2 XP (a great haul), now that they are based on gross rather than net loot.  But the tracking and calculations will be simpler and players will feel more free to consume their consumables.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 13: Yrtol and the Turtle

Date:

Demmasday, 6th of Jelenius, 2993 AE

Weather:

Cool, overcast

Player Characters:

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

Ashe "Goat" Maykum, Goblin mercenary druid (Sharp Frank)

Lasselanta "Chrysalis" Ashcroft, Half-Elven mercenary martial artist (ArchonShiva)

Significant NPCs:

Hama and Company, adventurers

Yrtol, unfriendly ghost

Dire snapping turtle

Dirty starving crazy woman with a giant magic belt

Camilla, summoned goat

Additional summoned goats

Summoned bat swarms

Summoned fish swarm

Summoned poisonous water snake

Most of the Left for Loot (alias Right for Riches) company decided to take a shopping trip to Newmarket, but Ioannes didn't want to spend that long away from his newly acquired cats, so he stayed in Gosterwick.  And then he got bored so he went over to the Grudge Brigade Mercenary HQ and hired both the animal summoning goblin druid "Goat" and the mysterious half-elven staff fighter "Chrysalis".  Crysalis had just bought a Staff of Blue Light that Left for Loot had found in the Great Cavern, and wanted to test it out.  Ioannis told them that with a small group he didn't want to go all the way up the Long Stair into the ruins of Arden Vul, just go to the base of the waterfall and check out the old haunted watchtower and the tunnels that Goat had previously found behind the waterfall's plunge pool using a Water Vision spell.  The mercs were fine with that, as long as they got paid.

Ioannes dropped the Bless spells on his usual companions, figuring they couldn't get in too much trouble shopping, and Blessed both Goat and Chrysalis.  He also made a couple of new Continual Light rocks.  Chrysalis cast Keen Hearing on all three of them, saying she could maintain it all day.  Goat summoned two more goats (in addition to Camilla) and offered to let the goats carry everyone's backpacks.  He also summoned some bat swarms, but those didn't carry anything.

The group headed north on the Imperial Road toward Arden Vul, and ran into a group of 6 adventurers heading the other way.  The leader of the other company, a big Thorcin fighter, introduced himself as Hama and also mentioned the names of his companions.  Ioannes introduced himself as Ioannes, from Right for Riches.  Hama asked if there was news from Gosterwick, and Ioannes didn't have anything major to report.  Ioannes asked Hama for news from Arden Vul and was told the halflings under the pyramid were doing a major construction project, building new doors around the Glory of Thoth.

After bidding Hama and Company farewell, the party and the world's worst traveling petting zoo continued north until they approached the waterfall.  Their plan was to fight the terrifying ghost they had fled from before, but with some new spells to give them a better chance.  Ioannes cast Bravery on everyone to defeat the ghost's fear attack, and planned to later cast Affect Spirits on their weapons (including a goat) so they could actually hurt it.  They crept toward the watchtower, but the ghost didn't show himself.  Goat started casting Mystic Mist to make the battlefield unfair in their favor, and when he was almost done, Ioannes cast Affect Spirits on Chrysalis's blue staff, then Chrysalis ran forward and opened the trap door leading to the basement.

That caused the Yrtol the Unfriendly Ghost to emerge from the basement, just like last time, screeching a fearful threat to kill all Settites.  This time, with the Bravery spell up, none of them were scared.  Yrtol pointed his Finger of Doom at Chrysalis, but she was close enough to parry the attack with her glowing blue staff, and the purple doom-beam missed her harmlessly.  She gave the ghost a good smack.  As Yrtol felt the pain of a weapon that could actually hurt him, wielded by someone who could parry his attacks and seemed immune to his fear, he retreated back into the wall of the tower.  Chrysalis hit him one more time before he fully disappeared into the wall, and they did not see the ghost again.  He yelled some more threats about how he would kill them all since they were Settite murderers, and Ioannes yelled something back about not being Settites and in fact killing Settites, but they did not see him again and so could not be sure if he heard them through the stone wall he was cowering inside of or behind.

With the ghost apparently fled, Goat finished casting Mystic Mist to protect them while they searched, and then Chrysalis went down into the basement.  It was a 20' square room, mostly featureless, but with a skeleton on the floor.  The skeleton was wearing a tarnished silver circlet and a silk purse.  Afraid to touch anything, Ioannes asked Goat to have a goat open the purse.  Inside were a magic potion and a magic pebble.  Ioannes took a close look at the potion and thought it looked like a Flight potion, worth serious money.  They had no idea about the pebble but took it anyway, and they took the purse too.  The circlet did not appear magical, but it was valuable (if silver) or very valuable (if platinum), so of course they took it too.  They searched the basement for secret doors, didn't find any, and left with Yrtol's stuff before the ghost returned.

Next they headed to the waterfall's plunge pool.  Goat cast Water Vision and again noted the location of two tunnels, about 35' and 40' underwater, behind the waterfall.  After some discussion he cast Water Vision, Breathe Water, and Swim on Chrysalis.  Chrysalis swam through the eastern tunnel, with a strong current at her back, and eventually popped up into a large cave, with huge statue of Arden's head on the north wall, and a huge snapping turtle swimming toward her.  She backed into the tunnel that she thought was too narrow for it to follow, then parried its bite and smacked it in the flipper.  She followed up with a hard blow to the head, momentarily stunning the huge turtle.  It regained its wits and came at her again, then reconsidered and swam away.

Meanwhile, Goat got a bit worried and summoned a swarm of fish and a poisonous water snake, sending them down the tunnel after Chyrsalis and ordering them to protect her.  However they arrived right as she drove the turtle away, so merely served as an honor guard.  She swam around the cave a bit, seeing a small dry platform to the south and a larger one to the west, then swam back out to update her friends.

Goat was tired from casting and maintaining so many spells, and Ioannes was casting Lend Energy to help, when Chrysalis popped out of the water.  She let them know about the cave and the turtle, and said she would wait for them inside.  She then swam back into the cave and climbed up onto the southern dry platform, where she could probably be safe from drowning, current, and giant turtles until the others arrived.  There was an old campfire and a skeleton there, but no loot.  She searched the platform while waiting for the others, but didn't find anything.

After some rest, Goat cast Breathe Water on both himself and Ioannes, and Swim and Water Vision on Ioannes, then climbed on the larger Ioannes's back while Ioannes swam quickly down the tunnel, into the cave, past Chrysalis on the south platform, and up a flight of stairs to the west platform.  He dropped Goat off there, then swam back and grabbed Chrysalis and swam her over to the west platform too.  Ioannes was pretty fresh after the short magically-enhanced swim, but Goat was tired from casting all those spells, so took another rest.

Ioannes and Chrysalis searched the west platform.  There was an inscription on the wall in Mithric, which he could read (but not fluently).  It said something like "Let all persons honor the sacrifice of Arden, founder of this site and defender of her people" in huge letters, and "Lucullus Axia made this as thanks to Lady Arden for rescuing him" in merely big letters.  There were also a couple of old clay lamps and a couple of old silver coins.

With Water Vision still running, Chyrsalis scanned the bottom of the pool and spotted what looked like a magic shield on the bottom.  She got Goat to cast another Swim spell on her, but thought she could do the dive without Water Breathing.  She used Breath Control, then dove toward the shield.  On the way, she spotted another glint of magic, so moved that way and grabbed a magical red square of glass.  She then swam over and grabbed the shield, then surfaced.  The turtle had not reappeared.

While the Swim spell was still active, she jumped back in the water and looked around.  She saw two staircases on the north wall, flanking the statue of Arden, starting about 20' underwater.  She surfaced, told the others that she was going to explore the stairs, then took a big breath and dove.  With the Swim spell she quickly emerged from the top of the stairs into a dry passage with breathable air, with passages leading north and west.  She looked around quickly, then swam back south before the Swim spell ran out to tell the others, then swam back north again to wait for them at the top of the stairs.

Eventually Goat had enough energy back to cast Swim on Ioannes and Water Breathing on both of them, and Ioannes carried him up the watery stairs toward Chrysalis.  Once they were all reunited on dry land, Goat dropped all the aquatic spells and summoned some new goats and bat swarms.  Chrysalis heard the sound of bare feet running to the north.  When the animals were all ready, the group headed north, then turned east, then saw an open doorway to the south and smelled a horrible odor coming from that direction.  Looking into the room, they saw skeletons, graffiti on the walls, piles of filth everywhere, and a skinny dirty woman wearing rags and a gigantic magical-looking belt, squatting on a table.  She babbled various unfriendly things.  Ioannes tried talking to the woman, but she accused him of being in league with the demon turtle.  He mentioned food, which seemed to interest her, but they had left most of their gear outside guarded by the goats, so they didn't actually have any.  She hid behind the table.  Eventually they gave up on talking to her and left.

They continued down a passage east, then south, then east into a room containing some stone benches, a shrine to Arden, and a circular pool that appeared magical.  There was a Mithric inscription on the wall saying "Those who would take up the labors of the Great Defender must purify themselves."  Ioannes washed his hands in the pool, and the water felt clean.  Everyone wondered why the woman was so dirty if she had this pool of clean water right here.  There were some offerings to Arden on the shrine, including a couple of small ivory statuettes, but Ioannes thought it would be wrong to take them.

They went north up a staircase and found a makeshift barricade with the corpses of about a dozen ancient legionaires heaped all over it.  The ancient equipment was all in bad shape, but the bodies had a few ancient gold solidi and silver coins, so they took those.  There were doors leading north and east beyond the barricade.  They listened at both, but Ioannes said they should go back west and investigate their route back before opening these doors.

Going back west, they spotted the crazy woman spying on them around a corner, but she fled.  They went west to where they had emerged from the water, then continued farther west, into a room with more ancient corpses.  They had a few usable-looking shortswords and spears.  Ioannes declared that the shortswords were valuable loot and took them, but they left the spears.  There was a closed door south, and a big archway east, with orange light coming through it.

They went through the archway into a huge and splendid room.  It contained frescoes all about the Labors of Arden on the north and south walls, as well as twelve magical pillars with magical Mithric numerals on them, one dedicated to each of the Labors of Arden.  There was a sunken circular area in the center of the long room, containing a relatively recent corpse of a knight in magical scale armor, with a magic greatsword next to him.  Everyone was suspicious of the sunken area, so they all left the room, then sent in a summoned goat to get the loot.  It pushed first the sword, then the knight's corpse, all the way from the sunken area to the stairs on the west side of the room.  While the corpse was being dragged, a purse fell off its belt.  Chrysalis ran over and grabbed it, and it contained a bunch of small pink gems.  Ioannes inspected the corpse.  He appeared to be a Knight of the Azure Shield, probably only weeks or months old, and had fatal puncture wounds all around its neck, like he had been repeatedly stabbed in the neck by spears or daggers.

Ioannes picked up the sword, which briefly felt like it resisted being picked up, then yielded, then sent a vision into Ioannes' head.  The sword was being held by the knight, as it was plunged over and over into a bear-sized creature with feathers like a bird.  It struck the killing blow, and the knight rested -- as another of the creatures snuck up behind him and grabbed him by the neck with its huge horrible claws, and squeezed and stabbed and strangled, while the knight swung the sword blindly back trying to fend off the attack.  The vision ended with the sword falling from the knight's hands and then the knight falling to the ground next to it.

They discussed stripping the armor off the body, then decided to leave it on and just take the whole corpse out.  They checked the door to the south, but it was locked, and they didn't have any lockpicks, and decided not to try to break it down.  They investigated to the east of the big room, and found some stairs leading up to another room with four more ancient bodies.  One body had a magic shortsword, and there was a well-preserved deluxe folio of The Twelve Labors of Arden nearby.  The other weapons and armor were in bad condition.

At that point Ioannes said they had enough treasure and should head back.  They went back to the crazy woman's room and tried to convince her to come with them, but she just laughed at the idea and screamed at them to leave her alone.  Eventually they gave up and went back to the watery stairs.  Goat first cast his aquatic spells on Chrysalis, who scouted ahead, didn't see the turtle in the big watery cave, eventually found that it was resting in a side cavern to the east, decided not to fight it, and went back to report to the others that the western tunnel looked like a safe way out.  She then swam out of the cave before the spells expired to wait for the others, dragging the knight's corpse behind her.  Goat rested a bit, then cast Breathe Water on himself and Ioannes, Swim on Ioannes, and Shape Water to create an air bubble to protect the book.  Ioannes swam both of them out.

When they met Chrysalis at the edge of the plunge pool, they took the magic scale armor off the knight's corpse, then buried the body.  Goat then said to hold on for a moment, grabbed all the food out of his backpack, and summoned a (merely large, not dire) turtle.  Chrysalis tied the food to the turtle's shell and Goat ordered the turtle to carry the food up the tunnel, across the wet cave, up the submerged stairs, and north to the dry area where the woman could find it.

They headed back to Gosterwick with a large amount of treasure to split three ways.  They didn't run into anything significant on the way.

GM's Comments:

Ghosts are a lot less scary (literally) when you have a Bravery spell.  And having an Affect Spirits spell helps too.  Yrtol the Unfriendly Ghost took a couple of hard smacks from Chrysalis's glowing blue staff and noped his way through a wall.

I fully expected the PCs to cast Breathe Water and Swim on a single scout (because Goat didn't have enough FP to cast them on everyone at once) and send them into the cave alone, which they did.  I wasn't sure if that one PC would survive the experience, as the turtle was SM +4 (bigger than an elephant) with the bite damage to match.  One good surprise roll followed by one good bite could be the last thing that scout never saw.  However Chrysalis had Water Vision, which nerfed the turtle's otherwise excellent chance of surprise, and without surprise she was able to parry its bite and then land a nice brain shot (she initially rolled poor damage, but used Luck to reroll) to stun it.  At that point it decided to go hide and wait for easier prey.

These players are definitely motivated by XP.  At some point they decided they had explored enough rooms and found enough treasure to meet their weekly quota of both, and decided it was time to go home.

XP:

• Exploration: 9 new locations, good for 1 XP
• Loot: A very good haul, and only split 3 ways (summoned animals don't get paid), for 2 XP
• Achievements: None
• Total: 3 XP

Next Week:

Most of Left for Loot should be back from Newmarket and will probably be jealous of all the stuff Ioannes and the mercenaries found.  I suspect that they'll want to revisit the area behind the falls, since they left some unopened doors and a mysterious woman behind.  Of course that will only happen if Goat is available again, as he's currently their only source of Breathe Water and Swim.