DFRPG Arden Vul Session 23a: Gelatinous Cube and Slime Kraken

Date: 

Basilsday, 16th of Gerakios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Hot, dry

Player Characters: 

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

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

Michael J. Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Significant NPCs:

Lillian, captured Canon of Mitra

Kronos, Innkeeper at the Sign of the Broken Head

4 Ghouls

Gelatinous Cube

Slime Kraken

Susarra, Archontean fighter

Several Set guards

Vallium formulated a plan to rescue Lillian.  They would avoid the halflings, bribe the beastmen (who rumor claimed had taken Lillian) with food for information on Lillian or for her release, bring her back to the Church of Mitra, and profit.

The first part of the plan went pretty well.  They loaded up their mule with food and took it up to the ruins of Arden Vul.  Not wanting to take the mule into the Halls, they instead took it to the Sign of the Broken Head and paid Kronos for boarding.  They then loaded the food into a wheelbarrow, went down through the basement entrance to avoid the halflings, and headed south toward the beastmen.

On the way, they searched for secret doors in the Thothian burial niches, and found one.  Opening it up found a crypt containing some elaborate sarcophagi and 4 angry ghouls.  The ghouls surprised Michael, but failed to hurt him.  A quick battle ensued, with Michael and Vallium smacking down the ghouls.  The grave goods included a couple of magical white gold rings, a high quality spear, and some silver torcs and alabaster urns.  The party took the light loot and left the heavy stuff in the secret tomb to grab on the way out.

As they approached beastman territory, Vael cast Seeker looking for Lillian.  The spell showed her bound, gagged, and injured, in a prison cell.  It said the cell was somewhere to the northwest, away from the beastmen.  Vael followed up the Seeker with a Trace so he could keep homing in on Lillian.  At that point they decided to turn around and not talk to the beastmen after all, since it appeared they didn't have Lillian.

They went north and west until they reached the room with 3 portcullises and 3 levers.  Vael, who hadn't been there before, wanted to go up the stairs to the south, but Vallium explained that it led to parts of the Well of Light lever that they had not fully explored, and pulled him back on target.  Vael, not wanting to touch anything he didn't have to, used Apportation to move the middle lever and open the middle portcullis.  They then headed west into a maze of catacombs, filled with burial niches whose plugs had been removed.  Knowing it would take forever to search all the niches, everyone kept their eyes open for obvious doors or treasure, but nobody took time to search.

At one point Uvash was in the lead and almost ran right into a nearly invisible form ahead.  He saw some coins just hanging in the air, and stopped before becoming enveloped.  It was a large gelatinous cube.  Uvash backed away and called for help, as the others ran up.  The cube was huge but fairly slow.  Uvash was a bit worried that it might damage his fancy mace, but took a swing at it anyway, and did a bit of damage.  Michael and Vallium ran up and started rapidly hacking at it.  It kept trying to hit them with slimy pseudopods, but didn't aim very well.  Eventually they hit it enough that it slowed down further and stopped dodging effectively, and then they just kept hitting it until it stopped twitching.

There were some coins and gems inside the cube's body, along with a wand.  Michael, wearing heavy armor and a Ring of Free Action, was able to crawl in and grab the gems and wand without getting hurt, but his armor was smoking a bit.  Manually getting all the coins didn't seem worth the risk, but since coins are pretty sturdy, Vael used Create Fire to just melt the remains of the cube to ash, and they picked the coins out of the remains.

They found a door heading south, but it had no obvious handle, did not budge when they tried pushing it open, and appeared too strong to break down without mining tools.  Vael tried using Apportation to push the door in every direction, but his spell failed to move the door.  Giving up, the group resumed walking around the catacombs looking for secret doors.  Ioannes found one to the northwest, but it led to stairs down, and Vael was pretty sure Lillian was on this level, so they didn't go that way.

Giving up on finding another door, they went back to the heavy door, and Vael used Shape Earth to dig a small tunnel through the rock a few yards away from the door.  His first couple of tries didn't go far enough, but eventually he managed to dig a small tunnel through to another room.  Vallium volunteered to crawl through it first, and didn't find anything dangerous in the room, just the bodies of a couple of humans and a couple of ghouls.  Everyone else crawled in, and they looted a shortsword and a ring.  There was a door on the north wall, which led to a short passage and then the door they had been unable to open from the other side.  From this side, it was possible to push it open with enough effort.  However, it closed itself shortly after they stopped pushing on it, and nobody had any spikes to keep it open.

Heading east, they found another room with doors south and east.  The southern door was spiked shut.  Vael confirmed that Lillian was still southwest, so they pulled the spikes and went south.  They saw doors south and west.  The western room was small and completely trashed.

To the south, however, was a very large room, containing a circular pool with a statue of Thoth inside it.  The temple had been thoroughly and deliberately trashed, and both clerics felt like it was a place of negative sanctity.  There was some anti-Thoth graffiti on the walls, and a picture of a crocodile eating an ibis, indicating that the vandalism was probably the work of Settites.  Worse, when Vallium went into the room, a lot of tentacles emerged from the pool to grab him.  Everyone retreated back north out of the room, with Vallium chopping off a couple of the tentacles as he parried their attacks.

After some discussion, the group decided they needed to get past the tentacle beast, but since they now knew it was there, they could buff themselves first.  Vael would cast Great Haste on the fighters, while Ioannes cast Flaming Weapon.  Vael flubbed his first couple of attempts to Great Haste Michael, but the third try worked, and then Michael opened the door and charged south.  He ran right into the pool, not slowed because of his Ring of Free Action, and started cutting off tentacles as the slime kraken tried dragging him under.  At one point it looked like Michael critically failed an attack and crippled his own shield arm, but his Bless spell sacrificed itself and prevented the self-inflicted attack.  A few seconds later, Vallium also came charging into the room at double speed, and now the slime beast was surrounded.  Both Vallium and Michael kept cutting off tentacles, then went after its body.  With all its tentacles gone, the beast started biting with its beak.  Uvash used Divine Grace then followed them into the room, but Michael finished the slime creature off with multiple rapid strikes from behind before Uvash arrived.

With the battle over, Vael was very tired after casting multiple Great Hastes, and Vallium and Michael were tired from fighting.  While they rested, Ioannes started searching and found a magical sheet of yellow glass in the pool.  Rather than reaching into the murky water, he Apportated it out.  After resting, everyone started circling the room and looking for secret doors.  Vael found a secret door in the north wall, with a small empty alcove behind it.  Later he searched in the same spot on the south wall and found a matching secret door and empty alcove.  There were doors in all four corners of the rooms.  Both of the ones on the east side led to ramps up to galleries overlooking the temple.  One of the ramps had a bit of adventuring equipment left on it, and Vallium grabbed some spikes.

The most promising door, in the southwest corner, led to a small passage south, another door, and a cave-in.  The cave in was large enough that Vael did not feel he could use Shape Earth to get past it.  Everyone returned to the temple and searched again for secret doors.  They did not find any, but Uvash spotted an iron key in the fountain, which Vael Apportated out, dried off, and added to their keyring.

Giving up on manually searching, Vael pulled out the Wand of See Secrets and used a charge.  At that point a secret door to the southwest and a peephole high on the west wall became obvious to him.  He ran around the temple while the spell lasted, finding another secret door off the southeast gallery.  He then doubled back north through the other rooms they had searched.  He did not find any more secret doors there.  There was one door to the east which they had not opened, and, caution thrown aside while racing the spell duration, Vael opened it rather than waiting for Vallium and Michael to catch up.  There was an armed and armored woman hiding in the room.  Fortunately for Vael, she did not attack, and instead asked who he was and what he was doing there.  Vael didn't want to talk, as he was trying to find secret doors, but he explained that they were looking for Lillian.  The woman didn't know who Lillian was, but said that her name was Susarra and her friends had been killed by ghouls and she was looking for a way out past the tentacle monster.  When Vael indicated that they had killed the monster and invited her to tag along, she followed him out of the room.

They listened to the southwestern secret door, opened it, and found a room full of trash.  There were some footprints leading from the secret door to the middle of the room, then vanishing.  Everyone started searching for more secret doors.  While searching, Vallium triggered a spear trap.  It barely penetrated his helmet, scratching his face.  Vallium broke the spear in half to make sure that didn't happen again.  They eventually found a concealed door on the south wall.

When they opened the door, a trap went off, and gas started pouring into the room with a loud hiss.  Everyone managed to hold their breath before breathing any of the gas, and then Vael cast a Purify Air to clear the room.  The group went south through the door, and saw some Set guards in their distinctive red scale armor, looking angry.  There wasn't enough time left in the session to fight the battle, so the session ended there.

GM's Comments:

Slime Kraken might be my new favorite monster name.

Gelatinous Cubes are fun, but they're also slow and stupid, so unless they surprise you and get a free attack, or corner you, they're not as dangerous as they seem.

You would think that the combination of Seeker and Trace and Shape Earth would make reaching a prisoner within one four-hour session pretty easy.  Find the prisoner, head toward the prisoner, and if you can't find a way toward the prisoner, dig one.  But four hours flew by this week, despite only finishing three fights.

Achievements:

None

XP:

None until they get back to down, but they explored some new territory and found a bit of loot.

Next Week:

We know they'll be starting the session fighting those Set guards, and then, if they win, presumably resuming the search for Lillian.