DFRPG Arden Vul Session 25: Looking for the Back Door to the Forum of Set

Date: 

Tahsday, 27th of Gerakios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Warm, 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:

Wicktrimmer, Imperial Goblin Leader of the Rarities Factor

Barnaby Goodbarrel, Halfling Lawyer

Yrtol the Angry Ghost

3 Fire Mephits

4 Set Guards

12 Zombies

Telepathic Gold Cat Statue

Large Black Pudding

Many Fungal Foresters

6 Beastmen, Servants of Androsia

Several Cave Lizards

4 Varumani

Wicktrimmer, the leader of the Rarities Factor in Gosterwick, sent a message to the Right for Riches Company that he believed they had found some significant magical items and he wanted to trade for them.  Vael, Vallium, and Ioannes met with him at the Rarities Factor.  Vael was curious how Wicktrimmer knew, and Wicktrimmer said he was a collector of magical items and regularly used magical means to detect any new powerful items in Gosterwick, but did not give details.

After a long negotiation, the Right for Riches Company contacted a local halfling lawyer, Barnaby Goodbarrel, and had him write up papers incorporating them as an officialy chartered company within Gosterwick, then get approval from the Thesmothete of Vetucaster, Eusbia Phokas.  With their Company legally able to own property, they returned to Wicktrimmer to conclude the deal.

He gave them 20000 pieces of silver, free lifetime banking at the Rarities Factor, personal shopping services in Narsileon (for up to five designated items per month, if available and found by his agent there, using their own funds deposited at the Rarities Factor), and any information on their enemies (particularly the Cult of Set) that he learned.  In exchange they would give him the powerful magic stiletto Larel's Pin and right of first refusal on any magical or historical items the company or its members wanted to sell in the future (except for a few items which Lady Alexia specifically claimed).

Wicktrimmer did not have any new information on the Set cult, beyond the contract on their heads that Coinbase had already told them about.  Vallium decided they should revisit the Great Cavern and see if the Settite guard post they had found there connected with the Forum of Set.  Vael's Living Wheelbarrow (invented by Ashe the goblin druid) was ready, so cast Levitation on it and used it to carry Larel's Sack.

Ioannes spent some of his wealth on an even more expensive power item, which enabled him to cast Bless +2 on Vael, Vallium, and Michael, as long as they paid for the power item recharges.  Uvash declined and kept his Bless +1.

The group left for Arden Vul early Tahsday morning (varying their delve day to throw off their enemies).  They first visited Yrtol's ruined watchtower.  Everyone gathered closely around Uvash and his Amulet of Bravery to resist Yrtol's fear effect, and Vael wore Larel's Cloak in hopes it would impress the ghost.  When they opened the trap door into the basement, Yrtol appeared and started talking about killing them and the rest of the Settites who'd sacrificed his Nyema.  Vael said something about killing many Settites themselves, which slowed Yrtol a bit.  Yrtol asked about Michael's red scale armor, and Vael said that it had come off a dead Settite.  At that point Yrtol decided to spare them, this time, but said not to come back until they'd killed 50 more Settites and recovered Nyema's body.  They asked how they would know her, and Yrtol said she'd had a wedding necklace with her name on it, in Mithric, if any of them could read.

Leaving Yrtol, the group headed north to the waterfall, up the Long Stair to the beastman secret door into the Great Cavern.  After going in, Vallium led them north to the statue of The Philosopher, where he put two magical silver eyes into its empty eye sockets to see what would happen.  The silver eyes disappeared but there was no obvious magical effect.  Vael cast Identify Spell and determined that the statue had just cast some kind of Great Healing spell over the area, but since none of them had been injured, it was wasted.

Next, Vallium lead the group east then north through side caverns until they reached the cave with 3 fire mephits and a column of magical fire.  He asked Michael, wearing the Salamander Amulet, to check out the fire and see if it led anywhere interesting.  It did not.  It nicely cleaned his armor, though.  The mephits were a bit grumpy, because they were out of Eye Opener mushrooms.  They asked the group to bring them some.

Next, the group went west across the Great Cavern toward the Set guard station, 25' up the western wall.  Vael cast The Bracteros Effect on Vallium's Continual Light stone so that nobody far away could see it, and the rest put their lights away.  As they got closer, Vael cast Walk on Air on Vallium, Michael, and Uvash, then used Larel's Cloak to turn himself invisible, then used the Ring of Friendly Defense to turn himself blind and make Vallium invisible.  Invisible Vallium then walked up the air to the Set guard post, where four Set guards were standing.  He backstabbed one of them from total surprise, badly wounding and stunning him.  The stunned guard fell off the tower and sustained near-fatal falling damage.  While the three remaining guards were still a bit surprised, Vallium started stabbing them, while both Michael and Uvash ran up and joined in.  The battle was quickly over, with 3 guards killed and the first one lying unconscious below the tower.  Vael rested to recover from all that spellcasting, while a couple of the others stood guard in case there were more Settites, and a couple killed the unconscious guard, stripped all the guards' weapons and armor, and threw them all in Larel's Sack.  They also found a couple of keys.

They went west into the cliff face, found the Settites' supply room full of sacks of food, and considered burning it but decided not to.  They then continued into the Settites guard rest room, which was unoccupied.  There was a locked door on the north wall, which one of the keys they just took opened.  This led north through a mix of finished passages and rough cave tunnels to another locked door, which led to a finished room with another locked door to the west, which led to stairs down.  This was what they'd been looking for, but they decided to explore more of the immediate area before trying the stairs.

They continued north and found a room full of zombies with axes and shields.  The zombies immediately attacked, through a narrow connecting tunnel.  A slow combat ensued, where the zombies failed to hurt the PCs, but dodged a lot of attacks.  Vael cast a Create Fire in the middle of the zombie swarm, and the zombies mostly just ignored it and slowly burned.  The combination of fire, two swords, and a mace eventually finished all the zombies.  There was a creepy magic black light in the room behind the zombies.  After a bit of examination, Vael smashed it.

Continuing north into another cave, the group saw a 3' tall magical statuette of a sitting golden cat with black gem eyes, surrounded by old corpses of 3 people and a lizard.  Ioannes looked at the corpses but failed to determine cause of death.  Vael started casting Analyze Magic on the statue, but then started hearing meows and hisses in his head.  A few minutes later, he started hearing an accented voice in his head, saying "Avenge this wrong!  Return me to my sister-people.  Touching is forbidden!" over and over.  He tried asking questions, but didn't get any answers.  Uvash and Ioannes thought the statue might be an icon of the Cat Goddess Bastet, but nobody knew of any nearby temples or worshippers of Bastet, so they decided to leave the statue.

To the southwest there was a passage with some kind of flickery force field at the end of it.  Vael tried throwing a rock at it, and it flickered harder.  Michael then attacked it with his sword, and the field failed and fizzled out.  The party went southwest into the room, then a few seconds later a large black pudding hidden on the ceiling dropped onto Ioannes and achieved surprise.  It quickly started smothering him.  Ioannes tried cutting his way out with his axe, while Vallium and Uvash tried bashing it from the outside with sword and mace, and Michael tried pulling the pudding off Ioannes.  Vael first tried some fire and then a wall of lightning to damage the pudding.  Ioannes was badly hurt and knocked unconscious, but the Bracers of Force he was wearing provided some full-body protection, and the combination of stabs and bashes and fire and lightning killed the pudding, as Michael pulled Ioannes out.  Uvash healed Ioannes, while Vael used Apportation to get a sample of the pudding into a glass vial.

After a few minutes to recover, the group searched for secret doors, then Vael cast Seek Earth looking for gold, and Seek Magic.  The nearest unknown gold and magic were to the east, so they went that way.  The magic turned out to be a cave full of some kind of shimmering opalescent fog.  Nobody was sure what it was, and nobody wanted to go into it, so they left that cave.  The gold seemed to be in the direction of a cave full of mushrooms and fungal foresters that they'd visited before.

As they reached mushroom cave, the fungal foresters started speaking a language that nobody recognized.  Ioannes cast Gift of Tongues on Vael to let him speak fungal forester.  The lead forester talked about how cool Ptarmis was and how much he liked the living wheelbarrow and asked if they were friends of Ptarmis.  Vael indicated that they were also friends of Ptarmis and asked if the foresters had a source of cloud cap mushrooms.  The forester indicated that cloud caps were in short supply because the beastmen kept taking them, but might trade some for that wheelbarrow.  Vael said not today, but maybe next time.  He also cast Seek Earth again and found the gold was a bit northwest.  Searching the northwest wall for secret doors, they eventually found one, which the fungal foresters were apparently unaware of, as they were pretty excited when it opened.

The group crowded into a room, containing a big bubbling cauldron and 6 very skinny beastman troopers.  Vael again used Larel's Cloak to appear friendly and charismatic.  The beastmen asked if they were new recruits to Androsia and if they had any food.  Vael lied and said they were, and a couple of them gave their rations to the hungry beastmen.  At that point Vallium led the beastmen to the western part of the room and asked a lot of questions about marching and guarding and Androsia and the area, while Vael turned invisible and started looting the cave.  He found a magic bag, some gold solidi and ancient silver coins, some magic glass eyes on the wall, and a couple of potions on a shelf.  He threw the magic bag into the wheelbarrow and the rest of the stuff into Larel's Sack, then went back out the secret door.  After Vael left, Vallium said something about forgetting something to the southeast before they could return to take their guard shift, and the group left.  The fungal foresters were sniffing around the secret door, so Ioannes cast Gift of Tongues on Vael again, so he could explain that there were beastmen on the other side of the secret door who might be hungry and not friendly, so the foresters might want to keep it closed.

Leaving the fungus cave, the group went north a bit to try to finish their map, and found a room with several goblin-sized cave lizards.  Not looking for a fight, the group backed away.  At that point they went back south and west and decided to try the stairs down.  Vael used Larel's Clock to turn invisible, and the Bracteros Effect to hide his light, and went ahead of the group a bit to scout.  The stairs went down and west quite a bit, then the passage turned south.  To the south was an octagonal room with four exits, and a group of four varumani armed with mattocks were guarding all four exits in ambush position.  Vael turned around and went back to the group, indicating that there might be a serious fight if they continued.

At that point the Right for Riches company decided that they had their quota of dead Settites and loot for the day, and started heading back for Gosterwick.  Vael did some scouting by Levitation and found what looked like a small old Archontean temple atop one pillar of stone, but didn't get very close.  He saw Ptarmis sitting on his big stone throne, but didn't approach close enough to talk.  He also got another look at the big plateau on the eastern end of the Cavern with a weird metal pillar on top and a cave going down inside, but did not stop to investigate either.

The group made it back to Gosterwick, with another magic bag, a decent pile of gold and silver coins, a vile of black pudding, and the weapons and armor of four more Settite guards.  They had found the stairs down they were looking for.

GM's Comments:

Wicktrimmer really wanted Larel's items.  There was a pretty serious debate among the players as to whether to sell or trade any of them, but "We want Wicktrimmer as a friend and knives aren't great weapons and none of us really uses one" won out over "this is a rare and cool magic item so we should keep it just in case", so they sold Larel's Pin.  Larel's Sack and Larel's Cloak were more immediately and obviously useful, so none of the players considered selling them.  Amusingly, after 23 delves without a magic bag, they found magic bags on consecutive delves.  (Vael identified the new one as a regular Bag of Holding, but actually heavier and with a larger capacity than Larel's Sack.  We'll see if they keep both or sell one.)

The group didn't want to try another frontal assault on the Forum of Set in the direction the cult would expect, so they went looking for a back door instead, and found exactly what they were looking for.  However, they also found four varumani on the other side.  We'll see whether they go that way again, or try something else.

The black pudding got Ioannes to -5 HP, 6 away from a death check.  He still had a Bless spell, so he was guaranteed to make his first death check at -11 HP, but the one at -22 HP was no guarantee, and the pudding could have gotten him there quickly.  Fortunately for the PCs, a five on one numerical advantage is really good.  The pudding was pretty tough, and probably could have killed any one of them with surprise, but four of them combined to kill it pretty quickly.  (Michael didn't help kill it, as he was trying to pull it off Ioannes instead.  Which he managed to do, right as it died.)

Using Larel's Cloak (and some food) to get a friendly reaction from Androsia's beastmen, then turn invisible and loot the room they were guarding, was definitely some Larel-like behavior.

Achievements:

None

XP:

• Explored 7 new locations, good for 1 XP
• Found enough loot to easily get 1 XP each.  Maybe 2 XP if they sell the magic items.
• Total 2-3 XP each

Next Week:

No game the next two weeks; GM on vacation.  We'd played every week since March, so this ends a good streak, but we'll start another one when I get back.

Tip for Big Combats: Make a Table of When Reinforcements Arrive

DFRPG Arden Vul session 24a ended with the PCs in the dungeon, chasing retreating Settite guards down the stairs toward the Forum of Set.  So I knew that session 24b would start with a big set-piece battle.  Exactly how big, I was a bit fuzzy on, and the players had no idea.

So I went through the area around the Forum of Set and found every NPC that might possibly be involved in the fight.

I first identified the ones that were close to the bottom of the stairs where the PCs would arrive, and guaranteed to be attentive and hostile.  Basically, the ones they just chased down the stairs, plus the guards on duty in the Forum whose actual job was to fight off intruders.  Those were the Turn 1 opponents.  I made a list of those to make sure I remembered to tag them all as combatants in Foundry at the start of the fight.

I then went through everyone else in the Forum to figure out who would actively close with the PCs and fight, who would stand their ground and fight only in self-defense, who would hide, who would run away, who would go get help, who would hesitate and wait for instructions from their superiors, etc.  Most of these were pretty obvious, but there were some NPCs who could conceivably react in multiple ways, so I made reaction rolls for those.  High rolls were good for the PCs (usually meaning the NPC would only fight if personally attacked), and low rolls were bad for the PCs (usually meaning the NPC would actively help defend the Forum).  

I then repeated the process for other rooms in the area, compiling a list of everyone who would participate in the defense.  (The ones who would not participate could just be left off the list, saving time.)

The next step was figuring out how long it would take each potential responder to hear the news of the attack, get their equipment ready, and reach the Forum staircase where the PCs were likely to be.  For example a guard 50 hexes away might take 10 seconds to hear the news, 5 seconds to get up and grab their weapons, and 10 seconds to run to the battle, meaning they would join the fight on turn 25.

The last step was to make a table, sorted by the turn each combatant would arrive where the PCs were.  Then I could happily ignore all the offscreen action before then and focus my attention on what my players could see.  So if there were hypothetically 50 total NPCs involved, but only 10 of them started near the PCs, I could just play those 10, and ignore the other 40 until they arrived.  I just had to track turns, and when I got to a turn number when my table said some reinforcements were due, I could add their tokens to the map at the edge of the PCs' line of sight and add them as combatants in Foundry.

I want a consistent world.  I want things to make sense.  I want verisimilitude for my players.  I want a fair fight.  But I would also prefer that a combat turn take 5 minutes rather than 10 minutes, so it's good if I can avoid spending precious game time meticulously moving tokens around outside the players' line of sight.  If the players can't see something, the exact details don't matter.

So the takeaways are:

1. If there are things that you can just as easily roll before the session as during the session, you might as well roll them before the session.  Pre-rolling some NPC reactions let me take some NPCs out of the fight, saving time during play.
2. Feel free to put your data in the form that's easiest to use in play.  A map key with NPCs placed in each room is good for a static dungeon where the PCs are the only ones moving, but it's not ideal for a fight where the PCs are fairly stationary and the NPCs are moving toward them.  So make a new table, with the data in the most useful order: which turn each reinforcement will arrive, in ascending order.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 24b: The Set Cult Strikes Back, Larel's Stuff, and the Hall of Shrines

Date: 

Mitrasday, 19th 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:

Many Set guards

Several Set acolytes

Several Set sergeants

Some Set Guild of Service fighters

Roskelly Winterleaf, halfling Toll Collector

Several halfling Assistant Toll Collectors

2 Ibis-headed guardians of Thoth

Several Knights of the Azure Shield

We resumed the battle with the Right for Riches company having chased the retreating Settites down the Sighing Stair into the Forum of Set.  At that point the party paused, because there was a portcullis on their left side and they were worried about being surrounded if they continued.  The Settites also paused at the bottom of the stairs, to form up and load crossbows.

Start of the battle

After aiming for a bit, the Settites loosed a volley of crossbow bolts.  Vallium was missed due to his Amulet of Missile Shield.  Vael was behind a wall to the west and out of line of sight, so didn't receive any shots.  Ioannes, Michael, and Uvash each dodged, blocked, or were missed by a couple of bolts.  The Settites dropped their crossbows and readied their melee weapons as they surged forward.

Meanwhile the Settites behind the portcullis to the east rang an alarm gong to summon more guards.  Not wanting to deal with assault from that direction, Vael cast Smoke on those guards, distracting them and wrecking their line of sight.  The one with the gong kept ringing it though.

Vael casts Smoke onto the Set Guildsmen to the east

Uvash used his Divine Grace, which gave him +7 to DX for 13 turns.  With only a short period with Super Dwarf available, the PCs surged forward to meet the mass of Settites at the bottom of the stairs.  Michael readied an Alchemist Fire potion and threw it at one of the Settites.  He missed, but there were so many that it landed in another Settite's hex behind the target, doing some splash damage.

Melee at the bottom of the stairs.  Set animal statue (with prisoners chained to it), Forum stalls (SW), and Forum food vendors (SE) visible

The Right of Riches Company had their shields, while most of the Settite guards had dropped theirs to fire crossbows and had not had a chance to pick them back up, so the PCs were at an advantage.  They cut down a few guards, killing a couple and knocking a couple of others unconcious, but a bunch more approached from the south and southeast.  When things started getting a bit lopsided, Vael threw a Smoke south of the stairs to slow the reinforcements, but the Settites started coming up the stairs and flanked Michael.

The Smoke slows further reinforcements, but there are enough to surround Michael, as the other PCs start falling back.

While surrounded by several Settites, Michael fell down, and appeared doomed.  He managed to regain his feet, but was reeling from his wounds, so his Move and Dodge were reduced.  He was a bit far for Uvash or Ioannes to heal him.  As he tried running up the stairs toward his comrades, one of the Settite guards appeared to hit him cleanly in the back for serious damage -- but Michael's Bless spell averted the attack.  Vael dropped a Grease on the stairs, while caused many of the Settites to fall and others to move more slowly, while Michael's Ring of Free Action let him keep going.  Eventually Michael got close enough to Uvash and Ioannes that they were able to drop a Stop Bleeding and a Major Healing on him, healing him enough to get his full Move back.  At that point Michael was as fast as the Settites, and the other PCs were faster, so they were able to escape up the stairs, with a swarm of Settites in tow.

The Right for Riches Company made it to the top of the Sighing Stair, ran east through the Temple of Set, then south and east past the barricade, then north into the desecrated Temple of Thoth, then down the skinny secret passage to the east.  The faster PCs ran at full speed to buy themselves a few seconds.  Ioannes and Uvash both cast Lend Energy on Vael, who was ready to cast Magelock on the door as soon as Michael came through it.

Unfortunately, right as the lead PCs came out the secret door, Roskelly and several of his halfling toll collector thugs were standing right in that area, looking at the statue.  They immediately started talking about tolls and dungeoneering licenses and asking where the PCs came from, since they hadn't come down the stairs from the Pyramid of Thoth.  Vael pulled out his Dungeoneering License pin and flashed it at Roskelly and said they were a little busy with pursuing Settites right now.  That caused the halflings to take a few steps back toward their territory.  Michael came running through the door, Vallium slammed it closed, and Vael cast Magelock on it.  As they heard the Settites start trying to break the door down, the PCs discussed whether to go north toward the stairs up to the basement, or south to the pyramid teleporter to the Well of Light.  They went toward the basement, and the halflings let them go.

Having not found significant loot or explored much new territory, the Right for Riches company decided to keep delving rather than heading back to towh.  Rather than going upstairs to the basement, they headed east to the bridge over the chasm, and back into the room with the baboon-headed Thoth statue.  Vallium dug through his notes looking for the statue arm settings that opened a door last time, while Vael tried Lockmaster on a locked door to the north.  The spell unexpectedly failed, but a second attempt was a critical success and unlocked the door.  After listening at the door, Vallium went north into a room with 3 sarcophagi.  He motioned the others to stay back, indicating that if there were any arrow traps he didn't want anyone getting hit.  He then pulled the lid off the nearest sarcophagus.  He got a glimpse at a (non-moving) mummy, as tons of sand started pouring out of the ceiling.  Vael and Ioannes, who had been just inside the room, hopped out.  Vallium ran for the exit, which took him about three seconds, through rapidly rising sand, but he made it without falling.  As they looked into the room from the corridor outside they saw that it was buried under many tons of sand.  Vael said they could come back another time with digging tools and digging spells, but for now they should try another way.

They went back into the room with the statue and manipulated its arms to a few different positions.  Two positions each caused a secret door to open and an ibis-headed Guardian of Thoth to emerge to attack them, but the fights were five on one and the Guardians were not that hard to defeat.  A third position caused a door leading east to unlock, and the group went down a passage.

They went past a room to the north with previously looted sarcophagi, then past a large room where Vael had previously defeated a statue by Levitating out of reach, then past a Continually Lit room with a fountain that had given Uvash donkey ears, before finding a new room to the north.  The room had frescoes on all the walls featuring the exploits of the Archontean folk hero Larel One-Eye, who both Vallium and Ioannes recognized.  There were also a cloak rack with several cloaks; a chest; a weapons rack with a variety of knives; a desk with a golden apple, a silver letter opener, and some letters; and a pedestal with a funerary urn on it.  Vael and Ioannes went around the room looking for magic, and found that several of the knives and a couple of the cloaks looked magical, as did the apple.  Vallium checked to see if any of the items looked like the ones on the walls, and a multi-colored cloak looked like Larel's cloak, while one of the knives looked like Larel's stiletto.  Ioannes thought the multi-colored cloak might be magical, while Vael was pretty sure it wasn't, but Vallium put it on and turned invisible.  That settled the debate.  Vael declared that something in the room was interfering with magic detection, and they should take everything.  The letters on the desk all claimed to be from Larel to three different women, and all used the exact same phrasing with only the name changed.  Vael Apportated the chest open and found some clothing; inside a stocking cap Ioannes found a sack.  He reached into the sack and pulled out a rock, and decided the sack was special.  The urn did not appear magical, and the party left that behind.  They searched under the desk and along all the walls, then continued east.

There were doors north and east.  Behind the north door were spiral stairs up.  Vallium decided to go up.  This led them to an area they'd found before, northeast of the Well of Light.  There they remembered a secret door that they had found (with magical assistance after performing the Litany of Light) but never opened.  Vael figured out how to open it, and they opened it to reveal stairs up, with Thothian frescoes.

At the top of the stairs was a a large and interesting room.  There were two rows of statues of Archontean heroes of the past, with a few of the statues missing.  There were also several old corpses in the room.  Iaonnes inspected the bodies and thought they had been violently killed by something strong.  The bodies contained some weapons and armor, a few coins, a couple of potions, and a scroll.  Vael looked everything over and detected a magic sling and a magic shield.  The group then started looking around the edges of the room.  There were eight shrines, but seven of them were closed off behind some kind of magical force fields.  The one that was open contained a book and a quill and some Mithric writing.  Everyone decided to leave the shrine alone for now and come back later.  There was also a large statue of Thoth in ibis-headed form, with some orange gas descending from its beak, and some Mithric writing about pneuma.  Vael said that he had some theories about the statue and the shrine but they should leave for now and come back later.

They went back down to the Well of Light level, then went west and south to the actual Well of Light without encountering any baboons, and Vael cast Flight on Vallium and Michael and Levitation on himself, and everyone flew up the Well, with Vallium and Michael carrying Ioannes and Uvash.  They walked south across the ruins of Arden Vul, climbed down the Cliff Face (with Ioannes using his Luck to avoid a careless fall) and hiked back to Gosterwick.  They met another patrol of Knights of the Azure Shield on the Imperial Road before reaching town, but the Knights just asked them for news of the Settites and let them pass.

For security, Vallium, Uvash, and Michael moved out of the Yellow Cloak Inn and moved into the Arcane Practitioners Club with Vael and Ioannes.  They resolved to treat Gosterwick as a dangerous place after Susarra's murder and try to watch each other's backs.  Vael started analyzing all the items they recovered, casting Analyze Magic multiple times per item in case the magic concealing effect interfered with it.  It appeared that Larel's Cloak, Larel's Sack, and Larel's Pin (the letter opener) were quite powerful items.

GM's Comments:

Superior numbers are good.  The Right for Riches Company appear to be better than Settites, but not better than dozens and dozens of Settites.

I was pretty sure Michael was toast when he was significantly separated from the rest of the party with a whole lot of Settites in between, but Bless and heavy armor and some lucky die rolls and Grease and the Ring of Free Action, plus some timely healing spells, saved him.

I thought it would be hilarious if the PCs took all of Larel's decoy items and missed the concealed good ones, but Ioannes rolled a critical success on a Per+Magery roll, and Vallium thought to correlate the items in the frescoes with the items in the room, and Vael then declared they should take everything in the room even if they didn't think it was magical (except the urn), so that didn't happen.

I think the players were more excited to find a new stairway up than they were to find unguarded magic items.

Achievements:

• 1 XP for reaching the Forum of Set, an Arden Vul Iconic Location

XP:

• 1 XP for exploration, for finding 10 new locations
• 1-2 XP for loot, depending on how much they sell
• 1 XP for an achievement 
• 3-4 XP total

Next Week:

They have a lot of options.  They can go after the Set Cult again, or deal with the halflings, or try to revisit the goblins, or explore more of the Halls of Thoth east of the chasm, or go back to the Hall of Shrines.  Or a half-dozen other places.  Arden Vul is big.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 24a: Revenge on the Set Cult

Date: 

Mitrasday, 19th 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:

Jador the Just, chief priestess of Mitra in Gosterwick

Audun Yellow-Eyes, logothete of the House of Sight ("Drome") in Gosterwick

Freydis the Stern, steward of Lady Alexia Basileon in Gosterwick 

Four Knights of the Azure Shield

Seven beastmen

Many Set guards

Several Set acolytes

Several Set sergeants

Sparky the goat, mascot of Alpha Sept

Apophis the giant lizard

Two boars

After the murder of Susarra, the Right for Riches company decided to head back to Arden Vul before the Trace spell on her head wore off.  Knowing that he couldn't sleep without losing the Trace, Vael first went to the Temple of Mitra to see if any of the priests there could cast Vigil to let him go a night without sleep without ill effects.  Unfortunately, nobody there was able to cast Vigil.

The party then went to the House of Sight in Gosterwick where they were granted a meeting with the logothete, Audun Yellow-Eyes.  Audun explained that he was appalled by the murder of Susarra, but could not officially endorse an attack on Set, or lend any resources to one.  Also that if anyone asked about the vial of Susarra's blood sent to Vael, it wasn't him.

They continued to the Azure Keep to try to arrange a meeting with Lady Alexia.  Unfortunately, she was not available.  They did meet with her steward, Freydis the Stern, who gave her condolences on Susarra and said that she would pass along any inquiries to Lady Alexia when she returned.

With no help forthcoming, they headed out for Arden Vul just after sunset.  A few miles from the Cliff Face, they heard riders coming south down the Imperial Road toward their lights.  It was four Knights of the Azure Shield, who asked them to identify themselves, they had questions about Michael's red scale armor.  They were satisfied with the answer that the armor had come off a dead Settite and there hadn't been time to repaint it before the Settites killed their friend and required a late night attack.  The knights continued their patrol.

When they reached the Cliff Face, they saw lights halfway up the cliff, west of the waterfall, at the site of the Set cult's basket.  Vael Levitated up to try improve his triangulation on Susarra's head.  He was surprised to see that she was at the same elevation as the Set basket, and somewhere west, rather than up at the level of the ruins.  Vael flew back down to confer with the group.  They decided to go up to the ruins of Arden Vul, then back down though the basement, around the halflings, and through the desecrated Temple of Thoth to reach the Temple of Set.

Everyone (except Vael, who was still Levitating) tied themselves together for the night climb.  About halfway up the Long Stair, they encountered a beastman patrol heading down.  The beastmen formed up into a hedgehog formation as their sergeant asked the group to identify themselves.  He then indicated that his group would back up to a wider spot on the trail and allow the party distance to pass, as they were not looking for conflict.  This was agreed, and the Right for Riches company passed by the beastmen as they stood in defensive formation.  They continued to the top of the climb, then north across the ruins.

They group passed through the basement without encountering anything, then went down the spiral stair, west through the illusory wall, south through the destroyed remains of a one-way door.  They discussed going through the catacombs to stay farther from the halflings, but decided the secret door behind the Thoth statue was faster.  They were lucky enough not to meet any halflings, and went down the narrow secret passage west into the desecrated Temple of Thoth.  At that point they heard the blaring of a horn from the secret peephole high on the west wall -- their bright lights had been spotted.

The party quickly went south through a secret door, carefully picked their way through a formerly trapped room, and set off the gas trap again, which had been reset.  Nobody breathed any of the gas, though, and they continued south to the corner, then looked up west to see the barricade had been rebuilt and there were a mass of guards in red Set scale armor behind it, commanded by a sergeant, and accompanied by a goat.

The guards threw Alchemist's Fire flasks at Michael, Vallium, and Ioannes.  Michael was directly hit and set on fire, but he was wearing the Serpent's Amulet and didn't mind.  While the others hung back a bit, Michael started up the stairs.  Meanwhile Vael cast Shape Fire and started moving the rest of the boiling oil up the stairs toward the barricade.  Vallium went up the stairs behind the fire, warning the others not to stand directly behind him.  Uvash trailed Vallium off to one side, and Vael and Ioannes stayed well back.

As Vallium made himself a conspicuous target, he took several shots from crossbows.  He dodged several, trying not to give away that he had an an Amulet of Missile Shield.  Up against the barricade, Michael took a point-blank crossbow shot and failed to dodge it, resulting in a major wound to the chest.  He responded by stabbing the arbalester with his long sword.  The Vael-controlled fire wrecked the Settite line, as half the guards jumped to the sides to avoid the fire, and a couple failed to dodge it, caught on fire, and had to stop, drop, and roll to put it out.

Michael went over the barricade and stabbed a couple more guards.  Vallium followed him over and joined in.  Uvash and Ioannes came up behind, and Ioannes reached over the barricade to heal Michael twice, first with Stop Bleeding and then with Major Healing.  Vael stayed on the stairs and just sent his fire around the room harassing the guards, who occasionally failed to dodge and had to stop fighting for a bit to roll around on the ground.

Meanwhile Sparky the Goat decided to help his sept by charging into battle to slam the invaders with his horns.  Unfortunately for Sparky, Vallium and Michael had shields and heavy armor, so his slams were not enough to knock them over.  Worse, Sparky was not wearing armor, so when he got hit by the fire, the room smelled of burning goat.  After a bit of fire damage and a stray sword or mace shot, Sparky went down and did not get back up.

The Set sergeant recognized that his side was losing, and told one of his unwounded guards to run north to the temple and get reinforcements.  Vael responded by sending some of his fire after that guard to try to slow him down.  Eventually, the Settites lost 6 elite guards and a goat, while 2 guards and the sergeant managed to flee north.

As Uvash ate some singed goat, Vael checked his Trace and found that Susarra's head was down and west.  The Right for Riches company quickly regrouped to discuss their next move.  Did they chase north through the temple, or cut west and try to reach the stairs?  Taking a quick look through the burned curtains, they saw some cultists  fleeing west and a giant lizard chasing a boar.  Deciding to avoid that chaos, they went back into the room to the south and grabbed a couple of flasks of Alchemist's Fire and a couple of maces that Vael thought looked nice, plus a few silver coins from a chest.  After leaving some rude graffiti and setting a few cots on fire, they went west through the passages between the temple and the prison, trying to outflank the guards in the temple and reach the stairs down.

Unfortunately for them, the Settites had thought of this, and there was a large group of guards waiting on the wide stairs.  It was a dozen guards, four acolytes, and a couple of sergeants, including the one they had just been fighting.  About half the guards had crossbows ready, and one of the sergeants was yelling "nobody use fire."

Start of the battle on the wide stairs

Vallium, with his Amulet of Missile Shield, led the way, trying to draw more crossbow fire.  Michael followed behind, drawing his boomerang.  He threw it into the clump of guards, missing one near the front.  Unfortunately for the guards, it was a target-rich environment, and the boomerang missed or was dodged by two more guards, before it plunked one in the back who had no idea was was happening.  He fell down, momentarily stunned, and dropped his mace.

Four of the six guards with crossbows fired at Vallium.  He dodged all of the shots (some legitimately, some with magical help), before critically failing one Dodge roll and starting to fall down.  Realizing that he didn't want to be prone next to a pile of enemies, he used Luck to reroll the critical failure and avoid the fall.  The last two crossbowmen held their fire, as the sergeant said something about waiting for a better target.  The guards in the back with maces and shields ready started surging to the front.

Uvash prayed for his Heroic Grace and got a great result, +7 to DX for 13 turns.  He decided to use this temporary blessing to go for aimed shots at the skull and try to knock guards unconscious with one blow.  Meanwhile Michael and Vallium just went toe-to-toe with the front row of guards and started cutting them down, Vallium with single Deceptive Attacks, Michael with double Rapid Strikes.

Vael considered coming around the corner to help, but realized he'd probably get shot as soon as he did, so paused to cast Missile Shield on himself.  As soon as he emerged, the last two crossbowmen used their Wait maneuvers to drill him, and missed due to the spell.  After laughing at them, Vael cast Grease into the swarm of guards.  Meanwhile, two of the acolytes in the back were casting spells of their own: Dispel Magic, trying to take out whatever buffs the PCs had.  Both succeeded by slim margins, and failed to knock the Bless off any of the four PCs in the area of effect, as Ioannes outrolled them.  They also failed to dispel Vael's Trace.

Michael and Vallium continued cutting into the swarm, aided by the defense penalty for Grease.  Uvash meanwhile started smashing skulls, failing to one-shot kill any unwounded guards, but knocking a few unconscious.  Vael, seeing the acolytes in the back casting more spells, followed up his Grease with a Smoke, trying to mess up everyone's concentration.

Battle after Grease (right circle) and Smoke (left circle) were cast

At some point the remaining Settites started fleeing west down the stairs.  All the sergeants and acolytes and a couple of the guards got away, while Michael and Vallium and Uvash cut down the stragglers.

Vael checked his Trace and saw that Susarra's head was still down and west.  The Right for Riches Company started down the wide stairs after the Settites.  There were realistic busts of (mostly) older men flanking both sides of the stairs, probably Settite priests.  Uvash wanted to spend some time smashing them, but the others pressed him to hurry up and pursue.  As they continued down, the stairs bent left, from west to southwest and then south.  And the busts were replaced by some stuffed heads of various creatures: reptilian humanoids, one with horns, a bat, even a frost giant.  The frost giant head was enchanted, and started swearing in several languages (some the PCs knew, and some they didn't) as they approached.  Uvash put some leftover goat meat into its mouth to attempt to shut it up, but it didn't work.

As the stairs debouched into a wide Forum, the party saw a passage running east to a portcullis, with a couple of guys in leather armor behind it.  At the bottom of the stairs were a mass of guards, including the ones that just fled plus some more.  Beyond the guards was a huge statue of Set in Set animal form, with several slaves chained to it.  It appeared they may have finally reached the Forum of Set.

We paused there due to time.

GM's Comments:

As expected, the Settites reinforced the guard post in front of their temple.  Not well enough though.  The PCs decided to continue down the stairs rather than retreating to Gosterwick after the second battle, figuring they didn't have enough exploration or loot to earn any XP, and that they should do some more damage or make some more progress.

Crossbows don't combine well with maces and shields.  Crossbows do great damage if they hit, but they take two hands, and it takes forever to ready a shield.  Without a shield, an unbalanced mace is a much worse weapon, as it can't both attack and parry in the same turn.  The cult of Set might consider swapping some maces for spears, or some shields for bucklers.

Sparky tasted better than he fought.

Achievements:

The PCs caught just a glimpse of the Forum of Set at the end of the session.  They haven't actually entered it or seen most of it yet though.

XP:

None until they go back to town.  So far they have only visited a couple of new locations, grabbed a small amount of loot, and glimpsed the edge of the Forum of Set.

Next Week:

The Right for Riches Company appears to be invading the Forum of Set.  Do they smash a major faction of Arden Vul, or get swarmed and make new PCs?  I have no idea.