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.