DFRPG Session 28: Teleport Rugs and Baboons

Date: 

Tahsday, 18th of Besemios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Cool, rainy

Player Characters: 

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Thronebreaker (Thrainor Ironvein), Dwarven mercenary fighter (Archon Shiva)

Significant NPCs:

Creon, pawnbroker

Theopilos, locksmith

Egill Flat-nose, tavern owner

Wicktrimmer, Imperial goblin merchant factor

Grugga, cavewoman leader

Many cave people

Stamelis, animated head, formerly Librarian of Thoth

2 crocodiles

otyugh

Yamki, giant 3-armed intelligent baboon

Trefko, giant 4-armed intelligent baboon

Many baboons

2 goblin women who are honorary baboons

Burris, Thorcin warrior

3 mantari

Ghost of Ptirasa, priestess of Thoth

Skalla, skeleton warrior

Bottleneck, goblin master sergeant

Many goblins

The Plan:

Vallium's plan for the week was to trade with the cave people to the west of the waterfall below Arden Vul, see if the Rugs of Instant Access had enough range to bypass climbing the Long Stair, clear out the pits near the Ruby Chair and find the control rod for the indoor pyramid teleporter, test the indoor pyramid teleporter, perform the Litany of Light again, talk to Yamki and Stamelis, donate a lot of alcohol to the goblins, and explore more of the Well of Light or Halls of Thoth levels.

What Actually Happened:

Vael got a tip from Creon the pawnbroker than an interesting item was available, and it turned out to be the Eyes of Set, some goggles that allegedly allowed seeing through magical darkness cast by Settites.  Vael purchased them.

Vallium went to Theopilos to have copies of Plumthorn's keys made for the goblins.  He also went to Egill at the Baliff's Truncheon tavern and purchased several barrels of moonshine for the goblins.  He also bought several axes for trade with the cave people.

Wicktrimmer sent the Right for Riches Company a note that he had information about their shopping list.  Vallium, Vael, and Uvash showed up at the Rarities Factor, where Wicktrimmer told them that his agents in Narsileon had found a magic broadsword that Vallium might like and some magic scale armor that might meet Michael's requirements, but that neither Bracers of Force nor any giant spider silk had been found.  Vallium and Vael (speaking for Michael, who was off in the woods somewhere on another hunting trip) approved the purchases, which Wicktrimmer said should arrive via mule train in a few weeks.

Wicktrimmer then said that His Sources had revealed the presence of strong teleportation magic in Gosterwick, and asked if they knew anything about that.  Vael admitted the existence of the teleportation rugs but said they hadn't told Wicktrimmer because they were still testing how well they worked.  Wicktrimmer asked for a description of the rugs, and said they sounded like Rugs of Instant Access, which Sligo the Devious famously used to assassinate Leonidas of Archontos.  He asked for an update after the rugs were tested, and said that if they had enough range to teleport someone from Gosterwick to Narsileon, he would pay a whole lot of money for them.

Trying to avoid being predictable, someone rolled a 7-sided die to figure out the day of their next delve.  It came up Tahsday, so very early Tahsday morning they set out for the caves west of the Swift River.  There were several cavemen standing guard outside their cave, They called into the cave for reinforcements, and a couple dozen more people came out.  Nobody shared a common language or had language magic, but Vallium gestured a desire to trade, and pulled 5 good quality metal axes out of Larel's Sack.  The cave people were impressed by the axes, and their older female leader (who turned out to be named Grugga) sent someone back into the cave to get something.  A few minutes later he emerged carrying a metal axe head, and being yelled at by a women who apparently didn't want him to trade the axe head.  Vael saw that the axe head was magical, and so told Vallium that trading 5 whole axes for that one axe head was a good deal.  The trade was made, and then the Right for Riches company tried gesturing back and forth with the cave people for a while but gained no significant information (beyond the gestured version of "snake people basket fall down go boom", which they already knew because they had been the ones to make the basket fall down), before leaving.

They walked a bit into the woods and spread out one Rug of Instant Access across the ground, then Vael cast Levitation and flew to the top of the cliff, holding the other Rug.  Vael spread out his Rug across the ground at the top, then stepped on it and said the command word "viator", and appeared on the other Rug near the others.  The others then used the lower Rug to teleport to the upper Rug, one at a time.  Finally Vael grabbed the lower Rug and flew up to the top of the cliff with the others.  The total time for two flights up the cliff was about six minutes, compared to well over an hour to climb the Long Stair (depending on climbing skill, load carried, and risks taken), so everyone agreed this was a success.

The group walked north through the ruins of Arden Vul to the top of the Well of Light.  Vael dropped a Continual Light rock down the Well and didn't see a bright reflection at the bottom, which indicated that the bottom mirror had probably been covered.  He Levitated down the shaft carrying one Rug, saw that the fixed mirror was indeed covered in muck and the portable mirror and stand were gone, but didn't see anything dangerous in the area.  He landed, spread out the Rug, teleported through it, sent the other 3 through the top Rug, then grabbed the top Rug and flew down the Well again to rejoin the others.  They spent several minutes cleaning baboon feces off the fixed mirror, then went south to visit the head of Stamelis in the Library of Thoth.

Stamelis seemed happy to see them, but didn't have a lot of news.  Nothing had come into the locked Library, though he had heard some baboons hooting.  He was annoyed that he had a whole library of books to read but no ability to fetch books or turn pages, and requested that the group find a nice priest of Thoth to assist him.

Everyone headed north to the Hall of Judgment.  They pushed studs on the Ruby Chair until both pits opened.  One still contained 2 crocodiles, though they weren't moving much, possibly due to hunger.  The other contained some kind of creature with tentacles, and that was the pit that Vael's Seeker spell had said the pyramid control lever was in.  The tentacles weren't long enough to reach the top of the pit, so Vael decided to un-sportingly use Wall of Lightning in the water-filled pit to electrocute the monster from afar.  This worked, and after a while the whole room smelled of an unholy combination of wet dog and burned fish.  Vael rested for a while, then Vallium tied a long rope around the punishment pillar, and Vael levitated down into the pit while Uvash climbed down the rope to guard him.  Vael spotted the control rod for the pyramid and a magic wand and grabbed both.

The group discussed whether they should also kill the crocodiles, and then thought there might be treasure in that pit too, so they had to.  Vael repeated the remote electrocution trick.  This time Vallium went into the pit with Vael, because he wanted to try using his survival skills to try to extract valuable crocodile skin, and also see if there was anything valuable in their stomachs.  He failed to skin them cleanly, destroying the hides.  He also didn't find anything valuable inside them.  He did, however, make a giant stinky mess.  Meanwhile Vallium picked up a few silver coins.  The missing mirror was also in the pit, along with its stand, which was broken into two parts but looked fixable.  Vallium loaded the heavy mirror into the Living Wheelbarrow and Levitated it up.

With both pits cleared, the group turned their attention to the Ruby Chair.  Both dwarves agreed it sure looked like it was carved from one giant hunk of ruby, but that was impossible as rubies didn't get that big.  Vael cast Seek Earth for ruby, and it pointed right at the chair.  Thronebreaker tried using his considerable strength to move the chair, but it didn't move.  There was a Mithric inscription behind the chair that said “Speak the Secret Name and Claim Thy Reward.”  Vael read the inscription out loud, which did nothing.  He didn't know any secret name, but they thought Stemelis might, so they went back to the library to talk to him.  Stamelis didn't tell them any secret names.  Vael started looking through the books hoping one would have the secret name, but most of the books in the Thoth section were written in the Secret Language of Thoth, which Stamelis would not teach him because Thoth's Secrets Are For Thoth's Children.  After various attempts to trick, fast-talk, or persuade Stamelis, they left again.

Wanting to test the pyramid control rod, the Right for Riches company went west to the indoor pyramid, where Vallium installed the rod.  They then flipped the rod and appeared on top of the nearly identical pyramid one level down.  They they moved the matching rod there, and were back on the Well of Light level.

The group headed east toward the Howling Caves, and found Yamki the Three-Armed in a room just north of the portcullis leading to the Caves.  At that point there were some pointed questions about how the mirror got re-pooped.  Yamki said he didn't do it and his loyal baboons didn't do it but there might be some renegade baboons who didn't respect his authority and management was hard.  Vallium offered Yamki a bunch of meat in exchange for leaving the mirror alone and telling them who had vandalized it.  Yamki wasn't sure exactly who, but said that Trefko the old four-armed baboon, and several female baboons who had formerly been Sisko's harem, were still living to the west of the Hall of Judgment, and didn't listen to him.  The group headed that way to talk to the other baboons.

They went north past the Ruby Chair, the west past a trap door up with a rope hanging out of it, which they had seen before but hadn't explored.  They declined to explore it again and went south.  Eventually they listened at a door and heard loud snores behind it.  Opening the door found Trefko stumbling to his feet.  Trefko said that he hadn't been the one pooping on the mirror, but he didn't want to live in the Howling Caves because there were too many young baboons there and they were too loud.  He would stay in his room.  He agreed to not cause any trouble with the mirrors, in exchange for meat.  He also wanted a contract that said he was in charge of all the baboons, but Vallium said that was impractical and they had to work that out among themselves.  Uvash and Thronebreaker noticed that Trefko was wearing a Dwarven Life Stone around his neck, and asked whether he'd be willing to trade it.  He said that might be possible, for gems or large quantities of meat.  Vallium said they'd bring him a whole live goat next time.

Heading south, the group found the room with Sisko's former harem, which consisted of 4 baboons and 2 goblins.  They had a human male prisoner manacled to the ceiling.  These baboons couldn't talk, but the goblins could, and said they considered themselves part of the baboon tribe and didn't need rescuing, and also that King Weskenim sucked.  Also that Sisko was the king of the baboon tribe, so with his death they were the reigning queens, and they could poop wherever they wanted as this was their territory.  Vael went with diplomacy trying to talk sense into them to avoid violence, while Thronebreaker went with intimidation and ripped the prisoner's chains apart.  With the harem somewhat cowed by this display of brute force, Vallium told them that they had given Yamki a bunch of food to avoid further vandalism of the mirror, and that if the harem wanted some of it they should go over there to get it.  Once they left, Uvash healed the prisoner, a Thorcin warrior named Burris.  Vael levitated up to search two sacks hanging from the ceiling, and it turned out one was full of coins and the other full of miscellaneous treasure.  All of that went into the Bag of Holding.  Someone felt a bit bad for taking all the stuff, and suggested leaving some of the booze that was intended for the goblins in exchange.

Vael searched for secret doors, and found one on the east wall.  It was very hard to figure out how to open it, but a critical success on a Lockmaster spell did it.  Beyond the secret door was a narrow cobwebby corridor that looked like it had been unused for centuries.  Everyone explored it and found a tunnel heading east and a suspicious dead end to the north.  The dead end found another secret door, near the Ruby Chair, so once they opened that one to confirm they had a safe exit, they closed the first one so the harem wouldn't know about the secret passage.  Everyone then took the tunnel east.  Thronebreaker lent Burris an axe, just in case.

The tunnel led to a rough cavern, with an old corpse and some ancient rotted food.  There were dead end passages northeast and southeast.  The one northeast led to a secret door, which Thronebreaker opened.  That led to a room with a sarcophagus, but before anyone could explore it, three mantari (small flying ray-shaped creatures with stingers) ambushed Thronebreaker.  One of them actually hit and slightly wounded him, and then he and Vallium killed one and scared the other two into flying away.  The sarcophagus was empty, but there was a bridge over the Great Chasm (which was pretty narrow here) further east.

Crossing the bridge led to a room with a bunch of funerary gisants and some rotted crates.  After a bit of poking around, a ghost appeared and did not attack.  She revealed that she was Ptirasa, a priestess of Thoth, and warned the others that Arpostas was a traitor.  They had no idea who Arpostas was, though.  She also revealed that there were some nasty bugs in the crates and they should stay away from them.  Vael used Create Fire to keep the bugs away, and then the group found a secret door to the east, leading to a north-south passage they'd found before.

With exploration to the east complete, they doubled back to the west and explored more secret passages.  They eventually found a room with a pile of baboon skeletons on the floor, along with one human skeleton with an apparently magical axe, and a female elf skeleton on a bed.  Someone tried to take the axe, and the human skeleton predictably stood up and fought them.  However, it was four on one, and when the skeleton turned to face Vallium, Thronebreaker got behind it and did a Power Blow plus Rapid Strike from behind.  The skeleton managed to avoid one of the blows, but the other hit it hard enough to shatter its brittle bones.

With the skeleton no longer a threay, Vael started searching the room for magic, and they grabbed the magic axe and nonmagical mail and shield from the human skeleton, plus a magic pouch, a single magic gauntlet, a couple of magic arrows, and a spellbook from the elf skeleton.  There was a stone chest under the bed, but it was empty.  Nobody wanted to believe that, so an intensive search ensued.  When that didn't find anything, the whole stone chest went into the Bag of Holding for further investigation.

With little time left in the session, Vallium still hadn't delivered the booze to the goblins.  So the group went back to the small pyramid, flipped the lever, and ended up in Upper Goblintown (formerly the Halls of Thoth).  As they headed toward the Glory of Weskenim (formerly the Glory of Thoth), they greeted each squad of goblins they met and gave each of them a small barrel of liquor.  By the time they reached Bottleneck Halfling-Slayer, Master Sergeant of Upper Goblintown, they had a fan club of a few dozen already drunk goblins following them, while a few Designated Sober Guards had to stay behind.  Vallium tried to get some information from the goblins, and learned that Gislu the False Prophet had last been seen in the Forum of Set.

GM's Comments:

The plan to trade with the cave people actually worked, despite having no language in common.  It appears that even people who don't know your language know that getting 5 whole axes for one axe head is pretty good.

The party confirmed that the Rugs of Instant Access were useful for skipping the long climb up the Long Stair, at least if someone with Levitation was available.

The Seeker spell once again proved its worth by finding the pyramid control rod in the pit (and incidentally helping find some other treasure in that pits).  But the party already knew of two stairways between the Well of Light level and Upper Goblintown, so this was mostly completionism.

The baboons once again showed that, left unattended, some them will eventually poop on the mirrors.  (I once lived in a huge all-male freshman dorm, so I can confirm this is true.)

Everyone (especially the dwarves) seemed very interested in the Ruby Chair but nobody found a way to move it or break parts off it.

The head of Stamelis seemed to know things, but also seemed reluctant to share Thoth's secrets with random tomb robbers.  Similarly, the ghost of Ptirasa was a mix of helpful and obscure.

Vallium's plan to give goblins $500 of moonshine was a roaring success.  For most of the goblins anyway.  The ones who got Sober Guard Duty with the promise they could have some leftover moonshine later probably didn't like it much.

Achievements:

• The Rescuers: 1 XP for freeing Burris from the baboon harem

XP:

• Exploration: 9 new locations: 1 XP
• Loot: magic axe head, magic axe, Bottomless Purse, Wand of Illumination, coins, etc: 2 XP
• Achievements: 1 XP
• Total: 4 XP

Next Week:

I expect more testing of the teleport rugs.  Vallium is still looking for a priest of Thoth.  There are still unexplored areas on both the Well of Light and Upper Goblintown levels.  Ioannes may be able to help with some of the mysteries of language or religion that stumped the others.  And if they run out of other things to do, they can always resume their war with the Cult of Set, or explore deeper.