DFRPG Arden Vul Session 32: Fast Exploration

Date: 

Lunday, 28th of Basilembrios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Cool, rainy

Player Characters: 

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

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

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Lacrymosa, Elven Mercenary Archer (ArchonShiva)

Significant NPCs:

Akla-Chah, Rudishva hologram therapist

2 vanishing earth elementals

Phase spider

Varumani miners

Young Varumani pranksters

Several secretive mages and their bodyguards

Varumani guards

Many goblins

Many goats

Temrin, goblin artist

Survivors of the Stone, dwarven adventuring party

Chisel the War Dog

Claudine of Narsileon, human arms dealer

Weskenim, King of the United Goblins

Palestrim, Major-Domo

Gribble, brother of the king

Hal, varumani barkeeper

Several arena guards

Keth, varumani gambler

Dalton's Darlings, adventuring party

Varumani Lifts conductors and laborers

Killik, big boss of the Wet Caves

Gog, varumani hermit

The Plan:

• Investigate an unexplored ledge in the southwestern Great Cavern
• Go up to the Set landing, down the stairs to the Set level, then down the stairs to the Arden level
• Try opening the round door on the Arden level using the Rudishva IDs
• Explore further, on the Arden level or the Set level

What Happened:

Vael spent most of the week learning some spoken Rudishva from Akha-Chah, while she learned some spoken Archontean from Vael.  (They started with Mithric in common.)  By the end of the week Vael knew quite a few Rudishva words and phrases but still had a lot of grammar and vocabulary to learn.  Meanwhile, Akla-Chah was speaking Archontean fairly fluently, but with a disturbingly Vael-like inflection.

Uvash spent most of the week reading the Rudishva Devices book and taking careful notes, but did not yet quite trust himself to start experimenting with the Rudishva artifacts.  He urged his companions to also study the book so that they could compare notes and start devising a plan to experiment, but none of the others shared his Dwarven fascination with the technology.

Ioannes and Vallium spent most of the week back in Gosterwick, researching and brewing potions and carousing.  Vallium sadly found that, despite his willingness to buy drinks, nobody was sharing much new information with him, and actually noticed an elf writing down everything he said.

On Lunday, they all teleported back to the Beacon using the Rugs of Instant Access, along with the mercenary archer Lacrymosa.  Vael cast Shape Earth to punch a small hole in the stone cover he and Ashe had built over the stairway to the surface.  Everyone climbed through the hole into the rainy early morning chill.  Vael cast another Shape Earth to repair the hole in the cover.  They all hiked southeast through the gates of the ruins, to the top of the Long Stair.  There Vael spread the Rug on the ground and the others all used to to teleport back to Gosterwick.  Vael grabbed the Rug and Levitated down the side of the Cliff Face to the secret door, then spread out the Rug and waited for the others to join him.  They then opened the secret door, and Vallium led them in a roundabout march through the southern Great Cavern, east then north they west through side passages, the across the Cavern itself to under the ledge in the southeast corner.  At that point everyone stepped back through the Rug, Vael carried it to the top of the ledge, and everyone came back out.

There was a short passage back into the cave wall, terminating in a 4' high bas-relief of a mostly realistic face of a middle aged man, except with half-spherical empty holes where his eyes should be.  A careful inspection of the face showed that it was magical, and that there were lines around the edges as if it were a door, but it would not open.  Vallium compared the eye holes to various small objects he was carrying, then stepped back through the Rug to the Arcane Practitioners Club in Gosterwick and came back with a pouch full of additional coins and gems, and compared each of them to the eye holes without actually inserting them.  The eyes were too spherical and deep for coins, and too perfectly round to be a good match for most gems, but the silver and blue magical eyes they had were a perfect match.  Vallium said those eyes were valuable and he didn't want to risk losing them without knowing more, so he recommended not actually inserting them yet.  They resolved to come back later when they learned more.

Everyone stepped back through the Rug, and Vael flew it over to the Set landing, then everyone came back out to investigate.  The Settites were still gone.  The group went west, then north, then down a stairway to the west.  Vallium carefully crept ahead in case there were more guards in the octagonal room, but it was empty.  He led them west to the blue pillar, then north from there to a very long staircase down.

The stairs debouched into a room on the Arden level, containing a large construct with the face of Arden and two large hammers, and a large number of corpses of various ages and types but with similar large hammer dents.  Vallium held up his platinum token of Arden.  The construct watched him but did not attack or say anything.  Vallium went to the door in the south of the room, which had previously been deformed with a Shape Earth spell to the point where it was now a crawlway.  He inserted the token into the slot in the door, then crawled through the hole.  The construct appeared satisfied by the ritutal of inserting the token and let him and his companions pass.

Vallium led the group south and east and north around some descending and turning stairs, then north past the large Continually Lit chamber dedicated to Arden, then east past the room with the hot bath, then north over a small barricade with a lot of old corpses, then finally east to the room with 19 beautiful statues of Archontean worthies, and one destroyed statue.  From there a hole in the wall led to a rough narrow passage heading south.  Vallium led the company past a stairway leading up to the west, past some side passages, into a Rudishva-looking passage with while marble floors and walls.  The floor was scorched and bent as though someone had set off a huge fireball here.  There was a circular door at the end of the passage, which Vallium wanted to try opening with the Rudishva oval cards.

While he advanced to try the door, a couple of the earth elementals they had encountered before somehow snuck up behind the group and attacked Ioannes and Vael in the back.  Lacrymosa was caught off guard and took a second to recover her wits.  Meanwhile, Ioannes and Vael each took a couple of heavy blows from stone hands.  Neither quite went down though.  Uvash spun and cast a Stop Bleeding spell on the injured Vael, as Vael activated Larel's Cloak to become invisible then hid against the wall.  Ioannes dove forward away from the elementals to hide behind Uvash, as Vallium heard the commotion behind him and ran toward it.  The second elemental tried to tackle Lacrymosa from behind but completely missed and ended up prone on the ground.  Lacrymosa recovered her senses and started putting arrows into the two elementals at high speed, one in the neck, then the other in the foot to ground it then the neck to try to kill it.  Surprisingly, both elementals disappeared into thin air, just as Vael had.  Lacrymosa started firing arrows into likely hiding spots while Vallium ran up and started poking around with his sword, but neither found the elementals.  Vael invisibly nudged Ioannes while identifying himself and asking for some healing.  Ioannes healed Vael and Lacrymosa, Uvash healed Ioannes, and then Lacrymosa advocated finding and killing the elementals before they got away.

First, they decided to spend a few seconds trying to open the door.  None of the large pile of variously colored Rudishva oval key cards they had opened it.  Vael tried a Lockmaster spell, which gave him a bewildering vision of something that was Not A Lock As He Knew Locks.

Giving up on the round door, the group went into the passages to the east looking for the elementals.  They traversed several caverns full of stalactities and stalagmites but saw no sign of the creatures.  Vallium failed to watch his step while peering around a corner looking for danger, and slipped into a pool of water.  With the Ring of Free Action causing him to easily slip through the water, he immediately sunk quite a distance, before righting himself and kicking and reaching the surface.  After telling the others to watch their step, Vallium dove back into the water, while Vael flew around above it.  The sinkhole was about 60' deep, and at the bottom was a fairly rotten and party eaten Rudishva corpse, wearing a mostly intact orange one-piece outfit with articulated arms and legs.  Vallium hauled the body to the surface, then searched it, finding another rust-colored keycard.  Already wet, he decided to make a second dive into the cold water and look for anything else down there, but didn't find anything else.  He surfaced, considered putting the body through the Rug, decided that might annoy the landlords, and put it in the Bag of Holding instead.

They continued exploring the twisting passages, finding no sign of the elementals, but finding two tunnels sloping down, to the north and east.  They took the eastern one and ended up on top of a ledge, covered with large spider webs.  Carefully cutting some webs away, they advanced and saw below them another large cavern full of giant mushrooms.  Vael again had everyone else step through the Rug so he could Levitate down to the cavern floor.  However, they had not noticed a phase spider on the ceiling above them.  As Vael's last companion disppeared into the carpet, the spider decided the odds were in its favor, and pounced on Vael.  Fortunately for Vael, he saw it dropping toward him, and cast Blink to put himself out of reach, several yards out from the ledge.  Also fortunately, he had a Levitation spell on, so this did not cause a painful fall.  The spider looked at Vael, while shaking its hindquarters back and forth like a cat waiting to pounce, but decided the fall was too far.  Vael charged up a lightning spell and threw it at the spider.  The spider phased out of existence to dodge the bolt.  Vael flew away from the ledge, spent a while avoiding any walls or ceilings or the floor in case the spider was there, then eventually decided it was safe to drop the Rug and open it up with an Apportation spell.  A minute later, Vallium stepped through the Rug, followed quickly by the others.  Vael explained the spider attack, but it did not reappear.

They explored the fungal forest, while Ioannes tried to identify mushrooms.  He saw some Aqua Vitae, and some big red mushrooms that might be fatal Red Veil or might be valuable Red Lotus, but since he wasn't sure he recommended not touching them.  They walked northwest to the edge of the cave and spotted some ledges beyond, then went northeast until they spotted a pond.  An island in the center of the pond contained a building, some kind of automated shovels, and a varumani trying to fix something.  Vael tried talking to the Varumani, but either he wasn't friendly or didn't speak Archontean or Mithric or Elvish or any of Vael's several words of Rudishva.  Ioannes cast Gift of Tongues on Vael, and then Vael started speaking Varumani, and the Varumani responded.  He was a miner, this area was Varumani territory, there were some nasty blood eels in the water so they should not go in.  Vael asked where the rest of Varumani territory was, and the Varumani said north.  Vael asked if there was anything dangerous that way, and the Varumani said "teenagers."  The spell ran out and the group headed north.

As they advanced past a large rock formation, some boulders rolled down it in their direction.  They were moving slowly enough to easily dodge.  Vael spotted a couple of varumani on top of the formation, and used a Thunderclap spell to announce his displeasure.  This was unexpectedly effective, as both varumani retreated to the other side of the rock formation and kept it between themselves and the group.  The cavern ended with a cliff at the north edge, with a ledge on top.  Vael flew up, saw a paved path and a round door, then flew back down and had everyone step through the Rug, then flew back up with the Rug and let them step back out.

Before anyone tried the round door, Ioannes started poking around on the north wall and spotted a secret door.  Vael came up and explained that, no, that's not a secret door, that's just a totally normal natural crack in a wall, Ioannes responded by opening the secret door.  Beyond was a short passage, leading to a worked but decaying room.  In the room were several humans, some dressed like wizards and others like warriors.  One of the wizards blustered that "you're not allowed to be here go away."  The Right for Riches company declined.  One of the warriors called for reinforcements, and a couple more warriors and another wizard came into the room from a passage to the west.  Now outnumbered, the Right for Riches company refused to leave and kept asking questions.  The lead wizard decided not to fight, and not to talk further, and led his group back down the passage to the west, but warned them not to follow.

The room contained a small niche on the west wall with a 4' tall statue of a strange 6-armed creature.  Vallium tried lifting the statue, and it was heavy, but he was strong enough to move it a short distance.  He had Vael spread the Rug on the floor, then picked up the statue, stepped onto the Rug, and said the command word to teleport with it back to their apartment, then returned.  While he was filching the statue, the others searched the room for secret doors, and found one on the east wall.  Using the rule "secret doors first" (which is somehow related to "left for loot") they went through.  It led to some stairs up, and ended in a narrow corridor, with a door on the east end and another on the south wall.  The eastern door had a bunch of graffiti on it in a language they didn't know.  Vallium listened at the east door and heard nothing, then at the south door and heard conversation in Archontean.

Vael knocked on the south door.  It opened a minute later, and there were several humans inside, again dressed as a mix of wizards and warriors.  The Right for Riches company identified themselves.  The strangers asked if King Weskenim sent them.  Vael said they knew King Wiskenim, they were friends with King Wiskenim, but they were not currently representing him.  The strangers said they were awaiting an audience with the King.  The company left.  Vael wrote down all the graffiti on the east door, then knocked on the south door, and asked the wizard if he could read it.  The wizard explained that it was in goblin and that it said "danger," "keep out," "death within," etc.  Vael asked if they knew how to get from here to the King, and the wizard pointed at the ceiling and said the hole there led to the goblin halls, if they could Levitate or climb.

Leaving the mysterious strangers again, the party decided not to open the eastern door, but explored the hallway all the way to the west, where it had collapsed.  They saw a skeleton poking out from the rubble, so dug it out.  The skeleton had been stripped of all equipment, but there was a magic spear behind it, which they took.

They went back to the hole in the ceiling.  Vael Levitated up through it, and saw a small passage leading north, to a huge cave with a lot of noise and the smell of goblins and goats.  When he moved forward to check it out, he saw two ogre guards flanking the end of the passage.  One looked at him and said "Halfling Slayer, you may pass."  Vael went back for the others, and they used a rope to climb up to the hole, then emerged into the Goblin Great Hall.

Vallium walked over to the Merchant's Corner in the southeast of the Hall, and introduced himself to Temrin, the goblin artist sitting waiting for customers.  He asked what Temrin painted, and Temrin said he mostly did portraits, but pointed at Vallium's Halfling Slayer patch and said that he'd made those for the King.  Vallium said Termin's work was excellent and asked if he could paint a portrait of their group.  Temrin agreed, and Vallium then used his Ring of Change Self to appear to be Michael and asked Temrin to add Michael to the portrait.  After about an hour, the portrait was finished, and Vallium purchased it.  He complimented the work and asked if Temrin had any other art for sale.  Temrin had a portrait of King Weskenim and another of Gribble, both of which Vallium also purchased.  He asked what else Temrin could draw, and Temrin said he could do maps and sometimes they turned out to actually lead to the object, but sometimes they didn't.  This got Vallium's attention so he asked Temrin to draw him a map to a necklace with "Nyema" on it.  Temrin started drawing and said it should be ready tomorrow. Vael cast Seeker looking for Nyema's necklace and saw a vision of a necklace hanging on a hook on a wall, somewhere down and to the east.  Vallium paid him for all of the art and said they would be back for the map.

Meanwhile Uvash spotted a group of dwarves, accompanied by a war dog, buying provisions from another merchant.  The dwarves were the Survivors of the Stone, an adventuring party, looking for "something of ours but I can't say what."  Their dog was named Ummchark, which meant "chisel" in Dwarvish.  Vael tried petting the dog without asking and almost became a chew toy, but its owner Ljot called the dog off and told it to go stand next to a goat and not eat it either.  Uvash mentioned they had found a life-stone and asked if any of the dwarves knew the Corundum clan, but they did not.  One of the dwarves, Hallsted, another cleric of Zodarrim, said that he would be happy to take the life-stone back to Kazildor if they finished their mission and headed back that way before Uvash did.  He would look for Uvash at the House of the Gods in Gosterwick before they left the area.

Another merchant, an arms dealer named Claudine, had been watching the interactions.  Vael went over to check on her weapons, but was not impressed with any of them.  Claudine was equally not impressed with Vael.  Vallium also came over to look, and Claudine liked his scale armor and magic sword, but he didn't see anything he wanted to buy either.

The group left the merchants and headed up the spiral stairs to the northeast, past Rizzit the weird purple wax demon, and around the upper level of Goblintown toward King Weskenim's rooms.  When they reached the Court, the major-domo Palestrim recognized them and asked what they wanted.  Vael indicated they would like to see the King.  Palestrim asked if they had news of the Scepter of the Goblins, and Vael said not yet.  It took most of an hour to get their audience, then the king deigned to speak to them for a few minutes.  He said they were doing great work, but he needed that Scepter to unify the goblins.  Vael asked about the secretive wizards, and Weskenim said he was letting them wait in that out-of-the-way room rather than granting an audience, as he thought they were opposed to the Varumani and he didn't really want to make any powerful enemies right now.  He wasn't granting or refusing an audience, just stalling and hoping they went away.  Lacrymosa mentioned that she'd been part of the Great Reconquest of Upper Goblintown but had never received her patch, so Weskenim instructed Palestrim to find her patch, and Palestrim found it in a drawer somewhere so the king could pin it on her and recognize her as an official Halfling Slayer.

With their audience finished, the group went back down the stairs to the Goblin Great Hall, then back down the hole to the southern corridor, then down the secret stairs to the Varumani level.  They followed a passage north, and found a guard room with four varumani guards.  The guards asked if they had varumani passports.  They did not have passports.  The guard said they could not enter varumani territory without a passport.  Vael asked where to get one, and the guard was not very helpful, except for allowing them to leave.  Behind the guards in the room were some small creatures resembling a cross between monkeys and bats, who did not talk, but chirped.

They went back south, then went east to the round door.  Vallium's brown ID did not open it, but Vael's orange ID did.  Beyond was a hallway with two huge stone thrones with leather throws over the backs.  One of the seats had a Rusishva-looking glyph; the other was damaged as though the glyph had been destroyed.  Vael wrote down the glyph on a piece of paper for later investigation.  They continued to the end of the hall, where there was an octagonal room full of trash, and some wide stairs up.

The stairs led to another large corridor, containing a bar run by a varumani and 3 goblins.  Vael purchased a Hak's Special Red Ale.  Ioannes purchased a mushroom cake and got a free cup of water.  The varumani was named Hal, and spoke pretty good Archontean.  He said this was the Arena level and on match days this bar did great business, but it was pretty quiet right now.  There was another set of stairs up to the east, and a chasm to the west with a makeshift bridge going southwest.  Vael asked Hal if that chasm was The Great Chasm, and Hal said he didn't go into the chasm because it wasn't safe, but he'd heard they were connected.

After finishing their snack, the group headed north.  They spied some more large and creepy stone chairs, then some guard niches full of human arena guards, then a room with some gamblers loitering.  Vael spoke to a colorfully dressed varumani tout named Keth, who said tomorrow's matchups were not announced yet so odds were not yet posted, but they were hoping the announcement would come soon.  West of the gamblers were some bleachers overlooking the a huge arena with a sandy floor, currently empty.  There was a door to the northwest, which someone tried opening, but a guard ran out and said "that's private don't go in there" then said something to another guard about how stupid people were about not knowing where not to go.  The second guard said something about maybe putting up helpful signs, and the first guard said something about signs not working because stupid people couldn't read, as the group pretended not to hear the guards and walked away north.

They passed some kind of tunnel bored into the east wall, then reached a fancy throne to the north.  The throne was unoccupied, but some familiar adventurers were hanging in punishment stocks near the throne.  It was Dalton's Darlings, the entire group, including their friend Jost who they had rescued from Gerrilad's jail.  Dalton revealed that they had fought in an arena battle the day before, and the rules were no magic, so they had obeyed by not even bringing their wizard to the fight since he was useless without spells.  But unfortunately Isidor the halfling got injured and reflexively fast-drew and chugged a healing potion, and healing potions were considered magic, so the Arena Lord had stopped the bout, ruled that Dalton's Darlings were cheating, awarded the win to the goblins they were fighting, and ruled that since it was a first offence and they were stupid surfacers who didn't know anything, Dalton's Darlings could spend a few days in the stocks rather than being immediately executed.  The Right for Riches company started asking Dalton more questions, but an arena guard walked up and said "no talking to the prisoners" so they left.

They continued west down a wide passage, past a statue of a four-armed monster and a statue of a Rudishva (who welcomed visitors to the Arena in Archontean, Varumani, and Rudishva), past some magical darkness, and finally west to the Great Chasm, where they saw a huge contraption operated by one varumani in charge and two varumani laborers turning the winch, the Troll Lifts.  The lead varumani said it cost one silver per leg, since there were five of them and they each had two legs, that would be ten silver.  From here they could go up, or across the Chasm, where there was another lift that went down.  They paid the ten silver to go up.  They got in the cage, and the two varumani turned the winch and hoisted them up a long way, until they arrived a level up.  There they met another crew of a varumani overseer and two winch pullers, who let them out of the cage.  Nearby they saw a bridge across the Chasm, with a gap in the middle, and some wooden planks across the gap.

Recognizing about where they were, Vael cast Seek Earth looking for platinum and sensed some nearby, in the varumani lift operators' camp.  Not wanting conflict with them, he tried again, and found more platinum further north somewhere out of sight.  They crossed the bridge and Vael cast Seek Earth for both gold and platinum, and sensed platinum north and gold south.  Giving up for now, they went southwest and found Killick and his large group of goblins.  Killik greeted them and allowed safe passage through his territory to Gog's cave.  Gog greeted them, hoping they'd brought him food, and was disappointed they had not.  He still allowed them through his cave to the secret door leading to stairs up to Upper Goblintown.  The party went up the stairs, through Upper Goblintown, up the stairs through the Pyramid of Thoth, and then back across the surface ruins of Arden Vul to the Beacon.  There Vael asked everyone to step through the Rug, then experimented with Blinking through the cover over their stairs, to the Beacon, rather than using Shape Earth to dig a hole.  He succeeded, and was through with less work.  He laid the Rug down in the Beacon so the others could come through.

GM's Comments:

They failed to open either of the doors they wanted to open, got ambushed twice, and only found a few items of loot.  Yet this was a very successful session in terms of exploration.  They survived both ambushes, explored a whole lot of rooms, found two Arden Vul Iconic Locatons, and visited two previously unvisited levels.

XP:

• Exploration: 35 new locations (a new record), good for 2 XP
• Loot: not much, but the magic spear is worth enough to generate 1 XP if sold
• Achievements: Two Arden Vul Iconic Locations, the Arena and the Sundered Span, for 2 XP
• Total: 5 XP

Next Week:

The current plan is to bring food to Gog and see if he can tell them how to get Varumani Passports.  They would then return to Goblintown and get their map from Temrin, and follow it and see if it takes them to Nyema's necklace.  If so, they would recover it and bring it to Yrtol.  If not, they would improvise.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 31: I Want to Believe

Date: 

Lunday, 21st of Basilembrios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Cool, cloudy

Player Characters: 

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

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

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Ashe "GOAT" Maykum, Goblin mercenary druid (ArchonShiva)

Significant NPCs:

Michael J. Dundee, Thorcin barbarian

Wicktrimmer, Imperial Goblin banker and merchant

Barnaby Goodbarrel, Esq., Halfling lawyer

Craastonistorex, green dragon

Camilla, summoned bat

Summoned wild boar

Summoned cave bears

Summoned bat swarms

2 Imperial Stone Guardians

Akla-Chan, hologram of a Rudishva artificial intelligence psychologist

Summoned hammerhead sharks

Many crocodiles

Huge snapping turtle

The Plan:

• Leave tribute on the dam for Craastonistorex the green dragon
• Use Water Vision to see if there's anything interesting in the lake
• Put the ankh keys in the obelisks of the sun, moon, and stars before noon and see what happens
• Use Water Vision to see if there's anything interesting in the Great Cavern River
• Check out the salamander island in the Great Cavern
• Explore the southwestern ledge in the Great Cavern
• Go down the Settite stairs from the Great Cavern and explore/loot more of the Settite level

What Happened:

Michael and Vallium got matching letters from Wicktrimmer that the mule caravan from Narsileon with their items had arrived.  Michael also got a letter from his mother that his father was sick and he should come home.  They went to the Rarities Factor where Vallium picked up his new sword and Michael got his new scale armor, both already paid in advance.

Michael then made plans to leave.  His plan was to travel down the Imperial road to Newmarket, then all the way to Narsileon on the sea, then catch a ship down to Sweetwater Hold in southeastern Irthuin, then walk to his family's home from there.  He first settled up with the Right for Riches Company.  They agreed to give him a magic shield, a few healing potions, and the Belt of Strength as his share of party items.  Vael and Michael went to their lawyer's office and had him draw up a separation agreement to make it official; if Michael ever came back and rejoined the Right for Riches company it would be as a new member, with no claim to any pre-existing items.

Vael wanted to test the range of the Rugs of Instant Access, so he proposed that the group walk with Michael for a while, either until the Rugs stopped working or until they reached Narsileon.  (If they made it all the way to Narsileon with the Rugs still working, they would rent a place there and leave a Rug then teleport back, losing the tactical use of the Rugs but gaining instant access to a real city.)  It took a bit less than three days to hike the 60 miles to Newmarket.  On the fourth day, a bit south of Newmarket, the Rug stopped working.  They turned around and went back a bit and confirmed the Rug worked again; it appeared the range limit was about 60 miles.  At that point the Right for Riches company said goodbye to Michael and headed back north, and he resumed hiking south alone, at a noticeably faster speed.

It took three days to hike back to Gosterwick.  When they got there Uvash was still busy trying to convert Torunn the Smith to Zodarrim, but they'd just lost most of a week walking to Newmarket and back, so they went to the Grudge Brigade and hired Ashe the goblin.  They got up early the next morning and walked to Arden Vul, wanting to be there well before noon because the obelisks of the sun and moon said something about "midday life" and they interpreted that as "put the ankhs in the obelisks before noon".

At the base of the Long Stair, Vallium and Ioannes stepped through the Rug back to Gosterwick, while Vael and Ashe Levitated up the Cliff Face,with several bats flying as escorts.  They made it to the top safely, so Vael laid out the Rug and Vallium and Ioannes joined them.  Levitating rather than climbing the Long Stair saved about an hour, so they had a couple of hours left before noon.

The group walked over to the dam to leave tribute for Craas.  Vael noticed a scroll case on top of the dam.  Inside was a note from Craas, saying that the silver chess pieces were "appropriate tribute" but then listing several complaints, like the missing chess board, the pieces being the wrong colors, and the archons being larger than the dragons.  Everyone said some rude things about Craas, quietly, then Vael wrote a polite note back rather than risking dragon wrath.  They left a magic amulet that only worked for Settites as additional tribute.

Vael pointed out the Obelisk of the Stars.  The swamp between the dam and the obelisk looked wet and slow to traverse, so Vael cast Walk on Air on Vallium and Ioannes so they could get there faster.  There were a few ruined buildings near the swamp that people wanted to investigate, but they didn't want to risk taking too long so they only poked around for a couple of minutes, and didn't find anything.  When everyone reached the obelisk, they read the inscriptions and looked at the pictures of stars, then inserted one of the silver ankhs.  Nothing seemed to happen.

They noted a long intact building and discussed investigating it, but decided to do that later and finish with the obelisks first.  They went east toward a bridge, and spotted a large statue with the head missing.  They thought it was probably Vul the Sorcerer based on the resemblance to the Colossus of Vul on the Cliff Face, but couldn't be completely sure without the head.  They didn't see the head anywhere, and continued east across the bridge to the island in the middle of the Swift River, south of the Palace.  They went north to the palace wall, beyond which they had found the bottom part of the Obelisk of the Moon.  (The top part was nowhere to be seen.)  Vael grabbed an ankh from Vallium, Levitated over the wall, and put the ankh in the obelisk.  Again, nothing obvious happened.

They continued east over the other bridge and again saw the plinth with the feet and ankles of a large statue, but with the rest of the statue missing.  They compared the scale and thought that might be the statue of Arden whose head was above the door of the Inn of the Broken Head, but could not be completely sure.  (Vallium was keeping a list of large statue pieces and their locations in case they needed them in the future.)  They continued east to the Forum, went nowhere near the tower full of wraiths, went south to the Obelisk of the Sun, and discussed whether to insert the third ankh immediately or wait for noon.  They decided to insert it early then wait for noon, to avoid possibly inserting it too late.

Everyone watched the shadows to see when noon approached.  Vael Levitated up a bit to get a better view.  When the shadows disappeared, they heard a loud crashing sound to the northwest.  Vael impatiently flew over and was the first to notice a new hole in the ground, on the southern part of the island with the palace.  Looking into the hole, there were some stairs leading into the earth, ending at some large bronze doors.  Camilla the bat flew ahead and checked out the doors, magically relaying a picture of them back to Ashe.  The non-flying members of the party walked across a narrow iron footbridge to the island.  It didn't collapse under them, but Ashe decided not to send any summoned bears across it, just in case they were too heavy.

Everyone investigated the doors at the bottom of the stairs.  They were huge and bronze and sturdy looking and magical.  There were carvings of Thoth and Set (who everyone recognized) and Anubis and Horus (who Ioannes identified), all holding up their right hands in the universal sign for stop.  There was a big Mithric sign saying "Chamber of the Beacon.  Enter only with Permission of the Archon.  Speak the password to open.”  There were no obvious keyholes.  Vallium pushed on the door, but it was locked.  Everyone started guessing passwords, but only a couple of the party members spoke Mithric (which they assumed the password would be in), so they had to translate the others' guesses.  After a bunch of guesses that had no effect, Vael said "Open Sesame" in Mithric, and as soon as he said "open" in Mithric ("aperire") the door clicked unlocked.  (Apparently the ancient Archonteans were terrible at passwords.)

Vallium pushed the door open.  This revealed a large room, with a couple of statues in the back corners.  Angry statues, charging at him.  Vallium fought the two stone constructs, while two of Ashe's bat swarms and a summoned wild boar tried to help.  (Ashe's cave bears were too big for him to maintain down here where Nature's Sanctity was weak.)  The bats and boars didn't seem strong enough to penetrate the constructs' stone armor, and didn't even manage to distract them enough to soak any hits, but Vallium's enchanted broadsword worked fine.  He blocked and parried many punches from the constructs, and two sword cuts to each construct put them down.  Ioannes and Vael and Ashe stood in the back preparing to cast spells to help, but once Vallium downed the first construct they decided he had the fight under control and just watched from a few steps back.

The room had a bunch of frescoes on the walls in great condition, legionnaires and archons to the left, priests of Thoth and Set and Horus to the right.  There were wooden doors left and right, and a passage to a stone door straight ahead.  The group listened to the left door, heard nothing, and Vallium opened it.  Beyond was a workshop, with many benches, covered with tools and some odd devices.  The party spent a few minutes looking at the various devices, failed to really identify any of them, and started shoving them in their Bag of Holding.  They searched for secret doors but didn't find any.

They went across the room to the other wooden door, listened again, and opened it.  They found a rather luxurious reading room, full of nice furniture and bookshelves containing many books.  Three walls were decorated with images of Thoth, Set, and Horus.  Vael immediately started valuing the furniture and wondering which pieces they could carry through the Rug, but they didn't actually bother taking any furniture yet.  They did shove all the books in their Bag, though.  While they were taking books, a thin flat oval disc fell out of one.  It looked like the unexplained orange disc they had bought at the Goblin Market, but this one was pale green.  Once again they searched for secret doors, and this time Vael spotted an ibis fresco on the north wall that looked suspicious, with a slot in its beak.  He tried the small oval disc in the slot and it fit and the door opened.  Inside were a bunch more odd devices, including some that looked somewhat recognizable like a helmet and a shield, and others that were just weird.  Once again they put everything small enough to fit in their magic bag.

They searched for more secret doors, didn't find any, and went north to the stone door.  This one had a keyhole, but none of Vallium's keys fit.  Vael Lockmastered it open.  Beyond was a room with three more exits, all of them strange round doors with no obvious handles or keyholes.  Vallium remembered seeing one door like that before, behind the waterfall, but failing to open it.  (They had not had a wizard with them at the time, though.)  There was also a portable blackboard in the center of the room, covered with various writing in Mithric, some of it sensible, some of it just jumbled letters and numbers.  Vael pulled out pen and paper and copied everything from the board.

They then went west.  There was no obvious way to open the round door.  Vael held the pale green oval disc to it, and it opened, in slices like an iris.  Beyond was a small room, with a silver circle on the floor, and a gold square next to the circle on the wall.  They tried various combinations of holding things up to the circle and pushing the square and standing on the square, but nothing happened.  Nothing appeared magical either.  It was odd.

They went back to the east and opened the other iris door with the green oval.  It was the mirror image of the other room, with another silver disc and another gold square.  They once again tried a lot of things, but nothing happened.

Giving up on those rooms, they went north.  The green oval worked on that door too.  They went back and also tried the orange oval on all three doors, and it also worked.  To the north was a passage, with the east side collapsed, and the west side leading to another round door.  Against one wall were some wooden benches, a sign reading “The Beacon – Source of the Old Ones’ Power", and an arrow pointing west.

The green disk opened the western door too, and beyond it was a very confusing room.  It was all brilliantly lit with what appeared to be hidden Continual Light spells, but did not radiate magic.  The room contained 6 oversized chairs in various colors, fixed to the floor.  On the walls beyond some of the chairs were black mirrors, with odd switches and dials in front of them.  There were a couple of podiums with more such controls.  Finally there was an oval hole in the floor, with a little ridge around it.  It led down to another level beneath, but there was no ladder.

Ashe sent a bat down to scout the floor underneath, and didn't see anything that looked dangerous.  Vael sat in the central chair, which was way too big for him, and smoothly swiveled side to side on a pin.  It had cavities in both armrests, with a blinking red light in each, clearly magical but not detecting as such.  They tried putting various things in the cavities, but nothing seemed to have any effect.

Vael Levitated down through the hole in the floor, but something else interfered with his Levitation and pushed him down, then stopped him at the floor below.  Eventually the others followed him; there was some kind of levitation effect in the shaft that worked even without the spell, and was not detected as magic.  A passage northwest led to a round door straight ahead, with other doors left and right.  They chose left, for loot.

This door opened as they approached, without needing to hold up a disc.  Beyond was a room with many chairs in different colors around a long oval table.  On the table were three large sheets of parchment.  All of them had maps.  The first appeared to be a map of the two-level area they were in, with annotations by several rooms.  The rooms they hadn't visited yet were "power" and "strange ghost".  The second map was another two-level building, labeled "Barracks of the Old Ones" in Mithric.  The third map appeared to lead to some tomb, somewhere in the Halls.

They went to the room labeled "power" on the map.  It was full of a lot of odd machinery they did not recognize.  Vael somehow avoided pushing any buttons.  They went to the room labeled "strange ghost" on the map.  It led to a room with many small round tables surrounded by chairs.  There was also a bar along one wall with some kind of drink faucets.  And there was also indeed a strange ghost.

The translucent form was about 7' tall, with two arms and two legs, wearing an unfamiliar outfit.  It had brown skin, no hair, two small horns, and one less finger on each hand than expected.  As they approached, it greeted them in Mithric.  Vael and Ioannes, who spoke Mithric, engaged it in a long conversation, while Vallium and Ashe watched.

The ghostly creature was named Akla-Chah, and she was a Rudishva.  Sort of.  She was an illusion of a Rudishva.  Kind of.  She was a construct built by the Rudishva and appeared to them as an illusion of a Rudishva, because her job was talking to Rudishva and they were more comfortable talking to someone who looked like them.  But she was actually not a biological rudishva, but a construct.  But she considered herself a Rudishva anyway.

This did not really explain the situation, because they had no idea what a Rudishva was.  But she had a lot of questions and they answered them.  Their names, their species (she recognized Vallium and Ioannes as human but Vael looked somewhat different and Ashe looked very different), why not everyone spoke Mithric, what other languages they did speak, who they worked for, why no humans had come to visit in a long time, how they found the Beacon, their goals, who they worked for, etc.  It went on for a long time.  Akla-Chah was good at asking questions.  They eventually figured out that was her job -- she was a psychologist and morale officer for the Rudishva, whoever they were.  Her projection only worked in this room, so could not leave, but she said her actual form was somewhere else.

The short version was that the Beacon was a Rudishva vehicle that had crashed into Arden Vul many years ago and had been unable to leave.  The surviving Rudishva (and their allies, the Varumani and Varuda) survived here, trying to find a way home.  But then some horrible treason happened and most of them were killed and it was too painful to get into details.  Later the ancient Archonteans had come to Arden Vul and discovered this piece of the Beacon and rudely interrogated Akla-Chah, but eventually they stopped coming and she didn't know why.

Also, this room was a cafeteria, and they were welcome to food and drink from the machines along one wall.  Vael pushed the food button and got an Arden Vul cake (very filling and nutritious, but not that tasty) like the ones they had once seen in the market in Gosterwick.  Ioannes pushed the drink button and got some very strong alcohol, stronger than any of them had tasted before.  It was too strong for him, but some of the others liked it better, and Akla-Chah said they were free to take some to go, so they filled a canteen and a couple of wineskins.

Vael pulled out some of the artifacts they had found earlier, and Akla-Chah identified a few as possibly weapons but was not too sure, as she was a talker not a fighter, and had only seen pictures of such weapons in Rudishva entertainment media, er, moving books, that might not be accurate.  She did identify the ovals as keycards that controlled access to doors, and said that the different colors of cards were for different people with different ranks and access levels, and that some of the cards were of colors she had not seen before and might be fakes.  Vael asked what the best color was, and Akla-Chah said the captain's card was gold.  They asked where the captain was, and Akla-Chah said that Captain Leil-Jor was killed in the treason, and she didn't know where her body was.  Vael asked if there were any other constructs like her, and Akla-Chah said there was one other, but he went crazy and they should avoid him.

After they ran out of questions, the party left Akha-Chah, but said they'd be back soon.  They tested that they could open the secret door from both sides, left one of the Rugs inside the secret door, then went outside.  Vael flew to all three obelisks and pulled out the ankhs.  This did not cause the steel doors over the stairwell to re-close.  Much investigation of the steel doors did not reveal an easy way to close them.  They were not directly magical, and it they appeared to weigh many tons, more than Vallium's strength or Vael's Apportation spell could lift.  Maybe they could lift them with a large team of oxen or a dwarven engineering team or a dragon, but they wanted to cover the stairs quickly before anyone else spotted them.  So they decided to instead build a cover over the stairwell.

Vael and Ashe cast Shape Earth many times (so each casting would use a manageable amount of mana) to create essentially a bridge of stone logs above the stairway.  They then used more Shape Earth spells to close the gaps between the pieces, and finally Ashe threw a bunch of dirt and sticks on top of the stone to try to camouflage the cover.  They completely sealed it up, leaving no hole to get in or out, so they'd need another Shape Earth (or stone-cutting tools and time) to get back in.  But with the Rug inside, they could also just teleport in from Gosterwick.

With their tracks covered, they went over to the nearby lake to look for treasure.  Ashe used Water Vision and reported a wrecked barge on the bottom about 50 feet down.  Also a huge turtle and a bunch of big crocodiles.  They formulated a plan to search the barge.  Vallium, wearing the Ring of Free Action to let him move through water quickly, would get Breathe Water and Water Vision spells from Ashe and Flight and Mage Sight from Vael.  He would then fly above the wreck, dive down into it, and look for treasure.

Unfortunately, the huge turtle was staying near the wreck, looking up at Vallium.  Vallium wasn't in the mood to be eaten by the turtle, so he flew over and conferred with Ashe.  Ashe summoned two hammerhead sharks, large but not as large as the turtle.  They swam over toward the turtle, who saw interesting prey and gave chase.  The sharks, who were faster than the turtle, led the turtle toward the northwest corner of the lake.  This gave Vallium an opening, and he flew down through the water to the wreck.  Inside were two fairly rotten wooden chests.  He punched holes through the rotted wood of the first.  It was full of small ancient silver pennies and the large ancient gold solidi.  He grabbed all the gold he could, stuffing it quickly into his bag, then went over to the second chest, which was much larger.  It had a mix of items: a few gold medallions, some more silver ankhs, a magic bastard sword, a magic wand, a huge magic gold key, and three regular-sized keys.  Vallium got really excited about all the keys, but remembered to also take the other stuff.  He decided he had enough time to go back to the first chest and grab the silver coins, then flew straight up out of the water.  The turtle was still busy chasing sharks, so he went back toward shore, where Vael and Ashe were each focused on maintaining several spells while Ioannes was checking for danger and asking to see if either needed more mana.

Once Vallium reached the shore, they dropped all the spells (to the disappointment of the hungry turtle who really wanted shark), rested a bit, then walked back to Gosterwick.  They had a bag full of treasure and a story nobody would believe.  

GM's Comments:

It took them 31 delves, but they finally found what appears to be definitive proof that extraterrestrials visited Magae.  They also thought to look in the lake that they've walked next to dozens of times, and were rewarded with some treasure.

Achievements:

First Contact in a While: 1 XP for meeting Akla-Chah.

XP:

• Exploration:  18 new locations, good for 1 XP.
• Loot: They kept the books and Rudishva artifacts, but the treasure from the lake was worth 2 XP.
• Achievements: 1 XP
• Total: 4 XP

Next week:

They're currently planning to explore an unexplored bit of the Great Cavern, then go way down the stairs from the Set level to the Arden level behind the waterfall, and see if the keycards from the Beacon also work on the round door they found there.

A Couple More Foundry Modules We're Using for GURPS

Previous Post

A quick update on the Foundry VTT configuration we're using in DFRPG Arden Vul:

Core FoundryVTT Version

I'm still running Foundry v12, even though v13 has been out for a while and most of the modules we use claim support for it.  I just don't want to make major changes in the middle of a campaign and risk breaking compatibility or breaking all the content we've made.  I'd choose v13 for a new campaign though.

Game System

We're still using GGA, GURPS Game Aid, the main GURPS system for Foundry.  (DFRPG is not GURPS in Steve Jackson Games marketing land, but it's 99% GURPS in real life, so this is the right system.) We're using version 0.18.4.  0.18.6 is out, but I've seen system updates break things, so I don't update this without a good reason.

Modules

In addition to the long list in the previous post, we've added a couple more:

X-Card

This adds a little button with an "X" on it.  If any player clicks that button, a big "X" appears in the middle of everyone's screen.  The intent is a player safety tool: if the GM or another player starts going into content that really bothers a player for whatever reason, they can pop up the "X" to say stop.  However it can also be used as a general stop tool even for more mundane reasons like "all the audio is messed up and I can't hear you guys" or "hey you skipped my combat turn!"  Basically, if someone triggers the big X, everyone pause the game for a bit and we can sort out what's wrong, then continue.

(There's another similar module called Raise My Hand that's similar but designed to be a bit less intrusive, for saying "please let me talk next after this person finishes" rather than "everyone stop right now!"  Ideally I'd like a separate button for that, but Raise My Hand only supports v13 and so didn't install easily to v12.  I may see if I can force it to install at some point.)

Simple Calendar System

This is an absurdly good calendar module.  You can pick from a few predefined calendars (modern Earth, Traveller Imperium, Greyhawk, etc.) or enter your own.  (The Arden Vul calendar wasn't in there, but it only took me a few minutes to enter.)  Then the GM can set the current day in the game world and everyone can instantly see the month, day of month, day of week, season, phase of the moon, etc.  If you want you can also track time of day, along with variable sunrise and sunset.  Finally, it can integrate with the game system, so the time of day can automatically be changed by game actions.  Foundry is missing a combat turn counter by default, so this is an easy way to see how much duration is left on that Great Haste, without adding another time tracker module just for that.  (I might still want to add some other time trackers, in particular a per-player Luck timer, but this is a good start.)

Campaign-Changing Magic Items

The PCs in DFRPG Arden Vul have found a few unexpectedly powerful magic items that have significantly changed the campaign.  If I had written Arden Vul, I would not have put any items that powerful that close to the surface.  As a teenager I read all the Gygaxian advice from the 1970s Dragon magazines about avoiding Monty Haulism, because once power spirals out of control the campaign is doomed, and I've tried to be cautious about giving out too many powerful items ever since.  But maybe it's different for items that aren't the +5 Weapon of Effortless Killing or the +5 Armor of Completely Ignoring Danger.  Maybe Richard Barton knew what he was doing.

Larel's Sack

Larel's Sack is a Bag of Holding.  Not even a particularly big Bag of Holding.  It can also create small items, with limitations.  (Though my PCs haven't really used that power much; they just use it as a Bag of Holding.)  And they found another, larger, Bag of Holding later, so Larel's Sack doesn't feel that powerful anymore.  I think the first method PCs find to significantly increase carrying capacity is a big deal (as it means they can get heavy treasure out of the dungeon, which increases their loot and thus their XP if you give XP for loot), but additional ways of carrying more stuff give diminishing returns, once you can usually carry all you find.

Larel's Cloak

Larel's Cloak gives Invisibility, which is either amazing or not a big deal, depending on whether you already have a mage who can reliably and repeatedly cast Invisibility.  It also gives reaction bonuses, which is either amazing or not a big deal depending on how often NPCs are actually making reaction rolls.  If the GM makes reaction rolls in secret then players might underestimate the value of reaction bonuses, since they can never be sure if that NPC was always going to be friendly, or if their reaction bonus saved them from a fight.  On the other hand, if the GM mostly determines NPC reactions by fiat, maybe the bonuses don't help much.  (You can't use random reactions for every single NPC, or the beautiful nymph face character just charms her way past every challenge and the other PCs are just there to carry the gifts from her adoring fans.)

Larel's Pin

Larel's Pin is a really good magic stiletto.  It has bonuses to skill and damage, and a chance to slow opponents it hits.  In games where every weapon is about the same, that's a really good weapon.  In games like GURPS where different types of weapons use different skills and do different amounts of damage, knives aren't great.  They don't completely suck, because you can use them in close combat, and you can fast draw them, and you can hide them.  But if nobody puts points in Knife skill because a knife isn't a good a general-purpose weapon as a sword or axe or spear, then nobody's going to get that excited about a magic knife.  I was kind of surprised that my PCs actually chose to sell it, but it was worth a lot of money and they wanted to curry favor with Wicktrimmer, one of the more connected and powerful NPCs in Gosterwick.

Rugs of Instant Access

Teleportation is especially called out as a problem in DFRPG, and the Teleport spell from GURPS Magic is not in the DFRPG spell list.  (There's an advantage in one of the Dungeon Fantasy books to get around this if the GM wants, but it's 100 points, not 1 point [once you have the prerequisites] like most spells, so it's not common.)  The Rugs are a super powerful item because they allow teleportation.  They are also portable, and seem to be reliable.  A portable, reliable teleporter is an extremely valuable thing.  But they have limits.  You can only teleport from one Rug to the other Rug, so you need to get them both in place first.  So you can use them to go between two fixed guarded points, but how many PCs have two fixed guarded points?  If you want to go from one fixed guarded point to random places, someone has to carry the other Rug there first.  If you want to use the Rugs to evacuate the whole party, you're leaving a Rug behind with whatever made you run away, and you might not get it back.  So I think the Rugs are amazing most of the time, but they have drawbacks.  Probably the best kind of magic item.  They change the campaign, but make the players make difficult choices.  Do you sell it to an NPC, do you use it for your commute, or do you use it for tactical movement?  So far the Right for Riches company has gone with tactical movement.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 30: The Tomb of Theskalon

Date: 

Lunday, 9th of Basilembrios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Cool, cloudy, chance of rain

Player Characters: 

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

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

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

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

Significant NPCs:

Mariposa, Chrysalis's monkey

Gwelf, deceased dwarven thief

Lyssandra Astorion, Archontean wizard, co-owner of the Arcane Practitioners' Club

Creon, pawnbroker

Flavius Aurelius, Archontean merchant

Several merchant teamster/guards

Several mules

Suspicious bat that transformed into a suspicious worm

4 Settite Guild of Service slavers

Harold, Archontean fighter

Hjalti, Wiskin fighter

Kiglon, Thorcin ranger

The Plan:

• Leave one Teleport Rug in Gosterwick and bring the other along
• Climb the Long Stair to the secret entrance to the Great Cavern
• Go to the top of the rock formation in the southeastern Cavern and explore the shaft down
• Explore the classical temple on top of a rock spire in the southwestern Cavern
• Defeat the Set outpost in the southwestern Cavern, go down the stairs, and defeat the Varumani guards
• Explore as time permits

What Happened:

Uvash led some members of his dwarven flock to bury the fallen dwarf adventurer Gwelf, whose body they had found in a cavern the previous week.

Lyssandra left messages on everyone's apartment doors at the Arcane Practitioners' Club, that livestock and corpses were not permitted on the premises.  Also that all apartment tenants must leave by the first of Dikaios, when renovations to the top floor would commence.  The lounge, alchemy labs, training rooms, and library on the lower floors would not be affected.

Creon sent Vael a note that he had some newly arrived magical items.  The items were a very expensive magical knife, a suit of magical scale armor, and an invisibility potion.  Vael didn't buy any of them, but paid Creon a tip for continuing to let him know about interesting items before they went on the shelves.  Vael did spot and purchase a couple of items from market peddlers: a mapping kit and a hands-free helmet lamp.

Vael went looking for Wicktrimmer to see if he had any ideas about apartments, but the goblin was not available.

The Right for Riches company left for Arden Vul just after dawn on Lunday.  They made it to the base of the waterfall without encountering anyone, but saw a trail of people and mules heading up, about a quarter of the way up the Long Stair.  Everyone else stepped through the Rug back to Gosterwick, then Vael Levitated about halfway up the Long Stair to outside the secret entrance to the Great Cavern, and let the others come back through.  They waited there for the mule train, which turned out to be a merchant and six armed guards, each leading a mule.  Two of the guards came forward to talk.  They revealed that they were heading up to the Inn of the Broken Head with supplies.  Once he was convinced of their peaceful intentions, the merchant, Flavius Aurelius, came up to chat.  He revealed that he and his men regularly brought supplies from Gosterwick up to the Broken Head.  Vael asked to exchange contact information so they could talk again sometime in Gosterwick, and Flavius agreed.

Once the mule train was out of sight, the party opened the secret door, and Vallium led them east then north then west through narrow passages into the Great Cavern proper.  They repeated the trick with everyone stepping through the Rug, Vallium Levitating up to the top of the rock outcropping, then everyone stepping back out.  The shaft they wanted to explore was about 5 feet in diameter and extended beyond the range of their light sources.  Vael cast Trace on his Returning Pebble then dropped it into the hole.  The spell told him that it fell about 70 feet, bounced a few times, then settled there.  Vael was a bit nervous to fly down into the hole alone, so Vallium tied a 100 foot rope around his waist, spiked it in place at the top and had the others hold it, and then climbed down while Vael Levitated.  At the bottom was a cavern and there did not appear to be any danger, so Vallium stayed at the bottom to stand guard, while Vael flew up, let everyone step into the Rug, flew down, and let everyone step out.

The group explored the small cave.  It was unoccupied, but had a few interesting features.  There was what looked like a black flowering plant, impossibly growing in the pitch dark.  There was also a sheet spread out on the ground.  On the sheet were a couple of flasks of a strange light orange material, a couple of small discs of a strange heavy orange material, some unidentifiable dried fruit, and some unidentifiable and extremely old dried meat.  They took the objects, left the old food, and did not disturb the plant.

There was another shaft heading down.  Vael again cast Trace on his Pebble and dropped it.  This time it fell around 170' before bouncing around a bit.  That was longer than any rope they had, so Vael sent down a Wizard Eye spell to explore.  The spell revealed a cavern complex, with one large cavern containing a pool of water, and another tunnel sloping down.  It looked unoccupied, so Vael had everyone step into the Rug, flew down, and let everyone step out.

The group thoroughly explored the cave.  They didn't find any occupants or treasure, or any exits except for the tunnel sloping down.  Vallium swam around in the chilly pool, which appeared to be fresh water, about 30' deep.  Eventually they took the tunnel down, but then turned back around before exploring the deeper level.  Everyone climbed back up, then stepped into the Rug, and Vael flew all the way up to the rock then back down to the surface of the Great Cavern, and everyone stepped back out.

They walked west a bit to the base of the pillar atop which Vael had seen some kind of classical temple.  He flew up to take a look, then repeated the Rug trick to teleport everyone else up.  There was what looked like a classical marble temple on top of the pillar, and in the center of it was a large sarcophagus.  It was surrounded by 8 urns, about 4' in diameter and 4' tall.  There was a Mithric inscription on the sarcophagus:

Here rests Ptarmis

loyal servant of Thoth

seeker of hidden ways

who destroyed the loathsome ones

raised his children from spores

and opened this cavern

Those who disturb his sleep

Will be returned to the mulch

from whence they came.

This was a bit confusing, since they'd met a man named Ptarmis, on the throne a bit to the east, who was very much alive.  Vael looked over to see if he was there, and he was.  He flew over to chat.  Ptarmis indicated that the temple was his, like everything in the Great Cavern was his, and that they should leave it alone.  Surprisingly, the party complied, and left without opening the sarcophagus or the urns.

Next they continued west to the Settite outpost.  Vael used Larel's Cloak to turn invisible, and cast Infravision so he could hide his light, and flew over to check it out.  There were no guards on the landing.  He kicked the rope ladder down so the others could climb up, and explored into the tunnel to the west.  The stores of food were gone, and then all the furniture in the Settite guard lounge room was gone.  It looked like the Settites had abandoned the area.  The door north was locked, but Vallium had a key, and unlocked it, then another door north, then another door west, to find the stairs leading down to the Forum of Set level.

The group snuck down the stairs, wary of the Varumani guards they saw last time, but this time they didn't see any varumani in the octagonal crossroads room.  There was just one bat, suspiciously orbiting the room.  Chrysalis decided she didn't like the bat, and used her long staff to knock it down, fatally.  When it hit the ground, its corpse changed from a bat into a strange worm, and remained dead.

They explored a few tunnels until they found a large room to the south.  There were 6 plinths, with name plaques.  5 of them contained statues, with 4 of the statues complete and one of them headless, with colorful magical sparks shooting out of its neck.  There was a separate smaller platform in front of each plinth.  There were large letters in Mithric on the south wall "Let the Worthy Illuminate the" and then the sentence was rudely interrupted by a hole in the wall.  The missing statue was "Priscus Pulcher, the Arch-Sortian" and there were some fresh flowers there.  The intact statues were "Licinia the Seer", "Plotinus Quartus Claudino, Archon", "Yeth, Who Sought to Bring Law to Chaos", and "Horatius Interfector, Sorcerer."  The headless statue with the spark show was "Thrygga the Mighty", and he was wearing some impossibly fantastic armor, a bit similar to what the Sun-Scarred Knight Sir Sorrow had worn.  Some of these names were vaguely familar but none of the party was a historian.  Vael tried putting Continual Light stones near each statue, which didn't seem to do anything.  He also put a piece of paper in the spark shower and succeeded in setting it on fire.

Tiring of the statues, the group explored a few more tunnels, then went west, to a big blue pillar they had seen before.  The pillar had statues on several sides: of a handsome man, a woman, a varumani, a Thothian priest, and a goblin.  Vallium had made a note to bring old coins, but had not actually brought any.  Fortunately they had the teleport rugs, so he walked through one back to their apartments, grabbed several coins and gems, and came back.  He determined that the woman's eyes were a perfect fit for gold solidi, and the priest's eyes for ancient silver pennies.  The handsome man's eyes, varumani's mouth, and goblin's nose also had holes, but none of those matched the size of any coins or gems in their collection.  Vallium put two solidi in the woman's eye holes, and the whole group was instantly half-blinded by bright light as they were teleported outside, near the old Archon's palace.  Unfortunately they were about ten feet above the ground, so everyone (except Vael, who still had Levitation on) fell to the ground with a painful thump.  While Ioannes healed falling damage, Uvash mentioned that he had seen a short obelisk on the other side of the palace wall, before they fell.  Vael Levitated up and saw that the obelisk was covered with lunar symbols and had an ankh-shaped hole, much like the Obelisk of the Sun near the entrance to Arden Vul, except this one had been broken and only the bottom 10 feet remained.

Remembering something they had read about sun and moon and stars, the group determined that if they'd found the moon obelisk, they should see if they could find the star obelisk to complete the set.  Vael looked for a third obelisk on the line between the others but didn't see it.  He then tried a Seeker spell, concentrating on the moon obelisk, to find another one like it but with stars.  He was rewarded with a vision of the Obelisk of the Stars, in the swamp to the southwest.  He flew up and looked that way, until he also spotted it with the naked eye.  They considered visiting all the obelisks now, but something in the story they remembered had said "mid-day", and it was already afternoon, so they decided to come back another day before noon in case the exact timing mattered.

The group decided to go back to the Blue Pillar.  They walked east across the bridge toward the Pyramid of Thoth, south through the Forum, past the scary Tower of Scrutiny, past the Obelisk of the Sun, and down the Long Stair to the secret door.  They then retraced their steps across the Great Cavern to the west, climbed the rope ladder into the former Set outpost, went down the stairs, and went west again to the Blue Pillar.  After all that walking, and with no significant loot found, Vael announced that it was time to look for treasure, and cast Seek Earth looking for platinum.  He sensed some, a bit to the northwest.  There were no passages going that way, and nobody found any secret doors, so they went east then north up some stairs, hoping they could loop around.  The stairs went up a long way, and there were periodic frescoes of faces in agony.  There were also some magical noses on the walls, which started sniffing as they passed.  No enemies came, so the group ignored the noses and pressed on.

Ahead, they heard some conversation, as if someone was searching for someone.  They snuck up and saw four Settites, facing the other way toward a closed door.  Wordlessly, they ambushed the Settites.  Vallium shield-rushed one to the ground, chopped him up, then chopped another one.  Mariposa the monkey tied one of the Settites up in cloaks, while Chrysalis smashed him with a staff.  Uvash paused for a second to activate his Divine Grace, then ran up behind a wounded Settite and smashed his skull in.  The last surviving Settite tried to surrender, but nobody wanted to deal with prisoners, and he died under a hail of cuts and blows from all sides.

Vallium forced open the door to the west, and there was a large man hiding behind it.  Seeing they were not dressed like Settites, he came out and revealed that his name was Harold and that he'd been hiding from the slavers.  He had come to the Halls with an adventuring group to explore old tombs and take treasures that their owners no longer needed.  But then their leader, Gillen, had decided to turn bandit, capturing travelers and selling them to the slavers.  Harold considered himself a respectable tomb robber, not an evil bandit or slaver, so left the group.  Unfortunately he had gotten lost and had attracted the attention of the Settite "Guild of Service" and thought he was about to be captured and thrown into a slave pit, until the Right for Riches company came and killed the slavers.  They believed his story, and offered to guide him out.

Everyone continued north up the stairs to another room, in which two badly wounded men were stapled to a punishment frame.  One was missing both hands, unconscious, and bleeding to death.  The other was in better shape, and identified himself as Hjalti.  He said the other man was Kiglon.  Ioannes healed both of them, then they let both men down.  Neither looked to be in any shape to walk far, so he cast more healing spells until both men were able to walk a bit better and Kiglon woke up.  Then they told both men that they would be able to teleport them to a temple in Gosterwick where they would be safe, if they promised not to reveal the secret of the teleportation.  Both men agreed, as did Harold, and then Ioannes took all three of them through the Rug, back to an apartment at the Arcane Practitioner's Club in Gosterwick, then to the Temple of Demma.  Ioannes came back through the Rug alone about 30 minutes later, and the others had not been interrupted.

Vael tried another Seek Earth spell and detected platinum again, this time to the southwest.  Figuring they'd missed a secret door, he pulled out the Wand of See Secrets and used a charge.  It immediately found a secret door to the southwest.  He ran around the previously explored territory until the spell ran out, but didn't find any more secrets.  Returning to the secret door that the wand had found, Vael was able to see the outline of the door, but not a handle or a catch or a keyhole or any way to open it.  Everyone else looked, and nobody else found anything either.  Vael used Shape Earth to just rip a hole in the wall, which worked.

A narrow passage and a few steps down led to a room with several empty sarcophagi and a workbench with some tools and jars.  The jars contained some kind of embalming spices.  There was an obvious door north, but some searching found a secret door south.

Behind the secret door was a small room containing a blood-encrusted altar.  Both clerics felt the sanctity level dip to Pure Evil.  The non-clerics searched the altar but didn't find anything.  Ioannes exorcised it, which made him feel better but didn't diminish the feeling of evil.  Eventually Chrysalis got suspicious and figured out the altar was a scary illusion, and put her staff through it.  Once she pointed it out, the others were able to see it as well, and they searched the room and found another secret door leading south.

The room to the south contained a big block of granite, like a sarcophagus but with no obvious lid or way to open it.  It had a small hemispherical depression on the top.  It was inscribed "Theskelon is in me I am in Theskelon" and "Let Set devour the rays of his old rival".  The plastered walls had several Settite images that were a combination of flat painting and three dimensional sculpture, with some real objects incorporated.  There was a black boar with a sun in its jaws, a crocodile eating a heron, a Set animal squatting on a turtle, and a human priest of Set chopping a baboon with an axe.  The sun, the boar's eye, the heron's legs, the turtle shell, and the axe head were distinct objects.

Everyone got into position, and Vallium tried smashing the granite block, which did nothing.  Chrysalis then tried a Power Blow to smash the block harder, still nothing.  Finally Vael told the warriors to stand aside and used a Shape Earth spell to open the block, which also failed.

Someone asked about the size of the sun versus the depression, and the sun was a bit too big to fit.  Vallium ripped the sun off the wall and started peeling the plaster off the outside, revealing a golden orb that would fit in the depression.  Once he inserted it, the granite shell exploded into dust, revealing a smaller gold and lapis sarcophagus, shaped like a Settite priest with folded arms.

Vallium opened the inner sarcophagus, but as he did a fire trap exploded, burning him.  All the others who were foolishly standing too close had to dive out of the way, but none were injured.  Ioannes healed Vallium's burns, and then they looked inside the sarcophagus.  It contained some human bones with gold signet ring (inscribed "Theskelon the Master") around one finger.  There were also three copper plaques with maps on them, along with glyphs in an unknown language and notes in Mithric.  There were three books, one in Mithric (about creating mummies) and two in unknown languages.  Finally, there was a key, which Vallium immediately added to his huge keyring.

Uvash cast Final Rest on the bones, hoping that would stop them from going undead and attacking.  Vallium set up the Rug and carried the gold and lapis inner sarcophagus (which was too big to fit in Larel's Sack and too heavy easily carry home) through, then came back.  They gathered up the other treasure in Larel's Sack, then retraced their steps back to Gosterwick.

GM's Comments:

This blog is starting to feel like an infomercial for the Rugs of Instant Access.  ("But that's not all!  If you order in the next ten minutes we'll throw in a third Rug!")

For the second week in a row, we had some technical difficulties in Foundry VTT.  Last week it was the PCs trying to visit a map that wasn't ready, my fault.  This time, the map they wanted to visit was ready, but a new module I'd added to Foundry (Map Coordinates) was causing problems loading large maps, including that one.  So they had to turn around before exploring that new level, and we also had to do the Arden Vul Ruins part (when the blue pillar teleported them to the surface) theater-of-the-mind since that map wouldn't load either.  I figured out the problem after the session was over and removed that module, so now they're clear to visit those maps again.

This session was fairly light on combat (just two one-sided fights against the single bat-worm and the four surprised Settite slavers) and loot (just that one tomb, plus the slavers' stuff and a few odd items they found in a cave), but the PCs explored a lot and rescued three more people from the Settites.

Achievements:

• The Rescuers, for rescuing Harold and Hjalti and Kiglon, 1 XP

XP:

• Exploration: 16 new locations, good for 1 XP
• Loot: orange objects, slavers' gear, stuff from tomb, good for 1 XP
• Achievements: 1 XP
• Total:  3 XP

Next Week:

Will they go back down to one of the deeper levels that they've been foiled from visiting by technical issues, or will they stick to the surface ruins and try to figure out the Obelisks?  Will they find a new place to live that's more tolerant of live goats and dead giant beetles?  Will the Rugs of Instant Access demand a full share of loot and XP?