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.