DFRPG Arden Vul Session 33: Nyema

Date: 

Lunday, 5th of Dikaios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Cold, partly cloudy, windy

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:

Yamki, 3-armed intelligent giant baboon

Bumpko, 4-armed intelligent giant baboon

Many large albino baboons

Stemelis, enchanted bust of former Librarian of Thoth

2 zombies

Bottleneck, goblin master sergeant

Gog, varumani hermit

Many goblins

Many goats

Temrin, goblin artist

Claudine of Narsileon, Archontean arms dealer

Archontean merchant

Several Thorcin merchant guards

Leifcrim, halfling merchant

Set sergeant

Set acolyte

6 Set guards

3 Crocodiles

Wild boar

Mummy

8 huge spiders

Yrtol, ghost

The Plan:

• Buy a lot of meat
• Take meat to the baboons
• Do the Litany of Light
• Take Stamelis to the Beacon to keep Akla-Chah company
• Take meat to Gog
• Get information about Varumani Passports from Gog
• Go to the Goblin Great Hall and get the magic map from Temrin
• Follow the magic map to Nyema's remains, killing any Settites in the way
• Take Nyema's remains to Yrtol

What Happened:

Vallium bought 250 lbs. of meat in Gosterwick and put it in Larel's Sack.  Vael had Vallium put the dancing Nataraja Watcher statue on the stairs to the Beacon, to act as a guard and remote viewing device.  He said the command word to activate it.  (However, he forgot to leave a light source there, so once they took their lights out of the room, the remote viewing just showed blackness.)

Vael had everyone except Vallium step through a teleport Rug, then used Blink Other on Vallium to put him above the cover over the starts, then used Blink to join Vallium.  He then had the others step through the Rug again.  Nobody seemed to be watching, so Vael and Lacrymosa spent a few minutes further camouflaging the roof over the stairs.  The group then walked over the narrow bridge then northeast toward the Well of Light.  When they got there, everyone stepped through the Rug, then Vael Levitated down the Well, cast Apportation on the Rug, and magically moved it to the floor and opened it up, until the others eventually stepped through, then flew down to the ground to join them.

The group went east to the north portcullis to the Howling Caves.  Yamki met them a few minutes later and asked to meet in private.  He explained that The Thane had come to the Howling Caves with a bunch of his ugly bald human followers and kidnapped Bobo and Bifki, two strong young baboons.  Bumpko had led many baboons to attack the Thane and his minions and try to protect Bobo and Bifki, but the Thane has used bad juju to stun Bumpko and several of the other baboons and then his followers had fought off the others as they withdrew.  By the time Yamki arrived and Bumpko recovered, the Thane and his minions were gone.  The group had a lot of questions, so Yamki got Bumpko to help answer them.  The Thane had come from the south, where a passage connected the Howling Caves to the Cliff Face.  The Thane had done this before, in the bad old days before The Master had come, but had never dared enter the Howling Caves while The Master had been there to protect them.

The group said they could not go after The Thane today, but would do so soon, and left 200 lbs. of meat with Yamki as a consolation prize.  They said they would be doing the Litany of Light soon, sunlight permitting, and told Yamki to warn the others.  Yamki sent another baboon north to warn Trefko that things might be bright soon.

The group went west to the mirror at the bottom of the Well of Light and waited for a gap in the clouds to put bright light down the Well, then pulled the blanket off the mirror to illuminate everything.  They then went to the four nearby rooms, and everyone attempted the Litany of Light.  Ioannes and Uvash did it correctly, and were granted See Secrets, Infravision, Invisibility, and an IQ bonus.  The others did not execute the ritual properly.

Vallium lead the group north then east to the stairs down to the Halls of Thoth.  They then went west across the chasm, and south toward the Glory of Weskenim.  Ioannes yelled out to stop -- he had spotted a secret door.  He pointed but was invisible so nobody could see him pointing, so he grabbed Vallium's arm and pointed with it, until Vael saw where the secret door was.  Vael then figured out how to open it, and did so.  As the door opened to reveal an ancient barracks, two zombies charged.  Vallium killed one with his sword.  Uvash bashed the other one with his mace, and Lacrymosa finished it off with an arrow.  There was a chest in the room, which contained a small red jasper gem and a magical blue glass square.  This completed their set of six colors of teleportation squares.  Vallium wanted to make sure it was safe, so asked Vael to spread out the teleport rug, and took the square back to their apartment at the Arcane Practitioners Club, where he had all the other glass squares wrapped up carefully in cloth.

When Vallium returned, they put the Rug back in the Bag of Holding, and continued south to the Glory of Weskenim.  There Vallium unlocked a door with one of Plumthorn's keys.  Bottleneck came over with several goblin warriors, surprised that someone had a key to that door, but then saw it was Vallium and waved the Right for Riches company through.  They went south to the baboon facade concealing a door to stairs down, then took the stairs and exited another secret door to Gog's cave.

Gog was there, and greeted them happily, since he'd asked them to bring food next time.  They indeed had food for him, 50 lbs. of meat, which Gog asked Vallium to put in his canoe.  They then asked Gog a lot of questions about Varumani passports and the Varumani Thegn (not the same person as the Thane) and then tested Gog's linguistic skills.  He seemed to understand Elvish and Dwarvish and Rudishva, though he said he didn't speak or read any of them as well as he understood them, since he didn't get much practice with those languages.  Vael asked him for information on Varumani lifespan and also why Gog wasn't allowed to return to the Varumani territory.  Gog didn't give a lot of details on his exile, besides being wrongly accused of something he didn't do, but not wanting to defy the thegn's authority anyway.

They went south, through the goblin Wet Caves, then down the stairs to Lower Goblintown.  On the way down the final stairway they ran into a squad of goblins carrying a large quantity of meat for someone or something called "Mr. Heads" and saying anyone carrying a heavy load had the right of way.  They continued into the Goblin Great Hall, and saw Temrin sitting in his stall, while some merchant way trying to sell a lot of spears to Claudine.  Temrin said he had their map but it was locked up in Leifcrim's vault for safekeeping.  Temrin went over to Leifcrim's stall, and Leifcrim let Temrin into his vault to get the map, then brought it over to the group.  The map showed going east and down some stairs from the Goblin Great Hall, then north, then over a chasm and up some stairs, then north up a lot of stairs to the Forum of Set, then up some more stairs to the Temple of Set, where Nyema's body was apparently in one of the crocodile pools.

Meanwhile, Ioannes, still Invisible, was sneaking around the Goblin Great Hall looking for secret doors with the See Secrets from the Litany of Light.  He didn't spot any at ground level, but he saw one inexplicably high up on the wall, far out of reach of anyone without flight magic or extreme climbing skills or a really long ladder.  He went to get Vael, who Levitated up, while Ioannes whispered directions in Lacrymosa's ear and then Lacrymosa yelled them to Vael in Elvish.  Vael eventually found the secret door that Ioannes had spotted, but there were a bunch of goblins (and some goats) below him watching him fly around, so he decided not to open it.  Instead they just made a note to check it out another time.

Very happy with Temrin's map (even though they hadn't followed it yet), Vael proposed commissioning another one, and offered twice as much money.  After some brief discussion with the others on the thing they most wanted to find, he pulled out the orange Rudishva oval identity plaque and asked Temrin to draw a map to a gold one.  Temrin said he could try, and asked if he could keep the orange one to focus on.  Vael said no, as they only had the one orange one, but gave Temrin one of their rust-colored plaques since they had several.  Temrin said he could paint it gold, pretty much any shade of gold they wanted, but Vael clarified that changing the color would not work and the gold color was inherent to the object they really needed.  Understanding that, Temrin said he would start working on their map, and they should give him a few days.

The actual path on the map looked dangerous, as it went though a lot of Settite territory including the Forum of Set, but the group knew a back entrance to the Temple of Set, so now that they knew Nyema's body was there, they went back up to the Glory of Weskenim, then west through a secret door to the destroyed Temple of Thoth.  Ioannes and Uvash used their See Secrets along the way, but didn't find any more secret doors.  They went southwest to the guard room south of the Temple of Set, where 8 Settites were waiting for them behind a barricade at the top of the stairs.  The Right for Riches Company were expecting a fight there, so Lacrymosa had drank an Agility potion, and Vael had cast Great Haste on Vallium, so the fight was over pretty quickly.  Lacrymosa filled several Set guards with arrows, while Vallium ran up the stairs, hopped over the barricade, and then alternately shield-rushed and stabbed other guards.  Two of the guards made it north to the temple, yelling for reinforcements, before one was cut down and the other was shot.  There were no reinforcements in the temple, though.

Vael went to the big doors west from the Temple and Magelocked them shut.  He then went south to several other doors that Settites might infiltrate through, and Magelocked them too.  He then sat down to rest.  Meanwhile Lacrymosa went over to the crocodile pods and shot the three surviving crocodiles to death before any of them managed to get onto dry land to fight her.  With the threats gone, Vallium jumped into the southern pond and pulled out Nyema's body, with her platinum torc identifying it.  He put it in Larel's Sack.  He searched the northern pond, but didn't find anything interesting.

With no Settites around, they decided to further explore the temple area.  They went north and saw a jeweled snake, but it was moving back and forth so they didn't touch it.  They also found a wild boar, chained to a wall, and left it alone.  Vallium tried all his keys at a metal grate until one (presumably taken off a Settite a long time ago) opened it up.  It led north into a cavern.  There was a nest full of bones, where Ioannes found a magic ring.  Continuing west, the still active See Secrets spotted a secret door high up the south wall of the cave.  Vael flew up and opened it, revealing a finished passage to a room with a sarcophagus.  There was an amphibian skeleton with a candle on top sitting on the sarcophagus.

Everyone got in position, then Vallium pulled the heavy lid off the sarcophagus.  A mummy sat up, and a fear effect almost made Vallium run out of the room, but he used his Luck and discovered he wasn't scared after all.  Lacrymosa, who had been standing with her bow pointed at the sarcophagus hoping that would happen, shot it a lot of times, until the mummy decided to lie down again.  They looted the sarcophagus of a magic sword, a magic torc, a key, some ancient gold solidi coins, and some potions.

Continuing east, they found a room with the marble floor descending toward a basin in the middle, which was full of some kind of liquid.  The floor was quite slippery, and Ioannes, still Invisible, slipped and almost fell in.  His Luck didn't save him.  His Bless spell did, and he found himself lying on the floor, right next to the edge of the basin, with his Blessing gone, one foot in the liquid, and that foot slightly burning from the contact.  Falling in might well have been fatal, since if he were both Invisible and unconscious, it might have taken his friends a while to find him and fish him out.

Vael, still Levitating, carefully flew over the liquid and filled Lacrymosa's four empty potion bottles with whatever was in that pool for later analysis.  Not wanting to touch the liquid, he used Apportation to dip the flasks in the basin.  When he was finally done filling containers, they investigated a hole in the floor in the east side of the room.  A pebble with a Trace spell on it said the hole went down about 200 feet, so they decided not to explore that way today.

Doubling back to the large cave, they found a passage leading to stairs down to another level, then another trap door in the floor leading 250' down to another level, and a hole in the floor in another place with a rope ladder installed, that only dropped about 20' to the Catacombs of Thoth.  They noted all those exits, then went back to the Temple of Thoth and the Prison of Thoth.  The prison was empty, but Ioannes spotted a secret door in the back of one of the cells, behind the body of a fishman that had apparently starved or dehydrated to death after they had killed all the guards.

They followed the narrow passage from the cell to a tight squeeze around a cave-in.  Vael used Shape Earth to make the narrow part a bit wider so they could fit through more comfortably, and everyone continued until the passage unexpectedly led to a white marble room with rounded corners, much like the architecture on the Beacon.  There were small pictures repeated all over the walls: Rudishva, Varumani, some kind of bird-people, and some kind of snake-people.  Parts of the walls had been burned out, either collateral damage from a battle or someone deliberately destroying some art.  Going west, there was a round iris door to the north, and Ioannes spotted a secret door to the south.  Surprisingly, nobody could figure out how to open the secret door, even with Ioannes and Uvash still having See Secrets active.

Vael's orange ID opened the iris door, into a ruined room full of spider webs.  8 huge spiders attacked.  Vallium, Lacrymosa, and Uvash killed them fairly quickly, while Vael and Ioannes stood back.  Uvash got bit once, and was slightly poisoned, but his dwarven poison resistance meant the damage was not that severe.  Scattered around the floor were some coins, some gems, a copper slate with some writing, and three different stone hands.  One had a stone mace, one held a metal magical scimitar, and one held a stone rod with a platinum tip.  Vallium put all the items in Larel's Sack.  The room continued to the west, but it felt like time to go visit Yrtol, so they turned around at that point.  They went back up to the Set temple, then back east to the Glory of Weskenim, then up through the Pyramid of Thoth to the surface ruins of Arden Vul. They hiked south across the Forum to the Long Stair, then everyone else stepped through a teleport Rug and Vael flew down.  He landed, set out the Rug, let everyone else step through, and they walked to the ruined watchtower that Yrtol haunted.

When they reached the watchtower, Vallium took out Nyema's skeleton, still wearing her platinum torc.  The others banged on the trap door to the basement to get Yrtol's attention.  Yrtol flew out through the closed trap door to see who was intruding, and saw Nyema.  His voice changed and he asked Vallium to bury her.  Wanting to get it done quickly, Vael used Shape Earth to quickly make a grave.  After checking that Nyema's torc was neither magical nor incredibly valuable, they decided to bury her without taking it off.  As they covered her body with another Shape Earth spell, Yrtol disappeared.  Under where he had been floating there were two huge eye-shaped sapphires on the ground.  They did not appear magical, but when someone picked one up, it delivered a serious but not truly life-threatening electrical shock.  They used Apportation to put the sapphires in the sack without touching them, then everyone stepped back through the Rug and Vael flew them back up to the top of the cliff.  There the group walked back to the Beacon.  Vael looked through the Watcher's eyes to get a good picture before Blinking through the stone cap, then realized it was too dark in there to see.  The others stepped through the Rug, then he managed to Blink blind without hurting himself (on the third try) and then everyone was back in the Beacon.  They placed Stamelis near Akla-Chah, where the magical bust holding the spirit of a former librarian and the holograph representation of a Rudishva AI could entertain each other.

GM's Comments:

Some enemies are pretty much immune to arrows.  For everything else, there's Lacrymosa.

See Secrets is really good, especially with a long duration.  (It normally costs 2 mana per minute to maintain, so only those who have it at level 20 can keep it up for long.  Thoth doesn't play by normal rules though.)  This session it found at least three secret doors in places the PCs probably wouldn't have even thought to look.

The most broken combo in DFRPG (and other flavors of GURPS Fantasy that allow the Bless spell) is Luck plus Bless.  PCs with both, who use their Luck strategically for emergencies rather than blowing it every time they miss a roll, are really hard to kill.  Ioannes came very close to falling into a Pool of Scary Mystery Liquid while invisible (making finding him to fish him out harder).  He missed his DX check, used Luck, missed his DX check twice more, fell in, took enough damage to possibly knock him unconscious, and then his Bless decided this was a truly lethal threat and sacrificed itself to retroactively make him just barely make his DX check and end up on the edge of the basin with one foot in the liquid sizzling a bit.  Thanks to having a two-cleric party, Ioannes wasn't even running around without a Bless for very long; he got Uvash to replace it (albeit with a mere Bless +1 rather than a proper Bless +2) a bit later.

Temrin's map led them right to Nyema, though the route it gave was not the safest.  The PCs definitely felt like they got their money's worth though, as evidenced by Vael immediately commissioning another map and offering to pay twice as much for it.

XP:

• Exploration: 11 new locations, 1 XP
• Loot: They found quite a bit.  I think they'll sell enough for 2 XP
• Achievements: 0 XP.  (Apparently burying Nyema was not the end of a quest.)

Next Week:

They plan to go after The Thane, who Vallium thinks is Tikun Thane the wizard from Newmarket.  They also want to head back to the Goblin Market and get Temrin's new map.  Finally, they have discussed trying the teleporters now that they have all 6 colors of activation squares.  Vael is thinking about magically expanding the area next to the Beacon.