Date:
Lunday, 12th of Dikaios, 2993 AE
Weather:
Cold, partly cloudy
Player Characters:
Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)
Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)
Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)
Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)
Significant NPCs:
Yamki, 3-armed intelligent giant baboon
Bobo and Bifki, kidnapped large albino baboons
Many large albino baboons
Inkor, 4-armed intelligent giant baboon
3 sand worms
Ranko, 4-armed intelligent giant baboon
2 carcass creepers
4 huge spiders
6 ibis gargoyles
6 shadows
3 Disciplined
4 trained large albino giant baboons
Tikun Thane, wizard and alleged baboon kidnapper
The Plan:
- Buy some meat
- Perform the Litany of Light
- Give meat to the baboons
- Get Yamki to show the paths south of the Howling Caves, where the Thane went
- Track down the Thane and rescue Bobo and Bifki
What Happened:
Uvash had church business and no Grudge Brigade mercenaries were available, so only three members of the Right for Riches company were on hand to try to find The Thane (who Vallium presumes is the same person as the wizard Tikun Thane in Newmarket) and rescue Bobo and Bifki. They used the Rugs of Instant Access to teleport from Gosterwick back to the Beacon, under the ruins of Arden Vul. Vael used Blink to pop through the stone cover over the stairs to the surface, then set down a Rug so the others could join him. They walked over a bridge then across the Forum to the Well of Light, where Vael Levitated down, then again used the Rug to bring the others.
It was a mostly cloudy day, so they decided not to try the Litany of Light, which requires sunlight. They went east toward the Howling Caves, where Yamki was waiting with many other baboons. Yamki agreed to lead them south across the Howling Caves and show them the passage leading toward the Cliff Face, but he said he couldn't take them all the way there, as he needed to stay in his territory and didn't get along with some of the other baboons to the south. He warned the group about Ranko in particular.
In the cave immediately south of the Howling Caves, they ran into several other baboons. Yamki had a conversation with them, and said they had seen the Thane and his minions when they had come to kidnap Bobo and Bifki, but not where they had come from.
The group continued roughly south through the caverns, looking for both any sign of Tikun Thane and for an exit to the Cliff Face. They encountered several groups of large albino baboons. The aggressive-looking ones were intimidated away using Vael's Thunderclap spell. They found a few pools of water, and Vallium dove into each looking for treasure. One contained a silver ring inscribed "To Guivrel, with love from Lankios."
Eventually they reached a cavern containing a 40' tall cliff, over which a four-armed baboon with a huge bow presided. The baboon, Inkor, gave them a chance to explain their business. They explained that they were looking for Bobo and Bifki for Yamki, and after some discussion with the smaller baboons, Inkor decided to let them pass. Vallium used the Ring of Climbing to climb down the cliff, then Vael Levitated back up carrying the Ring so that Ioannes could also use it.
They continued south and west until they found the exit to the Cliff Face. It was high above the Long Stair, a difficult climb down, though the baboons fleeing from Vael's latest Thunderclap managed it easily enough. Vael flew around a bit looking for a better trail, but concluded that it would require excellent climbing skills or magical assistance to be worth the risk.
They headed back north into the twisty passages and explored different routes. At one point they found a cave with a sandy floor and some occasional rocks breaking through. When they tried crossing it, Vallium spotted something moving under the sand and warned the others back. Vael used a Windstorm spell to move sand around until a sand worm was revealed, and then Vallium ran up and killed it. A couple more worms came out of the sand to ambush him, but they failed to bite through his scale armor, and he killed them too. When no more worms emerged they dug around in the sand for bit, then Vael decided that was a waste of effort and cast Seek Earth and Seek Magic to look for treasure. The nearest gold and platinum were pretty far below, but both silver and magic were a bit to the south. So they headed that way until they found a couple of corpses, one of whom had a silver magical eye, along with some other items like a sword and some notes and a rose quartz stone.
Continuing to explore, they ran into another giant 4-armed baboon, Ranko, and his followers. He was aggressive and seemed ready to fight, but the group bribed them with the meat they were carrying in Larel's Sack and were allowed safe passage through Ranko's territory. They found a beastman corpse, with a spear and some armor and an interesting badge of a mailed fist. Later they found a cave-in. Vael thought it looked dangerous to try to crawl around it, and cast several Shape Earth spells to try to make it safe to pass. This uncovered a corpse with some fancy boots and a wand. It also uncovered some Carcass Creepers who were waiting in ambush, and who were surprised by their cover suddenly evaporating. Vallium made quick work of them.
Heading north past the cave-in, they were ambushed by a few huge spiders. Vallium killed them, and Vael cut through some webs to reveal the body of a dwarf, with a magic metal shield and another magic silver eye and a magic green glass square. Vallium said they should use the Rug to put the fragile square (and any other heavy stuff they'd rather not carry) back in their apartment. However, when he spread out the Rug and said the command word, nothing happened. They retried several times, and Vael cast Seek Gate to try to diagnose the problem, but the Rug still showed itself as a closed magic gate, as expected. It just would not open.
With their map of the caverns complete and no sign of the Thane, they decided to use a charge from their Wand of See Secrets to look for secret doors, and found a concealed door on the west wall of the spider cave. Moving quickly to try to find as much as possible before the wand's effect ran out, Vael went west and saw a secret door on the western cavern wall. He also spotted a hidden needle trap on the door. He disabled the trap and opened the door, into a short dead-end passage. There were some manacles on the wall, covered in white fur. Ioannes looked for another secret door in the obvious place on the far end of the passage, found it, and Vael figured out how to open it.
This led into some worked passages. There was a heavy stone door to the south, and a widening passage with pillars to the west. They listened to the door and tried opening it, but it was locked, so they went west. The passage to the west opened into an upper level of a huge room, with a bridge crossing it from east to west, and a drop farther than their Continual Light rocks could see. The bridge was lined with statues of ibises, and as they approached, the statues animated and flew at them. Vallium killed two of the ibis gargoyles, and the others changed their mind about fighting and flew away.
Working south around the huge room, there was a larger ibis statue facing north into the room, and it was possible to step inside the statue from behind. Ioannes did so, and saw that he could look through the statue's eyes, and see a magically lit and enhanced view of the whole room in front of and below him. They left the statue and continued around the perimeter of the huge room, to a door to the west.
In the western room where three living mosaics on the floor, showing the Great Hall of the Halls of Thoth level with a beastman patrol walking through it, a stone platform in the middle of a large cavern surrounded by many mushrooms, and an interesting-shaped room with many pillars and a red dot at one end. They decided that was the room with the Ruby Chair, north of the Well of Light.
They continued south through an archway, then found a room with two odd magical leather helmets with yellow lenses over the eyes. Both lenses on one helmet were intact; both lenses on the other were broken. They took both.
They went southwest and found a looted barracks full of junk and corpses. As they entered, some spooky undead creatures emerged from the corpses and came at them. As Vallium started fighting, Vael cast a powerful Wall of Lightning (using his power item for extra mana) and managed to catch all the undead in it. This was very effective, and all of them were destroyed. In the room were several suits of archaic scale armor, a few gems, and an ivory token labeled "Overseer of Truth" in Mithric. They took the gems and token and as much of the armor as would fit in Larel's Sack. (They tried the Rug again, just in case the problem had fixed itself, but it had not.)
To the south, they found a room with a Mithric sign saying "Danger." Hanging from a rope in the middle of the room was a single leather boot. They avoided that room and headed east to a heavy stone door, which they could not open. Vael decided to use Shape Earth to wreck the door, and it failed -- the door was somehow shielded. With no more obvious exits, they decided to use another charge from the See Secrets Wand. Vael ran around looking for secret doors, and found one to the west. It was difficult to open, so he used Lockmaster, which worked.
The room beyond had a spiral staircase running up. They were excited to possibly find another exit to the surface. The stairs led up around 250', to a basement room with a couple of doors on the north and east walls, in what they decided was probably the Tower of Scrutiny. Not wanting to fight any wraiths, they immediately went down the stairs.
Heading back east to the door they could not open, there was another spiral staircase, this one heading down. They were less excited about this one, but took it down about 100'. This led to a room with a passage heading out to the east. Not wanting to get distracted, they went back up.
With all other routes exhausted, they went back east to the first locked door they had found. Vael used Lockmaster and managed to defeat a magical lock. This led to a very interesting room. It contained what looked like a table with a linen cloth covering it, a statue of a baboon, some manacles on a wall, a work table with a bunch of alchemy supplies and potions and some random other magical stuff, a large magical wooden frame with Thothian decorations mounted to the southwest wall, a smokeless magical fire burning in the center of the room, and a magic sink along the north wall. There was a screen separating the northwest part of the room; behind the screen were a bed and a chest.
They methodically worked their way around the room searching each thing. Under the linen cloth was a chessboard, with the squares black and white rather than the traditional Archontean purple and orange, with a pyramidal glass cover over it. On the board were six black pieces, some piles of dust, and one oddly colored non-standard piece that looked like a little man with copper-colored skin, wearing robes covered with eyes, and carrying a twisted staff. The little chess-piece-sized man was looking up at them and gesturing upward with his staff and free hand. They looked at each other, and put the linen cloth back over the chessboard.
The baboon statue looked Thothian but not very interesting; it didn't have gems for eyes or arms on pinions and did not appear magical. The manacles contained some white fur, like the ones in the secret corridor outside. The work table had a bunch of interesting stuff: potions, scrolls, a notebook with some spells, a padded bag with a complete set of 6 glass activation squares, a decent alchemy lab, and a book titled (in Mithric) "Kel Bormol's Chess Diary." The chest contained a bunch of clothes that seemed like they would fit a human man, along with some gold coins and a small box with 6 black opals.
Vallium said something about doors with Thothian symbols possibly being teleporters, and Vael cast Seek Gate which revealed that the frame was indeed a teleporter. It was currently disabled though, which Vallium confirmed by stepping through it and walking into the wall behind it. Vael spent several hours repeatedly casting Analyze Magic until he got the command word for the teleporter -- "noobab."
Meanwhile Iaonnes and Vallium used the alchemy lab to try to identify the potions, and were pretty sure what about five of the seven were. They also flipped through the chess diary. Most of it appeared to be records of chess games from about 1100 years ago, in Mithric. The last few pages appeared to be records of some kinds of experiments, in Archontean, in different handwriting.
After Vael was done finding the command word, he needed to rest to recover from the repeated spellcasting, and Ioannes helped with Lend Energy. Once everyone was recovered, they decided to activate the teleporter and step through.
It led into a small closet-sized room, with stone walls and a very secure-looking metal door, with a large sliding peephole, currently open. There was an empty frame like the one they'd just walked through on the back wall, looking inactive. A human guard on the other side of the door saw them appear in the room and started yelling, and someone ran off. Several guards with scimitars started taking position on the other side of the door, along with some large albino baboons with collars and spears.
Vael started casting Great Haste on Vallium, but when the guards made no move to open the door, he aborted it and started casting Lockmaster. Meanwhile Ioannes used the same command word to activate the teleporter on this side, and Vallium held his shield over the peephole to keep the guards from seeing what they were doing. Once Vael finished Lockmaster, the door clicked unlocked, but he said "wait for Great Haste." He then cast Great Haste on Vallium while the guards held position.
Once the Great Haste took effect, Vallium threw the door open and started stabbing guards. There were three human guards in the room, unarmored and wielding scimitars. There were also three of the trained baboons, with spears. Vallium managed to kill one of the guards. Another dropped his weapon. The third parried all of Vallium's blows. Vallium managed to dodge, block, or parry several scimitar cuts from the guards, as well as several spear thrusts from the baboons. Vael cast Blur on Vallium to make him harder to hit, as Ioannes stood defensively with his shield up, ready to heal anyone who needed it.
We ran out of time at that point, pausing in mid-battle.
 |
| Battle in the Tower of the Ape |
GM's Comments:
It's sometimes hard for me to predict when the players will be cautious and when they will be brave. I was a bit surprised they went after the Thane with only 3 PCs. I was also surprised they went through the teleporter with only a few minutes left in the session. (They knew Uvash would not be available next week either, which factored into that decision.)
This was a very good session for exploration, with a whole lot of a new level explored, a new exit to the Cliff Face found, and a couple of new stairways discovered. They also found some treasure, though haven't identified much of it so they don't really know how good it is. Except that after spending months collecting a full set of 6 teleportation tiles, they just found a full second set all together in one place.
XP:
They stopped in mid-delve, so no XP was awarded. Anything they did this session will be added to next session.
Next Week:
Since we stopped in mid-battle, I know exactly what they'll be doing at the start of next week's session: continuing to fight trained baboons and Disciplined guards with scimitars. After that it depends on how that fight goes. Guessing they press on as long as things go well, and try to dive back through that teleporter if they go poorly.
Solving the mystery of why the Rugs of Instant Access stopped working will certainly be a high priority next session, if the PCs make it back to Gosterwick.
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