Date:
Demmasday 12th of Toternios, 2994 AE
Weather:
Hot, overcast
Player Characters:
Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)
Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)
Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)
Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)
Lacrymosa, Elven mercenary archer (Archon Shiva)
Significant NPCs:
Akla-Chah, Rudishva AI psychologist
Pelteon, Archontean wizard and co-owner of the Arcane Practitioners' Club
Onyx, cat
Fael, half-elven druid
Basil, Right for Riches employee
Dragonfly construct of Kerbog Khan
Explorer constructs of Kerbog Khan
Battle constructs of Kerbog Khan
Doorkeeper construct of Kerbog Khan
Nurse construct of Kerbog Khan
Borer construct of Kerbog Khan
2 Child constructs of Kerbog Khan
Paratus, Head of Thoth, former logothete
The Plan:
- Feed the baboons
- Find and kill Kerbog Khan
What Happened:
Ioannes had a scheduled therapy session with Akla-Chah, who diagnosed that he was afraid of women, and prescribed a medicinal dose of Rudishva aquavit from the Nutri-Vore 2500. Fortified with the aquavit, Ioannes teleported back to the Arcane Practitioners' Club and asked Pelteon to go for a walk with Onyx and him. They had a nice walk, and she brought Onyx a whole lake trout in her Bag of Holding. Pelteon told Ioannes that he was a good guy but she had two conditions if he wanted to date. She wanted joint custody of Onyx even if things didn't work out, and he had to tell her where the mysterious Rug of Instant Access in their room led.
Ioannes then paid Fael for a Speak with Animals spell so that he and Pelteon and Onyx could have a conversation. Onyx said that he liked Pelteon as a person and was happy to spend more time with her, but he needed to speak to her as his landlord. The Arcane Practitioners' Club had too many interior doors that he could not open, and he either needed some of them removed or cat-sized holes made in them, so that he could freely move about his territory without having to constantly ask people for help. Pelteon said she'd have to ask Lyssandra about the doors. Ioannes said he'd have to ask the rest of his Company about sharing the secret of the Rug.
The whole Right for Riches company was at the Gosterwick Market on Demmasday, spread out looking for anything interesting, when the Command Bracelet alerted Vael of an incoming call from Akla-Chah. She said that Basil had been in the library and had heard noise in the workshop, like something knocking things off of shelves. He thought it could just be rats, but he wasn't sure, so he hadn't opened the door and had gone to tell Akla-Chah instead. Vael started sending Message spells to the rest of the Company and to Lacrymosa at the Grudge Brigade to meet at the Arcane Practitioners' Club and go check on the Beacon.
Vallium, the fastest runner in the company, didn't wait for the others. He sprinted to the Arcane Practitioners' Club, then up the stairs to their rooms, where Basil was standing next to the Rug. Basil repeated the story about noise in the workshop and said that Akla-Chah had told him to teleport to Gosterwick. Vallium went thorough the Rug, then ran south down the passage to the workshop. Inside were a dragonfly automaton watching the door and a spider-shaped exploration automaton, which was scooping up their entire collection of Rudishva laser rifles. The exploration automaton teleported out with the stolen artifacts, while Vallium chopped the dragonfly automaton in half. The rest of the group rushed in a few seconds later.
Vael tried a Seeker spell to find the location of Kerbog Khan, using the broken dragonfly construct as a focus, but it didn't work.
Knowing that Kerbog Khan had found the Beacon, the company went back to Akla-Chah on the lower level, and Ioannes went back through the Rug to get Basil. They announced a new plan: skip feeding the baboons, and just go find Kerbog Khan. They assigned Basil to watch the workshop in case any of Kerbog Khan's constructs returned, but told him to have his Lover's Token ready so he could alert Vael if they did, and then to just run back to Akla-Chah's room and close doors behind him to keep any intruders from the most sensitive parts of the Beacon.
The group went through the Rudishva teleporter to the Cloister, then went through the secret passage and down a level, then over to the magic pool of disturbingly yellow liquid near the Tomb of Marius. Everyone except Ioannes drank from it. Vael and Uvash and Vallium got buffs, but Lacrymosa got her dexterity reduced. Next they climbed up the suspiciously perfectly round sloping passage toward the Rudishva medical pod. They went back to the room where they had fought the invisible stalkers and the surgical construct and freed Gevorda, and tried the exits they had not tried before, but both were locked. Not wanting to waste time, they searched a few more rooms then found some vertical lift shafts, which were disabled. Vael and Vallium Levitated up, Ioannes flew up using the cloak with magic bat wings, and Vallium dropped a rope so Uvash and Lacrymosa could climb up.
They explored a bit of the upper level of the medical pod, and found a looted room with a hole in the ceiling. Levitating up through the hole, Vael and Vallium found they were on the algae-covered roof of the medical pod, and there was water to the north. They flew around a bit and found a porch to the north, with some kind of construct in front of a strong door. The construct started reciting some Kerbog Khan spiel about trade and how all deals must be sealed with blood. They flew back to talk to the others. Everyone except Lacrymosa drank a Resist Fire potion, and Vael cast See Invisible. The others then stepped through the Rug to the Beacon, then Vael and Vallium flew north to the porch and brought the others through the Rug to join them, then Vallium walked over and stabbed the Doorkeeper construct until it stopped moving.
Vael tried a Lockmaster spell on the door, but it resisted. Deciding Kerbog Khan's Magelock was too strong to defeat, they first considered a Shape Earth spell to make a hole in the wall, but decided that would be too expensive. They switched tactics to brute force, and pulled a four-person portable battering ram out of Larel's Sack. Everyone but Vael grabbed a handle, with Uvash pointing out where to aim the ram, and the door yielded after several blows.
Everyone followed Vallium down a passage to the north. He spotted a construct ahead, which resembled a statue of a nurse. Vallium paused to drink an agility potion. Uvash stepped past him into the room and saw four more constructs waiting in the corners to ambush him. Three of them were battle bots, and they started firing lasers at Uvash. Enough lasers hit him that he probably would have been seriously burned, except for the Resist Fire potion. Uvash feigned injury to encourage the bots to keep using the ineffective lasers. Vallium joined Uvash in the room and they started attacking the battle bots. Kerbog Khan, inhabiting one of the bots, cast some kind of death spell on Vallium, which defeated his resistance and his Luck, but Vallium was saved by his Bless.
One of the battle bots tried using its flamethrower on the group bunched up in the hallway. Everyone except Lacrymosa had Resist Fire, but she had missed the message to drink a potion and got burned. She fell, stunned. Vallium and Uvash gradually defeated the battle bots and a bipedal exploration bot. The nurse bot fled the room to the west and apparently disappeared. Ioannes cast Stop Bleeding and Minor Healing and Awaken on Lacrymosa to bring her back into the fight. Ioannes then re-Blessed Vallium.
With all visible constructs defeated, they explored the area. There was a grille on the north wall, with a small enchanted varumani head behind it. There was a small room to the west with a couple of statues and some spare parts on tables. There were some stairs to the east, leading to a closed portcullis. Uvash found a couple of levers, one of which opened the portcullis. This led to a flimsy wooden bridge over the water to the east, then another portcullis. Uvash hit the other lever and opened that one.
Beyond the second portcullis was a storage room full of stuff, some of it interesting looking. As Vael and Vallium started investigating, a large construct shaped like a giant drill bit attempted to ambush them and bore holes in them. It wasn't very stealthy, they saw it coming, and Vallium chopped it up. There were exits north and south, but Vael thought Kerbog Khan was probably back to the west since that's where the levers were. They grabbed only the lightest and most obviously valuable loot from the storage room, and went back west.
More searching revealed a secret door on the northern wall of the western room, which they could not open. Vael Blinked blind through it, then found a handle on the other side and opened it. A narrow passage led to a larger passage with many doors. There were doors east and west, a door south back toward the grille room, and double doors leading north.
They went east and found a luxurious bedroom with carpets on the floor, walls, and ceiling. Nobody was there, so they spent a bit of time searching the room, and took the most obviously valuable treasure. East was a door to a stinky privy. Vallium stepped inside so he could say he'd been in that room, they immediately left. West was a sturdy locked door, that they ignored for the moment.
The double doors led to a large workshop. Inside was the nurse construct, through which Kerbog Khan cast a death spell at Vael. Once again, it defeated his resistance and Luck, but Bless saved him. Lacrymosa filled it with arrows. There were a couple of child-sized bipedal constructs hiding in a corner. Vallium ran over and asked if Kerbog Khan could cast spells through them. They said no, and Vallium spared them but told them to run away from the room. Vael said this seemed like a poor decision to him, but did not attack the constructs. They searched the room and found Kerbog Khan's Build-a-Bot workshop, a magical forge, a couple of summoning circles, some tools and building materials, a bunch of Rudishva power supplies, and what Vael identified as a power supply charger. There was no sign of Kerbog Khan himself. They found the broken body of the surgical bot, next to the pile of laser rifles that had been stolen from their workshop. They retrieved their rifles.
Doubling back to the west room, they found it was colder than expected, due to a couple of magical cold balls up against a cabinet on the north wall. On the south side of the room was a desk containing a crystal ball and an arcanum sphere with a finger-sized slot in it. The cabinet contained many glass vials full of blood, with names on them. The slot on the arcanum sphere seemed to match a vial. The arcanum sphere was too heavy to take in one piece, so Uvash went through a Teleport Rug back to the Beacon to get a pickaxe. He broke the arcanum sphere into smaller pieces, breaking one pickaxe in the process. They took all the blood vials, the cold balls, the crystal ball, and the arcanum chunks back to the Beacon.
Finally, they went through the south door. In addition to the enchanted varumani head they had seen through the grille, there were many other heads in the room. Most of them were just statue heads, but there were a few magical heads as well. One was a Head of Thoth of some bureaucrat named Paratus. One was a very foul-mouthed and rude shrunken head, which they destroyed. They also destroyed the varumani head, with fire. They kept an enchanted demon head and an enchanted devil head, but worried about both.
With all the known doors explored, they went back to the bedroom and used the battering ram to break the secure door. This caused some screams from the privy; checking revealed the child constructs were hiding in there. Beyond the secure door were five large stone bins, full of coins and gems. They looted everything except the copper pieces.
With Kerbog Khan still not found, the group went back to the east, and found that the northern exit led to a slope down and the southern exit led to stairs up. We paused at that point.
GM's Comments:
Kerbog's Khan's battle bots were not the best design, as their ranged weapons were lasers and a flamethrower, both stoppable by Resist Fire. And their melee weapons were a spinning cutting blade and a needle, both stoppable by heavy armor. Vael's decision to use a goat to test if Resist Fire was effective against laser fire was a good one. Lacrymosa forgetting to drink her Resist Fire potion when everyone else drank theirs was a mistake, but she survived.
Whatever death spell Kerbog Khan cast was serious; it almost killed Vallium twice and Vael once. They were both lucky to be Blessed.
Though they smashed several of his bots and took a lot of his treasure, the Right for Riches company has still not actually laid eyes on Kerbog Khan.
Achievements:
None yet, will be resolved next week.
XP:
None yet, will be resolved next week.
Next Week:
We paused in mid-delve, with the group still hunting for Kerbog Khan. Will they find him?
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