Date:
Basilsday 11th Lucrios, 2994 AE
Weather:
Hot, sunny
Player Characters:
Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)
Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)
Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)
Ashe "The Goat" Maykum, Goblin Druid (Mercenary) (Archon Shiva)
Significant NPCs:
Fael, Half-elven druid
Onyx, cat
Basil, Right for Riches employee
Akla-Chah, Rudishva AI psychologist
Mistral, intelligent scimitar
Cers, intelligent scimitar
Stone natarajas
6 Kaliyani
Kunda and The Silent, Khumus adventurers
Gribble, goblin prince
Many goblins
Yoburra, varumani ambassador
Dworm, food merchant
The Plan:
- Explore the Rudishva teleporter network
- Meeting with King Weskenim and try to commission more Temrin maps
What Happened:
Vallium was out sick.
Ioannes hired Fael the druid to cast Speak with Animals so he could converse with his cat Onyx. Onyx informed him that he was happy with the cat-friendly doors in the Arcane Practitioners' Club, but it was wrong for both Pelteon and Wicktrimmer to go out of town at the same time that Ioannes had to go back to the scary cave, leaving Onyx with nobody to talk to but other cats. He also said that Wicktrimmer's employees at the Rarities Factor weren't nearly as good at picking fish.
Basil warned Vael that he heard noise from inside one of the chests kept in the bridge of the Beacon. Vael investigated and found Mistral, the scimitar they had found months ago, yelling that he needed to speak to Vallium. Told that Vallium was unavailable, he said that he would settle for Ioannes. Mistral informed Ioannes that he detected the prescence of Cers nearby, that Cers was evil, and that Cers must be melted down. Vael suggested just throwing him in the slime pit, but Mistral said that Cers was devious and would probably figure out a way to survive that then join up with another evil person.
Vael pulled Cers out of another chest to get its side of the story. Cers said that it could detect treasure and so was more useful than Mistral. Also that it wasn't a bad scimitar, it had just been charmed by the vampire Cinna Minux, like half the people and monsters in Arden Vul. Vael said that if Cers shocked him again he'd go into the slime pit, so Cers promised not to shock him, and Vael put Cers in his belt.
They waited for Uvash and hired Goat at the Grudge Brigade for his animal summoning skills. Vael made sure everyone had a silver Rudishva identity plaque, then they all took the Rudishva teleporter from the Beacon to the vault near the cloister. They walked across the cloister and took the teleporter to the translocation hub, where there were three other teleporters, two of them unexplored. Some stone natarajas started hopping in their general direction, but everyone waved their Rudishva identity plaques and the natarajas went back to their niches.
Goat created a bat swarm, then chose one bat as the special one and cast Beast Possession on it. Vael hit the button on a teleporter and the bat flew in. A few minutes later it hadn't returned but Goat hadn't awakened, so Vael followed the bat through the teleporter and saw that it was in a small room they had explored previously, with an iris door that led to some slime zombies. Vael activated the teleporter for the bat and both returned to the hub. After making a note on his map, Vael pointed to a second teleporter and sent the bat through.
The bat, inhabited by Goat, visited a Rudishva-architecture room with some orange benches around a small empty hole in the floor. On the far side of the room was a granite slab, with a lapis inlay, showing a large orb with three smaller orbs surrounding it. The bat landed on the inlay, and this triggered the slab to start rising. It was an elevator! The bat rode it to the top, then a door opened, and the bat flew out into a large octagonal room. In the room were what looked like several high-tech coffins. Some looked off or broken. Others had blinking lights and made humming noises, indicating that they were active. And they had windows, within which some creatures could be seen, sleeping or dead. The inhabitants included two Rudishva, some unknown hairless gray humanoid, some kind of rock elemental, some kind of hideous woman with claws, and some kind of black goop.
Goat had the bat avoid touching anything and continue flying south. There was a chasm there, and at the bottom of the chasm was some kind of spherical mechanical construct. There were also a few Rudishva corpses down there. The bat avoided the construct and flew across the chasm to another exit. This led to a natural passage containing a statue of some kind of bipedal amphibian. Later, the bat avoided some green slime. Finally, the passage started sloping it down. The bat kept following it until Goat ran out of energy to maintain the Beast Possession spell, lost his link to the bat, and woke up, exhausted.
Vael cast Lend Energy on Goat, and Goat selected another bat to possess. This time he told Ioannes and Vael to keep his energy topped up rather than waiting for it to run out. He flew the bat into the last teleporter, which revealed a small Rudishva-architecture teleport pod, with two teleporters. It exited to a room full of a bunch of Rudishva technology, with screens displaying Rudishva glyphs that Goat could not read. There was an iris door, but the bat lacked the identity plaque to open it. Eventually Vael went through the teleporter after the bat, and brought it back out. Then everyone went through. Vael looked at the screens for a while, then they opened the iris door.
On the other side was a large room, containing many vats. Some were empty, some contained strange liquids, and three contained varumani, dead or sleeping or comatose. Vael called Akla-Chah on the Command Bracelet to ask about the room. She said that was probably the room where the crew of the Beacon grew more varumani after the crash. Vael asked how to work it, but Akla-Chah lacked details.
Eventually they sent the bat through the second teleporter. It emerged into a Rudishva-architecture room with a bunk bed, three large metal chests, and a lot of bones and junk on the floor. The bat exited the room into a huge hallway. Across the hall was a wall of fire. Continuing down the hall, it had periodic iris doors, and a few niches high up on the walls. At the end of the hall was a breached barricade and some bodies. Near the barricade, a side passage led to a huge water tank. The bat flew up to explore the tank, and found a couple of humans hiding in the water inside it.
Continuing through a narrow side passage, the Goat-possessed bat saw a group of six six-limbed snakelike beings with two fangs each, with weapons and equipment. Kaliyani. One of the kaliyani spotted the bat and threw a javelin, which was lethal.
Goat woke up, back in his own body. He described what he had seen. The group then decided to explore the area the bat had scouted. Vael used a Salamander Amulet to walk through the Wall of Fire, then dropped a Teleport Rug to let the others join him. Beyond the wall was a camp containing many corpses, mostly human but one kaliyani. There was also an open chest containing a bunch of silver coins, and some bedrolls and backpacks, and a couple of the bodies were wearing armor. Looting ensued. When Vael started picking up silver coins, he didn't feel so great. There was some kind of contact poison on all the coins. Uvash picked up the chest, and that was poisoned too. Fortunately both resisted the poison and felt better a bit later.
Continuing north, Vael turned Goat invisible, then they attempted to ambush the kaliyani squad, who had heard them and simultaneously tried to ambush them. With nobody surprised, Vael cast Missile Shield on himself while Uvash and Ioannes dove behind cover. The kaliyani threw a lot of javelins at Vael, who tried to make a good show of dodging them. Two kaliyani spellcasters tried spells, which failed to affect Vael and Uvash. Eventually the kaliyani warriors ran out of javelins to throw and closed with their broadswords.
Uvash started fighting. Meanwhile Vael cast Create Fire and Shape Fire and started harassing the kaliyani with them. Goat, invisible, finished his long casting of a Create Animal for an elephant, which he tried dropping on the heads of three kaliyani. Two dodged, but one was squished. The elephant, which survived its fall, then stood up and start charging and trampling and goring and generally wrecking kaliyani. One of the kaliyani casters got too close to the wall of fire, so Vael used Shape Air to knock it back. This was successful, causing the kaliyani to go into the wall and burn a lot.
Eventually Uvash and the elephant finished off the last kaliyani. The party looted the bodies, then picked up javelins from all over the room. Finally, Vael remembered that Thegn Varboka had a reward for kaliyani fangs, so they ripped all the kaliyani fangs out. The summoned elephant timed out. So did the Wall of Fire.
With the kaliyani menace eliminated, the group headed west to the big water tank. Vael cast Walk on Air on Uvash, so they could both Levitate and/or Walk to the top. The two humans were not immediately visible, but then Vael spotted one hiding under the water. Various gestures eventually got them to surface and talk. Only one of them, a very slim person dressed all in black, did all the talking. She said that most of their group had been killed by the snake creatures and their line of retreat was blocked by creepy bird creatures, so they were hiding here. Vael pulled out the kaliyani fangs and explained that it was safe now, and they could get them back to Gosterwick if they could follow directions. After a bit of discussion, the two climbed down a rope from the tank and went back to the site of the battle with the kaliyani. They mentioned that someone had looted their companions, but nobody admitted doing it.
Vael said that if they'd agree to be blindfolded and to say the right command words, they could be teleported out. Some gesturing revealed that one of the pair didn't like to talk, but he eventually agreed to try to say the command words. After both were blindfolded, Uvash went through a Teleport Rug, then took both Rugs from Akla-Chah's lounge to the entrance stairway where there was less to see. Vael then had each of the people say the command word to go through the Rug to the Beacon, then Uvash had them say the second word to go through the other Rug to the Arcane Practitioners' Club, then they led them out. Vael gave each of the adventurers some silver.
Vael and Uvash went back through the Rugs, and Ioannes suggested taking the Goat to the Goblin Forum, since Gribble had been asking about him. They went back through some teleporters and flew up through the shaft near the slime pool outside the cloister, then took the stairs down from the former Temple of Set to the Forum. There, all the goblins were exited to see Goat. One of the guards went to get Gribble from his quarters. Gribble asked Goat to please drop another elephant on the evil Set statue to break more of it into small commemorative chunks. With dozens of goblins and several varumani ambassadors watching, Goat did another elephant drop. Once the elephant was safely gone, the goblins swarmed the broken statue to gather relics. Vael briefly talked to the varumani ambassador. The group then decided that was enough exploration for one day, and went back to the Beacon.
GM's Comments:
When a player wants to drop elephants on things, you can spend a lot of time doing physics. It's not worth it. Just treat it as a slam attack.
Achievements:
The Rescuers: 1 XP for getting Kunda and The Silent out
XP:
- Exploration: 16 rooms, 1 XP
- Treasure: Some, but not a lot. Mostly the kaliyani's stuff. 1 XP
- Achievements: 1 XP
- Total: 3 XP
Next Week:
Exploring teleporters has revealed several new areas, so they have a lot of choices of where to explore. They also still want to visit Goblintown to talk to King Weskenim about a map, and the Court of the Varumani Thegn to get a reward for those kaliyani fangs. I have no idea what they'll choose.
