DFRPG Bonus Downtime Recap: Strange Happenings in Gosterwick

There's this idea in DFRPG that Town is a "safe zone".  PCs can shop and train there and don't have to worry about being robbed or murdered.

Is that true in Gosterwick, 10 miles south of the ruins of Arden Vul?  Apparently not.

The Right for Riches company returned to Gosterwick after their successful mission to rescue Canon Lillian of the Church of Mitra from the dungeons of the Cult of Set. This mission incidentally resulted in the deaths of about a dozen Settites guarding the path to Lillian's cell, plus about a dozen more Settites in the nearby Temple of Set who just happened to be doing the wrong evil ritutal in the wrong place at the wrong time.  And a giant crocodile who took advantage of the chaos to try to eat an allied NPC.  While the PCs were in the Temple of Set, they also stole anything valuable looking that wasn't too heavy, including a couple of gigantic and incredibly valuable rubies from the largest cult statue's eyes.  And some of the PCs may or may not have urinated on a holy altar of Set; the stories are inconsistent.

(Artistic interpretation of Uvash and Ioannes stealing the ruby eyes of the cult statue in the Temple of Set, over the corpse of the giant crocodile Susarra killed, while Vael, Michael, Vallium, and an unidentified NPC discuss their next move.)

It appears that the Cult of Set was not happy about any of this.  A few days after the Right for Riches Company returned to Gosterwick, two things happened:

1. Coinbase, leader of the Grudge Brigade Mercenary Company, received an anonymous offer under his door.  It promised a payment of $2500 each for Vael, Vallium, Ioannes, Uvash, Michael, or Susarra, dead or alive.  They or their remains should be brought to the Duty Deacon in the Forum of Set, who would then contact the Pontifex to verify the identify of the invader and pay the reward.  (Coinbase decided to sell the contract to Vael rather than acting on it.)
2. Susarra was decapitated in her bed at the Yellow Cloak Inn.  Her head and the more valuable and portable parts of her gear were missing.  Vallium, who the innkeeper had seen with Susarra, was called in to identify the body, and then Vael showed up and asked for a blood sample from the victim.  His request was initially denied by the guards at the crime scene, while one of them added Vael's name to A List.  Later that denial was overruled by Audun Yellow-Eyes, head of the Drome in Gosterwick, who sent a blood sample to Vael.

Once he got the blood sample, Vael cast Seeker followed by Trace, revealing that Susarra's head was currently in a backpack tossed in a corner of a comfortable room, about ten miles north of Gosterwick.  Vael could maintain the Trace spell as long as he could stay awake, but could not cast Seeker again for a week, so he advocated cutting short the usual week of downtime between delves and immediately going after whoever murdered Susarra.

To be continued...

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 23c: Set Jailbreak and Down to Goblintown

Date: 

Basilsday, 16th of Gerakios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Hot, dry

Player Characters: 

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)

Michael J. Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Significant NPCs:

Susarra, Archontean fighter

Many Set guards

Hidlat, Set wizard

Kathroc, Set torturer

Lenuel, Set jailer

Eadgithu, enslaved Thorcin ranger

captured fishman

Geleg, captured wizard

Lillian, captured Canon of Mitra

Azgallatu, captured cleric of Mitra

Grist the Hammer, captured dwarf fighter

Gribble, captured goblin noble

Killik, goblin boss of the Wet Caves

Pelestrim, goblin major-domo

Weskenim, goblin king

Several ogre guards

Many, many goblins

Jador the Just, chief priestess of Mitra in Gosterwick

Anaximander, ancient sage and cleric of Mitra

We resumed in the dungeon, after the party killed or chased off everyone in the Temple of Set and spent a few minutes looting.  The group retreated south out of the temple, back into the guard room atop the barricade, where until the sanctity level (for non-Settites) went back to normal, then rested.  They then searched the western wall, where the Set deacon had been running, and found a door concealed behind a screen.  They went west through a torture chamber, then through a black curtain into some kind of waiting room with pews, then south into a robing room.  There were some red Settite robes there, but not enough for everyone, and Uvash refused to wear them anyway.  With some of the group disguised and some not, they searched for secret doors and found one on the south wall, leading to a narrow spy corridor. Heading west, they found some peepholes into a prison, with seven cells, six prisoners (including Lillian), and four guards.  Without a way into the prison from here, they doubled back north, east, and then south down some stairs.

Suddenly some candles lining the stairs start smoking, and loud screams came from somewhere.  Magically alerted, several guards poured out of a room to the southeast.  A six-on-six battle commenced.  Susarra, Vallium, and Michael filled the corridor to the south, with Uvash, Vael, and Ioannes behind them.  On the other side were 4 Set guards, a Set torturer with a long whip, and a Set wizard who was throwing Force Missiles at Michael from the doorway.

The Set ranks held for a few seconds, while Vael cast Great Haste on Michael.  Then once Michael started attacking twice as fast, he downed an enemy and charged forward to get the wizard, while Uvash moved up to fill the hole on the left.  Vallium and Susarra kept holding the line and stabbing Settites, and Ioannes cast several Stop Bleeding and Major Healing spells to keep his allies up.  As the Settites started to fall, they yelled for help, and reinforcements started coming from the west.  It was the four guards the party had seen before, plus a jailer they had not spotted.

As the original Settites to the east fell, the battle moved west toward the approaching reinforcements.  Vael dropped a Grease spell in the hallway, which resulted in several Settites missing attack or defense rolls or falling over.  Michael, with his Ring of Free Action, was unaffected by the bad footing, and mercilessly hacked through the Settites before his Great Haste could run out.  Susarra and Uvash and Vallium followed behind him, staying out of the Grease but helping finish the Settites.  Eventually, all 11 of the Settites went down.

Vael and Michael were exhausted after the battle, so took a few minutes to rest, with Ioannes casting Lend Energy.  Once everyone could stand up, they took a preliminary pass over the bodies looking for magical loot, then they went west.  They heard a woman yelling from behind an open door to the north.  In the room was the jailer's prisoner Eadgithu, manacled to the wall.  Vallium grabbed the jailer's key ring and tried keys until one freed her, at which point Eadgithu thanked them and went to grab a sword off the jailer's body.  Vael saw a lockbox in the room and cautiously opened it using the keys and an Apportation spell, finding some coins and gems and a spellbook.  The group then went west to the prison.

There were 6 prisoners visible.  Three of them (Lillian, an overweight man, and a tough-looking man) were manacled to the back of their cells and gagged.  The other three (a goblin, a fishman, and a well-muscled dwarf) were not tied or gagged.  Half of the prisoners showed obvious wounds, while the others appeared to be in better shape.  Vallium used the jailer's keys to free Lillian first, and Ioannes healed her wounds.  She then explained who some of the other prisoners were.  She said the tough-looking man was Azgallatu, a warrior cleric of Mitra who had been captured trying to find her, and he should definitely be freed.  She stated that the goblin (who showed no wounds) was some high-ranking noble captive, at which point Gribble interrupted to introduce himself and said he was the brother of King Wiskenim, who would certainly reward his rescuers.  Lillian and Gribble agreed that the fishman was unfriendly and also didn't seem to speak any languages they knew, so he was left in his cell.  The overweight man was Geleg, a wizard, who when ungagged immediately thanked his rescuers then asked if anyone had seen his spellbook.  Vael admitted to having found a spellbook but asked if he could copy any spells, and Geleg immediately agreed to let Vael copy anything he wanted.  The dwarf seemed a bit unfriendly, so Vallium passed the keys to Uvash to deal with him.  Grist asked Uvash several questions, apparently suspicious that he might be a doppleganger, before agreeing that he was an actual dwarf and warming up slightly.  He was badly wounded, so he appreciated the healing spell Ioannes gave him.  Azgallatu, when freed, thanked the party then immediately took up position at Lillian's side.

With a horde of rescued prisoners in tow, the party went back east to loot the room at the bottom of the stairs.  There were several heads mounted on the walls, of a lion, some kind of reptile man, a member of Gog's species, and a goblin.  The goblin head appeared to be magical.  Gribble wanted to throw it in a nearby disposal hole, but because it was magical Vael argued that it couldn't be left where the Settites could recover it, so Gribble reluctantly put it in a chest (where he didn't have to look at it) and carried it out.  Meanwhile each of the other prisoners was asked to carry a suit of red Set scale armor.  So burdened, the group went back north up the stairs, east over the barricade, north through the gas-trapped room (the trap had not reset), and back into the desecrated temple of Thoth were the slime kraken had been killed.

There was some debate on whether to go north or east.  Vallium argued that east was closer to the halflings so north was safer.  Ioannes countered that with so many of them, the halflings would probably be too scared to fight.  But the decision was made to go north and try to avoid contact.  Vael re-cast Shape Earth to cover the ends of the passage he had made next to the one-way door, and everyone went north through the one-way door then east through the catacombs to the portcullis.  They closed the portcullis behind them, then went south through the burial niches to the secret room where they had stashed a wheelbarrow full of food.

Vael and Vallium wanted to give the food to someone rather than waste it, so they asked Lillian the story of her capture.  She said she had been looking for Settite activity when she had been grabbed by the Green Fang Kobolds, who traded her to the beastmen, who traded her to the Settites, who threw her in their jail and tortured her.  This dropped everyone's opinion of the beastmen, and they decided to give the food to Gog instead of the beastmen.  They instructed everyone to leave the heavy scale armor in the secret door, grabbed the wheelbarrow of food, and headed south and east to the concealed door behind the baboon fresco.  They took the hidden stairs down to the Cave of Gog.

Gog heard them coming, and was waiting outside the secret door when it opened.  He was pleased to see the wheelbarrow of food and asked if it was for him.  Pleased to hear that he was, he got his boat and had them dump all the food from the wheelbarrow into it.  Gribble said that goblin territory was just to the south and asked if the party would like to meet his brother the king.  The other freed prisoners were not so enthusiastic about tromping through goblin territory, but they didn't want to go back to Gosterwick without their heavily armed escort either, so they came along.  Gribble led them south into a room full of many goblins, who enthusiastically greeted him.  Their leader led Gribble and his huge entourage east to Killik, the Boss of the Wet Caves.  Killik then appointed one of the other goblin captains Temporary Boss and went with Gribble down a long staircase to Goblintown.

Arriving in Goblintown, Killik and Gribble led the party through a confusing maze of passages.  At one point they were led across a rickety bridge "maybe not so strong for big people go one at a time."  Uvash actually broke one slat of the bridge when crossing it, but managed not to fall.  They eventually reached a room with ogre guards outside, where the goblin major-domo, Pelestrim, greeted Gribble and went into the room to arrange an audience.  A minute later, Gribble and his rescuers were invited in to meet King Weskenim.

King Weskenim asked Gribble a lot of questions in Goblin, then thanked his rescuers in accented Archontean, and said he wasn't prepared for their arrival but promised them a reward next time they visited.  He also mentioned the need to recover the Scepter of the Goblins.  When Vael asked if the goblins knew about any other entrances to the Halls, Weskenim said that was a sore point, that Plumthorn's Halflings were squatting on his rightful entrance to the surface, and needed to be removed.  After hearing how many Settites they had killed, he said the Right for Riches company were just the halfling exterminators he needed and to please take care of the infestation at their earliest convenience.  He warned them that the halflings had a wizard and used poison.  At some point during the meeting, Weskenim's cat jumped onto his shoulder, at which point the king had to end the meeting to play with the cat.

With the royal audience concluded, Killik led the party and their freed prisoners back up to the Wet Caves, this time taking a longer route that didn't involve any bridges that might not be strong enough for armored humans or dwarves.  At one point he rushed them past some kind of demon imprisoned in a summoning circle reciting obscure mathematical formulae, but didn't answer any questions.  They went back up to the Wet Caves, then back to Gog's Cave, where Gog was happily sorting his newly acquired food.  Gog ferried everyone across the underground stream in his boat, and they went upstairs, then out to the surface through the basement exit, then back to the Broken Head to get their mule, then back to the dam to stow their wheelbarrow, then finally back to Gosterwick.

In Gosterwick, Jador the Just at the Temple of Mitra was excited to see Lillian had been rescued, and detailed a lesser cleric to go with Ioannes to the Silent Factor and transfer the reward money to his account.  Anaximander, the ancient sage they had rescued previously, had been healed of his insanity, and was dictating the events of 250 years ago to some other clerics.  Vael asked for access to Anaximander, and Jador agreed to let him read the notes the clerics had compiled so far, and also personally visit him.  Lillian and Azgallatu said they would stay at the the Temple of Mitra for a few days before heading to Newmarket, while the other freed prisoners got rooms or bunkroom beds elsewhere in Gosterwick.

GM's Comments:

Another large battle, but not as large as last week.  Great Haste is still very good.  Grease is pretty good too.

I need to spend more time with the Foundry Token Attacher module so I can quickly make a train of NPCs follow a PC.

I was not really prepared for the PCs to go down to Goblintown (I should have been, since they were heading for Lillian and Gribble was in the next cell over, but I had wrongly assumed they would just let Gribble go rather than following him home) so had to scramble to find the right paths for everyone to take around the Goblintown map.  Since there wasn't a lot of time left in the session, I rushed through the first meeting with King Weskenim and had him invite them back for another one.

Achievements:

• The Rescuers: for rescuing Susarra, Lillian, Gribble, Eadgithu, Geleg, and Grist.
• Quest: for bringing Lillian back to the Temple of Mitra
• Knockback: 1 XP to Uvash for the first hit with a blunt weapon hard enough to achieve knockback.  (This happened all the time in GURPS 3E, but is rarer in 4E and DFRPG due to some rules changes.)

XP:

• Exploration: about 47 rooms (across 3 sessions) (many of them led through goblin territory), 2 XP
• Loot: reward money, 2 giant rubies, coins and gems and weapons and armor: 2 XP
• Achievements: 2 group achievements, 1 individual achievement for Uvash
• Total: 7 XP for Uvash, 6 XP for Vael/Vallium/Ioannes, 4 XP for Michael (missed a session)

Next Week:

The PCs have a lot of options.  The obvious ones are to try to get their reward from King Weskenim, further battle the Cult of Set, or finally deal with Plumthorn's Halflings.  But they also have several parts of the Halls to explore.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 23b: Disrupting Services in the Temple of Set

Date: 

Basilsday, 16th of Gerakios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Hot, dry

Player Characters: 

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)

Michael J. Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Significant NPCs:

Lillian, captured Canon of Mitra

Susarra, Archontean fighter

Many Set guards

Many Set cultists

Several Set acolytes

Several Set deacons

Continuing from the previous session, Vallium came through the gas-trapped doorway, with Vael, Ioannes, and Susarra close behind him.  Uvash and Michael were well behind.  There was one Set guard in red scale armor peering around a corner ahead, shouting back reports to his allies.  Vallium charged, while yelling for nobody to stand right behind him.  The guard waited until Vallium was two yards away to fire his crossbow -- and somehow missed.  Whether this was due to Vallium's Amulet of Missile Shield, or the guard just panicking, was hard to tell.

The guard backed around the corner.  There was a short staircase up, with a 4' tall barricade at the top, and several more guards behind the barricade, holding crossbows.  A couple more took shots at Vallium as he and the first guard ran up the stairs, then dropped their crossbows and pulled out maces or potions.  Meanwhile Michael and Uvash caught up to Vael, who cast Great Haste on Michael.

Vallium neared the barricade as a couple of the guards threw down Alchemist's Fire potions, but missed him.  By then Michael was double-timing up the stairs behind him, and Vael was near the bottom of the steps casting a Grease spell.  The Set deacon at the top of the stairs concentrated on a spell for a couple of seconds, so Vallium let go of his sword (letting it hang from a lanyard), reached into his potion belt, and smashed a Magebane potion.  This emitted a sickly smoke that kept everyone within a few yards of Vallium from casting wizard spells for a while -- but the caster was a cleric and was not affected.  He finished his Dispel Magic spell, catching Vallium and Michael and Susarra in it.  He was trying to dismiss Vallium's Missile Shield (which failed because it was a permanent magic item, not a spell) and Michael's Great Haste.  The attempt was successful, and also dismissed a couple of Continual Light rocks as well as Vallium's Bless.

It didn't get the Grease though, which was cast behind the barricade outside the area of effect of the Dispel, and the guards started slipping and sliding.  Michael stabbed the one on the stairs.  Vallium recovered his sword and hit a couple behind the barricade.  Susarra got to the barricade and got a couple of axe swings in.  As the battle turned against his side, the deacon commanded one of the unwounded guards to run north and set reinforcements.  A badly wounded guard broke ranks and followed him.  After taking a hit, the deacon retreated west.  Uvash reached the top and opened the gate in the barricade, and the party poured through.  They eventually took down all but one of the guards, but the one survivor ran north into an area with a red tiled floor, pulled open a black curtain, and ran into the large room beyond while yelling for help.

Vallium used his Ring of Illusion Disguise to look like the cleric they had just defeated, whose guards had called Deacon Hurub.  He followed the guard into the big temple room to the north while yelling "The Azure Knights are attacking, there are too many, retreat."  A couple of set clerics were leading many cultists in a service nearby.  Many of the cultists broke and ran in various directions.  Vallium waited at the curtain for a few seconds, while Vael cast Great Haste on both Vallium and Michael, and Ioannes followed up with Flaming Weapon.  Once they were fully buffed, everyone ran into the temple.  Michael chased the retreating guard to the west, trailed by Vael, and eventually caught and killed him, but by then about eight more guards were streaming out of two rooms north and south.  Uvash and Ioannes and Susarra went east toward a huge statue of Set in Set animal form, and killed a few cultists.  Vallium chased some clerics to the northeast into a room with a portcullis, and killed them both before they got it open.  There was a brief difference of opinion about who was the real cleric of Set and who was the traitor or imposter, but Vallium won the argument using his sword, and the nearby cultists helped him finish off the acolyte.

Michael was beset by a lot of guards, but he had Great Haste, and Vael cast two Grease spells and a Smoke spell among the guards to help him.  Michael eventually downed all of them.  Meanwhile Susarra ran between two long rectangular pools to come help Michael, when a huge crocodile unexpectedly emerged from one of the pools and tried to eat her.  She avoided being surprised and eventually killed it with a couple of solid axe blows.  A second crocodile came out later, and she wounded it badly enough that it went back under the water to hide and wait for easier prey.

Uvash and Ioannes, after running out of nearby cultists, decided to try to desecrate the evil temple.  Ioannes first tried to knock over the huge statue, but it was just too heavy.  They then decided to take its ruby eyes.  The statue was 25' tall, so its eyes were well out of reach.  Uvash climbed up the statue with his Ring of Climbing, then dropped a rope to help Ioannes up, since Ioannes had the Apportation spell and could take the rubies without actually touching them.  This plan worked, and Ioannes magically grabbed two huge rubies and dropped them in Uvash's pouch, before climbing back down.  Ioannes then stole everything he could find on the Settites' evil sacrificial altar.  He and Uvash then knocked it over.

Vallium chased down and killed two more deacons who were trying to escape down a wide staircase to the west, then dragged them back into the temple and took their portable valuables.  He and Vael shut the huge bronze doors, and Vael Magelocked them.  Vael ran around the room looking for magic items, and Susarra explored the temple looking for other valuables.  Everyone then retreated to the room to the south, outside the temple's Set-aligned sanctity, to rest and heal.  Both Michael and Susarra were fairly wounded, so Ioannes used Stop Bleeding and Major Healing to patch them up.

After the long battle, and with the Set Cult fully alerted to their presence, it was time to decide whether to head back to Gosterwick or press on looking for Lillian.  The group unanimously decided to keep looking for Lillian rather than retreating, so they ended the session, very close to where they started it, but surrounded by a lot of dead Settites (and one dead crocodile).

GM's Comments:

This was by far the biggest battle we've fought in this campaign, 5 PCs and an NPC against over 20 Settites and a couple of crocodiles.  It took almost the whole session.  I should have taken some screenshots.

Achievements:

None

XP:

None until they get back to town, but they explored even more new territory and found some more loot.

Next Week:

They're pretty sure they're close to Lillian now, so they're going to try to rescue her and get out before whatever portion of the Set cult is left gets their revenge.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 23a: Gelatinous Cube and Slime Kraken

Date: 

Basilsday, 16th of Gerakios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Hot, dry

Player Characters: 

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)

Michael J. Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Significant NPCs:

Lillian, captured Canon of Mitra

Kronos, Innkeeper at the Sign of the Broken Head

4 Ghouls

Gelatinous Cube

Slime Kraken

Susarra, Archontean fighter

Several Set guards

Vallium formulated a plan to rescue Lillian.  They would avoid the halflings, bribe the beastmen (who rumor claimed had taken Lillian) with food for information on Lillian or for her release, bring her back to the Church of Mitra, and profit.

The first part of the plan went pretty well.  They loaded up their mule with food and took it up to the ruins of Arden Vul.  Not wanting to take the mule into the Halls, they instead took it to the Sign of the Broken Head and paid Kronos for boarding.  They then loaded the food into a wheelbarrow, went down through the basement entrance to avoid the halflings, and headed south toward the beastmen.

On the way, they searched for secret doors in the Thothian burial niches, and found one.  Opening it up found a crypt containing some elaborate sarcophagi and 4 angry ghouls.  The ghouls surprised Michael, but failed to hurt him.  A quick battle ensued, with Michael and Vallium smacking down the ghouls.  The grave goods included a couple of magical white gold rings, a high quality spear, and some silver torcs and alabaster urns.  The party took the light loot and left the heavy stuff in the secret tomb to grab on the way out.

As they approached beastman territory, Vael cast Seeker looking for Lillian.  The spell showed her bound, gagged, and injured, in a prison cell.  It said the cell was somewhere to the northwest, away from the beastmen.  Vael followed up the Seeker with a Trace so he could keep homing in on Lillian.  At that point they decided to turn around and not talk to the beastmen after all, since it appeared they didn't have Lillian.

They went north and west until they reached the room with 3 portcullises and 3 levers.  Vael, who hadn't been there before, wanted to go up the stairs to the south, but Vallium explained that it led to parts of the Well of Light lever that they had not fully explored, and pulled him back on target.  Vael, not wanting to touch anything he didn't have to, used Apportation to move the middle lever and open the middle portcullis.  They then headed west into a maze of catacombs, filled with burial niches whose plugs had been removed.  Knowing it would take forever to search all the niches, everyone kept their eyes open for obvious doors or treasure, but nobody took time to search.

At one point Uvash was in the lead and almost ran right into a nearly invisible form ahead.  He saw some coins just hanging in the air, and stopped before becoming enveloped.  It was a large gelatinous cube.  Uvash backed away and called for help, as the others ran up.  The cube was huge but fairly slow.  Uvash was a bit worried that it might damage his fancy mace, but took a swing at it anyway, and did a bit of damage.  Michael and Vallium ran up and started rapidly hacking at it.  It kept trying to hit them with slimy pseudopods, but didn't aim very well.  Eventually they hit it enough that it slowed down further and stopped dodging effectively, and then they just kept hitting it until it stopped twitching.

There were some coins and gems inside the cube's body, along with a wand.  Michael, wearing heavy armor and a Ring of Free Action, was able to crawl in and grab the gems and wand without getting hurt, but his armor was smoking a bit.  Manually getting all the coins didn't seem worth the risk, but since coins are pretty sturdy, Vael used Create Fire to just melt the remains of the cube to ash, and they picked the coins out of the remains.

They found a door heading south, but it had no obvious handle, did not budge when they tried pushing it open, and appeared too strong to break down without mining tools.  Vael tried using Apportation to push the door in every direction, but his spell failed to move the door.  Giving up, the group resumed walking around the catacombs looking for secret doors.  Ioannes found one to the northwest, but it led to stairs down, and Vael was pretty sure Lillian was on this level, so they didn't go that way.

Giving up on finding another door, they went back to the heavy door, and Vael used Shape Earth to dig a small tunnel through the rock a few yards away from the door.  His first couple of tries didn't go far enough, but eventually he managed to dig a small tunnel through to another room.  Vallium volunteered to crawl through it first, and didn't find anything dangerous in the room, just the bodies of a couple of humans and a couple of ghouls.  Everyone else crawled in, and they looted a shortsword and a ring.  There was a door on the north wall, which led to a short passage and then the door they had been unable to open from the other side.  From this side, it was possible to push it open with enough effort.  However, it closed itself shortly after they stopped pushing on it, and nobody had any spikes to keep it open.

Heading east, they found another room with doors south and east.  The southern door was spiked shut.  Vael confirmed that Lillian was still southwest, so they pulled the spikes and went south.  They saw doors south and west.  The western room was small and completely trashed.

To the south, however, was a very large room, containing a circular pool with a statue of Thoth inside it.  The temple had been thoroughly and deliberately trashed, and both clerics felt like it was a place of negative sanctity.  There was some anti-Thoth graffiti on the walls, and a picture of a crocodile eating an ibis, indicating that the vandalism was probably the work of Settites.  Worse, when Vallium went into the room, a lot of tentacles emerged from the pool to grab him.  Everyone retreated back north out of the room, with Vallium chopping off a couple of the tentacles as he parried their attacks.

After some discussion, the group decided they needed to get past the tentacle beast, but since they now knew it was there, they could buff themselves first.  Vael would cast Great Haste on the fighters, while Ioannes cast Flaming Weapon.  Vael flubbed his first couple of attempts to Great Haste Michael, but the third try worked, and then Michael opened the door and charged south.  He ran right into the pool, not slowed because of his Ring of Free Action, and started cutting off tentacles as the slime kraken tried dragging him under.  At one point it looked like Michael critically failed an attack and crippled his own shield arm, but his Bless spell sacrificed itself and prevented the self-inflicted attack.  A few seconds later, Vallium also came charging into the room at double speed, and now the slime beast was surrounded.  Both Vallium and Michael kept cutting off tentacles, then went after its body.  With all its tentacles gone, the beast started biting with its beak.  Uvash used Divine Grace then followed them into the room, but Michael finished the slime creature off with multiple rapid strikes from behind before Uvash arrived.

With the battle over, Vael was very tired after casting multiple Great Hastes, and Vallium and Michael were tired from fighting.  While they rested, Ioannes started searching and found a magical sheet of yellow glass in the pool.  Rather than reaching into the murky water, he Apportated it out.  After resting, everyone started circling the room and looking for secret doors.  Vael found a secret door in the north wall, with a small empty alcove behind it.  Later he searched in the same spot on the south wall and found a matching secret door and empty alcove.  There were doors in all four corners of the rooms.  Both of the ones on the east side led to ramps up to galleries overlooking the temple.  One of the ramps had a bit of adventuring equipment left on it, and Vallium grabbed some spikes.

The most promising door, in the southwest corner, led to a small passage south, another door, and a cave-in.  The cave in was large enough that Vael did not feel he could use Shape Earth to get past it.  Everyone returned to the temple and searched again for secret doors.  They did not find any, but Uvash spotted an iron key in the fountain, which Vael Apportated out, dried off, and added to their keyring.

Giving up on manually searching, Vael pulled out the Wand of See Secrets and used a charge.  At that point a secret door to the southwest and a peephole high on the west wall became obvious to him.  He ran around the temple while the spell lasted, finding another secret door off the southeast gallery.  He then doubled back north through the other rooms they had searched.  He did not find any more secret doors there.  There was one door to the east which they had not opened, and, caution thrown aside while racing the spell duration, Vael opened it rather than waiting for Vallium and Michael to catch up.  There was an armed and armored woman hiding in the room.  Fortunately for Vael, she did not attack, and instead asked who he was and what he was doing there.  Vael didn't want to talk, as he was trying to find secret doors, but he explained that they were looking for Lillian.  The woman didn't know who Lillian was, but said that her name was Susarra and her friends had been killed by ghouls and she was looking for a way out past the tentacle monster.  When Vael indicated that they had killed the monster and invited her to tag along, she followed him out of the room.

They listened to the southwestern secret door, opened it, and found a room full of trash.  There were some footprints leading from the secret door to the middle of the room, then vanishing.  Everyone started searching for more secret doors.  While searching, Vallium triggered a spear trap.  It barely penetrated his helmet, scratching his face.  Vallium broke the spear in half to make sure that didn't happen again.  They eventually found a concealed door on the south wall.

When they opened the door, a trap went off, and gas started pouring into the room with a loud hiss.  Everyone managed to hold their breath before breathing any of the gas, and then Vael cast a Purify Air to clear the room.  The group went south through the door, and saw some Set guards in their distinctive red scale armor, looking angry.  There wasn't enough time left in the session to fight the battle, so the session ended there.

GM's Comments:

Slime Kraken might be my new favorite monster name.

Gelatinous Cubes are fun, but they're also slow and stupid, so unless they surprise you and get a free attack, or corner you, they're not as dangerous as they seem.

You would think that the combination of Seeker and Trace and Shape Earth would make reaching a prisoner within one four-hour session pretty easy.  Find the prisoner, head toward the prisoner, and if you can't find a way toward the prisoner, dig one.  But four hours flew by this week, despite only finishing three fights.

Achievements:

None

XP:

None until they get back to down, but they explored some new territory and found a bit of loot.

Next Week:

We know they'll be starting the session fighting those Set guards, and then, if they win, presumably resuming the search for Lillian.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 22: The Oracle of Thoth and The Litany of Light

Date: 

Basilsday, 9nd of Gerakios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Hot, dry

Player Characters: 

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)

Merenuithiel "Lacrymosa" Armaris, Elven mercenary archer (Archon Shiva)

Significant NPCs:

6 ghouls

Yamki, wounded giant 4-armed intelligent baboon

Many large albino baboons

Anaximander, ancient insane cleric of Mitra

Voice of Thoth, ancient god for magic, moons, secrets, etc.

Skeleton cook

Flaming skull

Animated bust of Stamelis, Librarian of Thoth

2 Ibis constructs of Thoth

Ioannes did some research on the copy of the Litany of Light they had found in the Library of Thoth, which pointed to it being a forgery, so he wasn't sure if it was a good idea.  Vael learned the location spells Seeker, Pathfinder, and Trace, and tried using them to find the Troll Lifts and Lillian the missing cleric of Mitra.  Vallium tried and failed to find some magic scale armor, and decided not to put down a deposit on fine-quality scale armor.

Vallium decided the company should try to finish exploring the Well of Light level (except the caves full of baboons), try installing the mirror below the Well of Light, and have Ioannes conduct the Litany of Light if willing and able.  Michael was still off in the mountains somewhere and Uvash had a church emergency, so the shorthanded party hired Lacrymosa the bloodthirsty elf archer.  She asked if it was time to kill the halflings yet, then came along to kill whatever else they needed her to kill.

They got up early on a sunny Basilsday, made good time to the cliff face beneath Arden Vul, then tied themselves together and climbed up the Long Stair (except Vael, who didn't believe in climbing when you could Levitate).  They made it to the top without any problems and hiked to the top of the Well of Light.  Vael cast Flight on Vallium, who carried Ioannes down the Well, while Vael Levitated down and Lacrymosa used Walk on Air to walk down the well as if there were an invisible spiral staircase.  This time, there were no baboon hordes waiting for them at the bottom, so they were able to rest safely.

They went west, then north, and found a door that was spiked shut.  They prepared for battle and Vallium ripped the spikes out.  Opening the door revealed 6 angry ghouls.  A quick fight ensued, where Vallium stabbed the ghouls, Lacrymosa show the ghouls, Ioannes finished off one ghoul with his axe, and Vael supervised while preparing a Great Haste spell just in case they needed it.  They did not.  Digging through the trash in the room found a few platinum coins, a tall bronze magic helmet shaped like an inverted flowerpot, and a wand.  They grabbed the treasure, unspiked a second door into the room for good measure, then continued exploring north and west.

Eventually they doubled back and explored south and west.  They found an empty room, then a room with Continual Light, a fresco of an ibis with orange glowing eyes, a scroll along the wall full of obscure phrases in Mithric, and three blocks of granite shaped like open mouths, with black holes of magical darkness.  They explored the room for a while, until the ibis's eyes flashed and a burst of energy filled the chamber, dispelling all their spells (including all their Blesses, all their Continual Light rocks, and Vael's Levitation) and destroying some of their potions.

After depositing their surviving potions outside the room in case that reoccurred, Vael cast a Light spell into the air, then cast Trace on his Returning Pebble and threw it into the eastern mouth.  He sensed that it teleported way down and northeast, then was still.  A few minutes later, the dispelling effect repeated, taking out both the Light and the Trace.  The Returning Pebble eventually returned, and Vael returned the experiment with the middle mouth.  This time the pebble went down and in the direction he threw it, as if there were stairs or a ramp there.  He waited until the second Trace was dispelled and the Pebble reappeared in his pocket, then returned the experiment with the western mouth.  This one seemed like another teleporter, moving the stone down and southeast.

Meanwhile, Ioannes, re-cast Bless on his other companions, who stayed out of the room to keep from having it dispelled again.  He finally cast it on Vael, and then everyone crawled into the magical mouth.  After going through a brief area of magical Darkness and Silence, they emerged onto narrow stairs leading down, then the passage turned west and they went down some more, until they reached a dead end with a square hole in the ceiling.  Vael re-cast Levitation and popped up into a hemispherical room containing an dais with a magical marble chair and a ibis statue whose wings wrapped around the chair.  In the chair sat a very old, disheveled man who was twitching and mumbling.

Everyone climbed up into the room.  The man did not respond.  Everyone tried talking to him, but he did not respond.  Eventually Vallium pulled the man out of the chair, and then the man noticed them, but did not speak coherently, just babbled about things they mostly did not understand.  It took a lot of prodding to reveal that his name was Anaximander, he was a cleric of Mitra, and he'd been in that chair for a very long time.  Ioannes told the others to pull him out if anything weird happened, then sat in the chair.  He felt a warm layer of air, then a deep voice told him to "Speak Thy Desire."  Ioannes said that he wanted to know the correct way to perform the Litany of Light.  The voice told him that he already had a book that said exactly how to do it, and that instructions could not get much more detailed that that, but maybe he could find a version with more pictures.  Ioannes was then stunned.  After a couple of minutes, Vallium pulled Ioannes out of the chair, and he soon recovered.

The old guy asked a few jealous questions about how Ioannes had gotten answers and said maybe it was a good idea to bring friends along to pull him out of the chair.  While he rocked on the floor, the group went out an exit to the south, into a room with a magic pool, whose water was overflowing the basin and streaming out of the room to the southeast.  Vael cast Analyze Magic, which said that the pool was designed to increase its user's intelligence.  That was enough for Ioannes, who immediately took a drink and felt smarter.  Impressed, Vael also took a drink, but felt sicker rather than smarter, then felt his guts twisting.  Ioannes cast a couple of Stop Bleeding spells and a Major Healing on Vael to help repair the damage, and the poisoning eventually subsided.  Vallium explored the water damage crack, but it wasn't big enough to go far, and he didn't find anything in the water.

Returning to the Oracle room, the group grabbed Anaximander and headed back up the stairs.  They left the dispelling room before it got another chance to ruin their spells, and headed for the Library of Thoth.  There they introduced Anaximander to the animated bust of Stemelis, and let the two ancient guys keep each other company while they explored more.

Vael found a secret door north of the kitchen, which led to a dusty narrow corridor.  In the corridor was a skeleton with a chef's hat and a cleaver, who was angry at the intrusion.  He was only one skeleton though, and Vallium and Lacrymosa finished him off pretty quickly.  The skeleton had a scroll in its hand that turned out to be a recipe for baboon stew, which they took.  Continuing east, they found another secret door at the other end of the passage which led to an area north of the baboon cave.  They saw Yamki, the giant 4-armed baboon they had wounded before, leaning on a stick, standing in the entrance to the cave watching them.  Neither side made any threatening moves, and the group moved away from the baboons.

They went north to a room with a baboon statue and a door they had not tried before.  The door had a picture of an ear on it, so everyone listened to it, but heard nothing.  It was locked, and Vallium pulled out his collection of keys.  The first one he tried fit, and he unlocked the door, but a needle trap was triggered.  He pulled his hand out of the way in time to avoid being pricked, if there was ever any chance of the needle penetrating his armored gauntlets.  After some brief discussion of whether they could try to recover poison from the needle, they decided the risk to reward ratio was poor, and Vallium carefully broke off the needle and threw it into a corner.

The room to the north was large, with columns, a dais in the center, and an opening to the Great Chasm to the east.  Vallium checked out the chasm, while Ioannes and Vael looked at the dais.  There was an ivory oliphant, and a Mithric note that said to "Name Thyself and Whisper They Message and Thou Shalt Be Rewarded in Thine Ear."  Vael complied, but the message he received was some stupid song about 99 flagons of ale on the wall.  Ioannes also tried, and heard a very deep voice saying "Me hide pretty rock in water.  Nobody find it now!"

Looking over the chasm, Vael thought he saw something to the southeast.  He Levitated over the chasm to inspect a creepy magical soapstone idol of some kind of salamander, with empty eye sockets and a gaping mouth.  He came back and cast Flight on Vallium so that Vallium could carry the others over the chasm.  They avoided the statue and explored a cave filled about 3 feet deep in bones.  After not finding anything in the bones for a few minutes, Vael searched for secret doors, and found a concealed exit to the east.   He then cast Seek Magic, then Seek Earth twice, for gold and platinum.  When these spells revealed nothing in this room and platinum off to the east, he suggested they stop searching and go east.

It led to a large round cavern, with a shaft in the middle, in which there was a huge creepy triangular obelisk, clearly crafted not natural.  The obelisk continued up about 20' above their heads, and down farther than their Continual Light went.  Vael Levitated up to the top of the obelisk and saw a pentagram on top, with a metal coffer within the pentagram.  He avoided touching the pentagram and tried Apportating the coffer open, but it appeared to be welded shut.  He looked at the pentagram to see if it looked like platinum, but it looked more like silver to him.  

Vael flew back down, informed the others, then flew down the obelisk about 90' without seeing the bottom.  Not wanting to stray too far, he flew back up, cast Trace on his Returning Pebble, and dropped it.  It fell about 150' before stopping.  Vael then flew down to the bottom and found the obelisk sat in a natural cave, with nothing very interesting within range of his light.  Not wanting to explore solo, he returned to the others.

Leaving the obelisk, they went north down a narrow tunnel until they found two bodies, one wearing slightly glowing orange mail, in front of a stone chest.  As they inspected the bodies, a flaming skull flew out of the wall to attack Vallium.  He parried, and a quick combat ensued, where Vallium kept stabbing it (while not doing much damage, as his sword mostly passed through the flames) and Lacrymosa tried both arrows and her cloak.  Eventually Vallium scored three critical hits in a row and the skull was dispelled.  They searched the bodies and found a small magic silver eye, a few coins, a scroll, and a couple of potions.

Iaonnes went to open the chest but Vael yelled him away and tried using Apportation instead.  That failed because the chest was locked.  Vael thought he noticed some writing on the chest and cautioned the others against reading it.  Eventually he opened the chest with a Lockmaster spell followed by an Apportation, without setting off any traps.  Inside the chest were a bunch of silver coins, a few of the extremely valuable huge ancient octagonal platinum coins, a magic silver torc, another copy of the Litany of Light (this one much shorter and less fancy than the one from the library), a magic pick, and a few potions.

With their desire for treasure temporarily met, they went back to the Well of Light to try replacing the mirror and saying the Litany of Light.  Vael cast Flight on Vallium again so he could ferry the others across the chasm, and then everyone went back to the library.  Stamelis looked ready to have Anaximander taken off his hands, then was disappointed when Vallium just grabbed the huge mirror from behind the stacks and went right back out the door.  Vallium maneuvered the mirror onto the tripod while Vael and Ioannes gave helpful hints.  Eventually they placed it correctly and light went out in all directions, then Vael went to play with some of the secondary mirrors and bounce the light around.

With the mirror in place, Ioannes conducted the Litany of Light.  He went to the four small rooms surrounding the Well of Light, and in each room said the correct Mithric words.  His poor Mithric pronunciation was just good enough to trigger each effect, and he ended up with Infravision, an intelligence bonus, See Secrets, and Invisibility.  Vael and Vallium followed him around and repeated the rituals, and each of them got the same bonuses.  Lacrymosa did not participate.  With See Secrets in effect, everyone started running around looking for secret doors.  They found one northeast of the Ruby Chair, and another one northwest.

They opened the secret door northeast of the Ruby Chair (with the hidden catch on the floor made obvious by Thoth's blessing) and went east into a room, with an apparently accurate magically animated star field on the ceiling (despite it being daytime outside), and a couple of mosaics, one depicting the room with the Ruby Chair, another depicting some unknown large room with a bunch of statues.  They continued east to find a room with a couple of corpses, which Ioannes thought had been killed by some kind of strong impaling damage.  Both were wearing red ceremonial robes and hats.  One had a belt pouch, which they took without opening.  Another was lying on a big bronze key.  One was wearing magic boots.  They took all the loot but left the old rotted robes and hats.

Continuing east, they found a room containing two ibis statues.  The statues unfortunately did not seem to like visitors, and animated and attacked Lacrymosa, the only visible intruder.  Looking at their beaks, Ioannes now had a pretty good idea how the corpses to the west had been impaled.  Invisible Vallium had a free shot at the back of one of the constructs, and hit it squarely, but not hard enough to take it down.  Lacrymosa ran away while rapidly firing arrows, which the other construct dodged with amazing speed.  Ioannes and Vael tried to stay out of the way and stay Invisible.  After a few more tries, Lacrymosa finally managed to nail one of the constructs in the leg, slowing it and knocking it down.  It didn't dodge so well after that, and stopped moving after a few more arrows hit it.  Meanwhile Vallium landed a second, harder hit on the other ibis to slow it, then finished it off.  With See Secrets still running, everyone noticed a secret door on the south wall behind where one of the constructs had been standing, but nobody opened it.

In a hurry to go home, the party took a quick look to the east and saw a dead-end room with some spiral stairs down.  They then doubled back, closing the secret door behind them.  They went back to the Library, retrieved Anaximander, then went back to Gosterwick.  Vallium took Anaximander to the Temple of Mitra to see if they could help him, while Vael and Ioannes went back to the Arcane Practitioners Club to start identifying their loot.

GM's Comments:

That was an exceptionally productive delve.  All the previous visits to the Well of Light level had been interrupted by periodic baboon attacks, but with the baboons apparently herded into the Howling Caves to the southeast, there were fewer interruptions this time, which made exploration easier.

Using a Trace spell on the Returning Pebble was a creative way to figure out what the 3 dark mouths did, without actually risking crawling in.  Vael used a lot of caution this session, not touching the salamander statue or the pentagram on top of the obelisk, and trying to open every container with Apportation rather than his hands, but still got poisoned by the magic pool.

Anaximander seemed too crazy to give the party useful information, but Ioannes still dared climbing into the marble chair that they pulled Anaximander out of, and got an answer about the Litany of Light.

Replacing the mirror and performing the Litany of Light correctly got four useful magical effects with long (but not permanent) durations.  See Secrets revealed three secret doors, two in areas the group had walked past before without searching.  And Invisibility gave Vallium a free rear attack on the ibis construct, which contributed to quickly winning that battle.

Achievements:

• The Rescuers: 1 XP for pulling Anaximander out of the Oracle of Thoth and bringing him back to town
• The Litany of Light: 1 XP for restoring the mirror and performing the full Litany

XP:

• Exploration: About 17 new locations, 1 XP
• Loot: A few magic items plus 5 of those valuable huge ancient platinum coins, 2 XP
• Achievements: 2 XP
• Total: 5 XP

Next week:

They left a couple of secret doors and a staircase unexplored at the end of the session, so they'll probably be back.  Though there was some talk of trying to rescue Lillian, the canon of the Temple of Mitra in Newmarket, now that Vael has some knowledge magic that might make it easier to find her.  (Of course there was also talk of killing Plumthorn's halflings, but pretty much only from Lacrymosa, who always wants to kill the halflings.)

How I'm dealing with friendly NPCs in DFRPG Arden Vul

Arden Vul is full of NPCs, some of them in town, some of them in the Halls.  Some of those NPCs are actually adventurers who might be happy to visit the Halls.  Some are friendly to the PCs, and might be happy to accompany them.

But I'm not generally letting the PCs bring NPC companions into the Halls with them, for meta reasons.  My general rule is that I limit delves to 5 PCs, because each additional player or token slows everything down.  NPCs don't slow things down quite as much as PCs do, because they don't add additional players, just additional tokens.  But they still add significant overhead.  I tolerate this for key PC powers that they paid points for -- the GOAT's summoned animals are annoying to manage, but he's a druid and summoned animals are a major part of a druid's powers so if I allow druids I pretty much have to allow summoned animals.  But I'm not letting PCs buy the Ally advantage (which isn't in DFRPG, only GURPS, so it appears Kromm agrees with me), or pay hirelings to come into the dungeon with them.

So, basically, my rule is that if you rescue an NPC in the Halls, they may stick with the party until you get them back to town, and they may be your friend in town or even let you hire them in town to do non-dungeon jobs, but they're not coming back into the Halls with you.  Because I don't want to deal with a party of 15 dragging the game to a crawl, making it less fun for everyone, and eventually killing the campaign.  Of course like all rules there may be very specific exceptions -- if one particular NPC really wants to do one thing in the Halls, they may ask to come along for one targeted mission.  (As an example, Thalia, the ranger the PCs rescued in Session 21, really wanted to kill the vile 4-armed baboon Umsko.  But since Uvash already killed him, she no longer needs to go back to do that.)

Note that this kind of rule varies from campaign to campaign, and from game system to game system.  If I only had 2 players, I would let them each bring an Ally, and probably have them run each other's Allies.  If I were running a very lightweight system with no VTT maps, I could be freer with NPCs, as they would require less work to keep up with.  So I'm not saying that GMs who allow tag-along NPCs are wrong, just that it's something to carefully consider rather than blindly allow.

DFRPG Arden Vul Session 21: The Library of Thoth

Date: 

Basilsday, 2nd of Gerakios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Cool, dry

Player Characters: 

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)

Sister Valya "Basilisk" Hushbreaker, Halfling mercenary monk (ArchonShiva)

Significant NPCs:

Giant lizard

Many large albino baboons

Isocritis Half-Hand, Archontean wizard

6 baboon zombies

8 logovores

Magically animated head of Stamelis, Librarian of Thoth

Umsko, giant 4-armed intelligent baboon

Yamki, giant 4-armed intelligent baboon

Thalia, Thorcin ranger

Fetch, elderly Archontean slave prisoner

In Gosterwick, Vael paid Creon the pawnbroker to let him know about any particularly interesting items before putting them up for general sale.  Creon let Vael know about a Wand of Air Jet that came in, but Vael declined to buy it.  More graffiti appeared on the town walls, in a slightly different style than the previous graffiti, this time depicting some chickens killing a huge red dragon, then running from tiny halflings.  Vael and Uvash went to the Demmasday market looking for Elven and Dwarven rations.  Neither found what they were looking for, but Octavian's Cucina had some Arden Vul Cakes available, which Vael purchased.  Nobody was quite sure of the origin of the cakes, except that they were occasionally found in the ruins of Arden Vul, were highly nutritious if not very tasty, and lasted forever if kept dry.

Vallium, newly nominated as the Right for Riches Company's official destination planner, decided that they would go down the Well of Light and look for the Library of Thoth.  With Michael still off in the mountains somewhere, they hired Basilisk, the tiny halfling monk with the piercing high-pitched kiai shout.  As usual, Basilisk asked to ride on someone's shoulder rather than walking all the way to Arden Vul on her very short legs.  When they reached the Long Stair, however, she somehow walked right up the side of the cliff.  Vael Levitated, and everyone else climbed up the steep and treacherous path the regular way, without incident.

As they walked north through the ruins of Arden Vul, a giant lizard attempted to ambush them from behind a tree.  Its attempt at surprise failed, and Vallium stabbed it.  Noting the lizard's thick hide might be useful, Vallium skinned it, and Vael used his Levitation to carry the hide up and stow it in the top of a tree.

Continuing north into the Forum of Arden Vul, Vael expressed suspicion about the giant oak tree growing out of the center of the ruined pavement.  Ioannes took a close look at the tree and said it was really old, but looked like a regular oak to him.  Uvash climbed the tree and didn't see anything odd.

As they reached the Well of Light, Vael first dropped several very bright Continual Light stones down the well to try to scare away light-averse baboons.  He then cast Flight on Vallium, who could carry Ioannes then Uvash down the Well.  Vael Levitated down, while Basilisk walked down the side of the well, but both were much slower than Vallium's Flight.  Ioannes, alone at the bottom of the Well, heard the loud hooting of baboons to the east.  He raised his shield and waited, until Vallium returned carrying Uvash.  The three then saw four baboons charge.  Vallium, with Flight still active, counter-charged and shield rushed one, but failed to knock it over.  The four baboons tried to swarm him, as Uvash and Ioannes ran up to help, but Vallium's thick scale armor kept him from getting hurt as he crippled one baboon and knocked another unconscious.  The survivors broke and ran, and nobody pursued, as they waited for Vael and Basilisk to arrive.

Once the group was together and the baboons were out of earshot, they went due south toward where they thought the Library was.  They saw some double doors at the end of the passage.  Everyone listened at the doors, but nobody heard anything.  Vallium went through his collection of keys, and one of them (which had been taken from Gerrilad) unlocked the door.  Opening the door, they saw a Continually Lit library, with 6 hooded figures seated at some nearby tables, a human in robes with one withered hand sitting at a librarian's table in the center of the room, then a row of pillars across the room, and some stacks of shelves filling the southern part.

The robed human gestured for silence and then whispered "Who are you and why are you in my library?"  Vael and Ioannes were not very happy that this guy claimed to own the library, and Ioannes failed to whisper his reply, so the man gestured toward the doors and indicated that they should continue their conversation outside.  When they got near the door he made it clear that he was an wizard, and that this was his library because Gerrilad, the owner of this level, gave it to him.  Vael and Vallium countered that they had killed Gerrilad, so it was their level and their library now.  The man said that, despite that, he was an archmage and they were not and if they did not leave he would have to demonstrate his powers.  Vael took affront and Blinked behind the man, then tapped him on the shoulder.  At that point a potentially fatal electrical shock moved from the wizard's shoulder to Vael's hand, but Vael's Bless spell caused his hand to jerk away supernaturally quickly, as a bolt of lightning arced to the floor instead.

Isocritis the wizard, affronted that he had been flanked and also that Vael had cheated by bringing divine assistance to a wizard fight, waved to his allies sitting around the tables, and the robed forms revealed themselves to be zombified baboons as they scampered to his assistance on all fours.  However, Vallium was directly behind Isocritis, and took advantage of the opportunity by shoving the blade of his broadsword into the kidneys of the wizard while he was distracted by Vael.  Isocritis's spellcasting ability failed to protect him from the mighty stab, and he collapsed, dead.

One of the baboon zombies tried to punch Vael, who Blinked back to the other side of the doors, out of reach.  Vallium, standing in the doorway, started stabbing any zombie within reach.  Uvash and Ioannes both stayed behind the doorway.  8 creatures that looked like baby baboons, who had been hiding within the stacks south of the pillars, ran forward, with one of them yelling "Need New!"

When he recovered from the disorientation of Blinking, Vael cast Grease inside the doorway.  He followed this up with Create Fire in another area, after making sure there were no books there.  The Grease and Fire channeled his allies as much as they did the enemies, though, and Ioannes and Uvash remained stuck behind Vallium.  Basilisk, with her wall-walking ability, suffered no such constraints, as she walked along the wall over the fire, throwing flash nageteppos, then a smoke nageteppo, and continually shouting stunning kiais at the nearest targets, to both stop them from attacking and make them more vulnerable.

As the baboons gradually went down, Ioannes went into the east side of the room around the fire, while Uvash crawled over the Grease into the west side.  The baby baboons kept yelling "Known!" and "Need New!" as they adorably tried to kill everyone.  There was some speculation about what the baboons wanted.  Vael tried speaking Elvish, and the baboons liked that a lot, and all grew a bit bigger.  Fortunately for the Left for Loot Company, the baby baboons didn't have time to get too big before they were all dead.  One of them landed a solid claw hit on Ioannes, but otherwise the party was uninjured.

With the fight over, the group started looting the wizard's body and then searching the room.  There were hundreds or even thousands of books in the stacks, so a thorough search would take forever.  Vael suggested locking the doors and searching until they were done, but Ioannes wanted to go grab the statue head of Stamelis the Librarian and bring him to the library.  The group went east to Gerrilad's quarters were Stamelis was, and while they were there they stuck Isocritis's body in the mulch pit.  Vallium dragged the heavy bust back to the library and set it in a place of honor on the librarian's station.

Ioannes then had a conversation with Stamelis, while Vael searched for secret doors, and Uvash started going through the stacks looking for interesting books.  In addition to the books, Uvash found a large mirror, which appeared to be related to the Well of Light.  Eventually they decided they should go find more treasure, and Vael cast Seek Earth for platinum, which showed there was some platinum a bit northeast.  He then tried finding gold, but the nearest gold was down a level.  He then cast Seek Magic, which revealed some magic in the stacks.  He went and found Isocritis's spellbook.  He tried Seek Magic again and found another spellbook, this one belonging to Tresti Iredell, the half-elven mage they had rescued from Gerrilad's prison.  Not wanting to keep burning expensive spells, Vael went through the stacks looking for more magic books, but failed to find any.  He tried Seek Magic one more time and the nearest magic was a bit to the southeast.  That did not jibe with their map, so they thought there was probably a secret door somewhere.

Heading northeast toward the platinum, the group found a room containing a statue of a baboon.  There was a passage heading south, and they heard the hooting of baboons that way.  They also heard the deeper grunts of giant baboons, giving commands.  They spent a few seconds casting spells to prepare for a combat, then they saw two giant baboons charging toward them from the south, followed by a mass of smaller baboons.

Vael cast Create Fire in the middle of the pack of smaller baboons to split the baboons in half and prevent more reinforcements from arriving.  That left 2 huge and 3 normal-sized baboons still in the fight.  Vallium chopped an arm off Yamki, one of the huge ones, as Basilisk used kiai to stun him.  Yamki realized he had been defeated, and surrendered.  This enraged the other huge baboon, Umsko, who slammed into Yamki from behind in frustration, then charged.  Uvash dodged and parried Umsko's attacks, then Basilisk stunned him.  With both nearby opponents stunned, Uvash made a huge all-out attack targeted at Umsko's skull, connected cleanly, and killed the giant baboon.  That caused all the baboons north of the wall of fire to stop fighting.

Some negotiation commenced with Yamki.  Vael's main argument was that all the baboons could die, or they could peacefully let the party have the run of the level and take whatever treasure they wanted, and the baboons could live and even be provided with food.  Yamki was badly wounded, though, and passed out before the negotiation reached a conclusion.  Uvash bandaged the giant baboon to keep him from bleeding to death, and then the group searched the room to the east.

In the room was a naked human woman, chained to the wall, trying to free herself from her shackles.  Vallium called Vael over asking for a Lockmaster spell, but the woman indicated that Umsko had the key, so they went back to Umsko's body and searched it, then used the key they found.  The woman crawled under a bed and pulled out a lot of equipment that she said was hers, and then hurriedly put on some clothes and some scale armor and started picking up weapons.  She said her name was Thalia, that she was a ranger, and that this was her gear.  She thanked them for freeing her, and said she had a lot of baboons to kill.  They informed her that Umsko was already dead, which calmed her down a bit.  She thanked Uvash for killing Umsko, and managed to not charge through the fire into the remaining masses of baboons to the south.

Thalia found a few other things under the bed that she said were not hers, and threw a scroll case to Vael, and pointed Vallium at a sack (which contained the platinum coins that Vael had detected, as well as some gold) and some potions.  With Umsko's room looted, they crossed the hall to Yamki's room, where they found a heavy ebony chair, which Vael judged as not valuable enough to be worth its weight.  They also found a silver goblet and a small wooden box containing silver coins, a potion, and a magic pebble.  Remembering a previous magic pebble, Vael said to avoid touching the pebble until it was identified, and Vallium just took the whole box.  A pile of rags in the corner surprisingly contained something magical, and Vael pulled out a magic cloak and added it to the loot pile.

There was one more door in the passage, which led to a storeroom.  Inside was an old human man, who was chained to the floor, and cowering at their approach.  Vallium tried Umsko's key again, and it worked.  The man was not thrilled to be freed, and didn't seem to speak Archontean.  He hooted a bit and hid in the corner, then tried running for the door at record-slow speed.  Vallium grabbed the old man, determined to rescue him rather than letting him run off and get killed.  The room was full of various things that the baboons ate, most of which were in no way appetizing to humans, so they didn't take any of them.  But when looking behind some crates, Ioannes spotted a magic bullwhip on the floor, and grabbed it.

At that point the party decided to head for home.  They went north and west back to the Well of Light, then went into the library to see if the mirror fit into the Well.  It did, but they put it back in the Library for now, because they could lock the doors.  Vael once again cast Flight on Vallium, and he ferried most of the others up the Well, in addition to Thalia and the old man.  When they got back to Gosterwick, Vallium took the old man to the Temple of Mitra, who told him that the man's name was Fetch and he had apparently been a slave to the baboons for most of his life, and didn't know many words in any human language.

GM's Comments:

Neither of the random encounters I rolled, the giant lizard or the troop of 4 baboons, were much of a challenge.  I thought the baboons might be a challenge since they attacked when the party was split while moving down the well, but Vallium had too much armor for the baboons to easily hurt him.

Isocritis was a challenge, and he might have killed Vael except for the Bless spell.  But he got himself surrounded, and a surrounded wizard is in deep trouble.  He probably should have stayed behind his baboon zombies, but he was trying to keep the invaders quiet to keep them from making the logovores grow.  With hindsight maybe he should have had a long, loud conversation instead, so that when the logovores appeared they were huge, but he was overconfident.

The logovores were a really neat monster, and the players eventually figured out how they worked (they grow when they hear enough new words) based on the monster name (leaked by Foundry VTT; maybe I need to find a way to avoid showing token names) and the "Known!  Need New!" and the way they grew after Vael spoke Elvish.  But between Basilisk's stunning and Vallium's stabbing, they didn't last long enough to grow to be a real threat.

The 4-armed giant baboons are tough except most of them are too overconfident to use weapons.  Fighting with your bare hands without the Striker advantage is a good way to get your arm cut off by an aggressive parry on your own attack.  If Gerrilad had just taught them to use giant clubs they might have killed a couple of PCs by now.  This is one of the challenges of converting D&D monsters to GURPS; sometimes the flavor carries over but the power level changes.

With more baboons defeated, we'll see if the PCs have the run of the Well of Light level, or if there are still enough baboons willing to fight for their territory.

Achievements:

The Rescuers: 1 XP for rescuing Thalia from Umsko.

XP:

• Exploration: 5 new locations, good for 1 XP
• Loot: Isocritis's and Yamki's and Umsko's stuff.  Not a huge amount, but enough for 1 XP
• Achievements: 1 XP
• Total: 3 XP

Next Week:

I expect they'll come back to the Well of Light and try to finish searching the Library or play with the mirrors or explore more.  But every time I expect them to focus on the same job for two weeks in a row they surprise me, so we'll see.

How I Do Surprise, Initiative, and Turn Order in DFRPG

One of the DFRPG Arden Vul players asked how I do surprise and initiative.  I think I do them pretty much by the rules, but then most GMs probably think that, and yet they still do slightly different things because it's impossible to write RPG rules that are perfect and complete.  (This is the RPG version of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.  If you can write perfectly clear rules for it, it's not complicated enough to count as an RPG.)

I use "Initiative" to mean the order in which combatants move in a role-playing game, and "Surprise" to indicate a special situation at the beginning of some RPG combats where some combatants don't get their normal actions until they recover.  ("Turn order" is a synonym for "initiative.")

GURPS initiative is different from initiative in most other role-playing games. Because there are active defenses, everyone's turns overlap.  Also, because all the turns overlap, there's a fixed turn order for the duration of a combat, rather than constant re-shuffling.  Surprise means that some combatants suffer Mental Stun and lose their turns until they recover, then proceed normally after that.  Dungeon Fantasy RPG slightly tweaks the basic GURPS surprise rules (see Exploits page 26).  I follow the DFRPG rules, but there's a certain amount of GM judgment required.

The first thing to consider is surprise.  There are three possibilities for a two-sided fight: nobody can be surprised, one side can be surprised, or both sides can be surprised.

Rule zero of surprise is that if there's no chance of surprise, you don't roll for it.  If two groups approach each other across clear terrain in broad daylight, you're done.

When there is a chance of surprise, you have to think about whether only one side can be surprised, or both can.  If two groups approach each other across clear terrain in pitch darkness, and one of those groups has Darkvision, they have a chance of surprise and their opponents do not.  Life isn't fair.  On the other hand, if two groups who've both been sneaky both turn a corner at the same time and end up meeting each other at close range, they both have a chance at surprise.

The rules say you can only achieve surprise if you're being sneaky (meaning you move at half speed), or you have some advantage that makes you sneaky by default (like Invisibility).  If you're loud, brightly lit, and stinky, then you don't get to roll.

For a one-sided contest, you roll the sneaky side's worst Stealth versus the other side's best applicable detection roll: Per (a good default if you have no specialized senses or detection skills), Vision (assuming you have a chance to see your opponents), Hearing (assuming you have a chance to hear them), Smell (I don't allow this for humans unless the opponents are extra stinky, but something like a guard dog with a really good sense of smell could use this to detect invisible and silent foes), Observation (if you've trained it up higher than your base senses), whatever the GM agrees makes sense.  If the sneaky side wins they get surprise, otherwise no surprise.

(Note that, for me, worst Stealth literally means the worst Stealth in the group.  I don't use the "part of the problem or part of the solution" rule to let a mostly sneaky group ignore a non-sneaky member, unless they actually take appropriate action like having a quiet person sneak ahead while leaving the loud person behind.  This means that every adventurer should have some points in Stealth, and every adventuring party should figure out how to get the least stealthy person in their group better at it.)

For a two-sided contest, it's a contest of each side's worst Per-based Stealth.  This is a clever way to combine both Perception and Stealth into a single quick contest.  Losing side gets surprised, and on a tie both sides are surprised.  (I don't think I've ever seen mutual surprise in several years of running DFRPG, but it'll happen someday.)

Once you're done computing surprise, you mark everyone who was surprised as Mentally Stunned, and then you do the usual turn order.  GURPS turn order is Basic Speed first, ties in Basic Speed broken by highest DX, and ties in both Basic Speed and DX broken by a die roll.  I also let players freely move down (later) in order, but once they do so, they can't move back up, as that could potentially be exploited to get two turns in a row.  (So, if your slower friend is in your way, you can either take a one-time Wait maneuver to Wait until your friend goes, or you can permanently move below your friend in turn order.  The advantage of the latter is that only some maneuvers are valid after a Wait, while if you just delay your spot in the turn order you can take any maneuver.)

The basic effect of Mental Stun is that you Do Nothing on your turn except roll to recover from Mental Stun, and all your defenses are at -4 as long as you're stunned.  So being surprised can get you killed.  The roll to recover is an IQ roll, with +6 for Combat Reflexes, so a rule of thumb is that dumb combatants need Combat Reflexes.  (Smart combatants might want it too, but they already spent all those points on IQ...)

With FoundryVTT keeping track, I'm happy to do individual initiative.  Groups of identical monsters will all be clumped together in turn order anyway, since they have the same Basic Speed and DX.  If a player controls multiple tokens and they're not clumped together and this bothers the player (because they prefer to move all their tokens together) or the GM (because the player loses focus when it's not their turn and this means getting their attention back more often), then a player can move all their tokens down in turn order next to their slowest token.  But this is definitely a place where house rules are fine -- if you want to do side-based initiative, you can.  You just have to decide whether the side with the fastest member goes first, or the side with the slowest member goes last.

I should also mention where new combatants slot in.  Basically, if you magically summon something in the middle of a fight, I don't let it do anything immediately on the turn it appears, but it slots into its normal spot in the turn order the next turn.  (Summoning sickness from Magic the Gathering in my GURPS?  It's more likely than you think.)  On the other hand, if something comes onto the battlemap from offscreen, it's probably in the middle of a Move maneuver in its first turn (though it could be Concentrate instead if teleportation is involved) and then can take any normal maneuver when its turn comes around again.

Finally, I do not modify turn order due to effects during a fight.  If someone casts Great Haste on you, you get two turns, but they're right next to each other, not spread evenly across the turn order.  (So as long as you know that nobody on the other side took a Wait maneuver, you can cheesily All-Out Attack on your first turn and then take a maneuver that allows a defense on your second turn.)  If you get slowed and only get to move every other turn, you stay in the same place in the turn order, just with a Do Nothing every other time.  If you drop your backpack or pick up a wounded companion and your encumbrance level changes, that effects your Move and Dodge, but you still stay in the same place in the turn order.  The only things that modify turn order are Wait maneuvers (where you temporarily delay your turn until triggered, take your action immediately, and go back to your usual spot in the order), and voluntarily moving down in turn order (which is usually a once-per-combat thing to move after an ally.)

As an aside, I like the DFRPG surprise rules better than the GURPS Basic Set surprise rules, because they make "no surprise" more likely, while in the Basic version, if surprise is possible at all, you only get "no surprise" if the modified d6 rolls are exactly tied.  (So, assuming reasonably close surprise modifiers, only about 1/6 of the time.)  On the other hand, I like that the Basic rules give a reason to have a leader (many PC parties clearly do not) and for the leader to have Combat Reflexes and Tactics and high IQ.  So maybe I'll write my own surprise rules someday that combine the things I like.  But I'm avoiding house rules in Arden Vul, so using my interpretation of the DFRPG rules as written.