Post by Dungeon Master on Nov 2, 2016 11:27:20 GMT -8
Session 19...
The party chooses to investigate the main room, upon the floor. Atom makes no noise and after checking the area for traps gives an all clear signal. Freshmeat and Ulric, in their bulky and heavy armors make a lot of noise, and the Dung creature (just atop the stairs, on the previous level) comes down to eat them.
They know there's bad guys, then a cold room, then a wheel trap should they take the northern of the two western doors, so they choose to go south this time. They move quickly, to get distance from the Dung Beast thing, not stopping or doing more than a percursory search for traps along the way.
A secret door is discovered, but the area beyond reeks of death... the door is carefully closed and that area is passed, as they don't wish to have enemies both in front of and behind them.
There are three doors along the northern edge of this passage. Scratching can be heard at the first of these. The second is quiet. There is a whisking noise from the third, which through the doorway they assume to be a swinging blade that periodically cuts through something. None of these are investigated at this time, due to the Dung thing that might still be chasing them.
There is also a door to the south, from which several voices can be heard but no one speaks the language. The voices are deep, most likely monstrous humanoids or giants of some form.
The passage then turns to the north, at which point Atom guesses the level is laid out as a giant square shape, with a passage around the outer edge. There is a doorway to the east, most of the way up the passageway northwards, but there is no sound beyond the door.
To the north there is a door, which leads to an east-west passageway. There is an immediate door to the east and a large hallway (longer than maximum line of sight) to the west, which the party guesses will eventually lead to the northern door, of the first room they had been into on this level.
The eastern door leads to a dug out chamber, which with one look convinces Thor that the ceiling is not at all reinforced and could come down at any time. He flat out refuses to enter the room, but says that others can if they want to. The non-dwarves (everyone else is a build-it-yourself-race from Advanced Race Guide, none with any underground or earth related traits) all defer to Thor in this.
The first room to the west appears to be a storage room of some kind. It opens on the south edge of the long west-east cooridor. They party holes up here for a night, hoping they've lost the Dung Beast thing.
In the morning the coast appears to be clear. They backtrack to the rooms that had been bypassed previously.
The room with the deep voices is opened by Atom Wisse (who is Invisible at the time). It contains five Ogres who are intently balancing copper coins into stacks on 100. One of them looks at the open door, and closes it.
The party does a few buffs and then opens the door. Ulric and Freshmeat are both enlarged (Ulric enlarges via Expansion, as a standard tactic to this point), and jointly blocking the 10 ft. wide doorway, each partially in and partially offset 5 ft. from the doorway. Jaala the charging barbarian/dinosaur cannot charge as the path is blocked. Thor can take pot-shots but does not have a clear line of sight; similarly Atom can hit one creature from his angle (different from Thor) but is the wrong angle to have multiple options.
One of the Ogres hits like a truck and after having discovered Ulric to be harder to connect on, while Freshmeat is easily hit, focuses on Freshmeat. Jaala blows her heals, trying to keep him alive, but cannot match the damage. Freshmeat is knocked unconscious (actually is slain) and the Ogre turns his attention onto Ulric. Once it becomes clear that Atom is hitting fairly hard, the Ogres rotate which is in the doorway... Ulric blocks the way out, while an Ogre constantly blocks the way in... Atom and Thor unleash damage on the doorway Ogre but that Ogre changes every couple of rounds. Meanwhile Jaala is out of heals, and Freshmeat is dead. Ulric falls as Atom uses his last Scorching Ray. It is now a Mage (Arcanist|Rogue) with a couple of Magic Missile spells, an archer without many arrows, and a healer charge-dinosaur without spells, vs a hard hitting ogre...
The party wins, but is in horrible shape...
The Ogre has an Unholy Weapon, which was more effective against good characters and hit them much harder than it should... The party does not want to use an evil item, but also doesn't wish to leave it for others to find or to sell it. They decide to keep it, as "an increase to average party loot values, so we get more gear when we bring in future characters".
Deadmeat has most of his next character ready... Thrymm (ending up with an Aegis 5 | Fighter 5 (Two-Handed Archetype) (we added an extra m, since he has already has a Thrym character).
Ulric's player spends a lot longer making a character, since both Karzak/Shurke/Silk/Essen/Deadmeat/Freshmeat and Rommel/Sigrunin/Atom Waffe have spent 90 mins to 2 hours of previous sessions making their next toon to continue to adventure... He ends up with Ulver (Cleric 5 | Fighter 5).
The replacements join the group the next day...
The room with the scratching is filled with rats, mostly cat-sized Dire Rats. After clearing the room, there are numerous tunnels which progressively get tighter. Atom is able to crawl a couple of hundred feet on his belly, before reaching a point too tight to move further forward. He does this for each of the tunnels, and encounters a set of eyes that look at him, within one of the tunnels. Scorching Ray and Magic Missile dissuade whatever it was from chasing him too far, as he scurries backwards feet-first while on his belly...
The next room contains very rusty carpentry tools, including 3 hammers, 2 saws, 1 axe and a 260 lb box of 10,000 rusty nails.
The room with the whisk whisk whisk sound contains an animated broom, which the party cannot figure out how to stop it from cleaning... it is still animated (and trying to clean) the inside of a Bag of Holding.
Returning to the eastern North-South hallway, there is the other silent room on the eastern edge of the hallway.
The doorway reads in Celestial, but using the Infernal alphabet (Thrymm can read both of those, but no one could with previous characters)... "Sarack: In life a deluded slave of blinding light; In death a dark warrior-king.".
Forcing their way within, they encounter a skeletal man in full armor and wielding a heavy sword. No one gets good knowledge checks so they're not sure what he is exactly, beyond something undead...
He does a spell (cast defensively), which the casters identify as 'Detect Good'. Ulver is hanging back a little, so Jaala does her charge and hits all five pounce attacks for a little over a hundred points. The skeleton thing focuses on her, even as Ulver and Thrymm move in, and it hits her exceptionally hard (Smite Good...). She doesn't last two rounds against it. It then switches to Ulver (who was also detected as Good initially). Ulver is hit too hard to get heals off, so he trades swings with the skeleton who drops him shortly. Thrymm decides to run, as the creature moves next to Atom Wisse and drops Atom in one round. Thrymm runs one way (faster than Saracek can run; Thor runs the other way, a lot slower than Saracek. Saracek catches Thor and dispatches him quickly too.
A heavily wounded Thrymm is lucky on random encounter rolls, and manages to get back to the ladder leading upwards to the first mausoleum chamber. Unfortunately, the iron plate is still in place, and there is no escape from the dungeon that way.
Dungy makes an appearance and finishes off Thrymm; that makes it a Total Party Kill on the session, if not in the one fight.
I total experience, and let the players know that the Rats put the party to level 6, so that's where everyone's new characters will start.
However, since there are no survivors we cannot total the party wealth, and then divide by the number of party members, so we default to the initial value of 500gp of gearing.
The party chooses to investigate the main room, upon the floor. Atom makes no noise and after checking the area for traps gives an all clear signal. Freshmeat and Ulric, in their bulky and heavy armors make a lot of noise, and the Dung creature (just atop the stairs, on the previous level) comes down to eat them.
They know there's bad guys, then a cold room, then a wheel trap should they take the northern of the two western doors, so they choose to go south this time. They move quickly, to get distance from the Dung Beast thing, not stopping or doing more than a percursory search for traps along the way.
A secret door is discovered, but the area beyond reeks of death... the door is carefully closed and that area is passed, as they don't wish to have enemies both in front of and behind them.
There are three doors along the northern edge of this passage. Scratching can be heard at the first of these. The second is quiet. There is a whisking noise from the third, which through the doorway they assume to be a swinging blade that periodically cuts through something. None of these are investigated at this time, due to the Dung thing that might still be chasing them.
There is also a door to the south, from which several voices can be heard but no one speaks the language. The voices are deep, most likely monstrous humanoids or giants of some form.
The passage then turns to the north, at which point Atom guesses the level is laid out as a giant square shape, with a passage around the outer edge. There is a doorway to the east, most of the way up the passageway northwards, but there is no sound beyond the door.
To the north there is a door, which leads to an east-west passageway. There is an immediate door to the east and a large hallway (longer than maximum line of sight) to the west, which the party guesses will eventually lead to the northern door, of the first room they had been into on this level.
The eastern door leads to a dug out chamber, which with one look convinces Thor that the ceiling is not at all reinforced and could come down at any time. He flat out refuses to enter the room, but says that others can if they want to. The non-dwarves (everyone else is a build-it-yourself-race from Advanced Race Guide, none with any underground or earth related traits) all defer to Thor in this.
The first room to the west appears to be a storage room of some kind. It opens on the south edge of the long west-east cooridor. They party holes up here for a night, hoping they've lost the Dung Beast thing.
In the morning the coast appears to be clear. They backtrack to the rooms that had been bypassed previously.
The room with the deep voices is opened by Atom Wisse (who is Invisible at the time). It contains five Ogres who are intently balancing copper coins into stacks on 100. One of them looks at the open door, and closes it.
The party does a few buffs and then opens the door. Ulric and Freshmeat are both enlarged (Ulric enlarges via Expansion, as a standard tactic to this point), and jointly blocking the 10 ft. wide doorway, each partially in and partially offset 5 ft. from the doorway. Jaala the charging barbarian/dinosaur cannot charge as the path is blocked. Thor can take pot-shots but does not have a clear line of sight; similarly Atom can hit one creature from his angle (different from Thor) but is the wrong angle to have multiple options.
One of the Ogres hits like a truck and after having discovered Ulric to be harder to connect on, while Freshmeat is easily hit, focuses on Freshmeat. Jaala blows her heals, trying to keep him alive, but cannot match the damage. Freshmeat is knocked unconscious (actually is slain) and the Ogre turns his attention onto Ulric. Once it becomes clear that Atom is hitting fairly hard, the Ogres rotate which is in the doorway... Ulric blocks the way out, while an Ogre constantly blocks the way in... Atom and Thor unleash damage on the doorway Ogre but that Ogre changes every couple of rounds. Meanwhile Jaala is out of heals, and Freshmeat is dead. Ulric falls as Atom uses his last Scorching Ray. It is now a Mage (Arcanist|Rogue) with a couple of Magic Missile spells, an archer without many arrows, and a healer charge-dinosaur without spells, vs a hard hitting ogre...
The party wins, but is in horrible shape...
The Ogre has an Unholy Weapon, which was more effective against good characters and hit them much harder than it should... The party does not want to use an evil item, but also doesn't wish to leave it for others to find or to sell it. They decide to keep it, as "an increase to average party loot values, so we get more gear when we bring in future characters".
Deadmeat has most of his next character ready... Thrymm (ending up with an Aegis 5 | Fighter 5 (Two-Handed Archetype) (we added an extra m, since he has already has a Thrym character).
Ulric's player spends a lot longer making a character, since both Karzak/Shurke/Silk/Essen/Deadmeat/Freshmeat and Rommel/Sigrunin/Atom Waffe have spent 90 mins to 2 hours of previous sessions making their next toon to continue to adventure... He ends up with Ulver (Cleric 5 | Fighter 5).
The replacements join the group the next day...
The room with the scratching is filled with rats, mostly cat-sized Dire Rats. After clearing the room, there are numerous tunnels which progressively get tighter. Atom is able to crawl a couple of hundred feet on his belly, before reaching a point too tight to move further forward. He does this for each of the tunnels, and encounters a set of eyes that look at him, within one of the tunnels. Scorching Ray and Magic Missile dissuade whatever it was from chasing him too far, as he scurries backwards feet-first while on his belly...
The next room contains very rusty carpentry tools, including 3 hammers, 2 saws, 1 axe and a 260 lb box of 10,000 rusty nails.
The room with the whisk whisk whisk sound contains an animated broom, which the party cannot figure out how to stop it from cleaning... it is still animated (and trying to clean) the inside of a Bag of Holding.
Returning to the eastern North-South hallway, there is the other silent room on the eastern edge of the hallway.
The doorway reads in Celestial, but using the Infernal alphabet (Thrymm can read both of those, but no one could with previous characters)... "Sarack: In life a deluded slave of blinding light; In death a dark warrior-king.".
Forcing their way within, they encounter a skeletal man in full armor and wielding a heavy sword. No one gets good knowledge checks so they're not sure what he is exactly, beyond something undead...
He does a spell (cast defensively), which the casters identify as 'Detect Good'. Ulver is hanging back a little, so Jaala does her charge and hits all five pounce attacks for a little over a hundred points. The skeleton thing focuses on her, even as Ulver and Thrymm move in, and it hits her exceptionally hard (Smite Good...). She doesn't last two rounds against it. It then switches to Ulver (who was also detected as Good initially). Ulver is hit too hard to get heals off, so he trades swings with the skeleton who drops him shortly. Thrymm decides to run, as the creature moves next to Atom Wisse and drops Atom in one round. Thrymm runs one way (faster than Saracek can run; Thor runs the other way, a lot slower than Saracek. Saracek catches Thor and dispatches him quickly too.
A heavily wounded Thrymm is lucky on random encounter rolls, and manages to get back to the ladder leading upwards to the first mausoleum chamber. Unfortunately, the iron plate is still in place, and there is no escape from the dungeon that way.
Dungy makes an appearance and finishes off Thrymm; that makes it a Total Party Kill on the session, if not in the one fight.
I total experience, and let the players know that the Rats put the party to level 6, so that's where everyone's new characters will start.
However, since there are no survivors we cannot total the party wealth, and then divide by the number of party members, so we default to the initial value of 500gp of gearing.