Session date: Monday, June 27, 2016
Game date: Saturday, December 21, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 4, hp 23, xp 9495/17000
Caryatid, Magic-user 4, hp 19, xp 11128/20000
Simon Sackwell, Halfling 1, hp 4, xp 670/2000
Retainers:
Manley "Meat" Smythe, Fighter 2, hp 13, xp 3179/4000
This was a much shorter session than usual. For various reasons, I arrived quite late, so late in fact that I gave my players a bonus of 100 XP each in apology!
Before descending into the dungeon, the party paid a visit to the slightly doddering old sage, Professor Zinn, at his apartment on the top floor of a rickety, tilted old house in the hillside neighborhood of The Steps. They made guarded inquiries with him about the recent activities of "Caryatid the Green". Professor Zinn was confused at first, completely unaware that Caryatid had a "sister". He spoke of her enthusiastically, happy to have found someone who shared his passion for research into the ancient ways of magic and esoteric knowledge. It transpired that Green Caryatid had hired Professor Zinn to make copies for her of information in old books and scrolls related to human physiology and anatomy. The other odd thing that came up was that she had paid him in gold eggs, about the size of a chicken egg or perhaps a bit larger.
None of this made them feel any better about Green Caryatid's activities, but they arrived at the Rusty Lantern tavern on a cold Saturday morning and made their way down into the undercity. They didn't get far, though. They had just emerged from the gnomes' mining tunnel south of the main city square when they were beset by a flock (swarm?) of stirges! Five of the bizarre bird-like bloodsuckers came flapping out of the darkness, diving towards the adventurers. Two swarmed around Gulleck and he fended them off with his axe. One attacked Meat, and one focused on the diminuative hobbit, Simon.
My players really hate stirges, and when Tyrriel and Wilhelm are in the party they usually cast Sleep immediately. But Caryatid does not know Sleep, and could only launch Magic Missiles at them. While she was doing so, Simon was impaled by the sharp proboscis of a stirge, and as his blood was pulled out in one big gulp, his face grew pale, his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed on the cold stone floor. The stirge continued to drink for a few seconds and then disengaged and flapped ungainly away into the darkness.
Gulleck and Meat dispatched their stirges, and the group took stock of their situation, aghast. Barely into the dungeon and Simon dead. So, the mission now was to descend to the second level and find the pool of rebirth that could restore life to any person, once.
They made their way down without further encounters, Meat carrying Simon's body over his shoulders. When they arrived at the small round chapel containing the pool of rebirth they were surprised to find it in use! A befuddled-looking man and woman were just sort of hanging out in the pool, arms holding the sides, apparently enjoying the body-temperature water.
"Whoa, hey man," said the man. "We're, uh, in the middle of using this pool."
Oh great, groaned the players, it's the hippies. They find these guys a bit too weird for their tastes.
"Uh, excuse us," said Gulleck, "It's kind of urgent. We need to put this body in there."
"You what?" asked the woman. "What're you talking about, man?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa..." said the man, "Janis and I were just enjoying the hot tub, man. You can't come in here and dump a dead guy in here! Total buzzkill!"
And so it went. Eventually the hippies were persuaded to just step out of the pool for a few minutes while they stripped Simon of his plate armor and let him slip into the pool. A few moments passed and then, with a frantic thrashing, Simon came to the surface gasping for air. The two hippies' jaws dropped in amazement.
"Oh man, that is far out... Whoa..."
And so, having restored life to Simon, the adventurers bid the hippies a pleasant time in the "hot tub" and made their way right back upstairs the way they had come, and right back out to the Rusty Lantern.
Some days things just don't go your way!
Saturday, November 12, 2016
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Idalium Game 53: Shadows in the Dark
Session date: Monday, June 13, 2016
Game date: Saturday, December 7, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 4, hp 23, xp 9452/17000
Caryatid, Magic-user 4, hp 19, xp 11085/20000
Simon Sackwell, Halfling 1, hp 4, xp 625/2000
Retainers:
Manley "Meat" Smythe, Fighter 2, hp 13, xp 3157/4000
Ahhh, back to the dungeon! Side treks and diversions in the wilderness are fun and add variety and spice to the campaign, but when it comes to being able to run a low-stress "beer and pretzels" game every week, nothing beats a megadungeon. I have my B/X rulebooks, my binder of maps and keys, and my Crown Royal bag of dice and I'm all set!
We did some "housekeeping" and roleplayed the return of the Holy Lantern to the Great Cathedral of Idalium. The Abbess Archura was pleased to see Gulleck complete his quest, and with a wave of her hand, Gulleck felt an odd weight lift from his shoulders. The party was rewarded with a payment of 200 platinum minas and a promise that any curative prayers that they might need from the Church in the future would be performed at half the usual "requested donation".
At the Rusty Lantern tavern, the adventurers were welcomed with good cheer by the regulars, who seemed frankly surprised to see them again. The party caught up on some rumors about what might have been going on in the undercity in their absence, and then made their familiar way to the basement, paying the usual toll of a gold daric apiece, and descending through the well-used trapdoor into the buried city of Ancient Idalium that lies below the bustling city above.
The group attempted to take their usual path to the second level below, but found that in their absence there had been a cave-in, and the alleyway was blocked by rubble. They backtracked to the abandoned town plaza, avoided a group of giant rats that were scurrying around in the shadows, and took another, longer, route. However, they were pleased to find that a passage that had previously been blocked in by rubble now had a small tunnel (about 5' high) excavated through it, braced with timbers like a small mine shaft. In the tunnel they found small mining tools, and suspected that their friends the gnomes were probably responsible for this.
Down to the second level they proceeded (destroying a squad of animated skeletons on the way, which Caryatid caught in a giant web of sticky spider strands). They stopped briefly in the "Wheel of Fortune" room, intending to "haze" the new guy, Simon. In the room were five orcs, one of them spinning on the wheel and coming to a rest as the party entered. The orcs were in good spirits and encouraged the adventurers to try out the "magic table", guffawing as they pushed their way past the party and out the door.
Simon was strapped to the wheel and given a spin, and when he came to a rest he suddenly noticed he could smell a strange, metallic smell that he had not noticed before. He sniffed around and traced to his companions' money pouches. He could smell gold now!
The group had no clear goal in mind for this delve, and decided to go visit Caryatid's "sister" (actually a magical duplicate) who had taken up residence in the abandoned apartments of some long ago wizard. On the way, however, they decided to investigate a scary dark room that they had found many months ago. The room was so dark that not only did lantern light (and now, magical sword light) not even disturb the inky blackness, but Gulleck's natural ability to see in the dark was completely useless. It was darker than Gulleck had ever experienced in his life, and a cold, foreboding fear settled in the PCs' hearts. They knew from prior investigations that there was another doorway across the room, and now Gulleck and Simon carefully moved through the room, trailing ropes behind them that Meat and Caryatid held.
As the two approached the doorway, Simon's nostrils were flooded with the intense smell of gold. Reaching the threshold of the doorway, they, and Simon used the mind-reading medallion that he possessed. Expanding his mind forward to encompass the space beyond the doorway, he became away of a malevolent lurking evil presence. He could not articulate any clear thoughts, but there was something there, something alive and hateful.
Gulleck stepped carefully through the door, and it was as though the darkness broke over his face like water. He entered a room lit by sickly, greenish flames flickering in metal sconces attached to the walls. The cold foreboding feeling was more intense than ever here. Along the wall to the right, there was an altar of sorts, on top of which was a frightening statue or idol of some kind of demon, about five tall with curling horns and wild googly eyes. Despite its hideous visage, it was clearly well-crafted of gold and silver and studded with gemstones. Before it on the altar were a ritual chalice, a sacrificial dagger and other more ominous-looking "tools", also crafted from precious metals and stones. On a stand next to the altar was an ornate ceremonial robe and headdress.
Gulleck approached the idol to get a closer look, and he did so he felt a quickening in his heartbeat, and the eerie cold fear tightened around him. The shadows from the flickering flames seemed to lengthen and converge, flowing together into several man-shaped forms, looming towards him on the walls and even seeming to drift off of the walls towards him...
"That's it! Nope!" muttered Gulleck, and ran like hell, grabbing Simon on the way. They two ran panicked into the hallway, where they pulled the door shut and caught their breath before leaving this strange place behind them.
It was just a short walk along the hallway to the abandoned wizards' apartment that Caryatid's magical duplicate had taken up residence in. Gulleck knocked at the door and a familiar voice called, "Who is it?"
"It's us!" replied Gulleck.
"Could you be more specific?"
"Us!"
(I don't understand why, but we go through this every time they knock on a door...)
Eventually, "Green Caryatid" recognized the voices of Gulleck and "Blue Caryatid" and pulled the door open with a smile on her face. As before, she was effusively friendly, and they exchanged some small talk on their respective adventures in the past few months.
"Oh, as you can see, I have settled in so nicely here. It's such a wonderful place for my research and my quest for personal self-improvement."
Every time she says things like this, Gulleck's face looks more and more alarmed.
She told them of how "that delightful fellow, Professor Zinn" had been doing some research for her, and perhaps they wouldn't mind checking with the sage to see if he had any information for her?
"What kind of research?"
"Oh, well... do you remember the braziers in that room over there? The ones with the strange residues? Well, Professor Zinn has been invaluable in helping me identify the powders and herbs that were burned in those braziers. In the protective circle, there was rosemary, sage, cinnamon, and frankincense. In the summoning and binding triangle was the remains of turmeric, asafetida, and the dried dung of goblins."
Gulleck nearly choked on his own tongue. "The what!?"
Green Caryatid continued as if she hadn't heard. "And after many months of study and research into books found here and provided by the good professor, I was successful! Would you like to see my pet?"
"Your... pet?"
"Yes, he's not the most attractive fellow, but he's going to be ever so helpful to me. Come on in and see!"
And Green Caryatid opened a door on the west side of the sitting room and led them in the summoning chamber, where a large circle and triangle were inlaid into the floor and flanked by waist-high braziers. But all eyes were drawn to the triangle, within which stood a hideous creature: vaguely insect or crab-like, with bulbous eyes and covered in a light filamentous hair - a sort of giant hairy prawn. As they entered it became agitated, and their ears were filled with a terrible hissing and gnashing and clacking of mandibles.
"Oh shush now," said Caryatid the Green. "Let me introduce you to my pet," she said to the adventurers with a flourish of her hand. "This is Morgluthkluthor, called the Destroyer of the Seventh Nebula, the Blight of Jupiter, the Dark Rain that Falls Upon the Forsaken Desert..."
"That's a bit of a mouthful, though, so I nicknamed him Marcel!" ("Blue Caryatid"'s capuchin monkey gave a screech from his perch on her shoulder.)
"And... why are you keeping him here?" asked Gulleck in shock.
"Oh, he's going to grant me power, wisdom, understanding of the world. I haven't quite decided what to ask for yet, but I will soon."
"Er... we have to get going soon..." mumbled the adventurers.
"Oh, of course. I've enjoyed our visit. I'm so glad you're taking care of my duplicate. Be careful, from what I've learned in my researches, when people are duplicated like that, the copy is usually unstable and degenerate. But be kind to her. It's not her fault she's the duplicate."
That set the "real" (they assume) Caryatid a bit afire, but Gulleck saw an opportunity. "Well, maybe you could ask your 'pet' to stabilize the duplicate?"
"Oh. Well, I could do that. I suppose..." She didn't seem too taken with the suggestion, though.
In the end, the party made their farewells, left Caryatid the Green's apartment with more misgivings than they had entered with, and made an uneventful trek back through the dungeon to the Rusty Lantern again.
Game date: Saturday, December 7, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 4, hp 23, xp 9452/17000
Caryatid, Magic-user 4, hp 19, xp 11085/20000
Simon Sackwell, Halfling 1, hp 4, xp 625/2000
Retainers:
Manley "Meat" Smythe, Fighter 2, hp 13, xp 3157/4000
Ahhh, back to the dungeon! Side treks and diversions in the wilderness are fun and add variety and spice to the campaign, but when it comes to being able to run a low-stress "beer and pretzels" game every week, nothing beats a megadungeon. I have my B/X rulebooks, my binder of maps and keys, and my Crown Royal bag of dice and I'm all set!
We did some "housekeeping" and roleplayed the return of the Holy Lantern to the Great Cathedral of Idalium. The Abbess Archura was pleased to see Gulleck complete his quest, and with a wave of her hand, Gulleck felt an odd weight lift from his shoulders. The party was rewarded with a payment of 200 platinum minas and a promise that any curative prayers that they might need from the Church in the future would be performed at half the usual "requested donation".
At the Rusty Lantern tavern, the adventurers were welcomed with good cheer by the regulars, who seemed frankly surprised to see them again. The party caught up on some rumors about what might have been going on in the undercity in their absence, and then made their familiar way to the basement, paying the usual toll of a gold daric apiece, and descending through the well-used trapdoor into the buried city of Ancient Idalium that lies below the bustling city above.
The group attempted to take their usual path to the second level below, but found that in their absence there had been a cave-in, and the alleyway was blocked by rubble. They backtracked to the abandoned town plaza, avoided a group of giant rats that were scurrying around in the shadows, and took another, longer, route. However, they were pleased to find that a passage that had previously been blocked in by rubble now had a small tunnel (about 5' high) excavated through it, braced with timbers like a small mine shaft. In the tunnel they found small mining tools, and suspected that their friends the gnomes were probably responsible for this.
Down to the second level they proceeded (destroying a squad of animated skeletons on the way, which Caryatid caught in a giant web of sticky spider strands). They stopped briefly in the "Wheel of Fortune" room, intending to "haze" the new guy, Simon. In the room were five orcs, one of them spinning on the wheel and coming to a rest as the party entered. The orcs were in good spirits and encouraged the adventurers to try out the "magic table", guffawing as they pushed their way past the party and out the door.
Simon was strapped to the wheel and given a spin, and when he came to a rest he suddenly noticed he could smell a strange, metallic smell that he had not noticed before. He sniffed around and traced to his companions' money pouches. He could smell gold now!
The group had no clear goal in mind for this delve, and decided to go visit Caryatid's "sister" (actually a magical duplicate) who had taken up residence in the abandoned apartments of some long ago wizard. On the way, however, they decided to investigate a scary dark room that they had found many months ago. The room was so dark that not only did lantern light (and now, magical sword light) not even disturb the inky blackness, but Gulleck's natural ability to see in the dark was completely useless. It was darker than Gulleck had ever experienced in his life, and a cold, foreboding fear settled in the PCs' hearts. They knew from prior investigations that there was another doorway across the room, and now Gulleck and Simon carefully moved through the room, trailing ropes behind them that Meat and Caryatid held.
As the two approached the doorway, Simon's nostrils were flooded with the intense smell of gold. Reaching the threshold of the doorway, they, and Simon used the mind-reading medallion that he possessed. Expanding his mind forward to encompass the space beyond the doorway, he became away of a malevolent lurking evil presence. He could not articulate any clear thoughts, but there was something there, something alive and hateful.
Gulleck stepped carefully through the door, and it was as though the darkness broke over his face like water. He entered a room lit by sickly, greenish flames flickering in metal sconces attached to the walls. The cold foreboding feeling was more intense than ever here. Along the wall to the right, there was an altar of sorts, on top of which was a frightening statue or idol of some kind of demon, about five tall with curling horns and wild googly eyes. Despite its hideous visage, it was clearly well-crafted of gold and silver and studded with gemstones. Before it on the altar were a ritual chalice, a sacrificial dagger and other more ominous-looking "tools", also crafted from precious metals and stones. On a stand next to the altar was an ornate ceremonial robe and headdress.
Gulleck approached the idol to get a closer look, and he did so he felt a quickening in his heartbeat, and the eerie cold fear tightened around him. The shadows from the flickering flames seemed to lengthen and converge, flowing together into several man-shaped forms, looming towards him on the walls and even seeming to drift off of the walls towards him...
"That's it! Nope!" muttered Gulleck, and ran like hell, grabbing Simon on the way. They two ran panicked into the hallway, where they pulled the door shut and caught their breath before leaving this strange place behind them.
It was just a short walk along the hallway to the abandoned wizards' apartment that Caryatid's magical duplicate had taken up residence in. Gulleck knocked at the door and a familiar voice called, "Who is it?"
"It's us!" replied Gulleck.
"Could you be more specific?"
"Us!"
(I don't understand why, but we go through this every time they knock on a door...)
Eventually, "Green Caryatid" recognized the voices of Gulleck and "Blue Caryatid" and pulled the door open with a smile on her face. As before, she was effusively friendly, and they exchanged some small talk on their respective adventures in the past few months.
"Oh, as you can see, I have settled in so nicely here. It's such a wonderful place for my research and my quest for personal self-improvement."
Every time she says things like this, Gulleck's face looks more and more alarmed.
She told them of how "that delightful fellow, Professor Zinn" had been doing some research for her, and perhaps they wouldn't mind checking with the sage to see if he had any information for her?
"What kind of research?"
"Oh, well... do you remember the braziers in that room over there? The ones with the strange residues? Well, Professor Zinn has been invaluable in helping me identify the powders and herbs that were burned in those braziers. In the protective circle, there was rosemary, sage, cinnamon, and frankincense. In the summoning and binding triangle was the remains of turmeric, asafetida, and the dried dung of goblins."
Gulleck nearly choked on his own tongue. "The what!?"
Green Caryatid continued as if she hadn't heard. "And after many months of study and research into books found here and provided by the good professor, I was successful! Would you like to see my pet?"
"Your... pet?"
"Yes, he's not the most attractive fellow, but he's going to be ever so helpful to me. Come on in and see!"
And Green Caryatid opened a door on the west side of the sitting room and led them in the summoning chamber, where a large circle and triangle were inlaid into the floor and flanked by waist-high braziers. But all eyes were drawn to the triangle, within which stood a hideous creature: vaguely insect or crab-like, with bulbous eyes and covered in a light filamentous hair - a sort of giant hairy prawn. As they entered it became agitated, and their ears were filled with a terrible hissing and gnashing and clacking of mandibles.
 |
| The Destroyer of the Seventh Nebula |
"Oh shush now," said Caryatid the Green. "Let me introduce you to my pet," she said to the adventurers with a flourish of her hand. "This is Morgluthkluthor, called the Destroyer of the Seventh Nebula, the Blight of Jupiter, the Dark Rain that Falls Upon the Forsaken Desert..."
"That's a bit of a mouthful, though, so I nicknamed him Marcel!" ("Blue Caryatid"'s capuchin monkey gave a screech from his perch on her shoulder.)
"And... why are you keeping him here?" asked Gulleck in shock.
"Oh, he's going to grant me power, wisdom, understanding of the world. I haven't quite decided what to ask for yet, but I will soon."
"Er... we have to get going soon..." mumbled the adventurers.
"Oh, of course. I've enjoyed our visit. I'm so glad you're taking care of my duplicate. Be careful, from what I've learned in my researches, when people are duplicated like that, the copy is usually unstable and degenerate. But be kind to her. It's not her fault she's the duplicate."
That set the "real" (they assume) Caryatid a bit afire, but Gulleck saw an opportunity. "Well, maybe you could ask your 'pet' to stabilize the duplicate?"
"Oh. Well, I could do that. I suppose..." She didn't seem too taken with the suggestion, though.
In the end, the party made their farewells, left Caryatid the Green's apartment with more misgivings than they had entered with, and made an uneventful trek back through the dungeon to the Rusty Lantern again.
Sunday, September 18, 2016
Idalium Game 52: The Voyage Home
Session date: Monday, May 23, 2016
Game date: Tuesday, October 23, 208 to Friday, November 15, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 4, hp 23, xp 9402/17000
Caryatid, Magic-user 4, hp 19, xp 11035/20000
Retainers:
Manley "Meat" Smythe, Fighter 2, hp 13, xp 3132/4000
This session was all about planning and executing the long voyage home to the city of Idalium. Khrisong the acolyte from the monastery had originally planned to travel with the party to Idalium, but he was recognized and welcomed in the village, and he made plans with some of the villagers to rebuild the monastery and its order, and gratefully parted ways with the adventurers.
There was still some dissession in the party regarding what to do with Brother Guntur's body. Some members would have been happy to bury him here in the village, but when Father Jibber was asked his feelings on the matter, he seemed to feel rather strongly that Brother Guntur should be returned to his fellow devotees of the Great Church of Idalium, and so the party went to extraordinary lengths to commission an elaborate contraption: a coffin for Brother Guntur, impregnated with melted wax to make it watertight and, more importantly, smell-proof, as the journey was long. As long as they were building a custom-designed coffin, an idea was hatched to build a sort of cart under it, to put the coffin on two large wheels to make it easier to transport through the mountain passes. This came at not insignificant expense to the party: over a thousand silver shekels were spent to build this contraption.
Meanwhile, Caryatid found a tailor in the village to make a tiny red fez for her pet monkey, which was constantly perched on her shoulder and whom she had named Marcel [yes, our game is full of these kinds of jokes].
And so, with Brother Guntur's rolling coffin constructed and everyone reprovisioned for the long journey, the adventurers set out again, with Grimbo Shimspall the hobbit ranger leading them. They had briefly considered attempting to travel through the wilderness directly to the port town of Trobadanz, but eventually decided it would be a safer (if longer) trip if they
simply backtracked to the monastery and then to the citadel of the dwarves and then on to Trobadanz.
They ran into trouble on the very first day of their travels. I use the Expert book wilderness encounter tables, whichs means just about anything can be encountered. And while trundling Brother Guntur's "wheelcoffin" through a rocky mountain pass, the adventurers were horrified to see the awesome and bonechilling sight of four red dragons fly overhead. Two were smaller and seemed to be children, and they flew into a cave in the side of the mountain, but the other two wheeled around in the sky and swooped towards the party again.
There was a sudden scramble. People abandoned their horses to leap into the cover of a gully full of bushes and trees. Brother Guntur's coffin rolled recklessly into the gully, his body thumping around unceremoniously inside.
Then there was a roar of wind and a buffetting wave of heat, and the scream of a horse. A flapping of wings. And when the adventurers peeked out from the bushes, they saw that Caryatid's horse was gone, and the grass where it had been still singed and smoking. The party rounded up the other horses and quickly as they could, and put as much distance as they could between them and the dragons' cave before camping for the night.
On the third day they passed the abbey, abandoned now on the top of its hill, and turned to follow the faint trail back to the dwarven citadel. On the fourth day, the party was minding its own business when from out of nowhere a boulder came hurtling through the air, slamming into the side of the head of Tod's horse, killing it instantly. Tod barely managed to leap off his horse as it fell. Everyone turned to look where the rock had come from and saw a trio of enormous men: almost twenty feet tall, with stony gray flesh. The giants guffawed at the adventurers' horrified faces, and weighed more boulders in their hands.
Nobody thought twice about this. They fled. Those on horseback spurred their horses to the fastest they could safely go on the rocky trail, and those on foot ran as fast as they could. Poor Brother Guntur and his very expensive customized coffin were abandoned here in this mountain pass, and the cruel laughter of the stone giants echoed over and over again off the mountain peaks as the adventurers ran at breakneck pace down the trail.
And that was the ignoble end of Brother Guntur's story.
The rest of the journey to the dwarven citadel was generally uneventful, although at one point they were attacked by three giant hawks ("They're coming back for Simon!" someone quipped). Caryatid tangled the wings of one hawk in the strands of her magical web, and then Gulleck used his magic ring to control another hawk and fly it right into the webbed one. They left the two hawks tangled up in the inescapable sticky silk and continued on their way.
The party arrived at the dwarven citadel and spent a night there, restocking some provisions, and then left the next morning, and made good time to Trobadanz, arriving without peril three days later. Grimbo bade them farewell, and they booked rooms for the night at the Grizzled Harpy, where they had first met Grimbo at the beginning of this wilderness adventuring.
Heading down to the harbor the next day, the party made inquiries as to whether the Black Marigold was still in dock. I gave them a 1 in 4 chance that she would be, and fate was for once kind to the players, and Captain Lauren Kerr was still in town, making ready to leave in a few days. She was happy to sell the party passage on her ship, and on Monday, November 11th, the Black Marigold set sail from Trobadanz, heading west along the coast of the sea back towards Idalium. The winds were strong and favorable, and on November 15th, after a sea voyage of 450 miles, the smoking chimneys and spires of Idalium came into view, and soon they were once again in the harbor of the river that runs through the city.
Soon there would be time for returning the holy lantern to the Great Church, and for visiting the Rusty Lantern tavern to see what changes might have happened in the dungeon below Idalium in their absence. But for now, the adventurers made their way to their respective apartments and houses for a well-deserved rest. It was good to be home!
Game date: Tuesday, October 23, 208 to Friday, November 15, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 4, hp 23, xp 9402/17000
Caryatid, Magic-user 4, hp 19, xp 11035/20000
Retainers:
Manley "Meat" Smythe, Fighter 2, hp 13, xp 3132/4000
This session was all about planning and executing the long voyage home to the city of Idalium. Khrisong the acolyte from the monastery had originally planned to travel with the party to Idalium, but he was recognized and welcomed in the village, and he made plans with some of the villagers to rebuild the monastery and its order, and gratefully parted ways with the adventurers.
There was still some dissession in the party regarding what to do with Brother Guntur's body. Some members would have been happy to bury him here in the village, but when Father Jibber was asked his feelings on the matter, he seemed to feel rather strongly that Brother Guntur should be returned to his fellow devotees of the Great Church of Idalium, and so the party went to extraordinary lengths to commission an elaborate contraption: a coffin for Brother Guntur, impregnated with melted wax to make it watertight and, more importantly, smell-proof, as the journey was long. As long as they were building a custom-designed coffin, an idea was hatched to build a sort of cart under it, to put the coffin on two large wheels to make it easier to transport through the mountain passes. This came at not insignificant expense to the party: over a thousand silver shekels were spent to build this contraption.
Meanwhile, Caryatid found a tailor in the village to make a tiny red fez for her pet monkey, which was constantly perched on her shoulder and whom she had named Marcel [yes, our game is full of these kinds of jokes].
And so, with Brother Guntur's rolling coffin constructed and everyone reprovisioned for the long journey, the adventurers set out again, with Grimbo Shimspall the hobbit ranger leading them. They had briefly considered attempting to travel through the wilderness directly to the port town of Trobadanz, but eventually decided it would be a safer (if longer) trip if they
simply backtracked to the monastery and then to the citadel of the dwarves and then on to Trobadanz.
They ran into trouble on the very first day of their travels. I use the Expert book wilderness encounter tables, whichs means just about anything can be encountered. And while trundling Brother Guntur's "wheelcoffin" through a rocky mountain pass, the adventurers were horrified to see the awesome and bonechilling sight of four red dragons fly overhead. Two were smaller and seemed to be children, and they flew into a cave in the side of the mountain, but the other two wheeled around in the sky and swooped towards the party again.
There was a sudden scramble. People abandoned their horses to leap into the cover of a gully full of bushes and trees. Brother Guntur's coffin rolled recklessly into the gully, his body thumping around unceremoniously inside.
Then there was a roar of wind and a buffetting wave of heat, and the scream of a horse. A flapping of wings. And when the adventurers peeked out from the bushes, they saw that Caryatid's horse was gone, and the grass where it had been still singed and smoking. The party rounded up the other horses and quickly as they could, and put as much distance as they could between them and the dragons' cave before camping for the night.
On the third day they passed the abbey, abandoned now on the top of its hill, and turned to follow the faint trail back to the dwarven citadel. On the fourth day, the party was minding its own business when from out of nowhere a boulder came hurtling through the air, slamming into the side of the head of Tod's horse, killing it instantly. Tod barely managed to leap off his horse as it fell. Everyone turned to look where the rock had come from and saw a trio of enormous men: almost twenty feet tall, with stony gray flesh. The giants guffawed at the adventurers' horrified faces, and weighed more boulders in their hands.
Nobody thought twice about this. They fled. Those on horseback spurred their horses to the fastest they could safely go on the rocky trail, and those on foot ran as fast as they could. Poor Brother Guntur and his very expensive customized coffin were abandoned here in this mountain pass, and the cruel laughter of the stone giants echoed over and over again off the mountain peaks as the adventurers ran at breakneck pace down the trail.
And that was the ignoble end of Brother Guntur's story.
The rest of the journey to the dwarven citadel was generally uneventful, although at one point they were attacked by three giant hawks ("They're coming back for Simon!" someone quipped). Caryatid tangled the wings of one hawk in the strands of her magical web, and then Gulleck used his magic ring to control another hawk and fly it right into the webbed one. They left the two hawks tangled up in the inescapable sticky silk and continued on their way.
The party arrived at the dwarven citadel and spent a night there, restocking some provisions, and then left the next morning, and made good time to Trobadanz, arriving without peril three days later. Grimbo bade them farewell, and they booked rooms for the night at the Grizzled Harpy, where they had first met Grimbo at the beginning of this wilderness adventuring.
Heading down to the harbor the next day, the party made inquiries as to whether the Black Marigold was still in dock. I gave them a 1 in 4 chance that she would be, and fate was for once kind to the players, and Captain Lauren Kerr was still in town, making ready to leave in a few days. She was happy to sell the party passage on her ship, and on Monday, November 11th, the Black Marigold set sail from Trobadanz, heading west along the coast of the sea back towards Idalium. The winds were strong and favorable, and on November 15th, after a sea voyage of 450 miles, the smoking chimneys and spires of Idalium came into view, and soon they were once again in the harbor of the river that runs through the city.
Soon there would be time for returning the holy lantern to the Great Church, and for visiting the Rusty Lantern tavern to see what changes might have happened in the dungeon below Idalium in their absence. But for now, the adventurers made their way to their respective apartments and houses for a well-deserved rest. It was good to be home!
Sunday, September 11, 2016
Idalium Game 51: The Return of Krong
Session date: Monday, May 2, 2016
Game date: Tuesday, October 22, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 4, hp 23, xp 9180/17000
Caryatid, Magic-user 4, hp 19, xp 10813/20000
Simon Sackwell, Halfling 1, hp 4, xp 403/2000
Krong, Dwarf 3, hp 20, xp 4500/8800
Retainers:
Manley "Meat" Smythe, Fighter 2, hp 13, xp 3021/4000
Our friend and former DM was visiting from overseas again, and we invited him to drop in for a game. I still had his character sheet from the last time he was in town, so again he played Krong, an alarmingly unstable dwarf cultist of some obscure fire god, as unlikely as it might be to encounter him again many hundreds of miles from where they last parted ways. I quickly bumped Krong up to third level to account for his "offscreen" adventuring exploits, and we were ready to play. Of course, most of our game time was spent chatting and catching up, so this session was much shorter than usual.
When we left off, the adventurers were caught in an awkward standoff. They had arrived in a small alpine village in search of assistance, only to find that the four surviving wererats monks had got there before them, and had conned the villagers into believing that they had been unjustly attacked by the party!
"It is them, headman!" hissed one of the monks. "These are the vagabonds I told you about! We welcomed them in to our monastery, gave them food and shelter, and they repaid us by slaughtering our entire brotherhood! Attack them! Attack them at once!!"
"Now, wait just a damn minute," grumbled Gulleck. "They attacked us! We came to their monastery on a quest for a holy relic, and they tried to murder us for no reason. You see that body on the horse? Ask them how he got that way!"
"Headman, these are pillaging vagrants. Whose words will you believe, those of we monks who have helped this village for centuries, or some unknown ruffians?"
"It is true," said the headman tentatively, "that the monastery of Sri Santo Pelasong has been a friend to this village for as long as anyone can remember. And you are strangers here..."
"What was that name? I don't recall hearing that before. I thought you were the Brotherhood of Saint Rathmus!"
The bickering was interrupted by the sound of a tavern door slamming open, and a stout and ruddy-faced dwarf emerged, clutching a beer stein in each hand. "What's all this noise?" he shouted, and then his face turned to surprise as his eyes fell on Gulleck.
"You!" he shouted in disbelief, pointing.
"You!" shouted Gulleck in return.
"How the hell are you!?" Krong exclaimed, pounding the Gulleck on the back.
There was a confused exchange of greetings and explanations, and the headman looked disorientedly from one to the other. The monks looked disturbed as well, displeased that they had lost the momentum of the conversation.
"Headman, were you not going to throw these vagrants out of the village?"
But the party turned with increased confidence on the monks. "There's an easy way to answer this, headman. Let's just wait until nightfall and then we can all have this conversation. I think everything will be clear then." (The monks grew pale at this suggestion.)
At this point someone realized that they actually had one of the original monks with the party, the acolyte Khrisong whom they had rescued from the catacombs under the monastery. It turned out that Khrisong was known to the headman, and when he vouched for the party, the ratman monks snapped, "We will not have our good name smeared in this fashion. Headman, we will talk with you again tomorrow. In the meantime, we will be in our cottage!" And they stomped off to a small cottage tucked away in the yard behind the headman's house. The headman had given them shelter in his guesthouse when they arrived battered and hungry the night before, but now, with Khrisong telling the story of his imprisonment, he was deeply disturbed and anxious. He agreed to join the adventurers in confronting the monks at nightfall.
As night fell and the moon shone down on the forest, the party, along with the headman and a couple of his guards, gathered near the cottage. Krong had equipped himself with a bandolier from which hung several oil flasks stuffed with oily rags. (I generally don't allow convenient "Molotov cocktails" in my game, but I make an exception for Krong.)
Gulleck pounded on the door. "Open up, we want to talk!"
"Go away," hissed a now-familiar squeaky voice. "We are indisposed. We will settle this in the morning."
"All right. I tried. Open it up, Meat."
Meat slammed his shoulder into the locked door repeatedly, until the latch splintered away from the jamb and the door burst open. With a hiss of rage, a man-sized rat sank its teeth deep into Meat's arm (just barely failing to do enough damage to inflict lycanthropy on him!). Meat struggled with the rat monk in the doorway, and then Krong threw a flaming flask of oil at point blank range into the ratman's chest, and he and the other one in the doorway went up in flames, screeching in pain and anger.
Meanwhile, the other two ratmen had sneaked out a window, and were rather foolishly attempting to flank the attackers instead of just high-tailing it out of the village. They too found themselves engulfed in Krong's fiery wrath, and things ended quite ignominiously for the brethen of St. Rathmus.
The party having cleared the misunderstanding with the villagers, they procured rooms for the night, and Krong returned to his libations, joined by Gulleck. He would vanish the next day, departing the party's adventure as suddenly and coincidentally as he had joined it.
It's a funny thing about monsters. Sometimes the chance events of an initial encounter, the random die rolls and tactical happenstances, can define the character of a group of villains. The wererat monks of St. Rathmus started off with the potential to be sinister and malevolent enemies, but a few fumbled attacks and botched ambushes led them to quickly take on a personality of selfish and arrogant incompetents whose threats significantly outstripped their ability to make good on them. It got to the point where the players were rolling their eyes and laughing at the bombastic threats of the rat monks. On the other hand, perhaps it's not so inappropriate after all for shifty, cowardly creatures like wererats.
The adventurers are still quite concerned about the letter they found in the monastery, implying that there is another group of St. Rathmus cultists in the dungeons below Idalium, but with the power to change freely between human and rat form, regardless of the time of day. But for now, they spent some time in the mountain village resupplying for their journey home, and seeking to commission a sturdy casket to transport the remains of poor Brother Guntur.
Game date: Tuesday, October 22, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 4, hp 23, xp 9180/17000
Caryatid, Magic-user 4, hp 19, xp 10813/20000
Simon Sackwell, Halfling 1, hp 4, xp 403/2000
Krong, Dwarf 3, hp 20, xp 4500/8800
Retainers:
Manley "Meat" Smythe, Fighter 2, hp 13, xp 3021/4000
Our friend and former DM was visiting from overseas again, and we invited him to drop in for a game. I still had his character sheet from the last time he was in town, so again he played Krong, an alarmingly unstable dwarf cultist of some obscure fire god, as unlikely as it might be to encounter him again many hundreds of miles from where they last parted ways. I quickly bumped Krong up to third level to account for his "offscreen" adventuring exploits, and we were ready to play. Of course, most of our game time was spent chatting and catching up, so this session was much shorter than usual.
When we left off, the adventurers were caught in an awkward standoff. They had arrived in a small alpine village in search of assistance, only to find that the four surviving wererats monks had got there before them, and had conned the villagers into believing that they had been unjustly attacked by the party!
"It is them, headman!" hissed one of the monks. "These are the vagabonds I told you about! We welcomed them in to our monastery, gave them food and shelter, and they repaid us by slaughtering our entire brotherhood! Attack them! Attack them at once!!"
"Now, wait just a damn minute," grumbled Gulleck. "They attacked us! We came to their monastery on a quest for a holy relic, and they tried to murder us for no reason. You see that body on the horse? Ask them how he got that way!"
"Headman, these are pillaging vagrants. Whose words will you believe, those of we monks who have helped this village for centuries, or some unknown ruffians?"
"It is true," said the headman tentatively, "that the monastery of Sri Santo Pelasong has been a friend to this village for as long as anyone can remember. And you are strangers here..."
"What was that name? I don't recall hearing that before. I thought you were the Brotherhood of Saint Rathmus!"
The bickering was interrupted by the sound of a tavern door slamming open, and a stout and ruddy-faced dwarf emerged, clutching a beer stein in each hand. "What's all this noise?" he shouted, and then his face turned to surprise as his eyes fell on Gulleck.
"You!" he shouted in disbelief, pointing.
"You!" shouted Gulleck in return.
"How the hell are you!?" Krong exclaimed, pounding the Gulleck on the back.
There was a confused exchange of greetings and explanations, and the headman looked disorientedly from one to the other. The monks looked disturbed as well, displeased that they had lost the momentum of the conversation.
"Headman, were you not going to throw these vagrants out of the village?"
But the party turned with increased confidence on the monks. "There's an easy way to answer this, headman. Let's just wait until nightfall and then we can all have this conversation. I think everything will be clear then." (The monks grew pale at this suggestion.)
At this point someone realized that they actually had one of the original monks with the party, the acolyte Khrisong whom they had rescued from the catacombs under the monastery. It turned out that Khrisong was known to the headman, and when he vouched for the party, the ratman monks snapped, "We will not have our good name smeared in this fashion. Headman, we will talk with you again tomorrow. In the meantime, we will be in our cottage!" And they stomped off to a small cottage tucked away in the yard behind the headman's house. The headman had given them shelter in his guesthouse when they arrived battered and hungry the night before, but now, with Khrisong telling the story of his imprisonment, he was deeply disturbed and anxious. He agreed to join the adventurers in confronting the monks at nightfall.
As night fell and the moon shone down on the forest, the party, along with the headman and a couple of his guards, gathered near the cottage. Krong had equipped himself with a bandolier from which hung several oil flasks stuffed with oily rags. (I generally don't allow convenient "Molotov cocktails" in my game, but I make an exception for Krong.)
Gulleck pounded on the door. "Open up, we want to talk!"
"Go away," hissed a now-familiar squeaky voice. "We are indisposed. We will settle this in the morning."
"All right. I tried. Open it up, Meat."
Meat slammed his shoulder into the locked door repeatedly, until the latch splintered away from the jamb and the door burst open. With a hiss of rage, a man-sized rat sank its teeth deep into Meat's arm (just barely failing to do enough damage to inflict lycanthropy on him!). Meat struggled with the rat monk in the doorway, and then Krong threw a flaming flask of oil at point blank range into the ratman's chest, and he and the other one in the doorway went up in flames, screeching in pain and anger.
Meanwhile, the other two ratmen had sneaked out a window, and were rather foolishly attempting to flank the attackers instead of just high-tailing it out of the village. They too found themselves engulfed in Krong's fiery wrath, and things ended quite ignominiously for the brethen of St. Rathmus.
The party having cleared the misunderstanding with the villagers, they procured rooms for the night, and Krong returned to his libations, joined by Gulleck. He would vanish the next day, departing the party's adventure as suddenly and coincidentally as he had joined it.
It's a funny thing about monsters. Sometimes the chance events of an initial encounter, the random die rolls and tactical happenstances, can define the character of a group of villains. The wererat monks of St. Rathmus started off with the potential to be sinister and malevolent enemies, but a few fumbled attacks and botched ambushes led them to quickly take on a personality of selfish and arrogant incompetents whose threats significantly outstripped their ability to make good on them. It got to the point where the players were rolling their eyes and laughing at the bombastic threats of the rat monks. On the other hand, perhaps it's not so inappropriate after all for shifty, cowardly creatures like wererats.
The adventurers are still quite concerned about the letter they found in the monastery, implying that there is another group of St. Rathmus cultists in the dungeons below Idalium, but with the power to change freely between human and rat form, regardless of the time of day. But for now, they spent some time in the mountain village resupplying for their journey home, and seeking to commission a sturdy casket to transport the remains of poor Brother Guntur.
Sunday, August 21, 2016
Idalium Game 50: The Bear Necessities
Session date: Monday, April 25, 2016
Game date: Sunday, October 20, 208 to Tuesday, October 22, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 4, hp 23, xp 9180/17000
Caryatid, Magic-user 4, hp 19, xp 10813/20000
Simon Sackwell, Halfling 1, hp 4, xp 403/2000
Retainers:
Manley "Meat" Smythe, Fighter 2, hp 13, xp 3021/4000
It was a relatively short session this week, and almost entirely dealing with logistics and making preparations for the long journal back to the adventurers' home city of Idalium. Having routed the remaining wererat monks, but having suffered the loss of Brother Guntur, the adventurers regrouped in the courtyard of the monastery to tie up loose ends and prepare themselves for the journey home.
They were all hungry (and pretty much out of rations), so they set to work preparing the Abbot's slain grizzly bear. Grimbo (their hired hobbit ranger guide) skinned it (Tod called dibs on the fur) and once it was disemboweled and cleaned, they moved to the monastery's kitchen to start a low fire to roast the bear meat. In the kitchen, they made a terrible discovery. There was a pantry door secured with a padlock, which Gulleck hacked off with his axe. Inside, they discovered a meat locker of sorts, and hanging from a hook was the flayed body of Axel, who they had handed over to the monks in hopes that they could restore life to him! Oh, such cruel irony.
The group ended up moving Axel's remains to the catacombs below the temple, finding an empty slab to lay his body out upon. Brother Guntur was also laid there in the cool underground air, but temporarily, as Father Jibber was rather insistent that the right thing to do would be to return him to the Great Cathedral in Idalium, where he could be interred with the other members of his order. They ended up spending the night in the kitchen, next to the warm fire that was slowly roasting the bear meat.
In the morning, Khrisong (the acolyte they had rescued from the catacombs) packed up some of the more important scriptures. Having no other members of his brotherhood left, his plan was to return with the adventurers to Idalium, and hopefully start up a new monastery there. Brother Guntur's body was retrieved from the catacombs (where they bid a final farewell to Axel), and hoisted onto his horse. They ate as much bear meat as they could stomach, and then loaded up as much as they could carry for their journey. Then they made their way out of the accursed monastery, and carefully led the horses down the steps that wound around the mountainside.
Khrisong told them the nearest village was perhaps a dozen miles to the north. The party hoped to resupply there, and commission a proper sealed casket for Brother Guntur, so they could bring him back to Idalium without having to smell or look at him. They traveled through the mountain passes and over hills and valleys, without any significant encounters, and camped uneventfully in an alpine meadow.
On Tuesday the 22nd, they traveled the remaining few miles to the village, passing through pastoral fields where they began to see shepherds watching over flocks of sheep, and people working in fields of grain. Eventually, they came to the village, a small collection of wooden houses clustered in the midst of a thin grove of pine trees. The villagers watched nervously as the large procession of weary and battle-scarred adventurers entered their village, with a corpse draped over the back of one of the horses. The door of the grandest house opened, and a man emerged, flanked by two other villagers holding spears.
"Greetings, strangers," the man spoke guardedly. "I am the headman of this village. What brings you here?"
Gulleck and Caryatid both started talking at once, trying to explain their odd appearance (with somewhat contradictory stories), but they were cut off by the sight of four monks in saffron robes stepping out of the doorway of the headman's house.
"It is them, headman!" hissed one of the monks. "These are the vagabonds I told you about! We welcomed them in to our monastery, gave them food and shelter, and they repaid us by slaughtering our entire brotherhood! Attack them! Attack them at once!!"
(Cliffhanger ending!)
Game date: Sunday, October 20, 208 to Tuesday, October 22, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 4, hp 23, xp 9180/17000
Caryatid, Magic-user 4, hp 19, xp 10813/20000
Simon Sackwell, Halfling 1, hp 4, xp 403/2000
Retainers:
Manley "Meat" Smythe, Fighter 2, hp 13, xp 3021/4000
It was a relatively short session this week, and almost entirely dealing with logistics and making preparations for the long journal back to the adventurers' home city of Idalium. Having routed the remaining wererat monks, but having suffered the loss of Brother Guntur, the adventurers regrouped in the courtyard of the monastery to tie up loose ends and prepare themselves for the journey home.
They were all hungry (and pretty much out of rations), so they set to work preparing the Abbot's slain grizzly bear. Grimbo (their hired hobbit ranger guide) skinned it (Tod called dibs on the fur) and once it was disemboweled and cleaned, they moved to the monastery's kitchen to start a low fire to roast the bear meat. In the kitchen, they made a terrible discovery. There was a pantry door secured with a padlock, which Gulleck hacked off with his axe. Inside, they discovered a meat locker of sorts, and hanging from a hook was the flayed body of Axel, who they had handed over to the monks in hopes that they could restore life to him! Oh, such cruel irony.
The group ended up moving Axel's remains to the catacombs below the temple, finding an empty slab to lay his body out upon. Brother Guntur was also laid there in the cool underground air, but temporarily, as Father Jibber was rather insistent that the right thing to do would be to return him to the Great Cathedral in Idalium, where he could be interred with the other members of his order. They ended up spending the night in the kitchen, next to the warm fire that was slowly roasting the bear meat.
In the morning, Khrisong (the acolyte they had rescued from the catacombs) packed up some of the more important scriptures. Having no other members of his brotherhood left, his plan was to return with the adventurers to Idalium, and hopefully start up a new monastery there. Brother Guntur's body was retrieved from the catacombs (where they bid a final farewell to Axel), and hoisted onto his horse. They ate as much bear meat as they could stomach, and then loaded up as much as they could carry for their journey. Then they made their way out of the accursed monastery, and carefully led the horses down the steps that wound around the mountainside.
Khrisong told them the nearest village was perhaps a dozen miles to the north. The party hoped to resupply there, and commission a proper sealed casket for Brother Guntur, so they could bring him back to Idalium without having to smell or look at him. They traveled through the mountain passes and over hills and valleys, without any significant encounters, and camped uneventfully in an alpine meadow.
On Tuesday the 22nd, they traveled the remaining few miles to the village, passing through pastoral fields where they began to see shepherds watching over flocks of sheep, and people working in fields of grain. Eventually, they came to the village, a small collection of wooden houses clustered in the midst of a thin grove of pine trees. The villagers watched nervously as the large procession of weary and battle-scarred adventurers entered their village, with a corpse draped over the back of one of the horses. The door of the grandest house opened, and a man emerged, flanked by two other villagers holding spears.
"Greetings, strangers," the man spoke guardedly. "I am the headman of this village. What brings you here?"
Gulleck and Caryatid both started talking at once, trying to explain their odd appearance (with somewhat contradictory stories), but they were cut off by the sight of four monks in saffron robes stepping out of the doorway of the headman's house.
"It is them, headman!" hissed one of the monks. "These are the vagabonds I told you about! We welcomed them in to our monastery, gave them food and shelter, and they repaid us by slaughtering our entire brotherhood! Attack them! Attack them at once!!"
(Cliffhanger ending!)
Monday, August 15, 2016
Idalium Game 49: What a Tangled Web We Weave
Session date: Monday, April 4, 2016
Game date: Sunday, October 20, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 4, hp 23, xp 9047/17000
Caryatid, Magic-user 4, hp 19, xp 10680/20000
Retainers:
Manley "Meat" Smythe, Fighter 2, hp 13, xp 2954/4000
Brother Guntur Valto, Cleric 2, hp 8, xp 1793/3000
A short-handed and relatively short session this time, and the adventurers were focused on mopping up the remaining wererat monks in this accursed monastery. But now, having caught a few hours of sleep, they first inspected the tin lantern they had retrieved from the temple. There was an inscription encircling the top of the lantern, in letters that they recognized as Ancient Idalian. Though no one could read the old language, they did possess a magical pair of spectacles that could allowed them to understand it. Gulleck put the strange goggles on, and read, "The source of the all-pervading light salves the wounded and restores health to the diseased." He opened the lantern to find a crumbling wick in a small reservoir of pasty, congealed oil of some kind. Oddly, the paste smelled absolutely delicious to him. Gulleck ventured to swallow a small amount of the paste, and felt a wholesome warmth pervade his body, and suddenly he was aware that the feverish delirium that had been growing by the hour was gone. (This was a lucky thing, too, as it turned out that according to his unlucky dice rolls, the disease from the giant rat bites would have killed him. Which would have been rather bathetic, so to speak, having just retrieved the item he was sent to acquire in payment for being raised from death!) Experimenting further with the oily paste, Gulleck and Meat found that when rubbed on their wounds, it had a remarkable healing power and their wounds were significantly less livid and inflamed.
Emboldened by this, they set out in search of the remaining monks. At the end of the last session, they had crept into the monks' house, but found it empty and abandoned. They decided to return to the temple, for they had seen a flight of stairs at the back of the shrine where they had defeated the Abbot, descending into the underground catacombs that seemed to connect many of the buildings in the monastery complex.
On their way to the shrine, they passed through the terraced porch that was the entrance to the temple. The little capuchin monkey that had guarded the room when they were last here had returned, its leg still shackled and chained to a short piece of wood that had split from the pole that formerly leashed it here. It barred its teeth at the adventurers and squealed. Gulleck held forth his ring of animal control, and his eyes rolled back in his head as it became still, and allowed Meat to break the shackle from its leg. Once released from Gulleck's control, the monkey looked confusedly at its leg and then at the adventurers and then pointed to its open mouth and screeched.
"Oh, he's hungry," said Caryatid, and offered him some scraps of rations and some water. The monkey seemed grateful, and before Caryatid could react, he ran up onto her shoulder, where he remained perched and would not come down. And that is how Caryatid ended up with a pet monkey.
The group entered the catacombs and explored an unfamiliar tunnel, eventually finding a ladder leading to a trapdoor. According to their maps, they were somewhere below a building that the monks had called their training hall. Caryatid slipped on her ring of invisibility and quietly opened the trapdoor and peered out. It opened into a room with a bookshelf of books and papers against one wall. A monk (human now, during the day) sat in a chair facing away from her). A polearm rested against the wall next to him, and a lantern burned on a low table.
Caryatid quietly gestured for the others to join her, and they attempted to overpower the guard without being noticed. Unfortunately, the clank of plate armor gave the party away, and the monk whipped around, eyes wide, and shrieked an alarm. Gulleck and Meat moved quickly to deal with the guard, while the sound of running feet approached from the courtyard outside the room.
The guard went down in a heap, and Gulleck and Meat quickly pulled the bookshelf down and over to block the doorway. More angry monks in saffron robes arrived, wielding polearms over the bookshelf. Caryatid's new pet monkey leaped off her shoulder to perch on the table with the lamp, hooting and screeching at the chaos surrounding it.
The battle was going well at first, with Gulleck and Meat fighting the monks over the barricade, but then four more monks came charging in through the other doorway leading into the room, effectively flanking them. Brother Guntur was suddenly surrounded, and issued a horrible death cry as two vicious polearm blades sank deep into his body.
Caryatid spoke a complex incantation, and then sticky strands of silk spat from her fingertips (say that five times fast!), entangling the monks in a snarled web from which they could not escape. Seeing their comrades incapacitated, the two remaining monks behind the barricade dropped their polearms and ran from the doorway, their running feet echoing as they fled the building.
Gulleck wiped blood and sweat away from his forehead and looked at the captured monks, and then at the pale, bloody body of Brother Guntur near their feet. He made one last attempt at peace with the ratmen, insisting that one of them swallow some of the oily paste from within the holy lantern, in the hope that it might cure them of their shapechanging curse. But the monk only gagged and spat - "It burns my throat! What poison have you fed me?! It burns!"
"Well, I tried," quipped Gulleck grimly and then got on with the dismal task of dispatching the evil monks. He didn't want to get his axe stuck in the sticky web, so he used the new magical spear they had found in the temple. Only six inches long, when lunged with it suddenly expanded to a ten foot spear and then blinked back to its miniature size again. Over and over Gulleck stabbed at the wretched monks with the magical spear, dispassionately carrying out his work until the shrieking stopped. It was truly horrible.
We ended the session here, with the rat monks vanquished from the evil monastery, but the death of Brother Guntur a rather bitter payment in return. There has been some speculation that with the rate this party goes through hired clerics, the Great Church may stop allowing them to hire any more of them!
Game date: Sunday, October 20, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 4, hp 23, xp 9047/17000
Caryatid, Magic-user 4, hp 19, xp 10680/20000
Retainers:
Manley "Meat" Smythe, Fighter 2, hp 13, xp 2954/4000
Brother Guntur Valto, Cleric 2, hp 8, xp 1793/3000
A short-handed and relatively short session this time, and the adventurers were focused on mopping up the remaining wererat monks in this accursed monastery. But now, having caught a few hours of sleep, they first inspected the tin lantern they had retrieved from the temple. There was an inscription encircling the top of the lantern, in letters that they recognized as Ancient Idalian. Though no one could read the old language, they did possess a magical pair of spectacles that could allowed them to understand it. Gulleck put the strange goggles on, and read, "The source of the all-pervading light salves the wounded and restores health to the diseased." He opened the lantern to find a crumbling wick in a small reservoir of pasty, congealed oil of some kind. Oddly, the paste smelled absolutely delicious to him. Gulleck ventured to swallow a small amount of the paste, and felt a wholesome warmth pervade his body, and suddenly he was aware that the feverish delirium that had been growing by the hour was gone. (This was a lucky thing, too, as it turned out that according to his unlucky dice rolls, the disease from the giant rat bites would have killed him. Which would have been rather bathetic, so to speak, having just retrieved the item he was sent to acquire in payment for being raised from death!) Experimenting further with the oily paste, Gulleck and Meat found that when rubbed on their wounds, it had a remarkable healing power and their wounds were significantly less livid and inflamed.
Emboldened by this, they set out in search of the remaining monks. At the end of the last session, they had crept into the monks' house, but found it empty and abandoned. They decided to return to the temple, for they had seen a flight of stairs at the back of the shrine where they had defeated the Abbot, descending into the underground catacombs that seemed to connect many of the buildings in the monastery complex.
On their way to the shrine, they passed through the terraced porch that was the entrance to the temple. The little capuchin monkey that had guarded the room when they were last here had returned, its leg still shackled and chained to a short piece of wood that had split from the pole that formerly leashed it here. It barred its teeth at the adventurers and squealed. Gulleck held forth his ring of animal control, and his eyes rolled back in his head as it became still, and allowed Meat to break the shackle from its leg. Once released from Gulleck's control, the monkey looked confusedly at its leg and then at the adventurers and then pointed to its open mouth and screeched.
"Oh, he's hungry," said Caryatid, and offered him some scraps of rations and some water. The monkey seemed grateful, and before Caryatid could react, he ran up onto her shoulder, where he remained perched and would not come down. And that is how Caryatid ended up with a pet monkey.
The group entered the catacombs and explored an unfamiliar tunnel, eventually finding a ladder leading to a trapdoor. According to their maps, they were somewhere below a building that the monks had called their training hall. Caryatid slipped on her ring of invisibility and quietly opened the trapdoor and peered out. It opened into a room with a bookshelf of books and papers against one wall. A monk (human now, during the day) sat in a chair facing away from her). A polearm rested against the wall next to him, and a lantern burned on a low table.
Caryatid quietly gestured for the others to join her, and they attempted to overpower the guard without being noticed. Unfortunately, the clank of plate armor gave the party away, and the monk whipped around, eyes wide, and shrieked an alarm. Gulleck and Meat moved quickly to deal with the guard, while the sound of running feet approached from the courtyard outside the room.
The guard went down in a heap, and Gulleck and Meat quickly pulled the bookshelf down and over to block the doorway. More angry monks in saffron robes arrived, wielding polearms over the bookshelf. Caryatid's new pet monkey leaped off her shoulder to perch on the table with the lamp, hooting and screeching at the chaos surrounding it.
The battle was going well at first, with Gulleck and Meat fighting the monks over the barricade, but then four more monks came charging in through the other doorway leading into the room, effectively flanking them. Brother Guntur was suddenly surrounded, and issued a horrible death cry as two vicious polearm blades sank deep into his body.
Caryatid spoke a complex incantation, and then sticky strands of silk spat from her fingertips (say that five times fast!), entangling the monks in a snarled web from which they could not escape. Seeing their comrades incapacitated, the two remaining monks behind the barricade dropped their polearms and ran from the doorway, their running feet echoing as they fled the building.
Gulleck wiped blood and sweat away from his forehead and looked at the captured monks, and then at the pale, bloody body of Brother Guntur near their feet. He made one last attempt at peace with the ratmen, insisting that one of them swallow some of the oily paste from within the holy lantern, in the hope that it might cure them of their shapechanging curse. But the monk only gagged and spat - "It burns my throat! What poison have you fed me?! It burns!"
"Well, I tried," quipped Gulleck grimly and then got on with the dismal task of dispatching the evil monks. He didn't want to get his axe stuck in the sticky web, so he used the new magical spear they had found in the temple. Only six inches long, when lunged with it suddenly expanded to a ten foot spear and then blinked back to its miniature size again. Over and over Gulleck stabbed at the wretched monks with the magical spear, dispassionately carrying out his work until the shrieking stopped. It was truly horrible.
We ended the session here, with the rat monks vanquished from the evil monastery, but the death of Brother Guntur a rather bitter payment in return. There has been some speculation that with the rate this party goes through hired clerics, the Great Church may stop allowing them to hire any more of them!
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Player Journals from Session 48
Tod's Journal
Jibber and I woke up alone in the dark.
Terrible things were afoot. Why did they let us sleep in? What were
these idiots thinking?
We
followed the trail of carnage and despair to the outside the Abbot's
rooms. When we arrived I heard screams and squeaks of pure horror and
pain coming from the other side of the door. And there was something
different about Gulleck. Can't quite put my finger on it. He just
seemed different somehow.
Apparently,
while Jibber and I slept there was much fighting with the Rat Men. Our
tiny little guide had been captured and held hostage and was rescued. A
Rat Man had been captured and then thrown into the room beyond the door
where there happened to be a ten foot long rattle snake just hanging
out. Shortly after we arrived the screaming and squeaking stopped. And
then there was silence.
The
plan was for me to open the door, confront the snake, while the rest of
the party threw things at it. Jibber stood by my side and I opened the
door. The giant serpent, fangs dripping with venom, a hideous bulge in
it's body, reared up to strike me. And then it fell asleep. I cut off
it's head. Poor snake.
There
was a door across the room and we could hear chanting and praying and
growling. All good things. So I opened the door and Jibber and I were
instantly attacked by a humongous bear. One claw smacked me on the side
of the head, and the other dug a vicious rake across Jibber's forehead.
Jibber let out a scream. Suddenly, the bear stood up and got a blank
look on its face. I knew that look anywhere. Gulleck was using his
animal control ring. The bear turned, and attacked the stinking Abbot
rat bastard who was screaming at us and praying to this ridiculous
statue of a rat man in the center of the room. With a tremendous hug,
the bear squished the Abbot into a broken lifeless pulp. Then it fell
asleep and I killed it. Poor bear.
We
found chests of gold and silver, jewels and scrolls. Tremendous
fortune. We dragged it back to our sleeping quarters and then had a good
nights sleep even though it was morning.
We
then adventured into a final room we had not explored. Or maybe it was
the other way around? I forget. Anyhow, at the end of a wide hall was
an alter with a statue of someone decidedly not a rat. In one hand he
held a tin lantern which glowed with a holy light and gave off a almost
imperceptible choral tone. At long last our quest was at an end. The
Holy Lantern of Gurtle's Folly was found.
There
remained the unpleasant business of clearing out the rest of the rat
man infestation. After all, it is what we do. We figured they were
held up in their barracks. Caryatid, being invisible and possibly
hopped up on Orc Crank, went in there looking for trouble while the rest
of us waited outside.
That bear claw is going to leave a mark on Jibber. Maybe he should try to cure himself?
I need to find a tavern soon. I hate this place.
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