Chapter 5 Recaps

Game 1 (06/04/2011)

Torm (Paul)
Murach (Robert)
Jeff (Mur Dhor)
Grendel (Alan)
Cog (Mark) – Early session
Joe (Reeper) – Late Session
Darren (Sneaky Jeb) – Late Session

Lots of in-fighting and other monstrosity this week.  This will be choppy:  Partly because I wasn’t hear for half the game.

We return from last adventure (Chapter 4) and discover that it has been 5 years and that our cave/tribe have been co-opted by another leader.  Seems we didn’t like this much.  I believe Torm declared himself leader.  (I was not present for the early part.  I did however show up as the team had already deposed the leader and were beating up some dual T-Rexs).

Mur Dhor had a cohort he purchased, who was promptly eaten by a T-Rex.  This same T-Rex was charmed by Grendel.  Mur Dhor wasn’t happy and wanted satisfaction—he wanted the creature cut open and his friend let out.  Too late for that of course, and Grendel objected.  Mur Dhor confused many monsters with is complicated wording about what he wanted.  Torm didn’t dare much one way or the other and left them to settle it.

Among the things taken off of some human adventurers was a map (which included “Dragon Treasure” written on it on the other side of some mountains.  We hung around to break into a collection of treasure that was walled up in the caves behind a stone-shaped area.  There was found a Haru “Heal” scroll.  Mur Dhor immediately claimed it and then said since Grendel could read it, if he wanted to keep the peace between them he could use it only on Mur Dhor when the need arose.  Grendel, having no such intent, accepted.  Sneaky Jeb blew a detect traps and wound up poisoning himself with a gas cloud when trying to open a chest; he was at 0 STR until the next day when he could be restored by Reeper.  (“Him useful!”)

We took off in the night to head to our destination.  Either we went over some very impassable mountains or we went around the lake past some settlements, including the fort that had been a human fort, then a monster fort, that is now a human fort again.

We found farmers.  Most of them are not a problem, but we eventually run into one where there is a house on fire, a bad guy cackling with glee, and a dire wolf.  I think most of us (the evil guys) were enjoying the sight, but the cackling wiz decided to throw some flame strikes around which initiated a combat.  Sneaky Jeb made the mistake of making himself known (Been a long time since I played a guy who hung back—I screwed up) and after he got flame-striked AND missed the reflex save, AND got attacked by a dire wolf, he was 1 pount from negative-con death and made his save stabilize in one roll.  Reeper returned fire (literally) and flame-striked back at the wiz, and the T-Rex did some chomping and the Torm did some smacking, and there was much chaos.

Add to this that Murach the White would not let the house burn with people in it.  He tore the wall down and tried to convince them in pigeon-common to get out, which they did.

Upon victory, any humans who tried to run were gathered up.  Torm and Mur Dhor (and maybe some others) wanted to see these people tortured and burned.  Murach took umbrage and tried to stop it.  He challenged Torm for leadership, so it was left to us to set terms of such a fight.  We decided to give people the opportunity to rest, but Torm wanted the fight now, so some healing was granted.  Remember the Haru Heal scroll?... Well, not so much.  Seems the folks who bothered to read it failed to find it was not a heal.  It was a blindness scroll.  So no fight just yet.  Instead next day he had to be unblinded via spell.

So the fight takes place.  The initial (and correct) thinking:  He who wins initiative wins the war.  So with that… Torm wins the first swings.  He doesn’t do devastating damage, Murach does some fair damage in return, but he’s unable to avoid Torm’s axing.  Down goes frazier, down goes frazier.

Some discussion with Torm, trying to convince him to let them save Murach from bleeding to death results in Grendel convincing Torm to let him take the white minotaur back to the frozen north hence he came.  The tribe has spoken!  Robert will have to devise another character for this campaign L

While Grendel is away on his little voyage, the group are continuing around the lake and find a battlefield—

Oh, wait.  I forgot about the sphinx.  During our investigation of farms and such, Grendel encounters up in the air an Androsphinx.  She is named Sylvia and demands the party stop destroying farms.  He returns to us and gives us the ultimatum, with Grendel playing up how dangerous it would be to disregard her warning; Torm will do what Torm does.  So Grendel will have to basically try to guide us around farms so as to avoid such a bloody monster death.

--Now back to our battlefield.  So there are humans and goblins lying in a field.  The humans are typical contemporary knightly types, but the goblins seem to be something out of time.  Their stuff is much older and of a bygone era of monsterness.  The one goblin that Grendel saves (while the rest of us take cover from a group of encroaching knights in full gear with lances) speaks an old form of goblin.  He converses with Mur Dhor about a few things and comes with us due to lack of anything better to do.  But he’s not around long.

Once we encounter the large pack of undead our new goblin friend runs away.  These undead suck souls and have a 50/50 miss chance.  Reeper’s attempts to use the new “turn undead” result in some damage to some of them.  The rest of the folks are getting pretty weakened by the level draining.  Torm is down a few levels, but falls due to hitpoints.  Sneaky Jeb loses a level.  Grendel’s T-Rex buddy loses 3 levels.  By the end we’re just able to stave them off, but not after Grendel misses virtually every one of his 50/50 rolls.

I’m fairly sure that was the last of it for the evening.  At least I can’t remember anything else, which in either case should surprise no one.

Game 2 (07/02/2011)

Monstrosities:
Birdyman (Alan)
MinoTorm aka “Master of You” (Paul)
MurDurer (Jeff)
Reeperer (Joe)
Zen Frog (Robert)
Dead Cog/Red Orc (Mark)
SneakiestJeb (Darren)
 
Welcome to another round of in-fighting and monstercide.  Tough session for Jim; lots of rules arguing and trying to avoid his adventure, and the dreaded split party syndrome.  Won’t you please help to stomp out SPS in our lifetime?
 
Our quest for dragon treasure continues.  We round the lake some more, make camp, Torm sets watches, and things go peacefully through the night.  Oh, no, wait… cog is here.  Cog decides to refuse to keep watch because “Torm no keep watch”.  Torm goes and finds the hole that Cog has decided to sleep in, orders him to keep watch.  Cog challenges for command.  Well he doesn’t really—I mean nobody heard him formally challenge for command, he just initiates a fight so near as we can tell any result is going to be just one or both guys beat up.  Cog summoned a crocodile to grip Torm, which does a good job, and he curses Torm so that he now has a 50/50 chance of being able to do anything each time he tries, with a duration of… forever!
 
The new guy from last game (Reeper) decides to assist Torm.  Grendel shows up with his T-rex and decides to break this up immediately, seeing as how we’re just whittling away the party to nothing (And having to replace the departed with dumber PCs it seems, which is not easy you’d think, but is actually pretty true).  Well, the fight is discontinued with Cog on top of this one, he formally challenges, but no one will let the fight happen until after Torm’s curse is removed.  The argument goes like this:  “Why should someone be allowed to recover fully before you take your shot?  It’s the monster way!” versus “If you want a strong leader, shouldn’t both combatants be at full strength to determine leadership?”
 
In any event the rematch goes distinctly differently.  An un-cursed Torm gets one swing on Cog, critical, rolls high damage, and does 100 HP, neatly cutting cog in two.
 
Hanging around in the background most of the time has been Murach’s replacement, a fellow from the tribe who we haven’t worked with before, whose name I can’t recall.  Anyway, he’s a Siv (frog-man) made by Robert.  He’s a zen fellow who has wandered away from the tribe and into the world to “find himself”.  So he’s all Quai Chang Caine, with the monk moves (and presumably sexual asphyxia).  But wait, he may not be around long.  See below.
 
Seems that the frog-man’s info on the area is that there are plenty of goblins around who think they are dwarves, or who at the very least keep clean and wear armor and such.  Soon onto the scene is Red, a friend of the Siv’s, and Mark’s replacement for Cog.
 
Well, there’s a fight with some ghosties who try to drain Torm but don’t do that too well.  Since they can only be hurt by magic a few of us hang back while Torm’s big axe and a slew of spells dampen the spirits.
 
We hear combat ahead during our travel and Grendel scouts ahead.  He sees (and is seen by) some folks: A cleric, a female mage, a bard, and a barbarian.  They have a quick word with Grendel, who warns them that they will be destroyed if they do not leave now.  They seem unconvinced.  Worse yet, now they have time to prepare.  So when we arrive as a group, there’s a bolt of lightning to the center of the group.  MurDhur’s haste helps bump up the activities of most of the group.  Grendel flies into the cave to see things and winds up inside there when a stinking cloud is set off by the monsters (Red, I think) that blocks the entrance.  We soon hear birdy-man coughing and he comes back out, crashing.  Inside is a sort of rainbow curtain that covers the back of the cavern.
 
There are some taunts exchanged, including one that they are trapped inside, to which the mage teleports their entire group out of the cave.  Soon we are under aerial attack by a dragon who speaks like the female mage and who is carrying the bard on her back.  Several flamestrikes to the beast and bard help put the music man in trouble.  Even though the dragon gets off some breaths and hurts the t-rex (who I believe fled during this fight, never to be seen again), the dragon ultimately turns back in order to save the bard who is badly injured.
 
During this time, the Siv has jumped through the curtain and not returned.  We get a sense that it’s probably dead.
 
Some of us are hiding outside the cave, not wanting to get trapped in there with no choices.  Others are inside the cave deciding what to do.  This is where the party splitting happens.  Torm and some of the crew go through.  Grendel, Red, and Sneaky Jeb stay outside, and decide since the group went through and didn’t come back that they must be dead.  The last order by Torm had been to return home, so they set out that way.  About now Jim is trying to figure out how to reassemble the group rather than run a split campaign.  The cleric of that party we fought sends a message through magic to Grendel to tell him the dragon is crazy and will never let us escape no matter how long it takes to find us and the only way to be safe is to leave this plane.  So apparently the cavern’s shimmering curtain is a portal to another plane.  (First the cleric sent to Sneaky Jeb, then there was some revision because frankly, who knew Jeb was even there? He hid the whole time waiting to strike.)  We head back.  The travel away from the cave had been by Red shapechanging Grendel into a mouse (after promising to change him into a bird)  so Jeb could carry him while using his uber-sneakiness, and changing himself into a bird.  The trip back would be with Grendel invisible(?) and Red and Jeb as birds.  On the other side of the curtain we are reunited with the group who camped overnight and were about to leave when we showed up (it had been a day on our side as well, so time apparently runs concurrent here).
 
In this world there are battling groups of goblins and humans.  The goblins maintain some towers from which they send out their hordes.  Unlike normal goblins these ones have adopted dwarvish ways of semi-cleanliness and equipment maintenance and such.
 
It is decided (pretty much by Torm) that we should do a frontal assault on one of the towers because recon hasn’t shown much activity.  Well, it turns out recon was not so good.  There are actually tons of these guys who will show up as the fight progresses.
 
Sneaky Jeb gets himself into a bit of trouble by going solo; He had used a spiderclimb potion to go up the wall and through an arrow slit to take out a couple archers and maybe sneak up on the roof group who are going to be subject to attack by the group; Instead he meets about 6 or 7 guys, the first of whom crits him.
 
The rest of the guys are assaulting the roof using flight spells and lots of smashy-smashy.   Unfortunately, goblins are pouring out of the big tower and heading toward us.  Retreat is sounded, Jeb is using his auto-tumble (Damn but Skill mastery and a high tumble skill rules) and his spiderclimb (and the haste) to head up the building’s interior walls to the roof where he snagged by Torm and the group flies away in retreat to reconsider their assault.
 
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE… unfortunately I had to check out about that time.  So someone else may need to tell what happened next.

Game 3 (07/16/2011)

Those who monstered:
Kip Croaker (Robert)
Red (Mark)
Torm (Paul)
Grendel (Alan)
MurDor (Jeff)
Reeper (Joe)
Sneaky Jeb (Darren)
 
And anyone who did not attend missed out on some awesome BBQ.  I made up for it by eating your share though.

Apparently the part of last game that I ducked out on late involved two offers of alliance.  A Githyanki came across us and offered an alliance against a mind flayer.  Soon after that, a mind flayer offered (telepathically) to Reeper to forge an alliance.  Both, seemingly, were denied.

So we are in this sort of pocket dimension with Goblins who act like Dwarves, a lurking mind-flayer and a lurking Githyanki, and it turns out… a lurking Githrazei… who shows up at one point to also make us an offer to alliance.

There are going to be a lot of broad strokes in this recap, simply because I’m not sure anyone benefits from details of us moving from various caverns across the tiny world.  We manage to figure out that the goblins have a means of getting through the shimmering wall (back to our world) but we don’t know how.  They set up camps there and wait.  (Now I’m thinking that we might have benefited from just staying near the goblins at the shimmering wall until the bell sound happened so that Sneaky Jeb could see how they are crossing over… but it’s too late for that now, given where we are.)

We had one fight in a cavern with a bunch of goblins who were headed to the shimmering wall, and we kicked their little goblin butts.  The thing is, we keep doing these things that trigger groups of goblins to go out scouring the countryside for us, something which ticks off our new alliance-mate, which I believe is the Githrazei.  One of the giths anyway.  So he won’t travel with us, he’s just going to lurk around.

One of our fears is that if we have knowledge of how to escape this world then the mind flayer will try to pry it from our heads.  We actually have the Gith draw a map to it and rip it into 8 pieces, then everyone in the party has one.  So he’d likely have to take us all out in order to know where to go (or at the very least get very lucky with his selection of which map pieces he won if he got one of us).

The safest place we can find to hide AND gather intelligence is the pit where the goblins dump their dead.  It’s reportedly 1,000 ft deep.  We go to the cavern where the pit is and hang out, grabbing mourners and interrogating them (then throwing them into the pit).  We’re pretty cruel to the goblins, but in a comedic way, unlike the human farmers.  The problem is that as mourners stop coming back from the pit, they send out search parties in large numbers to look for who/whatever may be killing them.  We have a hideyhole in the shape of a stone-shaped niche below the edge of the pit a few hundred feet.

Now part of our intel is wrong.  It seems the pit is FAR deeper than we thought it was.  This is important later on.  For we are being scyed upon by someone who is then directing the goblins to search for us.  They’re good enough at the scrying that a large group shows up to repel down into the pit and some mage types have decided to pull down air elementals to come clean house.  This sets up one of my favorite fights of the whole thing; The party has to split, else we end up with a whole team of us stuck in a cave while chaos happens.  So here’s how it goes:

One large air elemental comes after Torm, who has a flight spell on him and his carrying MurDor and Reeper.  He’s in a steep dive and has a head start but that doesn’t keep the elemental from catching up and attacking.  There’s a brief period during which Jeff left to get food and as such MurDor was removed from the equation, so Torm opted to start fighting back as well since he now had an arm free.  All this is happening and high speed as they approach the bottom of the pit, which is, as I mentioned earlier, far further down than previous intel would have us believe.

One large air elemental comes after Sneaky Jeb, Red, and MurDor’s Sidekick.  Unfortunately, the sidekick is not much of a hider and is spotted by the elemental.  Everyone gets unhidden and attacks, eventually bringing it down a little bit at a time.

A bonanza of goblins (That’s what you call a heard of goblins, right?) drop from the cliffs on ropes and repel down toward the hidden niche, so Grendel decides to start taking out their ropes as they dangle, with lots of success!  Goblins fall like ugly, ugly drops of rain.

Smaller elementals show up and go into the cavern where Sneaky Jeb, Red, and MurDor‘s minion are.  However, Red and Sneaky Jeb are hiding on the ledge outside so they go in and kill the bad hider.  There’s a weird discussion about whether the elementals can haul his corpse out or not.  Either way, they’ve got his corpse.   Not sure why they’d want it.

Croaker (in large bat form) carries Sneaky Jeb to the bottom of the pit, and then he and Grendel work together to bring Red down.

At the bottom of the pit, there’s a section that narrows.  At the end of it is a doorway with magical runes on it that seem to indicate it used to be warded against the dead.  Inside that area are a couple ghosts, who proceed to injure Sneaky Jeb and panic some others.  Bringing up the rear behind us are swarms of rats who try to disease Torm.  We move up the stairs and discover a shimmering gate!  Once we’re healthy enough we head through and discover it’s a dead world of some kind.

Two fliers come after us as we crossed this land:  They were two large fliers with scorpion tails.  This is where I bid adieu and left the fight to those who could actually reach the fliers (we’re on a flat plain with no place to hide or anything to climb to come after them, so I presume some sort of archery/magic battle ensued, but I leave that to anyone who wants to add their two cents.

EDIT:  Seems we fought (in my absence) two wyverns, wound up finding the dragon trove and fighting 4 fire trolls there (victoriously).  Not sure if fire trolls can be backstabbed so I may have been no help at all in that one, had I remained.  I definitely couldn't hit a flier.

Game 4 (07/30/2011)

Monstritis Sufferers:
Torm (Paul)
MurDor (Jeff)
Reeper (Joe)
Grendel (Alan)
Kip Croaker(Robert)
Sneaky Jeb (Darren)
 
Seems last game after I left we defeated 4 fire trolls and recovered the dragon’s treasure trove.  Sometime thereafter, as we slept and recovered (between games) we were approached in our dreams by some sort of golden icon who asked us to help free him, promising a reward.  Those who agreed wound up with some sort of boon.  Kip did not get one.  Sneaky Jeb’s came in pretty damn handy all game, except where it helps him run into trouble faster.

This game we decide to backtrack, to make our way back up the pit (where bodies were discarded by the goblins) and get back to the shiny wall that we think will get us out… the one at the center of the city.  We avoid a few ghostly types by use of invisibility, invis v. undead, and silence.  Flight is used to get Torm and his cargo up and out of the tunnel.  There’s some confusion as 3 of the 5 of us understood we were meeting one place and two thought it was another.  But we subsequently figure it out and meet up.  On the way Sneak Jeb stops off to steal some casting implements from a goblin, just cuz.

Kip spends most of the game in bat form, and subsequently does some scouting (as Grendel would be a little more obvious in this setting).  Through his observations and Reeper’s spells, we get to the center of the city and go in to the temple where the shiny wall is that should get us out.  When Torm plunges through, the rest of us follow, and we end up… back not far from where we started this game scenario.  We’ve looped!  So we end up resting and doing the whole process again.

Now since we had interrogated a farmer who told us that he had passed through the gate to our world, we had to wonder how he did it of course, and we decided maybe we needed to capture a goblin.  Sneaky Jeb does some recon on the original shiny gate and finds the goblins are encamped there.  But he also witnesses the Bard we’d encountered earlier, the one who worked for the dragon lady.  He passes through the gate successfully, by taking the hands of two goblins and walking through as a group.

Sneaky Jeb brings back this information and we set about a plan that involves capturing and interrogating one of the goblins; one that is on the military guard squad that guards the gate.  We camp out the goblin city and wait for a goblin to exit their equivalent of a military bar, and when one leaves alone who appears to be a soldier, he gets grabbed by a flying minotaur and dragged off.  He won’t give up any information during interrogation, but after Grendel successfully charms him he’s willing to talk.  But he doesn’t know much.  So Grendel convinces him to go find information (following a long night of drinking and having the Goblin’s wife hit on Grendel).  Problem is that he sets off an alarm somewhere because two things happen:  First the rendezvous point for him and Grendel is being watched by sneaky goblins, Second we get scryed on.  The jig is up!  We need to get moving.

New recon on the tunnel with the shiny wall reveals they’ve put up a barricade to shoot over, and that they’ve got wizard reinforcement on their guards now.  What we will face is a small group of goblins (12), a medium group (24), and the final group right at the gate (36).  A plan is forged, but no plan of ours ever survives encounter with the enemy.

On the first group, Sneaky Jeb fails to warn the group of the closeness of the enemy, and so a fight breaks out.  Sneaky Jeb backstabs like he’s never done before, Torm hacks and cleaves, and Grendel flies on ahead to slow down some of the fleeing types.  These guys aren’t all that hard to handle, unlike the next, double-sized group.  That one, Sneaky Jeb comes back and warns the group then moves up in anticipation of the wizardly attack on the group, but the master of the sneak is spotted, so the fight begins quicker than we like.  The big help in this one is Evered’s Black Tentacles, cast by MurDor and which interfere with not only their ability to fight us, but their caster’s magic.  Kip is on the far side of the group, having run through the entire mob of 24 in a mad dash to get to the other side and prevent any potential runners, uses some fog to try to slow them down, with mixed results.  It’s a good solid bloodletting but we come out without much injury on our part; just a depletion of resources, as spells are being used up quickly.

The final group are in the cave of the shiny gate, behind a 5’ high barricade.  We spot their glyphs due to the Gem of True Seeing, and Reeper sends in a zombie he just made in order to trigger the glyphs, which works (first one is paralysis, which doesn’t hurt zombies, and the second one brings the boom, obliterating him.  Their wiz creates a wall of fire that blocks our passage.  One by one we decide to start crashing the wall, since it won’t ruin our invisibility.  Most of us go in by air or by crawling the ceiling with spider-climb.  On the other side there’s a pause as not everyone can spot the wizards and with Paul’s pending departure, finally someone acts.  Sneaky Jeb backstabs the one wiz he spots.  The team activities seem to vary between waiting to do something and staying hidden OR leaping in and drawing all kinds of fire.  Torm cuts and cleaves, Jeb pursues the wizard while taking lots of damage from the crowd around him, and Grendel (the weakest of us) tries to grab a goblin and fly through the gate to test it out—but can’t wrestle him.  Then the big pain comes!  Reeper calls in the flame strikes to nuke the camp from orbit, and MurDor does some lightning bolt action.  The group dwindles down to a few, allowing healers to get to Sneaky Jeb who is 4 turns from death when he’s healed.

The other wizard fled through the gate, as did a few stragglers.  We kept a few of the goblins alive in order to force them into taking us through with them, which works.

We’re on the other side!  But most of us who had made the agreement with the glowing icon between games last time have a sense of where we need to go now in order to go find and release the mysterious benefactor.

Great game as always.  It’s fun sometimes to be effective.

Game 5 (10/08/2011)

GMVictims:

Red (Mark)
Reeper (Joe)
Torm (Paul)
Sneaky Jeb (Darren)
Grendel (Alan)
MurDohr (Jeff)
Kip (Robert)

Having escaped the weird goblin dimension those of us who made the deal with the glowing thingie in our dreams now must go complete our mission. Sneaky Jeb instinctively senses the direction and we head off.

We encounter a band of traveling goblins who, in true inhumanoid fashion, we proceed to kill for the crime of not giving us all their stuff.

Our fliers (Kip, MurDorh, and Grendel) are the advance team, scoping out our path.  They spy an ambush, which we trigger by having MurDohr set some silent images out there in the trap area, causing the bad guys (trolls) to unleash an avalanche onto them.  When they come down we go after them.  Torm does some cleaving, Sneaky Jeb does some stabby stabby (I will now pause to mention that I critical backstabbed my enemy twice and took him out, which is a first), Red worked them with his fists like working a speed bag, and there are a few spells unleashed from the assemblage.

When we finally reach our destination, we find our way down a ga—er, I mean cave, to a crossroads of sorts.  It’s a natural cavern with 6 other exits, and a bunch of statues, one at each.  Sneaky Jeb disables their jaws (a trap meant to spring and take out the hand of anyone reaching inside to get the gems stored therein) and we do our investigation of each tunnel.

In one, a Lurker Above (©TSR 1919) drops on Torm and Sneaky Jeb.  Fortunately, as people beat on it and realize they are doing damage to the guys underneath too, Reeper pulls out a Kill Monster spell and, well, kills the monster.  That was going to be an ugly end for Jeb, though Torm could probably hang on a while.

In another, we find a long, long cave filled with bats.  Thousands of bats.  Multiple, probably 8 or more, swarms.  The slightest f-up will send them raining down on us so we go quiet with a silence spell.  We make our save vs nausea for walking through bat guano, and get to the end of the line which seems to be a series of holes from which project some enormous moray eels.  Torm kills one but this could take all day and he’s going to take all the damage because no one else wants to get in front of the holes (especially Jeb, who is the only one small enough to be dragged in if he gets snagged).  I can’t recall what was at the end, but it wasn’t important.

A third cave featured a statue that animated and attacked.  It was kicking our butts, primarily because it didn’t take damage from most of us, couldn’t be backstabbed, and eventually had to destroyed by use of many, many, many flame strikes and axe hits.  Red goes down courtesy of its nasty, only-healable-by-remove-curse+magic-healing blows, but survives.

Another tunnel had some form of stirge, which got smacked around pretty good.

Another cave featured some bats that Kip (in bat form) tried to reason with, to no avail.  They just wanted to eat people.  So we killed them with use of Reeper’s confusion spell (which had them hilariously fighting one another), Torm’s leap-in-the-air piñata-style attacks, and lots of ranged weapon firing.

Another tunnel featured a black pudding, which every blow managed to separate into more parts.  When there were too many parts in the way, all of them able to dissolve objects, we fled… in 3 different directions.  Finally the creature decided to return to its hangout and reassemble.  During the running around part though it was discovered by Grendel that one way to damage it is to keep dividing it until it reaches a point where it can’t divide any further. 

The team reassembles and continues searching.  About now Mark had to go, I had to go, and Joe was close to going.  That means that Torm, Kip, Grendel, and MurDohr were left to figure out where the glowy thing is.  There was some discussion of it being at a river.

(Everything below this line was contributed by Joe!)

To catch everyone up with the last hour, we cast water walk and check out the river. We find another cave and head on in.  We see a creature that has three heads...a bull, a dragon, and some other thingy. Torm walks in an introduces himself as the destroyer of worlds. The dragon head smirks and talks to us in a voice that can only mean she's WAY more powerful than we are. Basically, she finds us cute and amusing, which is why she hasn't munched us yet.

Grendel and Murder talk to her for a while. Torm is surprisingly quiet. Reeper gets annoyed. Apparently, he confirms that she is giving us two options. Become a lunchable. Or give her our treasure, stay with her until we die, and then become a luncheable once she's bored. Not liking those options, Reeper chooses option three and starts casting. Now, he didn't do anything at all useful. In fact, he went invisible. However, it started a chain reaction. Everyone scatters. The Dragon/Bull/Thingy creature flies down and breathes on Torm, Reeper and Kip. We had to make a Con save (which Reeper was very lucky to make). We all did, which Jim later told us would have turned us to stone.

Murder wisely decides we're screwed and whips out a Force Cage scroll. Turns out it's to high level for him, but he's able to roll well enough to cast it. Then, he rolls well enough to surpass her MR.  Low and behold, he cages her. She's not happy. However, Murder explains that the cage will eventually go away, and she'll be free. If she's good and lets us go, we leave instead of attacking. Either she was suitably impressed by the force cage or afraid of getting poked from behind by Torm who was sneaking her way so she decides to play nice.

Meanwhile, our druid, Kip, makes his one Knowledge Nature roll this game and figures out that there a bunch of rocks that are not naturally assembled. Torm plays Starving Student and hauls them away disclosing stairs down. That's were we ended knowing we have about 22 hours to go explore, find the Shiny Shiny, and get the hell back out of here before the cage goes down, we're turned to stone, and then eaten.

 

Game 6 (10/22/2011)

Rocks in a Hard Place:
Grendel
Torm
Kip
Murdor (early)
Sneaky Jeb (late)

I don’t know what happened to start this one out.

When I came in to play, a map was being drawn and we were arriving at a cave filled with snot. A skeleton sent into the room to scout things was promptly dissolved by the acidic ooze, which then turned and came after us. Cowardice was promptly opted for, except for Grendel who wanted to see further into the cave and so he flew past the thing.

Aside from the fact that it dissolved stuff (and we didn’t want our stuff dissolved), it also absorbed spell magic, so spells were pretty useless, AND when Grendel flew by it tried to absorb some of his magic. Same on the return flight.

When we retreat, Torm called for Grendel to come back, then he had Kip call for his return. Kip did so in the loudest possible way, which got the attention of the entire dungeon, or more specifically, a huge snake the width of the entire tunnel. It cornered Murdor, Sneaky Jeb, Torm, and Kip in a dead end tunnel. Murdor used a fog spell to slow it down, then a slow spell, which bought us opportunities to attack and retreat. Sneaky Jeb fired arrows at it and took some long unused ingested poison and hurled it into its mouth. Torm would smack it with his axe then back up, again and again. Kip tried to use summoned creatures to slow it down. Meanwhile on the other side of the snake, Grendel has arrived and discovers that the back end of it is a snake head also. He fires some sling shots at it.

We manage to stay alive long enough for the swallowed poison to finally kick in, killing its CON and thus its HP.

We ignore the ooze and look elsewhere. There are obsidian statues in one room. You know how we love statues.

In another room there are mushrooms. Our presence causes them to begin to emit a high pitched scream. This alerts some large insects to come down and attack. We actually do pretty well against the insects, between the backstabs and the cleaves, but the real problem comes with the destruction of one of the mushrooms, which shoots spoors that catch Sneaky “+4 Fortitude save” Jeb, taking out most of his STR. Everything gets defeated and we make it through to not much gain. Eventually Kip restores his STR.

Another room features a large number of holes. It takes very little to cause a large lizard to come popping out. It grabs Torm and Grendel charms it but can’t communicate with it, so it just seems to hang around with Torm in its mouth. Sneaky Jeb goes into a hole and finds very little. Most of the group advances beyond the lizard except that eventually an attack on the lizard breaks the charm and it resumes trying to eat folks. Torm breaks loose and rolls away. It tries to eat birdy man. Eventually it takes so much damage that it flees.

In the final encounter of the night, we find a room littered with statues both whole and broken. We think of the litany of creatures that turn things to stone but none of us know of the one that shows up. It’s a black shadowy figure who breaths a petrifying breath. On the very first breath he takes out Grendel and Kip. With only half the group left, Torm starts to beat on it, Jeb stabs it (but no backstab bonus, so that’s slow going). It looks at the two of us and for some reason opts to breath on Sneaky Jeb, who again has very little Fortitude, rather than, say… the guy who is doing massive damage to him. This time Jeb fails the save and Torm has to finish of the foe solo.

And that’s where the session ended early, 8:30ish, because we were likely going to need someone from our group who can restore folks from this stony state. Else it’s Torm + 3 New Monsters continuing.

 

Game 7 (11/19/11)

Torm, Murdor, Red, and the statues of Sneaky Jeb, Grendel, and Kip

 

Red and Murdor show up and Torm tells them about our stoning.  They wait overnight and Murdor casts a spell to de-stone us.

 

The searching of the caverns continues.  We are managing to find everything EXCEPT for what we came for (The golden glowy thing for whom some of us are questing).

 

A combat heavy session for which I will undoubtedly lack the details and attribute kills to the wrong people, but here goes anyway.

 

Encounters include:

And now for our vampire.

 

When we finally get to the “center hex”, we meet a lovely young lady who would like us to kill one another.  She begins by ordering Torm to come be her slave.  He declines because her spell is broken (By Murdor, I think).  The room is spherical, which would be quite a hindrance to anyone who isn’t able to run on such surfaces or fly.  Sneaky Jeb has the tools to run up the walls thanks to the golden god (nice foresight glowy!) runs up to the ceiling to try and remove the glowing golden lantern in the room from its anchoring.  Turns out this is a good choice and we can tell because she decides to try and intimidate him out of it.

 

There’s lots of running up walls, morphing into other creatures, casting fly spells on Torm, and trying to hit her impossibly high AC.  Some of that AC is taken down by well-placed Dispels!  Some of her luster goes away.  Jeb does little bits of damage (since you can’t backstab a dead chick), and flying Torm does some axing—and successful saving against her Dominate ability.  What he has trouble with however is her ability to tear away at his soul, draining levels from him, and one from Red.

 

At the fight’s climax, Sneaky Jeb is at the very top of the chain trying to unlock it from its anchor; Kip is in anklyosaur form and clinging to the chain and flailing his tale around hoping to rip the lantern down, with two air elementals he summoned helping him, Torm flying around trying to hit the vampire at the same height, the Vampire, on the chain attacking Torm, and Red up there doing something too (probably swinging at the vamp), while down below the Troll is staring up and hoping to get to either catch one of us or strike the enemy.

 

I can’t remember if the chain snapped first or if the vamp got damaged enough first.  I think she got damaged enough to go gaseous and reform below.  However, she then flowed into somewhere below the sarcophagus, probably a secret chamber.  The group gets a unified effort together and pushes the stone aside and she is re-formed there.  We do some more killage and this time she doesn’t reform—as near as we can tell.

 

The golden god in the heads of those who agreed to complete the task says thank you and gives them an additional ability.

 

I had to leave so I’m not sure what happened next.

 

Game 8 (02/11/12)

Torm, Grendel, Reaper, Murdor, Kip, Sneaky Jeb

So we’re back in our own world and we have a sense as to what direction we need to go with our lantern in order to find and free the golden god.  The DM indicates that this leg of the campaign either ends here or in a few more games based on what we do.

We fly over a bunch of campaign thanks to a wind walk spell from Reaper.  There’s some delay caused by Torm’s directional problems.  The guy who can navigate a maze at will can’t seem to agree with us on the direction we need to go.  Regardless, we arrive at our destination and two of us with good perception rolls determine that there’s more here than what most folks are seeing.  There is a small army atop the mountain that we need to enter and there’s a cave nearby.  A cursory exploration of the cave by Sneaky Jeb reveals big dragon-like claw marks.  The army up top are composed of orcs, trolls, and giants armed with boulders.

Naturally we enjoy a good frontal assault, but we try to be cagey given that there are so many and that there’s a GONG near them which can possibly bring backup.

Sneaky Jeb discovers there’s an entire tribe of orcs inside the mountain.  But by the time he returns to the group, they’ve enacted a plan.  Grendel is flying into their camp fleeing from two (illusionary) creatures, pleading for help.  The orcs scare off the illusions and are considering turning Grendel into pincushion of arrows when he convinces them not to.  They seem to think he’s part of an Aaracockra tribe in the area (which we were not aware of).  They allow him inside and he entertains them.  Grendel said to give him 3 days to infiltrate them, cause distress between the races (Racewar!) and maybe they’ll take each other out.  He sings many songs about Orcs kicking troll @$$.  He is promptly asked to come below and meet the master of the facility.

Seems the guy who runs the place has been waiting for Grendel/Us.  He is in search of a golden lantern and wants to know where it is.  He bears the religious emblem of a dead/forgotten god.  Turns out this is the god of magic (not Boccob) who was imprisoned by the others because of his desire to destroy the multiverse.  So this begs the question:  Are we really freeing Boccob or are we freeing this guy who will destroy the world?

Grendel convinces the guy that he can go get the lantern and bring it back, whereupon the guy puts a Geas on him that makes it so that he has to do so within 3 days or he starts to wither away.

Grendel arrives, tells us what’s going on, and after Reaper phones his god and discovers that Boccob is not the god we are freeing, Grendel decides to fly off and implores us to move on.

We waste lots of time in discussion about things like what to do with the lantern, is there a way to destroy it, can we use its spells to do things like free Grendel from the geas, etc.  The second that the gem of seeing is sacrificed to the lantern to power it up (the lantern runs on expensive gems) the bad guys come right at us.  Grendel, who has gone off to spy on the evil base sees their boss riding out to meet us riding his evil black dragon.  He cries a warning that we hear, but we’re pretty much bottled up.

A massive elemental shows up and blocks us in with his burning and smashing.  Torm does some damage to the elemental, the rest of us try to find clever ways to take it down, and Grendel tries to unseat the villain from his dragon while a thousand feet up.  He fails and is batted down.  He’s lucky enough to land softly but he’s out of the fight.  Kip, in bat form, tries to nibble the saddle through and thus complete the work on the bad guy.  The elemental is instructed to bring the lantern, which it promptly rips from our hands and brought out.  For some reason he jumps and falls to his death on a thousand feet below (in the laaaaaand of the looooost).  The dragon rider goes down after it, the rest of us grab on to Torm (who is now flying) and head down, Murdor flies down on his own.

There’s a fight on the ground.  Kip gnaws through the saddle and thus the rider will have trouble getting away.  The dragon has taken enough injury that it flies up into the air and vanishes in a poof of black smoke.  Torm assaults from one side, Sneaky Jeb from the other, and the bad guy goes down.  He might have had a pouch with something in it, but if he did only Sneaky Jeb saw it.  The confirmed found stuff is divvied up (Half Plate total bonus +9, Shield of missile deflection, a rod of metamagic silent-spell, a dagger of acid and a dagger of wounding).

Reaper’s god is pleased that he did not fall for the whacky hijinks of world-destroyer-god.

EVERYONE IS TWELFTH LEVEL.  Yes, you have read that correctly.  Jim has bumped everyone, regardless of their currently level, up to 12th.  So it might behoove you to send him an updated character sheet for his records.