Friday, December 3, 2010

Dyson’s Delve – Session 3 – In Which the Party Is Named

This session happened Wednesday, December 1, 2010. This campaign uses the Dyson’s Delve dungeon pages on A Character for Every Game. We are using the Pathfinder RPG, so some adjustments were made (or so I’ve been told).

Adventuring Group:
Harkaitz of the Red Soul, Cleric of Ra (male human cleric, Fire and Sun domains)
Wednesday (female elf rogue)
Sahar (female human fighter)
Luna (female elf sorcerer, draconic bloodline)
“Electric” Frankie Hu (male dwarf monk)

SPOILER ALERT: If You Might Play Through Dyson's Delve, Stop Reading

Going through the spoils of their last run through Dyson’s Delve, the adventurers were joined by Luna, and elven sorceress with a knack for identifying magic items and an interest in adventuring. Realizing an actual arcane caster would be useful and was needed, she was readily accepted into the adventuring band. After selling off goblin gear and trading the gold scrapped from the zombie sarcophagus for two potions of cure moderate wounds, the adventurers set off from Aldelle to the dungeon.

At the cave entrance to the dungeon, the adventurers found a small sign, written in goblin. It stated, “Super rat not allowed – Go Away.” This nonplussed the adventurers, who realized that Frankie’s “Super rat was here” graffiti in the goblin bar had been taken seriously. There was talk about defacing the sign, but Harkaitz advocated waiting until the group was leaving to avoid tipping off any goblin patrols to the group’s presence.

The adventurers made their way through the caves to the finished hallways in the back (stopping only momentarily to kill some fire beetles on the way) and found two goblin guards at the back stairs down, deep in an argument as to whether or not “Super Rat” really existed. Frankie instigated a fight with the battle cry “Super Rat is here!” Luckily, the short fight drew no goblin patrols.

Heading down the stairs, the adventurers discovered that the goblin bar was now closed and Frankie’s graffiti marred. He updated it by adding “Super rat is angry!” and then the group moved on. At a T-intersection, the group found a room to the left blocked off and likely containing fire beetles. The group decided to leave that room alone and try the right passage, stumbling upon a goblin watchpost with four goblins. This fight was tense as the goblins started out flanking Wednesday (who had been in the lead), but Luna’s magic missiles and Sahar’s swordwork turned the tide. Frankie wrote “Four more for Super Rat” on the walls to taunt the goblins further.

Following a winding hallway at another T-intersection, the adventurers found a large room with pillars and stairs down to the next level of the dungeon. The pillars were carved to have bone-looking spikes sticking out of them and on the spikes were several goblin skeletons. This was puzzling to the adventurers who could make nothing of it.

Retracing their path and taking a different hallway, the adventurers found a locked door, with the locking mechanism on this side of the door. After Wednesday unlocked the door, Sahar and Harkaitz stepped up to face whatever was on the other side. Sahar kicked the door open and received a Molotov cocktail to the face for her troubles. The burning oil splashed onto Harkaitz as well, lighting both adventurers ablaze! Inside the room was an old goblin barricaded behind a turned over desk with a torch and a ready supply of oil flasks. Sahar and Harkaitz pushed forward to kill the goblin, Sahar doing so with a critical blow (after Harkaitz rolled near minimal with his burning hands spell, again). Sahar quickly put out the fire on her, but Harkaitz needed help from Wednesday and Frankie. Harkaitz then channeled the positive energy of Ra to heal both Sahar and himself of their wounds (and avoid any scarring from the burns). The only things of note in the room were the four remaining flasks of oil, which Harkaitz took and placed in a belt pouch. These would turn out to be critical later. Frankie took the time to write “Now Super Rat has fire” on the wall.

Following a different hallway, the adventurers found another barracks, this time with four goblins and two hobgoblins. After a tough fight, the adventurers finally killed their opponents and happily found that only Sahar was hurt. Harkaitz healed her back to full health before the group pushed on.

The next hallway ended in two doors. Sahar kicked open the door and the party discovered four grizzled hobgoblins – the hobgoblin leader and three bodyguards. At first the adventurers were confident, having bottlenecked the fight so only one hobgoblin could reach Sahar at a time and the adventurers could used ranged attacks (notably Luna’s magic missiles) against the other hobgoblins.

Then the second door opened and two more hobgoblins appeared directly next to Sahar!

The adventurers staged a fighting retreat back to the barracks while the hobgoblins fired arrows into them. At one point the hobgoblin leader berated his troops by shouting out “You fools! Kill them!” to which Frankie quickly replied, “We’re trying!” When the adventurers were finally out of the hallway, Harkaitz told Frankie and Wednesday that the oil flasks were in his belt pouch and then threw one of the flasks into the mass of hobgoblins in the hallway. Wednesday followed suit, lightly pulling one of the flasks from Harkaitz’s belt pouch and dowsing the rest of the hobgoblins in oil. After taking a nearly fatal arrow from the hobgoblin archer [a critical hit for heavy damage], Harkaitz realized he could no longer wait for Frankie to throw more oil and he launched a flame bolt spell at the hobgoblin archer, incinerating the creature [with a near maximum damage critical hit] and lighting all the rest of the hobgoblins aflame [again doing near maximum damage].

The hobgoblins were able to put themselves out quickly and surged into the barracks, attempting to slay Harkaitz. While nearly successful, this push into the room allowed ALL of the adventures to attack and the hobgoblins, greatly weakened by the fire damage, went down quickly to the assault. One of the last hobgoblins to be defeated was the hobgoblin leader, who Frankie subdued, rather than kill. Frankie tied up the hobgoblin while Harkaitz used one of the cure moderate wounds potions to heal himself and a cure light wounds potion to heal Sahar. [Harkaitz was out of 1st level spells at this point and down to a single use of channel positive energy.]

After waiting for the burning oil to expend itself, the adventurers took a quick survey of the two rooms the hobgoblins had been occupying. They found some gear and maps of Aldelle, marked to show defensive weaknesses and planned routes of attacks. The adventurers scooped up the map and decided it was time to get back to town with what the map and the hobgoblin leader.

On the way out, the fire beetle room was dealt with (the last two bottles of oil and another fire bolt spell killed all seven fire beetles) and a final patrol goblin was captured (he saw the adventurers had his boss tied up and he just gave up). On the way out of the dungeon, Harkaitz stopped at the cave mouth and burned the goblin-made sign, indicating what “Super Rat” thought of the goblin warnings. The adventurers then returned to Aldelle and turned their captives and the map over to the sheriff.

*End of Session*

[As a side note, the adventurers made 3rd level at the end of this session, using the Rapid Progress column of the Pathfinder Experience Table. And yes, it does appear that the adventuring group has been named "Super Rat".  Or at least that is how our enemies know us.]

3 comments:

  1. Love the super rat antics. Particularly reminded of Die Hard with the Super Rat has Fire one.

    I laughed repeatedly reading it. Awesome.

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  2. Super Rat was the idea of Frankie's player, sparked by an overheard discussion between two goblins as to what had killed the others. He has added to the Super Rat legend since then. About half way through this session we realized that our adventuring group was now known as Super Rat, a moniker that is likely to stick.

    The message "Now Super Rat has fire" did include the words "Ho, ho, ho" when originally discussed. :)

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