Tuesday, August 30, 2011

The Aldelle Group – Session 41 – R-and-R in the Forest of Angry Elves

Session 41 happened Tuesday, August 16, 2011.

This campaign used the Dyson’s Delve dungeon pages on A Character for Every Game as a starting point, but has now moved on to new material from the DM-in-training.  I heartily recommend Dyson's Delve as a beginning adventure.

Adventuring Group:
Tre-ba Bel a sheer (female elf alchemist)
Wednesday (female elf rogue)
Frankie Hu, Master of the Distracting Fist (male dwarf monk)
Harkaitz of the Red Soul (male human cleric of Ra)

NPCs:
Aziz of the Light (male human paladin, cohort of Harkaitz)
Sarisvati the Suntouched (female Ifrit oracle, cohort of Aziz)
Midnight (female half-elf witch, cohort of Frankie Hu)
Gil Gamesh (male uffik artificer*, cohort of Midnight)
Short John Copper (male halfling expert, hireling)
Brand and Zephir (mated pair of pseudo-dragons tagging along for the fun of it)
The Red Keffiyehs (human warriors, followers of Harkaitz)


Evening, July 2, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, who watches over us from on high.

The next ten days are going to be busy.  I spent the afternoon today selling off the treasure we acquired since we last left Ttaeladra and then paid out shares.  Midnight and I then went and purchased the necessary materials for her to craft an item for me.  That item will take ten days to craft, which sets the limit of time we will stay here before continuing our quest.

Tonight we will have a good meal as a group and then spend our visit here separately.


Evening, July 3, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, who lights our path.

This morning Wednesday requested I forge a ring of maniacal devices for her.  We started work on it today and it will keep the two of us occupied over the next three days working on it.  This may be for the best, if what Tre-ba says is true about Wednesday's last extended stay in Ttaeladra.


Evening, July 6, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, who illuminates the workings of the world.

The ring is forged.

Tre-ba is eating with us this evening.  She has been searching out spell formulae to purchase to improve her selection of elixirs and potions.  Tomorrow I will be hosting a feast with the Red Shirts and the Red Keffiyehs, thanking both groups for their staunch support of our work and introducing the groups to each other.


Morning, July 8, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, whose morning light shows us the world anew.

The feast was a great success, with everyone trading stories and getting along greatly.  In fact, it was such a good party, it did not end until just an hour ago.  Time for me to sleep.


Evening, July 11, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, in whom we trust.

Tomorrow is likely our last day here, so we met to discuss and plan where we would go next.  We have several options: the gate in the Ridgeback Mountain, the gate in the Uskar Desert, and the lights on the edge of the swamp.  After some discussion, we decided that the Mountain Gate is probably the highest priority now and should be our next target.

It was also decided that we would stay in Ttaeladra one extra day to celebrate my day of birth.  I had not thought to make a large issue of it, but Tre-ba insists.  She said she would plan a "proper birthday" for me.  I am somewhat…dubious about what that means.


Noon, July 14, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, who has seen me through another year of life.

Today is my day of birth and the day we leave Ttaeladra.  The celebration Tre-ba threw yesterday grew quite raucous near the end.  I find that my memories about the later part of the evening are a bit fuzzy and I awoke with a young elven woman (Velaasiel is her name) in my bed with me.  Well, young for an elven woman – she is probably four to five times older than I am.

Suffice to say it was a good party and a pleasant morning.  At least for Velaasiel and I.


Evening, July 16, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, who gives our enemies no place to hide.

It took us two days to get to the edge of the forest and today we were skirting the edge of an arm of the forest before making directly for the Ridgeback Mountains when we espied a nabasu fly out of the trees and attack us.  It stayed airborne for the entire flight, but that availed it not.  I struck it with several spells and it cast enervation upon me as a result.  The effects are most unsettling and I nearly fell to my knees as a result.

Sarisvati called upon the mysteries she is privy to and sprouted wings of flame.  She flew up to engage it, attempting to lodge a tanglefoot bag in its wings.  While she never grounded it, she did hit it and slowed it down.  Gil provided Aziz with flying (and some other effects) and Aziz took the battle to the sky.  Near the end of the fight, the nabasu cast hold person, which caught Aziz – until Sarisvati immediately followed up with remove paralysis.  Aziz returned the favor on the nabasu by striking it three times in quick succession, killing it.

We have moved off and camped.  We are uncertain if the nabasu was another courier (it was carrying a messenger ioun stone) or specifically hunting us.  Once we crack the seal on the message in the ioun stone we may find out.

Short John is cooking a meal that seems to be a mix of dishes he learned from the elves and the lizardfolk.  He has been worth every copper piece we pay him and is a pleasant traveling companion besides.


Evening, July 17, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, whose light shines upon all the world.

Today was quiet.  We've entered Kurnmorn Valley, the traditional entry point to the dwarven territories in the Ridgeback Mountains.  We are at a camp site at the back of the valley, a place caravans regularly stop.  Tomorrow we will climb up into the mountains, heading to the dwarven city of Orzimar and should reach it by the end of the day.

*End of Session*

[* Uffik are a race from a third-party supplement.  Imagine Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street and you are envisioning an uffik.  Artificers are also from a third-party supplement.  They are arcane magic workers that build devices that contain magic effects, but it takes time and effort to switch effects.  Gil himself is from this campaign's antecedent campaign and has been reintroduced here.  He was picked up in Ttaeladra and it took a bit before Harkaitz was certain Gil was not some sort of familiar of Midnight's.]

[This is also the last regular game with all the players.  Wednesday's player is going away to college for her bachelor's degree (she just finished her associate's at a local community college).  She will be far enough away that she can only make it down on weekends to play, but I and my wife cannot make weekend games due to full schedules.  To keep things going and all the players playing, our DM has decided to run two games, both in the same world at the same time.  The party will split into two groups, one group going after the Mountain Gate and the other going after the Uskar gate.  More on that at the end of the next adventure log.]

5 comments:

  1. Is it just that this is coming from Harkaitz' point of view, or does Aziz really do most of the fighting?

    I didn't see Frankie get into this fight, and I would have thought a Fly spell would have let him get in on the fight.

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  2. There are a couple of factors involved here. The largest is that I'm going off my notes, which are a bit sketchy about fight particulars, so my memory supplements what I didn't write down and I remember best what my characters did. I try to put in when the other characters do cool things as much as I can, but if I forget, it's my fault.

    Second, when Aziz gets at a foe he has declared a smite evil on, Aziz does a lot of damage, especially against evil outsiders. When he gets a full attack routine with haste on, he deals a ton of damage. He is also very slow as I suck when rolling initiative. Therefor, all the other players pile on damage and Aziz follows up with the kill. Without the other characters (or with a reversed initiative order), Aziz would not shine as well. As we say at the table "every point of damage counts, even one point".

    Frankie could have flown if Gil had given Frankie the fly spell, but he gave it to Aziz. As Gil and Frankie are run by the same character, this was really up to him. I think his thinking was that Aziz could do lots of damage and override and DR, whereas Frankie's special attacks would just barely make it past the DR. Plus, Aziz is a hit point sink.

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  3. As a person running a Rogue/Shadowdancer, I've got to say I fully appreciate those big chunks of meat that go out and take all the damage while I go all stabbity from the back. I wouldn't want to be a tank, but I certainly do appreciate them! :-)

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  4. I normally play a rogue or gadgeteer character, as that is where my heart is, but when this campaign started, we only had three players and the other two players already had a monk and a rogue done up. We needed healing, some tanking, and some spell lobbing and a cleric of Ra with Fire and Light domains in the Pathfinder RPG fit the bill. It also gave me enough different things to do so I had options. As we added players, we added characters specifically designed to fill in gaps in our lineup and I stepped back into support for them. It has been fun playing different characters than I'm used to and gets me out of some ruts as a player.

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  5. [I should really edit my posts before hitting "Post Comment". It would keep me from hitting delete three times as I notice typos. Sigh.]

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