Dyson’s Delve – Session 8 – A Marked Room

This session happened Wednesday, January 5, 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 (male human cleric of Ra)
Wednesday (female elf rogue)
Sahar (female human fighter)
Luna (female elf sorcerer)
Frankie Hu, Master of the Distracting Fist (male dwarf monk)

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

Rather than risk losing another prisoner through the sheriff, Super Rat held onto their wizard prisoner until they could question him.  Harkaitz and Frankie handled the questioning, playing “good cop/bad cop”, respectively, but part way through the questioning, Harkaitz seemed to have forgotten that he was supposed to be the nice guy.  The group learned that the three wizards were members of the Temple of Fire, a group that worships the power of the elements or possibly elementals.  (Maybe even elder elementals...)  Tim was once one of their number but was expelled from the group for reasons that were not made clear.  Tim had contacted the Temple for assistance and it was viewed as Tim making amends, so Peter, Richard, and the third wizard [his name was never given, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was John Thomas] were dispatched to assist Tim and find out what he was up to.  The map the had was discovered in the “Dungeon’s Junk Drawer”.

The three amulets the wizards were searching for apparently work with something Tim has to open a portal to…someplace.  Tim was offering everything on the other side of the portal to the Temple – except for the one item he is claiming for himself.  The guys in platemail were Tim’s servants, assigned to keep the three wizards from leaving before the job was done.  Most of this story did not add up, but the adventurers decided that whatever that one item Tim wanted should under no circumstances fall into Tim’s hands.

The group then turned Peter over to the sheriff with the warning that he was a wizard in the service of Tim and should not be trusted.  The adventurers then unloaded more of their loot onto the village trader for coin while Luna identified the gold crown as providing a magical boost to intelligence [+2].  After some discussion, it was given to Wednesday as she seemed best able to use it to the group’s advantage.

The group then returned to the Delve, quickly making their way back down to the sixth level, where they had battled the three wizards.  Planning to do a simple sweep of the last two rooms to verify the map, Super rat ran into a group of four were-rats.  [Side note: one of the players had no idea what “were-rat” meant and it had to be explained.  She was suitably creeped out.]  Due to having the map, Sahar and Luna were able to run around and flank the were-rats.  Both Harkaitz and Luna cast burning hands during the fight, each with a different player character in the area of effect (Frankie and Sahar, respectively).  Harkaitz had done this before with Frankie with Frankie easily was able to evade the flames, but not this time and he took full damage.  Sahar was able to side-step most of Luna’s attack, but still got burned enough that Harkaitz had to run around to that flank and cast cure moderate wounds on her to keep her in the fight until the were-rats were defeated.  Afterwards, Harkaitz healed everyone back to full health with a couple channelings of Ra’s positive energies.  [Who is the one god?/Who is the sun god?/ Ra. Ra! RA!]

Having cleared as much of this level as they could, the group started descending the spiral stairs down to the next level of the Delve.  Part way down, they heard a group chatting as they came up!  Super rat quickly (and quietly) retreated back up to the top of the stairs.  When the group climbing the stairs got near, Harkaitz called out, “What’s the password?”  The group below answered, “Nexus,” and Harkaitz called for them to proceed.  The guard patrol arrived at the top of the stairs to find the adventurers standing about the room nonchalantly.  They gave the group some quizzical looks but seemed to accept them at face value as other guards and moved on.  Super Rat waited until they were out of hearing range and then quickly descended the stairs.

The last 40 ft of stairs were open, descending from the center ceiling of a large, octagonal room.  Four of the walls have large elemental symbols on them, one each for earth, air, fire, and water.  There were also several priestly types going about their business and largely ignoring the player characters, who were doing their best to look like they belonged there.  Apparently, with the previous guard patrol having just gone up the stairs. the priests assumed that the player characters DID belong there and never gave them a second look.  The player characters for their part marched confidently across the room and exited a passage between the symbols for fire and earth.  Turning left, they entered a shrine to fire (consisting of innumerable candles burning plus many fire beetles roaming freely) and finally out of sight of the priests.  Looking around the room, Wednesday’s sharp eyes spotted a door buried under a layer of wax from candles past.  With no other passage except back to where the priests were (and wanting to avoid their suspicions by reappearing so soon) the group decided to try the wax covered door.  Harkaitz used produce flame [2nd level granted spell from the fire domain] to discretely melt the wax only at the edges of the door.  Once freed of the wax binding, the door opened freely and the group entered a very dusty passage containing stairs up to the isolated portion of Level 6.

Following the map they had taken from the wizards, the adventurers passed an abandoned guard post and slipped through a series of rooms and corridors to the secret door hiding the marked room.  Inside the marked room were two coffers.  The first coffer contained 400 gold coins, while the second contained two scrolls.  One of the scrolls had the spell formulae for continual flame on it.  The other resisted both Luna and Harkaitz’s attempts at deciphering it [bad spellcraft roll].  Shrugging and planning to re-evaluate it once they were back in Aldelle, all of the loot went into the haversack.

On the way back out from the marked room, the group checked an adjacent room they had previously ignored and were attacked by five animated statues.  Barely able to damage the stone the statues were made of, Super Rat fought a retreat back to the main corridor, closing and spiking the final door to seal off the statues.  Luckily for Super Rat, the statues did not seem to be programmed to follow past that door.  The adventurers had taken a pounding from the statues and not destroyed a single one.  Battered, bruised, and starting to run short on healing, the group made their way back down through the temple and then up to the surface, their luck holding out enough so that they were unchallenged the entire way.

*End of Session*

[I have a new found respect for animated objects now, particularly ones made of stone.  We had nothing able to bypass their hardness and they took half damage from our energy attack before the hardness was applied, negating our strongest attacks.  We will not be returning to that part of the dungeon anytime soon, I guarantee you.]