Tuesday, January 15, 2019

Session Report – Barrowmaze – Session 33

[The Revengers spring an obvious trap.  Rocks fall – Hrglclxin dies (plus 2 NPCs)!]

[Also?  SPOILERS!  This series will spoil what’s in Barrowmaze, so take that into consideration before reading.]

PCs (The Revengers)
Godric – male Dwarven Craft-Rector (6th level Craftpriest)
Daphne – female human Blade-Adept (7th level Bladedancer)
Boris the Fighter – male human Champion (7th level Fighter)
Adam the Hesitant – male human Enchanter (6th level Mage)
Hrglclxin [pronounced her-gull-klack sin] – male human Tracker (6th level Explorer)

NPCs
Dergos – male human guide, still sold on the glory of adventuring, hired by Boris
‘Len – professional torchbearer, full name is Morgullen, but he never uses it, hired by Boris
Nolig – male human porter, hired by Hrglclxin
Proximo – male human Rogue, Godric’s henchman
Verya [pronounced Vir-uh] – female human Hero (4th level Fighter), hired for 1/3 share of any treasure
Vorgand – female human porter, a university student earning coin, hired by Daphne
Dhekeon – a revenant seeking redemption
Sir Pelinore – male human Paladin, bound to serve the Revengers for 1 year
Scorpie – charmed giant scorpion following Daphne


Hernesday, August 27th, 1st year of the reign of King Vladik the Gamesman
While the rest of the Revengers were retrieving the library from Barrowmaze, Daphne stayed in Helix, taking a turn at the first aid station for the Grand Party [drunk partiers still do dumb things, even after three weeks of partying].  She also cast Divination to see if the Mongrelmen leaders were still alive.  The response she received was, “Yes, but soon.  Sooon.”  [This is a bit of retcon, but it is reasonable that she would do this and I’d actually been waiting for it, so I allowed it.]

Magusday, August 28th, 1st year of the reign of King Vladik the Gamesman
With a sense of urgency as Adventuring Season neared its traditional end [September 1st, but really until the first heavy rains arrive and make the moors to muddy to travel through], the Revengers formed up at the Mercenary Guild building with their usual crew of hirelings and followers.  The group headed south into the moors.  Along the way to Barrowmaze, another [or possibly the same] empire of owlbears started following the group.  After some time, the Revengers were able to lose the owlbears and arrived at the field of barrows a little after Noon.  [The players failed their initial evade check, but the owlbears failed their pursuit check.]

The Revengers made their way to The Pit [Barrow 47] and climbed down to the dungeon itself.  They went west, down the corridor, and then turned right at the first intersection.  When they reached the complicated T-intersection, they took the left jog in order to continue north.

Part way down this corridor, they came upon a side hallway, 20 ft. wide with a ceiling the rapidly rose to 40-feet high.  At the end of the hallway was an immense set of wooden double doors.  Intrigued, the Revengers decided to investigate.

Boris pushed open the immense double doors.  Beyond was a 40-foot tall very large chamber, its ceiling supported by numerous pillars carved into the shape of armed warriors.  Spread between the pillars were numerous unopened sarcophagi.  In the center of the room was a giant bronze statue of Nergal [Room 256].

Now the Revengers knew a trap when they saw one, but the lure of treasure was strong.  Boris stepped into the room carefully.  When none of the pillars nor the statue animated, he carefully sidled up to the nearest sarcophagi to investigate it.  The rest of the group stayed back at the doorway, where they could see Boris, but were not actually in the room.  Boris opened the sarcophagus by pushing its lid off, which triggered the double doors to the room slamming shut in the faces of the rest of the Revengers.  Then the bronze statue of Nergal animated…

Outside the room, the Revengers first tried to push the doors back open, but the doors were held shut by magic.  They then attacked one of the doors, hacking away at a section where the two doors met, desperate to get past the doors and help Boris.  [During this effort, Proximo accidentally hit Daphne.  She mostly shrugged it off, which kept Scorpie from attacking Proximo to defend its friend.]  It took nearly 30 seconds before they were able to hack away enough door that they could start sidling through, one at a time.

Meanwhile, inside the room, Boris learned a few valuable lessons.  First was that the bronze statue could hit hard.  Very hard.  [Its first attack was a natural 20 on the die, doing max damage per house rules, for 30 points of damage or slightly more than half Boris’ hit points.]  Second, attacking the statue with an edged weapon, like his sword, caused the statue to spray the molten metal that was its core on the attacker.  This burned.  Boris dropped his sword and kept his shield up, using it for defense and to attack.  Luckily, Boris’ high defense [and my crappy rolls] kept the giant statue from landing attacks every time it swung.  Unluckily, several of its swings shattered adjacent pillars, burying nearby sarcophagi in the rubble.  [If there were frogurt here, it would be cursed.]

With a gap hacked into the four-foot thick doors, the rest of the Revengers started entering the fray.  Hrglclxin and Pelinore made it through in the first round, but Daphne’s gear got caught up in the narrow gap and she temporarily held up the others.  Based on Hrglclxin’s suggestion, Daphne called for Vorland to dig the Horn of the Dead out of her gear and pass it through.  

Hrglclxin started firing his small supply of enchanted arrows at the statue, wounding it repeatedly.  Once Daphne was in the chamber, she cast Protection from Evil, which Boris quickly stepped into and started chugging healing potions [he was down to less than 10 hit points at this time].  Godric and Proximo followed Daphne into the chamber, Proximo stepping out of Daphne’s protective magics to shoot arrows at the statue [he accidentally shot another PC at this point, but I don't remember who], but Dhekeon got stuck in the door gap, blocking Adam and Verya from entering the chamber.

Vorland found the Horn in the pack she was carrying and passed it to Dhekeon.  Once Dhekeon got through the gap, he passed it to Hrglclxin, who blew on it, summoning 15 Viking skeletons to attack the statue.  The next person to attempt the door gap was Adam, but he got stuck.  This turned out to be a blessing in disguise for him.

The statue, unable to attack Boris anymore, switched target to Hrglclxin [who had stepped outside the protective sphere so he could continue to attack the statue], nearly killing Hrglclxin in one blow.  The combined attacks from those in the chamber finally brought down the giant statue, but its final flailing attack knocked out another pillar, causing most of the ceiling to partially collapse [meaning, there was not an opening to the sky, but a lot of stone and dirt came down on everything], immense stones smashing everything they landed on.  The displaced air popped Adam out of the door gap and back into the corridor beyond, where Verya caught him.

As the dust settled, the Revengers started digging each other out from under the rubble.  Hrglclxin was dead [crushed heart and lungs per the Mortality Table], as were Pelinore [crushed knee] and Proximo [a red stain and shards of bone].  Daphne healed Pelinore and cast Restore Life and Limb on Hrglclxin [his soul is marked and outsiders hate him], but Proximo was lost.  Boris and several others consumed healing potions or received cure light wounds spells from Godric and Daphne.  Once the healing magic ran out, most were still wounded from the fight or the collapse but mobile.

Not wanting their efforts to go for naught, the Revengers searched the chamber.  Only five of the sarcophagi were not crushed and destroyed by the collapsing ceiling.  One of the sarcophagi contained a very angry, but still drowsy vampire.  Godric slammed that lid shut before the vampire could respond and Boris used spikes to seal the sarcophagus.  The other four sarcophagi yielded a magical hand axe [+4 dwarven thrower], a Jasper [minor gemstone], a scroll of ward vs. lycanthropes [1st level spell], and a potion [eventually identified as a potion of delusion, so worthless].  The magical hand axe made the effort worthwhile to the Revengers and the battered and bruised adventurers decided to call it a day.  They returned to the surface and headed back to Helix.  Many drinks were raised in memory of Proximo.

End of Session

[It was late, so I didn’t roll for an encounter on the way back to town to save time.  It would not have gone well for any attackers anyways – Adam never got to cast any spells, so he was full up with fireballs and magic missiles and itching to use them.]

[I have determined when the rains will arrive, so I know what date the moors will become impassible.  It will be sooner rather than later.  I think it will be less than 4 sessions, but definitely before Hrglclxin finishes his mandatory 23 days of bedrest.  Once the season ends, we are going to switch campaigns for a bit so I get to play and someone else gets to run.  I think we are going to do Pathfinder, which will be a huge gear change after the more rules-light ACKS, but it might be the HERO System.  We talked a little bit about it but nothing definite that I recall.  I’ll post more info as I have it.]

[Please note, we will return to Barrowmaze using ACKS for Season 2.  We’re just switching GMs for a bit so I can recharge.  Plus the real-time gap will help simulate the in-game gap in time between seasons.]


The Motley Crew
Session 1: The Start

Session 11: TPK

The Revengers
Session 12: Rise of the Revengers

Session 22

Session 32
Session 32A

Session 34

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