[Day 67 Concludes – Clearing the dungeon, Part 3, Beyond the Bedrooms]
[This game uses the Pathfinder 1E roleplaying game. Game sessions happen once a week. This session happened December 13, 2021.]
[SPOILERS! If you are likely to adventure through the Shattered Star Adventure Path from Paizo, this campaign will be spoilers all the way down.]
Player Characters
Roscuro – male ratfolk 7th level Monk
Hrefna – female changeling 6th level Omdura
Swamprover – female grippli 6th level Wizard
Marativy – female ratfolk 7th level Ninja
Zitch Grimreaper – male ratfolk 7th level Witch with a donkey rat (capybara) familiar
Via Roll20
Templeton von Trapp – male ratfolk 7th level Summoner (Synthesist)
NPCs
Gridik Stormstride – male blue kobold 5th level Wizard (Invoker)
Ariphi – female tiefling 6th level Rogue
Mel Sharples – male halfling Cook (Expert of unknown level)
Alice Hyatt – female halfling Bodyguard (Warrior of unknown level)
Flo’ Castleberry – female gnome Bodyguard (Warrior of unknown level)
Autumn
Day 67 (Continued)
Having cleared out the lower dungeon level under the Lady’s Light and still having time in the day, the Ratpack made their way back up to the upper dungeon level, returning to the Hall of Grey Flame. There they lit a torch off the grey flame and placed it into the torch holder on the western wall, thus opening the secret door to the Hall of Bedrooms.
They made their way down the Hall of Bedrooms to the secret door at the end and opened that secret door [using means my notes nor memory explain] to the Big Bed Room. The octagonal room was how the group left it, the unusually large bed stripped of its luxurious sheets. The adventurers arranged themselves around the door on the north wall, hoping to find more than a closet. Marativy checked the door for traps and found none, but it was locked. She unlocked it and Roscuro opened the door.
Beyond the door was octagonal like the Big Bed Room, but there were four marble benches evenly spaced about the room with a single door on the north wall. The floor was a mosaic of chips that formed a starburst and there were faded erotic frescos on the walls. The mosaic radiated a moderate enchantment when checked. Zitch and Swamprover noted that the figures on the walls were doing magic, but in a sexual way. Roscuro rolled his eyes.
Roscuro went to step into the room and Zitch offered to cast his Ward on Roscuro. Roscuro waited for him to do so and then entered the room. Suspicious of the starburst mosaic, Roscuro walked clockwise around the edge of the room, walking on the marble benches as necessary. When he safely made it to the door on the north wall, Marativy followed, hopping bench-to-bench.
While standing in front of the north door, Roscuro asked Zitch to use his wand to detect secret doors. Zitch did so and found none. As the door on the north wall was the only way forward, Roscuro gestured for Marativy to investigate it for traps and locks. After checking the door thoroughly, Marativy stated it was safe and had no lock. Roscuro opened the door.
Beyond this door was a small 10-foot by 10-foot room with three other doors, one on each wall. In the center was a 5-foot diameter pool of clear water. Not trusting the situation, Roscuro asked for one of the spellcasters to come up and cast Detect Magic. Swamprover stepped forward, following Roscuro’s path around the starburst mosaic. Once Detect Magic was cast, she stated the pool was magical, radiating a moderate abjuration magic. Roscuro stepped into the small room. When nothing happened, he signaled it was safe for the rest of the group to follow.
Swamprover and Gridik investigated the pool of water and worked out that it had a Dispel Magic effect on it. While they did this, Marativy checked the three doors out of this room for traps and locks. After 30 minutes, she reported none of the doors were trapped, but the east door was locked. Following the “Left-Hand Rule”, Roscuro opened the door on the left [west] to see what was beyond it.
This octagonal room was clearly a laboratory of some sort. The stone counters lining the walls were covered with glasswork and ceramic containers of various shapes and sizes. A large corroded urn sat conspicuously in the center of the counter on the west wall. A quick Detect Magic identified that some of the containers, or at least their contents, were magical. Swamprover, Zitch, Gridik, and Hrefna entered the room to investigate further and see if they could identify what the various magical substances were.
Swamprover identified one of the concoctions as highly explosive and dangerously unstable. She called out a warning to the others. Zitch identified one of the vials as containing a potion of displacement, which he carefully stored away. Gridik identified an elixir of love, which Roscuro asked him to store for later sale. Hrefna's concoction was another dangerously unstable liquid which exploded in her face when she attempted to move it. The explosion covered the entire room, injuring those in the room and shattering all the other pieces of glassware and ceramics, including the corroded urn, and caused a chain reaction as two more unstable liquids exploded [including the one Swamprover had safely identified]. Hrefna activated her healing aura while two blobs escaped the corroded urn [and the Other GM asked us to roll for initiative].
Swamprover identified the blobs as grey oozes and shared that they were immune to cold and fire, took no sneak attack or precision damage, and were acidic against inorganic materials, like weapons. The fight against the two grey oozes was short but noisy due to Swamprover and Gridik both casting Lightning Bolt in the small room. Marativy got in the killing blow on the first ooze and Roscuro on the second.
Once the fight was over, those injured made use of Hrefna’s healing aura to recover from the explosions. Hrefna had to cast cure light wounds on Gridik to finish healing the kobold from the damage.
The next door opened was the north door. Beyond this was another octagonal room. This room had six marble slabs with attached manacles, draped with white sheets. Next to each slab was a metal bookstand, one of which still held a book. Detect Magic said nothing was magical beyond some pages in the book. Marativy carefully investigated the book, discovering the magical pages were scrolls tucked into the book. The first was a scroll of Dream, the second a scroll of Mind Fog, and the third a symbol of sleep, which triggered. Marativy was the only one to succumb to the power of the symbol [the rest of us made our Will saves].
Roscuro picked up Marativy and took her back to the big bed to sleep off the effects of the trap, staying there to guard her. Zitch checked the book and found it was written in Diabolic, which no one in the group could read. [Kind of surprising, actually.]
Ariphi stepped up and and picked the lock on the eastern door once the rest of the group was ready. Hrefna opened the door. Beyond was a final octagonal room, this one with a domed ceiling and a complex design painted on the floor in several different colors. There was broken furniture scattered around the room, including a bookstand from which partially held a large black tome against the far wall.
The book and the circle both detected as magical with the circle seemingly in mid-conjuration. The adventurers discussed whether they wanted to enter this room or not. Once they decided they wanted the black book, it became a question of who would try to retrieve it. Templeton volunteered to fly in and get the book. This seemed safest and was approved.
Templeton flew around the edge of the room, avoiding the circle on the floor until he got to the book. This apparently triggered the completion of the conjuration and a worm-like monster with a hideous face of eyes and hooked jaws appeared, wielding a wand and a sword in its twin tentacle tails. Zitch immediately invoked Conjuration Foil, which damaged the creature but failed to shift it. An aura of madness rolled off the monster, confusing Templeton, Ariphi, and Gridik!
The fight that followed was tough. The monster caused confusion and could control those who were confused, setting Ariphi to attack Swamprover. The aura continued to roll out from the monster, causing all in the room and the small chamber outside to work to maintain their sanity [had to make a Will save every round, which not everyone made]. Hrefna was able to get a massive attack in at the start, but after that it was a slow progress of those adventures in control of their wits making attack after attack. Templeton was able to regain control over himself for a while. His attacks did little to the creature, but did cause it to start bleeding before he once again became confused. Gridik punched himself to little effect. Swamprover gradually pushed Gridik out of the aura of madness and into the lab. Once Gridik could think clearly, he climbed up on a worktable and cast Lightning Bolt back into the conjuration room.
Ultimately, it was the bleed damage inflicted by Templeton that finally killed the thing.
Once the monster was dead and the adventurers were in control of their minds again, healing was done. The black book was packed away and the wand and sword were taken from the dead creature.
Deciding they had pushed their luck far enough and with no other areas to explore, the Ratpack exited the dungeon, taking the sleeping Marativy with them.
End of Session
Rat Whispers
[The monster at the end was a fiendish seugathi, for those interested. In less cramped quarters, I think the group could have taken it with less trouble, but the things Aura of Madness filled the room and the adjacent room, leaving no way to get out of the area of effect and still attack the thing. Luckily, the Other GM missed the part where it had Fast Heal 5, so the Bleed from Templeton’s one successful attack kept going. A very tough fight and we would have left the dungeon at this point, even if there had been more to explore. I’m very glad we didn’t face this on the first expedition when we were lower in level, it would have been a TPK.]
[It was running late when the fight finished, so we wrapped up quickly. After resting the night, most of the characters leveled.]
Ratpack
Book 1:
…
Book 2:
…
…
…
…
No comments:
Post a Comment