No Rest for the Wicked
Apparently I forgot to log the last session again, so this is two sessions' worth, although honestly nothing much happened between the two of them since they were both spent entirely in combat rounds.
The fight against the Warriors of Wrath continued for a while -- Elyssie could of course hurt them easily with her Blindfighting, Kaito could do a little damage by closing his eyes in fox form, using scent to pinpoint them (since a 50% 'I can't see you' miss chance is better than a 50% 'you're displaced' miss chance with six mirror images on top of it), and Ash summoned an angry thundercloud which, while targeted, doesn't involve an attack roll and also ignored their defenses.
So eventually, the party won... of course, by that point the archer golem had for some reason decided to follow them through the teleporter, and horribly mauled Noggin's valet who'd been hiding 'out of sight' in the teleporter room. Kaito, Altei, and a few others turned to fight the golem, but Elyssie was busy wrestling with the last Wrath Warrior out of sight of the rest of the party. It turned out they sucked at grappling, so that part at least went smoothly.
The golem itself was tough -- in the lower ceiling of the teleport chamber it couldn't fly out of reach, but it could still do touch attacks with its energy bow or just straight-up maul people with its fists. Oh, and it breathed a cloud of poison gas that not *everyone* could ignore.
But Kaito (with his admantium rapier) and Altei (with a golembane scarab) were able to hurt it, so eventually it retreated (or, possibly, 'accidentally stepped on the exit portal'). They regrouped with Elyssie and her prisoner (she'd choked him unconscious instead of murdering him) and decided to look for somewhere to rest (after the Paladin healed the people who needed it most).
The first room they checked had a small boy in it. The boy tried to stab Zeddicus (the Paladin) a couple of times but Kaito could talk to him and showed the Sihedron amulet to calm him down. Then Ash waved her magic tail and charmed him, which worked much better.
He explained that people in the Runeforge still died, but they'd be reborn as children while their bodies became sinspawn. Sure enough, one of the other doors that a few other party members were opening in their search had a kid in it who immediately tried to attack them -- Elyssie took him down with one punch, and managed not to kill him. Barely. They were all servants of Alkanest as relayed by the Warlady Alhoxir (or something unpronounceable like that). He didn't seem to care much about the dead people -- apparently that happened during training all the time.
The exploration team also found a kitchen, full of sunflower seeds and a weird white paste that didn't seem to be food. The water at least was potable. There were also two more portals they could leave through, other than the one the golem went through (which they assumed went back to the golem room, although that relied on the people who'd built the dungeon being sensible, which was never a safe bet with ancient cults).
They split into two groups -- roughly, men and women (although Altei was with the women because he wouldn't let Kaito volunteer for that) -- and settled down in two adjacent little side rooms... but forgot to hide (or loot) the dead bodies before settling down for the night.
Oops.
So of course they were woken up in the middle of the night by a patrol. The patrol didn't know which room(s) they were hiding in, but started a search pattern. The patrol was four wrath warriors with all their buffs cast, three of them standing back to fireball while the fourth opened doors. An annoying group to fight, especially without their own defenses (and in the Paladin's case, armor). But somehow, the entire party managed to turn invisible and/or sneak out of the rooms while they were looking the other way, and hid by the nearest teleporter for them to leave.
They didn't leave. Instead, they looked like they were going to start fireballing the teleporters. By this point the party (guided by the foxes' scent ability) had regrouped enough to get a Message spell cast so they could talk to each other, so they started arguing about the plan. With the imminent fireball, they snuck past the patrol (again) and headed towards the teleported back to the golem -- there was no way sound would travel between rooms linked only by teleporter, so if they could destroy the golem they could get back to the central chamber, which none of the lords claimed and might be safe to rest in.
Other ideas included 'going back to sleep in one of the rooms they already searched' and 'pressing on instead of trying to rest', but those got informally voted down.
Unfortunately, despite a distraction caused by Noggin in the kitchen, the hasted patrol moved faster than the sneaking party and was already watching the golem portal before they got there. Or at least, one of them was.
So Elyssie attacked. Kaito and Altei joined in mostly ineffectually, but the ongoing distractions (including Noggin-the-skull coming out of his box and floating around taunting them to fireball him more) meant that they trickled up towards the party one at a time. There were some fireballs, but June managed to get protection from fire onto most of the people fighting, and Kaito just toughed it out. Eventually, the whole patrol was down.
This time, they at least remembered to loot. The chief benefits of this were an adamantium greatsword (which Zeddicus took to help fight the golem, maybe) and a bunch of mithril chain shirts +2, which was an upgrade for several party members (and which Zeddicus could use as a nightshirt so that he wouldn't be completely unarmored next time they were woken up in the middle of the night).
Then... maybe fight the golem?
Phoof: "What if they follow us into the center chamber and we can't rest there, either?"
Kaito: "Then we're going to have a bad time."
The takeaway from this session was:
(a) being woken up in the middle of the night sucks, although in a dungeon you sort of have to expect it
(b) trying to coordinate a party of eight invisible people as they sneak past a patrol four times faster than them is both tedious and frustrating
(c) Enemies getting infinite duration round/level spells is also kind of frustrating -- I'm pretty sure their haste and displacement spells lasted at least five minutes.
prev | next
The fight against the Warriors of Wrath continued for a while -- Elyssie could of course hurt them easily with her Blindfighting, Kaito could do a little damage by closing his eyes in fox form, using scent to pinpoint them (since a 50% 'I can't see you' miss chance is better than a 50% 'you're displaced' miss chance with six mirror images on top of it), and Ash summoned an angry thundercloud which, while targeted, doesn't involve an attack roll and also ignored their defenses.
So eventually, the party won... of course, by that point the archer golem had for some reason decided to follow them through the teleporter, and horribly mauled Noggin's valet who'd been hiding 'out of sight' in the teleporter room. Kaito, Altei, and a few others turned to fight the golem, but Elyssie was busy wrestling with the last Wrath Warrior out of sight of the rest of the party. It turned out they sucked at grappling, so that part at least went smoothly.
The golem itself was tough -- in the lower ceiling of the teleport chamber it couldn't fly out of reach, but it could still do touch attacks with its energy bow or just straight-up maul people with its fists. Oh, and it breathed a cloud of poison gas that not *everyone* could ignore.
But Kaito (with his admantium rapier) and Altei (with a golembane scarab) were able to hurt it, so eventually it retreated (or, possibly, 'accidentally stepped on the exit portal'). They regrouped with Elyssie and her prisoner (she'd choked him unconscious instead of murdering him) and decided to look for somewhere to rest (after the Paladin healed the people who needed it most).
The first room they checked had a small boy in it. The boy tried to stab Zeddicus (the Paladin) a couple of times but Kaito could talk to him and showed the Sihedron amulet to calm him down. Then Ash waved her magic tail and charmed him, which worked much better.
He explained that people in the Runeforge still died, but they'd be reborn as children while their bodies became sinspawn. Sure enough, one of the other doors that a few other party members were opening in their search had a kid in it who immediately tried to attack them -- Elyssie took him down with one punch, and managed not to kill him. Barely. They were all servants of Alkanest as relayed by the Warlady Alhoxir (or something unpronounceable like that). He didn't seem to care much about the dead people -- apparently that happened during training all the time.
The exploration team also found a kitchen, full of sunflower seeds and a weird white paste that didn't seem to be food. The water at least was potable. There were also two more portals they could leave through, other than the one the golem went through (which they assumed went back to the golem room, although that relied on the people who'd built the dungeon being sensible, which was never a safe bet with ancient cults).
They split into two groups -- roughly, men and women (although Altei was with the women because he wouldn't let Kaito volunteer for that) -- and settled down in two adjacent little side rooms... but forgot to hide (or loot) the dead bodies before settling down for the night.
Oops.
So of course they were woken up in the middle of the night by a patrol. The patrol didn't know which room(s) they were hiding in, but started a search pattern. The patrol was four wrath warriors with all their buffs cast, three of them standing back to fireball while the fourth opened doors. An annoying group to fight, especially without their own defenses (and in the Paladin's case, armor). But somehow, the entire party managed to turn invisible and/or sneak out of the rooms while they were looking the other way, and hid by the nearest teleporter for them to leave.
They didn't leave. Instead, they looked like they were going to start fireballing the teleporters. By this point the party (guided by the foxes' scent ability) had regrouped enough to get a Message spell cast so they could talk to each other, so they started arguing about the plan. With the imminent fireball, they snuck past the patrol (again) and headed towards the teleported back to the golem -- there was no way sound would travel between rooms linked only by teleporter, so if they could destroy the golem they could get back to the central chamber, which none of the lords claimed and might be safe to rest in.
Other ideas included 'going back to sleep in one of the rooms they already searched' and 'pressing on instead of trying to rest', but those got informally voted down.
Unfortunately, despite a distraction caused by Noggin in the kitchen, the hasted patrol moved faster than the sneaking party and was already watching the golem portal before they got there. Or at least, one of them was.
So Elyssie attacked. Kaito and Altei joined in mostly ineffectually, but the ongoing distractions (including Noggin-the-skull coming out of his box and floating around taunting them to fireball him more) meant that they trickled up towards the party one at a time. There were some fireballs, but June managed to get protection from fire onto most of the people fighting, and Kaito just toughed it out. Eventually, the whole patrol was down.
This time, they at least remembered to loot. The chief benefits of this were an adamantium greatsword (which Zeddicus took to help fight the golem, maybe) and a bunch of mithril chain shirts +2, which was an upgrade for several party members (and which Zeddicus could use as a nightshirt so that he wouldn't be completely unarmored next time they were woken up in the middle of the night).
Then... maybe fight the golem?
Phoof: "What if they follow us into the center chamber and we can't rest there, either?"
Kaito: "Then we're going to have a bad time."
The takeaway from this session was:
(a) being woken up in the middle of the night sucks, although in a dungeon you sort of have to expect it
(b) trying to coordinate a party of eight invisible people as they sneak past a patrol four times faster than them is both tedious and frustrating
(c) Enemies getting infinite duration round/level spells is also kind of frustrating -- I'm pretty sure their haste and displacement spells lasted at least five minutes.
prev | next