Gaming Log Oct 7, 2006: Heart of a Medallion, And The WIngs of A Bat (Because It's Ravenloft!)
System: AD&D @nd Edition
Level: 5-8th
GM: Ryan
XP: 2,000
Summary:
(Really crappas summary since the game was 2 weeks ago and I lost my flippin' notes).
The party ends up taking a walk through the woods. It gets real foggy, real fast. Even characters immune to fear feel uneasy. Then the mist clears-- that's good! But now everyone's in Ravenloft. That's bad. Ravenloft is icky and horrible, and the Lord tied to the land the party suddenly find themselves on is a big, nasty lich-fiend. He's so powerful that the cleric to the demigod can't turn undead at all, nor can the cleric to a major drwaven god and all, and even devout PCs are feeling only the barest connection to thier dieties.
A brief experiment by K'r'reck, the Thri-Kreen cleric reveals that light and sun-based magics are greatly diminished: her recently forged holy symbol relic's divine continual light penetrates mere inches into the gloom. Torchfire is similarly ineffective. Even a Sunray spell bareley lightens the path 50 feet ahead of hte party.
Party stumbles into an abandoned gypsy camp, meets creepy crone who wears a living cloak or undead ravens who basically has them over a barell once the entire party (minus one) cannot resist the allure of a Deck of Many Things (it pretty much turned out good for those that picked, with lots of XP and wishes enough to negate the bad things). Find some taliman shards that were taken from her, or never see home again.
So we venture through this old decrepit mansion, and are jumped by gravelings. Gravelers. Something with grave int he name. Imagine if zombies were ticked off, had really long claws, could blink and displace at will and there was something about shooting lightning bolt spells and this acid thing they were doing that was sapping the party of about an average of 10 HP per round, even with one of the clerics swinging a censer with holy incense. Many player characters fought and died and fought and died several times.
A few wishes and one divine intervention later (a new wrinkle introduced by the DMs with my thi-kreen cleric is that any divine intervention rolls that successfull raise a party member means the character cchanges-- grows antennea, etc.) and the Fire -bending matial arts came back none the worse for wear, except for some shiny new chitin!
So we all leave the room where we got jumped only to find us each individually reliving our worst nightmares-- kid of like the vision quest spel if vision meant "sucks to be you". We all make it through to come face to face with the lich-fiend who is whomping left and right. Two characters are trapped in a force cage, and blocking line of sight for the archer- well, he's blind, so more like line of heat. The fighters that are whomping on Mssr. Lichfiend are rather taken by surprise when he drop a death fog spell-- centered on himself. So the lich goes POOF and he's not really dead, since all liches have a spirit-gem thingy that they can retreat to. The party members that fell down, though, didn't have that luxury, and a few more wishes later, the party got the shards, went back to the crone, got a unique shard-related magic item each, and then got to leave ravenloft. Yay us!
(This was a lot more creepy and atmospheric than my slapdash recap might sound)
Level: 5-8th
GM: Ryan
XP: 2,000
Summary:
(Really crappas summary since the game was 2 weeks ago and I lost my flippin' notes).
The party ends up taking a walk through the woods. It gets real foggy, real fast. Even characters immune to fear feel uneasy. Then the mist clears-- that's good! But now everyone's in Ravenloft. That's bad. Ravenloft is icky and horrible, and the Lord tied to the land the party suddenly find themselves on is a big, nasty lich-fiend. He's so powerful that the cleric to the demigod can't turn undead at all, nor can the cleric to a major drwaven god and all, and even devout PCs are feeling only the barest connection to thier dieties.
A brief experiment by K'r'reck, the Thri-Kreen cleric reveals that light and sun-based magics are greatly diminished: her recently forged holy symbol relic's divine continual light penetrates mere inches into the gloom. Torchfire is similarly ineffective. Even a Sunray spell bareley lightens the path 50 feet ahead of hte party.
Party stumbles into an abandoned gypsy camp, meets creepy crone who wears a living cloak or undead ravens who basically has them over a barell once the entire party (minus one) cannot resist the allure of a Deck of Many Things (it pretty much turned out good for those that picked, with lots of XP and wishes enough to negate the bad things). Find some taliman shards that were taken from her, or never see home again.
So we venture through this old decrepit mansion, and are jumped by gravelings. Gravelers. Something with grave int he name. Imagine if zombies were ticked off, had really long claws, could blink and displace at will and there was something about shooting lightning bolt spells and this acid thing they were doing that was sapping the party of about an average of 10 HP per round, even with one of the clerics swinging a censer with holy incense. Many player characters fought and died and fought and died several times.
A few wishes and one divine intervention later (a new wrinkle introduced by the DMs with my thi-kreen cleric is that any divine intervention rolls that successfull raise a party member means the character cchanges-- grows antennea, etc.) and the Fire -bending matial arts came back none the worse for wear, except for some shiny new chitin!
So we all leave the room where we got jumped only to find us each individually reliving our worst nightmares-- kid of like the vision quest spel if vision meant "sucks to be you". We all make it through to come face to face with the lich-fiend who is whomping left and right. Two characters are trapped in a force cage, and blocking line of sight for the archer- well, he's blind, so more like line of heat. The fighters that are whomping on Mssr. Lichfiend are rather taken by surprise when he drop a death fog spell-- centered on himself. So the lich goes POOF and he's not really dead, since all liches have a spirit-gem thingy that they can retreat to. The party members that fell down, though, didn't have that luxury, and a few more wishes later, the party got the shards, went back to the crone, got a unique shard-related magic item each, and then got to leave ravenloft. Yay us!
(This was a lot more creepy and atmospheric than my slapdash recap might sound)