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| Sky City West Quadrant, Maintenance Level room 7 |
Timekeeping
Player Characters Present
Introduction
Downtime
Session Report
The party was a big one, 8 PCs, including a special appearance by Treefingers the Ranger and three henchmen. Slippery Pete had gone off on his own during downtime to raise funding and awareness for the orphanage he was planning, and in his stead was new magic-user, Petrov the Prestidigitator.
Setting off once again for the Pizza Slice of Doom, they travelled with the Rocket Cycle scooting along at ground level, not trusting to go any faster or higher with the risk it might also drop out of the sky without warning. They took the Elevator up to the Irish position at the top of the Volcano and peered down into the PSoD level 1 access shaft; it was still filled with water as I had been last session, and was unpassable. No problem, with two Pegasus riders to help, they ferried the party to the area where there was a gap between the wall of the volcano and the metal floor of the sky city quadrant. This lead in some six hundred feet before passing under the city thruster cone they had used to egress last session after being trapped by water.
Everything looked the same as they had left it; even the rope still hung usefully from the top of the cone where they had left it, so they began to climb back into the city.
Immediately upon reaching the interior of thruster tube room, long ropey tendons lashed out at them before the party had got properly into formation, two of these latched on to Sheamus, causing him to loose half of his strength, and started pulling him towards the gaping maw of a huge stalagmite-like creature standing right between the party and the secret door out of the room. Others of its six arms locked onto different PCs and it was looking pretty touch and go for a while there. However, the party defeated the roper thanks to a combination of swords, spells, and Bumblebore's familiar O'Malfoy. Then they discovered that the guardian creature had apparently been deployed here via some sort of glass tube which was now broken into a million shards. This party is not squeamish about cutting up monsters for useful parts, and now this habit yielded a dividend as Bumblebore discovered 12 gems and some platinum pieces in the gullet.
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| At about the same time this was happening in game my daughter sent me this picture from her work. The spider is about 3 inches wide. I was receiving constant updates on it for the rest of the session. |
In any case, Giuseppe failed his save and ran away in the opposite direction, which would have seen him run straight over one of the collapsed floor sections. This was a cunning combo trap that had come about through random chance, but those who were not effected by the gas were able to grab the Paladin before he fell into the depths below.
Now warned, they could have avoided the area with the mold altogether, but decided to use fire arrows (supplied by O'Malfoy) and Treefingers lit it up from a distance. Eventually they way was clear for them to continue. The room beyond connected back with a corridor they had already traversed, and, other than a harmless section of organic matter, being apparently empty, they carefully passed around the dangerous looking section and left the room. However, not before "something" had bumped into Bumblebore, and, not yet perceived by him, had relieved him of the pouch of gems he had gathered from the disgusting guts of the Roper. One great thing about discord is that you can let individuals know such things as they happen without the rest of the players finding out what their characters don't yet know. It does mean you have to be on your toes as a player though and be looking in your character channel.
This incident had come about entirely through a random encounter and my rechecking the abilities of certain creatures in the Fiend Folio before this session. Little did I know what it would soon prompt...
The misaligned and battered corridors lead west into another chamber with several exits. Through the north door was a corridor, at the end of which was wall of interconnected metal shards; like a grate with nasty looking barbs sticking out at all angles, beyond this was a dead end. However, just before the dead end, in a pile debris on the floor, could be seen the tell tale glint of gems. Bumblebore avoided any possible issues retrieving the gems by sending O'Malfoy, who was small enough to fit through the metal bars, to collect them up three at a time; one in each claw and one in its mouth (this detail became important later). However, when the magic user went to pocket the gems, he noticed the theft that had occurred a few rooms back; the gems from the Roper were gone!
When the distraught Theurgist reported this to the party, there was a great deal of dismay, and suspicions were aroused! The fact that both sets of gems happened to number the same, 12, added to this feeling (but it was just a co-incidence).
I can't be sure exactly what everyone was thinking at this point (or ever really, but this time certainly), but Giuseppe at least suspected this incident wasn't enemy action; while Sever left no doubt that he considered the new level 1 magic-user, who was yet to cast any spells so far this session, to be the culprit. It must be recalled that in session #25 Slippery Pete had used his Hat of Disguise to appear as a normal level 1 fighter, and now Sever suspected that "Petrov" - a name that suddenly seemed to be dripping with hidden import - was actually Slippery Pete in disguise.
When Bumblebore protested that something invisible had stolen the gems, and not Petrov, this only increased suspicions; since Pete was known to possess a potion of invisibility. In any case, Sever had been suspicious that the thief was skimming off the top for a while now, and he had had enough.
Giuseppe, I think trying to forestall the anger of Sever, asked to inspect the gems they had just acquired thanks to O'Malfoy, and found nothing amiss. The question arose, how would they know if there had been some double switch-a-roo with the gems; maybe there was only ever one set of 12 gems!? Someone came up with the brilliant idea of asking what the gems tasted like, figuring that the ones from the Roper, which of course they had no time to thoroughly clean, would taste different from the others. And it was unanimously agree that while he carried them in his mouth O'Malfoy, and, via his familiar connection, Bumblebore, would have tasted these recently acquired gems and so could make this call. They tasted more of dirt than anything like the Roper, according to Bumblebore.
I forget his exact wording, but Sever's player decided to give Petrov a good shake to try and... I don't know, get him to come clean? I announced I would interpret this as a grapple, we both thought this would be a demonstrative but ultimately non-lethal action.
However, 25% of grappling damage is real, and when you are a 2hp magic-user, that's a big problem. Petrov lost 3 hit points, and was dead. This left a bit of a pall over the party (although the opposite was going on in discord), particularly Sever's Ranger buddy Treefingers.
Now, I don't know how "pause time" "story gaming" "theatre kids" with "dice fudging" and "rule zero" would handle this situation, and I don't really care. I went back over the rules to be sure I hadn't made an error. Sever in his armour had a middling chance of catching Petrov, but once he got him he did 8 damage plus 5 for the Ranger's strength. With 25% of 13 points being 3, he had killed the innocent young magic user on his first adventure. RAW, this wasn't a good look for the Ranger and he started to feel some pain in his alignment, for Rangers can loose their class abilities permanently with an evil deed.
After a short discussion they gathered up Petrov's body and started to retreat. However, all of this activity had attracted other dungeon denizens. Two Boobries (as per session #35) confronted the party from the direction they wanted to go. Unlike last week, however, these had recently been fed and were not immediately hostile. They took one look at the glowering Sever and his grizzly cargo, and backed away down the corridor.
Having returned the way they had come without further incident, Sever resolved to fly to the white city of Minas Mandalf and seek a Raise Dead spell from one of of the clerics there in order to revive the dead adventurer. There was time available to achieve a bit more in this session if people could pull themselves together, so the party decamped to Castle Irish while Sever and Treefingers flew off on their mission of mercy. I didn't belabour this side-quest; but if we were playing a 6 hour session I certainly would have had some fun with it.
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| "What happened to this poor fellow? He looks like he ran into Macho Mandalf's elbow!" |
So, a day later the the Rangers (one 7000gp lighter) and Petrov returned from Minas Mandalf and the delve resumed. They retraced their steps and encountered the pair of Boobries again in the same room as before. They seemed to look at the dried blood on the floor and back to Petrov a few times before again deciding it would be better not to mess with the party and leaving through the door to the North. Moving on they found a twisted section of corridor that lead to an "elevator trap", except, with the damage in this area, the elevator room went sideways instead of up or down, and left them in what was part of level 2 of the sky city before it crashed. The level now appeared to be a hodgepodge of the technical level and the forest level.
After some continuous exploration they found a room with what McScales identified as a maintenance lift platform that could be used to descend, probably all the way to the outside if the way wasn't obstructed.
With a possible exit secured, the party chose to push on for a bit more and ran into an Achaierai, one of the 15' tall bird headed creatures they had previous encountered on the forest level. The legs of the creature proved very difficult to damage, but when they concentrated on its head they soon had the better of the creature.
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| But whoever bred the Achaierai was a real son of a gun: |
The whole party took 2d6 damage from the black toxic smoke. Sadly, this meant death for Petrov, again. Sever shouldered the weight of the magic-user's lifeless body once more. Not only that, half the party were now 'moronic children' as per the spell description, although I goofed and let them know this was temporary a bit too soon. Fortunately the other half of the party were able to shepherd the morons back to the lift platform and stop them wandering off long enough to get it working. The lift did indeed lead to another exit from the sky city and the surviving party members lived to fight another day.
Dungeon stats:
Mapped area traversed: 320 feet
New corridor mapped: 520 feet
New rooms mapped: 5
Combats: 3
Total time in the dungeon: I will start recording this in future.
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