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| Mesa your humble servant. |
Timekeeping
Player Characters Present
Introduction
Session Report
Thanks to McScales the lizardman and former slave, last session the players had jammed in iron spikes to stop the maintenance lift from being able to retract back into the Sky City, and this precaution meant they were able to use it as another means of entry to the huge facility. However, once again, when they reached the room where the lift stopped, something had changed. The 30' square room was filled with dirt and growing lumps and fronds of plants, they completely surrounded the platform the party stood on and would have to be navigated in some way before they could reach any of the four exits from the room.
There was some attempt to set fire to oil and burn a path to the western door, but it was not terribly successful; one of the oil flasks failed to break. However, this was enough to draw the attention of two Giant Sundew plants, one to the north and one to the south of the lift platform.
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| cute, until they're in your face |
The plants were quite a threat, anything within 5 feet of them was exposed to 6 attacks from their sticky fronds, successful hits cause 1hp damage per round until broken, and with a roll of 20 indicating a suffocating blow to the target that results in death in 2-4 rounds. The party put Sever on one and Sheamus on the other, with Gurt doing his best to contribute with his Spetum.
Battle commence, and although the front line were getting struck steadily with fronds, which penalised their own return attacks, the hit point losses were looking to be sustainable; until Sever caught two in the face. This happened just as Louie came up with the idea of dumping a wine skin over Sever, and although technically the party had won initiative and this action would have been resolved just before the two fronds started suffocated the Ranger, I had declared with a flourish that enough had been poured out that Sever was spitting out wine, so I had to follow through and say that this prevented the suffocating effect.
At almost same time Sheamus was also hit in the mouth, but the fearless Irishman calmly reached for his bottle of whisky and poured it over his head, freeing himself. After his the plants soon took a dirt nap.
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| To help set the scene I describe the room as just like the CHAZ garden, a lot of dirt had been shipped in from somewhere. |
Once they were ready the party left by the western most door, back into a 20' wide corridor running north-south. There was a chamber nearby to the south that was empty; but impressions on the floor showed that heavy equipment that was once there had been removed, perhaps to the north. Questions were levelled at the lizardman and he answered as best as he could. By now I'd figured that McScales sounded like Jar Jar Binks, so there was a lot of "Mesa knowing mesa be big help" and such for the rest of the night.
They set off north again and the long corridor eventually lead to a chamber with 4 branching exits, one was blocked by vines, one lead into a vast open area, one widened to 40' and had large water filled metal columns running down its length, and the last was pretty normal looking and heading directly east.
Cautiously they proceeded down the wide corridor with the pillars, the party got about halfway down before were attacked from behind by an Achaierai; one of the demonic bird-headed creatures that had caused them so much trouble last week. This week they had much better tactics, Sheamus with his high AC held its attention; while the others used missile weapons to target its low AC head from far enough back not to risk getting caught in the toxic cloud the thing could emit. That part worked well, but the bird-thing was still able to release its gas and use it to escape before they could finish it off. They tracked it back to the open area they had glimpsed earlier. This was a huge cavernous chamber, with its floor 10' below the corridor where they stood. This was covered with organic matter and had a high ceiling choked with trees from the forest level. After careful probing they could see that within this area was a lair of seven of the creatures.
As much as the party wanted to go on the attack, they decided they didn't have the fire power to win and simply marked it down on the map for another time.
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"You have a sudden strange feeling and an image of a weird many-tentacled creature with flappy wings. It is working on some kind of machine. You see something like a sphere of light, clearly not part of the sky city structure, it fluctuates and vanishes; but not before you see many other like creatures moving around inside. If pushed, you guess its location is to the west."
Once he had passed on this vision to the rest of the party they tried to interpret its meaning. The prospect of a full on battle against the Old Ones who ruled this dungeon was again something they decided they didn't have the firepower for, but the urge to map out some more of this level spurred them on.
When they reached the eastern most point so far, Comfort Rod called a stop and place his ear against the wall, all he could hear was the background hum of machines, technology beyond his ken, and the strain of metal under great pressure. However, this action proved crucial as around the next corner was a wandering monster, a Chimera! I put things together and realised that Comfort Rod's successful hearing roll meant he would have heard the "clomp clomp, clack clack" sound of the creature's approach. They proceeded to ambush it and got one segment of surprise. The melee guys got hits in in this segment but Comfort Rod again did something, this time wildly successful; he cast Command and ordered the creature to flee. I was thinking this wouldn't work on a creature over 6HD, but a quick check showed that such creatures must make a saving thrown, and the Chimera failed by 1, meaning it fled away from the three melee characters and prompted three more successful hits as the thing flew off. By the time they had cornered it in the next room the beast was down to very few hit points, and a bad initiative roll saw the party finish it off without taking any damage at all from the fearsome creature.
What was more, the room the Chimera retreated to held many thousands of electrum pieces just scattered around; and something more besides, a big heavy metal-reinforced belt. While searching through the loose sea of coins they were again attacked, this time by a giant slug. Sadly for Comfort Rod his run ended here as his hammer bounced off its blubbery hide to no effect. The thing spat a gob full of its acid at Gurt and the paladin was lucky to get away with his armour intact. His weapons were another matter, all were destroyed except for his hand axe; and this he used to finish off the creature after Shaemus and Sever chopped it to pieces.
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| Sheamus tested the belt and found it was great for opening doors. |
They went back to the lift platform via another route, exited the PSoD safely, and then went back to Castle Irish. Here they competed for the prized girdle and Sever won it.
Dungeon stats:
Mapped area traversed: 200 feet
New corridor mapped: 510 feet
New rooms mapped: 4
Combats: 4
Total time in the dungeon: I will start recording this in future.
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