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| Player map built live in session |
Timekeeping
Player Characters Present
Session Report
The party set off in the rain to, once again, explore the quadrant of the Sky City known as the Pizza Slice of Doom. However, once again, when they reached the room where the maintenance elevator brought them, things had changed. All of the dirt and plants that attacked them last week had been cleared out, to be replaced by a strange contraption of wires and cabled and helmet like metal hemispheres. The wires ran to the ceiling and then were connected to each of the four doors that led out of the room.
They turned to McScales; but, without Sheamus, who had other business, no one could communicate with him. The Irish fighter had sent his lizardman anyway to aid the party with his knowledge of the place, he mimed that putting on the helmets would open the doors, and also that he wouldn't put one on himself.
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| Guess who put the metal cap on his head? |
This stymied the party for a while, finally Louie declared he would put on one of the helmets, but nothing happened. Clearly, whatever was going to happen was going to happen when both helmets had been put on. No one else volunteered.
Sever, with his new girdle of giant strength, decided to just break the door instead.
Free of the cunning mechanism, they travelled back up past the elevator trap to the west and down new corridors.
They entered a chamber with three exits and that was filled with steaming water leaking from some place and which trailed away down a corridor to the south, two Thorks in the pool looked dangerous enough for Sever to attack them, but they were ready and sprayed boiling water over the party. Fortunately for the party it takes one full round for these creatures to reload and they were dead by then.
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| Treefingers ate two hot water streams |
In the pool they found many electrum pieces of the kind used by the Hawkmen, but are perfectly acceptable in the mountains as well. Also, a potion. Donny tried this with a small sip, even though he was a bit worried it was poisoned. Which it was! He failed his save and "died" on the spot. Various PCs tried first aid to revive him and Comfort Rod found that his vital signs appeared to be stable. What was going on? Eventually they slapped the monk around until he regained consciousness, at which point he was sure he had been raised from the dead. Yet, he had enough energy to continue on. Comfort Rod took the potion (of delusion) bottle and smashed it against the metal floor. That was fun, for me anyway.
The party were very much the worse for wear and there was ooc discussion of whether it would be cheesy to pull out of the dungeon and hold up at the Irish Camp outside until Godleve (who was out there) and Comfort Rod could heal them up. The rules are clear that you apply the normal chances of encounters and time is a resource to be used, so I don't see any problem with players using this to their benefit. It is not cost free as they used two days that could have been later used for downtime activities.
While resting up, Treefingers had a problem with McScales, on the surface because he felt the former slave should run off and enjoy his freedom, but more likely just because he hates non-humans. We played out this distraction and of course when push came to shove the Ranger left the hapless Lizardman in a pool of his own blood on the ground; but he did not stick around the finish the job as Donny objected and the Monk threatened to come to blows.
I'm sure this won't have any repercussions when Sheamus finds out.
On the third day Giuseppe arrived with his henchmen, fresh from downtime activities that I hadn't caught up with yet. Now with the doughty Paladin who can take damage, and two guys who can deal it out, Sever as caller was prepared to give up pushing to the west in search of the Old One(s), and instead take on the nest of Achaierai they had mapped last session. In short, the plan was to use his super human strength to rip out pieces of metal and make a barrier at one of the corridors leading to the lair, while the party attacked from the other. Simple, but effective.
The problem was that the noise of this work attracted a wandering monster, a giant constrictor snake, which snuck up on the main party from behind (Bumblebore noted that the snake came from the vine chocked corridor to the west) and would have surprised them if it were not for the abilities of Treefingers. These didn't stop him getting wrapped up in the creature's coils, and this commotion caught the attention of the Achaierai who immediately attacked.
Giuseppe was ready with his shield and his Hawkman hand-crossbow, he held the later out and... nothing happened when he pulled the trigger. Like Connor McGregor's Rocket Cycle, it must have been effected by the machine built by the Eldritch Horror that rules this place. He switched to his sword and readied to face the assault.
Bumblebore had prepositioned O'Malfoy in the room and now the Firedrake swept in and breathed over the giant bird creatures. This first attack was quite effective, but his next one was not so good and three of the creatures ran for the other exit and were soon bashing away at the barrier Sever had built there.
Giuseppe held off the first Achaierai until it was wounded enough to release its toxic gas cloud that reduced his brain power to that of a moronic child. Spells and missile weapons sent into the cloud managed to finish off one and knock down another creature, while Louie and then Donny ran around to try and hold the barrier together.
This proved to be a long and drawn out battle of attrition, but that was simply the nature of the encounter that the party had sought out, and finally they prevailed.
After a very thorough search of the lair there was no treasure to be found, just mounds of mud and "guano" with some shiny things like broken glass stuck in it; but nothing of value. This led them in frustration to examine the huge vine that Bumblebore had noticed earlier. When its long vines prepared to grasp Sever and pull him in, vines obviously backed by a vast body within the cavity it was growing in, the party managed to win initiative and retreat.
Dungeon stats:
Mapped area traversed: 360 feet
New corridor mapped: 230 feet
New rooms mapped: 2
Combats: 2 (3 if you count the giant snake separately, 4 if you count running from the vine creature, 5 if you count Treefingers trying to kill McScales)
Combat rounds: 16
Total time in the dungeon (approx): Delve #1 20 turns, Delve #2 6 turns.
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