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| Delve map |
Timekeeping
Player Characters Present
Session Report
After other options were briefly tabled and then rejected, the party set off again to push on into the quadrant of the crashed 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.
They knew to expect some response from the bizarre intelligence that opposed them. It turned out to be a floating head-sized robotic sentinel hovering near the ceiling just outside the broken western exit to the entry room. It descended, spoke in a robotic voice, then disintegrated the lift platform they had just used; before using the remainder of its surprise segments to paralyse first Giuseppe, then Treefingers, with beams from its glassy eyes. After this it floated back up out of the reach of melee weapons before the party could respond.
Once they did respond their accurate bow fire and well placed Macho Mandalf Flying Elbows managed to destroy the thing before it got another chance to use its deadly beams, there was a very real chance the entire party could have been paralysed if rolls had gone slightly differently. During that same round Slippery Pete had rushed to fashion a lasso from his climbing rope, this proved unnecessary at the time but also prompted a short discussion on the admissibility of the Unearthed Arcana rules for a lasso. This foreshadowed what would happen later. Bumblebore then claimed the destroyed sentry unit and spent most of the rest of the session with his hands in the thing like a puppeteer, trying to get it do something. Perhaps he will have better luck in downtime?
Heedless of the warning, or rather threat, the sentry had given them of approaching reinforcements, aka the "clean up squad", the party focussed on the strange vine monster they had encountered nearby last session, and began methodically removing vines from the area that might allow them to approach its lair. Shortly after they had some success in clearing a path, Gurt reported the approach of flying creatures from the corridor to the west. The clean up squad had arrived.
10 Hawkmen and a like number of Kenku, led by King Voltan and (later) Lord Inferno respectively, were flying towards them. Of course the latter were Kenku in disguise, and this ruse had the players scrambling to react appropriately. The Hawkmen kept their altitude advantage and threw spears down into the party's formation, with a series of hot attack rolls, the damage of which was augmented by an electrical 'Zap' attack. Fortunately for the players, the spears mostly hit the tougher characters while Bump wisely hid in the side passage they had cleared of vines.
Bumblebore sprang into action and cast Sleep. This effected many of the Kenku, causing them to fall 20' to the floor, take 2d6 damage, and wake up again. Though they were no longer asleep the creatures couldn't attack until the next round, where Bumblebore followed up with a breath weapon attack from O'Malfoy that wiped them (and some of Sever's and Giuseppe's hit points) out. Slippery Pete unwound his makeshift lasso and swung it up at King Vultan, the thief's ample dexterity plus a good roll making up for his lack of weapon proficiency and he brought their enemy down into the middle of their formation (later I read in UA that thieves can't use a lasso...). Giuseppe then pummelled the "Hawkman King" into oblivion, where upon the body shifted back into the form of a Kenku.
This battle was fun and chaotic but also slooow to adjudicate with so many on each side. It was not until the last of the Hawkmen had fled and the Kenku were destroyed that the session really got into gear. The Rangers, with the generous indoor tracking rules, managed to track the flying creatures west; the direction they have reason to be believe live the Eldritch Horror(s) at the top of the food chain in this place, back into an area they had started mapping last week and then...
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| into a Toxic waste room |
The new area was a huge, roughly rectangular room which featured a large metal platform with gantries leading to it from several exits elsewhere in the room; some of these had fallen into a pool of green toxic sludge 10' below, and of unknown depth, that covered the entire floor. In the centre of the metal platform was a tall, tapering cylinder; the top of which was hidden in the shadows near the ceiling. More of the green ooze could be seen leaking out of vents in various locations, dropping through the metal grating, and adding to the pool below. In places the green of the pool held a mustardy coloured blob, and the occasional waft of a matching scent drifted their way as they looked in through the doorway.
Much discussion happened at this point, and Bump lamented that he had used his Unseen Servant in the previous battle and surely the duration had expired by now. However, with my painstaking application of the timing/mapping rules I was able to tell him exactly how long he had left (a few turns) on that spell and so he now used it to scoop up some of the toxic goo and try some experiments. All this while the rest of the party moved a discrete distance away around a corner.
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| I use "spindown" dice to track rounds and turns in the dungeon |
When this endeavour failed to prove useful they returned to the toxic waste room and resumed their problem solving. Eventually I realised that my description of the area had left the players confused over where the connecting gantries were; so I had to clear this up and I once again reflected on how the true sense of three dimensional areas can be very tricky to impart with theatre of to the mind.
I think also what happened here was that while I was happily looking at my map, thinking the players had internalised what I saw there, Sever's player had made a wip map displayed on the discord screen share that didn't show a connection to the central area from where they stood, and so they held the view that there was no easy way across when in fact there was a metal walkway right in front of them. Once this was sorted out the dam broke and there was a rush of characters who suddenly wanted to do various semi-contradictory things at the same time and in the same space.
I announced that I would roll to determine who got to do something first, and the 'winner' was Slippery Pete. He ran out across the metal causeway towards the central platform with the intention of reaching the control panel looking thing and pressing some buttons. Sadly he only got as far as a few steps before the trapped causeway collapsed under him, sending him for a dip in the toxic greenish-blackish-in-some-places-somewhat-mustardy soup and he soon disappeared.
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| Pete was welcomed back with open arms |
Various actions were declared that would, hopefully, add up to saving Pete with the lasso; and then I rolled. Tied initiative! I lamented that I could easily see how to evaluate a win or a loss for either side, but a tie!? So, the Mustard Jelly in the toxic sludge surged forward and attacked Slippery Pete as he bobbed to the surface gasping for air, and Bump's Unseen Servant dropped the lasso around him. I thought Pete was done for here because it's a tough monster and one hit would probably be all it would take to kill him. The mere approach of the creature caused Pete to be effected by its toxic vapor, which has the effect of a Slow spell; but the pseudopods it attacked him with missed by 1 on the die! Treefingers hauled up the hapless thief and the party figured they were safe for the moment; and that was when the two Hawkmen, stationed in the shadows at the top of the metal cylinder, opened up with a squad manned automatic blaster weapon!
Six shots rained down on the party, who were pretty much sitting ducks, resulting in several hits. One had Bump's name on it, the 1 hit point magic-user said his goodbyes; but the energy blast went wide! The party lurched out of the line of fire and retreated. They weren't going to risk getting back in front the weapon in their current condition. Instead they withdrew to the side-ways elevator trap they had found a few sessions ago; used it to return to the maintenance level, and from there back to the thruster tube room and (after dodging the giant sundews that had been placed there several weeks ago) escaped the PSoD once again.
Dungeon stats:
Mapped area traversed: 780 feet
New corridor mapped: 10 feet
New rooms mapped: 1
Combats: 3
Combat rounds: 8
Total time in the dungeon (approx): 12 turns
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