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| Route of a Tornado |
Timekeeping
Player Characters Present
Downtime
Session Report
When the session began the there had been a major storm in the area the day before, followed by a tornado on the actually day the PCs planned to meet up. This meant that several characters were stuck waiting for the storm to abate before they could go anywhere. One player wanted more detail on where the tornado actually went, so I took out my direction dice, started from where Gurt had been when I rolled the storm, and went from there (see the above map). It got close enough to the Pizza Slice of Doom that I rolled an item saving through for the Irish camp and lift platform there, and it was destroyed. Thankfully there were no casualties and the tornado turned south before it reached Castle Irish. Once the weather had settled, Sever, Slippery Pete and Gurt straggled in and then everyone discussed plans for the session based on who was available. I treated it like any other session and waited for Gurt to explain what he had seen.
I'm not sure if it wasn't just to have a change of pace from the PSoD, but the party figured the possibility of treasure a day's ride away was too good to pass up. They rode until nightfall, reached the cave, and went right in.
The place was a double cave, with a narrow connection allowing passage into the larger cave within. From here there was a passage that Gurt led them down, which soon reached the portcullis he had told them about. There was a niche on either side of the bars where a holy symbol could be placed. Gurt had explained that doing so would allow the portcullis to be lifted open. (I divulged later that although this was true, doing so would cause the holy symbols to be trapped within the niches and prevent them from being used against the vampires).
Giuseppe peered through the bars at the four sarcophagi beyond, finding them also just as Gurt had described. There was no sign of movement, but something felt off to the more experienced Paladin and he used his detect evil ability. "You detect VERY STRONG EVIL," I sent him in his character chat, then described that a cloud like mist started to pour out of the four stone sarcophagi and move in their direction. He passed this on to the rest of the party and they readied for battle. I messaged Gurt: "You are sure your party members must be mistaken, some evil has effected them!"
Holy symbols were raised and the mists parted, in response it or not it was impossible to tell; some swept out of sight on either side of the portcullis. In moments two branches of mist had blocked off either side of the tunnel the party of seven were standing in, and then they changed form into human like shapes.
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| This one stared at Giuseppe, who made his save vs charm |
Now the Monster Manual entry for Vampires makes it very clear that they will not directly attack into the face of a holy symbol, and this party had a few (even Slippery Pete was waving a Cross about). This was a damn good thing for the party as a simple slug fest with four vampires was going to ruin everyone's day. I had to weigh this along with the presence of the Paladins' circles of protection. A round passed in a stand off, with some players averting their eyes to avoid charm; while the vampires summoned rats & bats, with the idea of using them to obscure the party's accursed holy symbols. Unknown to the party, these would take 2-12 rounds to arrive and I rolled quite high, so it was going to take some time.
Vampire Battle
It was at this moment that Sever decided that rather than wait and see the enemies' plan, whatever it was, reach fruition, he would attack the young looking male vampire in front of him; incidentally allowing that vampire to attack in return. Deltacron backed up the ranger with his favourite tactic, burning oil. It was on. The female called on Gurt to help in the fight, and the hapless paladin turned on his party members just as Giuseppe elected to try to turn undead.
Gurt tried to use his spetum to disarm Giuseppe, which I figured would have effected his turn undead attempt if he had managed to go first and cause him to drop his Cross, but the party won initiative. Sadly the Paladin from Brome was not high enough level and the young female vampire laughed off his attempt; but, never the less, she still did not attack in the face of the Holy Cross.
Were'shbane cried out in joy at finally being able to hit a shape changing creature and so deploy his full power. Sever struck a telling blow for around half the hit points of the vampire, while Deltacron missed with his oil and was missed in turn by the vampire's counter attack.
Another round against the male vampire and he was nearly out of hit points from another Sever(e) hit, but again it had a chance to swing at Deltacron and this time was rewarded with a solid hit; draining the life force from the dwarf until he was dead, falling to the floor as a lifeless husk. The brave dwarf had given his all and was now no more, you could cut the tension with a knife.
Slippery Pete had spent a round trying to get his hat to produce an effective disguise of Gurt, for what purpose I never learned. Now the charmed Paladin turned to overbear Giuseppe and the defence on that side turned into a wrestling match; the two henchmen joined in the weaponless combat, allowing the vampire to glide up and attack who ever she wanted. The thief was having none of that, he quaffed a draft of invisibility potion, impulsively snatched up Deltacron's fallen longsword, and darted around behind the enemy for a backstab next round.
The party won a crucial initiative, which might have been immaterial for the three on one wrestling match, but Slippery Pete got in a backstab with the borrowed Longsword+3 for maximum damage! It was one of those situations where a story gamer would have been tempted to ignore that the female vampire still had 3 hit points left, but that's not how we roll. She went for Giuseppe, who had just regained his feet from flipping Gurt on his back, extracting himself, and letting his henchman take over restraining operations.
There was a heated discussion of whether he still had use of his shield, but in the end the monster rolled badly and missed regardless. Sever finished off the vampire in front of him, but that was only to reduce it to zero hit points; it was not dead, rather it returned to gaseous form and passed back through the portcullis, only to be replaced by one of the two other vampires there.
Next round the party won initiative again and this time Giuseppe put the female vampire down with a solid slash, she also returned to gaseous form and passed back into the room with the sarcophagi. Bishoy and Tawdros finished choking out Gurt and got up to rejoin the fight. Sever exchanged blows with an older looking female vampire, fortunately avoiding the enemy's return attacks and keeping all his levels, for now.
It was now that a vast swarm of rats finally arrived. Another timely initiative win allowed Sever and company to finished off the vampire before it could get another life draining hit it. Giuseppe's henchmen stepped up to hold off the rats while the PCs faced off with the last vampire. An older looking male, clearly the head vampire, he was staring at them from within the room; safe, he thought, behind the portcullis. The PCs did not take the bait and averted their eyes from his gaze.
What would they do? It was certainly possible now for them to escape if they wanted. They had no other means of opening the portcullis that they knew of...except for brute strength.
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| yes I'm sure Slippery Pete joined in |
The last vampire looked very put out as the super strong Sever, wearer of the Girdle of Cloud Giant Strength, simply lifted the portcullis, wrenching it through the gears that held it place, until it was well and truly jammed open. The party strode in to once again play Russian roulette with level drain. Slippery Pete had quaffed another draught of Invisibility potion and moved to backstab, but failed! The henchmen again proved their worth by holding off the horde of rats while Sever and Giuseppe half destroyed the head vampire with solid blows. It swung back at Giuseppe; but his shield took the blow and once more level drain was averted. Next round the party won initiative and removed the last of the vampire's hit points before it had another chance.
Puzzle Solving
At that moment the rats broke and fled. Victory was theirs! There was a collective sigh of relief from the three high level PCs, they saw to the fallen Deltacron, and checked on Gurt; he was still charmed. What with the unarmed combat this fight had taken a fair bit of real time, but now the session changed gear to problem solving; how could they finish off the vampires, who were probably even now recuperating?
The four sarcophagi had traps from Appendix G, but Slippery Pete only detected two of them. There was some fun problem solving to circumvent the traps before all four had been opened and looted. Still the question remained, how do you finish off a vampire that is not yet in corporeal form? The sun was still many hours from rising. The party decided seek the answer elsewhere. Sever went back out to the horses and flew his speedy Pegasus Convess to Castle Irish in order to ask the clerics there; surely they must know. In fact there were clerics of a number of stripes there, a Brovenloft Roman, a lawful neutral cleric from the Valley of Fear, the (N)PC Godleve, even Sir Troland's cleric from far away Saint Terese. The advice was conflicting to say the least. However they all agreed that Holy water was of use and were able to sell up to 20 flasks. Sever threw some gems at them before flying back with as many as he could carry.
There was still a while before dawn when Sever returned, and the party were concerned that the vampires might survived the holy water. So the ranger spent some time widening the passage between the inner cave and the out cave, chipping it out with a rock, then one by one pushed the sarcophagi all the way outside to where they would get a good dose of sun. Then they emptied out the holy water flasks to turn each sarcophagi into a sort of bath tub, and hammered in improvised wooden stakes into the spots where they vampire's hearts would be when they reformed.
As a proxy for this location, I looked up what time the sunrise would be in the summer and randomly came up with Seattle time, 5:30 something AM, which just happened to be pretty much exactly 8 hours after the vampires had started to recover. They party kept watch until a glimmer in the East became a sudden flood of light. The vampires began to stir; the effect was immediate, the combination of killing methods so devastating, that I switched my camera on and did an impression of their gruesome death throes.
Lair stats:
Mapped area traversed: 0
New corridor mapped: 60 feet
New rooms mapped: 3
Combats: 1
Combat rounds: 9
Total time in the Lair (approx): 9 Hours