Crystal Cantrips

[SilverClawShift]

The people I play with often have trouble staying in character, so this is utterly refreshing.

That would be distressing. We make a point of acting OUT of character once the game gets rolling. Anything we say or do is considered in character unless otherwise noted prior.


...how did Drifter plan to make it work? If he infected her and forced her body to commit suicide, would that send his soul to the heavens?

See, I don't think it's working like that in this case.

Outsiders (angels, demons, and what have you) don't have seperate souls. That's part of what being an outsider MEANS, your body and soul are united and inseperable. Here's the relevant D20 entry on Outsiders (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#outsiderType).
Now there's no reason our DM couldn't have changed that... but I really don't picture him changing things to make our lives easier. She was bound to this world, not summoned. Killing her won't send her back, it will destroy her outright.

The conclusion being that the villains know something we don't (shocker!) and have another card they still haven't put on the table yet.

What we need to figure out now (aside from, you know, everything) is who this fifth mystery man is, and what role he was playing in the proceedings.
He was absent from the ritual for a reason, I'm sure.


A night of sweet loving will turn any evildoer good. :smallamused:

WROOONG

But a night of twisted deviant loving will drag almost anyone to the dark side.


There are 14 posts by heaps of people!!! :smalleek:

You noticed that too o_o

[arguskos]

But a night of twisted deviant loving will drag almost anyone to the dark side.
*whistles innocently* *shuffles things about in my closet* I can attest to this. :smallcool:

As for the Drifter and his angel, no matter how it falls together, it'll be awesome. :smallamused:

[thorgrim29]

Small suggestion to make your life easier if you have to kill the angel: Ask her questions about how to best defend her against the bad guys, ie:

If someone were to stab you in the kidney with a sword, would that be a problem for you, she can tell no lies after all.

[SilverClawShift]

As for the Drifter and his angel, no matter how it falls together, it'll be awesome. :smallamused:

You never know. Even the greatest setup can fumble at the climax.

Or, to quote our Swashbuckler player in another game (one where we really had no clue how to fight the BBEG) "How are we gonna win this? Cause if it turns out his weakness is the power of friendship, I'm gonna be very upset".



Ask her questions about how to best defend her against the bad guys

We're not too worried about fighting her. She told us point blank that the four of us are strong enough to take her out. She doesn't want us to, but on some level she's acknowledgeing it as an INTELLIGENT course of action (even if it's one she's morally obligated to advise against and fight to the death over).

No, killing her won't be a problem. Finding a better solution will be.

That's how morality tends to work. The easiest course is usually the worst one.

[Deth Muncher]

We're not too worried about fighting her. She told us point blank that the four of us are strong enough to take her out. She doesn't want us to, but on some level she's acknowledgeing it as an INTELLIGENT course of action (even if it's one she's morally obligated to advise against and fight to the death over).
No, killing her won't be a problem. Finding a better solution will be.
That's how morality tends to work. The easiest course is usually the worst one.

Okay, first off, morality? Pshaw. You're adventurers. You launch mass genocides against goblins just because they're listed as Evil in the MM. Morality is silliness that should be avoided at all costs.

That said, you DO have the...Dragon Shaman, I believe? Who would be very against this. So, as an alternative idea, MILK HER FOR INFORMATION. Get as MUCH possible info out of the angel as possible. And possibly ask her what her weaknesses are. That way, you can either A- defend them or B- use them to be rid of her quickly should the tide turn against you.

[Lilienthal]

A fairly simple thing to do would be for you take the Flee the Scene Lesser Invocation from Complete Arcane. Scratch that, it's short range teleport only.

What could work is Dark Foresight, a Dark Invocation, but I don't know when (or if) you'll be able to get that. It can basically establish a mental link with a creature and informs you of the best course of action to take to keep that target safe from any and all danger that might befall it. *looks it up* Oh, hmm, 16th level hu. Yeah, probably not gonna happen.

Your best bet is to try a few teleport and dimension spells on the angel with your archivist/sorcerer buddy to see if she is indeed bound to a single plane of existence. If that's so, you can still work with a lot of other spells to keep the being safe. One of the more humorous would be to Reduce Person her and get the lightning-fast kobold to give her a piggy back ride. Not that it would work, but it'd be hilarious to see him try.

Since there are now three of you who can fly, two of which permanently, and you have some untiring bats a cheesy solution would be to take to the skies. If you can create more undead flyers, you can literally spend entire days up in the air. No doubt your DM will find a way around that, but you'll likely be better off than getting ambushed on the ground.

You might have awakened my inner munchkin now. Maybe I can still find some other "interesting" spells that a low level archivist or sorcerer could (ab)use. :smallbiggrin:


That's how morality tends to work. The easiest course is usually the worst one.

Only if you're on the wrong side of the alignment grid. :smallwink:

[SilverClawShift]

You launch mass genocides against goblins just because they're listed as Evil in the MM

Not at this table buster :smalltongue:


[S]you can literally spend entire days up in the air

Me and the Factotum discussed that as a possibilty, actually. Give her one of the bats and have her go as high as possible, and simply circle in the barest reaches of the atmosphere wihle we try to set things right.

We'll see how this plays out.

[thorgrim29]

Yeah, not sure how a zombie would fare if a being of pure good energy sits on it for a few days actually. There's probably nothing in the rules, but if it was me calling the shot's that wouldn't work for more then a few days at most before the bat falls apart and the angel goes splat (wouldn't be such a bad thing at that....)

[13_CBS]

Me and the Factotum discussed that as a possibilty, actually. Give her one of the bats and have her go as high as possible, and simply circle in the barest reaches of the atmosphere wihle we try to set things right.

We'll see how this plays out.

I get the feeling that this will result in the following:

Swashbuckler: Hey! My bug just grew a pair of wings!

Dragon Shaman: Sweet, it can fly around now.

Warlock: Wait, what about all the other gem bugs? Will they get wings?

:smalleek:

[Roc Ness]

That would be quite nasty

[Lilienthal]

Warlock: Wait, what about all the other gem bugs? Will they get wings?

Ehm, they already had wings. I'd be more concerned with the army that the Drifter is controlling now.

[13_CBS]

Oh did they? Then will the plan of flying around just inside the atmosphere work? They could simply fly up there, couldn't they?

[Sliver]

If the bugs will get wings, the Swashbuckler's one might not enjoy this gift, nor will the party get to know that the other bugs have it now.
But by the time that the Drifter cares about the angel he might just have a whole s**t load of them and some might be able to cast invisibility.. And they might just be able to create an invisible tower of themselves, reach the angel high in sky and kill it anyway.

[SilverClawShift]

Oh did they? Then will the plan of flying around just inside the atmosphere work? They could simply fly up there, couldn't they?

The worlds a big place, and the further you get from the surface, the larger the 'sphere' you're a part of it. There's less to go on, no landmarks to use to navigate, ever-changeing clouds...

It wouldn't be a permanent solution, they'd find her eventually, but it WOULD be an option if things turn bleak.


If the bugs will get wings, the Swashbuckler's one might not enjoy this gift, nor will the party get to know that the other bugs have it now.

Yeah, there's nothing indicating that they're all evolving together in any fashion.

[Lilienthal]

If the bugs will get wings, the Swashbuckler's one might not enjoy this gift, nor will the party get to know that the other bugs have it now.
But by the time that the Drifter cares about the angel he might just have a whole s**t load of them and some might be able to cast invisibility.. And they might just be able to create an invisible tower of themselves, reach the angel high in sky and kill it anyway.

I think you're mixing things up. The scarabs the Drifter used had their gems taken out and replaced with black onyx, I assume the ones that multiplied in the hosts are similar, though they might need to grow the onyx like the original gem scarabs did. The Drifter's scarabs could fly from birth so didn't need to evolve. It's possible and quite likely that the regular scarabs will as well, but Silverclaw hasn't mentioned those in a while, except for all the failed specimens. They are also not under the Drifter's control, but are your average mindless insectoid (if you can call half-metallic and spellcasting average).

[Roc Ness]

You guys are around Lvl 8, right?

If you are, that means there should still be a lot to go, which means that there are probably still plot twists and hooks out there noone in this thread has thought of.

[Kosjsjach]

Game day!
*waits eagerly for the next enthralling installment*

[SilverClawShift]

You guys are around Lvl 8, right?


Yeah, we are, but the DM never said if this adventure was going to hit level 20, or end somewhere earlier.
The DM has mentioned something about having something (and I quote) "really really" good planned for our next campaign, and a few of us have started talking about our next characters, but all signs point to this getting a lot bigger before it ends.


Game day!
*waits eagerly for the next enthralling installment*

Bearing in mind we're gaming tonight, so I'll be posting early/mid day TOMMORROW at the soonest, depending on how fast I write :smalltongue:

[Chineselegolas]

Bearing in mind we're gaming tonight, so I'll be posting early/mid day TOMMORROW at the soonest, depending on how fast I write :smalltongue:Aww... Well I'm sure you can start posting as you play and keep us up to the minute.
:wink:

[Lilienthal]

Aww... Well I'm sure you can start posting as you play and keep us up to the minute.
:wink:
You know SilverClaw, that isn't such a bad idea. Since you've got your laptop with you anyway you can give us a verbatim report of the action through IRC or something. Let's see that draconic DM get the better of you with a hivemind backing you up. :smallbiggrin:

[Kosjsjach]

I can't decide if that's a fantastic idea or a terrible one.

I think it's both.

[13_CBS]

Let's see that draconic DM get the better of you with a hivemind backing you up. :smallbiggrin:

This can only end in tragic hilarity.

[SilverClawShift]

Worst idea ever.

[evil-frosty]

Only from your point of view. But ya it is a lot to ask for and sounds insanely hard and you wouldnt be as involved in the game so ya overall probably a bad idea but it would be cool for us.

[GreatWyrmGold]

So? You won't have to worry about being tired or cold or hungry anymore!
:smallannoyed:


At least you still have (most) of your flesh on your bones, unlike, say, a skeleton.
Okay...



Where do you think Half Draons come from?
First of all, DRAGONS. Second of all, they are rare (except maybe with chromatic ones in need of weapon-wielders).



A night of sweet loving will turn any evildoer good. :smallamused:
...



Opposites attract!
Or kill each other...



Q
E
D.
(http://youlose.ytmnd.com/)
???



Worst idea ever.
Yep.

[Gothmog]

Hi SilverClawShift !

I'm crawling out of lurker mode to join the praising bandwagon. :smallsmile:

Reading your table stories remind me of the awesome campaigns I had with a group of friends - unfortunately now dispersed in 5 different towns, and busy with kids, so meetings have become scarce...

But what was I saying before I went on rambling on how much I miss my friends ?
Oh, yes : your stories are awesome. Really.
And they bring back many great memories, so thanks a lot !
Keep on having good games and telling us about them. :smallwink:

[Roc Ness]

Can't wait!! :smallsmile:

Whats "tomorrow night" in East Australia Time?

[Corwin Weber]

Can't wait!! :smallsmile:

Whats "tomorrow night" in East Australia Time?

Any time now. :) At least I'm posting this at about 7pm pacific coast time.... so it's evening or later everywhere in the continental US. :)

[SilverClawShift]

Er, actually we just wrapped the game up. And the Factotum player is hanging around to do some homebrew work with me on vampires and a new base class.

And I wasn't writing the campaign as I went, so it's gonna be a while yet :smallwink:

[Bigbrother87]

And I wasn't writing the campaign as I went, so it's gonna be a while yet :smallwink:

Please, take your time. Of course, keep in mind that you have legions of loyal readers waiting with baited breath for the results. :smallwink:

[Corwin Weber]

Er, actually we just wrapped the game up. And the Factotum player is hanging around to do some homebrew work with me on vampires and a new base class.

And I wasn't writing the campaign as I went, so it's gonna be a while yet :smallwink:

Hey, I'm just handling the time zone update. I have no idea what your schedule is like. :)

[Coidzor]

Er, actually we just wrapped the game up. And the Factotum player is hanging around to do some homebrew work with me on vampires and a new base class.

And I wasn't writing the campaign as I went, so it's gonna be a while yet :smallwink:

Ooo, will you be sharing any of that with us here on the boards?

[Sliver]

Ah.. I wonder.. Can the Drifter still cast spells? Spells with him as the target might just effect every bug out there..

[Kyeudo]

The way this campaign has been going, investing in some better ways to kill swarms would be a good idea.

How close are you to getting Chilling Tentacles?

[Fayd]

Do you have access to one of the Warlock dispelling invocations? I wonder what would happen if you dispelled one of his bugs. Of course, you'd have to beat his caster level, but it might work.

[Sliver]

Do you have access to one of the Warlock dispelling invocations? I wonder what would happen if you dispelled one of his bugs. Of course, you'd have to beat his caster level, but it might work.

I don't imagine it working better then dispelling a commoner tho...

[Coidzor]

I don't imagine it working better then dispelling a commoner tho...


If the spell ends while you are in the magic jar, you return to your body (or die if your body is out of range or destroyed). If the spell ends while you are in a host, you return to your body (or die, if it is out of range of your current position), and the soul in the magic jar returns to its body (or dies if it is out of range). Destroying the receptacle ends the spell, and the spell can be dispelled at either the magic jar or at the host’s location.

Since it's been customized to make him into a hive-mind (and he was acting like he already had a disjointed hivemind or was communicating with some kind of piggy-backing demithurge....) all bets are off...

[Sliver]

I donno... I had the impression that they... ATE part of his soul so its just part of them, each of them just having a fraction of the soal.. The dispelling might work, but with the Drifter's caster level and the amout of bugs, even if it is they will need to dispell every bug and beat the check so..
I wonder what happens to the Drifter when a bug gets slain..

[SilverClawShift]

Wrote until the wee hours of the morning. I'm gonna need a nap today.

Our adventure resumes, with us on the open water, heading westward towards the jungle continent inhabited by (among other things) Papa HeeNo and his hopefully now-healthy tribe. Our intentions, as a group, are to tuck the angel away in Papa HeeNos sanctuary, and see if there's some kind of communicative spell he has access to (it's something we currently don't have). Once she's safe, we're going to return to Central Island ASAP and check in with the only other clever person we've met, Macguiller, and see if we can't get some kind of insight from the guy.

After that, we're going to hop off to the artic port. We're starting to wonder if maybe that listed destination had been factual, after all. Might explain the mystery man, whoever he is. And we might as well follow up on the two leads we neglected, now that the APOCALYPSE is happening a few hundered miles off our tailside.

Speaking of our tailsides though...

Devil With the Blue...

So we're about 50 miles out at sea, having been sailing top speed until dawn breaks and the sun comes up. Which naturally filled our hearts with resolve and renewed our... yada yada yada. We're playing Sir Robin and running with our tails between our legs for a safe hiding spot.

We're moving along as fast as our sails can take us, which unfortunately turned out to not be fast enough, as we spot something approaching from the direction we just left. We know we're outpacing the mass of bugs by a fair speed, and there shouldn't have been any ships able to catch us outright with our headstart. Keep pace with us maybe, but not overrun us.
Spot checks reveal nothing other than it being a big mass of blue moving in our direction. And that it's moving very fast. The blue is making it blend into the water enough that we're having trouble getting hard details.
So, the four of us stand there at the stern of the ship, watching this rapidly approaching... something, and scratching our heads like buffoons and wishing one of us had had the sense to purchase one of those piratey collapsable telescopes. Until it finally closes enough distance that the kobold passes a spot check, and the DM sends him a note about what he sees.
The kobold chuckles nervously and announces "Uh, guys? That's a blue dragon. A LARGE SIZED DRAGON. Flying angrily at our ship."
We pause, taking in that fact for a moment before running back to the deck and starting to secure things, checking to see what we can use to our advantage in a fight like this. A Large sized dragon is literally 1/4 the size of our ship itself, and the possibility that it could capsize us is very real. It's also definately WAY over our CR, which means one of us is probably going to die outright.
We help the skeletons swing the ship around ("HARD STARBOARD" shouts the dragon shaman :smalltongue:) to bring our two piddly ballistas in line with the dragons approach. The Swashbuckler and Kobold both helped the skeletons man the Ballistas, waiting for it to get into range, while we ask ourselves WHY in the world this dragon is charging us so furiously? We can't come up with an answer, as we haven't done anything to enrage any of the Draconic race... We haven't even SEEN a draconic creature yet...

...When it finally flies into range, and we can make it out in better detail. The Dragon has a golden glowing rune on its forhead.

We all stopped dead in our tracks at that, as the kobold managed to get out "Did it just occur to you guys how much trouble we're actually in? Cause it just hit me all at once how BAD our situation is".
We're in complete agreement. Blue Dragons live in the desert. The growing mass of bugs apparently found Big Blue's lair, and successfully infected it. So we're sitting there trying not to think about what ELSE the bugs might be infecting, and what ELSE is going to be hunting us to the ends of the earth, when the dragon starts screaming out at us to hand over the angel, amidst various threats and promises of unimaginable tortures.
We asked her if she could outpace the dragon, and she told us flatly that "No" it can fly much faster than she can. So we sent her below decks and locked up every entrance as securely as we could. Finally the dragon got in reasonable range of the Ballistas and we opened fire. Both hit for medium damage (3d8 each) and the group manning them began to reload for another shot.
In the meantime, me and the Shaman took to the skies with the bats flying seperately. I didn't want to risk the bats in the fight, as they were extremly valuable, but we were clearly outmatched and needed all the help we could get here. We flew out to fight the dragon directly. I hit it with an Eldritch Spear as soon as it got into range and was mortified to discover that it was old and devloped enough to have spell resistance. I passed the caster level check to bypass it, but not by much. At least I hit it for a relatively high damage roll.
The Blue Dragon covered the huge gap between us and fired a breath weapon (line of electricity) at the Shaman. The DM told him not to bother rolling a reflex save, as it was immpossible for him to even pass it, and he took a nasty chunk of hitpoints. The Shaman cleared what was left of the gap between the two and hit the blue dragon point blank with his fire breath weapon for a similar chunk of damage. The ballistas fired (and both hit) for another good damage roll
I fired another eldritch blast while backing off to one direction as much as I could, bypassed its spell resistance again (thankfully), and forced it to split its attention between me, the shaman, and the ship. The Shaman was in between it and the ship, and adult dragons don't actually have great mid-air manuevarability, so it was forced to attack him to continue advancing. It hit him straight on, with a scary damage roll that the DM decided was enough for it to LITERALLY just swat the shaman out of the sky and into the ocean below. The Dragon Shaman had to use his turn to scrabble out of the water (wishing he wasn't in full plate) and flying back in persuit. If the Dragon shaman didn't have CON 22, there's no way he'd have survived all the way to this level, by the way.
My bats attacked from either side, but neither could make a dent in the blue dragons AC.

The fight raged on for like 15 rounds, so I'm gonna stop trying to give a blow-by-blow here.

The Dragon landed on the side of the ship and crushed one of the ballistas, but the bats attacking it gave the kobold a flanking position, and he made a really good sneak attack at the dragons exposed underside. The Swashbuckler opted for two-handed power attacking, increased his size with Enlarge Person to put him on better footing with the dragon (which made our ship groan from the increased weight of the two).
The Dragon spent a lot of time knocking us around, but it didn't capsize the ship directly like we'd feared. About half the way through the fight, we realized it was because it didn't want to risk killing the angel itself, not knowing where she was below decks. It DID attack our rigging, knocking the mast clean over and destroying our sails in the process. It utterly destroyed two of the skeletons, one of the bats, and sent the kobold running in fear from its Frightful Presence aura once. I spent a turn rummaging through my pack of poisons for an ingestable, high DC CON damaging poison, handed it to one of the remaining skeletons, and sent it off to fling itself into the dragons mouth to fight its way down its throat. The trick worked, destroying the skeleton, but giving the dragon 7 CON damage for a huge drop in hitpoints.
We rolled the randomly summoning dice. It came up Giant and Spider, at which point a HUGE sized spider (literally bigge rthan the dragon) appeared. It sort of gave us an edge, in that it was attacking both sides, which occasionally occupied one of us, but occasionally distracted the dragon while we pounded away at it. The dragon eventually shredded the spider (huge or not, it was still Dragon versus Spider), but it had been more beneficial than detrimental.
At some point during the fight, all four of us wound up in negatives, with a lot of very close calls. I don't think the DM was pulling his punches, I think we all just stayed out of range when we were too-low on hitpoints until we were healed enough to survive another hit. But between all four of us having various healing tricks, we kept getting back up to rejoin the fight. Finally, on the stern of the ship, between the enlarged Swashbuckler pounding away at its face, the Dragon Shaman hitting it from behind with fire breath and bastard sword attacks to the back of its skull, me peppering it with Eldritch Blasts left and right (some of them missing due to spell resistance), the poison eating away at it, and the Factotum hitting it in the face with a Fireball spell from the bow of the ship, the beast finally, mercifully, was felled.

At which point it began to cough in its death throes, choking up the black onyx bugs! :smalleek:

The Dragon Shaman coup de graced it to prevent it from dissolving into a swarm of the horrible vermin, but it still coughed up around two dozen of the soul-stealing insects beforehand, who made a beeline for us, and for the various cracks and holes the ship had devloped during the fight. We managed to kill them without much trouble, the final bug crawling rapidly towards a hole in the deck when the Kobold whipped out his hand crossbow and plunked it from afar.


Damage Control

At which point we began to assess the damage. We were in very, very bad shape. Our hitpoints were nill, ranging from single digits, to the kobold with the highest at like 25. All of our daily healing was expended, except for the Swashbuckler having a few cure-minor wounds. We had no healing potions left, and most of our daily abilities were expended.
The ship was in shambles. Our crew was down to two intact skeletons and a single surviving undead bat. The rigging was DESTROYED, and would take days of dedicated labor to fix. Days we needed to be resting to heal ourselves from the fight. Days when the Drifter hivemind would be heading in our direction, knowing exactly which heading we'd been following, and that our ship was in no shape to sail. There were low winds
There was talk of abandoning the ship. The Dragon Shaman didn't like the idea of leaving the S.S. Ironman behind, considering she'd been a very loyal vessel. He did conceed we were low on choices tho.
I could fly under my own power. The Angel could carry the kobold while she flew. The Dragon shaman could only fly for limited durations. He had a lot of stamina, but he wouldn't be able to fly under his own power all the way to shore. The bat could only carry one of them with weight concerns. Even if the Shaman and Swashbuckler stripped and left all their gear here, they'd still be too far over weight. The Dragon Shaman and kobold could ride a bat together, but not with the full plate, so the Shaman would be giving up some very critical gear.
Dragon Shaman: We could row. We wouldn't have to spend the time repairing the mast then.
Swashbuckler: Rowing would give us no rest, which we sorely need, and we'd be moving at half speed. Maybe if we had more skeletons.
Me, to DM: How many hit die did that dragon have anyway?

The DM smirked, and said "More than you can animate in a single casting".
The dragon was 18 Hit Die. I could CONTROL the dragon as a zombie, with room to spare in my max undead capacity. But I was level 8 and could only ressurect 16 HD worth of creatures at once.
Except I had a scroll of "Desecrate" that I'd taken from the changelings gear back when we'd found all the black onyx in the first place. Desecrate has the nice side effect of allowing you to animate twice as many undead per casting...

Dragon Shaman: I am NOT letting you DESECRATE the stern of our ship!
Me: How about the Bow?
Dragon Shaman: Look, I'm IFFY about bringing a dead dragon back to life anyway. Bahamut would be upset, but I admit we have to give ourselves a little leeway right now, the stakes are high. DESECRATING our vessel to unholy forces still isn't okay.
Swashbuckler: I'd rather not make our ship unholy. But I'm ready to look the other way, we need an answer here.
Factotum: Likewise. I can just stand on the opposite side of the ship and hum loudly and pretend it's not happening until it's done.
Dragon Shaman: The angel. She won't approve.
Me: We won't tell her.
Dragon Shaman: She'll know.
Me: But by then it'll be done and over. She knows I'm evil, she'll just have to man-up and deal with what happened.

The dragon shaman, in real life, ran his hand through his hair and sighed, before looking clean across the table at me and saying point blank
"I won't let you desecrate my ship".
Me: I float towards the stern backwards, keeping my eye on the dragon shaman the whole time. I tell him I don't know how he thinks he's going to stop me.
Dragon Shaman: Roll Initiative.
Kobold: *Coughs loudly* OH, wow, we're not getting involved in this.
Swashbuckler: Count me out, let me know who wins. I am switzerland here.
Me: Fine. Roll initiative.

So... there we stand. On the deck of an utterly smashed and ruined ship, in the middle of a calm ocean with still winds. Covered in our own blood, beaten to within an inch of our lives, bruised and broken. Low on supplies. I have five hitpoints, the Dragon Shaman has like a dozen.
And he wins initiative. He crosses the deck of the ship until he's adjacent... and readies an action, taking a deep inhale and telling the DM that he's ready to torch me with his fire breath if I so much as twitch aggressively.
I sat in silence for a bit, thinking of my next move. His fire breath is 4d6. I have 5 hitpoints. "If you roll all ones, I'll survive to hit you with an eldritch blast"
Dragon Shaman: If I roll all fours, you'll instantly burn to death. Feeling lucky?

I think for another minute and sigh. "Okay. I won't desecrate your ship".

Combat ends, everyone looks releived. I fly over the the dragon corpse and start pushing it off the back. It's slow going, but it's close to being toppled with its own weight anyway, I just need to shift it over the edge. Finally it shifts enough that it topples into the water. I float over on top of it and pull out my desecrate scroll.
Dragon Shaman: Excuse me?
Me: I'm not desecrating your precious ship. I'll desecrate this little chunk of water I'm floating on, and raise the dragon, and we can all be on our merry way! We can whistle a little tune while we go!
Swashbuckler chuckles and shrugs. "She's not desecrating the ship. You can still go kill her out of spite I guess."
The Dragon Shaman sighs and shakes his head. Agrees. The ship's not tainted with evil, my actions are my own, if I want to make my own redemption that much further away then so be it.
Me: So be it.

So the ship floating off a ways, I UMD the Desecrate scroll and make the surrounding area pulse with unholy negative energy, yada yada yada. Fortunately the dragon corpse floated long enough for me to get off the scroll, stuff its face full of black onyx, and reanimate it.
So me and my new (very powerful) blue friend fly up to the deck of the ship, and we begin re-discussing strategy. I was just figuring on having an extra flying mount to chariot us all away, but the Kobold had a remarkably amazing idea.
"Chain it to the bow of the ship and have it pull us!"

The Dragon is strong enough that even carting our ship and crew behind it, we'll be moving at easily five times our normal sailing speed. And that's not reliant on winds, and it's non-stop. It'll fly all night and all day. We'll still need to take turns at watch, to make sure it doesn't keep dragging us straight onto dry land, but it'll be a REMARKABLE ungrade.
The DM even gave us a golf clap. He hadn't expected us to do anything like this, but was impressed that we'd turned such a horrible situation into an IMPROVEMENT over our normal standings. He even confessed that he expected one or two of us to die distracting the dragon while the others escaped.

And of we sailed! Or... flew... Or off we got dragged! Yeah, that one sounds right.

Off we got dragged!


Papa HeeNo...Again

The rest of our travel was plagued with the most horrible weather we'd encountered to date. It became hard to tell the difference between day and night, the cloud cover was so dark. Torrential downpours were constant, the skeletons spent their time scooping water ouf of the below-decks (not that it was critical, the dragon was strong enough that pulling us up and forward had our ships normal waterline ABOVE the actual waterline. Lightning cracked and thunder rolled, and cyclones and maelstorms sprung up on all horizons.
The Dragon Shaman said the gods of the sea were angry at me, and this was my karma taking face. I said something about the gods of the sea being neutral and uncaring, and his reply was "well SOMEONE is mad at you".

Despite the storm, the Dragon serving as our undead engine turned the "several weeks later" journey into "several days later", which was good, because time was definately not on our side. When we spotted land, I had the dragon sink into the water to slow our arrival. We were going far faster than any sailing ship could muster, so the dragon had to drop and start swimming, letting us slow naturally and walking ahead of us.
When we reached the entrace to the river, and the lazy local portmaster came out with a smile and a wave, saying something about the plague clearing up right after we left. He cut himself off when he noticed the huge (now pale and dead) blue dragon starting to peak above the waterline as the shore got more and more shallow. He just tilted his head and stared at it as it pulled our ship up to the dock.
Dragon Shaman: We don't actually have any port papers, by the way.
Portmaster, shaking his head with a glazed distant expression: "No concern. No concern, I'll just... pretend I never saw you?"
Dragon Shaman: Good man.

So we made it to Papa HeeNos area. We elected to just leave the ship floating in the water, and gave the blue dragon and skeleton orders to kill anything that tampered with the boat while we headed further inland to the village with the (perfectly willing to follow our lead) angel in tow. When we were almost there, just before we could actually SEE the village, we came to some kind of barrier. It didn't look like anything, there was just a point in the trees where we could no longer press on without passing a Will save, and then a fortitude save, in quick succession. The save DCs were ridiculously high. I floated up to see if the barrier had some kind of space limit, but no matter how high I went, it was the same thing. It just quietly repulsed us from entering.
The angel could cross through it. Wether her saves were just that high, or it was a side effect of being a creature of pure goodness, we didn't know.
As soon as she crossed the barrier though, Papa HeeNo was standing there on the other side, as if he'd been there the entier time. He said "Ah Ah Ah no no no. Ain't no one comin in da village no more, ya hear? We off limits. I knowin ya be bringin da bird girl, she'll stay. Da rest of ya need to be goin now, aint no cause for ya bein here."
Factotum: We could... really really use a place to rest. Resupply a little maybe?
Papa HeeNo just laughed and waves us off. "Ya be leavin, now." Then he reached over, grabbed the angels wing and stretched it out, and roughly yanked one of the bigger looking feathers out of place. The angel didn't flinch. Papa HeeNo then reached up, plucked out a single one of her hairs, and tied it around the feather, before letting it drift to us from across the barrier. "Ya be keepin dat wit ya. Day still be followin you instead a her now. Now go. Da spirits be lettin ya know if I wantin ya back ever. Git."
The angel didn't say a word, just turned towards the village and began marching away. Papa HeeNo waited to make sure we started heading back to the ship before doing the same.

Kobold: That didn't really set my mind at ease.
Swashbuckler: It didn't? Cause my first thought here is "Wow, that guy knows what he's doing"
Me: The angel did seem to trust him implicitly.
Kobold: What if he's got her under a charm or something, and is planning to kill her?
Me: Then we won't have to worry about that at least.

So we leave the jungle uneventfully, heading back to Central Island.


Global Warning

We half expected central island to be destroyed when we got there. The way things had been going with us pulling into dead cities and sneaking to haunted asylums, it occured to us that it'd actually been a while since we'd dealt with normal people.
We still had the mental wherwithal to disguise our status as "The Necromancy Boat. We didn't bother to hide the skeletons or bat, we just tied a rope to each one of them and handed them each a weight, and sent them overboard with the underwater dragon tugging us into port. No sense bothering to try an explanation when we could just let them soak in silence.

No one noticed the undead creatures a few hundered yards back and deep under the dark water, fortunately. They did immediately notice that our rigging had been shredded from the base up, and that all four of us looked like we'd had boulders dropped on us. Because of the speed of our travel, it'd only been a few days since the dragon attack, and we were still worse looking for the wear. We'd managed to top our hitpoints back off around day 3 through a combination of rest and our various methods of curative treatments (lay on hands, fiendish healing, regeneration, the Swashbucklers healing bug familiar, and good old fashioned cure spells). That didn't mean we DIDN'T look like we'd almost lost a fight with a dragon.
The portmaster didn't even ask for our papers. He just looked around the deck of our ship and said "What in the hells happened here?"
All we said was that we needed to see the captain of the guard (who came rushing out once he realized it was us). The first words out of his mouth? "Did you have a run in with Therin?"

Which is when it hit us that we hadn't been back to central island for a full update in a WHILE...we laughed.

We brought the captain of the guard up to speed. He was a little dubious about our story, until we showed him the familiar spellcasting bugs, only clearly twisted and evil and dark. He accompanied us to Macguillers shop so we could bring them both up to speed at once and have Macguiler check out the newest strain (and verify that the gems were of the soul-stealing variety).
His assesment of the black onyx gems was identical to ours, with the added conclusion (one we hadn't even checked) that the gems were so perfect and pristine that they were worth a lot more than normal black onyx gems of their type. I made a mental note that me and the Swashbuckler/archivist would have to harvest every available one, for undead related purposes.
Macguiller, in a little magical experiment, took a live crab and put it in a makeshift mesh cage, before activating the black onyx gem on it. Instantly, a glowing rune appeared on the crabs back and it began to attack the walls of the mesh cage ferociously. Before it could make much progress, Macguiller took a thin metal spike and slammed it home on the crab... which caused it to shake and sputter and crack open, causing another one of the black onyx gem bugs to pop out from inside it and begin attacking the same spot on the cage. Macguiler spiked it to.

The guard captain, watching intently, whistled and asked us how many of those bugs had been out there? When we said "A few thousand, and spreading" he looked at us with wide eyes and nodded. Said he'd send out every available ship to every possible port (excluding the ones within a few days travel of the egyptian continent) with sketches of the rune, the bug, and a warning about exactly what they were. Hopefully enough places would take it seriously to develope some decent defense strategies.
That's when we dropped the bombshell about the dragon attacking us (leaving out the dragons timely zombification obviously). The Swashbuckler casually asked "How many dragons do you think are in the world, anyway?" The Dragon Shaman and DM both replied together "Too many".

Still, it felt good to have the authorities on our side. The guard captain took a sketch of the symbol, the bug, and started writing down the key details, and went back to have as many copies scribed as possible, and sent out with every willing ship.

We took the resting period to look at the map of the world, And chart out how fast the bugs might be spreading. Given the actual bugs pace, it didn't look too bleak. A hundered miles out in any given direction from the initial ziggarut was the raw potential.
Factoring in the spreading and travel of faster creatures made it a little worse. Infected horses, camels, or other quick moving creatures could have spread the bugs out to just over three hundered miles. At which point they could destroy themselves to let the cache of insects out to re-start the infection process in new locations...
If the obviously Adult dragon who'd attacked us had nearby offspring who were also infected? Even just wyrmlings or very young hatchlings?

700 miles give or take.

And god knows what was out there for the drifter to take over.

Before we got too depressed thinking about that, we gave Macguiller one of the gems from the Swashbucklers healing bug and asked if he could maybe try to grow as many of those as possible. The bugs themselves were apparently not the evil plot, and having more healing in the world, especially central island, would probably be a good idea after all.
He nodded in agreement, and we wished him the best. We re-supplied as best we could (the captain practically gave us extra gear from his guard militia. Bolts, throwing daggers, whatever we thought we might need). We found a wand of Endure Elements that would be very important to us...

Because with that, we set off to the artic circle.


To end the session, the DM let us level up. Said we'd definately earned it with the display against the dragon, the securing of the angels (temporary) saftey, and sending out a mass signal for the rest of the world to defend itself against a very real threat. Wether or not anyone would beleive it remained to be seen, but at least we'd warned them.

The Dragon Shaman is now immune to Fire and has learned his final Draconic Aura. Immunity to fire will be less valuable in the artic, probably, but at least it's something handy for the future.
The Factotum opted to finally take his level in barbarian for the boost to speed, making him even faster and more "Everywhere". The rage might also come in handy, for the boost to will saves, hit points, and damage.
The Swashbuckler took another level in archivist, and got 2nd level spells (learned Cure Moderate Wounds and Gentle Repose). His reason for learning Gentle Repose? "I'm not going to desecrate any areas, but if we find another powerful corpse, I'll just keep it from rotting horribly until one of us has enough levels to turn it into a zombies. Pretty clever.
My Eldritch Blast got a little more powerful, but I didn't learn any new tricks for it. I can also animate things with 18 HD now, which is Ironic with a capital I because the struggle and roleplaying that resulted from NOT being able to animate the dragon means I now COULD animate the dragon, which would have reduced the conflict and just... yeah, make you go cross eyed.

[wadledo]

2 things:

1. You still have the dice? You never said anything about picking it up during the battle with the bugs?


2. Do you know how many cold creatures have strong fire attacks?
.....Well, 7, I think, but still, fire immunity is probably a good thing.

[SilverClawShift]

Ooo, will you be sharing any of that with us here on the boards?

I actually put up a thread about the vampire stuff, but it allready faded awya into the nothing.


How close are you to getting Chilling Tentacles?

I'd be more inclined to get Eldritch Cone truth be told.

But I really want to take Repelling Blast and see what it does to priests dark orb ,which may or may not be my soul...


You still have the dice? You never said anything about picking it up during the battle with the bugs?

Details do get lost in translation. I haven't mentioned how many pints of oil or sticks of chalk we still have either :smallwink:.
Someone pocketed a black onyx gem from one of the bugs, of course we snagged the dice.

And yeah, fire immunity is still good, it just seems less immediately useful.

[Sliver]

WOW.. That was.. woven out of threads of win!
Good thing you didn't get something like a skeletal rabbit because.. a skeletal rabbit :smalleek:

EDIT: BTW, did you find out how much time it needs before recharge?

[Dragonmuncher]

As clever as towing the boat is...

Hollow out the dragon. Step inside. Congratulations, you have an airship. A bit smellier than riding on it, but you get out of the wind!

[Sliver]

As clever as towing the boat is...

Hollow out the dragon. Step inside. Congratulations, you have an airship. A bit smellier than riding on it, but you get out of the wind!

So thats a strike against using it as an air baloon too I'd guess? He might not be able to lift a ship above ground, but a big enough basket for all the group is fine I'd think..

But in any case, it would make coming to port a little harder nay? As they now stand, the dragon just dives.. If they ride inside it tho..

[SilverClawShift]

Hollow out the dragon. Step inside.

That's actually a really neat idea, but a large sized dragon isn't all THAT big. It's be a really small room for anyone inside. It's strong enough, but space wise we'd be really cramped.

Plus, this way we still have a boat to store stuff on (stuff being walking corpses, angel feathers, and everything else we find).

Oh, and the dice are useable once per day.

[13_CBS]

As clever as towing the boat is...

Hollow out the dragon. Step inside. Congratulations, you have an airship. A bit smellier than riding on it, but you get out of the wind!

I...I think the Shaman would have FITS over that idea. :smalleek:

[SilverClawShift]

I...I think the Shaman would have FITS over that idea. :smalleek:

I don't think he'd be that opposed to riding around in it. No more so than animating it in the FIRST place.

He'd be more concerned about abandoning his ship. This is the best of both worlds. If something happens to the dragon, we have to find a new way to tow our ride (underwater adventure to find some sharks to skeletalize and chain up maybe?)
If something happens to the ship, we still have a flying dragon zpmbie capable of great feats of strength.

[13_CBS]

I don't think he'd be that opposed to riding around in it. No more so than animating it in the FIRST place.


Really? Obviously he'd be less pleased about animating a dragon than riding around in it, but he can't be too happy about the idea of gutting one and using it as transport. It'd be like asking an elephant lover to ride around in an elephant-mech made out of a hollowed out elephant...they'd be pretty squicked out by it, no? But yeah, he probably wouldn't be as upset over this as animating one.

(Speaking of elephant-mechs, if you guys ever come across an elephant in a jungle and you have HD to spare, elephant zombies could be an interesting method of ground transport, now that you guys don't have any bats. :smallamused:)

[Corwin Weber]

Ok, here's something maybe....

The dragon only produced what, a dozen or so bugs? The crab only made one?

Didn't the initial infected humans make dozens each?

Maybe this whole thing weakens per infection? Maybe there IS an upper limit?

[only1doug]

Wrote until the wee hours of the morning. I'm gonna need a nap today.


Hi SCS, thanks for the Updates, I'm loving the story so far. BUT you shouldn't mess up your sleep patterns to give us a slightly earlier scoop.

Keep telling us your (GMs) story, but please don't mess yourself up to do so.

[Lilienthal]

Me, to DM: How many hit die did that dragon have anyway?

"How many hit dice did you say that dragon had?" :smallbiggrin:

I'm a regular goddamn psychic. :smallbiggrin:


That was a pretty awesome fight though, and great job on solving that little moral quandary with the Dragon. I have a feeling it won't be the last, I suggest you figure out a way to deal with him when the time comes; the rest of your party seems to be quite neutral, with somewhat of an evil or at least selfish streak, so they shouldn't object too hard if it boils down to mortal combat. Too bad Warlocks don't get any contingency spells, they were made for that. But between your at-will powers and the Zombified Dragon you should be able to take him easily.

Oh, and make sure you get a saddle (and a name xD) for your dragon, the rule of cool demands it. :smallwink:


And I'll second what only1doug said, no need to wear yourself out just to please the masses. :smalltongue:

[Magicus]

As always, an excellent tale... I've got to say, though, I feel so sorry for your Dragon Shaman right about now. He's just trying to do his duty, be a good person, save the world, captain his ship... And what does he get in return? His beautiful ship becomes the Necromancy Boat! :smalltongue: Nothing says "Evil Dragon Shaman" quite so much as a torn-apart ship pulled by the desecrated corpse of an ancestral enemy.

[SilverClawShift]

We were actually in a long-running campaign where one of us was a dread necromancer.
At one point, we came scrabbling out of some caves being chased by a massive (and I mean massive) hoarde of trolls, led by a fiendish troll who'd been literally hunting us down like we were prey for several levels. We'd gotten trapped underground and under supplied, and were being chased like dogs. The phrase "This is hell" came up at least once.

When we finally found a cave with a dim light and the top, and scrabbled up so fast we cut ourselves on the sharp stones. We made it out, still worried about being persued by the trolls, and what do we discover we scrambled out into the middle of?

Elephant Graveyard.

The necromancer actually stood up at the table, cackling maniacally. Good times...

[SilverClawShift]

Ok, here's something maybe....

The dragon only produced what, a dozen or so bugs? The crab only made one?

Didn't the initial infected humans make dozens each?

Maybe this whole thing weakens per infection? Maybe there IS an upper limit?

I strongly doubt it. I think producing the bugs is some kind of willing self-destruct. The dragon shaman coup de gracing the dragon is probably what kept it from bursting into 50 of the damn things. At least, that's the immpression we got at the table.


BUT you shouldn't mess up your sleep patterns to give us a slightly earlier scoop.

It's okay. I was up WAY too late with the factotum player anyway, working on our homebrew stuff (and some Dustlands material. We're kind of ADD).

Why not just stay up all night? :smalltongue:


I'm a regular goddamn psychic. :smallbiggrin:


I did think about that :smalltongue:

And honestly? I hope it doesn't come down to me versus the shaman. I think it'll become an airborn slugfest (we'll both be able to fly at will soon) and he has way more hitpoints and a regenerative aura that never runs out of fuel.
It'd be an ugly fight.

Plus, he could have killed me. I had every intention of taking him out clean, but he readied an action to show me mercy. Chaotic Evil or not, that IS weighing on my characters mind when we interact now.

[GreatWyrmGold]

We haven't even SEEN a draconic creature yet...
...Except for half of your party...

Also...
I was thinking, "Geez, even when the campaign is over, the thread will be alive from my "PLEASE DON'T KILL AND ZOMBIFY MEEE!!!" request." I guess I'm wrong.

[Coidzor]

Ok, here's something maybe....

The dragon only produced what, a dozen or so bugs? The crab only made one?

Didn't the initial infected humans make dozens each?

Maybe this whole thing weakens per infection? Maybe there IS an upper limit?
Well the dragon was stopped before its body was completely consumed which is why they could zombify it. So apparently killing the host stops it from being turned into the bugs, but that means you can't just drop 'em, have to get 'em down to -10 hp.

Well, I'm definitely thinking you should think up something kooky for your MacGyver(first thing I thought of when I saw his name) to do while you're away.

You guys still have that rubber stamp to use to give him letters and sketches, right?

If he needs to tell you anything, isn't there that sending spell that he can use to give you like, 5 sentences?

(On staying up all night. Don't do it. Being nocturnal is not as nice as vampires make it out to be. For one thing, your blood pressure shoots up and you become really weak to diabetes.)

...Wait, is the Dragon Shaman's Aura REGENERATIVE? And applies to the rest of you? ...if so, open up your leg-wounds and you should begin growing *something* back...

Over what period of time?

V: This campaign is definitely causing me to reconsider the value of necromancy...

Also, I completely agree about herd of elephants in general and undead elephants in particular. I now want undead stampy...

[Drakyn]

We were actually in a long-running campaign where one of us was a dread necromancer.
At one point, we came scrabbling out of some caves being chased by a massive (and I mean massive) hoarde of trolls, led by a fiendish troll who'd been literally hunting us down like we were prey for several levels. We'd gotten trapped underground and under supplied, and were being chased like dogs. The phrase "This is hell" came up at least once.

When we finally found a cave with a dim light and the top, and scrabbled up so fast we cut ourselves on the sharp stones. We made it out, still worried about being persued by the trolls, and what do we discover we scrambled out into the middle of?

Elephant Graveyard.

The necromancer actually stood up at the table, cackling maniacally. Good times...
There are far too few occasions in modern fantasy when the bad guys get trampled by herds of undead elephants.

Honestly, raising the dead seems so practical and helpful in this adventure that I'm amazed more heroes don't try it. You kill an enemy, your average group gets EXP and loot. You guys get that PLUS flying mounts/ship power source + juggernaut/kamikaze poisoners. You're like some kind of swiss-army warlock.

[Lilienthal]

There are far too few occasions in modern fantasy when the bad guys get trampled by herds of undead elephants.
Honestly, raising the dead seems so practical and helpful in this adventure that I'm amazed more heroes don't try it. You kill an enemy, your average group gets EXP and loot. You guys get that PLUS flying mounts/ship power source + juggernaut/kamikaze poisoners. You're like some kind of swiss-army warlock.

That'd be your problem.

[SilverClawShift]

You guys still have that rubber stamp to use to give him letters and sketches, right?

...

Wow. Do I feel stupid. We could have sent out the warning as soon as the bug debacle occured (not that it necessarily would have been beleived).

I completely forgot that existed! I don't know who has it on their character sheet (I'm thinking swashbuckler). I'm bringing this up at the next meet :smalltongue:

[SilverClawShift]

That'd be your problem.

I'm a firm beleive that you can be a necromancer and not be pure evil. You have to hide what you're doing, generally, but it's definately more morally grey than pure blooded villanry.

We probably end up using necromancy in some capacity one out of every four or five major sessions. Someone realizes they have Animate Dead on their spell list and everything goes to hell.

[Deth Muncher]

I'm a firm beleive that you can be a necromancer and not be pure evil. You have to hide what you're doing, generally, but it's definately more morally grey than pure blooded villanry.

We probably end up using necromancy in some capacity one out of every four or five major sessions. Someone realizes they have Animate Dead on their spell list and everything goes to hell.

I feel that your next-next campaign (since you mentioned that your next one has been brought up in discussion already) should involve EVERYONE being a necromancer. Everyone. Or it should be set using the Ghostwalk suppliment. Seriously. Or, perhaps, everyone plays undead characters (either via the Necropolitan template, or playing an undead monster, via rules from...Libris Mortis, I think?). Just to, you know, get it out of your systems. :smalltongue:

[Lilienthal]

Coidzor, editing your post is great if you don't want to doublepost, but including quotes from things people said after you is quite confusing. :smallamused:

And SilverClaw, while I understand your character's "gratitude" for not being slain outright, I don't think it will last long, given that you already bartered your soul in a deal with outsiders. You have quite a few invocations that are suited to taking him out in one-on-one combat, where Walk (fly? xD) Unseen is arguably the best. He can't burn what he can't see after all. :smallwink:

On another note: I was just looking over the Dragon Shaman class again. How does he explain his do-good alignment anyway? Assuming he's a Red Dragon Shaman, his alignment is supposed to be CN, NE, or CE. Scratch that, he's taking the Golden Dragon path isn't he?


I'm a firm beleive that you can be a necromancer and not be pure evil. You have to hide what you're doing, generally, but it's definately more morally grey than pure blooded villanry

Oh yes, it's definitely a grey area, but raising the dead to do your bidding is hardly a heroic activity. And actively pursuing necromancy will lead you on to an evil path with things like Desecrate around. You could probably make some sort of homebrew Necromancer variant to the malconvoker though.

[Coidzor]

I completely forgot that existed! I don't know who has it on their character sheet (I'm thinking swashbuckler). I'm bringing this up at the next meet :smalltongue:

Well I wasn't going to make any assumptions, but I was curious as to why it was only mentioned once.

Sorry Lilie, didn't wanna clog things up too much.

[Deth Muncher]

Coidzor, editing your post is great if you don't want to doublepost, but including quotes from things people said after you is quite confusing. :smallamused:


Worried about other people vying for the "goddamned psychic" title? :smallamused:

[SilverClawShift]

I feel that your next-next campaign (since you mentioned that your next one has been brought up in discussion already) should involve EVERYONE being a necromancer.

Actually, I allready have my next character. We have no clue what the next campaign is going to be about, but our DM did mention it again, and seems pretty excited.
The Factotum player allready said that he wants to be a Binder, the DM said no problem.
I want to play Rich Burlews own Champion base class (found in the gaming tab to the left :smalltongue:). I've got this character in mind, daughter of a farmer who becomes the servitor/worshipper/avatar of Lady Autumn, The Goddess of the Harvest.
Allready worked it out with the DM and got his approval of the class and character. Favored weapon is a Scythe, access to the Plant and Death domains (deity is true neutral, character is neutral good). Avatars hair is nothing but falling leaves, skin has black and green veins underneath.

I'm gonna have fun with that. But, I'll have Animate Dead as a domain spell. DM said he's okay with a Neutral Good character animating the dead. And since I'm going to be at half-caster-level, I won't have a lot of them, probably just an undead mount and a skeleton bodyguard or something.

Still, that's a ways off. I'm sure we have at least another month of this campaign, give or take depending on what level he plans on stopping us at. We're probably going to go all the way to 20 though, and usually level once a session.

[Olo Demonsbane]

Awesome Awesome Awesome.

I love this thread so much.

[Mnymosene]

You're writing this up very very well. I can't wait for the next "episode".

[Forrestfire]

I feel like I'm both watching an amazing show, and reading an amazing book at the same time.

I loved your horror campaign, Silver, and I just finished reading up till the current situation.

I loved your shenanigans with the desecration and the boat, and I avidly await the next issue.

[Corwin Weber]

I'm a firm beleive that you can be a necromancer and not be pure evil. You have to hide what you're doing, generally, but it's definately more morally grey than pure blooded villanry.

We probably end up using necromancy in some capacity one out of every four or five major sessions. Someone realizes they have Animate Dead on their spell list and everything goes to hell.

I think that largely depends on the campaign, or rather the nature of undead in the campaign. If a zombie or skeleton is just a shell, then you can have grey uses of necromancy. Seems to me that this is the direction most campaigns go in. If the soul of the animated corpse is somehow bound to the corpse.... then necromancy becomes wholly depraved evil and there's no grey involved. Likewise if you have the ability to create more than just skeletons and zombies. (Forcing the dead into a tortured existence as a shade or spectre, for example, or creating ghouls.) This mixed with the frequently fiendish source of necromantic powers.... it can make for some interesting moral issues.

Dragonsfoot has a necromancer class listed for first edition, no alignment restrictions. A number of the spells they get are fundamentally evil, (like create undead, which can create more than just zombies and skeletons) but can also be cast in reverse as a good act. (A spell that can create, let's say, four 6HD undead cast in reverse can destroy that many... and it's a lot more efficient at it than using fireballs.) They openly mention in the class description that there are necromancers of this type from all alignments, ranging from the stereotype necrofreak evil bad guy to the village healer, to undead hunters.

[Coidzor]

I'm gonna have fun with that. But, I'll have Animate Dead as a domain spell. DM said he's okay with a Neutral Good character animating the dead. And since I'm going to be at half-caster-level, I won't have a lot of them, probably just an undead mount and a skeleton bodyguard or something.

Corwin, SCS: You guys familiar with these two conceptions of necromancy? http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=632562

I was just reminded of it with all the discussion that's come up.

[evil-frosty]

This is just amazing. Very good job writing it all up SCS. And please please keep telling us about this campaign and please tell us about your next campaign that your DM is so excited about.

[Corwin Weber]

Corwin, SCS: You guys familiar with these two conceptions of necromancy? http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=632562

I was just reminded of it with all the discussion that's come up.

Reading.... most of these are.... not actually neutral, in spite of the attempt to make them so. Some of them, arguable. Maybe you could have a neutral character do it, but I'm more inclined to call that sophistry. People that want to be evil without admitting that they're evil.

Some of the others are just blatantly evil. And I mean Evil. Necrophagia? Enslavement? Evil with a capital E.

[Coidzor]

Reading.... most of these are.... not actually neutral, in spite of the attempt to make them so. Some of them, arguable. Maybe you could have a neutral character do it, but I'm more inclined to call that sophistry. People that want to be evil without admitting that they're evil.

Some of the others are just blatantly evil. And I mean Evil. Necrophagia? Enslavement? Evil with a capital E.

I haven't read the feats in particular very closely since most of them seemed of limited utility, but from what I saw it's basically advanced necromancy is Evil, basic necromancy may or may not be evil, depending upon how you view things. And of course, doing evil acts is still evil from what I saw. Meaning a good 2/3 of the classes are evil by default but that leaves about a third which can be more morally neutral/grey.

I personally like having two ready-made conceptions of what skellies and zombies are like to choose from and see developed in front of me, since I can see the "robot" and the "hole in existence that hungers to embody destruction" as being viable options to choose from...

Most of the undead which aren't mechanically obligated to be a plague on the living would seem to be just more selfish in nature than outright EVIL, letting it be their actions and how their personality develops/adapts that determines their moral standing. At least that's how I read it. I could've missed out on the sophist elements.

[Roc Ness]

Yay SCS!

On another note, this thread got about 40 extra posts in a space of 6 hours.

[SilverClawShift]

this thread got about 40 extra posts in a space of 6 hours.

And I have a polite obligation to keep up replying :smalltongue:


Most of the undead which aren't mechanically obligated to be a plague on the living would seem to be just more selfish in nature than outright EVIL

That's our DMs standpoint on mindless undead to a T. Their creation is inherently selfish on part of the encromancer animating them. You're desecrating a corpse, which while a cultural taboo (and very offensive to most) is not necessarily the "E" word, so much as it is "unacceptable".
But the real reason it's selfish is that uncontrolled mindless undead really DO go on destroying other living creatures. Wether it's because their naturally maelevolent, or acting on some deep rooted urge to feed that all 'creatures' have ingrained in them isn't the point.
The point is that while you're controlling them, they're a neutral force. If you lose control of them, you didn't just set loose a predator, you've set lose an UNNATURAL predator. They're evil for the same reason most aberration are: They just don't fit in their environment.

A rabbit being chased by a fox is arguably unsettling, but not evil. It's just nature.
A rabbit being chased by a skeleton fox who will never sleep or rest, and will not stop persuing until it has killed, is not fair to the rabbit. It's suddenly been plunged into a situation it wasn't biult for with no possible climax but its own pointless death (the fact that the skeleton fox doesn't NEED any kind of nourishment makes it worse. It's not even part of the circle of life, it's just taking and taking and taking).

When you animate a corpse, you're saying that your immediate needs are more important than the saftey of those around you. MAYBE you're even correct about that, but it's still selfish.

[Drakyn]

That's a really neat perspective on it. Making something undead isn't EVIL, it is bad because of facts A, B, and C.

What about summoned elementals or animated objects and so on? How do those work out? I'm guessing that since they don't have predatory instincts "in the bone" (at least, if the elementals are just plain vanilla ones), they aren't as innately hazardous.

[Lilienthal]

What about summoned elementals or animated objects and so on? How do those work out? I'm guessing that since they don't have predatory instincts "in the bone" (at least, if the elementals are just plain vanilla ones), they aren't as innately hazardous.

You mean like binding elementals as power sources like in Eberron? I thought they only desired their freedom, so they travel back to their homeplane the second you lose control.

[GreatWyrmGold]

We also had a recurring problem with wild wolves anytime we camped for the night, but with watching in shifts we had no real problem. They didn't seem to be supernatural, it seemed to just be a whole mess of wolves in the immediate area.

I reread this thread and realised...what if they were the first version of the hivemind? Did you kill any of the wolves?

[Lilienthal]

I reread this thread and realised...what if they were the first version of the hivemind? Did you kill any of the wolves?

Allow me to take this one: That'd be impossible since the hivemind was only established after the Drifter completed his ritual, consuming his original form to create the mind-controlling scarabs.

[SilverClawShift]

Indeed. It was just a dangerous wood we trekked through. Our DM is very insistent on the fact that "Not everything I say or do has relevance to the central plot."

In other words, "Sometimes a wolf is just a wolf" :smalltongue:

[GreatWyrmGold]

Allow me to take this one: That'd be impossible since the hivemind was only established after the Drifter completed his ritual, consuming his original form to create the mind-controlling scarabs.
Note I said, 'First Version". That means, maybe a semi-failure. Plus, it was just a wild guess.

-------------------------


Indeed. It was just a dangerous wood we trekked through. Our DM is very insistent on the fact that "Not everything I say or do has relevance to the central plot."

In other words, "Sometimes a wolf is just a wolf" :smalltongue:
Ah, well. Just a crazy guess.

Please tell me about if you killed some?



EDIT: Sweet! New page!

[Coidzor]

I'm gonna side with the crazy paranoia theory there. I'd say it's more that they were egged on by some kind of evil druid to be hostile to humans when by nature they'd be ****-scared of humans due to all of the habitat destruction and wolf-slaughtering that humans do when they have control of a country that's been developed and settled for a couple of millennia like that.

Since, seriously. That many wolves that are deterred by fire and a watch and not attacking anyway... That's just bizarre. Actually a druid would probably have had them descend on you if it was trying to get 'em to attack. Maybe it taught 'em to really, really creep out any humans that dared camp in the woods as a protective mechanism.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Hopin' the next installment comes swiftly!

Agreed, but for a different installment.


To avoid double-posting:


...or use it from behind and smoke the crippled warlock.
I have a crazy imagination.
:nale:(pretending to be :elan:): Smoke, smoke, smoke the crippled warlock!
The rest of the OotS: :smallconfused:

[SilverClawShift]

So we take off for the artic circle, just as planned.

As we announce that we intend to follow through with our plan to head to our potential icy-deaths, the DM smiles and waves a copy of "Frostburn" at us, reminding us that we we're wearing all wearing leather armor, except for the dragonborn, who's wearing a giant suit of highly conductive metal (who mumbles and curses a little about not going with a Silver Dragon as his totem instead of Gold).
The Swashbuckler proudly points out that he has a wand with 50 charges of Endure Elements in it, and the Factotum Kobold mentions that he's going to be casting it on himself each day to save charges. The DM just nods casually and says "I have the rules for exposure and hypothermia bookmarked. Don't run out."

Sinking Ship

So we sail on until the waters turn pitch black and frosty, and great chunks of ice threaten our path at every turn. The storms that have plagued us ever since I cast "Desecrate" on the open ocean continue to do so. Maybe it really is bad karma. I definately felt the brunt of the suffering, as at one point, I actually have to fly up and ride on our blue dragons head to give it a better guiding hand at navigating the ice, or it would drag us right into huge chunks that would reak havoc with the SS Ironman. When I was up there on him, the DM informed me that I noticed he was stiffening up in a very severe way. It hit me that dead bodies don't produce heat, and while a skeleton might be fine in this weather, a zombie won't be. So we would have to expend Endure Element charges to keep our flying mounts mobile, or we'd be hoofing it through the artic ourselves.
Once it gets cold enough to be a concern, I UMD the wand and give all six relevant targets a charge from it, for 24 hours of protection from the cold.
Finally, we reach the destination that is listed as the artic port. True to what one of the sailors earlier in the campaign told us, there's nothing here. The water dead-ends into a huge and unscalable wall of ice that's easily 30 stories high, maybe further (we couldn't make out the top in the bad weather). There are immpressively sturdy wooden posts and bright colored markers (sporting the Empires colors) around signifying it as an actual official location, as opposed to random wilderness, but they're beaten by the weather and a lot of them are missing. Repair runs up here can't be very frequent...
At the 'port' though, is another ship, tied to the wooden posts, anchored, but still tossed and beaten against the ice wall. It's crumbling, the hull is compromised and warped. Whoever left this ship here either never made it back, or weren't planning on returning.
Our first thoughts as seasoned adventurers, is how we're going to traverse this nigh immpossible wall of slick ice in these heavy winds.

NAH, I'm fooling, our first thought was "Is there anything valuable on that ship!?!?"

The Swashbuckler hopped on the bat, I carried the kobold, and the Dragon Shaman flew himself over to it. Most of the surface was slick with layer after layer of ice. We could see occasional stray papers on the deck, frozen in place by the wet mists that blew upwards. We couldn't find much of value on deck itself, but there was some salvageable rope.
We open the doors to head below decks. The first thing we notice is that the hull looked much better from our ships side. From the opposite side, there's a clear and gapping hole, and only the ropes and the fact that it's freezing into the glacier are holding it afloat. The second thing we notice? Two BIG FRACKING DIRE POLAR BEARS who immediately roar and charge us. One of the bears actually won initiative (actually, the kobold won initiative, but his first action was to immediately spring back above deck through the door the bears couldn't fit through.
The bear pummeled the swashbuckler with a nasty claw attack, knocking him prone and blocking the doorway. Me and the Dragon Shaman both hit it with our signature supernatural abilities (fire breath and an eldritch blast). The Swashbuckler stood up, and the other bear charged in and slammed me clean into the wall. The kobold had a flank on the bear through the doorway, and hit it with a great sneak attack with his hand crossbow before it hit the Swashbuckler with another claw attack and started a grapple. Fortunately it failed to properly grapple. The Dragon Shaman ran at the second bear and brought his bastard sword to it with a roar, fighting it one on one. I opted for a more prudent course of actions and floated back out through the gapping hole in the ship, helping the Dragon Shaman with an eldritch blast.
The Kobold dashed further out, took careful aim, and threw off a fireball. It hurt the bear through the doorway, but not the Swashbuckler (who was behind the wall). The Swashbuckler did a quickened Enlarge Person on himself, figuring if the bear wanted to wrestle, he'd wrestle. He grappled it out of spite, and succeeded.
The fight pretty much went on like that. In the end, we had some tough moments and took a decent licking (well, me and the kobold were attacking from range, and were fine :smallamused:), and took out the bears, who had had the audacity to seek shelter in something me and my companion sought to loot.

For our troubles, we found a whoooole bunch of water damaged supplies, a few intact bottles of rum, a compass, and a whole lot of nothing. I figured, much like with the dragon, if we weren't getting GEAR we might as well have another fighter/mount on our side. So I reanimated one of the bears as a skeleton. It brought me up to my undead limit, but it seemed a valuable addition to things.


Due North

Then we head back out into the bitter winds and even bitterer waters to begin contemplating how to get up the ice wall. It's not too difficult, the dragon is strong enough to bear the winds as he flies, so he can take us up one or two (or even all four) at a time and set us down. The greater concern, once we reached the top, was wether we wanted to take the dragon with us. I thought flying over the incredibly deep snow would be a lot faster and easier than treking through it, and the way I saw it, time was definately against us. In a grand sense, we needed to be working against the bugs as fast as we could. In shorter terms, we had about a weeks worth of endure elements, so we needed to wrap this frozen adventure up as fast as we could and be on our merry way.
The Dragon Shaman rightly pointed out though, that the ship and the dragon were our two most important assets. If anything hurt either one of them, we'd be stranded here. I completely agreed with that line of reasoning, which was WHY I wanted to bring the dragon with us. We could keep an eye on half of our assets, rather than none of them. And besides, the dragon could carry all of us by weight, if something DID happen to the ship.
Dragon Shaman: But we allready established that all four of us can't ride him without an unreasonable chance of falling off in flight.
Me: No... but we could tie some ropes to his legs and let you glide behind him? The kobold could hang onto you too, we could all fit that way.
Dragon Shaman: Wait. You want you and the swashbuckler to ride the dragon comfortably while I cling to a harness and parasail behind him at 150 feet per round? ...that's the greatest thing I've ever heard. Get the rope, we're doing it.
Me: I meant if something happened to the boat.
Dragon Shaman: Well he flies faster than any of us right? We want to spend as little time here as possible. Let's just travel like that for now.

And so we did! We left the skeletons (two human, one bear) and the zombie bat guarding the ship (and gave the skeletons poles to push away from the ice wall, hoping that would be enough to keep the ship from getting too beat up whlie we were away). The Dragon Shaman couldn't match the dragons fly speed in any sense, but his wings were strong enough to let him GLIDE pretty fluidly behind, and the rope gave him enough leeway to bank side to side in the process. When we set off through the snow the DM pointed out that, if anyone saw us, they would know there was something wrong with me, as the wind whipping around had my dress blowing freely side to side and revealing my lack of legs quite clearly. I shrugged. Who we'd run into, I didn't know, but there wasn't a lot I could do about that. I'd just explain that I flew with magic because I was vain, and hope they wouldn't do anything irrational.
We were heading in no particular direction. We were actually following due north for lack of any guiding hooks or logical place to head off to. Making great time flying, and since we weren't trudging through the snow, we were likely moving ten times as fast as any normal artic expedition might (150 fly speed versus 30 feet move speed, versus moving half speed because of the incredibly thick snow and harsh conditions). In just a day, we'd probably made it over a weeks worth of travel in. We had to make camp twice still, as we saw nothing relvant in many days worth of travel.
It was winter here in the artic, which meant no sunlight. The kobold and I were the guides here, as we were concerned light would bring down undue attention on our party (and the two of us could see in the dark). Around the tail end of the third day though, we started hearing things. The wind was a constant low howl, but this was even lower. A deep, sad, maddening moan echoing through the dark snowy night. It wasn't rythmic enough to be natural. It was guttaral. Intentional.

Along the way, the kobold made a spot check to reveal a dark shape under the snow. We landed to dig it up, and after uncovering enough snow and it was shown to be our fifth mystery man. Someone failed in his little task, apparently... whatever that task had been.
We pulled him all the way out of the snow to loot his corpse (adventurers!), which is when we saw it. He didn't die of exposure. His lower legs were gone just below the knees... and it looked like they'd been BURNED off. Charred bone stuck out through raw blackened (and frozen) flesh.
Which immediately raised a whole heap of questions. Who, what, and WHY were his legs burned off? And why hadn't scavengers picked his corpse clean? The artic wasn't a bustling place, but there WERE creatures here. Probably feircly hungry ones.
We still looted his corpse. Some valuables, some supplies, we took the coat just in case we started running low on endure elements. The only thing he had that really stood out was a magic mirror of some kind. We assume it was magical because it was a full six inches across, thrown in a pack full of lose gear, but it wasn't broken, scratched, or marred in any way. It had no frame, it was just a circle of silvered glass. We didn't feel we were at the best time or place to thoroughly examine it though.
Along the path further, we started noticing more dark shapes. Other men, equally warmly dressed. Every one of them had their lowest extremities charred clean off. The way we found them all, facing away from the main path, made it look like they'd been fleeing... they weren't grouped together, they were spread out and killed in various locations.

And we heard another moan coming from the pitch black snowscape.

We stopped for the kobold to do a boosted Listen check... which is when the attack came.


Into the Night

We all rolled will saves (we all passed). Then it came in. It moved fast. Lightning fast. Faster than the kobold, and he was a flickering blurry dart when he moved his top speed. It swooped in at an arc from above, out of the black sky, moaning hauntingly. It passed over our group, hit several of us in one blow. We all took slashing and fire damage (the dragon shaman naturally only took slashing damage, being immune to fire). The immediate area lit up with flames as the top layer of snow was suddenly filled with two thin twin tracks of fire that brushed between us all in an elegant arc, apparently the creatuers path of attack.
The Swashbuckler had gotten an attack off, hit with his rapier, realized it was a poor option and drew his longsword. The four of us grouped up back to back, the dragon circling us while we all stared off into the biting black coldness. The moan died away, and in another round, so did the flames, leaving us back in total darkness. The Swashbuckler cast light on the ground behind us, making our shadows dance off into the horizon eerily while we struggled to make out anything against the bleak night sky.

Me: Knowledge arcana check anyone?
The kobold rolls one under the DC to see if he knows anything about what we're up against. The Swashbuckler/Archivist likewise has nothing. Because he only rolled one under, the DM was nice enough to give the kobold a single word. The creatures name, something he pulled out of old memories and terror stories.
Kobold: "Wendigo".

Just then, the moan returned. We all rolled another will save. Once again, we all passed. And once again, the creature came arcing out of the pitch black sky to attack us all in one fell swoop. It ignore the undead dragon and swooped through the four of us, slashing us all with burning... something. It was too fast for us to even see how it was attacking us. But not so fast we couldn't lash out at the blur with our various methods of assault. I have Hideous Blow as an invocation, so I can fire my eldritch blast through a melee attack. I failed a spell resistance check though, and only hit it for a 1d4-1 damage. The others smacked it a little better, including the true-striking Swashbuckler who once again topped off the "Who's Who" list in damage dealing.

Kobold: Knowledge history checks, maybe?
The kobold rolls high enough to get out a little more info. The Wendigo is a legend of an undead creature, fueled by hate and hunger.
Swashbuckler: That doesn't really help much, we could have established that after killing it and desecrating its corpse
Dragon Shaman: NO DESECRATIONS.
Swashbuckler: I didn't mean the SPELL.
DM: And now it strikes again.

Another howling moan fills the air. Another batch of Will saves. This time the swashbuckler fails. We brace ourselves for another attack. The Wendigo swoops through our group (taking three attacks in the process), grabs the Swashbuckler from behind, and screams off in a straight line, dragging the swashbuckler with him for 150 feet before dropping him into the snow and dissapearing back into the black sky. As he dragged the swashbuckler, the swashbucklers feet burst into flames, leaving a trail across the top of the snow until he crashed back to the earth. He took 5d6 fire damage, and we got a better look at the creature. It was human looking (mostly) but twisted and feral. Its clothes, hair and its own skin hung from it in long tattered streamers, and its lower legs? Burned off below the knee.
We run towards the Swashbuckler, but even taking a double move the kobold was the only one who made it to him when the low howling moan carried back across the wind. Will saves. The Swashbuckler and me both fail. The Wendigo comes, down in its arc, getting attacked by the dragon shaman, but dragging me off (west compared to the Swashbucklers north). I didn't take any fire damage (no legs to burn), but the Wendigo was so enraged by that fact that it raked its claws down my face, almost damaging my eyes in the process (fort save), and dropping me down into the snow, 150 feet from the dragon shaman and even further from the Swashbuckler and Kobold. The kobold healed the swashbuckler some, and then sprinted in my direction. He reached me, but didn't have the actions left to heal me. I still felt better not being alone. The Dragon Shaman and swashbuckler ran towards each other.

Moan. Will saves. We all passed, but the Wendigo didn't relent. It swept down in an arc, hitting me and the kobold with the slashing fire damage (and taking a serious blow from me in the process, with a dagger strike laced with an eldritch blast that got through its spell resistance for the first time). It swept away from us, to the dragon shaman, exchanging blows, before 'rebounding' over to the swashbuckler and trading blows with him as well, before dissapearing back into the night sky.
The thing cleared 240 feet in its turn while fighting everyone it passed. Scary fast.
The kobold healed me and the entire group ran back towards each other. Another moan, another will save, we all passed. The thing swung through for another round of exchanging blows with all of us. It didn't seem to care about the dragon, and the dragon was too slow to get a lick in even if it got into range.
We were almost grouped together when the swashbuckler failed another will save, with a ONE, and got dragged off another 150 feet. And then another. And another. He was getting dragged off alone, taking heavy fire damage, trying to roll a passing will save and fighting back every time and failing spectacularily, and all we could do was chase after him and listen to him screaming, quietly (selfishly) thanking ourselves it wasn't us.

Eventually, we lost sight of the Swashbuckler (the kobold was keeping up with him, but was trying to stay between both groups...and the swashbucklers screaming drifted off into the night so far he couldn't track both at once... and he elected to stay with us as the most logical course of actions), and then there were three :smalleek:


Puzzle Piece

We flew north in grim silence. We didn't know if or when another attack was coming, or what to expect. At this point, we were questioning what we were even heading towards. We found the fifth man, we found his magical toy. We could examine it and see what it did once we weren't in constant environmental (and now supernatural) danger. How badly did we need to find where he was going? He obviously wasn't vital to the first part of the ritual (which meant this trek had something to do with infecting the angel and sending her home to heaven).
We were heading towards day 4 of our artic travel, and had 30ish Endure Elements left (the kobold could cast it on himself with his Factotum spellcasting, but not on anyone else). If we went too far, we wouldn't have enough magic for the trip home. The Dragon Shaman said we at least needed to see what happened to our Swashbuckler companion. The kobold said "I have an idea or two about what happened, and I'd rather not run into the Wendigo when it gets hungry again".
Still, we pressed on, resting for another night and topping ourselves off with another Endure Elements for the days march. I say 'day', but bear in mind it's still pitch black eternal night in this region. Which is why we're confused to see a dim glow coming from over the next few snow banks.
We press on carefully, getting closer and closer, until we realize what the glow is. Its the swashbucklers rapier, with a "light" spell cast on it, sticking out of the snowy ice. We search around frantically until we find him, tucked under an ice bank, curled up in a ball, with his hands and face stuck into his pack to conserve as much warmth as possible, shivering like he's at his last.
Until I UMD an Endure Elements charge for him :smallsmile:. He slowly stops shivering and stands up, still shaky from the cold damage he's taken. The Dragon Shaman tops him off with a lay on hands. He'd been really close to freezing to death, but the kobold managed to treat his hypothermia and frostbite with a boosted heal check. He'd taken some cold damage that absolutely couldn't be healed until we had him in warmer climates though, and was suffering some DEX damage we had no real way of fixing except for healing via rest. We ask him what happened (the DM had handled that part via private messages).

Swashbuckler: Oh, you know. Will Save, Cure Moderate Wounds, True Strike, Power Attack. Stuff like that.
Dragon Shaman: You beat it?
Swashbuckler: I'm still moving, it's not. It had nothing valuable.
Kobold: ...He's so great.

By the end of that fourth day, we'd cleared almost 1000 miles. We considered ourselves at the halfway point of our journey, and were about to turn back (for better or for worse) when we saw...whatever it was we were headed towards. Ahead of us, in the snow, was some kind of stone structure. It looked to only be about 500 feet across, a perfect stone disc, supported about 5 stories off the ground by four huge pillars built perfectly on the compass points. (closer examination revealed the pillars to be circular stairways).
It had no ornate decorations. There were no runes, no magical symbols... it was all simple, basic, stone. A bare stone platform with four bare stone pillars.
We landed the dragon straight on the platform and began poking around. We established quite quickly that there was nothing actually here. Search checks reveal nothing, magical sight reveals nothing. It's just... rock.

That's not good enough for us, obviously. So we circle back off the platform and checked UNDER it, searching through the snow. The kobold manages to find something buried in the dead center. We dig it up to reveal a horribly, horribly weathered treasure chest. The classic kind of treasure chest, with a big elaborate lock. A big elaborate lock that's utterly rusted solid. The kobold digs his lockpicks around in it, but nothing will budge.
We all turn to the Swashbuckler (at the table) who smirks, grabs his dice, and asks "two handed power attack for six?"
One clean strike and one bashed off lock later, we're cracking open the chest like the greedy imps we know we are in our hearts. The DM even played the classic zelda "Found a treasure" sound effect. And was it worth the fight through the harsh artic climates, that would be lethal to anyone not magically protected and being escorted by a giant dragon?
Oh yeah. Definately. The chest was, quite literally, full to the top with coins stamped from precious metals and beautifully cut gemstones. Two things were immediately noticebale, however. One was that the entire chest was divided into four compartments. The coins were seperated into the four compartments by what was engraved on them. One compartment just had smooth featurless coins, the other three had a variety of faces, symbols, letters and numbers... the kobold rolled some knowledge history checks on them, and discovered that they were old currencies from ancient (and defunct) kingdoms. Thousands and thousands of years defunct kingdoms, and that none of these coins were still around, they just existed as sketchings in certain history books. Defunct or not didn't matter, because we were busy scooping out the coins into sturdy canvas bags to strap to the dragon to cart off for us. A quick count revealed the whole chest to be somewhere around the 100,000 GP mark (gems included). Divided four ways, we were all kinda giddy over the find. It might even be worth more, if we could find people who were concerned about the 'ancient kingdom' status of the coins.
The thrill at the idea of a shopping spree was tempered by the fact that if we didn't figure out a way to "Save The World(TM)" there wouldn't be anywhere to spend our pile of recovered treasure.

Which brought us to the second point of interest in the treasure chest. Strapped to the lid was a big metallic blue ring with a hinge to open it, the same size across as the mirror disk we'd carted up here. Without even thinking about it, the Dragon Shaman grabbed the disc, pulled out the mirror, and pushed the two together, locking the hinge shut with the mirror inside (which pulsed with a quiet blue light and then did nothing).
The idea that the mirror might have been magically booby-trapped didn't occur to us until way later, fortunately, nothing uncomfortable or lethal happened :smalltongue:.

Kobold: Okay, it's time we seriously think about this situation. We're at the magnetic pole of this world. And hidden here, in nigh unpassable terrain, is a giant stone platform with four pillars, a treasure chest with ancient currency from dead kingdoms spread across the entire globe, and the frame to a magical mirror. I'm thinking "teleport", anyone with me?

We all agreed it seemed more likely than not at this point. This platform must have been an old nexus used for travel between kingdoms. God knows who created, why they made it at the magnetic pole (must have been a requirement) or how exactly it worked.
So we climbed one of the pillars and started poking around to find out, mirror in hand. It turned out that you could trigger the mirror with a UMD check (even after triggering it, we couldn't figure out what the NORMAL, non-UMD trigger was, but that seemed irrelevant as long as we could make the thing work). Once triggered, it stopped being a "looking glass" and became a literal looking glass. We could see clean through the mirror, and when we did things looked a bit different. The four pillars all had four doorways overtop of them, and each led to a different room. The rooms were all bare stone. Nondescript, the same as the platform we were on itself. They also had no doorways leading out.
We figured that the four stone rooms led to different points in the world, but without going through and finding out the hard way, there was no way of telling where they went off to. We couldn't bring the dragon with us either, so we'd be crossing our fingers and hoping the mirror let us come back to this nexus point with the mirror, assuming we took the plunge through.
The other thing we noticed was that the dead center of the stone platform had a heavily locked doorway made of some kind of metal. It was only there when looking through the mirror, and it was absolutely covered in chains, heavy padlocks, and the whole thing looked very, very intimidating.


And we decided to end the session right there, with us on the stone platform deciding what to do (mainly because we honestly couldn't decide what to do :smalltongue:).

The DM informed us that we were leveling up to 10. The Kobold Factotum didn't really get much out of it, aside from mroe hitpoints and skill points. The Dragon Shaman got a stronger breath weapon, and his aura bonus shot up to +3. The Swashbuckler took another level of archivist (which puts him at 4, 4, 2 Swashbuckler Archivist Sorcerer). That means he's one level away from being able to animate and control 20 HD worth of undead creatures himself, which means we could be bringing a good force to bear against any targets we decide to plan an attack against. he's also mentioned to the DM that he wants to learn the Reincarnate spell ("just in case"). The Dm said he'd be able to take it as a cleric spell on level up (in three more levels that is). The swashbuckler said once he's got that, he'll probably go back to martial classes with his spellcasting as backup.
I got energy resistance 5 to two elements of my choice. I picked cold and electricity, figuring if we spent much time in the artic, being naturally resistant to cold would come to my advantage. I also got a new Lesser invocation, but I haven't decided what it is (I'll need to pick by our next session).
I really like Spider Shape from Drow of the Underdark. The biggest reason I want it is because it will give me good control over my size. At this level I'll be able to turn into a Small, Medium or Large sized fiendish spider at will. In another level I'll be able to turn into a tiny one, and then I'll be able to become Huge and Gargantuan.
My other top choices are Curse of Despair (access to the Bestow Curse spell has saved us on more than one occasion), Flee the Scene (50 foot teleport with an image of me left behind is just slick, ability to fly or not), Ignore the Pyre (changing energy resistance 10 is just prudent), or Walk Unseen (invisible, yes please).
I'm also trying to decide if, at level 12, I'm going to take another "Extra Invocation" feat, or an item creation feat.

We'll see I suppose.

Also, I should probably start numbering these to keep things straight. I consider this "update 11" in any event.

[evil-frosty]

Another awesome session SCS. Exactly what is a wendigo i don't have frostburn and am at a lost. Also my advice is not to go thru any of the door ways as you could lose the dragon, the ship and all of your animated undead back at the ship. Which would not be very good now would it?

[SilverClawShift]

The Wendigo actually isn't in Frostburn. I don't know if it's in any book to tell you the truth, it's an actual factual myth of a creature born of cannibalism and starvation. I think it's an encounter our DM made up just for the artic travel, truth be told, not an official monster.

And I'm really hesitant to go through the door myself, yeah. I'm almost suggesting a team split, where we send the kobold and someone else through a doorway, and me and another team member head back to the ship. Unfortunately we'll lose all communication with each other, so the ones going back to the ship won't even know where they're heading next... Splitting up isn't really that realistic, all things considered.

[Fayd]

Have you considered Eldritch Chain? You'll probably be fighting a LOT of swarms, and being able to hit multiple targets with the same blast might be a good thought.

Or Voracious Dispelling. If Drifter is using Magic Jar (and that can be dispelled, right?) You'll dispel his soul from the bug/creature, and do some damage to it to boot...heck, you might even hurt his soul, I don't know.

[evil-frosty]

Oh then, well it looked pretty cool,if it is possible i would like to see the stat block. And on another note you never split the party proven by this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waa2ucfgVgQ

[The Glyphstone]

Wendigo is in Fiend Folio, actually. And it very closely matches your beastie's description, minus a few things that I (in your place) would have me watching my back.:smallannoyed:

[Sliver]

Hey, can you send one or two characters with tied up rope(s) around them through one of the doors? too bad you don't have the other part of that stamp that you can use to message back to the main island.. Maybe you can ask through it if they know something about this place tho?
Wonder what will be the reaction if you throw the dice through a door..
You can use the familliar bug so it will go through a door? it will pass on something to the Swashbuckler, and if it will actually die, better it then you no?

[SilverClawShift]

Have you considered Eldritch Chain? Or Voracious Dispelling.

I would consider the Chain one if it wasn't so limited on target jumping. At this level, I'll be hitting one target for full, and two targets for half. That's IF they're even close enough together (no guarantee). I'd do more good for our group in combat by hitting our enemies with the "50% chance of doing nothing each turn" curse left and right. And I'd do MYSELF the most good by turning invisible, flying 150 feet away, and then nailing the enemies with Eldritch Spears.

Voracious Dispelling, I don't think will do much good. I doubt what's going on here is a straight casting of Magic Jar. It seems...bigger than that. Big enough that hitting a bug with a Dispel effect isn't gonna do a lot.


Wendigo is in Fiend Folio, actually. And it very closely matches your beastie's description, minus a few things that I (in your place) would have me watching my back.:smallannoyed:

Well GREAT. I don't have fiend folio myself, and the DM frowns at us metagaming by looking enemies up. And by "Frowns at" I mean "randomly changes things to make us hate life". But it's good to know I we might want someone keeping their eyes peeled.


Hey, can you send one or two characters with tied up rope(s) around them through one of the doors?

Not a chance. I know our DM well enough to know that "Magical Portal" will always trump "Hemp Rope" :smalltongue:

[thorgrim29]

Glyphstone, you are thinking about the old ghoul replication trick? I know I am. I don't know if I remember correctly. but didn't the setting have 5 continents? That would indeed indicate the padlocked door is to another plane, though judging by the locks, heaven would be strange.

[SilverClawShift]

That would indeed indicate the padlocked door is to another plane, though judging by the locks, heaven would be strange.

I don't have the faintest as to what you're talking about, but yes. Our group finds the idea that the padlocked hatch leads to heaven dubious at best. There's more here than meets the eye. I mean, literally, but also figuratively.

[Sliver]

Maybe the chains are simbolic and the door is like the angel, bound to earth by those chains. Or it really could be a gate to the higher planes, a one that only a celestial creature can release the chains of and open, and so the Drifter sent someone to make sure there won't be trouble when the time comes.
If it is part of the final plan, you can always hope to shatter the mirror in hopes that the last step of the drifter will be ruined.. but if it comes to it, then the place went to hell anyway so it isn't really a good course of action or anything to rely on..
If the mirror can also communicate with someone else that has a copy of the mirror I will be bothered tho..

[Emong]

Well GREAT. I don't have fiend folio myself, and the DM frowns at us metagaming by looking enemies up. And by "Frowns at" I mean "randomly changes things to make us hate life". But it's good to know I we might want someone keeping their eyes peeled.

Well, let's just say it's very possible for things to get... interesting fairly soon.

[Lycanthromancer]

I'd say that you summon an intelligent creature, cast some messaging spells on it, then send it through. It can tell you everything that it experiences as it experiences it.

[The Glyphstone]

Actually, I was thinking about:

This spoiler is for the protection of Silverclawshift, who probably doesn't want to metagame.

The fact that it has Regeneration broken only by Fire, which the Swashbuckler doesn't have access to unless I missed something. It's not dead, just low on hit points and (probably) really ticked off.

[Sliver]

Well, let's just say it's very possible for things to get... interesting fairly soon.

I checked that wendigo thingie but I failed to find that signature move of his with the flamable legs.. and his claws actually, doesn't it only have a bite attack? or maybe its another creature with the wendigo template? cuz well, doesn't look like a tough challange as it is, without being a tamplate for something else..
On the plus side, except that fort save against losing her eyes, no one needed some fort save to avoid disease.. so it probably didn't even attack with his bite anyway.
Akward for me if I'm not looking at the right thing..

[Emong]

It's possible her DM was using his own version of the Wendigo (In which case who knows what's going to happen :smalleek:) or maybe it was a standard Wendigo with some custom stuff add to it.

[Fayd]

What invocations do you have? And you're allowed to swap them out at level up, right? I'm interested in what you've got.

[9mm]

so you found a travel platform... if drifter had that he could have spread bugs everywhere instantly. :smalleek: and that just assumes it stays on the material plane.

[SilverClawShift]

Straight from my character sheet

Invocation (least): Devils Sight
Invocation (least): Beguiling Influence
Invocation (least): Hideous Blow
Invocation (least): Eldritch Spear
Invocation (least): Miasmic Cloud
Invocation (least): Dark One’s Own Luck
Invocation (lesser): The Dead Walk
Invocation (lesser): Fell Flight
Invocation (lesser):

I've taken extra invocation twice, and my bracers give me an extra invocation of all the lowest level ones I can cast (so when I get access to greater invocations, I'll get an extra lesser invocation too).


if drifter had that he could have spread bugs everywhere instantly. :smalleek: and that just assumes it stays on the material plane.

Exactly. We've allready mentioned the possibility of finding a way to destroy the mirror just to keep it out of his hands. We're not sure if that's possible, or if there's another solution we should be seeking though.

We're not even sure where the platform goes yet.

[Roc Ness]

I haven't read it yet (don't have the time), but this new installment looks promising. :smallbiggrin:

[ex cathedra]

Out of curiosity, is there any reason as to why you've taken Hideous Blow rather than Eldritch Glaive?

Regardless, I've been greatly enjoying your work here. Keep it up.

[Saruchan28]

I've been keeping up with this for a while now, and I'm intrigued by a thought that occurred to me...

You say the rooms the doorways led to were nondescript stone... Like say, a stone ziggurat you've seen a couple of before, perhaps?

I can't posit a guess on where the fifth door leads, but it's somewhere you don't want The Drifter going. That's about all I can really tell.

[Protecar]

I've read the whole story up to this point today, and I must say, your DM(as mentioned exhaustively before) knows how to spin an elaborate and amazing story line. You also do a great job at recapturing it so that I feel like I'm reading a good novel.

I can't wait for another installment(and will now entertain myself by reading about your horror Halloween campaign).

Well done! :smallbiggrin:

[SilverClawShift]

Out of curiosity, is there any reason as to why you've taken Hideous Blow rather than Eldritch Glaive?

Short Answer: Because I wanted to. I like the styling of it more.

Medium Answer: Because always going for the most mechanically optimized choice in every game will quickly become repetitive and limiting. It also kind of irks me personally when any thread quickly degenerates into nothing but "do this instead", even when the original post specifically said that wasn't what they intended to do.

Long Answer: I'm not intending to be a melee warlock. My Constitution is acceptable, my strength is appaling. I have weapon finesse (I didn't have much else to take at that level, my DEX is allready pumped so I can more easily make the ranged touch attacks, and so I can throw poisoned daggers with relative accuracy if I have to).
My daggers are only there for when I find myself in a situation where melee is unavoidable, or is an oddly superior choice due to limiting circumstances. Melee is very much my emergency backup plan. Since I'll only be engaging in melee in such odd circumstances (like my eldritch blast struggling to overcome spelll resistance) I want something mundane and straightforward to fall back on.

The fight with the Wendigo is a good example really. I beat its spell resistance one time. Yeah, with Eldritch Glaive I would have had more chances to beat the spell resistance, but there's no guarantee. If I hadn't, I would have done zero damage entirely.
1d4-1 isn't great, but I did deal around ten damage to the thing total, without my hideous blow. I don't know how close the swashbuckler came to biting it (our DM has no problem killing us for his own entertainment), but ten damage might have been the difference. If not there, it might be elsewhere. So in melee I'd rather have a small hit of damage with a poison and a channeled eldritch blast, than two eldritch blasts.

But I'd prefer to be 200 feet straight up and nailing my pathetic ground-bound enemies with eldritch spears from above :smalltongue:


You say the rooms the doorways led to were nondescript stone... Like say, a stone ziggurat you've seen a couple of before, perhaps?

That's been gnawing at me. The question will end up being, if they ARE connected to the ziggaruts, then where in the world do the other two spring up?


your DM(as mentioned exhaustively before) knows how to spin an elaborate and amazing story line. You also do a great job at recapturing it so that I feel like I'm reading a good novel.

Thank you. Still glad it's being enjoyed :smallsmile:

[Fayd]

Well, you don't have any blast essences, but I don't know how helpful they would be in the end (except for Vitrolic, because you seem to be having trouble with SR)...actually...these bugs are part clockwork, right? Metal, right? I wonder if they might have particular exploitable weaknesses that you can use to kill them in batches. Such as acid. And Acid in an AoE. Acid flasks FTW? (are they even AoE?)

I'm wildly speculating outside of my small amount of knowledge, so I'm not entirely certain...of anything...but good luck next session!

[SilverClawShift]

Actually, we haven't checked the onyx bugs to see if they're also clockwork.

It could very well be that the clockwork mechanisms were simply inserted to invoke unusual levels of aggresion for use as tools leading up to the real plan. Or for manipulating them into breeding the right strain. Or who knows.

On the other hand, maybe mechanus is using the drifter to destroy heaven, to upset the balance between good and evil in a way that hell has to spread itself too thin, causing the demons in the abyss to begin attacking other planes, to allow mechanus legal authority to exterminate them with extrem prejudice.

No Clue! :smalltongue:

[Fayd]

saywha? I don't get it...2nd paragraph

[Ceric]

Dragon Shaman: Wait. You want you and the swashbuckler to ride the dragon comfortably while I cling to a harness and parasail behind him at 150 feet per round? ...that's the greatest thing I've ever heard. Get the rope, we're doing it.


This made me laugh very very hard.

Anyways, hi, I've been reading this adventure for a while now and I think it's very well created (credit to your DM) and written (credit to you) and overall made of frickin' awesome win. But there's not much I can say that others haven't already said.

Great job, and please keep writing for us :smallsmile: Now I guess I'll go read this Halloween campaign I've heard so much about...

[Olo Demonsbane]

Amazing session. Thanks for keeping this updated :smallsmile:

Fayd: Mechanus is the home of clockwork creatures, such as the inevitables. I think this is what SCS was refering to.

[Corwin Weber]

Another awesome session SCS. Exactly what is a wendigo i don't have frostburn and am at a lost. Also my advice is not to go thru any of the door ways as you could lose the dragon, the ship and all of your animated undead back at the ship. Which would not be very good now would it?

Wendigo is a northern Native American word for cannibal. It refers to people who have resorted to cannibalism in extreme circumstances. (Think Donner Party.) According to legend they become inhumanly fast, tough, strong.... and totally insane. Breaking such a strong cultural taboo breaks their minds and leaves them completely depraved.

The D&D version is undead as I remember, but I don't remember a whole lot else about it.

[Coidzor]

Wendigo is a northern Native American word for cannibal. It refers to people who have resorted to cannibalism in extreme circumstances. (Think Donner Party.) According to legend they become inhumanly fast, tough, strong.... and totally insane. Breaking such a strong cultural taboo breaks their minds and leaves them completely depraved.

The D&D version is undead as I remember, but I don't remember a whole lot else about it.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20040529a I don't know where it is specifically, but they're talked about in this freely available adventure. It's Cold-aligned.

[TheCountAlucard]

The D&D version is undead as I remember, but I don't remember a whole lot else about it.Funny; the one I saw in the books was a Fey. :smallconfused:

[Corwin Weber]

Funny; the one I saw in the books was a Fey. :smallconfused:

Spoilered so that Our Heroine can avoid metagaming. :)


Meh.... apparently it's a template now.

** googled it **

[Sliver]

Meh.... apparently it's a template now.

** googled it **


Indeed it is. but there is an example, and he is far from a challange to the group and doesn't have the capabilities that their wendigo had, so their DM must have used something stronger and gave it the wendigo template.. only for the speed probably. What allowes a creature to move, attack, and still move and attack while the others can still attack him anyway?

[Corwin Weber]

Indeed it is. but there is an example, and he is far from a challange to the group and doesn't have the capabilities that their wendigo had, so their DM must have used something stronger and gave it the wendigo template.. only for the speed probably. What allowes a creature to move, attack, and still move and attack while the others can still attack him anyway?

Here's another thought.....



The Wendigo may not have been some bad nasty waiting up there to kill Drifter's people.

It may be one of Drifter's people.

[Alleine]

Hey SCS, I've got a question. How does your DM decide how far you get knocked when you're hit? You've mentioned getting swatted into walls and across floors several times, and this is an area of D&D I find lacking. Its cool to see that he does that, because it just makes no sense to me that getting owned by high strength creatures wouldn't cause you to move at all.

[Coidzor]

Here's another thought.....



The Wendigo may not have been some bad nasty waiting up there to kill Drifter's people.

It may be one of Drifter's people.



I'm surprised the DM hasn't punished them for forgetting to see to the bodies of the Wendigo's victims. Which seem to be turning into wendigos.

And for the dragon shaman forgetting to see to the dead. (What kind of Goody-goody anti-undead person forgets to see to the dead properly anyway? :smallconfused: Hell, my DMs have never put us up against undead but I still know that in an undead hating church, proper funerary rites to prevent undead from arising would be... ...basic theology.

Which is why Pelorian Clerics love cremation. :smallbiggrin:)


That's been gnawing at me. The question will end up being, if they ARE connected to the ziggaruts, then where in the world do the other two spring up? :

I'm starting to think of the Drifter and company as the Manson Family from your initial description of him and the crazy-cultish stuff of it...

What's the breakdown of continents on this plane(t) again? North Pole, Cradle of Civilization, Sand Land, Malaria Land, and ???? Since the fourth one probably does not link back to the Arctic if it is some kind of ziggurat transportation network....

I'm thinking the reason you have only visited two of them is that very possibly, the Manson Family hit up the two on the civilized continent and the other continent (the one which isn't jungle, desert, arctic, or the cradle of civilization... Which we've heard jack-all about, actually. Kind of suspicious.)

It would explain where they got the mirror half of the portal key for the nexus.

OOoo... Maybe that "central island" has more significance than you thought and originally really was a major hub for the ancients and the reason Therin was basing his operations there was to loot the hidden/buried ziggurat there. :smalleek:

I'm gonna echo that the locked up portal is planar in nature. If you'd've been able to contact any planar-travelling powers or even just had someone who could do the binary nature of this universe interrogation of a deity... Might be able to tell if that goes to more of an Outlands(or whatever that place is that's beneath/around the spire which Sigil floats above), Astral Plane, Planar Hub, or an actual upper plane that has since been cut off either due to mortals being unworthy/falling from sufficient power to protect a back door into heaven from any evil powers that would seek to wreck havock there...

[Copacetic]

Excellent. SCS, I applaud you, your DM, and your party's collective ingenuity.

[Frog Dragon]

Once again, I am amazed by the sheer amount of pure, undiluted win your games possess. I only wish my campaings were as cool. Or that I could play in a campaing this cool.

Anyway. I also err to the opinion that the door thingies lead to a celestial plane.

Also. Throwing this out. Maybe the "burned from the legs guys" were infact, an adventuring party who also knew about the Drifter and his plans. And the gates in the polar regions. So they rounded up the disk and made their way to the polar to get through the gate and warn the gods. And got plastered by wendigos before they made it.

Just a thought.

[Kyeudo]

My suggestion is that any door that is magically hidden from sight and chained to the hilt is one of those doors you avoid opening until you know what's on the other side.

[Deth Muncher]

My suggestion is that any door that is magically hidden from sight and chained to the hilt is one of those doors you avoid opening until you know what's on the other side.
+1

That door sounds like something that should NOT be messed with.

[SilverClawShift]

Hey SCS, I've got a question. How does your DM decide how far you get knocked when you're hit?

He has a very meticulously constructed series of charts, adavanced equations, and the speed/weight/energy ratio of traveling objects and how they transfer kinetic energy.

And if you buy that, I had a bridge I'd like to sell you :smalltongue:

He makes it up as he goes (a.k.a. eyeball and wing it) based on what he thinks seems like the most likely outcome. Fortunately it works both ways (if our fullplate wearing dragon shaman were to grab a rope and swing down at something, nailing it in the chest with both feet, he'd probably make then thing take "Xd6" damage (where X is whatever our DM wants it to be) and knock it prone).

Part of it is because none of us are really rules lawyers, and sometimes we don't really worry about game mechanics and what is or isn't explicitly described in published books. If you've got 24 DEX, then it's assumed you're going to be able to do some crazy stuff, and while there might not be a specific RULE for swinging around a pole on a rope ala Jack Sparrow and slashing at the people you sail over, there doesn't necessarily need to be one. Wait till your turn, grab a rope, jump off the nearest elevated surface and attack.

We also rarely use grids when we play. We've been doing it enough that we can pretty much estimate how far 30 feet is (and five feet off in either direction doesn't really hurt immersion in the game world. Arguably it enhances it) and have our characters move a little more fluidly.
Of course, we just use dry erase markers on plexiglass instead of minis.


Since the fourth one probably does not link back to the Arctic if it is some kind of ziggurat transportation network....


I'm thinking the other two (if that's what it turns out to be) would be on Central Island and somewhere in the temperate continent belonging to the empire. Not sure though.


My suggestion is that any door that is magically hidden from sight and chained to the hilt is one of those doors you avoid opening until you know what's on the other side.

Indeed. We ended the session specifically because we wanted to resist the urge to set the swashbuckler power attacking the chains. Best to leave that door locked up until we're not in the dark about it.

And everyone else, thank you for the kind words :smallsmile:

[Magi_Ring_O]

Hm...Did you by any chance look up when you were at the portal place? There might have been another more "angelically" themed door in the sky that leads to the angel's home plane.

[SilverClawShift]

We checked the area, if the DM has that as his trick I'm gonna be dissapointed in him.

[Alleine]

He has a very meticulously constructed series of charts, adavanced equations, and the speed/weight/energy ratio of traveling objects and how they transfer kinetic energy.

Well he should so that the rest of us can copy his amazing abilities and pass them off as our own! :smalltongue:


Here's a thought: Send a message to MacGuiler about the platform and teleportation. He's probably the only guy with any clue about this sort of thing at all, maybe he knows something?

[penbed400]

I started reading this thread yesterday and I'm all caught up and believe me I was disappointed when I hit the end of the thread and now I have to wait like everyone else but I must also join in to the masses in saying your DM is an amazing story writer and you are great at relaying that story. Keep it up and I can't wait for the next section of the story.

Advice: Charge blindly into everything and don't use spells, spells are bad. Also throwing down weapons and attempting to give bad guys hugs helps too. It helps with their mother-related issues.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Have you considered Eldritch Chain? You'll probably be fighting a LOT of swarms, and being able to hit multiple targets with the same blast might be a good thought.

Or Voracious Dispelling. If Drifter is using Magic Jar (and that can be dispelled, right?) You'll dispel his soul from the bug/creature, and do some damage to it to boot...heck, you might even hurt his soul, I don't know.

When she gets access to dark invocations, she should take Eldritch dDoom. All targets she wants within 20 feet! Plus, it would be useful against literal swarms (e.g, ones with the (swarm) subtype).



That's been gnawing at me. The question will end up being, if they ARE connected to the ziggaruts, then where in the world do the other two spring up?
Ziggurats unknown on other continents? Seems obvious to me as a possibility.


Thank you. Still glad it's being enjoyed :smallsmile:
By me, too! (Until someone zombifies me...like you might.)



On the other hand, maybe mechanus is using the drifter to destroy heaven, to upset the balance between good and evil in a way that hell has to spread itself too thin, causing the demons in the abyss to begin attacking other planes, to allow mechanus legal authority to exterminate them with extrem prejudice.

saywha?
Agreed, Fayd. It's crazy. Has you or your warlock been playing Call of Cthulu recently? (Well, your warlock obvio...CRAP! PLEASE DON'T KILL AND ZOMBIFY MEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)



Now, I need to go to Sunken Valley. Why? Uh...it has to do with a warlock and a readied action to use my breath weapon.

[aje8]

Just read your entire horror campain thread as well as the entirity of this one. Adding praises to the pile here I know, but still. Your campain reads like a cross between optimization diarys and an epic novel. Seriously, pure awesome. Oh, and I offically like to join the church of your DM. If you guys ever released an adventure module, (in a normal campain setting, aside from your custom one) I'd pay a lot of money to get my hands on it.

There's good questions about that 5th door...... I know I'm meta-game thinking here but it seems like your DM would have a way for you guys to know what's on the other side of that door.... whatever's on the other side is probably dangerous so it doesn't seem like he just expects to try it.

[Roc Ness]

:Poke:

Sooooo... Slow news/conversation day?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Back from Sunken Valley!


Spoilered so that Our Heroine can avoid metagaming. :)
"Heroine" describes the warlock about as well as it does Xykon. (Well, o.k, better, but only because of gender.)

Apparently, I'm supposed to post something about warning the warlock not to come tomorrow...I'd probably understand better if I could remember something from my trip...

[Coidzor]

What? :smallconfused: You're a bit muddled there. Or maybe I'm just losing you...

[SilverClawShift]

I'm a little lost there myself.

[Fayd]

Did Sheogorath pay a visit to you recently GreatWyrmGold?

[TheCountAlucard]

I doubt it; he's not making great mention of intestines... :smalltongue:

[Fayd]

Or calipers.

[Coidzor]

Although... he is on to something in describing SCS as heroin... :smallwink:

[Viv]

He makes it up as he goes (a.k.a. eyeball and wing it) based on what he thinks seems like the most likely outcome.

Basically, it sounds like when something fun or interesting is possible, the rules bend to accommodate.

This is, of course, how it ought to be.

[SilverClawShift]

Intermission from the middle of our campaign.


Basically, it sounds like when something fun or interesting is possible, the rules bend to accommodate.

This is, of course, how it ought to be.

Exactly. The rules are important, to an extent. But ultimately the rules are nothing more than a framework attempting to give you insight into the world that's taking place on your table.
If the rules are getting in the way of the best course of action, then the first thing you do as a DM is burn the rules while chanting a holy ritual and let the best course of action take place.

Nothing should ever, ever get in the way of your having a good time, D20 be damned.

[Eldrys]

SCS, when does your group meet? I can only be on the computer for about a 30 minutes every week now that our computer stopped working, and I want to know when to check for updates.

^ninja. What does intermission mean? does it mean your group won't be meeting for a while:smalleek:?

[SilverClawShift]

Well he should so that the rest of us can copy his amazing abilities and pass them off as our own! :smalltongue:

Sorry to double post, tbut this isn't actually that difficult! It's just a matter of understanding what the numbers really mean.

10 STR is a normal human. Grab an average looking man or woman off the street. They have STR 10.

14 STR is a lot. Not excessive, but this is the friend you call to help you move your refridgerator when you have a new apartment. This is the "Why is my end of the couch higher than yours?" friend.

18 STR is an olypmic dead-lifter. He can lift more than you can, and can prove it after a little warm up. He'll pull a bus with his teeth if enough cameras are pointed at him.

20 STR plus is ridiculous. It starts getting more and more severe, but a 20 STR man can lift two normal men while playing a harmonica. Hercules is 26 STR or so, where is you a punch a rock, you EXPECT it to crumble to dust, and are confused when it doesn't.

30+ STR is where you start punching trains and watching them crumble around you.

Just get a general guage on a cahracters weight to Strength ratio and go from there.

The same applies to other stats, just with different results and conclusions.


SCS, when does your group meet? I can only be on the computer for about a 30 minutes every week now that our computer stopped working, and I want to know when to check for updates.

^ninja. What does intermission mean? does it mean your group won't be meeting for a while:smalleek:?

Intermission means we're taking a food/conversation break from the game. We meet every tuesday and saturday night, unless scheduling moves those days around a little :smallsmile:

Which means updates SHOULD be un sunday and wednesday, USA central time, but I can't make any promises about how much time I have to write and post.

[Eldrys]

Intermission means we're taking a food/conversation break from the game.


:smallsmile:



We meet every tuesday and saturday night, unless scheduling moves those days around a little :smallsmile:


Awwwww:smallfrown: lucky. your one of those nifty groups who meets both regularly and frequently. I envy you.

[Deth Muncher]

Awwwww:smallfrown: lucky. your one of those nifty groups who meets both regularly and frequently. I envy you.

Seconded. My campaign has pretty much died, so now I'm drifting, campaignless...

[SilverClawShift]

We were friends long before any of us considered playing D&D. I think it was actually our Dragon Shamans player who said it might be fun, even though it was geeky.
It was around the time Lord of the Rings was announced that we all started really taking it more seriously. We all wanted to be elves, FYI.

Our DM, being the one of the group with the greatest long-term vision, read up on things and amde the rest of us play an NPC class only game.

The rest is history :smalltongue:

Now we meet to play roelplaying games instead of meeting to watch movies.

[Coidzor]

Mmm! In that case, when you go back, tell him some weird guy on the internet is drinking to his health.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Did Sheogorath pay a visit to you recently GreatWyrmGold?
No. When saying the warlock wasn't a heroine (or, rather, hinting at it), I was pointing out her EVILNESS. It's sometimes BLATENT EVIL coming your way.


Although... he is on to something in describing SCS as heroin... :smallwink:
Huh? I added the "e"...


Sorry to double post...
Playing Call of Cthulu again? Need I ressurect my joke about not zombifying me after implying that your warlock is insane?

[TheCountAlucard]

Mmm! In that case, when you go back, tell him some weird guy on the internet is drinking to his health.

Fixed it for you! :smallbiggrin:

[Coidzor]

Huh? I added the "e"...

:smallwink: And I fixed it for you. SCS, heroin, addiction, storytelling, heroin, addiction, storytelling. You see what I'm getting at here? :smalltongue:

...

...
Back from Sunken Valley!

Apparently, I'm supposed to post something about warning the warlock not to come tomorrow...I'd probably understand better if I could remember something from my trip...

= :smallconfused::smallconfused::smallconfused::smal lconfused:

...

*just realized what SCS's avatar was of*
*feels dumb*
*But finally knows why it reminded him vaguely of hotness*

[Lilienthal]

No. When saying the warlock wasn't a heroine (or, rather, hinting at it), I was pointing out her EVILNESS. It's sometimes BLATENT EVIL coming your way.

They meant your second sentence, which makes about as much sense as a toddler on PCP.

[SilverClawShift]

So this will be update twelve on my campaign.

To start the session, we let the DM know about our finalized character sheets and sent him the updated ones to bring us up to level 10. I opted for the Walk Unseen as my newest invocation, because being able to fly and be invisible for 24 hours a day is basically what makes Warlocks so deliciously warlockish.

Then we resumed our campaign exactly as we had left off. The four of us (and our undead dragon) are standing on a giant stone platform, with the bitterest of the bitter artic winds whipping us over. We're stuck facing four doorways leading to "question mark", and a hatch we're afraid to open. And all of it relies on a magical mirror that we can't see them without.
What do normal deity-fearing adventurers do in this situation?


Where To?

"Send the kobold first"

Our reasoning is that he's smaller, sneakier, and faster than the rest of us will ever be by a long shot. He's going to trot through one of the doorways real quick. Just into the room and back, and tell us the scoop from the other side. If he can't get back at all, the plan is for him to go into hardcore-stealth-mode and try to find a way back to central island, one way or another (up to and including hijacking a rowboat and braving the open seas alone, though that's obviously the last on the list of options) while the rest of us do an about-face in the artic.
One way or another, we've established that me and the Dragon Shaman aren't going through the doorway. I don't want to leave my small undead army (not to mention the heap of trea-sha! we found here), and the Dragon Shaman doesn't want to abandon his ship to the icy waters. We feel we might be hamstringing ourself here, but we aren't so quick to give up our stuff if there's a way to avoid it.

So the kobold takes the magic mirror and hops through the doorway (we picked north, no real reason). He goes through, takes a quick look around the room both with and without the mirror, and comes back our way. He's allready established a few things. The doorway leads to a plain stone room with only one doorway in our out. The noteworthy thing about the single doorway is that, WITH the mirror it becomes a portal to the platform. Without the mirror, the doorway just leads to the rest of the structure. The second thing he established?
Kobold: Yeah, it's defiantely a ziggarut. The doorway out led to a giant stone chamber, they're getting relatively familiar looking. I don't think it's either of the ones we've been to either.
Dragon Shaman: How could you tell?
Kobold: Well it wasn't full of giant murderous bugs. They might have cleared out of the jungle ziggarut, but I didn't see any insects at all. A few would have hung around, right?
Swashbuckler: Could you tell where in the world it was? Like by temperature?
Dragon Shaman: It'd probably be hard to guage something like that inside a giant stone structure, especially if it's mostly underground. Especially because he's used to the whole "spit freezes in midair" temperature we're in right now.
Swashbuckler: But if it's really humid, like a jungle, as opposed to a desert?
Kobold: Ref?
DM: You couldn't tell.
Kobold: That's that then.

So we send the kobold through the other three, very scientifically. What he guages is that, the one on the west probably IS the jungle ziggarut. It's got a lot of strange looking insects crawling around, that he avoided irritating by being able to hide in plain sight. The one to the south is like the one to the north. More old cobwebs and dust than any real activity. They haven't seen any use (at least, not like the other two). When he goes through the one on the east and looks around, he immediately comes tumbling back through the doorway to inform us that the east ziggaurt is clearly the desert one, because it's brimming with black onyx bugs covered in golden runes.
We're torn between examining that one first, and not bothering to examine it at all. We're curious as to what happened in the wake of our departure, but at the same time, "bugs everywhere oh god get them off".
We know what to expect of the jungle ziggarut, so our plans it to examine the other two, find out where they are and what's the dealie-yo, and then double back and check out the Drifters base and see if we can't find anything relevant there. Once we have everything figured out, we'll come back to the artic platform, grab our dragon, and head out and see how the world's been faring against the swarm of black onyx bugs. If we can establish where the other two ziggaruts are, we can tuck our ship somewhere safer, knowing we have alternate means of travel.


North

We press into the northern ziggarut. It looks to follow the same layout as the other two, but things look to be in different condition here. The main chamber was full of rotten wooden rubble, which closer examination revealed to look like a collapsed wooden walk (or specifically, a whole series of collapsed wooden walkways laying on top of each other). Nothing was living in the wooden rubble, we saw no rodents or insects.
More noteworthy was the pillars. Everywhere in the chamber were great stone pillars ring with human sized boxes...obviously coffins. There were hundereds in this chamber alone. The coffin thing made us a tiny bit uneasy, but nevertheless, we were hit with a sense of calm peace. This seemed to truly be a resting place. The kobold did a knowledge (history) check, but came up with nothing. A knowledge (religion) check did verify that the place was consecrated though.
The dragon shaman sighed, smiled, and said "good place to be". We all generally agreed, me included, if only because it meant we weren't in any real immediate danger. As we explored, some of the coffins did seem to be rotted open, but the skeletons inside were just collapsed peacefully in place. The swashbuckler commented that this would be a great place to return to when he leveled again, as he'd instantly have 20 skeleton warriors (and taking "Practiced Spellcast" for his archivist levels after that would let him have 40 HD of undead minions). The dragon shaman asked if he was honestly okay with regularily raiding a consecrated tomb, but the Swashbuckler said "Trying to save the world, ect, ect".

We checked the rest of the ziggarut. The other rooms were more of the same. Lined up and down with coffins, all with no name and no noticeable markings or explenation as to what they were. When we reached the ziggaruts exit, we found that it was sealed shut with stone. With great team effort, we managed to move the stone door...only to find a wlal of dirt. This ziggarut, wherever it was, was apparently buried. We decided that in a few levels, we would set a small team of skeletons digging a tunnel out and up, but for now there was no sense scrabbling through the dirt.
In fact, depending on where the Southern doorway led, we might rather keep this ziggarut buried and sealed off... a secret and foritified location that we could use as a base, and the foundation of an undead army if it came to that... it occured to the Kobold Factotum that in one more level, HE'LL be able to cast Animate Dead too, to which the Dragon Shaman replied with an exasperated "Really? We're ALL going to be necromancers except for me, really?".
The Factotum doesn't necessarily want to be a necronmancer (especially when it comes to raiding blessed tombs) but is of the mind that we need to pick up any advantage we can, and having an army of 120+ skeleton warriors is not something to ignore outright.
The Dragon Shaman agreed not to burn any of us to death over the issue, but has gone on record to say the idea makes him feel uncomfortable.

So we returned to the portal room, exited the ziggarut back into the biting artic winds.


South

We entered less cautiously, feeling airy and calm from the sealed, blessed, and consecrated tomb. When we walked through the portal to the southernmost ziggarut though... well, we felt an instant weight drop on our shoulders. The Factotum did another knowledge (religion) check to reveal... yes... just as the other ziggarut had been consecrated, this one was indeed desecrated. I chuckled and mentioned something about this being useful too, because we could drag corpses to it to make our undead more powerful. The Dragon shaman glared, but nodded and said it was numerically sound for us, and it wasn't OUR fault the place was desecrated and unholy.
We pressed on, being a little more careful than before. Whatever made this place unholy was probably not going to be to our liking... which we discovered was very true when we exited into the great chamber that apparently all ziggaruts have, only to find a giant throne on a pile of human skulls, and what looked for all the world like a giant mummy sitting calmly on it. A closer spot checked revealed the mummy to be an ogre who'd been wrapped and bandaged and properly treated in a funerary procession.
An Ogre Mummy. Adventurers don't have "lucky days", but this was the opposite of lucky. A mummified ogre? Great.

And as we're processing how screwed we are, the ogre mummy just lets out a harsh gravely whisper, the first word spoke by dried vocal chords in god knows how many centuries: "Why are you here?"
We all sit in akward silence for a minute, hoping the kobold will say something clever (in real life. He's our best roleplayer, hands down), when the SWASHBUCKLER (great player, weaker on the roleplaying) says "we're just poking around, sorry".
Our whole table just stares at him, before the dragon shaman says "We're just poking around? Really? you reached down, and that was what you pulled up?"
The ogre mummy doesn't move, and just replies "Weary. Rest. Never Rest." before going into some kind of fugue and saying "rest, rest, rest, rest" over and over. As we look around, we see corpses, looking dessicated but still intact... somewhere between a zombie and a skeleton, crawling around on the walls and glaring at us with somehow still-intact eyeballs. Some of them lick their lips. They look eager and full of hate.

Dragon Shaman: Okay... anyone have a spell that'll get us out of this situation?
Kobold: Not high enough level yet
Swashbuckler: I mostly stab and heal
Me: All of my powers are self only, and nothing helps here.
Dragon Shaman: ...these things are going to attack us. That much is obvious to anyone. Maybe WE should make the first move here?
*akward pause*
Me: Eldritch Spear, Mummy, Face. *rolls 7d6*

So my character makes her attack move, which by this point in the campaign i've decided is the "Rock On" hand gesture with an underarmed swing. The mummy takes a good rolls worth of damage, 30ish, and roars with a kind of dry high pitched whine through aforementioned unused vocal chords. At that, skelezombies start dropping off the ceiling and pouncing off the walls in attack mode.

Our immediate assesment as seasoned adventurers is "HOLY CRAP RUN FOR COVER", which we do. The kobold springs his ridiculous move rate towards the exit to the rest of the ziggarut, hoping he can find a reasonable choke point for the swarm of wall-crawling skelezombies (our DM never named them, i'm guessing they were one of his little "I'm making this up, I am god" type monsters). The Dragon Shaman and me both fly, dodgin falling concious corpses, and, like the cowards we are, we leave our True-Striking swashbuckler on the ground by himself. In our defense, he's the most likely to fight through a crowd of the walking dead, which he proves by actually doing so with little trouble while the rest of us cover his movement with eldrith blasts, cones of fire, and the Kobold even broke out some of the spellcasting gems we harvested from the bugs to thin out the crowds on the Swashbucklers path to catch up.
Wether suicidal tendencies or tactical genius, we found an unoccupied room and used the choke point of the doorway to hack at the Skelezombies while they swarmed in at us, We couldn't take them all out, as they spilled into the room and gave us a decent fight, but we clearly had the upper hand. That is, we HAD the upper hand until the Skelezombie squeezing thru started outnumbering us AND the ogre mummy started squeezing through the door,
The fight got ugly, but with me sticking to the ceiling (mostly out of range, though some of the skelezombies could jump and hit me), the dragon shaman torching cones worth of the undead creatures, and the Kobold being wise and sticking to support and boosting the occasional attack or damage roll (while the swashbuckler naturally cleaved his way through anything that got close to him), we were doing allright. The mummy got in a really good lick on the Swashbuckler and sent him sprawling into the far wall and into negatives, but his healing familiar tucked him back up to positives and his next action was to cast Enlarge Person on himself and charge back at the mummy with a rigtheous roar.
The Dragon Shaman wound up directing his cone of fire breath at the mummy and hacking at the undead harrasing him. All in all, we took some solid licks, but we managed to kill the entire group like seasoned adventurers should. Without the choke point it might have been a different story, but we beat them into the stonework all the same.

It was when we were all leaning against the walls, catching our breath and re-assessing the situation, we noticed some of the skelezombies we hacked up starting to...twitch. it took a passed spot roll to notice, but really subtly, we could see movement coming from the first ones who had dropped. By the time we were up and ready to react, the first of the fallen had started making a haggered hacking coughing noise and returning to unlife.
This place wasn't just desecrated. It was...more intense than that. The dead did not rest here.
We started fighting again, but when the Ogre mummy started making the same haggered coughing noise, we realized how bad our situation was. Rather than fighting an eternal and peretually losing battle, we retreated further up towards the normal ziggarut exit. We found it rather suddenly, when the dragon shaman wrenched open the stone doorways to the outside only to be hit with a blast of heat so intense that it forced the rest of the party back away from it (even with endure elements up). The dragon shaman leaned out, being immune to fire, and smirked a little.
The ziggarut was built against an active volcano (probably magically warded against being destroyed by it). The Dragon Shaman looked back at our party from the doorway leading out to the open air (the open superheated air with a pool of lava at the bottom) and said a single word. "Hide".

The rest of us, seeing where he was going with this, tucked into the nearest rooms and took up the most stealthy positions we could, while our fullplated Dragonborn Dragon Shaman stood in the doorway with his wings outstretched, watching the twitching and slowly rising mass of the undead coming his way. When enough of them were up and shambling, he took a step back off the stone ledge and above the pool of lava, beating his wings.

Ah. To be totally immune to fire damage.

He flew backwards against the far wall and clung to it, keeping his eyes dead set on the shambling corpses and occasionally breathgin fire at nothing to look intimidating and violent. The trick worked, and all of the undead marched blindly out over the lede to fight him, only to trip and fall down into a giant pool of molten rock.
All except the mummy. He stood at the doorway screaming angry (and simple minded) curses across the open volacno cone, at least, up until the Swashbuckler came running out of the room he'd been hiding in and bullrushed the unaware mummy out into the lava.
The Dragon Shaman flew back to our group, and as adventurers are often called upon to do, we re-assessed the situation.


Storm Clouds

We could get in and out of the active volcano with a small degree of effort. The Dragon Shaman was fine, but the rest of us became a little fatigued from the sweltering heat of the open air. I could fly the Kobold out without too much trouble, but the Swashbuckler was too heavy for me. The Dragon Shaman had to take off his armor, fly the swashbuckler out, fly back, put his armor on, and then fly out.
Fortunately, being immune to the heat meant the repeat trpis were no great concern. Once we were out in the open air, we established that it was actually night time on this part of the world, and that we were very close to Central Island. Specifically, we were on one of the smaller offshoot islands nearby. We were basically within swimming distance.
This was great news! We had ziggarut portals connecting the Jungle, the Desert, and Central Island! As well as access to a secret base somewhere underground, only accessible with the mirror itself. As long as we controlled the mirror, our travel options just got a lot more slick. We figured we would go check in with Macguiller and the captain of the guard while we were here, then head back, grab our dragon and gold, and sail back to the island.

We got across the water without much trouble. We found a seemingly unclaimed rowboat of some kind and 'borrowed' it (we honestly had no intention of keeping it) and headed for Central Island. We opted to make camp and wait for daybreak as opposed to waking Macguiller up. Time was of the essence, but spellcasters need their rest if they're going to do their spellcasting thing.
He was happy to see us in the morning. He'd been growing and breeding the healing bugs ever since we left, and had created a fair number of them. Unfortunately, even using the gem from the Swashbucklers stronger familiar only produced bugs that could cast Cure Minor Wounds. Apparently whatever power caused the bug to molt and become stronger wasn't something that benefited its offspring. Either that or being a magical familiar changed the rules somehow.
Still, the bugs were friendly enough. They seemed intelligent enough that they were about on par with very stupid puppies. Macguiller had them in cages for conveniance, but they didn't seem to mind, as long as they were well fed (he'd been feeding them copper peices. The value of the metal didn't seem to matter, just the volume).

The Guard Captain was happy to hear from us too. None of the ships he'd sent out had reported back yet, so he had no way of knowing if the rest of the world was prepared in any capacity. We couldn't give him any insight to that, but we decided we were comfortable telling him about the teleportation platform we'd found. We discussed moving people off the island as a backup plan, but it was ruled out for two reasons. One was the difficulty in moving a whole population through an active volcano, and then across 500 feet of open artic air. The second reason was that Central Island had some of the best militia the empire had to offer, since it was a hub and supply location for every continent. He'd had his guards practicing archery against small targets, and felt this was one of the safer places to be.
We actually agreed with him that it seemed sound, and mentioned that we were planning on using central island as our base of operations for the time being.

Which is when everything started to get darker. The rising sun dissapeared behind a mass of black billowing clouds off on the horizon.
DM: The captain of the guard says "That's odd, there wasn't supposed to be a storm today." Everyone roll Spot checks.

The kobold opted to boost his spot check with an inspiration point, and he was the only one that passed. I'm sure some of you guessed it. We pretty much knew without the spot check confirming it. They weren't storm clouds, it was a giant swarm of black bugs, rolling our way in a massive cloud. The captain of the guard shook his head bleakly, before barking out orders to round up every able bodied person on the island to fight. He apparently didn't realize how hopeless this situation was.
Me: We can't let the Drifter get access to the mirror. The kobold can outpace all of us by a ridiculous amount, send him running back to the volcano and through the portal. Wait at the doorway in the artic for us and we'll try to make it in one piece.

The party agreed, and the kobold immediately started sprinting back the way we came. The rest of us got Macguiller, who started packing up his most essential gear and grabbed a few cages of the healing bugs. We were going for an evacutation, but the rolling mass of bgus came in really fast, and hit hard. It was like flipping a switch. One minute it was a peaceful and serene sunrise on the beach, the next minute we were in a complete warzone. Bugs were whipping through the air and taking pot shots at everyone they passed. For the most part you could shrug them off, and they only did a point of damage, but there were so many hitting so often that it quickly became a losing battle to keep your hitpoint total up. We sent Macguiller off running and tried to cover an escape for him by drawing attention to us. The dragon Shaman did good torching cones of the things, while the Swashbuckler was cleaving through the swarm. Instead of eldritch blasts, I tossed a few pints of flaming oil to catch any of the bugs that flew too close to it.
We weren't at it for long though, before the cloud parted and three familiar shapes stepped out. Priest, the Changeling, and Therin all had been riding inside the thickest part of the cloud, like some kind of perverse chariot. Therin shouted at us to give up the angel, but I tossed an eldritch spear his way...just to have it arc into Priests sidepack harmlessly. He pulled the dark orb out of his sidepack and waved it at me, his horrible rictus grin never leaving his face. "Hmm, I wonder why it does that anyway? I mean, all I ever used it for was binding some souls from an asylum... Tell me girl, have you ever been commited?"
The dark orb pulsed and my flight hiccuped for a heartbeat. My reaction was immediate. "We need to leave, NOW" and I started flying off in the direction Macguiller went. My party followed, but we didn't get far before my flight gave out entirely and I crashed to the ground helpless. The Swashbuckler tried to pick me up, but Therin made a sliding tackle and the two went tumbling off further along.
The Dragon Shaman and Changeling stared each other down, and she pulled out a rapier and a short sword before striking an elegant pose with them. The Dragon Shamans response? "You don't have to do this. There must be some way to break your curse. Her pose drooped for a moment, and she looked down, obviously feeling some kind of shame, before immediately making a whirling, dancing leap across the distance between them, hitting in a flurry of light blows (that barely beat the Dragon Shamans AC, and barely scratched him from his damage reduction). On his turn, he just shook his head at her, which made her falter in her stance.
Meanwhile, Priest had run over top of me, waving the orb at me and saying "Very familiar". I pulled out a poison coated dagger and sank it into the same spot in his shoulder that I'd hit when we ran into each other before, and said "Yes, very familiar".
Priests rictus grin didn't even falter though, as the orb pulsed and he hit me with my own eldritch blast, saying "You were in the asylum weren't you? Your soul works for me as sure as the other patients do... though yours seems much more useful".

Therin kicked the Swashbuckler hard enough to send him flying through the air, before doing some kind of jump/backflip, flying easily 20 feet through the air and landing on the Swashbucklers chest with a crunch. The Swashbuckler was winded, but knocked Therin off of him with enough force to knock him prone, quickdrew his rapier, and got in a good piercing hit and a slash across Therins face.

The Changeling dropped her swords and held her arms down at her sides, looking away sadly, before opening up with a ridiculously powerful punch clean across the Dragon Shamans jaw and tumbling a few feet back from him before putting up her fists and kissing one of them, dancing like a boxer. Binders usually do have a lot of tricks, after all.
The Dragon Shaman ignored her, noticing me yelling for him, laying under Priest. The poison was clearly affecting him, he just felt like he still had the upper hand. Until the Dragon Shaman cleared enough distance to hit our area with his fire breath. He caught me in it, but I turned on my Fiendish Resilience to start healing the burns, and sunk another poisoned dagger (with a different poison) into priest. The second poison coupled with the burn was enough to stagger him long enough for me to crawl a few feet towards the Swashbuckler.
Who was locked in an epic duel with Therin. Therin swept his legs around and took the Swashbuckler down in a grapple before trying to do the throat slash move he'd shown off before, but he missed from the Swashbuckler wriggling away from the blow. Then the swashbuckler headbutted Therin to break the grapple, and ran him clean through the torso with his rapier.
The changeling did a tumbling roll over to the Dragon Shaman and took another bare-fisted swing at him. She missed, and took a hit from a bastard sword, before the Dragon Shaman flew over to me and started dragging me with him. He couldn't fly with me in tow, but he didn't drop me all the same, opting to run with me scrambling to keep up.

Priest hit him with one of my eldritch blasts for the trouble.

While Therin and the Swashbuckler continued to trade blows back and forth in a very bloody display of sheer testosterone. The Changeling opted not to persue the Dragon Shaman, picking up her swords and running at the two duking it out. The Swashbuckler seemed content to make this a fight to the death, and he might have insisted on it (despite our urging him to make an escape with us), until we heard a roar echo from deeper into the island. A dire tiger came running out...complete with a golden rune on its forhead. A look around revealed a lot of golden runes springing up in various locations... including the forheads of some of the guard captains men off in the distance, who were busy fighting the men who'd been strong enough to not yet be infected.

Dragon Shaman: This fight isn't going to get BETTER. We're losing here, and we're going to start losing harder.

The Swashbuckler finally agreed, and started taking double move actions to escape with us. They both dragged me far enough away that I was out of range of Priests orb, and my ability to fly returned. I thought about hitting back with an eldritch spear at SOMETHING, out of spite, but figured it would be fruitless. Instead we just hauled as fast as we could towards the island with the volcano. Me and the dragon Shaman were flying, and when we got to the ocean, we saw Macguiller had allready gotten the rowboat and was almost to the other side. The Swashbuckler didn't think twice, just dove into the ocean and started swimming for all he was worth, with the huge mass of black onyx bugs swarming above the water and dipping down into it after him.

We were keeping pace ahead of the mass... barely. Therin was closest to catching up with us, he was a very fast and tireless man. The changeling was behind him, priest was nowhere in sight (my poisons probably finally caught up with him enough to make chasing too much of a fatigue).

Underwater, the Swashbuckler had a bad run in. A shark with a golden glowing rune on its forhead swam at him and tried to take a chunk out, but his dodge bonus to AC let him flit off to one side at the last second and keep swimming. It took a few passes at him, but it didn't manage to connect before he got into shallower waters and ran after us.

We were worried, since the Dragon Shaman couldn't fly the swashbuckler OR macguiller down, but macguiller cast feather fall on both of them, and they jumped down to the ledge and into the underground volcano/ziggarut.
The bugs chased us the whole way. Therin and the changeling stopped at the lip of the volcano, despite the dragon shaman beckoning for them to follow with a smirk. He considered flying back up and trying to grapple one of them into the lava, knowing he could take it and they couldn't... but by this point, the black onyx bugs were basically forming a wall of chitinous shell that was hindering our movement. We had to book. We made it to the portal room, and the Kobold opened it up from the other side for us (despite the mass of bugs attacking). We all made it through safely, along with a few dozen black onyx bugs. In the cold, we had less trouble fighting them. insects do poorly in freezing temperatures, and we hadn't even killed them all before they started to just fall out of the sky. We stomped them all for good measure, harvested the black onyx gems from them, and escorted Macguiller and his cage of healing bugs (who were also freezing) over to the northern most portal.


That was where we wrapped things up. Macguiller and a few healing bugs are safe in the underground ziggarut. How safe remains to be seen. The bugs seemed intelligent enough to know their allies and to escort them around. The infected seemed to have a clear idea of what they were trying to do. By this point, it must be obvious we have access to the mirror, and we know what it does. IF someone knows where that last ziggarut is buried, it won't be a secret base for long. If not (which we're hoping) it's now one of the two safest places on the planet.

We leveled up to 11. The Factotum and Swashbuckler can both cast Animate Dead now, so it might turn into Bugs Vs. Skeletons here pretty soon. The Dragon Shaman can now remove diseases and other status effects with his lay on hands, which might come in handy. This was a great level for me. my damage reduction went up a point, my eldritch blast got another D6, and I learned my first Greater Invocation.
Priest has my soul. I'm almost sure of that now. There's no way the DM was hinting at anything else. I sold my soul in that dinky tower chamber, and Priest somehow found a way to tap into the transaction and pluck it from its rightful owner.

That works fine for me, because that means Priest has my soul instead of some demon lord. And now I have to go pluck it from HIM. My characters current main goal is getting my soul back, everything else is secondary until that happens.
I took Repelling Blast as my first Greater invocation (and Ignore the Pyre as my extra lesser invocation). Let's see if priest can hold onto the orb of his when it's forcing a reflex save to be knocked back 30 feet.

I hope that works, in any event.

The Dragon Shaman's also re-shifted his goals. He now considers the Changeling too dangerous to be given a (third) offer of redemption. He's going to attack her on sight, because she's too sneaky to trust. His exact words on the subject were "I'm good, not exalted. I'm not going to kill myself trying to talk her into giving up on evil".

And that's where we stand now.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Oh...Oh my...


We leveled up to 11. The Factotum and Swashbuckler can both cast Animate Dead now, so it might turn into Bugs Vs. Skeletons here pretty soon.

I'm fine, as long as you three don't make ME a zombie. (Actually, I bet the dragon shaman would have problems with that, too, since I'm a gold dragon.)

[Kosjsjach]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

So.
Goshdarn.
Entertaining.
:smallbiggrin:

[Fayd]

A repelling Eldritch spear? I think that's about the only way you'll be able to actually hit him with it.

Oh, and he probably can use repelling blast now too, but will only know it (probably) after you use it once or twice. So you have to have a GOOD plan to steal that orb. Probably involving the factotum.

[Deth Muncher]

SCS, HERE's a thought: What if Priest actually IS a demon lord? I mean, they know Polymorph, right?

On other, non-silly notes. So, you're back in the arctic, which seems safe enough for the moment. And you can get to the holy temple, which is also good.

...wait.

Holy temple.

You know who likes holy temples? Angels like holy temples.

[Fayd]

Say: A thought. How much HD does the average pair of legs have?

[Saruchan28]

Hm. So get the orb away from Priest... and wrap your special orb-sealing present from Heeno around it. Be sure you have on your glove-type things too.

I have a feeling that, if you don't... It won't be a lot of fun to grab that thing.

[Drakyn]

Your DM should be writing up his sessions as "how-to" examples and sending them to WotC. And you guys should be listed in the middle of every Player's Handbook under "how to do ridiculously awesome things without using a slide rule and eighteen prestige classes."

[Lilienthal]

Well that was certainly an eventful session.


The Dragon Shaman's also re-shifted his goals. He now considers the Changeling too dangerous to be given a (third) offer of redemption. He's going to attack her on sight, because she's too sneaky to trust. His exact words on the subject were "I'm good, not exalted. I'm not going to kill myself trying to talk her into giving up on evil".

Aaw, you should tell him to reconsider. Changelings are just too sad and cute to eliminate like that. :smallbiggrin: If you manage to seperate her from the rest of your enemies, even by force, you should be able to get her on your side. Having a former enemy on your side should help a lot in your situation, and the roleplaying itself could be epic as well. Romantic interest anyone? :smallwink::smallwink:

[Olo Demonsbane]

Awesome session. Thanks for taking the time to write it up for us.

[Corwin Weber]

Ok.... have your Dragon Shaman lay hands on an infected person as soon as is convenient. It would be terribly useful to know whether that kind of possession is something he can cure or not.

And again, squee. Just much squee. You're seriously inspiring me to find a D&D group local to me. (And I really haven't played since early college.... so considerably pre-3.0.)

** edited to add **

Hey wait a sec.....

Ok, the dragon didn't really give you a good measure of this, but now you've encountered a possessed dire tiger and a shark. Did you get any sort of idea of how intelligent they were? Were they just reacting like controlled versions of their species or were they more intelligent? (As in being actually possessed?) It might be useful to know what kind of limitations these bugs have. If an unintelligent animal gets infected, do they become Drifter, or does he just control them?

[Jayngfet]

Wow, now I literally can not wait until you're next write up.

[13_CBS]

Hey SCS, would you mind if I made a separate thread archiving all of your group's posted adventures, past and present? It'll make it easier for people interested in reading about your stuff if it's all collected into one huge thread, I think. I already have all the text copy-pastad, so all I need is the green light from you.

[Coidzor]

Ok.... have your Dragon Shaman lay hands on an infected person as soon as is convenient. It would be terribly useful to know whether that kind of possession is something he can cure or not.

And again, squee. Just much squee. You're seriously inspiring me to find a D&D group local to me. (And I really haven't played since early college.... so considerably pre-3.0.)

** edited to add **

Hey wait a sec.....

Ok, the dragon didn't really give you a good measure of this, but now you've encountered a possessed dire tiger and a shark. Did you get any sort of idea of how intelligent they were? Were they just reacting like controlled versions of their species or were they more intelligent? (As in being actually possessed?) It might be useful to know what kind of limitations these bugs have. If an unintelligent animal gets infected, do they become Drifter, or does he just control them?

He seems like he's at least seeing through their senses and directing them, so yeah, they're drifter. The only real question I can see is whether they gain his mental stats/saves or not.

[SilverClawShift]

A repelling Eldritch spear? I think that's about the only way you'll be able to actually hit him with it.

Oh, and he probably can use repelling blast now too, but will only know it (probably) after you use it once or twice. So you have to have a GOOD plan to steal that orb. Probably involving the factotum.

I didn't plan on getting very CLOSE to him :smallwink:

And I don't know for certain, but the immpression I got was that, since he's holding my soul, he can sap the powers I got from SELLING said soul in the first place, and use them himself.
Since the orb seems to have some kind of range on what it can do to me (I get far enough and my powers re-activate), I don't think he has access to any of it unless I'm allready there and helpless. Come to think of it, if he realizes how much more powerful he'd be with me helpless and near him, I might be in deeper trouble.
I'll have to be careful.

Hopefully a long-range repelling blast will knock the damn thing away from him.


You know who likes holy temples? Angels like holy temples.

We thought about that, but that's assuming we can get ot the angel right now. Papa HeeNo hasn't contacted us or anything. And even then, putting the angel in a one-way-in one-way-out situation might not be a great idea. At least in the open she can scramble away or fight.


Say: A thought. How much HD does the average pair of legs have?

I mentioned this as a possibility to my DM. I don't think he thought I was serious. The idea of finding a good pair of legs and stitching them to me doesn't sound too far off from what I'd do, but for now that's not the path I'm taking.
There are undead leg grafts out there, aren't there? I seem to recall something like that in eberron.


Aaw, you should tell him to reconsider.

I told him to ice her from the start. i'm glad he's finally listening to my way of thinking :smalltongue:


Thanks for taking the time to write it up for us.

You're very welcome.


Ok.... have your Dragon Shaman lay hands on an infected person as soon as is convenient. It would be terribly useful to know whether that kind of possession is something he can cure or not.

...

Did you get any sort of idea of how intelligent they were? Were they just reacting like controlled versions of their species or were they more intelligent?

That is something he's going to try to do, but we won't know what happens until we have an infected creature mostly alone.

And the immpression I got was that the Drifter is still in there, but is trying to brute-force his way into things now. We ran from the tiger, and the shark was just trying to attack, so we don't really have a sure way of knowing.

My gut tells me each one will be as smart and cunning as the drifter himself would have been. If his mental control was going to "give out" I think it would have done so long before the 10-million-infected mark.


Hey SCS, would you mind if I made a separate thread archiving all of your group's posted adventures, past and present?

You can, if you really want (and the moderators don't say otherwise, which I suspect they WOULD).

[wadledo]

I mentioned this as a possibility to my DM. I don't think he thought I was serious. The idea of finding a good pair of legs and stitching them to me doesn't sound too far off from what I'd do, but for now that's not the path I'm taking.
There are undead leg grafts out there, aren't there? I seem to recall something like that in eberron.

Their in a couple of places, though fiend folio has the best ones.

[13_CBS]

You can, if you really want (and the moderators don't say otherwise, which I suspect they WOULD).

Huh? Why would the mods object? :smallconfused: It's simply going to be a thread with all your posted stuff organized into one neat post. It shouldn't be breaking any rules, I think.

[Olo Demonsbane]

Actually, it couldnt be one big post...SCS tried that last campaign and it ran over the limit...wait, I think that was a typo, nevermind.


Oh, and please make the thread. You could PM a Mod before hand, if you thought they might care...negatively care, that is...some of them might be just as excited as the rest of us.

[Fayd]

I didn't plan on getting very CLOSE to him :smallwink:

And I don't know for certain, but the immpression I got was that, since he's holding my soul, he can sap the powers I got from SELLING said soul in the first place, and use them himself.
Since the orb seems to have some kind of range on what it can do to me (I get far enough and my powers re-activate), I don't think he has access to any of it unless I'm allready there and helpless. Come to think of it, if he realizes how much more powerful he'd be with me helpless and near him, I might be in deeper trouble.
I'll have to be careful.

Hopefully a long-range repelling blast will knock the damn thing away from him.


True, good point. I still think you should get the factotum involved...how's his pickpocket/sleight of hand/whatever skill doing? Repel him and send the Shadow Blur in to nab it for you.

...wait...you said he deactivated your powers. WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR ZOMBIES/SKELLIES?



I mentioned this as a possibility to my DM. I don't think he thought I was serious. The idea of finding a good pair of legs and stitching them to me doesn't sound too far off from what I'd do, but for now that's not the path I'm taking.
There are undead leg grafts out there, aren't there? I seem to recall something like that in eberron.


I know the Pale Master prestige class gets an undead grafted arm, but I'm not sure that's what you're looking for...

I actually thought you still had your own legs, but still petrified (I believe I'm wrong)...I thought if you made those skeletal or zombified and grafted them on, though any legs of the same species would still work...

...wait a second! Does anyone in your group have access to Restoration or Regeneration or the applicable one?

[evil-frosty]

Well this is just amazing. And here is an idea what if you animated one of the bugs and see if you then had control over it? And then if you do everything it possesses you would have control over.

That would be so cool.

[13_CBS]

I've been proofreading and reformatting SCS's story posts (both this one and her old one) in preparation for the archival thread (no real confirmation from Roland about this yet), and, uh...

These things are loooong. :smalleek: (Which is great since there's lots of cool stuff to read :smallbiggrin:)

Just for the record, the first story, the one that started with all the kythons, comes out to be about 30k words. The second story is already 55k words. :smalleek:

[Lilienthal]

I've been proofreading and reformatting SCS's story posts (both this one and her old one) in preparation for the archival thread (no real confirmation from Roland about this yet), and, uh...

These things are loooong. :smalleek: (Which is great since there's lots of cool stuff to read :smallbiggrin:)

Just for the record, the first story, the one that started with all the kythons, comes out to be about 30k words. The second story is already 55k words. :smalleek:

Seems like you've got your work cut out for you then. =p If you need any help with proofreading just send a pm, I'll be happy to help.

[SilverClawShift]

...wait...you said he deactivated your powers. WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR ZOMBIES/SKELLIES?

Still there. The zombie dragon was exactly where we left him. I do wonder if they were still under my control or not, maybe not being in proximity had something to do with it.


...wait a second! Does anyone in your group have access to Restoration or Regeneration or the applicable one?

Oh sure, any one of us could have healed my legs at any point, we all just thought watching me crawl around was funny :smallwink:


what if you animated one of the bugs and see if you then had control over it? And then if you do everything it possesses you would have control over.

I doubt that'd work. if it did, it would probably cost me the creatures HD to control it all the same.


Just for the record, the first story, comes out to be about 30k words. The second story is already 55k words. :smalleek:

Imagine how long the halloween story would have been if I'd started writing at level 1. There was a lot of build up :smalltongue:

[13_CBS]

Imagine how long the halloween story would have been if I'd started writing at level 1. There was a lot of build up :smalltongue:

:smalleek:

...

Actually, that would've been AWESOME. :smallbiggrin:


(Btw, we're going to have to come up with a thread title for the archive thread when (if?) the mods give me the greenlight. Any ideas?)

[Lochar]

Double your Pure win campaigns.

[Coidzor]

Oh sure, any one of us could have healed my legs at any point, we all just thought watching me crawl around was funny :smallwink:

I was thinking they'd be at risk of forgetting or not realizing it if they found a scroll or some such in the loot. They don't seem the type to keep very good notes.

[Corwin Weber]

I think I'm still gonna recommend heading back for the jungle. Putting the Angel in the sanctified Ziggurat may not be a great idea.... but asking her about both of them might be.

It might not be a good sanctuary for her, but she might have valuable information about them and about the chained door. (Maybe it's chained to keep her from going through it back to Heaven?)

[13_CBS]

Huzzah! Both stories have been completely proofread, formatted, and spellchecked! :smallbiggrin:

Until Roland gives me the greenlight, I'm gonna flit around the forums and look for interesting vignettes to add.

[Roc Ness]

Huzzah! Both stories have been completely proofread, formatted, and spellchecked! :smallbiggrin:

Yay!!!! :smallbiggrin:

Hey, Silverclawshift, will you be putting a mini prologue to the horror campaign? Cos I would like to know stuff like how you got the Island.

[Lilienthal]

(Btw, we're going to have to come up with a thread title for the archive thread when (if?) the mods give me the greenlight. Any ideas?)

"SilverClawShift: Letters from the Front"

I'd also recommend reserving a few posts in your topic for future stories. :smallbiggrin:

[13_CBS]

Good news! Roland gave me the greenlight! :smallbiggrin:

I'll be making the archival thread in a few hours. Until then, let's try to come up with a catchy thread title.

[Bigbrother87]

"The Definitive Silverclawshift"?

"Silverclawshift Campaign Journal Required Reading"?

"This, this is how it's supposed to work, Silverclawshift's Journals"?

It should include the who, and the why of why everyone should read it.

[Kyeudo]

I suggest: "Wow, that sucks": SilverClawShift's Campaign Journals

[Emong]

"SilverClawShift's Campaign Journals: Required Reading for Those Aspiring Be Dungeon Masters"

[Deth Muncher]

More Awesome Than Physically Bearable: The Adventures Of Silverclawshift

[13_CBS]

Hmm...I'm thinking about leaving the "This is how D&D looks like when it's done right" part in an introductory blurb, and simply titling it "SilverClawShift's Campaign Journals" (since it seems to be showing up in a lot of suggestions).

[SilverClawShift]

They don't seem the type to keep very good notes.

Actually we're pretty much required to write (or type, these days, actually) info down on our character sheets if we expect to be able to use it. Our DM keeps relatively up to date copies of our character sheets for a reason (not because he doesn't trust us, but so he can check firsthand what we're capable of doing and be relatively ready for it).

The question is more wether or not we'll REMEMBER any specific thing being marked down, not wether or not it is.

But no, no scrolls of "Fix Silverclaws Legs" to be found :smalltongue:


Hey, Silverclawshift, will you be putting a mini prologue to the horror campaign?

Actually, yeah, I'll consider writing it up if and when I have free time. Mind you, it's not as fresh in my memory, so there won't be as many details as, say, this campaign has :smalltongue:. I darn well won't remember "how many scrolls of what spells the archivist found in that place I didn't follow him into", but I can write up the gist of what went down.


Good news! Roland gave me the greenlight!

Really? I'm kind of shocked. I thought for sure it would be deemed redundant and abusive of the forum servers :smalltongue:

Well, nice :smallsmile:

[13_CBS]

Really? I'm kind of shocked. I thought for sure it would be deemed redundant and abusive of the forum servers :smalltongue:


Asking people politely can go a long way, I've found. :smallbiggrin:

Edit: I also gave Roland some good reasons for starting an archival thread: all the story posts will be collected into one or two posts for easier reading, among other things.

Edit2: A question to you all...

While I was going through SCS's stories again on my word processor, I took the liberty to tweak some of the formatting--add page breaks, add new titles for said page breaks, etc.

Should I keep it like that? Cuz, now that I think about it, I'm wondering if I'm being rude by going in and reformatting SCS's writing. :smallconfused: What do you guys think?

[SilverClawShift]

That works for me. I've gone over some of my own posts and cringed at the sloppy editing (and in some cases, the sloppy descriptions).

[Lilienthal]

Agreed, I don't really recall any major problems with SilverClawShift's writing, but if you're putting the whole thing together it would probably benefit from some restructuring.

[SilverClawShift]

I wrote a lot of entries in the horror journal in between shifts at work, pressed for time, as rapidly as possible (and occasionally a little drunk).

Some of them are... less coherant than others :smalltongue:

[Dragonus45]

"SilverClawShift: Letters from the Front"

I'd also recommend reserving a few posts in your topic for future stories. :smallbiggrin:

Letters From the Front gets my vote. I like the feel of the name, event if they aren't really letters.

[13_CBS]

That works for me.

Awesome! :smallbiggrin:




As for the title, how about a compromise:

Letters from the Tablefront1: SilveClawShift's Campaign Journals

*cue epic music*

1 Like a Battlefront, except, you know, from a gaming table.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Good news! Roland gave me the greenlight! :smallbiggrin:

I'll be making the archival thread in a few hours. Until then, let's try to come up with a catchy thread title.

Post a link!

...

Please?

[Fayd]

Make it Journals (the plural) and you have my vote!

[13_CBS]

Post a link!

...

Please?

You seemed to have missed the many posts above you debating on what we should have thread title be. :smalltongue:


Make it Journals (the plural) and you have my vote!

Done. :smallbiggrin:

[Lilienthal]

"Journals from the Front" then? It's about as accurate a description of what it is as you can find I think.

[Darkfire]

I'm honestly not sure what I'm more excited about: the next thrilling installment or the prospect of a prologue to the horror campaign.

As for the title, tough call. I love "Letters from the Front" but for some reason can't decide which side of the colon I prefer it.

"SilverClawShift: Undeniably Awesome" keeps occurring to me as well but that might just be a side effect of following this thread :smalltongue:.

[GreatWyrmGold]

As for the title, how about a compromise:

Letters from the Tablefront1: SilveClawShift's Campaign Journals

*cue epic music*

1 Like a Battlefront, except, you know, from a gaming table.

You seemed to have missed the many posts above you debating on what we should have thread title be. :smalltongue:
I was wrong...you havn't decided.

[13_CBS]

Ok, I'm trying to post this darn thing, but...

...it's colossal. :smalleek:


The first story alone is going to take about 5 or 6 posts. And it's the shorter one. And the second one isn't even complete yet.

So, uh...don't expect to see the thread up anytime soon. :smalleek:


(Meanwhile, continue with the thread title ideas. :smallbiggrin:)

[llamamushroom]

SCS, I hope you're happy - you've managed to create a cult. It starts off with collections of quotations and parables, and next thing you know we're sacrificing virgins at your [un?]holy altar.

[Eldrys]

SCS, I hope you're happy - you've managed to create a cult.


A Cult! where!? Can I join!? Oh pretty please, I'll be the bestest cultist I give you my house and all my worldly possessions! And if you tell me to, I'll worship you as a god

[GreatWyrmGold]

Ok, I'm trying to post this darn thing, but...

...it's colossal. :smalleek:


The first story alone is going to take about 5 or 6 posts. And it's the shorter one. And the second one isn't even complete yet.

So, uh...don't expect to see the thread up anytime soon. :smalleek:


(Meanwhile, continue with the thread title ideas. :smallbiggrin:)

:smallfrown::smallfrown:

[13_CBS]

It is done.

The thread stands ready to be posted.

Only a title for it remains.

[Eldrys]

Only a title for it remains.

You could have it open for other people to post and use, then you could call it something cheesy like "Campaign Island".

[13_CBS]

Huh? You can create threads editable by anyone? :smallconfused:

Edit: Just as an FYI, the entire story will take 11 posts to, well, post. 5 for the first story, 6 for the second. Plus, I'm going to make at least 4 or 5 blank posts for future editing.

[Dragonmuncher]

I think he meant have other people post their campaign stories in the thread as well. Don't think you should do that, though- it'd sort of defeat the point of having an SCS archive.

Hooray! Cult! But, is it SCS's cult? More like

"There is no DM but SilverClawShift's DM and SilverClawShift is his prophet."

[GreatWyrmGold]

It is done.

The thread stands ready to be posted.

Only a title for it remains.

YAYSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Wow, that is the least mature thing I have ever typed.)
Title: Go simple. That way people actually know, y'know what it is.

[13_CBS]

Simple, eh?

I like it. I'll go with simple.

"The SilverClawShift Campaign Archives".

I'll post it as soon as I'm done heating up some soup. :smalltongue:


As I said before, I'll need about 14-15 posts to finish posting everything, so please refrain from posting in the thread until I'm all done. :smallbiggrin:

[GreatWyrmGold]

You forgot your link!

Here you go! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116836)
Given my luck, I'm probably ninja'd...
Edit: Cool! I'm not!

[13_CBS]

Thanks!

Anyhow, the archives have been posted. Enjoy!

[Fayd]

Actually, this thread is what prompted me to actually play through Neverwinter Nights 2's Mask of the Betrayer. As a warlock, naturally...

[Roc Ness]

Huzzah!!!!!! :smallbiggrin:

That is going in favourites!!!!! :smallwink:

Now all we need to do is ask the Giant to consider it as something to do after he finishes OOTS! :smalltongue:

[Deth Muncher]

Hm...should be an update today.

Anxiousness!

[Coidzor]

Heh, get too eager and she might delay just to spite us. :smalltongue:

[Deth Muncher]

Heh, get too eager and she might delay just to spite us. :smalltongue:

Somehow, I see that as entirely in-character for her. If not her true character, then her character's character.

[SilverClawShift]

So we started off our session with a bang.

We gave our DM our updated character sheets, established that the Swashbuckler took Animate Dead and Magic Vestments as his spells for 5th level archivistdom. We also established that he had an extra spell slot, and was going to use it to boost the AC on my leather armor/shredded dress combo, since my AC is currently the lowest.

Then immediately after our DM said "Game on", the next words were the Swashbuckler saying "Okay, time for me to animate some corpses!"

Holy Exterminators

The dragon shaman was allright with us raiding a blessed tomb of ancients long forgotten and defiling their bones, but only if we were reverent about the whole thing. We walked quietly through the main chamber for a minute, running our hands across the coffins and saying out loud that we didn't mean any disrespect, but that we needed their bodies, and that the entire world was at stake.
With that, we started wrenching open the doors and hauling their ancient carcases out into the light of day (well, we couldn't animate them in the consecrated ruins, so we were actually hauling them out to the dark of an artic night, but still).
After harvesting the black onyx from the spellcasting bugs, we had way, way, way more than enough gems to animate them all, stuff our packs full of spare, and still have plenty for future animation. It occured to us that even if the world pulled through, black onyx was going to become a very common commodity... undeath might be very common in the future. Bleak, but not worse than the alternative (a single hive mind becoming a deity. Or MULTIPLE deities at once somehow).

We debated dragging them across the platform and trying to animate them in the Desecrated zigarut, but a quick glance at doorway to it showed that the Drifters minions (Changeling, Therin, and an ill looking Priest) had all made their way down, and were examining the portal room. We noticed Therin say "They must have the mirror" to which the changeling made an exaggerated solemn nod and put her wrist to her forhead in the classic "Woe is us" pose. Priest ran his hand along the edge of the doorway, obviously knowing where the portal WAS, and said "We shouldn't talk in this room". They exited, looking like they were coming through the portal, but vanishing from view as they simply walked out into the rest of the ziggarut.
The room was also practically opaque with Drifter bugs, which the trio walked calmly through. The question of the Drifters intelligence has been raised, but he's obviously still smart enough to recognize his allies if nothing else.

We camped out in the blessed temple for a night in order to reanimate more corpses than the others would be able to raise in a single day. The Factotum got in on it too, so we now have 10 skeletons being controlled by the Swashbuckler (leaving him 10 HD for anything interesting he finds), and 30 being controlled by the Factotum (also leaving him 10 HD for anything interesting).
While we were dragging the corpses out onto the snow platform, we noticed something though. The snow and ice that regularily settled, froze, broke off, and blew away, had formed a very obvious pattern. It had all settled in the shape of the jungle continent. Papa HeeNo obviously wanted us to come back around.
Since we were just waiting around to raise more skeletons anyway, and knowing we might not get another chance, we took this opportunity to poke around the platform some more and see if we couldn't understand things better. We activated the magical mirror to check the dark chained hatch. The Kobold put his hand to the metal, only to dsicover "It's warm. it's not just warm, it's HOT. I don't think this hatch leads to HEAVEN guys". We sat there processing that the hatch may very well lead to hell, when it hit us. If the hatch was a pit leading to hell (not confirmed, but, seems likely no?) then HOW was the angel planning on getting to heaven?
So we circle under the platform and look up. Sure enough. Looking through the mirror at the underside of the platform? Another perfectly circular portal, this one producing a soft blue glow around the edges of the gold and pearl seal of metal, just as thoroughly locked as the hatch above. This platform was literally where the world ends. Follow your compass to the one spot it spins wildly with no direction, and you find a stairway to heaven, and a pit straight to hell. It made us wonder if the ziggaruts were even man made, or were just some kind of fundamental aspect of this world itself. Two regarding life, two regarding death, two that made things stronger, two that made things 'different'.
We still weren't opening either of these freaking hatches.

So once we had all the skeletons raise, we armed them the best we could with what was laying around. I gave up a bunch of my daggers, the Swashbuckler gave up his old rapier, the Dragon Shaman gave up his old morningstar. The rest of them we armed with improvised clubs and staffs made from their own coffins.
We took the whole mess of skeletons and opened the portal to the jungle ziggarut. We realized that if they know we have the mirror, heading to the artic platform is probably the next step on their agenda, and it's time we start staying a step ahead rather than a step behind. The BUGS won't survive in the cold weather, but the drifter will undoubtedly find creatures to infect that WILL be able to.
Knowing that, we couldn't be slowed down by escorting a small army of skeletons through the snow. We'd fly at rapid speed on the dragon, and leave the skeletons at the jungle ziggarut with orders to kill any bugs they see (bearing in mind, these are NORMAL bugs, not drifter bugs, he seems to have abandoned the jungle ziggarut), but not to leave the building. We'll sail there as quick as possible to catch up with them and go from there. Macguiller set up a small workshop in the blessed temple, knowing that we're (probably) the only ones who can get into the place, wether they reach the artic or not.

So with the skeletons whack whack whacking away at any bugs they see, great and small, we set back off into the blistering cold of a lightless winter.


Freezer Burn

The dragon zombie was stiff and icy from laying out exposed for so long, but an edure elements spell had it back up and running normally in no time. The dragon shaman grabbed the ropes, and we set off flying for our ship with utmost haste. The trip back was uneventful until we realized (by terrain and pathways) that we'd reached the area all of the Fifth Mans crew had been slaughtered. And none of the bodies were there.

Kobold: That can't be too odd here? The near constant winds and billowing snow, they probably got buried by the elements relatively quickly.
DM: Sure thing. Spot checks.

We all rolled, we all passed, and we all noticed a pack and lose gear from the body that we'd looted. But no body.
Me: Should we set down and investigate it?
Everyone else in near unison: "NO!"
So we fly on as quick as zombie wings will carry us. Just when the drone of the artic winds against our face begins lulling us into a false sense that we'd passed the danger, we hear the dull hurtful howl that had become familiar to us after our prior experience. The hollow cry of a wendigo... scratch that. The hollow cry of a CHORUS of Wendigos.

Wether they were weaker, or because we weren't touching solid ground, they couldn't hammer us as hardly as the first one. It might have even been a combination of those two facts, as the first one may have been some kind of Wendigo Lord or something. Either way, this batch couldn't make us roll will saves. So instead they just engaged us in midair :smalleek:.
They were fast. Not as fast as the first one, but still fast, and they arced through the sky in a furious assault pattern, leaving trails of fire everywhere behind them, slashing at us with burning darkness. I changed my energy resistance to fire and started popping them with eldritch blasts. I beat their spell resistance about half the time, so at least I was chipping away at them.
The Swashbuckler had braced his heels against the dragons spikes growing off its spine, and was in an attack stance, slashing back at anything that tried to get near us (and doing a decent job of it). The Dragon Shaman was holding on to the ropes dragging him for dear life, so he couldn't do anything but bank left and right to dodge them and hit them with an occasional fire breath. Everything was happening too fast for him to tell if it was working on them or not.
The Kobold at first thought he couldn't do anything either, since he was clinging to the Dragon Shamans neck and holding on to HIM for dear life. Then it occured to him that, if these things were undead, he could hit them with an Opportunistic Piety. He singlehandedly 'blew up' three of them in flashes of holy wrath by hitting them with Turn Undead uses. I popped two, and the Swashbuckler hacked three, and the Dragon Shaman was finally vindicated when he roasted the last one and watch it fall silently out of the sky.

And the night returned to the quiet droning hum of biting winds.


Deep Rising

The rest of our flight (and nights spent camping) were uneventful. Only so much happens in a frozen wasteland. When we made it back to the ship, we were relived to discover that it was intact. It had taken some beating from the elements, but it was in good shape. The skeletons with barge poles had done a good job of keeping it away from the wall, and it appeared to be unbothered by any manner of creature.
So we lashed the dragon back to the bow and had it pull us towards the jungle continent. We could see, in some areas, dark clouds on the horizon. Everytime we saw them, we had to wonder if it was natural storm clouds, or the drifter coming our way. occasionally, stray Drifter bugs WOULD find us... small swarms that would scurry around the deck in a deliberate suicide mission, searching for a way below deck to the angel (not knowing there was nothing but a feather and a bit of golden hair below decks).
We could fight the swarms without too much difficulty, but it made us feel caged and cornered, even though we were on the open seas. The bugs were spread out. Searching. They didn't all descend on us immediately, which was a plus. Maybe they couldn't pinpoint us instantly just by finding us. Just get a vague sense of direction and nothing more.
It was halfway between the artic and the jungle continent when it happened. The entire ship rocked with a horrible sickening lurch, and we leaned to one side before settling back on an even course. Naturally we all ran to the edge and looked over into the waters... at first it looked like nothing was there.

That's how big the creature was.

The waters were darker where it swam under our ship. Out a ways we could see the lighter waters, and we realized how screwed we were. It was a kraken. A giant squid that utterly dwarfed our ship. And as our vessel bucked and groaned under the pressure again, we could see a golden glowing rune just below the surface.
Swashbuckler: Roll initiative, I'm diving in.
Kobold: NO. We need to get on the mounts and take to the skies. It's sad, but it's time to abandon ship.
Dragon Shaman: I'm not willing to abandon ship. If you guys want to fly off, that's fine, but I'm staying to fight this thing, and I'm going down with the ship.

I have the dragon bank hard left (as hard left as a zombie can turn anyway). The kraken veers off a ways slowly before jetting back and striking our underside, rocking us horribly again. Then it jets off ahead of us and turns around.

Kobold: You can't give up your life over a boat. It's admireable for the captain to go down with his ship and all, but there's obviously more important things going on. We need you.
Dragon Shaman: I shake my head sadly and lash a rope around my wrist before drawing my sword and getting ready to swing overboard for a hit at this thing when it comes back.
Kobold: It will swallow you WHOLE if it gets a chance, look at the size of it! It's five times the size of the SHIP, which is twenty times the size of US.

The Kraken jets back at the bow, and I order the dragon to fly straight up. The ship rocks back as it it hit a giant wave and groans horribly from the shift in weight. The karken clips the underside of the sternbefore the weight of the ship causes the dragon to crash back down to the water, and I order it to resume flying straight. The Kraken is behind us now, and rciling around at another strike on our left.
Me: Why in the world doesn't it just wrap its tentacles around the boat and capsize us?
Kobold: Same reason the dragon didn't ram itself through the hull and tear us apart from the inside out. It doesn't want to risk killing the angel that isn't actually there.

The Kraken jets forward at us, and I have the dragon bank hard right. The Kraken clips the back left of our ship and tears off a great portion of the wooden planks all along the side in the process. The Dragon Shaman swings down and plunges his sword into the beasts side, and the DM decided that do to circumstances (the squid moving multiple hundereds of feet per round with a sword being raked down its side) that the hit was triple damage. We could still tell it barely scratched the thing.

Dragon Shaman: We're not going to be able to kill it, are we?
Kobold: It tore open part of the hull. We're going to sink.
Dragon Shaman: We allready know the dragon pulls us above the waterline. We can take on water and still sail fine as long as the Dragon's pulling us.
Swashbuckler: Wait! How strong is the dragon? Can it lift the ship?
DM: Not a chance.
Swashbuckler: What if the bat helped? The bat's pretty darn strong too, right?
DM: Even with both of them you're looking at 1/5th the carrying capacity necessary to lift, let alone fly.

The Kraken jets at us again and tears off another section of the hull. Its tentacles grope around inside for a minute before it swims off for another strike.

Kobold: ...What about just the deck?
DM: ...Huh?
Kobold: We go around smashing at the support struts and the planks below the deckline. If we can get it weak enough, the kraken will just tear the entire bottom of the ship clean off when it hits. Can the dragon and bat combined lift just the deck, us, and some cargo?
DM: Hold on *scribbles some notes before smiling* Yes. Actually the dragon himself should be able to do it.
Kobold, looking at the Dragon Shaman: ....Captain?
Dragon Shaman: Yeah. Let's do it. I swing over the edge and start kicking planks loose below the deckline.
Swashbuckler: Me and the kobold will go start chopping at the struts
Me: I'll call the dragon back and start roping it to the deck as centered as I can.

The Kraken strikes us again, tearing off another huge portion of the hull and groping around inside for a target that doesn't exist. I popped it with an eldritch blast and it jetted off to the side in anger, preparing another strike.

By the time it circled and jetted at us twice more though, the kobolds plan went perfectly. With a ragged cracking tearing sound, the entire hull of the ship came clean (well, pretty ragged actually) off from the rest, leaving nothing but the deck, the captains quarters, and the dazed looking crew cheering and flying off into the sky. The Kraken made a lunging strike at us with its tentacles, but it was nowhere close enough to knock us back to the waters. I still hit it with an eldritch spear out of spite.

The upside is our ship is now... well, one of a kind for sure. The downside is that the feather was below deck, so now the Drifter knows it was chasing nothing. Which PROBABLY means it's going to be heading for the jungle too. Can it sense the angel somehow? If it can, it's going to tear the feather apart and head in the same direction we are.

We spent the rest of the flight towards the jungle carefully cutting loose the jagged planks and making the bottom of the deck as smooth as possible for landings. Along the way, I also turned to the two remaining skeleton crew, and said "I suppose you're not needed any more. Jump over the edge. If you survive the fall, destroy each other".
The Kobold responded with "Wow, cold", but agreed that we didn't need a manned crew anymore, and I might as well have the extra room in my controllable undead capacity.
The DM let us transfer control between the undead creatures, so I gave up the sole remaining bat to the swashbuckler. It's officially his mount, his property, and under his mental control now. We're going to try to find a flying mount for the kobold too, hopefully by next level when the Dragon Shaman will be able to fly constantly under his own power. Then we'll all be airborne effectively as much as we want.
We've also started modifying the deck of the ship to get ready to install metal grips for the dragon in the center of things. That way we won't have to rope him to it, I can just make him grab or let go as the situation calls for. That way we can land, take the dragon with us quickly, and still just fly back, grab ahold, and take off with relative speed.

When I asked the Dragon Shaman about installing the grips on his deck, he just shook his head and said very solemnly "yeah... about that. I can't be captain anymore. I'm relinquishing command to you, it's your ship now."
We were all quiet at that for a minute. I just said softly "I'm sorry", but the Dragon Shaman said not to be. That sometimes the wrong course of action might still be the only way to lead to the right result.

We re-christened the ship with one of the bottles of rum we'd taken from the decrepit ship in the artic. Since we had a blue dragon as our central power source, I wanted to name the ship the FS Bluebird. The party liked it, so we christened it as such and sailed/flew on to the jungle.


Check It Thrice

We didn't even bother heading towards the port, going above the clouds and changing our destination for Papa HeeNos village straight away. It would only save us an hour, but an hour mattered now. Above the cloud cover, we stopped getting harassed by the occasional drifter bug. We wondered if we dissapeared off his radar, or if he was gearing up for something bigger.
Either way, when we reached Papa HeeNo's village, we couldn't fly in through the barrier around it. But the angel came flying out to meet up with us, silently landing on the deck of the ship and heading into the captains quarters without saying a word. After we watched her enter the only lockable room still on our ship, we turned around and were MAJORLY surprised to find Papa HeeNo standing on the deck of the ship, looking very sad.

"Ya gots to take da bird girl with ya now. She ain't safe here no more. Aint no one safe no more."
We looked off on the horizon and could see, very faintly, a dark cloud heading our way. We knew what it must be. Papa HeeNo just spit off the side of the ship, and a thunderstorm immediately broke over our immediate area. We asked him where we should go. What we should do. He just shook his head and looked straight up into the rain. We looked up as well, and in the instant we did, a lightning bolt curved through the clouds above us, flashing a shape into our eyes that followed anywhere we looked. We were dazed for a moment, but when we straightened up, we realized it was the eastern edge of the desert continent. The area where we found the first ziggarut.
We had to go back.
We looked around the deck for Papa HeeNo, but he was gone just the way he'd come. Not having any reason to stay (nor being able to land in HeeNos village), wanting to get the angel away from the approaching cloud on the horizon, and needing to pick up our skeletons, we simply left. We flew to the jungle ziggarut and circled, ordering the skeletons to emerge and climb it. They all scrabbled up the slopes as a group, which was difficult given the torrential downpour, but finally they made it to the pinnacle, and we began throwing them rope and pulling them on deck. We checked the weight, and even with the angel and skeletons, we were still a few hundered pounds under max flight capacity.

So we started discussing strategy. We could go to the original ziggarut through the portals via the mirror, but they're be expecting that. They had utter control over two ziggaruts (including one we were trying to get into) and we'd probably be walking into a death trap if we just mirror-walked ourselves in the easy way. That left the hard way. We escorted the angel through the jungle ziggarut, across the artic platform, and into the Consecrated ziggarut with Macguiller. He promised to try to keep her safe, and she cracked the first smile we had ever seen out of her when she began to pet one of the healing bugs.
Then we mirror-walked back to the jungle, climbed back into our ship, and began flying towards the desert continent. The plan was to hit it like a D-Day dropship. Have the skeletons hanging off ropes on the sides and jumping down as we circled the canyon, fighting to clear us a path. When we had one, we would all fly down individually, and send the Bluebird flying as high above the cloud cover as it could and circling until we re-emerged. Either we would come back out the way we came in, or try to mirror-walk to the artic platform and re-assess our situation with whatever infomartion we gleaned while inside.


It was getting late, so we ended session there. We leveled again, up to 12.
The Dragon Shaman has a much stronger breath weapon now. The Factotum gained the ability to bypass damage reduction and spell resistance, the archivist got a step closer to getting Reincarnate and other 4th level spells. I got the ability to craft items with a UMD check, but I still haven't settled on a crafting feat.

[Lilienthal]

I expect nothing but Ride of the Valkyries to be playing when you start your next session. =p


Is it just me or was this one of your shorter sessions as well?

[Forrestfire]

Yay! New update! :smallbiggrin:

[13_CBS]

Huzzah! Update! As I said in the archival thread, I will wait until SCS posts another update before adding this one to the archives.

[only1doug]

Is it just me or was this one of your shorter sessions as well?

I'd guess a weekday evening session is shorter than a weekend session.

[SilverClawShift]

It was about the same length as always? There was a lot of talking, and the fight against the Wendigos actually took quite a while, despite not being incredibly varied. A lot happened.

[Tehnar]

I would suggest scribe scroll or craft staff as your feat if you want to produce magic items. I would suggest staff if you can get your DM to allow UMD to activate staffs. There are a few problems with it.I can elaborate further if you wish.

The reason I suggest this is that there are a few very useful spells for dealing with swarms of creatures, mostly various wall effects that should work very well in enclosed spaces.

[Coidzor]

I knew it! Wendigo horde!

...Now if only you had had command undead....

And did you remember to speak with the angel about the various niggling questions? Like the ziggurats, the portals to the upper and lower planes and how exactly she thought the drifter was going to send her infected shell back to the heavens?

...If only there were some way to trick the drifter into going down into hell and then locking it behind him. That'd be pretty appropriate, since hell is more blocked off from interacting with the material... usually. Probably would just become another demon prince and be done with it.

Because I'm wondering if you're sealing or killing off heroes in the dance... As, really, right now the drifter could have killed off most of the life on the planet... How many days have passed? Bastardized math:hmm... Let's see... about 4-6 from a human, let's say, average weight of 150, so...let's say, average of 5 bugs per person, ish, or a ratio of about 1 bug per 30 pounds of body weight/mass. ...68.0388555 kilograms... 13.608 kg of mass per bug, ish... About a fly speed of 60 feet... Able to act as either a swarm or as individuals. Improved version of the Hell Wasp Swarm's ability to take control of a host body. an average commoner can take out, maybe 3 bugs if very lucky, so we'll say, average of 2 destroyed per ordinary person with a net profit-yield of 3 bugs per person infected that can fight....

An adventurer-type of 1st level, say, would take out about 8 bugs before being overwhelmed(?) with a net loss of 3 bugs per level one adventurer. If the number of bugs produced are based off of A. CR or B. HD, rather than mass/weight, then the profit to loss for leveled characters and other nasties becomes less, especially since there's the option to keep the possessed individual around for a good while before it becomes more of the swarm...

so 60' of travel per round, flight. (assumed due to experience)Untiring due to 1. construct and 2. necromantic qualities. That's... 60' per 6 seconds...*10 to get 600' a minute * 60 to get 36,000' an hour * 24 to get 864000' a day. /5280 feet per mile... 163.64 miles per day. Halve that if it's just a 30' fly speed. Let's say a delay of maybe 10 minutes per thorp or hamlet, 30 minutes per village, about an hour for a small city, 2 for a medium, 3 for a large, and a whole day for a metropolis(and an additional day for the undercity... Probably could beef up the time for the larger settlements, but I felt the estimate was justified from how good at overrunning and causing chaos the drifter-swarm seems to be).

Probably start with the livestock unless a large swarm was already on its way to the inhabited area, and then have the newly created bugs/minions from that settlement take care of it with the rest of the swarms continuing their search pattern.

...I wonder what sort of search pattern/net the drifter threw out...

Though at the very least it seems like the next step is going to be trying to tamper with the physical representation of the Drifter's ritual that allowed his mind-transferrance. That alone will drop the bugs from "world-devouring" to "endemic pests," because, really, right now, even if the drifter is kept from getting into heaven, it looks like he's well on his way to eating the entire world. Maybe some dwarven holds that are entirely self-sufficient without access to the surface might hold out for awhile... Probably hasn't found his way into the underdark if it exists....

What Monster Manual were the base bugs from again? 5?

[Lycanthromancer]

I'd suggest taking a psionic crafting feat, actually, if you can.

Craft Universal Item will let you make psychoactive skins, and the skin of proteus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/items/universalItems.htm#skinofProteus) is very much my favorite item in the whole game.

[Guancyto]

Long time lurker of this thread. Have to say, I love the campaign.

Your DM seems pretty cool. You should ask him if he can do anything about crafting time, since the world is on the brink of destruction and you probably don't have weeks to sit around making items.

If you can get things crafted faster than RAW (and collect your own components/use the treasure you found to make stuff), you should probably grab Craft Wondrous Item. Stat boosts, necklace of fireballs, prayer beads, you can't go wrong with UMD CWI.

Edit!: Alternatively, you could get Magic Arms and Armor. It would be pretty hilarious for you to be forging Holy weapons for the party.

[13_CBS]

You know, I really wish I could draw, so that I could make some kind of fanart based off of this: http://www.basugasubakuhatsu.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/LOL%20Fang-tan%203.jpg


Warlock: Dragon Shaman, hey Dragon Shaman!

Dragon Shaman: Hmm?

Warlock: Can I desecrate the ship for necromantic purposes?

Dragon Shaman: *Fire breath to the Warlock's face*

Warlock: *Badly burned* Nyoro~n.

-------------------------------


Edit: You could do this for a lot of situations in the campaign journal...


Swashbuckler: Dragon Shaman, hey Dragon Shaman!

Dragon Shaman: Hmm?

Swashbuckler: I'm gonna get Raise Dead for my next Archivist spell!

Dragon Shaman: *Fire breath to the Swashbuckler's face*

Swashbucker: *Badly burned* Nyoro~n.

-----------------------------------------

Warlock: Dragon Shaman, hey Dragon Shaman!

Dragon Shaman: Hmm?

Warlock: Let's kill the angel!

Dragon Shaman: *Fire breath to the Warlock's face*

Warlock: *Badly burned* Nyoro~n.

-----------------------------------------------------

Warlock: Dragon Shaman, hey Dragon Shaman-!

Dragon Shaman: *Fire breath to the Swashbuckler's face*

Swashbucker: *Badly burned* Nyoro~n.


------------------------------------------------------


Swashbuckler: Ogre Mummy, hey Ogre Mummy!

Ogre Mummy: Hmm?

Swashbuckler: Can we poke around your tomb for a bit?

Everyone else: *Fire breath/Eldritch Blast/Sneak Attack to the Swashbuckler's face*

Swashbucker: *Badly hurt* Nyoro~n.

---------------------------------------------------

Dragon Shaman: Warlock, hey Warlock!

Warlock: Hmm?

Dragon Shaman: Can I ask the asylum Director uncomfortable questions about you?

Warlock: *Eldritch Blast to the Dragon Shaman's face*

Dragon Shaman: *Badly burned* Nyoro~n.

[Dragonus45]

Lol, we need someone with art skills to write a few of those up.

[kyuubigan]

Has your Dragon Shaman ever considered taking Metabreath feats from the Draconomicon? If not, he should really look into them.


edit: page 68.

[TheCountAlucard]

Lol, we need someone with art skills to write a few of those up.(jumps up and down) Alucard might! :smallbiggrin:

[Roc Ness]

(jumps up and down) Alucard might! :smallbiggrin:

Heh... I can draw, but no matter what I draw its cute. I really don't know why. :smalltongue:

(Okay, the people I draw have big heads, thats one thing, but I don't understand why my dragons are cute.)

[Coidzor]

Heh... I can draw, but no matter what I draw its cute. I really don't know why. :smalltongue:

(Okay, the people I draw have big heads, thats one thing, but I don't understand why my dragons are cute.)

http://www.dragon-tails.com/

...I wholeheartedly support this... type of fanart. Yes. :smallbiggrin:

[Roc Ness]

That... That is 8-bit theatre with dragons for characters.

My dragons look nothing like that. My dragons look like overfed babies with elongated reptilian faces, bloodshot eyes and twisted horns of terrible wrath. Their mouths are open wide with the snarl of the predator, their claws keen enough to shred the foundations of a stone, nay, metal castle!


And yet they still look cute. :smallannoyed:

[Olo Demonsbane]

...I really start sounding like a broken record when I post on this thread.

You can probably guess what is in this spoiler:
AWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOMEA WESOMEAWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOMEAW ESOMEAWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOME

[Lilienthal]

What Monster Manual were the base bugs from again? 5?

Yeah, MM5, page 62.

[kemmotar]

oh man...SCS I hate you for getting me addicted to this thread and making me compare your DM with mine -_-

On the other hand...this is the most entertaining and yet epic campaign...has ur DM considered professional DMhood? Or do you keep him locked in a cellar so he only concerns himself with making campaigns for your group and so that he DMs for no other group?

Oh and last...could you ask him if he could send us his notes for past campaigns?^_^
Promise I'll give honor where it's due?:smallbiggrin:

[Rockbird]

So, uh, my first thought upon reading the new name for your ship?

Balladen Om Briggen Blue Bird Av Hull

Det var Blue Bird av Hull
Det var Blue Bird en brigg
Som med sviktade stumpar stod på
Över soten i snöstorm med nerisad rigg
Själva julafton sjuttiotvå
-"Surra svensken till rors, han kan dreja en spak."
Ropa skepparn
-"Allright boys, lös av!"
Och Karl Stranne från Smögen
Blev surrad till rors
På Blue Bird som var dömd att bli vrak

Han fick Hållö-fyrs blänk
Fast av snöglopp och stänk
Han stod halvblind
Han fick den i lov
Och i lä där låg Smögen
Hans hem där hans mor
Just fått brevet från Middelsborough
-"Nå vad säger du Karl?"
-"Går hon klar?"
-"Nej, kapten!"
-"Vi får blossa för här är det slut."
-"Vi har Hållö om sytrbord och brott strax i lä."
-"Ut med ankarna båtarna ut."
Men hon red inte upp
Och hon fick ett par brott
Som tog båten dom hade gjort klart
-"Jag tror nog" sa Karl Stranne "Att far min gått ut."
-"Emot oss, jag litar på far!"

-"Båt i lä!"
-"Båt i lä!"
-"Det är far, det är vi!"
-"Det är far min från Smögen. Hallå!"

-"Båt i lä!" sjöng han ut
-"Dom är här jumpa i, alle man vi blir bärgade då."

Det var Stranne den äldre
En viking en örn
Tog sitt renade brännvin
Ur vinskåpets hörn
Till att bjuda dom skeppsbrutna på
-"Hur var namnet på skutan?"
Han sporde och slog
Nio supar i spetsiga glas
-"Briggen Blue bird."
Det tionde glaset han tog
Och han slog det mot golvet i kras
-"Sa ni Blue Bird kapten? Briggen Blue Bird av Hull?"
-"Gud i himlen var är då min son?"
-"Var är pojken kapten för vår frälsares skull?"
Det blev dödstyst

Gubben Stranne
Tog sakta sydvästen utav
-"Spara modern kapten, denna kväll."
-"Nämn ej namnet på briggen som har gått i kvav."
-"Nämn ej Blue Bird av Hull är ni snäll."
Och kaptenen steg opp
Han var grå han var tärd
Stormen tjöt knappt man hörde hans ord
När han sa med självande röst till sin värd
-"Karl stod surrad och glömdes ombord."

Let's see, stupid song in the wrong language. I'll try to translate it as best i can (Please forgive my butchering of seafaring terminology. I hardly know what half of it means...):

The ballad of Blue Bird of Hull

T'was Blue Bird of Hull
T'was Blue Bird, a brig
Who pressed on, 'gainst wind heaving to
In a blizzard that covers the rigging with ice
On Christmas eve seventytwo
-”Bind the Swede to the wheel, he can hold her in check.”
Cried the Cap'n
-”All right boys, switch off!”
And Karl Stranne from Smögen
Was tied to the wheel
Of Blue Bird who would be a wreck

He saw the lighthouse on Hållö
Though by spatter and snow
He was blinded
He caught it behind
And leeward lay Smögen
His home where his ma
Just got the letter from Middelsborough
-”What say you then Karl?”
-”Will she pass?”
-”'Fraid not sir!”
-”We'll have to book it, for this is the end.”
-”We've got Hållö off starboard and soon leeward'll break.”
-”Low the anchor and out with the boats.”
But she didn't ride up
And took a couple of breaks
What took the boat the'd readied to go
-”I believe” said Karl Stranne ”That father's gone out”
-”To meet us, I trust in my da!”

-”Lee, a boat!”
-”Lee, a boat!”
-”'Tis my father, it's us!”
-”'Tis my father from Smögen. Hello!”

-”Lee a boat!” he sang out
-”They are here, now get in, every one will be saved if we do.”

'Twas Stranne the elder
A viking, a hawk
Took his clear spirits out
From a cupboard he had
To offer the stranded men drink
-”What was the name of the ship?”
He asked as he poured
Nine drinks into thin measured cups
-”Blue Bird, a brig.”
The tenth glass he took
And smashed it to pieces at once
-”You said Blue Bird, good sir? The brig Blue Bird of Hull?”
-”God in heaven, then where is my son?”
-”Where's the boy cap'n tell, in the name of the lord?”
There was silence

Old man Stranne
He slowly took off his coat
-”Spare the mother, dear captain, this night.”
-”Do no mention the name of the ship that's been lost.”
-”Name not Blue Bird of Hull, it's not right.”
And the Captain he rose
He was gray, he was gaunt
The storm almost drenched all his words
When he said to his host so he barely was heard
-”Karl stood bound and we left him onboard.”


So basically, not a lucky name... :smallamused:

[only1doug]

So, uh, my first thought upon reading the new name for your ship?

Balladen Om Briggen Blue Bird Av Hull

Det var Blue Bird av Hull
Det var Blue Bird en brigg
Som med sviktade stumpar stod på
Över soten i snöstorm med nerisad rigg
Själva julafton sjuttiotvå
-"Surra svensken till rors, han kan dreja en spak."
Ropa skepparn
-"Allright boys, lös av!"
Och Karl Stranne från Smögen
Blev surrad till rors
På Blue Bird som var dömd att bli vrak

Han fick Hållö-fyrs blänk
Fast av snöglopp och stänk
Han stod halvblind
Han fick den i lov
Och i lä där låg Smögen
Hans hem där hans mor
Just fått brevet från Middelsborough
-"Nå vad säger du Karl?"
-"Går hon klar?"
-"Nej, kapten!"
-"Vi får blossa för här är det slut."
-"Vi har Hållö om sytrbord och brott strax i lä."
-"Ut med ankarna båtarna ut."
Men hon red inte upp
Och hon fick ett par brott
Som tog båten dom hade gjort klart
-"Jag tror nog" sa Karl Stranne "Att far min gått ut."
-"Emot oss, jag litar på far!"

-"Båt i lä!"
-"Båt i lä!"
-"Det är far, det är vi!"
-"Det är far min från Smögen. Hallå!"

-"Båt i lä!" sjöng han ut
-"Dom är här jumpa i, alle man vi blir bärgade då."

Det var Stranne den äldre
En viking en örn
Tog sitt renade brännvin
Ur vinskåpets hörn
Till att bjuda dom skeppsbrutna på
-"Hur var namnet på skutan?"
Han sporde och slog
Nio supar i spetsiga glas
-"Briggen Blue bird."
Det tionde glaset han tog
Och han slog det mot golvet i kras
-"Sa ni Blue Bird kapten? Briggen Blue Bird av Hull?"
-"Gud i himlen var är då min son?"
-"Var är pojken kapten för vår frälsares skull?"
Det blev dödstyst

Gubben Stranne
Tog sakta sydvästen utav
-"Spara modern kapten, denna kväll."
-"Nämn ej namnet på briggen som har gått i kvav."
-"Nämn ej Blue Bird av Hull är ni snäll."
Och kaptenen steg opp
Han var grå han var tärd
Stormen tjöt knappt man hörde hans ord
När han sa med självande röst till sin värd
-"Karl stod surrad och glömdes ombord."

Let's see, stupid song in the wrong language. I'll try to translate it as best i can (Please forgive my butchering of seafaring terminology. I hardly know what half of it means...):

The ballad of Blue Bird of Hull

T'was Blue Bird of Hull
T'was Blue Bird, a brig
Who pressed on, 'gainst wind heaving to
In a blizzard that covers the rigging with ice
On Christmas eve seventytwo
-”Bind the Swede to the wheel, he can hold her in check.”
Cried the Cap'n
-”All right boys, switch off!”
And Karl Stranne from Smögen
Was tied to the wheel
Of Blue Bird who would be a wreck

He saw the lighthouse on Hållö
Though by spatter and snow
He was blinded
He caught it behind
And leeward lay Smögen
His home where his ma
Just got the letter from Middelsborough
-”What say you then Karl?”
-”Will she pass?”
-”'Fraid not sir!”
-”We'll have to book it, for this is the end.”
-”We've got Hållö off starboard and soon leeward'll break.”
-”Low the anchor and out with the boats.”
But she didn't ride up
And took a couple of breaks
What took the boat the'd readied to go
-”I believe” said Karl Stranne ”That father's gone out”
-”To meet us, I trust in my da!”

-”Lee, a boat!”
-”Lee, a boat!”
-”'Tis my father, it's us!”
-”'Tis my father from Smögen. Hello!”

-”Lee a boat!” he sang out
-”They are here, now get in, every one will be saved if we do.”

'Twas Stranne the elder
A viking, a hawk
Took his clear spirits out
From a cupboard he had
To offer the stranded men drink
-”What was the name of the ship?”
He asked as he poured
Nine drinks into thin measured cups
-”Blue Bird, a brig.”
The tenth glass he took
And smashed it to pieces at once
-”You said Blue Bird, good sir? The brig Blue Bird of Hull?”
-”God in heaven, then where is my son?”
-”Where's the boy cap'n tell, in the name of the lord?”
There was silence

Old man Stranne
He slowly took off his coat
-”Spare the mother, dear captain, this night.”
-”Do no mention the name of the ship that's been lost.”
-”Name not Blue Bird of Hull, it's not right.”
And the Captain he rose
He was gray, he was gaunt
The storm almost drenched all his words
When he said to his host so he barely was heard
-”Karl stood bound and we left him onboard.”


So basically, not a lucky name... :smallamused:

Hmmm, so far the ship has...

Had all the crew slaughtered while PC's away
Had crew replaced with undead
Lost all rigging
Lost the Hull

Perhaps an Unlucky name suits this ship?

[GreatWyrmGold]

(Okay, the people I draw have big heads, thats one thing, but I don't understand why my dragons are cute.)
Why do I get the feeling the dragon shaman would be the only member of the party not to get the giggles if they saw your fanart of the party?



Hmmm, so far the ship has...

Had all the crew slaughtered while PC's away
Had crew replaced with undead
Lost all rigging
Lost the Hull

Perhaps an Unlucky name suits this ship?
Most,
Obvious.
Post.
Ever.
Except.
Posts.
Saying.
How.
Awesome.
Silver.
Claw.
Shift's.
Campaign.
Is.

I'd suggest taking a psionic crafting feat, actually, if you can.

Craft Universal Item will let you make psychoactive skins, and the skin of proteus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/items/universalItems.htm#skinofProteus) is very much my favorite item in the whole game.
Seconded.

[SilverClawShift]

I would suggest scribe scroll or craft staff as your feat if you want to produce magic items.

I really, really want to take Craft Staff. That said, I just don't think I'll get as much use out of it as I would something like Brew Potion or Scribe Scroll. Those I can reasonably craft during travel time, a staff I'll be lucky to make one or two before the end of the campaign.
I love magic staffs tho, maybe I'll play an old-school wizard one of these days.


And did you remember to speak with the angel about the various niggling questions? Like the ziggurats, the portals to the upper and lower planes and how exactly she thought the drifter was going to send her infected shell back to the heavens?

She didn't seem very talkative (tho admittedly, we didn't press her for information). We'll probably have more time to talk with her in the future, now that we can mirror-walk to her with relative ease.

And while we try to be as realistic as possible, try not to overanalyze things too terribly much :smallwink:. Our poor DM IS winging things to try to stay ahead of us, some leeway and suspension of disbeleif (and fudging of numbers) will occur.
"Repeat to yourself, it's just a show, I should really just relax"


I'd suggest taking a psionic crafting feat, actually, if you can.

Psionics, Incarnum, and Tome of Battle are kinda the odd sources out for our group. We have access to the books, and we don't NOT use them, but they tend to only come into play if we actively decide to bring them into play.
Our Factotum took Wild Talent and Speed of Thought, but that was really a specific path for a specific character image he had in mind. It doesn't mean our worlds suddenly become ripe with psionic potential.

What I mean is, my DM would LET me start using psionic material and feats, but I don't necessarily WANT to unless the campaign were a bit more on the psionic side.


grab Craft Wondrous Item

That's the other one I was leaning towards. I like the idea of tweaking out our parties gear, adding enhancements and touchups and specific powers and such. We could definately use a good bit of polishing, from a magic-wear standpoint.
Brew potion fits my character image really well. Scribe Scroll works almost as well, and from a sheer potential standpoint, it seems way more handy.


Has your Dragon Shaman ever considered taking Metabreath feats from the Draconomicon?

He has a few actually. That was part of his character goal. I don't recall off the top of my head which ones he has though, I only keep a copy of my own character sheet :smalltongue:.


has ur DM considered professional DMhood?

He hasn't mentioned it. if he DOES, he might have to explain to his girlfriend how he "Fell down the stairs....twice" after we got through with him.

And His notes are kinda chaotic, and I'm not sure how inclined he'd be to share them. bearing in mind, his notes are usually not much more than bullet points and brief descriptions. He's more prepared for DMing in a 'general' sense than for any specific story.
It's all loose. That's why we can make weird decisions and have him be ready for us.


So basically, not a lucky name... :smallamused:


Perhaps an Unlucky name suits this ship?

Not to mention its current captain will light the thing on fire and abandon it as a decoy if that's what seems like the most prudent course of action.
I'm not Chaotic Evil. I'm Pragmatic Evil :smalltongue:

[Guancyto]

Brew potion fits my character image really well. Scribe Scroll works almost as well, and from a sheer potential standpoint, it seems way more handy.

Hmm. A thought occurs!

You could make pretty much any divine scroll.

The Swashbuckler can scribe divine scrolls.

Suddenly his spellbook has anything he wants it to have.

Plus with all those spellcaster levels he's taken, being able to toss around Divine Power a few levels early would be pretty handy.

[Lycanthromancer]

What about those temporary potions that are really fast to make, but that only last, like, 1 hour/lvl?

Also, the ability to craft psionic items would give you access to psychic reformation. You could expend some XP and swap out your feats.

[Drakyn]

Speaking as someone completely biased, I'd say you could probably get decent use out of craft staff simply because it sounds awesome and you'd like to try it. Since when has optimization gotten in the way of rule of cool so far?
Or, as you said, you could go craft wondrous item and make a zillion random doohickeys. I think my point if I had one was "lolconsumables." Screw the practical, you've got magic!

[SilverClawShift]

Well, the problem isn't that staffs wouldn't be valuable, it's that CREATING them won't be practical due to time constraints.

Unless we hole up in the consecrated ziggarut while the world collapses and I make magic sticks :smalltongue: Scrolls I can reasonably whip up in the captains quarters of the FS Bluebird and have them ready for me, the archivist, or the factotum to access.

[Drakyn]

Damn.
Is there any chance you could make the staffs out of paper-mache and persuade the DM that they're just "really big scrolls"? Stupid apocalyptic timetables.

[13_CBS]

I wonder how the Dragon Shaman will react if (when?) you start churning out Desecrate scrolls. :smallconfused:


Warlock: "Dragon Shaman, hey Dragon Shaman!"

Dragon Shaman: "Hmm?"

Warlock: "I wanna make some Desecrate scrolls--"

Dragon Shaman: *Fire Breath*

Warlock: "Nyoro~n."

[Forrestfire]

Can't you put multiple spells on scrolls?

I think the DMG says so, so if it's ok with your DM, scribe a bunch on scrolls onto a quarterstaff with a knife, or something like that.

It could probably be ruled to be reusable, too. If not, quarterstaffs are free to buy. :smallsmile:

[kamikasei]

Can't you put multiple spells on scrolls?

Yes, but effectively it's just making a bunch of different scrolls stuck together. Complete Arcane has rules for different types of magical items that are functionally identical to scrolls, potions, etc. - the important thing being who can use them, what spells can be put on them, how they get used up etc. So it'd be quite straightforward to create "alternate" scrolls or potions which have been refluffed in some way to look like a wizard's staff or something similar (wands that you break when you use, that sort of thing).

[Corwin Weber]

You need to take craft wonderous item so that you can accessorize!

:D