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SilverClawShift
2009-05-21, 07:28 PM
So my group has recently started a new campaign, one that our DM says should last a good long while - which usually means we hit level 20, or even go epic at some point. By this point we're up to level 2, and we seem to be picking up traces of the central plot, or at least are on the right path.

Some interesting stuff has come up though, and I'd be interested in getting some outside insight into things.

The campaign world has an large central island, give or take equal sailing distance from every major continent. Naturally the island is a port-city metropolis, with a smattering of races and cultures from everywhere on the world. A lot of trade, import, export, ect. Not much you can't find there, and not many places on the world that you can't find a relatively direct path to.
The player group is as follows:
I'm planning on being a Human Warlock (with the classic "dark, mentally unstable witch" archetype). My current plan, unless something catches my eye, is to drop most of my feats into extra invocations to expand my versatility. I'm also probably going to carry around a handful of throwing daggers and the hardest poisons I can find, just in case.
One player is being a Dragon Shaman (race: Lesser Aasimar turned Dragonborn). They're manifesting wings as a dragonborn, are boosting their CON and CHA almost exclusively (with a little into INT), and are going to take a lot of meta-breath feats. They're going for an "unkillable heal-battery with a hard to resist breath weapon" motif.
Third player is a kobold factotum, with a one-level dip into barbarian for fast movement. They're also taking the Wild Talent feat to become a psionic character, and then taking the Speed of Thought feat for a +50 base move rate. The rest will be Font of Inspiration abuse, so there's not much else to say. A tiny, hard to hit, lightning fast, versatile scout/rogue who's everywhere we need him to be. He's bugging the DM for a chance to add the "Dark" template to his character for another +10 feet too.
Fourth player is a human Swashbuckler/Barbarian. Probably wind up being a power attacking shock trooper or something.

Anyway, onto the meat (and the questions).

Our group had a few small confrontations heading towards the island in the first place. We had an attempted boarding by a group of pirates, but with some flaming oil pints and quick thinking, we made it too much effort to continue attacking us, and forced them to turn off into another direction. Stuff like that.
We had a larger confrontation when the captain of the ship we'd purchased passage on realized we were smuggling the kobold in our luggage (the kobold having been wanted for questioning at the loading docks regarding a string of thefts), but we resolved it by palming him 5gp to upgrade our tickets to include a "no questions asked" policy.

We still wound up swimming the last 100 yards to shore when the swashbuckler said something rude to one of the deck hands. But at least the captain was nice enough to toss our luggage onto the islands docks instead of into the sea. He even told the dock master we'd been with him, so we didn't have to deal with too much hassle signing the log sheets and getting our stuff. Tough but fair, I guess.

We started looking for work on the island, and something big sprang up almost immediately. One of the trading companies was searching for an "exterminator". We tracked down the owner and started talking. Seems one of his ships had been visiting a desert nation to acquire some recently unearthed treasures out of a long-dead emporers tomb. It wasn't until they'd gotten back and started opening things up to examine them, that they discovered some kind of pest had apparently been sealed up in the packaging.
They were fist sized scarabs, with seemingly metal carapaces and crystals growing out of their back. The problem was, they were EATING metal objects during the voyage, but now they were eating the metal weapons and armor of anyone who tried to deal with them. And they could apparently cast cantrips, because they were spitting little fireballs and acid splashes at anyone they saw. They'd allready killed four men since they were unloaded.
The owner finally had to seal up the building they'd unloaded the cargo into. The local authorities considered it his problem. He agreed to give us 50 gp each if we successfully cleared all the bugs from inside.

Well, to make an allready long story short, the fight was brutal. We found out that we could strip the crystals out of the dead ones and cast the cantrips with them, which saved our butts when we realized that the white and gold scarabs could cast Cure Minor Wounds. No way we would have survived otherwise. It was brutal, but finally we killed them all and collected their shells to get the gems out.
At the end of the day, we were level 2, and had a fair number of shiny little gems that could cast cantrips. That was the end of that session, so we're trying to decide what to do with the stones at this point.

Anyone can activate them as long as they're touching their skin, just by concentrating on them. I can actually fire them along with my eldritch blast, which is cool, but doesn't seem remarkably useful.
We have:
12 Acid Splash
10 Ray of Frost
7 Cure Minor Wounds
5 Daze
5 Open/Close
3 Light
3 Create Water
2 Mage Hand

We also have 2 that can cast True Strike, and one that can cast Reduce Person, from one of the scarabs that was larger and meaner and could apparently cast higher level spells.

Our DM agreed that the Cure Minor Wounds gems could be activated while we were in negative hitpoints, to stabilize ourselves. So we're each carrying two of those, except the dragon shaman who is carrying one.
Right now we're just carrying the rest in a bag so we can grab them if there's something we might want them for, but I'm thinking of asking the group of I can have the offensive ones set into some quick and dirty (and cheap) rings so I can wear a whole mess of them at once and activate them with my eldritch blast as needed.

Anyone have any clever thoughts on how these gems could come in handy? Or is it more likely they'll just be a novelty we find interesting, but not so useful?

Coidzor
2009-05-21, 07:38 PM
Are they at will? Or at least at will with a recharge time? Or is it more of a "times per day" thing? You should find out if they're using charges or what...

As an at-will magical item, even for cantrips is pretty valuable.

TheCountAlucard
2009-05-21, 07:38 PM
My opinion? You can get a lot of use out of these. Not necessarily in direct combat, but nonetheless, these should be very useful. If it's useable at-will, that pretty much guarantees that every fight will start with your party at full health. Likewise, if you can create water at will, that's likely to save a lot of time and effort during travel, as well as never having to worry about darkness, thanks to your light crystal. Not only that, but walls and doors should never hold the party back, since you can dump an infinite amount of acid on them.

SilverClawShift
2009-05-21, 07:42 PM
Are they at will? Or at least at will with a recharge time? Or is it more of a "times per day" thing? You should find out if they're using charges or what...

As an at-will magical item, even for cantrips is pretty valuable.

Oh no. I guess I should have been a little more explicit. They're one use items.

Lycanthromancer
2009-05-21, 07:47 PM
You should've captured some of them, so you can raise them as pets/resources.

You could love them, and hug them, and pet them, and squeeze them, and name them GEORGE.

Sinfire Titan
2009-05-21, 07:48 PM
You should've captured some of them, so you can raise them as pets/resources.

You could love them, and hug them, and pet them, and squeeze them, and name them GEORGE.

Agreed, though I get the feeling the creatures in question were from the MM5 (and thus each crystal is limited to one use only, as they crumble to dust afterwards).

Starscream
2009-05-21, 07:48 PM
I kind of hope that they aren't at will, True Strike whenever you want is pretty broken.

I'm pretty sure those things are from MMV. By RAW the crystals are worth something like 50 gp each, so you can always sell the ones you don't want. Then again, I think that as described in the book they don't retain their magic once removed, so the DM must have changed that.

If anyone can use them, you could argue that they are worth as much as disposable magic items of those types and sell them accordingly. The 12 Acid Splash ones are probably as valuable as an Acid Splash wand with 12 charges left, for instance.

But you won't make that much money anyway, so I'd just hang on to all of them. I like the idea of using your Eldritch Blast in conjunction with them, though. Having a Reduce Person Ray or a Dazing Blast could be fun.

woodenbandman
2009-05-21, 07:51 PM
Well, that's different. Umm... market price for one of those things is 25 gp, except the true strike one which is 50 gp. For your level these things are extremely useful. Kudos to your GM by the way for a kool custom monster encounter.

SilverClawShift
2009-05-21, 07:51 PM
You should've captured some of them, so you can raise them as pets/resources.

Not likely. They were fast, vicious little buggers.

But on that same page, you're right. We want more of them. And when we mentioned sailing to that continent to see if we could hunt down some more at some point, our DM got his traditional "good, they picked up the trail" smile.

Lycanthromancer
2009-05-21, 07:56 PM
Do some Gather Info checks to see if any of the bugs are hiding out anywhere else in the city; some are bound to have filtered into the rest of the city.

If any have, set up some traps and start yourself a coleoptera-factory.

Once you've got them contained and breeding, see if you can get some slight mutations going, and a training academy. An exotic pet that can cast prestidigitation at will would fetch one hell of a price on the open market.

Set yourself up as an exotic pet shopkeep, and you're set for adventuring on a (greatly expanded) budget.

If all else fails, go find their original habitat.

[edit] Partially ninja'd. Oh well. You sound like you have one helluva DM, and I'd love to be part and partial to that game.

Sinfire Titan
2009-05-21, 07:57 PM
I kind of hope that they aren't at will, True Strike whenever you want is pretty broken.

I'm pretty sure those things are from MMV. By RAW the crystals are worth something like 50 gp each, so you can always sell the ones you don't want. Then again, I think that as described in the book they don't retain their magic once removed, so the DM must have changed that.

The MM5 says you can remove the gems from the beetles easily once they are killed, but not before then. Trying to remove one before killing it causes it to shunt the energy from one gem into another, which causes the gem you are trying to remove to become worthless.

True Strike at will is only broken if he can use it as a Swift action, and can get it to apply to a Full Attack. Once per two rounds auto-PA for 20 is ok, as the spell takes a standard action to use. This means it can be Dispelled by anything with Quicken SLA (Dispel Magic), thus making him waste actions.

The Glyphstone
2009-05-21, 08:05 PM
[edit] Partially ninja'd. Oh well. You sound like you have one helluva DM, .


Well, we already knew that. :) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59107):smallcool:

SilverClawShift
2009-05-21, 08:05 PM
You sound like you have one helluva DM

The man definately knows what he's doing.

Lycanthromancer
2009-05-21, 08:23 PM
Gah. I have so many suggestions on that Horror Campaign, and yet it's waaaay over.

Lots of crusaders (all using White Raven maneuvers), some dragonfire inspiration bards, and some clerics (all using protection from evil and a bunch of buffs to keep the kids safe)...

If only I were around back then...

Olo Demonsbane
2009-05-21, 09:14 PM
Gah. I have so many suggestions on that Horror Campaign, and yet it's waaaay over.

Lots of crusaders (all using White Raven maneuvers), some dragonfire inspiration bards, and some clerics (all using protection from evil and a bunch of buffs to keep the kids safe)...

If only I were around back then...

I know...I occasionally just reread that when I am about to make a mission.

OP: I'd recomend you keeping the Ray of Frost and Acid Splash ones...right now, they basically function as a 1-use empower spell-like ability on your eldritch blast.

The other ones...you probably should just give them to random members of the party without much spellcasting ability.

Lycanthromancer
2009-05-21, 09:29 PM
Spoiler'd for off-topicness.

Along with the aforementioned, I'd train everyone that didn't want to be down on the ground and all the elderly and children in the use of bows, and have the party's spellcasters make as many pieces of paper/parchment with explosive runes as are physically possible. Tie them to the arrows, and have the people all fire them in a barrage at the strongest kythons when they show up. Then have an AoE dispel (cast at minimum CL) available to deal hugely massive damage to anything nearby (when they fail to dispel the explosive runes, of course). Including unavoidable force-based damage to that damnable slaymaster.

Hoorah for broken Vancian casting.

SilverClawShift
2009-05-23, 05:55 PM
explosive runes

I don't think we would have been able to make enough to change the battlefield the way our other strategy did. Not to mention a cheesey enough tactic that it working would have been called into question by our DM.
Not to mention that our wizard didn't know explosive runes :smalltongue:


Anyway, we had another game session last night, and the plot thickened. Significantly so.

Upon wrapping up the debacle with the bugs and counting out the gemstones, we went up to the owner of the shipping company to get paid. The owner noticed we'd collected the gemstones and a few of the bug bodies for further observation, and started getting really, really shady. At first he just told us that the bugs were part of the cargo being shipped in, and told us to hand them over if we were going to get paid.
To which our factotum pointed out that, no, they weren't part of the cargo. We'd skimmed a copy of the shipping manifest inside the building. Nothing on it about any bugs. Which meant it was either an accidental infestation issue, or a SMUGGLING issue concerning foreign animals.
The owner actually started to draw his sword in anger, but caught himself and re-sheathed it. He then calmly explained to us that the bgus WERE an infestation, but that the owner needed to recoup the losses of the cargo and crew-men the bugs had killed, and that he might be able to find some use from them.

We actually thought that pretty reasonable, or WOULD have if he'd said that from the start. And not almost attacked us when we'd pointed things out. I decided to test the waters, signaled my party that I was up to something, and told him he could keep the 200 gold, chalk it up to a free extermination, and let us on our way with the gems.
The owner drew his sword but held it loose at his side, and said "Listen little girl. Those bugs belong to me. Hand them over, or there will be trouble."
The swashbuckler calmly said "Trouble with the authorities, that is.".
The owner makes eye contact with each of us in turn, before sheathing his sword again and muttering "Fine. You four can enjoy your dead bugs, I'll keep the pay. Wait, you said you were looking for work around here right? I just lost four dock workers. How about you take their places? I'll pay you each 15 gold a week."
Our Dragonborn immediately said "I beleive we'll seek employment elsewhere for the time being".
The owner laughed at us, smiled, and muttered "Good look getting hired anywhere looking like you do."
We decided that instead of turning it into a fight, we should just turn tail at that and consider ourselves having come out ahead. If nothing else, it seemed like the owner had been up to something, and we'd obviously been a hiccup in his plans.

So the first thing we did then was track down an herbalist/arcanist. At first he wasn't that interested in us, until we used one of the Open/Close gems to open the window behind his counter. We gave him one of the bug corpses, showed him the gems, and told him where they'd come from. He was EXTREMLY interested after that. He asked us what we had in mind, and we said we'd let him keep the bug on the counter if he let us know anything he found out about it. He smiled and agreed happily. We also sold him two of the gems for 50 gold, and took off, but not before warning him of how shady the shipping owner had been acting, and letting him know he should probably keep quiet about the whole thing. He told us that everyone on this side of the island knew "Charles Therin" (the owners name, we'd never asked. The arcanists name was Maguiller by the way) had been up to some shady activities for months now, but no one had any evidence to warrant sticking their nose into things. We also warned him that the bugs had killed four grown men, so the be careful with whatever experiments he had in mind.

So after that we did some small shopping, mostly mundane equipment we could use, and rented a night at a local bar/inn. We told the bartender that we were looking for odd jobs if anything came up, and rested up for the night.

The very next morning, the arcanist was waiting for us at the bar. Told us to come back to his shop, and not having much else to do at the time, we followed. He seemed a little strung out actually. Said that two of Therin's workers had come and harassed him about what we were doing there, but he told them we were just shopping for some generic ingredients and that aside from having a Dragonborn and Kobold with us, we hadn't really stood out.
What was more immediately relevant though, was the state of the bugs, and the corpses that the bugs had killed.
The corpses? There were no corpses. In fact, asking around, no deaths had been reported yesterday at all. The arcanist was more inclined to beleive us, all things considered, but it did raise the question as to WHY you would cover up four accidental deaths.
The bugs? Not just bugs. On the surface, they seemed like normal insects. Even at a glance dissecting them, they still looked like normal bugs, with a few oddities like some crystallized organs, but that seemed almost expected with the gems growing on their backs.
But looking real close? Part of them were clearly metal. And not just metallic, but actual forged, tooled, and bolted metal. We took a glance through some magnifying lenses and saw what he was talking about. Obvious traces of sanding, tiny little bolts, and a stray gear.

Weird.

So the arcanist notices one of Therins dock workers watching through the window, and asks if we'd agree to be his night guards for the time being. Therin wouldn't be so stupid as to attack in broad daylight, and the authorities would come running if Maguiller was attacked, but us actually being on the scene might be the difference between a scuffle and an assassination.
So we just spent the day exploring the island. We had a few little side quests. A wealthy noble girl had lost her engagement ring out at sea, but the dragonborn just weighted his ankles and let his natural water breathing give him the edge over the divers looking for it. Found it, she rewarded him and gave him a peck on the cheek, saltwater and all. So 100 GP and a friendly noble on the island, not bad. Very handy to have courteous higher-ups, especially if you clearly don't look human.
Stuff like that.

At night, the Dragon Shaman and Swashbuckler took up guarding the front entrance. I spiderclimbed up onto the wall of a taller building nearby and hid among some of the tattered canvas signs on it to keep a lookout on the surrounding area.
We sent the kobold factotum back to Therins loading docks, to see if he could find out anything about the bugs, bodies, or Therin's shady activities.
While he was messing around there, we did actually stop an attack. Two of Therin's dockworkers had gone and started breaking in the back door, figuring the two blatant guards at the front were all Maguiller had going for him. So I tossed a stone onto the sand in front of Maguillers shop to let my buddies know that our little gamble had worked, and spiderclimbed down to meet up with them. The three of us tried to just rough them up and drag them inside the shop for some interrogation, but they were actually fairly good in a scuffle, and it wound up turning into a fight to the death. Which was loud enough to draw the attention of the local authorities.
Standard operating proceedure apparently involved putting the three of us in a holding cell until the whole thing gets straightened out. We actually didn't find that to be too unfair, since it was our word against the word of two corpses. Maguiller promised he'd vouch for us to the higher-ups that he'd been harassed by Therin's workers the day before.
Luckily, our Factotum didn't get caught. He also didn't get too far into the loading docks before the commotion started. it was loud enough that the entire beachfront was lit up with guards, onlookers, and whatnot. He wound up tucking and running back to Macgiullers shop to hide inside for the night.

So the next day Macguiller comes and vouches for us that he'd been harassed just the day before, while Therin is there calling us cold blooded murderers. Said his workers were on their way home for the night, and that they just happened to be passing by. It was more or less a hear-say stalemate. We figured it was going to turn out sour for us, but the husband-to-be of the noble we found the ring for camme in and vouched that we were good and honorable people.

Truth is way less useful than a blue-blood's thumbs up.

So we get released, and the local authorities tell Therin and the rest of us that, whatever is up between us gets dropped now. Any shady activity from either of us, and they'll bring the hammer of justice down on us with full force.
Considering this is a D&D world, the hammer of justice might be an actual physical hammer, we're inclined to avoid it.

So we laid low for the next few days, keeping an eye on Maguilers shop while he did experiments, and just avoiding trouble. On the second day, Maguiler called us all in to his shop to show us what was up. He'd managed to grow/heal/and cobble together enough of a bug to grow another two living bugs. Essentially clones of the first one (a cure minor wounds one at that). That's when we found out another interesting bit of info.
The Bugs weren't naturally aggressive. The two just chittered happily around Maguillers shop, landing on things, exploring them a little, taking off little nips of a metal stick Maguiller was feeding them. He said that whatever these things were, they weren't aggressive by default, the ones that had been attacking were violent for some other reason.
One of them landed in our Swashbucklers hair, seemed very friendly, and he asked Maguiller if he could keep it. Maguiller agreed, since he still had the original and a new living one to toy with. So our Swashbuckler aquired a pet with Cure Minor Wounds twice a day. Cute. Not incredibly useful, but cute. He named it Chitter.

Now we HAD to know what was up. So that night the Factotum went back to the docks, while the rest of us stayed nearby in case trouble sprang up. Uneventful for us actually (we had to pause whlie the kobold adventured solo, it happens). He found some creepy stuff though. The dead bugs we hadn't collected (stripped of gems still) were locked up in a glass case together, labeled to be shipped back to the continent they'd come from. Along with other crates full of miscellaneous replies. Everything was going to set sail in the early AM.
The factotum cracked one of the cases? Dead body. One of the dead dock workers, to be precise. With THINGS pushing at his skin from the inside. The factotum debated for a moment, before deciding against slicing open the corpse, instead re-sealing the crate and stealing copies of the shipping and receiving manifests, along with the record of all purchases made by Therin's sailing company.
Him and the Swashbuckler (high INT, recall) both pured over the logs and manifests until they'd proved, conclusively, that what Therin listed as being shipped out COULDN'T be what was in those cases, because he didn't HAVE any on hand. They outlined the relevant parts in red, wrapped it in a bundle, and the factotum snuck up to the local sherriffs office and left the bundle sitting on the front porch.

Which turned out to be a miscalculation on our part.

The local authorities, including customs, went to Therins at just past dawn. They demanded to see what was in the crates that were, at the bare minimum, mislabeled and a gross oversight, and at worst a major crime.

We were watching this from a safe distance away mind you.

Close enough to see what was going on, but far enough that our presence wasn't an attention grabber.

So there wasn't a lot we could do when Therin sighed, scratched the back of his head, and in one smooth motion tore the throats out of two of the guards with his bare hand.

Then he started running for the boat, shouting for it to leave the rest of the cargo and set sail. Naturally we took off sprinting in its direction, but by now, things had gotten crazy. The other dock workers were all pulling weapons and trying to defend the area around the boat from the local guards as the ones on the boat started chopping at the ropes keeping it in place.
We fought through them as fast as we could (I even started spiderclimbing UNDER the pier to avoid direct confrontation), but we couldn't make it before the boat took off. Then the dockworkers started setting fire to Therin's entire building. And themselves. They didn't even scream while they burned.

We stood at the edge of the dock, watching the ship sail, with Therin glaring at us from the rear, watching his place go up in flames. A few quick skimmers took off to try to catch up, but he had gotten too much of a head start. Then we fought our way back through the flaming pier and could do nothing while everything else, including anyone who could answer a question, burned to ashes.

******************************

At least the local sherrif had seen the entire debacle first hand. He obviously beleived that we were on his side. We apologized for the anonymous clues, but told him they'd been from us. He was mad that we'd taken things into our own hands, but understood why, all things considered.

So that's where we stand now. We know what continent Therin is headed to. Or at least where his LISTED destination had been. We figure with the cargo going to and from there so often, it's likely he had a reason to be heading in that direction. The local authorities are on our side, but they won't be doing anything at this point but attacking on sight if Therin and Co show their faces again. Anything off the island is outside their jurisdiction.

We're gearing up and getting ready to buy a charter ship to take us in pursuit.

Crazy.

Oh, but the acid-splash laced Eldritch blasts have come in handy after all, at least :-p.

*EDIT*

Oh, I almost forgot to ask the question which was the whole reason I posted.

Any thoughts on catching up to Therin directly? I can't think of any good way for a group of level 2's to catch a ship on the high seas, but if there's a trick or obscure rule that we might be able to take advantage of, I'm prepared to board that scary punk.

Lycanthromancer
2009-05-23, 07:00 PM
I don't think we would have been able to make enough to change the battlefield the way our other strategy did. Not to mention a cheesey enough tactic that it working would have been called into question by our DM.
Not to mention that our wizard didn't know explosive runes :smalltongue:Yeah, I figured that second part out later.

Incredibly awesome campaign, and just as awesome retelling, SCS. Have you ever considered a career in fiction?

[edit] See if there's a bounty on this guy's head, or if he's done anything against some of the nobles directly.

If there's a grudge going, maybe you should talk to your noble friend and see if she can hook you up with a teleport without error spell, or a wind walk, or something similar.

If you have a wizard with a REALLY fast movement speed, have him cast Tenser's floating disk and set out to sea. Make sure he has enough prepped for all of you (preferably multiple times...).

Lycanthromancer
2009-05-23, 07:11 PM
Hmm. How much thrust do your eldritch blasts create? Get everyone on a small boat and use your blasts as a propellant?

[editedit] Find a druid with an aquatic animal companion, and have it tow a canoe?

SilverClawShift
2009-05-23, 07:59 PM
Incredibly awesome campaign, and just as awesome retelling, SCS. Have you ever considered a career in fiction?

I don't think I can assemble a coherant story. I AM my groups ghostwriter for homebrew content, if we ever finish/publish the Dustlands campaign, I'll be the one doing the actual writing.

But making something reasonable? Plot structure? Characters? Dialogue?

Maybe if my DM lays it all out for me ahead of time :smalltongue:


maybe you should talk to your noble friend and see if she can hook you up with a teleport without error spell, or a wind walk, or something similar.

Unless he specifically says otherwise, our DM builds his worlds on the idea that there are maybe a few thousand people level 3-5, maybe a hundered 6th level and up, and a small handful that can get to double-digits on leveling.

And usually half of that small handful are villains :smallfrown:

Lycanthromancer
2009-05-23, 08:03 PM
Check out the swan boat feather token in the DMG.

Pool your resources and nab one.

(Save thanks for K.S.Lillian if you ever meet her. T'wasn't my idea...though I was about to go start looking at the feather tokens, and would've hit on it shortly. :smallamused:)

pingcode20
2009-05-23, 08:25 PM
Or, you know, you could just charter a Pinnace or something. A Caravel if you can swing it with your blue-blooded friend. Sure, Magic's all well and good, but the plain old mundane tends to work a lot better for large scale stuff. Like crossing an ocean.

It's a bit problematic that you scared the guy and sent him packing - he might have managed to leave light enough to keep a good pace against you, if he's using a pinnace or caravel himself.

Stormwrack sets both the Pinnace and the Caravel as the tied third fastest ships available, at 3mph/wind strength level. If you load up your caravel with 'only' 60 tonnes tons of supplies, you're likely to get the speed advantage on Therin, assuming he's using a larger, slower cargo ship or managed to load up the majority of his cargo before being caught.

Now, if you can swing a 5th level druid or wizard in your favour, Therin is going to be screwed, as far as escaping goes. Stormwrack gives the 'Favourable Winds' spell as 3rd level on both their spell lists. In short, strong winds (9mph for one of the fast vessels) for 10 minutes a level, giving you an 'extra' hour and a half every day.

By playing the mundane game, you might just have a chance at running him down at sea, rather than having to play catch-up.

(The swan boat is a nice idea, but given it's clearly a continental trip and it only lasts one day, you're just asking for trouble, even if you are going twice as fast. It puts the pressure back on you to capture him before the day is up, or you die. Strong winds would kill you, too - a sailing ship can move faster than a swan boat can paddle in good winds.)

SilverClawShift
2009-05-24, 09:13 AM
Check out the swan boat feather token in the DMG.

It's interesting, but also kinda questionable. He's allready got a massive head start on us, and we probably won't be able to catch up to him just by matching speed.


It's a bit problematic that you scared the guy and sent him packing - he might have managed to leave light enough to keep a good pace against you, if he's using a pinnace or caravel himself.

That's what I'm starting to think. I get the immpression that between the head start, and the near-suicidal determination to get to his destination while evading authorities, we're probably not gonna catch him on high water.

I'm gonna suggest at our next session that we just re-group and focus on tracking him down once we reach the desert/egyptian-esque continent he ran off to.

Kosjsjach
2009-05-24, 12:31 PM
Man, I'm really disappointed I wasn't around for the "Horror Campaign" days, because your re-tellings are spectacularly entertaining. How often are your sessions, so I know when to tune back in? :smallsmile:

Not only that, but I already have a favorite character. Your mobile do-everything sneaky kobold party member is a reptilian humanoid after my own heart.:smallredface:

SilverClawShift
2009-05-24, 12:54 PM
Yeah, the little lizard-ninja thing is a pretty cool character concept, I don't deny it.

And we game twice a week most of the time. Sometimes we can only get together once though.

arguskos
2009-05-24, 12:58 PM
And we game twice a week most of the time. Sometimes we can only get together once though.
...I want your group, so veeeery bad. My group plays twice a MONTH, at BEST. :smallannoyed:

Kosjsjach
2009-05-24, 01:17 PM
My group plays twice a MONTH, at BEST. :smallannoyed:

I haven't had the best luck finding groups, but I always thought that was pretty standard. Twice weekly with the kind of quality you've expressed seems phenomenal.

Btw, I'm sure your kobold player already knows about it, but he can wait around save up to get the Collar of Umbral Metamorphosis, which grants the Dark template for 10 minutes per day divided up as he sees fit, or save up a bit more for a continuous version.

SilverClawShift
2009-05-24, 11:08 PM
Twice weekly with the kind of quality you've expressed seems phenomenal.

Well, my group are all friends. We STARTED playing D&D as a group because we all agreed it sounded fun. So we'd really be hanging out two or three times a week anyway, and we're just playing a tabletop game instead of doing some other random activities.

The quality is directly related to our DM. I'm our backup DM, but when I'm running things our games aren't nearly as fun. It's still a good time, but I just can't keep up with things the way our main DM does.
He just thinks on his toes really well, usually has an entire list of backup plans and alternate plot paths for when we go off in a random direction he hadn't counted on, and knows the game really really well.

Not to mention, he knows us all really well, so he's usually three steps ahead of whatever plan we concocted.


Collar of Umbral Metamorphosis

That is cool, but I think he's persuing permanent boosts. I'll definately mention it though.


...I want your group, so veeeery bad. My group plays twice a MONTH, at BEST. :smallannoyed:

Are there scheduling conflicts, or is it just disinterest?

Find a group that actually plays :smalltongue:

Olo Demonsbane
2009-05-24, 11:21 PM
My serious 3.5 group meets ONCE every TWO months, if Im lucky :smallfurious:

I meet perhaps 1/month with my 3 other groups.

I feel sad now...going to cry in a corner :smallfrown:


Where does your group meet anyway?

SilverClawShift
2009-05-25, 08:03 AM
One of our players houses most of the time.

Sometimes we meet at our DMs place, but his girlfriend prefers we do it somewhere else, because she's one of those people that doesn't 'get' what we're doing :smalltongue:

arguskos
2009-05-25, 08:29 AM
Are there scheduling conflicts, or is it just disinterest?

Find a group that actually plays :smalltongue:
Depends on the player. One is mostly disinterested, but won't leave, for whatever reason. My gf loves playing, but has lots of scheduling issues. :smallannoyed:

*sigh* I'd LOOVE to find a group I am not always the DM for and that plays every week.

SilverClawShift
2009-05-25, 09:32 AM
I'd LOOVE to find a group I am not always the DM for

It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.

arguskos
2009-05-25, 09:33 AM
It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.
You have no idea.

In any case, you should keep updating us on this campaign. It seems most excellent. :smallbiggrin:

SilverClawShift
2009-05-25, 09:49 AM
I intend to, provided I have the time to keep it up.

Our next session is tonight, so I'll post about it sometime after that. I've been talking with the Factotum player about it, and we're thinking we're just going to gear up here on the island and set off for the area the bugs were shipped in from originally.
Wether or not Therin is actually heading there, we're more likely to find out more about what's going on that way than tracking him down directly.

We'll discuss it at the table though

Jayngfet
2009-05-25, 01:53 PM
Hmmm, I'm thinking that there are going to be much larger, meaner spell bugs with better spells, if you can find a passive one try to make a handle animal check to keep it.

Willfor
2009-05-29, 06:51 PM
I'm fairly curious about how things went down. Though if you don't want to continue posting it here, I do understand.

SilverClawShift
2009-05-29, 07:22 PM
Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm part of the way through writing up what's been happening, but I got a little busy.

The real problem is the same one that plagued the halloween campaign I wrote up. We've had two sessions since my last post, which means I'm lagging behind what's actually going on.

But I'm working on it, don't worry :smallsmile:

Kosjsjach
2009-05-29, 08:23 PM
Huzzah! I was getting worried. :smallsmile: Now I just gotta be patient... *twiddles thumbs*


Hmmm, I'm thinking that there are going to be much larger, meaner spell bugs with better spells, if you can find a passive one try to make a handle animal check to keep it.

Would a Handle Animal check really apply to an insectoid construct?

SilverClawShift
2009-05-30, 08:18 PM
So our next session starts where it left off. Therin in the open water, the local authorities in panic mode, and us scrambling to figure out what the heck just happened.

We started off by scouring over the immediate area and grilling everyone Therin interacted with with questions (with the sanction of the local authorities. They knew they couldn't follow up on anything that happened off the island without coming into legal trouble in a foreign land, so they knew we were going to have to be their justice by proxy).
With liberal application of Sense Motive skill checks, we found out everything we could. We found out his DIET even. He appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be a totally normal human who came across as a shady manipulative businessman.

Except he tore out the throats of two trained guards in the blink of an eye.

And his dock workers LIT THEMSELVES ON FIRE to escape capture.

These are not normal behaviors.

It remains to be seen wether or not the double-kill was some kind of cleaving sneak attack, or if Therin is more-than-meets-the-eye.
In any event, once we'd established everything we felt we could reasonably figure out, we geared up and chartered a small fast ship to take us to the continent Therin had sped off towards. The local authorities actually even gave us some of their extra armor and weapons, some scrap gear, and some extra coin, in the hopes we'd take him down on behalf of the men they'd lost. We wished Maguiller well and left him tending to/experimenting on his healing bug.
A word on the continent we were heading towards. It was a largely desert-land with an arab/egyptian motif. Pyramids, scimitars, and face scarves and whatnot. Magic was considered something only authority figures (pharoahs, clerics, and any apointed by them) were allowed to have any access to. Anyone studying or attemping to use magical abilities or items was breaking a serious law. Like a cut-off-your-head law. We would all have to be careful. Me and the Dragon shaman would have to be the most careful, having blatant flashy effects in our grasp at all times.
So we set sail. The ship and crew we'd hired were known for being among the faster on the open seas, and we told them we'd double what we'd paid if they caught Therin's ship on open water. We had no sight of him. It was actually an uneventful trip (our Factotum noted that might have been one of the first times an adventuring team hired a boat to cross an ocean, and NOTHING BAD HAPPENED to the crew).

When we docked, we were hit with a pretty strong sense of "not belonging here". A lot of un-hidden staring came in our direction when we got off. Probably mostly because half of our team was blatantly reptillian humanoids. A few passed spot checks meant our Factotum noticed a few people taking SPECIFIC interest in us. We couldn't be sure, but we suspected they were part of Therin & Co and were noting that we'd followed him here.
Not really feeling comfortable in the open, we quickly found our way to an inn and rented a room to lay low in and use as a base of operations. Our immediate problem we noted was that no one was answering any questions about this "Therin" indvidual. They either didn't know who he was, he was using a different name here, or they were lying to us with enough fervor to get past our Sense Motive checks.
After asking a lot of questions, we were approached by a local cleric. We were warned, point blank, to stop our line of questioning. He told us we were welcome to stay in the city (a small city, or a large town, population 3000ish), but that if we kept being 'troublemakers', we would find the trouble coming back down on us.
While we were still reeling from that random little encounter, a scared looking kid pops us behind us from out of the alley he'd been hiding in. He said he knew who we were looking for. That this Therin was a bad man, and the group he was a part of had hurt his family. And e said he knew where Therin was staying.
Since it was our only lead, we followed him, taking us out past the town walls, into the open sand and towards a a makeshift encampment out in a direction no one would normally need to travel, outside of sight of the towns. When we got to the makeshift camp, we found it empty. Wandering through the camp looking for signs and clues turned out to be the predictable course of action though, as the kid who led us there immediately ran out into the open sand shouting "THEY'RE HERE, I BROUGHT THEM, THEY'RE HERE".

So. Crap. We notice the ambush our failed spot checks hadn't noticed before, as a large group (over a dozen) of armed men surrounded the encampment, some of them mounted. The one that was obviously the leader started shouting to us that if we threw down our weapons and surrendered peacefully, he would.... make our deaths as painless as possible. WHEE.

Me: So we're outside of earshot and visuaal range of the town?
DM: You are completely and utterly gone.
Factotum: No matter how much noise we make, no town guards are going to hear it and come running?
DM: Scream all you want to, ain't no one gonna hear.
Me: Perfect. Roll initiative, Eldritch Blast the smallest looking one in the face.

So I popped the weakest looking one in the face with the eldritch blast laced with an acid-splash gem (killing him in the process) and our group took up defensive/hiding positions in the tents. The entire group of warriors converged on us at once. The fight was pretty rough, but between the Dragon shaman opening with a Damage Reduction aura for us, and then switching to a healing aura once we took a bit of a pounding, we managed to trim their numbers down to five within a few rounds of combat.
At which point the leader of the gang crowbarred open a crate in the encampment, and a swarm of those damned insects came out, still firing cantrips at us. The fight got a lot harder at that point, in no small part because our Factotum had allready used his inspiration point trimming down the group of guys, and we were still struggling against the remaining ones. Luckily we still had our Dragon Shamans aura, three competent fighters, and ranged Eldritch Blasts. Eventually we took out every last one of them.
We debated setting the crates on fire rather than risk opening them up, but we eventually opted for cracking the crates open while sticking the bugs we saw with daggers/eldritch blasts before they could get out and swarm.
We didn't see the kid again. Probably for the best, we would have had a hard time deciding between offing him and just dragging him around tied up until our business here was done.

At the end of the encounter, we'd gotten enough XP to level up to 3, a bunch more crystals full of cantrips to replenish the ones I'd used fighting these guys, and a bunch of miscellaneous gear and gold. Not a bad haul, all things considered.

We ALSO picked up a trail leading away from the encampment. In the OPPOSITE direction of the town. It looked like these crates weren't being taken from the town, they were being brought TOO the town. God knows why.
So we trekked off following the trail. A smalll dust storm actually threw us off, but our Factotum used some inspiration points to regain the trail and we marched onwards. We also had to defend ourselves against a few piddling attacks from snakes, scorpions, and random desert problems. It was nothing too much, but we did have to pay attention to what was going on around us. A snake bit our swashbuckler, but he passed his fort saves and shrugged off the poison. I also acquired a dose of strong snake venom, and hung onto it for my daggers, just in case.
Eventually, the trail led us to a box canyon with no seeming way down. What was interesting was that at the base of the canyon (about 300 feet straight down) looked like a small dig sit, which had unearthed what appeared to be three layers of some kind of Ziggurat (picture a pyramid made with platforms all the way up). We didn't notice much activity down there, but this was obviously where we needed to be. But there's utterly no sign of passageways or scaleable surfaces. No way down.
Now, there's one classic mistake beginning parties make, and one thing that NO veteran player would ever leave home without (once they needed it the first time and realized how screwed they were). Lots and lots of rope :smallamused:.
We pooled some of our rope together until we had over 300 feet of it, tied it all together thoroughly, had our factotum take 20 while using some inspiration points to make DARN sure we'd spliced everything together strongly, and the dragon shaman started lowering us down one by one. Factotum, Me, Swashbuckler (in order based on weight, really, just in case). Once we were all down, he dropped the rope, unfurled his wings (strong enough to glide, but not yet strong enough to fly yet), and started swooping down towards us in lazy circles.
At the ziggarut, a man hiding with a crossbow spotted the descending dragon shaman. But he hadn't seen us, and I won the initiative roll :smallamused:. I popped him in the face with my new improved eldritch blast, and took him down clean in one silent hit. At the base of the canyon, we collected our rope, regrouped, triple checked our gear and hit points, and started sneaking towards the structure. On the way, we noticed signs (and cast off shells) of the metallic cantrip-casting bugs, so this is PROBABLY where they're coming from, if not just a collection spot for them. We're not sure yet.
Once we'd gotten to the top of the Ziggarut and found a way in (a small doorway that you had to crawl through at the very tip), our factotum kobold perched in the doorway and made an authentic vulture call.

See, we figured a vulture could reasonably be expected to make some noise out here in the desert, so the bird call wasn't so blatantly obviously an arrival of a foreign party so much as just a dumb animal in a dumb location. Our factotum also made a high-roll listen check to the echo of his own bird call, to figure out just how far the passageways descended. He rolled a 20, on top of having a decent modifier, on top of using some inspiration points for a boost, so he got a fair grasp on how far down the corridors go.

The realization? "Way, way, way deeper than it looks from the outside".

***********************

Our campaign is actually further along than that, but that seems like a good stopping point for now. More has happened allready, and our next session is tuseday night, so I'll try to get things written up and posted by then. Ideally I won't fall more than two sessions behind what's actually happening to our group.

Glad you're enjoying reading it though.

Oh, for anyone who's curious and keeping up on this kind of stuff:

Our Factotum in this campaign was the Archivist in the horror campaign.
Our Swashbuckler in this campaign was the Paladin in the horror campaign.
And our Dragon Shaman in this campaign was the Dusk Blade in the horror campaign.

Just thought I'd share that.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-05-30, 08:30 PM
Awesome. Thanks for updating, and for telling us who these people...are? were? whatever :smallwink:

Willfor
2009-05-30, 11:26 PM
I have a feeling that someone out there is breeding these bugs, and you're not going to like it when you find the mother lode... Well, your characters are not going to like it. You'll (the plural you'll) likely enjoy it a lot. :smallsmile:

Kosjsjach
2009-05-31, 01:11 AM
*claps*
Not as riveting as the last session (throat-ripping, holy hell), but still very enjoyable. :smallsmile:

Roc Ness
2009-05-31, 04:42 AM
I don't play DnD, and probably never will, but I really do enjoy the storyline. (and the horror campaign).You should get your DM guy to be an author or something.

Is an eldritch blast some sort of magical cannon?

Kosjsjach
2009-05-31, 05:08 AM
Ooh! Ooh! I've got this one! :smalltongue:

"The first ability a warlock learns is eldritch blast. A warlock attacks his foes with eldritch power, using baleful magical energy to deal damage and sometimes impart other debilitating effects."

Basically, it's an unlimited-use quasi-magical ranged attack used by Warlocks.

Okay, someone else can go ahead and explain it better now.

Talic
2009-05-31, 05:12 AM
I don't play DnD, and probably never will, but I really do enjoy the storyline. (and the horror campaign).You should get your DM guy to be an author or something.

Is an eldritch blast some sort of magical cannon?

Basically, it's a pew pew beam.

Good examples of things that could be considered eldritch blasts in pop culture include:

Ironman's hand cannons
Cyclop's eye beam

Basically, if it shoots a beam, and doesn't run out of juice, that's it.

Roc Ness
2009-05-31, 05:58 AM
Huh. Well then what are "initiative rolls"?

Frog Dragon
2009-05-31, 06:10 AM
You roll 1d20+Initiative bonus and then act in order from highest to lowest.

SilverClawShift
2009-05-31, 07:52 AM
I have a feeling that someone out there is breeding these bugs

Sort of. We allready gathered some good info. It seems like the bugs were naturally occuring, but that they're being 'farmed' for something. We're not sure for WHAT though yet.


Is an eldritch blast some sort of magical cannon?

My character's a Warlock. One of the main class features of Warlocks is an eldritch blast, which is basically a ray of magical energy that hurts people. It's like being a wizard who never runs out of spells, but you only have one spell, and that spell punches people in the face from 60 feet away.
As a warlock gets more powerful, they learn more things they can use their eldritch blast for (stuff like flying, setting things it hits on fire, or turning into a swarm of bat-like shadows), but the basic idea of "I kill things with magic" still remains.


Huh. Well then what are "initiative rolls"?

Frog Dragon got it. You roll dice to see who has initiative. Higher numbers go first, down the line. You don't need to know the initiative order if you're just walking through a forrest, but you do need to know the initiative order before you stab someone in the face.
In the example from the story, if the guy with the crossbow had won the initiative instead of any of us, he would have shot our Dragonborn guy while he was gliding down the canyon. Since I won initiative, I blasted his head off before he knew what was what.

Roc Ness
2009-05-31, 08:00 AM
Since there's a lot more rules I don't know, I think I'm safe enough assuming what I think it is. (Magic cannon is similar enough to ray that blasts people's heads of, innit?)

SilverClawShift
2009-05-31, 08:12 AM
Yeah basically. It's just a part of my innate abilities though, not some physical thing I could lose.

SilverClawShift
2009-05-31, 12:30 PM
Kay, I'm trying to get this caught up before our next game session tuesday.

So where did I leave off? The four of us were standing at the pinnacle of a partially unearthed ziggarut, trying to determine the best means of continutation. The passageway down was on the smaller side. Not so much that it was a horrible squeeze, but enough that it restricted movement a bit.
We sent the kobold in first, naturally, so he could tell us any changes in the upcoming twists and turns. The rest of us crawled in behind him.
There were a few trip-wire traps that the kobold managed to undo without triggering. We couldn't tell what they actually did though, just that we'd stopped them from going off. Near as we could tell, triggering them was more of a warning system than an actual kill-you-dead trap.

We crawled out until the passage opened into a network of larger hallways. There were a lot of doorways, but they all led to single rooms. Searching revealed that the rooms probably contained ancient objects (hundereds of years old, if not thousnads), but that everything had allready been picked clean. Probably a long time ago at that, based on the dust build up. In other rooms, it looks like makeshift beds are being set up, and that what is possibly construction material is being moved in bit by bit. Perplexing. Like we caught this place in the beginning stages of being set up as a base of operations.
So we continue on until we hear a distant echoing whisper. It's distorted enough that we can barely make out anything intelligble. What little we can make out seems to be in no language any of us know (and that includes infernal, draconic, elven, and most of the commong ones). As we wind down more and more passages, the whispering gets louder and louder, until we finally round a corner and see the source.
Sitting in the middle of a giant empty chamber, facing away from us, is a human. He's sitting on the floor, with two candles on either side, rocking back and forth and hissing and muttering to himself. He's dressed in dirty rags and a shredded brown overcoat, and looks like a decrepit homeless lunatic. It sounds like he's alternating between crying, laughing, and muttering rythmically to himself. Language checks again, and most of what he's saying is in no language any of us can speak. Occasionally he slips into common, and we catch fragmentary phrases concerning "where to find the materials" and building some device.

No I won't lie. Sitting at the table, we had no idea how to begin approaching this. We discussed what the heck might be going on, and our first conclusion was that he might be some poor innocent dragged out here to be used as a sacrifice or something. our second thought was that he was just a crazy derilect, maybe being inducted to work for Therin. Our third thought, was that we have no freaking clue, but whatever this situation is it's the oopsite of okay.
Not sure about what we were doing at the moment, we send the kobold (highest move-silent modifier), followed by me (second highest move silent modifier), with the two clunky warriors staying back by the doorway. I stay about halfway between both groups, as the kobold goes and gently pats the crazy mumbling lunatic on the shoulder, and quietly asks if he needs help.
The drifter (as we've taken to calling him) immediately stands and turns in one lightning quick motion, glaring at us in the dim candle light. We can make out that he's...clearly infected with something. His skin color is wrong, his eyes are sunken and hollow, his skin is bubbled and chaffed raw.
And he hisses, seemingly to himself. "Who are they? How long were they listening? We can't know. Trouble. TROUBLE!" he shouts the last bit before backing up quickly and Hitting us with a Gust of Wind spell, blowing out the candles and knocking the kobold flat on his back. We hear a lot of clattering and echoing footsteps on stone. The noises are coming towards us.
The dragon shaman thinks quick and uses one of the "Light" cantrips we had, letting us barely make out what's going on. A group of four new people aside from the drifter had come running out of rooms on the opposite side of the chamber we were in. The drifter was shouting at them to leave and start their tasks. We don't catch a lot of details, but they sprinted out into the hallway past us. We did catch that one of them was Therin, who stopped to bellow "YOU" at us. The Dragon shaman sneered and said "Yeah, Us", but the Drifter grabbed him by the neck and screamed at him not to waste time, that there was too much to be done. As one of the group walked by, I realized they paused, shifted, changed their face to look exactly like mine, smirked at me, and then kept running.
We started to persue (and I fired off an eldritch blast that missed entirely), but the Drifter (now in the hallway past us) hit the area in front of us with a "Soften Stone" spell and turned the entire area into mud. Then he hissed for his "Children" to come and pick our bones clean. Our Swashbuckler managed to break past the mud and chase the five down into the hallway a way, before he realized that engaging in a five on one fight with clearly non-mook NPCs wasn't the most strategic course of actions. The fact that the other three of our group started screaming in panic.
Because a swarm of rats poured in front cracks in the walls, a swarm of bats shrieked down from the (too high to see) ceiling, and the entire area filled with locusts and beetles. A few spellcasting bugs and scorpions were in the giant swarm of vermin too. Now this fight was hell. One of the bugs hit the entire area with a grease spell, so we were on a greasy mud patch. Another one of the bugs hit the kobold with a sleep spell, but he shrugged it off. The rats were diseased, the bats were everywhere, and we had to make concentration checks to do anything fancy. We gave it our all, but the kobold and and me both fell into negatives about 3/4 of the way through the battle. The dragon shamans healing aura stabilized us and made us crawl back up, but all it was doing was basically keeping us alive while the rats gnawed at us. The swashbuckler also hit negatives near the end of the fight, but his pet healing bug stabilized him, and the dragon shamans aura brought him back above zero. The two of them killed the last of the bugs, before some CON damaging poison from one of the scropions knocked him far enough into negatives that he was effectively down for the count.

So three of us are comatose and barely hanging onto life, and the dragon shaman is standing there in single digit hitpoints and wondering if the filthy bleeding wounds he has are going to be infected with something. That's when we hear quiet echoing footsteps coming back down the stone hallway towards us.
Our lone concious party member assesses the situation, and immediately drops his weapon and falls face first into the muck, staying as still as possible. The footsteps stop at the doorway, and there's a too-long, incredibly uncomfortable pause, before he hears Therin's voice asking if he should gut us where we lay. Then the Drifters raspy whispering voice answers him. "The rats will tend to them by morning, help Jezz and the others move as many crates as we can." he laughs "we don't want delay, do we? No we don't."
The Dragon shamans healing aura brought the kobold back up to one hit point, but like the clever little lizard he is, he just continued playing dead.

We stayed there in the filth for a while. What could we do? We cleaned and stabilized our wounds the best we could, drank a few of our healing potions, bandaged ourselves up, and just waited. We weren't in any shape to bring the good fight up to the five NPCs of questionable level. The Drifter alone was obviously a force not to take lightly, and we still didn't know anything about Therin. We figured all we could do at this point was wait for them to clear out of the Ziggarut and then tail them, hopefully finding some way to understand more about what was going on, and undermine whatever plans we could. When we were sure things were quiet, we searched the area and found a fair chunk of coin, as well as a few decent spell-gems from bug carcasses.
Eventually, we felt our courage return to us enough that we were comfortable marching back up hallways with our heads down. By the time we got to the section with all the rooms, we realized they were long gone, and so were all the crates (presumably full of the bugs). There were scratches and stray bits of rope, so they had simply dragged them up the passageway. Which was fortunate for us, because it meant there was some way of getting out of the box canyon we were in.
We got out of the ziggarut, thankful to be in sunlight and fresh air after the uncomfortable situation we'd been in. We searched around a bit, and noticed there was a trail in the sand (wheels, and tracks from pack animals). We followed the trail to a small cave in a crack in the canyon walls, and started marching upwards. We were in no shape for combat, so it was ditressing that we ran into not one, not two, but three giant spiders on our way up through the saves. We survived, barely, with a combination of hit and run tactics (mostly running backwards and peppering them with ranged weapons and eldritch blasts).
We limbed back to the town through the desert, triple checking to make sure anything magical was tucked away out of sight, and that we had no lasting magical effects. We also cleaned up the blood and muck from ourselves as best we could, so we didn't walk through town looking like we'd bathed in gore. We were trying to keep our heads down, especially given that we'd ruthlessly murdered at least 15 people that day. We only caught a few sideways glances as we hurried back to our inn room, locked the door, and focused on getting a good solid nights rest.
Fortunately the inn didn't catch on fire or anything :p

When we woke the next day, there was a team of armed guards waiting for us. They grilled us about what we were doing here, what we'd been doing yesterday, and wether we knew of anything suspicious. Thinking it best to just avoid as much trouble as possible, we bluffed, bluffed, and bluffed some more, until they seemed satisfied that we were just hapless foreigners who stuck out like sore thumbs.
We knew Therin, the Drifter and Co had probably taken off that same day, so we had some catching up to do. We also knew we were on SOME kind of time limit, as the entire group had been rushing for a reason. Why we didn't know, but they were rushing to get as much of their 'plan' done as quickly as possible.
Thing is, after the previous days events, we felt that we may be in over our heads. We thought we'd stand a beter chance if we regrouped, maybe hired a few thugs of our own to land a hand with future combat scenarios, and formulated a plan of attack. So we went straight for the docks to head back for the Central island we'd started on. We sent the kobold to go out and do his thing, to find any shipping logs and information as to where the Drifter and Therin had gone off to, whiel the rest of us went back to the ship we'd chartered to tell them we were ready to take back off.
When we got to the ship, we found an interesting surprise. The entire crew had been slaughtered, seemingly effortlessly at that. They were just laying there, soaked in blood in the morning light. You couldn't see it until you started coming up onto the ship itself, which was why no one had reported it yet. Now this was bad. We knew we were going to look guilty as hell here, and there wasn't a lot we could do about that other than drag the corpses out of plain sight and wait for the kobold to get back.
When he did, we found he'd been fairly successfull, but that he also had bad news. Turned out, FIVE ships had left port last night without much warning, and from the sounds of things he'd heard with Gather Information checks, it was a distinct possibility that all five of our would-be assassains had taken a different ship to a different destination, WITH some of the crates. Why? Beats us.

We didn't change our plans though. We were going to head back to the island, report in with the authorities who actually trust us, and then pick one of the destinations and try to pick the trail back up once we had our wits about us, and didn't feel like we were behind in the game.
The DM agrees that with the skill checks, the Factotum knows just enough about sailing a ship that the four of us can successfully get things moving onto the high seas. But as he's directing us to prepare to take off, we see guards come running down the peir at us, shouting that we hadn't gotten permission from the dock keepers to leave, that we had to list our cargo and destination. And that they wanted to know what happened to the rest of our ships passenger list.
Which is what they were asking as they came up the ramp to our ship and saw the deck coated in blood and gore. AWESOME. Great, wonderful, grand.

We had no chance at explenation. They attacked outright. So we frantically prepared the ship to take off WHILE fighting off armed and trained city guards. While blatantly using magic, drawing a LOT of attention, generating a LOT of commotion, and only causing more guards and dock workers to run to try to stop us.
We finally managed to push off to the sea, and when the remaining guards realized we were moving, they dove overboard rather than be stuck on a sailing ship.

So, we'd better have some disguises worked out if we ever want to come back to THIS land. We'd probably be executed on site if we tried to dock here again.

On the plus side, we got enough XP on making it back to the central island that we leveled up to 4. (Our DM likes to level us faster up to level five or six, far enough away from the oner-hit-kill hitpoint totals). Also, our Swashbucklers pet healing bug molted on the shipride, got a little bigger, and can now cast Cure Light Wounds instead of Minor wounds. So that's cool.

And that's where we stand now. :)

Glad I could get things up to date before our next game session.

Dragonus45
2009-05-31, 02:14 PM
I love the campaign here, your dm is really kicking some ass. Any chance you have a hefty player who i could kill and wear the skin of?

Swooper
2009-05-31, 02:38 PM
Although I've never met him, I am now a fan of your DM. This game sounds awesome. Can't wait to read about the next session! :smallsmile:

Goatman_Ted
2009-05-31, 03:38 PM
I'd forgotten how hard you win at D&D, SCS.

Lilienthal
2009-05-31, 06:01 PM
Our Swashbuckler in this campaign was the Paladin in the horror campaign.

I'm surprised we haven't heard a "Wow, that sucks." out of him yet. :smallwink:

Reading your campaign updates seems to do wonders for my (stolen) creativity. :smallsmile:

evil-frosty
2009-05-31, 06:23 PM
I am loving this campaign, your DM is awesome. You guys are very lucky to have him. I already stole the idea of spell gems for my campaign :smallbiggrin:. Cant wait to read more.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-05-31, 06:53 PM
Again, awesome update. You and your DM should co-author a book...he'd provide the story and characters and whatnot, and you could actually get paid for the faboulus writing you are capable of and have just shown all of us :smallsmile:

13_CBS
2009-05-31, 07:58 PM
Wait a second...is this the same group that brought us the game about Binders and Tenebrous' shenanigans that came from the Elemental Plane of FREAKING AWESOME?

Roc Ness
2009-06-01, 01:43 AM
Wait a second...is this the same group that brought us the game about Binders and Tenebrous' shenanigans that came from the Elemental Plane of FREAKING AWESOME?

Apparently it is.

SilverClawShift
2009-06-01, 03:00 PM
I'm surprised we haven't heard a "Wow, that sucks." out of him yet. :smallwink:

Well, things are way less bleak and distressing in this current campaign, so far.


You guys are very lucky to have him.

Yes we are. I had to stand in for him for a month or two this year. Not quiet the same :smalltongue:


You and your DM should co-author a book.

Reading back over my thread, if I did the writing for a book, we'd need the worlds most expensive proofreader. "limbed back to the city"? Really? Not to mention some other glaring typos and downright confusing make-beleive words.
I'd run things through a spellchecker, but not many D&D words are in those, so I'd spend more time updating the spellchecker than I did writing it in the first place.


Wait a second...is this the same group that brought us the game about Binders and Tenebrous' shenanigans

Indeed.

Minus two players (one veteran, and the new guy. No longer a part of our main group).

To everyone else, thank you for the kind words. I'm glad that you're enjoying things, despite my many glaring abuses of the english language :smalltongue:

Lilienthal
2009-06-02, 01:14 PM
Well, things are way less bleak and distressing in this current campaign, so far.

I don't know about you, but I'd consider a burial chamber filling up with every type of swarm you can think of to be pretty damn bleak and distressing. :smallsmile:

SilverClawShift
2009-06-02, 03:24 PM
Distressing sure, but not so bleak ;).

At least, we've seen bleaker.

evil-frosty
2009-06-02, 07:38 PM
i dont think bleaker is a strong enough word for facing down 2 separate hordes of zombies and kythons, who when die come back as zombies. That just downright sucks and isnt bleak just hopeless. It was awesome how you guys won that though.

13_CBS
2009-06-03, 11:38 AM
Indeed.

http://img.letssingit.com/members/768730/hellyeah_.jpg

SilverClawShift
2009-06-03, 12:04 PM
Update of our most recent gaming session (last night). This is probably going to be a really big post, sorry.

**********************************

So kiddies, what happens when you die in the presence of D&D brand adventurers? Anyone who answered "All of your worldly possessions now belong to them" can go home. Everyone else needs to meet me after class.

The first topic that came up at the start of our game (as brought up by the Swashbuckler) was the legal status of the small sailing ship we'd just brought back into port. Ships aren't incredibly easy to come by. They're not something that can't be found, but you don't usually just stumble into a deserted ship walking to the market in the morning.

We decided we'd get back to that after verifying a few other things.

Our first course of action on land was to update the local authorities (particularly the captain of the guard) on what had happened, including the fact that Therin & Co had casually slaughtered the entire ships worth of crew. The guard captain was notably unsettled by everything, and began contemplating loopholes in the island charter concerning extra-continental crimes. He was trying to think of a way to send a small 'military' force with us while we tried to try to track down Therin (he didn't seem concerned about the Drifter. He hadn't met the Drifter).
Unfortunately, he couldn't come up with anything relevant. He had to settle for using us as off-the-books mercenaries. He wasn't too thrilled about it, mostly because he wanted to send a larger force to capture and execute Therin. He was more pleased when he found our exact intention involved bringing a larger force of mercenary arms in the future.

Which is when we brought up the issue of the ship. most notably, that the ships captain had been among the crew when they were slaughtered.
Being the salty-dogs they were, none of them really had anything resembling a will. The standard course of action in this type of situation was to sell the ship and use the profit for any necessary burial costs, and then to give the leftovers to next of kin or closest living relative (after a hefty tax, obviously).
But the ships logs were a ridiculous maze of port listings, crew lists, passenger lists, destinations diverted to or from... This ship spent most of its time on the sea itself, it had no identifiable home port. There seemed like only one logical thing for any adventuring party to do in this situation. Perch on the deck of the ship like the greedy vultures we are. Even the Neutral Good Dragonborn, Servitor of Bahamut and Gold Dragon Worshipper, was fine with it. "Ship has no captain. A ship's supposed to have a captain."
So, we inquired as to wether or not we could, maybe, say, pay the funeral costs of the crew and take on the ship ourselves. The guard captain wasn't strictly opposed to the idea, but he wasn't too interested in circumventing local traditions in order to LOSE possible profit. Our kobold factotum actually fielded tat one, leaning out from between two of us and saying "We are taking a huge personal risk here. One that will be mutually beneficial if we succeed. We're not asking you to break the law or anything, just to look the other way while we take care of this mess, and not poke a formal nose into things".

So, we now own a sailing ship.

It needs a minimum crew of 5 on top of us for a realistic minimum. The four of us could do it alone SOMETIMES, but intense fatigue would be an immediate issue if we tried to sail that ship around solo. Fortunately, the guard captain managed to keep it quiet that the ships previous crew had been RELETNLESSLY BUTCHERED ON THE DECK OF THAT VERY SHIP, WHILE UNDER OUR THEORETICALLY WATCHFUL EYES, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to find anyone. As it was, rumors spreading gave us a hard enough time adopting a reasonable collection of workers.
We had enough coin left over from buying the ship itself, that we could actually just hire a crew straight up. It was nice to not have to jump through hoops finding cheap hirelings. We even managed to find a few reasonably combat-ready fighters to come help us drop a train on whichever one of the Drifters crew we found first. We sparred them a little to make sure they weren't one-hit wonders (and to establish a bit of "We're the bigger dogs" in our crewmembers).
We found time to buy two bottles of wine and christen the ship (we called her the S. S. Ironman. At first I thought it was stupid, but it's evocative enough in a fantasy setting that I started liking it). We also tossed an uncorked bottle off on our first voyage for the gods of the sea.
We also tucked into Macguillers shop. He didn't really have any information for us about the bugs, but when we mentioned that we'd run into a few stronger ones (with access to heavier spells), he seemed concerned. When we showed him that our own healing bug had molted, grown, and that the patterns on its back had changed, he seemed VERY concerned. Since his own collection (he'd grown four more, though two were dead for experimentation) had remained static, he made an initial hypothesis that something we'd encountered had produced the effect. Either the Ziggurat itself, or something one of the Drifters crew had done/had... We had no way of knowing.
Macguiller also started questioning his idea of selling the bugs to nobles as useful pets. Since they were likely linked to something beyond our understanding, and since they were BORN with traces of clockwork mechanisms, they might be more dangerous than originally assumed, healing or no. His previously heightened curiosity also became a lot stronger at the news. He gave us a discount on some critical necessities, and tossed in a free communicative magical item. Just an enchanted seal (the kind you stamp wax on a letter with), that transferred its writing to a blank page affixed with a related seal. He kept a clean and sealed piece of parchment on the desk in case we had anything urgent to send to him or the guard captain.

And so, with our friends and allies updated, and our scurvy crew at the ready, we set off. As previously mentioned, there were five possible destinations. (and as a brief aside, our DM had the travel time between ports set up, so which ones we could hit consecutively the fastest played into things).
- One was actually headed towards the artic continent. Now, it was possible that this was the truth, but one of our shipmates clued us in to the 'trick' of listing the artic as the destination whenever you were going somewhere "off the books". Since there were no official ports or kingdoms there, you could just sail anywhere complaining of the cold and your entire journey would have been outside any watchful eyes.
We ruled that one out as our first destination based on that bit of insight.
- One was actually on the opposite side of the egyptian continent containing the ziggurat. We weren't sure how fast word spread throughout a desert land like that, but we weren't tempted to press our chances by sailing directly back into the SAME kingdom with the SAME ship we'd just sailed off after slaughtering around 30 people and stirring up a bunch of trouble. Other side of the landmass or not.
We ruled that out due to our overwhelming cowardice.
- One was on the temperate climate containing the worlds largest kingdom. Picture the british empire at its peak (only in D&D and run by an elven royal family). The benefit of going there was that the central island we were using as a major base was one of the colonies of this world spanning kingdom. If we DID run into trouble, one of their own men back on the island could potentially verify that we, if nothing else, had good intentions.
- Two of the destinations were actually on different ports of this worlds "Dark Continent". A jungle land with no real central ruling body, mainly due to being filled with too many deadly creatures and venomous vermin for any great sense of stability. This is the lawless land, where the docks are barely maintained and only really there for officiating travel.

After debating between the last three, we decided to go to the temperate climate with the great kingdom. Aside from being a civilized local, it was our best chance at getting any kind of official help should things get ugly.

And we're off!

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So on to the "Empire" as we took to calling it.

As a side note, our DM used to be perpetually horrified that we never remembered the details of world geography, kingdom names, NPC names, and so on and so forth. Until he traded places at the table and tried playing. Now he agrees that it's a lot easier to remember descriptive detail than formal detail.
Which is why even our DM usually describes people we're meeting as "Beardy Drunk Dwarf" and kingdoms as "Psuedo-British Empire". He has real names for when we ask, and sometimes we remember (easier with arch villains of course).

Anyway. Back to it.

Our seafaring trip was more or less uneventful. We had a run in with one of the empires military vessels, but our papers all checked out and we didn't say anything too stupid, so we were on our merry way.
Once we got to the docks, we realized how COLD the trail had grown. Six weeks of sailing to the island a as a detour, plus a few days of recruiting, when the enemy had only needed four weeks (give or take) to go straight between the two ports. We were two weeks behind whatever the heck was going on.
Since I was the only High CHA human face in the party (and because I had Beguiling Influence as my third warlock invocation, making me better at bluffing and diplomacy and such), I put on my best forced sunday smile and talk to some of the local port authorities about ships that would have arrived two to three weeks ago. I played up the "We were separated from a friend" angle as best I could, but I failed a bluff check and they weren't buying it because none of the ships that had docked had mentioned anything about lost crewmates. So I tried an intimidate check, rattle-hissing that maybe they hadn't thought it important enough to tell a random dock worker. Intimidate check passed, only four ships had come in during that time period, only two were from the egyptian continent. One had been nothing but cargo being dropped off, no departure of crew or passengers, and nothing unusual had been delivered. The other had listed a few departures of both passengers, but no cargo. The most notable of the passengers was a man called "Priest". Not a title, that was actually his name.

Something told us that was the guy.

I tossed the nervous dock worker a few coins and went back to being friendly, thanking him for helping us and mentioning how excited we'd all be to group back together. It was another bluff check, and I didn't know if I'd failed or passed, but we had to at least try to avoid arousing suspicion.
So we went into the city proper, and tucked into the first pub we saw. Four weeks at sea, one of your earliest desires is for good food and drink, right? We tuck into the joint, order some drinks to gain a bit of favor, and the Swashbuckler leans to one of the barmaids and starts asking questions about a man named priest.
She pauses, and says she doesn't know anything about no man named Priest.
Failed bluff check.
So he gets a little more verbally assertive. Except a burly and grouchy looking drunk a table away overhears, and barks at the Swashbuckler that "We don't come here to ask questions. We don't come here to think. We come here to STOP thinkin. So shut your mouth or I'll make sure it's the last time you ever open it."
The swashbuckler said, "Are you stupid enough to have a one on one fight in mind, or do you have a small army tucked in your pocket?"

So... almost the whole bar turns to glare at us.

Swashies only response to the trouble he just stirred up? "Good, I was starting to think this town was nothing but talk! Roll initiative"

So the drunk wings a glass mug at our table. Misses the swashbuckler and it goes right for the (hooded) Dragonborn. Since he's sitting with his back to a wall at a bar table, our DM calls this a reflex save. Which is the Dragonborns weakest save, so he fails horribly. The mug smashes right against his face, knocking his hood back in the process. He screams out in anger and flips our table. The kobold ducks under the table and makes a hide check. I spiderclimb up to the ceiling out of melee reach and shout "non-lethal damage! non-lethal damage! for the love of god non-lethal damage!"
We JUST got here. Are we really going to call down the hammer on ourselves?
The whole room is freaking out, because not only is there a barfight going on, but there's a bar fight going on with some kind of dragon monster, some kind of 3 foot tall lizard, and some crazy girl who can crawl across the ceiling. Some of them ran screaming into the streets, the angrier ones attacked us outright. Fortunately the group realized how bad of an idea slaughtering an entire room full of drunks would actually be, and didn't draw any lethal weapons. The fight was slightly harder as a result, but in the middle of things when a mass of city guards ran in weapons drawn screaming at everyone to stop, we were a lot happier that we weren't soaked in blood. I dropped from the ceiling, we all threw up our hands and surrendered.
The guards arrested everyone in the building. We weren't in our holding cell for very long though. When they questioned the bartender and barmaid as to what happened, they did mentioned that we were attacked first. They elected to let us go with a warning about stirring up trouble (and we couldn't help but notice that our coin purses seemed a little lighter when they gave us back our gear).
While we were thinking of what to do next, the barmaid approached us on the street and asked to speak with us somewhere a little more private. We all ducked into an alley. She kept glancing around nervously, as if she was looking out for someone, and said that she knew who we'd been asking about. This Priest character (she gave us a pretty good description, apparently he tends to dress a little over-the-top, even by mid-victorian noble standards) seemed really, really off. His smiles seemed too big, his stares lasted too long, his speech was close, but off in enough tiny ways that the whole picture became wrong. She wasn't the only one who'd felt that way, but he'd been accepted by the blue-bloods and the clergy outright, so people were afraid to say anything.
She told us where he'd gone. To a city further inland, along with several of the local church members, his own team of men, and some paid workers with dig equipment. He hadn't really advertised what he was leaving for, at least not to commoners, and she thought she rather preferred it that way. She wanted nothing more to do with any of it.

We gave her 10 gold for her troubles, and as thanks for the information, went back to our ship, grabbed all but two of our own men. We told the two we left behind guarding the ship to swallow their pride and SCREAM, and scream LOUD, for help if ANYTHING shady started happening. With the rumors about what had happened to the ships previous crew, and the unexplained bloodstains on the deck, they agreed with us eagerly.

And we set off for the next city. It was only a few days by foot, so we didn't bother to get mounts or a carriage or anything. Along the way, we did have a few run ins. An "unofficial" toll on the path (aka, bandits). We paid in steel, so, they're dead now. 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.

So, we got to our destination. It was a more run down city, more of a waypoint between the larger coastal city and the capital cities further inland. Since it was in a bit of a valley, we had a pretty good visual layout of things, and we could see right away that there was some kind of recent dig site off to the west border of the town. It was directly near an old and obviously abandoned church (roof caving in, dingy and dirty, but the stained glass windows WERE still intact, probably out of respect from the locals), and the digging itself seemed to form a giant star pattern around the building.
Dragon Shaman: "There's NO WAY that's a good thing."
So, that was obviously our first stop. We tell our merc-thugs to stay back and just keep their eyes peeled for trouble, and wander onto the church grounds. There are what looks to be very very old headstones being unearthed. The writing on them is not in any modern language, and they have random runes and symbols carved throughout them in bas-relief. And directing the digging, is a man in a ridiculously elaborate and expensive looking suit. Clearly, this is the man named Priest.
We approach him, and when he turns to address us, we realize that he does indeed have a mile-long stare and an uncomfortable rictus grin. He seems as if he's trying to be cordial, but trying way way too hard. He addresses us in the same way, overly polite and paced slightly off from normal speech patterns. "Hello there folk, is there anything I can help you with to-" His last word cuts off, and his rictus grin drops into a flat tight lipped line. "Oh. You. How odd."
The swashbuckler nods and calmly responds "Yes. Us. Speaking of odd, could we inquire as to what exactly is going on here?"
Priest: I don't believe I am under any obligation to detail the activities of myself on my churches own holy grounds
Dragon Shaman: Some holy grounds. Do you normally let your holy grounds fall into such disrepair
Priest: NOR am I responsible for the lack of dedication of various smaller sects throughout the land. Please leave.
Dragon Shaman: We really just have a few questions *Intimidate check*
Priest: And they are questions I have no intention of answering *failed*

The pastor that had accompanied Priest and his men came and asked us politely to leave the church grounds. That they're in the middle of preparations for a ritual, and that when they're done the town, and the entire world, will benefit from the wisdom they gain. Priest glares at the back of his head when he mentions preparations and rituals, but immediately returns to his forced rictus grin and once again starts surveying the dig teams.
We left, not really in the mood to pick a fight with a group of questionably mixed intentions. We instead made some Gather Information checks in the town. All we got was more of the same. The clergy was preparing for some kind of ritual that they promised would be of immense benefit to everyone involved. We did pick up that it was Priest who'd come into town with the documents elaborating on the location of the stones they were unearthing, and the details of the ritual.
Which was really all we needed. We waited for nightfall and sent in the kobold to find these documents and figure out what was up. He found that it was some kind of summoning ritual, that it had to be performed at dawn, and that it looked like they were almost ready. Nothing detailed WHAT, exactly, was getting summoned. We smelled demon. Or worse. But we had no proof, and no one was willing to talk.
It seemed like our only two options were to try to sabotage the ritual beforehand, or to stay nearby while it was being performed to interrupt/intervene/study as the situation warranted. Even with the men we'd brought, the entire town seemed happy about what the clergy had planned, so anything we did would be calling down a giant mob of angry pitchfork bearing commoners. This seemed like something we would want to avoid. We opted for option two.

So, every night, an hour before dawn, we'd do the same thing. The swashbuckler and dragon shaman would hide in the darker areas around the church with our men. The kobold would cling to my back while I spiderclimbed up to the collapsing ceiling, I would perch where I could see the area below, and the kobold would dash across the roof (he barely weighs anything, of course) to the pinnacle at the front, and wait for my signal if we should charge.
After the third night, one of the men turns to our swashbuckler and says "Working for you is very boring, by the way". The swashbuckler laughs, asks if he'd rather be in constant life threatening danger. The guy says "Well YEAH. That's why I became a mercenary in the first place.". The swashbuckler just tells him to hang tight, and that things will probably get real ugly real soon.

The next night. They start the ritual. Just before dawn, they begin lighting candles, heating oils, mixing arcane ingredients, laying powders, chanting... Everyone present except for Priest and the nameless pastor had on blank masks with crosses painted on the front. Your classic SpookyStuff ritual. And just before light begins to break, the area inside the church brightens as if it was the middle of day, sunlight streaming OUT through the stained glass windows and casting colored patterns across the unearthed grounds. The light flashes brilliantly, and the shadows from the windows burn themselves into the ground surrounding the building, completing the pattern they had drawn across the floor on the inside. And suddenly, where there had been nothing, on a stone pedestal in the middle of the church, stood an angel.

An angel?

Yeah, that wasn't what we expected either. But she stood there, with all the overwhelming perfection of a divine entity. Completely nude, eyes pools of glistening silver, hair just strands of solid white gold, wings tucked serenely against her back. She turned her head calmly to the left and right, surveying the area while everyone inside, Priest included, stood in shocked awe of her divinity. She knelt, and beckoned for the pastor that had been working with Priest to come to her. She cradled his jawline from above him, on her pedestal, and began to weep. Her words were a whisper, but they rung throughout everyone present with perfect clarity and an unbearable sadness.
"Thou hast made a grievous mistake child." She kissed the clergyman on the forhead in an act of forgiveness, took his wrists and placed his hands over his own ears, and SHRIEKED. The entire building, Priest included, fell to their knees clutching their ears. The stained glass exploded outwards in delicate shards. Priest gestured at the angel, and several pained looking men began to attack her with some kind of black leather loops, trying to bind and silence her.

I made the signal and jumped in through the hole in the roof, sticking to rafters and chandeliers on the way down to break my fall. The kobold lit one of the light gems we had and threw it to the ground out front, before jumping in after me (and making a very high tumble roll to negate the damage when he hit ground).
The Swashbuckler, Dragon Shaman, and our men outside began charging in towards the building, kicking in the front door and climbing through the broken windows.
The masked men inside began attacking us with ridiculous fervor, just as two of the men succeeded in gagging the angel with a leather strap and catching one of her wrists in another. She wasn't really fighting, she seemed unable to ATTACK outright. She just flailed around in an effort to make things difficult for them.
Me and the swashbuckler went straight for priest. The dragon shaman tried to do some crowd control with his fire-breath. The factotum jumped on one of the guys with leather straps for a vicious sneak attack and took him down with one hit. The angel caressed his head for that, but gestured for him to run. Being an adventurer, he instead took out another dagger and went to swing at another one of the men holding the straps. Which means he had to make a spot check to notice that the corpse he'd attack burned up in black fire... and that an identical body climbed out of the ashes. At that, he shouted to the rest of us that we were in BIG trouble.
The Dragon Shaman had come to that realization too, after three of the guys he'd burned simply got back up and began attacking him from behind.
Out of character: Anyone run to run some knowledge checks to see what the heck is going on here? Maybe Religion or Planar checks or something?
In character: WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE THINGS?!?!

Two of Priests immediate guards start to move in on me, but he tells them I can't hurt him and to get the swashbuckler instead. The swashbuckler gets bullrushed, but also scores a critical hit and takes one of them down. Not that seems to help matters.
I fire an eldritch blast at the priest, but it curves away from his face and into the smoky glass orb he's holding in his left hand.

Well? Crap.

Priest just keeps smiling at me in his creepy rictus grin and says "Suffer not the witch to live" before dashing and giving me a good stiff kick in the face for way more damage than I was hoping to take, and knocking me completely prone. The dark orb he's got pulses, and I feel a bunch of magic rush out of me (he dismissed my spiderclimb invocation. As a warlock I can just cast it again, but it's not under effect anymore).
The factotum is having a hard time trying to save the angel, and she still can't seem to actually fight back. She seems to be pleading with her eyes for him to escape, as if there's nothing that can be done. He, mournfully, accepts her urging and goes to help us in the main fight, while the men strap more and more of the black (obviously enchanted) leather straps on her and start dragging her off.
Two of our mercs die off, which means the fight is starting to tip further against us, and we don't really have any idea how to stop these things from coming back (whatever they are, no passed knowledge checks on the subject).
The swashbuckler and dragon shaman are able to knock out a few at a time, but they'll just get back up on their turn. Priest lurches over me, cackling about how my witchcraft won't help me against him. Realizing he's right, I pull out a poison coated dagger and sink it into the guys shoulder. His rictus grin doesn't change, but his eyes betray his pain and concern. Instead of carrying on the fight, he instead grabs a bunch of his 'men' as guards and follows his crew dragging off the angel.
Not really having a solid plan, we kept fighting. We told our remaining crew to retreat from the fight, and try to avoid getting slaughtered. After killing a few dozen of these...things, they all at once cocked their heads to the side and then took off running out the front door. We followed in hot pursuit, as they all started jumping and clinging to the side of a black carriage. We could hear the angel let out a cry from inside it. Priest was urging the horses on. The last of his crew managed to climb on/in the carriage and they sped off into the night.
We tried to give chase, but even the kobold wasn't fast enough to keep up with horses at full sprint. I fired off an eldritch blast, but it just arced through the sky and into Priests hand. I hate that stupid dark orb.

So we went back to the church to try to quickly piece things together before getting a move on back to the docks. We found the pastor, still clutching his ears, weeping to himself. We bottled some samples of the black ashes those things had kept crawling out of, noting that the floor underneath it was charred solid black. No light seemed to cast on the spots, even the new breaking sunlight coming through the gutted windows.
While we weren't paying attention, the pastor crawled over to a dagger, mumbled "please forgive me" and drove it into his own neck. We tried healing him, but he was gone. Which sucked, because we REALLY wanted to have him verify our story with the authorities if it came to that. Instead we quickly and quietly buried him in the church grounds, and tried to make it look like part of the normal dig patterns. Hopefully they would just cover it up and not notice, so there would be no explaining to do.

We went through the church building. Found a few minor magical items. A silver holy symbol, a prayerbook with some spells in it that we might be able to sell or UMD as scrolls, some powdered gold, holy water... you know the drill. We're adventurers. If it looks valuable, we stuff it in a bag and call it ours.


So. To wrap up the session, we sprint back to the docks as fast we can, hoping to be able to tail Priest and Co as hotly as possible. Fortunately, when we get back, the dockmaster was so thoroughly creeped out by Priest, his masked men, and the fact that they bothered to load an entire carriage onto their ship ("Just straight up the ramp and onto the deck!") that he was compliant with our inquiries regarding information.
Priest went sailing back to the egyptian continent. The one where we're wanted murderers. And A bipedal dragon, a three foot tall talking lizard, a strung out looking witch, and an obvious swashbuckling pirate don't exactly blend in. So we're debating wether or not we're going to pursue him directly, or try our luck at another port. The other port on this continent is pretty close, so we might see what the other villainous monsters are up to before pressing our luck back in the desert.
We're really worried about the angel though. So it's a toss up at the moment.

At least most of our crew survived this time.

Swooper
2009-06-03, 01:27 PM
Took a while to read, but awesome. I can see this leading up to something big. I wonder what they are going to use the angel for...

evil-frosty
2009-06-03, 02:28 PM
Awesome session. That dark orb thingy really sucks for you. Uh i really dont know what advice to give you, maybe next time have characters that blend into regular society better? good luck.

Kosjsjach
2009-06-03, 04:40 PM
:smallbiggrin: Man, this is so awesome.
Can't wait for the next one.

Lilienthal
2009-06-03, 05:23 PM
Thanks for taking the time to type all that out SilverClaw, reading about your sessions always manages to cheer me up somehow, I suppose it sends my creative neurons firing like mad trying to find ways to work some if it in my own campaigns. :smalltongue:

Your DM seems utterly blessed with great ideas, and you guys really seem to make the party and the story fit together. I wish I was that good at telling my story. =p


"Ship has no captain. A ship's supposed to have a captain."
This has got to be my favourite line so far. :smallsmile:

SilverClawShift
2009-06-03, 05:56 PM
I wonder what they are going to use the angel for...

So do we. Our DM usually doesn't have the campaign on strict rails, so unfortunately, we probably COULD have saved the angel, somehow, some way. Me and the factotum discussed it out of character today. None of us have much in the way of divine prowess, and those returning things were probably some kind of undead or demon or something. A cleric probably would have been able to save her.
Sad, but our current line of thinking is that they took her alive for a reason. Hopefully.


maybe next time have characters that blend into regular society better?

Where's the fun in that? :smalltongue:


:smallbiggrin: Man, this is so awesome.
Can't wait for the next one.

Glad you're enjoying it :smallsmile:


Thanks for taking the time to type all that out SilverClaw, reading about your sessions always manages to cheer me up somehow, I suppose it sends my creative neurons firing like mad trying to find ways to work some if it in my own campaigns. :smalltongue:

You're very welcome. It's time consuming, but I like to hone my writing abilities anyway, and this is at least good practice keeping my fingers going. I do also like getting our campaigns down in some capacity, for memories.


Your DM seems utterly blessed with great ideas, and you guys really seem to make the party and the story fit together. I wish I was that good at telling my story. =p

Our DM has this knack for taking a dozen smaller ideas, plot seeds, monsters, classes, NPCs, ect, and tying them all together in one big coherent high-fantasy blob.

But I've actually talked to him about how good he is at it, since I'm his stand in for when he's gone. He says the trick is to not have everything planned out meticulously. That it's better to have monsters, NPCs, and locations lined up as possibilities, but to spend the bulk of your efforts on reacting to the PCs.
It's not a game if the players are incidental, so the world needs to shape itself around the PCs to some degree or another. If I hadn't made a point that my character was a "Witch" when we were rolling up and planning things out, the Priest villain might have been completely different. If one of us had been a healer, we might not have a healing bug animal companion, ect...

A DMs job is to be the referee. The run the game, but a lot of that is rolling with the punches the players are throwing. In fact, you might call that the point itself.

Of course, there's no 'doing it wrong', each table to its own :smalltongue:

Swooper
2009-06-03, 06:26 PM
So do we. Our DM usually doesn't have the campaign on strict rails, so unfortunately, we probably COULD have saved the angel, somehow, some way. Me and the factotum discussed it out of character today. None of us have much in the way of divine prowess, and those returning things were probably some kind of undead or demon or something. A cleric probably would have been able to save her.
Sad, but our current line of thinking is that they took her alive for a reason. Hopefully.
My first thought was that they are going to either sacrifice her or use her in some other kind of dark ritual. But then, having recently read through the Horror campaign log you posted (and was linked from this thread, which is how I found it), your DM probably has something much more wicked and original in mind. Siphoning off her divine power somehow? I don't know, just guessing wildly here.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-06-03, 07:25 PM
Awesome. Pure Awesomeness.

Thank you SilverClawSwift for taking the time to update for your loyal fans :smallbiggrin:

Kosjsjach
2009-06-03, 10:21 PM
Our DM usually doesn't have the campaign on strict rails, so unfortunately, we probably COULD have saved the angel, somehow, some way. Me and the factotum discussed it out of character today. None of us have much in the way of divine prowess, and those returning things were probably some kind of undead or demon or something. A cleric probably would have been able to save her.

[...]

But I've actually talked to him about how good he is at it, since I'm his stand in for when he's gone. He says the trick is to not have everything planned out meticulously. That it's better to have monsters, NPCs, and locations lined up as possibilities, but to spend the bulk of your efforts on reacting to the PCs.
It's not a game if the players are incidental, so the world needs to shape itself around the PCs to some degree or another. If I hadn't made a point that my character was a "Witch" when we were rolling up and planning things out, the Priest villain might have been completely different. If one of us had been a healer, we might not have a healing bug animal companion, ect...

A DMs job is to be the referee. The run the game, but a lot of that is rolling with the punches the players are throwing. In fact, you might call that the point itself.

This is exactly how I've always envisioned DMing should be. I've just never known it to be carried out with such... panache.

Has your DM read this thread? :smalltongue: I can't decide if it'd be a good idea or not; it might give him a (deservedly) big head.

SilverClawShift
2009-06-04, 05:34 PM
My first thought was that they are going to either sacrifice her or use her in some other kind of dark ritual.

That's the way we're currently leaning. Me and the Factotum were talking about it today out of game. Those returning things we were fighting couldn't have been undead, because sneaks and criticals worked on them. So they were probably some kind of demon, or they were under some magical effect we just don't know about.

Either way, since they took the angel alive rather than just spearing her while she was unable to fight them, they must NEED her alive.

So as much as we loathe to do it, we're probably going to have to just leave her to her current situation for a while longer. She's an angel, she's tough, she'll understand?


Thank you SilverClawSwift

Very welcome :smallsmile:


This is exactly how I've always envisioned DMing should be. I've just never known it to be carried out with such... panache.

Well, there's the other side of that same coin. A DM should be rolling with the punches his players throw, but the PLAYERS need to remember that the DM has the harder job, and that we outnumber him three-four-or-five to one.
So he needs to roll with the punches, but we should at least avoid deliberately tripping him and power sugar in his mental gastank :smalltongue:


Has your DM read this thread? :smalltongue: I can't decide if it'd be a good idea or not; it might give him a (deservedly) big head.

Nah, he reads OOTS and Erfworld (I made him) but he doesn't really hang out on forums.

Kyeudo
2009-06-04, 10:34 PM
That's the way we're currently leaning. Me and the Factotum were talking about it today out of game. Those returning things we were fighting couldn't have been undead, because sneaks and criticals worked on them. So they were probably some kind of demon, or they were under some magical effect we just don't know about.

Either way, since they took the angel alive rather than just spearing her while she was unable to fight them, they must NEED her alive.

So as much as we loathe to do it, we're probably going to have to just leave her to her current situation for a while longer. She's an angel, she's tough, she'll understand?


My thoughts: That ritual was overly specific.

If all they needed was any angel, all they'd have had to do was cast a Planar Binding spell and drag one in. Instead, they had to do all that ritual preparation and travel to a whole different continent to call that particular angel. So, there must be some connection between who that angel was and what that ziggurat is. I'd do some digging on that information while still in civilization.

Something tells me to suspect Elder Gods are going to be involved.

Swooper
2009-06-04, 10:49 PM
Very good point, the same had occurred to me. It does appear to be a specific kind of angel at least - it didn't fight back, so it's not just any other astral deva. Unless the ritual prevented it from fighting back?

evil-frosty
2009-06-05, 12:07 AM
Could it maybe have been a some sort of saint your DM homebrewed or something of that nature? Maybe it was a higher up angel (like the equivalent of a devil lord but an angel) and couldnt actually do anything actually on earth? This would be highly unlikely though as i dont think there really is an explanation of why this would be. Most likely just part of the ritual or maybe the rope they were tying her up with was preventing it?

SilverClawShift
2009-06-05, 06:50 AM
My thoughts: That ritual was overly specific.

If all they needed was any angel, all they'd have had to do was cast a Planar Binding spell and drag one in.

Something tells me to suspect Elder Gods are going to be involved.


Unless the ritual prevented it from fighting back?


Could it maybe have been a some sort of saint your DM homebrewed or something of that nature? Maybe it was a higher up angel (like the equivalent of a devil lord but an angel) and couldnt actually do anything actually on earth?

This.

This is more or less along the lines of what me and the factotum were thinking when we talked about it yesterday. Since our DMs worlds usually follow the "high level characters are rare" scheme, high level magic is rare too. Finding someone to pop off even a fourth level spell for you would be like getting an NFL linebacker to come and beat up someone you don't like. It's not UNDOABLE, it's just less than likely. Getting someone to cast a 5th level spell for you would be like getting stephen hawking to help with your science homework.
10th level and above is generally reserved for PCs and Villains (and plot critical NPCS on either side).

Whatever happened, I'd put money on it being 'off the books'. Factotum agrees with me.

Next game is tonight, but unfortunately, we're probably not going to find out a lot more about the angel just yet.

SilverClawShift
2009-06-06, 12:44 PM
Okay, I'm going to try to be a bit more concise this time, so it's not a giant wall of text like last time, but a lot happened in this session. We leveled twice, for instance. It was a rather lengthy night :smalltongue:

I'll spoiler things for more convenience.

As a group we faced some inter-party conflict to start things off. Me and the factotum thought that we should head to another port and see if we could learn more about the Drifters allies. They took the angel alive for a reason, and we can't really bring the force necessary to save her right now. Also, I'm a little worried about running into Priest in a one on one situation.
The Dragon Shaman wants to persue Priest and try to free the captured angel. The Swashbuckler is on the fence. We convinced him that it was in our best interests to avoid the desert continent for a while longer, either to lay low, or to wait until other options of travel are available to us. He agreed in the end, and by vote of 3 to 1, we reluctantly selected a new port to sail to.

DARK CONTINENT
So we take off for one of the ports on the Jungle continent. It's fairly close, only a week of sailing away, so we're probably not going to fall so far behind we can't catch up with whatever is going on.
The closer we get to the port, the rougher the weather seems to be. Torrential downpours and massive waves, broken up by periods of the sea being dark, grey, and calm. When we actually make it to port, we have to sail in through a cloud of fog so thick we had difficulty safely docking. There should have been a lighthouse active, and we could make it out (barely, through the fog), but it was dark and inactive.
What's more, the docks here are completely empty. Deserted, abandoned, still, silent. There are other ships in port, but no one on them. No one on land. No officials sealing arrival and departure sheets, no one checking shipping logs, no one unloading anything... not a soul to be found.
We take a few of our crew with us, and leave the rest guarding the ship, since we're not sure exactly what to expect. The kobold thinks to use an inspiration point and roll a high Survival check on the docks, trying to track any oddities or anomalies. He comes up with nothing.

So it's off to the empty lighthouse we go.

What strikes us as odd about the situation is how perfectly normal everything seems to be. There are no signs of life, but there are also no signs of struggle or theft. Nothing is broken or missing. Until we march up the spiral stairs to the top of the lighthouse, and see a body sitting in a chair facing out the window.
The swashbuckler approaches with caution, and sees that the lighthouse keepers throat was slice ear to ear. The blood is pooled and congealed down his front and on the floor, so he clearly didn't see it coming or have time to put up much of a struggle.
Not liking how that bodes for the rest of the port town, we look out the window, tho we can't make out much. It's just a fog that would put londons thickest to shame. We think we can see dark figures moving through the city streets, but failed spot checks mean we aren't sure if it's a trick of our eyes or not.
So we start heading back to our ship to check back in and then go explore the port town...
...And find our boat being overrun by a massive hoarde of zombies! about 30 to be precise. Which is probably a good fifth of the population of this dingy little port town, but still. Our deckhands are screaming in fear and trying to shove the zombies shuffling up the ramp with ten foot poles, so we sprint over to join in the fight. Actually, most of the crew we were WITH stayed back due to cowardice, refusing to rush into a shambling mess of rotting flesh and broken teeth for some reason.
The fight was more or less a mop-up. The Dragon Shaman could take out two or three with his fire breath, and another one per turn while his breath recharged. Our Swashbucklers INT to damage doesn't work against the undead, but fortunately he had a backup plan for situations like this. He sheathed his rapier, and pulled out the longsword strapped to his back, two-handing it and power-attacking to make up the difference in damage. He could also Cleave, so he was mostly taking them out two per turn. The Factotum plunked them from range with a small crossbow, while I spiderclimbed up a nearby wall and fired Eldritch Blasts into the fray. Then we re-boarded our ship to address our crew. But before anyone could say anything, we heard screaming from back on the docks. The four men we were with got overrun by a smaller group of zombies crawling out of the water. They were allready dying, nothing we could do to save them except kill the zombies from range.
After that, we went to address our remaining crew members, only to discover that they no longer considered themselves our crew. "We've lost six men in two weeks! We're not following you anymore, we signed up to sail and fight, not to get slaughtered by monsters and walking corpses! This isn't right!" We tried some diplomacy, but... they were having none of it. They grabbed their belongings and some supplies, unloaded them from the Ironman, and loaded them up on one of the quicker looking abandoned ships, and sailed off into the mist. Swashbuckler recomended executing them for insubordination, but the dragon shaman just glared at him and let them go, saying they were right, we'd been hemmoraging hirlings since we first set sail.
We had no clue what to do about a crew, but we figured we'd worry about that later. We checked our gear, the Factotum elected to use his first level spell slot to put an 'alarm' on the deck of our ship (and we took down the ramp for the time being), and we got ready to set out into the fog.

We stopped when our DM informed us that we just reached level 5 :p. So we spent the next ten minutes updating our sheets.

We all stayed single-classed for another level, except for the swashbuckler. He took a level in SORCERER of all things. The reason? "True Strike 3 times per day, punks!". He plans on using True Strike, then power-attacking for as much as his BAB will allow. Our DM also elected to make "Chitter", his healing bug pet, become his familiar. So Chitters stats received a significant boost since he's now directly tied to the swashbuckler.
My blast became stronger, the factotum can now heal a little per day, and the dragon shamans auras are double in strength.

Anyway, back to the story.


THROUGH THE GHOST TOWN
We started sneaking through the town. It was indeed full of the walking dead, but with their slow move rate, we just kept up a steady pace and snuck between buildings. We only drew attention from a few of them at a time, and they couldn't keep up with us, so we just stayed ahead of them. This did turn out to be a mild tactical mistake.
When we got to the edge of the town, we found a shop that had been boarded up pretty thoroughly. Surrounding the shop were around three dozen zombies, beating at the walls and doors and moaning loudly. Obviously, something relevant was in there, but in stopping to fight this huge group of zombies, we allowed the zombies that had been chasing us through the streets to catch up, meaning we were surrounded. I had the worst of it. Low hitpoints, low AC, my attack strategy kind of relied on being able to move out of range or poison things that got too close. Being surrounded meant I was taking a pretty harsh beating. The Factotum was almost untouchable, since he has the highest AC, but the few hits he did take were bad with his small hitpoint total. If it wasn't for the dragon shamans healing aura, I would have been toast, and the factotum wouldn't have lasted too long. As it was, we managed to slug our way through the last of them without hitting negatives, then took some time to catch our breath and heal up.
We approached the boarded up door, and politely knocked. Our Swashbuckler shouted out, asking if anyone was inside. A small dwarf woman leaned out of one of the windows on the second floor in absolute shock, looking slightly off center (mentally, that is). She asked us if she was imagining this, before scrambling back from the window, dashing down the stairs, and tearing a few planks from the door so we could crawl through before replacing them.
"You're alive! I haven't seen a living face in two weeks!" She hugged the swashbucklers legs and cried happily. She was talking too fast, babbeling, almost nonsensical. "How did you get here? It doesn't matter, you're here, oh god, all hell broke loose, but you're here, we can leave. Let's leave. How did you get here, we can leave that way?"
Dragon Shaman explained that we came by ship, but that we couldn't leave just yet. We were missing a crew and we had to figure out what happened here.
"Oh I can tell you what happened here, hell broke loose here. The devil came and hell followed. There's no reason to stay really, no reason at all, we should leave."

She was obviously a little shaken up by spending the past few weeks listening to the zombies trying to break their way into her tiny little sanctuary.

We asked her who, exactly, the devil was, and what, EXACTLY, had happened.
She just shook her head no ferociously. "She came in on a boat and everyone started dying. One by one, people just dissapeared. She never made a sound. Not a sound, just walked through the streets wearing our skins and killing us one by one. Then after she killed almost everyone she found where the miners stay and killed all of them. Then everyone she killed started standing up, and she took the miners to the caves with her. I saw her leaving with them, wearing someone elses skin. The devil wanted the caves, we should let her have them, we should leave and let her have them."
We felt bad for the tiny little dwarf woman, but we couldn't just up and leave after THAT, right? She seemed fine with us going too. Said she would just stay where she was cause it was safe but that she wouldn't go to the caves cause if we went to the caves she would just wear our skin and kill us all too and she had to stay here where it's safe and, ect, ect, ect.
We told her we'd come back for her and climbed out one of the second story windows. There weren't many zombies left after our wholesale massacre of them, but there were still enough that it would be trouble if they congregated around the building again, so we had to leave it boarded up.

And, naturally, we set off towards these caves.


INTO THE CAVES
The cave mouth was set up near the top of an overgrown cliff face. It wasn't unclimbable, but it was tricky. Once we got to the top and caught our breath, our dragon shaman picked up a stone and threw it into the pitch black mouth of the cave. In response, a swarm of bats came shrieking out past us.
Now, me and the kobold can both see in the dark (me with an invocation, him naturally). The dragon shaman and swashbuckler, cannot. We debated how to address this issue. Using a light source would potentially ruin our element of surprise, or worse, give the element of surprise to the enemy. The Swashbuckler can now CAST light as a cantrip, so what we opted to do was use the buddy system. I took the dragon shaman by the hand, and the kobold took the swashbuckler, and we both led them down into the dark with the swashbuckler ready to cast Light if need be.
We led them down through a few twists and turns and paths, when we started seeing traces of reflective black stones on the ground and walls. A quick peak (and prying one out with a dagger) revealed it to be Black Onyx. Which, if not an explenation for the zombies, at least shows a relevance to what's going on. Of course, we all started pocketing the stuff left and right, because, hey, free black onyx.

Which is when we started hearing a lot of intense fluttering all around us. Looking up? Bats. Lots of bats. Some of them the size of small dogs. Some of them larger than us.
Kobold: "light, light, lightlightlight now"
The swashbuckler casts light just in time for them to see the huge flurry of bats attacking us from all sides. The giant dire bats were making dive attacks that were knocking us prone, the smaller bats were just a swarm of tiny needle-like teeth and claws shredding us from every angle.
Once again, the Dragon Shaman turned out to be our bail-out here. His fire-breath was the only thing that was keeping the swarm from shredding us like we were stuck in a flying blender, giving the rest of us a chance to fight the (turned out to be five) dire bats beating on us. The bats put up a good fight, but in the end, we stood victorious amidst a giant pile of lightly fried corpses.
We pressed deeper into the caves, content that the ruckus we had made probably ruined our chance at surprise anyway, so we just hustled with the light spell active. Eventually, we came to a metal doorway with mine carts and digging equipment. The door was locked pretty strongly, the kobold using an inspiration point only barely managed to open it. When we popped the door, expecting more tunnels, we were taken aback when it actually opened into a huge, brightly lit cavern. A huge brightly lit cavern filled with a few dozen humanoid skeletons, hammering at the walls with picks, rummaging through the piles of broken stone, picking out the black onyx, and piling it into crates. It looked like this had been going on for a while, as there were crates and crates full of onyx gemstones.
And in the middle of this macabre sight, dancing around in exaggerated steps like a lunatic with a huge grin, was...a woman with no face. Well, she had a face, but it was just pale, grey, and smooth, with eyes and a mouth. A simple knowledge check revealed her to be an obvious example of a changeling, a race that's basically dopple-ganger-lite.
When she noticed us standing in the doorway to her chamber, she stopped in mid-stride and stood slack-jawed. Her face cycled through a few random male and female looking forms, before she finally picked one to settle on with a surprise expression. She pointed at us as a look of exaggerated recognition spread over her, and she nodded in understanding. We survived the encounter at the ziggarut, and now here we were. She didn't say a single word though.
Instead the skeletons all stopped where they were and turned in our direction, huge nasty looking picks at the ready. The changeling woman held out her hands on either side, as if she were a scale, weighing her decision visibly. Then she apparently reached a conclusion, because she waved her hand, the skeletons all got back to work, and she sprinted down one of the tunnels leading deeper into the caves, looking quite concerned about our presence.

We, of course, sprinted after her.

The swashbuckler asked if we should stop and kill the skeletons, but we considered her a higher priority and persued.
She, to her credit, moved like a damn leopard. The dwarf was right, she never made a single sound. The only way we could follow her was by keeping her in visual range, and trying to assess which turn she'd made by traces she left on the floor and walls. The Factotum was our godsend here, as without him making Survival checks to track, we would have gotten lost in the mazelike tunnels.
Eventually, we came to another, smaller, darker chamber. The changeling woman was backing up to a wall at our right, when we heard a shuffle come from our left. A very, very large troll zombie came staggering at us, while the changeling gestured at us frantically before climbing up into a nook and sliding down a stone path further into the dark. The Swashbuckler told me and the kobold to follow the changeling, while they handled the troll. I wasn't positive they could take it solo, but they were right. If we lost the changeling in the dark, we'd never find her, and we were the only two that could see in the lightless caves.

So we tucked and dove into the same nook she had, while the swashbuckler and dragon shaman took the fight to the lumbering mass


TROLL FIGHT

The troll lost the initiative roll, obviously, so my teamates had the first strike. The dragon shaman opened with a fire breath at the thing, which took a big chunk of its hitpoints down. The swashbuckler opened with a full two-handed power attack with his longsword, but rolled low on the attack and his blow didn't do any real damage. Since he was closer, the troll slammed the swashbuckler and caught him good. The Dragon shaman charged the troll and nailed him hard. The Swashbuckler took another swing, and this one connected cleanly. The troll slashed at the swashbuckler with another claw attack, and with the damage he'd taken earlier, that was enough to knock him into low single-digit hitpoints.
The Dragon Shaman opted to swing at the troll again, clearly roughing it up badly, but the swashbuckler (in an unusual show of self-preservation) decided to move back a few paces. The troll turned its attention to the dragon shaman, and they traded blows (while the swashbuckler chucked a rock at the back of the trolls head only to realize it had no effect :p). Ultimately, the dragon shaman wound up in single digits too, and back away, but not before his breath weapon charged up again, and he popped the troll with it again.
Crossing his fingers and hoping the troll was close to dying, the Swashbuckler charged it with another full power attack. He connected and sliced the things head off with one clean motion.

The two of them collapsed together and caught their breath while the dragon shamans healing aura brought them back up to half hitpoints. Then they both down a healing potion and came charging after us.


CHANGELING CHASE

At the bottom of the stone slide was another (wetter) chamber. When me and the kobold slid to the bottom, we saw that the changeling had unfurled a scroll, and was standing over a hideous mass of bones and flesh stitched together into some.... more ABSTRACT form than your average humanoid undead. When she heard us hit ground, she turned to look at us, threw her hands up in an over-the-top "Shocked and Scared" look, dropping the scroll and running further down into the caves in the process.
We grabbed the scroll, and found it was an "Animate Dead" spell. We figured, we might be able to use whatever the heck this monstrous looking thing was against her, so the factotum UMDed it and called the mess of bones to unlife. It twitched, jerked, climbed into some hideous spiderlike form... turned pitch black, filling the air with an icy chill, and EXPLODED in a shower of black ice and negative energy. A smackload of cold and negative damage, a concussive blast that sends the two of us flying hard into the wall (for more bludgeoning damage), and in one single move the two of us were in single digit hipoints.
Kobold: In retrospect, that was a fairly OBVIOUS trap...

So he uses his Opportunistic Piety ability and channels some positive energy to get us back into double digit hitpoints, and we press on.

We finally come to what looks like, hopefully, a dead end chamber. This looks to be where the changeling has been living these past few weeks, as there's basic amneties set up, and some personal looking belongings. The chamber is also full of natural columns (the kind that form with a slagtite means a stalagmite), and the changeling does her best to hide behind them and evade us. Considering, to this point, she still hasn't made a single audible sound, she does a fairly good job. We never once catch her with listen checks, it's only when we spot glimpses of her that we can re-assess where she is.
We split up, to try to corner her somehow, but she kept sneaking past us, trying to make it back to the entrance so she could climb up back the way she came. Finally I gesture to the kobold. I'm going to spiderclimb above the entrace, he's going to chase her towards it. I'll drop and grapple her as soon as I see her, and he can try to attack. After a few rounds, it works, and she comes sprinting towards the entrance, thinking we'd lost her. I drop and try to initiate a grapple, but it provokes an attack of opportunity and she punches me and slips by me up the hole. Except I can spiderclimb at will, so moving up the passage is a lot easier for me than it is for her making climb checks. Except every time I get up to her, she gets another attack of opportunity and kicks me in the face. I would just pop her with an eldritch blast, but since she's trying to ESCAPE, it'd be a waste, hurting her but allowing her to get further away.
Fortunately, space finally work out to our advantage. When the two of us reach the next highest champer (with the exploding undead thing, and the kobold in close persuit), the rough terrain left by the shower of bones slows her down, while I just spiderclimb around the wall and perch at the exit leading up. The kobold comes up and blocks the path leading back DOWN, she backs towards the middle of the chamber, and I nail her with an eldritch blast. She throws up her hands. I assume it's another trick, but ready an action to fire at her again.
Me and the kobold both advance on her, and she looks like she's contemplating taking another dash at the exit up, when the swashbuckler and dragon shaman come sliding down (looking much the worse for wear). We all circle her while she holds up her hands in depressed defeat. The swashbuckler asks if we should just kill her where she stands, but she presses her wrists together and waves them at him, pleading with her eyes, a fairly obvious show of surrender. The swashbuckler, a little surprised, says "She's mute?!" to which the changeling shifts her face to mirror his, and makes a "DURR" face (calling him an idiot without actually saying as much).

The dragon shaman and kobold agree, they're not comfortable killing a surrendering prisoner, no matter how much of a pain she'd been. So we drag her down to the lower chamber to go through her stuff and see if we can find anything particularily relevant. We don't find a lot. Some magical items, wands and scrolls of animate dead and gentle repose (when we asked her where these came from, she holds out her hands in the classic "I don't know" pose and shrugs with a little smile). And a bunch of rolls of black silk cloth with golden embroidery. We unroll a few, and with a successfull knowledge check, instantly understand. She's a binder. The cloths are seals that she can use to summon vestiges. When we say it out loud, her face immediately changes back to an expressionless mask, obviously upset that we understand.
We bring up the possibility of real interrogation, considering how compliant she's gotten since she surrendered. Which is when it hits the factotum.
"Guys. She surrendered pretty quickly. Didn't even really fight"
Swashbuckler: Because she didn't want to die?
Factotum: But it was a pretty quick about face, even in the circumstances, don't you think? She didn't even put up a struggle, and now she's just going along with what we want?
Dragon Shaman: So?
Factotum: So, we need to get back to the docks. NOW.

The changeling adopts the tiniest smirk at that. We're all hit with the "Oh Crap" realization at the same moment, and we start dragging her up towards the main cave entrance. When we get to the larger, brightly lit chamber? No skeletons. No mine cars. Most of the crates are missing, just a few stray crates partially full of black onyx, and tracks leading up the caves.

She wasn't trying to fight us. She wasn't even really trying to get away. That's WHY she charged blindly into a dead end. She wanted to keep us busy while her undead minions loaded up the stones they'd been digging up!

CRAP.

Standing around in the chamber in slack jawed horror, her face shifted to a random female form and she pointed at us, making the motions of over the top mocking laughter, while mouthing the words "You're so stupid". The Swashbuckler reared up to punch her, and she shifted back to the expressionless mask and shirking away from him, throwing up her hands again.
We booked it back to our ship, only to see tiny little forms through the fog. Skimmers, quick little ships, out on the open sea.
Me: Any chance of us catching them?
DM: The tiny little lightning quick ships, each being manned and rowed by crews of tireless undead, who will not to stop to eat, sleep, or even slow down? No, you won't catch them.
Kobold: Crap.


UNDEAD MOUNTS?

So we discuss what to do now. Our DM informs us that between the fighting, the chasing, the capturing, and the plot advancement, we'd picked up enough XP to level to 6.
Naturally we all stop dead in our tracks to update our character sheets again, while the DM gets his notes ready for what happens next. I had a tough decision to make though. See, right from level one I'd been planning on getting Fell Flight at the first possible opportunity. Being level 6, I get my first chance at grabbing a more powerful Eldritch Invocation, and the ability to constantly fly was really really high up on my list of desires. But I hadn't planned on hitting level 6 while on an island full of black Onyx and shuffling corpses. "The Dead Walk" is another option at this level... And with my level, if I take that, I can control 24 HitDie worth of undead creatures.
I decided, in the end, that I can ALWAYS take fell flight later. But I'd be a fool to look a gift horse in the mouth. And in this case, a gift horse takes the form of a pile of dead bats large enough to ride around on. And zombies retain their ability to fly :smallamused:

I had to bring it up with my teammates of course. "How do you guys feel about our ship being crewed by the undead? *innocent smile*" Responses were mixed.
We don't have to pay them, we don't have to feed them, and they'll keep doing their job even while we're sleeping.
We can't sail into any official port with them above deck, and if any authority checks our cargo hold, we could have big trouble.

I bring up the possibility of dumping the zombies overboard before we reach land, and restocking them when we have fresh corpses available.
Dragon Shaman: How many corpses do you expect to stumble across?!
Me: ...we're ADVENTURERS?
Dragon Shaman: Right, a metric crapload, right.

In the end, it was decided this was a horrible idea that we should avoid.
Kobold: I don't think it's the most sound and safe decision we could make as a group at this moment in time.
Dragon Shaman: As captain I have to say I'm not in favor of it. As a devout worshipper of a good god, I have to say I'm strictly opposed to it.
Swashbuckler: Yeah, the whole "Undead" thing probably won't be in our bests interest.
Me: ...*cough* You guys remember that there's a giant pile of rideable bat corpses up the mountain, right?
*pause*
Swashbuckler: I fully support "Operation Undead Labor"!
Kobold: If I get a mountable bat zombie, you can turn everyone we meet into a walking corpse.
Dragon Shaman: I hate you all.

So because he can't sail the ship ALONE, the captain tolerates our plans. He mentions that we are crossing into the grey-area of heroics (yet again). I point out that, while yes, abuse of a corpse is questionable, they're going to be turned into extensions of my will, so they're only as good or evil as I am. He points out that, if I lose control of them, they'll revert to trying to eat anything they can fit their jaws around. I ask "And that makes them different from normal carnivores HOW?" He reluctantly agrees to go along with things.

The large sized bats were all 4 HD, so I have a rideable bat corpse for all three people who want one, and still have 12 HD worth of undead I can control. After cramming a few hundered gold worth of black onyx into their skulls, they're ready to ride. We'll need to make some custom saddles to make riding them easier, but we can cling to their backs for now. My DM also agreed to let me ressurect the 1/4 HD bats at 4 for 1, so I also have 12 normal sized zombie bats sticking to the bigger one. Which I don't really think will come in handy, but it IS fun.

I also named my mount. The DM got annoyed. "You've had LIVING companions you didn't name, and you just named a zombie?!" I argued that it was more of a VEHICLE than a creature, and that we named the ship too! I call him Sky-rat.

I also ressurected five skeletons to serve us on the boat (faster than zombies, easier to stuff into small areas to hide them if need be), I had four left on my HD limit to use during battles, which seemed like enough for now. The trick is, if a warlock uses black onyx to raise the undead, they're permanent. If I DON'T use black onyx, the zombies that result only last a few minutes. Which is perfect for mid fight, because I can have a zombie fight for me, then crumble to dust without looking like I did anything suspicious.


BACK TO THE GAME

Moving on.

We tried coaxing the dwarf woman to come out of her store, but she said she'd rather stay where she has food and saftey. We're planning on informing the next port we're in about the situation, and that the undead have been cleared out, so they can safely restore order there. When we dock, we're going to stuff the skeletons in various hiding spots, and have the bats play dead and say we're using them for material in crafting. That should let us get away without too much legal trouble.

We almost ended the session there, but we really wanted to get some more information out of the changeling for us to mull over in between games. So we collected everything useful we could from the town (including a whole MESS of black onyx from back in the cave!) and set off at sea. We figured we would have an easier time keeping track of the Binder Changeling on the open water, where she couldn't run off. We'd have to keep her tied up, of course, or she'd mimic us and probably start causing hell. We took her below deck while the skeletons manned things above. It stormed again when we were taking off, but thankfully, skeletons don't mind a little rain.
We tried to lock a bell around her neck (really) since she was so quiet. She mocked us by 'washing' her ears like a cat. We noticed the bell made no noise. That's when it hit us. She's not just MUTE, and she's not just STEALTHY. She literally CAN'T make any noise. She seemed depressed when we pointed that out, so we asked why she looked upset about it.
She thought for a minute, then moved her hands like she was playing piano and singing wordlessly. We asked if she'd been a musician, and she nodded. I asked "This is a curse. Isn't it?" She looked sadder, and nodded again. The factotum asked what happened. She gestured for something to write with.
Swashbuckler: Dude, she's a binder, we can't give her something to WRITE with. God knows what she'll do.
The Dragon Shaman gives her some parchment, ink, and a pen all the same. He tells the swashbuckler to cut off her hand if it looks like she's trying something stupid, to which she goes wide eyed and puts one hand on her heart and one in the air (obviously promising to be good).
The message she writes is very abrupt. "Bard. Seduced wrong person. Betrayed wrong person. Curse. Fin"
Factotum: So someone just wanted to hurt you as much as you'd hurt them
The changeling glares and writes "Thousandfold" Music obviously meant a lot to her.
Dragon Shaman: Why are you working with these people now? Why are you doing this?
The changeling almost tears up at that, but writes "When he's a god, he promised to make me his herald."
Swashbuckler: When who's a god?
The changeling just glares. It's obvious we know who. The Drifter.
We pause for a minute, before the dragon shaman asks if there was some other way to break the curse.
She writes "Tried everything"
He asks if we could find some way to break the curse, if she'd give up being evil.
She adopts a mile-long stare, blankly looking at nothing in particular. She writes "Too late. Killed hundereds. Liked it."
He sighs and says "It's never too late. Anyone can be redeemed in time."
She doesn't respond.
I ask where they're taking the black onyx to. She looks at me like I'm an idiot. I ask if it's the ziggarut, and she puts one finger on the tip of her nose, and points at me with her other hand.

The swashbuckler asks what they're trying to accomplish. She looks angry, throws down the pen and parchment. Question time must be over. Swashbuckler says we can beat the information out of her, as long as we don't break her fingers. Her form instantly changes to a terrified young woman, tear streaked makeup and a black eye, shaking her head back and forth in fear, before changing just as fast to an expression of calm, resolved fury and spitting in the swashbucklers face. He punches her, splitting her lip. She licks her lips with a thin snake tongue, painting them red in the process and continuing to glare back.
The dragon shaman says this obviously isn't going to get us anywhere. That we should just tie her up and give her time to think about things. The factotum uses an inspiration point to make a ridiculously high "use Rope" check to make sure she's bound in the chair and can't move at all. Once we're confident she's not going anywhere, we go above deck to try to get our bearings against the storm and try to decide on a heading.

Our DM informs us that a few minutes later, we see flashes of light coming from below deck and hear loud, laboured weeping. We rush into the room where she's kept, and see her still tied there, still unable to move. But in front of her is a seal, and a weeping vestige standing in it. She'd chewed the split in her lip and SPIT the seal onto the ground in her own BLOOD :smalleek:
When she saw us, the vestige dissapeared... by turning into streams of water and pouring into her. Instantly she began weeping (visibly, not audibly) as the vestige had. The walls begin to crackle with electricity, and she cringes and shuts her eyes tight. A bolt of lightning appears from nowhere and... hits...her. Square in the back. The sound and noise are deafning, and she's obviously scorched and in pain, but the lightning bolt also destroyed the ropes and part of the chair holding her in place. We moved to fight her, but she sprinted past us.
I hit her with an eldritch blast, but she took it in stride (even though she was obviously badly damaged and in pain), and ran straight out into the storm, jumped onto the deck of the ship, and dove straight into the stormy waters. We moved to the edge. She'd taken my form, and was pretending (quite obviously) to struggle and drown, before switching to her pale grey 'mask', smirking at us, and sinking into the inky waters with a mocking wave goodbye.

The dragon shaman dove after her (the only one who could breath underwater, which she obviously could too now, due to the vestige), but between his armor and low swim checks, she dissapeared into the murky depths.

We got the dragon shaman back on deck.

And the session ended.

:smalleek:

Lilienthal
2009-06-06, 01:19 PM
Once again, that was pretty damn awesome.

Zombies in the mist, wild chases through a mine, rideable bat zombies, turning your ship into a Black Pearl? Damn.

Spitting a vestige seal in blood though? Sounds like she rolled a twenty on that. :smallwink:

Willfor
2009-06-06, 01:43 PM
It goes to show that you never can trust those zany binders. :smallwink:

SilverClawShift
2009-06-06, 01:50 PM
Spitting a vestige seal in blood though? Sounds like she rolled a twenty on that. :smallwink:

Skill, right?

I looked it up (and bugged the crap) out of my DM though. The vestige she summoned was real, his seal has to be drawn with a liquid, and he gives you the ability to call lightning and breath water.

I asked how the HELL he came up with that that fast, sitting across the table from us.

He apparently has a list of "Ways various classes can escape various situations". For real. Cinematic stuff he came up with that he can drop on us if we set things up right without realizing it.

Our DM is the freaking joker.

Jayngfet
2009-06-06, 02:21 PM
I wonder, what OTHER spells did he pick? He could have forgotten about a hella useful spell. Similarly, true strike unarmed power attack to knock her unconsious would have been useful but hey, hindsight.

And thanks to that, I'm going to create a similar list just in case Ineed one as a dm or character.

And no, you're dm is goddamned batman.

wadledo
2009-06-06, 02:25 PM
We all stayed single-classed for another level, except for the swashbuckler. He took a level in SORCERER of all things. The reason? "True Strike 3 times per day, punks!". He plans on using True Strike, then power-attacking for as much as his BAB will allow. Our DM also elected to make "Chitter", his healing bug pet, become his familiar. So Chitters stats received a significant boost since he's now directly tied to the swashbuckler.
http://www.solarnavigator.net/films_movies_actors/cartoons/cartoon_images/finding_nemo_seagulls_sydney_harbour.jpg
Gish, gish, gish, gish!

Anyway, why didn't you just have one of the undead watch over her, with the order of "Beat her with this board(I.e. Non-lethal damage) if she does anything but sit there."
Or did you not have that many skeletons?

Edit: To bad you didn't get corpsecrafter as your feat this level.
Then you could have Destruction Retribution at 9th, and make little exploding zombie bats of doom.:smallbiggrin:

jseah
2009-06-06, 02:29 PM
About the magic absorbing gem, try going for hammer blast and using terrain to hit him. Fell a tree, drop ceilings or something.

It won't stop indirect magic. =P

SilverClawShift
2009-06-06, 02:42 PM
I wonder, what OTHER spells did he pick?

He didn't say, and I don't currently know. He usually plays martial characters (sometimes with a twist). A level of sorcerer for true-striking power-attacks is actually a large magical dip for him :smalltongue:


Similarly, true strike unarmed power attack to knock her unconsious would have been useful but hey, hindsight.


[IMG]
Anyway, why didn't you just have one of the undead watch over her, with the order of "Beat her with this board(I.e. Non-lethal damage) if she does anything but sit there."

Hindsight, exactly. Fortunately, no one's perfect, which means we all have mistakes, lucky streaks, accidents, and SURPRISS in store for us.
It would be very boring if we were all operating with perfect hindsight. And it's real easy to come up with a perfect strategy in retrospect :smalltongue:


About the magic absorbing gem, try going for hammer blast and using terrain to hit him.

I've actually been quietly wondering what would happen if I took "Repelling Blast" and AIMED for Priests dark orb... unfortunately, I get that at level 11 at the earliest, so if I run into him again before that, I'll be throwing poisoned daggers as soon as I see him.

wadledo
2009-06-06, 02:48 PM
Hindsight, exactly. Fortunately, no one's perfect, which means we all have mistakes, lucky streaks, accidents, and SURPRISS in store for us.
It would be very boring if we were all operating with perfect hindsight. And it's real easy to come up with a perfect strategy in retrospect :smalltongue:

Hey, that's my first reaction whenever I've got someone tied up in a chair.
Beat them with a board until they stop doing anything questionable.

....Which may explain something.......

Kzickas
2009-06-06, 03:37 PM
Shouldn't the crossbow guy in the forth last update have gotten surprise round? Seems strange to be killed by someone who hadn't seen you before you do anything to reveal yourself. I do realize it's a little late to ask, but it seemed really strange to me

Drakyn
2009-06-06, 03:47 PM
Whenever I read one of these updates, I keep thinking that what you guys REALLY need is either three times as many players or a lot of very affable clones of your characters that find deep meaning and comfort in being used as cannon fodder. The way your DM keeps putting you in places where you need to do three ultra-important things at once is downright diabolical. Which is pretty awesome to watch.

TheCountAlucard
2009-06-06, 04:05 PM
Man, SilverClawShift, I wish I had a DM like that; your game sounds awesome.

Lilienthal
2009-06-06, 05:14 PM
I asked how the HELL he came up with that that fast, sitting across the table from us.
He apparently has a list of "Ways various classes can escape various situations". For real. Cinematic stuff he came up with that he can drop on us if we set things up right without realizing it.

You obviously need to swipe that list, for the benefit of both you and everyone else here. :smallsmile: I've actually been working on a list like that myself, but it's nowhere near as comprehensive as his seems to be.


Our DM is the freaking joker.

And no, you're dm is goddamned batman.
Quite so, there's no Crazy Prepared (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrazyPrepared) like Batman Prepared! You should probably check if he has any Munchkin Repellent DM-Spray lying around, just to be safe. :smallwink:

SilverClawShift
2009-06-06, 06:17 PM
Hey, that's my first reaction whenever I've got someone tied up in a chair.
Beat them with a board until they stop doing anything questionable.

See, our reaction was "Whoo, what a long day. Let's wrap this crap up now that the prisoner is secure" :smalltongue:


Shouldn't the crossbow guy in the forth last update have gotten surprise round?

Maybe? I dunno. Maybe our DM decided that the range the dragon shaman was away meant combat hadn't officially started for them or something. Don't look at me, I just kill things.


The way your DM keeps putting you in places where you need to do three ultra-important things at once is downright diabolical.

First rule of managing your enemy. Break them into smaller groups.

Since we're his enemy, he likes to make us want to split up.


Man, SilverClawShift, I wish I had a DM like that; your game sounds awesome.

He's ours, you can't have him!


You obviously need to swipe that list, for the benefit of both you and everyone else here.

I'll see what I can do :smallsmile: But he probably doesn't want to reduce his chances of getting us to say "OH CRAP!"

TheCountAlucard
2009-06-06, 06:25 PM
He's ours, you can't have him!All right, fine; I wish I was a DM like that. :smalltongue:

Olo Demonsbane
2009-06-06, 07:34 PM
If you were a DM like him, you would get millions of people trying to play in your Pbps :smallsmile:

Thanks for updating SCS :smallsmile:

Roc Ness
2009-06-06, 10:27 PM
Reading back over my thread, if I did the writing for a book, we'd need the worlds most expensive proofreader. "limbed back to the city"? Really? Not to mention some other glaring typos and downright confusing make-beleive words.


I just realised, I know heaps of people who can proof-read, simply for the virtue of being bored. That's right, I know people who proof-read because they're bored. :smallredface:

You are going to have to help them with dnd terms though.

TheCountAlucard
2009-06-06, 10:36 PM
I proofread when I'm bored! :smallbiggrin: And I know D&D terms!

evil-frosty
2009-06-07, 12:31 AM
This is another awesome campaign by your DM, i am rather jealous you have such a great DM. When i first read that she was changing skins my first thought was that it was an some sort of outsider with the mortal hunter prc from BoVD. Your Dm seemed to like it in the horror campaign.

This is just an awesome campaign so far and i love the the undead bats (it reminded me of OotS, when Xykon turned an angel into a zombie). I love reading this please keep posting.

Lilienthal
2009-06-07, 02:33 AM
This is just an awesome campaign so far and i love the the undead bats (it reminded me of OotS, when Xykon turned an angel into a zombie). I love reading this please keep posting.

Hint-hint? :smallwink:

Dragonmuncher
2009-06-07, 10:32 AM
Awesomesauce.

You're a warlock, so I imagine you've got a good UMD. Plan on picking up any useful trinkets? Wand of Invisibility might come in handy, or definitely a wand of Command Undead, if you meet up with the necromancer again.

So, are you going to chase down the boats with your bat mounts? Or sail your boat with its skeleton crew?

SilverClawShift
2009-06-07, 12:19 PM
Hint-hint? :smallwink:

Our Dragon Shaman will go into hardcore Penitent-Emo mode if that angel doesn't survive :smalltongue:


You're a warlock, so I imagine you've got a good UMD. Plan on picking up any useful trinkets?

Well the thing is, our DMs campaign worlds are usually what you might called "Restricted Magic". They're high-magic worlds in theory, where high level spellcasting is possible, and where epic artifacts exist to be exploited and whatnot.
But magic isn't something that permeates every locale. Shops have limited inventory (for real, another thing our DM has is create shop-inventory lists. So if we go into a shop to browse around, he actually hands us a list of what we can find. Sometimes more potent goods are kept 'behind the counter' if you ask, but it's not like we can leaf through the magic item compendium every time we drum up some cash).

If we tell him we want something SPECIFIC, he'll probably let us set out and find it, but we don't do that a lot. The factotum's been mentioning asking about boots that'll increase his base speed (since he's trying to stack +10 to move modifiers :smalltongue:) but that's more or less it.
If the DM has some items in mind for us to have, he'll give it to us himself.


So, are you going to chase down the boats with your bat mounts? Or sail your boat with its skeleton crew?

Both! Planning on circling around the ship in the air and scouting around while the skeletons keep things under control on-deck. We don't expect to catch the black onyx cargo on open water though, undead crew or not.
We, are now seriously debating trying to get back to the buried ziggarut in the egyptian continent though.
If they're close to setting their plans in motion, we want to be there to gum them up as much as possible.

Lilienthal
2009-06-07, 01:43 PM
Our Dragon Shaman will go into hardcore Penitent-Emo mode if that angel doesn't survive :smalltongue:

I fail to see how that would be a problem. Just wait until he kills himself out of desperation and then zombify him. Voila! Future moral quandaries are out of the way and you've got a lovely zombie rider to match your Undead Angel mount. :smallwink:

Kzickas
2009-06-07, 01:45 PM
If they're close to setting their plans in motion, we want to be there to gum them up as much as possible.

Can you? You seem quite outmatched, especially if those pheonix guys are with them. Even just one of them gave you trouble and they're likely all going to be there for the final part

llamamushroom
2009-06-08, 02:11 AM
SilverClawShift, you're awesome. Just so you know.

Roc Ness
2009-06-09, 05:08 AM
Can you? You seem quite outmatched, especially if those pheonix guys are with them. Even just one of them gave you trouble and they're likely all going to be there for the final part

What phoenix guys? Do you mean the Therin guy or is it a dnd term? :smallconfused:

arguskos
2009-06-09, 05:14 AM
What phoenix guys? Do you mean the Therin guy or is it a dnd term? :smallconfused:
You know the legend of the Phoenix, right? Rising from the ashes and all that? Well, those guys SCS and Crew killed were getting back up in flashes of fire and ash. Hence, "phoenix guys". At least, I'd assume that was what was meant.

Roc Ness
2009-06-09, 06:02 AM
Ok, I get it now.

Also, I read an SRD thingy someguy on the forum linked, so now I know quite a bit more about dnd. Still can't find the eldritch blast, though. (Or a whole bunch of other stuff)

Lilienthal
2009-06-09, 08:11 AM
Ok, I get it now.

Also, I read an SRD thingy someguy on the forum linked, so now I know quite a bit more about dnd. Still can't find the eldritch blast, though. (Or a whole bunch of other stuff)

The SRD, or System Reference Document, is the core d20 gaming system that DnD uses, and it was released under an Open Gaming License, which basically means that anyone can use it as long as they include the license with their product. The warlock is a special class that isn't part of the "core package" if you will. In DnD 3.5 it was introduced in a supplement called Complete Arcane. If you want a full reference package for 3.5th edition, you can find it here (http://crystalkeep.com/d20/). If you're looking for general terms, you might find those on one of the many DnD wiki's out there. I've never found those to actually be useful or very correct though, so use them at your own risk.

Magicus
2009-06-09, 11:42 AM
I know it's been said many, many times, but I'm pretty sure that you are part of the Best Group Ever. One of the main reasons I stopped lurking and actually registered is to express my undying admiration for your DM. :smallredface:

And reading your logs of your campaigns has provided with me with so much material that I can adapt (read steal) for my own games. So now I have the idea for a terrifying pirate ship captained by a demonspawn and her Kobold associate, and crewed by the undead. With flying zombie scouts! It's brilliant!

SilverClawShift
2009-06-09, 03:36 PM
Just wait until he kills himself out of desperation and then zombify him. Voila!

Hah! Evil or Good, party cohesion is something that should be reasonably maintained by all at the table :smalltongue: Not to mention the fact that he could probably tear me apart in a straight fight.


Can you? You seem quite outmatched, especially if those pheonix guys are with them. Even just one of them gave you trouble and they're likely all going to be there for the final part

None of them gave me huge trouble, it was PRIEST that was the problem. They ARE a concern though. We've been looking for a chance to find out more about them. There's gotta be a way to take them out though.


SilverClawShift, you're awesome. Just so you know.

Thank you! That's hard to come up with a response to, but thanks :smallsmile:


Still can't find the eldritch blast, though.

Like mentioned, the SRD is just the bare basic stuff. The main classes, the main monsters, the main spells...
But there's easily three dozen books or more for 3.5 edition (which is what we play) all of which add new classes, new spells, new monsters, new abilities, ect, ect... Actually, come to think of it, not a single one of us is playing a core class this game. Not counting the two levels of sorcerer the Swashbuckler is sporting.

Our group also uses home-designed stuff sometimes.


And reading your logs of your campaigns has provided with me with so much material that I can adapt (read steal) for my own games.

Good! The more people enjoying their games to the fullest, the better :smallbiggrin:

Lilienthal
2009-06-10, 03:19 AM
Hah! Evil or Good, party cohesion is something that should be reasonably maintained by all at the table :smalltongue: Not to mention the fact that he could probably tear me apart in a straight fight.

With the way your party is stampeding across the slippery slope of necromancy most foul, your party cohesion would arguable improve if you got the silly good Dragon Shaman out of the way. :smallwink:


Something else that occurred to me: how come your factotum hasn't started UMD'ing Expeditious Retreat and Lively Step* scrolls yet? :smallwink:

As for fighting the Priest character and his lovely orb, I suggest you take the Earth's Grasp invocation. No direct targeting on your part, but a good chance to grapple (and pin) the bastard. And just imagine what it'd be like to get a few of those in the field, I dare say the phoenix folk won't be much trouble anymore if they can't move. :smallbiggrin:

And if you want to find out the actual weakness of those Phoenix folk, I suggest Vision of Fear**, although it's a spell from Dragon Magazine, I don't know if your DM will allow it. Of course, you might be able to level up more before you need to confront these again, in which case you can just go for some better diviniation spells. Or hell, roleplay it out. =p

*Lively Step: Player's Guide to Faerun, p 106, Caster and allies in 30ft emanation receive +10 to movement and can hustle for 1 extra hour per caster level, lasts as long as the caster only takes move actions

**Vision of Fear(DR333 p73)
<Div, VS, 1 Full Round, 60’ range, Instantaneous,WillNeg, SR applies>
– Learn either the ‘greatest’ or ‘most recent’ fear (chosen at casting time) of the target (who must be vulnerable to fear and have at least a 3 Intelligence). If the fear was the result of magic, the caster knows this.
[Continued as image below]
http://laughingman.eu/img/visionoffear.png

llamamushroom
2009-06-10, 07:07 AM
Spell within 24 hrs after 24 hrs Scry First-Hand Second-Hand Teleport Studied Carefully Viewed Once any [fear] –2 penalty on Will n/a “any [fear]” indicates the target’s penalty on Will saves vs. the caster’s fear spells.

That has got to be one of the most confusing sentences I've ever read, and I've done Latin (where there is no word order).

Lilienthal
2009-06-10, 08:38 AM
That has got to be one of the most confusing sentences I've ever read, and I've done Latin (where there is no word order).

Oh, heh. Looks like I broke up a table there, sorry about that. I went ahead and swapped out that part of the description with a screenshot from the Crystal Keep (http://crystalkeep.com/d20/) spell index. Nunc fiat lux. :smallwink:

SilverClawShift
2009-06-10, 06:16 PM
Session Starts where the last one left off.

Destination Unknown


Some crazy mute Binder Changeling just summoned lightning in the hold of our ship and managed to escape into the black choppy waters of the unforgiving sea. The four of us are up on deck with our five-man-skeleton-band, fighting a horrible storm and trying to pick a heading to follow.
The Dragon Shaman (who IS technically the captain of the ship) once again wants to return to the desert continent. He reminds us that The Drifter now has an undetermined number of spellcasting bugs, resurrecting warriors, a captive angel, and now a small group of skeletons carting a metric crapload of Black onyx.
We point out that we still don't know a whole lot about what's going on, and there are still three potential places to find new information about What's Going On(tm). We've ruled out the arctic. Even if the destination wasn't being listed as a lie, the odds of us finding anything to go on there are slimmer than elsewhere.
We elect to head for the second port on the Dark Continent after all, but agree that unless we find a very good reason not to, our next step is going to be to haul back to the Egyptian continent (with a brief stopover in the central island to check in with Macguiller and resupply, since that island is in the path between our next port, and the ziggurat anyway).

So off we sail, into dark and stormy waters, wondering in the back of our minds if a psychotic murderous changeling is clinging to the hull of the ship.

It turned out to NOT be the case, because we safely made it to our next destination. We sailed in to the port on an overcast morning through still choppy waters. The land itself looked to be a dense overgrown swampy jungle, and our first assumption had been that we'd lost our bearings in the storm. Then we saw a tiny dilapidated wooden pier at the mouth of a massive river, waving the flag of the Empires colors (black white and teal, for anyone concerned with such things). We pulled up to the rotten planks near as we could and docked, hoping our ship wouldn't just tear the pier clean off if it rocked in the water.
Before we could do much, a man came walking out of the port masters shack with a lazy stride. His dress style was some combination of normal attire and 'native' decoration, but all of it sported the empires colors. He waved as he came up to us.
"Ya don't wanna be stayin here. Plague's struck. Everyone's sick, ain't no one getting better." We asked him if he was the usual port master, and he let out a high sad laugh. "Sure am. Five years of stampin papers here, or twenty-five years of hard labor back home. I'm still wondering if I got the better deal."
We asked for the details of the plague, and he said it was like some kind of massive flu that everyone seemed to come down with at once. Headaches, chills, fever, vomiting. Symptoms kept changing, no one was getting healthy. Told us again we might as well take off. Again we told him we didn't have much choice, so he sighed and asked for our port documents.
When we told him we'd come from an abandoned port, he looked at us dubiously. We promised it was the case, but he shook his head and put up his hand to shut us up. Told us he didn't actually care where we'd come from, 50 gold and he'd update our paperwork and be on our merry way. We agreed, if only to cause less long term trouble. He actually updated our papers to include our LEAVING this port all ready, because he didn't want us interacting with him once we went further into the jungle, so we didn't "bring the plague to him".
We verified that the river was deep enough to sail a 10-man ship up it, and he nodded that we shouldn't have any problem, but that when the river forked, keep to the left. We asked what was down the right, and he said that it was nothing but a village of natives struck worst by the plague. He also told us "If you ignore that advice and go to the village anyway, at least trust me on this one. Don't listen to a word Papa HeeNo says. Head full of crazy ideas, really shady guy." We asked who Papa HeeNo was, and he just shook his head and mouthed "Witch Doctor" before looking around nervously and heading back to his shack with a wave.


PaPa HeeNo

So we set up the river. Naturally, the first thing we did when we saw the fork was to push right. It was difficult maneuvering, and eventually the water did run too shallow, and we had to leave the SS Ironman where she sat. I gave the skeletons a few daggers and told them to defend themselves and the ship, but not to attack unless they or the boat were being tampered with. (I considered that to be an acceptable balance between "lethal misunderstanding" and "loophole allowing destruction of our ship").
We took to the skies here, with three of us riding our giant zombie bats, and our Dragonborn flying on his own wings (flying for a round here or there and then gliding along with us, since his wings can only support a few rounds of sustained flight per day).
We spotted the native village in a clearing, and considered landing our bats in some trees and walking the rest of the way, but we opted to just land in the clearing. They looked so sick and listless we didn't think they would get too worked up, once we explained we were there to find out what was going on. We were completely right, our landing on flying bat corpses and dismounting stirred no huge response. They were all watching us, confused and curious... the healthier looking ones anyway. Most of them seemed so ill they were delirious, with the ones who still had to together trying to tend to the worst off.
Our Dragon Shaman was largely struck with empathy, asking the DM if his lay on hands ability would provide any help. I was worried that using the healing now would be a... less than ideal tax on our collective resources, but he still knelt by the nearest person and put a hand to their forehead, promising he was trying to help, and letting a point of healing light pulse into them. It seemed to have no effect, so he tried a higher number (five), but it still looked like it wasn't doing anything. That's when Papa HeeNo showed up.
He came out of no where, coming up to our group from a previously empty direction. He was seven and a half feet tall if he was an inch, and slender as a scarecrow. He didn't look like your archetypical 'witchdoctor', by which I mean there was no headdress or bone piercings or facial paint. There was no doubt about who he was though, he had a foreboding presence that demanded attention. "You dasn't try and help... won't do no good, and they dasn't need any right now."
The swashbuckler makes a passing comment that they obviously DO need help, because they're obviously DYING.
Papa HeeNo just goes on talking in his deep monotone. "I know what causin dis here sickness. A Man causin dis here sickness, and when he leaves he takes that sickness with him. And he leavin real soon. Come, Papa HeeNo needs your help."
So of course we followed him. We walked to a dark and twisted tree growing half on the land and half out into the swampy water, when HeeNo reaches into its bundle of roots, and seemingly falls through them and into nothing. We just kinda stand there akwardly, until HeeNo reaches his hand out and beckons for us to follow. So one by one, we go tumbling down through the roots and into a dank and dark little room. There's a bundle of rags in the corner that looks like a bed, a tiny table on the floor, and the walls are absolutely strewn with bones, shelves containing jars of eyes, live mice, and god knows what else. Handcarved trinkets and voodoo dolls abound. Water is dripping from everywhere, and you get the distinct immpression that we are definately under the water line of the swamp. Occasionally there will be a shimmer of something perfectly polished and cleaned, intricate gold objects and glass lenses and such, standing out against the otherwise filthy and horrifying surroundings.
And Papa HeeNo is sitting crosslegged at his tiny table (which is covered in runes and symbols and laid out in an obvious pattern). He's shaking bones in his fists and throwing them across the table, scanning his eyes over to take them all in before scooping them up and shaking them again. He keeps doing this over and over while he talks, Rattle, Rattle, Clatter, Pause, Scrape, Rattle, Rattle, Clatter, in a perfect and unbreakable rhythm.
He starts talking before we can say anything. "You knowin dis Man I spoke of. You searchin for him, wantin to stop him. He bad man, doin bad things."
Swashbuckler: The bones told you that?
"Your eyes told me that. I seein you knowin when I sayin. I can help you against dis man. He almost finishin what he doin here, and when he leaves, the sickness leaves with him." Papa Heeno stares us all in the eyes one by one, never breaking his rythm of the bones. "But dis man, he comin back someday soon. And when he comin back, he bringin somethin worse. Aint no one gonna live no more when he comin back"
I asked what The Drifter is trying to do. Papa HeeNo just replies with "Somethin Bad. Some Sickness. Bad Sickness".
We pause for a minute to take that in, before he goes on talking. "I can ward dis place against Him for a while. Keep the sickness out. For a time. But I needin ya help to do dis. If'n ya help Papa HeeNo, Papa HeeNo helpin ya. The Spirits showin me a Boon for each of ya. Ya help me, and I give dis Boon to ya."
We glance at each other before most of us either shrug or nod. The Dragon Shaman says we'll help any way we can.
Papa HeeNo just keeps shaking his bones and throwing them at the table. "A snake woman lives in the jungle." He points off in one direction during the pause before scooping his bones back up. "She's a bad snake woman, and she be mad at us. We be feedin her for years, meat. We'n too sick to feedin her anytime soon. She gettin hungry. She comin for us soon. You bring me dis woman's head, and I givin ya da Boon." he laughs, an unnerving monotonous laugh. "But ya be sendin the dragonman in first, ya hear?"
And with that, he gestures for us to leave.


Whacking Day

Being adventurers, a crazy witchdoctor telling us to go murder a stranger for profit seemed like a perfectly normal turn of events.

So after a quick inventory/gear check to make sure our stuff was in good repair and we were sound for combat, we took to the skies. The Dragon Shaman only had two rounds of flight left, so he reluctantly hopped onto the bat with the kobold (best weight distribution), and we set off. We didn't have to go far, it couldn't have been more than a mile before we noticed something odd against the dense jungle canopy. There was an obvious stonework path - abandoned and in disrepair but clearly man-made - leading up to the remains of a small two story stone building of some kind. A few locations had given in and showed the ground floor below, and through them, we could barely make out a small female figure. I had Eldritch Spear as one of my blast shapes, and she was in range of it. I wanted to pop her, but the group elected to land and find out at least a little more about the situation before we started shooting complete strangers in the back.
We landed the bats near the stone pathway, and I ordered them to take back to the skies and circle above the building in case I needed them to swoop in for assistance. We set out up the path, and everything seemed relatively normal. And by relatively normal, I mean the area was completely devoid of natural life, and there were stray bones and skulls in every direction you looked, apparently tossed into larger piles the closer you got to the entrance. The building was obviously falling apart. Rough gravel in odd shapes (apparently from the collapsing stone), the whole building was covered in moss and vines, but a spot check made us realize there were still no signs of non-plant creatures. Not even bugs.
We snuck up to the entrance and leaned around, we could see a cloaked and hooded female form walking around. We heard very faint, angry murmuring. The area was shadowy, and she was moving away from us, so her exact location was difficult to place.
Remembering Papa HeeNo's suggestion, we sent the dragon shaman in first. We stayed pretty much lock step behind him, checking every possible nook and corner. The woman had apparently disappeared from sight when we'd crossed the threshold. We took it slow, with no sign of her. Our assumption was that she knew we were here, and that we were playing on her terms. We turned out to be right, when we entered a room where the floor had given mostly in, and heard her voice from the broken 'balcony' above, asking what we're doing in her home in a voice that sounded like wet ash being run through a grinder.
The dragon shaman approached her calmly, saying that Papa HeeNo had sent us, but that we were interested in learning more about the situation. She giggled, an ancient rattling sound, and said there was nothing to learn. The Dragon Shaman asked if she didn't want to tell us her side of the story.
She giggled again, and said "I can SHOW you my side of the story?" Before ripping back her hood and staring dead at the Dragon Shaman.
He immediately rolled a Fortitude save (and we all rolled initiative). He passed it, and tucked and rolled back to our group, saying "F*** ME it's a medusa". Me and the kobold immediately dropped our eyes to the ground and shielded our eyes with our hands. Just in case. Our fortitude saves were NILL. The kobolds was worse than mine, but he can at least use inspiration to boost it up. I'm stuck trying to roll high numbers just to keep being made of meat!
Nevertheless. I won initiative. So when actual combat began, my first course of action was to run blindly into the room, rough terrain and all, and fire a blind shot (total concealment) with my eldritch blast at the medusa. And I HIT her too, for a good roll at that. The kobold ran out too, and fired a blind hand-crossbow shot (but missed). The medusa went next, and she jumped down and used her gaze attack again, catching both of us in it. Total Concealment meant I didn't have to roll against it, but the kobold didn't get lucky and DID. Fortunately, he boosted the saving throw roll with his Inspiration ability, and survived it.
The Swashbuckler cast True Strike, but stayed around the corner to attack the next round. The dragon shaman ran into range, and hit the medusa with his fire breath for good damage. I backed up to the wall and out of her gazes range, and fired another eldritch blast (which missed this time). The kobold used an inspiration point to cast Acid Arrow, and connected with it, which was great because it meant three rounds of acid damage for her.
The medusa dashed through the crowd, passing by the dragon shaman, the kobold, and coming to stop in front of me (sticking to the wall). Her snake-hair bit every one of us on the way. The dragon shaman shrugged off the poison, the kobold used his last bit of inspiration on the saving throw roll again, but the poison went straight to my heart. Four strength damage (HALF MY STRENGHT) later, and I was a wreck.
The Swashbuckler dashed into the room and two-handed power-attacked for a promised hit, and a BEAUTIFUL damage roll. It was glorious. The dragon shaman attacked her for another chunk of hitpoints.
I spiderclimbed up the wall, yelling up to my bats "BABIES! KILL HER!" before firing another blind eldritch blast (Whiff). They start swooping down for an assault. The Kobold takes a swing and connects, but for 1d4-1 damage :smallyuk:.
The medusa uses her gaze attack, and things got ugly. The kobold and me both immediately failed and turned to stone where we stood. The problem was, HE was trying to cover his face and standing on solid ground, I was magically clinging to the wall 20 feet up and supported by nothing but the force of my own dark will.

I came tumbling down, straight onto my legs, which cracked and shattered under the weight.

Uh Oh :smalleek:

The fight raged on. The Swashbuckler dropped his longsword and quickdrawed (quickdrew?) his rapier, striking with it for another decent damage roll. She was looking to go down for the count. The dragon shaman closed the gap and attacked for another chunk of hitpoints. The medusa used her gaze attack again, and this time, the swashbuckler failed his saving throw too, turning to a statue where he stood.
It was her last action though. The Dragon Shamans breath weapon had recharged, and he rolled max damage (he actually threw his hands up and shouted "YAHTZEE!!!!!" after he rolled).
For a more cinematic description, he actually pressed his hand over the medusas face, slammed the back of her head against the stone wall, and aimed low, charring her body to a crisp below the neck with such a vicious blast that her body literally just gave away under her neck and collapsed.
Then the bats came and landed around him. They hadn't made it down in time for the fight :smalltongue:


Last Leg

The DM decided that me being a statue didn't mean they were out of my control, thankfully, so they just sat around waiting for my next order (which obviously wasn't coming). The Dragon Shaman scooped up the medusas head into a sack, so he wouldn't have to worry about glancing at it the wrong way, and then set about rummaging through the abandoned building. He found a few interesting things. A pair of dice that were seemingly carved out of bone and covered in strange runes, that he tucked safely into a pack. Some silver and gold coins, some gems and jewelry. And a small jar absolutely covered in tiny lizard statues (which were probably just tiny lizards, petrified in a huge number of layers).
In the jar was a translucent blue goo, and when the dragonborn wiped the goo on the side of the jar, one of the lizards sprang to life and ran off into the jungle. So he naturally returned to us, and brought the kobold and swashbuckler back to life. The three of them stood around for a while, debating on what to do with me. My stone legs were absolutely shattered. Peicing them back together would take god knows how long, and that's if they could even find all the right peices in the gravely rubble. Closer examination revealed that a lot of the gravel was actually stone insects, so the odds of peicing me back together was nill. Then the Swashbuckler raised the gruesome possibility of my mangled legs rotting off of me if they did something wrong.
It was THAT comment that made them decide to resurrect me sans lower limbs.

So, THAT SUCKS.

The Dragon Shaman thinks it's ironic justice. I skipped over the ability to fly at will in order to have zombie mounts. Now I NEED a zombie mount to MOVE under my own power. He chuckled. I glared.
The zombie bats move at 20 feet, so I'm the slowest party member on land now. But my adventuring career isn't over. I auto-fail any dex or strength check that needs legs, and take a massive penalty to full body dex checks. But my ACTUAL dexterity is still okay, and my aim with my eldritch blast is still fine. So I just have to rely on clinging to a zombie bats back for most situations. I'm less mobile in general, but... it could be worse. I could have shattered outright. My character is in full on hardcore emo-mope mode over her loss though.
My current plan, two levels from now, is to IMMEDIATELY take the Fell Flight invocation so I can fly under my own power, and then to IMMEDIATELY purches a floor length dress. I'll be floating like a wraith, but at least I'll be more or less where I was before.


Lime in the Coconut

So we saddle up, and fly back to the village. The Swashbuckler and Dragon Shaman have to help me into Papa HeeNos underground...hut...thing. But we all get situated. He's put his bones away by now, and it looks like he's been busy. The entire hut looks like its contents have been rearranged. He laughs when we tell him what happened, and asks for the bag. He fondles the head through the fabric, nodding to himself when he feels the snakes. Says that he's very glad she's dead, and that he's gonna cut the snakes off and put them around the village to ward off outsiders... that it'll keep them all safer, longer.
Then he says that "The spirits got two boons for each of ya now."
He has the kobold sit in the middle of the table, with me leaning in behind him. The swashbuckler and dragon shaman sat on either side of the two of us. First, he says, he's giving us all a boon of knowledge (but he points at me and says "Dis boon for ya, most of all"). He pulls a cage down from over his shoulder, full of the tiny little white mice. He opens the door and says "Allright now I need ten of ya babies to help Papa HeeNo now" and ten of them scurry out. They're still moving like mice, randomly, darting around, but they all moved out as a group all the same. He shut the door to the cage, still teeming with the other rodents, and left it there on the table.
Then he scoops up a cup and pushes one of the mice into it. The other nine just run around the patterns on the outside of the table, never crossing into where the runes and symbols and letters are. He gestures to me and leans across the table, until we're almost nose to nose, before saying one word. "Priest". Only he says it "Prees-Tah". I arch my eyebrows in surprise, and he goes on "Ah ya be knowin him den. Da spirits don't lie do dey? Dis Prees-Tah, he a bad man. He doin bad tings, da spirits don't like him none at all."
Papa HeeNo cups his hand over the cup and starts rattling it around ruthlessly, probably bludgeoning the hell out of the poor mouse inside, before uncupping his hand and pouring the mouse out into the middle of the table. The mouse runs in a dizzy circle, before finally coming to rest, at which point Papa HeeNo SLAMS a thin iron spike down through the base of the mouses neck and into one of the symbols.
Our group reaciton was "OH!"
He scoops another mouse into the cup and repeats the process. "Da spirits... dey gonna tell us where ya be findin more about dis Prees-Tah. Dey gonna show where ya goin to learn ta stop stop him."
He pours out another mouse, waits for it to stop and SLAMS another spike down into the table. He does it with all ten of them, before looking down at the pattern the mice formed, and mouthing wordlessly.
"Papa HeeNo dont know what dis here means. But da Spirits say YOU do" pointing at me directly.

As an aside, this next part is something me and the DM set up ahead of this session. It was setting this up that PROBABLY saved my character. Spiderclimbing up a wall while fighting a medusa was a poor tactical decision, and the fact that I lost my legs instead of shettering entirely is probably because our DM wanted the plans to carry on.
He hasn't SAID that, it's just the vibe I get :smalltongue:

Papa Heeno just says one simple sentence. "Mercyglade"
I just stare blankly at him, before replying quietly "The asylum".
The factotum asks what asylum, and I respond "The asylum they put me in when I started talking back to the voices."
The table (the REAL table, the one the players are sitting at) is quiet for a minute, and the swashbuckler leans off to the side and says "I now take a 5-foot step AWAY from the warlock..."
We all laugh, and then the game continues.
Papa HeeNo nods and goes on "Ya be goin back to Mercyglade. Ya be findin more about dis Prees-Tah. Ya be learning how ta stop him."

I just nod quietly, looking conerned to the point of illness. Then he pulled out the spikes, scooped the dead mice into another box, poured some white liquid into it, closed it, and shook it all around while chanting. When he opened the box to pour the contents back into the cage with the mice, the ten 'helpers' he'd spiked all looked completely normal, hale, and healthy.
Then HeeNo reaches into the box next to his table and starts pulling out odd little trinkets.
The Swashbuckler gets a little wooden ring, intricately carved around the entire length. He says it'll give him more magic, and help him use it better. It turns out that the ring gives him an extra four first-level spell slots, and lets him cast first level spells as a swift action twice a day.
The Factotum gets some kind of sandals. They're more like leather circles that go under the arch of the foot, and lace up around the ankles. They turn out to give him an extra 10 feet move rate, and let him make some downright ridiculous jump checks. Which is exactly what he wants out of life. It also gave him two extra inspiration points.
The Dragon Shaman gets what looks like tiny golden webs made out of delicate feathers, that Papa HeeNo draps over the spikes on his wings. The golden clings to the dragon shamans skin, and will allow him to fly for three times as long as he could otherwise. When he gets the ability to fly indefinately, the feathers will increase his maneuverability by one step.
I get a pair of black leather wrist braces, laced, and covered in red runes. There are holes for more lacework to be done, and one thin silver chain laced on lower left brace. He also gave me a matching set of short black leather straps, and an additional chain. The way the extra straps sat, it looked like a loopy X made to go over a sphere. I had a clue what the extra bit was for. The braces themselves pumped up my eldritch blast by 2d6, and gave me an extra invocation of the lowest level (still no fell flight).

Papa HeeNo says "Okay, da girl got the knowledge, ya all got ya tings. Three boons left". He pulls out three bottles of foul black sludge, and hands one each to the swashbuckler and dragon shaman. He tells the kobold to put his hands face down on the table in front of him, and sets the third bottle between them.
He tells the two holding the bottles to drink. They hesitate, naturally, and he says "Drink now before ya makin the spirits angry". Since we're adventurers, and doing stupid things is just a matter of course for us, they both chug the bottles together while cringing. Then they both immediately pass out onto the floor together.
Before me or the kobold can react, HeeNo pulls out two more of those iron spikes and SLAMS them down through the center of the kobolds hands, nailed them to the table. As the kobold scream, HeeNo, fast and practiced, opened the bottle and pours it out over both of his hands, before putting his hand on the kobolds face and SHOVES him back so hard his hands slide up over the tops of the spikes, leaving them still in the table and covered in blood and a nasty black syrup.
The kobold topples back, knocking us both to the ground, and passes out on top of me. Papa HeeNo moved too fast to respond to, stepping over the table in one motion, and leaning down over me. I manage to get out "Was this a double cross?" before HeeNo exhales a black cloud of smoke in my face, saying "Sleep Now Girl".


Ja Boons

We all come to at about the same time. Sitting out in the sunlight, laying in the middle of the village clearing, coming to with the worst headaches any of us have had. We ran over to the roots of HeeNo's hut, but it seemed to be nothing but dirt underneath. The entrance was gone.
It turned out, whatever HeeNo had done was a blessing of some kind though. The Swashbuckler got +2 Dex and another first level spell known (which he didn't consider too hot, but we talked him into taking Protection from Evil. Since he's our strongest attacker, we like the idea of him having a buffer against being mind-controlled).
The Dragon Shaman got a +2 to CON and a +2 to CHA, as well as being able to manifest two auras at once (he checked, he can still take the double-draconic aura feats to manifest three at once, at some point). Pretty darn handy, as the extra CON is actually another three rounds of flying for him, and the extra CHA increases the multiplier for how many Lay On Hands healing points he has).

The Kobold got it the coolest though. When we checked, his hands had two perfect holes through them in the shape of eyes. The skin around them was jet black, and the black was spreading rapidly. If you looked closely, you could actually see it bleeding ever so gradually into his normal skin color. By nightfall, the black will have encompassed him entirely, and given him the Shadow template.
Shadow Kobold. Wicked.
He's trying to decide between Fast Healing 2 or Damage Reduction 5/magic for his shadowy perk.


Now, we have a problem here. A combination of me getting more into the flow or writing, and this session being very roleplaying-heavy with less combat, means we're actually only HALF of the way through tuesday night session, and this post is allready ridiculously huge.

I'm going to stop and post this while I work on the rest of this session, and HOPEFULLY I'll have the second part up before our next game saturday. I'll work on being a little more concise in the future.

TheCountAlucard
2009-06-10, 07:50 PM
That was pretty awesome, SCS. :smallsmile:

You know, when I got down to the part where characters started turning to stone, I was actually pretty worried. :smalleek:

SilverClawShift
2009-06-10, 08:01 PM
We were fairly concerned as well. Our DM WILL let us TPK ourselves. The tactically sound thing to do would have been to call down the bats immediately and not get involved directly. That's probably what he expected us to do, in retrospect.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-06-10, 10:17 PM
SilverClawShift...words cannot express your awesomeness. Thank you so much, and have an internet.

Oh, and your scaly friend should most definitely take Fast Healing. That means that not only will he start every encounter with full powers (inspiration points FTW), he will also start with full health, assuming a decent time interval between the fights. DR 5/magic gets useless after a while, when every NPC and his mother are using magic weapons.

arguskos
2009-06-10, 10:21 PM
SCS, it does sorta seem like you got a touch shafted on the loot section of the evening. You had that AWESOME sequence with Papa HeeNo (great to see a player who works with the DM, by the way), but you ended the night with a plot point, one piece of nice gear and no legs. Everyone else? One piece of awesome gear and inherent stat bonuses (far more valuable than gear). Yeah, you can fix your own lack of legs, but it still sorta sucks that you lost your legs and they all got bonuses.

I guess your DM is so good though that somehow, that'll be compensated for, but yeah, I'd be sorta "aww, I don't get anything cool? :smallfrown:". I do hope you get something awesome though.

In any case, awesomely cool session, can't wait to see the next one, like always with your stuff. :smallbiggrin:

Lochar
2009-06-10, 10:37 PM
Actually, if you notice, he only got through half the Tuesday night session.

arguskos
2009-06-10, 10:47 PM
Actually, if you notice, he only got through half the Tuesday night session.
Yeah, that is true, though it was implied the legs weren't fixed. Just a note that I felt like making. If I've jumped the gun though SCS, feel free to smack me into place. :smallwink:

pingcode20
2009-06-10, 10:55 PM
Yeah, that is true, though it was implied the legs weren't fixed. Just a note that I felt like making. If I've jumped the gun though SCS, feel free to smack me into place. :smallwink:

That, and it literally is a custom plot point made specifically for SCS, and her alone. Everyone else got a weird black potion, SCS got the spotlight.

No doubt there'll be something of real significance to be had there specifically for her - it would make sense, being a visit to her backstory and all.

SilverClawShift
2009-06-10, 11:17 PM
but you ended the night with a plot point, one piece of nice gear and no legs.

You picked up that the nice gear I got is going to be directly related to Priest, right? :smallwink:

He has a crystal orb that can catch eldritch blasts, I have wrist braces that boost eldriitch blasts and a leather loopy strap and chain designed to strap on over an orb. This is going to work well in the long run, I know it.


That, and it literally is a custom plot point made specifically for SCS, and her alone. Everyone else got a weird black potion, SCS got the spotlight.

This.

Our DM likes to break out some limelight for us as individuals. Sometimes it's something small (like the horror campaign, with the Warforged scaring the CRAP out of all of us set up ahead of times, or the paladin having the DM drop a Spidereus Ex Machina on a villain who was about to beat us).
Sometimes it turns out to be bigger, when the central plot and a character fit together nicely.

Our swashbuckler player, for instance, we had an entire pirate CAMPAIGN once, complete with the most overly enchated ship you ever done seen, and the swashbuckler literally sailed the ship off into the sky at one point.
The rest of the players? We were his crew. He gave the orders, point blank, no mutiny, for real :smalltongue:

The factotum player was once a Favored Soul who wound up being the head of his church, at higher levels, leading armies of paladins against a war he declared on hell itself.

The Dragon Shaman player is USUALLY more content just stabbing things and making the peoples fall down. Sometimes he gets into games more than others. I don't want to spoil my own game here, but the way the Dragon Shaman keeps mentioning redeeming the schizo binder chick... Well, anyway.

Our DM tries to make us all feel special (we ARE the main characters, after all), but sometimes one character naturally pulls out ahead in a story. We'll see what happens here.
I definately got fewer cool toys, but I'm definately WAY more roped into the game than I was before (And I was allready fully hooked :smalltongue:)

*************************************

Also, remember that in the horror campaign, I became undead and could go ethereal on a whim. The duskblade? Got a rapier and a non-magical schoolmarm outfit :smalltongue:

Kyeudo
2009-06-11, 12:49 AM
I can't wait for the next installment. This is the most awesome thing since Exalted.


Oh, and your scaly friend should most definitely take Fast Healing. That means that not only will he start every encounter with full powers (inspiration points FTW), he will also start with full health, assuming a decent time interval between the fights. DR 5/magic gets useless after a while, when every NPC and his mother are using magic weapons.

I second this advice. Your scaly friend will want the fast healing.

Kosjsjach
2009-06-11, 01:39 AM
I can't wait I can't wait I can't wait I can't wait I can't wait I can't wait I can't wait... :smallbiggrin:

llamamushroom
2009-06-11, 03:26 AM
SCS, your gaming group is insane in all the best ways. Seriously, a war on hell itself? That is cool.

Also, the bats sound mighty helpful (especially now), and the Dragon Shaman (character, not player) sounds very tight about the "dramatic irony" issue. On the plus side, the image of floating warlock blasting her foes while in a full length ballgown is awesome, and it's a good thing your character isn't male (though, listening to Groundskeeper Willie at Scotchtoberfest...).

wadledo
2009-06-11, 10:59 AM
Also, remember that in the horror campaign, I became undead and could go ethereal on a whim. The duskblade? Got a rapier and a non-magical schoolmarm outfit :smalltongue:

Hey, schoolmarm's is cool.

Raz_Fox
2009-06-11, 01:28 PM
SilverClawShift, I'm sure you've gotten positively sick of all the praise, adoration, lauding and praise you've gotten in this thread, simply because you and your group have a surplus of imagination, creativity and knowledge.

However, instead of gushing about how you are awesomist person evah can you sign my character sheet, I'm going to give you a little titbit of knowledge.

I used to like 3.5 - because it was the only RPG system I'd ever heard of. When 4th Ed came out, I realized I liked it better. Then I stumbled upon Scion and Decipher's LOTR RPG, and liked them even more. I hated 3.5's horrible rules for calculating monster difficulty, how weak the PCs were, how boring some of the classes were and how complex others were, how the focus seemed to shift from roleplaying to numbers. I play to tell stories about characters, and 3.5... just didn't work for me without crunching and work.

Having heard that, know this: I am strongly considering finding a 3.5 game now because of what I've been reading. Despite the fact that I threw it aside once I found other RPGs, having read all this made me want to roll up a ranger or a rogue, a swashbuckler or even a bard in 3.5.

Congratulations on creating a story that made a gamer willing to switch sides in the edition wars. :smallsmile:

Kyeudo
2009-06-11, 01:51 PM
Alright, SCS, you've now got Raz the Rogue Mage lauding your game. You have officially made it in the world of roleplaying.

SilverClawShift
2009-06-11, 04:10 PM
Seriously, a war on hell itself?

Technically he declared war on the seventh layer of hell specifically, and its archdevil Baalzebul, any other devils caught in it were collateral damage.

The best part was the reason though. A single man, a first level commoner at that, had made a deal with an evil cult. It wasn't in exchange for his soul, it was an exchange in food and aid for his struggling family until the harvest season came up to yeild better crops. The cult sabotaged his crops so he couldn't afford to hold up his end of the deal, and then "lawfully executed" him (read, ritually sacrificed him) and sent his soul to hell.
Our favored soul decided their sabotage was a breach of contract, rendering it null and void, and that the man should not have been harassed (let alone executed) over the event.
He even tried to get messages to Baalzebul himself (and asmodeus when that didn't work) for a legal discussion on the matter. Neither gave any formal acknoledgment.

So the favored soul kidnapped the entire cult, executed the entire group on sanctified grounds, telling them to tell their masters "Formal war has been declared".

And it was waged. Church officials called him a lunatic, asked if all the resulting bloodshed (and probably destabilization of the universe at large) was worth a single soul. his response was "A single innocent soul. And yes."
We stormed the first layer through various inter-planar portals, held the archdevil of the first hostage (and even sent a battalion of the churches armies to help the devils hold the front line in the blood war! we didn't want the whole universe collapsing over this).
Fought our way down to the seventh layer and saved the farmer. Were told explicitly by a slightly bemused Asmodeus (whos voice causes nosebleeds and naseua, and sounds like a mixture of thunder rolling in with the shrill of a million babies shrieking in pain) that our presence had been entertaining, but that we were to LEAVE, now.

The favored soul ordered a tactical retreat. Cause I mean. Asmodeus. DAMN. But we still did what we went for.


it's a good thing your character isn't male

That'd be no problem. Floor length duster/matrix-coat of some kind. I'll stick with the floor length dresses though :smalltongue:


Having heard that, know this: I am strongly considering finding a 3.5 game now because of what I've been reading. Despite the fact that I threw it aside once I found other RPGs, having read all this made me want to roll up a ranger or a rogue, a swashbuckler or even a bard in 3.5.

I'm honored! Seriously!

Personally, I think what edition (or even what GAME) you're playing means way, way less than who you're playing with, and everyone adopting the same mentality and working toegether for the experience.
It doesn't matter if you're playing a D20 game, or call of cthulhu, or shadowrun, or even if you're just sitting around to play "Fantasy Improv!", what's REALLY important is a group cooperating towards whatever end you all want to go towards. Compromise on unimportant things, make suggestions when you have flashes of inspiration, don't be a douchebag, ect...

My group likes 3.5 D&D just because it's what we started with, learned mostly inside and out, and have huge piles of books, web content, ect, ect for... Our DM knows it all well enough to stay one step ahead of us (95% of the time at least, even he rolls the occasional metaphorical 'one')
But we've played Shadowrun, and D20 Call of Cthulhu, and so on, and it's all gravy.

3.5 does have a whimsical charm though. There's nothing else quite exactly like a bipedal dragon punching a spider-centaur thing in the face while wizards teleport innocent bystanders to saftey.

In any event, I'm very flattered, and glad everyone is enjoying this so much :smallsmile:

evil-frosty
2009-06-11, 04:18 PM
That favored soul is now my favorite character of all time, that is just epic. That farmer should feel very important.

How was your character participating when she was stone? I dont remember reading that the party turned you back, i thought they were waiting to get a raise dead or something for fear of what might have happened to your legs since they are non existent. Did i miss something?

Lilienthal
2009-06-11, 04:24 PM
My group likes 3.5 D&D just because it's what we started with, learned mostly inside and out, and have huge piles of books, web content, ect, ect for... Our DM knows it all well enough to stay one step ahead of us (95% of the time at least, even he rolls the occasional metaphorical 'one')
But we've played Shadowrun, and D20 Call of Cthulhu, and so on, and it's all gravy.

I think everyone else will agree that the next game your group should play is a Call of Cthulhu horro campaign. :smallbiggrin:

Also, damn. Raiding your way through seven layers of hell for a single soul? The man's got balls. (and issues :smallsmile:)


Silverclaw, could you add a breakdown of your group to your next update? Just the basics like race and class and so, because it's getting harder and harder to keep everyone apart. And how long have you guys been playing together? Your group seems to have a very relaxed and mature playing style compared to some things I've seen. :smallwink:

SilverClawShift
2009-06-11, 04:56 PM
That favored soul is now my favorite character of all time, that is just epic.

It was ridiculous, yes. The best part is, we were nowhere NEAR the numerical level we should have been for storming hell itself. We weren't even epic levels!
The only reason anything we did worked, was because the favored soul had the cajones to keep going at such a rapid place, no one in position to counter us honestly beleived we'd DO it.
"They wouldn't really declare a formal war on Baalzebul...?"
EXECUTION
"They wouldn't honestly storm blindly through these disconnected portals with no pre-intelligence and a complete lack of battle strategy?"
THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF SCREAMING PALADINS!
"They wouldn't really fight the front line of the bloodwar AND keep marching on?"
SPLIT UP!!!!!
"Did that squishy bag of meat with wings who can't even cast ninth level spells seriously just point at Tiamat and tell her to 'Stay the f*** out of this'?"
YES HE DID!

Our DM tried to brutalize us. We just kept attacking blind and sideways until we got where we were going.


How was your character participating when she was stone? I dont remember reading that the party turned you back

They did. They stood around debating it, and then decided to bring me back sans-legs for fear of the gruesome possibilities of trying to patch me back together.
I suppose I could have made that a little more explicit.


Silverclaw, could you add a breakdown of your group to your next update? Just the basics like race and class and so

Do you mean real names, or character names? I don't use any formal names because it sounds silly in my head (not to mention, it adds a whole nother layer on keeping the writing straight).

I gave a little breakdown in the first post, but here's some more.

Class: Dragon Shaman
Gender: Male
Race: Dragonborn of Bahamut (a humanoid dragon, basically)
Attitude: Holy, Good, and Virtuous. Captain of the ship.

Class: Factotum
Gender: Male
Race: Kobold (with shiny nwe Shadow template)
Attitude: Neutral, quick, and kinda sketchy. Likes moving fast, and stealing things.

Class: Warlock
Gender: Female
Race: Human (sans legs)
Attitude: Emo. Vaguely and unspecifically evil. Not "Let's end the world!" evil, just not a good person.

Class: Swashbuckler/Sorcerer
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Attitude: "I stabs the people and they stop moving. Sometimes I cast True Strike first. I like being not-dead!" He's got a fairly simple outlook to most games :smalltongue:

arguskos
2009-06-11, 05:07 PM
I guess that's a good point about the wrap there SCS. I didn't catch that it could cover the sphere Priest had, which changes my thoughts about it significantly. I'll be happy to retract my statement, and toss yet another "****ING AWESOME!" into the pile. :smallwink:

Hopin' the next installment comes swiftly!

SilverClawShift
2009-06-11, 05:21 PM
I'll be happy to retract my statement

You'll be interested to know the Swashbuckler actually thinks HE got the shortest end of the stick.
"whoo. Spells"
It'll hit him eventually that a power-attacking character who can cast True Strike like 6 times a day as a swift action is going to be lopping off heads like no tommorrow.

And I'm working on it. Hopefully by tommorrow :smallsmile:

arguskos
2009-06-11, 05:38 PM
You'll be interested to know the Swashbuckler actually thinks HE got the shortest end of the stick.
"whoo. Spells"
It'll hit him eventually that a power-attacking character who can cast True Strike like 6 times a day as a swift action is going to be lopping off heads like no tommorrow.

And I'm working on it. Hopefully by tommorrow :smallsmile:
Really? He has spells, as swift actions, and has Power Attack, and REALLY? That's... pretty amazing. I was all like "...o.O?!?" when I saw what he got (I have characters that have killed for lesser trinkets).

Lilienthal
2009-06-11, 05:46 PM
Do you mean real names, or character names? I don't use any formal names because it sounds silly in my head (not to mention, it adds a whole nother layer on keeping the writing straight).

No, I just meant what you summed up, since I started losing track of who was who in your group halfway through page three. (For a while I was under the impression that you had a dragonborn swashbuckler and a human Dragon Shaman ^^.) And yeah, just stating the class is a lot easier for everyone to remember, character names being what the usually are. (i.e. too damn complicated =p)


(I have characters that have killed for lesser trinkets).

Arguably because that's one of the only things PCs can do to get trinkets in the first place. :smallwink:

arguskos
2009-06-11, 05:53 PM
Arguably because that's one of the only things PCs can do to get trinkets in the first place. :smallwink:
That's a good point you make. Of course, most wizards can make their own damn magical trinkets. Mine are just lazy.:smallwink:

SilverClawShift
2009-06-11, 06:37 PM
And yeah, just stating the class is a lot easier for everyone to remember, character names being what the usually are. (i.e. too damn complicated =p)

That's why our DM rarely names people or places, and when he does it's something whimsical and catchy. Like Macguiller. For some reason we were like "AH, GOOD OLD MACGUILLER. WE'LL REMEMBER YOU FOREVER"

He usually just lets us name things. Like "The Drifter". When we started calling him that, that's just what the DM started calling him too :smalltongue:. It probably helps that we picked the creepiest way possible to describe the guy.


Really? and REALLY?

Yeah, really. I think he's not impressed because it's not as 'flashy'? He can't fly, he isn't gradually evolving into a living shadow, and it's not plot-relevant.
He's not offended at all, he's happy with how things are going. He just thought his hookup was the low-scale one, when actually it turned him into a magical human blender.

RelentlessImp
2009-06-11, 06:51 PM
It was ridiculous, yes. The best part is, we were nowhere NEAR the numerical level we should have been for storming hell itself. We weren't even epic levels!
The only reason anything we did worked, was because the favored soul had the cajones to keep going at such a rapid place, no one in position to counter us honestly beleived we'd DO it.
"They wouldn't really declare a formal war on Baalzebul...?"
EXECUTION
"They wouldn't honestly storm blindly through these disconnected portals with no pre-intelligence and a complete lack of battle strategy?"
THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF SCREAMING PALADINS!
"They wouldn't really fight the front line of the bloodwar AND keep marching on?"
SPLIT UP!!!!!
"Did that squishy bag of meat with wings who can't even cast ninth level spells seriously just point at Tiamat and tell her to 'Stay the f*** out of this'?"
YES HE DID!


Okay, I was laughing my way through reading this, and then I hit the bolded part. My dog ran in barking like mad to see what was wrong with me - I don't scream with laughter very often. Please tell the person playing that Favored Soul they are now my favorite person ever, and would have gotten a cookie if it'd been Asmodeus they'd said that to.

I'm sitting here giggling every time I reread it now. That's priceless.

GreatWyrmGold
2009-06-11, 07:59 PM
Great! Many of my quotes are from this thread.

Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This thread is :smallcool::smallcool::smallcool::smallcool::small cool::smallcool:

Etc etc random praise I want to see more soon.

arguskos
2009-06-11, 08:01 PM
Yeah, really. I think he's not impressed because it's not as 'flashy'? He can't fly, he isn't gradually evolving into a living shadow, and it's not plot-relevant.
He's not offended at all, he's happy with how things are going. He just thought his hookup was the low-scale one, when actually it turned him into a magical human blender.
Huh. Well, I guess that in your games, getting a sweet item might just be the most boring thing there. It's pretty true that the other guys got some awesome stuff. Let the Swashbuckler know about the True Strike+charghpowahatksmash. :smallwink: That'll brighten his day.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-06-11, 08:38 PM
SilverClawShift...

I wish I was more articulate so that I could actually contribute meaningfully to describing the awesomeness of this thread and everything related to it.

Roc Ness
2009-06-13, 12:22 AM
Good golly, you lost your legs!

I bet the rules don't cover that.

evil-frosty
2009-06-13, 01:14 AM
AH. Roc Ness i saw that the thread was on the front page again and i thought SCS posted more about the campaign you got me all excited for nothing. And do the rules cover losing the use of your legs?

Roc Ness
2009-06-13, 01:18 AM
Dunno. I know little to nothing about the rules, but I think there are rules on growing legs back but not on how to hack them off.

vicente408
2009-06-13, 01:45 AM
Dunno. I know little to nothing about the rules, but I think there are rules on growing legs back but not on how to hack them off.

Hehe, if we had some that would be the core of Dead Space the RPG. :smallamused:

Lilienthal
2009-06-13, 04:53 AM
I thought there were rules about that, but it seems I was mistaken, or at least I can't find them. There are some spells that will grow back lost limbs, sometimes as part of a resurrection spell.

I thought there was a Critical Hit variant in the DM Guide which included loss of limb but it's probably a custom rule I picked up somewhere. There is a passage about damage to specific limbs or sensory organs in the DMG but as a temporary ailment. It gives you a good idea of what actions are impaired when you lose a leg though:
http://laughingman.eu/img/limbdamage.png

As well as hampered skillchecks, loss of both legs likely results in a penalty to dexterity and possibly constitution, a significant and permanent loss of hitpoints, inability to carry heavy loads and other things which crop up in roleplay outside of combat. Suffice to say that the result isn't pretty in any way. :smallwink:

SilverClawShift
2009-06-13, 06:12 AM
Second half of the last session, GO:

So we finished testing out the new toys Papa HeeNo gave us, and content like adventurers always are (read: immediately looking for the next great conquest) we set back off for our ship. The other players had to help me onto my bat, and the humiliation and frustration resultant meant that I pretty much vowed to never LEAVE my bat again, until I was capable of flying under my own power (or found an upgraded mount).
We made our way back to the SS Ironman, and found she was still unhassled (along with the hiding skeleton crew). So with some difficulty we pushed back down the river and continued sailing further up. the other path. On deck, we took a closer look at the two six-sided dice the dragon shaman had found in the medusas gear.
One die was mostly incomprehensible arcane symbols. Knowledge Arcana skill checks revealed a little more about what they meant. The symbols were summed up as "Draconic", "Giant", "Skeletal", "Fiendish", "Unnatural", and "Swarm". The other die had animal symbols on it. A Wolf, a Bird, a Spider, a Tiger, a Rabbit, and a Humanoid. Knowledge checks turned up nothing.
Factotum: ...Well? Throw em!

So we cleared a spot on the deck and the dragon shaman rolled the dice. It came up "Giant" and "Tiger". For a moment nothing happened, but then the dice turned solid black, and a HUGE tiger flashed into existance standing above them. The tiger looked at us, roared, and charged in attack. It was strong, but we still managed to mop it up with a minimum of real danger. The dice had turned solid black, but we could see they were slowly changing color. We figured that was our indicator of how long before we could use them again, but it was too early to tell if it was once a day, or a few times per day, or what.
The dice seemed... interesting. They were a wild card, for sure. It was obvious that it summoned a monster based on what roll came up, but the monster clearly also had no loyalty to the dice-thrower. Hopefully it would just attack everything nearby at random, meaning we could find ways to use it to our advantage (clear range, have kobold throw dice from rafter, watch chaos).

We sailed up river, looking at the shoreline for anything suspicious. Finally, we saw another ship anchored by some trees up ahead... and closer examination? Revealed that the thing was utterly swarming with insects. In fact, they were swarming so thickly that the entire vessel was in a thick black cloud of them. Even from the other ship, we could tell that some of them looked clearly dangerous. There was no way we were going to board the ship.
The Factotum raised the possibility that the bugs were some kind of defense mechanism. A shield for the ship or something, while the owner is away. It was working. We kept our distance from the cloud of possibly venomous insects (possibly carrying malaria or something). But we knew this was a lead we had to check up on. Especially when we snaked around the ship and got ot the shore, only to find an obvious trail of insects crushed under human feat leading off into the trees.
Naturally we stumbled off in that direction, tracking down whoever it was. What did confuse us was that it was only one set of tracks leading away from the boat. Either the person at the helm could handle it all alone (less than likely), or they were pulling some shenanigans like us with a fake crew. Either way, the person we were tracking was not someone to take lightly, so we approached cautiously, amazed at the sheer number of crunched bug corpses strewn about. At one point during the tracking, we found a crystal-cantrip casting bug crushed under foot, and looted the two remaining crystals (mage hand ones, oddly enough).
We actually had to track for two days at a brisk pace, with a few small random animal encounters on the way. Finally we came to a valley, and saw where we were going. It was another zigarut... one that was almost IDENTICAL to the one back on the egyptian continent. Only this one was unearthed, and came almost to the top of the very very deep valley. It was easily fifty stories, with a base the size of several city blocks.
Our DM had us roll spot checks, and we noticed that, in this area? Things weren't quite right. The vegetation was growing in strange patterns. Leaves were thicker in some areas as opposed to broader. Insects had odd numbers of legs, too many legs... we found spiders with wings. Lizards with multiple eyes.. and so on. Like this area was full of mutations or something.
We suspected the zigarut as the cause, and pressed on, following the tracks to the base. We could see no way in, but that wasn't our primary concern, since the tracks actually led up the side. So we just flew up, keeping an eye for where the dead insects were the heaviest, until we finally saw it leading into a crack in the side of one of the levels (give or take thirty stories up).
We squeezed in (literally, it was a squeeze for large creatuers, and the bats are large) and continued following the tracks. There were bugs on everything, and the further in we got, the thicker they seemed to get. It was the earlier zigarut all over again... the deeper we got, the more we heard this creepy insane muttering in an entire smattering of languages. The babble would go from common, to infernal, to celestial, to ignan, to a language none of us knew, and back again...
And again, we round a corner to find our beloved Drifter pacing thru a massive swarm of bugs, angrily babbeling to himself in a way that only the insane can seem to muster. A lot of it we didn't understand, but we did catch the phrases "Ultimate Parasite" and "ascension".

We remember what happened last time. This guy almost single handedly took out our party. We were debating trying to sneak attack him, or wether we should try to start a dialogue (from a distance obviously) when our decision was made for us. Some of the nearby bugs started chittering and flying at an increased intensity. So intense that it spread like a wave, the entire open chamber the drifter was in turned into a scream of tiny insect wings as they alterted him to our presence. He turned to the doorway, and muttered louder "Who who who who?"
So... we got ready for grief and poked our heads around the corner.
He barely even reacts to recognizing us. Just mutters "Bothering us again again still bothering us thought we killed them priest was right they're still alive bothering us". He stuck his tongue out and pulled a centipede crawling across his face in with it and bit down with a crunch.
Our factotum starts to say "We don't want to fight, we just want to know what's going on" But the drifter just angrily mutters "no no no don't listen to them we're done here anyway we have to leave".
And with that, giant insectoid wings tear out through his back and through the filthy rags he wears, and he immmediately begins fluttering up into the darkness. Now we start to fly up after him, but we're hit with another massive swarm of stinging venomous insects. By this level, we're fighting them off pretty well... and we think we'll be able to do a general mop-up with fire breath and high-level tricks, but that's right around the time the giant spiders descended from the ceiling on silen strands, and the spellcasting bugs began swarming us (hitting us with FIREBALLS and VAMPIRIC TOUCH :smalleek:). We were defiantely outgunned, and actually took to running away once our hitpoints got too low, and the bugs showed no sign of stopping. The factotum did manage to pocket three Fireball crystals though.
By the time we fought our way back into the daylight (where the majority of the bugs didn't venture back out into), we couldn't see the Drifter in any direction. He was probably crafty enough to duck down into the trees, rather than soaring blatantly through the mid-day sun. We flew back to the ship, and the Drifters ship still sat there, still cloaked in a cloud of angry bugs. He'd either taken off on his wings, or he'd hidden below deck. We landed on the deck of our own ship (and lit his ship on fire from a distance, just to be sure) and eagerly set off to get back down the river.

It was around this time that it hit me. Our bats had taken a severe pounding during the bug fight, and they were now critically important to my survival and sanity. I took my own bat down below decks to keep him safe and out of harms way, and began thinking of ways to start healing/protecting him a little better for the next few levels. We don't have any reliable way to generate negative energy, so right now he's sitting at dangerously low hitpoints and I'm feeling remarkably vulnerable.
We've discussed it a bit since then. Cleric (for Inflict spells) is out, because only one of us have the WIS necessary, and he's not multiclassing. I hate to delay my warlock progression any, and I certainly am looking forward to getting Fell Flight as quick as possible, but I may take a level of Dread Necromancer the next time we level, just for the ability to pump unlimited negative healing into my now-oh-so-important SkyRat. It's not like I don't allready have the whole "undead aficionado" thing going for me.

We're still up in the air about what to do now. Mercyglade Asylum is back in the temperate continent controlled by the royal empire. Even the Dragon Shaman thinks going there as soon as possible is a good idea. We also know that the villains plot is starting to come together, and we do want to bring the heat to them.
Going to Mercyglade first will probably give us some critical backstory, and maybe even a necessary key to winning The Good Fight(tm). On the other hand, we're adventurers, and we can probably pull off something Just Crazy Enough To Work(tm) if we go straight to the other zigarut.

Or next game is tonight, so we'll see what happens.

And WHEW, all caught up. It's a good feeling. This is a little shorter than the first half, even though it took about the same length of time. Out of necessity, I cut back a little on the extra details, so I could have the core critical stuff posted before our next game session (if I start falling behind, things'll get very abrupt when I'm trying to write it all out :smalltongue:)

Glad everyone's still enjoying my ramblings though. :smallsmile:

Roc Ness
2009-06-13, 06:45 AM
Bet he wants to be god of insectoids.

13_CBS
2009-06-13, 06:50 AM
Just wondering...

There are definitely binders in this game.

Does that mean that...


...the three newest spirits, aka your rogue, the warforged bard, and the creepy paladin, are available for binding in this game?

Frog Dragon
2009-06-13, 06:55 AM
From that I'd guess the Drifter is actually some kind of giant magical insect in disguise.

SilverClawShift
2009-06-13, 06:59 AM
There are definitely binders in this game.

Does that mean that...

Yes actually, we have those in our list of vestiges, and our DM considers them fair game to use anytime someone's a binder. That doesn't necessarily mean we'll see them though.


From that I'd guess the Drifter is actually some kind of giant magical insect in disguise.

Actually MY first guess was that he's a verminlord from the Book of Vile Darkness. Either that, or it's an evil spell of some kind. We're thinking he's a druid, based on the spells he's got. Maybe a druid with some kind of ability to rebuke or command insects.
Or maybe he's just the evil boss fight and our DM is making this up as he goes.
Wait, scratch that. Our DM is DEFINATELY making it up as he goes ,he's been doing that for years :smalltongue:

Lilienthal
2009-06-13, 08:02 AM
Aah, the dice. I had a feeling I knew what they were going to do when you described them. They seem to be inspired by the Demon Dice (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoFfnZ-S28M) from American McGee's Alice, which also summoned a random, hostile creature. Could you ask him if that's where he got them from or if they are from another book? Maybe after the campaign wraps up if he doesn't feel inclined to answer. :smallsmile:

And I can see how you'd be worried about your personal flying segway breaking down. I suggest you get your factotum to roll a fiendish or unnatural bird with those dice and animate that after you kill it, provided they die and don't just desummon. Alternatively, I'm fairly sure that your DM will let you get away with an impromptu unholy ritual to infuse them with negative energy, but I doubt your scaly friend will approve. :smallwink:


Does your DM usually recycle a lot of game/movie/book ideas? A lot of the things he's conjurring up have a very familiar feel to them, one of them being the Drifter. He reminds me of Jean-Henri Fabre from Read or Die, the Fly (obviously) and one other story that I just can't seem to remember. :smallbiggrin:

Edit: I've just read a bit about the Verminlord from BoVD and it's likely that that's what you're dealing with. Knowing your DM I wouldn't put much faith in the class description though. :smallwink:

evil-frosty
2009-06-13, 09:18 AM
Ya when i read what Drifter did i thought he was a vermin lord or/and maybe some cancer mage. Or its just a complete homebrew class your DM has been working on without you:smalltongue:

Again another awesome session.

Rockbird
2009-06-13, 09:37 AM
First of all:
SCS is describing another campaign! Glee!
As has been said, this is awesome. And personally, i'd just like to say that when you shouldn't apologize for long posts, because long posts mean more awesome!

Secondly:
Could you maybe describe your party? As in, visually. I'm thinking of drawing fanart of your party. Because it is awesome.

Awesome.

SilverClawShift
2009-06-13, 01:05 PM
fanart of your party.

Fanart of a D&D party? Now I'm flattered :smalltongue: :smallredface:

The Dragon Shaman's is a Dragonborn of Bahamut, with the original race being a lesser Aasimar. So he's a bipedal (human sized) dragon that looks a little more perfect and celestial than your average dragonborn (but only slightly). He has wings, and is currently wearing Breastplate armor and using a morningstar and medium wooden shield.

The Swashbuckler is a human male, good STR, DEX, passable CHA and high INT. He's wearing leather armor, has a rapier at his side and a longsword on his back, and can quickdraw between the two.

I'm a human female, really high DEX, good CHA, low STR. Wearing leather armor (and leather bracers, for that matter) like a good creepy warlock. Unfortunately lacking legs, and probably not going to get them back unless we meet a high level cleric (doubtful). Long, stringy, flat black hair hanging over the face, and wild eyes, is how I picture her.
And as mentioned, when possible, I'm going to get a floor length gown of some kind, probably black and red like the armor.

The kobold was a normal looking (but unusually poised and intelligent) kobold with a shady streak. Now he's got eye-shaped holes pierced thru his palms and has the Shadow Creature template. So darker, and partially living shadow. Studded leather armor, small wooden shield, small longsword.

Deth Muncher
2009-06-13, 01:55 PM
The kobold was a normal looking (but unusually poised and intelligent) kobold with a shady streak. Now he's got eye-shaped holes pierced thru his palms and has the Shadow Creature template. So darker, and partially living shadow. Studded leather armor, small wooden shield, small longsword.

In all seriousness, perhaps he should look into a Darkwood Shield? For flavor purposes, of course.

Also, I was going to make a joke about his shady streak becoming a Shade-y streak, but I couldn't think of one. :smalltongue:

On the campaign thus far:

I, like everyone else, am sad I am not a part of this. I'm sad I don't have MMV so as to look at what these little clockwork buggies are, but I love what your DM is doing with them. In fact, I pretty much always love reading your campaign journals - I just realized I spent close to 3 hours reading this whole thread and enjoyed every moment of it. Other things I love: Zombieland. I actually had a feeling that's where it was leaning, and then "OHSNAP 30ZOMBIES" happened and I chuckled. Also, your DM gets super-props for helping out all of your characters get what they want - the kobold being stabbed through the hands made me gasp, but it's awesome. Let's just hope he doesn't need to hold anything smaller than the holes in his hands. Like...sand. Or something.

GreatWyrmGold
2009-06-13, 02:34 PM
Or next game is tonight...

Oh...I can't wait...

Rockbird
2009-06-13, 04:09 PM
Fanart of a D&D party? Now I'm flattered :smalltongue: :smallredface:


TBH from my perspective it's less like a D&D party and more like the leads of a wicked sweet story. :smallwink:

SilverClawShift
2009-06-13, 06:34 PM
I'm fairly sure that your DM will let you get away with an impromptu unholy ritual to infuse them with negative energy

He might let me somehow re-stitch them together as weaker versions of themselves and re-animate them once more. Or scavenge one of them for parts to bring a whole one back together. he likes outside the box thinking.
He also occasionally likes watching us suffer though, so he might suggest one of the players just drag me around on a rope -_-.


Does your DM usually recycle a lot of game/movie/book ideas?

He does. A lot of what goes on in our world is stuff from movies/books/games cobbled together in a new order. He's a firm beleiver that no artist ever creates anything without being influenced by what they've seen before in their lives. When it comes to gaming especially (which is ultimately just about having fun) he's more than happy to crib good ideas and wrap them around in new ways.
And honestly, I get the feeling the Drifter character is at least partially inspired by the homeless guy from Hellraiser :smalltongue:


Also, your DM gets super-props for helping out all of your characters get what they want


it's less like a D&D party and more like the leads of a wicked sweet story. :smallwink:

Those two are directly related.

That's how WE all think of it too. We're just some of the main characters in a story. If it's not fun (getting the occasional toy we wanted) or interesting (crazy stuff be happenin!) then what's the point? :smalltongue:

Olo Demonsbane
2009-06-13, 10:21 PM
Every time I get on to Giantitp.com, I check two things: If there is a new OOTS comic, and if there is a new installation of your journal.

BTW, there is a class called Master of Flies in Savage Species which looks pretty appropriate for the Drifter.

Roc Ness
2009-06-13, 11:07 PM
Every time I get on to Giantitp.com, I check two things: If there is a new OOTS comic, and if there is a new installation of your journal.


Indeed.

I get worried when both start going really long intervals without updates.

Kyeudo
2009-06-14, 01:55 AM
My suggestion: Get a new conveyance. While your bat is highly useful, using some of the skeletons to haul around a palanquin might work for things not too far from your ship. Just dress them in dark robes and make like a rich person.

Also, Scrolls and Oils of Inflict Wounds could help out as well.

Deth Muncher
2009-06-14, 02:13 AM
You know what might be absolutely funtastic? Making you an impromptu drider. As in, surgically apply yourself to a beast of your choice. I personally like the spider approach, but you could do it with anything - even the zombat, if you really wanted to, I suppose. Or, you could just wait until you can find something with "Regenerate." I figure the DM has been pretty facilitating to you guys so far, if you make mention that being a paraplegic is inhibiting your character, he'd do something about it.

Alternatively, see if he'd let you get THE CLOCKWORK ARMOR. I don't have a link to it, but it's in the WotC archives. Essentially, it's Iron Man's armor (freezing problem and all), and you might get the DM to rule that you can work the leg bits, given that it has levers inside of it that you have to set. Or maybe like a half-version, for just your legs. Perhaps you could get Macguiller on it, since he's been growing clockwork buggies for you. I dunno, this is sleep-deprived ramblings getting the better of me.

Lilienthal
2009-06-14, 04:14 AM
And honestly, I get the feeling the Drifter character is at least partially inspired by the homeless guy from Hellraiser :smalltongue:

Ah yes, that's probably the one I couldn't remember.

I'll second that you need to get a new form of transportation, preferably one with a high awesomeness-factor. I don't think you'll be very welcome anywhere other than the underdark or the demonweb pits if you sow yourself to a spider though. And the Clockwork Armor (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070212a) seems to be more of a hassle than a boon. When can you take Fell Flight?

Roc Ness
2009-06-14, 05:50 AM
Try wings of flying.

Kyeudo
2009-06-14, 10:44 AM
Idea: Get a twin brother to the swashbuckler's bug familiar that produces Inflict Wounds spells.

SilverClawShift
2009-06-14, 12:28 PM
Every time I get on to Giantitp.com, I check two things: If there is a new OOTS comic, and if there is a new installation of your journal.

:smallredface:


I get worried when both start going really long intervals without updates.

We only game twice a week, and I work full time. So best case scenario is a few posts here and there. I'll try not to neglect it for long stretches though.


Also, Scrolls and Oils of Inflict Wounds could help out as well.

We'd need to find a shop that sells them (well, would have. Some things have been updated as of the last campaign).


As in, surgically apply yourself to a beast of your choice.

You'd be surprised at how close you came to guessing what actually has happened so far.
It's occured to me that I can also take an invocation that lets me change into a spider of various sizes, and the DM said it would be a six-legged spider but remain perfectly mobile. Fell flight will be way cooler though, and I'm not far away from it.


When can you take Fell Flight?

As of last night when we leveled up again? One more level away...


Idea: Get a twin brother to the swashbuckler's bug familiar that produces Inflict Wounds spells.

Highly unlikely. An interesting suggestion, but highly unlikely.

*****************************

And the next post is going to be an update on our gaming. I kind of like breaking the session into smaller posts. It makes it easier for me to stay ahead of things without feeling like everything is blurring together.

So the next post will, again, actually be give-or-take half of the session we played last night. More has happened, and again, hopefully I'll have it caught up before out next game tuesday night :smallsmile:

SilverClawShift
2009-06-14, 12:31 PM
Next Gaming Session

So we found ourselves in an unusual situation for our group. For the first time since the angel had been kidnapped, our Dragon Shaman wasn't interested in persuing her trail directly. His rational was that by this point, she's either dead due to that being the plan anyway, or alive due to them needing her that way for whatever they were getting ready to do.
The way we had hit multiple ports all within a week of each other meant that we weren't actually THAT far behind the group at large. We still don't know what Therin did, or where he went, and we still don't know what (if anything) was up with the unidentified fifth man. We do know that they now have a whole mess of black onyx, a live angel, and a new strain of stronger spellcasting bugs. We knew that the Zigarut we were in had caused mutations (It's even possible that The Drifters insects wings were from prolonged exposure to the zigarut, and not from some class or spell specifically), and that the mutations had probably been changing what the spellcasting bugs did. It occured to the factotum that the Vampiric Touch casting bugs were the first ones we'd encountered that were using NECROMANCY spells... Between that and the black onyx? Well, we still don't know what exactly is going on, but it's starting to look like it's all definately connected, and it's definately something we don't want to LET happen.

At the same time, the Drifter is flying under his own power. He doesn't have the wind at his back speeding up the process, and even when he gets to the continent, he's probably still going to have to set things up. Making a side trip to the Empire continent will only change our target destination by just under two weeks. Since we'll be avoiding dockijng at a major port, to get us closer to the city Mercyglade is contained in, it'll only be a days flight by bat. We all agree that, whatever else is going on, we need to know more about Priest and hopefully find out how to shut down those returning fighters of his.

So that's what we all collectively agree (for the first time in quiet a while) needs to happen. We set sail northward, bringing us close to (but not directly on) the coastline of the temperate continent. We pick an area that's give or take near where Mercyglade is, tell the skeletons to circle in the waters, but to avoid any other ships, and take to the skies, flying in over the forest. Thankfully, zombie bats don't get tired, so a few hours later we were still coasting along happily, and spotted the outskirts of a major metropolitan city.
The city wasn't our destination though. Mercyglade was an asylum, built a decent way outside of the city directly (No one wants lunatics in their back yard, after all), on a mountainside facing away from the city itself (don't want the lunatics looking out the windows and getting ideas, after all). So we steer further north and come in low, flying just over the treetops. Eventually, we spot our destination a few hundered yards off into the distance.

Black Hawk Down
*************************************

And right around this time, a giant rock comes hurtling through the trees and nails the underside of my bat, finally knocking it down to zero hitpoints and sending me and my dead mount tumbling out of the sky and onto the hard ground. Fortunately, we were only 50 feet up or so, so I survived the fall damage. Unfortunately, I was essentially helpless, laying on the ground next to a large dead bat, and watching the lumbering Hill Giant running akwardly towards me and cheering about how he caught his dinner. He was still around 200 feet off, out of range of a lot, but fortunately I nailed him with an Eldritch Spear. Unfortunately, I rolled horribly and barely annoyed his hitpoint total.
I was still able to spiderclimb at will, assuming I could drag myself (5 foot move rate) to one of the trees (20 feet away) before the hill giant came up and started pummeling me into pulp with his club. The option sounded... less than ideal. Fortunately, the next round of combat involved the Dragon Shaman calling for the Swashbuckler to throw him his rapier, catching it in midair, and flying off the bat to make a charging/piercing Dive attack for double damage, which was more than my puny blast had done.
The Factotum and Swashbuckler both landed their respective bats in the treetops and jumped down to help us out, but used all of their actions doing so.
Which meant it was the Giants turn again. He opened with a full attack on the Dragon Shaman, hit both times, and took over half of the dragon shamans hitpoint total off in a single round, when we'd barely scratched him. I was still laying in the brush a few hundered feet away, so all I could do was Eldritch Spear another blast into the giants face (rolled better this time, at least) and send my normal sized bats flying in to try to create a distraction. The Dragon Shaman took off flying in a (justifiable!) panic, as one more full attack would send him into negatives, but he hit the Hill Giant for a good chunk of fire damage from his fire breath too.
The Swashbuckler closed the distance and made a two-handed true-striking power attack (thank god) for a massive chunk of damage, and the Factotum circled around to get into flanking position and made a really sturdy sneak attack. We all kind of winced, because it was the giants turn again, and frankly, the two combatants still in range were not built to take full-attacks form greatclub weilding giants. Worse, the Giant, being angry about the sneak attack, elected to open his full attack on the KOBOLD :smalleek:.
Now, I may have mentioned this, but between his size, various bonuses, ect, ect, our kobold actually has the highest AC in the group. The way the giant rolled was actually two near misses, effectively rendering the giant moot for his turn. I told the kobold he needed to RUN, because the giant could actually reasonably roll well enough to send the kobold to -10 in a single turn. The kobold just shook his head and stayed in flanking position.
I fired off another eldritch blast, feeling for all the world like a portable turret system, and rolled another good hit of damage. The Dragon Shaman used a good portion of his healing touch to bring himself above the "one shot kill" ranged and circled into position for another dive attack. The swashbuckler made another two-handed true-striking power attack, for another beautiful damage roll. The Factotum made another sneak attack, but rolled poorly and didn't really do much damage.

*Wince*

Giants turn. Frustrated with the kobold, the giant makes a full attack against the Swashbuckler instead. And he elects to mimic his assailaint in kind, two-handed power-attacking him. In one turn, he knocked him from full hitpoints, to NEGATIVE EIGHT. The DM described it as just a Steroid Fueled Major League Baseball SLAM that literally sent the swashbuckler tumbling heels over head (over heels over head, over heels...ect) backwards and spinning out unconcious into the grass.
I fire another eldritch blast :smalleek:.
The Dragon Shaman, being too far from the Swashbuckler to help, elects to make another dive attack for double piercing damage. The swashbuckler bleeds out to -9 and fails his stabilization check. Fortunately, the kobold has his ridiculous move speed (and is everywhere we need him to be), because he cleared the gap between himself and the swashbuckler with move to spare, and used his last inspiration point to bring the poor guy up to four hitpoints.
Swashbuckler: Four whole hitpoints? I could kiss you!
Except the Factotums inspiration has run dry.

*Wince*

Giants turn again.
He initiates a charging bull rush against the Dragon Shaman, who is currently AIRBORN, a size category smaller, and not really all that strong. Yeah, the giant blew the Dragon Shamans opposed check out of the freaking water, and pushed him back effortlessly back something like 100 feet.
I won't lie, I had a moment of temporary cowardice. The Hill Giant was now closer to me than he was to the kobold and swashbuckler, and our dragon shaman didn't really have much meat to bring to this fight. And I was prone and helpless. I seriously considered trying to drag myself to a tree to climb up it instead of continuing an attack. But I wound up shaking my head and firing off another eldritch blast all the same.
1, 1, 1, 1, 2. Talk about bad karma. Or that was fates way of telling me cowardice exists for a reason :smalltongue:
The bats closed the distance and started swarming around the Hill Giant, but he refused to acknowledge them in favor of the whimpering target that kept firing bright shiny pulses of magical energy at him. The Dragon Shaman took a piddling swing, but barely scratched the behemoth.
The Swashbuckler and Kobold both got up and started sprinting back to the fight. With the kobolds move rate, he got almost in range, but not quiet. He intentionally stopped shorter than he could have, to keep himself out of the giants move range, knowing he could close the gap on his next turn if he didn't get himself killed on this one.

*Wince*

The giant bullrushes again, this time knocking the dragon shaman from airborn to prone, and right next to me. I fire another eldritch blast, the dragon shaman breaths fire into the giants face. Neither roll was very good. We're a little concerned here, because on the giants next turn, he could realistically power-attack and kill either one of us flat, without really breaking a sweat.
Which is when the kobold, moving a ridiculous distance lightning fast, makes a charge attack and FLINGS himself at the giant, with nothing but hios itty bitty little sword, strength penalty and all.

Apparently, the Giant had had exactly three hitpoints left, because four was enough to knock him into negatives and make him fall face first in the dirt :smallbiggrin:

Factotum: Can I do a one-handed handstand with the grip of the sword sticking out of the hill giants back, doing gymnast like poses in midair because I'm just that awesome?
DM: I don't see why not!

So we all collect ourselves, start healing up those in need (swashbuckler waved his hands frantically), and figure out what to do now. I ask if I can re-stitch the dead bat as a weaker version and re-animate it? No dice. A zombie dies when its not structurally capable of EXISTING anymore, that bat is pulp, says the DM. The Dragon Shaman suggests that I can ride with the Swashbuckler, like he's been riding with the kobold. By weight it should work, especially with me lacking legs. I just sit there moping for a moment, before it hits me.
ME: Is that hill giant still breathing?
DM: He passed his stabilization check, yeah, he's at -3 hitpoints.
Me: I fire a an eldritch blast into the base of his skull and start rummaging through my pack for more black onyx.

The whole table gave me this face :smalleek:

Me: What? He's large sized. He's got legs, I need legs. I'm turning him into a skeleton, cracking open his ribcage, and riding around inside of him until something better comes up.

The table continues to stare

Me: Someone help strap me to his spine and pad his hipbones.

So, I got new legs, which is interesting. The DM ruled that it's basically like any other zombie mount. Controlling him takes some of my turn if I want him to do anything tricky, moving is more or less straight forward, dismounting will take twice as long since I'm literally held in place with leather straps. I'd better avoid populated areas until I find a new option. He also can't fly, but his base move rate is better than mine was when I HAD legs, and it matches the zombie bats fly speeds. So it'll do for now.
Plus he still has his greatclub :smallamused:

As an aside, after that fight, we leveled up. I basically flipped a coin as to wether or not I was going to take a level of dread necromancer or another level of Warlock, but in the end, I decided on staying pure warlock. My current ride is ridiculously sturdy compared to the bats, and by the time it's a concern, I'm sure we can find other options for mounts for me and the others. Plus Warlock 7 is a good level, I get fiendish Resilience to allow me to heal myself, contributing to our overall group hitpoint total.
So imagine our surprise when the (severe attention span problem) Swashbuckler announces that he's taking a few levels in Archivist next. We asked why, and he said "You've all got healing, we might as well round it out. Besides, now I can heal everyones mounts during down times. And I think I want in on this undead action myself." So now he's a Swashbuckler 4, Sorcerer 2, Archivist 1, contemplating staying in Archivist until he gains access to Animate Dead.

And now our group has two fledgling necromancers. The Dragon Shaman face-palmed.

***********
EDIT
***********

I'd also like to point out that we ALL face-palmed when we realized that throwing the dice from the air and summoning "Question Mark" creature to soften up the hill giant would have been WAY smarter.
Our DM even laughed at us and said that's what he'd expected us to do, because the hill giant was a tougher fight than we should have been up against.

Hindsight's 20/20, right?

Kosjsjach
2009-06-14, 12:48 PM
:smallbiggrin:
This is so goshdarn entertaining!

Lilienthal
2009-06-14, 12:57 PM
:smallbiggrin:
This is so goshdarn entertaining!

That might be somewhat of an understatement even. :smallbiggrin:


And now our group has two fledgling necromancers. The Dragon Shaman face-palmed.

I'll repeat that it's only a matter of time before you all turn diabolically evil enough to kill him in his sleep. :smalltongue:



I'd also like to point out that we ALL face-palmed when we realized that throwing the dice from the air and summoning "Question Mark" creature to soften up the hill giant would have been WAY smarter.

Good luck finding those again when you throw them from the air though. =p Unless anyone in the party has Detect Magic of course.

Drakyn
2009-06-14, 01:08 PM
So....you've gone from a leglass giant-zombie-bat-riding agent of despair witch-person to a legless person wearing a hill giant skeleton as a sort of Iron Man-style power armour.

This is highly awesome in many ways simultaneously.

Oh, and a thought just struck me - when you skeletify him, do all his meaty bits fall off instantly or what? 'Cause if they don't, well, I guess your seating would be certainly squishier. To put it mildly.

SilverClawShift
2009-06-14, 01:19 PM
Animate Dead says that the flesh all falls off a corpse if it's risen as a skeleton. So his body just kind of sloughs off around the moving bones.

Cute_Riolu
2009-06-14, 08:00 PM
Hmm... whatever happened to those fireball bugs? Didn't the kobold pick up a couple of 'em?

13_CBS
2009-06-14, 08:26 PM
Hmm... whatever happened to those fireball bugs? Didn't the kobold pick up a couple of 'em?



Hindsight's 20/20, right?

:smalltongue:

arguskos
2009-06-14, 08:33 PM
Once again, SCS comes through with something awesome. :smallsmile:

It does suck that your bat got creamed, but hey, you scored a massive Hill Giant skeleton.

Also, what the with the Swashbuckler's player? He started in Swash, switched to Sorc (a change I can see and make sense of), and then went Archivist?! What is his character trying to do, go crazy with strange features? I mean, they're all good classes, but I'm not seeing a character theme or any kind of synergy (aside from some minor Int synergy with Swash and Archivist) here. Huh, he's an odd bird that one. :smallwink:

Nohwl
2009-06-14, 09:47 PM
i dunno. he is taking levels in 2 of my favorite classes, archivist and swashbuckler. [cleric being the other class in my 3 favorite.] i like sorcerers too, but they are behind a few more classes.[behind rogues and wizards.]

of course, the theme probably isn't nohwls favorite classes.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-06-14, 10:16 PM
You have done it again. And think of the look on your opponents faces when you come walking up! The hillariousness!

SilverClawShift
2009-06-14, 11:12 PM
Hmm... whatever happened to those fireball bugs?

A fireball is only so applicable. It is a giant explosion and all. To use them he'd have to win the initiative roll when we're not the ones being surprised, OR shut the rest of the group out of reasonable combat to get them out of range of the target, and ensure the target doesn't follow.
Either use it from the air and smoke the Dragon Shaman, or use it from the ground and smoke the swashbuckler, or use it from behind and smoke the crippled warlock.


Also, what the with the Swashbuckler's player? He started in Swash, switched to Sorc (a change I can see and make sense of), and then went Archivist?!

He's actually playing his character really realistically. He started as a swashbuckler ("Hey, I'm clever and crafty and cunning and...") whos main goal was the be on the versatile side of things. he started with a rapier and a longsword, because he knew sometimes he'd be called on to fence intelligently, and sometimes he'd just need to two-handed smash things.
Along the way, it occured to him that a one or two level dip would net him a spell that would make him way better at his primary goal "Hitting things without missing!".
Now that he's been hanging around a necromancer long enough, he's found himself thinking "Hey, controlling the undead has been really useful!" and is going up the most logical path for him to take (other divine caster classes being less valuable to him).

He's wandering the globe, seeing abilities he likes, and learning them. He's kinda like a makeshift factotum :smalltongue:


You have done it again. And think of the look on your opponents faces when you come walking up! The hillariousness!

That's actually what has me most worried right now. I don't exactly look like your average good natured citizen.

I think most people who see me walking up are more likely to BECOME opponents now. I need something less conspicuous, and soon. I'll be eerie floating perfectly smoothly in a floor length dress, but I won't be BLATANT EVIL COMING YOUR WAY!!!

Deth Muncher
2009-06-14, 11:22 PM
I think most people who see me walking up are more likely to BECOME opponents now. I need something less conspicuous, and soon. I'll be eerie floating perfectly smoothly in a floor length dress, but I won't be BLATANT EVIL COMING YOUR WAY!!!

You know, I'm willing to bet that with a smidge of practice, you could simulate real walking by slight bobbing up and down as you float. You just wouldn't leave any footprints.

Also, though it barely matters now, the thought had crossed my mind as I was reading the post last night before you updated: "Hey, isn't there a huge undead thing that steals you inside of its chest cavity? I wonder if she could rig something like that..." And you did. (Believe me or don't. :P) But. The fact that I keep thinking in line with your party makes me think that I must be destined to be a part of this campaign.

No, but really though. Hillgiant-mobile is pretty cool, although you're right, it is a bit BLATANTLY EVIL. Perhaps until you get another mode of conveyance, find the spell Disguise Undead.

Jayngfet
2009-06-14, 11:48 PM
So, you have a zombie mecha? Awesome.

arguskos
2009-06-15, 12:05 AM
He's actually playing his character really realistically. He started as a swashbuckler ("Hey, I'm clever and crafty and cunning and...") whos main goal was the be on the versatile side of things. he started with a rapier and a longsword, because he knew sometimes he'd be called on to fence intelligently, and sometimes he'd just need to two-handed smash things.
Along the way, it occured to him that a one or two level dip would net him a spell that would make him way better at his primary goal "Hitting things without missing!".
Now that he's been hanging around a necromancer long enough, he's found himself thinking "Hey, controlling the undead has been really useful!" and is going up the most logical path for him to take (other divine caster classes being less valuable to him).

He's wandering the globe, seeing abilities he likes, and learning them. He's kinda like a makeshift factotum :smalltongue:
You can make the argument that he's being realistic (totally awesome and probably correct), or that his character is schizophrenic, since most folks tend to focus their skills more precisely than "Ooh, swords... ooh, innate magic... ooh gods... ooh (whoknowswhat)!" In any case, it's hilarious to watch, and really rather organic and interesting. I just hope he won't get too left behind (though he does need to get some auras in there, just to complete his "I'm everyone else now!" theme :smallwink:).

Fayd
2009-06-15, 12:58 AM
And I reach the end. I can't wait to see more...I hope my first game is fun like this! (I know the DM, and he seems like he'd be brilliant, so one can hope, right? And Neverwinter Nights 2 doesn't count, though it gave me some character ideas, and basic BASIC rule comprehension.)

Forrestfire
2009-06-15, 06:12 AM
You should use illusions to disguise the skeleton as a living (albeit huge) person.

...Or as a giant mecha...

Roc Ness
2009-06-15, 06:27 AM
I *might* be playing my first PBP soon. I hope its gonna be as interesting as this, cos this is what made me decide to try in the first place. :smallsmile:

Master_Rahl22
2009-06-15, 10:31 AM
I hope you have a good experience too, Roc. At its best, D&D (or any RPG for that matter) feels like you are one of the main characters in a kickass story that you are helping write along with the DM. That is what you're seeing from SCS since they have a great group and a great DM. D&D can certainly be fun with a less-than-stellar group or DM, just not as much fun.

I second the comment that SCS needs to figure out how to disguise the Hill Giant corpse as some sort of clockwork contraption. She will still stand out of course, but she won't be quite so blatantly EVIL while she's standing out. :)

Deth Muncher
2009-06-15, 12:40 PM
I second the comment that SCS needs to figure out how to disguise the Hill Giant corpse as some sort of clockwork contraption. She will still stand out of course, but she won't be quite so BLATANTLY EVIL while she's standing out. :)

Fixed that for ya.

SilverClawShift
2009-06-15, 03:26 PM
Picking up where I left off (leveling up on our way to the asyulum), this is the tail-end of our last gaming session.
I should point out that me and the DM basically got together and sat down outside of the game sessions so he could teach me about the asylum. What it had been like, and so on, so I wouldn't fumble and shuffle akwardly if someone asked me about the backstory.

Mercyglade

So we trek on towards the asylum. Me in my Giant skeleton (who I'm considering getting a giant hooded robe for to try to pass off as some kind of real giant in a pinch), and the rest of the group circling above on our two remaining bats (who are in less danger of being destroyed thanks to a few handy dandy inflict spells).
The asylum itself is a massive compound, three individual buildings surrounded by two layers of wrought iron gates topped with spikes. One of the buildings has a series of towers jutting out from it in random locations. I mentioned that they had cells at the top for high-risk-of-escape patients. The Factotum asked how I knew, and I mentioned that the third one from the left had been mine. I drop a little exposition, that the asylum wasn't actually a terrible place. The doctors were mostly holy men of varying degrees, and truly wanted to help. They didn't torture us or anything, I was just high risk because I kept trying to escape.

So we press on, and the closer we get, the more something seems wrong. We can hear a really faint echo from inside, sounding like a small group all crying. And the place looks to be abandoned of any activity. When we get to the outer gate (with me staying hidden out among some trees) we can see that, yes, something is definately off. There's no one. No guards, no doctors, no patients walking in the courtyard. Windows are broken, no movement is occuring inside... The place doesn't look decrepit. It isn't falling apart under the elements just yet... it seems there's no one left.
Relatively confident that our riding around with a posee of undead creatures won't draw massive amounts of attention, the fliers land and we all go in through the front gate. The hinges creaking garners us no extra attention. We can still hear crying echoing through the courtyard, and it's getting louder. We pass through the open terrain with no incident. We debate the best place to start searching for information (or the source of the crying), and come to the conclusion that this is one of those times kicking in the front door is not only acceptable, it's borderline desireable.
So kick in the front door we do, and rush into the lobby of the asylum and take up defensive positions, darting our eyes everywhere for anomalies. We see papers scattered everywhere, and it's very, very dark, but aside from those two details, everything seems normal. Dusty, clearly unused for weeks, maybe months... but normal. Having been met with no resistance from our SWAT team style entry, but still clearly hearing faint crying echoing through the halls, we suddenly become much more unsettled, and opted to press on more carefully. We snaked through the abandoned halls, occasionally poking our faces into rooms only to find more of the same scene (papers everywhere, filing desks overturned... as if someone had been searching for something). Finally, we ascended to the second level, and entered a room that had a balcony/walkway circling and overlooking a great hall full of tables and benches.
And everywhere we looked? Floating apparitions, looking for all the world like incorporeal patients in asylum gowns, weeping and babbeling and muttering to themselves in a mad rolling wave. Suddenly, they all noticed us in unison, and began to disperse. Sinking into the floor, floating back through walls, floating into support columns... the crying, insane noises surounded us, coming through walls and floor and ceilings... and everywhere we looked, we'd see spectral palms just barely breaching the surfaces of everything in sight...

Dragon Shaman: How are everyones FORT and WILL saves these days?
Factotum: ...Bad...
Swashbuckler: Middling
Me: Same, not as low as the factotums...
Dragon Shaman: I guess I'm on point... Anyone have anything that works especially well against ghosts?
Me: Nope. It's all got a 50% miss chance...
Factotum: This is so so bad.

Which is when one of them raises from the floor in front of us, babbeling incoherently. We all roll will saves, but even with using an inspiration point to boost his saving throw, the kobold fails spectacularily. His eyes glaze over and he just stands there, swaying lightly, babbeling to himself sadly the same way the ghost had been. The Dragon Shaman scoops him up and flies out over the grand hall, banking in tight circles to keep him away from the ghosts while he's helpless. The Swashbuckler thanks his lucky stars that he took Magic Weapon as a spell known. He debates on wether or not the spell should go to his own blade, or to my skeletons greatclub. The reasoning being that he can make better tactical decisions, but the giant won't stop smacking ghosts around until there are none left, even if we all go catatonic.
Eventually he decides to cast it on his own blade, but tells me that if he gets mindsnapped or something to have my skeleton grab it ASAP. He quick casts it and swings at the nearest ghost, connecting for a good bit of damage.
I fired an eldritch blast at the ghosts face point blank. It went through the miss chance, and rolled One 4, One 5 and Three 6s. I guess my dice knew I was mad at them. It was enough to make the ghostly creature dissapear in a sad quiet puff of light. I beleive that's when I hummed the ghostbusters theme song.

The Dragon Shaman was close to getting swarmed by flying apparitions, but a quick check revealed that his breath weapon was a Supernatural ability, which meant it could affect the ghosts (with a miss chance). He reared up as high as he could and breathed a cone of fire straight downwards, catching as many as he could in the blast. He got four or five of them, but not enough to destroy any, and the whole group kept persuing him.
The kobold continued to stare in abject horror while babbeling like a lunatic. We needed to keep him safe, as he was the only one of us with an attack that could directly affect the ghosts (Opportunistic Peity could either turn them, or hurt them outright). Even if he were able to act though, we were definately getting swarmed by way too many of them for his presence alone to turn the tide.
The Swashbuckler took a jump onto the edge of the balcony and swung out at the flying cloud of ghosts trying to get the dragon shaman (ignoring the growing cloud of ghosts that were swarming our position). But due to the miss chance, his sword just swung through them and caused no real harm.
I Fired an eldritch blast at the group behind us, but it just blew through them like they weren't there (well, because they weren't).

The fight basically went on like that. Hopeless. The kobold finally stopped babbeling incoherently at one point, and managed to get off a Turn Undead, sending four of the ghosts screaming and clawing straight down through the floor to escape his divine wrath. Unfortunately, the next turn, the swashbuckler and kobold BOTH failed the will save to avoid becoming babbeling messes again, and were both rendered helpless. We were taking wisdom damage left and right...
I shouted to the Dragon Shaman that we needed to BOOK, and fast. He agreed, and banked to the balcony to join the escape. I had my giant skeleton chasis grab the incoherant swashbuckler, and we both started to run back to the front door, carting our helpless compatriots along with us. It was daylight outside. If we could just make it back into the sun?

Which was about our last thought as the swarm of ghosts finally wisdom drained us into nothing, and sent us into a catatonic restless state full of nightmares and tremors...



Meet the Staff

We woke up from our horrible coma to brand new surroundings. Each of us sat in a plain metal chair, manacled into place, and utterly motionless. We could make out that we were in an office, and we were facing a large desk. A tall bald man with glasses sat scratching at the desk with a pen. A spot check revealed two things. There was no paper, the desk there was almost solid black with repeat applications of ink without any effort to actually record what was there.
The second thing we noticed, was that we could clearly make out the wall through the man.

He sighed, and stopped scratching at the desk with his pen (though the pen just sat there pointed down as if he were still holding it). He rubbed the smooth top of his head and sighed again.
"We prefer not to have impromptu visitors here, you know. It gets the patients so worked up."
Not knowing what to do, the Swashbuckler just squeeked out "Sorry Sir."
"You might have undone an entire weeks worth of treatment for some of our more encourigable ones"
The dragon Shaman squeeked out "yes Sir, sorry... we weren't trying to cause any trouble."
The (apparently) ghostly director once again started scratching at his desk with the pen, before sighing again. "Well, there's no sense dwelling on an honest mistake, is there? Tell me, who were you here to visit, anyway?"
We paused akwardly, before the Factotum said "Actually, we're really just here for information. See, there's a man. Calls himself Priest... We think he's been here before... maybe a patient? He's been causing trouble, and we were hoping to find out more about him...?"
The bald man looked up from his desk, startled, and suddenly the manacles holding us in place unlocked and opened all at once. The director laughed, and said "I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were constables! My mistake, we should have been expecting you back, what with all the trouble occuring here!".

We all rubbed our wrists, and I looked around for my Giant skeleton. He was nowhere to be seen.

The director continued "A patient here you say? Come with me, we'll check the hall of records and see what we can't find out for you!"
I sat akwardly for a minute before the Dragon Shaman offered to carry me piggyback... Humiliating, but I was grateful for the help all the same. So the four of us cautiously trailed the ghostly director as he floated down the dark and abandoned halls of the former asylum. Everywhere we looked, we would see the occasional pair of eyes, or even a face, pressing out of the walls and furniture...watching us closely. Occasionally we'd see a spectral doctor or orderly keeping tabs on us as well...
Finally we made it to the hall of records. Drawers slammed open in unison and papers began flying out in a rapid wave, circling the room as if a small tornado had been let loose. The director asked "Priest, you said? I'm terrible with names, always have been, but I'm not finding any records of a man named Priest serving as a patient here. I'm much better with faces... perhaps you could describe him?"
When he said that, I made a point of looking down and back, covering my face a little behind the Dragon Shamans head.
The Swashbuckler fielded the question. As soon as he said the phrase "Horrible grin", the papers all stopped flying and immediately settledon the floor. The director looked at us with a mixture of recognition and sadness. "Oh." he said, as a whole new set of drawers slammed open, and a whole new set of papers began flying around. One leafed out through the mess and flew in front of our group. The kobold snatched it, and began to skim it.
The director went on "Priest wasn't a patient. He was sent here as a temporary aid from the church. He was only with us for a few weeks before this ghastly trouble all began."
The kobold nodded, and asked "Why did they send him?"
The director sighed. "One of our patients had a... problem. We were doing all we could to help her, and keep her from escaping. But it seems we let her down on both counts." I buried my face deeper into the Dragon Shamans back. "She sold her soul, it seems, in a bid for dark powers. Used them to escape in the middle of the night... we never COULD get the markings off her cell. Seems the shadows and symbols in the process burned themselves clean into the walls and floor. After so many years of trying to remove the markings, Priest came in to examine the cell and learn more about what had occured... But after a few weeks, well. Everything went to hell one night. We're still trying to sort through the whole mess, you see. The cells in the east wing caught the worst of it. Ghastly, ghastly business."
The swashbuckler asked what had happened to the east wing. The room we were standing in faded to pitch black, and suddenly when the lights faded back in, we were standing in a different room. Only this one had suffered serious fire damage. So serious that sunlight streamed in through a few weak holes in the ceiling. The director floated cautiously between them.
"The fire struck at the same time half of the patients began some kind of riot. That's why we're trying so hard to keep them from getting worked up now, we don't want a repeat of that unfortunate night. Thankfully, most of them seem to have forgotten what happened..."
We started floating out into the burned out shell of the hallway. Doors lined either side. And inside each cell, we could see an identical scene of utter horror and depravity. The cells were all burned out as well. But each of them contained a single corpse, nailed to the floor overtop some kind of strange symbol, that looked like a bird made of fire. Their heads were all facing the cell doors, upside down, mouths opened in a charred scream.
The director said "I try not to speak of it in front of the others. But my own personal beleif? Is that this Priest character somehow found out how our patient had sold her soul. Found the raw mechanics and actions that transpired, that is. I beleive he's taken the souls of these poor patients here..." The director stopped to face us. "If you can find a way to right this, we would be very grateful."
We nodded in agreement. The Dragon Shaman asked, hesitantly, if the director could tell us anymore about the woman who'd sold her soul. I looked at him from across the table, and mouthed "no, no, no" doing the throat slashing gesture.

The DM just smirked. All three of us kind of glared at the Dragon Shaman then, with an expression of angry disbeleif. It was pretty obvious I was the escapee that had sold her soul. The Dragon Shaman was just stirring up trouble :smalltongue:.

The director gave a few more details. She heard voices, kept trying to escape, the director had done everything he could to help, but in the end had failed her... accoring to the guards, she officially sold her soul one night, and by the time they could open the door to intervene, she'd allready used her newfound powers to blast open the lock on the window, climb down the tower wall on the outside, and sprint off into the night.
Which is when, as I'm sure even DEAD people have guessed by now, the director ***** his head looking at me. A wry smile crosses his face... and all he says is "Oh. Welcome Home." Before the entire group is once against swarmed by Wisdom draining apparitions. We ran. We made it about 30 feet...


Escape

Before we each woke up, this time seperated, in various predicaments. We still had all of our gear, fortunately. The DM went around the table describing what we saw when we woke up.

The Swashbuckler woke to absolute blackness. He thanked his lucky stars that he had a Light cantrip, and cast it, only to discover that he was in some kind of featureless pit with a trapdoor above him. They'd thrown him into some kind of solitary confiement pit.
He managed to two handed power-attack the door hard enough to knock it clean open, which drew a lot of attention from the "orderlies" who began floating after him. But a good acrobatic jump, a climb up through the door, and he was sprinting towards the nearest window. He took a few wisdom draining attacks frmo ones that got too close, but was moving really quickly (despite the cluttered and difficult terrain), before he finally tucked and rolled through the window (taking some slashing damage in the process). Still, he was home free... the ghosts didn't chase him into the sunlight. He jogged around to the front couryard, naturally, taking note that the sun was indeed starting to set.

The Kobold woke up in the middle of the hall we were first attacked in. Completely surrounded by the ghosts of former patients, who all seemed very busy doing nothing. None of them were paying him any regard. Probably because he wasn't actually doing anything. He was afraid to move, but he took advantage of his shadow template ability to hide in plain sight, and made a high-rolled check to sneak the heck out of there.
He managed to make it to the front couryard without blowing a single roll, and ran out into the protective daylight around the same time the swashbuckler did.

My situation was a little tougher. I woke up in my old cell, charred arcane symbols and all, with two ghost orderlies watching me from the doorway. I dragged myself over to the window and looked down, only to see the surface was facing away from the sunlight, and that ghostly hands were reaching out through the wall and skimming back and forth across it slowly. Spiderclimbing down was clearly not an option.
Fortunately, the undead bats in the courtyard were still under MY control, even if we considered them the kobold and swashbucklers mounts. I called for them to come to me, and waited until they were in sight before blasting open the lock on the window. The orderlies moved to attack me, but I managed to drag myself up and over the edge of the window in time to go tumbling out and onto the back of one of the bats, flying aroundto the front couryard myself. It IS the obvious meetup point in that kind of situation, after all.
Once in the courtyard, I could see my hill giant skeleton standing in through the front doorway, from when we'd almost successfully escaped. He'd been waiting motionless the entire time, like a good mindless creature. I called him out, and had my friends help strap me back inside of him.

The Dragon Shaman actually woke up in a padded cell. He tried running against the door repeatedly in an effort to knock it over, but he wasn't quite strong enough. In the end, he wound up TORCHING the outer wall with his fire breath, taking cover against the doorway (and taking some wisdom draining attacks of his own in the process) until enough of the wall had burned away that he took a flying leap at the top section, bursting out into the open air and flying around the outskirts of the gate.

Once we were all together, we agreed that an IMMEDIATE departure was called for, as the setting sun meant the ghosts wouldn't be confined to the building any longer. We debated setting fire to the building, but thought the most prudent course of actions was to simply run for our lives and back to our boat.

Those who fight and run away, after all.


So now we're caught up before tommorrow nights session :).


I *might* be playing my first PBP soon. I hope its gonna be as interesting as this

Hope it's even better!

TheCountAlucard
2009-06-15, 03:37 PM
...this is the tail-end of our last gaming session.Oh, noes! :smalleek:


So now we're caught up before tommorrow nights session.Oh, okay. Thank goodness.

You scared me there for a minute.

arguskos
2009-06-15, 04:04 PM
Dear oh dear, you caused Priest did you? Bad SCS. :smallwink:

The plot thickens indeed! Next session will probably be great. Are you going to go to the north after the elusive fifth man, or will you try to track down the Drifter again and stop him for good?

And what's the connection between Priest, who's anything but, and the Drifter, who seems to be the incarnation of an angry insect god?

SilverClawShift
2009-06-15, 04:45 PM
Dear oh dear, you caused Priest did you? Bad SCS. :smallwink:

No kidding. Now I'm wondering what the relationship of that dark orb of his is, to the fact that I and apparently a few other mental patients don't have our souls.
We're guessing the men we saw nailed to the ground are actually the ones that keep returning from the ashes. They aren't undead, and they aren't demons, they're like...bound or something. Whatever Priest did when he burned them there locked their souls into his service.

It's gotta be related to the Orb of his.


Are you going to go to the north after the elusive fifth man, or will you try to track down the Drifter again and stop him for good?

We're leaning towards finally going back to the egyptian continent and the original zigarut. It's time we see if we can throw a monkey wrench into the plans. We've been beating around it for weeks now. It's time to go in like the US Marshals and mess some stuff up.


And what's the connection between Priest, who's anything but, and the Drifter, who seems to be the incarnation of an angry insect god?

We haven't talked about it, but my guess?

Priest is in the same boat as the changeling to some degree or another. This Drifter character is trying to become a Deity. He's going to make the changeling his herald (giving her back her music a millionfold). He's probably promised Priest something along those lines.
Maybe Priest is going to be his soul-collector or something. Garner worshippers.

Heck, if he can steal souls, maybe that's part of the plan. :smalleek:

Lilienthal
2009-06-15, 05:39 PM
We debate the best place to start searching for information (or the source of the crying), and come to the conclusion that this is one of those times kicking in the front door is not only acceptable, it's borderline desireable.
So kick in the front door we do, and rush into the lobby of the asylum and take up defensive positions, darting our eyes everywhere for anomalies.

Dynamic Entry!
http://laughingman.eu/img/dynamic.gif
By the way, your kobold should totally be doing that in every encounter. He's got an insane run speed already, just think about the jump checks he could pull off :smallbiggrin:


Something puzzled me about the ghosts though. How long do their wisdom-draining attacks last? Because you guys went down an awful lot, but seemed to get back up just as quick. :smallwink:

SilverClawShift
2009-06-15, 05:53 PM
Something puzzled me about the ghosts though. How long do their wisdom-draining attacks last? Because you guys went down an awful lot, but seemed to get back up just as quick. :smallwink:

Technically ability drain is supposed to be permanent, but our DM doesn't like to casually cripple our play experience. We're probably recovering the wisdom loss as if it were damage.

Actually, we haven't verified anything yet in game, but I suppose it is possible we were in the asylum for days. My guess is that the asylum, technically being a place of healing, was bringing us back from the 0 scores whenever we were no longer causing a ruckus.

Either that or we've all permanently lost our minds and are still laying in the great hall of the asylum, shaking like epileptics in an inescapable nightmare of our own creation.
That wouldn't be a good story tho :smalltongue:



By the way, your kobold should totally be doing that in every encounter. He's got an insane run speed already, just think about the jump checks he could pull off

Yeah, but he weights like 10 pounds :smalltongue:

Lilienthal
2009-06-15, 06:37 PM
Technically ability drain is supposed to be permanent, but our DM doesn't like to casually cripple our play experience. We're probably recovering the wisdom loss as if it were damage.
Ah yes, that's why I was confused, but I wasn't sure whether it was permanent or not.


Yeah, but he weights like 10 pounds :smalltongue:
Bah, weight is of no importance once you hit terminal velocity!

GreatWyrmGold
2009-06-15, 07:31 PM
The DM chose the perfect character to tie into that part of the plot, don't you agree?

Uh, not to say that you're insane or anything, but...

PLEASE DON'T KILL AND ZOMBIFY MEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(runs)

Olo Demonsbane
2009-06-15, 08:12 PM
At the risk of sounding like a broken record...

Wow. Amazing. You've done it again.

That was awesome, and I particularly like how your DM tied your backstory into the plot, even making it the primary moving force.

Deth Muncher
2009-06-15, 08:36 PM
The DM chose the perfect character to tie into that part of the plot, don't you agree?

Uh, not to say that you're insane or anything, but...

PLEASE DON'T KILL AND ZOMBIFY MEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(runs)

The man brings up a valid point. You have this tendency to kill things and reanimate them. And use their twisted corpses for your own means.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. And you're not doing anything BLATANTLY EVIL with them...yet.

arguskos
2009-06-15, 08:54 PM
No kidding. Now I'm wondering what the relationship of that dark orb of his is, to the fact that I and apparently a few other mental patients don't have our souls.
We're guessing the men we saw nailed to the ground are actually the ones that keep returning from the ashes. They aren't undead, and they aren't demons, they're like...bound or something. Whatever Priest did when he burned them there locked their souls into his service.

It's gotta be related to the Orb of his.
I dunno, I'm thinking that Priest was a corrupted worshipper of the church that the angel is associated with, and the Drifter turned him to evil, just like the changeling. That orb is likely just his new holy symbol/focus for the Drifter's power. As for those corpses, that's a good bet, I didn't catch that. Huh, maybe when you meet them next time, try to turn them to your side with promises of release, since you know the truth of their existence now?


We're leaning towards finally going back to the egyptian continent and the original zigarut. It's time we see if we can throw a monkey wrench into the plans. We've been beating around it for weeks now. It's time to go in like the US Marshals and mess some stuff up.
Well, it worked in US Marshals cause Tommy Lee Jones is a badass, not cause it was a good plan. Fact is, you can't take the Drifter, and if he's got back-up that is more than just the bugs from hell, you'll die faster than you can say "we are all going to die". I'd suggest trying to find allies. Perhaps PaPa HeeNo and his tribe?


We haven't talked about it, but my guess?

Priest is in the same boat as the changeling to some degree or another. This Drifter character is trying to become a Deity. He's going to make the changeling his herald (giving her back her music a millionfold). He's probably promised Priest something along those lines.
Maybe Priest is going to be his soul-collector or something. Garner worshippers.

Heck, if he can steal souls, maybe that's part of the plan. :smalleek:
You know, I'm thinking along a different line. I think that the Drifter is actually the high priest of a trapped god of plague and insects (wonder why he's trapped eh? :smallwink:) and he's going to try and siphon off that god's essence into himself. That's probably what he needs the angel for, and what those ziggurats are. The ziggurats are fanes of the old god's power that he needs to attune with in order to absorb the essence. The angel was taken alive to use in some rite to enable the Drifter to take his trapped god's place. It feels like the Age of Worms adventure path in some respects, but with twists and turns.

My biggest wonder is this: we know who the Drifter is, who Priest is, who the changeling is, but where is Therin (the first guy), and what is the mystery man doing? This feels like you're missing a few pieces of the puzzle. We have a partial how/why, but not enough of one. And what is the onyx for?

SilverClawShift
2009-06-15, 09:57 PM
PLEASE DON'T KILL AND ZOMBIFY MEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No promises.


I particularly like how your DM tied your backstory

The DM actually made up part of my backstory (with my approval). I won't lie, I was just playing an evil crazy witch who's toying with forces beyond her understanding.
HE threw out the whole "ex-mental patient who sold her soul to a demon lord" thing. It works though, so we're running with it.

He's good at that though. We're the main characters, who are are SHOULD be impacting this story.


And you're not doing anything BLATANTLY EVIL with them...yet.

My character is evil. I don't even pretend otherwise. I unflinchingly sold my soul because it was the quickest way to get out of a locked cell.
I'm loyal to my adventuring party, because if I wasn't why would I even be with them in the first place?
And I'm not overwhelmed with an urge to kill strangers. And I don't want the world wrecked (I do live here).

It's a very subtle selfish kind of evil. The "If your corpse is more valuable than your life, don't turn your back on me" kind of evil.



try to turn them to your side with promises of release, since you know the truth of their existence now?

Doubtful. I doubt they're surving Priest willingly. I doubt they HAVE wills anymore. I think we have to off them somehow.


Fact is, you can't take the Drifter

We're aware of that. We're not going in for an assassination, we're going in for SABOTAGE :smallamused:.


I think that the Drifter is actually the high priest of a trapped god of plague

Wether that's true or not is something we currently have no way of knowing, but it doesn't change what we do know. He's a druid, he's got bugs, and he's trying to become a god. We know he's a druid from exposure to him, and the changeling said he was going to be a deity. She had no reason to lie to us, because we don't know enough to bother throwing us off any trail :smalltongue:


This feels like you're missing a few pieces of the puzzle. We have a partial how/why, but not enough of one. And what is the onyx for?

I guess we'll find out what the onyx was for when we go in and steal it all :smallwink:

Deth Muncher
2009-06-15, 10:07 PM
My character is evil. I don't even pretend otherwise. I unflinchingly sold my soul because it was the quickest way to get out of a locked cell.
I'm loyal to my adventuring party, because if I wasn't why would I even be with them in the first place?
And I'm not overwhelmed with an urge to kill strangers. And I don't want the world wrecked (I do live here).

It's a very subtle selfish kind of evil. The "If your corpse is more valuable than your life, don't turn your back on me" kind of evil.


And you have now proven that it's okay to be Evil and not be and ******* jerkbag to the party. Yay! And I mean that in all seriousness too. Most people who play Evil in a non-Evil party (or hell, even in all-Evil parties) are like "Hey, lookit me! I'm so evil! I'mma go stab random person on the street in the kidney! YAAAAAAY! ::lunatic squeal::" Mind you, that's the teensiest bit of hyperbole, but my point remains.

So good on you. Or, wait...no...crap. :smalltongue:

As an unrelated note: You need to make one of those necrobombs.

arguskos
2009-06-15, 10:35 PM
Yah, I was just making some predictions/speculations. I await the results of your sabotage efforts (don't get caught!). :smallbiggrin:

Raum
2009-06-15, 11:21 PM
I've spent the last hour reading through this entire thread...and I have to get up early tomorrow. Err, today. This morning. I still can't decide whether I should castigate you for keeping me up late or congratulate you for writing an entertaining story!

...that will teach me not to click on randomly interesting threads.

In all seriousness, congratulations! Your description does credit to what sounds like a very fun game!

Lycanthromancer
2009-06-15, 11:29 PM
I've spent the last hour reading through this entire thread...and I have to get up early tomorrow. Err, today. This morning. I still can't decide whether I should castigate you for keeping me up late or congratulate you for writing an entertaining story!

...that will teach me not to click on randomly interesting threads.

In all seriousness, congratulations! Your description does credit to what sounds like a very fun game!

Just wait until you read their Halloween Horror Campaign.

Roc Ness
2009-06-16, 07:08 AM
Just wait until you read their Halloween Horror Campaign.

Oh yeah... That was really entertaining! :smallbiggrin:

GreatWyrmGold
2009-06-16, 08:50 PM
No promises.
Uh oh...Oh, I have a lot of HD if I am a GWGD.

thorgrim29
2009-06-16, 09:20 PM
Well, since I'm here anyway thanks to the thread being bumped by gwg, I guess I'll just join the chorus in chanting you group's praises SCS, and asking where you are (even though the odds of you being anywhere near me are astronomically low). Seriously, it is very cool, both your retelling of the events (could use more humor IMHO, but that's just the Dresden fan in me speaking) and the truly impressive skill of your DM, not to mention the cohesiveness your group apparently has. Also, I want to play a warlock now....

13_CBS
2009-06-16, 09:21 PM
Uh oh...[/color]

Dude, a dark, hot, and sexy warlock is going to make you her mount. What the hell are you complaining about?

:smalltongue:

Lycanthromancer
2009-06-16, 09:27 PM
Dude, a dark, hot, and sexy warlock is going to make you her mount. What the hell are you complaining about?

:smalltongue:

Maybe GWG is LGBTitP? Or a grrl? I know there aren't any on the intarwebs, but still. (Sorry; hadn't seen his gender icon...Also, why isn't there a :vaarsuvius: icon under the gender options?)

Tome
2009-06-16, 09:31 PM
Someone mentioned fanart a little while back, and I've found myself thinking of doing some myself.

I did a (very) rough sketch with my tablet to try and get down what your warlock's face might look like, is it anywhere close?

[NOTE: Large Image]
http://fc06.deviantart.com/fs46/f/2009/167/5/4/Warlock_Face_Sketch_by_Tome_The_Dragon.png

Forrestfire
2009-06-16, 09:33 PM
It looks like an evil version of Rukia. :smalltongue:

Lochar
2009-06-16, 09:38 PM
My thoughts exactly.

13_CBS
2009-06-16, 09:41 PM
That reminds me...

Silverclaw, would you mind telling us the personalities of your character and her party members? You gave us a brief outline a few pages back, and there are some things we can figure out from your storytelling, but I was wondering if you could give us a more detailed account of what they're like.

Tome
2009-06-16, 09:45 PM
It looks like an evil version of Rukia. :smalltongue:

Huh, I suppose you're right. Didn't notice that.:smallconfused:

Time to doodle something else then I guess.

SilverClawShift
2009-06-16, 10:23 PM
could use more humor IMHO

Our campaigns are only humorous on rare occasions (outside small bits). We are facing frequent near-death experiences left and right and all :smalltongue:


is it anywhere close?

That's the gist of it, yes. Thought I definately picture the character a little more slack and expressionless in general, aside from occasional bouts of manic that would probably look a lot like that.


Silverclaw, would you mind telling us the personalities of your character and her party members?

What you see is mostly what you get.

The Dragon Shaman is a fairly no-nonsense, "Do Good or do Nothing" type. He's a dragonborn, so by his very nature, he given up his life SPECIFICALLY to be a servitor of holy force. He didn't go too far detailing his history, but since he's an ex-aasimar, it can be assumed he was more or less like that beforehand too, and became a dragonborn out of specific respect for draconic presence on the world.
That he's a Dragon Shaman by class pretty much guarantees that too.

The Kobold Factotum has... issues regarding the concept of personal property. If he can reasonably lift it, in his mind, it belongs to him. He's not a THIEF thief in the sense that we have to watch ourselves, he's not going to cause a bunch of party conflict amongst the people he trusts his life to.
But his character sheet has "Swag" instead of "Gear".
The whole "Fast, sneaky, and adaptable" thing is in tune with his desire to not get caught.

My Warlock's mostly dettached and distant. She knows her powers are a result of toying with dark and evil forces she can barely understand, and knows that when her hourglass runs out of sand, it's going to be very bad very fast.
Wether it comes up in game or not remains to be seen, but the characters motivation is basically hedging her life on the idea that she can be become valuable enough to NOT torture for eternity. Wether that means finding a way to steal her own soul back, or just proving she's worth more intact than as generic planar currency waiting to be swallowed whole by some demon lord.

The Swashbuckler player is honestly the type who's mostly along for the ride. He's a good roleplayer, and loves the game as much as the rest of us, but he's probably the least emotionally invested out of the group (DM included).
So his character is mostly defined by what he does.

13_CBS
2009-06-16, 10:27 PM
Hmm...so nothing more on their actual personalities? Like, is the swashbuckler boisterous and cheerful, or does he buckle his swash in a different way? Or does his way of playing not reveal what sort of personality he has very well? Something else?

Roc Ness
2009-06-17, 01:05 AM
Well, I wasn't selected to play. :smallfrown:

But there's a new page of this!!! :smallwink:

Lilienthal
2009-06-17, 03:35 AM
Someone mentioned fanart a little while back, and I've found myself thinking of doing some myself.
I did a (very) rough sketch with my tablet to try and get down what your warlock's face might look like, is it anywhere close?
[NOTE: Large Image]
http://fc06.deviantart.com/fs46/f/2009/167/5/4/Warlock_Face_Sketch_by_Tome_The_Dragon.png
"How many hit dice did you say that dragon had?" :smallbiggrin:


But his character sheet has "Swag" instead of "Gear".

What, he's Australian? :smallwink:

Roc Ness
2009-06-17, 03:56 AM
What, he's Australian? :smallwink:

... I'm Australian...

Lilienthal
2009-06-17, 05:31 AM
... I'm Australian...

I never said it was a bad thing. :smallbiggrin:

TheCountAlucard
2009-06-17, 05:58 AM
Thought I'd say something.

I started looking at your Army of Commoners thread, SilverClawShift. I'm only on page ten; it's outright amazing stuff.

Can you possibly provide me with links to other awesome page-turner campaign journal-type threads of yours?

Roc Ness
2009-06-17, 06:38 AM
Touching on the Horror Campaign, whatever happened to that magic coin which changes faces? It was only mentioned once as a "calling card"

SilverClawShift
2009-06-17, 04:44 PM
Hmm...so nothing more on their actual personalities?

I'm not actually sure how to respond, truth be told. Like I said, what you're seeing here is more or less what you're getting.

The Dragonborn is somber and deadly serious.
The Factotum is curious and attentive, but slightly intellectually dettached.
The Swashbuckler has attention span concerns, but is fairly resolved and loyal.
I'm just brain-busted.

Our characters are us, or who we're pretending to be at least :smalltongue:


Can you possibly provide me with links to other awesome page-turner campaign journal-type threads of yours?

Actually, the Halloween one and this one are the only two so far.
I started doing one for the Elder Evil campaign we played, but at the time I was too busy to keep up BOTH gaming and writing about it afterwards. Guess which one got the axe? :smalltongue:


Touching on the Horror Campaign, whatever happened to that magic coin which changes faces? It was only mentioned once as a "calling card"

Nothing came of the coin, it's just something our DM does. He throws us a magic item of dubious usefullness, just to see if we can find a way to make it come in handy. Like goggles that let the wearer see the ethereal (and only the ethereal) and take a full round to put on or take off. Stuff like that.

The dice might be that in this campaign. We have the ability to summon something at random that will attack anything, including us. We can make it work.... but we have to actively MAKE it work.

SilverClawShift
2009-06-17, 04:47 PM
Last nights session.

It was a doozy. Fortunately, I managed to get the entire thing written up :smallsmile:

Approach

So we collectively agreed on something for the first time in a while. It's high time we go poke our nose back to the villains main base and see what trouble we can stir up. We still haven't decided what we're actually going to try to accomplish when we get there, but we can worry about that later.
Or quote the Swashbuckler "Once again blurring the line between bravery and idiocy!"

So we set sail from the northern Empire continent, and head off back to the egyptian lands. The trip itself is relatively brief and uneventful, once again made more brief by the fact that our skeletal crew labors tirelessly while the rest of us are tucked in our bunks at night.
When we get close enough to the egyptian continent that we can start to make out the shoreline and the port that we last escaped this place from, we start to circle in place instead of charging in full steam ahead, circling in the open waters for a few hours until nightfall.
We're concerned that they haven't forgotten either our ship, or our faces (not to mention the whole "Undead monstrosity" thing I'm riding around in). So we wait until darkness falls, and send the kobold on a bat flying in to do a little scouting out of the city. We all wait patiently on deck while he flits about on silent wings in the dead of night, and finally returns to us with the news.
"There's no one there."
Swashbuckler: Like, everyone's gone home for the night and left the place unguarded?
The kobold look at him blank and repeats "There's no one THERE. The city's EMPTY."

So... well, crap.

We opt to stop circling aimlessly in the open waters, and pull in to the city at large. We dock and tie up the ship, and a glance around reveals that the kobold was 100% correct. The place is deserted.
Me: On the plus side, I don't have to be sneaky with my skeleton.
The dragon shaman gave me a sideways glance, but agreed that it did make our approach much easier, considering the only one of who could belnd in isn't exactly the master of diplomacy (swashbuckler).
We go in cautiously, sending the kobold to ghost a few hundered feet in front of us before giving us the clear. About halfway through the city, we realize it really IS deserted, and rather suddenly. But not so suddenly they didn't have time to lock their doors and make sure everything was in proper order.


Shop Till You Drop

I had the kobold pick the lock on what looked like a tailors shop. The Dragon Shaman insisted that we were NOT looting this city (even though we were allready wanted criminals who would be executed), and I reluctantly agreed to leave behind some gold for whatever I took. I wasn't after much, just a huge black cloak and brooch for my Giant skeleton, and some dresses that would work to conceal my lack of legs once I had fell flight (and would fit over my leather armor with some minor alterations).

Since I was shopping, the swashbuckler and kobold thought maybe it would be a good idea if we started sneaking into shops to restock our gear? We were definately behind on normal supplies, and this was the first time we'd stopped at any civilized place at weeks. It happened to be EMPTY, but it was still a civilized place.
At first the Dragon Shaman didn't like the idea, until he looked down and noticed he was still using the same beat up eight-gold-costing morning star he'd had since level 1. He reluctantly agreed that it was probably a good time for a re-supply run, and that we might as well take advantage of the lack of "being tried as wanted criminals" to grab some new gear.
He'd been taking armor and weapon proficiency feats for lack of better immediate options, so this was something he (out side the game) was kind of looking forward to I know. He swapped out his cruddy beat-to-crap morningstar for a Masterwork Bastard Sword. He also found a suit of Masterwork fullplate that, with some relatively minor modifications, was suitable for him to wear (what with the wings and all). He came up a tiny bit short on the gold for all of it, but gave himself a 'Trying to be a hero, 10% off' discount.
Fortunately, The Sword/Shield/Armor combo is light enough that he can still fly normally, but he won't be carrying any of us casually unless he pumps his strength some more.
The rest of us spent our loose coin on some scrolls and potions, a spellbook to serve as our fledgling archivists prayerbook, some better armor and weapons for ourselves (nothing too special. Some more daggers for me, better fitting leather armor for the kobold, a masterwork rapier for the swashbuckler (and he found a Masterwork buckler with no arcane spell failure chance)). And yes, we gave ourselves varying discounts as well.

Our little shopping detour was interrupted when we heard a haggard cough echoing down the streets. We sent the Swashbuckler first, since he was currently the only one who could pass for normal, with us trailing a few feet behind. We pinpointed the noise to one of the alleys in between buildings, and creeping down, we noticed who was making the noise. A homeless man, obviously completely blind, and laying in a pile of filthy rags. He blended in so well, that if we hadn't noticed the noise, we never would have spotted him. He was clearly dying, infected with something horrible.
Not wanting to touch him due to fear in infection (and all of us lacking any kind of way to remove a disease. We could produce healing effects, but not remove disease), I reached out with the giant skeleton hand to pat him softly on the arm and made a hushed noise to alert him to our presence. When he reached to grab the wrist of the skeleton, and felt bone instead, he gasped, and asked "Is this the reaper coming to free me from this life?"
The Dragon Shaman said "Not quite yet friend... tell me, where has everyone gone?"
The homeless man drew a ragged breath and told us, the plague had spread through the city like an uncontrolled fire. Everyone was sick...even the healers and holy men had fallen ill. But a man... Priest, had promised them a cure... they beleived him...followed him out into the desert, where they were beginning a ritual to take the sickness away. No one who'd passed had been willing to help the blind and dying homeless man though, as they figured (rightly, he said) that he was only hours from the end.

So we established two things. Priest, despite being obviously unhinged and unnerving, was neevrtheless able to convince people he was important enough to let him do as he wished (browse unchecked through mental patient records, lead a church sponsored archaeological dig, get an entire city to follow him pied piper style out to an unearthed zigarut...)
The second thing was where we needed to go now. We'd been heading that way anyway, but it was nice to know what to expect.

The homeless man weazed, and asked us if we could do him a mercy. As the Dragon Shaman was asking "What's the moral thing to do here anyway?" I put my hand gently on the homeless mans forhead...and fired off an eldritch blast. The dragon shamans response was "Oh gee, look at that! SURPRISE!"

Bitterness aside, we gathered up our new supplies, left what we didn't immediately need back at the ship, and told the skeletons to pull out of port and return to circling the waters off shore until we came back (playing it safe), did a hitpoint/status/gear check, and set off in the direction of the Ziggarut. We took the bats with us, but walked while they flew overhead.


Blockade

On the way there, we were attacked. Wether it was a chance encounter, or something deliberately prepared, we're not sure, but we were attacked by giant scorpions of various sizes in the open sand. Since it was night, we hadn't noticed them approaching until they were actually in combat range. We managed to wipe them out, and finally leveled up for our troubles.
Which means I finally got Fell Flight! The text of Fell Flight says you gain a fly speed equal to your move rate... but the DM was kind enough to give me a fly speed equal to my NORMAL move rate, and not my new "drag yourself 5 feet at a time by your arms" move rate, because that would have just been cruel, even for him. So I eagerly flew out of my skeleton ride and put on one of the dresses, finally back to equal 'footing' among the others (actually technically better footing, as I can move in any direction at will...)
The Swashbuckler took another level of Archivist (Swash 4, Sorc 2, Arch 2). The Kobold elected to stay pure Facotum to gain Cunning Surge (and can now spend inspiration points to take an extra standard action on his turn). The Dragon Shaman got a stronger breath weapon. All of us got a high enough BAB that we get a second attack each round.

And we moved on through the desert.

When we arrived at our destination, we found no one around the box canyon directly. But when we got to the edge and looked down? We saw it was absolutely filled with a WAVE of people. They were all kneeling and facing the ziggarut, crying, and praying for strength. The sounds of the desperate. Some of the less ill were standing guard, holding large falchions and other curved blades. Around the ziggarut directly where several elite looking warriors. And on top of the ziggarut? Priest knelt surrounded by his group of men, leading the people of the city in the ritual prayers.

We pulled back away from the edge of the canyon and started talking about our options. NONE of them seemed very positive. Our primary goal was getting INTO the ziggarut itself... but ideally we could do that without the entire population of a major port city persuing us in a rage. The kobold could probably make it in, if he could fly. With a bat though, he'd be obvious, and wouldn't be able to do it stealthily. The full plate wearing dragon shaman would be even more obvious. The Swashbuckler had no real options other than fighting his way in. I could float out above the ziggarut and drop straight down, but there were enough torches that someone would be bound to notice me, and I can't hide in plain sight like the kobol can.

We sigh and scratch our heads.
I suggest that I can probably get us in violently. I can control 32 HD worth of undead (Dragon Shaman: "No"), and I'm only controlling 27 at the moment (Dragon Shaman: "No"). If the Dragon Shaman can make it down and torch 5 people in his fire breath (Dragon Shaman: "No"), then I can re-animate them and have them attack anyone nearby (Dragon Shaman: "No"), and just raise whoever THEY kill when their numbers start thinning out (Dragon Shaman: "No"). Hell, if you keep everyone off my back (Dragon Shaman: "No"), I might be able to take out the whole canyon (Dragon Shaman: "No!!!").
Swashbuckler: At least it's an IDEA?
Dragon Shaman: No it isn't. Attempted genocide isn't an IDEA. It's an ATTROCITY.

We sigh and scratch our heads.
Swashbuckler: Go in gangbusters style? Fly down, send the bats careening into the nearest attackers, dash into the entrance and try to seal it behind us so no one can alert whoever's inside?
Me: You mean pin ourselves in with a psychotic druid who's shown that he can wipe out the four of us casually? I don't think sealing the entrance is what THEY'RE worried about, it's what WE'LL wind up worried about.

We sigh and scratch our heads.
Factotum: What about a distraction? We could throw the hill giant skeleton down one side of the canyon...maybe light it on fire first. And when everyone's excited and confused, the Warlock can fly the two of us to the ziggarut opening... we need to be stealthy inside the place anyway. It won't do to have two armored tanks trying to sneak through the dark tunnels with us. You could wait guard out here to save our butts when we inevitably come running out in a panic because we got in over our heads.

We look around at each other and finally nod. I can make a cloud of darkness that surrounds me, so the two of us will just be a darker spot against the night sky. I can drop at 60 feet a round, and given the height of the ziggarut as opposed to the drop, it'll be give or take 9-12 second before I can have us both inside through the doorway. And even if anyone DOES look away from the flaming skeleton long enough to notice us, we'll just be a shadowy blot that dissapears in a few seconds.

Yup.

That's HONESTLY the best plan we could come up with. Go us.

So me and the kobold position ourselves at the edge of the canyon, as close to the entrance to the ziggarut as we can get, while the Dragon Shaman and Swashbuckler get on the other side with the Hill Giant skeleton. The swashbuckler coats it in two pints of oil (all good adventurers carry rope, oil, and chalk, FYI) and the dragon shaman hits it with a fire breath as I give it an order to go toppling over the side of the canyon and (if it survives) start attacking anyone who attacks it.
The reaction is, exactly as predicted. EVERYONE in the canyon, Priest and his men included, look back at the behemoth falling to the canyon floor below. I grab the kobold and start flying down as fast as I can, while the skeleton hits the ground. Between 20d6 fall damage and 5d6 fire damage from the breath, it turned out to be something like 95 points of damage, which meant the skeleton was still up and kicking (well, clubsmacking) the guards who rushed it in fear and confusion. The ruckus generated was MORE than enough for me and the kobold to make it into the entrance of the ziggarut unnoticed, and the flaming skeleton killed a pretty high number of guards before they finally took it down.
The Dragon Shaman and Swashbuckler both booked to the entrance of the tunnel leading out of the canyon (the one we'd gone up that first time), getting into position to attack whenever anyone came up to figure out what had happened.

And we were in.


Inside the Ziggarut

We could both see just fine in the dark, so we didn't have to get any light source or anything that would give us away. We'd been here before, so it was a pretty straightforward sneak-job. We didn't get lost or make any pointless detours into empty corridors like the first time. Along the way down though, we notice dsomething kind of peculiar. The spellcasting bug corpses were...everywhere. They look like they'd been thrown into a wood chipper, and were so shredded it took close examination for us to notice that some of them had parts of them ripped out cleanly. None of the spellcasting gems were to be seen. They'd all either been taken, or expended from the bugs casting them in self defense. We couldn't tell which.
But Occasionally, we'd find a partially intact corpse with black onyx haphazardly jammed in where the gems should have been. We say partial because, it looks like after the onyx was pushed in, the bugs wound up being crushed out of frustration...

All of this seemed very bad.

We came to the great champer we'd encountered the Drifter in before. The high-ceilinged chambers that we kept bumping into him in. Immediately, the kobold started sliding around the outer wall to get further into the chamber, while I (in my dark blot of shadows) floated up the wall and stuck to the ceiling, looking downwards. I noticed spiders and other various insects sitcking quietly in the shadows, but none of them noticed me while I floated to a nice safe position that would give me a good view.
The scene in the champer was... disturbing, to saw the least. The Drifter was there, in the middle of everything, surrounded by black onyx and a strange glowing symbol carved into the rock floor. The same symbol was on his forhead, a glowing gold rune. Therin and the Changeling were there too, along with a number of Priests men (who must loan out a few of them to Therin while they're working together, or something. Which would explain the guys burning themselves to death at the docks in the beginning... they weren't killing themselves, they were just HIDING. By killing themselves. Or whatever.) The fifth mystery-man wasn't present.
On the outside of the strange carved symbol, were thirteen people from this city, of various ages and genders. They were all bound and gagged, helpless, facing the Drifter as his wings buzzed uncomfortably and he muttered quietly to himself. Occasionally, Therin or the changeling would double check the bonds on some of their prisoners.
There were also thirteen jars. Each one filled with a spellcasting bug... each one looking like its back had been torn open. Whatever gems they'd had were gone, replaced by cut crystals of black Onyx. The bugs were still alive and well, though extremly agitated. These must have been the successful ones...

And on the back wall? Chained and strapped and gagged? The angel. Her eyes were gouged out :smallfrown:, but it didn't stop her from turning her head to 'look' directly at the kobold, and then up at me on the ceiling, before returning her 'gaze' straight ahead and giving a defiant tug at the chains holding her to the ground. She knew we were here, and assumedly, she gave that one subtle tug at her bonds as a way of telling us to free her. Angels aren't known to be quiters, I suppose.
A closer look at the center of the chamber revealed one of the angels eyes laying on the ground, facing directly north at the tip of the strange symbol.

The kobold crept alongside Therin/Priests workers, checking them for keys or anything that would help him free the angel. He found nothing, and elected to go and begin picking the locks on the chains directly. There wasn't much I could do from the ceiling. I could fire a blast at someone to disrupt things, but it would be suicide for me (and I'd be taking the kobold down with me).
The kobold managed to spring one of the locks, but the DCs were really high. He was forced to take 20 to get some of them...and there were a good number of locks :smalleek:.
As he was working on freeing the captive celestial, I was watching the ritual starting to go down, still trying to think of anything I could do to stop it that wouldn't just get us destroyed. After thorough examination of my abilities and gear, I came up with.... diddly squat. All I could do was watch and hope the kobold managed to spring the angel.
The drifter finally stopped muttering to himself, and nodded at the changeling, who proceeded to walk around, cautiously opening the jars containing the black onyx bugs. When she opened each one, they honed in directly on the Drifter himself, and...apparently began to chew their way into him. The first one caused him to flinch and grind his teeth, but he simply stayed where he was with a steely resolve... until the fifth one started chewing on him. Then he finally winced and cried out in pain, falling to one knee while his wings fluttered aggressively, and the constant swarm of smaller bugs around him began to buzz around, agitated.
The changeling hesitated to open the sixth jar, and Therin simply asked "Sir?" with a concerned echo... but the Drifter cried out in pain again and glared at the changeling, barking at her to keep going. She looked very worried. So did Therin. The drifter simply scowled and gritted his teeth more. The changeling ran from jar to jar... by the tenth one, the Drifter began screaming out in pain, which even made Therin look uncomfortable, looking around nervously and trying not to focus on the sound.
The kobold sprang another few locks.
By the time the changeling had opened the 13th jar, and all 13 black onyx bugs were attacking the drifter, he was freely screaming in pain, rolling in place and trying to fight off the bugs. The changeling and Therin kept exchanging nervous glances. The prisoners looked catatonic with terror.
The kobold sprang the last lock, and dissapeared back into the shadows, after patting the angel between the wings to let her know he was done. She remained in place... too clever to give it away that easily and risk being recaptured.
The drifter... stopped screaming in pain. He stopped screaming in pain, because apparently, the bugs had done him in. All thirteen of them had chewed and chewed until he'd finally bled out, and was laying in the middle of the symbol... his blood pooling out and flowing through the cracks of it while the bugs continued to feed on his corpse.
Therin shuffled uncomfortably and the changeling backed nervously towards the exit. They weren't 100% on the situation either, apparently.
When the Drifters blood finally pooled into the entire symbol? The golden rune on his forhead stopped glowing, and the symbol on the floor flashed gold instead. And when it did, all 13 of the bugs immediately fell onto their backs and went into death throes, curling their legs tight as they perished, only to flip themselves back over and stand motionless. After what seemed like too long of a pause, the strange golden symbol on the floor and on the drifters forhead flashed on the backs of the bugs.
At which point they all flew into a frenzy, circling each other angrily before flying out and attacking the 13 bound captives... who also began screaming in pain, until the bugs finally worked their way into the bound victims... causing the same glowing rune to spring up on their forheads, and then they suddenly stopped struggling.

I didn't like where this was going.

Therin, the Changeling, and their workers all began circling the group, untying and ungagging them as quickly as possible. Therin asked "Sir, are you allright?". At which point, every ungagged victim spoke in a creepy unified chorus "Yes. Yes, I just didn't expect it to hurt as much as it did."
At which point, everyone present turned their eyes to the angel... Only to find her sprinting alongside the outskirt of the chamber, heading towards the exit door. They all screamed varies cursewords, a great wave of rage coming as they moved to attack her. The spiders on the ceiling all came to and began descending on silk strands, one of them dropping directly in front of the exit.
Feeling uncomfortbaly noble, I gave away my position by firing an eldritch spear at the spider blocking the doorway, allowing the angel a clean escape. The kobold gave away his position too, when he cast "Grease" on the doorway just behind the angel, allowing her to run unhindered while anyone making it to the door began to fall and crawl. I flew towards the front doorway as fast as I could, trying to dodge the spiders and taking hits from some ranged attacks and thrown rocks... one of the group cast Contagion on me, but I passed the Fort save. Another one had apparently cast some kind of lightning spell, because me and the kobold were both getting struck by bolts of electricity while we booked for the exit. The kobold managed to make a running, springing jump over the patch of grease without much problem. I just flew over it. Therin managed to jump over it too, but the changeling and some of the "previously victims" all fell prone in the muck. The rest couldn't get through the collapsed bodies, but Therin was persuing and howling in rage.

And glancing back as we ran for the exit with everything we had?

One of the victims in the grease pit had begun a violent coughing fit... coughing up blood, gore... until they literally fell apart in a showering of bone and viscera... revealing a whole swarm of the black onyx bugs from their insides, which began flying out. The others began coughing in the same way :smalleek:


Outside the Ziggarut

The entire time this had been happening, our two warriors had remained outside. They had run to the entrance of the pathway out of the canyon and positioned themselves for attack, as mentioned. A group of guards came running out of the cave system to see what had caused a giant flaming skeleton to drop down in the middle of their prayer session. The Swashbuckler whipped out his new trick, cast "Enlarge Person" on himself, did a power attack and killed a guy, cleaved and killed a guy, great cleaved and killed a guy, great cleaved and missed... rolled his second attack and killed a guy, cleaved and killed again, and great cleaved to kill two more guy. The Dragon Shaman toasted the rest of the (now MUCH smaller) group with a cone of fire.
They laid low until another, smaller group came up a few minutes later. They tried to hide, but, neither of them are stealthy characters, so they wound up killing THAT group too.
Eventually, after not hearing back from any of the exploration guards, Priest sent five of his men up. The fighting got redundant in a very serious manner. See, Priests men were no incredible warriors, expecially compared to two level 8 PCs. But they just kept burning into ash and then climbing back up to fight again. The Dragon Shaman and Swashbuckler knew they could pretty much keep mopping the floor with these guys.... but it was only a matter of how long it went on before even MORE came up. If a large enough force came? They'd be overwhelemed. And that's not knowing what tricks Priest himself is capable of (besides shutting down some magical abilities).
Swashbuckler: So what the heck do we do?
Dragon Shaman: We have to buy our friends inside as much time as we possibly can. We keep fighting like spartan soldiers, regardless.
Swashbuckler: That's exactly what I hoped you'd say.
They wound up fighting in the open sand for the majority of the time we were in the ziggarut, before, ask predicted, whole droves of guards and Priests men began storming up to see what the heck was going on. They fought viciously, but when the number started to get overwhelming, they started to sprint around the outside of the canyon, looking for a place where they might turn the terrain to their advantage.

It wasn't long after they got overwhelmed that a sightless angel came sprinting out of the ziggarut, immediately taking to the skies and trying to fly out of the canyon (amongst many bewildered guards and confused gasps from the crow, and Priest shouting some obscenity, obviously knowing that this wasn't the plan).
Immediately afterwards, a lightning fast kobold who was so dark he was practically a shadow came springing out, followed immediately therafter by a derranged looking warlock floating at high speeds, scooping the kobold into my arms and flyign after the angel.
Immediatly followed by a howling and cursing Therin, throwing a weapon at us (and missing outright).

...Immediately followed by a buzzing hideous mass of spellcasting bugs, jet black, full of black onyx, and glowing with an eerie golden hum from the collective display of so many runes. Which then dispersed among the crowd and began to attack all of them.
Some of the bugs left the canyon, flitting to where the Swashbuckler and Dragon Shaman were fighting a small army of mook guards (and still cleaving through them like butter until...). The bugs began to attack everyone present, guards included. Whenever the bugs successfully 'killed' one of the men, they would fall to their knees, clutching their stomachs in pain, before looking back up with a brand new glowing rune on their forhead.
The Dragon Shaman and Swashbuckler were both tough enough to fight the bugs off without TOO much difficulty... it was easy enough that the Dragon Shaman could take the time to pry out one of the black onyx gems and pocket it.
They did start to get overwhelmed by sheer numbers, which is when the Dragon Shaman opted to throw the summoning dice...

Guess what it came up?

No no, go on, guess.

Give up?

The first die was Swarm.

The second die?

Rabbits.

He randomly summoned a swarm of rabbits. He smacked his own forhead so hard he winced in pain. "really? I pull out a last ditch ace from my sleeve, and it's a swarm of rabbits?"

Instantly, the battlefield fills up with around three dozen tiny white rabbits. Who all hop around for a minute before flinging themselves at the faces of everyone nearby. Now let me clear one thing up before hand, these weren't monty python killer rabbits of unstoppable doom. They were literally just harmless white cotton balls, who were still nevertheless trying to DESTROY everything they saw.

By the time the Angel, Me, and the Kobold met up with them, half the canyon was filled with the eerie golden glow of those now sporting the golden rune on their forheads.
By the time we realized it was hopeless (about 12 seconds later), the other half of the canyon was full of the glow, and every ninth or tenth person was falling to the ground, coughing out their insides... rapidly multiplying bugs included.

The ...unusual... cover of the bloodthirsty rabbits distracting every active combatant was enough for us to make our escape.


Escape

We took to the skies, trying to outpace the growing mass of bugs and possessed people screaming in fury and persuing us. The Swashbuckler and kobold each took one of the bats, while me, the Dragon Shaman, and the angel (who was blind, but could still apparently observe her surroundings in some fashion) all flew under our own power. We told the angel we had a ship just off shore that we could recover on, assuming we could outpace the mass of bugs. Thankfully, the bugs, while spreading rapidly, were moving about half the speed we collectively were. And the angel seemed to be able to fly circles around us all, but was going slower to keep with the group.
She thanked us for coming back for her, in the very calm matter of fact way that only an angel can seem to muster.
The Kobold asked how she can get around so fine without eyes, she just responded that "Celestial creatures do not see. We either know, or do not know."

Which was a good enough answer that we all clammed up for the rest of the flight. We landed on the deck, and sent the skeletons working double time. The Swashbuckler asked if we actually had a heading, and the Dragon Shaman replied "Far away from here".
The Swashbucklers healing bug, Chitter, molted again. Must have gotten close enough to the zigarrut, because it powered up and can now cast Cure Moderate Wounds.

We talked to the angel about what had happened. The ritual they were performing hadn't actually needed her at all. Gouging out her eyes and decorating with them was done out of malice, not necessity. That first part of the ritual had gone off perfectly, as we could see by the results. The Drifter had bred a strain of Necromancy casting gem-bugs, and had made them powerful enough that they had been able to cast? You guessed it. Magic Jar (also frequently refered to as "Soul Jar"). Then he'd somehow transferred his conciousness into the bugs... who then took over the other people... who then acted as hosts while the bug multiplied rapidly inside of them to increase the process exponentially.
Factotum: So his goal is... what? Take over the world and leave nothing but himself? That doesn't sound like how you become a God.
The angel 'looked' at him and said point blank, "No. He does not care about your world."
Factotum: So...what does he want?
Angel: I was bound physically to this world as a guardian millenia ago. Once he had become the ultimate parasite, he was going to infect me.
Factotum: ...And?
Angel: And then we would return to heaven.

We all stopped for a minute to take that in.

Dragon Shaman: So he was going to use you to wrench open a path into heaven and then... infect it? That's how he was going to become a god. By INFECTING a god?
The angel just nodded.
Factotum: So, then, it's in our best interests to keep you as safe and hidden as possible.
Me: I think we should kill her.
Dragon Shaman: What the HELL, okay, we just went WAY past the "Gray Area of Heroics" and screaming into pointless evil. Really? Kill the angel? Really?
Me: Damn right kill the angel! If she's dead he can't hitch a ride in her.
Angel: She is absolutely correct.

We all stop and stare at her.

Dragon Shaman: But that's blatant evil?
Angel: Destroying a celestial creature is an evil act under any and all circumstances, correct.
Dragon Shaman: But we should kill you?
Angel: *long pause* I am unable to advocate the performance of an evil act under any circumstance, by my very nature.
Swashbuckler: So... we could kill you to stop this Drifter guy from becoming a god, but we'd still be performing an evil act by doing so. So you can't TELL us to. Can you kill yourself?
Angel: Destroying a celestial creature is an evil act under any and all circumstances. As I am unable to advocate the performance of an evil act, so too am I unable to perform an evil act myself, by my very nature.
Dragon Shaman: Okay, we get it. Killing you might be a smart thing to do, but it's still Evil with a capital E.
Angel: Correct.
Me: I'm okay with that. I'll kill her. I'm allready the bad guy, I'll save you all from having to make that choice.
Angel: I am unable to allow an evil act to transpire in my presence without intervention, by my very nature.
Me: Okay, wait. I'm a little confused.
Angel: If you attempt to perform an evil act, I am obligated by my very nature to destroy you in opposition.
Factotum: You can't LET us kill you, no matter how good of an idea it might be.
Angel: Correct.

After a long uncomfortable pause

Dragon Shaman: Are the four of us strong enough to defeat you?
The angel replied as flatly, coldly, and as factual as if she were reading a dictionary entry: "Yes"


Wrap It Up

So after that... deliciously warm and friendly conversation, the Dragon Shaman admits that... maybe I was onto something. But even if I am, he doesn't have the conviction to go through with it as long as any other course of action exists. The other two agree, but we're putting "Murder a Being of Pure Light and Goodness" as plan B.
If we're in such dire straights that nothing else can be done, that little plan is going to be trotted out and re-examined. It'll be my finger on the trigger, obviously, but the others aren't comfortable with being evil by proxy.

So now we're acting as bodyguards for her. Things are about to get Very Very Bad(tm) on this world, but it'll get a lot worse a lot faster if the Drifter manages to hijack even a minor deity, let alone a major deity or (deity forbid) an OVERDEITY...

We think for a few minutes about what to do. We consider stopping by central island to see if we can't get Macguiller and the local legal authorities on our side. We do have an ANGEL vouching for us at this point.
But after mulling over our possibilities? The factotum mentions "Papa HeeNo did say he was warding off his village, didn't he? If he knew what he was doing, and he clearly did *points at eye shaped hole in palm* then that might be one of the safer places we can stick her until something better comes up. How long do you think it'll take for the Drifter parasite to spread?"
Dragon Shaman: No way to be 100% positive, but I'd say that continent can't last more than... a week? Two? The ocean will slow him down, luckily there are a lot of unconnected landmasses in the world... there's got to be safe pockets. We just need to find more and start figuring out a method of counter-attacking this.

We agree, and set off for the jungle continent, hoping we can convince Papa HeeNo to hide our angel until we can figure out what to do next.

I have a feeling things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better.

Lilienthal
2009-06-17, 05:38 PM
That...was...amazing. I love how your group conversations play out, steadfast in their predictability as they may be. :smallwink:


So how about it, no "Wow, that sucks" yet? An impending armageddon and disruption of the planes seems pretty damn bleak to me. :smallbiggrin:

TheCountAlucard
2009-06-17, 05:39 PM
:smalleek: That's, uh, well...

THAT IS SO AWESOME!!! :smallbiggrin:

I mean, wow, y'know? :smallredface:

arguskos
2009-06-17, 05:48 PM
Hmm. Here's a thought then: find out how to send the angel back to the planes. Really, it works!

Priest needed a good cleric to summon her. Now that the Drifter has begun his campaign of "rawr infection rawr" clerics will be in veeery short supply, meaning Priest is unlikely to be able to find another one to resummon her. All you need to do is send her back with warnings to her god/gods about what's going on, and maybe marshal a divine army to crush the Drifter and his bug plague. Go with her if you can, to provide more knowledge to her masters.

This goal might be served well by talking to Papa HeeNo, who may know how to send her back.

Oh, and :smalleek:! This is getting freaky, but it's still awesome.

Hyozo
2009-06-17, 05:50 PM
Me: I think we should kill her.

You see, times like this are one of the reasons every team should have an evil member.:smallamused:


I have a feeling things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better.

Don't they always? I'm sure you'll find some way to save the world, or at least part of it, hopefully.


Swarm Rabbits

That is just perfect.

wadledo
2009-06-17, 05:53 PM
Instantly, the battlefield fills up with around three dozen tiny white rabbits. Who all hop around for a minute before flinging themselves at the faces of everyone nearby. Now let me clear one thing up before hand, these weren't monty python killer rabbits of unstoppable doom. They were literally just harmless white cotton balls, who were still nevertheless trying to DESTROY everything they saw.

Even with my lack of repect for monty python, I still feel your DM still should have done something with this. Maybe make the rabbits one shot, one kill for undead (because white=holy) or something.

Bigbrother87
2009-06-17, 06:01 PM
Silverclawshift. This username has become synonymous with harrowing adventures of great depth and exciting, culminating in a doomsday plot of such epic proportion and complexity that we, the loyal viewing public, mere bystanders to the awesomeness that are these games, are left always wanting more. Not to mention that we give serious thought to kidnapping/cloning your group, but that's another story. :smallwink:

SCS, really, I'm in awe of the complexity of the stories your DM's put together, not to mention that I really enjoy your style of relating them to us. I, like many others I'm sure, hope to have this much fun around the table with our groups someday. I'd read your horror campaign before, but recently reread it and this one...Please allow me to echo the crowd and go "Wow, awesome."

Soon, next Friday on fact, I'll be able to play with a real group of great people, and I hope to be able to help them have as much fun and enjoyment as I can, while also playing myself and enjoying whatever story the DM creates. Because of you and others, I'm also likely to record what happens, hoping that, if nothing else, what my group does will entertain and educate people in gaming, as you and your group has done. We'll be playing 2e, but that doesn't detract from the storytelling opportunities.

/endHeroworship Ok, now seriously, when's the next part? :smallbiggrin:

Lilienthal
2009-06-17, 06:14 PM
While this might be off-topic Silverclaw, how are things going with your Dustlands setting? Do you still work on that or not? And do you ever intend to, you know, organise some of that stuff? :smallwink: I've looked at it a few times and while I read a bit about the classes and weapons, I haven't really found the courage to work myself through the whole thing. :smallbiggrin:

Oh, how do you prefer to be addressed actually? By your full name, or SCS or something else entirely? Don't want to be too disrespectful after all. :smallcool:

Fayd
2009-06-17, 06:18 PM
Just a thought SCS:

That orb thingy Priest had? I think it's your soul. Or connected to it...he WAS studying your technique...and he might have done a deal with the devil himself to get a hold of it...you might not want to break it.

The good thing with Drifter's current metamorphosis is that his soul/consciousness is divided amongst every bug, right? So eventually, he'll hit a maximum that he can control effectively...he might be helping you defeat him by dividing himself like that, assuming my theory of metaphysics is at all accurate.

Can't wait for the next update!

thorgrim29
2009-06-17, 06:36 PM
Wow, cool..... that drifter is very bad ass.... Also, I get a feeling the DM saw the film slither recently.... And I have no idea how the soul jar modification thing works, but don't think that Drifter can expand exponentially all the time, because he's still (more or less), a mortal with a mortal mind, and now he's suddenly a hive mind, the adjustment should slow him down a bit when the pieces of him start getting out of sight of eachother.

Finally, the etheral goggles? Easy, give them to a familiar.

13_CBS
2009-06-17, 07:05 PM
See? This is why I, on SCS's old story thread, proposed that we make Silverclaw a custom title, "Storyteller in the Playground". But noooo, no one listened. :smallannoyed:

:smalltongue:

Dragonmuncher
2009-06-17, 07:48 PM
Awesome post- makes me glad I've bookmarked this thread!


So, how does your DM handle splitting the party? Go into another room? Notes? Both groups at the same time?

SilverClawShift
2009-06-17, 08:31 PM
So how about it, no "Wow, that sucks" yet? An impending armageddon and disruption of the planes seems pretty damn bleak to me. :smallbiggrin:

I'm sure he's said it once or twice.

You know how people fixate on a phrase or something for different periods of time? Lately our group has been dropping incredulous "Really?"s left and right.

"The dragon smacks you clean out of the cave!!!"
Really? :smallannoyed:
"The entire city is full of zombies"
Really? :smallannoyed:
"Bahamut said your mother is ugly"
Really? :smallannoyed:


Hmm. Here's a thought then: find out how to send the angel back to the planes.

No one in the group is going to get above 7th level spellcasting, so "Gate" type solutions are out. If we can hang on for SEVEN MORE levels without the angel being endangered (which will get tricky), the Swashbuckler will get access to Plane Shift.

But somehow I bet that "Bound to this world" means exactly what it sounds like. We're not going to solve this problem by expending one spell slot, I'm sure.


You see, times like this are one of the reasons every team should have an evil member.

Agreed! I'm glad it's not always me though.


Ok, now seriously, when's the next part? :smallbiggrin:

You flatter me.

And our next session is saturday night :smallsmile:


While this might be off-topic Silverclaw, how are things going with your Dustlands setting? Do you still work on that or not?

We do :smallsmile:. We usually work on it in between actual games, when we're figuring out what we want to play next as far as theme/characters/level, ect.
It's either that, or rounds of Slaughterdash, which is what we call our mindless neverending series of violent envioronments full of illogically paired monsters trying to ruthlessly kill us for no reason. Rapid Fire D&D. It's good to cleanse the pallette from time to time. :smalltongue:


Oh, how do you prefer to be addressed actually? By your full name, or SCS

I'm easy. As long as I know who you're talking to.

It was supposed to be SilverClawShifter, but I wasn't paying attention when I made my account, and didn't realize that I was being akwardly verbose. I do that a lot.


That orb thingy Priest had? I think it's your soul. Or connected to it...

That thought has definately occured to me, beleive me. We haven't seen it working on anything other than my powers, and my powers did come directly from selling my soul.
And Papa HeeNo gave me a harness for that orb for a REASON, he had to have.
But wether it's specifically my soul, or just some witch-hunter toy of his remains to be seen. I doubt he was expecting to run into me on the street... Unless. Maybe he figured I'd come hunting FOR the soul...

I dunno, we'll see how it plays out.


The good thing with Drifter's current metamorphosis is that his soul/consciousness is divided amongst every bug, right? So eventually, he'll hit a maximum that he can control effectively

Hahahahahaha... I... really, really doubt the DM will let us off that easy.

The Drifter was allready a babbeling luantic. I don't think seeing through more than one pair of eyes is going to make him EASIER to kill...


Also, I get a feeling the DM saw the film slither recently....

We know he readily cribs things from movies, books, and games. But there's never a guarantee of WHERE he took something from, or if he decided to add a twist that we can't anticipate.

He's really good at twisting things around. It's why he's so good at staying ahead of us seamlessly. (Most of the time. We've derailed him on a few occasions, sometimes we kill the BBEG way ahead of schedule and make him just stop and stare at his notes for a long, long time...)


the adjustment should slow him down a bit when the pieces of him start getting out of sight of eachother.

My guess?

It's going to make him even more dettached, unstable, violent, and dangerous. I doubt it's going to do anything but make our lives worse.


See? This is why I, on SCS's old story thread, proposed that we make Silverclaw a custom title, "Storyteller in the Playground".

But my DM is the storyteller. I'm just a ghostwriter :smalltongue:


So, how does your DM handle splitting the party? Go into another room? Notes? Both groups at the same time?

It depends on wether or not he anticipates something happening that needs to be kept secret, or if it's something we'll just pow-wow and tell each other about in the end anyway.

If it's blatantly obvious that we'll be sharing information? We just go back and forth between the groups. Find a good stopping point (ie, 'in the doorway') and see what the other group is up to.
Sometimes we do one group at a time until a real stopping point, but usually it's back and forth.

If we (either the player or the DM) need to keep a secret, we just do things on our laptops. Our group all brings laptops to our gaming session, cause we keep character sheets and notes and such on them. It also lets us commmunicate in secret provided we have a wireless network.
Makes things a lot more tidy and manageable. We can send our updated character sheets to our DM, so he know exactly what we can or cna't do, and what kind of saving throws he should be throwing at us.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-06-17, 08:47 PM
...I hate saying the same thing everytime, so Im going to go with something different.

WOW THAT WAS FREAKIN AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love your group dialouges in particular. The people I play with often have trouble staying in character, so this is utterly refreshing.


See? This is why I, on SCS's old story thread, proposed that we make Silverclaw a custom title, "Storyteller in the Playground". But noooo, no one listened. :smallannoyed:

:smalltongue:

If she wants it, I vote for it 500%.

Fayd
2009-06-17, 09:40 PM
Hahahahahaha... I... really, really doubt the DM will let us off that easy.

The Drifter was allready a babbeling luantic. I don't think seeing through more than one pair of eyes is going to make him EASIER to kill...


When I read the bit about the bugs, I was put in mind of a "species" of undead constructs from a trilogy by Garth Nix (Abhorsen, if you're curious). The Gore Crows are "Ordinary crows trapped, killed with a ritual, and infused with a single human spirit by a necromancer. They disintegrate in the sun and wind, and if one makes contact with running water, all its counterparts will be forced back to Death as well. The fewer crows share the human spirit, the stronger they are, but they kill by strength of numbers." (from wikipedia)

Basically an inverse relationship between intelligence/control and the number of the swarm. True, the guy was insane...ooohhh. What if he was a severe case of multiple personality...as in multiple souls in one body. That would make this sort of swarm thing MUCH easier to maintain, especially if there was a single dominant soul.

GreatWyrmGold
2009-06-17, 09:41 PM
Dude, a dark, hot, and sexy warlock is going to make you her mount. What the hell are you complaining about?

:smalltongue:
I'll...be...DEAD! And a ZOMBIE!!! Plus, why do dragons care about a girl that's good-looking by HUMAN standards? Especially beong a metalic one? And let's not bring up the whole "I'm LG" thing...


See? This is why I, on SCS's old story thread, proposed that we make Silverclaw a custom title, "Storyteller in the Playground". But noooo, no one listened. :smallannoyed:

:smalltongue:
I agree. :smallsmile:

Corwin Weber
2009-06-17, 10:37 PM
Ok, sooooo.... here's a thought.....

Um, wait. First. This thread has me full of levels of squee that are entirely inappropriate for a 35 year old man. Let me just state that right out. I mean, we're talking anime Japanese schoolgirl levels here. We're talking 'meeting Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman' levels here, k? K.

Now.... ok. Drifter planned to infect the Angel, and then return to the Heavens to infect a god..... sure, killing the Angel would send her back to the heavens, but.....

...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? And without the bugs, could he even infect anyone?

I'm guessing she has some means to get home. Why she hasn't already used it (or even suggested it) I couldn't say.

evil-frosty
2009-06-17, 10:48 PM
This is just AWESOME!!! i cracked up at "trying to be a hero 10% discount" and i am so going to try using that in a game now. Please kepp telling us about your campaigns they are so awesome.

Corwin Weber
2009-06-17, 11:09 PM
Ok, I gave this some more thought. You guys have to find out what Drifter's actual plan was. It's got to be more complicated than 'infect the Angel then commit suicide.' That wouldn't work. The Angel's soul, (albeit corrupted and possessed) would return to Heaven, but for his plan to have worked she'd have to bodily return to Heaven. Otherwise.... no body, no bugs. No bugs, no further possessions, and his whole plan accomplishes exactly bupkis.

There's more to this. There has to be.

13_CBS
2009-06-17, 11:15 PM
I'll...be...DEAD!


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



And a ZOMBIE!!!


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



Plus, why do dragons care about a girl that's good-looking by HUMAN standards?


Where do you think Half Draons come from?



Especially being a metalic one?


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



And let's not bring up the whole "I'm LG" thing...


Opposites attract!


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

arguskos
2009-06-17, 11:59 PM
Ok, I gave this some more thought. You guys have to find out what Drifter's actual plan was. It's got to be more complicated than 'infect the Angel then commit suicide.' That wouldn't work. The Angel's soul, (albeit corrupted and possessed) would return to Heaven, but for his plan to have worked she'd have to bodily return to Heaven. Otherwise.... no body, no bugs. No bugs, no further possessions, and his whole plan accomplishes exactly bupkis.

There's more to this. There has to be.
SCS, THIS is what I'm talking about. The Angel has to be able to get back to heaven once infected, meaning you can use whatever trick she or the Drifter was/is going to use to warn the gods. It sure as hell won't be easy, but it will need to happen.

Eldrys
2009-06-18, 12:03 AM
SCS, THIS is what I'm talking about. The Angel has to be able to get back to heaven once infected, meaning you can use whatever trick she or the Drifter was/is going to use to warn the gods. It sure as hell won't be easy, but it will need to happen.

or mabye, the drifter and his mates have some control over the binding and have the ability to force a return to Celestia.

Corwin Weber
2009-06-18, 12:13 AM
or mabye, the drifter and his mates have some control over the binding and have the ability to force a return to Celestia.

I can't see how they could force her to do something she can't do.... something she'd be unwilling to do, sure. Unable.... not so much.... and a binding like that sounds like something she wouldn't have any control over.

Eldrys
2009-06-18, 12:19 AM
I can't see how they could force her to do something she can't do.... something she'd be unwilling to do, sure. Unable.... not so much.... and a binding like that sounds like something she wouldn't have any control over.

What I was thinking that the binding could be disabled by the BBEG, and that the binding was the only thing holding the angel to the material plane of existance, and when the binding is broken the angel is sucked into the plane of celestia by some metaphorical vacum.

Corwin Weber
2009-06-18, 12:50 AM
What I was thinking that the binding could be disabled by the BBEG, and that the binding was the only thing holding the angel to the material plane of existance, and when the binding is broken the angel is sucked into the plane of celestia by some metaphorical vacum.

Maybe.... it's one of the few alternative explanations that makes sense. I mean, if Drifter can just open a gate or something similar he wouldn't actually need the Angel. Getting her was a lot of work just to kick the dog, so to speak.

TheCountAlucard
2009-06-18, 12:54 AM
If an angel dies and goes back to Celestia, though, the angel does "bodily return." An outsider's body is its soul; that's why it's so hard to raise them from the dead.

vicente408
2009-06-18, 01:10 AM
Hmmm...

An all-consuming swarm?

With mortal servants to act as his "heralds"?

I think you may have just witnessed the birth of Ultimate Galactus. :smalleek:

Corwin Weber
2009-06-18, 01:11 AM
If an angel dies and goes back to Celestia, though, the angel does "bodily return." An outsider's body is its soul; that's why it's so hard to raise them from the dead.

Do they? Or do they just reform in a new (or their original) body?

Roc Ness
2009-06-18, 01:27 AM
Man. Before School: New Post by SCS! Yeeeeaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!! :smallbiggrin:

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