Today's experiment... partial success
Apr. 28th, 2003 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothToday was the last session of Lance's high-level D+D game. He's thinking of getting more people and running a game of Dragonstar next...
We did exactly what we set out to do, but didn't do it correctly, and as a result millions of people will continue to suffer endlessly, while the Scarlet Guard's power spirals out of control. Go us.
While resting the night on the far side of the ring, the party decided that going after Barrabus wasn't likely to accomplish anything -- he wouldn't have the soul they were looking to free *on* him or anything. Instead, the wizard (who shall forever remain nameless) cast a scry spell on their friend, and got three results: One of a crystal in a rack of similar crystals, and two of automatons in different places. So the party buffed up, and teleported to the crystal first -- figuring it was most of the soul, and the automatons were the other bits of it that they'd have to free later by destroying them.
The crystals were guarded by about 30 constructs, but the mage's chain lightning and the monk and dragon's physical attacks made short work of them, and a wall of force and prismatic wall made sure nothing else came to play except for a few soul-stealers that snuck in before the wall of force went up. The crystal was stone-shaped out of its alcove, and was found to be 2/3rds full -- one of the automatons had been in the very same room.
The monk wanted to drop the wall of force and engage the 20 soul-stealing constructs behind it, but was vetoed by the wizard who'd have to actually do that -- the soul-stealers were *dangerous* and there were *20* of them and they *blew up bestowing negative levels in a radius* when they died! Badness all around.
So the party teleported to the third automaton and destroyed it. It was stationed outdoors with nothing else big around, so it wasn't much trouble to kill it.
Now they had the soul, but how to get it out? The party retreated again to study the crystal and determine that.
The results of the determination was that destroying or disjuncting the crystal would destroy the soul as well -- it had to be freed by whatever had put it in in the first place. So they teleported back to the street outside (figuring the crystal chamber would be crawling with reinforcements by now) and cast 'find the path' to 'the place where the soul had been trapped in the crystal'. The path led to a heavily-guaded castle, so everyone went into the shapeshifter's extradimensional mansion and the dragon's pet cleric cast 'ethereal jaunt', then followed the line down into the ground...
...to the chamber behind the prismatic wall, which had no other exits. It did have 8 soul stealers and 8 super-duper gold constructs, as well as a huge spider-legged multi-dragon-headed machine which was building constructs and animating them from a supply of soul gems.
The monk walked out and asked nicely for the machine to free their friend's soul. The machine ordered its minions to kill her. The mage chain-lightninged them, killing 6 of the soul stealers... whose negative energy deathbursts badly impaired the monk. Meanwhile, the shapeshifter and dragon were fighting a losing battle to defend the corner where most of the party was holed up from the damned constructs, which revealed their ability to cast 'Power Word: Kill' by failing to kill the monk.
The shapeshifter deathwarded the wizard and dragon, then tried to engage in melee and was killed by a construct. The wizard hasted everyone, while the monk joined the dragon in defending the alcove, and the pet cleric started casting 'restoration'.
Without the shapeshifter, though, the line wasn't solid, and a construct got through and mauled the pet just after she finished restoring the monk. The wizard put up a wall of force to make their position more secure, and between a few fireballs and breath weapons, and the newly formed narrow corridor of death through which the constructs had to advance, the party managed to take down the rest without further trouble (although one of the soul-stealers death-bursted on the wizard and took out his time stop and disjunction, pissing him off).
The giant spider dragon machine hissed in frustration, and agreed to release the party's friend's soul if they then left. They agreed, and the bargain was carried out in good faith, although the party warned the machine that they might be back.
Then they teleported home. As soon as his soul was returned to his home cenotaph, their friend the wizard arose from the not-quite-dead and promised to fix the problems with his tower's defenses. Then the dragon marched the monk to a temple where the dragon orb could be destroyed (the dragon orb having been quite willing to say how the souls inside could be released). With all the dragons in a hundred mile radius gathered and glowering threateningly, the orb was smashed. Since the monk had never (intentionally) used the dragon orb, dragonkind forgave her and her companions for having possessed it for a time, and the released souls didn't take any sort of revenge.
The last order of business was to raise the shapeshifter, but as the clerics busied about preparing for the great ceremony of True Ressurection, the occasion was ruined by the shapeshifter returning on his own, somehow. When filled in on what had happened after his death, he was horrified that the party had left the spider-dragon machine in one piece -- smashing it would have freed *all* the souls, including their friend's!
D'oh.
last week
We did exactly what we set out to do, but didn't do it correctly, and as a result millions of people will continue to suffer endlessly, while the Scarlet Guard's power spirals out of control. Go us.
While resting the night on the far side of the ring, the party decided that going after Barrabus wasn't likely to accomplish anything -- he wouldn't have the soul they were looking to free *on* him or anything. Instead, the wizard (who shall forever remain nameless) cast a scry spell on their friend, and got three results: One of a crystal in a rack of similar crystals, and two of automatons in different places. So the party buffed up, and teleported to the crystal first -- figuring it was most of the soul, and the automatons were the other bits of it that they'd have to free later by destroying them.
The crystals were guarded by about 30 constructs, but the mage's chain lightning and the monk and dragon's physical attacks made short work of them, and a wall of force and prismatic wall made sure nothing else came to play except for a few soul-stealers that snuck in before the wall of force went up. The crystal was stone-shaped out of its alcove, and was found to be 2/3rds full -- one of the automatons had been in the very same room.
The monk wanted to drop the wall of force and engage the 20 soul-stealing constructs behind it, but was vetoed by the wizard who'd have to actually do that -- the soul-stealers were *dangerous* and there were *20* of them and they *blew up bestowing negative levels in a radius* when they died! Badness all around.
So the party teleported to the third automaton and destroyed it. It was stationed outdoors with nothing else big around, so it wasn't much trouble to kill it.
Now they had the soul, but how to get it out? The party retreated again to study the crystal and determine that.
The results of the determination was that destroying or disjuncting the crystal would destroy the soul as well -- it had to be freed by whatever had put it in in the first place. So they teleported back to the street outside (figuring the crystal chamber would be crawling with reinforcements by now) and cast 'find the path' to 'the place where the soul had been trapped in the crystal'. The path led to a heavily-guaded castle, so everyone went into the shapeshifter's extradimensional mansion and the dragon's pet cleric cast 'ethereal jaunt', then followed the line down into the ground...
...to the chamber behind the prismatic wall, which had no other exits. It did have 8 soul stealers and 8 super-duper gold constructs, as well as a huge spider-legged multi-dragon-headed machine which was building constructs and animating them from a supply of soul gems.
The monk walked out and asked nicely for the machine to free their friend's soul. The machine ordered its minions to kill her. The mage chain-lightninged them, killing 6 of the soul stealers... whose negative energy deathbursts badly impaired the monk. Meanwhile, the shapeshifter and dragon were fighting a losing battle to defend the corner where most of the party was holed up from the damned constructs, which revealed their ability to cast 'Power Word: Kill' by failing to kill the monk.
The shapeshifter deathwarded the wizard and dragon, then tried to engage in melee and was killed by a construct. The wizard hasted everyone, while the monk joined the dragon in defending the alcove, and the pet cleric started casting 'restoration'.
Without the shapeshifter, though, the line wasn't solid, and a construct got through and mauled the pet just after she finished restoring the monk. The wizard put up a wall of force to make their position more secure, and between a few fireballs and breath weapons, and the newly formed narrow corridor of death through which the constructs had to advance, the party managed to take down the rest without further trouble (although one of the soul-stealers death-bursted on the wizard and took out his time stop and disjunction, pissing him off).
The giant spider dragon machine hissed in frustration, and agreed to release the party's friend's soul if they then left. They agreed, and the bargain was carried out in good faith, although the party warned the machine that they might be back.
Then they teleported home. As soon as his soul was returned to his home cenotaph, their friend the wizard arose from the not-quite-dead and promised to fix the problems with his tower's defenses. Then the dragon marched the monk to a temple where the dragon orb could be destroyed (the dragon orb having been quite willing to say how the souls inside could be released). With all the dragons in a hundred mile radius gathered and glowering threateningly, the orb was smashed. Since the monk had never (intentionally) used the dragon orb, dragonkind forgave her and her companions for having possessed it for a time, and the released souls didn't take any sort of revenge.
The last order of business was to raise the shapeshifter, but as the clerics busied about preparing for the great ceremony of True Ressurection, the occasion was ruined by the shapeshifter returning on his own, somehow. When filled in on what had happened after his death, he was horrified that the party had left the spider-dragon machine in one piece -- smashing it would have freed *all* the souls, including their friend's!
D'oh.
last week
