Return to the Temple... one last time
Jun. 8th, 2003 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothToday was Tom's Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil game, which we finished, somewhat abruptly, and somewhat anticlimactically, with a final chase scene rather than a final battle.
The party considered their options. They didn't want to fight the earth elemental. They really, *really* didn't want to fight the earth elemental. But they also didn't want to waste a bunch of spells bypassing just one obstacle on the way to their destination, since they didn't know how far they had to go.
Considering their options, they found they had several potions of invisibility (four, although they only used two). They also had two people who were already flying, and three others who had a Polymorph Self effect up and could shift into something small enough to, say, fit inside an invisible wizard's robe. And they had a portable hole to stash the rest of the party, and the bear, and the dominated ogre in. They also had three dimension doors and four teleports.
So the invisible flying contingent (Marcus and Thanos) with polymorphed riders (Burne, Mepechu, and Guinsette) was assembled, everyone else clambered into the portable hole, and they dimension doored past the immediate threats: the elemental and the giant who were waiting for them. The giant noticed the teleport, but couldn't spot them before they zipped down the open tunnel, ignoring for the moment the door they'd have to open.
Past the giant was a fairly empty area. There was a beholder in a pit, which Guinsette in creepy-crawly form noticed without being seen and allowed the party to avoid. There was a long hallway ending in a crumbling, empty chamber. There was an excavation party of hobgoblins. Past the hobgoblins was a staircase leading down. The hobgoblins did not see invisible, or hear people silently flying past.
At the bottom of the stairs was a room full of ropers, who also didn't spot the party as it flew past invisibly. Then there was a long, empty hallway, with two rooms to either side guarded by iron golems, which probably saw the party but didn't do anything since they just continued on past without approaching. At the end of the hallway was a large chamber, in which a sacrifice was being performed.
Finally, something the party had to deal with! Thanos flew up invisibly and, in the surprise round, chopped off the cleric's head. The rest of the party took out her blinded ogre companion, threw a cloak over the eerie transparent altar with an embedded golden eye, and started using ranged weapons to plink at the animated curtains that harassed Thanos when he got too close.
While working on the curtains, the cloak over the altar suddenly rose into the air, as if suspended under an eye-shaped object, to the surprise of, well, pretty much no one. Guinsette grabbed the bottom of the cloak to keep it from getting away or shaking the cloak off, and Mepechu played baseball with her +4 mace.
Unfortuantely, it wasn't as easy as all that. The eye was strong enough to tear the cloak, and gazed at people, inflicting random effects... on Mepechu's bear, and Darien, everyone else made their save, and then it was hit with hundreds of points of damage and killed. Then Darien remembered his rod of force had a 30-foot force-sword power, and used it to chop down the curtains.
The room behind the curtains was blocked by a Forbiddance spell, however, and none of the party could manage to make the save to go inside. So they decided to stop beating their heads against the wall, and go down the side corridor in the sacrifice chamber instead, which led to the elemental node of fire, which they'd been searching for.
Since there were likely to be guards immediately on the other side of the node's teleporter, Marcus made sure everyone was 'disguised' as a follower of Tharizdun, in the spiffy purple robes he'd saved. Then they teleported through, and asked the friendly salamander noble where the First was.
They went 'thataway', and after walking down a hallway, prompty found the First. And the bearer of the Orb of Oblivion, a medusa/fire elemental. And Imix, prince of fire. Having tea, or something, in the only room in the fire node large emough for Imix to even FIT inside.
Darien wall-of-forced the First, while Guinsette and Thanos (silenced) and Bella went to beat on the medusa, and Mepechu's bear obligingly turned to stone. The medusa tried to hide behing Imix, which was reasonably since he was about fifty feet tall, but got fireballed and dropped, at which point Malvar, invisible, darted over, touched her, and teleported back to the entrance chamber.
The rest of the party put up walls of force and sent summoned and/or dominated creatures to annoy Imix while they ran like little girls. They assembled back in the entrance chamber, where the salamander was starting to suspect something was up.
"Where's the exit?" Mepechu asked.
"Uh... right here..."
"How do you use it?"
"You use the orb, of course. Why are you asking such stupid questions?"
Mepechu then looted the medusa's body for the orb, and the First, who'd been watching the whole thing ethereally (he'd gotten out of the first wall of force by etherealling through the floor), decloaked and attacked. He got off a Horrid Wilting, which didn't kill anyone this time as no one was seriously injured, but tipped off the Salamander to actually attack them, although he didn't do so very effectively.
Darien put the First back in another wall of force dome while the party Orb'd back to the temple, and started piling into Malvar's portable hole for Evac. The First followed them again, but Burne was waiting for him and force-caged him, and then the party telported to the crater, where they ran through empty halls to the fane of the black sun, and tossed the evil orbs inside. Apparently, the First was either out of teleports, or couldn't actually teleport, or didn't correctly guess the party's destination, as he didn't appear to stop them.
Mission accomplished. Well, except that Imix was free, and the First was still alive, and the Temple was half uncovered and probably still full of evil they never faced, and there were two more evil orbs somewhere in the world that might be able to release the other princes. But it'd take evil a couple years to recover, which was certainly cause for celebration.
After the game, Tom showed us the map and all the things we'd bypassed. "This is the giant area that you didn't open the door to. This is the secret door leading to the high level assassin you never searched for. Past the iron golems are the ogre barracks and the priests' chambers. The forbiddance you didn't go inside is the lair of the Second, a high level aboleth priest. Every other direction you could have gone in the fire node led to all kinds of monsters and traps. I thought it'd take you months to get through this dungeon..."
But... all we did is take the path of least resistance. Door is closed or guarded, let's go a different way... and it led us right to the end of the adventure without any detours. Tom was seriously pissed.
last session
Realistically, the adventure wouldn't actually end here, but it's enough of an ending that with Dave and Tom starting to really hate the adventure, it's over. We're not sure who's going to run the next game, but the thought is to have people playing monsters and hunting down humans, or something like that.
The party considered their options. They didn't want to fight the earth elemental. They really, *really* didn't want to fight the earth elemental. But they also didn't want to waste a bunch of spells bypassing just one obstacle on the way to their destination, since they didn't know how far they had to go.
Considering their options, they found they had several potions of invisibility (four, although they only used two). They also had two people who were already flying, and three others who had a Polymorph Self effect up and could shift into something small enough to, say, fit inside an invisible wizard's robe. And they had a portable hole to stash the rest of the party, and the bear, and the dominated ogre in. They also had three dimension doors and four teleports.
So the invisible flying contingent (Marcus and Thanos) with polymorphed riders (Burne, Mepechu, and Guinsette) was assembled, everyone else clambered into the portable hole, and they dimension doored past the immediate threats: the elemental and the giant who were waiting for them. The giant noticed the teleport, but couldn't spot them before they zipped down the open tunnel, ignoring for the moment the door they'd have to open.
Past the giant was a fairly empty area. There was a beholder in a pit, which Guinsette in creepy-crawly form noticed without being seen and allowed the party to avoid. There was a long hallway ending in a crumbling, empty chamber. There was an excavation party of hobgoblins. Past the hobgoblins was a staircase leading down. The hobgoblins did not see invisible, or hear people silently flying past.
At the bottom of the stairs was a room full of ropers, who also didn't spot the party as it flew past invisibly. Then there was a long, empty hallway, with two rooms to either side guarded by iron golems, which probably saw the party but didn't do anything since they just continued on past without approaching. At the end of the hallway was a large chamber, in which a sacrifice was being performed.
Finally, something the party had to deal with! Thanos flew up invisibly and, in the surprise round, chopped off the cleric's head. The rest of the party took out her blinded ogre companion, threw a cloak over the eerie transparent altar with an embedded golden eye, and started using ranged weapons to plink at the animated curtains that harassed Thanos when he got too close.
While working on the curtains, the cloak over the altar suddenly rose into the air, as if suspended under an eye-shaped object, to the surprise of, well, pretty much no one. Guinsette grabbed the bottom of the cloak to keep it from getting away or shaking the cloak off, and Mepechu played baseball with her +4 mace.
Unfortuantely, it wasn't as easy as all that. The eye was strong enough to tear the cloak, and gazed at people, inflicting random effects... on Mepechu's bear, and Darien, everyone else made their save, and then it was hit with hundreds of points of damage and killed. Then Darien remembered his rod of force had a 30-foot force-sword power, and used it to chop down the curtains.
The room behind the curtains was blocked by a Forbiddance spell, however, and none of the party could manage to make the save to go inside. So they decided to stop beating their heads against the wall, and go down the side corridor in the sacrifice chamber instead, which led to the elemental node of fire, which they'd been searching for.
Since there were likely to be guards immediately on the other side of the node's teleporter, Marcus made sure everyone was 'disguised' as a follower of Tharizdun, in the spiffy purple robes he'd saved. Then they teleported through, and asked the friendly salamander noble where the First was.
They went 'thataway', and after walking down a hallway, prompty found the First. And the bearer of the Orb of Oblivion, a medusa/fire elemental. And Imix, prince of fire. Having tea, or something, in the only room in the fire node large emough for Imix to even FIT inside.
Darien wall-of-forced the First, while Guinsette and Thanos (silenced) and Bella went to beat on the medusa, and Mepechu's bear obligingly turned to stone. The medusa tried to hide behing Imix, which was reasonably since he was about fifty feet tall, but got fireballed and dropped, at which point Malvar, invisible, darted over, touched her, and teleported back to the entrance chamber.
The rest of the party put up walls of force and sent summoned and/or dominated creatures to annoy Imix while they ran like little girls. They assembled back in the entrance chamber, where the salamander was starting to suspect something was up.
"Where's the exit?" Mepechu asked.
"Uh... right here..."
"How do you use it?"
"You use the orb, of course. Why are you asking such stupid questions?"
Mepechu then looted the medusa's body for the orb, and the First, who'd been watching the whole thing ethereally (he'd gotten out of the first wall of force by etherealling through the floor), decloaked and attacked. He got off a Horrid Wilting, which didn't kill anyone this time as no one was seriously injured, but tipped off the Salamander to actually attack them, although he didn't do so very effectively.
Darien put the First back in another wall of force dome while the party Orb'd back to the temple, and started piling into Malvar's portable hole for Evac. The First followed them again, but Burne was waiting for him and force-caged him, and then the party telported to the crater, where they ran through empty halls to the fane of the black sun, and tossed the evil orbs inside. Apparently, the First was either out of teleports, or couldn't actually teleport, or didn't correctly guess the party's destination, as he didn't appear to stop them.
Mission accomplished. Well, except that Imix was free, and the First was still alive, and the Temple was half uncovered and probably still full of evil they never faced, and there were two more evil orbs somewhere in the world that might be able to release the other princes. But it'd take evil a couple years to recover, which was certainly cause for celebration.
After the game, Tom showed us the map and all the things we'd bypassed. "This is the giant area that you didn't open the door to. This is the secret door leading to the high level assassin you never searched for. Past the iron golems are the ogre barracks and the priests' chambers. The forbiddance you didn't go inside is the lair of the Second, a high level aboleth priest. Every other direction you could have gone in the fire node led to all kinds of monsters and traps. I thought it'd take you months to get through this dungeon..."
But... all we did is take the path of least resistance. Door is closed or guarded, let's go a different way... and it led us right to the end of the adventure without any detours. Tom was seriously pissed.
last session
Realistically, the adventure wouldn't actually end here, but it's enough of an ending that with Dave and Tom starting to really hate the adventure, it's over. We're not sure who's going to run the next game, but the thought is to have people playing monsters and hunting down humans, or something like that.
