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terryclothToday was my Tuesday D+D game, where I decided that I was not doing a good enough job of coming up with high-level encounters, and decided to start running a module, namely 'City of the Spider Queen'. The players were fine with that, and none of them admitted that they'd played it before, and it seems to be going reasonably well.
The party spent a long month resting and recuperating in Baldur's Gate... more like two months, actually, what with all the items they needed to commission upgrades for. May bought a charisma enhancing cloak off the shelf, then spent his time helping the village elder retrieve the scattered groups of his people, who set up shop in the city and started a little mini-community, plying their various trades.
Their welcome and/or patience started to wear thin as the weeks went by, though... Abbey and Samrat were thiefy, Erdann's giant wolf bit off several peoples' fingers (when they tried to rob him) and was run out of the city, and the others were pestered with offers of treasure maps and other nonsense.
So they were receptive when what looked like a legitimate message from the Lord of Daggerdale requested their help, and Air Walked the 300 miles in an afternoon to check it out.
The Lord wasn't *surprised* at their quick arrival -- he had been sending a message to a group of adventurers who, he'd heard, had been teleporting all over the countryside rescuing people -- but was pleased, and told them a sad tale of drow raiders murdering indiscriminately, apparently from a base somewhere under the old abandoned crypts ten miles south of town. He offered to pay them 5000gp (not each, he had to add) if they'd find the Drow fortress or outpost that was sending the raids and put an end to it. They accepted, although May wasn't especially keen on going back into the underdark... for one thing, it wasn't a sure bet that they'd be going *all* the way into the underdark proper. Whatever outpost was causing this trouble was probably close to the surface.
So the party rode borrowed horses to the crypt, and crept inside, after checking out one of the two mausoleums and finding it empty, and having Samrat's shadow check the other for lurking enemies, of which there were none (that it found). Inside the door, after May knocked it, they found a half-dozen week-old drow corpses, stripped of all valuables. Forewarned that danger might be near, they cast their spells to prepare for trouble.
And they found it rather quickly, as Conner set off a glyph and was attacked by Celestial Dire Lions which failed to penetrate his defenses. After dispatching the beasts, he informed Abbey and Samrat that they were *not* to loot the many apparently untouched sarcophogi. Dismayed, but not willing to piss off the healer, the party left the potential sources of treasure untouched, and also bypassed the other sealed crypts (although they had Samrat's shadow scout for lurking drow or obvious passageways to the underdark).
They then took the stairway down to the lower level, where the poorer people had been buried in open niches carved into the wall of a natural cavern. Abbey and Samrat scouted ahead, and sensed someone invisible watching them... so they led it back to the party where May was able to see it. May cast a chain see-invisible, and then the party attacked.
Abbey demanded its surrender, Samrat set his shadows on it (his familiar shadow and the slave shadow it had converted), and May cast 'Hold Monster', freezing it in place, then tied it up. With some difficulty Samrat managed to call his shadows off so that they could interrogate what looked like a human rogue.
The rogue told the party that he lived in the caverns because it was secluded, and that he avoided the drow, and hadn't ever meant to hurt them! He was just curious and a little scared of them. May did his standard 'Why shouldn't I kill you?' routine, and the rogue offered to lead them to the drow, if that's what they were looking for. Erdann growled, sensing that (a) the rogue was hiding something important, and (b) he was planning to lead them into a trap.
So instead, they took him outside, and let him go. Then locked the front doors of the crypt behind them, to prevent him coming back in and bothering them.
A bit onwards, Samrat spotted a hidden roper guarding a section of corridor, notable only because only one of the walls was covered in burial niches, and set his shadows on it. The roper couldn't affect the shadows, but had a hugely long, disgusting reach, and flailed out at Samrat, missing him with all six tentacles. It yelled out, in undercommon, 'INTRUDERS! INTRUDERS!'. Samrat immediately silenced it with a wand.
The party, in particular Erdann's wolf and Conner, quickly reduced the roper to rubble, but not before Samrat was badly drained of strength from a toxic tentacle that touched him. Underneath it they found some gems.
Past it was another empty room full of burial niches, and then a Y intersection. Erdann, in bear form, scented the trail of a foul, unnatural creature from the left path, so the party followed it to an empty lair, ripe with the smell of death, with rather expensive equipment lying around in piles, but no bodies. The equipment was catalogued and filed in bags of holding, and then the party moved on, wondering where the lair's owner was.
Down the right path were some Drow, but Abbey managed to spot them without being spotted, and the party rushed up, with Abbey hasted and invisible, and managed to kill them all before they got away to sound the alarm, and without any real trouble. They had an undead spider that could sense Abbey despite her invisibility, but it wasn't immune to fireballs.
A pit in the floor of the room led to a steeply sloping tunnel, which ended abruptly in a stone wall just after yet another pit. The party decided to stone shape a doorway in the wall, after Samrat's shadows verified that there was open space on the other side, and ignore the pit for the moment.
Past the wall of stone was a webby area with some giant spiders and driders, which the party annihilated with fireballs and flanking, although the driders got some spells off which made Samrat VERY NERVOUS but failed to actually kill off his shadows. Abbey rooted around through a disgusting pile of refuse, and found some potions and scrolls and coins, although she felt a bit sick afterwards.
Then it was back to the pit, to see what was below it, and if it was perhaps the route to the drow.
last week next week
The party skipped a lot of encounters, and cakewalked through the ones they did face because I forgot to account for them being level 12 instead of level 10. Of course, since the module is intended to take characters from 10th to 18th level, it should be a self-correcting problem... but I'll be sure to make things a little harder for them from now on.
The party spent a long month resting and recuperating in Baldur's Gate... more like two months, actually, what with all the items they needed to commission upgrades for. May bought a charisma enhancing cloak off the shelf, then spent his time helping the village elder retrieve the scattered groups of his people, who set up shop in the city and started a little mini-community, plying their various trades.
Their welcome and/or patience started to wear thin as the weeks went by, though... Abbey and Samrat were thiefy, Erdann's giant wolf bit off several peoples' fingers (when they tried to rob him) and was run out of the city, and the others were pestered with offers of treasure maps and other nonsense.
So they were receptive when what looked like a legitimate message from the Lord of Daggerdale requested their help, and Air Walked the 300 miles in an afternoon to check it out.
The Lord wasn't *surprised* at their quick arrival -- he had been sending a message to a group of adventurers who, he'd heard, had been teleporting all over the countryside rescuing people -- but was pleased, and told them a sad tale of drow raiders murdering indiscriminately, apparently from a base somewhere under the old abandoned crypts ten miles south of town. He offered to pay them 5000gp (not each, he had to add) if they'd find the Drow fortress or outpost that was sending the raids and put an end to it. They accepted, although May wasn't especially keen on going back into the underdark... for one thing, it wasn't a sure bet that they'd be going *all* the way into the underdark proper. Whatever outpost was causing this trouble was probably close to the surface.
So the party rode borrowed horses to the crypt, and crept inside, after checking out one of the two mausoleums and finding it empty, and having Samrat's shadow check the other for lurking enemies, of which there were none (that it found). Inside the door, after May knocked it, they found a half-dozen week-old drow corpses, stripped of all valuables. Forewarned that danger might be near, they cast their spells to prepare for trouble.
And they found it rather quickly, as Conner set off a glyph and was attacked by Celestial Dire Lions which failed to penetrate his defenses. After dispatching the beasts, he informed Abbey and Samrat that they were *not* to loot the many apparently untouched sarcophogi. Dismayed, but not willing to piss off the healer, the party left the potential sources of treasure untouched, and also bypassed the other sealed crypts (although they had Samrat's shadow scout for lurking drow or obvious passageways to the underdark).
They then took the stairway down to the lower level, where the poorer people had been buried in open niches carved into the wall of a natural cavern. Abbey and Samrat scouted ahead, and sensed someone invisible watching them... so they led it back to the party where May was able to see it. May cast a chain see-invisible, and then the party attacked.
Abbey demanded its surrender, Samrat set his shadows on it (his familiar shadow and the slave shadow it had converted), and May cast 'Hold Monster', freezing it in place, then tied it up. With some difficulty Samrat managed to call his shadows off so that they could interrogate what looked like a human rogue.
The rogue told the party that he lived in the caverns because it was secluded, and that he avoided the drow, and hadn't ever meant to hurt them! He was just curious and a little scared of them. May did his standard 'Why shouldn't I kill you?' routine, and the rogue offered to lead them to the drow, if that's what they were looking for. Erdann growled, sensing that (a) the rogue was hiding something important, and (b) he was planning to lead them into a trap.
So instead, they took him outside, and let him go. Then locked the front doors of the crypt behind them, to prevent him coming back in and bothering them.
A bit onwards, Samrat spotted a hidden roper guarding a section of corridor, notable only because only one of the walls was covered in burial niches, and set his shadows on it. The roper couldn't affect the shadows, but had a hugely long, disgusting reach, and flailed out at Samrat, missing him with all six tentacles. It yelled out, in undercommon, 'INTRUDERS! INTRUDERS!'. Samrat immediately silenced it with a wand.
The party, in particular Erdann's wolf and Conner, quickly reduced the roper to rubble, but not before Samrat was badly drained of strength from a toxic tentacle that touched him. Underneath it they found some gems.
Past it was another empty room full of burial niches, and then a Y intersection. Erdann, in bear form, scented the trail of a foul, unnatural creature from the left path, so the party followed it to an empty lair, ripe with the smell of death, with rather expensive equipment lying around in piles, but no bodies. The equipment was catalogued and filed in bags of holding, and then the party moved on, wondering where the lair's owner was.
Down the right path were some Drow, but Abbey managed to spot them without being spotted, and the party rushed up, with Abbey hasted and invisible, and managed to kill them all before they got away to sound the alarm, and without any real trouble. They had an undead spider that could sense Abbey despite her invisibility, but it wasn't immune to fireballs.
A pit in the floor of the room led to a steeply sloping tunnel, which ended abruptly in a stone wall just after yet another pit. The party decided to stone shape a doorway in the wall, after Samrat's shadows verified that there was open space on the other side, and ignore the pit for the moment.
Past the wall of stone was a webby area with some giant spiders and driders, which the party annihilated with fireballs and flanking, although the driders got some spells off which made Samrat VERY NERVOUS but failed to actually kill off his shadows. Abbey rooted around through a disgusting pile of refuse, and found some potions and scrolls and coins, although she felt a bit sick afterwards.
Then it was back to the pit, to see what was below it, and if it was perhaps the route to the drow.
last week next week
The party skipped a lot of encounters, and cakewalked through the ones they did face because I forgot to account for them being level 12 instead of level 10. Of course, since the module is intended to take characters from 10th to 18th level, it should be a self-correcting problem... but I'll be sure to make things a little harder for them from now on.
