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terryclothTonight was my Tuesday D+D game, in which we played out a little more of City of the Spider Queen, getting back on track with the module proper. Although the party played intelligently and skipped some of it.
Before returning to the underdark, May and Abbey decided that they wanted to have some items commissioned or improved, which would take about a tenday. They planned to spend the time bumming around the city and having fun, which had worked in the past... but it wasn't quite as uneventful as they'd assumed it would be.
Abbey made her own trouble, deciding to rob a dwarven gem merchant to raise money for magical items. She got past the barred, sealed door, and the pressure plates, and the invisible detection field, and she *spotted* the symbol of death... but she tried to disarm it, despite having less than a 50% chance of doing so, and managed to set it off and get herself killed.
Erdann, who'd been watching her from a distance just in case, waited a half hour before charging in to help her (which was JUST long enough to not get Symbol of Deathified, given how long Abbey had spent searching). Erdann did not avoid the invisible detection field, and holes in the walls opened and spewed forth tiny constructs, which swarmed and attacked! Erdann turned into an octopus, grabbed Abbey's body, and fled, sinking into the stone to escape when the constructs followed him out onto the street. When he emerged an hour later, the guards were there investigating the disturbance, but they didn't react quickly enough to stop him from just running away.
Erdann buried Abbey in a shallow grave in the city park, secretly, during the night.
The next day, May, who'd been gallivanting around outside the city looking at real estate, was attacked out of nowhere by a demon. He tried to teleport away, but was followed after only a few rounds, and stood to fight. For a second. Then he started fleeing in terror from its terrifying evil aura.
It tried to herd him to ground with illusionary duplicates, but he was too slippery, and it had to contain him in a wall of ice. By the time it broke in through its own wall of ice, though, it only had a few rounds of attacks before it disappeared, and it didn't do enough damage to May to kill him in that time.
May teleported back to the city to find Erdann and Conner and get healed. They also had a talk about Abbey, and Conner was convinced that it was a demon that had suddenly appeared and killed her -- so he agreed to have his temple talk to the powerful temple and have her True Ressed. Abbey was happy to be alive, but poorer (monetarily) for the experience.
They hired a sage to scry on 'the person who was summoning devils to attack us', and saw a white-skinned elf, flanked by undead, in a temple to Kiransilee. She spotted the sensor, and taunted the party before dispelling it.
The party decided not to try to teleport into what was undoubtedly the underdark. They talked to a Bard about the other locations on the map, and figured out that for the most part they led to an old battlefield in Battledale, whose entrances to the underdark had been sealed long ago. 'Hap hill', on the map, was in Shadowdale, but no one knew where the implied entrance to the underdark was, there. So they decided to just do what they'd planned anyway, and take the tunnel from Szith Morcane.
Oh, while looking into this they found a letter in the same tube as the map that they'd missed before [oopsie - my bad] in which the head vampire's 'mother' instructed her to attack the surface to cause fear and pain and death in preparation for the coming of her great army which would sweep the surface clean with its evil hordes. The specifics were few, but it was clear that bad things were likely to happen despite their victory in Szith Morcane.
So they started down the tunnel, and soon enough May felt the all-too familiar tingle of the underdark's magical fields.
Shortly afterwards, they were attacked by a quartet of revenants, two of whom they recognized as the drow clerics they'd killed in their sleep (essentially), the other two just random drow they must have killed. Two of the revenants were trapped in a wall of force bubble, while the other two were slaughtered (although they tried a slay living and the like, none of their spells really stuck), then May hovered up near the cieling while the rest of the party went a ways down the tunnel, which was flat and straight at that point, dropped the force bubble, and started pelting them with fireballs and magic missiles. Mostly ineffectively, due to their spell resistance, but he slowly wore away at them, and was indeed out of their reach (one of them had spells, which failed to accomplish much, and the other could climb the walls, too slowly to pin down a flying target, but it didn't really help). The last revanant went running for the party, and cursed Abbey as Erdann's wolf took it down.
They continued on. Erdann spotted the point where a large group of drow had recently destroyed a great deal of fungus heading down a side passage, but they didn't pursue. After three hours, though, they came to a place where the main path split, left and right, and decided to rest the night so that Erdann could memorize a Stone Tell to determine the proper direction.
Resting in a rope trick, they were safe from the creatures that slunk past in the night.
The next day, the druid's spell revealed that the right path was the one from which a huge group of drow had come a month or two before -- probably the refugees who'd repopulated Szith Morcane (as had been hinted in another letter earlier). They headed right.
An hour took them to a cavern full of stone giants. The giants threw a warning shot, and yelled out in undercommon, which half the party spoke. Hostilities were avoided and the giants were perfectly willing to let the party pass. Erdann made a little side trip to make sure the giants weren't mistreating the bears he heard, but indeed the bears were pets and companions, and he was satisfied.
The stone giant cavern was on the edge of a large underground lake -- doubtless the 'Sea of Shadows'. Erdann turned into a dire shark to explore the water, and smelled something very large and fiendish swimming around... the rest of the party got to exploring the small islands near shore, though, finding a half-eaten drow corpse, and a large fish-motif building, which they were just about to examine when the fiendish kraken attacked.
Erdann struck first, charging at it and biting. This proved to be poor tactics, as the kraken was able to flail at him with six arms and a bite, while its hundred-foot long tentacles of doom grappled Abbey and Conner. Both of them escaped in the next round, though, and Conner managed to get out of reach. Erdann was grappled trying to withdraw, but turned into a tiny fish and swam away. The kraken regrappled Abbey and grabbed May, who'd flown down to haste everyone, and May teleported out of its grip and sonic balled it.
Then it jetted away into the darkness, underwater, Abbey in tow. She escaped immediately, and fled with propulsion from her fly spell, but while she could see the party from their light sources, they couldn't see her, and Conner and May started fanning out across the water in search of her.
The kraken summoned a giant windstorm to try to suck the party down where it could reach them, but never really got anyone within reach before they all flew over to the hideout Erdann had created up out of reach in the cavern wall with a wall of stone. After a few minutes of impatiently waiting for the wind to die down, May dispelled it.
They healed up, and, invisible, May and Abbey approached the building once more. Abbey disarmed the trap on the door, and opened it, and the fish-person monk inside looked hostile...
Plus the kraken was probably still lurking about.
last session next session
Before returning to the underdark, May and Abbey decided that they wanted to have some items commissioned or improved, which would take about a tenday. They planned to spend the time bumming around the city and having fun, which had worked in the past... but it wasn't quite as uneventful as they'd assumed it would be.
Abbey made her own trouble, deciding to rob a dwarven gem merchant to raise money for magical items. She got past the barred, sealed door, and the pressure plates, and the invisible detection field, and she *spotted* the symbol of death... but she tried to disarm it, despite having less than a 50% chance of doing so, and managed to set it off and get herself killed.
Erdann, who'd been watching her from a distance just in case, waited a half hour before charging in to help her (which was JUST long enough to not get Symbol of Deathified, given how long Abbey had spent searching). Erdann did not avoid the invisible detection field, and holes in the walls opened and spewed forth tiny constructs, which swarmed and attacked! Erdann turned into an octopus, grabbed Abbey's body, and fled, sinking into the stone to escape when the constructs followed him out onto the street. When he emerged an hour later, the guards were there investigating the disturbance, but they didn't react quickly enough to stop him from just running away.
Erdann buried Abbey in a shallow grave in the city park, secretly, during the night.
The next day, May, who'd been gallivanting around outside the city looking at real estate, was attacked out of nowhere by a demon. He tried to teleport away, but was followed after only a few rounds, and stood to fight. For a second. Then he started fleeing in terror from its terrifying evil aura.
It tried to herd him to ground with illusionary duplicates, but he was too slippery, and it had to contain him in a wall of ice. By the time it broke in through its own wall of ice, though, it only had a few rounds of attacks before it disappeared, and it didn't do enough damage to May to kill him in that time.
May teleported back to the city to find Erdann and Conner and get healed. They also had a talk about Abbey, and Conner was convinced that it was a demon that had suddenly appeared and killed her -- so he agreed to have his temple talk to the powerful temple and have her True Ressed. Abbey was happy to be alive, but poorer (monetarily) for the experience.
They hired a sage to scry on 'the person who was summoning devils to attack us', and saw a white-skinned elf, flanked by undead, in a temple to Kiransilee. She spotted the sensor, and taunted the party before dispelling it.
The party decided not to try to teleport into what was undoubtedly the underdark. They talked to a Bard about the other locations on the map, and figured out that for the most part they led to an old battlefield in Battledale, whose entrances to the underdark had been sealed long ago. 'Hap hill', on the map, was in Shadowdale, but no one knew where the implied entrance to the underdark was, there. So they decided to just do what they'd planned anyway, and take the tunnel from Szith Morcane.
Oh, while looking into this they found a letter in the same tube as the map that they'd missed before [oopsie - my bad] in which the head vampire's 'mother' instructed her to attack the surface to cause fear and pain and death in preparation for the coming of her great army which would sweep the surface clean with its evil hordes. The specifics were few, but it was clear that bad things were likely to happen despite their victory in Szith Morcane.
So they started down the tunnel, and soon enough May felt the all-too familiar tingle of the underdark's magical fields.
Shortly afterwards, they were attacked by a quartet of revenants, two of whom they recognized as the drow clerics they'd killed in their sleep (essentially), the other two just random drow they must have killed. Two of the revenants were trapped in a wall of force bubble, while the other two were slaughtered (although they tried a slay living and the like, none of their spells really stuck), then May hovered up near the cieling while the rest of the party went a ways down the tunnel, which was flat and straight at that point, dropped the force bubble, and started pelting them with fireballs and magic missiles. Mostly ineffectively, due to their spell resistance, but he slowly wore away at them, and was indeed out of their reach (one of them had spells, which failed to accomplish much, and the other could climb the walls, too slowly to pin down a flying target, but it didn't really help). The last revanant went running for the party, and cursed Abbey as Erdann's wolf took it down.
They continued on. Erdann spotted the point where a large group of drow had recently destroyed a great deal of fungus heading down a side passage, but they didn't pursue. After three hours, though, they came to a place where the main path split, left and right, and decided to rest the night so that Erdann could memorize a Stone Tell to determine the proper direction.
Resting in a rope trick, they were safe from the creatures that slunk past in the night.
The next day, the druid's spell revealed that the right path was the one from which a huge group of drow had come a month or two before -- probably the refugees who'd repopulated Szith Morcane (as had been hinted in another letter earlier). They headed right.
An hour took them to a cavern full of stone giants. The giants threw a warning shot, and yelled out in undercommon, which half the party spoke. Hostilities were avoided and the giants were perfectly willing to let the party pass. Erdann made a little side trip to make sure the giants weren't mistreating the bears he heard, but indeed the bears were pets and companions, and he was satisfied.
The stone giant cavern was on the edge of a large underground lake -- doubtless the 'Sea of Shadows'. Erdann turned into a dire shark to explore the water, and smelled something very large and fiendish swimming around... the rest of the party got to exploring the small islands near shore, though, finding a half-eaten drow corpse, and a large fish-motif building, which they were just about to examine when the fiendish kraken attacked.
Erdann struck first, charging at it and biting. This proved to be poor tactics, as the kraken was able to flail at him with six arms and a bite, while its hundred-foot long tentacles of doom grappled Abbey and Conner. Both of them escaped in the next round, though, and Conner managed to get out of reach. Erdann was grappled trying to withdraw, but turned into a tiny fish and swam away. The kraken regrappled Abbey and grabbed May, who'd flown down to haste everyone, and May teleported out of its grip and sonic balled it.
Then it jetted away into the darkness, underwater, Abbey in tow. She escaped immediately, and fled with propulsion from her fly spell, but while she could see the party from their light sources, they couldn't see her, and Conner and May started fanning out across the water in search of her.
The kraken summoned a giant windstorm to try to suck the party down where it could reach them, but never really got anyone within reach before they all flew over to the hideout Erdann had created up out of reach in the cavern wall with a wall of stone. After a few minutes of impatiently waiting for the wind to die down, May dispelled it.
They healed up, and, invisible, May and Abbey approached the building once more. Abbey disarmed the trap on the door, and opened it, and the fish-person monk inside looked hostile...
Plus the kraken was probably still lurking about.
last session next session
