Borrowed Trouble, and Missing the Point
Feb. 29th, 2004 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothToday we had the third session of Tom's anime-themed D+D game. I spent most of the session running away and otherwise being useless, because the enemies were neither living nor evil, so (as a rogue with a holy weapon) I basically couldn't do damage to them.
Dave, who got to turn undead, and heal the whole party many many times, keeping them from dying, was the one who complained about his character being underpowered, though.
Ariana was extremely annoyed to see Oshi run past her to melee the zombies -- uselessly, to her mind, since she could turn them to dust, easily. She and Felesse Prime -- whose name we were later informed was 'Arala' or something of the sort -- took the time to heal Natsuki and Despero, since they couldn't do much else.
Once all the visible undead were cut down, Despero ran past Oshi into the 'cleared' room full of dead bodies and coffins. Nine of the bodies turned out not to be so dead after all, though, and leapt up to rush him and flay the flesh from his bones, although he was fairly resistant to that, being a demon and all.
What followed was a pretty standard 'group of mostly melee-focused adventurers unloads a cannister of whoop-ass on some reasonably strong but overmatched opponents'. Sure, the zombies had eye-beams, and Ariala couldn't turn them inside the room, but that didn't significantly alter the tide of battle. What made the party turn and run was when the zombies started getting back up -- and not a vial of alchemist's fire or acid among them! They were doomed! DOOMED!
Or not. Ariana used a stone-shape spell to seal all the zombies in the room (some of them had to be cut down again and tossed in). Oshi, who could see invisible, saw ghosts rising up from the piles of dust of the zombies Ariana had turned. They turned out to be friendly (or at least non-hostile), though.
Oshi's armor took noticeable damage during the battle, and of course couldn't be healed by Ariana's spells. He laughed off the danger, though -- especially after Arala showed that she could repair it somewhat using the same power she'd used to heal Natsuki -- and boldly opened the next door... and was buried in a cascade of severed hands! With a great cleave, he slew a dozen of them, leaving hundreds... there was nothing for it but for Natsuki to panic, and unleash a fireball on the whole lot of them. She tagged Zat too, but Zat evaded... Oshi's armor, on the other hand, was severely damaged, to the point that it was almost completely destroyed.
"I'm - I'm sorry! There were just all those CREEPY HANDS! And I didn't expect the fire to hurt your armor, I mean it's made out of *metal*."
Arala did what she could to fix the damage, but was running low of repair/healing for the day.
Next, the party ran into a well full of countless wooden manniquins. They decided not to set them on fire just yet, lest they be smoked out of the dungeon. Instead they opened the door across from the well, which was full of suspiciously placed manniquins... and skeletons. Two of the manniquins were throttling skeletons, and in a back room there were manniquins under construction, and more skeletons hung on hooks on the walls. Given the alchemical lab in the front room, and the books and other paraphrenalia, it was obvious that some dark necromancy was at work.
Arala was the one to walk too far into the room and trigger the attack this time, and while the manniquins were much much weaker than the original few, they were aided by a gibbering mouther hiding in the corner of the back room, which confused Oshi -- in a mindless rage to kill the source of the noise, he charged into the room... and was surrounded by manniquins, and his armor was destroyed. It reverted to its inactive state as bracers on his arms, and left him naked and still confused. Arala saved his life, though, grabbing him and teleporting away to a safer part of the dungeon.
Natsuki, who'd run away at the first sign of trouble (and the first call of 'everyone out of the room, let's fight them in the door'), saw everyone else rushing into the room (to back up the confused Oshi), and tried to creep back closer to help... only to be confused by the gibbering and run and pounce on Zatsuichi. Zat was skillful enough to avoid serious injury at her claws, though, and she quickly regained her senses.
Arala was the first to spot that the mannquins in the well were stirring, but that left the party in a bad situation. They left the room and slammed the doors behind them, to face one group of enemies at a time -- and as they did, the manniquins in the well quieted down as well.
Without Oshi's armor, they didn't feel safe continuing on, so they poured lamp oil on the manniquins in the well and lit them on fire, then retreated to the surface to rest for a while. During the hour it took for Oshi's armor to regenerate, they discussed the next step.
"We need to rest until morning," Ariana said, "They go back and free these poor souls tomorrow, when I have all my spells back."
"We can't afford to waste that much time," Natsuki pointed out, "We need to hurry to get to the heir before that ninja sorceror. We only detoured here because the storm was so awful, but if it's cleared in the morning we have to push on. So if we want to solve this puzzle and free the ghosts, we have to do it now." Zatsuichi seconded the notion, and so since her spells weren't *completely* gone, Ariana agreed to go back down once Oshi's armor was back up to full strength.
So they went down to search the rest of the basement for the key that would free the ghosts and stop the regenerating undead. They found a dusty library with a ghostly librarian, but it didn't hold any answers -- each question they asked was met with 'Shhh!' They found some animating manniquins scattered in the hallway, and killed them. They found a 'source of evil' in the catacombs proper, and slew the wight with much to do, but that didn't solve anything. It *did* get them a key, though -- on a chain around it's neck.
But where was the keyhole?
They first checked a mysterious barred door they'd bypassed the first time. Oshi broke it down, and revealed... a collapsed room, nothing but a pile of rubble. Doh.
So that left only two places that they hadn't properly searched -- the room full of regenerating undead, and the lab full of manniquins. They decided that since the ghost had told them to clear the 'room of the dead', they should face the undead first. Hoping that they'd be turned to dust easily outside the confines of the unhallowed room they were in, Arala led them back to the party, who waited in ambush outside the room full of manniquins (the backup plan being to free the manniquins to have them fight the zombies, since they'd destroyed the non-animated skeletons in the previous battle). She took some eye-beams in the process, but nothing life-threatening.
Then Oshi and Arala and Despero and Zatsuichi took turns trying to fight the zombies in the narrow corridor. Natsuki tried to tumble past the zombies (hoping to search their room for the keyhole while they were busy, and not having thought of that plan *before* the zombies were let out to play) but didn't quite succeed, falling at the feet of the last zombie in line. They pummeled her fiercely, beating her half to death... but it would be simple to tumble past the last *two* zombies, woudln't it? She thought so, but failed, and fell at their feet again, and was pummeled within an inch of her life.
By that time, the party had almost chewed its way through the line, so she tumbled back to them, instead, and hid in the back even *after* Ariana healed her up from the brink of death.
And just in time, too, as the door to the lab burst open -- the manniquins had freed themselves! Despero attacked and killed one, and to the party's surprise, one of the zombies collapsed, and stopped regenerating. The solution at last! The manniquins were dispatched, and the zombie threat was gone.
A bit of searching eventually revealed the keyhole they'd been looking for in the back of the backroom of the lab, behind a brick. Natsuki turned the key, opening the way to a secret room, containing a glowing white orb. Mesmerized by its shininess, she ran over and picked it up -- for a second, she thought she was trapped in a white room, but then she shook it off.
She mentioned the sensation to the party, and they told her to put the orb down... slowly... and walk away, but she refused. "What if we have to move it? It might do something bad to me when I pick it up again."
Someone suggested going to ask the ghost who'd sent them on the quest into the basement what to do with the orb, but the ghost was gone -- all the ghosts were. Killing the manniquins, or taking the orb, or *something*, had set them all free. Natsuki buried the orb in the wagon, under the golden coils of rope bridge, and the party started to plan watches to sleep the night, now safe from storm and undead both.
Zatsuichi coudln't leave well enough alone, though, and decided to touch the orb to see what would happen. Of course, it immediately sucked the soul out of his body. The party tried to wake him up, but it was useless, because the soul had been sucked out of his body. "Should we break the orb?" "Um... why don't you memorize an Augury, Ariana, and we'll ask that in the morning."
So they rested until morning. The augury said 'Woe' would befall them if they broke the orb. Ariana had a sudden thought, though, and touched Zatsuichi's soulless body to the orb again -- and he was revived!
"I was in a white room..." he said, "And I wasn't alone."
last session next session
After the game I headed over to Tasho's to see if I could catch part of the after-Sunday-gathering crowd, but they'd all gone to Legends (which figures; every time I checked Legend's after a Sunday D+D game they'd all gone to Tasho's). There were a few people there, though, and I got to watch someone play Halo on a far higher difficulty than I'd braved (well, okay, one step higher, but DAMN it looked hard) and also see a few episodes of a really annoying anime about 'the greatest magician in the world' and the girls who want to have his babies.
Dave, who got to turn undead, and heal the whole party many many times, keeping them from dying, was the one who complained about his character being underpowered, though.
Ariana was extremely annoyed to see Oshi run past her to melee the zombies -- uselessly, to her mind, since she could turn them to dust, easily. She and Felesse Prime -- whose name we were later informed was 'Arala' or something of the sort -- took the time to heal Natsuki and Despero, since they couldn't do much else.
Once all the visible undead were cut down, Despero ran past Oshi into the 'cleared' room full of dead bodies and coffins. Nine of the bodies turned out not to be so dead after all, though, and leapt up to rush him and flay the flesh from his bones, although he was fairly resistant to that, being a demon and all.
What followed was a pretty standard 'group of mostly melee-focused adventurers unloads a cannister of whoop-ass on some reasonably strong but overmatched opponents'. Sure, the zombies had eye-beams, and Ariala couldn't turn them inside the room, but that didn't significantly alter the tide of battle. What made the party turn and run was when the zombies started getting back up -- and not a vial of alchemist's fire or acid among them! They were doomed! DOOMED!
Or not. Ariana used a stone-shape spell to seal all the zombies in the room (some of them had to be cut down again and tossed in). Oshi, who could see invisible, saw ghosts rising up from the piles of dust of the zombies Ariana had turned. They turned out to be friendly (or at least non-hostile), though.
Oshi's armor took noticeable damage during the battle, and of course couldn't be healed by Ariana's spells. He laughed off the danger, though -- especially after Arala showed that she could repair it somewhat using the same power she'd used to heal Natsuki -- and boldly opened the next door... and was buried in a cascade of severed hands! With a great cleave, he slew a dozen of them, leaving hundreds... there was nothing for it but for Natsuki to panic, and unleash a fireball on the whole lot of them. She tagged Zat too, but Zat evaded... Oshi's armor, on the other hand, was severely damaged, to the point that it was almost completely destroyed.
"I'm - I'm sorry! There were just all those CREEPY HANDS! And I didn't expect the fire to hurt your armor, I mean it's made out of *metal*."
Arala did what she could to fix the damage, but was running low of repair/healing for the day.
Next, the party ran into a well full of countless wooden manniquins. They decided not to set them on fire just yet, lest they be smoked out of the dungeon. Instead they opened the door across from the well, which was full of suspiciously placed manniquins... and skeletons. Two of the manniquins were throttling skeletons, and in a back room there were manniquins under construction, and more skeletons hung on hooks on the walls. Given the alchemical lab in the front room, and the books and other paraphrenalia, it was obvious that some dark necromancy was at work.
Arala was the one to walk too far into the room and trigger the attack this time, and while the manniquins were much much weaker than the original few, they were aided by a gibbering mouther hiding in the corner of the back room, which confused Oshi -- in a mindless rage to kill the source of the noise, he charged into the room... and was surrounded by manniquins, and his armor was destroyed. It reverted to its inactive state as bracers on his arms, and left him naked and still confused. Arala saved his life, though, grabbing him and teleporting away to a safer part of the dungeon.
Natsuki, who'd run away at the first sign of trouble (and the first call of 'everyone out of the room, let's fight them in the door'), saw everyone else rushing into the room (to back up the confused Oshi), and tried to creep back closer to help... only to be confused by the gibbering and run and pounce on Zatsuichi. Zat was skillful enough to avoid serious injury at her claws, though, and she quickly regained her senses.
Arala was the first to spot that the mannquins in the well were stirring, but that left the party in a bad situation. They left the room and slammed the doors behind them, to face one group of enemies at a time -- and as they did, the manniquins in the well quieted down as well.
Without Oshi's armor, they didn't feel safe continuing on, so they poured lamp oil on the manniquins in the well and lit them on fire, then retreated to the surface to rest for a while. During the hour it took for Oshi's armor to regenerate, they discussed the next step.
"We need to rest until morning," Ariana said, "They go back and free these poor souls tomorrow, when I have all my spells back."
"We can't afford to waste that much time," Natsuki pointed out, "We need to hurry to get to the heir before that ninja sorceror. We only detoured here because the storm was so awful, but if it's cleared in the morning we have to push on. So if we want to solve this puzzle and free the ghosts, we have to do it now." Zatsuichi seconded the notion, and so since her spells weren't *completely* gone, Ariana agreed to go back down once Oshi's armor was back up to full strength.
So they went down to search the rest of the basement for the key that would free the ghosts and stop the regenerating undead. They found a dusty library with a ghostly librarian, but it didn't hold any answers -- each question they asked was met with 'Shhh!' They found some animating manniquins scattered in the hallway, and killed them. They found a 'source of evil' in the catacombs proper, and slew the wight with much to do, but that didn't solve anything. It *did* get them a key, though -- on a chain around it's neck.
But where was the keyhole?
They first checked a mysterious barred door they'd bypassed the first time. Oshi broke it down, and revealed... a collapsed room, nothing but a pile of rubble. Doh.
So that left only two places that they hadn't properly searched -- the room full of regenerating undead, and the lab full of manniquins. They decided that since the ghost had told them to clear the 'room of the dead', they should face the undead first. Hoping that they'd be turned to dust easily outside the confines of the unhallowed room they were in, Arala led them back to the party, who waited in ambush outside the room full of manniquins (the backup plan being to free the manniquins to have them fight the zombies, since they'd destroyed the non-animated skeletons in the previous battle). She took some eye-beams in the process, but nothing life-threatening.
Then Oshi and Arala and Despero and Zatsuichi took turns trying to fight the zombies in the narrow corridor. Natsuki tried to tumble past the zombies (hoping to search their room for the keyhole while they were busy, and not having thought of that plan *before* the zombies were let out to play) but didn't quite succeed, falling at the feet of the last zombie in line. They pummeled her fiercely, beating her half to death... but it would be simple to tumble past the last *two* zombies, woudln't it? She thought so, but failed, and fell at their feet again, and was pummeled within an inch of her life.
By that time, the party had almost chewed its way through the line, so she tumbled back to them, instead, and hid in the back even *after* Ariana healed her up from the brink of death.
And just in time, too, as the door to the lab burst open -- the manniquins had freed themselves! Despero attacked and killed one, and to the party's surprise, one of the zombies collapsed, and stopped regenerating. The solution at last! The manniquins were dispatched, and the zombie threat was gone.
A bit of searching eventually revealed the keyhole they'd been looking for in the back of the backroom of the lab, behind a brick. Natsuki turned the key, opening the way to a secret room, containing a glowing white orb. Mesmerized by its shininess, she ran over and picked it up -- for a second, she thought she was trapped in a white room, but then she shook it off.
She mentioned the sensation to the party, and they told her to put the orb down... slowly... and walk away, but she refused. "What if we have to move it? It might do something bad to me when I pick it up again."
Someone suggested going to ask the ghost who'd sent them on the quest into the basement what to do with the orb, but the ghost was gone -- all the ghosts were. Killing the manniquins, or taking the orb, or *something*, had set them all free. Natsuki buried the orb in the wagon, under the golden coils of rope bridge, and the party started to plan watches to sleep the night, now safe from storm and undead both.
Zatsuichi coudln't leave well enough alone, though, and decided to touch the orb to see what would happen. Of course, it immediately sucked the soul out of his body. The party tried to wake him up, but it was useless, because the soul had been sucked out of his body. "Should we break the orb?" "Um... why don't you memorize an Augury, Ariana, and we'll ask that in the morning."
So they rested until morning. The augury said 'Woe' would befall them if they broke the orb. Ariana had a sudden thought, though, and touched Zatsuichi's soulless body to the orb again -- and he was revived!
"I was in a white room..." he said, "And I wasn't alone."
last session next session
After the game I headed over to Tasho's to see if I could catch part of the after-Sunday-gathering crowd, but they'd all gone to Legends (which figures; every time I checked Legend's after a Sunday D+D game they'd all gone to Tasho's). There were a few people there, though, and I got to watch someone play Halo on a far higher difficulty than I'd braved (well, okay, one step higher, but DAMN it looked hard) and also see a few episodes of a really annoying anime about 'the greatest magician in the world' and the girls who want to have his babies.
