Forest and Faithfulness
Apr. 16th, 2004 12:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothTonight Jeff ran a session of the Dragonlance game. Patrick and Luis were missing, but we decided to play anyway. Sonnet and Morgan's players were later than they've been the last few weeks -- 7pm this time. I should record it every time and graph it, along with indicators for the various tactics employed to try to get them to show up. Except I'm too lazy.
I decided to play INT 4 by speaking in mostly small words and agreeing that everything that people suggested was 'a really good idea'. This mostly amounted to them suggesting I send my familiar to scout out areas of certain death. Fortuantely, Sonnet refused to let me send an animal into danger, insisting on going herself in its place. This pissed off Morgan somewhat, as he considered himself to be the party's scout. It also pretty much saved my familiar's life.
After resting near the fountain, the party headed deeper into the forest of sorrow. Or was it misery? Woe! It was woe. After a few hours of walking down the ten-foot-wide path between the ludicrously dense trees, they came to the spot on the map labeled 'insects', and were ambushed by a swarm of hellwasps!
Most of the party was utterly useless against the wasps -- in fact, after Kijj's spear (and Thor's sword, and Morgan's rapier) passed through it without doing damage, and Mike's scorching ray was similarly ineffective, Kijj decided it was hopeless and ran! Morgan stuck around, constructing a makeshift torch (the whole party had lanterns instead) and flailing at the swarm with it... but they were highly resistant to fire, and it was as useless as any other weapon.
Highly resistant did not mean immune, however, and eventually Mike and Murphy took it down with a barrage of fireballs. Most of the party was poisoned and injured, but they were able to get themselves healed, and continued on.
The next day, they bypassed the spider loop (full of very very VERY large webs) and visited the 'scary trees'. The trees were indeed scary, and while Kijj and Murphy and Mike and Sonnet were at least able to step past the threshhold, they couldn't go in very far before being sent fleeing. Except for Murphy, who recognized the grove for what it was, and left of his own accord.
"This is *exactly* like the grove around the tower of Palanthas," Murphy said [being run as a GM NPC this session]. "If we go in any farther we'd be attacked by undead and sucked down to hell, so we should probably leave it alone." [I think all of us recognized it instantly last session when the non-afflicted kender Kelwick said that he was afraid of going into the trees, but our characters had no idea until this point.]
The party slept in a rope trick at the edge of the side path with the scary trees, and managed to thus avoid an attack by patrolling spiders. They continued on to the chasm without incident, resting again to memorize the fly spells needed to get across.
The chasm was very deep. Mike tried dropping a stone with a light cantrip on it to see the bottom, but it fell for more than 12 seconds before vanishing -- which meant a pit at least a half mile deep. They rope-tricked at the edge, and the next day flew across.
Someone brought up the important question, "Hey, we bought enough Fly scrolls to get us across, did we buy enough to fly us back?" The answer was 'no', but Murphy had gotten more powerful in the meantime and could cast enough that they only had to use one scroll to get across each way, so they'd be fine.
Yet another day passed uneventfully as they sauntered through the evil woods, until they came to the large clearing surrounding the dark cave. They decided to rest before facing the cave (so that Murphy would have Fireballs instead of already-cast Fly spells), and at Kijj's suggestion went as high up into the mountains as they could easily before setting up camp. No one would look for them there!
And no one bothered them in the rope tricks that night either. The nexy day, after the party carefully approached the cave from the side, Morgan and Kelwick snuck up to scout it out. They found it filled with magical darkness, and summoned Mike to examine it with his spellcraft. "Aha! I recognize this spell! It's a 3.0 home-ruled Deeper Darkness!" [yes, this was when Jeff realized that Darkness had been nerfed in 3.5, so he called the spell 'fiendish darkness' instead -- same idea either way]
Sonnet volunteered to scout through the actual darkness, since Morgan had declined to walk into the unknown, and found the cave much as Kelwick had described it -- a glowing gem clutched in a dragon's claw illuminating a gap in the darkness that filled the cave, watched over by an iron golem. "That's a golem," Kelwick helpfully pointed out, "It seemed to move when I tried to remove the gem before, so I decided to let it be."
So now the whole party entered the cave, and tried to decide what to do about the gem. They were pretty sure the golem was going to animate when they tried to retrieve the gem, so Thor and Kijj were armed with the admantium trap blades as improvised weapons that might be able to scratch it, while Morgan scouted out the darkness checking for other exits and/or surprises. He found one of the latter -- a sharp dropoff surrounding the bright area, into a pit of unknown depth (since it was in darkness and he couldn't see). He managed to discover this without actually falling in.
Gingerly, Murphy -- the only member of the order of high sorcery, and thus the only one who'd be able to retrieve the gem, or so they'd been told -- approached the dragon claw and reached for the gem. It didn't budge. "Odd," he said, "But this dragon claw is radiating strong good energy, while the gem itself is evil. If Dalamar couldn't retrieve it himself, maybe someone truly good at heart needs to remove it?"
Morgan stepped forwards and gave it a try, and sure enough the gem was released into his care. The darkness faded away, revealing the pit and that there was really nothing more to the cave, and the iron golem remained still and unmoving.
The party marched back to the big pit blocking the path, deep in the forest, where Murphy identified the gem as the key to the Tower of High Sorcery that used to be in Palanthas. With this, they could enter the tower! Of course, it would only get them past the grove, not past the undead guardians sure to be watching for any unauthorized intruders.
"We were betrayed!" Morgan insisted, "We can't let Dalamar get his hands on this! He'll turn the tower back into a pit of evil where he can train his black robes!" Much of the party seemed to be of a similar mind, but Kijj, while mostly staying quiet, looked more and more ill at ease at the suggestions that they keep the gem for themselves, or try to find the next leader of the white robes and give it to him. "He just wants to --"
"I want to keep my word," Kijj insisted, "We signed a contract, remember?" The party checked the contract, and sure enough it had DIRE penalty clauses if they found the gem but failed to return it to Dalamar -- they'd be declared renegades, and a price would be put on their heads. It was also enchanted strongly with various forms of magic -- which Murphy insisted hadn't been there at signing, or had been covered up -- so there might be other more immediate consequences of knowing betrayal.
However, there seemed to be a loophole -- if the party 'never found' the gem they merely had to pay back the advance, less reasonable travel expenses. So they marched BACK to the cave, a full day's travel, wasted as they found that the dragon claw and golem were crumbling and fading away into the cavern, which was quickly reverting to its natural state. So much for that idea.
So, back to the pit again. But what was at the bottom? After being pressured repeatedly to bring a rhinoscerous out of the bag of tricks, so they could see if maybe they could see the bottom from light spells cast on it as it fell, Sonnet decided she'd go down herself. A fly and invisibility later, she was on her way.
"Why is *she* scouting?" Morgan complained. The general consensus seemed to be 'because she's an idiot'.
She did make it back alive this time, although it was a close thing -- at the bottom of the pit was a funnel-like siphon of dead souls, which tried to suck her soul from her body and drag it off to who knows where (but given its name, the 'Pit of Sorrow', it was probably nowhere good). She said that caught in the pipe of the funnel were a bunch of bags seemingly dropped by the dead. An elaborate plan was constructed to retrieve the bags while staying out of the soul-sucking, until Mike brought up that they probably weren't even real bags in the first place. At which point they flew back over the pit and continued on.
But not to the tower of high sorcery, no -- that would make too much sense. Instead, they turned north at the crossing towards the 'graveyard full of endlessly regenerating undead' Kelwick described, hoping to strip the mass graves of valuables, and possibly hone their skills sparring with the remains of dead warriors. This was three days out of their way. Each way.
In the middle of the second day, heading up there, they were ambushed by three giant spiders. REALLY big spiders. One wrapped Kijj up in webs before he could move, but he managed to cut himself free with one powerful slash of his sword. He might as well have not bothered, though, as it was Morgan and Mike and Murphy and Thor that took out the spiders. Sonnet distracted one to the south with food from her bag of tricks while Mike friccaseed it with scorching rays (as a war mage, he had very nasty scorching rays), while Thor and Morgan flanked the pair to the north (one at a time) and front-and-backstabbed them to death.
With the spiders dead, yet another digression presented itself as a possibility -- after visiting the graveyard, should they swing back to the Spider Loop and search for the spiders' now presumably unguarded lair?
last session next session
I decided to play INT 4 by speaking in mostly small words and agreeing that everything that people suggested was 'a really good idea'. This mostly amounted to them suggesting I send my familiar to scout out areas of certain death. Fortuantely, Sonnet refused to let me send an animal into danger, insisting on going herself in its place. This pissed off Morgan somewhat, as he considered himself to be the party's scout. It also pretty much saved my familiar's life.
After resting near the fountain, the party headed deeper into the forest of sorrow. Or was it misery? Woe! It was woe. After a few hours of walking down the ten-foot-wide path between the ludicrously dense trees, they came to the spot on the map labeled 'insects', and were ambushed by a swarm of hellwasps!
Most of the party was utterly useless against the wasps -- in fact, after Kijj's spear (and Thor's sword, and Morgan's rapier) passed through it without doing damage, and Mike's scorching ray was similarly ineffective, Kijj decided it was hopeless and ran! Morgan stuck around, constructing a makeshift torch (the whole party had lanterns instead) and flailing at the swarm with it... but they were highly resistant to fire, and it was as useless as any other weapon.
Highly resistant did not mean immune, however, and eventually Mike and Murphy took it down with a barrage of fireballs. Most of the party was poisoned and injured, but they were able to get themselves healed, and continued on.
The next day, they bypassed the spider loop (full of very very VERY large webs) and visited the 'scary trees'. The trees were indeed scary, and while Kijj and Murphy and Mike and Sonnet were at least able to step past the threshhold, they couldn't go in very far before being sent fleeing. Except for Murphy, who recognized the grove for what it was, and left of his own accord.
"This is *exactly* like the grove around the tower of Palanthas," Murphy said [being run as a GM NPC this session]. "If we go in any farther we'd be attacked by undead and sucked down to hell, so we should probably leave it alone." [I think all of us recognized it instantly last session when the non-afflicted kender Kelwick said that he was afraid of going into the trees, but our characters had no idea until this point.]
The party slept in a rope trick at the edge of the side path with the scary trees, and managed to thus avoid an attack by patrolling spiders. They continued on to the chasm without incident, resting again to memorize the fly spells needed to get across.
The chasm was very deep. Mike tried dropping a stone with a light cantrip on it to see the bottom, but it fell for more than 12 seconds before vanishing -- which meant a pit at least a half mile deep. They rope-tricked at the edge, and the next day flew across.
Someone brought up the important question, "Hey, we bought enough Fly scrolls to get us across, did we buy enough to fly us back?" The answer was 'no', but Murphy had gotten more powerful in the meantime and could cast enough that they only had to use one scroll to get across each way, so they'd be fine.
Yet another day passed uneventfully as they sauntered through the evil woods, until they came to the large clearing surrounding the dark cave. They decided to rest before facing the cave (so that Murphy would have Fireballs instead of already-cast Fly spells), and at Kijj's suggestion went as high up into the mountains as they could easily before setting up camp. No one would look for them there!
And no one bothered them in the rope tricks that night either. The nexy day, after the party carefully approached the cave from the side, Morgan and Kelwick snuck up to scout it out. They found it filled with magical darkness, and summoned Mike to examine it with his spellcraft. "Aha! I recognize this spell! It's a 3.0 home-ruled Deeper Darkness!" [yes, this was when Jeff realized that Darkness had been nerfed in 3.5, so he called the spell 'fiendish darkness' instead -- same idea either way]
Sonnet volunteered to scout through the actual darkness, since Morgan had declined to walk into the unknown, and found the cave much as Kelwick had described it -- a glowing gem clutched in a dragon's claw illuminating a gap in the darkness that filled the cave, watched over by an iron golem. "That's a golem," Kelwick helpfully pointed out, "It seemed to move when I tried to remove the gem before, so I decided to let it be."
So now the whole party entered the cave, and tried to decide what to do about the gem. They were pretty sure the golem was going to animate when they tried to retrieve the gem, so Thor and Kijj were armed with the admantium trap blades as improvised weapons that might be able to scratch it, while Morgan scouted out the darkness checking for other exits and/or surprises. He found one of the latter -- a sharp dropoff surrounding the bright area, into a pit of unknown depth (since it was in darkness and he couldn't see). He managed to discover this without actually falling in.
Gingerly, Murphy -- the only member of the order of high sorcery, and thus the only one who'd be able to retrieve the gem, or so they'd been told -- approached the dragon claw and reached for the gem. It didn't budge. "Odd," he said, "But this dragon claw is radiating strong good energy, while the gem itself is evil. If Dalamar couldn't retrieve it himself, maybe someone truly good at heart needs to remove it?"
Morgan stepped forwards and gave it a try, and sure enough the gem was released into his care. The darkness faded away, revealing the pit and that there was really nothing more to the cave, and the iron golem remained still and unmoving.
The party marched back to the big pit blocking the path, deep in the forest, where Murphy identified the gem as the key to the Tower of High Sorcery that used to be in Palanthas. With this, they could enter the tower! Of course, it would only get them past the grove, not past the undead guardians sure to be watching for any unauthorized intruders.
"We were betrayed!" Morgan insisted, "We can't let Dalamar get his hands on this! He'll turn the tower back into a pit of evil where he can train his black robes!" Much of the party seemed to be of a similar mind, but Kijj, while mostly staying quiet, looked more and more ill at ease at the suggestions that they keep the gem for themselves, or try to find the next leader of the white robes and give it to him. "He just wants to --"
"I want to keep my word," Kijj insisted, "We signed a contract, remember?" The party checked the contract, and sure enough it had DIRE penalty clauses if they found the gem but failed to return it to Dalamar -- they'd be declared renegades, and a price would be put on their heads. It was also enchanted strongly with various forms of magic -- which Murphy insisted hadn't been there at signing, or had been covered up -- so there might be other more immediate consequences of knowing betrayal.
However, there seemed to be a loophole -- if the party 'never found' the gem they merely had to pay back the advance, less reasonable travel expenses. So they marched BACK to the cave, a full day's travel, wasted as they found that the dragon claw and golem were crumbling and fading away into the cavern, which was quickly reverting to its natural state. So much for that idea.
So, back to the pit again. But what was at the bottom? After being pressured repeatedly to bring a rhinoscerous out of the bag of tricks, so they could see if maybe they could see the bottom from light spells cast on it as it fell, Sonnet decided she'd go down herself. A fly and invisibility later, she was on her way.
"Why is *she* scouting?" Morgan complained. The general consensus seemed to be 'because she's an idiot'.
She did make it back alive this time, although it was a close thing -- at the bottom of the pit was a funnel-like siphon of dead souls, which tried to suck her soul from her body and drag it off to who knows where (but given its name, the 'Pit of Sorrow', it was probably nowhere good). She said that caught in the pipe of the funnel were a bunch of bags seemingly dropped by the dead. An elaborate plan was constructed to retrieve the bags while staying out of the soul-sucking, until Mike brought up that they probably weren't even real bags in the first place. At which point they flew back over the pit and continued on.
But not to the tower of high sorcery, no -- that would make too much sense. Instead, they turned north at the crossing towards the 'graveyard full of endlessly regenerating undead' Kelwick described, hoping to strip the mass graves of valuables, and possibly hone their skills sparring with the remains of dead warriors. This was three days out of their way. Each way.
In the middle of the second day, heading up there, they were ambushed by three giant spiders. REALLY big spiders. One wrapped Kijj up in webs before he could move, but he managed to cut himself free with one powerful slash of his sword. He might as well have not bothered, though, as it was Morgan and Mike and Murphy and Thor that took out the spiders. Sonnet distracted one to the south with food from her bag of tricks while Mike friccaseed it with scorching rays (as a war mage, he had very nasty scorching rays), while Thor and Morgan flanked the pair to the north (one at a time) and front-and-backstabbed them to death.
With the spiders dead, yet another digression presented itself as a possibility -- after visiting the graveyard, should they swing back to the Spider Loop and search for the spiders' now presumably unguarded lair?
last session next session
