Escape to Alcatraz
May. 14th, 2004 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothTonight we had a session of Jeff's dragonlance campaign. We fought our way out of the office building of evil, sailed across the ocean blue, and didn't attack the hundred frost giants in the city of evil. Yet.
Sonnet and Morgan were late, and Murphy and Thor didn't show up at all. It might have been better to play Wednesday as originally planned, even though I wouldn't have been able to come. I wish they'd have said they had a problem with Thursday back when that was still an option, instead of waiting until this morning.
Staying in the burning room -- where they'd just killed the harbormaster and a bunch of other draconians, but not the Aurak who'd been second in command -- was not an option. So the choices were to go down the stairs and fight their way out of the rest of the building, or to run the gauntlet of the horribly trapped hallway back to the harbormaster's office, which (they recalled) had a window.
Since they had the dispel magic wands, the party decided to opt for the office. With Murphy to point out the traps and the wands to dispel the (or at least temporarily suppress them) it only took twenty five charges of dispel magic to get through the hallway and into the room. The traps were turning back on behind them, however, so they decided to just knock the door instead of relying on the shakey thief skills Morgan possessed to get them into the office.
This proved to be a mistake, as it set off a deadly gas trap. Surprisingly enough, only Thor fell victim to the worst effects of the gas -- and even he survived. Barely. The others either threw off the effects, or managed to hold their breath for the duration of the stay in the office.
The only obvious place to search was the desk, which had a magic spell on it. A charge from a wand got rid of that. It also had four locked doors with poison needle traps, which Kijj circumvented by using his admantium longsword to disassemble the desk. They found a bunch of papers, coins, and 'random magic items', which were dumped into Mike's bag of holding. Then, as they'd been holding their breath for nearly a minute, Kijj picked up the desk and tried to throw it out the window.
This was also a mistake, and an obvious one -- the magic trap on the window had never been dispelled. It set off a chain lightning that dropped Thor to negatives (thanks to all the con loss from the poison) and hurt Kijj badly, and a wall of force that blocked exit through the window. Undaunted, Kijj used his sword (officially named 'Can Opener') to hack through the outer wall of the office. It took about ten seconds. He probably should have just done that in the first place.
A featherfall got them to the ground, and invisibility (eight of them, from Mike) got them away from the rioting crowd, that somehow knew that the harbormaster was dead less than two minutes after his corpse hit the floor, and swarmed to loot his office. The party wasn't able to keep together without being able to see each other, but they'd arranged to meet back at the elven enclave, which they did.
There, they were offered protection and hospitality. And clerical healing for the poison's aftereffects. And medals, for ending the slave trade (at least on this continent) as the new leader of the city was himself a half elf, and not as sympathetic to the Ogre Mages' business proposition.
18 pearls (and a VERY long day for Murphy) later, they identified and divvied up the items they'd stolen from the harbormaster's desk and his person. Everyone got something interesting, although in some cases it was something cursed. The heavily cursed items were sold to 'dishonest merchants', since they didn't want to piss off the honest merchant.
They also had some deeds to various properties, and a ship. They sold most of them, although one -- to a luxurious, inhabited mansion -- was too hot for anyone to touch. They ended up using it as proof that they were the ones who killed the old harbormaster (showing his body wasn't enough, since he was hardly the only Sivak in town, and they transformed upon death into the likeness of their killer), to collect the bounty from the new master. Who was also head (now) of the guild of assassins, and gave out 'get out of assassination free' cards in addition to the cash promised.
Then they set out in a feather token boat across the straight, with a folding boat as emergency backup, in case they missed the island. Murphy was put in charge of navigation, although everyone helped as much as they could, and they did indeed get to the other side, with almost five minutes to spare before their boat turned into a pumpkin.
Frost, the white dragon overlord, flew overhead, but wasn't interested in such small prey.
After a rest, they marched towards the evil city fort thing. A patrol passed in the distance, with six frost giants and twenty ogres, but they laid low until it was gone instead of trying to ambush it.
Sonnet, invisible, snuck into the city to try to scout it out, taking along an intelligent, chaotic neutral luckstone that asked to be brought along to help. She managed to chat with a captive elf, before her luckstone cast an illusion of a gold dragon that attached far too much attention. 'To save her life!' it insisted, 'The giant was about to step on you, while you were busy talking!'
She came back with the news that most of the elves were, indeed, in the fortress-like inner compound, and that there were almost a hundred frost giants living in the camp, although not all of them were home at any given time -- many of them were out near Silvamori, raiding for more elven captives. She also told them that she'd promised the elves that she'd be back to rescue them, at least.
They captured and charmed a goblin to get more information. The goblin told about a cold-breathing 12-headed 'scaly doggie', and a bunch of white furry doggies that were out at night in the courtyard of the inner compound, and a bunch of ogre mages and dragonspawn and such in too little detail to really be of use. He also bitterly complained that there were about fifty elves alive in the basement, getting all the good food, and two 'special elves' with their own rooms -- 'Gil-somebody and Portho?'
Then the luckstone cast an illusion of a scrying item on the goblin's ear. When it wouldn't come off, Kijj cut off that part of the goblin's ear and tossed it far away... and Mike killed the goblin to stop it's startled screaming. "What's with you people! I cut off someone's ear to try to save their life, and you go and kill them anyway!"
Figuring that the gig wasn't any more up than it had been after the dragon, the party moved a half mile through the ruins and set up camp there, to finish their planned raid into the city. They had to at least rescue the six elves in the outer camp, and maybe the 'special elves' -- rescuing the fifty would be hard, because that was too many for them to carry.
last session | next session
People did touch the illusionary earring before doing anything drastic. The GM described it acting exactly as an illusion would be described... if we'd failed our saves. Which he didn't give us. Grr.
Sonnet and Morgan were late, and Murphy and Thor didn't show up at all. It might have been better to play Wednesday as originally planned, even though I wouldn't have been able to come. I wish they'd have said they had a problem with Thursday back when that was still an option, instead of waiting until this morning.
Staying in the burning room -- where they'd just killed the harbormaster and a bunch of other draconians, but not the Aurak who'd been second in command -- was not an option. So the choices were to go down the stairs and fight their way out of the rest of the building, or to run the gauntlet of the horribly trapped hallway back to the harbormaster's office, which (they recalled) had a window.
Since they had the dispel magic wands, the party decided to opt for the office. With Murphy to point out the traps and the wands to dispel the (or at least temporarily suppress them) it only took twenty five charges of dispel magic to get through the hallway and into the room. The traps were turning back on behind them, however, so they decided to just knock the door instead of relying on the shakey thief skills Morgan possessed to get them into the office.
This proved to be a mistake, as it set off a deadly gas trap. Surprisingly enough, only Thor fell victim to the worst effects of the gas -- and even he survived. Barely. The others either threw off the effects, or managed to hold their breath for the duration of the stay in the office.
The only obvious place to search was the desk, which had a magic spell on it. A charge from a wand got rid of that. It also had four locked doors with poison needle traps, which Kijj circumvented by using his admantium longsword to disassemble the desk. They found a bunch of papers, coins, and 'random magic items', which were dumped into Mike's bag of holding. Then, as they'd been holding their breath for nearly a minute, Kijj picked up the desk and tried to throw it out the window.
This was also a mistake, and an obvious one -- the magic trap on the window had never been dispelled. It set off a chain lightning that dropped Thor to negatives (thanks to all the con loss from the poison) and hurt Kijj badly, and a wall of force that blocked exit through the window. Undaunted, Kijj used his sword (officially named 'Can Opener') to hack through the outer wall of the office. It took about ten seconds. He probably should have just done that in the first place.
A featherfall got them to the ground, and invisibility (eight of them, from Mike) got them away from the rioting crowd, that somehow knew that the harbormaster was dead less than two minutes after his corpse hit the floor, and swarmed to loot his office. The party wasn't able to keep together without being able to see each other, but they'd arranged to meet back at the elven enclave, which they did.
There, they were offered protection and hospitality. And clerical healing for the poison's aftereffects. And medals, for ending the slave trade (at least on this continent) as the new leader of the city was himself a half elf, and not as sympathetic to the Ogre Mages' business proposition.
18 pearls (and a VERY long day for Murphy) later, they identified and divvied up the items they'd stolen from the harbormaster's desk and his person. Everyone got something interesting, although in some cases it was something cursed. The heavily cursed items were sold to 'dishonest merchants', since they didn't want to piss off the honest merchant.
They also had some deeds to various properties, and a ship. They sold most of them, although one -- to a luxurious, inhabited mansion -- was too hot for anyone to touch. They ended up using it as proof that they were the ones who killed the old harbormaster (showing his body wasn't enough, since he was hardly the only Sivak in town, and they transformed upon death into the likeness of their killer), to collect the bounty from the new master. Who was also head (now) of the guild of assassins, and gave out 'get out of assassination free' cards in addition to the cash promised.
Then they set out in a feather token boat across the straight, with a folding boat as emergency backup, in case they missed the island. Murphy was put in charge of navigation, although everyone helped as much as they could, and they did indeed get to the other side, with almost five minutes to spare before their boat turned into a pumpkin.
Frost, the white dragon overlord, flew overhead, but wasn't interested in such small prey.
After a rest, they marched towards the evil city fort thing. A patrol passed in the distance, with six frost giants and twenty ogres, but they laid low until it was gone instead of trying to ambush it.
Sonnet, invisible, snuck into the city to try to scout it out, taking along an intelligent, chaotic neutral luckstone that asked to be brought along to help. She managed to chat with a captive elf, before her luckstone cast an illusion of a gold dragon that attached far too much attention. 'To save her life!' it insisted, 'The giant was about to step on you, while you were busy talking!'
She came back with the news that most of the elves were, indeed, in the fortress-like inner compound, and that there were almost a hundred frost giants living in the camp, although not all of them were home at any given time -- many of them were out near Silvamori, raiding for more elven captives. She also told them that she'd promised the elves that she'd be back to rescue them, at least.
They captured and charmed a goblin to get more information. The goblin told about a cold-breathing 12-headed 'scaly doggie', and a bunch of white furry doggies that were out at night in the courtyard of the inner compound, and a bunch of ogre mages and dragonspawn and such in too little detail to really be of use. He also bitterly complained that there were about fifty elves alive in the basement, getting all the good food, and two 'special elves' with their own rooms -- 'Gil-somebody and Portho?'
Then the luckstone cast an illusion of a scrying item on the goblin's ear. When it wouldn't come off, Kijj cut off that part of the goblin's ear and tossed it far away... and Mike killed the goblin to stop it's startled screaming. "What's with you people! I cut off someone's ear to try to save their life, and you go and kill them anyway!"
Figuring that the gig wasn't any more up than it had been after the dragon, the party moved a half mile through the ruins and set up camp there, to finish their planned raid into the city. They had to at least rescue the six elves in the outer camp, and maybe the 'special elves' -- rescuing the fifty would be hard, because that was too many for them to carry.
last session | next session
People did touch the illusionary earring before doing anything drastic. The GM described it acting exactly as an illusion would be described... if we'd failed our saves. Which he didn't give us. Grr.
