Save the Queen!
Jun. 3rd, 2004 01:01 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 stormed the castle for a *third* time, and this time managed to defeat the bosses and rescue the 'special elves'. We didn't rescue the non-special elves from the basement, because Mike in particular wanted a month or two to do some item enchantment using money he'd saved up.
Murphy replaced Gogo with some monk/kensai who he thought would cost less to support... until he realized how much an Amulet of Mighty Fists went for.
The party rested the night in Palanthas, then sent Mike out to rescue Thor and the elves (and Kijj's familiar) from where they'd been stashed. Luckily, one of the elves had died during the night, so Mike was able to actually bring all of them back with him.
After another night of planning, they decided to teleport in fully buffed and invisible, and catch the big scary bosses napping. Cat's graces all around... and stoneskin, and mirror image, and see invis, and invis, and a few others. Mike was a bit stingy doling out his spells, though, and only cast protection from evil on himself, and displacement on nobody (because of its short duration). Kijj finished up with a haste, and Mike and Murphy teleported.
They arrived in position in the hydra room, which was now guarded by giants. They tried to stealthily open the door, but it was barred -- and the knock spell used to disbar it was noisy, alerting the giants and provoking Mike into fireballing them twice, killing all of them.
Beyond the door was the Big Bad Ogre of Doom and the remaining pair of ogre magi, all invisible. Enough of the party saw invisible to get two of them glitterdusted and the third cut down before the ogre magi could do more than cone-of-cold, which failed to do much because the party was protected from cold.
Sonnet threw a warhorse out of a bag of tricks (she had four by this point) at the BBOD, revealing a nasty trap -- the floor in that room was fake, a millimiter of plaster over a twenty foot drop into the giant-filled guard post. The giants below started running upstairs towards the party, although it took a while for them to get anywhere.
This mostly left the big bad to deal with. His great-cleaving axe took out Murphy's mirror images and wounded the wizard, but in return he was brutally abused by Kijj AND Morgan AND Thor and, after destroying Kijj's spear (which was just mean -- the minotaur had plenty of only marginally less effective backup weapons), was forced to flee over the floorless room, where he waited just out of sight, springing out to attack while remaining out of reach.
Sonnet and Sawyer tried to follow him and ended up falling down to the floor below, while the others tried various long-range attacks until Mike got around to using Wall of Stone to make a floor for them to stand on. Then it was all over -- he got one round of attacks on Kijj, but didn't manage to kill him (due to crap rolls and the minotaur's high AC), and was then taken down.
But by this time, the giants from the lower guard post had made their way up to harass the party, followed quickly by Sonnet and Sawyer harassing them. AND the party noticed that the ogre mages and the BBOD were regenerating. Worse, the BBOD was highly resitant to fire and acid both. Kijj, who'd enlarged himself to get reach back without his spear, stole the still unconscious BBOD's axe (+5 of speed) so that at least he'd be a little less of a threat if he came to, and Mike tried to give him a scorching-ray enema, but failed to get past his spell resistance.
That was when the Big Boss Big Boss Big Boss Blue Boss (to use the long-dead goblin's terminology) showed up. "Kneel before your GOD, mortals!" he intoned, and most of the party proceeded to do so, charmed by his awesomeness.
Mike was one exception, protected from compusion and charm by his protection from evil spell. Instead of protecting (and thus freeing) Thor or Kijj or Murphy or Sawyer, he ran like a little girl, after throwing off a dispel magic and getting blasted by twenty bolts of black energy.
Murphy also managed to avoid being charmed, and cast lower spell resistance twice on the creature, followed by a dispel magic, and then a feeblemind. It *almost* worked, but not quite.
Sonnet was the last that had resisted the spell, and after tossing out a rhino, she used 'silent image' to make an illusion of Big Blue attacking the party with the black bolts he'd used on Mike... sadly, most of the party made their saves to disbelieve the illusion.
But Thor WAS free, and ran to attack! "No one makes me kneel!" he screamed, after getting back to his feet. "Protect me!" Big Blue ordered, and Kijj whacked Thor for subdual damage, while Morgan and Sawyer jumped on Mike just after the war mage toasted Big Blue with a very very powerful fireball.
That was enough to send Big Blue running -- he stone-shaped the door he was fighting through closed, and teleported away, or *something* -- at any rate, he was gone by the time Mike slapped a prot-evil on Kijj and had him bust through the wall. Sonnet coup-de-graced the regenerating ogre magi and BBOD with her fire-bow (after removing what turned out to be a ring of fire protection from the BBOD), and they proceeded onwards into the monster's bedroom.
There was more treasure in the bedroom, including 50 suspiciously blood-like potions and a magical tome describing the creation of the 'Elixer of Rebirth'. "I bet that's how you make dragon-spawn," Murphy speculated, and momentarily considered downing a dose to see if it would work, before realizing that that was really really stupid, especially considering that there was apparently a ritual involved.
The real prize was behind yet another wall, though -- peering through peepholes, they saw the special elves, including Alhana Starbreeze herself! Somehow, she'd gotten herself taken prisoner. Kijj tried to dimension-door in to rescue them, but they didn't come out with him. "Magic shackles," Murphy pointed out. Doh.
So Kijj and Thor burrowed through the wall. It was noisy, it took five minutes, and no one showed up to bother them... but then, there weren't many people left alive in the inner compound, and who in their right mind would bother someone who'd just defeated their boss?
Eventually, the elves were freed, and Murphy gave Morgan a scroll of teleport so that, with three people doing the teleport, they could all leave successfully. Morgan botched the roll to read the relatively high-level scroll. Luckily, Mike had *another* scroll, and gave it to Kijj (who had a better shot of getting the spell off, but less chance of getting to the right place, as he'd never expected to be teleporting anywhere and hadn't studied the Wayreth teleport chamber). This time, the spell went off, and everyone arrived safely.
The elves told their story, which was long and boring. The two key points were that Porthios had been captured after being betrayed during a plan to kill Frost, and that Alhana had been captured after Big Blue used his mass-charm power to convert her and her entire army. She revealed that whatever ritual was being used was to transform ogre magi into Big Blue-like superpowerful bastards, and that many elves were slaughtered in the process, in addition to the need for elven blood.
Of course, she wanted to return to rescue the other elves... but the party was not in the mood to help her. Or rather, they were more in the mood to use the vast amount of enchantment credit Jenna gave them for stopping the killing in the forest (which they'd done by replacing the harbormaster with the former head of the assassins' guild, back before they'd ever travelled across the straight) and the tower's wonderful magical workshops.
So they wished Alhana well, perfunctorily, and let her instead hire other mages to go raid the camp yet again. There was certainly no shortage of wizards in Wayreth tower.
Kijj decided to keep the BBOD's giant axe of speed, as it was a truly wondrous weapon. Of course, to use it properly, he'd have to get himself permanently enlarged, but that was no problem -- they'd been given more than enough credit for that. And maybe he could get someone to enchant an item that would reduce him when he needed to NOT be gigantic...
last week | next week
Murphy replaced Gogo with some monk/kensai who he thought would cost less to support... until he realized how much an Amulet of Mighty Fists went for.
The party rested the night in Palanthas, then sent Mike out to rescue Thor and the elves (and Kijj's familiar) from where they'd been stashed. Luckily, one of the elves had died during the night, so Mike was able to actually bring all of them back with him.
After another night of planning, they decided to teleport in fully buffed and invisible, and catch the big scary bosses napping. Cat's graces all around... and stoneskin, and mirror image, and see invis, and invis, and a few others. Mike was a bit stingy doling out his spells, though, and only cast protection from evil on himself, and displacement on nobody (because of its short duration). Kijj finished up with a haste, and Mike and Murphy teleported.
They arrived in position in the hydra room, which was now guarded by giants. They tried to stealthily open the door, but it was barred -- and the knock spell used to disbar it was noisy, alerting the giants and provoking Mike into fireballing them twice, killing all of them.
Beyond the door was the Big Bad Ogre of Doom and the remaining pair of ogre magi, all invisible. Enough of the party saw invisible to get two of them glitterdusted and the third cut down before the ogre magi could do more than cone-of-cold, which failed to do much because the party was protected from cold.
Sonnet threw a warhorse out of a bag of tricks (she had four by this point) at the BBOD, revealing a nasty trap -- the floor in that room was fake, a millimiter of plaster over a twenty foot drop into the giant-filled guard post. The giants below started running upstairs towards the party, although it took a while for them to get anywhere.
This mostly left the big bad to deal with. His great-cleaving axe took out Murphy's mirror images and wounded the wizard, but in return he was brutally abused by Kijj AND Morgan AND Thor and, after destroying Kijj's spear (which was just mean -- the minotaur had plenty of only marginally less effective backup weapons), was forced to flee over the floorless room, where he waited just out of sight, springing out to attack while remaining out of reach.
Sonnet and Sawyer tried to follow him and ended up falling down to the floor below, while the others tried various long-range attacks until Mike got around to using Wall of Stone to make a floor for them to stand on. Then it was all over -- he got one round of attacks on Kijj, but didn't manage to kill him (due to crap rolls and the minotaur's high AC), and was then taken down.
But by this time, the giants from the lower guard post had made their way up to harass the party, followed quickly by Sonnet and Sawyer harassing them. AND the party noticed that the ogre mages and the BBOD were regenerating. Worse, the BBOD was highly resitant to fire and acid both. Kijj, who'd enlarged himself to get reach back without his spear, stole the still unconscious BBOD's axe (+5 of speed) so that at least he'd be a little less of a threat if he came to, and Mike tried to give him a scorching-ray enema, but failed to get past his spell resistance.
That was when the Big Boss Big Boss Big Boss Blue Boss (to use the long-dead goblin's terminology) showed up. "Kneel before your GOD, mortals!" he intoned, and most of the party proceeded to do so, charmed by his awesomeness.
Mike was one exception, protected from compusion and charm by his protection from evil spell. Instead of protecting (and thus freeing) Thor or Kijj or Murphy or Sawyer, he ran like a little girl, after throwing off a dispel magic and getting blasted by twenty bolts of black energy.
Murphy also managed to avoid being charmed, and cast lower spell resistance twice on the creature, followed by a dispel magic, and then a feeblemind. It *almost* worked, but not quite.
Sonnet was the last that had resisted the spell, and after tossing out a rhino, she used 'silent image' to make an illusion of Big Blue attacking the party with the black bolts he'd used on Mike... sadly, most of the party made their saves to disbelieve the illusion.
But Thor WAS free, and ran to attack! "No one makes me kneel!" he screamed, after getting back to his feet. "Protect me!" Big Blue ordered, and Kijj whacked Thor for subdual damage, while Morgan and Sawyer jumped on Mike just after the war mage toasted Big Blue with a very very powerful fireball.
That was enough to send Big Blue running -- he stone-shaped the door he was fighting through closed, and teleported away, or *something* -- at any rate, he was gone by the time Mike slapped a prot-evil on Kijj and had him bust through the wall. Sonnet coup-de-graced the regenerating ogre magi and BBOD with her fire-bow (after removing what turned out to be a ring of fire protection from the BBOD), and they proceeded onwards into the monster's bedroom.
There was more treasure in the bedroom, including 50 suspiciously blood-like potions and a magical tome describing the creation of the 'Elixer of Rebirth'. "I bet that's how you make dragon-spawn," Murphy speculated, and momentarily considered downing a dose to see if it would work, before realizing that that was really really stupid, especially considering that there was apparently a ritual involved.
The real prize was behind yet another wall, though -- peering through peepholes, they saw the special elves, including Alhana Starbreeze herself! Somehow, she'd gotten herself taken prisoner. Kijj tried to dimension-door in to rescue them, but they didn't come out with him. "Magic shackles," Murphy pointed out. Doh.
So Kijj and Thor burrowed through the wall. It was noisy, it took five minutes, and no one showed up to bother them... but then, there weren't many people left alive in the inner compound, and who in their right mind would bother someone who'd just defeated their boss?
Eventually, the elves were freed, and Murphy gave Morgan a scroll of teleport so that, with three people doing the teleport, they could all leave successfully. Morgan botched the roll to read the relatively high-level scroll. Luckily, Mike had *another* scroll, and gave it to Kijj (who had a better shot of getting the spell off, but less chance of getting to the right place, as he'd never expected to be teleporting anywhere and hadn't studied the Wayreth teleport chamber). This time, the spell went off, and everyone arrived safely.
The elves told their story, which was long and boring. The two key points were that Porthios had been captured after being betrayed during a plan to kill Frost, and that Alhana had been captured after Big Blue used his mass-charm power to convert her and her entire army. She revealed that whatever ritual was being used was to transform ogre magi into Big Blue-like superpowerful bastards, and that many elves were slaughtered in the process, in addition to the need for elven blood.
Of course, she wanted to return to rescue the other elves... but the party was not in the mood to help her. Or rather, they were more in the mood to use the vast amount of enchantment credit Jenna gave them for stopping the killing in the forest (which they'd done by replacing the harbormaster with the former head of the assassins' guild, back before they'd ever travelled across the straight) and the tower's wonderful magical workshops.
So they wished Alhana well, perfunctorily, and let her instead hire other mages to go raid the camp yet again. There was certainly no shortage of wizards in Wayreth tower.
Kijj decided to keep the BBOD's giant axe of speed, as it was a truly wondrous weapon. Of course, to use it properly, he'd have to get himself permanently enlarged, but that was no problem -- they'd been given more than enough credit for that. And maybe he could get someone to enchant an item that would reduce him when he needed to NOT be gigantic...
last week | next week
