Waterlogged
Jun. 25th, 2004 12:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothTonight we had a session of Jeff's Dragonlance campaign. The theme of the night was 'water', and the session ended with what *could* have been a very damp TPK if not for the fortunate and incidental purchase of a silent metamagic rod.
Teleporting back after the worm incident, the party tried to retrieve Sonnet, and ended up losing Morgan to a preacher's enthralling story. So there were only six (Mike, Murphy, Tetsuyo, Kijj, Lini, and Oyou) who teleported back to continue the next leg of the journey.
A day passed uneventfully, and then they came to a branch. Of course, they took the 'wrong' branch, wanting to explore every nook and cranny of the underdark and strip it of all its treasures. This branch spiralled down and down until it ended in a gem-studded chamber, 200 feet across.
Murphy quickly identified the gems as worthless Mica, but spotted three actually valuable gems in the far wall, as well as a pit full of nonmagical but very high quality weapons. The party cast some basic defensive spells (shield, shield of faith, etc) and moved up to examine and retrieve the treasure.
As Kijj bent down to pick up a random sword from the pit, the whole party was wrapped up in insivible webs of force from three hidden spiderlike creatures! With the party immobilized, they ran up and tried to devour their magical items, but the party wasn't *paralyzed*, and Lini freed Kijj with a Freedom of Movement spell, letting Kijj move around freely and slaughter everything. Tetsuyo, again, kept one of the spiders pinned down with his stunning fists, but the mages were useless against these creatures, their spells seemingly utterly ineffective.
No one was hurt in the battle, except for Murphy, who got bit and temporarily lost his ability to cast spells. The only significant casualty was Murphy's Staff of Power and the Elements, which was disjuncted by the spider's bite. The glowgem was able to recharge it, even from its fully drained state, although it used up an extra 100 charges to do so.
Still, the party was spooked enough (and down enough spells, as freeing themselves from the invulnerable, invisible webs was really hard, even with the spiders dead) to teleport back. Besides, some other minor magic needed to be replaced.
Sonnet was finally done investigating what turned out to be a red herring -- the ink lasted forever, but only by the use of magic, which left it dispellable and thus clearly not suitable as a solution to her lifequest. Morgan was still unavailable, but Sonnet and Sawyer were once again able to come with the party.
Sonnet was sent down at the end of a rope to investigate what was below some suspicious cracks in the floor of the 'spellgaunts' chamber. The cracks led to a large cylindrical room, whose lower reaches were full of swiftly flowing water. Sonnet had to use the fly belt she'd taken with her just in case to get back up, since the twisting nature of the crack kept the standard 'two tugs to get pulled back up' signals from working, and it was too tiring to try to climb the rope faster than it was being lowered.
Mike and Kijj, also flying, accompanied Sonnet down to give the chamber a more thorough investigation. There were no exits above the water, so they took a small badger from Sonnet's bag of tricks, 'attached' it to a grappling hook, and went fishing. After a few uneventful casts that merely half-drowned the helpless animal-like construct, the grappling hook caught on something, and Kijj tugged mightily, trying to pull his catch above water, eventually snapping the rope.
There was a rumble of moving rock, and part of the ceiling collapsed, bouncing rocks painfully off everyone flying around down there... and worse, the water level started rising. "Oh no!" Kijj said, "I broke the mountain!"
The water level didn't rise THAT quickly, though, and the party was able to outpace it up the spiral passage, back to the intersection.
A few more days passed uneventfully, until finally they approached the realm of the Dark Dwarves. Oyou, scouting ahead on his own in Morgan's absence, reported back that the dark dwarves had fortified what used to be a natural bridge over a chasm, installing a crenellated wall to defend it against anyone who might wander by.
Mike (flying), Murphy (on a spectral mount), and Lini (on another spectral mount) flew in invisibly and took up station, while the rest of the party approached with basic minute-per-level defensive spells up, and Sonnet tried to negotiate for safe passage. The dwarves initially demanded a truly horrendous payment, which Sonnet counteroffered with a merely extremely large payment. The fee agreed on, the party approached the doorway...
...and, not really to anyone's particular *surprise*, as such, the dwarf who'd been negotiating reached down to turn the bridge to mud under their feet.
The party was not all THAT badly affected by this -- Kijj's Wings of Flying were already active, and Sonnet was able to featherfall herself and Sawyer and Oyou. Only Tetsuyo actually started falling. They were generally slow to react, though, and the black-robed wizardy dwarf was able to fling off an (unsuccessful) flesh-to-stone at Oyou (the only visible hated elfling) before slamming the door in the party's face. The two dwarven clerics flung Destruction spells at Mike and Oyou, and Oyou was consumed in infernal flames -- Mike, of course, was immune, thanks to his soulfire armor.
Kijj was an unstoppable juggernaut of DOOM, shrugging off the bridge dropping out from under him (wings of flying), a destruction (soulfire), a forcecage (dimension door), and a harm (soulfire again), then using his Blink to walk through the walls to escape from a blade barrier, and getting automatically shielded from most of a flame strike by his resistance amulet. For all that, he was too busy running around and occasionally getting dazed by Blasphemy to actually *do* anything, though.
It was Mike who scored all the kills -- with ludicrously destructive fireballs for the clerics and peons, and a disintegrate that took out the leader. Soon, only one dark dwarf was left alive (not counting one cleric who'd Word of Recalled). Kijj picked him up, dangled him over the chasm, and interrogated him. "How do we get past your stupid little kingdom?" "Just don't take any left turns for the next half mile!"
Sonnet, disturbed by Kijj's interrogation techniques, fascinated the minotaur, almost making him drop his prisoner. After a brief but futile charm-person-battle between party members, Mike decided to go ahead and charm the frigging dwarf, and he was interrogated again. He told mostly the same story, except that it was the third left the party needed to take, if they wanted to escape the underground, instead of fighting the horrible evil things that had killed all the dwarves who'd gone that way.
The dwarf was extremely chatty, and continued to volunteer information as they let him lead them to the 'wrong way to go', which they decided they WANTED to take, since Tetsuyo's Rod pointed down that way. They carefully studied an area, and told the charmed dwarf to come with them as they teleported, since there were some other friends of theirs they wanted him to meet.
The dwarf didn't teleport with them. "Damn. I guess he wasn't really charmed."
So, after getting Oyou true-resurrected (they still needed his guidance), and spending a day getting his sword repaired (falling 800 feet down the chasm after he was obliterated had broken it), they decided to take extra special care teleporting back. Murphy would use an invisibility sphere to make them all invisible, and Lini would have a Silence stone in her pocket, to pull out as soon as they arrived.
Mike considered buying a silent metamagic rod to allow him to silently cast teleport, but decided to go buy a feat-book (which used Wish to give him an extra heroic feat) instead. And then took 'Scult Spell' instead of Silent Spell.
So when the party teleported in to what they suspected might be a dwarven ambush, invisibly and ready-to-be-silently, and found themselves underwater, in a short section of passageway blocked by three-foot-thick walls of stone at either end, it was really damn lucky that Lini had *actually* bought a lesser silent metamagic rod, and was therefore able to cast stone shape on one of the walls to drain all the water.
Damp, but undrowned, they cursed the dwarves -- who they hoped would fail to realize the trap had been sprung, as Lini had shaped a hole in the far end of it -- and prepared to move on.
last week | next week
Jeff said afterwards that he was really surprised at the metamagic rod thing. He'd expected the trap to seriously endanger the party -- while they *might* have been able to use their various admantine weapons to break down the walls before drowning, it would have been really close, and there was nothing else they could even try -- command words for magic items and most spells require you to be able to speak.
Teleporting back after the worm incident, the party tried to retrieve Sonnet, and ended up losing Morgan to a preacher's enthralling story. So there were only six (Mike, Murphy, Tetsuyo, Kijj, Lini, and Oyou) who teleported back to continue the next leg of the journey.
A day passed uneventfully, and then they came to a branch. Of course, they took the 'wrong' branch, wanting to explore every nook and cranny of the underdark and strip it of all its treasures. This branch spiralled down and down until it ended in a gem-studded chamber, 200 feet across.
Murphy quickly identified the gems as worthless Mica, but spotted three actually valuable gems in the far wall, as well as a pit full of nonmagical but very high quality weapons. The party cast some basic defensive spells (shield, shield of faith, etc) and moved up to examine and retrieve the treasure.
As Kijj bent down to pick up a random sword from the pit, the whole party was wrapped up in insivible webs of force from three hidden spiderlike creatures! With the party immobilized, they ran up and tried to devour their magical items, but the party wasn't *paralyzed*, and Lini freed Kijj with a Freedom of Movement spell, letting Kijj move around freely and slaughter everything. Tetsuyo, again, kept one of the spiders pinned down with his stunning fists, but the mages were useless against these creatures, their spells seemingly utterly ineffective.
No one was hurt in the battle, except for Murphy, who got bit and temporarily lost his ability to cast spells. The only significant casualty was Murphy's Staff of Power and the Elements, which was disjuncted by the spider's bite. The glowgem was able to recharge it, even from its fully drained state, although it used up an extra 100 charges to do so.
Still, the party was spooked enough (and down enough spells, as freeing themselves from the invulnerable, invisible webs was really hard, even with the spiders dead) to teleport back. Besides, some other minor magic needed to be replaced.
Sonnet was finally done investigating what turned out to be a red herring -- the ink lasted forever, but only by the use of magic, which left it dispellable and thus clearly not suitable as a solution to her lifequest. Morgan was still unavailable, but Sonnet and Sawyer were once again able to come with the party.
Sonnet was sent down at the end of a rope to investigate what was below some suspicious cracks in the floor of the 'spellgaunts' chamber. The cracks led to a large cylindrical room, whose lower reaches were full of swiftly flowing water. Sonnet had to use the fly belt she'd taken with her just in case to get back up, since the twisting nature of the crack kept the standard 'two tugs to get pulled back up' signals from working, and it was too tiring to try to climb the rope faster than it was being lowered.
Mike and Kijj, also flying, accompanied Sonnet down to give the chamber a more thorough investigation. There were no exits above the water, so they took a small badger from Sonnet's bag of tricks, 'attached' it to a grappling hook, and went fishing. After a few uneventful casts that merely half-drowned the helpless animal-like construct, the grappling hook caught on something, and Kijj tugged mightily, trying to pull his catch above water, eventually snapping the rope.
There was a rumble of moving rock, and part of the ceiling collapsed, bouncing rocks painfully off everyone flying around down there... and worse, the water level started rising. "Oh no!" Kijj said, "I broke the mountain!"
The water level didn't rise THAT quickly, though, and the party was able to outpace it up the spiral passage, back to the intersection.
A few more days passed uneventfully, until finally they approached the realm of the Dark Dwarves. Oyou, scouting ahead on his own in Morgan's absence, reported back that the dark dwarves had fortified what used to be a natural bridge over a chasm, installing a crenellated wall to defend it against anyone who might wander by.
Mike (flying), Murphy (on a spectral mount), and Lini (on another spectral mount) flew in invisibly and took up station, while the rest of the party approached with basic minute-per-level defensive spells up, and Sonnet tried to negotiate for safe passage. The dwarves initially demanded a truly horrendous payment, which Sonnet counteroffered with a merely extremely large payment. The fee agreed on, the party approached the doorway...
...and, not really to anyone's particular *surprise*, as such, the dwarf who'd been negotiating reached down to turn the bridge to mud under their feet.
The party was not all THAT badly affected by this -- Kijj's Wings of Flying were already active, and Sonnet was able to featherfall herself and Sawyer and Oyou. Only Tetsuyo actually started falling. They were generally slow to react, though, and the black-robed wizardy dwarf was able to fling off an (unsuccessful) flesh-to-stone at Oyou (the only visible hated elfling) before slamming the door in the party's face. The two dwarven clerics flung Destruction spells at Mike and Oyou, and Oyou was consumed in infernal flames -- Mike, of course, was immune, thanks to his soulfire armor.
Kijj was an unstoppable juggernaut of DOOM, shrugging off the bridge dropping out from under him (wings of flying), a destruction (soulfire), a forcecage (dimension door), and a harm (soulfire again), then using his Blink to walk through the walls to escape from a blade barrier, and getting automatically shielded from most of a flame strike by his resistance amulet. For all that, he was too busy running around and occasionally getting dazed by Blasphemy to actually *do* anything, though.
It was Mike who scored all the kills -- with ludicrously destructive fireballs for the clerics and peons, and a disintegrate that took out the leader. Soon, only one dark dwarf was left alive (not counting one cleric who'd Word of Recalled). Kijj picked him up, dangled him over the chasm, and interrogated him. "How do we get past your stupid little kingdom?" "Just don't take any left turns for the next half mile!"
Sonnet, disturbed by Kijj's interrogation techniques, fascinated the minotaur, almost making him drop his prisoner. After a brief but futile charm-person-battle between party members, Mike decided to go ahead and charm the frigging dwarf, and he was interrogated again. He told mostly the same story, except that it was the third left the party needed to take, if they wanted to escape the underground, instead of fighting the horrible evil things that had killed all the dwarves who'd gone that way.
The dwarf was extremely chatty, and continued to volunteer information as they let him lead them to the 'wrong way to go', which they decided they WANTED to take, since Tetsuyo's Rod pointed down that way. They carefully studied an area, and told the charmed dwarf to come with them as they teleported, since there were some other friends of theirs they wanted him to meet.
The dwarf didn't teleport with them. "Damn. I guess he wasn't really charmed."
So, after getting Oyou true-resurrected (they still needed his guidance), and spending a day getting his sword repaired (falling 800 feet down the chasm after he was obliterated had broken it), they decided to take extra special care teleporting back. Murphy would use an invisibility sphere to make them all invisible, and Lini would have a Silence stone in her pocket, to pull out as soon as they arrived.
Mike considered buying a silent metamagic rod to allow him to silently cast teleport, but decided to go buy a feat-book (which used Wish to give him an extra heroic feat) instead. And then took 'Scult Spell' instead of Silent Spell.
So when the party teleported in to what they suspected might be a dwarven ambush, invisibly and ready-to-be-silently, and found themselves underwater, in a short section of passageway blocked by three-foot-thick walls of stone at either end, it was really damn lucky that Lini had *actually* bought a lesser silent metamagic rod, and was therefore able to cast stone shape on one of the walls to drain all the water.
Damp, but undrowned, they cursed the dwarves -- who they hoped would fail to realize the trap had been sprung, as Lini had shaped a hole in the far end of it -- and prepared to move on.
last week | next week
Jeff said afterwards that he was really surprised at the metamagic rod thing. He'd expected the trap to seriously endanger the party -- while they *might* have been able to use their various admantine weapons to break down the walls before drowning, it would have been really close, and there was nothing else they could even try -- command words for magic items and most spells require you to be able to speak.
