All in a day's work
Aug. 13th, 2004 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothLast night we had a dragonlance campaign session thing. We spent a while agonizing over what to do next, then decided to help Alhana again because it's always easier when someone else lays out the mission for you to go complete. Even if she doesn't pay very well.
After the random demon attack, Sonnet was questioned by the city guard. For some reason, she tried to lie about everything, including lying that she'd *threatened* the shopkeeper in order to get the silver arrows, which the shopkeeper was happy to corroborate, since that meant that he got to sue her. She also tried to lie that the devils were after Morgan instead of her, but Morgan refused to go along with that story. There were no serious repercussions, though -- she wasn't even banished from the city. Apparently, the elves are cool with random demon attacks.
So, Kijj didn't want to help Alhana at this point, since acting as a bodyguard while also being a devil-magnet was a bit... dishonest. They discussed going to the plane of earth, prospecting, searching for one of the smaller parts of the rod of seven parts in the ruins of Ishtar ("The sea's only 100 feet deep!" "We'd be searching an entire *country*!" "Don't be silly, Murphy's research says it's probably in the capital city somewhere."), or storming hell to take out the stupid devilgnome before he could attack again.
A discussion with Alhana revealed that they weren't being hired as caravan guards -- they were being hired to *teleport* her to the palace (she had a mirror which could scry on the teleport pad there) and then slaughter the guards between her and her other princessy friends and the secret passage to the heart of Silvanost, conveniently located in the throne room behind the giant evil altar. Er, that is, the elven throne. Once in the heart, they'd sing the song from the music box Sonnet had given them so long ago, and something wonderful would happen to reclaim Silvanesti for the elves, although they didn't know what.
The palace wasn't sealed against extradimensional travel, but it would react to any teleport that wasn't heading for the pad, and devour the teleporter, which means random devil attacks would be cut rather short if they tried to happen during the mission.
So they agreed to storm the castle for her. She didn't offer any payment, instead asking them what they wanted. Sonnet, Morgan, and Mike wanted elven titles and estates in Silvanost. ("In the ruins of Silvanost? The minotaur-infested ruins of Silvanost?" "Well, sure, if the mission *fails* they won't be worth much...") Murphy asked for a favor to be named later. Kijj wanted cash, but wasn't sure how much to ask for. Mike told him to triple whatever he thought he was worth, so Kijj pro-rated the 50,000 steel they'd gotten for the two-month assault on Frost's lair for a one-day mission like this, doubled it because they were richer and more powerful now, then tripled it. "6,000 steel!" "Done!"
The assault happened the next day, after everyone had a chance to recover from the devil attack, buy some anti-devil supplies (primarily silversheen), and memorize anti-devil spells (mostly align weapon). Now they'd be ready if the devilgnome attacked again. ("If you see a portal to hell, jump through!") They had a morning hero's feast, and another one around dinnertime, and at dusk teleported to the palace.
Alhana knew the palace well, and was able to sneak them around back ways (deserted, since it was the middle of the night in Silvanost) until they were almost to the throne room. Finally, they ran out of secret passages, and had to engage the guards.
The first pair of guards were taken down silently... thanks to a silence spell. Kijj and Morgan charged them, then Mike and Murphy finished them off with fireballs. The next room had four guards, though, and was a three-level hall, with the party on the upper floor. As they snuck around the top invisibly -- the guards saw the door swing open, but didn't twig to what that meant in time to save themselves -- they noticed that a party was going on on the lower floor, too -- hundreds of minotaurs, praying to four black priests of Sarghess. Murphy noticed a bunch of hiding bow-minotaurs on the middle floor, but couldn't say anything about them in time. They seemed to mostly be looking down, anyway.
So the party positioned itself, and struck! The four minotaur guards went down silently, again, before they could move, but this time the flashy magic alerted the bow-minotaurs, who raised the alarm and started shooting LOTS of arrows at Kijj and Mike.
So Mike decided that he'd retailiate by casting a prismatic spray... on the crowd below. Most of the crowd vanished, sent to another plane, and the rest were killed or driven insane... two of the priests lived, though, and tried to disintegrate him in return. It didn't work, since some of his mirror image was still left.
Sonnet (on Sawyer) and Kijj could fly, and Morgan had the rod of force, and together with Murphy's spells they took on the archers, while Mike continued to harass the priests. The priests got off more instant-death spells, none of which actually managed to kill anyone, and the archers managed to miss a lot, but eventually the party was victorious. They shoveled the bodies of the dead combatants into the portable hole with the other guards, and went to continue on, after Morgan disarmed a glyph of warding.
The next room was a small antechamber with an 'alarm spell', and then into the throne room. As the party rushed in to face the high priest of Sarghess and his two pit fiends that he'd just summoned, thanks to Mike so helpfully killing off the sacrifices for him, they realized that they hadn't remembered to cast their short-duration buff spells. Oops!
On the plus side, they hadn't given the priest a minute or so to cast *his* buffs. On the minus side, pit fiends don't *need* to cast many buffs.
So, the battle started fairly slowly. The pit fiends put up unholy auras, and flew into the air, engaged at range by Sonnet and Morgan, while Mike counterspelled the priest, Murphy started lowering peoples' resistances (and failing to feeblemind), and Kijj hung back to cast some defensive and offensive spells -- blink, haste, silversheen, and align weapon seemed like prerequisites for engaging pit fiends in melee.
The pit fiends kept bombarding the party with quickened fireballs, but the only one who took any damage from them was Kijj, who only had 20 points of fire resistance -- the lowest in the party. Kijj didn't take much. Still, it's not like it took any effort for the devils to keep up the barrage.
The priest activated his altar, which started sending out black ghostly claws, which passed right through armor to deal massive internal wounds. Tetsuyo, running up to try to stun the priest, was killed by one, and various other people were grievously wounded.
One of the pit fiends swooped down to grapple Murphy, just as Kijj was going into melee with the other... and the other meteor-swarmed Kijj (he blinked out of the way, luckily) and menaced Lini, leaving her no obvious escape route without drawing an improved-grab-enhanced attack-of-opportunity.
Murphy, even grappled, was able to cast 'Otto's Irresistable Dance' (thanks to a metamagic rod), and it worked! The pit fiend started capering and dancing, and couldn't keep its grip on him very well. Kijj ran over and stabbed it five times, until it was reduced to a puddle of goo.
Lini used a wall of stone to escape her pit fiend, and flew way up in the air out of its reach, since the phantom steed she was riding was a lot faster than it. So it teleported after her -- and while the palace did react to the teleport, it didn't react effectively enough to take down a pit fiend, or in fact even inconvenience the creature to the slightest degree. She was grappled in short order, stung and squeezed by the fiend's tail.
Meanwhile, Mike had been continuing to counter the priest's magic, while the altar slowly killed everyone, and Morgan and Sonnet tried in vain to hit him with weapons [because they rolled crap, not because he wasn't 10 AC easier to hit than the pit fiends]. Morgan still had the silence, and while this annoyed the priest and made him keep having to take AoOs to cast his spells, it kept Mike -- who'd swooped in to help Morgan flank -- from countering the Implosion the priest got off.
Mike was the first target. Mike used his Moment of Prescience to avoid instant death. The Murphy Power-Word Blinded the priest (who'd finally been backstabbed BUT GOOD by Morgan), keeping him from picking any more targets. Then Mike disintegrated him.
The remaining pit fiend had been ordered to help the priest, and had tried -- he'd thrown Lini at Kijj to distract him (which worked), used a mass hold monster which paralyzed Lini, and then had swooped down just in time to see the priest turn to dust... and the altar start to crack and pulse, as if it was about to explode. Kijj set Lini down and charged at the pit fiend just as everyone else -- including the pit fiend -- ran away from the altar. Mike encased it in a wall of stone to try to contain the explosion, but Kijj and Lini still took quite a beating from it. They hadn't been among those clawed earlier, though, so they both lived.
At that point, Murphy (noticing that no one in the party had more than 50 hit points left) offered to let the devil go if he'd agree to stop the fight and go back to hell. The pit fiend didn't really *want* to fight a group armed with at least one blessed silver weapon, and didn't really want to hang around in a backwater like Krynn anyway, so he agreed. He seemed a bit disappointed that he hadn't gotten to kidnap Sonnet, as he left -- apparently, there was a huge bounty on her head in hell, from the devilgnome.
last session | next session
We won't be playing next week, but Jeff promised to finish out this mission in e-mail, since we're basically done.
And now... I'm wondering whether or not I have an interview today. I accepted the invite a day late, and it didn't appear on my calender and I never got the follow-up information. So I'm thinking not. But since it didn't appear on my calender, the invite is just gone gone gone now, and I don't even have the contact info to ask the organizer if I do or not. Gotta love outlook.
After the random demon attack, Sonnet was questioned by the city guard. For some reason, she tried to lie about everything, including lying that she'd *threatened* the shopkeeper in order to get the silver arrows, which the shopkeeper was happy to corroborate, since that meant that he got to sue her. She also tried to lie that the devils were after Morgan instead of her, but Morgan refused to go along with that story. There were no serious repercussions, though -- she wasn't even banished from the city. Apparently, the elves are cool with random demon attacks.
So, Kijj didn't want to help Alhana at this point, since acting as a bodyguard while also being a devil-magnet was a bit... dishonest. They discussed going to the plane of earth, prospecting, searching for one of the smaller parts of the rod of seven parts in the ruins of Ishtar ("The sea's only 100 feet deep!" "We'd be searching an entire *country*!" "Don't be silly, Murphy's research says it's probably in the capital city somewhere."), or storming hell to take out the stupid devilgnome before he could attack again.
A discussion with Alhana revealed that they weren't being hired as caravan guards -- they were being hired to *teleport* her to the palace (she had a mirror which could scry on the teleport pad there) and then slaughter the guards between her and her other princessy friends and the secret passage to the heart of Silvanost, conveniently located in the throne room behind the giant evil altar. Er, that is, the elven throne. Once in the heart, they'd sing the song from the music box Sonnet had given them so long ago, and something wonderful would happen to reclaim Silvanesti for the elves, although they didn't know what.
The palace wasn't sealed against extradimensional travel, but it would react to any teleport that wasn't heading for the pad, and devour the teleporter, which means random devil attacks would be cut rather short if they tried to happen during the mission.
So they agreed to storm the castle for her. She didn't offer any payment, instead asking them what they wanted. Sonnet, Morgan, and Mike wanted elven titles and estates in Silvanost. ("In the ruins of Silvanost? The minotaur-infested ruins of Silvanost?" "Well, sure, if the mission *fails* they won't be worth much...") Murphy asked for a favor to be named later. Kijj wanted cash, but wasn't sure how much to ask for. Mike told him to triple whatever he thought he was worth, so Kijj pro-rated the 50,000 steel they'd gotten for the two-month assault on Frost's lair for a one-day mission like this, doubled it because they were richer and more powerful now, then tripled it. "6,000 steel!" "Done!"
The assault happened the next day, after everyone had a chance to recover from the devil attack, buy some anti-devil supplies (primarily silversheen), and memorize anti-devil spells (mostly align weapon). Now they'd be ready if the devilgnome attacked again. ("If you see a portal to hell, jump through!") They had a morning hero's feast, and another one around dinnertime, and at dusk teleported to the palace.
Alhana knew the palace well, and was able to sneak them around back ways (deserted, since it was the middle of the night in Silvanost) until they were almost to the throne room. Finally, they ran out of secret passages, and had to engage the guards.
The first pair of guards were taken down silently... thanks to a silence spell. Kijj and Morgan charged them, then Mike and Murphy finished them off with fireballs. The next room had four guards, though, and was a three-level hall, with the party on the upper floor. As they snuck around the top invisibly -- the guards saw the door swing open, but didn't twig to what that meant in time to save themselves -- they noticed that a party was going on on the lower floor, too -- hundreds of minotaurs, praying to four black priests of Sarghess. Murphy noticed a bunch of hiding bow-minotaurs on the middle floor, but couldn't say anything about them in time. They seemed to mostly be looking down, anyway.
So the party positioned itself, and struck! The four minotaur guards went down silently, again, before they could move, but this time the flashy magic alerted the bow-minotaurs, who raised the alarm and started shooting LOTS of arrows at Kijj and Mike.
So Mike decided that he'd retailiate by casting a prismatic spray... on the crowd below. Most of the crowd vanished, sent to another plane, and the rest were killed or driven insane... two of the priests lived, though, and tried to disintegrate him in return. It didn't work, since some of his mirror image was still left.
Sonnet (on Sawyer) and Kijj could fly, and Morgan had the rod of force, and together with Murphy's spells they took on the archers, while Mike continued to harass the priests. The priests got off more instant-death spells, none of which actually managed to kill anyone, and the archers managed to miss a lot, but eventually the party was victorious. They shoveled the bodies of the dead combatants into the portable hole with the other guards, and went to continue on, after Morgan disarmed a glyph of warding.
The next room was a small antechamber with an 'alarm spell', and then into the throne room. As the party rushed in to face the high priest of Sarghess and his two pit fiends that he'd just summoned, thanks to Mike so helpfully killing off the sacrifices for him, they realized that they hadn't remembered to cast their short-duration buff spells. Oops!
On the plus side, they hadn't given the priest a minute or so to cast *his* buffs. On the minus side, pit fiends don't *need* to cast many buffs.
So, the battle started fairly slowly. The pit fiends put up unholy auras, and flew into the air, engaged at range by Sonnet and Morgan, while Mike counterspelled the priest, Murphy started lowering peoples' resistances (and failing to feeblemind), and Kijj hung back to cast some defensive and offensive spells -- blink, haste, silversheen, and align weapon seemed like prerequisites for engaging pit fiends in melee.
The pit fiends kept bombarding the party with quickened fireballs, but the only one who took any damage from them was Kijj, who only had 20 points of fire resistance -- the lowest in the party. Kijj didn't take much. Still, it's not like it took any effort for the devils to keep up the barrage.
The priest activated his altar, which started sending out black ghostly claws, which passed right through armor to deal massive internal wounds. Tetsuyo, running up to try to stun the priest, was killed by one, and various other people were grievously wounded.
One of the pit fiends swooped down to grapple Murphy, just as Kijj was going into melee with the other... and the other meteor-swarmed Kijj (he blinked out of the way, luckily) and menaced Lini, leaving her no obvious escape route without drawing an improved-grab-enhanced attack-of-opportunity.
Murphy, even grappled, was able to cast 'Otto's Irresistable Dance' (thanks to a metamagic rod), and it worked! The pit fiend started capering and dancing, and couldn't keep its grip on him very well. Kijj ran over and stabbed it five times, until it was reduced to a puddle of goo.
Lini used a wall of stone to escape her pit fiend, and flew way up in the air out of its reach, since the phantom steed she was riding was a lot faster than it. So it teleported after her -- and while the palace did react to the teleport, it didn't react effectively enough to take down a pit fiend, or in fact even inconvenience the creature to the slightest degree. She was grappled in short order, stung and squeezed by the fiend's tail.
Meanwhile, Mike had been continuing to counter the priest's magic, while the altar slowly killed everyone, and Morgan and Sonnet tried in vain to hit him with weapons [because they rolled crap, not because he wasn't 10 AC easier to hit than the pit fiends]. Morgan still had the silence, and while this annoyed the priest and made him keep having to take AoOs to cast his spells, it kept Mike -- who'd swooped in to help Morgan flank -- from countering the Implosion the priest got off.
Mike was the first target. Mike used his Moment of Prescience to avoid instant death. The Murphy Power-Word Blinded the priest (who'd finally been backstabbed BUT GOOD by Morgan), keeping him from picking any more targets. Then Mike disintegrated him.
The remaining pit fiend had been ordered to help the priest, and had tried -- he'd thrown Lini at Kijj to distract him (which worked), used a mass hold monster which paralyzed Lini, and then had swooped down just in time to see the priest turn to dust... and the altar start to crack and pulse, as if it was about to explode. Kijj set Lini down and charged at the pit fiend just as everyone else -- including the pit fiend -- ran away from the altar. Mike encased it in a wall of stone to try to contain the explosion, but Kijj and Lini still took quite a beating from it. They hadn't been among those clawed earlier, though, so they both lived.
At that point, Murphy (noticing that no one in the party had more than 50 hit points left) offered to let the devil go if he'd agree to stop the fight and go back to hell. The pit fiend didn't really *want* to fight a group armed with at least one blessed silver weapon, and didn't really want to hang around in a backwater like Krynn anyway, so he agreed. He seemed a bit disappointed that he hadn't gotten to kidnap Sonnet, as he left -- apparently, there was a huge bounty on her head in hell, from the devilgnome.
last session | next session
We won't be playing next week, but Jeff promised to finish out this mission in e-mail, since we're basically done.
And now... I'm wondering whether or not I have an interview today. I accepted the invite a day late, and it didn't appear on my calender and I never got the follow-up information. So I'm thinking not. But since it didn't appear on my calender, the invite is just gone gone gone now, and I don't even have the contact info to ask the organizer if I do or not. Gotta love outlook.
