Jesus Made Me Tumble
Sep. 10th, 2004 01:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothTonight we had a session of Jeff's Dark Sun campaign. Morgan's player showed up, necessitating a long delay while he rolled ten sets of stats and made a character (Ducati, an elvish brute, and Zehera's brother). Sonnet took the time to level up Saurian and finish her backup Thri-Kreen, and Ed -- who'd thought he'd be absent, but decided to blow off his other commitment, a support group meeting for people who, like him, are building airplanes in their garage -- decided to remake his cleric as a multiclass cleric/preserver, so that he could eventually become a mystic theurge.
The elf Ducati was sent back to Tyr to attempt to retrieve Zehera, as her family had heard that she was imprisoned. He was surprised to find her free, let alone banded with a group of non-elves. She explained her debt, and how she was using the rest of the party to help repay it, and he decided to come along to protect her, and make a little money of his own. They cleared this with the high council -- one councilmember was present, and after a brief tug-of-war decided Ducati was suitable -- and so Ducati set off in the morning with the rest of the party.
They headed towards the mountains, and just as they entered the foothills, with thirty-foot bluffs dividing the desert sands into canyons, they spotted a dustcloud headed towards them at high speeds -- [insert list of names of inoffensive darksun beasts I've never heard of before here]... it was a stampede!
They tried to climb up the side of the bluff, with decidedly mixed results. Laika, of course, was above the fray, but failed to catch April's thrown rope (he didn't carry a rope of his own, because his tight encumbrance requirements made it a choice between 'rope' and 'food'). Most of the party managed to eventually climb far enough up the wall to avoid getting trampled much, but April and Saurian did not, and got pretty badly hurt. So when the animals passed, and the next wave of stampede approached, they took the opportunity to climb up the rope, hopefully out of reach of the scaly dog-things that were chasing everyone and causing the stampede.
Trellak, the Pterran they were escorting, and Zehera refused to climb, insisting that they'd stay on the ground and fight. April recognized the critters as 'sand howlers', with a paralyzing gaze, so Laika flew WAY up to engage them, as they closed in on the party.
The battle itself went well for the party. All the gaze attacks failed, and while the creatures clawed and bit, the party's weapons and spells bit back harder. Laika, despite not doing a ton of damage from 100 feet away, managed to vulch every single kill except for one, striking the killing blow with his arrows after the rest of the party took the creatures *almost* down.
As they continued into the mountains, the canyon walls got higher and steeper, until climbing was no longer an option. And then, they came to a branch, where the canyon split in two and neither side was a dead end, at least not for as far as Laika was willing to scout ahead, or April's augury could tell them.
So which way to go? "We should go right," Saurian said, confidently. "You're crazy!" Trellak replied, "We can't go right just because you say you. You Pterran Valers always think you're sooo important, when you don't even have the good sense to get out of the sand." Saurian replied in kind, and thus started a tedious, days-long argument over which way to go at each decision point, fueled by the implacable hatred of two peoples without even the slightest shred of difference between them. Cries to "Take it to telepathy!" went unheeded.
At any rate, they went right, and came to another intersection, where an earthquake pelted them all with rocks (even Laika, who was flying reasonably close to the ground so as to keep an eye on the party, and was thus subject to especially ambitious bounces) and buried April. April might have been in dire straights, had she not had Ectoplasmic Form as her wild talent, which let her ooze out through the tiny cracks and escape.
Annoyed, the party went left this time, and after a day's travel came upon another intersection, where another earthquake dumped more rocks on them. This time they were ready for it, and fared a bit better -- no one was buried, at least. Laika thought he saw something scurrying about up on the mountainside, but wasn't a skilled tracker or anything, and wasn't able to find any clear traces of enemies or sabotage.
They continued straight past the intersection, until, just as stormclouds gathered overhead, they came to a dead end. With thri-kreen in it. The thri-kreen didn't seem very responsive to negotiation, and in fact attacked April as she foolishly got within reach. In the ensuing fight, Zehera was paralyzed by a poisonous bite, but otherwise the party's combined efforts quickly brought down the foes.
The thri-kreen, however, were not the true danger -- it was the storm. The 'dead end' turned out to be a very occasional waterfall, and the flash flood that roared down on them swept several of them half a mile or more down the canyon... Zehera, paralyzed, fared worst, but she had her 'biofeedback' power manifested, and so survived the battering.
Laika scouted up the erstwhile waterfall, once the storm and flood were over, and discovered that it truly was a dead end, the canyon dissipating into a field of boulders, and then the bare mountainside.
So, they went back. There was another earthquake as they got back to the intersection, but no more boulders fell. Heading the other way, the canyon narrowed until it was no more than five feet wide... and then, lions attacked. Green psionic lions.
The party had Ducati on rearguard and Zehera on point, so at least it was their fighters who met the brunt of the lions' assault -- but Zehera quickly went down, so quickly that she didn't even have time to react, and only Trellak's quick thinking (and potion delivery) saved her, at the cost of getting the lion set on him. Laika's arrows, Trellak's dagger, and a stab in the back from the revived Zehera put it down. In the rear, the other lion was hacked to bits in a relatively straightforward fashion by Ducati and Saurian's astral construct.
So, the party hurried out of the defile, only to feel another earthquake coming. Laika, suspecting a trap -- he was sure the earthquakes were triggered, somehow -- had scouted out potential rockfalls, and told the party to stay in the narrow part, which was too narrow for the boulders poised over it to fall into. Most of the party listened, but Saurian and Ducati ignored him and ran out into the open, where they were mercilessly pummeled.
That was the last obstacle, however. They turned left at the next intersection -- which didn't have an earthquake in it -- and soon reached the forest on the far side of the mountain range. The one with all the lizard-eating halflings in it.
About a day in, they heard the sounds of battle ahead, and rushed up to investigate. Laika, as the fastest, flying, was the first to arrive. Seeing that none of the enemies -- neanderthallish brutes with bone clubs, fighting against a group of familiar-looking Pterrans -- seemed to have ranged weapons, he flew in low and took down two with arrows (assisted on the second by April's magic missiles). As the rest of the party was starting to enter the clearing, the two he'd killed -- and was now flying over -- stood back up and blasted him out of the sky with psionics.
*FWUMPH*
Zehera and Ducati ran up to guard their fallen comrade, with Saurian and April and an Astral Construct not far behind. The Pterrans also assisted, and between all of them, and Saurian's energy bolt, the brutish thugs were soon routed, their leader calling for a retreat after turning himself invisible.
Laika survived, having used autohypnosis to close his own wounds while unconscious. They healed, talked with the Pterrans -- another trade delegation from Trellak's village of Lost Scale -- and travelled on for another day, when the earthquake to end all earthquakes struck, and the ground opened up and swallowed the lot of them!
Except Laika, who could fly, and April, who could turn ectoplasmic. It got most of them, though.
last week | next week
The elf Ducati was sent back to Tyr to attempt to retrieve Zehera, as her family had heard that she was imprisoned. He was surprised to find her free, let alone banded with a group of non-elves. She explained her debt, and how she was using the rest of the party to help repay it, and he decided to come along to protect her, and make a little money of his own. They cleared this with the high council -- one councilmember was present, and after a brief tug-of-war decided Ducati was suitable -- and so Ducati set off in the morning with the rest of the party.
They headed towards the mountains, and just as they entered the foothills, with thirty-foot bluffs dividing the desert sands into canyons, they spotted a dustcloud headed towards them at high speeds -- [insert list of names of inoffensive darksun beasts I've never heard of before here]... it was a stampede!
They tried to climb up the side of the bluff, with decidedly mixed results. Laika, of course, was above the fray, but failed to catch April's thrown rope (he didn't carry a rope of his own, because his tight encumbrance requirements made it a choice between 'rope' and 'food'). Most of the party managed to eventually climb far enough up the wall to avoid getting trampled much, but April and Saurian did not, and got pretty badly hurt. So when the animals passed, and the next wave of stampede approached, they took the opportunity to climb up the rope, hopefully out of reach of the scaly dog-things that were chasing everyone and causing the stampede.
Trellak, the Pterran they were escorting, and Zehera refused to climb, insisting that they'd stay on the ground and fight. April recognized the critters as 'sand howlers', with a paralyzing gaze, so Laika flew WAY up to engage them, as they closed in on the party.
The battle itself went well for the party. All the gaze attacks failed, and while the creatures clawed and bit, the party's weapons and spells bit back harder. Laika, despite not doing a ton of damage from 100 feet away, managed to vulch every single kill except for one, striking the killing blow with his arrows after the rest of the party took the creatures *almost* down.
As they continued into the mountains, the canyon walls got higher and steeper, until climbing was no longer an option. And then, they came to a branch, where the canyon split in two and neither side was a dead end, at least not for as far as Laika was willing to scout ahead, or April's augury could tell them.
So which way to go? "We should go right," Saurian said, confidently. "You're crazy!" Trellak replied, "We can't go right just because you say you. You Pterran Valers always think you're sooo important, when you don't even have the good sense to get out of the sand." Saurian replied in kind, and thus started a tedious, days-long argument over which way to go at each decision point, fueled by the implacable hatred of two peoples without even the slightest shred of difference between them. Cries to "Take it to telepathy!" went unheeded.
At any rate, they went right, and came to another intersection, where an earthquake pelted them all with rocks (even Laika, who was flying reasonably close to the ground so as to keep an eye on the party, and was thus subject to especially ambitious bounces) and buried April. April might have been in dire straights, had she not had Ectoplasmic Form as her wild talent, which let her ooze out through the tiny cracks and escape.
Annoyed, the party went left this time, and after a day's travel came upon another intersection, where another earthquake dumped more rocks on them. This time they were ready for it, and fared a bit better -- no one was buried, at least. Laika thought he saw something scurrying about up on the mountainside, but wasn't a skilled tracker or anything, and wasn't able to find any clear traces of enemies or sabotage.
They continued straight past the intersection, until, just as stormclouds gathered overhead, they came to a dead end. With thri-kreen in it. The thri-kreen didn't seem very responsive to negotiation, and in fact attacked April as she foolishly got within reach. In the ensuing fight, Zehera was paralyzed by a poisonous bite, but otherwise the party's combined efforts quickly brought down the foes.
The thri-kreen, however, were not the true danger -- it was the storm. The 'dead end' turned out to be a very occasional waterfall, and the flash flood that roared down on them swept several of them half a mile or more down the canyon... Zehera, paralyzed, fared worst, but she had her 'biofeedback' power manifested, and so survived the battering.
Laika scouted up the erstwhile waterfall, once the storm and flood were over, and discovered that it truly was a dead end, the canyon dissipating into a field of boulders, and then the bare mountainside.
So, they went back. There was another earthquake as they got back to the intersection, but no more boulders fell. Heading the other way, the canyon narrowed until it was no more than five feet wide... and then, lions attacked. Green psionic lions.
The party had Ducati on rearguard and Zehera on point, so at least it was their fighters who met the brunt of the lions' assault -- but Zehera quickly went down, so quickly that she didn't even have time to react, and only Trellak's quick thinking (and potion delivery) saved her, at the cost of getting the lion set on him. Laika's arrows, Trellak's dagger, and a stab in the back from the revived Zehera put it down. In the rear, the other lion was hacked to bits in a relatively straightforward fashion by Ducati and Saurian's astral construct.
So, the party hurried out of the defile, only to feel another earthquake coming. Laika, suspecting a trap -- he was sure the earthquakes were triggered, somehow -- had scouted out potential rockfalls, and told the party to stay in the narrow part, which was too narrow for the boulders poised over it to fall into. Most of the party listened, but Saurian and Ducati ignored him and ran out into the open, where they were mercilessly pummeled.
That was the last obstacle, however. They turned left at the next intersection -- which didn't have an earthquake in it -- and soon reached the forest on the far side of the mountain range. The one with all the lizard-eating halflings in it.
About a day in, they heard the sounds of battle ahead, and rushed up to investigate. Laika, as the fastest, flying, was the first to arrive. Seeing that none of the enemies -- neanderthallish brutes with bone clubs, fighting against a group of familiar-looking Pterrans -- seemed to have ranged weapons, he flew in low and took down two with arrows (assisted on the second by April's magic missiles). As the rest of the party was starting to enter the clearing, the two he'd killed -- and was now flying over -- stood back up and blasted him out of the sky with psionics.
*FWUMPH*
Zehera and Ducati ran up to guard their fallen comrade, with Saurian and April and an Astral Construct not far behind. The Pterrans also assisted, and between all of them, and Saurian's energy bolt, the brutish thugs were soon routed, their leader calling for a retreat after turning himself invisible.
Laika survived, having used autohypnosis to close his own wounds while unconscious. They healed, talked with the Pterrans -- another trade delegation from Trellak's village of Lost Scale -- and travelled on for another day, when the earthquake to end all earthquakes struck, and the ground opened up and swallowed the lot of them!
Except Laika, who could fly, and April, who could turn ectoplasmic. It got most of them, though.
last week | next week
