Betrayal at the Mine of Nibonei
Nov. 30th, 2004 12:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothWe had a session of the Darksun D+D game tonight. We were pretty evil, but it got results, in the form of lots of dead enemies, as well as some questionable allies.
After surviving the dream attack and the followup Gith assault, the party moved on to find a new place to rest. They weren't completely wiped out -- they thought they could handle another wilderness encounter, maybe -- so they traveled the whole day before camping in a sheltered gulley. It looked like this was a place where the Gith they were chasing had camped, so they figured it'd be safe enough.
They were wrong. No sooner had they closed their eyes (and again, even the sentries fell asleep immediately) than they found themselves back in the eerie red dreamscape -- this time facing an army of 300 skeletong, racing down at them from the top of the surrounding dunes. Laika lept into the air to get out of reach, while April and Cypher cowered in a circle of protection, which seemed to hedge out the undead. Everyone else fought bravely, but in vain, as each skeleton that fell was replaced by a new one from over the dunes.
Laika decided to make a break for it, and see just how large an undead army they were really facing -- after running the gauntlet of enemies (a strange force prevented him from flying above the level of the top of the dunes, so he was forced to rush through a bunch of skeletons and take 20 AoOs (!!)), he found that beyond the dunes was... nothing. No skeletons, no features, just a big empty featureless plain. The new skeletons formed of nothing just beyond the dunes' peak, then rushed over to join the fray. He told his friends about this, and they d-doored out of the kill-zone and waited safely in the empty area while everyone else in their army fell.
Having nothing better to do -- the skeletons never came back over the dunes to attack them, but they didn't wake up either -- they headed towards the purple moons, and eventually crossed over an invisible line, into the waking world... but now *everyone* else was in a coma.
Cypher detected psionics, and found a small black stone planted in the middle of the camp, the focus of a powerful spell. Picking it up pegged it as an amplifier with a link to a distant, powerful mind. April didn't spot the stone, but she did notice something flying invisibly overhead, and fireballed it -- the corpse of an imp fell to the ground. Apparently, it was the creature that had planted the stone.
Cypher thought that by concentrating he could pull the party into the stone and track a silvery path to... something, possibly the evil bastard who'd been attacking them in their dreams. They wanted to rest first, though... so they found a rock outcropping a mile away, and April used a stone shape spell to bury the black stone deep in its heart, with an arcane mark to show the spot so that she could retrieve it the next day. That proved sufficient to shield them from its influence, and they rested and regained spells.
The next day, they hid their bodies in a rope trick and crossed over into the dream world. After what seemed like hours of following the path, a pair of iron pillars rose up suddenly in front of them, and formed into two huge psionic constructs, that immediately attacked! Cypher and Laika were both nearly killed by the creatures, which were able to grow wings and dimension door to follow the party whereever they ran, and hit hard enough to take a person down in three to five hits (depending on the person). Cypher's opening disintegrate, April's scorching ray, and a final arrow from Laika were enough to take out one of them relatively quickly, though, and with more spells and one of Laika's Astral Constructs they were able to take out the other before anyone was killed.
Before and during the fight, they were able to take advantage of a strange property of the dreamworld -- by expending power points, they were able to manifest any psionic power simply by willing the results to happen. This came in handy a lot during this fight and the next.
After another hour, they came upon a large gith-lord, who levitated up to attack them. He was much less dangerous than the constructs had been, but didn't hit nearly as hard, and April was able to keep healing Cypher while Cypher blasted him with energy (while Laika fluttered around failing to do anything useful -- he was out of power points, so couldn't focus enough to use his greater psionic shot). They were in really bad shape after that fight -- they were just barely able to heal, but arcane, clerical, and psionic powers were all nearly expended. Still, they had no choice but to press on.
And there before them rose up a gigantic creature, 150 feet long monster, rearing up 50 feet to roar at them with frightening tentacles. April clenched her teeth and flung her last fireball at it... and it vanised in a puff of smoke, nothing but a last-ditch illusion intended to frighten them away.
Nothing then stopped them from entering the skull-shaped palace at the center of the dream, where a glowing, floating crystal held the souls of their friends, while other crystals embedded in the walls contained the memories of their enemy (according to Cypher). He thought that smashing the surrounding crystals would kill the Gith leader, while smashing the center crystal would release their friends and drive him insane. Laika smashed the center crystal first, since that was most important, and... they were instantly ejected from the dream, without the opportunity to finish the job. Still, insane was better than not insane.
To Cypher's chagrin, the black glowing stone shattered as the spell was broken -- he'd hoped to use it as a psionic amplifier.
A few more days travel, and they came to the gith mine. Laika was scouting ahead, and noticed that the Gith camp was in total disarray -- apparently, the insane leader was still alive and was executing the reinforcements, as well as all the competent officers. He also noticed some soldiers watching the camp, as if planning an attack. He approached them, and they identified themselves as soldiers of Nibonei, there to take back the mine. Laika arranged for their leader to meet with Tenpeg.
Cypher went with Tenpeg, and the two of them were taken to talk with the Templar in charge of the small Nibonei force -- only 50 strong. The Templar couldn't offer any stake in the mine, or any monetary rewards, but offered her silence about the large force of potential slaves that Nibonei would otherwise try to capture. After some mindlinked consultation, they agreed to take that offer, if she'd also free all her slave conscripts -- while secretly planning to betray and murder her at the first opportunity, which would be presumably right after the battle with the Gith.
To ensure their cooperation, the Templar made Tenpeg take a water oath, which would (in theory) kill either of them that tried to betray the other. Of course, the Templar was a spellcaster and could just remove the curse, and April likewise promised to remove it from Tenpeg, so it was basically a worthless gesture.
It would take three days to prepare the seige engines for the assault, so during that time April and Brightstone -- Laika and Cypher had decided that assaulting the mine wasn't as attractive as they'd previously thought, and used Correspondance to summon Brightstone and [Patrick's Psychic Warrior] to fulfill the contract in their place, while they returned to Tyr to spend their ill-gotten gains -- decided to mess with the insane commander's mind. They wrote a message out in Gith, attached it to a rat, and sent the rat as an animal messenger to be 'accidentally' captured by the commander, with the message:
"Gather your forces, when the kestrekel flies overhead, that will be the signal to attack!"
The insane commander somehow took this as evidence that an army of rats would attack his base, and had his men form up in tight ranks and stand at ready, waiting for the rats to strike. For thirty six hours, they waited, getting more and more tired and demoralized... and then, once the seige engines were finally ready, Brightstone and April dropped spike stones and sonic-balls on the formation, killing 70% of the Gith army before they could move.
The rest of the heavily wounded troops emerged from the base to assault the waiting combined Nibonei/escaped slave force, and were cut down without much trouble -- except for the insane leader himself, who was still a powerful, violent telepath, and animated fallen weapons and set brother against brother with his powers. Tenpeg, who'd been subverting the slave troops, took this as an excuse to 'get mind controlled' and attack his 'friends'. The Gith and Nibonei troops alike were taken out with few losses from Tenpeg's band, and none from the party, who'd never even gotten within 100 feet of the battle.
There was little to loot in the mining camp (other than the steel-tipped spears of the Gith), but there were some prisoners, who told them about the Gith attack. The mine had been mostly crappy and unprofitable, and they'd been following the last good seam of ore deep underground when they'd broken through into the Gith area, where the Gith apparently had been using the good end of the seam to build an army's worth of metal weapons. This meant that to get any profit out of the mine, the Gith would have to be driven away.
Two Gith armies had already been slaughtered -- the one at the temple, and the other by the Nibonei troops before they ran afoul of the party -- but who knew how many more Gith waited underground?
last session | next session
We're going to try a confusing, complicated schedule starting the week after next, or possibly the week after New Year's, depending on how many people are gone how soon for Christmas. The hope is that it'll let Stacey be there more consistently, since all the random things that keep her from showing up (today it was someone supposedly bringing her important documents for her brother) tend to happen more often on Mondays, according to her estimates. We'll see...
After surviving the dream attack and the followup Gith assault, the party moved on to find a new place to rest. They weren't completely wiped out -- they thought they could handle another wilderness encounter, maybe -- so they traveled the whole day before camping in a sheltered gulley. It looked like this was a place where the Gith they were chasing had camped, so they figured it'd be safe enough.
They were wrong. No sooner had they closed their eyes (and again, even the sentries fell asleep immediately) than they found themselves back in the eerie red dreamscape -- this time facing an army of 300 skeletong, racing down at them from the top of the surrounding dunes. Laika lept into the air to get out of reach, while April and Cypher cowered in a circle of protection, which seemed to hedge out the undead. Everyone else fought bravely, but in vain, as each skeleton that fell was replaced by a new one from over the dunes.
Laika decided to make a break for it, and see just how large an undead army they were really facing -- after running the gauntlet of enemies (a strange force prevented him from flying above the level of the top of the dunes, so he was forced to rush through a bunch of skeletons and take 20 AoOs (!!)), he found that beyond the dunes was... nothing. No skeletons, no features, just a big empty featureless plain. The new skeletons formed of nothing just beyond the dunes' peak, then rushed over to join the fray. He told his friends about this, and they d-doored out of the kill-zone and waited safely in the empty area while everyone else in their army fell.
Having nothing better to do -- the skeletons never came back over the dunes to attack them, but they didn't wake up either -- they headed towards the purple moons, and eventually crossed over an invisible line, into the waking world... but now *everyone* else was in a coma.
Cypher detected psionics, and found a small black stone planted in the middle of the camp, the focus of a powerful spell. Picking it up pegged it as an amplifier with a link to a distant, powerful mind. April didn't spot the stone, but she did notice something flying invisibly overhead, and fireballed it -- the corpse of an imp fell to the ground. Apparently, it was the creature that had planted the stone.
Cypher thought that by concentrating he could pull the party into the stone and track a silvery path to... something, possibly the evil bastard who'd been attacking them in their dreams. They wanted to rest first, though... so they found a rock outcropping a mile away, and April used a stone shape spell to bury the black stone deep in its heart, with an arcane mark to show the spot so that she could retrieve it the next day. That proved sufficient to shield them from its influence, and they rested and regained spells.
The next day, they hid their bodies in a rope trick and crossed over into the dream world. After what seemed like hours of following the path, a pair of iron pillars rose up suddenly in front of them, and formed into two huge psionic constructs, that immediately attacked! Cypher and Laika were both nearly killed by the creatures, which were able to grow wings and dimension door to follow the party whereever they ran, and hit hard enough to take a person down in three to five hits (depending on the person). Cypher's opening disintegrate, April's scorching ray, and a final arrow from Laika were enough to take out one of them relatively quickly, though, and with more spells and one of Laika's Astral Constructs they were able to take out the other before anyone was killed.
Before and during the fight, they were able to take advantage of a strange property of the dreamworld -- by expending power points, they were able to manifest any psionic power simply by willing the results to happen. This came in handy a lot during this fight and the next.
After another hour, they came upon a large gith-lord, who levitated up to attack them. He was much less dangerous than the constructs had been, but didn't hit nearly as hard, and April was able to keep healing Cypher while Cypher blasted him with energy (while Laika fluttered around failing to do anything useful -- he was out of power points, so couldn't focus enough to use his greater psionic shot). They were in really bad shape after that fight -- they were just barely able to heal, but arcane, clerical, and psionic powers were all nearly expended. Still, they had no choice but to press on.
And there before them rose up a gigantic creature, 150 feet long monster, rearing up 50 feet to roar at them with frightening tentacles. April clenched her teeth and flung her last fireball at it... and it vanised in a puff of smoke, nothing but a last-ditch illusion intended to frighten them away.
Nothing then stopped them from entering the skull-shaped palace at the center of the dream, where a glowing, floating crystal held the souls of their friends, while other crystals embedded in the walls contained the memories of their enemy (according to Cypher). He thought that smashing the surrounding crystals would kill the Gith leader, while smashing the center crystal would release their friends and drive him insane. Laika smashed the center crystal first, since that was most important, and... they were instantly ejected from the dream, without the opportunity to finish the job. Still, insane was better than not insane.
To Cypher's chagrin, the black glowing stone shattered as the spell was broken -- he'd hoped to use it as a psionic amplifier.
A few more days travel, and they came to the gith mine. Laika was scouting ahead, and noticed that the Gith camp was in total disarray -- apparently, the insane leader was still alive and was executing the reinforcements, as well as all the competent officers. He also noticed some soldiers watching the camp, as if planning an attack. He approached them, and they identified themselves as soldiers of Nibonei, there to take back the mine. Laika arranged for their leader to meet with Tenpeg.
Cypher went with Tenpeg, and the two of them were taken to talk with the Templar in charge of the small Nibonei force -- only 50 strong. The Templar couldn't offer any stake in the mine, or any monetary rewards, but offered her silence about the large force of potential slaves that Nibonei would otherwise try to capture. After some mindlinked consultation, they agreed to take that offer, if she'd also free all her slave conscripts -- while secretly planning to betray and murder her at the first opportunity, which would be presumably right after the battle with the Gith.
To ensure their cooperation, the Templar made Tenpeg take a water oath, which would (in theory) kill either of them that tried to betray the other. Of course, the Templar was a spellcaster and could just remove the curse, and April likewise promised to remove it from Tenpeg, so it was basically a worthless gesture.
It would take three days to prepare the seige engines for the assault, so during that time April and Brightstone -- Laika and Cypher had decided that assaulting the mine wasn't as attractive as they'd previously thought, and used Correspondance to summon Brightstone and [Patrick's Psychic Warrior] to fulfill the contract in their place, while they returned to Tyr to spend their ill-gotten gains -- decided to mess with the insane commander's mind. They wrote a message out in Gith, attached it to a rat, and sent the rat as an animal messenger to be 'accidentally' captured by the commander, with the message:
"Gather your forces, when the kestrekel flies overhead, that will be the signal to attack!"
The insane commander somehow took this as evidence that an army of rats would attack his base, and had his men form up in tight ranks and stand at ready, waiting for the rats to strike. For thirty six hours, they waited, getting more and more tired and demoralized... and then, once the seige engines were finally ready, Brightstone and April dropped spike stones and sonic-balls on the formation, killing 70% of the Gith army before they could move.
The rest of the heavily wounded troops emerged from the base to assault the waiting combined Nibonei/escaped slave force, and were cut down without much trouble -- except for the insane leader himself, who was still a powerful, violent telepath, and animated fallen weapons and set brother against brother with his powers. Tenpeg, who'd been subverting the slave troops, took this as an excuse to 'get mind controlled' and attack his 'friends'. The Gith and Nibonei troops alike were taken out with few losses from Tenpeg's band, and none from the party, who'd never even gotten within 100 feet of the battle.
There was little to loot in the mining camp (other than the steel-tipped spears of the Gith), but there were some prisoners, who told them about the Gith attack. The mine had been mostly crappy and unprofitable, and they'd been following the last good seam of ore deep underground when they'd broken through into the Gith area, where the Gith apparently had been using the good end of the seam to build an army's worth of metal weapons. This meant that to get any profit out of the mine, the Gith would have to be driven away.
Two Gith armies had already been slaughtered -- the one at the temple, and the other by the Nibonei troops before they ran afoul of the party -- but who knew how many more Gith waited underground?
last session | next session
We're going to try a confusing, complicated schedule starting the week after next, or possibly the week after New Year's, depending on how many people are gone how soon for Christmas. The hope is that it'll let Stacey be there more consistently, since all the random things that keep her from showing up (today it was someone supposedly bringing her important documents for her brother) tend to happen more often on Mondays, according to her estimates. We'll see...
