Not *quite* a TPK this time...
Jan. 11th, 2005 01:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothWe finally had another session of Jeff's Darksun campaign, after over a month. For some reason, we were convinced to go back into the mine to face the force that had killed the previous party. The sole survivor from the last mission did *not* volunteer to go back in...
So the team that was selected was Cypher (the group's premier psion, remorseful that he'd sat that one battle out -- he could have saved everyone!), Lucas (a newcomer (another psion) who'd been tricked into signing a contract saying he'd fulfill April's mission in return for inheriting her wealth, which had been disintegrated along with her), Kelt ("They always call me when the going gets tough!" Yes, too stupid to realize it was a suicide mission), Saurian (a psion who'd been too ill to help all through the previous battles with the gith), and Moghli (a newcomer, psionic warrior).
What's missing? Other than rogueishness, that had always been missing, and arcane spells, which psions could mostly ape? That's right, a cleric. But everyone could cast body adjustment on themselves, so that was okay. Well, Kelt couldn't, but he was too stupid to care.
So, the second expedition ventured into the caves, much less stealthy without April's invisibility. Kelt led the way, even as the tunnels got far too narrow for him to fight in effectively...
So, anyway, no stealth. At the bottom of the mines, the Gith guards saw their light, and gave the alarm, and the battle was on. One guard was cold-balled, one was dominated, three were great-cleaved by an angry giant... but one got away to sound the alarm. Damn it all.
The party rushed up to the room, which was at the top of a stairwell. From the bottom of the stairs, they could see a few Gith lined up near the top... eight of them, who all unleashed Ego Whips at Kelt! (as the entire party lost initiative to all the enemies, argh) Kelt's 5 charisma was unable to survive this assault [as by DM fiat the minimum damage from a spell was 1, even if the d4 rolled 1 and it was being divided by 4] and he fell into a deep coma.
Saurian and Lucas unleased area spells that destroyed the lurking contingent, and Lucas and Moghli advanced just far enough up the stairs to see into the room -- to see thirty gith with javelins, poised to pincushion the first person to enter the room. So Cypher sent his dominated Gith up -- and triggered the fire trap they knew was in front of the entrance, incinerating himself.
Saurian started an astral construct to take the javelin fire, but after a boss-gith spring-attacked Lucas, Moghli grew impatient and charged! His biofeedback allowed him to survive the fusillade of javelins, but his attacks were almost irrelevant against the horde. Another of Lucas's cold balls took out most of one half of the horde, though, and Cypher followed Moghli up and used a huge cone of acid breath to kill most of the other half -- and then got badly hurt by a barrage of exploding darts from the second boss gith.
Meanwhile, Saurian's astral construct was beating on the first boss gith. After the initial attack, he'd been dazed by several ego whips, wasted a round eating a Heal potionfruit (bringing him back up to 14 charisma, argh), then been stunned by an energy stun. The astral construct was taken out by the second boss's darts (which were especially effective against ectoplasm), and then he grew to huge size!
The second boss was worried by the loss of the horde (as Moghli cut a swath through the few survivers) and ran off to rearm, leaving the first boss essentially alone. The party focused their efforts on the now-gigantic gith, but didn't *quite* kill him... and then in a single explosive round of great cleaving, he took down Lucas, Saurian, and Moghli, leaving only Cypher conscious.
Now, Cypher was well able to handle himself -- he finished off the giant gith with a swarm of crystals, while his psicrystal maintained a dominate spell on the last surviving cannon fodder gith. But just as he and his dominated servant finished stabilizing the party's wounds (somehow, no one had been killed outright!), the second boss ran back in with a fresh supply of darts! One tossed dart brought Cypher down to 3 hp.
Cypher had the power points to stop time momentarily to heal himself and regain his psionic focus, then overchanneled a mind thrust which killed the dart-throwing gith in one shot. He squeezed a potionfruit into Moghli's mouth to bring him back conscious, and Moghli was then able to heal himself, and wake everyone else up using Empathic Transfer to accept some of their wounds. With everyone in single-digit hit points (except for Kelt, who'd slept through the whole battle), they decided to strip the corpses of the enemies in that room, and teleport back to Tyr to regroup.
In Tyr, the halfling was selling more weird shit -- a tail-like appendage that functioned as an animated shield, more protective 'shell' armor, eye-symbionts that gave 120' darkvision at the cost of color vision, and ropelike creatures that attached to the legs in a hideously painful procedure, but increased movement speed by 30'. None of them could be removed, once attached... Kelt got a shield-tail, and Saurian and Moghli got leg-things, and spent a day drugged out of their mind to dull the agony...
After that, and selling or passing out the magic and metal items and other treasure, they headed back to mine to try to, you know, free the slaves that they'd forgotten about. The formerly dominated Gith was there, and seemed willing to cooperate with them even before Cypher dominated him again. He led them to the only slaves that were still in the complex -- Gith slaves from other tribes. The party took them up to Tenpug's band of escaped slaves, then ventured into the area where the Gith could not go, not knowing the password -- using Saurian's cheap astral constructs to trigger the traps. There they found about 10,000 ceramic in gold, but nothing of real value.
From the dominated gith, they learned that the slaves from the surface had been taken to the Gith's mine, which was past 'Yargoth, the City of Calamity', a huge deserted mess a few minutes' walk away. Also, that the bitch who'd TPK'd the first party had been 'promoted' by the 'lady' who led the Gith. Argh, you mean she wasn't even the real boss?
The party decided to venture on to see if maybe they could rescue the slaves. After passing through some empty natural caverns, they came to a huge domed room with a sunburst pattern on the floor in crumbled black rock. Kelt scoffed at the party's hesitation, and boldly walked through the center... and nothing happened, that anyone noticed. Still, they skirted the design. In a pile of rubble on the far side, they found a strange black iron tuning fork, which rung with a low tone when struck. No one was sure what it was, although Cypher remembered April mentioning that it might be the sort of thing you'd use to plane shift somewhere... although of course plane shifting anywhere from Athas was suicidal.
Down the other tunnel -- the brightly lit one -- they found the city, stretched out below them in a giant cavern, lit by a weird yellow orb as bright as the sun, and choked with vines. Just getting through it would likely be a chore... and which way was the mine again?
last session | next session
[sigh] I love spending most of the session unconscious. Especially when the person who could have brought me back up the same round decided to run up and accomplish nothing for five rounds instead.
So the team that was selected was Cypher (the group's premier psion, remorseful that he'd sat that one battle out -- he could have saved everyone!), Lucas (a newcomer (another psion) who'd been tricked into signing a contract saying he'd fulfill April's mission in return for inheriting her wealth, which had been disintegrated along with her), Kelt ("They always call me when the going gets tough!" Yes, too stupid to realize it was a suicide mission), Saurian (a psion who'd been too ill to help all through the previous battles with the gith), and Moghli (a newcomer, psionic warrior).
What's missing? Other than rogueishness, that had always been missing, and arcane spells, which psions could mostly ape? That's right, a cleric. But everyone could cast body adjustment on themselves, so that was okay. Well, Kelt couldn't, but he was too stupid to care.
So, the second expedition ventured into the caves, much less stealthy without April's invisibility. Kelt led the way, even as the tunnels got far too narrow for him to fight in effectively...
So, anyway, no stealth. At the bottom of the mines, the Gith guards saw their light, and gave the alarm, and the battle was on. One guard was cold-balled, one was dominated, three were great-cleaved by an angry giant... but one got away to sound the alarm. Damn it all.
The party rushed up to the room, which was at the top of a stairwell. From the bottom of the stairs, they could see a few Gith lined up near the top... eight of them, who all unleashed Ego Whips at Kelt! (as the entire party lost initiative to all the enemies, argh) Kelt's 5 charisma was unable to survive this assault [as by DM fiat the minimum damage from a spell was 1, even if the d4 rolled 1 and it was being divided by 4] and he fell into a deep coma.
Saurian and Lucas unleased area spells that destroyed the lurking contingent, and Lucas and Moghli advanced just far enough up the stairs to see into the room -- to see thirty gith with javelins, poised to pincushion the first person to enter the room. So Cypher sent his dominated Gith up -- and triggered the fire trap they knew was in front of the entrance, incinerating himself.
Saurian started an astral construct to take the javelin fire, but after a boss-gith spring-attacked Lucas, Moghli grew impatient and charged! His biofeedback allowed him to survive the fusillade of javelins, but his attacks were almost irrelevant against the horde. Another of Lucas's cold balls took out most of one half of the horde, though, and Cypher followed Moghli up and used a huge cone of acid breath to kill most of the other half -- and then got badly hurt by a barrage of exploding darts from the second boss gith.
Meanwhile, Saurian's astral construct was beating on the first boss gith. After the initial attack, he'd been dazed by several ego whips, wasted a round eating a Heal potionfruit (bringing him back up to 14 charisma, argh), then been stunned by an energy stun. The astral construct was taken out by the second boss's darts (which were especially effective against ectoplasm), and then he grew to huge size!
The second boss was worried by the loss of the horde (as Moghli cut a swath through the few survivers) and ran off to rearm, leaving the first boss essentially alone. The party focused their efforts on the now-gigantic gith, but didn't *quite* kill him... and then in a single explosive round of great cleaving, he took down Lucas, Saurian, and Moghli, leaving only Cypher conscious.
Now, Cypher was well able to handle himself -- he finished off the giant gith with a swarm of crystals, while his psicrystal maintained a dominate spell on the last surviving cannon fodder gith. But just as he and his dominated servant finished stabilizing the party's wounds (somehow, no one had been killed outright!), the second boss ran back in with a fresh supply of darts! One tossed dart brought Cypher down to 3 hp.
Cypher had the power points to stop time momentarily to heal himself and regain his psionic focus, then overchanneled a mind thrust which killed the dart-throwing gith in one shot. He squeezed a potionfruit into Moghli's mouth to bring him back conscious, and Moghli was then able to heal himself, and wake everyone else up using Empathic Transfer to accept some of their wounds. With everyone in single-digit hit points (except for Kelt, who'd slept through the whole battle), they decided to strip the corpses of the enemies in that room, and teleport back to Tyr to regroup.
In Tyr, the halfling was selling more weird shit -- a tail-like appendage that functioned as an animated shield, more protective 'shell' armor, eye-symbionts that gave 120' darkvision at the cost of color vision, and ropelike creatures that attached to the legs in a hideously painful procedure, but increased movement speed by 30'. None of them could be removed, once attached... Kelt got a shield-tail, and Saurian and Moghli got leg-things, and spent a day drugged out of their mind to dull the agony...
After that, and selling or passing out the magic and metal items and other treasure, they headed back to mine to try to, you know, free the slaves that they'd forgotten about. The formerly dominated Gith was there, and seemed willing to cooperate with them even before Cypher dominated him again. He led them to the only slaves that were still in the complex -- Gith slaves from other tribes. The party took them up to Tenpug's band of escaped slaves, then ventured into the area where the Gith could not go, not knowing the password -- using Saurian's cheap astral constructs to trigger the traps. There they found about 10,000 ceramic in gold, but nothing of real value.
From the dominated gith, they learned that the slaves from the surface had been taken to the Gith's mine, which was past 'Yargoth, the City of Calamity', a huge deserted mess a few minutes' walk away. Also, that the bitch who'd TPK'd the first party had been 'promoted' by the 'lady' who led the Gith. Argh, you mean she wasn't even the real boss?
The party decided to venture on to see if maybe they could rescue the slaves. After passing through some empty natural caverns, they came to a huge domed room with a sunburst pattern on the floor in crumbled black rock. Kelt scoffed at the party's hesitation, and boldly walked through the center... and nothing happened, that anyone noticed. Still, they skirted the design. In a pile of rubble on the far side, they found a strange black iron tuning fork, which rung with a low tone when struck. No one was sure what it was, although Cypher remembered April mentioning that it might be the sort of thing you'd use to plane shift somewhere... although of course plane shifting anywhere from Athas was suicidal.
Down the other tunnel -- the brightly lit one -- they found the city, stretched out below them in a giant cavern, lit by a weird yellow orb as bright as the sun, and choked with vines. Just getting through it would likely be a chore... and which way was the mine again?
last session | next session
[sigh] I love spending most of the session unconscious. Especially when the person who could have brought me back up the same round decided to run up and accomplish nothing for five rounds instead.
