Changing and/or Massacre of the Guard
Feb. 22nd, 2005 01:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothWe had a session of Jeff's Darksun campaign today, even though it was President's Day. Most of us didn't even know about the holiday, since it's not one of the ones we get off.
The two powered up Girdak-worshipping Pterrans were swapped out for other characters, so we didn't get to pursue that thread in-game. We talked about it a little before the game, of course...
I switched out Cairn for Laika because Cairn was two levels higher, which would have killed the xp intake for the character tree. In-game rationale was that Cairn, now evil, was insisting that Laika go out and earn the equipment he'd been sending his way (to keep him from being entirely useless). Stacey switched out Saurian for Thorn (another female Pterran psion... I think she has three female Pterran psions making up her tree) so that she could send XP Saurian's way to get past the first few cleric levels.
At any rate, we found the next obstacle and started gnawing away at it, until we ran out of energy and ran into too-powerful enemies and had to run.
While Saurian and Cairn were busy reading the scriptures of Girdak and getting themselves all evilled up, two other members of The Heroes of Tyr Inc. were sent in their place -- Thorn, an as-yet untested pterran psion (a nomad), and Laika, the Aaracockra archer who'd stopped going on missions when the missions started going underground. Laika had hired a psion to give him a psychic reformation back to first level, and in addition to optimizing his power selection, he had the psion implant a resistance to the normal Aaracockran claustrophobia [the DM said I could take a feat to negate it, so I swapped out Rapid Shot].
So, along with Moghli, Cypher, and April, the two of them teleported back to Zygath's old digs (their normal teleport drop zone), then wind-walked across the city to the former temple of Girdak, from which they could proceed down to the Giths' area.
Before they could get to the Giths' area proper, they had to fight through some undead -- some hideously weak skeletons (which April dusted despite her freakishly low cleric level -- they were 1hd), and then a pair of dwarven banshees who would have done basically nothing to the party if Laika hadn't failed an easy save by rolling a 1, then proceeded to roll multiple natural 20s as the berzerk rage he flew into made him attack his own party. After nearly killing April, slightly wounding Moghli, and stubbornly resisting Cypher's attempts to dominate him, April managed to get a Resurgence on him which snapped him out of it.
April spoke with the dead banshee dwarves, and found that the unfinished task which had bound them as undead was simply to escape from the Gith -- if their bodies were buried on the surface, they would be free. So, into the handy haversack went the corpses!
The way onwards was blocked by a wide chasm, and the two archways to either side seemed inoperative if, in fact, they had ever done anything, but it was simple for everyone to fly or teleport across. On the far side, they came to a four-way intersection, and decided to head down first.
Down was a lake full of fish -- a wonder like none the party had ever seen! Forgetting about the Gith and their plans for a while, they had a nice fish picnic, and fantasized about buying or renting some Portable Holes to transport this vast fortune in water back to Tyr. There was millions of ceramic worth of water in the lake... although they estimated it would take 896 trips to get it all. April wanted to drop everything and do that first, but was outvoted. And before they could even finish their dinner, they heard the sounds of Gith from the corridor above.
So they reactivated the wind walk, turned invisible with an invisibility sphere, and went to spy out the situation. A single Gith psion stood guard over eight torches, yelling down one of the other corridors to some other Gith who were probably doing something. The party materialized and basically ambushed him to death, skewering him with an arrow, magic missiles, and a mind thrust before he could act. Then they crept up on his underlings...
They found the other Gith of the patrol harvesting guano from a massive cave full of bats. The torches they'd taken with them started flaming blue instead of orange, but none of them realized why. April, as an arcane mage, did know that guano was flammable, so Laika tossed his torch at the Gith as they turned to attack the party, setting fire to not just the guano but a massive explosion of natural gas. Everyone in the party survived, all the gith died, so maybe it was a good move, even if they had to waste a bunch of healing to cure the burns.
There was only one tunnel left, so the Gith camp had to be in that direction. As they approached, the noise of smashing rock and burning smelter and hideous screams from god-knows-what became deafening -- so no one had heard the explosion, and no one heard them take out the guards at the post at the end of the tunnel where it opened into the cavern. Actually, they only killed two of the six anyway -- Cypher dominated the rest.
They peeked over the wall at the mining operation. There were dozens of Gith visible managing dozens of slaves, and many buildings of unknown purpose, with a giant smelter in the middle churning out metal-tipped spears. As they took in the sight, they were approached by an invisible mage, who wanted them to rescue his cleric friend that was stabilized and invisible, but unconscious. April snuck out into the chamber to do so, and the two refugees were left in the water chamber to rest, while the party planned to assault the camp. The refugees figured that the party would cause enough of a distraction that no one would come get them.
Cypher decided that the best way to start the assault was to send his dominated Gith into the barracks to coup-de-grace as many sleeping guards as they could. They were eventually discovered, as not *everyone* in the barracks was asleep, but they managed to take out fifteen before they went down. The guards from the barracks sent a patrol towards the overlord's chambers to inform Zygath, but Cypher was watching from the guard post, and dominated them as well.
So the guards -- including the highest ranking Gith from the garrison -- returned to the barracks with 'orders from Zygath' to gather everyone up and march them out to the chasm in search of the intruders. The sight of the dead bodies of the Gith the party had killed earlier spurred them on, once they got up to the post, and the party hid in a side corridor and let them past, coming up behind them.
When they got to the chasm, the Gith couldn't go on any farther without a mage to put up a wall of force to help them assemble their bridge, and started to question the dominated lieutenant's orders... so Cypher had him start setting off point-blank area of effect spells, while the party rained down fiery and soniccy death from a distance. Aside from the dominated psion and a couple dominated Gith he'd dispatched to check out the disturbance the one time the party had been heard, the Gith from the barracks were wiped out.
April and Laika were getting low on spells, but were convinced that right at that moment, while Zygath was still unaware of their approach, would be the best time to teleport in and take her out. The dominated Gith were sent ahead as backup, and when they got to where they were about to enter Zygath's chamber, the party dimension-doored in. Cypher wriggled his way in past Zygath's divert teleport spell, so they appeared as planned in the middle of the building.
Unfortunately, they hadn't planned for Zygath to have so many visitors who were also powerful psions -- before they could do much, they were blasted by four AOE spells, which triggered a blade barrier that negated the psychic warriors' attacks by keeping them cooped up in the middle. April and Laika decided that they needed to fly out of the building to heal while they still could, while Zygath began to turn the building to magma, and the 'overlord' that she worked for telekinetically bull-rushed Cypher through the blade barrier (setting off another trap, so that the warriors would have to go through *two* to attack).
Realizing that as drained as they were, they had no hope against five enemies, Laika and April urged Cypher to escape with the others, so Cypher d-doored back through the blade barrier and teleported Moghli and Thorn out -- much to their dismay. The two of them wanted to stay and fight! April and Laika had to face down another trio of area spells as the low-level enemy psions (only 11th) d-doored out and fireballed while April cast, but she maintained her concentration and got herself and Laika back to Tyr.
It was obvious that Zygath was too paranoid to take by surprise, and too well fortified in her place of business to assault there successfully, so they started planning instead to rescue the slaves without facing her, if possible, and at least with her removed from her trap-filled element.
last week
The two powered up Girdak-worshipping Pterrans were swapped out for other characters, so we didn't get to pursue that thread in-game. We talked about it a little before the game, of course...
I switched out Cairn for Laika because Cairn was two levels higher, which would have killed the xp intake for the character tree. In-game rationale was that Cairn, now evil, was insisting that Laika go out and earn the equipment he'd been sending his way (to keep him from being entirely useless). Stacey switched out Saurian for Thorn (another female Pterran psion... I think she has three female Pterran psions making up her tree) so that she could send XP Saurian's way to get past the first few cleric levels.
At any rate, we found the next obstacle and started gnawing away at it, until we ran out of energy and ran into too-powerful enemies and had to run.
While Saurian and Cairn were busy reading the scriptures of Girdak and getting themselves all evilled up, two other members of The Heroes of Tyr Inc. were sent in their place -- Thorn, an as-yet untested pterran psion (a nomad), and Laika, the Aaracockra archer who'd stopped going on missions when the missions started going underground. Laika had hired a psion to give him a psychic reformation back to first level, and in addition to optimizing his power selection, he had the psion implant a resistance to the normal Aaracockran claustrophobia [the DM said I could take a feat to negate it, so I swapped out Rapid Shot].
So, along with Moghli, Cypher, and April, the two of them teleported back to Zygath's old digs (their normal teleport drop zone), then wind-walked across the city to the former temple of Girdak, from which they could proceed down to the Giths' area.
Before they could get to the Giths' area proper, they had to fight through some undead -- some hideously weak skeletons (which April dusted despite her freakishly low cleric level -- they were 1hd), and then a pair of dwarven banshees who would have done basically nothing to the party if Laika hadn't failed an easy save by rolling a 1, then proceeded to roll multiple natural 20s as the berzerk rage he flew into made him attack his own party. After nearly killing April, slightly wounding Moghli, and stubbornly resisting Cypher's attempts to dominate him, April managed to get a Resurgence on him which snapped him out of it.
April spoke with the dead banshee dwarves, and found that the unfinished task which had bound them as undead was simply to escape from the Gith -- if their bodies were buried on the surface, they would be free. So, into the handy haversack went the corpses!
The way onwards was blocked by a wide chasm, and the two archways to either side seemed inoperative if, in fact, they had ever done anything, but it was simple for everyone to fly or teleport across. On the far side, they came to a four-way intersection, and decided to head down first.
Down was a lake full of fish -- a wonder like none the party had ever seen! Forgetting about the Gith and their plans for a while, they had a nice fish picnic, and fantasized about buying or renting some Portable Holes to transport this vast fortune in water back to Tyr. There was millions of ceramic worth of water in the lake... although they estimated it would take 896 trips to get it all. April wanted to drop everything and do that first, but was outvoted. And before they could even finish their dinner, they heard the sounds of Gith from the corridor above.
So they reactivated the wind walk, turned invisible with an invisibility sphere, and went to spy out the situation. A single Gith psion stood guard over eight torches, yelling down one of the other corridors to some other Gith who were probably doing something. The party materialized and basically ambushed him to death, skewering him with an arrow, magic missiles, and a mind thrust before he could act. Then they crept up on his underlings...
They found the other Gith of the patrol harvesting guano from a massive cave full of bats. The torches they'd taken with them started flaming blue instead of orange, but none of them realized why. April, as an arcane mage, did know that guano was flammable, so Laika tossed his torch at the Gith as they turned to attack the party, setting fire to not just the guano but a massive explosion of natural gas. Everyone in the party survived, all the gith died, so maybe it was a good move, even if they had to waste a bunch of healing to cure the burns.
There was only one tunnel left, so the Gith camp had to be in that direction. As they approached, the noise of smashing rock and burning smelter and hideous screams from god-knows-what became deafening -- so no one had heard the explosion, and no one heard them take out the guards at the post at the end of the tunnel where it opened into the cavern. Actually, they only killed two of the six anyway -- Cypher dominated the rest.
They peeked over the wall at the mining operation. There were dozens of Gith visible managing dozens of slaves, and many buildings of unknown purpose, with a giant smelter in the middle churning out metal-tipped spears. As they took in the sight, they were approached by an invisible mage, who wanted them to rescue his cleric friend that was stabilized and invisible, but unconscious. April snuck out into the chamber to do so, and the two refugees were left in the water chamber to rest, while the party planned to assault the camp. The refugees figured that the party would cause enough of a distraction that no one would come get them.
Cypher decided that the best way to start the assault was to send his dominated Gith into the barracks to coup-de-grace as many sleeping guards as they could. They were eventually discovered, as not *everyone* in the barracks was asleep, but they managed to take out fifteen before they went down. The guards from the barracks sent a patrol towards the overlord's chambers to inform Zygath, but Cypher was watching from the guard post, and dominated them as well.
So the guards -- including the highest ranking Gith from the garrison -- returned to the barracks with 'orders from Zygath' to gather everyone up and march them out to the chasm in search of the intruders. The sight of the dead bodies of the Gith the party had killed earlier spurred them on, once they got up to the post, and the party hid in a side corridor and let them past, coming up behind them.
When they got to the chasm, the Gith couldn't go on any farther without a mage to put up a wall of force to help them assemble their bridge, and started to question the dominated lieutenant's orders... so Cypher had him start setting off point-blank area of effect spells, while the party rained down fiery and soniccy death from a distance. Aside from the dominated psion and a couple dominated Gith he'd dispatched to check out the disturbance the one time the party had been heard, the Gith from the barracks were wiped out.
April and Laika were getting low on spells, but were convinced that right at that moment, while Zygath was still unaware of their approach, would be the best time to teleport in and take her out. The dominated Gith were sent ahead as backup, and when they got to where they were about to enter Zygath's chamber, the party dimension-doored in. Cypher wriggled his way in past Zygath's divert teleport spell, so they appeared as planned in the middle of the building.
Unfortunately, they hadn't planned for Zygath to have so many visitors who were also powerful psions -- before they could do much, they were blasted by four AOE spells, which triggered a blade barrier that negated the psychic warriors' attacks by keeping them cooped up in the middle. April and Laika decided that they needed to fly out of the building to heal while they still could, while Zygath began to turn the building to magma, and the 'overlord' that she worked for telekinetically bull-rushed Cypher through the blade barrier (setting off another trap, so that the warriors would have to go through *two* to attack).
Realizing that as drained as they were, they had no hope against five enemies, Laika and April urged Cypher to escape with the others, so Cypher d-doored back through the blade barrier and teleported Moghli and Thorn out -- much to their dismay. The two of them wanted to stay and fight! April and Laika had to face down another trio of area spells as the low-level enemy psions (only 11th) d-doored out and fireballed while April cast, but she maintained her concentration and got herself and Laika back to Tyr.
It was obvious that Zygath was too paranoid to take by surprise, and too well fortified in her place of business to assault there successfully, so they started planning instead to rescue the slaves without facing her, if possible, and at least with her removed from her trap-filled element.
last week
