House... of the Dead
Nov. 26th, 2002 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothTonight was Lance's D+D game. We'd decided that the previous game had gotten way out of hand (what with the spaceships and the undead armies and all) and made up new characters, and tonight was the shakedown cruise. Lots of combat.
The premise of the game was that the characters were the sole survivors of their previous parties, thrust together by fiat. I mean, fate.
Wren's player decided to go diametric opposite from Wren's chaotic neutral, as a lawful neutral samurai named... something I can't remember. I'll call him 'samurai'. The result was a character that attacks people almost without provocation, refuses to consider the rest of the group when deciding what to do, and frequently wanders off on his own. WOW, WHAT A HUGE CHANGE.
Ray'ia the kitty monk was replaced with Ray'ia the elven monk, slightly different spells and feats but essentially the same person. She doesn't go 'meow' anymore, though, despite various suggestions as to what it might mean in elvish.
Largo the asshole dragonman was replaced with Swift the asshole mage, who has the standard assortment of power spells, and likes to use detect magic to decide what 'his share' of the treasure is. "You don't mind if I just take this stuff and leave you the rest, do you?"
And Rey the spelljammer was replaced by Tri'llik the ratling druid and his dire wolverine Grr'rar. Tri'llik, being another character created on short notice with no inspiration, has almost as little personality as Rey did. So rat antics are used for comic relief purposes.
At the start of the game, the four quite likely heroes were sitting at separate tables in the same inn, brooding over the deaths of everyone they knew, when a bunch of thugs came in, killed the bartender out of hand, and proclaimed them slaves of the new mayor. The party responded by quickly killing them, then going outside and killing some of their friends, then running towards the church to kill their leader.
Swift took out all ten of the leader's bodyguards with a fireball. The leader held up his mace, and raised them all as zombies. Swift took them all out again with another fireball, while the rest of the party peppered the leader with various damaging stuff. The leader attempted to flee, but was taken out in a cutscene by an NPC shaman, who then joined the party.
The party looted the bodies and (eventually) split up the loot... the remains were fed to the dire wolverine, because hey, Goodberries don't grow on trees. At least, not in the middle of the winter. Several notes were found which outlined the bad guys' nefarious plan to use the 'Hall of Heroes' located under the church to... well, to do something bad, although what was not specified. One of the prisoners told them that a scout, probably a harmless looking woodland creature of some sort, would be sweeping by the village in two days.
That gave them enough time to deal with the mayor's problem -- his house was haunted, with all his family's wealth inside. He promised to give them all land grants and noble titles if they'd clear out the ghosts, which had (so far) killed everyone who'd set foot inside the house.
After discovering that the shaman was an expert in dealing with spirits, and felt that it wouldn't be total suicide to at least take a look around, the party walked to the haunted house and stepped inside. Tri'llik questioned some rats from the pantry, who warned about giant spiders and 'a big black bird who lived upstairs'. Ray'ia sneered when the information was relayed, figuring they were just afraid of a large raven or something.
So, the party searched a few more rooms, and happened upon the ghost of a small girl in a library, talking to a large black bird, which flew off through the wall as it saw the party. "I didn't mean to do it," the little girl said, "But they had to die. He told me so!" Then she faded away.
The party thoroughly searched the room until they found a skull hidden inside a book. The shaman held a seance, and from the spirit the party learned that the bird had been given to the small girl by the same traitor who'd killed the Lords of the Vale, a group of adventurers the mayor had told them about, who 100 years ago had controlled the entire area and in particular the Hall of Heroes. A few weeks after getting the bird, the girl had snapped and killed everyone. Obviously, the bird was the focus of the evil pervading the mansion.
The spirit also told them how to enter the vault, albeit in extremely cryptic terms. The cryptic terms did contain what were obviously command words, though.
A few more rooms were searched before the party was suddenly attacked by a group of shadows and wraiths, led by the black bird. The party managed to fight them off, although the druid was very nearly turned into a shadow himself, and the bird got away without really being hurt. They decided that it was too risky to continue to search the whole mansion, and that they needed to find the bird's focus as quickly as possible and destroy it. The shaman told them that he thought it was upstairs, and that he could find it.
So they went upstairs, and the shaman led them into a mist-filled room with a giant covered mirror. The doors slammed, and out of the mirror stepped exact duplicates of the entire party... except that these duplicates were fresh, unwounded and with all spells memorized. "Oh no," Swift thought, looking at his duplicate, "He's going to fireball us! If I get lucky, I can take him out with one magic missile..."
He didn't get lucky. The party was fireballed. Fortunately, the enemy duplicates were also caught in their own fireball, and the damage was low enough that Swift was only mortally wounded rather than being killed outright. The rest of the party fought a long, hard battle, but the protective and enhancing spells that they already had up proved to make all the difference, and they emerged victorious. By using up the last of his magic, Tri'ling was even able to heal everyone back up to full, although of course their spells were severely depleted.
The command word opened the mirror, and the party advanced into the vault, where they were immediately hit by a flame strike from the 'bird', who'd turned into a large, menacing human. Fortunately, they were loosely grouped, and only Ray'ia was in the area, and she managed to evade it easily. Swift opened a can of firebally goodness on the bird's eight wraith companions, and the monk and samurai closed with the bird to finish things, once and for all... only to discover that +1 magical weapons weren't good enough to hit it.
"Wow," the party's players thought aloud, "We're SO screwed, since the GM explicitly only allowed us to have +1 weapons, at 5th level greater magic weapon won't do even +2, and the 'bird' just shrugged off the fireball. I guess we'll have to run away, assuming that the door that locked us in here unbreakably miraculously opens for us now."
"Er..." the DM said, checking his books to discover that yes, indeed, there was no way for the party to damage his monster. It was incorporeal, undead, and immune to elemental damage, which left... "The shaman says, 'Hit his amulet! It's the focus!'"
"Oh," the players said, "He has an AMULET. Why didn't you say so in the first place?"
So the party followed the shaman's instructions... Swift burning his last magical slots on magic missiles to take the amulet out, since the samurai and monk couldn't seem to hit it. With the amulet gone, the 'bird's total immunity to +1 weapons vanished, and the samurai was able to cut it to ribbons. With its death, everything was wonderful and happy laughing children were heard in the distance... oh, and the remaining wraiths vaporized.
Ray'ia started to loot the treasury before being reminded that (a) as a monk, she was lawful, (b) stealing from your employer is not a lawful act, and (c) committing a crime against a samurai's employer in front of the samurai is tantamount to suicide. Her desire to go find and hunt down the giant spiders the rats had mentioned was also vetoed by the shaman and Tri'lling, who pointed out that they had no magic left to, say, cure poison.
And that's where we ended.
last week next week
The premise of the game was that the characters were the sole survivors of their previous parties, thrust together by fiat. I mean, fate.
Wren's player decided to go diametric opposite from Wren's chaotic neutral, as a lawful neutral samurai named... something I can't remember. I'll call him 'samurai'. The result was a character that attacks people almost without provocation, refuses to consider the rest of the group when deciding what to do, and frequently wanders off on his own. WOW, WHAT A HUGE CHANGE.
Ray'ia the kitty monk was replaced with Ray'ia the elven monk, slightly different spells and feats but essentially the same person. She doesn't go 'meow' anymore, though, despite various suggestions as to what it might mean in elvish.
Largo the asshole dragonman was replaced with Swift the asshole mage, who has the standard assortment of power spells, and likes to use detect magic to decide what 'his share' of the treasure is. "You don't mind if I just take this stuff and leave you the rest, do you?"
And Rey the spelljammer was replaced by Tri'llik the ratling druid and his dire wolverine Grr'rar. Tri'llik, being another character created on short notice with no inspiration, has almost as little personality as Rey did. So rat antics are used for comic relief purposes.
At the start of the game, the four quite likely heroes were sitting at separate tables in the same inn, brooding over the deaths of everyone they knew, when a bunch of thugs came in, killed the bartender out of hand, and proclaimed them slaves of the new mayor. The party responded by quickly killing them, then going outside and killing some of their friends, then running towards the church to kill their leader.
Swift took out all ten of the leader's bodyguards with a fireball. The leader held up his mace, and raised them all as zombies. Swift took them all out again with another fireball, while the rest of the party peppered the leader with various damaging stuff. The leader attempted to flee, but was taken out in a cutscene by an NPC shaman, who then joined the party.
The party looted the bodies and (eventually) split up the loot... the remains were fed to the dire wolverine, because hey, Goodberries don't grow on trees. At least, not in the middle of the winter. Several notes were found which outlined the bad guys' nefarious plan to use the 'Hall of Heroes' located under the church to... well, to do something bad, although what was not specified. One of the prisoners told them that a scout, probably a harmless looking woodland creature of some sort, would be sweeping by the village in two days.
That gave them enough time to deal with the mayor's problem -- his house was haunted, with all his family's wealth inside. He promised to give them all land grants and noble titles if they'd clear out the ghosts, which had (so far) killed everyone who'd set foot inside the house.
After discovering that the shaman was an expert in dealing with spirits, and felt that it wouldn't be total suicide to at least take a look around, the party walked to the haunted house and stepped inside. Tri'llik questioned some rats from the pantry, who warned about giant spiders and 'a big black bird who lived upstairs'. Ray'ia sneered when the information was relayed, figuring they were just afraid of a large raven or something.
So, the party searched a few more rooms, and happened upon the ghost of a small girl in a library, talking to a large black bird, which flew off through the wall as it saw the party. "I didn't mean to do it," the little girl said, "But they had to die. He told me so!" Then she faded away.
The party thoroughly searched the room until they found a skull hidden inside a book. The shaman held a seance, and from the spirit the party learned that the bird had been given to the small girl by the same traitor who'd killed the Lords of the Vale, a group of adventurers the mayor had told them about, who 100 years ago had controlled the entire area and in particular the Hall of Heroes. A few weeks after getting the bird, the girl had snapped and killed everyone. Obviously, the bird was the focus of the evil pervading the mansion.
The spirit also told them how to enter the vault, albeit in extremely cryptic terms. The cryptic terms did contain what were obviously command words, though.
A few more rooms were searched before the party was suddenly attacked by a group of shadows and wraiths, led by the black bird. The party managed to fight them off, although the druid was very nearly turned into a shadow himself, and the bird got away without really being hurt. They decided that it was too risky to continue to search the whole mansion, and that they needed to find the bird's focus as quickly as possible and destroy it. The shaman told them that he thought it was upstairs, and that he could find it.
So they went upstairs, and the shaman led them into a mist-filled room with a giant covered mirror. The doors slammed, and out of the mirror stepped exact duplicates of the entire party... except that these duplicates were fresh, unwounded and with all spells memorized. "Oh no," Swift thought, looking at his duplicate, "He's going to fireball us! If I get lucky, I can take him out with one magic missile..."
He didn't get lucky. The party was fireballed. Fortunately, the enemy duplicates were also caught in their own fireball, and the damage was low enough that Swift was only mortally wounded rather than being killed outright. The rest of the party fought a long, hard battle, but the protective and enhancing spells that they already had up proved to make all the difference, and they emerged victorious. By using up the last of his magic, Tri'ling was even able to heal everyone back up to full, although of course their spells were severely depleted.
The command word opened the mirror, and the party advanced into the vault, where they were immediately hit by a flame strike from the 'bird', who'd turned into a large, menacing human. Fortunately, they were loosely grouped, and only Ray'ia was in the area, and she managed to evade it easily. Swift opened a can of firebally goodness on the bird's eight wraith companions, and the monk and samurai closed with the bird to finish things, once and for all... only to discover that +1 magical weapons weren't good enough to hit it.
"Wow," the party's players thought aloud, "We're SO screwed, since the GM explicitly only allowed us to have +1 weapons, at 5th level greater magic weapon won't do even +2, and the 'bird' just shrugged off the fireball. I guess we'll have to run away, assuming that the door that locked us in here unbreakably miraculously opens for us now."
"Er..." the DM said, checking his books to discover that yes, indeed, there was no way for the party to damage his monster. It was incorporeal, undead, and immune to elemental damage, which left... "The shaman says, 'Hit his amulet! It's the focus!'"
"Oh," the players said, "He has an AMULET. Why didn't you say so in the first place?"
So the party followed the shaman's instructions... Swift burning his last magical slots on magic missiles to take the amulet out, since the samurai and monk couldn't seem to hit it. With the amulet gone, the 'bird's total immunity to +1 weapons vanished, and the samurai was able to cut it to ribbons. With its death, everything was wonderful and happy laughing children were heard in the distance... oh, and the remaining wraiths vaporized.
Ray'ia started to loot the treasury before being reminded that (a) as a monk, she was lawful, (b) stealing from your employer is not a lawful act, and (c) committing a crime against a samurai's employer in front of the samurai is tantamount to suicide. Her desire to go find and hunt down the giant spiders the rats had mentioned was also vetoed by the shaman and Tri'lling, who pointed out that they had no magic left to, say, cure poison.
And that's where we ended.
last week next week
