Traps traps traps
Nov. 21st, 2005 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothSunday, we had a session of Tom's game. Ed was missing this time. We mostly went up against more traps. Sooo many traps... but eventually we got to the treasure chamber they were guarding.
The hallway they found at the bottom of the stairwell was not a trap, in itself -- it had murals on the walls depicting the rise and fall of two powerful liches, one of which was trapped by having a sword impaled through it into the ground, the other under a powerful force field.
Rhiannon recognized the force field story as the lich associated with her mace, so of the two doors at the far end, they picked the one on that side, figuring that it might just be a trap after all.
Beyond that door was a trapped room. An inverted cone shaped room, the walls lined with razors to prevent climbing, with a pit in the middle with spikes -- the only exit was a hole in the top, at the apex of the cone.
They sent Zanzibar up to set a rope, but the hole was surrounded by an antimagic field, and he couldn't fly close -- and Rainna wouldn't be able to use the immovable rods to get close either. So since this trap was difficult, they tried the other door -- but behind it was nothing but a carving of an archway that teleported whoever touched it outside. So, after getting back to the mural hallway, they decided that they'd have to bridge the antimagic.
Fortunately, one of them had a grappling hook, and by using the rods to climb close to the antimagic, Raiina was able to scramble up into the room at the top before the grapple came loose (as there wasn't much for it to hook on but the edge of the hole itself).
The room at the top was cross shaped, with a locked door, a key sitting on a box, and four statues of gargoyles. She stepped back a little to see if she could get out of the antimagic to properly set a rope, and one of the statues animated, attacking her! It was stronger than a normal gargoyle, so she had to retreat back down the hole, relying on a safety rope she'd left tied to an immovable rod to arrest her fall. Somehow, she avoided swinging into the razors.
The party waited a while for the statue to de-animate, then tried again, this time staying near the hole until everyone was up. The gargoyle was a golem, though, which made much of the party's weaponry useless against it -- but as it turned out, it was vulnerable to a stone shape spell, and Rhainnon was able to turn it into a featureless sphere, which they rolled through the hole to smash in the pit below.
The key turned out to be trapped, in that flames would engulf the arm of the cross it was in if anyone got close to it or cast a spell near it (eg mage hand), and the key would teleport to a different arm. The solution wasn't too hard -- they had someone wait in an empty arm, then triggered the trap until it ended up appearing next to them. The key did, in fact, unlock the door.
The next room had a wide pit of tar with a series of rings hanging from chains dangling over it, that could be used to climb over it safely. Yeah, right. The party used immovable rods and rope to construct their own rope bridge, and moved on without touching the rings.
The room after that had spikes on the ceiling, and eight doors. Anticipating a falling ceiling trap, Raiina set immovable rods over her head before trying the first door. She'd wanted to go clockwise, but Zanzibar convinced her to go counterclockwise instead, as those were the doors which hadn't been trapped in the previous chamber with eight doors. Unfortunately, the first door counterclockwise was trapped -- with a reverse gravity spell. She was nimble enough to grab onto the rods she'd set to block the ceiling, though, and eventually the trap reset.
The second door counterclockwise -- which lined up with the actually untrapped door from the octagonal room, as opposed to the first counterclockwise which had been the reset switch -- seemed to open to a corridor with stairs leading down. They'd found the right door! But for some reason [the DM had laughed at Zanzibar's reasoning, and accidentally revealed that clockwise was the right way to go -- and Eric was metagaming like crazy], Rhiannon absolutely refused to move on without checking the other doors. Sure enough, there was another untrapped door, clockwise, which led to a room. Rhiannon insisted on going that way first.
The trap in that room was a tiled floor, set up like a chessboard with pictures of various undead -- skeletons, zombies, ghouls, vampires, and liches -- on the squares. They forced Zanzibar to fly out over the tiles to see if anything would happen, and he got zapped by lightning over the first (skeleton) tile. It was pretty weak lightning, but enough to add up crossing the whole board, so he didn't.
Samuel was still protected from lightning (the party had been searching for traps, which slowed them down a lot, and other peoples' protections off scrolls and potions had expired) so he followed a trail of skeleton tiles as far as he could... but eventually he had to step on a zombie tile, which was flame. Weak flame. Two zombie tiles in total (and about a dozen skeleton tiles) let him get to the other side.
The path would be much shorter if they could take a shortcut past a ghoul or vampire, but when Zanzibar tested ghoul and vampire tiles with a wand of summon nature's ally I, they turned out to be EXTREMELY nasty -- the skeleton/zombie path was the way to go. So they protected against lightning again, healed the fire damage, and proceeded on their way.
Only to find that the next room was a dead end -- a looted, empty treasure chamber. Well, until Raiina's search of the walls found the secret door. Behind that was the *real* treasure chamber, which had some very unusual treasures.
The first door had a picture of a cube on it -- the same cube that people had been seen worshipping in a mural in the hallway below. Zanzibar and Samuel were powerfully drawn to it, and Samuel was able to determine that by tracing the symbol on its surface, he could have it cast any enchantment or necromancy spell. "Heroism!" he called out, as a test, while tracing the symbol, and sure enough it cast greater heroism on Raiina.
"Wow, this is the best wand ever," Zanzibar said, enthralled. "We *have* to take it with us!" But Rhiannon refused, repulsed by the overwhelming wave of evil she felt emanating from it. Zanzibar's counterargument was, "Well... mass charm person."
The spell went off, but even charmed, Rhiannon absolutely refused to let anyone use the cube ever, although she agreed to let them put it in the portable hole so that they could have it destroyed.
Behind the next door was a lich, pinned to the ground by a sword that was also impaled in a crying child, guarded by an angel. "You shouldn't be here," said the angel. "Why did you come here?" No one [icly or oocly] could remember, but they figured it either had something to do with Rhiannon's mace, or they were just following a treasure map. Both rationales were told to the angel, who was annoyed, but couldn't leave her post lest the lich get free and destroy the world. So they closed the door, and moved on.
The third door had a picture of the lich trapped in a force field on it, and opened only when Rhiannon's mace was used as a key. Behind it was... a glowing jawbone, which they guessed might be the key to the forcefield (whereever that was), since some glimmering of such a key had turned up in Rhiannon's previous research. Seeing no good that could come from removing the jawbone, they left it there and relocked the door.
The fourth door had a picture of a demon on it, and was reinforced with iron bars and magic. They decided not to open that door.
The last door, at the end of the hallway, opened to a library full of powerful magical books, a dozen in all. Although, well, one of them was a Dragon Orb. Most of them were evil.
last session | next session
That's where we stopped, since Tom hadn't generated the books in the library yet. Josh remarked that with all these evil artifacts, it was a real shame they couldn't just have an artificer disenchant them for crafting XP. "That's an Eberron-only thing, though."
"Well you know, Astral Projection is a necromancy spell. We could use the cube to travel to Eberron, and have them all disenchanted."
No one else thought that was a good idea, though. }:P
The hallway they found at the bottom of the stairwell was not a trap, in itself -- it had murals on the walls depicting the rise and fall of two powerful liches, one of which was trapped by having a sword impaled through it into the ground, the other under a powerful force field.
Rhiannon recognized the force field story as the lich associated with her mace, so of the two doors at the far end, they picked the one on that side, figuring that it might just be a trap after all.
Beyond that door was a trapped room. An inverted cone shaped room, the walls lined with razors to prevent climbing, with a pit in the middle with spikes -- the only exit was a hole in the top, at the apex of the cone.
They sent Zanzibar up to set a rope, but the hole was surrounded by an antimagic field, and he couldn't fly close -- and Rainna wouldn't be able to use the immovable rods to get close either. So since this trap was difficult, they tried the other door -- but behind it was nothing but a carving of an archway that teleported whoever touched it outside. So, after getting back to the mural hallway, they decided that they'd have to bridge the antimagic.
Fortunately, one of them had a grappling hook, and by using the rods to climb close to the antimagic, Raiina was able to scramble up into the room at the top before the grapple came loose (as there wasn't much for it to hook on but the edge of the hole itself).
The room at the top was cross shaped, with a locked door, a key sitting on a box, and four statues of gargoyles. She stepped back a little to see if she could get out of the antimagic to properly set a rope, and one of the statues animated, attacking her! It was stronger than a normal gargoyle, so she had to retreat back down the hole, relying on a safety rope she'd left tied to an immovable rod to arrest her fall. Somehow, she avoided swinging into the razors.
The party waited a while for the statue to de-animate, then tried again, this time staying near the hole until everyone was up. The gargoyle was a golem, though, which made much of the party's weaponry useless against it -- but as it turned out, it was vulnerable to a stone shape spell, and Rhainnon was able to turn it into a featureless sphere, which they rolled through the hole to smash in the pit below.
The key turned out to be trapped, in that flames would engulf the arm of the cross it was in if anyone got close to it or cast a spell near it (eg mage hand), and the key would teleport to a different arm. The solution wasn't too hard -- they had someone wait in an empty arm, then triggered the trap until it ended up appearing next to them. The key did, in fact, unlock the door.
The next room had a wide pit of tar with a series of rings hanging from chains dangling over it, that could be used to climb over it safely. Yeah, right. The party used immovable rods and rope to construct their own rope bridge, and moved on without touching the rings.
The room after that had spikes on the ceiling, and eight doors. Anticipating a falling ceiling trap, Raiina set immovable rods over her head before trying the first door. She'd wanted to go clockwise, but Zanzibar convinced her to go counterclockwise instead, as those were the doors which hadn't been trapped in the previous chamber with eight doors. Unfortunately, the first door counterclockwise was trapped -- with a reverse gravity spell. She was nimble enough to grab onto the rods she'd set to block the ceiling, though, and eventually the trap reset.
The second door counterclockwise -- which lined up with the actually untrapped door from the octagonal room, as opposed to the first counterclockwise which had been the reset switch -- seemed to open to a corridor with stairs leading down. They'd found the right door! But for some reason [the DM had laughed at Zanzibar's reasoning, and accidentally revealed that clockwise was the right way to go -- and Eric was metagaming like crazy], Rhiannon absolutely refused to move on without checking the other doors. Sure enough, there was another untrapped door, clockwise, which led to a room. Rhiannon insisted on going that way first.
The trap in that room was a tiled floor, set up like a chessboard with pictures of various undead -- skeletons, zombies, ghouls, vampires, and liches -- on the squares. They forced Zanzibar to fly out over the tiles to see if anything would happen, and he got zapped by lightning over the first (skeleton) tile. It was pretty weak lightning, but enough to add up crossing the whole board, so he didn't.
Samuel was still protected from lightning (the party had been searching for traps, which slowed them down a lot, and other peoples' protections off scrolls and potions had expired) so he followed a trail of skeleton tiles as far as he could... but eventually he had to step on a zombie tile, which was flame. Weak flame. Two zombie tiles in total (and about a dozen skeleton tiles) let him get to the other side.
The path would be much shorter if they could take a shortcut past a ghoul or vampire, but when Zanzibar tested ghoul and vampire tiles with a wand of summon nature's ally I, they turned out to be EXTREMELY nasty -- the skeleton/zombie path was the way to go. So they protected against lightning again, healed the fire damage, and proceeded on their way.
Only to find that the next room was a dead end -- a looted, empty treasure chamber. Well, until Raiina's search of the walls found the secret door. Behind that was the *real* treasure chamber, which had some very unusual treasures.
The first door had a picture of a cube on it -- the same cube that people had been seen worshipping in a mural in the hallway below. Zanzibar and Samuel were powerfully drawn to it, and Samuel was able to determine that by tracing the symbol on its surface, he could have it cast any enchantment or necromancy spell. "Heroism!" he called out, as a test, while tracing the symbol, and sure enough it cast greater heroism on Raiina.
"Wow, this is the best wand ever," Zanzibar said, enthralled. "We *have* to take it with us!" But Rhiannon refused, repulsed by the overwhelming wave of evil she felt emanating from it. Zanzibar's counterargument was, "Well... mass charm person."
The spell went off, but even charmed, Rhiannon absolutely refused to let anyone use the cube ever, although she agreed to let them put it in the portable hole so that they could have it destroyed.
Behind the next door was a lich, pinned to the ground by a sword that was also impaled in a crying child, guarded by an angel. "You shouldn't be here," said the angel. "Why did you come here?" No one [icly or oocly] could remember, but they figured it either had something to do with Rhiannon's mace, or they were just following a treasure map. Both rationales were told to the angel, who was annoyed, but couldn't leave her post lest the lich get free and destroy the world. So they closed the door, and moved on.
The third door had a picture of the lich trapped in a force field on it, and opened only when Rhiannon's mace was used as a key. Behind it was... a glowing jawbone, which they guessed might be the key to the forcefield (whereever that was), since some glimmering of such a key had turned up in Rhiannon's previous research. Seeing no good that could come from removing the jawbone, they left it there and relocked the door.
The fourth door had a picture of a demon on it, and was reinforced with iron bars and magic. They decided not to open that door.
The last door, at the end of the hallway, opened to a library full of powerful magical books, a dozen in all. Although, well, one of them was a Dragon Orb. Most of them were evil.
last session | next session
That's where we stopped, since Tom hadn't generated the books in the library yet. Josh remarked that with all these evil artifacts, it was a real shame they couldn't just have an artificer disenchant them for crafting XP. "That's an Eberron-only thing, though."
"Well you know, Astral Projection is a necromancy spell. We could use the cube to travel to Eberron, and have them all disenchanted."
No one else thought that was a good idea, though. }:P
