Rescues and... things like that
Feb. 12th, 2006 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothHad a session of Tom's game today. Ed didn't show up, even though he'd apparently called Tom Friday to say he would, but we can deal with one person being gone.
The party moved on to explore the second floor. It was less empty than the first floor, and some of the rooms even had ceilings! They found some magic items, and some fresh human corpses hanging on meathooks. Not all of them were corpses, either, and Rhiannon pulled them down to heal them.
One of the still living was horrifically half-eaten, but somehow still alive. Rhiannon wanted to put him out of his misery, but Zanzibar noticed that his collar was magical, and perhaps was an item of regeneration like Samuel's -- that would keep him alive, even injured like this, when little else would... and would also eventually restore him to full health, so 'out of his misery' wasn't really the best option.
The prisoners were all insane, but wanted to be taken out of the forest, reasonably enough. The party agreed to escort them after they finished looting the part of the castle that existed during the day -- further examination of the ambient magical field revealed the outline of the rest of the castle still around, immaterial.
The primary finds exploring the rest of the castle were a ghostly librarian (who didn't bother them as long as they stayed quiet), a giant bubbling cauldron full of... something... and the living (although vampire-bitten) servant whose job was to keep the castle clean. Their interrogation of her went nowhere, and while she seemed surprised that there were dead people hanging on hooks half-eaten and tortured to death, she didn't seem particularly bothered by that fact, or by the notion that her mistress was a murdering, rampaging undead.
So, when Rhiannon decided to leave her in peace, Zanzibar (outraged by her uncaring attitude) stayed behind and fed her to the Cube. When Rhiannon asked where she'd gone, he told her he'd Geased her into leaving the castle and going as far away as possible, to keep her from telling her mistress too much about them. And while Rhiannon was trained in Sense Motive and had wisdom as her class's primary attribute, Zanzibar was trained in Bluff and had Charisma as his class attribute, and managed to convince her. The fact that she wanted to believe he hadn't just murdered her helped. [if it had come to that, it would have given him +5 on his bluff };)]
Then they noticed that, somehow, it was already getting dark, and took the rescued prisoners and fled, while the castle not only reformed behind them, but rose up out of the ground to hover in midair! They managed to get back to the town without incident, and dropped the crazy people they'd rescued off with the guards, and identified a few magic items. The collar was, indeed, what was regenerating the now only quarter-eaten man, and they also found themselves in possession of a +3 vorpal steak knife (actually, intended as a two-handed sword for very angry mice, or something about that size).
The next day they headed back to the castle, of course -- but their actions had alerted the inhabitants, and it wasn't unguarded this time. Zanzibar flew up stealthily to peek in and make sure it was safe, and sure enough it was *not* safe, full of skeletal guards, including archers with three bows each! So they dimension-doored in and engaged the skeletons in combat.
The fight was pretty one-sided, altough the skeletal archers hit *hard* when they got a lucky shot in. Rhiannon turned most of them to dust (over the course of several turn attempts), while the rest of the party finished off the stragglers. Soon, the second floor was clear of guardians, and they decided that before it got dark, they'd try to destroy the cauldron -- which they'd figured out back in town was a Cauldron of Undead, that could make an unlimited number of undead, limited only by the number of bodies you fed it.
last session | next session
Tom stopped it there, since the cauldron would be a battle and it was getting pretty late. I headed over to Legend's and played a few games of magic, but headed back fairly early.
No one wanted to trade! Or rather, they supposedly wanted to trade, but refused to trade off even their crap trash rares for anything but the hottest cards that, for the most part, I don't even have. And no, I'm not going to trade you my multilands for Phytohydras and Hate Seeds. It's a really annoying attitude -- "even if I hate this card I'm trading away and would never use it, you can't have it unless I find something I really want from you". I managed to get a couple things from Lex, at least.
The party moved on to explore the second floor. It was less empty than the first floor, and some of the rooms even had ceilings! They found some magic items, and some fresh human corpses hanging on meathooks. Not all of them were corpses, either, and Rhiannon pulled them down to heal them.
One of the still living was horrifically half-eaten, but somehow still alive. Rhiannon wanted to put him out of his misery, but Zanzibar noticed that his collar was magical, and perhaps was an item of regeneration like Samuel's -- that would keep him alive, even injured like this, when little else would... and would also eventually restore him to full health, so 'out of his misery' wasn't really the best option.
The prisoners were all insane, but wanted to be taken out of the forest, reasonably enough. The party agreed to escort them after they finished looting the part of the castle that existed during the day -- further examination of the ambient magical field revealed the outline of the rest of the castle still around, immaterial.
The primary finds exploring the rest of the castle were a ghostly librarian (who didn't bother them as long as they stayed quiet), a giant bubbling cauldron full of... something... and the living (although vampire-bitten) servant whose job was to keep the castle clean. Their interrogation of her went nowhere, and while she seemed surprised that there were dead people hanging on hooks half-eaten and tortured to death, she didn't seem particularly bothered by that fact, or by the notion that her mistress was a murdering, rampaging undead.
So, when Rhiannon decided to leave her in peace, Zanzibar (outraged by her uncaring attitude) stayed behind and fed her to the Cube. When Rhiannon asked where she'd gone, he told her he'd Geased her into leaving the castle and going as far away as possible, to keep her from telling her mistress too much about them. And while Rhiannon was trained in Sense Motive and had wisdom as her class's primary attribute, Zanzibar was trained in Bluff and had Charisma as his class attribute, and managed to convince her. The fact that she wanted to believe he hadn't just murdered her helped. [if it had come to that, it would have given him +5 on his bluff };)]
Then they noticed that, somehow, it was already getting dark, and took the rescued prisoners and fled, while the castle not only reformed behind them, but rose up out of the ground to hover in midair! They managed to get back to the town without incident, and dropped the crazy people they'd rescued off with the guards, and identified a few magic items. The collar was, indeed, what was regenerating the now only quarter-eaten man, and they also found themselves in possession of a +3 vorpal steak knife (actually, intended as a two-handed sword for very angry mice, or something about that size).
The next day they headed back to the castle, of course -- but their actions had alerted the inhabitants, and it wasn't unguarded this time. Zanzibar flew up stealthily to peek in and make sure it was safe, and sure enough it was *not* safe, full of skeletal guards, including archers with three bows each! So they dimension-doored in and engaged the skeletons in combat.
The fight was pretty one-sided, altough the skeletal archers hit *hard* when they got a lucky shot in. Rhiannon turned most of them to dust (over the course of several turn attempts), while the rest of the party finished off the stragglers. Soon, the second floor was clear of guardians, and they decided that before it got dark, they'd try to destroy the cauldron -- which they'd figured out back in town was a Cauldron of Undead, that could make an unlimited number of undead, limited only by the number of bodies you fed it.
last session | next session
Tom stopped it there, since the cauldron would be a battle and it was getting pretty late. I headed over to Legend's and played a few games of magic, but headed back fairly early.
No one wanted to trade! Or rather, they supposedly wanted to trade, but refused to trade off even their crap trash rares for anything but the hottest cards that, for the most part, I don't even have. And no, I'm not going to trade you my multilands for Phytohydras and Hate Seeds. It's a really annoying attitude -- "even if I hate this card I'm trading away and would never use it, you can't have it unless I find something I really want from you". I managed to get a couple things from Lex, at least.
