Oh, that WASN'T the big bad guy. Oops!
Oct. 28th, 2008 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothSunday we did play D+D. Ed was missing, but everyone else showed up so we just played over at Tom's.
The party rested the night in the temple of Bahamut on the second level, watched over by the kindly old cursed death knight. In the morning, refreshed, they headed down to wipe out the rest of the hobgoblins standing between them and this 'Caramel' fellow trying to open the rift.
Wiping out the rest of the hobgoblins wasn't very hard... they set off a trap that let the last few surprise them, but it really seemed to be the last few. The hobgoblins decided to surround and flank the party instead of standing in a phalanx, which wasn't necessarily the worst idea in the world especially since they did manage to set up their phalanx a little later on. But with Bore in the middle of them and Vexx's positioning abilities, they ended up separated and counter-flanked, and eventually their leader was all alone. Shanarea tried to call for his surrender, but wasn't willing to stop shooting to do it [and wasn't trained in intimidate anyway] so they had to kill him. BOO HOO.
The hobgoblin leader did have a magic axe in his treasure horde (none of his hobgoblins used axes, so it was just a trophy), which Bore claimed eagerly -- he was the last member of the party to get a magic weapon, although he'd been one of the first to get magic armor so it wasn't like he'd been neglected. He also had a lot of gold.
Moving on, the party had a choice -- an obvious trail through the dust tracked by many, many feet, or a side passage that looked totally deserted. The consensus (between a die roll, Shanarea, and the rest of the party's apathy) was that they should go back to scour the corners of the dungeon for additional treasure *after* the world was saved. They felt that they had to be in striking distance of the rift itself, now, if they could just push on through the last few barriers...
The next barrier was a room full of giant statues that were obviously traps. Shanarea tried to sneak up on the big sword-wielding titan in the middle of the room, but stepped on a pressure plate and got whacked upside the head, catapulting her into range of a force-breathing dragon statue, which ejected her back into the corridor she'd come out of, more than half dead.
"Great. A pinball chamber."
The tracks led blithely past the traps, so apparently it was keyed to only let evil people past.
"So, if I kill one of my friends, I'll turn evil and can get through? Who volunteers?"
But the dragon statues were only on one edge of the room, and the titan's sword wasn't quite long enough to reach to the wall, so instead they just went around. The exit corridor had four more statues with faintly glowing eyes, but Shanarea was able to disable one of them from a safe spot, teleport past the trigger location to disable the second, and that was it for the trap.
GM: "Crappy design on the trap, letting you just walk around it like that. I guess you could have just smashed them all at range anyway, though."
The next room was full of corpses... some of them walking around moaning for brains. The party was swarmed! The zombies tried to grab the party to immobilize them, allowing their ghoulfriend to use its nasty bite attack to fully paralyze... but Sam used his encounter power that set all the enemies within 15 feet of him on fire while skipping his friends, which cleaned out most of the minions, and the few tougher zombies had pretty bad luck (one of them going down instantly to a crit from Bore's new axe).
There was also an imp theoretically helping the zombies fight (but in reality never actually hitting anyone), who tried to run off into a hidey hole but didn't make it. Hidden in his hole, along with LOTS of other corpses, was some more treasure. Finally, they'd hit the jackpot!
Oh, right. World still needed saving.
So, on to the temple. A priest stood at an altar that gushed rivers of blood, praying to Orcus. Caramel at last! The party charged forwards... cautiously. This turned out to, perhaps, be a mistake, because the vampire minions were able to come out behind them and pin them between vampires and really nasty berzerkers. Forced into melee, the ranger and warlock were... less than optimally effective. But Bore kept the berzerkers focused on himself, and was (just barely) durable enough to survive their attentions, and Alaric (or whatever the warlock was calling him/her/itself that day) used a power to toss the priest down the pit the rivers of blood were draining into, which stopped all the death-throes the enemies would otherwise have gotten, so they prevailed!
Only to realize that there was a LOT MORE chanting coming from the bottom of the pit -- this hadn't been the real temple, and that hadn't been the real priest. And tossing him down the pit had alerted them all that the party was coming, and they'd sped up the ritual to finish 'soon'. The party had time for a short rest to catch their breath, but that was it -- they had to stop them now, or the rift would be opened and the hordes of undead would pour out to claim the land.
last session | next session
The party rested the night in the temple of Bahamut on the second level, watched over by the kindly old cursed death knight. In the morning, refreshed, they headed down to wipe out the rest of the hobgoblins standing between them and this 'Caramel' fellow trying to open the rift.
Wiping out the rest of the hobgoblins wasn't very hard... they set off a trap that let the last few surprise them, but it really seemed to be the last few. The hobgoblins decided to surround and flank the party instead of standing in a phalanx, which wasn't necessarily the worst idea in the world especially since they did manage to set up their phalanx a little later on. But with Bore in the middle of them and Vexx's positioning abilities, they ended up separated and counter-flanked, and eventually their leader was all alone. Shanarea tried to call for his surrender, but wasn't willing to stop shooting to do it [and wasn't trained in intimidate anyway] so they had to kill him. BOO HOO.
The hobgoblin leader did have a magic axe in his treasure horde (none of his hobgoblins used axes, so it was just a trophy), which Bore claimed eagerly -- he was the last member of the party to get a magic weapon, although he'd been one of the first to get magic armor so it wasn't like he'd been neglected. He also had a lot of gold.
Moving on, the party had a choice -- an obvious trail through the dust tracked by many, many feet, or a side passage that looked totally deserted. The consensus (between a die roll, Shanarea, and the rest of the party's apathy) was that they should go back to scour the corners of the dungeon for additional treasure *after* the world was saved. They felt that they had to be in striking distance of the rift itself, now, if they could just push on through the last few barriers...
The next barrier was a room full of giant statues that were obviously traps. Shanarea tried to sneak up on the big sword-wielding titan in the middle of the room, but stepped on a pressure plate and got whacked upside the head, catapulting her into range of a force-breathing dragon statue, which ejected her back into the corridor she'd come out of, more than half dead.
"Great. A pinball chamber."
The tracks led blithely past the traps, so apparently it was keyed to only let evil people past.
"So, if I kill one of my friends, I'll turn evil and can get through? Who volunteers?"
But the dragon statues were only on one edge of the room, and the titan's sword wasn't quite long enough to reach to the wall, so instead they just went around. The exit corridor had four more statues with faintly glowing eyes, but Shanarea was able to disable one of them from a safe spot, teleport past the trigger location to disable the second, and that was it for the trap.
GM: "Crappy design on the trap, letting you just walk around it like that. I guess you could have just smashed them all at range anyway, though."
The next room was full of corpses... some of them walking around moaning for brains. The party was swarmed! The zombies tried to grab the party to immobilize them, allowing their ghoulfriend to use its nasty bite attack to fully paralyze... but Sam used his encounter power that set all the enemies within 15 feet of him on fire while skipping his friends, which cleaned out most of the minions, and the few tougher zombies had pretty bad luck (one of them going down instantly to a crit from Bore's new axe).
There was also an imp theoretically helping the zombies fight (but in reality never actually hitting anyone), who tried to run off into a hidey hole but didn't make it. Hidden in his hole, along with LOTS of other corpses, was some more treasure. Finally, they'd hit the jackpot!
Oh, right. World still needed saving.
So, on to the temple. A priest stood at an altar that gushed rivers of blood, praying to Orcus. Caramel at last! The party charged forwards... cautiously. This turned out to, perhaps, be a mistake, because the vampire minions were able to come out behind them and pin them between vampires and really nasty berzerkers. Forced into melee, the ranger and warlock were... less than optimally effective. But Bore kept the berzerkers focused on himself, and was (just barely) durable enough to survive their attentions, and Alaric (or whatever the warlock was calling him/her/itself that day) used a power to toss the priest down the pit the rivers of blood were draining into, which stopped all the death-throes the enemies would otherwise have gotten, so they prevailed!
Only to realize that there was a LOT MORE chanting coming from the bottom of the pit -- this hadn't been the real temple, and that hadn't been the real priest. And tossing him down the pit had alerted them all that the party was coming, and they'd sped up the ritual to finish 'soon'. The party had time for a short rest to catch their breath, but that was it -- they had to stop them now, or the rift would be opened and the hordes of undead would pour out to claim the land.
last session | next session
