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Sep. 29th, 2002 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothEch. I decided to try 'Bertie Botts Every-flavor Beans', and... well, some of the flavors were nice, but a 'dirt' followed by a 'grass' followed by a 'sardines', and I can't make myself try to eat any more of them. Still, I don't really regret trying them, now that I've washed the taste out of my mouth.
Today was Tom's game, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Tonight we began the assault on the inner circle (or at least, on the circle inside the outer circle). And once again, pretty much the entire session was one long running battle...
One of the priestesses of the air temple had seen the writing on the wall -- or perhaps, the blood and organs of her fellows splattered across the temple walls -- and agreed to bless an air key for us, a while back. So, having cleared the enemies away from the air bridge during the previous session, we retreated to the sanctified dwarven temple to rest, hoping that its blessing would protect us from the curse of the doom dreamers. Even though we'd previously stripped the entire dwarven area of anything not nailed down.
Before sleeping, Marcus the Malevolent Mage identified the loot from the air bridge and earth temple for us... nothing really notable, except for a ring of spider climbing that guinsette (the half-orc fighter/ranger/barbarian/rogue) took to replace her ring of climbing. Which was only noticeable because of what she started doing with it later.
Also, I (Mepechu Chohari, a spirit-folk shaman who somehow found her way to Greyhawk from Rokugan) cast Divination and asked, paraphrased, 'What the hell are we supposed to be doing here?' See, there had probably been clues and stuff in Hommlet, but Marcus, the de-facto party leader, had ignored them in favor of just going out and killing everything that moved, or looked like it might move. The answer wasn't really what I'd been looking for, but it gave us someone to look for in the inner temple that sounded like he might be able to get us back on track.
Anyway, then we rested, and the sanctified area seemed to work to keep the Doom Dreamers away. A couple of our group still had bad dreams that kept them from resting, but we didn't get fireballed in our dreams again. In the morning we headed out for the air bridge (about an hour's walk), killed the regenerating chimera again, put up our 'most of the day' buffs (bull's strengths and the like, and I polymorphed myself into a troll), and let Marcus gingerly insert the air key into the receptacle on the door with a mage hand.
It opened.
Nothing attacked us right away, but of course that couldn't last. We walked up some stairs and were jumped by four arrowhawks, camoflaged against the walls. Lightning shot out, zapping Guinsette and Thanos (our other front-line fighter) pretty badly, then Darien (killer Archer Boy, a deep-woods sniper, that our cleric Bella keeps full up on magic arrows using Greater Magic Weapon) took one out with a single shot... and Guinsette charged across the room, up the wall (using her new ring of spider climb), and onto the cieling, where she engaged the birdlike elementals in melee. It was a short fight, but it drained quite a bit of healing, since Arrowhawks only need ranged touch attacks and basically never miss.
Then we opened a door, and fought a bunch of ogres in plate mail. They weren't really a match for us. We had them on the run, so I ran up to heal Thanos (he had a fly cast on him, so he'd been up ahead of the party a ways) and instead got jumped by a pack of Fiendish Dire Lions. And then everything went dark.
Thanks to Improved Grab, we ended up fighting the damn FDL in the darkness. It hurt a lot. Specifically, it hurt me a lot, but both Thanos and I managed to break out of the grapple and stagger back for healing, which managed to draw the lions out of the darkness, where they were finished off by Darian, Zod (a Drunken Master NPC, originally, although he's been played as Darien's second PC for ages now. He only fights things that threaten Bella), and... er... this inexperienced elf chick that we rescued, who's been following us around using hand-me-down weapons and armor.
Meanwhile, Guinsette scampered across the ceiling through the darkness, and found the surviving ogres waiting for us on the other side, healed and stone-skinned, along with a Troglodyte priest. Marcus zipped after her and blasted everyone with a sonic fireball, and I started casting 'summon arrowhawk', amending it to 'summon xorn' after realizing that we were still in an air temple. The first impulse would have been better.
Once through the darkness, we made short work of the ogres, even with their stoneskins, but the priest took off, with Marcus in pursuit. The priest had a funky metal leg that seemed to let him go *really fast*, but the flying mage was faster, until the priest dispelled his fly spell. And his cat's grace. And his endurance. And his persistent Shield. He was unhappy, and responded with several salvoes of magic missiles, but it wasn't enough. I ran up after him (with expeditious retreat) and cast another fly on him, but by that time the priest had enough of a lead that he managed to make it to the Fire Bridge before we could catch him, so Marcus and Thanos (our two people with fly up) decided to come back so that we could regroup, rather than taking on the new forces on their own.
And that was the session... one long battle, ending in what promises to be an extremely temporary reprieve since the trog escaped to bring reinforcements.
next session
Today was Tom's game, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Tonight we began the assault on the inner circle (or at least, on the circle inside the outer circle). And once again, pretty much the entire session was one long running battle...
One of the priestesses of the air temple had seen the writing on the wall -- or perhaps, the blood and organs of her fellows splattered across the temple walls -- and agreed to bless an air key for us, a while back. So, having cleared the enemies away from the air bridge during the previous session, we retreated to the sanctified dwarven temple to rest, hoping that its blessing would protect us from the curse of the doom dreamers. Even though we'd previously stripped the entire dwarven area of anything not nailed down.
Before sleeping, Marcus the Malevolent Mage identified the loot from the air bridge and earth temple for us... nothing really notable, except for a ring of spider climbing that guinsette (the half-orc fighter/ranger/barbarian/rogue) took to replace her ring of climbing. Which was only noticeable because of what she started doing with it later.
Also, I (Mepechu Chohari, a spirit-folk shaman who somehow found her way to Greyhawk from Rokugan) cast Divination and asked, paraphrased, 'What the hell are we supposed to be doing here?' See, there had probably been clues and stuff in Hommlet, but Marcus, the de-facto party leader, had ignored them in favor of just going out and killing everything that moved, or looked like it might move. The answer wasn't really what I'd been looking for, but it gave us someone to look for in the inner temple that sounded like he might be able to get us back on track.
Anyway, then we rested, and the sanctified area seemed to work to keep the Doom Dreamers away. A couple of our group still had bad dreams that kept them from resting, but we didn't get fireballed in our dreams again. In the morning we headed out for the air bridge (about an hour's walk), killed the regenerating chimera again, put up our 'most of the day' buffs (bull's strengths and the like, and I polymorphed myself into a troll), and let Marcus gingerly insert the air key into the receptacle on the door with a mage hand.
It opened.
Nothing attacked us right away, but of course that couldn't last. We walked up some stairs and were jumped by four arrowhawks, camoflaged against the walls. Lightning shot out, zapping Guinsette and Thanos (our other front-line fighter) pretty badly, then Darien (killer Archer Boy, a deep-woods sniper, that our cleric Bella keeps full up on magic arrows using Greater Magic Weapon) took one out with a single shot... and Guinsette charged across the room, up the wall (using her new ring of spider climb), and onto the cieling, where she engaged the birdlike elementals in melee. It was a short fight, but it drained quite a bit of healing, since Arrowhawks only need ranged touch attacks and basically never miss.
Then we opened a door, and fought a bunch of ogres in plate mail. They weren't really a match for us. We had them on the run, so I ran up to heal Thanos (he had a fly cast on him, so he'd been up ahead of the party a ways) and instead got jumped by a pack of Fiendish Dire Lions. And then everything went dark.
Thanks to Improved Grab, we ended up fighting the damn FDL in the darkness. It hurt a lot. Specifically, it hurt me a lot, but both Thanos and I managed to break out of the grapple and stagger back for healing, which managed to draw the lions out of the darkness, where they were finished off by Darian, Zod (a Drunken Master NPC, originally, although he's been played as Darien's second PC for ages now. He only fights things that threaten Bella), and... er... this inexperienced elf chick that we rescued, who's been following us around using hand-me-down weapons and armor.
Meanwhile, Guinsette scampered across the ceiling through the darkness, and found the surviving ogres waiting for us on the other side, healed and stone-skinned, along with a Troglodyte priest. Marcus zipped after her and blasted everyone with a sonic fireball, and I started casting 'summon arrowhawk', amending it to 'summon xorn' after realizing that we were still in an air temple. The first impulse would have been better.
Once through the darkness, we made short work of the ogres, even with their stoneskins, but the priest took off, with Marcus in pursuit. The priest had a funky metal leg that seemed to let him go *really fast*, but the flying mage was faster, until the priest dispelled his fly spell. And his cat's grace. And his endurance. And his persistent Shield. He was unhappy, and responded with several salvoes of magic missiles, but it wasn't enough. I ran up after him (with expeditious retreat) and cast another fly on him, but by that time the priest had enough of a lead that he managed to make it to the Fire Bridge before we could catch him, so Marcus and Thanos (our two people with fly up) decided to come back so that we could regroup, rather than taking on the new forces on their own.
And that was the session... one long battle, ending in what promises to be an extremely temporary reprieve since the trog escaped to bring reinforcements.
next session
