Author Topic: Sunless Citadel Adventure Path - Campaign Journal  (Read 45175 times)

Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Sunless Citadel Adventure Path - Campaign Journal
« Reply #60 on: August 12, 2015, 02:33:38 AM »
Tonight was the 47th session of the campaign.  After recapping the events of last time, and everyone getting a laugh at recalling them tromping all over the Beastlands, and being paranoid about traps and ambushes, we picked up with the Jackal Scholars.  Thankfully my slip-up from last week seemed to have been completely missed, and when I described them tonight, Værï interjected with “hound archons.”

I lightly roleplayed the end of that encounter, where the researchers had accepted a 2,000 gp retainer, and the PC’s would have to pay expenses beyond that.  The “hound archons” expected the research to take two days or so.  The deal struck, the PC’s left the scholars’ apartment, and debated what to do with the next two days; they wanted to wait until after they’d gotten the info about Thaas before reporting to Rule-of-Three at the Styx Oarsman.  Roderick went to the Tower of the Prophet and spoke to Humbart the Warden Archon, keeping his promise to keep them informed as to Rule-of-Three’s plans regarding the PC’s.  They stopped in to speak with Goldfeather at the Library of the Lady, hoping that a previously-mentioned possibility (at the PC’s urging) of work and side jobs to earn time in the extradimensional reading room had borne some type of opportunity.  Goldfeather still had nothing for them to do, but said she’d been keeping her eye out.

Then the party retreated to their inn (as yet unnamed) in the Guildhall Ward, and proceeded to eat dinner and get drunk, or in the case of Værï, study Resist Energy in preparation for scribing it the next day.  While the other PC’s are in the common room, I introduce one of the two NPC’s that are provided in the module, both as helpful resources for the PC’s, and to showcase the two new prestige classes in the appendix of the adventure.  Gryfalcon the human Jaunter saunters into the common room.  The PC’s had seen him before, as he is a regular at this establishment.  Gryfalcon looks to be in a decent mood, despite the horrific bruise splotched on his face, and he heads over to the bar.

Davben sees the intended roleplay opportunity, and steps over to start talking with the bald human.  He asks about the bruise, and Gryfalcon tells a short tale about his most recent job for the Wayfarer’s Union, ferrying a nobleman to the Infernal Battlefield of Acheron.  A small cube had been hurtling toward them when they arrived via Plane Shift, and Gryfalcon had to quickly swap places with the noble to keep him from dying (via benign transposition).  Davben has wands of that spell, and he was curious exactly what Gryfalcon meant, so the Jaunter demonstrated.  Davben then demonstrated back via a wand.  He bought Gryfalcon a drink (which improved his attitude to friendly), and the party continued speaking with him, learning about the Wayfarer’s Union, and the types of jobs that Gryfalcon will take, and the kinds of payment he expects (of relevance to his role as an NPC that might adventure with the party, he expects an equal share of treasure, with first pick of telportation-related magic items.)

Somewhere along the line an offhand remark about the water for sale in Sigil escapes Gryfalcon’s lips, and Jonmuir sees this as an opportunity to buy a future service from Gryfalcon by magically creating water.  I call for a wisdom check and on a moderate success of 12, point out that Gryfalcon has a massive bruise on his face, and there’s probably something better the druid could do to earn favor with the Jaunter than create some water…  At that Davben uses two charges from his Belt of Healing to heal 14 of Gryfalcon’s 30 points of damage, and soon after that Sir Roderick heals the remainder with Lay on Hands.  This alters Gryfalcon’s attitude to helpful, and as the discussion turns toward exploring the planes, he says he’d be interested in tromping around with the PC’s for a while, for a fair share of the loot, even if the PC’s are going to the Demonweb Pits… where his teleportation travel powers don’t function.

The next day is spent with Værï scribing a spell into his spellbook, and Jonmuir and Davben setting up a “lemonade stand” to sell magically created pure water.  I roll 3d6 and allow them to have earned 12 gp before someone runs them off and shuts them down (I didn’t say as much, but it was likely Dabus.)  The morning after, they take their time enjoying a leisurely brunch, then head back to the Jackal Scholars to learn about Thaas and Spidersilk.  They balk at the additional 2,600 gp required (the scholars had to “call in some favors” to get the information the party sought), but they take another loan from the Bank of Jonmuir, and are given the information.

I took quite a bit of time reading the histories of the two items out loud, as well as explaining the rituals needed to awaken them to full power, and explaining the tiers of abilities and the basics of how Weapons of Legacy worked, and how I was doing the cost part differently.  I explained each of the abilities the items would grant, and the requisites for each wielder.  They were quite impressed with the items (one small note, since Thaas is eventually described as having the Bane property against both evil outsiders and chaotic outsiders, and since such an ability would not stack, rather than adding the chaotic outsider bane ability, when it did so, I just kicked the base enhancement up by one, so it ends up being a +4 Holy Evil Outsider Bane Longbow at 20th level).  Roderick was so impressed with how effective Thaas would be for him as a back up for when he can’t get into melee, he is now planning to take Weapon Focus (Longbow) [which is a wielder requirement to bind Thaas to you] as his 12th level feat.

Overall, I think the players liked these boons.  Spidersilk is PERFECT for Værï.  He is an armor-wearing mage, and there couldn’t be a better character type to use this item.  The requirement to gain two ranks in Knowledge (Nature) will cause him to rejigger his planned advancement a bit, most likely (Abjurant Champion doesn’t get all knowledges, while Unseen Seer does), but we will have to wait and see.  Changing the Weapons of Legacy to be a higher gold and XP cost (much as if the PC’s were crafting the item) rather than imposing permanent penalties made them much more palatable, I think.

Among the information learned about Thaas is the fact that the first legacy ritual must be performed within one month of removing it from the burial site of Forest Hart, or the longbow disappears and returns to its resting place in the Beastlands.  This lights a fire under the PC’s to level up quickly and bind Thaas to Sir Roderick.  When first describing the abilities and the costs of Thaas, the other PC’s even offered to pay the gold cost of the ritual for Roderick, since he would be paying the XP cost.  That’s how awesome they see Thaas as being, and how they see it as integral to their quest (the prophesy did mention the bow, after all.)  It’s just awesome to see such buy-in by the players.

Having gone through all of that information, the “hound archon” scholars thanked the party for their business, and encouraged them to come back if they needed help with anything else.  They also gave the PC’s a written copy of all that information (ie - I will email the info to them).  With that newly-acquired information in hand, they decided it was time to report to Rule-of-Three.

Rule-of-Three is in his normal spot, drinking what looks like the same glass of wine.  He shows interest and reverence at the presence of Thaas, and warns the PC’s not to show it around; it might offend any demons who notice it…

The Githzerai scholar tells the party he has located the portal back to their home realm, and will tell them the location and the key once they have performed their third and final errand for him.  He hauls a satchel of books onto the table, and asks them to mount an expedition to the Demonweb Pits.  A fellow scholar resides there, a drow who has rejected Lolth’s embrace, and serves Rule-of-Three in exchange for information that aids her own research.  The party is to take these books to her, and collect a report meant for Rule-of-Three.  They should all “soon see Lolth’s plans unravel,” and it should be safe for the party to return home.  The githzerai tells the PC’s to crush a spider’s egg while walking through the front entrance of the weaver’s guildhall, and they will find themselves in the Demonweb Pits.

The party leaves a note for Gryfalcon, asking him to join them at Peak the next day, and accompany them to the Demonweb Pits.  Then they spend the afternoon and the next morning researching again about Lolth’s realm (since they don’t remember what they learned before).  Since they’d learned the basics before, I cut the research time in half, and it only took Davben an hour to relearn all the basic traits of the Abyss, and the Demonweb in particular.  Of note, web spells are effectively widened, the save DC of poison goes up by 3, spider climb and spells that summon vermin have their durations doubled, and [Evil] or [Chaotic] spells have their caster levels doubled (I warned them that if they run into a demon that they recognize as having blasphemy as a SLA… RUN), and spells of the teleportation descriptor simply do not work in the Demonweb Pits.

They also remembered the previous red herring of Draegloth, and researched the weaknesses of those half-fiends again, learning that they don’t really have any weaknesses (they don’t have DR or vulnerability to anything; I tell them that they are NOT resistant to sonic…)  There was one or two other small items they tried to learn about regarding their trip, but they aren’t important enough that I remember them now.

So, the preparations done, and Gryfalcon accompanying them, the party sets out the day after meeting with Rule-of-Three, and soon find themselves in the Demonweb pits.  They had disguised all of themselves (and Gryfalcon) as drow, or as animals, and all of them have pearls of speech for Undercommon.  Although that won’t remove all the potential encounters, that will make their lives a lot easier for about 60% of the encounters they might face.  There’s just one problem… they didn’t pack enough darkvision.

They pass through from Sigil and find themselves standing in a ring of bones on a raised dais in the middle of a bulging section of tunnel made completely out of webbing.  There is no ambient light at all.  Davben always has darkvision, Jonmuir is currently wildshaped into a desmodu hunting bat (thus blindsense, though I sometimes don’t catch when he accidentally treats it as blindsight), and Værï casts Darkvision on himself and Sir Roderick… There is no spell for Gryfalcon…

With most of the party now able to see, they note three tile mosaics that are inlaid into the other parts of the wide dais.  One depicts an iron triangle, another a blue square, and the last a bronze star.

So the party leads the Jaunter along in the dark, preferring to maintain the rouse and not attract attention with lit torches (not a bad idea).  Roderick inspects the wall of the tunnel, and notices patters in the strands of webbing.  That one looks like a silently screaming face… and over there is an image of an elf on a torture rack…  Roderick is disturbed.

The party picks a direction at random and ends up heading roughly northeast.  After traveling nearly half a mile, Jonmuir can tell that the corridor made of webbing joins up with some rock, and the hallway continues on into a stone hall.  At this point I was accidentally treating his “vision” as blindsight, and he thus automatically saw the Chwidencha that was hiding back in the depths of a deeper darkness effect.  The rest of the party got up to the point where the aberration was just outside their darkvision (which is also the range of the creature’s tremorsense), and thanks to Jonmuir’s early warning, the PC’s all fired off readied actions as the creature emerged from its den.

By the end of that series of attacks, which included two critical hits by Jonmuir’s Splinterbolt (again, errantly treating the desmodu bat form as having blindsight), the beast had 22 hit points remaining.  Thankfully it won initiative, so at least I got to attack and hit Davben once before the party slew it.  They searched the area, aided by Roderick’s Daylight armor suppressing the deeper darkness so the PC’s darkvision would function unimpeded, and Værï found a silver cube, about 5 inches to a side.  They asked Gryfalcon if he knew what it was, and he did not, though he thought it might be another key similar to this one he had gained from a previous trip here… he pulls out a silver sphere, which is a key for the teleportation mosaics, like those in the arrival chamber.

There is another web corridor that leads toward the south, and slightly upward, and the party continues that way for three-quarters of a mile before coming to a large cross-section of five corridors.  There is a hole torn in the ceiling of the intersection, and darkness filled with thin spider web strands fills the whole space (their darkvision is limited to 60 feet, but the webbing would limit vision to 100 feet regardless).  A single creature seems to be roosting at the edge of the torn hole, but its Spot check of 37 notes the PC’s as easily as they spot it.  Jonmuir fails to identify this plant creature, which is a single Spore Bat (Fiend Folio).  The plant wins initiative and flies toward the party slightly, then fires a brown ray at one of the targets in the front of the party.  I rolled randomly for Davben or Gryfalcon… the Jaunter was struck with an enervation ray (identified by Værï, despite it being a Supernatural ability; I wanted them to know what they were facing…), and gained one negative level.

That terrified the party a bit.  Another splinterbolt hit twice (and again I errantly let Jonmuir ignore concealment), but the rest of the party missed the first round due to the sporebat’s camouflage ability, which gives it total concealment in anything other than daylight.  The “simplification” of concealment in 3.5 really causes a lot of problems with regard to spore bats, shadow mastiffs, and the shadow creature template.  Total concealment means the creature can’t be seen, nor can it be targeted.  I usually treat it that way, but knowing that the Fiend Folio stat block only provides 40% concealment (thus is can be seen and targeted), I treated it as the non-RAW 50% miss chance, period.  They could still see it and target it just fine.  After all, Jonmuir will be able to turn into one of these in just a few levels…

Near the end of the first round, Roderick activated his Daylight armor as a swift action, but still failed to hit with Thaas.  But his glowing armor made it possible for the rest of the party to effectively attack the plant creature, and Gryfalcon actually hit with one of his rapid shot attacks. 

The sporebat can only use its enervation ray every other round, so it flew up to claw at Gryfalcon, hitting for a meager three damage (they aren’t melee monsters, that’s for sure).  Jonmuir cast Produce Flame, and his bear hit the sporebat, grappling it, and Davben slaying the energy draining creature with eldritch glaive.

There was a mosaic of a silver circle in the floor of this intersection, and the party started debating whether or not to use Gryfalcon’s silver sphere key to travel elsewhere in the Demonweb.  Gryfalcon couldn’t remember any of the other locations that keyed to this symbol (you can only travel to like symbols, silver circle to silver circle, etc), except the Fane of Eclavdra (which he explains is a fortress here in the Demonweb), and he knew that using it without a destination in mind would send you to a random location that had that same mosaic.  The party asks about this Eclavdra, and I ask for a Knowledge (Religion) check.  A result of 22 by Roderick seems enough for me to tell him that Eclavdra is Lolth’s high priestess… the party has NO interest in going to her fortress.  None at all.

Still, Gryfalcon tells them that there supposedly is a platinum key in the Fane of Eclavdra, and it is basically a free pass to anywhere in the Demonweb.  Despite giving them this information, he makes it clear that he has no interest in going to the Fane, and the PC’s still don’t seem to have much interest in doing so, though Davben points out that they do all look like drow…

Værï searches the area, finding a small, red tree icon (I describe it as not made of metal, but feeling like metal), and a further search of the sporebat roost above finds five sporebat seeds (which in total are worth 5,000 gp).

The random encounter chart calls for a check every hour that the PC’s are exploring the Demonweb.  They’ve fought a few battles, spent time searching, and walked (with someone who was effectively blind) for a mile and a half.  I figured this was a good spot to check for a random encounter.  It was getting close to the end of the night, and two yochlols would make for a decent end to the evening.  The two demons approached from a different direction than the PC’s did, and they approached in drow form.

Davben hailed them in Undercommon.  It wasn’t a rude greeting, but it also didn’t show a whole lot of respect either.  One of Lolth’s haidmaidens took umbrage at his tone, and flowed into its amorphous, amoeba-like form, calling him out on his lack of respect.  He identifies it as a yochlol, and kneels, attempting to smooth things over.  I ask for a Diplomacy check; since he doesn’t have a lot of ranks in Diplomacy, he asks to do a Bluff check instead.  I allow him to do so, but roll the yochlol’s Sense Motive (which a +15 modifier…) and easily discern that he is hiding something…

The rest of the party had gotten onto the silver circle mosaic (aside from Gryfalcon, who had the silver sphere key), and Davben wanted to move back to the rest of the party, but I called for initiative first.  Just a check between him and the one yochlol.  The demon won, and attempted to use Dominate Person on him.  The Warlock succeeded at his save, moved back onto the mosaic, and then Gryfalcon joined hands with the party and stepped on the mosaic himself.

They knew it was a risk, and I rolled on the random table to see where they ended up.  Initially I looked at the wrong column (for a different key/mosaic) and just said “oh shit…” when I saw where it would have put them.  Thankfully I quickly realized it was the wrong column, and saw that it was a much more friendly area that is typically deserted.  The party took up positions and readied actions to attack if the yochlols followed.

I messed up here, and didn’t realize that the yochlols, as listed, don’t have any of the teleportation keys.  I was just going with the flow.  I rolled on the random teleportation table to see where the yochlols would check first, since they would have no clue where the PC’s would have teleported to.  It ends up they checked the correct location last, giving the PC’s 4 rounds to ready actions.

But I’ll have to recount this battle tomorrow night.  It’s late, and I have to work tomorrow.

+++++++++++++

When the party used the silver sphere teleportation key and mosaic to escape the yochlols, the random roll placed them in the Hall of the Great Web, a hemispherical room 60 feet wide with a black marble floor.  There is silver scrollwork patterns in the webbing of a few sections of the walls, as well as a few stained glass windows.  The room contains four exits, and four teleportation mosaics.

The party spreads out to surround the silver circle teleporation mosaic, with everyone but the Bear getting 10 to 20 feet back from the 10-foot-wide mosaic.  Roderick turned on his Daylight armor, and the party readied actions, pretty much all focused on attacking anyone that showed up on the mosaic.

The two Yochlols appear in their normal, ameoba-like forms after four rounds, and everyone's readied attacks go off.  Gryfalcon fired his bow and missed; Værï struck with a ranged sneak attack, dealing 26 damage that overcame DR thanks to his Fiendslayer crystal.  Roderick fired Thaas, also missing.  I forget what Jonmuir did, but it didn't deal any damage; I think he hit the demons with a Flame Strike, but failed to overcome SR.  Davben nailed both of the Yochlols with his eldritch chain, overcoming SR and dealing 7 damage to each (he critted the second one), after the damage was halved due to his gloves of entanglement (leaving the yochlols entangled for 1d3 rounds).  Jonmuir's Bear 5-foot stepped and clawed one for 12 damage; just enough to scratch it after DR 10/Good, and started a grapple.

Initiative is then rolled, and the yochlols don't do very well.  Gryfalcon opens up with three rapid shot attacks, hitting the non-grappled one twice, but only dealing small amounts of damage due to DR; thankfully he rolled well, and has Favored Enemy (evil outsiders).  Værï moves into melee, drawing his rapier, thinking that the bear would provide flanking, not realizing it would not do so due to being in a grapple; he rolled terribly, anyway.  Roderick activates Law Devotion, then attacks twice with Thaas, actually hitting with the first arrow.  I forget what Jonmuir did at this point, but his Bear failed the first attempt to grapple for damage, but did so on the second grapple attempt (brown bears have BAB +6, so can damage their opponent twice in a round, the second at a -5 penalty).

Then the yochlols finally get to go.  Yochlols can shift form between their normal, amoeba-like form, a drow female form, or a spider form, as a swift action.  So the grappled one did that, and proceeded to bite the Bear, dealing a small amount of damage, and inflicting poison (Fort DC 20, 1d6 Con/2d6 Con).  The ungrappled yochlol decided to deliver retribution to Værï for his painful sneak attack; it was only at this point that I realized yochlols get eight tentacle attacks, all at +16.  Five of them hit Værï, as the elf was uncharacteristically without his Mirror Images.  Two of those five hits were criticals, so Værï ended up taking 7d4+28 points of damage, which was enough to bring him down to 7 hit points.  Davben responded with an eldritch chain, aiming the first blast at the ungrappled one, so if his second blast hit the bear (50% chance to hit either foe in a grapple), it would be the lesser amount of damage.

Gryfalcon continued to pepper the ungrappled demon with arrows, occasionally hitting well enough to deal a point or three of damage, while Værï withdrew from the demon, fearing what end may come to him if he faced that torrent of tentacles once more.  Seeing that it is hard to hit with Thaas, and difficult to overcome the yochlol's DR, Roderick swift-casts Bless Weapon on his longsword, moves up to the demon, drawing his sword and Smiting it for 20 damage.  Jonmuir flies over and casts a Cure Moderate Wounds on Værï, while the Bear continues to grapple the Yochlol, dealing only two or three damage each time it succeeds, thanks to DR.

The grappled yochlol bites the Bear again, and again the bear saves versus the fiend's poison.  The other demon full attacks Sir Roderick, hitting four times, but the paladin's Iron Ward Diamond helps absorb some of the damage.  Davben decides not to push his luck on the ranged "miss chance" into a grapple a third time, and instead uses eldritch glaive to attack the grappled yochlol, dealing 22 points of damage.

Gyrfalcon continues to pepper the demon, hitting for small or no damage.  Værï casts invisibility on himself, while Roderick hits the same yochlol again for 12 damage, then 15.  Jonmuir's bear grapples once, dealing 1 damage after DR, then releases the demon spider, and steps back 5 feet.  There was just enough clearance for Jonmuir to lay down a Flame Strike.  The ungrappled yochlol was sitting at 4 hit points by now, and failed her save.  Thirty-six points of Flame Strike rained down upon her, killing her instantly.  The recently-grappled yochlol fared much better, succeeding on the save, thus only taking 9 points of divine damage, and completely resisting the 9 points of fire damage.  Sitting at 47 of 95 hit points, having just seen its companion killed, and knowing it would not fare overly well going forward, the yochlol returned to yochlol form as a swift action, and holding a silver sphere, 5-foot stepped back onto the mosaic in the floor, and teleported away.

We ended the evening there, with the PC's distraught and vexed that the demon got away (to carry news of their presence...?)  Yes, the other denizens of the Demonweb Pits are likely to learn that there is a rogue group of drow with a few animal companions traipsing about the Demonweb.  But, if the PC's are smart, they will make sure to assume the guise of different drow next time, and maybe they'll think to use illusion to make their animal forms look like something else.  Jonmuir did mention that he is pretty well tapped out on spells, so they might be looking at finding someplace to hole up for 20 hours or so. (They have dealt with three encounters so far, at EL's 9, 10, and 10, so they are at least somewhat close to the recommended 4 equal-level encounters per day for their average party level of 10.6 [heightened because of the extra NPC's presense]).  If I were to hole-up somewhere in the demonweb, it would either involve Rope Trick (which I don't think they have, but maybe Davben has a wand of it or something), or based upon what they've seen so far, the Chwidencha lair would work pretty well.  They could also leave the Demonweb and return later, but that has other consequences that will come into play.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2015, 10:18:01 AM by ksbsnowowl »

Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Sunless Citadel Adventure Path - Campaign Journal
« Reply #61 on: August 19, 2015, 03:03:15 AM »
Tonight was the 48th session of the campaign.  We picked up with the PC’s standing in the Hall of the Great Web, a hemispherical room with a black marble floor 60 feet in diameter.  Funny thing about that… the room description read-aloud text mentions silver lines and shapes on the floor.  There are also a few hidden passages… if the PC’s would have taken the time to inspect the room.  The hidden doorways would have taken a Search check, but the floor would have merely taken a declaration that they were inspecting it… then a DC 17 Wisdom check would have allowed said character to realize that the lines and shapes are actually a map of the demonweb… and every time it changes, so does the map on the floor.

Regardless, the PC’s decided that staying here was a bad idea, and after much argument amongst themselves, decided against making another blind jump via the keyed mosaic portals.  So they pick one of four directions at random, and head in a southeasterly direction.  They also changed what drow they looked like (smart).  They set up a marching order where Jonmuir is 60 feet ahead of the rest of the party (just inside their darkvision ranges), using his 120-foot blindsense to scout out ahead.  They trudge ahead for a mile before coming to anything of interest, which they are somewhat incredulous about.  Hey, the Demonweb is a big place.

Jonmuir notices a hole in the ceiling of the web-strand tunnel up ahead, and he and a Lolth-touched Huge Monstrous Spider hear each other.  The spider sticks its head down through the hole, and Jonmuir wins initiative, and hightails it back to the party, and uses his ghostwise halfling telepathy ability to tell them all what lies ahead (yeah, the telepathy should go away when he’s wildshaped, since it is Supernatural, but that’s the whole reason he chose that race, so whatever).  The Huge spider squeezes its way down through the hole, and double-moves as far as it can to get closer to the party.

Værï fires an arrow at the vermin, missing, while Jonmuir reverts to halfling form so that he can use Fiery Burst.  The druid’s Bear couldn’t close the distance to the spider and attack, so it hung back.  Gryfalcon couldn’t see anything (no Darkvision), so he delayed.  The spider tried to entangle Sir Roderick with a web (it is a web-spinning variety), but rolled a Nat 1, then finished closing the distance to the paladin.  Two more Huge spiders crawled down through the hole and moved toward the action, and the front one tried to throw a web, too, but also rolled a Nat 1.  Davben blasts the front spider, dealing 9 damage.  Roderick full-attacked the front spider, hitting twice for a total of 35 points of damage (it makes a difference when the monsters have no DR or energy resistance), and his horse hit all three times for a total of 21 points of damage.  Roderick also activated his Daylight armor as a swift action, so Gryfalcon finished up the round with three bowshots, hitting once.

I “messed up” this fight.  I started a new job a few weeks ago, and it has kept me REALLY busy.  I didn’t have time to read over all these encounters again within the last week (I read them during my initial prep, several months ago), and so I missed two things.  There is only supposed to be one spider (the map shows three, but there is supposed to be one the first time the PC’s come here, two the second time, and three any time after that).  Oh well, it increased the EL from 5 to 8.  It will help my PC’s level faster.

Still, these spiders were basically just huge meat bags with a decent chunk of hit points.  Værï fires his bow again, still missing (firing into melee is hard, especially when you don’t have precise shot).  Jonmuir fried the front spider with Fiery Burst, dropping it into negatives, though the tactical movement involved required his bear to get out of his way with a five-foot step, thus preventing the bear from moving forward to engage the next spider.  That’s okay, the spider moved to engage the bear, biting for 17 damage, though the Bear saved versus the poison.  A web attack from the rear spider missed Davben.  The warlock responds with a chained Hellrime Blast, dealing 15 and 7 damage, and inflicting a –4 Dex penalty on the rear spider.  Roderick rode forward, and he and the horse together dealt 19 damage.  Gryfalcon had some terrible rolls this round, doing nothing effective.

Værï fires at the rear spider, as it isn’t in melee, and hits twice for a total of 11 damage.  Jonmuir fried the front spider with Fiery Burst, dealing 18 damage.  The front spider takes a bite out of Roderick, poisoning him as well, but the Paladin shrugs off the venom.  Davben chains the Hellrime again, dealing 22 and 11, and this time giving the front spider a penalty to Dex.  Roderick may have backed off and drawn Thaas at this point… I can’t recall.  Gryfalcon continued to fire at the rear spider, hitting for small damage.

Værï delayed, while Jonmuir is able to hit both spiders with his Fiery Burst, killing the front one, and dealing 20 damage to the rear arachnid.  Værï then came in and fired at the rear spider, dealing 7 damage.  The spider was ineffective in its attack against Roderick, and two hoof attacks crushed the oversized bug.

Davben flew up to peek through the hole in the ceiling, noting that there was another tunnel crossing in a roughly 90-degree angle, that touched and the hole allowed access between the two crossing paths.  Some in the party felt they were wandering aimlessly (true, but thats what this mission is…) and that they should go back and use the silver sphere teleportation mosaic again.  Debate ensued, and despite Davben pointing out that just teleporting around at random, hoping that Lissondra is located right at one of the mosaics, wasn’t likely to actually find her… the party turned back around at went back to the Hall of the Great Web.

Along the way, they encountered a normal huge monstrous spider.  During the previous fight, I had reminded Værï that one of the keys to unlocking Spidersilk was to survive the poison of a Large or larger spider without magical aid.  So when Jonmuir noticed the spider approaching, Værï went out ahead of the party, intending to get bitten.  He was bitten, and he made his saves just fine.  It died in five hits, which included two arrows from Thaas, and an eldritch blast from Davben.  During the fight Værï drew his rapier and struck with Sapphire Nightmare Blade, getting a nat 17 on the Concentration roll (for a total of 34)… and getting a Nat 1 on the attack roll.  After rolling the Concentration check, Værï even said, “watch me roll a 1.”  I continue to be vindicated in my dislike of that maneuver; he would have hit the damn thing with the 17.

The party arrives back at the Hall of the Great Web, and decides to test their luck, randomly teleporting to a silver circle mosaic in the demonweb… arriving in a strange sack-like cyst of webbing, where the tunnel is hanging precariously and spinning.  It was actually a fairly interesting encounter that way, though it didn’t have too much of an effect on the PC’s.



There are a total of nine bloodsilk spiders here, but I only had the PC’s encounter five of them (the five on the pendulum), since they never left the spinning section of tunnel.  A piece of paper folded lengthwise was just about perfect for the hanging section of tunnel, so I could spin it 90 degrees each turn.

Despite appearing right next to a threatening spider (the party is so large with wildshapes, animal companions, etc, that they spilled out in every direction from the mosaic when trying to run the tactical encounter), everyone in the party except Roderick beat the aberrant vermin at initiative.  Værï got a sneak attack on the one near the blue square mosaic, Jonmuir’s bear clawed and grappled the closest one, and the druid finished it off with a bite.  The tunnel spun 90 degrees, and Davben blasted a spider or two.  Gryfalcon again couldn’t act since he was effectively blind, and two spiders crawled into the tunnel section through holes, with two biting at Davben, and one nailing Roderick with its blood web, and entangling him.  Roderick fired his bow, hitting the one near the blue square.

Another round or two brought this fight to a close without much danger to the party.  The bloodsilk dealt Roderick one instance of 3 damage before he broke out with a strength check.  With the five spiders dead, the party tried to use the silver cube planar key that they found on the blue square mosaic, but it didn’t work.  Then they just teleported back to the Hall of the Great Web.

Frustrated that randomly teleporting wasn’t seeming to get them to their goal, they decided to trudge off in the opposite direction than they did at the start of the night.  A half mile later they come to a T-intersection of sorts, and turn left (Værï always goes left… in an infinite plane…)  There is talk about leaving to get more precise information for Lissondra’s whereabouts from Rule-of-Three.  Nevermind that the portal from Sigil got you as close as anything could to her, and the fact the Demonweb constantly changes (which Gryfalcon told them), so I don’t know what they thought Rule-of-Three would have been able to tell them, but whatever.  Davben gripes about the portal not getting them very close.  I point out that the map I’m working with is roughly two miles by three miles, and that “close” is relative, at least with regards to an infinite plane; this gets quite a laugh from everyone.

Arguments about teleporting via the mosaics versus walking the tunnels eventually cease, and they trudge onward, and before long they come a pair of metal doors.  Davben throws the doors open (after Værï checked them), and inside they see pools of molten lava, and two Palrethee demons (MM2) with the skeletal remnants of their wings on fire.  The demons are newly acquired allies of Lolth, and their metal building caught in the Demonweb contains a portal to their home plane (unnamed fiery level of the Abyss, or alternately the City of Brass.)  Their agreement with Lolth allows drow to pass unmolested.  Lucky for them, they are running around looking like a party of drow!

Davben authoritatively says in Abyssal that they are on the business of Lolth, and they need passage through the area.  His Bluff check of 21 beats the demons Nat 20 Sense Motive check, since they have no modifier, and the demon allows them to pass through.  Due to the positioning of the demons in the room, Davben wished to stay away from them, and so he chose the door to the right side of the room, rather than the left.  Funny how things work out… that’s they way they needed to go.

A mile down the web tunnel and they come to another door.  It is locked, and it takes Værï a few tries to get it open.  The occupants of this ensnared structure hear as he picks at the lock, and ready themselves… The party opens the door and sees a small entry room with heavy black curtains blocking off passageways to the left, right, and straight ahead.  Davben continues his authoritative ruse, declaring he comes on the business of Lolth, and demands (politely; even when demanding, his own native politeness inserts a “please” into his demand  :lmao) that the residents come tend to him.

The front door is still open, and the rest of the party hangs back at the doorway.  They all hear shuffling as someone approaches, and a tiefling pulls back the curtain opposite the door.  Davben says they are in need of research on such-and-such, demanded by Lolth, yadda, yadda, yadda, and the tiefling motions for them to enter.  Someone asks for or mentions Lissondra, and the drow female in the next room (a combination library and laboratory) asks, “you are looking for me?”  They can’t believe they actually stumbled into the right place.

Davben plays it smart, and had previously told Jonmuir to relay the real reason for the party’s arrival, while Davben continues to bloviate on topics pertaining to their “mission” for Lolth, just in case there were others listening in.  Lissondra plays along with the subterfuge, though she mentally tells Jonmuir it isn’t necessary.  Værï gives Lissondra the satchel of books, and the drow scholar retrieves a sealed letter from a box and hands it to the elf, mentally telling Jonmuir “Good of you to visit, but really, you’ll have a hell of a time surviving past the Black Gate.”  This is exactly what the encounter says she will say, but it still seems oddly out of place.  (Though I suppose it only seems out of place from the perspective of assuming the PC’s are in the dark about Rule-of-Three’s true purpose, which they are…)

The PC’s are so shocked that they found Lissondra and made the exchange without a hitch, that they can’t think of anything else to do while here.  They don’t think to ask Lissondra for information about Lolth’s plans (why are the drow raiding on Oerth, etc?), even though the drow scholar has much she could tell them (though she would have to be convinced via Diplomacy or bribery).  So, the party thanks her, and they depart the way they came.

I roll for another encounter, and it comes up “none,” so the party soon finds themselves outside the palrethee metal building again.  Feeling that the demons should have attacked the bear and desmodu bat before (hey, whatever a demon needs to do to justify carnage, right?) the two demons are arguing when the PC’s arrive.  I ask for Listen checks, and the only one who knows Abyssal fails miserably.  Still, one or two of the others can tell that an argument is going on, so they prompt Davben to press his ear to the door…

The palrethee demons are arguing over if they should have attacked the bear and bat (“the agreement is only to allow drow to pass…” “they are with the drow, they’re fine…”)  Given this information, the party acts to avoid a conflict; Jonmuir wild shapes into a dire rat and climbs in someone’s backpack, while Værï casts invisibility on the bear.  The also change what drow they look like again (gotta love hats of disguise… though Gryfalcon is under an actual disguise spell of some sort, IIRC; or maybe he was borrowing Jonmuir’s hat).

The party enters and passes through the palrethees’ domain, and as they are walking out the door they originally entered through, one of the parlethee demons uses its at will SLA to see invisibility, and verbally makes note of the bear to the other demon.  Værï quickly slams the door, and the party retreats; a percentile die works in the PC’s favor, and the demons are too lazy to follow.

Back to the Hall of the Great Web, and from there they teleport back to the spore bat rookery (where they should have had another encounter with two spore bats… oops), and then they trudge over to the chwidencha lair before turning the last corner to the arrival chamber.  But, one last encounter roll shows a standard drow patrol.  The party is using the same marching order as before, with Jonmuir out front in desmodu bat form.  His blindsense has the same range as drows’ darkvision, and when he notices them, they notice him.  He can sense that they stopped short, and gets the vague sense that one of them is pointing his direction.  Jonmuir flies back to tell the party telepathically, but Davben takes charge and just walks the party past the drow patrol.  There is a 1-6 chance on a d20 that drow patrols are hostile; otherwise they ignore a party that is disguised as drow.  I rolled a 7.  I also gave them a 50% chance to have heard about the party of distructive drow with the bear and bat companions… they hadn’t heard of the encounter reported by the yochlol that had escaped.

So the party found their way back to the arrival chamber, and crossed back into Sigil with very little trouble.  Roleplay, Bluff, and smart playing for the win!

Lastly, back in Sigil, Værï wanted to read the report they got from Lissondra, but it was sealed.  He came up with a great use of Clairaudience/Clairvoyance, and he put the sensor inside the envelope.  Granted, he might need to bend the paper a bit, pushing on it to make it “tent” out into a tube, so the sensor can actually read it, but it was quite ingenious.  I gave them a brief run-down of the information the PC’s could have gotten from Lissondra herself (the adventure doesn’t say at any point what the report contains, so I figured this was a good way to get them this information, and it would be the type of information RoT would want in a report anyway).

Lolth will soon be hosting a demon council, and several demon lords are listed as possibly attending or sending ambassadors.  None of them are named directly in the report, but they are referenced by euphemism (Prince of the Undead, Prince of Beasts, etc.)

That is where we ended.  The party ended up pushing through without resting, and they did just fine, despite a few more encounters.  Maybe this will prompt them to push forward a bit more in the furture.  Next time Roderick plans to inform the archons of the report’s contents (he even mentioned how beautiful it would be to see an army of archons descend upon the demon council…), and after sleeping the night and getting spells back (and leveling up to 10th for Jonmuir), they will take the report to Rule-of-Three.  They probably won’t be happy when he reneges on his promise to tell them how to get back home…

Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Sunless Citadel Adventure Path - Campaign Journal
« Reply #62 on: September 01, 2015, 12:14:10 AM »
“I don’t know what to do… I mean I could help to rescue you, but then I would surely die.”
- Davben

Last week was the 49th session of the campaign.  The party rested the night in their inn in Sigil, and Jonmuir officially leveled to 10th.  The party is now composed of:

Værï Able the CN Elven Rogue 2/Wizard 1/Warblade 2/Unseen Seer 4/Abjurant Champion 1
Davben the CN Human Warlock 10
Sir Roderick Cardiff of Blackpool, the LG Human Paladin 10 (of Heironeous)
Jonmuir of the Yosemit tribe, the NG Ghostwise Halfling Druid 10

They decided that the first thing they would do is go as a group, and have Sir Roderick inform the archons at the Tower of the Prophet about the contents of the report, regarding the upcoming demon council.  Well, someone had other plans…

The adventure has an encounter for an ambush by a squad of Yugoloth mercenaries.  There are several instances in which their use is suggested (if the PC’s piss off the jackal lord scholars, if they try to enter the Demonweb a second time through the door of the weaver’s guild, etc.)  Well, I made up my own reason for using it…

Remember that Yochlol that got away?  Well, she decided to do something about the situation, and recruited a Glabrezu (given the way Draegloth are made, there must be Glabrezu in service to Lolth, likely in the Demonweb, though the adventure doesn’t list any there; the Demonweb does contain a planar door to the Drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu, which lists Glabrezu as one of the demon types that resides in the city.)  The yochlol got the Glabrezu and took him to Sigil (the most likely place trouble-makers would have come from), and had him watch the portal in the entrance to the Weaver’s Guildhall.  He would see the party exit from the Demonweb (and their true forms, given his True Seeing), and could easily follow them back to their inn by using his at will ability to greater teleport to jump from alleyway to alleyway, watching them as they progressed.  Then arrangements would be made for the mercenaries, and the glabrezu would watch outside their inn, and point them out to the Nycaloth when they exited the inn.  No matter what they looked like, the nycaloth would have them in his sights, and could trial them from above, flying invisibly, and teleporting as needed.

So the party walks into an ambush as they meander through the hodge podge of chaotic Sigil streets.  I call for a Spot check from Davben (as he is the only one who could see the invisible Nycaloth), and he failed with an 8.  The nycaloth relays telepathically to the waiting mezzoloths that the party is in position.  The street fills with sickly green-yellow gas, and as the insectile mezzoloths move through the cloudkills toward the party, Fortitude saves and initiative checks are made.

Værï and Davben fail their Fort saves, and each take 2 Constitution damage; Sir Roderick and the Druid’s bear each take one point of Con damage, while Jonmuir ignores it, because he is immune to poison.  Værï identifies the yellow-green fog as cloudkill.  Davben wins initiative, and he can see one mezzoloth running through the fog toward him, but utterly fails the Knowledge (the Planes) check to identify what it is.  Given the inability to see beyond 5 feet, Davben takes advantage of the fact the mezzoloth hasn’t yet gone, and is technically flat footed (sort of…), and blasts away from right next to the mezzoloth, not drawing an AoO for the ranged attack due to him being “flat footed” (I was being nice…), hitting, but failing to overcome SR.

The mezzoloth stabs at Davben twice with his trident, missing both times.  Another mezzoloth moves forward through the mist, striking at Værï from the corner of the alleyway, critting and confirming despite cover… but in actuality failing to hit, due to the 20% miss chance from the cloudkill, that I didn’t remember to roll until after I’d told Værï about the damage.  A third mezzoloth comes around the corner of another alley up ahead, moving toward the party, and finding Jonmuir’s small form resolving into view through the mist.  The insectile fiend stabbed the halfling for six points of damage.

Jonmuir doesn’t recognize what these creatures are, and having just taken damage, decides to wild shape into a Desmodu hunting bat, healing his damage, and flying straight up 30 feet, though the mezzoloth rolls a Nat 1 on his AoO as the bat flies away.  He sees that the bank of fog fills an unexpectedly-large section of the alleyway (it’s actually two fog cloud spells side-by-side, though moving past each other in opposite directions).  Jonmuir’s bear fails to hit the mezzoloth in front of him, and then runs away, exiting the fog.  The resulting AoO as the bear runs away from the mezzoloth in front of him is negated by the fog’s miss chance.

Værï hopes to get help from a group of Dabus he saw in the street up ahead just prior to the cloudkills forming, Tumbling away from the mezzoloth threatening him, and just barely exiting the fog.  The Dabus that he approaches has a very large “thought bubble” above his head showing a barrage of things, such as the Lady of Pain’s face looking angry, Værï locked behind prison bars, and large hand positioned palm out, indicating “stop.”  Værï is somewhat incredulous… they are being attacked, and they are being told to stop… defending themselves?  He proceeds to cast mirror image, getting seven images.

Out of nowhere a claw tears at Jonmuir’s bat-like flesh, inflicting 11 damage, and a large green four-armed gargoyle-like fiend appears in the air before him.  Sadly, the second claw attack failed to hit with a Nat 1… I’ve never successfully gotten to use the Nycaloth’s Lift Off ability against a PC before…

Down on the street, Roderick activates Law Devotion, and then attempts to call his warhorse… and the horse doesn’t come… This is the first time he has tried to call Butch while in Sigil, so this is the first time he has had an opportunity to learn that calling effects do not function within the planar metropolis.

Still surrounded by deadly fog, Davben fires a Mortal Baned Hellrime Blast at the nearest mezzoloth; lucky for him, that fiend had already used his AoO for the round against Jonmuir’s retreating bear.  The blast strikes… but fails to overcome SR.  The warlock 5-foot steps back, getting near the edge of the fog cloud, and casting blockade from a wand as a swift action.

The mezzoloths’ turn arrives, and the first thing I do is have the cloudkills move… but I screwed up and only had them move five feet instead of ten.  This mistake will have them persist twice as long as they should have throughout the battle (as their centerpoints would have moved into walls and thus removed them from play twice as fast as I had them do so…  But to the party’s benefit, I didn’t subject anyone to double saving throws in the are where the two spell effects overlapped.)  As I draw the advancing banks of the two cloudkills, the party cries out in surprised horror at how smart the fiends were, now realizing they had cast two instances of the deadly fog, seeing the edges at the ends of the street moving in opposite directions.  Everyone but Jonmuir and his bear have to roll saves versus the cloudkills, Davben fails, taking 3 Con damage, while Roderick and Værï each take one.  Davben has not been struck in combat, but his total of 5 points of Con damage has lowered his hit points from 67 to 37…

Since the party members had all moved away from the mezzoloths on their turns, I rolled a 1d3 for each of the three mezzoloths to see exactly which direction they would stumble blindly through the clouds (although the yugoloths are immune to the poison of cloudkill, they still can’t see through it any better than the party), biased toward the general direction in which their former targets had retreated.  One of the fiends 5-foot steps directly toward Sir Roderick, but his excellent attack roll was negated by the fog’s miss chance, and its second attack flat out missed the paladin’s Law Devotion-buffed AC.  Another mezzoloth approaches Davben, failing to hit with a Nat 1.  The single attack by the last mezzoloth also missed.

Jonmuir makes use of his good maneuverability, and “5-foot flaps” backward and down, out of the nycaloth’s reach, and identifies the nycaloth with a Knowledge (the Planes) check, thus learning all yugoloth traits (immune to acid and poison, and resistance 10 to everything else but sonic).  Despite the fire resistance, Jonmuir calls down a flame strike centered on the nycaloth’s rear end, but fails to overcome the fiend’s SR.  Unable to help his flying master, or contend with the killing fog, the Bear keeps to himself, safely up the street.  Værï makes use of his cloak of arachnida, spider climbing up the side of the 30-foot tall building, and uses his anklets of translocation to teleport the last 10 feet up onto the roof of the building.  Bow in hand, he fires at the nycaloth failing to hit with a 15 on his attack roll.

Jonmuir’s claw wound bleeds for one point of damage, while the nycaloth sees Værï’s eight targets, and opts to attack Jonmuir again, 5-foot flapping up to the druid, hitting with his first greataxe attack for 19 damage, and hitting again with his second greataxe attack for 14 more damage.  The third axe swing misses the druid’s bat form, as does the first claw, though the second claw does hit for six more damage.  Sir Roderick smites the mezzoloth next to him, hitting with a 30 on the attack roll, but his sword isn’t blessed at the moment, so half of his 20 damage is resisted.  He also hits with his second swing, but it is entirely resisted by DR.

Davben moves 10 feet back with his anklets of translocation, moving out of the deadly fog, and flies up onto the 10-foot high roof of the building on the east side of the street.  He takes aim at the nycaloth that is attacking Jonmuir, succeeding in hitting and overcoming SR, for 21 points of untyped magical damage.  The mezzoloths stumble through the fog, swinging at Sir Roderick, and missing terribly*.  Jonmuir uses his anklets of translocation (via wilding clasp) to teleport down into the fog, where the nycaloth can no longer see the poison-immune druid.  Jonmuir then casts a Cure Moderate Wounds on himself.

*Note I forgot to have them save versus the cloudkill at this point.

Værï swift-casts Shield, and with bow in hand, Fiend-Slayer weapon crystal already attached, hitting with a 30, but dealing only 7 points of damage; at least it overcame his DR.  The elf fires a second time, but misses.  The Nycaloth was successfully attacked twice in the last round, and he can see both Davben and Værï… He decides to match Værï’s tactics, using his Mirror Image SLA, gaining five images, and moving right up next to Værï, glaring at him menacingly.  Sir Roderick swift-casts Bless Weapon, and smites the nearest mezzoloth, hitting with an attack roll higher than 30, dealing 26 points of damage, and hitting with his second attack for another 14 damage, then five-foot stepping back into the concealing fog.

Davben moves to within 60 feet of the nycaloth and attacks with a chained entangling blast, taking out two of the nycaloth’s images.  The cloudkills continue their slow march across the narrow battlefield, their center-points moving beyond the walls lining the street, so the fog disperses.  The mezzoloths move to attack Roderick, all missing.  Jonmuir fires a splinterbolt at one of the mezzoloths, hitting twice for 19 damage and 8 damage, but those are reduced by the yugoloth’s DR 10/Good.

Værï Tumbles back from the Nycaloth and casts invisibility, causing himself and his images to disappear.  Unbeknownst to Værï, the Nycaloth can see invisibility, so he 5-foot steps over to the invisible elf and swings with his great axe destroying one of the wizard’s images.  Roderick swift-casts Bull’s Strength, and full attacks, massively hitting twice for 16 damage and 15 damage, all overcoming DR.

Davben moves up just a smidge to get within 60-feet of the nycaloth, and uses his gloves to fire another entangling blast at the four-armed fiend, hitting the fiend for 8 after the halving, and hitting two images, destroying them.  Two of the mezzoloths full attack Roderick, the first missing with attack rolls of 25 and 24, though the other one does crit the paladin for 12 damage, and the third mezzoloth casts another cloudkill, centered right in front of itself, aiming its movement across the street toward Roderick, who takes 1 point of Con damage.

Jonmuir senses the land-bound fiends through the cloudkill and casts Flaming Sphere, but fails to overcome the fiend’s SR.  Værï sees two nycaloths before him, 5-foot steps back and attacks, hitting the fiend with an arrow for 10 Good damage, and another 7 with an unconfirmed Nat 20.  The Nycaloth finally is able to five-foot step up to Værï, and this is the first full attack since I’d noticed I had forgotten about his two rake attacks that he can use when flying…  The three greataxe attacks all hit high, but only take out three of Værï’s mirror images, while one claw takes out an image, but the second is a low roll, and bounces off of Værï’s armor, then both rakes roll well, but destroy the last two of Værï’s images…  At least the spell did what it was supposed to.  Værï laments having prepared only one mirror image today, opting instead for now-useless copies of invisibility.  Sir Roderick hits one of his attacking mezzoloth foes for 9 damage.

Davben moves forward slightly and chains a blast, destroying the nycaloth’s last image, but failing to affect the fiend himself.  The mezzoloths attack Roderick repeatedly, hitting twice for 11 damage both times, and critting him once for an additional 11 damage.  Jonmuir moves his Flaming Sphere toward a different mezzoloth, overcoming SR, but the fiend makes the reflex save, negating the damage.  The Druid then heals himself with his healing belt (which also has a wilding clasp).  Værï decides to cast Blink.  When I call for a Spellcraft check he swears in frustration, thinking I was going to point out that the nycaloth could still see him while he is on the Ethereal Plane…  So instead he uses his anklets to teleport back 10 feet, casts Haste, doubling the Climb speed he gains from his cloak, and climbs over the edge of the roof, and down the wall, to about 10 feet above the street.  The nycaloth, even with a halved speed, can fly 45 feet, and follows right after Værï, attacking the elf once, hitting for 22 damage.  Roderick moves away from the mezzoloths, taking two AoO’s from the mezzoloths for 18 total damage, but getting out of the couldkill, and dumping all his lay on hands into 20 points of healing for himself.

Davben double moves along the rooftops on the east side of the street, just gaining a clear line of sight to Værï and the Nycaloth down the alley heading west away from the main street.  The mezzoloth’s cloudkill moves into a building and disappears, and one of the mezzoloths charges Jonmuir for 8 damage, while another approaches him and attacks, but misses.  Jonmuir tries to attack the same mezzoloth with his flaming sphere once again, but again it dodges with a reflex save, then casts spiderskin on himself.  The druid’s bear charges at a mezzoloth, attacking with a claw and hitting for 12 damage and starts a grapple.  Værï defensively casts blink to pass through the wall into the warehouse he is climbing on, forgetting that there is no ethereal plane in Sigil.  He then attempts to Tumble away from the nycaloth, failing with a 14, and getting hit with the fiend’s greataxe for 18 points of damage, leaving him with 3 hit points.  The Nycaloth follows after the elf, hitting him with a claw for 7 damage, and knocking him unconscious.  Roderick swift-casts angel skin, granting him DR 5/Evil that stacks with his ironward diamond, then attacks one of the mezzoloths, failing with his power-attacking first swing, but rolls a Nat 20 on his second swing, and thanks to bless weapon, auto-confirming the critical hit for 24 damage.

Davben uses eldritch chain on the mezzoloths, hitting the first, second, and third targets for 15, 7, and 3 damage each; he then moves and draws a wand as a swift action with his wand bracers.  The grappled mezzoloth tries to escape the grapple with the bear, failing the tie with the bear, while his companions move to flank Roderick, hitting twice between them (one would have been a crit, but that was negated by the Paladin’s light fortification armor), and since mezzoloths strike as evil, even with their weapons, the angel skin spell didn’t help Roderick this time, and he ended up taking ten total damage after DR.  Jonmuir’s Bear grapples its mezzoloth dealing damage once, while the druid flies back into an alleyway that will eventually lead around to where Værï is getting slaughtered, but he can’t get there, so stops to heal himself with a Cure Light Wounds.  Værï fails his stabilization check, and bleeds to –6, while the nycaloth picks up his limp form, and struggles aloft with the elf, only gaining a height of 30 feet before his entangled speed reaches its end.  Roderick ends the round with a full attack, failing with a Nat 1, and striking with the second swing, dealing 15 points of damage, making one mezzoloth look to be near death.

As Davben saw the nycaloth flap above the rooftop with Værï in his arms, the party began fretting aloud (though thankful Roderick is now carrying the party loot in the bag of holding), and Værï had resigned himself to the fate of death.  But Davben had an idea…

The nycaloth was 30 or so feet away from Davben, and the warlock yelled out that Værï was up on the roof and needed healing.  He then used his wand of benign transposition to swap places with Værï, placing himself in the nycaloth’s claws, while Værï’s unconscious form slumps onto the rooftop.  Davben then uses his anklets of translocation to extricate himself from the fiend’s grip, placing himself back on the edge of the roof, five feet away from the nycaloth.  The party exclaims in joyous celebration, and Davben declared that his rescue attempt had worked out so much better than he’d thought it would.

Two of the mezzoloth’s fail to hit Roderick, and the third one actually succeeds in escaping from the Bear’s grapple.  The bear attacks the mezzoloth again, hitting with both claws, but failing to initiate another grapple.  Jonmuir flies up to Værï’s location on the roof, bringing the elf back to consciousness with a Cure Light Wounds.  Now conscious, Værï heals himself with his Belt of Healing, then stands up.

Davben is still undamaged, other than Constitution damage having robbed him of 30 hit points.  His AC of 22 won’t hold up well to the Nycaloth’s attack routine of seven attacks…  But that whole littany was not necessary, because the nycaloth scored a critical hit with his first swing, dealing 63 points of damage, slaying Davben instantly.  The fiend followed that up with two claws, and has a hold of Davben’s corpse.  Roderick then deals the first decisive blow, killing one mezzoloth, and injuring another.

The party is demoralized at this point, and the nycaloth’s tactics specify that once he claims one party member, he flies off with him to claim the bounty.  A mezzoloth full attacks Jonmuir, failing both times, while the other mezzoloth attacks the Bear, hitting for a small amount of damage.  The Bear fights back, bitting for minor damage that fails to overcome DR, then hitting for 2 damage (after DR) with a claw, then attempts to claw again, failing.  Jonmuir attacks the nycaloth with Splinterbolt, hitting with the first for 21 damage (10 is ignored), and hitting with the second, scratching the nycaloth for 1 damage after DR.  Værï doesn’t know in-character that the nycaloth is immune to acid, so he attacks with a lesser acid orb, hitting but not doing any damage while the nycaloth uses a double move to fly 90 feet away with Davben’s corpse, and all his wands and scrolls.  Roderick crits another mezzoloth with a power attack for 31 points of damage, halving that one’s health.

One mezzoloth withdraws away from the Bear, and the other 5-foot steps away from Roderick, and casts another cloudkill for 1 Con damage each to Roderick and the Bear, and then the bear moves out of the fog, and closes the distance to the retreating mezzoloth.  Jonmuir directs his flaming sphere to a new mezzoloth, but fails the SR check against it, then casts Ice Flower around the mezzoloth who just cast the cloudkill, damaging it somewhat.  Værï chases after the Nycaloth, jumping from building to building, and firing his bow at the fiend, hitting for 11 damage.  The entangling effect on the nycaloth ended, and the fiend runs away with his corpse, flying 360 feet, at a slightly upward angle to perform a “great circle route” across Sigil.  He escapes, and the players are so done with this encounter, which took nearly the entire session (I was thinking it would just make a good opening encounter for the evening…), that I handwaive the escape of the other two mezzoloths, and we begin discussing what means there are to bring Davben back from the dead when they don’t have his body.

A Knowledge (the Planes) check by Jonmuir lets him know about Glabrezu and their ability to grant a wish once per month to a mortal humanoid… but with a paladin in the party, that’s not overly feasible (though if there weren’t a paladin in the party, Værï would have been all over that).  The remaining party goes to speak to the archons at the Tower of the Prophet, now hoping they will help resurrect their fallen companion.  Roderick and Jonmuir both fail abysmally on Diplomacy checks to that end, though the archons are interested in the information the party has brought them about the upcoming Demon Council, and urge them to work toward stopping it.

That’s where we ended things.  There is probably enough of Davben’s blood that was spilled from being nearly hacked in half that it could be used to have him reincarnated or resurrected… but we’ll see if the party members pick up on that tomorrow night when I recap Davben’s death.  Davben has made a replacement character in case the party doesn’t think to use his copious amounts of blood to have him brought back.  We’ll find out tomorrow which he ends up using.

Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Sunless Citadel Adventure Path - Campaign Journal
« Reply #63 on: September 13, 2015, 04:07:39 PM »
Two weeks ago we had the 50th session of the campaign.  When recapping the short timeline of events from the previous week, I mentioned the copious amounts of blood that fell from Davben’s body as the Nycaloth carried away his corpse.  As the party turned to leave the archon tower, the celestial asked how Davben was killed.  “Nearly cut in half” was the gist of Værï’s response.  The archon mentioned how the blood dripping from his dead body could be used to resurrect him.  This got the party to hurry back to the scene of the crime (which happened a mere hour ago, at most), and Roderick started mopping up what blood he could with a blanket.

Jonmuir also noted that the blood continued to drip and leave a trail across streets and rooftops.  He had taken eagle form to note the first large blood splotch on the roof, where Davben was killed, and then started to follow the blood trail.  I had included the blood trail simply as a means of ensuring they got blood that fell from Davben’s corpse after he was already dead (thus meeting the strict wording on reincarnate and resurrection), but the party started using it to track the fiend…  Not wanting to punish their good thinking, I went with it.

The druid tracked the blood splatter to a large open window.  Not knowing if the fiend had entered the building, or used the window as a portal to exit Sigil (though suspecting the latter), Roderick burst through the front door, ready to face down evil.  Instead he found a scantily-clad Aasimar woman who started screaming at the top of her lungs.  He noted that there were no blood drips readily apparent in the apartment, uttered a hasty apology, and left.  The window was obviously a portal to somewhere, and Jonmuir’s ridiculous attempt to wave his arms and jump through the window in a vain attempt to guess the proper portal key, led the party nowhere.  (For the record, I had decided the portal led to Gehenna, where the nycaloth was planning to hide out with the body for a day or so to lose the party, and not lead the PC’s back to his Yochlol employer).

The other players had occasionally been asking or hinting at wanting to get a hint from Davben if he really wanted to be brought back, or if he wanted to come in with his new character.  Davben stayed quiet, and left that decision completely to the party, as in-character they would have no way of knowing what Davben would want. (Light implications by me that Augury, etc., could assist in learning if Davben would refuse the reincarnation attempt, went unheeded).

So the party waited until the next morning, then Jonmuir reincarnated Davben.  Davben had secretly been hoping to be brought back as something a little more exotic, and I had told him to make a list of all the subraces of the races listed in the Reincarnate chart.  If he came up as “elf” or “dwarf” or whatever, then I’d assign percentages on the fly to his lists of subraces, and roll to see if he came back as a plain old PHB version, or some other subrace of that type of creature.  Jonmuir rolled an 89… Human.  Davben didn’t apparently know there are human-associated races in Races of Destiny.  I wouldn’t really call them subraces, though, so he returned as a plain old human.

After the session, Davben was texting me, telling me he was a little disappointed that he had been brought back as the Warlock, rather than coming in with his new character (a Chaos Gnome “Sorcerer” 8; there were some PrC levels involved).  He said he is feeling … not useless, but less than useful.  He recognizes that he made this character as a damage dealer, which could be great… except that’s the same role everyone else in the party is trying to fill.  Roderick is a decent beat stick, soaking damage and getting decent hits in fairly regularly.  Værï mostly tries to be a damage dealer, rather than a problem solver; I suppose that’s what gishes are best for, so I don’t fault him for playing that way, I guess.  Jonmuir is the most aggravating one on that front, I suppose.  He’s the only full caster, and of late it seems he’s spent half his turns healing himself, or using questionable tactics (flaming sphere versus monsters that have SR and Fire Resistance 10 isn’t worth the action of casting it).  At least he discovered Align Fang tonight, so his Bear will start being an effective combatant against the demons the party is facing.  Anyway, Davben recognizes that a sorcerer might fill a needed party role a bit better than his current character… but at the same time wanted to gimp his casting by taking a +1 LA race… *sigh*

Davben’s new body forms, and Jonmuir expends several more spells dealing with the party’s Con damage from the day before, so the party waits one more day before going to take Lissondra’s report to Rule-of-Three.

The party went through and finally got around to selling several items they’d been holding onto for several sessions, including the suit of mithral full plate they got from the Wild Hunter (sold at a favorable percentage for 7,500 gp), and the Sporebat seeds they found in the Demonweb (total of 5,000 gp), producing a liquid wealth total of 15,946 gp that Davben could use to reequip himself.  Værï still had his mithral chain shirt, so lent Spidersilk to Davben for the time being (since the warlock doesn’t suffer the arcane spell failure, and Værï’s own mithral shirt has twilight on it).

Davben spends 13,900 gp (the party didn’t want him to spend everything).  I make an off-hand comment about Davben’s tanned skin making a wonderful rug (like a bear-skin rug) in some demon lord’s palace.  Roderick finds the thought horrifying, and makes a promise to himself that he will try to find out what happened to Davben’s corpse, and who was responsible, if information and opportunity allow for it.

Davben decided his new body is bald, so he bought a wig to hide his new embarrassment.  Værï decides that he won’t be preparing blink for the time being, since it is useless until they get back to the Material Plane.

In the morning, the party heads to the Styx Oarsman to meet up with Rule-of-Three once again.  Værï made note to the rest of the party that Rule-of-Three always does everything in threes, so if they can convince him to pay them some extra money (to make up for Davben’s lost loot), they need to hold out before agreeing to a deal, as he might offer up three sums of wealth.  The tavern looks much as it always does, and Rule-of-Three is sitting in his usual spot, reading that large tome that Værï was interested in several sessions back.

Jonmuir glumly says that their companion died, and blandly says “pay us.”  Rule-of-Three inquires about what happened and the party explains.  Værï explains that the recent endeavors seemed a bit riskier than they had anticipated, but they had retrieved the report the githzerai scholar had requested.  Værï reluctantly hands it over, and Rule-of-Three opens the sealed envelope and reads through the report.  Værï verbally questions if Rule-of-Three can trust the information from Lissondra, and the scholar answers that this report confirms information he had heard elsewhere.

Here is where Rule-of-Three drops his bomb… “I regret I must inform you that I cannot yet tell you how to return to Oerth.”  The party understandably cries foul, and Rule-of-Three enters his boxed-text-spiel about a servant of Orcus that has offered Rule-of-Three three things to help the situation.  The time of the upcoming Demon Council, a map of the Demonweb itself, and a key to pass the Black Gate and enter the lower reaches of the Demonweb.  I and the text assume that Rule-of-Three knows the PC’s know about the Demon Council (the writers probably assuming they would have learned the information directly from Lissondra, and have shared it with Rule-of-Three first thing…), but Værï does a great deadpan of “Demon Council? What are you talking about?”  I pause in reading the boxed text and Rule-of-Three explains the basics, so the boxed text can continue under the proper assumptions.

Rule-of-Three points out the prophecy the party obtained from the Tower of the Eye, and that they have obviously been preordained to walk this path, and that the Queen of Spiders must be hunted in her own web, and Orcus’ servant has the weapons they must use.  The party must meet this servant at an establishment in the Abyssal city of Zelatar.

Roderick, perturbed by Rule-of-Three welching on his deal with the party, wants clarification as to if RoT can’t tell the PC’s how to get back home, or if he won’t tell them how to get home.  RoT’s implication that they share the same foe, etc, etc, is met by Værï with a loudly stated “You want us to take down a demon goddess?”  To which Davben urgently whispers “Værï! Lower your voice!”

Still unsatisfied with a lack of answer, Roderick demands to know: can’t or won’t.  Rule-of-Three sheepishly states that the party are the best tools he has available to deal with the situation… and the party starts demanding recompense, and driving a hard bargain.  Rule-of-Three places a bag containing 10,000 gp worth of diamonds on the table (I note that this is coincidentally the amount of diamonds you need to perform a resurrection…)  Værï stands firm, that this is merely a start at compensating them for the danger they will be putting themselves in…

At Davben’s prompting that Rule-of-Three must have access to rare and interesting magic items, the Githzerai pulls out a pale lavender ioun stone, and places it on the table.  Davben detects that it is magical, and a quick look through the artificer’s monocle shows it to be just that.

“There must be something better, something powerful, something cool, that you can give to us…” Davben insists with a decent Diplomacy check.  Despite great reluctance, Rule-of-Three sighs, and slides over the large tome he was reading, and gives them the Book of Flesh and Mirrors.  It is a book containing several interesting spells related to mirrors and the Plane of Mirrors, and also contains information about the Plane of Mirrors, and how to create a mirror mephit.  Of most immediate importance, it contains the spell Analyze Portal, which is like Detect Magic for portals, and might actually allow you to look through a portal (vision limited to the 60-foot range of the spell) and see what is waiting on the other side.  Although the following information isn’t concrete and given to the PC’s, the book is valued at roughly 100,000 gp, were it to be sold on the open market (of course, the adventure intends that the PC’s will use it to buy time in the extradimensional reading room at the Library of the Lady, after they have copied several spells from its pages).

The party then asks if Rule-of-Three knows where a portal to Zelatar exists in Sigil, and the Githzerai tells them such a portal resides in the stables of the Styx Oarsman.  Climb the ladder to the hayloft while thinking of a platinum piece.  With that they depart from the Styx Oarsman, and make plans to spend the next several days researching Zelatar and Graz’zt, and study spells from the new spellbook.  They also take their newfound wealth (the diamonds, plus 14,000 gp they get from selling the ioun stone [Roderick rolled a Nat 20 on his Diplomacy check to garner a high price]) and finally heed my suggestion to buy two scrolls of Teleport.  Oh how things would be different if the party had owned a scroll of Teleport when the Yugoloth mercenaries had descended upon them…

Værï spends the afternoon reading through the Book of Flesh and Mirrors, skimming its contents, and I tell him all the spells it contains, and describe those that aren’t found in the PHB and Spell Compendium.  He then spends 5 days scribing, adding Heart of Water and Analyze Portal, among others, to his spellbook.

Davben and Jonmuir go to the Library of the Lady to research Graz’zt and Zelatar.  Before they go in, Roderick succeeds at a Knowledge (Religion) check to start them off with some basic info on the demon lord (patron of corrupt rulers, keeper of secrets, etc).  They had mistakenly been thinking that Graz’zt was the place they were going, so with the above info, they decided they wanted to learn about the city and the layer (thinking there was only one).  I prompted them to research the city first, as it would reveal that the city exists on three different layers simultaneously.

The adventure has a Know (Planes) chart on Zelatar (DC’s 15, 20, and 27), and Jonmuir decides to assist Davben’s roll, but fails to get a 10, so does not.  Davben gets a 24, and with a +2 bonus from the Library… gets a 26.  He just misses out on one of the most important pieces of information to this stage of the module; Merchants in Zelatar are protected from demonic harassment by a special edict.  Though it would take other means to find out the details, the party can obtain a Merchant Charter for Zelatar, which provides them with a sizable level of protection.  Too bad they failed this method of obtaining the info…

The adventure has two other methods for learning about the merchant charters.  One involves hiring the Jackal Lord scholars to learn about the charters (and obtain one for the party), but that has the disadvantages of costing money (1,500 gp) and requiring that you ask specifically about the charters, or something close to it (“is there a way to travel safely in Zelatar?” Etc.)  The third method though… the party has NO excuse for missing the information, because I already gave it to them.  It is in the Traveler’s Guide they bought when they first got to Sigil.  But my players like to follow a pattern… I think this will make the third time they have failed to read the information I physically gave them, and instead jumping blindly through to a plane they’ve never visited before… 

The paper that Værï’s player has physically in his possession says “… Graz’zt’s Edict, which made his city great, states that any mortal or outsider merchant is protected from violence while within the city, unless he commits a crime such as … [a] violation of Graz’zt’s truce. … all who disobey it are hunted down and killed. …”  There’s certainly enough there to prompt searching out how to become a merchant, and the benefit of becoming one is well worth the 1,500 gp cost the Jackal Lord scholars would demand.

Instead, after a mere one day of research, Davben learns that Zelatar is ruled in a sharp hierarchy, and that the city is built on all three layers Graz’zt rules.  Several example demon denizens are mentioned, as is the strict rule against melee combat in the city, and a suggestion to hire a guide to help find your way around.  Jonmuir is perceptive enough to note that only melee combat is banned, and thus ranged and magical combat are allowed.  He was half joking, in the purposefully obtuse way that he does, but he is actually correct.

Then Roderick has an idea… maybe he should spend part of these six days awakening Thaas… but he has to meet the first requirement, being that he has to “knowingly and willingly enter into an encounter with an outsider that has the chaotic and evil subtypes.  The EL of this encounter must exceed the average party level by 1 to 4.”  He and the others wonder if there is something they can do here in Sigil to unlock Thaas before they head into the Abyss.  Maybe Rule-of-Three knows someone he wants knocked off… or maybe the Archons?  They would be a better group to approach for this subject.

Roderick heads to the Tower of the Prophet, and speaks with Humbart, asking if there are any demons around that “need to be taken care of…”  Humbart says there may be a situation that needs dealing with, “so long as it doesn’t come back to us, you understand.”  I’m making this encounter up on the fly, and I’ve always been partial to Glabrezu…  It’s a CR 13, but much like a dragon, if the party goes in prepared, they should be able to handle it.  I quickly check on an encounter calculator if the EL would go up any if I added a succubus minion, and it did not (still EL 13), and so the idea started to solidify in my mind.  Humbart tells Roderick of the glabrezu, Azerbax, whose plotting has interfered with the archons’ plans.  He can be found in the lower ward, where he usually does business doing demony things (again, making this encounter up on the fly)  Through the course of the party’s planning, Jonmuir offers up the idea of trying to buy drugs from the glabrezu, and that’s how his business morphed into him being a drug dealer…

The party then spends a half hour or so making plans to deal with this proffered situation.  Illusion spells to keep others from witnessing their assault, dimensional anchor scrolls to lock the glabrezu down, staking out the drug business while eating lunch across the street, etc.

Davben works up the courage to walk across the street, planning to buy some drugs and get a look inside.  A comely woman opens the door, which prompts Jonmuir to ask if it is Idalla, but Davben has never seen Idalla, so he has no idea.  She does have wings, and Davben identifies her as a succubus.  Davben picks a drug name at random as I read them from the Book of Vile Darkness and asks if they sell that.  He concocts a believable junkie story about someone saying they sold the best stuff, etc, and his Bluff beats the Succubus’ Sense Motive roll by a lot.  He is seeking a large quantity of Baccaran for a party, and she leaves the door open, teleporting down the hall to beckon him in and point him into the parlor.

Davben almost chickens out at this point, but says he would like to bring his body guard in with him, and he’ll be right back.  His Bluff check beats her Sense Motive again, and she waits patiently as he retreats across the street, getting Værï, and having a very quick mental conversation with the rest of the party via Jonmuir’s short-range telepathy ability.  Davben and Værï head over and walk right into the glabrezu’s front door, while Roderick and Jonmuir try to nonchalantly saunter over to wait in front of the demon’s home.  Davben and Værï walk into the entry hall and back to a large doorway into the parlor, where Værï recognizes that the succubus is Idalla, and in the parlor is a Glabrezu talking telepathically with a pair of vrocks.  I have Piazo’s wonderful Glabrezu miniature, and I place it and two vrock minis on the table.  Davben says out of character “Jeez, that thing is so huge… what are we doing?!”  Værï agrees, pleadingly saying he doesn’t want to do this…

Idalla shows them into the parlor, then teleports back to the front door to close it, where she finds Jonmuir waiting outside with his bear… I think the plan had been for the druid and the paladin to follow in behind Davben and Værï, but Jonmuir says he is just standing there like a package boy, and his bear is just an exotic pack mule.  When asked by Idalla if she can help him, and he speaks like a simpleton, stumbling through an explanation that he will haul the product the others are buying.  His Bluff check beats Idalla’s Sense Motive by 2.

Davben and Værï witness a telepathic conversation between the Glabrezu and the two vrocks, then the glabrezu makes a dismissive gesture with one of his small hands, and the vrocks teleport away.  Now the encounter is just the Glabrezu and the succubus Idalla.  A difficult but winnable encounter.  Værï is still in love with Idalla, despite the mental manipulation having ended long ago, and just stares open-mouthed at her, then addresses her.  He asks how she’s been and engages in small talk as Davben gets down to business.

Davben negotiates with the Glabrezu, terrified since he has no idea what the street price is for Baccaran.  He gets out 500 gp, and lucking had chosen a drug that was relatively cheap; 500 gp will get him 50 doses, which matches with Davben’s cover story (some drugs in the BoVD run in the hundreds or thousands of gold pieces per dose, which would have looked suspicious given his story of buying a “large quantity.”)  The glabrezu teleports away, and returns with a small strongbox filled with 50 bags of powder.  Davben inspects it, and sticks a little on his tongue, saying that the product looked good.  I have him roll a fortitude save with a massive bonus, since he only put a small amount on his tongue (and it is an ingested drug, so through blind luck he picked the right thing again).  He hands the demon the gold, and when asked, successfully bluffs a junkie story about how he learned of the glabrezu’s business.  His explanation is reasonable and unverifiable, so I give him a +10 bonus on the Bluff check; he gets a 35, beating the glabrezu’s Sense Motive check of 32.

By this point the party has gotten cold feet, in part because some of them are outside the house, and they decide to abort the planned assault, and get out while they can.  As Davben packs up to leave, the glabrezu tosses him another bag, telling him to have his friends try that…  The party leaves, happy to have gotten out alive.

And that’s how my party, which includes a paladin, became drug dealers…

Though they aborted this assault attempt, Davben thinks it could still work, since now they have an in, and the glabrezu would likely expect them to return for repeat business.  They debate going back next week, and actually debate selling their stock of Baccaran on the streets of Sigil to make back their money (and possibly more…)  Roderick makes clear he doesn’t want to get the whole party killed trying to unlock Thaas, but they continue to plot going back in under Glibness to set up a larger buy.  In the end, they decide this is a dead end, at least for now, and leave it for later, turning their attention back to Zelatar, and the informant they are supposed to meet there.

They spend some time researching the denizens of Zelatar that they heard of in their research, and then they head off to the stables of the Styx Oarsman, to travel to Zelatar.  I prompt them, asking if they aren’t going to do any more research, and that they’re just going to go?  They decide to research some more at the Library of the Lady about Graz’zt’s layers specifically, and get some general info about the 45th - 47th layers of the Abyss, and that there is a portal system that can shift you from one layer of the city to another.  With that, they feel they’ve researched enough, and walk headlong through the portal to the Abyss…

They pop through the portal, arriving in a small ring of stones about 20 feet away from a road leading toward the gates of Zelatar.  The stones obscure their sight lines somewhat, but Davben hears a voice in Abyssal ordering slaves to get up and get moving.  The party uses their 3 hats of disguise to make most of themselves look like rutterkins, and then they peer around the stones and better see what is going on.  They see the road is flanked by several guardian pairs of centaur-like Armanites, and 40 feet away, on the side of the road, they see a Hezrou standing in the midst of a dozen prone, maimed demons, whipping them and placing shackles on them.

As they emerge from the ring of stones, they can see legions of demonic cavalry training outside the city, and vrocks roosting on the city walls.  Merchants can be seen heading toward the city on the road, and on a crystalline river.  Jonmuir asks what types of creatures the merchants appear to be, and all types, both humanoid and outsider, are represented.

The encounter allows for a DC 30 Knowledge (the Planes) check to reveal to unprepared parties* the obscure bit about merchants being protected in Zelatar (at least if they have the proper charter papers).  This seemed like a good place to call for that check, with Jonmuir failing miserably, and Davben failing with a 27.  That check does allow him to identify mercanes, genies, and humanoids, in addition to demons traveling along the road.

* My party is unprepared.  They only took advantage of one avenue of information gathering before coming to Zelatar, despite having another in their possession.  They also failed to use Analyze Portal before coming through to Zelatar.

The Hezrou slaver sees the party, laughs that they just came through the one-way portal from Sigil, and that he is going to make them his slaves.  Initiatives are rolled, with everyone beating the Hezrou.  Jonmuir rides his bear forward and uses Fiery Burst against the demanding demon, which made his save and took no damage.  Roderick fires two arrows at the demon with Thaas, missing twice.  Værï casts Haste on the party, then hides behind the Bear.  Davben uses his new wand of Instant Diversion, then also uses his wand of Buzzing Bee, which will force a Concentration check any time the Hezrou tries to use an SLA. (Note, we are using the version in the Miniatures Handbook, since the reprinted version in the Spell Compendium removed the operative sentence that forces the target to make a Concentration check or the spell fails…)  Davben then moves southeast, away from the party and the demon.

The Hezrou hops over the prone slaves, double moving into the midst of the party, calling out to the Armanites for help, yelling that the travelers attacked him first.  With the Hezrou so close, his stench forces everyone but Davben and Jonmuir (who is immune to poison) to make a Fort save or become nauseated.  With a 23, Roderick opts not to activate his snakeblood tooth, and thus fails the save by one.  The bear also fails, but Værï just passes the save.

Jonmuir uses his wand of Align Fang on his bear (not the best tactical decision, since your bear is nauseated for an unknown number of rounds…) and then pulls out his hammersphere.  Limited to a move action, Roderick takes cover behind a big stone until he feels better.  Værï tumbles away from the Hezrou, draws his bow, and fires, missing.  Davben flies up and back about 30 feet, ending about 15 feet in the air, then firing an eldritch blast at the Hezrou, hitting and overcoming SR to deal 13 damage.  He also yells out in Abyssal, “These are my slaves! You can’t have them.”  Funny, but not the best idea since he looks like a rutterkin, and they know there is a strict caste system in Zelatar…

The Hezrou moves to place himself within 40 feet of everyone in the party, then the PC’s feel a wave of evil strike them as the Hezrou makes his Concentration check against the Buzzing Bee, and unleashes a Blasphemy.  Jonmuir’s bear is paralyzed for 8 minutes, and everyone else has their strength scores reduced by 10 for four rounds, which drops Værï, Davben, and Jonmuir all to Strength 0 (or less).  Roderick was actually still strong enough to move around in his armor, though just barely; unfortunately, he’s also the only one nauseated…

That’s where we ended the session, in a rather glum mood.  I did caution them that I thought they could still get out of it alive.  Not the best start, but it is recoverable.

After the session was over, and I was looking over Blasphemy more carefully… only then did I notice that any of the PC’s who fails an effective DC 25 Will save (DC 21, plus a –4 penalty on the saving throw) is banished back to their home plane* (though the hezrou’s home plane is never stated, hezrous tend to live on the 45th layer, as they “enjoy the climate,” have mansions in the neighborhood, and there are lots of slave markets in this layer of Zelatar.  Plus, it might well get my PC’s out of a bind… though it could end badly for any PC who happens to make his saving throw…  I plan to have Roderick and Jonmuir’s bear roll their saves first, then I might be nice enough to give the three caster types Spellcraft checks to recognize the effects they are feeling are from Blasphemy, just in time to inform their decision to resist the spell with a Will save or not…

*Further research led me to determine that the fiend’s home plane for this purpose is the Abyss, not any specific layer thereof.  So it doesn’t matter if the 45th layer is where the Hezrou spawned; anywhere in the abyss a Hezrou’s use of Blasphemy would have that additional effect of potentially banishing any extraplanar creatures affected by it.
« Last Edit: September 13, 2015, 04:21:26 PM by ksbsnowowl »

Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Sunless Citadel Adventure Path - Campaign Journal
« Reply #64 on: September 26, 2015, 04:13:44 PM »
September 8th was the 51st session of the campaign.  Since Davben and Værï also play in my Thursday game, I had them roll their Will saves versus the Blasphemy effect late the previous week, so I would have an idea of what way the wind was blowing.  Davben came close with a 23 (but the –4 penalty lessened that to below the DC of 21), and Værï failed utterly with a 13; Værï had already reasoned out that the effect was Blasphemy, and was thus quite pleased with his failure of the saving throw.

During the past week, Davben continued to voice displeasure with his return as merely a straight warlock, so I took this blasphemous banishment opportunity to suggest something that would meet his desires, yet also maintain character continuity.  I suggested he look at Eldritch Theurge from Complete Mage.  He looked at that, and unbidden he also looked at Eldritch Disciple from the same book.  He actually fell in love with Eldritch Disciple, and decided to rebuild Davben as a Cleric 3/Warlock 2/Eldritch Disciple 4, following Olidammara.  My mind started playing with exactly how I would introduce this character change in game…

A few months back I was skimming through the adventure Speaker in Dreams, which I had skipped over in this campaign because I didn’t like it.  Well, as I skimmed through it a little closer, I figured out that I didn’t like the open-ended first half of the module, but I rather liked the second half, where the baron institutes martial law, enforced by fiends who were brought to town by a cult of Hextor.  The priest and acolytes of Pelor are declared outlaws, and the church of the sun god is defiled by the cult, its altar smashed, and a Gate to an unnamed level of Hell is opened, with a 20-foot diameter column of hellfire spewing upward.  Sixth level PC’s have to deal with cultists of hell, hellspawn that come through the Gate, and the Bone Devil enforcer, as well as human militia who have been pressed into service by the baron’s newfound tyranny.

The adventure suffers somewhat during a 3.5 update, because Bone Devils were CR 6, 5-HD fiends in 3.0, having only 32 hit points, but higher energy resistances.  In 3.5 they are CR 9 and have 10-HD (and 95 hit points).  So it seemed a fitting thing to throw my 9th and 10th level PC’s against unexpectedly.  The second half of the adventure also makes prolific use of Barghests and Hell Hounds, and I can easily ramp the CR of those up by replacing a few with Greater Barghests and Nessian Warhounds.

Jonmuir was the first to show up at the game, so I had his Bear make the first Will save of the evening; it failed miserably.  Then I gave Jonmuir a chance at a Spellcraft check, which also failed.  The druid then proceeded to fail his Will save.  Once Roderick arrived, I had him roll his save, which thankfully also failed.  I don’t have to split the party!

The party had all been arranged in a rough semi-circle around the Hezrou’s position when the Blasphemy fired off, but Davben had been further back, and flying 15 feet in the air.  I recapped for everyone that Roderick was nauseated for 3 more rounds, the Bear was paralyzed for 8 minutes, and everyone suffered a 10 point reduction in Strength for 4 rounds.  That put everyone but Roderick completely out of commission; at a Strength of 8, the paladin was still strong enough to move around in his armor.

The banishment effect of the Blasphemy transported the entire party to a “random” location on the Material Plane of Oerth, and Roderick, Værï, Jonmuir, and his Bear, all appeared in a room and fell to the wooden floor.  Værï succeeds on a DC 20 Listen check to hear a *thud* from somewhere else in the building.  The present party hears the dying notes of a trumpet fanfare, and the muffled sound of a public speaker through the closed shutters of the window.  While the others remain immobile, Roderick moves over to the window and opens the shutters.  He sees that he is on the fourth floor of a building, looking towards the wall of a keep.  The road beside the keep’s wall is packed with people, and down the way to his right there is a town square, below a corner tower of the keep.  The square is also filled with listeners, and on the tower is a human man addressing the crowd.

Roderick’s first instinct is to yell for help, but thinks better of interrupting the speech of whomever is addressing the crowd.  As the weakness leaves the rest of the party, they get up and move over to listen at the window as well.  I won’t reproduce it here, but the speaker mentions the growing lawlessness and assaults that have been plaguing the town.  When they had thought the problem solved, and the town feasted in honor of the adventurers who had dealt with the problems, assassins plotted, and successfully killed those adventurers last evening.  In response to the lawlessness, the baron was implementing martial law, ending the annual street fair, closing the gates of the city, outlawing the carrying of weapons, declaring the priests and acolytes of Pelor outlaws, and issuing warrants for their arrest.  He also summoned all able-bodied citizens to fill out the town militia (as the town guard had taken heavy losses), and declared that defiance of these laws would be punished by death, and justice would be executed without delay.

As the baron ended his speech and started leaving the tower, his new enforcer appeared on top of the tower… a Bone Devil, with its skeletal physique and scorpion tail.  Sadly, both Jonmuir, and later Davben, failed to identify the Bone Devil, only recognizing it as a fiend (ie - evil outsider).  The speech over, Værï decided to investigate the thump that he had heard before, exiting the apartment the party found themselves in, and climbing the stairs to the next level.  He knocked at the doors, and didn’t recognize the voice that greeted him behind one of them.  When Davben opened the door to greet Værï, the elf saw a human in front of him, but it was not his friend’s reincarnated visage, though there were hints of the same features in his face.  The man before him had one green eye and one brown, and though his voice was different, he knew Værï, and claimed to be Davben.

Given Davben’s desire to rebuild his character as a Warlock/Cleric hybrid, I made use of the unexpected banishing effect to produce a magical “mishap” that resulted in the character’s mechanical changes.  Davben has all of his old memories, but he now finds he has a second set of memories, where he was a dedicated priest of Olidammara, and has lived in Brindonford for years.  Værï looks through the door into Davben’s apartment, seeing religious iconography about, and also a summoning circle drawn on the floor.  There are also some shadowy burn marks radiating out from the summoning circle.  A prompted look via Detect Magic reveals an odd dual aura of evocation and conjuration.

I had also rolled on the “mishap” line of the Teleport spell, and inflicted one instance of 7 points of damage to Davben on his awkward arrival.  The party puts two and two together, figuring out that something must have gone wrong, where a cleric of Olidammara must have been trying to call a creature (perhaps from the Abyss), at the same time Davben was deposited here, and something went wrong, melding the two characters together.  Hey, it’s as good an explanation as any ;)

The party now consists of:
Værï Able the CN Elven Rogue 2/Wizard 1/Warblade 2/Unseen Seer 4/Abjurant Champion 1
Davben the CN Human Cleric 3/Warlock 2/Eldritch Disciple 4
Sir Roderick Cardiff of Blackpool, the LG Human Paladin 10 (of Heironeous)
Jonmuir of the Yosemit tribe, the NG Ghostwise Halfling Druid 10

Seeing that the public speech was done, and the townsfolk were starting to clear the streets, Davben realized that this apartment was his, and the party left their arrival apartment behind, and moved in to Davben’s apartment to make sense of what had just happened.  Værï was curious if the town name of Brindonford was recognizable to him or anyone else in the party.  It wasn’t, except for the half of Davben that had lived here for years.  Also, none of the towns and cities the party had previously visited (Hookhill, Oakhurst, etc) were familiar to Davben’s newly-acquired set of memories.  But Davben did know they were on Oerth… they just don’t know where in relation to their previous stomping grounds.

Davben also knew that the baron’s speech was very atypical for the town ruler.  He was never a particularly popular ruler, but he had never before displayed a streak of cruelty.  He was generally thought to be wise, benevolent, and authoritarian.  He did tax trade heavily, preventing the merchants from gaining too much wealth or power, but the draconian nature of his decrees seemed at odds with Davben’s perceptions of the man’s rule.  This was actually information the PC’s could gain via Gather Information checks, but it seemed an appropriate boon for someone in Davben’s situation to have.  Davben does also know that the Baron wasn’t lying; there have been bad things happening in town.  Wererats interrupted the street fair, grimlocks interrupted a dramatic performance and slaughtered people.  Roderick and Davben think something hinky is going on with the Baron, and he’s probably being controlled in some way.

By this time, town criers had started rereading the baron’s speech for those townsfolk that could not get close enough to hear it in person.  Despite my prompting, the PC’s don’t wish to head out and listen to the speech again; if they had, they’d have seen two large goblin-like creatures (Barghests) escorting the town crier as he read the baron’s decrees around the town.  Instead, the party started making plans to either go to the temple of Pelor and save the priest (hoping for an ally), or go talk with the halfling community that exists outside the city walls, on a flotilla of barges in the river.  In either case, they would have to disguise their weapons, and so Værï set about filling a few of his unfilled spell slots (he’s learned, and has been leaving a few open every day now) with spells to conceal (invisibility, illusions).  Davben loans his hat of disguise to Roderick, as his eldritch blasts are naturally unseen until deployed.

They finally decide to head to the temple of Pelor first, and on the way they encounter a group of enforcers: the Bone Devil that appeared on the tower is patrolling the town with four militia members.  The party hears the sounds of combat from the street ahead, and Værï invisibly sneaks up to look.  He sees the enforcers in battle with a pair of individuals that seemed to have already run afoul of the “no weapons” policy.  The elf watches them get injured, and comes back to report to the party what he saw, and that the idiots deserved their fate for breaking the newly decreed law.  Well, at least the party now knows for sure that the baron wasn’t lying about the penalties…

Davben leads the party toward the temple via another route, opting to avoid the Bone Devil entirely, and as they approach down a street toward the front door of the temple, Davben notices that the dome of the central part of the temple looks wrong… there is a cracked hole in the dome, through which flames are licking upward.  The party thinks the building is on fire, and they rush to the doors of one of the side wings, hoping to enter, find any priests of Pelor, and save them from the burning building.


Old link:
http://dnd.sendric.com/adventures/core/htm/images-sid/image14.jpg

The wooden rear exterior door (near room “f”) is locked, but Værï easily picks it.  The party starts filing into the hallway from the western door.  It is a 5-foot wide hallway with several doors, and one T-intersection split off to the north about halfway down the hall’s length.  Still thinking that there are priests to be saved here, Roderick starts knocking on doors, yelling out “anyone in here?”  Belatedly, Roderick thinks to detect evil as he’s knocking on doors.  He checks the first door on the north side of the hall, not detecting any evil beyond that doorway; opening the door, he just finds another small hallway with two doors (leading to the rooms marked “p”).

Roderick sweeps his evil radar eastward, detecting evil down that direction (he doesn’t know exactly where at this point, but it is just on the other side of the door to room “e.”)  Initiatives are rolled, and Værï casts Haste on the party.  Roderick moves forward near the intersection, and readies to attack if anything comes around the corner.  A priest in room “g” moves to the door and opens it, seeing the party.  Davben doesn’t have a good line of sight to him down the length of the hall, so he readies to cast Ice Slick in the two eastern-most squares of the hallway once the man in the doorway steps into the hall.

The full-plate-clad priest in room “f” moves to the door and opens it as well, staring at Davben right in front of him.  Davben notices the holy symbol hanging around the priest’s neck, and that it is a holy symbol of Hextor.  A similar priest comes out the open door from room “g,” triggering Davben’s casting, requiring a Balance check from the armor-clad priest, who fails and falls prone.  The fallen priest reacts by casting spiritual weapon, directing it at Roderick, hitting with a flail of force for very little damage.

Jonmuir is in brown bear form, so he and his pet would have to squeeze to enter the hallway.  Jonmuir notes how curious it is that it isn’t smokey in the hallway, given the flames they saw previously; he might be catching on that their assumption about the building being on fire was wrong.  He decides to revert to his ghostwise halfling form and moves into the mouth of the hallway.

Værï, still invisible from the party’s trek through the city streets, steps into the hallway from outside and fires a lesser acid orb at the priest standing in the doorway to room “f,” critting for 42 points of damage, burning a hole through the man’s torso.  The party hears barking from somewhere to the east (room “e”).  Roderick steps up and attacks the prone priest of Hextor, missing once and hitting twice for 18 damage and 20 damage, killing him.

The priest standing in the door to room “g” screams that there is a knight of Heironious killing priests, and attacks the paladin from the doorway, missing because of cover from the door jam (he didn’t want to step into the icy hallway).  Last round Davben had told one of the priests of Hextor that the party was here to arrest them, because the priests were carrying weapons; this time he yells out that there are insurgents with weapons, claiming to be priests of Hextor!  He notes that the barking they are hearing is not coming from room “f,” and then he proceeds to Spider Climb up to the ceiling, and readies to dismiss his Ice Slick spell right before Roderick’s turn, so the paladin will have an unimpeded path to the third priest.

I forgot to have the dead priest’s spiritual weapon attack this round, but Jonmuir decides to open the door near room “f” that leads to a stairway, then casts Produce Flame.

Værï delays, unhappy with his options at the moment.  Davben dismisses his Ice Slick, and Sir Roderick five-foot steps up to the third priest of Hextor, hitting three times for a total of 39 damage.  The priest responds, declaring “I smite you in the name of Hextor!” and hits Roderick for 8 whole points of damage…  Davben mistakenly goes again (in his old position in the initiative), blasting the priest of Hextor for 13 damage, killing him.

Jonmuir heads up the flight of stairs and listens at the door, hearing the clank of armor on the other side.  He knocks, and asks “who’s there?”  I then get sloppy and allow him to ready a Fiery Burst if he sees a holy symbol of Hextor around the neck of whoever opens the door.  The individual on the other side does open the door, and Jonmuir recognizes the inhuman-looking creature as a Tiefling, wearing black armor engraved with symbols of Hextor.  Jonmuir tries to fry him, but the goat-featured priest gets a Nat 20 on his save, and takes a mere 2 fire damage after resistance.  The priest continues with his his action, cursing Jonmuir and smiting him with a 30 on his attack roll, dealing 18 damage, plus 5 electric damage from the shocking heavy flail.

Værï moves up the stairs, firing lesser orb of acid at the tiefling, hitting for 26 acid damage.  Roderick deals with the barking from room “e,” opening the door and suffering a readied attack by the Hell Hound on the other side, but the bite misses.  Roderick activates Law Devotion, placing the bonus to his attack, and power attacking.  He hits for 20 damage, nearly killing it.  Davben climbs around on the ceiling, and burns a turn attempt to hit Jonmuir with a Healing Blast.  The Druid uses his anklets of translocation to move past the tiefling, just to the south of the open door to room “h.”  He then steps over to look into the room, seeing a well-appointed bedroom, and noting the closed door to the balcony overlooking the main temple area.  Jonmuir turns around and finishes his move to come back closer to the tiefling, then casts Corona of Cold, which the tiefling negates with a Fort save.  Looking back on it, I should know by now to never take Jonmuir at his word as to what a spell does.  We just treated it as a one-and-done; it should have lasted for 10 rounds, and honestly would have been a bigger hassle for his party mates than it would have been for the tiefling…

The tiefling priest of Hextor casts Unholy Blight, dealing 3 damage to Davben and Værï, and 14 to Jonmuir, sickening the druid for 3 rounds, then retreats toward the north, taking 3 fire damage from Jonmuir’s Produce Flame AoO.

Værï moves up to the priest (and would have taken cold damage…), missing on his attack.  I remember the Spiritual Weapon at this point, and it fails to hit Roderick.  The Hell Hound in front of the paladin breaths fire at him for a small bit of damage, which is completely absorbed by Roderick’s Protection from Fire.  Roderick responds by cleaving the hound’s head from its injured body.  He then moves up to the door to the main temple area.  I was lazy on enforcing actions this session, and let him detect evil through the door; since there is a huge column of hellfire rising out of the middle of the temple floor, I told him there is evil on the other side.

Davben moves up the stairwell and onto the upper floor, recognizing the tiefling for what it is, and knowing enough to recognize that they likely don’t has Spell Resistance.  He blasts the planetouched cleric for 11 damage.  Jonmuir uses his anklets again to move into a good position, drops a shield from his arm, and wild shapes into a bear.  He had wanted to animate the shield, not realizing that the animated property had to be activated with a command word, which would take a standard action… and now he can’t speak.

The tiefling doesn’t have many good options, so he decides to cast Obscuring Mist defensively, rolling a Nat 1 but succeeding thanks to Combat Casting.  He then accepts an AoO from Værï, getting hit for 7 points of damage, and heads into the bedroom.  Værï follows after the tiefling, striking with Sapphire Nightmare Blade, hitting and dealing sneak attack, killing the tiefling with 20 points of damage.

Roderick follows the party up the stairs, and tells the party there is more evil through the door into the temple.  Davben moves back to cover the stairs, readying to attack anything that approaches.  Jonmuir uses his bear strength to bust down the door to the balcony, and sees a huge pillar of fire rising up from somewhere below, and up through the hole in the cracked dome.

Værï searches the tiefling’s body, noting the heavy flail that is crackling with electricity, and also finding four potions, and ten scrolls (this is part of me boosting the treasure awards to get the party back up to wealth by level), and he notices a footlocker at the end of the bed.  Roderick tells the party they need to hurry and get back down to the main temple, and he heads back down the stairs.  Davben moves out onto the balcony overlooking the temple floor, and is the first to see the 20-foot diameter gaping hole in the floor, where Davben’s new memories tell him the altar to Pelor used to be, and which is now spewing forth the column of fire.  He then notices a creature climb its way out of the pit, failing his Knowledge (the Planes) check to identify the Orthon. (So far no one has identified any of these fiends, so don’t realize they are all devils, not demons).  Davben chooses to hit the Orthon with the targeted version of Dispel Magic, successfully stripping away the Orthon’s See Invisibility.  The Eldritch Disciple then yells a warning that there is a scary creature in the temple.  Jonmuir moves out onto the balcony, also failing his Knowledge check to ID the fiend, then casts Splinterbolt at the fiend, hitting with one of his two bolts, for 14 damage after DR.

Værï abandons searching the tiefling’s body in room “h,” drawing his bow as he moves out onto the balcony, and firing at the devil, hitting with 9 Good damage.  Roderick moves to the first floor door to the temple, and opens the door.  The Orthon wants to hurt the PC’s that have hurt him, and levels a Hellfire Crossbow at Davben, and fires a stream of hellfire as a ranged touch attack, critting for 19 points of hellfire damage.  Since he can fire his hellfire crossbow as a move action, he then levels his Hellspear at Roderick, waiting for the paladin’s inevitable charge.

Davben activates an amulet of healing that will allow him to heal Jonmuir and simultaneously heal himself for a sizable amount of damage.  He then utilizes his last round of hasted movement, approaching the dome wall behind him, and then climbing out beyond the edge of the balcony.  Jonmuir decides to smite the devil with a Flame Strike, hoping the half divine damage will help bring the fiend to its death, but the druid fails to overcome SR, and then decides to retreat back toward the stairs.

Værï full attacks with his longbow, hitting once for 10 damage, then steps back from the balcony edge.  Roderick draws Thaas hitting for 10 damage, thanks to a fiendslayer crystal.  The Orthon can’t quick reach Roderick in the doorway, even with his 20-foot reach with his spear, so instead it fires its hellfire crossbow at the paladin, hitting for 9 hellfire damage, then approaching as much as he could, coming under the balcony.  Davben then casts another Ice Slick under the fiend, but the devil Balances just fine.  Jonmuir reverts back to halfling form and moves down to the first floor, ushering his bear before him.

Værï sheaths his longbow, and makes use of his cloak of arachnida to start climbing on the dome wall, climbing to the west.  Roderick full attacks with Thaas, missing.  The Orthon five-foot steps up to threaten the paladin with his hellspear, and full attacks, missing twice.  Davben fires a corrupting blast at the fiend, hitting, but failing the SR check.  Jonmuir casts Align Fang on himself, sharing it with his bear, and the two of them move up toward the devil, the bear taking an AoO for 17 damage from the devil’s spear.  The bear claws at the devil, hitting for 13 points of damage.

Værï spends his whole turn swapping his fiendslayer crystal from his bow to his rapier.  Roderick takes advantage of the Orthon being distracted by the bear moving through, and slips through the devil’s threatened area to enter the temple itself, moving to the side enough to remove the soft cover the bear was providing the orthon, and firing Thaas, hitting for 10 more damage.  The orthon is too low on hit points for comfort, and teleports away.

Since they are climbing on the eastern and western walls, Davben and Værï make some Spot checks, Værï noticing someone watching their battle from the shadows of the northern balcony.  Roderick takes a moment to heal himself with his belt, and Værï climbs over to the northern balcony.

Jonmuir enters the door into the first floor of the north wing, under the balcony Værï and Davben just approached.  Roderick follows, detecting evil through some of the doors, but they decide to leave those for later, searching instead for a stairwell to get upstairs with the two climbing party members.  I had already mentioned off-hand that this wing was almost a mirror image of the other one, so they knew where to look for the stairwell without bumping into more bad guys.

Værï and Davben move into the L-shaped upper hallway, and as the two land-bound party members ascend the stairs, they find that no one is there.  But the door to room “i” is closed… maybe the shadowy form Værï saw has retreated to that room…  Sir Roderick detects evil through the door, not noting any evil presence… 

Room “i” is the den of a pair of Barghests, each of which can use Dimension Door once per day; they heard the battle in the church, one of them crept up to watch it for a short bit, then retreated, and dimension doored out with his companion…  The PC’s don’t know this information, of course, but now news has gotten out twice, via the Orthon teleporting away, and now these barghests.

Having noted no evil in the upper room, the party decides to head back downstairs where Roderick had detected evil through some doors.  Having noted the shadowy form in the balcony previously, Værï is suspicious enough to cast See Invisibility to make sure there is no one sneaking around unseen.  Jonmuir’s Bear breaks down the door to room “b,” and inside they find a Hellhound and a Nessian Warhound.

Davben had a readied action to blast whatever was in there, and he hits the Nessian Warhound for 12 damage.  The hounds respond by breathing fire on Jonmuir and his Bear, dealing meager bits of fire damage to them.

Initiatives are rolled, Davben chains for 7 and 3 damage, while Værï Tumbles into the room failing two checks, but suffering no damage because both hell hounds roll Nat 1’s.  Værï finishes his move, rolls a Nat 20 on his attack, and strikes the NWH for seven damage…  The hell hound bites back, barely missing, but the warhound bites the elf for nearly 20 damage.  Roderick steps into the room, provoking an AoO from the warhound, but the thing rolls another Nat 1.  The paladin swings for 18 damage, and the Druid fires a Splinterbolt at the Nessian Warhound, hitting once for 13 damage.  The bear squeezes into through the door, and misses on his attack.

Davben burns a turn attempt to fire a healing blast, chaining it from Værï to Roderick, healing 5 and 2 points (Davben had some terrible ‘damage’ rolls this night).  Værï attacks the hell hound with Sapphire Nightmare Blade, hitting and sneak attacking for 20 damage, killing it.  The Nessian Warhound attacks Værï, hitting for 17 damage (all the fire damage was being absorbed by Værï’s Resist Energy spell).  Roderick know the hounds are evil, and full attacks, smiting with the first attack for 23 damage, and hitting with his second attack for 18 damage.  The warhound is barely standing at this point, and Jonmuir’s bear full attacks, missing with his bite and first claw, but dealing 12 damage with the last claw.  Jonmuir tries to fire another Splinterbolt at the warhound, and it takes an AoO at him (the 10-foot reach means 15-foot reach on diagonals throws people off sometimes).  I only did the AoO for the ranged attack, not the casting of the spell… which would have forced a DC 28 Concentration check.  Oh well, the night was nearing its end.  Jonmuir kills the Warhound with his splinterbolts.

The party decides to head back upstairs to check out room “i,” as they have not yet opened the door, and Værï wants to have a look around while his See Invisibility is still active.  A flurry of healing is bestowed about the party, and at the door, Davben yells out asking if the priests of Pelor are still alive (they are still under the mistaken assumption that the priests are captured and in the temple).  After getting no response, they open the door, finding a room similar to room “h,” different only in that there is a small altar on the west wall, and the blankets and curtain are torn down and lumped into what look to be dog beds.

That’s where we ended for the night.  As people were packing up, Davben voiced some plans he wanted to make sure happened next session.  He wants to take all the holy symbols off the priests they killed, and he wants to use Shatter (via his Baleful Utterance invocation) on their faces.  That is actually a brilliant idea, since a dead body is considered an object by the rules, so Shatter would work on them.  Break all the bones in their faces, and make them unrecognizable.
« Last Edit: July 08, 2017, 02:31:58 PM by ksbsnowowl »

Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Sunless Citadel Adventure Path - Campaign Journal
« Reply #65 on: November 26, 2015, 12:25:19 PM »
Here you go, a little Thanksgiving treat.

First, I must apologize for the tardiness of my updates of late.  I started a new job in August, and it is taking a toll on me.  Too much of my free time lately has been spent decompressing from the higher level of stress, and I’ve really had to cut back on extra-curricular activities in my life.  But I am determined to see this campaign journal through to level 20; just be forgiving if the updates are late, and have a bit different writing style (I’ve taken to recording the game sessions on my phone, so I can write the update later, but that leads me to be a bit more verbose than I used to be, I think.)

September 15th was the 52nd session of the campaign.  After recapping their newfound circumstances, and the battle through the defiled temple of Pelor, the party decided they needed to sweep through the rooms, but were worried that someone had seen them.  There were two rooms yet that the party hadn’t entered (rooms “c” and “d”), so they decided to clear those out first.


Old link:
http://dnd.sendric.com/adventures/core/htm/images-sid/image14.jpg

Roderick detects for evil behind the doors, and Davben detects for magic as well.  Roderick senses there is Evil in both rooms “c” and “d,” and proceeds to open the door to room “c.”  Davben had readied an eldritch blast, and hit one of the two hell hounds in the room.

Initiatives are rolled, and Værï fires through the door, hitting the flat-footed hell hound with an arrow for 22 damage, killing him.  Jonmuir delayed his turn, while Davben fired through the doorway, while hanging up-side-down while spider climbing over the doorway, scoring a critical hit for 14 points of damage.  The hell hound breaths fire, not knowing the party was buffed up against fire damage.  Sir Roderick five-foot steps through the door, slashing at the hell hound for 17 damage, dropping the hound well into the negatives.

Jonmuir then hears a growl as something invisible starts tearing at his flesh.  He is standing in the T-intersection near the door to room “b,” and the clawing attacks are coming from the direction of the main temple.  Unbeknownst to the druid, a Hellcat has decided to use him as a play toy, pouncing upon him.  Værï and Davben are further west up the hallway, and since both have See Invisibility active, they can see ghost-like cat paws clawing at Jonmuir.  Lucky for the Small druid, I forgot about the hellcat’s improved grab here, when it hit the halfling with its bite attack.

Jonmuir ended his delayed action, five-foot stepping into room “b,” and Fiery Bursting into the squares from which the claw attacks came (since you know what square you were attacked from by an invisible opponent, so long as the attack was a melee attack without reach).  The druid’s bear then squeezes through the door, following its master.

Værï steps over to attack the hellcat from the intersection, attacking with Sapphire Nightmare Blade, succeeding on the Concentration check, and getting a Nat 1 on the attack roll.  Davben climbs over to peer at the hellcat from around the corner, identifying it with a Knowledge check, and learning that it is a devil, and is most susceptible to Good weapons.  He then proceeds to fail to hit it with an eldritch blast.  Roderick steps back out of the room with the hell hound corpses, moving over to the corner, standing below Davben’s Peter Parker-like perch, and sees his companions stabbing into the southern hallway, though he can’t see the hellcat himself.  He swift-casts Bless Weapon and attacks into the visually empty square, striking true despite the miss chance and cover (which was counteracted by the fact the hellcat was squeezing), dealing 20 damage to the fiend, between his blade and his energy assault crystal.

The hellcat didn’t like getting hurt, and so it attacked Roderick from around the corner, but with cover and the hellcat squeezing, he was at a net –8 to hit over what he would normally be.  Roderick feels paws bouncing off his armor, but that’s it; he can’t even see the hellcat five-foot step back (so it’s now straddling the doorway into the temple proper).  Jonmuir pulls a little bit of a rules technicality approach, using his wand of Align Fang on himself (though he currently has no natural weapons), and also affects his Bear with it, thanks to the Share Spells ability, making its natural attacks Good.  The bear squeezes into the hallway, through the intersection and to the east, since he couldn’t see the hellcat pull back, and it ineffectually attacks into the south hallway, not knowing the first five feet was empty.

Værï steps into the southern hallway, attacking with Mountain Hammer, hitting for a measly 8 damage on 4d6; at least it overcame DR…  Davben fires an eldritch blast at the fiend, hitting easily, but failing to overcome SR…  He also yells for someone to move up and make ready to heal Værï from the impending flurry of claws and teeth.

Sir Roderick debates how to move forward given the lack of room, choosing to sheathe his sword and draw Thaas.  The hellcat hits Værï with one claw, then five-foot steps back, gaining space and no longer squeezing.  Jonmuir then heals himself.

Værï drops his rapier and fires two arrows at the hellcat, hitting once for 8 damage that overcame DR (yay for the Fiendslayer crystal).  Davben fires an eldritch blast, hitting the fiendish feline, but failing the caster level check by 1.  Roderick saw where his companions were firing, and does the same, missing the first time because of concealment, and the second time just from a bad attack roll.

The hellcat is actually a bit beat up by this point, and decides to pull back, double moving around the column of hellfire, and disappearing from the PC’s line of sight, somewhere on the south side of the column of fire.  Jonmuir has his bear break down the door to room “d,” which opens upon a kitchen.  Neither Jonmuir nor his bear can see anything in the room.  Questions about if there is still evil in the room are met with the need for Roderick to spend a standard action to once again concentrate on his spell-like ability.

Værï picks up his rapier and removes the Fiendslayer crystal from his bow.  Davben moves southward, into the chapel, beneath the balcony, and despite not knowing how to speak Infernal, tries to taunt the hellcat in Common, then swift activates his wand of Updraft, which in conjunction with his Spider Climb ability lets him latch onto the underside of the balcony.

Two barghests appear on the west side of room “b,” and one moves to attack Jonmuir, who is still in the room, standing near the door.  The barghest misses, and Roderick hears the snarling of the barghest through the doorway, and fires Thaas at the unidentified creature, missing because Roderick does not have precise shot.  Jonmuir five-foot steps to the east, giving himself room to wildshape into a bear, and calls his bear into the room, which has to squeeze given the tight space.  The bear lashes out with its claw, dealing 13 damage.

Værï puts his Fiendslayer crystal onto his rapier, then moves into the chapel, and starts moving around the column of fire, but doesn’t gain enough distance to see the hellcat.  Davben double moves around the west wall of the chapel, and finds the hellcat (near the southwest pillar in the chapel.

The barghests five-foot step, and one attacks Jonmuir’s bear, hitting twice with its claws for six meager points of damage.  The other hits Jonmuir with a bite and a claw.  Roderick decides to follow the two arcanists out into the chapel, double moving and starting to move around the west side of the fiery column.  The hellcat didn’t do much at this point, only repositioning itself in hopes of getting a good pounce attack next round.  Jonmuir’s bear attacks one of the barghests, hitting with both claws, and pulling the barghest into a grapple.  Jonmuir hits the other barghest with both claws, critting once, and kills one of the barghests.

Værï skirts around the east side of the fiery column, just starting to see the hellcat after moving 30 feet, but rather than attack, he decides to keep moving, placing the southeast stone pillar between himself and the hellcat.  Davben moves 20 feet along the wall, and hits the hellcat with his eldritch blast, yelling for Roderick to attack where he fires.  He hits the hellcat and overcomes SR, dealing 7 damage.

Seeing where Davben’s ray struck, Roderick attacks the correct square, hitting once with Thaas for 10 damage.  In response, the Hellcat charges at Roderick, pouncing on the paladin, clawing for 14 damage and 8 damage, and getting a Nat 1 on the bite, but hitting with one rake attack for another 5 damage.  The sole surviving barghest belatedly tries to get out of the grapple with Jonmuir’s bear, but rolls a Nat 1 and has no chances of succeeding.  The bear grapples back, dealing 13 damage.  Jonmuir drops the barghest he had killed, steps over and attacks the grappled barghest, hitting three times, but just barely failing to kill the barghest.

Værï charges at the hellcat, hoping to gain flanking, but forgetting that Roderick has his bow out.  Without the flanking bonus, he just misses on the attack.  Davben does a Healing Blast to heal Roderick and Værï, chaining 17 and 8 points of healing.  The barghest would try to succeed on a Concentration check to use Dimension Door to escape the grapple (though even that would be a futile effort, since it is sitting at 0 hit points), except he cannot possibly succeed, since he has no ranks in Concentration.  Instead he tries something equally futile, and tries to escape the grapple.

Roderick draws his longsword, attacking the Hellcat with a one-armed swing, missing, then contemplates moving out of flanking with Værï, but doesn’t after out of character exhortations not to do so.  The hellcat attacks Roderick, hitting with an unconfirmed critical with the first claw, and a confirmed critical with the bite, dealing a total of 30 points of damage, but failing to start a grapple with the paladin due to a Nat 1.  Jonmuir’s bear drops the dying barghest, and he and the ursine companion move into the main chapel, and continue on toward where the party is stabbing at an invisible foe, taking some fire damage for standing too close to the column of fire raging up from the floor.

Just as the druid joins up with the rest of the party, two devils teleport into the main chapel, arriving approximately where the “a” room letter is on the map.  The party recognizes both of these fiends.  The first is the Orthon that had teleported away last session.  He sought out help and healing, and has returned fully healed and with the Bone Devil enforcer in tow.  This draws cries of “Oh my God! No!  We don’t want to face him yet!”  I meet these cries with a comment that the party might want to “get out of Dodge.”

Værï decides that finishing off the Hellcat is important for the goals, as well as aiding in their escape (to avoid AoO’s), so he strikes with Mountain Hammer, dealing 22 Good damage with his rapier and fiendslayer crystal, killing the fiendish cat.  The elf then moves to just before the doorway leading into the hallway at the south end of the chapel.  The Bone Devil interjects with a boney finger pointed at Davben, still clinging to the wall; “Law-breakers!” it yells with a raspy voice.  Davben casts invisibility on himself, and climbs 20 feet along the wall toward the southern doorway, dropping closer to the floor so he can move faster next round.

Sir Roderick can see the Orthon standing slightly south of the door, but decides since the party is fleeing, he best flee with them.  He double moves into the hallway, just passing Værï, planning to leave through the door through which the party originally entered (near room “f”).  Jonmuir also joins in fleeing, moving himself and his bear into the hall, one reaching the intersection and one rounding the corner, but leaving a square open near the western exit door, so someone else can get to it and open it.

That leaves Davben standing alone along the west wall of the main part of the chapel.  He’s invisible, but the Orthon has his see invisiblity SLA active again.  The Bone Devil tries to block off the escape of Værï by forming a Wall of Ice across the doorway.  Værï is adjacent to the doorway and rolls a Nat 20 on a reflex save to disrupt the formation of the Wall of Ice, but fails to identify the spell in question.  The orthon can see Davben standing over by the wall, though the Eldritch Disciple is just outside of the distance the devil can cover to attack him.  Instead, the orthon fires his hellfire crossbow at Davben, easily hitting the touch attack and dealing 9 points of hellfire damage to the reincarnated warlock.

Værï uses his anklets of translocation to move past Roderick and speed his way to the doorway at the west end of the hall, then uses his standard action to open the door for everyone.  Davben moves into the hallway and past all his companions, using his anklets to add 10 additional feet of distance to the end of his double move, making him the first one to exit the building.  Roderick also double moves out the rear door, as does Jonmuir and his bear, moving across the open space toward other buildings (roughly 40-foot clearance around this wing of the temple for streets, etc).

The party thinks it is a good time to retreat for the day, as they are starting to run low on resources.  Værï tells everyone to group up around him on their next turn, as he is silently contemplating using a scroll of Teleport to get the party out safely; they are somewhat strung out at the moment.  The devils teleport out into the small courtyard and street to which the party has escaped, and the Orthon fires his hellfire crossbow at Roderick, hitting for 6 damage.  The Bone Devil only has a move action, so he positions himself near the door, so he can attack Værï as he moves out the doorway and meets with the rest of the party lined out out the doorway.

Værï uses his anklets of translocation a second time to position himself outside and five-foot steps to position himself close to as many party members as he can, but is unfortunately still in the Bone Devil’s reach.  He draws out a scroll of Teleport and readies to cast it defensively once Jonmuir moves back into the range of Værï’s touch, yelling for Jonmuir to “get over here now!”  Davben doesn’t realize that Værï has to touch him for Teleport to work, but players blurt that info out before I can have Davben make a Spellcraft check to know that about Teleport.  Still, I have him make the check, which he fails, so I tell him to continue acting on what he was planning, as if he didn’t know Værï would have to touch him.

Davben moves in a way so as to provoke an AoO from the Bone Devil.  He is invisible, but he knows at least the Orthon can see invisible creatures.  He games the rules a bit and moves 5 feet (but NOT a 5-foot step), hoping to provoke the AoO while still staying adjacent to Værï.  He moves, and the Bone Devil doesn’t attack him (Bone Devil’s can’t see invisible creatures), so he just tries to entice the devil by screaming at it.

This entire round was an exercise in getting players to shut up and not give information to other players, and players having to not metagame too much, and only act on information their characters knew.  The party has never teleported before, so the specifics of what needed to happen were unknown to most of them.  It was torturous trying to get them to act in character, and not speak spell info to non-casters who wouldn’t know they needed to move adjacent to Værï, etc.  It did up the tension though, so in that respect it was a nail-biting winner.

Jonmuir squeezes up to the party, and has his bear follow him.  Everyone is now in touch-range for Værï, but there are other complications.  I have the bear-shaped druid roll a Spellcraft check, and he succeeds, realizing that Large creatures count as two creatures for what Teleport can affect, so Jonmuir ends his turn by reverting to halfling form.  Værï succeeds in casting the scroll defensively, touching Roderick, Davben, and Jonmuir in that order; that maxes out the 9th level scroll, and the four party members Teleport away, leaving Jonmuir’s bear companion behind.

Værï decided to teleport the party back to Davben’s apartment, which Værï had spent about 20 minutes in just before the party headed off toward the Temple of Pelor, so I went with “seen casually” as far as the teleport miss chance, and rolled a 96, meaning they are off target in a “similar area.”  Davben’s apartment is a little unique, having a summoning circle drawn on the floor of the back room.

So the party arrives in a different apartment that also has a summoning circle in it.  This is me using the “background” info from the first half of the Speaker in Dreams module, which involved an evil cabal of half-insane sorcerers that were summoning creatures from the Far Realms.  Davben doesn’t recognize this apartment, and this room doesn’t have any windows.  So Davben uses his Hat of Disguise to make himself look like his old cleric half, and cracks open the door to look around.  He sees a building landmark through a window in that room, so knows they are still in Brindonford.  The apartment is empty of any occupants, though there is furniture about.

Davben succeeds on a Knowledge (the Planes) check on the summoning circle, recognizing it as a being used for Lesser Planar Binding, and other calling spells.  Then he takes a better look out the window, and recognizes the part of town where they are now located.  Davben’s cleric half lived in Silver Hill, the upper class neighborhood near the Baron’s keep and the Temple of Pelor.  This apartment is in West Hill, a middle class neighborhood.


Old links/info:
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The party debates heading back to Davben’s apartment, either now or after nightfall, or just staying here.  The apartment is furnished, and certainly doesn’t look abandoned (the NPC adventuring party that took care of things prior to the Baron’s speech had killed the occupant of this apartment at another location), but the party doesn’t know if the owner will come back.  It is empty though, so they are thinking of staying here.

With the pressures of battle no longer fast upon the party, I have Davben give me some belated Knowledge checks (both the Planes and Religion), as a means of providing some information about the column of hellfire spewing from the center of the chapel floor.  He gets a 22 on the Planes check and a 17 on the Religion check.  I ask Jonmuir to make a Planes check, and Roderick to make a Religion check.  Roderick gets a 20.  It’s been too long ago for me to remember what the exact DC was that they were shooting for, but I’m pretty sure it was a 23.  Even allowing Davben’s roll to assist Roderick’s Knowledge (Religion) roll meant that both checks only got a 22.  These rolls were for identifying the column of fire as a gate of some sort (and possibly a clue as to where it led to).  Throughout all the fiends they have fought, thus far Davben had only successfully identified the Hellcat, and I don’t think they as yet understood that these creatures were all devils, not demons.

Regardless of the failed rolls, I used it as an opportunity to remind Davben of what he saw:  a column of fire roaring out of a broken pit in the floor of the church, and a creature (the Orthon) crawling up out of the fiery pit.

Though Davben failed his roll, this is a great place to tell you about that column of fire.
The adventure doesn’t go into much detail about the gate, and in typical WotC fashion, there aren’t any game mechanics reasons for how a cult containing no one higher than an 8th level cleric was able to open a seemingly permanent Gate to an unspecified lower plane.

The whole contraption has three short paragraphs describing what is going on in the main chapel.  First, “the presence of devils in the temple has … imbued it with a desecrate effect.”  (Again, no mechanical justification for this, which always just peeves me.)  Second, there are rules for getting close to or entering the column of fire (1d6 or 10d6 fire damage, and a heat metal effect on metal armor).  It also mentions, in an off-hand manor, that if a character falls into the pit, “[it] is a gate to the infernal plane the devils call home…” and goes on to note a character who falls through wouldn’t likely survive there very long.  Lastly, it tells you how to close the gate, by using positive energy via a Turn Undead (having to turn it as if it were a 10-HD undead).

Turn Undead closing the gate doesn’t make much mechanical sense either, but whatever; I suppose it was a precursor to the rules for turning in Defenders of the Faith, which allowed sealing and unsealing doors (and Sunless Citadel had a door like that, too).  But more importantly, keep in mind that this adventure was intended for 5th level characters, though they would likely be 6th level by this point.  Look at the Turning Undead table in the PHB; the highest it goes is Cleric’s level +4, and that’s only if you get a result of 22 or higher on a 1d20 + Cha mod roll (keep in mind this was a 3.0 adventure; 3.0 didn’t have the +2 synergy for 5 ranks in Knowledge (Religion)).  A Paladin would be unable to do it (though more likely to hit a 22 to get the +4, in either edition they would only count as third level clerics as a 6th-level paladin).  If your party didn’t have a 6th level cleric with a Charisma of 14, you would be completely unable to shut down the gate.

In my eternal strive to have things in game make mechanical sense, I was puzzling out the problem and happened to remember incantations from Unearthed Arcana.  There’s even one (Fires of Dis) that is intended to be used by cultists to open a gate to the second layer of Hell, which luckily is quite fiery.  However, the incantation is supposed to blanket the immediate area with fiery destruction, and open a short-lived gate that is only open long enough to bring through a Pit Fiend, then closes.  However, the rules for incantations have this wonderful little gem tucked away:
Quote
Most important among the drawbacks, an incantation rarely fades away quietly if the caster fails to perform the ritual correctly. Instead it reverses itself on the caster, explodes with a cascade of magical energy, or weakens the barrier between worlds, enabling hostile outsiders to emerge onto the Material Plane.

Perfect!  The gate in the chapel is the result of a failed Fires of Dis incantation.  Though the cultists could not have anticipated this fortuitous result, the failure actually worked out better for them, creating a ‘permanent’ portal, and only sacrificing the cult leader, rather than consuming the entire cult in fire, as Fires of Dis would have done.  The odd-ball failure result also allows some justification as to why a gate could be closed with Turn Undead; basically the realm of incantation failure is completely DM fiat anyway.

The background on the gate now making sufficient mechanical sense to me, the only other thing I changed about it was altering how high the effective HD of the gate counted as in order to close it with Turn Undead.  I have a paladin and a multiclassed cleric in the party.  They are both 10th level at this point, but would soon level to 11th.  Due to the distribution of the cleric’s levels, he happened to mirror the paladin, and both currently turn as 7th level clerics, making 11 HD the most powerful undead that they could possibly turn.  So to mimmic the difficulty the module would have presented to the traditional 5th and 6th level party it was designed for, I had the gate count as a 12 HD undead for this purpose.  If they can turn the gate as a 12 HD undead, it will close.

Alright, enough bloviating about the gate, and how I justified its existence.  Back to the party.

The party was pretty tapped out at this point, and decided to just rest here in the cabalist’s apartment.  A reminder that the previous week they had debated going to the church first, or going to talk to the halflings on the river flotilla first, was met with “we’re completely spent.”  Deciding to spend the rest of the day and night here, Davben starts looking around for any books the owner might have on religion or the planes, finding nothing with an unfavorable percentile roll (I was making up this apartment on the fly).  He also wants to find info about the owner’s political views (pro-Baron, anti-Baron) for info to use in Diplomacy with the owner, should he return.  Later on he finds a journal while trying to determine where the apartment owner is, or what he’s been up to, and in the journal are notes about a shop called The Reality Wrinkle; Davben recognizes it as a book store in town.

They heal up, and Jonmuir feels a sense of horror, then a darkening of his heart (his companion was killed).  They make plans to visit the Halfling village tomorrow, and discuss things through the afternoon and evening, bouncing ideas around.  I actually encourage them to bounce ideas around the table as to what the column of fire actually is.  Roderick immediately thinks it is a portal, and Værï agrees, thinking it either leads to Hell or the Abyss.  Davben wants to make a check to know what plane would exude hellfire.  I point out that I described the column of fire as “hellfire,” and the one fiend he identified was a “hellcat.”  He finally puts together that the portal likely leads to Hell (“I didn’t realize that D&D was going to be so literal, here.”)  Based on that realization, he makes a few Knowledge (the Planes) checks to know some general information about Hell and its denizens.  A 29, assisted to 31 by Jonmuir, scores Davben information about people selling their souls, and being able to protest the terms of their contract after death, as well as the fact there are nine layers to Hell, the top layer being an eternal plane of war with demons, Hell is primarily populated by Baatezu, the plane itself is Lawful and Evil, each layer is ruled by Devil Lord.

Realizing it is likely a Gate, Davben wonders if they have anything that could close such a thing.  Maybe an earthquake to bring the whole building down on top of the gate…  Could Dispel Magic get rid of the Gate?  They do come up with the idea of using Analyze Portal to gain information about the Gate.

The owner of the apartment never returns, and they make it through the night unmolested.  They want to sneak back into the Temple of Pelor and let Værï use Analyze Portal while under cover of invisibility, but first they plan to visit the halflings outside the town wall.  They move through town disguised via wild shape, and with two hats of disguise; Davben had been disguised during their assault on the temple, so he lent his hat to Roderick, and just walked around as his new heterochromia-eyed self (that no one in town has ever seen before).

They approach the edge of the city, passing militia groups patrolling the streets.  They stop in an alleyway and cast invisibility on Værï, Davben, and Roderick.  A spider climb spell is cast on Roderick, and those three invisibly climb over the city wall, while Jonmuir just flies over in eagle form.

The party walks past the closed doors of the Old Ford Gate, and note there are no guards on the outside.  Jonmuir reverts to Halfling form and leads the party into the flotilla village of boats and floating walkways.  He looks around for a friendly “leader-looking” halfling, but ends up talking to a random passing halfling, who returns his greeting, and asks if they came for the fair… “because that got shut down…”  Thinking the party are newcomers, the halfling recounts a few major events from the last couple days, from their perspective (no one comes to buy our fish anymore, etc.)

Jonmuir asks if anything else weird had happened lately, and the fact he is a halfling made up for his terrible Diplomacy roll, as the halflings starting attitude with halfling PC’s is friendly.  The halfling villager relates to the party that there is some sort of monster in the river, a large serpent that grabbed several folk off the boats.  When questioned for more details, the villager points them toward McGregor, another halfling who witnessed the serpent attack.

McGregor tells the party about how the serpent thing ate his brother just last night, and describes approximately how large its head was.  Knowledge checks tell the party that there are snakes that large.  They ask McGregor to show them where the attack happened, and as he is leading the party along the floating walkway of crate lids, the party hears a scream about 50 feet away.  Sir Roderick detects evil in that direction, and there is indeed evil over in the area of the scream.

Initiative is rolled, and Værï sees a large serpentine form pulling a dead halfling off the walkway between a few boats.  I placed a purple worm mini on the table to represent it, and that freaked them out a bit.  The serpent is around a bend in the walkway planking, and so Værï decides to cut cross-ways over some of the boats, succeeding on Jump and Balance checks to do so.  He pulls out his longbow, and identifies the monster as a fiendish elasmosaurus, then pelts it with an arrow for 7 damage.  Davben spider climbs along the floating and bobbing walkway (to avoid Balance checks) and blasts the elasmosaurus with an eldritch blast, but fails to overcome SR.  Jonmuir wild shapes into a Desmodu Guard Bat and flies up above the fray.

The elasmosaurus heads underwater to swim under the floating pier, then lunges out from between the boats near Værï, biting the elf with a critical hit for 45 points of damage, eliciting gasps from the party.  Davben uses an immediate action to cast Close Wounds on Værï, healing 8 damage.  Roderick used Battle Blessing to cast Fell the Greatest Foe, and shoots the elasmosaurus with Thaas for a measly 4 points of damage.

Værï tries to Tumble away from the dinosaur, failing with a 14.  The elasmosaurus bites him for 19 more points of damage.  Værï is convinced that he is going to die; without the previous Close Wounds spell, he would be unconscious and dying at this point.  Once out of the dinosaur’s threat range, he casts mirror image, which will significantly increase his chances of survival.  Since mirror image makes it much harder for Davben to heal Værï, the Eldritch Disciple’s planned action is altered to focusing fire on the big bad dinosaur.  He hits with a 23 on the touch attack… and gets a 7 to try overcoming SR.

Jonmuir attacks the dinosaur with splinter bolt, scoring a critical hit with the first splinter for 20 damage after DR.  He hits with the second splinter as well, dealing 12 damage after DR.  The elasmosaurus bites at Davben for 24 damage, and Sir Roderick steps out of the creature’s threat range and pegs it for 7 damage.

Værï heals himself with his belt, and Davben retreats to the edge of the dinosaur’s threat range with his anklets of translocation, but fails to withdraw from there, wanting to just move back, and provokes an AoO in the process.  After taking 20 points of damage, Davben heals himself.  Jonmuir swoops close enough to attack with Splinter Bolt again, hitting twice for 3 and 15 damage after DR.  The elasmosaurus attacks Roderick for 19 damage.  Roderick activates Law Devotion and steps back, attacking with Thaas, and hitting the dinosaur’s low AC for 18 damage over two attacks.

Værï attacks with lesser acid orb, hitting for 24 acid damage, bringing the damnable thing to 1 hit point.  Davben wants to heal himself, but everyone noticed that the hit point total I wrote was a single line, so Jonmuir pesters him to “kill it!”  But he knows he’s having trouble getting over the Spell Resistance, so instead he uses a Healing Blast on Roderick, and attempts to chain it to himself, but fails with a Nat 1.  Jonmuir finishes things with another splinter bolt, killing the murdering beast.

The halfing makes a stylish landing back on the floating pier, reverting to halfling form in front of McGregor, proclaiming “so, I killed it.”  McGregor confirms that was the creature that killed his brother, and the party sees the more bulbous part of the dinosaur’s body floating just below the water’s surface.  It didn’t disappear, so it wasn’t summoned.  Jonmuir has never seen a dinosaur here on Oerth before, so this thing’s presence raises a lot of questions.  (It also raises questions in the module, as it was supposed to have come from the gate… several blocks away from the river…)

McGregor is ecstatic, having witnessed vicarious revenge for his brother’s death.  The entire village is in awe of Jonmuir.  McGregor asks if Jonmuir can “kill that dick of a Baron that stopped the people from buying our fish.”  The party presses McGregor for info that is purportedly for working toward such a goal.  Is there a secret way into town?  At the party’s implied request for help, he says that the halflings will help them in whatever way they can, but none of them can do THAT (referring to the defeat of the elasmosaurus).  Værï points out that information about the Baron and what has been happening in town is paramount.  McGregor says they should talk with Dentheira, the leader of their village.

That is where we ended the session.  Hopefully I can hammer some of these session recaps out a little faster.  There will be some weeks off from gaming in December, so I will try to use that time to start getting caught up (though I’m still 7 sessions behind…)
« Last Edit: July 08, 2017, 02:31:06 PM by ksbsnowowl »

Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Sunless Citadel Adventure Path - Campaign Journal
« Reply #66 on: December 31, 2015, 09:38:42 PM »
Happy New Year!

September 22nd was the 53rd session of the campaign.  McGregor leads the party to Dentheira’s houseboat, and Værï and Jonmuir notice many of the halflings whispering as the party passes by.  Jonmuir understands their whispering, and they are talking in awe of what they witnessed the party do to the elasmosaurus.

They approach a slightly larger houseboat, and McGregor knocks on the door.  A very old halfling woman comes to the door.  Jonmuir introduces the party, and says they were just passing through, but were trying to get into the city, and mentions there seems to be foul things happening concerning “demons” and other foul creatures (…oh and by the way, we took care of your plesiosaur problem…)

Dentheira knew of the river monster, but the presence of demons is news to her.  They describe the appearance of the Bone Devil, and tell her of the fiery gate.  A gate you say?  Maybe that’s the evil that she felt yesterday shortly after the Baron closed the gates of the city.  She also rights their misconception about these creatures being demons.  She knows enough by their description that the Osyluth is a devil.  Despite some in the party scoffing that the difference is immaterial, Davben presses for more information, and she tells the Eldritch Disciple that it is sometimes referred to as a Bone Devil.  She doesn’t know anything about the described Orthon, so they turn to more temporal matters, asking about the Baron, and describe him much as Davben had, taxing heavily, but not cruel.  She is pleased to learn the party intends to fix the current situation with the Baron and his decree.  When the party asks for help toward that end, she doesn’t have much to offer beyond her healing capabilities as a 3rd level Cleric.  Værï takes her up on the offer.

Still hoping that they will rescue the priests of Pelor, Davben asks if Dentheira could care for refugees if they got some out of the city.  With Davben’s Diplomacy roll of 28, Dentheira says they could do that.  Jonmuir asks about the nearby druid circle on the far side of the river (the party had heard of them from McGregor, IIRC), and the halfling cleric says the druids typically keep to themselves, so long as the city folk don’t try to log on that side of the river.

Seeing that Dentheira’s ability to help the party is limited, and recognizing that the river monster was likely put in place to contain the halflings, Davben thinks that they should go check on the Druids of the forest, if for no other reason than that there may be some beast menacing the forest as well.  At this point Værï is actually ready to give up on the city (“what do we care if bad things happen here?”) and Davben has to take a hard stance, as half of him grew up in this city.  Værï acquiesces and they get McGregor to use his house boat to ferry the party across the river to the forested side.

Jonmuir looks about for tracks, and soon finds a trail or two.  A few minutes later they notice a clearing ahead, having been lead to the Holy Grove of the druids.  Jonmuir notices three individuals, half-elves and a human, and calls out to them in Druidic.  Replying in Druidic, the human female asks who they are.  The party and the NPC’s feel each other out, and begin discussing demons and devils, and the female druid asks if this has to do with what the druid circle felt yesterday…?

The party’s story to Dentheira is repeated, adding in the new facts about devils, as well as info on the Hextor cultists in the Temple.  When asked if they are here to deal with these problems, Sir Roderick Diplomatically convinces her that they are (check result 25), despite Værï’s protestations against it.  She asks them about the gate spewing hellfire, and if they know how the cultists opened it, which the party does not.

The module has the druids somehow knowing that the gate can be closed with positive energy.  It is never explained how they know this, or really how they were able to ‘feel’ that something had happened when it opened, but I didn’t belabor the point, and my players didn’t question it.  I played it up that the druid was piecing together ancient, nearly-forgotten knowledge of incantations, along with the info the party was able to describe about the gate, and presented the solution of positive energy being able to close the gate as a half-remembered possibility… but she wasn’t sure it would work.  It takes Davben a few moments (and me leading him by the nose) to piece together that “positive energy” was referring to Turning Undead.  The druid goes on, relaying the half-forgotten tale of a similar situation from the depths of time, where the way she remembers it, a priest was able to close that rent in the multiverse.  But without know how the gate was made, she couldn’t say for certain that the same would be true this time…

Davben and Sir Roderick start comparing how effective they each can possibly be in Turning Undead, and plans to return to the city and the burning temple begin to form.  Værï balks at returning, after all, they had just escaped the city.  Like the halflings, the druids do not know of a secret way into Brindinford, and unlike the halflings and their attacking river monster, nothing unusual has been menacing the druids or their forest.  Remembering the main part of their quest, Værï asks if they have seen any drow or other minions of Lolth recently, and the druids have not seen any of that, either.

The party debates staying with the druids for the night, and Jonmuir asks about the local fauna, as he needs to replace the animal companion that was left behind the last time they escaped via teleport.  As Jonmuir sits down to begin praying for his new companion, the party hears the growl of a wolf off to the southwest, about 200 feet away.  The female druid says it is her companion making the noise, but the party hears deeper growls in addition to the wolf’s, and the sounds of a dog fight break out.  Sir Roderick mounts up and rides hard that direction, slowed by the underbrush.

Roderick comes upon three hell hounds that are ganging up on the wolf companion, and initiatives are rolled.  Jonmuir wild shapes into a desmodu guard bat and flies toward the fighting.  Roderick has Thaas in hand, so rides up as close as he can, and skewers the nearest hell hound with an arrow.  Værï struggles through the underbrush, and Davben uses his warlock spider climb ability to skitter through the tree branches, effectively brachiating toward the fighting.  The hell hounds bite the wolf companion for some nice bits of damage, and the last one breaths fire at the wolf, who survived because animal companions get evasion, and he barely made the save.

Jonmuir flies closer and casts splinter bolt, missing one, and dropping the hell hound that had been injured by Roderick’s arrow.  The paladin fires Thaas again, missing due to firing into melee.  Værï continues to struggle through the forest, and Davben double moves, since he was too far away for Eldritch Blast.  The wolf fails to pierce the hide of one of the hell hounds, who continue to gang up on the wolf, biting and burning, but the wolf lives yet.

Jonmuir swoops down and heals the wolf companion with a cure critical wounds, healing much more than the 20 points needed to get it back to full health.  Roderick’s horse 5-foot steps up to the hell hounds, hitting with one hoof while the paladin draws his longsword, though his blade fails to strike a blow.  Værï fights his way through the bushes, and Davben blasts away for 7 damage.  The wolf companion withdraws, and the hell hounds turn on Roderick and his steed.  Fire is breathed at the mounted paladin, but both save, and Roderick only takes 3 damage.  The second hell hound bites at warhorse, missing.

Jonmuir fires off another splinter bolt spell, missing with the first, and hitting with the second bolt, knocking one of the hell hounds unconscious.  Roderick full attacks the remaining hell hound, hitting twice for a total of 37 points of damage, killing the fiendish beast.

The party saved the wolf companion, and healed it back to full health, and the older druid is quite thankful, and a touch worried if these hell hounds are a mere minor example of the troubles that have come through the gate.  She offers up whatever help the party thinks the druid circle could provide, but cautions that if their foes are much more powerful than the hell hounds, she’s not quite sure what help they can really provide (she is a 4th level druid, and their circle also has a 5th level ranger).  When questioned about any possible older members in hiding, the Druid, Enselle, answers that she has been the leader of this circle for decades. (It’s tough work being the highest level characters in the region…)

The party debates how to get back into the city, and Jonmuir does a quick flyby of the outside of the city gates, finding them all closed up tight, with no guards on the outside.  The baron and devils are keeping people trapped in the city, after all.  Still, the party opts to wait until tomorrow to go back into town, so they have time to prep sufficient invisibility and spider climb spells to do so unseen.  It is only mid-morning by this point, and Jonmuir sits down to begin praying for a new animal companion.

They figure that their invisibility spells will last long enough to climb over the wall, and hurry over to the defiled Temple of Pelor, and sneak in to try closing the gate.  They will sneak up to one of the balconies, where Værï can Hide invisibly long enough to cast Analyze Portal without being noticed, and they can confirm the Druid’s hunch that Turning Undead can close down the gate.  For added sneakiness, Jonmuir will give Værï a camouflage spell to help him Hide.

The next morning Jonmuir’s dire lion companion shows up, but it isn’t dawn, so he can’t reprep spells again… so the party waits yet another day so the druid can prepare the spells they need.  Værï spends the time to learn a new pair of spells from the Book of Flesh and Mirrors, choosing Meld into Mirror and Mirror Magic.

The next morning the party returns to the city side of the river, they buff themselves with Hiding, Climbing, and invisibility magic, Jonmuir shrinks his new companion with Reduce Animal, stuffs him in a Bag of Holding, wild shapes into desmodu bat form with the bag, and the party makes their way over the wall.  The party enters the temple through the same back door they used in their initial attempt to save the priests (near room “f”).  Værï unlocks the door, and they immediately go up the stairs, heading to the southern balcony.



They try to move silently up the stairs and out onto the balcony, but Roderick and Davben both trip as they move out onto the balcony, clamoring around with results of 10 and 2.  They stand there invisibly and look down into the main part of the temple, and see the Osyluth standing there.  The both of them ready attacks if the devil comes up to visit, and Roderick activates Law Devotion.  Værï holds position just outside the balcony, using the door frame as cover with which to Hide, in case something looks their direction from inside the chapel.  He begins casting Analyze Portal which takes one minute to cast, and his strong voice for the verbal component is easily heard by the Bone Devil (who had already heard the lumbering tin cans crashing about).

The Osyluth teleports up to the balcony, right between Roderick and Davben, though when the bone devil doesn’t seem to realize exactly where anyone is (he can’t see invisible), they hold off on their readied attacks, and normal initiative is rolled.

Værï wins initiative, so completes round 2 of his casting, and Jonmuir, still back in the hallway area south of the balcony, reverts his form back into a halfling, and as a move action opens the bag of holding to release his dire lion, who stays near him so as to receive a spell next round.  The Bone Devil spends a move action actively trying to Listen for where foes are, and recognizes that someone (Værï) is on the other side of that doorway casting a spell.  The bone devil attacks Værï’s square (he has cover and total concealment), missing.  Davben five-foot steps back and starts casting Conjure Ice Beast 3, which will at the least provide the Bone Devil with another invisible target to try attacking.  Roderick is standing right beside the Osyluth, and the devil has no idea that he’s there.  Roderick Smites Evil, power attacking for 3, hitting with a 31 for 32 total damage.  He follows up with another sword blow, missing due to his power attack penalty, and ends his turn casting Fell the Greatest Foe as a swift action.

Værï continues to cast his spell, and Jonmuir casts Align Fang on himself, sharing it with his Medium dire lion, then shifting closer so his lion can move forward and stay next to Jonmuir.  The Dire Lion gains flanking with Roderick, but misses with his claw.  The bone devil full attacks Sir Roderick, but only hits with one claw.  Davben’s Fiendish Huge Monstrous Centipede Ice Beast arrives on the balcony, having to squeeze a bit.  The ice beast’s cold aura inflicts 1 cold damage to the bone devil (he resists it), as does Davben, the Dire Lion, and Roderick.  It then slams at the bone devil, threatening a crit, but not confirming, dealing only 4 damage after the devil’s DR.  Davben shuffled up onto the wall to get out of the ice beast’s way, and then tried a Turning attempt on the fiery gate in the temple floor, below.  He rolls well enough to turn a 10 HD undead (his max possible is 11), and nothing happens.  Roderick full attacks and smites again, scoring a critical hit for a total 42 damage, all overcoming DR.  He swings again, missing, but the bone devil does NOT look good.

Værï continues casting, and five-foot steps back, putting a little distance between himself and the fight before him.  Jonmuir dismisses the Reduce Animal spell on his new dire lion, and the lion full attacks the bone devil striking for 10 points of Good damage with one claw.  On the bone devil’s turn he flees, defensively using his Greater Teleport SLA to run away.  You can’t blame him… he only had 7 hit points.  The party bemoans another fiend being able to run away.

Davben has the ice beast centipede slither down to the main floor and use an icy breath weapon on the portal, hoping that it might weaken it in some fashion, knowing it likely won’t do anything.  He and Roderick both try Turning to shut down the portal, and both fail.

Værï continues to cast, while Roderick and Davben continue to Turning.  No foes present themselves, and so the others take defensive positions around Værï, readying actions if foes arrive.  Værï finishes his casting, and move out onto the balcony to study the pillar of fire and the gate at its base.  He spends a few rounds studying the portal, attempting DC 17 caster level checks to gain additional info each round.  He fails a few, but ends up slowly gaining all the information there is to be had.

  • There is no key or command word needed to operate the portal (it’s just open).
  • There are no special circumstances governing the portal’s use.
  • The portal can be closed if someone channels enough positive energy sufficient to turn a 12 HD undead (this is one higher than the party is currently capable of turning).

As Værï failed the check to learn that the portal is two-way, the front door to the temple opens, and the Bone Devil strides back in, along with a human in full plate.  His full plate is engraved with symbols of Heironeous (Roderick’s god), but every instance of Heironeous’ hand holding a lightning bolt has had arrows painted over the lightning bolt in blood, defiling the symbols into those of Hextor.  This is a fallen Paladin Blackguard that I inserted into the adventure as the true surviving leader of this Hextor cult.

The sight of this angers Roderick, but it is now Jonmuir’s turn, who only hears the front door open, since he is still in the upper hall outside the balcony.  He and his lion move toward the south stairwell, intending to reach the main floor.  The party on the balcony notes the bone devil looks better off than he did when he fled, though not 100%.  Davben moves to the edge of the eastern edge of the balcony, within 60 feet of the two foes, and fires off a blast, using his gloves of eldritch admixture to add electricity damage against the devil, striking the Blackguard, and chaining to the bone devil, but failing to overcome SR.  He deals 15 damage to the blackguard.  Roderick debates dying in glory, or retreating to fight another day… he had Thaas out while overwatching to defend Værï, so decides to step up to the railing of the balcony and fire down on the Bone Devil, missing twice.

Værï succeeds on his check, learning that the portal is a two-way portal.  The Blackguard of Hextor doesn’t find the battle to his liking, since he is a melee character, and the PC’s are all up on the balcony, or climbing around on the walls, but he makes the best of it, and draws his longbow, firing at Roderick, hitting despite the balcony railing providing him cover.  But Roderick succeeds on the save versus the poison on the arrow.

The Bone Devil flies 20 feet up, coming level with the party, and then casting Wall of Ice, blocking the doorway at the back of the balcony, cutting off the party’s route of escape.  Jonmuir continues on his way toward the first floor of the temple, reaching the closed door to the main chapel.  Davben chains an eldritch blast again, using the gloves to add fire damage this time, hitting the Blackguard, and the Osyluth, but again failing to overcome the devil’s SR, so only dealing 13 damage to the Blackguard.  Davben then ends his turn by using a wand of Updraft, shooting upward and latching onto the domed ceiling with his Spiderwalk invocation.  Roderick fires twice at the Blackguard, missing, then five-foot steps back, gaining total cover from the fallen paladin, and swift-casts protection from evil.

Værï succeeds on another check, seeing where the portal leads, but only within range of the spell (60 feet from Værï), so he can only see about 15 feet beyond the other side of the portal, and all he sees is fire.  The Bonedevil flies right up to Davben, and strikes at him with his stinger, and forcing a save versus poison.  Davben doesn’t roll exceptionally well, and uses his Luck Domain granted power to reroll, succeeding with the second roll.

The Blackguard can’t see any foes except Davben, so draws an arrow and applies poison to it.  Davben sees this and yells out to the others.  Jonmuir reverts to halfling form, intending to use his wand of Align Fang next round.  Davben five-foot steps to the side along the wall, then uses his Anklets of Translocation to shift another 10 feet, and get out of the Bone Devil’s reach.  He then casts Dispel Magic to try and get rid of the Wall of Ice over the door, failing by 2.  Sir Roderick fires a few arrows from Thaas, failing to hit the Bone Devil twice.

Værï decides to join the fight, nailing the Osyluth with a Lesser Orb of Acid, sneak attacking for 39 points of acid damage, though the devil resists 10 of that.  The Bone Devil tries to strike back, missing.  Jonmuir casts Align Fang on his dire lion, then opens the door into the chapel, and the lion moves into the temple proper.  The Blackguard stops delaying his turn (he couldn’t see any targets previously), and fires a poisoned arrow at the lion, hitting, but the lion saved versus the poison.  Davben Jumps down to the balcony, taking 8 points of falling damage, and shuffles over to the railing, and casts Ice Slick underneath the heavily armored Blackguard, but the evil knight makes the DC 10 Balance check this first round.  Sir Roderick moves up to the Bone Devil taking 7 damage from the scorpion tail AoO, and succeeding on his Fort save only because of the Protection from Evil that he had previously cast.  Roderick finishes turn and Smites the bone devil, but misses.

Værï steps back and defensively casts blink, and draws his longbow.  The Osyluth continues his assault on Roderick, dealing only a handful of claw damage.  Jonmuir’s lion attacks the Blackguard, hitting with a claw for 13 damage; the Blackguard amazingly succeeded in his Balance check to remain standing after having taken damage.  Jonmuir moves into the chapel and hits the Blackguard with Fiery Burst, dealing 19 fire damage, and causing the Blackguard to fall over with a failed Balance check.

The Blackguard accepts the lion’s AoO as he stands, and then cries out to Hextor for aid.  He draws his flail and starts flagellating himself, calling out to Hextor as he five-foot steps off of the Ice Slick.  The party all finds that odd and masochistic; Davben even laughingly comments “…probably going to summon Hextor himself.”  Funny he should say that… This is a little extra-rules tension builder, for lack of a better explanation we’ll call it an incantation; if the blackguard completes it, he will indeed summon an Aspect of Hextor from his own dying flesh.  I even went to the trouble of buying the Aspect of Hextor mini…

Davben decides that hitting the flagellating blackguard is a good idea, and blasts him for 8 damage.  Sir Roderick full attacks the Bone Devil, missing both times.

Værï five-foot steps to the side, hoping to get within 30 feet of the Blackguard to sneak attack him, but is too far away with only a five-foot step.  He is within 30 feet of the bone devil, though, and blink wonderfully allows him to deny the bone devil his Dex to AC.  He hits the devil despite the miss chance from blink, dealing 16 Good damage with his crystal-laiden longbow.  His second attack hits the Bone Devil’s flat-footed AC as well, dropping the Bone Devil to exactly –10 hit points.  The players nearly erupt with exclamations of “No way!” when I knock the miniature over.  Jonmuir somehow got skipped on the previous turn, but this turn his dire lion hit with one claw for 11 damage, leaving the Blackguard of Hextor with 1 hit point, and the Druid nailed him with another Fiery Burst, killing him just before he completed his little ritual.  I dejectedly pull out the Aspect of Hextor mini, and as it was exactly 10 pm, I cruelly tell them we will stop there, and they will have to wait until next week to find out if the Aspect busts out of his corpse, or not…

They did well this session, and succeeded despite being forced into a couple difficult fights.  It’s true that the Blackguard didn’t live up to my expectations, but that largely has to do with the fact it ended up being a largely ranged battle between him and most of the party.