DM Chronicles, Session 8: Heroic Conclusions

Previously in Phil’s game:

Our Heroes beat the leader of the Cult of Sehan and various other aberrations in an ancient tomb that predates modern Ptolus. After a short rest on Andach’s island, they returned, searching for a way to that pool of glowing green slime that may or may not contain Sehan. They had just started opening another closed tomb door when the soft whispers of thousand of tiny creatures skittering toward the light…

This week, Math (the Elven Duskblade/Arcane Archer Mashed up PC) was missing. We had pushed the game back one week because of my job’s X-mas party and we tried finding various alternative date to accommodate him, but failed. So we elected to play without him as our Social Contract dictates.

The setup of this encounter was tactically promising. We had a 20’X20′ square in front of a door to the other room (click thumbnail to see details). The middle 10’X10′ square was occupied by a Glyph of Warding that characters had detected but not triggered (So picture 4 characters around a Glyph a warding getting ready to invade the next room). The sealed door needed 3 rounds to open by a strong PC (Nogard, Str 28).

As soon as the door was one third opened I activated the 4 Spider Swarms inside. Surprise round! My goal was to have the swarm step on the glyph and wipe itself out while causing all players a few d8s of sonic damage.

That never happened. Within the surprise round and the next one, Lillie, Elite Jedi Mook hunter that she is, killed all swarms with 2 well placed Force Blasts (a force-effect lightning bolt-like spell from Monte’s Complete Book of Eldritch Might). She also cleared a 5′ wide path in all the webs found in the newly opened room.

Eric then sent Cruger inside the room and that’ s when the Web Golem (A golem made out of guess what? MM III) dropped from the ceiling and cast Web on the group outside the room.

The following fight was helped tremendously by Lillie who quickly created paths to the monster. The main difficulty was that Cruger and Nogard both got their weapons stuck on the Web golem and lost them. Nogard went all out and attacked with his natural weapon… getting grappled by the sticky Golem on the way and doing not a lot of damage.

The monster was finally destroyed and no passage to the 4th level (where the pool of green slime reside) was found. It was then decided to use ropes and descend to the last level. (The players went to pains to explain to me how safe they were and how everyone was tied correctly… I didn’t have the heart to play Use ropes checks… and I’m glad I didn’t).

At the bottom awaited Sehan…. A large 40’X40′ pit of glowing greenish slime. As they party approached the pool, I had everyone save vs a telepathic Suggestion to step in this ‘pure, crystal blue pool’ and discuss the next steps with Sehan.

I gave all PCs who had never been exposed to the stuff a bonus to save. None failed… Ahhhhh

I took the occasion to describe that the room was littered with Green crystals embeded in walls and stuck in growing vines coming out of the pool .

As players looked in the crystals, I described how Sehan saw each PCs if it’s own plans came to fruitions. I made a mini image for each PC where power was given to the PC at the price of his/her individuality and form.

For example, I showed Cixi as a Medusa-like Queen commanding millions of Sehan-touched Iron Heroes conquering the worlds of the Multiverse. I showed Cruger (Hellbred Crusader) as a freed soul, 1/2 human and 1/2 Sehan, conquering each layers of Hell with an army of Children of Sehan…

That’s when I had a Huge Green Dragon burst out of the pool and claim it was Sehan and asking to parley. All players but Stef (1/2 Dragon Barbarian) moved back and prepared to fight. I had the other PCs roll for spot checks. Those that succeeded looked into the crystals and saw that the dragon was in fact a Huge Worm-like creature (an Argorth, taken from Pathfinder #3).

Stef played his PC beautifully, willing to trust Sehan after it had given him this new form he liked so much. He stood by the pool, defenseless… while the others were rolling for initiative… I gave him 20% of the XPs needed to level up and the worm promptly grabbed him with it’s tail and Swallowed him up. WooT!

Aside: I’ve played with a lot of Grapple creatures in D&D 3.x and I must say that this worm was one of the best. It needs to spend a tail slap to hit and achieve a grapple… then it must use it’s bite attack to swallow a creature. A seamless process that went fast!

The combination of Tail slap damage, stomach constriction and Stomach acid rapidly drained Nogard of his HPs. The other players promptly went to work on the worm.

When Nogard dropped to -8, Cruger used his 8d6 Divine Surge, killed the worm and cut opened it’s stomach to free his 1/2 draconic pal in the nick of time!

Nogard was healed (draining the last of the healing wands) and then the players pondered how to destroy the pool… Which happened to be the actual Sehan.

Lillie and Nogard discussed this and she agreed that fire might, for once, be a good solution. So Nogard started burning the pool with his breath weapon. It vaporized rapidly, filling the cave it sat in with Insanity Mist (Scroll to poison)… All other players ran away when they made their save vs poison. Nogard prevailed and soon finished destroying this ancient evil…

The characters had saved Ptolus of yet another threat… Woot!

They promptly reported to the Keepers of the Veil who were very happy of this development and invited the PCs to a Banquet to be held in their honor a few days later.

There, Cruger was officially named commander but not without the leader of the Knights of the Pale (a competing, more popwerful organization) telling him to act as her eyes and ears in this “junior” organization..and to be ready to merge both organization if the need arose. You should have seen the evil ‘not more Ptolus politics!’ eyes Eric threw me…. Priceless!

The city’s Commissar came to the banquet and exchanged a few polite words with Cixi…. “I seem to be seeing a lot of you these days miss Cixi”. He also gave Lillie and the rest of the party the “keys of the city” making them full citizens without any of the bureaucratic hassles usually associated with citizenship (much to Lillie’s delight).

The players were enjoying this!

Then I had a somewhat clueless Paladin deliver a special package to Cruger. It was a long thin coffer containing a runed Bastard Sword. An unsigned letter said something to the effect of ‘thanks for the services rendered, here’s something to help you in your quests” The sword was identified as being called Caldbolg (Thanks Fang!)

Aside two: The players who read my last Adventure Prep post suspected where that sword came from. But I really nailed it with the following piece of improv…

One of the invitees was Rastor, a leonal (Lion-man) weaponsmith of Delver’s Square, known for his ability to identify weapons by wielding them for an instant. He went to Cruger and put himself between Cruguer and Dorant Khatru (head of House Khatru, a militaristic noble house Cixi belongs to).

He identified the sword (a sacred blade, bane to Undead/Outsider alike). He then walked to Khatru and told him the sword was of no importance to him… When another PC quizzed him later about his behavior (hiding the sword and lying to Khatru) he shrugged and said something to the effect of ‘if the man can’t keep proper care of his collection, who am I to point out the stolen pieces’

Fun!!!!!!!!

At that point I should have ended the game, but I still had some energy left and I had put a series of new rumours on my whiteboard. Including the rumours of an Inn opening up in the Necropolis…

Well it so happened that the players investigated it, way before I was ready to play the scene (which is from the next campaign arc)…. It turned out all right… but I’ll probably have to make a rewind because we went a lot farther that I planned… But that’s a story for another time!

Lessons Learned:

• Improv: It’s all good, but stop when you’ve reached the final plot point of the evening!
• Recognition scenes to end an adventure is a good idea.
• D&D tiles are Awesome!

What Players liked:

• Getting recognition for their deeds. The ‘thank you’ scene was appreciated
• The Boss monster was cool and nice to play (even Stef fought bite and claw from the thing’s stomach!)

What player disliked:

• When Franky inquired about the outer planes in the Necropolis Inn, I railroaded his inquires to later… he didn’t like that…
• With being caught in the Web Golem’s web and eaten by the worm, Stef was not really able to shine in a cool way all all that much…

What’s next:

• Planescape, January 4th!! Stay tuned!