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Where once there was a chest, now there is a chest with a mouth. |
This one update will have to cover the last two weeks. During this time, we explored the Denby Plinth.
We leave from Hoddenhill and set out for the elven forest city, Caer Brollachan.. It's a hex or two north of us and since Alia is there, the Wayroads are branching out from it.
We arrive at the tree city and find that it's covered in lush vines, and some dire bears are guarding the place. We camp outside.
We take the Wayroad to the plinth. It's a tall, white, elven spire rising about 200 feet into the air. It sits in a forest clearing. Surrounding the plinth are several dozen small tents, and as many people and adventuring companies. A small thorpe has grown up around the place. Little more than a thorpe with no governance, just some trading guilds that set up shop to service the adventurers who've come to plunder the tower.
We hang out for a little while and talk to some of the locals. They discuss the fact that the tower is hollow, that there's a pair of big iron feet in the middle of the central floor, and that their explorations have only taken them to about the second level, but people are already coming back badly injured...sometimes not coming back at all.
There's a guy selling magic plundered from the tower. He's got a lot of miscellaneous magic, and a Rod of Negation. Hoo! How much you want for it?
"Thirty thousand gold."
"!!"
We decline. That's, like, half our treasury and we don't carry our treasury around. We rest for the night and, in the morning, proceed to the entrance of the tower.
The main door has been pulled off its hinges and is lying on the ground. There's a secondary door, behind the first one, that slides back and forth. It's controlled by a winch inside the plinth, but someone's spiked it open to prevent it from closing. Also, there's a butchers board on the outer wall, by the entrance. People write their names on the board when they go in, and cross them off when they come out...or their bodies are found. Anya adds our names to the board.
Within, we find the hollow middle of the tower, just as promised, and indeed there are two giant iron feet, each twenty feet long, in the center with long legs stretching up into the darkness.
We can't see up to the top of the thing, but the inside of the tower is filled with stairways and rooms leading up. We know this is the tower of Corwin the Shaper, so we're not surprised to find old, disused forges.
As we ascend the tower, we find many rooms already cleared. Adventurers have pillaged the lower rooms leaving only those things of no use to an adventurer, including several tons of iron ingots. Worthless to an adventurer perhaps, but priceless to us. We press on.
In several rooms, we find walls facing the center of the tower with open passageways facing the Colossus. Winches push accessways out allowing someone to walk out and examine the iron giant. We take advantage of them and find that each faces a different panel on the Colossus. The first one we find is open. Within we find some kind of battery. A pair of glass orbs store electricity and copper wires run out to the innards of the giant Lightning coursing through the orbs answers our question; "are they active?" Scorch marks around this open panel indicate that previous adventurers were not sufficiently cautious. We learn from their mistakes, and close the panel.
We come to a series of rooms, full of statues. We fear gargoyles, but after some investigation, they seem mundane. Then, a room with several statues and a collection of chests in the middle. Obviously some kind of trap, but we fail to recognize what kind.
Sekhet and Jaina enter the room. Sekhet relies on Jaina's experitise in getting into places people would like to keep us out of, and asks her to examine the chests for traps. The chests are not trapped. The chests are not chests.
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Where once there was a chest, now there is a chest with a mouth. |
While everyone else is outside the room watching, the first mimic opens its mouth and grabs Jaina. At this point, the statues animate, and the shit hits the fan.
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Two mimics! Wow, nice minis Jim! |
There are eight gargoyles and 2 mimics. Targ leaps into battle and jumps onto the mimic holding Jaina. He clenches his entire body around the thing, and pulls with all his might. Muscles strain and tendons stick out like steel cables as Targ slowly pulls the mimic's mouth open, allowing Jaina to escape. Meanwhile the rest of us are attacking in the close quarters.
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The long view. note the room with the plank leading out to the colossus. |
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The view from above. |
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The gargoyles close in. |
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Things are looking bad. |
The battle is long and difficult. We attack the gargoyles with magic and, eventually, Sekhet succeeds in hitting several gargoyles with the lightning bolt from his Greatsword, courtesy of Erendill. But none of them go down. We dispatch the mimics but Sekhet and Jaina are quickly surrounded by gargoyles.
Jaina is killed. Steve's new Elven Monk, Targ, goes down. Sekhet is killed! Things are looking profoundly bad. Gilmarra heals Targ, and though Anya and Kephara are still in there fighting, none of the gargoyles have yet been killed. Characters attempt to strategically withdraw. The gargoyles begin following them out into the hall. Gilmarra makes a critical decision, and casts ice storm into the room. Targ is hit, as are Anya and Kephara. But none of the PCs go down, and fully half the gargoyles are killed.
The group manages to finish off the rest of the gargoyles, but Sekhet and Jaina are dead. This is a problem.
The company returns to Caer Brollachan and contemplates their options. Gilmarra has the power to reincarnate both dead heroes, but Harn wants to travel to Orthanc and consult the Oracle. The group agrees.
At Orthanc, Harn asks the Oracle who else in the area has the power to resurrect the heroes. The Oracle informs Harn that she only answers questions for the Lord of Orthanc. Harn assumes the Lordship of the tower in order to get an answer out of the Oracle. She informs him that the shaman of the lizardmen who captured Harn long ago has the power to bring Sekhet back, but Jaina is lost to us.
Not wanting to risk reincarnating Sekhet as a bugbear or, god forbid, a gnoll, the group travels the the swamp east of the Weald and asks the Lizard men what they can do. They agree to bring Sekhet back for a price. They're happy with cash, maybe some trinkets. We have plenty of miscellaneous magic in party treasure, and provide what they ask for.
Upon Sekhet's return, Sekhet negotiates a treaty with the Lizardmen and arranges an alliance between them and the Weald. Not bad for a week off from adventuring.
But our vacation's over. We return to Denby Plinth, with Mark's new character Sarin in tow. Sarin is basically a Jaina clone with better stats. Mark works on her backstory, but he's not around the night she's introduced and asks us to play her anyway. So she slips in quietly and takes Jaina's place. Careful reader may also note the presence of a new dude for Steve; the elven monk Targ. We don't know Targ's backstory and though he risks his life with us, he seems to think we're a bunch of idiots.
Back at the Plinth and we're quickly inside, picking up where we left off. We continue on, finding more accessways to the construct. We smell chlorine but we're not sure where it's coming from. We assume it's got something to with the construct.
The rooms suddenly split off from one another. Before us lies an iron portcullis. to our left another passage branches off. As we investigate the other passageway, Sarin finds a pit trap. As we're about to bypass it, several arrows fly out at us from beyond the portcullis! Bugbears!
We don't even bother with the portcullis, we use the branching corridor to get around it and start attacking the Bugbears. They're tough, but we're tougher. Erendill zaps a few with magic missiles from his wand, then gets the bright idea to try a fireball from the Staff of Dunatis the White. Well...the fireball is effective and we smell burnt bugbear. We also notice our mage has been polymorphed into a slimy toad. Huh. A toad.
The fight continues, there are several pit traps, but we avoid them all. Well, we avoid all but one of them. Targ falls into one of them, but he takes no damage because he's a monk and can fall 30 feet without taking damage. At the bottom of the pit, he finds a pair of rust monsters who check him out, and pronounce him devoid of all metal. He pets them, and climbs out of the pit.
Meanwhile the fight with the Bugbears continues. We press on and they retreat. At one point, doors we've passed by as we pursue the Bugbears open and more bugears come out. We're surrounded! As it turns out, this is not that big a deal. Sekhet obliterates their chieftain and their mage uses one of the openings that leads to the construct to rappel down a rope he had waiting and escape. We slaughter the rest of the bugbears and press on.
There's a large mithral door in front of us, and the opening the Bugbear mage took to get away to our left. From that opening, we smell more chlorine. We look down and notice that there's a large opening in the wall below us. As though there were another room underneath us we'd not yet found. Targ climbs down the rope and investigates.
The chlorine gas seems to be coming from the room he discovers. It's dark, and there's a great deal of treasure lying about. He quickly realizes what's going on, and tries to sneak very quietly forward.
"Go ahead, thief. Take all you want. There's plenty for all." growls a deep, intelligent voice.
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Targ faces a green dragon. |
Targ freezes. "I apologize, Lord, for intruding on your slumber. My friends and I were just passing through." Targ backs out toward the rope.
"Why leave in such a hurry? Stay awhile!" A green dragon comes snaking his way forward from the darkness of the room and Targ leaps out of the opening and grabs a hold of the rope. The dragon breaths on him, but he avoids the deadly gas and begins climbing. The dragon flies out of his lair, and follows the monk.
Just as Targ reaches the room where we're waiting for him, the dragon breaths again and many of us are caught in the chlorine gas. Ack!
Kephara breathes his own gas on the green dragon, and slows it. Good boy! We attack it a few times, forcing it to retreat until the slow wears off.
We descend into its lair and find stairs leading up to our level, beyond the mithral door. We root around for any powerful magic that might help with the dragon, but don't find any. Fearing that the dragon has flown down and out of the tower and may now be eating the people outside, we quickly descend.
Indeed, that is exactly what's happened. We wisely opt not to go outside, where the dragon can attack us from the air, and taunt it. This is moderately successful. The dragon pokes its head in the tower and breaths on us. Again, Kephara breaths back, and again it is slowed.
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The dragon prowls around ouside. Note the dead bodies. We wait for it inside the Plinth. |
I repeatedly fail to beat the 35% arcane spell failure check and cannot cast true strike. I want to cast true strike so I can power attack and hit the thing with smite evil, and 5 extra points of damage from power attack and a 7d6 lightning bolt from the Greatsword of spell storing. I wonder why I've never been bothering with the arcane spell failure before, and chastise myself for cheating all this time. It's rough work being a Paladin/Wizard and you tend to forget things like TRUE STRIKE IS VERBAL ONLY AND SPELL FAILURE IS ONLY FOR SPELLS WITH SOMATIC COMPONENTS!!!!
Ah well, that was 3 rounds of pissing around for me, while Gilmarra and Harn healed me repeatedly. But eventually I got the spell off and the dragon was forced to retreat. We had all done a lot of damage to the thing. As it flies away, Sarin take a shot at the thing with her bow, doing a single point of damage. This is enough to fell the beast, and we rejoice in our victory. Among other things, Sekhet has armorsmithing, and we take the time to make Targ some shurikens out of green dragon scales.
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Sarin the dragonslayer! |
We continue on through the tower. Beyond the mithral door, the complex continues. We enter a room with several pillars and a single statue. Hm. More statues. Ok, Sarin, carefully...
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Sarin carefully approaches the status. The rest of us watch from a safe distance. |
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Hey it's a clay golem! Wee! |
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Jim's Clay Golem Mini. A+! |
We begin attacking the Clay Golem. This thing is fucking nasty. We batter at it and assault it but don't seem to do much damage. Targ is really frustrated, as even those of us without adamantine bludgeoning weapons (i.e. everyone) can usually do enough damage to get a few points past the DR. But Targ cannot. So he scratches his head for a second, and does a sweep kick against the golem, knocking him to the ground. When the golem gets up, we all get free attacks on it. This works several times and is highly effective. The golem knocks Sekhet out, but Harn heals him. The golem knocks Harn down, and Anya moves to heal him, but then the golem smacks Anya and kills her. ! We begin retreating. It follows us. We are sorely vexed. Sekhet is too wounded to survive another blow, but his weapon is the most potent against the thing. We decide to try and fight it, and stand our ground. Two rounds later, the thing is destroyed, and we're still alive. Well, everyone except Anya.
So it's BACK to the Lizardmen. Excuse us, we'd like to trade you this lovely battleaxe of lifedrinking (which we don't want) for the life of our friend. That seems to work, and we've got Anya back. Oh, and could you turn our toad friend back into a person? Thanks.
We spend about three weeks in Hoddenhill while Erendill makes some wands. When make our way back to the Plinth. On the way, some Wyverns attack us on the Elven road. This is unusual, normally nothing crosses our path on the elven road.
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One wyvern attacks while another flies in. |
In our absence, someone has come along and murdered all the people who'd been living around the plinth, going so far as to torture some of them and nail them to trees. We make a note of this, and enter. While the door is still off its hinges, someone has removed the spikes keeping the portcullis open. But the portcullis is still open. We spike it open again and proceed. Previously, the inside of the plinth showed the presence of many groups of adventurers going to and fro. Now it's immaculately clean. Hmmm..
We press on. Before we can get back to where we were when last we were here, we hear noises from the foyer below. Great. We look down from one of the accessways and see about a dozen elves, apparently the elves of Gwynnyd. Great. We think for a few minutes about how to deal with this. It is decided that we'll talk to them first, ask them why their here, see what they have to say about the dead humans outside, and ask them to leave. Gilmarra notices an elven rogue watching us as we talk, and we take that opportunity to descend. But first, everyone loads Sekhet up with spells. If there's going to be a fight, it's going to be one hell of a fight.
We approach the elves, and Sarin does the talking for us. She asks them why they're here. They say they're taking over. We point out this place is not theirs. They say it belongs to the elves of Albion, and then show us that they've got an Elf from Albion. The elf looks really, really old which is interesting because Elves are supposed to be ageless. What is this thing that looks like an ancient elf? Is it what it appears to be?
We talk to the elves for a little while and note that they've got a Centaur with them. He claims he's just here as an advisor since the Elves of Gwynyyd are not from around here. We point out to the Elves that there is no more Albion. They claim there is. We ask what happened to the humans outside. They claim bugbears killed them all, sent by the Fomorians.
We both do some posturing and things seem tense. Then Anya attempts to fascinate the Marshall from Albion, along with the sorceress who appears to be the lead Gwynnyd Elf. It works! Anya is about to order them to leave the plinth when the Centaur walks up and says "Are you mad?" and then orders Anya to release them. She complies.
We posture some more and nothing much happens. We agree not to attack them and they agree not to kick us out. But they're going about the business of reactivating the forges and restoring the Plinth. But they don't explore any farther than we've gone.
We go outside and Harn casts speak with dead and we discover that, as far as we can discern, the Gwynnyd elves are telling the truth. Gilmarra sends an animal mesenger to Finvarra, king of the Elves of Ulster. The only reason the Weald and Gwynydd aren't at war right now is because Finvarra told the Queen of Gwynydd to stop attacking us. Therefore we feel is it perhaps prudent to discuss this matter with him since it would only be polite to let him know we were about to attack the elves of Gwynydd and further we're hoping he'll shed some light on the 'Who is this Albion Elf' matter.
The adventure continues next week...
written by Mark Hobbs
Jaina was married to Prince Tobin Brookshore in a small gnomish town north of the wield. Shortly after the marriage, Jaina fell ill with the plague. While not normally a superstitious people, the gnomish town took this to be a bad omen. Disapproval spread and the elders banished Jaina from the prince's house and anulled the marriage. Jaina was brokenhearted and wracked with sickness for several weeks. Eventually the plague reduced her to a frail husk.
Not that the Softmeadow family had ever been blessed with a child of even average strength. Jaina could barely carry the weight of her own clothes when she was healthy. But what they lacked in muscle, the Softmeadows surely made up for in gnomish ingenuity and a social grace rarely seen in the short people. Combine this with the light and airy clothing Jaina preferred, and she was in the eye of every gnomish male.
Assuming she would die quickly, the people of the Tobin's village were shocked when Jaina recovered, and horrified when she walked out of town swearing never to return while the prince's petty family lived. The people privately renounced Tobin and his family and mourned the loss of their Jaina, who's name now became a reminder of the town's foolishness and gnomish strength.
A few month's after Jaina's departure, the plague sweeps through the town. This time, not one member of the town fell ill, but the plague took dozens, and did not spare a single member of the Brookshore family. The town in full mourning, now cried for Jaina to take her position on the elder council. They sent word to the Softmeadow family to find and return Jaina Brookshore.
The questions remain:
Did Jaina become a carrier for the plague? What will the town do when they learn of Jaina's death?
