Into Dragon’s Den, Part 4

After holding up the game for about half an hour trying to redraw a map I thought I’d lost, the players re-checked the door for traps, and feeling that it was no longer going to disintegrate anyone else, kicked it in. In my last campaign, the players actually complained that there weren’t any traps–in an ancient, undead-ridden castle, no less–so this time I indulged their paranoia since I could rationally explain there existence (also, it would likely be awhile before I could use them in such abundance again).

In the map I drew the “dungeon” is divided into two halves, with each half basically having two ways to go about it. One is trapped, while the other is clean. For the trapped path, the doors are locked, suggesting importance, with traps setup to trigger once it is opened, or when someone steps on the area just outside (pressure plates). The idea is that no reasonable organization would employ mechanical traps in an area that sees regular traffic. I tried dropping hints, such as that the doors appeared to be rusted, or that the dust, mold, and/or excrement around the door didn’t appear disturbed.

Despite this, they pressed on through a heavily fire-trapped-and-locked hallway, until they kicked in a door to find a scarred orc getting ready to take a cleaver to Moxie. Although I’ve never seen an episode of Doctor Who, Beth got it right in that it was a teleporter and not a disintegration ray. The trap, when triggered, teleports the individual into a chamber where the target is restrained by a magic circle. Moxie tried to talk her way out by pretending to be a “new guy”, but the orc wasn’t having any of it. Besides, he needed some blood for a ritual on there wasn’t any on tap.

When the rest of the gang arrived, he tried in vain to draw one of them into a Khyber dragonshard, summoning some legion devils for support. Heien locked down the devils, while Lwaxana weakened the circle enough for Moxie to attack the orc when he got pushed too close. An imp stung Heien and fled invisibly to warn others when he got damaged. It was an easy battle as I’d banked on someone getting temporarily trapped in the dragonshard or knocking someone else into the magic circle, but thats how the 20-sider rolls.

They tried having Moxie trick more of the thieves, but the imp had already spilled the beans. They tried to go pretend to go along with her story, and while she saw through the ruse, the imp had snuck on on her and stung her, too. The rest of the party sprung into action, feathering the thieves with arrows while Heien and Moxie killed the imp before it could get away (again). Another pretty easy fight, but I didn’t want them to peter out of healing before they got to the end, as I liked the idea of them plowing through a thieves guild without having to stop for a nap.

After looting some beds, they came across a pair of warforged. While most of the party took them on, Lwaxana ran the other way to open a door, adding a trio of minions and a skilled duelist into the mix. Who was also Moxie’s sister. This was a problem. I might not have mentioned this before, but Moxie was looking for her sister, whom she believed had fallen in with Dragon and his crew. The basic story behind Liz’s character is that she got into the dragonshard smuggling trade so that she could get close to Dragon and determine this for herself.

This means that she [Moxie’s sister] is a changling, a race that hinges on the ability to create perfect alternate identities. So, I tried to describe her fighting technique as “very similar to Moxie’s”, what with the graceful flourishes, feints, and two-weapon style, but no one really caught on. I didn’t want to make anyone roll Insight, as once you call for it the players immediately become more paranoid or interested in something than they have any right to be. Kinda like when you ask for a Perception check and everyone fails.

Long story short, they killed her, she turned into a changling, and Liz realized what was going on. After some accusations that I did that to avoid developing the character hook later, or that I’d allegedly forgotten about it, I reminded the players that such a thing as Raise Dead exists in D&D. Since, you know, forever. All they have to do is find a halfling House of Healing and shell out the 500 or so gp (I might up it to 1,000 due to supply and demand, but certainly not out of irritation, so siree. :-P).

With that out of the way, the found a room with tables and gemcutting kits and an attached vault filled with chests and crates. They went after the crates, triggering an explosive trap that also blew up the crates. Which were filled with rocks. When they got around to checking the crates, they say that those were filled with Eberron dragonshards.

The last stop was Dragon’s throne room. Yes, this guy had a throne room, along with an attractive half-elf…well, let’s call her a “mediator”. To the party, Dragon appeared as a big-ass green dragon lounging upon a gem-encrusted throne made of gold. The entire hall glittered with opulent splendor. So, I’m hoping none of the players were surprised when they discovered it was a grand illusion. Dragon was a brain in a jar, while the half-elf was a dolgaunt, with more dolgaunt minions lurking behind illusionary walls.

The battle opened with Dragon dominating Heien and tossing Hawkeye into a dolgaunt infested room. Moxie chucked daggers to no avail, and Lwaxana had a bitch of a time hitting him with any Will spells since, surprise surprise, his Will was his highest Defense. With the ranged guy surrounded, the defender dominated, and the two support characters being directly confronted, they pulled out the big guns dailies. Since none of them had even used daily powers, Dragon lasted a round or two before the head-based puns started rolling.

Next session, it’s off into the Shadow Marches to deal with the orcs, ideally after pawning their shit, doing some research, and gearing up.

Into Dragon’s Den, Part 3

With Red captured and delivered to the authorities, the party–not wanting to leave any stone unturned–insisted on making Perception checks to see if they’d missed something in his hideout. Truth be told, they’d managed to avoid a room that the thieves had neglected due to a wraith infestation. Despite my descriptions of a bone-chilling cold and foreboding feelings, they determined that whatever glinting gem lay at the far edge was worth the risk. The room contained a single stone chair where the previous occupant practiced turning fleshy things into stone and/or horribly disfiguring them. They typically died painfully and were discarded, which is the sort of thing that you don’t want to do in a world where vengeful spirits are a very real threat.

When they approached the room one appeared over the chair, dressed in decaying finery and staring with empty eyes. Moxie tried to lift tactics from Shaun of the Dead in a doomed attempt to trick it into thinking that she was also dead. I don’t care what Dungeon Master’s Book says, sometimes you need to say no. The moment she crossed the threshold, it drew a ghostly blade and rush her. So did four others that were lingering in the discarded rubble formerly known as their bodies. I like the cut of the new wraiths (and sovereign wraith), but I don’t like insubstantial. To be fair, the party was both outnumbered, and one was a level 8 soldier. To their credit, they only had one force attack and legitimately killed the sovereign before I got bored and had the rest drift off after only being bloodied, leaving them with a khyber shard of lifedrinking for their troubles (and patience).

Back at town, they convened on the next course of action, which was to find Dragon, kill him, and take his stuff (aka, Plan A). Through the power of narrative and skill checks they found out that a merchant was accepting payment to use his premises as an access tunnel. They went there, paid his guards off with a combination of monetary incentive, skill, and promise of not progressing to physical incentive. Normally I like to think that paid guards are a bit more professional, but when you’re outnumbered two-to-one and the opposing party is clad in magical armaments, the line has been crossed. They glumly accepted about several weeks of advance pay, and strode off to inform whatever amounts to the Zarash’ak law enforcement (which will be addressed later).

Inside, they were pleased to find increasingly paranoid that the merchant’s house wasn’t riddled with traps, but merely locked. The found the access tunnel, (accidentally?) killed the two archers on the roof, and not feeling larcenous enough stole some knick-knacks off of the shelves in his bedroom. The real adventure literally underway, they ventured into the tunnel to face Dragon. I laid out Dragon’s hideout as a kind of old-school dungeon, deciding that the tunnels and chambers were built long ago before the Gatekeepers did their mojo to sweep all the aberrants under the rug so that a future generation of unlikely heroes could deal with it later. Even so, their influence is subtle and memories are short; people were drawn to this place to build atop the sunken ruins.

The underground passage lead to an iron door, beyond which they could hear talking. Moxie changed into a non-descript human and pretended to be wounded. She got someone to open the door and booked it, which did not cause the thief to give chase (as she’d hoped). Instead he crane his neck around the corner, and upon spotting the rest of the party brilliantly silhouetted by Heien’s glowing shield, shouted a warning and attempted to close the door. Some of the characters won initiative and managed to put a stop to that plan, which was good because it locks from the inside. The combat that ensued involved a close-quarters skirmish that allowed Heien to easily maintain battlemind’s demand on most of the opposition, and Hawkeye to deal lots of area-effect damage (something I’ll need to consider in the future).

The next room had a large hole in the center that reeked of shit and rot. Beyond that they spotted a pair of warforged talking to a hobgoblin. Again, Moxie pretended to be a wounded guard and tried to convince them that intruders had arrived, but that she’d captured them. They told her to toss them in the hole, but she persuaded them that she needed their help. They followed her into a well setup ambush that allowed the party to easily triumph despite all the low rolls. They didn’t kill the hobgoblin, and after some interrogation convinced him to take a handful of coins and a few weeks off. Before he left, he clued them in about a magic item-toting elf that’d shown up recently and got pitched into the hole during a “misunderstanding”, which contained refuse and an otyugh.

Moxie lit a barrel of spirits on fire and pitched it in, lighting up the otyugh and causing it to climb out. Thanks to her smart thinking, she seared off about a quarter of its hit points before initiative even got rolled. To make matters worse, Heien saved against its filth fever. My goal is to one day strip away all 13 or so of his healing surges. It did not–as they’d hoped–eat the bow, which would allow them to easily retrieve it. No, they had to go into the pit and get their hands dirty. Heien couldn’t find anything after some extensive rifling, so Hawkeye went in next since he felt that he had the Endurance to shake off any diseases (or corn) that might “crop up”, digging up both a +2 venomous songbow and monkey’s paw +2 lucky charm.

This made Lwaxana happy, and I didn’t inquire as to if she would use a bow that had poo in the wood grain, +2 or no. From here they had two doors to choose from, and in true Gygaxian fashion one was trapped, while the other wasn’t. They chose the one that was, or rather, had a trap in it’s immediate vicinity. See, Moxie checked it for traps, as per routine, but I figured that a thieves guild wouldn’t keep traps in a room that sees a lot of traffic for fear that something might set it off. I felt it was logical to place it on the other side, if for no other reason than to avoid the cost of rearming it. She opened the door, and lacking a sufficient Passive Perception, stepped on the plate, unleashing a salvo of poisoned crossbow bolts.

They missed.


Everyone.

However, there were also several gray oozes slithering about a stream of water nearby, which proved a minor distraction thanks to lock-down powers and Heien’s high Fortitude.

They found themselves in an illogically large sewer tunnel, built in accordance to high fantasy requirements: about 30-feet wide, stream of water in the center, and the ends capped by metal grates. The only things missing were dungeon-grade rats and/or insects, which the guild apparently skimped on due to economic shortages. Oh, and two more doors. Moxie was smart and found the trap in front of the door this time, but rather than scope out the other door the party decided to go with this one. A botched Thievery check triggered it, causing a circle of runes to appear and zap her with a green ray. She disintegrated, leaving a fine cloud of dust, an ominous note that I felt appropriate to end the game on.

Next Time!


Is Moxie really dead? Just what is Dragon? Will Lwaxana disenchant her other songbow into chainmail that we didn’t know she didn’t have? Will all those paid guards really stop their life of crime, or will they create their own adventuring party,and do totally awesome things that will have repercussions later? Will Randy ever get his very own trained owlbear? Will anyone use Gary’s acid spray attack?

Into Dragon’s Den, Part 2

The session picked up with the continuation of the previous session’s battle. They didn’t have a lot of time to recuperate before other guild members snuck into an adjacent room, but I allowed them all to burn up to two healing surges and regain one encounter power of their choice to reflect them managing to get a small breather. With that, combat resumed in earnest when one managed to hit Heien with both a dagger and combat advantage.

Unfortunately, the only safe route to the party was over a catwalk and down a ladder into a fairly cramped room, which meant that when Heien made his move he was able to get a few backed up against a wall, cutting off their escape and keeping them lumped up for Hawkeye’s elemental spirits and biting swarms. Moxie ran in and got herself stuck between a thug and bugbear, which was unable to strangle her for a few turns due to opening move.

Things were looking up for a few rounds as Heien’s battlemind’s demand and restricted space kept the heat on him, and his elan resilience and whatever the fuck his level 5 daily is shaved plenty of damage off of the continual flow of Sneak Attack-bolstered-clubbery. However, I’d budgeted this battle for slightly above the norm had there been five party members, and there were only four.

It didn’t matter.

With one thief left and only a quarter of her hit points pooled on the floor, she made a break for it. Heien is great at absorbing damage, but his opportunity attacks leave a lot to be desired in terms of attack bonus. Thankfully, Hawkeye is even worse at it. These two factors allowed her to run out of the warehouse entirely, only to be picked off by a ranged sly flourish from Moxie. Oh well, there went my plans to have Dragon informed and thereby be better prepared.

The party explored the rest of the warehouse, discovering a hefty cache of bank notes, coins, bars, and ladder-descending-underground, which is always a plus. Going down they wandered through a series of narrow tunnels both natural and man-carved, before Heien blundered into a gelatinous cube. This didn’t bother him much, as he could teleport quite a bit thanks to his battlemind class feature and disciplines. No, what bothered him were the pair of green slimes dropping from the ceiling behind the softer characters.

Green slimes haven’t changed much between Monster Manual and Monster Vault, except that their opportunity attack deals ongoing acid damage, while engulf deals more. I managed to get Hawkeye caught up in one while the other tried to slither up and over to Lwaxana, but Hawkeye’s encaging spirits kept them both at bay while fire-based elemental spirits polished them off rather quickly, while Heien and Moxie finished carving up the gelatinous cube.

The tunnels weren’t extensive, and they found their way out rather quickly into a massive hall that had been formed from petrified humanoids–mostly orcs and various goblinoids–and inhabited by a pair of warforged guards. Heien ventured out alone, hoping to talk his way past, but once other party members started showing up and failing Stealth rolls they extended weapons out of their arms and rushed him. Once more party members revealed themselves, they called for help, adding a bunch of minions to the fray, which ended up being easy pickings for Heien’s augmented spinning cobra strikes and Hawkeye’s elemental spirits.

Leaving one thug alive, they managed to figure out that Red could turn people to stone, and had a pet owlbear. This didn’t bode well with Randy, who had just recently read up on owlbears from Monster Vault and did not care for their 4d6 + 6 claw attack one bit. Not one to levy player knowledge, they proceeded through the halls until they reached a gallery of disfigured statues illuminated by a crimson everburning torch set within an iron mesh on the ceiling. With a few amazing Perception and Arcana rolls, they determined that aside from an iron door that an illusionary wall was also noteworthy, prompting Moxie to investigate.

The wall wasn’t trapped, and served to only conceal the owlbear’s lair. It tried to maul Moxie, but she was able to scamper out of they way without taking a scratch (or having her body rearranged into inevitably fatal configurations). I applaud Randy’s bravery, having Heien charge to the front with the knowledge that two well-rolled hits could drop is character instantly. Lucky for him, I tend to roll really badly when the star monster enters the scene, and even when I do usually Beth has Lwaxana do something annoying to mitigate the hit. Fucking leaders.

Once the owlbear was bloodied, Red decided to check out what the noise was about and seeing Moxie literally right in front of him, petrified her and had his dog-golems get in front to shield himself. Red was a dwarf that was a bit worse for wear after digging his way into a lost daelkyr ruin, discovering ancient magic carved into the torsos of petrified creatures, and trying to master it. His arm was mostly petrified as a result, though motion caused the stones to grind, causing it to constantly bleed as a result. Still, he had a lot to show for his sacrifice, being able to transmute stone to mud, and flesh to stone.

The party tried to parlay again, but the combination of combat and Red’s own perception that he had them where he wanted them didn’t help matters much. It did, however, give him pause, which is one way to phrase “combat advantage”. Heien teleported behind him, Moxie got in a flanking position, and they knocked him out against Moxie’s protest.

Randy, not being satisfied by the promises of gold or +2 weapons/armor, wanted to befriend the owlbear, and with Hawkeye and Lwaxana on the case he was no match for their Diplomacy and Nature skill bonuses. To add insult to injury, Red didn’t fare any better against Heien’s and Moxie’s Intimidate checks, but instead of conditional friendship they garnered the district where Dragon had setup kip. With pockets full of dreams and twice-stolen goods (and dragonshards!) they turned Red into the authorities and have told me that they’ll probably go after Dragon next, giving me less than a week to prepare.

They’re not quite done exploring the place, so maybe next week we’ll spend some time exploring artifact chairs and haunted quarries.

Into Dragon’s Den, Part 1

En route to Zarash’ak, the party was ambushed on their boat by a group of dolgaunts occupying varying levels and roles. One vainly demanded that they hand over the silver key, while the rest positioned themselves atop the cabin thanks to a combination of high Dexterity scores and training in Stealth. Well, except for the two artillery trawling a raft to the side. They were safely out of melee range and had a clear shot at most everyone. Moxie and Hawkeye wanted to resolve things peacefully, or perhaps just delay initiative rolls for a bit since Lwaxana and Heien were…well…indisposed. With an “Endurance-based skill challenge”. *cough cough*

Obviously, words failed, initiative was rolled anyway, and half the party was forced to fight without pants. Although I was able to grab almost everyone at the start, Hawkeye was able to take out the pair of artillery on the raft almost instantly thanks to a crit and area-effect attacks. I think that, despite the defender having no armor and people being outnumbered, things were made far too easy thanks to most of the party testing out fresh level 5 daily attacks. At one point, a dolgaunt managed to snag the silver key to everyone’s chagrin, but as predicted he was frozen and then shattered on the following turns. Yes, I predicted that turn of events. My players seem to enjoy selecting powers that specifically fuck with me.

They rolled into Zarash’ak without further incident, except for the part where we spent a half hour discussing how they would sneak into the city without paying for documentation that would have allowed them to loot freely and not be taxed and/or arrested for it. Eventually they took the honest route and told a guard what happened, visited with one of the House Tharashk leaders to explain things in detail, and learned that there was a lot more going on than they expected: in addition to mass citizen unrest in the city, mining camps were being overrun by bizarre monsters or razed by orc warbands. Hawkeye immediately volunteered to speak to orc leaders to the House patriarch’s delight. He granted them claim over all treasure previously discovered with the exception of dragonshards (since they were now a hot commodity).

The next item on the agenda was to fence a bag of holding‘s-worth of gilt fish idols. I informed them that they could only trade so many to merchants, and after prompting them for various skill checks that they easily succeeded at, managed to ditch 1,000 gp worth. Afterwards the party split up, with Hawkeye and Moxie going to fence their gilt fish idols while Heien and Lwaxana sought council from elan Signers.

The talk with the Signers was brief, but Heien and Lwaxana learned that the documents found in Obed’s shrine pertained to creating gates linked to Xoriat, corrupting the Gatekeeper seals, and communing with old stars drifting through the far reaches of the Astral Sea. Fearing that their foe might very well be one of the old stars, he decided to send missives to other Signers to determine the best, if any, course of action, and informed the pair that he’d get back to them in a week’s time.

To make a bad day worse, Moxie and Hawkeye ran into one of Dragon’s catspaws, an eccentrically crazy orc with an aberrant dragonmark named ‘Nogs, whom both knew of as an extremely dangerous criminal throughout most of western Khorvaire. He informed Moxie that she had three days to deliver 600 gp of dragonshards, after which Dragon would permit him to do whatever he wanted to her. Not in so few nor pleasant words, mind you.

Once the party met back up, they exchanged information and determined that they didn’t quite like Moxie being threatened by that. This resulted in another lengthy debate about whether they should just leave and try to find those orc clans causing so much fuss, try and trick Nogs into thinking that Moxie got the dragonshards and beating his ass, or kicking in the door of another dragonshard smuggler and taking his stash. Eventually they settled on option three and through another series of easily succeeded skill checks found out that a dwarf named “Red”–Moxie’s employer and one of Dragon’s right-hand men–was holed up in an abandoned warehouse in the seediest side of a port district.

They went there and found only a single half-orc sitting by the door. Moxie wanted to try the diplomatic route, got told to fuck off, and went around back. I feel bad because Beth (Lwaxana) fired up Glib Limerick and words of friendship, but none of them detected the trap on the backdoor. I mean, Hawkeye suspected as such, but only one person tried Perception and failed. I figured that they’d all give it a look for good measure and a +6 Aid Another bonus. The trap was several flasks of alchemist’s fire rigged to the other side to the tune of 3d6 + 3 fire damage and a push, which alerted a pair of arbalesters situated in a storeroom. They opened fire on a prone Lwaxana, which basically ruined her plan to take the lair by farce.

The arbalesters opened up on a bunch of prone targets, which was beneficial since they got a -2 to hit. They beat on them for a round before some of Red’s thugs peeked in to see what the ruckus was about. Heien managed to more or less block them in a crowded room, allowing Hawkeye to mow them down using at-will attacks since most were minions. I’d also placed an arcane crane in the room, which Lwaxana was able to use to pick up and drop an arbalester in the water after a few rounds of fiddling with the controls. One the minions almost got away, but Moxie planted an enchanted dagger in his ass, whose dying screams alerted a warforged on the catwalk that something was amiss. Rolling out numerous encounter attacks, he hammered almost all the party at once with area-effect force attacks before being scrapped.

We called it there due to time, but the encounter wasn’t over since another gaggle of thugs are scheduled to arrive before the five-minute mark.