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The Adventures of Baabby and Sam - a Skylanders Campaign
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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 7251331" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 22: RIFT ACCIDENT</strong></p><p></p><p>PC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Baabby, humanoid sheep barbarian/cleric (Life) 12</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Sam Crow, humanoid crow ranger/rogue 12</p><p></p><p>NPC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Sapphrina, fairy sorcerer 12</p><p></p><p>Game Session Date: 14 October 2017</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>"This isn't the troll airship!" squawked Sam.</p><p></p><p>"Thaat's obvious," pointed out Baabby. He had just opened a rift from the Life-Giver's Grove back to their airship, which was en route back to Skylanders Academy. But during transit, Sam could have sworn he bumped into somebody - and then they ended up here instead, wherever here was.</p><p></p><p>The first thing Sam noticed about here was that here was dark. As in pitch black dark. Fortunately, the <em>Rift-Weaver's Blade</em> was still in Baabby's hands and it gave off a magical light. That made here somewhat less than pitch black, but not by very much. Here was still a pretty murky place. And here apparently had denizens that were, one: used to the darkness; two: surrounding the heroes in a rough circle; and three: attacking them with light crossbows.</p><p></p><p>Sam pretty much decided right then and there that he didn't much like it here.</p><p></p><p>It took a moment for the heroes' eyes to get accustomed to the dim light from the <em>Rift-Weaver's Blade</em>, which was the only source of illumination within this dark dungeon. By that time, all three had been shot at by crossbowmen, eliciting a grunt of pain from Baabby and yelp of astonishment from Sapphrina. (Sam, had the good fortune - although he'd no doubt attribute it to "catlike reflexes" - to have been missed by the pair of rogues shooting down at him from an upper level along one wall of the room.)</p><p></p><p>And that was only the initial response of some of the forces surrounding the heroes; immediately after the crossbowmen let fly with their quarrels, three shapes raced up and stabbed at the heroes with sharp-tipped rapiers. At this distance, the adventurers could finally see what they were fighting: ratmen! The ones who had stepped up to stab at the heroes held shields in their off arms, whereas the ones holding back held light crossbows (and were frantically reloading them), but also had rapiers belted at their hips. At Sam's quick glance through the darkness, it looked like there were five of these rogues; added to the three fighters, that made a party of eight.</p><p></p><p>Well, the heroes had dealt with larger numbers of foes at one time before! Sam ducked beneath the ratman fighter swinging a blade in his direction, took a sliding step to the side, and let loose with a explosive arrow at the fighter, catching him chest-first in the blast and two of the rogues as well for good measure. Before anybody could react to that, Sam had also sent two normal arrows into the fighter's body. Surprisingly, none of the ratmen dropped. "No fair!" squawked Sam. For ratmen, these guys were pretty tough!</p><p></p><p>As he was facing in Baabby's direction, Sam saw the baabarian swing his greatsword in a high arc that came crashing down at the ratman fighter who had attacked the sheep-man. It crashed into the stone floor, sending divots flying - had it hit its foe, Sam had no doubt the fighter would be lying dead on the floor of the dungeon. Growling in anger, Baabby swept the sword up for a side-swing at the ratman with all of his might, but the nimble foe ducked underneath the blow. Baabby swung in a full circle and sent his whirling blade in for another powerful swing at the ratman, but again he missed; he was focused too much on damage and not enough on actually striking his foe.</p><p></p><p>Sapphrina was bleeding from a crossbow bolt and a cut from a rapier at this point, so she flew up toward the ceiling - it was quite a large room, with a ceiling height of almost 30 feet - and cast a <em>mass cure serious wounds</em> spell that healed herself and her two friends, both of whom had taken quite a bit of damage from these ratmen already.</p><p></p><p>The ratmen, having seen what the heroes were capable of, chose to rush in to close-quarters combat. For the rogues, that meant holding their light crossbows in their off hands and attacking with their rapiers; for the two rogues who had started on the higher level, that meant a 10-foot leap down to the lower level and a rush toward the melee. Attacked from four sides each, Baabby and Sam were hard-pressed to dodge all of the rapier attacks that came their way, and drops of the heroes' blood littered the stone floor.</p><p></p><p>From her perch above the fight, Sapphrina blasted down at three of the ratmen - two rogues and a fighter - with a <em>cone of cold</em> spell. That took out two of them, the first deaths the heroes had managed to rack up. Encouraged by her success, Sam blasted his ratman fighter enemy - whom he had dubbed "Mr. Fighty" - with an explosive arrow, followed by a pair of normal ones. Together, that took down Mr. Fighty, leaving one ratman fighter and four rogues to menace the heroes.</p><p></p><p>Baabby continued putting all of his power into his attacks, and continued to miss. His ratman fighter foe had no such limitations; he didn't deal as much damage as one of Baabby's powerful blows would have done (had they ever hit), but he was whittling down the sheep-man cut by cut. Sam called to his friend, "Quit screwing around, Baabby! Take your time and make sure you hit him!" Baabby ignored the archer's advice, sure that fate owed him a powerful hit on his nimble enemy. But three more attacks went whooshing through the air around the ratman fighter, none of them connecting.</p><p></p><p>"Have you learned your lesson yet?" called Sam, concentrating on blasting another rogue with an explosive arrow.</p><p></p><p>"Nope!" admitted Baabby, swinging with all of his might and missing once again. Sapphrina shot a <em>magic missile</em> spell at the ratman Baabby was fighting, the spell striking unerringly (as it was built to do), and so unnerving the ratman that Baabby finally got a strike in. The fighter crumpled to the ground, dead.</p><p></p><p>"Got him!" Baabby announced.</p><p></p><p>"Yeah, but we had to take care of the rest!" complained Sam. Sure enough, with Baabby's one kill all of the ratmen were dead, but the other seven had been taken out by a fairy sorcerer and a crow archer - neither one of whom was normally the big slayer of the group. The last two ratmen rogues had tried running back up the stairs to the upper level where there was door leading further into the dungeon complex, but they had still been in range of Sam's arrows and Sapphrina's spells.</p><p></p><p>"Let me heal you up," offered Baabby in way of atonement. Touching his Life amulet, he cast a few healing spells that sealed up the heroes' numerous wounds. That put them all in a better mood.</p><p></p><p>"So what in the world just happened?" asked Sam. "What are we doing here? Why aren't we on the airship?"</p><p></p><p>"That's a very good question," replied Sapphrina. "I can only guess that we crashed - if that's the term - into somebody else also traveling through a rift. We likely ended up where they were going, and they ended up where we were headed."</p><p></p><p>"It did feel like I bumped into somebody, just before we showed up here," admitted Sam. "But who'd want to come here? And why were the ratmen waiting here for us?"</p><p></p><p>"There's no way to tell," replied Sapphrina.</p><p></p><p>"Well, can we try again?" asked Sam. "Have Baabby use his sword to rift us back to the airship?"</p><p></p><p>"I caan give it a go," offered Baabby.</p><p></p><p>"Let's look around here first," suggested Sapphrina. "It's possible we were hijacked on purpose. If that's the case, we need to find out who can do something like that - and put a stop to it."</p><p></p><p>"Yeah, I sure don't like the idea of getting hijacked out of a rift every time we try going somewhere," answered Sam. "So which way?" There was a portcullis blocking a passageway to the south of the large room and a closed door up along the upper level through which the last two ratmen had tried escaping.</p><p></p><p>"Up there," decided Baabby, pointing with his greatsword. "If thaat's where they waanted to go, thaat's where we should go." He led the way, with his friends following behind him. "Ready?" he asked, and upon receiving a pair of nods, he pulled open the door.</p><p></p><p>The room beyond was also lightless, but from the glow of his blade Baabby could see a trio of ratmen fighters standing alongside a pair of statues of giant rats. Off to the right stood another ratman armed with a shortbow, with a snarling dire rat crouched at his side.</p><p></p><p>Sam was the first to react and sent an explosive arrow flying into the room to strike one of the fighters in the face. The blast encompassed the other two fighters as well, and then the crow followed up with another pair of arrows striking his initial target, who fell to the ground dead before he'd realized he was even in combat.</p><p></p><p>Baabby was charging into the room before the dead fighter's body hit the ground, swinging the <em>Rift-Weaver's Blade</em> into one of the other ratman fighters, cutting him down with one blow before pivoting and scoring a deep gash across the chest of the other one. <em>Thaat's more like it!</em> he thought to himself.</p><p></p><p>Sapphrina flew into the room, staying close to the ceiling and out of harm's way (but eyeing the ratman archer with wariness). She blasted the dire rat with a <em>magic missile</em> spell, hoping to take it out before it could attack. Luck was with her, for it collapsed under her magical assault.</p><p></p><p>The ratman archer focused his attention on the obvious threat posed by a hulking baabarian and sent a pair of arrows stabbing into Baabby's back and side. Sam, still in the corridor and seeing he couldn't charge up an arrow with his Dynabow 3.0 to explode the last fighter without catching Baabby in the blast radius, decided to try a new maneuver he'd been working on - speeding up the reloading process of his arrows. Within the span of several seconds, he managed to send four arrows flying into the last remaining ratman fighter instead of the normal three, which was all he'd been able to manage until recently. The fighter fell to the ground grabbing at one of the arrows piercing his neck.</p><p></p><p>That left only the ratman archer - a ranger, just like Sam - to gain Baabby's undivided attention. (Most enemies learned very quickly that Baabby's undivided attention was not a thing to be desired.) With a screaming charge, Baabby raced at the ranger, bringing his <em>Rift-Weaver's Blade</em> to come crashing down into the ratman's side. That attack brought the ranger down to one knee, and another barrage of <em>magic missiles</em> from Sapphrina made sure he never got back up again.</p><p></p><p>"Hey, check this out," said Sam, mesmerized by what the ranger had been guarding. Just behind where he'd been standing was a short corridor filled with a purplish field, which turned everything beyond a violet color but didn't prevent the archer from making out piles of loose coins, gems, and golden goblets. It was a massive pile of riches - about 30,000 gold pieces' worth of treasure all there for the taking, by the greedy crow's estimation - there for the taking, if they could just get past the purple <em>wall of force</em>. "Look for a release lever, or a secret button, or something!" the little crow commanded, leading the search himself. When that proved to be fruitless, he started a search among the dead bodies, looking for a key or something (although his earlier search of the room had failed to unearth a keyhole).</p><p></p><p>"It's no good," said Sapphrina, putting a hand of the frantic crow's shoulder. "There doesn't seem to be a way past it."</p><p></p><p>"There's <em>gotta</em> be a way through it!" wailed Sam, pressing his face up against the <em>wall of force</em>. "The treasure room doesn't have any other doors or ways in that I can see!"</p><p></p><p>"Let's go," echoed Baabby. "Maybe there's another way in somewhere else."</p><p></p><p>"Yeah, okay," sighed Sam, unwilling to take his gaze off of the out-of-reach riches. But he allowed Baabby to lead him to the south side of the room with the rat statues, where there was a closed door leading elsewhere in the dungeon complex.</p><p></p><p>Once again, Baabby opened the door, ready to attack anyone on the other side. But this time, the door only led to a short corridor which made a right turn after about 20 feet. "Looks safe," he said, stepping into the corridor.</p><p></p><p>Unbeknownst to him, his first step into the corridor triggered a magical trap. Stone spikes rose up from the floor beneath the baabarian's feet, but they merely poked into the bottoms of Baabby's hooves and he didn't even notice he'd been attacked. Stepping further into the room, though, caused more stone spikes to rise up, and the baabarian finally noticed he was taking damage from merely walking on the stone floor. "Ow!" he called.</p><p></p><p>Sam looked ahead and saw indications that the entirety of the floor was trapped in the same manner. Sapphrina, being a fairy, flew into the corridor without touching the floor, turned the corner, and verified that it was unoccupied, leading to a closed door ahead. She flew back to Baabby and cast a <em>fly</em> spell on him. He rose up off the ground, cast a healing spell on himself, and started flying down the corridor.</p><p></p><p>"Do me next!" called out Sam, and the fairy obliged with another <em>fly</em> spell for the little crow. "This is much better than my original idea!" the crow enthused.</p><p></p><p>"I almost hate to ask this, but what was your original idea?" the fairy asked, almost certain she was going to receive nonsense in return.</p><p></p><p>"I was going to have Shelldon crawl along the ceiling, while I hang on to his shell," replied Sam. "It would have worked, too! On the down side, though, it would take about four hours to make the trip - and then he'd have to go back for Baabby." Sapphrina merely pursed her lips and nodded to herself - she'd been right: nonsense. She turned and flew around the corner by Baabby, with Sam floating right behind her.</p><p></p><p>"Ready?" Baabby asked, but it had apparently been a rhetorical question because he then swung open the door without waiting for a response.</p><p></p><p>The room beyond was deeper than it was wide, with a large throne taking up the middle of the back wall. Sitting in this throne was a rather cute-looking ratwoman, if whiskers and a pink, hairless tail were your kind of thing - personally, Sam could do without either. But his attention was quickly brought to the hulking ratman brutes on either side of her: each wore what looked like not just any animal skins, but specifically <em>cat</em> skins (one calico and one tabby), and wielding greataxes very similar to Baabby's original weapon of choice. <em>Barbarians!</em> the crow thought, and then wondered why he was keeping this important information to himself. "Barbarians!" he cried to the others.</p><p></p><p>"Noted!" Baabby replied, getting a good grip on his greatsword, ready to pounce into the room.</p><p></p><p>Sam beat him to the punch, by sending a flurry of arrows into the room, past the baabarian's head, between the ratmen barbarian guards, and directly into the rat-queen. (She was sitting on a throne; Sam assumed she was a rat-queen.) The first arrow, the one Sam had charged up with explosive energy, went flying straight into her shoulder, bouncing off without exploding. <em>A dud?</em> thought Sam - that had never happened before! Worse yet, the other three arrows all managed to hit her, but each one tinkled to the floor without seemingly causing the queen any discomfort at all. <em>She's got a stoneskin spell active!</em> the archer realized, then once again chided himself for not sharing this valuable information with his friends. "She's got a <em>stoneskin</em> spell active!" he called out to the others.</p><p></p><p>"Noted!" Sapphrina replied, pulling out her <em>wand of fireballs</em> and sending a fiery blast at the rat-queen. The <em>fireball</em> did what Sam had hoped to do with his explosive arrow: engulf the queen and catch both bodyguards in the blast as well. The rat-queen retaliated by standing up from her throne in indignation and casting a spell at all three of the heroes, still bunched up just beyond the doorway. Immediately, it began raining fire from the ceiling, something Sam would have sworn was impossible. <em>She's a wizard!</em> the archer thought, following the thought with an echoed vocalization: "She's a wizard!"</p><p></p><p>"Do you see her bone armor?" asked Sapphrina.</p><p></p><p>"Yeah."</p><p></p><p>"And her bone sickle-staff?"</p><p></p><p>"Yeah."</p><p></p><p>"And are you aware that she just cast a <em>flame strike</em> spell at us?"</p><p></p><p>"Is that what that was? I was wondering."</p><p></p><p>"Wizards can't cast <em>flame strike</em> spells," pointed out the fairy. "Therefore, the rat-queen is a...?"</p><p></p><p>"Ah," replied Sam, making the obvious connection. "A necromancer!"</p><p></p><p>"<em>That's a kind of wizard!</em>" shrieked Sapphrina. "She's a flippin' <em>druid!</em>"</p><p></p><p>"But with all of those bones..." argued Sam.</p><p></p><p>"How about let's fight them now, and discuss them later!" fumed Sapphrina.</p><p></p><p>"Fine!" snapped Sam. "But for the record: I made you say flippin'." He sent an explosive arrow at the rat-queen...and once again it failed to explode. Instead, it bounced off her <em>stoneskin</em> spell, causing a minimum amount of damage to her protective spell and a maximum amount of swearing on the part of the flustered Sam (using words much stronger than flippin'). He sent a trio of normal arrows into one of the barbarians, wanting at least <em>some</em> of his shots to count for <em>something</em>.</p><p></p><p>Baabby, in the meantime, had charged into the room and attacked the ratman barbarian on the right. This was the ratman Sam had just shot, and compared to the beating he took from the enraged baabarian (for Baabby had mirrored the guards' own rage, and now Sam noted there were <em>three</em> burly, half-crazed, bloodlust-filled fools in the room swinging bladed weapons at each other), the archer's arrows seemed a mere scratch.</p><p></p><p>Another <em>flame strike</em> spell on Sam and Sapphrina sent the little archer reeling and the fairy collapsing to the floor, unconscious. (Worse yet, upon landing she activated the <em>stone spike</em> trap the queen had cast upon the corridor when she had first learned that her dungeon was being invaded by forces unknown - the only way the legless fairy could activate such a trap!) With Sapphrina out, Sam already feeling woozy, and Baabby ignoring the multiple wounds spilling blood down his own fleece, Sam called for a tactical retreat. "Baabby! We need healing--bad!" he called.</p><p></p><p>Baabby managed to snap out of the red haze he had been engulfed in long enough to realize what Sam was saying. Then, still flying, he backed up and slammed the door shut before casting a <em>mass cure moderate wounds</em> spell through his greatsword - which, thanks to the Life Rune filled in on its blade, maximized the healing effects. Sapphrina woke up and flew back into the air, while Sam and Baabby readied themselves for the door to open and the ratmen barbarians to renew the attack.</p><p></p><p>Predictably, they did just that. Standing in the 10-foot-wide doorway side by side, they lashed out at Baabby with their greataxes. Baabby took the attacks with a grunt, then retaliated.</p><p></p><p>"The queen! Get the queen!" called Sam, and Sapphrina fired another <em>fireball</em> spell through her wand, just as the ratwoman had finished casting a mass healing spell herself on her own forces. But it was the last such spell she'd ever cast, for the <em>fireball</em> spell fried her to a crisp. As her lifeless body fell to the ground, her <em>stone spike</em> spell deactivated on the floor of the corridor.</p><p></p><p>Baabby concentrated his blows on the most heavily-wounded barbarian, the one he'd been attacking earlier. Even with the brief respite of a healing spell from his queen, the barbarian couldn't last long under a concerted onslaught by a furious sheep-man with a massively powerful greatsword; he fell to the ground shortly thereafter, dead. The last barbarian didn't last long after that, faced as he was by an enemy barbarian stronger than himself and two other foes who could attack him from range, one with spells and one with arrows. He followed his liege in death in mere moments.</p><p></p><p>"Whew!" breathed Sapphrina loudly, letting out a great sigh. "Those guys were tough!"</p><p></p><p>"I'll say!" replied Sam, then had a sudden thought - one which, in his excitement, he forgot to mirror vocally. He went rushing over to the dead rat-queen and started groping her all over.</p><p></p><p>"Just <em>what</em> do you think you're doing?" demanded Sapphrina.</p><p></p><p>"AHA!" cried Sam with a shriek of triumph, holding forth a narrow rod he'd pulled from the rat-queen's pocket. It had a purple gemstone at its tip - a gemstone, it should be added, almost the exact same shade as the <em>wall of force</em> keeping the greedy crow from the pile of treasure in the other room. "Let's go!"</p><p></p><p>Baabby and Sapphrina barely kept pace with the gold-crazed crow, who practically tackled the <em>wall of force</em>, holding the gem-tipped rod before him like a knight's lance. It was a good thing the crow's hunch had been right and the magical wall snapped off immediately upon contact with the rod, or else Sam would have been flattened silly like a bird flying into a plate-glass window. But he leaped into the pile of loose coins, scooping them up and letting them trickle through his fingers just to hear them clink and clank against each other. Baabby and Sapphrina entered the room behind the crow, marveling at his antics.</p><p></p><p>"And just <em>who</em> are <em>you</em>?" demanded a regal voice behind them.</p><p></p><p>Turning around, the heroes saw a thin, light-skinned elf wearing the cowled robes of a witch. She glared at the heroes, a wand in hand and ready to be used at a moment's notice.</p><p></p><p>"My name's Baabby," answered the sheep-man. Despite looking like she was undead, the baabarian had learned that didn't mean she was evil, and so far, everything they'd fought in this place was either a ratman or a dire rat. "I'm an adventurer. This is my friend Sapphrina, and my other friend Sam."</p><p></p><p>"Why did you alter my trajectory?" demanded the undead elf. Baabby and Sam just looked at each other in confusion, but Sapphrina understood at once.</p><p></p><p>"Were you traveling through a rift, and got sent to a troll airship instead?"</p><p></p><p>"An airship? No, I ended up in a forest, facing off with four chompies."</p><p></p><p>"Leafy Junior?" gasped Sapphrina. "You didn't hurt him, did you?"</p><p></p><p>"Hurt him?" repeated the elf. "Quite the contrary. I asked him to explain himself, and he did, to my satisfaction. Then I returned to Skylanders Academy and tried traveling by portal back here - and this time, it worked."</p><p></p><p>"Why were you trying to come here?" asked Sam.</p><p></p><p>"<strong>Spyro</strong> had been battling a bunch of ratmen, and was knocked unconscious. As with all Skylanders, he was immediately teleported back to the Academy, and Master Eon asked that I replace him." Spyro was a little purple dragon and one of the most famous Skylanders around. Even Sam had heard of him before.</p><p></p><p>"So you're a Skylander, then?" asked Sam.</p><p></p><p>"That much should be obvious," sniffed the undead elf. "My name is <strong>Hex</strong>."</p><p></p><p>"Why was Spyro sent here in the first place?" asked Baabby.</p><p></p><p>"We had heard rumors that the ratmen were amassing gold, to fund a secret project. Spyro was sent to determine the truth of the matter."</p><p></p><p>"It turned out it was just a rumor," said Sam quickly with a sickly grin, kicking a few loose pieces of gold behind him and doing his best to block the Skylander's view of the massive pile of riches behind him.</p><p></p><p>"Sam!" chided Baabby. "She's one of Maaster Eon's trusted agents! Show her the treasure!"</p><p></p><p>"Treasure?" asked Sam innocently, turning around and feigning just having seen the pile of gold behind him for the first time. "Holy smokes! Hey, it looks like there's treasure here after all!"</p><p></p><p>"We were traveling by rift from the Life-Giver's Grove back to our troll airship," Sapphrina further explained to Hex's original question. "Our individual teleports must have collided in mid-stream and sent us both off course. We ended up where you were heading, and you ended up where we had just left."</p><p></p><p>"Interesting," replied Hex. "This is a phenomenon previously unknown to me." Then, looking over at Sam and Baabby, she said, "Gather up the treasure. We will bring it back to Master Eon."</p><p></p><p>"Don't we get to keep it?" asked Sam in a quiet voice to Baabby. "We took care of all the ratmen!"</p><p></p><p>"We will allow Master Eon to determine that," responded Hex, demonstrating that despite being an undead elf, she still had remarkable hearing.</p><p></p><p>"He'll let us keep it!" surmised Sam as he started shoveling the loot into his extradimensional backpack. "He's a nice old geezer!" At that, Hex fixed the crow with a withering stare. "Uh, 'geezer' is a term of respect among my people," the crow stammered. "It means, uh, 'man of great intelligence and unwavering wisdom'." Hex merely narrowed her eyes and turned away.</p><p></p><p>But Sam was correct: Eon allowed the three heroes to keep the treasure, as a reward for having picked up where Spyro had left off and taken out the nest of ratmen. He was a pretty nice geezer after all!</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>Logan used a bunch of Dungeon Tiles I had collected over the years to lay out the dungeon of the ratmen. In fact, he even went 3-D a little; there was a short set of stairs leading up out of the initial dungeon room, and then another longer flight of stairs leading up to a doorway. Logan put a layer of other dungeon tiles underneath these areas so we could which areas were elevated (even though they weren't to scale).</p><p></p><p>He also did something I would never have dreamt of doing. The night before we played, he laid out the entirety of the dungeon using Dungeon Tiles, then took a picture of it with his digital camera. Then, with a photo of the whole layout stored electronically, he removed everything but the area in which our PCs first showed up. When we explored further into the dungeon complex, he took a quick look at his digital photo before laying out the next room. Pretty smart! (When I DM, I always map out the areas I design in a quad-ruled composition book of graph paper. I have to admit, his method is much quicker!)</p><p></p><p>Lacking sufficient minis of the appropriate types, Logan used dagger-wielding kenku for the ratman rogues, sword-wielding kenku for the ratmen fighters, and gnolls for the ratman ranger, barbarians, and druid queen. For the dire rat, he used...a dire rat. (We have one of those!)</p><p></p><p>I should point out Sam's lack of explosions twice in a row during the fight with the rat-queen wasn't the result of any magic effect in the room, but rather my poor die-rolling: twice in a row I rolled a natural "1" for the two arrows Sam had charged up with explosive energy. (I finally gave up and switched to a different die.) Also, the dialogue between Sam and Baabby in the first fight about Power Attacks vs. actually hitting the target was taken almost verbatim from a conversation between Harry and me. Harry was determined to deal out a butt-ton of damage using Power Attack, probably because we leveled up to 12th-level right before playing this adventure, and Harry had just bumped Baabby's Strength score up to a 22.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 7251331, member: 508"] [b]ADVENTURE 22: RIFT ACCIDENT[/b] PC Roster: [INDENT]Baabby, humanoid sheep barbarian/cleric (Life) 12 Sam Crow, humanoid crow ranger/rogue 12[/INDENT] NPC Roster: [INDENT]Sapphrina, fairy sorcerer 12[/INDENT] Game Session Date: 14 October 2017 - - - "This isn't the troll airship!" squawked Sam. "Thaat's obvious," pointed out Baabby. He had just opened a rift from the Life-Giver's Grove back to their airship, which was en route back to Skylanders Academy. But during transit, Sam could have sworn he bumped into somebody - and then they ended up here instead, wherever here was. The first thing Sam noticed about here was that here was dark. As in pitch black dark. Fortunately, the [i]Rift-Weaver's Blade[/i] was still in Baabby's hands and it gave off a magical light. That made here somewhat less than pitch black, but not by very much. Here was still a pretty murky place. And here apparently had denizens that were, one: used to the darkness; two: surrounding the heroes in a rough circle; and three: attacking them with light crossbows. Sam pretty much decided right then and there that he didn't much like it here. It took a moment for the heroes' eyes to get accustomed to the dim light from the [i]Rift-Weaver's Blade[/i], which was the only source of illumination within this dark dungeon. By that time, all three had been shot at by crossbowmen, eliciting a grunt of pain from Baabby and yelp of astonishment from Sapphrina. (Sam, had the good fortune - although he'd no doubt attribute it to "catlike reflexes" - to have been missed by the pair of rogues shooting down at him from an upper level along one wall of the room.) And that was only the initial response of some of the forces surrounding the heroes; immediately after the crossbowmen let fly with their quarrels, three shapes raced up and stabbed at the heroes with sharp-tipped rapiers. At this distance, the adventurers could finally see what they were fighting: ratmen! The ones who had stepped up to stab at the heroes held shields in their off arms, whereas the ones holding back held light crossbows (and were frantically reloading them), but also had rapiers belted at their hips. At Sam's quick glance through the darkness, it looked like there were five of these rogues; added to the three fighters, that made a party of eight. Well, the heroes had dealt with larger numbers of foes at one time before! Sam ducked beneath the ratman fighter swinging a blade in his direction, took a sliding step to the side, and let loose with a explosive arrow at the fighter, catching him chest-first in the blast and two of the rogues as well for good measure. Before anybody could react to that, Sam had also sent two normal arrows into the fighter's body. Surprisingly, none of the ratmen dropped. "No fair!" squawked Sam. For ratmen, these guys were pretty tough! As he was facing in Baabby's direction, Sam saw the baabarian swing his greatsword in a high arc that came crashing down at the ratman fighter who had attacked the sheep-man. It crashed into the stone floor, sending divots flying - had it hit its foe, Sam had no doubt the fighter would be lying dead on the floor of the dungeon. Growling in anger, Baabby swept the sword up for a side-swing at the ratman with all of his might, but the nimble foe ducked underneath the blow. Baabby swung in a full circle and sent his whirling blade in for another powerful swing at the ratman, but again he missed; he was focused too much on damage and not enough on actually striking his foe. Sapphrina was bleeding from a crossbow bolt and a cut from a rapier at this point, so she flew up toward the ceiling - it was quite a large room, with a ceiling height of almost 30 feet - and cast a [i]mass cure serious wounds[/i] spell that healed herself and her two friends, both of whom had taken quite a bit of damage from these ratmen already. The ratmen, having seen what the heroes were capable of, chose to rush in to close-quarters combat. For the rogues, that meant holding their light crossbows in their off hands and attacking with their rapiers; for the two rogues who had started on the higher level, that meant a 10-foot leap down to the lower level and a rush toward the melee. Attacked from four sides each, Baabby and Sam were hard-pressed to dodge all of the rapier attacks that came their way, and drops of the heroes' blood littered the stone floor. From her perch above the fight, Sapphrina blasted down at three of the ratmen - two rogues and a fighter - with a [i]cone of cold[/i] spell. That took out two of them, the first deaths the heroes had managed to rack up. Encouraged by her success, Sam blasted his ratman fighter enemy - whom he had dubbed "Mr. Fighty" - with an explosive arrow, followed by a pair of normal ones. Together, that took down Mr. Fighty, leaving one ratman fighter and four rogues to menace the heroes. Baabby continued putting all of his power into his attacks, and continued to miss. His ratman fighter foe had no such limitations; he didn't deal as much damage as one of Baabby's powerful blows would have done (had they ever hit), but he was whittling down the sheep-man cut by cut. Sam called to his friend, "Quit screwing around, Baabby! Take your time and make sure you hit him!" Baabby ignored the archer's advice, sure that fate owed him a powerful hit on his nimble enemy. But three more attacks went whooshing through the air around the ratman fighter, none of them connecting. "Have you learned your lesson yet?" called Sam, concentrating on blasting another rogue with an explosive arrow. "Nope!" admitted Baabby, swinging with all of his might and missing once again. Sapphrina shot a [i]magic missile[/i] spell at the ratman Baabby was fighting, the spell striking unerringly (as it was built to do), and so unnerving the ratman that Baabby finally got a strike in. The fighter crumpled to the ground, dead. "Got him!" Baabby announced. "Yeah, but we had to take care of the rest!" complained Sam. Sure enough, with Baabby's one kill all of the ratmen were dead, but the other seven had been taken out by a fairy sorcerer and a crow archer - neither one of whom was normally the big slayer of the group. The last two ratmen rogues had tried running back up the stairs to the upper level where there was door leading further into the dungeon complex, but they had still been in range of Sam's arrows and Sapphrina's spells. "Let me heal you up," offered Baabby in way of atonement. Touching his Life amulet, he cast a few healing spells that sealed up the heroes' numerous wounds. That put them all in a better mood. "So what in the world just happened?" asked Sam. "What are we doing here? Why aren't we on the airship?" "That's a very good question," replied Sapphrina. "I can only guess that we crashed - if that's the term - into somebody else also traveling through a rift. We likely ended up where they were going, and they ended up where we were headed." "It did feel like I bumped into somebody, just before we showed up here," admitted Sam. "But who'd want to come here? And why were the ratmen waiting here for us?" "There's no way to tell," replied Sapphrina. "Well, can we try again?" asked Sam. "Have Baabby use his sword to rift us back to the airship?" "I caan give it a go," offered Baabby. "Let's look around here first," suggested Sapphrina. "It's possible we were hijacked on purpose. If that's the case, we need to find out who can do something like that - and put a stop to it." "Yeah, I sure don't like the idea of getting hijacked out of a rift every time we try going somewhere," answered Sam. "So which way?" There was a portcullis blocking a passageway to the south of the large room and a closed door up along the upper level through which the last two ratmen had tried escaping. "Up there," decided Baabby, pointing with his greatsword. "If thaat's where they waanted to go, thaat's where we should go." He led the way, with his friends following behind him. "Ready?" he asked, and upon receiving a pair of nods, he pulled open the door. The room beyond was also lightless, but from the glow of his blade Baabby could see a trio of ratmen fighters standing alongside a pair of statues of giant rats. Off to the right stood another ratman armed with a shortbow, with a snarling dire rat crouched at his side. Sam was the first to react and sent an explosive arrow flying into the room to strike one of the fighters in the face. The blast encompassed the other two fighters as well, and then the crow followed up with another pair of arrows striking his initial target, who fell to the ground dead before he'd realized he was even in combat. Baabby was charging into the room before the dead fighter's body hit the ground, swinging the [i]Rift-Weaver's Blade[/i] into one of the other ratman fighters, cutting him down with one blow before pivoting and scoring a deep gash across the chest of the other one. [i]Thaat's more like it![/i] he thought to himself. Sapphrina flew into the room, staying close to the ceiling and out of harm's way (but eyeing the ratman archer with wariness). She blasted the dire rat with a [i]magic missile[/i] spell, hoping to take it out before it could attack. Luck was with her, for it collapsed under her magical assault. The ratman archer focused his attention on the obvious threat posed by a hulking baabarian and sent a pair of arrows stabbing into Baabby's back and side. Sam, still in the corridor and seeing he couldn't charge up an arrow with his Dynabow 3.0 to explode the last fighter without catching Baabby in the blast radius, decided to try a new maneuver he'd been working on - speeding up the reloading process of his arrows. Within the span of several seconds, he managed to send four arrows flying into the last remaining ratman fighter instead of the normal three, which was all he'd been able to manage until recently. The fighter fell to the ground grabbing at one of the arrows piercing his neck. That left only the ratman archer - a ranger, just like Sam - to gain Baabby's undivided attention. (Most enemies learned very quickly that Baabby's undivided attention was not a thing to be desired.) With a screaming charge, Baabby raced at the ranger, bringing his [i]Rift-Weaver's Blade[/i] to come crashing down into the ratman's side. That attack brought the ranger down to one knee, and another barrage of [i]magic missiles[/i] from Sapphrina made sure he never got back up again. "Hey, check this out," said Sam, mesmerized by what the ranger had been guarding. Just behind where he'd been standing was a short corridor filled with a purplish field, which turned everything beyond a violet color but didn't prevent the archer from making out piles of loose coins, gems, and golden goblets. It was a massive pile of riches - about 30,000 gold pieces' worth of treasure all there for the taking, by the greedy crow's estimation - there for the taking, if they could just get past the purple [i]wall of force[/i]. "Look for a release lever, or a secret button, or something!" the little crow commanded, leading the search himself. When that proved to be fruitless, he started a search among the dead bodies, looking for a key or something (although his earlier search of the room had failed to unearth a keyhole). "It's no good," said Sapphrina, putting a hand of the frantic crow's shoulder. "There doesn't seem to be a way past it." "There's [i]gotta[/i] be a way through it!" wailed Sam, pressing his face up against the [i]wall of force[/i]. "The treasure room doesn't have any other doors or ways in that I can see!" "Let's go," echoed Baabby. "Maybe there's another way in somewhere else." "Yeah, okay," sighed Sam, unwilling to take his gaze off of the out-of-reach riches. But he allowed Baabby to lead him to the south side of the room with the rat statues, where there was a closed door leading elsewhere in the dungeon complex. Once again, Baabby opened the door, ready to attack anyone on the other side. But this time, the door only led to a short corridor which made a right turn after about 20 feet. "Looks safe," he said, stepping into the corridor. Unbeknownst to him, his first step into the corridor triggered a magical trap. Stone spikes rose up from the floor beneath the baabarian's feet, but they merely poked into the bottoms of Baabby's hooves and he didn't even notice he'd been attacked. Stepping further into the room, though, caused more stone spikes to rise up, and the baabarian finally noticed he was taking damage from merely walking on the stone floor. "Ow!" he called. Sam looked ahead and saw indications that the entirety of the floor was trapped in the same manner. Sapphrina, being a fairy, flew into the corridor without touching the floor, turned the corner, and verified that it was unoccupied, leading to a closed door ahead. She flew back to Baabby and cast a [i]fly[/i] spell on him. He rose up off the ground, cast a healing spell on himself, and started flying down the corridor. "Do me next!" called out Sam, and the fairy obliged with another [i]fly[/i] spell for the little crow. "This is much better than my original idea!" the crow enthused. "I almost hate to ask this, but what was your original idea?" the fairy asked, almost certain she was going to receive nonsense in return. "I was going to have Shelldon crawl along the ceiling, while I hang on to his shell," replied Sam. "It would have worked, too! On the down side, though, it would take about four hours to make the trip - and then he'd have to go back for Baabby." Sapphrina merely pursed her lips and nodded to herself - she'd been right: nonsense. She turned and flew around the corner by Baabby, with Sam floating right behind her. "Ready?" Baabby asked, but it had apparently been a rhetorical question because he then swung open the door without waiting for a response. The room beyond was deeper than it was wide, with a large throne taking up the middle of the back wall. Sitting in this throne was a rather cute-looking ratwoman, if whiskers and a pink, hairless tail were your kind of thing - personally, Sam could do without either. But his attention was quickly brought to the hulking ratman brutes on either side of her: each wore what looked like not just any animal skins, but specifically [i]cat[/i] skins (one calico and one tabby), and wielding greataxes very similar to Baabby's original weapon of choice. [i]Barbarians![/i] the crow thought, and then wondered why he was keeping this important information to himself. "Barbarians!" he cried to the others. "Noted!" Baabby replied, getting a good grip on his greatsword, ready to pounce into the room. Sam beat him to the punch, by sending a flurry of arrows into the room, past the baabarian's head, between the ratmen barbarian guards, and directly into the rat-queen. (She was sitting on a throne; Sam assumed she was a rat-queen.) The first arrow, the one Sam had charged up with explosive energy, went flying straight into her shoulder, bouncing off without exploding. [i]A dud?[/i] thought Sam - that had never happened before! Worse yet, the other three arrows all managed to hit her, but each one tinkled to the floor without seemingly causing the queen any discomfort at all. [i]She's got a stoneskin spell active![/i] the archer realized, then once again chided himself for not sharing this valuable information with his friends. "She's got a [i]stoneskin[/i] spell active!" he called out to the others. "Noted!" Sapphrina replied, pulling out her [i]wand of fireballs[/i] and sending a fiery blast at the rat-queen. The [i]fireball[/i] did what Sam had hoped to do with his explosive arrow: engulf the queen and catch both bodyguards in the blast as well. The rat-queen retaliated by standing up from her throne in indignation and casting a spell at all three of the heroes, still bunched up just beyond the doorway. Immediately, it began raining fire from the ceiling, something Sam would have sworn was impossible. [i]She's a wizard![/i] the archer thought, following the thought with an echoed vocalization: "She's a wizard!" "Do you see her bone armor?" asked Sapphrina. "Yeah." "And her bone sickle-staff?" "Yeah." "And are you aware that she just cast a [i]flame strike[/i] spell at us?" "Is that what that was? I was wondering." "Wizards can't cast [i]flame strike[/i] spells," pointed out the fairy. "Therefore, the rat-queen is a...?" "Ah," replied Sam, making the obvious connection. "A necromancer!" "[i]That's a kind of wizard![/i]" shrieked Sapphrina. "She's a flippin' [i]druid![/i]" "But with all of those bones..." argued Sam. "How about let's fight them now, and discuss them later!" fumed Sapphrina. "Fine!" snapped Sam. "But for the record: I made you say flippin'." He sent an explosive arrow at the rat-queen...and once again it failed to explode. Instead, it bounced off her [i]stoneskin[/i] spell, causing a minimum amount of damage to her protective spell and a maximum amount of swearing on the part of the flustered Sam (using words much stronger than flippin'). He sent a trio of normal arrows into one of the barbarians, wanting at least [i]some[/i] of his shots to count for [i]something[/i]. Baabby, in the meantime, had charged into the room and attacked the ratman barbarian on the right. This was the ratman Sam had just shot, and compared to the beating he took from the enraged baabarian (for Baabby had mirrored the guards' own rage, and now Sam noted there were [i]three[/i] burly, half-crazed, bloodlust-filled fools in the room swinging bladed weapons at each other), the archer's arrows seemed a mere scratch. Another [i]flame strike[/i] spell on Sam and Sapphrina sent the little archer reeling and the fairy collapsing to the floor, unconscious. (Worse yet, upon landing she activated the [i]stone spike[/i] trap the queen had cast upon the corridor when she had first learned that her dungeon was being invaded by forces unknown - the only way the legless fairy could activate such a trap!) With Sapphrina out, Sam already feeling woozy, and Baabby ignoring the multiple wounds spilling blood down his own fleece, Sam called for a tactical retreat. "Baabby! We need healing--bad!" he called. Baabby managed to snap out of the red haze he had been engulfed in long enough to realize what Sam was saying. Then, still flying, he backed up and slammed the door shut before casting a [i]mass cure moderate wounds[/i] spell through his greatsword - which, thanks to the Life Rune filled in on its blade, maximized the healing effects. Sapphrina woke up and flew back into the air, while Sam and Baabby readied themselves for the door to open and the ratmen barbarians to renew the attack. Predictably, they did just that. Standing in the 10-foot-wide doorway side by side, they lashed out at Baabby with their greataxes. Baabby took the attacks with a grunt, then retaliated. "The queen! Get the queen!" called Sam, and Sapphrina fired another [i]fireball[/i] spell through her wand, just as the ratwoman had finished casting a mass healing spell herself on her own forces. But it was the last such spell she'd ever cast, for the [i]fireball[/i] spell fried her to a crisp. As her lifeless body fell to the ground, her [i]stone spike[/i] spell deactivated on the floor of the corridor. Baabby concentrated his blows on the most heavily-wounded barbarian, the one he'd been attacking earlier. Even with the brief respite of a healing spell from his queen, the barbarian couldn't last long under a concerted onslaught by a furious sheep-man with a massively powerful greatsword; he fell to the ground shortly thereafter, dead. The last barbarian didn't last long after that, faced as he was by an enemy barbarian stronger than himself and two other foes who could attack him from range, one with spells and one with arrows. He followed his liege in death in mere moments. "Whew!" breathed Sapphrina loudly, letting out a great sigh. "Those guys were tough!" "I'll say!" replied Sam, then had a sudden thought - one which, in his excitement, he forgot to mirror vocally. He went rushing over to the dead rat-queen and started groping her all over. "Just [i]what[/i] do you think you're doing?" demanded Sapphrina. "AHA!" cried Sam with a shriek of triumph, holding forth a narrow rod he'd pulled from the rat-queen's pocket. It had a purple gemstone at its tip - a gemstone, it should be added, almost the exact same shade as the [i]wall of force[/i] keeping the greedy crow from the pile of treasure in the other room. "Let's go!" Baabby and Sapphrina barely kept pace with the gold-crazed crow, who practically tackled the [i]wall of force[/i], holding the gem-tipped rod before him like a knight's lance. It was a good thing the crow's hunch had been right and the magical wall snapped off immediately upon contact with the rod, or else Sam would have been flattened silly like a bird flying into a plate-glass window. But he leaped into the pile of loose coins, scooping them up and letting them trickle through his fingers just to hear them clink and clank against each other. Baabby and Sapphrina entered the room behind the crow, marveling at his antics. "And just [i]who[/i] are [i]you[/i]?" demanded a regal voice behind them. Turning around, the heroes saw a thin, light-skinned elf wearing the cowled robes of a witch. She glared at the heroes, a wand in hand and ready to be used at a moment's notice. "My name's Baabby," answered the sheep-man. Despite looking like she was undead, the baabarian had learned that didn't mean she was evil, and so far, everything they'd fought in this place was either a ratman or a dire rat. "I'm an adventurer. This is my friend Sapphrina, and my other friend Sam." "Why did you alter my trajectory?" demanded the undead elf. Baabby and Sam just looked at each other in confusion, but Sapphrina understood at once. "Were you traveling through a rift, and got sent to a troll airship instead?" "An airship? No, I ended up in a forest, facing off with four chompies." "Leafy Junior?" gasped Sapphrina. "You didn't hurt him, did you?" "Hurt him?" repeated the elf. "Quite the contrary. I asked him to explain himself, and he did, to my satisfaction. Then I returned to Skylanders Academy and tried traveling by portal back here - and this time, it worked." "Why were you trying to come here?" asked Sam. "[b]Spyro[/b] had been battling a bunch of ratmen, and was knocked unconscious. As with all Skylanders, he was immediately teleported back to the Academy, and Master Eon asked that I replace him." Spyro was a little purple dragon and one of the most famous Skylanders around. Even Sam had heard of him before. "So you're a Skylander, then?" asked Sam. "That much should be obvious," sniffed the undead elf. "My name is [b]Hex[/b]." "Why was Spyro sent here in the first place?" asked Baabby. "We had heard rumors that the ratmen were amassing gold, to fund a secret project. Spyro was sent to determine the truth of the matter." "It turned out it was just a rumor," said Sam quickly with a sickly grin, kicking a few loose pieces of gold behind him and doing his best to block the Skylander's view of the massive pile of riches behind him. "Sam!" chided Baabby. "She's one of Maaster Eon's trusted agents! Show her the treasure!" "Treasure?" asked Sam innocently, turning around and feigning just having seen the pile of gold behind him for the first time. "Holy smokes! Hey, it looks like there's treasure here after all!" "We were traveling by rift from the Life-Giver's Grove back to our troll airship," Sapphrina further explained to Hex's original question. "Our individual teleports must have collided in mid-stream and sent us both off course. We ended up where you were heading, and you ended up where we had just left." "Interesting," replied Hex. "This is a phenomenon previously unknown to me." Then, looking over at Sam and Baabby, she said, "Gather up the treasure. We will bring it back to Master Eon." "Don't we get to keep it?" asked Sam in a quiet voice to Baabby. "We took care of all the ratmen!" "We will allow Master Eon to determine that," responded Hex, demonstrating that despite being an undead elf, she still had remarkable hearing. "He'll let us keep it!" surmised Sam as he started shoveling the loot into his extradimensional backpack. "He's a nice old geezer!" At that, Hex fixed the crow with a withering stare. "Uh, 'geezer' is a term of respect among my people," the crow stammered. "It means, uh, 'man of great intelligence and unwavering wisdom'." Hex merely narrowed her eyes and turned away. But Sam was correct: Eon allowed the three heroes to keep the treasure, as a reward for having picked up where Spyro had left off and taken out the nest of ratmen. He was a pretty nice geezer after all! - - - Logan used a bunch of Dungeon Tiles I had collected over the years to lay out the dungeon of the ratmen. In fact, he even went 3-D a little; there was a short set of stairs leading up out of the initial dungeon room, and then another longer flight of stairs leading up to a doorway. Logan put a layer of other dungeon tiles underneath these areas so we could which areas were elevated (even though they weren't to scale). He also did something I would never have dreamt of doing. The night before we played, he laid out the entirety of the dungeon using Dungeon Tiles, then took a picture of it with his digital camera. Then, with a photo of the whole layout stored electronically, he removed everything but the area in which our PCs first showed up. When we explored further into the dungeon complex, he took a quick look at his digital photo before laying out the next room. Pretty smart! (When I DM, I always map out the areas I design in a quad-ruled composition book of graph paper. I have to admit, his method is much quicker!) Lacking sufficient minis of the appropriate types, Logan used dagger-wielding kenku for the ratman rogues, sword-wielding kenku for the ratmen fighters, and gnolls for the ratman ranger, barbarians, and druid queen. For the dire rat, he used...a dire rat. (We have one of those!) I should point out Sam's lack of explosions twice in a row during the fight with the rat-queen wasn't the result of any magic effect in the room, but rather my poor die-rolling: twice in a row I rolled a natural "1" for the two arrows Sam had charged up with explosive energy. (I finally gave up and switched to a different die.) Also, the dialogue between Sam and Baabby in the first fight about Power Attacks vs. actually hitting the target was taken almost verbatim from a conversation between Harry and me. Harry was determined to deal out a butt-ton of damage using Power Attack, probably because we leveled up to 12th-level right before playing this adventure, and Harry had just bumped Baabby's Strength score up to a 22. [/QUOTE]
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The Adventures of Baabby and Sam - a Skylanders Campaign
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