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Aftermath II - Free Agents
- Thread starter Rybaer
- Start date
quiet
Well, a few setbacks and a new quest for evil and now nobody wants to post to this story thread
The kneebiters are ok but I hope we get back to this campaign once we get rolling again. Just my two cents. Think how devious B is going to be after he gets back with a fresh perspective...
Well, a few setbacks and a new quest for evil and now nobody wants to post to this story thread
The kneebiters are ok but I hope we get back to this campaign once we get rolling again. Just my two cents. Think how devious B is going to be after he gets back with a fresh perspective...clockworkjoe
First Post
I just caught up with this story hour and looking forward to reading the next installments.
First off... Many props and congrats to Rybaer and the-now Mrs. Rybaer. I had the honor and pleasure of attending the ceremony and must say, it was one of those weddings where you say to yourself and everyone around you, "This is pretty kool." Everyone around me agreed.
Of course, "everyone around me" was (the players of) Zalman, Rurik, Amblin, and Bommer (Amill was at a different table). On top of that, we all forgot our dice, so, by default, we all failed our saves vs. happiness and glee.
Soooo... The RL events of the past few weeks and the events of the campaign have led to a lack of updates for a while. There are some major events coming up.
Have faith, constant reader... the best has yet to come.
Right, Rybaer?
Of course, "everyone around me" was (the players of) Zalman, Rurik, Amblin, and Bommer (Amill was at a different table). On top of that, we all forgot our dice, so, by default, we all failed our saves vs. happiness and glee.
Soooo... The RL events of the past few weeks and the events of the campaign have led to a lack of updates for a while. There are some major events coming up.
Have faith, constant reader... the best has yet to come.
Right, Rybaer?
Rybaer
First Post
At long last, the next session is ready. Somehow, in the midst of NWN and Warcraft3 being just released, I found a few minutes to finish up the entry I started some six weeks ago.
Session #12.10 - The Refinery
After a quiet rest in the crumbled remains of the temple of Moradin, the group was ready to continue their exploration of the ruins of Kladish - some more enthusiatically than others were. They crossed the pools and crevasses of the central plaza and found the hole that Zalman's summoned thoqua had created in the buried hallway. The wizard summoned two more thoquas to widen the passage into a respectable crawl space. They waited a short while for the molten rock to cool and then headed through.
Amblin, the quickest of the group, led the way. At the far end of the tunnel, he found another corridor of massive proportions. It was sixty feet wide and the ceiling and far end disappeared out of sight in the darkness. Considerable portions of the walls had collapsed, filling the passageway with boulders and rubble. It was deafeningly silent.
The others soon joined Amblin and they carefully set off. Along this passage, they found a series of rooms - Rurik guessed that it had been some manner of guildhall or place of business. Now, it housed loose rubble and the crumbled remains of ancient furnishings.
A short distance further down the main corridor, a similar wide passage split off to the right. This secondary hallway descended at a gentle slope into darkness. They took a quick vote and decided to check down the sloping passage before continuing on down the main hallway.
The side passage opened after a short distance upon a massive chamber full of oversized vessels and piping. Rurik quickly concluded that this was a smelting chamber for the refining of ore. Enormous smelters sat cold in several niches around the room. By flipping a couple levers, they found that the smelters would begin to heat themselves magically. Rurik was impressed.
Around the room were stacks of raw iron ingots, half rusted with age. Cooling racks were left abandoned. Carts full of crushed ore were covered in dust. A water tank was positioned in the center of the room, elevated about ten feet off the floor. A network of pipes branched off of it to various spigots around the room.
While the paraphernalia of the refinery was impressive - at least to Rurik - there was little of any use to the party in this room. It was clear that it had been hastily abandoned eons ago. There were a few doors leading off the main shop floor, however, which warranted further investigation.
Through one set of these doors, they found a series of low-ceilinged hallways and rooms. They appeared to be a mix of offices, meeting rooms, tool shops, and perhaps a small cafeteria. A few of the tools might one day be serviceable again, but otherwise there was little of interest in here.
Through another door on the other side of the shop, they found something a bit more interesting. Another couple offices were linked together, but at the far end of one room was a heavy steel door...which looked suspiciously like a vault. The door itself had been forcibly broken and it hung limply open. The vault beyond was little more than a modest-sized room with steel lined ceiling, floor, and walls. It was also empty.
Bommer and Nigel quickly set to inspecting the walls for secret passages, but it was Zalman who found the first hint of one. With his magic crown's ability to allow him to detect magic, he pinpointed an emanation from a small spot on one of the vault's side walls. Zalman directed Bommer to the spot and the halfling was finally able to discern the location of a concealed latch in the joints between two steel plates. Bommer marveled at the craftsmanship and admitted that he'd have never found it without the wizard's direction.
"Dwarven craftsmanship," Rurik said. "Halfling proof."
Between Bommer's inspection and Zalman's studying of the magic emanation, they concluded that it was most likely a trap. Zalman tried casting Dispell Magic upon it, but was unable to suppress the spell. Given that this was a secret door in a vault, the group was willing to risk a little to get through it. Rurik stepped up and offered to open the door. If it required a cleric's touch to safely open, he was the only logical choice. Besides, he was the keenest on seeing what was on the other side.
Bommer explained the latch to Rurik and then retreated to the next room with the others. Rurik took a deep breath and grabbed the latch. A furious blast of cold exploded from the secret door and numbed the dwarf to the bone. His skin was instantly frostbitten and ice clung to his beard. What really peeved Rurik, though, was that he'd lost focus when the blast came out and he had failed to flip the latch all the way open.
The others hurried to the cursing dwarf's aid, careful not to slip on the frosty steel floor of the vault. Rurik cast a curative spell on himself while growling at the door. Amblin offered to take the next shot at the door. He pointed out that he had very good reflexes and an innate resistance to cold temperatures, courtesy of drawing the Penguin from the magical Totemic Deck all those months back. No one disagreed and again they retreated back to the next room.
In spite of his nimble reflexes, Amblin still caught a bit of the cold blast that came out of the door when he flipped the latch. His resistance to the biting cold helped, though, and he was able to maintain his concentration through the effect. The secret door swung easily open and revealed a short passage to a smaller steel-lined vault.
Most of the group piled into the smaller vault to inspect the contents while Nigel held back and kept an eye on the door leading to the refinery. The only contents of the room were two wooden chests, each about three feet wide but made in distinctly different styles. Bommer inspected both and concluded that, while locked, neither appeared to be trapped. Zalman detected magic emanating from one of the boxes, but he suspected it was something inside the box rather than a magical trap.
Bommer picked the lock on the non-magical trap and opened the lid. Six small bars of pure but unworked mithril rested in the bottom of the chest. Rurik's heart skipped a beat as he realized what they were. Not a lot of raw material, he thought, but certainly enough out of which to make a couple fine weapons.
While Rurik's drool collected in his beard, Zalman nodded at Bommer to go ahead and open the next chest. This second box had a worn black velvet lining. Sitting in two depressions in the lining was a pair of silverish metallic cubes, both some six inches on a side. On each face of the cubes a rune of unknown design was inscribed. Zalman's crown indicated that they were of moderate magical power.
The wizard leaned over to begin studying, but was immediately knocked backward when the two cubes launched themselves out of the box. In the small, steel-lined vault, the sound of the heavy metal cubes ricocheting off the walls and ceiling was deafening. They seemed to fly in a completely erratic fashion and at an alarming speed. As everyone dove for cover, the cubes' real fireworks kicked in.
Every few seconds, each cube unleashed a magical blast or cone or ray of some sort at the nearest moving target: a cone of fire at Amblin; a crackling yellow beam that depleted Rurik's strength; a column of electricity at Zalman and Bommer. The effects were as rapid-fire as they were bizarre.
Bommer and Amblin retreated back to the main vault, meeting up with Nigel who was coming to investigate the horrible clanking noise. Switching to his longsword, Nigel connected with one of the cubes that followed them, but found that his blade had little effect. Amblin bravely tried to grapple the cube to the ground, but got a point blank blast of caustic black acid for his efforts and lost his grip. The cube pinged around the main vault a couple more times and unleashed a rust-red cloud of vapor that induced dizziness and confusion. Dragging one another, Nigel, Amblin, and Bommer all made it out of the vault and closed the door most of the way - trying to keep the cube inside the room. There they wrestled with whether to go back in after Zalman and Rurik, neither of whom had made it out of the secret vault.
Zalman was screaming at Rurik to leave the chest of mithril behind while ducking the second cube still trapped in the smaller vault with the pair. The cube unleashed a wave of liquid that had all the appearance and qualities of mucus, coating everything and everyone in the room in slippery slime. The weakened dwarf found it nearly impossible to get a good grip on the heavy chest with the mithril, but was unwilling to leave it behind. Zalman stood over the stubborn dwarf and focused long enough to conjure a Shield that he positioned as best he could to negate the bouncing cube and its effects. The cube unleashed a stream of decaying vegetable matter that splattered across Zalman's invisible barrier - the stench of which, however, had some sleep inducing effect. Both were able to shrug off the sleepiness.
Zalman blasted the cube with Magic Missiles. The cube was knocked aside by the impact but continued to bounce around the small chamber with reckless abandon. Zalman then tried a different approach and conjured a patch of Glue on the ceiling. Within moments, the cube connected with the Glue patch and managed to get completely stuck. It launched one more attack at Zalman and Rurik, a concussive blast of cold, and then went inert.
In the outer vault, at nearly that exact same moment, the others watched as the first cube also went inert. It clattered to the floor, silent and motionless. Amblin cautiously entered and, ignoring the cube, hurried to check on Zalman and Rurik. He found the pair burned, frozen, and covered in slime and rotting vegetation. On the upside, however, they were alive.
No one in the group had escaped the encounter unscathed. Rurik, with help, managed to drag the chest of mithril out of the secondary vault. Zalman, just before leaving, decided to take the chest that the cubes had been found in. Nigel kicked the one cube into the smaller chamber with the other and closed the secret door on them. While Rurik healed the worst of their injuries, Zalman inspected the chest.
Underneath the velvet lining, the wizard found a small instruction manual of sorts. His crown allowed him to read the otherwise unknown language it had been written in. The cubes, apparently, were called Chatterhorm's Chaos Cubes. He carefully perused the manual and found command words for proper activation and deactivation. He also learned that Chatterhorm, as a defensive measure, had rigged them to activate within ten seconds of the chest being opened if the deactivation word was not uttered. The manual pointed out that the devices deteriorated with each use, lasting for a shorter period until they finally wore out completely. Also contained in the documentation was the Chaos Blast spell, the basis for most of the Cubes' effects.
"I don't care much for those cubes," Nigel said. "A bit unpredictable."
"They might be really fun to unleash upon that red dragon living down here," Bommer said. There were a couple murmurs of agreement.
"Two problems with that," Zalman said. "First, while they were pretty effective against us, I doubt that a dragon would be that badly hurt by its powers. It'd probably be more of a liability to us than an asset. Secondly, the book here says that the cubes usually need about a week to recharge between uses. I, for one, certainly hope to be out of this hell hole within a week." Rurik held his tongue at the reference to the dwarven ruins as a "hell hole" and nodded in agreement.
Everyone jumped at the sound of a loud crash from the vaults. Everyone except Zalman, that is. "Don't worry," the wizard said. "My Glue spell just wore off. Just the cube falling from the ceiling."
Confident that the cubes would not spontaneously reactivate, Zalman went into the secondary vault and retrieved the pair. While he had no interest in ever using them, he figured they might fetch a decent price from someone else. And for the hassle they had created for the group, he wanted something in compensation. As for the mithril, the group convinced Rurik that it would be safest just left in the secret vault for now. They would fetch it on their way back out of Kladish.
Next session: The group picks the wrong fight.
Session #12.10 - The Refinery
After a quiet rest in the crumbled remains of the temple of Moradin, the group was ready to continue their exploration of the ruins of Kladish - some more enthusiatically than others were. They crossed the pools and crevasses of the central plaza and found the hole that Zalman's summoned thoqua had created in the buried hallway. The wizard summoned two more thoquas to widen the passage into a respectable crawl space. They waited a short while for the molten rock to cool and then headed through.
Amblin, the quickest of the group, led the way. At the far end of the tunnel, he found another corridor of massive proportions. It was sixty feet wide and the ceiling and far end disappeared out of sight in the darkness. Considerable portions of the walls had collapsed, filling the passageway with boulders and rubble. It was deafeningly silent.
The others soon joined Amblin and they carefully set off. Along this passage, they found a series of rooms - Rurik guessed that it had been some manner of guildhall or place of business. Now, it housed loose rubble and the crumbled remains of ancient furnishings.
A short distance further down the main corridor, a similar wide passage split off to the right. This secondary hallway descended at a gentle slope into darkness. They took a quick vote and decided to check down the sloping passage before continuing on down the main hallway.
The side passage opened after a short distance upon a massive chamber full of oversized vessels and piping. Rurik quickly concluded that this was a smelting chamber for the refining of ore. Enormous smelters sat cold in several niches around the room. By flipping a couple levers, they found that the smelters would begin to heat themselves magically. Rurik was impressed.
Around the room were stacks of raw iron ingots, half rusted with age. Cooling racks were left abandoned. Carts full of crushed ore were covered in dust. A water tank was positioned in the center of the room, elevated about ten feet off the floor. A network of pipes branched off of it to various spigots around the room.
While the paraphernalia of the refinery was impressive - at least to Rurik - there was little of any use to the party in this room. It was clear that it had been hastily abandoned eons ago. There were a few doors leading off the main shop floor, however, which warranted further investigation.
Through one set of these doors, they found a series of low-ceilinged hallways and rooms. They appeared to be a mix of offices, meeting rooms, tool shops, and perhaps a small cafeteria. A few of the tools might one day be serviceable again, but otherwise there was little of interest in here.
Through another door on the other side of the shop, they found something a bit more interesting. Another couple offices were linked together, but at the far end of one room was a heavy steel door...which looked suspiciously like a vault. The door itself had been forcibly broken and it hung limply open. The vault beyond was little more than a modest-sized room with steel lined ceiling, floor, and walls. It was also empty.
Bommer and Nigel quickly set to inspecting the walls for secret passages, but it was Zalman who found the first hint of one. With his magic crown's ability to allow him to detect magic, he pinpointed an emanation from a small spot on one of the vault's side walls. Zalman directed Bommer to the spot and the halfling was finally able to discern the location of a concealed latch in the joints between two steel plates. Bommer marveled at the craftsmanship and admitted that he'd have never found it without the wizard's direction.
"Dwarven craftsmanship," Rurik said. "Halfling proof."
Between Bommer's inspection and Zalman's studying of the magic emanation, they concluded that it was most likely a trap. Zalman tried casting Dispell Magic upon it, but was unable to suppress the spell. Given that this was a secret door in a vault, the group was willing to risk a little to get through it. Rurik stepped up and offered to open the door. If it required a cleric's touch to safely open, he was the only logical choice. Besides, he was the keenest on seeing what was on the other side.
Bommer explained the latch to Rurik and then retreated to the next room with the others. Rurik took a deep breath and grabbed the latch. A furious blast of cold exploded from the secret door and numbed the dwarf to the bone. His skin was instantly frostbitten and ice clung to his beard. What really peeved Rurik, though, was that he'd lost focus when the blast came out and he had failed to flip the latch all the way open.
The others hurried to the cursing dwarf's aid, careful not to slip on the frosty steel floor of the vault. Rurik cast a curative spell on himself while growling at the door. Amblin offered to take the next shot at the door. He pointed out that he had very good reflexes and an innate resistance to cold temperatures, courtesy of drawing the Penguin from the magical Totemic Deck all those months back. No one disagreed and again they retreated back to the next room.
In spite of his nimble reflexes, Amblin still caught a bit of the cold blast that came out of the door when he flipped the latch. His resistance to the biting cold helped, though, and he was able to maintain his concentration through the effect. The secret door swung easily open and revealed a short passage to a smaller steel-lined vault.
Most of the group piled into the smaller vault to inspect the contents while Nigel held back and kept an eye on the door leading to the refinery. The only contents of the room were two wooden chests, each about three feet wide but made in distinctly different styles. Bommer inspected both and concluded that, while locked, neither appeared to be trapped. Zalman detected magic emanating from one of the boxes, but he suspected it was something inside the box rather than a magical trap.
Bommer picked the lock on the non-magical trap and opened the lid. Six small bars of pure but unworked mithril rested in the bottom of the chest. Rurik's heart skipped a beat as he realized what they were. Not a lot of raw material, he thought, but certainly enough out of which to make a couple fine weapons.
While Rurik's drool collected in his beard, Zalman nodded at Bommer to go ahead and open the next chest. This second box had a worn black velvet lining. Sitting in two depressions in the lining was a pair of silverish metallic cubes, both some six inches on a side. On each face of the cubes a rune of unknown design was inscribed. Zalman's crown indicated that they were of moderate magical power.
The wizard leaned over to begin studying, but was immediately knocked backward when the two cubes launched themselves out of the box. In the small, steel-lined vault, the sound of the heavy metal cubes ricocheting off the walls and ceiling was deafening. They seemed to fly in a completely erratic fashion and at an alarming speed. As everyone dove for cover, the cubes' real fireworks kicked in.
Every few seconds, each cube unleashed a magical blast or cone or ray of some sort at the nearest moving target: a cone of fire at Amblin; a crackling yellow beam that depleted Rurik's strength; a column of electricity at Zalman and Bommer. The effects were as rapid-fire as they were bizarre.
Bommer and Amblin retreated back to the main vault, meeting up with Nigel who was coming to investigate the horrible clanking noise. Switching to his longsword, Nigel connected with one of the cubes that followed them, but found that his blade had little effect. Amblin bravely tried to grapple the cube to the ground, but got a point blank blast of caustic black acid for his efforts and lost his grip. The cube pinged around the main vault a couple more times and unleashed a rust-red cloud of vapor that induced dizziness and confusion. Dragging one another, Nigel, Amblin, and Bommer all made it out of the vault and closed the door most of the way - trying to keep the cube inside the room. There they wrestled with whether to go back in after Zalman and Rurik, neither of whom had made it out of the secret vault.
Zalman was screaming at Rurik to leave the chest of mithril behind while ducking the second cube still trapped in the smaller vault with the pair. The cube unleashed a wave of liquid that had all the appearance and qualities of mucus, coating everything and everyone in the room in slippery slime. The weakened dwarf found it nearly impossible to get a good grip on the heavy chest with the mithril, but was unwilling to leave it behind. Zalman stood over the stubborn dwarf and focused long enough to conjure a Shield that he positioned as best he could to negate the bouncing cube and its effects. The cube unleashed a stream of decaying vegetable matter that splattered across Zalman's invisible barrier - the stench of which, however, had some sleep inducing effect. Both were able to shrug off the sleepiness.
Zalman blasted the cube with Magic Missiles. The cube was knocked aside by the impact but continued to bounce around the small chamber with reckless abandon. Zalman then tried a different approach and conjured a patch of Glue on the ceiling. Within moments, the cube connected with the Glue patch and managed to get completely stuck. It launched one more attack at Zalman and Rurik, a concussive blast of cold, and then went inert.
In the outer vault, at nearly that exact same moment, the others watched as the first cube also went inert. It clattered to the floor, silent and motionless. Amblin cautiously entered and, ignoring the cube, hurried to check on Zalman and Rurik. He found the pair burned, frozen, and covered in slime and rotting vegetation. On the upside, however, they were alive.
No one in the group had escaped the encounter unscathed. Rurik, with help, managed to drag the chest of mithril out of the secondary vault. Zalman, just before leaving, decided to take the chest that the cubes had been found in. Nigel kicked the one cube into the smaller chamber with the other and closed the secret door on them. While Rurik healed the worst of their injuries, Zalman inspected the chest.
Underneath the velvet lining, the wizard found a small instruction manual of sorts. His crown allowed him to read the otherwise unknown language it had been written in. The cubes, apparently, were called Chatterhorm's Chaos Cubes. He carefully perused the manual and found command words for proper activation and deactivation. He also learned that Chatterhorm, as a defensive measure, had rigged them to activate within ten seconds of the chest being opened if the deactivation word was not uttered. The manual pointed out that the devices deteriorated with each use, lasting for a shorter period until they finally wore out completely. Also contained in the documentation was the Chaos Blast spell, the basis for most of the Cubes' effects.
"I don't care much for those cubes," Nigel said. "A bit unpredictable."
"They might be really fun to unleash upon that red dragon living down here," Bommer said. There were a couple murmurs of agreement.
"Two problems with that," Zalman said. "First, while they were pretty effective against us, I doubt that a dragon would be that badly hurt by its powers. It'd probably be more of a liability to us than an asset. Secondly, the book here says that the cubes usually need about a week to recharge between uses. I, for one, certainly hope to be out of this hell hole within a week." Rurik held his tongue at the reference to the dwarven ruins as a "hell hole" and nodded in agreement.
Everyone jumped at the sound of a loud crash from the vaults. Everyone except Zalman, that is. "Don't worry," the wizard said. "My Glue spell just wore off. Just the cube falling from the ceiling."
Confident that the cubes would not spontaneously reactivate, Zalman went into the secondary vault and retrieved the pair. While he had no interest in ever using them, he figured they might fetch a decent price from someone else. And for the hassle they had created for the group, he wanted something in compensation. As for the mithril, the group convinced Rurik that it would be safest just left in the secret vault for now. They would fetch it on their way back out of Kladish.
Next session: The group picks the wrong fight.
Stubborn Dwarf!
"Rurik!!! Get Out!!!! We don't need the Mithril that bad!"
"I love you Z, but the metal is coming with me"
"!^!#$%!@##, get behind me" (This Dwarf is gonna get me killed, I think...)
"I should be able to pick this up, but the damn snot it blew on me has made me as weak as an elf..."
"Well, let's see if they can get stuck"
Luckily, they did. I thought the cubes were cool, but as a Lawful Neutral Conjurer they were much too random for my tastes. What Rybaer didn't mention is that each cube weighs about 20 pounds. Imagine a 20 pound cube of metal banging around in a metal room in random directions and casting spells.
Yeah, I don't like it either unless I am a clever DM.
"You don't think all this noise attracted anyone's attention... do you?"
"Rurik!!! Get Out!!!! We don't need the Mithril that bad!"
"I love you Z, but the metal is coming with me"
"!^!#$%!@##, get behind me" (This Dwarf is gonna get me killed, I think...)
"I should be able to pick this up, but the damn snot it blew on me has made me as weak as an elf..."
"Well, let's see if they can get stuck"
Luckily, they did. I thought the cubes were cool, but as a Lawful Neutral Conjurer they were much too random for my tastes. What Rybaer didn't mention is that each cube weighs about 20 pounds. Imagine a 20 pound cube of metal banging around in a metal room in random directions and casting spells.
Yeah, I don't like it either unless I am a clever DM.
"You don't think all this noise attracted anyone's attention... do you?"
Rybaer
First Post
I had a great deal of fun (as a DM) watching how the encounter with the Chatterhorm's Chaos Cubes went down. I got the idea for the items from the spell Chaos Blast in Wild Magic (by RangerWickett). In short, when the spell goes off, you roll three d20's - one for area of effect (cone, ray, area, touch, etc), one for damage or effect (d6/level, slow, confusion, etc), and one for visual effect (water, fire, small furry rodents, etc). I couldn't wait to try out the spell, but had no real plans for the group to encounter a suitable spell caster for quite some time.
Then I realized that there had been precious few cursed magic items in my game thus far. Mwuahaha. Not that this is really cursed, because they can be *somewhat* controlled. The catch was in their spontaneous activation unless the deactivation word was spoken.
Basically, it turned into a 6 round episode of D&D Survivor. They did pretty well, though I was worried about Zalman and Rurik near the end there. The cubes were not indestructable, but the combination of being difficult to hit (size and speed) and having a respectable hardness would have made such nearly impossible before they deactivated on their own.
Then I realized that there had been precious few cursed magic items in my game thus far. Mwuahaha. Not that this is really cursed, because they can be *somewhat* controlled. The catch was in their spontaneous activation unless the deactivation word was spoken.
Basically, it turned into a 6 round episode of D&D Survivor. They did pretty well, though I was worried about Zalman and Rurik near the end there. The cubes were not indestructable, but the combination of being difficult to hit (size and speed) and having a respectable hardness would have made such nearly impossible before they deactivated on their own.
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