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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LordVyreth" data-source="post: 3016264" data-attributes="member: 9626">The Gate of Madness: The Horror of the Giggling DoorNegotiations with the kobolds were breaking down.  After finding the entrance to their lair on the only path they haven’t explored yet on the first level, the party confronted the two guards at the door, only to find that they didn’t speak Common, either.  However, concerned with the respect the goblin chief had for a mere kobold, the party decided to try negotiating first.  This brought a kobold diplomat who did speak Common, but apparently he and the chief shared a lack of interest in the party.  As the negotiations turned to shouting and threats of violence, the two kobold guards, who couldn’t understand a word of the conversation but easily picked up its tone, looked increasingly desperate at their so-called ambassador.      Fortunately for the two of them, at least for now, the last display of power by Lorren was enough for the kobold ambassador to take notice.  Seemingly cowed, he called the two guards in from the entrance (to their undisguised relief,) and then told the party to enter so that they can begin “negotiations.”    “There’s no way it’ll be this easy,” Elvis said suspiciously.    Luke sighed with resignation.  “I have to admit I agree, but if we can at least try to resolve this peacefully, we should.  After all, we still have the orcs to deal with, and we’re running out of time.”    As the party passed a completely empty guardhouse, Luke’s hopes at least initially appeared correct.  That changed, however, when their guide entered the next room.  Before the party could follow, the door slammed shut, forcing the party to take precious seconds to get it open again.  By the time they could see the next room, their guide was gone.  Instead, the room had a pair of wooden catwalks that covered both sides of the room and numerous dark alcoves containing potentially anything.      “We’ve been betrayed!” Enrique yelled angrily, and he rushed into the room with Grim and Anastacia.  Before they could get far, though, foul creatures emerged from the alcoves.  They were humans, or at least they used to be, but now they were little more than stitched together flesh or bone.  As the zombies and skeletons descended on the party, the kobolds fired using surprisingly well-built slings.  The party returned fire, only to find that the kobold archers were surprisingly well-armored and hard to hit.    “We need your power!” a frantic Elvis shouted at Luke while he tried to even damage the archers.    Luke looked at his holy symbol nervously.  He knew in his heart that Ehlonna would protect him from creatures like these, but then again he never had to test that theory before.  Nonetheless, he concentrated on his lifelong faith while raising his holy symbol.  Even though the doubts that rose from his church’s sudden dubious new leader gave him pause, he was pleased to see that his hope was not ill-founded; many of the undead monstrosities were driven away by the light of Ehlonna.      With their enemies scattered, the party fought on with renewed vigor.  Though wounded fairly heavily in the fight earlier, Anastacia and Grim held out long enough to finish the remaining undead, while Lorren and Elvis finally eliminated the kobold archers.  Enrique led the fight against the turned undead and finished them before they could recover and again attack the party.  However, from his position on the other side of the room, he noticed that in addition to a door directly opposite the one they used to enter the room, there were additional doors on the same level as the catwalks the archers used.  Enrique carefully climbed up to the nearest catwalk (which he would have done anyway to search the enemy bodies,) and then called out to the party, “Hey, I have an idea!  If the kobolds are expecting us to attack them from the main door, we can sneak in and ambush them using this door.”    Eager to avoid another death trap, the party agreed, and after Enrique secured a room up to the ledge, they carefully climbed up and traversed the narrow path further into the kobolds’ lair.  Soon, they came to another room, and while it apparently led to the same room that the main doors would have reached, if the massive doors on the ground level on their side were any indication, they apparently had the two guards in the room caught unaware.  However, another complication soon hindered the party; they tunnel was so narrow that only one of them could look out of it and attack the kobolds at a time!  Enrique responded to this problem by climbing a ladder down to the next level, while Grim decided to make things simpler by just leaping to the ground and attacking the kobolds!  Lorren was next in line and attacked the nearest kobold with his magic, but that left Anastacia, who was next in line, without any way to reach their targets.  Eager to at least try to help the party, she rushed to the front of the tunnel, which unfortunately involved pushing poor Lorren out of the tunnel!  As he landed in an uncomfortable heap on the ground, the party continued to swarm on the surprised guards, and despite their armor, they were quickly finished off.    Besides the kobolds themselves, the room seemingly contained only a single, gilded door.  Enrique excitedly examined the door, only to reply moments later, “No, it’s just gold paint,” with disappointment in his voice.  He sadly gestured toward the door, obviously expecting someone else to open it.  Anastacia was the first to open the door, prompting a massive stone block to swing out of the wall and knock her unconscious!  All eyes, except for Lorren’s, glared angrily at Enrique, who shrugged.  “Well, I figured out what the door wasn’t,” he admitted.  “I wasn’t that certain what it was, exactly.”    While the party stabilized Anastacia’s wounds, Enrique disarmed the trap and Grim opened the door.  To the part’s surprise, the door actually fell over backwards like a drawbridge.  It even required a rope and pulley system to close again.  After his most recent failure, Enrique was quickly made to take point so he could confirm that the way was safe before proceeding.  He slowly made his way down the corridor beyond the drawbridge door.  About the time he got halfway down it, however, the party had another surprise.  A kobold, in a way that seemed casual, opened a secret door and sauntered into the room.  Upon realizing that the party was still there, he stopped mid-stride and immediately tried to escape.  However, it was not to be.  Grim and Luke charged the unfortunate kobold while Lorren, Elvis, and Ik supported the party from a distance.    Enrique, however, didn’t even realize there was a fight until he returned to the party.  “The route seems safe,” he confirms, “but it doesn’t really lead anywhere.  There’s a huge cliff at the end of the hall.”  Eager to examine the phenomenon, the party carefully approached the end of the tunnel to see the massive cliff.  The walls of the cliff extended beyond their vision, and the same was true for the drop, making it at least sixty feet to the bottom.  Grim even cautiously dropped a rock down the pit and shuddered slightly when the rock could never even be heard hitting bottom.    “To be honest,” Lorren admitted as he looked over the edge, “I’m sort of glad Anastacia is still unconscious right now.”    The party returned to the gilded door and carefully closed it.  The secret door was now the only way they had of getting further into the kobold’s realm, but even with the last kobold’s unaware response to the party, they still suspected another trap, so once again Enrique was stuck going ahead to make sure the path was safe.  And once again, this caused more problems than it solved.  Enrique tried to silently sneak through the tunnel into the next room, but before he could get near it, he almost tripped on a rock.  As soon as he stumbled into the next room, he saw that its inhabitants, two zombies and a hideous dog with two heads, where well aware of his presence and on their way to attack!      “Zombies!  Doggie with two heads!” Enrique screamed as he dashed out of the tunnel.  The party quickly responded, with Grim taking point and Luke preparing to turn the undead.  However, the narrow confines again proved problematic for the party.  Luke was successful at holding the undead at bay, and he even caused one zombie to dissolve into ash instantly, but Grim had more trouble with the dog, and the rest of the party couldn’t fire at it without risking an attack on Grim.  Finally, though, Elvis decided to chance it, only for him to drive an arrow right into Grim’s back!  As the unfortunate barbarian collapsed, the dog ran right over his “defeated” foe and leapt on Elvis, mauling him with both pairs of its filthy, disease-ridden jaws.  Finally, though, the dog was brought down, and Grim’s wounds were bandaged.  The party realized that they were too injured to safely travel further today, but at the same time they didn’t want to give up too much land and give the kobolds an opportunity to rebuild their defenses.  Of course, there was also a risk of attack while the party was resting.  Finally, the party agreed to partially make a tactical withdraw to the abandoned guardhouse they saw on the way in.  After carefully confirming that it actually was still abandoned, the party rested four the third time since they came to the Gate.  Only four days remained before the caravan would return for them, however.    When they returned to the room with the wooden catwalks, they found the bodies of both the kobolds and the undead gone, but there were no additional forces waiting for them.  The same was true of the gilded door room, though the secret door was closed again.  When they entered the secret room, it was also bereft of bodies, but when they tried to open the next door, they were shocked to hear the door itself actually giggle!  Enrique immediately investigated the door, out of a misplaced fear that there was someone on the other side of the door laughing at them, but after he heard the door chuckle when he put his ear to it, he quit in disgust and opened the door, which caused the door to really laugh.  “I’m starting to really hate this place,” he muttered.In the next room, apparently the throne room of the kobold chieftain, they finally found kobolds waiting for them.  Surprisingly, though, the two kobolds in question were unarmed and clearly willing to surrender.  The party immediately recognized one of the kobolds as the same ambassador that met the party at the front door.  “Where’s your leader?” Elvis growled at the kobold, but he just glumly responded by pointing at a caved-in tunnel.    “She decided that fighting you more would not be to her benefit,” the ambassador replied.  “She left me here to negotiate with you.”  The other kobold, who apparently didn’t speak Common, simply cowered in the corner of the room.    Enrique, Anastacia, and Ik immediately searched the room for valuables.  Enrique was excited about the throne, which unlike the earlier door was actually made of gold, but Ik was even more enthused about a piano in the corner.  “Wow, it has a full 88 keys!” she said excitedly.  She quickly sat down to try it out, demonstrating to the entire party and two unfortunate kobolds that the piano was one instrument she was not professionally trained in at this point.    Luke tried to ignore the rancor and ask about what they came for.  “We want the skull of the Effervo Vesica agent you killed.”      The ambassador nodded.  “She understood that, but she kept it with the other trophies of enemies she defeated.” He indicated a door in the room.  “She kept the skull in here, but she arranged with two other skulls, and I don’t know which one is the real one.  She only told me to give you this and said it would help you.”  With that, he handed the party a skin full of what was, at least in theory, water.    The party cautiously opened the door and saw the three skulls hung up on hooks.  Above the skull, a simple message was written:Three Skulls of Enemies Long DeadEach Died A Death UniqueOne Breathed the Fumes of DeathOne Met a Demise of WaterThe Last Was Crushed By Earth Itself    Elvis groaned.  “She left us a puzzle?  Why would she do this?”    Lorren glared at the kobolds.  “If I had to guess, I’d say she hoped we would set off a trap.  She knew we couldn’t leave without the skull, and this way, she’d have a chance of killing us without endangering more of her own people.”    Enrique finished searching the room and found the only other object in it.  “I think this bucket might be useful,” he said dubiously.      Grim offered the simple option.  “Well, the diplomat gave us water, and the message suggests a death by water.  What if we filled the bucket with the water and tried to pour the water on the skulls or even submerse them?  That way, if there’s a trap, we can figure out if there’s anything special about the skulls without touching them.”    Lorren shook his head.  “That just seems too simple.  And how can we trust the kobold’s assistance?  Maybe the water just sets the trap off.”    Elvis responded by grabbing the diplomat.  “Well, who says that WE have to do it?  It seems to me that the chief gave us the solution to the trap after all!”    Luke seemed reluctant.  “We can’t just use them as bait for traps!  They’re surrendering prisoners!”    Anastacia rolled her eyes.  “It’s their own trap, though.  If they’re still technically trying to kill us, I don’t think it’s a problem.”    Luke conceded the point, and soon the simple kobold assistant, who figured out the situation soon enough despite the language barrier, tried to place the bucked under the skulls.  One sunk into it normally, but the other two seemingly repelled the bucket, preventing it from submersing them.  At the party’s orders, the same kobold took the seemingly normal skull from off the hook and gave it to the party without any further incident.    “Huh, so it WAS that easy,” Lorren admitted.    Elvis grinned evilly.  “We can make them take the skulls off of the other hooks and see what happens.”    Anastacia was more practical, if no more merciful.  “What about giving them to Ophidians?  They said they needed goblins to reproduce.  I’m sure the kobolds aren’t that much different.”    At this, the diplomat looked up with shock.  “No!” he shouted.  “I’d rather be thrown off the cliff into the Gravity Well!”    Lorren sounded interested in this Gravity Well, which he assumed was the cliff they found earlier, but Luke finally put his foot down.  “Stop that!  We got what we wanted from them, so no throwing them into traps, throwing them off cliffs, or somehow turning them into weird lizard-people.”    “Weird lizard people with speech impediments!”  Ik clarified.    The party grumbled but accepted Luke’s decision this time, and they decided to leave the piano and the throne behind as well, at least until they were ready to leave and their excess weight wouldn’t cause a problem.  With the kobolds and the goblins dealt with, they only had to proceed to the second level to find the orcs and learn the name of their adversary.  Of course, the question remained: how to get there?    “I don’t suppose we can try the elevator again?” Enrique offered.    The party tellingly ignored Enrique, and Luke made the next suggestion.  “What about the tunnel the Ophidans suggested?  They seem friendly towards us.”    Anastacia shuddered.  “I don’t like the idea of having to find a tunnel underwater, not to mention being at the mercy of those things.   Let’s just re-negotiate with the goblins.  We can afford to now.”    The party agreed that the Ophidians were too bizarre to be trusted, and soon the party was back in goblin territory, where their previously obtained papers got them an audience with he chieftain himself.  The party was soon escorted back into a familiar hall and from there in a room with several closed wooden trap doors.  From there, the party was taken to a domed room with a fresco covering the ceiling.  Geritch himself barely acknowledged the party as they entered and seemed more interested in a hole in the wall.  “Hey, good to see you again,” he casually said as the party entered the room.  “Take a look at this.”    The party, wary of a trap, obediently approached and looked at the hole.  The saw that the hole opened to the top of a massive, bowl-shaped room far too perfectly shaped to be natural.  The bottom of the bowl was dominated by a sphere of blinding light.  Strange, tiny humanoid figures slowly moved on the slope above the light, their shapes creating dark shadows over the sphere.    “We call this the Energy Bowl,” Geritch calmly explained.  “We think it’s a portal to the Plane of Fire or something.  All I know is that it and the storms it makes keeps me in business.  Plus, it’s great for my tan.”  He turned to the party.  “Now, I heard that you were interested in buying the rights to use my passage to the next level after all?  I assume you’re willing to pay?”    The party was almost willing to pay the price Geritch offered, but Enrique had another idea.  “Well, we found a piano when we raided the kobold’s lair.  We can give you that.”    Geritch looked very interested.  “You attacked the kobolds?  How did you do?”    Lorren smiled.  “We drove them out past the throne room.  They sealed the tunnel as they fled, though, so we couldn’t get any further.    Geritch chuckled.  “And you offer me her personal piano!  Excellent!  I will gladly take such payment!  In fact, for a gift like that, I’ll even let you use our tribe’s sauna!”    Anastacia looked excited at the chance for some actual luxury, but Luke looked more reluctant.  “Perhaps…on the way back,” he offered.  With that, the party left to retrieve the piano, though as they did, Elvis told the rest of the party about an idea he had.  Moments later, the two kobolds, as they tried to figure out what they were going to do to survive for the months before the tunnel is cleared, were surprised when the party burst back into the room, shouting and with weapons drawn!  The two kobolds were too terrified to even move and thus did nothing but stare in confusion as the party suddenly changed directions and then calmly lifted the piano up and carried it out of the room.    OOC: This takes us to nearly the end of the second full adventure in the Gate of Madness.  The party’s adventures through the second level continue from here, but they didn’t get far yet, and the game resumes tomorrow.  As you might have noticed, the undead turning rules were altered for my campaign.  Basically, each undead has a TR (Turn Resistance) equal to 10 + their CR and any turn resistance bonus they may have.  The cleric rolls a caster level check plus Charisma for each undead.  Beating the undead’s TR will turn them as normal, but beating it by 10 will destroy them, letting even a low-level cleric like Luke destroy a weak undead at times.</blockquote>

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