Daggers & Deviltry
- Thread starter Paka
- Start date
Storn - Glad you like it.
Buzz - Thanks for the kind words.
Thanks, Tony, that was my story hour, back in the day with 3.0. Thanks for remembering.
Here's the link to it. Wow. Memories.
Buzz - Thanks for the kind words.
Thanks, Tony, that was my story hour, back in the day with 3.0. Thanks for remembering.
Here's the link to it. Wow. Memories.
Winterhaven Cemetary Fight 1
I numbered this as our first Winterhaven Cemetary Fight because I'm kind of assuming this might very well happen again.
I gained new respect for Winterhaven (and our Dungeon Master's eye for in-game logic) when we were lead to their cemetery and it was outside the walls of town. In a world with undead, that just makes plain old sense.
As we approached the cemetery, a town guardsman frantically approached us with the fear most NPC's have for their own lives and all of the passion of a good plot hook.
"I was investigating some strange noises and *the other guard whose name Melech can't be bothered to remember* didn't come back. The Captain was always very clear that if our partner is grabbed, we don't go into the cemetery after them but go get help."
I'm sure Petal remembers the guard's name and likely Kendrick might remember if he had his weapons properly strapped on or what kind of mug he was carrying. Bok probably remembers a blurry human. To me, he's the guy who led me to the dark place where I could get stabby.
Y'know, I've skimmed over threads about other group's adventures in Winterhaven and my player even owns the damned module (but he promises he hasn't read it) and I can't for the life of me remember it being a damned horror story. Is this place in the Demi-Plane of Dread or something?
Some undead beast, a farmer, was eating the town guard who had been grabbed.
I stealthed in, eager to find the necromancer behind this late night shenanigans and introduce him to my knife's point. Kendrick charged headlong at the ghoul, cleaving some zombies as he went. Bok dropped back to the edge of the map and dropped some fine icy clouds into the battlefield. Petal totally botched her initiative and when the ghoul rushed by Kendrick to get her, it rooted her to the spot. She always seems to be getting stuck somewhere.
Her stuck state made her prayer to Bahamut and undead turning not as optimal as it could've been but really left her with no choice.
It was about then that the rats hit the board. They were a swarm, and in 4e, a swarm of critters is just plain nasty. They boiled out of one of the desecrated tombs and headed for Kendrick and Petal. As Bok's player put it, "They're like a moving area effect spell with claws and fangs." Luckily, her icy cloud spell was just the thing to end that little threat. Turns out, dead, frozen rats make a really satisfying crunch when you step on them.
Bok insisted on taking one of the frozen rats with him when we left. Eladrin are a mystery.
My second level utility feat allows me to run without it effecting my stealth, so I was making good distance through the cemetery without zombie roadblocks. Or if you need some more in-character mumbo-jumbo, here ya go:
"My family's training served me well. We often had need to run through the night in silence, in order to destroy our prey with assassin's knives. The fast, quiet pace my brothers had set in the city during my criminal youth served me well in this moonless cemetery, while zombies moaned hungrily to the left and right."
Happy?
I got about halfway through the cemetary and from the look on the Dungeon Master's face, I could tell there would be no Necromancer to be found. Rather than waste the combat doing some in-character searching, I decided to join the fray and earn my experience points.
The ghoul was a nasty piece of work, quite a few levels above us and screaming incoherently about eating us and killing us and killing us and eating us. The bastard attacked his former comrad, knocking him over the short cemetery fence. Poor NPC was unconscious. Petal went over and saved his life with a Heal check, no one wanting her to waste any real healing on a non-combat non-player character.
It took me and Kendrick flanking him and Bok's ice ray to finally drop him. Kendrick danced with him for a long while, swinging at him while he jumped and ducked this way and that. It felt good being on either side of a snarling foe with Kendrick.
I'm not sure if we even took a hit that fight. It was a pretty handy victory and a good chip to have when we talk to Winterhaven's Lord about our pay for saving this little point of light.
"Wait a minute! Is that brutal ghoul the damned farmer I didn't kill to make you people happy when we got into town? Would we have passed this infernal hick's farm on the way in?" I asked.
"No," the healed guard replied, "No, his farm is to the south; you would have come in from the west."
"Oh."
I still should've killed that bastard.
I numbered this as our first Winterhaven Cemetary Fight because I'm kind of assuming this might very well happen again.
I gained new respect for Winterhaven (and our Dungeon Master's eye for in-game logic) when we were lead to their cemetery and it was outside the walls of town. In a world with undead, that just makes plain old sense.
As we approached the cemetery, a town guardsman frantically approached us with the fear most NPC's have for their own lives and all of the passion of a good plot hook.
"I was investigating some strange noises and *the other guard whose name Melech can't be bothered to remember* didn't come back. The Captain was always very clear that if our partner is grabbed, we don't go into the cemetery after them but go get help."
I'm sure Petal remembers the guard's name and likely Kendrick might remember if he had his weapons properly strapped on or what kind of mug he was carrying. Bok probably remembers a blurry human. To me, he's the guy who led me to the dark place where I could get stabby.
Y'know, I've skimmed over threads about other group's adventures in Winterhaven and my player even owns the damned module (but he promises he hasn't read it) and I can't for the life of me remember it being a damned horror story. Is this place in the Demi-Plane of Dread or something?
Some undead beast, a farmer, was eating the town guard who had been grabbed.
I stealthed in, eager to find the necromancer behind this late night shenanigans and introduce him to my knife's point. Kendrick charged headlong at the ghoul, cleaving some zombies as he went. Bok dropped back to the edge of the map and dropped some fine icy clouds into the battlefield. Petal totally botched her initiative and when the ghoul rushed by Kendrick to get her, it rooted her to the spot. She always seems to be getting stuck somewhere.
Her stuck state made her prayer to Bahamut and undead turning not as optimal as it could've been but really left her with no choice.
It was about then that the rats hit the board. They were a swarm, and in 4e, a swarm of critters is just plain nasty. They boiled out of one of the desecrated tombs and headed for Kendrick and Petal. As Bok's player put it, "They're like a moving area effect spell with claws and fangs." Luckily, her icy cloud spell was just the thing to end that little threat. Turns out, dead, frozen rats make a really satisfying crunch when you step on them.
Bok insisted on taking one of the frozen rats with him when we left. Eladrin are a mystery.
My second level utility feat allows me to run without it effecting my stealth, so I was making good distance through the cemetery without zombie roadblocks. Or if you need some more in-character mumbo-jumbo, here ya go:
"My family's training served me well. We often had need to run through the night in silence, in order to destroy our prey with assassin's knives. The fast, quiet pace my brothers had set in the city during my criminal youth served me well in this moonless cemetery, while zombies moaned hungrily to the left and right."
Happy?
I got about halfway through the cemetary and from the look on the Dungeon Master's face, I could tell there would be no Necromancer to be found. Rather than waste the combat doing some in-character searching, I decided to join the fray and earn my experience points.
The ghoul was a nasty piece of work, quite a few levels above us and screaming incoherently about eating us and killing us and killing us and eating us. The bastard attacked his former comrad, knocking him over the short cemetery fence. Poor NPC was unconscious. Petal went over and saved his life with a Heal check, no one wanting her to waste any real healing on a non-combat non-player character.
It took me and Kendrick flanking him and Bok's ice ray to finally drop him. Kendrick danced with him for a long while, swinging at him while he jumped and ducked this way and that. It felt good being on either side of a snarling foe with Kendrick.
I'm not sure if we even took a hit that fight. It was a pretty handy victory and a good chip to have when we talk to Winterhaven's Lord about our pay for saving this little point of light.
"Wait a minute! Is that brutal ghoul the damned farmer I didn't kill to make you people happy when we got into town? Would we have passed this infernal hick's farm on the way in?" I asked.
"No," the healed guard replied, "No, his farm is to the south; you would have come in from the west."
"Oh."
I still should've killed that bastard.
Last edited:
Jim DelRosso
First Post
Thanks for the kind words: I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about effective undead countermeasures.
I'm really enjoying these write-ups, both because they're fun to read and it gives me a different perspective on the game, which helps when I'm running it. It's been neat hacking a horror vibe onto Winterhaven/KotS, and I hope y'all enjoy the rest of it.
Though why you assume there'll be more fights in cemeteries I'll never know.
Storn
Explorer
This last Saturday's game gleaned a special doodle by me at the table. Although, nothing unusual about it on the surface. Thanks to Jim and the gang for making for one blast of a night. (C, aka Petal, is going to provide the commentary, as Paka aka Melech the Red could not make it to the game, I'll paste her stuff in next post).
This one has a bit of a story behind it.
I met Millie 23 years ago. She became my wife after 4 years of living together. We broke up a year later. But parted on very good terms. I always thought the world of her, but we simply where too young, too different (she is Puerto Rican, I'm a white guy without an ounce of religious upbringing, she comes from a huge family and is a twin, I come from a tiny family. I was a raving geek, she was not etc. etc.)
18 years pass and we meet again and rekindle our romance this last xmas. She is now moving to my home town and I'm very happy to have this 2nd chance.
One of our causes of friction was she thought role playing was "stupid". Now, many years later, and because she is a nurse instructor, she uses roleplaying as case study-teaching aides every semester. When we rekindled, she expressed large interest in trying out this odd hobby of mine (ours).
This picture is her first character, done during play. She played 4th ed D&D this last Saturday and had a great time, wants to do it again. She was very nervous, but my fellow gamers did a wonderful job of embracing her and her character. I had a great time. So... there's the story behind "Midnight aka Serielle, Paladin of Avandra".. Millie's first character.
These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5
This one has a bit of a story behind it.
I met Millie 23 years ago. She became my wife after 4 years of living together. We broke up a year later. But parted on very good terms. I always thought the world of her, but we simply where too young, too different (she is Puerto Rican, I'm a white guy without an ounce of religious upbringing, she comes from a huge family and is a twin, I come from a tiny family. I was a raving geek, she was not etc. etc.)
18 years pass and we meet again and rekindle our romance this last xmas. She is now moving to my home town and I'm very happy to have this 2nd chance.
One of our causes of friction was she thought role playing was "stupid". Now, many years later, and because she is a nurse instructor, she uses roleplaying as case study-teaching aides every semester. When we rekindled, she expressed large interest in trying out this odd hobby of mine (ours).
This picture is her first character, done during play. She played 4th ed D&D this last Saturday and had a great time, wants to do it again. She was very nervous, but my fellow gamers did a wonderful job of embracing her and her character. I had a great time. So... there's the story behind "Midnight aka Serielle, Paladin of Avandra".. Millie's first character.
These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5
Finishing the Keep on the Shadowfell
Daggers & Deviltry: Finishing the Keep on the Shadowfell
All art by Storn A. Cook
Ask most dungeon-masters and any player-character (not the player, mind you but the character) and they will tell you that the problem with role-playing games is that we are dependent on these damned players. There should be laws in the DMG about players being in graduate school; it is and it is hampering my ability to be an effective player character. Why can't my player be a 13 year old boy who draws pictures of me on his social studies notebook and evenly divides his time between Elric novels, Dragon magazine and his dad's copies of Hustler magazine. No, I get a 33 year old library studies student with no time at all.
It has been months and the Keep on the Shadowfell has become distorted by time, not my time but by what you readers would call real time. It was months between our skirmish outside the dungeon with the kobolds to the grind down in the bowels of it all with the hobgoblins. If a kobold never uses its damned shift powers to get combat advantage and a kobold shield wall never bangs on me ever again whlie their archers rain hell on me and my friends, it wll be too soon.
But there is a purity to it all, clearing rooms, descending always lower, piecing together why this particular piece of real estate is so important. We were joined by Bael, a drow with two weapons. I'd tell you his story and how we met but my player wasn't there that game. Still, its fun to have another guy from a bad family life to skulk and stab along-side, another stealthy striker in the posse. Kendrik is great because he and I are so very different that we compliment each other but Bael and I seem like two sides of the same coin, one horned and one hooded.
The last of the hobgoblin archers surrendered after we slaughtered his friends. I told the players that I would be putting him in the spider cage, since I heard them yell, "Open the spider cage!" just before a giant spider started wreaking hell on us.
I killed that Hobgoblin archer for putting an arrow in me. In order to keep my word, I stuffed the corpse into the spider cage. That way when I came back to the party and Kendrik asked, "Melech, you didn't kill our prisoner, did you?"
I replied, "He's in the spider cage, safe and sound," without giving him any tells to my lie. Rolling a 32 on your bluff check allows for lies like that, keeps the party lubricated and moving right along.
We found Midnight, Paladin of Avandra's child. Turns out the Eladrin kid was now one of Orcus' top paladins in the region and was attempting to do some sorcery concerning the Shadowfell. There was a gate to the Shadowfell below the keep.
The kid got away from us in the next to last battle and there we were, standing over a pit, chains leading down into who-knows-what, where Midnight's kid-all-growed-up-evil and some other undeads would be attempting to give Orcus a hoofhold right here. I'd like to think that people can change and redeem themselves but y'know, when I was a kid I thought that Asmodeous snuck into my room on Asmodemas and put a shiny new knife under my pillow but that didn't make it so.
It is a scary thing whe you wake up in the middle of a moonless night to your dad trying to slip a knife under your sleeping head.
But I digress.
Bael's character was playerless due to out of state in-laws in town, so it was up to me to shimmy down the chains and see what was going on below in what we knew to be the final battle of the dungeon. Here, let me give you some pulp fantasy novel paragraphs about the descent:
Melech the Red, with a knife in his teeth, climbed slowly down one of the chains, while his comrade, Kendrick held the chain steady. The tiefling descended into a cavernous chamber with streams of blood flowing into gutters. The blood flowing was an impossible amount; there wasn't this much blood to be had in all of Winterfell and Melech knew, he kept a tally for such things. Magical blood streams,,,fantastic, he thought to himself, only real hard-bitten psychopaths use magic to make running blood streams.
Below, skeleton warriors were marching in guard patterns while Midnight's kid, Kaleel, read from a book on an alter. His plate armor was decorated with tortured faces, his shield carried the goat-headed sigil of his demon-god and his axe seemed impossibly big, too big to lift let alone wield. On the opposite side of the room a Wight, skin stretched impossibly tight over sinew and bone, kneeled before an altar of Orcus. Between them was the gate to the shadowfell, a roiling and living beast of shadow within and facing the gate as if it pleased him to see it, was a grand statue of the Demon-God of Undeath.
Enough of that.
It was at that point we realized that although we'd hit fifth level down here, we were still amateurs. I had no way to communicate with the rest of the crew without climbing back up, which just seemed wasteful to me. Figuring that the faster we interrupted Paladin Junior's reading time, the better off we'd be, I pulled on a chain twice and hoped they'd take that as a signal to follow me.
They did.
We descended out of the shadows, into the torchlight, ankle-deep in some kind of magical blood stream and did what all D&D groups do, we split the party.
Me, Midnight and Petal went after Kaleel, while Kendrick and Bael went to deal with the Wight.
It had been a while since I had killed a young bad-ass in front of his mother. Life hadn't called on me to do anything like that since I left the City. I am a Strike; this is how we do, go after the biggest bad-ass and draw blood and get out before anyone's the wiser. I had the Daily powers I was going to unleash on this kid all lined up and ready to roll. If all went according to plan, the big bad guy would be blind and limping in two, three rounds tops.
The d20 had other plans for us.
We screamed battle cries, blood from the streams staining the boots of those who didn't roll a high enough athletics to avoid dropping into the blood, while our players rolled initiative.
Kaleel summoned more skeleton warriors, as the faces on his armor drained away, malevolent spirits emptying into some nearby bone piles. Some more full-on Harryhausen skeleton warriors, others were just torso that would go after our ankles for the entire combat, slowing us down with every attack.
I managed to get by the skeleton warrios, only taking minimal damage, coming just before Kaleel in the initiative order, Dragonborn Cleric and Eladrin Paladin clearing the field for me. First I threw a shiruken at his knee, which would cause him to limp around for the rest of the combat if I hit just the right spot.
I said, "Things are about to get bad for you, my boy."
And the d20 said!
3.
Hell and blood, man. That is a daily. Hell and Blood.
The Dungeon Master described the whiff in glorious detail: "Kaleel grimaces in pain as he wrenches the shiruken from his knee and rises from the ground." One of the most brutal attacks I can muster and it blows one of his minor actions and causes single digits in hit points' damage. Last round, Kaleel had already picked up that axe, now he uses it.
20.
Natural 20.
Hell.
Blood.
The Dungeon Master described in loving detail, having the respect to wince while rolling damage: "The axe slams into you, glowing with an unholy power."
"Bad for me? Things are about to get worse, for you, much-much worse," Kaleel said.
The damage took me down to -2 hit points. Everyone at the table winced. Everyone in the battle shook their head at the thought of trying to take this boy-paladin of Orcus down (truth is he was in his late-late teens).
By the time the loving healing of Avandra and Bahamut, through their mortal agents, Midnight and Petal, had me up and moving again, the combat had passed me by. Kaleel, evil Eladrin that he was, had teleported to a glyph right in front of the gate to the Shadowfell. It seemed pretty clear from the behavior of a skeleton warrior that the glyph was giving off necrotic energy the way a fire gives off heat. The damned thing was healing him.
To make matters worse, everyone once in a while a pseudopod of shadow-stuff would claw out of the Shadowfell, grabbing at a skeleton warrior. The shadow-stuff's designation in the initiative order was: Thing.
As I trudged my way across the battlefield, Kaleel was re-gaining his lost hit points and a shadow-thing was clawing at anyone and anything who stepped too close to the gate.
What about Kendrick and Bael, who had gone after the Wight?
Good question.
Kendrick realized that we were in trouble and he picked up our flank, leaving Bael alone, assuming that the Ranger would be fine enough to handle the Wight. Kendrick, big fighter that he is, charged in to a fray with some skeleton warrior minions and some of the damned ankle-biting skeleton torsos. Whereas my rolling went to for to-hit, Kendrick's dice came in the form of damage. He didn't roll higher than a 4 on a d10 for the first half of the combat, leaving him surrounded by skeleton minions and getting ankle-bit for the greater part of the fight.
Bael's fight with the Wight was almost comical. The Wight would pin Bael down with some kind of undead magical bolt, Bael would fire at him with a crossbow in each hand, until finally, Bael went into a nearby pit. I'm summing up about ten rounds of combat there but Bael's player wasn't there and honestly, that is a pretty accurate summation of the ten rounds.
At about the time that my second Daily was a total wiff, also doing single digits of hit point damage but not blinding him as planned, we realized that the armor the Dungeon Master had lovingly described was giving Kaleel an advantage. His armor class was through the damned roof, nearly 30.
One of my At-Will strikes is all about getting by big armor guys, by making the attack roll vs. his saves. We needed to target his Will or his Reflexes and stop banging uselessly on his armor. By the time we pinned him down on the necrotic glyph, the only place where I could get a combat advantage and get my precious extra 2d8 damage was right in front of the gate. I stepped up and hit and hit.
"Worse? You want worse, kid?"
In the end, it was Petal, calling down a holy platinum lance from Bahamut that lit up the entire chamber and took Kaleel down. It was always a big deal that Petal never hit to kill if she could help it.
The Dungeon Master asked, "Do you kill him, Petal?"
Midnight's player looked over at Petal's player imploringly. "No, I take him down but do not kill him."
The Wight, still alive, desperately jumped into the gate to the Shadowfell. None of us cared to stop the thing. Maybe we just imagined that we could hear it screaming from the other side of the gate. Maybe not, maybe a place like that is home for a creature like a Wight.
Kendrick tied up Kaleel and we took off his armor, that seemed to be attached to his flesh.
Now it was a matter of playing with the fun toys Kaleel had left us:
- a gate to the Shadowfell
- the book he was reading from on the altar
- and that big ole statue to Orcus.
I used the statue to the Demon-God of the Undead to afford me some post-battle privacy to take a dump. Yeah, I used a statue of Orcus as a toilet. My player includes details like that and I, for one, appreciate it. Most characters don't ever get to take an on-screen/at-the-table dump and I got to to take one that befouled a statue to a goat-headed demon-god.
I approached Midnight when we had a moment alone. "Midnight, listen, if you want me to...I know this isn't easy but some people never change alignments, never redeem themselves. So, if you want me to, I could...take Kaleel and put him in a 'spider cage" if you know what i mean." I gestured to one of my knives in case she didn't get it.
"I don't think that will be necessary," she replied, "I believe me son will be fine. It might take a while but he'll be fine."
I nodded, shocked at her optimism.
We approached the altar with the book together, hoping to figure out how to put this place to rest, leave this mess less of brutal threat than how we found it. The book was written in Supernal, Abyssal and Draconic on what pages we could actually read, pages that weren't just entirely shadow.
We discussed the book and the gate while our players ticked off healing surges from their character sheets. The blood streams tinkled like bells, oddly soothing, or maybe it was just me.
Next: Conversations with the Gate, Conversations with Kaleel and Dreams of Platinum Dragons and God-Tyrants
Daggers & Deviltry: Finishing the Keep on the Shadowfell
All art by Storn A. Cook
Ask most dungeon-masters and any player-character (not the player, mind you but the character) and they will tell you that the problem with role-playing games is that we are dependent on these damned players. There should be laws in the DMG about players being in graduate school; it is
and it is hampering my ability to be an effective player character. Why can't my player be a 13 year old boy who draws pictures of me on his social studies notebook and evenly divides his time between Elric novels, Dragon magazine and his dad's copies of Hustler magazine. No, I get a 33 year old library studies student with no time at all.It has been months and the Keep on the Shadowfell has become distorted by time, not my time but by what you readers would call real time. It was months between our skirmish outside the dungeon with the kobolds to the grind down in the bowels of it all with the hobgoblins. If a kobold never uses its damned shift powers to get combat advantage and a kobold shield wall never bangs on me ever again whlie their archers rain hell on me and my friends, it wll be too soon.
But there is a purity to it all, clearing rooms, descending always lower, piecing together why this particular piece of real estate is so important. We were joined by Bael, a drow with two weapons. I'd tell you his story and how we met but my player wasn't there that game. Still, its fun to have another guy from a bad family life to skulk and stab along-side, another stealthy striker in the posse. Kendrik is great because he and I are so very different that we compliment each other but Bael and I seem like two sides of the same coin, one horned and one hooded.
The last of the hobgoblin archers surrendered after we slaughtered his friends. I told the players that I would be putting him in the spider cage, since I heard them yell, "Open the spider cage!" just before a giant spider started wreaking hell on us.
I killed that Hobgoblin archer for putting an arrow in me. In order to keep my word, I stuffed the corpse into the spider cage. That way when I came back to the party and Kendrik asked, "Melech, you didn't kill our prisoner, did you?"
I replied, "He's in the spider cage, safe and sound," without giving him any tells to my lie. Rolling a 32 on your bluff check allows for lies like that, keeps the party lubricated and moving right along.
We found Midnight, Paladin of Avandra's child. Turns out the Eladrin kid was now one of Orcus' top paladins in the region and was attempting to do some sorcery concerning the Shadowfell. There was a gate to the Shadowfell below the keep.
The kid got away from us in the next to last battle and there we were, standing over a pit, chains leading down into who-knows-what, where Midnight's kid-all-growed-up-evil and some other undead
s would be attempting to give Orcus a hoofhold right here. I'd like to think that people can change and redeem themselves but y'know, when I was a kid I thought that Asmodeous snuck into my room on Asmodemas and put a shiny new knife under my pillow but that didn't make it so.It is a scary thing whe you wake up in the middle of a moonless night to your dad trying to slip a knife under your sleeping head.
But I digress.
Bael's character was playerless due to out of state in-laws in town, so it was up to me to shimmy down the chains and see what was going on below in what we knew to be the final battle of the dungeon. Here, let me give you some pulp fantasy novel paragraphs about the descent:
Melech the Red, with a knife in his teeth, climbed slowly down one of the chains, while his comrade, Kendrick held the chain steady. The tiefling descended into a cavernous chamber with streams of blood flowing into gutters. The blood flowing was an impossible amount; there wasn't this much blood to be had in all of Winterfell and Melech knew, he kept a tally for such things. Magical blood streams,,,fantastic, he thought to himself, only real hard-bitten psychopaths use magic to make running blood streams.
Below, skeleton warriors were marching in guard patterns while Midnight's kid, Kaleel, read from a book on an alter. His plate armor was decorated with tortured faces, his shield carried the goat-headed sigil of his demon-god and his axe seemed impossibly big, too big to lift let alone wield. On the opposite side of the room a Wight, skin stretched impossibly tight over sinew and bone, kneeled before an altar of Orcus. Between them was the gate to the shadowfell, a roiling and living beast of shadow within and facing the gate as if it pleased him to see it, was a grand statue of the Demon-God of Undeath.
Enough of that.
It was at that point we realized that although we'd hit fifth level down here, we were still amateurs. I had no way to communicate with the rest of the crew without climbing back up, which just seemed wasteful to me. Figuring that the faster we interrupted Paladin Junior's reading time, the better off we'd be, I pulled on a chain twice and hoped they'd take that as a signal to follow me.
They did.
We descended out of the shadows, into the torchlight, ankle-deep in some kind of magical blood stream and did what all D&D groups do, we split the party.
Me, Midnight and Petal went after Kaleel, while Kendrick and Bael went to deal with the Wight.
It had been a while since I had killed a young bad-ass in front of his mother. Life hadn't called on me to do anything like that since I left the City. I am a Strike; this is how we do, go after the biggest bad-ass and draw blood and get out before anyone's the wiser. I had the Daily powers I was going to unleash on this kid all lined up and ready to roll. If all went according to plan, the big bad guy would be blind and limping in two, three rounds tops.
The d20 had other plans for us.
We screamed battle cries, blood from the streams staining the boots of those who didn't roll a high enough athletics to avoid dropping into the blood, while our players rolled initiative.
Kaleel summoned more skeleton warriors, as the faces on his armor drained away, malevolent spirits emptying into some nearby bone piles. Some more full-on Harryhausen skeleton warriors, others were just torso that would go after our ankles for the entire combat, slowing us down with every attack.
I managed to get by the skeleton warrios, only taking minimal damage, coming just before Kaleel in the initiative order, Dragonborn Cleric and Eladrin Paladin clearing the field for me. First I threw a shiruken at his knee, which would cause him to limp around for the rest of the combat if I hit just the right spot.
I said, "Things are about to get bad for you, my boy."
And the d20 said!
3.
Hell and blood, man. That is a daily. Hell and Blood.
The Dungeon Master described the whiff in glorious detail: "Kaleel grimaces in pain as he wrenches the shiruken from his knee and rises from the ground." One of the most brutal attacks I can muster and it blows one of his minor actions and causes single digits in hit points' damage. Last round, Kaleel had already picked up that axe, now he uses it.
20.
Natural 20.
Hell.
Blood.
The Dungeon Master described in loving detail, having the respect to wince while rolling damage: "The axe slams into you, glowing with an unholy power."
"Bad for me? Things are about to get worse, for you, much-much worse," Kaleel said.
The damage took me down to -2 hit points. Everyone at the table winced. Everyone in the battle shook their head at the thought of trying to take this boy-paladin of Orcus down (truth is he was in his late-late teens).
By the time the loving healing of Avandra and Bahamut, through their mortal agents, Midnight and Petal, had me up and moving again, the combat had passed me by. Kaleel, evil Eladrin that he was, had teleported to a glyph right in front of the gate to the Shadowfell. It seemed pretty clear from the behavior of a skeleton warrior that the glyph was giving off necrotic energy the way a fire gives off heat. The damned thing was healing him.
To make matters worse, everyone once in a while a pseudopod of shadow-stuff would claw out of the Shadowfell, grabbing at a skeleton warrior. The shadow-stuff's designation in the initiative order was: Thing.
As I trudged my way across the battlefield, Kaleel was re-gaining his lost hit points and a shadow-thing was clawing at anyone and anything who stepped too close to the gate.
What about Kendrick and Bael, who had gone after the Wight?
Good question.
Kendrick realized that we were in trouble and he picked up our flank, leaving Bael alone, assuming that the Ranger would be fine enough to handle the Wight. Kendrick, big fighter that he is, charged in to a fray with some skeleton warrior minions and some of the damned ankle-biting skeleton torsos. Whereas my rolling went to
for to-hit, Kendrick's dice came in the form of damage. He didn't roll higher than a 4 on a d10 for the first half of the combat, leaving him surrounded by skeleton minions and getting ankle-bit for the greater part of the fight.Bael's fight with the Wight was almost comical. The Wight would pin Bael down with some kind of undead magical bolt, Bael would fire at him with a crossbow in each hand, until finally, Bael went into a nearby pit. I'm summing up about ten rounds of combat there but Bael's player wasn't there and honestly, that is a pretty accurate summation of the ten rounds.
At about the time that my second Daily was a total wiff, also doing single digits of hit point damage but not blinding him as planned, we realized that the armor the Dungeon Master had lovingly described was giving Kaleel an advantage. His armor class was through the damned roof, nearly 30.
One of my At-Will strikes is all about getting by big armor guys, by making the attack roll vs. his saves. We needed to target his Will or his Reflexes and stop banging uselessly on his armor. By the time we pinned him down on the necrotic glyph, the only place where I could get a combat advantage and get my precious extra 2d8 damage was right in front of the gate. I stepped up and hit and hit.
"Worse? You want worse, kid?"
In the end, it was Petal, calling down a holy platinum lance from Bahamut that lit up the entire chamber and took Kaleel down. It was always a big deal that Petal never hit to kill if she could help it.
The Dungeon Master asked, "Do you kill him, Petal?"
Midnight's player looked over at Petal's player imploringly. "No, I take him down but do not kill him."
The Wight, still alive, desperately jumped into the gate to the Shadowfell. None of us cared to stop the thing. Maybe we just imagined that we could hear it screaming from the other side of the gate. Maybe not, maybe a place like that is home for a creature like a Wight.
Kendrick tied up Kaleel and we took off his armor, that seemed to be attached to his flesh.
Now it was a matter of playing with the fun toys Kaleel had left us:
- a gate to the Shadowfell
- the book he was reading from on the altar
- and that big ole statue to Orcus.
I used the statue to the Demon-God of the Undead to afford me some post-battle privacy to take a dump. Yeah, I used a statue of Orcus as a toilet. My player includes details like that and I, for one, appreciate it. Most characters don't ever get to take an on-screen/at-the-table dump and I got to to take one that befouled a statue to a goat-headed demon-god.
I approached Midnight when we had a moment alone. "Midnight, listen, if you want me to...I know this isn't easy but some people never change alignments, never redeem themselves. So, if you want me to, I could...take Kaleel and put him in a 'spider cage" if you know what i mean." I gestured to one of my knives in case she didn't get it.
"I don't think that will be necessary," she replied, "I believe me son will be fine. It might take a while but he'll be fine."
I nodded, shocked at her optimism.
We approached the altar with the book together, hoping to figure out how to put this place to rest, leave this mess less of brutal threat than how we found it. The book was written in Supernal, Abyssal and Draconic on what pages we could actually read, pages that weren't just entirely shadow.
We discussed the book and the gate while our players ticked off healing surges from their character sheets. The blood streams tinkled like bells, oddly soothing, or maybe it was just me.
Next: Conversations with the Gate, Conversations with Kaleel and Dreams of Platinum Dragons and God-Tyrants
Last edited:
Derulbaskul
Adventurer
Thanks for posting; this is great stuff!
Did you also post a Midnight story hour a few years ago when that setting was new?
Did you also post a Midnight story hour a few years ago when that setting was new?
We through the book through the gate. The gate closed. The gate became a god. Let me know if I lose you.
I'm not sure if the Dungeon Master was going by the module here or was making up and I didn't care. This was cool-ass . Turns out, Vecna had founded this dungeon first and in creating this gate, sealed one of his must trusted students here. Said student was a god of secrets, a domain that ole one-eye now claims for his own dead-self.
When one of us let that slip, the god wasn't that happy.
He was a golden image of a perfect human. Kendrick found faith immediately. Petal already had a god, a big platinum fella but she was still respectful. Bael, whose player was not present that game, just dug himself out of the pit he had fallen into. Poor sap. Midnight seemed more concerned with her hog-tied evil son.
Kendrick, though, he was hooked. I could see it in his player's eyes.
And me, how did I feel, having found out that our dungeon-delving shenanigans had freed a god of secrets into the world? Y'know, it made it all feel like it meant something, as if the world could be changed at the roll of a d20, at the flicker of a knife's blade. I like that feeling.
When I sit by the campfire at night and sharpen my blades and shiruken, it isn't just sharpening weapons, I'm sharpening the future, I'm preparing to make history.
He wasn't going to replace Asmodeus, God-Tyrant of Hell for me anytime soon but still, it isn't every day ya get to see a god unleashed into the world. He mentioned that he was in our debt, that we owed him a boon. From that moment on, I didn't speak to him. I didn't want to flub it, didn't want to spend my boon with my big mouth.
I know exactly what I am going to spend that boon on. Oh, it won't be for a few dozen levels yet but I know exactly what I'm doing now. My path, my destiny is clear. I only have to live to see 30th and I will change the worlds, rock hell to its bloody core. You watch what I can do with a few knives and a god of secrets' boon.
I'm not sure if the Dungeon Master was going by the module here or was making
up and I didn't care. This was cool-ass . Turns out, Vecna had founded this dungeon first and in creating this gate, sealed one of his must trusted students here. Said student was a god of secrets, a domain that ole one-eye now claims for his own dead-self. When one of us let that slip, the god wasn't that happy.
He was a golden image of a perfect human. Kendrick found faith immediately. Petal already had a god, a big platinum fella but she was still respectful. Bael, whose player was not present that game, just dug himself out of the pit he had fallen into. Poor sap. Midnight seemed more concerned with her hog-tied evil son.
Kendrick, though, he was hooked. I could see it in his player's eyes.
And me, how did I feel, having found out that our dungeon-delving shenanigans had freed a god of secrets into the world? Y'know, it made it all feel like it meant something, as if the world could be changed at the roll of a d20, at the flicker of a knife's blade. I like that feeling.
When I sit by the campfire at night and sharpen my blades and shiruken, it isn't just sharpening weapons, I'm sharpening the future, I'm preparing to make history.
He wasn't going to replace Asmodeus, God-Tyrant of Hell for me anytime soon but still, it isn't every day ya get to see a god unleashed into the world. He mentioned that he was in our debt, that we owed him a boon. From that moment on, I didn't speak to him. I didn't want to flub it, didn't want to spend my boon with my big mouth.
I know exactly what I am going to spend that boon on. Oh, it won't be for a few dozen levels yet but I know exactly what I'm doing now. My path, my destiny is clear. I only have to live to see 30th and I will change the worlds, rock hell to its bloody core. You watch what I can do with a few knives and a god of secrets' boon.
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