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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Paka" data-source="post: 4742736" data-attributes="member: 100">Finishing the Keep on the ShadowfellDaggers & Deviltry: Finishing the Keep on the ShadowfellAll art by <a href="http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y35/Storn/" target="_blank">Storn A. Cook</a>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 <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> 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.<img src="http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=3185093a04&view=att&th=1207d7adb91dfedf&attid=0.1&disp=inline&realattid=f_ft7psxwz0&zw" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />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 <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />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.<img src="http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=3185093a04&view=att&th=1207b8af85bf7bbe&attid=0.1&disp=inline&realattid=f_ft76gmic0&zw" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />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 <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> for to-hit, Kendrick's <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> 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</blockquote>

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