die_kluge's story hour - The Lost Continent

[der_kluge]

(ed: Yep, this is the final battle)

From the hole in the roof, Bax fires down a lightning bolt at the golem, which just seems to absorb the bolt, and now writhes with electrical energy.

Mournax and Ivo move down to engage the golem, who is nearby. Mournax swings his axe around mightly and is jolted with a burst of electricity as his axe connects with the construct. "That golem is made of copper!", Ivo shouts, "Be careful with that one!" "Now you tell me!", Mournax whines.

Bax moves back into the room upstairs, and comes down the stairs. Dzintra holds back on the stairs as Nytor begins casting a Prayer spell. Rath moves into the room to get a better look at what is going on. Bringing in some illumination, Rath can see two lone sarcophagi on a raised dais in the center of the room. The lizardman king, wielding two bronze short swords, and wearing bronze armor and a bronze helmet is poised for battle. Aside him, Rath can just make out the shadow of another lizardman form - a more female form, perhaps his queen.

Ivo, Mournax, and Nytor bash on the golem, which is difficult due to the hardness of its exteriour. Their weapons have a difficult time penetrating its shell, but nonetheless together, they inflict massive damage on the creature, and the structural integrity is compromised and it crashes in a heap on the floor in front of the stairs.

King Siluth, the lizardman moves up to Mournax, roars, and unleashes a hellish fury of swordblows on the minotaur. Mournax, Ivo, and Nytor respond with attacks of their own, which don't seem to phase the creature, who is obviously gone into a barbarian-like rage.

Meanwhile, the queen has made her appearance known, and even though Dzintra has found cover behind a pillar that adorns the dais, the queen enchants her with a Domination spell. Rath has flown to the ceiling at this point, and unleashes a blast of force upon the queen who recoils at the impact.

Dzintra throws her dagger - at Rath, who is surprised by this turn of events, but misses him. The Queen casts a Confusion - centered on Nytor, Mournax and Ivo. Ivo's eyes glaze over and his facial features become blank as he tries to figure out what is going on.

Rath casts a Telekinetic Sphere, and encapsulates the king, who roars silently from inside his magical prison. The queen casts an enchantment on Rath, but fails, and Rath responds in turn with a lethal dose of forceful damage, bringing the queen to the floor. Dzintra, dazed, regains her own focus, and sheathes her dagger.

Ivo, still confused, swings his axe heartily into Mournax, who in his barbaric rage screams out, and raises his axe to return the favor. Rath, seeing this, casts yet another telekinetic sphere, this time on Ivo, both shielding him from Mournax, and isolating him from causing further harm.

From inside the sphere, the king hurls silent insults, and bangs on the inside wall. Rath calmly shouts, "The sphere will not hold him forever, we need to be ready to engage him when the sphere is removed. Ivo's confusion will wear off shortly, and I will release him when he regains his senses."

Moving around the sphere with the king in it, the party readies their weapons. Ivo's eyes return to their normal color, and Rath releases the sphere containing him. Ivo moves in behind the king.

Rath drops the sphere, and the King roars, and everyone cuts into the king with full attacks. The king shrieks in rage, but does not appear phased by the pain. The king responds in full with a horrific display of sword prowess on Mournax, who by this time is covered in blood. The party responds again with attacks, and the King responds in turn with another, this time near fatal barrage of swordblows on Mournax. At this point, both Mournax and the King are fully covered in blood, and fleshy bits. Their eyes, having a hard time seeing through the ichor, focus on one another, as if everything else is void. Ivo responds with a vicious blow to the King, and Bax unleashes yet another volley of piercing arrows into the king. The king, defeated, slumps to the ground.

Mournax pauses, and takes a step back, axe hanging heavy at his side. "..healing... I need healing, cleric." Mournax, blinded by rage, was standing by sheer adrenaline alone, and had it worn off, he too would have fallen in battle. Nytor, responding quickly, heals Mournax with a powerful curing spell. "thank you", Mournax says.

Dzintra, perusing the room, notes a door down the wall from the stairs. "Let's check it out", Rath says.

______
ed note: The king wore a helm that has 2 uses per day of dimension door. I *forgot* that little fact, and still kick myself to this day that I didn't use to escape Rath's telekinetic sphere. Oh well.

 

[der_kluge]

The party makes a quick scan of the equipment worn by Siluth and his queen.

Queen - +2 Charisma Amulet, Wand of Magic Missile (CL: 10; 17 charges), Ring of Protection +1, Cloak of Resistance +1 (all identified over the next few days)

Siluth - +3 Bronze Breastplate (+8 armor), +2 bronze short sword, +2 bronze short sword, Boots (+10 to Jump Skill)

Siluth’s Helm
Detects as: Moderate Conjuration
Description: This bronze helmet is mostly plain aside from some artistry on the nosepiece.
Powers: The helm is command-word activated, and allows the wearer to cast dimension door two times per day. The command word “Nor” is an ancient Draconic word, which means, “move hastily”.
SS: 9 4th level slots (4 command-word use-per item +5 two uses per day) (caster level 7, spell level 4); Market Price 16,200gp, Creation Cost: 8,100gp.

The breastplate was discarded, since no one needed it. Bax is wearing the helm. Nytor took the amulet, and the rest got scattered amongst the rest.

I'll try to post Siluth's the Queens' stats in my Rogue's Gallery thread.

 

[der_kluge]

Moving into the adjacent room, the party finds some unusual things. Firstly, the room is not large, and features only three things - a sundial-like thing on the right, on a platform, a table with a bag on it, and a large steel wall in front of them with an odd pattern on the wall.

Rath casts detect magic, and notes that the wall and the sundial thing are magical. Rath examines the sundial, and notes that it has an actual dial that can be turned. "The current setting is set to Slow." Rath, feeling confident, turns the dial all the way back to "off". Feeling the hair on the back of his neck settle down, Rath knows that the time distortion effect has been turned off. "You know, we could use this to just stay in this place until civilization catches up to it. We'll just wait in here for 200,000 more years, and we can walk outside to find a vast civilization.", Nytor suggests, sarcastically. "Funny", Rath responds.

Dzintra picks up the bag on the table and finds 8 small runes, each with a number 1-8 written in Draconic. "Look, there's something written on the wall here", Bax says, looking at the wall.

Bax reads out loud:
“1 through 8, the numbers placed will open the gate.
To see the light, without a fight, no number should touch
its siblings, diagonal, up-or-down, or left-or-right.”

 

[der_kluge]

Ed: I'll leave the puzzle for people to play with. My players solved it in, oh, about 2 minutes, so it was hardly a challenge for them.

The puzzle opens the treasure vault, which is the last room. I'll describe the contents of that in a few days.


They finished looting the dungeon mid-way through game #4, and then they spend a fair amount of time resting outside. Bax and Rath spent some time going back into the tomb to get books out of the library, preserving them (with a special spell), and reading the contents. I told them they could get maybe one or two books a day. Bax pulled out a lot of genealogy books, but they did manage to get a few spells. Bax also got a book on vermin, and the most useful was a book on planar magic, for which I granted them a +2 bonus on spellcraft checks against planar magic after they read it.

There is still a little bit of detail to cover in game 4. Game 5 was short, and game 6 is long, but mostly combat. Game 7 is tomorrow night, and is the continuation of game 6. I should be able to get the SH caught up to current by next week. That's my goal.

 

[Liolel]

Since you don't seem to have much of a readership I'll continue doing my part to keep you motivated. The final battle of this adventure was a great read and I looked at your rogue gallery thread and am anticipating the battles with those monsters you posted. Won't say anything about them because your players might read this thread but those should be some interesting battles.

 

[der_kluge]

I'm sure there are others that read, but they continue to remain quiet. I know some of my players read this on occasion.

Most of those in the rogues gallery (yes, my players stay out!), come in game 6. I'll try to get caught up quickly. Things start happening fast once the PCs get out of the tomb. The tomb was mainly an exercise for everyone to get familiar with their characters, and for me to get an idea of their power level (which is extremely high). Thus far I've had a difficult time in truly challenging them.

 

[der_kluge]

Working together, and going over the problem of the puzzle, it does not take long for our heroes to piece together a solution. "The 1 and the 8 need to go in the middle", Bax points out, "but we can either put the 8 or the 1 in the top center square."
"There are multiple solutions", Rath says, agreeing.

Listening to their advice, Dzintra takes the runes and places them into the recesses in the door. After placing them successfully, there is a metal "click" and a seemless door panel opens up in the wall, revealing some stairs that lead upwards.

These are the solutions to the puzzle:

 

[der_kluge]

Moving up the stairs, the party finds a room filled with treasures beyond their wildest dreams. The room is relatively small, but absolutely filled with boxes and shelves filled with jewelry, gems, sacks of coinage, art, wine, and weapons and armor.

Bars of gold, and silver
Sacks full of coins. These coins come in a variety of styles, several are square, and have simple pictures on them, like a sun, or a moon, or a sword. There are bags of gold coins (5000 gold coins), several bags of silver coins (50,000 silver coins), bronze coins (100,000 bronze coins), and even some stone coins (probably the least valuable denomination) (200,000 stone coins).

Jewelry:
There are boxes and boxes of jewelry. Nearly 4,000 individual pieces of jewelry, including earrings, necklaces, bracelets, amulets, nose-rings, rings of all styles, brooches, and even tail rings. Most of the metal in the jewelry is bronze or copper, but the finer pieces are made with silver or gold.

Gems:
The largest such gems and precious stones include: 1 piece of amber with a small insect inside, 5 pieces of amber without insects, 8 agates, 3 lapis lazuli stones, 1 alexandrite stone, 2 rubies, 3 aquamarines, 1 emerald, 2 iolite stones, 3 bars of solid jade, 2 bloodstones. There are countless other smaller gems of lesser value.

Art:
There are numerous clay pots, each are of the highest quality, and have elaborate scenes emblazoned upon them. In addition, there are clay vases, as well as bronze vases, and ornate gold and silver goblets, plates, and other fine dining ware, each of the highest quality.

Masterwork items:
There are several masterwork bronze spears, scimitars, axes, and daggers. There are several suits of masterwork bronze plate armor, as well as masterwork bronze shields (multiple sizes). There is also a suit of masterwork, ornamental gold plate armor. There are some other miscellaneous masterwork items – an hourglass, a mirror, and an ocarina.

Miscellaneous:
There are more than 50 bottles of well-aged wines on a wine rack here. There are also numerous sacks of seeds and grains.

Magic Items:
+1 Socketed Bronze scimitar
+1 Chain shirt
+1 Studded Leather Armor
+2 Hide
+1 Longspear (3)
+1 Halberd (2)
+1 Guisarme (2)
+2 Glaive
+1 Heavy Shield
+1 Dire Flail

Boots, +10 to Move Silently skill
Cloak, +10 to Hide skill
Gloves, +10 to Ride skill

 

[Lefferts]

Others are following

I wanted to let you know that others *are*
following along: at least I am.

Quick question as well: what did the characters
take with them out of all that loot? I am
assuming you are using encumbrance.

Lefferts

 

[der_kluge]

Most of the coinage was left, and they pried gems out of the jewelry, since the jewelry wasn't very good quality stuff. But, they had a bag of holding (Nytor), and it's currently filled with jewelry gems, and lots of that wine (well aged!). They took the socketed scimitar, and I think they left most of the other +1 weapons. All the +skill items were taken, and I think they took some of the coins, but most of it was gems. They took the hourglass, and mirror. I can't remember if they took the ocarina or not, though.


I figured I was justified in giving them a room filled with treasure, since they don't have anywhere to spend it anyway.