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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 9499104" data-attributes="member: 508">ADVENTURE 85: HOUSE APPRAISALPC Roster: Alewyth Putterpye, dwarf priestess of Aerik 17             Thurloe Pulver, human fighter 3/wizard 3/spellsword 10/eldritch knight 1             Wakuren, half-orc cleric of Cal 9/paladin 8             Xandro Silverstrings, human bard 6/rogue 11             Zander Quilson, elf sorcerer 17NPC Roster:Beetle Darkcloud, halfling ranger 6             Robin the Balladeer, human bard 6Game Session Date: 27 October 2024 - - -"As always," said Wangle Turdblossom, "it's been a pleasure doing business with you."  The little gnome - a dragon in gnome form, the heroes all knew, but Wangle didn't know that they knew - had returned to Skel'dorath a day after the incident with the flesh colossus to present Wakuren and Xandro with the items they had purchased and receive the rest of his payments.  Wakuren had the iron ward diamonds attached to his armor immediately, while Xandro brought his magic crossbow into a weapons shop to have a few more upgrades made to it.  "Might as well," he reasoned.  "We've got to stick around until the authorities are finished with their investigation in any case.""Well, you know," interjected Thurloe.  "That's not technically true....""We're not skipping town and having the drow authorities putting a price on our heads," scolded Alewyth.  "And we did nothing wrong.  The investigation will show that, surely."  Fortunately, the dwarf was correct in her assessment - within a few days, the authorities had completed their investigations and determined the five heroes - while technically responsible for the deaths of the countless beings that had been merged into a flesh colossus after a poorly-timed surge of wild magic affected a pair of magic items one of the wizards of the Temple of Telgrane had concocted - had saved the lives of countless others, and they had been in no way responsible for the creation of the flesh colossus in the first place.  They were thanked for their assistance and given leave to go.And go they did - nobody wanted to stay in Skel'dorath any longer than needed, as the wild magic surges were too unpredictable.  Alewyth had taken to casting her morning heroes' feast spell inside the extradimensional confines of Hesperna's lamp, the better to end up with food that actually tasted like it should and had the desired effect.  But as they were leaving the city, they saw a grizzled-looking drow packing up a riding lizard.  "You hear about the bounties?" he asked them as they approached.  When told they had not, he offered up that there had been gnoll raids along the trade route to the next city, Van'kiroth, some 50 miles away - so much so that the city of Skel'dorath was paying 5 pieces of gold for each gnoll pelt brought in.  "Gnolls prefer making their ambushes at night," the drow declared.  "Especially around the nights of a full moon - like tonight.  I figure if I can track them to their lair during the day, I can kill me a bunch of them in their sleep.""Well, good luck to you," declared Zander.  He knew they wouldn't be making any side trips to go gnoll hunting; Beetle was already antsy at being held up in Skel'dorath for so long and wanted to get back on the road.  And 5 pieces of gold per pelt was chump change to heroes of their caliber, at this point in their adventuring careers.  He also figured a group of their size would probably be safe from any gnoll bandit attacks, as they generally liked to go for weaker prey."It'll likely be two days to Van'kiroth," Beetle said from the front of their procession.  "That is, if we don't run into any trouble...."It only took them four or five hours on the road to run into trouble.  They were riding more or less in single file, with Beetle and Yellow-Belly in the lead and Robin at the end, leading Wakuren's pachycephalosaurus Perseverance by the reins while the half-orc rode his air element warhorse Nimbus just above Zander's head (providing the elf a bit of well-desired shade, for the sun was hot overhead).  Xandro had his Dardolian lute out and was absently playing a travel tune, just to keep in practice.  They followed alongside a shallow stream which carved its way through a bunch of scrub brush.  Up ahead and to the right, the badlands rose up to a small rise, upon which sat a ramshackle house looking like a strong wind might blow it over.  It was a two-story structure made of sun-faded wood."Hey, Petey, why don't you go check out that house?" suggested Zander, and his pseudodragon familiar was off like a shot.  But shortly after he rose up in the air, he called back to his master telepathically, <Hey, there's a bunch of dead bodies ahead of you!>Sure enough, shortly after his familiar's warning, Zander could see the scattered bodies of a couple dozen dead gnolls laying in the dirt ahead, nearly half of them already stripped of their pelts.  As the group got closer, they could hear the buzzing sound as hundreds of flies swarmed about, dropping in for a quick meal of carrion.As the rest of the group came to a halt, warily looking around for potential enemies, Alewyth rode her dinosaur mount up, casting a magic circle against evil spell upon herself as she did so.  "Do you think they're undead?" she called up to Wakuren, who had a better view from his slightly higher vantage point.  Xandro immediately halted his song, and from the back of the procession, a new tune started up - Robin's song of inspirational courage.  They weren't in any combat yet, but the young bard had a feeling it wouldn't be far off.  Beetle, feeling the same way, urged Yellow-Belly back to the end of the formation by Robin and let the heroes make their assessment of danger.Thurloe urged his mount Boney up, casting a shield spell on himself with his wand as he did so.  "They don't look undead," he offered up.  "They're just lying there.  Maybe that drow with the big lizard killed 'em, loaded up what pelts he could fit, and'll be back later for the rest.""Let's find out for sure," suggested Wakuren, leading Nimbus to drop back down upon the ground in front of the others as he raised his holy symbol of Cal and prepared to try turning the potential undead with a blast of positive energy.  But before he could do so, the gnolls triggered their ambush.There was a sudden blur of motion as all about them, the scrub brushes all turned into gnolls - or, more accurately, at a predetermined signal, each of the nearly three dozen gnolls dropped the veil spell that had magically disguised them as desert plants.  The line of heroes on their bonehead mounts had twenty gnolls to their immediate right, a clump of five to their left, and two groups of four archers each off to the left and behind them.Four gnoll fighters to the left each shot arrows from their shortbows at a different target: Wakuren, Thurloe, Zander, and Alewyth, as they were lined up in that order.  The fifth gnoll in that group, an adept, fired off a scorching ray spell at Zander, but fortunately for the elf only one of the gouts of flame struck him, the other whizzing over his shoulder.  The eight archers in the back paired up, two each firing at Beetle, Robin, Xandro, and Alewyth - and while all of this was happening, a blast of electricity smashed into Thurloe, sending arcs leaping out to strike the other four heroes and all of their mounts.  (Zander was once again quite fortunate in that his ring of counterspells had been loaded with a chain lightning spell, so the arc headed his way fizzled out to nothingness.)  Xandro's training allowed him to dodge the sudden blast of lightning altogether, but everyone else was struck and shocked by the blast.  But then the gnolls in the front ranks to the right - they were layered three deep - struck out with their battleaxes.To the gnolls' surprise, however, this hadn't been the bloodbath they had initially expected.  Each of the heroes - and their mounts - had been wounded, but none were down, and none looked to be ready to drop at any moment; they were made of much tougher stuff than the merchants they'd been preying upon in recent weeks.  Some began wondering if attacking during the day - a switch they'd made when the drow started traveling by day to avoid the gnolls' nighttime attacks - had been a mistake.<Did you see that?> called Petey from the air, the only one of their group to be completely unscathed by the multiple surprise attacks.  <That chain lightning spell came from the top floor of the building!>But then Wakuren made his move.  The words to a holy word spilled from his lips, and a wave of holy energy went exploding in a burst all around him, blasting its way through those of a non-good bent it encountered along its way.  Eighteen of the twenty gnolls to the half-orc's right were blasted away to instant death, and most of the gnoll skeletons and about half of the gnoll zombies - all of whom were in fact undead, and had been slowly clambering to their feet - were likewise destroyed by the spell.  The gnolls on Wakuren's left - those with more fighting experience - were not slain by the spell, but all five of them went blind and temporarily lost their hearing as well; fortunately for the gnoll adept, he'd already commanded his undead minions to rise up and fight once the ambush had been sprung, so they hopefully would not need any further instructions from him.However, Wakuren hadn't fully thought through the ramifications of casting the holy word spell - it had been the first time he'd ever had occasion to do so - and the four pachycephalosaurus mounts, Boney, Pachy, Lapis, and Ceph, all froze up as their muscles locked in temporary paralysis and they lost their sight and hearing for a bit as well.  Nimbus, however, was unaffected and moved forward to send a sharp hoof crashing into the leg of a gnoll fighter standing sightlessly before him.The two remaining gnolls of the clump of 20 attacked haphazardly with their battleaxes, their attention diverted by their falling neighbors; as a result, none of their attacks made it to their intended targets.  The blinded fighters advanced cautiously, swinging their weapons before them in the hopes of connecting with an unseen enemy, and surprisingly both Thurloe and Alewyth were hit in this fashion.  But then Xandro leaped from the saddle of his unresponsive mount, drew Deathwhisper from its scabbard, and charged the nearest blinded fighter, stabbing him deep in the chest with his blade.Wakuren and Nimbus found themselves the targets of a charging group of undead gnoll skeletons and zombies, as Zander cast a prismatic spray spell at the blinded gnolls to his left.  Two of the gnoll fighters were hit by green rays and slain instantly by poison, falling over dead without ever knowing what had struck them down.  Two more were struck by violet rays, and while the gnoll fighter remained unscathed, the adept vanished from sight as his body was cast through a rent in space and hurtled to another plane of existence.  An indigo ray hit the fifth gnoll but had no effect; the sightless brute was blissfully unaware of how close he had come to becoming completely insane.Petey, in the meantime, had made his way to the decrepit-looking building, flying up to the open attic windows, through which he could see the furry face of yet another gnoll: the sorcerer who had cast the chain lightning spell down upon the heroes.  The gnoll seemed to be diverting his attention between the battle going on in the scrublands below and whatever held his interest on the table before him in the cramped attic room.Alewyth dismounted from the paralyzed Lapis and ran over toward the two small groups of archers, who as of yet had been untouched by combat - she intended to put an end to that oversight at once!  Casting a summoning spell, she brought forth a large earth elemental from the ground below the feet of one group of four, and by using her summoner's totem, she was able to imbue the stone-bodied elemental with a bull's strength spell as it formed from the very ground, increasing its already impressive strength.  The earthen brute swung a boulderlike fist into the closest gnoll archer, sending him flying and the other three fleeing at top speed.  The other group of archers, some 20 feet away, continued targeting Robin and Beetle with their arrows, while the two did their best to dodge out of the way.  But Robin continued playing her inspirational song, not wanting to let down her teammates.Thurloe swung Spellslicer from the saddle and slew one of the lesser experienced gnolls to his right, then slid to the ground to his left, heading for the blinded gnoll fighters that remained.  But in doing so, he turned his back to the wooden building up on the mesa, and as a result he missed out of the spectacle that followed: the gnoll sorcerer, pulling levers and pushing buttons on a desktop just below the open attic windows, managed to finally activate the one that allowed the wood colossus to transform from its house shape - a form in which it had sat here for literally thousands of years - into a hulking, humanoid shape.  With creaks and moans of ancient wood, the "house" rose up into the air as below it, the wood of its construction reconfigured itself until it stood some 65 feet tall, the "attic" now forming a sort of rough head and the open windows serving as eyes, through which the gnoll could see the fight going on down in the scrublands below was not going very well for his troops.  Oh well, let's see how these strange travelers fared now that the gnolls had a wooden giant on their side!Wakuren raised his holy symbol of Cal at the zombie horde before him and channeled positive energy their way, slaying a bunch of them as well as some undead skeletons that had been trying to claw him and Nimbus.  The cloud-steed continued its hoof attacks upon the blinded gnoll fighter before him, and there wasn't much the furry foe could to to block the attacks he couldn't even see were coming his way.  The blinded gnolls tried swinging their weapons at where they thought their enemies might be, but such unsure attacks were rather easy to dodge, as the heroes soon proved all too well.Xandro slew the gnoll fighter he'd been stabbing, then spun around, looking for his next victim.  Zander, alerted to the wood colossus by Petey's frantic telepathic calls, cast a summoning spell of his own and had a huge fire elemental burst into existence about halfway between the heroes and the massive construct.  Upon the elf's orders, the blazing elemental went rushing up the mesa to block the path of the colossus, striking it with a burning fist.  The flames didn't seem to do too much against the wood colossus, although its wooden construction, dried after so long in a semiarid environment, seemed like a good candidate for firewood; apparently it had some sort of magical protection against fire keeping it from starting ablaze.Petey flew through the open attic window and right into the gnoll sorcerer's face, stabbing at him with his scorpionlike stinger.  He got the gnoll in the side of his hairy muzzle, but the gnoll swatted the pseudodragon away with a pawlike hand, and the injected venom did not appear to do anything.Alewyth swung Sjondra into the side of a blinded gnoll fighter's head, crushing his skull and dropping him instantly.  Her earth elemental strode forward, swinging his massive fists at the same archer he'd hit before and ending his life as well.  The other archers shot arrows at Robin, Beetle, and Alewyth - at least those not running away from the earth elemental.  And up on the mesa, the wood colossus smashed a wooden fist down at the fire elemental, momentarily flattening its wavering body before it pulled it back - long before it had time to start on fire itself.  The blazing elemental tried striking out at the colossus when it regained its full form, but once again its flames did little - and the construct actually seemed to be healing itself as time went on.Thurloe cast a dimension door spell and manifested instantly in the back of the attic room, behind the gnoll sorcerer and seemingly without him noticing the sudden intrusion.  But before the spellsword could do anything himself, Petey struck again, and this time the venom had its intended effect; the gnoll sorcerer collapsed onto the table before slumping to the floor, sound asleep.  Grinning to himself, Thurloe took the opportunity to sever the gnoll's head from his neck and sent it plummeting out the attic window.  Then he looked at the controls on the table before him and frowned - they were all labeled in the Drow language, which Thurloe could recognize but not read himself.  "Go get Zander," he told the pseudodragon, and Petey flew back out of the window to go let his master know he was needed.The remaining gnoll zombies were doing their best to swarm over Wakuren and Nimbus, so the half-orc cast a mass cure medium wounds spell, which had the dual effects of slaying the closest undead and healing up some of the worst wounds on himself, Zander, and the mounts.  Xandro activated his ring of invisibility and stalked over towards the nearest batch of gnoll archers, who remained blissfully unaware of his presence.  Zander headed that way himself, unleashing another prismatic spray spell after determining Xandro was not in the area of effect.  Two of the archers turned immediately to stone; one went insane and attacked his nearest companion with a battleaxe; and three more survived the attack despite suffering burns from either fire or acid.  Alewyth then added salt on their wounds by casting a dictum spell at the archers, paralyzing the lot of them as their muscles froze up.  It was simplicity itself for the elemental, Alewyth, and Xandro to pick them off one by one until they were no more.The last remaining undead made their final attacks upon Wakuren and Nimbus before another blast of positive energy channeled through the half-orc's holy symbol turned them to dust.  Then, responding to Petey's telepathic calls, Nimbus flew over towards Zander, Wakuren leaned over to one side, and pulled the elf up behind him.  Petey caught up with them in midair and expertly landed back on his master's shoulder.  They flew towards the wood colossus's head as Thurloe came flying out of it, using the power of his celestial armor to get out of the range of the construct's reach before it could register the spellsword's presence.  Thurloe could see how much damage the colossus was dealing to the fire elemental and did not want that powerful of a punch being directed his way!As he was thinking this, the colossus gave the fire elemental a final smash and its fiery body dissipated for good (although its fist finally caught fire as a result).  Alewyth, seeing this and not wanting to allow the wood colossus to continue on its path towards them, summoned a huge earth elemental - easily twice the size of the one she'd sicced on the gnoll archers - and it immediately began pounding in the colossus's wooden structure with its stony fists.  Already it seemed to have done more damage to the construct than the fire elemental had been able to during its brief stay on the Material Plane.  Taking comfort in the fact the wooden colossus could catch on fire after all, Thurloe cast a scorching ray spell at it from a safe distance in midair.While it was thus occupied, Wakuren flew Nimbus to right outside its striking range and cast a gaseous form spell on Zander.  The elf needed no prompting; he floated over to the open attic window and attained his solid form once more once safely inside.  Then, looking over the controls and focusing in on a large gemstone marked "vocal input" in Drow, he said - in the language of the dark elves - "Return to your house configuration!"The effect was instantaneous.  The wood colossus bucked and shuddered as its limbs drew into its central structure and it lowered itself back down to the ground.  It finally ended up back in its dilapidated house structure, the entire building canted a bit to one side due to the uneven surface upon which it had rooted itself.Declaring it safe to do so (or so he believed), Zander led the others in exploring the interior rooms of the house.  They had all seen better days, the wood warped and covered in years' worth of cobwebs, with water damage from a leaky roof having destroyed the contents of a wizard's library on the upper floor.  But Wakuren announced he'd be casting six make whole spells on a daily basis for however long it took to spruce the place up.  "Just think!" he said.  "We can get this thing back to its original appearance!  And one of us can pilot it alongside us as we travel the rest of the way to the Forbidden Lands!"  As it turned out, the attic was the only room remaining in its normal configuration when the colossus assumed its humanoid form, the rest of the house interior being shunted into an extradimensional space and anyone inside those rooms being placed in a timeless stasis for the duration.  But everyone agreed they should bring the wood colossus with them.Several hours later, the drow bounty hunter approached on his riding lizard.  He was more than happy to accept the bounties on all of the gnoll pelts if he'd do the work to skin them, since these strangers said they had no intentions on returning to Skel'dorath any time soon.  Amazed at his great fortune, the drow couldn't believe these idiots were passing up free money like that.  But then they headed off, Robin once more in the rear, but this time with not only Perseverance but also Ceph attached to her saddle by their reins.The drow's mouth hung open when the wooden house started restructuring itself once again until had resumed its humanoid build.  He said nothing as Zander waved a cheery farewell to him through the open attic window.  "Enjoy your pelts!" he said, as the wood colossus trudged in the wake of the strangers and their dinosaur mounts. - - -For this adventure, I used two Paizo Flip-Mats from the "Ambush Sites" pack side by side.  However, since that covers an area bigger than the table in my game room, for this session we played in our family room, with the two maps completely filling up the large coffee table we have there in front of the sofa.  It had the added advantage of keeping us closer to the downstairs kitchen area, where we lay out the snacks prepared for that session.  And at the end of this session, everyone advanced their PCs to 18th level. - - -T-shirt worn: My Dalek "Exterminate!" shirt, not only because that's what the gnolls wished to do with the PCs, but because a Dalek is an unliving construct controlled by an organic being on the inside, much like the wood colossus is a construct with a living controller inside its "attic head."</blockquote>

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