Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 9457287" data-attributes="member: 508">ADVENTURE 60: NOTICEDPC Roster:Ageratum Purslane, halfling rogue 15             Alistair Mandelberen Pastlethwaite, human sorcerer 15             Chaevaris Noarunal, elf archer 15             Harlan Starblade, half-elf paladin 15NPC Roster:Orchid, elf druid 15Game Session Date: 4 September 2024 - - -At long last, the new headquarters building of the Trained Professional Adventurers was complete, and the heroes had all moved in.  It was a four-story stone structure, basically a square keep with an attached stables off to the side: the ground floor was their general living area (complete with a blank wall on the side where the extradimensional door could be located; the heroes didn't want to give up their previous dwelling and thus just incorporated it into their new place); the second floor held the apartments of Ageratum and Alistair; the third floor was where Orchid and Chaevaris  had their own rooms; and the top floor held Harlan's living space in the front and an open balcony in the rear where he could launch his celestial pegasus Nova into the skies as needed.  There was no need for a kitchen, dining area, or bathrooms, as those were inside the extradimensional space on the other side of the door when Chaevaris projected it from her necklace.  The attached stables were accessible from a side door on the ground level of the keep, or through a pair of larger doors in the front of the stables themselves.  There was a separate stall for each of their mounts, plus an extra one for visitors, a feed storage shed, and the living quarters of Purley, who the group had hired on as their full-time animal handler.Recently, the TPA had taken custody of two plinths that, when stood upon, granted the person so doing the ability to activate a statue spell for the next half a day; each plinth could grant the ability to up to two people who used it each day.  Not wanting to limit their access, one plinth was stored in the corner of the lower level of the new stone keep and the other kept inside the extradimensional dwelling, so the adventurers could bring it (along with the door) went they left the keep.As for the Dark and Light Club, the two-story nightclub where the adventurers had normally plopped their extradimensional door, the owners were given directions to the new keep - about 5 miles out of town, to keep the town safe from any attacks upon the keep but also to allow room for the town to grow and expand over the years - with orders to direct anyone looking for the TPA to their new location.  After all, it had become common knowledge that if you wanted to hire the TPA, you needed to head over to the Dark and Light Club.It was a cold, winter late afternoon when the keep received its first visitor: a delivery lad, dropping off a small wooden crate.  Harlan gave the lad a coin for his troubles, detected the crate with his paladin's senses to ensure there was no evil within, and then brought it inside to open.  There, he was pleased to see five copies of a new book: The Gallants: Adventures in the Darkened Realms, by E. L. Grimwade, the renowned author of the "Elfy Danger Silverleaf" children's stories that Alistair loved so much.  Flipping through the top copy, Harlan noted it was autographed to Alistair - each of the five copies had been signed by the author with a personal note to its intended owner on the inside cover, and depicted the fictional adventures of a group of characters quite obviously patterned after the TPA members.  The group consisted of Brindlewald Stormwind, a noble human sorcerer; Patton Lux, a half-elf paladin; Siobhan Wiggins, a halfling rogue lass; Adelain Swiftshaft, a female elven archer; and Daisy Thornvale, an elven druidess.  The dedication page read, "To the Trained Professional Adventurers, who live even greater adventures than I can write."The other heroes were each upstairs in their rooms, putting in their finishing touches.  (And Ageratum had twice the chore as the others, for the eight-foot-tall walls of her quarters were bisected horizontally, giving her twice the living space as the others, the "upper floor" reachable only through a halfling-sized hole in the four-foot ceiling she used her spider climb ability to reach.)  Harlan left the crate downstairs and went to fetch the others, so they could each receive their own copy; he particularly wanted to see Alistair's face when he saw the end result of their visit, months ago, by E. L. Grimwade herself.Had it been up to Alistair, that's all anyone would have seen of him that night, for upon discovering the book he wanted nothing more than to return to his new quarters and devour the book, no matter how many hours that might take, and how many missed meals such an undertaking would entail.  But before he could make his way back upstairs, there was another knock upon their front door, and Harlan once again answered it.This time, it was their wizard associate Blorkane Trotter, a heavyset spellcaster with more arcane knowledge than common sense - a trait he had exhibited to their consternation on more than one occasion.  "Hey," he said without preamble, bursting his way past Harlan and into their new living area.  "I understand you unearthed that cubic gate I sold to Kasselban Picksmart.  Well, I need to buy it back from you.""I don't believe that will be possible," announced Harlan."What?  Don't tell me you've already sold it!""On the contrary," replied Alistair, looking up from his book.  "We still have it, but we don't wish it to be available to anyone who might misuse it.""Several of the Outer Planes to which it's attuned are rather nasty areas - ones we wouldn't want an open planar gate allowing their denizens to come waltzing over here to the Material Plane," affirmed Harlan.  "The Nine Hells for one.  The Abyss for another.""But you don't understand!" insisted Blorkane.  "The original owner - er, alleged, at least - wants it back, and he knows it was recently in my possession!""Blorkane," scolded Ageratum.  "Did you steal that cubic gate?"  She looked innocently over at Harlan.  "We all know that stealing is wrong.""I most certainly did not!" insisted the heavyset wizard.  "It's just...entirely possible it came into my possession without the knowledge that it may have been taken from its owner through...irregular channels."Chaevaris was well aware of how much money a cubic gate was worth.  "Tell you what," she smirked.  "Since it's you looking to purchase it from us - an honest, aboveboard individual who would never allow it to fall into the wrong hands - I think we could sell it to you...for the low price of 200,000 pieces of gold."  The elven archer was well aware it was valued at 164,000 gold pieces; she just wanted to see him dance a bit."Preposterous!" scoffed Blorkane.  "Even with the extra enhancement--" he started, but then cut himself off, as if not entirely eager to let the others know about what made this cubic gate even more valuable than the standard model.  "I--I have already spent some of what I was paid by Kasselban, but I can give you 120,000 pieces of gold for it, right now!"  He patted his coin pouch, no doubt as extradimensional as the door in Chaevaris's magic amulet.But Harlan had picked up on what Blorkane had started to say.  "What's this about extra enhancements?" he demanded.  Blorkane tried to deflect the question, but under the determined gaze of a hardened paladin he folded like a cheap house of cards.  "If you touch an item taken from the plane in question, and use it to activate a gate to that plane, it will zero in on the area from which it came," he admitted.  "So instead of going to a random location on an infinite plane, you can end up, say, at the actual home of a vrock demon by touching one of its feathers to the cubic gate.  It's a specialized version, called Tellander's gate," he finally admitted.  "But really, I do need it back!""I'm afraid that will be impossible," Harlan said sternly.  "As I said, we do not wish it to fall into the wrong hands.  But if the owner tries to get it from you, you are more than welcome to send him our way.  We'd be more than willing to tell him that to his face."Blorkane wiped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief.  "It may well come to that," he explained.  "Right now, there's an unnatural storm blasting lightning down on the Dark and Light Club - that may be him announcing his presence.""What?" demanded Harlan.  "Someone's attacking the town - trying to get to us?  Why ever didn't you mention this earlier?""It sounds like a storm of vengeance spell," interjected Orchid.  "That's high-level druidic magic.""It slipped my mind until now," admitted Blorkane, answering Harlan's question.  But the paladin was buckling on his sword-belt and indicating for the others to get their gear together.  Ageratum, who already had her gear with her, ducked into the stables and asked Purley to come inside and "keep Blorkane company" - in other words, make sure he didn't go snooping around trying to find the cubic gate (which, unknown to Blorkane, was inside the extradimensional dwelling on the other side of the door in their living room, across from the door leading to the stables).  Then the five members of the Trained Professional Adventurers - plus Shushitan, Orchid's loyal timber wolf animal companion, and Ambrose, Alistair's grackle familiar - were mounted on their horses and riding to the town proper at best speed, the extradimensional door tucked back into Chaevaris's magic amulet.Well, that was mostly true, in any case; Harlan, as usual, had forsaken riding his white riding horse Law and instead rode Nova, his celestial pegasus; Law was ridden by Orchid, who had no horse of her own; and Talkacha was left behind in the stables by himself, as Chaevaris opted to pilot her two-seater carpet of flying instead of sitting astride her gray light riding horse.  But the group made their way towards town, seeing the storm of vengeance spell, if that's what it had been, was already winding its way down (as Orchid said it likely would have been by this time, as the spell lasted mere minutes after having been initially cast).As they got close to the edge of town, the spellcasters started applying those spells they were used to have active in battle, as whatever had caused the storm of vengeance to destroy the Dark and Light Club had more than likely been aiming for them.  Alistair already had a mage armor spell active and an endure elements spell to keep him comfortable in the chilly air; he cast that second spell onto Orchid and Chaevaris as well.  Then he cast a flame arrow spell on the group's assembled ammunition; a cat's grace spell upon Ageratum (at the halfling's request); a Rary's telepathic bond spell upon the group of five heroes; a shield spell upon himself and Ambrose; and a haste spell upon the heroes and their living steeds.  Orchid cast a fire seeds spell upon a handful of acorns in her pocket; barkskin spells upon herself, Harlan, and Nova; a longstrider spell upon herself; and a mass bear's endurance upon the five heroes.  Harlan enhanced himself with bull's strength, magic circle against evil, and eagle's splendor spells, then cast a bless spell upon the assembled group.By that time, the group was in the town proper and were rapidly approaching the ruins of the Dark and Light Club, razed to the ground and nothing more than smoldering ruins.  Ageratum and Chaevaris slipped into invisibility, the little halfling dropping from her pony and unsheathing her short sword.  There were no visible enemies at hand, but the area was strewn with dead bodies, some crushed by falling blocks of stone from the ruined building and others likely electrocuted from blasts of lightning from above.  A smoky haze covered the area, but Harlan and Alistair, riding in the front of the group's ragged formation, spotted a figure through the smoke, stepping out from behind an intact building near the rubble and making some sort of hand gestures.  Immediately, a pile of some sort of smoldering rubble appeared before him. declared Alistair over the link.  <Some sort of spellcaster up ahead - did you see him?>  Harlan agreed he had, and Ambrose supplied a piece of data his master had missed: the figure had dropped something very much like a handkerchief on the ground, which sprouted up into the pile of burning rubble they'd seen suddenly appear.  Alistair knew what that meant: <A shrink item spell being undone!>Orchid urged Law forward at top speed, riding up to the burning pile of rubble, but when she got there the spellcaster was gone.  She was able to determine the smoldering pile was made of dung and human bones: an altar to Iuz!  She wracked her brains trying to recall when the group had come up against those who worshiped Iuz, and came up short.  Shushitan raced up behind his mistress and in doing so, smelled someone advancing towards him down an alleyway.  Stopping a few buildings short of his mistress, he snarled as the cloaked human advanced before him, and then he went ahead and bit at the stranger.  However, the dark-clad man easily avoided the timber wolf's bite, and Shushitan snapped his jaws upon empty air.Harlan had Nova fly over by Orchid, the pegasus landing in the street beside the druid.  The half-elf cast forth his paladin senses and got a distinct emanation of evil coming from the altar to Iuz - no real surprise there.  Chaevaris raised the elevation of her carpet of flying until she was higher than the rooftops, and was able to see the altar and the dark-clad man by Shushitan.  She slipped an arrow to her composite longbow and readied to aim.  Ageratum, on foot and still invisible, approached the man, whose attention seemed to be focused upon Shushitan, with the occasional nervous glance over at Harlan, Nova, Orchid, and Law.  Munson, no longer being led by the halfling, wisely changed course and trotted back the way he'd come.Then the dark-clad figured stepped fully into the street and started growing.  As his body expanded, it morphed in shape, taking on distinctly draconic features, until it was a dark-scaled dragon the size of an elephant.  The heroes had fought a black dragon before and this one didn't have the same curving horns or skull-like snout, but they could tell from its coloration it was closer to black than anything else.  Some sort of hybrid, perhaps?  Whatever it was, with the burning fires behind it, Chaevaris, Shushitan, and Ageratum were granted the image of a dark silhouette taking up the majority of the wide street before them."WHERE"S MY CUBE?" demanded the shadowy dragon figure in a deep voice.  Suddenly, the heroes realized this was the "original owner" of Tellander's gate, and belatedly recalled one of the planes it connected to was the Plane of Shadow.  In answer, Ageratum decided to stab at the reptile with her short sword, but she surprised herself by missing completely - that was something that almost never happened against a target so large!  Fortunately for her, she'd recently upgraded her bracelet of invisibility to provide the benefits of a greater invisibility spell, so she remained unseen despite her attempted attack.  The dragon likely didn't even know she was there.Alistair rode up on Zephyr, and once within 60 feet of the dragon he cast a chain lightning spell through his metamagic rod of maximize spell.  But the dragon twisted about like a cat and the jagged arc of electricity failed to connect with the massive reptile.  Most unusual! Alistair fumed.Orchid spun about on Law and cast a sunbeam spell at the dragon, but once again the dragon ducked its head and the spell did him absolutely no harm.  Shushitan ran up and went to bite the dragon, once again uncharacteristically missing with his snapping jaws - it was as if the dragon wasn't exactly where it had appeared to be, and his advanced lupine sense of smell was offering him no aid in determining its true location.Harlan and Nova charged into battle against the dragon, the pegasus missing with a sharp hoof-kick but the paladin connecting nicely with his flaming Starblade.  Finally, at least one of the heroes was able to cause this blasted beast some pain!  Even better, while the dragon was focused on the paladin's attack, Ageratum got in a sneak attack with her invisible blade, stabbing up at the dragon's belly.  With her expertise with this type of blade, she struck in such a way as to cause the dragon enough pain to lessen the effects of its own attacks, basically draining it of a bit of its impressive strength by not allowing it to take full advantage of it while in such pain.Chaevaris was having a hard time "locking on" with her aiming, as at the range she was at, the dragon was still nothing more than a dark silhouette, with no hints as to how far away it might be.  Scowling in irritation, she rode her carpet of flying practically up into the dragon's face, until she could feel its warm breath on her skin.  One way or another, she was determined to do one of her patented "shots to the eye" to blind the thing - only it wasn't cooperating!  At that short distance, she was able to determine it had a large, central horn jutting up from its face like a blue dragon, although this one's scales were definitely much darker than the standard blue's.Ageratum went stab-happy with a short sword in each hand, thrusting up again and again and piercing her way past the thing's scales and into its belly.  The dragon moved over a bit, lining up a blast of its breath weapon to hit not only Harlan and Nova but Orchid and Law as well.  Ageratum got in another belly-strike as it moved (and Harlan's Starblade cut a gash along the side of its thick neck as well; even Nova got in a successful hoof-kick), and then it let loose with a blast of electricity that struck each target in turn, singeing the heroes and Nova but slaying poor Law outright.  Orchid was forced to leap from the saddle as Harlan's white riding horse collapsed, dead, in the street.Alistair was furious - not only at the death of a defenseless horse that had been part of their team, but at his own failure to realize this was a blue dragon from the Plane of Shadows; had he realized that earlier, he never would have started his attacks with a chain lightning spell, since blue dragons were immune to electrical-based attacks.  Scowling at his own foolishness, he fired another spell through his metamagic rod, this one a cone of cold that he angled upwards so as to hit the dragon but not any of his friends.  But the massive, bulky dragon once again proved to be as nimble as a jungle cat and evaded the blast of cold coming from the sorcerer's rod.  Once again, Alistair had proven to be completely useless in fighting off this draconic foe.Orchid, still puzzling why her sunbeam spell hadn't worked - she'd been sure a creature who lived on the Plane of Shadows should have taken some damage from a blast of sudden light like that - abandoned that spell and went with something much simpler, and which didn't target the dragon directly in any case.  She cast a small wall of fire spell directly beneath the dragon, over to one side with the heat from the flames aimed at the dragon's other side so it could feel its full effect.  But Harlan, Nova, Chaevaris, and Ageratum were all far enough away from the spell's area of effect that they were in no danger of being burned.Harlan channeled Pelor's smiting energy into his blade and struck at the dragon with every ounce of strength he could muster.  The blade swung true, carving a deep gash in the beleaguered foe.  Ageratum took advantage of the dragon's split attention to its visible problems to strike it again with her invisible blade.  Nova gave the stupid dragon another sharp-hooved kick for good measure.  Chaevaris finally got an opportunity to aim at its right eye and let fly with her arrow, but its ability to blend into shadows allowed it to evade the arrow entirely.  Another set of cuts into its belly from the stab-happy halfling and it was now close to being on its last legs.  It snapped at Harlan, scratching at him with its front claws as well and buffeting him with its wings, while its tail slashed out at Chaevaris, now visible upon her hovering carpet.  Ironically, it was at its most effective in combat during what would be the last few seconds of its life.Seeing how beaten down the others had made it, Alistair decided a maximized magic missile spell would likely be all it took to drop it to the darkened street.  He channeled the spell through his magic rod, struck the dragon without fail (one of the highlights of that particular spell), only to see it fizzle against the dragon's inherent spell resistant.  Just like that, Alistair actually wished he had sat out this particular battle; he could be back at the keep reading E. L. Grimwade's new masterpiece instead of mucking about here uselessly in the cold!Finally, the snapping flames of Orchid's wall of fire spell took the life of the dragon, and it collapsed in a heap in the street.  From her vantage point on the ground, Ageratum could see one of its foreclaws had been carved into a weird pattern - almost like a key.  Remembering the special trick to Tellander's gate, she had Orchid dismiss her wall of fire spell so the halfling could get in close with her blades, this time not to slit a throat (as was her usual custom) but to cut off the distinctive toe.  Then, having Chaevaris activate the magic door from her necklace onto a nearby building, she went inside the extradimensional dwelling and returned with the cubic gate in hand.  "Which one is the Plane of Shadow one again?" she asked.  Once Harlan pointed out the correct symbol on one of the cube's six sides, she touched the key-claw to it and a gate opened up in the middle of the street.  As expected, it led not to a random place on the Plane of Shadows, but the exact location of the dragon's hoard on that dismal plane of existence.  But dismal or not, the prospect of collecting a dragon's treasure hoard was enough of an incentive to have all five heroes stepping through, returning with armloads of treasure - coins and gems valued at a total of nearly 200,000 pieces of gold in all.Then, with nothing left to do but take poor Law's body into the extradimensional dwelling for transport back to their keep, they waited around to explain the situation to the town's Guildmasters: the dragon had come from another plane to wreak havoc, and the TPA put a stop to it (with no point in mentioning that idiot Blorkane's responsibility for the attack in the first place - he wasn't much of a wizard, but he was a good source of arcane lore and he was somewhat of a friend, after all).  They smashed the altars to Iuz, which had been placed around the ruins, and wondered to themselves (over the telepathic link still in effect) whether the Iuz attack on the Dark and Light Club and the attack by the dragon were linked in any way or just coincidentally occurring at the same time.  With no way to tell one way or the other, the heroes made their way back to their new home.By the time they'd gotten back, they'd agreed they were not going to sell the Tellander's gate back to Blorkane; best that they maintained custody of it and keep it out of circulation.  But the heroes were mentally deciding what they'd be doing with their share of the dragon's loot.  All but Alistair, that is; he just wanted to get back to his new book. - - -Dan admitted the next day at work that he couldn't find stats for a shadow dragon online, so applied a shadow creature template he found to a blue dragon of the appropriate CR he wanted.  The shadow creature template has a bunch of options as far as special qualities go (much like the ghost template), and he chose evasion, which is why none of the spells worked against it; as long as he made his save (and a dragon of his level was going to make his save on just about all but a "1"), he took absolutely no damage.  Tie that it with some sucky die rolls on our part, Dan's misunderstanding on how the sunbeam spell worked, and the shadow template granting the dragon full concealment - the one thing that undid all of Chaevaris's archer abilities - and we ended up with a lopsided fight that only Harlan, Nova, and Ageratum really got to participate in.  Not a whole lot of fun for the rest of us players, though.  (I was also a bit perturbed that Alistair didn't get a chance to roll a Spot check or make a Wisdom check or something to notice the massive, honking nose horn on the "black" dragon, which would have easily identified him as some sort of blue dragon immune to electricity).  But as the boys and I discussed it that night after the game was over, it was far from the worst adventure we'd been through in this campaign.</blockquote>

Verification