TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

All 6 regular players were present, although the githyanki's one had to leave a little early. Most of the characters stopped for a breather and a dip in the Binder's regeneration tank, just another of the many tricks she now has stored in her Enveloping Pit. Meanwhile, the githyanki did an ultra-quick plane shift and teleport to Tu'narath and back, spending half an hour picking up several scrolls, most importantly Discern Location. Another 10 minutes spent casting and they had a pinpoint location of the fungus lord, a mere 360' to the northeast of them, right in front of the forges in the dwarven fortress. They prepared a new set of buff spells and teleported over.

There, they found the fungus lord stretched out in front of the forges, with fungus-covered dwarves bustling over it, in the middle of fitting a custom suit of armor and horn enhancement fit for a giant worm monster. They tried to leap to attack it, but found that it had cast Antipathy on the area around to block their entry. Only the Githyanki made his save (and the binder is immune to mind-affecting powers, so she didn't even have to try) so only those two could actually move forward. The githyanki summoned some amnizu, who also failed their saves and headed out of the protected zone at full speed. On their turn, the dwarves pointedly did not leap to the attack, but instead said that the master was tired of this cat & mouse game and wanted to parlay. If they could beat him in an arena battle, he would leave this planet peacefully. They had no particular intention of honoring anything like that, but weren't given the choice, as on it's turn it simply used Transport Through Plants again to disappear into the fungus-covered wall to the east. This meant they had to waste a couple more rounds of their buffs getting the whole party back together and another 5th level spell slot teleporting back to J'bhulgolboth, coming out by the big shallow pool in area 17 that the kuo-toa once used for combat games.

When they arrived, they found that while Xhagevoxhab might not quite have had time to fully finish its new armor, it had been preparing in other ways. There was a full audience assembled surrounding the arena consisting of mold men, kuo-toa, grimlocks, a mind flayer announcer & umber hulk bouncer. In the centre of the arena was a massive humanoid body consisting of thousands of mold men that had bonded themselves together, (using the stats for the flesh colossus from the ELH without the profane bonus to AC and plant immunities rather than construct immunities, making it somewhat less able to no-sell their blasting magic) with the fungus lord curled up on top to form the head. They tried to have a brief moment of hyping up the combatants before the combat began (and so Xhagevoxhab could at least know the names of the creatures who had been slaughtering his minions for months now) but the PC's were in absolutely no mood to play along with his little psychodrama and just went into full attack mode straight away. The githyanki summoned more amnizu and set them to using their quickened fireballs every round until they ran out. The Drow cast anti-magic shell in the middle of Xhagevoxhab's bulk, which kept it from casting a spell in the first round, but as it was fixed in space, it could get out of it by stepping forward with the colossus and doing an area stomp that did a fair bit of damage to the priestess & winged kobold. It hit the githyanki once, but with his acid shield still up, it was obvious that direct attacks were a bad way to fight him, so instead it used reverse gravity to send him to the ceiling and do 20d6 points of damage in the process. Meanwhile, all the PC's were breaking out their best attacks, the binder was literally climbing up the body shredding as she went, and it only took three rounds of this before the colossus was reduced to negative HP by the final set of amnizu fireballs, with the priestesses acidic whip delivering the finishing blow shortly afterwards. Xhagevoxhab was sent toppling to the ground as the colossus lost cohesion and disintegrated into a fungussey mess. It tried to surrender, but the PC's had never intended on making any deal with it and kept on pressing the attack. Realising this, the audience rushed the arena in a last-ditch attempt to tip this fight back in it's favor. The illithid unleashed its mind blast, but only the winged kobold failed his save and got stunned. The drow got attacked from behind by the umber hulk and reduced to -9hp in a single round, which seems like a suitable cliffhanger to end the session on. But 4 of the PC's plus a bunch of summons are still able to fight and Xhagevoxhab is already down half it's hp. A few of them might still die in the process, but it's looking pretty certain that next session they'll finally finish off the big bad that has been their main challenge for a good 9 months of real time now. (and with a satisfying big multi-stage boss battle rather than an anti-climactic ganking in a corridor as well) But they still have to figure out how to break away from githyanki command, defeat the lich-queen and find out what else lies beyond the gate. When they do, they may find themselves wishing they were still just facing fungus ......

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 85: Mar/Apr 2001
.. Since it doesn’t spin off of or merge with any of the magazines I’m already covering and I was never the greatest fan of Star Wars in the first place I think I’ll skip adding this one to my plate as well, even though it only lasted 10 issues.

I changed my mind. I'm finding the 4e issues so gruellingly samey and formulaic that I'm struggling to keep going with them, so I've decided to interleave Star Wars Gamer, followed by Kobold Quarterly, Gygax Magazine, and maybe Undefeated as well if I can get a complete collection of that, (still missing issues 3&8 at the moment if anyone reading has either of those) both for the sake of my sanity and so I have something I can actually post without disrupting the timeline of this thread. That does mean this journey will take even longer overall than expected, but better to get it done late but comprehensively than not at all. The first issue can be found here.

 

[(un)reason]

Everyone was present. The binder activated Rage and continued to shred Xhagevoxhab with even more attack and damage bonuses. Meanwhile the other active players concentrated on saving the two downed PC's. The githyanki summoned a couple of Bralani, placing one next to the drow and healing him back into the positives and the other next to himself on the ceiling. On her turn the priestess also headed that way, soaking up attacks of opportunity from the umber hulk and mold men along the way and brought him back to just under full hp. Since he was still surrounded, his next action was to activate levitate and try to get a bit of height. The sniper blinked out of the mold men surrounding him and reappeared invisibly on the edge of the arena, where he could focus on Xhagevoxhab and ready an action to disrupt it if it tried to cast a spell to escape. On the next round, the githyanki used transposition to get the stunned winged kobold up on the ceiling with him. The priestess wiped out a couple more mooks, the drow summoned a couple of osyluths and placed them next to the fungus lord to further lock him down and the binder continued to shred. The enemy illithid tried to charm him, but it failed against his spell resistance. The fungus lord continued to ineffectually try to attack the binder climbing up his body, while his mooks did the same to the priestess and all the summons, but those were mostly misses as well. On the third round, the githyanki teleported back down to the surface and smacked the fungus lord with his maul, which when combined with the binder's ongoing onslaught was finally enough to bring that second energy bar down to zero. He died messily and with him gone, all the other monsters lost cohesion, dying slowly over the course of the next 10 minutes. (those that weren't finished off prematurely by the still bloodthirsty binder) and then crumbling away as the remnants of the fungus turned to inert powder, (which they collected several sacks of for analysis just in case) leaving only their bones. (or exoskeleton in the case of the umber hulk.)

Since pretty much everyone except the binder was tapped out at this point, they retired to the enveloping pit for a good rest while she let out her low level minions to thoroughly loot the place. However, their sleep was interrupted halfway through by another group of githyanki arriving, all dressed smartly in black (mirrorshades optional), led by a cigarette smoking githyanki covered in obviously magical tattoos. They congratulated the group for handling the problem before they arrived in the mildly condescending way of special forces greeting regular army grunts, then told them they were taking over operations in this area, so they could just head on back to Tu'narath for their next mission. Since they had yet to recover their spells, the PC's were able to stall them, but they were definitely waiting around in an impatient manner for the other team to leave while running tests on things with strange magical devices. When debriefed and asked about what happened to the gate though, instead of taking them to the bottom of the lake, our githyanki commander teleported briefly with them to the deep caverns with crushing pressure where the tablets had been kept, lied (41 on his bluff check) and said that the gate was there, but it had closed when they defeated Xhagevoxhab. Since they were taking damage each round, they couldn't stick around there and investigate in detail, so they teleported back and it looked like they'd got away with the deception. Before leaving, the group also went back and investigated the dwarven fortress, checking that they had also died when their master did (leaving suits of armor frozen around the fortress in random places) and thoroughly looting the place. Between Jbulgolboth and the dwarven fortress, they once again have a pretty decent haul, with the single biggest thing being the massive chunk of adamantine the fungus lord had shaped into a horn enhancement, plus enough xp to bring one of them up to 15th level and the others close. Things have definitely moved a step closer to the climactic final confrontation. What will their next mission be? Will they ever find out what lies beyond the still-open gate? Just how long will they be able to keep up the ruse of being loyal soldiers, and what position will they be in when finally discovered? Still plenty to play for next week.

 

[(un)reason]

5 players present. This was a slow one almost entirely taken up by interparty roleplaying. They had a number of options for new missions available to them. They could continue investigating the world on the other side of the gate under Needlespire. (Two of the party independently did this sneakily anyway in downtime, finding it was indeed completely dead now the fungus lord was gone.) They could follow up on the plot hook about the blade of Aknar Ratalla. (General Zetch'r'r had also heard that tale and sent one party after it who never came back, and was very interested on getting his hands on the blade if it turned out divine ascension was indeed part of the lich-queen's plans) They could go for the more prosaic mission of helping to discreetly retrieve General Gythra-Kyharz's silver sword from the treacherous psion Lashmere. Or they could try a heist; Yu’thiol Mansecho had been scoping out the banking system of the free city of Greyhawk Redeagle and though the group might be able to pull off a heist that destabilised the economy of the whole region, rendering them easy prey when the big assault started in a couple of months time. The group was pretty split, but the heist got more votes than any of the other options, so that was their final decision. They then engaged in plenty of nitpicking over the info they had been given before even leaving Tu'narath, wth the drow casting Contact Other Plane to find out more details about how much gold was in there, what the most dangerous traps & guards were and if Yu'thiol planned to double-cross them to get the cash. (not as long as he thought they were still loyal to the lich-queen) They also had to make sure everyone had at least one disguise power active, plus mundane makeup on top, as none of them were of races that would be welcome there except the priestess. (who would simply have to take off the BDSM gear to be unrecognisable )

Once they'd exhausted all the preparations and research they could make without actually visiting, they headed back to Pharagos, making sure they arrived a moderate distance away from the city, came in the road and get themselves rooms at an inn. The binder came up with a surprisingly sneaky keystone to their plan. Use her sentient magic glove as an inside man, open up an account and deposit it there, then retrieve it again after three days and get a full accounting of the various defences it went through on the way too and from the vault. That would give the others plenty of time to scope the place out from other angles and find the best way to do the rest of the job. This nearly fell at the first hurdle as she rolled poorly on her initial diplomacy roll, but her forged credentials (and obvious large quantities of money) were good enough that they eventually let her open an account.

During the three day wait to make withdrawing the glove again not seem totally suspicious, the others kept busy. The two kobolds took sewer duty, seeing if there was any way of getting into the bank down there. Unfortunately, while many other big civic buildings did have connections to the sewers, including the wizards academy and the colosseum, there were conspicuously no tunnels anywhere near the mint. They did encounter thieves guild members down there discussing business, but their stealth skills far outstripped that of the NPC's so they just listened to them gossip for a while, hearing both some new info about the state of the city, and distorted tales of their own exploits northwards in L'trel. The githyanki also got in on the stakeout, investing in X-ray vision, which revealed a staircase leading downwards on the north side, but no visible tunnels underneath it, indicating that this was either where the heavy-duty shielding started or they went through a portal. This meant they had a clear target of where to head when they started action, but still no clear way of getting down there stealthily.

When they got the glove back, it became increasingly clear that there was indeed still a gauntlet of defences down there that they couldn't see with their divinations, as it had gone through a checkpoint guarded by pyrohydras, several trap systems, a couple of illusory walls and awkward vertical tunnels, to reach a central vault that was guarded by a beholder mage with multiple regular beholders as minions. (see Vlindarian's Vault, another adventure from future issues I've reviewed but haven't been able to post yet) This info would mean they could prepare spells to counter the most obvious problems and weren't likely to simply get stuck, but it would still be a challenge to get in and out quickly without being caught. They debated kidnapping one of the tellers or manager to pump them for further information, but decided against it. Eventually they decided that complete stealth probably wasn't going to happen, but if some of their minions staged a distraction in the lobby while the PC's used passwall to get through the back wall and down the stairs they might be able to keep the number of challenges they face at once to a manageable level. With that resolved, it seemed like a good place to end the session, and make sure that next one would be the action-packed one. We'll find out if their plan survives contact with the enemy next week.