Like Father, Like Son: Kid Charlemagne's Story Hour , PT III

Brennen took 35 points of damage from that blow from Kentfield. It was not a critical. He was not using power attack.

Oh that's fabulous. Very encouraging.

And me without the Dodge feat.

It's always fun when the DM lets some little factoids loose.
"Oh yeah, he did 97 points of damage with one hand and a head cold"
"Ekozius has 975 hit points in 3E"
"Now its a keen ,flaming ,vorpal bastard sword +36 "
 

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Gavin said:


Oh that's fabulous. Very encouraging.

And me without the Dodge feat.

It's always fun when the DM lets some little factoids loose.
"Oh yeah, he did 97 points of damage with one hand and a head cold"
"Ekozius has 975 hit points in 3E"
"Now its a keen ,flaming ,vorpal bastard sword +36 "

Just doing every little things I can to maintain that aura of unadulterated fear that so enhances every game session...

But the players don't complain when Brennen drops 52 points of damage on a wight in one round, do they? Oh, no.... :)
 

Kid Charlemagne said:


Just doing every little things I can to maintain that aura of unadulterated fear that so enhances every game session...


It is funny you say that. Until the 35 pint no-crit-no-PA I was more afraid of Kentfield's friends . But now that I think about it- we have not seen him cast any spells and this is his first stint in hand-to-hand.

Eep.
 

Old Kentfield Country Estate, June 7th, AE 420

Anthius immediately abandons his "play dead" approach, and moves into a defensive posture. Gavin moves up and between he and Reana, the Girrilon does not last long. The hobgoblins put up a little bit of a fight, but in moments the only one left is the last of the leaders.

Gavin takes a swing at him as he retreats into the corner of the room.

"Cut it out!" Brennen yells. "He's giving up!"

"Oh, is he?" Gavin replies. He tries to physically intimidate the lone hobgoblin, and trips over one of the his compatriot's corpses.

Gavin rolled a "1" on his intimidate roll, I think.

The hobgoblin drops his longsword and puts his hands up.

"Hey, hey, hey," he stammers. "I have no interest in dying for these guys!"

"Good choice," Reana says. "Where's Kentfield?"

"He went down that way," the hobgoblin says, gesturing towards the next room, where the party knows the secret door to the temple is located.

"Who's with him?" Brennen asks.

"He's down there with Quinn, and with a troll. That's about it, as far as I know, but we don't go down there much."

"So what's the deal here? Why are you helping Kentfield?"

"Hey, he let us use these swanky digs," the hobgoblin says. "And he swung some kind of deal to get us a decommissioned ship from the Ulfang Navy. We're pirates!"

"Were pirates, more like," Corwin says. "Kinda tough to sail a ship by yourself."

Jovah steps in. "Did they bring an elf statue this way?"

"Uh, yeah," the hobgoblin replies. "We helped them move it in through the sea cave entrance. They dunked it by the dock."

"Underwater? Great," Gavin moans.

"Is it guarded?" Jovah asks.

"Not really. Well, I mean, except for the sharks..."

"Sharks?!"

"Yeah. 'Bout five of them."

"This is getting better all the time," Gavin says.

"Do they have any demons down there?" Reana asks.

"I don't know anything 'bout that kinda stuff."

Brennen thanks the hobgoblin for his answers, and then punches his lights out.

"Okay, so it's down the hatch, I guess," the Sword of Kelanen says.

"So who's opening the door?" Anthius asks.

Brennen stops and thinks, and then looks at Gavin.

"Ready?"

"Huh? Yeah..."

"One, two, three!"

The two fighters shake their fist three times, and then open them.

"Scissors beats paper!" Brennen howls.

Gavin shrugs in resignation.

"Damn."
 
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Lazybones said:
A fast-paced and dramatic battle, as always... (boy, your players sure do like splitting up, don't they? :)) Looking forward to the ultimate confrontation and bad-guy smackdown (right before he makes a last-minute escape, of course!)

They weren't nearly as split up as it might appear; the hallway that Reana and Gavin were in was immediately adjacent to the rear wall of the manor house, so if Aris looked in the nearest window, he would have seen Reana.

Bad guy smackdown coming up (well... kind of), probably tomorrow evening (if I'm not distracted by my upcoming purchase of D&DG... now I'm going to have to finally get to work on converting ALL my gods to 3e, not just the few that have major roles in the game. I'm actually looking very much forward to that.)
 


Kid Charlemagne said:
The two fighters shake their fist three times, and then open them.

"Scissors beats paper!" Brennen howls.

Gavin shrugs in resignation.

"Damn."
Funny sometimes what Kid C seizes on as good story hour material.

Since both Gavin and Brennen frequently take the lead into combat situations (Brennen by extension of his class' code of conduct; Gavin most likely due to some mental disorder), the whole "rock-paper-scissors" thing just seemed like a quick, mostly out-of-character way to decide the standard dungeon dilemma of Who Gets To Opens The Door.

I guess the image of the two noble, knighted, master swordsmen using an old playground game to decide the issue was too good to pass up ;)

We've also learned a sure way to get a moment included in the Story Hour is to say to the DM "You're not going to write that in Story Hour, are you?" :D

[...as Brennen gingerly pokes Jovah's bruised nose... ]
 

Old Kentfield Country Estate, June 7th, AE 420

Despite Gavin’s misgivings about winning (?) the contest to open the secret door, there prove to be no traps, and the party descends the long spiral stair down to the temple. The temple is a good seventy feet below the castle, and the stair winds around many times until it opens into a short corridor. At the end of the corridor is the door into the temple proper.

They open the door, and find the area fairly dark. Lights are brought out, and they can see that the hundred foot long chamber is empty.

Aris’ locate object runs out at this point, with the last impression of direction indicating that the door way to the cave under the waterfall is the path to take. The party makes their way to the door, and Anthius begins picking the lock.

“Hurry up there,” Brennen says. “We haven’t got all day.”

“Be quiet,” Anthius replies. “I’m not a master lockpicker, all these distractions make me take longer…”

Soldago is watching to the rear. He hears a deep rumble, almost without a definite origin. Towards the far end of the chamber, he sees something stirring.

Something big.

“Look out! There’s a … thing coming our way!”

He draws and fires three greater magic weaponed arrows at the immense form coming towards him, and two find their target. As it comes further forward, the party can see it better. It is immense, nearly eighteen feet tall, even stooped over. It has a body like a gorilla, with its knuckles draggin along the ground, and the head of a bison. It is larger than the Ghour Demon that they fought in Ulfang, but clearly more animalistic in nature, although almost certainly demonic in origin.

“Great googley-moogley,” Jovah stammers.

Soldago continues to send rapid fire arrows towards the thing as most of the rest of the party advances. Corwin, Aris and Reana move up along the narrow stairs that lead up to the sacrificial platform at the far end, roughly above the beast’s head. Brennen and Gavin advance straight towards it. Anthius breaks off his lock picking and starts playing an inspirational tune.

The beast reaches down next to it, and picks several boulders out of a pile. He then hurls them at high speed at Soldago. The archer breathes a sigh of relief as none hit the mark.

Corwin launches a set of magic missiles, but they break uselessly off his skin as his spell resistance holds. Aris tries a lightning bolt, with the same effect.

As the party closes in, the beast roars, and stomps down hard, driving its cloven feet into the ground, setting off a major tremor. Everyone nearby is knocked off-balance, some falling over, and stones from the ceiling fall, as the temple begins to collapse. A cloud of dust rises from the fallen debris, and Soldago can no longer see his target. He closes in to get a new vantage point.

Gavin finally regains his footing and reaches the thing, braving its fists to slip inside its reach and swing. He cuts deep into its side. The thing brings its fist down, just missing, but breaking the stone underfoot and nearly throwing Gavin off-balance again. Reana and Brennen use the opportunity to move in closer.

The beast bellows in anger at Gavin’s blow, and swings hard at the swordsman. He connects powerfully, and everyone winces at the sounds of bones cracking and Gavin screaming in pain. Gavin goes down.

The demon landed a critical hit on Gavin, and did 48 points of damage, knocking him unconscious. Brennen’s player helpfully pointed out that had he taken two more points he would have had to make a fortitude save versus massive damage.

Jovah sees Gavin go down, and begins flying in to help. Reana and Brennen redouble their attacks, and Aris tumbles into position to help as well. Brennen lands several massive blows, and Reana also lands multiple blows, and finally the thing drops. Jovah casts a cure on Gavin, and the party makes their way out towards the waterfall cave, as the ceiling of the temple begins to fall in on itself.

When they reach the cave, they find it empty. The hobgoblin’s pirate vessel is there, a medium sized single masted ship with places for oars as well. A quick look around reveals Jalea, about thirty foot under water just of the ship’s bow. Circling around the area are five sharks.

“Well, at least they’re not very big sharks,” Aris says.

“Who’s talking?” Jovah replies. “They could swallow me in one bite!”

Big or not, they are twelve to fifteen footers. Big enough to be a problem.

“I wonder if there’s any chum around here,” Corwin wonders, only to find a bucket so close by if he had taken another step he’d be standing in it. He gives the bucket to Jovah, who flies to the edge of the waterfall. Just for grins, he stick his head out of the waterfall to see if he can see where Kentfield got off to. He sees a rowboat about a hundred yards off, being rowed by a troll. Kentfield is in the front, trying to signal his vessel docked alongside the cliffs. Quinn is in the back, looking towards the waterfall, but doesn’t appear to notice the gnome.

Brennen checks the ship out and finds sufficient block and tackle to lift a statue the size of an elf out of the water, and Jovah begins tossing chum in by the waterfall, leading the sharks away from Jalea. Reana dives in and attaches the rope to the statue-elf, and Brennen, Gavin, and Corwin lift him up out of the water.

“That went well,” Jovah says, and tries a break enchantment on the hapless rogue. It fails.

“Dang it.”

He uses his luck ability to bend probability back and try one more time. It still fails.

Dang it!

“Okay, we’ll have to carry him,” Jovah says.

“No problem,” Aris says. “We prepared for this. I’ve got the reduce scroll we bought in Cape Varna. That will get him to a weight we can carry through the dimensional folding.”

Aris reduces Jalea to about 60 pounds, and Jovah prepares to cast his extended dimensional folding spell. This one will stay open twelve seconds, allowing the party more time to go through.

He casts the spell, and the familiar portal opens up, but this time something is wrong: An emerald field covers the portal, and Jovah can barely see the courtyard of his house in Fencig. Aris tosses a stone at the fold. Instead of going through as it should, it bounces off the shimmering emerald force field.

“Uh, Jovah?” Reana says, inquiringly.

“I… I’ve never seen that happen before!” Jovah stutters.

“What do we do now?”
 
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We played last night, and Jovah's rapid strike team approach was in full effect, despite being blocked for a day by whatever caused the dimensional fold to fail in the subterranean temple...

Update to follow, later today or at the latest Tuesday!
 

Old Kentfield Country Estate, June 7th, AE 420

The party quickly moves the Jalea-statue onto the hobgoblin’s pirate ship (which is named “The Bloody Bucket,” or so the red painted letters on the back proclaim) before the reduce spell wears off. Aris’ hawk familiar is circling outside, above the manor house, and through his empathic link, Aris can tell that Kentfield’s ship has dropped anchor and moved to pick up Lord Kentfield, Quinn, and the troll, and are now loading up the rowboat on deck.

“Jovah, what happened with your dimensional fold?” Reana asks.

“I don’t know,” the gnomish priest answers. “It’s possible to use a dimensional anchor to stop things like that, but someone would have to target me, maybe someone invisible in this cavern… I don’t like to think that someone could have warded the entire cavern with it!”

Gavin is trying to figure out how many men it will take to man the Bloody Bucket. There are eight oars, and a single mast on the forty-five foot vessel. Sir Brennen suggests that the party could sail it pretty well, although a larger crew would be able to get more speed out of her.

“How about Kentfield’s ship, out there?” Gavin asks Brennen.

“Hmmm…” Brennen does some thinking. Kentfield’s ship is a fast, almost yacht-like two-master.

“At least twelve,” he says. “Maybe more. Maybe lots more.”

“Well, what do we do now?” Jovah asks. “Stay in here with the roof falling down, or sail on out and maybe fight off Kentfield and his ship?”

They decide to wait a little while. They get the ship ready, and row her out to the inside edge of the waterfall. Aris watches the ship through his link to his hawk. Kentfield’s men sail out to about a half-mile off shore, and drop anchor again. After two hours, they are apparently satisfied that no pursuit is forthcoming, and raise anchor and sail off east, in the general direction of Ulfang.

“I say we sail around to the dock, load Jalea up on the dock, and go up and check out the manor house more closely,” Brennen says.

“Spoiling for fight there, Brennen?” Jovah asks wryly.

“Trying to avoid one, actually,” the Sword of Kelanen replies. “Don’t forget there are Sahuagin involved in this mess, and if they show up while we’re on ship we could be in trouble.”

“Good point,” Jovah concedes. “Let’s check the house.”

Brennen and Anthius stay behind to watch the boat and Jalea while the rest of the group heads back up to the manor house. Small tremors occasionally rock the cliff and the plateau beyond, and when they get close to the house they notice two things. First, the water level on the lake beyond the house has dropped nearly five feet in the past few hours, and secondly, there are cracks in the foundation of the manor house itself.

“I bet this place will eventually just fall into the sea,” Aris says.

Soldago looks to see if there is anything in the water, and stops short.

“What is it?” Reana asks.

“Look out there, past the lake,” Soldago responds.

They look out into the valley beyond the lake. The valley stretches several miles to the north before beginning to climb into the far southern edge of the Endicott Mountains. Dotted throughout the valley are about two dozen low mounds, perhaps fifty feet on a side, marked mostly by variations in the grass cover compared to the rest of the valley.

“Good lord,” Jovah says, disbelievingly.

“Mass graves,” Aris states dryly.

“Enough evidence now?” Gavin asks Corwin.

“I think I’ve seen more than enough evidence to this point,” Corwin replies. “This may help us convince other people, though…”
 

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