Piratecat's Updated Story Hour! (update 4/03 and 4/06)

[Piratecat]

Re: ages-old fairie magic

Nice and nasty PC. Luckily for the heros the shadow didn't escape to heal and return later to repeate the scene.

Oh, it was sooo close. Mara went, and the shadow had the very next initiative. She was the only chance.

"Do you want me to roll the miss chance, or you do want to roll it?"

Mara's player looked aggrieved. "I'll roll it."

"Okay," I said. "You want a miss on low or high?"

"Pick low!" urges Sagiro. "The dice have been rolling high all night." But Mara's player goes with high instead, and after declaring that she activates all kinds of smiting and divine feats, she rolls her d20 to see if the attacks against the incorporeal monster hit.

Rolls the miss chance for the first attack. 17. Groans.
Rolls the miss chance for the second attack. 19. Starts looking worried. "Change it to low!" someone urges, but she ignores them.
Rolls the miss chance on the third attack. 12. More agonized groans from around the table. I start suspecting that my villain may get away.
Rolls the fourth attack. 6! Rolls to hit and easily makes contact, and the table erupts into impromptu cheering as Mara does 22 points of damage to a monster with only 3 hit points left. Accursed mass heal! Accursed paladin!

 

[Piratecat]

"Silent light thunders through the room like a cascade of falling bricks."

Absolutely wonderful! I've read this sentence several times over -- fantastic, even though I'm not sure I can completely visualize it!

A water tower, high over your head. The bottom gives way. You look up and you can see it coming. Millions of gallons of crystal water falling, falling down at your head, shaking the air with its passage - only it's made of light, and shaped like masonry, and it splashes through you without harm.

Unless you're undead. If you're undead, the water hits you and carries you away.

 

[Piratecat]

Agar is healed by the clerics, even as the first wave of ghouls reaches the far side of the sovereign wall. “It should hold them back,” Velendo says with confidence. “There’s just a narrow gap along the top near the ceiling. Even if they use each other as ladders, it’s going to take them some time.” He has to raise his voice a bit to be heard; howls, slurps, and wailing echoes crazily about the cavern in a disturbing cacophony of noise that reminds Agar of Pandemonium.

“Then let’s take the fight to them.” Tao stretches in anticipation and makes sure her swords are loose in their sheaths. As she does so, Mara and Malachite return to the group from the edges of the courtyard, where they were scanning for hidden shadows. Since Mara can’t detect undead herself, she had borrowed Karthos from Malachite. The sword seems disappointed to be passed from the beautiful paladin back to the grim hunter of the dead.

“Hang on, something is odd,” says Nolin, peering forwards. “Agar, didn’t you say that they were spread far apart in formation?” Nolin gestures out into the darkness. At the very edges of their darkvision, the group can see the ghouls clustered up at the wall. It looks like there are more than a thousand of them now, tightly packed and clambering over one another in their eagerness to acquire fresh meat. Their long nails scrape along the wall of force as they seek some sort of purchase.

“Well, there’s one way to break them up,” says Nolin, and he cheerfully utters the command word for his previously placed fire seeds. Tao does the same for her seeds that Nolin already placed, and multiple explosions signal their effectiveness in the tightly packed ghoulish army. Ghouls are thrown upwards, screeching, but the press at the wall redoubles. Then the ghouls back away, and a single figure stands at the front of the army. It’s a dwarf; old, tall, ruggedly handsome, and very very dead. The resemblance to the dwarven prince would be obvious even if the ghoulish dwarf wasn’t wearing a bejeweled crown. Angry and terrified murmurs radiate out amongst the dwarven soldiers in the courtyard.

“The King is undead,” says Nolin sotto voce. “Long live the King.”

With that, the Defenders of Daybreak move forward to take on the ghoulish horde.

On vast fiery phoenix wings, Nolin soars to the top of the sovereign wall and casts two fireballs after swooping through the gap. The powerful fireballs tear into the tightly packed army, burning away some ghouls while leaving others totally uninjured. In the light of burning and twitching corpses, Nolin can see the packed masses of the dead beneath him. He flies forward, the foul stench of their bodies filling the air and making it hard to breathe, and the ghouls reach up for him as if they were grasping for a particularly plump and juicy fruit on a tree. A few spears clatter off the uneven ceiling above his head, and he banks around a stalactite.

Malachite runs to the wall with Karthos in one hand. The paladin levitates up to the gap and looks down at the clambering ghouls that are climbing each other’s bodies. “No,” he says simply, and thrusts forward his hand as he calls on his faith. The divine radiance of Aeos pours forth, focused through Malachite’s soul, and more than half of the ghouls within a hundred feet of him turn into ash. Karthos sings in triumph at his side, echoing the divine song that resonates through Malachite whenever the Hunter of the Dead calls on his power.

Looking down, though, Malachite can’t help but notice that there are many fewer corpses beneath him than there should be. Either he completely disintegrated them, or something strange is happening! He lets the group know via his mindlink, and Velendo confirms his suspicions.

“I have true seeing up, and only about one in four of the ghouls is real. The rest are illusions.” Using his new winged boots to fly, Velendo unleashes an incredibly powerful fire storm centered on the spot where the undead dwarven king is standing, and pauses to observe the results as the air itself catches fire. “The King wasn’t real, either. Keep your eyes open for spellcasters.” He ducks down as a bone spear shatters on the wall in front of him, and then begins another prayer.

As the dwarven troops roll out siege ladders to mount the wall themselves and take the fight to the enemy – No cowards there! thinks Agar – Mara leaps atop Luminor and pulls Galthia up behind her. “Hang on,” she says as she shakes her long golden hair away from her face, and the warhorse activates the magical harness that gives him pegasus wings once a day. Luminor gallops easily into the air, banks tightly, and speeds towards the narrow gap between sovereign wall and ceiling. Galthia’s narrow face pinches as he calculates that there isn’t a chance in hell of the large warhorse actually clearing the gap.

To be continued….

 

[Piratecat]

The monk points, but Mara simply repeats her previous suggestion. “Hang on!” The flying warhorse angles itself, gathers even more speed, and ducks its head as it pulls all four legs in tight against its body. Mara leans as far back as she can, and Galthia is forced to do the same.

Galthia blinks as the cracked base of a broken-off stalactite whizzes past just inches from his nose, and he can feel the horse suddenly falling and lurching in mid-air. Then there is a *WHOMP* as the long feathery wings catch the rancid air, and they’re safely through the gap.

“Nice riding,” the monk mutters, and Mara grins in the darkness. Luminor does a barrel roll sideways to avoid a barrage of bone spears, and Galthia looks down. Riding with Mara is a little bit like traveling through Limbo. “I’ll let you know where to let me off,” he shouts over the wind, and Mara nods.

Tao grabs a hold of anyone who wants to come, and dimension doors into the heart of the disorganized ghoulish army. As Malachite lowers himself to join her and Velendo flies by overhead, she and Splinder use their weapons to great effect, cleaving through the ghouls already weakened by Malachite’s positive energy burst. Soon the ground around the three of them looks like a charnel field. The newly formed undead foot soldiers throw themselves at the heroes, but their flailing limbs aren’t skilled enough to easily batter their way past magical armor or well-wielded weapons. Tao’s two swords are a blur, and despite the undead’s natural resistance to damage she has little trouble in clearing away her enemies.

Behind her, one ghoulish hobgoblin does score a hit on Malachite when his companions aid him by flinging him bodily forward into their foe! Blood trailing down his cheek, Malachite easily fights down the creeping paralysis and batters the hobgoblin’s skull in with the hilt of Karthos. One of the dwarves rushes in and finishes it off, and Malachite realizes that the dwarves are ensuring that no more ghouls have a chance to rise again. Good.

A huge bone spear arcs out of the darkness, missing Nolin and shattering on the force wall. “Undead siege engine!” calls Nolin in a ringing voice, and wheels in the air to fly back and carry Malachite and Tao. Hearing him, Velendo flies forward.

Rising from the darkness in front of the old cleric is a lumbering, hideous insect-like skeletal construct. It has at least six legs, and it is using its own massive ribs as ammunition as it slowly winches back the huge bone ballista on its back. Around it, several dozen ghouls scurry in attendance. Velendo dodges a bone spear and begins to cast. Within seconds, a blade barrier shimmers into existence next to the siege engine’s front legs, and bone chips fly as the magical blades begin to spin.

“There!” Galthia points, and Mara angles Luminor towards the siege engine. As she swoops past and leans to hit it with her holy mace, Galthia leaps nimbly from the back of the horse onto the bone structure itself. He balances on a narrow and quivering rib, pulls out his magical staff, and begins attacking.

The siege engine doesn’t last more than another fifteen seconds. The blade barrier chops into its front set of legs and a searing light from Velendo shatters a skeletal arm, just before Galthia’s staff of disruption destroys its back half with an roaring explosion of golden sparks. The monk nimbly leaps clear of the magical blades, and they watch as the huge undead construct collapses.

It takes the Defenders another fifteen or thirty minutes to mop up most of the remaining ghouls, although they use many of their remaining spells to do so. Velendo uses another wall to block one of the cavern entrances, and although he suspects a handful of undead have successfully escaped, the vast army has effectively been destroyed.

Success.

To be continued….

 

[Piratecat]

So did y'all simply hit the fast forward button at this point and say, "Job done, 20 minutes gone, mark off X spells"?

Pretty much. After they took out the skeletal siege engine and slew the important leaders, the ghouls' force degenerated from an organized army into a scampering mob. It was simple for the Defenders to take them apart at that point, so we fast-forwarded. With the last use of Malachite's positive energy burst, they managed to destroy the last major clump that was trying to escape, and then it was all over but the shouting.

 

[Piratecat]

Later, filthy and exhausted, the group gathers in the courtyard. Velendo creates a Calphas’ Comfortable Castle and invites the dwarven troops in to feast on the gourmet food that Calphas has created.

“I’m still worried,” the dwarven prince – now king? – says. “Reports are that the ghouls who took Mrid numbered in the thousands, and had many more siege engines. I’d like to know where they went if they didn’t come here.” He pulls out a map, and points to a series of tunnels. “They may have gone up this way. There are orcs up here, and giants as well. We’ve never been able to invade them. Hopefully, these ghouls won’t, either.”

Nolin nods. “It’s quite possible that they considered you just a minor roadblock, a distraction. They probably didn’t think you could withstand the force they sent.”

The prince nods. “And we almost didn’t, either. We owe you a great debt. If you are going to take back Mrid, we’ll come with you.” The group exchanges glances.

“I don’t think that’s necessary, your Majesty,” says Mara. Velendo agrees.

“Best to stay fortified here. We can cast a sending to try and gather more reinforcements for you. The best thing you can do is provide us with information and maps.”

“Indeed.” The dwarf nods, and then a crafty look passes over his tired and smudged face. “I have just the person to send with you. Our most knowledgeable Loremaster.” He looks over at an unhappy and pathetic-looking dwarf wearing jester’s motley, jingling by himself over in the corner.

“Not him?”

“Glibstone!” the prince roars.

The jester jingles over and half-heartedly bows, bells tinkling. “Prithee, m'lord, wish ye a riddle? What is the difference between a dwarf in the forest and one who has been hit by an acid arrow?” The Defenders all look at Nolin, who slowly shakes his head. Glibstone gives a grimace that might, possibly, be mistaken for a smile in very dim light. “One meets the elfs, and the other one eats the Melf's!” He looks at the prince hopefully. The prince catches and holds the Loremaster’s eye.

“Glibstone, these heroes are traveling back to Mrid. You're going with them.”

“Mrid, your Majesty?” Glibstone gulps, bells a-jingle, and looks momentarily hopeful. “The ghouls are gone, then?” The prince shakes his head, and the jester’s face falls.

“No. But they will need to know and travel the secret ways, and no one knows the ancient runes and old lore better than yourself.”

“I could write it down, my lo-“

“Don’t be foolish, Glibstone.” The prince turns back to the Defenders as Glibstone jingles slightly. “There is a vault and an armory inside the palace, a vault that contains our greatest treasures.” Prince Stern leans forward, face clouded with worry and sorrow. “My father would have fallen before he revealed the secret to the ghouls, and I doubt that the ghouls will have pierced the secrets of the vault themselves. If they haven’t, I give you leave to borrow what weapons and armor you need, for as long as you oppose these thrice damned ghouls!” He’s standing now, shouting, and with an effort he regains control of himself. He gestures with his clenched fist. “Glibstone can get you into the vault, and will return with whatever treasures you don’t need. With those, we’ll equip our own troops, and hopefully be ready for the next assault.”

“Are you sure, my lord?” asks Mara. “We don’t need a reward.”

“Indeed. That’s why I trust you to do this.” The prince stands, nods to the jester, and strides across the hall to speak with one of his soldiers.

The table falls silent.

The Loremaster clears his throat awkwardly and harrumphs. “So…” he says. “Hey nonny nonny? Er. You know how to tell how old an elf is?”

Nolin lean back and crosses his arms. “Cut him in half and count the rings?”

“No, m’lord, that would be for a half-elf.” He looks around as if looking for an escape, and Velendo laughs as he stands up.

“Glad to have you with us, Glibstone. We’ll value your knowledge.”

<> - <> - <> - <> - <>

It’s a tired group of heroes who fall asleep in the safety of their Calphas’ Comfortable Castle that night. When the Defenders retire, the outer cavern is being thoroughly searched for valuables and items, and any ghoulish bodies are being stacked for incineration as any lone ghouls are hunted down and destroyed. The well-fed dwarves of Mridsgate have proper security precautions in place, and the adventurers feel secure enough to bid them a good evening as they close the door to the castle and queue up to bathe before bed. The hot water feels delightful.

“What are we going to do about Kellharin?” asks Velendo as they sit in the library afterwards, warm robes wrapped around them and a blazing fire warming their skin.

“Tomorrow,” the group agrees, “we’ll decide tomorrow.”

To be continued….

 

[Piratecat]

A quick description of the Calphas’ Comfortable Castle:

Covering 5100 sq. feet, this interdimensional space is dominated by an ornate and well-decorated Great Hall. The Great Hall has a stage for Nolin, two long tables loaded with food, a beautiful fountain, and a whole lot of carvings of saints that all mysteriously look like Velendo when he's not paying attention to them.

Off of the Hall is a stable/exercise room, a large chapel to Calphas, a comfortable library, three small chapels (to Aeos, Galanna and Moradin), a bath, and a hallway. The hallway leads to bedrooms, more baths, and a common room for the dwarven troops.

If anyone knows how to take an Excel spreadsheet and turn it into a jpg, email me privately and I’ll post a map!

 

[Piratecat]

Here's a quick map of the CCC, where 1 square = 5 ft. Thanks, everyone who gave me advice!

1. The Great Hall.
2. Exercise and practice room, complete with closed pit. Also used as stables.
3. Chapel to Calphas.
4. Library with comfortable chairs and a cozy fireplace.
5. Bathroom with hot and cold tubs. Primarily used by dwarves.
6. Dwarvish barracks. Sleeps 30 in bunk beds.
7. Dwarvish common room.
8. Splinder's bedroom.
9. Agar's bedroom.
10. Velendo's bedroom.
11. Tao's bedroom.
12. Women's bathroom. Connected to library by narrow hallway (21) for the convenience of female Defenders.
13. Mara's bedroom.
14. Galthia's bedroom.
15. Men's bathroom.
16. Malachite's bedroom.
17. Nolin's bedroom.
18. Small chapel to Moradin.
19. Small chapel to Galanna.
20. Small chapel to Aeos.
21. Narrow (3 ft. wide) hallway.

 

[Piratecat]

Tao runs through the tunnel. She can hear the ghoul’s footsteps in front of her, but no matter how quickly she runs she can’t seem to catch up. It knows all of the twists and turns in the passageway, and she’s running blindly as she tries to run it down. Her breath rasps in her lungs.

Then the cave wall in front of her lights up with a vibrant green light, and Tao realizes that the light is coming from her eyes. Tao feels her own mouth open, and the words that emerge are in the tongue of her Goddess. AWAKE, TAO. THE TEMPLE HAS BEEN DEFILED!

Wrenched from her dream, the divine agent sits straight up in bed. Other than the faint glow of magical weapons, the only illumination in the small room is the coruscating green light that still pours from Tao’s eyes. Her Goddess’s voice still rings in her ears, and Tao instinctively knows that the small shrine here in the Calphas’ Comfortable Castle has been either destroyed or defiled. “Thank you, Goddess,” she says reverently as she scrambles out of bed in a panic.

Meanwhile, Mara awakes from a sound sleep to the frantic mental neighing of her warhorse. “Luminor, what is it?” asks Mara as she sleepily sits up and swings her legs around. Her flannel nightdress with images of the sun bunches slightly as she gets to her feet.

“I’m in the stable, and there’s something horrible on the other side of the door! It’s coming closer, I think; it might smell me. Do I kick down the door and fight it?”

“No, not yet!” Mara looks at her armor, dismisses it as taking too long to don, and grabs her holy shield and her mace Lightbinder. “Stay put, and don’t leave the room unless you have to. I’m on my way now!” She wrenches open the door to the hallway, and is caught by surprise as solid darkness flows into her room. The light from her mace is extinguished, and Mara finds that she is completely sightless. Blindly, she turns right and begins to grope her way along the corridor, heading for the less crowded back passage to the main hall.

Across the hall, Tao has grabbed her swords and opened her door as well, only to find the same complete darkness enveloping her. “Wake up, everyone!” she yells at the top of her voice, shouting the phrase that for years the group has joked will be guaranteed to wake everyone up instantly. “Evil undead Torazite babes are stealing all the beer! We’re being attacked!” Then she is jostled by Mara in the darkness. “Come with me,” she says as she grasps the paladin’s shoulder. Tao closes her eyes, concentrates, and dimension doors the two of them into the small chapel of Galanna that Velendo has created off of the main hall.

With Tao’s shouting and the faint sound of Luminor’s whinnying, the other Defenders begin to wake. Galthia is the first to reach his feet, bounding up from the floor where he sleeps and scooping up the staff that lies on the overly soft bed next to him. He swivels his head and notices the thin line of darkness that creeps into the room from the crack under his door. That hardly matters, he thinks, as he remembers the year he spent blinded in order to improve his fighting reflexes. I wonder if these primes are properly trained to fight in darkness as well? Likely not. Relying on his ears and memory instead of his eyes, Galthia swings open the door and runs down the hall past his companions’ rooms. He can hear many noises: Velendo grumbling as he wakes, Nolin mouthing inanities, Karthos speaking to Malachite, and dozens of dwarves stirring. More worrisome, though, is the odor he smells coming from the main dining hall. Something smells acrid, like an alchemical experiment gone awry, and a faint hissing sound reaches his ears. He hears no other sounds from the room as he rounds the corner of the hallway.

In Malachite’s room, Karthos is speaking. “I sense no undead, Sir Malachite,” he says with a metallic ring, “but there is something horribly evil out there. I’m not sure what; fiendish, possibly. Let’s go kill it.” Malachite thanks him as he draws the sword from its scabbard and heads out his door without his shield or crystal armor. Darkness immediately surrounds him, and Malachite decides to test its limits.

He begins to swing Karthos in circles over his head. The sword immediately begins to radiate sunlight and heat, and the solid darkness lessens into flickering torchlight in the area immediately around the paladin. Satisfactory, he thinks, then he turns and heads into the darkness towards the great hall. As he does, Velendo and Agar open their bedroom doors and try to look out into the hall.

Still in his room, Nolin swears as he quickly grabs his instrument and cloak. I’m going to have to have words with Velendo, he thinks to himself. I thought this place was supposed to be impregnable. Ignoring the easy joke, he reaches inside of himself to the phoenix that shares his soul. “Rides the Sun, do you sense anything?” The knowledge of great evil fills Nolin, along with the certainty that its only feet away from him on the other side of the stone wall. Nolin briefly considers blasting open the wall with his blast harp to get there without delay, but decides to go around via the hallway instead.

Tao and Mara reappear in what should be Tao’s plant-filled chapel, but something is horribly wrong. The Altar Tree is completely dead and withered, seared away by something unknown. Puddles of gooey fluid cover the floor, and the air smells horrible. They still can’t see due to the darkness, but both Tao and Mara can feel the puddles of fluid eating into their slippers and the bottom of their feet. “Acid,” Tao says to herself, and is surprised to find that she can’t even hear her voice. Silence, she thinks, and they both step out into the darkness of the main hall.

By now Galthia has rounded the corner and entered the main hall himself, his staff of disruption poised to strike. Suddenly he can’t hear anything, and instincts kick in as he tries to dodge to the side. He’s not fast enough. Something strikes him like a juggernaut, something horrible and slimy that breaks over him with bone-crushing force and sweeps him up off the ground. The monk desperately twists as he looks for leverage to escape, but there is none. Blind and deaf, he feels dozens of mouths beginning to gnaw at his skin, even as searing pain from some sort of acid shoots down his body. No one hears his involuntary scream.

To be continued….

 

[Piratecat]

At this point, the arcane spellcasters have only had six hours of sleep, and it's about two or three hours before the divine spellcasters regain their spells. A wave of grimaces swept around the room when KidCthulhu said, "When was the last time we fought a battle without mass haste?" Tao's player asked, "You're out?" KidC replied, "Totally tapped. Not a high level spell in sight."

No one looked pleased.

Incidentally, this game starred our very own Lord Nightshade (Justin Tindel) as a guest player. Justin was visiting from Oregon, and played a wonderful alienist.

So Sagiro (who plays Velendo) thought it was really cool when I had designed the CCC map earlier that week, using nothing but Excel. When this encounter began, I pulled out the 4-page map I'd printed out to scale and taped together. "You bastard!" he said. "I was afraid you were going to do something like this." It's a good looking map at a large scale, and worked wonderfully when trying to figure out who was where.