seasong's Light Against The Dark (FEB 06)

[seasong]

Greppa's stats will have to wait (I don't have the character sheet handy, need to fix that ), but Athan & Merideth are completed in the Rogues Gallery. I'm devoting one post to each one, with every level version in the same post.

A few things about Athan: Yeah, he's twinked out. This is actually scaled back from when Great Cleave was available for 1 point. I viciously ripped that from his bosom as soon as I saw it. However, for the rest of it, it works out okay. It will work even better when I take his spears away.

Ah, did I just say that? Aheh heh. Ignore that.

A few things about Merideth: Trying to be two mages at once is difficult. She's planning to learn the heck out of new spells at 4th level, but for now she's pretty limited.

As a side note, I'm collecting orc words in a single file, which I'll be making available on the website. I will still include translations, of course, but I thought a short dictionary might be interesting. Chock full of etymological goodies, too, like where the word ankheg comes from, and why calling someone an insect in orc is particularly insulting.

 

[seasong]

The Broken Temple
wherein our heroes actually enter it.

By the time Greppa and Merideth returned, Athan was resting against the rocks again, looking bored save for the slightly swollen bite marks and massive spider corpses lying on the ground. Merideth laid healing hands on him, despite his protestations of "it's just a scratch, really".

And Greppa had a new trick. One at a time, he cast earth's strength and earth's skin on each of them. As he summoned the earth spirit into each of them, their skin darkened to rich sienna tones, their eyes turned to yellow agates, and heat flowed through their limbs. All three sighed - with heated blood and hardened skin, they felt invincible.

Torches were lit, and they walked into the cave.

-----

The floor gently sloped beneath the tree, and resembled wide, naturally cut stone steps. Iron brackets on the walls held cracked and broken glass spheres. This was no natural cave.

They penetrated perhaps twenty feet in, and what looked like eight feet down, when the tunnel opened up into a larger cavern, somewhere inside the cliff behind the tree. All three peered into the darkness beyond the torchlight, trying to penetrate the shadows, but they saw nothing.

Then Greppa shrugged, drew a circle in the air, and incanted, "uil allas ger mar". Daylight, true sunlight, streamed from the stalactite-filled ceiling and filled much of the cavern.

Athan and Merideth were too shocked to notice the 12 foot long brown-furred spider clinging to the far left wall, now revealed by the light. When the light filled the cave, it hissed and shot webbing from its abdomen at the most heroic looking of the three, Athan.

Then, everything opened up at once. A swarm of fist-sized spiders dropped from the ceiling, Greppa began running towards a large pool of water visible in the center of the cave, and Merideth cooly pushed her burning torch into Athan's chest, burning away the webbing and killing some half dozen spiders that had dropped on him.

Not that Athan minded. Earth's skin was more effective than hoped for, and neither the spider bites nor the flames hurt at all. The big spider immediately fled, and the trio set to work smashing the littler ones with spear, foot and spell.

Greppa, weakened by the casting of daylight, asked to rest for a bit, and so they sat in the sun for about half an hour, watching the hole at the back of the cave carefully. While they were waiting, Greppa noticed something else.

Where the daylight was directly hitting the broken globes, the glass was growing back. It was unsettling to watch, until one finished healing, and began to cast its own daylight. Then everyone started to smile.

"We can restore this temple!" Merideth was excited. Even Athan didn't manage to keep back a grin.

So they rested, went back and let Greppa cast daylight on the entrance tunnel, and then they prepared to go through the hole at the back.

Greppa cast daylight through the hole, and they charged in, spotting spiders everywhere, including the 12 foot brown one and... a massive, 15 foot black one that looked like the hell hunter, only bigger, and without the red rune on its back.

As they ran in, it hissed something foul sounding, and Greppa's daylight winked out. In the pitch black of the deeper caves, the sounds of scurrying could be heard.

 

[Caliber]

In the pitch black of the deeper caves, the sounds of scurrying could be heard.

Very spooky description of the spiders and the darkness. Nice cliff-hanger too. Spiders that can cast Darkness are nasty beasties.

I have a question about Greppa's spells.

Earth's Strength is obviously (well, to me) Bull's Strength right?

What is Earth's Skin? Endurance? Bark Skin? Mage Armor?

 

[incognito]

Uh-oh!

Classic player over confidence. Spelled up and thinking they were "da-man" G, M, and A, are about to achive a 1st class ass-whuppin' I'll bet...

O, O, O - question about spell casting fatigue. does a 1 always fail on this check?

I like this story hour, I do. I wish my players didn't HAVE to have a 18 INT or WIS as spell casters...

 

[seasong]

I'll be answering mechanical questions about the characters' abilities in the rogues' gallery thread, to keep non-narrative stuff to a minimum. I've answered the above questions there.

As for the 1st-class whuppin', we'll see.

 

[seasong]

The Broken Temple

Earth's skin was the only thing that saved them. The smallest spiders had difficulties biting through their hardened flesh, and even the larger spiders had problems finding purchase for their fangs. Still, the situation was bad.

Greppa could feel almost all of his strength draining from him as the twelve foot mountain spider near-paralyzed him with its bite... and he was suddenly grateful for the small extra boost of earth's strength that kept him standing upright.

Infernal webbing filled the room, making movement or tactics of any sort almost imopssible. And regardless of how difficult the spiders found biting, they were swarming over the heroes and continuing to try.

Finally, Greppa managed to cast daylight again, and the heroes got a good look. Each of them was covered in brown and grey-furred spiders that would have been harmless enough if they were not organized by the hell hunter. Greppa was pinned by a massive brown-and-black spider that easily weighed eight times what he did. Merideth was completely trapped in the webbing, and struggling only seemed to make it worse.

And then, the heroes finally had a stroke of luck. Although fire did not burn the webbing... sunlight did. The trio took some delicate, first degree burns from the brief flames, but the spiders took it far, far worse, being unprotected by the earth's skin. Almost all of the smaller spiders died, screaming, burning and running. The larger ones (and the large on standing on Greppa) squealed, but continued to fight.

Until Athan, enraged, hurled his spear the distance between himself and Greppa, and completely buried it in the big one's torso... by way of its head. The spider lurched off and expired quietly.

Greppa, freed again, crafted horrible revenge on the hell hunter in the form of a summoned fire elemental, which streaked onto the hell hunter's skin and began gleefully using up the essence Greppa had given it to burn, burn, burn.

The hell hunter finally braved the direct daylight, and attacked Greppa. Perhaps it should have gone after Athan, but it still harbored some idea that spell casters were worse to let live.

Two spears, an inflict moderate wounds and another fire elemental, and it finally died. Greppa could barely stand, and Merideth was badly injured as well, but no more spiders were coming for the moment, having retreated further back into the temple area.

The room through the hole was even larger than the first, and at the edge of the light the heroes could see pillars, and the stone-paved beginning of the temple itself. On either side of the hole were a pair of statues of warrior-servants to Allas.

The heroes retreated to the cavern with the pool of water, and Greppa used his last reserves to fill the room with sunlight. They rested there, and fervently hoped that the big hell hunter was the last.

Well, except perhaps for Athan. He was looking forward to it.

 

[seasong]

That's probably going to be my last update until after Hallmark Day. Work is expected to be really busy today and tomorrow, and there's an office party I have to attend this evening... and then I'm visiting my parents for the weekend + holiday. But I'll be chained back to the desk job after that, starting Thursday the 26th, so I should be able to start updating again at that point.

On the plus side, I'm going to have four days of enforced family time to hide in my room and develop stuff for my various campaigns. Well, that and practice martial arts with my little brother .

(To my Mom, who I recently learned was reading this Story Hour: I'm joking above. It's a joke. I'm planning to beat tar out of the little snot.)

Seriously... It's going to be good to be "home" .

 

[Caliber]

Cool battle. Hope you have a happy Christmas!

I noticed you said the Earth's Skin protected the party from the flames ... does that mean DR in your game is universal? (ie, DR counts not only as reduction from physical harm, but also from energy attacks?)

 

[seasong]

Answered in the PC thread.

 

[Indigo Veil]

Hey, Thomas. ^_^ So I made it safely to New York, and I hope you have a good trip and visit home for your holiday. Tell your sister and mom that I said hi. ^_^

About the story hour: this might seem like a question with an obvious answer (or perhaps you've already given an answer for this), but why do our heroes face -spiders- so consistently? It's like, everywhere they turn, spiders are waiting for them. Is that ethereal spider god thing the nemesis of Allas, or something?

Happy holidays, everyone!