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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 6662571" data-attributes="member: 508">ADVENTURE 99: AN EYE FOR AN EYE, PART ONEPC Roster:  Cal Trop, human cleric of Kord             Chalkan, half-elf ranger/cleric of Corellon Larethian/sorcerer/arcane archer             Delphyne Babelberi, human witch (wizard)/arch-witch             Feron Dru, half-elf druid             Galrich Slayer, half-orc barbarian             Rale Bodkin, human rogue             Telgrane, half-fire elemental human conjurer/archmage             Thunderwolf, human fighterNPC Roster: Aerik Battershield, dwarven fighter/dwarven defender             Desdemona Honeytongue, human wizard             Old Clem, human commoner/expert (fisherman)             Vic, human commoner/expert (fisherman)It was the extradimensional nature of their bedrooms which killed them.The Greyhawk City Adventurers Guild Headquarters was built in the shape of a giant rectangle.  The ground floor held the administrative wing: Guildmaster Farthingale's office and living quarters, as well as the front office where records were kept and the bunkrooms where the Guild pages lived when not on duty.  The ground floor also held the various conference rooms, the kitchen, the small library, and the combat training grounds.  In addition, there were eight wide sets of stairs, each leading up to the individual living areas of the eight Wings whose members comprised the actual adventuring part of the Guild.The stairs leading up from the ground floor each connected to that Wing's common living area, which consisted of a separate kitchen and dining area besides the standard living room.  A shorter set of stairs from the living room led to the upper level, each housing the bathrooms and the individual adventurers' bedrooms.  This upper hallway looked rather unusual, for it consisted of a series of ten doors along the wall, set side by side.  As such, someone seeing them for the first time would be excused for assuming they were merely narrow closets or something similar.  But despite the closeness of the doors to each other, the eight central doors each led into an adventurer's bedroom, a square room with walls 25 feet to a side and 15 feet tall.  (The two doors on the ends of each hall were the bathrooms and were not extradimensional at all.)Each adventurer was allowed complete autonomy over the contents of his or her bedroom.  They were furnished with the basics, a bed and dresser; anything beyond that was up to the individual.  Some, like Thunderwolf, took advantage of the extra room to set up archery targets so they could hone their combat skills; some, like Cal, built their own interior walls inside their extradimensional bedroom and thus furnished themselves with a small suite, complete with hidden areas for treasure storage.  But each had outfitted their bedroom to their own tastes and they were comfortable areas, safe harbors against the dangerous world outside.On the night in question, it appeared to be no different than any other night for the members of Wing Three; they had not been actively involved in any adventures and in fact were more or less waiting (some more patiently than others) for Brother Altamaic to complete his studies on how best to alter the plane shift spell to seek out the elusive Elemental Water Halo without even knowing upon which particular plane it currently resided.  (All the Wing Three adventurers had been able to determine thus far was that it was not, as might have been expected, on the Elemental Plane of Water.)  Cal had spent the day moving much of his non-adventuring gear over to his manor house across town, but had decided to crash for the night in his Guild bedroom.As the night progressed, each of the Guild members eventually toddled off to their respective bedrooms and went to sleep.  The Guild Headquarters became a quiet place, securely locked up for the night.  The loudest sound in the general area was Old Clem's snoring, but he was in his favorite haystack out in the stables off to the side of the Guild Headquarters building, so his raucous snores didn't bother anybody but the animals housed there - and they had long been accustomed to the sound, to the extent that it was actually soothing to some.It was about two in the morning when tragedy struck.Thunderwolf was the first one awakened, but merely by seconds and only because his room was the easternmost and as such the doorway connecting his own extradimensional space to the rest of the Guild Headquarters was the first to be sundered.  With a loud CRACK! that shook the young fighter from his slumber, his bedroom was suddenly plunged into normal space.  As it was now larger than allocated by the space around it, Thunderwolf's sleep-befuddled senses tried to make sense of the wall to the women's bathroom now occupying the middle of his bedroom.He didn't have long to try to figure out the dilemma, however.  Mere seconds after his bedroom stopped being extradimensional, Rale's - the next bedroom to the left - followed suit.  As this meant a 25-foot-by-25-foot room was now occupying the same space as the similarly-sized room next door, the two rooms only skewed 5 feet from each other, much of the contents of the two rooms were suddenly juxtaposed and merged into each other.  Thunderwolf's dresser was partially pinned inside the steps leading up to Rale and Dez's sleeping platform, which they had built over the extensive closets they had designed to hold the many pieces of wardrobe needed for Dez's acting pursuits.  Fortunately for the two of them, the fact that the upper half of Thunderwolf's bedroom was most empty meant they were able to live for a brief scant seconds longer than the fighter, who found his body suddenly and inexplicably split in twain by a rather comfortable-looking chair from Rale's bedroom.Rale and Dez weren't able to put their few extra seconds to any practical use, however.  The next bedroom in line suddenly manifested into normal space along with the first two, and both the rogue and his live-in wizard cohort were merged with one of the exterior walls of Feron's room as it materialized into place around - and through - them.Down the line it went, with each bedroom suddenly manifesting into place on the material plane and merging with the overlapping contents of the rooms preceding them in the process.  Delphyne's broom of flying, leaning innocuously against the wall in the witch's bedroom, was not so innocuous when it was suddenly piercing Feron's skull.  Seconds later, the fact that Cal's bed in his bedroom and Delphyne's bed in hers were in roughly the same location once the extradimensional nature of the rooms was overcome meant the two merged into a mass of writhing flesh, a tangled body of twisting limbs that struggled briefly then lay still in death.  Chalkan, Galrich, and Aerik awoke, screaming, to find their bodies suddenly pierced by walls.Only Telgrane survived the assault, and that was only by the purest luck.  His bedroom was the westernmost in the line, and as luck would have it his bed was situated against the western wall.  Thus, when the door frame was sundered and his bedroom was shunted back into the material plane, the twenty easternmost feet of his bedroom merged with the rooms to the east of him; the five-foot-wide section in which he had lain sleeping now jutted out the west side of the Headquarters building.  Sitting upright in bed, Telgrane turned his head and saw a solid wall - the outer wall of what was Galrich and Aerik's bedroom - mere inches from his head.But it was the scream of his familiar that brought him fully to his senses.  A fire elemental, Infernia needed no sleep, but she was well aware that her half-human master still required hours of unconsciousness in order to be sufficiently rested to be able to prepare any spells in the morning to replenish those he had cast the day before.  Infernia chose to spend those hours in vigilance over her master's form; Telgrane had built a fire pit of sorts for her to sit in, so she need not concentrate on keeping her blazing body from setting the rest of the room on fire.Awakening from the sound of the room shifting and merging with the solid objects in the other rooms nearby, Telgrane sat up in his bed in time to see half of his beloved familiar fall over into a formless pile of flames, her humanoid body split in two by the wall that had manifested straight down her middle mere seconds before.And now, the eight bedrooms of the Wing Three living areas having merged and warped together, Telgrane could hear the groaning of the roof above as it collapsed, its support structures having been sundered.  His chunk of room started collapsing as well, the combined weight of eight overlapping bedrooms more than the floor had been built to withstand.  A chunk of ceiling fell down upon the bed by him, crushing his right foot and shattering the bones of several toes in the process.  Roaring in pain and confusion, Telgrane struggled to pull himself from his bedsheets and to whatever safety he could find.But now there was a hissing sound approaching, as if a vast quantity of liquid were being poured over the crumbling remains of the shattered Adventurers Guild Headquarters.  The archmage picked up an acrid smell over the smoke and flames of the now-burning wall separating his chunk of bedroom from the rest of the building and realized two things at once: first, he had no idea what was going on; second, he had a wish spell currently prepared in his spell inventory.Ignoring the pain in his right foot and his concerns for his slain familiar, Telgrane spoke the words to the wish spell.  Realizing that rewinding time was a dangerous business and the farther back one went the greater the possible repercussions, he opted to keep it simple: "I wish I had waken up five minutes ago with full knowledge of what was about to happen."The archmage - and he alone - was able to actually see time stop and then reverse direction at an enhanced speed.  The chunk of ceiling leapt off his bed and righted itself above him, as the flames dripped down the wall and formed a pool on the floor, which then righted itself and took on the form of Infernia's left half - which then merged back into her right half as the wall that had pierced her vanished.  The archmage lay back down, head on pillow, and fell back asleep, as to the east, one by one, the extradimensional bedrooms of the other members of Wing Three vanished from the material plane, and the Guild Headquarters building stitched itself back together. - - -Telgrane awoke with a start, sitting upright in his bed, his face a mask of fright.  At the foot of his bed, in her fire pit, Infernia noticed it right away.  "Master!  What is wrong?" she asked."Get everyone up!" Telgrane ordered her, as he leapt out of bed and grabbed up his spellbooks.  "Quickly!  Have them grab up their gear and meet me in the living room!"  Her master's tone brooked no arguments; Infernia ran to the door and started pounding on the next door in line.  A cautious-looking Aerik answered, axe in hand; he had been fast asleep moments before but still had the presence of mind to recall that the last time he'd been awakened in the middle of the night by a pounding on the door it had been an assassination attempt by Vandergrotten's viper familiar and its allies.Telgrane passed by Infernia and pounded on each of the doors in turn as he made his way to the stairs.  "We've only got minutes!" he bellowed.  "Grab up your gear and get out here -- pronto!""What's going on?" grumbled Rale, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.  "Have a bad dream?""We've got minutes before this whole place gets torn apart!" Telgrane replied, racing down the stairs.The group assembled behind him.  "What's the danger?" asked Feron.  She had no idea what had gotten the archmage so worried, but she was taking him at his word.  Telgrane quickly explained what had happened, and how he had rewound time to give them a chance to escape."So, is it an attack?  An earthquake?  What?" Thunderwolf wanted to know."I'm not sure," admitted Telgrane."So what's our plan of attack?" asked Galrich, gripping his vorpal greataxe."We ride it out inside the Door That Doesn't Belong," responded Telgrane, unrolling the Door and slapping it up on the southern, outside wall of the Wing Three living room, directly across from the bedrooms to the north."That's the plan?" demanded Cal.  "We escape the collapse of our extradimensional bedrooms by climbing into another extradimensional space?"We'll be on the outer edge of the building," Telgrane reasoned.  "The damage seemed to all come from the center of the building.  We should be safe."  With that, he opened the Door and stepped inside.  "You coming?""I am," replied Delphyne, stepping inside behind Infernia.  The others all followed suit - all but Cal, who started casting a spell upon himself."What are you doing?" asked Telgrane.  "We've probably only got seconds left!""I'll be fine," replied Cal, becoming insubstantial, his ethereal jaunt spell having allowed him to step across into the Ethereal Plane while still keeping an eye on the events of the material plane.  Without a further word, Telgrane closed the Door That Doesn't Belong from the inside.Cal got quite a show.  There was a mighty crashing noise, as if half of a mountain had suddenly collapsed upon the Headquarters building.  This was followed, almost immediately, by the sounds of wooden beams snapping, starting at the eastern side of the Headquarters building and making its way westward.  Within seconds, a metallic-looking wing shaped like that of a bat came slicing through the wall.  It cut through the doorways of the bedrooms, causing each of the dimensional spaces to collapse back into the material plane as it made its way west.  Then, having smashed through the exterior wall of the building, the ceiling started collapsing inwards.  Cal could see a tangled mess of overlapping walls breaking through a floor that could no longer support all of the extra weight.  He mouthed a silent prayer of thanks to Kord that he and his companions hadn't been caught up in that mess.The area became better lit once the ceiling had collapsed completely into the remains of the building.  In the moonlight of the now-open space, Cal saw a distinctive, draconic shape execute a full turn and race back the way it had come.  It followed a similar path to its original one, only this time it flew above the remains of the shattered building instead of flying through it.  It released a spray of acid as it flew, covering the length of the Guild Headquarters building on its final pass.  And then it flew off, apparently not wanting to deal with anyone who could have survived such a sudden attack.Once Cal was certain the dragon wasn't going to return, he remanifested fully into the material plane and knocked upon the Door That Doesn't Belong.  Telgrane had been correct; the Door was unharmed in its present position.  The archmage opened the door and stepped outside."By the Goddess!" exclaimed Delphyne behind him, upon seeing the remains of their living area."Careful," suggested Cal as he helped the others out and into the remains of their living room.  "I don't trust this floor to support our weight.  I recommend we fly out of here as carefully as possible.  Let's reconvene over by the stables.""Fang!" yelled Galrich, suddenly remembering his dire wolf.  He jumped upon his drow floatdisk and flew over to the stables, Aerik right behind him.  Several of the others followed suit.Delphyne remained, looking aghast at the destruction.  She had grabbed up her robes of the arch-witch and her spellbooks upon being awakened, and strapped on her bracer of wands which held her combat wands, but in her haste she had left behind her broom of flying, her crystal ball...it was all too much to take in at once.  Rale picked her up in his arms and activated his winged boots, flying her down to the stables, earning himself a jealous look from Dez as he did so.Down at the stables, the group was pleased to see that Old Clem had survived the attack unharmed, as had their various animal companions.  A crowd of neighbors had come over to check out the commotion, including a group of the city guard.  Telgrane and Infernia had flown around the building on his carpet of flying to assess the damage; it looked as if the dragon had dropped a good-sized boulder onto the eastern end of the building, then flown through it from that entrance point and smashed its way down the center of the building, just above the Great Hall that ran from the administrative area at the east to the combat arena at the west.  None of the eight Wings had made it through unscathed, and as for those on the ground level...it didn't look good, for most of the upper levels had collapsed onto the ground floor, crushing everything below it.  Guildmaster Farthingale, all of the Guild pages - it was unlikely any had survived the initial devastation, let alone the spray of acid that followed it up."Uncle Clem!  Is my Uncle Clem alive?" asked a frantic voice.  It belonged to a young man with brown, shoulder-length hair.  Alighting from his carpet, Telgrane looked over at the young man and recognized him at once as Vic, the fisherman who had married Old Clem's grandniece, Janella.  Old Clem staggered out from the stables and recognized the man from his old fishing village.  "Vic?" he said.  "What are you doing here?""I have a message for you," Vic replied.  His eyes then seemed to glaze over, and he said, in a voice several octaves lower than normal, "Old Clem, slayer of Zarzabond, you have taken from me a valued family member.  I trust I have managed to do the same to you, by destroying the nest of your extended family members, after having already razed the village of your birth and those who lived there.  But one member of your true family line still yet lives: your grandniece, Janella.  I have her in my lair.  And while it's too late to save your village and the lives of all those within it, perhaps you can still manage to save Janella, the last living member of your line."With that, Vic's eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed to the ground in a faint.  As he fell, Telgrane's magically-enhanced eyes saw the aura emanating from the amulet the fisherman wore around his neck, one that spoke of mind domination effects.The heroes gathered around Vic and shook him awake.  "Janella!" he cried.  "We've got to save Janella!""Tell us what you know," demanded Cal.  "Quickly, for time is of the essence!"Vic swallowed his panic and began his story.  "It started about a week ago," he said.  "This black dragon flew into our village and demanded to know who had slain his grandson, Zarzabond.  A few of us recognized the name and somebody admitted it was Old Clem who had slain the dragon, along with his adventuring assistants.  The dragon - he said his name was Xherxabundix - next demanded to know whether any of Old Clem's kin was about, and the villagers, well, they gave up Janella and me.  The dragon grabbed us both up and then destroyed the village and everybody in it.  Then it flew us away to his hidden lair in the cliffs to the north of the village."He put this amulet on me, and through it he could not only see what I saw and hear what I heard, but also make me do whatever he wanted.  While he kept Janella as a hostage, he sent me to go find out Old Clem's whereabouts.  We knew from Old Clem's letters that he worked out of Greyhawk City, so that's where I went.  Once here, I found the Adventurers Guild and spotted Old Clem and his minions entering the building, so I knew that was where he lived.  Xherxabundix had me pretend to apply to the Guild, just so I - and he - could get a good look at the layout.  And then, well, I guess you know the rest."Old Clem had paled during Vic's account.  Telgrane reached over and pulled the amulet from around Vic's neck; it seemed to have been drained of its power, but then the dragon no longer really had any use for it, for it had done its job."We gotta go back and save Janella!" Old Clem exclaimed, in his eagerness sounding as if he were indeed the great adventurer he had bragged to his fishing villager that he had become.Chalkan laid a hand on the elderly fisherman's shoulder.  "We will," he promised.  "We'll get her back.""I'm coming with you," announced Vic.  "She's my wife.""And I'm comin' too," said Old Clem.  When Chalkan looked as if to argue, Old Clem replied, "That damned dragon's gonna be expectin' me to show!  And Janella's, she's, she's the only living kin I got left in this world!"  Despite his nearly seventy summers, the elderly fisherman had tears dripping down his face as if he were a small child demanding his parents allow him to stay up late."We'll all go," promised Chalkan.  "And we'll rescue Janella.  I swear we will."Old Clem just nodded his head in gratitude and looked around at the devastation of the Guild Headquarters.  They were going to go up against a creature who could do all of that in a matter of mere minutes.... - - - That's as far as we got in this adventure, but boy, did it get my players' attention!Knowing that my players all knew that this was adventure #99 in a campaign that was scheduled to end with adventure #100, I allowed them to all believe that this adventure would be the search for the Elemental Water Halo.  The spellcasters thus made all of their choices accordingly, and then I mentioned that the adventure would start by them all going to bed.  I passed out "bedrooms" to each player: a five-square-by-five-square grid with a doorway in the center of one wall, labeled with the adventurer's name at the top, and I asked each player to quickly sketch out the contents of their bedroom.  That was sufficiently different than anything else I'd ever done to get them all wondering what was going on.Once everyone was finished, I laid them all out side by side and had them put their PC miniatures in their appropriate beds.  And then, one by one, I materialized them back onto the material plane, explaining how each died a horrible death when walls and furniture suddenly manifested into their bodies.As for Telgrane getting lucky and surviving, thus preventing a TPK in their sleep and finishing the campaign on a sour note?  That was easy: I cheated.  All it took was for me to mention in the car on the way to the game that I'd be having the players draw up the PCs' bedrooms, and for reasons which would become obvious later it was essential that Telgrane's bed be along the western wall.  (I knew that Telgrane's was the westernmost room and also that he'd likely have a wish spell readied, so really, this was all just a way for me to kill off just about the entire party knowing full well that they'd be fine in a moment.  And, as is always the case when I "force" someone to cast an XP-draining spell for plot purposes, I promised Logan that Telgrane's casting of the wish spell would not drop him below the XP needed to remain a 20th-level PC.)Once the Headquarters building had been destroyed (ironically, I had to first design the whole place just so I could destroy it, but the layout allowed me to come up with "Fur, Feathers and a Fisherman" as well), I made each player go through his or her PC folder, specifically their lists of equipment, and we jointly decided which items were easily reachable and likely to have been grabbed up - and which would have been left behind in the bedroom.  As Logan sits to my left, we started with him, then moved on to Dan.  As we were going through Dan's PCs' gear, Vicki started gasping in shock, looking ahead as to what was coming up when it got to be her turn.  Feron was fine, as she has an extradimensional haversack which carries just about all of her gear.  But Delphyne lost her crystal ball and her broom of flying, two items she heavily identifies with her arch-witch PC.  Galrich lost the vast majority of his backup weapons, but as long as he still had his vorpal greataxe he was fine.  Thunderwolf was pleased that he keeps all of his spare gold coins in an extradimensional haversack of his own, and that he had grabbed it up as part of his standard combat gear; he's about the only one (besides Cal) who has any amount of money at hand.So now the players have been put on notice: they'll be up against a CR 22 great wyrm black dragon (I have the appropriate D&D Miniature) the next time we play.  Dan thought this whole setup was fantastic, realizing that losing their headquarters one adventure before we folded up the campaign was no big loss.  Vicki's less pleased with the situation, and is seriously wondering if they have time to purchase a replacement broom of flying before they go assaulting Xherxabundix's lair.We're scheduled to finish this adventure on 25 Jul 15.  We'll see how everything goes!</blockquote>

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