A Fool's Errand - Chapter 5
A Fool’s Errand – Chapter 5
OOC Notes:
Exp is 2400 for 24th, 1830 for 25th.
Handy Combat Tip:
As characters go up in level, the game becomes increasingly complex. More magic items, more special abilities, more spell effects, more options, and most of all, more hit points. All of these things add up to combats that can take quite a while. There’s a number of good techniques for speeding things along and I’m not going to have a generic discussion here. But there is one tip I’ve not seen mentioned that we’ve used more lately, and I think it’s a good one.
Know when enough is enough. A lot of combats have the same general formula or tempo. Things begin hectic and confused. For us, usually it looks like the monsters have an advantage. Then, as the PC’s understand more what they’re dealing with, they get their game on, defenses are raised, and the damage starts flying. The odds tip in favor of the PC’s and their advantage escalates. Then there’s the cleanup phase – at some point the monsters no longer have much likelihood of causing serious harm, and it’s a matter of working through their last bit of hit points. If you’re in this phase, and you know you’re in this phase, you have to ask yourself: Why bother? As the DM, you should feel free to handwave the last bit of combat, and assume it’s a foregone conclusion. Sure there are story-point combats against major villains, and you want to play those out. But if it’s just another room’s worth of encounter, then what do you gain by working it out to the last hit point? Not much, and you can eat a lot of time doing it.
To illustrate my point, let’s use one of this week’s combats. The party was attacked by a group of four hellwasp swarms. Personally, swarms scare the beejezus out of me. Partly because they’re hard to deal with, and partly because I just don’t understand them (not very familiar with those rules). So at the start, there’s the “scream-n-panic” phase of things. We’re getting a sense of their special attacks, we’re figuring out their resistances (ok fire is resisted partially, cold is not, etc.) and we’re learning about their DR (bludgeoning full, slash and pierce do half damage.) This is the first 20% of the overall combat time roughly. We react to what we learn – use different elemental spells, switch to blunt weapons, Kayleigh casts a spell to convert arrows to bludgeoning damage, etc.
This is another 20% of combat time. Then we start doing some more serious damage. Some swarms start dying, all of them are damaged. This is another 40% roughly. So at this point, two out of four swarms are dead (i.e. dispersed). The other two are damaged. The party is up to speed, and not taking a lot of damage from the swarm attacks. And Wizardru says “Ok, that’s good. We’ll just hand wave the rest.” And we moved on. Sure we could have finished off the last two by rolling dice. We’d have taken a tiny bit more damage (which would have been healed anyway) but it would have eaten up more of the evening with little real gain.
Thus ends this week’s high level tip.
Loot:
Gems 15x1000gp
Stand 1000gp
Throne 5000gp
Book on apotheosis
Necromantic book that makes people turn into undead
Vacuous grimoire
Scroll of miracle, cure moderate wounds, speak w/ dead, spell immunity
Scroll of mind blank x2
Tome of understanding +2
This Week’s Adventure:
Slowly our minds began to get a grip on the situation over the babbling and howling of the prophets. I stared at the hourglass above (the most troubling thing here I think in retrospect) and figured we had around half an hour so we could at least try to investigate a little.
“Investigation” in this case was akin to a blind man investigating a room by walking around hoping to stumble into something. Scorch tried to speak to one prophet, who turned out to be a doppelganger shifted shape several times, often with some kind of mortal wound. Bolo recognized one of the prophets – Mad Glidia, a strange witch of the northern steppes who vanished forty years ago. It was starting to look as though someone had collected the greatest prophets of the ages here. Most of them had been rendered blind and those that could still see were usually mute.
The portals themselves were something one would typically construct to channel divinatory energies, and let those passing through be better prepared to meet the fate the diviner has foreseen.
One of the other prophets was a satyr who read the dregs of ale for his foretellings. Bolo borrowed some elven wine from Aethramyr and poured it in the satyr’s mug. The satyr took out one of his own horns (no longer in his head) and stabbed his own arm with it, then began scrawling on the floor in blood. He drew some kind of elephant, standing on something. A log? Then flames all around.
Dravot attempted to heal the insanity of one lady prophet, but she was no better for it. She screamed “Acererack’s bane is true death!”
I was half expecting to hear “The bargain must be kept!” next.
We received various other semi-coherent tidbits.
“Beware the raven’s maw. And for that matter, also its caw.”
“Acererack. He always watches. He always watches. Even now…”
“Stones of darkness be destroyed but stones of crimson try to avoid.” This prompted us to destroy the black globe recovered from the oozes. The thing shattered and released a wave of negative energy in the process that turns out to be rather inconvenient. [Negative levels all round.]
Our time was down to about ten minutes left. I drank the tea of a minotaur prophet (from his horn) and offered him the horn to read. He said “Up is down, left is right. In that chamber, mundane is might.”
I shrugged, and walked through the minotaur’s portal. It was my night for impulsiveness it seemed.
There was a rush of cold, and a flash in my mind. I felt the image of the hourglass imprint on me. I felt my body on fire for a moment. Then I was back in the circular room. I shrugged, and waited for the others. It didn’t take long before they returned as well, each with a similar experience.
[OOC: After a d20 roll, I was told for the next 24 hours I would have a +4 insight bonus to AC against AOO’s. I replied “Wow. That’s about as useful as a feat from a splatbook.” Other party members received different effects except Dravot who was the only one unlucky enough to get a negative effect.]
Once we were all back in the room, we continued checking doors. The last door opened on another passageway, and lacking other choices we explored it. The long hallway came to an area with 7 sets of statues. One was warlords, another timid halflings, then hideous demons, frail wizards, and so on. Some of them were labeled - one halfing was marked “Dydd the Coward”, while one paladin was marked “Maleva, Demonstalker.” The paladins were in the service of Pelor, but under investigation by Valanthe, the plaster fell away and symbols of Therizdun were revealed.
Valanthe was sure there was some sort of trap on the statues but every time she thought it was disarmed, it would return. This went on for a while until Scorch uncovered a fairly mundane enchantment designed to mislead a rogue in this way. Frankly such a mundane deception was the last thing anyone expected here.
Beyond the double doors the statues guarded, the corridor went left and right. One door had a relief of a face with deep holes at the mouth and eyes, as if to pour something out. The other door was blank.
Behind the door with the face was a room. There was a bone throne with gold inlay. On its seat was a stand with an opalescent white globe. On each side stood two large shambling fleshy creatures – surely flesh golems. Each carried a black globe in its hands.
Valanthe was disarming the
Glyphs of warding on the floor when the golems started moving. I was covering them and fired one arrow at each, hoping to slow them down. But that’s not the result I got.
The golems tore apart easily. The flesh was a mere shell of skin stitched together. This had two results. First, the black globes fell to the floor and broke, releasing a thin black grease all over the floor. Second, the hellwasps that were animating the shells poured out. And they were angry.
I dropped a fireball in the room and Valanthe moved out and closed the door. Of course now the purpose of the holes in the door was very clear, and I felt silly to have ignored my first impulse to block them up. At least the hallway was better than being on the grease.
The swarms poured all over us. Blunt weapons seemed to have the most effect and we each took steps to start using the appropriate weapons while spells started wearing down the swarms. Swarms are problematic to deal with but we were able to get our feet under us and start wearing them down. Fortunately their stings were only moderate wounds and we could withstand them. It took us some time but we got the situation under control, dispersed the swarms and repaired the damage.
The milky white globe is not magical and about a foot across. The stand is actually of some worth, and the bone throne as well. (Bolo amuses himself by cramming it into his portable hole, determined to take it with us.) And there were some inlaid gems that Valanthe took great interest in.
While I was holding the milky globe, there was just something odd about it. It was an odd weight and off balance. I was sure it was hollow and there was something inside.
So I dropped it. It was, after all, my night for impulsiveness.
[OOC: Cut to slow motion shots of Scorch and Valanthe yelling “Nnnnoooooooo!” Valanthe (the player) had gone upstairs during the investigation phase taking fresh cookies out of the oven. She had just come back down as I was dropping the globe. This conversation occurred.
Kayleigh: I drop the globe.
Scorch: EEEEEK! I dim door out!
Valanthe: I catch it.
Kayleigh: (pouting) You can’t catch it. You’re busy with the gems.
Valanthe: (eyes lighting up) There’s gems??
My point was made.
]
The ball hit the floor and broke into a few pieces, but nothing else happened. Inside was the crossguard part of a sword with two skulls on it. It looked as if an adamantine longsword of some power had been broken into several pieces. This piece had the crossguard and part of the blade. It still retained a powerful magic aura, but seemed to be neither good nor evil. On the blade were runes of two letters. “TR”
Scorch and I looked at each other nodding “True Death.” Well at least that was making sense now.
The other door lead to a well stocked library. Niches in all of the stone walls went from floor to ceiling, filled with old texts and scrolls. A solid stone table and stools squatted in the center of the room and four pillars supported the ceiling. A shrouded librarian shuffled around the room, bent and clearly lame. And lurking on the ceiling, out of view to all but the most careful inspection, was some kind of fleshy golem with spidery legs and pincers.
I covered it while Valanthe entered, determined to fire as soon as it twitched.
It twitched.
The glitter burst all around it, and it was now clearly visible. It didn’t move from the ceiling; it could easily reach to the floor. It snatched up Aethramyr even as we were attacking from all sides. I’m not sure if it was going to eat him, or even why it would want to, but it didn’t survive long enough to try it.
When I looked over, I saw the librarian was destroyed also. I looked at Dravot, who just shrugged.
It took the better part of an hour to search the library thoroughly but the results were worth it. One tattered scrap of paper said the following:
The Rhyme of Shards:
The shards of True Death are key,
Scattered about on levels three.
Encased in a crystal prison without a door,
But only the first, there are five more.
I hold the next shard of True Death,
But beware my fiery breath.
This shard is as safe as can be,
Hidden behind the reverse of a party.
Stuck fast is this shard,
Removing it is torturously hard.
Beyond the constant crimson drops,
Cloaked in darkness this shard sits.
Lest all hope fades,
Guarded by gold,
Solve the riddle of the swords,
The last shard behold.
