Wizardru's Story Hour (updated 11/21)
- Thread starter Zad
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Zad
First Post
There are plenty of times the story (being, as it is, a story) doesn't really capture the fun or the mood of the night. Shame too since we have such a great time. The staring contest fell right out because of that kind of limitation. I am somewhat saddened that I can't quite convey these kinds of things. I think Piratecat does, but that is in part due to having a generally lighter tone throughout the course of his story hour, and a third person perspective.
C'est la vie.
It does seem odd though that in this very dangerous place, for some reason we seem to be very prone to high risk behaviors. Whacky, but whatchagonnado.
C'est la vie.
It does seem odd though that in this very dangerous place, for some reason we seem to be very prone to high risk behaviors. Whacky, but whatchagonnado.
LordVyreth
First Post
Heh, I'm glad our mutual concerns about this adventure was waaay off. 
Though Dru gave me a hint on that in his other thread. Still, I'm eager to see the party handle things beyond this adventure, and not just because I finally get to see some of the monster work I've done for Dru get paid off. How much of the dungeon is left? Do you have an indication from what you've seen so far?
Though Dru gave me a hint on that in his other thread. Still, I'm eager to see the party handle things beyond this adventure, and not just because I finally get to see some of the monster work I've done for Dru get paid off. How much of the dungeon is left? Do you have an indication from what you've seen so far?
Argent Silvermage
First Post
Note to self. NEVER go down the well by yourself Bolo. NEVER!
Argent Silvermage
First Post
Note to self #2... Do not under any circumstances look into the Frog's mouth. Stop volunteering to look into things Bolo.... It always leads to trouble.
Note to self #3.... Remember to bring a fresh change of underwear. I'm just sayin is all.
Note to self #3.... Remember to bring a fresh change of underwear. I'm just sayin is all.
Argent Silvermage
First Post
We just cleared out level 2 last night. but at a huge cost. and I mean HUGE!LordVyreth said:Heh, I'm glad our mutual concerns about this adventure was waaay off.
Next up.... Gulthias!
Zad
First Post
A Fool's Errand - Chapter 7
A Fool’s Errand – Chapter 7
OOC Notes:
Exp is 3000 for 24th, 2500 for 25th.
DM Notes:
At this point, I will point out for the curious that Wizardru is doing some editing. I’m not even sure what module we’re in at this point – I leave that for Wizardru to define. But there are some rooms being excised because they’re just plain silly. We were half jokingly and half seriously admiring some of the well designed traps in this dungeon. But then there are some that are just… tacky. Perhaps it’s a matter of expectations; when you are 5th level (or perhaps reminiscing to 5th grade) a trap requiring you to step on colored platforms of rainbow hues in proper sequence may seem clever or new. To an epic party with all late 30’s players who’ve been playing for 20-ish years, it just seems rather sad. And with a mere motion of his hand, Wizardru made the room go *poof* and it was erased from existence.
It’s a good module with some good pieces, but then there’s some real dogs and they drag the whole thing down and ruin the epic-nemesis feel of the thing. It makes it feel like something that was written 20 years ago. Some good editing could turn this into a top-quality piece.
This Week’s Adventure:
The smooth black stone relief of the cawing crow was at chest height. The latch to the door was, of course, inside the maw.
There was an intricate combination of traps, that made it practically impossible to disarm one or the other without losing some appendages to the jaws. The jaws were nothing to laugh at – they were laced with disintegration magic and would snap through whatever you might have thought to block them with.
We were debating some other ways of bypassing the door entirely when Valanthe, in a display of consummate skill, managed to open the door while retaining the correct number of appendages.
The next room was long and narrow with two paths tiled on the floor leading up to two statues. One was of a human, and the other a dwarf holding a torch. An inscription on the floor read
Once before, this crypt was looted.
The robber bore one sack of gold;
His henchman stout bore two sacks.
To proceed, you must walk the path
Of he who bore the heavier load.
I’ll spare myself writing down the details of the discussion. The inscription itself of course is vague and therefore requires some level of assumption to proceed. This fact means that the choice is nearly random, and it’s pointless to debate the merits of the assumptions, since all are equally potent. One theory held that a single sack of gold is much heavier than two (empty) sacks therefore the human statue held the proper path. Another notion was that the henchman hauled the gold in one and his dead master in the other. And it went on from there. Valanthe volunteered to try one, and we settled on the human side. She reached the other end of the room without incident.
While she checked the next door, we noticed that above each statue was a hole that went up ten feet and stopped. It suddenly became clear that upon activation, the ceiling would slam down crushing whomever was in the room (but of course leaving the statues undamaged). I was tempted to move the statues out of spite.
The next room was sixty feet square. The corners held large wooden columns that were mortared into the walls. Tiny holes covered the floor and ceiling. In the center of the room was a well or cistern. Along the other three walls were three wooden doors.
Bolo went into air elemental form and floated down the well. After a short way, the well opened out and he was in a large cave chamber. Four chains extended from the corners of the room above descending down into dark water far below.
“Ah,” Bolo thought. “The room is an elevator. The posts hide the chains, and the room lowers into the water and fills up through the holes.”
Which would have been somewhat elegant in itself, but not quite deadly enough. The addition of two ghostly dire sharks however, would serve that need. These same sharks heard Bolo clattering his way down the well shaft, and were “swimming” out of the water, through the air, and towards him, the room, and us, still waiting in the room with the statues.
The ghostly sharks of course could come through the floor, the walls or the ceiling at us as they saw fit. They were too strong to be destroyed by Dravot the easy way. And of course they were ghosts, which is always a nuisance. They came at us from above and below, tearing flesh and blood into spectral ether. My arrows had no trouble, nor did Valanthe’s dagger (a souvenir from Nightfang Spire) but other weapons were less effective. To give us some level of tactical control, Dravot went into the ethereal and put down an ethereal blade barrier to try to force the sharks to attack us along controlled lines.
This tactical situation have been workable, until one of the sharks, being more clever than he looked, triggered the trap and smashed the ceiling down on most of us.
[OOC: Now this, friends, is the craftsmanship. Someone went to the trouble of finding a dire shark, awakening it, optionally attaching “frikkin lasers”, and THEN turning it into a ghost and putting it here. Then they did it again. That’s caring about your work is what that is. And yes, there were frikkin lasers - they shot an ethereal beam at Bolo.]
Valanthe dove clear, and Dravot was ethereal. The rest of us were smashed down to the floor. I was able to reach out and teleport the others into the elevator room and we stood up with no small amount of indignity.
The sharks kept coming, but it was far easier to fight them in the more open room, and they didn’t have the good sense to escape. Bolo used several mass healing spells, both fixing our ruined backs and hurting the sharks in the process. Ultimately the sharks were destroyed but it would be a while before some of us would be walking straight.
The water below held nothing interesting, except that the floor was filled with spikes which would come up through the holes in the floor, in addition to allowing the water to drain.
With three doors before us, we took the one on the right. We could hear screams of agony as we approached a door at the end of a corridor. As we opened the door, the wave of fear and despair signaled the presence of an unhallowed area. It was a circular chamber, the walls lined with cages and the tables filled with torture equipment and notebooks. In the middle of the room was a cast iron chest shaped like a toad-demon and chained shut.
As we approached, a mournful voice said “Who opens my maw will feed it. True Death lies beyond.”
A check of the room revealed a secret door, and two vials. One was empty but had a slick residue and Valanthe believed it was the telltale sign of a vial that used to contain sovereign glue. That spawned the natural conclusion that the other vial contained universal solvent.
When the lock on the chest was released, they sprang to life and attacked. Scorch used a sonic spell to shatter them into pieces and we opened the lid. Inside was a pit, and down below was a troll-like creature, spiked and chained into a position of supplication on the floor. It screamed but there was no sound. Its tongue lashed out twenty feet and wrapped around Bolo. (Naturally.)
“Back where you came from,” waved Scorch. The dismissal worked and the creature was gone. But the shard of True Death was not there.
“Must be ‘beyond’,” Valanthe said jerking a thumb at the secret door.
The door led to a small, plain chamber. It had no adornments nor features. It was entirely unremarkable, save for the object in the center. The red stone thrummed audibly and steadily, pulsing with a sanguine glow. It was ten feet wide and made of a living crystal. It released a wave of evil over us. And there was no doubt that this was the heart of Ashardalon.
The very presence of the thing weakened us slightly, and not just by virtue of its existence. If it was here, then it escaped the destruction of Nightfang Spire. And if it was here, then it was likely that someone else was here as well. Gulthias would not be far from his precious heart.
On the far side of the heart, I caught a glint of something that didn’t belong. I crouched down and could see a small metal fragment on the floor.
Scorch and Dravot were conferring fervently. “This is wrong. It’s all wrong. Someone has been warping this thing,” Scorch said.
“It’s worse. There is the taint of the divine upon it. Some unholy diety has placed its mark upon this. It is far more powerful now than it likely was in Nightfang spire,” Dravot said, slightly pale.
“I agree. It must now be intelligent,” Scorch agreed. “There’s no way it could not be. Surely it knows we are here. It can sense us. Except perhaps Valanthe. She is touched by the void. It may not have noticed her yet.”
Valanthe sighed a heavy sigh. She slipped into the room, keeping as far from the Heart as she could. I watched her (since nobody else could) as she got closer to the shard. The Heart either did not know, or did not care. She reached for the shard, but it didn’t move. She shook her head in disgust with a sneer that said “Ha ha, very funny,” then took out the universal solvent and released the shard from the glue.
She slipped back out of the room, shaken but unharmed. “There was a vision. Flashes in my head. Memories from someone – Gulthias perhaps. I saw a skull with gems for eyes, floating in the air. It was… teaching Gulthias. And another creature – The ShadowTaker I think. I think Gulthias was loyal to The ShadowTaker, the worm to Acererack, and the lich to Orcus.”
While Valanthe had been sneaking, Dravot was praying for guidance. The evil in this thing was too dangerous too persist but too powerful to excise. After a time, he stood up, his face blank.
He turned to the Heart and held up the Light of Reason. The Heart grumbled slowly. A bright light shot from the lantern towards the Heart growing brighter and brighter. Dravot’s skin began to glow with it and bursts of light started glowing from his eyes and mouth. Suddenly, the lantern shattered the pieces hanging in the air and dancing around each other while the light grew even more intense. The Heart started shaking and smoking, turning from red to black.
I couldn’t see what happened next, but the entire room shook with power. Everything went white.
When we woke, only a few seconds had passed but we were back in the torture room. The torture devices were gone, and so were the cages. Inside the Heart’s chamber was only a burning afterimage, as if someone had erased that part of the world.
Dravot’s clothes had all turned pure white, but he was otherwise unharmed. The Light of Reason, though, was gone. Dravot didn’t seem to mind – there was a hint of a small smile at having destroyed a very bad thing.
We soon realized that we had to move. The destruction of the Heart would surely be noticed by someone and they would be coming… here. So it was time for us to be somewhere else.
We went out a different door from the wet room. I’ll skip the irrelevant details and just say we retrieved another shard.
[OOC: I’ll skip it because… well… we did. It was a goofy room with levers and things. Wizardru hand-waved it.]
The last door led to yet another door. Valanthe could hear the sound of people moving about and something large and wooden falling over. Valanthe snuck in.
It was a chapel to Therizdun (if those words even go together). There were some drow kicking over benches to make a defensive position. Directly in front of the altar was a man brandishing a dark black sword. They clearly knew we were close.
“I can’t see you but you must be Valanthe. Magic will kill you whether or not we can see you. Then you will join us.”
Gulthias smiled at that. “The ultimate vampire.”
A Fool’s Errand – Chapter 7
OOC Notes:
Exp is 3000 for 24th, 2500 for 25th.
DM Notes:
At this point, I will point out for the curious that Wizardru is doing some editing. I’m not even sure what module we’re in at this point – I leave that for Wizardru to define. But there are some rooms being excised because they’re just plain silly. We were half jokingly and half seriously admiring some of the well designed traps in this dungeon. But then there are some that are just… tacky. Perhaps it’s a matter of expectations; when you are 5th level (or perhaps reminiscing to 5th grade) a trap requiring you to step on colored platforms of rainbow hues in proper sequence may seem clever or new. To an epic party with all late 30’s players who’ve been playing for 20-ish years, it just seems rather sad. And with a mere motion of his hand, Wizardru made the room go *poof* and it was erased from existence.
It’s a good module with some good pieces, but then there’s some real dogs and they drag the whole thing down and ruin the epic-nemesis feel of the thing. It makes it feel like something that was written 20 years ago. Some good editing could turn this into a top-quality piece.
This Week’s Adventure:
The smooth black stone relief of the cawing crow was at chest height. The latch to the door was, of course, inside the maw.
There was an intricate combination of traps, that made it practically impossible to disarm one or the other without losing some appendages to the jaws. The jaws were nothing to laugh at – they were laced with disintegration magic and would snap through whatever you might have thought to block them with.
We were debating some other ways of bypassing the door entirely when Valanthe, in a display of consummate skill, managed to open the door while retaining the correct number of appendages.
The next room was long and narrow with two paths tiled on the floor leading up to two statues. One was of a human, and the other a dwarf holding a torch. An inscription on the floor read
Once before, this crypt was looted.
The robber bore one sack of gold;
His henchman stout bore two sacks.
To proceed, you must walk the path
Of he who bore the heavier load.
I’ll spare myself writing down the details of the discussion. The inscription itself of course is vague and therefore requires some level of assumption to proceed. This fact means that the choice is nearly random, and it’s pointless to debate the merits of the assumptions, since all are equally potent. One theory held that a single sack of gold is much heavier than two (empty) sacks therefore the human statue held the proper path. Another notion was that the henchman hauled the gold in one and his dead master in the other. And it went on from there. Valanthe volunteered to try one, and we settled on the human side. She reached the other end of the room without incident.
While she checked the next door, we noticed that above each statue was a hole that went up ten feet and stopped. It suddenly became clear that upon activation, the ceiling would slam down crushing whomever was in the room (but of course leaving the statues undamaged). I was tempted to move the statues out of spite.
The next room was sixty feet square. The corners held large wooden columns that were mortared into the walls. Tiny holes covered the floor and ceiling. In the center of the room was a well or cistern. Along the other three walls were three wooden doors.
Bolo went into air elemental form and floated down the well. After a short way, the well opened out and he was in a large cave chamber. Four chains extended from the corners of the room above descending down into dark water far below.
“Ah,” Bolo thought. “The room is an elevator. The posts hide the chains, and the room lowers into the water and fills up through the holes.”
Which would have been somewhat elegant in itself, but not quite deadly enough. The addition of two ghostly dire sharks however, would serve that need. These same sharks heard Bolo clattering his way down the well shaft, and were “swimming” out of the water, through the air, and towards him, the room, and us, still waiting in the room with the statues.
The ghostly sharks of course could come through the floor, the walls or the ceiling at us as they saw fit. They were too strong to be destroyed by Dravot the easy way. And of course they were ghosts, which is always a nuisance. They came at us from above and below, tearing flesh and blood into spectral ether. My arrows had no trouble, nor did Valanthe’s dagger (a souvenir from Nightfang Spire) but other weapons were less effective. To give us some level of tactical control, Dravot went into the ethereal and put down an ethereal blade barrier to try to force the sharks to attack us along controlled lines.
This tactical situation have been workable, until one of the sharks, being more clever than he looked, triggered the trap and smashed the ceiling down on most of us.
[OOC: Now this, friends, is the craftsmanship. Someone went to the trouble of finding a dire shark, awakening it, optionally attaching “frikkin lasers”, and THEN turning it into a ghost and putting it here. Then they did it again. That’s caring about your work is what that is. And yes, there were frikkin lasers - they shot an ethereal beam at Bolo.]
Valanthe dove clear, and Dravot was ethereal. The rest of us were smashed down to the floor. I was able to reach out and teleport the others into the elevator room and we stood up with no small amount of indignity.
The sharks kept coming, but it was far easier to fight them in the more open room, and they didn’t have the good sense to escape. Bolo used several mass healing spells, both fixing our ruined backs and hurting the sharks in the process. Ultimately the sharks were destroyed but it would be a while before some of us would be walking straight.
The water below held nothing interesting, except that the floor was filled with spikes which would come up through the holes in the floor, in addition to allowing the water to drain.
With three doors before us, we took the one on the right. We could hear screams of agony as we approached a door at the end of a corridor. As we opened the door, the wave of fear and despair signaled the presence of an unhallowed area. It was a circular chamber, the walls lined with cages and the tables filled with torture equipment and notebooks. In the middle of the room was a cast iron chest shaped like a toad-demon and chained shut.
As we approached, a mournful voice said “Who opens my maw will feed it. True Death lies beyond.”
A check of the room revealed a secret door, and two vials. One was empty but had a slick residue and Valanthe believed it was the telltale sign of a vial that used to contain sovereign glue. That spawned the natural conclusion that the other vial contained universal solvent.
When the lock on the chest was released, they sprang to life and attacked. Scorch used a sonic spell to shatter them into pieces and we opened the lid. Inside was a pit, and down below was a troll-like creature, spiked and chained into a position of supplication on the floor. It screamed but there was no sound. Its tongue lashed out twenty feet and wrapped around Bolo. (Naturally.)
“Back where you came from,” waved Scorch. The dismissal worked and the creature was gone. But the shard of True Death was not there.
“Must be ‘beyond’,” Valanthe said jerking a thumb at the secret door.
The door led to a small, plain chamber. It had no adornments nor features. It was entirely unremarkable, save for the object in the center. The red stone thrummed audibly and steadily, pulsing with a sanguine glow. It was ten feet wide and made of a living crystal. It released a wave of evil over us. And there was no doubt that this was the heart of Ashardalon.
The very presence of the thing weakened us slightly, and not just by virtue of its existence. If it was here, then it escaped the destruction of Nightfang Spire. And if it was here, then it was likely that someone else was here as well. Gulthias would not be far from his precious heart.
On the far side of the heart, I caught a glint of something that didn’t belong. I crouched down and could see a small metal fragment on the floor.
Scorch and Dravot were conferring fervently. “This is wrong. It’s all wrong. Someone has been warping this thing,” Scorch said.
“It’s worse. There is the taint of the divine upon it. Some unholy diety has placed its mark upon this. It is far more powerful now than it likely was in Nightfang spire,” Dravot said, slightly pale.
“I agree. It must now be intelligent,” Scorch agreed. “There’s no way it could not be. Surely it knows we are here. It can sense us. Except perhaps Valanthe. She is touched by the void. It may not have noticed her yet.”
Valanthe sighed a heavy sigh. She slipped into the room, keeping as far from the Heart as she could. I watched her (since nobody else could) as she got closer to the shard. The Heart either did not know, or did not care. She reached for the shard, but it didn’t move. She shook her head in disgust with a sneer that said “Ha ha, very funny,” then took out the universal solvent and released the shard from the glue.
She slipped back out of the room, shaken but unharmed. “There was a vision. Flashes in my head. Memories from someone – Gulthias perhaps. I saw a skull with gems for eyes, floating in the air. It was… teaching Gulthias. And another creature – The ShadowTaker I think. I think Gulthias was loyal to The ShadowTaker, the worm to Acererack, and the lich to Orcus.”
While Valanthe had been sneaking, Dravot was praying for guidance. The evil in this thing was too dangerous too persist but too powerful to excise. After a time, he stood up, his face blank.
He turned to the Heart and held up the Light of Reason. The Heart grumbled slowly. A bright light shot from the lantern towards the Heart growing brighter and brighter. Dravot’s skin began to glow with it and bursts of light started glowing from his eyes and mouth. Suddenly, the lantern shattered the pieces hanging in the air and dancing around each other while the light grew even more intense. The Heart started shaking and smoking, turning from red to black.
I couldn’t see what happened next, but the entire room shook with power. Everything went white.
When we woke, only a few seconds had passed but we were back in the torture room. The torture devices were gone, and so were the cages. Inside the Heart’s chamber was only a burning afterimage, as if someone had erased that part of the world.
Dravot’s clothes had all turned pure white, but he was otherwise unharmed. The Light of Reason, though, was gone. Dravot didn’t seem to mind – there was a hint of a small smile at having destroyed a very bad thing.
We soon realized that we had to move. The destruction of the Heart would surely be noticed by someone and they would be coming… here. So it was time for us to be somewhere else.
We went out a different door from the wet room. I’ll skip the irrelevant details and just say we retrieved another shard.
[OOC: I’ll skip it because… well… we did. It was a goofy room with levers and things. Wizardru hand-waved it.]
The last door led to yet another door. Valanthe could hear the sound of people moving about and something large and wooden falling over. Valanthe snuck in.
It was a chapel to Therizdun (if those words even go together). There were some drow kicking over benches to make a defensive position. Directly in front of the altar was a man brandishing a dark black sword. They clearly knew we were close.
“I can’t see you but you must be Valanthe. Magic will kill you whether or not we can see you. Then you will join us.”
Gulthias smiled at that. “The ultimate vampire.”
- Status
