3rd Day of Harvester, CY 580 - Continuing the Investigation of Dieg Manor

After having skipped the last two sessions, and a month and half between playing, we finally managed to get back together (well, enough of us that we were able to form a quorum, anyway). The meantime, my D&D miniature collection has exploded. I bought several bricks of the newer D&D and Pathfinder miniatures, a ton of singles, and I've started painting my own in earnest. Playing with miniatures really makes it so much easier. There's no question about who is in line of sight, what gets caught in the fireball, or whether or not the fighter can manipulate himself into melee position.

But it also means I've had to adjust maps to 5 ft. squares instead of 10 ft., and the maps are much bigger now. The good news is that the table is big. I'll post a picture of it for one of these posts at some point, but not today. Today, I need to catch us up on the story so far.

We left off with Pontus staring down a vicious guard dog, which immediately started barking and attacking. It bit down on Pontus' leg, but its hard to do any serious damage to the huge barbarian. He retaliated with a blow from his sword, killing the dog and silencing it. The dog had already done its job, however, in alerting the guard behind the door, who ran away to alert the brigands holed up further down in the dungeon. By the time the party reached the room with the brigands, they were ready, with 9 archers, arrows drawn, prepared to fire on whoever walked through the door. Around the corner were another 6 archers, 7 spearmen, and four high-level fighter.

The archers unleashed their arrows on Pontus as soon as he opened the door, but only a couple of arrows could hit him with his ridiculously low armor class. He endured two full rounds of that before Sarril was able to launch a fireball into the room, wiping out all of the low-level brigands.

After some geometry and group discussions (that involved much beer) concerning how to calculate the volume of an irregular room, we determined that Pontus would indeed be hit by the fireball. Still, the barbarian could take it, and made his saving throw so I didn't try to destroy his items. This inspired what may become a future tactic for the party, which is to cast Spell Immunity: Fireball on the barbarian, and send him running into the middle of a room in order to get as many creatures around him as possible before the wizard drops a fireball right on him. Ideally, if they could figure out a way to get the barbarian to trigger the fireball himself, it would be even better. (There are some creature from the lower planes who employ this same tactic. . . it does make me wonder sometimes).

The only living things left in the room were the four higher level fighters who, while on fire, rushed at the party. They did a good amount of damage to both Pontus and Jarrus before being killed, but the party has three healers, and were back up to par immediately after the encounter.

The party continued to search through the dungeon and eventually came into a room where a man in yellow robes immediately disappeared as the room went dark. Drawing another Continual Light coin from his pocket, Sarril immediately restored light before casting Detect Invisibility, and seeing the invisible cleric that Cadwin already sensed. Cadwin cast Faerie Fire at the cleric, outlining him in a glow that allowed Jarrus and Pontus to close in on him and quickly finish him off before he could cast anything really nasty. The most he was able to effectively do was a Cause Serious Wounds on Jarrus, which didn't do much to the fully healed fighter.

The group decided to search this room and found a staff with demonic carvings on it (not magical that anyone could tell) and a secret door that led down a twisting hallway. At the first turn in the hallway, they encountered a statue that was clearly of Iuz, and another of a man with reptilian features wearing a crown of Furyondy, in a subservient position. This was definitely a clue as to what they were up against, and Jarrus immediately realized that they needed to alert the Church of Trithereon and thus earn some favor with Lord Wilfrick. Continuing down the hall, they party came across some pools of water that cast no reflection. They avoided the pools. Then they came to another pool - this one dark and acrid smelling. Pontus decided the best way to investigate the pool would be to spit in it. A moment after he spit in the pool, a splash of water shot back out at him, striking him in the chest, withering it and paralyzing him. The clerics and druid immediately cast Remove Paralyzation, Cure Disease and Neutralize Poison. It was a good attempt, but none of those things worked. Lucky for Pontus, the DM rolled very low, and the paralyzation only lasted 1 round, which prevented his death. The affect also aged him 6 years, which, raised his biological age from 18 to 24, which everyone agreed suited him better.

The party then continued to trek through the dungeon until they came across an earth elemental stomping around in a room. It tried to attack Pontus but missed. Rather than fight it, they backed out of the room and sent Cadwin in. The elemental saw Cadwin and calmed down, and then started making gestures - a form of sign-language. Cadwin, who is completely blind, was oblivious as to this attempt at communication, and left the room. The party moved on, skipping the traditional searches for secret doors, trying to make time before the Detect Traps spell wears off.

The room to room searching eventually led to three clerics in yellow robes (much like that other guy they killed). These clerics had a funny trick up their sleeves. Each of them changed shape to resemble one of the party members, hoping to cause confusion. But such a trick was useless on the blind druid, who responded with Faerie Fire to make each of the enemies glow. A Silence 15' radius in the middle of the room shut down anything else these three might have been able to do, and Pontus and Jarrus quickly cleaned up. It turned out these clerics weren't quite so invested in their work, and tried to surrender, but being silenced limited them hand gestures, which Jarrus interpreted as attempts to cast spells. Luckily, one of the party members caught on before the last cleric was killed, and they managed to keep him alive for questioning. The cleric was willing to trade information in exchange for his life, but suspected the party may kill him anyway, so he revealed just enough to pique their interest, offering the rest of the information to Lord Wilfrick directly in exchange for immunity. The information he revealed so far was that they were recruited by a priest named Margus (described as the man the party already killed earlier), who was preparing Verbobonc for an invasion by Iuz's forces. Seeing the power of Iuz directly, and not wanting to be caught on the wrong side, they reluctantly agreed to go along. But now that he sees the power of the heroes, there is hope, and he would be more than happy to renounce Iuz and cooperate with the party and give details of the plans to Lord Wilfrick. Sarril responded with a couple of magic missiles, killing the cleric and proclaiming that the party has learned all that they are going to learn from this man.

And so the party determined that they have already killed the "boss," and now they just need to finish searching the dungeon and tie up any loose ends. They eventually charged down a wide hallway that led into a room containing this fun beast.

Dracolisk

The Dracolisk was hiding in the corner of a large room at the end of the wide hallway. As soon as Pontus burst through, it took the air, centered itself in front of the group, and spewed acid on everyone. The acid wasn't so bad, but the gaze attack that went with it was a little rough as Jarrus turned to stone (everyone else made their save - Rings of Protection are no joke). The Dracolisk was not prepared for Pontus, who could jump high enough to reach it with his two-handed sword. It did take Pontus a couple of rounds and some more saving throws to realize that he should probably avert his gaze, which he joined the rest of the party in doing.

The next round, however, the dracolisk's keeper, a 6 HD troll came charging into the room, leading a hoard of really pumped up JuJu zombies. Juju zombies are normally really nasty 3 HD zombies with fire resistance, immunities and other special properties, but these were Iuz's special Juju zombies inside his own temple (6 HD, with attack bonuses). Eight of them came flooding into the room. Cadwin cast Summon Elemental, and rolled randomly for a 16 HD fire elemental (very lucky), which made short work of the troll as Pontus finished off the dracolisk. Unfortunately, the fire elemental couldn't do very much damage to the juju zombies, which are resistant to fire. Luapan attempted to turn the juju zombies without any success. They had to be finished off by the fighters. The good news is that Sarril had one extra Stone to Flesh spell tucked away, and was able to burn it to bring Jarrus back into the fight. It was a tough battle, but the party was victorious.

We were at the end of the session but the party wanted to first search the room where the zombies and trolls came from. They found a room with 20 regular zombies in it. Luapan brandished the holy symbol of Celestian and bellowed something apocalyptic and they were all turned to dust. They did find a secret door with a room filled with treasure, and another secret door beyond that which led to another part of the dungeon, which is where we will pick up next session.

It is approaching dawn on the morning of the 3rd Day of Harvester, CY 580.