The party spent to rest of the afternoon of the first day of Flocktime searching the rest of the Fire Temple, including Prefect Allrem's personal quarters. Some minor treasure was looted, including a book about the Elemental Plane of Fire, which was open to a page describing an Elemental Grue known as a Harginn. There was also a partially written letter addressed to Kelno, high priest of the Air Temple, which read: "Your rewards will be great if you bend your knee to Fire. Bring all of your forces here to me now, and swear fealty. If you fail to heed this advice... "
That evening, the party decided to stay inside Prefect Allrem's quarters to rest, since they could lock the door. During the night, a noise was heard outside the door, and the next morning, when the door was opened, a letter was found addressed to the party from Kelno, the Air Temple Priest, thanking the party for defeating Allrem, praising their worthiness and power, and asking them to parlay with him in the northwest corridor. The party took a round-about way to get there in the morning, defeating a minotaur along the way, mapping out some more of level 2 of the ToEE, but otherwise moving quickly (i.e. not searching) in order to maximize the use of the strength spells that were put on Pontus and Jarrus. The party eventually came in contact with Kelno and what appeared to be the remainder of his temple forces (more bugbears). Kelno asked the party to destroy the Earth Temple on the level above and offered a vial of poison with instructions to place the poison inside the altar to destroy it. If the party did as he asked, he promised to provide them with the information needed to destroy the Fire Temple.
Just as the party was finalizing the deal, Athan brandished the Golden Skull and demanded that all bow before him (losing a point of charisma in the process). The bugbears cowered in fear, but Kelno was unaffected. Jarrus then lept at Kelno, striking a critical hit with his new frostbrand sword (max damage, doubled with a 20, insane strength bonuses, etc.). Kelno exploded into millions of shards of ice, with only one or two magical items surviving the hit. The bugbear leader, witnessing this, immediately turned to Jarrus and said something to the effect of "you boss now."
The party then directed the bugbears to go up to the first level and kill everyone they see. The party then searched through what was left of Kelno before heading upstairs to follow the bugbear trail of death. The first thing they came across were a bunch of jail cells. Luckily, the only inhabitants were zombies, which the bugbears took care of. Following the sounds of fighting, the party eventually catches-up with the bugbears, who had led them in the direction of the Earth Temple. The Earth Temple was a large room with a dirt floor (go figure) and a pyramid in the middle. As the bugbears entered the room, they caused the earth elemental guardians to rise up out of the floor. Four of these 16 HD creatures appeared in total, which would have likely been more than the party could handle had they not had the bugbears to basically take the hits for them while Sarril drained charges from his wand of lightning. (There were several ways in which the party could have defeated or avoided the elementals, and using the bugbears as fodder in order to fight them head-on was creative, even if that wasn't their original intent). After the elementals were killed, Athan poured the vial of poison into an offering box on the altar and closed the lid. After some dramatic earthquakes, the pyramid crumbled and the floor cracked. The party took the opportunity to run back downstairs.
The rest of the day was spent going back over territory previously visited, searching for treasure/secret doors, etc. At one point, Jarrus found a piece of his father's armor (a magical breastplate), and otherwise, minor treasure, rations, spell components, etc. were all able to be replenished. The party did a little more exploration of Level 2 and came across a Su-monster, which is an ape-like creature with psionic abilities. The creature hit Luapan with a psychic crush attack, incapacitating him for a time, but the rest of the party was able to finish the beast off and Luapan eventually recovered. The party decided to it was best to take another rest, thus ending the session on the afternoon of second day of Flocktime.
...and There it is! They nailed the faction vs faction opportunity which, if starting ToEE at low-level, is probably the only reasonable way to survive it (granted these guys had already chalked up some xp in the Caves so the quick access to level three probably saved several sessions of the "5 minute dungeon work day.").
ReplyDeleteGary certainly seemed to figure that players would get the faction vs faction thing going in Keep on the Borderlands as well. That must have been a pretty common feature of his home campaigns.