Post by Trevor on Apr 4, 2013 9:30:46 GMT -5
Fun little puzzle/fighty adventure to pass the time as I figure out where the heck 3/4s of the club has gone
Party: Sam, Alex, Collin M, and Collin of Gorgon fame (henceforth known as Raptor Collin and Xenomorph Collin, respectively)
The party is boppin' around the guildhall once again, when a familiar Tiefling enters with an escort of Hellknights. It's Marcus Terell from my last adventure, whom everybody but the Collins recognize as a thinly veiled disguise for a Pit Fiend. Marcus explains that after the guild's last little foray into his affairs, he's a few thousand souls in debt to the Guys Downstairs, and has been put on a planar house arrest until he can scrounge up a down payment. He tasks the mostly evil group to going to his old digs in the Iron City to pick up a stash of souls. To help them navigate his traps, he gives them a spyglass, an odd little glass bauble with clock gears inside, a bag of sand, and a vial of his own blood. I mis-said "He writes you a note" as "He writes a note on you", so we rolled with that, a street address being gouged into Steve's leg.
Arriving through a Gate spell, the party walks around the immensely big Iron City of Dis, a rather Mordor-ish spikey metal city on Hell's second layer, before getting directions from an Ice Devil. They arrive at a building and get the go-ahead from the Cornugon doorman.
The party rather easily navigates the first trap in the dungeon (a Symbol of Death floor, the safe path only indicated by a slightly thinner coating of dust) before getting to an apparent dead end. Alex notices that the uncarved stone blocking there way seems somehow older than the surrounding rock, despite being continuous. Detect magic reveals a huge Transmutation aura, some sorta vaguely defined Dr Who BS by which the hallway is out of synch with the rest of time, such that it hasn't been carved yet.
The guys use the glass orb (which generates an antimagic field) to negate the aura and make the hallway exist again, huddling together lest they stray out of the 10ft radius and get shunted into solid rock. They totally ignore a trap-room mid way by Xeno Collin jumping onto a door frame and lifting a portcullis and Sam have Steve reach across the room without touching the floor, and move on.
They get to a room full of dozens of doors, with a single comically large key in the middle of the room. The spyglass has True Seeing on it, and they find the one real door. When Alex pops the key out of the housing, a little bead of black goop starts forming where it was fixed, as if the key were plugging a hole. As Sam and the Collins put the key in (just revealing two gold bowls flanking the door), Alex continues to poke and prod at the black goo, which subsequently swells up to Huge size and becomes a Shoggoth. After Steve loses his mind and goes comatose (5 rounds of 1D6 wisdom damage. Yeesh.), and everybody but the raptor mount and Zeff gets grappled and eaten at least once, they kill the Shoggoth and put some of its black goop in one of the bowls, the devil's blood in the other, opening the door.
The last room is a 600ft diameter sphere, a floating platform in the middle (with no apparent way across) with a panel, two statues and a pedestal. The bottom 3rd of the room is full of water, containing a Colossal++ crocodilian leviathan apparently called "Mr. Chomps". As Raptor Collin uses the sand bag to reveal a winding, invisible force bridge and distracts Mr. Chomps with Jibbity-Jab meat, Xeno Collin goes "F*** subtlety" and climbs to the roof of the room, dropping down on the platform and shrugging off the 20D6 falling damage. Once everybody's there, they take turns willing a Sphere of Annihilation off the pedestal to reveal the soul gem, sitting inside of it with an antimagic coating. Alex realizes one of the golem statues is an actual Adamantine golem, and everybody but Steve bops off to ambush it on the bridge as Steve grabs the gem and legs it.
After an embarrassingly quick fight with a supposed CR25, Marcus shows up, takes the gem, feeds Mr. Chomps a live adult hill giant that he apparently had in his Bag of Holding, and then invites everyone out for dinner.
Aside from scalding hot drinks and ridiculously spicy food, you have a surprisingly civil evening, particularly for being in one of the three most fundamentally evil places in the Multiverse. The Pit Fiend sends you on your way, claiming "I might just save your souls after all.". You've the feeling he meant that more frugally than in terms of salvation.
Rewards: Standard loot, plus 1pt fire resistance for tolerating Infernal cuisine. This is a natural bonus that stacks with magic resistances i.e. from Resist Energy or magic rings.
Sam: You get to keep the spyglass, which can be drawn as a move action and used as a standard action, giving you True Seeing in a 60ft cone. I hope Steve has saddlebags or some form of inventory.
Also, if you opt to keep the message on Steve's leg, you get a +10 to bluff checks against devils to move unopposed through the Iron City.
Alex: You couldn't help yourself, and felt the need to take a sip of the devil's blood from the vial. You get Fast Healing 1. This is negated for 1 round each time you take Good-aligned damage.
Xeno Collin: You get Acid resistance 5, on account of being a friggin' Xenomorph. This stacks with magic enhancements the same way as the fire one. Also, Marcus gives ya a pair of magic gloves which allow you to use Strength instead of Int for checks when manipulating Spheres of Annihilation.
Raptor Collin: You get to keep the sandbag, which looks totally mundane, but actually allows you to cast Glitterdust (DC 26, CL20th) once a day as a standard action. It also contains regular sand, in case there's any more force bridge tomfoolery in the near future, or if you need to f*** with pressure plates and golden idols.
Party: Sam, Alex, Collin M, and Collin of Gorgon fame (henceforth known as Raptor Collin and Xenomorph Collin, respectively)
The party is boppin' around the guildhall once again, when a familiar Tiefling enters with an escort of Hellknights. It's Marcus Terell from my last adventure, whom everybody but the Collins recognize as a thinly veiled disguise for a Pit Fiend. Marcus explains that after the guild's last little foray into his affairs, he's a few thousand souls in debt to the Guys Downstairs, and has been put on a planar house arrest until he can scrounge up a down payment. He tasks the mostly evil group to going to his old digs in the Iron City to pick up a stash of souls. To help them navigate his traps, he gives them a spyglass, an odd little glass bauble with clock gears inside, a bag of sand, and a vial of his own blood. I mis-said "He writes you a note" as "He writes a note on you", so we rolled with that, a street address being gouged into Steve's leg.
Arriving through a Gate spell, the party walks around the immensely big Iron City of Dis, a rather Mordor-ish spikey metal city on Hell's second layer, before getting directions from an Ice Devil. They arrive at a building and get the go-ahead from the Cornugon doorman.
The party rather easily navigates the first trap in the dungeon (a Symbol of Death floor, the safe path only indicated by a slightly thinner coating of dust) before getting to an apparent dead end. Alex notices that the uncarved stone blocking there way seems somehow older than the surrounding rock, despite being continuous. Detect magic reveals a huge Transmutation aura, some sorta vaguely defined Dr Who BS by which the hallway is out of synch with the rest of time, such that it hasn't been carved yet.
The guys use the glass orb (which generates an antimagic field) to negate the aura and make the hallway exist again, huddling together lest they stray out of the 10ft radius and get shunted into solid rock. They totally ignore a trap-room mid way by Xeno Collin jumping onto a door frame and lifting a portcullis and Sam have Steve reach across the room without touching the floor, and move on.
They get to a room full of dozens of doors, with a single comically large key in the middle of the room. The spyglass has True Seeing on it, and they find the one real door. When Alex pops the key out of the housing, a little bead of black goop starts forming where it was fixed, as if the key were plugging a hole. As Sam and the Collins put the key in (just revealing two gold bowls flanking the door), Alex continues to poke and prod at the black goo, which subsequently swells up to Huge size and becomes a Shoggoth. After Steve loses his mind and goes comatose (5 rounds of 1D6 wisdom damage. Yeesh.), and everybody but the raptor mount and Zeff gets grappled and eaten at least once, they kill the Shoggoth and put some of its black goop in one of the bowls, the devil's blood in the other, opening the door.
The last room is a 600ft diameter sphere, a floating platform in the middle (with no apparent way across) with a panel, two statues and a pedestal. The bottom 3rd of the room is full of water, containing a Colossal++ crocodilian leviathan apparently called "Mr. Chomps". As Raptor Collin uses the sand bag to reveal a winding, invisible force bridge and distracts Mr. Chomps with Jibbity-Jab meat, Xeno Collin goes "F*** subtlety" and climbs to the roof of the room, dropping down on the platform and shrugging off the 20D6 falling damage. Once everybody's there, they take turns willing a Sphere of Annihilation off the pedestal to reveal the soul gem, sitting inside of it with an antimagic coating. Alex realizes one of the golem statues is an actual Adamantine golem, and everybody but Steve bops off to ambush it on the bridge as Steve grabs the gem and legs it.
After an embarrassingly quick fight with a supposed CR25, Marcus shows up, takes the gem, feeds Mr. Chomps a live adult hill giant that he apparently had in his Bag of Holding, and then invites everyone out for dinner.
Aside from scalding hot drinks and ridiculously spicy food, you have a surprisingly civil evening, particularly for being in one of the three most fundamentally evil places in the Multiverse. The Pit Fiend sends you on your way, claiming "I might just save your souls after all.". You've the feeling he meant that more frugally than in terms of salvation.
Rewards: Standard loot, plus 1pt fire resistance for tolerating Infernal cuisine. This is a natural bonus that stacks with magic resistances i.e. from Resist Energy or magic rings.
Sam: You get to keep the spyglass, which can be drawn as a move action and used as a standard action, giving you True Seeing in a 60ft cone. I hope Steve has saddlebags or some form of inventory.
Also, if you opt to keep the message on Steve's leg, you get a +10 to bluff checks against devils to move unopposed through the Iron City.
Alex: You couldn't help yourself, and felt the need to take a sip of the devil's blood from the vial. You get Fast Healing 1. This is negated for 1 round each time you take Good-aligned damage.
Xeno Collin: You get Acid resistance 5, on account of being a friggin' Xenomorph. This stacks with magic enhancements the same way as the fire one. Also, Marcus gives ya a pair of magic gloves which allow you to use Strength instead of Int for checks when manipulating Spheres of Annihilation.
Raptor Collin: You get to keep the sandbag, which looks totally mundane, but actually allows you to cast Glitterdust (DC 26, CL20th) once a day as a standard action. It also contains regular sand, in case there's any more force bridge tomfoolery in the near future, or if you need to f*** with pressure plates and golden idols.