Session 41: Passing the Baton
7/2/23 - 7/16, rest 7/17, active 7/18
PCs: Gwendolyn, Luther, Redcorn, Cleet, Caspian, Flynn, Max
Henches: Amadayo, Beyza, Eggie, Mulligan, Mahin
Everyone came out on this holiday (‘murica) weekend to try and put the nail in the coffin of the Butzkrag, so we had a full table of PCs and they were ready to rock. They shot down towards level three of the dungeon where they had fought a bunch of mummies just the session before and had discovered bigger badder evil ritual stuff. There was also a fistful of flame salamanders that had taken residence in the largest of the sacrificial chambers and the crew really didn’t want to fool with them.
They had a few alternative access points for that level, one a trapdoor slide that Luther found early on and the other a narrower stairwell on level two. After a brief discussion they decided the stairs were probably best and off they went. The party was very cautious as they proceeded, tracking and checking for sekrits often. They found a handful of copper pieces in one intersection but no sign of how the coins got there. Otherwise, it was a clean trip down.
The square room that the stairs let out into was consistent with their recollection of the architecture of the third level, matte black metal walls carved in strange runes and smokey glass doors etched with a wolf head symbol. The adventurers spent some time in this first room reading languages, detecting evil, and checking for sekrits, learning that the runes noted a lineage of the Von Malkin family that was less prominent than the ones they’d seen mentioned before. There was no blatantly evil aura or sekrit doors and the exit door got the thumbs up from the thief hench so out they went.
Luther and Max were first into the hallway which forked north and east. They chose to go north, where it opened into a wide gallery of sorts. On the west wall was a beautifully painted mural that went for hundreds of feet and depicted scenes of conquest over nondescript natives by a technologically superior invading force. The mural was old but still vibrant, reflecting a style reminiscent of the masters of the renaissance. On the east wall was a jarring mess of chaotic modern art abstraction, loosely resembling the horrific nightmares that the Dark Hymn had imposed on the region for the past six months. It was much more new and of no artistic value even among modern art enthusiasts.
The gallery linked up with the ritual preparation room that the PCs had discovered the prior session, where the riddle-spitting statues guarded the large double doors leading into what they were presuming to be their target destination. They piled into the ritual room and their front rank approached the doors to open them, expecting the statues to hit them with a hastily googled brain teaser.
Not so! The master of the house was aware of their previous transgressions and had changed his guardians’ commands! The statues animated, pointing their fists at the party and blasting them with fire. The crew rapidly engaged the stone figures and after a moderately challenging battle with fixed and not particularly intelligent foes, they were victorious.
While Eggie the Thief started examining the doors, Flynn poked around in the ritual things looking for treasure or clues or something. Unfortunately there was a mummy waiting there with a cultist robe covering its foul nature. The party wasn’t sure why it didn’t attack them during the statue fight but once it was discovered it tried to rip Flynn’s face off. It lasted until a successful turn undead had it huddling in a corner and the party beat it down.
At this point, the players started planning for a more challenging encounter. They had used some magical resources during the first two encounters and were carefully counting spell slots for the assumed next one. They had a rough memory of the features of the room beyond the defeated statues and planned to enter slinging dispel evil to try and break what they presumed to be the altar in the center.
Redcorn dropped a few buffs with Flynn planning to do so once inside the room, specifically to try and keep the protection from evil non-contact bubble in place. They chose to only bring a few PCs in the room at first, to cast and then see what happened. As Max, Luther, Redcorn, Flynn, and Cleet entered a long, wide hall dominated by a ritual circle and floating ominous orb, they did not see the black and red gas pooling to the floor in a corner on their far right.
It coalesced into a tall, pale man with slicked back black hair dressed in purple and black robes. Surprise rolls were rolled and Max was the only one able to act. While the clearly dangerous fellow began to cast a spell in their direction, Max ran at him and tried to stab him. Unfortunately, the man seemed to be immune to the barbarian's weapon and finished his spell. A black and red column of hellfire exploded down onto the remaining group, killing Flynn and Cleet instantly and spoiling Redcorn’s dispel evil cast.
The adventurers were unhappy but determined. They engaged as they could, bringing to bear the magic weapons and spells that they had left. Meanwhile, Max caught a blow from the creature, which dealt an irrelevant amount of damage but drained two levels of experience from the warrior! This was not Max’s first experience with this effect but it didn’t make it any easier to bear.
While some of the backline PCs pulled triage duty, the rest tried to affect the monster with anything that they had. Fortunately for them, Redcorn displayed his holy symbol and beseeched Ehlonna to turn the abomination. This was accompanied by a very good turn undead roll and the vampire cleric of Tharizdun was in flight.
The players are accustomed to turn being an auto win, mostly because their DM (that’s me) is lazy and rolling against a cowering defenseless foe is boring. Vampires, however, have quite a bag of tricks up their sleeves. Von Malkin turned to gas to escape, improving his ac significantly and allowing him freedom of movement. The party pursued, concerned he was going to instantly restore himself in one of the coffins on the far wall or escape through a secret door.
It was a running fight over several turns mostly due to high AC. The gas slipped through a secret door and continued to flee, but the party was able to find the latch for the door quickly. Max pursued the cloud of black and red smoke and smote it with a magic blade thrown to him by one of the henchmen. Motes of dust fell to the floor and were absorbed, leaving the party to wonder if it was another evasion tactic by the wily creature.
They considered leaving the dungeon to rest up since they were light on resources and there were three sarcophagi with unknown contents nearby. The players weren’t sure they could fight another vampire or two if it came to it. They opted to check the center coffin, discovering a comatose von Malkin lying in repose and recovering from the many wounds the party had inflicted on him. The players didn’t really know how to permanently destroy a vampire, but some theology and loremastery rolls got them there and they stuck a stake in his heart and Max chopped his head off. Oberholt has a house rule that if you strike the killing blow against the enemy that drained your levels you get a save versus Death to regain that energy. Unfortunately for Max he rolled a 1 so that energy loss would be permanent.
As the vampire’s body crumbled to ash, the orb that was floating in the center of the room released its dark energy above and below, grounding against the metal surfaces of the chamber and dissipating. What was left was a glass orb the size of a bowling ball that Cleet rescued before it got smashed by zealots. The party was able to discover a secret latch, sliding von Malkin’s coffin away to reveal a cavity piled with treasure and a grave’s worth of rich, moist soil. They also found a library and workshop of decent value which Cleet took a bit of time to investigate.
The rest of the session was bagging up loot and victory lapping, then retiring back to Talston to rest/level/recuperate which is where the big span of time hit. Random encounters were mundane and uninteresting so we’ll leave it at that. The Dark Hymn had been broken and the citizens of Oberholt could sleep peacefully again. For now.
Musings:
The party was very careful in resource management this session, with multiple clerics using spells as they could to ensure that they had some redundancy to recover people who may have fallen in combat. They were a bit more engaged in planning, particularly since they had a little advanced recon from their previous visits, and turned a bad situation into a win.
Energy drain sucks.
Fate points are an interesting mechanic from the HFH. Originally, Oberholt had none. Then we had 1d4 per PC. Then we backed off to 1. I still think this is the right balance, particularly since we don’t run the backup XP mechanic that ACKS offers. If we ran backup XP, I’d pull fate points. Something to consider next time around perhaps, but this session fate points came through again by saving Cleet.
I think the party will be relieved to get away from that dungeon, although they know that there is more to explore if they’re truly interested. This will be the first time compression since some of the newer guys joined the table, so they’ll get their first chance to roll new PCs for Team B and their shenanigans.
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