3/10/24-3/12/24, rest 3/13, active 3/14
PC: Gwendolyn, Legany, Galt
Hench: Amadayo, Mahin, Madrof, Godfried, Chase, Thomas, Mike, Freddy
The session led off with discussion about potential targets, with one player attempting to refrain from pressing for his own interests in the form of missions from his name level PCs. The party decided to try and finish off the Black Shaft dungeon which they felt was nearing completion. I allowed for the likelihood that resources from PCs that were not present would be available in lieu of any downtime action declaring otherwise, so they had magical light and a boat to get them in.
They went straight down towards the lowest unexplored level but ran into some assassin bugs just like the ones from last session. We learned that last week’s miracle victory using the Hypnotic Sigil spell had an asterisk by it since the spell only affects Humanoids. I need to read spells in conjunction with players rather than trust what I’m told! There was a hard fought battle that almost broke the players’ morale but they carried on at least to scout out the next level, accompanied by a conjured fire elemental dubbed Mr. Sparkles.
The landing at level 5 had flashing magical images appearing randomly throughout the room of the ACKS goddess Lammala in battle and/or lustful contention with the ACKS god Ornaron. When I described these entities abstractly since Oberholt uses the Greyhawk pantheon, the party dubbed them Ursula and King Triton from Disney’s The Little Mermaid, with Gwendolyn’s player hittin’ us with the “well actually'' when he was called Poseidon. We promptly got a collective grip.
They explored a little and discovered a trap of some kind. The party chose to avoid it rather than disarm it. A large mural of a storm tossed sea dominated the entire wall of a long chamber with the whitecaps and accents inlaid with platinum. Some attempts were made to estimate the value and how long it would take to remove all the little pieces. The group chose to come back to that later.
A gale of raining blood ruined visibility and made for quite a disgusting scene in one room, so they noped away from that. A mural of a stern-faced King Triton overlooking the next relatively small room gave them pause, since the ceiling was obscured by storm clouds and lightning walked along the walls about waist high. There was much discussion about which room was worse, blood or lightning, before they sent Mr. Sparkles across to see what might happen. Predictably, lightning blasted the creature. They chose to dismiss it rather than pull it back to them and suffer another lightning bolt. How kind of them. Mr. Sparkles hung them a flaming middle finger when he faded away.
Back to the blood room and in they went, doing their best to protect themselves but ultimately failing. They discovered a plinth of obsidian like stone that had a plaque inset within it and a marble portal that pulsed with a rhythmic light. The plaque crawled with shifting arcane symbols in an unknown language, the same language was on the marble archway but in a much different tone.
While the rest endured the downpour, Thomas the thief attempted to remove the plaque. I called this a Trapbreaking check, which he failed, and failed, and failed, but no random encounters. Shucks. This gave the party time to summon some manes and prepare to move forward.
Weird arcane plaque finally in hand, they pushed on, discovering another trap just before Galt stepped on it to his certain doom. Backing out, they put one of the manes on triggering it, which released a 10,000 lb Ochre Ooze from a trap door in the ceiling. It smashed the manes flat and the party fled.
They hit on a random encounter on their way out. I made them roll the dice for it and it was bad, two humanoid females with snakes for hair and wings and straight busted faces. ACKS II Gorgons are like badass Medusae, but they had a max reaction check. So what to do with that?
Well, first the stone gaze was voluntary. So the monsters didn’t hit em with that, yet. Second, they were affiliated with Nasga, the ACKS Chaotic goddess of beauty, pain, and lust, so they were gonna be a bit sketchy with their motivations and ambitions. Third, they were super tough and knew it, so were going to negotiate from a position of extreme strength.
I decided that they were going to demand a frankly absurd amount of gold as a toll to leave their level of the dungeon safely. They gave the vague impression that they would take trade in flesh as well, whatever that meant. Some members thought it was just sacrificing one of their own to their death. Others thought it was something dangerously sexual. After a painfully long discussion, the ever-greedy Galt opted to give himself into their custody rather than pay the toll, gaining an assurance that they would drop “whatever was left of him” at the beginning of the dungeon.
I whiffed here as the Lawful Crusaders in the party probably would not have been comfortable with this arrangement, but they have a shitload of henches and I miss things like that sometimes. The party left Galt with a healing potion, a blindfold, and an inspire courage from Gwendolyn the bard. They were able to get out without any further encounters and deposit their tablet on the boat with one of their tougher henches to guard it while most of the party returned to wait for Galt’s delivery to the entrance.
I decided to have the resolution of his… uh… encounter… resolved by a mortal wounds check. Death by snu snu was certainly possible, but I allowed him to use his healing potion as part of the recovery. The bonuses went his way and he only suffered notable scarring as dictated by the Savage Mortal Wounds table. The party scooped him and sailed back to town.
After a day’s rest and some magical healing, they returned to Jolus the Laughing Skull with donuts in hand for Irrelevant the Caretaker. The party was led up the mystical tower where previously it was a brutal, arduous climb. This time they walked easily to the Master’s room and met with Jolus a la Emperor of Mankind on his golden throne. A psychic image entered their minds and thanked them for delivering the agreed spell formula before it broke into a thousand pieces and was absorbed by the corpse-like figure on the mechanical seat.
Payment was never discussed when they took the mission, surprising no one more than myself, so now they were offered “Power or Riches.” Characteristically, they chose Riches unanimously and piles of treasure materialized at their feet. They scooped it, waved goodbye, and immediately sold what they didn’t want and traveled to Millon to trade Redcorn for some items. End of session.
Musings:
Disappointed that I didn’t press the issue with the Lawfuls in the party. Unless they’ve got interest in that portal, I think Team A is done with the Black Shaft. Congratulations to the team on a successful objective.
No comments:
Post a Comment