Arc Sol - Human Cleric of Pelor, the god of the sun (343 points)
Aurum Red-Brand - Human Wizard (329 points)
Mor'ath Enanqua - Elven Swashbuckler/Thief (329 points)
Zaxod - Half-Orc Knight (339 points)
Day 72 (Cont.):
Weather: Who Cares! You're Two Miles Underground
Date: Coreli 3rd, 2526
Mor'ath turned back to face the ooze and launched a series of attacks to little effect, while Zaxod continued running before looping back around to slam into it. The slime didn't even try to dodge and melted through Zaxod's codpiece while taking almost no damage. Zaxod followed Mor'ath's example, and the two managed to chop the ooze into a puddle before heading back to regroup.
Meanwhile, Aurum and Arc were still hiding, when they heard a scratching noise through the wall behind them. Figuring it might be a secret door, they looked around, but were unable to find anything. Mor'ath and Zaxod came back and informed them of their grand victory, and Aurum used Shape Earth to gouge a 1m deep "doorway" into the wall, but it didn't go all the way through. The scratching stopped, and the party rested for a while.
They headed back to the sliding door that was spiked closed, and Mor'ath removed the piton, allowing it to open. Beyond was a small burial chamber with two sarcophagi and several burial alcoves. The first sarcophagus was decorated with a tree relief filled with silver, while the second had the design of a mountain. Zaxod was unable to place the symbols, but was fairly certain that they were heraldic. Aurum wanted to open them, but none of the others wanted to graverob, so they moved on.
Back in the room where the ooze had attacked, Mor'ath noticed that the "dead end" was actually a thinner portion of wall that could be broken through by tapping it with his trap-finding pole. Zaxod tried to push it down, but when that failed he ran headlong into it, and managed to kool-aid man his way through. On the other side was a four-way intersection of hallway, an open pit on the left with an iron door slightly further down, and a group of half a dozen skeletons on the right.
The skeletons attacked, some coming back into the ooze room before Arc used True Faith, while others surrounded Zaxod. All of them were quickly dispatched quickly, and Arc noticed that there was a troll in the bottom of the open pit. Aurum lit it on fire for a minute or so and it burned to ash.
The party retreated back into the ooze room and rested for a while, before hopping over the pit and opening the door, causing some water from behind to spill out and into the pit. Beyond the door was a large room with an inch of water on the floor, which narrowed to a hallway with several closed doors on both sides.
Mor'ath noted a hidden panel with a hinge where water was flowing, and pushed it back, revealing a waist-high passage into a room with two beds, two unlabelled potions (one clear, one with red pigment that had separated), two ancient sets of stoneworker's tools, a sledgehammer, and 10m of (surprisingly intact) rope. Aurum took the potions and they headed down the hallway to the first door on the left.
After checking the door for traps, Mor'ath opened it and saw a roughly 20x25 room, half of which was covered by a large mass of pink, slighly undulating flesh. He immediately closed the door and the party decided what to do next. Eventually, they re-opened the door, and headed in. Taking a better look, they saw a door on the left wall, just in front of the flesh, and dozens of burial niches with skulls and coins on the flesh's side of the room. Zaxod approached the flesh, and noted that it smelled horrible, but it did nothing, so he poked it.
When it didn't respond in any discernible way, they continued through the door and down a hall, going left at a T. Mor'ath pointed out another thin wall, this one with geometric patterns of triangles which Aurum copied down. The hallway ended in a small room with burial niches lined in engraved runes filled with silver. Arc cast Gift of Letters and discerned that they were Dwarven prayers, though he did not recognize the name of the god (or gods) they praised.
Mor'ath started checking the niches, but was surprised by another grey ooze! It dissolved one of his sandals and started on the other one, while Zaxod and Mor'ath chopped at it. They beat it into a puddle before it caused too much damage, and Aurum threw a Fireball he had been charging at its corpse.
Zaxod remembered the room with the sledgehammer, and went back to grab it with Aurum, who took a chisel and mallet to remove the silver from the runes. They made it there and back uneventfully, and Aurum started chiselling out some silver while the rest of the party rested.
With everyone in good condition, Zaxod moved up to the triangle wall, and all of his hair suddenly fell out. After being checked for disease (nope), curses (nope), and magic (probably not), Zaxod sledgehammered the triangle wall, but failed to break it in one hit and started yelling at it, Arc, and everyone else to give him their hair right now. He broke it with a second hit, and the party went in.
Inside were four life-sized dwarven statues on slabs, several alcoves containing intact, non-moving skeletons, and a door on the far wall. Mor'ath opened the inner door, and found another room with three sarcophagi and hundreds of burial niches lining the wall. They also noticed that there was an iron door, though the bottom half of it had been smashed inwards. Zaxod went to take a closer look, and was ambushed by a black pudding that was hiding between some of the sarcophagi.
Zaxod drew his great axe, and Mor'ath stepped in, but the slime hit hard, and the blows of the party seemed to have almost no effect, frequently bouncing off its rubbery hide or getting almost stuck inside of its gelatin-like body. The pudding bashed Zaxod's axe aside, and then savagely beat him with its body again, while Arc cast Major Healing twice to keep the half-orc alive. Mor'ath dealt the final blow, and Aurum threw a Fireball he had been charging at its corpse.
They fell back to the room with the silver runes to rest, but Aurum just chiselled instead. The ting-ting-ting noise he made attracted some strange, swollen skeletons after twenty minutes, and Mor'ath moved to advance while Arc began to stand. Up close, the skeletons were dripping water, and their bones seemed far harder than usual, almost like stone. Mor'ath focused on removing hands, and just before Zaxod could join the fray, Arc used his True Faith and the skeletons all ran away.
Notes:
Mor'ath's player missed the first hour or so of the session, and Zaxod took Waits during the ooze fight to make sure that the higher-Dodge Swashbuckler was the one being attacked.
Zaxod was switching weapons throughout the ooze fights, and I'm pretty sure that every one of his axes is close to disintegration.
Zaxod is in the anti-graverobbing faction, even though he grabbed a magic axe from a burial chamber. It's okay to take the undead's things, but the dead are off-limits.
Aurum was initially planning on using repeated Fireballs to kill the troll in the pit until I suggested he use Create Fire.
When Zaxod lost his hair, he immediately began listing things he had done to see if they could figure out what had caused it. Nobody's sure, though they think touching the flesh might have had something to do with it.
Aurum has so far taken half a pound worth of silver runes. $10 per coin, 50 coins to the pound means that's worth about $2,500.
They've managed to beeline into three ooze rooms in a row (four if you count the flesh room), which is hilarious to me.
XP:
1 for general success
1 for good roleplaying
1 for the hardest fight (the pudding)
MVP went to Zaxod for pretty much single-handedly killing the pudding.
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