Argua - Half-Orc Barbarian (250+9 points)
Grükuk Kzaash - Half-Orc Knight (250+10 points)
Lucas Zombini - Human Cleric of Pelor, the god of the sun (250+9 points)
Masha Deathfoot - Human One-Handed Martial Artist (250+10 points)
Puddin' Noddington - Gnome Thief (250+6 points)
Zephyra - Half-Elf Wizard (250+6 points)
Amothius 2nd, 2546
While waiting for Puddin' to wake up and for Lucas to recover FP, Zephyra cast Shape Earth on the stone beneath the pedestal with the black book on it, and formed it into a narrow layer which moved towards the door, bringing the pedestal with it. As it got closer, the book storm started again, but stayed within the room, and soon enough the pedestal and black book emerged into the hallway.
Zephyra took a look at it, and, thanks to Thaumatology, realized that it was a magical security system (similar to the Dehydrate runes) that would end if the book itself was destroyed. A closer look at the book revealed its cover to be letters found in Common, but arranged in random gibberish, and that the pages inside were all blank. She crit casting Dispel Magic, which upgraded it to Dispel Enchantment and ended the book storm, leaving the books (most of which were found to be hollow and filled with rocks) strewn all around the library's floor.
Now that hundreds of flapping pages weren't ruining visibility, however, the party noted that a dozen or so books were still on the shelves, and seemed to have stayed there the whole time. Zephyra waited for Puddin' to wake up, and then sent her in to Search the shelves, where she found two spellbooks: Elrem's Curses and The Lesser Kunsian Book of the Dead. They were deemed too heavy to carry, so Zephyra concealed them behind other scraps of torn-apart books before moving on.
Puddin' relayed that the rest of the books were just ledgers and stuff, and Zephyra decided she'd take a look as well. The ledgers were, indeed, ledgers, with entries for such mundane things as grain stockpiles and expense reports, with most signed by Esterad Shadowmantle, and a few by Jaina Shadowmantle and Jeeves. The party discussed how they might have to rebrand the family line, as neither Argua nor Zephyra really wanted the last name Shadowmantle, but Grükuk pointed out that they'd need to get new silverware and banners with updated heraldry, which would be costly.
Puddin' mentioning the lack of loot so far triggered more conversation, where they hoped that the inherited land would cover their expenses once they finished clearing out the necromancer or whatever, and discussed whether there was, and how they could redeem, a bounty on necromancers (no standing orders, but they could probably get something). Once they finished resting, Puddin' checked out the next door on the left, which was iron, and peered through the keyhole after finding no traps.
The room was dark, but thanks to her Dark Vision, she saw a man in super heavy armour holding a sword and shield standing in the middle of the room. One of the torso armour plates sported a half-cog with an inner star, which Lucas identified as an icon of Erathis, the goddess of Civilization and Law. They figured he was either a zombie or a prisoner (Puddin': "Or a zombie-prisoner!"), and tried talking to him through the door, but got no response. Puddin' didn't want to open the door, because she'd be on the frontline (Grükuk: "What, are you afraid of dying?" Puddin', a 3' tall gnome: "Yes.").
The party continued to argue about what to do, but eventually Puddin' got Curious enough, opened the door, and said "Hello there!" to the heavily-armoured "man", who clomped forwards slowly. Masha, Argua, and Grükuk all charged in to attack it, but their blows were either parried, blocked, or bounced harmlessly off of its armour. Puddin' Disappeared, and Lucas noticed that the half-cog symbol was defaced with a red icon of a spider.
The man retaliated with a savage blow which crippled Argua's right arm, but thanks to her huge muscles, she would still be able to wield her great axe (poorly) with only her left. A crit failed dodge caused the armoured man to fall over, though he wasn't wounded by the blow, and he was then Stunned by Zephyra before he could finish standing up. Grükuk readied her kukri to go for the eyes, while Argua and Masha failed repeatedly to injure the armoured man's sword-arm.
Finally, Masha landed a telling blow that managed to penetrate the armour, but the injury was only minor. Puddin' jumped out of the shadows, tried to stab him in the eyes, but missed and then sprinted away. Lucas kind of just stood there, refusing to cast spells that might help anybody, or to use his sling and aim for the eyes ("I'm not a coward, I'm just useless; there's a difference!"). After evaluating for a second, Grükuk made a committed stab at the eyes with her kukri, but also missed, and tried to run around behind him, only for his sword to slip past her shield and take off her right arm.
Zephyra asked the rest of the party to retreat so she could block the door with Shape Earth, but they wanted to stand and fight, with Grükuk running past to flank, until Masha took a slash to the torso. Argua and Masha both started to move out, while Grükuk used her rear position to grapple the armoured man with her remaining arm, and he failed to escape. This left her in a perilous position, though, as she was now the only one in the room, and if she let go, she could only move at the same speed as their foe.
Lucas cast Great Healing on Grükuk, which fully restored her HP (and fully depleted his FP and ER) and got her move back up to 4 (Lucas: "I can't let any of my harem of female characters die!"). She backed up a bit, blocked a feinted strike while slipping towards the door out, and then sprinted away. Grükuk made it past the door, followed by Lucas, who didn't pass out thanks to his high Will.
Once everybody was out, Puddin' shut the iron door and instantly picked it shut, followed by Zephyra casting Shape Earth and exhausting her FP to cover it with stone. While the casters rested, we noticed that Lucas' ratty pile of robes would be a 1-FP power item, and discussed retiring characters (Grükuk: "I'm not quite there yet, the other arm's still good.").
Afterwards, Zephyra tried casting Shape Earth to create a 1" diameter hole in the wall, but the spell fizzled again. Puddin' scraped off some of the rust-coloured coating, and a second attempt at casting succeeded, revealing the man to have returned to his original post. She followed up with Create Fire to immolate the entire room for a minute, and the armoured man fell over partway through. Zephyra thought about it some more, and put the pieces together: he was actually a golem-armour swordsman, and, while the fleshy parts had just been crispy-fried, the armour was still very much intact, if glowing a dull red.
Puddin' tried peaking through the keyholes on the other two rooms, but they didn't go all the way through.
Notes:
The book storm room in the adventure is written fairly poorly, because the loot it contains relies on all the books being destroyed but 2. What if they realize the book is evil and destroy it with Fireballs? They still only get two books, but there are dozens of others? Even something like "There are 4 valuable books, but 2 are destroyed during the book storm" would solve this, if poorly.
Treasure in this adventure is WAY too low. Assuming the party loots everything, gets maximum rolls on variable-priced items, and drags 1,000lbs of crap back to town, they get ~$10k, which drops to $4k, or $6k with a lucky reaction roll; few people will try the opposed Merchant roll, as even the pre-made Bard only has skill 13. The party's down $3.2k if they want to get Masha's left hand and Grükuk's right arm back, so they have a total of $800 (and potentially NEGATIVE, depending on how poorly the rest of the dungeon goes).
Puddin' now uses my Gnome and Thief templates, which gives her Dark Vision (Forward Arc Only), and way better skills across the board. With Lockpicking-21 and Good lockpicks for +1, she rolls on a 12 to instantly pick doors..
I mistakenly allowed the Stun spell to affect the golem-armor swordsman, but it shouldn't affect Constructs. Additionally, technically, the flesh bits shouldn't have burned going by RAW (Large Area Injury gives 8DR), but it makes sense that the metal will heat and it will be cooked.
Lucas doing nothing screwed them over pretty hard; a Shield 4 or Armour 3 or something would have saved Grükuk's arm, allowing him to avoid casting Great Healing. On another note, Contingency Casting on a Cleric seems like a poor choice because the spell list is too short, and you could just buy another 14 spells, or a level of Power Investiture and 4 spells.
I have now noticed that the demon-in-a-bottle is worth only barely more than the strongbox+lock it's in, which seems odd. I'm going to revamp the item to be way more valuable.
The most valuable item in the adventure is a tie between an alchemy kit and a bunch of copper at $1k, which is a huge let down not just because there's no "big score", but because the loot is so mind-numbingly boring. This is doubly annoying when they could have just randomly rolled crap from DF8 to make far more interesting items.
XP was 1, MVP was Zephyra. I gave them the point for dealing with the book storm even though they activated it because the solution was creative.
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