Masha Deathfoot - Human One-Handed Martial Artist (250+11 points)
Puddin' Noddington - Gnome Thief (250+7 points)
Zephyra - Half-Elf Wizard (250+8 points)
Player Absent:
Grükuk Kzaash - Half-Orc One-Armed
Lucas Zombini - Human Cleric of Pelor, the god of the sun (250+10 points)
Amothius 2nd, 2546
The party rested in the hallway, leaving the suit of armour in its locked room, and Lucas healed Argua and Masha's wounds once he had enough FP and ER back. Puddin' went down the hallway through the arch and found a pair of orange-y metal double doors engraved with dozens of screaming faces, which had gemstones as eyes. Zephyra confirmed that they were non-magical, and Puddin', after ensuring there were no traps, threw a Gizmo'd loop of rope around one of the handles, stylized as the tongues of one of the faces.
She pulled it open, and looked through to see a square, barren room with some scorch marks, pitting, and bits of shattered glass scattered about the floor. On the far side was an archway leading to a narrow flight of stairs up, and Puddin' could feel a faint breeze coming out of the room. She opened the other door, and the party moved up to the threshold to take a look, but nobody could see anything out of the ordinary.
The party walked towards the staircase, and as they crossed the mid-point, four living shadows manifested in the corners and charged towards them, reaching out with their arms; most of them missed, but one reached into Lucas' torso and stole some of his life force. Once she had a moment to think, Zephyra realized that these were Demons from Beyond the Stars, and informed the others that, despite their appearance, they were vulnerable to normal attacks and would be banished after taking only a moderate amount of damage.
Masha kicked a demon over and Argua chopped the same one, while Grükuk sprinted at another with her shield and knocked it over. Puddin' switched to her shortsword and dagger, but found her weak blows to be ineffective. Zephyra conjured a 3d Flame Jet, and Lucas backed up and crit casting Shield 3, but his Curse caused him to fail and then expired. The two prone demons started to stand, while the others failed to get a hold of anybody's souls.
Another solid kick from Masha caused a demon to "bleed" pinpoints of starlight from its "wounds", and Grükuk knocked the one that had been trying to attack Zephyra over. Argua finished off the "bleeding" one, but Zephyra, Puddin', and Lucas failed to inflict any worthwhile damage on the others. One of the demons tore out part of Zephyra's soul and knocked her over, healing itself slightly, while the others continued to stand up.
The front-liners took out a second Demon, while the half-orc battering ram knocked the only one standing over, and the others again failed to do anything of import, though Zephyra did at least recover from stun before having more of her soul ripped from her. Masha landed a sick crit kick, but like Lucas, her Curse caused it to whiff instead. Puddin' helped Zephyra up, while Argua cut the demon that had been stealing Zephyra's soul to ribbons.
Lucas dodged the last demon's grasping claws, and it was subsequently banished by a Rapid Strike flying kick before it managed to inflict any more damage. With the fight over, Lucas healed Zephyra and himself, and the party searched the room; they found that the floor held a faded and ruined Pentagram, and figured that the gems on the doors were worth about $4k, and the doors themselves were copper and worth probably another $1k. They figured it was probably intended to be a place to summon things, for whatever reason.
The party decided to head up the staircase, which came to a dead-end hallway with a lever on the left side. Puddin' realized that this was a secret door, and Grükuk pulled the lever which caused it to pop up out of the ground a half-inch or so and spun around to the other side, taking Grükuk with it. The rest of the party filtered through one at a time, and found that the room beyond was some sort of mausoleum.
It housed three tombs, which appeared to have been vandalized and then repaired, and engravings of ravens on branches watched over the room from an archway leading to more stairs up. Lucas identified the ravens as being imagery of the Raven Queen, goddess of Death, Winter, and Fate. There was a brief discussion of how such things were in no way required, nor was the tradition of putting a coin in the deceased's mouth for "passage to the underworld", but that most folk just followed tradition.
Beside the revolving wall on this side was a death's head, which seemed to have a semi-hollow mouth. Grükuk put a copper piece in, and the door popped up and rotated, so they now knew another way in that could avoid the tunnel of Dehydrate runes. Zephyra tried to cast Summon Spirit to talk to the people in the tombs, but failed and gave up. The party then headed up the stairs, which led to an antechamber with another short set of stairs ending at a stone door that was slightly ajar.
Puddin' opened the door, and arrived outdoors, on the same hill as the manor, overlooking the ruined village to the north. The party decided to head back to Isserno (a several day journey) to sell some loot, hopefully enough ($1600) to get Grükuk's arm regenerated. Before they could, however, they had to head back down to grab the spellbooks they had left in the library, as well as the gems on the copper face door.
Amothius 4th, 2546
Back in Isserno, Puddin', the impromptu face, sold the party's loot, except the silver demon flask (which I forgot to add to the tally) but walked away with only $988 after a failed Merchant roll. Grükuk and Lucas decided to stay in town to rest (because their player wasn't here). That done, the party headed back to Haverbrook, and then Shadowmantle Manor.
Amothius 6th, 2546
The party arrived back at the Shadowmantle mausoleum and scouted the other two mausoleum wings off of the antechamber. They found them extensive and filled with tombs, many vandalized, but no valuables or threats. They paid the toll to pass by the revolving secret door and then went back to the hallway they had been in last time and went to check the last door on the right. Zephyra scraped some of the meteoric covering off of the wall and cast Shape Earth to create a viewport into the room.
Inside was a ruined alchemy lab, which had clearly exploded, lit by an eerie green cloud of gas hovering lazily along the ceiling at the far end of the room. Zephyra cast Purify Air to get rid of the cloud, which turned out to be a Toxifier that flew out through the hole to suffocate her and the rest of the party, who all started to hold their breath. Masha and Argua beat the crap out of the evil cloud, using AoA (Double) and Flurry of Blows to land as many attacks as possible, while Zephyra continued casting Purify Air and Puddin' ran away screaming. It "died" before anybody could be hurt.
Zephyra took a look around the alchemy lab, and noticed a half-dozen intact potions and an empty crystal vial which seemed to be magical, meanwhile, Puddin' searched the wreckage and was able to assemble a backpack alchemy lab. Zephyra spent 30 minutes and used her Hidden Lore (Magic Items) to discover that the vial was the Phial of the Mad Alchemist. Once per day, it can synthesize any potion or other concoction named clearly in front of it, which will last for 1 minute before evaporating; however, there is a 1-in-6 chance that the concoction has the opposite effect, and there is no way to tell until it is used.
For the last room in the hallway, they did the now-standard "scrape 'n' shape", made a viewport and saw a huddled mass of rags in the far corner that seemed to be breathing, and a handful of skeletons, which appeared to have been gnawed on. Zephyra cast Create Fire on the entire room, followed by Shape Earth to close the viewport to be safe. As she did, they heard a blood-curdling scream calling for help, as though somebody was being burned alive. Argua tried to force the door open, but it was iron and unyielding.
After a minute, long after the screaming had stopped, Puddin' picked the lock and they went in to check the room, where they found that there was now one more set of bones, and that nothing other than charred bones had survived the inferno. The party decided to leave and sell more loot, but made sure to block up the blasted passage first.
Amothius 8th, 2546
Zephyra used their new backpack alchemy lab to identify the potions during their downtime; there were three Minor Healing Potions (transparent, liquid) and one Potion of Flight (sky-blue, gaseous). Unfortunately, while working with the next potion (a thick black ooze), she rolled a crit-fail on Alchemy and spilled a whole vial of Liquid Death™ on herself; a failed HT-6 roll resulted in 6d6 damage as her skin absorbed the ooze and it crawled towards her heart; fortunately, though she took 27 damage, she passed her death check and lived.
After getting some Great Healing from Lucas, she started to identify the last potion (clear blue), and crit failed AGAIN, wasting that as well; it turned out to be a Potion of Agility.
Notes:
The player who runs Argua/Masha was going to run the first session of his GURPS Androids on the Run game tonight, but one of the players had to cancel, so we did this instead.
The Demon from Beyond the Stars stat-block gives them a ±5 Temperature Tolerance, which is completely irrelevant in probably 99.9% of games, and a waste of page space.
Grükuk was still pretty useful with only a shield. She could probably have knocked the golem armour swordsman over in the last session had she tried.
I dislike that Innate Attack is split into 4 different specialities, and hate that Magic/Spells don't actually tell you which one a spell uses. Going forwards, I'm just going to have one Innate Attack skill, and will give "weird attacks", like breathing fire instead of shooting it out of your hands, a flat -2 at worst; you're already paying for the spell/advantage, why get dinged twice?
I let Puddin' make a DX roll to help Zephyra up to standing in a single turn. Seems fair to spend one turn to help another person stand up; you're losing potential damage output and have to be in the "danger zone" to do it.
The system for using Merchant to influence pricing for selling good is idiotic. For no particularly good reason, you are required to have a skill of 17+ in order to regularly beat the average NPC, which earns you only 20% extra. As a result, I changed this to be a flat, unopposed roll. They still failed.
I'm not super happy with how spellbooks work in DFRPG. They save you... $40/spell. Assuming that you actually use that optional rule, and that you want to learn all of them (and don't already know them all, as Zephyra does), that's $200 saved for the wizardly one in this adventure. How do you make them useful and/or interesting without using that rule, then? I've decided that, in the future, any spellbooks found will have at least one special/custom spell that does not exist in the default list. I'm also thinking of adding the following:
- Lets you learn the spells listed without meeting the pre-requisites
- Can be used as reusable, heavy, uncharged scrolls
I came up with a new trait for boss monsters this session: Loot-Sploding. The idea is to mimic how enemies drop loot in games like Diablo or Borderlands. When the monster dies, its body explodes in a shower of gore and treasure as coins, weapons, scrolls, and anything else fly across the room dealing 1d cutting damage as shrapnel.
Argua and Zephyra are both pretty much counting on the other one dying during the adventure, and the other getting to inherit the property. There was also discussion of a "duel to the death", where both parties determined that whoever went first would be likely to win.
I really flubbed the Toxifier fight; first I had its poison act as respiratory but didn't let them hold their breath at all, then ret-conned it so that they could hold their breath (and so undid some damage done, because they killed it in under HT/2 seconds), and then finally realized that its poison is... contact? Urgh. I also take issue with the idea of using a monster with Unkillable (Achilles' Heel: Magic Weapons) when there are no magic items in the adventure.
I have shortened the time to identify potions to 1 hour with a lab or 10 seconds with a taste. Still too long to do reliably in the dungeon, less ridiculous.
The "mass of rags" was a Dwarven prisoner that had been forced to eat his companions to survive, but was otherwise friendly. RIP in Peace.
XP was 1 for killing the Demons from Beyond the Stars. No MVP because it's kind of weird with only 2 players.
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