Defenders Summary #76: Hit ‘Em When They’re Down
Party Roster:
Felix, 7th level fighter, 70 hp, played by Alex
Balinor, 7th level fighter, 70 hp, played by Joel
Cassian, 7th level cleric, 45 hp, played by Katherine
Kain, 6th level cleric, 43 hp, played by Jeff
Donald, 8th level mage, 43 hp, NPC
Morgan, 7th level fighter, 38 hp, played by Alan
Quentin, 8th level druid, 37 hp, played by Jeremy
Albee, 5th level monk, 31 hp, NPC
Bogomel, 3rd level fighter, 31 hp, henchman
Nakumanu, 4th level fighter, 30 hp, henchman
Chiaro, 4th level illusionist, 8 hp, played by Aaron
The party was bored, and that meant we had to kill something.
We settled for kidnapping an orcish “priest” or so we hoped. After waiting for a few days, our crack strike team of Morgan, Kain, and Donald spotted a large group burying two orcs that had been executed in front of the gravesite earlier in the day. Kain and Donald were hiding, and Morgan was invisible as he snuck up on the orcs. He spotted a holy symbol on the leader orc, and gave the ok by turning visible. The orcs turned and promptly all but the leader fell asleep, thanks to Donald. Before Morgan could have any fun (he had a Silence spell with him to ruin any screams or warnings), Kain Held the leader, and the battle was over without beginning. We Levitated the orcs and dragged them back to the party.
On the second Charm Monster we managed to “persuade” the orc that we were hired by the orcs to ferret out a traitor in the temple complex. We then discovered that we had badly underestimated the power of the complex. It apparently contains the high priests of all four major orcish religions and would likely have servants of the deities, even though many of the high level priests had been slaughtered by Dunstill and Illic at the harbor during the previous mission.
We decided that this was far too much, and set our eyes on another target. We found out from our orcish friend that the palace, our designated target, had drained most of its coffers replacing the water that had been lost when we destroyed the dams. The water was stored in gigantic barrels (8 feet tall) in two rows in a huge storeroom near the palace. We decided to make their lives miserable by destroying it.
The plan was masterful, if we do say so ourselves. It didn’t work out quite as well as we hoped, do to some bad luck, but in the end…
Kain and Cassian Flew to the storeroom while Balinor, Felix, and Morgan were blown there while Levitating using Cassian’s summoning of winds ability (as a cleric of Phaulkon). This cool method of travel allowed us to have five people present and VERY far above the roof of the storeroom.
Cassian landed on the roof under cover of a Darkness spell and cast a Dust Devil. Amazingly there were no guards outside or anywhere within 500 yards. The Dust Devil was used to correct the trajectory of our missiles: 200 pound rocks dropped from great heights by the fighters and Kain.
The smashes were not as good as we’d hoped (due to grossly incompetent d20 rolling) but nonetheless eight of twelve boulders crashed through the roof and nailed the major portion of the barrels on one side, leaving about 20 out of 110 barrels. Cassian dropped into the warehouse, discovering that there were a number of dead guards under the rubble, and apparently they were all completely drunk, or had been. No alarm had even been raised. We took advantage of this and cast a Control Temperature to freeze 18 of the 20 barrels to the point of explosion from ice, opened the spiggots on the remaining two barrels, and blew up the other half with a Wall of Fire from the Belt, thus totally annihilating the water supply!
The mission was a success, and the Belle Venture arrived and took us back to Carse. Quentin had meanwhile reached the Druidic Court with the Kraken warning system item, and had only needed to dodge an eagle once on the six week trip. Quentin’s fate is as yet unknown.
The party reached Carse and we avoided salvage tax there by chartering a passenger boat to Restenford. The Baron was happy to accept the tax, and discounted us a bit, especially considering that Felix had a baseball-sized diamond, which is virtually unsellable, though priceless.
We Identified our items, finding that we had an amulet that allowed any character to Turn Undead as a 1st level cleric with a –2 penalty. We also had a dagger +1, a scroll of Prot. Plants, Magic Mirror, (I may have forgotten an item here) and a circlet that connects the wearer to a Book of Infinite Spells! (You get spells of any type, and can use them a number of times)
The first spell in the book is Transmute Stone to Flesh (6th level wizard spell). This means Donald can use it once per day at a significant (~20%) chance of the page flipping when it is used.
The other we got was an urn which contained weird creature. The urn was sent to Zalk for identification and was discovered to be, you guessed it, a permanent gate to the Elemental Plane of Air.
We haven’t decided whether to sell it to the School of Wizardry. The offers are 15,000 gp or some really weird magic items including such lovely things as:
Arma-armadillo—Wearer looks like an armadillo, gains heightened smell from elongated nose, long jumping ability, and gets –1 AC bonus.
Staff of the Gnat—1 charge, kill all bugs in the area, or Finger of Death a giant bug of any kind (even insectoid), 2 charges, raise all dead bugs in the area, and 3 charges was really weird, though I can’t remember what it was. Someone remind me!
Hammer, +6 vs. dogs—no explanation necessary
…and so on…
We really didn’t decide this. Thoughts also include Donald picking up Wall of Fire/ and or Fireball in this trade.
Finally, Kain and Chiaro gained levels and somehow BOTH managed to roll 1s on their hit dice, Kain rising to 45 hp, and Chiaro rising to the “kill-me-now” “total” of… 9 hp, at 5th level.
XP for the mission ranged from 7,000 for Chiaro to 18,000 for Cassian (with most party members between 9-10k) and the henchman with 1,000.
The general party concensus, minus Chiaro, is a mission to the Khargish ruins to begin clearing them out.
Joel/Balinor