Wizard Mountain Summary # 9: Stickiness and Ooze
Party Roster:
Halacar, 5th level halfling fighter, 56 hp, played by Joel
Standish, 5th level half-orc fighter, 55 hp, played by Katherine
Brigling, 6th level halfling thief, 36 hp, played by Katherine
Browork, 5th level dwarf cleric, 36 hp, played by Joel
James, 3rd level human paladin, 31 hp, played by Zack
Flechette, 3rd level halfling fighter, 28 hp, played by Aaron
Duran, 3rd level human woodsman, 21 hp, played by Kyle
Harry, 3rd level half-elf cleric, 18 hp, played by Chris Allen
Zero, 3rd level human fighter, 14 hp, played by Kyle
Jim, 3rd level human mage, 12 hp, played by Sean
And the Pickup Party of Dread, the Larry Consortium, springs back into action�
Joining the traditional four members were some one time friends Jim, Zero, and Duran, along with new invitees James, Flechette, and Harry (short for something I can't quite recall). James is a powerful paladin wielding the scimitar. Flechette is a durable and dangerous halfling bow specialist who uses the short composite bow. Heri is our friendly neighborhood cleric.
We tromped back into the cave with the hydra and dead gnome in it (among other things). Exploring additional passages we came upon a large "warehouse" room. It was immensely large, and we simply followed one of the walls to another archway. As we were about to pass the archway, Halacar felt something land on his head.
He put his hand on his helmet, and he felt goo. And his hand was stuck.
Then his helmet started rising in the air. He was being reeled toward the ceiling!
Halacar slashed at the area above his helmet with his falchion, which stuck there as well.
Four other party members jumped on the poor halfling, including the heavy paladin James, eventually bringing the tension in the invisible string to such heights that it suddenly broke. They all tumbled to the ground in a heap, Halacar's hand still stuck to his helmet.
Halacar pulled himself out of his gauntlets, took off his helm, and drew his second falchion, leaving his equipment in a mess of goo. We tossed up a Continual Light stone, which froze in the air, but not before revealing our nemesis. Up there, lo and behold, was a cave fisher! (a nasty spiderlike thing that has invisible strands of incredibly sticky webbing to haul in its prey).
Brigling, Halacar, and Flechette opened fire on the thing, raining arrows on it until it stopped moving. Jim Levitated Halacar, who rose to gingerly approach the spider. It didn't move. He slashed the legs one by one. When we had cut six of the eight, Brigling suggested Halacar lower the thing gently down.
Well, in the event, as Halacar descended, the last two legs gave way. The cave fisher fell and splattered all over the ground, completely covering the hapless Halacar.
With a sigh, we dragged the tangled mess all the way back to town. After purchasing some softening agent from an alchemist for 50 gp, we managed to free all our gear.
And we returned to the cave. We uncovered two more cave fishers on the ceiling, and dispatched them rather more gracefully, lowering their corpses and pillaging their glands of anti-stickiness. And the gold ring too.
We moved on and discovered a room with a strange machine in it. It had several bellows leaving the area, which were the only magical things. There was a flat dish with some black powder on it of unknown origin (it was later ID'd as an unknown substance of ancient Dwarven manufacture). We shrugged. Then a burrow worm leaped out at us.
It spewed acid at Standish (I think), who dodged the worst of it. We hurled stuff at it, and slashed it, and it died horribly and quickly!
Leaving the room, we went through another arch to find a pile of rubble.
Or so we thought. About 15 "rocks" leaped up and started attacking Standish. We all got into the action, blasting them off the flailing Standish as he declared the party incompetent as usual. Jim got a good whack� at Standish. Standish then conveniently "missed" a rock and nailed Jim. It was all good clean fun. Really.
The rock thingies died eventually.
Turned out to be rather valuable rock/gems too--when dead. We didn't mention the whole being animated part.
And lastly, the other encounter of note:
As we were trekking down a corridor, we noticed a door with a large amount of money and jewels and stuff piled in the space between the bottom of the door and the floor. Being adventurers, we scooped up the treasure, and bashed down the door, James in the lead.
There was nothing inside except a moderately small room with a door at the far end with more treasure under it. We went toward that door when James and Standish suddenly froze in the air.
Zero, using his fine-tuned sonar skills, banged his sword against the ground and... felt that the room with filled with water, or the walls were watery, or�.
At the back, Halacar was pushed forward suddenly, and he turned around and slashed at the air with his falchion, drawing a blue streak in the air.
Realizing we were under attack by multiple invisible goo monsters (gelatinous cubes), Brigling started lighting torches and handing them off. Duran took one and helped engage Halacar's opponent, who swallowed the poor halfling moments later. Zero continued to slash at his, lopping off slices of the thing.
Browork, Brigling, Jim, and Flechette (after firing a few arrows to no noticeable effect) went at the third one that had appeared by Browork, brandishing torches. We slowly began to injure the creatures. Zero chopped his to shreds and rushed to aid the torch people. To bad for him, he was then enveloped himself after a successful slash. Duran nailed his as well.
Finally, Zero started to look pretty bad inside his, and in a frenzy we all went at the creature, freeing Zero just in time.
While we were waiting for the paralyzed people to recover, another cube slithered in under the doorway (at which point it occurred to us that the treasure in the doorway was probably stuff that had slipped out of the cubes on their way through here), and it was beaten back by the torch wielders.
Fortunately, no more appeared, and we continued our exploration. At last we ran out of time and decided to head back to town, down two cows, but up quite a bit of treasure
The take was ultimately about 14,000 gp, divided among the party in gems and gold.
Also, Slasher the Kobold fought in the arena against a dog. The fight was unimpressive, but Slasher was eventually killed by the beast. So sadly, our kobold is now 1-1 and has "retired" from the gladiator circuit. The magic couldn't last.
However, Crusher the Goblin, now wearing chainmail and wielding a short sword, emerged to great cheers, attacking a club wielding hobgoblin. The fight was brutal and quick as Crusher slew the hobgoblin in one strike! I believe Crusher is now 6-0!
And that, as they say�
Joel/Halacar/Browork