Felix Adventure #2: Building Blocks of Death
Party Roster:
Felix, 8th level half-orc fighter, 79 hp, played by Alex
Rathbane, 5th level dwarven fighter/cleric of Clangeddin, 45 hp, played by Katherine
Donald Collins, 8th level human mage, 43 hp, NPC
Gates, 6th level dwarven cleric of Moradin, 39 hp, played by Jay Bates
Hendel, 7th level dwarven thief, 38 hp, played by Joel
Nakumanu, 5th level orc fighter, 32 hp, henchman of Felix
Pseu, hit dice unknown but rising, unclassed mimic, “pet” of Rathbane
(Events of May 2004 in Manhattan)
(this is the follow-up to Felix Adventure #1: Defenders Reunion: The Return of the King, and the Sliming of the King, which ended with the following sentence:)
…A few days later, the passageway began to ramp downward, and become more smooth, and then, about a month after we’d initially set out, we reached the edges of the ruined city, the ancient capital of Shabrund…
And we encountered a very large drawbridge. It crossed a huge chasm to what looked to be a gigantic gatehouse. Suspicious, we approached cautiously.
A voice boomed out in dwarven. “300 gold toll.”
The voice didn’t sound like a dwarf, but it seemed we had little choice. “Leave the money by the gate, and don’t look back.”
We did as instructed, and headed into the city slightly poorer. The city itself was mostly a mess of ruined buildings, with lots of main roads and alleyways on a fair facsimile of a grid. Clearly to find the Girdle of Dwarvenkind would be nearly impossible in something this size without clues as to where to look. Thus we had to explore until we encountered someone.
After some debate, we headed down one of the thoroughfares, but were halted at an intersection by a dark diminutive figure (one of the “greebley guys” from the 8th Open). He offered to guide us to a location for an exorbitant fee. Instead we bargained for mere directions and warnings of major hazards. The darkling explained where we could find one of the two groups of mountain dwarves known to be in the city. He also warned us a giant slug that would be frightened off by fire. We paid him and headed down the passage.
Sure enough, a giant slug attacked us, and Hendel was handed a torch and told to go scare it off. He lit the torch, moved bravely forward… and was engulfed in acid. This ruined his clothes but fortunately little else. Satisfied, the slug bolted. Hendel sighed.
We reached a square where the dwarves were supposed to be. There was a large sign that said, “Go away!” in dwarven. When we approached the sign, a Glyph of Warding hit Rathbane, but it had no effect other than a decent amount of light. Shrugging, we called out that we were just interested in talking.
The dwarves eventually responded threateningly, but agreed to meet us if we walked over to this here small door… that of course led to a hideously trapped room. As we entered, the ceiling dropped about a foot, making it impossible to open the door and reminding us of our predicament. “Now we can talk,” the dwarven voice above us chuckled.
Negotiations were slow and painful, but ultimately mildly successful. The dwarves let us know of some enemies in the area we could dispatch for them, including a group of hobgoblins in the northern corridor, but require passing through an area of dungeon mites, rabid thieves that presumably have a boatload of treasure if we can find their lair. There was also a citadel with weird flying manta rays and illusions in the center of the town. There were some troglodytes, and mushroom people that they also wanted killed. And a few score “blue dwarves” (dark dwarves with wizard savants and all that). They also greatly disliked the other mountain dwarves.
We weren’t really pleased with the interaction, but at least they’d told us some information and let us go. We figured we might have better luck with the other group of dwarves, so we went back to the greebley guy to find out where THEY were. After some more money changed hands, we headed to a different section of the city.
And once again we reached some kind of a square and yelled out that we wanted to talk. These dwarves were a bit more civil, merely leading us to a trapped floor plate which would presumably drop us onto poisoned spikes before they were willing to talk. But they agreed to let us know about what we could do in the city (and hinted that if we helped them we could trade with them and rest reasonably safely). They mentioned the hobgoblins and troglodytes, but said that the mushroom people were their allies and any actions against them would be considered hostile. They also told us of a group of a frost giants, and a group of fomorian giants. The fomorians were supposed to be mutants that were physically very dangerous, but not all that bright, whereas the frost giants were tactically intelligent but not as strong. The frost giants are believed to be in an outpost that actually connects to the surface (apparently near the noblink valley). The hobgoblins provided the trade route they used though, and the dwarves were less than keen on their elimination, although the fact that we had cleaned the route to Shabrund did intrigue them.
We considered our options and started on the troglodytes first. We knew there were “a few score” so we approached them carefully. Hendel snuck up on the group of smelly creatures, and spotted a pit trap in the middle of their group, which he warned the party about. What followed was a brief but massive slaughter, with Donald launching a fireball that eliminated the only spellcaster, and Felix, Nakumanu and Rathbane slaughtering the survivors in melee combat. Probably half of the total troglodytes were killed.
Scouting ahead while the party cleaned up, Hendel spotted a troll at the same time as it smelled him, and he turned and fled back to the party. Donald dropped a Wall of Ice that killed most of the rear of the formation, while the trolls in the lead were slain attacked by the melee fighters. Hendel even backstabbed one. However, the ones in the back were fleeing, and Hendel gave pursuit in the hopes of catching them before they could warn the others to run away. But this time the unlucky thief ran into some kind of horrible cold effect that nearly killed him. Backing off, he returned to the party.
The party had been messing with the trap door, and it nearly killed somebody when the spores from the yellow mold sprayed out of the trap, but ultimately we got away unharmed.
Then it was looting time, which was semi-productive. Finally, Donald felt he could eliminate this cold thing by countering with fire (I think, it might have been cold). He launched a fireball down the corridor… and it swelled up to enormous size and the cold aura shot out even further. We ran away.
The dwarves congratulated us on slaughtering most of the troglodytes and allowed us to rest. In addition, they informed us that the frost mold would hurt any warm-blooded creatures (so it made a great defense for the reptillian troglodytes), so that effectively ended any pursuit we might give. The dwarves let us know that they would pay 2 gp/body for compost purposes, or 1 gp/100 pounds of generic organic material.
They also agreed to let their animal trainer work with Rathbane’s mimic creature, the blob that takes various shapes and has been growing massively. Apparently there are two varieties, but this is the smaller and eventually more intelligent one. They may even be capable of learning speech and such. We’re creeped out by this, but Rathbane is learning exercises and training techniques to use.
When we told the dwarves we were looking the Girdle of Dwarvenkind, they told us where it was last seen. It had been brought to the city by an expedition of Shabrundian dwarves 60 years earlier, and lost with them in a pair of large battles. The first took place in front of the citadel, when they tried to sneak in. The weird illusion creatures apparently attacked and while they are offensively weak, they befuddled the dwarves and held them long enough to kill several.
The second great battle happened when they tried another entrance to the citadel from the upper levels, near where the frost giants are. The rest of the expedition (which apparently still included most of the officers) was lost to the giants. So the dwarves believe the Girdle is in the possession of one of these groups.
Realizing that we wanted to gain more favor with this group if we were ever hoping to gather the force to assault the citadel, the frost giants, or the blue dwarves, we decided to build this base by eliminating the fomorians.
We headed up the stairs toward the upper level where the fomorians were. On the way up the stairs, a huge cloud of shadows was coming down, and it paralyzed everyone except Felix. The shadows moved down, and the feeling eventually passed. A nasty effect, but possibly if we were lucky we could defeat this too. It was something to consider for later, at any rate.
Exploring the top floor, we went through several houses and eventually ended up in a large cave with a huge lake in the middle of it. Walking around, we eventually spotted two noblink fishing with a capstan and hauling in a very large fish. They squeaked when they saw us and tried to run, but Donald caught them with a Sleep spell. Then we charmed both of them and convinced them to help us move the other dozen noblink slaves out of the way while we dealt with the fomorians. Apparently these giants go past giant snails to the surface to kidnap noblink and hunt for food. The noblink can’t venture past the snails because they are too weak.
And of course we kept the giant fish.
Apparently, one of the giants was out hunting, so we perceived this to be our chance. Hendel again snuck inside, while the rest of the party came in behind him with Invisibility (10 foot radius) on. This backfired when one of the giants, who had an eye grotesquely on the side of his head, saw right through the invisibility and came charging at us.
This was not good. Donald hurled a Charm Monster and miraculously caught the other giant! The uncharmed giant swung at Felix and dealt him a very heavy blow, leading us to wonder if we would survive this encounter at all. Then he swung and crushed Rathbane to his knees. But the melee offense of Nakumanu, Felix, Rathbane, and a backstab from Hendel, AND his ex-comrade giant was too much for the fomorian, and he keeled over (with over 150 points of damage!).
Still, he had trashed Felix, Rathbane, and Hendel, and we had a charmed fomorian on our hands to deal with. We tried to convince the giant to go to sleep while we kept watch, but this somehow broke the charm. This giant was at a severe disadvantage since we had him surrounded, but it was still a scary fight. The giant nailed Gates, but he was brought down before swinging again with all fighters and Donald hammering away to maximal effect. (The one advantage here is that dwarves have natural defensive bonuses against giants, so Rathbane, Hendel, and Gates were actually tricky to hit even for these powerful giants).
We searched the lair and found 3000 frost giant gold pieces (the equivalent of 6000 human gp). At least we had made a profit! We settled down to heal up, and prepare for the arrival of the last giant, and then perhaps kill the giant snails and lead the noblink out…
And build our power base, one faction at a time. Next up, frost giants? Then the shadow/sacrol or maybe ray-like things?
Tune in for more slaughter with Felix!
Joel/Hendel