The World of Telvar

Feather of Levitation (7 Charges)

Token of Chest : This one-use token can turn into a wooden chest (with a 10,000 coin weight storage limit. It can then be converted back into a token, and later into a chest again (within one week of the original activation).

Flickering Mouth-Harp of Odor Generation. (Makes no sound, can generate any odor within 120’)

7 Charges of Dust of Non-Detection

Cloak of Guises. A one-use cloak that can turn into a set of clothing of whatever type desired by the wearer.

Ring of Gastropod Control. Useful for feeding the toads. (Still looking for cool snails and slugs to control)

Nonmagical black book: “The Elemental Planes”

Potion of Climbing

Potion of Shadow Control

Potion of Healing

Everyman Armor (65 hp) Whee! Now he looks like an Umber Hulk!

7 Blank Collectors Cards. If the cards are illustrated and titled, they can then be invoked to create an illusion that acts according to its title (and lasts for a duration inversely related to its power). They’re still blank at he moment (trying to think up some good ones).

Wand of Wonder (13 charges). Fun times to come.

Shoes of Glamorous Footfalls

The mouth harp allowed Chiaro to create any odor, although it would not mask existing odors; theoretically quite useful with sensory illusions. However, Chiaro’s mad plans could not be stopped; the item would make excellent trade bait for Chiaro’s ultimate desire: a ring of toad control! The trade was made, and Chiaro soon acquired a pair of 3 HD toads to flank him at all times: Gamabunta: 18 hp, Rana 1/2: 17 hp. Guarding Chiaro and Magic Lad respectively.

The other items he kept; the armor is made from an umber hulk skin and can take 65 points of damage before being destroyed, providing AC 3/3 protection for him until then; the ring of gastropod control may one day be used to control the dreaded “hypno-snail”, perhaps in a bobby-style hat with a shutter; the boots allow Chiaro to change the sound of his footfalls to indicate a number of different things, from the sounds of a determined Ranger in high soft boots to those of a drunken woman in stiletto heels. The possibilities are, well, not endless, but quite large in number!

In addition, having obtained sufficient experience to train for 7th level (and additional mysterious abilities), Chiaro decided to pick up a henchman as bizarre as he was. He settled on “Magic Lad” (original name erased when Chiaro took him over), a multiclassed gnomish cleric of the God of Magic (Mandred) and illusionist in training. Mandred clerics are unique in being unable to wear armor and being restricted to mage weapons; additionally they cannot turn undead. In exchange, at high levels they can start swapping mage and druid spells into their clerical spell slots (at several levels penalty). They can also identify items like a sage of their level, which can save some cash, at least, as well as allowing possible field IDs. (Although the Brotherhood of Sages is happy to remind all new Clerics of Mandred that they are only allowed to ID magical items for themselves and their own parties. Failure to adhere to this stricture would most likely result in the near-term demise of any such clerics poaching on the turf of the Sages.)

Magic Lad came with the illusionist spell Phantom Armor already in his spellbook, so he was fortunately well-armored, and Chiaro soon learned the spell. Chiaro trained to 7th level, gaining 2 more hp and the “battle-scarred” feat to increase his hp from the pathetic total of 12 to the noticeably more impressive total of 22, although he grew even uglier in the process. After a few years of light adventuring with his henchman and a low-level party, Chiaro had picked up no frailties, but he had aged to 61 (five bonus years thanks to a horrific ghost encounter while in the Defenders), and his physical abilities suffered a bit (losing 2 points of dex to drop to 15 and losing his 10% XP bonus), and he became even uglier (he’s now equivalent in ugly to Balinor with the arm-a-armadillo on). He trained in magic theory: illusion and acting to boost his illusionary abilities. After picking up new spells (including Alter Self, Zane’s Deodorant, Invis 10’ Radius, and Continual Darkness, as well as Detect Illusion and Phantom Armor from Magic Lad, whose initial spell selection was quite nice) and roughly 6000 XP from his adventures from 2186-2191 (and Magic Lad gained approximately 300 XP as well) he decided to seek out a new adventuring party.

The circumstances of their meeting are not clear, but Star and Chiaro immediately felt a “connection” upon meeting in Petethal. They realized that they could discuss some things that others would not understand, and this convinced Star to bring Chiaro into the young Strangorn party. Chiaro joined as an independent (he gets 25% of the treasure after salvage tax), although he may stay on longer [dependent more on the real world than the game world, of course]. The party continued its “mini-missions” style of play in the hopes of getting the lower-level members up to survivability to allow more difficult missions to be undertaken.

To some extent this process had already begun. The party mage, Minerva, had recently acquired 3rd level and an area-of-effect spell (Stinking Cloud), and the swashbuckling fighter-thief, Madupe, was also rising rapidly. As a further hedge against instant death, the party had acquired two dogs, a war dog and bloodhound, to help Rangorn track more effectively and to protect the weaker members in case of attack. (Fashion note: Minerva later made a felt daisy for Chiaro’s hat, because at some point in their lives, everyone should be confronted with an umber hulk wearing a daisy.) Chiaro also provided Continual Darkness beads for the party, which is always a handy resource, and phantom armor to improve the AC of Minerva and Magic Lad.

The party has a unique composition with several interesting strengths and weaknesses. We can tackle stealth missions, we hardly ever lose the trail, we have a few bizarre hidden powers and powerful ranged attacks. The party lacks a true tank, however, which makes fighting powerful melee opponents quite dicey. The bow specialist (i.e., Rangorn) doubles as the melee tank, which is certainly inefficient.

With some experience, this situation can improve dramatically (and indeed, the results of this mission bear out that it will have by the next session). With this in mind, we continued looking for mini-missions from the Rangers.

In September 2191, we were told of five ogres and pets traveling through the wilderness, and we set off to take them down. The tracking was simple, but Rangorn managed to blunder into the group before he realized they were there. He tried to sneak off without their noticing, but tripped over a branch and caused them to turn and spot the woodsman hidden in the bushes. Rangorn shouted a warning to the party (trailing roughly fifty feet behind him) and sent the bloodhound back. He then drew his ogre-slaying falchion, Grunt-ender, and turned to face the ogres. One of them was noticeably larger than the other four. The big one sent the two lizard pets to deal with the rest of the party while the ogres encircled Rangorn, who had brazenly let them close instead of retreating back to the party (cocky, I know).

Alisan let loose the dogs, and the rest of the party quickly closed with the two lizards. Drifter and one lizard ripped viciously at each other, while the other was hit by a sleep spell from Minerva. Chiaro attempted many illusions (including a spectral fireball against a few of the ogres around Rangorn and a spectral call lightning on one of the lizards), but found his opponents bizarrely resistant. Magic Lad whacked some of the ogres with his sling, and healed Drifter, who had gotten into trouble in his tangle with the lizard.

Rangorn clocked the big ogre, and dodged what probably would have been a nasty blow. One of the other ogres hit the woodsman, and opened a wound. At this point, Minerva landed a stinking cloud that snagged two of the four regular ogres, while Zippo and Lewis continued charging to help. Rangorn hit the big ogre a second time -- which really should have killed it, in Rangorn’s opinion -- but the tough ogre still stood.

Many things happened in rapid succession. Star commanded one of the ogres to “die” in its native tongue, and it rapidly complied, falling over unconscious. Minerva blinded one of the ogres using a Light spell, while Zippo and Lewis poked and slashed at them. Being stealthy, Madupe looked around for opportunities to backstab an ogre. At one point, Star also used the power of his mind to invoke overwhelming surprise and fear upon his opponents. The result was satisfying and immediate – provoking a flight response in the big ogre that was truly breathtaking.

With only one ogre still standing (outside of the Cloud, anyway), the big ogre tried to flee. Rangorn got in a slice at the big ogre’s back as he disengaged, while Madupe jumped in pursuit, daggers out, and Alisan split-fired her longbow at the creature. Rangorn dealt with the last remaining “regular ogre” and when it went down in a spray of dust, and he leapt to join the pursuit. Madupe sank his daggers into the fleeing ogre’s back, nearly bringing it down. At last, with several of Alisan’s arrows poking out of its back, Rangorn’s falchion obliterated the creature from existence. The last remaining ogre, sick and convulsing as the Stinking Cloud blew away, was quickly dispatched. The war-dog Drifter was pried off of the dead lizard, and the sleeping lizard was finished off with a quick thrust from one of the fighter-types.

Loot was pretty solid; a few thousand gold pieces and three magic items: a scroll of Protection from Possession, a dart of returning +0/+4 vs. demons, three uses of dust of non-detection, and a mantle… that Magic Lad blew his ID chance on. (Magic Lad did manage to ID the dart successfully, saving the party 250 gp! And the failure rolls were quite spectacularly bad, so it’s not really Magic Lad’s fault.)

We took the magical mantle to the new sage in Teft (of whom we have a pretty low opinion—he’s sort of rude, and apparently kind of weak as a sage; but the old sage had disappeared under bizarre circumstances that the other sages seemed unconcerned about, so it’s best not to trouble over these details…). The sage in Teft also blew the ID, cementing our opinions of him, and we took it to Koralgesh.

On the way, a quartet of bugbears came out of the brush and demanded that we pay them 60 gp. (Out of character recall the lessons of Balinor’s encounter with gnolls and not wanting the party to harangue him forever…) Rangorn slowly pulled out the cash while the rest of the party scanned the brush for more reinforcements. Surely four bugbears weren’t stupid enough to try operate alone, were they?

We couldn’t find any reinforcements but, still suspicious, we handed over the cash. Then Rangorn tracked the bugbears as they fled, and we followed them to a small hollow. In there were… four more bugbears. They appeared to be celebrating their incredible good fortune.

Terrifying.

The hollow was described as “perfect for a stinking cloud.” Minerva grinned gleefully.

Chaos reigned as the cloud of billowing vapors descended on the eight bugbears. They staggered out of the cloud in pairs, and were demolished in a shooting gallery of Rangorn and Alisan with bows, Star with his crossbow, and Madupe, Zippo, and Lewis with nice sharp melee weapons. Oh, and Star threw in a couple of Hold Persons for good measure. Chiaro dropped two with a color spray, and “helped” Star hold one of the bugbears with a domination effect. The result was inevitable, and quick.

The treasure: 60 gp.

Yes, they had not a copper piece to their name. Sigh.

No, we didn’t pay salvage tax on the 60 gp again.

We continued on to Koralgesh, where the sage there promptly blew the ID a THIRD time [a new record, Edwin declared]. Finally we sent Lewis sailing to Barnacus, Lendore Isle to have Augman ID it, which he finally did. It was a mantle of spell resistance (5%).

We paid the dart in salvage tax, Star acquired the mantle (having been completely left out of the loot the last time this party had adventured), and we kept the dust as a party resource, along with the scroll.

More time passed in Depwood, and the rainy season was well underway. We got a report of a single ogre with a pet. Wondering if it was an ogre magi, we went in paranoid… but it was just an ogre and a wolf. The battle was short and brutal; the treasure was 9 gold pieces. The excitement was mounting.

At last, the Rangers approached us with what appeared to be an interesting mission (perhaps TOO interesting…?).

A bit of background: In the Greate Olde Woode, the great forest found south of the Hadarna Mountains and the Indicara Jungle, there is a large region known as the Dark Wood. The Dark Wood (not to be confused with the Dim Forest in Cromwell) is a mysterious portion of the forest, where Demons and their ogre servants rule the area and use their evil powers to subjugate and destroy local peaceful populations of demi-humans and other races. As a case in point, the elves of the Greate Olde Woode have been fighting a losing rear-guard action against the Demons and ogres in the area for many, many years. It is unknown what the cause of the evil presence in the forest is, but given the purported presence of undead “armies” in the forest, few have investigated it, and the few forays by adventuring parties from the Northern city-states or Dunador have thus far not been able to determine the origin or goals of these Demonic forces. The Stone Soules had some dealings with the elves of this region, including Canstin/Raven (one of the core members of the Soules), and so Star and Rangorn were somewhat aware of the situation in the Wood, but were just as ignorant of the evil presence in the forest as everyone else.

Among the servants of the Demons and ogres in the Wood are certain corrupted humanoids known colloquially as “demon ogres.” These demonically-possessed or –tainted ogres are known to possess various fell powers granted to them by demon sponsors or the like. They often command small regiments or groups within the vast demonic hordes of ogres. Though their specific powers vary and are largely undiscovered, they are powerful beings capable of vast mayhem and can give renewed tenacity to otherwise chaotic and disorganized ogre groupings.

The Rangers approached us with a very particular mission involving these ogres and demon ogres out of the Dark Wood.

Recent communications between the Rangers of Petethal and the Sarkian armed forces, had determined this:

A demonic ogre had broken out of the Dark Wood with a group of living and zombie ogres and was fleeing from sniping attacks by the Sarkian army. It had become clear to the Sarkian forces that the group would cross into Petethal before the army could finish them off, and that the ogres would likely cause trouble there. As a result, they had sent word to the Rangers about the threat.

The Rangers, of course, looked at their log book of available adventuring parties and noticed one that had a particular penchant for finding and killing ogres. Hmmm… Would Star and Rangorn be interested in finding the demon ogre and his minions, and destroying them when they crossed over?

We agreed. Then we began forming plans.

Interception would be simple. We knew roughly where they were going, and we could hike out ahead of them and catch them in Petethal. They moved quickly because they didn’t stop to sleep much (the undead didn’t need to rest), but we could still get ahead of them. And use our many available scouting abilities to locate the camps of the demonic ogre horde as they advanced!

The real unknown was this demon. What could it do? Could we hurt it? Would Grunt-Ender get its usually nasty bonuses versus ogres against this demon thing? Could we sneak up on it without being detected?

Given the likely demonic powers imbued in the leader of this group, and the relatively minor firepower available to the Company, Star and Rangorn were concerned about what could be done to destroy the group using the resources they had at hand (or were acquirable).

The minor ogres and the undead (zombie) ogres were not so much of a problem if we could deal with the demon ogre. But if we could not deal with the demon ogre, things would go south very quickly. It was rapidly decided that whatever our strategy, focusing on the demon ogre was the main goal of the party. If necessary, we could eliminate the demon ogre and kill off the rest at our leisure, over time. Our previous experience with ogres suggested that this would not be too difficult.

The demon ogre, though, was a different story. Magical weapons seemed a necessity to injure the demon ogre, and the party had a dearth of these. Illusions might not work against it. Stinking cloud would probably not work against it, and sleep certainly would not. Star had very little in the way of offensive magic that could affect it.

This did not leave many options.

In the end, Star decided that Holy Water was probably the way to go. Coming up with some rough guesses about its susceptibility to Holy Water and our ability to procure this very expensive but potentially life saving commodity, the party decided to purchase a gallon of Holy Water. We needed to acquire this from various churches, because no single church had all of the water we needed, but we were able to do so. It set us back about 800 gold pieces, though! The party spent some time coming up with an elaborate way of “delivering” the Holy Water to the demon ogre, which will be detailed in a moment.

Critical to this plan was arriving at the demon ogre undetected. For this purpose, the answer was: dust of non-detection and the use of Chiaro’s equivalent spell, Non-detection.

We headed out to our ambush region, and got there ahead of the ogres as planned. Aerial surveillance located a rude ogre camp, and Rangorn was sent out to scout it.

Rangorn discovered that there were twelve living ogres (four on watch at any given time, all looking injured), eight zombie ogres, and the demon ogre thing (a very big ogre with ridiculous teeth and horns, and fiery red skin), all within a hastily constructed circular palisade (really just a fence of toppled tree trunks) of about sixty foot diameter. The palisade was not very high, however, as people could actually see over it from ground-level.

The original plan was to have most of the party stay some distance away from the palisade. Chiaro would alter self to grow wings, and push a levitating Star and Rangorn over the demon, all under cover of non-detection (either from Chiaro’s spells or the dust). Someone would dump the holy water on the creature, and then Rangorn would dive down and swing his falchion at it while the rest of the party advanced on the palisade. Chiaro and Star would provide mental support and try to attack the creature using their various powers.

After we discovered that Chiaro couldn’t push two levitating people, it was decided that Chiaro would fly in alone, while Rangorn would sneak in under cover of invisibility and levitate over the palisade, ending up behind the demon. Chiaro would dump the Holy Water and Rangorn would slash the creature from the back, while the party advanced.

That evening Star received a premonition in a dream. In the dream he saw a number of hard-boiled and soft-boiled eggs on a silver platter. A chicken appeared, and was tossed into a pot of boiling water.

There were two opposite interpretations of this dream: if the chicken represented the demon, then this mission was a laugher. If the chicken represented Chiaro (or Rangorn), then he was in great danger and this plan would backfire violently.

We couldn’t afford to play it risky, so we changed the plan around (ultimately for the better, we think). Chiaro would be flying vaguely nearby, but would not trigger the combat and break invisibility. Rangorn would sneak under cover of invisibility and non-detection but this time, Minerva would accompany him to the palisade wall, and Chiaro would float overhead, all under cover of hiding spells. Minerva would cast an unseen servant, which would be able to pick up the Holy Water container from Rangorn after he had snuck up on the demon. The servant would then dump the Holy Water, Rangorn would strike, Minerva’s fox would tell the party things were happening from its vantage point in a nearby tree, and the fight would commence.

All was ready, and Rangorn, Minerva, Chiaro, and the rest of the party got into place.

The plan went swimmingly.

Rangorn and Minerva approached without being noticed, Chiaro hovering nearby. Rangorn floated over the wall, servant in tow, and two reached the demon, both under non-detection. Rangorn put the jug of holy water on the ground for the servant to use, where it became visible… and apparently detectable.

The demon immediately turned…

And the servant deluged it with the gallon of Holy Water. Though the servant failed to hit the demon ogre with the entire contents of the jug, he still managed to hit it with the equivalent power of about 23 vials of holy water.

The results were spectacular. The demon instantly vaporized. The ogre zombies collapsed where they stood. And Rangorn didn’t even need to turn visible.

After Minerva moved away from him, Chiaro started a Spectral Force, which first manifested as a Fireball (dropping 5 or 6 ogres, some of which were newly awakened).

At that point, it quickly turned into a rout. Only four ogres had actually been awake even before the “fireball”, although they had noticed the commotion. Minerva caught three ogres in a stinking cloud, but the rest were waking up. The party charged as fast as it could, hoping to get a piece of the action. Two of the awake ogres fled out the front of the palisade, and Rangorn brought down a third, turning visible at last.

Zippo charged around to the front of the palisade, which took quite a while. Lewis tried to take a quicker route over the logs, tripped, and got stuck and mostly missed the combat. Madupe backstabbed an ogre, bringing it down messily. Finally Chiaro, Minerva, and Magic Lad amused themselves greatly. Chiaro had already dropped a number of the ogres with the illusory fireball, and now he “summoned” a spectral genie to attack the remaining ogres. The genie was not real, but the unseen servant it surrounded was, and the real pressure the unseen servant could exert caused the ogres to believe the illusion. The spectral genie pounded two of them into the ground (including one ogre who had in fact been blinded by a light spell from Star beforehand and couldn’t actually SEE the illusion…).

The three ogres in the stinking cloud were blinded and then bashed down Rangorn, Madupe, Zippo, and the spectral genie/unseen servant beast. The remaining two ogres were shot at long range by Star’s crossbow of accuracy, and Alisan split-fire pursued them, along with Madupe. They were brought down several hundred yards away, but the result was inevitable and nobody on our side even took any damage.

Star felt a final impression from the fallen demon-ogre: “I deserve so much better than a window-sill!”

The treasure… was one non-magical curved sword the ogre demon had wielded. Chiaro later sold it to the sage in Teft for 12 gp. Whooppee. At least we still have one charge of non-detection dust left.

So the treasure was non-existent, but XP was very good. The henchmen got about 1000-1500 XP, and the main characters 3500-4000 XP or so. This leveled Zippo, Lewis, and Madupe (in both classes), and left Minerva a mere 400 XP from her next level (and Alisan only 500 XP away, although as a henchman that’s more significant). Zippo gained 13 hp (max!), Lewis 5 hp, and Madupe 8 hp. The new party roster:

Rangorn, 7th level woodsman, 65 hp
Star, 6th level cleric, 37 hp
Zippo, 3rd level fighter, 34 hp
Chiaro, 7th level illusionist, 22 hp
Lewis, 2nd level ranger, 20 hp
Madupe, 2nd/3rd level fighter/thief, 19 hp
Minerva, 3rd level mage, 14 hp
Alisan, 1st level cleric, 8 hp
Magic Lad, 1st/1st level cleric/illusionist, 6 hp

To complete the session, we paid Chiaro about 2000 gp for his share of the treasure [to make sure we were squared away in case Aaron playing Chiaro could not play in the next game or wanted to play him solo first] and trained the leveling characters. This left the party down about 1000 gp for the game, but that wasn’t bad at all considering we gained four levels and a few nice magic items!

We traveled to Teft for training and had a nice New Years’ Party/Lanthalassa-té celebration at the Phaulkonian church. After the New Year, we finished training, and set off back to Depwood.

We leave the party in Depwood after Lewis’ training, ready to adventure anew, on 22 February 2192. The party had paid for Minerva to trade for or buy a couple of new spells and as a result she had learned web, although she couldn’t seem to find someone willing to trade her magic missile for stinking cloud.

Some numbers: At the beginning of the game, the average party level (including Chiaro and Magic Lad) was 3.33, and average hp was 22.11. By the end of the game, the average level was 3.67 and average hp was 25.00. (If you take Chiaro and Magic Lad out of the equation, the numbers increased from level 3.14 and 24.43 hp to level 3.57 and 28.14.)

The three melee fighters had all leveled and Zippo can now be considered a true party tank alongside Rangorn. If we can level Minerva, we’ll have a large increase in wizard power. (Basically leaving Magic Lad and Alisan as the only remaining weak and exposed party members.) Having a strong tanking alternative to Rangorn both makes Zippo more useful, and allows Rangorn to go with his best offensive strategy, which is firing his bow at close range. And it certainly allows for greater redundancy in combat.

The party’s plan at this point is to do a couple more minor missions with the Rangers, enough to get Minerva to 4th level as a mage. Once we have done that, we will train her and the goal is to look for more difficult missions. If the Rangers have something for us at that point of greater difficulty, we could certainly do that. If not, the party may consider a foray beyond Petethal – perhaps even to islands of the Korinn Archipelago! Only time will tell! One thing is sure, though – the party had met its goal of greatly improving its survivability and overall skill level. .) And next time around, interesting things are bound to happen!

Joel/Rangorn (with additions from Kyle/Star and Aaron/Chiaro)