The World of Telvar

There is a tunnel below Eralla that used to lead very conveniently out to Southern Cromwell, but it was sealed off long ago. There was a “conveyer belt” or something like that, one of the once plentiful machines that ran the great dwarven empire. Although it is almost certainly not running (they would be able to hear if it was), the tunnel would greatly improve their economic contact with Cromwell and maybe help ease the decline. We would travel inside and clear out the complex. It was known that they had originally been driven out by earth elementals and derro dwarves (the hated beardless dwarves), but it was unknown who the current occupants might be.

Gates picked up Knowledge, Geology, and Felix gained 2 feats (to be named later). We picked up supplies and headed through the ruins of the older parts of Eralla. The dwarves undid the horrendous traps and gave us the password to a massively locked door, and we were sealed in. The dwarves would cast low-cost divination spells to determine if we were waiting at the door, checking once a week, and let us out if we were detected. Otherwise, we were cut off.

(A side note: we re-purchased our missing Raise Dead scroll for 10,000 gp. I was certainly under the impression we’d gotten one prior to going into the tunnel in Felix Adventure #1, but there were no records of it, so we shelled out the cash. I fear we may have lost 10,000 gp, unfortunately.)

So with the party actually in the negatives, cashwise, we hoped to increase our disposable treasure. A lot of the decline in riches had been due to extremely good causes: massive high-level training, and repairing the shackles that allowed us to permanently eliminate two creatures from this plane, so there are no regrets there…

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The first thing that happened after passing through the door was that we came upon a slime trail. We tracked the ichor through the ruins of the city to a 12 foot long giant slug! Being bloodthirsty folks, we attacked it despite its apparent non-hostility. Everyone charged, and the thing tried to flee, but Donald’s fireball and magic missiles killed it without anyone else even getting involved.

There was, sadly, no discernible treasure.

[There was much existential discussion of giant slug psychology with Alex’s father at this point. He ultimately left the room even more confused.]

The second thing that happened after passing through the door was an encounter with an old favorite of Balinor’s, the deadly black pudding! Donald made short work of this one with fireballs and magic missiles. How much better it goes when you’re not trapped in a vault without your wizard…

Eventually we reached the top of a huge mine shaft that was sealed off by a massive metal plate. Around the plate were a dozen large boltholes, each with a glyph on them. It took several hours to undo one of them, and then suddenly there was a blue flash, but Felix resisted whatever the effect was.

Down the bolthole was a 40 foot deep shaft that led to a landing of some kind. A spiral staircase wound down the hole.

We decided, for some reason, to check it for traps, and amazingly this paid off. Hendel found a nasty fire/oil trap on one of the stairs, and deliberately set it off, thereby actually avoiding damage! How rare is it that paranoid adventurers searching a random section of dungeon for traps actually find a trap? There seemed to be some sort of law against it.

We reached the landing, and found ourselves faced with a messed-up door, in the sense that it would take a day of rock clearing to open it. We decided to go with the more expedient trail and continued down the shaft on a ladder.

Halfway down to the next landing, a grey human-sized creature suddenly detached from incredible camouflage with the wall and backstabbed Hendel! The thief would have tumbled to ground and sustained considerable damage, but after he, Felix, and Rathbane all failed to catch themselves on the rope connecting the party, Donald (on an 01!) was able to grab the rope and hang on to the ladder. Hendel stabbed back at the creature’s shortsword arm, but missed. Felix stabbed the creature for minor damage, and it looked like we might have a fight on our hands.

Then Rathbane said, “Hi!” in Guardian Naga. The creature’s eyes turned suddenly fearful and it immediately dashed down the wall (it was climbing like a spider), and fled.

That was a strange reaction.

According to Donald the creature was a member of some kind of assassin race, spiteful thieves that go around killing things and taking their treasure and then running away. There wasn’t any connection to nagas, though.

We mulled this over, then shrugged and continued to the next landing. There was a door here with an alarm bell of some kind. Hendel successfully dismantled it and we opened the door.

We were facing a surprised gnoll. But immediate hostility didn’t break out, and it tried to talk to us. We shrugged and tried our languages. There was no effect until, again, Guardian Naga. The gnoll looked suddenly respectful and fearful, and called out. Two more gnolls appeared. We tried to communicate with them in Guardian Naga. It seemed that they couldn’t actually speak the language, but they recognized it (we imagine it would be like Voldemort’s parseltongue).

The obvious conclusion seemed to be that there was a naga around here somewhere. Guardian nagas are generally good and typically wouldn’t have worshipful followers like the gnolls, so we figured it was probably a different type of naga. The question then became what to do. We seemed to be in its complex/lair. The gnolls were beckoning us forward. Should we kill them and invade the complex? Should we let them lead us to the naga and try to fight it in the throne room?

We decided to follow them, casting prep spells along the way. They led us through a big complex with a lot of doors, and after ten minutes or so stopped and gestured to a ramp passage leading downward.

We figured this way our moment and turned on the gnolls, dispatching them without a peep (partially because of a silence spell…). Felix, Rathbane, and Donald each brought one down, Donald with a particularly brutal shocking grasp on his longtooth dagger. We then headed down the corridor and soon found ourselves at a beach on an underground lake with a single boat and oars sitting there. There was also some broken machinery that we found out later was some kind of automated gold panning device.

There was a cave off to one side of the beach area, and from there slowly emerged a bizarre fire giant. It wore decrepit battle armor, had a strangely retarded look on its face, and was moving very slowly. Comprehension of danger slowly dawned on its face, but the group was faster.

We charged forward, smashing the giant with weapons and nasty attacks under full cover of silence. The creature managed only a single poorly aimed swing at Felix before it was brought down by the fighters and Gates’ spiritual weapon. Hendel didn’t even have time for a backstab, and merely sputtered uselessly.

With that violently over, we turned to the boat and decided to take the offering and row across the lake. We were worried about creatures capsizing the boat, so Hendel held on to the token of swanboat (we actually had two!) in case something untoward happened…

As we rowed around the corner, another beach came into view. On it were eight large chests, some fine rugs, books… and a 25 foot long snake with a human head. Bingo!

The snake/naga was obviously ready for us. We began rowing frantically for the shore, but it launched a huge fireball at the party. Trapped in the boat we were unable to dodge (no dex bonus) but only one person actually caught the full blast. Unfortunately, that one person was Aral, who fell to -9 instantly!

Gates began a death’s door, and the fighters rowed faster. Donald unleashed lightning bolt fury on the creature, bouncing it against the back wall and inflicting massive damage on the creature… and the naga made a beeline for the water. Before we could attack it again, the creature disappeared beneath the waves.

This was a big problem. There wasn’t much we could do to it down there. We attached Felix to a rope, had him drink a waterbreathing potion, and shoved him over, attempting to follow him. The creature was much faster and obviously unhampered by the water, but Donald partially trapped it with a wall of ice spell. Despite this, Felix couldn’t reach the creature.

It backed up, and cast a spell. The boat instantly dispelled out from under us! This would have been complete disaster, if it weren’t for the token of swanboat. It sprang instantly beneath us, under Hendel’s mental control, and the party was saved from watery confusion. But the naga continued to back up and cast spells, although there was no obvious effect.

About this time we realized the swanboat could move quite quickly! Soon Hendel was towing Felix through the water in the hopes of smashing him head first into the naga, but it was still dodging our best efforts. Felix was being dragged and really didn’t have much to say about what was going on, when (perhaps mercifully) the naga magic missiled the rope, leaving Felix to flounder. Cursing, Hendel steered the boat back around to pick up Felix. Gates had saved the unfortunate Aral (who escaped without permanent damage, fortunately) and healed him enough to have him stand up.

The naga decided to make a break for it while we were picking up Felix. It burst out of the water, almost fully healed!

Aral blasted it with a nasty shot from his dwarven crossbow! Hendel nicked it with his light crossbow. Donald launched improved magic missiles at the creature. Hendel nicked it again. It collapsed!

We picked up Felix, and Hendel fishtailed the swanboat onto the shore. Cool boat!

Reaching the shore, we quickly confirmed that the naga was dead. Donald harvested naga organs for, ironically, water breathing potions. We were notably injured and low on healing thanks to the nasty fireball, and decided that we couldn’t continue doing mass looting of the complex. Hendel really wanted to make sure we got anything important from the fire giant’s section. Although the naga’s slaves were now free, they were ex-slaves and so probably didn’t have choice loot, but maybe the leaders had something worth taking.

Hendel, Felix, and Donald took the boat partway back to the bend in the lake, and Hendel peered around the other side from the water. The coast was clear and we landed and searched. The giant had nothing of note on him, and the cave was searched for a few minutes to no avail (and it was a complete mess). After a few minutes, though, we heard the sounds of approaching footsteps. The party jumped back on the boat and fled back to the island. Deciding to keep tabs on what was happening, Hendel swam out of the boat and watched from the bend.

By the time he started observing, there were over twenty gnolls fighting on the beach! (And also about twenty dead gnolls strewn about the beach.) Donald grinned at Hendel. We swung the boat back and Donald lobbed a nice fireball right into the middle of the crowd. Four gnolls survived and began running off. Hendel shot one down, and Donald caught the last three with a sleep spell.

We looked over their gear and loot. Their weapons and armor were of poor quality, but a few of the gnolls had some sort of ore/gem things. We decided specifically to loot those.

Hendel: “We loot the ones with the rocks.”

There were eight chests on the naga island, and Hendel detected traps on four of them. I’m not sure why I thought this was reassuring, but Hendel started on one of the “untrapped” chests. He promptly set off a light glyph and a booming thundercrack sounded, blinding him for several minutes and momentarily freaking out the party.

So probably all eight were trapped. He worked slowly, sometimes disarming, sometimes setting off the traps, but they were all ultimately harmless. Inside we found:

*= magical
**= high magical

7200 fire giant gp
4000 Realmish gp
2 full size spellbooks
4000 cw uncut gems -- 40000 gp
*small ukelele
*3 flasks (potions?)
18 flasks (thin yellowy substance)
**pair of red and black striped felt bedroom slippers
quiver with 21 *long arrows
**headband from naga
3 nonmagical books (3 destroyed by lightning bolt)
*bastard sword

The books turned out to be demon-worshipping texts. Always nice to have confirmation after the fact that the naga “really deserved what it got.”

After eight hours of healing, we decided to check out the rest of the complex. It was empty of enemies, and so we just got the express description:

There was a corridor shaped like a C that had collapsed, despite the fact that no digging had been done. It was determined that this was likely due to a lava intrusion
Trying to track the gnolls, we found visible cart tracks leading down the mine shafts. It seemed that everyone fled down one path. Aral determined that there were “more than dozens,” and they’d probably been carrying lots of loot.

Interestingly there were also 30 dead gnolls in complex, four of which had had throats slit from behind by short sword. They were probably overseers, although Hendel speculated that they were killed by that assassin creature for some reason.

In terms of the bigger picture, one party theory suggested that there were two tribes here: one mining, one composed primarily of overseers. Although there did actually seem to be some mixing between the two. In any case, a civil war broke out among them when the naga was killed, and the miners definitely won.

We also noted a blocked door with big rocks moved out of the way and that had been recently used.

Finally we questioned our three sleeping gnoll prisoners. Bizarrely, the gnolls had no memory of last five years or even the part after the naga died. This was strange. There seemed to be considerable mental deficiency among the slaves, given the retarded fire giant as well. When interrogated, the gnolls were able to identify the ones that were from rival tribes. They also repeatedly accused us of using "aging magic" on them, which was fairly entertaining.

Searching through the loot, we first determined that the spellbook was of little value to Donald. The only spells it contained that he didn’t have were grease and rebind (an obscure, specialized, but very useful 2nd level spell that fixes damaged spellbooks).

It turned out that the uncut gems were actually worth quite a lot. And in any case we had a lot of coin weights of loot, so we decided to use the “save the game” option and return to the door. The dwarves were strangely unimpressed. “That’s it for a week?” they asked accusingly. Strangely impatient given no one had been in these halls for five thousand years! We assured them that we just wanted IDs and were going right back in.

The dwarves asked us why we were carrying vast amounts of “gold juice.” We looked confused. Apparently the 18 vials of yellowish liquid were highly illegal drugs with a street value in the hundreds of thousands of gold pieces!! Apparently they aren’t made with real gold, but merely nicknamed that because of their color.

This was an interesting revelation. Hendel had heard of these drugs; apparently they cause wisdom loss and make people very susceptible to charm spells over the long term, among other things. They are of course highly addictive, and they would be a huge problem except that they take incredibly huge amounts of land and time to produce. Apparently the amount of gold juice we had recovered would take a year to produce on a field the size of Koralgesh’s entire agricultural area!

That sort of made sense. The naga was using the drugs to keep a complacent empire of semi-retarded slaves mining the uncut gems (we had recovered approximately 40000 gp worth). But the math didn’t work out. The drugs were considerably more expensive than the treasure produced. Was there more treasure? Was the naga getting this stuff cheaply somehow? What fields were producing this much gold juice? Was it from the gnoll empire on the Fields of Hwa, where our tribal gnolls had come from?

We headed back up to Eralla where the dwarven sages took a look at our gear:

-21 +1 ff long arrows

-headband of +1 wisdom

-slippers of kicking (adds stun damage equal to real damage) -- monk item

-ukekele of unrest -- plays comical music with great ease, pleasant to listen to; one week later everyone who heard it begins to distrust and dislike each other-- effect lasts for a number of weeks based on wisdom, carries false aura of humor magic, unrest only functions once/year (choose)

18 vials of gold juice -- gold mixed with water, illicit drugs with street value of over 100,000 gp, reduces wisdom, makes you susceptible to charm spells and such, a year worth of plantation fields larger than fields in Koralgesh required to produce this

-one potion unknown; other two are heroism and speed

-magic bastard sword+4/double damage (of slaying) vs. plants

ID cost: 1500 gp

The slippers of kicking are pretty special, but mainly useful for those who use kick attacks regularly, like monks, and therefore not particularly useful to the party in the long term (although Aral has been equipped with them for now).

The headband would be totally awesome except it only takes 17 wisdom to 18, which actually does nothing for cleric bonus spells or spell failure chances. So it’s essentially a +1 on mental saves item for anyone with a wisdom of 14 or higher. It does add to a percentage wisdom, but I think only about 10%? In any case, it’s equally useful on four of the six characters, if I recall correctly. I think the two who wouldn’t benefit were Hendel and Felix? I’m not complaining, it’s just too bad we don’t have anyone who could make really optimal use of this item. This may lead to trading it down the road, or looking for other wisdom upgrades.

The plantslayer bastard sword, while pretty hokey, does actually work on fungal creatures like shambling mounds and of course, treants, so it isn’t useless!

The ukulele is pretty disturbing. The long term disruption of a group of unsuspecting people suggests that a) we keep this very very far away from Phargus the evil bard, and b) that we consider how best to use it. It can actually be used by a non-musician to pleasant effect. The unrest effect only works once per year, so it would have to be considered part of a long term plan. It works kind of well in combination with the gold juice. As an added bonus the ukulele is actually highly magical, but shielded by special magical effects that make it appear to be of low magic.

Although we initially considered destroying the drugs, we think we can find better uses for them. If they can be given to an infiltrating group, they could be used to disrupt an evil society (for example, the frost giants…). The ukulele may well help with this. In any case, we came out considerably ahead financially. We didn’t deal with salvage tax for now, but simply left the less useful items behind as collateral for continuing the mission. This would include the unidentified potion, the drugs, the long arrows, and the ukulele, plus the cash and gems.

One logistical thing to consider: Aral certainly leveled (that one shot at the naga was probably enough to net him the needed 350 XP) and would probably like to train. That could take a few weeks, and there aren’t conveniently located dwarven woodsmen, so we may either want to delay training, delay the expedition, or leave Aral behind for a bit.

Felix’s thoughts on this whole situation will appear in a followup summary.

Joel/Hendel