The World of Telvar

The party set off once again, this time with new members Tiberius K. Ollivander (2nd/2nd half-elven cleric of the god of desks / magic-user and hammer-wielding battleclericmage) and Campbell (3rd half-orc fighter longbow specialist, only the second bow specialist in party history and the first one to be taller than the Halflings). [Also Alan and Rhonda’s first time playing in THIS instance of Wizard Mountain… welcome to death and destruction!]

It should be noted that this party is all-infravision, so we didn’t use lights except when needed to examine things. Standish reminded everyone that he had a giant-slaying backup magic longsword (yes, Halacar is still using a normal falchion…) and that we should fight some giants. Also, that we were supposed to retrieve another giant’s lost etched sword, so we should be on the lookout for that.

After examining options (we hadn’t played in 6 years, so give us a break here), we decided to fill in a few corridors from our map. We debated some options but eventually settled on checking out a trio of unmapped passages off of an entrance mostly marked by a stream flowing out of it. The stream flowed out into the swamp around the entryway, and inside there was room to walk around it or through it (it wasn’t very deep).

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Because no sooner had we exited town then we encountered the dragon. Again.

The dragon came swooping down on us and we punted the extremely fat cow we always drag with us, hoping the dragon would take the bait. At least initially it did not, and it circled the party.

Unfortunately at this moment, the fleeing Browork and Tiberius began to sink into quicksand. Rather than fighting it they decided to burrow in deeper and hide. It looked like Tiberius was a goner, but suddenly the dragon changed its mind and went for the easy prey. SWOOSH! The cow was gone.

The party decided not to return and repurchase a cow, assuming that the dragon was probably full for a bit.

We passed through the swamp and entered the stream-filled cave. Taking the first left into an unmapped corridor no more than a few feet from the entrance, we almost immediately ran into something. Several beanbag shaped things surged out of the water and came at the party!
Tiberius immediately dropped a sleep spell, nailing three of the things, as it turned out (and later preserving some nice skins…) The giant frogs swarmed at the front and sides of the party. Halacar and Standish engaged the front line, tearing through frogs (particularly Standish). Tiberius moved to engage but Browork took the lead and attacked in a probably fairly irrelevant attempt to protect Tiberius. Campbell mowed down frogs left and right. It was all going great. Virtually no damage was taken.

Then Halacar’s falchion blew into a million pieces. [Thank you, 01 critical fumble!]

So for the rest of the adventure Halacar would be using his silver (and more easily breakable) falchion.
The frogs were dispatched in short order, and Brigling recalled that such skins could be very valuable, and skinned 4 of them (plus some scraps for dinner).

The end of the corridor was fairly uninteresting, and we walked back out to the main path to assess the second unmapped corridor.

We came upon a large boulder door.

Brigling determined that the door was trapped, but with a simple noisemaker that he felt he could disarm. We decided to do so and not precast silence or other spells, although Browork and Tiberius were holding prayer and bless respectively. The trap appeared disabled, and the other four party members (mainly the buff Standish) pulled the door aside on the first (?) try.

A strange fog rolled out of the room, encompassing the corridor in fairly impressive darkness. The guard dog growled and backed up, anticipating something strange.

But nothing came out.

We decided to charge in. Browork and Tiberius cast their spells and the party marched in.

And great nastiness descended upon the party.

An invisible fifteen feet tall giant backstabbed Browork from behind. The results should have been truly horrendous for the dwarf, but thanks to a) his field plate armor, and b) the prayer, he took only substantial damage [19 points and a triple wound] and was relatively healthy as the party turned to face its attacker.

Weirdly, the giant was only 20% visible even after the backstab and was already fading away.
Standish grinned and drew out his sword of nastiness vs. giants. Browork and Tiberius began casting cure light spells. The giant faded away, but not before Standish and Halacar reached him. The Halfling poked him a bit, but Standish’s attack was brutal, shearing open a significant portion of the giant and opening a wound [35 points, I believe!]. Brigling missed on his first backstab but tried to follow the giant’s movements. Campbell shot the thing, but it still didn’t appear very injured, and it vanished. The giant slipped away before we could catch it, but we decided to chase after it immediately, Browork stopping to cure himself a final time. The party was in pretty good shape overall.

But the fog appeared to roll all the way out into the swamp, blocking even the sun from shining! This is where I wished that Browork had dispel magic in memory. His other third level spell would prove useful in any case…

The giant had left a blood trail and the dogs could certainly track it, and Campbell had tracking skill as well, so Standish and Campbell led the group to chase after the giant. Moments later a rock came sailing from nowhere and crashed straight into the unfortunate Tiberius, dropping him almost dead instantly. Browork immediately stopped to drop a death’s door while the others continued on after the
giant.

Another rock sailed at Browork but missed, probably thanks to the shield that he had borrowed from Standish.

The main party continued tracking, and couldn’t seem to find the giant.

Browork dropped a cure light and brought Tiberius up to consciousness [2 hp] and they mutually decided that Tiberius should continue to play dead. Browork dragged the “body” to the cave entrance (and left the guard dog Percy guarding him) and moved out to rejoin the party when he heard the sound of battle rejoined…

…which it had been. The giant had appeared out of nowhere (mostly uninjured again, probably due to a potion of healing or something) once more to go straight for Standish. A massive backstab on Standish could have discouraged the angry fighter, but it did not, and he struck back. Unfortunately he missed repeatedly, as did the unlucky backstabbing Brigling, who in fact NEVER hit during the combat [at this point Katherine became rather outraged with her dice, for good reason]. Halacar kept jabbing at the giant from the side, poking relentlessly. Standish continued to fight but was slowly falling. Campbell pumped arrows into the giant as fast as she could.

The giant (who was still 80% invisible this whole time) slammed Standish twice more, and had clearly decided to stand and fight, or at least was completely obsessed with eliminating Standish, and the fighter dropped. At this point, Browork and shortly after Tiberius arrived, and Browork dropped a cure light on Standish. The fighter continued to play dead in the reeds.

Quote from Standish via Edwin: “You’re not gonna kill me! My dog is!”

The giant finally turned his focus on someone else… Halacar. He managed to hit the poor Halfling three times in a row, but the little armored tank [Halacar wears full plate +2 with 42 hp] just wouldn’t die [in fact he was barely down to half]. But the giant had forgotten about Standish.

The fighter didn’t get up, but simply jabbed his sword at the giant’s foot, inflicting horrendous wounds and sending the giant screaming in pain.

Browork then dropped a lucky light spell, blinding the giant! It turned to stagger away. And then things really sucked for it. Halacar, Standish, Browork, and Campbell all hit the giant for a combined 60 points of damage. The thing dropped like a wet brick.

The treasure recovery was simple but heavy, thanks to Brigling’s assessment. Browork identified the giant as a cloud giant, which made sense. The giant’s sword was in fact silver-chased, but far too huge to belong to the other giant, and it didn’t glow either. But it turned out to be worth 1000 gp, so no complaints. The giant had 1000 pp on him, as well as his armor, which turned out to be white dragon armor!

We cut off the head and stuffed it in our very large bag of holding and headed back to town, although we did check out the lair and re-shut the boulder door before doing so. When we got back to town we found out that the cloud giant was one of two bandits that were raiding ships, and there was a 2500 gp reward for each! Score! And good that we didn’t run into the other one! (Or did we… who knows who threw those boulders?)

After blowing money on armor resizing we managed to make the white dragon armor Standish-sized, which is cool, as it is AC 1/ AT 4, magical, and makes the user immune to cold (in all forms, damage or ambient), as well as being +2 for ALL saving throws (300 cw, 9” movement rate).

Standish’s banded+1 was transferred to Tiberius. Halacar bought a new falchion, and Campbell replaced her lost arrows.

Then we went back to check out the giant’s lair the very next day. On the way out we were attacked by a giant spider, which went after Browork. It missed him, Browork fumbled drawing a free attack (miss) and then everyone else killed it. Yay.

The giant’s cave appeared to be untouched on our return. The door was still shut. We entered and found a large dome cave, that must have until recently been cooled somehow (perhaps by the mysterious fog?). To the left we found a refrigerator room with 9 huge fish hanging from the ceiling, stabbed with swords from above. It was clear they would go bad soon if we didn’t haul them somewhere.

To the right was a woodland scene tapestry (50’ in diamater), and a bear rug.

Straight ahead was another boulder door. Behind it was the treasure room… an assembly of goods weighing excess of 100,000 cw, mostly not worth very much except collectively.

Behind the tapestry Brigling spotted another trap door, but this time the trap was set to go off from the OTHER side (suggesting that this was the emergency backdoor escape hatch).

We decided to head back to town with as much loot as we could carry (7 out of the 9 fish and 100 cw of uncarved ivory plus the rug). We found a tribal lizardman had ALREADY skewered the cow and he ran off.

Oh well.

We returned to town uneventfully and convinced a merchant company to pay us to retrieve their stuff and provide mules and drovers (or expenses covered in any case). In the end we returned without a fight and actually got not only the 5000 gp reward but a few extra hundred gp profit from our expense account, as we skimped a little on some of the drovers (hiring fighters with drover skill instead in addition to actual drovers) and lost none of the pack mules.

In the end it was a good haul. The tapestry and the rug were both heavily damaged by moisture but were worth a few hundred gp each. The seven fish fetched a combined 2900 gp (including the exotic greenbelly worth 900), and the ivory was worth 500 gp.

In the end, we were up to the tune of 10000 gp. But we had not yet trained, and XP was delivered:

Tiberius -- 2752 cleric/2945 mage
Campbell -- 6961
Browork -- 7153
Halacar -- 7511
Brigling -- 6833
Standish – 8528

Tiberius trained to 3rd mage and 3rd cleric, gaining 4 hp to stand at 14, and mirror image.

Campbell trained to 4th fighter, gaining 13 hp to stand at 43!

Standish trained to 7th fighter, gaining 11 hp to stand at 74!

And Halacar was 180 XP short of 7th level. Doh!

[Browork is 15000 XP short of 7th level, not sure where Brigling stands.]

Rather than adventure out to the mountain, Halacar decided to enter the arena as a gladiator. He was offered the option of fighting to the death, or fighting under at least the pretense of a rescue (but being heavily penalized in XP and payment upon success). He threw caution to the winds…

Halacar faced Zorbal the bandit! Standish bet against him, as is traditional. Halacar stepped out in studded leather with an OH SO CHEAP falchion, while the bandit appeared with a broadsword and studded leather armor.

The combatants went at it! The crowd roared as Halacar attempted to sing taunts at Zorbal, who just grimaced and attacked. But Zorbal was VERY high level, as it turned out. Oops.

Halacar could not seem to hit Zorbal in the early going, and his extreme toughness was the only thing keeping the fight even. Finally Halacar got going and began to injure Zorbal, but it was looking bad. Then Halacar went on a streak (and the crowd clearly seemed in favor of Zorbal, who was fighting for his life to get another week before being challenged to the death again). In the end Halacar came within one or two swings of dropping the bandit, but his luck ran out, and Zorbal dropped him to the ground!

It looked to be the end for Halacar as Zorbal turned to the crowd for a thumbs up or down. Halacar’s natural charisma was insufficient (Zorbal’s was even higher!) but then Campbell managed to whip the crowd into a frenzy and saved the poor bleeding Halfling!

Zorbal left a gold coin on each of Halacar’s eyes as he stomped off triumphantly. Halacar was paid 20 gp and gained 30 XP. He donated the (22 gp) money in shame to the party coffers.

Then he sought out a “slightly easier” duel, versus a great ogre. This time Standish bet for him. This fight was more straightforward. Halacar emerged from the stands with four huge sausages tied to his back. He tried to undo them, but ran out of time when the ogre charged at him (it was faster than the poor Halfling anyway…). The ogre came at Halacar and missed, who then dove in and stabbed the ogre twice, wounding the beast. But the ogre struck back and nailed Halacar, wounding him as well, and holding him at bay for several minutes…

But eventually the ogre missed again, and the bleeding but still relatively strong Halacar moved in and struck brutally at the ogre twice more. This time the beast missed and Halacar finished the job! Triumph! Halacar tore off a bit of cloth from the ogre and used it as a headband, smiling triumphantly and subtly applying his healingx2 to the wound…

He gained 204 XP and 100 gp (again donated to Larry) from the fight, and trained to 7th level, gaining a (max) 15 hp to stand at 80!

And last but most importantly, Crusher the Goblin stepped out for his duel. He had fought one other battle in our absence, and was now allowed a short sword and chainmail. He faced off against a bandit with studded leather. He slashed and immediately injured the bandit, who missed. Then Crusher leapt at him and dropped him to stable consciousness!

Crusher turned to the crowd for a thumbs-up or down, and the bandit made an amazing charisma roll and was spared… but Crusher failed his wisdom check.

The goblin leapt bloodthirstily and finished off the poor bandit messily.

He was then given a pair of throwing daggers on a belt for his next bout. Crusher is now 14-0!

Standish bid correctly in ALL THREE fights. Way to go! I think. Halacar may never forgive himself for this (and is clearly indebted to Campbell, when finds out…)

In the end, after all expenses (training, armor repair, equipment, spells) the party ended up down 552 gp in cash for the adventure, but up the white dragon armor and several levels and spells, so it was deemed a great success. In addition this is only after the party donated 1684 gp to the Larry Consortium, who used 2000 gp to pay back Standish and Brigling half of their debts. Halacar and Standish split the other 552 gp loss. So in the end we ended up slightly in the black as a party cashwise, and certainly in better shape…

The final party roster:

Halacar, F7, 80 hp
Standish, F7, 74 hp
Campbell, F4, 43 hp
Browork, C6, 41 hp
Brigling, T7, 39 hp
Tiberius, M3/C3, 14 hp

May it not be another 6 years!

Joel/Halacar/Browork