January 12, 2002

Hook

Continuation from 01/05/2002 game...

Plot Synopsis

Ep. 1.5: Battering Rams and Blue Balls

After given two days to rest, Yori returns to the party to begin. He gives them a map, 4 bottles of Dr. Browns, 5 Luck Amulets, and tells them his plan. His army is to make a major offensive against the Shadowlands army, while the party flies above them on a Shadow Mount. He thinks the best method is to drop them from above and let them infiltrate the tomb.

The party has a better idea. They commission a project. They take a tree from the local forest, bore a hole in the middle, fill it with iron ball bearings, sand, powdered jade taken from grinding up some weapons they got earlier, and water. Then the entire thing is wrapped in several dozen iron bars and an anvil is glued to the tip. This creates a several ton battering ram that they plan to drop on the tomb from their Shadow Dragon (yes dragon, not drako). Spending some time training the artillerist in dropping large things from a flying dragon, they decide to set out.

After an hour flight, a well placed shot lands the ram directly in the center of the tomb. The tomb looks like a grinning skull and the ram flying up its nose. The ensuing shock wave causes all the buried chambers to be revealed (including a hidden one) and springs most of the vibration sensitive traps in the upper levels of the dungeon. The party drops off an uses their deferred cushions to keep from being hurt by the fall.

Initially the party thinks the hidden entrance is the way to go, but finds it is really a death trap to catch those few people that trust the GM. The decide the nose is the next best entrance as the rock formation is actually an illusion covering the entrance.

They find an elaborate room with various murals. Some of the magic toys with them, but in the end they only really get involved with two pictures. A gemmed archway is activated by Case and he is almost swallowed by the water weird inside (the rest of the party moved very quickly to save him). Burnhard creates a shadow servant to operate a trapped lock to open the door of the chamber. After first being sleep bombarded, then destroyed by a spring loaded needle, the third servant opens the door.

Lynn finds a nice little time wasting trap that would have seriously hurt her if she hadn't created an amulet of magic protection. The next room leads to a chapel filled with various tapestries, pews, and an alter. As they use an undead created by Avolene and another shadow servant from Burnhard to check them all, the party doesn't spring the load of traps made to hit the first "living creature" that touches it. Though the zombie was dissolved by acid. After removing a tapestry prone to sucking souls into it, the party finally find the lever to open the secret door.

Within they found a crypt thing, and after some ineffective magical attacks and a very poor looking Brad, the party manages to get around its magic shield by beating it with shovels and staves. This is the end of this dungeon and they realize they took the wrong path (this was about 1 am real time).

They returned to the outside of the crypt, find one eye socket filled with rubble (aforementioned vibration sensitive trap) and the other eye socket to lead to a set of false doors. The rest was given at a higher speed because everyone was getting tired, so I'll summarize. Found secret door, found trapped chest, found lever in chest, avoided obviously blatant trap in a ruby demon statue that would have actually given them something neat. Found a series of locked doors followed by pit traps that they quickly avoided, and missed a secret room with more neat stuff. Avoided a spiked pit by flying over it, slowly chipped through a frozen door, and spent hours game time bypassing a room filled with unbalanced pillars.

They found a statue of a woman that healed Case and tried to rip out Bink's soul. Bink got angry and through the statue through a trapped door, found another trapped room that was a dead end and would have probably killed him except that he simply flew over the lava pit. A secret door lead to a small group of goblins and one Nilbog. Because I was tired, I let the party use out of character knowledge and they easily defeated the nilbog.

Found the throne room beyond, toyed with a magical crown and scepter a while, bypassed some mithril doors, and finally entered the tomb. But to their dismay, the body was already gone and they found an otherworld portal (actually two) that lead to Jaern. In the tomb chamber they found some items that had been left by others unlucky enough to survive the dungeon.

They returned to the Crab, who were upset the deity wasn't in the tomb and revoked the Otherworld portal. A bit of travel later, the party got home. Everybody got one item, 3000 eeps, plus bonuses all around for their teamwork, creativity, and so forth. Also someone found a way to steal the mithril doors and may make them into some armor or weapons later. And Avolene made a "special friend" along the way. It was a really fun adventure, for I think everyone involved, but it was a real pain to write-up. In the future, I'm going simpler. But it was fun, so that is all that really matters.

Noteworthy Postgame Events