Dungeon Fantasy Aersalus – B-Team – Session 8

Dramatis Personae

  • Fyadhiel, Elven Scout (386 points) (played by +Douglas Cole): An elvish warmaster sent on a quest to be more humane. It’s not working. Tagline: “Just Damn Better than you.”
  • Gaffer, Gremian Artificer (428 points) (played by +Christopher D.): Boom Squirrel. Tagline: “Stop damaging your gear! I’m the one that has to repair it.”
  • Galen Fallowhide, Halfling Scholar (Physick)/Cleric of Healing (385 points) (player by +Christian G.): He’s a doctor (but not a cannibal) that can heal with steel. He’s small, but deadly and a bit crazy. Tagline: “How many times have I healed you? Let me count the holes.”
  • Ryeleah Lopek, Human Wizard (358 points) (played by +Merlin A.): TBA. Tagline: “TBA”
  • Waraxe Mandrake, Dwarven Knight (350 points) (played by +Rob K.): A solid dwarf with miscellaneous scars and a long red beard. Usually seen in well-maintained (ahem) dwarven armor, and with Lydia, a rather large dwarven waraxe. Tagline: “Pass the beer and look out for the axe.”
  • Maxion “Twerp” Lopek, Human Cultist (Wizard) (84 points) (NPC): Twerp is a human boy (about 11, he’s not sure since his mother didn’t keep track) who dreams of one day becoming an auric knight and finally making his mother proud. Son of Ryeleah. Tagline: “Gee, I don’t know if that’s a good idea, mom.”
  • Moon Moon, Dire Wolf (156 points) (NPC): Not too bright, but strong. Sometimes forgets how to doge, such dignity, wowe. Tagline: “Woof.”

Previously . . .

We’re trying to get into the wizard’s tower. It’s magically warded at the bottom. We’re trying to get up to a window and go through there. We don’t to touch the edge of the tower. We’re talking about tying up to a tree. Gaffer tries to make a working pulley/etc. system (critically succeeding on his Engineer (Gadgets) skill roll). Waraxe goes along the contraption and through the window. He disappears from the others’ sight. Thereafter, they hear him snoring. There’s a pause. Ryeleah tries to go next. She looks down and sees the teleportation runes. She didn’t see these before; evidently WMD activated them. What could possibly go wrong? Everybody goes in . . .

Inside The Tower of Ghanz, First Floor

Fyadhiel, Gaffer, Galen Fallowhide, Ryeleah Lopek, and Waraxe Mandrake
Anner (Fourth Month), 3rd, 981 F.R., 7th Hour of the Sun (7:00 am)
Taskar, Dancorra Bay, Abolethe (“The Span”)

 

. . . and the PCs realize they’ve teleported to the first floor of the tower. Gaffer calls out to Shalana. Ryeleah realizes that there’s something funky about this entire place; it’s slightly out of sync with the material dimension, but not in the spirit world. Ryeleah smells manure from the stables nearby. We go there. Waraxe opens the door and goes in. All of a sudden there’s ecrement all over him; something has thrown poo at him! He sees poo forming into humanoid shapes around him. Fyadhiel pulls Waraxe out of the stables and shuts the door, while Ryeleah starts to run away. Gaffer pulls out some jamming goo and throws it at the door t keep it sealed. Excrementals ooze underneath the door. Waraxe chops at one, with a mighty swing (since excrementals have Injury Tolerance (Diffuse) this results in 2 points of injury, total).

Fyadhiel draws Winter’s Kiss (a katana with multiple cold-related enchantments) and makes a Deceptive Attack; this actually seems to hurt it quite a bit freezing its bits. Waraxe does a Rapid Strike, swinging his axe three times, and trying to hit with the flat of the blade (Note: I used the rules from MyGURPS for this, and fiated a -1/die of damage; really, this should be a power-up instead of something anyone can do, but it seemed appropriate at the time). The excremental is splattered against the wall, but is still pretty well-formed and animate. Gaffer throws some alchemist’s fire towards the excrementals and stable door. A couple of the excrementals explode in a chain reaction, doing a whole bunch of damage to Waraxe (17 points of crushing damage after DR x3). At least the excrementals are all dead. Ryeleah gives Waraxe a healing potion and gets back 16 HP.

Fyadhiel goes inside and sees a bunch of rusted-out horseshoes on the ground, but there’s one that’s not rusted and nailed to the eaves inside the stable. Ryeleah sees that it’s magical. Gaffer looks at it, and uses Hidden Lore (Magic Items) to know that it’s a common charm against magic and evil.

Fyadhiel, who seems to be spazticly impulsive (Note: Doug decided to spend the -20 points of disadvantages he’d held in reserve on Impulsiveness (6); we’ll see how that goes), activates his Ring of Speed, opens a new door, and goes through it. He avoids falling on his face as he steps into the stickiness associated with the web . . . and there are giant phase spiders. Oh, Leroy errr Fyadhiel, who can attack insubstantial things attacks with his sword; the phase spider blinks away. The elf steps over, pulling his feet out of the sticky mess, attacking again, but the spider dodges again (Dodge 14 is a helluva drug). The others move in, Gaffer swinging on rope off of the ceiling to avoid touching the sticky floor. Fyadhiel shoots a couple of arrows up one of the spiders’ “shelob-hole.”

The spider tries to attack back, and Fyadhiel dodges. The other spider goes back into the webs and starts jumping up and down; the web starts to glow . . . Waraxe chops with his axe, but the spider phases out of existence for a split second.

Gaffer fires a couple of alchemist fires at one of the spiders. (With Fyadhiel and Waraxe amongst the webs . . . what could possibly go wrong?) The spider dodges again. Fyadhiel fails to step, but fires several arrows anyway. One arrow hits one spider, killing it (2d6+4 impaling damage for the win). He shoots a couple of arrows at the other one, hits once (doing 15 impaling damage), and the spider dies.

There’s a chest at the back of room. Waraxe tries to push his way back to it, but fails, and gets hopelessly entangled by the sticky partially phased spiderwebs (ST 19 Binding with triple normal DR and the ability to affect spirits and other insubstantial beings). He feels really embarrassed; he’s supposed to be strong. Ryeleah comes up with the idea of casting Zombie to animate one of the spiders . . . but because they’re SM +1, it’s too costly.

Fyadhiel hacks through with his spirit knife, and 10 minutes later frees Waraxe. Waraxestarts hacking with Lydia to make a path to the chest. Ryeleah casts See Secrets and sees there’s a trap; she floats Gaffer over to disable the trap using Apportation; it was a poison needle trap and he easily removes it. Fyadhiel goes over to the chest and opens it . . . and triggers the second trap (Hey, it’s me. There is a high chance that there is a second trap). He’s under the effects of a Weakness potion (-3 to ST for an hour).

Fyadhiel sees some random bobobs and dodads in an otherwise empty chest. It’s a 300lb chest made of solid oak. Ryeleah heads over and takes a look; there is something magical in there. There are some scraps of cloth, and some gold coins — $3,200 worth of golden coins. Beneath all that there’s a small backpack that looks like it’s filled with tools. Ryeleah holds it out for Gaffer. It’s an Instant Workshop artifact and works as any tool, allows forging metal, and can fix objects requiring special tools or spells to fix. Gaffer doesn’t seem as excited as Waraxe thinks he should be.

Fyadhiel opens a door to the west. There are more webs in what looks like a kitchen. There’s decaying food in there; given the time we’re talking about, it should have already turned to dust. Fyadhiel starts going into and wandering around the room. He gets stuck in webs and gets knocked down. He manages to pull one hand free (elf twister!); he pulls out his spirit knife and tries to cut at the webs. Everybody else is sitting back in the doorway watching. More spiders phase in…! Fyadhiel pulls himself to his knees, puts away his knife, gets out his bow, and fires at a spider, hitting it. The spider moves forward and tries to grab Fyadhiel. Ryeleah is invisible. (Turns out she’s been invisible for a little while having cast the spell much earlier.) She uses Apportation to wiggle another part of the web in hopes of attracting a spider somewhere else. A whole lot of spiders appear and pounce on nothing (Ryeleah used a Dirty Trick here to get the spiders bunched together and/or distracted). Gaffer uses his last Gizmo to pull out a couple of Combustion potions. He fires them towards a big group of spiders to the west. Only one of the group dodges. Four of them die in a terrible conflagration. Twerp moves into the room and chops at the webbing around Fyadhiel.

Fyadhiel is being grappled by a phasing spider. Being as badass with his bow as he is and thanks to his Heroic Ketoh), he is still able to fire at it . . . It dodges three arrows and gets hit with a third (15 points of impaling damage and a death check later it dies)

A spider moves towards Waraxe; he was waiting, and chops at the spider. He then parries, and the spider ends up chopped in half (24 points of cutting damage and then another 27 points of cutting damage turn the spider to chop suey) The spider grappling Fyadhiel tries to grapple him with all of its legs (scoring 10 Control Points). It is a little over-eager and fails to get a really good hold. Two more spiders come in. Waraxe steps forward and chops at the spider grappling Fyadhiel, killing it. Galen sends his dancing shield after one of the spiders about to pounce on Fyadhiel, but it phase-dodges out of the way. The other spider about to attack Fyadhiel, on fire from Gaffer’s earlier attack, dies. Gaffer fires at the spider that just dodged Galen’s attack, hitting with one of three shots, catching it on fire.

Twerp continues to cut at the webbing on Fyadhiel. Fyadhiel fires four shots at the vitals of the now-burning spider and hits with two arrows (doing 14 points of impaling damage with each arrow). All the spiders dead the PCs catch their breath for a moment.

 

Aftermath

The PCs loot the kitchen, spending an hour removing webbing and sticky bits to get to the valuables. There’s a lot of crockery, kitchenware, and some silverware (made of real silver). Fyadhiel opens one of the cocoon sacs . . . There are lots of dead goblins. The PCs stop there for the session, as our intrepid heroes are (evidently) at the base of this tower, having teleported there from the runes on the upper level.

After Action Report (GM)

This session went smoothly and the three combats I ran along with the loot-a-nating of the place by the PCs was great. They still have two rooms on the ground floor to get their before going up (or not) and I’ve got to finishing stocking the rest of the floor and the [fnord]. I do wish I had used Control Points vs. Binding for the persistent sticky effect on the floors, but I’ll just have to remember to do that next time I use the spiders.

Footnotes

None.

 

 

 

Posted in Session Recap and tagged , , , .

One Comment

  1. Pingback: GURPSDay Summary May 18, 2018 – May 24, 2018 - Gaming Ballistic

Leave a Reply