August 30th

After resting up following the fight with the scorpion men, the party once again followed vague direction towards a cave. Then encountered a fellow made of dwarf and rock. His name was Tragden, and he was a Gulgar. Tragden knew of the cave with the dead human girl, and he was willing to take the party there given the circumstances. He warned them that some sort of evil was coming out of there, but the party went in anyway. They did not anticipate the magnitude of the trap on the door of the cave, though. They felt using a monkey from a safe distance was a good plan. Sadly, against the cleverness of whomever invented that vile trap, the party had no chance. The wizard's mind was warped into insanity, as was the monkey's. The scuffle that followed was fantastic, though unluckily no one died.

The party then journeyed into the cave, and found the stone was worked, and every surface appeared covered with some sort of flat, gray, smooth material. They battled the undead and monsters merely hideous and wretched. The poor gnome Zargofoop was turned to stone in one battle, a tear in his eye as the transformation occurred. Then they faced the mummy of Medji, a powerful beast that whacked at them with great scorn. Out matching someone dead 6 to 1, the party was victorious. The rogue managed not to steal from a dead woman's grave, and they acquired the black iron rose.

Returning to Calimport, the party spoke with their team of priests, Lankyforpot and Restis. These two had spoken with their leaders (Ulraunt) in Candlekeep and got permission to continue working on this problem. It seems there is much activity around the world in researching dead gods. It looks like someone out there might be attempting to use these divine sparks to become a god. This sounds like bad news.

Team Priest also discovered that there was a gnomish wizard who enjoyed building things. He had tried being a priest of Gond, but he lacked the priestly skills. He set out on his own and learned to combine magic and engineering to create wonderful traps for players. His name was Sankroparlazoty, and he lived about 100 years ago. They believe the wizard got the beating heart for a machine he was building. They know he lived in the area of Calimshan, and they know his greatest fear was other wizards. With this is mind, the party set off for Arim believing that the wizard may have created an underground workshop in the area.

Arim is a town that is in a magic dead zone. It is ringed by rocks showing the boundary. The nomadic tribe called Tariq rule these lands, in particular by Sheik Sond. There are only four permanent buildings. They are the Camel's Seventh Fart (an inn for the slightly rougher crowd), the Wizards' Respite (an inn for the wealthy and magically awesome), Perfectly Ordinary Supplies (a general store), and the government building with no name. In the middle of these four is a courtyard with a well.

Beyond the city is the Tent City, where nomads come and go. They have their own oasis there and visitors to the town are not welcome there. The Tariq avoid overusing the oasis, and they also require that no one stay in the town more than 15 days. After that, they are charged 15 gold per day. This limits the water usage.

The party went from the courtyard by the well and into the Wizards' Respite. They got rooms and asked the insanely beautiful owner named Tara if she knew of any caves or passageways below the city. She did not, and the party went outside, passed the well, and sought and audience with Sond. Sond greeted them as friends, but he knew of no caves in the area. Then they crossed the courtyard by the well and met Felix, the owner of Perfectly Ordinary Supplies. He has a lot of common items in stock, and the Wizard bought some items hoping that in reality it was something quite magically. There is that possibility, of course, though he may not have thought it all the way through. Then the party passed by the well on their way to the Camel's Seventh Fart. This place has gambling and a lot of drinking, but it's kept reasonable by the large woman named Hessa who chases out troublemakers with her rolling pin. Giving up, the party passed by the well on the way to their rooms in the Wizards' Respite. Just then, the little dwarf with robes said "The well is a hole underground."

With this stroke of genius, the party found themselves under the town in a cave. They battled some ugly critters, faced a clever trap by taking shelter on some spikes, and emerged victoriously from the room of heavy balls by beating a door with a chain.

The party now sits on a stairway with two members unconscious and four others jealous. They have no magic, and this is upsetting them to be sure. They miss their magic, particularly the healing stuff.

What is before them? Will they bleed to death slowly, or rise up, straight to the top? Do they have the guts, the glory? Will they go the distance, or stop? It's just them, and their will to survive.

It's the 9th day of Ches, the third month. The spring equinox is 10 days away.

Had I known she would not be allowed to simply ram the door... ~sigh~

Really, she should have just grabbed a bowling ball or two and bashed the door down with them.

I thought this was one of the better evenings of gaming. The insane wizard was fantastically entertaining. My favorite night however, is the rogue having to sing Signy a love song. He will never live that one down.

Just like Signy will never live down trying to destroy a reinforced door with a spiked chain.

Luvs!

2-shay

You're allowed to ram the door, but the door was pretty strong. There's not much point in locking and trapping an iron door if a fighter can just knock it down in a round. You got it open and you're still technically alive, so hold your head up high.

But yes, a ball would have been quite a bit more effective.

So you're saying it took balls? I can live with that.

The Gulgar eat and eat forever, but never poop. This means that, eventually, they will devour the world.

I know, because I asked him.

Honestly, you shouldn't trust things that don't poop.



No, we went in *because* there was some sort of evil coming out of there!



Something that has a range of miles, inflicts permanent status conditions (barring heal spells), and ignores line of effect? You might say it was a bit of a surprise. I was honestly surprised you had the balls to put something like that in your game. That's the difference between a good DM and, well, everything else. Do you know HOW MUCH the rulestards would cry about that?



I got to roll an unarmed attack against the monk! It did not go so well.



A few more levels, and we'll be able to experiment with this instantaneous reversion stuff. Like, will it still revert if it's in a portable hole?



The scariest room was the sandwight room by far. The mummy, while a badass, had a special ability that did damage instead of instantly killing us, and as such we had pretty good odds. In the terms of WoW he was "elite", and the 4ed term would be a "solo monster", but whatever you call it, he was definitely pumped full of evil energy.



I mean, she wasn't using anything...



The take home lesson is that the sorceress isn't even the worst of it- this chases all the way up to someone who we are in a race with. He's in a race to ascend, and we are in a race to either ally with him (if his intentions are good), or, much more likely, chop off his head and pee down his esophagus.



Gods it's gonna be more undead.



You know, I always knew dead magic zones would suck? But these really, really suck. I spent some time looking through the monster manuals, to find out what happens if you blank out Supernatural, Spell Like, and Spells. Beholders can still fly, did you know that? What the fuck is that about. Fucking retarded. There's a bunch of dudes, from the famous and well designed Monster Manual III, that are composed of positive energy. They have no necks. Oh, their heads are still at the right altitude, but they have no necks. Not having a neck is an extraordinary ability. HOVER HEAD IS (EX).



Full of psychopaths and wierdos.



I played Eron (and plan to continue to play him) as a little off the handle here. He doesn't know it though. Spend a bunch on a masterwork dagger and hope it's magical? SURE! Head straight toward the arrow trap? ON IT! Try to catch iron balls? THAT WAS MY PLAN



It's an exorbitant rate, which is interesting that there are those willing to pay it.



Yea, that was pretty good! Go Sunny The Wise! Also, punch.


Punch.




What I got a kick out of in the arrow room is that almost the entire thing was spike traps. Not like, a little. The whole thing. I think there was like, one untrapped square to get across, and some squares were just trapped just because.

I also wanna point out the hysterical image of our fighter halfdrowess, attempting to beat down a door by SCRATCHING IT WITH A SPIKE CHAIN. I don't think it gets much better than that. Well, maybe if she had tried to trip the door, that would have been better. Of course the fact that both she and the KOed cleric were getting beat on by bouncy-balls was pretty epic too.



We should consider back tracking to the inn, resting there, and heading back in the next day. We did tell them to expect us back shortly, so if we rest a day underground things will get talked about.




You also forgot to mention the thing where you houseruled that Aid Another couldn't be used to assist Open Lock, because having a genius who is trained in picking locks looking over your shoulder shouldn't be worth +2 because you ruled it fully tactile (to be fair, he is using the feat that makes it only use Dex). I think you left Disable Device and Search, so, there's that.




Wait, so the moon is about to hit? Crap, I always get that messed up. Better play that song of time travel to go back to the first day!

I just had some soup, and the soup reminded me that I wasn't done talking about how awesome the trap was.

So someone who wasn't in the game might be reading this, so I'll explain the trap: there was a cavern, and shortly after the entrance was the door. The thief detected it was trapped, so I used Alacritous Cogitation to Summon Monster I, aka Summon Dead Celestial Monkey. Now, being 7th level at the time, I had only 7 rounds (70 seconds with our 10 second rounds) between casting and having the monkey do his task. So everyone else, far too used to getting blasted despite being on the other side of a room, took the opportunity to book it. Most of the group got pretty far out of the hallway. The monkey did his thing with about two rounds to go, at which point I was out of line of sight of the doorway (and line of effect as well).

The trap created a *brilliant* blast of light, which of course shined and reflected out of the cavern. Everyone who was looking at the cave had to roll a will save, with DC 22 for my character (closest) down to like 17 for the folks who were farther away. The only characters who did not where ones who had basically implied they were still running.

The trap was straight up Motif of Harmful Sensation- if you saw the blast of light and failed your save, you went Insane (as per the spell).

How many monkeys must suffer?

How many?


Most of them. The Celestial planes teem with monkeys, constantly summoned and told to do crazy shit by ostensibly good wizards. Then they return, unharmed, but what of the memories? Can they ever truly be purged? How they must curse their thumbs!

The change from the gray covering to natural cave wasn't instantaneous, it was simply faster than you could run.

Sorceress not the worst of it? Noooo... I wouldn't do that, would I? Well, ok, maybe I would.


FWIW, I think I might have screwed up the DC on the trap. Standing in front of it should have been DC 17. I was giving you guys a +2 bonus for being farther away... but I think in my head I just added 2 to 17 and got 19. Oops.

Disable Device, sure, you can use it Aid Another for Disable Device. Open Lock is DEX! How does that make any sense?

You should be nicer to the spring equinox. Depending on where you are, it might be nice to you.

As John mentioned, though, I took a feat to allow me to use DEX instead of INT on Disable Device. Can he still use Aid Another to add his huge brainpower to my Disabling of a Device?

As always, John's observations were awesome. I actually began to feel sorry for all those traumatized Celestial Monkeys.

Can we game soon? Like, tomorrow? Please?


Aren't you forgetting the third option? Kill the guy with whom we're racing (before probing his mind to get all the good information), and utilize the relics to obtain godhood ourselves. I mean, Midnight, Cyric and Kelemvor were all successful in that venture, right?

I don't understand a word you just said.

Which one?

I'm fairly confident it's not "relics."

Holy frick that was cold!

What the hell are you? Some kind of level twenty-gillion ice maiden?

Not unless the whole "born again" thing works for the frozen few.