Final Session: Mirescythe

After three weeks away we got back to some D&D 4e and the final encounter of the (somewhat wayward) campaign.

I wanted a boss monster but my experience with solos had been a mixed bag. What I really wanted to do was give them an encounter in which would tax them on a tactical level and also push the party. Their opponent was the shade beneath Zendicon; Mirescythe.

Mirescythe was a solo-lurker with some nasty tricks behind him, he was accompanied by 3 Urn Minions who constantly buffed him with various effects and occasionally attacked the party. They took on Mirescythe in a room on many levels which made the most of their crafty opponents ability to teleport around and generally make life difficult for them.

The Urns were marked with symbolsthe p[arty recognised: Vigour, Unhallowing and Onslaught. Vigour stored temporary Hp for Mirescythe (leeched by his Vampiric Scythe on a critical), Unhollowing blocked the Channel Divinity class feature (Specifically to stop Katarakis from nullifying my criticals, as he had done all campaign) and Onslaught recharged Mirescythes powers one at a time.

Mirescythe himself had lots of tricks. Being undead he had Vulnerability 5 to Radiant Damage, however the Pattern Shift power would swap his Radiant Vulnerability and his Necrotic Resistance for a turn. However as a minor action this competed with Mirescythe's ability to revive an urn and so was little used. Apart from this Mirescythe had an evil 'channel divinity' power (Golghezel's Pillar) along with a burst daze attack, a ranged attack and his nasty hit-teleport which he employed to brutal effect.

In the opening round he teleported across the room and his Skurmesh Anklebiter with a critical, at this point Katarakis realised he couldn't channel divinity and the strike dropped Skurmesh to just under his bloodied value. The players looked on aghast as Mirescythe teleported away to safety, and thus began a cagey few rounds as the party tried to draw a bead on the errant monster and his urns, during this time Mirescythe threw out a few nasty tricks including using his hit-teleport to perform hit and run attacks whilst the Urn of Onslaught kept recharging the power, he also tossed in a few action points to teleport, hit-teleport and then launch his ranged attack.

The party to their credit did well, with a Warlord and two Paladins they are exceptionally resilient and as ever Caradoc's ability to draw the worst of the damage onto himself (Absorbing most of Golghezel's Pillar, for example) eased the worst of the party's sufferring. The big problem was their enemy's mobility but Celavorn and Du'nn'o's ranged attacks kept the damage ticking over, Skurmesh also made great use of his ability to grant his allies extra attacks (the Helm of Heroes turning them from base attacks into standard actions, this helm is a must for any Warlord!) and stayed in the middle for the occasional buff or heal.

Katarakis also deserves mention for granting most of the party a +4 to all damage rolls at the start of the encounter and then making Mirescythe even more vulnerable to Radiant damage.

All in all this party's ability to weather massive amounts of damage and then recover from it has been the bane of my life in this campaign. All attempts to kill the party have failed simply because no matter how much damage I do, no matter how hard I hit them they just turn around and manage to get healed. I was more threatening with Goblins during Keep on the Shadowfell. All in all though I must say the party works well, far better than my monsters fare, and this is down to teamwork.

So now we say goodbye to our party for the meantime whilst I attempt to concoct some strange new adventure for them to take on.

On Top of the World: Session 7

In which the party gains a new member, massacre an encounter and leave Zendicon.

Two rounds. That'll make more sense in a paragraph or two.

So the party started where they left off last week, in the bottom of the Deeping Well with Lord Lofang cackling maniacally; yet there was hope! Oh yes, with a sunrod tied to an arrow the signal had been sent for Lady Jazelle's troops to assault Lord Lofang's stronghold and the first of her warriors had arrived in the form of Celavorn, Elven Ranger, played ably by 4th Ed. Neophyte Medium Dave. The party now looked like this:

Caradoc Burrows, Halfling Paladin of the Raven Queen (Giz)
Katarakis, Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamut (Hair Dave)
Skurmesh Anklebiter, Dwarven Warlord (Amanda)
Du'nn'o Me'name, Eladrin Rogue (Rachel)
Celavorn, Elf Ranger (Medium Dave)
Cael, Elf Barbarian (NPC)

Admittedly Rachel was absent from this session but with Giz playing her character we ploughed on regardless and started by adding Celavorn to the initiative order and then let them loose on Lord Lofang. Between Du'nn'o and Celavorn (and some action points) Lofang took over 100 damage in the first round of combat and a round later was very, very dead.

I am fine with this, Lofang wasn't underwhelming as a monster, he wasn't a one trick pony who couldn't hurt the party; it was just that the party came together and tore the encounter to pieces. Celavorn was horrific and Du'nn'o had a revelation to cause massive damage. Lofang's guards didn't do much better and an encounter that might have taxed the party was over relatively quickly.

A good thing too as after divvying up the spoils, looting the place and deciding to abandon Zendicon it was already time for Amanda to hit the hay (damnable 5am starts) and I didn't want to run without her. Furthermore whilst I did have some more encounters planned I wanted to spend some time really planning things out so that the Zendicon Caverns will have entertaining and interesting encounters and a memorable finish to this leg of the campaign.

On Top of the World: Session 6

In which the party go trading, meet a beautiful women, become assassins and finally get a cliff hanger.

Woo.

Like Kirk in Star Trek II I'm back in the chair and being chased chased around a nebula by Ricardo Montalban... Well, maybe not. Finally after our three week hiatus we're back in Zendicon and rapidly approaching some variety of ending for the current campaign.

In a breief recap last time Du'nn'o had managed to climb up into the tower above Gaol Zendicon, borked her sneak roll across and empty room and got carved up by the wardens. When this session began the party were considering the possibility of escape by going through the caverns beneath Zendicon and escaping that way. They left Du'nn'o to rest following her ordeal and pressed on.

Realising quickly that they would need provisions for the trip the party decided to head to the Dust Market once again and eventually found the trader Avazan, a man who at first was happy to trade for what supplies the party had, but would not trade for gold. However he did mention his 'mistress' was rumoured to have some need of such precious things and directed one of his Ogre guards; Venerable Terry, to take the party to her.

The party came through many chambers to the ruined temple where the Lady Jazelle made her home, the party entered between drapes of precious fabrics into a room where an empty throne made of weapons sat unattended. As they waited Lady Jazelle seemed to appear from nowhere, a beautiful woman with almost luminous green eyes. The party traded with her for goods (15 trail rations, 10 flasks of water, and they managed to guess the price bang on) losing a quantity of gold and some sun rods for their trouble. Lady Jezelle for her part seemed interested in the Dwarf and bade them return to discuss a favour over dinner.

At dinner the Lady described her desire to control the trade of the market uncontested and solicited the party to remove her rival; the secretive Lord Lofang whose priests Caradoc and Du'nn'o had recently butchered. Caradoc was resistant to the idea of becoming an assassin but the party swayed him and in return Lady Jazelle promised to get her troops in the caverns below to allow them passage. Having agreed the party went to check her story out and found the cavern reinforced on both sides by a great many troops who barred the path with hails of arrows.

(Skurmesh also promised to make an army for the Lady, with whom he seemed infatuated. To this end, and given Dwarves unique biology in the Hearthlands, he was to impregnate the stone with his 'seed' thus giving rise to new Dwarves who must bear the sigil of his clan. Thus Skurmesh Anklebiter, last of the Anklebiters, has founded a new clan within this place.)

And so the party went to assassinate Lord Lofang, with a promise of aid from Lady Jazelle once the deed was done. To this end they took Caradoc and Du'nn'o bound and entered the 'Deeping Well' under the pretense that they had been captured by Katarakis and Skurmesh. The party were brought before Lord Lorfang, a grey skinned humanoid, and Talvil the priest Caradoc had maimed earlier. Words were bandied and eventually Caradoc head-butted Lord Lofang and the party jumped their collective adversaries.

The party aren't idiots and when Lofang went down they suspected he was a decoy, Skurmesh decided his manservent was in fact the real Lord Lofang, but he turned out to be a minion. Then with a terrible noise within his mind Caradoc was hit for a great deal of damage and upon the balcony above a voice entreated them and, coweled and robed, his face purple and festooned with tentacles; the Illithid Lord Lofang made himself known to the party.

Dun-dun-dunnnnn!

Session? No Luck

This is usually where my session write up would go, but since Dave (our erstwhile Dragonborn Paladin) was captured by The Evil Empire and forced to work until gone 9 (on... something, details are vague) we decided to do something else. We played 'Burn In Hell' and then decided that the game could for it's raw tedium; we have a love hate relationship with Steve Jackson Games; Munchkin and Munchkin Cthulhu are awesome, Ninja Burger is divisive (although I love it for the roleplaying alone) and Munchkin Bites and Burn in Hell were truly yawn inducing.

Apart from this we watched Read or Die and then went to bed; hardly the stuff of heroic legends.

World Top has been plagued by these interruptions; although I won't blame anyone because when work comes knocking its difficult to tell them to sod off cos you've got some ogres to kill; but it does end up stealing some momentum from the campaign. I'm tempted at this point, with next week being cancelled aswell, to just trap the players in Zendicon for a year and come back to it when our schedules re-align.

So whilst Dave is sunning himself in Barcelona and Rachel is off doing... something; I am going to spend next sunday afternoon running a few people through Stonehell, even if it's just Gareth and Amanda, and hopefully I'll get a few ideas for making my own dungeons in the process.

On Top of the World: Session 5

This week was a chance to change things up for the characters and introduce some of the dreaded role playing to proceedings. It seemed to work quite well.

The party’s attempt to beat a hasty retreat from the Malboro Forest was thwarted by the arrival of a mysterious figure clad in armour as black as night and swathed in dark robes. He appeared to them stood in a tree and dropped down when spotted by Skurmesh and instantly began accusing the party of ‘transgressions’ by trespassing and awakening the huge Malboro (Malthulu?). The party were none too pleased about the possibility of going to prison for the prescribed 25 years and Du’nn’o snuck off into the long grass to take a shot at the ‘Judge’ with her new Blingtastic Crossbow (The first item in the campaign to get the much coveted +4 Enhancement bonus, largely because I felt guilty for losing her character sheet before the session).

Suffice to say there is a time to shoot and a time not to, specifically it is a poor idea to shoot a man in the head when he is in the middle of exposition, and even worse when he’s in the middle of delivering the DM’s railroad. Generally I try to avoid railroading the party, but this once I wanted them to be somewhere so that the work I had actually done wouldn’t be wasted. Suffice to say the Judge was struck squarely by a sneaky bolt and instantly disappeared.

Du’nn’o felt burning and cold and the distinct sensation of having been cut open. Twice. Frankly she took a ridiculous amount of damage, which was fine by me as it instantly made the party realise I wasn’t about to let them just run away, and begrudgingly they followed the judge through a rift to the Gaol Zendicon.

I pulled a couple of ‘dick moves’ here, intended solely to make the party’s life difficult. One was to remove all of their food and water, including their much coveted ‘Horn(s) of Plenty’. These items I didn’t rule out near the start of the campaign, but given that I want Zendicon to be tough for reasons other than monsters and the like, they had to go. Mercifully I concocted a reason that was acceptable to the internal mechanics of the world and yet wouldn’t rob them of their other precious magic items.

The party awoke to the sound of a lean looking elf by the name of Cael who seemed to act as their guide; letting them know where they were and what travails they would encounter within the walls of Zendicon. Caradoc was very upset to find out that he had lost his Horn of Plenty and 40 Waybread Rations, it would not be the last time he would be upset this night.

The party having recovered themselves began to get a general lay of the land; to the South lay Dust Market, there were the East and West wings and to the north was a hall where a temple of the Raven Queen was holed up. Additionally in the ceiling of this chamber were two portals set into the carved ceiling from which, at irregular intervals, food and water would be deposited. Cael mentioned it was a kind of control; the food and water was never enough to sustain all the inmates, forcing them to fight for what resources there are.

Caradoc instructed Katarakis and Skurmesh to stay in the main chamber whilst he and Du’nn’o (The two party members dedicated to the Raven Queen) went to check out the temple. I get the inkling that Caradoc was well aware of what would be going on when I said: ‘They administer the Raven Queen’s Blessing’ and I was not one to disappoint.

Within they found Taluil and his brother clerics with rows upon rows of the dead and it didn’t take long for Caradoc to go on the offensive as Taluil explained quite plainly about how he euthanized the poor souls who came here and justified his actions as a blessing granted by the Raven Queen.* The exhumation and consumption of the organs post mortem was treated quite matter of fact-ly by the cleric who claimed that the dead allowed the living to survive; but Caradoc saw this as a clear sign of murder and kicked the Cleric.

Caradoc is 2 feet 9 inches tall, the minimum size for a Halfling in Third Edition, we assumed he either got a stepladder or has an exceptionally strong boot.

Suffice to say that as Skurmesh and Katarakis arrived the entire place went crazy; the Dragonborn threatened everyone in the room whilst Skurmesh played good cop and squeezed some of the more terrified clerics for information before loaning his axe to Caradoc who tied up the now whimpering Taluil and lopped his hands off. Katarakis prevented him from dealing the fatal blow although Du’nn’o managed to kill a cleric before Skurmesh could stop her (by hitting her in the face with the haft of his axe) and the others including Taluil made a dash for it. Du’nn’o, apparently not enamoured with having her nose broken by an irate Dwarf ran after the fleeing cleric and into Dust Market.

The Dust Market is a market ostensibly for Dust, a kind of narcotic which represents the only ‘escape’ from the Gaol Zendicon. Here and there merchants were plying wares for trinkets, jerked rat meat and weapons made of sharpened pieces of metal. As a symbol of status those merchants who were particularly wealthy wore cloaks made out of strips of faded precious fabrics; the more gaudy the more up market they were and probably the closer affiliated with the gangs.

Du’nn’o didn’t find Taluil before the rest of the party tracked her down (with Cael’s help) and led her back to the area with the two ceiling hatches. Caradoc stated plainly his disgust for the place and his desire to be rid of it by the end of the day. His plan was simple and relied upon Du’nn’o’s skills of athletics and thievery to open one of ceiling hatches and find a route up into the higher reaches. Cael had warned them of the darkness clad warders he had heard about higher up the gaol and the beasts that existed in the lower reaches, but Caradoc felt confident they could at least assess the risk.

Du’nn’o shimmied up the wall and set to work hanging from the ceiling. Her Aevis Sandals she had gained a while back protected her from falling damage so she was a good candidate for the task at hand. It took her some time but eventually she managed to open the iris hatch and climb into the room above in which shafts of light caught the dust from the floor and a pair of tall wooden doors stood in the wall like proud guards.

Speaking of proud guards it was at this point Du’nn’o attempted a stealth check in an empty room and true to form rolled a 1.

We have an unspoken rule in these parts that when Rachel (Du’nn’o’s Player) rolls a stealth check on ‘anything but a critical failure’ she will instantly roll a 1 (Or 100 in her fabled Dark Heresy bork) and we are obliged to then hurt her character. Specifically at this juncture three wardens crept out of the shadows, immobilized her and began to wail on her. They had greatswords. They did extra damage when she was immobilized.

Now she could still teleport down the shaft that she had just come up and didn’t risk falling damage but Du’nn’o apparently wanted to cause as much damage as possible and being a trickster rogue managed to toss two of them down the shaft (and they had teleported by the time they reached the floor and Katarakis got to bat at them) although in the process was hit so hard she lost almost all of her Hit Points in 3 hits.

Eventually she beat a hasty retreat and teleported down the shaft, which was fortunate as one more roll probably would have killed her with no way for the party to get up there and save her. The hatch in the ceiling closed and the wedges Du’nn’o had put in to keep the hatch open were reduced to splinters.

The party were, at the end, reunited and currently have some much needed info; primarily don’t go up alone, and given it was midnight at this point we elected to reconvene in a fortnight and continue from there; possibly with a journey down into the depths of Gaol Zendicon.

*This is perhaps a point of contention, technically Taluil kills only those who seek him out and it was never stated nor implied that he went out into Gaol Zendicon and hunted people down. Certainly his other crimes are severe but we are talking about a place with little or no food or water and given that a corpse is rich in (or at least possesses) both, the dead can be considered to be one of the few resources that the Gaol has in rich supply. Currenlty the party see this as black or white and Caradoc was certainly not impressed with Taluil’s reasoning.

On Top of the World: Session 4

This was by far the worst of our sessions in terms of combat and the blame for that falls squarely at my feet. Our party having beaten Melgoroth of the Eternal Blight finally got a weapon for Katarakis (The Smith's Hammer) which Du'nn'o fished out of the lava with her face given that she took 45 damage (12d6 Fire damage) because I was still annoyed about not killing her character a fortnight ago.

At the top of the ridge on the far side of the lava river was a great crater of glamoured forest in which dancing multicoloured lights weaved between the gret deciduous boughs. In the centre of the forest a massive oak rose out of the canopy and dominated the area around. Perhaps not the most original of glamoured forests to be sure but it worked quite well and for a while the party were wandering in circles. Eventually they reached the great oak* and decided to wander in opposite directions around it to reach the far side in a direction that was roughly north.

Halfway around Caradoc and Du'nn'o noticed they were being followed by dryads and a few minutes later realized they were no dryads. These were the deadly Malboro's we had been building for a week and I was quite pleased with how tough they were; as it turned out they were too tough. Here's three thing I learned:

1) Stunning is brutal and takes people out of the game and should not be given to 4 monsters in an encounter.

2) Stunning should most certainly not be a rechargable power with a 1/3 chance and auto-recharge at bloodied.

3) Taking people out of the game for near enough 5 rounds can be classed as a 'dick move'.

My lust for tough monsters made the Malboro's overly powerful and I was forced to give them a raft of 'on the spot' changes; lowering some defences, giving them the fire vulnerability they sould always have had and amending their bad breath to 'dazed' instead of Stunned.

All in all it was a bit of an underwhelming session, I think in order to make it up to the players next week might have to involve a trip into the 'awesome' bucket for encounters. At the end I polled some of the players for things they'd like to see and will use some of that feedback. Next week will be a session as normal although hopefully with more roleplaying and less unkillable monsters.

*Katarakis is officially insane. Our journey to the centre was a skills challenge and I was eager for a little bit of 'out of the box' thinking. To this end I told the players they could use any skills as long as they justified it. Given that the party were under the impression they were being watched Katarakis attempted to intimidate the hidden parties into revealing themselves... By shouting at the trees.

No Session This Week

With Hair Dave off fighting at the Black Gate this week we decided not to plunge on without Katarakis and so myself and Amanda enjoyed a day entertaining small children and having the occasional pint of Becks. However since I'm trying to post something every monday I felt obliged to drag myself from bed and put something up here. For a week I've had nothing at all to write about but yesterday following a conversation between myself, Dave and Amanda I got all excited. The reason: I finally get to play a game!

Huzzah

Finally I get to play Vendreth the Barbarian (Vendreth; warrior without fear!) and spend some time cracking skulls and investing in more d12's. Amanda, my long sufferring girlfriend has been elected to run a session or two at some point (Probably after Giz's Fudge Bleach), this promises to be alot of fun since last night I got to watch her tear into my Monster Manual in search of all manner of nasty critters to unleash on our unsusupecting party.

This promises to be alot of fun, Amanda is really starting to get to grips with D&D and its been a pleasure to watch her Dwarf Warlord (Skurmesh Anklebiter) come into his own in the encounters we've fought; saving Du'nn'o from certain death, granting Katarakis all manner of nasty bonus attacks and just generally keeping the party in shape. I'm hoping that she can carry that enthusiasm into her DMing and just have fun with it.

Our party itself seems to be taking shape, aside from my Barbarian Mr. Dave is talking excitedly about an Avenger with a double-bladed sword who looks like Darth Maul and I feel certain Giz will arrive with something musical and leader-ish. That just leaves Rachel who we intend to corrupt into becoming a Defender of some flavour; I personally am voting for Warden.

Now I'm off to go do some planning for next week; here's your sneak peek: It starts with M and ends with -alboro.