Easter delayed the next part of our Paragon Tier campaign, with over half the party (and I) sat on a hill drinking cider and watching the sunset rather than trawling the Undermanse in search of treasure. That said we are finally resuming as normal and this week promised some interesting combat.
Or at least that was the plan.
Originally the party were destined to get ambushed by a Lich and its friends when they followed the path after their battle with the (underwhelming) Hydra. Now Liches are usually tough opponents but with two Paladins in the party (Caradoc the Paladin of Redirect and Katarakis the Astral Weapon) I was looking forward to seeing the party take one down ‘old-school’.
Instead Caradoc in a bout of meta-gaming declared that since the cowled figure (read: Lich) had gone through a portal there then there must be a way of opening it through hand signals, gestures, using bits of detritus and the like. In a retcon roll we discerned that Katarakis had seen the moves that the Lich had made before opening the portal.
Dungeon Masters of old will be remembered by the faithful as hateful architects fuelled by malice, every thread and sinew of their being toiling ceaselessly to forge mazes of agony for their friends to stumble through. Fourth Edition tones this down by removing level drain, statistic loss and instant death and you might suspect that this means an age of party friendly Dungeon Masters. I refute this with a single line:
“The figure appears to have made a series of arcane gestures and then ended with some word of arcane power, from your vantage point you could hear something that sounded like... Macarena.”
I am still grinning.
The portal opened and the party wandered through a dreamlike wilderness unique to each of them (with one consistent theme; a dead Peter Andre) until they came out on a ledge far above the Undermanse. The party were stood upon one of the Stalactites mentioned in the last session and below them could see the strange geometric patterns of the Neminoan barrows. Before them is an irregular archway surrounded by mosaics made of irregular tiles (called ‘tessera’ as Katarakis informed me) and beyond a room in which they found a pillar of metal with copper cables coming from the top of it. Blue light pulsed along the cables and was carried along cables bordering a ramp on the far side of the room that led out from this stalactite to another one. From within the pillar came the sound of distant thunder and a dull throbbing.
This room was to be the resting place of the ‘Lord of Thunder’; a maul that was rather good at knocking things down; hence the rumble of distant thunder. I was counting on my party’s natural curiosity (along with the greed that grips all adventurers) to cause them to crack this open and get the aforementioned magical item. The trade off being that doing this would take power that was being bled through the cables to a room further on in which there were sarcophagi containing all manner of nastiness.
As it was after some debate and some ‘advice’ from Caradoc about greed (this being the same player who carved his name onto the family tree in a crypt near Winterhaven and declared himself the lost son of Lord Padraig) the party decided to leave it and I watched my shiny magic item disappear off into the sunset.
After some more walking they came upon the sarcophagus room in which they found a flesh golem (in actuality 2 flesh golems squeezed) in the aforementioned sarcophagus. Again in a fit of common sense they decided to leave well enough alone and walked away without releasing the deadly monstrosities.
I was feeling defeated. The party had evaded 2 combat encounters and the treasure for this week; that said Skurmesh Anklebiter was spoiling for a fight and I didn’t want to end a session of D&D without some actual combat. I toyed with the idea of throwing the Lich back in but that felt a bit cheap especially since the party had been lucky and avoided that encounter.
Instead I decided to let the party out of the mountain in a valley with a river of fire and gave them an encounter worth fighting: a green dragon, specifically Melgoroth of the Eternal Blight. I was wary of running another solo, especially since the hydra was soundly beaten and didn’t provide much entertainment. Mercifully Melgoroth provided much more entertainment.
Now you might be wondering what a green dragon, a race of dragon that commonly makes its home in forests, would be doing in a blasted volcanic waste. Indeed my players were likewise interested in how I planned to dig myself out of this hole. Luckily in the first session Caradoc asked about dragons and I had mentioned they were driven into the north; Melgoroth specifically was driven north by the Knights of the Order Rosenkavalier after it killed the other dragons in the area and gorged itself on one too many local towns.
The party opened poorly, the rogue squandered her surprise round destroying the nearby rock face and everybody else got close enough to cause some damage before it unleashed its breath weapon. Then came Du’nn’o’s (!?) moment of glory as she used her Close Quarters ability to leap on the dragons back and stab it for some reasonable damage. Melgoroth however was having none of this and flew high above the lava and shrugged Du’nn’o off ditching her into the lava.
I wussed out on the lava damage and Du’nn’o actually ended up taking very little damage from the lava and Skurmesh used Knight’s Move to allow her to fey step out of ‘Firey Flamey Death(tm)’. If I should ditch someone into lava again the damage will be colossal; I’m thinking damage, healing surge damage and ongoing damage.
The rest of the fight was a tough affair that consumed most of the party’s resources (the way a good solo should), fortunately Melgoroth’s breath weapon refused to recharge and with Caradoc being a Hospitalier and Skurmesh on healing duty the party was rarely in danger. Melgoroth eventually was felled by Du’nn’o when I forgot about an ability she had in play that dealt damage when it attacked her and it claimed the last of its hit points as she met its incoming attack with her dagger.
Overall this session had a much more satisfying fight and I think I’ve learned what makes a good solo (ready for making my own ‘Hydra 2.0’). However given that I was a little strung out the colour and roleplaying seemed to suffer. The players were all willing but I wasn’t as enthused as session 2; hopefully for next time (a fortnight away as Katarakis is fighting the ‘Black Gate’ at work next Sunday) I’ll be a little more enthusiastic and have some interesting encounters planned out.
Until next time; add parting witticism here.
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