Players (Characters)
Scott (Rain)
Jeremy (Grokk)
Tom (Garlen, Amber)
Tony (Roland)
Rachel (Horkina)
DM: Catherine
After the party was sure the area was secure, Horkina fed a gold piece into a gambling machine in the lounge. A hundred mechanical rats began fighting for the coin. One of the rats was colored gold, but this special rat did not succeed in retrieving the coin. While this was going on, Rain started unlocking doors in an obvious training area. Each lock was a little bit more difficult than the last, and each had a little bit more treasure behind it than the last. After nearly a dozen doors, he broke a lockpick and jammed the lock, so Horkina broke the door open and Rain continued on. In one of the final areas, he picked up a valuable silver beer stein, which he kept. Meanwhile, Percy walked through a series of trip wires, setting off some fairly simple traps. He shrugged off the damage, but stopped when Roland discovered a pit. Garlen jumped over the pit and Percy climbed inside and acted as a bridge for Rain. Just beyond the pit was a simple pressure plate that would have triggered a falling block, but Rain was able to wedge it in the off position. The next room's floor was one big pressure plate, so Rain and Garlen flew over it and unlocked the final door, where Rain picked up a luckstone.
Elsewhere in the complex, the party encountered a gnome who was working with a huge pile of laundry. He was sent away with the same stern warning: find somebody less creepy to work for. The party also found a bar with fairly low-quality alcohol. Rain tested out his new mug and Horkina took a bottle with her.
The party moved back to the pit with the animated suit of armor. Garlen and Rain jumped into the pit behind the armor, trying to draw its attention and disrupt its defense, while Horkina jumped in front of it and attacked. Grokk stood and cheered. The armor and the Horkina exchanged blows, with Horkina's attacks impressing Rain and Garlen so much they lost their rhythm and couldn't disrupt the armor's attacks. Grokk moved around the stands to get a better view. After a few more swings, Horkina finally crushed the armor and handed its magical axe to Grokk. This particular blackmetal axe, crafted in Naurim, would deal significantly more damage than expected on critical hits. As the party prepared to move on, Amber cast gentle repose on the dead dwarf in the bottom of the pit and sent Redtail flying home.
Grokk pulled out a crowbar and pried open the door leading out of the pit. The cages in the next room were obviously set up to hold captured adventurers. Several had antimagic fields in place, and all of them had steel nets high overhead. The party later learned that captured adventurers' gear would be left in these nets, tantalizingly out of reach.
Grokk pried open another door leading to a small room with two huge stone golems. The golems did not respond to the party immediately. Garlen and Rain tumbled to the middle of the room and began poking and prodding one golem. Both turned their attention fully on Garlen, smashing him with their huge arms. Grokk flew into a rage and leaped at the near enemy, smashing it with his axe. Roland transposed Garlen and Horkina's positions, and Horkina landed a series of powerful hits that cut chunks off of the construct. Rain tumbled behind the second golem and Amber set off the fire seeds he was holding, while Garlen pulled out admantine arrows and began firing from a distance. Amber, still invisible, healed Garlen. One golem began attacking Roland while the other turned to attack Rain, and both of the party members took severe injuries. Grokk and Horkina dropped the golems with their next few swings. Roland examined the golems' targeting priorities: (1) attack any creature that casts a spell, (2) attack unarmored targets, (3) attack the target the other golem has selected, and (4) defend yourself. Obviously Garlen's hidden armor made him the primary target when the Golems first attacked.
Roland noticed an illusory wall behind the golem remains, next to an obvious door. Rain was able to determine the door was not actually unlockable, but that there was a locked door behind the illusory wall. The next hallway led to an obviously painted door, which Horkina converted into some obviously painted rubble. The party began to tire of the silly jokes. ("We laughed, we cried, we swung, you died." - Jeremy.) Opposite the next set of doors was a black button, presently in the "in" position. Percy leaned up against the button to keep it from popping out, in case it was the trigger mechanism for something. Rain carefully opened the next door, revealing a large room with a large plus-shaped stone wall in the middle and smaller stone walls sheltering the corners.
Rain and Garlen sneaked quietly inside while Horkina moved into the nearest corner, where she discovered a mechanism she telepathically informed the others about. Three small buttons faced the three other corners of the room, and one larger button sat in the middle of the assembly. Suddenly an arrow flew at Rain's head, and he noticed an enemy hiding in another corner. Grokk moved to engage the enemy, but the rogue tumbled behind a pillar and pushed a button, disappearing. Horkina pressed another button and discovered she'd teleported across the room. Garlen searched one corner for the enemy rogue while Roland pushed a button to teleport to the remaining corner. There, the enemy was waiting, and was able to resist Roland's spell. Rain teleported in behind the enemy, who pushed the large central button, causing the room to drop like a large elevator.
As the floor fell, the central stone wall extended to divide the room into four quadrants, with arrow slits facing into each one from the outside. Garlen pushed one of the other buttons and found it had been deactivated. Amber stoneshaped a hole from the chamber she and Garlen were in into the chamber Rain and Roland were in. Horkina began smashing down the wall between her and Grokk, while Percy helped move rubble out of the way. Roland cast a Wrathful Castigation to disable the enemy rogue while Rain began checking a nearby door for traps. Suddenly a hail of arrows came flying at Grokk, but his uncanny ability to dodge and his ability to absorb damage allowed him to shrug off what would have been a devastating attack. Grokk fired his own flaming arrows back at his assailants, striking one of them solidly. Garlen and Amber crawled through to gather up with Rain and Roland, and Horkina kept tunneling toward Grokk. Roland had Garlen, Rain, and Amber gather up and cast Dimension Door to move them into Grokk's chamber, and Rain quickly unlocked the door into the hallway that circled all four chambers.
The enemies began running and the party gave chase. Amber's Sound Burst stunned a pair, while Garlen began chasing the third in the other direction. Horkina finished tunneling through. Rain's arrows and Grokk's leaping attack dropped the two Amber had stunned. Roland moved to cut off the exit from the circling hallway, holding a charge of Combust ready to ignite the remaining enemy. Garlen taunted the fleeing foe and fired a few arrows at him, and Grokk, Horkina, and Rain positioned themselves near Roland to block the enemy's escape. The gnome stepped around the corner, where Roland stood waiting to light him on fire. The now-burning gnome rolled past, but Grokk came leaping over Horkina to land the final blow.
Rain led the way to the south, where the party found another small lounge. Garlen picked up a set of dice and started playing a game. Rain opened a door and found a torture chamber, with a dwarf whose fingers had been cut off. The dwarf asked if his brother Nayin had sent the party, and then realized Grokk was wielding Nayin's axe. Rain freed the dwarf and Amber healed him as much as she could, assuring him that his brother would be raised as soon as possible. The dwarf waited in the lounge as the party continued moving. Roland used a few more charges from his wands to make Grokk and Horkina invisible again, and to give them the ability to see invisible as well.
As the hallway split, a sign declared "no admittance to noiseys." Sam the Pseudodragon sensed a large beast just a few yards away, and snuck around the corner to see the largest Gorgon he'd ever seen. The party decided to leave the beast behind for the moment, since it couldn't fit through the door. The other branch of the hallway led to a fire-filled room with pillars spaced throughout. Fire would wash across the room from the north, then east, then south, then west. Roland cast Mass Resist Fire while the whole party examined the pattern. Soon it became apparent that one could use the pillars for shelter, running to specific points and then waiting for the fire to change direction before moving onward. Roland cast Silence on Grokk, who carried Garlen across with him.
As Grokk and Garlen exited the chamber, a bolt of lightning came flying at them from inside a large room with pillars and alcoves throughout. Garlen ducked away, but Grokk took the full force of the shock. A gnome fired an arrow from his hiding spot around the corner, but Garlen deftly avoided it and attacked. Rain, still protected from fire by Amber's earlier spell that had allowed him to safely use fireseeds, ran through the room to help protect his friends. Grokk moved forward, narrowly avoiding falling into a pit, and then jumped over to solid floor beyond. When he entered the large room, he took damage from a Forbiddance spell. Horkina, Roland, and Amber ran through the fire, getting somewhat singed, while the enemy engaging Garlen withdrew deeper into the room.
Amber healed the party while Roland dispelled the Forbiddance effect. Garlen moved into the room toward the left past a strange button on the wall and Horkina moved to the right. Rain moved toward the center while Grokk kept moving left. A bolt of lightning narrowly missed Garlen but struck Amber. Garlen saw a gnome pull the lever that set off the lightning bolt, and stabbed him in the arm. Roland's Locate Creature spell made him suspect Heppenfod was near the back of the room just to the right of the central passage, so he cast a spell of Glitterdust in that area, revealing an invisible -- and now blind -- gnome. Rain charged at Heppenfod and struck him with Sventerant, taking off his head. Garlen finished off his opponent with a flurry of stabs as the ghost of Taraxartax materialized and dissipated.
A thorough examination of the room uncovered several levers and buttons. The levers fired lightning and fireballs around the room, while the buttons cast healing spells and dispel magic. The party healed up and then headed back toward the Gorgon. Roland fired a meteor swarm at the beast while Amber used an Earthquake to drop the ceiling on its head. Rain slipped around the back way and carefully disabled the Symbol of Insanity on the following door, turning it into a Symbol of Inanity. He and Garlen started bantering meaninglessly as they opened the locked vault and gathered up a substantial amount of treasure, including a jeweled shield with a family crest they returned to the dwarf in the lounge.
Amber and Rain reached level 17.
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