Monteport Session 42

We picked up where we left off, and the amulet that controlled some sort of transport device. We reviewed prior locations and interesting phenomena, so as to figure where to go next.

We decide to head West, and we see doors which are shiny, iron, dwarven-made doors. They don’t appear to be locked in any way. It’s surprisingly well-made, and there’s some sort of funky non-corroding alloy. Detect magic? Nope. 

We open it up. No demons, just a narrow corridor, another pretty door, and a corridor pointing south. There are two rows of stone tables, and a Dwarven dinner prayer inlaid into the walls. The room to the south is another dinner hall. Apparently this mirrors a room somewhere above – 21 miles away. 

Between the Finder’s Lens and the belt of Dwarvenkind, we determine that the construction here is predating the one above by quite some time. Perhaps the one above was built to mimic this, which was then abandoned?

Also: looking for Montporte-a-potties. I missed some stuff in previous sessions, apparently.

We head through a door to the East, and we find a room full of dark, thick soot. We leave it to our fire expert, who investigates. We look around, and there seemed to be some sort of large iron object; presumably an oven.We do a quick Finder’s lend, finding nothing.

South we expect to find a pantry, since we probably just came from the kitchen. 

We make a full circuit out of it, and find a double-door, behind which is a staircase down. We’ve been mapping and checking out rooms for 90 minutes or so. We descend about . . . five miles. Good grief. That’s a hell of staircase, though apparently the last one was 21 miles deep, so this is “nothing.”

We find a humanoid body, laying face-down on the stairs. It’s a half of a half-elf. So a quarter-elf, really. It was wearing a tunic, trousers, a felt cap, with a backpack. There’s a trail of blood down the steps, and the elf has been almost eviscerated, complete with bite marks on his neck.  There’s nothing immediately obviously screaming “trap-door spider!” or anything.

He’s got a wound on his arm that looks like he got chopped. Everything else looks like multiple claw-marks. The body left a blood trail, and is not yet completely dry.

Holy crap. Not yet completely dry.

Hmm. If we only had a couple of rogues! Alas, they’re gone.

“What have you been doing?”
“Sneaking.”


We find out that the elf is wearing the symbol of Adzeer’s god on him. He’s got a dagger on his belt (clearly not a good fighter, with no blood on his dagger). He’s got the trappings of a Hunter of Adzeer. He’s got 127gp in his backpack, a bone scroll case, a dagger, a ring, and 12 vials. The lens of awesome (Lens of Molnar) identifies them as a bunch of potions (2 healing potions and 10 vials of holy water), a small spellbook, and a Ring of Zombie Protection (Nosphryc gets a good roll). The dagger is nothing special. The spellbook is for a Wizard. 

The wound definitely looks like a vampire bite, the blade wound could be a sword or knife, and the bite marks look like humans – likely zombies.

The scroll-case actually contains a letter.

Most of us stop and wet ourselves at the line containing the word “lich.” Yikes. Lichs, vampires, zombies, and lots of crypts. Yeesh.

“Who’s the highest-level guy? He needs to say ‘OK, the area is secure.'” like Lieutenant Gorman.

We continue down the stairs for another mile, saying “Lichs and zombies, and vampires, oh my.” For the first bit, we see evidence that the poor half-elf dragged himself. Now we see an occasional bloody footprint.

Oh, and the staircase is no longer dwarven-made. Hell. Probably literally. We descend another sxeven miles. 

We keep descending, and see the body of a wight laying on the ground; farther on is the body of a dead zombie. The wight looks like it has a burned, charred spot on his chest, as if he was hit by some sort of electrical energy. Bet that spellbook has a lightning bolt spell in it.

And on the south wall says “Arlonian Syndicate Waystation 452.” Thanks to a good roll, we know that that Goblins have something resembling guilds, where certain Goblin troops have exclusive trading rights to certain areas.

We decide to take a long rest before we open doors and stuff – actually two of them. We hear a groan during the second watch, but nothing else of consequence. We check out the western staircase, and find a three-way corridor. Huh. Hoped for something that didn’t give more options.

Still, we choose danger. The trail of blood continues, and a zombie body lies in the middle of a 25-foot-long corridor, which is but 5′ wide. We emerge into at least a 25′ square room, with at least five zombies in it.

Initiative is rolled. We don’t do too badly, and retreat to a chokepoint. Breena takes a small hit, and Adzeer rolls a hit, then a bunch of 1’s for damage. Breena rages, and grapples a zombie, in a cool but seemingly cosmically backwards. Breena rolls very well, while the zombie also rolls well, but not well enough. He takes the zombie down with a shove; he’s got advantage on that roll, so the zombie has to beat a 16 or be flung prone. He rolls 20 and 10 (disadvantaged) and takes him down. So he has the guy grappled, which means he’s immobile, can’t get up, and all attacks against him are advantaged. Breena is not disadvantaged by grappleing, so booyah.

Nosphryc moves past Adzeer, and hits the grappled zombie with a critical hit, dispatching him. He uses his second action to plug the hole in the line and attack another zombie, hitting for 9 HP.

A wight moves into the line, and we start making Steven Wight jokes.  A few zombies move up, and one hits Nosphryc for 4 HP, and Breena for 7, reduced because she’s raging.

Our strategy is working; we’re only facing two at a time, and can pretty well concentrate on them. Unfortunately, we forgot to actually give out and equip the freaking Ring of Protection from Zombies. Because we’re stupid.

Goose: “The defense department regrets to inform you that your sons are dead because they were stupid.”

Breena and Adzeer do their thing, and Adzeer hits for 12 HP radiant damage to Steven Wight, while Breena hits and kills a zombie with the Battle-Axe of Aknarr, and then hits and wounds another.

Dante moves up and firebolts the Wight, with advatnage thanks to Adzeer’s spell. Hits, but only 5 HP of damage. Nosphryc hits for 13 slashing damage, reducing his target to 0 HP with an undead-slaying sword. So dead-dead.

But on their turn, the wight moves up to Nosphryc, and attacks once with a sword, and misses, and reaches out and drains the life out of Nosphryc with a critical. “He grabs you by the ball-sack, baby. Your descendants are starting out lower level.” 12 HP of damage, and 12 HP from my freakin’ maximum as well. The wight says “Turn your head and cough.”

Nosphryc does so.

The zombie misses Breena.

Adzeer misses with a spell. And Breena misses with one attack, and axes the other for 8 slashing.

Dante continues the streak of misses against the wight. These guys really have a thing against Nosphryc; must be a 1%-er thing.

Nosphrys steps up and crits with the Sword of Lendroth. The wight dies. Another hit on the zombie in front of Breena with the undead-slaying sword kills a second one. We rule on the spot that the Sword of Lendroth (+1 vs everything, +3 vs. Undead) automatically kills undead at 0 HP.

As the zombies step up, we hear a female voice from within the room saying “get them and kill them!” The zombies miss both Nosphryc and Breena for a change.

Adzeer uses Sacred Flame, a cantrip that requires a single save, which he misses; 6 points of radiant damage is dealt. Now Breena steps to the fore, and hacks at a zombie twice for a total of 19 slashing damage. Still up. Wow.

Dante rolls an 8 vs the zombie, hitting, and does 19 points of fire damage, deep-fat frying him. Nosphryc hits twice for 33 slashing damage, killing the second-to-last zombie.

Nosphryc takes another 6 HP, down 22 HP from his former max, one of two PCs to be hit. And a second wave of zombies shows up, along with a token we immediately label Evil Cosplaying Goth Chick – presumably the owner of the voice

Adzeer flings a spell, and the lady laughs maliciously, revealing sharp pointy teeth. Oh, crap. Vampire.

Breena hits twice for 14 slashing damage, while Dante flings a fireball. Dante bends it like Gandalf, and five critters have to make a DEX save or take 9d6 damage.

Suck it, bloodsucker. One zombie makes it, as does the vampire babe. So they take 12 HP, the others take 24 HP.  Only two dead, but hopefully some softening.

Nosphryc kills the zombie in front of him, but misses the vampire chick with a quick-drawn bow shot.

The undead charge in, but only the wight is in close range, and he misses Breena.

Adzeer hits the vampire, but for only 12 HP. We weep for Tim’s continual rolling of 1s when damage happens.

Breena hits the wight twice for 25 HP, killing it. Dante casts an opaque wall of fire, which damages everyone on the far side of the wall, 5d8 within 10′ of the wall. 21 HP of damage if they fail a DX save. The vamp . . . fails her save. We clear the board of everyone but, well, we can’t tell, because wall of fire.

Nosphryc fires two arrows through the wall at where the vamp was, at a disadvatnage. He actually hits twice, for 9 HP piercing damage, and his arrows do not burst into flame. A stupid zombie runs into the wall, immolating himself.

Adzeer casts locate creature on the vampire – a very fitting companion to the nature of his hunter character. He can locate her as long as no one breaks his concentration, she polymorphs, or crosses running water.

Dante drops the wall of fire, and we all charge into the room as far as we can. Breena hits with a few hand-axes. Nosphryc tosses two hand-axes, and actually stuns her. Nosphryc then runs up and makes vampire julienne – actually, she’s not a vampire. She’s a vampire groupie (vampire spawn, technically).

Nosphryc reclaims and cleans his axes.

Besides the vampires and wights in the room, there were three dead zombies, and a dead human in armor. He’s got a wooden stake shoved through his visor.

We search for treasure and likewise search the room. We find a secret door right where she was standing (no surprise there).

We also recover 322 gp, and the human has 280gp, a long sword, a short sword, short bow with 20 arrows, a a bone scroll case. 2 vials. and 15 flasks. The liquids are 2 healing potions. 5 flasks of oil. 10 flasks of holy water.

We end there.

***

+Ken H used the second-most dangerous category using the DMG to make the encounter (Hard), and tuned it for one more player than we had. Still, we did well, Setting ourselves up in the choke-point was vital, and the undead-slaying sword turned the tide on the early waves. We also put down the vampire spawn fast enough that the vampire spawn couldn’t regenerate fast enough to make a difference.

We each net out 4,100 XP. This brings Nosphryc to just shy of 2,100 XP away from 6th level.

Players were +Tim Shorts, +Chris C., +Joshua Macy. +Rob Conley