Alternate Felltower: Once More Into the Breach

When last we left our heroes, we had mostly cleared the “first level” of an underground temple, we think. We pulled a bunch of loot out, including 26 lbs of arrows for our scout.

We had a long taxi, so to speak, as we fixed characters and caught up, so we got going about an hour late. We went into the first level, which we’d presumably cleared, mostly looking for anyone coming up to see what all the ruckus and blood and dead bodies of goblins stuffed into a storage closet was all about.

We start to do a quick-check to make sure the level is clear, Marshall casts invisibility … and rolls an 18. So a crit fail magical catastrophe the instant we land on the first level. He gets stunned coming down the stairs, and at least passes the DX roll so he doesn’t fall down the stairs.

“I swear this has never happened before.” Yeah, sure. He tries again and casts it. So we now have an invisible wizard, which is no bad thing.

We head down to the second level. “Let’s head down there, kill everything, and get more stuff.” -Handsome the Scout.

This is, frankly, a more coherent plan than our usual, so at least that’s going for us.

We start by coming into a room filled with stone sarcophaguses (sarcophagi?) lit by a dim light source at the far end. Clearly we need to be ready for a fight here, since at some point, those in the coffins are going to get up and kill us. Our bard, who is in-game genre-savvy due to lore, says:

“So, we all understand that if we disturb those sarcophagi the occupants are going to get up and try to kill us, right? Like, I’ve sung this ballad before.”

Not wrong, we all agree.

As we pass four of them, they bang open (of course), and unarmed skeletons come out. Then more. So we’ve got nine skellies (at least), but they’re unarmed. Saw it coming, now we fight.

Our scout is “caught” in the middle of many foes, but since “turn one” is “coffins open” he skeddaddles to the party, heroic archer shoot-on-the-move, and misses. I do a bastard sword swing to the neck and am dodged. They’re nimble, but with unarmed they cannot block or parry. Next time I may just hit ’em in the hit points with deceptive attack; I’m not sure anything else is going to matter.

We mostly don’t do much damage our turn, and then fast skeletons start to swarm us. I block one attack and step back out of C, our bard gets clawed at but dodges, but the skeleton follows him into C. No grapple, though, so he can back out.

I throw two shield bashes on two targets; one hits solidly for 12 (doubled to 24, because vulnerability to crushing), which knocks the second target prone and probably within a point or two of Unnatural making them discorporate.

Persistance, he of the 2H flail, goes and Rapid Strikes two skeletons. This is his fight – as he has 3d+9 crushing on any hit. That’s a minimum of 10 points past DR; any reasonable roll is going to be one-hit, one-kill … and this one is. Two down. Seven to go.

Even so, there are a lot of them and they’re fast. Lots of moving into C, because they are unarmed and they can.

We proceed to rock the world of these guys hard, all using crushing weapons (bell-guards on swords, shield bash, etc). Very quickly there are only three left. We finish them quickly.

The sarcophagus lids all swung closed. OMG, I hope they don’t respawn. They don’t, but they seem to be spring-loaded. They creak closed.

Handsome “Leeroy Jenkins” scouts around to map south, and doesn’t see much. The smell ahead is of damp rot. Zombies?

I check out to the east, and there’s a silvery white light coming from the ceiling, which has a dome construction, with a fresco depicting a regal dragon with silver scales in flight. Images of soldiers in prayer sit behind each one. Two altars bear inscriptions: “the platinum dragon is my deliverer,” blah blah blah. Woo hoo, Bahamut.

Clearly those are instructions: Urbain, being genre-savvy, kneels and prays to Bahamut. There’s a tone, the area in which we fought lights up with light, and the sarcophagus doors now swing open. They’re still empty, but the entire thing is now more “normal.”

Just for giggles, we pray at the other one too, with no effects. We suspect zombies, and go to the open rooms containing the stench. We see some sort of arcane/eldrich/occult symbol on the floor ahead. Marshall believes it’s to inflict pain, panic, or injury. We cast Walk on Air on the bard, who steps over the runes…

We break for lunch.

Continuing, the bard makes it across, Thor (me) is Curious, Impulsive, etc etc and jumps across the corner, and we all manage to get across without triggering the presumed trap. We gather at the corner, and hear moaning noises. Either amorous elderly folks or zombies. We come closer and yeah, zombies. Six in front of us…and our rear-guard scout sees a few more. Handsome the scout launches a cutting arrow at one, hits, and rolls poorly; even so it’s 7 cut, a bad roll, and it falls stunned. I walk up to yet another set of runes, hold there with an AoD (Dodge) as that allows the half-move.

We step to the front of a wide corridor, and a zombie comes within range of Persistence the 2H Flail guy, and gets pasted twice for 40 crushing damage. Dead. I get charged and I dodge out of the way, which breaks our line temporarily. Persistence gets charged, parries and makes it by 2+ (a house rule for damaging parries) and does 10 crush to the arm.

We continue to basically make short work of the zombies, who continue to do move-and-attack which caps their attacks AND costs them an effective defense. So that’s basically flinging themselves onto Cuisinarts. All the zombies near me fall; now there are two or three left over on the scout’s side of the battle. Splug the Goblin ally gets on the board with a 3-injury stab to the vitals (1 point of damage), but the Vitals causes a HT roll anyway, and zombie fails and goes down stunned.

Duncan hits a zombie with a 3d-3 lightning bolt for 8 damage, -4 to recover from stun. Zap. Splug hits for 12 injury on the downed zombie in front of him, and since Handsome the Scout threatened to kill him if he didn’t engage, gets out of the Dead Zone. Persistence does a quick check down the empty corridor … oh, it’s not empty. More zombies from the south. So we have seven total targets, probably six of whom are robust.

Three attempt to dogpile Persistence with move-and-attack, but they don’t. He’s presently in CC with three zombies. I get a chance to do a shield slam vs someone underneath the currently floating bard. Major wound, knocked down, knocked back, but not stunned. So pretty good. Persistence steps back and does an AoA(Double) and Rapid Strike, rolls a natural 3 (max damage) for 27 crush. The other two…one gets knocked back and reeling, the other dodges. But then gets stabbed at by Urbaine AoA (Determined) since he’s floating over the battlefield, and rolls max damage (6) for a 16-point brain injury.

At some point, we just declare it mop-up time and end the combat. But overconfident, curious, impulsive me does a running jump – and fails – hitting the rune zone. I make my Will roll (at -2) though, so no fright check failure. A ghostly scream resounds through the hall, I shudder, but shrug off a Terror spell. This is NOT going to help me resist the temptation to do this in the future. No obvious loot.

Gah, it’s like 21 Rune Street here. Even so, we wander around, finding basically nothing but hallways and runes. Handsome smells more rotting zombie stench beyond the most local rune zone. We definitely don’t smell loot. We surmise either an invisible zombie or a secret door due to smell but no critter. As we search, the hand goes through the wall – illusionary wall. I go through first, and there are four zombies waiting for me, so I yell “Four zombies!” No problem. (Overconfident). One steps into range and eats 21 injury, reeling. A second bounces off my shield (retreating block) and keeps going. A third does another slam, and I dodge.

The scout and our katana-user both roll 17s, but Thor gets in two hits on two zombies, one reeling, one instakill. I’m just swinging for the HP now because my usual damage basically instagibs one per shot. So nothing fancy: just chop away. Persistence finishes off the one half-way through the wall who was already reeling from my sword swing.  He falls into the hex with the fallen but not dead guy. I get slammed from the flank, but dodge; the zombie hits the wall and kills himself from the impact. We call it, because that’s all she wrote. Handsome votes for

We go into the room, which is an armory. Yes! Urbaine casts a 4-hex Purify Air, so it no longer stinks.

There are several weapon racks. On one post, there’s a ragged suit of armor, on the north wall there’s a steel plaque inscribed with a helm.  The racks don’t seem to have anything on them. (No!) The plaque seems to be magical. Duncan touches the plaque, and a deep booming voice says “A wondrous treasure, valued by all, sought by many, …” It’s a riddle. We say “reputation” or “honor” nearly all at once, we hear “Correct” and the suit of armor is now a gleaming suit of armor.

Handsome changes his MVP vote to the magic plaque.

We all wait with bated breath as Vic looks up what the armor is supposed to be. It is … a full suit of brigandine armor, magical. It’s blackened steel. Ornate +1, definite some sort of enchantment on it. As we pick it up, we note a weight of about 45 lbs, which means it’s a full suit of lightened brigandine armor.

We do another search to see if the rack is concealing invisible anything; a full tactile search of the entire room. Where there’s one illusory wall, maybe there’s more? Handsome does find what he’s fairly confident is a loose stone or stones on the north wall behind the weapon racks. Sure enough, when we pry the bricks loose, we don’t find any traps but we do find a small sack in the niche. He hands it to Urbaine, who looks through, handling Handsome’s sack like it’s his own. Wackiness ensues. The bag itself radiates magic. There’s a bunch of coins; more than should fit and it weighs much less than it should. Woo hoo, bag of holding. All gold pieces! It’s 2 lbs of gold coins (!), 500 small gold pieces, $10,000. The bag itself can hold up to 18 lbs instead of 6, and the extra 12 don’t count as encumbrance. So this is a big deal – the bag is worth $24,000 by itself.

That’s the best haul we’ve had yet, by a long shot. And we haven’t even gotten to the double doors yet. Which Handsome reminds me, and instead of “let’s get out and take our loot home,” we’re now in “I have to find out what’s behind those doors” land. I do put on the magical armor for now, though. I’m light encumbrance with it, instead of none

We go through the double doors, and there’s a dead guy in plate armor with a sword. “The rift may never be re-opened; state your business or die.”

Well, we’re here for “exploration of the ruins,” and definitely not to open the rift. We’re here to slay the minions of Orcus, etc. He beckons us in. He looks all of us over, and makes sure we’re all here. Asks the cleric if we’re “properly equipped” to handle the rise of evil.

We joke that this is a ghostbusters moment: “If someone asks if you’re properly equipped for defeating evil, the answer is always we could always be better equipped.”

“If you trust your senses not to betray you, tell me what what you see before you.” Answer: “I see a dangerous undead warrior.” “It is true, but I am more than that.”

Now he looks over at Persistence: “You wear a fearsome demeanor. Are you as formidable as you look?” “As much and more so.” We all agree that given the tendency of Persistence to turn foes into ketchup, he’s not wrong.

Now my turn: “Do you swear to seal the rift. Do you swear to risk my life to do so?” I so swear. That’s not even hard.

I will not destroy you all, but I hold you to your promise to seal the rift. He used to be the commander, he failed in his charge to keep the rift sealed (all of us together, “awwww”).

He gives quite the speech:

I was commander here in the Keep. It was my charge to keep the rift sealed, lest Orcus’s unholy powers once again seep into the world.

I failed in my responsibility. I allowed the influence of the Shadow Rift and my knowledge of the crumbling empire to distract me from my sworn oath. The corruption that lies on the other side of the rift touched me and triggered disaster.

Orcus’s vile taint soaked through the rift and into my dreams. A madness overcame me. I was possessed! In a rage, I drew my sword and slew my wife and children. From that bloody deed I moved outward, attacking my captains, one by one, killing them even as they stared in shock. I had become a murderous fiend!

Finally the alarm went up, and what remained of the legion banded together against me. Even in my rage, I realized I couldn’t best them all, so I fled into the crypts to hide from vengeance. Only then did the madness lift. I realized what I had done and despaired. I had killed my love and broken my oath. More than that, I had done so with my sword, Aecris, an implement given to me by the King when I was knighted. “The remnants of my legion sealed the passage and trapped me here. I selected this as a fitting place to spend eternity.

I am past redemption. But perhaps I can grant you aid. I cannot leave this crypt, but Aecris can. Perhaps this elegant weapon, unlike me, can be redeemed. I give it to you that you might purge the Keep of those who work to open the rift. Seek Bahamut’s boon at the altars outside and perhaps he too will grant you aid.

Bard steps up: “You cannot help us, but your sword can help us.”

Oh, yes. He gives us the sword, which he names Aecris. It’s a bastard sword. Woot – that’s Thor’s weapon of choice. “Seek Bahamut’s boon on the altars outside, and perhaps he too will grant you aid.”

He holds out the blade. Urbaine takes the blade, bows, “thank you for your aid, Sir Knight. We will not disappoint you. I will remain here. If you seal the rift, my terror will be over.” He sits back down in his stone chair and closes his eyes. He hands it to me, makes me swear to uphold its honor, etc. The Cleric has the moment too: this is totally Religious Ritual. Behind the stone altar, there’s a cutout in the stone, as if there’s a piece of stone fit into it. Inside there’s a small sack, which Chop takes and examines. (Critical success!!) There are 8 leather necklaces with – roughly the size of a golf ball – there are stone carvings of what appears to be a platinum dragon, and are 100% definitely holy symbols. We all put one on. We all feel like the potion-drinkers in Big Trouble in Little China.

We spend time praying in front of the altar, as Chop leads us in the proper rituals. Even Splug is in firm agreement.

We decide to head back to town, but to take the stairs we ignored in the first place so that we don’t miss anything or get ganked. We are moved to a small room with a double-door as an exit. It feels like there’s a beam or bar behind it. The bard declares the door offends him; Persistence and I step up to the plate, a silence spell is cast, and we bust down the door. We’d been here before, so we move through without searching.

We break for the day, pass around stuff – armor goes to Persistence, Thor keeps the shield and sword. We negotiated with Sir Leonhard, we got the loot bonus, the fights were fodder. 7 XP. Duncan buys Splurg as an Ally.