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Dragon's Demand: Halfbeard's Hellish Hickies

Game Date: 3/22/2014
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Dragon's Demand, Session 9
System: Pathfinder
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Halfbeard (Cliff) - Dwarf Ranger
Lilith (James) - Tiefling Paladin
Raz Furian (Matt) - Human Sorcerer
Vires (Daniel) - Human Alchemist

The Session:

Last session we attended the auction of Hunclay's estate.  This ended in bloodshed (like pretty much everything else we do), as four batlike grioths and a red drake attacked the auction house.  No sooner had we saved the day, then the true villain made his appearance.  Aeteperax - a centuries-dead dragon of great renown - swooped down from the sky and threatened the town.  Perching on a roof where he could be seen by all, the dracolich ordered Belhaim's citizens to fulfill a deal he had made with the late Hunclay.  We are to locate and deliver some books of great power, along with nearly 800 thousand gold.  We have two weeks to fulfill his request or he will destroy the town.

So to recap, the dragon has made his demand, and now the campaign can now truly begin.  Today's session began with an emergency meeting of the town council.  They realized that there isn't nearly enough gold in the entire town to complete the dragon's request.  We suspect that Aeteperax knows this, and is looking for an excuse to destroy the town.  Predictably, the council asked us for our help to defeat the dragon.  To help us, the sheriff reluctantly gave us his +2 Ring of Protection, which Lilith now wears.  A retired adventurer also donated a Flametongue weapon, which we are giving to Tanith.

On day 1 of our two week time limit, we set out for Tula's Tomb to see if Aeteperax's bones were still there.  We used the tunnels under our keep to avoid the spying eyes of dragons.  On the way, we tried to check on our kobold friends to see if they could provide any aid.  However, we discovered the entrance to the kobold tunnels had been destroyed, and we found no signs of life.  We continued to the tomb.

Arriving at the tomb, right off we saw the dragon bones were still there.  A fifty-foot long dragon skeleton covered the graveyard.  So if these are, indeed, the bones of Aeteperax, how could he also be out and about to terrorize the town?  There was a mound of dirt beneath the bones, with a locked door.  We already possessed the key, but before we could enter we heard a noise coming from the dragon's skull.  It was some sort of mindless chattering, full of meaningless words and psychopathic babblings. 

As we approached the skull, an amorphous mass of mouths and eyes slithered out and attacked.  In the opening round, the gibbering mouther used its babbling power, and we all failed our saving throws.  We all started the fight in a confused state.  Then the mouther grappled Halfbeard, covering him with damaging hickies.  On their turns, Raz and Lilith attacked themselves instead of the enemy.  Next round the mouther engulfed Halfbeard.

Most of our attacks were absorbed by the mouther's damage reduction, but fortunately magic was still effective.  One of Raz's missiles finally finished it off.  We healed Halfbeard as well as we could, and debated whether or not to continue on.  Well, we'd come this far, and really wanted to see what was inside the tomb.  We used the key and opened the door.  Inside there was a five foot alcove leading to a long shaft.

We used a rope to lower Lilith down into the shaft, intending to pull her up if she faced something too heinous.  Nothing immediately ate her, so we followed down the shaft.  We were in an ovoid room (which reminded me a little of the Slave 1) with two small side rooms containing sarcophagi.  Lilith detected an evil presence from one of the caskets, so we opened that one first.  We saw a child-sized body with the head of a deer skull.  The room then filled with whispering sounds, like soft whimpers or sighs.  As Lilith leaned over the body, it bit the paladin's arm, causing fatigue.

It's wasn't a long battle.  Vires critted with an attack, causing the additional effect of fire vulnerability, but that never mattered because Halfbeard finished the creature off a few seconds later.  We then thoroughly explored the tomb, finally finding a secret door at one end.  The passage led to a spiral staircase, which led us further downwards.

The next level was shaped a bit like a cow's udder.  On the floor there was a large mosaic of a red dragon, which detected as magical.  An inscription on the on the mosaic instructed us to "give the dragon her due".  We tried applying fire and gold pieces, but neither caused any reaction.  There were a few more sarcophagi in the room, one of which had a magic aura. Inside was a soldier's body, wearing a magic ring and shield.  The latter is a +1 shield with 10 acid resistance.  We haven't identified the ring yet, but we know its enchantment is related to necromancy.

Three of the side rooms contained black marble pillars, which had niches holding urns.  We felt magic coming from the pillars, but not from the urns themselves.  There was another spiral staircase on this level, leading even further down, but Halfbeard was still hurting and we didn't want to push it.  We decided to head back to town for now.

On the road back to Belhaim, we encountered an angry flame drake.  He wouldn't listen to our attempts at diplomacy, and shot toward us, blasting us with fire.  Most of us took 20 damage before we even got a turn, and it was enough to knock Raz out.  Lilith, who still hoped to get past the drake without a fight, picked up Raz and started to run.  The next round took out Vires, at which point there was no getting out of a battle.  It was a scary fight.  Maffei finally killed the drake, taking great advantage of the creature's vulnerability to cold.

We limped back to town, badly damaged but alive.  We healed up and sought out Bassy, the town historian.  She was quite impressed by everything we told her about the tomb.  We asked her how those could really be Aeteperax's bones if the dracolich was out and about.  Bassy didn't know, but she was a bit suspicious as to whether that had really been Aeteperax the previous night.  She wasn't sure, but there were subtle clues that pointed to the dragon being an illusion.  Interesting.

We took care of more business in town, buying more healing potions and such.  Lilith and Halfbeard gained a level, the ranger acquiring a dog companion. The next morning we prepared to head back to the tomb.  We ended the session there.

Reminders:
It is now day 2 of 14.  Since Tanith wasn't with us this week, we decided he spent the day studying an indecipherable book of power.  It takes 48 hours to get any useful information from this book, so he's now halfway done.  Next session it will be up to him whether he wants to join us at the tomb or keep studying the book.

I will be out next week, and James and Thomas are iffy.  There probably won't be a game, but if there is, someone please give me a recap to post here.  It doesn't need to be as detailed as my blogs. A short paragraph is fine.  I'm also iffy on 4/5, but I'll let you know as soon as I can. 

By the way, this is what goes through my head whenever I see the name Aeteperax:

Dragon's Demand: Aeteperax's Ultimatum

Game Date: 3/15/2014
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Dragon's Demand, Session 8
System: Pathfinder
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Halfbeard (Cliff) - Dwarf Ranger
Lilith (James) - Tiefling Paladin
Raz Furian (Matt) - Human Sorcerer
Tanith Tularn (Thomas) - Human Cleric
Vires (Daniel) - Human Alchemist

The Session:
Last week we finished up cataloging the wizard Hunclay's estate.  Today we went to see the Lady Origena for our reward.  She told us Hunclay's auction would be held in one month.  She also offered to contribute some money if we decided to bid on anything ourselves.  We had our eye on a couple of the spellbooks, so we looked forward to the auction.  But in the meantime, we had a month of downtime to get through.

Halfbeard acquires a +1 French Fry

Halfbeard looked for the whereabouts of the town's missing Druid, even staying in the Druid's house for a couple of days in case he came back.  The rest of us got jobs or did some minor questing.  Raz became a scribe for a cheese shop.  We were told we would be evicted from the inn soon, because the auction was likely to draw a lot of travelers to the town.  We spent some time looking around for houses to rent, but there weren't any.  It was basically pitch a tent or buy a property.

After much discussion, we decided to build a house of our own.  We bought the site of the tower Hunclay destroyed back in the first session.  This included the tunnels underneath, so we now own our very own dungeon.  We all put in some time and money into the construction, which took a good portion of the month.  The day of the auction was here in no time, and we had front row seats.

Several wealthy out-of-towners showed up for the auction.  They were big spenders, so we didn't get much.  Lilith managed to outbid Bassy, the gnome historian, and won some assorted potions.  The last bid of the night was for Hunclay's house itself.  As the auction wrapped up, we saw some dark shapes fly overhead.  Four bat-like humanoids - called Grioths - swooped down into the open-air building.  While the other auction-goers panicked and fled, we stayed and fought the creatures.

The fight was complicated by the fact that the seats were rough terrain, and climbing onto the stage required an acrobatics check.  Lilith was hit early on with a confusion effect, and spent most of the battle attacking herself.  Our shade friend Maffei did the most damage, utterly slaughtering one of the Grioths on one turn.  Raz used a plot twist card to trip one of them, and our opportunity attacks finished it off when it tried to stand up.  After the last one died, the still-confused Lilith charged Raz, taking more than half her hit points in one hit.  Raz forgave her once the confusion wore off, and the two reaffirmed their friendship by using heal spells on each other.

But before things could get too sappy, we heard a loud roar, and a red drake swooped down onto the stage.  This was a more difficult battle - that drake hit hard and often, and we were already hurting from the previous battle.  Tanith and Vires both got taken down to zero, and Halfbeard made the final blow against the drake.  After the battle, Raz tried to heal Tanith but was surprised to find she caused him more harm.  (Out-of-character note: Raz has a bloodline power that heals good-aligned creatures, but damages evil ones like Tanith.)

As we were tending to each other's wounds, we heard another roar.  Before we could say, "Not again," a huge black dragon landed on the roof of a nearby building.  Its flesh rotting like a dracolich, the monstrous dragon addressed the town in a booming voice.  It announced that it was Aeteperax, a name we recognized immediately.  This dragon was supposed to have been defeated centuries ago, and its bones were reportedly buried in Tula's Crypt.

Aeteperax claimed that Hunclay had promised him some books of power.  The dragon demanded (oh hey, I totally get the campaign's title now) that we give him the books along with 776,000 gold.  No one is allowed to leave the town until this debt has been paid.  After the dragon left, the council arranged an emergency meeting, and we ended the session there.

Dragon's Demand: Adventures in Bookkeeping

Game Date: 3/8/2014
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Dragon's Demand, Session 7
System: Pathfinder
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Flarin (Trevor) - Human Barbarian
Halfbeard (Cliff) - Dwarf Ranger
Lilith (James) - Tiefling Paladin
Raz Furian (Matt) - Human Sorcerer
Tanith Tularn (Thomas) - Human Cleric
Vires (Daniel) - Human Alchemist

Previous Session Recap:
I missed the 3/1 session.  Here's a recap, courtesy of Thomas.

Lillith was unconscious, but we saved her.  When Raz and Halfbeard came back to town, Raz was very concerned about divine light shining from her hands and Delilah spent the rest of the day comforting her.  Halfbeard and Tanith were making all haste back to the cave, but ran into an Alchemist (Vires) who basically said he blows stuff up and we said he could come along.  In the fight, Tanith stormed the giant creature, was promptly reduced to a few hitpoints, and withdrew.  This gave enough time for Daniel's character to reach Lillith and administer a potion.  However, the monster came back for Lillith.  She had to use a couple of hero points to avoid death.  Tanith made it quite foggy to try to help the party escape, but Halfbeard pays no mind to fog and shot the creature through concealment all the same, downing it.

We got several chests that are magically sealed from the cave that we think are part of Hunclay's estate.  We went to catalog things at Hunclay's mansion and were met with a few magical traps.  We are very good at finding them, but the finding is preceded by doh! and ow!  We found a servant who Tanith apparently spoke to in Infernal when greeting him instead of common, but Halfbeard convinced him to help us out.  At the top of the mansion we found an observatory with some sort of flying demonic cherub.  Because Tanith is to friendly with these things, he tried to talk to it, but it shot lightning at him.  Halfbeard and Lillith came to the rescue to down the fiend.  We still have to explore the bedroom (which the servant told us was dangerous), another room that whose door keeps shouting at us, and the cellar.  We have a few weeks before we our completion deadline for cataloging the estate, so we decided to go back and rest.  Raz was with the party throughout Hunclay's estate acting as the scribe.

Today's Session:
After resting at the inn, we continued to explore Hunclay's manor.  This time we went for the basement first.   First we found a lot of storage crates full of mundane items.  Down some other hallways we found a wine cellar, a meat freezer, a room full of magic items, a room designed to contain dangerous summoned creatures, and a workshop full of clockwork parts.  At one point Flarin used a frozen side of beef to break down a trapped door.  Perhaps a bit unconventional, but it worked.

Once we'd inventoried everything we could downstairs, we went up a couple of floors and checked out Hunclay's bedroom.  As we stood in the doorway, an enchanted bearskin rug growled at us.  Having already seen the rug last session, Lilith had prepared by bringing some bear traps.  She used Tanith's lance to push the trap into the room.  It didn't really help.  As Lilith entered the room, a large Fiendish Grizzly Bear  magically appeared on top of the rug.  For the most party Lilith soloed it while the rest of us fired at it from the hallway.  Flarin joined the melee on his turn, shortly before Raz's Magic Missile finished it off.

We continued taking inventory of Hunclay's possessions.  We found some keys that would be put to very good use for the rest of the session.  We also found a piece of paper containing dirty limericks, but the paper detected as magical.  We used some arcane trickery on it, and the words rearranged themselves to reveal Hunclay's to-do list.  Among other things, it mentioned a secret door in the clockwork lab in the basement. 

But before heading back downstairs, we tried the keys on the screaming door across the hall.  The door opened to reveal a study, where Tanith and Vires both took damage trying to open a trapped chest.  Once the study was accounted for, we went back to the clockwork room and found the secret door.  It looked like it might lead somewhere dangerous, and a few of us were low on hit points, so we went back to the inn and took care of more business in town.

Last week they'd taken some of the locked chests back to the inn, so now we used the newfound keys to open some of them.  There was a lot of gold and other treasures, but of course we're not to touch any of that as it belongs to our employers.  We also found a book written in a strange language, full of celestial images.

Now well-rested and healed up, we set out for Hunclay's secret passage.  We went down some long narrow hallways, until we found a room with a summoning circle.  Inside the circle was an "Accuser Devil", which looked like a grotesque cross between a child and a giant fly.  It spoke to Tanith telepathically in the Infernal language, pleading to be released from the circle.  It promised it would return to its home plane if released, but Tanith was skeptical.  So finally Tanith made a deal - we'd release the creature, but if it didn't immediately unsummon, we would attack.

We released the devil from its prison, and it immediately vanished.  But we still detected it in the room.  It had only turned invisible, while pretending to teleport away.  The party took a couple of shots at the Accuser's last position, but didn't have much luck hitting it.  Raz then used a scroll of Glitterdust, which blinded the devil and made it visible.  Knowing when it had been beat, the Accuser teleported away for real this time.

It wasn't long before we encountered another extraplaner prisoner.  After passing through a hall filled with arcane symbols, there was a hallway filled with bright magical light.  At the other end, an imprisoned fae creature pleaded to be released.  Her name was Maffei, and she was from the Plane of Shadow.  As such, her shadowy form was unable to pass through the magically-lit hallway. We looked all around for ways to dissipate the light, but had no luck. 

We did have a vial of magical darkness dust, but it was part of Hunlcay's estate, and we didn't want to use up any items that should be inventoried.  Finally we decided to head back to town and ask Lady Belhaim for advice.  As we started to leave, Flarin took it upon himself to use the dust, which made it dark enough to release Maffei.  She agreed to serve us until she could find a way to return to her plane.

We had now explored every room in the house except for one.  After opening a barred door, we saw a large room with a pit at one end.  On one wall, in large letters, was the name "Cthepaltangoulgi" and other words in the Abyssal language.  A voice yelled at us from the pit, at first mistaking us for Hunclay.  It turned out to be a devil that looked a bit like a minotaur.  This devil crawled out of the pit and attacked.  He had high AC and hit hard, dropping Vires early in the fight.  Luckily Lilith's smites hit hard as well, and a couple of attacks brought the devil's hit points down far enough for Raz to finish it off with a Magic Missile.  It's funny, Raz is the least damaging person on the team, but she managed to finish off all three encounters today.

Hunclay's estate now completely inventoried, we headed back to town.  We ended the session there.