Dragon's Demand: For Whom The Bell Tolls

Game Date: 4/26/2014
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Dragon's Demand, Session 12
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:

Lots To Do

When left off last session, we'd just encountered Azmur the Druid at the old monastery.  Azmur couldn't help us directly because he was being forced to serve our enemy.  However, he still managed to give us a little bit of helpful information.  We have a lot of quests on the table.  We need to find and defeat (or recruit) Aeteperax's four lieutenants:  Azmur, Goladryth, Thaena, and Pentosh.  We need to learn Aeteperax's true name, since we're pretty sure it's not the real Aeteperax.  As long as we're at the monastery, we should try to figure out where all the monks went.  We also need to restore our friend Maffei to her original strength, befriend a few people and factions in Belhaim, and oh yes, if we find the time, actually defeat Aeteperax and save the town from his threats.  Should be a busy fortnight.

Earlier we'd seen someone ringing a bell, so we decided to head in that direction.  We entered one of the buildings and wandered the corridors, passing by most of the doors and looking for ways up to the bell tower.  We were walking through an area filled with sleeping cubicles, when two shadowy creatures attacked us.  They were insubstantial, making it difficult to damage them with anything but spells.  It was difficult to fight them because they could walk through walls, making positioning our party difficult.  They didn't physically damage us, but they had mass compulsion powers and the ability to drain our wisdom.

Eventually we managed to kill them, but the party was a lot stupider afterward.  We continued our search, climbing some stairs and searching more halls.  Eventually we entered an open room with a small overgrown garden, and encountered the naga Thaena.  We tried bluffing her at first, but the naga saw through our lies and turned invisible.  We really wanted to defeat her without killing her, because we thought she might have information we need.

During the fight, Thaena used a power that fascinated us, so some of us wasted a few rounds staring at her pretty scales.  Lilith really turned the fight around with a critical hit to the eyes, permanently blinding the naga.  Once Thaena was defeated, we tied her up and healed her a little so she wouldn't die.  Then we holed up in the naga's bedroom for an extended rest.  Once Thaena was awake, we questioned her, but she wasn't as helpful as we hoped.  We left her tied up and kept searching the building.

At the bottom of the stairwell to the bell tower, we were ambushed.  A human woman - Pentosh the Alchemist - led a group of bat-like grioths.  Pentosh opened the battle by throwing a bomb at us, a move she repeated several more times during the battle.  Halfbeard won initiative, and critted on his opening shot, badly damaging Pentosh and causing her CON bleed.  However, the alchemist was under multiple AC-boosting buffs, so our following attacks missed her a lot.  Raz took advantage of her never-missing magic missiles, but they didn't do a lot of damage.

But difficult as Pentosh was, the grioths were a piece of cake.  We took them out pretty quickly, finishing them off right around the time Pentosh decided she'd had enough.  She fled to another room upstairs.  We pursued, but it took a few rounds getting up that spiral staircase.  Using his boots of spider climbing to bypass the stairs, Vires was the first through the upper door.  He immediately got blasted in the face by a trap Pentosh had set.  The rest of us finally entered the room to find both Vires and Pentosh down.  Despite having survived the fighting, Pentosh had finally succumbed to Halfbeard's CON bleed.

We healed up Vires and tied up Pentosh.  We climbed the rest of the way up the bell tower, where we had a beautiful view of all the surrounding areas.  We cut the rope to the bell to make it harder for anyone else to sound the alarm, then headed back down, down, down.  Exploring the lower levels, we found a secret door leading to an oval room.  There was a pit in the center, with a two-foot wide ledge around the sides of the room.  This could have been tricky for a party so bad at acrobatics checks, but Vires still had his spider boots active, so he helped the party get around the edges.

In another room we found a pool of calm water.  Vires used a water breathing amulet to search the pool, but didn't find anything  As he climbed back out of the pool, something followed him... but that's all we know for now.  Our next session will open with that encounter.

Dragon's Demand: Funny, He Doesn't Look Druish

Game Date: 4/12/2014
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Dragon's Demand, Session 11
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:
I missed last week's session, in which they explored more of the tomb.  They dealt with a few floor tile traps, fought a few wights, and had a difficult battle with an incorporeal wraith.  As today's session began, the party was still hurting badly, with some of them suffering from stat damage.  The first thing we wanted to do was find a place to rest.  We considered resting in the tomb, but we really wanted to head back to town instead.

We exited the tomb, and immediately saw a few flying monsters.  It wouldn't have been a difficult battle, but the party was in bad shape and we got hit early with some bad effects.  Maffei was hit with a confusion power, and Halfbeard was exhausted.  It wasn't easy, but we finally managed to finish them off.  The rest of the trip back to town was uneventful. 

In town, we rejoined Raz and healed up. We asked the town historian about the Wraith we'd fought, and she said it must have been an important person in life.  After taking care of some other various business in town, we headed back to the tomb. 

Down a few levels, we found the last room we'd yet to explore.  The final tomb featured a large tile mosaic of a black dragon.  As we entered the room, we heard the ghostly voice of Tula Belhaim.  She knew we'd defeated the wraith, which she informed us was her husband.  She thanked us for setting his spirit free, and asked us to return his wedding band to her tomb.  It took a few tries to open the sarcophagus, due to a bout of poor strength checks.  But we finally got it open.  Inside was a corpse adorned with several magic items.  The voice told us to place the ring beside the body's head, and the rest of the loot was ours. 

The magic items included a +1 keen composite bow and some arrows designed to kill dragons, which we gave to our ranger Halfbeard.  Tanith took the +3 Breastplate of Luck, which looks pretty funny on him since it was designed for a woman.  Lilith took a magic longsword.  We couldn't identify it yet, but Lilith thought she heard it speaking to her.  Having found the equipment we may need to defeat Aeteperax, we left the tomb for good.

On the road again, we encountered another fire drake.  It started the battle by blasting us with fire, and we chipped away at him with our weak attacks.  On Lilith's turn, she hit it with her new found sword, and... damn.  Turns out it's a Dragonsbane weapon called "WyrmSmite", and it certainly does a number on dragons.  The drake didn't last much longer.

Next we wanted to check out the monastery where we're eventually supposed to present Aeteperax's ransom.  As we approached, we noticed a lot of kobold tracks around.  We explored the grounds, following the paths around the buildings.  Eventually a kobold voice called out to us, speaking through a building's arrow slit.  They asked if we were here to deliver Aeteperax's treasure.  We lied and said yes (actually we gave the neutral answer "We have gold"), and they directed us to see Aeterperax's "pet human." 

Instead of following their directions, we sneaked into the building where the voices had come from, and attacked the kobolds.  They were a bit tougher than most kobolds we've fought.  Shortly into the battle, we started to hear a bell clanging in the distance.  After the battle, we exited and saw a human clanging the bell from the top of a distant building.  We wanted to shoot him, but he was well out of range.

We walked into the courtyard, and saw a human sitting on a rock.  It was Azmur Kell, Belhaim's resident druid, who we'd been tasked to find earlier in the campaign.  He told us that his pregnant wife, Rima, was a captive of Aeteperax (if it really is Aeteperax, which we doubt).  Azmur must serve the dragon for one year in order to get his wife back.  The druid wasn't confident in our ability to defeat Aeteperax, and wouldn't give us much help for fear of betraying the dragon.  Still, he gave us a little bit of information about the area and some of the enemies we might fight... or hopefully recruit.  We ended the session there.

Reminders:
There is no game next week.  We'll resume the campaign on 4/26, though our cleric won't be able to make the game.