Posted on September 23, 2011
The Acts of the Lords of Rannick, XXXIII
At least two things I did wrong last night:
1) I forgot to give you XP for the two stone giants you put in a cage. You don’t have to kill something to get xp for it; you just have to remove it as an obstacle. That’s actually kind of important… Albedon.
2) Dagfinn absolutely could have attacked that Kobold as it ran past him. I was hung up on the idea of “holding” an Attack of Opportunity, which you absolutely can’t do. But you can make an AoO if the target continues to provoke one. I.e. Dagfinn could have let the Kobold move through his threatened area (declining the AoO), then through the square next to him (declining the AoO) and then through the square behind him, then making an AoO, since that is still a threatened square the Kobold is moving through. Apologies.
Still in the caves of Jorgenfist.
Progressing from the kitchen, where they’d just killed the Stone Giant cook, the party was joined by Dagfinn and Kerplak took his turn up top on watch. He took his barrel of jellied eyes with him, which made us all consider the logical conclusion of gnome’s need to explore new sensations: eventually they’ll run out of wholesome, normal things to do and shit will get weird.
The decision was made to walk widdershins around the circle of tunnels (my transatlantic compromise between counter- and anti-clockwise is to use a term none of us uses). This led them to discover the secret back entrance to Galenmir’s lair, then the neatly ordered cave that they suspected belonged to this Kobold they’d heard about. Torgor confirmed that this den was in current use and sized appropriately to a Kobold. Leading away from the cave was a narrow tunnel running down and away from the cave system. The tunnel was narrow and the path winding and no-one chose to venture down there.
However, there was no sign of the Kobold, only neatly arranged piles of detritus. Broken armour piled up over here. Rat skins piled up over there. Insect chitin. All sorts of stuff, but no actual Kobold.
They passed on through the caves, Arradin and Corwin leading the way. Dagfinn, still feeling the effects of the Mummy’s curse/disease stuck to the middle, which was probably pretty sensible.
The next cave they discovered was an empty tannery – empty of tanners that is, not the appallingly foul tanning gear. Someone at my work named their kid Tanner and I always wanted to ask if they knew what a tanner actually did for a living. I’m sure little Dips-flayed-skin-in-rancid-piss-and-then-scrapes-it is doing just fine on the playground. Arradin was tipped off that there may be something in the next cave by someone saying “shhhh!”
Corwin made his way into the next cave and found this one set up as a forge. Two nervous looking Stone Giants stood guard over a cage of emaciated dwarves who were evidently kept barely alive to work the bellows of the forge. Against one wall, a pile of broken armour and weapons lay awaiting mending. Corwin demanded that they lay their weapons down. They did, without too much resistance. They’re giants, not stupid/ogres and they know when their goose is cooked.
The giants were bound, the dwarves released. It took some persuasion, but the dwarves agreed to wait in this cave for rescue and to refrain from exacting revenge on the giants. The giants were persuaded, again by Corwin, that it was in their own best interests to get in the cage. They were terrified of the idea of being caught by the Kobold, who was fiercely loyal to Mokmurian and unlikely to view their easy surrender as anything other than cowardice (which it was).
Nevertheless, they went in the cage and the dwarves agreed to watch them and no more.
At the mouth of the forge cave, Dagfinn stood watch. He noticed something down the tunnel from which they had come and so cast Invisibility on himself, then spent a few rounds fannying about trying to let other people know there was something there without giving his position away. Torgor joined him in the tunnel and eventually everyone else came out too. Corwin clung to the shadows of the wall and moved forward silently, past Dagfinn and spotted a necklace lying on the ground. He moved forward to examine it, but Dagfinn cast an Unseen Servant to move the necklace slightly further away. As Arradin proceeded down the tunnel, Corwin picked the necklace up. As he did so, a red scaled Kobold popped around a corner in the passage way, screaming at the top of her little lungs and flicked a red bead towards Corwin.
The sudden conflagration (fireballs don’t actually cause an explosion, which is hard to think about) was intense. If this game had chunky salsa rules, we’d be getting ready to play Carcassone next week. The blast annihilated Corwin; Arradin horribly injured and unconscious. The Kobold had used a Necklace of Fireballs as a trap and detonated it with one of the beads. She rushed past Dagfinn, who let her by to preserve his Invisibility spell and rounded the corner, hoping that the party had continued to travel so tightly packed together. It hadn’t; Albedon, Don and Torgor were waiting for her. Don and Torgor had both been waiting for something to pop out at them and when she did they immediately responded with force. Don cast Flamestrike, the druid nuke and Torgor plugged her good with volley of arrows.
Oh, THAT'S why the Stone Giants were scared of her... she's fucking mental.
The enraged Kobold ran directly for them, stabbing at anyone she could get within shortspear range. Her fighting style was erratic, defensive one second, wildly swinging the next, precise and controlled the next, she seemed fine taking on opponents from two directions. She took Don down (I think) and was working on Albedon with a frenzy when she was eventually taken down herself, Albedon managing to get a Force Missile spell off under her rain of spear-thrusts.
Tersplink arrived, having decided to put in a shift down the pit and drawn by the almighty roar of umpteen different fireballs going off at once. Picking up and healing Arradin and Don, it was decided nothing could or should be done with Corpswin; he’d let Don know that he was at peace with eternity and so his soul drifted off to Pharasma, Lady of Graves. There he entered the Boneyard, kind of a departure terminal, while Pharasma processed his Chaotic Good passport for passage to the pristine wilderness of Elysium.
The living, beneath Corwin’s shadow baked onto the wall, started divvying up his stuff in the great tradition of rpg characters since the dawn of time immemorial. While they did so, Albedon and Dagfinn noticed a brief flare of light in the adjoining cave.
Albedon went to check it out, lighting the area with dancing lights. The room was a long cave, with crudely constructed wooden bunks and evidently served as a small barrack. Across the lower bunks slid two young red dragons.Larger dragons are mechanically terrifying, but I’d have to assume that a dragon larger than a horse is still fucking scary.
Albedon, at least, was having none of it. What with his history with dragons, that’s kind of understandable: I imagine he hates red dragons as much as he used to love being able to reach things on the top shelf. He leapt into action, evoking a storm if ice above the dragons. They responded, one bounding forward to douse the corridor in flame. A bunch more people hit the floor. This was a bad day for getting burned to death.
Albedon put up an Wall of Ice between the two dragons, freezing them and making them more angry. Arradin stepped up and began whacking at the dragon. It tried to shove past her to get to the hated Albedon, but after it pushed her back it overextended its neck in its eagerness to chew Elf/dwarf Evoker face. Arradin stepped in and coolly lopped its head off. The remaining dragon charged through the wall of elemental ice and surged at Arradin, but she simply moved to one side and killed it too.
Any sword is Vorpal if you put enough fucking effort into it.
The wounded were quickly tended to and that’s where we left them, picking themselves up off the ground again, one party member lighter. Next week, we’ll pick up with them still in the cave.
Meanwhile, enjoy this rape joke* on the internet.
Dagfinn goes shopping.
I got a Wacom pad and pretty much as soon as I got it I tried cartoonizing Dagfinn. For some reason (probably because I painted the miniature) I have a really strong idea of what he looks like. I’ve no idea who that other little guy is, so I didn’t put any effort into him, so that’s why he looks like a testicle with eyebrows.
*Not really a rape joke**, just an etymological misunderstanding.
** Seriously though, don’t be raping.
That was humbling last night. I’m going to miss Corwin.
I’m going to miss him until Rolland buys and paints Thomas Hammerfist for his new cleric, that is.
I think Sigurd is a better match for the cleric I’m going to roll. I’m conflicted on weather to channel positive or negative energy. We don’t have a dedicated healer in the group so it would be nice to fill that void but I really want a 30′ radius of 5d6 damage (selectivley channeled of course).
I think you should start as you mean to go on:
http://www.reapermini.com/FigureFinder#detail/02082
“Hoverround Conan is here to save the day!”
GM: Conan, it is your initiative. What are you going to do?
Conan: I’ll spend a move action to just sit there and a standard action to continue looking like goddamn badass on a sweet throne.
I get the impression Albedon killed something he wasn’t supposed to kill. Were we supposed to negotiate with Red Dragons? Because we were beat to hell when we fought them. I was surprised we didn’t die.
But you are right, Albedon hates Red Dragons. But he also hates kobolds for the same reason he now can’t help but like a fine stone carving or a good beard grooming.
Oh, BTW, looking forward to more drawings David.
No, no. It’s fine for Albedon to be a shoot-overwhelmingly-massive-damage-that-precludes-the-possibility-of-any-option-other-than-combat-even-though-nobody-else-was-ready-for-it-from-the-hip kind of guy, especially against creatures that killed him dead once. You have to think he holds a grudge. An almost… dwarf-like grudge…
Your defensive spells are also pretty great – Wall of Fire-but-really-Ice? Woof! That’s a fantastic spell. Those can buy you time. You have options, you can exercise whichever one you’d like.
Also, you left a hat here. Just in case your head was cold.
That was my first try at a cartoon. I’ve been dicking around with the storybooks I send to my niece/nephew in Oz, and I’m starting to get the hang of the software.
Yeah, that hat is probably pretty gross. Thank you for not burning it. The Elemental Wall power is a handy one, as it gives Albedon a Swiss-army knife of energy walls. Interesting side-note: Albedon is still functioning with -1 level due to Reincarnation. When he was killed, he was 7th-going-on-8th level (elemental wall is a power you get at 8th level). He is now 9th level. That means he never got to use that power the whole time he was 8th level. I can’t wait until a) he get’s restored and b) he hits 10th level. *Squeel!*