Process Servers d20
Jan. 26th, 2012 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lederhosenWe celebrated Australia Day in the traditional fashion, by sleeping in followed by an afternoon of D&D.
This session, our party was asked to go deal with a nearby wizard who'd been breeding dangerous monsters in his private valley and using the villagers for labour in the mines (something guaranteed to push Alessandro's buttons, due to backstory I haven't yet posted). Our job was to go to his castle and give him a scroll that would impose a geas on him to return to town to face the council and discuss reparations etc. We were told the locals had reported seeing undead, basilisks, manticores, and other creatures in the area, so we took the time to enchant our weapons before heading out.
Along the way we met a ragged-looking fellow who said he'd escaped from the mines. He told us of a secret entry into the valley, bypassing the main gate, and also gave us a password to get past the golems guarding it. We realised he was hiding something behind his back; it turned out to be a pouch full of some sort of greenish stuff that he'd stolen from the mines. Indra, our halflingpsychopathwizard, identified it as a valuable magical component - apparently that's what they were mining.
We followed his directions to the secret entry, and the password worked as advertised. On the other side we headed north towards the castle, along the road. We could see movement in the forest to one side - something low-slung and reptilian, probably connected to the petrified animals and people we could see nearby, including the last few process servers sent by the council. But we decided not to pick a fight just now, and it didn't try to attack us.
As we got near the castle we heard singing. Three of our party members (including the bard) were hypnotised by the singing and started walking towards the singer, which was problematic, because she was on the other side of the castle moat. But the rest of us passed our will saves and realised the singing was coming from one of a pair of harpies, standing on the castle wall. We picked her off with spells and Alessandro's bow (which is rapidly turning into the fantasy equivalent of a Barrett Light Fifty) and her sister made the mistake of swooping on us. I tried to subdue her in case she could tell us anything useful about the defences, but Thunk the cleric impaled her with a greatsword at about the same time, so that didn't work out.
The druid had been using lightning bolts, so we figured we'd lost the element of surprise. There was a bridge across the moat, but it was called the "Bridge of Judgement" on our map so most of us chose to leap/swim the moat rather than try his luck. Thunk, being heavily armoured and all, did cross the bridge and tripped a trigger, but nothing too bad happened.
In the courtyard on the other side of the portcullis we could see two fierce looking dire boars - at first they were chained, but the chains magically vanished when Thunk hit the trigger. I think Rey was expecting us to break down the portcullis, fight the boars, then fight our way past guards and traps to the top floor of the wizard's house inside the castle. Instead, Alessandro threw a grappling hook up to the walls and speed-climbed, with the rest of the party following, then we ran along the walls onto the roof of the wizard's house and chopped a hole in the ceiling.
Inside, down below, we saw two hydras (five-headed vanilla persuasion) and the wizard we'd been sent to retrieve. While going through the roof allowed us to bypass a lot of his defences, it'd given him plenty of time to prepare, and he blasted us with a fireball as soon as we got through the ceiling. (Alessandro and Kauri laughed it off with Evasion, the rest of the party were a bit singed but nothing too severe.)
He followed up by bringing up a cloud of smoke from the now-burning roof beams. Drustos the druid retaliated by blowing it back into the house, allowing Indra and Kauri to jump in under cover (and in Indra's case, with an invisibility spell). Indra tagged the wizard with the geas scroll and a couple of us started to poke at one of the hydras; killing the heads seemed too complicated, so we just concentrated on hitting the body.
The wizard started to cast a Summon Monster of some variety, but Meg (our bard) was ahead of him and summoned a couple of scorpions to attack him. They only did 2 hit points damage, but it was enough to break his concentration.
Meanwhile, Indra had lost her invisibility, and was being monstered by the other hydra. Things were looking nasty for her, and then it was Drustos' turn...
"I cast Wood Shape on the floor."
He dropped the hydra into a small storeroom on the floor below, neatly removing it from the fight. Kauri had already hurt the remaining hydra with a sneak attack, and then Thunk jumped down onto its back, greatsword first. Alessandro finished it off with a sneak attack from his lance, and then moved up to get in the wizard's face.
At this point the wizard was sensible enough to surrender. We questioned him and found out that the details of the mission were not quite as advertised. While he did have an excessive interest in breeding dangerous animals (there was a sort of 'animal hoarder' thing going there), he actually had a business arrangement with the town - criminals sentenced to hard labour were sent to work in the mines.
He wasn't entirely innocent; he had definitely been a bit reckless with the monsters, and possibly overworking his miners. But our errand seemed to be more about the mayor wanting a bigger cut of the operations than with this guy being a REAL menace to the area. In the end we talked him into coming back to town with us; next session I guess we'll find out how the negotiation goes.
All in all, very little bloodshed. His monsters were trained not to attack people on the road, so we'd avoided a lot of trouble on the way in, and then we dodged a lot more by skipping the 'front door' assault. I think we may have ended up getting more XP for the fights we avoided than the ones we won. We didn't get a whole lot of loot, but nobody was badly hurt, and we may yet be able to make peace between the wizard and the town.
Still odd being in a party that manages to avoid unnecessary fights, complete quests without getting distracted, and doesn't routinely get banned from every town we've ever visited. I credit it to not having a paladin in the group.
And Alessandro got just enough experience to make it to level 6. One more level and I'll have four different character classes...
This session, our party was asked to go deal with a nearby wizard who'd been breeding dangerous monsters in his private valley and using the villagers for labour in the mines (something guaranteed to push Alessandro's buttons, due to backstory I haven't yet posted). Our job was to go to his castle and give him a scroll that would impose a geas on him to return to town to face the council and discuss reparations etc. We were told the locals had reported seeing undead, basilisks, manticores, and other creatures in the area, so we took the time to enchant our weapons before heading out.
Along the way we met a ragged-looking fellow who said he'd escaped from the mines. He told us of a secret entry into the valley, bypassing the main gate, and also gave us a password to get past the golems guarding it. We realised he was hiding something behind his back; it turned out to be a pouch full of some sort of greenish stuff that he'd stolen from the mines. Indra, our halfling
We followed his directions to the secret entry, and the password worked as advertised. On the other side we headed north towards the castle, along the road. We could see movement in the forest to one side - something low-slung and reptilian, probably connected to the petrified animals and people we could see nearby, including the last few process servers sent by the council. But we decided not to pick a fight just now, and it didn't try to attack us.
As we got near the castle we heard singing. Three of our party members (including the bard) were hypnotised by the singing and started walking towards the singer, which was problematic, because she was on the other side of the castle moat. But the rest of us passed our will saves and realised the singing was coming from one of a pair of harpies, standing on the castle wall. We picked her off with spells and Alessandro's bow (which is rapidly turning into the fantasy equivalent of a Barrett Light Fifty) and her sister made the mistake of swooping on us. I tried to subdue her in case she could tell us anything useful about the defences, but Thunk the cleric impaled her with a greatsword at about the same time, so that didn't work out.
The druid had been using lightning bolts, so we figured we'd lost the element of surprise. There was a bridge across the moat, but it was called the "Bridge of Judgement" on our map so most of us chose to leap/swim the moat rather than try his luck. Thunk, being heavily armoured and all, did cross the bridge and tripped a trigger, but nothing too bad happened.
In the courtyard on the other side of the portcullis we could see two fierce looking dire boars - at first they were chained, but the chains magically vanished when Thunk hit the trigger. I think Rey was expecting us to break down the portcullis, fight the boars, then fight our way past guards and traps to the top floor of the wizard's house inside the castle. Instead, Alessandro threw a grappling hook up to the walls and speed-climbed, with the rest of the party following, then we ran along the walls onto the roof of the wizard's house and chopped a hole in the ceiling.
Inside, down below, we saw two hydras (five-headed vanilla persuasion) and the wizard we'd been sent to retrieve. While going through the roof allowed us to bypass a lot of his defences, it'd given him plenty of time to prepare, and he blasted us with a fireball as soon as we got through the ceiling. (Alessandro and Kauri laughed it off with Evasion, the rest of the party were a bit singed but nothing too severe.)
He followed up by bringing up a cloud of smoke from the now-burning roof beams. Drustos the druid retaliated by blowing it back into the house, allowing Indra and Kauri to jump in under cover (and in Indra's case, with an invisibility spell). Indra tagged the wizard with the geas scroll and a couple of us started to poke at one of the hydras; killing the heads seemed too complicated, so we just concentrated on hitting the body.
The wizard started to cast a Summon Monster of some variety, but Meg (our bard) was ahead of him and summoned a couple of scorpions to attack him. They only did 2 hit points damage, but it was enough to break his concentration.
Meanwhile, Indra had lost her invisibility, and was being monstered by the other hydra. Things were looking nasty for her, and then it was Drustos' turn...
"I cast Wood Shape on the floor."
He dropped the hydra into a small storeroom on the floor below, neatly removing it from the fight. Kauri had already hurt the remaining hydra with a sneak attack, and then Thunk jumped down onto its back, greatsword first. Alessandro finished it off with a sneak attack from his lance, and then moved up to get in the wizard's face.
At this point the wizard was sensible enough to surrender. We questioned him and found out that the details of the mission were not quite as advertised. While he did have an excessive interest in breeding dangerous animals (there was a sort of 'animal hoarder' thing going there), he actually had a business arrangement with the town - criminals sentenced to hard labour were sent to work in the mines.
He wasn't entirely innocent; he had definitely been a bit reckless with the monsters, and possibly overworking his miners. But our errand seemed to be more about the mayor wanting a bigger cut of the operations than with this guy being a REAL menace to the area. In the end we talked him into coming back to town with us; next session I guess we'll find out how the negotiation goes.
All in all, very little bloodshed. His monsters were trained not to attack people on the road, so we'd avoided a lot of trouble on the way in, and then we dodged a lot more by skipping the 'front door' assault. I think we may have ended up getting more XP for the fights we avoided than the ones we won. We didn't get a whole lot of loot, but nobody was badly hurt, and we may yet be able to make peace between the wizard and the town.
Still odd being in a party that manages to avoid unnecessary fights, complete quests without getting distracted, and doesn't routinely get banned from every town we've ever visited. I credit it to not having a paladin in the group.
And Alessandro got just enough experience to make it to level 6. One more level and I'll have four different character classes...
