Isle of Fury part 8

Last week we played Part 8 of the Isle of Fury! It all came down to this: in game 1, four 1st level characters landed on the island, and were warned by friendly fish-people to stay away from the barrows. Now there were 7 characters, everyone was at least 2nd level, and they were armed with the weapons of their ancestors. We were ready to finish this thing!


A well-defined path led from the crossroads in the center of the island to the barrows in the northeast. The vikings approached the barrows through the woods to stay hidden. The clanky fighters stayed back, while Hermiad the Ranger and Mendas the Rogue went ahead to scout. They saw that the path opened to a clearing some 50 feet before the first barrow. And in that clearing was zombies!
As they crouched in the woods, they saw 12 zombies, from a mix of human, orc, and goblin corpses, softly moaning and shuffling in place. Around their perimeter was strung a light rope, which terminated in some kind of device. Through the scout's eyes (using One Heart, One Mind), Bartix the wizard determined that the rope and device were not mechanical. Another examination by Mendas seemed to determine the purpose: when the rope was triggered by zombies walking over it, a loud bell would ring.

This determined, Hermiad and Mendas scouted further down the map to look at the barrows. There were four barrows, some 40 feet across and twenty feet of sharply-sloping earth. One had thoroughly collapsed and could not be entered, but the other three seemed to have wooden doors of recent construction. Against one of the doors, a large boulder had been dragged into place.



Rurik the warlord suggested that this boulder-secured cave might be where the Jesus monster was kept. Jesus does, in fact, hate vikings... but everyone knew that WOTC wouldn't get to Jesus until at least Monster Manual III. Rurik's next idea was to open this crypt first: as it seemed to be secured by the goblins, it might contain allies. This was a fucking terrible idea and I could not keep a straight face, so I apologize to the group for lending undue aid.

After getting a feel for the whole area, the vikings hatched a plan. Hermiad would try to sever the rope with an arrow, solving the alarm problem. Then, Bartix would run some 200 feet down the path and use Ghost Sound to replicate a moaning zombie. Since we've all read our Max Brooks, we knew that this would draw the zombies away. Mendas stayed in place in the eastern woods, behind the zombies, ready to react to whatever happened.

First, Hermiad aimed his arrow, aided by four of his allies. With 1H1M still running, this ended up giving him a +12 to an already good roll, and his arrow severed the rope and then buried itself in the ground, unnoticed by the undead.
Then Bartix moaned in the distance. The zombies took the bait and shuffled to the south. This plan was gangbusters so far, except for one thing... predatory zombies made a noticeable moan themselves. Not as loud as the alarm bell, but still noticeable. And I rolled a monster Perception of a natural 20.
So, at this point, Grimmur, the boss of the goblin horde, came running out of his northern barrow to see what the commotion was. Grimmur was an Elite Demonic Acolyte Ogre Savage, with nearly 300 HP. We all rolled initiative and got to it. Everyone beat the monsters, with Hermiad going first.
The ranger stood in the woods and sent two arrows at the ogre, one of which hit. Varin the warlock got out of the woods and began firing Bolts of Radiance at the backs of the zombies, doing decent damage to one of them. Oddny did the same with her crossbow. Bartix made a desperate zombie howl, trying to keep the attention of his quarries. Everyone else started to work their way out of the woods. Grimmur, meanwhile, took shelter against one of the barrows, taking out a scroll! Mendas relayed this to the rest of the party, as the ogre could no longer be seen by most of them. Only 9 of the zombies were still on the map, having shuffled off towards Bartix for several rounds. But now they saw fresh meat behind them. The horde reversed direction and began to shuffle towards the players!

Determined to stop that scroll from being read, the vikings went into action. Hermiad moved and fired again at the ogre, even though the zombies were getting close. Rurik charged across the battlefield, hitting the ogre with a Critical with his greataxe! This was his first crit with a magic weapon, and the damage was obscene for an action without even a power behind it. Mendas leapt from his hidey hole and took position at the ogre's back, hitting but rolling low on his d8s. Edgar also charged, connecting for around 15. I think the ogre was down by about a sixth of his hit points, and he hadn't struck yet!
Back at the zombies, Oddny wanted to use her Turn Undead, but it was a close Burst 1 and these guys weren't close yet. It was actually beneficial to wait and get mobbed (ah, the defender's lot in life). She fired off a lightning burst from her crossbow, taking out two zombies and injuring two more. Varin also fired into the horde: by now it was clear that some of these zombies were going down fast and some were not. It looked like the goblin corpses just didn't hold up to undeadification real well.
Meanwhile, Grimmur was mobbed, but if he could get that scroll off, he could add another 700 points of forces to his side. He ignored the consequences and tried to read it. But then his curse struck! As a result of reading the Rune Stone of Sorrow, Grimmur could only act each turn if a die came up 4,5, or 6. So he froze, scroll in hand, while Edgar, Mendas, and Rurik administered free whacks!
The zombies inched across the map. Hermiad and Varin got slammed (why do zombies slam, Monster Manual? They should bite), and Oddny was now surrounded, but protected by her plate and shield.
As the initiative order reset, Hermiad cuisinarted his zombie foe, while Varin shifted and burned his. Oddny got her Turn Undead off, taking the total number in the horde down to four. I think all the minions were off the table now. Rurik and Edgar got their Daily Powers off against the ogre, doing quite a lot of damage, thank you very much. Mendas also hit with his Dazing Strike, limiting the monster's actions. Grimmur, now, had another chance to get that scroll off, but he froze up under the curse again! Bah! He was now bloodied, meaning that over 140 points of damage had been dealt to him. Also, the zombies continued their assault, but generally the vikings were okay.
On the next turn, Hermiad, Varin, and Oddny worked on cleaning up the zombies, while Edgar, Mendas, and Rurik whittled away at Grimmur. Bartix finally made it back on the battlefield, and magic-missiled the ogre chief.
The monster wasn't looking so hot, but his curse subsided for the turn, so he tried to hit Edgar with his club. No dice (literally, he rolled a 4). The battle was over in the next two turns. Hermiad killed Grimmur with an arrow shot, and the remaining two zombies were easy pickings once the group realigned to deal with them.
With the immediate threat taken care of, there were still two barrows unopened. Edgar and Rurik had spent the end of the battle proper at the door of the closest, waiting to react to anything that might come out. But nothing happened... as the last zombie collapsed, the battlefield fell silent.

After a five minute rest, the party gathered at the barrow doorway. The door was kicked open, and Bartix lit it up. They peered in and saw... nothing! Nothing moving, anyway... the floor was covered by three softly glowing magic circles, and in each were two aged human skeletons. With Mage Hands, Batix extracted three swords, six skulls, and anything else he could take to disable this necromantic hoo-hah. When it seemed safe, Mendas went in. He kicked apart the sand defining the magic circles, then searched the room. On a desk was a scroll that seemed to be identical to the one that Grimmur carried. Written in gobbish, it was defintely magical, but appeared to be designed for a layman to cast, not an experienced mage. The party correctly deduced that this was the raising mechanism for the six skeletons. Other than that, the room was bare.
Next they went to the barrow that Grimmur had come from. The smell was awful: it was apparent he had been living in the small room for at least a month. Inside was the Runestone of Sorrow, a coffin with the sides kicked out (to accommodate an ogre), and his stash of over 1000 gold! But nothing moving.

Finally the party came to the last barrow, with a boulder in front of it. Working together, they pushed aside the rock, opened the door, and looked inside. The barrow was in ill repair, with rocks from collapse and coffins askew across the floor. Something stirred inside, but the monsters had burrowed into boltholes as the crypt was lit up. Cautiously, Mendas, then the rest of the party entered.
Six ghouls jumped out, but it wasn't like they really surprised anyone. We rolled initiative, but several players still had Daily Powers left, including our most successful implementation of the wizard's Freezing Cloud yet! The ghouls were dispatched, and since is was nearly 11:00, I called the game.
Everyone hit Third level this game, and has some kind of bonus from weapon and armor besides. They had proven that they could take out a level 8 monster without breaking a sweat. They handled an encounter that could have been four encounters in one without it going pear-shaped. Thanks to everyone for playing!

Casualties:
6 Zombies
6 Zombie Rotters (minions)
3 Blazing Skeletons (never triggered)
2 Skeleton Warriors (never triggered)
6 Ghouls (Downgraded from level 5 to level 3)
Grimmur, Elite Demonic Acolyte Ogre Savage
25 beers

A Week of Adventuring

From Marcus:

So, I was messing around with a timeline and guessed/calculated some stuff out:



Moon Day we got our briefing. Moon Day morning status meetings, bleh.

Tyr’s Day we landed on the island and messed with runestones.

Woden’s Day we fought a bear, spiders and goblins.

Thor’s Day we found the Arsenal of Thor! Naturally.

Freya’s Day we freed some ghosts.



That makes today… um… well, given that we’re fleeing the invaders, we’re not likely to have given their god Saturn a day of the week yet, are we? So I figure it’s Loki’s Day. Hmm, I bet some people regard Loki’s Day as bad luck. Or maybe people tend to go crazy more often on Loki’s Day.



And tomorrow would be Sun Day, of course. Good day to rest, depending on how Loki’s Day goes.

Isle of Fury part 7

The other night we played the seventh game of the Isle of Fury cycle. Yeah, it started as an adventure, but now it's a cycle! First we rewound the clock a bit. Once I published the Journal of Bogrunn, Studious Goblin, I interrupted continuity and we realized that the players had acted without knowing information that they now should have had. Maybe they didn't want to go into the pit full of angry ghosts after all!

So we started this session in the morning as they woke up in the Temple of Thor. In attendance was Anthony playing Hermiad the ranger, Marc playing Varin the warlock, Marcus playing Mendas the rogue, Martin playing Edgar the fighter, and Rebecca playing Oddny the paladin. The players of Bartix and Rurik couldn't make it, so we made a group decision to leave them unplayed in the back of the scene. We've tried to put two characters on one player, and it got us through some early games when people couldn't show, but it's not what we like.

So the party went out and marched directly to the mysterious pit!

The floor in this large circular room spirals downward into darkness. A five-foot-wide path is easily walked to the bottom of the dark bowllike depression.

Mendas secured himself with a rope and let Edgar be in charge of rescuing/hoisting him if things went wrong. He carefully descended two levels down while above him, on the platform above, the rest of the party readied missile support. As Mendas landed on the second level, two spirits materialized in front of him! The party could see swirling forms of vapor floating just feet from the rogue. Hermiad, who rolled the high initiative, took the first action and tried Diplomacy instead of Arrow. He called out to the ghosts, telling them that the party were brave Viking sons here to liberate the island from the invaders, and that they meant no harm.

The ghosts responded by backing away from Mendas, although two more appeared lower in the pit. That was still a good sign, so Mendas tried Diplomacy as well, and rolled really high. He tried to explain to the ghosts that they had secured the Temple of Thor and the runestones, and were close to clearing the island of non-Norse filth. He backed it up with a really high Diplomacy roll, especially for his character. The ghost liked the cut of their collective jibs, and opened up, telling Mendas that they were the last defenders of the island, killed years ago defending against an Underdark incursion from the doorway at the bottom of the pit. Mendas acted as spokesman throughout, and the part used "One Heart, One Mind" from the runestone blessings to effortlessly trade ideas. Finally, the specters asked the party to give their remains a proper Viking burial (as everyone knows, you put the body on a boat, and then you shoot the boat with a flaming arrow). If they could perform the burial before the sun set, they could help themselves to the magical armor the corpses still wore!


Well, you don't turn down a chance at magic armor, or the chance to start a fire. So the party descended and gathered up the bones, then retraced their steps through the dungeon and exited out of the bear cave. Making their way over to the beach, they tried to decide on how to make a boat. It wouldn't work to burn their own boat, so they quickly chopped down a tree and started creating a dugout canoe. We ran a skill challenge using Athletics or Nature as the mechanism, and got 10 out of 10 successes. That's how you make a boat! Of course, at that point, someone remembered that Bartix had a specific plan for this kind of issue... he had been carrying around miscellaneous junk so that he could use Make Whole to create a bridge or a house or a boat! Oh well. The party laid out the bodies, towed the canoe out in their longboat, and set it aflame. Then they went back on the beach to admire their new armor.

The party made their way back to the caves, stopping by the runestones first to refresh their blessings. They went to the opening of the cave they had first discovered (all those weeks ago, to us) and cautiously worked their way in. The opening room was empty, and some exploration of one of the surrounding passages revealed a place they had already been to. Now able to place themselves on the dungeon map, they proceeded to the east and found themselves at a mysterious doorway. They thought they recognized this as a heavily-trapped room from the journal, so they peered in the door and examined it carefully.

The corridor widens into a roughhewn cavern strewn with debris and an eclectic collection of bizarre belongings. Pocket knives, handkerchiefs, assorted knick-knacks, a small pile of cutlery and broken pottery, a candle, flint and steel, and a rusty old grappling hook cover the floor.

They noticed good stuff in there, a shiny medallion and at least a hundred gold coins. Peering in, they noticed grooves cut across the floor at regular intervals, but probing the grooves did nothing. At this point everyone in the party knew that the room was going to attack them, but what was there to do? Mendas cautiously leapt in to see what would happen, with Edgar close behind.

The doorway of the room immediately shut as a stone block swung down from the ceiling. In the room, Mendas and Edgar saw the door ahead of them close. Then two bladed pendulums swung through the room (though they were nowhere near the characters. Finally, from the debris, two small serpentine humanoids rose up and rushed the heroes.

In the hallway, the three remaining characters attempted to break down the door. Meanwhile Edgar and Mendas were grappling with the monsters, revealed at some point to be Cavern Chokers. Mendas had the high initiative, but he held his action to react to the creatures. The chokers charged across the room and grabed the two vikings, but Mendas got a simultaneous hit in. The pendulum axes swung again, but they only went through the back of the room.


The rest of the party launched an attack on the door, and Varin's blast was able to get through! Varin hopped in through the hole he had made and helped Mendas with his Choker. Edgar had been grabbed, but he broke away. Mendas's foe missed; so far, these creatures weren't performing well. Then one of the axe blades swung at Varin, doing one million damage! Or 18 something, but we established that the axes were serious business.



The rest of the party charged into the room, and the chokers lasted only a round or two. However, the axes were still swinging. At this point, everyone was frantically rolling Perception checks to see where the next axe would be. Hermiad figured out that he could damage an axe that swung through the middle of the room in a row next to him. But it required doing a lot of damage to a moving target. Then a pendulum went through Row 2, where most of the party was clustered. Everyone unloosed either sword or spell, and the axe was stopped. Now they had a safe place to stand!

From row 2, it might be possible to clear the rest of the room, as most of the party had some ability to attack at a distance. But everyone knew that this would take forever. Oddny assisted Mendas with a perception check, and they got to 25! That was enough to see the control panel hidden in the corner of the room.

Mendas crossed the room and began to try to disarm the trap. This turned out to be a really tough skill challenge! Hermiad went a few rows away and tried to clear some heat by attacking nearby pendulums with his axes. He and the rest of the party were able to stop another axe on row 10, but Mendas got more faliures than successes, and the number of axes increased! He had to start again, and this time, worked his way through the trap.


Searching the room revealed an Amulet of Health, a pair of Acrobat Boots, and 900 pieces of gold. Everyone had to spend some healing surges to replenish the several axe trap hits, but they were okay. Now it was 10:30, so I quickly rolled them through the rest of the dungeon. A room to the east was a water cave where the goblins had fished: Edgar found some Wavestrider boots (which are useless, as far as we can tell). In the middle of the dungeon was a newly consecrated shrine to Loki, but the priest was absent, possibly killed in a previous attack. They checked the pit as well, and the spirits were absent. Everything else had been explored and killed. Done and done!

The party agreed to sleep for the night, then assault the barrows. Important game next time, everyone totally has to come!

Casualties:
4 Specters (not killed, but released)
2 Cavern Chokers
2 Pendulum traps
8 beers (I blame myself)