We had five players in attendance: Marcus playing Mendas the halfling rogue, Marc playing Varin the half-elf warlock, Martin playing Edgar the warforged fighter, Matt playing Rurik the tiefling warlord, and Zach playing Bartix the human wizard. At 4:00 that day I would have thought we'd have all 8 players, but by 7:00 game time we just had five. So thanks to everyone that showed, and thanks for everyone that, on other weeks, puts up with a larger-than-possibly desired assembly. It's this large group that makes us fault tolerant and able to have a good game week after week.
We opened with the Vikings having just descended down a ladder into a strange metal cave. Ahead of them in the corridor was a strange metal cabinet, full of blinking lights and soft whirring noises. The party crowded around poking at it, and Mendas tried to pry it open to see what was inside. But that made the thing explode! Everyone failed their Reflex save and took 10 damage! And for the best, I think. The explosion was the result of a random roll, but the result would keep the game moving. The vikings don't need to break every damn thing, I didn't put power-ups back there!
Backing away from the new smoking hole in the wall, the group examined their map:
Sadly, no-one wanted to go to "Beware Death Here," as if Death doesn't equal Treasure or something in D&D. Whatever, whatever, they went the other way to the prisons. The map turned out to be accurate:
A low but ominous hum fills the air as you enter this long, narrow corridor. The corridor, which measures 10 feet wide and 90 feet long, slopes slightly downward. Located along both sides of this corridor are a total of six bulky doors, evenly spaced apart. The doors seem to be made from some sort of strange, greenish metal, and each door is reinforced by hundreds of rivets. In the center of each door is a small green-tinted window. Immediately to the left of each door is a small panel, approximately 6 inches square.
Rising for a moment above the low hum is the sound of a muffled dwarven voice. “I say!” calls out a cheerful voice from behind one of these doors in Common. “Who’s there? Can you kindly let me out? I need to explore this marvelous machine!”
Looking in, the group saw a dwarf peering up against his cell door, pleading for assistance. He was overjoyed to hear familiar language and to see civilized species. The dwarf explained that his name was Nigel Throtenstoat, a nobleman from Albion. He had found this continent in his one-of-a-kind flying carriage, the "Gilded Gull," but it had been shot down in the mountains. He had blacked out and woke here. For the past few days he had watched strange constructs drag lizardmen and dragonborn to these cells, but his fellow prisoners were always taken away shortly after.
The group talked for a while between themselves and decided to release this foreigner into their care/slavery. They played around with the buttons, and found the way to release Nigel. He looked at them all for the first time and resigned himself to being led around by Norsemen. Rurik handed him a crossbow, which might make him a bit more useful until his gear could be located.
The vikings backtracked and made their way to the point at the map marked "Guards." Obviously, this was where a fight would be. Mendas cautiously looked around the doorway and saw four robots, sweeping the area with a focused red light.
The party quickly planned an assault, figuring that the robots would not listen to reason.
Bartix and Varin are the party artillery, and they took first go, blasting the robots with a Shock Sphere and a Frigid Darkness. The players darted in to the doorway to fire on their targets, then darted out again, leaving the robots without anything to shoot at.
Instead they yelled "UNKNOWN PHENOTYPES DETECTED! OPERATION ANNHILIATION!" and rearranged themselves around the door (taking some damage from the darkness full of mouths.
Edgar was the first of the melee troops to go, which ended up being a bit of a short straw. He charged in and was lit up by both the walkers. Just a tad staggered, he connected his charge with the techno-cat in the corner. It had been reserving an action, so it took his hit and bit him back! These three attacks in a row left the warforged bloodied!
Rurik followed him, and hacked away at the cat. The hammerer now triggered and engaged Rurik in the back.
Mendas then moved past their combat to face the walker in the middle of the room. He used Bait and Switch to stab the walker, then trade places with it. That left it in the persisting zone of Darkness! More chewing little mouths!
With this setup, the combat continued. The mages entered the room and laid down fire without being engaged. The techno-cat fell, and Edgar and Rurik quickly took down the Hammerer as well. Mendas kept up his one-on-one with the walker, as it retreated to fire and was then caught... he finally took it out after three or four rounds. Rurik was first into the fray with the other walker, but it had taken a lot of warlock fire by now. Everyone saved their Dailies, though, as this fight didn't seem too impressive.
With the robots defeated, the path was cleared for death! But the vikings decided to head for the sword on the map instead. Hoping to cure the Horned King by recovering the two swords, they went down the left-hand corridor to find the Engine Room!
Like many of the other rooms in this strange cave, this room is square in shape, measuring some 100 feet across. On the northern and southern walls stand huge metal whirring cabinets with blinking lights; the rest of the walls are covered with flat black metal panels. Each of these panels measures 1-foot square and appears to be bolted onto the metallic wall.
Towards the center of the room is a clear cylinder that stretches from floor to ceiling. The cylinder measures 10 feet in diameter and is full of green mist. Suspended in the greenish mist is a sword, which hovers about 10 feet in the air. Occasionally, blue flashes of electricity spark between the sword and the mist. Red lights located at the base of the cylinder flash brightly whenever these flashes occur.
The three coils pulsed with what looked like lightning. The group approached the cylinder in the center, where they recognized the poisonous gas from the entrace. Bartix used a combination of Mage Hands to break open the cylinder and Thunderwave to clear the gas, and the sword was free! But suddenly, behind them, a hostile party broke in!
A walker and hammerer robot backed up a party of strange Dragonborn, clad in strange garments and armed with shimmering weapons and strange crossbow-like devices. They saw the vikings gathered around the sword chamber, and began to yell in Draconic. "Put that down, you savages!" one cried in Draconic. "You'll break the delicate balance that you can't possibly understand!"
We rolled for initiative, and the two winners, Bartix and Varin, decided to use their opening rounds to antagonize the dragonborn further. A Magic Missile and a Dreadful Word sailed into the coils, causing them to shoot lighting into the squares all around them. Interesting...
Enraged, the hi-tech dragonborn fanned out to engage the vikings. The Specialists fired rifles at the vikings, which were accurate throughout the battle and did ongoing lightning damage after a hit. The Recons had some sort of swords and charged in, throwing grenades when they could.
The vikings responded as they could, engaging the robots and dragonborn. They took heavy damage but were slowly able to whittle their opponents down.
Nobody, however, had time to deal with the walker robot. It continued to walk the periphery of the room and fire opportunistically at the vikings. Finally, Bartix had the actions free. He Thunderwaved the walker back into the coils, still sparking wildly. The robot took enough damage to be bloodied. Some other missile fire caused another coil discharge that shut it down!
The dragonborn left some interesting gear behind. Mendas took one of the guns apart, but couldn't seem to put it back together. The party decided to keep the other one away from him. The party decided to keep going before sleeping, moving on throughout the dungeon!
Here's the map of what has been explored so far:
Casualties:
3 Walker-bots
2 Hammer-bots
1 Cat-bot
2 Dragonborn Ranged Specialists
2 Dragonborn Recon
16 beers, I think
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