The three sessions previous to last weekend, in brief, before I write up last weekend (they're finally reaching level 5a!)
Session 3/22/08:
The party was convinced the Obelisk was in Lokaug's possession, from dim memories of the latter Balcoth meeting and his rather opaque pronouncements on the subject. There followed a rather dull hour of gametime as Anne, invisible and flying, mapped out the entire tsathar cavern complex, failing to discover an obelisk. She also found the stairs down to level 6, where she nearly ran afoul of a behir! It clearly could smell her, or something, and started scuttling in her direction - she beat a hasty retreat.
Not knowing how big the obelisk was, one hypothesis was that Lokaug keeps it in his pocket. But they were also open to the idea that Lokaug was simply guarding it or in control of it, maybe not holding onto it. But it was nowhere else on the level; they'd explored everywhere, except the bleeding wall that held back some evil thing. Was it there?
It was at this point that the discussion turned to Abysthor, and the possibility that he could be raised and called to finish the job himself, and the divination referred to above happened.
Session 4/5/08:
They decided initially to do a find the path, then raised questions about how to get knowledge of the obelisk to the rogue (because they would have her spy it out while invisible). Since that was not straightfoward, they decided instead to go after the behir. The behir fight was well done -- Mass Enlarge Person wound up being a tremendous advantage -- and while Anne was swallowed and dropped to negative HP, in the end they hacked the behir to bits and pulled her out.
It had no treasure, which seemed odd... but an alcove in the behir's lair contained three behir eggs and the remains of a rogue with some magic items. Eric called his celestial griffon, placed the eggs on it, and dismissed it (this is, by the way, one of the most useful aspects of the paladin's mount: it can function as a leomund's secret chest...
From there they headed east, where they found a disquieting, huge cavern covered with runic writing. With a comprehend languages, they read the story of a great evil wizard named Gremag, who lived thousands of years ago and, apparently, reached lichdom early in his career. He was now buried in this crypt, somewhere.
It was unanimous (at least among the responsible members of the party, i.e. not Anne) that they were in no way ready to face a thousands-years-old lich. But the Orcus priests would definitely want to open the crypt, and this Gremag would likely destroy the balance of power here. The question became how to keep it a secret from them...
Session 4/12/08:
Within the large carving-covered cavern there was, in its upper reaches, a halfling-sized spider. It was immediately assumed this was a spy of Natasha's.
The best and most foolproof way to keep the lich sealed up would be to remove clues to its presence - destroy the carved stories throughout the cavern. My ruling was that the minimum dimension of stone shape (10 cubic feet + 1 cubic foot per level) was 1 inch (the carvings on the walls were about an inch deep anyway); thus it could affect 180 square feet when cast at 8th level. That cave was, unfortunately, fifteen feet high throughout, and between it and its two side corridors had over 400 linear feet of walls: that's 6000 square feet. An earth mephit could be called with lesser planar ally and it could cast soften earth and stone, but that was no better: 10 square feet per level was only 80 square feet; though Cedric (with a day's warning) could prepare and cast a dozen of those, they were not willing to spend 24 hours in this place, nor wait 24 hours to seal it up.
So sealing it up it was. Stone shape could turn a pile of rocks and rubble into a concrete wall several inches thick, which if done at the western end of the passage leading to the crypt cavern would require at least a little bit of close investigation, and it was hoped this would fool Orcusites and others for some time. They kept expecting the spider to try to scuttle out, but it never did.
They had a short bit of fun with dire rats while collecting rubble to pile in the passage, but nothing life-threatening. They then poked around to the west and got humilated by su-monsters, eventually running (dragging stunned friends by the hand) back to the behir cave.
There followed discussion of what to do next. It was clear their next destination should be this obelisk. How to find it, though? They had a scroll of find the path, but it would behoove them to learn something about it. They left the dungeon (through the stairs back to 2a) and discussed matters, eventually settling on a divination: "How should we proceed toward the obelisk?" The gods obliged:
The entrance to the maze of tomb, blood, and stone
sits behind an illusory wall that must be known false to be unseen
from there, stairs descend below the clean waters
Lokaug's elite guards are the first obstacle you must overcome
This was sufficiently unclear that there was still some discussion. But at the least there were stairs down, that went below the clean waters (clean waters must mean the pool in the roper cavern), which meant...
That meant find the path should get them to stairs down, so long as it was cast near the clean waters. The next expedition would have to be back to Lokaug's level, somewhere near the pool.
(When Eric called back the griffon, there were only two behir eggs and a broken shell on its back... had the missing one hatched in the celestial realms?)
Session 3/22/08:
The party was convinced the Obelisk was in Lokaug's possession, from dim memories of the latter Balcoth meeting and his rather opaque pronouncements on the subject. There followed a rather dull hour of gametime as Anne, invisible and flying, mapped out the entire tsathar cavern complex, failing to discover an obelisk. She also found the stairs down to level 6, where she nearly ran afoul of a behir! It clearly could smell her, or something, and started scuttling in her direction - she beat a hasty retreat.
Not knowing how big the obelisk was, one hypothesis was that Lokaug keeps it in his pocket. But they were also open to the idea that Lokaug was simply guarding it or in control of it, maybe not holding onto it. But it was nowhere else on the level; they'd explored everywhere, except the bleeding wall that held back some evil thing. Was it there?
It was at this point that the discussion turned to Abysthor, and the possibility that he could be raised and called to finish the job himself, and the divination referred to above happened.
Session 4/5/08:
They decided initially to do a find the path, then raised questions about how to get knowledge of the obelisk to the rogue (because they would have her spy it out while invisible). Since that was not straightfoward, they decided instead to go after the behir. The behir fight was well done -- Mass Enlarge Person wound up being a tremendous advantage -- and while Anne was swallowed and dropped to negative HP, in the end they hacked the behir to bits and pulled her out.
It had no treasure, which seemed odd... but an alcove in the behir's lair contained three behir eggs and the remains of a rogue with some magic items. Eric called his celestial griffon, placed the eggs on it, and dismissed it (this is, by the way, one of the most useful aspects of the paladin's mount: it can function as a leomund's secret chest...
From there they headed east, where they found a disquieting, huge cavern covered with runic writing. With a comprehend languages, they read the story of a great evil wizard named Gremag, who lived thousands of years ago and, apparently, reached lichdom early in his career. He was now buried in this crypt, somewhere.
It was unanimous (at least among the responsible members of the party, i.e. not Anne) that they were in no way ready to face a thousands-years-old lich. But the Orcus priests would definitely want to open the crypt, and this Gremag would likely destroy the balance of power here. The question became how to keep it a secret from them...
Session 4/12/08:
Within the large carving-covered cavern there was, in its upper reaches, a halfling-sized spider. It was immediately assumed this was a spy of Natasha's.
The best and most foolproof way to keep the lich sealed up would be to remove clues to its presence - destroy the carved stories throughout the cavern. My ruling was that the minimum dimension of stone shape (10 cubic feet + 1 cubic foot per level) was 1 inch (the carvings on the walls were about an inch deep anyway); thus it could affect 180 square feet when cast at 8th level. That cave was, unfortunately, fifteen feet high throughout, and between it and its two side corridors had over 400 linear feet of walls: that's 6000 square feet. An earth mephit could be called with lesser planar ally and it could cast soften earth and stone, but that was no better: 10 square feet per level was only 80 square feet; though Cedric (with a day's warning) could prepare and cast a dozen of those, they were not willing to spend 24 hours in this place, nor wait 24 hours to seal it up.
So sealing it up it was. Stone shape could turn a pile of rocks and rubble into a concrete wall several inches thick, which if done at the western end of the passage leading to the crypt cavern would require at least a little bit of close investigation, and it was hoped this would fool Orcusites and others for some time. They kept expecting the spider to try to scuttle out, but it never did.
They had a short bit of fun with dire rats while collecting rubble to pile in the passage, but nothing life-threatening. They then poked around to the west and got humilated by su-monsters, eventually running (dragging stunned friends by the hand) back to the behir cave.
There followed discussion of what to do next. It was clear their next destination should be this obelisk. How to find it, though? They had a scroll of find the path, but it would behoove them to learn something about it. They left the dungeon (through the stairs back to 2a) and discussed matters, eventually settling on a divination: "How should we proceed toward the obelisk?" The gods obliged:
The entrance to the maze of tomb, blood, and stone
sits behind an illusory wall that must be known false to be unseen
from there, stairs descend below the clean waters
Lokaug's elite guards are the first obstacle you must overcome
This was sufficiently unclear that there was still some discussion. But at the least there were stairs down, that went below the clean waters (clean waters must mean the pool in the roper cavern), which meant...
That meant find the path should get them to stairs down, so long as it was cast near the clean waters. The next expedition would have to be back to Lokaug's level, somewhere near the pool.
(When Eric called back the griffon, there were only two behir eggs and a broken shell on its back... had the missing one hatched in the celestial realms?)
