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Session #2 - Assault on Devil's Finger

If you're going to run this with miniatures, you can try to get 4 of the large Chessex battlemaps and use them all in a 2x2 pattern. The top of Devil's Finger is about that size. I don't have that many though, so I had to make due with just 1 large map and a smaller square one. We made the large map grids become 10'x10' and used this to show the overall position of things on top, but then used my smaller map kind of like a zoom on the present area. It wasn't perfect though, as things moved off the little map all the time. (One of the players in my group DM's another campaign, and he just picked up a large chessex map for himself, so now at least we'll have access to two of them in the future. His gaming table is a ping pong board that can handle 4 of these maps though!)

The party awoke near dawn, and the cleric opted to use his windwalk spell to get them up there. With one casting, the most he could get is himself and 3 others. The druid can fly as a bird, but that meant the 6th character needed some other option. They have a bag of holding, and decided to use this to carry the final member of the party.

They ascended and then decided to approach near the east edge below the ridge near some ruined buildings. As they got close, an alarm cube went off. There were 5 patrols of 3 members each walking clockwise around the area. I rolled listen checks for each (wind & distance makes it non-automatic), and one of the near ones did hear the cube. Meanwhile, the party, which looks like a cloud moved into one of those ruined buildings. There were still within range of the cube so it kept making noise.

With Wind Walk, it takes 5 rounds to go from cloudform back to normal form, so the party began to do that. The near patrol began looking around the cube alarm, looking over the edge for climbers or flyers, etc. A 2nd patrol also heard the alarm now and moved to investigate. The party stayed hidden in the structure, and after 5 rounds they let the other member out of the bag of holding. The bard proceeded to use Sculpt Sound on the alarm to make it sound like the normal breeze again. But one of the guards heard her spellcasting and the patrol moved toward that building.

The party got ready to attack, then popped out of the building as the guards neared. The party tried a diplomatic approach, but the guards kept ordering them to drop their weapons and not move. Eventually, a fight broke out.

Typically party opening ensued with the monk getting enlarged, and some other buff spells going into action. The party mowed thru the first two sets of 3 guards without any difficulty. Reinforcements came from the wheelhouse (contrary to the module directions, but it seemed to make sense here). Those 15 guards + a captain ran toward where the party was located. Before they could get there, most of their number had fallen to a series of spells, arrows and other attacks. The captain saw this and made a run for the Festhaus to ring the bell.

The battle got spread out here quite a bit, with the party cleaning up the stragglers. The monk used subdual damage on all his attacks, so almost all of his foes survived. Meanwhile, the fighter/barbarian plowed thru many guards and then gave chase to the captain, almost reaching them before they got to the bell.

The camp was alerted by the bell, but it was in no position to fight back. 30 guards were sleeping in bedrolls in the festhaus, and were now awake, but didn't have time to don their armor. I did a random roll, and found Lord Raob was likewise not in his armor (given the time of day, he'd probably just woke up). Meanwhile, Sleeara and the other 30 men were tied up with the digging action and the diggers would need a full minute to hastily don their gear and get out to help.

The rest of the party closed on the festhaus. 15 guards had been sleeping on each end of it, and I decided to place 1 captain per group. As they got up, they grabbed their armor and made a move to try to get out of the building. The Fighter/Barbarian tried an intimidate check at this point, to make them stop. Normally, intimidate can't affect that many, but he rolled something in the high 30's (due to some items he has to help this) and I decided to roll per captain to see if they could control their men. One group got somewhat panicked, dropped their gear and broke toward the wheelhouse. The other group was calmed by the captain and made a normal retreat back toward the dig site.

The party singled out that remaining captain barking the orders, possibly thinking she was in charge, and focused their efforts on killing or capturing her. The guards surrounded her and they managed to reach the ridge, but at this point the druid dropped a spike stones on the area and stopped their retreat. Between the monk and fighter/barbarian, they made very short work of the guards and took down the captain. A few stragglers were the only ones left here from that group of 15.

At this point, Sleeara joined the battle. While the party had been focused on the other men, he workers had re-equipped their armor and moved along the ruins into a position to attack. She had flying cast on herself, and used it to position herself for a cone of cold that would hit 4 of the party members along with the captured captain. The rogue and monk both saved, taking no damage, while the bard and cleric got hit and the captain died.

The monk used a potion of flying and closed with Sleeara. Most of the other characters unloaded a variety of ranged spells at her which really hurt her badly. (Note - I changed her gear so she no longer had robes of the arch magi since a 75K item seem out of place for a mere 10th level NPC. The replacement robes only conferred 1 AC, +2 on saves and SR13) The workers popped up at this point and unloaded a volley of arrows at the party. The bard got hit a few times but no one else was.

The druid faerief fired Sleeara at this point, worried that she might go invisible. I'd actually saved her invisibility to use after her initial spell, and that tactic was now foiled. Instead, I had her cast blink and move away from the monk. The monk charged and landed a solid blow, knocking her out. She floated down to the ground since she was still under the fly spell effect.

Seeing one of their leaders dropped so quickly, the workers surrendered after another round. The party took their weapons, but had no easy way to corral them all, so many of them made a beeline for the wheelhouse to escape. The party only worried about 1 enemy - the captured spellcaster, Sleeara, who was promptly tied and gagged and left under a close guard by the cleric and bard (who have the best chances to detect casting with spellcraft).

As the rest of the party began searching, Lord Raob finally emerged from the Festhaus. Seeing his troops thoroughly defeated, I opted to have him try to escape. He reached the wheelhouse, but the monk (still flying) and druid (in bird form) saw him and moved to investigate.
I basically ruled that the wheelhose was enclosed with its only opening being below to access the cauldron and a door to the north. At this point, the cauldron was down as the last fleeing guards hadn't raised it.

The monk easily burst thru. A panicked Lord Raob realized he was seriously outmatched (again contrary to his description in the adventure, but makes sense here) and he decided he would rather die than be captured as a result of the monks subdual damage. (At this point, death would be preferable to failing his employer.) He shouted an insult at the monk and druid, then took a step into the opening and proceeded to fall 750' to his death.


For me, the best part of this session was getting to use a ton of minis I haven't before. I've bought several boxes of the new plastic ones from WotC, and this was a great opportunity to use many of the human figures. At one point, I think I had about 45 enemies on the map plus the 6 party figs. It would have gone smoother with a bigger map or more maps, but we made it work.

The final carnage wasn't as bad as it might seem. Over half of Raob's troops survived and fled. A big part of that was due to the conscious efforts of the monk and cleric to try to avoid bloodshed.

Note #1: I changed up the timeline to have the gate open at 70 minutes rather than 10, based on comments I saw in the errata thread. This actually worked out pretty well. Also, I modified it so the dwarves have had no warning that an attack is pending either.

As the party emerged on the other end of the gate, they were quickly surrounded by a patrol of dwarves. This was handled diplomatically and combat was avoided. The party was soon led to meet with the dwarven king in his throne room.

The bard was elected to tell the party's tale. The dwarven king was skeptical of their tale, and was doubtful of some of their claims, but they managed to convince him well enough to let them stay for now. According to the king, there was no way out now. Dwurvator had told them that no dwarf would leave this place, but their needs would be taken care of.

It was at this point that the party let slip that fact that Dwurvator was dead, and this angered the dwarves. Their god was not dead! The priests here had power.

It appeared that perhaps Dwurvator was not dead, but somehow his creation of this place had cut him off from the outside world. But if that was true, then the priests outside would be largely helpless. Such thoughts did not set well with any of the dwarves at all.

The king summoned his high priest, but was informed that he'd fallen ill. The party cleric and druid offered to help, and eventually they convinced the king to grant them audience. Those 2 entered his chamber while the rest of the party waited nearby in the hallway. About 20+ minutes had passed at this point.

The high priest was comotose and a heal check discovered that he appeared to be poisoned and very near death. The cleric used a lesser restoration to bring him back from 1 con to 4 con, and this briefly roused the high priest. "Begone! Demons! Stop Them!" and then drifted back to unconsciousness. (I decided the poison effects would take more time to wear off explaining why he passed out again. Had they used a full restoration, I may have allowed him to fully recover).

The attending priests quickly delivered this information (poisoning, and his warning) to the king. The party began searching his chamber for any signs of the poison. On the priest's foodtray, there was a trace of an ingestible poison they detected with detect poison. They also found the hammer in the priests chest, but put it back at the urging of one of the attending priests. At this point, approximately 50 minutes had now passed by.

The party informed the king about the poison, and they began their search in the kitchen area surmising that the culprit might be there. 20 minutes into their search, several dwarven cries were heard.

They rushed back to the king and learned something had broken thru a seal in the lower area. The king dispatched a squad to deal with it, and then offered the party a chance to help as well. If they could help deal with this matter, he'd consider helping them in their quest.

Note #2: I changed up the details on the Hezrou attack slightly. I made it attack from the south hall, while the dwarves arrived and tried to fend it off from the room with the stairs. I removed the rubble/trap area on the map as well. When the party arrives, the dwarves have already been hit by the blasphemy, so all they see initially is several fallen dwarves. Also, in 3.5, the Hezrou is now only a CR11, so I added a 2nd Hezrou waiting far to the south that can join the attack.

As the party arrived, the Hezrou used a 2nd blasphemy on them, and this managed to affect the Monk & Fighter/Barbarian, weakening them both (penalties of -4 str to monk & -3 to fighter/barb) and dazing them for a round. Neither was affected by the stench. The rogue moved up to attack, but became overwhelmed by the stench and began retching. The cleric, druid and bard entered and used some spells which had only moderate impact. After this opening round, the party was in pretty bad shape already, so I decided to leave the 2nd Hezrou out of it.

On the next round, the Hezrou elected to use it's Chaos Hammer, hoping to slow several of his enemies. However, all of them saved against this. The weakened monk and fighter/barbarian made full attacks, but due to the DR, they didn't deal nearly as much damage as they normally do. The druid summoned a big earth elemental and sent it at the demon. I don't remember the cleric & bard's actions.

On it's next turn, the Hezrou teleported to the other end of the room, positioning himself next to the druid, cleric and bard, forcing all of them to make saves vs. the stench. The druid and bard both failed and began retching. The rogue was still out at this point too. Things were not looking good with 3 characters incapacitated, and both fighters still weakened as well.

Fortunately, the earth elemental began to have an effect, and the remaining characters began landing some attacks for more damage.
Eventually, the demon was down to about 30 hit points, and I had it teleport away (to the gate).

I expected the party would likely heal up and re-group, but both the monk and fighter/barbarian elected to rush forward hoping to catch the wounded demon. Both had a number of buff spells in place with 1 round/level or 1 min/level durations, and they felt it was better to rush than wait at this point. Of course, this got the party really spread out, and put them into a very dangerous situation.

Eventually, the fighter/barbarian (in the SE corner of the level) and 2nd Hezrou (at south central T-intersection) saw each other. It ran toward him, but he had deftly made a short retreat behind the hall corner so it could not charge him. He made his save against this ones stench and shouted out to the party that he'd found another one.

The Monk and Rogue (finally done retching) were the first to arrive to aid him. The druid sent his elemental thru the armory room and the cleric and bard made their way to help.

The new hezrou again tried blasphemy, and the monk failed again. This time the strength penalty was -11, so he was badly crippled by this. However, the fighter/barbarian & rogue quickly got flanking on the demon due to the earth elemental coming from behind it. Between all their attacks in the next couple rounds and the bard's singing to boost those attacks and damage by +2, the demon went down fairly quickly.

At this point, I figured they'd probably regroup and heal up once again... But I was shocked when the cleric suddenly decided to open the door leading to the room with the gate!

The druid was still back up in the northeast hallway, but the rest of the party was near the open door. The fighter/barbarian entered the chamber. The vrock moved closer to the doorway and used its screech, but the only character that got affected was the bard. The druid opened the north door to the room and summoned a huge earth elemental and sent it at the glabrezu. The glabrezu used dispel magic to get rid of it on it's turn.

On the next round, the vrock approached the cleric and fighter/barbarian and released its spores (free) and then attacked the fighter/barbarian, landing some damage. On the cleric's turn, he attempted to cast a spell, but due to the spore damage it forced a concentration check and he managed to lose his spell. The monk moved in and began attacking the vrock. The rogue opted to run over to the north door by the druid and attack from their. The bard attempted to slow the demons, but they both saved. The druid summoned yet another huge earth elemental and sent it at the glabrezu. Again the glabrezu attempted to dispel it, but failed this time.

As characters entered the room, I was giving them DC15 spot checks to notice the idol near the gateway, and a spellcraft DC20
allowed them to understand it's connection to the gate. The druid was the first to figure that out, but I ruled that his firestorm spell wasn't sufficient to break the idol in half. On the next round, the cleric directed his spiritual weapon at it, and I decided that should be enough to do the job.

The figure was broken, and the gate suddenly closed, sucking all the demons with it.


This turned out to be a very exciting session, but the characters could have made things easier on themselves by not charging ahead so much. The cool thing about this adventure was getting to use every one of my plastic dwarf minis, my vrock mini, and my Aspect of Orcus mini for the glabrezu. If I could have just had a hezrou figure, it would have been a near-perfect night in the mini-department. For the hezrou, I used a metal demon-looking one.