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A new episode has been added to the database: The Ascension Alleycats | Altheya: The Dragon Empire #109

A new episode has been added to the database: 561: Floon the Coop

by Red Wine Pie

Dramatis Personae:
Eric - The Gamemaster
Matt - Dr. Iris von Disdain the High Elven Cleric of the Life Domain
Susan - Drakar Vexborn the Dragonborn Warlock Pact of the Tome
David - Hadrian the Human Warrior Champion
John - Lycara the Tiefling Paladin Oath of Devotion
Peter - Teslen the Lightfoot Halfling Bard School of Lore (Absent)
Callum - Thargrim ‘Tar’ Ironbraid the Dwarf Duellist Warrior Battle Master

Continuing adventures on Levels 10 and Y of the Mad Mage’s Dungeon.

[hr]
The Sing-alongs all look a little thin and pale for halflings, and accept some of the heroes’ (non-goblin) food. The halflings say they were captured just as they were leaving Daggerford for a tour of the nearby villages, so no-one on the surface knows they are missing. The musicians are very grateful for the rescue, and ask for an escort back to the surface. They don’t recognise Teslen, but are impressed with his Doss lute. As the heroes are ready for a rest, they take the five halflings along and head for the visitors’ suite.

Behind the eastern door, a suite of four rooms is revealed. The dining room, lounge and study are all connected by short hallways but have no doors. In the study, five books are sitting on a shelf. Two are blank and three have titles. One was written by Vlonwelv herself. Iris notes that it may have become valuable, now the author is dead. It was handwritten in Drow, and discusses the importance of the Matriarchy to Drow dominance of the Undermountain. One book is a tawdry novel about Menzoerranzan, and the last is called Demonic Infestation. A single door from the lounge leads to the bedroom, which is where the heroes find the Mirror Gate that Xarann spoke of. Around the frame of this gate the letters T-U-O-Y-A-W are inscribed. The heroes are pretty sure they know how to get through this gate, but first they want food and drink, and then a long rest. The Sing-alongs take chairs around the fireplace, as the heroes make their preparation to ensure they are undisturbed during their rest. [hr]

During their rest, the heroes have uneasy dreams. Only Teslen and Tar remember their dreams, which both pertained to Halaster’s magic gates. Teslen has a clear image of what is beyond the gate in this room - a stone room with arrow slits in the opposite corner, a door on the left and a large statue of a merman blowing a conch shell in the centre. The bard has the strongest feeling that this room is not on Level 1 of the dungeon, as Xarann had said. Tar has a message that seems to come from Dumathoin himself. The gate the heroes really want to use to get back to the top level is to the east and north of this room. The way to go is to head back by the teleportation provided by two Drow statues. There is the suggestion of a dread foe to face on the other side of a door the heroes have already seen. When the heroes wake up they discuss all that Teslen and Tar had seen in their dreams, then decide to try and activate the gate in this room and look through it to see if Teslen was correct. Drakar, Iris and Tar have a few goes to open the gate. First they try walking backwards into it, then saying ‘OPEN!’, and finally hit on saying the inscribed phrase T-U-O-Y-A-W backwards as ‘WAY OUT!’, while looking at the gate. This causes the gate to open, revealing a stone room very much as Teslen described it.

The merman statue that dominates the room is chiseled from granite, with the bottom half an unfinished square of stone. There is an iron-framed door to the left, and there are arrow slits high up on the walls straight ahead and to the right. A long metal trident is attached to each wall. Telling the five halflings of the Sing-alongs group to wait behind while they check this place out, Iris leads the heroes through the gate. Once again she feels a symbol being drawn on her back, but nothing else happens as she arrives in the small stone chamber. Iris recognises the symbol as meaning ‘Decision’. The rest of the party arrive without feeling anything, and begin to examine the room. The heroes do notice that this room is warmer than the room they have just left. Drakar can now tell that the statue is magical, and Hadrian goes over to examine it more closely. Teslen heads for the arrow slits to see if he can see outside. His darkvision allows him to see beyond the outside wall of the building, but there is nothing visible outside. Before he can explore further, Hadrian touches the statue and it suddenly changes…


Roper and Tridents v The Heroes on Level Y

…into a Roper, which tries to grab Tar, Lycara and Hadrian, and bite him with its sharp teeth. Drakar is the first to react, withering the Roper with a powerful Blight spell. Tar batters at the Roper with his war pick and shield. The heroes are suddenly attacked by the four tridents from off the walls, which strike at Teslen, Tar, Hadrian and Drakar. Hadrian concentrates on the Roper, and Lycara joins him. Tar turns to attack the tridents. Teslen battles the animated trident that is close to him, keeping it at bay with his short sword and dagger. The Roper tries again to grab at the heroes with its thick tentacles, but they are too quick and well armoured. Tar does take a bite wound in his shoulder, but the Roper is not large enough to swallow the Dwarf. Drakar aims her Eldritch Blasts at the Roper, and two blasts are enough to destroy the monster. Tar manages to disable two animated tridents, then Teslen kills the one he is facing. Hadrian kills the last before it can try to pierce him. The room falls still, and Drakar confirms that the only specific magic left in the room is from the mirror gate that the heroes entered by.

Teslen leaps down from the arrow slits to look at the door. It has an iron frame and glass bricks set into a central panel. The bard doesn’t detect any traps, and Drakar confirms there is nothing magical about the door. Teslen does notice a silver coin wedged into the door frame at the top. The heroes decide to press on, with Drakar using mage hand to keep hold of the coin as Teslen opens the door. Twenty feet ahead there is another door, and a passageway that leads off to the left. After thirty feet, passages lead off at right angles. The floor glitters with thousands of shards of glass and crushed gems, polished to a high sheen. Coloured light filters through walls to the south. Teslen hears a noise from behind the opposite door, and moves forward to investigate. He notices a gold coin lying on the floor in front of the door, and sees that the door is slightly ajar. The noise sounds like something smashing wooden and pottery items inside. Drakar had investigated the silver coin, finding it an ancient coin of unknown origin. The gold coin on the floor looks similar. The party moves up to the new door, and Tar and Hadrian enter to confront what is inside.


Homunculus Fight

A twelve-foot tall humanoid is trashing the room, knocking over tables, bookshelves and tearing rugs apart with its teeth. Iris steps forward to command the creature to stop what it is doing and explain itself. It does turn to face the heroes, and seems to understand the words. After looking carefully at each of the heroes, the humanoid moves to attack them. Tar is quicker, and chops repeatedly at the thing with his war pick. Each blow lands with deadly precision, and after he completes his combat routine with his shield bash the creature falls to the ground. Then it begins to dissolve away, and after a minute not even a mark is left on the messy floor. The room is fifty feet long by thirty feet wide, with another door opposite the one they’ve entered by. There is a small window in the right hand wall, where a multicoloured light illuminates the shattered items scattered across the floor. There’s nothing particularly valuable here, just an odd collection of candles and candle snuffers, mushrooms in pots, mortars and pestles, lamps, pendants, books, spoons, stuffed animals, balls of yarn, mirrors and prisms, smoking pipes and scroll tubes. It is an eclectic and colourful collection of stuff. Iris takes a few of the shattered pieces of glass and casts Mending on them to form a simple mirror.

Now they know what they are looking for, the heroes quickly spot the gold coin jammed into the top of the door frame. Drakar prepares to catch the coin when Hadrian pushes the door open. A similar passage opens in front of the heroes. There’s another door twenty-five feet away, and a set of stairs leading upward on the right. To the left, the passageway heads onwards to another door ahead, and there are more walls with coloured glass in line with the door exit. Teslen doesn’t hear any noise from the stairway, or the opposite door. He sees that there is a copper coin wedged in this door frame. This door has a wolf’s head worked into the glass panel in the middle of the door. Opening the door reveals a room about the same size as the first chamber, but which is overwise completely bare. The room is dusty and dirty, with a few normal sized cobwebs in the corners. A search for magic and secret doors reveals nothing. At this point the heroes remember their halfling friends, and everyone agrees that this strange castle is not on Level One of the dungeon. The heroes decide to go back the way they came, and follow Tar’s dream instead.

The Mirror Gate is activated again, and the heroes pass through it without incident. The Sing-alongs look up hopefully from their instruments, and are ready to follow the heroes to the other gate on this level. When explaining where they had been, Iris takes out her mended mirror to show Olivia Tallrush. To her surprise, the mirror is shrunk to barely a twelfth of its former size. The halfling is politely unimpressed. Leaving the guest suite, the party head back to the Drow statues and teleport between them. This allows them to pass on the message from the male to the female Drow, and their torment is briefly interrupted. From the secret door at the north end of the statue passage, Teslen turns left and returns to the double doors he had listened at before. There is still nothing to hear, and the halfling bard considers the door safe and unlocked. Hadrian and Iris push the doors open. The floor is made of recessed cobbles, leading forty feet to the west towards a larger chamber. To the south there is a matching set of double doors. Teslen creeps across to the southern door to listen there. As he reaches the doors he realises that the flooring is not stone cobbles, but scores and scores of humanoid skulls. They support his weight with ease, but it is a disturbing sensation under foot. Teslen finds the southern door is safe and unlocked. Through it, he can hear the sound of something heavy crashing to the ground. The noise seems to be a long way off, echoing through a large space to reach his alert ears.


Resting Drow Giants

The warriors open the double doors, and find a zig-zag passageway that leads south and east. Everyone can hear a loud Thump!, and some kind of deep, low speech. The whole party, including the Sing-alongs, walk cautiously over the bed of skulls and enter the passageway of black marble. Teslen sneaks on and finds the end of the passage. An eighty-foot wide grand chamber runs west to east, disappearing into the darkness where the noises are coming from. Teslen moves as quietly as he can up the chamber, moving from pillar to pillar until his Darkvision can sight the end of the room. Two huge humanoids are lying some distance apart, throwing head-sized lumps of stone at each other. They appear to be misshapen Drow, with bulging limbs and hunched backs. When Teslen sneaks back down the chamber to the others, they agree to his plan to hit both of the Drow giants with a fireball and then follow up with a charge by the warriors. Teslen quickly carries out the first part of the plan, the sphere of flame bursting between the giants, causing howls of pain and rage. Drakar casts a Gate that leads from the western to the eastern end of the chamber. Tar is the first through the gate, and he attacks the left-side giant with six solid blows. Hadrian and Lycara follow, and attack the other giant to the right of the portal opening.
Iris is next and casts a Guiding Bolt to injure the left-side giant and make it easier for the next blow to hit it. Teslen’s Poison Spray eats into the right-side giant, while he stays out of reach of the giants. The great Drow attempt to bash the warriors attacking them with lumps of stone, but Hadrian, Tar and Lycara are too quick to be hit. Drakar is the last through her gateway, and she strikes the left-side Giant with an Eldritch blast. The giants have closed in one Tar, allowing the Dwarf to hit both of them in one round. With a thrilling display of martial prowess he kills both the Giants in his turn. Looking more closely at the huge corpses, Iris theorizes that they were normal Drow injected with magic to mutate them into giants. Drakar can find no magic on or around them, and there is nothing of interest found in the rest of the hallway. The heroes call the Sing-alongs back to join them, and leave by the wide western end of this chamber.


The Drow Giants stand and Fight

This room is spotlighted by a shaft of silver moonlight that shines from the ceiling to a life-size statue of a female Drow with flowing hair. It is posed in a pirouette, with outstretched, empty hands. At the southern end of the room there is a set of double doors, while a passageway leads off to the gloom in the west. Drakar detects magic from the moonbeam, as well as the statue. Iris takes a close look at the figure and thinks it may be a representation of Eilistraee, a goddess of beauty, song and the hunt. She is normally shown with a weapon in her hands, so perhaps that is what she needs. While the Sing-alongs wait at the back, the heroes stand close to the statue and watch as Tar places an unused short sword in the reaching hand of the goddess. Tar feels the magic of the Moonbeam upon him, but resists its effects. Eilistraee grasps the sword in her stony hand, then performs an elegant dance and a turn. Facing the southern doors at the end of her spin, the sword stabs up and the doors unlock with a loud click. The heroes pass on through, and the doors close behind them.

Leaving the Sing-alongs by the doorway, the heroes head south and explore the wide vestibule in front of them. An open space in the ceiling shows a mezzanine floor with railings, thirty feet off the ground. A curved alcove to the south contains piles of bones. A passageway leads out of the room to the west, while passageways to the north lead to steps that head up. The pillars that hold up the mezzanine floor are carved to look like spiders’ legs, and the balcony is shaped as webs of iron. Drakar is sweeping the room for magic, and gets close enough to the alcove to get a large hit from the piles of bones. She turns and checks the pillars, wondering if they are a magical creation too. Lycara has joined her on the left side of the hall, and is preparing to Detect Evil on the bones. Hadrian has walked down the middle of the hall, and has just about reached the alcove when the bones animate as four piles, formed into large misshapen lumps that are roughly humanoid in shape. As everyone’s attention turns to the alcove, and Drakar fires a shatter spell into this hopefully brittle environment. Two of the heaps are badly affected, while the others resist the spell. Lycara attempts to channel positive energy against them, but a stronger force resists the power of his god. Teslen fairies a Shatter spell of his own which bypasses all the bone-things’ resistances. Hadrian closes for combat with them, chopping the closest heap into shards of bone. Then a terrible roar comes from the balcony above.


The Drow Palace and Muiral's Attack

Lycara and Drakar turn and look, finding themselves suddenly hemmed in against the corner of the room by a Wall of Force. An angry scorpion-bodied humanoid drops from the balcony inside the wall and attacks Drakar and Lycara with its longsword and envenomed tail! The paladin is saved by his armour, but the draconid warlock takes a slice across her midriff from the sharp sword of the scorpion-thing. With the force barrier unpassable, Iris casts guiding bolts on the next bone-thing, and Tar rushes up to help Hadrian. Drakar has dodged back to the edge of the room as Lycara attacks with a fully empowered blade. The scorpion-creature keeps its concentration for the first blow, but the second is so strong that the barrier falls and the whole room is open again. Mural (for it is he) responds by making an extra attack on the paladin. Teslen helps Hadrian with the bone heaps as they try to engulf the warrior, but he is strong enough to keep them away as he hacks them down with sword and axe. The halflings sling shots help break a second pile into shards. Tar rushes to join the attack against Muiral, hitting with all his attacks. When the scorpion-man attacks again, only Drakar is hit by his sword. But this is a mixed blessing for the monster, as the warlock responds with a Hellish rebuke that burns him strongly. He takes another legendary action to escape from Tar and Lycara, and rush for the nearest staircase.


Death of the Scorpion-Man

Hadrian and Teslen finish off the last bone mounds. Lycara draws her magic javelin and hurls it at the retreating scorpion-man, the bolt and lightning catching him fully. Iris adds a Guiding bolt, and Tar uses an extra action to rush up to Muiral and make one well-aimed attack. His war pick stabs the scorpion-man, scourge of the Drow for decades right through the heart and he collapses, dead, at the foot of the steps. Muiral’s sword is not magical and he has nothing of interest on him. But there is plenty for the heroes to search in the connecting rooms, and a Gate to find.

by brumcg

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ctimmins wrote:

In the 1980s, for Basic Dungeons & Dragons, before we knew any better, one player of mine wanted to play a "scorpion centaur" character. Like a centaur, but a scorpion x human. It was vastly overpowered, which we - at that time - found amusing. Needless to say, it ruined that campaign.

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In the 1980s, for Basic Dungeons & Dragons, before we knew any better, one player of mine wanted to play a "scorpion centaur" character. Like a centaur, but a scorpion x human. It was vastly overpowered, which we - at that time - found amusing. Needless to say, it ruined that campaign.

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