GURPS DF Session 214, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS

Date: 10/5/2025
Weather: Warm and mild.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (362 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (346 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (250 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)

We started off in town, and the PCs gathered rumors and set off. The plan was simple - take the new guy to the altar, and hope for the best, and then go down the second GFS.

The group went in the well and made their way to the altar. Hannari handed a big bag of silver coins to Rogar and he touched the altar - and 45 of those coins turned to gold.

That done, they made it to the GFS and went down. At the bottom, Hannari used Autohypnosis to put himself in a meditative state and then tried to keep climbing down the steps by following the pattern on the floor. It faiiled, and left him dizzy.

Out into the level itself, they found the air very stale indeed, and Rogar felt dizzy and nausea (he rolled a 17 on his HT roll, his first in-game roll.)

They headed towards the second GFS. Along the way, they forced open the door to a room near the "Ape Gate." They felt a refreshing sense of good, clean air . . . but inside was an intact black hemisphere, and two bronze spiders that seemed to be repairing or having just repaired it. The spiders attacked. One jump-slammed Vlad but he dodged. They quickly pounded them into junk. Then Vlad shot the hemisphere to pieces with a few dozen shots from his Cornucopia Quivers.

That done, they headed to the second GFS, but sidetracked to a magical pool nearby. The hallway was lined with runes, sigils, and symbols powerful for water magic. At the end of it was a opaque blue pond. Vlad drank some - their notes said it made the drinkers strong. Instead, it nearly killed him - HT-5, which he barely passed. He spewed out the water - which had tasted wonderfully clear until he had a full mouthful - and stood back. They didn't stop there - they put Resist Poison on Vlad and he stuck his head in and looked around, to no avail. Hanari tried some, since he has a Serpent's Amulet and is immune to poison. Nothing happened but it tasted bad.

They moved on to the other GFS. It took Strengthen Will and a few tries to get everyone through.

They wound down the stairs a few turns and opened the first door - they planned to bypass the "Deathtouch floor" and find something to kill and loot. But as they moved in, Chop and Vlad heard a faint five-note chime. They let everyone know the enemy was alerted. They stacked up on the left wall to give Hannari running room for a jump across the room, and Vlad began to shoot the black hemisphere in the room.

From a side passage, four Obsidian Golems and an Iron Spectre emerged. They waited at the edge of the floor for the golems. Vlad shot at the eyes but didn't make any real progress on them. Rogar threw a hatchet, missed his target, but rolled a 4 on the next golem in line and knocked its left hand off. The golems moved up and bathed Hannari and Rogar with their paralytic eye-rays. Hannari was paralyzed but Rogar was not. Relieve Paralysis from Chop took care of that.

Hannari threw a smoke nageteppo to block their line of sight, which forced the golems a little forward. They managed to beat one down with a combination of Percy's flail and Vlad's arrows. But soon after a big mob of humanoids rolled in from the far hallway - a dozen or so norkers . . . but unarmed ones. Stories from previous groups talked about "thorkers," and these were they. Vlad shot one in both eyes, and it basically shrugged it off. Hannari blinded a few with a flash nageteppo thrown behind his own smoke. A few were blinded, and complaints were heard. The "thorkers" were otherwise silent while they fought.

They mobbed up against the PCs. Percy knocked a few out with skull hits, but clearly hadn't killed them even with 2-3 clean, hard hits. They were vulnerable to Sleep Potions, though, and Hannari had a lot and kept them coming. Two of the golems were down, but two are meleeing Rogar who is slightly battered but holding firm and dealing damage back.

We left with the PCs getting swamped with thorkers, but most of those who got too close were asleep and a few knocked out.

We called it there for time.

Notes:

Rogar Thane-Blood is the first DF PC for a new player. Actually, one of my old players, from my 1st edition GURPS game back in the day set in the then-new Forgotten Realms. He happened to be visting, and asked if he could drop in on game. I did him one better and let him join ongoing. He knows some of my guys from back in the day since we all grew up in the same town.

There is a random effect from the beneficial altar, but the silver-to-gold has come up quite often. It feels like more than it should, but maybe just because that's the one people get excited about?

MVP was Hannari for his timely and effective grenade and nageteppo use.