DF Felltower, Session 91, Felltower 64 - Endless Room & Colored Doors

August 27th, 2017

Weather: Clear, cool, sunny.

Characters:
Hjalmarr Holgerson, human knight (337 points)
     Brother Ike, human initiate (160 points)
Mo (his momma call him Kle), human barbarian (340 points)
Red Raggi, human berserker (?? points, NPC)
Vryce, human knight (494 points)
     Raska, human laborer (62 points)
     Veronico, human archer (125 points)

We started in town. The PCs gathered some rumors, stocked up on gear, and purchased potions and spellstones. They also recruited a couple of hirelings and found Raggi. The grabbed their bridge, a lot of rope, and headed to the castle.

They made it up, with Hjalmarr touching the statue of Sterick's axe and saying, "I'll find you soon." Heh.

They climbed into the castle without difficulty, and headed to an area long-ago explored because there was a note about a red six-fingered hand in it. They headed right to the "apartment complex" and sent Vryce in past the defenses at a run. He got zapped with lightning, limmed with black fire, and shrugged off freezing damage before he was safe. But could the others pass? Probably not.

So Vryce moved into the complex while the others went around to a secret door. They found and accessed the first one, but once inside an adjacent corridor they couldn't open the doors they found. They did find a spy hole, and used that to talk to Vryce. Vryce touched the red hand, and then went back around and met him as he sprinted past the defenses again, taking more damage for his trouble. This took a while out of game, but that's all that happened.

They headed down to the depths to explore more. On the way, though, they got turned around and ended up by an old area. One door was wedged shut with a strong, thick wedge that basically shut the door fast. They were curious so they unwedged it, since clearly no one would wedge something other than treasure behind a door, right?

Turns out it was a room with a least a few reeks in it. They fled, but Mo stayed to spike the door shut. Without the wedge, the door wasn't sealed enough, so the reeks soaked out beneath the door. One grabbed his leg and flowed up it.

He fled back to the group and Hjalmarr hacked it off, hurting them both. He slew it, but not before it sizzled off a lot of Mo's skin and left it sensitive (-2 DR).

Mo tossed a pair of alchemist's fire grenades at the door to seal it off and roast one reek (he's not sure if that worked) and they headed down to the next level. They quickly made it to the giant staircase.

Once down the giant staircase, which Vryce can now open, they tried to touch the floor to see if the painted staircase would extend down. It didn't, despite a rumor to the contrary.

They headed into the level they'd been delving in recently, and moved into new territory.

They quickly found a heavy door, and opened it up, and then a corridor lined with painted-on symbols they couldn't read (and Ike's attempts to copy them came out rubbish, thanks to a terrible Artist default roll.) It also had clouds and stylized bird images. At the end of the hallway was another door. That was forced open. Beyond it the air smelled of fresh, clean air. There was a long wide ledge sticking out into an oval, perhaps egg-shaped, room that extended to the sides, ahead, and down. Floating 9 or 10 feet off the floor was a glowing blue disk - a gate. Something whisked by just out of view, sending a breeze their way. They closed the door, assuming it was an air elemental. They marked this as "air gate" and moved on.

They head bare feet slapping on the floor nearby, so Mo put on some Dark Vision Salve (from Magic Items, from the DFRPG, purchased in town). He couldn't see the source, but he did keep an eye out and ensure nothing snuck up on them.

The other direction found them a mosaic-lined extended octagonal of a room. The mosaics were in reds, blacks, greys, and purples. They depicted two-dimensional non-perspectived images of cone-hatted humanoids worshipping, making offerings, and sacrificing to six-fingered taller cone-hatted figures. Two panels stuck out - one on the right wall, in the middle, showing sacrifices to two six-fingered types.

On the left wall, the panel in the middle showed books and scrolls picked out in grey with black letters. Most of it was just random, lorem ipsum-like nonsense. But a scroll above human eye level read "Whose will do you submit to?" in Common. Hjalmarr tried touching it, and found the letters depressed as individual letters. A chime went off, clear and low, right after a clunk. They tried to "type" in combinations once it was clear every letter was represented at least 3-4 times on the panel. All they did was set off more chimes.

More of this lead to a slugbeast of unusually large size coming after them down the wall. They fled to new territory, passing a small room midway down a long passageway. They eventually reached a side passage full of intersections leading to doors, and a T end with a bricked-up passage to the side with two missing bricks and a door to the left. They took the door.

Beyond it was a large room. How large? They marched for several minutes, and it was huge - hundreds of feet. They kept going and going. Long story short, they eventually gave up and walked back to the door - and it only took a few steps.

Intrigued, they tried several directions - all the same. They tried tossing lightstones and walking after them - tossing worked, but walking back always took far less time than they'd spent walking away from the door.

They spend tens of minutes trying chalk marks, tying rope onto people (it would tense, but drop limp as soon as the person took a step or five and ended back up at the door), and otherwise trying to figure this out.

Eventually, though, something else came at them from the fast distance of the room, closing very, very rapidly. It was a very human-looking brain on four crab-like legs - a Death Brain! It zapped several of them in turn, starting with Mo, inflicting direct brain harm and Fright Checks. One sent Raggi berserk. He charged. They fought it in the distorted room, with ranges being strange, movement away from the door taking many steps and towards the door very few, and sideways an unpredictable amount. The death brain was quick and agile, and avoided most of their attacks.
Mo tried throwing an axe where he thought it would be, and missed. Finally, though, Raggi caught up to it and critically hit it, cutting it down. It leaked clear fluid, and they hacked off its legs to keep and its brain was bashed up to see if it was normal brain material. It seemed so.

After several more minutes of testing and checking, yet another monster appeared in the distance, but closed very rapidly - a gibbering mouther. They got the first hint of it as it moved in and spat at Hjalmarr, disintegrating a chunk of his shield with a gob of corrosive spit. It swarmed in, gibbering away and confusing (dazing) Raggi and Ike repeatedly. It zoomed in and bit at Mo, taking a chunk out of his hand and dodging his counterstrike with easy. It bit at Raggi and tore great chunks out of him. It dodged arrows and slingstones, and stunned poor Ike as he tried to get a Sunbolt going, causing him to (harmlessly) zap himself. Eventually Raggi cut it, slicing it deeply but then crippling his own arm on the thing's critical Dodge. But it was wounded enough that it exploded, sending razor-sharp armor-piercing teeth out as shrapnel.

Raggi and Mo were badly wounded, and needed healing. They got it, and the group left the room, annoyed they couldn't figure it out.

Not wanting to leave empty-handed, they explored a side corridor and found they all ended in noteworthy doors. One had a black door with silver-plate-edged iron bindings. They forced it open and found a slate-grey room with a glowing blue rune on the wall. Fearing a teleport trap, they backed off.

The next door was a green demon face with squinted eyes and a keyhole in the mouth. Hjalmarr tried that, and it tried to bite him. He narrowly dodged it. Mo cut the door with his demonhunter machete but to no avail. So they moved on.

They found more - a red stone door and a blue-painted wood one.

They forced the red stone door and in the corner of the room beyond was a small golden statue of a moai on a grey stone pedestal. They contrived a plan that basically worked out to "Vryce runs in, swaps in a stone for the statue ala Indiana Jones, and runs back out."

This failed.

The statue turned out to be magically Glued to the pedestal, and the floor was instantly covered with Grease and the statue with Glue and the pedestal cast Dehydrate over and over, once per second. Vryce was badly hurt the first time (I rolled a 3 on the spell). He instantly realized he was in trouble - stuck to the statue, unable to get his feet so he could break free. They'd tied a rope to him and Mo hauled him back. This worked, overcoming the Glue spell with ST, but unfortunately the statue stayed stuck to the pedestal.

Vryce argued for leaving, that it was clearly a trap and thus wasn't going to be real treasure.

Mo argued to try again, that it was clearly real treasure because it was trapped.

Hjalmarr sided with Mo. They tried again, this time with Mo going in and Hjalmarr and Vryce pulling. This time it worked - Mo was hurt, but he could keep his grip and they pulled, and his grip exceeded the strength of the spell keeping the statue on the pedestal.

They got the statue out. It was about 5 pounds, and seemed to be gold.

It was getting late, but they decided to risk one more door - the blue one. They couldn't force it, though, and decided to return to the surface.

They eventually did so, first going up via the spiral stairs and metal trap door and then retrieving their bridge.

They made it back to town, not bothered any further.

In town, the statue turned out to be a gold alloy, hollow, and worth 20,000 sp ($20K) for its gold and design. They pocketed $5K each, which Mo immediately spent to commission his morninstar to be enchanted with Puissance +1. That's where we ended.

Notes:

Quotes of the game:

"Haven't you ever dungeoned before?" - Mo (right before the reeks)
"We should have known better." - Vryce (right after the reeks)

Very fighter-heavy group today. Vryce recruited an archer and a laborer so they could cover ranged better and have someone to haul digging tools in case they were needed. Vryce's player also runs Gerry the necromancer, but until he arrived at game we thought it was only two people playing so he figured on Vryce. Gerry's character sheet was elsewhere, so it was easier to just run Vryce anyway. It did lead to a ST-heavy, moderate-Per (best Per was 12), low-knowledge skill group. Still, it worked out okay.

The NPCs got their names because I needed to name an archer, so Mo's player said, "Archie." I said, "No, Veronica - now we're talking." Then it become Veronico, which sounds like a masculine form of the name. Raska was Roscoe, until someone mis-pronounced it and I decided Raska sounded like a great fantasy name. And Veronico Raska sounds like a Scott Lynch character name.

The gibbering mouther has different powers than the original D&D monster. I should just rename it, honestly, as it is look-and-feel but with very significant changes. The death brain is a mini I had, plus a name I'd been meaning to stat up. They're not terribly nasty but they aren't pleasant, and could be lethal in numbers.

That was one of my more mean spell combos - statue glued to pedestal, pedestal casts horrible spells on folks touching the statue, floored gets Greased so you can't get stable to break free or pry off the statue. And yes, feet on the pedestal would work, but then you'd get your feet glued to the pedestal and hit with spells then. I'd originally planned on Deathtouch but I decided I over-use that one, and something resistable would be more dramatic. It was.

I commented that it's a lot of fun to watch people solve problems without spells. Mostly because with spells it becomes combining spells, parsing sentences, discussing costs and timing of casting, etc. Without them, it's ingenuity with known tools.

Hasdrubul's player couldn't make it, thanks to a prior engagement, but he did provide a quote I think we need to use - "I'd rather be in Felltower." Well, who wouldn't?

XP was 5 each, as $5K apiece was enough for everyone's loot threshold and they explored several new areas.