GURPS DF Session 135, Felltower 104 - Lost City 12 - the Dark Temple (Part II)

This is part II of a delve. Here is Part I.

Actual Date: June 15th, 2020
Game Dates: May 31st-June 1st, 2020

Weather: Cool and cloudy near Felltower, raining and hot in the Lost City of D'Abo

Characters:
Aldwyn Hale, human knight (287 points)
     Varmus the Hanged, human apprentice wizard (145 points)
"Mild Bruce" McTavish, Jr., human barbarian (267 points)
Crogar, human barbarian (294 points)
Galen Longtread, human scout (456 points)
Gerald Tarrant, human necromancer (374 points)
     1 Skeleton (~35 points)
Hayden the Ebon Page, human knight (307 points)
Ulf Sigurdson, human cleric (306 points)
Sir Bunny Wigglesworth, human holy warrior (250 points)
Wyatt Sorrell, human swashbuckler (300 points)

We picked up from last time, with the peshkali down, the priestess disarmed of her "wand" (a baton), and seemingly unconcerned.

The priestess started to concentrate on a spell. Bruce rushed her, and grappled her around the neck with both hands.

Wyatt grabbed the priestess's hood and yanked it down, revealing her face:


(That, sans the faux-metal headpiece)

The other PCs mostly stood around or moved up to support him, but there were no enemies left.

Crogar decided to fix that. He was standing next to the statue, so he hauled off and used a Rapid Strike to hit it twice, knocking some chips off.

That caused the obsidian jaguars to animate and attack. They launched themselves into a run and jump at their nearest targets. Bruce was pounced on from behind, Ulf was as well and mauled, and Heyden and Crogar were attacked as well. Bruce couldn't turn because he was grappling the priestess and Wyatt has grappling her, too, and he was unwilling to let go.

Wyatt attacked the jaguars by slashing at their necks, trying to decapitate them. Galen shot one in its vitals, or where vitals should be on a real jaguar. Heyden broke one up, as did Aldwyn and Crogar. Wyatt broke the leg off of one that was biting Bruce.

Heyden shoved and knocked over a candelabra, putting out its candles, as he fought one of the jaguars. Soon enough, though, the jaguars were all destroyed by the superior firepower of the PCs.

Meanwhile, Bruce executed a takedown on the priestess off of his neck choke. She kept clawing at him with her hands, and eventually landed a strike - and did about 10 injury. Clearly, her touch was lethal. He tried snapping her neck, twice. Both times he heard cracking and popping, but it had no lingering effect.

Heyden dropped his sword and dove down and grappled the priestess's right arm.

Crogar hits the statue again and the building shook and rocked people but no one fell. Gerry called over to Crogar and said it was a bad idea. Meanwhile, he used Dispel Magic and knocked Strike Blind off of Sir Bunny, who moved ahead near the priestess and Bruce.

Meanwhile, Wyatt picked up a candelabra and moves it a few yards, to "defeat any geometry." He moved it a few yards away.

Meanwhile the priestess drew a statuette from her sleeve and stuck it it out into the treasure to her side and activated it with a choked-out command. It grew in an instant to an Ebony Death Goddess (DFT3, p. 16.) The EDG attacked Bruce, slashing him four times. She wounded him badly. Wyatt ran around the statue to engage her. Bruce held on to the priestess and Heyden tried to break her arm. The EDG crippled Heyden's leg with a cut and hit Bruce more. He was at nearly -100 HP by now, with a crippled arm and two crippled legs. The priestess struggled to get free but wasn't able to.

Wyatt attacked the EDG and destroyed it in three seconds - one hit to the body, then three arms destroyed, then a final hit to the body. It fended off attacks from multiple PCs in the process, but Wyatt's skill was too high to allow it to defend effectively against him.

Meanwhile, Sir Bunny slammed his holy water, originally intended to hand to Bruce to dump on the priestess's face, and poured it into the water in the basin in front of the statue after realizing it was too wide-based to be tipped over. The water in the basin began to bubble and steam away.

Gerry and Ulf pulled out their bells and rang them, first separately and then together. They did nothing they could see.

Crogar got tired of not attacking the statue for two whole seconds, and hauled off and whanged it again with his axe, knocking chips off. This time, there was a strange warping sensation, and everyone needed to resist with the worse of Will or HT. Crogar and Galen failed . . . and disappeared. The group didn't know it at the time, but they were expelled to the top of the temple, outside. They tried to find a way to re-enter, including running down the stairs and back up, but it didn't work. They spend the rest of the session outside of the combat.

Ulf used Faith Healing to heal Bruce, and used his staff as well. Bruce eventually let go of the Priestess after Sir Bunny grappled her left arm. Varmus tried to hit her with a Fireball but missed, and then cast Pain on her and she yelped in pain and annoyance.

Gerry headed off to investigate the skull piles. He saw it was a big pile of hundreds of broken skulls, with an intact skull on top. Gerry charged up a Skull Missile and smashed it.

The priestess started to make seductive promises of wealth and . . . other things . . . to Sir Bunny, and then to Heyden, but they ignored her. They noticed that her voice seemed weaker.

Ulf puts Silence on the priestess to keep her quiet.

Wyatt ran over and smashed another skull.

Varmus moved over to get a third, but Gerry, with Great Haste and Haste, easily beat him to it and smashed a third with another Skull Missile.

Wyatt then ran across the room and smashed the fourth.

Aldwyn decided to stab the priestess a few times, and did so. She seemed pained, but she did several times before. He gave up after a couple of stabs. He then grappled her robe and tried to cut it, to get her out of it, since they couldn't think of how to pull it over her head when

They decided to search the priestess at this point, and Heyden and Aldwyn groped her heavily, looking for rings, jewelry, etc. that could be keeping her immune to their attempts to kill her. They found she wore little besides a silk shirt and a loincloth beneath the robes.

Wyatt decided it could be the candles, so he ran around and blew them all out. Varmus tried to help, but Unfit and a bad HT roll didn't help.

In any case, it had no visible effect.

Gerry moved up next to the priestess, and cast Animate Shadow on the priestess probably close to 10 times, but each time he failed in the contest and she resisted.

They just kept searching her and there, starting to pull up her robes and then stopped, debated breaking her arms but decided that hadn't worked, etc.

Somewhere in this time, maybe earlier, Ulf tried a Dismissive Wave but utterly failed to exorcise the evil from the temple.

Also sometime in this time Wyatt kicked the "wand" over to Ulf, who contemplated destroying it as it was clearly magical and special. Instead he dumped it into the bowl, which Ulf had added holy water to.

Wyatt eventually joined the pile-on and grappled the priestess's left arm, allowing Bunny to get up off of her and investigate the statue and bowl.

They examined the statue, suffering Fright Checks (not Sir Bunny, though), trying to discern if the eye sockets were holes for something to put in, or held something. The statue seemed either slimier, or wetter, and it felt to Gerry (who rolled a 6 on Occultism) that it was either becoming more attentive, or hitting it was drawing attention to it.

Gerry tried Summon Spirit to call the princess, but it failed. The priestess seemed contemptuous of them.

Eventually, Ulf decided to pray - Wyatt mimed that at him a few times. Ulf took a knee and spent a few minutes in prayer.

He recalled a passage - "Blessed is he who completes a task, blessed is he who follows through." He decided this must mean destroying the statue.

He told the group this, so they carefully policed up the loot, tied up the priestess's feet, and wrists, twined up her fingers, made a wadded-up ball gag and gagged her, and looped the wrist and feet ropes together. Gerry pointed out that she could still concentrate and cast spells like that, so they needed to have someone grapple her and keep her from concentrating.

Everything prepared for when they got teleported . . . away . . . Ulf wound up and hit the statue with his axe, doing nothing to it at all. The room darkened briefly.

Aldwyn snapped, "Oh, just give it to me." He took Ulf's axe and really whanged the statue.

The room darkened considerably for an instant, and everyone in the room except the priestess took 12 injury. Ulf collapsed, unconscious. The priestess had a look of contempt on her face. Ulf was out, so they just left him laying there.

Next they tried pulling the statue down with ropes on both side and rocking it back and forth. It didn't budge at all, not even the slightest rocking.

So they stipped the princess down, nude, taking off the ropes while she was in a choke hold and taking off her clothes while keeping piled on her. Several of the delvers felt really uncomfortable with this.

Then, she was stabbed a couple of times by Aldwyn and she sagged down in Sir Bunny's arm. She didn't bleed but the wounds did stay. They decided that the holy warrior needed to kill her so she couldn't come back as undead. So she was stabbed by Sir. After a few stabs, there was a blue glow.

In the blue glow appeared Princess Ailivo of D'Abo. They stood around and started talking to her. She frowned and asked why they didn't bow before royalty. They all hurriedly took knees. Except Ulf, of course, who was unconscious.

She told them to get ready, now that her mother was destroyed she could end the curse. Once they were free, she told them to come to her palace for a reward.

They had gathered up all of the loot, so they just decided to wait. The room glowed blue.

The PCs found themselves warped out of the temple, out in the street. The temple began to collapse. Crogar and Galen stood on top of it, and ran down the stairs as it began to fall down under them. They made it down and out. The strange-shaped building fell into rubble.

They headed off to find the "Palace" the Princess spoke of. They headed first to the "Prophecy" plaza. She wasn't there. So they started to look at the map and go around to places that they felt looked like a palace. They searched the five-towered building where they found the bell, Rangol Grot's house, went past the broken tetrahedron, and walked up and down the Path of Kings (who were silent.)

Eventually, someone suggested going to where they'd last seen the princess. They did, and entered the building. They saw a glow, and went deeper into the building to find its source. They found a wide room with a throne sitting on a three-step dias. Upon it sat Princess Ailivo D'Abo, translucent and glowing blue. She told them of the curse, and how her mother attempted to sacrifice her to summon and control the demon-god. She explained that her mother split her soul into 4 skulls to make herself immortal. She told them of her loyal servants, who spirited her body away and hid her royal goods. She imparted into them a feeling of how to find it. She thanked them, and faded away. All that stood was the three-step dias, with old scrape marks where a heavy throne was dragged away long ago.

They followed their feeling and found a masoleum-like structure. In it, below a blank and normal-looking floor stone, they felt the location of the royal goods. Bruce helped pry the floor up. Beneath it they found a stone-lined pit, and in it a tiara, a somewhat feminine but barbaric helmet, two rings, a necklace, and a bracelet. They took it all headed to the gate. Ulf suggested using Sanctuary to stay, but no one was interested. In the fading light of the day they headed to the gate and back to Felltower. From there, they made their way home.

Thanks to odd dilation effects, they found they'd lost a couple of weeks either in the temple or in the gate. They summoned the chest from Rangol Grot and looted it (and kept it, for later use.) Divvying up the treasure netted each of the 10 about 17K worth of silver, and three magical items got handed out to those best suited to have them.

Notes:

- Remember that Wyatt had +6 ST (for a 17) and +6 DX (for a 21), and thus most skills in the mid to high 20s for this fight thanks to two potion rolls.

- No amount of prep and visuals help. People asked me what the priestess looked like, and if she looked human, after I posted the picture. They asked me if the statue had eyes (it doesn't, in the picture), and something else about it too that clearly wasn't in the picture.

- At one point, Varmus had little to contribute, so Aldwyn's player said, "He'll go over and collect my [dropped] swords." Aldwyn's player's brother said, "He's not your servant!" Damn right. Wizard rights and peace!

- This is why the PCs don't have any unholy water. The first thing they do when they find it, if the fight they're in is going any way except a one-way massacre in their favor, is destroy it. So, again, no Cold Fens delve. Maybe they'll find another dark demonic temple and manage to defeat its occupants without destroying the unholy water they need to penetrate into Sakatha's tomb in the Cold Fens. But then again, they sought it for a while, and then destroyed it.

- Of course, someone eventually cast Affect Spirits to attack the priestess. I forget what term I used to describe it last night, but it's basically the default "let's try this!" spell. It's been used against almost every single creature or opponent that even vaguely seems hard to kill. I'm in retrospect surprised they didn't use it on the vampire they fought. I've got a post on the spell to write - it's actually much, much, much more narrow of a spell than it seems to swell to in the minds of the players when they can't figure out how to hurt something. Ulf's player pointed out that it works on wights, but I pointed out that wights are defined as semi-corporeal and their immunities are largely tied to their partly-spirit nature. That it works on a spirit doesn't mean it works on all things hard to otherwise damage, much like spirits are.

- Animate Shadow was an interesting choice, but it's a tough cast vs. another caster. Even weak casters have Will 14-15, so the Rule of 16 limits you to a small positive margin in your favor. Hers was much higher. He did roll well a few times, but so did I.

- Overall, a good session although it dragged a bit. The PCs were, in their own words, flailing around and guessing. The irony is that they hit on a good solution early, and then abandoned it partway through and then just various half-measures. Their own Silence spell put paid to the only real cue about the weakening of the priestess, and then gagging her meant she couldn't provide any other information. So they ended up jumping from one idea to another and eventually hitting on to the solution from lack of ideas.

- They also almost destroyed two valuable magic items - the plan to strip the priestess by cutting her robe apart was only foiled by a poor damage roll followed by PC ADHD. "I tried for one second and it failed! It'll never work!" And there was a brief discussion about destroying Necros's Finger. Fighting the jaguars netted them some extra loot, but it also dragged out the fight and cost them some damage they needed to heal with potions and paut. Maybe net/net a loss?

- Ulf took the priestess's robs - Hooded Robes of Protection with Fortify +3. Gerry took Necros's Finger. Aldwyn took the D'Aboan Helm of Command.

- I did a bit of a post-session review with them, something I don't normally do, but it seemed appropriate. I'll put that up tomorrow.

- I thought "Come see me at my palace" would immediately trigger the PCs to say, well, let's check where we met her last time first. No, they went around from building to building to building, looking for "looks like a palace" locations. I guess it was late and people were brain-fried. I told them they were overthinking it, but maybe it was totally underthinking it. In any case, they eventually settled on going where they met the princess and that was the right move. I knew the skulls-puzzle thing was opaque, it was meant to be, but I thought this was obvious - why not start with the place you met her?

- XP was 4 each for loot, 1 xp for new exploration. MVP last session was Aldwyn, and it was Bruce this time for what his player described as "my only sound tactical decision ever."