GURPS DF Session 137, Felltower 106 - Icy Gate I

Split session today, as is often the case with gates.

Date: August 3rd, 2020

Weather: Hot, sunny.

Characters:

Aldwyn Hale, human knight (303 points)
     Varmus the Hanged, human apprentice wizard (150 points)
"Mild Bruce" McTavish, Jr., human barbarian (306 points)
Crogar, human barbarian (317 points)
Galen Longtread, human scout (461 points)
Gerald Tarrant, human necromancer (374 points)
     3 Skeletons (~35 points)
     Skull-spirit (?? points)
Ulf Sigurdson, human cleric (306 points)
Sir Bunny Wigglesworth, human holy warrior (259 points)

We started off in Stericksburg, with the PCs gathering up their yurts, travois, group basics, arctic gear, snowshoes, snow goggles etc. and gathering rumors.

The PCs headed into the dungeon and down to the "gate level" (formerly known as the "apartment level.") From there they headed over to the Icy Gate, briefly getting turned around (mostly because I think the map orientation on the PC's version of it throws off their navigator. I follow their instructions literally.)

They headed down the corridor where they'd fought obsidian golems and reached a door. Crogar tried to pry it open, but was zapped for 1 HP of injury. Wyatt wanted to know if it seemed like the same sort of injury that the floor on the next level down inflicted. He didn't have any information to use, or anything really to see, though. They tried again, with someone else trying to force it and getting zapped. Finally they tried to just touch it - Crogar did - and it opened. It was activated by having touched one of the six-fingered hands. Beyond it was another door, and that, too, zapped the opener for 1 HP injury and opened only to someone who touched the hand. They hurried through.

The found a cross-shaped area capped on each end by brass portcullises. Between them, in alcoves, were brass braziers full of cold coals. The PCs tried to have Bruce and Crogar lift the gate, but it wouldn't bunch or shift even an inch. But they remembered (i.e. looked up on the blog, see Notes, below) that they needed to ignite them on fire to open the portcullises and that there would be gigantic fire elementals to fight as a result. They stashed their arctic gear around a corner, put Resist Fire on everyone except the SM+1 guys, and started to figure out how to light the coals from 8 yards away through a portcullis too narrow to stick a staff through.

Their first idea was a large-area Create Fire excluding all hexes except the hex with a brazier in it (to cut down the range penalty) but that would engulf the brazier from below and may not affect the coals. They eventually decided to use Ignite Fire from Varmus to light an alchemists's match that Gerry would Apportate over. (They originally thought of using Apportation to strike the match, but you need Manipulate for fine movements or else you're making Manipulate useless.) They managed to do this after a number of tries, with matches going out on the 1-yard-per-second zip over. Ironically, two times Varmus rolled a 4 on Ignite Fire which would have been a sufficient roll for a free, successful direct lighting of the coals.

The coals lit, the portcullises rose into the ceiling. Two giant fire elementals appeared, each alone wide enough to nearly block the hallway and hunched over in the 12' ceiling. They attached with firebolts and flaming fists. Long story short, the PCs jammed their front-rankers against them, put Resist Fire on Mild Bruce and Crogar, and slowly destroyed them. Some amusing bits happened - Mild Bruce tossed his sword away after a critical Dodge that sent him to the Critical Miss Table - and Wyatt used up four liquid ice grenades to damage and destroy an elemental while Gerry set off two Explosive Skull Missile spells. Galen tried arrows but they roasted to cinders and a spinning arrowhead before hitting their targets. And the melee fighters mostly swung and inflicted what damage they could against Diffuse foes. The elementals couldn't hurt anyone, although the PCs usually insisted on defending to not give away their resistance. Wyatt tried to taunt the elementals, but he lacks the right skills (and language) so it wasn't effective. These attempts did prompt Ulf to cast Gift of Tongues on himself, but he critically failed and ended up unable to use the spell again for a delve.

The elementals destroyed, they checked for loot or valuable residue (none), and moved their arctic gear to the next room. It was cold, but they pried the iron doors open amidst the cracks and pops of ice. Beyond it was a freezing cold room with a shimmering silvery gate between two ice-coated posts.

They debated using one of their four Scry Gate scrolls but decided not to.

Through they went.

On the far side was a cold, cold mountain ledge covered with ice and snow. Glinting in the distance to the East atop some mountains - probably on a plateau amidst them - were some towers with pennants or flags fluttering on them (according to Galen). To the North the mountains sloped down toward a snow-filled "valley" and in the distance was water.

To the South and West, mountains blocked the view. Their best guess was they had a couple of hours of daylight - and their best expected overland speed (without accounting for terrain, just snow) was 0.75 mph.

They quickly decided to climb down the mountain toward the valley. They headed down, with Resist Cold and Warmth spells to bolster the ones who needed it the most.

As they headed down, some of them (IIRC, Varmus, Galen, and Sir Bunny) saw a black pilar or obelisk in the snow, maybe 10-15' tall? - north of them. They could make it there, barely, before nightfall, or make it into the valley's edge, again, barely before nightfall.

They chose to make camp early, instead. They had comfort thanks to yurts, bedrolls, and small fires due to kindling gathered by the skeletons on the way to Felltower. They huddled up, ate, and rested. They put out patrols, though, suffering the cold to avoid surprise. They rested 10 hours, which is what Wyatt calculated was necessary for everyone to get 8 hours sleep with full coverage.

The next day devolved into a Blizzard. Heavy winds and moderate snow kept them pinned in all day. Ulf used Create Food to make some edible snow (Aldwyn spiced his with his spice pack) and Warmth spells to put out scouts (the cold was too severe for level 1 Resist Cold to be sufficient, and level 2 couldn't be maintained for free.)

The day after, they dug out from ~30" of snow pileup, mostly on the West side, and collapsed their yurts and headed out to the obelisk. On the way, north of it they spotted some four-legged beasts walking along west to east.

They made it to the obelisk, and found it was on a flatter-than-the-surrounding roughly circular area of ice. It was partly covered with snow. They used Heat to melt snow and ice and shields to shovel away the snow until they found ground and browned grasses. The obelisk was 20' high, 1' square, and topped with a point. Its surface was black stone, entirely unblemished. Around its base were four stone plaques set in the ground. Each had writing on it - two with an alphabet-like writing, one a very fluid and looping one, and the last runic.

Ulf used Gift of Letters to read each one (he didn't need to specify the language, just cast it with the writing sample, but didn't get to identify what language it is.) Each one had the same phrase, "I require a Navigator." He couldn't speak them, however. Wyatt touched the pillar but nothing happened. They cast Mage Sight on Galen and he identified the pillar as magical.

They decided to try saying that in Elvish and Goblin. Galen did so. Then Galen said, "I am a Navigator!" None of these did anything.

Finally, Galen touched it and said, in Elvish, "I require a Navigator!"

After a few minutes, the air shimmered and sparkled nearby and a figure appeared. It was tall man with very pale skin, wearing a cloak over a shirt and pants, carrying a sword and a flute. He had a headband on but no helmet, and he seemed unaffected by the weather.

He spoke to Galen in Elvish and said, "I am your Navigator."

He and Galen spoke briefly, and then when Galen translated to Common the man switched to Common. "We can speak in this language, if you like."

(For some reason, a couple players wondered why he spoke Elvish - because Galen summoned him with that language, clearly.)

His name was Jaed (Jay-ed) the Navigator. He said he could offer them safe navigation to another obelisk, or "another reasonable destination." The cost was 1 gp per person (or 50# of cargo) per mile.

They started to question him about the area they were in. He quizzed them back and found they were from Stericksburg. But when he finally took a good look at the scattered group, and saw the skull-spirit and skeletons, his approach changed. He asked if they served the Iron Wind. They said, the what? He asked if they served the Unlife. They weren't any less confused. After some discussion, he made it clear that his guild would not transport those serving or servants to the Unlife. Ulf said, no, no, those are Gerry's servants. Our friend Gerry has some unusual servants, but they're okay, he's a worshipper of the Good God, it's fine. But Jaed wasn't swayed. He pointed out that this was a being of evil, and using evil was not the act of the good, but was the act of someone serving the Unlife. Ulf said, "Well, yeah, we weren't really aware until recently that it was evil. Mostly we thought it was pretty okay, really." To prove themselves, they sent Wyatt and Aldwyn over to kill it, while Ulf cast Rebuke Evil on it to destroy it (I ruled you can't just terminate the enchantment, since it's not a maintained spell.)

Not yet swayed, he said that evil was willing to kill their own once they were no longer useful. He asked if Ulf spoke for the group. They all agreed except Galen, who said, "Not for me." Jaed took out an amulet and said it would force the wearer to speak the truth - would Ulf put it on and answer his questions?

He asked, do you serve the Unlife?

"No."

Do you serve the Iron Wind?

"No."

Is anything any of you said to me so far false?

"No."

He was satisfied and took the amulet back.

They ended up quizzing Jaed about their location. He said he's a Navigator, not a guide, but he'd be willing to give them some information and sell them others. He told them the towers were the city of Syclax, the city of five towers, capital of the Syrkakar. He told them they serve the Unlife, unwittingly (at least most of them so.) They wanted to know more, so he said it would cost 20 gold ($400) for that information. They decided to pay him - Mild Bruce forked over 20 gold coins.

They found out the Syrkakar were ruled by a person who rose from relative obscurity to control, and he in turn served a demon lord - he carefully gave them the name Aztaur, Demon Lord of Ice, one of the (six?) Ordainers. Sir Bunny recalled the name as being from a kind of fire demon, and Gerry that it was ranked as in the seventh tier of the seven tiers of demons, ranked by power. Jaed spelled out the name like so - "the first letter of your word apple, the last letter of your alphabet, (etc.)" to avoid even spelling the name. They wanted to go right after him, but he told them his assessment of their power was nothing like that of the demon lord. Ulf asked if there were other, perhaps allied, demons that he did know of they could go and fight. He repeated what he could do, and said he couldn't provide an assessment of their chances at anything . . . just his assessment that they weren't up to fighting an Ordainer.

Wyatt said he meant no offense, and didn't know the customs and didn't want to offend or accidentally transgress. He'd repeat that his goal was to avoid those kind of cultural pitfalls.
Wyatt asked if Jaed was a man or a construct. He also asked if Navigator was a title, a job, a description of what he was - was he a man, or a construct? Jaed was clearly nonplussed (at best) by these questions, and said he was "A man, like you" but refused to clarify on the rest other than to say that he was a Navigator, and repeat what he'd said before. Wyatt quizzed him on Navigators (the player explained he was trying to determine if "Navigator" meant "Scout" in "this world.") Jaed refused to answer and his answers became more curt and short with Wyatt in particular and the group in general. A lot of times Wyatt was trying to nail down a particular word, phrase, or very specific meaning for a statement - sometime for things Jaed stated already (like, are there other obelisks? and Is the leader of the Syrkakang the demon, or the puppet of the demon?" So that clearly was rubbing the man the wrong way.

They pestered him with a lot of questions. The city was unfriendly to strangers in general and the Syrkakar fear and hate the undead, and he indicated the skeletons. Wyatt asked what he meant by "undead." Jaed asked what they call those - and pointed at the skeletons? Wyatt said skeletons and that he was just trying to be clear about what counted as undead here, and Aldwyn backed him by saying he only ever called them skeletons, and then started to try to introduce them - "That's party skeleton, that's green skeleton . . ." But Jaed wasn't inclined to be helpful right them.

He did still provide some information. The land was called Mur Fustisyr, meaning "the land of blue light." There was another "more friendly" port to the West; he could take them there for 20 gold per. Yes, he could teleport, if they called it that, and he could take them that way, but it would cost 100 gp. Wyatt asked if they needed their yurts, etc. on travel or if "safe travel" meant they didn't need it. Jaed, annoyed, said that they must bring their own shelter. He could manage the trip safely but not vouch for their safety against the climate, or attacks, or whatever happened at their destination (this would be overlooked, but important later.) He was a Navigator only.

He would take gold only, when they asked about that, but he personally would take gems or jewelry at a "fair percentage" of their agreed-upon value.

He could take them to the return gate to Felltower, yes. It would cost 15 gp per (so 180 for the group, 375 with their yurts and travois). No, he wouldn't provide directions to it. Wyatt argued he should, but out of game I said he clearly wasn't in the business of selling directions, but selling navigation services, so they might be able to sway him but not to expect a large discount.

They asked about other placed. He mentioned a few, and Ulf latched on to a holy place, but it was 100 gp per to get there.

Eventually they decided they could go to the port, or "give up and go home." After an hour or so of debate, Jaed held up his hand and said, "There is another call for a Navigator. Do I answer it, or do we have a contract?" They agreed, quickly, that they did. They paid him 180 gp to bring them to the gate to Felltower, and buried their yurts in the snow nearby to avoid paying freight costs. They headed out together.

Jaed said something Galen in Elvish. Galen later said he told him that he'd navigate but Galen was free to scout and do his normal work. He took out an amulet, seemingly pressed it in a few spots while covering it up from their view, and led them away.

Long story short, the weather cleared up, and Jaed lead them Southwest and up the mountainside. They needed to stop for the night, although he offered to press on if they'd travel at night to finish the journey. They decided to camp, and Ulf used Sanctuary since they had no recourse to yurts. He used Vigil to stay awake, but Jaed sat, covered himself with his cloak, and seemed to sleep seated. "That's not weird at all," quipped Aldwyn.

In the morning they exited, and had to go from snowshoeing to climbing. With Galen's help they managed to climb up the steep, icy, dangerous incline to the top. At the top was ice scarred and scraped into an undulating pattern, perhaps by the winds that scoured this top ridge. The ridge dropped away gently to the west, and could be climbed down easily (and it forked off.) To the east was a cave mouth, rather a large one, and the group stood there shivering in the wind.
(Wyatt's player offered to use Luck to re-roll the weather per DF16, but it was already good weather . . . he declined to re-roll trying for a critical.)

Jaed said the journey was complete, and the gate was in those caves. If they were lucky, they wouldn't encounter the "polar worm" that lives inside.

There was a shimmering and sparkling and a moment later Jaed was gone.

We ended outside of the cave of the "polar worm." Or wyrm? Or wyrms? We'll see.

Notes:

- First off, PLEASE NO SPOILERS. If you do recognize the Navigators, Aztaur, the Iron Win and the Unlife, Mur Fostisyr, the Syrkakar and Syrakang, etc. PLEASE DO NOT POST COMMENTs. I won't approve them. The PCs don't have access to the usual Stericksburg rumormill, so anything you post about those subjects will be new information that they magically suddenly know. I will bet I'm the only person in my group that could identify this stuff without a search engine, and the only person who owns the supplement I drew most of this from, and I'd like to be able to use that effect in play.

- Before leaving town, Ulf plunked down enough money to find a sage, and then get him to do two weeks of research on the Osirian culture.

- It was amusing, as the GM, to watch the players struggle with opening two doors largely the same group and players (and largely identical PCs) had dealt with originally and then multiple times afterward. What was less amusing was them checking the blog during the session to see what to do.

Pretty much, people used the blog search function to find the previous summary, and then pulled it up and used it for reference during the game. That felt really kind of hokey. I said as much during the game - I get the whole "everyone has a copy of the map" (not that anyone pays for paper, or has a scrollcase, but whatever) after this incident, but everyone having a complete, clearly indexed and searchable, journal of everything every character did in Felltower? Yes, I put this stuff up as common knowledge, but I'm not as fond of people using the blog during play to look everything up. It just felt wrong and un-fun to sit there as people searched, compared, and read.

The fact that it was the same players and same PCs actually made it more plausible, but made it worse - people couldn't bother to remember any details of their own adventures.

So I asked people to not do blog lookups in game.

We haven't enforced "no rules lookups in play" and I might need to go back to that, too. We've had all too much time taken up looking up some modifier, pulling up some rule so people can get get a +1 relative to my estimate on the fly, etc. And plenty of casters taking bunches and bunches of new spells and then not knowing the spell's details well enough to use them without reading the book first. It's a time killer and our numbers of people means everything is slow.

- the fire elemental fight is a reason why I don't use a lot of single-attack foes. Only fire? Resist Fire provides total immunity. Only cold? Resist Cold, and so on. They're flat-out immunity so if all you can do is X, the PCs will regularly and simply take Resist X and destroy you over time. I have an idea for another approach for some future game.

I did shoot down the argument that Resist Fire on Galen should apply to missiles he launched. At that point, if you touch something and it remains resistant when you let go, can you touch other objects to transmit resistance for a brief time? That's a big extension to the spell.

- I ruled that even though a bedroll + a yurt = comfort, you couldn't automatically pick Concealment and Line of Sight as your two benefits every time Galen rolled a 16 or less on Survival (Arctic.) There were just cases where Concealment wasn't going to be an option, or it was easy to do one but not the other. If it's possible, a success should do for both, but it'll take a critical in cases where the terrain just normally cannot support it. Even then, a critical will be meaningless if one of them isn't possible (unlikely, but you never know.)

- How long does a Skull-Spirit last? Canonically, 24 hours, but we've never enforced that in Felltower. It's rarely been 24 hours, but when it's been longer (several Lost City delves, for example), the skull-spirit just sticks around. It's been "one delve" for a while, but I might rule it's a random number of days if it ever comes to that (like, if they try to keep one around.)

- Watching the PCs try to hem and haw about "But Gerry's a believer in the Good God, so using a being that is Truly Evil to do the Good God's work is good" was pretty funny. Not even convincing to them, I think. Wyatt argued that "Truly Evil" is more of a grey area. It really isn't, and Jaed the Navigator isn't the first person to point this out, only the most recent and strenuous. I've said so out of game several times that they're evil entities and that associating evil entities violates the principles of the Good God, but you know . . . no one wanted to give up the powerful thing. It's the old "but it's better if my Paladin has Stormbringer because then it can't be used for evil" argument and it doesn't hold water in a world with absolute Good and Evil as material as physical laws.

Actually, it was in retrospect amusing the watch them try to define skeletons as not-undead. So, you don't consider the skeleton of a human being that has been animated into a false seeming of life through Necromancy to be undead? This is why NPCs don't deal well with PCs, because players often bust out bs backed by lawyerly word-warping to cover for it. At the time, though, I made a reaction roll . . . and the PCs barely got a good enough reaction to keep things going.

- Yes, Mild Bruce and Galen carry all of their money with them at all times. Bruce was carrying ~4 pounds of gold coins on him. Some PCs are totally broke aside from their gear, some PCs have $20,000 in cash.

- It took ~60 minutes of discussion in the arctic cold and wind and snow to decided that finding out how to get back to Stericksburg was the #1 priority and it was worth paying. Once decided, it took another 10 to decide about the yurts, then another 5 to decide when, where, and how to bury them.

- They briefly discussed carrying the yurts, and then just dropping them to fight. I pointed out that carrying them in their arms or over one shoulder wasn't the same as carrying them in harness, and no one wanted to deal with that. Wyatt suggested that he could use Knot-Tying to rig up ersatz quick-drop rigs for them, but I shot that down. Making some lengths of cord (if anyone had any, instead of heavier climbing rope) and rolled up 4-man yurts into quick-drop backpacks would Quick Gadgeteer. People pay 50 points for that. They could make something like that with sufficient time, equipment handy, and experimentation, but on the fly? In the snow and wind? In arctic gloves? With less than ideal gear to do the job? With one point in Knot-Tying? Yeah, one point in one skill isn't really the answer to that. Artificer is the template if you like to gimmick up MacGuyver solutions to problems. Yes, I'm aware they would have used Luck.

- I messed up communicating the penalties and bonuses for the cold, so people rolled at 5 lower then their actual roll a few times. But I also let people climb as a group and inflicted 0 penalties for encumbrance on a group that was largely at Heavy. So they climbed an icy, steep, dangerous edge (-3 to Climbing rolls) at -0 for encumbrance (actually -3 for Heavy.) I'd rather have gotten neither wrong.

- Wyatt complained that the Navigator had some strange definition of the word "safe" if they arrived "safely" at the gate back to Stericksburg but it was likely guarded by a dangerous creature. Maybe he's right, and Navigators should specify that if you specifically ask to go to a dangerous place, and they get you there, then you might be in actual danger, and thus somehow they're responsible for that? Nah. I think it's just sour grapes . . . Wyatt and the Navigator drew sparks off of each other very quickly.

MVP was Ulf for all of his Resist Cold and Resist Fire spells and other general utility.