GURPS DF Session 138, Felltower 106 - Icy Gate II - Escape from Icy Gate

This is a continuation of the delve started in Session 137.

Date: August 16th, 2020
Game Date: August 4th, and then 17th, 18th.

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)
Ulf Sigurdson, human cleric (306 points)
Sir Bunny Wigglesworth, human holy warrior (259 points)

The group was standing on an icy, windy mountain-top ridge facing a cave their Navigator said contained a gate to Felltower. They headed in, led by Galen. Their idea was to get inside the cave mouth, out of the wind, to change up their cold-resisting spells. That would tough, as the cave was long but not wide (only 3 yards wide and high) and they take up a lot of space (11 hexes of people.) They moved in and Galen moved ahead.

Galen saw more marks on the slick ice of the movement of something big.

They moved into a cave system and found a raised section of ice to the east, another tunnel out to the northwest. Galen scouted to the northwest as they heard a scraping and sliding noise. He saw a large cave and the sound got much louder! As they started to react, a gigantic ice-crusted "worm" slide down the ice from a nearby cave at high speed. They formed up and Galen dodged back behind the shield-carrying fighters, luckily keeping his footing on the ice. The others just chose Wait or AOD (Dodge.) The worm breathed out a huge cone of frost and ice chunks, hitting the front ranked fighters (the others, including Wyatt, were out of sight around a corner.) No one was more than mildly hurt, though, as it rolled very poor damage (ranging from 6-10 on 3d-1) and the PCs were both bundled up in arctic gear and armor. They tried to advance on it, but Aldwyn and Crogar slipped. Sir Bunny stood in place and waited. Galen shot it a couple-three times and chipped off ice on all three shots.

The PCs attempted to close with it, but it stayed back. It tried to bite and sting Crogar a couple times, but he was able to block and parry those, and climbed up to his feet. Aldwyn got up, too. Galen kept shooting, aiming for inside its mouth as it bit (I allowed this as Chinks in Armor, -8). In the back, Varmus created a Fireball and eventually tossed it at the ground to melt the ice, and did, then stood in the water and cast Resist Fire on himself. Gerry put Great Haste on himself, and on Galen. Wyatt crushed a few spellstones, including Walk on Air, and ran up.

The wyrm kept biting at the PCs, including Bruce, who ran up with a Move and Attack. He managed to Dodge with two 8s, despite the ice, lack of Retreat, etc. It never managed to do any damage except some to Crogar's shield. Bruce and Crogar hit it a couple of times and did some damage, but Galen just kept putting six arrows into its mouth per second. It died in only 2-3 seconds of this. It was badly wounded, and then Galen hit it for 16, 15, 7, 8, 16, and 14 impaling, all in one second. That more than finished it.

With the ice wyrm dead, they checked around to ensure it was alone. It seemed to be. They got to work carving it up for parts based on Galen's Survival (Arctic). He got to work on the teeth, and Ulf was to attempt Surgery with a -5 for lacking any proper tools. It was IQ-based, so Gerry offered up a Wisdom potion that he'd reconstituted from dust and wasn't really sure of. Ulf took it. He rolled a 4, and was able to extract the cold-producing organs from inside the wyrm. He used a scroll of Suspend Animation to keep it fresh and put it in two sacks to carry it. Galen was able to extra the teeth - 1d of them. He rolled a 1. He used Luck, and got another 1, and a 2. Oh well.

They took their loot and explored the tunnels. It got colder and colder as they went in. Down one path they eventually found a deeply freezing room with the gate. Down another, they found a room with icy walls studded with big chunks of blue crystal that looked like some kind of quartz. Mage Sight didn't show them to be magical. Galen recently learned Prospecting so he used some improvised tools (a mallet, a mace, and iron spikes) to chip out ten of them, weighing ~50 lbs in total. The rest broke into useless splinters. They spread them out among the warrior types and headed to, and through, the gate. The crystal room and the gate room were a stunning -135 F, and despite their gear and Warmth spells some of them began to lose FP at an increasing clip. On the far side of the gate the temperature was a sweltering 0 degrees F (-18 C), so they started pulling off their gear.

They forced the door out, and then moved out. The portcullises were still up, the coals still burning, so they headed through, leaving their torch between the portcullises for next time. Gerry lent 6 FP to Ulf so he could cancel 6 Warmth spells early. Then Ulf used Sanctuary and they went inside. They rested for 1 hour 40 minutes, and then exited and headed out, FP recovered. Aldwyn opened the two handprint doors, and they made their way to the GFS and up, encountering nothing along the way - and no one succumbing to the stale air (Gerry used Luck.)

Once they reached the top, carefully checking for traps as they went, they headed toward the orcs. They found a solid block of stone where they expected some rubble they could clear with a pickaxe and shovels. They made their way to another area, and found they same. Since they were near a bricked-up room where their map showed secret doors, they bashed down the brick wall and headed in.

They used See Secrets and checked the wall, but found no secret doors. They realized their map was just wrong, having tried in an earlier delve to find the secret doors from the other side.

They headed back to the stairs and up, intending to come to the orc hole from behind.

On the way, on level 1 they stopped in the pool room after Ulf semi-sold the idea to enthusiastic delvers who hadn't been there.

The door was locked but yielded to Gerry's Lockmaster spell.

They went in, and explored the 13 pools. All held something, even one they expected to be empty. They put Resist Poison on Aldwyn, who drank from one and had his wounds healed. Two others unknown to them turned out to be water, one bitter and one stale, and the last acid, which did 6 corrosion damage to Aldwyn's mouth and tongue. He wasn't too mangled, and Ulf was able to hear him. He noted the acid was powerful but it didn't affect his helmet. They decided it could be alkahest, and Gerry concurred it could be that or something like it.

Eventually they started to drink from the purple pool "of dreams." They each prayed or stated what they wished to dream of, then drank. Ulf did so and fell asleep. Wyatt drank, too, and fell asleep. After waiting three hours, Ulf woke up. He'd dreamed of shattered the chains on two giant doors, and finding a huge room carpeted with coins many layers thick - copper, silver, and gold. The he woke.

Aldwyn drank, too, and also fell asleep. Wyatt woke up, and related his dream of a circular room deep in Felltower with a plain fountain in it. He touched it, and gained great power - more strength, agility, health, and speed. Much of it, he knew, was temporary, but a percentage of it was permanent. He also knew not to touch the fountain again or he'd lost his gain. Then he woke. Crogar tried to drink, but didn't fall asleep - Gerry, the same (his Improved Magic Resistance "aided" him here.) Varmus drank, too. He was still sleeping when the PCs realized a) they'd been in the room for ~9 hours, and b) the lightstones seemed just a little dimmer, and the shadows around a little thicker. Around now Alwdywn woke up. He dreamed of free-climbing a tall pillar that he couldn't see to the bottom but heard splashing when pieces of stone fell. When he reached the top, he found a little alcove in the pillar with a chest in it. Inside the chest were coins, jewelry, and gems.

So they left - using Lockmaster on the door to leave. Mild Bruce carried sleeping Varmus.

After that, they headed to the altar so Ulf could run in and use Dismissive Wave. It failed. He was injured. He was healed and they moved on.

Next, they made it to the stairs down to the second level, and found they door they'd destroyed. Beyond it was solid stone.

They went back up. They tried to use the "bugbear tunnels" to leave, but found the corridor down that way had partly collapsed.

Next, they headed into the are where delvers - including Galen - fought some wights may years ago. It was closed off roughly with stone and mortar, again. So they woke up Varmus with Awaken, cutting off his dream. He said he dreamed of them opening a door, and something killed them off violently and quickly . . . and they woke him before he could identify the door clearly! They kept asking if doors "looked familiar" but he couldn't remember a single salient detail from his dream thanks to his early wakeup.

They bashed the wall down quickly.

They found nothing except some empty rooms and bits of bone and shattered coffins. They did find the door at the far end of the corridor was intact, and locked. It had a small waist-height viewing slit plugged with wood. They used a knife to push that in, but it hung in place. So they opened the door. Beyond it was a large room - 80 x 100 - that had been used as a living area. Whatever used it was long gone.

They found evidence of a target practice area, a fire/cooking area, a pen for 3-5 dogs, and an emergency toilet corner. The viewslit plug was on leather straps so it could be moved and used, and then dropped to cover the slit easily. They also found the hinges were new, and oiled - but probably not used in a long time. Finally, they found 411 hash marks on the wall ending with a check mark. Probably 10-12 people - likely surface-dwellers based on the smell and habits - stayed there for a long, long time.

Ulf put See Secrets on Galen. With it, he spotted a concealed trapdoor in the floor. It was easily pried open, but it was sealed with Shape Stone. They decided this must be connected to the gnome.

After all of that, they headed back to the surface, which wasn't very far from where they were.


Notes:

- a couple of guys have hobnailed boots, which negate bad footing. This includes ice.

- I think falling should be nastier than it is, now in our games. You should risk dropping weapons (or just drop them, like with Knockdown), for one. I think I'm supposed to require a DX roll per hex of movement, too, not just one roll. You really shouldn't run 4 yards on ice just because you have Move 8 and roll DX just as often as taking a Step. I need to re-read those rules again. I thought I remembered them, but maybe not.

- I let my players roll the two d6 rolls needed for their dreams. I'm pretty sure they wrote down the numbers, so they can compare in-game results to the dreams to the rolls. Amusing, because I often re-number and re-arrange my tables. They write down the numbers they roll for rumors, too, and track that. I don't leave rumors in a particularly slot, either. I move them around as formatting and convenience suits. I use dummy rolls, too - rolls that don't do anything. And sometimes I call for rolls that aren't immediately relevant, too - roll now, used later for results. Rolling is fun. I like people to have the deciding roll, but not to use the numbers to try to triangulate their results in some way. The numbers don't have any in-game existence, so they can change.

- Roll20's rolling frustrates me. It's very slow, and also I roll, on average, below average. We also get a lot of incidences of repeated rolls - two 8s, two 9s, three 11s, etc. It's possibly just statistical clumping but it's also possible it's just a junky roller. It's certainly slow enough to be very annoying.

- Best line of the way wasn't one particular line, just the whining about how the orcs kept blocking stuff off and someone else (Mild Bruce? Aldwyn) pointing out that maybe they don't want to have every member of their tribe killed just to have an easy way to explore deeper in Felltower.

- the Wandering Monster rolls were kind today. I do need to modify my approach a little, though - more on what I do now, and what I'm going to do, in another post. Not to make them more frequent, exactly, but to make consequences of time and exploration happen more often.

- that said, you spend too long in some places in Felltower - or maybe just in Felltower - and stuff can happen. Not just a quickie monster to kill, either.

- the group lost two weeks in the gate travel. One player figured that meant the time spent past the gate didn't matter. It did, but they also spent roughly 23 hours before and after in Felltower. So they ended up coming home on Tuesday morning.

- they took home 37,500 worth of loot plus two very fine knives, which I ruled cost $40 each for getting wrapped and hilted and such since no one wanted to risk Aldwyn's low skill (11.) 40% of that is 15,000. Yes, Wealth would be useful. Still the hangup is someone saving the points up, and then that character possibly wanting an uneven cut of loot to reflect their extra value. Had someone had Comfortable it would have netted another 7500 right there. Not small change.

- Full XP for loot for this delve, plus a point for exploration. MVP for both sessions was Ulf, although Galen voted for himself and I think had a real claim. He mostly killed the wyrm all by himself and his skills and senses were critical this session. But so was Ulf's 4 and his spells.

(More notes here.)