GURPS DF Session 141, Felltower 109 - Nothing Ventured & Nothing Gained

Date: November 8th, 2020
Weather: Warm, clear, breezy.

Characters:
Aldwyn Hale, human knight (313 points)
     Varmus the Hanged, human apprentice wizard (135 points)
"Mild Bruce" MacTavish, human barbarian (308 point)
Crogar, human barbarian (317 points)
Desmond McDermott, human wizard (263 points)
Galen Longtread, human scout (470 points)
Gerrald Tarrant, human wizard (408 points)
     3 skeletons (~35 points)
     toxic skull (?? points)
Heyden, human knight (307 points)
Wyatt Sorrel, human swashbuckler (321 points)

The group planned out their delve, and settled on bashing down the middle down on the GFS, checking out "five ooze corner," and then possibly the orcs or Lord of Spite after. They wanted to go the Black Library, which is why Desmond came, but they realized they lacked enough knowledge of Elder Tongue and magic to allow them to talk to the demonic door. So instead, they bought a battering ram, Strength potions, and some other gear for digging and breaking in, and so on. The group gathered rumors and headed out.

They headed into the dungeon through the trap door, and down to the giant fantastic staircase. They used a scroll to put Silence on the landing, had their four strongest drink Strength potions, tapped the door with a mallet (to check if there was a trap), and then started bashing. Their effective ST was 37 combined, and they did 9d+3 every 3 seconds. After two minutes - and 40 bashes - they didn't even scratch the door. (Damage was 9/43.5/57 min/avg/max)

Tired from the exertion, they retreated to the 2nd level and entered a large room, luxuriously furnished room with a roaring fire. "It's an illusion," said Galen. It was. It was all fake, unreal to the touch. They waited it out in the room until they were mostly ready to move on.

Next they headed down the stairs. At the bottom they headed out into the "gate level,"and naturally Varmus and Aldwyn failed their HT rolls for "bad air" and suffered a -1. In the room outside the stairs, Galen found some dried blood drops. They followed them to the left, to an octagonal room. They seemed to go past a door, opposite from the direction they wanted to go. It seemed that there was more blood away from the stairs than at them.

They ignored the blood for now and headed toward Five Ooze Corner. They reached nearby, and then Gerry sent a Wizard Eye to scout it out. Their map showed another hallway near the oozes. The eye explored a bit, spying the quiescent ooze pool, and Gerry found the "other corridor" was a map error - the ooze corner was a dead end room bewteen two known areas.

He sent the eye into the room and saw no obvious exists. The pool spun off an ooze and sent it after the eye. Gerry had it flee away from the party, and lure the ooze that way. He paused to check out the mosaic room, and saw it had been roughly repaired. At that point, the ooze caught and destroyed the eye.

They headed from there to the "brain monster room." It had been explored before, but not to Desmond's satisfaction. Bruce forced the door open and in they went. The room spilled away from them, as far as they could see with their light - and Dark Vision didn't help - it couldn't function past the end of the range of the light. They headed along the left wall, and walked for ~3 minutes or so, losing sight of the door. They decided enough was enough and turned to head back . . . but before they did, they saw something in the distance. It was a large fish-like creature "swimming" toward them. They moved toward the door. It closed very quickly, although it didn't seem like it was moving that quickly. It was a three-eyed catfish-looking thing with tentacles around its "head" and catfish whispers on its face. They fled out the door.

From there, they headed to the blood trail, forced the door, and followed it to a corner. It headed to the left, but ahead was the suspected back route to the Lord of Spite's caverns.

Galen headed forward, stealthily. He reached the caverns, and hear a raspy, rattling breathing. He moved forward and saw treasure scattered around the center of the cavern. He headed off to the side, and heard laughing instead of breathing, and spotted a devil maw coming from the right. He backpedaled, and then ran once he heard a drag-stomp, drag-STOMP.

Short version - they ran. They fled to the levels above, waited there in hiding in the "cold room," and then headed home once it was clear the Lord of Spite wasn't coming. They debated many other things to do, but couldn't settle on anything that wasn't just a time-waster, or, like raiding the orcs, better done with a purpose in the future instead of just to try something now as busy-work.

Back in town, they spent some time discussing a plan - the current one is, in two weeks, to go after the Durak, the Lord of Spite. The call has gone out for Sir Bunny Wigglesworth and Dryst, and many spell stones and potions were ordered.

Notes:

MVP was Heyden, because his player had a really funny line at the beginning of the session that we felt suited Barbie in Gamma Terra. He now has 29 points saved. A lens is coming, eventually, unless he breaks down and puts them all into Artist-16 or Poetry-16 so he can be Felltower's Poet Laureate. Otherwise, no one really did anything exciting.

No loot, no XP for exploration today. A total empty session. But it did answer two nagging questions about Five Ooze corner and the "endless room," and did trigger a serious discussion about the Lord of Spite. We'll see if they can actually do it. But for now, the plan is go and fight him (or draw him out and fight him) and not let him escape. He's a tough go, thanks to at the very least having his boars, and possibly having devil maws and doomchildren with him, too. But there is a lot of loot near him, and some doors they'd like to explore unimpeded by his chasing them off of his lawn.