GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, Session 169, Felltower 121 - Second GFS - Part I

Game Date: 4/10/2022

Characters:
Aldwyn, human knight (360 points)
     Varmus the Hanged, human apprentice (180 points)
Gerrald Tarrant, human wizard (420 points)
     3 skeletons (~35 points)
     1 tough skeleton (105 points)
"Mild" Bruce McTavish, human barbarian (349 points)
Crogar, human barbarian (375 points)
Ulf Sigurdson, human cleric (366 points)
Wyatt Sorrel, human swashbuckler (379 points)

We started off in town. The PCs bought up a large quantity of spell stones and potions, mostly aimed at circumventing the floor on the first landing of the second GFS, where they intended to delve. It took a long time to get everything sorted, but they eventually headed out.

They made their way up to the dungeon and found the trap door shut, so they crossed the pit at the main entrance. They made their way to the noisy room, where Bruce force the doors and chuckled so he could hear it echo loudy.

They headed down to the next level, then to the GFS. They went down that, too, opening it up with the taxidermied hand of a "gith" - one of the six-fingered types. At the bottom they opened the next door, and out into the stale air of the "gate level." The group moved along their usual path, and after forcing a door they blundered into a basilisk. Crogar dropped his crowbar and fast-drew his axe and rushed it, but missed on his Move and Attack. It looked at him and injured him. He swung a couple more times and it dodged, and inflicted more damage on him, as Aldwyn and Bruce rushed up. Crogar managed to hit it three times a second later, decapitating it.

Gerry wasn't happy because he can't cast Zombie on anything decapitated.

They reached the will-wall and found some - especially Aldwyn - couldn't force it. He rolled a 17 and took a permanent -1 to get through it. Bruce decided to use his magical powers (and Laccodel's Rune) to dispel the magic. That worked, and they continued on. They reached the first landing and buffed up. Once through the door, Ulf put up Silence and tried to Sunbolt the black hemisphere on the ceiling of the room. That did nothing. Varmus tried a Fireball and equally did nothing. So Bruce walked on air to the center of the room and bashed it to pieces with his sword. They hurried left.

Nothing came to fight them, so they continued left - Wyatt rushing ahead, followed by Bruce, and the others more slowly. Eventually Wyatt reached a room at the end of the hallway.

In the room he saw patterns of etchings with semi-precious stones at each point of each line. The others rushed up. They quickly determined that there were 150-200 of those stones, the patterns weren't identifiable, and the stones probably ranged in the 20-50 sp per gem range. So an easy 3K - 10K of treasure. Call it 6500?

They set up to watch the room, checked for magic - it was wholly magical - and tried to decide what to do. Gerry argued that they shouldn't touch the stones, as they could clear the area by taking the fight to their foes and then loot. Greed - in the form of "we should disrupt their magical pattern" - won out. They spaced about half the party out of the room to guard - Gerry, two skeletons, Bruce, and Crogar - and the rest went in to pry stones or observe.

Wyatt started to pry out stones.

The guarding guys noticed the room went instantly silent . . . and was empty.

Crogar said they should just do the same and join them. Bruce ran in and got ready. Gerry followed. They tried to pry out a stone.

They all found themselves in the dark, stomachs wrenched by the now-familiar teleportation - Body Sense rolls all around. Ulf felt for his glow vial and found only chest hair. Uh, where was his armor? And shirt?

They were all in the dark, nude. Only Gerry could see thanks to Dark Vision. They were in a 30-35 yard wide cicular room with a 30' ceiling with one exit. He cast Continual Light on one of the skeletons.

Checking the room, they were totally bereft of anything except their own bodies - and the skeleton's bones. The room had writing in a 6" wide band around the room, around 5 1/2' off the ground. Gift of Letters revealed a kind of chant. Gerry said it was like phrases of power in a chant, likely being a way to replicate the chanters in a ceremonial spell casting, centered on transformation and creation . . . turning something into something entirely new. It was totally without any power now, though. Above and below were lead markings they determined were stylized "signatures" in the form of "I was here" and "So was I" writings by many different hands.

They left the room, and found some corridors like those of the level they'd just left, equally bereft of doors. They bypassed a collapsed side passage as they heard sloughing noises. They managed to get to a corner chamber before they realized three oozes rushed from their left, and a giant one from behind. Ulf cast See Secrets despite the Low Sanctity of the area. There was no where else to go . . .

We left it there for now.

Notes:

- This took a lot longer to play than it sounds. Mostly we started slow and then I had lots of issues with the map as we spent a lot in combat time. It could have been different had they done different things. But I cost us some of the time with technical issues. I have a way to address that that I'll bring up soon enough.

- I can't decide if they've fallen for my least likely trap, or my most likely one. Semi-precious gems studding a wall in a magical room? Which wins, greed or caution? Basic adventurer common sense says, "Trap." Basic adventurer greed say, "Loot." Well, here we are.

- The players, as always, took this well. No one was anything less than amused. There were hanging heads and palms on foreheads, but that's all.

- MVP was Gerry for being right. Not that he insisted, but he did point out that this was a bad idea.

- I have a bunch of rulings to go over . . . and some exasperation with our VTT that mostly stems from me.