DF Session 188, Felltower 126 - Werewolf Loot & Crystal Gazing

Date: December 17th, 2023

Weather: Morning cloudy, cool, evening rainy, cool.

Characters

Chop, human cleric (308 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (305 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (297 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (298 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (304 points)
Urbaine Fabre, half-elf bard (301 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf martial artist (255 points)

We started off in town, with the PCs gathering rumors and buying assorted stuff. Silvered gear was a-plenty this time around, just in case. They heard rumors of a dungeon under a lost city, more of the mind-warping Aruda, and some others.

The group climbed up the mountain and into Felltower, Vlad scouting ahead and finding evidence of 6-7 giant rats in the castle ground above. They went in the main entrance and to the left, through the bent bars (Percy took a few minutes after getting stuck.) The door beyond was easy enough to open, clearly having been battered hard as it no longer sits flush in its frame.

Beyond it they cross a large room, and smelled burned meat. They decided to investigate, since they smelled the same last time. Thor crowbarred the door open and beyond it, in the dark, waited three ogres. Vlad immediately snapped off an arrow at one, who dodged. "HEY!" it yelled, and combat was on. The waiting ogres flung spears at the PCs, and hit Thor and Vlad. Thor's armor bounced the spear; Vlad took 3 HP injury to his left foot. Percy parried the one that hit him.

The ogres engaged the PCs with their greataxes. They didn't last too long. Urbaine stunned two of them with Rapier Wit despite their Magic Resistance, Percy smashed all three down with skull hits, one with an assist from Hannari's axes and kamas and Vlad's bow, one with an assist from a brutal neck shot from Thor, and the last with help from a 6d Stone Missile from Duncan. The Ogres did roll a critical dodge to make Percy waste a whole second off-balance, and despite low Dodge scores they dodged very often. But it just prolonged the fight a few seconds.

The ogres had their axes and spears, but also a pot full of over 5000 cp (~$500), a copper torc, some arrows, and a longsword. They checked if the sword was magical but it was not - it was fine, though.

They stashed most of the loot after a long discussion about carrying vs. not carrying, and then headed to the second level.

On the way, they stopped at a metal door and Vlad began to explain all about the headless statues he'd read about being in there. (I actually just said, "Why aren't you just showing them?" - a rare GM push to end some of this meta-silliness of tour guiding by guys who haven't been here.) In they went, and they checked the headless statues and did Seeker to try and find the heads. Duncan got a vision of one of them on a pile of treasure with a floating orb-shaped monster above it before the vision faded.

Next they moved down to where they fought the werewolves, through the dark temple - and through a door along the way that fell flat under a 3 roll by Percy. Once pas there, they headed downstairs. There wasn't a trace of the fight, just the faint smell of old rot. Not even bloodstains remained.

Checking where their map showed rooms they found were the werewolves lived - two rooms, each with 4 bedrolls. One had a Cashamashite fringed carpet and four plush chairs, the other a cut-down table and four pillows. Between them they found water, 60 dwarven rations (Vlad pounded down three as fast as possible), some gems, a few paut, a Minor Healing potion, a crystal vial of flaky black stuff (they thought poison, it turned out to be pepper when they checked in town), and some gold and copper coins.

Next they found a secret door their map indicated was a normal door. The map pointed out a trigger button, so Vlad pushed it . . . and felt a tearing, wrenching pain and suffered 24 toxic damage. He was still down 2 HP from his foot wound earlier, so was at -1xHP exactly and had to make a death check. He survived, and wasn't stunned, either. He dropped to a seat and waited. Chop cast Major Healing and rolled a 4 and healed the whole wound, for free.

The secret door was to a crystal ball room. No one had Crystal Gazing, but Urbaine went ahead and grabbed the ball and concentrated on seeing a spot nearby on their map. It worked! He quickly tried to spot one of the statue heads - no. And then the green zombie room, which failed. At that point he realized he was down 3 FP and let go. Duncan took over, and scryed like mad. He tried a lot of spots - Sterick's Tomb, town, the treasure hoard he saw . . . to no avail. But he was able to scan the dark temple above, which they'd traversed on their way down. Finally he looked at the cave entrance, aka the dragon cave . . . and saw a stone bull and a chimera (identified later) . . . and some treasure

They spent the rest of the session checking everything else on this level except the cave area and the green gemstone zombie room. There wasn't anything of value.

That all done, they headed back, retracing their steps and taking everything, from chairs to rations to greataxes. They sold the lot in town.

Notes:

- Someone wanted to talk to the ogres - maybe even Vlad, actually - but shooting instantly didn't allow for other options.

- Luckily for the PCs, there were two orichalcum keys in the dungeon. This one wasn't originally here, but has made its way around the dungeon for a while and ended up with the werewolves a while back.

- They sold pretty much everything, netting about $1200 each.
- 4 xp each for loot, MVP was Chop for healing.

Fun game, and a good delve where they largely stayed on their main plan with only two side trips. We'll see if that continues in the future.