GURPS DF Session 209, Felltower 135 - Exploring the Air Gate, Part II

Session Date: 6/1/2025
Game Date: 5/4/2025
Weather: Wet, warm.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (362 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (346 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (322 point knight)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (358 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (318 points)

We started off with the PCs inside the cloud castle. They went down a long hallway to a door to a stairway down. They went down. At the bottom they found a complex of a few, but very large rooms.

Starting to the right, they made their way around the rooms.

- a big room with a dead-end side passage, but also a floor to ceiling cloud pillar. They approached with caution and about 15-18 little clouds broke off. They backed off and shot arrows at them harmlessly. The clouds turned into big-ass rats that rushed them. In cloud form or rat form, weapons didn't seem to affect them. Their fangs bypassed DR, and when in cloud form they choked anyone they were close to. Chop took one out with Purify Air, so Duncan and then Chop followed up with much bigger Purify Air and that finished them off.

- a "map room" - a room with a big angled table and floor-to-ceiling stackes of poster-sized scrolls. Lots of investigation here revealed they were all maps, of various scales and places. Gift of Letters let them read one, of the "Kingdom of Sindarin" - which they'd never heard of.

- an "observatory" - a magically transparant-floored room they decided was for making maps.

- a couple of storerooms, largely empty, but one had a few 1000L sized barrels of wine (one) and whatever (the others), hanging bulls and deer-like animals curing to eat, and bags and sacks of who knows what food. They decided the place was an abandoned or unused "convention center," Vlad hammered a hole in a barrel and had some wine, and they otherwise poked around.

- they found a room with cloud-lined walls and a couple more cloud pillars. Thor walked around inside the clouds to see what they concealed, and almost fell out of the castle to his potential death (his wings being damp from crawling around in the pillar) when he stepped into a chute out the bottom of the castle.

They gave up on the level after checking a few dead ends with See Secrets and their hands. They used Flight on everyone to fly out of the chute, which they discussed as a possible secret entrance. (I pointed out that a concealed chute that drops you out of a castle a mile or so to the ground below is called a "trap." I made sure to write it in the chat back so no one would get the spelling wrong.)

Once out, they flew up to the top, each person taking a different arc around. Thor spotted - and was spotted by - a gigantic bird - a roc - perched on the landing. They gathered on the top. Shortly after, Vlad decided to try an eagle cry. He did . . . and the roc answered, loud. Less than a minute later, they heard a deeper-pitched eagle cry, then the roc again.

Soon after they saw the roc flying away, with a gigantic figure on its back. They hid, and the roc wheeled away and flew off. They decided to fly, using their wings. In a few minutes they saw the roc turning back toward them. They fled back to the castle and went to the landing.

They set up there. The roc returned, and the giant on its back called down lighting on them as they stood in a combat formation near the door to the castle. Zap! They quickly used Resist Lightning on everyone and pulled inside.

The giant followed, landing the roc and coming in. It didn't come alone - it had four tiger-men with it. As-Sharak, one each of Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. Vlad shot the giant in the vitals with a critical hit and it batted the other arrow away. Annoyed by the damage, it put up a Windstorm in front of it and advanced.

The PCs drank potions by the buckletload and waited for the giant. It closed in, swinging a giant club at them.

In a nasty brawl, Hannari got beaten down by the giant and the breath weapons of the As-Sharak. Thor was wounded and blinded. Percy was paralyzed, nearly blinded (thanks Luck), and wounded badly. Chop unparalyzed Percy and put him back in the fray.

In the end, though, Percy + Agar's Wand was too much for the As-Shark - they'd account for three of the four. Thor killed one in a blinded swing when it came close. The giant was battered by Percy even as he bashed Percy up a treat, too. Eventually the giant fell unconcious and the last As-Sharak banished back to hell.

We left it there.

Notes:

- The cloud rats are basically ersatz AD&D vapor rats. They're a smaller (sm-2) giant rats with a body of air metatrait they can turn on or off, armor-ignoring bites, and a choking effect in cloud form. Obviously vulnerable to Purify Air based on the encounter. I like glass cannons like this for some encounters - dangerous enough to take seriously but neither immediately lethal or hopelessly outclassed.

- The Gift of spells say "any language." Does that mean "any and all"? The magic item versions are per language, and the spell cost is pretty cheap compared to Borrow Language if it does multiples and doesn't need a source. So I ruled it's one language. Fits Felltower better, anyway.

- The PCs are basically bingo power and FP at this point, hopped up on Strength and Dexterity potions, Haste spellstones, and a few other buffs. They have the giant out, and have to decide if they want a prisoner or just to kill him. Given their lack of information, a prisoner is more useful, but he's strong and magical. A (hopefully not-serious) suggestion was to - ahem - lop his limbs off one at a time, healing in between to keep him alive, and then gagging him so he can't cast spells. I pointed out that cutting off all his limbs was likely to be make him less, not more cooperative. We'll see what they choose. Killing is easier, but just makes the dead giant a lootable corpse. A prisoner can answer a lot of questions and potentially bribe them to keep himself alive. So what to do?

MVP was Percy for ending 4 out of 5 opponents, albiet with a lot of healing support from Chop and the assistance of his magical sword buddy Agar's Wand. "Wandy" is how Percy calls it. Several times people started to tentatively suggest backing off because one more hit could end Percy, but Percy just went right back into the fray. And won it. Pretty badass, actually, and in retrospect it's good for an Awesome Bonus, too. Thor's head chop roll was spectacular and well timed, but that was as much luck as boldness. Without that boldness it could have meant the as-Sharak was around to kill more. Still, enough for +1 XP all around thanks to the two of them.

Felltower pre-summary

- the PCs exploded a number of room inside the cloud castle

- they fought a bunch of "cloud rats"

- they almost fell down a "secret entranceway," known in common dungeon parlance as a "pit trap"

- spotted a giant bird, and then a giant on the bird

- ended up trying to face off against the giant and bird, then fled inside

- fought said giant plus the giant's dangerous little friends.

Full update tomorrow!

Friday Roundup 5/30/2025

- I had a little time to play Battle Brothers. I gave up for the moment on my first game - I seem to have made just enough mistakes for long enough that I can't sustain myself in the fights I need to sustain my crew. I will try to advance the game another time when I'm more skilled.

My new game . . . not good. I seem to be in a high-danger area with tough contracts and very few recruits, many of whom are very expensive. A few days in and I've had to go back to my initial save twice already to just try to choose a better path . . . and it's not working. Hmm. I might need another restart.

Still fun.

- Game is Sunday.

- I'm still figuring out which level I'll support the Bat in the Attic kickstarter. But I'm in for sure.

Bat in the Attic's new Kickstarter

This will launch very soon - a fantasy sandbox by Bat in the Attic Games.

Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms - the Northern Marches

I'm in, no question.

Weekly Wrapup 5/23/2025

- Basically no gaming this week. Lots of grappling practice. One of my friends is competing for the first time tomorrow so that's dominated my time.

- I did play a little Battle Brothers. Using some new mods, it's clear that I have a few poorly built brothers and it might be too late to upgrade everyone to survive the fights I need to take at this point. Hmm. I don't want to start over, but I made need to abandon these guys are try again with better knowledge of what to do.

- I had to do a partial rollback of my Felltower update because some of the modules I use won't run with the new version of Foundry. Sigh. We'll see how it holds up in a week.

- Oooh, I love Battletech with minis.

Felltower Update

I did a little work on Felltower today. We'll be beyond the air gate, next time, but still, the dungeon must go on.

- I updated some rumors

- I updated the Felltower main file a bit, to clean up some noise. It's a running record of changes, but some didn't get logged for some reason.

- I backed up the VTT and updated it.

Nothing really exciting - too much non-gaming work to do.

Thoughts & Links for 5/16/2025

What's up this week?

I've been badly distracted by ice hockey playoffs, sumo tournaments, and getting a friend of mine ready for their very first submission grappling match. But I have done some gaming reading.

- The cult of the TPK and the OSR. Felltower is a good example of this - it's deliberately high lethality. It's not meant to exactly ape the lethality of the old school games we played. It's more. It's just I find the higher lethality, "hardcore mode" approach appealing for this game.

"Enjoy your death as I enjoyed killing you." - Peter, GMing Felltower. Only kidding, it's Leela, The Horror at Fang Rock.

- Why archers don't volley fire. Yeah, so much of Hollywood historical warfare is basically WWI or WWII with swords and bows even when none of it makes sense.

- I have barely played any Battle Brothers. The mods I put on help, but also revealed some errors I made in selecting brothers. No matter. But I just haven't had time to sit and play, not with all of the non-play responsibilites I have going on.

- Next Felltower game is early June!