DF Felltower: Looking back on magic item placement

Looking back on my Magic Item Placement post.

How am I doing on these themes?

The best is found, not bought.

This is still true for magic items. The opportunities to buy magic items are even more restricted than when we started the game and no freer than in 2016. PCs generally buy their consumables and armor, but the best armor out there was found in the dungeon - Magescale, Sterick's Plate, and the Targe of the Tiger - the latter two since lost and destroyed, respectively, the shield in the act of finding the first. Hooded Robes of Protection have turned up pretty often, but that's all of DR 2 and mostly useful as a Power Item.

But the good stuff is still found. Doing okay here.

Offensive is better than defensive.

The tendency of my players - maybe players in general, I can't say for sure - is defense. Given a choice between offensive firepower and survivability, they'll choose survivability. It makes sense, but it does mean they'd rather have DR than damage, HP than to hit, and immunities over attacks. So as stated in the original post, I lean heavily towards the former. I give out more offensive items not defensive items. That may encourage defensive builds even more, but I'm inclined to think not. Back when I gave our more armor and defensive magic items people just doubled down to maximize their value.

The PCs have found a few items which can be either/or - a Potion Ring, for example, which the players immediately decided was best for defense and allocated as such.

But largely, I've placed a lot of offensive weapons. Aecris came along, but Vic handed that out. I don't love it - I try to avoid post-DR damage adds as they are rarely decisive and always time-consuming - but it's an offensive weapon. Agar's Wand, which does fight for its wielder, is primarily defensive. It's the only one you'll see in my game. Even then, it is its own thing, and isn't just a magic sword someone can sic on foes. The players really want it to be a self-propelled semi-autonomous killing machine and try to use it as such, but it's one of the rare mostly defensive items I put out here.* Magebane (technically not magical), a Universal Sword, and Shieldslayer were all pulled out of Felltower.

I've put in magic arrows (which amusingly got sold, because they just tossed them in a pile of saleable weapons and didn't investigate them at all), a Wand of Fireballs (given to the best possible user in terms of accuracy, but who usually has 3-4 better things to do than fire 4d Fireball spells), and a few unique potions that largely disappeared into the "we'll use it someday" pile and may have been lost.

I feel like I've largely kept on with this one. Yes, I put in Gorilla Gloves and the armors mentioned above, and there are a few more items out there, but it's magical offense that is found most often.

Enhance but don't replace abilities.

I think I've done well on this one. One swords that'll fight for its wielder, a bracelet that dispelled magic, and a few utility items that do things nothing else quite does. But in general, the majority of items just enhance what people do already. They mostly let them do them better.

Not a lot of detail here, but I think I largely kept to this.


So far, I think I'm doing okay on this. I do it all by feel. But we're mostly on track.



* And it's aimed at wizards. It's a wizard's item, but a non-wizard stepped up and took possession of it. There has been discussion about finding a way to pass it on to to the wizard, but they haven't made any determination of how to do that. Or even ideas. The best so far is, "We should look into that" and fishing questions in my direction in the vague hope I'll provide a simple answer. No luck so far.

Magic Loot of Felltower, the Cold Fens, Lost City, and the Caves of Chaos

Out of curiousity, I decided to pull a list of all of the magic items I have marked down as being taken out. I removed common consumables from the list. Many of these were sold, others lost in the dungeons, some taken by PCs that have since retired, and still more are just . . . gone . . . because no one kept track of them.

A few notes:

- This might be missing a few items I overlooked as I passed through looking for bolded, strikethrough items.

- This is just for information purposes. I won't answer to the current location or disposition of these. A good number of them were sold, though, and more are back in the dungeon thanks to people dying there.

- I do expect some of my players to read this and want more information. This is it.

- I left on the oddball potions and the best of the healing potions, and the scrolls. I don't really put in many scrolls.

All that said, what's been pulled from the dungeons?

11 thonged spears, SM-1 - Penetrating Weapon (3), Puissance +1 (both only when thrown, one shot)
Black-painted star-motif Light Shield - Deflect +1, Lighten 25%, Fine
14 Arrows +1/+1
Fine Brass Knuckles, +1 Puissance
Fine Balanced Dwarven Mace, Puissance +1
3 Undead Hunting Talismans (see Demon Hunter's Tassals)
Bat-winged fine greathelm (Fortify +2) (treat as Ornate +2)
Long Bow (ST 17, Elven, Accuracy +1)
Two vials of Thieves’ Oil
Meteoric small falchion
Scroll (Wizardly; Charged, skill 18, Jump 5, Heat 5 cycles)
Hooded Robe of Protection (blue, with silver and gold stars on it) enchanted with Fortify +2 (DR 4) and Clean (easily cleaned).
Fine staff w/Staff
8 blocks of Incense of Meditation
1 Fire Fountain
Potion of Great Heal
Potion of Gaseous Form
Wand of ice daggers (21 charges, no recharge)
Fine Dwarven greataxe (Accuracy +2, Puissance +2)
Minor Ring of Wishing (appears to be a gold ring with three diamonds. As a Great Wish, but only about 1/3 power - equal to a 300-point spell casting, diamonds disappear as wishes are used, last wish turns ring to lead)
Deadly Ring (special, see file - appears to be a gold ring worth 800 sp) (Also in DFT3)
Iron Ring of Endurance (DF8, pg. 38 - 1750 sp, holds 6 FP)
Amulet of Fireballs (DF1, 10 uses, 7200 sp, 0.25 lbs.)
Gem of True Healing
Clerical Scroll (charged, skill 15) of Restoration
Cleric Scroll (charged, skill 15) of Great Heal
1 Hero’s Brew
Dwarf-sized Scale Armor (Lighten 50%, Fortify +3)
Four blocks Incense of Choking
A beaker of potions (Healing - dispenses 1 major healing potion per day, until 15 potions have been dispensed)
Shortsword (Fine, Accuracy +1, Puissance +1)
Wand of Electricity (5 charges left)
Flying carpet (one man size, Move 15, max 200 lbs)
Potion of plant control
Sterick's Armor
Magebane
Shieldslayer
Boots of Walk on Air
Scroll of Protection from Weapons
Potion of Giant’s Strength
Potion of Treasure Finding
Ring of Animal Friendship +2
Sigurd’s Sword (aka Balmung, aka Gram)
Dueling Halberd (Dwarven, Balanced, Accuracy +1, Puissance +1)
Lightning glove
Wand of Fireballs
Transparency Potion
Amulet of Shapeshift Other (Fish)
Fine Thrusting Greatsword Puissance +1
Belt of Might +3
Staff of Healing
Sling (Made out of fine leather, Accuracy +1)
Headband of Mind Shielding
Salamander Amulet
Fine SM+1 Mail with Fortify +3 and Lighten 50%
SM+1 Axe Accuracy +1 and Puissance +1
SM+1 Broadsword Accuracy +1 and Puissance +1
Valmar's Sword (Fine Balanced Longsword with Puissance +2, Continual Light,)
Laccodel’s Rune
Elf-sized heavy elven mail Fortify +2
Bronze Corselet Fortify +1
Cornucopia Quiver of Arrows
Bottomless Purse
Mythic Corselet (Spiritual)
Fine Thrusting Broadsword w/Puissance+1
Necklace of the serpent (a silver necklace with a green jade symbol of two snakes facing each other over a rising sun.)
Crystal Ball (+2, 20,000 sp 4” ball, $40,000 with enchantment)
6 Javelins of Shock
5 Javelins of Penetration
7 Javelins of Fire
Scroll (Cursed, inflicts a fatal fungal disease, die in 0+HT days, resists healing with skill 20)
Scroll (4 wizard spells, charged, skill 15 – Aura, x 4)
Iron Lamp
Fine Thrusting Broadsword, Puissance +1, Flaming Weapon
Scroll of explosive fireball 6d6 (charged!)
6 arrows +1/+1
Protection from Good Supernatural Powers amulet +3
Balanced Fine Spear (Puissance +1)
Light Plate (+1 Fortify, 75% Lighten, Ornate +1)
Medium Iron Shield (+1 Deflect, 50% Lighten, Ornate +1) (with big demon face carved into it)
Gold and Silver Amulet of Evil: 10 FP power item, gives wearer +3 vs. Good Supernatural Powers and Deflect +1 vs. Holy attacks and acts as +2 Holy Symbol.
In it are a suit of Vineshield, two Clouds of Fire Potion of Puissance
Luck Charm (One shot Luck, then it becomes dust)
Potion of Great Healing
Mana Gout potion
Hero’s Brew potion
Bracers of Shock
Clerical Scroll of Resist Disease-20, Stop Paralysis-20, and Banish-20
Ring of Strong Will
Fine Silvered Huge Machete w/Demonhunter Talisman on hilt (3750 sp, 4.5 lns)
4 vials of Oil of Puissance
Ebony Death Goddess Statuette
Necros’s Finger
Hooded Robe of Protection w/Fortify +3
Helm of Command
Targe of the Tiger
Black Knife is Fine, non-metallic (it’s obsidian), Shatterproofed, Puissance +1
Hooded Robes of Protection with Fortify +1
Several suits of Magescale
Universal Sword
Ring of Protection
Staff of Nature

Year in Gaming 2021

Here we are at the end of 2021. How was it for gaming for me?


Running Dungeon Fantasy

We had only 18 sessions of DF this past year, from session 145 - session 162. That's down from 20 the previous year. We weren't as dilligent about getting sessions in, clearly.

Session 145, Felltower 111 - Yeth Hounds
Session 146, Felltower 112 - Yeth Hounds & Moonbeams
Session 147, Felltower 113 - Orichalcum and Moon Doors
Session 148, Felltower 114, Lost City 13 - Ampitheatre
Session 149, Felltower 115 - Staring at Doors
Session 150, Cold Fens 9
Session 151, Cold Fens 10
Session 152, Cold Fens 11 - Deadfalls & Defeat
Session 153, Cold Fens 12 - Scouting Sakatha's Island
Session 154, Cold Fens 13 - Hexcrawling the Cold Fens (Part I)
Session 155, Cold Fens 13 - Hexcrawling the Cold Fens (Part II)
Session 156, Cold Fens 14 - Sakatha's Lair Do-or-Die (Part I)
Session 157, Cold Fens 14 - Sakatha's Lair Do-or-Die (Part II)
Session 158, Cold Fens 14 - Sakatha's Lair Do-or-Die (Part III)
Session 159, Cold Fens 14 - Sakatha's Lair Do-or-Die (Part IV)
Session 160, Felltower 116 - Level 7? (Part I)
Session 161, Felltower 116 - Level 7? (Part II)
Session 162, Felltower 117 - Level 6?

I think we had 10 different players this year. Playing virtually kept us consistent but oddly didn't help some of the occasionals stay in the game.

In game, it was largely the Cold Fens this year, with 10 delves there, plus 1 in the Lost City, and thus only 7 in Felltower. They made a few delves down deeper but, once again, avoided some of the big things they discovered along the way - the beholder, the draugr, the dragons, the gates. It was a year of Cold Fens delves and lots and lots of nibbling on the margins of things. That's part of why I bit the bullet and went with the firmer requirements for loot for XP. I had enough of nearly 400 point guys picking up XP for loot by cashing in a few dropped weapons and some scrap bits found here and there.

Roll20 hasn't been a lot of fun to deal with, though, so we're moving to Foundry VTT as soon as reasonably possible.

Playing Dungeon Fantasy

I was able to play in a one-shot with evil characters, GMed by Marshall, who runs Aldwyn (and Varmus) and previously ran Gwenneth the Dirt Mage.

DF Suicide Squad 1: Cave of the Dark Elves

I enjoyed getting to play, as much as I complained about how overpriced Terror was for what I'd gotten.

Playing Gamma Terra

Zero sessions of Gamma Terra this year. I'm officially putting this one in the "dormant" campaign category. Our GM still plays DF when he can, so it's possible we'll get back to this, but he's a bit too busy to GM right now. Too bad.

AD&D

We went the whole year without playing AD&D. I'm bummmed. We were ready to go but had to cancel last-minute, and then the next time it came along everyone wanted to play DF Felltower. I still intend to run more.

Other Games & Gaming

I played some video games:

- a bit more of Darkest Dungeon, but stalled when one guy I need was killed off and I can't seem to find a replacement to level up to where I need him. Tiresome. Enjoyable while I've got a good party going but it's annoying to finish a quest and the next week the coach still hasn't brought the one class I need. Feh.

- I finished X-Com: Apocalypse, despite not being able to finish all of the tech trees.

- I played a lot of Battletech, finishing the core missions and getting deep into the Flashpoints before stalling out due to a mission I'm not enjoying.

- I stalled out on Ultima V, but I'm not really far from victory if I'm right about my progress. I just need to get my notes out and get to work.

- I played a bit of other games but nothing really worth mentioning. Well, maybe Borderlands 2, which I'm still playing. I finished it with another guy.

I didn't get in any board games that I can recall. Maybe Fire in the Lake will arrive in 2022 and I'll be able to play that.

Painting

I got in some mini painting right under the wire this year, finishing a few figures and speed-painting a pair.

I'm still going to sell my Bones V collection, I just need to get up and list it on eBay.

Writing

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 22: Gates came out in 2021. I'm quite pleased with it.

The Crypt of Krysuvik came out, as well. It was a hard thing to write, as it was my first adventure, Marshall LaPira's first writing for hire in the gaming field, and our first collaboration with each other and for Doug. I've written with Doug before, but not for Doug. I'm done with adventure writing as of the moment, but Marshall has more on tap I believe.

I did a little more writing. Truth be told, I've slacked off because I want to write for royalties, not flat payments. The royalties, over time, make more sense for me. SJG isn't currently doing Royalties. I threw in for another SJG project, and we'll see where that goes.

Overall, not a bad year in gaming - but not a great one, either. I'd like to get in some additional games - running AD&D, playing GT or something else - and some additional "other" gaming - writing, painting, video games . . .

Where is the loot in Felltower from?

The delvers in my Felltower campaign have been fairly hit and miss with loot. Sessions with a lot of loot, sessions with moderate amounts of loot, and numbers without any loot.

Still, characters have generally steadily climbed up the XP ranks as the required loot hadn't really been that high, often by some combination of moderate loot, sold equipment and magic items, and so on. So much so that I recall someone specially saying something about "farming orcs for XP" - going to fight and kill orcs because, hey, every 4th or 5th one has a good-quality broadsword, that's $240 each one, plus the rest have a mix of axes ($16), spears ($16), bows ($40-80), and armor, plus some actual coinage on each one.

That's an implicit criticism of the lack of look in Felltower and the associated areas. I decided to give it a look from this side of the screen.

When I first launched the campaign I didn't put in enough loot. I went through and added more, and then did another pass or so to add more. I created loot tables that reflect how much cash value a given pile of loot should have - you can see them in DF21.

From my side of the screen, in order of total value:

- jewelry/gems/coinage (all saleable at 100% of stated value in my game, everything else is subject to the usual rules.)

- magic items

- luxuries (tapestries, furniture, paintings, wine, etc.)

- weapons and armor

- scrap & monster body parts

I think one of my players can probably run numbers on what the PCs actually took home. I am curious if it matches the above.

For so many delves, it's been more like this:

- sold magic items

- weapons and armor

- scrap & monster body parts

- coinage

- luxuries

So much so that my players tend to look at plain furnishings, wall decorations, random geological formations, wandering monster body parts*, etc. as loot. If I put a box of hardtack somewhere, I sure as heck better know how much it weighs, how big it is, and how valuable it is as the players will likely have their delvers haul it back as loot.

Part of this post is me wondering what I see on my side vs. the players see on their side. The other part is to reiterate that Felltower isn't really designed as a stingy game. It's a lethal game. If you try to play it to avoid the danger, yeah, it'll be stingy as the real loot is protected by monsters, traps, and concealment. But I will say there is a lot of it where I did place it. A while back we had a discussion of how I distribute the treasure out, and in general the players liked the way it's spread (or actually not spread) throughout the dungeon.

It's just that I see the coins and jewelry as the bulk of the value, the magic items next (assuming you sell them), luxuries next, and then everything else tapers off from there down to minimal value. It seems like the delvers perceive it as magic items, weapons and armor, etc. and then coinage and luxuries down at the bottom. I think that can color the organization of delves, too - if you think the money is in broadswords and helmets, selling off magic items you don't need, and monster bits with a sprinkling of loot, what kind of things are you going to aim for? You're going to look for fights - and refuse to avoid them if they even have a chance at loot - instead of focusing purely on finding the big raw loot payoffs. Even trying to find gold and silver with Seek Earth only results in the closest, not the biggest, so you're no more likely to find the 100,000 coin hoard than the 1 sp some guy has tucked in his boot for luck.

I'll have to sit down and think more on how I can make the game more find-the-treasure centric and less realize-the-value-of-your-kills centric.

* Even of monsters not considered valueable. We've been through this so many times I made up rules for it. Yes, you can see deer bits and cups of ooze or whatever but if a choice body part of a rare monster is only $100-200, you're not going to get more than piddling pocket change. It's why you are delving and not killing squirrels to sell the tails to Mepps.

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy - Session 148, Felltower 114, Lost City 13 - Amphitheatre

Sunday was the latest game in our DF Felltower game. For more notes and summaries, check the DF Felltower campaign page.

Date: February 21st, 2021
Weather: Cold, ground still very snowy.

Characters:
Aldwyn Hale, human knight (340 points)
     Varmus the Hanged, human apprentice wizard (155 points)
Galen Longtread, human scout (490 points)
Gerrald Tarrant, human wizard (418 points)
     3 skeletons (~35 points)
Ulf Sigurdson, human cleric (343 points)
Wyatt Sorrel, human swashbuckler (354 points)

The PCs gathered in Stericksburg, gathered rumors, and then headed out. Their plan was to go to the Lost City, so generally the PCs armored up a little lighter and carried a little less overall gear. The only rumor that really interested them was one that the front doors of Felltower lead deep into Felltower and bypass the upper levels . . . and that mostly interested Gerry.

They headed in the trapdoor extrance, having the skeletons dig them down to it through the snow. They opened it and proceeded down. They worked their way to the "gate level" unmolested, with only Ulf suffering from the stale air on that level.

They made to the "Lost City" gate after a minor navigation error that got them lost briefly. They passed through the gate and found excellent weather on the far side. "Because it's winter," said Galen, demonstrating that Absolute Direction and his high Weather Sense didn't help him realize they're in the southern hemisphere.

They spent some time checking the map outline on the wall, and the images on the wall, which for some reason several characters (and their players) didn't realize were there. They climbed down from the building and moved along Cliffview Terrace (as they've named the streets along the western cliff). They bypassed various buildings, choosing to climb over rubble that blocked the streets instead of choosing a different route. Eventually they decided to check out one building that was a "ziggurat" or "step pyramid." The door was hard to open, and it took Might on Aldwyn to get it open.

Inside it was pretty much empty, but at the very top level was a red-mosaic floored room lined with windows and faded frescoes. In the center was a mosaic oval of circular stones with a red mortar holding them together. Gerry and Varmus, thanks to being wizards, could see a six fingered hand (wrist east, fingers west) made of slightly-magical stones. It was slightly slick with accumulated slime from element exposure, but yes, it was there and visible only to the magically sensitive. The oval was illuminated slightly from above - the ceiling was a dome of greenish translucent stone or glass. It let in a greenish light, but with all of the sunlight-bright lightstones of the group it was hard to see until they covered them up.

They had each one of the non-undead members of the group stand on a finger tip, but nothing happened. So they climbed down, exploring the building as they went, but finding nothing. They decided the hand must point to a nearby building. So they forced their way in and explored much of the building, but found nothing but empty 6' x 6' rooms and some other rooms mostly empty. One had a stone bed that had been moved. So they moved it back, since it clearly had been moved to cover some loot. Nope, no such luck.

They finally headed to the "ampitheatre." They proceeded down an overgrown path and found a small building on a path leading off of the main path. Although it had windows, they headed straight to the door and Aldwyn knocked. No answer. So they forced the door open. Inside was totally empty; unlike the other floors it was dirt, not stone. They searched it - which by this point means See Secrets, Mage Sight, and other spells occasionally - but found nothing.

Beyond it was a natural amphitheatre that had clearly been finished out with proper stonework, with rows of benches to sit on. At the "stage" end was a tunnel mouth.

They moved carefully toward the tunnel mouth. Soon, they were within about 10 yards of it.

Suddenly, out charged a gigantic deadly black tarantula, with a 10' body and 30' width by legspan, immediately biting at Galen. Galen was able to get three arrows off at what he was sure were its vitals before it chomped down hard on him - but he used his Iron Arm bracer and blocked it. The rest of the fighters closed in and attacked. Wyatt sheared off a leg at the end of a Run and Hit. The spider bit at him, instead, and critically hit but Luck averted it.

Varmus charged up a Fireball as Gerry started in on Great Haste and Ulf backed off to make some room. Meanwhile, 12 "baby" spiders - each 3' across including the legs - charged out to feed! Wyatt shifted to them and killed one and wounded another. Varmus narrowly avoided getting bit and hit one with his Fireball and wounded it and ignited its hairs.

The big spider eventually landed a bite on Wyatt, and the fangs did 5d+2 impaling . . . and I rolled 14 damage. (sigh). That was enough to pierce his light armor, and he was poisoned. (I had him roll a die after he was poisoned, and he rolled a 1. Unbeknownst to any of them, he was going to drop dead in 2 seconds.)

Ulf saw him bit and ran up 4 yards to get closer to try Instant Neutralize Poison on him. Meanwhile, Galen backed off a bit and started shooting the baby spiders three at a time. They dodged here and there, but mostly he killed 2-3 per second.

Ulf got off his spell, and made the roll - Wyatt was cured.

The fight ended almost immediately after - Aldwyn hacked off four legs from the spider, leaving it with three. Wyatt stabbed it in the eyes about 5-6 times over two seconds, and Galen finished shooting the baby spiders. One was climbing up Wyatt in the end, and Aldwyn wouldn't swing, worried he would hit Wyatt. Galen shot it off, since he never worries about hitting his friends at all.

The spiders dead, they healed up the wounded.

Despite the total lack of any webs, and the tarantula-like appearance of the spiders, the group was disappointed at the lack of giant spider silk to loot. They did manage to drain out four vial's worth of its venom - Gerry did the work, defaulting from Alchemy, protected by Resist Poison.

Inside the tunnel mouth was a cave area - the spider nest. They found two egg "shells" and some loot - a weird suit of vines, an ornate broadsword, two potions, a D'Aboan leather helm, and a pouch. The pouch had a dozen gems (they turned out to be worth ~300 each) and a folded square of vellum. They very carefully opened the vellum, to make sure it didn't spill anything out. It did not. It was a map, showing this area of the Lost City with an X marking the tunnel mouth of the ampitheatre. They looked around with See Secrets and Mage Sight and Search but didn't find anything extra.

They proceeded to explore the tunnels. Long story short, it was a way out . . . but to get there, they had to cross a 90' or so chasm (a few hundred feet deep) with stairs to an overlook on the city side of the chasm, climb down into a cave from an outlet 30' up, force some doors in a worked section, through a room with a smashed, empty chest in the middle, and a beach along an underground water system. Ulf feed some white-ish fish with some elven rations. They checked for tracks but only thought to do so after tramping around for a while.

They sent a Wizard Eye out to scout and found there was another beach out of side around some intervening floor-to-ceiling rock formations. That beach had five 3-man canoes, all hacked up and with multiple holes, in front of a statue. The statue was a snake-bodied six-armed female - a peshkali, clearly. It was a relatively crude statue, with its arms folded along the body and shoulders so the "swords" lay flush with the body. In front of it were two braziers, empty, on metal tripods. See Secrets, Mage Sight, and so on didn't help spot anything. Gerry sent the wizard eye along a wide, worked area of tunnel that eventually led to a vine-choked exit to a jungle. It was clearly outside because the sunlight from the mid-summer evening was still bright.

After a long discussion about going over to fight the peshkali, and to search it for treasure, and to activate its braziers so they could find out what evil powers it had and defeat them . . . they gave up and headed back.

They made their way back, climbing up to the cave mouth they'd climbed down from (which took Wyatt three tries before he could re-hammer in spikes and lower the rope ladder,) again crossing the chasm with Levitate, and worked their way back to the gate. It was open, and they returned to Felltower. There, Aldwyn got really ill from the poor air (-3 on all rolls, after a critical failure on his HT check.) Otherwise, they weren't molested.

On the way out, of course, they stopped at the temple that Ulf has been trying to "cleanse" every delve for months now. He managed to excorcise it last time, but still took damage. This time, he cast Sense Evil on the area. He sensed evil, but not a particular kind of evil. He stepped in, and took damage for 4 seconds, trying to discern the type of pain and injury he felt. He didn't accomplish much other than to feel the pain is within his skull and his body . . . in general. But he plans to ask the church about this.

They checked the two front doors as best they could from the wrong side of the portcullis, but couldn't see anything special, just a pair of double doors with big locks, with concealed hinges (I said they swing out, but they'd swing in, actually), decorated with evil motifs and the occasional cone-hatted type. After that, they left by crossing the pit.

Notes:

- the group pretty decisively headed to the Lost City. Sadly, they found nothing as a tag end to start next time, although I'm sure at some point they'll make a trip to the "peshkali statue" to try and light the braziers and make it do whatever it'll do when that happens . . . and then try to fight it. It's this thoroughness, by the way, that every group I've GMed for has shown on some level. It's even parodied in Another Day, Another Dungeon by Greg Costikyan, so it's not just my group. What's amusing is how mystifying it is to the players when they find, say, doors spiked for no reason, perfectly useful things destroyed so no one else can use them, traps reset after the loot is gone, and furniture moved and broken for no discenable reason. What's amusing to me is that it's not always me simulating some other group looting. Sometimes, it's this group, who have long forgotten as players (and may not know as characters) that they did this.

- Ulf really bailed out Wyatt, here. He was literally going to die the next second . . . but a timely Instant Neutralize Poison spell saved him. I can't help but think the spider might have been a bigger threat if the PCs had kept going to the ampitheatre back in Lost City 1.

- As usual, I was very disappointed with my high-damage monsters. I don't think I've rolled more than average damage, and usually considerably less, most of the rolls for should-be scary monsters. 14 HP of damage on 5d+2? That's an average of 2 points per die, instead of 3.5, which would have been more like 19.5 damage (so, 19 or 20). It's like when the giant guardian statue did 13d+7 and never rolled even close to average damage in three hits. I'm not saying random damage is bad, but if a monster has a high-damage attack, needs a critical hit to actually land one - and maybe multiple critical hits, because of Luck or magically perfect defenses, and then rolls pitiful damage . . . then it's not really doing any of the stuff it's actually threatening to do. The spider got off one effective attack and may as well have been doing 2d+2. I totally get why D&D 5e has a flat damage option.

- They sold the sword and the gems, along with the poison (out of concern for an inabilty to keep it useable) - which got them $500 per dose - but kept the vine-suit and the two potions. Those turned out to be Cloud of Fire bottles (now published in DFRPG Magic Items, p. 19)

- I've noticed an extra-detail-seeking tendency amongst my players recently. "You sense evil" "Is it a particular kind, do I get any sense of the type?" - no, or I would have said so. "It's magical." "Do I know anything about the kind of magic it is?" No, I would have said so if you could sense such. "You see a standard door, wooden with iron banding, that opens away from you." "Is there anything special about the construction of the door?" No, it's a standard door made of wood with iron banding that opens away from you . . . not sure what else to add there. "Is the floor level?" "Yes." "Do we see any bones, maybe a fire pit, or anything like that?" No, I'd absolutely mention that the floor is covered with bones surrounding a firepit if there was one. Those are all just from this session. I'm not sure why, but "just making sure" and "just clarifying" questions - that are digging for additional information - are coming up very regularly now. I have to figure out if it's a reaction to something I'm not doing - that is, not providing the full explanation unless prompted. I don't think so. I won't provide detail on something no one examines at all (if you don't look in the chest, or at the ceiling, or whatever, you're probably not noticing fine details), but I do provide information in general that I thought was complete. At least I think so. I'm not sure I've ever provided additional information when asked for clarification that I didn't already provide. I get that sometimes people don't hear what I said because of Zoom issues or mic issues, but it's beyond that - people are deliberately digging. So either it's them, or it's me, and I'm not sure which. I joked that I felt like Inspector Clouseau. "Do you know what kind of bomb it was?" "The exploding kind."

- Ulf wants to ask the Church about the damage he suffered. I treat all of this as hiring a Sage, or spending your week doing Research (but possibly with a different check.) It's just another way to get information, and that's not free, usually, and it's takes time. Besides, "the church" isn't a bunch of elder researchers hanging around waiting for questions. Ulf will need to talk this priest, who recommends talking to this monk, who says the nuns over someplace else know stuff . . . while he drops coins in the poorboxes so they think well of him next time, and so on. Or he can just donate a signficant chunk to one person to do that for him. So either he's doing it himself instead of other in-town activities, and paying money for better (or any) results, or hiring a "sage" by another name. Players say, "Ask the Church" or "Ask the Wizard's Guild" and I game that out as "talk to members of that group and use my contacts and knowledge to find things out." I think Ulf's player understands that, but the shorthand sometimes becames the actual thing if not detailed out in this way. "While they're casting Remove Curse for me, I ask about demons, and how to kill liches, and if yeth hounds hate Holy Water, and if silver helps with exorcism." Er, no, not that.

- XP was 4 each for loot because they gave $4K to Galen and then divvied up the rest, then 1 xp for exploration. MVP was Ulf for saving Wyatt's life. Funniest vote was when Galen's player voted for "Galen, for all of the Levitate spells." Heh, it was pretty late. Still funny.

Felltower pre-summary

Six delved into Felltower today.

They:

- headed to the Lost City through the gate

- Found an interesting building or two

- Fight a big spider and some little spiders

- Were a split second from losing a PC

- explored some tunnels

- found some loot

- and found a way out of the Lost City into the surrounding jungle.

They also detected something evil it the temple that Ulf can't seem to let go of "dealing with."

Full summary tommorrow.

The Lost City & Missed Opportunities

I avoid "Monday morning quarterbacking" as much possible here on my blog. The actions of the PCs are their actions. They don't need me coming along and telling them the "right" way to play. I'll point out errors in character development or systemically poor approaches to a task, but otherwise, they can do what they like.

Still, I think it's worth noting how things could have gone a bit differently in the Lost City.

Sunday night, after the game ended, a few of us sat and talked for a few minutes about the self-described flailing of the PCs, trying to try something that turned out to be the right thing to do. The irony of doing the "right thing" and then not following up on that was painful; it all could have ended much earlier and with much less expenditure of resources. And had they just focused exclusively on the priestess instead of activating the jaguars by bothering the statue, they could have puzzled it out and experimentally tried options and defeated her. They did find her one weakness - she was a poor grappler and couldn't use her "deathtouch" ability without a free hand and couldn't cast spells while grappled. They just didn't really exploit it, and tried damage long after it was clear damage wasn't the way to do it. It was just hopeless action for a while - attempting to do the same thing again just to stay busy.

I will say the jaguar statues were a trap for typical delver behavior - smashing anything that could be a golem before it activates would spark an avoidable fight. Also, smashing everything in places they visit just in case they conceal treasure, or because they're "evil" (not a priority until combat is over and it's clear the "evil" thing isn't valuable and salable), or because they're bored. Had they showed some restraint, they wouldn't have needed to fight them. They didn't do a lot of harm, but they did enough, and 2200 worth of obsidian chunks sold for 880 and it cost probably that or more in paut and healing potions expended as a result of them. Net/net, it wasn't a good use of time or resources.

But the lost opportunities go way back, to the first series of delves in the Lost City. I won't enumerate all of them, just a couple that directly bear on the current session's results.

Back when they first attacked Rangol Grot (pre-emptively getting him back for trying to kill them, and for the high crime of possessing an item they also wanted), they managed to savage Rangol's companions and force him to flee. Angus was pursuing Rangol Grot, but couldn't run him down due to inferior Move. So he gave up and went back to the group. Actually, that's a whole post on its own - running away when you have less Move and pursuing when you have inferior Move.

The missed opportunity is that they gave Rangol Grot about 20-30 seconds time before the next group of pursuers came. That's not long, but it was long enough. He was able to gather up a couple of prized possessions, including the Right Bell of D'Abo, and flee. He only needed a brief respite to escape. The PCs gave it to him. Had they kept after him Rangol would have needed to flee without the bell, hoping it would stay hidden. The PCs having the Left Bell of D'Abo, they'd have been been able to triangulate its location and find it eventually. It wasn't safe from them in the house. It was safe out of range. He fled to an encampment, which the PCs never blundered into, and then from there into the jungle itself. There he got himself some new friends, and it was there they found him . . . years later.

The second missed opportunity was the message from the Princess. Multiple times, from the first few sessions in town to the Naga delve, the PCs saw that glow . . . and ignored it or actively avoided it. The message isn't that deep, but having had it, it would have made the task more clear. Instead, it grew in stature . . . eventually, it became "let's go get the Princess and bring her to the temple" and it's clear that this wasn't the way to do it. Instead of just pointing the way early, as intended, it was sought out when they hoped it was the how-to guide for clearing the temple.

Sometimes sitting on the GM's side of the screen it can be frustrating watching the players miss opportunities. It's like watching a comedy or a horror movie where the protagonists make some error, just narrowly miss some connection, or otherwise act "foolish" because of a lack of complete understanding of the situation.

But it's also fair to look at it from the side of the players, and see how they could make decisions based on limited information.

Still, some of the above was really odd - even with a party with multiple people in it across the delves with Curious, they'd rather self-control rolls than investigate a strange glow in a town they were searching for treasure, and that they were searching for a rumored ghostly Princess who appeared there. The lapse in not chasing a fleeing foe more than a few seconds because he was too quick meant another loss. Those seem more like mistakes than choices made in the absence of good information. Even so, the games were fun to play . . . just it was sad how often "we need the second bell!" came up and how often "If we could find the Princess . . ." was said. The bell was in their grasp at one point, and the Princess was at all points. They just needed to go and look for it.

It's sparked some discussion with the players about how to organize delves, combat and otherwise, and we'll see what comes to pass with that.

GURPS DF Session 135, Felltower 104 - Lost City 12 - the Dark Temple (Part II)

This is part II of a delve. Here is Part I.

Actual Date: June 15th, 2020
Game Dates: May 31st-June 1st, 2020

Weather: Cool and cloudy near Felltower, raining and hot in the Lost City of D'Abo

Characters:
Aldwyn Hale, human knight (287 points)
     Varmus the Hanged, human apprentice wizard (145 points)
"Mild Bruce" McTavish, Jr., human barbarian (267 points)
Crogar, human barbarian (294 points)
Galen Longtread, human scout (456 points)
Gerald Tarrant, human necromancer (374 points)
     1 Skeleton (~35 points)
Hayden the Ebon Page, human knight (307 points)
Ulf Sigurdson, human cleric (306 points)
Sir Bunny Wigglesworth, human holy warrior (250 points)
Wyatt Sorrell, human swashbuckler (300 points)

We picked up from last time, with the peshkali down, the priestess disarmed of her "wand" (a baton), and seemingly unconcerned.

The priestess started to concentrate on a spell. Bruce rushed her, and grappled her around the neck with both hands.

Wyatt grabbed the priestess's hood and yanked it down, revealing her face:


(That, sans the faux-metal headpiece)

The other PCs mostly stood around or moved up to support him, but there were no enemies left.

Crogar decided to fix that. He was standing next to the statue, so he hauled off and used a Rapid Strike to hit it twice, knocking some chips off.

That caused the obsidian jaguars to animate and attack. They launched themselves into a run and jump at their nearest targets. Bruce was pounced on from behind, Ulf was as well and mauled, and Heyden and Crogar were attacked as well. Bruce couldn't turn because he was grappling the priestess and Wyatt has grappling her, too, and he was unwilling to let go.

Wyatt attacked the jaguars by slashing at their necks, trying to decapitate them. Galen shot one in its vitals, or where vitals should be on a real jaguar. Heyden broke one up, as did Aldwyn and Crogar. Wyatt broke the leg off of one that was biting Bruce.

Heyden shoved and knocked over a candelabra, putting out its candles, as he fought one of the jaguars. Soon enough, though, the jaguars were all destroyed by the superior firepower of the PCs.

Meanwhile, Bruce executed a takedown on the priestess off of his neck choke. She kept clawing at him with her hands, and eventually landed a strike - and did about 10 injury. Clearly, her touch was lethal. He tried snapping her neck, twice. Both times he heard cracking and popping, but it had no lingering effect.

Heyden dropped his sword and dove down and grappled the priestess's right arm.

Crogar hits the statue again and the building shook and rocked people but no one fell. Gerry called over to Crogar and said it was a bad idea. Meanwhile, he used Dispel Magic and knocked Strike Blind off of Sir Bunny, who moved ahead near the priestess and Bruce.

Meanwhile, Wyatt picked up a candelabra and moves it a few yards, to "defeat any geometry." He moved it a few yards away.

Meanwhile the priestess drew a statuette from her sleeve and stuck it it out into the treasure to her side and activated it with a choked-out command. It grew in an instant to an Ebony Death Goddess (DFT3, p. 16.) The EDG attacked Bruce, slashing him four times. She wounded him badly. Wyatt ran around the statue to engage her. Bruce held on to the priestess and Heyden tried to break her arm. The EDG crippled Heyden's leg with a cut and hit Bruce more. He was at nearly -100 HP by now, with a crippled arm and two crippled legs. The priestess struggled to get free but wasn't able to.

Wyatt attacked the EDG and destroyed it in three seconds - one hit to the body, then three arms destroyed, then a final hit to the body. It fended off attacks from multiple PCs in the process, but Wyatt's skill was too high to allow it to defend effectively against him.

Meanwhile, Sir Bunny slammed his holy water, originally intended to hand to Bruce to dump on the priestess's face, and poured it into the water in the basin in front of the statue after realizing it was too wide-based to be tipped over. The water in the basin began to bubble and steam away.

Gerry and Ulf pulled out their bells and rang them, first separately and then together. They did nothing they could see.

Crogar got tired of not attacking the statue for two whole seconds, and hauled off and whanged it again with his axe, knocking chips off. This time, there was a strange warping sensation, and everyone needed to resist with the worse of Will or HT. Crogar and Galen failed . . . and disappeared. The group didn't know it at the time, but they were expelled to the top of the temple, outside. They tried to find a way to re-enter, including running down the stairs and back up, but it didn't work. They spend the rest of the session outside of the combat.

Ulf used Faith Healing to heal Bruce, and used his staff as well. Bruce eventually let go of the Priestess after Sir Bunny grappled her left arm. Varmus tried to hit her with a Fireball but missed, and then cast Pain on her and she yelped in pain and annoyance.

Gerry headed off to investigate the skull piles. He saw it was a big pile of hundreds of broken skulls, with an intact skull on top. Gerry charged up a Skull Missile and smashed it.

The priestess started to make seductive promises of wealth and . . . other things . . . to Sir Bunny, and then to Heyden, but they ignored her. They noticed that her voice seemed weaker.

Ulf puts Silence on the priestess to keep her quiet.

Wyatt ran over and smashed another skull.

Varmus moved over to get a third, but Gerry, with Great Haste and Haste, easily beat him to it and smashed a third with another Skull Missile.

Wyatt then ran across the room and smashed the fourth.

Aldwyn decided to stab the priestess a few times, and did so. She seemed pained, but she did several times before. He gave up after a couple of stabs. He then grappled her robe and tried to cut it, to get her out of it, since they couldn't think of how to pull it over her head when

They decided to search the priestess at this point, and Heyden and Aldwyn groped her heavily, looking for rings, jewelry, etc. that could be keeping her immune to their attempts to kill her. They found she wore little besides a silk shirt and a loincloth beneath the robes.

Wyatt decided it could be the candles, so he ran around and blew them all out. Varmus tried to help, but Unfit and a bad HT roll didn't help.

In any case, it had no visible effect.

Gerry moved up next to the priestess, and cast Animate Shadow on the priestess probably close to 10 times, but each time he failed in the contest and she resisted.

They just kept searching her and there, starting to pull up her robes and then stopped, debated breaking her arms but decided that hadn't worked, etc.

Somewhere in this time, maybe earlier, Ulf tried a Dismissive Wave but utterly failed to exorcise the evil from the temple.

Also sometime in this time Wyatt kicked the "wand" over to Ulf, who contemplated destroying it as it was clearly magical and special. Instead he dumped it into the bowl, which Ulf had added holy water to.

Wyatt eventually joined the pile-on and grappled the priestess's left arm, allowing Bunny to get up off of her and investigate the statue and bowl.

They examined the statue, suffering Fright Checks (not Sir Bunny, though), trying to discern if the eye sockets were holes for something to put in, or held something. The statue seemed either slimier, or wetter, and it felt to Gerry (who rolled a 6 on Occultism) that it was either becoming more attentive, or hitting it was drawing attention to it.

Gerry tried Summon Spirit to call the princess, but it failed. The priestess seemed contemptuous of them.

Eventually, Ulf decided to pray - Wyatt mimed that at him a few times. Ulf took a knee and spent a few minutes in prayer.

He recalled a passage - "Blessed is he who completes a task, blessed is he who follows through." He decided this must mean destroying the statue.

He told the group this, so they carefully policed up the loot, tied up the priestess's feet, and wrists, twined up her fingers, made a wadded-up ball gag and gagged her, and looped the wrist and feet ropes together. Gerry pointed out that she could still concentrate and cast spells like that, so they needed to have someone grapple her and keep her from concentrating.

Everything prepared for when they got teleported . . . away . . . Ulf wound up and hit the statue with his axe, doing nothing to it at all. The room darkened briefly.

Aldwyn snapped, "Oh, just give it to me." He took Ulf's axe and really whanged the statue.

The room darkened considerably for an instant, and everyone in the room except the priestess took 12 injury. Ulf collapsed, unconscious. The priestess had a look of contempt on her face. Ulf was out, so they just left him laying there.

Next they tried pulling the statue down with ropes on both side and rocking it back and forth. It didn't budge at all, not even the slightest rocking.

So they stipped the princess down, nude, taking off the ropes while she was in a choke hold and taking off her clothes while keeping piled on her. Several of the delvers felt really uncomfortable with this.

Then, she was stabbed a couple of times by Aldwyn and she sagged down in Sir Bunny's arm. She didn't bleed but the wounds did stay. They decided that the holy warrior needed to kill her so she couldn't come back as undead. So she was stabbed by Sir. After a few stabs, there was a blue glow.

In the blue glow appeared Princess Ailivo of D'Abo. They stood around and started talking to her. She frowned and asked why they didn't bow before royalty. They all hurriedly took knees. Except Ulf, of course, who was unconscious.

She told them to get ready, now that her mother was destroyed she could end the curse. Once they were free, she told them to come to her palace for a reward.

They had gathered up all of the loot, so they just decided to wait. The room glowed blue.

The PCs found themselves warped out of the temple, out in the street. The temple began to collapse. Crogar and Galen stood on top of it, and ran down the stairs as it began to fall down under them. They made it down and out. The strange-shaped building fell into rubble.

They headed off to find the "Palace" the Princess spoke of. They headed first to the "Prophecy" plaza. She wasn't there. So they started to look at the map and go around to places that they felt looked like a palace. They searched the five-towered building where they found the bell, Rangol Grot's house, went past the broken tetrahedron, and walked up and down the Path of Kings (who were silent.)

Eventually, someone suggested going to where they'd last seen the princess. They did, and entered the building. They saw a glow, and went deeper into the building to find its source. They found a wide room with a throne sitting on a three-step dias. Upon it sat Princess Ailivo D'Abo, translucent and glowing blue. She told them of the curse, and how her mother attempted to sacrifice her to summon and control the demon-god. She explained that her mother split her soul into 4 skulls to make herself immortal. She told them of her loyal servants, who spirited her body away and hid her royal goods. She imparted into them a feeling of how to find it. She thanked them, and faded away. All that stood was the three-step dias, with old scrape marks where a heavy throne was dragged away long ago.

They followed their feeling and found a masoleum-like structure. In it, below a blank and normal-looking floor stone, they felt the location of the royal goods. Bruce helped pry the floor up. Beneath it they found a stone-lined pit, and in it a tiara, a somewhat feminine but barbaric helmet, two rings, a necklace, and a bracelet. They took it all headed to the gate. Ulf suggested using Sanctuary to stay, but no one was interested. In the fading light of the day they headed to the gate and back to Felltower. From there, they made their way home.

Thanks to odd dilation effects, they found they'd lost a couple of weeks either in the temple or in the gate. They summoned the chest from Rangol Grot and looted it (and kept it, for later use.) Divvying up the treasure netted each of the 10 about 17K worth of silver, and three magical items got handed out to those best suited to have them.

Notes:

- Remember that Wyatt had +6 ST (for a 17) and +6 DX (for a 21), and thus most skills in the mid to high 20s for this fight thanks to two potion rolls.

- No amount of prep and visuals help. People asked me what the priestess looked like, and if she looked human, after I posted the picture. They asked me if the statue had eyes (it doesn't, in the picture), and something else about it too that clearly wasn't in the picture.

- At one point, Varmus had little to contribute, so Aldwyn's player said, "He'll go over and collect my [dropped] swords." Aldwyn's player's brother said, "He's not your servant!" Damn right. Wizard rights and peace!

- This is why the PCs don't have any unholy water. The first thing they do when they find it, if the fight they're in is going any way except a one-way massacre in their favor, is destroy it. So, again, no Cold Fens delve. Maybe they'll find another dark demonic temple and manage to defeat its occupants without destroying the unholy water they need to penetrate into Sakatha's tomb in the Cold Fens. But then again, they sought it for a while, and then destroyed it.

- Of course, someone eventually cast Affect Spirits to attack the priestess. I forget what term I used to describe it last night, but it's basically the default "let's try this!" spell. It's been used against almost every single creature or opponent that even vaguely seems hard to kill. I'm in retrospect surprised they didn't use it on the vampire they fought. I've got a post on the spell to write - it's actually much, much, much more narrow of a spell than it seems to swell to in the minds of the players when they can't figure out how to hurt something. Ulf's player pointed out that it works on wights, but I pointed out that wights are defined as semi-corporeal and their immunities are largely tied to their partly-spirit nature. That it works on a spirit doesn't mean it works on all things hard to otherwise damage, much like spirits are.

- Animate Shadow was an interesting choice, but it's a tough cast vs. another caster. Even weak casters have Will 14-15, so the Rule of 16 limits you to a small positive margin in your favor. Hers was much higher. He did roll well a few times, but so did I.

- Overall, a good session although it dragged a bit. The PCs were, in their own words, flailing around and guessing. The irony is that they hit on a good solution early, and then abandoned it partway through and then just various half-measures. Their own Silence spell put paid to the only real cue about the weakening of the priestess, and then gagging her meant she couldn't provide any other information. So they ended up jumping from one idea to another and eventually hitting on to the solution from lack of ideas.

- They also almost destroyed two valuable magic items - the plan to strip the priestess by cutting her robe apart was only foiled by a poor damage roll followed by PC ADHD. "I tried for one second and it failed! It'll never work!" And there was a brief discussion about destroying Necros's Finger. Fighting the jaguars netted them some extra loot, but it also dragged out the fight and cost them some damage they needed to heal with potions and paut. Maybe net/net a loss?

- Ulf took the priestess's robs - Hooded Robes of Protection with Fortify +3. Gerry took Necros's Finger. Aldwyn took the D'Aboan Helm of Command.

- I did a bit of a post-session review with them, something I don't normally do, but it seemed appropriate. I'll put that up tomorrow.

- I thought "Come see me at my palace" would immediately trigger the PCs to say, well, let's check where we met her last time first. No, they went around from building to building to building, looking for "looks like a palace" locations. I guess it was late and people were brain-fried. I told them they were overthinking it, but maybe it was totally underthinking it. In any case, they eventually settled on going where they met the princess and that was the right move. I knew the skulls-puzzle thing was opaque, it was meant to be, but I thought this was obvious - why not start with the place you met her?

- XP was 4 each for loot, 1 xp for new exploration. MVP last session was Aldwyn, and it was Bruce this time for what his player described as "my only sound tactical decision ever."

Felltower pre-summary

We wrapped up the previous delve of Felltower today.

Highlights:

- the obsidian jaguars made an appearance.

- Bruce made the one sensible tactical decision of his life.

- the priestess proved hard to kill, but not necessarily hard to keep under control.

- a long frustrating attempt to figure out what to do.


- success.

- and victory.


Full summary tomorrow night.

GURPS DF Session 134, Felltower 104 - Lost City 12 - the Dark Temple (Part I)

Actual Date: May 31st, 2020
Game Dates: May 31st-June 1st, 2020

Weather: Cool and cloudy near Felltower, raining and hot in the Lost City of D'Abo

Characters:
Aldwyn Hale, human knight (287 points)
     Varmus the Hanged, human apprentice wizard (145 points)
"Mild Bruce" McTavish, Jr., human barbarian (267 points)
Crogar, human barbarian (294 points)
Galen Longtread, human scout (456 points)
Gerald Tarrant, human necromancer (374 points)
     2 Skeletons (~35 points)
     Skull spirit
Hayden the Ebon Page, human knight (307 points)
Ulf Sigurdson, human cleric (306 points)
Sir Bunny Wigglesworth, human holy warrior (250 points)
Wyatt Sorrell, human swashbuckler (300 points)

We started in Stericksburg. The group was joined by Heyden and Heyden's friend Sir Bunny Wigglesworth, a holy warrior. Quenton was too scared to follow up with the evil temple. The PCs spent a pile of money on spellstones and potions, as usual, gathered rumors, and tried to raise money. Ulf's speechifying didn't amount to much - he didn't attract a real crowd this time and raised nothing with Panhandling.

The rumors included one about how been bitten by a vampire passes on the curse. Aldwyn became worried; he's already sun-sensitive, he noted, so clearly it's starting to take hold!

Some of the PCs gathered and had Gerry cast Summon Spirit. Combined with Power Items, Lend Energy, timing on Energy Reserve, etc. they could swing 28 questions. They used every single one of them. They started with his real name - which he said he couldn't say to a non-elf. (This caused some concerns - how can he refuse? He has to answer to the best of his knowledge . . . but what if giving the answer actually violates some closely-held belief or requirement, or supernatural compulsion? Clearly, my ruling is Summon Spirit doesn't override everything.) From there they asked questions about his religion (He doesn't worship the Good God, as an elf he respect nature), his vampire companion (he met her and, as a woman, she couldn't resist him), did she have other resting places (he had no idea), something about the princess (she's a ghost who appears at night in a blue glow), a question about the headless kings of the Lost City (he didn't know what Gerry was asking about), did he do something to the headless statues in the Lost City (he didn't know what Gerry was talking about), valuables in the lost city (he looted all that he knew of), the protections in the temple (he didn't know much, he was confident his will would overcome the priestess within because no woman can resist him), what's in the temple (a demon-god he was going to master with his will and take its power), where did he get this orichalcum key (he made it), what did it do (it summoned a chest), etc.

A lot of the questions were on the same thing - would opening the chest harm the opener (no), others nearby (no), did it need to be opened in a specific spot (no), how do you summon it (command word), tell me the command word (he did - his name backwards plus the Elvish for "come"), what's in the chest (he listed his treasure) - and some seemingly low-value questions - what was your power item (the key) and such like that.

They headed out after that, originally planning to fetch Galen, go back to town, open the chest, stash the loot, then leave again . . . but more time-conscious delvers shot that down. Off to a late start, they hiked up the mountain, arrived well past the usual lunchtime, and headed into the dungeon.

They made a straight and unmolested trip to the gate (and I forgot to have them roll their HT rolls for the thin air - note to self, I'm marking it on my map as a required roll), and headed through after their more vulnerable types put on Resist Fire. Despite this, Gerry and Sir Bunny were affected by the heat a bit and were down 2-3 FP each.

They headed across town to the "Prophecy." (That is, the obelisk in the walled plaza first explored by some delvers back in Scene 23 Lost City 2.) They headed in, and four of them (Wyatt, Bruce, Ulf, Aldwyn) felt a warm feeling and found they could read the central pillar. Gerry pulled out a scroll of Mystic Mist and used it to cover the entire 42 area needed to blanket the area. Inside, they stood guard as the readers - well, not Bruce - read the prophecy. The guards saw vegepygmies watching them, and a large snake and some beetles were seen but didn't penetrate the mist, but otherwise they were left alone.

They had to puzzle over a lot - culturally the D'Aboans tell stories with a conclusion, followed by the causes of the conclusion, then the next conclusion, then the causes that link it to the previous one. Readable, but difficult to understand at times. They spent four hours going over it. It wasn't really a "prophecy" exactly, but a story of how things came to be and how they could go. Based on the situation in the city, it seems like it may have happened already. Basically, "The princess can be sacrificed to summon the demon-god. Only the chiming of the bells and the voice of the princess in the temple can “undo the curse upon all.” The story claims that they who release the demon-god, if they are masters of themselves, can master the power of the god."

That read, the PCs decided they needed to find the princess, and bring her into the temple. They couldn't recall where they'd seen the glow, exactly, but their recall and information from Rangol Grot pointed them to the southeast.

They headed there and scouted out a number of cul-de-sacs, before eventually finding one with a door off of it that interested them. They broke it down, and explored some empty rooms until they tired of that. They came out into the post-sunset gloom and sent Galen up on a roof to look around. He couldn't see a glow of any kind. ("How about one of a different color?" No. "Any auras?" No.) He climbed down.

They gathered around and pulled out the bell Gerry had - the one they recovered from the tower aka the left bell - and rang it. Nothing happened.

They waited five minutes and then rang the other one - Rangol Grot's bell aka the right bell - and rang it. Nothing happened.

They decided to ring them both - Wyatt had been concerned that ringing the new bell, or both together, would trigger something they weren't prepared for over at the temple while they were far away (I think.) Ulf tried to ring the bells by clanging them together. All that caused was a toneless "chink" and a feeling of doing it wrong. He had to gently hold them in two fingers and a thumb and gentle ring them with his ring fingers and pinkies. That worked - they both chimed a new high tone, a perfect B note.

An apparition appeared, limned in blue and translucent:



Ulf started to speak to her, and she spoke over them and pleaded for help, saying they planned to sacrifice her and the only hope was to destroy the evil in the temple so the curse could be lifted. She disappeared after her plea.

Wyatt had taken the moment she showed up to go see a man about a horse in a nearby alley. He came back, hitching up his armor, and realized he missed the whole thing. He'd been banking a long discussion, not an impersonal visitation.

The PCs decided to sleep until the morning, unhappy that they couldn't get the princess to talk to them and come with them to the temple. They holed up in one of the rooms they'd explored and closed the door.

Night was filled with weird noises, shrieks of things being horribly killed, and the occasional bangs and crashes. But nothing bothered them.

In the morning, they headed out to the temple.

They reached it without encounters and set up outside. Wyatt crushed a 1-hex Bravery spellstone. Wyatt decided he'd need a quaffed a Dexterity potion - and rolled a 6. Heyden crushed a Bravery spellstone, too.

They rang the bells, and the shimmering dome over the temple dropped, and the stone gates blocking entrance behind the dome also disappeared. The way into the temple was open.

They moved up, and looked at the two statues on either side. They were of a crouching, clawed, dome-headed, tentacled creature with bat wings. They were roughly hewn, and the PCs decided they couldn't be petrified real things. They wanted to know what kind of demon or whatever it was - Sir Bunny said it wasn't a demon, but an elder thing. Not good or evil, but rather orthogonal to both . . . and hostile to non-elder thing life.


They climbed the stairs that led up to the top of the odd-shaped building. As they reached the top, they saw the world shimmer around them (the people still on the stairs, too - it's a long group) they were . . . elsewhere.

(I had them all roll 1d12, rolling for unique numbers. Those turned out to be their landing sports. Crogar's player deserves an attaboy for suggesting it was rolling to see which dungeon each person went to.)

They all appeared in a room, roughly in a circle, all facing inward toward a roughly 10' tall statue looking just like this:


Standing in front of it was a feminine figure wearing hooded robes holding a skull-tipped rod, next to a stone bowl with some liquid in it. Silver and gold coins and greenish stones were scattered in a semi-circle around her and the front of the statue. Surrounding the all of this were a dozen crumpled skeletons.

In the four corners of the rooms were piles of skulls. In the center of each wall crouched a jet-black stone (obsidian?) jaguar.

Gerry, oddly, ended up between his two skeletons. The skull spirit didn't appear at all.

The PCs each needed to make a Body Sense roll and a Fright Check. Those without Unfazeable needed to make a check at -5; those with, a straight check. The statue was warpingly, upsettingly wrong.

Varmus missed both, and critically failed his Body Sense roll. He fell, disoriented and stunned. Several others missed a turn to Body Sense (which Heyden actually has, thanks to a timely critical long ago) and more failed the Fright Check and were stunned.

The hooded figure called out, "Arise and protect me! Kill them, my serpent sisters!"

As the PCs stood, stunned, four skeletal figures with snake staves (ciuaclá) attacked by surprise, from behind, on their chosen targets - Wyatt, Ulf, one of Gerry's skeletons (it was the only close one it could see), and Galen. They struck them all, inflicting heavy crushing damage plus cosmic toxic damage. The skeleton was quickly destroyed.

For the first 1-2 seconds, much of the party was unable to do anything. The ciuaclá continued to attack. The PCs got very lucky when they missed a few attacks. Gerry's other skeleton had its right arm smashed off (after which it was ignored). Galen managed to dodge, despite great injury and behind attacked from behind.

The PCs were forced to fight where they were against the ciuaclá.

Unengaged Heyden turned around and rush the jaguar statue behind him, and then stood and waited. In a moment, he turned and ran off toward Gerry's skeletons, guessing (okay, out-of-game knowing) Gerry must be there.

Wyatt moved to engage one, and quickly feinted it out of position and whacked it several times. It ignored all of his strikes - he did nothing to harm it. Galen turned away from the ciuaclá attacking him, grabbed out a great healing potion, and managed to down it, while Dodging the whole time. Healed up, he drew up his bow and started to shoot at the ciuaclá. He managed to hit it three times in the face, and knocked off a lot of bone.

Wyatt decided he wasn't strong enough, and quaffed a Strength potion - and rolled a 6. That made a huge difference, taking him up to ST 17 and adding 2d+4 or so to his damage.

Gerry kept his skeleton after the ciuaclá as Heyden ran up - and Gerry put Great Haste on himself and then on Heyden. Heyden attacked the ciuaclá and drove it back. Gerry basically headed toward Wyatt so he could Great Haste him, and did so.

Wyatt attacked the ciuaclá facing him and Varmus (just now rising from stun and falling) and hit it multiple times in the face. This time, with ST 17, he managed to smash its head apart. It collapsed into dust, leaving a snaky staff behind.

Meanwhile, Bruce tried to slam the ciuaclá attacking Ulf, who'd backed up to Sir Bunny. It dodged, and he moved past and it struck him and wounded him. He tried again, but it dodged aside. Sir Bunny ran off to engage the robed figure, as did Aldwyn. The ciuaclá near Sir Bunny struck him from behind, knocking him out. It shortly put Ulf down, too. Bruce slammed it again, rolling a 3, and knocked it prone.

Heyden fought his, and it managed to drop its staff thanks to a critical (parry, I think). But it dissolved into thousands of tiny snakes and wriggled back into its hands immediately! (Aldwyn was like, I want that on my sword. Shut up and take my money!)

A ciuaclá kept attacking Galen, and he parried its strikes with his Iron Arm bracer and then backed off and shot it until it was destroyed. Meanwhile, Crogar guarded his back and then rushed the skeletons guarding the center.

The one fighting Bruce was next, finished off by Bruce and possibly Wyatt. Heyden backed his up toward Galen, who shot it three times in the head because turning your back toward Galen is a cardinal sin. (So is turning toward him, or giving him the side eye.) Heyden finished off the ciuaclá after Galen's arrows damaged it badly.

As all of this went on, Aldwyn hacked down a bunch of skeletons, with his wooden sword and metal sword. Crogar did the same - first advancing cautiously, and Waiting, but then realizing his foes wouldn't advance on him he went for them. They attacked with their skeletal fingers. One eventually got lucky and hit him. His high natural DR meant the blunt claws couldn't harm him . . . but its skeletal hands flashed black and he took 1d toxic damage - Deathtouch! Still, he managed to press the skeletons back.

The entire time the hooded figure had been concentrating on a spell. She got it off as Aldwyn moved in close on her and stabbed her multiple times in the vitals - to no effect. His blade came out clean, with a sucking feeling of a wound closing around it. She made no attempt to defend, and instead finished her spell.

A six-armed snake-bodied figure appeared, just as Bruce ran up to try and melee or grapple the robed figure, too. Lucky for him a skeleton attacked him first and blocked an easy path for the snaky opponent.

(At this point, Ulf's player typed to tell everyone go for the arms. I scolded him - he's unconscious. I don't ask for a lot of in-game/out-of-game knowledge seperation, but I do ask that you only kibitz and help out and give advice if your PC is actually there and able to give it.)

Alwyn and Bruce attempted to fight the demon. The robed woman yelled, "Kill them all!" The skeletons, which had mostly been waiting and blocking, started attacking everything close to them.

With the ciuaclá down, Wyatt ran over to Sir Bunny and Ulf and used a 4-area Awaken spellstone. It woke up Sir Bunny, but not Ulf. He moved closer and used a 3-area Awaken and this time it worked.

Varmus, meanwhile, was attacked by two skeletons. He fled, and eventually surrounded himself with Create Fire. Gerry took a shot at one with a 5d Skull Missile and narrowly missed it (and Varmus.) The one-armed skeleton of Gerry's ran down and shield-bashed the other skeleton but didn't hit hard enough to harm it. Wyatt chopped down the skeletons in short order, and Gerry renewed Great Haste on him (and he took a pro-rated 3 FP.)

Galen shot the peshkali a few times, but the wounds didn't do much to her.

Sir Bunny took a good look at her and took a turn to figure out what kind of demon she was, with Hidden Lore (Demon Lore). He yelled out she was a peshkali and to cripple all of the arms.

Aldwyn, Heyden, and Crogar moved in after the demon. Crogar systematically cut down the skeletons, taking wounds from one in the process but otherwise smashing them up nicely. Heyden fought the peshkali but took some hits and critically missed at one point and fell down as his leg was crippled by a scimitar blow. Bruce tried to fight her but took three hard strikes, and just barely missed having a hand and a foot crippled. Aldwyn went for the arms, taking two out right away. The peshkali swung back at him with the other four swords and he managed to fend them off. Bruce turned to a skeleton attacking him from behind and punched it to pieces over the course of several seconds.

The PCs kept after her; she backed up as Galen tried shooting her arms off (it didn't work, despite 2d+5 impaling). Eventually Crogar moved in and tried to cut off her last arm after Aldwyn crippled three more in several seconds. He failed to do so, and she attacked back six times - 5 hits and a critical. He managed to block, parry, and dodge all 5 attacks and then stagger back wounded from the last slice. Finally Aldwyn took out the last arm, and then Galen shot her down with arrows.

The demon going down, the PCs decided to attack the robed woman. Galen put three arrows into her vitals, but she ignored them entirely. "Well, she doesn't have Missile Shield," he quipped.

Sir Bunny had stood by this point, but his right arm had been crippled in the blow that knocked him out. Left-handedly holding his sword, he dropped it and started digging for holy water. He resisted a spell from the robed woman, and then failed to resit another - Strike Blind.

Bruce tried to grapple her neck, but she managed to just barely dodge away as she stepped out of the hex she'd been in the whole time. The PCs regarded that as a victory of sorts.

Wyatt went for a quartet of disarm attempts; he was able to fairly easily sweep the wand aside.

The hooded female figure said, "Hey! My wand!" as it dropped at Wyatt's feet. She sounded more playfully annoyed than angry or surprised.

Then she laughed, and said, "You've destroyed my friends and my servants. Perhaps I'll make you into my servants when I'm finished killing you."

We left it with her turn about to begin.


***

The foppish demon-fighting holy warrior Sir Bunny is a returning player - the guy who ran Mo, back after an 18-month absence. Real life intervenes hard sometimes. According to his player, Sir Bunny Wigglesworth is cousins with Bunny Carlos from the Land of Cleve, who is a master of two sticks and the smoke of confusion.

We started at 11 am, got rolling after shopping, chatting, etc. by 12, when they began to question Rangol Grot. That took about 40 minutes (in game, 28 minutes, but I had to pause at times). It's weird. The NPC has to answer, but what do you do when there is a compulsion not to, such as a secret true name? Which will, of course, be used to summon the NPC again for multiple rounds of followup questions. Totally logical but a real drain on the GM. The spell really needs "One Try" or "One Try Per Year." That would mean each casting was even more valuable, so players would probably spend even more time on each casting, and even more time prepping the questions, but it's not like they don't maximize each time already.
     If the PCs have Summon Spirit you need to know, or be able to generate, all of the knowledge of everyone the PCs encounter and kill, or who dies, or who was dead when they find them. And they'll ask for the full name of the victim first, to eliminate the -5 for the next time.
     I shot down a few questions. One was, "What obscure facts do you know about vampires?" I couldn't think of a way to answer that. Just rattle off random crap about vampires for 60 seconds and hope it seemed "obscure"? What does that mean for Hidden Lore (Undead)? Does Gerry get a situational bonus from now on? Do they have to depend on writing it all down and then pulling up next time someone mentions fangs or blood and run through the whole list? Just no, I didn't even know how to deal with that or what to say in answer to it.
Knowledge skills complicate these kinds of player-knowledge-heavy games.

Quenton is going to be right upset when he finds out Ulf considers the Elven reverence for Nature - shared to an extent with druids, who lack the Sense of Duty but draw their power from it - is not really "good."

I don't know why, but I honestly thought the PCs would go right to the temple. They didn't last time because it was late and we wanted to wrap up game; had there been unlimited time I'm sure they'd have recuperated and then gone right for it. So this time, they went right for it . . . after an hour of Summon Spirit and followup, then a trek to the "prophecy" to read the whole thing, then a trip over to find Princess D'Abo and talk to her, and then to the temple. I'll give them points for thoroughness but it did feel like avoidance pretty quickly. No one was in a hurry to go to the temple and got less in a hurry the more outside exploration they did. I've experienced that happen before - the decisive plan of action "right after we check A and B" turns into a real reluctance to do the actual thing. What you don't know can kill you, but what you do know tends to paralyze you. So can the perception of having many options. I think it's easy to just try to get one more item, one more double-check with NPCs, one more look around "in case we missed anything," etc. and never feel really ready.

It's also kind of amusing that they've been carefully avoiding the blue glow whenever they saw it, or refusing to investigate it. Now, they had to seek it out.

It probably feels unfair to have things that can inflict a Fright Check right through Unfazeable. Sure, but that's how GURPS Cthulhupunk handled Great Old Ones, and I figure it's a fun thing to put on them - Terror (Cosmic: Ignores Unfazeable). Making Unfazeable wipe out any penalties to the roll seemed fair. The people with it were basically fine, but threatened, the ones without . . . had issues.

Right after the peshkali lost two limbs in one second, I had her attack 4 times. The next second, I went back to 6. I realized nothing says she has some limited form of Extra Attack that's tied to the number of limbs. DFRPG doesn't limit you to different attacks. She attacked six times with one scimitar at the end.

We'll see how it goes next time - the PCs have wiped out the skeletons, the ciaucla, and the peshkali. They've got four black stone statues of jaguars and this priestess who seems unimpressed by their attacks. Wyatt just disarmed her, and the PCs are calling for Gerry and Ulf to get out the Bells of D'Abo for next time. Will that solve their issue? We'll see. They've been very reluctant to use them since they determined they give off different notes near each other.

MVP was Aldwyn for crippling all six limbs on the Peshkali. No other XP; the delve isn't finished. Seems like there will be loot, if they can survive.


By the way, is there a Roll20 "Invisible" switch somewhere? It would be nice to set it so invisible folks are visible to the GM and themselves, but not others. I'm guessing "no" or "If I spend a lot of money and then use some special .api and hours of my time to get it working." It would be so helpful and tactically interesting to have "Invisible' and "See Invisible" powers interacting automatically.

Felltower / Lost City Pre-Summary

Part I of a multi-part delve today as the PCs are stuck in a combat.

they:

- brought along a new companion, a Holy Warrior of most flamboyant mien (a returning player),

- summoned up Rangol Grot's spirit and played 28 questions with him,

- read the prophecy in the Lost City,

- went out at night in the city to try to meet the ghostly princess, and did so,

- penetrated the "evil temple" and got into a big brawl with an evil priestess or witch of some kind, deathtouch skeletons, snakey skeleton women, and more.

We ended mid-fight as the PCs crushed much of the opposition and found their final foe didn't seem vulnerable to things like "attacks" or "damage."

Full summary tomorrow.

GURPS DF Session 133, Felltower 103 - Lost City 11

Actual Date: May 17th, 2020
Game Dates: May 17th-18th, 2020

Weather: Cool and cloudy near Felltower, sweltering and rainy in the Lost City of D'Abo, then beautiful and clear.

Characters:
Aldwyn Hale, human knight (297 points)
     Varmus the Hanged, human apprentice wizard (145 points)
"Mild Bruce" McTavish, Jr., human barbarian (267 points)
Crogar, human barbarian (294 points)
Galen Longtread, human scout (456 points)
Gerald Tarrant, human necromancer (374 points)
     2 Skeletons (~35 points)
     Skull spirit
Ulf Sigurdson, human cleric (306 points)
Quenton Mudbourne, goblin druid (317 points)
Wyatt Sorrell, human swashbuckler (293 points)

We started out in Stericksburg, with the PCs gathering rumors. Amusingly, Crogar, Varmus, and Gerry all heard the same rumor. Clearly, they were all at the same bar. One rumor Wyatt picked up was that a dwarf wizard and his companions came down from Felltower . . . and they'd been there a year. He couldn't find them to talk to them personally.

Ulf did some Panhandling after giving a big speech and took in about 12 sp in donations.

They gathered a lot of Strengthen Will spellstones and Paut and headed out. They made their way up to the dungeon and made spellstones and Gerry created a Skull Spirit, and noted he was running low on skulls. Wyatt took specifics of what he needed (sapient creature skulls.)

The headed through the trapdoor, which was unlocked. They made their way to the next level, to the stairs down, and to the gate. Even in their brief time on the "gate level" Aldwyn suffered from the thin air. Again, they remarked they needed to "do something" about the air.

The gate was open, and they headed through. As usual for winter/spring, rain was sheeting down in the Lost City. They settled in for the rest of the day, waiting out th weather with Galen and Wyatt and Quenton outside in a Weather Dome and the others inside. In the evening the rain slacked off, so they set pairs of guards, each with two one-hour shifts, and waited for morning.

Overnight Varmus spotted some blueish/white lights flashing in the southeast, but Aldwyn wasn't able to see them. No one else saw anything in their shift, but heard a lot - bugs, rockfalls, splashes, slitherings, scraping, and other less pleasant noises.

In the morning they headed to the vegepygmy fort, taking the long way around to avoid the shielded temple. They made it to the vegepygmies over the flooded path, and sent Quenton in via Levitation. He brought up their offer to help find Rangol Grot and they agreed to do so right away. Their chief designated one druid and six others and two thorn hounds to go with them. They left by the north "gate" which just opened and closed itself for them. They made their way across town, picking up more vegepygmies as they went.

Eventually they reached the switchback path that Gerry and Quenton and a previous group had used to come down into the lost city, where they fought vegepgymies.

There they picked up a last batch of vegepygmies - given them an escort of 34 vegepygmies including 4 druids plus 6 thorn hounds. They trekked off a few miles, stopping once on the way. The vegepgymies tried to give them an idea of distance but couldn't get it across; they'd end up going about 5 miles. A mile out from Rangol Grot's place they stopped to eat on the tight trail. They wanted the vegepygmies to scout ahead, but not if they couldn't assure they'd be undetected. They said they could go but couldn't assure they wouldn't be sensed. So they spelled-up Galen and sent him, including Invisibility and No Smell.

Galen moved off and found the came, right at a three-way path intersection. The path was guarded with two covered pits, with only a narrow path in between. There were five small one-man tents, and a cave mouth. Walking around were two gnolls with bows, and Galen spotted an orc in one tent, clearly sleeping. There was a firepit that had been used frequently, set up for the smoke to dissipate against the canopy before escaping to the sky. Galen scouted around and determined there were three orcs, three gnolls (another showed up with a large monkey on its shoulder, which the gnolls began to butcher), and two tents with unknown occupants. Galen tried to check the cave but a heavy curtain was set up inside to block all light.

He headed back, after briefly considering just killing them all.

Once back, he told the others and they geared up and headed out. They left the vegepygmies behind after they said they'd done what was asked showing the group where to go. Galen was given a 30 second lead, and then they followed - all as stealthily as possible. Galen watched the camp and saw the gnolls had posed themselves to guard better - two of them, anyway, one was missing - and the orcs were awake. They'd clearly heard his friends. He moved into the camp and lined up a shot at the curtain, waiting for something to emerge. Wyatt was also invisible, and was also to go and wait near the curtain to kill Rangol Grot as soon as he came out.

The PCs advanced and engaged the waiting orcs and gnolls. The orcs took up stations behind the concealed pits, but Galen's directions were explicit and no one walked into them.

The orcs threw javelins but Crogar and Aldwyn deflected those. The PCs moved ahead, slowly so Wyatt could move past as the fighters moved up. Gerry immediately began a cycle of Great Haste spells on himself and on the fighters. The orcs were quickly slain, lasting only a few seconds as Aldwyn and Crogar moved into them. Aldwyn took a shot from a gnoll concealed out of immediate line of sight - and it rolled a 4. The arrow hit his mail and didn't penetrate.

The PCs moved into the camp, and as they did so Mild Bruce took a blowgun dart in the face. As he ran to attack the tiny many who'd stepped out of a tent to shoot him, another dart hit him from another angle. He raced after the first horde pygmy, who fled. Bruce followed, only to be shot and wounded by a gnoll archer waiting down a side path. He slammed the pygmy down and for good measure tried to run down the gnoll. That didn't work and the gnoll dodged, and bit him on the shoulder as he went by; Mild Bruce critically failed his Dodge and fell. Crogar ran up and right over a concealed pit!

Lucky for him, he had Levitation on from Gerry, who wanted it as a way to neutralize him if he was charmed. Crogar didn't fall in the pit but he was stuck. He managed to wound the gnoll but was stuck. Gerry paused and dragged him back to "land." Crogar moved off to deal with new prey.

Meanwhile the curtain parted about halfway. A shadowy form was glimpsed behind it - Galen took three shots. All three should have hit, but narrowly missed. Missile Shield! Out from behind the curtain swarmed 5 hexes worth of black bats! They came right out and attacked invisible Wyatt, who was next to the cave mouth. He took some cuts on his exposed skin from bat bites (and would later need a HT roll.) Gerry saw this as he advanced and changed up an Explosive Skull Missile. A moment later he threw it in the midst of the swarms. It blew up, wounding Aldwyn and Crogar, and Wyatt, but demolished all but the bats swarming Wyatt. Those would go down a few seconds later from cumulative attacks and another Explosive Skull Missile.

By this time, Galen had gotten bored and engaged the two gnolls, killing one and wounding the other. A moment later the other was slain, too, by a combination of attacks. He also shot down the other horde pygmy he'd seen hit Bruce, firing through the tent slit to kill him.

Aldwyn rushed the curtain and cut it down. Beyond was a cave floored with rugs, and he glimpsed booted feet beyond.

Meanwhile, as Bruce and the gnoll fought - and eventually both ended up prone thanks to critical failures. Bruce jumped down and mounted the gnoll and tried to punch him, as the gnoll tried to bite back. They ended up rolling around on the ground for a while, before eventually Crogar came back and took a few swings into the fight and hit and wounded the gnoll. Bruce disengaged and Crogar finished the gnoll off.

At the cave, Gerry put Great Haste on Wyatt and Aldwyn. Wyatt threw in a visibility dust grenade but didn't reveal anything. They sent in the skull spirit and it attacked a man standing off to the side. Wary for pits, Aldwyn pushed his sword into the doorway and found one. Galen shot into the cave and killed the man standing there, being attacked by the skull spirit. The figure dropped. Aldwyn jumped in after probing for a safe spot, and then Wyatt followed shortly after. They shrugged off charm spells thanks to Hide Thoughts, but then Wyatt was put down with a Sleep spell. He dropped. A mahogany-skinned woman wearing nothing but a leather bikini bottom, a cape, and thigh-high boots grabbed sleeping Wyatt and lifted him one-handed and brought a black knife to his neck and said, "Hold or I'll stab your friend." Aldwyn attacked immediately, slashing her arm twice. She parried one but the other hit, and slashed her arm nicely . . . but the cut healed instantly on the other side of it.

As this happened, a loud voice echoed around the room saying, "Let's talk! We want to negotiate."

Gerry sent the skull spirit to attack the woman but it missed and hit grappled Wyatt, instead, waking him up! He immediately (see notes) broke free thanks to two turns of Great Haste. The woman stabbed him but he defended. They ended up in a three-way fight. Aldwyn was put back to sleep, and the woman grabbed him and pulled him into close combat. Wyatt drew his wooden sword and tried that as well as his magical sword. The magic sword did nothing, but the wooden sword made contact and left a mark. So he kept battering away with the wooden longsword, wounding her a bit. Aldwyn was woken up by the skull spirit attacking him, but the woman was faster. She bit Aldwyn on the neck and started drinking his blood. She also stabbed him as Wyatt kept hitting him. Aldwyn tried to break free but kept failing, and she kept stabbing him and draining 3 HP per second from his neck. Soon he was making rolls against death. Ulf cast Sunlight, wounding the vampire. Its effect was immediate, but slow - she'd hold on for a while.

Gerry used Hidden Lore (Undead) to try to figure out vampire weaknesses.

The voice kept yelling, "Parlay, dammit, let's negotiate!"

Eventually even with her on him he freed up a Great Healing potion and drank it (lots of DX rolls), putting him to positive HP again. The vampire woman, still getting battered by Wyatt, tried to cut Aldwyn's throat. It took three tries but she finally cut him through his armor and wounding him terribly. He managed to escape from her grasp. Wyatt had kept hitting her and trying to Disarm, but her ST-based Knife skill well outdid his DX-based Broadsword skill.

Galen came into the cave at this point, and started looking around. He spotted a shallow grave that had skins and cloths tossed aside from it, like it was an unmade bed.

The voice kept demanding a parlay, and calling them murderers for not listening to his pleas to talk.

Galen looked around more. Eventually Gerry decided Rangol Grot must be behind an illusion, not Invisible, since Galen's See Invisible didn't help any. So he sent the skull spirit around bumping into walls. That eventually broke an illusion of a cabinet, which hid Rangol Grot. Wyatt immediately broke off and ran over and attacked him, cutting off one of his legs and then stabbing him four times in his one good eye. That killed him outright.

They went back to work on the vampire. Aldwyn got out a wooden stake. Galen ran over to Ulf's calls and caught one that Ulf tossed him. They ran over. Aldwyn managed to stab her with the stake and left it in. She was wounded but not dead, and slashed him in the neck. He rolled a 17 on his death check . . . and despite HT 13 and Hard to Kill 2 he was still mortally wounded.

The PCs piled on the vampire. Bruce ran in and slammed her, took a lot of damage, and fell down. Wyatt splashed her with holy water and injured her. Galen moved up. As Aldwyn went down, Galen stepped up and stabbed at her twice. One hit . . . for 1 damage / 3 injury. That was just enough to put her to a death check, and she dropped.

They poured holy water on her face, damaging it a bit further. Then Bruce punched the stakes in deeper. Then they stripped her naked and Entombed her after using Shape Earth to destroy her resting place.

That done, they used the Bell of D'Abo and searched. They found an orichalcum key with an orange tassel on it (magical), her knife - a black piece of obsidian (magical), and the other bell. They gathered up the weapons, the cash on the gnolls and orcs, and the heads of everyone intelligent (minute the pygmies, who Bruce stomped on the head for poisoning him), and then dragged out of there.

They found at this point that the "mage" that Galen had shot down was a dressing dummy that had been covered with Illusion Shell.

Wyatt made a HT roll after the fight not to catch disease from the bats.

Bruce later made his HT roll not to catch GNOLLVID-20, too.

The PCs made it back to the gate, escorted by the vegepygmies. They camped out there, healed everyone up, and returned to Felltower and from there to Stericksburg.

Back in town they sold off the salvaged gear, got the orichalcum key and knife analyzed, and eventually sold off the knife and divided up the loot.

Notes:

The weather was terrible again in the Lost City - I rolled 15+ on the weather table most of their recent delves. The second day I rolled a 5, though, for perfect weather, so that probably made up for it. They had to hike ~5 miles from start to finish to Rangol Grot's place. In even usual rain that would have been a slog.

The PCs had no interest in parlaying with Rangol Grot. Wyatt scoffed at Galen's interest in Rangol's call for negotiation, as if Galen was the only one the guy was talking to. In the end, they killed him. It got me thinking, though - are there any disadvantages that essentially make you talk to civilized foes who ask to? I can't think of any in DF. Pacifism, maybe, but you're not likely to be fighting in the first place and it's not a PC disadvantage in DF. Someone, I can't recall who, suggested that Rangol Grot had a lot of nerve asking to parley after trying to kill first Gerry back in the day. You know, the first time the PCs barged onto his property and started killing everyone. Delver logic is actually among the most painful forms of spurious logic.

Also gamer logic, there was some discussion about how the vegepygmies promised to help them fight Rangol Grot, and that the plantfolk need the shielded temple dealt with to purify their city. The vegepygmies said they'd show their druid friend where the one-eyed elf is. They never mentioned the temple.

Spell question - can someone with Levitate fall, if the spell is on them but the wizard hasn't actually moved them around yet? It hadn't come up until Crogar knocked the cover off of that pit. We went with no. But that also means a person with Levitate can't jump down (and probably shouldn't be able to jump across, something I forgot later.) Part of why I ruled this was is that in Bard's Tale you used a levitation spell to avoid pits. I did rule that Walk on Air would be different - a fall breaks the spell, so falling would happen and the spell would be broken. They used the old "run one inch off the ground" thing, which I figure is playing it way too fine, but whatever.

I rolled a lot of criticals with the gnolls - lots of 4s and 17s, specifically. I rolled none with any other NPC. Lucky for the PCs - a single 4 by Rangol Grot would have meant a charmed PC or someone sleeping until the fight was over (or longer), no resistance.

The usual "oops" moments. One was the gnoll shooting Aldwyn in the chest. He went vitals because they're all in leather armor, right? I rolled a 4. Sweet! Except Aldwyn says, "Good thing I have my full armor on!" He does? He did. I didn't ask. The gnoll wouldn't have put a broadhead through mail; he'd have gone for the less-protected face. Sigh. What should have been the shot of a lifetime bounced off of the DR. Annoying, but I'd already called the shot. More annoying still was the PCs "discovered" the way to deal with Sleep is with the skull spirit just hitting the sleeping PC to get a HT roll and wake up. That happened by accident with Wyatt, who immediately sprang into action and did 4 Break Free actions a split-second later, followed by 3 more on the second turn of Great Haste. I forgot that - and the players who looked up the spell didn't note that - you are mentally stunned. Oh sure, Wyatt would have recovered with his 16 or less (IQ 10 or 11 plus Combat Reflexes) but it gain him a full turn of successful CP depletion that foiled the vampire's next move and got him away a full second earlier than would have otherwise. So yeah, that was a big deal error. I should give out XP rewards to people who inflict the full extent of the rules on their own characters. It would just make my life easier.

I'm still of the opinion that 17-18 is a critical failure and death on a death check unless you have 16+ on your roll. But I let it go.

The vampire was fun; I've used that mini before (as the vampire of the Evil Stone Head island in my last campaign.) She could have made some better decisions but her disadvantages limited her options a lot once triggered. Spoiler alert - I use a few different kinds of vampires, with overlapping traits but not identical curses. I was surprised they didn't immediately deploy weapons suited for vampires, though - Sunlight, holy water, garlic, and wooden stakes seemed pretty obvious choices, especially since they carry these items and took that spell to deal with vampires. It's like running into werewolves and trying to beat them to death with normal weapons while your silver dagger is in your belt sheath. Even more strangely, they didn't deploy some of these until after Gerry rolled Hidden Lore to remember what he could about killing vampires. Wasn't staking a vampire kind of an obvious choice? Wyatt had nothing better than his blunt wooden sword, but they really frittered away a lot of time before helping him with specifics. I know the players will say they didn't think of vampires, but geez, bat swarms! Sunlight-proof cave! Fangs!

They took Rangol Grot's head to use for Summon Spirit. We'll resolve that email (or more likely, the beginning of the next session because folks are too busy to get to it before then.)

They also salvaged the orc and gnoll heads for Skull Spirit spells, took every weapon (not the armor, it wasn't in great condition), and everything salable or portable - such as the vampire's thigh-high boots, leather bikini bottom, and cloak. They'd have brought her, too, if they thought they could sell her (Wyatt suggested her fangs were loot.) Just goes to show with delvers in general, and especially with a necromancer in the group, everything is loot down to the bodies themselves. I'm glad I've been so strick with Repair spells or every single thing the PCs find needs full dimensions, weight, price as-is, price new, and materials needed to repair. And I'm not even kidding.

They're not sure what to do with the key. It summons something, but they need a command word (at least.)

The knife was obsidian, but fine quality and both Puissance +1 and Shatterproofed - value $15,000. They spent a good 5 minutes or more debating the knife. Bruce wanted it until Aldwyn pointed out that his ST exceeded the maximum of a "normal" large knife. They sold it, in the end, because they needed the cash for loot and no one needs a knife especially much. They got $6,000.

XP was 4 each for loot, 1 xp for exploration - 2 and 1 for Galen who only took home $800 not the $4K he needs. MVP was Wyatt for keeping the vampire busy.
(Speaking of "needs" I really shouldn't have gone with my hybrid loot levels system; I did that to quiet complaints about sudden rises in loot needed back in the day. I think the smoothed, heavier progression is actually more logical and more fair risk-to-reward. In other words, I'd do Method 2, not Method 3, from this page.)