June 3, 2017

Battle Technique #33: Letting Your Gnome Take the Brunt of the Damage

The Motley Too then approach Mangar's stronghold, and speak the phrase given to them by Sebastian, "Mangar, we submit to your test". The door opens and the party steps inside...

...The door closes behind them. Inside a stone edifice dominates the center of the room. In the corner is an armored skeleton holding a green javelin. The inscription on the stone says the group must locate the "heaven gems". There are seven in total, but they must bring at least two to the top of the tower. The more gems they collect, the greater their reward.

Sensing a restless spirit in the skeleton, The Harper of the North speaks to it. The skeleton reveals that it used to be a man named Jorg. Jorg was a warrior for the Giant-King Roe several hundred years ago. He was abandoned by his two companions when he became injured in this stronghold. Before The Harper puts the spirit to rest, Jorg advises the group not to stay on the path and to try to look behind the puzzles presented to them. They take his green javelin but opt to leave the bulky armor behind.

Delphine opens the door that leads further into the stronghold only to recoil in horror. Inside the narrow corridor looms an umber hulk on a red pedestal. Taking a closer look, Adarra assures the group the umber hulk is not moving. Jandove bravely clamors over the umber hulk to the door at the other end.

Almost as soon as she opens the door, Jandove is covered in a sweet, sticky goo that immobilizes her. This room has a grated floor. At the opposite side on a raised platform is some kind of squid creature. It seems to change colors rapidly - red, green, yellow, blue - spitting the sticky goo with each color change.

Delphine sends Tala towards the platform to investigate, but jets of flame shoot randomly out of the floor, hitting the hawk. Delphine cries out in pain as Tala crashes unconscious to the floor. A door opens in the ceiling and stirges fly out. Attracted to the sticky syrup, they immediately attack Jandove, drilling through the hardened goo and into her arm, feasting on her blood.

Wileu, The Harper, and Sir Gyles attempt to help Jandove but avoid actually entering the room and becoming a target for the squid. Delphine blinks herself out of phase to rescue Tala, and Adarra tries to find a spell that will protect the group from the flames. Unfortunately, when Delphine blinks into phase to grab Tala, the stirges attach themselves to her, one of them hitting a nerve on her leg. Delphine collapses.

Sir Gyles: Time to win this fight! Battle leader!

After many fumbles and many many more stirges, the group remembers Jorg's advice. Adarra summons a burst of rain, dampening the jets of flame long enough for Delphine to fly to the platform. The color-changing squid is actually four squids on a quickly rotating table. On the wall behind them is a purple gem. Delphine grabs it and flies to a door on the east side of the room. Meanwhile, Sir Gyles, Wileu, Jandove, and The Harper repeatedly trip and fall on the floor.

Opening the door, hoping for an exit from this steaming room, Delphine is given a second shock as this corridor houses a dracolisk. Unfortunately, unlike the umber hulk, this monster is very much alive. Delphine slams the door shut as the dracolisk charges towards her.

The Harper casts darkness to obscure the group's escape past the dracolisk. Adarra blinds it with flashing lights. Most of the party run past the creature without incident. However, despite its blindness, the dracolisk senses Wileu as she tries to run past. Jandove rushes back to distract the monster by tripping and knocking herself out with her bow. The maneuver works, the dracolisk turning in the gnome's direction and away from Wileu. Delphine saves them both, killing the dracolisk with a jet of flame from her staff.

This corridor opens to a room that seems safe enough. The party catches its breath while exploring. In the center of the room is an odd looking chair. Tubes extend from the back, running into the floor and resurfacing at a metal panel on the wall. A metal bowl-shaped headpiece is suspended above the seat. On the south wall are three alcoves. Above each opening is a symbol - a black dragon, a green snake, and a blue eagle. Not coincidentally, there are two suits of armor in the room, one with a black dragon emblem and one with a green snake. Sir Gyles remembers the armor on the skeleton had a blue eagle on it so he runs and retrieves it from the foyer.

Donning the armor, Sir Gyles, Kurtis, and The Harper each take a turn sitting in the chair. Flipping the switch seems to charge the armor with electricity. Standing in the alcoves with the charged armor causes a secret panel to open in one of the walls revealing another purple heaven gem.

Not Enough Heads

Continuing through the next door, the Motley Too finds another narrow corridor, this one inhabited by two frozen chimeras, large creatures with the heads of a dragon, a lion, and a goat. In the middle of the hallway under a sconce is a red javelin. The party walks towards the door at the other end, but as they reach the sconce the chimeras come to life and attack.

Sir Gyles: Seven heads are better than six! Battle leader!

One of the dragon heads shoots a blast of fire killing Delphine and severely injuring Wileu and Kurtis. Fortunately, in an amazing feat of archery, Jandove runs past the second chimera, leaps into the air and spins around firing off a hail of arrows that kills the creature. She fires one last arrow at the remaining chimera. The Harper reaches up and touches the arrow as it flies past him, casting a paralyzation spell on it. The arrow flies true and the chimera is frozen once again. This makes it much easier to kill.

Sir Gyles adds the red javelin to his collection. Wileu's and Kurtis' wounds are tended to while The Harper resurrects Delphine using a scroll. She awakens to find her leg healed, but something does not seem quite right. There is a heaviness on her soul.

The Harper: *pats shoulder* Life is suffering.

Pressing on, they enter a round room bathed in a purple light, a winding staircase hugging the wall. Checking the sconces, the Motley Too collects a third heaven gem.

Musical Clams

Another frozen umber hulk, this time on a green pedestal, guards the next hallway. Vain remains by the stairs while the rest of the group move down the hall. It opens to a room where glittery flecks seem to be constantly falling from the ceiling. Once the party enters the room, the door closes behind them and a tinkling giggling can be heard, though the source is unknown. Lined up in the center of the room are five three-foot wide open clam shells, one gold, the rest silver. On a dais is another clam shell more than twice as large, this one closed by a padlock. Hanging on a wall behind the large clam shell is a small silver hammer.

Inside the gold clam shell is a key. Before they can take it, the shells shut and begin to shuffle. Hitting the gold shell with the silver hammer causes a dull thud. On all of the silver clam shells, it produces a musical sound and causes that shell to open briefly before all of the clam shells shuffle again.

Bored with the group's experimentation, Kurtis moves to the door on the west end of the room and opens it. The scragglemaw on the other side begins to charge immediately. Kurtis slams the door shut and runs away. Adarra transforms herself into a hippo before joining Delphine and Sir Gyles at the west door to meet the scragglemaw head-on.

The scragglemaw bursts through the door. As everyone knows, hippos are very dangerous animals, especially when they bite. Soon, the scragglemaw knows this, as well.

In retaliation, it claws the three in a spinning move before leaping over them to kill Kurtis. Once again, Jandove saves the day with her arrows killing the hippo-wounded creature before it can maul anyone else.

Inspecting the hallway from which the scragglemaw had come, the party finds a control panel of some kind on the wall. There is a list of rooms, some of them recognizable as those the group had already walked through, with a dial next to each. The dial for the foyer is set to "three" while all the others are at "zero". Changing the setting for the clam shell room to "one" does not seem to obviously change anything, but before they can test the hammer on any of the shells, Jandove feels a compelled to investigate the tower.

At the top of the winding stairs they come to a metal door. There are two heaven-gem sized holes and an unknown rune above the door. Placing two of the gems in the openings causes the door to open. Right inside the door is a large bin with a sign. The sign reads: "Deposit heaven gems here." The Motley Too walks past this to examine the rest of the room.

It contains several scrolls and other items that are likely magickal. The group debates whether or not they should take the items, fearing a reprisal for stealing. Tired of the debate, Adarra randomly grabs a scroll and hands it to The Harper, hoping one of them can resurrect Kurtis.

When nothing terrible happens to Adarra for taking the scroll, the party examines all of the items. The Harper finds two resurrection scrolls (luckily for Kurtis) and two scrolls for a mage. Delphine opens a case containing three extra healing potions, a potion of super heroism, and one of diminution. Jandove recognizes three gems that can be affixed to an item making that item more powerful.

After The Harper resurrects Kurtis, the group can get back to solving the clam shell puzzle (or not because really they only need two gems and they have that and more so it's like they already succeeded).

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