So it's been a while since one of these floated across the wires. That's because my DM Paul and his lovely wife went on a big trip to England, and thus we had a brief hiatus. But they got back last weekend and so it was back to the table this Wednesday.
Jolly good, eh what?So, when last we were with our mighty band of adventuristas we were making our way through the gloomy gloomwood, and had just finished a fight with a couple of wereboars.
We camped out for the rest of the night without any more trouble, so the next day we packed up and got going again, working our way through the dark, creepy tangle of trees along an ancient elvish road that was more weeds than paving stones.
Eventually, we came to a tight narrowing in the road where the trees became like a tunnel, and something big and arachnidy had gone and webbed this small passage up. So we were left with a choice of going off the path into the tangle of the woods, or cut/burn our way through the web.
We chose the latter, since with what we'd already seen and fought and the rep this area had, we didn't want to add getting lost to the list of our troubles.
So we set Gentleman Jack Getz up in front with a torch tied to a ten foot pole, and he began the arduous process of burning a big enough hole for a guy on horseback to get through the gauzy barrier that faced us. We decided on this rather than a smaller hole just in case we had to make a quick retreat.
As it was it was slow going, and for added annoyance we really didn't have more than two torches between us. (We're mostly lantern/oil based light, since you get the added bonus of Molotov Cocktails from that.) So we were pretty concerned about running out of torch before we ran out of web to burn.
After an hour of burning we were only half way through the web tunnel, with Getz, his horse, Kashim on his warhorse, and Jantz on his horse standing single file while the thief slowly burned away the webs. Of course, this was when a couple of gimundous frikkin' spiders pop out of the webs and attack. They grabbed up Gentleman Jack with huge suction cup tipped legs and tried to cram the poor guy right in their maws.
Well, the rest of us were kind of parked outside like we were in bad traffic on I95 (in other words, like we were in traffic on I95), so the best we could do was move to the sides of the "road" so that the guys in the tunnel could back out.
Only Kashim, our fierce foreign fighter from far afield where they're fond of falafel, could mount any kind of counterattack, so he charged in with blades blazing, and managed to keep from getting grabbed and mawstuffed too.
Getting the horses out turned out to be a bit of a problem, since Getz' horse blocked his escape, as well as Jantz's horse and Kashim's. I kind of kick myself about this juncture 'cos I forgot I had the Ring of Animal Control on me. I could have backed the horses out by remote control a lot sooner.
While we were making three point turns with the horses, the spiders got into a little tug of war over Gentleman Jack, which really wasn't doing him or his spine much good. Thankfully, they didn't seem to have any poison, or else our hapless thief would probably have been dead several times over. He just got munched, and had a chunk taken out of his thigh in a critical hit.
Things were starting to look desperate, which is usually the go button for Kashim. He leapt off of his horse and dove onto the back of one of the spiders, succeeding in stabbing it through its cephalothorax and killing it. I'm a little muddled with events here, but I think the other spider had dropped Gentleman Jack at this point, and he managed to crawl away and hide under the dead spider.
Meanwhile, we'd gotten the horses rearranged and a couple guys with polearms took the front to help Kashim out, and we managed to get the other monster arachnid dead with a bit more stabbing.
From there we laid some healing mojo on Getz, popping that chunk out of his leg back into place and giving him a little bit of git up n' go. Then we set back to work burning the webs, and after a short while longer we made it through, burning the rest of the way with a flask of oil.
The gloom still loomed though, and the woods got spookier as we went. As night was beginning to fall, making it marginally darker than it already was under the forest's impenetrable canopy, a terrified fox bounded across our path, pursued by a trio of ghostly elves riding ghostly elf horses.
Two rode off after their quarry, but one spotted us and turned, howling like a banshee and charged us. Right off, the Deacon tried to turn him, but didn't roll good enough, so we were forced to take up arms and fight.
Klint, our senior thief got most of the good hits in, since he had the magic sword with a +2 vs. undead. Meanwhile, Kashim and the Deacon concentrated fire on his horse, since we both had +1 weapons of our own, Kashim the Vadium Sword and the Deacon his Mojo stick. We managed to unhorse the wraith, popping the ectoplasmic equine like a soap bubble and sending his rider tumbling to the road. After a few more whacks, we dispelled the phantom elf, but not before he got a constitution draining hit in on Gentleman Jack. (He was quite lucky that Paul's kind of working out what he wants to do with level drain attacks.)
After that, we decided to camp, again setting up right in the road. Mercifully, night passed uneventfully, or at lest as uneventfully as it could in the Gloomwood with all the monsters and evil faerie and squirrel on squirrel violence going on.
The next "morning" we set out, and by midday found we were moving into a classier section of the wood, that Hearth, our companion elf wizard, said was telling him we were close to our destination in Elfhold. We met up with a couple of elf hunters who were just regular elves, not ghosts, and they were nice enough to guide us the rest of the way. So we made it!
Cookies for everyone!
Once we were there, we set up a meeting with the Elf King, who received us most graciously. Unfortunately, it turns out that Prince Gway, who we'd been seeking to warn about the eminent danger to Restenford (where all the bars we go to are located), had run out of patience waiting for his sidekick Rodger, who we'd busted out of jail and escorted here, and hand gone on a quest to find certain elvish artifacts of great magical power he was convinced would help him fast track his way to the crown. Rodger was understandably ticked off, and walked out fuming about his boss.
So we got a little chance to sit back and kind of re-appraise and huddle up.
One of the main issues was that Kashim was operating under a quest spell, ever since his little escapade in the temple fountain back in Greenwild, and we weren't sure if we'd tripped it off or not. The conditions of the quest spell stated that as soon as we saw Prince Gway he had to drop whatever else he was doing and go on a mission to find a missing temple acolyte somewhere around the cheerily named Skull Mountain. But we hadn't met with Prince Gway, so odds are we're still clear.
Hearth the elf sought out Roger and had a long (and excellently role played, btw) chat about the prospects of the kingdom and whether we should go search for Gway or cut bait. The upshot was that Gway was a good enough guy, for a prince, and a damn sight better than Prince Hank, but he tended to get caught up with the idea that some sort of magical solution could solve all his problems, rather than going the political route as Rodger had recommended.
So with that in mind, we decided we'd probably do well to go find our errant Prince and get his butt back on mission. We asked a favor of the Elf King to speak to the sages that Prince Gway might have consulted before going off on his search into the Gloomwood.
From them, we found out about this place called "The Shelf" which was some sort of geographic feature that reputedly contained the site of the Tree of Life, where the elves and all other sapient life first arose. There, apparently, was a great book that held mighty magics from the early days of creation.
So the plan was to find this place and hopefully find Prince Gway before something bad happened to him. Of course, we needed to prep, so we spent the rest of the session getting some stuff done.
The Deacon was sorely missing the BOOM! component of the mighty Mojo Stick, and thus inquired about any mage who might be able to help us recharge it with Magic Missiles. I was directed to the tent of an aged elf mage known as Hovan of the Four Masters, who after a bit of bargaining agreed to lay a buncha magic missiles on my staff for 10 gold a spell. I forked over 100 so that the Mojo Stick would get nice and charged up, but it meant we'd have to hang around for about 4 days while Hovan made with the boom booms. Klint accompanied me, and struck a bargain to transcribe some spells into his spell book. I don't rightly recall which ones, but they'll come in handy if he can learn 'em.
Gentleman Jack was still feeling the spiritual drag of his encounter with the elven wraith, and thus sought out some clerical assistance to restore his lost Constitution. He was directed to the Shrine of the Maiden of the Waters (I think it was.), which was crewed by a bevy (and you can only use the word "bevy" in this particular context, really) of lovely, exceedingly friendly elf maids.
I think Kashim went with him, and the Deacon sent Frog, our henchman, along to keep an eye on them based solely on the description of "shrine maidens". (Look, the Deacon's no bluenose, but we already are on kind of shaky footing in several towns as it is...) Well, it turned out that would be no problem, as this shrine was kind of a pointy eared version of Hef's grotto. Frog reported back, and I quote "Boss, you gotta see dis place..." So yeah. I guess no intervention needed. Yet... (Do elves form torch bearing mobs? Maybe they just wave sticks...)
And I think that was mostly where we left things, planning for an excursion into the depths of the meanest forest around looking for Prince Gway and his fifty men. Some of us think it shouldn't be too much to find him, a group that big will leave a trail.
My opinion, I think the variety of woodland horrors we'll encounter as we hack through the brush will be a little bit fatter as we delve into deepest, darkest fantasy land. I just hope they save the Prince for dessert.
Anyway, a good session all around, nice action, good roleplaying from our new elf buddy Hearth. As I said in an email exchange afterward, he's kind of turning out to be the party's Spock, just like the Deacon is kind of our Dr. McCoy. The rest of 'em can slap fight it out on who gets to be Kirk.
Thanks again to Paul for running a cracking good game, and to the rest of the 10d gamers.
Cheerio!
P.S.: Apropos to the youtube clip, Star Trek would be a HELL of a lot cooler if there were more Gorn around. Just sayin'.
I love that sound effect. (GrrrrYayhey!)
We camped out for the rest of the night without any more trouble, so the next day we packed up and got going again, working our way through the dark, creepy tangle of trees along an ancient elvish road that was more weeds than paving stones.
Eventually, we came to a tight narrowing in the road where the trees became like a tunnel, and something big and arachnidy had gone and webbed this small passage up. So we were left with a choice of going off the path into the tangle of the woods, or cut/burn our way through the web.
We chose the latter, since with what we'd already seen and fought and the rep this area had, we didn't want to add getting lost to the list of our troubles.
So we set Gentleman Jack Getz up in front with a torch tied to a ten foot pole, and he began the arduous process of burning a big enough hole for a guy on horseback to get through the gauzy barrier that faced us. We decided on this rather than a smaller hole just in case we had to make a quick retreat.
As it was it was slow going, and for added annoyance we really didn't have more than two torches between us. (We're mostly lantern/oil based light, since you get the added bonus of Molotov Cocktails from that.) So we were pretty concerned about running out of torch before we ran out of web to burn.
After an hour of burning we were only half way through the web tunnel, with Getz, his horse, Kashim on his warhorse, and Jantz on his horse standing single file while the thief slowly burned away the webs. Of course, this was when a couple of gimundous frikkin' spiders pop out of the webs and attack. They grabbed up Gentleman Jack with huge suction cup tipped legs and tried to cram the poor guy right in their maws.
Well, the rest of us were kind of parked outside like we were in bad traffic on I95 (in other words, like we were in traffic on I95), so the best we could do was move to the sides of the "road" so that the guys in the tunnel could back out.
Only Kashim, our fierce foreign fighter from far afield where they're fond of falafel, could mount any kind of counterattack, so he charged in with blades blazing, and managed to keep from getting grabbed and mawstuffed too.
Getting the horses out turned out to be a bit of a problem, since Getz' horse blocked his escape, as well as Jantz's horse and Kashim's. I kind of kick myself about this juncture 'cos I forgot I had the Ring of Animal Control on me. I could have backed the horses out by remote control a lot sooner.
While we were making three point turns with the horses, the spiders got into a little tug of war over Gentleman Jack, which really wasn't doing him or his spine much good. Thankfully, they didn't seem to have any poison, or else our hapless thief would probably have been dead several times over. He just got munched, and had a chunk taken out of his thigh in a critical hit.
Things were starting to look desperate, which is usually the go button for Kashim. He leapt off of his horse and dove onto the back of one of the spiders, succeeding in stabbing it through its cephalothorax and killing it. I'm a little muddled with events here, but I think the other spider had dropped Gentleman Jack at this point, and he managed to crawl away and hide under the dead spider.
Meanwhile, we'd gotten the horses rearranged and a couple guys with polearms took the front to help Kashim out, and we managed to get the other monster arachnid dead with a bit more stabbing.
From there we laid some healing mojo on Getz, popping that chunk out of his leg back into place and giving him a little bit of git up n' go. Then we set back to work burning the webs, and after a short while longer we made it through, burning the rest of the way with a flask of oil.
The gloom still loomed though, and the woods got spookier as we went. As night was beginning to fall, making it marginally darker than it already was under the forest's impenetrable canopy, a terrified fox bounded across our path, pursued by a trio of ghostly elves riding ghostly elf horses.
Two rode off after their quarry, but one spotted us and turned, howling like a banshee and charged us. Right off, the Deacon tried to turn him, but didn't roll good enough, so we were forced to take up arms and fight.
Klint, our senior thief got most of the good hits in, since he had the magic sword with a +2 vs. undead. Meanwhile, Kashim and the Deacon concentrated fire on his horse, since we both had +1 weapons of our own, Kashim the Vadium Sword and the Deacon his Mojo stick. We managed to unhorse the wraith, popping the ectoplasmic equine like a soap bubble and sending his rider tumbling to the road. After a few more whacks, we dispelled the phantom elf, but not before he got a constitution draining hit in on Gentleman Jack. (He was quite lucky that Paul's kind of working out what he wants to do with level drain attacks.)
After that, we decided to camp, again setting up right in the road. Mercifully, night passed uneventfully, or at lest as uneventfully as it could in the Gloomwood with all the monsters and evil faerie and squirrel on squirrel violence going on.
The next "morning" we set out, and by midday found we were moving into a classier section of the wood, that Hearth, our companion elf wizard, said was telling him we were close to our destination in Elfhold. We met up with a couple of elf hunters who were just regular elves, not ghosts, and they were nice enough to guide us the rest of the way. So we made it!
Cookies for everyone!Once we were there, we set up a meeting with the Elf King, who received us most graciously. Unfortunately, it turns out that Prince Gway, who we'd been seeking to warn about the eminent danger to Restenford (where all the bars we go to are located), had run out of patience waiting for his sidekick Rodger, who we'd busted out of jail and escorted here, and hand gone on a quest to find certain elvish artifacts of great magical power he was convinced would help him fast track his way to the crown. Rodger was understandably ticked off, and walked out fuming about his boss.
So we got a little chance to sit back and kind of re-appraise and huddle up.
One of the main issues was that Kashim was operating under a quest spell, ever since his little escapade in the temple fountain back in Greenwild, and we weren't sure if we'd tripped it off or not. The conditions of the quest spell stated that as soon as we saw Prince Gway he had to drop whatever else he was doing and go on a mission to find a missing temple acolyte somewhere around the cheerily named Skull Mountain. But we hadn't met with Prince Gway, so odds are we're still clear.
Hearth the elf sought out Roger and had a long (and excellently role played, btw) chat about the prospects of the kingdom and whether we should go search for Gway or cut bait. The upshot was that Gway was a good enough guy, for a prince, and a damn sight better than Prince Hank, but he tended to get caught up with the idea that some sort of magical solution could solve all his problems, rather than going the political route as Rodger had recommended.
So with that in mind, we decided we'd probably do well to go find our errant Prince and get his butt back on mission. We asked a favor of the Elf King to speak to the sages that Prince Gway might have consulted before going off on his search into the Gloomwood.
From them, we found out about this place called "The Shelf" which was some sort of geographic feature that reputedly contained the site of the Tree of Life, where the elves and all other sapient life first arose. There, apparently, was a great book that held mighty magics from the early days of creation.
So the plan was to find this place and hopefully find Prince Gway before something bad happened to him. Of course, we needed to prep, so we spent the rest of the session getting some stuff done.
The Deacon was sorely missing the BOOM! component of the mighty Mojo Stick, and thus inquired about any mage who might be able to help us recharge it with Magic Missiles. I was directed to the tent of an aged elf mage known as Hovan of the Four Masters, who after a bit of bargaining agreed to lay a buncha magic missiles on my staff for 10 gold a spell. I forked over 100 so that the Mojo Stick would get nice and charged up, but it meant we'd have to hang around for about 4 days while Hovan made with the boom booms. Klint accompanied me, and struck a bargain to transcribe some spells into his spell book. I don't rightly recall which ones, but they'll come in handy if he can learn 'em.
Gentleman Jack was still feeling the spiritual drag of his encounter with the elven wraith, and thus sought out some clerical assistance to restore his lost Constitution. He was directed to the Shrine of the Maiden of the Waters (I think it was.), which was crewed by a bevy (and you can only use the word "bevy" in this particular context, really) of lovely, exceedingly friendly elf maids.
I think Kashim went with him, and the Deacon sent Frog, our henchman, along to keep an eye on them based solely on the description of "shrine maidens". (Look, the Deacon's no bluenose, but we already are on kind of shaky footing in several towns as it is...) Well, it turned out that would be no problem, as this shrine was kind of a pointy eared version of Hef's grotto. Frog reported back, and I quote "Boss, you gotta see dis place..." So yeah. I guess no intervention needed. Yet... (Do elves form torch bearing mobs? Maybe they just wave sticks...)
And I think that was mostly where we left things, planning for an excursion into the depths of the meanest forest around looking for Prince Gway and his fifty men. Some of us think it shouldn't be too much to find him, a group that big will leave a trail.
My opinion, I think the variety of woodland horrors we'll encounter as we hack through the brush will be a little bit fatter as we delve into deepest, darkest fantasy land. I just hope they save the Prince for dessert.
Anyway, a good session all around, nice action, good roleplaying from our new elf buddy Hearth. As I said in an email exchange afterward, he's kind of turning out to be the party's Spock, just like the Deacon is kind of our Dr. McCoy. The rest of 'em can slap fight it out on who gets to be Kirk.
Thanks again to Paul for running a cracking good game, and to the rest of the 10d gamers.
Cheerio!
P.S.: Apropos to the youtube clip, Star Trek would be a HELL of a lot cooler if there were more Gorn around. Just sayin'.
I love that sound effect. (GrrrrYayhey!)
Ok, as soon as Keebler elves make it into the game, I will start playing!! ;)
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