Price of Immortality Session #5

Here is the campaign log from our fifth Price of Immortality session. This was written by Thomas (who plays Monte). My GM comments are in [italics and brackets.]

Note: There are, obviously, spoilers for the Price of Immortality trilogy below. In this session, the party continues its exploration of the lower levels of the Crypt.

[When we last left the party, they had sort of survived the Pillar of Arrows and defeated the final guardians of the upper level before descending to the lower level.]

Choices: West has the stench of rot. The east has the sound of water and something about opening a gate. What gate? I don’t see a gate. The south has a place to sit and rest and reflect on Kassen’s deeds. That might be useful in 12 to 24 hours before we head home finally.

[12 to 24 hours?!? When did Monte become such an optimist?]

Clearly the only choice we have here is to see what is rotting. We go west. Catacombs. Empty. Tattered clothing and no bodies. Someone wonders, “Wouldn’t the bodies that populated this tomb be finished rotting?” A questions for a necromancer. Let’s find these ghouls and beat the shit out of them.

I take the lead. Walk in. Stench is so strong. To my left, dead body with pustile’s and boils all over shambles towards me. Pop it two good times and it goes down. Evasive maneuvers! It explodes all over me! Pus and blood and shit and rotting flesh all over me. There must be a use for it…. No time to think, three more come around the corners! Rhodan goes towards the two to the left. I go right. Two perfectly timed and executed attacks send my zombie flying back down his hallway. Rhodan appears to be having more trouble. He goes down. Lilac attempts to jump and tumble past them but she slips on the goo on the ground and makes a wrong move the allows the zombie to slap her hard in the face. Poor orc has all that nasty in her mouth. I am sure that wasn’t tasty. My allies appear to be retreating with Rhodan. I sneak around the corner deeper into the catacomb and take down another zombie. One follows them and they take it down.

[Zombies that explode in pus and rotting flesh are so much fun to describe when the players are enjoying some brownies.] 😀

We are back at the pedestal-shaped pillar. Rhodan is stable but down. We have no healing available. Cornichon investigates the south. Only a fountain and some benches. There is an inscription but I barely glance at it. I am parched. The water heals my wounds! I dunk my head in but realize I might have gotten some nasty in the water…. Better scoop it out quickly before they yell at me…. A little rotting flesh never hurt anyone…

[One thing that Crypt of the Everflame does have is lots of healing. Between this fountain and the Wand of Cure Light Wounds, the party should have plenty of healing. Oh wait, they’ve already used all of the wand’s charges.

On a serious note, it has been quite some time since we’ve played a 3.5 type game. I don’t remember how many potions, wands, etc. of the curative sort was typical for a party, even a 1st level one. The Pathfinder RPG does give a bit more healing to clerics with the Channel Energy feature but it still hasn’t been enough. I’m going to assume that the module has the appropriate amount of healing magics since it was written by the designer of the game.] 😉

Rhodan is force fed the water and gets back up. We head back to the catacombs and briefly search some of the tombs. All appear the same to me. I open the door. Inside is a room with a long reflecting pool, a portcullis at the end and scorched murals along the walls. The door doesn’t automatically close. We discuss what to do next so I close the door. No sense in the bad guys beyond the gate listening to our discussion on strategy.

We head back to the east. We want to check the room with the way to open the gate. Immediately, we find water. It is flooding the initial hallway. The way to the left (north) has a door and a “ribbet” sound behind it. Frog. [Monte, apparently, is not a big fan of frogs…he seemed quite reluctant about heading that way.] The door is always water swollen. We will leave that closed. To the right (south) is a larger room, submerged, with blue-green fungi on the wall and the floating, scorched bodies of 3 dead giant rats and a giant frog. Lilac, Rhodan and I begin crossing the room. As the water laps up against the wall, the fungus sparks electricity which carries to the three of us. The hardest hit was Lilac. She goes down so we pull her to safety and heal back up without the help of the fountain. (Perhaps we should have done more reflecting on his deeds?)

Someone decides we didn’t search all the catacombs well enough so we go back. Sure enough, a sack is found with rotting rations (made clean by Rhodan with his prayers), a hand bill looking for mercenaries, and a map to this tomb from Tamran, the capital of Nirmathis. That is strange. [I think that is Monte’s way of saying, “Jinkies! It must be a clue!”] Also a pouch with 13 gold and a potion of cure moderate wounds.

[Ooh…more healing magic…such a nice module!]

Lilac realizes she dropped her dagger in the water when she was knocked out by the electricity. She decides to wade very slowly to get it. That apparently works. She decides to not stop at her dagger and goes through the room. Corridor that goes left to another swollen door (with a ribbet sound behind it I am sure) and larger room to the right, still submerged, but it has a large wheel with chains running up into the ceiling at the end. She goes right but quickly is surrounded by skeletons. We hear her yell, “I am not going to take the potion.” When she comes around the corner, I retreat out of the water but to my surprise, she doesn’t come back through the room with the fungus, she keeps going straight towards the dead end with 4-6 skeletons in tow. In hindsight, a brilliant move.

[How does that go again? Something like, “Never Split the Party”. After successfully navigating the fungus, Lilac pushed on while the rest of the party was on the other side of the fungus room. Finding what was possibly the wheel referred to in the inscription apparently unguarded, why not push on, right? Once the fight started, some of the others started to rush, slowly, through the fungus room to Lilac’s aid.]

She reports later that it was here that she drinks the previously mentioned potion (the invisibility gift from her partner in crime… er… mentor). We can see the skeletons lined up to begin taking their turn attacking her so Cornichon begins firing crossbow bolts from across the room. Serena bounds into the water towards the skeletons to save Lilac but gets electrocuted. Luckily, she stays up. The skeletons retreat back in to the room and as Serena is standing at the end of the fungus room, she sees an open space in the water and Lilac’s voice say she is going back in to turn the wheel.

[Luckily for the party, the skeletons largely ignored them and went back their “posts” so to speak. If they had pressed into the fungus room, the electrical discharge (assuming it happened) would have killed them but may have also taken some (more) of the party with them.

Not that the party knew this but the fungus could not discharge every round. After a discharge, it was 1d6 rounds before it could do so again. I believe that everyone assumed it would discharge every round but nothing was done to test this.]

When Lilac gets to the entrance of the room, she sees the skeletons are now just sitting as a line blocking the entrance. This is going to take some extreme maneuvers to swim between them. As Serena enters into a state of sublime meditation to pass her positive energy to Lilac, the orc recalls every detail of training she has had to perfectly execute a swimming tumble through the skeleton wall as they tread water. She is free to go turn the wheel and open the gate!

[Rachel spent her Hero Point to give Lilac a +4 on her Swim check to maneuver, invisibly and stealthily, through the skeletons. Lilac succeeded.]

Rhodan slowly crosses the room and sets up with Serena. Lilac is in the room, assumingly opening the gate. Rhodan heads towards the skeletons and channels his divine light. They come out and attack Rhodan and Serena. Cornichon sings and fires crossbow bolts as Rhodan and Serena attempt to fight off the remaining skeletons. Rhodan goes down but get pulled to safety by Serena. Lilac resurfaces and destroys one with a sneak attack from her invisibility! Serena goes down. Eventually all the skeletons go down and we feed the potion to Rhodan. He checks on Serena and it appears she has died. But wait! He was checking the pulse wrong! She has a faint weak pulse. The god of mountains be praised!

[When Rhodan attracted the attention of the skeletons with his Channel Energy (which, I think, pretty much all of them saved against), he and Serena retreated back down the corridor towards the fungus room. Cornichon started moving, slowly, through the fungus room to assist but ended up stopping and just shooting his crossbow at any skeletons he could see. I know, oh loyal readers, that this sounds quite out of character for the bard but Jamie missed the session and our friend (and former regular player) Bridgett got a night away from the kids and got to play.

Oh, Serena did die as she never was able to stabilize from her wounds before Rhodan was brought back to consciousness. However, as I did when Monte died, I allowed Rachel to take a Hero Point deficit to keep Serena alive.]

We retreat back to the fountain room. Rhodan stays with Serena but Cornichon, Lilac and Monte go back out to forage for food. When we return, the bloody skeletons in the first room from the blunted arrow pillar of death room have reset and are waiting for us. How strange! I kicked their heads off!

[Yep, another rest…this time with half the party in one room and half in another. They didn’t want to take on the bloody skeletons with only half the party as Rhodan and Serena had remained on the lower level to await the foragers return.]

We finish our rest and dispatch of them again in the morning. I dump their bodies down in the pit under the spinning pillar of death. Hopefully they won’t come back from that… but who knows? I am no necromancer.

[I loved how the party dealt with the skeletons after dispatching them again. If they might come back, even after kicking their heads off, why not put them some place where they won’t be able to do as much harm? Some place like…a pit! I believe that the party stuck the heads somewhere other than the pit…I don’t remember exactly where though.]

We head back to the room with the reflecting pool and portcullis. Opening the door, I see the portcullis is up. Good job Lilac!

I step into the room. As I scan the room, my eyes catch my reflection in the pool, but to my horror, I am a rotting, undead Monte and I am eating my new companions behind me. To this point, I had not considered that the necromantic magics of this place could turn me into this monster. The disgrace to my clan! Fear grips my soul and I lose my head. Dropping my weapons, last thing I remember seeing is the puzzled looks on the faces of my companions as I flee towards the crypt entrance.

[We actually stopped the session with Monte stepping into the room and my asking for a Will save. He failed but I didn’t describe the result. Instead, I emailed it to Thomas later so he could include it in the journey.

Oh…everyone leveled up.]