Price of Immortality Session #6

Here is the campaign log from our sixth Price of Immortality session. This was written by Rachel (who plays Serena). 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, Monte had just bolted in terror, leaving his companions both curious and concerned about what had scared him so much.]

Monte started into the room with a long pool in the center of it, then suddenly screamed and turned and ran away from the pool, back into the 1st room of catacombs where we fought the nasty things that exploded. Cornichon stepped closer, but not into, the room with the pool to see if he could tell what freaked out Monte. He didn’t see anything, so he went after Monte. Lilac ran after Monte and grappled him to get him to stop running. Monte tried to break free but was not successful.

Rodan and I began following the others to find out what Monte was so alarmed by, but then Rodan saw a warhammer (which looked a lot like Monte’s) go floating by and pointed out where he saw it. I went the direction he pointed but was not able to see it. Suddenly Lilac and Monte both became very frightened, which finally allowed Monte to escape Lilac’s now slack clutches. Monte ran out of the catacombs while Lilac ran in fright to the room with the pool. Lilac became even more freaked out and ran back through the catacombs in the direction Monte went.

While Lilac and Monte were gripped in fear, Cornichon, Rodan, and I were shaken—things just did not feel right. Then Cornichon and I spotted a 1 ½ foot tall demon/imp-like creature with horns, wings, and a big toothy grin. Despite feeling a bit off, Cornichon began humming and I moved to the imp and attacked him. He hissed at me but then disappeared before we could get another attack in. Suddenly an imp appeared next to Rodan and attacked him. Rodan moved away as soon as he could.

[Yep, imps…or something along those lines. The module as written has two bat swarms as the next encounter. However, I had come across a number of comments about how this was something of a killer encounter. Bat swarms, as tiny swarms, would be immune to all normal weapon damage and would require some area of effect type attacks. Guess what? The party, outside of a couple of flasks of oil, doesn’t really have any area of effect attacks. Combined with the bat swarms’ bleed ability, it could get ugly fast.

So I substituted imps…or something along those lines to: a) avoid the ugliness that the bat swarms would cause (i.e., a possible TPK); and, b) to provide an outlet for my inherent mischievousness as a GM. I don’t know about the players but I, at least, thought it made for more fun than the plain old bat swarms would have. It also let me plant some possible future adventure seeds.]

Monte’s fright wore off and he headed back to the catacombs, but an imp appeared by him before he could join the rest of us. The imp attacked Monte but Monte was able to attack him before it disappeared. The imps had disappeared and then one dropped on Cornichon and attacked him. The second imp appeared next to Cornichon as well and tried to attack him, but fortunately missed. While Cornichon was surrounded, Rodan had the opportunity to notice that the imp’s wounds were healing up, apparently on their own.

[Mwah ha ha!!! Finally!!! Cornichon takes some damage. This was the first real damage he had taken in any of the sessions. He did take some Strength damage earlier but no Hit Point damage.]

Cornichon apparently has been hiding one of his talents under a bushel—once the imps disappeared again, he began humming/singing a different tune and Rodan’s injuries were healed. Lilac returned after a bit—her fear must have taken her farther away than Monte’s did. Lilac and I thought we heard something like a door closing off the room with the pool, but none of us were willing to check that out until Monte and Lilac told us what scared them so much in there. At Cornichon’s encouragement, Lilac pulled the door shut between the catacombs and pool room. Cornichon sent up some floating lights around the room and we searched for some weapons that Monte had mislaid. I was able to find his warhammer, but we could not find his two throwing axes.

Monte and Lilac finally told us what freaked them out in the room with the pool—when they saw their reflections, they looked undead and were eating the rest of us. I hope the pool is not a view of the future! We opened the door to the pool room and Cornichon detected weak necromantic magic in the pool (without looking in it, of course). We decide that it would be best for us to move along the walls in the pool room, staring at the walls and avoiding seeing reflections in the water. As we move through, we can hear the imps chattering behind us—they must have been hovering above the pool. From their chattering it appears that they christened one of Monte’s throwing axes, and not with water. A few of us were splashed as well, but we kept our focus on moving through the room to the doorway where the portcullis was open.

We made it through the doorway and moved through some empty catacombs before coming to a small hallway leading to a door. When we entered the small hallway, we heard a gate clanging down behind us (the portcullis? I hope there is a way to activate it on this side, or another way out). We opened the door and moved into a large chamber with vaulted ceilings. There is a bridge over a large chasm in the middle of the room. On the other side of the bridge are two 10-12 feet high stone statues of villagers holding shields and spears. We can see brass double doors behind the statues. The imps continued their chatter, saying something about a “master” and teasing Monte with his throwing axes. One of them ends up being thrown into the chasm while the other appears to be walking or moving over the chasm.

[Imps…or something along those lines…sure can be major assholes! :D]

Lilac moved to the bridge to check it out—she spied a crack going across the middle of the bridge, so she jumped over the crack (just in case it triggered a trap of some sort) and landed in front of one of the statues. As soon as she landed, both statues immediately moved forward smoothly and pushed Lilac back a bit. Thankfully Lilac is pretty strong and was not pushed further or into the chasm.

After some discussion, Monte tosses the grappling hook and rope to catch on one of the statues, and he and Lilac pull it over to the side. With one statue at least somewhat out of position, Lilac was able to run across the bridge and past the statues. With Lilac pushing from her side and the rest of us pulling from our side, we tried to move the other statue but were unsuccessful. After some heckling from the imps (perhaps a bit of a clue bat?), I asked Lilac to check the statues for a mechanism to deactivate them. Lilac finds switches on the back of their bases and switches them off.

The rest of us moved across the bridge, and once we were all across, Monte and Lilac pushed open the brass doors. The doors opened to a small area before stairs go down into a large chamber. Across from the stairs is a dais with a stone sarcophagus on it, with a pale flame burning above the sarcophagus. We have finally made it to the everflame! Next to the stone sarcophagus, however, is something we were not expecting to see—a shapely woman’s body missing its head.

A wicked-looking skeleton comes into view, wearing mail and carrying a big sword, with blue glowing eyes. He says something about looking forward to turning more of Kassen’s heroes into minions in his army, and approaches us. Four other skeletons join him in fighting us. We are able to take out the other skeletons relatively quickly, but the one in mail is tougher. After I attacked him, he knocked my nunchaku out of my hands and over the side of the stairs to the floor (about 10 feet down). Then the skeleton tried to hit me with a massive attack but ended up dropping his sword instead. Rodan was able to use Milani’s influence to weaken the skeletons a bit, and Cornichon successfully greased the armored skeleton’s sword so that it slipped from his grasp. I quickly kicked it off the stairs to the floor below.

Monte, Lilac, and I jockeyed for position around the skeleton and Rodan moved up as well, so that we could help each other take out the skeleton. Cornichon tumbled his way across and off the stairs and somehow got my nunchaku up to me so that I could use them on the skeleton again. We finally took it out and it crumbled into bits. The pesky imps are still chattering in the background—saying how the mistress will be pleased and mentioning Sifkesh. I know Roldare’s one lucid scrawl mentioned Sifkesh, but surely she cannot be here???

[The big baddie at the end was a bit, in my opinion, anti-climatic. I suppose some of that might have been my fault with his more or less frontal assault but that’s pretty much the tactics that that module indicated. I think his being disarmed helped. His sword was magical and definitely more dangerous than just his claws. Outside of attacking, he didn’t really have anything else up his sleeve.