Exile: World as Dungeon [3.5]

[Telok]

Ok, they spent way more time in that cold pit than I thought.

Any ways; ranger, twin sister of the fighter (the kid's 18 and it's her first real RPG experience, I'll let it slide once), nuclear sorcerer, and a PETA warblade. Some people's characters are evolving in interesting directions. But they took the bait hint and are going in the correct direction. I had to NPC the cleric so he developed a severe case of narcolepsy.

The ranger and cleric both burned points of piety and made level checks (one success, one fail) to Consecrate the death chamber. Nobody ever seemed to think about making Kn:Religion checks, they just did stuff. Then it was slow slow searching all the way back out. They did find the last secret burial chamber of a priest, but failed to exhume the treasure after defeating his wraith. The body of the fallen fighter was left in the death chamber and the sorcerer lost another mephit, this one to Con drain. Since I has forgotten about wraith victims rising in 1d4 rounds I had decided on them rising in 24 hours. Now, the body of the air mephit was taken out of the Dark Spiral Pit and "thrown to the winds". Since it was small, had a 5' wing span, and weighed only one pound I said that it wafted off on a breeze. About 12 hours later it did/will become something undead, I just haven't decided what it will become. However the sorcerer has become aware that I wasn't kidding when I said that familiars are unionised. When he tried to call up his next one he got a pot-bellied ash mephit with a baseball cap and a clipboard, gave him some grief and made him fill out a few forms to get the next normal air mephit familiar. Pity he didn't read the forms or anything, if he loses this familiar too soon "Da Boss" is going to make some demands of him and change a spell or two on his known list.

Hung around Mertis a few days, picked up the replacement TWF bastard sword fighter (also has rapid shot and precise shot, the fallout of giving fighters a bonus feat every level is interesting so far) and joined a caravan going south to Almaria. Four days and sixty miles later our heroes leave the caravan for the Tower of the Magi. They could have walked there in two days.

At the tower the sorcerer almost went on a wall licking frenzy until the history of lead based paints and why they are no longer used in the USA was explained to him. This was because during the directions for getting around in the tower (spiel by the gate guards)there was a line about not licking the walls. The tower is white because it has an inch of lead plating on the exterior and interior sides of the exterior wall, and another inch on the exterior of the interior wall. Once the wall licking was averted (I still have trouble believing that) they went all kids-in-a-candy-store. They sold the Cobra Amulet, identified the Flame Halberd and Periapt of Health and Wound Closure, bought a bunch of potions and a pair of Boots of Agile Leaping and a wand of Cure Moderate. Set up an endowment for the nice priestess in Mertis for potion making apparatus and supplies (2900 gp!), got a bit of history (and 5000 gp) from Linda one of the high magi of the Triad in exchange for the historical scroll the ranger found. Talked with X, the other resident Triad member) about anvils, fried chicken, magic weapons, and enchanted riding lizards. Talked with a disillusioned graduating apprentice about the demon in one of the magic laboratories, got a letter for Solberg (the missing member of the Triad) and directions to the directions to his hiding place.

Eventually everyone got a decent night's sleep and a hot bath. The ranger worships Nemelex and hit the 10,000 gp sacrifice mark (the small, throwing, gnome bane, gnome hooked hammer finally got used for it's intended purpose) and was "rewarded" with a Deck of War set of magic cards. The warblade entered into the worship of Xom, which is going to be fun for me. Then they went out to the big summoning spot a few miles north of the tower and detected for magic and dark alignment where a Gate spell had been used to call forth a demon lord and were suitably impressed (he's bound somewhere in the tower but they haven't figured that out yet).

It is now May 15th, the party has wandered around in the tunnels east of the Tower of the Magi for a few hours and beat up three ogres (and tamed a boa constricter that only obeys commands in Giant speak). Next week they will find the directions to Solberg's tower, if they return to the Tower of the Magi I'll have to point them towards the local ogre cave because they need to level to 7 before going past Formello and I'd like for them to get the Tome of Stone random spellcasting book in the treasure there. I still can't believe they sold off the Cobra Amulet but kept the Periapt.