Exile: World as Dungeon [3.5]

[Telok]

A good solid group this week: warblade, sorcerer, psychic warrior, and a new 40ac cleric (it involves three different spells/abilities and using combat expertise, he's pimping out defence and healing but not much else).

I had decided that the mummy was going to sulk back to his room and rest to recharge his spells so that he could get some Animate Dead action going as soon as he could make some bodies. The warblade and sorcerer, after being healed by Gooley, decided to run back to town for reinforcements. The NPCs actually decided to stay put with Yong-Mi guarding the door slab while Gooley rested for more spells, the priest could change his spells to a specific mummy killing set now that he knew what was inside and that all the minions were dead. I decided (for play reasons) that the psi-war and cleric were just two hours down the road trying to catch up with the party. Meaning that four hours later everyone went back inside and thrashed the mummy-cleric. They still spent two rounds pumping 80-ish fire damage into his Resist Energy: Fire spell and only did 20 damage, then there was a switch to acid and melee which worked much better.

Loot: two halves of a sundered silver skull unholy symbol (6 lbs total), 1200 silver pieces (ad hoc added to counter frustration), four 500gp sapphires, and a Vicious Explosive Orc Bane dire flail (unidentified).

A short trip to Motrax and some conversation. The big guy is old and takes lots of naps so he's really laid back and didn't squash the "it has stats = we can kill it" suicide sorcerer gnome. He did give them directions to Solberg's tower, admittedly he didn't think about mere humans being unable to swim 20 miles of river or the problems they'll have with the lava fields so we still have some surprises left on this trip. They didn't talk to Captain Ko nor did they fight the salamanders in a side tunnel, so they missed some loot. But they did talk to the magi there and got sage answers on a few things. Thralni and his orb were mentioned along with some other First Expedition magic items, they learned that Piercing crystals were single use items (sad faces), the Slitherazi are also exiles here since about 1000 years ago, and that the magic arrows are either Arrows of Light (Holy Demon Bane) or Arrows of Life (Holy Undead Bane). Then they crashed for the night and left in the morning. Never did ask about what the magi were researching with Motrax, might be important some day.

A four day walk to Fort Draco later and they did... not much. Bought some steel armor and weapons, bought canoes and boards to turn into a raft, teased Frank the legless beggar, turned down the 50gp per Areana fang thing that I dangles in front of them. They did talk to Boutell and saw his big fancy anvil while he boasted of his skill as a smith and his plan to get his anvil enchanted. Then they left Draco by boat.

A day of paddling got them to the bridge across the river in the Nephil lands, which had some minion guards on it. That was a nice little fight. The bridge was 25 feet wide with a compost row on each edge for glowing mushrooms to grow in, it was 15 feet above the water too. One person paddling for a full round could get the raft ten feet and draw an attack of opportunity, if nobody paddled that round the raft went five feet down river (it's a really slow river and they are paddling up stream). A couple rounds of spear and javelin throwing, the warblade jumped up onto the bridge, 4/6th of the gnolls jumped down to the raft (two missed), then fighting under and on the bridge. The gnolls did better than I expected for being four 4hd mooks, a 6hd archer/longspear, and a 6hd Power Attack sword and boarder. Both the warblade and psi-war took about 20 damage and the sorcerer took 30-something (in melee too). Two mooks escaped with one hp each by swimming underwater.

They camped a couple miles up river from the gnoll bridge and I think there may still be a dead gnoll in the boat too. It is now June 7th and our intrepid heroes are headed towards Solberg's tower. See you next week.

[Telok]

Och, a late update this time. Wind storms, power and internet outages, plus a bit of lazyness.

So we had the sorcerer, pis-war, and warblade this week and they were trying to find Solberg's tower. They rowed east and found the right set of caves plus a minor encounter in a swampy bit, some giant bugs, frogs, and a slug. They killed this slug, primarily through melee attacks with piercing weapons and all the psychic warrior's power points being used on Hostile Empathic Transfer. Once again the sorcerer wasted several Combust spells and almost died, he would have died but he aced the divine intervention roll and lost all his piety. With no Detect Magic they missed the magic radiation rocks that salted the area to encourage giant mutant critters and oozes, Solberg takes his personal defence seriously.

They dicked around the tunnels for a day, avoided the lave lakes, and then went back to the boat and rowed up to Formello for some Endure Elements scrolls. Back downstream to the lava lakes, minor exploring, not engaging the local salamander tribe (lots of failed Spot checks), and found the tower. The party totally failed to impress Solberg (the sorcerer was really frustrated by exploring) but accepted a charge to find the other pieces of Demonslayer and bring them back to be reforged.

Back in Formello, supposedly to put wheels on the boat so they wouldn't have to buy a new one when they went back south (they want to go to Almaria now), they didn't like having to deal with the land trustees for carting services. Since they've put so much effort into avoiding the Formello situation and quests it means that the trustees are going to be able to oust the mayor in another month or two, leading to rioting and a general breakdown of order in the Formello area. Of course since the mayor of Formello is the only person willing (after a quest) to give adventurers the royal token they need to get in and see the king...

Anyway, they burnt their boat and travelled to Cotra. I dropped a small warband of Slitherazi on them to gauge their strength (they leveled up to 7) and drop a couple minor magic items (Boots of Agile something, Healing Belt) on them. I think that attack bonuses in the +8 to +12 range are appropriate now, since the +6 guys were pretty wimpy. I'll have to see about the base ACs of stuff too, 16+ seems good here. In Cotra they talked to Konig a bit, mostly getting a couple things identified but sort of listening to him about his search for the Crystal Cave. They haven't been to the docks or to talk to the mayor, even though I suggested both of them if they wanted a boat. This means that they don't know about the fishing crash or the giant crab causing it.

I think they will go up to Fort Dranlon next. This is good, they'll see how nasty the Slith war really is and get some hints/quests on where to go next. Because they ignored the fire lizards in Motrax's caves I'll have Gooley (NPC cleric) go there and help Captain Ko clear them out, he'll get the Fire Shield and then travel to Formello. Yong-Mi will go to Fort Draco, recruit some bodies and deal with the areana, netting Bloodslash before going back to Formello. Both of those depend on the players not returning to the north caves before that situation blows up. Food shortages from Cotra and Formello will give me perfect explanations for the speculation market crash in Blosk driven by banker/merchants. Eventual diversion of troops to Formello for martial law will also aptly explain the freedom with which the bandits around Dharmon are operating.

It is the 13th of June, the consequences of not doing quests or clearing dungeons are going to start piling up in the coming months.

[Telok]

This week the cleric, psychic warrior, and sorcerer got lost on a lake. It's a big lake though, 40 miles by 120 miles or so, and pitch dark with no winds or strong currents to navigate by. Basically they did almost nothing in Cotra this week except to buy a fishing boat and leave. They decided not to fight the giant crab at the bottom of the harbor and aimed themselves towards Almaria on the opposite shore.

Once they were out (1 in 3 chance of the giant crab attacking a non-fishing vessel, not this time) they were 9 hours of rowing from the south bank and only needed three DC15 Survival checks to make it there. Well, they made the first two anyway. After three more failed checks (dice hate) I let them arrive at the island with the Slitherazi fort on it, a couple miles counter clockwise from the fort. They went counter clockwise so I gave them a Slith war raft (low in the water, no cargo capacity, wicker frame on top covered with painted hides to make it look like a rock in the water, works from a distance and Slith have a swim speed so they use it as cover for underwater commando type stuff) and the guys ran for shore. The fight was a bit tougher than I ideally wanted, four each of braves and warriors backed up by a priest and mage, and the party only killed the braves while the rest escaped with varying amounts of damage.

Since I knew the guys would simply leave and keep going to Almaria I improvised a simple semaphore at the top of the island, set the hook with a DC20 Spot check, and reeled them in. What they are not, is stealthy. About 100 feet from the post is where hide and sneak checks would start making a difference so I put them under a small 15' high and 50' long cliff so they could reasonable decide on a plan to implement. The sorcerer simply walked up the cliff and started "making snake noises like they do when they are talking." Now I'd pretty quickly worked out how I wanted the semaphore to work, three mooks keeping watch and one brave working a hooded lantern simply kept watch for flashing lights from the boats and respond or send messages. The messages are a simple system of three long or short flashes that indicate a code word, two flashes means "trouble, come help", and one flash is "trouble, sound the alert." It's a simple military code system that's bugger all to break without the code book or lots of context and experience. My players are assuming it's a Morse code type thing for general communication and have started recording transmissions to try and break the code.

Since the basic mooks have six ranks in Listen the top of the hill was deserted when the party got there. It was a little rock wall about chest high, a ladder with a lantern on top, a couple pints of lamp oil and a bag of dried fish. They waited half an hour (it's 30 minutes down to the fort and almost an hour back to the top) before heading down the path towards the fortress lights. The last event of the night was them managing to barely-almost-sort-of ambush a scouting party, three spear carriers (mooks), two warriors, and a mage. However the fight involved a Lightning Bolt, Sound Burst, two Combusts, and two Scorching Rays. One of the Scorching Rays was the mage frying his code book, so that probably wasn't visible from the fort too easily. After looting a scroll with Shield and two Lesser Acid Orbs and 15 gp we had to close the session, people have to go to work on Monday.

Hopefully there will be a decent plan next week because the fort is sending several large patrols uphill now (the semaphore isn't going to be sending the "all clear" signal and the Slith know exactly how long it takes to walk up and down that hill). It's the 14th of June and we're stuck on a small island with a hostile force that knows almost exactly where we are.

[Zireael]

I read through the entire thread and I must admit I have never played the games, thus - is the world really a giant dungeon? It is described rather like a typical setting, in your campaign reports.

Still, I loved the setting descriptions, especially the dragons bit, and the reports.

[Cieyrin]

I read through the entire thread and I must admit I have never played the games, thus - is the world really a giant dungeon? It is described rather like a typical setting, in your campaign reports.

Still, I loved the setting descriptions, especially the dragons bit, and the reports.

Exile/Avernum is a giant cavern system many miles below the surface, so it's kind of a natural dungeon-type area in a way but it wasn't designed as such. There are crypts and ruins from previous denizens in the area that serve a dungeon-like function but the cavern system itself is fairly large and is more akin to untamed wilderness rather than a dungeon.

[Telok]

Theo world above ground may be slowly starting to turn into a Tippyverse, with some modifications because magic traps/items, teleportation ,and plane hopping work differently. Plus the highest level NPC caster (non-dragon because dragons are lazy like my cats) is a 17th level human wizard. Ghazahrad is over 160 years old (using Limited Wish to extend his life every couple of months), the power behind the throne of the Empire, spy master of the Emperor's secret police, lord high magus of the Imperial mages guild, and a paranoid bugger who won't share the time if day with someone unless he profits from it.

Needless to say he makes sure that most other full casters die at about 15th level.

Using the underground setting is helpful in some respects. While there is localized climate it has no weather to track. Likewise day and night are not an issue (though I do track what the date is) so lighting is pretty constant. I have a standing rule that there is (unless I mention or change it) a ubiquitous small glowing mushroom in most areas. While they don't give off enough light individually to do much when they cover large areas they give off a semi-dim lighting condition. So people have "D&D normal" light around them out to about 100 feet and "D&D dim" light beyond that to 200.

Another benefit is that it's easier for me to include weird stuff like giant slugs and exclude logical game breakers/bender like hippogriff cavalry here. I did have to nerf teleportation and flight a bit, but really only for out of combat stuff. Although some short range move/swift action TP effects took a small hit too.

[Telok]

Warblade, cleric, psychic warrior, and sorcerer today.

We left off with the party watching the Slitherazi fort empty itself of warriors to hunt a possible invasion force and four rafts depart to circle the island. Trying to sneak around the heavy patrols and hit the fort while it was relatively empty was discussed and voted down. There were about 20 slith total left in there, most of them mooks, but they don't know about that or the loot they missed. Instead they went back to the top of the hill where the psi-war manifested Skate on all of them and they high tailed it down towards their boat. Unfortunately the boat was only about a mile and a half around the curve of the island from the fort, with a batch of slith waiting nearby. While slith do have listen (soldiers) and spot (casters) as fully ranked skills they do not have hide or sneak. The fight was semi-brutal and two lightning bolts scorched across the beached and overturned boat blasting off 3/4 of it's thickness. They paddled off into the darkness with a Piercer Cloak (unidentified and too cowardly to experiment with it) and last session's low end scroll as the only reward for three decently rough fights on this island.

What they missed by not taking the fort is fighting about ten spearcarriers (2hd), ten braves (4hd w/ 2 1st level Iron Heart maneuvers), two priests (CL6), two mages (CL5), two warriors (7hd w/2 each White Raven and Iron Heart), and one chief (10hd w/3 each Tiger Claw and Iron Heart maneuvers). Missed loot was dragon scale full plate and two minor items on the chief, a Fire Shield (fire themed small iron shield resist fire20 +stuff @ 64kgp), the slith plans to attack Fort Dranlon, the slith codebook (I was wrong last time, it needs 8-bit codes for a decent vocabulary not 3-bit), and one of the crystals to repair the Crystal Cave. Plus two more camouflaged slitherazi war rafts, 50 rope ladders, and a gross of alchemical fire.

The slith attack on Dranlon is set to take place on June 27th.

But they left. Spent a 'night' resting in a leaky boat in the darkness (slith search parties made really bad rolls to try and find them) and then headed "that-away, because if this is the east edge of the island then that's south." Well it wasn't, they were on the southern side of the island. So they found the western shore, which is all swamp, and turned right expecting that to take them west to the river going south to Almaria. No, they were going north with no survival skills and no compass.

A day later they finally noticed the shore to the east of them, and the lights from a caravan going to Dranlon, it was only one more day to the fort. Got there, saw the slightly battle scarred walls, oohed over the Fire Web barriers, bought a compass, and talked to some people. One of the wizards offered to teach them the Fire Web and other wall spells in exchange for getting a magic tome from the slitherazi Swamp City. The commander offered them 20 lbs of silver and an unnamed bonus for the slith plans and code book from the Island Fort. The sorcerer learned to speak slitherazi (I'm assuming he has a horrible accent until he can actually converse instead of just shouting semi-incoherent threats) and the next day they set out in their leaky boat for Swamp City.

They found the city by rolling really well to notice a straight line canal cutting through the swamp. Managed to bust in and off the gate guards relatively quietly, mostly by killing the slith mage hard and fast. Then we needed to wrap up for the night. They passed the store houses and hot springs without investigation and are currently headed towards the hatchling's pool next to the temple and training/gladiatorial arena. There's a really good haul of loot in the temple, behind traps and a couple secret doors that are going to give them trouble. Plus there are four warriors and the chief training in the arena, who will go very whoop oss on them if they aren't very quiet about offing the priests and mage in the temple.

This is a tough dungeon for them, because they've intentionally avoided about five other dungeons/boss battles before getting here. This was aimed at them having another level and more magic toys before they got here.

It is June 19th, the slith plan to attack Dranlon will start on the 27th with 80 slith coming to Swamp City and 80 slith leaving the Island Fort. On June 30th teh war bands will be in position to attack. On June 31st 40 slith will attack Dranlon from the north, 40 slith will attack from the south, and 80 slith under Invisibility Spheres and Silence 15'r spells will scale the east wall of the fort and take the defenders from behind. The guys may still be there too, that'll be fun.

Edit: I just remembered that the boat is still leaking. Perhaps their footwear will need to make saves vs mildew. Three of them have magic boots.

[Telok]

Sooooo, we spent six hours covering 30 minutes of in game action today. But since we all had a bunch of fun I suppose it's all good.

Our hero's attacked some unarmed slith working in the hatchery. Amazingly they didn't smash any eggs or summon fiendish doom squid to eat the hatchlings. One slitherazi did manage to swim back to the communal pool and raise an alarm amongst the unarmed teenage slith back there. Still the party managed to run out and into the temple before anyone got back.

In the temple they smooshed a couple of warriors and priests, sucked down two lightning bolts before killing the mage, and were amazingly stealthy about it (they managed to block the exits). The high point of the fight was slapping Bestow Curse (-4 to all d20 rolls) on the warblade. I use that curse because it doesn't ruin the character like the 50% inaction and I'm not tempted to use meta-knowledge and -6 someone's critical character attribute (defaulting to a -6 Constitution curse is just as bad). In the priest/mage rooms behind the temple they did find one of the two secret doors (I've cut all the search DCs to 21 just so the plot can move forward). They tripped a dart trap that sprayed a 10x20 room and another 5x30 line through the door into another room with 120 darts, 1d8 darts per square. One person got hit, by one dart, while standing right in front of it. It did get another person into the room for the next trap. Not that the sonic trap on the chest did much, piddly damage and the psychic warrior deafened for ten minutes. It still got them a Hand of Glory, the Shielding Bow, and 750 silver. They liked that.

In the office they got two Cure Moderate Wounds potions that they put in a bag to be identified later, if ever. The magical laboratory yielded up two Goo Globes, a Glow Globe, and the Tome of Lightning (42 pages left). Nobody caught on to the magical item creation apparatus or the research notes lying around and the psi-war rolled a 1 on his search of the room (the secret door that they actually need to find) so everyone left except the sorcerer. The sorcerer opened the book. He also failed the Will save and didn't have Read Magic ready so an uncontrolled Chain Lightning blasted the room, he had previously cast Resist Energy [Electricity] and was not hurt. The magic laboratory was wrecked and all the research notes burned, a loss of loot but I'm not sure they would have wanted to carry any of it anyhow. He played around, cast Read Magic, got a Call Lightning (uncontrolled because it's a druid spell) and then lost a Call Lightning Storm by flipping pages back and forth. That lab is really trashed now.

Eventually our heroes girded their loins, decided that the book wasn't here (just because they don't have any ranks in Search they assume they can't find anything! Graahfufufubleargh!) and failed to sneak into the training area. So, no surprise round when they faced the Chief and his elite squad of warriors (the warriors aren't any tougher they just follow orders and the Chieftain has an 18 Int). First round the Chief ordered his warriors into a tactical flanking formation and went all Dancing Mongoose on the psi-war and warblade, this meant that the warriors didn't attack that round and the Chief tanked our fighters. The Chief also lost half his hit points that round. Second round those warriors were ordered to "Double tag team wolf pack" which meant that (heavy Tome of Battle usage here) W1 used White Raven Strike and changed stances from Absolute Steel to Tactics of the Wolf, then W2 used White Raven Tactics on W1 and White Raven Strike, W3 uses WRT on W2 and the strike, repeat for W4. On the next initiative count W1 moved to use WRT on W4 and attacked with Mithril Tornado, the others followed by shifting into the Tactics of the Wolf stance and following with their Mithril Tornadoes. Both the fighty PCs had hit points in the teens after this, there was much tension and "Are we going to survive this?"

Well they did survive, and win too. The warblade used both Goo Globes without knowing what they were, Xom (the god he worships, who likes randomness and uses a dice chart of good/bad things that can happen to you) likes that sort of thing and turned one of the warriors into a goblin, plus the webs helped by limiting the slitherazi's mobility a lot. The psychic warrior went into the negative hit points five times (Boots of <stand up with no AoO> were massively helpful to him). The cleric went negative twice and tried to use the Tome of Lightning (Call Lightning, uncontrolled) before throwing it to the sorcerer. The sorcerer and his familiar were smacked around a fair bit and reduced to throwing alchemy and force feeding Cure Light Wounds potions to KOed people for a couple rounds before the Tome came back to him (Orb of Electricity, twice).

The aftermath consisted of Detect Magic looting (Belt of Ultimate Athleticism and Greater Weapon Crystal of Fiendslaying off the Chieftain) while ignoring the large masterwork dragonhide full plate (value about 50,000 gp vs. the magic items worth 8,600). A tally of available power came up with everyone at almost full hit points, a 30 charge wand of Cure Moderate Wounds, a Tome of Lightning, two sorcerer cantrips, two cleric domain spells (Sanctuary and Shield Other), one psychic power point, and a cursed warblade. Listen checks revealed shouting and confusion out in the main hall, not surprising given that the gate guards are missing while an alarm was raised and the temple doors are now jammed shut from the inside.

It is still June 19th and I think the guys are going to try to run away and rest up for a return engagement. There are still 600+ civilian slitherazi, 100 braves, and 50 warriors in the city but they are mostly spread out in the farming and habitation tunnels. There will be about 20 or so slith in the main hall, some braves and a probably a warrior too. In a few minutes they'll get organized and a message party will depart for a nearby fortress while search parties and extra impromptu defences will be set up, this is when the training ground where the party is now will be searched too. After an hour the temple will be broken into and those impromptu defences will acquire a new urgency. What the PCs do next is going to determine quite a bit, because the only slitherazi that survived seeing the party only saw two of them for a few seconds.

[Telok]

Based on something said at the last game I've checked the total given, avoided, and abandoned loot so far.

Not including potions and scrolls the party has gained 346,385 in loot value and rewards, progressed through two required plot points, and achieved 3 fame.

Not including potions and scrolls the party has so far avoided 383,000 in loot value (not including rewards), three plot points (two are optional), and 2 fame.

The party has abandoned 4000 in loot and one optional plot point.

Now they still have a a chance to go to the Island Fort to pick up the two optional plot points and a fame, plus loot of course. Anastasia the Traitoress isn't going anywhere, she and the Nephil Fortress are one required plot point and a fame point. Motrax's cousins were pure loot, so were the giant intelligent friendly talking spiders. The 4000 in loot is still at the Nephil hideout with the demon altar, that's been reinforced and will have extra loot for extra danger. The abandoned optional plot point is the Slith tome that's still in the Slith City where the party is right now, they just have to bother to search for it.

The optional plot points are the tome in the city and the plans and codes at the Island Fort. These three things will determine the outcome of the war with the Slitherazi. The book details ancient slith history and religion, including that these guys are a sect that were exiled from a deeper homeland for turning to demon worship and violence. The plans are about an attack on Fort Dranlon that will destroy it and leave the entire Eastern Cave open to invasion by the nephil and slitherazi. That will cut off Formello and Draco from the rest of Exile while destroying the fishing and farming around Silvar and Cotra. The codes are just that, really useful military info.

People who know the Exile/Avernum game will remember that King Micah asks the PCs to kill the Slith king (there's a god/spirit of the slith that asks this too, for different reasons and a very different reward). This is a major required plot point, it also won't end the war. In six to eight months a new slith king will take control and the conflict will resume.

[Telok]

Five players this week. The lass with the TWF BS fighter could come. Don't whine about the build because she's still learning the game, is keeping up very nicely damage wise so far and, sadly, has more widely useful skills than anyone else.

The party hung around long enough debating what to do that I got bored, so some slitherazi spear carriers found them standing over the corpse of the chieftain. They ran out and clumsily fought through to the drawbridge, slaughtering about 10 civilians (using the tome of lightning with uncontrolled effects) and four braves. It still took them almost fifteen rounds to get out.

They ran off into the swamp, found a dry spot to hole up, and spent two days there. During that time (spent so that they could come back at full spells and hp) they made no effort to do anything with the magic items they had found, posted only minimum watches at their camp site, and cooked food. So I checked for the slith to send scouting parties to find them and lo! A 20 was rolled, right off the bat. Since these guys had done some major damage the scouts only watched from a good distance away. Players couldn't get over a 20 on any spot or listen checks so didn't notice the scouts. Seriously, the DC from the scouts 'take ten,' +1 bonus, and -10 for distance totalled 21 and they failed twice each. So two days later they head back to the city, everyone failing another set of spot and listen checks to notice the scouts going back before them.

Now the slith here aren't a major war force and most of the leadership has been killed. But the warriors have 16 Int scores and know that a major offensive is going to pass through the city before hitting Fort Dunvo. So they set a defensive position with spiky barriers and lots of spears just inside the gate thinking they could lure the PCs in one at a time and kill them. Four warriors and 12 braves with ten short spears each for throwing. The scouts reported the PCs still in the area and then reported when the party was coming back, time to set the trap.

I think that the Sanctuary spell was the only reason that the warblade didn't die. He used his boots of "teleport 20 feet" and the warriors and 4 of the braves failed the Will save to pincushion him. He was still below 1/2 hp before he got the drawbridge down. Then began the twenty round slugfest fight while the sorcerer kept flipping pages in the tome to try and get Orbs of Electricity and Chain Lightnings, after starting an uncontrolled Call Lightning and two uncontrolled Call Lightning Storms. That tome started with 42 pages in it and still had 35 pages when they left the city. It now has 12 pages left.

So they killed 7 warriors and 17 braves, leaving 43 more warriors and 83 more braves (reinforcements show up every 4 to 6 rounds). I believe that they think this is some sort of computer game spawn fight, they did say something about a "boss mob fight" that they expect. Of course they also think that the item they are looking for in here may be in a pool, in someone's bedroom, or somewhere in the farms. Never mind that they were explicitly told by the mage who sent them here that it was in the temple. These guys can fight, but that can't actually adventure worth a dang. This is way harder on them than it needs to be.

Just in case I didn't detail the tomes of random magic elsewhere in here (although I'm sure I updated the google docs magic item file)

Spoiler

Show

Magic Tomes
A fresh tome has 50 pages when created. When opened the user makes a Will save DC19 or he involuntarily reads the page and activates the spell. Read Magic will allow you to read the spell without activating it. Turning the page will waste the spell, it is gone as though it had been cast. The reader can only control spells that are on his class list, those spells are cast at the reader's caster level or the minimum caster level of the spell, whichever is higher.
65,000 gp value, CL 11.
Tome of Summoning: 1d6: 1-2 wizard, 3-4 cleric, 5-6 druid. 1d6: Summon Monster or Nature's Ally 1-6
Tome of Lightning: Shocking Grasp(w), Resist Energy(d), Call Lightning(d), Orb of Electricity(w), Call Lightning Storm(d), Chain Lightning(w)
Tome of Death: Chill Touch(w), Death Knell(c), Vampritic Touch(w), Death Ward(c), Slay Living(w), Circle of Death(c)
Tome of Protection: Shield(w), Shield Other(c), Prot from Energy(d), Lesser Globe of Invulnerability(w), Spell Resistance(c), AntiLife Shell(d)
Tome of Animation: Animate Rope(w), Animate Fire(d), Stone Shape(w), Shape Metal(c), Awaken(d), Animate Object(c)
Tome of Stone: Magic Stone(c), Soften Stone(d), Stony Grasp(w), Spike Stones(d), Wall of Stone(c), Flesh to Stone(w)

So it's the 21st now, in four days the force of warriors, priests, and mages, led by another chieftain, will arrive at the city to stage up for the assault on Fort Dunvo. If they're still here then I'm pretty sure they'll all die. Of course if they take too long and fail to hit the slitherazi Island Fort in time then Dunvo will fall anyways. Interesting times.

[Zireael]

That doesn't bode well for them.

[Telok]

How do you describe a 60 damage critical hit on a 2HD mook with only 4 hp left? I ended up coloring a 10x10 area red and drawing some limbs around it.

Well it started with our usual five suspects still in the (slightly blood soaked) slith city. They fooled around in the storage and farming areas for a couple minutes and had a minor brush with the force defending the hatchery, oddly they didn't seem to want to mess with people throwing nets on them. After a blunt hint they went back to the temple (closed and locked while awaiting a fresh batch of priests), broke in, and after a couple more hints managed to finally search the magic laboratory. One DC 19 secret door later (and a harmless lightning bolt trap) the got the strange greenish-grey metal book and a couple of non-magic scrolls. Our sorcerer was vastly disappointed in the lack of magical loot and fighting this time. After a brief skirmish at the front gate the escaped into the swamp.

They went five miles into the swamp, found a dry hummock, and camped. The Slith City is literally 10 miles from Fort Dranlon across the river. I'm going to have to stat up some quasi-random encounters to discourage this sort of thing. Sadly the slith rolled really badly on their scouting checks so I didn't hit them with a reprisal patrol while they slept. The sorcerer by this time was rather bored with looking for the slith book, failed a DC 10 decipher script (the slitherazi language has changed in the last thousand years), so he couldn't make sense of the historical part of the book. He also failed the history (zero ranks) and arcana (partial ranks) DC 17 checks to help his spellcraft check that would have identified the three spells in the book. See, those spells were "old magic" specifically they were AD&D the spells Fumble, Haste, and Lightning Bolt. The history and arcana checks were to recognize the magical equivalent of computer punch cards, which would have brought down the spellcraft DC to decode the spells. But our sorcerer, like his player, is thoroughly modern and uninterested in the history of the tools he uses.

Old magic spells.

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Clumsiness (Enchantment/Charm) L3
Range: 10 yards per level
Duration: 1 minute per level
Area of Effect: 30ft. cube
Components: V,S,M
Casting Time: 24 seconds
Saving Throw: Special

Effect: When a fumble spell is cast, the magic-user causes the recipient of the magic to suddenly become clumsy and awkward. Running creatures will trip and fall, those reaching for an item will fumble and drop it, those employing weapons will likewise awkwardly drop them. Recovery from a fall or of a fumbled object will typically require the whole of the next melee round. Note that breakable items might suffer damage when dropped.

Saving Throw: If the victim makes his or her saving throw, the fumble will simply make him or her effectively operate at one-half normal efficiency (cf. slow spell).

MC: The material component of this spell is a dab of solidified milk fat.

Quickness (Alteration) L3
Range: 60 yards
Duration: 3 minutes + 1 minute per level
Area of Effect: 40ft. cube, 1 creature per level
Components: V,S,M
Casting Time: 18 seconds
Saving Throw: None

Effect: When this spell is CAST, affected creatures function at double their normal movement and attack rates.

Thus, a creature moving at 60 and attacking 1 time per round would move at 120 and attack 2 times per round. Spell casting is not more rapid.
The number of creatures which can be affected is equal to the level of experience of the magic-user, those creatures closest to the spell caster being affected in preference to those farther away, and all affected by haste must be in the designated area of effect.
Note that this spell negates the effects of a slow spell (see hereafter).
Additionally, this spell ages the recipients due to speeded metabolic processes.

MC: A shaving of licorice root.
This spell negates a slow effect, and ages the recipient a year.

Electric Blast (Evocation) L3
Range: 40 yards + 10 yards per level
Duration: Instantaneous
Area of Effect: Special
Components: V,S,M
Casting Time: 18 seconds
Saving Throw: 1/2

Area: The AREA of the lightning bolt's effect is determined by the spell caster, just as its distance is.
The stroke can be either a forked bolt 10ft. wide and 40ft. long, or a single bolt 5ft. wide and 80ft. long.

Range: The range of the bolt is the location of the commencement of the stroke, i.e. if shot to 60ft., the bolt would extend from this point to 40 or 80 feet further distance, depending on the type of bolt.

Effect: Upon casting this spell,
the caster releases a powerful stroke of electrical energy which causes damage equal to 1 six-sided die (d6) for each level of experience of the spell caster to creatures within its area of effect, or 50% of such damage to such creatures which successfully save versus the attack form. The lightning bolt will set fire to combustibles, sunder wooden doors, splinter up to 1 foot thickness of stone, and melt metals with a low melting point (lead, gold, copper, silver, bronze). Saving throws must be made for objects which withstand the full forCe of a stroke (cf. fireball). If the full length of the stroke is not possible due to the interposition of a non-conducting barrier (such as a stone wall), the lightning bolt will double and rebound towards its caster, its length being the normal total from beginning to end of stroke, damage caused to interposing barriers notwithstanding.

MC: A bit of fur and an amber, and a crystal or glass rod.

Note that physical damage is not exceptional, so that if a solid wall is struck, the bolt effectively rebounds its full remaining distance. If it strikes a barrier which is shattered/broken through by the force of the stroke, then the bolt continues beyond.

Effect.UW: Underwater, this spell resembles a fireball as pertains to area of effect. Instead of a stroke, the electrical discharge takes the form of a 20ft. radius sphere, centring on the point where a stroke would originate were the spell cast above water. All those within the sphere will suffer the full effect (saving throw indicates one-half damage).

Example.area: If a 12th level magic-user cast the spell at its maximum range, 160 yards in this case, the stroke would begin at 480ft. and flash outward from there, as a forked bolt ending at 600ft. or a single one ending at 720ft.

Example.rebound: An 80ft. stroke is begun at a range of 120ft., but the possible space in the desired direction is only 100ft.; so the bolt begins at the 100ft. maximum, and it rebounds 80ft. in the direction of its creator.

Any way, the next day they went back across the river to Fort Dranlon and talked to Mariwen. She insulted sorcerers in general and rewarded them with a scroll of various wall spells, including her custom Fire Barrier spell.

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Fire Barrier, Conjuration (Creation)[Fire], Level: Sor/Wiz 6, Components: V, S, M, Casting Time: 1 full round action Range: Short (25 ft. + 5 ft./two levels) Effect: Fiery webs in a 10-ft./four caster levels -diameter spread, Duration: Instantaneous, Saving Throw: See text, Spell Resistance: See text
Fire Barrier creates a thick layer of strong, sticky, fiery strands. These strands trap those caught in them. The strands are similar to spider webs but far larger, tougher, and on fire. The Barrier must be anchored to two or more solid and diametrically opposed points or it may be cast on the ground, wall, or ceiling. I can be cast to cover a doorway or to fill an archway. The spell cannot be cast into an area occupied by another creature, trying to do so causes the spell to fail. Creatures caught within a web become entangled among the gluey fibers and may catch fire. Attacking a creature in a web won’t cause you to become entangled. Attacking the web may cause you to become stuck.
Anyone entering or touching the effect’s area must make a Reflex save. If this save succeeds, the creature is entangled and takes 3d6 fire damage, but not prevented from moving away from the Barrier. If the save fails, the creature is entangled and takes 6d6 fire damage and can’t move from its space, but can break loose by spending 1 round and making a DC 20 Strength check or a DC 25 Escape Artist check. Once loose (either by making the initial Reflex save or a later Strength check or Escape Artist check), a creature remains entangled taking a further 3d6 fire damage, but may move away from the Barrier. Any time a creature takes damage from the Barrier they must make a DC 14 Reflex save of catch on fire and burn for 1d6 fire damage for 1d4 rounds or until they take a full round action to extinguish the flames.
The webs of the barrier are 4 inches thick and have 16 hit points per square foot of web. The web is immune to blunt and piercing weapons as well as fire and heat. It is a DC 28 Strength check to break the web or a 38 Escape Artist check to slip through. Any cold spell of higher caster level that does more cold damage than the web does fire damage (6d6) will extinguish the Barrier's flames for 2d6 rounds and make the web brittle during that time, making the barrier vulnerable to blunt weapons.
Halving the diameter of the spell will double the thickness of the barrier, increasing the break and escape artist DCs by 10 each. Web can be made permanent with a permanency spell. A permanent web that is damaged (but not destroyed) regrows in 10 minutes.
Material Component: A bit of spider web and naptha, plus a fire opal or ruby worth 250 gp.

Then they waited another day and offered up a sapphire for an Identify spell to identify the odds and ends they got off the slith chieftain, plus figure out the last property of Ice Fang. This git them yelled at by Captain Rosie who had offered them several thousand gp to hit the Slith Fort to the south and bring back any codes or plans. The guys said "oopsie" and promised to set out for the slith fort next morning...

Since the island is 90 miles downriver from Dranlon it took them almost two more days to make a leisurely float down the east bank of the river, passing a flotilla that was going upstream on the west bank in the dark. So around noon (not that it makes a big difference underground) on June 29th they "attacked" the fort. Actually the plan was for the psychic warrior to "draw out" the guards while the party waited behind some rocks 100 yards away. Well the guards did what good guards do, sounded an alert. So a group of spear carriers (2 HD) led by a single brave (4 HD) came out to chase the lone human. The party stomped them and then split up. The cleric had knocked out one of the spear carriers and most of the party stayed to interrogate a teen aged mook. The psychic warrior (aided for one round by a summoned celestial bison) attacked the gate guards and went inside. The interrogation revealed that almost the entire fort (slith-wise) were off on some attack of "that human fort," but not much else before the party started squabbling between themselves and the sorcerer got tired of translating. The prisoner got KOed again and left behind.

All that was left inside were four spear carriers, six braves, one priest and mage. The psy-war took out the spear carriers, cleric (-8 and stable from allied heal checks), and a brave before going down. Since the Slitherazi mage didn't know what was going on or why a lone human would perform a suicide attack on a supposedly hidden fortress he ordered the guys to stabilize and disarm the human and to tend to the priest. Cue the rest of the party arriving half a minute later and killing almost everything else. One slith is stable at -4 (they haven't checked him), another jumped into the water and swam off with one hit point, and the priest was murdered in his bed. A quick search turned up no obvious magic items, lots of empty beds and storage space, and one slith boat. Then they got to the office and started searching through paperwork, when they got to the attack orders they started to panic. Sadly I didn't save the text of the attack orders after I printed them but it detailed times using the slith calendar and a flanking assault involving invisibility and silence spells.

We had to stop for the night there. The slith will be in position to attack Dranlon late on June 30th, and the attack commences in the early hours of the 31st. I checked and the air mephit can make the distance in about 8 hours. Of course he's also an abused familiar (the sorcerer keeps insulting him) who may be in a position of power for the very first time. There is still loot here too, at the end of a trapped hallway there is a chest with 500 gold and a piece of the Crystal Cave. Plus if they take the time to go through all the footlockers and personal possessions of the slith warriors they'll net about another 600 gold in stuff.

[Telok]

So I have the stats for the people in the Dranlon fight. Now I just need a good idea of who wins with and without PC involvement.

Fort Defenders: Four NPCs, Sorcerer 8, Wizard 9, Cleric 7, Ex-Imperial Officer 9 (Fighter 2, Empire Soldier 3, Elite Soldier 1, Empire Officer 3). Twenty five each of Fighter 5 (chain shirt, tower shield, crossbow sniper, improved shieldmate, shield specialization/ward), Duskblade 5 (heavy pick, light shield, long spear, 6/day resist energy/shocking grasp, 3/day deflect), Rogue 3/Fighter 1 (chain shirt, heavy shield, telling blow, wf: rapier) with spot & listen +9, Dwarf Fighter 2/Knight 2 (banded, tower shield, hand axes, phalanx fighting, shieldmate).

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Sianonn: heavyset sorceress, listening for slith sneak attack at the dock. female human Sor8: Size M (5 ft., 1 in. tall); HD 8; hp 37; Init +2; Spd 30 ft.; AC 12 (16), f10, t12, x10
Attack +5 melee, or +6 ranged; SV F+4, R+4, W+7; Str 13, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 16, Wis 13, Cha 18. Lt X-bow atk+6 1d8 19x2 rng80; Languages Spoken: Abyssal, Common, Draconic, Gnome. Skills and feats: Concentration +10, Craft (Pottery) +6, Hide +2, Knowledge (Arcana) +14, Knowledge (Dungeoneering) +8, Knowledge (Geography) +8, Knowledge (Local) +6, Knowledge (Religion) +6.5, Knowledge (Planes) +4, Listen +12, Move Silently +2, Spot +1; Craft Wand, Rapid Reload (crossbow, light), Scribe Scroll, [listen on class list], Imp.Familiar x2. Sorcerer Spells Known (6/7/7/6/4): 0th -- Daze, Detect Magic, Detect Poison, Flare, Mage Hand, Ray of Frost, Read Magic, Resistance. 1st dc15- Burning Hands[5d4], Disguise Self, Summon Monster 1, Magic Aura, Shield. 2nd dc16- Acid Arrow[2d4/3r], Summon Monster 2, Resist Energy[r20]. 3rd dc17- Explosive Runes[6d6], Summon Monster 3. 4th dc18- Evard's Black Tentacles[grap+16, 1d6+4].
Medium Elemental (Air, Extraplanar) Hit Dice: 4d8+8 (26 hp); Initiative: +9 (+5 Dex, +4 Improved Initiative) Speed: Fly 100 ft. (perfect); AC: 18 (+5 Dex, +3 natural), touch 15, flat-footed 13. Base Attack/Grapple: +3/+4, Attack: Slam +8 melee; Full Attack: 2 slams +8 melee, Damage: Slam 1d6+1. Space: 5 ft./5 ft.; Special Qualities: Elemental, darkvision 60 ft. Special Attacks: Air mastery, whirlwind, Saves: Fort +3, Ref +9, Will +1; Abilities: Str 12, Dex 21, Con 14, Int 4, Wis 11, Cha 11. Skills: Listen +3, Spot +4; Feats: Dodge; Flyby Attack; Improved Initiative; Weapon Finesse (slam)

Mairwen: short brunette mage, wall and barrier specialist; female human Conjurer9: (4 ft., 11 in. tall); HD 9; hp 52; Init +2; Spd 30 ft.; AC 16, f14, t12, x10; Attack +3 melee, or +6 ranged; SV F+6, R+5, W+8; Str 8, Dex 15, Con 17, Int 17, Wis 14, Cha 10. Languages Spoken: Common, Dwarven, Elven, Slitherazi. Skills and feats: Craft (Alchemy) +12, Hide +2, Knowledge (Arcana) +7, Knowledge (Dungeoneering) +14, Knowledge (History) +14, Knowledge (Local) +13, Knowledge (Religion) +12, Knowledge (The Planes) +10, Listen +2, Move Silently +2, Spellcraft +14, Spot +2; Combat Casting, Craft Wand, Craft Wondrous Item, Enlarge Spell, [Scribe Scroll], Silent Spell, Still Spell.
Repeating Heavy Crossbow atk+6 1d10 19x2 rng100'; Prohibited Schools: Abjuration, Transmutation. Wizard Spells Known (4/5+1/5+1/4+1/2+1/1+1): 0th dc13- Acid Splash, Arcane Mark, Dancing Lights, Daze, Detect Magic *O, Detect Poison *O, Disrupt Undead, Flare, Ghost Sound, Light *O, Prestidigitation, Ray of Frost, Read Magic *O, Touch of Fatigue. 1st dc14- Charm Person, Hypnotism, Identify, Mage Armor *OO, Obscuring Mist *OO, Ray of Enfeeblement[1d6+4] *OO, Sleep. 2nd dc15- Acid Arrow[2d4/4r] *OO, Glitterdust, Invisibility *O, Mirror Image[1d4+4] *O, Summon Swarm, Web[dc16] *OO. 3rd dc16- Deep Slumber *O, Invisibility Sphere *O, Phantom Steed, Wind Wall *O, Stinking Cloud[dc17] *OO, Suggestion. 4th dc17- Solid Fog [dc18] *O, Detect Scrying, Wall of Fire *O, Wall of Ice *O. 5th dc18- Cloudkill [dc19] *O, Wall of Stone, Wall of Force *O.

Toddric: youngish armored priest with a scar on his forehead, healer who has traveled in the north mazes. male human Clr7 Okawaru: (5 ft., 7 in. tall); HD 7; hp 56; Init +0; Spd 30 ft.; AC 18 (22), f18, t10, x10; Attack +7 melee, or +5 ranged; SV F+8, R+2, W+8; AL N; Str 15, Dex 10, Con 17, Int 15, Wis 16, Cha 5. Languages Spoken: Celestial, Common, Orc. Skills and feats: Craft (Stonemasonry) +15, Heal +11, Hide +0, Knowledge (Arcana) +11, Knowledge (History) +11, Knowledge (Religion) +12, Knowledge (Planes) +15, Listen +15, Move Silently +0, Profession (Miner) +7, Spot +2; Extend Spell, Magical Aptitude, Weapon Focus (Heavy Flail), Skill Focus (Knowledge (Religion: Okawaru)). Iron Full Plate, Iron Heavy Flail atk+8 1d10+3 19x2, lt.xbow atk+5 1d8 19x2. Blessed Light Mace of Okawaru (1/day +4wnp for 4 rnd OR Spiritual Weapon cl9). Cleric Domains: Strength (1/day +7 str 1rnd), Destruction (1/day smite +4hit +7dmg). Turn Undead 3/day 2d6+4 hd. Cleric Spells Per Day: 6/5+1/4+1/2+1/1+1. 1st dc13- Detect Magic OO, Detect Posion OO, Light OO. 2nd dc14- Enlarge Person, Divine Favor(+2), Magic Weapon(+1), Shield of Faith(+3), Faith Healing OOO. 2nd dc15- Bull Strength, Augury, Resist Energy(r20), Extended Lesser Vigor (30r) OO. 3rd dc16- Magic Vestment(+1), Locate Object, Invisibility Purge. 4th dc17- Spell Immunity, Divination.

Captain Rosie: honorable ex-Imperial soldier, will hire for stealing attack plans from slith Island Fort.
El1/Off3[9] hp:66, ac:19[23] chain+hv.sh t:12 f:15 s:10, F13[14] R4[6] W7[8], B/A/G +8/+11/+11. sh.sw +12 1d6+3 19x2, lng.spr +12(r) 1d8+4 20x3, sh.bow +10(60) 1d6 20x3. s16 d14 c15 i13 w12 c11, WF:sh.sw & lng.sp, phalanx, pwr.atk, cmbt.xprt, formation xprt, cmbt.ref[3], imp.init, ***move20, init+6*** ride+10, handle +10, climb+12-7, swim+12-14, listen+11, motive+7, forgery+7, decipher+7
1) Formation: +1 formation bonus to adjacent allies AC and saves
2) Coordinate: Aid another and flanking give allies +4 instead of +2
3) If fighting w/ Light Wp & Hv Shield, +1 AC
4) If you & two allies on either side are wielding a shield, you gain a +1 bonus to AC
5) If in a line of adj allies one ally falls, may single move to that location as if Readied Action
6) Gain a +2 attack bonus if you and adjacent allies wielding the same reach weapon
7) Give Orders: Standard action = following orders is +1 morale to all die rolls
Punishing Stance[+1d6 melee damage, -2 AC], Wall Blades[sub atk roll for AC], Iron Heart Surge!

Ftr5, Xbower, lt.xbow, chain.sht, s.sword, tower.shld
s:11 d:18 c:16 i:11 w:14 c:12,
hp 40, ac:chain shirt 18 (23/26), t:14 f:14 x:10, f:7 r:5 w:3
WF:lt.xbow, Precise, XbowSnipe, Imp.Shieldmate, Shd Spec/Ward
attk lt.xbow +10 1d8+2 19x2 80', **10 tanglefoot bolts
attk s.sword +3 1d6 19x2 && +5 shld ac, +3 more w/s.mate +touch
jump 8, swim 8 [-12]

Dusk5, hv.pick, banded, lt.wd.shld, long.spr
s:16 d:14 c:14 i:15 w:12 c11, (no OpAtk for cast if shld bonus)
hp 33, AC:band&lt.shld 18, t:11, f:17, x:10, f:6 r:3 w:4
Shielded Casting, Battle Caster, Combat Casting
attk pick +8 1d6+3 20x4, channel spell, Quickcast 1/day
attk long.spr +8 1d8+4 20x3 REACH, **pot: cure lt (1d8+1) x1
5/day detect.m, read.m, dance light, flare, ghost sound
0:dc12:[6]:acid splash[1d3], disrupt undead, touch of fatigue
1:dc13:[6]:resist energy[r10], shock grasp[1d8+5], true strike
1:dc14:[3]:deflect[+3]
ride 9, concentrate 10[14], spellcraft 10, sense motive 9

Rog3/ftr1 rapier, lt.xbow, chn.sht, hv.shld **alch acid x2 **smokestick x2
s:16 d:16 c:14 i:13 w:12 c:11, 2d6 SA, evasion, trapfind
hp 26, AC:chain shirt 19, t:13 f:14 x:10, f:5 r:5 w:2
Telling Blow, WF:rapier, WF:lt.xbow
attk rapier +7 1d6+3 18x2 [+2d6 SA on crit]
attk lt.xbow +7 1d8 19x2 80' [+2d6 SA on crit]
climb 9, escape.hide.sneak.tumble 9, listen.spot 9, intimdate 9

Dwarf Ftr2/Kni2 banded, tower.shld, handaxe, throw.axe x5
s:15 d:13 c:18 i:11 w:14 c:10, mv 20, darkvis 60, stonecunning
hp 42, AC: banded+tow.shld 22(24/26), t:11, f:15, x:10, f:8 r:2 w:3
WF:all axes, mount.cmbt, Phalanx Fighting, Shldmate, +4vs.spell/poison
no flanking bonus, no attk flatfooted,
if adj.ally w/ lt.wp & hv.sh +2ac +1rSav && adj.ally get +2ac
attk handaxe +5 1d6+2 20x3, attk throwaxe +4 1d6 20x2 10'
ride 8, intimidate 8

North and south slitherazi forces are (each): One Chieftain (10 HD large ToB style monster), 7 Mages (CL 5), 7 Priests (CL 6), 5 Warriors (7 HD), 10 Braves (4 HD), and 40 Spear Carriers (2 HD mooks).

The East side sneak attack force is: 15 Mages (substituting Invisibility Sphere for Lightning Bolt) with 7 scrolls of Lightning Bolt, 15 Priests (substituting Silence 15' for Shield of Faith), 20 Warriors, and 20 Braves.

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Slith Spearcarrier: Medium Humanoid (Reptilian) init:+1
HD 2d10+2 (13 hp), Speed 30 walk/swim, AC:16(leather) F:15 T:11 S:10, B/A/G 2/3/3, F/R/W 3/1/3, stats:body 12:mind 12
fire-hardened wood spears(5) +4 1d4+1 20x3 rng:30', darkvision:90', save +2 vs fire/poison/spell
craft:spear 6, listen 6, survival 6, loot: shiny rocks (10% small gem, appraise 12)

Slith Brave: Medium Humanoid (Reptilian) init:+2
HD 4d10+8 (30 hp), Speed 30 walk/swim, AC:18(hide) F:16 T:12 S:10, B/A/G 4/6/6, F/R/W 6/3/6, stats:body 14:mind 14
stone slith spear +7 1d6+3 20x3 reach10, bite +6 1d4+2 20x2, darkvision:90', save +2 vs fire/poison/spell
iron heart:Disarming Strike, Steel Wind, Punishing Stance
craft:spear 9, listen 9, survival 9, jump 6, loot: food, alchemy item

Slith Mage: Medium Humanoid (Reptilian) init:+1
HD 5d10+5 (32 hp), Speed 30 walk/swim, AC:18(mageAC) F:17 T:11 S:10, B/A/G 5/6/6, F/R/W 5/2/6, stats:body 13:mind 15
stone dagger +5 1d4+1 19x2, darkvision:90', save +2 vs fire/poison/spell
1:shield*1, less.acid.orb(3d8)*2, 2:scorching.ray(4d6)*2 3(16):lightning.bolt(5d6)*1
craft:alchemy 10, concentrate 9, spot 10, spellcraft 10, loot: scroll

Slith Priest: Medium Humanoid (Reptilian) init:+1
HD 6d10+6 (39 hp), Speed 30 walk/swim, AC:17(hide) F:16 T:11 S:10, B/A/G 5/6/6, F/R/W 6/3/7, stats:body 13:mind 15
stone dagger +5 1d4+1 19x2, darkvision:90', save +2 vs fire/poison/spell
1:faith.heal(13)*2, shld.o.faith(+3)*2, 2:cure.mod(2d8+6)*3, 3(17):curse(-4rolls)*2
craft:alchemy 11, concentrate 10, spot 11, spellcraft 11, loot: potion

Slith Warrior: Medium Humanoid (Reptilian) init:+3
HD 7d10+21 (59 hp), Speed 30 walk/swim, AC:19(scale) F:16 T:13 S:10, B/A/G 7/10/10, F/R/W 8/5/8, stats:body 16:mind 16
iron slith spear +12 1d8+6 20x3 reach10, haft strike +12 1d6+6 20x2, darkvision:90', save +2 vs fire/poison/spell
whiteRvn:WhRv Strike, WhRv Tatics, Tatics of Wolf, ironHrt:Mithril Tornado, Iron Heart Surge, Absolute Steel
hide 9, intimidate 13, jump 9, sneak 9, search 13, loot: minor potion

Slith Chief: Large Humanoid (Reptilian) init:+8
HD 10d10+21 (76 hp), Speed 30 walk/swim, AC:23(drgn.plt) F:19 T:13 S:9, B/A/G 10/14/18, F/R/W 11/7/11, stats:body 18:mind 18
steel slith spear +16 1d10+8 19x3 reach15, haft strike +16 1d6+8 20x2, darkvision:90', save +2 vs fire/poison/spell
tgrClaw:Pouncing Chrg, Dance Mong, Sudn Leap, Leap Drgn Stan, irnHrt:IrnHrt Focs, Mith Tornado, IrnHrt Surge, Absolute Steel
hide 12, intimidate 17, jump 12, sneak 17, search 17, listen 17 loot: 2 magic items

Now the numbers are a bit vague but Dranlon needs 100+ soldiers and the slith should have about 150% of that. If the players fail to help the fort it should fall, and if they assist in the defence obviously it will stand. My problem then is that my most likely scenario is that the party will warn the fort, but be unable to get there in time. If my players surprise me with something good then the warning may arrive a day ahead of the attack. More likely they will warn the fort just a couple hours ahead of the attack, or make some bone-headed move and get the message there during the battle.

Fort Dranlon is situated on the east bank of the river, with a small one pier dock, permancied Fire Barrier blocked entrances on the north and south gates, and a 25' high stone wall with parapet and crenelations (patched with Wall of Stone/Iron in some places). All buildings within the fort are 20' away from the walls, but the roofs are only 15' off the ground and made of rather thin wood. The fort is about 200 feet long on each side. The area surrounding the fort has been cleared and levelled out to 400 feet, the inner 300 feet is planted with the ubiquitous ankle-high glowing mushrooms in different colors for each 100 foot range from the walls. Combat and magic have taken a toll on the mushrooms, there are only about 40% of the shrooms left on the north and south sides compared with 80% on the east (inland) side.

So I really have three scenarios:
1) A full day of warning for the fort. The wizard and cleric can adapt their spells, simple traps can be prepared outside the walls, and the east wall will be manned by dwarves and duskblades. The fort will stand with heavy losses. How bad should it be though?
2) The warning arrives an hour or two before the attack. The east wall will be manned by dwarves and duskblades. Nobody will panic when the surprise attack shows up. Can this fort survive? What sort of shape will it be in after that?
3) The warning arrives in the middle of the battle. The walls are an even mix of soldiers and there's 1/4th of them waiting at the dock for a surprise attack from the water, the east wall is slightly less well manned than the north and south walls. Can the fort survive? If not, can the Captain prevent a rout and save at least some of her command?

[Telok]

Ok. June 29th Noon.
Players: At Island Fort 90 miles downriver from Fort Dranlon.
Mephit: Two miles away on the other side of the island, guarding the boat.
Dranlon: Blissfully unaware of the attack but generally ready for action.
Slitherazi: Landed north and south of Dranlon and moving to positions.

ETAs.
Mephit: Fast Healing seems to negate fatigue so hustling his flying will get him 96 miles in 8 hours.
Players: The fishing boat goes about 2 mph, the river current 1 mph. It got them 90 miles in two days. At 1 mph upriver... nope. Ok, 12 miles to shore in 6 hours and then 78 miles at move 20 is 4.9 days, at move 30 it's 3.3 days. I'm going to interpret the rule about anything that makes you fatigued while already fatigued puts you at exhausted to mean that you have to do different fatiguing things to become exhausted. So hustle for 3 hours in the boat and 5 more on land gets them 48 miles from Dranlon with 15 non-lethal. Cure that (cleric!) and they get 8 more hours of forced marching to get there.

DCs at 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, and 26. 1d6 non-lethal per fail = average 18 non-lethal if all the checks fail.

So they can get there in 16 hours with some non-lethal and fatigue, leaving another 16 hours before that attack. Except that there's a small army about 4 miles from the fort and it's watching the road to prevent any late arrivals from getting through. Say three scout groups spread on and beside the road at the 6 mile mark, consisting of 4 spear carriers and one brave, mission is to observe and report. A response team of one mage, one priest, two warriors, and five braves, mission is to destroy or deter. One scout team will follow the response team at 300 feet.

[Telok]

Och, these chaps are pretty floppy.

The psychic warrior ran off (Skate) to sweet talk the mephit into taking the slitherazi orders to Fort Dranlon. The rest of the party split up and explored the last of the Island Fort. The only interesting things there were the trapped door (Confusion poison gas and a Deeper Darkness spell) and a crystal from the Crystal Cave. The TWF fighter and the gnome sorcerer got caught in it and they both failed the Fort save for the poison and were confused for two minutes in the darkness. It was pretty funny to watch them beat on each other but eventually the warblade and cleric fished the gnome out of the darkness before he rolled four rounds of "Run away!"

On the race back to Dranlon they mostly followed the plan, the idea of it rather than the execution. They rowed (regular speed, not hustling) for six hours to the mouth of the river and then rowed twelve more hours upstream while the cleric slept and prepared spells. Then they hustled north for five hours, Mass Lesser Vigor removed the subdual damage and fatigue, then hustled four more hours. At this point two people failed the Constitution checks and became exhausted (hustling fatigue plus forced marching fatigue). So when they were 13 miles from the fort (I may have miscounted somewhere, one of my contact lenses self-destructed and scratched my eye making me slightly distracted the rest of the night) they decided to rest for eight hours... I asked the ex-Marine how far away you could see mortar fire at night and he said ten to fifteen miles with line of sight and clear weather, so they saw the lightning bolts a few hours into their rest. When they saw that they just wrote the fort off and went back to sleep.

They only got 1000 of the 2000 gold promised them because while the mephit's warning was enough to save the fort a full half of the soldiers and the sorceress Siannon died in the fighting. The party said "Oh, ok" took the gold and left immediately.

Three days later in Cotra the party only decided to deal with the giant crab in the bay after I mentioned in passing that there was a reward for killing whatever was eating the fishing boats. When asked why I hadn't mentioned it before I pointed out that they hadn't previously talked to anyone about solving the problem nor had they talked to the mayor who was offering the reward. So they got two new boats (the old one wasn't there when they went back, the slith forces from the Dranlon fight found it) and went to fight a huge crab. I'll give them credit for some foresight, they bought some +5 swimming skill potions and two Water Breathing potions that the town alchemist had made. They dumped a barrel of chum into a net and hung it off the second boat as bait, towing that boat 40 feet behind them. This worked and the crab attacked the second boat. Why the TWF fighter took off all her armor and stayed in the bait boat I don't know. She was the only casualty to the crab's +36 grapple check with Improved Grab and 3d6+15 damage. It took them almost a whole day to row back to town with the crab in tow.

Back in town there was a huge celebration of happy fishermen. The group got four magic rings and whined about getting them identified, I reminded them that several magic items they've gotten have been either historical and/or semi-famous (Ice Fang, Flame Halberd) or have had command words on the items themselves (wand, Cape of the Mountebank, Belt of Ultimate Athleticism, etc. etc.). The Int 10 cleric made untrained search checks and figured out that one ring was a Ring of Languages (four languages, draconic, infernal, abyssal, celestial, priced as a +5 skill ring) and a Ring of Animal Friendship (5/day, value 8000 gp). The other two are a Ring of Shooting Stars (underground only, natch) and a Ring of the Ram (3/day charges).

The cleric's god objects to necromancy so he refused to prepare Gentle Repose. The fighter will not be resurrected.

The party hopped in their remaining boat (the crab chopped the other in half with 4 hits) and headed south-south-west. Avoided the entrances to the Honeycomb, didn't get impaled on the underwater spikes in the river (small wooden fort as far north as you can get on that river) and got to Amlaria. They spent a lot of time talking to Julio, sage and ex-adventurer that he is. The cleric was horribly insulted by Mayor ("Lord Protector, thank you very much") Baran, but he washed up and came back to try a little diplomacy so he got the "lizard" quest (the mayor said "a couple of lizards" when he knows it's a breeding pair of basilisks with young) and promised them a "reward" (200 gp). They would have rushed off without asking any questions but the warblade, in his lust for lizard taming and riding, talked to Jasmine the butcher and lizard wrangler. When it came out that the mayor had actually offered a quest and a reward to adventurers she said that was odd because the mayor hated adventurers. I swear that I could see the little alarm bells going off in their heads, beautiful. So they talked to another couple of people which pretty much confirmed that there's something not right about this. They're still going lizard hunting, but they'll be (I hope) rather more careful and not all die at once.

It's July... 8th or 9th. The girl playing the TWF fighter is talking about making a rogue now. It's her first rogue so I'll help her where I can. If she doesn’t have a back story (more likely than the guys, but still unlikely) I'll propose that Yong-Mi picked her up in Fort Draco and took her and a couple few neophytes spider hunting. That will allow me to introduce magic items from the spider areas where these guys are never going to go. Plus I can tie the unrest in Formello into her history so the guys might go back up there.

[Telok]

My players are not incompetent, only inattentive. My players are not incompetent, only inattentive. My players are not incompetent, only inattentive. If I repeat this enough I'll believe it, right?

Team Hero is: Psychic warrior (deep impact and hostile empathic focus), gnome Sorcerer (summons, combust, lesser acid orb, incompetent outside of a fight), Cleric (AC whore, secondary healing focus), Warblade/Fighter (single weapon jumping tiger claw and a lizard taming/riding fetish), Rogue (generic-ish skill monkey type).

So they walked out of Almaria and went to solve a "lizard problem." The cleric actually talked to some farmers on the road! That just meant that they knew which farm to stop at. I was wondering if they'd manage to get lost on a road through farmland. But they got to the O'Malley farm without incident and send the rogue in alone to talk to the farmer. She did something quire useful without realising it, she mentioned that they were adventurers. The farmer had been expecting city guard goons and had initially just directed them to his south field. Once he knew they were adventurers he actually invited them in, spoke politely, and told them that they were facing basilisks. They began planning!!!

Enacting the plan most of them climbed to the roof of the farmhouse and readied missile weapons. The warblade and cleric went and staked out three smallish "eating lizards" near the east, south, and west fields. The fields are tower-cap mushrooms, grown for their wood, about 200' on a side and 150' from the farmhouse. The tower-caps grow pretty close together and can get decently big, so I put down slightly offset rows of pennies (sometimes we need lots of mooks) one square apart. The nearly ubiquitous glow-shrooms won't grow near tower-caps since they are different types of fungi, so it was dim light on the edges and dark from 15 feet in. As a bonus the cleric cast Light on each stake that the lizards were tied to.

And nothing happened. I let them hang for 20 (game time) minutes, since that was what I'd rolled for the first basilisk to wander over towards a new food. Seriously, real life hunters would love for bait to work that fast and these guys were starting to get itchy pants after five minutes. The psi-war and cleric rushed the first basilisk that came out of the south field, bloodied it, followed it as it fled and failed saves in amongst the tower-caps. That one fled with one hit point and the mephit (sorcerer's familiar) finished it with a crossbow bolt from 100' up in the air. This was the sorcerer's big contribution to the encounter, he never got off the roof and didn't cast any spells because he only had close and touch range spells. The warblade went haring off to the west field and fought the second basilisk alone (the rogue was dragging two statues back to the farmhouse by now), wounded it and then managed to scare it with the Tome of Lightning followed by knocking it out with a non-proficient unarmed attack of opportunity. There followed some amusing antics where he tried to blindfold it, healed it with a Healing Belt, failed a handle animal check and had to knock it out again, re-blindfold, try again, fail again, make more saving throws... It was quite amusing until the rogue came over and plunked a couple arrows into it while it was unconscious. The warblade was a good sport about it too, he just went to the nest and kept one of the hatchlings alive while he killed the other two.

Cue a slow trip to the Tower of Magi. The warblade rented an outbuilding from the O'Malley's to begin to rear his new pet, he's named it Sulfras. The other borrowed the O'Malley's wagon and hauled the statues back to Almaria where they hung out in a tavern for four days until a caravan came through. Ten days later (caravans are slow when you have to use barely tamed giant lizards to pull wagons) at the Tower one of the three 9th level cleric NPCs in the whole game agreed to un-stone people because nothing exciting was happening that week. The gnome wanted to learn to speak giant, one of the wizards agreed if he's fetch a magic book he'd had shipped to him from the ogres who raided that caravan. This is the same dungeon/quest they were offered last time they came to the Tower. A Sending spell was used to summon the warblade, his young basilisk being just trained enough to not claw it's blindfold off in public. Five days later the warblade appeared and sold the Flame Halberd for 28,000 which initiated a small buying spree. The cleric finally sacrificed the Vicious Explosive Orc Bane Dire Flail to his god for a few more piety. The next useless item on the list is a small Slow Burst (MiC 43) Disarming Dragon Bane siangham. The psychic warrior duelled the high priest, for a good reason though. The high priest is an ex-adventurer who worships Okawaru and has a blessed weapon. The psi-war wants to go into the Okawaru prestige class and needs a blessed weapon. Okawaru wants his blessed weapons to be out in the world smooshing people. The psi-war originally wanted a great mace and the only person at the Tower of Magi who had one was the priest, but he'll "make do" with a light mace that's a +4 weapon for four rounds up to three times a day. It was a nice non-lethal duel that the psi-war almost lost before he won in the end.

Then they went back to Almaria (ogres? what ogres?).

So three weeks after his first meeting with the mayor the cleric walks back into the mayor's office and asks for a pass to the Castle because he "solved the lizard problem." The mayor responded that some of his guards had come in two weeks ago with a pair of dead basilisks that "they had killed" and anyway he hadn't promised a pass to the Castle, just a reward. The cleric was then insulted again and thrown out of the building. Our heroes got quite pissy. But they remembered a rumour about the local Army commander not liking corruption! And they went and talked to him! It's the Almaria Bloodbath quest! It's detailed in a spoiler back just before this became a ongoing game thread, one of the last things I finished just before the game started.

It is August 12th and the rogue (and everyone else, but mostly the rogue) is considering how to get in touch with the "Thieves Guild," which has been defunct and crushed by the tong for several years now. Plus I need to figure out what the promised reward is. In the original it was a nice stealth boosting ring, I'm not sure what it should be for these guys.

[Grimsage Matt]

The Ring of The DM's Advice
Cursed Major Magic Item
Cost- Your sanity

This is a intelligent ring with the brain the size of a DM, that is impossible to get rid of, and gives the most Railroading advice ever.
The only way to remove it is when you manage to aquire at least 1 rank in Knowledge(plot).

There ya go Yer players giving ya problems? Give them a snarky telepathic ring that mocks them/Gives Advice/Helps you rail road them

[Telok]

I have an idea.

Ring of Fire's Friend: Created by an afrit (genie, maybe efreet and maybe not) to repay a debt to a magi.
Resist fire 5, +4 on charisma skills with fire subtype creatures, Endure Elements with fire, may summon (not call) the creator four times but it has already been used twice and does not confer control over the afrit, the afrit owed three favors (not wishes) to the original mage and while he still owes a favor the agency that will be giving the ring to the party is not the original mage.

This will allow them a potentially powerful asset that could be turned into a long term ally, if they play it smart. If they play it dumb and try to force wishes out of the afrit then they create an enemy.

[Telok]

Murder hobo rampage!!!

Chat with Dexter to get the pawnbroker's name, complain about the toll bridge (5gp a person), talk to Alycia to get the bartender's name and where the farm protection racket was at right now, swim back across the river, two people almost drowned to DC 12 swim checks, walk 20 miles further south in wet boots to the O'Malley farm. The O'Malleys are good people who dried the heroes out, fed them, and let them spend the night. Spend a whole day quick marching back to Almaria and the next day finding the extortionist thug partol in the farms north of town.

They tried to ambush the thugs and it sort of worked too. The rogue and the sorcerer's familiar followed them until they turned around at noon and headed back towards town. The familiar flew back high above the road to find the party who then hid behind a waist high stone wall, except for the sorcerer who sat down by a tree to read a book on the other side of the road. The rogue managed to sneak past the thugs at speed mainly due to distance penalties on the spot checks and ended up near the sorcerer when the thugs came by. The thugs were one L5 scout in front, another in back, and four L5 barbarian/fighters with Reckless Rage, Reckless Offense, and Power Attack. When they rage their AC drops by 6, their attack bonus does not change, and the great axe damage goes from +4 to +14. The lead scout got an untrined sense motive throught he sorcerers bluff and went to hassle him which is when the sorcerer discovered that the Tome of Lightning is now Xom's Tome of Lightning when he went through 3 pages looking for a Chain Lightning and then found that he couldn't control it. It hit one scout (failed the save and fried to -3) before toasting the sorcerer for 1/3rd his HP. In the ensuigh fight everyone except the cleric (AC whore) went into the negative hit points. There were no critical hits in that fight. Then they stunned me by capturing the last scout, they put two arrows in him as he was fleeing and had to heal him really fast but it was a capture. They got the name of the smith and headed back to town giving the extortion money back to the farmers as they went.

The smith had an outdoor forge in front of his house. Our heroes insulted him until he pulled a lion out of his bag of tricks and threw it at them. The poor lion never hit anything that fight, I couldn't roll over a 7 for that beast. The smith was murdered in front of his forge and his sons were killed when they tried to come out of the house to help him (L9 barbarian with a leather apron and a maul, two L3 rogues with rapiers and chain shirts). The sorcerer failed to set the house on fire with spells while everyone else found the cash stash and took the magic animal bag.

The bartender got pretty well hosed too. They covered the back door and the cleric walked in and issued an ultimatum while the sorcerer threw a light globe (they never bothered to identify it, or ask anyone about it, or cast spells on it, or compare it to the ones in the Tower of the Magi) at the L9 monk bartender. Eight poisoned shuriken (five from L3 monks hanging at the back table) totally missed the cleric of course. Murder occurred, three wounded mooks tried to escape through windows but were cut down in the street and alleys, and the fight dragged out into the main street. The bartender realized that if he could grapple the sorcerer into unconsciousness then he could use the held Combust spell via improvised weapon [gnome sorcerer] against the cleric. It almost worked, unfortunately the rogue ganked him. The cleric healed the bartender and soaked the Combust from a fussy sorcerer. Then the police showed up.

The psychic warrior had gone up to the roof and was playing lookout. That gave everyone enough time to get out and hide before the gnomish SWAT team arrived. The gnome Swat team is a reoccurring joke in our group. I found a way to make it work. Two goliath rangers push the paddy wagon which has twelve Swarm Fighting gnome monks in it and two huge Great Crossbows on top of it. Monkey grip is such a lousy feat that I'm perfectly willing to let it apply to bipod mounted crossbows. All twelve gnomes can fit in one square and they get +4 to hit from it too. So the fuzz checked the tavern and sealed it with yellow police rope while they started asking for witnesses and waiting for a senior officer. The PCs took this opportunity to calmly walk away, break into a warehouse, and start interrogating the bartender.

They offered the bartender his life if he spilled the beans. They also didn't catch his lies. There are five gang bosses in town, these three and two others. But he mis-identified the other two, implicating an innocent merchant and a crooked judge who takes bribes but isn't part of the gang. So two fifth level experts are probably going on the chopping block. Plus they did let the bartender go, and he's going to warn the pawnbroker before leaving town like he promised. So the L9 criminal sorcerer, who was already on alert because someone murdered the smith and his sons in broad daylight, will be quite well forewarned. Funny thing, the bartender didn't mention that the pawnbroker was a sorcerer. The players didn't ask.

The last interesting bit is that the sorcerer wandered off to the pawnshop instead of going to the warehouse. Due to an natural 20 die roll and his size modifier to hide nobody has spotted him watching the shop. Yet. Of course the sorcerer doesn't know diddly about what else is going on either. Splitting from the party will limit your information pretty badly sometimes.

It is August the 15th and Almaria is being terrorized by a troupe of rampaging spree murderers. Not long now before the Army is called in and the city goes into lockdown with assault squads roaming the streets.

[Zireael]

Natural 20, nice. Of course, once someone notices him, all hell will get loose...

[Telok]

Natural 20, nice. Of course, once someone notices him, all hell will get loose...

Well someone did notice him. The monk/bartender that they had let go made a quick pit stop to tell his fellow Tong about the adventurers before he left town. Since he has a +15 spot the party walked into a trap. Sort of.

The ranger has rejoined us! We are up to six PCs now and the ranger went into the pawnshop and asked about pawning a cloak. There were four L3 duskblades downstairs and one was trying to impersonate the owner. The ranger asked to speak discretely with him and he agreed, the cloak was pure white silk which is rare to impossible in Exile, they headed to the upstairs bedroom where Tosti (L9 human sorcerer and pawnbroker) was waiting. About this time the warblade and rogue ascended to the roof and saw a trapdoor. Stealth rolls were failed, listen checks were made, and the game was up. Tosti called out about the intrusion on the roof while the ranger managed a really good bluff check and acted like an innocent bystander/customer. Highlights include the roof being cleared with a Stinking Cloud, the psychic warrior taking two readied action attacks (True Strike, channeled Shocking Grasp, Blade of Blood short swords for 7d6+3 each) then Hostile Empathic Transferring most of it back, and the gnome sorcerer standing outside and trying to count magical auras with Detect Magic the whole time. After a Fear (warblade run!) and Lightning Bolt combo Tosti fled by Flying through his own Stinking Cloud out the trapdoor in the roof.

After a quick loot (they actually don't want to tangle with the gnomish SWAT team, amazing!) including a poison recipie book, a pint of giant scorpion venom, a necromantic corpse preservation book, and a treatise on arcane uses for fairy giblets, our heroes skedaddled. They went and threatened a poor wainwright and his daughter but listened to them and belived them about not belonging to the Tong. After that it was bed time at the Bed & Keg, some people chose rooms with windows and some chose rooms without windows.

Tosti's night attack went OK. The ranger and rogue were Feared through a Stinking Cloud, the psi-war and sorcerer didn't wake up until the Lightning Bolt, and the warblade discovered a new weapon. Literally, he reached into his stuff for the Tome of Lightning and came up with a Xom god gift. A bright yellow with smiley faces nunchucks enchanted with Giggling (really Screaming, MIC 42) and Impedence (MIC 37). Random stuff is RANDOM! And also oddly appropriate for this fight, a couple swats with these and the sorcerer was pretty well fubar. Since he wasn't fully murderized they took him prisoner.

Morning came and with it breakfast and baths (for some people), praying for spells and meditating for power points took two people out until lunch. The rest sort of, kinda, tried to interrogate the prisoner. Plans were argued over trying to assault the magistrate's home. That never got anywhere, thankfully. My preperation of a butler, maids, husband, and daughter of the magistrate was wasted. But that's fine by me, it saved me the trouble of getting the entire city guard involved and making the PCs outlaws. Although I can work with that, outlawry will not stop the plots or prevent the PCs from doing stuff. Eventually the captive was simply given to Captain Thredor and they got the ring in return. Immediately they started talking about wishes a squabbling over the ring.

Ring of Fire's Friend

Spoiler

Show

Ring of Fire's Friend: Created by an genie to repay a debt to a magi.
Resist fire 5, +4 on charisma skills with fire subtype creatures, Endure Elements with fire, may summon (Calling effect based on Planar Binding) the creator four times but it has already been used twice and does not confer control over the genie, the genie originally owed three favors to the mage and while he still owes a favor it is legalistically to that mage. Captain Thredor has used the Calling once but didn't use any favors, he did part on good terms with the genie. The genie is a standard Djinn with 9 wizard levels and 17 Int.

It is now August 17th. The party is now level 8 and sitting in a farmhouse outside Almaria (which is under martial law until the random murderizing stops and a culprit or scapegoat is found.). I don't know where they will go next.

[Telok]

The genie has stats!

Spoiler

Show

Djinni, 9th level wizard (diviner)
Size/Type: Large Outsider (Air, Extraplanar)
Hit Dice: 102 hp
Initiative: +8
Speed: 20 ft, fly 60 ft. (perfect)
Armor Class: 19 (-1 size, +4 Dex, +3 natural, +3 ring), touch 16, flat 15, screw 12
BAB/Grapple: +11/+19
Attack: Slam +14 melee (1d8+4) or large flaming falcion +14 (2d6+6 +2d6 fire, 18x2)
Full Attack: 2 slams +14 or iterative falcion +14/+9/5
Space/Reach: 10 ft./10 ft.
Special: Air mastery, spell-like abilities, whirlwind
Special: Darkvision 60 ft, immunity to acid, plane shift, telepathy 100 ft, detect scrying
Saves: Fort +10, Ref +12, Will +13
Abilities: Str 18, Dex 19, Con 14, Int 17, Wis 15, Cha 15
Skills: Appraise +12, Concentration +21, Craft (weaving) +12, Diplomacy +4, Escape Artist +14, K(planes & arcana) +21, Listen +12, Move Silently +14, Sense Motive +12, Spellcraft +21 (+2 divination), Spot +21, Use Rope +4
Feats: SF(divination), Combat Reflexes, Ability Focus (Whirlwind), Imp. Init, Imp. Tough, Mobile Spellcasting (Concentration check (DC 20 + spell level) to cast a spell and move as one Standard
Action), Research (Ebberon p59).

Air Mastery (Ex)
Airborne creatures take a -1 penalty on attack and damage rolls against a djinni.
Spell-Like Abilities

At will—invisibility (self only); 1/day— create food and water, create wine (as create water, but wine instead), major creation (created vegetable matter is permanent), persistent image (DC 17), wind walk. Once per day, a djinni can assume gaseous form (as the spell) for up to 1 hour. Caster level 20th. The save DCs are Charisma-based.
Whirlwind (Su)

This djinni can transform itself into a whirlwind once every 10 minutes and remain in that form for up to 16 rounds. In this form, it can move through the air or along a surface at its fly speed. The whirlwind is 5 feet wide at the base, up to 30 feet wide at the top and up to 50 feet tall. The djinni controls the exact height, but it must be at least 10 feet. A djinni’s movement while in whirlwind form does not provoke attacks of opportunity, even if the djinni enters the space another creature occupies. Another creature might be caught in the whirlwind if it touches or enters the whirlwind, or if the djinni moves into or through the creature’s space. Creatures one or more size categories smaller than the djinni might take damage when caught in the whirlwind and be lifted into the air. An affected creature must succeed on a DC 26 Reflex save when it comes into contact with the whirlwind or take 3d6 points of damage. It must also succeed on a second DC 26 Reflex save or be picked up bodily and held suspended in the powerful winds, automatically taking 1d8 points of damage each round. A creature with a fly speed is allowed a DC 26 Reflex save each round to escape the whirlwind. The creature still takes damage but can leave if the save is successful. The save DC is Strength-based. Creatures trapped in the whirlwind cannot move except to go where the djinni carries them or to escape the whirlwind. Creatures caught in the whirlwind can otherwise act normally, but must make a Concentration check (DC 17 + spell level) to cast a spell. Creatures caught in the whirlwind take a -4 penalty to Dexterity and a -2 penalty on attack rolls. The djinni can have only as many trapped inside a whirlwind at one time as will fit inside the whirlwind’s volume. The djinni can eject any carried creatures whenever it wishes, depositing them wherever the whirlwind happens to be. If the whirlwind’s base touches the ground, it creates a swirling cloud of debris. This cloud is centered on the djinni and has a diameter equal to half the whirlwind’s height. The cloud obscures all vision, including darkvision, beyond 5 feet. Creatures 5 feet away have concealment, while those farther away have total concealment. Those caught in the cloud must succeed on a Concentration check (DC 17 + spell level) to cast a spell. A djinni in whirlwind form cannot make melee attacks and does not threaten the area around it.

Plane Shift (Sp): A genie can enter any of the elemental planes, the ethereal planes, or the Material Plane. This ability transports the genie and up to eight other creatures, provided they all link hands with the genie. It is otherwise similar to the spell of the same name (caster level 13th).

Spells 5/6/6/5/3/2 +divination, -enchantment, -transmutation
0:detect magic x2, read magic x2, prestidigitation
1:endure elements, shield, mage armor, critical strike(swift, flank/deny dex, +1d6 precision, double crit threat, +4 confirm), know protections(close, wNeg16)
2:resist energy(20), glitterdust(wNeg15), locate object x2, mirror image(1d4+3), shatter
3:dispel magic, nondetection, analyze portal, arcane sight, <open slot>
4:lesser invulnerability, black tentacles, <detect scrying>(pre-cast)
5:contact other plane, sending

Spellbook: all divinations to 5, no enchantment or transmutation, 50/50 anything not on list.
Crystal Ball (scrying dc16), Bag of Holding, Flaming (x2) large falcion, Ring of Protection +3

[Telok]

We were missing the ranger this week but our heroes still stomped everything in their way.

Still gloating over having access to a Wish they were now determined to find and kill some ogres. This is becaue the sorcerer wanted to learn to speak giant and agreed to a fetch quest for a teacher in the Tower of the Magi. Some ogres had raided a caravan and taken off with a book the mage had been after. So they set off for the Tower of the Magi.

Meanwhile the sorcerer had sweet talked me into letting him summon a different familiar. He wanted a hippogriff, which is something that is neither a naturally occuring creature down in Exile nor is it something that he can summon. He can summon elementals, even though he has no interest in them until he gets access to the monoliths. So I gave him a Fire Elemental templated hippogriff, because I knew that the main reason he wanted it was for the unlimited flying which would hash about half the setting. Now the sorcerer has to use a second level spell every time he wants to ride his familiar. Even better are the facts that he has no ranks in the ride skill and nobody in Exile makes saddles because nothing down here is tame enough to ride. Plus the party now has a large bonfire flying around it, stealth go bye-bye.

I moved the Olga the Lonliest Ogress encounter down to the east side of the Steaming Valley and they ran through that pretty easily. Olga surprised them and grabbed the warblade. After an amazing bluff check comparing his manliness to the cleric's Olga threw the warblade at the sorcerer, knocking him off his familiar and disrupting his spell, and started chasing the cleric. The cleric immedately cast Freedom of Movement and went to shelter behind the psychic warrior. A couple rounds later Olga was low enough on hit points to run but a summoned Howler took her down as she fled. They rescued one ogre and the other vowed to serve them for saving his brother. I don't recall if they got Olga's only magic item, magic slippers that allow the wearer to use Tornado Throw (ToB) once an encounter. They may not have them, my description of Olga was nasty and vivid enough for them to ask me to stop telling them what she looked like. The warblade spent several rounds hugging the fire hippogriff to cleanse himself.

A couple more days saw them at the Ogre Cave, it turns out that their new follower, Thog, knew where it was. The assault went OK, I forgot to detail read my noted before hand and missed about half the ogres but the 4HD ogres weren't the real threats anyways. The hill giant clobbered the warblade and psychic warrior for a while and even landed a heavy hit on the cleric, he was mostly a hit point and spell sink anyways and preformed admirably. The Orge mage... The flying, invisible, smart orge mage opened with a Cone of Cold that hit the rogue and sorcerer. The rogue was unaffected, the sorcerer was turned into an 8th level commoner when his familiar turned out to be vulnerable to cold. Since ogre magi are a bit fragile he avoided melee except to grab the sorcerer and dump him in the lake, he didn't want to face the whole party alone (half the listed ogres were dead and I'd forgotten about the other half). So the ogre mage easily escaped into the deeper rescesses of the cave and the party rescued the sorcerer before the giant catfish in the lake took more than two bites at him.

The party then swept the area, searched a single storeroom off the kitchen, and bedded down to sleep in the ogre mage's bedroom. Literally, they searched a pantry and went to sleep. They left Thog and the sorcerer's burning familiar on watch. Naturally the ogre mage came back after a few hours, it snuck in using is Gaseous Form ability and invisibility and started whailing on the cleric first. Things went really well until the warblade took the blindfold off his basilisk. Everyone made the DC11 Fort save except the giant type (bloody dice). They now have a 1,900 pound statue (Google is wonderful).

After they rested it was time to explore the lake. There is a boat, a dug out canoe sized for one ogre and some stuff. After an inital attempt to put a huge (charmed) lizard in it and still fit two people and a basilisk failed everyone accepted the inevitable and just left the lizards behind. The rogue failed a spot check and took a face full of black pudding, that fight finished with the sorcerer reading off his last scroll of Fireball. I moved the book from behind the giant's room (secret door) to the altar of Kikubaaqudgha, actually to a bookshelf in there, because I didn't want another repeat of the Slith City fiasco where they kept ******* around and not searching anything. Now except for a couple non-magic historical scrolls in the ogre mage's room all the loot was here. And a trap on the bookcase, but I'm going to double the damage of all the traps after this as 3d8 is pretty pathetic with my 60+ hit point adventurers. The warblade snagged the three cursed swords on the altar as soon as someone detected magic, the cleric grabbed the book they were after,while the rogue picked up 600 silver pieces, the Drake Skin Jacket and a small magic singham (masterwork Slow Burst Disarming Dragon Bane, +4 equivalent). They also now have another glow globe which they still think is some sort of magic weapon despite throwing it at things every other encounter.

It's August the 23rd and I'm sure they'll go to the Tower of the Magi next. Xom loves his playthings fooling around with unidentified and cursed magic items. So I think that the other half of the ogres were out hunting for food and the party will meet them on the way back. I'll just have to see which sowrd the warblade pulls out first.

Three of Swords, cursed.

Spoiler

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The longsword with a glowing red gem in the hilt is a -2 cursed sword. The longsword with the black blade and glowing green runes is a sword if cursed berserking. And the last sword is so plain looking that it almost sits up a screams that it's magical (compared to the other two), it's cursed with a delusion that makes it seem like the user is doing *1.5 damage when they are really only doing half damage.

[Telok]

Our six valiant heroes (the ranger made it this week) set around and bickered about ogre mage statues, trpohies, and crap until the ogres snuck up on htem and attacked. You heard that right, six standard 4HD ogres managed to sneak up on a party of 8th level PCs. Mostly because when I call for spot checks I expect you to roll a die and tell me a number, if you aren't paying enough attention to do that then you'll fail the roll.

Unfortunately they didn't try to use any of the cursed swords, and the ogres weren't a dangerous threat anyways. Eventually they went back to the Tower of the Magi. There they fooled around a bit, turned in the book for a language lesson, got the magic crap identified, and surprised me. The swords didn't ID as cursed, they never do, just as a "magic sword with a 2 bonus," a +2 Sword of Beserking (which confused them since it wasn't in the Magic Item Compendium), and a Sword of Extra Damage. Apparently they also thought that the singham was valuable enough to keep, although there is some effort being put into finding someone to cast Polymorph Any Object to turn it into a usable weapon. The rogue wants to go into the Nemelex Xobeh prestige class and needs to sacrifice 37k in wealth to do that (there is recompense for the lost wealth) and the singham was intended for her. Instead she got the Sword of Beserking and sacrificed that, which is less than 1/3rd of what shee needs. In fact sacrificing all three swords wouldn't be enough.

Eventually they came to a decision to head to Patrick's Tower (oldest mage and second largest magical library in Exile) and stop on the way at the volcano in the Steaming Valley. They're headed there because they heard about the salamander colony and the fact that thier spears can be used a components for fire resistance enchantments. They want to make an exotic saddle of fire resistance so that people can ride the sorcerer's familiar without casting Resist Energy every time. The cleric made peaceful contact (riding the familiar and wearing the Ring of Fire's Friend helped) and agreed to trade eight demon hearts for a spear. The salamanders even told them where to find the demons, south end of the Steaming Valley past the lake and in the lava.

The journey south went pretty well except for the bit where they entered the clouds of steam coming up off the boiling lake and started to make saves vs. broiling alive. They turned the raft (they made a raft to cross the lake) back and the cleric slept and prepared Endure Elements spells. Considering theat they knew there were demons ahead I'd have thought he would prepare some Protection from Evil and Align Weapon or something, but I guess that's not a priority for him. In the morning they rowed back to the steam clouds and beached the raft on the hardened shell where the lava meets the lake. Walking south they exited the clouds and started transversing the lava flows. Some 14 hours after the day began they reached the Shattered Fort. The only thing of note on thier journey was the rogue dipping the slippers from Olga into the lava. She'd forgotten to get them identified and couldn't figure out how to activate them (jumping around a shouting gibberish won't work). Those were modified Setting Sun Slippers that allowed anyone to use Tornado Throw once a day, about a 30kgp item.

At the fort they totally failed to sneak up on anything, the cleric rode the fire elemental hippogriff on a scouting flight and tried to lead some quasits back to where the others were waiting. The quasits, not being fools and totally missing their invisible surprise attacks on the cleric and familiar, simply went invisible and followed him at a couple hundred feet higher altitude. So when the party actually got to the Shattered Fort they were ambushed on the 'beach' by four quasits and a hellcat, with another 3 quasits and a hellcat coming 10 rounds later. They had a rather difficult time with the hellcats until the sorcerer pulled out his Summon Monster 4 spell and called in two Voor. Those are Monster Manual 2 large demons with four 20' reach tentacles and blind sense 120', they're also blind and the fool didn't write down whether or not they had the Blind Fighting feat so they missed alot too.

By the end of the fight they had killed 3 quasits and a hellcat, the others retreated because they didn't want to fight adventurers and tentacle demons who could find them when they were invisible. The party got a heart out of the hellcat, the three quasits didn't yeild hearts because the least dead of them was at -28 hp. When you've dumped 40+ damage into something with only 13 hit points it isn't just dead it's bisected, splattered, or dissolved.

That's where we left off. It's the 30th of August, the day of the festival of Vulcanalia. The PCs have been in scalding heat for 14 hours (so has that raft they left behind) and have eight hours of Endure Elements left. The demons in the fort are alerted to thier presence and will start to mobilize soon. I'll be nice though, the bone devil is going to order his minions to take care of them and go back to watching the succubus/eyerine team mud wrestling match.

[Zireael]

Well, at least they escaped the city...

[Telok]

Well, at least they escaped the city...

Almaria? I almost had to run them out of town with the army chasing them to get them to stop the murder spree. They were seriously planning a B&E on the judge's house (which is on the main town square) and murdering her. Without bothering to figure out that she had a husband and kids.

Now I'm thinking about how to get them out of the Shattered Fort without being too obvious about it. They've attacked a ruined fortress city with 22 quasits, 6 hellcats, 12 bearded devils, 4 babau demons, 4 chain devils, two succubi, an eyerine and a bone devil. While the chain devils are stupid everything else has 10 to 16 Int scores and the party is really unprepared to fight demons.

[Telok]

The current body count is 6 imps, one hellcat, 2 bearded devils, one babau, and three humans.

Bafore this week's game I bothered to figure out how the early Exile army took out Akhronath (the Shattered Fort). Given a year of preparation, twenty wizards and twenty priests, another 160 people capable of using scrolls, and about 800 picked troops a lava moat fortress/palace home to demons can be taken down. The walls were breached by (lots of scrolls) Disintegrate followed with Bigby's Forceful Hand spells. This created the scalloped edges of the two V shaped breaches in the 80' high and 40' thick basalt wall (the volume of a disentegrate spell creates a 15.7 foot wide crater that is 7.8 feet deep). Massed Hand spells then pushed the weakened walls inward making 50' wide entrances and huge fields of rubble inside. With all the soldiers ready, priest buffed, and chugging potions (Bless Weapon and Protection from Evil saw heavily use) they could get in and pretty effectively destroy any demons they could get to grips with. Massive casualties but effective. Grah-Hoth is trapped, the portal is sealed (of course there's a portal to the Halls of Pain in this place), and because of a really bad location and some lingering demons Akhronath never becomes a tourist destination.

Cue our heroes. After a few minutes discussion they climbed one of the breaks in the outer wall all the way to the top of the wall. They didn't go in, just up. Forewarned by the various quasits one of the inner patrols (four bearded devils and a babau) where hiding on the edge of the rubble field in the darkness. Being light limited, the party failed to see them and tied some rope to a crenelation to let the psychic warrior down. A quasit untied the rope. With a light source down there the bearded demons were revealed and combat ensued. One demon was killed normally, two escaped with single digit hit points, and the last was Hostile Empathic Transferred to -56 hp. The babau caused some unpleasantness before teleporting to attack the rogue and ranger, those being the only people left on the top of the wall after ten rounds. He failed to bull rush the rogue off the edge, teleported to the far side of the gap in the wall, and was brought low by a combination of a well rolled Combust from the sorcerer (grappled and then going to be thrown off the wall) and a Holy Undead Bane arrow from the psychic warrior. Sorcerer and demon fell off the wall for splattery damage, plus acid (dead demon at -36). Oh, and three out of the last four quasits from the first two encounters died too.

Clean up involved most of the cleric's remaining spell power. The heal check DC to get a demon heart suitable for ritual magic is 10 + (1/2 negative hp) and the deader must not be at more negative hit points than the original full health, so a dead demon at -10 is a DC15 to get a useable heart. They got one more heart.

Then, while everyone else talked, the warblade walked off towards the ruins. Lit by a sunrod he walked across a dark 300 foot killing field towards demon infested ruins. Alone. Following the direction one of the wounded demons had gone. The waiting demons were prepared, a babau cast Darkness on itself then it and three bearded demons did a combat 'port to surround him.

They took two rounds after they killed him to dismember the warblade. Demons are not nice people. The attempt to rescue the warblade's magic items was an uncoordinated disaster. The sorcerer ended up with the warblade's torso (and backpack) and flew out on his familiar. The rogue was attacked by a bearded devil and tried to flee. She went away from the party, carrying a light, cross a flat featureless killing ground, being chased by something faster than her and wielding a pole arm. She died twice, piety is a diefic Revivify, (sort of, there's a level check and piety loss involved) it is not a "got out of poop free" ability. The cleric trusted to his AC whoring, which some at-will Dispel Magics took down. The babau summoned another babau and +14 to hit with 3d6+5 damage finished him. He died twice too. The psychic warrior also died but piety and Ectoplasmic Form (and bad dispell rolls) saved him.

Then the sorcerer ditched the hilt of Demonslayer into the lava as he fled.

No I don't understand that one. He said something about Demonslayer being the reason they were there and getting killed. Any ways the discarding of part of an artifact (especially a really useful one) is going to come back and bite everyone pretty hard. Although Imps and quasits get Commune once a week and the bone devil can make the chain devils fish it out. Ooh, the cleric has a scroll of Planar Ally, that's gonna get used.

So the demons have a nice dinner and some even better loot now. In two weeks they'll have less loot but the hilt of Demonslayer. Commune can be used for two way communication (sort of, you have to ask the right questions) so a magic user type demon could be sent to start trying to repair the gate in Akhronath. I'll look into that.

It is still August 30th and our heroes are fleeing. Will the sorcerer wait for the others or will he abandon them? Will that raft still be there after sitting in boiling water for two days? Will they even get out of the lava flows alive? We will find out next week.

[Zireael]

Then the sorcerer ditched the hilt of Demonslayer into the lava as he fled.

What the Hell, Hero?!/Nice job breaking it Hero... Really...

[Telok]

So there are sixteen Quasits/Imps left in Akhronath. Each Imp gets to cast Commune once a week and ask six questions. Most of the demons in Akhronath have 14 Int and up to 18 Wis. I figure that as late as September 10th a arcanoloth will be assigned to camp the portal here so that he can go through and repair the gate that stabilizes it. Currently the portal has a 01% chance each hour of opening and it opens at a random time during that hour. On average the portal opens once every four days for a duration of about three seconds. There aren't more demons here because, frankly, I think they get bored waiting and just miss their chance. Plus I'm sure the more organized types have found a way to make money off of this by limiting entry. When Akhronath was whole and the gate was functioning the big demon who ran the place demanded 100 years of service as the price for passing through, a high enough price that he could control who came through (or survived the 11 year service) but low enough that demons would come through and he would have an army to defend Akhronath with.

But the powers that rule the Halls of Pain would like the gate fully open and stable again. The problem is that making permanent magic items (in this setting) requires special ingredients, silver to bind the magic, and a craft check. Enter the arcanaloth demon, by using Limited Wish to emulate Psychic Reformation he'll have the correct feats and spells to repair the gate. Thanks to our heroes he has several "special ingredients" worth in the hilt of Demonslayer, and some souls of hapless Exiles should suffice for the rest. But he'll need silver, and lots of it.

Grah-Hoth (Akhronath's original ruler) is trapped in an iron bottle somewhere in Exile (he's on the map) and an Adze-Haaki (ok so he's only a horned devil, the PCs are supposed to kill him at some point he shouldn't be a TKP machine) demon lord is trapped in the Tower of the Magi. But their telepathy still works, demons still roam Exile who owe them allegiance, and they never sleep.

Aw, geeze, I just rememberd that Grah-Hoth has lured the slitherazi into his worship. Well it may be a couple few months before he hears the news and tries to get the blade of Demonslayer and a shipment of silver down to Akhronath. Still I expect that a convoy of demons and slitherazi trying to cut through the Great Cave of Exile might alert some people to the fact that there's trouble brewing.

Any ways, this weeks adventures of the Adventuring Dummies! Seriously, that's what they're called. They didn't correct the deaf old man who lives on a major trade route when he misheard "Adventuring for Dummies." That old guy has been telling every caravan that passes his house about the Adventuring Dummies for two months now. They kinda earned it too.

The sorcerer, after starting a chain reaction that's detailed in the first four paragraphs up there, flew straight out to where the young basilisk had been tied up. The basilisk has escaped it bonds and was not left blindfolded, the late warblade's willingness to take lunatic risks was really quite amusing to me. The sorcerer decided to go and sleep on the roof of the cavern. The Steaming Valley is some 60 miles or so across, when I told him the roof was a mile and a half up he said "OK" and sent his familiar back to circle the basilisk site at an altitude of fifty feet. I simply allowed him to do this because unlike the warblade he doesn't realize when he's taking stupid lunatic risks, and it's still really funny. The ranger and psy-war collected Thog ("Nice people please save Thog from fiery death?" "Yeah, come on. Quick before the demons come back.") and went back to an old (and much cooler) dry lava tube to rest. Between two ranger spells of Endure Elements and the psychic Body Adjustment power they returned to the basilisk site to see the fire hippogriff fly away straight up. After 14 hours of hanging upside down the gnome's familiar finally came back into his empathic communication range and the sorcerer realized that he hadn't considered how he was getting down. He missed the hippogriff. He ended up surviving only because of D&Ds turn based nature and that the hippogiff could fly further than he could fall during the first round.

Some really good Handle Animal rolls by the ranger got the semi-tame basilisk under control and everyone set out for the Tower of the Magi. They spent two days there, bought some potions and sold a basilisk. I do feel a need to note that they have a letter of credit at the Tower to the tune of some 8,000 gold, and they got 3,000 more for the basilisk (that it's mostly trained to close it's eyes was a big selling point). The Tower isn't a magic-mart, I hate that conceit. But it's students graduate by making a permanent magic item, although the Tower does pick up the tab. So there is a sort of mish-mash or various items up to about 15,000 gp book value and a goodly selection of potions, scrolls (two raise dead scrolls in stock), and wands both fully and partially charged. Plus the advanced students are looking for things to make for thier thesis. They bought out the Cure Light Wounds and Lesser Restoration potions and left.

At the Tower of the Magi they met a beguiler with a vow of non-violence (ex-warblade), a duom weilding mage-slayer-stand-still-thicket-of-blades fighter (ex-cleric), and a warlock with a cleric cohort (the ex-thief spent a feat on Leadership and I provided three possible cohorts, she chose the cleric). The beguiler had been tutoring in illusions but two apprentices have gone mad from demonic voices in the last month and he decided to leave. The fighter was Charmed into coming along because he was being a dope and the warlock was invited along because she can turn invisible and blow things up. They left the Tower intent on heading to Cotra, I think they want the mayoral letter favor they need to get into the Castle. Of course two months ago they ignored the Cotra problem because there wasn't a reward. They killed the crab and were rewarded with magic rings one month ago. This is like a bum coming back two weeks after you give them 500$ for finding your lost pet and asking for a job interview at your company. You might like them but, dude, fill out an application and talk to HR.

Any how, Silvar (on the way to Cotra) was slightly more guarded than before but they didn't stop to talk. So on the road to Cotra, about three hours from town, they got to beat down a bunch of Nephil tribe gnolls who had set up an ambush. Another 45 minutes further down the road the beguiler scared off an entire ambush of gnolls, except the shaman who made a spellcraft check when he cast the spell but he ran after a crossbow bolt slapped off a third of his HP. ANother two hours of walking brought them to a third ambush. They beat that down and the warlock learned the virtue of not making herself a high value target for four rapid-shot archer gnolls. Another few miles brought another ambush, easily beaten down. They spotted all the fights well before they got into them, half of each ambush is 4HD mook gnolls with no ranks in the Hide skill. Still after ten hours of walking and four encounters of 16 gnolls each the party is 2/3s of the way to Cotra and the cleric is out of heals.

It is September 7th and the gnoll fort from waaaaaay back when (where they originally got the hilt of Demonslayer) is in full swing. The gnolls have pushed south and are increasingly aggressive because the army had to pull troops from Fort Dunvo to shore up Fort Dranlon after it was almost destroyed by the slith.

[Trellan]

Gotta say, I've been enjoying your campaign log, and I think you've made quite an interesting story/setting, but your players... I get the feeling they are either not interested in paying attention to the game and just want it as background to social activity, or they don't understand their actions have consequences. Especially the sorcerer. I am amazed he has stayed alive so long. Are they always like this?