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From humbug Thu Apr 22 11:04:44 1999
From: humbug
Subject: more diddle daddles. (longer)
Newsgroups: redbrick.rpg.board
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Well, this just kept getting longer as I was writing it :),
but here it is.
Okay, where'd I leave off.
First, some retrospective events. Jonas, upon leaping from the ledge,
managed to catch his backpack on the edge. All of the contents, along with
him, crash to the floor. His heavy crossbow hits the ground and breaks,
his beltpouch is torn open, and all of his money goes everywhere. His
lantern breaks, and basically all his stuff is strewn across the cavern
floor, most of it broken.
Okay, on with the combat.
Again we gain the initiative, luckily for the spellcasters, who manage to
get their spells off before being hit and interrupted. Nickos, again
casts 'grease' and covers the ground beneath the feet of two of the bad
guys. One of them slips, skids, and tumbles off the ledge. He hits the
cavern floor below, quite dead. The other caught in the area of grease
just falls to the ground, but he's out of the combat for this round.
Gandu casts the unerring 'magic missile' causing a good hit,
but failing to kill. Tick attacks with his short spear, and Thrombus
attacks twice this round, killing one.
The bad guys then attack. Thrombus takes some damage from the two
attacking him, and Tick falls to the ground after a solid blow from
a stone axe. Gandu lives through this round, and Nickos is unconcerned
by the guy attacking him with his bare hands.
In the next round, all the players take damage, Gandu looking
decidedly worse for wear, and only Nickos managing to hit the bad guy on
the ground floundering in the grease, but, luckily for the bad guy
he survives, and with more luck, regains his footing, ending the round
outside the greased area, ready to attack.
Again combat continues, Gandu, being attacked by two, falls,
Nickos, taking only bare hand damage, and Thrombus being dead tough remain
standing.
Telemacus, loosing an arrow from below, scores a critical hit against one
of the enemy, killing him.
Thrombus, not hitting as often as he would like to, still manages
to kill another.
At this stage the tables have turned. Thrombus cuts through the remaining
enemies beside him, and moves to help Nickos with the one remaining
enemy, deciding to wait to lower the casualties down to the
cleric.
The battle ends, with only two of the original six men on the
ledge left standing. Jonas is below, now conscious, but moaning in pain
from his broken legs.
The bodies of Gandu and Tick are above on the ledge, perhaps
unconscious, perhaps worse. Thrombus offers to lower down the bodies.
Tick is lowered down safely, but the unconscious form of Gandu is
bundled over the edge and caught badly, causing him a further 2 points of
damage. Eltric manages to heal these wounds using natural methods and then
begins to meditate to get some healing spells.
Thrombus and Nickos decide to remain above on the ledge, they hear
scraping noises from the original tunnel, but soon forget about them.
Nickos meditates, and Thrombus waits by the light of his magic sword.
Down below, Eltric, having received his spells, attempts to heal
Tick using magical means, fortunately Tick hasn't deteriorated during
Eltrics period of meditation and Eltric casts a curative spell upon him.
But, unfortunatley for Tick, despite his relatively high constitution,
Tick simply fails to survive the resurrection attempt, and nothing more
can be done.
Eltric then performed his death rituals, and built up a small
cairn for each of Guy and Tick's corpses.
Jonas and Gandu were healed to full strength by Eltric at this point,
and the party below began re-exploring a small cavern off the main one,
containing a waterfall, and eerily still pool.
Gandu, through use of a 'detect magic' spell confirmed the
magic nature of the area.
After a bit of paddling and throwing copper pieces into the water,
a patch of water was discoverd that appeared to have dry land below it.
Thrombus and Nickos were called down from the ledge, and with the
assistance of an 'unseen servant' spell, everyone found themselves, with
their possessions dry, in a small room containing a dwarf, now moving, and
a jewel eyed skull, now in Eltrics possession.
The dwarf introduces himself as Slate, and we realise that he
had been trapped in the gaze of the skull for at least five years ( fire
wasn't broken when he was last on our mutual home planet ) until Eltric
moved the skull from his line of sight. The skull had been uncovered
whilst mining, and the last thing he remembered was running towards it.
Okay. Candles running out, Nickos and Gandu decide to meditate,
and Eltric decides to risk looking at the skull, Telemacus waiting at
hand to turn his gaze from the skull if things go wrong. Eltric discovers
that the skull is a vessel for the soul of a deceased wizard of this
planet, who was only locked in a gaze with Slate because Slate was
preventing him from communicating, unlike Eltric.
Eltric sends the wizards soul on it's way and is given the two
jewels from the skulls eye sokets along with the key to their magical
powers.
Thrombus then steps forward to take the lead out of a newly
opened passage out of the room, but then is heard to mutter something
about "..call yourself a fighter, jumping.. ..in the middle of a fight.."
and ushers Jonas to take the lead. A stone trapdoor in the roof of the
tunnel proves difficult to open, but the party once again finds themselves
in the jungle.
The original pyramid is located, and used as a place to rest and
camp, primarily due to concerns about travelling without any healing
spells at the clerics disposal. Nickos notices (although it is quite
apparent once pointed out) that some great beast had been clawing at the
ground around the trapdoor through which the party originally entered.
It is surmised that this is what drove the humanoids that we fought down
the tunnel.
Rested well, and full up on spells, the party presses on. A
strange bat-like bony bird creature is spotted in the trees ( The eyes
and ears of the 'broken ones' in the jungle, we later find out ) but it
flies off. Not long afterwards humanoid tracks are found running across
our path, and it's decided to follow them.
As we draw near the noise we are making draws attention to
ourselves and Eltric uses his language spell and calls out to the
oncoming people.
Several humanoids appear from the trees in front of us, they are
painted in various colours, each man different, wearing jungle garb and
wearing dead snakes as headbands. As they emerge from the jungle they look
quite prepared to attack, but the fact and the surprise of what we looked
like and that we could speak their language seemed to seemed to stall
them.
Eltric took the lead, telling them who and what we are. Telemacus
assured them that "We come in peace", and I'm pretty sure he asked to
be taken to their leader.
From the conversation Eltric learned as much as he could about
their religion, but it didn't appear as though these were the people we
were looking to convert. We learned of the 'broken people', the magic
using folk, and of the war between the clans ( The forest guys and other
clans ) and the magic users.
We then decided to wait a day, that we might talk to their
shaman. These guys were of the snake clan, jungle dwalers. We were told
of another group of clansmen in a city who lived about 3 days (their
travelling speed ) downriver, but we were assured we would be killed if
we went near or entered the city because of our non-clan status.
Other options were an apparently massive but abandoned city formerly
belonging to the 'broken ones', again 3 days ( their speed ) away, but we
figured too difficult to find, or to travel upriver 'till we reached the
presumably safer plains ( a journey of more than 1 week for the jungle
folk ).
Well, that's where we called it a day, deciding upon heading for the
plains, I think.
Again, E&OE.
humbug.
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