World of Prime: Campaign Journal #60

The Necropolis, part I

The party debates long into the night while the Ranger keeps his assignment. The metaphysics of a calm and orderly realm seem to outweigh the evil of a Yellow sorceress and dragon. Should the party even intervene here? While freedom is a distant memory, and anyone who steps out of line is crushed, their are no wars or raids. Violent death can be avoided by submission, which is not an option in much of the world.

However, they eventually decide to follow up on Alys's tip, on the theory that if there is a way to defeat the dragon, best that they have it and not some worse power. After all, a kingdom ruled by hejerne-spica would not be employ cruelty as a tool to maintain order, but merely as entertainment.

Thus, they slip out in the wee hours. The city never sleeps, since half its population is goblin; the harbormaster wants to see their tax stamp before they go, but their captain shows that the barrels of cinnamon have been replaced by barrels of winter wine, a reciprocal gift from the Queen. They set out to sea, seemingly free and clear of the Golden Queen and her plots.

But the second night out, the Barbarian suddenly smells smoke. He rips the hatch open and dodges a gout of flame. The alcohol is on fire! The Druid instantly quenches the flames, but the damage is done: the boat is sinking. The Druid makes lifeboats out of the deck of the ship while the Cleric questions the burnt corpse found in the hull. One of their crewmen had been turned by the Queen and her formidable charms. He set the fire, thinking it would trigger his rescue. Instead he died in pain.

The crew piles into one boat, the party in another, and both head for shore twenty miles away. They get a hundred feet before water elementals attack and sink both boats.

Two elementals are no real threat to our heroes, even in the depths of the ocean; spells and swords soon do for them. Then two more attack, having already dispatched the ship's crew. These also die without much effort, but it leaves the party slowly sinking in the dark sea.

First the Cleric casts water-walking on the Druid Bear. The Wizard rides the bear, while the rest of the party cling to the floating discs behind the Wizard. When the water-walking spell runs out, the Bard summons a magical steed for the Wizard, and they race over the tops of the waves to shore.

Finally, as day breaks, they spot the air elemental that has been tracking them. Their destination lays twenty miles over water under the very nose of the dragon, or a hundred miles over land skirting the beast's lair. They choose speed. Mounting magical steeds, they race across the water, seeming to escape the notice of the monster by sheer speed.

A volcano lies before them, with sheer walls two thousand feet high. Thanks to a variety of magic, they climb and float to the top without incident - though the Barbarian would have fallen once or twice without the Bard's helping hand.

Here they view the caldera of the volcano, two thousand feet below. The smoke and fumes are fatal to the weak; the Bard must protect himself and the Wizard with magic, while the rest of the party can get by with just wet cloths across their face. The Ranger spots a narrow trail, thus obviating the need for climbing checks, and the party proceeds down.

Their first encounter is a simple stream of lava. Leaping over it is a trivial exercise, aside from the fact that failing would be almost certain death. Again magic comes to the rescue, in the form of the rarely used Jump spell.

The next stream of lava moves underneath the Ranger as he leaps it, because it's not actually lava. A group of odd creatures in the form of small pools of lava spring their ambush, but it is instantly obliterated by the Druid casting Quench, this powerful spell proving invaluable once again.

A cave entrance turns out to be merely a trap, with a dozen fire and magma creatures getting off a single Scorching Ray spell before the Barbarian and Ranger exterminate them all with cleaving swords and machine gun bows. The spell-casters are starting to consider the value of conserving their magic for greater threats.

Which immediately comes in the form of a dozen huge fire elementals. Rushing upon the party out of the thick ash and smoke, they gain initiative, which proves terrifying. The Wizard, Cleric, and Bard are pummeled to within an inch of their lives before they can put up energy shields. The Ranger valiantly fires arrows, but soon needs healing as well.

The entire encounter would have gone badly, save for the Druid spam-casting the Quench spell and reducing the elementals to single-digit hit points. Once weakened, the Barbarian and Ranger can dispatch the monsters, with a little help from the Bard, who casts a freezing shield and then recklessly triggers attacks against himself while the feedback effect destroys the elementals.

Now the party has reached the caldera floor, and is preparing to face the real dangers of the first layer of the Necropolis.

 

World of Prime: Campaign Journal #59

Against the Giants, part IV

The Cleric casts Obscuring Mist, cloaking the entire stairwell in fog. The warrior giants charge blindly ahead, swinging in wide sweeping blows; but the peasantry decline to throw rocks as the chance of friendly fire is too great.

The Cleric, forewarned, slips up the stairs to safety. The Ranger and Barbarian suffer hits to provide cover for the Druid and Wizard to escape, but the Bard just plain gets lucky, slipping past several blows by sheer dint of the foggy effect. Then the party is up the staircase and out of immediate danger. The Druid covers the floor with thorns and spikes and bear manure (the latter perhaps not entirely voluntarily, as the experience of watching a giant club swing at his fragile human form was traumatic).

Nonetheless, the giants begin trying to force the staircase, so the Bard casts Haste and the party flees to the top, where the Barbarian fails to lift the trapdoor. While he is trying to convince the Ranger to give him a hand, the Druid melts a passage through the stone.

Now safe and secure in the fresh air, the party immediately dashes to the lip of the mountain and leaps down to the courtyard to resume the fight, each descending in their own unique way - air-walking, spider-climbing, and feather-falling. They then barge into the great hall, and the entire previous battle is repeated - including the annoying ice storm, which is once again judged to be less than helpful.

However, this battle is an anti-climax. There are slightly fewer giants and only one weak spell-caster. The remainder of the Stone Hills clan is soon dead on the floor, and then loaded onto aurochs for the journey back to Kek.

If Kek is dismayed to see his alleged vassal state utterly destroyed, he does not show it; nor does he remark on the self-evident puissance of this party of adventurers. Instead he pays them for the addition to his corpse army in magic items. It remains to be seen which party benefits most from this exchange.

However, that looming confrontation is once again delayed when Kek asserts knowledge of a powerful item that could actually command the dragon. It is buried in a lich's crypt hundreds of miles away and far too close to the dragon for Kek to pursue it, but now that the party has demonstrated their power, perhaps it's not an automatic death sentence for them to try.

Since the party was already interested in returning to the Gold Coast, they take the hint. First they return home, to a quiet kingdom, as every nearby threat has been summarily dispatched by their recent actions. Then they load up their boat with a royal gift of cinnamon and set sail.

Entering the harbor at Flefliequelp provides an immediate surprise. There is a giant at the docks, unloading a ship. He is surrounded by warriors both human and goblin, intermixed without apparent discord. The harbormaster's boat is crewed by goblins but commanded by an older woman who reeks of authority.

She queries the party sharply, clearly backed by magic, but only the Ranger fails to resist. Fortunately they had already decided to tell the truth: yes, they have been here before, in Rian's court, and they've returned to visit her again. The woman informs them that significant changes have been wrought since last they came. For instance, any man caught using magic - or merely suspected of it! - will be castrated and then killed. The woman, a Questioner by rank, orders them to be prepared to answer a summons from the Queen, if one should be forthcoming; and also instructs the Ranger to be prepared to answer a somewhat more personal summons later that night. Otherwise they dock without incident, and longshoremen come to ferry their barrels to the castle.

Wandering through town, they observe goblins and humans living in a strict hierarchy. Women with magic are clearly at the top, followed by men with bows; ordinary tradesmen wear aprons to show their inferior status. The Bard directs them to an inn where he can gather more information, and in one of those unlikely coincidences, immediately recognizes their serving wench as the bard Alys.

She communicates to the Bard in their secret sign language that revealing her identity, or even that their prior association, would be fatal. Eventually the two spies manage to find a secluded spot to talk freely, and Alys fills the party in on Rian's total victory. The dragon backed the Queen in war, destroying the remaining goblin kingdoms and handing control over the entire region to her. In exchange the Queen has incorporated not just goblins and giants but goblinoid culture; farming, always a less than noble profession in Rian's kingdom, is now done by hordes of hobgoblins. To be a peasant in this realm is to oversee a hobgoblin plantation, a job dangerous, dirty, and disrespected.

All six kingdoms, goblin and human alike, have been reshaped and melted into one. There are no cities save the capital; the castles and towns of her previous rivals have been pulled down stone by stone. The land is now a vast swath of rural villages and hobgoblin sties, overseen by a horde of mind-reading sorceresses. The army is smaller than the combined forces of the previous six realms, but more potent, as it mixes human magic with giant strength. And the Queen now has two artifacts of immeasurable power: the Helm, wielded by a newly reinvigorated pyromantic line, and the favor of a dragon.

It is a police state, its rigidity enforced by telepathy and truth-spells, and its wealth dedicated to producing tael and flowing all of it through Rian's hands into the dragon. The party is less discomfited by this than expected, judging the lack of constant warfare between states to be an improvement despite the cost.

Alys the bard is not so sanguine. In hiding, fearing for her life if the Inquisitors should look into her head, she nevertheless holds out hope. Despite the magic and giants and fireballs, Rian's true claim on power is the dragon. That is the threat that quells all resistance and freedom. Dispatching or driving away the dragon is her new goal in life, and finding an ancient artifact is the key. As it turns out, she has a map...

 

 

World of Prime: Campaign Journal #58

Against the Giants, part III

The Druid turns into a bear and herds the aurochs together. With extreme diplomacy he convinces each of them to bear a corpse of their former owners. They trudge back to Kek to collect their reward; the mummy guards open the gates and get out of the way, as the aurochs are becoming unmanageable due to lack of water. They charge over to the canal, and while they are drinking, the cranes and golems begin unloading the cargo.

The party follows a mummy guard inside to engage in sharp negotiations with a creature not entirely sane. The Ranger's goal is to borrow the undead giants to help attack the giant's castle, but Kek explains they can't control that many. However, the Wizard can cast Command Undead, so Kek offers him one free giant zombie as an experiment, if the Wizard will give a report of how the creature performed.

When they come to negotiate the value of the aurochs, Kek confesses his troops have already slaughtered the beasts. The Ranger is compelled to accept the purchase of some magic items at list price as compensation. (The DM will later come to regret approving the Druid's purchase.)

Again they return to giant territory, searching for the hidden stone giant castle in the mountains. Because they have a high-level Ranger, they skip over all the tedious searching and straight to the action.

The castle is built into the side of a hill, with a 40' tall curtain wall out in front. The Ranger sneaks up to the gate, but it is barred, and his attempt to climb the wall fails. The Bard uses his new spider-boots to walk up the wall, attracting the attention of the entire herd of aurochs as he does so. While they stare dumbly up at him, the party spends half an hour discussing the best way to start a stampede. Eventually they settle on the Bard casting an image of dragon, causing the aurochs to swirl around the courtyard in a rumbling thunder.

After fifteen minutes or so, the beasts calm down, exhausted. The party has conclusively proven that there are no stone giants hiding in the courtyard, which was apparently a concern for them. The Druid melts a hole in the stone gate, the Barbarian goes through an unbars the door, and then pushes open the heavy sliding gate while the Druid-Bear holds the aurochs at bay. As soon as the Druid returns to human form, the aurochs trundle out of the gate, looking for food and water.

The party advances to the gate built into the side of the hill. Again the Druid melts a hole, and again the Barbarian steps through and lifts the bar. But this time he is rewarded with a hail of boulders from the line of giants conveniently 150' away and thus out of sight until they move.

Three of the boulders hit, doing a staggering amount of damage, but not enough to bring down such a stalwart hero (that comes later). He darts back outside, and the party spends half an hour debating the best way to enter the castle without getting pasted by boulders. Eventually they settle on the Bard turning the Druid invisible and the Druid casting Sleet Storm in the middle of the hall. Now the party has 11 rounds to enter and prepare for the battle, under cover of snow.

They arrange themselves in a line, casting all their best buffs; and when the storm finally winds down, they win the initiative role and open fire. However, the fading snow reveals more than it concealed: another line of soldier giants and bears are in front of the rock-throwing peasants, including a giant chief.

The Wizard gets great value for money by casting Wall of Fire on the entire line of peasant giants, doing only moderate damage but hitting all of them. The Druid, as usual, casts Stone Spikes, making the battlefield in front of the giants both damaging and crippling.The Ranger shoots a bear, the Cleric starts dispelling buffs off of the giant chief, and the Bard drains the giant chief of four levels, and the Barbarian hides behind his tower shield. A great opening round! Oh, also, the Wizard's giant zombie throws a rock or something.

The front line rushes forward through the spikes, not quite able to reach the party thanks to their crippling affect. But the peasants step forward out of the fire and hurl rocks to good effect, pounding the Barbarian anyway.

The next round, the Druid casts a line of fire in front of the peasants - a particularly strong one, due to his heightened caster level item he bought from the unsuspecting and obviously swindled Kek (the DM now has to revise Kek's character sheet to give him a String of Prayer beads too). Now they are taking light but consistent damage from both behind and in front. The Cleric keeps dispelling (curse him!) and the Wizard tries a Fireball.

The giants decide to ignore the walls of fire on either side, meaning they are taking light but consistent damage every turn. This time their boulders target the Ranger, hitting him hard enough to drive him into retreat. The soldiers still can't quite reach the party, but they will next round. Some of the bears make it close enough to start biting at the Bard and the Wizard's zombie.

On the next round, somebody points out that the walls of flame are opaque, meaning the peasants will have to walk through the front one to continue throwing boulders. Armed with this knowledge, the Cleric puts up a Wall of Blades. The Ranger shoots another bear, while the Bard decides to fight the giant chief, a soldier giant, and three bears on his own. The Barbarian, finally able to melee, takes the other flank to help the zombie with several soldiers and bears.

The peasants now have to walk forward through the line of fire, into the wall of blades and the spiky floor. This is too much, and all of them die. Ten giants with four spells! A record of efficiency to be entered into the annals of history.

However, the peasants were always only fire support. The real weight of the giants has now reached the party, and they lay into them with a will. The Bard finds all of his vaunted defenses stripped, his mirrored images smashed through and his displacement overwhelmed, from a flurry of attacks by multiple opponents. After only two rounds, he takes so much damage that another single hit from one of the soldier's massive hammers will spell certain death.

We can tell things are dire because the Druid turns into a Dire Bear. He starts eliminating the wounded giant soldiers, one per round, but taking huge hits in return. At least his Stoneskin spell is in the way. The Wizard tries a Magic Missile, but Shield is the one defense the Cleric failed to dispel off of the chief. The Barbarian does a whirlwind attacking, dishing out massive damage to bears and giants alike. The soldiers respond by pounding him into negative hit points; only his lingering rage keeps his heart pumping. The Bard feints at the chief with his halberd, allowing him to invoke his Combat Expertise and pump his defense. He then dashes out to spell-casting range, trusting to his Mobility feat to let him avoid the chief's attack of opportunity.

But it fails. The giant tags him, through Displacement and everything. Fortunately the chief does not hit as hard as the soldiers, so the Bard is still alive - but only barely. He joins the Barbarian on the ground.

However, this has opened room for the Wizard and Cleric to hit the chief with Fireball and Flamestrike, and in his enervated state, the chief succumbs to the flames.

The situation is still perilous, though, as one soldier makes it to the Ranger and promptly clubs him into unconsciousness too. Also, at some point, the Wizard's zombie was reduced to rubble.

This is worst state the party has ever been: three members on the ground at once! If not for the Druid-Bear, things would be grim; but the bear engages the last two remaining (and severely burnt) giants while the Cleric utilizes his new rank to heal all of his allies scattered throughout the room. Once they stand up again, the fight is over; the last giant doesn't last long.

The party is so intimidated by this beating that they immediately retreat from the castle, hiding in the mountains in the Wizard's trans-dimensional space (good thing the zombie was already destroyed, as it never would have fit in there).

When they return the next day, the castle is eerily quiet. There are three doors at the back of the hall; one leads to an empty suite of living quarters, where the Druid pries all the lightstones from the walls; one leads to an empty workshop and kitchen; and one leads to an empty armory, with piles of stones and a few old broken weapons.

The armory, however, has a spiral staircase in the center of the room. The party gathers at its feet and gazes up, realizing it leads to a secret back entrance they didn't even bother to look for. Whilst they are pondering, the Cleric alone realizes that half the alcoves in the room actually contain a perfectly motionless stone giant. He attempts to conceal his reaction to this discovery, but has no Perform or Bluff skill, because everyone relies on the Bard for that.

He fails. The giants know he knows; and they charge out, catching the party by surprise. The Cleric has one round to act before the giant soldiers are in melee range and administer a surprise-round beating, most likely killing the Wizard out-right and potentially killing the Bard (who has no magic defenses up!) or even the Druid (who is not a giant bear). What spell will he cast to save himself and his friends? Tune in next month to find out!