A Drow Walks Into a Bar...

I prepped a couple of characters for this: a drow monk follower of Eilistraee, the good drow goddess of nature and the moon, and a deep gnome artificer. When I saw people's other choices for classes, it became apparent we had a thing front line, so I opted for the monk. Granted, I'm using the Sun Soul build out of the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, which is a skirmish build, designed to move back and forth between the front and back lines. I feel she needs a more proper introduction:

Lyrrad Z'Draudei was raised in an enclave of Eilistraee followers in Cormanthor. Among humans, she goes by "Lydia," because humans are like 'Muricans and can't pronounce f'rin names. She went out into the world seeking portents showing the will of gods in the world. She believes it will all work for the better and evil will be defeated. She followed portents to Waterdeep and the Yawning Portal Inn. In this case, following signs posted by Kerowyn Hucrele, who needed some help.

Who else joined her to help this woman? Vrinn, a wood elf rogue played by Lazaro. Phox, a human barbarian played by Kyla. Bruenor, a hill dwarf cleric played by Calvin. Hiro, a human mystic played by Jeff. Auryx, a water genasi druid played by Shannon. Bobby Jay, a forest gnome bard played by Hillary. Squiz, a human fighter played by will. Amnon, a tiefling sorcerer played by Blake.

She was from a nearby village called Oakhurst, close to a ruin called the Sunless Citadel, a fortress that sank into the earth during a mysterious cataclysm. He brother, Talgen, and sister, Hucrele, went adventuring in the citadel and disappeared. She wanted us to go down and search for them, offering 125gp if we could find evidence of their fate, specifically their signet rings and double that if we could return them alive. Lydia knew that the gods would provide good fortune and we'd find them alive and return them. The rest of the party eventually agreed with varying amounts of optimism and pessimism.

We traveled to Oakhurst and asked around for additional information. We learned why adventurers might be interested in the ruin: every year around the summer solstice goblins living there come to the surface and sell an apple. Those that eat it have their ailments cured and are restored to full health and vigor. Like most drow, Lydia was suspicious of goblins. After some more digging, the priest at the local shrine mentioned the goblins sell a corpse-white fruit as mid-winter that is deathly poisonous. We learned that townsfolk would plant the seeds, resulting in only twisted seedlings that would eventually disappear. This piqued Lydia's interest, and she knew Eilistraee had guided her to the town to learn the secret of these apples the goblins sell. A few of the others had their interest piqued as well.

Otherwise, we learned that the citadel was built by a now extinct dragon cult.

We set out for the citadel, finding some columns in a wasted plain just off of an old road near the town. We found a knotted rope still tied off to one of these columns on the lip of a chasm leading to the Citadel. Although weather worn from a few weeks, the rope was still sturdy enough to climb. Staying in character, Lydia climbed down first, doing a super-hero landing when she reached the sandy ledge below. Of course, there were monsters! Some giant rats. It took a while for the rest of the party to reach the ledge, Except for Squiz, who decided to do a "people's elbow" off the ledge and onto one of the rats. It didn't really work out so well. Squiz landed prone and took about as much damage as the rat. At first level, risky moves are much more likely to end poorly.

We continued on, following rough stone steps down into the chasm, coming to a crumbling masonry courtyard that was once a crenelated balcony. While crossing it, Phox was kind enough to find a pit trap with her face. Aside from Phox, it contained some dead goblins, one very freshly dead. It also had another giant rat. Phox handled it quite quickly, chopping it in half with a greatsword.

The door leading deeper in had runes in draconic written over it spelling the word "Ashardalon." This was probably the dragon the cult "worshipped."

Past that we found a ruined tower, again containing only some goblin corpses, one impaled on a spear. After searching around, we found a flagstone sticking up from the ground with an obvious needle trap on it. Vrinn failed to disable the trap, but Hiro used a psychic ability of the Mystic to "borrow" Vrinn's thieves' tools proficiency and disabled it. We triggered this floor switch, opening a secret door into an archer's post containing three skeletons.

Did they animate and attack us? Of course they did strawman reader asking ridiculous questions. Did we dispatch them with alacrity? Again, of course. Stop asking rhetorical questions. We searched through the room and found 3 +1 arrows in special slots on their quivers.

We took a southerly route further into the dungeon, finding another crumbled room. The way forward was a stone door with a dragon carved on it in relief, a keyhole in it's mouth. It was locked, and resisted our attempts to pick it. While some of us were looking around the room trying to find other ways to unlock the door, including Auryx trying that old "peer through the keyhole" trick, Vrinn went off down another corridor, finding another empty room and an old cistern. Laz decided to hold the idiot ball this session, and had Vrinn bring out his crowbar and bash at the cistern, breaking it open and releasing two mephits: a steam one and an ice one.

Mephits are small imps made of para-elemental materials. That is to say, something that is a combination of the four "cardinal" elements. In this case, water and fire (steam) and water and air (ice). The ancient builders of this place probably summoned and bound the critters to the cistern for limits less water. The steam mephit constantly produces steam while the ice one constantly condenses said steam into water. Mephits, like more traditional imps, are malicious little critters, so they attacked their "savior." Vrinn called for help, and we naturally helped.

Mephits are a good thing to challenge a larger, but low level party. They have breath weapons, a fairly large amount of hit points, and explode when they die. Bruenor managed to keep us alive, though. After that fight, we retreated to the empty room and took a long rest.

We moved on, finding a room filled with wrecked furniture, a busted open cage, and a table covered in cloth like an altar. We heard something sobbing under the altar. We peered under there to find a sad kobold. Seeing a large group of well armed adventurers, it cringed, but we decided to talk to it, learning that it's name was Meepo, and it was the clan's dragon-keeper. Meepo explained that the goblins had stolen their dragon: Calcryx. We mentioned we're not fond of the goblins, either, and Meepo took us to see Yusdrayl, the clan's leader. On the way, Meepo taught us a password to let the kobolds know we were friendly as we moved through their territory.

She had arranged some rubble into a throne, part of which featured a rearing dragon. In it's mouth was a key. We surmised it probably unlocked the door we had passed earlier. We bargained to retrieve Calcryx from the goblins in exchange for the key. Yusdrayl also let us know that the adventurers we were looking for had passed this way and gone into goblin territory before disappearing. Yusdrayl was happy to have Meepo guide us into goblin territory to find the dragon and missing adventurers. We reached an accord, and then we broke for the evening.

Tomb of Horrors, Part Two

Here's some free DMing advice: if a player comes up with a clever or creative strategy, give it a chance to work. I almost forgot this.

So, back in the room with the vats. Blake thought Ghesh could try drinking the acid in the middle vat. I had to explain to him that the vat was made of stone, fixed to the floor, four feet high, and seven feet in diameter. He would need to drink a lot. And each drink would be doing some acid damage. Dragonborn are resistant, but not immune.

So they debated ways to poke a whole in the vat. Meanwhile, Remy and a few others, grabbed some of the empty vessels and started moving the acid into the empty vat. Finally, Tathora handed over her over-priced Barovian shovel, and they fished the magic item out, damaging the shovel. It turned out to be the other half of the golden key. They put them together and found they melded into a whole key.

They continued past that room through a corridor and down a set of stairs and to a 20-foot long, 10-foot, empty deep pit. They did spot a pressure plate on the last 5-feet of the pit and lots of spike holes (spoles?). They did some more wedging with pitons, and climbed out of the pit, coming to a 4-way intersection with another covered pit trap in the center. They wedged that one shut, then turned left, in this case going north.

Tathora (of course!) found another secret door and followed it down another hallway. This led to a door and corridor trapped with sleep gas. It knocked Tathora out, but Remy dragged her back and explored further. She found a stone juggernaut shaped a little like a steam roller, but with cool spikes on the big wheel covered in blood, gore, and bits of bone. They pulled back to the secret door. Dang it!

On the way Glawen spotted another secret door. This one in the floor.

It led to a narrow spiral staircase, down to a narrow corridor, which ended at a metal door with three slots in it, each perfectly-sized for sword blades. After some trepidation, they put three swords in, and the door opened into a pastel-colored hall filled with columns. Jornath, with an invocation granting detect magic up, saw that the columns were magic. So they avoided touching them. At one point Remy did wing a copper coin at one, and it levitated up to the ceiling, where a gentle breeze started pushing it to the northwest. Dang it!

They went to the south of the room where a black throne with skulls carved in it sat on a raised dais. A crown and scepter sat on the throne. The crown itself was gold. The scepter's shaft was electrum with a golden knob at one end and a silver cap on the other. Incidentally, electrum is an alloy of gold and silver. Jeff decided to do what Blake usually does and had Jornath put on the crown. It caused him to perceive the dungeon as if it were brightly lit by sunlight. He also intuited that he could take off the crown by touching it with the scepter. He examined it with detect magic, discovering the golden had an abjuration aura while the silver end had a necromantic one. He decided to touch the gold end to the crown, allowing him to take it off. Dang it!

Tathora spotted a crown symbol inlaid into the throne. Kyla, again, remembered a bit from the poem they found at the entry and touched the scepter to the crown, causing the throne and dais to lower, revealing a passage into a hall beyond.

It led to a set of stone steps, each step crafted of different materials resulting in a rainbow effect. The steps led up to a massive set of mithral doors. Sitting on the steps was a bronze key with an antipathy effect on it. After a few failed saves, Tathora used dispel magic to shut down the antipathy effect.

The examined the doors, and found a concave depression with a hole within. They tried their keys. Glawen used mage hand while Maveith just walked up and stuck the key in. In both cases, a shock traps activated and zapped the hand out of existence and Maveith had a few more hit points chipped off his tankish pile. They floundered for idea. At no point did anyone considering trying to break the doors open. Dang it!

Since games stalling sucks, I allowed another "get a clue" roll to realize the scepter might also work as a key here. The doors opened into a large square chamber. A large, smoking, bronze urn stood in the center. Massive statues holding wicked looking weapons poised to strike were in each corner. Along the far wall was a smashed open sarcophagus with ACERERAK written on it flanked by two iron chests. They left the urn alone. Dang it!

Jornath examined the sarcophagus, finding the inner coffin smashed open as well with some rotting bits of bone and and a broken staff of the magus within. Yves disabled the traps and opened the locks on the iron chests, finding a pile of valuable gems in one and a pile of platinum pieces in the other. Will had Yves "make it rain" Scrooge McDuck style.

Incidentally, Shannon is awesome. She was keep track of party treasure, so I passed her a note about a trick of the stuff they had just found. She kept it secret and out of character knowledge.

The rest of the party wasn't so convinced. They eventually spotted a pull ring behind one of the statues. Grom, Maveith, and Remy teamed up to move the sucker (it merely required a combined Strength total of 48 to move), and the opened it, revealing more corridors.

Tathora spotted a hidden keyhole on a wall just south of the secret door they had just emerged from.

Glawen set up a Leomund's tiny hut, so they could take a long rest before progressing. Jornath and Yves refrained, however, spending the time counting sweet loot.

They tried the first key, lowering a secret door made of stone-sheathed adamantine (because this dungeon is for filling out metal, minerals and alloys, mythical and real, bingo!), revealing an empty room with a small concavity in the floor. Searching there, they found another keyhole. They used the second key, and floor started to rise. Since these are savvy players, they got out of the way. Dang it!

In any case, they found a room with treasures and a skull on a low bench, the skull studded with gems in the eye sockets and teeth. They started examining the treasure, finding weapons, armor, potions, scrolls. A ghostly figure appeared and looked menacing, but disappeared. Then someone cast a spell at the skull.

Acererak had awoken. Hot dang I love a final boss battle: play for full effect. Acererak, like Strahd, has those handy Legendary and Lair actions. Plus a special soul devouring power. I missed a little something in the demilich stat block, however: their lair actions only go off on 11 or better on a d20. I ignored that on the first turn. It was a doozy.

A lair action makes it so that no one can recover hit points. The demilich has a "breath weapon," in D&D 4e and up terms, it has a recharge roll, called Howl. For a Con save, the victims are either at 0 hit points (failure) or frightened (success). I knocked out the healers with it. Finally!

I wasn't as effective with the Legendary actions, but Legendary resistance did come in handy. And my d20 refused to roll 11 or better on subsequent rounds to let him keep up the Lair action goodness. And Howl failed to recharge.

Grom did summon up those berserkers again. But their weapons aren't magical, so their attacks tickled Acererak. Plus he used an area of effect life draining action to injure them and heal himself, since he's also resistant to damage from magic weapons.

Then Alec got clever. Bastard! He had Glawen use telekinesis to put that crown on the demilich and then sent the scepter at him silver-end first.

Okay. Two options: Acererak is clever enough to make this trick not work on him. Fair enough. It was the first reaction I went for, having it laugh. Then I thought: or is he the kind of hubris-filled asshole that wouldn't expect that from puny adventurers. And the ghost of Gygax did whisper: reward clever and inventive players.

So, I had Acererak do bleached skull version of eye-widening instead, and dodged with a Dexterity save against Glawen's spell save DC. In any case, the PCs got a maniacal gleam that let's a DM know he's done his job: they're going to do this interesting!

The plan, such as it was, involved a portable hole from the treasure pile, trapping the skull, then hitting it with the scepter. Remy set up the hole, then used her monk powers to push Acererak into the hole. Then Maveith grabbed the scepter and thrust it at the skull. So it turned the skull, and those valuable, valuable gems, into a fetid powder.

Is Acererak dead? Who knows? The best bad guys always work by comic book rules and keep coming back. They found some awesome loot: a defender shortsword, some other cool weapons, some elven chain, and animated shield, adamantine full plate, a staff of the woodlands, and a lot more. Plus, because sometimes a GM needs to drop a golden apple saying "The Fairest" on it, they found a deck of many things. Adventure hook established!

I montaged a few other things. Like finding out that those valuable gems were basically bits of somewhat valuable glass and those platinum pieces were in fact copper. Plus a vrock came along and said, "Look, we could fight each other, but I just want to take the crown and scepter back to the tomb. I'll keep coming back from the Abyss until I do. Just do a brother a solid and let me have it."

So that's it for now. I get to take a hiatus while Alec runs the updated Sunless Citadel out of Tales from the Yawning Portal.

Tomb of Horrors, Part One

We're back, bitches!

Will had to take a break from running. So I ran Against the Giants out of Tales From the Yawning Portal.

Holy shit. Ghost of Gygax, it's called box-text. It's okay to write it for a DM running your adventure. Plus, they just killed so many giants. It was satisfying. So being a glutton for punishment, and having players eager to see their characters die, I am running Tomb of Horrors out of that same book. So here are our victims heroes:

Tathora, half-elf cleric, being played by Kyla.
Remy, halfling monk, being played by Shannon.
Maveith, goliath fighter, being played by Calvin.
Glawen, human cleric/wizard, being played by Alec.
Ghesh, dragonborn sorcerer, being played Blake.
Pusheen, human druid, being played by Hillary.
Jornath, tiefling warlock, being played by Jeff.
Grom, human fighter, being played by Lazaro.
Yves, human rogue, being played by Will.

Tathora was lured to guided to the tomb by visions of the demilich Acererak and the power of the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind. It can do other things, too! Who says it can't? She brought the others as patsies to take some of traps and monsters infesting allies to assist her in navigating the dangers of the tomb.

I decided to put the Tomb on the outskirts of the desert of Anauroch, linking Acererak to the long dead magical civilization of Netheril. So they came to a lonely, flat-stopped hill, covered by nothing but scrub and dry grass. Black rocks rested on the top. Investigating, they found a cliff of loosely packed sand and gravel under a stone overhang on the north side of the hill. Upon closer inspection Yves found someone scratched "Parzival and Art3mis 4 eva" into the hillside.

They dug through the loose dirt, finding three possible entry corridors: two relatively short ones, and longer, highly colorful one. Because players are players, they went into first the shorter one on the east side, triggering a trap in the form of a huge stone slab meant to seal them in. Maveith wedged it open with a crowbar. Then they went to the short one of the west side, using mage hand to try and open some false doors, triggering a collapsing ceiling trap. That one wouldn't have been fatal, but it would have hurt.

So they (finally!) went down the right path, a hallway covered in frescoes with mosaic tiling, mostly green with a narrow path of red winding through it. Some of the party avoided walking on the red path, others walked along it.

So, as I kinda forgot, Tathora found a tome of understanding at the end of Curse of Strahd. So she is now walking around with 22 Wisdom, and proficiency with Perception with a +5 proficiency bonus. She found all the pit traps. They're ten feet deep and lined with poisonous spikes. Although in 5th edition falling damage gives you a "grace height" of 10 feet, I decided to rescind that for this adventure. Gravity may have changed in new editions, but it now works different in this dungeon, dammit! (This will matter later)

And then there's Maveith. Maxed out Strength (in this edition, at 20), proficiency in Athletics and with a class feature that gives him advantage on Strength (athletics) checks. And the party has approximately all the pitons between them. So they were able to wedge those pit traps shut.

That done, walking along the red path reveals a poem written with all the skill of middle-school creative writing student (sorry Ghost of Gygax, you just aren't that good at poetry):

Acererak congratulates you on your powers of observation, so make of this whatever you wish, for you will be mine in the end no matter what!
Go back to the tormentor or through the arch, and the second great hall you'll discover.
Shun green if you can, but night's good color is for those of great valor.
If shades of red stand for blood, the wise will not need sacrifice aught but a loop of magical metal-you're well along your march.
Two pits along the way will be found to lead to a fortuitous fall, so check the wall.
These keys and those are most important of all, and beware of trembling hands and what will maul.
If you find the false you find the true, and into the columned hall you'll come, and there the throne that's key and keyed.
The iron men of visage grim do more than meets the viewer's eye.
You've left and left and found my tomb, and now your souls will die.

Toward the entrance of this hall, there is a fresco of jackal-headed humanoids holding a bronze chest coming out of the wall. Yves fooled around with it, finding a catch to open it with an obvious poison needle trap. He had a caster use mage hand to press the catch, opening the bottom of the chest. He found it empty, except for a lever, which he left alone. Dang it!

They followed the red path to the arch, cloudy and with three stones along it lighting yellow (left base stone), orange (right base stone), and blue (keystone) in that order. They messed around with the stones, but had no apparent effect. They left the arch alone. Dang it!

The red path also forked, leading a green mosaic of a leering green devil face, it's mouth gaping. Blake started messing around with it, sending a mage hand into the mouth, where it vanished. Then the others had to be buzzkills and told him to leave it alone. Blake actually listened. Dang it!

They purposefully triggered a pit trap, and found a hidden door at the bottom of one, but found it was one-way, so they re-wedged it.

Since no one likes it when things stall, I had Kyla roll a "get a clue" check for Tathora, leading them back to a fresco of a monstrous creature trapped behind an iron prison door. They started breaking away the stucco, finding a door.

It lead to a room with an apparent statue of a four-armed gargoyle. It came to life an attacked. The poor thing stood no chance. It was dead in less than a round. Didn't even get to attack and do damage. Surprisingly enough, Kyla got a little murder-hoboin' on and asked if it had anything: it did! a color studded with ovular 100gp blue quartz gems and a hidden compartment with a small scrap of parchment with gibberish written on it. A casting of comprehend language on it revealed it to read "Look low and high for gold, and on your way you'll wend. -A"

One of the exits from that room lead through a series of 10-ft by 10-ft chambers that terminated at a false door.

The other exit lead to an apparently empty 10-ft by 10-ft room. Until Tathora looked in and found a secret door. This lead to a series of secret doors in chambers where bolts were constantly raining down on the group like the diseased fever dreams of a Nintendo-era platform game designer. But Tathora, with help from Maveith and Remy, eventually found all of the secret doors, each of which needed to be opened in a different fashion. The original intent of this was for the players end up doing this forever while the bolts chipped away at their hit points. Since most of the party were jerks, and Tathora was the one mostly getting chipped, I let her figure out pretty quickly how to open all the doors.

Except for the last one. It was a door with seven studs. Upon reaching it, Tathora called the rest over for help. Only Maveith responded. Calvin and Kyla are not allowed to play games with these kinds of puzzles. Calvin just had them press all the studs at once, opening the door. Then the rest of the party followed, Yves even doing a Megaman slide to try and avoid the bolts. They found another hallway lined with color frescoes, this time of figures holding orbs of various colors. The door closed behind them, being a one-way passage, but I reminded them they could disintegrate it or open it with knock.

I drew up the hall, indicating the color of the orbs along the walls, because I wasn't going to describe it 50 times. Anyways, any game designers wanting to make a retroclone of something like Zork or Myst, have Kyla playtest that thing. She will show you how laughably dumb your puzzles are.

She remembered the scrap of paper she just found, and examined an orb colored gold being held high up, discovering a crawlspace beyond it, which she went through. There she found another four-armed gargoyle statue, but one of it's arms was on the floor. After closely examining the other hands, she found that they had indents in them perfectly sized for those quartz gems she just found. She put one in, and the hand animated, crushing it into dust. No one objected when she did it with the rest of those things, probably remembering how she solved the dancing puzzle in Curse of Strahd. Once all 10 were crushed, a magic mouth on the gargoyle added more bad poetry: "Your sacrifice was not in vain. Look to the fourth to find your gain." So Kyla found a gem of seeing in the hand of the broken fourth arm, just covered in a substance rendering it invisible.

While she did that, the party found some more crawl spaces behind a black orb and a red orb. They also found another cloudy arch. This time the stones lit up in colors of olive, citron, and russet. Why use $5 color words when $125 ones are available. Once again, they left the arch alone. Dang it!

Kyla, correctly, went through the black crawlspace, arriving in a chapel. Alec went through the red. Glawen fell through the foor, taking a little falling damage and finding three chests: gold, silver, and wood. Alec fell for the schmuck bait and used mage hand to open the wooden chest, summoning a giant skeleton into the room. He had to fight it by himself for a round before Shannon, being a team players, had Remy show up and help. The rest of the team were hard on her heels, but by then the giant was dead. It was vulnerable to bludgeoning damage, something monks are good at dealing with fists.

Alec did not learn his lesson, and opened the other two chests. The silver one only held a crystal box containing a ring of protection. The gold one just had a swarm of poisonous snakes. The swarm didn't last long, getting, well, swarmed by the rest of the party. But getting the box out of the silver chest did trigger a dart trap.

Pressing on in the chapel, they found the pews were hinged, and some were trapped. Yves disabled that trap. They avoided the altar and yet another cloudy archway. Dang it!

They did find a section of wall containing a slot big enough for a magic ring. Ghesh put in his ring of fire resistance. Blake hoped he could retrieve the ring after using it for this. It was cute. The ring is gone. This opened a hidden door leading deeper in. They followed some steps down to another corridor. For some reason, Glawen lead the way and fell into a pit trap. Tathora gave him a heal, and they pressed on. They shimmed that pit trap and found another.

Then fricking Kyla remembered a line from the poem. They found a third pit trap, and found a secret door on one of it's walls. Thinking smart, Glawen sent an arcane eye with true seeing on it down that passage, finding a secret door. Pusheen had to use a dispel magic to open the door.

They found a room filled with stuff for preparing mummies. Yves examined the unguents and herbs, but found nothing of value. After learning a vat contained an acid, Ghesh decided to drink some. He learned that resistance is not the same as immunity. Then Jornath poked at another vat containing an opaque liquid that turned out to be an ochre jelly. Once again, this fight was very one-sided, and the jelly died. But there was half of a magic key in there. We broke for the night. They know there is something magical at the bottom of the acid vat. Who will brave putting an arm inside to grab the magic item within? Find out next time.