A Dark And Stormy Knight (Part 3)

Having trouble with the locking mechanisms on these stone doors, all the PCs fail their attempts to pick the locks. Luckily their ineptitude seems to be their forté these days because Rikku's "failed" attempt actually triggered the lock and the party hears the gratuitous "click".

Impatient, Shashari uses her strength and pushes Rikku forward, headfirst into the double doors and opening them into a very long corridor. The marching order is once again determined (changed slightly this time) and the party moves into the passage looking for traps as they go. No traps are found early on and so the group stroll down the rest of the 60+ feet of corridor without further trap checking. The Lords of Orhan must be on their side as they encounter no traps at all.

"The long stone hall ends in a stone chamber furnished only with cracked, moldering tables on which lie rusted implements of iron. Rain falls into the middle of the room from a shaft in the ceiling that must run all the way to the top of the tor. From the bottom of the shaft dangles a rope, swinging slightly. A drain in the center of the floor allows the water to escape, but old, dark stains suggest that it was used to carry away other fluids long ago."

"Suddenly, from a doorway on the far side of the room step two burly humanoids. Each stands more than 6 feet tall and has feral eyes and flat facial features. With a roar, the two draw their weapons and charge."

This frightens Rikku who retreats into the corridor from which he came. Cavell, who was leading the group with Rikku, moves forward to attack, as does Kodos who swaps places with the retreating Rikku. Other characters have managed to spread out left and right as they entered the room.

Cavell takes the full brunt of the hobgoblin attack and deftly avoids taking damage, delivering a critical blow that renders his foe stunned for several rounds. Asmodeus prepares his Minor Pain spell, Shashari looses her long bow doing no damage and Xera draws and throws her Chakram, she hits but does only light damage. Xera's biggest problem, however, is not her foe but rather her reopened wound on her leg. She was warned that she needed to rest it and not stress it too much, but did she listen to her GM? Nooooo! She is now bleeding at two hits per round.

Seeing how easy it was for Cavell, Kodos takes on the other charging hobgoblin and promptly gets whacked a beauty. His arm is bleeding badly and he is stunned for a couple of rounds. Cavell, seeing his friend in difficulty, moves between the unhurt hobgoblin and Kodos to protect him. Rikku, not liking his friend hurt in this way, also moves forward to attack the foul humanoid that performed the dastardly deed.

A couple of rounds later Asmodeus' spell goes off and lightly wounds a hobgoblin. Now with so much against them, the hobgoblins succumb to the party's ferocity and are easily dispatched. It's time to tend the wounded.

Poor Kodos loses consciousness due to blood loss and the rest of the party spend rounds and rounds of time trying to heal him through their first aid skill. Even Xera with her bag of herbal goodies cannot help other than concussion relief (healing hit point damage). Nothing works given several rounds of trying. Cavell takes the last resort and cauterises the wound with his sword blade heated by the lantern fire. This works, barely, but further damages the already flat-lining Kodos. More concussion relief removes Kodos from any danger, then Xera notices the trickle of her own blood down her leg. In all the excitement she forgot about herself and is now starting to feel a little woozy. More first aid attempts fail and Xera is staring unconsciousness in the face just as Kodos is currently practicing the art.

Looking at the healing time requirements for both Kodos and Xera, they roll well and need only one day to fully recover from their wounds. It could have been a lot worse, but the party agree to rest for a full day to ensure they can continue without hindrance.

The party heads back to their campsite in the room with the sarcophagus, except Rikku who doesn't want to stop and so continues on independently. He moves into the passageway north of their entrance into this room and heads down another that is on the right. 30 feet into this passage he can make out a dusty room with his elven, low-light ability.

"There are "mummified" lumps lying on the floor.", GM.

Rikku moves further down the corridor. This guy is nuts! He's all alone and just recently saw his friend Kodos almost die in a battle of six versus two in their favour. Nearing the room entrance Rikku notices fine spider threads running across his path. Oh crap!

"I back off slowly and look around the passage."

"You see a huge spider against the ceiling above you."

This obviously scared him and so Rikku's player rolls a Fear RR check. He has had some bad experiences lately with spiders (to say the least) and even with negative modifiers to his roll, he manages easily to keep his wits about himself.

"I'll return back to camp.", says a shaken Rikku.

The 25 hour period of rest is interrupted twice by the sound of a metal grate hitting the stone floor. Nothing emerges from these sounds to present themselves to the PCs, however, they are concerned. The next day, they check out the storm situation and see that it is continuing unabated.

Fully healed and prepared for whatever lays ahead, the PCs retrace their steps down the long corridor and continue through the room with the now dead hobgoblins, but not before Shashari has some fun checking out the rope in the shaft. She ties her own rope to it and gets out of the way to pull. Nothing happens.

"Pull harder." - Shashari.

Still nothing happens, the rope simply goes taught then slides off the end - poor knot tying!. Shashari now wants to climb up the rope to see what is up there. This is one of her best skills and so manages to climb up 40+ feet before seeing a grey light more than 100 feet above her.

"Oh well, I climb back down."

The party moves down the northern corridor past the passage Rikku found on the right into the northern most room.

"A long, stone table dominates the center of this chamber, and bright bits of silver wink from within the dust that covers the floor. Upon the table lies the well-preserved corpse of a tall humanoid wearing the tabard and belts of a knight. The table has an opening at its front. Suddenly, the corpse sits up, lifting an old, rusted morningstar in one hand and a javelin in the other. As it climbs off the table, its mouth opens to loose an eerie moan."

The knight is a Male Lugroki Zombie (an Orc Zombie; a class III undead, level 6). The PCs fan out at the entrance to take on this knight of the unlife and it doesn't take long (2 or 3 rounds of combat) for it to be defeated. It only had 11 or so hits to go when Xera stepped in and took it out. 385 experience points go to her. Some antics were performed by Rikku; tumble-rolling across the stone table and failing, but I can't remember what happened to him.

Some very good rolls occurred to remove this menace so quickly considering it Size/Crit type is M/I#, which means it is a medium (human) sized creature (M) that has criticals reduced by one level (I) and does not get affected by stun or bleeding results (#).

With the Orc Zombie out of action and almost all the rooms checked out, the PCs are free to explore this area in greater detail. Experience points will be assigned next gaming session and characters will be allowed to level up if possible.

The PC's mission is to find a life stone taken by Lugroki (orcs) who headed into the western forest. Well, this is the western forest, but it is no lugroki settlement, nor is it a murlogi lair that Rikku has been interested in finding, but it does have hobgoblins and a lugroki undead.

What the PCs do next will be revealed in following blog ...

A Dark And Stormy Knight (Part 2)

Moving into what appears to be a cave at the base of Hightower tor, the PCs discover that the space beyond is huge. Unlike the three Elven companions, Xera needs to light her lamp in order to see the room, but even this proves to be inadequate.

Cavell, being practical, wants to tie up the horses so that they don't wander away. He gets frustrated as he cannot find a single thing to which he can tether the horses. He decides, in the end, to get a bunch of heavy saddle bags and tie a single horse to that with the rest tied to each other.

As GM I asked if anyone has a mapping skill, no one does, so I simply give descriptions and the players have to draw a map themselves. If someone did have cartography, I would be drawing the maps for them so that they are accurate.

Shashari and Xera wander over to a stone door to the left and both listen at the door, they hear nothing. Kodos, Asmodeus and Rikku are over with Cavell and the horses.

Moving onto the next door on the opposite wall to the entrance, Xera and Shashari once again listen.

Shashari, "Ah, I think I heard something. Hmm, maybe it's from all that noise behind me."

Shashari casts her listening spell so that her "ear" is ten feet on the other side of the stone door. Nope, can't hear anything - too bad.

"Squeak"

Xera, "What's that?"

Shashari, "It's a giant rat."

The two women of the party shriek with terror and run around the room in circles, looking for a chair to stand and scream on.

Oops! Actually that isn't quite accurate. It would have been more accurate if I said, Xera and Shashari both draw their weapons and move forward towards the giant rat twenty feet away at a small hole in the wall. The rat comes forward and tries to attack Shashari but misses.

The storm must be scaring the rats from outside because now another three come charging out of the small hole and try to attack Xera, they all miss, luckily.

Hearing the commotion, Asmodeus, Rikku and Kodos move to attack the rats that are over sixty feet from their position with the horses. See, I told you it was a HUGE room! Cavell is nonplussed since there are plenty of people to take care of the rats.

Xera backs off from the three rats attacking her and Shashari follows up from behind them to give her a better chance to hit, considering they are distracted by Xera. Oh no! Another three rats charge Shashari from the hole with a fourth staying at the hole entrance. No damage is done by anyone or anything as yet.

Now, Rikku, Asmodeus and Kodos are able to reach the rats. Rikku kills one outright by using his two weapon attack ability and splattered Xera with rat blood in the process. She really hates that! Asmodeus prepares to cast Minor Pain, a spell that will reduce a rat's hitpoints by 25%. Kodos draws his weapon and attacks, doing no damage. Realising his new friends are now outnumbered by the rats, Cavell heads on over to the battle. The PCs vanquish their foes and watch as the last rat, that stayed at the entrance, turns tail and skitters back into the hole it came from. Ahhh! Nothing like a little exercise. Experience too!

Rikku and Kodos decide they are going to search the room for themselves while Shashari plugs up the hole with dead rats. It's a messy job, but she feels it needs to be done. The two men find nothing.

Deciding the need for more action than just listening, Kodos, Asmodeus and Rikku try to pick open the locked stone door in the wall opposite the entrance. No luck there. Not happy with the men taking the lead in the task they set themselves, Shashari and Xera head on over to the door on the right of the entrance. Again they hear nothing. They decide to try and pick it open just like the men are now doing with the locked stone door on the west side of the room. No one has any real success, however, just as Asmodeus (I think it was him) gives up trying to pick the lock, he hears a click. He was sure he hadn't gotten it, but something he did triggered the lock. The same thing happened to Xera and Shashari's door. Now that both doors are apparently unlocked, they decide to firstly open the Western door where Rikku, Asmodeus and Kodos are. The door opens easily with the sound of scraping rock.

As GM, I ask for a marching order and we get the brave Cavell leading the group, followed by Rikku and Kodos, then Asmodeus and Shashari, with Xera bringing up the rear.

The PCs move down the long corridor, Xera's lamp washes away the darkness around them. They stop as the passage opens into a room. The only object of interest in this chamber is a statue at the far end. It resembles a sarcophagus standing upright, except that the head of the figure carved upon its lid looks distorted and seems to have tendrils instead of hair. A pair of bat-like wings extends from its temples. Suddenly, its eyes open, revealing the glow of green flames, and the head flies forward to attack!

A Lesser Vargouille, this D&D3.5 monster I converted to RolemasterFRP using the guidelines supplied by ICE for conversion. This little beastie turns out to be a Level 2B creature with 20D hits and a 30SBi attack along with its shrieking. The 'B' in the Level and 'D' in the hits allow for spur-of-the-moment adjustment of the values based on the Level Chart and Constitution Bonus Chart respectively. These can be found in Creatures and Monsters (ICE #5802). The PCs dispatch this obstacle easily. Shashari and Xera take off the lid of the sarcophagus and find only dust at the bottom.

"I'll search for secret doors in the sarcophagus." - Shashari

"Why don't you search the dust?" - Cavell

Shashari ignores Cavell.

"No luck, just the dust you are standing on." - GM

Others decide to search the room with no luck. Xera gets a second chance at searching because she felt she missed something the first time. This was the result indicated by the Static Manoeuvre Chart.

Success! Xera finds a silver ring in the dust at the bottom of the sarcophagus, hiding amongst the footprints left behind by Shashari. Good call Cavell!

The PCs are getting hungry and decide to stop for dinner and rest. They bring the horses down to this western chamber and make camp in it, knowing that any monsters that wander in will come down this single passage. They have a restful and uneventful night.

The morning routine follows and the PCs find the storm continues unabated outside. Rikku believes this is an unnatural storm and that someone or something has driven them inside this tor.

The eastern room has yet to be searched and this they do eagerly. The door opens easily and they head down the corridor to another room. This room is empty save for dust and a single, small, stone chest in the centre of the floor. Evidently no one has disturbed this chamber for many years.

Rikku, Cavell and Xera search the chest for traps while the others search the room. Bumbling Rikku sets off a trap, firing a fusillade of darts at the three of them around the chest. Cavell and Rikku are unhurt, however, Xera is lightly wounded and is bleeding at 2 hits per round. Cavell attempts First Aid and fails to stop the bleeding. He spends three rounds doing so and Xera loses another 10% of her total hits. Since Cavell couldn't get his act together (maybe he gets nervous when touching women?? or maybe it is just because he is level one and not very skilled in first aid yet) and fix her up, Xera decides to pull out some of her own circulatory repair herbs and stops the bleeding. It will take one day for her to heal the wound and so is restricted to walking speed and no sudden movements such as combat otherwise the wound will reopen.

The party return to the entry chamber and prepare to open the last of the three doors.

Thus ends a three hour gaming session. See you in a fortnight.