PREVIOUS EXCERPT: #35

Excerpt #36

So, like the United Nations Security Council, we convene once more to play games of propaganda and diplomacy and to each use our individual vetoes in turn to minimize progress, since (to all appearances) the goals of the various participants are conflictory. GM has obviously had time over the last week to design a vampiric monk that is more to his liking, and less like the piece of crap pre-fab one he had found in the DMG for the previous week.

Sadly, history (in the form of my notes) does not record whether or not this sparked an argument on the proper use and timing of spot checks. Considering my own neverending faith in humanity, I would tend to assume it did, but regardless, the brief review of the issue is as follows: normally, spot checks are called for by the GM whenever there is something to spot, but players can also choose to make a spot check as a move-equivalent action (for example, when they know about an invisible opponent, but failed their previous check to locate hints of its location). Actually, ideally the game master would have the spot bonuses of all players written down and perform the involuntary rolls in secret, but this is usually a little impractical, and so long as the players are trustworthy and not complete asses, it is generally far simpler to simply ask for checks when appropriate. In the case of this group, even though they are complete asses, the players are nevertheless trustworthy about their rolls and results, and they are honorable enough not to abuse the "failed spot-check" type of knowledge... unless they feel that they are being treated unfairly in some regard. Of course, when either side retaliates, and both sides are sure they are behaving honorably, that's when the worst fighting happens. In this case, though, everyone had been forewarned, and Omit was (mostly) just having a little fun with it.

A 9th level spell with a 5000 XP cost was too expensive even for Omit's scroll budget, and despite the expectations of the players, no vampire attack appeared imminent. The heroes cautiously resumed their advance down the lava-tube/mine-shaft, encountering only more of the same - skeletal miners and buckets of highly impure onyx ore. Umit followed the tenets of his faith by hitting each skeleton in the head with a three-thousand gold-piece adamantine mace. After over an hour more walking, the tunnel abruptly and somewhat unexpectedly ended in a chamber. Though its golf-green-like curved shape seemed to indicate natural formation, the walls, floor and ceiling had been worked to perfection, and the room was finely appointed with a four-poster bed, large paintings all around the walls, fine thick rugs in places, a bookcase, and a young well-dressed boy sitting quietly at a dinner table with fine silverware, with a group of six barrels against the wall behind him. Oh, and several naked women were standing around the left side of the room, with one of them chained to the wall (not hanging, just chained up loosely) and an easel nearby. The spotlessly clean chamber was lit by the standard ever-burning torches (made with the Continual Flame spell), and a solitary skeleton with a broom was sweeping the floor. Unfortunately (since we had been exploring an empty mine tunnel) Azheron had taken a rest room break and wasn't back yet to hear all this description. GM was busy drawing it all in as well as he could on the battle-map grid.

Balcoth returns.

Since all the thralls appeared to be under mind control by the standard-issue vampiric dominate ability, the player's Flame-Striking-Child concerns were mostly alleviated, so they proceeded to search the room. The victims were quite docile, though they began asking creepy questions that showed just how thoroughly their wills had been subverted by a fairly sick and twisted creature. The heroes coralled them all on one side of the room (taking down the one in chains), and tied them up. There was some discussion of the merits of dispelling the Dominate spell, but Verian felt that resources were already too low to waste it, and the others were concerned about the loud and panicky response (since mind control victims remember whatever horrors they had been forced to endure). Right now they were docile, so freeing their minds after getting out of the volcano seemed a lot more practical.

That barrel contained salt: ooh, exciting salt. Already losing enthusiasm with these barrels, stalward Balcoth tries one more (opening and not chopping).

Balcoth looks over at the kid at the table, and the unpleasant-looking meat, then looks back down into the barrel, and decides this s*** is all kinds of wrong. The remaining three barrels also contain children, apparently waiting quietly to be eaten (all mind controlled, of course). Azheron has made his own discovery with the search checks: three small holes bored into the floor. Each hole is about an inch wide, and (courtesy of darkvision) we can see them go down about two feet, but then they twist and turn and we can't tell where they go. The players were pretty sharp... knowing they were up against a vampire (although they arguably shouldn't know since the Improved-Invisible ambush retroactively never happened), they saw that the holes must be either an entry point or escape route for a vampire in gaseous form. They had seen the tactic before in a temple, long ago on "Lizard Island", used by Yuan-ti (snake people who can polymorph into small vipers). Balcoth started back across the room to investigate, when:

Azheron and Balcoth (mostly Balcoth) used the upside-down table to cover up the holes, and piled bookcases and a big heavy-stone barrel (not one of "the barrels" but a separate slave waste-receptacle with a heavy lid) to weigh it down, whilst Verian and Omit pulled out the barrel-kids (along with Jimmy and his quarter-eaten, quarter-amputated sister), tied them up and placed them with the other thralls in the corner. Just before Balcoth finished hauling positioning the last piece of furniture, Omit was Sneak-Attacked. By a vampire (duh).

Omit makes all those saves, and everyone rolls initiative. Unsurprisingly (him being the only one with +4 from the feat), Omit goes first after the surprise round. This incarnation of the vampire is visible after attacking, having used only regular Invisibility for the ambush. He is the dark figure from the painting: no clothes or body hair in evidence, but in fact his features (other than his pointy elven ears) are very indistinct. He's almost an opaque black crash-test dummy.

Balcoth rushes over and hits the vampire, but between its damage-reduction (10/magic AND silver) and its constant regeneration, he won't be able to impact it too much until he can start full-attacking. Verian Hastes the party, then Omit casts Prayer to buff our saves and to-hit by one, and penalize the vampire's by the same amount... of course, his real purpose is to get a better read on it's Spell Resistance number, and in that regard he is right on the money, beating its SR on a roll of 25 (since we know the 24 earlier failed, 25 MUST definitely be the number). So a roughly 50% chance to ignore most spells... although the odds were a little worse for Rikkon due to her being a level lower from death penalties, and her odds were getting worse all the time if the level-drains kept comin'.

The room (and tunnel outside) isn't high enough to fly out of reach and this vampire-monk has pretty freakin' impressive spot bonuses, so despite the invisibility it follows the mephling warmage and hits her again, for another 17-ish damage, and ANOTHER negative level. Since Rikkon prettymuch only HAS attack spells,and since every level drained makes her 5% less likely to affect this enemy with them, survival would be the greatest accomplishment Azheron can strive for at this point... Balcoth drinks one of his potions of Enlarge Person.

Balcoth moved up to the vampire, and with Azheron increasingly unlikely to affect it in any way, it changed targets and tried its luck on him, but Balcoth was a very hard target for monk to-hit values, even with the immense stat bonuses of a vampire. Next round Balcoth full attacked it, hitting for 23 (-10 for the DR), then tripping it and hitting it on the ground. Omit Blessed the party while Azheron flew further away (knowing that if GM decided he couldn't harm Balcoth, he would likely go for whatever kill he could get). Verian, however, decided that the current map situation was one worth preserving, and so he cast a Web over the area, placing the border right between Balcoth and the enemy, so that the vampire was webbed (-2 to hit and damage while in there) and would have to pass through more web (or through Balcoth) to get out. Of course in doing this, Rhaek caught himself on the other side of the web, but his oft-mentioned (by Verian, even during gameplay) Cloak of the Arachnida let him walk relatively unhindered through the sticky mass. With it's immense monk-movement-speed and superior strength, GM assumed that the vampire could manage...

Rhaek casts Mass Cure Light Wounds for a paltry 13 points of healing (and half that in damage to the undead which made it's Will save). Then the vampire moves over to Omit and makes a trip attack... and fails... and Omit successfully countertrips on a crazy lucky roll (and of course a crazy UNlucky roll by GM).

The vampire monk did his best, but despite the lack of anti-vampire weapons, Balcoth was grinding him down the old fashion way and his unholy regeneration could not keep up. Azheron had managed to keep away pretty well, and with two (okay, one-and-a-half) clerics in the party, all he really has to do is stay out of full-attack range each round and the vampire would take minutes of game time to kill him (at ten rounds per-minute). And as an added frustration, the heavily laden table blocking the air holes was now firmly secured in place by a couple squares of the web spell right on top of it. Adjucating whether a gaseous form could have passed through might have been questionable either way, but with the web stuck all over, the intuitive concensus was that it was sealed enough to prevent the vampire's escape. As its health dwindled, its only option seemed to be a retreat via the hallway, and it started in that direction.

Almost 80,000 gold, actually. The vampire had one other item but it was a minor thing increasing his effectiveness, and didn't even make my notes. A case of "treasure deferred"... GM explaining that this balanced out a number of treasureless encounters.

An easy victory for the players? Too easy? Just remember that they're still inside a mazelike volcanic structure, crawling with undead, and possibly an underdark connection... AND now they have a dozen helpless mind-control victims to deal with, rescue, or worse - talk to.

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Excerpt #37

According to the rules, of course, Azheron's right. It is not permissible to sever limbs in any way in combat except for one or two specific monsters which have special rules (such as hydras and ropers). But obviously, within the fictional world of a D&D game such things occur... they simply don't occur when the PCs are in combat because of the bloatrous rules difficulties of allowing specific injuries of that sort.

After much honest and heated (but surprisingly non-adversarial) discussion amongst the players, the decision was made to camp out in the destroyed vampire's room. With the amount of spells we had left, we generally agreed that we could hold out through one more fight, and we were confident that GM wouldn't let us rest without one more fight, and that meant we had to rest immediately. Furthermore, with Wind Walk we could get all the slaves out quickly and with relative ease, likely avoiding any further combat, whereas some players felt that escorting a dozen slow-moving people lacking any vertical mobility powers would make for very slow progress through the rough and corkscrewing lava tubes, and any enemy attack while transporting them would almost inevitably result in civilian casualties.

And so Balcoth poured over the room, plundering all the materials he could, and using his keen eye (both as a dwarf and IRL) for engineering to locate the best choke point in the hall just outside the room, and to barricade it. GM warned that the barrels and bookshelves, table and massive (but smashed) bed would not be enough to solidly wall off the whole hallway, even at the narrowest point, but Balcoth was happy with a pile that would rise most of the way up, as long as it would take multiple actions for opponents to break through. His idea was that even if a group of enemies did break through in one or two actions, they would only have opened one square, and would be forced to fight Balcoth only one-or-two at a time unless they wasted even more actions breaking through other map squares.

The rest of the party seemed to be in agreement; it was unfortunate, and it would be nice if the situation were otherwise, but the best way to help the mind-controlled victims was to regain spells and get them out as fast as possible. So Balcoth watched another hour, smashed another skeleton, then watched for hour number four, and a mummy came into view around the corner.

Balcoth ponders this, obviously still confident in his ability to handle the mummy and any accompanying hidden force. He is keenly aware that in many situations, enemies are actually less of a threat if they have no softer targets to draw them away - many times he has suffered more damage or simply killed the enemies much slower because they were chasing his allies and the dwarf was in turn forced to chase after them. But balanced against the rare opportunity to engage in his special "invulnerable-juggernaut" style of grinding combat without worrying about the others, was the looming risk of some fruity-assed gay-spell hosing him without having anybody who could dispel it for him...

Balcoth seemed unimpressed, as the level of assistance sounded a lot like Rhaek's part would be to wake the others if the shit hit the fan, but it seemed likely that Verian was underselling his resources somewhat. And if anyone's spells were less essential to plans of escaping in a few hours, it was the jack-of-all-trades. And it was still just a mummy.

So after all that, Balcoth emerged from the barricade, and Rhaek watched through the vision slits. Splat. Nobody was going to miss that mummy, and as for other scary things like mummy-rot disease, well... with Balcoth's immune-system (as represented by his fortitude save), the undead should probably be more worried about getting eaten alive by his saliva if he spits on them. So they went back to waiting and watching. Stressful activity (or in this case mildly stressful inactivity) sets a spellcaster back 1 hour's worth of rest for spell-recovery purposes, but as long as there was a chance the next attack was more than an hour away, Verian had his character try to catch some more rest. In the meantime though:

Our group doesn't use the "5% rule", that a d20 roll of 20 is always a success and 1 is always a failure, or "fumble". After all, if you are wearing full plate, with a huge (and doubled) check penalty to tumbling, there is no way you are performing acrobatics '20' or no. Similarly, fumbling doesn't add up, because the high level fighter (attacking three or four times per round) or a dragon (attacking 5 to 7 times per round) would actually fumble more frequently than a crappy peasant with an improvised weapon, because all those extra attacks give the 5% a greater chance to come up. Everyone likes it better this way, but the PCs (you know them) seem to push it even further with their affinity for saving throws. Despite GM doubling the price of Resistance Cloaks, when GM calls for saving throws he often is greeted by a chorus of "Whatever" "I autopass" "...don't even need to roll". In this case, only Azheron even bothered to roll, and even that may have been just for fun. Verian's character has a Fortitude bonus of about +16 or 17, with an additional +3 against any magic or psionic effects, and that was positively wimpy compared to Balcoth and Omit's characters. For comparison, an enemy wizard with Intelligence 20 casting Disintegrate would have a Save DC of 21 without specialization or DC boosting feats. Since a '1' is not a failure, that is an "autopass" for the "fragile caster". Nevertheless, we just made a save against something:

GM remains steadfast that the problem will worsen unless dealt with. Let it be known that representing an entire game world is a pain in the ass sometimes, and after months and months of ignoring players' various scientific, mathematical and engineering dissertations on various supposed flaws or lack of realism in GM's measurements, physics, geology, sociology, economics and combat tactics, he is not particularly disposed to let them weasel out of a perfectly good inconvenience. Especially since the vampire monk so utterly failed to live up to GM's expectations AND left behind over 80,000 gold in lewt (built up, though it was, by a conglomeration of consecutive lootless battles).

Eventually Balcoth (not recieving any ideas or offers of help from the sleepers) took it upon himself to restore some more humane conditions among the unfortunates. Also, he clearly thought that accepting some degree of indignity in the name of decency would shut GM up about it.

While the other players were somewhat put-off by GM's detailed "ambience", Azheron leapt to the rescue with his grasp of human anatomy:

It was just over an hour from the last attack (the hapless, "not-very-augmented" mummy which Balcoth had dispatched) when Balcoth spotted a couple of mummies and woke Rhaek again. From the descriptions, these mummies had better equipment (including bastard swords and shields), and Rhaek's Arcane Sight revealed some mid-level buff spells.

Verian relented, and they woke Rikkon (which at least gave Azheron more opportunity to roleplay than the exciting five or so hours of sleeping thus far), but as the two mummies paused a safe distance away and observed Balcoth's barricade, more of them came into view, one of which was sporting some magic "bling", including an enchanted Scarab.

Something about the wording got through to Balcoth. The fact is, going simply by the situation as the characters saw it, Balcoth's interpretation was pretty reasonable. He can fight a lot of mummies, and if one happens to be a caster as well... even burnt-out from a day of hard fighting, Rikkon and Rhaek should be able to balance that out. So the reason that Verian was correct in this case was not "the facts" but rather the nature of the game. If GM meant for there to be a fight, the players know by now that it will be (or at least, designed INTENDING to be) the exact same difficulty regardless of the actual status of the party; GM would throw the same at us whether we were fresh or exhausted. That is why Balcoth agreed to wake Umit as well.

A great deal of argument and later haggling occured. GM's problem is that 10 feet of radius is 20 feet of diameter, increasing the amount of targets that can be hit by a large amount. The players' problem was that because the effect is centered on the caster, radius minus opponent's reach minus five feet has to be greater than the distance to the nearest opponent, or the caster will generally get full-attacked on his next turn. So although a 20' radius is sort of the baseline size for an area damage spell, those spells normally have Medium or Long range, and a caster-centered 20' radius is so close that any enemy (even slow ones without reach) can easily move to and attack the caster in one turn. Worse, because enemies probably do not arrange themselves to form a ring at the edge of your spell range, in order to hit multiple foes (and Turn Undead is clearly intended to affect a large number of foes), a caster would have to put himself even closer, possibly exposing himself to multiple full-attacks, which is a lot different than the original (non-damage-based, 60-foot-radius) Turn Undead ability. Eventually we settled on trying the 30-foot radius, but GM was showing signs that he was not happy, implying that the radius was subject to modification (in other words shrinkage) after he sees it in action.

Balcoth went out to meet the threat, while Umit moved up cautiously in his wake (trying to compromise between between personal security, staying in his 30-foot healing range of as many characters as possible, and positioning himself to Turn Undead in later rounds), and Rikkon and Rhaek stayed back behind the difficult terrain so that Rikkon could rain death upon... the dead... and Rhaek could cast a self-defense buff and then, uh, try to annoy the enemy or otherwise trick them into thinking he had any worthwhile spells left. Technically, he could advance and Turn Undead himself, using his clerics levels, but although he cast as a moderate-level-cleric, his actual cleric class levels would give him turning-damage of 3d6, save-for-half. Which would be sort of effective against regular skeletons.

The first of the mummies then charged the nearest target, who was of course Balcoth.

Although GM was somewhat displeased by this attitude towards such intelligence-gathering techniques, the game progressed. Based on Rhaek's assessment of enemy magic, Verian and Azheron agreed that the "head" mummy's magic scarab was the kind that would negate magic-missile damage against the wearer. GM felt this assessment was rather premature and based on no evidence, but they ignored him, knowing that the item they had in mind was the only one of that type in the DMG which made any sense. Then Azheron's character Flamestriked three mummies plus the Greater Mummy for 51 damage, but they resisted half of it. Only half of the damage from Flame Strike is fire, while the other half is divine and effectively unresistable (although divine makes less sense when it is cast as an arcane spell), and half of 51 damage is 25.5 in our game where rounding doesn't exist. Since 25.5 is more than 20, the players all deduced that the buff spell on the mummies was Mass Resist Elements with a caster level of at least 11. Which is more the same kind of out-of-character metagame knowledge which GM has come to expect (and loathe) from his players. The debate over this kind of "player knowledge" has mostly dissipated though, now that the characters are high enough level that they should probably know as much or more about magic as the players.

Omit and Verian exchanged a glance noting how, forced to choose between increased survivability of his monsters and the possibility of inflicting extra damage, GM very rapidly chose the damage, and how as a side-effect of this, Balcoth would take them down significantly faster by powerattacking a couple points harder with his axe in two hands, with the added damage representing a magnified marginal gain relative to the fixed value of their damage-reduction. Not that any of this really needed to be said, least of all to Balcoth. Meanwhile, the Greater Mummy cast a Mass Inflict wounds spell, dealing minor damage to all the players and simultaneously healing all the mummies.

Rhaek cast a Mass Cure Light Wounds, partially counteracting the enemy spell by damaging the undead (lightly) and healing the PCs (slightly), in what was becoming something of an asymptotic see-sawing battle of the AoE spells. Umit, however, shattered the pattern of ever-weakening exchanges by using a Greater Turning attempt. The Sun Domain power (1/day) causes all undead which would normally be turned to be destroyed instead, but in the damage-turning variant it translates to maximized turning-damage: an appalling (to GM) ninety damage. Seeing GM's reaction, Omit held off on mentioning that the Radiant Servant [of Pelor] prestige class allowed him to do this the same number of times per day as normal Turn Undead... in addition to normal Turn Undead.

Still, GM was applying the mummies' Turn-Resistance trait as a bonus to saving throws against the effect, and so they were rarely failing their save for half damage. GM was highly displeased with this, feeling that his Turn-Resistance was being rendered worthless by the power of damage-Turning, and was already brainstorming a way to make his defense more effective. We later found out that in the Complete Divine handbook, which describes the damage-turning variant, Turn Resistance becomes a 1-to-1 damage reduction. So the mummies' would have seen the damage reduced by 4 (and taken their chances with the save) rather than almost automatically saving for half as they have been. But GM had a more pro-active solution for now, as the mummies surged forward over the difficult terrain of Balcoth's "wall", tripped and loosely surrounded Umit. He would suffer a few of attacks of oppotunity for standing up, and because of their spread-out positioning, many more attacks for trying to move past them. Of course, he would likely be pumelled into goo if unable to escape the enemies' full-attack range by their next turn.

Omit plotted his course and began making tumbling checks, one, then another, then another... each square having to make a check for each enemy whose reach he was moving out of, with a cumulative penalty for each successive check. Despite having Heavy Armor proficiency from his cleric levels and being able to cast unimpeded in any armor, Umit wears only a chain shirt. Because it has only a -2 check penalty (actually -1 since it's Masterwork) and because of his high dexterity and expensive cross-class ranks in his Tumbling skill, Umit easily succeeds the first few checks, but beyond that, he kept rolling higher, and higher, and in fact passed every one of the eight-to-ten checks required to dodge around the mummies... even though statistically he was nearly certain to fail once or twice, and even though one-or-two attacks wouldn't have been the end of the world for him.

While the mummies expended all their effort swarming Umit, Balcoth (who had naturally, independantly assumed a two-handed heavy powerattack fighting style as soon as the shields disappeared) was starting to shred their augmented hit points, and Rikkon kept blasting away, switching to non-fire-based AoEs with a smoothness that only a Warmage can manage when low on spells. Although, Azheron may have been getting a little worried that Omit's harried flight had taken his character very close to Azheron's character, possibly trailing a swarm of angry mummies. In fact, Verian's character had backed into that part of the room as well, still trusting his ability to move away from danger more than he trusted his defensive buffs.

Now, it would have been impolite to point out how GM's eyes bugged out and his face turned red at that. And yet:

Although Balcoth showed no sign of backing down from his assertions, the others managed to mostly convince GM that it was all a deliberate attempt to push his buttons. He calmed down soon enough, and indeed, he found it difficult to believe our descriptions of how furious he had looked:

In any case, the Greater Mummy moved just far enough into the room to cast Blade Barrier, dropping down a summoned wall of flashing blades and hitting the casters (that is, all the player characters except for Balcoth). After the wall inflicted damage on them (a fair amount of damage for Rhaek and Rikkon, although Umit was protected by his Ring of Evasion), each target was forced to choose a side to dive to since the wall would remain in place. Azheron and Verian both had their characters end up on the side that didn't have mummies - they were bottled in to a dead end part of the room, but it was doubtful that many of the mummies could survive passing throught the Blade Barrier spell, making them fairly safe from hand-to-hand.

Omit, on the other hand, chose for his character to stay on the other side of the wall in order that he could stay in healing range of Balcoth, starting with a 36-point area-heal (mass something or other) which restored some safety margin to those wounded by the Blade Barrier, and which harmed a couple mummies, even killing one. Azheron cast another damage spell, and Verian dispelled the Greater Mummy in an effort to help out Balcoth... not that Balcoth seemed to need any help. While everyone else screwed around trying to survive, he was blissfully hacking down mummies left and right, and the occasional AoE Cure spells that he was catching were keeping him near full hitpoints thanks to his own near impenetrable armor class, and his Damage Reduction (which was on par with the mummies themselves). In fact, as the other players ceased doing much of anything, bereft of spells from a long day of fighting, the mummies became more and more desperate to somehow stop the dwarven juggernaut. The Greater Mummy used a scroll to cast Harm on itself (the negative energy functioning as a Heal for undead), and it inched its way (as a fighting retreat) around the corner into the hall where it was out of the line of sight of those behind the barrier.

Ultimately, though, the mummies were dwindling. With only one spellcaster, they had lost the "AoE war", and even that had only accelerated what appeared to have been an inevitable loss to Balcoth's superior fighting. When he finished the Greater one, the last remaing mummy lunged towards the vampire's helpless thralls, who couldn't have run away even if they weren't still dominated, since they had all been bound by the players. However, Rhaek (still Blinking from earlier) phased through the solid wall to get around the deadly blade barrier, and (unable to do much more) at least presented himself as a target for the mummy. Umit dropped a Wall of Stone between the mummy and its would-be victims (which, winding back and forth over relatively few squares, Omit calculated as having 1350 hp-per-square). More importantly, though, it had crossed back into the part of the room that Rikkon could see. Azheron cast an Acid Orb, destroying it and ending the fight.

And now (other than Balcoth, who could seemingly keep this up indefinitely) we REALLY needed to rest...

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Excerpt #38 <<< NEW! <<<

GM had started in relatively good spirits, but even so, the second interruption succeeded in disrupting the flow of his narrative. So he moved things along a little. One of the dominated victims (one of the attractive women who had been modeling for paintings or something) managed to shake off the vampire's mind control on her own. There was no way to tell if she had a stronger will than the children and the other women, or if the vampire had merely renewed his domination on certain captives on different days.

For a [sex-]slave just released from mind control, she was quite haughty. In fact, it took very little conversation before she let on that she was some sort of royalty, and held herself in very high regard. Of course, victims of Dominate are aware of their surroundings (as an observer; a sort of in-body out-of-body experience), and the Princess (whose name I misplaced) was quite impressed with Balcoth's performance in the fight.

The hard decision was made to try to escape the caves now. Nobody thought that they would be allowed to rest another 4-5 hours to get back WindWalk, especially when the Mummy Lord failed to report back. Unfortunately, the gamble of trying to hole up and rest had not payed off, and now matters were worse. GM's initial commentary had been quite accurate for the characters other than Balcoth, as they were now below what they considered to be "one fight's worth" of spells after the mummy battle and after burning more spells afterwards to heal the injured (mostly Rikkon). That is not to say that any of them was completely out of tricks, but they would be hard-pressed to take another serious fight unless Balcoth could block off the opposing force in a narrow pass in the tunnels.

The other reason that we had eventually gone with the "resting" gambit is that, without windwalk, we would be severely hampered by the victims we were trying to save. The heroes all had some form of vertical mobility to help them maneuver the serpentine corkscrewing lava-tubes of volcanic mines, but Dominated or not, the underfed women and children had no way to overcome sharp drops, ten-foot steps, sixty-degree inclines and loop-de-loops - even Balcoth's Boots of Flying, though optimized for combat speed and air-to-air combat, were not well suited to hours of travel. In the end, Verian lent Balcoth his character's "signature" Cloak of Spiderclimb (giving him an excuse to complain in-character, as he resorted to his backup vertical movement item, Boots of Levitation), and we set off slowly through the mines with the dwarf using his superior strength to shuttle the slaves up and down obstacles at a decent pace. Rikkon turned invisible and scouted a short ways ahead, while the two clerics helped herd the victims from the front and back of the group, respectively.

We progressed for a while in this way, making better time than we had hoped, but not fast enough to think we would make it. And the one individual who had managed to shake off the defunct vampire's hold on her mind seemed determined to take at least one of our minds off the dangers ahead...

By this point, not only was Balcoth (the player) getting creeped out by GM's roleplaying, but Balcoth (the dwarf) was becoming indignant on behalf of his white-lie-wife, not to mention on behalf of moral decency in general.

If there was ever a way to Balcoth's heart, it was asking him to remove his armor. Anyhow, the Princess let him be for now, perhaps because GM felt Balcoth's response was reasonable for his alignment (Lawful Good), or perhaps just because the exchange had gone on for a while and didn't really involve the other players (who were alternately bemused or displeased by the behavior of Princess "spoiled little rich girl").

The group continued their progress, making good speed considering the circumstances, but not good enough to feel comfortable. Still, they made it past a branching in the tunnel, and were fast approaching the roughly (VERY roughly) vertical tube that led back down to the lava chamber, the bridge, and from there the unbranching way which ramped steadily upwards to the surface. They weren't out yet though, and they knew it, even before the rearguard heard a pack of enemies coming up behind. Rikkon scouted them as the party reformed (in other words, as Balcoth moved to the back), and reported back that it was a swarm of ghouls: around twenty of them. With all our resources depleted, we were concerned about many things which would not normally be threatening. We were not concerned about ghouls, which would have to be augmented and well-buffed to reach a non-zero chance of hitting Balcoth. With the heroes and those whom they are protecting slowed to a stop, the attack does not come. The ghouls stop just around a bend, forty or fifty feet away, and much to the surprise of all, one of their number advances alone and without charging.

Azheron laughed out loud at this paraphrasing of the old adage about "arguing on the internet", and Verian and Omit appeared to chalk that up as win for GM in the psychological battle to control the tone of the game. Balcoth simply brushed it aside though (after pondering whether taking umbrage would dignify the comment).

The ghouls did not return, nor did they appear to bring down any greater forces upon the heroes, and soon they were just above the cavernous lava chamber (the one with the bridge). Keeping the rescuees back in a vertical U-turn of the tunnel (like the "trap" in the plumbing under a sink), Rikkon flew invisibly down to check the area, and then Balcoth (still wearing the spider-cloak) began crawling across the ceiling, some 40 feet above the wide pool of molten rock. The coast appeared clear by all accounts, and Verian hovered down a short ways, taking a look around from the mouth of the ceiling shaft while we all worked out the logistics of passing down the slaves for Balcoth to shuttle across the ceiling and down to the mouth of the exit tunnel. Balcoth, meanwhile, wanted to make absolutely sure that the huge double-doors at the far end of the bridge had not become unlocked during the long time since we were last in this room.

Being blinded by an attack from behind from an attacker who had (until casting) been invisible meant that the elemental could do little other than to advance in the approximate direction of the attack. Balcoth kept moving across the ceiling towards the other players, sure there was no advantage to confronting a melee opponent who couldn't reach anyone, but he really disliked that he had nothing effective to attack with while doing so. Rhaek hovered back up into the shaft, and he and Omit readied themselves for the earth elemental to pop out from any direction at any time, or for the air elemental which had attacked from this same vertical shaft the last time, but there was no sign of either. Rikkon cold-orbed the Fire Elemental again, and again it was blinded.

Thus, it was unable to do much the next round. No other elementals appeared, and so Azheron's warmage cast Orb of Cold a final time, scoring a massive 57 damage (near max). After factoring in the weakness to cold, the elemental was dead. GM (who always thought the "Orb" spells from The Complete Arcane Handbook were overpowered) obviously wasn't thrilled with the performance, but the fight seemed to be over: no Earth elemental, no Air elemental (unlike the first time we faced the trap).

Scuttling around the ceiling and down the wall carrying one of the rescued women and children, Balcoth made many trips back and forth, and they were shuttled down to the exit tunnel without incident. Here there was a pleasant surprise - when we last left the room (after being ambushed by driders), the tunnel out had been blocked off by a precision cave-in caused by the Earth elemental. Even being fortunate enough to reach this point without heavy resistance, we had expected to have to penetrate the rock wall (and remember, we had no idea how thick the debris was). Instead, we now found the tunnel cleared, looking very much as though the collapse had never happened.

Proceeding with the appropriate level of suspicion for such a fortuitous change, there was nevertheless little option but to continue forward. From here up to the surface would be a relatively steady, relatively easy slope. Then the Earth Elemental popped out of the ground after all. Rather than attacking immediately, it arose a ways away, giving us a certain safe distance, and it addressed Balcoth in Terran (though the dwarf didn't actually know the earthtongue and so Umit translated as usual).

One must wonder if Balcoth may have learned to recognize that Terran phrase... we were all pretty familiar with the drill by now. The Earth elemental, being summoned and commanded against its will, was bound and trapped on this plane and prevented from returning home. And of course, as an Outsider, if slain on the Prime Material Plane (the "M-class Planet" part of the D&D cosmos), it would automatically return home. And we didn't have much choice but to fight it anyway, because it had been ordered to attack us. And the nature of the summoning/binding magic prevents it from holding back in the fight when subject to such an order. In truth, the quantitative impact of the brief bit of roleplaying was zero. However, these little chats (we've had a few now, always with the Earth-type elementals who feel a kinship or connection with dwarves), do serve to remind us that Elementals (particularly the bigger ones) are not the mindless automatons we nomally consider them to be.

When we started fighting, Umit cast Sanctuary, so that as long as he took no aggressive actions, an enemy would have to make a difficult will save in order to attack him, but the Elemental went right for Balcoth - it had to fight as hard as it could, but even so it retained the ability to choose its strategy, and it chose to try to take out the toughest-looking hero first, hoping that he would be strong enough to defeat it. Rhaek cast one feeble Magic Missile spell, and Rikkon followed suit (well, not as feebly), but it was again mostly up to Balcoth.

The fight went back and forth, but as often happens, Balcoth's impressive Armor Class gave him a greater advantage than the extra hitpoints of the Elemental (which didn't even have much more Damage Reduction than the dwarf). GM had been hoping for more, but since he wasn't winning the battle by traditional means, he decided to make more direct use of his monster's prodigious strength.

After a pause though, considering his options carefully, GM instead simply slammed Balcoth again. With the +4 bonus for attacking a prone target he hit this time, and dealt 13 damage.

As appealing as the 20d6 damage per round form molten Lava might have seemed to GM, the distance was too great. Even though the Earth elemental was pound-for-pound one of the best Bull Rush mobs in the game, the rules for the maneuver made it hard to push a creature with high Strength (such as Balcoth) for any significant distance. As for grappling, GM had changed it to be a single-round state; you could initiate a grapple as normal, and if successful, utilize whatever special grappling moves you might have (such as Constrict), but the target of the grapple would escape automatically on the next turn, making it impossible to grapple the surly dwarf and drag him all that distance.

In a couple rounds, the Balcoth hacked it one last time, and the elemental collapsed into a pile of local-stone rubble as its animating spirit returned home to the Elemental Plane of Earth.

The end of this horrid volcano journey seemed almost in sight, so with only a short breather, we set out up the tunnel and away from the heat of the bridge room. Some distance along the way, a small Earth elemental popped out of the ground... a really small one, of the type that couldn't pose much threat even in melee with our casters (although Rhaek's AC was so poor that it would still hit him fairly consistently). Having got our attention, it carefully deposited a large crystal of some sort on the ground then faded back into the rocky floor.

Approaching cautiously, we found a stone tablet with a note carved in Dwarven, bestowing the crystal and its contents as a token of appreciation from the elemental we (er, Balcoth) had released. There appeared to be a huge gemstone within the translucent quartz-like crystal casing, but damned if we knew how to get it out (GM warned that smashing it open risked damaging the precious gem within, in addition to obviously destroying the outer crystal which was itself not without value). Balcoth stowed the gem for now, and we continued the last leg of our escapade, with the rescuees in tow. Finally, we reached the point where we had found a skeleton with a warning scroll on the way in. Though that skeleton had been pulverized, a new one was standing there, holding out a brand new scroll in our direction.

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NEXT EXCERPT: SEASON 2, #1... A Brand New Gaming Group!