Excerpt #1 (Season 2)

After a long time, I am once again in an established, regularly meeting D&D group, and as a trial run I'm going to see what new Excerpts would look like (and how the other players will react).

Last session, the players had concluded a long story arc full of exciting chases and near-misses, where after traversing half a continent by horse, airship, and technomagical-train ("Lightning Rail"), they finally trapped, defeated and staked a vampire, returning it to the authorities. The pent-up completion XP was so much that although this is the players' first session playing at level 6, they are very close to leveling again already.

Though their band of three is unorthodox (not featuring any heavy-armor "tank" types), they have proven themselves capable, earning the respect of several influential employers in the megacity of Sharn, and it is here that they are spending the spoils of their most recent quest.

[Currently we are working our way through a series of Modules (premade adventures), and while they've been good, beginning each adventure with a rainstorm in the city of towers has gone from cliche to running gag.]

The letter is short and to the point, directing the adventuring party to meet soon at a private villa elsewhere in the city, and signed "Lady E", denoting the Lady Elaydrin, who had given them their first few big-paying jobs, only a few months earlier. Setting out immediately, the reached the home just in time to be greeted by anguished female cries, and to see shadowy figures moving inside an open and unguarded door. Standing there, in the rain, they moved without hesitation.

Three-eyes cast Haste, Tree and Badger rushed forward to see what was going on inside, and Lakshana approached with more caution, shielding herself with psionic Inertial Armor. The scene that greeted them was a handful of heavily armored zombies, with Lady E backed against a wall. The heroes arrive as she is struck by the sword of one of the undead.

As Tree conjured a flameblade, Badger and Lakshana rushed to their patron's side, and Three-eyes fell into the familiar combat-pattern of the Scout class:

Badger began tearing at the undead in melee, and Lakshana used her newly-acquired Empathic Transfer power to heal Lady E by absorbing some of the damage herself:

She does augment it up to 4d10 to reduce the chance of a randomly low roll (because d10s are notoriously unpredictable), and proceeds to roll over 30... fortunately (after some quick rereading of the power), the transfer can't "overheal", and so after the target was fully healed, Lakshana only suffered 8 damage. Just in time too, as the zombies' got their turn, and one struck another telling blow against the Lady, leaving her less badly wounded than before, but she would surely have died if not for the psionic healing. Three-eyes and Badger inflicted some more damage, and Tree destroyed a monster from full health with his flameblade [which makes touch attacks, hitting all but the most agile targets easily]. Lakshana joined in the attack, creating powerful elemental bolts with her mind, and the battle was soon over.

Thanking them for the rescue, Lady E explained that the vampire Garrow (a recurring villain from previous adventures) had attacked her home and stolen one of a set of powerful magic items that the heroes had quested for, and (leaving a few zombies to finish her off), had rushed off to uncover the fourth and final piece of the set. She charged them with the recovery of all four of the items (magic Schaemata used to power Creation Forges of the sort that had created the Warforged), promising thousands and thousands of gold, each, and providing most of it upfront to prepare for the dangerous journey to a largely unexplored continent.

Scurrying around the metropolis of Sharn, Tree and Three-eyes picked up new magic gear, and a new extra-fast magebred horse to replace one which was sadly lost in battle while chasing a previous vampire. Lakshana was more subdued, still processing the news that she had recieved when she visited one of the secret comunities of the Kalashtar between adventures. She had learned that the jeweled circlet she had recovered from the corpse of a discarded Quori host-body was in fact a powerful and important artifact of her people. The elders were surprised that such a thing of legend even existed, and concerned that their ancient bodysnatching enemies were after it. So, less concerned than her companions with material wealth, she conserved her resources (though offering the others use of her gold if they needed more), and a few hours later, armed with matching rings of protection, strength-boosting gloves for the robo-druid and a shiny new crossbow of undead-hosing for the unpredictable shapeshifter, the others were ready. The party set out for a nearby port-town.

With speed being critical, Lady E had used her House Canith connections to get the heroes passage aboard a very secret prototype vessel known as the Sea Dart. The grizzled gnomish captain showed them to an unremarkable warehouse containing a small, sleek vessel designed to travel under water. A bound water elemental ringed the outside to power it, and an air elemental within provided the air... but with space at a premium (no wonder the crew were all gnomes), the adventuring party were forced to leave their magebred horses behind - including Tree's brand new shiney one.

The Sea Dart coasted beneath the waves for days. With little space and even less to do, the heroes watched the dark seas pass by via an observation dome (enchanted with a form of clairvoyance that allowed it to focus anywhere around the ship). Then one day, the seas began to light up with the multicolored neon of photoluminescent life on pillars of stone which loomed into view, as though holding up the cieling of the space far out of sigh in the dark above, and reaching down to the sea floor far out of sight below. These were in fact the dreaded "Shargon's Teeth", bane of surface ships in a stormy sea near the dark continent of Xen'drik. Down here, the seas were deceptively calm, and safe...

Spot checks were rolled, and the heroes barely had time to see a large form shoot out of the darkness towards them before the submarine lurched.

The players roll their checks, the results of which were less than fantastic.

The gnomish captain began shouting orders at a frenzied pace, ordering the submarine to surface immediately. The shark seemed to disappear back into the darkness as abruptly as it had appeared, and all of the players were totally convinced that it would not return. Totally. So convinced.

As the submarine ascended though, they were shaken again (not enough to take damage this time) as the ship became snared in something. Using the magical view-port to scan around the ship's exterior revealed that in four places they were snagged on nets that someone had strung between the stone pillars. In order to surface and repair the damage, the nets would have to be cut.

A group of gnomish crewmen prepared to swim out and cut the lines, and Tree, Lakshana and Three-eyes went with them, taking from the ship's supply of Underwater Breathing + Freedom of Movement potions (and Three-eyes had to take one of their modified crossbows that worked underwater). Tree decided that Badger should remain inside.

Badger's intelligence and loyalty aside, Tree felt better keeping it 'safe' inside the Sea Dart, as the heroes cast their many magic buffs and ventured out.

The ship was surrounded by light spells, which pushed the darkness out a short distance, but even as far out as the nets it was dim. The heroes were uneasy at the thought that the submarine was effectively a beacon to everything that could lurk below... but there was little choice, the alternative being to work in the dark. The gnomes split into two groups, swimming to two of the snags to cut at the ropes with their knives. Lakshana projected a bolt of sonic energy to another 'corner', severing the nets there, while Three-eyes and Tree swam towards the fourth snag.

Tree got there first, and cut the cables free with his scimitar. One of the gnome-teams got theirs too, but the second team were having some trouble cutting the snares. Three-eyes cast Light of Lunia [a spell which surrounds him in bright light, but which can be discharged to fire small energy bolts], hoping to fire it at the ropes next round, but Lakshana used her wand to blow apart the nets a little ways past where the two gnomes were struggling - the Sea Dart was free.

Tree and Lakshana agreed that dolphins are quite effective at combatting sharks in real life, and that it would be very nice if that could happen, but since it seemed unlikely, Lakshana used the other energy-type available to her which sounded like it would be particularly effective against aquatic foes: electricity.

Normally, Tree would deal with this situation by sending Badger in to attack, summoning a flameblade, and beating and burning the monster to a pulp. On land, against a foe with identical stats to those of the dire shark, this would be remarkably effective, however Badger remained safely inside the submarine, and using a flameblade underwater (or another of Tree's preferred attack spells, Produce Flame) was a dubious enterprise at best. Thus, Tree was quite disconcerted until discovering that man-sized sharks were on 'the list' for Summon Nature's Ally III, which he then began to cast. Of course, Summon spells take longer than most spells to cast, and doing this was in lieu of immediately healing 3-eyes, but the shifter (currently in his Verne persona) was putting quite a brave face on the whole 'being eaten' situation.

It was at this point that Three-eyes appeared less secure for a moment, realizing that although his power was a spell-like ability which (also being an Immediate action) did not provoke attacks-of-opportunity from nearby enemies... that being grappled was in fact one of the few situations in which he needed to make a concentration check. Also, it became very relevant that Three-eyes had not maxxed-out his concentration skill (as nearly all other casters do), and therefore his odds of success, while not bad, were nowhere near as good as one would want when the alternative was to be digested.

The shark, who had so much strength that it didn't really miss 8 points all that much, and who could be forgiven for thinking that bright-glowing morsel had gone down more easily than most, and for not connecting it with the presence of a 'new' bright-glowing morsel behind it, spent it's turn swimming all the way over to Lakshana and eating her. It hit almost-but-not-quite automatically with it's bite attack.

While Lakshana struggled, Tree completed the summoning spell, and his conjured shark appeared just before his turn, it's sleek muscular 7-foot span utterly dwarfed by the school-bus-sized behemoth. The new shark attacked under the druid's command, taking a good bite out of it's prehistoric cousin, but it was becoming apparent that the dire-shark had hit points of an order previously unseen by the level 6 characters. Tree swam up and managed to get a heal off on Lakshana before she disappeared completely down the beast's maw, and Three-eyes planted a crossbow bolt squarely in the shark's back, which appeared about as lethal as a thumbtack right about now.

Lakshana, swearing unrelenting wrath upon GM should her character expire in such an unpleasant fashion, unleashes a blast of flame within the shark's gut. Its reflexes useless for dodging an attack from within, it flinches as it automatically takes full damage, losing nearly 30 hit points, which opened a gash most of the way to the outside.

The next round passed quickly, as Tree began summoning another shark, Tree's first shark missed its attack, and Three-eyes missed a crossbow shot as he moved closer hesitently, still glowing brightly from his Light of Lunia spell, hoping the enemy would attack him next rather than the warforged druid. Lakshana took some more "stomach-damage", and running out of time, she created another fiery blast, and this time it was visible from the outside as a gout of flame dissipating into the water, as the Kalashtar struggled and swam out of the hole.

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Excerpt #2 (Season 2)

Standard size for a D&D adventuring party is generally four players, and for some time (with occasional supporting NPCs), we've been going with only three. This week, though, we have a new adition to the group, another longtime pen-and-paper gaming enthusiast who has worked our D&D night into his schedule (or vice versa).

This is met by muted 'ooh's and 'ahh's of the players who were present last-session to fight the shark... not that they were especially worried about fighting the fishmen on land (the flat rock islet next to which the submarine had surfaced for repairs), but there was a certain sense of connecting the dots, and the relation between the shark and the nets which had trapped the sub beneath the waves.

Stormreach is a large city founded (built out of debris) by survivors of the many shipwrecks caused by the Shargon's Teeth (the big rock spikes in the sea), and over the last hundred years has become a real city and the only major port on the 'dark' continent of Xen'drik. The heroes were provided with travel documents that showed them as part of a university research expedition that had recently landed, but they were cautioned to avoid any actual members of that expedition, who would likely not go along with the charade.

On Byam's instructions, the group heads to a given address where they pick up a letter of credit for transportation, and where an artificer named Rohan was sent to join up with them, bringing his expertise in Creation Schaemas and other artifacts to help complete their task.

The continent of Xen'drik, where the heroes have come to search for the fourth creation Schaema, is largely jungle: unexplored and unpopulated by the residents of Khorvaire (the "main" continent of the player-character races in Eberron). Long, long ago, Xen'drik was populated by an advanced civilization of giants, who were so powerful that the dragons felt they had to be stopped, and "erased" their empire. The elves, who were a mere slave-race to the giants, were freed, and the remaining descendents of the giants are only dumb and vicious shadows of what their race had been, living among the massive ruins of former greatness. The elves who remain on the continent, the black-skinned Drow of Eberron, are also tribal and territorial primitives. And of course, the jungles are full of innumerable other (and generally more evil) monsters...

The party's information indicated that they were looking for a temple, deep in the jungle, about 300 miles up a powerful river. They had been given a letter of credit worth a large amount of money, to be used for travel expenses, amd they set out to hire a riverboat for the dangerous journey, and were directed to a man called Chinxero, Captain of the riverboat Marlow.

The elf steps in and offers to pay the difference, plus a 4000g bonus for the Captain ON TOP of the charter, as long as she can come along and 'observe'. The heroes see little choice but to accept the aid, but they meet with her in private to try to learn her motives. Moroni, it turns out, is part of a sect who follow ancient Draconic prophecies and look for omens, and she claims the four heroes are at the center of one section of a major prophecy, and that she merely wishes to witness it unfolding. Also, she's a powerful priest who will sit back out of combat most of the time, but will provide tons and tons of healing, making it really hard to say 'no'...

And so, the next day, the heroes set out down the river. They are shown to their luxurious 8000g stateroom... er, small cargo hold... and the riverboat Marlow churns down the broad jungle river under the power of its bound water elemental. Only one day down into their journey, they hear the screams of a woman off to one side of the river. Soon she comes into view, far away, but calling out for help (this river is over 300 feet wide here, with the ship right in the middle). Now, the heroes in question are all pretty good people... and they are in favor of rescuing and stuff... but this just seemed like...

Regardless, Lakshana was right that it looked like a trap. Three-eyes was also in favor of ignoring the woman and continuing on, and Rohan seemed at best ambivalent about going out to save her. But when the woman fell into the water, splashing wildly, Tree (though no less suspicious of the circumstances) decided that we couldn't risk letting an innocent person drown, and on the off chance that she was anything other than 'bait'.

Unfortunately, the writers of the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Edition Monster Manual were unaware of the badger's aquatic proficiency, and had neglected to furnish it with a Swim Speed (without which, they need to make swim checks and will move at only a fraction of their speed in the water), so Tree retroactively chose the form of a crocodile instead. Upon reaching the "woman" though, it became apparent that she was less of a woman and more of a Hag, bent on luring travelers in and drowning them. For the fun of it. Because she's a hag.

Unfortunately, most of the other characters were out of range to assist. Three-eyes was giving Captain Chinxero instructions (to slow to a near-stop), then Lakshana giving him better instructions in a subsequent round... the river was actually so wide that the ship had to turn and steam towards the bank to get some of the casters in range. Meanwhile, the hag was inflicting no hit-point damage, but rather strength-draining Tree in order to immobilize (and then drown) the druid-turned-crocodile, while Tree attempted to bite her.

Everyone was concerned about the strength drain, but Tree had massive strength in crocodile-form, and despite the penalties, was acquitting himself fairly well (snapping and biting away). The situation became far less stressful when we realized that, as a warforged, Tree does not breathe, and is therefore immune to drowning. The hapless hag (who saw only a crocodile, even if she knew it was a druid) was dispatched before ever learning her mistake.

The adventure called for random encounter rolls over this leg of the journey, and due to some fortuitous rolls, the party reached their destination without further inconvenience. Soon, turning a bend in the river (which had dwindled over hundreds of miles to a fraction of it's massive estuarial width) a monolithic stone temple loomed into view, built up against a mountainside at the base, but extending far up above the cliff. Built by the ancient race of giants before their fall, the structure was more than intimidating, topped by two thick prongs aimed up at the heavens.

Tree was amongst the first to spot them... a pair of guards trying to hide aboard an anchored sky-skiff (a small levitating craft which currently hovered ten feet off the ground). Actually, Tree was becoming miffed at his own high spot and listen checks so far, which had been truly excellent... and seemingly balanced by poor rolls in combat. He also spotted a third guard, off in the jungle, trying (but failing) to remain out of sight. Confronted with a riverboat (with more than a half-dozen people on deck), the guards in the air-dinghy surprised everyone by surrendering without much provocation.

When questioned, they admitted that they worked for Garrow (our recurring enemy) and the Emerald Claw, and that he had about fifty men, a large warforged warrior, and about a dozen undead skeletons. They were a little put-off at how little the adventurers were concerned about their fifty men, as we ordered the guards to come down and physically surrender themselves. Then, the third one (who had been sneaking close and closer to the temple entrance) made a break for it. Lakshana whipped around and, focusing her mind quickly, lashed out with a telekinetic force which abruptly pulled the man 60 feet towards her - at which point he readily surrendered as well. The men were tied up and given into the custody of Captain Chinxero, and the party prepared to breach the temple. Weapons were readied, buffs (the hours/level duration ones) were cast, and as Tree summarized:

A giant (as in, "built by and for giants") staircase led up to the first level of the temple, but a ten-foot-wide man-sized staircase was carved into the monolithic steps at one side, and these stairs were covered in bodies of more Emerald Claw soldiers, mixed with the bodies of feral black-skinned elves. As Rohan reminded Three-eyes that he too could search for traps (with the added benefit that Rohan could potentially disarm them), Three-eyes stepped onto the stairway. With a rumble, a large boulder rolled down from 50 feet up, and he was forced to make a reflex save to suffer only half of the 38 damage, diving into the corner where there was a little room to survive the huge rock ball. Even as Verne (3-eyes' brash, younger human form) dusted himself off, more Drow elves emerged from pillared nooks at the side of the stairs, charging down at the heroes.

As the Drow launch their attack, Three-eyes retreats out of the human-sized stairs, using the bottom giant-scale step for cover to use his magical Healing Belt. Lakshana makes a last-ditch attempt to avoid bloodshed, having her psicrystal use it's telepathy to communicate with the dark elf leader, but he cries out about 'witchcraft' and makes it clear that he considers the party to be no different from the 'other outsiders' who had come to 'burn their [Drow] nests'. And with the elves already beginning to attack, there is simply no time to change their minds, even if it were possible to do so, so Tree (in Badger form) and Badger charge the elves' front line, side-by-side, blocking them off (and inflicting some damage). Keeping the primitives away from the many casters in the party is good, but comes with a tradeoff...

As often happens (it's nearly unavoidable, since even if Tree doesn't charge, enemies tend to charge us), the allies in the field of fire prevent her from blasting energy up the entire staircase, plus there is a sizeable penalty to ranged attacks (and spells with attack rolls) against enemies in melee with allies.

Tree and Badger tear into the elves front line, mauling down a couple of them, while the Drow have a hard time inflicting damage in return, and their back ranks can do little but throw shortspears ineffectively at Lakshana and Rohan. Three-eyes moves back around the corner, getting in between the party's front and back ranks and hits the enemy leader with a crossbow bolt.

Enraged to see this, the elves rally, attempting to leap over the twin badgers and past Three-eyes as well, to reach the spellcasters who dealt the most (and most obvious) damage to their fallen leader. They suffer attacks-of-opportunity from the druid and his pet, and inflict only a few hits on their targets before dropping.

With the imminent threat over, the heroes are keen to count the Emerald Claw corpses from the battle before they arrived... they know Garrow brought roughly fifty men (or, if anything, the guards would have overestimated), so every casualty should reduce the odds against the players. In this case, they were able to account for a half-dozen men... The group also found some gear on the lead elf; Rohan's exceptional knowledge of magical items allows him to quickly identify whether or not items are enchanted simply by holding them for a minute. Also, if (as in this case) none of the magic gear is of any use to the party, Rohan can also disenchant magic items, taking their essence in order to fuel his own magic crafting abilities.

After the boulder ambush, the adventurers got more serious, using Lakshana's agile, telepathic psycrystal ("Skitter") and Rohan's fist-sized flying Homunculus to scout ahead, around corners, into rooms... entire levels of the temple. The first level, contained some mud structures in which the drow seemed to have been living, and a massive stone door on one side of the structure which was closed tight. Skitter moved around to the other side, communicating everything it sees to Lakshana, as always.

Some noted that the amount of planning that went into that assault may have been excessive, considering how easily the guards went down. When questioned, the Emerald Clawsman didn't seem to have much information, but he revealed that the men had no idea what lay behind the heavy door, and that the boss (Garrow) had merely ordered them to report anything they found, especially items matching the description of the artifacts. They tied him up in short order, while Rohan figured out how to use the machinery, should we want to open the door ourselves. However, the group decided that speed was more important than thoroughness, since it seemed that Garrow hadn't been down here either. The guard would be left behind, bound and gagged - to be picked up later on the way out - and the team would progress further up through the temple.

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Excerpt #3 (Season 2)

Another week of IRL slipped by, and we were once again in an ancient temple of giants, hunting for the Creation Pattern, and the four Schaemas, one of which lay hidden somewhere amidst the ruins, and the rest of which we needed to wrest from the hands of our enemy, the ghostly pale vampire known as Garrow. I may have gotten a little ahead in describing our plans in the last paragraphs of the previous excerpt, so I should backtrack a tiny bit. We had overcome the guards on the landing, gently interrogated and then bound the survivor, and needed to decide where to go from there.

Gradually, after some more discussion where both sides had opinions, but neither side was sufficiently certain or adamant to wrestle the others to a conclusion, a semi-concensus was reached to backtrack to the other major staircase which lead further up the temple (this side was a dead-end, other than the heavy sealed doors). After "getting there" (ie. saying they were going there), GM still felt as though he was pulling teeth to get a course of action out of us.

The psicrystal, Skitter, doesn't have sight or hearing of the normal kind, but has "sense" which can accurately and nonvisually percieve the environment out to a 40 foot range. Beyond that, it is totally blind. We didn't spot whatever it was we were checking for this time, but it reminded GM that it is good to be able to make rolls like that without informing the players, because the fact that they are making a roll can be almost as important as the roll itself, sometimes. Of course, players like to roll their own skill checks, so he had a compromise:

The two constructs espied a wide open space about 60-feet across between the top of the stairs and a set of massive stone double-doors, one of which was open. Four guards stood watch at the entrance to the room. Sneaking over their heads into the room beyond, the little scouts revealed (telepathically to their respective owners) a large space dominated by an indoor ziggurat - a step pyramid, made of three progressively smaller ten-foot high levels, and topped with a glowing sphere. There was a large makeshift camp in the room, with tents and tables and a number of guards moving around, seemingly under the direction of an unwholesome-looking bandage-wrapped figure.

Since (as noted last week), the party is actually pretty quiet on their feet, lacking the traditional "lead-weights" of stealthy enterprise, the Full-Plate fighter and/or cleric, we began formulating plans for an abrupt assault to silence the guards before they could give the alarm.

Casting Haste anyway, the accelerated heroes moved up to just outside the doors in a burst of speed, but all the guards had retreated and taken cover out of sight.

Tree advanced forward into the room, but still couldn't find guards to attack amongst the apparently abandoned campsite. The other players were also confounded, until later in the round when crossbow-armed Emeral Claw guards ran out from behind the second floor of the ziggurat (meaning they were in an elevated firing position, 10 feet off the ground). Meanwhile, Rohan and Three-eyes both spent their turns casting See Invisible, which turned out to be wasted a round or two later when the mummy broke invisibility by casting Magic Missile spells from the top of the ziggurat (it climbed up there pretty quick). Tree was left trying to figure out what to do, since the enemies were out of melee reach, and climbing up a defended 10-foot wall seemed tactically... dubious. The enemy crossbowmen had very little luck hitting the heroes, but when the mummy reappeared at the apex of the ziggurat, inside a glowing sphere and casting a feeble single-missile Magic Missile attack, Rohan discovered something alarming when he tried to Magic Missile the it right back... the 'bubble' was a Minor Globe of Invulnerability, which would stop any of our spells from getting in.

Unable to do much to the well-protected mummy, Three-eyes attacked a guard with his crossbow, and Rohan's homunculus even swooped down and bit another one, putting him to sleep with its poison. Then Lakshana lined up a pair of them...

The mummy Magic Missiled Rohan for another frightening 1d4+1 damage, drawing quips about "Cause Papercut Wounds", and Rohan and Three-eyes took out one more guard, which seemed to be the last straw for one of the survivors:

The more competent (and second-last) guard, who presumably had some added character levels or some such, leaped down from the lowest step of the pyramid and charged the nearest hero, Tree. He was a little overexuberant and missed though, and Tree counterattacked on his turn.

Though the players were a little concerned about the mummy, the rest was more of a mop-up action. Unable to simply blast it because of the Minor Globe of Invulnerability, Lakshana sent her psicrystal climbing up beside Tree in case she needed to have it touch him to heal through Empathic Transfer, while the druid and his pet met the mummy at the top and began tearing at him, and Three-eyes and Rohan fired up with crossbows. The mummy's 5/- damage reduction (that is, five points of "perfect" DR, working against any physical damage) and a 20% miss chance from a Blurring effect slowed them down significantly, but he was really not all that dangerous. GM later complained that the module's "Sorceror levels on a mummy" really wasn't a good use of resources. The only scare was one slam attack against Badger, which could have given him the horrifying disease Mummy Rot, but Badger saved, and the other one in melee, Tree, was a warforged and thus immune.

The step-pyramid had some interesting glyphs on three of the four sides, but even with a prodigious Decipher Script check, Rohan could tell only that they were encoded in some way - some kind of cypher-key was needed to make any sense of them. So attention turned to scouting around the rest of this level of the temple.

Rohan sent his homunculus flying around the outside of the temple, while Skitter (Lakshana's psicrystal) creeped steadily and silently in and out of any open doorways. The first find was a burly gorilla-like creature with four arms (like Goro). There was aggreement that it didn't look like he was going to come out and kill us anytime soon, and that it would be rude to do so to him (especially with no indication of valuables in his room). Meanwhile:

The patrol was moving pretty slowly around the large perimeter of the level, and since most of the closed doors that we wanted to investigate were not on their path, we decided to save some time (and animals) by avoiding them rather than killing them. Homunculus stayed out to keep an eye on them, like our very own Predator-drone UAV. Having two stealthy familiar-type-things which could telepathically communicate with their owners, we were greatly enjoying the extra instant intel.

Previously, we'd been ignoring the heavy stone doors when they were closed, but on this floor of the temple there were so many that we eventually realized that we probably were supposed to open them somehow. Although the party was more or less bereft of physical strength in most circumstances, Tree was getting to be quite strong when shapeshifted, and each person can add as much as +2 to an ally's strength check, no matter how individually weak they were. So we began opening doors. There seemed to be some minor magical preservation on them, because although it still took a lot of strength to get the titanic stone mass moving, once they started to budge they each swung pretty easily on their own momentum.

Fortunately, Tree was able shapeshift into flying animals as well... turning from badger into an eagle, he flew up and around and returned to the room. Unfortunately, he couldn't find an appropriate flying animal that could fight worth a damn, so he unshifted, and was "stuck" in his natural form for a while, saving his last shapeshift of the day in case of an emergency. Rohan disabled the trap, and we tried to open the door: take two!

The old character sheet presented did have "Deceased" printed in large merciless letters across the back. Lakshana gets attached to her characters. In any case, Rohan held the large lens (which we started to refer to as the "monocle", since it was built by and for giants), confirming that it was magical. Without time to Identify it properly though, and without any idea what it was for, it was stuffed in Tree's extradimensional backpack and we carried on.

The heroes went all around this level of the temple, opening door after door that they had passed by when we thought they were too heavy to move, but weren't finding much of anything. Most of the group were beginning to tire of pushing heavy doors, except for Tree, who was doing most of the work, but whose endurance was literally limitless. Eventually, we found a staircase leading upwards... a giant-sized spiral stair with (again) human-sized stairs cut out of them on one side. There were still a couple more doors untried though, and (though not unanimously) it was decided that we would try the last few for completeness sake.

The first one (ignoring one door which just led to another door), opened onto a large room filled with piles of dust, rising and falling like sand-dunes, several feet deep in places.

However, when the heroes ventured further in and actually began to search the large dustpiles, they managed to disturb something lurking there. It rose up, the dust pouring off of it like water from a hulk raised up out of the sea. It towered over the heroes (size: Huge), and though clearly zombified, its description had Three-eyes fairly worried... it was a zombie Gray Render.

Fortunately, zombies have bad initiative (especially really big zombies), and it was big enough to hit safely with area spells even when in melee with other party members. Badger charged it, which Tree (still in humanoid form) cast Flame Blade. Three-eyes hit it with his Undead-bane crossbow (with added Weapon Augment Crystal of undead-killing), and Lakshana let loose a fiery beam angled up through its body and flowing around it and up into the cieling, hitting it for loads of damage.

Despite giving us a fright, it went down smoothly after several more rounds, yielding no treasure except a big stash or decaying silver pieces from one of the dust piles. Passing a few more doors, we reach the last room on this floor of the temple.

Rohan wasn't obsessed enough to go in alone though... the mysterious room, and it's corpses with their "gangrenous sheen", were abandoned to the realm of "things to check out if we hit a dead-end" (and pretty low even on that list). The session was called soon after.

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Excerpt #4 (Season 2)

Having cleared (or at least poked our heads into) every room on the previous floor of the temple other than the big scary metal door, we headed up the spiral staircase we had found. At the top, we arrived in a storeroom full of crates - on a human, rather than giant scale. In case it wasn't entirely obvious that they were put there by our competition, the crates are stamped with the mark of the Emerald Claw.

After running through some figures, with some back-and-forth, the main difference in the numbers seemed to arise from the 'head-count' in the big room with the glowing corpses that we didn't mess with, and where five-to-ten was the best estimate we could get because they were so mangled. This, added to some of the other figures (and whether you count the upper or lower bounds of estimates, or take the average) resulted in somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five guards left.

With only two soldiers left, they were faced with the very real prospect of dying. While one gritted his teeth and tried to go down in a blaze of glory, the other of them turned tail and fled, narrowly avoiding attacks-of-opportunity, and bolting down the hall and around a corner. The one who stood and fought didn't last long.

'Skitter', as the psicrystal was now permanently dubbed, snuck down the hall, found a door, turned a corner, found another door, turned another corner and saw the hall ended in another door. For some short-term logic (which surely made sense at the time), we skipped one door and investigated the second.

Between Moroni's resources (which were becoming strained by this point), and some Lesser Vigor spells from Tree, we finished healing up and investigated the room that was guarded by the sonic trap. And the room was full of... cases of wine.

None of the characters were particularly skilled in appraising the value of merchandise, but Three-eyes rolled a natural '20' on the check, and GM revealed it to be worth around $4000g... IF we were to haul it all out with us.

As it turned out, it was anything but a smaller room. The door revealed a very wide space, like a canyon between two cliffs. The cliffs were actually separate temple spires (each big enough to contain multiple floors) rising up behind us and ahead of us, and wide open to the air on either side. Looking up would have been wide open, except that layer upon layer of massive webbing blotted out the sky, strung out like huge overlapping nets between the two towering 'prongs' of the gigantic structure.

There was quite a discussion here, a good chunk of player talk trying to decide how to handle the situation. GM is fairly lenient about such discussions, mainly because we have the excuse of being able to communicate telepathically with one-another using Skitter as a central 'node'. The psicrystal can communicate (2-way communication) with any creature within 30 feet that has a language, in addition to being able to communicate directly with Lakshana at distances up to a mile. Now, GM tries to keep us from talking too long in this way, because time does pass, but at least we are able to discuss options without being forced to say everything 'in character' (which often spoils "what should we do about this NPC" talks, if they can hear us).

Since my unreliable note-taking failed to record who said what in this part, here is the gist of the options and reasoning that we went through. This woman had to be either working for the Emerald Claw willingly, or against her will - it was supremely unlikely that she was here alone. Whether or not she worked for them willingly, she would probably give us some information if we pretended we worked for them... we wouldn't say that we worked for them (that would be a lie, and hard to take back), but we could simply demand information/updates from her. After hearing what she had to say, we could reveal that we were not in fact working for them, and if she was a captive or working under some form of duress, we could offer her protection. If she did in fact work for them willingly, well... we'd play it by ear. She gave a strong feel of being a noncombattant, even though we would normally assume a researcher in a place like this was a spellcaster.

This prompted a whole new discussion. Apparently, we didn't seem that much like Emeral Claw guys since we aren't wearing their uniforms. But was she indeed working for them, and thus trying to escape us with their help, or could she still be a hostage, thinking we were with them, but she had somehow made friends with something else in the temple, perhaps more of those Drow? If that were the case, she could be calling for their aid to protect her from the Emerald Claw, making her bid to escape them, and thus mistakenly attacking us. We didn't want to start killing stuff without making sure... But we were forced to roll initiative.

With the portly woman out of sight, Tree shifts advances in badger-form. Lakshana wanted to use her Telempathic Projection to influence the woman's mind, letting her know we were friends so we could sort this out (and, you know, change her mind about calling her allies). But when Lakshana moved into position to see around the throne, the researcher could not be found, and with everyone else tripping over each other to declare actions, the Kalashtar's action actually got lost in the chaos and buffing and readied actions.

One round later, we got some answers, as guards came into view, rushing towards us from a passage on the opposite side of the open space from the where we had come. They were staggered in pairs, ten feat apart, and they were clearly wearing Emerald Claw uniforms. There was still no sign of the woman, even after Three-eyes cast See Invisible.

All the ones Rohan can fit in the 20' radius die (two pairs), and Tree and Badger charge in, dropping another one. The last guard is wounded by Three-eyes with his crossbow, and Lakshana takes him out using a psionic wand she picked up a long time ago for situations when she's out of power-points. Though that was the end of the guards, it wasn't the end of the fight: they just had the misfortune of moving faster than the bulky, heavily armored warforged covered in spikes.

There was some more discussion, this time over how the spot skill could see that a druid, shapeshifted into a badger, was in fact a warforged. The thing is, the rules give numerical values to how good a 'disguise' is, including appearance and/or shape altering spells, and with a number assigned (not even a ridiculous number, like the DC 90 check to walk across water with the balance skill), it can be beaten. So apparently, although shaped like a badger and covered in fur, something about the way Tree moves (or possibly the way plates/joints/muscles move under his fur) gives away his mechanical nature.

Actually, it turns out that both Tree and Scimitar were acting on the same initiative. Since both of them wanted to hit each other, and neither was starting in melee range, GM adjudicated this as them simultaneously charging one-another.

Tree hits, and Scimitar (against all odds) manages to miss, giving the heroes a clear morale advantage. Three-eyes moved up and shot the enemy warforged with his crossbow, only to roll a natural one and miss, Lakshana moved closer in case healing was needed, an Rohan took a shot with his own seld-used crossbow... also rolling a one.

"Drinking our treasure" aside, Rohan continues the assault with his wand of Magic Missile, and Three-eyes continues a different trend by rolling a '1' again.

Lakshana finishes Scimitar with one more bolt of psionically-generated electricity, and we hope this time for good (though nobody stands around mutilating the body further). We do loot it, finding another Repair potion (healing for constructs, since normal healing spells like Cure Light Wounds only work half as well on Warforged, and wouldn't work at all on other constructs like Rohan's Homunculus), and also an eponymous magic, adamantine Scimitar. This seemed to be a good find for Tree, who (like most druids) uses a scimitar when not shapeshifted, and who may need it if we encountered a foe with high adamantine-based DR.

Investigating the scene, we find notes about sitting on the throne. Three-Eyes mostly leaves it to Rohan's expertise, since the human was markedly better at skills like Decipher Script and most things arcane. Rohan searches through the papers intently, skimming through reams of almost 'stream-of-consciousness' notes left by the researcher. The woman didn't seem to have figured out the symbols either though...

We all thought this was cool, and probably important, but if there was any further mystery to the giant throne, or any relevant use for it at the moment, it was lost on us. We moved on, heading down the hallway the guards had emerged from, and had several choices of where to go first. Nobody had any compelling reason or preference so...

The first room that we investigated had some much nicer impromptu furnishings. Judging by the more luxurious bed and other supplies, this had to be Garrow's sleeping quarters for the expedition. There wasn't much of use to us, no convenient notes or papers, but there was a chest. After copious amounts of searching and twenties were taken, everyone stood well back, and Rohan popped the lock effortlessly.

Not daring to open what most of us suspected to be blood, we took it (to spite him if nothing else), and carried on. We passed through an empty giant-sized stables, then pushed aside a door leading into a small room with nothing inside but another door. Which led to another identical room. And another. And another. And another. But THEN we found:

Once again, Three-eyes makes his reflex save and Rohan fails. The 43 points of damage, coupled with some minor injuries leftover from earlier are enough to knock the artificer unconscious, and Moroni (the perpetually 'offstage' NPC cleric) has to heal him back up from negative hitpoints. He was starting to get very tired of being blasted by traps, and we were starting to wonder about the party's 'search' capabilities, since that search check represented an above-average check (a roll of 13 or 14 or something on a d20) for Three-Eyes, and Rohan's own search skill was slightly lower (though both of them had the ability to find complex and magical traps, and Rohan was also skilled at disarming them).

In any case, the contents of the room consisted of a small giant library (a very small library for giants, thus containing a relatively small quantity of relatively large books). Most were decayed beyond recognition in addition to being written in an ancient giant language, tens of thousands of years old, but one book was magical, and thus both more interesting and a lot better preserved. Using his expertise and facility with magic items, coupled with a casting of the spell Comprehend Languages, Rohan was able to figure out that this was a Manual of Gainful Exercise - a powerful single-use item which, through weeks of study, could grant an individual a permanent +1 bonus to Constitution. Of course, this one was also several feet tall and weighed at least fifty pounds. Anyhow, this was a dead-end, so we began to backtrack towards the last branching.

The party is low on resources (spells, psionic power-points, etc) at this point, and nightfall is approaching, so there is some discussion about whether or not to continue. On the one hand, time is passing and we don't want Garrow (the vampire) to get the last Schaema before us, so we want to push ahead as much as we can. On the other hand, we don't want to run into a vampire when we are at our weakest, and we don't want to confront him after dark when he can so effortlessly escape us even if we are winning. After some discussion, we decide to try to finish clearing this floor (there isn't much left to explore), so we leave the book where we can find it, in a part of the dead-end chain-of-rooms, to be recovered when we are ready to retreat to the riverboat to rest for the night.

At the nearest branching we found another spiral stair leading upwards. Because the temple at this floor divides into two separate towering structures heading upwards like the prongs of a tuning fork. However, with a brief peak by our miniature "unmanned" spies, we learned that on this side, as on the other, the next floor was a mess of webs and unpleasant looking hovels that we didn't really want to tackle right now. So for our 'last push of the day' (understanding that this was about our third time deciding we would do potentially "one more fight"), we backtracked further to the hall where we found the sonic-trapped booze, and opened the last door down there.

After looking around and finding a whole lot of not-very-much, we heave open the first door. Like all the heavy stone doors, it takes a lot of pushing to get it moving, but once it starts it keeps moving on its own. The difference is, once we got this one to budge, it was flung open at us from within, revealing the huge, animated skeleton of what was probably one of the ancient giants who had build and lived in this temple.

There was a bit of a dicey moment as Skitter (which had been moving around independant of Lakshana for scouting purposes) became the skeleton's first target. After some frantic looking up of the psicrystal's stats, we found it had a mediocre armor class of 18 (nothing against an enemy this big), and half as many hitpoints as its owner. Fortunately, even though for most purposes the crystal counts as a construct, it has hardness like an inanimate object, and the hardness absorbed enough damage that it was not destroyed in one blow, and it was able to skitter-the-hell-out-of-the-way to be repaired after the fight.

Three-eyes, winning the initiative, casts Haste on the party. Tree and badger charge, but inflict only minor damage because of the skeleton's 5/Bludgeoning Damage Reduction, and because they weren't close enough to make their hasted full-attack actions yet. The giant skeleton, being... giant... is large enough for Lakshana to blast safely at the upper body without risk of friendly fire, but she rolled a paltry 26 damage (which is unusually low, for 7d6+7), and adding insult to injury, the skeleton 'barely saved', taking only half.

Rohan's turn signalled a turnaround, though, as he fired a Magic Missile from his wand and also coaxed a second, Quickened burst from it using his Artificer powers (and burning off a pile of extra charges from the wand), for a total of 40 damage. The undead giant only got in one round of attacks, then Three-Eyes (benefitting from his own haste) shot it twice with his 'crossbow-of-anti-undeadness', and then Tree Flame Striked it for 40 damage and this time it failed its reflex save and disintegrated under the divine fire.

The giant room and the two empty subrooms contained nothing of interest at all, it turns out, except for the ornate floor. When our constructs flew/climbed up for an elevated perspective (as the giants would have seen it), the mosaic formed the image of a winged humanoid flying up toward a large spider. Which meant nothing to us.

That was definitely our "one last fight", so we prepared to head back to Captain Chinxero's riverboat (remember him? That was a long time ago, wasn't it?). We grabbed the "Book of Con +1" and picked a few choice bottles from the boozeroom.

Retreating unmolested from the temple as darkness falls, we hide out in the ship for the night, where we hope strength in numbers (and who knows, maybe even the running water in which we are moored) will deter the vampire.

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Excerpt #5 (Season 2)

Having reached the boat to hide out for the night, the heroes get to level up. They actually had enough experience at the beginning of the last session, but it was kindof inapropriate to level right in the middle of a dungeon like that, so now, in addition to resting and regaining spells, they should learn new spells and abilities, gain more hit points and just generally be more effective. Though this is true for all four adventurers, Rohan is suffering a little because his abilities center around the creation and use of magic items, and without some more-significant 'down-time' (and gold) he can't take full advantage of some of his new skills.

GM produces a pair of paper handouts, giving one to Tree, and another to Rohan.

One of the choices was a power called Telepathic Maneuver which, though not the most blatant or powerful at the outset, could be used one-per-round for an entire average-length battle and presented a great many options, like the ability to trip, bull-rush [a maneuver used to push an opponent back], disarm and even make a telekinetic grappling attempt, all at range and using the caster's Intelligence modifier in place of the usual stats. There was some discussion trying to figure out exactly how all these options work, and whether the power was worth learning (as one of Lakshana's two new powers).

Rohan explains (based on the contents of his handout) that overnight he's decyphered more the handwriting and stream-of-conciousness notes left by the researcher-woman we found by the giant throne. Most of it concerns the symbols around the circular raised platform on which the throne sits, but several passages reference a hidden chamber of the temple which may be accessed via the throne (in addition to its sky-watching functions), and that the mummy (which we had since slain) had been sent down to investigate the runes on the indoor ziggurat to try and make a connection.

We all buff up, including Tree wild-shaping into a brown bear, his new melee form which is even more powerful than her previous dire-badger form. Everyone casts their "hour/level" buffs, Mage Armor, Inertial Armor, etc., and Greater Magic Fang (which tree is able to share with Badger from