Session 2 -of doors and golems

The Barrier Peaks Expedition

7/3/2015

Name	Player	Race	Class	Present	Survived	Replaced
Blake	Carl	Human	Bard	Y	Y	N
Catherine Lastation	Chris	Human	Oracle	N	Y	N
Faolan Ironhammer	Glen	Dwarf	Paladin	Y	Y	N
Finger	John L.	Gnome	Rogue	Y	Y	N
Goran Stonecrucher	Guest Player	Dwarf	Fighter	Y	Y	N
Halvar Gunnarson	Cory	Dwarf	Ranger	N	Y	N
Menyw Daolg	Danielle	Elf	Fighter	Y	Y	N
Ranold Winterhare	Tim (T.J.)	½ Elf	Magus	Y	Y	N
Ruis	Johnunce	½ Drow	Magus	Y	Y	N
Thadious Bullskin	Mike K.	Human	Wizard	y	Y	N
Mrs. Page	Mike’s npc bard	½ Elf	Bard	y	Y	N
The Homunculus	Mike’s critter		Critter	y	Y	N

The session started with the explorers discussing how they wished to proceed to explore the metallic ruins they have stumbled into. Their current method of doing so seem to be doing nothing but attracting attention and keeping them in a wave of chaos. After a short discussion, they decided they would start on the left, back wall and examine that violet door and retrieve the knife that was lodged there (or more correctly jammed there) by Ruis.

After the removal of the knife, involving grease (some elbow some magical), and experimentation with (and the degreasing of) the rectangular piece of leaden violet glass, the glass easily slid in. The glass rectangle disappeared inside the mechanism and the door slid open. The key slid out and was deposited in a catch by the door.

The room itself contained several tall cabinets on the west wall and a door shape panel on the on the east wall. The cabinets opened with little manipulation, revealing what appeared to be some unusual one piece suits of padded or maybe leather armor in addition to some sort of helmets made out of horn and crystal, one for each suit. The panel-like door on the west wall of the room would not yield to the party’s actions. The red color of the door panel suggested it needed some sort of red square piece of crystal, similar to the one they used to open the door to this room.

After clearing and marking this room, the party moved on to the next door in the entry foyer itself, only to find an identical room and several more identical suits of padded leather armor, bringing their total count to fifteen. Realizing that this violet lead glass that they had in their possession was some sort of key they could open the doors with was the biggest enjoyment of the discovery. Of all the dungeons they have explored, this was the first one where they had found the key to one of the doors!

So the explorers went to the right-side hall and made an attempt to use their key on one of the doors with a Jet Black panel. The door ate the key and start making a very disturbing buzzing noise. Puzzled by the noise they stood there for a bit trying to figure out where their key had gone and what the noise was till Blake and Finger pointed out that it was most likely some sort of alarm and by using the wrong key they had triggered it. As if to confirm their suspicions an unusual looking clockwork golem with two tentacles and two large arms entered the hallway from the northern passage.

Without thinking (and before anyone else could say a word), Ruis leapt into action! Striking quickly the half-Drow Magus moved closer while casting sorcerous burning bolts of flame. The twin bolts struck some sort of defensive shielding the creature had and did not seem to inflict any obvious harm. The golem returned his fiery attack, inflicting minor damage on the brave magus while burning off the last of the defensive magic the magus had stored from the fight with the plant creatures. The others then joined the fight.

Finger moved so he could see better, while Ranold, Faolan, Gorlan, and Menyw rushed to engage the golem. Blake started his performance to aid his allies as he again identified the clockwork golem possibly some sort of security creature. As the party’s warriors closed in with the creature, they were concerned about how hard it was to hurt. No attack seem to do any harm to it until Menyw managed to score a blow with her enchanted obsidian sword that pierced the creature’s hard armor. At which point the creature backed up and launched at the group a green colored egg about the size of the ostrich’s from its chest.

The egg’s impact released a green gas that seemed to cause drowsiness. For the first few moments the warriors were unaffected by the strange gas but they were concerned. Faolan, thinking it was some sort of poison gas magic, called for retreat out of the gas and all but Menyw and Ranold heeded the paladin’s advice. Ruis attempted to teleport past it, only to discover the hard way that something in this place blocked teleportation magic. The attempt stunned him, costing them valuable time, as Finger rushed forward and pulled Ruis out of the gas cloud, thinking that that the gas was the cause of his ally’s sudden shaking.

Ranold attempted to get past the creature, hoping to flank it from behind, but the creature was quicker than he was expecting and he was quickly entangled in one of its powerful tentacles. Brave Menyw leapt forward, attempting to do more damage to the creature with her obsidian sword, but fell to the gas’s subduing fumes. The rest of the group, unsure how to proceed through the fumes, watched in horror as the creature used other tentacle to pickup Menyw and retreat back to down the hall as two more of the golems appeared and advanced on the group. Ranold called to the party, confirming that he and Menyw had been captured and the creature was fleeing with them.

Finger, fearing for his friends’ lives, pulled out a sunrod and charged around the gas to illuminate the hallway for better aim of his arrows. Faolan charged behind him, followed quickly by Blake. As Faolan and Blake charged forward, the creature’s companions arrived and discharged some sort of purple ray at them. The ray seemed to have some sort of paralyzing affect, freezing even the mighty paladin in his tracks. As more allies came to help, the creatures unleashed more and more of these dangerously effective paralyzing rays, relentlessly disabling the team. Even on those few occasions in which the strong-willed were able to force their way free of the ray, they were hit again by another blast before they could inflict harm on the creatures.

Things looked brighter for the team as Ruis, still held, called upon his ancestral gifts and enveloped one of the creatures in a field of purple flames. While this did cause a pause for concern out of a mighty Finger to figure out what the creatures were doing, Halvar managed to get in close and strike viciously with his shield upon the creature, dropping whatever defensive barrier it had. This allowed the cautious Thaddeus to unleash a stream of mystical missiles into the creature, inflicting some harm. Ruis also had time to unleash another volley of mystical missiles from his own repertoire before once again being immobilized by the strange purple beams. Catherine pointed out to the group that no one was dead, meaning the creatures did not appear to attempting to kill the explorers.

Slowly, as the fight progressed, more and more members of the team started to fall victim to the strange purple beams, frozen in place like statues. Near the end, with Catherine’s help, the explorers were able to understand that the creatures were demanding their surrender. Finger, one of the few remaining warriors still in the fight, made the call lay down his arms and the rest of the team surrendered as well. The non-paralyzed members of the team were walked down the hall into a brighter lit area. All were placed into cells with strange doors made of energy.

Through loud talking, the party was able to communicating with each other. The doors of their cells were made of some sort of energy that was unable to be seen through. The arcane members of the group concluded that they were some sort of mystic wall of force, but they were not sure how this wall was conjured or how to dispel it, as the few attempts made failed to produce any results. Faolan, seeing some other options available, pulled out a vial of acid and a vial of alkali and proceeded pouring them against the walls. This had a nasty reaction and filled the cell with some sort of poisonous gas. The Gas had an adverse effect on poor Finger as he started choking on the fumes quickly. In an attempt to stop Faolan from doing any more damage in the cell, Finger used his boots of levitation to hover above Faolan and dropped tanglefoot bags on him, but with little effect.

At the same time, others in the group were making their own attempts to escape from their cells. Blake tried poking holes in his walls with pitons and hammer, trying to disrupt whatever was causing the force field. Thaddeus attempted to find a space to crawl through his force field(no success) and Ranold, being one of the few that are not had his weapon taken away (he had not used it to damage the creatures), took a swing at a section of wall about where he saw (as he was being brought in) the panels that the controlled the doors. He scored a lucky strike with his corrosive sword that cut a small hole into the wall. He then reached in and unleashed a powerful jolt of electricity into the strange vines beyond the hole. This reacted violently with the door and caused it to vanish. Unfortunately, the noise he created attracted the attention of a guard outside and the creature came in to see what was going on.

Reacting quickly, Ranold turned himself invisible, leaving the poor recovering Menyw to fend for herself. The guard, registering that the lock for holding the doors closed had somehow been damaged, grabbed the woozy Menyw and appeared to be moving her into a fresh cell with a working door when Ranold attacked it from behind. He successfully landed three powerful blows with his sword and then, by sheer luck, discovered his electrical attacks seem to have a greater effect than anything else on the creature.

In a matter of moments he destroyed the creature and set about releasing everyone else. He started with Finger’s cell, for he knew the brute force effect on opening the doors would only get them so far and hoped that Finger’s skill with a lock would be far better and quicker. Sadly he was soon proved wrong. Finger could only trigger and trick two of the doors to open of the six remaining as the locks were disturbingly complicated. Ranold was having much better success just bashing locks open with his corrosive sword. Looking to be more useful, Finger found a chest the end of the hall and decided that, since his skills were not as effective on the door locks, he’d try his hand here.

By the time Ranold had finish breaking everyone out, Finger had opened the chest. Within the chest was the party’s gear and weapons that had been taken by the creatures as well as a few other interesting things: a pair of strange leather masks, a dozen the strange green eggs (definitely not for eating), and two unusual looking things that looked as if they were some sort of sword handle but their shape and design did not show any place you might insert a blade. Seeing something that looked like maybe a button, Blake fiddled with the device.

Blake’s resulting actions led to a dart in the middle of Faolan’s face and the inflicting of grievous wounds upon other party members as continuous attempts to figure out how the device worked by both Blake and the Paladin caused the device to spit out high-speed clusters of darts. This experimentation led to injuries to both Finger and Ranold. Blake was wounded himself as the weapon finally exploded in his hands. The group did discover many things about this weapon. Blake believed he’d mastered the firing a single dart at a time, but the weapon’s feature to fire multiple darts seemed far too dangerous to be of any of use. He has dubbed the weapon an “AMC” (automatic Micro crossbow).

While all of that was happening, Finger cracked open the damaged golem and recovered a red rectangle of heavy leaden glass, about the size of the violet “key” they lost earlier.

The Session ended after the party realized they needed to get moving. They had wasted too much time here. Next session picks up with the party getting the hell out before any more golems come by.

Total time pass 1.5 hours