Session 6: Mad medics and strange mystic wands (8/28/2015)

The Barrier Peaks Expedition

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

The fight with the displacer beasts over, the party gathered themselves together and approached the two doors in the passageway, starting with the door in front of the party. Halvar gently slid the yellow rectangle of leaden glass into the panel and the door slid open.

The band was greeted by a tall, male humanoid who asked what their medical emergency was. Finding it strange to find a living human in the facility, they proceeded to ask him various questions, like how he survived so long and “what is your job”, all of which he answered evasively.  Ranold moved up and pointed out that “he” was a golem, like the others in past, but definitely better designed and possibly based on a pleasure golem. When questioned about this by Halvar, Ranold explained about pleasure golems in great detail. After a few moments of this conversation, Catherine turning beet red and shoved Ranold into the room with the golem.

The medical golem immediately grabbed Ranold and tossed him onto the table. It then proceeded to stick him with a needle. Not sure what was going on, the group delayed taking action, waiting to see what was happening (although Finger and Halvar moved to flank just in case). Menyw on the other hand perceived some danger from the golem and charged into the room to help her friend, attempting to hop up onto the table to impose herself in the way. She lost her footing in the attempt and fell hard to the floor in front of the table.

Whatever was in the needle the golem stabbed into Ranold caused him to only become woozy. The golem stabbed a new needle into him to much greater effect, causing Ranold to become unconsciousness, it then pulled a long sharp looking knife and started to operate. Finger and Halvar made valiant attempts to stop the process but their attempts failed and sadly, before anyone else could react effectively, the golem had removed Ranold’s heart, leaving him dead upon the table.

Stricken by the horror of what had happened, the party attacked the golem. The horrifying creature reached down and grabbed Finger. Saying something about needing to remove a deadly growth from the gnome’s face, and before the party could stop it, the golem stabbed Finger with a needle similar to that it had put into Ranold, rendering Finger unconscious as well. Menyw recovered her footing and, seeing the gnome limp in the golem’s grasp and hoping to save him, leaped onto the table and struck the golem a mighty blow. Also seeing the danger the unconsciousness gnome was in, Halvar tried to slam the creature back away from Finger, but the golem’s grip was firm and it carried Finger back with it. Before the creature could finish its dastardly operation and bring Finger to a horrid death, the remainder of the party rushed forward to destroy the creature. Catherine, on the other hand, turned her magics to bring the dead Ranold back to life. Quickly she grabbed his dropped heart, shoved it back into his ruined chest, and then cast Breath of Life (a spell that restores life to the dead if cast shortly after death).  Thus Ranold was revived, but only by a hair.  Eventually, the golem was destroyed.

It still took time and some of the smelling salts in Faolan’s possession to bring the two wounded adventurers back around to consciousness.  When the adventurers went to the next room labeled “Med One”, they were much more cautious upon entry and overly suspicious of the female humanoid golem they found in the room.  Through extra caution and better questions, which included Catherine asking if it could recharge one of the healing canisters, they discovered that this golem was an honest healer and they spent a great deal of time getting some of the injuries to Faolan healed. While this female healer was unable to fix many of his physical injuries, she was able to repair the injuries to his knee and the one that hindered his vision.

After spending a lengthy time getting these wounds healed, the group decided to go back and check the armory. So with caution they proceeded back, with Halvar and Finger taking the lead and Ruis no longer a gorilla as the spell on him had expired.

Along the trek back, the group encountered another band of vicious vegepygmies (this group with a pack of dogs), who had apparently heard the party tromping through the hallway but had not yet seen them. Halvar, seeking to steal the initiative from them, ran into the main hall and got their attention, not quite expecting the pack of dogs to catch up to him so quickly. Meanwhile the main force of vegepygmies moved up to engage the remainder of the party.  The fight did not take long nor draw unnecessary attention and quickly the vegetable creatures were put down along with their veggie dogs.

Forthwith, the party stealthily made their way back to the security area, while avoiding attracting the attention from the security golems. They worked back into the hallway they discovered earlier and with caution applied their newly acquire gray card to the first of the three doors. This opened up on a room. In the center of this room appeared to be an altar. It was supported by a single metal column with two arms spread towards the door. The wall opposite of the door was made entirely of highly polished obsidian and there were three skeletons sprawled on the floor near the altar. In the center of the altar there were six fist-size circular windows, three coin-size holes below those in a single metal box underneath, to the left were 10 small boxes sitting in groups, and to the right were 2 rows of rivets.  The wings of the altar were decorated with panels and small glass squares set upon it in rows.  Not having a clue what this place was Finger verified the place was free of traps and then started pushing buttons.

After tampering with a few buttons, one of the buttons pushed caught fire!  A small stream of some sort of foamy liquid leapt forth from a hidden panel putting the fire out quickly but this caused the most of the group to back out of the room cautiously as the last time something caught fire was catastrophic for the group.

With only Ranold, Halvar, Finger, and Faolan left in the room, Halvar and Ranold continued to fiddle with rivets and small glass squares. This had several different effects, including making the door close or the lights turn bright red and start flashing with some sort of loud repetitive buzzing noise happening (possibly an alarm). Halvar, thinking quickly, took his gray card and inserted it into a slot he noticed on the altar.  This caused the buzzing and the red lights stop. Opening the door, they discovered that all the doors had closed and a gas had filled the hallway, rendering all but Catherine and Goran unconscious.

Shortly thereafter another golem entered the hall and then the room.  The golem walked up to the altar, fiddled with it, and then left, not responding to any of the queries from the party. Having enough of this very strange room where mysterious side effects occurred (and applying doses of smelling salts to the unconscious) the party moved down to the armory they were actually here for.

Opening the armory door revealed within seven lockers, of which 6 were open. When searched, the adventurers discovered several very strange items. Among the items they discovered where four bracelets of horn with a long pointed top piece and a grip below the pointed piece, like a strange punch dagger. They also discovered two additional and larger bracers of horn, like strange punch swords that came with their own light chain coif. They also found 10 of what Blake dubbed AMCs (automatic Micro crossbow). They located another odd-looking scrying device, although this one seemed to be a shoulder mounted unit of some sort. They also found another one of the strange suits of armor that they had found earlier, which Halvar quickly locked back up. Finally, they found a handful of potion-like jars with handles as well is about 60 of those strange eggs, 20 of which being green, the others being black and red.

Feeling that they were in a safe location, they chose to experiment with the strange items. They discovered that the smaller horn bracelets hurled thin beams of fiery death, although two of the bracer’s were destroyed by their experimentation. Experimentation with the larger horn bracelet taught that it did the same thing.

Meanwhile, Ranold fiddled with the strange jars with handles and discovered the hard way that they had the same effect as what the security golems fired at them when they battled, as he nearly paralyzed himself.  There were about eight of these. He also gained some practice and mastery with green eggs, which, when properly used, discharged some sort of sleeping gas.

After spending a fairly long time experimenting these items, Halvar and Ranold both felt comfortable with their use and the ability to explain to others the use of the small and large bracelets, the eggs, and the odd jars with handles. Knowledge was gained of these strange weapons of limited power.

So here is where we end the night

time elapsed five hours into the second day