by James "Sir Tao" Murphy
What You Missed or, Uncle Tao’s Fireside Stories [ooc to follow,
there is some interesting stuff there]
Stonewood, problems with undead, probably be really easy to deal
with. Or not….
We gathered on Friday as a village in Stonewood had asked for our
aid. With armor on and weapons in hand we set off. I was quite amazed by the
large numbers that had gathered on this Friday night. We journeyed to a village
where we meet a few villagers who let us know that there was a local dungeon
where they thought was an artifact that was summoning the undead to the area.
They asked us to go into the dungeon and secure the artifact so it could be
found out if it was indeed the thing summoning the undead.
The entrance to the dungeon had some letters that had to be
arranged into words in a particular order. While more ‘thinky’ people than me
worked on this, I stayed to the outside expecting undead to start to appear.
Luckily they did not. It was as quiet as a tomb.
Once the puzzle had been solved the way was opened into a room
full of unbreakable stings that just looked a mess. Each string had to be
untangled to continue. As I had my trusty large questy axe, and full armor on,
I was not much help in the untangling. Myself and a few others in similar
circumstances went to a corner where we would not be in the way. After a bit
some of the strings were untangled, and some magic was used so that a wall
opened up and we were able to continue looking for the artifact.
The wall opened to reveal several statues that reacted to movement,
and hit with the force of large rocks. It took some time but eventually we were
able to get the large party around the statues with minimal damage.
The next obstacle we encountered was a bridge that had been
trapped in a clever way. The bridge was a series of tiles that when you stepped
on them the first time, you were pushed one or two tiles in a set way. For
instance if the tile said N E; you would be pushed one tile north and one tile
east. If this pushed you off the bridge you fell to your death, and would be
returned to the start of the bridge. Once it had been stepped on once, the tile
went blank and could be stepped on a second time without any forced push, but
would reset to active once it was used this way.
As is my way I stayed to the back constantly on alert for any
monsters to rise and start to attack, but it continued to be quiet. We did not
realize that there would be even more silence to come….
Getting everyone over the bridge took quite a bit of time. When we
encountered our next obstacle, a room that allowed no noise, but had several
riddles written on the walls. To solve the riddle the answer had to be written
down. With a party this size it was short work to solve them.
This led into a room where the artifact was found; a large
triangular statute-like thing that glowed with the light of arcane magic. We
walked it out to the village. It was decided we should keep it in our tavern as
that is where the majority of the adventures would be. Usually I spend time
cleaning blood and gore off my weapons and armor but this time I did not have
too. We were never attacked by anything.
The next day we gathered to find out more information about the
artifact and to see what could be accomplished to make it stop summoning undead.
I was hoping to continue not to have to attack anything; I was disappointed.
The undead started attacking as soon as we were gathered, and by
going to where they were coming from we were able to follow them back to where
they were coming from. A quick warning, these undead were strong, they
had unusual defenses. Alongside the normal zombies and skeletons, there were
also ghosts who could only be affected by ghost-bladed weapons.
At one point, some magic happened and we all went to sleep, or at
least I think we all went to sleep. After we woke up we learned that several
people in the party had been scalping out undead and trying to send their souls
to non-Stonewood gods. They also learned that this is a bad idea.
After many unusually powerful undead waves, a god(?) may have
shown up. He had somehow ended up with one of our magic items and was pretty
much looking for more battle and destruction. After a long running fight
with several cries going off, the god (Sorin?) was suitably impressed by our
combat prowess and returned the item.
We were exhausted from the fight but continued to keep looking for
more information. While I had not had to fight at all Friday night, by Saturday
afternoon, I had been very, very busy.
We explored until we found a chapel with some very
locked/stuck/blocked doors. There was also a large demon/monster thing that had
some grudge against one of the party and gave us quite a bit of trouble. After
quite a bit of shenanigans and general mayhem the party finally was able to
open the doors. We found nothing of worth inside. However while the work
was going into opening the doors, the demon thing had finally been defeated.
So, the demon was defeated, one of the party had stopped it from
blowing up temporarily. Almost everyone backed up a long way. But it was not long
enough. Once the thing was allowed to blow up it killed almost everyone.
At this point I only have secondhand accounts of what happened. I
had stayed close enough to the demon that if it was counting down to summing
more demons, or more undead or just did not blow up like we thought it would I
would be able to help the one party member in the middle of the field. There
was a large noise and then silence for me.
Many people were dead; many people were scalped (myself included).
Lots of magic was used to get us all back. We retired back to the village to
have dinner.
Here my tale ends, my soul was damaged, and I had received word
that matters out west needed my attention.
OOC:
Friday night quest had no fighting, none, not one skinny undead
anything. The entire dungeon had only puzzles and traps. While I think the
number of PCs that showed up Friday night was double what they were expecting it
still worked with some longer wait times as most of the puzzles/traps could
only be operated by a few people at a time.
The staff asked all of us to cover our weapons in white socks.
This made combat at night much, much safer. I liked it. They also used a
lot of light props that looked like glowing crystals that upped the ambient
light level. I liked these two changes. I feel they made fighting at night much
safer and more comfortable.
Also when I got scalped by the exploding demon, I left all the
stealables, a phis rep, and went to get a drink. I happen to walk up to two of
the event-holders and sat down with them for a bit. They wanted to make sure
the following exchange made it into print:
Me: “You just had a total party wipe, how do you feel?”
Travis: “Like a dick”
[Photos also by James Murphy]