Monday, July 23, 2018

Storm King's part 11 - Happy, Ugly Birthday Selene!!!

It just happened that the D&D night was overlapping with Selene’s birthday. We could not cancel our Game night but neither could we miss the chance of having free drinks on her behalf so we mixed the two together.


The night began with the cake ceremony...


We tried to write something that will be meaningful for a half-elf wild magic sorceress.


I think she promised NOT to kill us this night, her way of telling us she loves us, usually she is the reason the party dies, not including how our LEGENDS[1] got the title.

She even shared her cake with us.


Of course after all the cake eating and drinks the Game night wasn’t so productive campaign wise but we still got the change on doing some progress.[2]

So here we are in the room of the magic portal with Ancient Giant runes and all the giant's statues. The big dilemma is now if we touch more runes for more traps or try to find some alternatives to the problem.

A quick look around the room and the DM’s hint, THANK YOU!!!, and we see that the room has other frozen doors, 4 to be more precise[3]. We team up to break the ice, the sorcerers are trying to melt some ice on one door from  the left, while the dwarf and the Giant (great team) will work on one of the doors from the right. As it always is, the “right” door opens, not because the Giant can easily open giant doors but because the dwarf has loosened them up with his hammer (or at least this is the official story).

Behind the opened doors we find a great hall, looking like a dining hall with some kind of magical fire burning in the middle of it and a great axe near one of the tables.

A curious sorcerer, Selene, goes to look at the magical fire. While all the party is amazed by this fire that seems to burn with no fuel a giant Centipede attacks us by surprise. One bite is enough to get Selene unconscious, luckily the other sorceress, Szivem, will confuse the BUG at least to give us some time to run away. Rautza seems to be in berserk mode as she doesn’t want to run and hits the insect with all she's got[4]. Groin will heal Selene for just a round as the next round will bring her death: ugly, horrifying death being digested by the big insect.


Focusing all our might we manage to kill the beast and get Selene out of its belly. The digestion had already started so the body is heavily covered in acid, burning skin and full of scars. Groin performed the Resurrection Ritual that will bring Selene's body back to life, but the scars and the missing skin pieces are permanent marks on her body[5] and soul as she realizes that UGLY as she is, she will not have the chance to seduce any man from now on with her appearance :( . The cleric's robes do not fit her very well but at least she’s not naked anymore, an appearance that in the past was dashing (with dedication) and now it’s just repulsive.

Her rival in beauty, Szivem, was very glad about this turn of events, but in the end their friendship prevailed.


We ask Rautza to take the axe in the portal room as it seems to be the missing weapon from the Frost Giant Statue. We place the axe in the hands of the statue and try to press the symbols again, now that all giants have their weapons. Another press --> another trap. It seems this is not the solution to the puzzle. We make a plan on how to press and what to press not getting anyone killed. Our Giant, Rautza, seems to be the more fitting on the not dying part so we let her press the symbols buffing her with all we have: Heals, Death Wards and our cheering and clapping from outside the room. We try multiple things like getting all weapons out from the statues' hands, pressing the fire symbol with a torch, blowing the symbol for Storm, casting Fire Ball into the portal's mist, taking the mithril trident from the storm giant and pressing the storm symbol, or what we think is the storm symbol to be more correct. Needless to say that nothing worked, and our friendly Giant took a lot of damage.

As nothing else for solving the puzzle comes to our minds, we decide to try the doors on the left, maybe some clues can be found there in solving this irritating puzzle.

In this part of the temple it seems that the sleeping chambers are situated. We carefully inspect the room. It seems that there is a big statue in the middle with the hands in such a position that will imply something is missing from there. There are two pairs of stairs going to an upper level but we are not going there at the moment.

We inspect all the rooms until we reach about the middle of the big chamber where we find a big crack in the wall, big enough to fit a human but not big enough for a giant. At this time we ask Rautza to wait for us here in case we come out from the crack running and screaming and we venture on in hope for some clues about the puzzle.

Shortly after we find what could be considered a cavelike crossroad, meaning the cave will split into 3 more caves. Groin hears some unnatural scratching on the walls and warns the others, we decide to run out from the caves hoping what is coming will follow us out and meet our friendly giant. The plan doesn’t work as expected because what it felt like 10 seconds walking for us was instead 5 minutes walking[6]. Ugly Selene teleports the slow walkers (Groin and Szivem) out of the caverns, leaving the fast runners Ren and Ireth behind with the clear instructions to follow us out. Strange thing happens, the cavern is swamped with big spiders that immobilize Ren and he can’t run anymore. Good hearted Ireth will not leave the fallen companion behind, even if this means risking her own life, so she drew her sword to fight the spiders.


This plan doesn’t work and soon enough they both find themselves caught in spider web and paralyzed.


Outside the caves Groin, Szivem and Ugly Selene are starting to worry about the long time the fast runners need to come out running, something must be wrong… So back to the caverns we go and we find them... NOT!!! We kind of guess the tunnel they were dragged to and head that way, it seems this time the gut feeling was right and we truly find the spiders' nest. The Mother of all spiders descends from the ceiling but it is no match for the signature spell of Szivem’s FIREBAALLLLLL!!!! The spiders burn, the cocoons in the spiders' nest start burning also and they may contain our lost friends, nothing a Healing Word can’t solve. Hearing the voice of Groin, Ireth and Ren come back to their senses. Lliira bless us all!!! 

[2] So, just like any other game night.
[3] Any other room? "I SEARCH THE ROOM!" This room? "WE LOOK AT THE PORTAL AND IGNORE EVERYTHING ELSE!"
[4] See how the NPCs feel around you!
[5] As the dice decided.
[6] In game-time.

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