Terrible News: I go out of my way not mention people's names in these blog posts. I checked with the DM if I could talk about this and he said it was OK.
I've played with this group for about 4 or 5 years. The DM is married and he and his wife are about 30 years old. They had a baby who is now 2 years old. A little over 3 weeks ago, my DM's wife passed away in her sleep. From what I understand, she had an undiagnosed heart condition and it was very sudden.
She was nice and really smart. She was a professor at a big college and she looked to me like a really great mom.
My DM is doing well under the circumstances and remains the polite, kind person he's always been.
He's going to have to sell his house and move back to another state. So this might have been our last session... we might do one more. It looks like we're going to try to keep the campaign going online through Skype, so we'll see.
His baby is doing very well, too. She's a really fun kid. She's shy at first, but then she warms up to you after a while.
The whole thing is just horrible and a total shock.
Last Time: We were in a dungeon looking for the soul of a warforged. Tonight we finished the dungeon.
We started off on the second floor. There was a long, twisting hallway that had prison cells and a few rooms. The cells held different monsters. It went like this:
- Manes
- Grell
- Will o Wisp
- 2 treasure chests
- Snake Swarm
- Ghoul
- Quasit
Being super cautious, we guessed correctly that pulling one lever would open all of the cells. We also guessed correctly that at least one of those chests was a mimic.
We decided to leave the cells alone. We ended up tackling this "Hallway of DOOM" at the end of this session.
There were three rooms in this hallway as well.
Portal Room: This room had a swirling vortex. We figured out that if we got close to it, it would suck us in and eject us into a random plane.
Loom Room: There was a loom and some spider thread. This was where drow made clothes/armor. The fighter found a pair of mithril scissors.
Library: Our wizard loves books and immediately began rifling through everything. We found a journal of the guy who once lived here. He was a wizard who studied evil creatures and apparently something bad happened to him. His name was Tyrien D'Shar. I think he is a real NPC from an Eberron book. This place was at one time a shrine to The Traveller, a sort of evil Eberron deity of luck.
It had since been transformed into a lair of followers of Lolth and Orcus.
We found a secret area with magic items. There was a dagger of warning, a staff of striking, and a wand of wonder. I was all over the wand. The DM knows I love random charts so he knew I would want this thing.
We took a short rest to learn what the items did, and another rest to attune to them. The other heroes were wounded really bad but forgot. So they didn't spend any hit dice. This obviously would become a problem very soon.
The Drow Mage
We tried to sneak to the room but my stealth roll was really, really bad. The drow cast cloudkill under the door crack. This spell dropped everyone but me!
I quickly made myself invisible and used a potion on one of my allies. She got up and healed the fighter. She hit the spider with a gust of wind and the fighter plugged it with some arrows. Then the drow dropped them again with a lightning bolt spell.
The spider came out and headed down the hall. It had tremor sense so it sensed where I was. I said some swear in my character's Sean Connery voice. It is really fun to say "Shtupid Shun of a Bi-yutch" in a Sean Connery voice. I think I called this spider a "Fuck Faysh." I unleashed a fireball and killed him.
Thankfully we had loaded up on healing potions last session. I got my trusty allies up and we went and actually took a short rest.
The Bathroom Encounter
From there, we went upstairs to another level. We found a kitchen where humans were being cooked (yeargh). Because we are so careful and perception-checky, I found a gear. It would turn out that we'd need to find three gears to open the exit to this place.
In another room I found a gear in a clock. We came upon a bathroom. The shower curtain was closed. We pulled back the curtain, and found four suit of animated armor standing in there.
The door shut. The fighter and I were in the bathroom, the wizard was not. This was alarming because it was a tiny bathroom, meaning I was adjacent to these animated armors.
I cast dimension door so that the fighter and I could get out of there. To our dismay, we learned that the door was not locked! I could have just opened it and left. Instead I wasted a level four spell, which was pretty hilarious.
The armors walked through the door and we kicked the crap out of them with shocking grasp and shatter spells.
We found the last gear, a skull and a scroll of speak with dead. I kind of wonder if the skull belongs to Tyrien D'Shar.
We opened the exit with the gears. Before us was The Cogs, a section of the city of Sharn. We realized we hadn't fond the thing we came here for yet - the soul of the warforged.
The fighter had been pretty sure it was in the chest in the Hallway of Doom. So, down we went.
The Hallway of Doom
After some planning, we decided to open all of the cells and to just go nuts. We dragged the corpse of the spider/drow in front of the ghoul's cell, figuring that the ghoul would be distracted and would start eating it.
So I hit the lever and a train of monsters came at us. We dropped the quasit, the ghoul and the snake swarm with no problem.
I had been worried about the will o wisp, but I was able to kill it with a single magic missile spell cast with a 3rd level slot.
The grell gave us some trouble. We defeated it and learned that one of those chests was, in fact, a mimic. I decided it was time to pull out the wand. I used it three times:
- I stunned myself.
- I made it rain in a 60 foot radius. The group killed the mimic.
- I decided to use it one more time even though the bad guys were gone. I pointed in a safe direction and fired off a lightning bolt!
In the chest we found a mini-castle. Basically, it's a magic castle that we need to go into to find the missing soul. It is likely guarded by the rakshasas I'm so worried about facing (they are immune to level 6 spells and lower!).
The DM did a thing where the castle was in pieces and we got to assemble it. We had to configure the rooms he had made on three floors. Basically, we built the dungeon that we'll be going through next session.
Overall
It was a very good session as always, and we might squeak in one more live session in November, depending on when his house gets sold.
Dungeons: I think this was the first big dungeon we've gone through in this campaign. Dungeons are really fun. I don't like dungeons that are just rooms with monsters. I like ones where each room or area has a unique gimmick, and this one had that.
Monsters: The DM also does a really good job of portraying each monster like a fleshed-out creature rather than a list of stats. That goes a long way in making the game fun.
Wand of Wonder: I'm a little torn on using the wand. If I had my way, I'd use it all the time. I'm just afraid that some of the effects will hurt my allies. So for now, I'm going to try to use it only in situations where we're not in tons of danger.