Game Session Twenty One

Game session Twenty One: Saturday September 28, 2002

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The game session started the evening of Harvester 2, 3080 YE. With the party inside the hidden crypt of the (now) dead ghast. No healing has taken place and no spell have been recovered.

The game started with the players discussing the idea of whether or not to attempt a rescue of Cebo, or at least to recover his axe. It was decided that it would not be worth the danger to attempt it and decided to "let him go". Instead they took the opportunity to rest and recover spells. After doing so they were in full health, ready to tackle whatever else Rappan Athuk had in store for them.

They went down the natural cave passage to the south (the opposite way from where they encountered the dung monster) and soon came to the entrance to a large cavern. In the light of Ulfgar's torch they could see that the cavern extended beyond their light and there was visible a lot of rats, including several dire rats. They also heard a female scream and sounds of battle coming from the west of the cave. Rhino, uncharacteristically, ran forward to aid whoever was in trouble. The rest of the party followed. They soon saw a six foot tall pile of rubble with a slim female half-elf atop of it, surrounded by rats that seemed to be attacking here. As they watched fell down the opposite side of the rubble pile. The group, again led by Rhino, quickly climbed to the top of the rubble pile.

From the top of the pile they could see the female half-elf surrounded by rats and dire rats. She was in a short, wide tunnel that looked to lead to a set of stairs leading downward. The sight of so many dire rats was starting to piss off Moss who has sworn vendetta against their kind. The space between the party and the half-elf was filled by dozens of these rats. Flairian quickly fired off a carefully placed fireball, which even though it was pretty wimpy, managed to kill off a great number of these beasts. By this time also a number of the rats and dire rats had come up behind the characters cutting off any retreat.

At the sight of the rats getting blown apart the female half-elf pulled a packet from her robes and threw it at the where the characters stood. The packet proved to be a fine dust that immediately caused the heroes to start coughing and sneezing uncontrollably. By this time they realized that they had been suckered. Especially since the female half-elf had pulled a rapier and several creatures that looked like rats, only standing on two feet and being about three feet in height (which the group figured out had to be were-rats) appeared in tunnels above their heads. Including one were-rat who was holding a rapier that looked to be coated in poison, that jumped down into the corridor from above.

Quick thinking by Flairian, who cast a Gust of Wind spell which blew the dust back into the female, the were-rat, and the remaining rats and dire rats, and caused them also to be affected by the dust. So we had most of the attackers on both sides coughing and sneezing, barely able to attack. With the exception of three were-rat archers in tunnels above them (who couldn't seem to hit *anyone*), only the rats seemed free to attack.

Rhino went down to combat the male were-rat with the rapier, Moss started attacking any dire rat he could hit while Ulfgar kept attempting to cast spells on the female half-elf who seemed to be directing everything. During all this Flairian started singing a rousing bardic song of courage to help everyone out.

Eventually Ulfgar managed to score a couple minor spells on the female, and Rhino killed the male were-rat he had been attacking. At this the female half-elf suddenly changed form into that of a humanoid-looking dire rat. The female took off, climbing into a tunnel that lead to the south. Seeing this the three were-rats in the other upper tunnels also faded back out of sight.

This left only rats and dire rats left, which the party quickly took care of (with Moss leading the cleanup). Searching the only body left, that of the male were-rat, they only found a couple vials of what looked to be poison on him. A quick glance at the tunnels showed them to be similar to the rat tunnels that they have been seeing everywhere. About big enough for a small person to crawl into, impossible for medium sized being, especially in armor. They figured maybe without armor they could crawl through the tunnels but decided the idea was pretty dumb.

Before going down the stairs, the party checked out the large cavern. They found that there was a fast flowing river that cut across the chamber, running west to east. They could see several places where scorch marks indicated fireball blasts inside the chamber. Deciding not to cross the river they headed downward.

Going down the stairs they came to a broad north-south hallway with doors leading west and doors at either end. The northern most door had been hacked scratched and hacked at, with a small hand axe still embedded in it.

The group decided to check out the doors on the west wall first, looking into the southern one and finally going down the twisty corridor beyond the other. This corridor ended in a door, opening it revealed a room with a open archway along the south wall. Through the archway could be seen dim torchlight, illuminating a stone coffin in another room. Between these two rooms though lay a sunken corridor almost 50 feet in length. Along the floor of this corridor rolled an iron ball covered in spikes. The floor of the corridor was littered with debris, including bits of broken armor and bones.

As the party stood around talking about how they were going to cross this corridor there came several frightfull, bone chilling shrieks from beyond the door. As they turned to look they could see an area of blackness coming towards they down the corridor outside the room. They quickly shut and spiked the door, hoping to hold whatever it was back. As the door was spiked shut they could hear the sound of several creatures battering the door from the outside.

Quickly thinking they could get the jump on whoever was out there they spread a layer of oil around the doorway and retreated to the far corners, two character in each. As the door came crashing down and the blackness entered the room Ulfgar cast a Daylight spell from his staff, which revealed six skeletons, each as black as night and holding a longsword in each hand. Immediately Flairian launched a fireball, followed by magic missiles by Ulfgar. The Black Skeletons waded through the fireball and the flaming oil and started attacking.

The party quickly realized these were no ordinary skeletons as they seemed to shrug off any blow not made by a magic weapon, this was on top of having a very high armor class and a seemingly large number of hit points. To make matters worse for the party each blow of the Black Skeletons that struck them took a save to avoid draining their strength.

They quickly found out that dividing up was a problem, especially as Ulfgar and Flairian had no weapons with which to hit the creatures and ended up having to cast spells on the defensive. Moss and Rhino were taking the brunt of the Black Skeletons attacks. What saved the party was a successful web spell cast by Ulfgar that managed to catch three of the six Black Skeletons. Even with half of the Black Skeletons held in webs the fight still managed to almost kill the party, with Moss ending up almost out of both hit points and strength.

After the fight with the Black Skeletons the party decided that they were too beat up to continue onward so they slunk back to the level above and hid out once again in the secret room of the dead ghast. Here they spent one night of rest and healing, though it will take many more before they are back to full strength.

The game ended here on the morning of Harvester 4, 3080 YE. With the party inside the hidden crypt of the (now) dead ghast. One night of healing/rest has taken place since the battle with the Black Skeletons of Rappan Athuk.
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Unanswered Questions:

• You have party members that are down in abilities, especially Moss and Flairian. This will take days of rest to recover with out magic's (which you don't have)
• Remember that you still have to *get out* of both Rappan Athuk and under the Mistwall
• You have a broken wand that you have yet to identify. Ulfgar detected magic as strong as any magic he had ever seen before on it. What is it? What does it do? It is obviously broken, what/where are the other pieces?
• What are you planning on doing next? So far you have gotten very little except experience in this place, there has to be treasure somewhere. Doesn't there?

Session Twenty One Experience

Page Last Updated Sunday, November 10, 2002