Once again I’m left recapping a session two weeks later right before the next session. This one will be short again.
The Story
Seeing that the riverside entrance to the Temple District was just as well guarded and more heavily trafficked than the main entrance our part of brave adventurers decided to continue exploring further up the cavern. After a couple of hours checking through ruins and into various side passages Isabella noticed an arcane disturbance further ahead.
However, as they pushed forward they came across a band of Minotaurs that were also exploring the river cavern. The fight that ensued was brutal and long with Esteru and Terios both receiving life-threatening blows (Terios twice). Although there had only been three Minotaurs they were much better and stronger fighters than the party. Worried about how exhausted they were but unable to reach anywhere safe to rest the party continued on.
An hour or so later they finally found the source of the arcane disturbance. One of the walls seemed to have some sort of spatial disturbance on it. Whenever they looked at it the angles and surfaces seemed to shit and rearrange themselves. They did manage to notice 4 runes on the wall that seemed to correspond to some runes on Esteru’s map. If they could figure out what was going on with this defense then they could use her combination to open a secret door to the Vaults!
Unfortunately Isabella could not dispel the ward nor could she even truly figure what it is. The best she could come up with is that it looked similar to some Star Warlock magic she’d read about. Terios took the lead at this point by lightly putting his hands on the runes. As he moved his hands around he felt how the spaces and dimensions were shifting and worked out a way to track everything and trigger the runes in the proper order. The secret door opened….
Inside they found the Vaults almost exactly as on Esteru’s map. However, the inside was much as the door had been – angles looked weird and the walls appeared to be coloured in weird colors that none of them had ever seen before. As they began exploring they heard a voice calling out to them, imploring them to help.
Concerned, Harkness snuck up to the room from which the voice was coming. Inside he saw a Minotaur mage trapped within some sort of force cage in the middle of the room. Against the far wall he saw a chair and a table with a large tome and a melted taper on it. As he watched an amulet began to materialize next to the tome. Beneath the table and chair was a large arcane ward that glowed. The mage looked directly at Harkness and again asked for help.
All chance at surprise gone the rest of the group came into the room to investigate. The mage, calling himself Minroan, said that he’d been trapped there for centuries since the city fell. Baern was immediately suspicious because he couldn’t see any “waste” around the mage. Isabella and Terios found that it was impossible to enter the space around the magical ward as the air around it seemed to be elasticized. Isabella was able to identify the amulet as the Amulet of Passage – a powerful artefact.
Minroan told them that he knew the ritual to remove the wards but he couldn’t perform it while constrained. He’d been imprisoned by the crazed star mages of Leng and wanted to be set free. With all their investigations coming up fruitless they decided to go ahead with the ritual. As they set him free he cackled: “You fools!”
The Rules
I switched to using D&D Next’s exploration rules for this session and I am definitely going to continue using them going forward. There are still a few kinks left to work out in converting it to 4e but overall it worked well.
- They help to structure the adventuring day and thus eliminate the 5 minute work-day. Because you can only take an extended rest every 12 hours it gives some impetus to continue on and also to find ways avoid combat by other means.
- My players had some fun trying to figure out speeds and what actions to take every round. The rules actually provide a game to play in the exploration phase of the game. This is good.
- The combat with the minotaurs was tough. I pulled some punches that I didn’t need to in the end but they can’t have many of those encounters in those days.
- I was forgetting to hand out bonus Action Points for role-playing. Terios definitely should get one for the good idea of how to activate the combo lock. I hadn’t thought that bit through and was just ad-libbing the whole thing. He found a good out that saved my butt.
Random Geekdom Musings 