Last time the party
descended a spiral staircase around some kind of gravity well, entered
Guillaume's laboratory without an invitation, acquired a metal eating
shield, and somehow managed to only lose a single ratfolk.
Topside Barn
Agatha (archer)
Joseph (archer)
Timothy (axe, cook)
Tinslee & Therese (teamsters)
Horses (so many)
Topside Church
Sgt Teake
Yvonne (spear)
Rosaline (polearm)
Percival the Ratfolk
Dungeon Expedition
PCs
Lucien (Claus' bodyguard)
Philip (torch!)
Indira (axe, torch)
Basille (spear)
Sacha (greatsword)
Cyrille (polearm)
Edward, Freddard, "Eye-Van" the Ratfolk
The
rest of the party heard Viggo shouting exuberantly about the explosion
of the door. Then they saw him get silhouetted when he lit his torch
and started to explore the far room. In between Viggo and everyone else
was a room with a bunch of stone golems inside that activated a round
after someone entered.
They collectively considered two problems:
- How do we get everyone else across that room?
- How do we prevent Viggo's new toy from destroying all of our gear?
"I think it's time to
summon a beetle." - Barthelm
That
was greeted by a quick "No!" from Claus in a complete role reversal. I
guess there is something that even Claus fears? So then they focused on
the second question.
Does the shield work if Viggo isn't holding it?
Viggo
placed the shield on the ground, Barthelm threw a copper piece across,
and nothing happened! Viggo picked it up and it still didn't affect the
copper piece. They tried a steel holy symbol, that got sucked in. They
tried to turn the shield away and toss a crossbow bolt into the room,
wondering if it is directional, but the bolt got sucked around and
vanished.
Sidebar: Barthelm has one of every "no weight" item in
the Lamentations rulebook, which is why he had a steel holy symbol,
nails last time, a mirror... all sorts of things. I can appreciate that
kind of approach.
Viggo began to case the room in more detail,
looking for some kind of clue to help. The room was small, round, and
full of expertly carved wooden lounge furniture. Two small tables sat in
the middle, empty tea services sitting on top, and there was a door off
to the side. All of the furniture was assembled with metal-free wood
joints.
He found a couple of boxes
of old (but still decent) cigars in the small tables, lit one, and
turned his attention to the large portrait that dominated the room. It
was easily six feet high, half again as wide, and had a plaque
underneath that read "Guillaume le Galapiat."
 |
| Portrait of Guillaume le Galapiat |
Viggo
kept poking and prodding the furniture in the room but eventually came
to the portrait itself and tried to pull at one of the edges. He was
rewarded as the portrait, balanced on a copper hinge and mount
mechanism, swung easily away from the wall. Behind, a 3x3 cavity leading
back to a dumbwaiter.
In the cavity was a large, rectangular
black crystal case, like a big encyclopedia. Viggo found a slight
indentation, opened it up, and discovered that it contained a round
cavity lined with black velvet. He placed the shield inside, closed it,
and they repeated their experiment with the crossbow bolt. This time,
success! It seemed that the crystal case was able to contain the
shield's powers. Viggo places the whole thing back behind the portrait
and closed it up.
While this had been occurring Tenkos was
keeping an eye toward the stone golem room. He noticed odd reflections
and glints of light on the floor, especially around the body of their
dead ratfolk buddy Eye-Van.
Once Viggo signaled that the shield
seemed to be neutralized he cracked open the cigar box, lit one up, and
waited for everyone else.
Barthelm dashed across the golem room
first. The idea was to cover the 80 feet or so quickly enough to not
have the golems trigger since they seemed confined to the room. Things
were going well until his right foot squished into something with a loud
plop followed by an acrid burning smell. Once across, he saw that his
right boot had a hole in it and his foot was burned.
The
retainers all went next. Indira, with the torch, volunteered to go
first. Unfortunately she too squelched into something gross and burny
with her right foot. Unlike Barthelm "Mountain of Meaty HP" Schade,
however, she dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes and the stone
guardians begain to activate.
The group right behind her quickly
reacted, grabbing her and pulling her back towards the stairwell before
the guardians could act. She was still unconscious however, so Tenkos
used his magic to heal her back up.
Instant morale boost for the retainers.
Someone
(Tenkos?) noticed that the little translucent jellies seemed to be
"eating" the body of poor departed Eye-Van the ratfolk so they waited
until the body was all gone and resumed dashing across the room. As
folks arrived, Viggo was handing out cigars from the box he had found.
"You're smoking all of our XP!"
Barthelm
debated taking all the copper out of the door for resale (and because
screw this wizard!) but they agreed that it would probably take too
long. Jehan also noted that it might be very useful on the way out to
have a functional door that they could close.
They made their way
down a spiral staircase that ended in a door. This time the door was
bound and hinged with iron, rather than copper. PCs lined up to try and
pick the lock but to no avail. Viggo sent everyone else back up to the
waiting room, fetched the shield in its crystal case, and crosses his
fingers. Fortunately he was able to open and shut the case quickly
enough that he a) didn't get hurt and b) didn't seem to affect anything
too much in the room beyond. From the lack of reaction upstairs they
figured that either the stone or the distance blocked the effect.
They
found a large, octogonal library behind the collapsed door. Many of the
shelves were broken, with moldy piles of books littered throughout, but
there were a good number of intact shelves as well.
They went
in and surveyed the room. Every side of the octagon had a door on it
(they had entered from the "bottom right"). The right / 3 o'clock door
was more heavily locked than the other six but otherwise the room had a
fair amount of radial symmetry going on. Each of those six doors also
had a small desk in front of it. Immediately in front of the stairwell
doorway sat a lectern with a single sheet on it.
They spread out
thru the room, browsing and investigating. Claus realized that the
layout of the library matched the Teutonian "University System" and that
he'd be able to find topics pretty easily based on that.
Sidebar: Spend a turn searching for a book on a topic, roll to see if it survived, then can get an answer.
While
the rest of the folks were casing the joint and their retainers were
standing guard (except the ratfolk who were looking at everything),
Barthelm stood by the lectern near the entrance. He gradually became
aware of a low steady noise, like a barely audible wailing, coming from
the lectern. Barthelm looked down and saw a piece of vellum covered in
beautiful calligraphy.
"Swiftfinger Thom, renowned thief, attempted to steal the following books...
• Advanced Alchemy
• Death Cults of the North
• The Journal of Blissful Ignorance
• Preparation Rites
Thom was transmuted into vellum as punishment."
Thom
was not in much of a mental state to talk, delivering drawn out one
word moans for answers, but it did seem like they were in response to
Barthelm's questions.
 |
| Kermit the Frog bugging out, just imagine the screaming that would go with this |
Can't
remember exactly what Barthelm asked but the gist was that Thom was
terrified of everything, especially this place and its master, and
wanted to die.
"Thom I'm going to fold you into a paper airplane and throw you, you guide us to where we need to go." - Barthelm
While
it is quite difficult to fold a piece of vellum into a paper airplane
Barthelm gave it his best shot and chucked Thom's sheet into the air.
The vellum floated back a bit toward the more heavily barred door on the
eastern side of the room. Barthelm threw "him" again and the same thing
happened.
I think Barthelm suggested at this point that they
were going to continue deeper into the tower and bring Thom with them
and Thom's answer was a wail of a "Noooooooooo" with maybe a
"deaaaaaath" for good measure. Barthelm smacked the vellum sheet!
"Listen
up Thom!" Barthelm gave a quick motivational speech, probably centered
on not leaving anyone behind and helping Thom. Thom's response was
muted. Overall they learned from Thom that he is very scared to go
deeper, scared of Guillaume, and wants to die.
They started plans
to continue by saying that they were going to open one of the other
doors to investigate. This turned into a plan wherein Viggo would stay,
everyone else would leave, and then they'd try to open the shield case a
crack to "focus" the metal sucking power. As their plan got more
complicated we decided it was late enough and ended the session.
