Boss! De plane, de plane! ... part 1
FrdNwsm
Member Posts: 1,069
[Anyone remember "Fantasy Island"? Apologies to Herv Villachaise, but I just HAD to use that as a title here. And this scenario HUGE; took me hours to get through the thing.]
I had, some time prior to the recent Undead Extermination Missions, encountered a large spherical object that had dropped from the sky behind what was then the Copper kettle, but was unable to enter. When we bumped into Valygar, hiding from the cowled wizards, he naievely told us his hiding place back in town before he fled the scene. He's much too trusting. However, apparently he (or his corpse?) is the only means of accessing the enigma. The reason given to us was some improbable sounding mystical mumbo jumbo involving an ancestor of his who disappeared into the thing 500 years ago. Sounded pretty far fetched, but then so did a crypt walking expedition to China. So, having returned to the big city, I dropped my alias as "Big AL", paid off the boys and called up a more respectable crew. Wouldn't want Valygar to get the wrong impression; after all, I was with the nicer bunch when we first met.
Unlike most new recruits, he actually had some decent stuff of his own; +2 katana and decent armor. He didn't have squat in the way of missile weapons, however, so I donated a +2 longbow, and magic arrows. A +2 medium shield brought his AC up to a decent range and completed his outfitting. And sure enough, just having him with us mystically caused the door to appear. My skepticism level suffered a severe setback. Aside from myself and Valygar, we had Anomen, Jaheira, Nalia and Neera. We did lack a really competent rogue, but Nalia had her ring of lockpicks, gloves of pickpocketing and some potions of master thievery; I figured if we ran into something beyond her augmented skills, we could always go back and swap her out for Yoshimo.
First room we entered had exactly one mephit, who went quietly. There was a very pretty diorama of a totally unrecognizable landscape; no clue what that was about. Then a room with what appeared to be a metal arm and some lumps of coal. Now, lumps of coal are what bad little children get in their stockings on Lathandermas eve, but there had to be a better reason they were here, so we took them along. (Rule #3 in the Aventurer's Manual: If you find something that looks totally useless, grab it.)
Next room, we found three dudes who told us they were Knights of Solamnia; apparently this is some place far from here, and they were trapped. That sounded odd to me until I realized that, hey, they didn't have Valygar with them to open the door. I tried to tell them they were free to go, but they just babbled on about some fish people and cannibal halflings. Clearly they had gone stir crazy from long confinement, but we decided to investigate anyway.
Sure enough, the room to the north smelled like seaweed and dead flounder; we were immediately assailed by malodorous fish folk, who called themselves the Sushi-gin. They had a couple of priestesses with them; first rule of any melee, kill the spellcasters first. So we did, followed by the others. Pretty easy combat, but we decided to rest back in the CC to get a few spells back. Off to the entry ramp, only to find that ... the entry had vanished! Don't you just hate it when that happens? Those Solamnia guys weren't crazy after all. I wanted to pick Valygar up and use him as a battering ram to try and reopen the entry, but cooler heads prevailed; the others talked me out of it. Looks like Nalia is going to be it as far as thieves go.
Guess I'll have to use my wits to survive; could be a problem there.
I had, some time prior to the recent Undead Extermination Missions, encountered a large spherical object that had dropped from the sky behind what was then the Copper kettle, but was unable to enter. When we bumped into Valygar, hiding from the cowled wizards, he naievely told us his hiding place back in town before he fled the scene. He's much too trusting. However, apparently he (or his corpse?) is the only means of accessing the enigma. The reason given to us was some improbable sounding mystical mumbo jumbo involving an ancestor of his who disappeared into the thing 500 years ago. Sounded pretty far fetched, but then so did a crypt walking expedition to China. So, having returned to the big city, I dropped my alias as "Big AL", paid off the boys and called up a more respectable crew. Wouldn't want Valygar to get the wrong impression; after all, I was with the nicer bunch when we first met.
Unlike most new recruits, he actually had some decent stuff of his own; +2 katana and decent armor. He didn't have squat in the way of missile weapons, however, so I donated a +2 longbow, and magic arrows. A +2 medium shield brought his AC up to a decent range and completed his outfitting. And sure enough, just having him with us mystically caused the door to appear. My skepticism level suffered a severe setback. Aside from myself and Valygar, we had Anomen, Jaheira, Nalia and Neera. We did lack a really competent rogue, but Nalia had her ring of lockpicks, gloves of pickpocketing and some potions of master thievery; I figured if we ran into something beyond her augmented skills, we could always go back and swap her out for Yoshimo.
First room we entered had exactly one mephit, who went quietly. There was a very pretty diorama of a totally unrecognizable landscape; no clue what that was about. Then a room with what appeared to be a metal arm and some lumps of coal. Now, lumps of coal are what bad little children get in their stockings on Lathandermas eve, but there had to be a better reason they were here, so we took them along. (Rule #3 in the Aventurer's Manual: If you find something that looks totally useless, grab it.)
Next room, we found three dudes who told us they were Knights of Solamnia; apparently this is some place far from here, and they were trapped. That sounded odd to me until I realized that, hey, they didn't have Valygar with them to open the door. I tried to tell them they were free to go, but they just babbled on about some fish people and cannibal halflings. Clearly they had gone stir crazy from long confinement, but we decided to investigate anyway.
Sure enough, the room to the north smelled like seaweed and dead flounder; we were immediately assailed by malodorous fish folk, who called themselves the Sushi-gin. They had a couple of priestesses with them; first rule of any melee, kill the spellcasters first. So we did, followed by the others. Pretty easy combat, but we decided to rest back in the CC to get a few spells back. Off to the entry ramp, only to find that ... the entry had vanished! Don't you just hate it when that happens? Those Solamnia guys weren't crazy after all. I wanted to pick Valygar up and use him as a battering ram to try and reopen the entry, but cooler heads prevailed; the others talked me out of it. Looks like Nalia is going to be it as far as thieves go.
Guess I'll have to use my wits to survive; could be a problem there.
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Going on, we took the Knight's warning a bit more seriously. I slugged down one of my dwindling supply of oil of speed, everyone had their usual buffs in place, and we proceeded. Sure enough, we encountered a half dozen halfling warriors. Aww, how cute! We barged into them and put them down pretty fast. This is why I dissed Mazzy when I met her, calling her "shrimp" and "short stuff".
We claimed some minor loot, and went on. The next encounter was with still more halflings, but this time I noted that two of them in the back were wearing big name tags around their necks. OK, rule #4: anytime someone is arrogant enough to display their names, they are Somebody Special. So I berserked and dashed past their screen of 4 midgets to engage them. Good thing I did so; when I looked back, all the rest of the party were stunned! And the four warrior gits were ignoring me and heading for the helpless group with knife and fork at the ready. We had one skeletal warrior as a buffer, but I doubted he could stall them all. I am still not sure what they hit us with, but I had to wipe the spellcasters and get back fast before the rest became Hobbit Chow. I barely managed it; Valygar was looking pretty motheaten by the time they went down for the count.
To make it short, we found some more coal and some more magic stuff. The only other opposition was an iron golem; we beat him up and grabbed his head when it fell off. Now, here's where I lost a bit of time. Half-orc berserkers are not noted for their puzzle solving ability. After 30 minutes or so of wandering aimlessly, I started clicking on stuff at random, until I found some things I was informed were furnaces, and another cubicle with an incomplete golem in it, which sucked up the arm I was carrying. Well, hell; they sure didn't LOOK like furnaces. But at least now I knew what to do with all that coal.
Finally we were the proud parents of a bouncing baby golem ... who promptly began yelling something about "Intruder Alert", and ran off, bashing down some more doors that were in his way. We followed, and found him beating on something called an Elder Orb. Heck, it was just a beholder; we had fought the like before. We joined the golem in pounding it into the floor, whereupon the golem became quiescent; mission accomplished.
Time to rest up for the night.
Of course; barbarians are wimps. Umm, don't tell Conan I said that. The real Conan that is; you can tell Conan O'Brien that I dissed him all you want.
Also, "Al" has dropped that alias for now, since he's with a respectable crew again. Call him "MC" (short for MyChar).
If he were a cleric and used a warhammer, could I call him ... MC Hammer?
::badda-bing::
You may want to gain some proficency with hammers, regardless. If you hold on to that Crom Faeyr scroll and manage to find the other parts, you may cook yourself a most powerful artifact of a warhammer.
A thing about AD&D, there are different settings, out of which Forgotten Realms is only one. There are others such as Eberron, Greyhawk, Krynn, etc.. You can think of them as planets, since normal travel between them is impossible even with arcmage-level magic and it takes some extraordinary measures to get from one setting to another. You can see some references to these settings in tha game, just look at the description for the Scarlet Ninja-To, for example.
"You haven't read any Dragonlance-books by any chance? Would make a lot more sense if you knew where these guys are actually coming from. If you were a mage or a sorcerer, you could get the full story with these guys. "
Oh, sure; read a lot of them. But when I write post-scenario comments here, they are (unless specified otherwise) from the POV of MyChar, who doesn't know squat about Dragonlance.
So, while I myself, for example, know what Sahuagin are, he doesn't, and, not being very bright, when hearing it for the first time will almost certainly misspell it.
Very wise of him to seek the council of old sages such as us. Purpose or happenstance?
He's a bit vain, actually, and likes to boast. But both of us are willing to learn from those with more experience, also.