Summary 6/26/22
Table Talk:
I handed out a few new tokens (the scroll that Sorin picked up, and the DM question token then Ari/Brooke found). I also gave out the area Map that Ari found last session.
With no crunchy mechanical questions on the table i asked about players' preferences for the format we’ve been running with (table talk, quote, play, break, play, quote, table talk, end, bye). Since it was originally a tool to help me corral a bunch of loose squirrels and get them focused on the game. Since everyone agreed it is working well we are continuing with this format.
I also asked if people wanted me to continue writing these summaries. If you’re reading this, guess the answer.
The other player-game-play-experience discussion was on DM rolls. I can roll up creature/monster numbers (HP, Initiative, etc.) ahead of time when i set up my notes to make it faster, but i prefer to keep it in game so that it feels more organic and gives players time to think about what they want to do. After a brief discussion we decided to keep it as is, since it is not taking a lot of time out of game-play. If it starts to be an issue, we'll look at it again.
Very few questions this time, so let's jump right into it.
"That’s why you’re learning about ghouls now, Ciri. When you know about something it stops being a nightmare. When you know how to fight something, it stops being so threatening. So how do you fight a ghoul, Ciri?"
-Vesemir –Andrzej Sapkowski, “Blood of Elves: Chapter 3”
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 5: The Crypts
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 5: The Crypts
After a night of cool sleep in the wafting breezes of the sewers we open our noses to the smells of the sewer tunnels beneath Nibiru. It's nearly the end of the week. On the 29th day, we are almost at the end of the month of Mirtul (The Melting). No doubt some older folks in the city above are searching the attics to find they’re dusty old Trolltide masks. Meanwhile, the young folks are getting ready to paint rainbows and find the best ways onto rooftops to celebrate the start of Kythorn (The Time of Flowers) in a couple days.
But we’re all the way down here,
in the cold and the dark,
in the dank and the gloom.
We open our eyes and our ears
no sunny grass park,
just us; in our little room.
Look, it’s the best i could come up with at 4am.
As we yawn and stretch we take stock of our surroundings. No Bostra cooking up some hideous fried meat, no comforting camp fire, no soft padded dirt. Just a cold dark another mechanical room with a hard brick floor in the sewer.
Rae gets up and checks the crates she propped in the pipes. Looks like they were undisturbed.
Ari gets up to take a look at the gate to the room.
Cypress prays and enchants a moss-ball to glow with a soft pale Light.
Sorin reaches into a stolen adventurer’s pack and pulls out some quick morning rations for everyone. He lays them out on a scrap of cloth atop an empty barrel with a bottle of water in case anyone’s canteen is empty.
Rae sets the crates down around the barrel as benches, careful to sit on the corner furthest from the dead and crusted-over body of the giant Centipede that almost killed her the night before.
Sorin takes Cypress’s proffered glowing moss ball and ties a string round it to hang it above their little den.
Cypress blesses the food and water, cleansing it of any rot and making it just a hint sweeter. As we all sit in our makeshift den Rae pours some water into her most favoritest goblet, and Ari comes back to sit with us and tell us what’s out there.
In truth it’s a lovely scene, four people slowly growing into friends, sharing a meal under a warm dim light, sitting together at a table they made from whatever they could find. Beautiful, truly a scene from a fantasy novel that teaches you to ‘love the friends you find along the way.’ Of course the whole thing is massively undercut by the 30 foot long Giant Centipede corpse piled and shoved in the corner; slowly breaking apart into hard chunks as its acid green blood leaks and congeals in the drain…
But ‘found family’ is beautiful wherever it happens, even if it tastes stale and a bit like a rusty pipe.
Ari tells us about the gate, and what she managed to see beyond it. “Well I have a couple of ideas about the gate. I was looking around and this room is at an intersection. There is one tunnel going back toward where we came from, and then continuing what-I-think-is south. This room looks to be an offshoot on one side. On the other side is the interesting bit. There is another tunnel across from us and I can make out some bars… BUT on the other side of the bars is light. I think there’s a room over there.”
We finish eating our breakfast ration-bars and Ari sighs “The hard part is going to be the gate to this room, the only key-hole is on the outside. I can just barely get my arms around the lock to try to pick it, but it’s gonna be difficult and take a while.”
Sorin begins shaking with excitement.
Rae finishes her drink. “Well there are two pipes in here, I guess one goes back where we were, but we could always take the other one and see where it goes.”
“Oo oo oo oo. No no no, please, Please!”
“What is it, Sorin?”
“Okay, so um, so. youknowhowimostlyjustmeditateatnightanddon’treallyfullysleepthewholetime,kindalikeRaedoescausewe’rebothelven,” a deep breath, “wellwhenyouguyswereallrestingi’vebeenstudyingbeacuase,youkonow,eventhoughi’marrestedidon’twanttofallbehindinschooland-”
“Sorin! Breath! What is it?”
“I learned how to do a thing.”
“Will it help with the gate?”
Sorin nods hard and fast enough to give a normal non-Sorin person, if you will, the kind of brain injury usually only happens after ten years of playing in the NFL.
After we finish eating, put away our gear, and give Cypress his moss-ball back, we find Sorin taking a good hard look at the hinges of the gate. Poking them and hitting them with a piece of chalk, then listening. He turns back to the others, “I think I can do it.”
He starts to draw on the walls with the speed of a child who just watched Sonic™ for the 90th time this week and thinks he can move faster than time itself.
First, a circle around each of the two hinges, each one marked with small runes, arrows and symbols. Next, two long double lines on the wall connecting to a larger circle on the wall. This one has all the runes on the inside, and looks to be almost breathing. “Ready.” Last, Sorin traces his hand in the middle of the big circle, and puts the chalk away. He looks at the gate and then puts a hand to the wall. A small red-ish-blue-ish, light creeps down the chalk and into the metal, slowly we see the hinges changing. Where the light runs over them they are turning from iron to wood.
As he pulls his hand back and we hear the door creaking. Those thick old iron hinges were made to hold the weight of a large wrought iron gate, but these new wooden ones are straining hard to keep in place.
Raelle begins shaking with excitement.
“Ok now Rae you should be able to kick it and break the hinges open”
Rae rubs her hands together “Ooooh yeah, this is gonna be awesome!” she leaps forward. She plants her back heal, leans back, takes aim, puts her fists to her chest, and kicks out. Hard!
It is at this point that i want to remind everyone reading that we are playing a tabletop roleplaying game. Certain actions, and the outcomes of those actions are determined by random fate in the form of dice. This door now has a DC of 5, easily passable. So, when Rae (Sarah) rolls an 8, she does succeed. But how it plays out, isn’t really what anyone would call ‘awesome’.
The bottom hinge cracks and with a metal groan that echoes down the hallway and the door limply bends outward. Half open, still hanging in the lock. An epic-kick-moment reduced to a limp hanging bar.
It’s ok Rae, it happens to a lot of monks i promise, i’m not disappointed, really. We can try again next time, or get something to help, and aid perhaps, or just something to keep you inspired as you do it?
Now that we are out of the room we can get a better look at our surroundings. There is a long hall running to a large room north of us, close to where we were yesterday. Then to the south the hallway disappears into darkness. As Ari said, this is a four-way intersection and across from us in a grate to a well lit room. Lets see what’s in there. It looks fa- what’s that skittering, crawling sound?
We look down at the floor and see some of the cobblestones look odd, like they’re moving. They look skinny and long and they have all these little legs… Oh. Those are Centipedes. Roll for initiative as the swarm closes in.
Cypress points out that he knows a useful fire spell, so we could all just wait a second back here and he can cast it down the hall at all of the swarm.
Ari is up first. Drawing her rapier she swings out. As she does, one of the little bugs raises up and Ari’s mind pictures it crawling up the blade to her hand. Ewe ewe ewe. She lifts the blade at the last second and hits… nothing.
Rae looses an arrow at the creepy crawlies. It spits two of them, nailing them to a wall like two gummy worms on a cocktail toothpick in the worst drink ever. Rae is determined to make up for her limp kick and she centers herself. Focusing on her energy, dashes forward, and looses her stored Ki in a Flurry of Blows. As her hand thrusts out she suddenly imagines what it will feel like to touch them. Ewe ewe ewe. She pulls back and misses.
Cypress sighs. Now the bugs are getting everywhere and if he does a fire spell at the whole swarm it’ll hit his party members too (there wasn’t actually a pause, but i really think he considered it anyways). He ducks nimbly through the legs of his taller friends as they back away from the Centipedes. The little halfling thinks of the fire of the god. The power of that fire! His mind races with visions of it cleansing the forest so seeds can crack and grow. His eyes reflect the light of burning acres as he summons the burning will of Chauntea; the goddess of life. 𝓑𝓾𝓻𝓷𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓗𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓼. Flames erupt down the corridor and as the blood boils and hisses out of the Centipedes’ jointed pod bodies. The escaping blood-steam sounds like the teeny tiny screams of the damned. In a blink of an eye, there are just a handful left as Cypress’s eyes cool like the rain that comes after the fire at the end of The Lion King.
One of the last Centipedes skitters towards Raelle, about to crawl up her leg and do god-only-knows-what.
Sorin looks down and casts a trusty old reliable Firebolt. It sinks into the critters head and pops it like a tiny little jelly grenade. The flaming bits of Centi-skull (with no ‘peds’ left that’s what it is right?) fly out in splash damage against the critters scurrying around. And with that, all the Centipedes are either dead, or long gone.
Now that all the forbidden-leg-warmers are dead we can finally get a good look at this grate. Ari and Cypress peer in. Behind the bars is a large, well lit crypt. A vault of the dead, where the living store their honor until the memories and the pain can fade away.
A wall blocks much from view, but the room is as big as a church beyond a few rows of stone sarcophagi.
After a moment’s inspection, everyone realizes that this is one of the grates that raises up into the ceiling, so then, where is that lever, or turn wheel, whichever on it is this time.
Sorin remembers seeing one of the turny wheelies in the mechanical room we all woke up in. After some consideration everyone decides it’s worth a shot, and Sorin goes back to crank it in private. Looking at the big wood and iron wheel standing in the room, Sorin makes a very bad strength roll. So he decides that despite the poll running up and down in the middle, or the spokes all parallel to the ground, clearly this is one you pull down. So he spits on his soft palms and grips the beams and tries with all his might to push them towards the ground.
Grunting.
Silence.
More grunting.
More silence.
“Rae… can you come help?”
With a sigh, Rae walks back into the room to see Sorin’s skinny frame dangling off the ground hanging from one of the spokes. Rae plucks the school boy off the bar and with one hand starts to spin the wheel. After a good lesson on how to crank it, the two come back out of the dark corner to join the others standing in the now-open archway.
Ari’s eyes glitter with all the gold of pennies she imagines were paid to that fabled ferryman. Even if he did show up, she doubts he took the pennies. After all, graverobber might sound like an ugly job title, but the benefits and commissions pay are great. Ari’s foot lifts ready to run in.
“Wait!”
Ari groans, “What now Sorin? I wanna Loo-oo-oot. I want shiny things, they make me happy!” An evil flirtatious glitter in her half demon eyes. “Don’t you want me to be happy, school boy?” She pouts.
Sorin gulps. “I just thought, ya know, since we keep having these issues with things sneaking up on us… that I would set an alarm in case something comes at us from back in the tunnels… again.”
Cypress nods, “That’s a good idea actually.”
“Fine… but let me know as soon as you’re ready.” Ari lifts her leg like a cartoon ready to to run, “my thievin’ arms are a-tingling.”
Sorin casts Alarm. “And… done.”
Ari runs into the room, wearing blinders made of solid greed. An arrow slams deep in her shoulder for 8 damage. It hurts.
This part of the room is populated by 3 Zombies and 2 Skeleton Archers. Seeing Ari hurt, Cypress rushes in to assess the situation and immediately casts Sacred Flame.
This part of the room is NOW populated with 2 Zombies, and 2 Skeleton archers, and 1 pile of ash.
Rae dashes into the room next, ducking low in the space between the wall and a row of stone coffins. She runs to where the shot came from. She leaps, spinning her staff at the Skeleton archer there. SWISH! CRACK! THUNK! The rib-cage of the Skeleton is now on the floor, separate from the arms, legs, and neck it used to be very well acquainted with. The rest of the bones suddenly remember about gravity, and fall to the floor, lifeless once again. The Zombie close to Ari lunges forward gripping her tight in a hug, pulling her to the ground.
On the ground, the zombie opens a mouth full of teeth that look like headstones in a forgotten graveyard, slowly sinking into swollen gums instead of mossy earth. “Aaareu” it sinks its teeth in that special place on the neck where it meets the shoulder, you know the sexy kissing spot? Well it’s less sexy with a zombie… or not, i’m not gonna judge.
Sorin is the last into the room, and casts Magic Missile. One flies into the Skeleton Archer shooting from the corner, and the other two go straight into the hollow chest of the Zombie on top of our dear leader. They let out a sizzle and a smell of burned corpse mixed with boiling rotten puss. The Zombie lies dead and motionless…again.
Ari spends her turn of the combat moving her new gross friend unceremoniously to the floor, before standing up to get back in the action.
The remaining Skeleton Archer shoots Ari in the other shoulder. It hurts.
Cypress casts Sacred Flame, bloodying the remaining zombie.
Rae, slaps a hand down on the lid of a sarcophagus leaping into the air in super cool parkour skill! Another vault and she stands on a coffin swinging her staff into the face of the Skeleton that shot her friend. The head spins around, with a loud crack! Then it slowly turns around and stares grinning at the monk (it doesn’t have much choice).
The last Zombie slashes out its rotten claw, cutting into Sorin’s chest. It crits and it HURTS. The Zombie pushes Sorin into the wall attempting to run out and into the sewers, provoking an attack of opportunity from the wizard.
Hurt and pissed off, Sorin claps both hands on the head of the Zombie in a classic boxer pose as if ready to head butt it. But this is no mere discombobulation. He cast Firebolt between his palms and the headless body of the Zombie slumps on the floor oozing from an empty neck. Sorin turns and sends one more firebolt screaming into the room.
Before it can finish drawing its bow on Rae, the Skeleton’s eye socket is filled with red fire. The Skull explodes in a shower of blackened bone bits, and the hand holding the arrow falls to the floor. The bow releases, but is dragged down as the body crumbles away behind it. The arrow misses wide.
Phew, that was intense y’all. Let's relax and loot.
Ari digs around on the Zombie that tried to hug her to death and finds a spoon and some silver in a pouch halfway over run by bloated skin. She also finds a severed hand that would make an interesting flail.
There is a short table discussion about Psychic Damage, which comes up again as Sorin/Ashley debates about trying to use skeleton bones as ammo in that sling they found a couple days/weeks ago.
Rae looks through the bones of the Skeleton at her feet and finds a glass jar full of old used bandages. She makes a point of staring at her friends as she up-ends the jar and dumps out the bandages, then steps on them and twists her foot like she’s putting out a cigarette.
Cypress takes a minute to heal Sorin after he got crit on by a horny Zombie.
Sorin looks through the rags on the Zombie that he helped lose about 11 pounds in history’s least popular surgery (yeah, i googled it, the human head weighs about 11lbs [15 cm in metric]). He also finds a blue folding fan with a yellow asterisk, a plain leather necklace, and a heavy bronze whistle.
So, uh… Sorin, are you, uh, doing anything with that whistle?
Sorin holds out the whistle for Rae. snickering “Hey Rae, blow on this.”
Rae walks over to the rest of the group, pulls the whistle out of his hand, and throws it hard against the wall. The whistle goes… nowhere. The whistle is stuck to our favorite monk’s favorite hand.
My “loot” table has a few tags on it i use some times, and this one is “sticky.” It will stay attached to wherever it touches until the next rest. To be honest with you, dear reader, i’m sad no one blew on it. It would’ve been great having someone try to talk like they’re lips are stuck for a few hours.
As Cypress walks over to the last Skeleton, and looks around the room to take in the new sights.
We are in the first crypt of a temple. A large octagonal room divided into six parts.
Our party stands in a section devoted to graves of ‘those with means’ (inn owners, bath house owners, wealthy madams, etc). There are a few lines of neat stone sarcophagi; they're plain, but still, worked stone. They are spaced with small paths through them for small groups to stand over the grave when it is time to inter a loved one. There are a few lids with symbols, or some carved reliefs in them, but those are still very simple and mostly made of straight lines.
In the center of the room is a raised floor, dominated by a large spiral staircase leading up to through the ceiling. This raised area is surrounded by a simple railing of iron bars with a wide wooden top for mourners to rest against as they look out at those they’ve lost. In the corners of this platform are stone benches for the grieving to sit and ponder on the lives of the ones they’ve lost. There are steps leading down from this area in all four major directions, and there are stone benches there for those who wish to be closer, or who want a bit more privacy. At the corners of this dais stand four lit brass braziers to illuminate the hall.
Across from us is a small field of plots. Twelve raised dirt beds, like a garden of the dead, where the moderate and middle classes can dump the ashes of they’re deceased on sacred earth.
Next to that field of plots is ‘The Waiting Room’ a section of the hall where the newly deceased are stored as their permanent rest is being readied for them. This is the great equalizer, for a brief time the poor and the rich, the holy and the damned, all wait for a spot to open up. Here is also where the poorest and forgotten members of the church are waiting to be taken to the lower floor, where they can be forgotten in peace.
On the other side of the wall next to us are the coffins of the rich. Like the slabs next to us, they are stone. But these are carved in detailed reliefs of they’re occupants, some with metal accents, or jewelry worn in life embedded in the stone. They have much more room around them for a larger family to gather ‘round, and they have ornate markers on them with comments about the life of the person lying within, and how they made the world a better place. Some of these are written by poets, who are paid to lie professionally after some old rotten bastard finally shuffles off and finally stops robbing the dicks off of less fortunate people.
The last section is truly imposing. The southern quarter of the hall has a light all its own. A pale and holy blue light glows from the wings of the statue, as well as from basins of holy water behind it. In front of this winged woman is a small throne. A simple wooden bench with a tall, straight back upholstered in blue cushioning. A simple blue foot rest is there on a simple blue rug. On the floor around this statue are four coffins, all of simple worked wood, painted over with blue paint in geometric lines of some holy significance.
Behind the statue are the steps. Four steps up and then one step down, onto another dais. At the top of the steps is a smaller statue. We can’t quite make this one out from where we stand, but some parts are clearly reaching out.
Behind this statue lies one last sarcophagi. The figure of a woman in clear relief on its lid, carved to look like she could get up at any moment, if only she wasn’t made of stone. Above her, mounted in the wall is a torch, a torch which burns with that same holy blue fire, and occasionally drips a white light onto the forehead of the woman carved on this coffin.
It is worthwhile to note here that Sorin observes something interesting. He’s been fascinated with the mechanical aspects of everything down here and notices that the whole floor here is gently sloped. Not so much that you’d notice walking along it, but enough that a marble would roll, or a stream of water, or a drunk might stumble in the down-hill direction.
As for the undead, in the city of Nibiru, they are considered a pest problem more than anything else. Basically, when you have a lot of dead bodies crowded together in a place of high magic, like a church, eventually you will have some issues with the dead resisting, well, being dead. This is very similar to how if you have an area of food storage kept in the open, you are likely to get mice and bugs.
So the city has an attitude of “Hey Decan, Mrs. Flouchter said she saw a zombie.”
“Ok, I’ll call the Dodgrem brothers, I think they should be free since the full moon isn’t for another three days. In the meantime, lay out the traps and make sure the blessings on the stairs are still good.”
So while they are a danger, like diseased raccoons, they aren’t really a cause for much concern.
Sorin explains all this zombie-pest info to the others as Cypress walks over to loot the last body.
Cypress stands over the last Skeleton and debates for a minute about whether or not to take the shortbow, it’s been damaged from laying in the dirt so long, but it might still sell…. Nah. He does decide to take a few arrows though.
Ari is feeling very weak. Take 8 damage and your Strength is temporarily reduced by 1.
As he walks back to give Cypress and Rae the arrows, Cypress notices something odd about Ari’s shadow… Shadows… plural…
Everyone, meet the Shadows, an undead creature that drains you of life, and reduces your strength score until your next rest. It lurks in corners and moves nearly silently. And if, say a party was distracted over a whistle, it could latch on to someone and grab them from behind without anyone, even the victim, noticing, simply by staying behind them and out of sight.
Cypress dashes forward, dropping the arrows, and pulling out a holy crest. He casts Scared Flame. The shadow has been waiting, and watching. It ducks to the side and the spire of divine light misses, burning Ari’s skin where the shadow was sucking out her life force. Now everyone can see what they missed before, and the other two ready themselves for another fight.
Sorin lifts his hand in the blink of an eye and casts Firebolt. This Shadow wasn’t un-born yesterday though and it splits in two around the flames and then reconnects, silently laughing at the wizard.
Rae… isn’t the most elegant fighter, but is definitely an effective one. She jumps off the sarcophagus she was standing on, and reaches out for a slap. She lands the slap with a small chime sound as the heavy bronze bell in her hand smacks against the Shadow’s face for extra damage.
The Shadow is hungry. It darts down wrapping its hands around Ari’s muscles; biting into her chest, right at the heart. Take that strength down by one more point, Ari.
Cypress digs deep into himself and finds that core belief that drove him on this righteous path. “I am here, to protect life!” He reaches out and casts Bless on Ari. The Shadow is thrown from her as the favor of Chauntea settles around her.
The Shadow takes damage. Its last bite hadn’t fully sunk in yet, and the transfer was interrupted. Ari, you can regain that last Strength drop since it was interrupted. The Shadow leaps into the air and hisses down at our little cleric, ready to attack.
Sorin lifts his hand, “I bet you can’t dodge with your back turned!” He shoots another trusty old reliable Firebolt.
The flaming arrow sinks into the dark flesh of the Shadow as it screams. The flames consume it from the inside out, burning away its very soul. Think about that for a second, a creature who lives in darkness, who is weak even in the reflected sun… being burned alive. Ouch.
Ari slumps against the wall, daggers out, and panting heavily. Weakened and close to unconsciousness she’s contemplating her own mortality in a literal tomb.
So, that’s where we leave it this week. En media res, or i guess op media res since we’re ending. The mind’s eye pulls away and sees our team taking care of their leader as she tries to get up, but deciding that sitting against this nice cold stone wall for a minute sounds nice.
See you all again soon.
"You know how sometimes when you’re drifting off to sleep you feel that jolt, like you were falling and caught yourself at the last second? It’s nothing to be concerned about, it’s usually just the parasite adjusting its grip."
--David Wong (Jason Pargin), “This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It”
Table talk:
There were some questions about Magic Missile this week and whether each missile automagically hits, or needs to make an attack roll, so i will be looking up full info on that for next time.
I will also be updating the loot table to fit more with what’s going on.
Cypress has figured out that the tool he found on the thug was a small metal file.
Cypress, as a cleric of a life-church, and Raelle, as someone who grew up in a monastery, are going to spend some time this week thinking about all this death. Killing creatures, and much more importantly, the undead. Does this rattle them? Does it bring up a moral question? Is it an act of good to protect the living? Or is it a sin to stop the dead from clinging to the unlife they have left. We’ll find out what they think next time. Stay tuned.
