6 April 2007
Players/Characters
Crumpus (Russell) 8th level male Human Fighter
Elzara (Will) 8th level female Elven Monk
Kamal(Ian) 4th level Male Troglodyte Hexblade
Zoook (Ewar) 8th level Gnome Bard
Alexis Serria (Andrew) 4th/4th level female Human Cleric/Fighter
Eolias (Richard) 6th/1st/1st level male Elven Ranger/Wizard/Arcane Archer
Game Events
That evening as the party prepared for their coming encounter with the Snow Leopards, another quarter finalist team, they were surprised to learn that they had been selected to fight in the exhibition match against the wild beast instead in place of the current champions, Auric's Band.
Elzara was sent to scout the upper levels completely, and she skulked off into the darkness, avoiding contact with the roving guard patrols.
Whilst hiding from one such patrol she overheard the guards complaining about having to look after the huge Frost Salamander that was to star in tomorrow's exhibition match - vital information indeed!!
Swiftly covering the upper level, Elzara came across a detention area which was empty apart from one prisoner who seemed unable to converse normally. Elzara attempted to communicate by mime, but was unable to make the poor wretch understand, so she left to try and locate the keys to his cell.
Returning to the guard room discovered the evening before, Elzara made a swift check around the sleeping guards but was unable to find a set of keys, surmising that they were probably with the roving patrol.
Checking the last two store rooms she found a large number of flasks of Alchemist's Fire, and one room which stank of vinegar thanks to a large open vat of the stuff against the far wall.
Returning to the party Elzara updated them on what she had heard and seen.
The party decided to re-investigate the vinegar storage room, whereupon a secret door was found behind the open vinegar keg.
First onto the landing behind the door, Elzara triggered a Glyph of Warding trap and almost fell victim to a Slay Living spell, a signal that what lay below would be no push over!
At the bottom of the stairs three Spawn of Kyuss zombies lay in wait. Forgetting what had happened the last time she faced these creatures, Elzara rushed forwards to attack one. As before, when she withdrew her hand it was crawling with green worms which immediately burrowed in, making their way to her brain. Alexis managed to turn all three zombies and then the party turned their attention to their stricken comrade, managing to extract all the worms before they could kill Elzara, but not before they had done serious damage to her Intelligence.
Moving on, the group came to a room with a 5' wide hole in the floor which, from the smell, led to a sewer outlet of some kind.
Being the only character able to climb the slimy walls, Elzara scrambled down to find herself in a large cavern through which a stream of refuse-filled water slowly flowed. Deciding not to investigate further Elzara started to climb back to the others, but came under attack from a group of slimes and jellies which were attached to the ceiling, but she was quickly able to outdistance them.
Moving on the group came across what used to be a machine room used for magically transporting huge quantities of water, presumably for recreating naval battles in the arena above. Crawling into the guts of the broken machine itself, Zoook disovered a small pipe that he was able to move down until it was intersected by a strange transparrent barrier to a cocoon-like chamber glowing with strange green light. Inside this chamber was a gigantic maggot or grub, and in his eagerness to see more Zoook touched the barrier which gave him a massive jolt of negative energy.
In the next room the party discovered the source of this unearthly green light - a beam was being transmitted from an open scroll on a desk and through a set of closed double doors, presumable towards the maggot that Zoook had seen. After attempting to bypass the beam of light, the party discovered that touching the beam had no apparent ill effect, and moved onto the next room which was filled with six Spawn of Kyuss and a further skeletal creature which still had it's intestines writhing within it's ribcage.
The Spawn were once again easily turned by Alexis, but the other, identified as a Mohrg, proved much more difficult to destroy, inflicting damage on both Elzara and Crumpus before being eventually despatched.
Just as the final undead was killed, the room was entered by another spawn and a strange four legged bird that stood over 6' high, followed by a Tiefling in chain holding a glowing club.
The bird and the undead were quickly destroyed, but the attacking Tiefling proved somewhat problematic - no-one was able to get within 10' of him, and only Eolias was able to damage him at range with arrows that passed straight through the force barrier.
In response to this, the Tiefling cast blindness on Eolias and retreated into another room where he dispelled his shield and awaited the inevitable assault of the party.
He didn't have long to wait, and the group managed to knock him down fairly easily due to the massive amounts of damage that they can now dole out.
Also in this room was a motionless female zombie which resembled Ekayim's missing sister. Alexis checked the body and determined that the cause of death had been manual strangulation - there was even still an imprint on her neck from a serpent-styled ring, almost exactly like the ring worn by Raknian, the arena's director.
Searching the Tiefling's body the party found a +1 unholy club, +1 chainmail, +1 light fortification wooden shield, a Periapt of Health and a strand of Prayer Beads. Opening a nearby chest, Alexis was fortunate to avoid a particularly nasty trap that would have imprisioned her in another dimension, and found a quantity of cash and gems along with a potion of Cure Moderate Wounds, a scroll of Death Ward(11th), 2 scrolls of Ethereal Jaunt(11th), 3 doses of Dust of Tracelessness, a Wand of Restoration(36), a Murylands Spoon, 2 blocks of Incence of Meditation and 3 Potions of Gentle Repose.
Knowing that they had to fight the Frost Salamander at 10am, and as the time was now rapidly approaching 3am the group decided to return to their room under the arena.
The next morning, the party were brought out onto the sands for their exhibition match, and cast the various spells and drank the potions that they needed to combat the Frost Salamander whilst they were being introduced to the crowd.
Ten long minutes passed as the teams of handlers struggled to bring the beast into the arena, so many of the party's spells and potions had worn off by the time a huge waggon was manhandled into the centre of the arena. The guards retreated 100', holding ropes attached to pins holding the waggon together, and at a prearranged signal the beast was let loose.
As the sides of the box dropped the party found themselves looking at a very strange monster indeed - almost like a 20' high frog, but with four tentacles instead of front legs, three eyes on a central eyestalk and a mouth full of very sharp, long teeth! Whatever this was, it certainly wasn't a Frost Salamander!!!
Crumpus carefully edged towards the beast but was snatched up in the tentacles and squeezed before he could retaliate. This was the signal for the others - Zoook began his inspiring song, Alexis cast Deific Vengance and Eolias stood his ground and let loose a hail of arrows whilst Elzara and Kamaal charged into combat.
Despite taking huge amounts of damage the beast concentrated on the task at hand - namely eating the unfortunate Crumpus who quickly found himself inside the stomach of the strange creature. Drawing a dagger he attempted to cut himself out, but wasn't able to do enough damage before he succomed to the grinding and churning of the creature's stomach muscles.
On the outside the combined damage of all five remaining party members managed to slay the behemoth, but it was too late for Crumpus who was already dead by the time he was cut free.
Many of the party noticed that Loris Raknian was visibly shocked and upset at the defeat of his monster, but was able to control himself to present Ekayim with their trophy (a gold human gladiator statue) and 10,000GP.
When Ekayim came down to the party on their underground home to congratulate them, and to also bring a Cleric to cast Raise Dead on Crumpus, Alexis briefed him on the success of their mission to determine his sister's fate. Obviously upset, Ekayim asked the party to kill the zombie, but bring her body back to him so that he could take it home and either attempt to raise her, or to bury her in the family plot.
Later that afternoon Auric's Band decisively defeated the Snow Leopards, so the final was to be between the defending Champions and the party.
That evening, the party slipped back into the catacomb to recover the body of Ekayim's sister. Disconcertingly, as the party bludgeoned her unresisting body, Alexis noticed tears running down her cheeks. Alexis worried that she had read the signs wrong, and that they had just killed a perfectly healthy young woman!
Exploring further into the cave system, the party came upon a room split in half by a spidersilk curtain. As Elzara attempted to move the curtain a stinking cloud spell caused her to retch and run for clean air.
Eolias, Alexis and Zoook were separated from the others by a Wall of Ice and Crumpus also fell victim to the Stinking Cloud.
Kamaal was hit by a Cone of Cold, so when the others were able to destroy a section of the ice wall Crumpus, Elzara and Kamaal made a break for it, closely followed by the rest of the party, persued by the entity that had so effectively beaten them.
Fortunately for them, the battered party managed to outdistance the creature, and deciding that discretion was, in this case, the better part of valour, decided to leave the complex and prepare for their final battle in the morning.
The next day found the party arranged on the sands of the arena facing off against Auric's Band, consisting of Auric himself, his wizard companion Kelellek and three flesh golems. Loris Raknian was nowhere to be seen, so the wizard MC announced the start of the battle.
Both Auric and Khellek immediately flew up 40' while the flesh golems lumbered into combat.
Zoook blinded Khellek with a spell as Elzara, Alexis, Kamaal and Crumpus got into battle with Auric and his golems. The very floor of the arena shook with the violence of the confrontation.
Khellek managed to dispel the blindness as damage was done on all sides, then to the amazement of all present the shaking of the ground increased until the sand of the arena was flung away as the gargantuan maggot seen by Zoook a few nights earlier forced it's way to the arena floor.
Loris Raknian then appeared in the stands, shouting that the Apostle of Kyuss was upon them, pointed to the gladiators and instructing the worm to attack and devour!
All emnity against each other gone, the two sets of combatants pooled their resources and attacked the creature with everything that they had.
Alexis cast Searing Ray doing 1.5 times max damage (powered by her Minor Metamagic Rod and also one of the Incence of Meditation cubes used the previous evening), blasting a huge hole in the worm's side.
Undeterred by this, the worm bit and swallowed Auric whole, and also damaged those fighting in close combat against it.
Two maxed Deific Vengances from Alexis, plus the cumulative damage from all the other charcters eventually killed the beast, but not before it had managed to destroy Auric with it's stomach acid.
The crowd went silent, then the chant of 'ALEXIS!! ALEXIS!! ALEXIS!!' reverberated around the arena as the crowd went wild at the spectacle they have just witnessed.
Khellek conferred with the wizard MC, who announced that Auric's Band was withdrawing from the combat, leaving the party as the new Champions of the Free Arena!!
Raknian had disappeared, and so the party accepted their winnings and headed over to Raknian's Palace to confront him there. On arrival the sight of hastily ransacked rooms made it obvious that Raknian had fled, so the group decided to visit the sage Elligos to let him know what they had found below the arena.
When they arrived at his house they found the badly mutilated bodies of both Elligos and his servant Pollard who had been dead for several days. The bodies looked like they had been tortured at length, and a cleric who is summoned to attempt a raise informed the party that the souls of the departed did not wish to return, and so any raise attempt would fail.
Over the next few days, the group revelled in their new-found fame as Champions of the Free Arena until one night a disturbing message arrived for Elzara, being the only surviving member of the party to have been a native of Diamond Lake.
It appears that part of the village has been destroyed by a dragon, and that they are needed urgently!
Magical Items Found
- +1 Unholy Club
- +1 Chainmail
- +1 light fortification wooden shield
- Periapt of Health
- Necklace of Prayer Beads
- Potion of Cure Moderate Wounds
- Scroll of Death Ward(11th)
- 2 Scrolls of Ethereal Jaunt(11th)
- 3 doses of Dust of Tracelessness
- Wand of Restoration(36)
- Murylands Spoon
- 2 blocks of Incence of Meditiation
- 3 potions of Gentle Repose
Summary
- 9 x Spawn of Kyuss - 7,998 XP
- Mohrg - 2,400 XP
- Tiefling Cleric - 7,200 XP
- Froghemoth - 14,400 XP
- Apostle of Kyuss - 19,200 XP
Total XP - 51,198 XP
Kamal - 8,533 XP, -
Eolias - 4, XP (NPC)
Crumpus - 8,533 XP
Zoook - 8,533 XP
Alexis - 8,533 XP
Elzara - 8,533 XP
Current Totals
Kamal - 40,712 (level up to 9!)
Eolias - 40,712 (level up to 9!)
Crumpus 40,712 (level up to 9!)
Zoook, 40,712 (level up to 9!)
Alexis - 40,865 (level up to 9!)
Elzara - 40,712 (level up to 9!)
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