"Looks good. I am good continuing here until we have a reason not to."
"Agreed. It is good to have some spending money though. Say, did anybody else hear that fiddle playing down there? I can't imaging a skeleton playing a fiddle...it's possible we have a live one. If so it maybe we could learn something of this place from it."
Sleepy grabs a lockbox and tucks it away. Let us know the encumbrance of each. I didn't see the separate encumbrance thread until yesterday so will fill that in now.
"I didn't hear a fiddle but maybe it is a magic or cursed item that controls whatever is digging. I have heard of pipes that control rats so why not a fiddle for something else."
Marullus wrote: ↑Fri Sep 22, 2023 1:56 am
He picks up one of the smaller boxes and tucks it in his pack, motioning for Sleepy and Ciarra to do the same with the other two. He then picks up the silver triangle with a ruby medallion and looks to interpret its symbology and heraldry. Int+Know [2d6+2]=9+2=11
Gars recognizes the medallion as a holy symbol of a god called Inahant. The god is known to represent Light and Revealing Secrets but also for Righteous Anger, usually in the form of thunderbolts from the heavens. Gars knows the god was worshiped in the West but not around Caral.
Enoch wrote: ↑Fri Sep 22, 2023 2:57 amLavin, nodding in agreement, pulls the armor out from underneath the medallion and looks at the rest of the group. If there's no objection, she turns her back, strips off her war robes, and dons the plate mail.
"How's it look?", she asks, extending her arms and turning. "Does anyone want to wear my robes?
They're heavy, but good at turning away a blade."
The plate armor fits Lavin like it was sized for her specifically. It also feels lighter, as if special care was taken to ensure the mobility of the wearer.
Magic armor is equivalent to masterwork for encumbrance purposes, so this set's encumbrance is 1, not 2.
Gars regards the medallion reverently, then hangs it around his neck. He pulls his Lantern out and readies it on his belt and then drinks down as much of his waterskin as he can, offers some to the others, then spills out any remainder on the floor. He then fits his box of silver into his pack.
"Fiddles, hmmm?" he pulls a blob of sealing wax from his writing kit and forms a small ball for each of his ears. "Never did like fiddles. Follow me and Laavin, then."
Sleepy struggles with the size and weight of the lockbox before giving up on it and sliding it beneath some debris, just off the path. "I think I'll come back for this."
The party advances down the corridor, Gars and Lavin at the front with Ciarra and Sleepy close behind. Soon the music becomes clearly audible for all to hear.
Rounding a corner, the hallway opens to a large room. The half of the room closest to the party is decorated similar to the rest of the complex, with smooth tiled floors and fancy, albeit rotted, tapestries hanging from the walls. The half further away appears to have been a wide stairway that led downward before a cave-in blocked the way.
There are four human figures who are the source of the mining noises, slaving away with pick and shovel at the rocks blocking the way. Standing next to them with one leg propped up on a chair, playing a black violin, is a heavily tattooed man in dark robes. His face is completely covered by a skull tattoo and his arms and hands also appear to be heavily inked.
As you enter, the man stops playing and turns toward you. As he stops the music, the four miners also turn toward you. Horrifyingly, three of the miners are dead! More of the animated corpses like you saw before. The fourth is alive, and appears tired from all the exertion. They all appear to be equipped like yourselves, a party of adventurers. Two of them wear armor, the third greasy leathers. The one who is alive wears fine clothes but is otherwise unremarkable... except the scar on his forehead.
The musician scowls at the party.
So. The disturbers of my industrious crew finally reveal themselves. I grow tired of these constant interruptions! Announce your intentions or get out!
Having recently arrived in Ket to seek your fortune, you had fallen in with a group of like-minded individuals on the road who planned to become rich as the West expanded.
Your luck turned for the worse rather quickly. Upon your first expedition into the unknown, you were ambushed by what seemed like endless waves of skeletons and knocked out cold. When you awoke, it was to a nightmare. You had been taken to some sort of cave and magically compelled to dig at all hours of the day and night. Your erstwhile companions toiled by your side and, sickeningly, when they died of exhaustion or their wounds, the necromancer in charge of the site animated their corpses and returned them to work at your side!
Luckily, you have not suffered this indignity for long before another group, more adventurers from the looks of them, have arrived. Perhaps in the confrontation between the mage and the party, you can escape! It feels like, now that the necromancer is distracted, his spell of compulsion has ceased to affect you.
Sleepy angles around the others and raises his hand. Before he can do anything though, the spear flies past aimed at the man. He curses and draws an arrow, attempting to down the man.
Seeing the adventurers begin an attack, and not wanting to be slain as an undead servitor, Daravek drops to the ground and tries to roll away from the fighting groups.
Lavin leaps forward, surprisingly agile in her gleaming plate. "One of them's still alive!"
Her blade flashes among the creatures, sweeping above the head of the last survivor, and shrieks down toward the necromancer. As she moves, she interposes herself between the necromancer and her newfound friends.
On-Turn: I will use Whirlwind Assault to do 7 Shock to everyone (except Daravek)
Attack: strike at the necromancer: Halberd strike: [1d20+6]=19+6=25, damage [1d10+5]=9+5=14
She does 7 Shock on a miss.
Move: She will Screen an Ally, protecting Daravek and Sleepy. If she is hit as a reault, she'll use Veteran's Luck as an Instant to turn it into a miss.
The party moves to the attack in a practiced blur of motion.
Ciarra throws her spear with such force that the necromancer is deeply cut and bleeding.
Gars rushes forward, moving between the death mage and his friends, and gruesomely cuts him down with a slash from his Accursed Blade. The necromancer dies messily with a spell on his lips.
At the same time, Lavin also moves forward to block the path of the necromancer. Realizing her attack is no longer needed, she turns her eyes to the Husks and spins her halberd to slice all of the undead foes. Choosing one of the armored enemies, she carves it up and drops it into the dust.
By the time Sleepy has nocked an arrow and looked for a target, the necromancer and one of the husks is already dead, and the other two are gravely injured. He shrugs and aims at the other armored husk, and kills it with one arrow.
Daravek stops, drops, and rolls away from the action.
OK, I give up. The 5 HD necromancer has only 11 of a possible 40 hp. Gars and Lavin kill him before it's even his turn.
The other three Husks have 9, 9, and 11 hp. Lavin immediately does 7 hp damage to all three, then kills H1.
Sleepy hits H2 and kills it.
H3 is left, with 4/11 hp. I'm not going to bother to roll the rest of combat out. H3 would have attacked Lavin, since she attacked it, but she will use Veteran's Luck to negate any successful attack. And I am assuming the five of you can do 4 hp of damage on one AC 13 enemy.
Total levels of the PCs = 10. Multiply by 5 PCs and you get 50.
Three husks and one Skilled Sorcerer is 14 HD. Multiply by 4 attacks and you get 56.
This was supposed to be an even fight and it was a complete rout.
My fault for having the necromancer within melee range but I'm also trying to remember if you've lost initiative more than once in the entire game.
I rolled the maximum initiative, critical hit, and max damage. Not every round is like that. But remember you warned us of the lethality here so we all made warriors.
The thing is, if you flipped the rolls you would have taken out half our group in the first round. It is more a problem with the system I think then how you are selecting the encounters. We have been very lucky, but if our luck shifts someone is going to die quick. I don't think it means you are doing anything wrong it just is how it is. The important part is that everyone (including the GM) is enjoying the game. I suspect in one of these fights someone on our side is going to go down. just a matter of time.
"Wow. Really really impressive. It's almost like these things don't stand a chance! Ha!
But also...I was going to talk to that guy. How about occasionally we don't announce ourselves with blades. Generally speaking, people are more valuable alive than they are dead."
He goes up to the remaining slave and cautiously approaches, hands up. "Hey - I'm Sleepy. You're not going to kill me are you. You said you're not with the necromancer and I guess I haven't heard any of these zombies talk before and your skin doesn't look dead so you're probably not dead yet right? Can we help you?"
Gars first inspects the dead raiser-of-the-dead, taking up his fiddle and examining it and his other belongings for magical auras, interpreting them as best he can. Magic [2d6+4]=7+4=11
He then turns curiously to the cave-in. How much rubble appears to remain? As he looks it over he comments curiously, "An industrious effort at least... opening a lost part of this ruin surely will reveal more profitable finds... it is too bad, animating the dead seems more efficient and kind than working the living. Now we will likely have to dig it out ourselves..."
But remember you warned us of the lethality here so we all made warriors. 
