Entities Unseen (ooc and questions Vll)

[rredmond]

That's the one that ravenn4544 locked in there I think:

I think there is still 1 ghoulish creature left in there, no?

I believe there is, but it is turned and your spell will go off before the turning ends.

[Inferno]

It's true, as was clearly explained in lines 246-249 of my DM post!

PC Magic:

• Call Lightning (Bo): Casting time remaining: 3 rounds.
  Turned Undead (Ingrid): Z2: 5 rounds remaining. V1: 7 rounds remaining.
  Hold Portal (Mouser): Target: Altar. Duration: 1 round.

[ravenn4544]

sounds good on the action! appreciated.

[OGRE MAGE]

It's true, as was clearly explained in lines 246-249 of my DM post!

PC Magic:

• Call Lightning (Bo): Casting time remaining: 3 rounds.
  Turned Undead (Ingrid): Z2: 5 rounds remaining. V1: 7 rounds remaining.
  Hold Portal (Mouser): Target: Altar. Duration: 1 round.

That is clear.

I must have read it backwards or something.

[OGRE MAGE]

YES!!!

Now can we wait ten more minutes so he can do it again?

[rredmond]

[wolfpack]

aren't we still missing a party member.

[Inferno]

aren't we still missing a party member.

Three.

Hothhil Thornbush was last seen here.
Pyotr Whitetip was last seen here.
Mondegreen Cindereye was last seen here.

[ChubbyPixie]

Hey, guys.

In a bit of last minute surprise travel for work, I will be flying around the entire, literal globe starting this Sunday, the 21st, until August 16th. I know my posting will probably get erratic, especially during the first two weeks of August, so the normal rules apply about not letting me hold up the action, etc...

[rredmond]

Piggy backing off of CP, my 6 friends from HS and I have been getting together the third weekend in July since 1988 for an annual fishing* weekend. So I'll definitely be spotty this Friday through Sunday. I don't think it'll affect anything, but just in case please NPC as you see fit.

*To clarify, there's never actually been any fishing done that weekend, it's more about spending time together and drinking a few beers, smoking a few cigars and drinking the occasional good whisky. But it's better to say "Fishing Weekend" than "HMWHC Weekend"

[Inferno]

Thanks for the heads up, guys. Appreciate it.

[Inferno]

Telkis
If needed (for the smell): Save vs. CON (12): [1d20] = 16

Good news. He needed a Save vs Poison for the stench. Which he makes.

[ChubbyPixie]

Telkis
If needed (for the smell): Save vs. CON (12): [1d20] = 16

Good news. He needed a Save vs Poison for the stench. Which he makes.

Ha. Right. I forgot there is a specific save for that...

[ravenn4544]

Will be offline from this Sunday through the following Sunday (150 mile white water rafting trip through the grand canyon ). Please NPC as appropriate.

[Inferno]

Thanks for the heads up, Raven. Have fun!

[Inferno]

Experience Points Award is here: viewtopic.php?p=208992#p208992 (scroll to the bottom of the post)

...including the annual XP bonus! They say PbP is slow-paced, but it's been one busy, dread-filled year:

The Story So Far, continued:
Here we shall continue the account of the finals days of our doomed heroes:

Book ll: The Horror at Vicar's Head

Chapter 17: The Thing in the Woods

• Day 1:
  • Relentless, the heroes set out from Briarsgate on the trail of evil, seeking the origins of the malevolence that plagued Briarsgate. Joined by other adventurers, they journey northward into the ominous shadows of looming black mountains. As weather threatens, they find a tiny settlement nestled at the base of the thickly forested peaks. Scouting it, they surprise a girl and frighten her mother. The heroes explain themselves and are brought into a meeting house, fed and questioned by the reverend, Gideon Ashblood who leads this small colony of Pelor dissenters. The settlers ask for help against the Thing in the Woods, a lurking terror without name or shape that has stolen a child from them. As the heroes promise to search for the child, Long Bo divines the snowstorm's consequence. They investigate the missing girl's homestead and find tracks leading into the wood. With time running out, they follow the tracks into the foreboding woods. The heroes are lost in the woods of the doom haunted mountain as the blizzard descends upon them. They try to build shelter before they are claimed by the elements. Somehow they survive the night, plagued by dreams of unspeakable darkness. At dawn they are set upon by wolves.

• Day 2:
  • The onslaught of the wolf pack is savage and merciless. Rudolf is the first to fall. Then Pyotr. Then Mondegreen. Urdur and Mouser fall. Then Ingrid speaks in the ancient language of wolves and persuades the pack to leave, for now. Hunted by wolves, the lost, wounded heroes try to find their way out of the fog shrouded forest. They discover a strange black altar in the wood and cautiously investigate it. Suddenly, the top of the stone altar opens like a coffin and from out of it lunge fiendish, undead horrors! And the trees themselves echo the heinous monsters' bloodcurdling screams! Depraved undead fiends savage the heroes with demoniac ferocity and malice, sowing havoc and dread. The heroes prevail and pause to tend to their wounded and regain their strength.

Chapter 18: A Fate Worse Than Death

• Day 2, continued:
  • Night falls. The moon rises. And suddenly, horribly, the heroes transform into wolf-like monsters! They remember little of what transpired next.
  Day 3:
  • The heroes awaken after dawn in the haunted wood, smeared with blood that is not their own. In despair, they try to find their way back, and become lost in the haunted wood. They wander for hours until they come upon a cemetery and a town.

Chapter 19: Ghost Town

• Day 3, continued:
  • The despairing heroes have found Vicars Head. Cautiously, they enter the eerie silence of forlorn desolation. There, they make dreadful discoveries including the grisly ruins of a battlefield in the center of the hamlet, plagued by rats and crows. The heroes enter the tower, desperately searching for a room in which to lock themselves. They find a dungeon beneath the tower and imprison themselves. Then they undergo their frightful transformation into otherworldly things.

• Day 4:
  • They awaken at dawn. They and their cell doors have survived the night. The heroes explore the stone tower, learning more of the dark fate of the ruined hamlet. The cursed heroes separate and continue their investigations into the doom that came to Vicar's Head. A desecrated church is entered. In the tower, a secret library of the occult is discovered. In the streets, hanged witches writhe to life! And in the dungeon, the massacred dead of the tower siege walk the Oerth again!

Chapter 20: Hungry Are The Dead

• Day 4, continued:
  • An unholy legion of the living dead walks the streets of Vicar's Head! Some of the heroes attempt to flee the doomed hamlet. Pyotr falls, and Rudolf locks himself into the dungeon beneath the tower. Telkis and Urdur encounter a lone survivor. Bo, Brevos and Mouser are lost in the fog, and Hothhil, Ingrid and Mondegreen descend from the tower into the dungeon. Bo, Brevos and Mouser flee the town of the damned, racing headlong for its graveyard. They are not followed. Urdur and Telkis ignore the rantings of the madman and search the church, while in the dungeon, Ingrid heals Pyotr's wounds and Hothhil advances to rescue Rudolf! Then, in the church, the raving madman begins to transform into a beast! Urdur and Telkis flee and barricade the door against the wolf creature, as Hothhil joins the battle against the undead legion! In the haunted wood, Bo, Brevos and Mouser watch in horror as spectral figures emerge from out of the fog. They flee for their lives! Urdur and Telkis escape the church through a stained glass window, and the heroes in the dungeon are surrounded by a host of grisly undead! Hothhil and Mondegreen fall beneath their onslaught. The unspeakable inhuman predator that the clean-shaven man has become hunts Telkis and Urdur through the streets of Vicar's Head. Suddenly, Urdur falls beneath the primal beast's claws and fangs. In the dungeon, Pyotr is beaten into unconsciousness by cold dead hands. In the haunted wood beyond doomed Vicar's Head, loathsome undead stalk Brevos and Mouser, and trap Bo in a tree! They slowly start to pull themselves up the trunk! Long Bo cries out to the god of Nature in this, his darkest hour of need. The tree itself answers, its branches writhing to monstrous life and holding the dead men tight. In the forlorn dungeon, Hothhil and Ingrid are the next to fall. Bo murders one of the trapped living corpses in his writhing tree, as the host of undead break through the iron bars protecting Rudolf! Telkis falls beneath savage jaws, and Rudolf before a horde of undead. Bo, Brevos and Mouser flee the village of the damned. All the other heroes perish within its borders! Then the full moon rises and raises them from the dead! Once more, they undergo ghastly, harrowing transformations into things inhuman and unspeakable!
  Day 5:
  • Dawn breaks cold and grey. The heroes awaken in the woods, lost and without their possessions.

Chapter 21: Pact With The Devil

• Day 5, continued:
  • Forsaken and damned, the heroes lament their dark fate. Then wolves come to give them succor... if only they will join them. When the heroes will not see reason, the wolves depart, knowing it is only a matter of time before they come to their senses. Suddenly Urdur mesmerizes the pack leader and questions him! The wolves descend upon Urdur without mercy and the spell is broken! The unnatural wolves of the haunted wood withdraw with their prize, the immortal soul of Pyotr Whitetip.
    After recovering, the remaining forlorn heroes begin their desperate journey across the dark mountainside. By nightfall, they approach the strange black altar in the woods. They search nearby and locate their lost possessions where they were first consumed by the Curse of the Beast. The heroes silently reequip themselves. Close by, at the altar, blasphemous pacts with unspeakable entities are made by flame and by darkness. After all they've been through, few wish to raise a sword against it tonight. The heroes bury the beautiful necklace and the serpentine dagger from the Hell Mouth. Then Rudolf disappears into the pitch shadows, in the direction of the heinous shrine. When he does not return, Hothhil ventures after him, alone. Time crawls on and dark blossoms of dread flower in the heroes' minds.
    Then Hothhil returns, urging them onward! They follow and discover witches and other shapes chanting and writhing around Rudolf as he lays upon the black sacrificial altar... willingly! Suddenly, Mouser plunges his dagger into Rudolf as half the heroes are deafened and all of them are blinded! The blindness clears in time to witness Mouser plunging his dagger into Rudolf again and again! Ingrid's magic holds Mouser still and heals Rudolf. The grey druid communes with the tortured Ents. Steeling themselves, the heroes approach the altar. Suddenly, out of it lunge nightmarish horrors from beyond the grave! The witches' eerie song entrances almost all the heroes! Ingrid drives back the undead and the spell is suddenly broken! Female figures emerge from the darkness of the haunted wood and speak in eerie synchronization, saying something dreamlike and ethereal that cannot be understood. Long Bo succumbs to their beguilement. Then the shrouded handmaidens lunge forward with a feral hunger that shall never be sated. Ingrid drives them off as the witches weave spells and Long Bo ensnares his friends with living plants. Witches are slaughtered by sword and bludgeon, stone and arrow; and by a new trick from up Urdur's sleeve. Their evil is eradicated from the Oerth.
    Long Bo communes with the ancient towering trees as to how best destroy the heinous altar. Ingrid drives back the undead again as the grey druid begins chanting his most powerful spell! Long Bo is only halfway through casting when suddenly the lid of the unholy altar opens again! Ingrid struggles to hold back the tide of evil! The heroes vanquish the unholy scourge and the grey druid keeps chanting; building the storm! Suddenly a jagged bolt of white-hot electricity explodes from the heavens and strikes the heinous black altar in the woods, sundering it! Its diabolical power is broken, purified by fire from the gods! Then Brevos makes a startling discovery in the darkness of the haunted wood: the horrific, violated corpse of Hothhil! A second strike of lightning utterly destroys the black altar.

Thanks, everyone.
And congrats to Telkis and Urdur who each gain a new level.

[rredmond]

Woot! New levels means a safer Rudolph, er, I mean party!!

[SocraticLawyer]

W00t!

Any chance that a levelled-up Urdur can re-attempt to learn a spell he failed to learn the first time around? Like, Phantasmal Force or Color Spray??

[rredmond]

I think next time we lightning bolt first and ask questions later!
That would have helped at Vicar's Head and likely at Ashblood's town (did that have a name? Pelorville?)

[Inferno]

W00t!

Any chance that a levelled-up Urdur can re-attempt to learn a spell he failed to learn the first time around? Like, Phantasmal Force or Color Spray??

He'll need to find the spell in-game, in a scroll or spellbook. Unless he had a crit failure on his roll to learn the spell; in that case, he can never learn it.

I think next time we lightning bolt first and ask questions later!
That would have helped at Vicar's Head and likely at Ashblood's town (did that have a name? Pelorville?)

The Ashblood Colony.