Session 22 Recap & Experience Points Awards
After still another arduous day in the salt tunnels under Graven, the beleagured company locked the thick wooden door of the old saltminder’s chamber and hunkered down for a much-needed rest. Their thoughts turned quickly to the previous day’s events, in which they’d faced a strange ghost called the “Spiritcatcher” to recover a black onyx key, which they used to mercifully send the salt golem Tuneff to his “permanent rest.”
The encounter with the Spiritcatcher had not been difficult, a fact which did not pass the salt golem’s notice. “How is it you return so soon?” Tuneff had asked. “Did you not face the Spiritcatcher?”
“We faced him,” answered Schlemeel, the brash gnome in his roguish upspeak. “Faced him like fucking wildcats.”
Like fucking wildcats, indeed. The answer had lingered on the company’s minds, and now as they settled in for their hard-earned rest, the cleric Gambol could be seen casually etching a fearsome wildcat’s visage onto the face of his shield. Wildcats.
The Wildcats passed the hours studying the faded landscapes the child Sekana had painted on the walls here. “You will never finish the painting,” the Spiritcatcher had taunted them. But what painting? These? A few of the party members poked and prodded, and the ranger Unagi sketched a rough facsimile of the works for his own personal reference. But the answer eluded them, and the time came to move on.
With several of the company starved for fresh air and sunlight, the decision was made to explore the cave mouth and the adventurers soon emerged onto a broad prairie, with few signs of nearby civilization. The cave mouth itself had been framed in stone and artificial steps paved at the entrance, and the foundations of long-lost buildings remained visible amid the shrubs and grasses. And on a slight hill in the far distance, a modest, light stone building sat in heavy brush beside the bottom half of a defensive turret.
Running low on arrows and other supplies, the party had hoped for a nearby village, or at least some access to a merchant. But this old fortification did not appear promising. They turned and descended back into the salt caverns, headed straight for the teleportation pedestal they’d found a skoch past the entrance. There, the Wildcats joined hands and placed a violet salt crystal on the pedestal. As expected, their world turned suddenly black, then white, black, then white again, all in an instant, and the party members were wracked with pain and anguish—then suddenly stood, peacefully, in a mysterious old closet.
Looking up, the company noted the high, 20-foot ceilings in this room of smooth bricks, all of different sizes and colors formed from the familiar light-emitting salt crystals. They would soon discern this room belonged to a peculiar vertical construction, planted deeply into the ground and pocked with tall, thin windows that looked out only upon hard-packed earth. But here, amid musty coats and cloaks, the mage Grayndalf fished a thick old robe from the rack.
The elf’s colleagues checked back their collective excitement, hoping the day had finally come that Greyndalf would again properly cover himself—even if the robe’s fusty odor gave tell of its impossible age. Alas, it was not to be this day, for the mage simply rolled the garment into a bundle and tied its cord around. “Ahh,” the elf declared. “A bedroll.”
The gnome Schlemeel at last pushed open the towering door of the closet. This revealed a finely-preserved corridor through the salt-brick construction, with rising and desending staircases at each end. Lining the hall were several more polished versions of the same territorial landscape the company had seen painted on the wall of the old saltminder’s chamber—grassland in the foreground, forest in the middle distance, peaks rising in back. These were painted on canvases stretched over old boards, however, and hung carefully on the walls. “Sekana,” were all the paintings signed.
Across from the old closet, the company found an identical door, which they quickly opened to find an art studio of sorts. An old workbench rested against a near wall, on which sat a painter’s palate, jars of still-vivid paint, and brittle old brushes. And on an old easel in the center stood a half-finished version of Sekana’s same landscape painting.
Without hesitation did the party begin its experimentations. The mage Greyndalf muttered the tones of his detect magicspell, and soon sensed enchantments emanating from both the stunningly-preserved paint and the unfinished canvas. The sorcerer Onog first lifted a paintbrush from the venerable workbench, only to see the old brush simply crumble in his hand. Two party members tried to dab paint onto the unfinished work, and were suddenly thrown backward by an unseen force.
Finally leaving the painting, the company moved across the corridor to a tall pair of double doors, which opened to an ornate bedchamber with patterns of green and violet salt bricks climbing the walls and a stunning mosaic upon the ceiling. Though the furniture inside was poorly preserved, a wooden desk with the engraved nameplate “Gibronodol” stood very much intact, even if the parchment notes inside were significantly moth-eaten and decayed. The company salvaged what they could for later study, then proceeded to the ascending staircase.
At the top, the Wildcats found an odd domed chamber—perhaps 25 feet across but with a ceiling dozens of feet above, with an X-shaped stone spire shooting up from the middle of the floor. Scattered about were old planters and earthenware pots—dirt-filled, and holding the dried husks of old plants, as if this underground cavity was once an actual garden. But the company had little chance to investigate, for the screeches and wails of many strange, undead toadstools suddenly assaulted their ears. These painful, otherworldly calls were promptly answered by a trio of termesets: bizarre vine-men, mockeries of nature capable of binding foes with magical entanglements. They issued suddenly forth in a flash and a hail of fog.
The termesets found little success in their attack upon the Wildcats, however, as their vine strikes persistently failed and their brittle forms were no match for the warriors’ enchanted blades. But the relentless shrieking toadstools denied the mages their concentration, and the termesets’ strength soon proved in their numbers; only seconds into the battle, three more of the vine beings arrived to reinforce their predecessors.
The ranger Unagi silenced one shrieking toadstool with a precise bowshot. But the cleric Gambol counted eleven more of the abominations, which the company quickly discerned were responsible for summoning the termeset foes. And so necessity promptly birthed an ingenious solution, as the ranger joined with the rogue Schlemeel to drag a rope across the chamber floor and decapitate the screaming fungi en masse.
Though the shriekers’ scattered positions around the crowded dome complicated the task severely, fortune smiled on the mismatched duo and they managed to destroy every last one of the remaining eleven monstrosities in a single determined pass, decapitating the toadstools with their furious reverse-clothesline maneuver.
The dome suddenly quiet, the company easily mopped up the lingering termesets and then proceeded to examine their surroundings. In the far corner they found a collection of odd machinery—a human-like torso made completely of tin, iron cages attached to wires that climbed the length of the middle spire, a rotting clay leg, a barrel of gears, hinges, and fasteners. “This,” the sorcerer Onog declared, “must be where the golems were made.”
The party’s investigation was soon cut short, however, as the cleric Gambol set the termesets’ remains ablaze and the smoke quickly accumulated. There being no other path out of the dome, the group marched back down the stairs, and then down another flight to find a scene of utter destruction.
Debris covered the floor of an entire level here, with the most distinguishing feature being the massive hole knocked in a far wall. This led to an irregular tunnel into the earth, which the party followed a short distance to find a nest made of fabrics and other such materials undoubtedly taken from the salt brick construction. The company just began to inspect the nest when a sidewall suddenly gave way behind them, and a massive, two-legged beast with the head of a beetle—an fearsome umber hulk--burst through. Catching the party by surprise, the hulk slam the ranger Unagi with its powerful claw and mandible—just as a second beast exploded through the opposite wall and tore viciously into the dwarft Jowdain.
The Wildcats fought back frantically. Greyndalf blasted the first of the creatures with a lightning bolt, Onog followed with his minute meteors, and the rogue Schlemeel struck with a well-placed sneak attack. But the beasts raged on, ferociously hammering on the company’s warriors while unleashing a terrible gaze attack that sent the ranger Unagi wandering dazed through the unknown tunnels. When another smash of a hulk’s claw appeared to fatally crush the gnome Schlemeel, the Wildcats faced perhaps the most desperate moment in all their travels.
Miraculously, however, the gnome managed to avert the worst of the hulk’s attack, and rose from the blow to continue the fight. The cleric Gambol, who had already inspired his mates with a beacon of hope, called upon the power of Cygnival to heal his comrades’ wounds more impressively than he ever had before. The mages continued their relentless assaults, Greyndalf detonating fireballbehind one hulk while Onog pelted the other with his furious frost missiles.
The company had gained the upper hand, but the umber hulks weren’t finished. Their gazes of confusion now claimed Schlemeel and the rugged dwarf Jowdain. Unless swiftly defeated, the hulks threatened to scatter the company and devour the disordered adventurers one-by-one. But the hulks had taken a beating, and unlike the warriors they faced, would not know the warmth of a cleric’s restorative magic. When Greyndalf snuck around a traverse to flank the hulks and unleashed an augmented thunderwave, it was all but over. The spell knocked the one remaining hulk against a far passage wall, and Onog flung the last of his minute meteorsto end the grueling fight.
Beneath their feet, the glint of precious metals and other valuable sparked through the scattered debris. But there was no time to stop and collect these treasures, not with the possibility of more umber hulks afoot. While the half-orc Onog bent down to retrieve a small vial of an impossibly bright, white liquid, the he soon followed his companions as they trudged, bruised and exhausted, back out of the hulks’ cave. Girbondol’s old bed chamber lay just above, the perfect place to recover battle.
Adventure Notes:
- Shrieker, Undead. You’ve long known of the unusual ‘shrieker’ mushrooms, exotic caps that emit shrill calls whenever a person or other being of measurable size draws near. But the shriekers you encountered were more unusual even still—genuinely undead fungi whose shrieks were surpassingly ugly and cruel—heard in realms other than this one. These summoned termesets, vicious vine-men of a dark shadowland.
- Umber Hulk. Quite possibly the most fearsome enemies you have yet faced in your travels were the two burrowing umber hulks that ambushed the company from behind earthen cave walls. Powerfully-built and with beetle-like jaws, the hulks struck with three powerful physical attacks each combat round—all in addition to an ever-present gaze weapon that disabled several party members with confusion. The hulks were tough (~90 hit points) and difficult to hit (AC 18), but fortunately did not display resistance to any particular form of magic (with the company having used electrical, fire, cold, and thunder-based spells).
- Potion of Frost Giant Strength. Closely examining the vial of white liquid during the early portion of the company’s rest, the ice mage Onog excitedly announces his findings: the item is a potion of frost giant strength, capable of endowing any creature with fantastic might (23 STR) for a full hour after consumption.
Experience Points & Inspiration
Combat/Encounters
The company defeated six termesets and the two umber hulks in this session, as well as the undead shriekers. The experience value for defeating the umber hulks is 3,600 XP, with an additional bonus of 1,200 XP for defeating them in their ambush site.
The party is awarded an additional 1,200 XP for defeating the termesets and 600 XP for defeating the undead shriekers. Of course, had the company not defeated the shriekers so quickly, then more termesets would have been summoned. While the battle could have become much more difficult ha enough termesets arrived (or if they’d ever managed to hit anything on their attacks), there is little question the party could have handled another three, six, or even more termesets without facing any real serious danger. Therefore, the company is awarded an extra bonus of 1,200 XP for the value of termesets it effectively defeated by eliminating the shriekers before the additional termesets could be summoned.
These awards total 7,800 XP, which is divided among the six player characters for an even 1,300 XP each.
Interactions/Role-Playing/Quest progress
The company is also awarded experience for the following accomplishments:
- Reaching the Graven surface, 50 XP;
- Using the purple salt crystal to reach the Admark dungeon, 250 XP;
- Recovering Gibrondol’s notes, 50 XP;
These awards add up to an additional 350 XP, divided and rounded to 60 XP per character.
Inspiration
The adventure gods approved highly of Unagi & Schlemeel’s inventive and wildly successful “human weed whacker” trick in this session. Sometimes there is no need to belabor the point.
Final Session 20 totals:
- Jowdain acquitted himself well in battle, garnering 1,360 XP.
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