Rested, having spent a few hours in the Altar room, we investigate the secret door that heads downward. After a bit of work, we are able to pull it open and head downward. Near the entrance, we enter into a room of huge lizard like creatures that go all nasty on us.
Encounter 1: 5 Rage Drakes
From this point onward, our GM starts rolling randomly in a manner similar to Warhammer Quest, building a Dungeon for us step by step. We spend the better part of 4 hours just exploring and killing using a random set of encounters:
Encounters 2 to 11 (D6):
- 1 Gnell
- d6 Ochre Jellies
- 1 Gelatinous Cube
- d8 Deathrattle Vipers
- d8 Deathjump Spiders
- d6 Dire Stirges
During this, we come across a corpse of someone who preceded us here, he's wearing Rogue Gloves, a Handy Haversack, and has a Rope of Climbing. Our Cleric also found (Passive Perception test of 25) a Diadem of Acuity in this part of the dungeon, hidden in a crack between the floor and the wall.
After 10 encounters, we exit the dungeon and enter a cave system that it breaks into. It's scorching hot in these caves, and there are rivers of lava flowing through the system. Exploring the caves, we come across some things that seem to actually live in the Lava itself.
Encounter 12: 1 Magma Claw + 2 Magma Hurlers
Encounter 13: 2 Magma Claws + 1 Magma Hurler
Followed by a grande finale battle against
Encounter 14: 1 Magma Brute
Behind the Magma Brute is a door etched into the cave wall, and through that doorway is a staircase going down. We are relatively unhurt with most of our Healing Surges still available, so rather than rest up any, we opt to continue.... Game ends here, and begins the next week with us heading downward into the darkness below. It's another dungeon which begins with us nearly falling through a
Encounter 1: Elite False Floor Pit
On the other side of the pit, we encounter
Encounter 2: 3 Gricks
which put some hurting on us, but nothinga healing surge wouldn't fix. Back to the Dungeon process, the GM rolls dice to determine the layout, and at almost every juxtaposition or room we encounter some sort of trap, making our way through an
Encounters 3 to 8: Elite Spear Gauntlet, Elite Magic Crossbow Turret, Elite Pendulum Scythes, Elite Whirling Blades, Elite Flame Jets, and an Elite Electrified Floor.
Finally clear of the Trap hell behind us, we came to a pit that had been opened already where
Encounter 9: 4 Iron Cobras
awaited us, and who, upon dying, converted to 2000 Gold worth of gems and metals. The remainder of the dungeon consisted of the things that didn't make it through all the traps. The next 10 encounters were randomly chosen from
Encounters 10 to 19:
- d10 Phantom Warriors
- d10 Spectres
- d8 Wraiths
- d6 Blazing Skeletons + d6 Boneshard Skeletons
- d8 Ghouls
- d6 Mad Wraiths
By now we were hurting, and the Cleric was out of healing spells. A huge doorway with mystic runes stood before us, and we spent quite a bit of time analyzing it, but were unable to detect whatever obvious trap the runes created. The reason for this was simply because the Runes were artistic in nature, not arcane. Finally pushing our way through the doorway, with no healing remaining, and some of us still being Bloodied, we encountered our final battle with practically all of our Daily Powers used up.
Encounter 20: 1 Spirit Devourer
We had our butts handed to us, only winning due to the Cleric having cast Santuary on our Paladin, who although he died, did enough damage that our Longbow Ranger could finish him off once the rest of us were down. She and the Cleric were the only ones to survive the encounter, the rest of us were at 0HP. The Spirit Devourer had somehow devoured an Efreet, and upon being 'released' through its death, the Efreet rewarded us with 2 gifts. All of our Magic Items which had Enhancements were 'upgraded' to an enhancement bonus as if the item was created by a 15th level Wizard (Ie: +3). I think our GM did this because everytime we made a new 'wishlist' it was always the same items we had but with a better bonus. This is also the end of the GM leniency. In the next 4 levels, we've found 1 Magic item. Any other new magic items we have were created by us.
The 2nd gift was that he teleported us to a human city (without us asking him to do either btw). Our Cleric used his Heal skill to stop our dyings, and then holed up with us in a deserted and decrepit mill until we could recover some. We stayed there for more than a day until finally we had fully recovered from our damages. Emerging in the daylight, our mouths dropped open in awe at the sight before us. The city was immense, and tall. We had no idea where we were, and were sure that this city was either the kingdom's capital itself, or we were very very very far from home indeed.
Tags: 4e 4th Dungeons Dragons Dnd Module
