The Devil in the Dungeon

 

February 13, 2014

 

A tiefling, named Sian, disguised as the missing servant messes with Verus as he was preparing spells outside the portal the others had gone through. She talks about how he was the leader of the group and could protect her. Eventually, having not believed her, she lets the disguise drop and reveals herself as a tiefling. 

 

 

Verus casts buffs and heads through the portal which is a portal to an area on the plane of Shadow. There are double doors that are ajar at the end of the hallway and a body on the floor. 

 

In the next room, the walls are lined with books. The group is just finishing healing up and recovering. Ricken complains about how Sian (tiefling) attacked them and when she surrenders, the group accepts.

 

While looking at the books, Galen found a book named The drowned Jabe and his miserable brothers and sisters. There are many other books, but Verus realizes they are mostly about torture, so he isn't interested.

 

They finally mention that they found a haversack with a rune curse that Verus takes from Ricken. He fails a will save when he sees it, and it summons a bone devil. (Fear aura, immune to fire and poison, resist acid and cold, has SR, has DR Good)

 

The fear effect causes the group quite the problems. Galen gets hit immediately and suffers 6 rounds of fear. 

The bone devil attacks Verus, turns invisible, and teleports away. Ricken drops glitter dust at one hallway, so that we only have to defend one hallway.

He teleports back in and bites Verus again.

Ricken avoids the fear, but manages to hit him with glitter dust to invalidate the invisibility.

Galen throws off the fear effects and rejoins the battle.

The bone devil attempts to summon additional creatures, but fails.

Verus manages to convert a Scorching Ray into lightning and hits him hard.

Galen deals some damage to him.

Praetorius makes a point of taking teeth from it as a souvenier...with a critical hit.

The bone devil casts a wall of ice above us and drops it on us. Ricken and Curator get hit hard.

He also summons a minion of shadow which attacks Verus.

After several attacks, Verus forces 5 missiles out of his wand of magic missile and finishes off the devil. 

 

Praetorius takes the skull, Verus takes the stinger and several parts for selling later.

 

Verus is no longer bound by the curse of the rune, once the devil was defeated.

 

On the door is runed for protection from anything on the other side. The door is unlocked and untrapped.

 

As we walk through the door, we see an MCEscher-like staircase room. We head left into a hallway branching off the staircase room.

 

We have Curator jump over an open area, with difficulty, to get to a passageway. Galen throws a rope to him and we all shimmy over the rope, anchored by Curator and Praetorius.

 

We find a dozen cells with dead prisoners in all but one, which has a crazy loon of a devil, named Szasmir. We search all of the available area around the cells, but find nothing.

 

Galen and Verus are searching the area for hidden rooms when it becomes apparent that there are a couple of extra shadows.

 

We are attacked by two incorporeal shadows.

 

Galen hits one 

Ricken hits one with a magic missile

Verus uses his shadow stone as a focus to create a flare effect that dispelled one, and almost took out the other.

Galen cleaned up the other one.

 

After seeing what Verus did with his shadow stone, Galen tries as well, but fails to use it as efficiently.

 

There is another door that has a rune on it. Galen realizes that the shadows is what the rune is protecting the area from. The door leads into a long hallway. Around the corner and down a further hallway, we find a large room with flowing muddy water. There is necrotic energy. Galen says there is definitely some sort of undead here. 

 

The muddy water obviously contains a number of treasures we can see from outside the water. We try to use the chain whip of Praetorius's. Verus uses a mage hand to retrieve a wand, but instead the disturbed water summons creatures.

 

The four ghouls are quickly dispatched.

 

We use the mage hand to pull everything out of the water that is valueable. 

 

52 sp

4 Amethysts (100gp each)

Gold wedding ring (100gp)

Scowling silver death mask (150gp)

Wand (Wand of levitate 8 charges)

 

At the end of the room, we find a natural tunnel sloping sharply downward. We tie ourselves together and have a tough time falling and catching each other. Apparently, every time Praetorius slipped on something, it pops up spikes so that the next person would get impaled on them. Galen is the only one that actually got caught on any of them, but we mostly made it to the end in one piece.

 

We find a passage that leads to a pit, and straight down the hall, we go to a door. Verus unlocks it and Praetorius goes in first. There is a natural cave-like tunnel on one side, two flights of stairs lead down on either side of a staircase leading up. The stairs have signs. Ophidiophobia, Observation, Arachnaphobia. We choose to observe. We approach an area that has five other staircases branching off the center and a door. The door says, Abandon All Hope. Two of the staircases just mirror the previous two, then the left says Hematophobia, right says Pyrophobia, the center says Observation.

 

A shrill voice says we need to face our fears. After some confusion, Praetorious goes to the snakes and beats the snakes with one of them. After killing them, the one in his hand turns into a chunk of jade. The voice says that she just needs three more. Galen and Praetorius go to the Hematophobia challenge where they face several mosquito-style creatures. The last one turns into a grape-sized piece of amethyst. Then they go to Arachnophobia and the last one turns into a grape-sized red garnet. Then Pyrophobia, where they face small fire elementals, the last one turns into a grape-sized fiery orange pearl.

 

After thinking through the planar knowledge, Galen and Verus can't figure this creature out, but Praetorius realizes that she's an imp. She agrees to answer 6 questions in exchange for the 4 gems.

 

"Where is the Chelish Crux?" Lies beyond the heart of the Asmodean knot. It is guarded by the Outcast King. 

"How do we get to the Asmodean Knot?" Through the Abandon All Hope door.

"How do we navigate our way through the Asmodean Knot?" At this, she has some difficulty. After about five minutes of ritual. She has heard that blood will get you through the knot faster. But blood gets the heart pumping, but that is not a good thing here. We could get through without blood, but it is unknown how long.

"How do we defeat the Outcast King?" You need weapons of Good or weapons of Silver. Use lightning.

"Once we have the Chelish Crux, how do we return to our world?" We will have to retrace our steps.

"What is the purpose of this Asmodean Knot?" This also requires her to do a ritual for her to find the answers. She says that it was originally used as a vault, a gift, from Asmodeus's followers to someone, you already know who. One of his ancestors sought to expand the knot and twisted it. He created a connection to someplace else, trying to expand his knowledge and his power. He isn't the one who guards the crux, but he is between us and it. We will have to fight what remains of him. He failed in his goals, but what remains of him is trapped here. The early parts of this place can still be used as a vault, but the rest of it is corrupted and unusable.

 

She then crushes all the jewels together and fashions a Ring of Resistance +1 and hands it to Praetorius.

 

We decide to rest. Galen helps us heal up and recover spells.

 

During Ricken's watch, he finds out that her name is Livia and she has kind of a perverted sense of humor. She is very conversational, and seems to be a little off her rocker.

 

Verus casts a couple of buffs and we head through the door.

 

There is a strange vertical column of infinite depth and height. It has staircases that don't seem to make much sense. After a little effort, we figure out how to navigate the maze of stairs and get through to the passage on the other side.

 

We walk into an area of wooden stairs and platform. Bubbling filth surrounds the area and on the other side of the filth is a stone are with chests.

 

We have Curator, enlarged, jump across with the rope and when he lands, the outcast king bubbles up from the filth and attacks. (Barbazu DR good and silver, resist acid and cold, SR)

 

King draws two longswords with it's tentacles and hurts Praetorius.

Praetorius responds by disarming one of those tentacles.

Curator comes up from behind and hits him.

Galen comes up and attacks with no damage.

Ricken fails to hit him with a magic missile.

Verus fails to hit him with an empowered scorching ray, missing.

Praetorius gets into flanking and hits it.

Galen uses Bane to increase his effectiveness against the king.

Verus finishes him off with a 5 charge blast of magic missile.

 

The two longswords are magical and we take them. +1 Keen Longsword and +2 Defending Longsword

 

The two chests:

 

+1 Cold Iron battle axe 

Wand of Cure Moderate Wounds (33 charges)

Ring of Feather Falling

Minor Crown of Blasting (3d8 dmg once per day searing light) 

Papers (investment papers, lists of debts, etc. )

 

6 Books (Andoran history, ...) Spellbook (10 1st, 10 2nd, 7 3rd, 3 4th spells)

Chelish Crux

Ivory Box (Carved lid of golems destroying a city wall)

Golem-bane Scarab (Detect golem within 60 ft, eliminates a golem's DR from the holder)

Wand of Rusting Grasp (7 charges)

 

200 pp

1100 gp

3520 sp

4450 cp

 

We make our way back out and end up in the attic. It seems to be about 4pm.

 

5050 xp

 

John: 600xp

Drew: 500xp

Brook: 700xp

 

 

 

 

GM Notes

• We are going through the modules fast to me.  We are averaging a month, four sessions, per module.  That's fine but for this to be the year of Pathfinder means that we will have to do another AP or I will have to find a way to extend this one longer.  
• I tried to write the last entry in such a way that if Brook read it, it wouldn't be obvious that Sian and the assassin were the same person, so that Brook/Verus would be taken off guard when she comes through and talks to him.  I also tried to make her lies be obvious ("They just love your leadership ability") so that he knew something was up.  I think it worked out well but as the chronicler, Brook did not put much of that into the write up!  
• With Bob missing, I had Ricken/Curator there and quite effective due to Bob's set up from before but I didn't know some other specifics about the character to be able to use them.  
• I used Realm Works and it was awesome!  I used it to put in the maps and then use the fog of war reveal to show the dungeon as they went through it.  It allowed me not to show the secret areas but show what they saw!  I was very happy with how it worked out!
• I have to say that I'm not happy with how the puzzle of getting through the Heart was laid out.  While the idea is good, the execution didn't work for me.  I think that's because the random element made it, well, random about when they would make it across.  That's not a devil's work, that's a demons.  I think this should have been a logic puzzle instead that the PCs could work out instead of so random.  Not only would that be easier to present but I think it would be less confusing.  
• Again, fights seems really strange and swingy.  The Outcast King was tough as he should be and nearly fatal!  But a lot of the other fights, especially in the area with Livia (B13-B17) were trivial for them by this point.  I'm not sure why they even included them as the highest was CR 1!  (The others were CR 1/2!)  The only thing I can think of is that by making it easy, it's more likely they would do them and therefore interact with Livia instead of just attacking.  The ghouls were also quite easy.   
• In terms of XP, since this was for the medium advancement track and I'm using something that is less than the easy track, they are only one level ahead of where this module would put them.  I have been happy about that.   

 

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