Rescue Heroes to the ... Rescue!
S1 loves these things! |
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When Othello arrived with Sandy, he saw that the gnolls had dropped the prisoner and run off. Since I had set up a combat field using my Dungeon tiles (it looked quite nice in my opinion), the players knew there would be a big encounter. S1 said he wanted his character to race past the prisoner, grab him, and drag him out of thr pesh fields. Unfortunately, I had to remind S1 that Othello is only about 3 feet tall and the prisoner is maybe 6', and Othello has the lowest strength in the party. S1 then said he would toss the prisoner over Sandy and she could pull him to safety. Again, I said that wasn't going to happen.
So, Othello quickly shook the prisoner. "Are you okay? let's get you out of here." The prisoner lifted his head in despair: "Save yourself, the gnolls have already called their pet." Othello noticed that he could feel shudders through the dirt he was standing on. S1 noticed that the map had boulders on it, so he had Othello help the prisoner to climb onto a boulder. The rest of the party arrived at the same time and Othello yelled out to climb onto a nearby boulder. Shortly afterwards, the ground opened up like a giant sinkhole and a titanic worm reared up. It was a dust digger, sort of a cross between the monster in Tremors and a Bantha. Unfortunately (for the DM) this turned out to be a short fight. Jasmine was able to shoot it from her vantage point and Ibrahim moved to protect Othello, Sandy, and the prisoner. Othello fired a scorching ray down its throat. The dust digger moved and used its reach to attack Sandy. Since the monster could only reach Sandy using diagonal squares, it was debatable whether the monster was really within range; therefore, I only allowed it to use one of its 5 attacks. This one tentacle lash barely missed Sandy, and that was all she wrote. Sandy got in her flurry of kitty attacks, and on the next turn Jasmine shot and Ibrahim hit the dust digger. The worm had had enough and turned to burrow away. Ibrahim rolled a critical hit as an attack-of-opportunity and smashed its wee brain in. I had hoped that the worm would at least get to eat somebody...
The party returned to the monastery with the newly-released prisoner, whose name was Oxvard and a fellow member of the Iron Lions of Cheliax along with the guy tortured to death earlier in the day. Since the party members had no questions to ask this man, who had been held prisoner in the town they had been hired to liberate (!?!), everyone went to bed.
And then I pulled a trick I've been holding back for quite a while...
So, all party members get a perception check to see if they notice, while sleeping, this giant spider creeping into their room. Only Jasmine is a light-enough sleeper to notice the spider's approach. She realizes what is happening, yells to the others, and then rolls off the bed. This battle was pretty chaotic, since not only did the characters have no armor or weapons but S1 really does not like spiders, so it got weird quickly. Ibrahim immediately cast a light spell to see what was going on, which illuminated a giant spider trying to pin Jasmine so it could bite her. The spider successfully grappled Jasmine, but Jasmine immediately broke the grapple. According to the rules, during a grapple if one participant breaks the grapple, he grapples the opponent. So Jasmine ended up riding the spider, holding onto the pedipalps and trying not to be thrown.
Othello is so arachnophobic that he screams and does the only thing he can think of, which is to fire off an elemental ray which criticaled (unfortunately, this only encouraged him to shoot beams of fire inside wooden buildings). Katie found Jasmine's sword for her and tried to order Sandy to attack; the poor cat was quite frightened and decided discretion was the better part of valor and hightailed it. Oxvard was so stressed from his torture that he could do nothing but cry in bed and hide under the covers. Subsequently, Jasmine and the spider took turns rolling on the floor and establishing dominance in the grapple. Ibrahim tried to hit the spider with his mace and hits Jasmine instead. Oops. Othello screams again and fires off another elemental ray, but fumbles it and sets the walls on fire. Double oops. Katie spends her action putting out the fire with create water and Ibrahim finally smashes the spider dead with his mace.
My synopsis of the battle was that Jasmine and the spider were rolling on the ground like a couple of WWE wrestlers, Ibrahim was naked and smashing things with his mace (including his friends), Sandy ran for the hills, Othello ran around screaming shooting fire beams while Oxvard cried in bed. It was great.
After that little treat, Othello climed to the top of the stone tower to check for more spiders (I don't remember how he got volunteered for that job, I think his ring of feather fall had something to do with it...) He found some spider eggs at the top, which he promptly squished and then floated gently down using his ring. Katie cut out the venom sacs of the giant spider, which were sold to Father VAstoran the Alchemist for 5 gp, which is pretty good money in this game. Othello also procured an agreement for an apprenticeship in alchemy. Then everyone went back to bed (nobody took watch, oh well...)