CotMA 12

When last we left our intrepid adventurers, they were neck deep in trolls. We had 2 character deaths, and we were in trouble.

Feran: Ranger 6 (me)
Chance: Cleric 5/Rogue 1 (Ian)
Clip-Clop: Centaur Fighter 5 (Jake's character. Played by Dustin. 'Cause Mangonel is dead.)
Inquisitor 6 (Rob)
Mangonel: Human Barbarian 3/Druid 3 (Lion Shaman something or other) (Dead)
Tiefling Magus 4/Rogue 2 (Dave)

It is amazing what a difference 1 character makes. That centaur is brutal. Having him in combat we had a fighting chance.

We returned to combat on Feran's action. He immediately readied an action to hand the centaur his Flaming Axe. This quickly turned the battle. Doing 1d12 +10 + 1d6 will do that. Trolls have low AC, so Clip-Clop was dropping one a round. Add to this, the tiefling dealing acid damage, and Feran tripping the foes. And the Inquisitor was using bane. The red d6 is a Spiritual Weapon. The green die is a 'smoke countdown.' Opening the lane into the room actually was a benefit to us. We could attack several instead of one. Add to all of this the DM's dice were cold. We prevailed in a fight we were very close to losing.

Searching we found a secret room with 13 sacks in it. But, we also attracted a wandering monster. This guy showed up again. And again we ran. Straight back to the sphinx. We found it deactivated. But, it woke up after someone put themselves in the 'betting ring.' We gambled for a way home. And we won!

Coming out of the dungeon, we sold pretty much everything (in Greyhawk). We each had somewhere around 16k in gp. Feran bought a +1 enchantment on his Mithral Large Shield, a +2 enchantment on his Mithral Chain Shirt, and a Goggles of the Night.

Now we take a break so I can run some Mord Mar. Should be about 12 weeks and we'll be back to CotMA.

CotMA Session 11 - What a doozy

A correction from session 10. We had actually negotiated passage to level 5, not level 6 like I had mentioned previously.

The group:

Feran: Ranger 6 (me)
Chance: Cleric 5/Rogue 1 (Ian)
Drow Cleric 4/ Fighter 2 (I think) Nathaniel (our resident trainee. This will become apparent)
Inquisitor 6 (Rob)
Mangonel: Human Barbarian 3/Druid 3 (Lion Shaman something or other) (Dustin)
Tiefling Magus 4/Rogue 2 (Dave)
*The cross class levels may not be correct. I didn't double check with the players on their level ups.

Climbing out of the crevasse to level 5, the first thing we see is a sphinx with a moai head, made from a black stone with magical runes all around it. As we approach to investigate, it turns toward the group and asks "Would you like to make a wager?"

Feran, being reckless like he is (and broke) says "I will wager my health" our Drow and Chance (I think) made the wager as well. The sphinx gives us a riddle, which we solve easily, giving us each 1 permanent point of Constitution.

Next we all proffered up some gold, and doubled our money. (Except the Barbarian who bet a hammock and got a masterwork one.)

Then I decided to bet the awesome dagger I found last session. Other members decided to wager different things, and we again won. The dagger became a +2 Flaming Great Axe of Spell Storing. The Drow's Flail became a living steel flail.There were other things in there too, but I don't remember what.

Again, we are asked "Would you like to make a wager?" This time, the Tiefling, Drow, Inquisitor (and Barbarian?) decided to wager their souls against a map of the entirety of the Castle. The riddle was:
(Sphinx made an illusion of a scale set and 8 balls.) "Weighing only twice, which of these 8 balls weighs less than the others?"
The party said weigh 2 groups of 4.Then they weighed 2 groups of 2, and guessed on a 50/50 (which our DM actually allowed) and got it right. We had a "GM moment of weakness" there, I think.

After that close call, we decided we had had enough gambling for a while and headed East, toward a double door. On the way, we encountered 3 owlbears. (Owlbear don't care.) We dispatched them fairly easily, and a gelatinous cube came wandering up while we were searching their alcove. Again, no issue dispatching that, so on toward the double doors.

This is where things get interesting. The doors were locked and barred from this side. Listening, we heard nothing, so we opened the door. There was a huge ochre jelly. We shut the door and made a plan of attack. We reopened the door, and attacked. It did a little damage, split once, then died.

Searching the room, we see 4 doors besides the one we came in. We check one of them to find a proverbial mother lode of books, worth about 30k gp to collectors. We then check another room, to find it full of junk.

A third room is checked, and inside it has 7 earthenware jars and a huge crystal cylinder with a lid tightly on it. The drow and the ranger check it out. The drow goes in, looks around, and comes back out. Then Feran decides to check out a jar. The drow (being our trainee) walks back into the room. Feran taps the jar with a sickle, and a crystal materializes between him and the drow. The drow is hit, grappled and encased in crystal. Feran makes a hasty retreat.

The party slams the door on the crystal, and the Mangonel and Feran run to get the bar that was on the entry door. Before they get back, the crystal shatters the door, and the party flees for the one door we had not opened yet.

We get over to the door, and find it to be barred from the other side. We hall ass back toward the entry door, and Mangonel decides to play hero, holding off the crystal while the rest of us escape. He dies to the 7d8+9 attacks of this thing.

The surviving members of the party head back to the sphinx, and gamble 3 living characters for 2 dead ones to be brought to us, alive. We win that gamble, and gamble a full recharge on all spells and abilities. We also win this one.

Then our drow trainee decides to attempt a riddle by himself. He bets his bones against an item that can shatter the crystal. He loses and dies.

So, back to full health and full strength (minus a drow), we head toward a different exit. This time we come to a room full of summoning circles. We encounter nothing dangerous, and decide to check a room off to the side. Here we find a pleasant djinn who we have tea and read books in his library. He has 37 years left in his bound service to the Mad Archmage.

From here, we head north and turn east. We decide to check one door on our way to the stairs, and hear giant speak from the other side. 4 voices. We bust open the door and attack. 4 trolls! We fight and drop one (yay flaming axe!), but 7 more come from neighboring rooms. We are in for a tough fight.

As the session winds down, we have killed all of the trolls from the room we broke into, Mangonel and the drow are dead (again), and we are in bad position against an onslaught of trolls.

Mangonel is the prone efreet (he drank a potion of enlarge.) All of the other large sized bases are trolls heading in. The wolf to the right is Mangonel's animal companion.

CotMA Session 10

The party this week:
Feran, Human Ranger 5: Me 
Chance, Cleric 4/Rogue 1
Clip-Clop, Centaur Fighter 4 (ECL penalty)
Inquisitor 5
Barbarian 2/Druid 3 (I think)
Magus 3/Rogue 2 (I think)

End of last session, we killed Brekk, who blew up. This session picked up immediately after.

We looted his area, and found a bunch of coin, a Rod of Wonder, a Ring of Retribution (the thing that blew Brekk up), Ring of Maniacal Devices, and a couple of potions. After tallying up our haul, we decided we need to rest. We were quite deep in the Castle, and just had a dude EXPLODE! on us.

After nothing happening during our rest period, we entered back into Brekk's workshop. Looking over the machine that disoriented us, was the Mad Archmage himself. After a bit of a talk, he asked us if we 'wanted to see his Crypts.' I said yes. And away we went.

Well, the rest of the party was a bit upset as we were teleported. We appeared in a crossroads.The Mad Archmage then told us we were to meet a 'caretaker.' A rumbling started. We began to run in a random direction.

Eventually, with the rumbling following us, we found a 'jawbreaker machine.' Three of us bought jawbreakers. As we did, a variant bulette attacked us. The centaur, ranger, barbarian, and ranger's animal companion failed saves vs disease. (tbd).

From there we stumbled onward. We passed through bronze doors, and didn't disturb any tombs. Eventually, we decided 'up' wouldn't be inside the area inside the bronze doors. We found our way through another bronze door, and eventually to an area with more tombs.One marked "Guy Fawkes." My ranger broke it down, and found a +1 dagger of distance and returning.

From here, we turned a corner into a death cult, who assumed we were powerful enough to be here, and negotiated a way back to level 6 for the Ring of Retribution. That's where the session ended.

CotMA: Session 9

The party this week:
Feran, Human Ranger 5: Me 
Chance, Cleric 4/Rogue 1
Clip-Clop, Centaur Fighter 4 (ECL penalty)
Inquisitor 5
Barbarian 2/Druid 3 (I think)
Drow Fighter/Rogue1/4
Magus 3/Rogue 2 (I think)

After dealing with the hobgoblins at the end of our last session, we jumped right back into the action.We finished clearing out their complex, finding keys to the portcullis and a few secret doors. We found a bunch of money, bracers +2 and a wardrobe with an animated suit of scale armor. Our grapple expert grabbed it, and never let go. It was quickly pummeled into submission. It was guarding a tuning fork, that radiated magic. We stowed this carefully in the cleric's bag of holding. After this, we rested, and headed back to find Brekk.

We looked at our maps and figured out about which way to get to him, and followed a plan. The druid had Know Direction memorized, which kept us from getting off track, and possibly lost. Going through several corridors that seemed to double back on themselves, we eventually found another complex.

First, we ran across a room with a leaky pipe and moss growing in it. We tentatively checked it out and were not molested by any shambling mounds or other planty doom.

Then we came across a bloodied room. It was apparently the scene of a bloody battle (we found out later it was between hobgobbos and orcs). Following our best guesses, we found two emptied barracks and a room with a stone arm from a statue in it. (We left the arm there.)

Finally we came to a place where we found something alive again. Behind a door we hear voices speaking in Orcish. We knocked on the door and negotiated directions to Brekk and passage through their territory.

Following the orcish directions we found our way to Brekk's complex. One arrow trap blasted the party. We were fortunate on our search rolls after that.

We muscled our way to Brekk's workshop, where we were immediately hit by a device that disoriented any movements we made. (Chance and Feran rolled nat 20's to be unaffected.) The battle was joined with Brekk, his 5 gnolls, and only Chance and Feran moving normally.

Our War Mage hit the machine with a projectile, proving it could be destroyed. Chance turned it on the gnolls, keeping them out of the fight.Turning it also allowed our heavy hitters into the combat. Brekk was forced to destroy his machine himself.

Brekk activated some crazy stupid armor: Displacement, Shield, and Mirror Image. Then he used a touch attack to deliver a 5d6 Vampiric Touch and a 5d6 Shocking Grasp to Clip-Clop! Ouch.

Then he turned it on the Ranger. Double-Ouch. The gnolls went down, and I had to head to work, but the rest of the party were able to finish off the gnome-o-mancer. That's where the session ended.

EDIT: Apparently, this was session 9. Updated in the title.

CotMA Campaign Reset

We reset the CotMA campaign the weekend before Christmas. That's why there wasn't a post about it. Now I have to relearn everyone's character names. We did it to rebalance the party. A few of the players felt there was a brighter spotlight on some people (myself included). We also felt that some roles (in combat) were being under served, that's another reason for the reset. We also procured a few new books that everyone wanted to use in the game.

Our old characters sold our new ones their maps, and many of the quests were open to the public, so no real loss of continuity. The only things that really happened in the 'remake session' was discussion of roles and some light RP (finding the quests and etcetera.)

Here's the new group:
Ranger 5 (me)
Cleric 4/Rogue 1 (Oldhimara?)
Centaur Fighter 4 (ECL penalty)
Inquisitor 5
Barbarian 2/Druid 3 (I think)
Warmage 3/Rogue 2 (I think)
Some wizard thing 5 (from Advanced Class Guide)

So, last week's session found us heading once again towards Brekk (with different people. heh.) We found hobgoblins instead.

Not a lot actually happened. We had an encounter with a Hobgoblin Shaman with an Ape pet of some sort. Other than Spike Growth in a dungeon, we breezed this encounter.

Next a Hobgoblin patrol found us searching the Shaman. There were about 12 of them, that we again handled with little problem.

We followed the passage they came from to find an oddly shaped "room." A portcullis blocked one passage out. Another passage led further than we could see, and there were 2 doors. The room had signs of the Hobgoblin clan living here, so we knew they were close. We found a secret door that led to a weapons cache for the Hobgoblins. Then we found the Hobgoblins.

About 25 of them.
And 2 more Apes

All at once.

And 3 leaders showed up after the fight began.

Our centaur dropped, but we did well. The cleric was able to move into position to heal quickly, and efficiently. The Ranger used his bolas and sickle to trip, and AoO prevailed. The wizard-thing used lightning balls to harass and damage.
The Inquisitor used his judgements to great effect. All in all, the reboot did what it was supposed to. We were much more combat effective, and able to work as a team. We won the day, and beat all the hobgoblins (and pets).


Let's hope it continues.

Castle of the Mad Archmage Session 6

Castle of the Mad Archmage Session #6 recap:

Current Party:
Hask (1/2 Orc FTR 3/ PAL 1) - played by me
Ankar (1/2 Orc SRC 4) - played by Ian
Einar (Dwarf CLR 4) - played by Dave
Santiago (Halfling ROG 4) - played by Dustin
Go'ram(??? ALC 4) - played by Richard
New Guy (Dwarf DRD 3/MNK 1) - played by Rob
Skarsnik (1/2 Orc FTR 4) - played by Jake - new player


This week we didn't actually head into the CotMA. Instead we were approached by the town's cleric, Scarlett. She asked us to send a representative to a secret meeting. We elected to send our Dwarven Cleric, as it was a religious invitation. Through the next couple of days, he and the DM texted the meeting, which included the Pints 'o Pain (the adventure group we attacked in our last outing of the dungeon) and the wizard (sorcerer?) who almost killed us in our first incursion.

Through negotiation, our Cleric did an awesome job of getting us paid: 3500 gp to investigate a "temple," 250 gp per cultist, and 2k dead or 3k alive for a cleric we were familiar with, Abigail. She had traveled with us from Hommlet to Greyhawk as a guard of the caravan that we hired on to.

We headed out after dark, based on directions from Scarlett. Finding the temple was no problem, and a storm even rolled in to cover our noise! Luck seemed to be with us. We spotted a light patrolling the area, and engaged 4 followers of Demogorgon! I have to say, Channel Energy (Negative) really hurts. We survived, and took minor injuries.

Moving around to the back of the temple, we found two entrances. We sent in Santiago, invisible to scout the area. He returned telling us of a long hallway with 10 (?) doors and another corridor leading to a temple with a Demogorgon statue. The group quietly entered the outer door, and began systematically checking the doors. All of them were empty save for a desk, and perfectly made bunk beds. We checked the second corridor and found that a couple of those rooms were used, but unoccupied. Then we heard a scream.

The Paladin ran towards the woman's scream, ignoring a pair of double doors, which Santiago glued with a tanglefoot bag. Approaching the screams Hask saw 2 ogre sized "bleeding" skeletons, which he ignored when he saw the clerics dragging a maiden.

Three more clerics of Demogorgon engaged with the skeletons on the party. Skarsnik, Go'ram, and the Druid, dealt with the skeletons, while Hask, Santiago (with a Pro Evil from Einar), and Ankar moved to deal with the clerics.

In the middle of this hard combat, 3 more clerics broke out of the tanglefooted door. We did eventually take them out. But we were bloodied when done. However, we did save the maiden!

Between the 2 Ogre-Blood-Zombies were another set of doors. We healed some and headed in, to find 4 more OBZs and Abigail. She gave a fairly typical bad guy speech and the fight was joined. Hask got dropped by a zombie, and Abigail fled through a "door." Skarsnik played cleanup on the zombies while Ankar, Einar and Santiago chased her through the illusion.

She tried to escape through an outer door. Santiago blocked the escape.  Meanwhile, Hask came to, stood up, and was dropped by the same zombie taking an AOO. Another fight ensues with Abigail, while Hask is brought to consciousness again. Abigail is close to defeated, when Menkel (the Inquisitor) shows up and kills Santiago. They dimdoor to escape, and the session ends.

Castle of the Mad Archmage Session 5

While in my 'downtime' for Mord Mar, we have two DMs filling in the game sessions. Blondie is running XCrawl for the group, and Adam is running CotMA. I plan on doing session updates for at least that game, as it is a pretty popular setting.

Long and short of previous sessions: we started in a caravan heading to Greyhawk. Fought some kobolds, and established a party. We've established ourselves in the town, Chenth. We killed the bandits, got our asses kicked by Gorkhar the Magnificent, met the dwarves and elves. We made a deal with the kobolds (in the Castle), and found or fought several other random battles. We met and made deals with Hannegar.

Our current party makeup:

Hask (1/2 Orc FTR 3/ PAL 1) - played by me
Ankar (1/2 Orc SRC 4) - played by Ian
Einar (Dwarf CLR 4) - played by Dave
Santiago (Halfling ROG 4) - played by Dustin
Crazy-Ass (??? ALC 4) - played by Richard
New Guy (Dwarf DRD 3/MNK 1) - played by Rob
Jade (Human CLR 3) - NPC (pd 200 gp +10% over 2k from each Hask and Ankar)

A bit more back story:At the end of our previous session, Rob's old character (an Inquisitor of Grumish) attacked Ankar, and was left naked at negative HPs in the Xvents rooms. He had interrogated the bandit leader about their treasure that was left in Greyhawk.

So, we began Saturday's session heading to Greyhawk ahead of the Inquisitor. We decided to do some research while there too. No issues recovering the treasure, and spent several days researching the following topics:
Chenth (a legendary blue dragon who died twice, apparently) - and his bloodline
Chenth's mate - the kobolds believe they are descendants of hers. Part of the treaty.
Lyndys (the LN dragon god, Bahamut's dad) Jade's god
Elder Elemental Eye - our caravan at the start of the campaign went through Homlet, and this came up
Tristan, Scarlett, and Blaze (mayor, head cleric, and guard captain of Chenth)

Returning to Chenth from our trip, we found that the Inquisitor had indeed survived, and lodged a complaint to Tristan. They apparently think their law extends into the dungeon. Hask told them he would willingly submit to a Zone of Truth on the matter. That was set up for 2 days later.

The group headed into the dungeon, heading down toward level 3. As we entered, a rival group was in the great hall, using our kobold "allies" as puppets. Talking was an option until the other group pointed at 3 elf corpses and said "don't mind the axe marks."

The problem is, those elves saved our lives after we were knocked out by Gorkhar. So, Hask walked up and attacked the puppeteer. A lively fight ensued, with 2 Black Tentacles spells making sure we could not have an advantage. The other group fled, and we followed. This time, the crazy alchemist talked to them, and paid them to not talk in town about us attacking them.

We then proceeded down to level 3. We found a rhino trap, and a room with giant scorpions, who knocked Hask out, but the party was victorious. Everybody got <500 gp and leveled up.