Night Below: Situation Report
The Truth Seekers have attacked the lair of a tribe of derro dwarves. The battle has been raging now for just over a minute, but what a minute it has been.
The party’s plan was to sneak in, punching silently through the derro’s outer defenses to get to the nest of savants in the rear of the lair before the alarm could be raised.
Unfortunately, their plan didn’t survive contact with the enemy. They neutralized the outer defenses, but before they could press deeper into the lair they were attacked from behind by derro coming out of a hidden side-cavern. The party was able to quickly dispatch those derro, but the damage had been done and the alarm had been sounded.
With the loss of surprise, the individual party members each took their own actions. Another side cavern was sealed off while Matar flew forward, trying to catch the savants before they could properly react. He managed to badly injure the leader before being discovered. Most of the spells which had been cast on him were dispelled. Still, he kept the savants busy for several rounds, slaying one and badly injuring two others.
The rest of the party was having problems catching up with Matar. One of the derro cast a Wall of Force in the tunnel leading to the back of the lair. It took the group several rounds to make it past the wall and the stinking cloud which was placed behind it. Once past the barrier, several went to help Matar with the savants while others split off left to try and rescue the derros’ slaves.
The party has now separated into three distinct groups. Group one is made up of Katrina, Diana, and Nikki. They are all in the cavern with the savants. Diana is the only one visible, although it is apparent that several of the savants can see invisible objects, since both Nikki and Katrina have had spells cast at them.
The second group is made up of the party’s front line fighters - Matar, Thengal, and Castinar. They are all in a cavern with just over a dozen derro and about that many slaves.
The third group is made up Ari, K’harn, Amber, Bohica, and Shadow. They are back in the main tunnel, waiting for the derro who were blocked off early in the encounter to break past the Walls of Stone put up to contain them.
Something to keep in mind is the Combat Empathy spell the party has come to rely on isn’t functioning as effectively as normal. Matar isn’t in the loop at all. The two groups up top are cut off from the group in the tunnel by the Wall of Force.
Individual situations:
Amber: slightly wounded (38/41) and slightly weakened (-1 con) from a poisoned bolt she took early in the combat. Has about half of her spells left. Is waiting for the derro to come boiling out of the side cavern.
Ariessus: uninjured, and buffed up with several spells. Still has most of her spells left.
Bohica: slightly injured (26/29) with several defensive spells still running. Has used up most of his higher level spells, but still has a quiver full of magic missiles.
Castinar: moderately injured (50/69) with about half of his spells left. Currently in lizard form, just outside the stinking cloud
Diana: slightly injured (55/57) with about a third of her spells left, including several of her ‘big gun’ spells. She is standing in the middle of a shadow Summon Swarm spell, and is taking slight damage from it (and having to make concentration checks due to the damage).
Katrina: undamaged, but trapped inside a hemisphere of force. Is naked and has most of her gear stuffed into her bag, ready to shift into cat form.
K’harn: uninjured, standing next to Ari, ready to guard her. Has most her spell-like abilities available.
Matar: slightly injured (106/115), although most of the preparatory spells cast on him have been dispelled. Has several nice protection spells still running and can fly. Just landed in the middle of the derro in the slave room.
Nikki: uninjured with most of her spells left, currently hovering 40’ off the ground in the savant lair.
Shadow: uninjured, bow ready, waiting for the derro to break out.
Thengal: the worst off in the party at 38/92 (which isn’t bad after having taken on almost 20 derro by yourself). Is busy chasing down one of the derro savants. No longer invisible or flying.
The bad guys (in initiative order)
70 (derro leader): current location and condition unknown (invisible). Last seen a couple rounds ago badly injured but chugging down a potion while mounted on one of the flying spiders.
80 (mind flayer): slightly injured, playing it safe for the moment, staying out of Diana’s line of sight. Has tried to <fwop> both Diana and Matar, to no effect.
22 - 33 (the derro in the slave cavern): All have their crossbows still out. About half are looking at Castinar (lizard), the other half looking at Matar, with a few taking aim at Thengal again.
60: the savant trying to punch a hole through Ari’s Wall of Stone. Still not visible. Apparently going to hit it one more time before the derro come pouring through. Note this means most of the derro are going to appear on this initiative count. Since most of those waiting have readied actions, they will act first.
62: savant in the slave area. Condition and location unknown (invisible). When last seen was uninjured.
65: savant in savant area. IMPORTANT NOTE: this guy cast MM at Nikki last round, and I didn’t mention that he is now visible! He is blue on the map, but should be black. Both Nikki and Diana are aware of him. He is uninjured.
61: other savant in slave area. Uninjured and visible, busy trying to get away from Thengal. In the water about chest-high.
54: lieutenant of derro in slave area, very badly injured, also in water trying to stay away from Thengal.
64: savant in savant lair mounted on a flying spider. Slightly injured, currently about 100’ in the air. IMPORTANT NOTE: in the map you’ll see two 64s, one blue, one red. The red one is the correct one. The blue one is not there.
66: location and condition unknown (invisible), last seen uninjured, mounted on a flying spider.
I have intentions from a few of you. If you want to change whatever you have sent, feel free to do so. I’d like to get all the intentions by Wednesday. I may put a turn out on Thursday, although I’ll probably end up just having one ready to go when we start on Friday.
Amber: has a Silence spell readied, will cast on any apparent leader
Ari: ??
Bohica: ??
Castinar: shape change back to normal form
Diana: ??
Kat: shift into cat form
K’harn: ??
Matar: ??
Nikki: cast Minor Globe of Invulnerability
Shadow: move to other side of barricade (50% cover), get ready for derro
Now, some notes on the future of the game.
We will be shifting over to the module “Into the Dragon’s Lair” after this scene. Once this scene is over there is one other scene from “Night Below” that we’ll do. The party will then have some time to rest up (theoretically getting ready for the assault on the City of the Glass Pool). After about a month of rest time, you will be summoned down to Cormyr and provided with the not-so-subtle hook into the new module.
IMPORTANT: when we start the new module I’m going to trim the party down by removing all cohorts, followers, and companions from play. They will still be part of the game, but won’t be involved in traveling around and fighting. I would really like to trim the party size down to six, but that isn’t possible without dropping a couple players, which I’m not willing to do. So each of you will only be playing your primary character from now on. What happens to your cohort/follower is up to you.
That being said, if anybody is considering dropping out of the game, this would be the time to do it.
The new module is designed as a CR 10 module, which means it is geared towards a party of four characters of 10th level. The Truth Seekers will be 8 characters of 9th level, although I’d rate them more equivalent to 10th or 11th level characters due to all their extra feats and stuff I foolishly let you all take. So will be bumping up all of the encounters in the module, basically by making each monster a few levels/CRs higher and adding in a few monsters to large groups.
Once we start playing the new module I’m going to go completely IRC for all game-related action. We’ll still do e-mails during in-game “down times”, and I may ask for intentions in e-mail to jump start the next chat session, but e-mail turns will be few and far between.
And one last time, would anybody be interested in playing Star Wars instead of D&D? I read through the rulebook while I was gone and was very impressed with the Star Wars interpretation of the d20 rules. I love the fact that they don’t have Attacks of Opportunity (half the headaches in 3e), and their vitality/wound points system makes a lot more sense as well. I’m asking again because I really would like to trim down the size of the Truth Seekers to around six characters. Everything WotC is putting out is geared towards party sizes of four.
I’m trying to decide what to do with the web site since we’re moving away from the Night Below module. Any suggestions?
Later,
Saif