In this “Homebrewed,” Natalia, Iema, Corin, and Sunshine are being led by their dwarven friends to the entrance to the Underdark. Doesn’t sound friendly, does it? Yeah, we asked for it. Yeah, we’re crazy. Unfortunately, we’re stopped by some NPCs that, as it turns out, are the bane of Phil’s gaming existance. Not sure how we got here? Then get caught up here.
Huskyr the 28th
If you recall from the last game, we left off on Huskyr the 28th, late night, travelling with a dwarven thieves guild, whose members are leading Natalia, Iema, Corin, and Sunshine out of Fasset and to an entrance to the Underdark. We were stopped on the bridge by people accusing us of being “smugglers.” Before we know it, we’re surrounded by Halflings with crossbows, ogres with shields as large as walls, and your standard human guard stock.
Before I go further, I’m going to stop to mention something: Jim and I were talking about how Natalia’s and Iema’s trip through the Underdark is going to contain a lot of combat, which are both boring to write and boring to read. (Fun to play, though.) We agreed that I would just gloss over most of the battles. However, I want to specifically mention this one because it marks the return of two of Phil’s most-hated NPCs.
No, I had never run into them before, but in one of Jim’s previous games, Phil has. Their names are Jakyl (whom Phil calls “Dick”) and Cogar. I guess they’re a couple of undead guys who have clerics paid off to resurrect them when they die, so Jim torments his players with these guys from time to time. Or, at least, he tortures Phil with them. Phil says the worst thing about them is that you think you’ve killed them, only to find out that no…no, you didn’t. They just keep coming back.
“Give up, Gurdren,” Jakyl yells. “We’ve got you surrounded. No more surprises. It’s over.” Jim says that the stitches in his body—yes, he has stitches in his body, ew—start glowing blue.
Gurdren raises his hands, but he smiles. “No more surprises?” And suddenly, with the flick of his wrist, he whips out the fancy gun that we had given him, and he shoots one of the humans. The man falls, instantly killed. “Surprise!”
I could totally learn to like Gurdren.
Of course, we go into combat at this point. Both Iema and Natalia are hit with crossbows, but we make our saves, so Jim says that we hear buzzing noises but manage to shake it off whatever came along with those crossbows. None of the dwarves, though, seem to fare as well, and they go deaf.
Sunshine, though , is a little slow to catch on that they’re deaf. “OH MY GOD, GUYS,” she yells. “YOU GUYS ARE ALL MUTE.”
Phil and I both got a chuckle out of that.
Iema does his Haste, does some flicking thing with his hand (everyone’s just flicking everyone off in this game), and some ram image comes out and knocks a Halfling off of the bridge. Don’t ask me. I guess it’s some spell Iema has. Or a magical item.
Cogar, the other one Phil hates so much, yells that we’re all guilty of some sort of conspiracy to riot. What the hell are they talking about? I thought we were pretty sneaky and quiet. Isn’t that exactly opposite of what you’d expect from a riot? No matter; Cogar hocks a loogie at us that explodes in a gout of rancid seawater which pummels us for subdual damage. And this, by the way, is when I started to dislike Jakyl and Cogar, too, because explosive loogies? C’mon. Even nasty D&D baddies should be drawing the line somewhere.
Anyway, I won’t bore you with all the details of this fight. In-game, it was fun, but it was long. I’ll give you the highlights: Explosive loogie knocks out most of the dwarves who failed their reflex saves, Natalia does a bunch of damage with Ice Storm (great AoE spell, for any other druid-lovers our there) and gets down and dirty in her dire bear form, Sunshine gets her two cents in with a “dragging bite” (I had “Dragon Bite” in my notes, but Jim corrected me—I like “Dragon Bite” better), and Iema impresses us with his Wail of Doom. Yeah, there’s more, but what you need to know is that we won—Jakyl and Cogar jump off the bridge and run away.
Oh, yeah. They’ll totally be back.
It was a nasty fight. We move along. There’s some small talk. Gurdren says Jakyl and Cogar have been coming after him for a while. Guess Phil isn’t the only one they like to harass.
We move along. Jim says we’re not at the Underdark yet; we’re walking along the overground or something like that. Not really sure what that means or what that is. I assume that it’s the ground over the Underdark, but hey, what do I know?
So, of course, we’re rolling our dice for encounters, and we get the doozie of encounters: We walk smack into a city dotted with fires.
And Hobgoblins.
Like, 300 Hobgoblins.
“Oh, shit,” Gurdren moans.
Iema groans. “Can’t we just…walk around them?”
Gurdren shakes his head. “They’ve already seen us.”
Phil rolls a bardic knowledge for Iema. Incidentally, that is a REALLY handy thing to have. Phil is constantly rolling bardic knowledge for Iema and finds out all sorts of shit. But I digress. My point is that Iema knows that these Hobgoblins are nomadic, lawful-evil, and they’re more about survival than anything else. They’re also extremely sexist and tend to like formalized duels.
Natalia actually knows about the duel part, even without the bardic knowledge; after all, she’s witnessed Hobgoblins demanding duels on more than one occasion herself. Of course, she also knows that, being sexist, they won’t duel her.
Too bad. I’m pretty sure she could tear one up, easily.
Several of the sentries come up to us and stare. Iema sighs heavily. “You’re not going to let us pass, are you?”
The Hobgoblins shake their heads.
“Let’s just get this out of the way,” Iema says, warily. “No, you cannot use them”—he waves at Natalia and Corin—“as slaves. You want to duel, right?”
Of course. So Iema duels with a Hobgoblin. Natalia watches with interest. She feels a little bad making the bard fight, but like I said…the Hobgoblins are sexist. And, as it turns out, Iema can take care of himself.
The Hobgoblin charges. While he’s doing so, Iema quickly uses his Haste. He then waits until the Hobgoblin gets close enough, then he does a spring-forward attack and then quickly springs back while slashing him. Sounds cool, doesn’t it? I think this is thanks to some of the super-cool gear that Iema got from the dwarves in the last game session.
Iema kills the Hobgoblin easily. Once the fight’s over, he beheads the hobgoblin with its own sword. He knows enough about Hobgoblin culture to know beheading it is a respect thing. Iema bends next to the decapitated opponent to leave the sword with him.
When Iema stands up, the crowd of Hobgoblins part to let us pass through. Say what you want about them, they at least fight fair. We pass through. Behind us, we can hear Hobgoblins pulling their weapons out on each other, ready to fight one another for the sword that Iema had left behind.
And so we move along. A couple rolls later, we get another encounter. Jim says that something like an angel appears in front of us. It’s wearing dark gray mithril, gold, and silver armor. Gurdren halts and stares, looking shocked.
“Is it an angel? Is it an angel?” I ask excitedly. Admittedly, I was thinking of the angels on Supernatural. I like Castiel. Hell, I want to name my first born son after him.
The Angelic Poser glances at Natalia. “You and your bat may leave. But I want the others.”
“Is it an angel? It is an angel?” I keep asking. If Natalia was asking it, I imagine she’d be jumping up and down over the boys, trying to see it better. Although I don’t know why I would imagine that. Natalia is pretty tall at her 5’9”, and hell, one of those boys is a freakin’ dwarf.
Phil finally answers me to shut me up. “No.”
Well, then, WHAT THE HELL IS IT?
And I cannot tell you. Because Jim did not tell me. Phil did, but I don’t remember. What I do remember is that Jim said that Natalia felt an urge to leave, but I made my will save (not surprising, since Natalia’s will save is awesome), so she stuck around.
“I feel weird about fighting an angel,” I announce.
“It’s not an angel,” Phil says, probably secretly adding to himself that he was going to send me to meet some real angels if I didn’t shut the hell up.
Okay, so it’s not an angel. It’s something that I find out later doesn’t like anything with a chaotic alignment. Apparently, I—er, Natalia—is the only one with a non-chaotic alignment. (She’s neutral-good, if you recall.)
Again, I won’t go into the fight. We won. Yay. But I will tell you say this: Remember Gurdren’s glove? You know, the one that turns things into stone? Well, at a pivotal moment, Gurdren grabs at Angelic Poser and the thing turns into stone, wings spread out, looking very cool.
We’re all impressed. Iema jokes, “Do you do all your art deco that way?”
“It is nice,” Gurdren agrees. “Hell, I’m taking that with me!”
So we lug it with us. There are no more encounters for the day. Finally, we camp with no incidents until morning comes.
Huskyr the 29th
New day, new person rolling for encounters. I’m pretty sure it was me rolling this time. When I finally get an encounter, Jim says that Natalia hears singing. She stops. “Do you hear that?”
Iema, Corin, and Gurdren listen. “No,” they say.
Natalia turns to her dire hawk-turned-bat. “Sunshine, do you hear that?”
Sunshine cocks her head to her one side. “I hear it! It’s PRETTY.”
Jim explains to me that, as a druid, Natalia knows of various things that sing, some good, some bad. She can also discern that the singing is coming from the north. We debate checking it out, until Corin points out that if it’s something that lures travelers off the road to their deaths…well, yeah, we should probably take care of that.
Natalia is secretly on board from the get-go—she’s gotten where she enjoys the fights—but the others look hesitant until Corin points out, “Also: Loot.”
Suddenly, everyone is feeling agreeable.
So we follow the sound off-path. We go along the cliffs. We can feel the air getting warmer. Finally, we reach the mouth of a cave. Strangely, wind is coming from the cave. Natalia and Sunshine still hear the singing, but now, they can tell it’s in Sylvan.
“Does Natalia know Sylvan?” Jim asks me.
I check her character sheet. “No.” I’m disappointed. Natalia’s lousy intelligence score means she can’t speak a lot of languages. Sadly, she still speaks more than I do. D’oh.
Phil saves the day by pointing out that Iema does know Sylvan, so Natalia rattles off the words she hears in the song to Iema and Iema translates. “It’s just a song about past things,” Iema summarizes, shrugging.
Iema and Corin decide to sneak into the cave while Natalia, Sunshine, and Gurdren hang back. Unfortunately, there are stone giants right inside the mouth, and they instantly spot the bard and his apprentice.
The giants loom over the two, trying to scare them away. And it would have worked—if they hadn’t started talking in Druidic, which Natalia can speak. One says to the other, “Give them a chance to run. They might not know what’s in there.”
Natalia steps forward. “What’s in there?” she asks in Druidic. They look surprised at being understood. Trying again for privacy, they switch to Terran. Which, JOKE’S ON THEM, because Iema speaks that too!
Some rock creature bounds up to the giants. At first, I think that they’re going to unleash this thing on us, but Iema understands that they’re telling the stone dog to sit and stay. It jumps around them happily, very much like a kitten. They keep chatting to each other, and finally, they decide to tell us.
Inside the cave, they say, is an earth weird. Iema immediately asks if we can get a vision from her. I guess earth weirds have prophesies. Awesome.
They agree to let Iema and Natalia inside; Corin, Sunshine, and Gurdren have to wait outside. We’re led to the earth weird and ask again if we can be honored with a vision. She asks us what we have to offer. Iema double-checks with Natalia to make sure she doesn’t want to draw from the Deck of Many Things (HELL NO), and he hands the deck over. The earth weird must be pleased with it because she offers us each one prophesy for ourselves and one for another.
You’d think when you get an offer like this, you’d be ready for what you want to know. Well, maybe you would, but I was not. I know what I secretly wanted to ask: Is Iema going to betray Natalia? IS IEMA GOING TO BECOME EVIL? I’m totally suspicious. I’m wouldn’t put it past Jim to slip Phil notes to pull shit over on me. In fact, I know Jim does that. I wouldn’t be shocked if Phil did the same thing. If they haven’t yet, they probably will at some point. This could be how I find out for sure.
But…Natalia really doesn’t have a reason to doubt Iema, so she has no reason to ask that question. So, in keeping with the whole “role-playing” aspect of D&D, I chose not to ask that. Yeah, I was disappointed.
So I have to mull over that one for Natalia. Luckily, Phil is having difficulties, too. Since it’s taking a while for Natalia and Iema to decide, they’re invited to stay for dinner. Over dinner, they talk about possible questions they can ask.
Finally, after dinner, they’re ready. Natalia decides to ask who betrayed Julium—and the rest of us—and what Beta’s future holds. By that last question, she’s hoping to get insight on whether or not he actually has plans to get her, Iema, and Corin.
So she asks the first question: Who betrayed Julium? The earth weird concentrates, then her eyes widen in horror. I don’t know if she’s telepathically linked to those around her, but there was a collective gasp within the room.
I’m on the edge of my seat, ready to hear the answer. And, admittedly…a little fearful to hear the answer.
“I cannot answer that,” the earth weird says.
What. The. Hell.
“Which means,” she continues, “that the person who betrayed Julium and the rest of you is a worshipper of Tantori. They are protected by their god.”
Ooooh, Tantori…I read Jim’s blog. That’s a nasty god. I had a feeling a Tantorite was going to show up in this game sooner or later.
So that leaves one other question for Natalia. She was going to ask about Beta, but that would only affect her own future. Julium’s fate is tied up with most of Valt. Sigh.
“What does the future hold for Julium Caesus Numbra?” she asks.
The earth weird is quiet for a moment. Then she speaks. “There shall be no hand before him that can stop him,” she begins. “And he will succeed in his mission. He will unite everyone. But history will forget this, and he will be known as the most blood-thirsty tyrant in Valt. That is the price of unity. That is the price of his vision.”
Natalia mulls over her words. Iema’s turn.
“I have a weapon, Cruagh,” Iema starts. “But it’s missing its companion weapon, Ruke. Where can I find the companion weapon?”
“In Fenzybyl,” she answers. “The hand that clasps it is the son of a matron house and does not know of its power. Cruagh hungers for his blood.”
“And what about my apprentice, Corin?” Iema asks. “What does the future hold?”
After she answers, I cannot help but think that his fate is possibly worse than Julium’s: “Pain. Knowledge. Betrayal. Death. He will stand against the unstoppable, do the unthinkable, and he will never quit,” she says. “But he will know great pain, and when the unstoppable comes to him, he will be destroyed.”
Damn, does this woman—do weirds have genders?—know how to spoil a party. Sensing this, she pauses, then says, “Since I could not answer your first question, I permit you one more.”
Natalia looks at Iema. He’s the smart one. Let him ask it.
And he asks a pertinent one. “Will we survive the Underdark? Will we survive to see the sun over our home?”
“You will,” she answers. “But a great evil is loose in your homelands, crafted by your own hands. You have already influenced the blood-letting.”
God, we can’t win. With that fun information, we eventually leave the weird and find Corin, Sunshine, and Gurdren. We don’t mention the prophesies we were given. Instead, we walk with the others until we reached our original destination, the one before we got distracted by fates. Finally, we arrive at some cliffs. Rock doors slide open; we’re greeted by dwarves, who exclaim over the stone Angelic Poser we’re lugging along.
They offer us a place to crash for a night, and we take them up on it, quickly falling into a troubled sleep.
Huskyr the 30th
The next morning is full of activity as we prepare to finally enter the Underdark. Some of the dwarves wake us up. Gurdren is not one of them—he’s off doing something else.
One of the dwarves tells us that the elders are very appreciative of the things we’ve brought back. (I secretly substitute “stolen” in my mind, but who am I to correct them?) The elders specifically want to talk to Natalia. However, another man wants to meet up with Iema.
Iema goes to meet the man. The man has one eye, a burn scar on half of his face, a peg leg, and he’s missing a hand. All in all, I’d say he’s had a rough life.
He’s knows something about the Underdark. He explains that most of the Underdark is damp because it’s carved out by water. It’s also very linear in design. The first city we’ll come to is Fenzybyl. This is good, since Iema wants to find his companion weapon there.
He gives us more directions that I won’t bore you with. In general: Keep down and east. He also noted not to be fooled by anyone claiming anything related to Ziniel—those claiming they’re creatures of redemption, who were evil but don’t want to be. Everyone down there is evil, period, end of story.
Yeah, I think we already learned that lesson the hard way.
The man also gives tips on drow. And here’s the scariest thing I’ve heard so far. Now, I don’t know if this is the case in other D&D games, but in Jim’s world, there aren’t very many psionicists because almost all of them are kidnapped by the Gith. Nobody escapes. The fact that Allista is up and around is a very unusual circumstance. (A circumstance that, if you recall, was brought about by Natalia and her friends when they went to the Astral Plan and rescued her.)
The drow, however, actually do have psionicists among themselves. Several. Because they’re strong enough to fight off the Gith. GULP.
I have a feeling that by the end of this little trip, I’m gonna hate drow as much as Phil.
Other things to note, the man says. Drow don’t flinch. Ever. And there will be spiders everywhere. Ignore them. If we even take a little notice, they’ll know us as frauds in a moment’s notice.
While Iema is gathering information from this man, Natalia is whisked off to see the dwarven elders, whom, she is surprised to discovered, are druids! They offer to answer any questions. And, of course, she can’t think of a damn thing. I have a feeling this is one of those times when Jim was setting something helpful up for me, and then I failed him miserably. The only thing Natalia can think to ask is if they know which spells would be the most helpful in the Underdark. I had her ask this because right before it was time for me and Jim to do our little “scene,” I had been flipping through the other D&D books Jim has and reading up on the spells that Natalia doesn’t have. Asking the druids for helpful spells was my sneaky way to try to get them to teach Natalia some new stuff.
Sadly, they had nothing to teach me, no spells to recommend.
Sterror the 1st
The first day of the new month, the first day in the Underdark. A mere four hours into it, and we’ve already run into our first drow. However, Iema kills the drow easily. A little too easily, we think. We hurry off.
A little later, we have another encounter from a creature that just PLOWS right into us, bonking Corin with his club. There’s scuffling, of course, but we manage to kill it and find its lair. There we find magic rings—glowing in poop, I might add. Again, we don’t want to stick around, so we force march to get a little further away before finding a place to sleep.
Sterror the 2nd-5th
Phil and I trade off who rolls for different days, and these were the days we were lucky. Normally, I like to have SOME encounters, but since Jim has told us it’s going to take about a year (game-time, of course) to get through the Underdark, I’m actually hoping for less. It’ll make it go by faster.
The only thing to note is that on the 3rd, we finally got to the split in the path that Iema’s coach told him about. The path goes up and down. Because the man told us to keep going down, we opted for that route.
We’re going to find out later that we made the wrong decision.
Sterror the 6th
I’m pretty sure I was rolling when we started having bad luck with encounters. The first one was when the percentage was 21% (eek) and Jim says we hear tapping. Four shelled things with hooked claws and beaked faces are clattering toward us. Jim says that they’re hook horrors. Upon seeing us, they immediately charge and bite Iema. Then they look disgusted and horrified. It takes us a moment to understand why they’re acting all shocked, until they start clattering in Undercommon the word for “drow.” I guess drow is NOT the other white meat.
They’ve also attacked Corin, who never seems to fare well these days, as the boy-turned-drow is down to 0 hit points.
Natalia heals Corin right up, only to find that they’ve brought Iema down. So she heals him up, and he tries talking to the things in Undercommon, trying to explain that we’re not there to kill them, as they believe we are. They don’t believe Iema, and quickly wrap their hooks around Iema’s and Corin’s necks. I guess somewhere along the way, Natalia must have shifted to her dire bear form for the fight because the hookworms demand that she not be a bear. Or else, they say, wrapping their hooks tighter around the boys.
She shifts back.
At first, they debate eating us. Then they decide against it. Then they decide to steal our water and shove us in a cavern. And this is the scene were Jim becomes all happy because while we didn’t die in this encounter, this is the first one where we’ve completely lost the fight. In fact, he was so pleased, he wrote a whole post about it.
Hmph. What kind of man gets off on seeing his fiancée and best friend getting beat up, I ask you? See how long it is before I make him cookies again.
Anyway, once the hooked assholes are gone, we go out the way we came. This is where we realize that where the path split, we should have gone up, not down. So now we have to backtrack.
Re-roll encounter! And…it’s a 20. 
This time, we run into a group of big, flabby guys –athaches—that look like they’re actually looking for the hook horrors. And, of course, because everyone down here is a complete and utter DICK, we fight. Here, Iema shows off a really cool trick, Wail of Doom, and he sends four guys off running.
Not to be outdone, Natalia casts Ice Storm. Well, okay, Iema did outdo Natalia—Natalia’s Ice Storm is nothing new; we’ve all seen it a million times before. Still, the Ice Storm is impressive, doing 22 points of damage on the remaining 8 assholes.
Sunshine decides to jump in, biting, winging over and out. When it’s my turn again, I decide I’m going to summon something. When Natalia casts any Summon Nature’s Ally spell, by the way, it’s something we all like to jump in on. I always make the final call, but I definitely take Phil’s advice, since he’s a much more experienced player than I.
Although, admittedly, I’ve never summoned that orca whale that he wants to see in action so badly.
For this encounter, I decide on the Tendriculos again. Natalia’s only summoned it once before, and she never really got to see it in action.
I’m much happier with it this time around. Once she’s summoned it, it does tons of damage. We’re disappointed, though, that even with all the dings we put into these things so far, they still have 102 hit points. Sheesh!
Sunshine—poor Sunshine!—is still doing her best in her bat-form, but finally, at some point, she yells, “NATALIA, WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME ANYMORE?”
Natalia stops long enough during the fight to say, “What? I do!”
“WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME?” she keeps hollering. “YOU NEVER MAGIC ME ANYMORE.”
Oops. Because Iema had mentioned wanting Poison on his weapon, Natalia swapped the Greater Magic Fang spell out for the Poison. Her lack of Greater Magic Fang is what Sunshine is referring to.
Natalia tries to stammer out something that sounds half like an apology and half an explanation, but Sunshine keeps yelling, “YOU NEVER MAGIC ME ANYMORE! WHAT DID I DO WRONG?”
I felt really bad about this. And then I felt really stupid. Because I’m FEELING BAD FOR A CHARACTER THAT IS NOT REAL. Okay, done feeling guilty now.
At any rate, the fight is nasty, everyone does their own thing, and eventually, we’re left with one that runs away. We search the dead athaches, and WOOT. Magical jewelry! Just what a girl wants: Natalia gets a new ion stone! She promptly places it around her head, and it goes into orbit.
I hope that’s not indicating that my head is so big that it has its own gravitational pull…
Natalia also gets a ring and Moon Bracers. She gets over her loots pretty fast, though, and settles in on removing the poison from Sunshine with a wand she has. Meanwhile, Iema’s going through some things as well. He finds a necklace that looks crappy until he puts it on. Upon examination, he determines that the jewels can be used as explosives.
He also digs up a tin crown. “That’s funny,” he says. “It seems like it looked fancier on the athach that was wearing it.”
We all take turns trying it, but we can’t figure out what made it different when the bad guys were wearing it until Sunshine says, “Let me try!”
We shrug, then put it on her. It just looks like a tin crown. “Do you feel any different?” Iema asks cautiously.
“No. Maybe if I think real hard!” Sunshine squeezes her eyes shut. And then, right before our eyes, we see it turn into a gaudy crown. “Now I feel different!”
“That’s a Hat of Change Self!” Corin exclaims. We’re all impressed with this item. Of course, Natalia doesn’t need anything like that, since she changes herself more than I imagine she changes her underwear (sad but true), so that item stays with Iema.
And so concludes just another day in the Underdark.
Sterror the 7th
Good grief, only 7 days since we’ve been here? Natalia’s getting stir-crazy for some freakin’ SUNSHINE, and I don’t mean her animal companion. The Underdark is depressing.
And disgusting, as I’m about to find out with this next encounter.
Some spectral creatures step out in front of us and cast a spell. Phil immediately asks to do a check, but I assume he failed it because Jim announces that Iema can’t identify the spell the things are using. Nonetheless, we take damage. Iema attacks the thing, but he just goes right through it.
Aw, crap.
The spectral things disappear. Jim, incidentally, has the layout drawn on a battlemap: It’s a tunnel with several smaller U-shaped rooms off to the sides. Natalia walks into one passage way, sees an elf of composed of light. Sweet, right? Natalia (overall) doesn’t care for elves, and here’s one sitting for her to kill. She casts Produce Flame and gets ready.
Iema is still somewhere along the main hallway. Unlike Natalia, he’s figured out that there’s someone behind this, and he’s looking for a spellcaster. He hears where the spell is being cast from and inches towards it. One of his items has some sort of dimension door ability to it, which he uses.
He ports his ass right into some liquid.
I’m very proud of myself—as soon as Jim said that, I figured out what it was. No, I’m not just saying that to make it out like I know everything. I’m saying it because I usually have no clue what the hell we’re fighting, and this is one of those few times I figured it out right away. Only, of course, because I’d seen the things in action before.
I kept my mouth shut, though, just in case I was wrong. I wish I had been.
In her location, Natalia hurls two produce flames at the glowing elf in front of her. The flames seem to bounce off some kind of shield. Natalia frowns. The elf grins and flips her off. Sunshine tries to fly in behind the elf and bite, but, of course, it goes through the elf.
Jim now say that at this point, Iema’s “in” some creature. When Jim said this, it confirmed my suspicions: Gelatinous cubes. Iema dimension doors out of it.
Natalia, hell-bent on getting the ghostly elf, chases it, but it disappears behind another gelatinous cube. How many of these things are there? She runs around the opposite way of the U-shaped room to get to the main hall, spots the elf, and before she can think, she casts Produce Flame and hurls it at him. It, of course, goes through the elf and hits Corin smack on the back of the head.
“OW!” he yells. He turns on Natalia, annoyed. “IT’S AN ILLUSION.”
Oh. Well. Yeah.
Remember when I asked earlier how many gelatinous cubes are in this hallway? Well, the answer is a LOT. Here’s what’s worse: They’re working with will-o’-wisps, who taunt us, then we walk into the cubes, the wisps feed on our torment. Apparently, they also took levels of sorcerer, since they are casting Dancing Lights. And the cubes are on all sides. Iema and Sunshine pretty much get stuck and paralyzed right away; Natalia dodges it for a while, gets stuck but not paralyzed, then gets out of one to walk right into another cube again. The only one who manages to stay out of the gelatinous cubes is Corin.
There are will-o’-wisps right in front of Iema, taunting him as he’s paralyzed in his gelatinous cube. “Shall we kill him?” one asks the other.
Natalia starts for them.
“Stop,” they order. “Come any closer, and we’ll kill him outright.”
Natalia stops, undecided.
Not Corin, though. “DEATH TO TYRANTS!” he yells while running to save his master.
But, despite all his agility, he isn’t fast enough, and the will-o’-wisps kill Iema and turn invisible. Corin and Natalia kill off the cubes that are around them. Iema’s body lays on the floor.
Jim has us roll for another encounter. Wouldn’t you know it, we roll a 1, so yes, we’re going to get another encounter. “Shit,” I say. “Are we going to have to fight something else with Iema lying dead over there?”
“No,” Jim says. “They’ve heard you and are coming, but you’ve got a little bit of time to pull off a Reincarnation.”
So Natalia casts. As I roll for what Iema comes back as, I say a quick prayer that he’ll come back as something useful and not a toad or something. I read the number to Phil, and he looks it up.
“Human!” he reads, surprised.
“Awesome! Wait—so he’s human now?” I ask.
Jim shakes his head. “No, it’s just a baseline. When you roll human, it means you get to go back to whatever you were originally. So he’s an arcling again.”
So that’s cool. Next, Phil rolls on the “what went wrong” table. Jim reads the results and tells him that Iema is now vulnerable to weapons of death.
I don’t really get that—isn’t EVERYONE vulnerable to weapons of death?—but I don’t have time to figure it out. Already, we can hear someone approaching…
Of course, we’re not going to find out what it is until next game.
