Dramatis Personae
Beltin (Aasimar Dirge Bard/Cleric 8).
Bol (Tiefling Vivisectionist Rage Chemist/Barbarian 8).
Phil (player kept his sheet so his character gets to keep his name; Oread Ranger/Empyreal Sorc 8). ABSENT PLAYER
Glira Cross (Human Gunslinger/Magus 8). ABSENT PLAYER, now dropped from game
Bradley Weatherby (Human Dervish Dancer 8/Knife Master Rogue 7/Duelist 1).
"Sun Bro" (Can't remember his character name or classes, but they are no longer relevant as you will see). He is a warrior from a tribe of sun worshiping nomads in the desert to the north and he and several other warriors were sent on a pilgrimage to the Pillars of "Light" (i.e. Orcus) to restore his tribe's fortunes, but a flash flood in the rift claimed the lives of his companions. Now alone and lacking ranks in Survival, Sun Bro continued his search for the pillars, seeing his misfortune as a test of his mettle. Being completely lost just makes it more challenging.
Inter-party harmony, Session 3 - 5/10/14
Day 4. The party met and nearly killed Sun Bro as he was climbing toward the rift genesis and they into the rift proper; they met almost directly below the chasm in the road. Skelly Gurg was leading the way with orders to attack anything ahead when suddenly perception checks. What's that Gurg? You sense something ahead and you have orders? CHARGE.
Meanwhile from around the bend Sun Bro heard what sounded like a troop of something at the same time Gurg heard him, so he found an opening in the rift wall and hid. From his vantage point he saw some horrifying things: a gigantic bloody corpse carrying a great club the size of tree trunk... then several archers made of the same stuff. "Holy shit what's that" goes through his mind as he sees Bol, a walking abomination if there ever was one, walk around.
The man on the undead flying mount is strange as well. The sight of BW, a man of fashion (now ruined and tattered) and taste, confuses him, but he's seen enough to know that these are bad people. So he waits. Bol is suspicious and drinks an extract for scent and shit gets real.
Bol engages and nearly kills Sun Bro who is hiding in the rift before diplomacy prevails and each realizes the other isn't a creature of the Desolation. Sun Bro has joined the party! While this is happening, Beltin sees the remains of the smited hydra from the bridge and happily adds it to his menagerie.
After hearing the story of the flash flood (and me out of game letting the players see what it does), BW is completely paranoid and takes to riding the newly created hydra as it climbs along the cliff wall... 40 feet up just to be safe. Traveling. What's this? A wild black pudding has appeared! And oh wow does it appear with its surprise round followed directly by its turn it earned with a nat 20 initiative. I think BW thinks I want him dead...
The portion of the wall the hydra is climbing on suddenly begins to move and squirt out, grabbing and digesting. BW makes a reflex save and is given the choice of taking it with the hydra or jumping, and decides to feather wall his way down to relative safety. Knowledge dungeoneering checks! Failed? Excellent! The hydra battles the black pudding, biting it repeatedly, which turns out to be a poor choice.
Split, split, split, split, etc. Most of the smaller puddings rain down on the party below and some remain attempting to consume the hydra. As no one knows how to stop the splitting it keeps going until it can go no more and the party is almost overwhelmed for a second. Sun Bro goes down and begins to be consumed. Bol is nearly there too. BW's favorite non-magical kukri gets corroded to uselessness. But alas they can only split so much and eventually the puddings were defeated.
Beltin goes over to check on Sun Bro with BW, when BW stops him and suggests they check his bag first... and they find something that makes them happy. Sun Bro was carrying all the wealth of his tribe to (literally) pay homage to the sun, 10,000 gold worth of gems. Beltin and BW make an accord, agree to split it (though it all goes into BW's handy haversack for the moment), and then fill up the sack it was in with rocks and return it to their tribal friend's bag. Bol is off in his own little world, unaware of this or I'm sure he would have wanted in. They bring Sun Bro up and continue on their way.
As they continue on, they realize just how large the rift is and how they are essentially having some needle and haystack action going on, so Beltin flies up out of the rift to try to scout anything they should head towards. He comes up at just the right time and sees a fairly large group of winged creatures descending into below the lip of the rift and they realize if they continue east they will reach that spot, which is actually the lair of the spitting gargoyles (not that they knew that). As the caravan was attacked by flying creatures, this seems like a good lead. Onward!
A little bit later as they are descending a series of short drops in the rift they encounter a group of 5 margoyles, which don't do much overall, but the party has difficulty breaching the DR 10/magic and the fight is more difficult then it perhaps should have been. One of them breaks away and escapes, but the party has no idea if these creatures are related to the ones they saw before... they are.
When it is nearly nightfall they see a wounded margoyle, the one who got away several hundred feet up... and he disappears into the wall. Huh, maybe there's a cave up there? Bol turns invisible and flies up to investigate. As he goes up higher he hears horrible laughing and ripping noises and sees a grotesque scene; more creatures like the ones they fought tearing apart the wounded one who had returned.
The conversation is half terran, half common so Bol gets the impression the wounded creature was murdered by his kin for little reason other than his cries of "danger" woke them up early and they never really liked him anyway. Still, maybe they should fly out to check if there really is danger on the way. Screw that, we'll see em coming if they come says another and laziness prevails. Bol goes to leave, but before his does he hears a distinctly human cry come from the other cave, along with some more cruel laughter.
He goes down and reports. More of those creatures, looks like a lot and it sounds like they may have Rupert Smitty and the other missing man. In the right spot after all! The party sees more activity above and realize the creatures are mostly nocturnal so they decide to assault them at dawn. A magical hut is made and time for sleep. Except not.
Night 4. As they are getting ready for bed, Sun Bro discretely slips away and checks his belongings. He puts 2 and 2 together and realizes his new friends robbed him. He plays it cool and goes back like nothing it wrong but he has a plan. A poorly conceived plan. BW is on watch first and Sun Bro feigns sleep. Once everyone else is asleep his casts Deep Slumber on BW, who makes it and realizes it is time for violence.
He begins to silently dance and Sun Bro rises, an unspoken agreement that this is between them, hence the stealth. No one else need be involved. If BW thought he was getting a fair fight, he was wrong. Deep Slumber again, this time he fails. Sun Bro grabs his Handy Haversack and flees into the night. He casts Disguise Self to make himself look like a woman, under the impression he will rejoin the party later disguised as a different traveler.
He ducks into a small cave and begins to search through the bag for his stolen wealth, when he suddenly hears a whisper in his ear: "What are you doing here, little girl?" And then more voices, hundreds, thousands, gibbering, insane, damned voices. The three allips who he had walked right into float around to block his escape from the small crevice, laughing and gibbering.
They touch him and destroy his mind. Sun Bro throws the bag at one in desperation (it goes through and hits the wall in the back of the crevice) and runs. The allips pursue, telling him unknowable things as he runs, stroking him as he runs, and suddenly it all begins to make sense to him. He hears the laughter and the screaming and the gibbering is his head, but also he realizes, from his own mouth. As he runs back to party, they hear it too.
Bol steps out and is immediately fascinated by the allips, but Beltin is not and he has a plan. He dominates the allips one by one, but not before they bring Sun Bro down to zero wisdom. With the mad ghosts temporarily under his control he does the obvious thing: He commands them to go play with the creatures in the cave above. They happily comply and the party hears the sounds of screaming and laughter in the distance, finally silenced by a loud explosion. Out of game I roll 2d4 and tell the party that the allips managed to take down 5 of the creatures above, which is great because I think they'll need every advantage they can get.
As the sounds of allip battle from above trickle down, BW finally wakes from Deep Slumber and steps outside. He sees Bol and Beltin above the unconscious Sun Bro and walks over and nonchalantly cuts his throat for attacking and "robbing" him. They follow his back trail and recover the Handy Haversack and return to the magic hut to sleep and await the dawn.
1 causality: Sun Bro. Cause of death: Inter-party conflict.
