The Rise of Bob — Part 2
The continuation from the last play report: here.
Robert the Wizard
The rest of the boat journey is rather uneventful. I didn’t have a backup character, silly me, so I pulled one of the pre-mades from the back of the book and used that.
In the meantime, the others come across a castle on an island and dock there. It turns out that this is Mont Édouard Castle.
The lord of the castle offers his aid to the party.
- He allows an intern to join the party, Robert the Wizard.
This is my new character, eager for adventure. - One of the other mages offers to teleport us straight to Karnak Sul using a flaming gate.
Wins all around!
Karnak Sul
Wasting no time, we step through the portal. Now we’re in Karnak Sul. This place is huge and maze-like. We peer into a massive cavernous chamber and spot the forge area. That’s where we need to be, but that’s going to be a chore.
On top of that, we can hear the bellowing snore of the dragon. The more time we spend here, the more chance there is to wake that thing up.
We don’t want that.
We decide to use one of our Aesir’s Bridge scrolls to get down to that building.
Easy, we do that and it happens.
We’re right next to the forge building.
However, there’s a shield golem waiting for us.
Audible groans.
This is going to be a tough fight.
I tell the others, “Hey, don’t worry, Bob’s got this. Trust me.”
They’re like, “Uh, OK, if you say so.”
I then cast flight on myself and hover above the deep chasm, then I use Aesir’s Bane (a spell from a feature), to swap places with a target.
Done and done. Now the shield golem is falling into the chasm. Oh, and it makes a very loud clanging noise as it bursts into a million pieces.
This is the point where the DM rolls to see how many rounds it takes for the dragon to wake up. That probably would have been the outcome anyway if we had to actually fight the shield golem, ah well.
We hustle into the forge building. Our grey wizard readies his Seal Portal spell in case of dragon. Then we loot.
Oogrim
- Amulet of Belated Defense — A nifty little artifact that blocks the 2nd attack each round.
William
- Karnak’s Maul — A pretty strong and awesome maul that does sonic damage amongst other things.
Robert
- Yellow Orb of St. Lucia — This is like a LotR Palantir. There are only 7 of these in the world and you can use them to communicate amongst one another. Very wizard-y.
As for the robes, we did find some. However, they were not robes of the archmagi.
The lead was bad.
The robes we did get were Robes of the Wanderer and those are pretty cool. Kind of like the Rampage spell on steroids with a 1d4 rounds duration.
Are We The Baddies?
The dragon had still not awakened, but his lair was a ways off as well. We briefly played with the idea of trying to rob from his hoard, but decided to get out while we were ahead.
Since the lead was bad we got disillusioned by Galen’s plan for this new circle of archmages.
What to do then?
The idea was quickly brought up that we should turn on Galen and report him to a proper archmage.
We decided Archmage Edwin, head of the greys. So we used our other Aesir’s Bridge scroll to teleport to his tower.
Once there, we enter the tower and are greeted by a sassy owl in a cage. It taunts us and the idea of killing the damn thing gets thrown about immediately.
We decide not to, though, as that would get us off on the wrong foot with Edwin.
Edwin sees us shortly after arriving. He says it’s a good thing we didn’t kill it, that owl is actually a polymorphed lich and killing it would just let him reform around his heart in his proper form.
The owl wanted us to kill it.
The bastard.
We tell Edwin about Galen and our suspicions that he had murdered Archelaus. Edwin agrees that this is troubling and we should move on him.
That ends that session.
Notes
Second session I played, first death. Pretty epic, though. This whole adventure could have gone a number of ways. There were so many points that we could have deviated from what we did. We could have gone overland, we could have gotten a bigger boat, we could have gone straight to Edwin, really.
It was a lot of fun, though, what we did do.
In between this and the following session we talked up this adventure so we could recruit more players to join us in attacking Galen.
1/27/24
For this session I made a backup character. We didn’t really know what we were getting into last time, so I didn’t have a backup ready.
This time, we knew we were going to attack an archmage in his tower. I made a backup character.
We had more players this time, too, making this the largest group I’ve played in to date.
- Bob (Robert) the Human Red Wizard / Blue Wizard — This is me.
- William Ward the Human Mercenary / Grey Wizard
- Oogrim Firefist the Orc Red Wizard / Blade Master
- Sir Nugget the Halfling Knight/Blue Wizard
- Sharzad the Orc Skald / Huntsman
Report
It has been weeks in game (and out) since the party met with Archmage Edwin. Since then, they have been traveling back to White Haven and ended up recruiting a couple more adventurers to help in this mad task.
Gearing Up!
We had some cash and more was split, so we geared up. I picked up some alchemical potions in case of magic resilient creatures and everyone else grabbed some weapons to try and account for what we would run into.
Off to See the Wizard!
At the city we were able to get in and up to the castle with ease. It was just another day in White Haven. We were also able to get through the first line of guards, stating our business with Galen.
Now, the last time, once we got to the tower we talked with an attendant who led us in. It was the same man again. He recognized us and we told him we were back to see Galen, we were led in.
He leaves us in the sitting room, it’s slightly different from last time. In a gilded cage is that damned owl from Edwin’s.
What’s he doing here?
The owl alludes that Edwin is no more and that we were also doomed with that Bone Golem standing right behind us.
What!?
Indeed, right behind us was a Bone Golem made out of dinosaur bones. With some very good rolls and me casting Haste on our halfling knight, we make short work of the creature with very minimal damage, impressive!
With the creature defeated we now had choices. Upstairs or downstairs. As we listened both ways, our rolls were terrible. However, as I listened at the stairs going up, I was confident that this was the right way.
So confident that I started heading up. Right into a shield golem.
Damn.
No chasm to throw this one into.
I bravely yell out to my companions (scream like a little girl) to alert them of the danger.
They heed my call and another battle follows.
Not only was there the shield golem, but there were 5 gargoyles as well.
This fight was rougher.
Oogrim threw a fireball at the gargoyles which weakened them but did not drop any. Sir Nugget went up to fight the shield golem, while I had run back down the stairs.
The gargoyles swarmed the halfling and tore him to shreds. I moved up to heal him shortly after, giving him a healing potion and getting a smack from the shield golem for 2/3rds of my hp.
A couple things followed.
- William used his sonic blast and blew up the gargoyles.
- The healing potion rebooted the halfling and he went to town on the shield golem tearing it up.
Another solid victory!
This floor was Galen’s library which we plundered for scrolls and got a nice amount to add to our repertoire. We weren’t quite there, though.
On the next floor, we were greeted by a cerberus who did not look so friendly. Some trail rations were tossed to it and the dog ate it up. The problem being, it was still unsatisfied. One trail ration, three heads.
Someone earlier had mentioned having some White Lotus poison. This is an expensive poison that has to be consumed, but paralyzes the target for at least 1d4 rounds or a full minute if it fails the save.
So we poison some more trail rations and toss it to the doggo who gobbles it up.
Fantastic!
It fails its save!
This is awesome!
Kill the Wizard
Our next step is the last one. Galen’s on the next floor and we go up to meet him.
There’s no monologue, no back and forth. He knows why we’re there and we waste no time, battle is joined!
Sir Nugget moves up to engage, I Haste him with a scroll I found below, but Galen Counterspells it.
Oogrim uses his Robes of the Wanderer to transform into a Siren Snail, a super nasty beast with 90 hp, and uses his Piercing Shriek for some good sonic damage.
Galen is not a fan so far and throws a chain lightning that hits 3 of us. Due to defense abilities from the other two and my lack of them, they’re fine and I get dropped having been dealt 40 some lightning damage. I took half of that, but I had forgotten to heal before we came up, which would not have mattered because 20 was enough to drop me anyway.
William lunges with his zweihänder dealing some good damage.
This is followed by Sir Nugget moving in for an attack, but Galen uses the Staff of Archelaus to REVERSE TIME. This negates the last action Sir Nugget took and then reverses the turn order.
Sharzad administers a healing potion to me, picking me back up!
Galen drops a lightning wall and attempts a retreat, he downs a healing potion, clearly losing at this point.
The siren snail moves through the lightning wall, taking some damage, but has plenty to spare. He slams Galen for a bunch more damage and then William lunges again, dealing lethal damage to the would-be archmage.
The fight is over.
Looting Time!
We recovered his robes and staff. I took the robes, which are the equivalent of heavy armor for mages with some bonus goodies. Sharzad took the staff.
I rolled up a rug, I might keep it, we’ll see.
Some artifact armor was rolled up, Warden’s Scale Mail, good stuff.
Then a bunch of money was rolled up.
Honestly, this time I was more excited about our accomplishment than the treasure. I think everyone was level 1 still, we might have had a level 2 amongst us, but still!
After this, we were informed that the governor was disappointed we didn’t work with him to resolve this issue.
Pretty clear what he wants to do, or what he intends to do.
The next step: go tell the king about the governor, get him to mobilize his forces and take care of this governor.
That’s gonna be the next session!
Notes
This was a lot of fun, again! I think we all played pretty well. I held onto my resources until the last fight so we could drop some big damage and then I ended up getting downed by lightning. Disappointing, but I think it was still the right move.
I was definitely expecting a TPK or any amount of character deaths, but none. That’s pretty wild.
I think I have the opportunity to make it pretty far with Bob as long as I play well in the future.
Archmage Bob has a nice ring to it!
You can pick up Horde Wars here!
You also get an invite to the guilded server where we played this game.
You, too, can get in on this action!
