Kiss My Knits!

When last we left our party, we were in a lift, headed down to a room where our three rescued Dwarves were going to fix some machinery for us.

GM Vaschon: Your party begins to descend and sees a very large machine room.
Val: is there a small man behind a curtain?
GM Vaschon: The room itself is 80′ x 80′ and filled with pumps and other gears. What a great place for an ambush. Your party is roughly 30′ from the ground.
Palin: Okay, I should say up front that both Vaeldriil and I are totally wiped. If a ginormous combat starts up, I don’t know about her, but I’m definitely going to have to call it a night. So we can start fresh with a massacre the next week.
GM Vaschon: Your party arrives at the machine room. The door opens and you are greeted by 5 drow elves.
Torkal: HOLY SON OF A
Veracity: …..
Palin: You are f****** kidding me.
Aleanghi: Oh for the love of…
Veracity: “Run away! Run away!”

Miraculously, we do not launch into a giant running firefight. We stop and talk first. The drow want to take the lift up, but if they do, we’ll be trapped down here, as apparently they were. They’re a taciturn bunch and not very willing to bargain, but we’re wracking our brains trying to figure out how to get out of this without dying. We try to figure out some complicated way to shimmy up with a rope, or to bribe or reason with them. As we parley, Val and Aleanghi start whispering to one another.

Palin: “How about a gold piece? Just for a five minute ride to the main floor of the mine, after which you never have to see us again. Pick the person you can tolerate the best.”
GM Vaschon: The drow responds, how about all your gold.
Aleanghi: Aleangi casts flare.
Val: “NOW!
Val: Val sneak attacks!
Palin: What the…
Palin: Oho, Vaeldriil’s the crazy one tonight!
Val: Light Blindness: Abrupt exposure to bright light (such as sunlight or a daylight spell) blinds drow for 1 round. On subsequent rounds, they are dazzled as long as they remain in the affected area.
Aleanghi: Hey, last week you charged, tonight… 🙂
Val: Drow have light blindness. we weren’t gettin anywhere 🙂 .
Torkal: I’m finding the quote where you sigh loudly about strategy being ignored, Val. Just FYI.

Val: 8 against 5, with the pre-emptive strike…
GM Vaschon: You do realize I said before you came down ‘great place for an ambush’
GM Vaschon: 5 that you see. Which did you cast at?
Val: …oh no
Veracity: “This is it. We’re all going to die.”
Palin: I’m giving Val credit for good thinking tonight. He had the idea about going back up with the Drow, and he thought about the flare…
Val: you can also credit me with forgetting about the ambush note
Aleanghi: Hey, I was TRYING with the rope thing.
Palin: heh. that you were.
Aleanghi: Trying, trying, trying…
GM Vaschon: Ale WHo are you casting at
Val: well wait…if they took the lift…we’d be stuck in an ambush ANYWAY
GM Vaschon: Two people could have gone up, 1 waited, the other come down, let the drow go, all is well 😉
Palin: Oh, sure, NOW you tell us.

That five “that you see” by the way, refers to the drider that we didn’t. A drider is half Drow Elf, half giant spider, and all badass.

We lose two of the three captive Dwarves with us who know how to unflood the chamber. One is skewered and one is struck by lightning. Six times. Oops. At my suggestion, the final surviving Dwarf runs for the lift, but is shot by a poisoned crossbow bolt as he runs.
Palin: That dwarf is going to try to kill us in our sleep if we all get out of this alive.

At this point we regroup and consider our options.
Veracity: “I’m open to any plan that involved shoving the elf out in front.”
We’ve just decided to retreat when Torkal mentions that he has some sunrods! Drow are dayblind, so this could be just the thing.

Two drow avert their eyes. Two remain focused on their attack. I manage to lop off one of the blind ones’ leg. Aleanghi summons Rollo the Wonder Beetle for a repeat performance. Unfortunately, the drider summons a dretch (pictured below right) to even the odds.

Palin: Rachel Dretch?  She was so good on SNL.



It goes a little something like this:
GM Vaschon: Drider summons a monster to her aid.  A dretch scuttles into view.
Aleanghi: Ohman.
Torkal: GOD F***
Palin: Is it wrong that I’m finding this funny?
Veracity: No!  I am too  I am so sure we are all walking dead now, I can’t help but laugh!

What exactly is a dretch?
Torkal: Dretches are 4′ tall demons.
Aleanghi: Oh lovely.
Torkal: They’re beefy-looking.
Palin: But ironically they taste like chicken.

In the course of the battle, Klyx the hireling kobold nearly dies, Veracity is set on fire for huge damage, and Val is wounded but cuts off a Drow’s hand.

Val: Val looks at the leader’s hand and asks, “You’re a lefty, aren’t you?”

There were many more such jokes. I’ll spare you.

At one in the morning, I had to cut out, but apparently the drider and the leader of the drow stayed alive for a good while longer. The drider even drained some of Klyx’s hitpoints, knocking him unconscious. We pull out all the stops with our spells and begin to make a dent on them, when we are all webbed by the drider. Finally, at 1:53 in the morning:

GM Vaschon: Bentein
Bentein: He’s still doing fine. But now he’s mildly annoyed, which might count for something!

(Bentein rolls like a maniac.)

Aleanghi: I like this annoyed Bentein.
Bentein: The problem is he doesn’t get drubbed enough.
GM Vaschon: Bentein bashes at a drider’s neck and snaps it.  A *crack* is heard as the corpse falls to the ground.
Veracity: Oh, thank GOD
Val: wow
Aleanghi: And the party all collapses.

Elapsed time: Approximately four hours and forty five minutes.

In our post-game e-mail bitching, Vaeldriil, who plays Aleanghi, made this astute observation:

“It occurred to me last night that, had diplomacy worked and we managed to get the Drow back up, we’d have been Really Screwed – because when they’d get to the main lift, they’d then switch power to take the main lift out (it’d likely take them enough time to get over there for our party member(s) on that level to rejoin us in the machine room with our lift), and we’d all be stranded in the machine room with a non-functioning lift.

So not only did we have to think of the correct way to use our own lift to get the Drow out, we’d also *then* need the party member who was up there to realize that they’d need to follow the Drow (from a great distance, perhaps) AND get power back to our lift so we won’t end up stranded.”

Now that’s strategy. If only we could think that well in the heat of the moment.

Next week: Giant spiders, surly Gnomes, and treasure! See you then!