Slain by Elf

Four mighty adventurers are brought together to solve the perilous case of the missing girl. Four mighty second-level adventurers. Periwinkle, gnome cavalier; Brock Ironfist, dwarf barbarian; Githsashit, gnome rogue; and Davor, half-orc barbarian/rogue. 'Half-orc and half-what, exactly? Half-goblin? Half-gnoll?'

'Human, you annoying little prick.'

'No, really. Half-kobold? I need to know.'

'Don't mock me. I'm more man than you'll ever be.'

'He's right. He may only be half-man, but you're all gnome.'

'Oh! Ah! That's the answer! He's half-orc in the sense of not being all-man. He's been snipped! He's got no nads! He's half an orc!

And so our adventure begins.

We have the Chelish Crux and are out of the Asmodean Knot. I suppose we should take the Crux to the pathfinder who asked us to retrieve it. Or we could open it first, just in case. We don't know what will happen and it may be best to be prepared.

'If we open this and it creates a gate to hell...' says Ganelon, always thinking the worst.

'...then mission accomplished. It will be like every other adventure we've been on.'

'Plus we'll have opened the gate not where the pathfinder wanted it', says Skelra, pointing out another good reason to try.

'Oh. Right. I suppose I'd have a gate to hell in my bedroom. I suppose it would keep me warm in Winter, and act as a nightlight.' And so, unperturbed by the paladin's familiar overreaction, Skelra and Afutavere get to work trying to open the Chelish Crux, working by trial and error. Lots of error.

Each failure in opening the Crux brings some pain. Some of the faces of the Crux glow red and a burst of heat flashes out, scorching the holder. And despite being a wizard and supposedly intelligent Skelra manages to be pretty slow in determining the locking mechanism. He gets scorched, scorched, and scorched again, soaking up damage with healing potions and stealing hit points from the elf.

Eventually, enough luck gets the Chelish Crux's combination correct, and it starts to unfold. Skelra immediately sees what's inside the Crux: an Erinyes devil's severed head. An Erinyes devil's severed head that starts screaming its lungs out.

'What lungs? It's a severed head.'

'I was being figurative, shut up.' So the severed head is screaming at an almighty volume in the infernal language as soon as the Chelish Crux is opened.

'With all this commotion, I think our monk's going to have to move house.'

'Uh, this is hardly the first time a woman has been screaming in infernal in my bedroom. I'm just saying.'

We have the Chelish Crux, now we have to get out of the Asmodean Knot. We could go back the way we came, although that means passing through the heart and its randomly opening and closing doors, across a gap to a rickety bridge, and somehow working our way up a water slide. I think the slide by itself makes our return that way rather tricky.

Instead, we could press on through one of the three doors we found in an antechamber immediately before the Outcast King's hall. The problem was that the doors led to a room with the same three doors, which led to the same room with the same three doors, and so on. Brennan went through four iterations without getting anywhere, and turning back brought him immediately before the antechamber again.

A clue to a possible exit is given by symbols on the doors. One has a book, one a holy symbol of Asmodeus, and the third a glaive. We have picked up a bunch of books in here, but none that looks like a key. We've not found a holy symbol of Asmodeus. But we have found a glaive, which we gained by releasing a bearded devil from his imprisonment. Then the paladin threw a strop just because we bargained with a devil and got an evil-aligned intelligent weapon as a result. What a crybaby.

Now I have a perfect excuse to get my hands back on the glaive. 'It's the only key-like object we own that looks like it stands a chance of opening one of these doors', I say, pointing out that it is either getting the glaive out of the handy haversack (unbranded) or going back the long way. Up the water slide. With some consternation, the paladin agrees to let me use the glaive. Oh yeah.

I grasp my friend the glaive and walk up to the door with the glaive symbol on it. As I touch the handle I get a sensation of understanding. I concentrate on heading home and, as I open the door, it opens in to my home. Sweet. I step through the door and am in my bedroom. Holding the glaive. The glaive that is our party's key to exiting the Asmodean Knot. Slamming the door behind me would probably be the Wrong Decision to make, but it's oh-so tempting.

'Throw me the Crux and I'll throw you the glaive!'

'Stick my head under?' Ganelon's not too happy about having to dunk himself in the slimy, probably diseased water in order to locate our drowning elf. 'Do I have to?' He smooshes his foot around a bit instead, bumping it in to what could be the elf's body, or maybe the elf's corpse. I dash across, as fast as I can in four feet of filth, and grab what's under the surface and lift his head clear.

Having the elf above the water and safe, Ganelon lays his hands on Afutavere and brings him back to positive hit points. He's alive! 'Good. Now, let's go looking for the Outcast King's weapons. Those longswords looked pretty magical.'

'Hey', the elf splutters, 'I nearly died there! And you want to look for loot?'

'Don't be so ungrateful. I was the first to come to your aid!'

'To be fair, you were the first to get next to him and watch him drown. There may have even been a hint of a smirk on your face.'

'Hey, that's right. You didn't want to put your head under the water to look for the drowning elf in case it mussed up your hair, but now there are magical weapons to recover you're straight under like a colour-sprayed porpoise.'

But it's not just magical weapons that are left behind with the Outcast King defeated. Now we can break in to the two chests in the alcove beyond the water, where we find even more loot and—score!—the Chelish Crux. We've got what we came here for. Now to get out.

The elf is submerged and soon to drown. The Outcast King has all its tentacles swiping at the rest of us, a couple of them wielding swords. Thankfully, I have a silvered weapon that is getting through the monster's damage reduction, and Ganelon is using his ability to smite evil to full effect.

Ganelon swings twice to hit for 28 and 31 points of damage, most of that being the +22 damage bonus granted by smite evil, along with a little help from the bard's spell. He's pretty much ripping vital organs out of the monster with each swing.

Skelra's helping from the back too. A ghostly hand delivers a Vampiric Touch to the Outcast King, making it look wobbly on what might be knees. And Ganelon's final swing deals a critical hit, just to make sure of the kill, doubling the already huge damage bonus and adding extra weapon damage on top of that. Even though the 4D6 settle on 1, 1, 1, and 1, Ganelon's mighty 48 damage cuts the Outcast King in two, dropping it in to the sludge.

'Four 1s! What are the odds?' What a silly question to ask around a gaming table. 1 in 1,296, obviously. And the unlucky roll of the dice didn't affect the outcome too much, not that we're surprised with a +44 damage bonus. The Outcast King was knocked to 0 hit points by Skelra moments before the paladin's critical hit landed. Even our ranger could have done enough damage to kill the monster in that final blow.

Oh, our ranger. Right. We'd better get him out from under the water before he breathes in too much. I hear that's not good for your elf.

With all its tentacles now free, having dropped our dying elf in to the murky waters to drown, the Outcast King can flail away with its full five attacks against the rest of us. Or it could, if it weren't blinded.

'Being blind, does it still know which square its attackers are in?', asks the GM. Ganelon and I have been prodding it with our weapons for a couple of rounds, the paladin making more of a mess of the monster than me.

Yes, is the answer. A blind creature knows which squares any attacks come from. 'Well, it's knows where we were', says Ganelon. 'If we'd moved after attacking it wouldn't know what square we're in now.'

And, of course, like idiots we didn't move after hitting the monster, setting ourselves up for reciprocal attacks. At least being blind means that it still suffers a 50% miss chance on any otherwise successful attack, which results in only one of the five attacks hitting. Poor elf, getting crushed and drowned so that we may survive. At least we know what the ranger's good for now.

The Outcast King has risen from the shallow depths of some slimy water and is grappling our elven ranger. The constricting grip of his tentacle is crushing the life out of Afutavere, who is almost on his last breath. 'Go limp! Play dead!' I cry out, hoping that acting like a rag doll will convince the monster that the elf is already dead and cause it to let go.

The problem is that Brennan cast a spell to temporarily blind the Outcast King, hoping it would prevent its getting multiple tentacle attacks on the rest of us. It's working, but with no one else to hit and a squishy elf in its paw, the monster has little else to do but crush the ranger some more.

Crunch, crunch. The tentacle's grip tightens and crushes the elf's ribcage, finally rendering him unconscious and dying. Getting to this situation is actually worse than we first imagined, as we remember we're fighting in four feet of slimy water. If the Outcast King releases the elf and the elf is unconscious, he'll drop in to the water and drown immediately, not being able to hold his breath.

'New plan: don't go limp!' You know, I'm not sure he's listening to me.

Start with the monk class. Take the sunder feats. Optimise the character for his sundering weapons. Now take him in to the heart of combat but don't attack. Instead, always ready an action to sunder the weapon of anyone who attacks you.

As monks can attack using any part of their body, what essentially happens is that you end up standing still as opponents break their weapons over you. It doesn't matter what weapon they use or where they hit you, the weapon will shatter when it strikes the Iron Monk.

Left is the righteous path. It has been so since the days of Metrius the paladin, the simpleton who was forever taking us down left-hand corridors whatever the evidence that we should be heading in a different direction. He may have had a point, though.

'You know why we had a problem in that room, don't you?', says Brennan. 'We turned right, not left.'

'Did we have a problem in that room?', asks Skelra.

'...yes. I caught mummy rot!' Yeah, we'll see. It's probably just a joke by the GM.

We stumble in to what looks like a disused storeroom in the Asmodean Knot. There are bits and pieces stashed everywhere, and a small source of magic tempts Brennan and Afutavere in to look for it. They are both somewhat startled, but not surprised, when an atrophied humanoid stumbles out from behind something and starts to attack.

Afutavere tries to identify the creature, with its missing arm, foot, and jaw. 'Is it either human or undead?'

'It might be. Make your roll.'

'Okay, I get a 25, or more. 27 if it's human, 29 if undead. And 31 if we're in an urban area. Which we're not, what with being in a completely different plane as part of the Asmodean Knot.'

Well, thanks for mentioning it, all the same. Despite his elastic skill check results, the elf has no idea what we're looking at, perhaps even wondering if it counts as humanoid, what with it having only one arm. His failure to identify the creature has him reeling in shock. At least, we think it's shock, as Afutavere stands stock-still. But, no, it's just that he has predictably failed his first saving throw of the evening and has been paralysed with fear.

Brennan has no problem with seeing the creature and starts fighting back, although perhaps not giving quite as good as he's getting. The creature gets a couple of good hits in before the rest of us can enter the room. I dash in from further down the corridor, not quite getting in to attacking range, as does the Paladin, neither of us a-feared by the creature's aura. Skelra seems unaffected too, and mutters a few words that could be a spell. 'It's alright, lads', he tells us, although perhaps not quite so cockney, 'I've told it not to attack me or my allies'. We're not quite sure if this means it won't attack the paladin, and nor is the creature. It takes a shared glance between it and Skelra for it to back down completely.

Our necromancer has gained command of the creature, pretty much ensuring it is some kind of undead, and has told it not to attack. Thankfully, we can tame our own monster and keep paladin Ganelon from breaking the command so that we have a ceasefire, at least for the moment. 'It's a mummy', says Skelra, getting a closer look.

'And I've been wounded by it', says Brennan, suddenly feeling a little queasy. Yes, one of our party has been inflicted by mummy rot, the apocryphal disease that we use to scare players in to attending sessions. But everyone is here tonight! It's such a waste. Had anyone been missing there would have been weeks of fun kicked off by handing back the character sheet with 'mummy rot' scribbled on the top, as we normally do whether they have the disease or not. The initial disbelief and joking, the persistence of our apparently running gag, and the inevitable realisation, all missed!