Fomor: Session One Writeup (Part 2)

And the conclusion to the session. Part One can be found here. Same format applies, and all text in italics is my personal commentary as the DM to clarify things or to explain my reasoning.


The party makes their way to the cave, and find a large number of traps surrounding the entrance. Selma guides them through unscathed.
The cave opens up with a short battle between the party, some kobolds, and one troglodyte. Kheldar kills the troglodyte in one shot with his sneak attack, and the rest of the party cleans up the kobolds. They have two choices on where to go next, and they split up. Kheldar goes to the dead-end room while Selma and Garath go to the corridor.

The party split. Wonderful. I made them continue going in initiative order, with two fights happening on either end. It was very hectic but a lot of fun. Kheldar basically carried them this entire dungeon: Selma can only fire twice before she has to reload, and Garath is limited to only a few spells per day. His rolling was terrible so he probably dealt maybe 20 damage during the entire dungeon. Selma's rifle does pretty good damage, but she didn't build her character exclusively for combat. She's actually very skills-heavy, which I think is good. Kheldar had a +8 to initiative, so he got at least one sneak attack every fight. 

Kheldar fought a troglodyte at range, since he didn't want to risk walking into mysterious ooze. He cleaned the monster up eventually and made an acrobatics check to move through the ooze but was attacked when one of the puddles came to life. He had to melee it but killed it pretty quickly. He got one mysterious potion, with no way to identify it. Surprisingly, he made the smart decision not to drink it.

It's actually a potion of Cure Light Wounds. But I was so proud of him for wanting to wait and find out what it does.

Selma rolls a natural 20 on her Stealth check going into the corridor. She remained undetected for three or four turns, firing her rifle at a pair of troglodytes in the hallway while Garath flung ineffectual Jolt spells. 

Did I mention that Garath's rolls were terrible? Even versus touch AC, he only hit a handful of times, and at 1d3 damage, he wasn't doing a whole lot. Since Selma rolled so well on her Stealth check, I made the decision that she could continue rolling Stealth checks vs Perception every round to remain undetected. I said that since it was a cave, the rifle was echoing like crazy and the troglodytes couldn't tell where she was specifically. She was eventually detected when they bumped into her, and a melee ensued where she killed both of the troglodytes with her longsword.

The party regroups and decides they'll figure out what the potion does later. They've already taken some damage, and they don't know how much bigger the cave will be. They proceed into the next room, and Kheldar takes a readied spear to the face. They quickly kill the troglodyte in the side chamber and investigate. It is filled with rudimentary clubs and spears. Selma sees that there are pit traps all around the room and can tell that the troglodytes would put kobolds on sticks and have them pick stuff up whenever they needed something. Sometimes the kobolds slipped and fell into the spike pits. Oops.

Kheldar was trying to loot every random useless thing. This was my way of saying "Go be heroic already!"

The party gets to a fork in the corridor. They all fail perception checks and decide to head to the right and into the skills challenge. 

The Perception check was to see if they could hear the human prisoners whimpering while being taken to the boss chamber to be sacrificed. They all failed and picked a random direction, not wanting to split the party again. They wound up never going to the prison room. 

The party enters a chamber filled with traps. The skills challenge follows the Critical Hit Podcast rules, where no two people can use the same skill right after each other, and one person cannot use the same skill twice in a row. It was a very easy skill challenge, with a low DC and only needing 6 successes, and only failing at 5 failures. They will get much harder later on. 
Kheldar opens up with a usual Acrobatics check to get around the traps. Selma uses her Perception to guide the party members through the traps. Garath uses his Intimidate on the kobolds manning the traps, and scares them off. Kheldar uses Dance to continue weaving through the room. Selma uses her Survival to cure some poison that scratched Garath. Garath then pulls a Qui-gon Jinn and Bluffs the troglodyte guard that they are, in fact, troglodytes. And fails. Kheldar leaps over the troglodyte with Acrobatics, twisting its neck, and tumbles over the gate to safety. The party has succeeded their very first skills challenge!
With that, the party enters the boss chamber. Painted in blood, all around the room, is the same strange symbol they've seen.

The party was very low on hp and spells at this point. I changed this fight a little bit to make it easier on them. I tried to scale the dungeon to account for them not having a healer, but I made some things a little bit too difficult.

They see an altar with 4 troglodytes holding human prisoners, and one Cleric in the center conducting the ritual. A small group of kobolds are standing haphazardly around the altar, hoping they won't be eaten next. The party succeeded the skills challenge, so they get a surprise round. Kheldar opens up by criticaling the Cleric with a sneak attack, dealing 23 points of damage. Selma blasts one of the kobolds, and Garath casts Sleep, to no avail.
At this point, the kobolds swarm the party. They battle briefly, though Selma is the only one that actually fights them. Garath casts Sleep again and manages to incapacitate one of the troglodytes. Kheldar continues attacking the Cleric. The Cleric casts Bless over all his allies, and they begin to hit the party harder. He also casts a spell that paralyzes Garath and Selma for a round, allowing the ritual to completely finish. All of the humans are sacrificed, and the troglodytes are also pulled under. The boss ooze spawns and immediately eats one of the remaining kobolds. The Cleric heals himself of most of the damage he's taken.
The party shifts focus to the ooze, which is in their face. They deal some damage to it, but it replenishes health by eating all the remaining kobolds, and slams at Selma with its tentacles. Kheldar kills the Cleric before it is able to do much else. The ooze continues approaching and successfully grapples Garath. While Garath is held, the ooze begins slowly digesting him, but he breaks free after one turn. 
The party continues attacking the ooze. Selma fires several shots but misses most of them.

This is partly my fault. The way I wrote the initiative order, I kept forgetting about Selma. She got to have two turns in one, so was able to fire and reload. That wound up helping quite a lot, since she was in an amazing position once the ooze spawned. Unfortunately, the dice had other plans for her.

Garath's spells were mostly ineffectual. He used his last Magic Missile and dealt a whopping 2 damage. Kheldar's crossbow ran out of bolts, and he and Selma had to flank it and slowly attack with their swords. This had the benefit of sneak attack damage, but the party started rolling terribly at this point.
Eventually, they killed the ooze - and it exploded into two more, smaller oozes! These were quickly dealt with. Several rounds passed with neither of them hitting the party, despite each of them having two attacks. Such is the way of things. 
The party successfully defeated the ooze and the troglodytes! They were allowed to loot the chamber and received a few hundred gold as well as a few more mystery potions. They were not mysterious for much longer, as these ones were labeled "HEALTH" since troglodytes have poor memory.
They leave the cave and return to town, victorious. Kheldar takes a cup of ooze as a trophy, but his cup disintegrates after one hour. The guard can't believe that these heroes were successful, seeing the state they're in.

Garath and Selma were down to 1 and 4 health, respectively. Kheldar I think was at 5.

The party spends the week recuperating, and their money is actually sent to Ghet from Bicka. They continue to sublet the rooms to travelers. Garath wonders if he could enchant his severed hand to be a permanent companion, à la Thing from The Addams Family. He was very relieved to see that it wasn't eaten by the ooze.

At this point, the party levels up to 2nd level. Kheldar takes a level in Bard, and Garath finally takes Detect Magic as a spell. Selma takes another level in Gunslinger but doesn't get anything fancy.

The party is fully healed and starts their return to Bicka. Garath is upset when he realizes that the earliest they'd be able to get back would be around 1:01 PM, and he will again be unable to deliver his letter through the post office. His curiosity is biting at him about the parchment, and he has no clue whether he even wants to deliver it or not anymore. His curiosity is biting at him, and he decides to risk opening the letter. After seeing the symbol on the Black Hand parchment, he is very concerned for his own safety.

Garath has read "Hamlet" and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead." He knows all too well the dangers of an unopened letter to the lord of another land.

He has Kheldar roll a Disable Device to open the letter without damaging the wax. Kheldar manages to do so, but immediately after coming undone, the wax changes color. It used to have gold flecks in it, but these have now disappeared completely. Now that he has the spell, Garath finally casts Detect Magic and sees that the parchment and wax are magical. He opens the parchment, and sees that it is completely blank. 
They try to re-affix the sealing wax, but even though the letter closes, the wax remains normal instead of glittery as it once was. Garath is very scared.
The party continues onwards towards Bicka, and about an hour's walk away they see a gigantic plume of smoke rising. By the time they can finally see the city, they find that it is under siege.

The session ends.