The Island of Misfit Monsters (TIMM) 4: The Bone to Pick
Updated: Aug 3
Ah, another day, another slaying. Of course, that's not how the day began exactly. As you'll no doubt recall, the last session ended with the group's sterilization of nine cadavers inhabiting the armory of the castle.
Which means LOOT! to any player. Sadly all they turned up was one standard and one secret door. Great sadness was had by all, but none more than by Skeletor who'd had his heart set on finding some better gear. He began muttering under his breath about poor country kings.
Having missed the secret door entirely, the Bugbear scouted the main door. He found himself in a familiar corridor, the corridor they'd retreated to after the incident in the barracks. Despite the fact that those souls had been laid to rest he had no interest in going back in that room.
Meanwhile, Rhiltix was exploring through the secret door at the south end of the armory. It led to a passageway with another hidden door to the left. He immediately opened it to find a Fallen waiting on the other side. ROUND 1: FIGHT!
First up to bat: Killgore, who spent his entire turn getting into position. Next, Rhiltix stepped away and channeled to harm undead. It made the save. Hermin slouched against a wall in the first room and started playing his bagpipes. The Half-Ogre moved to the first secret door and attacked through the other. Damn his reach anyways!
Yoric . . . made a ride check to get Nelzask (whom he was alighted on) to move through the corridor. The DM was less than amused. He then used acrobatics to jump off the Half-Ogre's shoulder into the room behind the Fallen. All while complaining about the poor quality of his mount's training.
Jimmy moved and tried to lightning bolt the Fallen. It made the save. Incorporeal lowered damage by a half. Making the save did so again. Doing the math he came up with:
8D6/4 = wasted action.
The Fallen then attacked Jimmy. It's force damage did less than its negative energy damage, meaning it healed for more than it damaged. And it was ruled that despair would be a mind affecting effect. Undead are were immune to it. The fallen quickly did the math: 1D8 force - 2D6 negative and ineffectual effect = wasted turn.
Things pretty much went the same in round two, except the Fallen took its swipes at Rhiltix, and Jimmy tried to use Hold Person, another ineffective spell against incorporeal creatures. At the beginning of round three, Rhiltix decided to try diplomacy. The result of which led the others to leave Yoric to collect the bones; a job he did so grudgingly. Of course, he was still a little miffed at not finding any decent arms or armor in the armory.
He grumbled about the fact that he'd been reduced to body relocation while searching the room. Searching this room also yielded literally nothing else of worth. Even the wall sconces were only made of wrought iron. This led to more bitching about poor kingdoms until he found the body. He grabbed it by an ankle and began dragging it the length of the room, still expounding about poor country knights and their simple hovels.
Unfortunately, he'd failed to take into account the fragile nature of a skeleton unmodified by magic. He yanked the door open and held up . . . a foot. Turning back, he saw a breadcrumb like trail of ancient bones dotting his path. Killgore took the foot, replacing it with the bag that was apparently being set aside to cart osseous matter around. AKA the bone bag . . .
Now the bitching was about how he'd been turned into a janitor, and for what? He was no closer to his mark. He hadn't found anything to help him with his mission. It also came out that he wasn't a full fledged ninja yet. Apparently his graduation assignment was to kill the head necromancer in charge of this island.
And all of this because of one empty armory . . .
He collected the bones and stomped back to the door. But before opening it he decided to question the spirit. It went something like this. Yoric: Hey you!
Fallen: Yes?
Yoric: Where's the cool shit at?
Fallen: I am uncertain by what you mean by 'cool shit'.
Yoric: (attempts to roll nonexistent eyes) you know, weapons, valuables, shiny things.
Fallen: I don't know.
Yoric: If you don't tell me I won't give them your bones for burial.
Fallen: How would I know? I've been stuck in this room for nearly a thousand years.
Yoric: Listen closely. I need you to marshal your powers of concentration, limited as they may be, and think back to when you were alive. Where are the shinies?
Fallen: Ah, those were the days.
That's about when Yoric lost it. Uttering a string of expletive deletives that by all rights would have melted the mortar in the walls, he stomped out of the room, slamming the bag into Killgore's chest. More grumbling was to be had about poor kings, their idiot subjects, their questionable parentage etc. etc.
He was still standing there, arms crossed and grumbling, when the rest of the group decided to move out. It was clear that he was going to stand there until he was done. In order to keep the group together Nelzask picked the skeleton up and carried him like a football. There was no indication that he even noticed. He simply kept going on and on.
And on.
It was really quite impressive. Being a skeleton he didn't actually have to breath. So it was that the group was serenaded by an unending, unbreaking stream of invective that could peel paint off of walls as they headed back outside and around to the front of the castle. He never even repeated himself.
They were nearly back to the front of the castle when they found yet another secret door. Not a very defensible castle really. A point quickly brought up by Yoric in his tirade on the stupidity of the denizens of this kingdom past, present, and future.
It was suggested (over the background grumbling) that they might as well check for any other unhappy remains (besides those tucked under Nelzask's armpit) before they made the trip back to the graveyard. It was also suggested that sending Yoric on a scouting mission for more bones would probably be counter to the mission itself. Yet anyone else, other than Jimmy, would be attacked by the owners of said remains.
It was far from what they would have called a good solution, but in the end they decided their best option was to send Jimmy in. Nelzask took the preventative precaution of tying a 300 ft. rope to Jimmy's waste, so they wouldn't lose him, and off he went.
He recognized the area just inside the door as the same area to the west of the barracks, so he headed upstairs. And began exploring. He started with the room on his left and worked his way around the upper level. Each room was connected to the next by a secret door. Doors he opened and stepped through without considering closing them. Must have been born in a barn in his previous life . . .
This went on until the rope grew taught. A poor D20 roll indicated he'd forgotten the purpose of the rope, so he tried to remove it. When that failed he grabbed his knife and cut it off. Then he continued exploring the upper floor.
The rest of the group grew quite alarmed when the rope went slack, and charged into the castle to save their wayward zombie. Once they ran out of rope (Nelzask coiled it as he went) they followed the open doors until they found Jimmy, who expressed concern that they'd reentered the castle. There was much glaring to be had.
The group then decided they might as well finish the exploration of the second floor. Jimmy had started on the west wall, and they'd found him nearly to the end of the north wall. At the Northeast corner they found a stairwell down. Yoric put up a bet of 5G that the stairwell would end up near the kitchen. Killgore took that bet, and was dismayed to find that it led to the pantry. The group trooped back upstairs, forcing Nelzask to have to turn his Brobdingnagian body around on said staircase. There was more glaring to be had.
The group then continued their clockwise search of the upper floor. They came upon a library at the south east corner. Rhiltix immediately began searching for any books giving off a magical aura by casting detect magic. Yoric pointed out dryly that the magic books would be easy to spot by eye, as they would still be in good condition.
The group failed to find books worth any significant amount of money, which didn't stop Rhiltix from jamming every book he could find with an aura into his backpack. Yoric, on the other hand, came up with a battered copy of Darmak and Jalad at Tenagra, stating that this had been his favorite book when he was younger. . .
After that the group continued searching along the southern wall. In the second to last room they found a red door on the north wall. Hermin immediately used Prestidigitation to Paint it Black.
{Player's Note: We would, of course, have tried the door, but Beth informed us that she didn't have that particular encounter ready. Apparently we weren't supposed to be on the second floor at all yet. Paybacks}
So, they went into the last room on the south wall, through yet another secret door. And there, right next to the staircase they'd used to come up to this level, was a room filled with the gifts that had been granted to that long lost king, including magical arms and armor, and wonderous items.
Yoric immediately began masterminding a plan to get it all out of the castle. Not so much because he cared for more than what would improve his combat capabilities, but because its loss would no doubt piss off whomever was in charge. And, after the stories they'd heard so far, who could say that prick didn't have it coming, am I right?
Unfortunately there was far too much for them to carry. So Yoric collected the heavy bedding from the last several rooms (other than the library every room had been a bedroom) and created the world's largest nap sack. He then began piling all the loot on it. Heh, heh, heh. {Player's Note: The DM hadn't been ready for us to find this either. So instead of a long process of rolling to ascertain the contents of the loot currently being piled on bedding, she told us each that we could basically buy 15k of anything we wanted. Thus ended the day.}