DF Khoramandu Sea, Session 67 - Caves of Chaos, part 21

Due to the coronavirus lockdown, we once again played remotely using Hangouts. I don't use a VTT; when I need to show the battlefield, I use paper maps and minis, and point a webcam at the table.

Session Date: Thursday 4 June 2020

Party roster:
Miao Miao, cat-folk swashbuckler, 391 points (PC)
- Jenkins, human servant, 186 points (NPC Ally)
- Brother Warian, human monk (initiate), 177 points (NPC Ally)
- Gregus, human sellsword, unknown points (NPC Hireling)
- Mace, human mace-wielder, unknown points (NPC Hireling)
- Jorri, human archer, 125 points (NPC Hireling)
Sir Yvor Gryffyn, human knight, 343 points (PC)
Davin Emberwood, human wizard, 326 points (PC)
Sister Miriam Suntemple, human cleric, 297 points (PC)
Hemmu Gahrol, half-orc knight, 256 points (NPC*)
Childerbert "Bert" Ingoberger, halfling locksmith (thief), 253 points (PC)

*Hemmu's player couldn't make it, so I tried to keep her out of trouble. Mostly.

Location: Borderlands between the Kingdom of Ioscany and the Wilds of Pyrrhon; Caves of Chaos; in the storeroom on the lower level of the evil cult's cave.

 Yvor sounded the alarm, as the translucent wall of slime coming around the tunnel corner was revealed to be a 10-foot cube of jelly**. Miao retreated into the storeroom, having both a phobia of water and previous experience of being covered by a green slime***. Yvor was left to face the cube alone, until Hemmu and Gregus could come to his support.

 It didn't take long for the party to chop up the cube, although it did manage to briefly engulf Hemmu and paralyse her in the process. Miao was forced to get over her personal dislike and come to Hemmu's aid.

 Once the cube was defeated, I ruled that the 10x10x10 foot mass collapsed and partially decoagulated, spreading widely along the floor of the passage. Yvor and Gregus failed to react in time, and their feet were engulfed. Yvor managed to remove his sabatons in time to only suffer minor acid burn, although his heavy cloth armour underneath did suffer some damage. Gregus was paralysed by the slime seeping through his lighter footwear within seconds, and his shoes were completely ruined.

 Davin used Create Water to drench Hemmu's entire body, and Yvor's and Gregus's feet, with several gallons of water to rinse off the slime. Then he used Destroy Water to dry them off again. Bert and Miao used a barrel of poor quality wine from the storeroom to "wash" the corridor and dilute the acidic slime covering the floor. Davin spotted that a bone in the jelly was actually a magic wand, and that was retrieved and cleaned off.

 Nothing of interest or value was found in the storeroom, but the party rested while Bert searched.

 The party then returned to the barred door leading to stairs down. They discovered this led to the crypt they had been expecting and found a dark, low-ceilinged chamber, supported by four pillars and holding 11 stone sarcophagi.

 While opening one of the stone coffins, the party were soon attacked by undead rising from 3 of the other sarcophagi. These turned out to be wights****. The ensuing fight was a war of attrition, with only Miao (rapier enchanted with Puissance) and Davin (Ice Dagger and Flame Jet spells) doing any real damage to the creatures. First Sir Yvor, then Mace, Gregus, and Warian were each paralysed in turn by their touch. Miriam was able to largely keep the lesser wights at bay with Turning, but the other one largely ignored the effect.
 Miriam also fluffed one of her Turning rolls with a triple-six. As far as I could see, there is nothing specifically written on the effect of Critical Failures on Holy abilities. I went with my earlier ruling, which is that Turning won't work again until the PC has done a suitable prayer or other form of atonement (which fairly obviously couldn't be done whilst in the temple to a rival power).

 There was a comical scene whereby Bert tried to leverage his Judo and Wrestling skills to lower Sir Yvor gently to the ground whilst paralysed, to avoid his being knocked over. Unfortunately the halfling either overestimated his own abilities or underestimated Sir Yvor's weight, or both. Sir Yvor alone weighs more than either Bert's max encumbrance and his maximum lift, and the knight certainly wasn't naked, carrying enough equipment to be Lightly encumbered at the time. Just Yvor's armour alone would put Bert into Extra-Heavy encumbrance. Consequently, Bert gently tipped over the knight, bracing to support the weight with his full body, and was subsequently flattened when Sir Yvor came crashing down upon him! Luckily for Yvor, the halfling softened his fall :)

 Once the wights were dealt with, the party searched the remaining sarcophagi and found an enchanted sword, a magical scroll, and a magic helmet. Davin took them all to be analysed later. The party were happy to finally consider the evil temple cave "cleared" and return to the keep. We ended the session there as it was very late by this point.

 Hopefully the players can agree their next move in time for me to prepare for next session, otherwise I may have to wing it if they do something unexpected.

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**I took the Dungeon Fantastic interpretation of this iconic monster as the base for my version, but gave mine a lot more HP as befitting its mass. Considering it was facing 2 knights and a swashbuckler, that didn't help the cube's survival by more than a second or two. The cube is still basically a dungeon scavenger rather than a serious threat to 250+ point DF adventurers. 

***To be clear, mere sight of the cube didn't trigger Miao's actual Phobia of being submerged, however a previous engulfing by green slime had left Miao with a Quirk as a result, and her player's reaction in this case was pure roleplaying rather than mechanics.

****For the wights I again stole from Peter, with the level-drain effect being replaced by FP-drain, and the paralysis being a cosmic effect resisted by HT. The wights were not immune to non-magical attacks, but they had damage reduction, with the lesser wights' version being weaker and not cosmic.