Forum: Public Forum

Dear players,

I had planned two encounters for the evening, but got very bad with the timing in the end as when we started the Heptaric Locus and realised it was not "around nine" but quarter to ten.

Spell-fight at the PC's corral.

With the PCs having been relatively diplomatic in Xin-Shalast so far, I had planned for them to meet with Most High Ceoptra at some point. To be fair, if I had indeed brought Bestiary II you would have had a clowder of Lamias. Lamias are kind of feline, so the word clowder seems appropriate; it also allows me to show-off about knowing my collective nouns. Then I remembered the disfigured Lamiakin, the Hungerer, when flipping through the book; so I quickly re-jigged my plan and brought Most High Ceoptra with one of these.

Most High Ceoptra had been trying to get someone to answer the door, then becoming bored and totally ignoring the requirement of petitioning the local judge for a search warrant, she decided to get that door opened. A simple "Hey you!" would have attracted her attention and led her to stop her pet from ramming the doors.

The plan was:

• Impress on the scouting player that the fight was going to be over the odds.
• Hope the party takes the cue and sends in Marcus to sweet talk the encounter.
• Most High Ceoptra gives more information about the Spires of Xin-Shalast; ergo helps me give away all the juicy stuff a GM can read but find extremely difficult to impart on the players via their PCs.
• The PCs explain the various "accidents" of late, the untimely disappearance of a nascent Yeti battalion, the change of ownership with the food business and other happenstances.
• Lower Xin-Shalast remains more or less safe for them.

...then a Cleric runs amok and utters a maddening cry of "Destruction to the Demon!".

The "plan", such as it was, did not indeed survive the proverbial first contact with the enemy. Worse, the Hungerer, which was a decent CR15 on paper, rolled poorly against a Destruction spell. As mentioned Most High Ceoptra needs meat-shields to be worth her CR and as it was from the surprise round, a 70HP meat-shield would not have allowed many of her Oracle spells to be cast.

The Heptaric Locus.

You could have decided on a "Gladiator" approach, complete with bad Russel Crowe impersonations... but no. Despite all the hints, the party chose to sneak in and get a tactical terrain fight on the terraces.

The good thing about this combat is that thanks to the size of the locale, I can bring as many spidery red monsters as I want. I think I can also use a Spectre or two considering the place has seen many deaths in the past as mentioned in the original version of the adventure (the red things are new). This should be an insurance against crappy save rolls for my monsters and help have at long last a proper fight with actual risk being involved for the party.

See you in two weeks for more of Rise of the Runelords.

Laurent,