Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Session 13

Bram, Ja'Lil, Nightwind, and I left the Black Tree Ruins and headed back to Trynt on our horses.  We made the trip in two days without any problems, but when we got into Trynt and had arrived at our room at Korgle's Karriage we were just getting ready to sleep, already out of our armor and lying down when there was a knock on our door.  Nightwind blurted out,"Who is it?"

We all heard the door open and close.  We then grabbed our weapons which were always close to our beds and noticed after a little while a shadowy figure sitting on a chair near the table in the room.  Nightwind asked Ja'Lil to light a candle.
A deep female voice said,"There is no need."  I ball of light emerged from her hand and illuminated the entire room brightly.  There sat a hooded figure; the light not penetrating the hood concealing her face.  She asked if we had discovered anything at the Black Tree Ruins.  We all looked at each other with dumbfoundedness.
Nightwind replied,"Where?'
She responds,"The place you just came back from."
Nightwind asks,"How do you know where we came from?"
She says,"Because that is where you were going the last time we talked."
We all look dumbfounded until she lowers her light and removes the hooded cloak concealing her face.
We instantly recognize her as the female Drow that helped us awhile back.
She asks,"Did you find anything new out on the Black Tree Ruins?"
We show her the map and tell her we found it in Phrum Castle.  She asks us if and where we found any other information about the ruins.  We tell her of Grimml, the gnome.
She gasps,"A gnome mapkeeper.  You met a gnome mapkeeper here in Trynt?  I would like to meet him.  We'll go in the morning.  I'll sleep here."  We all sleep and travel across the street to Grimml's in the morning.  We knock loudly on the door since we remember how long it took last time we were here for him to answer the door.  She said that she should be the one in the front of the door since he hadn't met her yet.  We didn't argue.  She approached the door as Nightwind stepped away after knocking loudly.  She knocked on the door with a slight single tap and the whole building shook and dust came out of every nook and cranny.  About three seconds after she knocked, the door swung open and Grimml was standing there and was yelling,"Can I ..." and as he noticed her he became quite distraught and whimpered the last little bit " ... help you?"
She replied,"I am sure you can."
Grimml bowed and swept the door open for her to enter and as he did we followed her inside.  While stepping inside, we noticed low clouds of dust being swept outside into the street.  The place was clean and organized as far as we could see.
She leaned down and whispered into Grimml's ear,"Are you a Lorekeeper as well?"
Grimml simply nodded his head.  She sat down and we around her while she asked Grimml for anything he had on the city of Shyvalti.  Grimml went to a bookshelf toward the back of the room, moved a book and part of the shelf swung in to the right, he entered and about fifteen seconds later and after some noise of things being shuffled around, he emerged with a stack of five books and a couple maps.
She simply said,"Show me."
Grimml started opening the books and laying out the maps on the table nearby which was cluttered the last time we were here.
Nightwind says,"Looks like you cleaned up in here and organized."
Grimml nods no, glances towards the Drow and replies,"It was a gift.  I'll try to keep it this way from now on."
He opens the first book and Grimml says,"Most of the books say the same thing, but this one says it the best."

THE BOOK READS:
Shyvalti was created by Magister Elwynn Nightshade in the year of the moon at harvest time (about 250 years ago).  The population reached a peak of 3,000 individuals before it was destroyed by an unknown entity 200 years after its creation.

Grimml then points at the maps showing that they all have the city of Shyvalti listed on them.  The map he shown to us earlier is not among the ones he is showing and we whisper between ourselves about this, but he overhears us and states,"The one I showed to you was stolen about 6 days ago."
He points to one particular map and says,"This map has Shyvalti* listed, but has an asterisk after the name.  I looked on the back of the map and there is an asterisk there."  He points to it.

THE WORDS AFTER THE ASTERISK:
   *Believed destroyed because it cannot be found.

We are about to leave when Grimml points his index finger towards the sky and shouts,"Ohh!, I just remembered."  He rushes to the open bookshelf he used before and closes it, moves a different book and the bookshelf opens the other direction.  He enters and all we can see is his illuminated backside.  We hear rustling and then he emerges with a book.  Grimml brings the book over and we notice that the binding has Elven script written in gold while it also has common scratched into it as well.

THE COMMON PHRASE:  "Prophecy and Poem"
THE ELVEN PHRASE:   "Prophecy in Poem"

We ask if the translation is correct and tell him its not, but he insists that it is correct because he translated it.  His tone implied that he knew the translation was wrong and that he had done so on purpose.  The page he opened to listed a poem with no title.

THE POEM:

     When Xarrax still slumbers
           and the black tree loses all leaves
   he will awaken and take all he sees
           into the depths of hell
   from the gate they made
          in the Runes of Shyvalti.

We get up and leave, but I notice that Grimml bows onto one knee and holds his arm out towards the Drow and says to her,"Thank you Mistress Syllanna and may the Darklight family guide you."

We leave and head towards Po's Inn where the army we saved is resting, but once we get to the center of town near the fountain we hear a blood curdling scream and Bram's ears actually bleed.  People are running away from the inn.  While Bram stays back near the fountain with the Drow, Nightwind, Ja'Lil and I rush towards the front entrance to Po's.  Once inside, we all almost lose our stomachs.  The scene is horrific with dead bodies strewn about the place and a pool of blood in the common room.  We see broken wine casks and the sweet smell permeates the very skin we wear.  Ja'Lil attempts to find any survivors in the common room, we counted ten soldiers, while Nightwind and I go upstairs to find survivors.  The inn has three floors, and on the second we find five dead bodies in the hall and two dead bodies in the first room and two dead bodies in the second room, but also find a slumbering four year old human boy stashed on top of the drapery on the bed.  We continue our search for the Army magic user that we saved.  The first room on the third floor, no bodies in the hallway, has two soldier bodies on the floor and a third standing there staring out the window.  His body suddenly falls to the floor and we see a shadowy figure with a dagger.  The figure seems to fade under the bed and Nightwind hurries to the next room, but yells,"Trouble!"  So I follow him to the next room.  Inside the room we see a soldier grabbing his stomach with a look of pain on his face while the Army mage is holding a sword and pointing it towards the soldier.  Suddenly, the soldiers body flies forward and we see the shadowy figure standing there again with his black dagger in his hand.  Nightwind draws steel and steps to engage the shadowy figure while I step in front of the Army mage in his nightgown and face the shadowy figure.  The shadowy figure looks at Nightwind, then at me, then at Nightwind, then at the mage and points angerly at him with his dagger while barking in Goblin,"It's your luck day, Mage!"
The shadowy figure then phases out in a wisp of cloud and shadow completely disappearing.  We try and save as many as we can, but in the end, only three soldiers survive along with the mage.   We then decide to leave town, we all check Po's stable and find that every animal in the stable is slain.
Nightwind says,"It seems they were efficient."
I say,"No, it means they were thorough."
The mage replies,"It means they don't know who I am or what I am."
We agree to head out to the Paladin's place, a half a day away by foot.  On the way, I ask the Drow,"So Syllanna, what's your last name?"
I am not quick enough to dodge the slap she has for my face and I am not fast enough to land on my feet.  The force of her slap lands me on the ground.
I reply,"What, I only asked your last name?"
She replies,"It's not what you asked, but how you asked it.  You should learn to talk."
She tells of how the name she was born with is Syllanna Darklight, but when she became a Druid seven years ago, that she chose a new Druid name for herself and that she is also known as Lightwater.

We arrive at the Paladin Stand's home, we knock and he is home.

This is where we left off and we had a lot of fun doing some role-play tonight.  Well, until next time, safe gaming and have fun.

Star Wars D20 Revised Session 12

I wake up in the morning.  I arise and get dressed for breakfast.  After breakfast, a young padawan informs us to meet an unknown master outside for training.  We go outside and meet this master, a male human Jedi and await his explanation.  The master tells us that he will test our battle readiness using battle droids on the nearby platform as he points towards it.  Fra'll and I are sluggish after breakfast, but Fra'll a little more so.  We defeat two sets of four battle droids.  The second set of droids was tougher to defeat.  Sparred with a different young padawan.  We were evenly matched, but he eluded my hits even when it felt like I hit him.  Afterwords, we were told to report to the speeder bay.  When we get there, we get a speeder each and told to follow two masters to a temporary forward base and we hear blaster pistols being fired nearby when we arrive.  We arrive at some temple and see old droids defending the temple.  We are told that the old droids are protecting the Ruins of Kaleth, which is precisely where we are headed.  Inside the ruin grounds stands a tree that is massively tall.  The grounds are in a figure eight shape while the tree is in the center of the figure.  The tree has droids on either side of it, but with the two masters with us, they are easily defeated.  When we get past the tree, we head up some stairs that were hidden and find a platform with a green crystal in the center.  The masters tell me to meditate in front of the crystal and then move a boulder about 20 meters in diameter out of the way.  That didn't quite work.  Then told to survey the area, didn't find anything.  Told to search again, more carefully, and Fra'll and I find a hidden room with a hole in the ground that we found from a sound of metal ringing coming from it.  The hole is approximately three meters deep.  I find a ladder leading down.  We clear the debris on top of the ladder, mostly some shrubs and some rocks.  The hole with the ladder, which isn't the other hole we found, leads down and we descend.  I go down three meters and lose the sense of the force.  When I reach ten meters, I can sense the force again.  I stepped on a rung and I was told that it moved a couple centimeters and when I did, we heard a power generator fire up.  I reached the bottom and find myself in a large room.  I hear the sound of my feet on a metal floor.  The room starts to illuminate.  The ladder we descended was small, like the kind they used in the manhole tunnels they use on Corruscant.  I see that the room started about one meter after I started my descent and the ladder is about 30 meters long.  The room looks like a giant square with a giant cube in the middle.  The cube is approximately 28m x 28m x 15m tall.  We followed the wall of the cube and found one door that led inside, but the door has no knob.  The door instead has a cube protruding out of it approximately 25cm x 25cm x25cm.  Blow the dust off the cube and discover writing that is in basic.

This is where we left off.  Mainly because he hadn't come up with what was written on the cube.  If this seems at all familiar to any of you it may be because he is using the new Old Republic Star Wars game that is online for this.  Since neither Luis or I play this game, we don't have any worries.  Until next time, safe gaming and have fun.

Dungeons & Dragons Session 12 (2.5 converted to 3.5)

Well, Nightwind, Ja'Lil, Bram and I, Solon, were standing inside the cave entrance of the Temple of Gruumsh preparing to leave when we noticed a magical wave falling over the world.  I noticed a slight change in all my abilities, gear, and knowledge.  The others said that they had noticed similar changes as well.  (This was the effect of converting from 2.5 edition to 3.5 edition)

Right before we departed the cave, we heard an alarm sound from the orc village tower and we all heard an orc-language coming from that direction.  Nightwind translated for us what the voice was saying.  The voice said,"Owlbears attacking from all sides.  Battle positions.  Battle positions."  We saw groups of orcs leaving the village going north and south and one group, lead by some orc, was coming towards us.  I think they saw us.  There were ten orcs all together, but I couldn't tell which one was the leader.  They all wielded falchions and each had two javelins.  They all wore studded leather armor.  It was a quick fight for the four of us.  We looted what gear we could find and quickly left.

After defeating the orcs we made it out of the village and headed towards our horses, but we heard some growling before we got there.  Bram, Nightwind and I spotted two owlbears hiding by our horses, which they must not have seen or heard or smelled, but they noticed us when we moved closer.  The owlbears charged us and we had a hard time getting into position for a good attack.  Nightwind and I took the fight to them and once I got my flank on them, we defeated them quite quick, but it was touch and go there for a while.  I think I lost consciousness once after receiving a blow from the one owlbear.

We rested the night nearby under cover of the smell of dead owlbear and departed for Trynt in the morning.  We were a slow moving group, especially with the seventeen survivors of the Temple.  We made it to Trynt in four days.  Found out that the full moon was in three days time.  We made plans to make toward the Black Tree Ruins the next day, but for now we'll rest and get some needed gear and maybe do some upgrading on our gear.

We left the next day, and had an easy two days travel to where we think the ruins were according to the map.  Luckily, Ja'Lil found some shiny stones that turned into a trail.  We couldn't have found it without his help or the full moon's light.  We followed the trail, which turned into a paved path and led straight to a covered wooden bridge, but the moonlight didn't shine inside.  Nightwind, Ja'Lil, and I were all kinda weirded out by this, but Bram didn't seem to notice and walked straight inside the covered bridge with his lit up staff and disappeared.  We called out and he answered back, like nothing was amiss.  Apparently there was a magic field of glamour at the front of the bridge protecting what was on the other side.  When we walked through, I noticed right away that the glamour field extended further than just the mouth of the covered bridge.  We didn't see anything from outside the entrance that we could see now.  First was the silvery path inside the bridge and extending up the thirty-foot hill with the ruins where the black tree could be seen.  All of this was visible from this side of the bridge.  The path was wide enough for one horse and it zig-zagged all the way up the hill.  We entered the ruins through an archway wide enough for one horse.

Inside the ruins, we discovered a guard station, a ruined building, an old, torn-up, worn-down stable and a circle of stones around the awe inspiring black tree.  I searched the guardhouse and told the others that it was recently built within the last three years, but hadn't been used for the last year.  I hypothesized that maybe something lived here, but was now dead or gone.  I then told the others of a story I had heard from the merchants back in our village of the people of the south who had gardens of rock and how they only used rakes to keep them clean and organized.  I told them that these ruins reminded me of a garden of rock.  How all the leaves were gone from the ground, no tracks anywhere, and that the only leaves were black and inside the circle of stones around the black tree.  Nightwind investigated the circle of stones around the tree and then stepped over the circle of the stones.  Outside the circle, the black tree appears to be only about thirty feet tall, but inside the circle, which I entered after Ja'Lil and Nightwind, appeared to be over one hundred feet tall and while it was only five feet from the circle of stones outside the circle it was now thirty feet away from us and it was almost thirty feet in diameter.  It was maybe two feet thick on the outside of the circle.  I immediately left the inside of the circle and was amazed to find that I could not see Nightwind or Ja'Lil inside the circle, but I could still talk to them like they were next to me.  I convinced Bram to try and he couldn't step over the stones to get inside the circle.  The others couldn't even hear his voice.  Bram started investigating the stones around the tree.  I translated what he said to the other side of the circle.  I witnessed Bram studying the stones when he pulled out this little broom and started sweeping the stones.  He wasn't saying anything and was going from stone to stone around the tree.  He got to the last stone and passed out.  I told the others and Ja'Lil came out to check on Bram.  Ja'Lil woke Bram up and asked him what was going on.  Bram then remembered what he had been doing and relayed the story of the symbols that were engraved into the stones to us.

Long ago, there was a beautiful Elven city here called Shyvalti.  Many lived here and all were welcome.  One day a traveling person entered the city and vanished.  People remembered him entering, but didn't remember what he looked like or where he had gone or if he had left.  Other people started vanishing.  The royal court's investigators came in and searched high and low for the missing people.  On the eighth day, the investigators found all the bodies, forty-seven in all underground in the cavern that supported the city's well.  They also encountered the evil that had started living there.  It was a very powerful Troll ************.   The Royal Court's wizards came in and bound the evil inside the well and put five wards on the tomb of this evil.  The first ward was the iron tomb that sealed the body of the monster.  The second ward was the tree on the tomb around the body.  The third ward was the invisible force field around the tree preventing any from touching it.  The druids had come in to plant the oak tree on the tomb, but the evil inside the tomb made the tree black.  They used their magic to make the tree grow, but the evil eventually made the giant tree all black including the leaves that fell from it.  The fourth ward was the field around the circle of stones that prevented any non-Elf from entering near the tree.  The fifth and final ward was the field around the city preventing all from seeing inside.

Bram also told us of the stone after the symbol for troll that was eroded away.  He told us that magical symbols don't erode away.  He also told us of the last stone he read before passing out.  He told us that the last stone was in a different hand and that it was extremely evil.  He said that the words on the stone were: I'm coming back.  SOON!

After hearing this story, we all decided to go back to Trynt and send word to the Druids and hopefully prevent disaster from coming again.

AD&D 2nd Edition Revised to 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons

We met on our regularly scheduled Tuesday Night and began the process of converting the old 2.5 characters to the 3.5 edition.  The process took longer than expected which means that we had less than an hour left for combat.  This wouldn't work, so we called it a night.  The conversions are done and the next time we meet we will be starting combat.  As it stands, we rescued 15 prisoners that belonged to the army and the paladin and rogue that we had gone to find in the first place.  Also, in 3.5 edition, Bram cannot use a wand of fire since one doesn't exist, so now it is a wand of fireball and he isn't high enough level to use it.  The Bracers of Dexterity are now Bracers of Dexterity +4, and his cloak is a Cloak of Protection +3.  He has a Wand of Fireball and a Wand of Magic Missile which both have 50 charges.

As a side note, I haven't decided if Bram will be a Wizard or a Warmage.  I am leaning towards a Warmage, but maybe I will Multi-class him.

Until next time, safe gaming and have fun.

AD&D 2.5 to Dungeons and Dragons 3.5

So, I have looked at my game and I believe that it would be far easier to convert the existing characters in my AD&D Revised game into 3.5 D&D characters than it is to convert 3.5 D&D Monsters into 2.5 D&D Monsters.  I looked at the books and thought "NO."  Originally, it was my plan to convert some of the monsters in the five Monster Manuals into terrifying monstrosities for 2.5 D&D, but the conversions were not consistent with the Conversion Manual PDF I downloaded.  So, just gonna start the game where the characters left off, maybe after one last 2.5 game and then convert to 3.5 and just keep rolling.  I feel and hope this transition will suit me better and my players, plus, on the positive side, if I do convert to 3.5, I will hopefully gain another player on hopefully a permanent situation.