Part 17: Session 14.00: The Mage Tower Endurance Run: Floor #1

Session 14.00: The Mage Tower Endurance Run: Floor #1

You got the stuff?

“Three cases of Red Bull, check!”

How about you?

“I made sure to get plenty for the pizza man. Just tell me when to call.”

Not yet, it’s still early. Hal, you finding everything back there?

_{“Where are the Cheetoes?!”}

Oh God…

“They’re right next to you!”

_{“Where’s the Mountain Dew?!”}

“In the fridge! Duh!”

You know, that skit is pretty much the only reason I don’t buy Mountain Dew and Cheetoes anymore.

_{“I know! That’s why I brought my own!”}

“Junk food is bad for you anyway.”

“Just be glad DSA doesn’t have Magic Missile.”

“I cast Fulminictus at the darkness!”

Not you too.

“Sorry. It’s just funny watching you squirm.”

Anyway. If everyone’s ready, we should get started.

“Hang on. Are we starting without Paul?”

He said that the office “absolutely needed him for something today,” and that he’d probably be too wiped out to game with us even after he gets off. He did give me his sheet earlier, though, so we can still use his character.

“Eh, we don’t need him. He’s always been kind of an asshat.”

Yeah, but he fills out the group, plus he’s good at keeping you dumbasses on track. So where were we? Oh yeah, you had just gotten to the mainland and were headed back to Riva. Let me just roll for random encounters…oh hey, you guys should recognize this one.


Insert Thorwalian encounter here. It went exactly like the last one, except that Boxter’s saber broke halfway in.

Ah, damn it.
I was wondering when this would happen. We can get it fixed if we visit a blacksmith, or (since it wasn’t anything special) we could buy a new one.
Yeah, I figure. Good thing we got all this booze to make it through these hard times.
Hold on, they were all carrying brandy, right? I can make potions using those. Let me just check…no, looks like I’ll need some kairan leaves, and I’m pretty sure the market herbalist doesn’t carry them. I’ll need to visit the seeress to get the right herbs.
But I wanted to get drunk!
Go console yourself with a beer or something.



Try not to go overboard, though; we’ll be here for a while. So you went to the seeress for the herbs, right?

Yeah, why? Is the healer suddenly available now?

She is. But since you’re going to the Holberkian ghetto anyway, I figured I could mention this event:



Any excuse to pull out that accent of yours, huh?
“Aye!”
So, what a surprise, the serial puppy kidnapper doesn’t stop kidnapping puppies once we open his cages.
If we could move on? I believe I will be making 3 health and 4 mana potions, so I’ll need…hmm. And the mana potions will require 48 hours each to ferment.
But the health potions can be made instantly? That seems excessive.
AP is expensive in this setting, one way or another. We should also buy some whirlweed while we’re here; the stuff is basically one ounce health potions.

Alright, so you buy all your stuff and make all your potions. Hang on, let me roll for city random encounters again. *Roll* Let’s see, and it happens to *roll* oh. Oh my.


Ew!
Aw.
What, you wanted Belle to enjoy that?
No, I wanted Lord Boxter to enjoy it.

As Belle is wiping her mouth, the young woman “floats” away. Then, suddenly, she stops as if she’d hit a wall. She looks around with a confused expression, shrugs, and walks on with perfectly normal movements. An old man, who has been watching the scene unfold with wry amusement, just shakes his head. “Too much brimstone, far too much brimstone!”

I thought brimstone meant sulfur, not Ecstasy.
It’s a bit more than just sulfur in DSA. Can we get back to the wizard’s tower yet?

Sure, that was just the last thing.


On a side note, I find myself somewhat depressed to find that magic weapons can in fact break, apparently.



…So yeah, every once in a while, no one gets hurt crossing the mud. But it’s just a matter of time! You’ll all see!



I could cast a Foramen while Hal picks the other lock, but I’d rather not waste the AP. Can anyone else use lockpicks?

Thorgrim has his own set, if you recall.

Oh yeah. I guess we’re set, then.



I just remembered, there’s a track for this area too. I probably should have started it when you entered the garden area, but we were almost done, so…anyway, here it is.

(Backup)

So this is just the lobby?
Sounds more like a foyer. Maybe we can stash stuff here before we get into the main keep.

Well, before you can do anything,


Does Lie cover flattery?
Assuming you don’t mean it, yes.
I’ll talk to him, then. “You must be the great and inspired mage of this keep. Please accept our must humble admiration.”

His name is Toranor.

Right, I call him that.

Okay. “Well-chosen words indeed. Yes, I am he, Toranor. But despite your admiration, I require absolute quiescence for my studies. Have you seen my steward?”

Way to throw the fancy words around, Bob.
“Um, no, we haven’t seen anyone around here but yourself.”


It’s always nice when the game knows exactly what you’re thinking.

Did you see how the mage aimed at Vvhorpax whenever possible? That’s why I gave him the +4 to magic resistance amulet.

So this guy poofed into a bat, too?

That’s right.

So is this some guy messing with us, or will everyone be turning into bats?

You’ll find out.

How come you took his robe, Suzie?
Dunno. Just felt like it, really.


I’ll put my new coat on the coat rack.
Wait, so the only reason you grabbed his robe was to hang it up?
Pretty much. I just think coat racks ought to be used, you know?


Anyway, we can also use the shelves here to stash stuff.


Sounds good; I can lug around quite a bit more without the alchemy set to weigh me down.


This here is the map of the first floor. The entrance is on the center right, or the small room with the asterisk-looking thing on the big map. Most of this floor is just quarters and storage rooms, while the large room to the northwest is the kitchen. The passage just across from the front room is the door upstairs, but it’s not open just yet.

Let’s take a right here. In fact, if we keep to the right we’ll probably see the whole region.
Hey now, we should turn left! We should always go left.

Is this from the internet again?

Doesn’t stop it from being awesome.
If no one else cares which direction we go, I think both me and Bob would rather stick to the right.




You are in a room full of garden tools. Most of the shelves are full of shovels, rakes, (non-combat) scythes, and other such equipment. One of the shelves is empty now, though.

Told you we should have gone left.
I’d like to search all the shelves for useful equipment.

What, even the empty one?

Especially the empty one.


*Snicker*
Hey, I’m just trying to be thorough here.

Fine, you’re thorough. You find three rakes, four shovels, two pickaxes, some rope, a hammer, five torches, and a table covered in leaves. Nothing of real value.



Passing along the corridor, you encounter a section of the wall where the large gray bricks have broken apart. Filling the hole is a set of smaller red bricks.

So someone busted in here the hard way, then filled it back in later? Sounds like the tower’s traded hands at least once.



This is a storeroom. There are a few supplies here, including two bottles of brandy, eight drinking horns, three bottles of wine, five glasses’ worth of beer, twenty sets of cups, and twenty two sets of cutlery.

Can I stuff all the cups and silverware into my backpack?

Sure, if you like being weighed down. There’s more valuable stuff farther down the line, Alex, don’t worry.

We should at least grab the brandy for future potion making.


Let’s bust in and surprise ‘em.
I don’t think busting in and surprising sleeping people really go together.

What, did you want to see how well your magician can roll stealth checks again?

Good point. Alright, Hal, bust away.



Plus there’s the part where only three of them were sleeping.


Remember all those bandits I fought that slaughtered vVhorpax? Turns out I’ve learned a thing or two since then.


Damn, I’ve come down with something. We still have the anti-disease potion, right?
Oh, I don’t know, maybe we need it for something. We should save it for “emergencies.”
Bob said Paul doesn’t have the right herbs, so it is very likely that I’m sick with tetanus, and we are trying to do the whole tower in one attempt. Come on, hand it over!



You are in a small room off by itself. You imagine that the bandit leader you mercilessly slaughtered earlier must have come from in here. Aside from a small chest and the bed, you see a wooden dog figurine on a table.

We take it, of course. And what’s in the chest?



A key, a saber, and some ink.

I grab the saber.

Oh?

The one I’m using broke once already, and I’d like to have a backup. Oh, and someone should probably get the key, too.



You are in a dining room. It’s empty now, since you killed everyone who’d be eating at it. There’s also a small room branching off in the corner, but it’s locked.

Does the key fit?

It does, actually. And inside this door, you find…


So, ah, what exactly is in all these bottles?

Quite a bit, actually.



50 jugs of wine, 30 jugs of brandy, 40 licorice sticks, 90 sacks of rationable food, 20 small fish, and 3 sharks.

Three what?!
Did you just say there were three sharks on the shelves?

Freshwater sharks, so it’s not quite as impressive.

Still, sharks. Three whole goddamn sharks. I say we take ‘em with us.

Why?

So we can eat them!

Why?!

What part about “vicarious living” are you not getting about my character?



Fine, it’s your encumbrance. The next area you find is the kitchen. There’s just more food supplies in the shelves, and not as many as you found earlier.



When you examine the fire, you notice that there doesn’t seem to be any fuel. Nevertheless, it’s quite hot.


Is it a special knife?

No.

Then why would we take it?

I don’t know, you guys have the tendency to grab the randomest stuff.



There’s an old, dirty shirt in the washbin. Feel like taking the shirt?

Is it a fancy shirt?

No. Actually, it’s covered in fleas.

We are definitely leaving the shirt alone.



Ah, you finally found it.

Is the angry head supposed to be a lock or something?

Well, the wall it’s mounted on doesn’t look like the surrounding stone, and the path would otherwise be a dead end.

Try the dog figure we got earlier.



The head of the dog fits the lock exactly. After putting it in, you can move the head just like a key, and it causes the door to slide open.


How does this work?

The winch causes the cage to move up and down, although it only goes up to the second floor. The cage holds just one person at a time, and someone’s going to have to stay behind to work the wheel. Who did you—


Paul.
I guess it’s pretty convenient that he happened to skip out on today, isn’t it?

Fine, but you know whoever gets left behind won’t get any experience? I mean, I can’t hand it out for “standing next to a winch,” and Thorgrim would—

Thorgrim’s coming with us, isn’t that right?
“Aye, tha’ I am!”

Seriously, though, for whatever reason, someone does need to stay behind while the rest of the party goes and gets experience from the other three floors. And you can’t use an NPC for the same reason that he can’t go off on his own normally: you aren’t allowed to control his actions. It’s a real bitch, but hey, players disappear all the time in real sessions, so I figured now was as good a time as any for someone to go missing.

I’ll go up first.

Fine. So, once you get up, you see—

Wait, before you start the next floor, how about a pizza break? It’s getting about dinner time.

Actually, I am pretty hungry. Yeah, let’s take a quick break and come back when we’re done.