Kiss My Knits!

We start out with my homies harassing me for not posting frequently enough.

Palin: I’ll post. “I found a lightsaber, Torkal got a dog, everybody else got some stuff, and we almost died. The end.”
Torkal: Ahem.
Torkal: PIMPDOG.
Palin: Right. Sorry.
Torkal: Thank you.
Palin: Mr. Snugglypoof is indeed awesome.
Torkal: I will kill you.

GM Vaschon: Well, when last we left our intrepid mushroom wranglers….
GM Vaschon: Your party decided to climb down to ground level and I believe trudged a bit south before calling it a night. You can basically move in any cardinal direction at this point. There is a bridge towering above you to the west.
GM Vaschon: Your party did hear some sounds from the northerly direction. Something you might relate to moans or wails.
Veracity: We did? That sounds interesting. Weird but interesting.
Palin: Right! North it is.

Val’s not with us yet, but the rest of us start off northerly with Torkal in the lead.

GM Vaschon: Torkal stops your party and points out the large skeleton chained to a nearby mushroom. The skeleton appears to be the size of an ogre or a small hill giant. There is no meat left on it, and appears to have been there for quite some time. Both Torkal and Palin notice some acidic markings on the skeleton. The chains binding it appear rusted, but sturdy.

Palin: Uhhh…
Torkal: Torkal and Palin share a look. It’s not romantic.

The acidic marks aren’t at the waterline, so that rules out some horrible acid-spitting monster living in the water.
Bentein: “Remember, I heard some sort of moaning sound about ten feet above the water.”
Palin: “Maybe it’s something still alive. Well, obviously still alive, but I mean still alive and chained up.”
Veracity: Veracity says to Spot, “Think you could fly ahead and scope it out? CAREFULLY?”
Palin: “We should save whatever it is.”
GM Vaschon: Veracity’s raven looks burdened by the name Spot, yet flies off anyway.
GM Vaschon: Veracity senses her familiar is in danger…
Veracity: ‘He’s in danger!”
Aleanghi: ‘Then call him back
Veracity: Veracity lunges ahead. As much as you can in knee high water. She calls, “Get OUT of there!”
Aleanghi: ‘Telepathically, Veracity.
Veracity: oh hell. Vaya con dios, Spot.
Aleanghi: ‘You don’t need to yell and advertise our position.
GM Vaschon: A Veracity bellows out…
Veracity: Veracity glares at Aleangi as she flounders.
GM Vaschon: The sound of wailing begins to permeate all around your party.
Palin: Why must everybody constantly shout?
Veracity: “It was an automatic reaction.”
GM Vaschon: everyone roll a SPOT check
GM Vaschon: heh, get it?
Veracity: ahaha
Palin: grooooooan.
Aleanghi: (LOL)

GM Vaschon: As the wailing increases, both Ale and Veracity point out a number of banshee approaching from the northeast, north and northwest.
Palin: So not someone chained up we should rescue. Good to know.

Spot is slammed by a banshee (pictured right), and as a result, Veracity also takes damage. That’s the nature of the bond. And then, we’re surrounded.

GM Vaschon: From the north 2 banshee approach, 2 from the northeast and 1 from the northwest. They are hovering towards you.

Bentein casts consecrate, which will give the undead a penalty and help us get the upper hand. Veracity remains stunned, like Spot. Aleanghi casts disrupt undead.

Aleanghi rolled 1 20-sided die: 20
Aleanghi: Dang.
Veracity: wow
Aleanghi: I win?
Palin: Go Ale!
magusambrodiel: Torkal cues the pwnage wagon.
GM Vaschon: roll again Ale
Aleanghi rolled 1 20-sided die: 19
Torkal: !!!
GM Vaschon: Ale bypasses the Banshee’s spell resistance and causes damage. Ale disrupts a banshee for 4 damage and causes her left arm to be disintegrated.

Go Ale! Meanwhile, the rest of the banshees reach us.

GM Vaschon: Banshee chooses Palin
Vaschon rolled 1 20-sided die: 20
Aleanghi: Eep
Vaschon rolled 1 20-sided die: 20
Aleanghi: EEP
GM Vaschon: oh my
Veracity: oh boy
Palin: Palin’s witty retort dies on her tongue.
Torkal: Torkal cues the pwnage wagon again.
Palin: Stupid wagon.
GM Vaschon: The Rosie O’donnel… er banshee wails at Palin delivering her a mortal wound in the process…
Palin: WHAT??
Torkal: You done got Rosied.
GM Vaschon: Palin takes 8 points of damage and is mortally wounded (meaning you can not be healed…
GM Vaschon: Banshee 2 also chooses Palin, gets a penalty for no arm, but bonus because Palin is mortally wounded…
Palin: WHAT???
GM Vaschon: Palin is a guest on the View and gets nailed for another hit…
Aleanghi: She cannot be healed of that particular damage, or she’s dying and can’t be healed?
GM Vaschon: Mortal wound means she can not be healed while the mortal wound remains.
Veracity: So she needs an altar to heal those wounds and damage?
GM Vaschon: Or remove curse
GM Vaschon: Palin takes an additional 11 points of damage
GM Vaschon: Palin
Palin: WHAT????
GM Vaschon: You’re up
Palin: OH. Right.
Aleanghi: Make ’em pay, Palin!
Palin: Palin coughs, then fixes the nearest banshee with a steely glare.
Palin: “Protect Veracity,” she thinks. She’ll defend the group to the end!
Palin: She directs a huge blow toward the nearest banshee.
Torkal: She’s gone from suck to blow!

Palin winds up and smacks the tar out of the banshee for 14 damage. She’s going down swinging. Then it’s Torkal’s turn.

Torkal: Torkal turns the kind of RAGE you only get when your bro gets her arm messed with.
(Torkal rolls badly.)
GM Vaschon: Torkal swings and nearly cuts a mushroom.
Palin: Palin would laugh but it hurts when she does that.
GM Vaschon: The remaining banshee arrive and enter the consecrated ground…

…and proceed to wail on Palin. All of them. Palin’s down to 12 hitpoints. Palin rallies long enough to kill the same one she injured before.

GM Vaschon: The Banshee’s talk show is canceled as Palin cleaves her in two.

Torkal wounds a second banshee. A third tries to summon undead, but fails due to the consecrated ground. Another tries to drain Torkal but is denied. Bentein turns a banshee, neatly disintegrating it. Go Bentein! Then it’s the banshees’ turn again. One targets Veracity.

Palin: “Friend Veracity. I protected you until you were awake. Good luck now!”
GM Vaschon: Banshee 5 attempts to claw at Veracity and fails.
Veracity: Veracity hisses, “Bitch! I”m gonna incinerate your face for that.”
GM Vaschon: The banshee ignores Veracity’s meaningless taunts.
Veracity: Veracity then says cheerfully to Palin, “Thanks much, Palin. You look a little the worse for wear though.”
Palin: “Yes. I took a mortal wound defending you.”
Palin: “This probably goes without saying, but YOU OWE ME.”
Veracity: Veracity looks blankly uncomprehending, but smiles brightly at Palin anyway.

Maybe she didn’t get it, but you all heard me. SHE OWES ME.

Aleaghi hits a banshee hard, and I decide to finish the job.

Palin: Palin’s going to attack the banshee that Ale just hit. And she’s going to kill it, too.
Palin: THIS I DECLARE.
Palin rolled 1 20-sided die: 1
Palin: THIS I TAKE BACK.
(Palin confirms her critical miss.)
Torkal: VADERNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
GM Vaschon: Palin slashes at a Banshee and trips over a pebble falling face first into the murky water suffering a -4 penalty to defense this round.

Hey, I’m not dead yet! Awesome! Torkal avenges Palin.

GM Vaschon: Torkal cleaves at Banshee 1 and it falls over deader than Rosie O’Donnell’s career.

Bentein finishes off another banshee, There’s only one remaining. Veracity tries to take it out with magic.

GM Vaschon: Veracity’s ray hits a mushroom, nothing happens.
Aleanghi: At least we know the mushrooms aren’t undead.
Palin: Maybe they make things undead.
Veracity: They GROW on the undead.
Aleanghi: Don’t give Nick any ideas.

Val has joined the party, so he’s up, with one banshee still remaining.

Val: Val activates his frost sickle and slashes!

And unfortunately misses. That’s okay, though. Aleanghi’s burning hands (get that checked by a doctor, Ale) kill the banshee.

Val: Val combs back his hair and looks off with a satisfied face. if you didn’t know better it’d seem like he felt responsible for victory.

Veracity: Veracity fusses over Spot, also wounded. Though not as spectacularly as Palin was.
Palin: Palin glares at Veracity.
Palin: “Remember how I stood guard over your body while you were stunned because your bird managed to get wounded?”
Veracity: Veracity says defensively, “What! I’d heal you if I could, but it isn’t my forte!”
Palin: Palin narrows her eyes, apparently making a mental note.
Veracity: “And Spot took one for the team!”
Palin: Palin looks at the bird.
Palin: “So, you can see whatever the bird sees? If danger approaches the bird, you know it?”
Veracity: The raven squawks. Regrettably, he sounds rather smug.
Veracity: “Well, more or less, yes.”
Palin: Palin files that information away.

Palin, meanwhile, continues to be mortally wounded, and we have no potions or spells which will help. We decide to trudge on.

GM Vaschon: Your party begins trudging northerly. The amount of skeletons chained to mushrooms increase. You notice them gradually getting smaller to the size of dwarves and halflings.

Palin: The mushrooms aren’t eating the skeletons, are they? And growing bigger?
Veracity: Are they all stripped clean? Just bones and teeth marks?
GM Vaschon: There is no clothing on the skeletons. There are acidic burns on each of them.
Palin: Facing the mushroom side or facing outward?
GM Vaschon: Palin roll a d20
Palin rolled 1 20-sided die: 1
Palin: This is not my night.

Eventually, though, we do notice a few things.

GM Vaschon: You examine the skeleton and chains carefully. You observe that the acidic marks line the backs of the skeletons. The chains though rusted are sturdy and reach around the base of the mushroom and are consumed by them
Veracity: Veracity grabs one of the long legs bones from one of the taller skeletons, and uses it to prod the murky waters as they move forward.
Palin: You. Are. Gross.
Aleanghi: …ew, Veracity.
GM Vaschon: Veracity grabs an orge leg and hefts it.
Veracity: la la la

We keep moving forward.

GM Vaschon: Your party continues northerly and the number of skeletons begin to diminish. There is a cavern wall roughly 20′ ahead.
Veracity: Veracity pokes ahead with the bone, testing the bottom of the murky deep puddle they are wading through.
GM Vaschon: The water appears to be roughly 18″ in depth.
Veracity: Just checking. This is just the sort of place where the bottom will suddenly fall out from under us.
Palin: I think that will only happen metaphorically.
GM Vaschon: You never know!

GM Vaschon: Your party reaches the cavern wall. The wall rounds slightly to the southeast and southwest. Peering in each direction, you see a series of mushrooms to the southeast leading upward in elevation.
Torkal: I still feel like we’re missing something on this level. There’s a lot of ground we didn’t cover.
GM Vaschon: There’s an area you were at that you left without going into.
Veracity: I’m hopelessly confused on this level and just following the rest of you.
Val: yeah i’m very confused too
Palin: That’s not good. Are we all just randomly going whichever way?
Aleanghi: Well, we’re still in the huge mushroom cave.
Palin: You don’t say.

So basically, we have no idea where we’re going or where we are. Awesome. We continue to move forward with our master plan, called “get the hell out of here.”

GM Vaschon: Palin determines the best route to return to the bridge. One shroom hazard remains and will require a jump check for Palin and anyone else attempting to jump upward….

Palin rolls a 2. This is not good.

GM Vaschon: What is your strength?
Palin: Burning. Also, being tied to things.
Val: can val make an attempt to pull Palin back?
Aleanghi: Let’s find out if she even made it?
GM Vaschon: Unless she was tied to a rope, no.
Palin: Palin has true grit.
Palin: Don’t forger her rugged determination, her devotion to her friends, her willingness to take point although she has no clue where she’s going.
Palin: Her kindness to the dog.
GM Vaschon: Well, Palin beat the odds and lands on a mushroom 20′ down.
Aleanghi: Hey, something had to go her way tonight. Poor Palin.
GM Vaschon: Palin takes 10 points damage from the fall.
Palin: Leaving me 2 points.
Aleanghi: Man. We have got to get Palin outta here, before we’re hauling her corpse.
Palin: “I have a favor. If you have the dog drag me, please have it drag me face up.”

The trick now is to get me back off the mushroom without me so much as stubbing my toe, because that’s pretty much all it would take to kill me.

Torkal: So we need to rope her back up.
Val: what we need are some Reebok Pumps
Torkal: Will our mushroom support that?
Veracity: “Okay, can we toss a rope down to her from the higher mushroom? And THIS time, she can tie a LOOP in it, and sit in it and let herself be pulled up again?”
Palin: “What’s your point?”
Aleanghi: …but will the mushroom support enough folks to do that?
Aleanghi: We were hopping one at a time.
Val: we could tie the rope into one of the rungs of the ladder, lead the rope down…and pull her up
Val: like a pulley!
Val: and hopefully her entrails won’t fall out
Veracity: “That could work. And we cannot worry about minor details like entrails just at the moment.”
Palin: “My entrails are not a minor detail!”
GM Vaschon: Ale’s familiar acknowledges that it can deliver the item.
Veracity: “They are in the greater scheme of things! Like…..your being stuck there until you starve, or the mushroom wakes up and snacks on you!”
Palin: “The mushroom isn’t going to wake up.”
Veracity: “Now you’ve done it.”
Val: next thing you know, a chain is going to appear out of the mushroom and latch onto Palin
Veracity: Veracity watches Palin’s mushroom uneasily.
Aleanghi: What have we said about giving Nick ideas?

It’s all for naught. The rope isn’t long enough.

Palin: I could try to throw my grappling hook to the ladder.
Val: and swing?
Aleanghi: (breaking out the calculater and going at the Pythagorean Theorem…)
Palin: Ssssure. Why not.
Val: I think i saw a video warning me about something similar
Aleanghi: Not much room for tying, admittedly..
Val: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tO77Ef8ZB8
Palin: I’m liking the grappling hook.
GM Vaschon: Palin, what are you doing with the hook?
Palin: I have one end of the rope tied around my waist. I am going to throw the other end at the ladder.
Palin: The end with the hook.
GM Vaschon: Palin throws the rope, it lands on the ground next to Veracity.
Palin: Good enough!

Then we begin the calculations.

Veracity: Well, we want to shorten the rope enough so she doesn’t bash herself into the ground, but long enough that she can maybe swing over. Right?
Veracity: So we want to take the hook up higher than where she is now.
GM Vaschon: Palin is about to try something.
Veracity: hee
Palin: That made me laugh way harder than it should have.
Veracity: And then paint a cave mouth on the side of the mushroom stalk.
Torkal: http://imgs.xkcd.com/store/imgs/stand_back_square_0.png
Veracity: Dwarf pate, here we come.

Val ties the rope off, rolling badly in the attempt.
Palin: Palin waits on her mushroom, oblivious to the oncoming doom.
GM Vaschon: Palin debates on what to do next.
Palin: Palin takes up all the slack and reties the rope around her waist.
GM Vaschon: So do you want to swing downward then use your momentum to swing up?
GM Vaschon: You really need to watch that video then.

Aleanghi: If the ladder is 55 foot up from the ground… And palin is 30 feet up…
Aleanghi: That means the ladder is 25 feet higher than she is. 25 feet for leg a. 40 feet away from the ladder is leg b.
Aleanghi: Pythagorean theorem yields a hypotenuse of 47 feet. That’d be the diagonal length of the rope.
Aleanghi: From where it’s tied off to where she is, assuming no slack.

Aleanghi and Val continue to do geometry to try to figure out less slack or more, taking into account the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, if a train leaving Flagstaff at 6pm going 40 mph meets a Dwarf leaving a mushroom… it’s all very impressive. But it also takes about 15 minutes, at least. D&D should not require a protractor. Finally I can’t take it anymore.

Palin: I love you all, but it’s 12:30 at night and Palin is jumping.
Bentein: Deciding she never wants to go through another rope plan in her life, Palin flings herself to her death.
GM Vaschon: Palin swings on her rope avoiding her best to do a George of the Jungle impression. She misses the nearest shroom and lands safely to the ground.
Palin: FINE.
GM Vaschon: Palin arrives at the base of the shroom with the ladder.
Palin: “I’m down, and I’m fine!”

Palin climbs back up and asks:
Palin: How can we safely get to the next mushroom without detouring into Euclidean geometry for an hour?
GM Vaschon: If you want me to lay out all the mushrooms I can, however since you’ve been the path, I’ve laid it out that you only need to meet this hazard to get to the bridge.
Val: Val could take a rope with him to the bridge
Val: let it down..
Val: although thats a lot of climbing
Palin: Yeah, all we have to do is get past this one mushroom.
Palin: Val’s on the one we need to get to?
GM Vaschon: If you climb up, every 10′ the party will need to roll a climb check.
Palin: Nick’s trying to make it easy and yet still somehow we almost killed me.

Miraculously, we finally make it up the ladder, onto the bridge, back out the cavern, into the hall… where once again the lift is not where it’s supposed to be. At this point, it’s 1am, one of us has already had to log off and the rest of us are hanging on by our nails, so we decide to call it a night. Next week, we try to get mortally wounded Palin back to safety and healed up. Should be easy!