What Do I Know?

After finding their new friends and defeating some rather surly shrubbery outside of an ancient elven outpost, our band of adventurers attempted to rest.  This did not go well for them, as the evil Judge  (me) rolled a really nasty random encounter for the group.

The encounter was with a black pudding, which I modified a bit from their original form.  Instead of being just a black pudding, they resembled viscous mud puddles, so as to conceal themselves in the rainy landscape.  I also modified them so that temperature extremes hurt them, not just fire.

The pudding managed to destroy many weapons, get splint into three pieces, and almost kill several party members.  Groot, the ranger, managed to activate a trap on the elven compound’s door that fired off a burst of cold, which killed on of the smaller puddings, and damaged another, but nearly killed a few members of the party as well.

The wizard took off on his horse and then circled around the wall at a separate point.  Groot climbed the wall and found out that the top of the wall had a trough of clear acidic gel in it, and nearly died, and Montarion the rogue had a rough time after climbing through the acid as well.

The wizard, seeing what happened to Groot and Montarion, climbed the wall from off the horse’s back, and avoided the acid, as did Osborn the halfling.  Chad, Paladin of Gozer, pulled the wagon next to the wall and climbed over that way.  Now everyone was over the wall.  Except the professor that hired the group.

The professor looked like he was in dire straights, but Chad managed to bounce between his employer and Groot to save them both, and as it turned out, Montarion wasn’t nearly as dead as he first seemed  (making his Luck check on the recover the body roll).

Inside the compound, the group found a casting circle that boosted spellcasting, but at the risk of generating feedback.  Inside the building, they found a reception hall with eyes and a crown at the far end, over a flight of stairs leading down, with a colored square on the ground and writing under the eyes.

Eventually the group figured out that they were to bow and pay homage to the elven emperor.  Osborn decided to be defiant and made a rude gesture as he walked down the stairs, and the eyes blasted him with beams of flame, nearly killing him.

In one of the rooms of the next level, the party found elven scrolls detailing the inner workings of magic  (but not actual spell scrolls), which Montarion and the professor attempted to read.  Montarion failed miserably and became corrupted, becoming extremely hungry and glowing with flames on his skin, while the professor began to become extremely thin.  Osborn tried some of the elven plants and was affected by hallucinogens, as well as taking stamina damage.

“I can see colors.”

Apparently halflings are colorblind when not on hallucinogens.  Who knew?

“Time for your painfully invasive bath . . . “

In another room, the group found rows upon rows of stone slabs with naked humans on them, all in some kind of magical long term sleep.  They also found a horn, and a large piece of pottery that contained a water elemental whose job it was to violently clean any humans entering the room.  Unfortunately, the water elemental was pretty insane at this point, and didn’t know when to stop.

The party destroyed the elemental, but not before Montarion was scrubbed to death.  Then the group blew the horn.  This woke the humans, who were almost uniformly insane from their treatment at the hands of the elves.  As it turns out, the humans were normally sedated by the elves before being awakened for experiments or amusement.

Slamming the door shut behind them, the party waited for the wet tearing and snapping noises to stop, and upon opening the door again, found most of the humans had turned on one another and only left one human alive to wander out  (meta-aside:  Montarion’s replacement).

At this point the party decided it was time to regroup and we called the session for the evening.

I think I’ve done at least a fair job of reinforcing the elves of my setting as being much more Moorcock than Tolkien, which is fun.