Somehow both of my main player-chroniclers missed out on writing this one up despite at least one of them being there so we will be going solely off of the DM's notes for this one and it will not be a first-person narrative.
Our Heroes:
- Braeden (Human Ranger) played by Battletech Terry
- Sir Kentor (Human Paladin) played by Paladin Steve
- Sir Lantor (Human Fighter) played by Boom Gun Brandon
- The Mighty Xyzzifax (Human-ish Wizard) played by Blaster
- Samson (Halfling Mechanist) played by Shootist Will
- Jaric (Human Cleric) played by Variable David
The party is level 5-6 at this point. This account is written by the DM. The Bard was ill and stayed in the tower for this run. We begin on Day 64 of the campaign.
The party returns to the set of rooms where they fought the bugbears and ogres the day before. Nothing new is waiting for them - as happens sometimes in this place - but some of the bodies are missing. Xyz decides to animate some of the bugbear bodies and this prompts a discussion as Kentor the Paladin is not totally comfortable with that. The wizard gets an assist from the bard in making the case that animating deceased denizens of the Temple of Elemental Evil and using them to fight other denizens of the Temple of Elemental Evil is a) prudent use of resources and b) poetic justice and the paladin decides he's OK with it for now as long as they are used in the temple and are not permanent additions to the party. With this settled they now begin poking around the various corridors, doors, and secret doors in this area.
DM note: I love it when a party generates their own internal moral debates - this totally sprang up on it's own and some of us have been playing together a very long time so I knew Paladin Steve was going to raise an objection. That said Tales of the Valiant doesn't use alignment so there is more wiggle room here, and it also allows paladins to follow a cause or something similar and not a particular god so there was no god-specific proscription against undead in play here. I believe one of the opening lines of the discussion was "I'm trying to kill them and you're bringing them back!" and then things developed from there. It all worked out though and Xyzzifax would have a small band of undead minions lurking around the back of the party for pretty much the rest of the campaign.
Soon enough they backtrack to the Water Temple and open the great brass doors to the east.
Let's talk about the layout here with a map:
- The 220+ rooms in the upper left are where they fought the ogres and bugbears etc. last session
- 213 is the Water Temple they attacked in Session 18
- 211 is the "Corridor of the Elements" where various magical elemental effects kick in as one moves through the hall
- 210 is the Air Temple
Yes, many of the temples are packed right on top of each other on the second level of the dungeon. Yes, I would have spread them out more, possibly one per level, and though that might seem a little obvious now I'm not sure it would have been cliched back in the early 80's when this was coming together.
Back to Our Heroes ...
They move from the Water Temple into the large corridor and start getting buffeted about by various elemental blasts as the walls glow in different colors and strange smells fill the air. Being experienced and resourceful adventurers though they quickly make their way down it and open the doors to the north, entering a large octagonal chamber. Here's the flavor text straight from the adventure:
Illumination in this large, octagonal room seems to come from everywhere-ceiling, walls, floor-a milky radiance which gives a dim and eerie glow to the whole scene. The floor of this place is 15 feet below the level of the normal dungeon floor, with short, broad stairways leading to it. The ceiling vaults to a height of 40 feet. The walls and floor of the room are of polished, gray stone with whorls of glittering mica; the floor is partially obscured by swirling, eddying mist that glows softly.
In the center of the area is a great, pierced square of bronze, 10feet on a side. A dome is pierced in the ceiling, a circular shaft some 20 feet wide opening directly over a pit of the same diameter and 5-foot depth. Immediately to the south of the pit is a block of alabaster measuring 2 feet wide, 4 feet high, and 8 feet long. Atop it are two knives and a bowl of finest crystal. Ranking the pit are two crystal braziers, suspended from tripods by chains of silver. Each emits a faint, sickly-sweet, perfumed smoke.
The party starts investigating the room - Bubo flies around, Samson uses his various vision options to look for invisible or hidden things, and the Wizard sends a zombie off to examine the crystal implements. Eventually they cannot resist and have the thing pick up the items and that's when it gets interesting as 3 Vrocks fly down out of the ceiling shaft and engage.
A furious fight develops as while much of the party is clustered up in the doorway and the stairs some of them have spread out and the speed of the flying demons lets them engage as they please. The clustered characters get multiple face-fulls of spores and have to deal with that for a round or two as well as some horrific screeches Xyz shows just how expendable the zombies are as he fireballs a pair of demons even though his minion is caught in the blast as well. During the fight one of the creatures is turned and flees up the shaft. The team focuses and brings down the other two then waits out the return of the third one and hits it hard when it does, slaying it outright.
More thoroughly exploring the area after the fight they discover, among other things, a censer of controlling air elementals which ended up going to Samson which made him very happy. .
Having suffered various batterings and blastings the group decides to head back to the tower to pick up Malice and then head to Hommlet for some R&R
DM Notes
Vrocks are fun. They are reasonably tough, they can fly, they can make 3 attacks a round, and they have some other tricks:
This is not how the encounter was originally set up but I am well-into modifying things in this temple at this point as my party is capable of blowing through a lot. So I dropped the single drelb that waits in one of the side rooms which is no threat at all to my group and amped up the Vrock encounter by adding a third one and having them summoned if any of the implements are disturbed by someone not wearing a symbol of the air temple.
There is a fair amount of this in the temple with a single not terribly strong creature (in modern terms, not necessarily AD&D terms) is lurking somewhere by itself and versus a 6 or 7 person party all it's going to do is trigger a one to two round combat during which the party is in no danger at all. The Drelb in this case is a single CR4 guardian monster and I have six 5th or 6th level characters walking into that room. You can't negotiate with it and its one attack per round is not going to cause significant harm to anyone.
Some of this is just the modern game - hit point bloat, roll to save every round when hit with an ongoing condition (like paralysis) or damage (like poison) - so that the party doesn't even have to expend a spell or a potion to undo something. In my opinion it's better to avoid these random "nothing" combats and ensure the ones that do happen are more dangerous, meaningful, or can lead to something interesting like taking someone prisoner or negotiating a surrender.
Anyway there are some thoughts from the DM side of the campaign - next time back to the player perspective.
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