Valiant Swords of Greyhawk: Session 25 - fireball Fireball FIREBALL

 

"According to Mighty and Illustrious Xyzzifax"

Our Heroes:

• The Mighty Xyzzifax played by Alex
• Minion Samson played by William
• Minion Jaric played by Dave
• Minion Lantor played by Brandon
• Minion Sir Kentor (Human Paladin) played by Paladin Steve
• Minion Braedon played by Terry

 The party is level 5-6 at this point. The Bard was out for this session. We begin on Day 70 of the campaign after a trip to Hommlet at the end of the last session and then an uneventful trip back to the Temple at the beginning of this session.

The party awakens in the tower, ready to venture into the temple again, only to find that Malice has once again contracted an illness from the Paladin’s chili. At this point Xyzzifax is convinced that she is either not very bright (despite her magical prowess) or simply a glutton for punishment. Braedon tells the story of his brother being eaten by a werewolf in gruesome detail. Again.

Under Xyzzifax’s masterful tutelage, the group elects to return to the air temple room from which they retreated from the day prior.

Upon opening the door, the group sees that the room is now occupied by 4 trolls.

The trolls rush forward, with two of them charging up the stairs, raking with their claws, at the fighter and paladin. After repeated arrows from Braedon, Magical javelins from Samson, multiple sword blows from Kentor and Lantor, sacred flames from Jaric, and two fireballs from Xyzzifax, the 4 trolls are but smoldering remains.

Jaric says a prayer of healing while Bubo is sent up the vertical passage previously taken by the fleeing Vrock. The passage is long. Very long. hundreds of feet long. It eventually opens up into a large chamber filled with columns covered in what can only be described as elementally evil markings. The now familiar flaming eye symbol adorns one wall. Several passageways lead off from this room.

Having seen that the passageway itself is very long an perilous to climb up (for the minions incapable of flight) The adventurers decide to continue exploring the floor that they currently occupy. As they move out of the air temple into one of the many hallways leading off, the first one evidently ends quickly in a dead end room. The room appears to have been some form of living quarters, with smelly bedrolls and rotting meat littering the area. Likely some of the bugbears the group has slain made their beds here.

Continuing in a clockwise motion, the party continues down the next nearest hallway. This short hallway ends in a locked door, with a peephole. After unlocking the door, minion Samson activates his magical goggles, seeing 5 humanoids standing in the room: evidently they have seen the group coming. Armed with this knowledge, Future Lord Xyzzifax engages his unmatched tactical wit to instruct the group that he will launch a fireball into the room the very moment that minion Samson opens the door. On the count of 3, the group does just this, instantly incinerating 4 of the humans inside. The one remaining bandit flees down an adjoining hallway, while Xyzzifax and his minions pursue.

As minion Jaric is the first to pursue, he bursts into a room full of adversaries standing around in various states of readiness. In this room are 6 bandits, 2 captains, a rogue of some sort. The bandits are incinerated by the 4th fireball of the day from Xyzzifax, leaving just the captains and the rogue, who stabs Lantor as he enters the room, and promptly loses his head for it. Braedon kills one of the captains with a well placed arrow shot. Kentor tells the remaining captain that he is very guilty and should be ashamed of himself.

In response to this, the last remaining captain steals Kentor’s returning hammer, and slashes at him with a sword and a dagger. A door next to the rogue’s corpse opens, and a human in ornate black leather armor steps out next to Lantor, wielding a glowing sword. He swings it at Lantor, who easily dodges, and counterattacks, slicing into the man with his greatsword. Jaric moves in and launches a guiding bolt at the newly emerged foe.

Xyzzifax engages his masterfull intellect to consider hundreds of possible courses of action, and then responds to this new foe with yet another fireball from his wand, felling the remaining captain.

Now missing his hair, the ornately armored man is put down with an arrow through the eye by minion Braedon

(Behold Xyzzifax’s masterfull artistic rendition)

(and yes, I had passed out a paper copy of the illustration and yes he did "update" it to this)

DM Notes

At this point in the campaign I am really feeling the differences from the old school AD&D that this adventure was designed for. I like to think that D&D is still D&D for the most part, but there have been so many changes in design assumptions over the years that at times it jumps out pretty dramatically.  In this session it was the fireballs - AD&D wands had roughly 20-80 charges when found but were finite - by the book there was no way to recharge them. This meant that you felt every one of those things being used. Even if you had 50+ charges every magic-user I knew (including me) tended to hoard them because each charge was irreplaceable and you couldn't just go buy -or craft- a new one when you ran out. 

I have more to say on this but I will save it for a separate post.

At this point the campaign is going well and everyone is having a good time exploring their abilities as they explore the Temple.