Dungeon Delver Quest (Original Fantasy... again)

[Arkeus]

[x] Bring her along, you're sure you can handle her.
[x] Find your way back to that iron door you stopped at yesterday.

If there is a boss there it should be very doable right now.

Also, yrsillar, it seems we should have 8HP not 7 (2+4+2).

 

[prandom]

[X] Bring her along, you're sure you can handle her.
[X] Check out the clammy hallway

 

[Nohbody]

[X] Bring her along, you're sure you can handle her.
[X] Check out the clammy hallway

 

[theBSDude]

[X] Bring her along, you're sure you can handle her.
[X] Check out the clammy hallway

Undead? Daywalker? Necromancer?

 

[Kinematics]

A few editing corrections. Mostly pretty good today.

Spoiler

It's still a little annoying,. yYou move off from the entrance a bit so that your you're not blocking peoples people's way in, giving the folks in the crowd considering looks.

Click to shrink...

You blink at the sudden change in subject,. "Suppose not, as long as you're not gonna complain about pushing as far as we can."

Click to shrink...

"Really,? hHaven't seen it," you admit, eyeing a whole gaggle leaving the area, — must be ten people,. tThey look like pretty standard sellswords, though with a lot of variation in species.

Click to shrink...

A few more minutes of small talk with Linnea tick by, and your you're starting to consider heading off, when a movement catches your eye.

Click to shrink...

The girl, — you're pretty sure it's a girl, but given the tattered black rags of tunic and cloak she has on it's hard to tell, — flinches a bit when you meet her eyes, the colors of her iris' shifting violently from violet to a sort of yellow-gold.

Click to shrink...

 

[Hangwind]

[X] Bring her along, you're sure you can handle her.
[X] Check out the clammy hallway

 

[CptTagon]

[X] Bring her along, you're sure you can handle her.
[X] Check out the clammy hallway

 

[Bre Karn]

[X] Bring her along, you're sure you can handle her.
[X] Check out the clammy hallway

 

[Larekko12]

[X] Bring her along, you're sure you can handle her.
[X] Check out the clammy hallway

 

[Seventeen]

[x] Bring her along, you're sure you can handle her.
[x] Find your way back to that iron door you stopped at yesterday.

 

[yrsillar]

Alright, can I get the tally?

 

[Arkatekt]

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : Dungeon Delver Quest (Original Fantasy... again) | Page 11 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.4.2
[X] Bring her along, you're sure you can handle her.
[X] Check out the clammy hallway
No. of Votes: 11

Spoiler: Voters

Arkatekt
Bre Karn
CptTagon
Grosstoad
Hangwind
Larekko12
mrttao
Nohbody
prandom
Sirrocco
theBSDude

[x] Bring her along, you're sure you can handle her.
[x] Find your way back to that iron door you stopped at yesterday.
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

Arkeus
Seventeen

[X] Bring her along, you're sure you can handle her.
[X] Just pick a direction and go
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Xicree

Total No. of Voters: 14

By line:

Spoiler: Tally Results

Vote Tally : Dungeon Delver Quest (Original Fantasy... again) | Page 11 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.4.2
[X] Bring her along, you're sure you can handle her.
No. of Votes: 14

Spoiler: Voters

Xicree
Arkatekt
Arkeus
Bre Karn
CptTagon
Grosstoad
Hangwind
Larekko12
mrttao
Nohbody
prandom
Seventeen
Sirrocco
theBSDude

[X] Check out the clammy hallway
No. of Votes: 11

Spoiler: Voters

Arkatekt
Bre Karn
CptTagon
Grosstoad
Hangwind
Larekko12
mrttao
Nohbody
prandom
Sirrocco
theBSDude

[x] Find your way back to that iron door you stopped at yesterday.
No. of Votes: 2

Spoiler: Voters

Arkeus
Seventeen

[X] Just pick a direction and go
No. of Votes: 1

Spoiler: Voters

Xicree

Total No. of Voters: 14

 

[Minion #Q]

[x] Bring her along, you're sure you can handle her.
[x] Find your way back to that iron door you stopped at yesterday.

 

[yrsillar]

alright, bringing shadow along and hallway it is

 

[yrsillar]

As much as you find it kinda suspicious that she won't look you in the eye, you can't say you're much worried about it. You'll deal with anything that comes up. "Sure, I want to get started anyway, I'm Yuuka" you respond, turning away to head for the exit of the area, "Hope you don't mind pushing hard though, 'cause I need to get the funds for the basics on top of powering up."

You can hear them following you, and Linnea introducing herself, and after a moment you remember Linnea's issue and shorten your own stride, allowing them to properly catch up. Shadow seems marginally less on edge, but that's not saying much. "The two of you are pretty new then too?" she asks hesitantly.

Linnea nods, not seeming out of breath at all despite almost trotting along to keep up with the two of you, "I dunno about Yuuka, but I only made it here a few days ago. I didn't find anyone who would take me with them until yesterday though."

You're gonna guess that's because she kinda looks like a kid. "Got here yesterday and went in yesterday. Partnered with a wizard who seemed alright." You glance Shadow's way, noting her utter lack of equipment, "Gonna guess you're some kinda spellcaster too?"

Shadow twitches at that, mumbling something unintelligible before speaking up, "Not… not exactly, not the kind of magic anybody else uses anyway." Seeming to want to change the topic quickly her odd color shifting eyes go to Linnea, "Ah, I didn't ask, but what can you do?" She gestures helplessly at you, "She's pretty obvious, but you don't have a weapon or anything either."

You snort in amusement, but don't disagree. Subtle you're not. Linnea responds quickly enough, "I heal. I can also," you glance back as she pauses, looking disgruntled, "Root things?" she adds, as if questioning herself, "I'm not sure if this weird place is making fun of me or not sometimes," she adds under her breath, "I can poison stuff too, but that's not much good against skeletons."

"That all sounds pretty useful," Shadow responds, sounding almost wistful before flinching, raising her hand to her temple as if pained by something. You shoot her a concerned glance, but she just smiles weekly and waves you off.

The three of you are nearing the tower now, joining the influx of adventurers heading in for the day… and passing a few weary souls heading out. You guess they must have gone for a night run. Some even look rather battered. You don't know if they were wimps or if they ran into tougher enemies though and you don't feel particularly inclined to ask.

…There is a little bit of a hold up a short ways from where you're entering though, ragged, haunted looking elf babbling something about a murderous screaming wind to anyone who will listen… You'll keep it in mind if you hear anything weird you guess. Shadow seems kinda curious as well, although she drops her head when you try to meet her eyes, "I guess we shouldn't get too cocky huh?" she says with a weak chuckle.

"Probably not, but no sense getting worked into a frenzy over maybe's either," you respond as the three of you pass through one of the towers many entrances and the sounds of the outside fall away near immediately.

"It might be a banshee," Linnea speaks up matter of factly, pulling both of you to a halt. "It would fit the floor theme, and that guy said some stuff that reminded me of them."

You blink, "The heck is a banshee?" Shadow seems just as much in the dark as you.

Linnea pauses in catching up with you, looking a bit bewildered at your question, "Undead Sidhe. They're really cranky, but they don't usually attack us…" She pauses, "Oh. I guess you two might have a problem though." She frowns, "You might want to get earplugs, and um… not look it in the face. You might die."

Shadow scrubs a hand through her hair, looking a bit more stressed than before, "Great," she mutters, "Let's hope we don't run into that yet."

"Can you hit 'em?" you ask bluntly as you restart your march down one of the many banged up halls. You still don't know what a 'Sidhe' is, but you know what's important.

"Kind of?" Linnea responds thoughtfully, "They still don't like metal so I guess you should be able to hit one."

"Then we'll be fine," you respond blithely. Linnea laughs, but you notice a bit of tension ease out of Shadow's shoulders. Best not to get worked up about maybes. You idly pull the bottom half of your new outfits headwrap up as the three of you head deeper into the tunnels. No point in leaving your head vulnerable, and cloth meant to keep volcanic ash outta your lungs should help a bit with the rot stink.

Things are fairly uneventful for a awhile, you fight a handful of skeletons here or there, but with your new gear and the backup you brought along they drop pretty fast. Shadow's 'Magic' turns out to be some weird thing where her hand turns into an ugly fleshy knife that makes your skin crawl. It tears through bone like paper though so you guess you aren't complaining. You catch Linnea staring at her after the little skirmishes, but you don't comment on it since neither starts anything.

+3 Shards
+3 XP

Finding your way back to the clammy smelly hall doesn't take too long, neither of your companions are particularly averse to it either. Shadow just wrinkles her nose and seems resigned, while Linnea just seems curious… and entirely unbothered by the smell.

"Dunno what we're gonna see past this point, so keep an eye out," you warn idly as you head down the hall, your voice slightly muffled by the cloth wrap over your mouth. It really does help with the smell.

"Probably zombies," Shadow mutters, "Smells about right for them."

"That's pretty likely," you admit cheerfully, "I was more talking about stuff like traps though."

She pauses and frowns, "Ah, yeah, I guess that makes more sense."

"You're about to step into a pit," Linnea calls out from behind you, bringing you up short and almost making shadow bump into you from behind. "I can feel the empty space," she adds helpfully.

Glancing down you do indeed notice a weird seam in the stone, "Huh, thank for the save, any idea how big it is?"

She frowns, looking down at her bare feet and wiggling her toes a bit, "Deep, but… not very far across, five feet maybe?"

Well you can jump that pretty easy, you glance to Shadow and she grimaces, "I can make it."

You shrug then and leave her too it, "Alright then, you wanna let me take you across then Linnea? Guessing you aren't much of a jumper."

She nods, not feeling the need to contest that. It only takes a moment for you to crouch down and let her hop onto your back. Making it across is trivial, Shadow doesn't have much trouble either. You idly smack the false floor with your club after you're across, making it crumble down onto the rusty spikes below, to make sure you can't miss it on the way back.

You finally see some real action after that, the next room has a dreary mist hovering around the floor and still more of the endless sarcophagi, but from them stumble not skeletons but shambling grey skinned corpses with worm eaten flesh and empty eyes. There are six of them, armed with nothing but likely supernatural strength and their fists… but you don't pay them much mind. You're attention is on the two muscular figures behind them tall enough to look you in the eye.

You fight back the urge to laugh, well this should be at least a little more interesting than pounding skeletons huh? Shadow is already circling around from behind you, using the fact that the enemies have eyes only for you to get better positioning, and even as you start forward your club in a two handed grip, you see Linnea stamp her foot on the ground, almost immediately the floor under one of the two larger zombies erupts, stone cracking and crumbling as thick vines and roots come up from the ground to coil around it's limbs and bind it in place.

You grin, now that's pretty useful. Your first swing bursts a zombie's head like a melon, though it's not half as appetizing, and you see another go down with Shadow's 'hand' slicing through to punch out of it's mouth. Her disgusted look as she yanks her hand back says it all.

With their numbers thinned, there's little the normal zombies can do but ineffectually grab and pound at you… but the bigger one still sends you skidding back a couple feet as you interpose your club between you and a meaty fist the size of a humans head. That could stung if you'd been a little slower.

"Don't worry about the little ones," you call out over the groans of the dead, "This many ain't gonna hurt me."

Shadow doesn't respond, but given the fact that one of the fists swinging for your head tumbles to the ground a moment later you'll say she heard. Your club puts the thing on it's back a moment later it's ribs collapsing inward from the force… still it seemed tougher than it should have been, like it resisted your blow or something.

"The other ones gonna break out soon!" You hear Linnea call as you fend off the attacks of the remaining zombies. You might be in for a bit of trouble without your new armor. You lower your shoulder and bull right through the weaklings in time to combo it down with Shadow as it rips free of the last of the roots. It's all cleanup after that.

"How many more times can you do that trick with the roots?" you ask once the last zombie falls and you're waiting for the loot to show up.

"Ah… two more right now," Linnea responds after a moment of her eyes scanning empty air, "I have five heals too… not that you've needed them so far." You can here a hint of question in her tone.
"Not yet," you admit cheerfully. "But put enough of those big guys in one room and that'll probably change," you add.

"I'm just glad all the enemies seem to care about is you," Shadow mutters, glancing down on the two exiting hallways from the room, "It's a lot easier to stab things when they aren't attacking you." She then glances at the two of you, "I… haven't used anything special yet. You'll know if I do."

"Yeah, I'm pretty hard to ignore," you respond lightly. "And I haven't used anything either," you add, before glancing down as the loot finally coalesces. It's a pretty decent haul, or it would be without having to split it between three people.

+4 Shards.
+6 XP

A bit of investigation shows that of the two paths you can take one continues on without obstacle, and the other ends in a heavy steel portcullis, beyond which the scent of rot really intensifies. You'd have to use a charge of breaker to get through though; it's too heavy for even you to lift. There's also an inscription on the frame of the doorway, which oddly enough you can read despite it not being any script you recognize.

'Demise Often Follows Bravery, and not Always for the Brave. Beware Unleashing that which is Contained.'

"Well that's not ominous at all," Shadow says from beside you, squinting up at the words, before flinching, her gaze skittering away from the strange words. "I think we can probably handle it," she adds, sounding weirdly miserable at the admission.

"The warning just makes me want to open it more," Linnea admits. "But I can't move it."

Well it comes down to you, something kinda bugs you about the warning but on the other hand you didn't come here to back down from the first vaguely worrying thing you've run into.

[] Through the Portcullis
[] Down the Hall

 

[Larekko12]

That sounds like we might let out some roaming super boss on the other side of the place.

 

[Arkeus]

[X] Through the Portcullis
Well, we are still all very fresh. With a healer, a backstabber and ourself a boss should be doable.

The big question is what to do when only one chunk drops.

 

[Grosstoad]

[X] Down the Hall

Yeah, that sounds like possibly opening up a roaming Super Boss.
Here's my overtly cautious vote.

Also, nice going, Linnea!

 

[Arkatekt]

[X] Down the Hall

 

[Hangwind]

[X] Through the Portcullis

What exactly is Shadow's power? Some sort of curse?

 

[Sirrocco]

[X] Through the Portcullis

What exactly is Shadow's power? Some sort of curse?

Click to shrink...

She has a deep personal relationship with a... something. Not a curse so much as a bargain. Read my writeup from the front page for a bit more info.. Right now it looks like she's largely on a rogue chassis - some stealth, with a powerful melee attack that gets more effective when the enemies are paying attention to someone else. Her equivalents to daily powers are going to be impressive, but *expensive*. Like she said - we'll know. Fortunately, she should be pretty effective even without them, especially with Warrior's Challenge to let her get in that first hit or two while the enemies are focused on us.

A bit of a shame that Linnea doesn't have anything *but* daily powers. getting her a way to contribute eve when she's not burning spell slots would be a good thing.

I get the feeling that opening that portcullis is going to crank up the overall difficulty level of the area. That's... not necessarily a bad thing, though. The more pertinent question is one of character. If we decide to take the shiny challenge every time, we *will* die eventually. That's kind of how roguelikes work - and this is effectively a roguelike. More pertinent than *that*, however, is keeping our QM happy... and yrsillar is kept happy by interesting things happening.

[X] Through the Portcullis

 

[Grosstoad]

Interestingly, Linnea has some trapfinding ability, at least ground-bound traps, so far.
Not sure if she has camo or something though.

 

[Sirrocco]

Interestingly, Linnea has some trapfinding ability, at least ground-bound traps, so far.
Not sure if she has camo or something though.

Click to shrink...

Looks like a "detect presence/absence of nearby matter" ability. Should help wiht secret doors, too, if that's a thing. My guess is that it only really covers pit traps and the like at the moment - the big, obvious stuff - but that it'll become more refined as she levels up, covering smaller and smaller traps (crossbow traps leave suspicious niches in the walls, and so forth).

I'm kind of liking Us/Linnea/Shadow/Murdon as a potential long-term four-man party. We get the classic tank/rogue synergy with Shadow (who also brings some deep desperation panicbuttons, and probably a few other bits of utility), the classic tank/healer synergy with Linnea (who also brings some CC and trapfinding), and Murdon gives us some blaster and adaptive damage types. The only trouble I'd see is Linnea's move speed - not so much of an issue just yet, but likely to become one as we push further into the tower and the distance to trek to get between the town and our foes of choice goes up. Still, I suspect it'll be solvable.

 

[tEN]

Yuuka could give Linnea piggyback rides.

 

[Nohbody]

[X] Through the Portcullis

Let's Regret.

 

[CptTagon]

[X] Down the Hall

 

[Arkeus]

I get the feeling that opening that portcullis is going to crank up the overall difficulty level of the area. That's... not necessarily a bad thing, though. The more pertinent question is one of character. If we decide to take the shiny challenge every time, we *will* die eventually. That's kind of how roguelikes work - and this is effectively a roguelike.

Click to shrink...

The thing, I think, is to look at what we are able to do currently against the zone before going somewhere more difficult.

And we just saw that not only skeletons can't hurt anymore, but the new mobs, the zombies and big hulking things, also can't hurt us. Not only that, but we can hurt them reliably without using any of our dailies, and our group is almost fully fresh.

This basically tell me we are over-levelled for the area.

 

[mrttao]

And we just saw that not only skeletons can't hurt anymore, but the new mobs, the zombies and big hulking things, also can't hurt us.

Click to shrink...

Neither statement is true. MC explicitly stated that she managed to eliminate the damage from the large zombie by blocking successful and that it was NOT an automatic and guaranteed thing and that they could hurt her, and that the little zombies couldn't hurt us explicitly because our ally used one of her daily powers to root them. If she did not root them then the small ones could hurt us (via the -1 to defense per 5 swarming enemies mechanic). And if we did not roll well on defense vs the big ones we would have gotten hit. The fight went well and there is no reason to not think we can't do 5 more like it today before we start running out of steam, but that doesn't mean they are cakewalk.

Also, we do not know how well those things scale, maybe the next level is a LOT tougher and we should spend a few days leveling up here first before going there.
Also, even if our party survives, it could mean some other people we know died. because it is not a single boss encounter but a respawning boss encounter

Of course if we do survive the boss we might get something better than shards which means more levels

 

[Arkeus]

Neither statement is true. MC explicitly stated that she managed to eliminate the damage from the large zombie by blocking successful and that it was NOT an automatic and guaranteed thing and that they could hurt her, and that the little zombies couldn't hurt us explicitly because our ally used one of her daily powers to root them.

Click to shrink...

No. Reread the scene. She rooted one of the big zombies.

As I said, neither the skeletons or the small zombies can do damage to us (it's flat out mentionned).

You are right that a big zombie could have done damage had we not rolled a success in defense.

If she did not root them then the small ones could hurt us (via the -1 to defense per 5 swarming enemies mechanic). And if we did not roll well on defense vs the big ones we would have gotten hit. The fight went well and there is no reason to not think we can't do 5 more like it today before we start running out of steam, but that doesn't mean they are cakewalk.

Click to shrink...

She did not root the small ones, only one of the big ones. You are obviously correct that if there were twenty of them they could bypass our armour though.

Also, we do not know how well those things scale, maybe the next level is a LOT tougher and we should spend a few days leveling up here first before going there.
Also, even if our party survives, it could mean some other people we know died. because it is not a single boss encounter but a respawning boss encounter

Of course if we do survive the boss we might get something better than shards which means more levels

Click to shrink...

We don't know it's respawnable. We also don't know how well those things scale, but when we are basically immortal against the zone's enemies we want harder enemies.

Also, yes, delicious chunks.

 

[mrttao]

We don't know it's respawnable.

Click to shrink...

we were told literally everything here respawns and self repairs over time. Even the masonary slowly rebuilds.

We don't know it's respawnable. We also don't know how well those things scale, but when we are basically immortal against the zone's enemies we want harder enemies.

Click to shrink...

But we are not facing just lesser zombies. This is the same argument we had before. We just fought big zombies which you explicitly admit can hurt us, we fought yesterday a necromancer you explicitly admit can hurt us.
Yes we are "immortal" vs the minor adds (so long as there are few of them and they don't swarm us). But we are not facing just the minor adds. In 3 battles total since the start of the quest, only the first battle ever was against nothing but minor adds who couldn't hurt us, in both other battles we were at risk of taking damage, and in fact could have been in quite a bit of trouble if we didn't have a party and daily powers.

This battle cost us:
1. 2 uses out of 7 of an ally's CC power
2. A chance of taking damage that we only avoided due to a good roll on defense.

We can not, in fact, just grind this same battle over and over indefinitely. Our entire party could, I think, repeat this battle 10 times per day total before we are tapped out.