Hidden Suns session 4: Drugs Are Bad, Mmmkaaay?

Date: 2018-08-07

Player Characters (340 points):
ESA1000 45460 (4-5 for organics), humanoid engineering robot
Gaichu Koschei, android infiltrator/assassin
James Titus Kane, human legendary starship Captain of the Stewards Navy (retired)
Alva von Kirchess, aasimar diva / Captain of the Knights of Golarion (retired), breach and clear specialist

After healing up and resting for a short bit (no more than half an hour) at the pyramid’s entrance, the party decided to head back in. This time they took the door near the staircase, since they have explored everything they could reach through the opposing corridor. The door was very large, made of stone and rather thick by what they could estimate. A cursory check revealed that it was stuck. Since Gaichu was at it, he decided to investigate the opening mechanism. He found access to it in the tight space between the door itself and the wall, where the door would move sideways into the wall as the opening motion. Inserting a snakecam, he discovered that some of the gears in there were jammed by chips of stone. Improvising some tools from his lockpicking set, he managed to free the gears. 4-5 stepped up and pushed the door into the wall.

Beyond was a large hall, some 15×20 yards across and almost 10 yards high. There were two other doors leading out, one on he east side and one to the south (the players entered through the north door). Those were much smaller than the door they just came though, of the “regular” door size so far encountered within the pyramid. There was a large stone table in the center, some remains of long-ago rotted away furniture and tapestries along the walls, and a bit of pebbly rubble here and there on the floor. The ceiling seemed rough and uneven, not straight-cut like the rest of the place. It seemed uninhabited.

Taking just a cursory look at the room, the party grouped around the eastern door. It was locked, so Gaichu got to picking it. Soon after he started, Alva (who was standing watch) noticed something shifting on the ceiling. Six winged humanoids with coloration/texture of stone were flying down, long spears at the ready. She fired a three-round burst at one of them, but missed.

What followed was a relatively one-sided battle where the gargoyles rolled extremely poorly and didn’t manage to inflict any serious injury on the characters. Them actually being undead didn’t help either, it just protracted the fight due to Unliving. They kept their distance from the PCs by hovering while poking them with spears, all the while being whittled down relatively reliably by guns. There was an interesting bit, however. Alva decided to use her Judo Parry for her defenses, and started throwing the gargoyles into each other. While it didn’t do any significant damage, it resulted in a couple of them being grounded and even knocked down.

After the scuffle, they found a pouch containing some ancient coins on one of the gargoyles, and a tome bound in fur on another. It was written in common, but contained completely nonsensical content. The sentences contained words which had nothing to do with each other, and the group determined that it was surely written in code. Just which code, they couldn’t determine.

Gaichu eventually finished picking the door, and the party continued down the corridor which presented itself after taking a turn to the right directly beyond the door. Some 35 yards down there was a T intersection with the party coming down from the base. The right path took another right turn immediately, eventually leading to a door. Gaichu checked it for traps, finding tiny holes on the walls on each side of it. He found a triggering mechanism on the door “handle” and disabled it. After picking the lock, it turned out (as expected) that these were the south doors in the gargoyle room.

The remaining way from the T-intersection led down a corridor which started to wind several times after a while, leading to a metal portcullis revealing a large chamber to the north. A couple of the characters tried raising it with no success, but then 4-5 stepped up and did it almost effortlessly. The chamber beyond was similar in size to the previous one but the ceiling was much lower. A heavy stone door was on the west side, and a regular one on the east. It seemed to contain nothing of interest – some empty stone shelves, an empty fireplace, and some scratches on one of the walls. The group didn’t think much of it and proceeded to the east door. Not willing to wait for the rest, 4-5 attempted opening it but it was stuck, so he just bashed it open as many of the doors so far.

A roughly 8×15 room opened beyond. Unlike most of the pyramid so far, there was a soft magical glow within, almost producing the effect of a light fog. There were some niches in the walls, and a large stone tub against the east wall. North of the tub a “normal” stone door seemed to lead further. 4-5 approached the tub. It was filled with water! Upon closer inspection, he determined it was fresh water, filling the tub via thin, long incisions on its bottom, coming from some kind of an old plumbing system. He sampled the water and… critically failed Perception. There must have been some silicon-transmitted computer virus in that water, because he started seeing many-colored stars everywhere. He was useless for a while, and in the meantime the others searched the room. In one of the alcoves Gaichu found a small skeleton with an appropriately sized what appeared to be a polearm, specifically a horse cutter. It was of Fine quality and branded with an intricate design. While examining the skeleton they also found a pouch with a couple precious stones in it. The group determined that it did not in fact belong to a child but to a full-grown halfling instead.

While 4-5 was still indisposed, Gaichu took a look at the eastern door. He found a trap – a set of holes on each side of the door, presumably firing some kind of projectile once the tripwire before the door was triggered. He disabled it, and we ended the session there.

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The session took place three weeks ago at the time of this writing, so that is one factor to me not writing out the undead gargoyle battle as detailed as the previous ones. The other is the fight being the first one against multiple opponents, and remembering which one of the monsters did what exactly each round would be impossible for me even directly thereafter. Since we play via voice, there are no detailed recordings of what took place.

I am also considering stopping doing such detailed writeups of sessions and producing just summaries, since I need about 2 hours per report. With life having kicked in after the first couple weeks of this blog, I’d rather spend that time on other things I’d like to write about (campaign/setting/rules ideas etc). But I don’t want to give it up just yet, since reading such detailed reports was one of the reasons I started this campaign after a long gaming hiatus, and the primary inspiration for starting this blog. So I’d like to give back.