This is a page for planning the action of Session #32. It collects things brought up in the forum thread, and has its own comments page.
New information relevant to planning:
Obscura and Emurak have requested the assistance of the Grey Company in regard to a situation they have been monitoring. Since they last adventured with the Company, these heroes have been interacting with the dragon Scather, whose lair they visited: a massive cavern beneath a volcano, the walls of which are thickly plated with the gold and treasure Scather has melted there with his acid breath. Their experience suggests Scather is a potent magic-user.
Obscura and Emurak took a detachment of the Gynarch's troops to Scather's lair to negotiate with Emurak for the body of Mareth, a paladin who has since been reincarnated as a buxom blonde. This was successfully done in return for Emurak's month-long pledge of service: Scather sent her to Belltower and ordered her to kill everyone she encountered beneath the earth there. Emurak decided not to fulfill this commission; the consequences of this denial are not yet known. Obscura, Emurak, and Mareth returned to camp outside the zone of sterile devastation surrounding Scather's volcano, where they befriended a group of Chaotic wereboars who sometimes fight with Scather's brood of hatchlings for occupation of the extensive network of lava tubes and claw-dug tunnels that surround the volcano.
Two weeks ago, this trio observed Scather fly hard, high, and fast out of the mouth of the volcano, followed by three of his eldest offspring, two of whom were ragged and bloodied. These dragons were seen to be headed northeast before disappearing into the clouds. Shortly after, the volcano began to erupt, belching the white smoke into the sky that has never since ceased.
The eruption sent many of Scather's brood rushing out of the tunnels. Many of these hatchlings, dragonettes, dragon-kin, and young dragons immediately flew back at the mouth of the volcano, and were repulsed by flaming-haired giants fighting with enormous greatswords and fire arrows. Since that time, the giants have broken several waves of more-organized attacks; dragons returning wounded from the tunnels below the wasteland suggest that the subterranean passages are also defended.
Obscura, Emurak, and Mareth have been taking notes on these events. They have also observed another watcher, a dragon roughly akin in size of the three who fled with Scather, who is entirely clad in iron armor. Like themselves, this Iron Dragon has kept to the perimeter of the forest and has avoided contact with the heroes. At one point, some of Scather's brood attacked this observer and were slain; the Iron Dragon flew west and returned a day later with the damage to its armor repaired.
Obscura has sent word to K-Dubbs to carry word of this situation to the party.
From the planning thread:
John Fighter proposes returning to the Tomb and hoping Anubis is not at home. If he is, and we have clerical presence, the Skeletal Finger is nearby and (I think) not entirely plumbed. If he is not, full steam ahead; screw the Caged One. If someone wants to try to get some more info out of him, go ahead, but mainly we should get soem of the pharoah's loot into circulation. Ookla says that it would be interesting to see whether the Killing Frost and James' foolhardy brave fighter will still be there, or whether perhaps they have been transformed into mummies or some such.
Suggested questions for Ontussa:
1. Who is the Little girl who imprisoned the Caged One?
2. Are there truly other guardians in the Tomb of similar or greater power to the Caged One?
3. How can we get Maldoor out of the subworld, besides the Caged One's proposal to displace Lilianth, who he claims is responsible for the mess?
We might also query Ontussa to gain more information about the Caged One and we might also ask if she can separate the lies from the truth of what he told us about the remaining sand trap rooms.
I don't think the following will make much difference to anyone, but I'm including for the sake of planning: the new & improved (and "sensible") Arnold is still out for at least another session I think, plus I can't make it this weekend. Once Arnold returns, he'll be doing his best to fill Maldoor's shoes with the traditional, highly destructive spells, but that's at least a session or two away.
I wanna out-smart a god! But I also want to fight a dragon!
<metagame>I am a nincompoop</metagame>
<metagame> Fronts are awesome and definitely part of my thinking these days, and maybe we can make an AW-style countdown clock to help you guys visualize how far we are from catastrophe. However, the other things that are more directly feeding into this are 1) good old-fashioned dynamic-world DM-fiat sandboxing 2) a 'successful' roll for the forces of Chaos -> Giants on our random world event chart, which I introduced to give some structure to #1 and 3) some side treks Mike, Karoum, and I have played out. John Fighter's manifestation of the Skyfather during carousing also relates to the latter.</metagame>
Since the party has a map of the Pharaoh's tomb, can that be posted here, along with any commentary of everywhere the party's been and what has yet to be explored? That would be helpful in deciding what to target next and ask Ontussa about.
Anyone who has a copy of the Dungeoneer compendium is given permission to scan and annotate that map - I can try to remember to do so tonight.
As far as deciding whether to go back to the tomb or check out good ol' smoky mountain, I agree with Adrian about trying to get some of the sweet stuff out of the tomb first. Getting answers out of Ontussa may influence that, as things may turn out to be an emergency out there. I suppose the party doesn't need to liquidate the gem right now, but I suppose we could if need be. The big question in my mind is verifying whether the Caged One is just jerking the party around (my suspicion) and thus having to check out in person every part of the tomb. (I still am not sure what parts of the tomb have been checked out the time Arnold bit it). I think that stone to mud scrolls might be a wise move if we're low on high-powered mages. More thoughts later.