Gnomish Tarot

Dean, who has been a good friend and fellow gamer for many years now, has always produced some gorgeous art derived from our games, dating back to Justin's Vaults of Ur campaign (see the labels to this post). Through Ur, Chanbara play tests, various games run by Jeremy, and into West Marches, he's consistently drawn a lot of amazingly detailed pieces that illustrate our games. I've posted some of it here before. He also ran a pretty amazing campaign himself, that started as 4E and migrated to 5E along the way. The campaign was a bizarre mix of Oz, Spencer's Faerie Queene, Narnia, Pellucidar, Dr. Who... and tons of fun. 

He's back in Canada now, and producing a webtoon based on his campaign. You can check it out here: 

Tales from the Gnomish Tarot

Dean actually gifted me a lot of his original work that he produced while he lived here in Busan. Here's a couple of illos I have on my hard drive (the originals are in my office, I'm at home right now):

From my Megadungeon games

From Vaults of Ur

Wacky Races

This image was posted in the D&D in Busan Facebook group and spurred an interesting discussion.

Some comments praised the old-school Tolkienesque humans and human-like demi-humans (elves, dwarves. halflings, gnomes). Others praised the more modern variety of choices. Some pointed out that even in old school games, players sometimes run odd races like frog-men or sleestak (that last would be me, in Justin's old Vaults of Ur game).

But one person made a spot-on comment. In old school games, it was mostly humans because there were drawbacks to playing the demi-humans. Especially in OD&D and Classic, you didn't have much choice (well, disregarding the supplements and home-brew). Even in AD&D, only humans had the freedom to pick any class, and advance as far as you could go in all of those classes.

So yes, I played a Sleestak in Vaults of Ur. But it was based on the Halfling class in Labyrinth Lord, so limited to 8th level. Yes, there are plenty of demi-humans in low to mid level AD&D play, but if you want to play a high level campaign, better be human (or a thief).

In 5E, there's not much incentive to play a human, other than RP considerations. The variety of races get all kinds of cool abilities. The only real saving grace for humans is the variant that lets you pick a feat at character creation. Since feats in 5E can be pretty powerful, it definitely makes up for the lack of racial abilities.

Gaming as an Ex-Pat Part 3 (Final)

Here it is, the final post I made on Facebook, when asked by an acquaintance to describe how different it is trying to play/run games in Korea compared to back home. Yeah, I blathered on for a long time before actually answering her question. She dug it, though, and then wanted to take a look at Flying Swordsmen, so I consider that a win.

I arrived in Korea and in less than a month was a new father (my wife wanted to be close to her family when she gave birth, and she's a Busan native). So for that first year or so, I didn't get any gaming in. Soon, though, I met some guys named Josh, Alex, Pat and Steve who were interested in playing board games. We'd meet once a week or once every two weeks in Seomyeon to game. After a year or so, we started occasionally playing RPGs instead of board games. A few more people were interested, so we ended up with more players including a few Koreans, and running several short campaigns.

I ran Classic D&D. Josh ran 3E. Dave tried to get a d20 Conan game going, but it didn't gel. Alex tried the same with RIFTS. Eventually Pat got the 4E books, so we gave that a try. Josh picked up the 4E version of Gamma World, and we gave that a try.

During this time, I was working on my Dragon Fist retro-clone, which I titled Flying Swordsmen. Eventually I had it ready, so we played some Flying Swordsmen too. It's an odd feeling to run your own game at first. I felt this pressure to "get it right" since it was my own game. Presidents of the Apocalypse was just this little goofy game where everyone tried to be as silly as possible, but Flying Swordsmen tries to emulate Chinese wuxia fantasy martial arts using essentially D&D rules. I think I pulled it off well, but there were a few little things about it that bugged me (mostly because it was a retro-clone copying another game, so some design choices were out of my hands).

Then, as happens in ex-pat circles, people moved away. New people came in. I found myself next in a Pathfinder group run by a guy named Brian, along with one or two other people from the first group. Around the same time, Pat and Bill were putting together the Busan Bored Gamers group, so I feel like that group is a direct descendant of our Seomyeon group.

When the PF game finally finished, I ended up without a face-to-face group to play with, but through Google+ Hangouts (popular with gamers, especially the OSR), I ended up in a group run by Justin in Pohang. Thanks to the power of the internet, we've got members in other places besides Korea. A few Aussies played early on, and a Scottish guy has been a regular in our various G+ games ever since. Justin ran Labyrinth Lord (BX D&D clone) for a long time, then tried Stars Without Number (BX D&D rules for sci-fi gaming) for a while.

I ran a few Classic D&D games. Jeremy ran a wide variety of his home-brewed games he was trying out. Dean started a 4E game, which attracted a few different players, who aren't really into the OSR stuff. Now Dean's game is 5E, and still going strong. We've tried a few other things here and there over the years, too.

Because Flying Swordsmen got good reviews but I wasn't satisfied with it, I started working on my current project, Chanbara (fantasy feudal Japan set to basic D&D rules). I've been play-testing it now and then with this online group, and it seems to hold up pretty well. I'm hoping to release the game soon (real world concerns have delayed it, though).

As far as gaming supplies, I haven't really found much I need to buy anymore. I've got tons of dice and minis. Rulebooks can be downloaded in pdf form or ordered from Amazon (and sometimes Whatthebook). Since most of my gaming takes place online, there's not a lot of need for extra stuff. Also, I'm primarily a player instead of primarily a DM these days, which also reduces my need for stuff. All those minis I collected in Japan are locked in a cabinet where my baby can't get to them.

In a few years, though, I plan to be gaming with my boys, and putting all those gaming supplies I don't use now to good use!

Outcasts of Ur

Justin ran another session of Vaults of Ur last Saturday, the last game of the year for me.  Fitting that the play report of it then becomes my first post of 2014!

We had some new players joining us.  Gord has been in our Facebook group for a long time now, but finally got around to playing with us, as ...crap, maybe I should have posted this earlier, I forgot his character's name, but he was a gecko-like Beastman. 

Gino, who is new to Busan, also joined us, as a Tengu Thief named ...again I forget.  Sorry, guys.  Usually I write them down.  I will for sure next time.

And while Dean couldn't make it (and Elder Karl's character sheet was lost in his computer crash), Alexei was there playing Maya the Elf (with more or less the same retinue from my megadungeon game the week before), Jeremy had Noctis the Orc with new sidekick Sadaauk the Orc (more of an assassin type than gladiator type), and I was playing both Thidrek the Sleestak and Thomas the Visionary. 

I joined a bit late, with the party having been sent through one of the teleportation pools out of Fort Low into exile.  We were in a large chamber that was apparently part of the old orcish civilization's underground city.  We explored quite a bit, and had a battle with garbage.  Living garbage.  Or maybe it was a magical construct of some sort.  Thidrek got pretty beat up by it, but managed to give it the killing blow in the end. 

Every round in the combat, Justin had Thomas the Visionary up first on the roster, so he kept asking what Thomas was doing.  The answer every round was - staying the heck back.  Thomas has divination type spells, and lots of useful knowledge, but other than a shield spell, he has on combat prowess at all.  :D

We didn't find any loot, so we continued our explorations.  Thomas's Locate Object spell did cue us in that there was a large source of water across a chasm, so we made our way towards the bridge.  Across it, Gino's thief scouted ahead and heard a large force.  He was less than perfectly stealthy coming back, and the force sent some of their men our way.  After a brief parlay in orcish done by Noctis, we made peaceful contact with a merchant and his savage, tattooed guards and mutant white ape pack beasts. 

After discussing our options and trading the undead captain's helmet for information (with Thidrek using one of his ESP potions for insurance purposes), we decided we could trust this guy well enough, and plan to travel with him to the "City of the Veiled Ones" (apparently the freak masked orcs we fought just before getting framed for murder by the ogres). 

Should be interesting, but Justin will be back in the States most of January, so it will be a while before our next adventure.

We fail the quest

Last Saturday, we had yet another session of Justin's Vaults of Ur campaign.  Has this been going on for nearly two years now?  I'll have to check my records.

Anyway, last session we finished in the middle of Little Bear Carolly's trial by dream-quest in which we were all transformed into pole arm wielding bears.  This time, Jeremy couldn't make it so it was just Dean as Carolly, Alexei as Maya who was also accused, and me as Thomas the Visionary who was just along for moral support (which is interesting in that he lacks many morals with which to support them...).

We had to recover the MacGuffin...I mean the broken pieces of the Franklin Mint collectible plate with dogs playing poker.  We had one last session.  Three to go.  Then we could prove Elder Karl and Maya's innocence and expose the lies of the ogre partisans in Fort Low.

To get the remaining pieces, pixies who stole our weapons shrunk us down to 1' tall and sent us into a tree-stump dungeon.  We explored a bit, rescued the pixie they wanted us to rescue, found out that the mage who created the dogs-playing-poker plate was supposedly buried under the stump, and went back in to fight more spiders.

Just as we got into an inescapable situation, I (who had been drinking a fair amount that evening so I wasn't on top of my game) realized that when we took the pixie back out, we should have just had ourselves returned to normal size and then we could have dug up the mage's bones without having to battle spiders.  As Justin commented when I said this, it would have completely bypassed the dungeon.

As it was, we were trapped and poisoned by spiders and all of us died.

"Guilty!" "Guilty!"  "The vote must be unanimous, Jor-El."

Upon awakening, Karl and Maya were pronounced guilty, sentenced with exile.  Next session, all of our PCs, alternate PCs, and whatever NPC help we can scrounge up will be heading off through a portal into the wilderness on a continuing mission to find new life and new civilizations, kill them and take their stuff.  That's a Prime Directive that Thidrek can get behind.

Ur-sine Adventures

After many many weeks (nearly many moons!), we finally got to play an adventure in Justin's Vaults of Ur campaign.

We'd left off in September with the arrest and confinement of Venerable Carolus (now leveled up and called Little Bear Carolly) and Maya the Elf, for the wanton slaughter of the Homesteaders.  Long story short, he was framed, man!

Well, the powers that be in Fort Low, being Lawful to a fault, don't allow humans to interfere with JUSTICE!  They use random chance to decide court cases.  And Carolly and Maya were sentenced to Trial by Anthropomorphic Spirit Journey.  We all got to come along!

Of course Dean was playing Carolly and Alexei was playing Maya.  Jeremy had Noctis the Orc, and since I'd said Thomas the Visionary (my backup 70's style pervy magic-user) was in Fort Low and willing to help out with Karl, I ran him instead of Thidrek.

After imbibing some potions, we entered the Dream Quest forest as Soldier Bears.  We had to readjust stats, using a variant of Pendragon stats where Strength became Gentle/Savage, with a 3 being a bonus for Gentle but penalty for Savage and 18 vice versa, and all the other 5 ability scores split into dual system as well.  As with the Hill Cantons monster stats, we each had 2d6+2 hit points (Swords and Wizardry).  [Justin is trying it out for a possible future Arthurian game using this setup.]

We actually started out in a home under the name of Sanders.  We grabbed pole arms (much discussion of Gygax's fascination with them, some posting of pictures followed), with Carolly taking a glaive-guisarme, Thomas taking a Bohemian ear spoon, Maya taking a bardiche, and Noctis taking IIRC a pole axe. 

Wandering in the forests, we were attacked by swine-men, trapped and escaped an ogre's clutches, and then confronted by My Little Pony unicorns and told that in addition to the ogre's pendant we'd need four more tokens to beat the accusers (our former henchmen), escape and prove Karl's innocence.

Out of the frying pan, into the George Foreman grill.

Our Ur adventures continued last night.  We had left off last session with our characters retreating to the farmsteads set up in the ruins in order to rest and recharge before taking another stab at the cannibal orc warrens.  But our old friends the ogre mercenaries were running the show there.

The players: DM Justin, Dean playing Venerable Carolus, Jeremy playing Noctis, Alexei playing Maya, and myself as Thidrek.

This session, we began bargaining with the ogres.  They'd just pulled a "bring out the gimp/Deliverance" thing of some sort (off screen) on our NPCs Webberan and Chomondelay and set them free.  Thidrek offered a truce, and offered to assault some enemy of theirs, figuring that nearly every faction in Ur is our enemy as well, and it might just give us a chance to slip back to Fort Low, hire mercenaries, and come back to wipe them out.

The ogres (by the way, if you didn't read the link above, Ur ogres are lycanthropic nightmare machines, appearing like normal humans one minute, grotesque mutant mostrosities the next) were wary of such schenanigans, and planned to send us back to Fort Low to basically lead an insurrection for them.  Roll initiative time.

Karl's spell "repudiation of light" managed to soften up the opponents, but Haarkon the spider-centaur ogre leader escaped since we lost initiative.  Wez the other leader type also managed to escape, but we took out several of their underlings and then fled.  Escape was too easy. 

We were pursued, however Karl used Speak with Animals to call the carnivorous apes (not that they're too fond of us either), who responded and attacked the ogre pursuers, giving us time to flee. 

On the way back to Low, we were ambushed by a group of masked cannibal orcs - or so we thought.  During the battle, we realized that they were humans, which is why they had Fort Low armor (Romanesque) rather than cannibal orc armor (Mad Max-esque).  Luckily, Maya rolled a 1 on one roll, dropping her spear, and forcing her to use the nonlethal damaging Sky Hunter whip.  Not often that you hear someone thinking a natural 1 is lucky, is it?  Well, turns out that the leader of this band was Iago, brother of the Fort Low official who had gone missing.  We ended up taking him and one other prisoner thanks to the whip.

A large body of troops from Fort Low was approaching as we finished the battle.  We hid the bodies, and quickly looted them (a magic war hammer from Iago, two magic swords like Thidrek's, a scroll and a potion).  Karl went out to talk to the troops, Maya joined him.  Thidrek and Noctis skulked off into the ruins, Mattaki Shiptu, nerd orc magi NPC, following us.  Our former hirelings Webberan and Chomondelay were with the army, and were raving about how we'd slaughtered all of the humans at the farmstead (the ogres were actually doing that as we escaped - clever plan by Haarkon). 

Maya, Carolus, Iago and his companion were all taken into custody.  Next session, Dean will have some use for all the "dealing with folks" skills Carolus has taken like Bureaucracy and Diplomacy and Religion.  Noctis and Thidrek (and Mattaki) are hoping to slip past Low to the Hive, rally some allies, hopefully a Great Mind or two who can dispel magic, and expose the ogre treachery. 

Should be a fun session!  (Oh, and Noctis made 5th level last session, Karl made 7th level this session, and Thidrek made 6th level this session!)

Sleestak, your life force is running out!

Last Saturday, we again ventured forth in the ruins of Ur, City of the Ten Cataclysms.

Justin DMed a fun little game, which was fairly rough on us.  Jeremy played Noctis the Orc, Alexei was Maya the Elf, Dean was Venerable Carolus, and I was Thidrek the Sleestak.  We had (NPCs) a hired sellsword, Webberan, a tag-along nerdy Orc Magi Mattaki Shiptu, and fussy butlerish shield-bearer Ghomondelay with us as well.

Carolus, learning of ancient Urish technology that might be able to regrow his lost hand the way orcs are grown in vats, was interested in exploring the installation below the harpies' thorn maze.  On the way, when we got to the statue of the vulture-headed death goddess, Karl decided we should "consecrate" it (vandalize, in other words).  So we knocked it down, loaded it up on Thidrek's triceratopsian-cart, and trucked it back to Fort Low and set it up in the rich part of town.  We ignored the locals' talk of "curses."

We also heard of a local official's brother and his party who had gone missing in the ruins.  Altering our plans, we headed to a new homestead north-east of the thorn maze.  They seemed friendly enough, although we did wonder how they kept themselves safe in the middle of the ruins.  They gave us directions to the temple the brother had been exploring.

Under the temple were of course some tunnels, and in them, a new tribe of black masked orcs.  They were none too fond of us, and after a skirmish, we chased them and ended up in a trapped area with lots of rooms with levers to pull and various things to happen.  Thinking he had the puzzle figured out, Thidrek tried a lever that Webberan had pulled several times, with nothing but a few coins lodged in the ceiling dislodged.  One failed saving throw later and the ceiling was caving in on him.  Negative hit point time!

As the party came to Thidrek's aid, the orcs attacked en masse.  It was a pretty good scrum, but we managed to win in the end.  Sorely wounded, however, we retreated and went back to the homestead to rest up.

Turns out, as night fell and we were brought in to see the leader, that the community are actually Ur Ogres (they look human, then shapeshift into monstrous forms, sorta lycanthropish) led by Harrkonn Spiderlegs, an old nemesis of ours.

End of session cliff hanger!  I've updated by backup PC just in case Thidrek finally cashes in the last of his nine lives next session.

We rescue a real live Space Princess!

Last Thursday (8/15) being a national holiday in Korea (VJ Day/Korean Independence Day), Wednesday night we finished up our excursion into the vaults beneath the old Spiked Circle stockade that was the source of the Nightzone in our Vaults of Ur campaign.

We started off more or less where we had left off, playing just a bit in play-by-post in our facebook group.  Thidrek had gone down the pit and scouted around, and the rest of the party* followed him down. 

*5 orc magi men at arms left sans spells, their captain Thorn, Tark our NPC ghoul hunter, plus Venerable Carolus, Noctis the Orc, Thidrek, and Maya Culpa (replacing Alexei's other elf PC since she had her body back).

We followed the stream of darkness down a hallway, and were attacked by shadows.  At the same time, a shadow-creature in the stream itself attacked.  It was sort of a "shadow hydra" in that it had lots of shadowy pseudopods that could be destroyed the way hydra heads are, but did strength drain like shadows.  It was a nasty fight, and we lost all of the troops (Tark survived). 

During the battle, Thidrek managed to get to the control panel of a stargate type thing that was producing the darkness, and shut it down.  After we managed to finish off the monsters, we smashed the stargate thing to keep Helemor the Awakened from reactivating it (d'oh!  Found out later we might have been able to use it for planar hopping adventures!).

Exploring a bit more, we found another ghoul altar, with the remains of former companion Yargrob Elderbob.  Carolus pained it up with hippy flowers and teddy bears to reconsecrate it to the Great Bear (he's got a Grateful Dead bear thing for a deity, if you're new to Ur). 

The next room had five sarcophogi, one open (presumably Helemor came out of that one).  Three more had skeletons or other remains of people from before one or another of Ur's ten cataclysms.  The final one (actually the second one we checked after Helemor's, but the last one we opened) contained Lamara the Ancient, a "buxom and comely" survivor of ancient Ur!  We took her back to town and hopefully she will be able to provide us with all sorts of good intel about the wackiness of Ur's ruins!

Uptown Ghoul

A week ago, we played another session of Justin's Vaults of Ur campaign.

Thidrek and Noctis having penetrated the Nightzone only to find stiff resistance from the undead army, and losing most of our men at arms, in our last session, we gathered together a much larger force.

Thidrek hired a platoon of twenty Orc Magi heavy foot, each immune to ghoul paralysis and packing a magic missile spell, and their third level captain.

The Venerable Carolus returned to action!  Maya had suffered a mind-body swap curse in some FLAILSNAILS adventure, so Alexei pulled out another Fighter/Cleric/Magic-User Elf from his files, and now I've forgotten his name...Earilion or something Tolkien-ish like that.  Sorry!

Tark, the NPC Orc Magi ghoul hunter we met last session, stuck with us.

We penetrated to the heart of the Nightzone, and found the old fortress where some previous adventurers (Karl, Burg/Noctis, and a few others) had failed to recover a magical amulet.  Night was flowing up from the fortress through the ground.  After fending off a returning ghoul patrol, we went underground.

That's when we found ourselves in tight passages, with large numbers of ghouls and ghoul-centaurs (worm-like bodies, ghoul torsos, and praying mantis claws) all around.

Using a potion of invisibility and Alexei's elf's elven cloak, we found the leaders, Helemor the Awakened and a ghoul shaman.  In a large knock-down-drag-out fight, Thidrek was paralyzed and lost his sleestak horn, Noctis nearly died due to Helemor's ministrations, and Karl's spellcasting saved the day.

Helemor fled, the ghouls were destroyed, and we've still got about 1/3 of our troops. 

We're playing a bit of exploration PbP on Facebook, so things are continuing...

Slaughter in the Night Zone

Last Saturday night, Justin, Jeremy and myself cranked up the volume to 11 and ran the Vaults of Ur campaign again.  Been quite a while.

We started out doing a bit of down-time role playing by post, with Thidrek and Noctis following up on some stuff they found while they were away from Fort Low.  When we fought the eagle-shark, on the monument it used for a nest, there was a graven image of a magical flying cauldron and some humans flying around in it fighting orcs.  We'd seen a similar one in the room of the Hive's Great Minds.  We went there to see what they knew about it (not much), and they let us test it out. 

The cauldron didn't work for Thidrek, but an Orc Magi watching us (there is a lot more commerce between Fort Low and the Hive these days, we've cemented the alliance through our past deeds).  Tark was his name, and ghoul-hunting is his game.  We recruited him to come with us, since exploring the Night Zone was the plan of action for the night.  Tark, being skilled in magic, was able to pilot the cauldron.  The Great Minds of course took it back for analysis.

We hired a bunch of men-at-arms, ten light foot and ten archers.  Forager, our main ally in the Hive, also lent us five of his men.  Our mission was to see what's going on in the Night Zone, as I mentioned above.  The Night Zone is an area of perpetual darkness, where ghouls and an army of skeletons/zombies are battling.  This area was created when one of our adventures failed (the one where most of us used new 1st level characters, and explored an old Spiked Circle outpost full of octo-apes in order to find a lost amulet, and apparently we let something out, or the amulet allowed it to come out, and, well, Night Zone). 

It wasn't long after we entered the Night Zone that we heard the approach of many booted feet.  We arranged our force into an ambush position, and waited.  An undead army of skeletons and zombies approached.  They sensed us, and took a defensive posture.  After a few yelled attempts at parlay (we wondered if we could get them to help us fight ghouls, they wanted our bodies to swell their ranks, we reached an impasse), battle began. 

Our archers proved fairly useless, the skeletal archers less so.  The footmen on Thidrek's side were mown down fairly quickly by zombies, but luckily Thidrek had taken his potion of speed, and was doing Matrix-style bullet-time moves to keep things interesting.  On Noctis and Tark's side, the battle was a little more even, with Noctis staying back in "tactical command" mode and using his bow.

When the undead leader charged with the skeletons when the zombies were about finished off, Thidrek focused on him and took him down in short order thanks to that potion.  Unfortunately, while doing that the last of my archers was torn to pieces by skeletons.  The last of Noctis's light foot went down, leaving the three classed characters and two of Noctis's archers standing when we finished off the skeletons.

By this time, ghouls were approaching stealthily--not so stealthily that we didn't notice them, but enough so that we were unsure of their numbers.  We loaded up some of our dead (to keep them from being animated), and high tailed it back to the Hive.

Next time, hopefully we'll have both more players and more NPCs to help us.  A Cleric or two would be helpful for turning undead.  Maybe then we can penetrate to the heart of the Night Zone and find some way to shut it down.

The End of the Long Road Home

Wow, this adventure arc in our Vaults of Ur campaign went on for nine sessions, since the first week of last December when the party became stranded in the caves beneath the Hive.  It took the lives of my alternate PC Fantasmo Argento (a masked Luchadore), the NPC Ralex, FLAILSNAILS favorite the Venerable Carolus (Very Elder Karl), the last of Thidrek's chickens, and several red shirt hirelings of FLAILSNAILS adventurers from across the Veil.  The promising young mage Yargrob Elderbob also went missing during the affair, and the party was unceremoniously stripped of most of their gear along the way, resulting in the loss of much treasure and a few prized possessions.

Anyway, the session recap.  Justin of course is the DM.  Jeremy was playing Noctis the Orc (on the verge of Level 4 but without a FLAILSNAILS game to pick up that last necessary XP, but he did alright anyway).  Alexei was playing Maya Culpar the Elf, now 3rd level and in possession of many spells but no magic items.  I was of course playing Thidrek the Sleestak.  Dean and Rick couldn't join us due to a commitment to play one last session of Dean's 4E game with a player that's leaving the group, so Udumbara the Pacifist Cleric and the Scented Shade of Venerable Carolus were not available to join us.  Luckily, a pair of NPC half-orc thief chicks joined us.  Being part of Bolt's crew (they're not quite Spiked Circle, but they're not friends either), Thidrek was predisposed to dislike them, and only referred to them as Orcess and Orcette.  Noctis, being an orc, was predisposed to like them and hit on them all the time.

Bolt gave us maps and suggested three ways to infiltrate the Sky Hunter temple.  Overland was patrolled by Sky Hunters.  The ghoul warrens were of course the home of the ghoul undercity dwellers.  The river was also a way in, but the last group to go there never returned, so they assumed something nasty was there.  We ended up choosing the ghoul warrens.

We nearly made it through without discovery, and did manage to get through without engaging them in combat (paralysis is nasty, especially with no cleric to cure it).  We got through the secret door just in time, and Maya used a Hold Portal spell to make sure we weren't followed.

Inside, we were assaulted by the Sky Hunters' guards, which were pasty gollum-like things with arms and legs twisted and bending in the wrong directions.  Sneaky bastards liked dropping down from the ceilings on us.  We entered the main hall, and found a giant energy ball with swirling shadowy shapes inside, suspended in mid air by beams of light shot from four statues.  While tussling with more of the gangly guardians, a troop of Sky Hunter legionnaires and a sorcerer emerged and engaged us.  Due to an untimely natural 1 from Thidrek and natural 20 from the gangly thing, Thidrek ended up down with the baddies and paralyzed by the sorcerer's energy whip.  They demanded the party surrender.  Maya cast web, saving Thidrek's life.  Maya, Noctis and the orc chicks managed to kill the enemies on their side of the web, while the sorcerer and one guard retreated.

Freed, Thidrek slew the remaining gangly thing and Sky Hunter guard.  Then he and Noctis went to get the Orb we were sent to bring back while Maya and the NPCs took on the sorcerer and guard.  A rough battle took place with the guard, who managed to wound all three of the adventuring ladies, but they managed to bring him and the sorcerer down, and free an Orc Magi.  Thidrek and Noctis used a Land of the Lost style crystal matrix table to shut down the giant magic sphere and free the shadow elementals that were inside who apparently run the black water pool portal system.

We retreated through the river, since the ghouls were alerted to us and we didn't want to face more Sky Hunter patrols in our weakened state.  Down the shaft, there were strange shadowy things but they went past the party and up the shaft after Sky Hunters, we assume.  We found a skeleton (with phat lootz!) and got on our boat, distracting giant crabs with one of the Sky Hunter corpses and made our escape.

We rendezvous with Bolt, who takes us to the portal and we gave him the Orb, then took Karl and Ralex's bodies back to Fort Low - only to find out that the bastard stole Karl's psionic Stone Fist.

So things are complete, but there are now lots of things we could do again sandbox style.  Justin says we're entering Vaults of Ur 2.0.  Dean's not sure what to do about Venerable Carolus.  His character was changed by the ordeal.  We don't want to lose his character, but Dean's not sure he wants to keep playing him.  We'll see what happens.  He may end up retiring Karl.  Or we may go on a quest to get him (or make him) a new, better hand.

In the meantime, Thidrek plans to keep busy with some research, some plotting, and maybe the formation of a Brute Squad to help clean out the ruins.

Desperate Times

Late updating the Chronicles of Ur.  It's been over a week since the game. 

This session, Justin is of course the DM.  Jeremy played Noctis (formerly Burg) the Orc.  Dean played the Ghost of Very Elder Karl.  Rick (who DMs the Pathfinder Dragon's Delve game) played Udumbara the pacifist Cleric.  I was of course Thidrek the Sleestak.

We were camped out near the subterranean river with the corpses of Karl and Ralex the Fighter.  Our other companions had slipped back across the Veil to their home universes.  We found a skiff coming down the river, containing Udumbara, the only survivor of an expedition.  We made friends with her, and used her boat to head downstream.

We discovered some unusual statuary in the river, quite old.  There was a fork in the tunnels, and we were forced to quickly choose one or the other. Reminded me of Dragon's Lair.  We went left.

 After a little while, we heard a loud rumbling - assumed it to be a waterfall ahead - and found a place to dock.  While resting, the ghost of Karl did some scouting, but couldn't go too far from his corpse.  We got scouted while resting.  We explored up a staircase a bit, and found some ner-do-well types.  After a bit of negotiation, trying to get safe passage to the surface, we were introduced (re-introduced in Noctis's case) to their leader Bolt, the leather-bondage gear clad smuggler we'd ran into shortly after the bees killed Karl.  His short, cloaked magically adept friend was nowhere to be seen (Karl seemed to sense another presence in the room). 

Justin's image for us of Bolt

We made a deal with Bolt.  He wants us to invade the Sky Hunters' temple and steal a key to the black pool portal system like the one we had that got us into the current mess we're in.  He promised us safe passage back to Fort Low if we open up the portal system and give him the key.

Thidrek is planning to double cross Bolt.  Some of his men have Spiked Circle emblems, and they've been one of our biggest enemies in Ur.  But we'll see how things play out next session.





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In other news, I've got a few other posts I'd like to write up as well, but don't seem to have much time or motivation to write on the blog these days.  But I'm gonna try to get back to posting a bit more.

Map from Tonight's Game

Done in Twiddla:

Spiked Circle warrens where we may be bargaining away our souls to demon-worshiping bad guys in exchange for safe passage in order to resurrect Venerable Carolus.  Thidrek hangs out with Elder Karl's sandalwood scented ghost to the side.

Elder Karl is dead, and I don't feel so good myself

Saturday night, after a long break (games were happening every week, I was just busy with grad school stuff), Justin ran a session of Vaults of Ur.  Last time, Venerable Carolus (Elder Karl) had shuffled off his mortal coil thanks to a giant bee sting.  Ralex the Fighter (NPC, but played by Dean), Thidrek the Sleestak, and Noctis the Orc (Jeremy) were holed up in a pill-box type ruin.

Time doorways opened, and we were joined by our companion from across the Veil Maya Culpa the Elf (Alexei M.), plus two new-comers to Ur, Megasthenes the Hoplite (Dallas M) and Fang Tigerheart, Paladin of Bast (Steven Goodman), and Fang's torchbearer.

After a LONG discussion (over an hour of real time, although that also included time spent answering questions about the campaign and the two new characters and general table talk), we decided to try to use the underground passages from the pill-box to try and at least get past the killer bees.

We wandered around what was apparently a complex of the ancients, found a small amount of loot, and then stumbled across a room with three alcoves containing zombie owlbears with something like yellow mold growing on them.  We managed to kill one, and burning oil kept the others at bay.  But we had a dead end, and had to circle around another way.

We found a room that looked to have once been an important person's bedroom.  Past that, a corridor linked to the owlbear room, plus in another dead end there was a skeleton that was half embedded in the wall.  We couldn't find a secret door or anything, so had to turn back again.  Back in the VIP's room, there was a bright light, which turned out to be some sort of mobile time doorway that attacked.  Thidrek ended up on the wrong side of it, cut off from the party, who were trapped between the portal (which had grasping claws that drained Wis - Thidrek's a bit more careless than he used to be) and the owlbears.

A nasty melee ensued.  The owlbears eventually went down, but Ralex and the young torchbearer both perished.  Thidrek had tried to sneak back around, but ran into some of the ghouls.  Wounded, he knew he couldn't take on four of them himself, so after a round of melee he had to make a choice - try to run north to the exit, or back toward the portal.  Hoping to find some way around the portal or somewhere to hide, he chose the latter.  Luckily, for whatever reason the portal had retreated, and Thidrek was able to get around it and it moved toward the pursuing ghouls.

Beaten and battered, with more losses, the party retreated to a gate over the subterranean river to rest and lick their wounds.

The first day's worth of adventuring to save Karl was unsuccessful.  We've lost Ralex and we're all beat up without a cleric.  Good times!  I'm looking forward to the next session. 

Ur Gazette: Obituaries

Saturday, March 2nd, 2013 (Residimosday, Fourth Cycle, Year of the Beetle local time):

Friends, family and parishioners are mourning the loss of the Venerable Carolus: upstanding citizen of Fort Low, adventurer, dimension-hopper, and Follower of the Great Bear Spirit (birth name Father Karl), at the wrong end of a giant bee stinger during an encounter in the Zoo.  Carolus succumbed to poison.  His remains are now being transported back to Ur by his companions Ralex the Fighter, Thidrek the Sleestak, and their henchman Noctis (alias Burg the Orc).  Carolus leaves no family behind.  His accomplishments include the establishment of diplomatic relations between Fort Low and the Hive, and the clearing of the Alchemist's House which is the center of the new Crossroads settlement.  Donations in his memory can be made to the Shaman Gusorius on Bear Island, or to the seer who saw these events transpire in his crystal ball from the safety of Fort Low, Necronal the Sage.


In other news, it's been nearly a year since we started this campaign!  And it's been pretty awesome.  Thanks, Justin!  Anyway, here's the skinny on what happened last adventure.

So we (Ralex the NPC, Thidrek, Venerable Carolus and Burg renamed to Noctis) left Golden Pond, the lizardmen's village built atop giant lilypads, and headed south through the jungle that used to be the Zoo.  We had a rough map to follow, and soon struck a road headed mostly in the direction we wanted to go.

Soon after, we found a "pillbox" sort of structure on a small hill just off the road, on what we assumed was the border of the zoo and Sky Hunter territory.  After a brief investigation, we found that no one was home, but there was a large hatch in the floor leading down to the undercity, and nothing else.  Heading back to the road, we found the vegetation was becoming more sickly, and assumed we were heading to what the lizardmen had called the "diseased ones" and their "god." 

art by Dean

Heading onto side trails, we seemed to be making good time.  Then we heard the buzzing.  Before we had decided what to do, a swarm of five giant killer bees attacked.  In the first round, Venerable Carolus failed his saving throw.  The rest of the party made a heroic effort to kill the bees and save Carolus.  Unfortunately, the best we were able to manage was getting back to the pillbox and creating a barricade to block the entrance (after managing to fend off many more giant bees, luckily without serious injury or further losses).

During Thidrek's watch (Noctis' watch passed uneventfully), there were noises outside.  Infravision showed several very hot signatures low to the ground, with cold spots as if they were carrying loads.  A vague humanoid blur was also off in the brush.  Waking the others, we were attacked.  A large rock flew through our barricade, and Thidrek was beset by ghouls.  He was managing to fend them off by himself, but neither Noctis nor Ralex came to his aid - because they saw him flailing around at nothing.  A bit of assistance from Noctis brought Thidrek around as our assailants were pelting the walls and floors and Ralex (who was being played by Dean now) with oil.  Noctis went out to negotiate, and was told for his companions to come out.  Thidrek, not wanting to get captured again, dived into the tunnels while Ralex joined Noctis outside.

Asked about the "third one" in the party by the bondage-leather clad leader and his short, robed companion, they produced Carolus's corpse.  They were told to go to the road, wait one hour, then return to the pillbox.  Being good soldiers, they did as ordered.

Underground, Thidrek found an underground river (maybe the same one we explored before beneath the Hive), with a pier where some beastmen had loaded up a boat.  Hearing footsteps approach, he hid in an alcove and watched as a bondage-leather clad dude and a short robed companion led four pack-bats to the boat, board, and then set off into the river.  As the boat passed his hiding spot, the beastmen noticed Thidrek.  He shouted in Beastman language (Sleestak are a subspecies of Beastman) for them not to shoot, and they obliged.

Noctis and Ralex came back and went down into the tunnels looking for Thidrek, and we met up again and returned to the surface to watch over Carolus's remains for the rest of the night.

more art by Dean

This may not be the end for Elder Karl, though.  Justin informed us after the game that Dean can choose to roll up a new character with 1/3 of Carolus's accumulated XP, but if he does there's no chance of resurrection.  We've got four days of in-game time, however, to try to get back to Bear Island with the remains and see if, like Ripper, they can bring back Karl's spirit.  I'm hoping we make it.  The bear afterlife is likely just as interesting as the orc afterlife was.

The Cartography of Ur

Justin posted a map of the ruined city of Ur on G+ at Jez Gordon's request.  I'm reposting it here mostly so I can find it more easily in the future.

Also, this is the first week of my Ph.D. course.  I plan to write up our latest Ur adventure, chronicling the sad demise of the beloved Venerable Carolus, but I've got a shit ton of readings to do.  Hopefully I'll get around to it later tonight or tomorrow.  Anyway, here's Justin's map and key of our above-ground explorations in Ur.

1. The Golden Pyramid that dominates the skyline. No one knows what's inside it.

2. A broken obelisk. Between here and #1 is the territory of the Spiked Circle, a demon cult active in the ruins.

3. Fort Low, home to the PCs.

4. An overgrown park where giant apes once lived before the PCs got there. A faction of beastmen live in the tunnels beneath these old neighborhoods. They helped the party once. Between here and #6 is an underground facility that serves as the border between the beastmen and the undercity dwellers, the ghouls.

5. The party has never been here but have heard of an artifact buried in a mausoleum near here.

6. A giant thorn maze that has overgrown several urban blocks. There's an entrance to the underground facility mentioned in #4 at the maze's center. The maze was once home to the Vulture warriors and their harpy consorts, but they were mostly killed by the party.

7. A ruined temple where the Vulture warrior champion was defeated.

8. The Alchemist's Tower now a trading post with the Hive at #10.

9. A swamp where herbs grow.

10. The Hive - basically a giant termite mound where humans and giant insects live in symbiosis. The party has dabbled in Hive politics and installed an allied faction as the local power. There are entrances to the undercity beneath the hive.

11. A ruined Spiked Circle fort that sits over the entrance to an ancient tomb, which the party failed to explore completely. There is now a slowly spreading zone of eternal night above this area.

12. During the Hive power struggle some mercenaries told the power to meet at this ruined temple for a "showdown". The party was smart enough not to fall for the trick. It remains unexplored.

13. An Observatory. The party has heard of a group called the Sky Hunters and thinks they might live here. The lizardmen at #16 fear them.

14. An overgrown structure at the center of the "zoo" (it's more a park). The lizardmen at #16 say the Diseased Ones live here with their "god".

15. A small pillbox that sits atop an entrance to the undercity. The party is currently here licking their wounds and mourning their fallen.

16. A lizardman village. They are significantly richer for having "rescued" the party from Orlock the Anchorite, a fire-weilding undead sun priest that meditates in one of the towers at #17. North-west of here the party fought the eagle-shark.

17. The sky-tombs of the Sun Priests. A plaza of towers open to the sun. The party looted some until they encountered Orlock and his fire magic.

18. A small lake with an island park at its center. The party hasn't quite figured out how to use Ur's portal system yet. But they ended up here after using a portal in the tunnels beneath the Hive.

19. The party saw a giant rise out of the ruins and walk west from here. They chose to go in the other direction.

20. Massive walls surround Ur that have equally massive "gates" in them. These look like art deco skyscrapers as if designed by Viggo the Carpathian from Ghostbusters.

21. Off shore from Fort Low are several islands. One is sacred to the Bear God. The party, currently at #15, hopes to get their fallen companion here so he can be resurrected. They have four days to do it.

"I cast Cure Light Wounds on the Eagle-shark"

Saturday we played another session of the Vaults of Ur campaign.  Justin, having switched to a variant Stars Without Number system for the game, has been awarding XP on some "adventure" metric rather than monsters slain and treasures gained, and because of that, Thidrek earned his way up to 5th level after the previous session (and Venerable Carolus made 6th while Burg the Orc made 2nd).

This session, we started where we left off, with the same players/characters.  Dean played Venerable Carolus, Jeremy played Burg the Orc, Alexei played Maya Culpar the Elf, and I played Thidrek the Sleestak.  Ralex the NPC Fighter was also with us.  We had just been captured by lizard men when we ended the previous session.

After a bit of communication through gesture, we were stripped of most of our gear (weapons and armor were retained, but not shields or ammo) and taken to the lizard men's hunting camp and placed in a corral of rocks.  Some of the reptilians left with our stuff, we assumed to either their village or to use as an offering to some foul slimy reptile godling.  Karl ended up losing quite a bit of useful stuff, including 1000gp he'd picked up in adventures beyond the veil (Thidrek has a strong box back in Fort Low where he keeps his loot).  Karl was quite put out, and vowed revenge on the lizards.

We contemplated escape, but seemed to be too well guarded (and too low on hit points after losing the battle with the fire lich).  The next morning, a half-human hybrid showed up with another large group of lizard man warriors, and we spoke through him to the leaders.  When they learned that we were just trying to get to our home, they offered us safe passage through their lands IF (you know this is coming, surely) we took out a monster that preyed on their tribe.

We were tasked with slaying the eagle-shark, a beast Carolus had heard about and he knew its feathers would fetch a fair price back in Fort Low.  We were taken out into the jungle with an escort, given a shield each and our ammo, and then set loose.  After a brief debate about just high tailing it through the city back towards Low and taking our chances, we decided to at least check out the eagle-shark.  Carolus had ideas of befriending it and flying around tormenting the lizard men.  I was just curious about the beast. 

We came to an arch (I imagine it, from the way Justin described it, as like l'Arc de Triomphe or the Brandenburg Gate.  And now that I think about it, could the Golden Pyramid be the Louvre?  Is Ur based on a map of Paris?) that the beast used as a feeding ground.  After hunting for a small beast to use as bait, we made a meat-puppet and set it up in the plaza.  Waiting around for a while, the beast finally appeared.  And it was HUGE!  It had the head and tail of a shark, wings and body of an eagle, and the legs of a lion.  Karl uses Speak with Animals to try to talk to it, and it of course tried to eat him, then let out a blast of sound that caused Burg to run in fear.  The creature then scooped the Orc up in its claws and flew around trying to bite him.*  The rest of us were busy shooting at it.

Finally, Burg managed to score a hit on its wing, causing it to veer off course and slam into the arch, dropping the orc (and dropping him to negative hit points).  Karl ran out to heal Burg, and Ralex ran out to cover Karl.  Maya and I kept shooting.  The creature managed to destroy Ralex's shield, but shots from both of us archers brought the eagle-shark low.  Karl, still intent on trying to befriend the beast and use it as an instrument of revenge, proceeded (despite warnings not to from all of us) to cast Cure Light Wounds on it and ask it to join us.

He got bitten and brought down to low single digit hit points for his efforts.

So we renewed our attack, and killed it a second time.

We took some feathers and its claws.  Thidrek searched the top of the arch and found some dead men in strange armor with the eight-arrow mark of magic we've found before (like on Karl's stone fist and Caradoc's magical armor).  The lizard folk, while we were prisoner, had not liked that mark on Karl's fist, claiming it was the mark of Sky Hunters who fly around on magical sleds.  These, apparently, were Sky Hunters who fell prey to a higher level hunter.  We took their armor, and a bag of gems (well, as Justin pointed out, Thidrek was up there alone...  Hey, he's got a potion abuse problem and potions ain't cheap!) just as the lizard men came to claim our prize from us.

They took us back to their village for an Ewok style victory feast.  To be continued...



*Jeremy had rolled up a new Mutant character (complete with randomly rolled Gamma World style mutations, and Justin had asked him bluntly if it was OK to kill off Burg - Justin sure seemed to be trying!  Fun stuff.)

The Long Road Home (Part 1?)

Last Saturday, we recommenced to play in Justin's Vaults of Ur campaign, since he had returned from his month-long stay in the States.  We'd left off having escaped from some caverns the party was trapped in by a magical teleportation pool, and ended up on an island far north of the areas we'd previously explored.

During the month, we'd posted a few exchanges on Facebook.  Around the island, there were reptilian humanoid footprints to the south and a jungle area, to the west were narrow humanoid footprints and far off we could see ruins of rich looking manor houses, to the north was a great wall (think King Kong) with a gatehouse that Justin said "looked like the Ghostbusters skyscraper as designed by Vigo the Carpathian" and a 100' tall Voltron sort of golem walking past it one day.  Venerable Carolus used speak with animals to converse with birds and get some information of a "big ugly" with a flying body, dangerous tail, and ugly face like Karl's somewhere to the east.

Anyway, for the session, we had Dean playing Venerable Carolus Shaman of the Great Bear (level 5), Jeremy playing Borg the Orc Pit Fighter (now level 2!), Alexei returned after a long absence as Maya Culpar the Elf from Beyond the Veil [and with her as always Garth...I mean henchmen] (also now level 2!), and myself as Thidrek the Sleestak Hero (level 4).  Rick, a potential new player (although he's also suggested starting a 3E game), sat in and listened to the game.  Ralex the NPC Fighter was still with us.  We conveniently ignored the absence of Yargrob Elderbob the Mage, since Robert again couldn't join us.

After a brief debate about heading south to what we thought would be the Zoo and parts known (Thidrek had ventured into the Zoo at level 1, and barely escaped with his life but without the rest of his party) or west to the rich seeming ruins with unknown dangers between us and home, we choose the jungles/towers to the south.  The chance to bag some rare animals to take back to Fort Low, some towers to plunder, and what we hoped to be a quick road home made the decision for us.

We crossed from the island and headed into the Jungle (insert Guns and Roses references here).  We trekked through the jungle to a long plaza, running north-south, with seven squat towers with stairs going up the outside walls in it.  The plaza was of flagstones, and extremely hot - like a shopping mall parking lot in mid-summer.  After Thidrek did a bit of scouting, finding some primitive totems or tribal markers of some sort, he returned to notice that Maya's man-at-arms was missing.  Carolus immediately set off looking for the missing warrior, using Maya's Giant Rat/Guard Dog to track the scent. 

We found the henchman in the clutches of a hypnosnake, which we managed to slay without anyone else getting hypnotized.  It didn't have any treasure, but we butchered it up good, with Borg planning to make a snake-skin loincloth, Thidrek wanting to make a Serpentor-style helmet from its noggin, etc.

Back at the plaza, we skirted the edge, thinking it too hot to venture across, and found some more warning spear/totems from the lizard men.  At Borg's suggestion, Thidrek shouted out a warning that we were ultimate badasses not to be messed with in the Sleestak dialect of the Beastman language, hoping that Thidrek's reptilian nature was close enough for them to understand.  Eventually we braved the plaza, and Karl used his Stone Fist to loosen the mortar of the bricks blocking the doorway.  Inside were no traps, just the skeleton of a sun priest with a big gray metal mace in its hands, which we of course took.  The second tower yielded the same.

The third time's the charm, right?  As Karl shook open the mortar of the third tower we approached, a fireball sprang out of the farthest tower, zipped from tower to tower and hit our party.  It didn't do too much damage, but we lost Maya's torchbearers.  Two small fire elementals emerged as the tower was wreathed in flames, but we took them down fairly quickly. 

Thidrek went up to the tower by himself (he's nimble and all that) to poke around with his 10' pole.  Nothing bad happened, so Karl came to help.  And as we knocked open the tower, another fireball came...but hit the rest of the party trying to keep their distance.  We lost Maya's rat/dog, and both Borg and Maya were down to very low hit points.  Inside the tower, the skeleton sat up, looked at us, and asked us why we were disturbing its slumber as it burst into flames. 

Karl failed to Turn the undead.  Ralex came to help fight.  Maya and Borg headed for the hills.  Thidrek, after a brief consideration of battle with the fire-lich, also ran.  Karl started to run, but Ralex was engaging it.  He fired his stone-bow then yelled for Ralex to run as well.  And we all ran straight into the waiting arms of the lizard man tribe.  That's arms as in weapons, of course.

To be continued (we hope!)...

The Stak is Back!

Yes, Thidrek the Sleestak is back in action in Justin's Vaults of Ur campaign.  Last Saturday we had another session, and since Fantasmo the Luchador went to the square circle in the sky, Thidrek returned from his short hiatus.

And with Justin's combination of typical Ur wackiness, Stars Without Number as a base rule-set, and feats for Warriors from Spears of the Dawn, Thidrek now is back in classic naked sleestak form, having ditched the banded mail for his newly improved sleestak reflexes. 

This session, despite inviting numerous other players, the only players were myself, Dean - playing the Venerable Carolus of course, and Jeremy - still chugging away with Borg the Orc Pitfighter.  Ralex the NPC Fighter and Robert's mage Yargrob Elderbob (also being NPCed since Robert couldn't make it) and Yargrob's attack beetle were there as well.

Well, the party was on the shore of the underground river when we left off the last session, trying to remove goo from arms and armor.  Thidrek conveniently washed up on shore.  Since everyone but Thidrek was in bad shape, they decided to rest up.  During Thidrek's watch, he heard lots of noises - yelling, hooting, hollering - and when he went to investigate, he saw lots of strange movement to the west (toward the severed but still living head pillar and giant renegade beetle's lair).  He woke up Ralex and Burg, but after brief consultation decided not to press things. 

During Ralex's watch, undercity dwellers attacked.  One of them was flinging paralytic slime from a sling and Elderbob was hit.  We managed to kill the slinger and the others retreated.  We went on the offensive, with Elder Karl casting striking on Thidrek's crossbow, and the Sleestak using his stealth to try to scout out the underdwellers' tunnels while the rest of the party took care of the screaming heads on the pillar.  Also, the giant renegade beetle's body was there, hacked to pieces and its head atop the pillar.  Must have been what happened on Thidrek's watch.

Anyway, Thidrek got too far ahead of the party and a worm-centaur thing attacked.  One max damage crossbow bolt with striking and one nasty gash from the worm-thing's mantis-like arms sent both parties into a fighting withdrawal.  As the rest of the party caught up, we got to the top (we think) of the tunnels, but found too many branching corridors to feel safe with a blitzkrieg style attack.  We retreated all the way to behind the door we could only open with the magical key. 

After a bit of scouting to see if things were more or less safe, we rested again.  Exploring these tunnels after the rest, we encountered more of the pillar-slime things that killed Fantasmo.  Yargrob was able to communicate with them by name-dropping some of Ur's famous past residents that the party had learned of.  They seemed to be responding.  Little did we know that they were actually trying to herd us into a trap (which they did).

Anyway, we finally came to a room with a large pool of clear liquid.  Unsure, Thidrek decided to test it on his Level 3 chicken (a long story).  The pool was acidic and the chicken lost its head.  The last one, poor thing.  Thidrek and crew will not let its death go for naught.  Thidrek knows the 11 secret herbs and spices, after all...

Anyway, the pool was of course a monster and it attacked, along with the pillar things from all but one of the passages out of the chamber.  With Karl and Yargrob paralyzed, we managed to sever the pseudopods trying to drag them into the water and ran up the unguarded passage... to a dead end.

There was another room with a black water pool.  No other exits.  Looking around, we noticed the eight-pointed star symbol of our magical key on a floor tile.  Popping it in, the pool changed color, showing us a room in another location, as if seen from inside the floor.  After tossing in an iron spike, Borg took the plunge.  We could see him through the portal.  We all came through.  Our last minute plan to pull the key out with us using a length of chain didn't work, however.  We'll need to try to locate another key.

But for now, we're on a small island to the north of the Golden Pyramid (AKA much farther than we've ever been from Fort Low and with lots of hostile territory between us and home) but we're out of the damn tunnels.  To be continued...