Game Report: The Asylum of Exel

(Note: T, the Wizard also did a recap of the adventure from his perspective. Check it out.)

The party woke up in the copse of trees with Mute and Mars and the kids. They spoke with Mute for a while to finagle some new armor, and the bard suggested a possible route onto the moving fortress, an entity called Murc the Drunk, who happened to live to the south, in the same direction that the vault was. They then decided that the best course of action was to get the kids to the vault they were talking about, and they were off.

They traveled for an uneventful day and a half and found themselves in the Glass Forest. They eventually came across a sign in a common dialect, that led to a fork in the road, one leading to an asylum, the other reading to Exel. Figuring that the asylum was what they were looking for, they headed towards it, to find the building surrounded by orcs.

Well, there were some orcs there at least, trying to break through the door. They were unsuccessful and just now ready to leave. The wizard dropped a ghost sound to distract them, then they charged into combat. They burned down the leader quickly, after being hit by a chaos hammer, and one of the orcs buried his greataxe into the cleric twice, but they eventually destroyed all of them. The cleric, in a fit of justice, took the greataxe that he got crit with as his new weapon.

They walked up the asylum and knocked on the door, causing it to open immediately. They stepped inside to find nothing of interest and a stairway leading down. Down the stairs was a poorly lit room and a pile of corpses. Something on the edge of the corpses started moving; it was a few writhing piles of flesh and brains. Swarms, specifically. The fight went slowly, the space constricting some of the area effects, but they survived.

Apparently some sort of massacre happened here, so they told Mars and the kids to stay back. They stepped into the next room, to find exactly two zombies and some creepy bone swarms. The cleric stepped forward is critically hit a zombie, which apparently makes them explode, and a few scorching bursts towards the back of the room cleared out the bone swarms. They find papers describing the place, an old asylum that the Kingdom of Ar abandoned, allowing the inmates to starve to death. It was also magically sealed to prevent anyone from leaving without using a special ritual...meaning that the party was now locked in. They figured they would handle that later.

Moving into the next hallway, they come across the cell block, a long narrow hallway with multiple doors on both sides. They take a pick into each cell until they see an animated skeleton, and the doors burst open, revealing five more. These were the ex-inmates, and eventually they all fell. They move on to investigate, noticing that the last door on the right had been blown open from the inside.

The next hallway had a small sidedoor and a large set of doors at the end. They peek into the side door to find an undead humanoid with only one arm, pale with long, scraggly hair, with holes in his torso revealing a creeping ooze inside. In his right hand, the creature was holding his missing arm, filed down to a point. He was scratching the arm against the wall, apparently making “notes.” A religion check from the cleric confirmed that this was a man infected by a soulcreep, an undead creature that took over his human host and drove him insane. Figuring reasoning was out of the question, the fighter charged, getting hit by a opportunity attack on his way over. There was a full set of swarms in here as well; flesh, brain, and marrow.

The fight was in full swing. The creeps centered in on the fighter, taking him to bloodied real quick. A few area effects bloodied many enemies, although the boss proved hard to hit. Everyone filed in, staying well clear on the swarms to avoid repurcussions. The cleric helped by turning undead and getting some swarms out of range. When the enemies acted again, the creeps piled on the penalties to the fighter, and in a mighty unholy explosion, the boss infected the fighter, knocking him unconscious and causing another creep to spawn. The party paled; they had trouble. A few more close bursts cut the creeps down, and a holy infusion from the cleric allowed the fighter to jump from unconscious to no longer bloodied. They only now had to concentrate on the boss.

A turn passed, with some good hits against the boss. The boss moved to act again, deciding to get the warlord out of his face. But, the fighter had marked the boss, so he got a free hit on the boss first. This lead to a five minute rules discussion, determining what the hit meant, when it happened, and whether or not it the boss’s hit actually connected. As it turned out, it didn’t. The fighter had a feat that allowed him to push an enemy it hits with his combat challenge freebie, which sent the boss against the wall, moving the warlord out of range. With the boss and one of his creeps pinned against the wall, the wizard moved to cast burning hands on the lot, only to fire it over their heads, and on the next action, the two centered their attacks on him, hitting him with the infection and barely missing a KO, avoiding another creep spawn. With luck and tactics visibly on the party’s side, they took the boss down, and only had to clean up the creeps, which they easily did.

They then stepped over the big double doors, putting their hand against it to reveal...a group of refugees. Their leader, Erim, was an older wizard with scars around his mouth, who apparently couldn’t speak. His assistant stepped forward and told the story. The refugees have been living here for a couple of years, able to avoid the Wanderlust by using the magically-enchanted cells of the asylum. Only a couple of weeks ago, the door to an untouched and sealed cell burst open, and the soulcreep-infected came out and cut out Erim’s tongue, preventing him from casting spells. It then went on a rampage, killing about half of the refugees before they managed to seal themselves in the lower parts of the asylum. They had been waiting here until then, not strong enough to fight the soulcreep and its brood without Erim.

Grateful to the PCs, they offered some of their resources, including a +2 amulet of protection, as well as told them that Murc the Drunk was apparently in the next town over, only a short trek from the asylum. They took in Mars and the kids, and were preparing to cast a divination on Yan’s Ring.

They were one or two encounters from level 4 at this point, and wanted to press on to get their ding. It was nearing midnight, however, and it would take at least two hours to get their reward, and I didn’t want them stomping over the next planned adventure area while tired, so they broke, sure they would have their level next session.

Lessons learned: Know what your PCs can do. It’s been a while since I’d been bowled over by the shenanigans of a player, and this time it was a mutual misunderstanding of the rules that caused it. I was willing to give it to him because he had planned for this kind of stunt, and that was in fact how it worked, but it shouldn’t have surprised me. Also, know that PCs love leveling and loot, and want both to appear a lot. I drew a line this time because I had “given” them a level only two weeks ago, and they all can’t come easy. I can also need to increase the flavor text; a little more atmosphere and energy can be added now that everyone’s familiar with the rules, plus it helps more convey some of the cooler ideas I’m coming up with. Also, pre-build assumptions about story structure can be a useful tool; it apparently tricked two players into thinking there was another bigger, scarier boss behind the double doors. Heh, suckers.