When Artwork Attacks!

Last Saturday we had yet another G+ game of Justin's Vaults of Ur campaign.  I'm wondering if I'm ever going to get any more Flying Swordsmen games in or not, since we've moved the Ur gaming to almost every week now.  Oh well, it's fun, and when Justin sends us the XP awards for this session, I'm confident Thidrek will advance to Level 3, Sleestak Crossbowmaster.

This session, we had Josh (of the old Board Game Group, and last year's Gamma World GM) join us, playing Mork, his magic-user from my old sessions at the Board Game Group.  Jeremy still plays Ripper the Orc, Dean had Elder Karl Cleric of the Great Bear, and Brian played Caradoc the Mumbler Cleric of Gormah the Crone.

Elder Karl would like to take over the old Alchemist's Tower we explored on Thidrek's first foray into Ur (where he ran away from a Shoggoth-like slime beast among other heroic works), and turn it into a home base.  We're all on board with this, but decided to return to the Hive's tunnels to investigate the weird statue we'd noticed previously.  We got another hero's welcome at the Hive.  Also, Mork used his ESP spell to see if he could trust them, and Forager is apparently trying to make some political power play within the Hive, and is hoping we'll support him.  They also seem to have bigger trouble with the Spiked Circle bandits than suspected, so Thidrek's old plan to get the Hive to ally with us to wipe them out may happen in the near future, as well.*

Down in the caves, we examined the statue.  It was solid metal (unknown type), and of a humanoid holding a large mace.  It stood in an alcove carved like a giant hand.  When Elder Karl found a sword hilt in the debris near it, it came to life and attacked.  We had a hard time hitting it (AC was pretty high and our rolls were low), so Thidrek drank the potion of heroism he'd spent half of the last session's haul buying.  Ripper and Mork both pulled out ropes and started trying to entangle the statue.  Eventually we got it entangled, and Ripper delivered the killing blow with the statue's own mace.  During the battle, Caradoc and Mork had noticed a crack in the wall of the hand - a secret door.

Following it down, we found a series of partially worked caverns, with lots of carved pictures in the walls showing some sort of conflict in Ur between normal humans and beastmen on one side (with some sort of Holy Grail), and diseased ghouls on the other.  Found a healing pool, and another with black water (seemed harmless, and was DEEP).  Another secret door discovered led us to yet another crypt.  Thidrek fell in a pit trap, but the temporary hit points from the potion saved his life.  In the crypt, more living statues attacked.  These ones were stone, and not so hard to kill, so we managed to kill six of them. 

In the sarcophagus was a suit of mail (shiny, probably magical), a stone gauntlet of some sort (wouldn't fit on Thidrek's Sleestak hand), and a necklace with a key that matches a symbol on the secret door an on the iron statue.

It was a fun, chaotic session, and it ended with a large discussion about how to drag the iron statue back to Fort Low to sell it.  So next session, I imagine we'll take care of that and then make sure the Alchemist's Tower is safe to send in workers.

*Story emerging through play.  I like this.  Thidrek's original backstory was that he was a Sleestak (one of Ur's Beastmen) who had been born in the breeding pits.  That's it.  Now there are all kinds of plot points to potentially follow up on (assuming he doesn't get squished or eaten next session).