Slide down my psionic rainbow!

No, I'm not playtesting the hot new RPG "Perverts and Penthouses," just continuing our series of bad puns and cheesy innuendo in Vaults of Ur.

This week's cast: Justin on DM, Dean playing Very Elder Karl, Jeremy going crazy playing Ripper, Adam finally getting in on the Ur action as Fjharrag the Folded Mind (a Magic-User), and of course myself pounding away with Thidrek the Sleestak.  And let me tell you, this concert rocked hard!

Actually, things started a bit slow.  We spent most of the first hour getting Adam up to speed on the setting, and figuring out just exactly what we wanted to do and how to do it.  The sandbox was really wide open this time.  In our last game, we'd escaped the harpies and vulture men, and found refuge with the rather neutral Beastmen who live under the sewers.  They gave us lots of info and assistance, especially when we decided to finally take the fight to the harpies.

The harpies and vulture men, by the way, had left the bramble maze, and were camped out around an old temple performing some blasphemous rites.  Our plan was to scout out the situation, find a safe house, and then try to lure the carnivorous apes into fighting with the vulture men to whittle down both of their numbers.  And for once, the plan more or less worked!

After setting up our safe house, Thidrek did a bit of scouting of the temple area.  There were around twenty camp fires, with up to ten vulture men at each fire.  Way outnumbered!  We camped out for the night so that Karl could prepare Speak with Animals to hopefully send the apes into battle.*  In the middle of the night, a patrol of vulture men and one larger humanoid passed our safe house, and Ripper woke up Fjharrag and Fjharrag put the whole group to sleep.  They woke up Thidrek, who happily slit the throats of the vulture men, wisely leaving Elder Karl asleep through the whole mess. 

The larger fella turned out to be an adventurer named Mongoose Liskin, who happily joined us since the rest of his crew had been slaughtered by vulture men.  Thidrek disposed of the bodies, trying to make it look like apes had savaged them.  Still covered in blood and gore, Thidrek then woke up Karl to take his watch.  In the morning, Karl cast his spell, and began yelling for apes in their language.  And they came!  A group of six came and soon got in a fight with vulture men.  When it all ended, only three apes left with bits of vulture men to gnaw on, and nearly two dozen of the little buzzard-buggers were dead.  Of course, that still left way too many for us. 

We waited until nightfall, then Karl used his stone fist to telekinetically throw bundles of kindling into their fires, burning more vulture men (it was at this point when the quote I'm using as the title of the post occurred, as Karl contemplated airlifting us to the temple with the hand).  Alerted to our presence, harpies and vulture men attacked (although luckily not all of them).  Ripper and Thidrek managed to resist the charm this time (demi-human saves!), and after making sure that our allies would not walk out into the harpies' trap, waited for the assault.  Two harpies came in through the roof, but due to lucky initiative rolling, both Thidrek and Ripper hit two times in a row, downing both of them.  Vulture men, of course, smashed in the door and were fighting Liskin.  Ripper and Karl ran to his aid, while Thidrek climbed to the roof to watch for more harpies and snipe the vulture men waiting to come through the door.  Fjharrag kinda hung back until the end (smart), but did manage to take down one vulture man with his dagger.

Well, no more harpies attacked, but Ripper suffered two or three nasty critical hits in a row, one of them giving him a permanent wound (Justin decided a vulture man claw was stuck inside his arm), halving his Dex until we can find Fort Low's master surgeon and get it fixed.  And of course, the damage caused Ripper to go werebear!  This time, it was pretty glorious.  While Thidrek and Fjharrag hung back to loot bodies, Ripper-bear just charged into the temple.  There were four harpies, one giant chicken-man (who somehow got labelled as a Dire Cock even though previously that was the name for the actual giant chickens, not the chicken-men).  Plus a metric shitload of vulture men.  Well, the V-Ms couldn't hurt Ripper because they don't have silver claws.  The harpies likewise, but they did tangle him with their whips (Elder Karl's Silence 15' Radius kept them from charming).  So Ripper had a field day taking down the bad guys.  The chicken-man did have a magic sword, but only managed to hit Ripper once before getting his head crushed in Ripper-bear's mouth.

Normal vulture men ran away as the chicken-man and harpies were destroyed.  And we looted the temple, finding over 4000 gp worth of gold and gems, plus some magic arrows (and the magic sword of the chicken-man).  And we made it back to Fort Low without any fatalities (although Ripper's not in the best of shape right now). 

One of the funnest sessions we've had so far.  Thanks, Justin!


*I love it when seldom used spells like this one come in very very handy!