Van Helsing is a tragedy of a movie. Sure, it is bad. We all expected that. Sadly, it is only bad in a way that is boring, as opposed to a way that is easy to mock. Bruce (Longfellow Yost), Chris (Tonk Sangaree), Chuck (Darg Sangaree) and Tim (Anpago Yost) all walk away with expressions of disconsolate sadness upon their faces. Upon their return, they find Paul and Billy (Andrinor) waiting for them with great satisfaction. Paul demonstrates that he has gotten something valuable from the movie as he mocks the others, "Didn't any of you people actually read the reviews you were quoting for that flick? Didn't any of you understand what 'Wretched' meant? Didn't you realize what 'Ghastly excuse for cinema' meant?" Nobody is able to offer a useful rejoinder.
The final encounter from the 04/25/2004 session is worth 1400 experience points to Darg, Tonk and Longfellow. In addition, each character gains 1000 experience points as a story award.
For their roles in saving the Arcane Academy from the nightling threat, Tonk Sangaree, Darg Sangaree and Longfellow Yost are all given honorary degrees from the Arcane Academy, a very nice class ring (worth 30 gold to the crass), access to the libraries, and 20% off on magical services. Tonk Sangaree is granted lifetime membership upon the Board of Regents. Longfellow finds a goldsmith willing to resize his ring to fit around his claw, with a little hinge so he can remove it. Longfellow also finds out that over the last month or so the sight of an eagle riding around on the back of a bear has become rather commonplace in the city.
Jaylin Vass is elected to be the new Chancellor, replacing former Chancellor Cavanaugh. She had been the Assistant Chancellor under Cavanaugh.
Sister Chiron contacts Tonk Sangaree to tell him that the high priestess was very lenient during her trial, and even spoke on her behalf. She is certain that Tonk had something to do with it. Tonk glows with pride. Darg glowers, because he was the one who actually talked to the high priestess. It turns out that she has been knocked down to the status of initiate and forbidden to use her powers. She spends her days bringing water and doing chores for the temple.
Tonk takes her on a tour of the Arcane Academy, and tries to show her a good time. Unfortunately, everything he knows about the Academy revolves around the things that he killed there. He also learns that sewage is backing up on campus because something killed all the carrion crawlers.
After her departure, Tonk enthuses to the others, "Man! Prison sex is the best! Especially when you're not the one in prison!"
Tonk pleads with the others to go and help him loot the necromancer Alton Loroc's tower. Nobody is very enthusiastic until he explains that the characters need to furnish their own place, and everyone knows that both necromancers and homosexuals are fanatics about interior decoration.
The characters start in the lab. There are thirty books on necromancy, alchemy and whatnot there, worth easily over 1000 gold. They include one large book titled Spells and Rituals, and a smaller book called Tales of the Undead that appears to be Loroc's actual spellbook. Both of these are very interesting to Anpago Yost and Andrinor.
Anpago, in his role as the group's most competent alchemist, examines the various beakers and alembics upon the workbench. Among the various ingredients, incomplete projects, and lunch remnants he learns:
The bedroom contains a variety of very nice furniture, including a 15 by 15 foot bed and an armoire. The armoire contains a fashion collection suitable for a well-dressed servant of evil, and a Cloak of Protection +2. Tonk proclaims, "I am a carpenter! I'm going to take the bed apart!" Darg chides him, "You've been waiting all game to get some use out of that skill, haven't you?"
The library turns out to be full of books on dwarven history. The characters box them all up. Tonk groans, "Ohh... We're all going to be sore in the morning."
Anpago finds a big bag of lead-based makeup in the kitchen. He mistakes it for sugar and gobbles it down. The other characters find Anpago flying drunkenly into walls. He moans, "I feel dizzy and sick, but not in the good way." The other characters find eight bottles of Dwarven wine in the kitchen. Tonk and Longfellow (who has changed himself into a monkey for the occasion) try one bottle and decide that they should take along the rest.
Darg finds out that Loroc had some of the best soap in his bathroom. He leaves it lie. The guestroom looks like it hasn't been used for hundreds of years. It contains only five rotting cots. The characters get the idea that Loroc didn't have many guests.
The characters end up renting some rooms from a middle class family in the Condor Trails neighborhood. Their new landlords own a three-story building with a courtyard in the center. There are already a couple of families renting space on the first flood. The characters are on the second floor, which also includes a large open common room with a balcony that overlooks the central courtyard. The characters stuff one of their rooms full of books and the (disassembled) bed taken from the necromancer's tower.
The rent on the place is 50 gold per month. Longfellow pays the first month's rent. Tonk pays the second month.
The characters estimate that a permanent dwelling suitable to their needs would cost 10,000 gold. Longfellow, Tonk, Darg and Anpago plunk down 500 gold each as a down payment. Construction on their new home commences down on the herders' tier.
The characters remember how they got kicked around by the stone golem in Harsef's Tomb. They send Anpago to the Arcane Academy library to learn about stone golems. Anpago does not disappoint. He comes back to tell them:
Anpago collects 600 gold from Tonk and Darg. He uses the money to inscribe the Haste spell into his spellbook. Longfellow contributes 1000 gold towards a scroll of Stone to Mud. Tonk contributes the remaining 100 gold for the scroll, then heads off to supervise the construction of the characters' home.
Darg spends several weeks hanging out in bars with Lydia, the (former) Black Rain thief. They drink together. They exercise together. They do... other things... together. He learns that she is taking odd jobs as a bounty hunter. She has found that she actually likes hunting people down, and describes it as "the most exciting job in the world." Darg decides to get the Arcane Academy to put up a bounty for ex-Chancellor Cavanaugh. He asks Tonk to speak to the Regents, who eventually (reluctantly) agree. Lydia starts off by interviewing Cavanaugh's wife and child. Tonk: "Doh!"
Longfellow spends some quality time up on the crags, developing a quality relationship with a nice lady crag eagle. He resolves to raise up some nice healthy chicks. He is aided in this by the fact that he can pay peasants to gather straw and slaughter goats for him. He has the nicest nest in the entire Highthrone province.
The characters make their way back down the mountain to Harsef's Tomb. Along the way Longfellow spots some toads, toads that he knows are very poisonous. He tells the others, "Those are very dangerous toads! If you touch them, you will die. The druids call them red-spotted California mountain toads." The characters decide to remember this place and come back later with butterfly nets and rubber gloves.
Tonk falls down a ravine and twists his ankle. He explains that he saw one of them "forest nymphs." The creature distracted him by flashing bits of its anatomy at him. The other characters have a lot of trouble swallowing this explanation.
The tomb is much as the characters remember it. The characters move in to the hexagonal chamber, casting a variety of defensive and offensive spells along the way. Longfellow brings out his magic elephant, then preps up both the elephant and Watches-Birds-at-Dawn with Greater Magic Fang spells. Anpago triggers the golem's approach, then casts his Haste spells a bit too early. The golem approaches slowly. Tonk steps up to attack it, missing several times. He calls out to the others, "I remember now! It's hard to hit! Hard to hit!" Darg shows him how it's done. Then the bear and the elephant attack. After the elephant finished slamming the thing around, the golem is missing an arm and a head but is still flailing around. Then Tonk smashes the stone golem into tiny bits just as Andrinor shows up.
Paul admits he was wrong: it took two rounds for the characters to kill the golem. He thought it would take only one.
Anpago flies down the golem's corridor (off to the right) and finds a stone door with a lever. He pulls the lever without consulting anyone. The door opens. Anpago apologizes to the others for this kind of thoughtless decision-making, then sucks up some more pixie sticks. Tonk sends a wolverine from his bag of funny animals to check out the room. The creature suffers no ill effects. The chamber turns out to be empty except for a pedestal that probably once housed an eight-foot golem.
There is another door at the end of the hall. It leads to a room filled with books carefully stored behind a glass wall. A strange statue of an old man in a crystalline robe reading a book stands in one corner. Anpago opens the glass with a Knock, then Tonk sends the wolverine in. Again, the wolverine suffers no ill effects. The books look like they're arcane books on illusions.
Everyone remembers that the last time the characters were in this place it was full of illusions. They look for illusions. Nobody finds anything.
Tonk sends the wolverine down the other hall, the one where Longfellow originally died. The wolverine doesn't even get five feet down the hall before the double doors open, the boulder rolls out and kills the wolverine instantly. The boulder hits the statue in the hexagonal room and vanishes. Tonk pulls a wolf out of the bag and sends it after the wolverine. It suffers the exact same fate. Tonk comments, "I feel monstrous." Then he pulls out another furry ball and throws it beyond the point where the wolverine and the wolf died. It becomes a boar and lives. Tonk calls the boar back. It dies when it hits the trigger spot. The characters mark the area with chalk and then head down the corridor one at a time. Anpago flutters on ahead, then turns off down a side corridor.
Tonk walks down the corridor. Then he hits the second trigger. Tonk hears a "whoosh!" as the trap tries to trigger, but nothing happens: it has run out of stones. Anpago yells back, "You okay, man?" Tonk responds, "Yeah, but I need to change my pants."
The characters inspect the trap mechanism room. It contains lots of complex mechanical devices set up to roll huge cylindrical boulders down the corridor. Everything looks very complicated. Tonk asks, "Bearing in mind that we already looted the rest of this place out, and that it killed Longfellow, is there any way we could make a profit off this stuff?" Nobody seems to think that the trap mechanism would make a good carnival ride.
The characters manage to find some stairs leading down and another stone door to the north.
Anpago burns his scroll of Identify to check out the big statue in the hexagonal room. He finds out that if an arcane spellcaster touches the statue and says the name "Harsef", he gains +1 caster level to the next arcane spell he casts. Plus if a rolling rock strikes the statue it disintegrates.
The characters haul most of the books out into the hexagonal room and make camp. They leave some books behind in case the room is protecting the books from age. They take the night to gain some new spells and so on.
The next morning, Anpago Knocks the north door open from 40 feet away. He is unharmed by the Fireball trap that triggers when the door opens. The door leads into a sarcophagal chamber decorated with magic-looking runes. The centerpiece is a sarcophagus for a three-foot-tall person. Andrinor verifies the runes just look magic, but have no real power. Anpago Knocks the sarcophagus, then Tonk sends in an animal to check it out. After all that trouble, the characters find nothing more than a dead gnome. Six bronze urns and small coffer border the chamber. Tonk pops one of the urns open. It contains gold. The characters quickly determine that each urn contains 200 gold. Anpago Knocks the coffer. It opens. It contains:
All are sized for a gnome. Tonk tries to put them all on. The characters pack everything up and take it back to the illusion room.
The badger goes down first. Tonk follows. Then Darg ventures down with Longfellow on his shoulder. The stairs lead to a 65-foot corridor. Paired alcoves are spaced every ten feet down the corridor. Floating in the air between each pair of alcoves is a glowing mystic symbol. Anpago looks at the first one and offers, "I recognize that one: it's Death!" The symbols are:
Looks like Harsef ran out of creativity on the last one. Darg supposes that the last one might be for the really stupid people. Tonk starts edging towards the first one, looking at the alcoves. Andrinor stops him, saying, "Remember the last symbol we ran into? The one in the book? Remember how far we had to be away from that one..." Tonk relents and agrees to send his latest expendable animal down into the first one. Andrinor remembers that symbols normally have a radius of effect of sixty feet. Everyone backs up. Someone sends the badger down. It dies.
The characters develop a plan: they will create a tunnel parallel to the corridor sixty-five feet long using magic. Specifically, using Soften Stone and Earth, Wood Shape (for supports), Reduce (to move the mud out) and Stone Shape. This process takes a few days. Tonk spends some of the time visiting town to purchase mining tools for 50 gold.
The end of the corridor is a 35-foot diameter chamber. Strange bluish glowing spikes sprout from the floor and walls. The characters think the room was an old mine for some kind of metal. Nobody knows what it is, until someone remembers the stone giants describing how they were mining their special metal in the area. The characters conclude that they are standing in a partially worked vein of sky-metal.
Much of the floor is covered by a pool of magical water. Anpago has his magic badger drink from it. The badger isn't able to tell Anpago what effects it feels. A short debate upon what to do ensues, ending when Darg agrees to drink the water in exchange for 100 gold. He feels magical power welling up in himself, and then it fades away. He isn't an arcane spellcaster. Anpago decides to drink. The Reduce spell he cast earlier on the mud is refreshed in his mind. Longfellow drinks and gets back a Soften Earth and Stone. Anpago fills up a wineskin and figures out that the stuff doesn't work bottled.
Andrinor and Anpago get sent off to the Arcane Academy to research skymetal, who Harsef was, and so on. Everyone else stays behind guarding the tomb from the illusion room. Andrinor and Anpago find out that all references to skymetal in the books have been thoroughly excised. They do learn that Harsef was a powerful gnome who died about 100 years ago, known as a private eccentric. The land his tomb is located on is held under the protection of the city.
The characters each gain 3010 experience points for defeating the golem. Longfellow, Anpago and Darg all gain levels. Longfellow picks a 7th level of Druid, Anpago goes for his 7th level of Wizard, and Darg can't decide if he wants another level of Fighter, or one of Cleric.