Game Report: Fear the Rust Monster!
This is a game report for my 1.5-monthly Saturday 4E campaign. (It ended up much longer than I hoped :-/)
The group is currently Lv 7, formed by two defenders (Bigo the Shifter Warden and Solomon the Half Elf Fighter), two strikers (Midori the Eladrin Rogue and Adum the Dragonborn Barbarian), Sincearu the Gnome Bard and Charlie the Human Wizard. They are currently part of an treasure seeking expedition organized by Xor, a crazed explorer, to the forgotten island of Ludus. Ludus is currently inhabited by a number of savage tribes, but it is covered in the ruins of some Meso-American like civilization, which is claimed by each of the tribes to be their “precursors”.
Part 1 - of Love and Rust Monsters
In the last session, the group defeated the Snakemen tribe, which threatened the territory of the group allies, the Dragonborn tribe. Now they were exploring the nearest of two great ruined cities in the island. After exploring the surface of the city for a while, they found a secret passageway to the underground in what they presumed to be the ruins of the palace.
The passageway was blocked by a giant cockroach - the size of a large dog - which was resting atop a large pile of residuum and rust. It didn’t seem to show any reaction to the group, so they decided to charge the creature. A rust monster in 4E has few HP, so they were able to kill it before it managed to flee into the passageway, but not before it managed to rust the weapons of Adum and Bigus a little bit - panic insued, specially when the group noticed the rusted remains of a magic door in the passageway, and guessed that there would be a whole nest of these things down below.
They ventured forth, and found a very large room (25 squares across), with plataforms in the borders and dry pools in the middle, full of ruined statues, roots breaking from the roof, mushroom grooves, and debris piles. But what caught their eye that about a quarter of the room was partially blocked by large piles of rubble, resembling a giant nest of cockroaches… and behind that rubble, the largest pile of residuum the magic users of the group had ever seen before.
The fight happened in two parts. At first the closest rust monsters charged at the surprise metal meal - then they retreated when they realized that the walking meals were biting hard back at them! Their nest had many entrances and exits, so when the group came charging after them, they were able to attack them from two different directions. Inside the nest there was a Dweomer eater (lv 11), a young rust monster swarm (lv 9), and three regular rust monsters (lv 6). Flanking allowed both defenders to shine, Solomon tackling the regular monsters, and Bigus blocking the path of the Dweomer eater. There was a bunch of interactive objects in the scenario (the vines could be climbed, the mushrooms could be kicked for spores, etc), but most that happened was the warden activating one of the spore clouds by mistake, and the Dweomer eater bull rushing the warden into a pit so that it could get its paws into the bard’s juicy songblade (the only time where the monster’s “dissolve item” ability actually worked - they kept missing with this attack).
In spite of losing a magic item, the group was pretty happy in looting the Rust Monster nest - it had a full level’s worth of residuum. Sincearu put it to good use by “object reading” the big statue in the center of the room, and learning more about the former inhabitants of the abandoned city. They were dark skinned humanoids who built the city all at once using bestial labor. The statue represented some sort of living leader, and the last sentient being to come close to the statue was a murderer in yellow robes.
Part 2 - This is why you should clean up your temple, young man!
There were 6 corridors leaving from the big room. Three of them on the south wall looked the same, and three of them on the east wall had each different drawings around them. The group picked a corridor with holy symbols and symbols of gods and goddesses. They followed the corridor for quite a while, and arrived at another badly ruined room. They determined that this room was the interior of the pyramid they saw aboveground, and could not find the entrance before. The room had also the same collapsed tunnels they found on the surface, which Adum the native Dragonborn had previously identified as belonging to the dreaded “land shark”. Scared of a creature who could bore such large holes in stone, they proceeded with care.
In the center of the room there was an altar with uncontrolled arcane energies coming out of it. Charlie and Adum approached the altar while the rest of the group stood back. As she tried to manipulate the energies of the altar, its precarious equilibrium was upset, and a strong gravitational wave started sucking everything into the center of the room. This also attracted the Bullete, which was sleeping in one of the collapsed tunnels, to investigate.
The encounter was a Bullete (lv 9 elite) with a “Gravitational Hole” (trap) modified to shoot some weak lightning at the nearest target (players and monsters alike). The bullete’s ability to move underground made for a fun fight, as it burrowed right past the defenders into the soft, unprotected Midori in the back, scaring the hell out of her. The group eventually got its act together as they gathered in the center of the room, the Wizard, Rogue and Bard standing on top of the altar as the tanks circled them. As luck would have it, Solomon and Adum started rolling a series of criticals which finally dispatched the hard skinned monster. One of those critical hits activated Zharib Falcon, Solomon’s artifact weapon, making him see again the mysterious woman in white, beckoning to him from the corridor at the other end of the room.
Part 3 - Thinking with the other head.
Having defeated the beast, Sincearu set up again to use the “object reading” ritual, this time on the broken altar. They see images of priestess making some sort of ritual over a man in yellow robes with his hands and feet tied down, and the image of the bullete hitting the altar after the temple had been abandoned, and breaking its delicate magical balance. After that, they decide to follow down the corridor where Solomon had his visage. This leads to a bare earth underground passageway, which continues for 6 hours, with a few exits to the middle of the jungle aboveground in the way.
After resting and continuing down the tunnel, they arrive at another pyramid temple, many times bigger than the previous one. This one has a smaller pyramid inside, upon which a ray of sunlight hits. The mysterious woman in white is on the top of the smaller platform, and calls Solomon to her. When Solomon brings her the artifact, she reveals that she is a spirit trapped inside it, which was created by “the gods of the earth”, the entity that was born out of the world itself, and was not bound either to the Primordials or the Outer gods. She explained to Solomon that the mission of Zharib Falcon is to free the material planes from the influences of those not born from it, be it of divine or demonic origin. It warned Solomon that demons were preparing to invade the kingdom where they came from, and urged him to become a Paladin of the Earth. Solomon accepted, and changed his class (a move I had discussed with the player in advance).
After the pyrotechnic display was over, they left the giant pyramid and found themselves far to the north in the jungle, very near the mountains they only saw at a distance back in the Dragonborn village. The group decided to head into the mountains…
Conclusion
It was a very satisfying game. I put a lot of preparation in the adventure, and it paid off, even though the group skipped most of the underground dungeon I had made them, and headed straight to the exit. Well, those other 5 corridors will still be there when they decide to return from the mountains… if they return! (insert evil laugh here)
Things that worked:
- The players had genuine reactions to the bullete, because of the foreshadowing from previous session, and the rust monsters, because of the natural hatred of players to these creatures.
- I really liked how the bard player liberally used the “object reading” ritual - it is a interactive way for the players and the GM to decide what kind of expository info they want, and how much of it they want. It also allowed me to add some of the information that the players had skipped by going straight to the temple. Expect more “readable objects” in the future.
- The Warden player was missing during this session, but the wizard player managed to control both characters just fine - it gave me more confidence to run games with a player missing without having to worry about rebalancing everything.
- The encounters did not take too long, I think I really got my hand right with encounter balance this time. The flanking rust monsters were nice
- Solomon having his class change satisfied both the player who wanted to try a new character, and the GM who wanted to keep continuity in the story.
- I tried ChattyDM’s suggestion of preparing a “Game Synopsis” and asking the players for suggestions. Bigus’ and Solomon’s players jumped right into the idea, and I was able to mix their suggestions into the adventure.
Things that did not work so well:
- The players did not use all the toys that I left in the Rust Monster encounter. Maybe they were a bit out of the way and not so obvious?
- The Bullete encounter was a bit too easy, because I put the bullete too far away from the trap, and the players managed to disable the trap before facing the monster. Have to keep in mind movement rates next time I use hidden monsters.
- The Solomon Scene would have worked better if I made all players be able to see the phantasm girl inside the big temple. Or if I had decided to pull that player apart from the table for that scene, although I hate doing that.
- On the same line, I should have left the phantasm girl to appear only after the players had cleared out the dungeon, if they missed the temple passage, instead of the first time they got to the temple.