[Let's Play] Grailquest 3: The Gateway of Doom

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SGamerz
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Post by SGamerz »

Casually you saunter up to the massive Gateway.

Whistling innocently, you begin to push the Gateway closed.

Smiling grimly, the Thing pulls you inside the Ghastly Kingdom of the Dead.

Now stop messing about and go to 59.

Image
INTO THE GHASTLY KINGDOM OF THE DEAD!
That's done it! That's torn it and no mistake! You are in a vast, gloomy underground chamber, measuring 40 feet square. The floor, walls and ceiling are composed of large black granite slabs. The only light is a single flickering torch set in a bracket on the north wall.

There is nothing in the room (except you, of course) and most upsetting of all, there is no door out!!

Is this it? Is this the end? Is this where the brave adventurer ends up, wasting slowly in some dank chamber of the Ghastly Kingdom of the Dead, lonely, miserable, cold, unhappy, facing no brighter prospect than the final solemn journey to the dreaded 14? No, of course it isn't. Pull yourself together. If you look in the southwestern corner you'll find a scrap of ancient parchment on which there is a map. Go to 65 and study it carefully. It may show you a way out of this mess. (And probably into an even worse one, but that's a different story.)

Image
Now there's something to get your teeth into! This looks as though it might turn into an interesting adventure after all. The scrap of parchment seems to be a map of the ghastly place you're in (see Appendix p.219). You'll notice 65 is marked as a 40' x 40' room, exactly as you've discovered it to be. But the map shows no less than four secret doors out. Two of those doors lead into rooms, two into corridors. And the various rooms all have section numbers so you'll know where to go.

(Don't do anything yet, Pip--it's dangerous to rush into things down here.)

At the bottom of the parchment somebody has scrawled a message in blood, or possibly tomato ketchup:

'I have opened the Gateway and hidden the Key! Find it if you can, Sucker!'

Yours in Chivalry,

The Black Knight of Avalon.

So that's where the trouble started. The dreaded Black Knight of Avalon, the most wicked noble in the Realm. Looks as though he was the one who opened the Gateway to the Ghastly Kingdom of the Dead and let loose that Brass Dragon you killed a while ago. He must have used this map to find his way around the Ghastly Kingdom, so maybe you can do the same until you discover where the Key is hidden.

Now turn the parchment over--there may be something on the back.

There is something on the back: a set of instructions for adventuring in the Ghastly Kingdom of the Dead. The handwriting is different to that of the Black Knight, so you should be able to trust what they say. What they say is this:
LEVEL 1

Study the map carefully. You start from the room marked 65. You may pick any of the four secret doors shown as your exit. If a door leads directly into a room, turn to the section number shown to discover what you find there.

If a door leads into a shaded area, you will find yourself in a gloomy 10' wide, 10' high corridor with worked stone walls and stone slabbed floor.

For every 60' (6 squares) you have to travel along a corridor to reach wherever you are going, you must roll two dice to find out if you have encountered any Wandering Monsters. Check the result on the Table headed 'Level 1 Wandering Monsters' in the Appendix.

Sometimes the roll will show you meet no Monsters. Sometimes it will show you do. Wandering Monsters are too stupid to be bribed, and too bad tempered ever to give you a Friendly Reaction, so when you meet any, you must fight to the death.

If you kill the Wandering Monsters, you may continue along the corridor (still checking every 60' in case you meet some more.)

If the Wandering Monsters kill you, then it's off to 14 to re-equip and roll up new LIFE POINTS. But--and this is important--if you are killed anywhere in the Ghastly Kingdom of the Dead, you do NOT have to start the whole adventure again. Instead you return to 65 and start from there. (Or rather here, since this is 65.)

One more thing. The torch in the wall bracket of this 40' x 40' chamber is almost burned out. If you have no torches, lamps or other light sources in your equipment, you must travel in the dark. You'll be able to find your way all right, but you will not fight nearly so well as usual. You will score damage normally, but you will need to roll an 8 or better to hit, even if you're using EJ.

That's the bad news about Wandering Monsters. The good news is that they usually carry a bit of gold around with them and if you manage to kill them, you can add their gold to your own store. The Table shows how much gold each class of Wandering Monster usually carries.

That's it for the corridors. Now the rooms.

What you'll find in the rooms is anybody's guess.

Good luck.


The Black Knight who was name-dropped for the past 2 books is finally featured here!

The obvious bad news here is that we have no light source (we actually bought lamp and torches in the previous book but nobody chose to bring them for this trip! The text doesn't make it too clear, but I think we're supposed to take the combat penalty while we're in the shaded "gloomy" corridors, not in the white rooms.

The good news is that we're actually not very likely to run into wandering monsters on Level 1 as long as we have the Luckstone: thanks to the 3-point modifier, we only run into them If we roll a 12 on the Appendix:

LEVEL 1 WANDERING MONSTERS:
Image
Regarding the "Surprise roll" mentioned in the Appendix, I'm assuming that's just a different way of saying "roll to see who gets first strike".

Here's the map for level 1. It's a bit blurred on one part, but that happens to be the room Pip's in right now (65), right at the centre. The map shows that 1 secret door leads to 125 (with no apparent exit from there, so we may be backtracking after that), 1 leads south to 85, another leads into a "gloomy corridor" before opening into 90, and the last leading into another dark corridor that goes into 75 and 70.

LEVEL ONE MAP:
Image
Where do we start our exploration?
Thaluikhain
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Post by Thaluikhain »

Huh, it's turned into early D&D, didn't see that coming. Nice to try something a bit different.

I vote for checking out the small room 125 first.

(Also is a Creeping Jello the same as a Gelatinous Cube? Should we watch out for Bearowls or Beastly Displacers as well?)
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Darth Rabbitt
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Post by Darth Rabbitt »

Doesn't one of the early FF books have Brain Slayers?

Anyhow, keep an eye out for Oxidation Creatures and go to 125.
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Omegonthesane
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Post by Omegonthesane »

North (125).
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

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Thaluikhain
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Post by Thaluikhain »

Darth Rabbitt wrote:Doesn't one of the early FF books have Brain Slayers?
Not just an early one, I think they brought them back in a later beastiary, maybe in Blacksand.
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Post by SGamerz »

Thaluikhain wrote:(Also is a Creeping Jello the same as a Gelatinous Cube? Should we watch out for Bearowls or Beastly Displacers as well?)
No idea, since Brennan hasn't bothered to give descriptions. I'm sure they hadn't appeared in any of the previous books before.
This is a 10' x 30' chamber, empty except for a pile of straw on which lie a skull and a few crumbling human bones. There is no door out except the one by which you entered.

Seems the bones must have belonged to a previous adventurer. Hope you don't end up the same way. If you search the straw, you will find 10 gold pieces, which is something. (Not much, but something.)

Return to 65.


Well, as the text puts it, "not much, but something" indeed.

With no other exits, we head back to 65.

Which way to go now?
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Post by Thaluikhain »

SGamerz wrote:No idea, since Brennan hasn't bothered to give descriptions.
Annoying. Ok, I'm imagining a Creeping Jello as a blob monster that got kicked out of the blob monster clubs for being obnoxious and weird.

Anyway, 85 looks like another dead end, so let's clear there next.

(Also, if we search? Why wouldn't we search?)
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Post by Omegonthesane »

Agreed.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

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Post by Darth Rabbitt »

Search 85.
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Post by SGamerz »

You have entered a 30' x 40' chamber, not so big as the one you just left, but big enough and with a higher ceiling.

You have also walked into a web, the strands of which are thick as cables and very sticky. Spinning a new strand down from that high ceiling is a spider the size of a Great Dane.

That's the bad news. The good news is that the Great Danish Spider hasn't reached you yet, so you have time to make a dice roll to find out if you're stuck fast in the web.

Score 1 to 4 and you're not stuck. Score 5 or 6 and you may as well go direct to 14.

Even if you're not stuck, there's still that Spider, which is a lot nearer now. It has 15 LIFE POINTS, strikes on 5 or better and does +2 damage. Because of the situation, no Surprise is involved here on either side. EJ, who is afraid of Spiders, will score one less than his normal damage on account of shivering.

Go to 14 if the Spider kills you.

If you win, go back to 65. (There may be a lot of gold in this chamber, but you cannot search safely on account of the webs.)
The best news is that our Luckstone ensures that no matter what we roll on one die, we can ensure that the final result is less than 5, so we're definitely not getting stuck on the web.

I went back to double-check and make sure that there're no further elaborate rules about "Surprise" factor that keeps coming up in the text, but there's none. I did find out something I missed at the beginning: rolling for 1st hit now uses 2 dice instead of 1, which is what I have been using since that tutorial battle all the way from Book 1 (the only point where the text actually specified the number of dice to use). I suspect Brennan forgot his own rules rather than actively changed it.

Nevertheless, I'll be going with 2 dice for determining 1st hit from now.

Spider rolls 7, Pip rolls 11. Pip goes first!

COMBAT LOG:
Pip rolls 8+3 = 11 and hits for 7+5-1 = 11 damage. Spider is at 4.
Spider is knocked out.
Despite EJ's fears, we KOed it in one round. Unfortunately, there's no loot here. At least we just gained our first Exp in this book.

Back to 65.....and we're down to the last 2 secret doors on the left side. Which one do we take, and which numbered section are we heading for?

QUEST JOURNAL:
Pip's LIFE POINTS: 38/38
Permanent Life Points: 2

SPEED: 13/24

EQUIPMENT CARRIED:
Confirmed:
1. Excalibur Jr. (hits on 4, damage +5)
2. Dragonskin Jacket (damage taken -4)
3. Luckstone (modifies all of Pip's dice rolls by 3 in his favour
4. Magic Wooden Duck (can neutralize any magic once per book)
5. Globule Wand (roll 6+ during combat to hit, allows 4 free strikes before foe gets free), 4 charges remaining.
6. Snuffbox of Healing (can restore 2D6 LP every new section)
7. Artificial Aardvark
8. Joke Book
9. Leather thong-thing
10. Blue powder
11. Rope (15m coil)
12.

MONEY: 90 GP

MAGIC:
PANIC 3/3
POW 3/3
PILL 3/3
PAD 3/3
PIP 3/3
PIN 3/3
PiR2 3/3
INVISIBILITY 1/1
Firefingers 21/21 (must spend 3 LP to re-cast the spell to use the last 10)
Fireballs 2/2
PLoP 3/3
PID 3/3
PALS 3/3
PIL 3/3
POPS 3/3

EXPERIENCE POINTS: 1
ENEMIES DEFEATED:
Giant Danish Spider
PUZZLES SOLVES:

No. of Deaths:
None yet
Thaluikhain
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Post by Thaluikhain »

Um...north secret door and then to 70, perhaps?
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Post by Omegonthesane »

Agreed.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

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Post by SGamerz »

We enter the dark corridors for the first time....but it only takes 2 squares to get to 70, so no wandering monster encounters yet!
Wow! This is the largest chamber you have ever seen for sure! A full 70' across and 90' long with a colonnade of granite pillars supporting a vaulted ceiling.

At the end of the colonnade is a black granite throne on which sits a satin cushion on which sits...

(No, not a Monster--you're getting paranoid.)

... a glittering emerald as large as a duck egg!

The chamber is otherwise empty and there is no exit other than into the corridor from which you came.

That emerald looks as though it might be worth a fortune. Are you going to snaffle it?

Snaffle the emerald by going to 128.

Return to the corridor from which you came.


Do we take the emerald? Remember that we have only 1 open slot in our inventory right now if we want to avoid further combat penalties.

Either way, since there's no other exits here, where do we want to go next?
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Post by Thaluikhain »

Up to 75, perhaps?

And take the emerald/set off trap or whatever.
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Post by SGamerz »

Oh, no - it's a cursed emerald!!

You can tell the minute you take it in your greedy little hand. Desperately you try to dash it on the floor, but the emerald will not be dashed. Once you've picked up a cursed gemstone, you're stuck with it for life. Which may not be all that long, actually, since it deducts 4 from damage you score in any encounter from now on.

Return to the corridor from which you entered 70.
Drats, this is a pretty harsh trap.....

Not only does this almost neuter EJ's damage bonus, but we've also lost one inventory slot permanently.

Heading to 75 now, but on the way Pip must make a random encounter roll...

Dice roll = 10-3 = 7! We narrowly miss encountering a monster.
Cough, cough, hack.

That's the sound of you coughing, Pip, the reason being that this room is full of smoke. The map shows it as an 80' x 30' chamber, but you'd never know it from what you'd see. The map also shows no other door than the one into the corridor, but there might be a secret door somewhere if you searched. The thing is, do you want to search and risk choking yourself on this smoke--it really is foul and probably dangerously bad for the lungs.

Risk searching for a secret door at 67.

Or return to the corridor and make your way to another section.


Do we want to risk searching?

If not, please vote where you wish to go next.

QUEST JOURNAL:
Pip's LIFE POINTS: 38/38
Permanent Life Points: 2

SPEED: 12/24

EQUIPMENT CARRIED:
Confirmed:
1. Excalibur Jr. (hits on 4, damage +5)
2. Dragonskin Jacket (damage taken -4)
3. Luckstone (modifies all of Pip's dice rolls by 3 in his favour
4. Magic Wooden Duck (can neutralize any magic once per book)
5. Globule Wand (roll 6+ during combat to hit, allows 4 free strikes before foe gets free), 4 charges remaining.
6. Snuffbox of Healing (can restore 2D6 LP every new section)
7. Artificial Aardvark
8. Joke Book
9. Leather thong-thing
10. Blue powder
11. Rope (15m coil)
12. Cursed Emerald (reduces all damages inflicted by Pip by -4)

MONEY: 90 GP

MAGIC:
PANIC 3/3
POW 3/3
PILL 3/3
PAD 3/3
PIP 3/3
PIN 3/3
PiR2 3/3
INVISIBILITY 1/1
Firefingers 21/21 (must spend 3 LP to re-cast the spell to use the last 10)
Fireballs 2/2
PLoP 3/3
PID 3/3
PALS 3/3
PIL 3/3
POPS 3/3

EXPERIENCE POINTS: 1
ENEMIES DEFEATED:
Giant Danish Spider
PUZZLES SOLVES:

No. of Deaths:
None yet
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Post by Omegonthesane »

Risk it. Worst that happens is we die and lose a curse.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

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Post by Thaluikhain »

Risk searching, yeah.
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Post by SlyJohnny »

Is this cursed object magic, and can thus be neutralised by the duck?

It's really going to suck to lose our luckstone.
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Post by SGamerz »

Omegonthesane wrote:Risk it. Worst that happens is we die and lose a curse.
That's not the only thing we lose, though, we also lose all the loot from the previous books.
No secret door yet, but you've found the source of the smoke. Somebody has been burning poisonous laburnum leaves in an open brazier in the middle of the room. Getting this far has cost you one tenth of your current LIFE POINTS and the smoke is getting thicker.

Continue searching at 139.

Or return to the corridor minus one tenth of your LIFE POINTS.
It doesn't say round up or down, but since 1/10 of our LP is 3.8, I'd say we lose 4. Pip is at 34/38 LP.

Do we want to risk searching further? The last time we took a risk it didn't pay off.
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Post by SlyJohnny »

Search.
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Post by Thaluikhain »

Keep searching, yeah.
Last edited by Thaluikhain on Mon Nov 20, 2017 3:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by SGamerz »

Pip continues searching, and....
You're a glutton for punishment, Pip. Go to 14.
....dies.
Welcome to the dreaded 14. This is what it's like to be dead. Fortunately you don't have to stay dead too long. What you have to do now is roll up your LIFE POINTS again, exactly as you did before. (You might even get a better total this time, which would be great.) Then, when you've done that, start out again. It won't take you long to get back to where you left since you can safely ignore any monsters or baddies you've already killed. Or you can go in different directions, if you want. This is your adventure, so you can make the most of even being dead.

If you were killed within the Ghastly Kingdom of the Dead, you have a special choice. Once you've rerolled your LIFE POINTS, you can go direct to 65: or you can explore any earlier section of the adventure that you have not already entered. (And who knows, you may find some useful items to help you in the Kingdom itself.)


Re-rolling Life Points...

1st Roll = 8.
2nd roll = 6.
3rd roll = 11!

We actually got a higher score this time! Pip's Life Points is now 11x4+2 = 46!

SPEED roll = 11. Slightly less without the Luckstone boosting it. We may carry only 11 items this time.

Gold roll = 4! Here our luck really runs out. We start with only 40 Gold.

We lose the Luckstone, the magic duck, the Snuffbox and the Globule Wand. It's not clear whether we should still have access to Merlin's inventory (like the Artificial Aardvark) though, since it's given to us at the beginning of this book like EJ and the Dragonskin Jacket, which I don't think can be lost. I think tradition is in our favour if we look at the past books. In book 2 we just re-roll for gold and can basically buy all the seem equipment again.

Also, as the text says, we can start in the Ghastly Kingdom straightaway since we died in there, but do we want to check out some other places for loot before we enter the gateway?

ITEMS FROM PREVIOUS BOOKS:
Luckstone (modifies all of Pip's dice rolls by 3 in his favour)
Double-headed Copper Coin (can be used to win any gambling games)
Tinglering
Magic Wooden Duck (can neutralize any magic once per book)
Globule Wand (roll 6+ during combat to hit, allows 4 free strikes before foe gets free), 4 charges remaining.
Backpack
Carpentry Hammer
Axe
Rope (15m coil)
Torches
Waterbag
Tent
Sack (six)
Blanket
Lamp
Container of oil
Climbing spikes
Fish-hooks
Harp
Horn
Bandages (15m roll)
Knife
Tinderbox
Stakes
Change of boots
Parchment
Quill and powdered ink
Food pack (10 days rations)
Cooking utensils
Healing Potion (4 doses)
War Hammer (+3 damage)
Daggers x4
Snuffbox of Healing (can restore 2D6 LP every new section)
Horseshoe
Large Key
Snake Venom Antidote
Wand from Darkness Monster

NEW ITEMS OFFERED BY MERLIN:
Axe
Artificial Aardvark
Backpack
Blanket
Bandages
Bookworm
Blue powder
Carpentry hammer
Cooking utensils* (counts as 4 off SPEED)
Container of oil
Climbing spikes
Change of clothes
Change of boots
Clickstick
Dog collar
Fish-hooks
Food rations* (counts as 4 off SPEED, but one LIFE POINT comes back each time you eat)
Gold braid
Harp
Healing potion (1 dose)
Hasp
Joke Book
Knife
Leather thong-thing
Lute
Parchment (12 sheets)
Powdered ink
Quill pen
Rope (15m coil)
Sack (per six)
Saw
Tent (counts as 5 off SPEED)
Tinderbox
Waterbag
Xylophone

DEFAULT HEALING KIT:
3 Bottles of Healing Potion (6 doses each)
Healing Salve (5 applications)

Confirmed:
1. Excalibur Jr. (hits on 4, damage +5)
2. Dragonskin Jacket (damage taken -4)
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

So again, 2 things to vote one:

1) Our new starting equipment
2) Do we want to restart from the beginning or from within the Ghastly Kingdom (65)?

QUEST JOURNAL:
Pip's LIFE POINTS: 46/46
Permanent Life Points: 2

SPEED: 2/22

EQUIPMENT CARRIED:
1. Excalibur Jr. (hits on 4, damage +5)
2. Dragonskin Jacket (damage taken -4)
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

MONEY: 40 GP

MAGIC:
PANIC 3/3
POW 3/3
PILL 3/3
PAD 3/3
PIP 3/3
PIN 3/3
PiR2 3/3
INVISIBILITY 1/1
Firefingers 21/21 (must spend 3 LP to re-cast the spell to use the last 10)
Fireballs 2/2
PLoP 3/3
PID 3/3
PALS 3/3
PIL 3/3
POPS 3/3

EXPERIENCE POINTS: 1
ENEMIES DEFEATED:
Giant Danish Spider
PUZZLES SOLVES:

No. of Deaths:
1. Suffocated in smoke-filled room
None yet
Last edited by SGamerz on Tue Nov 21, 2017 10:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Thaluikhain »

Take the lamp this time. Also, start from the beginning and have a look around.

Not sure what other equipment to take.
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Post by SlyJohnny »

Try the coin, there might be gambling to be had in the village.
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Post by SGamerz »

Thaluikhain wrote:Not sure what other equipment to take.
Some new healing kit would be a logical place to start, considering we no longer have the Snuffbox.

If there's no other vote on equipment other than the coin and the lamp by Saturday, I'll just fill the remaining slots with what Pip took last time (minus the stuff carried over from previous books) like the Aardvaark, blue powder, etc.
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