EvilParty: The Chessboard of Doom

We continue experimenting with levers, trying to claim the final orb. We're forced to rest again, but after some switching things around we have the fourth orb and start placing things on platforms.

As with the previous area, each orb emits a beam of light and the hatch opens onto a pool of water.

Once again, we send Chuck ahead. He goes down and pops out on a new level, invisible and un-drown-able. He reappears a moment later.

Chuck: "There's like some sort of dumb fucking chessboard... whoever built this place was waaay into themselves and their stupid puzzle stuff. There are more orbs and another hatch and some more of those clockwork guys, but I think we can go down safely enough."

The floor is a misaligned chessboard, with mechanoids set at various points on the board and two walls of electricity running down the sides. Each square is ten feet by ten feet.

Chuck steps onto a black square, and the first row slides ten feet to the left. There are no mechanoids here, so he steps onto the next black square, which moves the second row to the left and brings one of the mechanoids into the field of lightning. It straightens and looks up, and now we're in combat.

Chuck moves first, and casts Scorching Ray at the mechanoid knight. (This is just a suit of armor, not the nasty life-draining thing we fought last time.) The fire damages it.

Jenny steps onto a white square, which shifts the row to the right and carries her closer to the mechknight. She barely keeps her balance, but still manages to attack. Unfortunately, it's like attacking an iron statue; very little damage.

The knight moves forward and attempts to smash her with an iron fist, but misses.

Hatch tries magic missile but doesn't do a lot of damage. Ramikin flies over a black square and the whole row shifts left. Apparently it doesn't require body weight to activate them; good to know. Bob -- Frost Giant Skeleton -- steps over and whangs the guy without setting foot on a square, and the knight goes down.

We move around a little more, discovering that anybody carried off the board disappears into a little cubby, and then we activate one of the centaur-types by moving its square into the wall of lightning. It moves around and tries to cast a spell on Chuck, who saves; but that's taken it within Bob the Skeleton's reach, and Bob bonks it with his axe. Chuck and Hatch both fire off scorching rays; Chuck fails to penetrate its magic resistance with his, but Hatch hits with both of his.

Jenny moves up onto a new square, which slides Bob, Ramikin, and Jenny closer to the mechanical centaur. It takes advantage of this to slap back at Bob, doing some damage; fortunately, Bob is a skeleton and soaks most of it. Jenny steps in with her chaos-tinged whip and tags it hard. Bob swings and loses his grip on his axe, which is now several squares away; he claws at the thing and takes it down.

We move forward carefully, until Bob retrieves his axe. Chuck tries to move diagonally and accidentally sets off The Wrong Square, activating one of the Big Uglies that we fought at the end fo last session.

Chuck attempts to use Web on the thing, but it fails. He manages to tumble to another square, shifting the row; the shift carries him into the lightning wall. He soaks most of it, and the Big Guy smashes him with his fists twice. The fists carry electric and sonic damage, but Chuck is very fortunate that he's a vampire; he's resistant to a lot of that.

Bob charges forward on Jenny's command, shifting the battlefield and activating another one of the knights, then tosses Jenny onto a square. She steps onto a white square, carrying her into range, and tears into Big Guy construct.

Hatch throws a scorching ray and does some damage; Durest drops a flame Strike on the two constructs, killing the big one and fucking up the knight. Chuck finishes off the knight.

He maneuvers the row he's on, until we can see the whole row; but doing so activates another of the knights; fortunately, Jenny is standing in range and just carves it up before it can even finish activating.

We continue manipulating the board, until Chuck stops us and drops a fireball on a cluster of not-yet-activated beasties up ahead of us.

Hatch decides this is a good idea, and drops his fireballs on the batch as well. They're harder to damage while they're inactive, but after a bit of shelling we've destroyed the two knights and injured the centaur and the big one.

We move things around a little more, getting the third pedestal closer to the lightning wall and activating one of the knights. It moves in, attacking Chuck but not doing too much damage. Jenny attacks it and rips it apart.

We move on, revealing the full width of more rows. We look at the position of the remaining constructs, and start dropping preemptive fireballs.

Then we move, and activate another knight on the far side. Chuck throws another Fireball off in that direction, and the knight steps in and punches Bob in the face. Jenny, irritated, rips this one apart as well.

We claim the last orb, and open the next gate. There's another bit of shuffling to get us off the board, and then Hatch uses Dimension Door (twice) to go get Ramekin. We have crossed the room, retrieved all four orbs, and are ready to head down to the next level. We also decide to take a break here; these puzzles are exhausting.