Demons and Djinni

In a recent session, the players in my Swords & Wizardry campaign managed to talk their way around two of the toughest encounters I had planned for the session. The first encounter with a Nymph and a Demon had a 50% chance as written of ending in a fight. The players had to guess which of the two was lying. I was not really happy with how I handled the scene. The scene comes from the DCC adventure Mysterious Tower and as written has a lot of advice on how to run it. But while playing I like to wing it and rarely check my notes. I think I tipped the players off to which was lying. The second encounter was with a djinni guarding a treasure. I expected this would end in a fight but the players were very cautious with the guardian and loath to attack someone who seemed so friendly. The solution they arrived at was not one I had planned out in advance.

Session 45: Demons and Djinni

Players: Lakima (Magic-user), Eathwund (Fighter), Alonso (Human Fighter), Domago (Human cleric NPC), Lantosh (Human Fighter NPC), Fenris (Human Thief NPC).

The players have just traversed the dungeon beneath the Ghost Tower. Trapped by a half-dozen rust monsters they leap through a magic door.

The door in the dungeons under the Ghost Tower deposits Lakima inside a stone-walled chamber with curved walls. Moments later, Eathwund, Alonso, Fenris, Lantosh, and Domago arrive. As they look through the door they see the rust monsters approaching the door on the other side. They quickly slam the door shut. The door is mounted in a stone wall that stands freely in the room a few feet out from the wall. Around the backside of the door is just stone.

The room they have entered is well-lit by magical lanterns. There are a latrine and several crates and empty bags. In the next two chambers, they find more crates, most of which are empty. And they find a circular staircase in the center of the rooms going upward. Lakima surmises aloud that they must be in the tower now.

On the next level, they find the former owner of the tower. The long-dead corpse of a mage lies slumped at a table covered in books. Lakima carefully packs up all of the books on the table and the loose sheets of paper. Nearby they find a kitchen and a bed-chamber. Lakima casts the cantrip Detect Magic and finds several pieces of furniture (bed, wardrobe) that are magical. He is unable to discern the nature of the enchantments. They also find some magic potions in a trunk and a magic staff.

They continue up the spiral staircase until further progress is blocked by a wall of force. An open doorway leads into a large circular stone chamber. In the chamber, they see two force cages. Imprisoned inside each cage is what appears to be elven women. Both women are alive and alert and immediately ask to be set free. They point at a control panel with three levers all in the up position. Each woman accuses the other of being a demon in disguise. After a lengthy conversation with each woman, they decide on which one to free and pull one lever. They choose wisely and the other woman immediately turns into a demon and curses at them. The woman they freed thanks them and tells them if they are here in this place at the same time the next day she will return with a reward. Then she vanishes.

Lakima speaks at length with the demon trying to get it to give him its true name. But the demon refuses. It suggests that if they free it, it will show them the tower’s treasure vault. The demon assures them they will never find the treasure otherwise.

Instead, the party uses the controls to lower the barrier blocking the stair. They continue upward and come to a chamber with many magical doors. Some of the doors stand before force cages, some are in force cages and some are against the walls. They experiment opening the doors, two of the doors lead to extra-dimensional prisons. They release an earth elemental which brushes past them and runs down the stairs. Then they release an undead Owlbear skeleton which leaps out of the door and attacks them. Fenris, who opened the door, is grabbed up and crushed in a bear hug. Eathwund manages to smash the skeleton’s arm freeing Fenris. Then he caves in the skeleton’s head and it collapses in a heap of bones. Deciding not to push their luck with any more doors, they head up the staircase and arrive at the highest level of the tower. The level is a larger, round chamber with four open windows to the outside. There is a table, an ever-burning brazier, an empty force cage, and the pages of a destroyed book all over the floor. Nearby they find empty wine bottles. Lakima picks up some of the pages and discovers the contents are the details of a Force Cage spell. Unfortunately incomplete. Fenris comments that it looks like someone threw a temper tantrum here - many years ago. Also on the floor, they see the charred residue in the shape of a summoning circle. Looking outside Eathwund notices that the force barrier around the tower is now gone (their doing) and that a crowd of people is standing outside the tower held back by the town watch.

The party return to the room of magical doors and notice that the distance traveled down the stairs suggests there is another hidden level. Lakima searches the staircase and does not find anything. Then everyone spreads out and searches the chamber of magical doors. Lakima uncovers another magical door hidden behind a secret door. Fenris agrees to open the door while Alonso and Eathwund provide cover. He opens the door into the chamber and they look through the doorway into another round chamber. Across the floor from the door is a pile of treasure. Gold coins are strewn from several sacks stuffed with coins. Several metal chests rest on the floor. As they start to move forward a blue-skinned man appears in a cloud of smoke. The man speaks in a booming voice, “Please do not enter, my friends! I would not wish to harm you.”

They all stop at the threshold of the doorway. Lakima asks if the man is a djinni. The man smiles and says, “Yes I am! Very clever of you. And I believe you are a wizard?” Lakima questions the djinni and learns it was bound into servitude to the wizard he called Nightwind. Nightwind bound him to 1,001 years of servitude guarding the treasure. The djinni is quite pleasant and eventually allows the party to enter the vault under his watchful gaze. He tells them he will not attack them if they do not touch the treasure. Lakima asks the djinni about the wording of the command the djinni was given. He learns that the djinni must stop anyone except Nightwind from taking the treasure. He cannot leave the vault even if some treasure is stolen. He can only leave if more treasure is stolen from the vault then remains in the vault. Lakima tells the djinni that the mage of the tower is long dead. The djinni is not surprised. He expected that was the explanation why the mage stopped visiting him more than 200 years ago. The djinni tells them some of the stories of the tower and how Nightwind became trapped in the tower by accident.

The party steps out of the vault room and back into the chamber of doors. They discuss how to get around the djinni for some time. No one is enthusiastic about attacking the djinni. Lakima announces he has an idea. He summons rats with a cantrip and tries to get them to enter the vault. But the rats just circle him and watch him. Then he tries the Pipes of the Sewers that he found recently. More rats arrive and these ones are able to follow his commands. He sends a pack of rats into the vault with instructions to each pick up a gold coin. Meanwhile, Eathwund opens the magical door to an extradimensional prison. But while at first, it seems to be working the djinni starts to spin and creates a whirlwind of incredible force. Gold coins fly about the chamber slicing through rats and flinging them against the walls. Once the djinni has killed all of the rats he stops spinning and reappears. The vault is now covered in splattered rats which the djinni starts tossing through the doorway. Eathwund hastily closes the door.

They decide to stay in the tower overnight to wait for the elven woman to return and to think of some way of getting around the djinni. In the morning Lakima uses comprehend languages and reads some of the wizard’s notes. He does not find the true names of the demon or the djinni but he does confirm the story. The wizard also writes in his journal of fighting despair and in anger destroying his spellbook. The elvish woman does magically appear. She explains she is a nymph able to dimension jump. The mage captured her hundreds of years ago to test if she could free herself from a force cage. She honors her agreement and gives the party six green cloaks. The cloaks are Cloaks of Resistance. Then she vanishes again.

Lakima asks the party members if they are willing to split the treasure half and half with Malyn the wizard. He knows Malyn will be able to animate Nightwind’s corpse and he believes that will allow them to remove the treasure without being attacked. Everyone votes and only Domago and Fenris are against the plan. Domago expresses how much he does not trust Malyn, and Fenris just does not want to split the treasure. The party now decides to leave the tower. Lakima uses Levitate to gently drop down the outside of the tower from the top floor windows. Once at ground level, he asks the watch guards for 100 feet of rope. He brings the rope back up to the top floor and everyone climbs down.

The Captain of the watch arrives and questions them about the tower. The force field is down for the first time in living memory. Lakima tells the captain that there are still dangerous creatures in the tower and everyone should be kept out. They enter the dungeons again via the secret staircase. Lakima intends to raise the force field again. But in the first chamber, they find that the acid trap has completely filled the space between the two force walls. If they lower the first wall the room will be flooded with acid. They decide to return home to rest.

The next day they go to visit Malyn. The mage is not entirely surprised to learn they entered the Ghost Tower. Everyone in town is talking about it. He agrees, after some negotiation on a split of the gold and the magic spellbook that the djinni mentioned was amongst the loot. The entire party returns to the tower with Malyn. Lakima levitates up to the top floor and lowers a rope. Then everyone climbs up - although Malyn also uses levitate. In the wizard’s study, Malyn casts Animate Dead and directs the corpse of Nightwind up to the room of doors. He then sends the animated corpse into the vault and it removes every single item. Once it is done the djinni smiles, laughs, and vanishes. The group lowers the treasure to the ground and then splits it up. A few carts are needed to get everything back to their Chapter House. The local townsfolk take a lot of interest in the proceedings. That afternoon Lakima uses a minor cantrip, Parlor Trick, to make it look like he is inscribing deadly runes on the exterior walls of the Chapter House.

The party takes a well-deserved rest for a few days to heal wounds and recover. Alonso buys an elvish phrasebook and starts to learn some phrases in elvish. Eathwund inspects the progress on the roof of his Tavern. He also hires a mason to shore up the foundations. Lakima spends time in the Library of Antiquity looking for any information he can find on a magical bridge the elves suggested they look for. He does find mention of a bridge over the River Corabel in a history book on the elvish realm of Haven. The bridge is about a two-day’s ride south of the village of Cowfold. He tells the party and everyone makes plans for a journey.