Session date: Monday, January 2, 2017
Game date: Saturday, May 3, 209
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 4, hp 23, xp 13146/17000
Caryatid, Magic-user 4, hp 19, xp 14664/20000
Simon Sackwell, Halfling 2, hp 6, xp 3421/4000
Adrien, Fighter 2, hp 6, xp 2126/4000
Retainers:
Manley "Meat" Smythe, Fighter 3, hp 17, xp 4897/8000
Brother Chase Pike, Cleric 2, hp 11, xp 1660/3000
Remus Thynerius, Thief 1, hp 2, xp 882/1250
Now we come to one of my personal favorite sessions of the entire campaign. My players finally took the bait on a set piece I had planned for months, after a nightmare I had one night. As a rule I tend to take things easy with this game and just use monsters from the B/X rulebooks, but I have created a few unique monsters, as I did for this scenario. It's always a bit of a gamble whether your monsters' attacks and statistics will work out the way you expected, but I think this went pretty well.
Having eliminated the shadows and auctioned off the demonic idol they guarded, the party set their sites on the few unexplored areas remaining on the second level of the dungeon. In the northwest quadrant of the level, not far from where the "hippie" berserkers live, they approached a sturdy wooden door, sealed on all four sides with wax-soaked rags, and emblazoned with a bold red X. A brass plate on the door read (in Ancient Idalian) "Hotel Lethia".
Gulleck had come prepared with a hand drill and set to work, laboriously drilling a inch-wide hole in the door at his eye level. This took quite a while and everyone kept a nervous watch for any wandering monsters, but they were undisturbed while Gulleck worked at the door. Eventually, he poked the last bit of wood out on the other side of the door and pressed an eye carefully to the hole, letting his vision adjust to the darkness beyond. In the dim, vague impression of his infravision, he could make out a long corridor lined with doors. He saw no sources of body heat, so the party pulled out the waxen rags that were sealing the door, and then heaved the door open. Clouds of dust billowed out, accompanied by an ancient, musty smell.
In the light of Simon's magical sword, the adventurers could see a once-elegant hall stretching into the dark. Closed doors lined both sides at twenty foot intervals. A dusty carpet with an unnerving geometric design covered the floor. Unsure of what might be under the carpet, the group decided to pull it up from the floor and roll it ahead of them. They proceeded down the hall, rolling the musty carpet as they went. The swordlight revealed more doors on the left and right. Simon stopped and sniffed the air. Due to a lucky roll on the "wheel of fortune" he was able to smell gold, and here he got a faint whiff of the metal.
Before he could identify the source of the smell, one of the doors on the left suddenly opened a crack and the group saw pallid white fingers creep around the edge of the door. The skin was flat and featureless, the color of the belly of a dead fish. The hand stretched out towards them on a long spindly forearm and then continued to stretch farther than any normal arm could reach, until it extended from the door some five feet, groping and questing. The party members were so shocked by the appearance of this ghostly arm that they could not muster any response before the hand closed around the neck of Brother Chase! He twitched and shuddered momentarily but rolled a 20 on his saving throw and casually swatted the hand away from his neck.
Gulleck came to his senses and drew forth his magical axe and brought it slicing down on the bizarre arm. He severed the arm with one hit, and it quickly snapped back into the darkness of the ajar door. The hand and the other side of the arm instantly liquefied, as if losing surface tension when cut, and white liquid splashed onto the stone floor. No sooner could the party catch their collective breath than two more arms emerged from the door. A bit farther up the corridor, another two arms emerged from a slightly ajar door on the other side of the hall.
The adventurers swung at the pallid arms, and the hands quested blindly for them, but no one could make contact. Caryatid in a confused panic drew forth her new "wand of random magic", pointed it into the first doorway, and let loose with its power. No fireball erupted forth this time, though: all she got was a strange sensation of emptiness and void in her mind. Simon was grabbed by one of the questing hands, but made his saving throw and struggled free of the grasping fingers. But then one of the four hands made contact with Adrian, wrapping around her throat. Her eyes suddenly flew back, fluttering and twitching, and her entire body began to shudder and spasm as she sunk to her knees. The pallid fishbelly arm began to pulse, as if drawing the very life from Adrian back into the dark of the room it originated from.
Gulleck leapt forward with his axe and again chopped right through the arm that grasped Adrian. The hand on her neck exploded into liquid, and the stump, as before, retracted into the darkness. Adrian slumped onto the floor, still twitching spasmodically. Meanwhile, two other hands grasped Remus and Meat. Both reacted as Adrian had, falling to their knees, eyes rolled up insensate, twitching and shuddering as the arms began to pump their lifeforce out of their bodies. Simon too was hit by another hand, and fell to the floor. Half the party was now incapacitated!
Gulleck decided he had had enough of these arms, and kicked the door open. Inside was a small hotel room, and standing near the door were two humanoids of the same white pallid flesh as the arms, naked and featureless. They gave the vaguest suggestion of a female form, but their bodily and facial features were rudimentary and vague, as if merely an imitation of a human being. Each one had one limp stump of an arm, and another long arm extended into the hallway. Caryatid attempted her wand of random magic again, and this time she found herself rapidly shrinking until she was merely 10" tall (her pet monkey shrank along with her). "Run!" she squeaked, and made her (rather slow) way out of the hotel hallway. "Great", muttered Gulleck, and concentrated on planting his axe in the chests of these bizarre things.
Meanwhile, Brother Chase used his mace to crush the arm attached to Meat, and the stump snapped back into the doorway it came from. But before anyone could attend to Remus, a dreadful choking gasp arose from his throat, and suddenly he (and all of his belongings) went *pop* like a water balloon filled with white liquid latex rubber. What was once Remus splashed on the stone floor and trickled away through the cracks in the stone. The arm, its owner apparently satiated, retreated into the room it had emerged from. Brother Chase, aghast with this sight, ran across to Simon to free him from the arm that pulsed at his throat.
In the room, Gulleck managed to kill one of the creatures (and it promptly exploded into rubbery goo), and then the other one, forced to retract its sole remaining arm after Brother Chase crushed it, slinked away backwards and hid itself under the bed against the far wall. Gulleck wanted nothing to do with this disturbing thing and quickly scanned the room for treasure. Against the nearest wall, he saw an adventurer's backpack nearly placed, alongside a set of neatly-folded clothes and shoes. This too was disturbing, but he grabbed the backpack, backed out into the hall, and closed the door of the hotel room.
Gulleck and Brother Chase dragged Meat, Simon, and Adrian out of the hotel hall and into the outer hallway as quick as they could. Brother Chase laid his hands upon Adrian with a prayer of healing, and she regained consciousness. They attempted to shove the wax rags back into the door as well as they could, and Caryatid cast Wizard Lock upon it to seal it magically.
The group holed up in a nearby empty room for about an hour until Meat and Simon regained consciousness. Then they high-tailed it back to the Rusty Lantern. The backpack was found to contain 400 gold coins, and a small velvet pouch containing a very valuable jacinth gem worth another 1000 gp! Perhaps a grim trade for the irrevocable loss of Remus, though...
Well, I have to say, nothing has taken my game closer to a TPK than ghouls or things related to ghouls like these creepy things! Getting paralyzed and taken out of combat is really dangerous, and has a snowball effect. You can just see the combat spiralling down the drain. I don't really mind; some things should be scary! That's why there was a big red X on the door! And speaking of...
Deep in the darkness of the dungeon, a sturdy wooden door was sealed with wax-drenched rags and magically locked. But, forgotten by some, an inch-wide hole gaped in the center of the door, and from this hole emerged, tentatively at first and then more aggressively, a pallid white finger and then an impossibly thin hand, wrist, arm...
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