Session date: Monday, June 15, 2015
Game date: Saturday, April 13, 208
PCs:
Tod P. Quasit, Jr., Fighter 2, hp 14, xp 3129/4000
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 2, hp 10, xp 2664/4400
Tyrriel, Elf 1, hp 3, xp 2743/4000
Caryatid, Magic-user 2, hp 8, xp 3692/5000
Vito Aneti, Thief 2, hp 10, xp 1540/2400
Retainers:
Brother Jibber, Cleric 1, hp 5, xp 1167/1500
Gaspar, Fighter 1, hp 3, xp 36/2000
Wilhelm, Magic-user 1, hp 4, xp 1102/2500
Ylil, Thief 2, hp 5, xp 1320/2400
Sprat, Thief 1, hp 3, xp 254/1200
Today we had a full house of players, for the first time in quite a while! Emboldened by their numbers, the Infestation Managers set forth with a mission: To claim the Beating Heart in the Hero's Tomb. But first, they had to find the Hero's Tomb. Happily, they now had three people in the party who could read Ancient Idalian, and so they intended to spend some time researching the records room in the caretaker's quarters.
They traveled through the streets of buried Idalium without encountering anyone, and made their way through the temple of the dead without event. They descended into the catacombs and cautiously made their way to the caretaker's rooms. The living room was still draped in dried webs from the giant dessicated spider corpse that still lay in this room. As the party looked around the room, Gulleck noticed the painting on the wall of the harbor south of the city of Idalium at the shore of the Great Sea, and remembered a reference in the caretaker's letter to "the treasure beyond the sea". Carefully, he lifted the painting down from the wall, and discovered a crudely bricked up cavity in the wall. The mortar was old and crumbly and it took little time to chip it away with a crowbar, and pull the bricks from the wall. Inside the cavity, they found several sacks full of silver and gold coins, and a small velvet pouch containing four very nice gems. Very pleased with their success, the party tucked the coins and gems away and proceeded to the records room.
In the records room, Tyrriel, Wilhelm, and Vito, who were all able to read Ancient Idalian, set to work looking through the card catalog containing the index to the records of the deceased. The rest of the party guarded the closed door. After half an hour or so, Vito discovered a map of the catacomb system. It was water damaged and faded, but they were able to add a few areas to their own map. Tyrriel and Wilhelm, meanwhile, were looking for information on heroes of Idalium. Most references did not seem relevant, but eventually they found a reference to a General Sevintius, who led vast armies into battle to expand the mighty Empire of Idalium. He had been buried with honors in a tomb in the catacombs. They cross-referenced the location to their newly-found map, and quickly headed out to find it.
When they got to the location indicated by the map, they found that there was no tomb door there. Before they could address this puzzle, a half dozen bodies rolled from the crypt niches further down the corridor. The corpses pulled themselves to their feet and started to lurch towards the group. One of the zombies flailed at Tod, wounding him, but he retaliated by slicing its arm off! Then Brother Jibber raised his holy sun disc and spoke a fervent prayer that drove the zombies back, while the others pelted them with sling stones and crossbow bolts until they fell senseless to the ground.
Tyrriel now turned to examine the wall very carefully, and discovered that the entrance had been bricked up and plastered over so skillfully that there was no sign of there ever having been an opening there, unless you knew to look for it. Gulleck and Tod brought out their crowbars and began tearing away the plaster and then pulling bricks out into the hallway. This made a tremendous noise, triggered a wandering monster check for every turn that it took them to bring down the wall. First three giant beetles approached. They were not immediately hostile, so Gulleck kicked across the arm that Tod had chopped off of the zombie. The beetles eagerly began to tear at the decomposed flesh, and Tod and Gulleck returned to their work at the wall. Next, the noise attracted an enormous pack of several dozen ordinary rats). Gulleck and Tod gingerly flipped the rest of a zombie body over in their direction, and were pleased to see that the rats as well were content to feast on the ancient corpse. Several of the party lit torches to brandish at the rats should they approach.
Eventually, the bricks were cleared from the wall, and the party cautiously stepped into the secret tomb. A large stone sarcophagus occupied the center of the room. On the lid was painted the image of a man in repose, a beautiful sword laid atop his body. The walls were painted with scenes of General Sevintius leading an army of Idalians against a horde of barbarians, wielding a sword that glowed with an bright light. Gulleck walked around the sarcophagus, and discovered behind it a three-foot square area on the opposite wall that had obviously been plastered over. He stuck his crossbar through the plaster and found that it penetrated easily into an open space. Proceeding to tear away the plaster and lath, he soon opened up the entrance to a tight crawlspace. Crouching down to peer along the crawlspace he could see that it extended perhaps thirty feet before opening up into a small room that was lit by an eerie red glow. And as he looked, he became aware of a faint thumping coming up the crawlspace, a sound like the beating of a heart.
Gulleck and Tyrriel nervously crawled into the crawlspace, a rope attached to Gulleck in case he needed to be pulled back in a hurry. At the end of the tunnel, they found a small shrine. Strangely carved wooden icons stood on a small altar, upon which they discovered what looked like a large human heart. It glistened in the eerie red glow that pervaded the room, and as they watched it, they saw that it was visibly beating, and the throbbing thumps were loud in the small room.
Gulleck gingerly reached a hand out and prodded the heart. It was squishy like flesh. He carefully picked it up. Suddenly, from back along the crawlspace, there was the sudden scraping of stone upon stone, and then came Brother Jibber's unmistakable shriek of fear.
Back in the tomb, the lid of the sarcophagus was suddenly pushed aside from within, and a withered body sat up in its coffin. It was practically mummified, thin skin stretched tightly over bone. As it emerged from the sarcophagus, the atmosphere in the room suddenly became chill and dim, and the PCs all felt a panicky terror welling up inside of them, as if their very souls were being tugged away from their bodies.
The creature quickly threw its legs over the side of the sarcophagus and stood up. As it did so, a sword in its scabbard clattered onto the stone floor of the tomb. Gaspar backed up and sent an arrow into the thing's chest, but it didn't seem to bother it at all. It seemed to leer at him and then grabbed the arrow and snapped it off. Caryatid quickly spoke the words of the Magic Missile spell and a glowing golden arrow shot deep into the thing's chest. This time it staggered and seemed wounded.
Tod lunged for the sword on the ground, but the horrible creature turned towards with a grimace. It reached forward and seized Tod by the shoulder, digging its cold fingers into his collarbone. Tod's face turned pale as he felt his very essence being sapped by this unholy fiend. It released him with a snarl and he staggered back, slumping against the wall.
Meanwhile, Tyrriel and Gulleck were frantically trying to destroy the heart with axe and sword but couldn't manage to hit it. (I made them roll attacks vs AC 9, since even though it was a stationary target they were rattled and rushed.) Tyrriel swears to this day she saw it twitch away from her sword.
The thing in the tomb room turned towards Ylil, reaching a hand towards him. But Caryatid spoke the words of Magic Missile again, and a second arrow flew unerringly into the creature's chest. The unholy spark in its eyes faded and it crashed to the floor. Solo kill for the magic-user! The cold, oppressive atmosphere immediately lifted as quickly as it had fallen.
The party hurriedly regrouped in the tomb. The heart had stopped beating and Tyrriel put it in a sack tied to her belt. After carefully lifting Sevintius's body back into his sarcophagus and replacing the lid (apparently dead war heroes still command some respect even after they've turned into hideous undead monstrosities), the party set out, making haste to return to the Rusty Lantern.
They were almost out of the catacombs when a handful of skeletons emerged from the niches along the walls of the hall. As they approached the party, Tyrriel could feel the heart begin to throb in the pouch on her belt, and began to grow warm. The sound of its beating filled the hall. "Aaaah, you take it!" Tyrriel yelped, and thrust the bag into Gulleck's hands. Gulleck tried to silence the heart by smashing it against the wall, but it kept beating and the skeletons began to lunge forward. Suddenly, as if driven by an inner wisdom that came from somewhere unfamiliar, Gulleck drew forth the beating heart and held it aloft. The skeletons stopped and seemed to gaze at it in rapture. Then they all prostrated themselves in front of the party, bowed over in a kowtow posture.
"Go back where you came from!" Gulleck boomed, and the skeletons meekly retreated into their crypt niches. "And stay there for a thousand years," Gulleck added hopefully.
Excited by this new power over the undead, but wary of what horrible cost on their souls it might exact, the adventurers quickly continued on their way out. On the way, they encountered the horrible nine foot grublike monstrosity that had paralyzed Gulleck last week. It didn't attack immediately, so at first they were going to just keep walking away. But Tyrriel decided she wanted to acquire its paralyzing tentacles to sell or research or make some kind of use of, so a quick Sleep spell from her rendered the enormous beast motionless. A quick blow of a sword killed it, and Tyrriel sliced off the eight tentacles around its mouth and carefully packed them into some empty flasks she had been carrying around for this kind of thing.
They made it back to the Rusty Lantern safely, elated to have discovered the Beating Heart, but deeply uneasy about possessing it, and looking forward with some dread towards their inevitable confrontation with Gregor Snapespindle, who had charged them with finding the Heart but whom they knew could not be allowed to take possession of it.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Idalium Game 23: Comfortably Numb
Session date: Monday, June 1, 2015
Game date: Saturday, April 6, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 2, hp 10, xp 2593/4400
Caryatid, Magic-user 2, hp 8, xp 3621/5000
Retainers:
Gaspar, Fighter 1, hp 3, xp 0/2000
Ylil, Thief 2, hp 5, xp 1284/2400
Another thin crowd on game night, so the Dynamic Duo of Gulleck and Caryatid set out on their own again. Well, not entirely on their own: Gulleck recruited Shorty "The Mouse" again, hoping to make use of her magic undead-slaying sword. Shorty was willing to join the team again, but this time asked for an upfront minimum payment of 1,000 silver shekels (since the last time was a complete bust in the treasure department). Gulleck also hired a new retainer to replace the tragically lost Rutger: a fighter named Gaspar, of rather ordinary strength but unusually nimble.
Back to the catacombs they went, in the grudging service of the horrible necromancer Gregor Snapespindle, whose wrath they did not wish to incur. On the way they met a group of nervous gnomes. The gnomes were high-strung because, as they told the party once they settled down, they had barely escaped with their lives from an enormous slug-like monster. They said its lair was strewn with thousands of coins and also a very shiny battleaxe, but when they went in to collect the treasure, the horrible beast emerged from a hole and nearly devoured them. They gave Gulleck some vague directions to the lair, and the two groups went on their way.
Gulleck and Caryatid wanted to doublecheck the records room they found in the caretaker's quarters. They were hoping to find some sort of reference to "The Hero's Tomb" or the map that the enciphered scroll had referred to. They made their way to the caretaker's quarters, and Gulleck carefully opened the door and looked in. In their absence, the room had been filled with gigantic sticky webs, and a giant glistening black spider across the room turned towards the door and began striding across the floor towards them.
Gulleck attempted to quickly close the door, but the spider was too quick for him. It rammed its head and part of its body into the doorway. Alas, I rolled a natural 20 for the spider's attack roll, and the venomous fangs of the black widow pierced deeply into Gulleck's arm. Gulleck's player chose to roll the big green d30 for his saving throw, but even with those odds (and his exceptional dwarven saving throws) he failed his save vs. poison! He was a dead man walking, but not down yet.
Gulleck plunged Shorty's magical sword into the spider's head before it could bite again, but the damage was already done. Gulleck limped with the rest of the party back out of the catacombs. No one was sure what they could do to save him, but the question was rendered moot, for just as they made their way back up the stairs leading out of the catacombs, Gulleck dropped to his knees, foaming at the mouth, and then collapsed against a wall, blue in the face and breathing no more.
Caryatid and Ylil picked up Gulleck's body between the two of them and the group moved as quickly as they could through the buried streets of Ancient Idalium to the temple of hedonism, where they knew they could pass through to the mystical pool that could revive the dead. They made their way uneventfully to the temple, but when they got to the hallway that led to the staircase down the second level they discovered that the crystal guardian statue had reformed! (It had been shattered by unknown persons the last time they were here.) There was a brief debate over who, if anyone, still had the robes of the temple that would allow them passage, but then Caryatid got tired of dithering and simply blasted the statue with magic missiles, shattering it into tiny fragments.
They made it to the pool without mishap, and they lowered Gulleck into the slippery waters. A few anxious moments passed, and then the dwarf's arms came splashing above the surface, and they pulled him out. He was ruddy of complexion again, and the wound in his arm had completely disappeared. Gulleck felt better than he had in months (since the last time he had taken a dip in this pool, to be precise!).
Now that that was sorted out, the party headed back again to the catacombs. They moved carefully through the halls, but disturbed the rest of a dozen skeletons, which chased the party through the halls until they ran into the caretaker's quarters and slammed the door shut behind them. They found the records room, but without anyone who could read Ancient Idalian, they were unable to made heads or tails of the obscure filing system.
Abandoning this line of inquiry, Gulleck suggested they pursue the treasure the gnomes had told them about. It had been so very long since the party had acquired any significant amount of treasure! It seemed the skeletons had lost interest and wandered off or returned to their rest, so the group set out again, heading west. They passed through more narrow catacomb halls lined with funerary niches, and into smoothly carved stone corridors with occasional elegantly carved mausoleum doors. ("The upscale side of the catacombs, I see!") Eventually, they came to an intersection where a hall to the west produced a terrible foul odor of active rot and decay. Creeping along the hall, they found it to open up into a room filled with rotting corpses, scraps of meat, vegetable matter, and other less identifiable debris. On the floor glittered thousands of copper and silver coins, and a shiny battleaxe glimmered in the lantern light.
But as the group entered the doorway, a freakish creature emerged from a burrow on the opposite side of the room. It resembled an enormous caterpillar or grub or centipede, with dozens of legs, but it was roughly three feet in diameter and at least nine feet long! Its faceted insectile eyes stared blankly at the adventurers, and around its chewing mandibles was a ring of bizarre tentacle-like growths, waving hungrily towards its prey. It moved with remarkable speed, crawling up onto the wall and ceiling and it scurried towards the adventurers.
Gulleck and Gaspar held their ground in the doorway as the horrible beast approached. Shorty managed to nick the thing's carapace with an arrow shot from over Gulleck's head, but it kept coming. It lunged at Gulleck, and multiple tentacles wrapped around the flesh of his arm and face. He felt a cold stinging sensation, and then suddenly his entire body went limp and numb, and yet again he slumped down onto the dirty dungeon floor.
Caryatid drew forth the magical wand they had discovered in the hall of records some weeks ago. She stepped forward past Shorty to point the wand at the crawling horror and released the power within the gnarled stick. The beast reared back in panic, and then, moving faster than ever, it scurried back along the wall and into its burrow, its long bulk wriggling into the wall and vanishing from sight.
Caryatid poured oil around the entrance to its burrow and lit it on fire, in the hopes of further discouraging the creature's return. The adventurers then turned their efforts towards scooping as many coins as possible into their backpacks. There were clearly too many coins to carry out in one trip, but they gathered as many as they could fit. Most of the coins were just copper bits, but they were mingled with the silver and there was no time to try to pick out only the more valuable coins. Gulleck regained control over his body about twenty minutes later, and took up the shiny battleaxe, beautifully made and clearly of dwarven craftsmanship! It was perfectly balanced in Gulleck's hand, and he looked forward for a chance to put it to the test.
Having gathered as many coins as possible, the party quickly fled this stinking room and made their way back out of the catacombs. Just as they got near the stairs out, a group of hideous undead monstrosities heaved their way out of the catacomb niches in front of them, and the air was filled with the sickly sweet stench of the ghouls. The adventurers flinched, ready for combat, but the ghouls seemed to recognize Gulleck and Caryatid, and stepped aside, allowing them to pass, even while snarling and hissing at them.
"What the heck was that?" said Shorty after they had emerged at the top of the stairs leading out of the crypts. "Why didn't they attack us?"
"Uh, I don't know," lied Gulleck.
"Maybe it's that new axe," suggested Caryatid. "Who knows what powers it has?"
"Oh, maybe," said Shorty, a bit doubtful.
Gulleck was in no hurry to reveal to his friend and rival that he was in fact working for an evil necromancer. But Shorty didn't push the issue, and they made it back to the Rusty Lantern without further issue.
Game date: Saturday, April 6, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 2, hp 10, xp 2593/4400
Caryatid, Magic-user 2, hp 8, xp 3621/5000
Retainers:
Gaspar, Fighter 1, hp 3, xp 0/2000
Ylil, Thief 2, hp 5, xp 1284/2400
Another thin crowd on game night, so the Dynamic Duo of Gulleck and Caryatid set out on their own again. Well, not entirely on their own: Gulleck recruited Shorty "The Mouse" again, hoping to make use of her magic undead-slaying sword. Shorty was willing to join the team again, but this time asked for an upfront minimum payment of 1,000 silver shekels (since the last time was a complete bust in the treasure department). Gulleck also hired a new retainer to replace the tragically lost Rutger: a fighter named Gaspar, of rather ordinary strength but unusually nimble.
Back to the catacombs they went, in the grudging service of the horrible necromancer Gregor Snapespindle, whose wrath they did not wish to incur. On the way they met a group of nervous gnomes. The gnomes were high-strung because, as they told the party once they settled down, they had barely escaped with their lives from an enormous slug-like monster. They said its lair was strewn with thousands of coins and also a very shiny battleaxe, but when they went in to collect the treasure, the horrible beast emerged from a hole and nearly devoured them. They gave Gulleck some vague directions to the lair, and the two groups went on their way.
Gulleck and Caryatid wanted to doublecheck the records room they found in the caretaker's quarters. They were hoping to find some sort of reference to "The Hero's Tomb" or the map that the enciphered scroll had referred to. They made their way to the caretaker's quarters, and Gulleck carefully opened the door and looked in. In their absence, the room had been filled with gigantic sticky webs, and a giant glistening black spider across the room turned towards the door and began striding across the floor towards them.
Gulleck attempted to quickly close the door, but the spider was too quick for him. It rammed its head and part of its body into the doorway. Alas, I rolled a natural 20 for the spider's attack roll, and the venomous fangs of the black widow pierced deeply into Gulleck's arm. Gulleck's player chose to roll the big green d30 for his saving throw, but even with those odds (and his exceptional dwarven saving throws) he failed his save vs. poison! He was a dead man walking, but not down yet.
Gulleck plunged Shorty's magical sword into the spider's head before it could bite again, but the damage was already done. Gulleck limped with the rest of the party back out of the catacombs. No one was sure what they could do to save him, but the question was rendered moot, for just as they made their way back up the stairs leading out of the catacombs, Gulleck dropped to his knees, foaming at the mouth, and then collapsed against a wall, blue in the face and breathing no more.
Caryatid and Ylil picked up Gulleck's body between the two of them and the group moved as quickly as they could through the buried streets of Ancient Idalium to the temple of hedonism, where they knew they could pass through to the mystical pool that could revive the dead. They made their way uneventfully to the temple, but when they got to the hallway that led to the staircase down the second level they discovered that the crystal guardian statue had reformed! (It had been shattered by unknown persons the last time they were here.) There was a brief debate over who, if anyone, still had the robes of the temple that would allow them passage, but then Caryatid got tired of dithering and simply blasted the statue with magic missiles, shattering it into tiny fragments.
They made it to the pool without mishap, and they lowered Gulleck into the slippery waters. A few anxious moments passed, and then the dwarf's arms came splashing above the surface, and they pulled him out. He was ruddy of complexion again, and the wound in his arm had completely disappeared. Gulleck felt better than he had in months (since the last time he had taken a dip in this pool, to be precise!).
Now that that was sorted out, the party headed back again to the catacombs. They moved carefully through the halls, but disturbed the rest of a dozen skeletons, which chased the party through the halls until they ran into the caretaker's quarters and slammed the door shut behind them. They found the records room, but without anyone who could read Ancient Idalian, they were unable to made heads or tails of the obscure filing system.
Abandoning this line of inquiry, Gulleck suggested they pursue the treasure the gnomes had told them about. It had been so very long since the party had acquired any significant amount of treasure! It seemed the skeletons had lost interest and wandered off or returned to their rest, so the group set out again, heading west. They passed through more narrow catacomb halls lined with funerary niches, and into smoothly carved stone corridors with occasional elegantly carved mausoleum doors. ("The upscale side of the catacombs, I see!") Eventually, they came to an intersection where a hall to the west produced a terrible foul odor of active rot and decay. Creeping along the hall, they found it to open up into a room filled with rotting corpses, scraps of meat, vegetable matter, and other less identifiable debris. On the floor glittered thousands of copper and silver coins, and a shiny battleaxe glimmered in the lantern light.
But as the group entered the doorway, a freakish creature emerged from a burrow on the opposite side of the room. It resembled an enormous caterpillar or grub or centipede, with dozens of legs, but it was roughly three feet in diameter and at least nine feet long! Its faceted insectile eyes stared blankly at the adventurers, and around its chewing mandibles was a ring of bizarre tentacle-like growths, waving hungrily towards its prey. It moved with remarkable speed, crawling up onto the wall and ceiling and it scurried towards the adventurers.
Gulleck and Gaspar held their ground in the doorway as the horrible beast approached. Shorty managed to nick the thing's carapace with an arrow shot from over Gulleck's head, but it kept coming. It lunged at Gulleck, and multiple tentacles wrapped around the flesh of his arm and face. He felt a cold stinging sensation, and then suddenly his entire body went limp and numb, and yet again he slumped down onto the dirty dungeon floor.
Caryatid drew forth the magical wand they had discovered in the hall of records some weeks ago. She stepped forward past Shorty to point the wand at the crawling horror and released the power within the gnarled stick. The beast reared back in panic, and then, moving faster than ever, it scurried back along the wall and into its burrow, its long bulk wriggling into the wall and vanishing from sight.
Caryatid poured oil around the entrance to its burrow and lit it on fire, in the hopes of further discouraging the creature's return. The adventurers then turned their efforts towards scooping as many coins as possible into their backpacks. There were clearly too many coins to carry out in one trip, but they gathered as many as they could fit. Most of the coins were just copper bits, but they were mingled with the silver and there was no time to try to pick out only the more valuable coins. Gulleck regained control over his body about twenty minutes later, and took up the shiny battleaxe, beautifully made and clearly of dwarven craftsmanship! It was perfectly balanced in Gulleck's hand, and he looked forward for a chance to put it to the test.
Having gathered as many coins as possible, the party quickly fled this stinking room and made their way back out of the catacombs. Just as they got near the stairs out, a group of hideous undead monstrosities heaved their way out of the catacomb niches in front of them, and the air was filled with the sickly sweet stench of the ghouls. The adventurers flinched, ready for combat, but the ghouls seemed to recognize Gulleck and Caryatid, and stepped aside, allowing them to pass, even while snarling and hissing at them.
"What the heck was that?" said Shorty after they had emerged at the top of the stairs leading out of the crypts. "Why didn't they attack us?"
"Uh, I don't know," lied Gulleck.
"Maybe it's that new axe," suggested Caryatid. "Who knows what powers it has?"
"Oh, maybe," said Shorty, a bit doubtful.
Gulleck was in no hurry to reveal to his friend and rival that he was in fact working for an evil necromancer. But Shorty didn't push the issue, and they made it back to the Rusty Lantern without further issue.
Monday, June 8, 2015
House Rule: Firing Into Melee
Basic/Expert D&D doesn't have anything to say about firing into melee. A lot of editions level rather punitive penalties against this (AD&D had you randomly determine your target before rolling to hit!) with the result being that people generally don't even attempt to use missile weapons in a close combat.
I don't care for that for a variety of reasons. First, B/X is lethal enough as is and the PCs could use the extra help of a back line of archers. Second, I'd rather give the players in the back ranks something to do while the front rank fights hand-to-hand. Third, I've never heard of any version of D&D allowing for the melee weapon equivalent of "friendly fire". Why subject archers to a significant risk of hitting their friends when the guys in front can wave their swords around wildly and never worry about hitting the wrong person?
So what I do is apply a -2 penalty to the missile attack roll for every ally between the attacker and their target. This could be modified if the target is significantly bigger or smaller than the allies in the way. My assumption is that if the attacker can't get a clear shot because of allies in the way, they will simply hold their fire. I allow for the possibility of friendly fire only if the attacker rolls a natural 1. If that happens, I randomly determine which ally was targeted instead and then have the attacker roll another attack against the ally's armor class.
This never came up in play until session 21, when Ylil's player rolled a natural 1 for his sling attack. Of the three allies between him and his target, I randomly rolled that Brother Jedidiah was the unfortunate accidental victim. Ylil's player rolled very high on the second attack roll, and the end result was that Brother Jedidiah took a sling stone right in the back of the head at close range and expired on the spot.
It's a tough job, adventuring...
I don't care for that for a variety of reasons. First, B/X is lethal enough as is and the PCs could use the extra help of a back line of archers. Second, I'd rather give the players in the back ranks something to do while the front rank fights hand-to-hand. Third, I've never heard of any version of D&D allowing for the melee weapon equivalent of "friendly fire". Why subject archers to a significant risk of hitting their friends when the guys in front can wave their swords around wildly and never worry about hitting the wrong person?
So what I do is apply a -2 penalty to the missile attack roll for every ally between the attacker and their target. This could be modified if the target is significantly bigger or smaller than the allies in the way. My assumption is that if the attacker can't get a clear shot because of allies in the way, they will simply hold their fire. I allow for the possibility of friendly fire only if the attacker rolls a natural 1. If that happens, I randomly determine which ally was targeted instead and then have the attacker roll another attack against the ally's armor class.
This never came up in play until session 21, when Ylil's player rolled a natural 1 for his sling attack. Of the three allies between him and his target, I randomly rolled that Brother Jedidiah was the unfortunate accidental victim. Ylil's player rolled very high on the second attack roll, and the end result was that Brother Jedidiah took a sling stone right in the back of the head at close range and expired on the spot.
It's a tough job, adventuring...
Idalium Game 22: Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire
Session date: Monday, May 4, 2015
Game date: Saturday, March 30, 208
PCs:
Tod P. Quasit, Jr., Fighter 2, hp 14, xp 3105/4000
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 2, hp 10, xp 2571/4400
Caryatid, Magic-user 2, hp 8, xp 3599/5000
Vito Aneti, Thief 2, hp 10, xp 1516/2400
Retainers:
Brother Jibber, Cleric 1, hp 5, xp 1155/1500
Rutger, Fighter 1, hp 9, xp 614/2000
Ylil, Thief 2, hp 5, xp 1273/2400
Brother Jedidiah, Cleric 1, hp 1, xp 24/1500
This was to be the last session before a three week hiatus, as I was going on vacation with my family, so I told my players to make it a doozy. And while I'm not sure it turned out the way they hoped, it certainly left the campaign on an interesting cliffhanger!
Tod, Gulleck, Caryatid, and Vito reunited at the Rusty Lantern, ready to head back down to the catacombs in search of the necromancer Gregor Snapespindle and the brazen head he had stolen from the Runcible Trading House auction. Rather than bring his retainer Sprat along, Vito invited Brother Jedidiah to come with them again, with the idea that two clerics would be extra useful in the undead-ridden crypts below the city.
When they arrived at the Rusty Lantern, they found the tavern occupied by the Night Walkers, an unfriendly NPC party whose relationship with the PCs had escalated from rivalry to venomous hatred. Led by a pair of arrogant elf brothers named Death Watch and Cobweb, the Night Walkers mostly consisted of equally cutthroat and mercenary scoundrels, except for two dimwitted but good-natured dupes. One of those dupes was no longer with the party now.
"Ah, the 'Rat Catchers'," quipped Death Watch grimly. "It seems you have lived up to your name and caught a rat: our dearly departed friend George." It transpired that the Night Walkers had found Vito's offering of wine, that he had tainted with rat poison, and the elf brothers had ordered George to be their taster. "I hope you are proud of yourself. We shall abide by the rules of the Adventurers' Guild up here, but make no mistake - we shall have avenge our comrade."
(This was honestly all the result of a series of random die rolls that I make at the top of every session to determine if anyone else is at the tavern and what their situation is, but it fit so perfectly with the events of prior sessions. Sometimes the dice just seem to "know"!)
Leaving the Night Walkers behind, the Infestation Managers descended into the ruined city of Ancient Idalium. Down along now familiar corridors went the party, making their way to the plaza of the dead. They were cautious, in case the temple was still claimed by the bandits they had skirmished with a few days prior. In the plaza they encountered a group of giant bees, lapping at a sticky puddle of spilled wine. They seemed groggy and sluggish, and the party was able to pass them at a distance and move on by.
In the vestibule of the temple, Gulleck's attention was quickly drawn by a drop of blood which fell from ceiling to floor before him. He looked up, and discovered a flock of stirges clinging to the ceiling, bloated and sleepy. Blood dripped from their ruddy beaks. They seemed satiated, and did not stir as the group crept nervously beneath them.
In the hall of the temple, the group beheld a dreadful sight. Roughly a dozen knockers were dragging a dead human body deeper into the temple. The body was pale and dessicated in appearance, but they recognized it as being George, formerly with the Night Walkers.
"What do you think you're doing?" yelled the party at the horrid, shriveled gnome-like creatures.
"We come for the bounty," hissed the lead knocker, and they continued with their grim funereal procession.
The party argued briefly over whether to kill the monstrosities out of respect for George, but curiosity overruled that urge, and they cautiously followed the knockers into the chapel. In the chapel, they encountered a terrified bandit, presumably from the gang they faced several days before. His face was aghast at the sight of the knockers and their horrible cargo.
"You still here?" snapped Gulleck.
"Uh, we don't want any trouble this time!" whimpered the bandit. "The Night Walkers tricked us. This place isn't safe at all! We're just trying to get out of here."
They left the pathetic bandit behind and followed the knockers behind the large statue of the skeletal reaper and set eyes upon an even stranger sight. The great iron doors to the catacombs had opened, and a party of walking skeletons had emerged. The skeletons handed a few tarnished grave goods to the knockers - a copper urn and a bronze torq - and then took up the body of George and carried off down the stairs into the darkness. The knockers likewise retreated back out of the temple, glaring at the party as they did.
After taking a moment to collect themselves, and newly concerned about Snapespindle now that it seemed he was paying a bounty for corpses to the knockers, the group descended into the catacombs. The giant rats were still scurrying around the room at the bottom of the stairs, squeaking and hissing at the adventurers. Coins still lay scattered throughout their nests of shredded shrouds. Several of the party lit torches to frighten the rats away, and then Vito had an idea to put his remaining rat poison to its intended use. Gulleck had some rations in his backpack, and they quickly sprinkled the rest of the poison powder over the food and then tossed it towards the rats.
But then, a terrible thing happened. While they were taking the time to mess around with the rat poison, a wandering pack of ghouls approached from the western crypt hall. So many things went wrong here. I rolled arguably the most dangerous monster on the wandering monster table, and then rolled the maximum number appearing (six). The PCs were scattered around the room rather than in a tight battle formation in a doorway or hall. And then they lost initiative for the first round. On the bright side, the rats scattered in fear of the ghouls and didn't seize the opportunity to pile on as well.
The ghouls fell upon the party, tearing at them with tooth and claw. Rutger and Caryatid were struck before they could react, and were stricken with a paralyzing fear, and every muscle went rigid in their bodies, as though they were trapped in the sort of nightmare where you are being chased but you can't move or run. The rest of the party attempted to regroup into a proper formation and fall back to the foot of the stairs where they could fight the ghouls one or two at a time.
Brother Jedidiah raised his holy symbol aloft and uttered a nervous prayer. Though terrified, he mustered enough faith to ward off one of the savage beasts, which retreated back to the crypt hall, snarling and hissing at the elderly acolyte. Brother Jibber took a more direct approach and rummaged through his backpack for his vials of holy water. He hurled the blessed water at one of the ghouls, and it recoiled in agony. The dead flesh on its face rippled and melted where the water had splashed it, and the unholy creature fell to the ground in spasms, and then was still.
Gulleck, in desperation, dug in his belt pouch for the paper-wrapped fruitcake (labelled "Eat Me" with chopped nuts) that they had found in the bank vault many weeks ago. He quickly chewed and swallowed the small cake, and suddenly he felt terribly odd indeed, as his body doubled in size and suddenly there was an eight foot tall dwarf standing in the hall. This gave the others behind him a bit of protection, but Gulleck himself quickly fell under the paralyzing fear that had gripped Rutger and Caryatid. The ghouls crawled and squeezed past the bulky dwarf to get at Vito and Ylil behind him. They too were quickly rendered immobile.
Brother Jedidiah took one last pot shot with his sling, as he watched his entire party of employers go stock-still and silent, and then turned tail and ran up the stairs, with a final cry of "God be with you!"
All was quiet for a moment. And then the ghouls turned towards their immobile prey with a look of hunger and anticipation on their savage faces. The air filled with the sound of ripping flesh, cracking bones, and snapping teeth.
So... Total Party Kill? I took a bathroom break and considered my options while the players joked about who their next party should be.
Now, I'm certainly not afraid to let PCs die. I don't see much point in having any "danger" in the game (like combat) if it's not "real", with the actual risk of losing your character. And when I'm a player, I take a PC death as an opportunity to try something new and fresh. So I'm certainly not interesting in pulling punches or fudging dices. But TPKs are a bit more problematic. By cutting off the continuity of the party, it can really take the steam out of a campaign. Sure, you can start over with a new party, but it's basically going to have to be a new campaign at that point. So, how can this defeat move the story forward rather than bringing it to a screeching halt?
I returned to the table.
Another lantern light flickered on the walls of the room. A cold voice commanded, "Leave the rest of them, my pets." A man in plate armor stepped into view, accompanied by several more ghouls, which lurked near him like guard dogs. It was Gregor Snapespindle, but his eyes now burned with malevolence. "Well, well, well. What shall I do with you? My pets would like nothing more than for me to allow them to feast on you, but I wonder if you could be more useful to me alive. You are going to come with me, and we shall have a little conversation, and then you will decide your own fate. Serve me, or be left to the tender mercies of my pets." And here he idly stroked the ragged, filthy hair of one of the ghouls, creeping everyone out.
"Bring them!" he barked, and led the way out of the room. More ghouls seemed to crowd in around the PCs, grabbing and pulling at them. Still helpless and unable to move a muscle, the party members were dragged roughly along the flagstones and cobblestones of the crypt, through grim halls lined with wrapped bodies. Eventually they were brought to an empty tomb and bound with rope. Snapespindle said he would return once they were able to converse, and he left them there, watched by several ghouls that he warned to restrain themselves from devouring them.
The minutes passed anxiously, and one by one the PCs regained control of their bodies. Gulleck's enormous visage deflated back to his stout but diminutive norm. Now that they were able to look around themselves, it was discovered that Gulleck's retainer Rutger was no longer with them. Alas, there is always a price to paid when the DM converts a TPK to a more interesting plot twist, and in this case it was the loss of a randomly rolled retainer.
There was some discussion between Tod and Gulleck over whether they could take Snapespindle and his ghouls, but sanity prevailed and they decided to play along with Snapespindle until they could get out of this accursed place. Snapespindle soon returned to them, guarded by several more ghouls. He was clad in blackened plate armor and carried a wicked looking warhammer at his belt, whose head was forged into a leering skull.
Gregor Snapespindle declared calmly to the adventurers that their lives belonged to him now. He told them that there was some source of malevolent power in these catacombs, that was disturbing the sleep of the dead. He sought that source of power, for he believed it would grant him power and control over the dead and bring him forbidden knowledge of the nature of death and how to transcend it. He believed the adventurers could help him find that source of power. He gave them a Hobson's Choice: serve him loyally, or be fed to the ghouls.
He told them how he had stolen the brazen head because the legends told that it was able to answer questions that no one else could. "Shall we go and perform the ritual now?" he asked the group. Surrounded by ghouls, they could only nod and cheerily reply, "After you!"
"How, uh, how do you control them?" Tod asked as they walked, nodding towards the ghouls.
"They know me to be a kindred spirit," replied Snapespindle. "They serve me, and I feed them."
Snapespindle brought them to an empty tomb that he had repurposed as a sort of study. Bookcases held various leather-bound books and scrolls. On a small table in the center of the room sat a silver platter, on which was a life-sized brass head, constructed of riveted brass plates. Its eyes were shut. In the corner of the room lay the body of George, looking still worse for the wear. Snapespindle took up a ewer and a curved knife, and then slashed at the neck of George's corpse and let his blood drain into the ewer. This he mixed with oil from another urn, and poured the combined liquids over the brazen head. He recited a series of incantations from an ancient book over the head, including words in a disturbingly alien language. Then he lit a wooden splint on a candle and touched the flame to the oil and blood in the platter.
Blue flames leapt up around the brazen head. Its brass eyelids snapped open, revealing what looked like living human eyes inside, which darted back and forth frantically.
Brother Jibber's involuntary scream pierced the air.
"Speak," croaked the head, its brazen jaws moving stiffly.
"I seek the source of power that awakens the dead in this place. Where is it?" implored Snapespindle.
"You seek the Beating Heart in the Hero's Tomb." And then the brass eyelids snapped shut, and the flames died out, and all was again still.
"The Beating Heart in the Hero's Tomb," repeated Snapespindle. "Now you know what your aim is. Go now, seek it out, and bring it to me. So long as you are loyal to me, you shall be allowed to live. But do not think to betray, for my servants will be watching you. Return to me when you have what we seek."
He ordered several of his "pets" to escort the party back out of the catacombs. Once they were safely at the top of the stairs in the temple of the dead, they fled as quickly as possible back to the Rusty Lantern tavern, relieved to have been spared a horrible death indeed but deeply disturbed by the Faustian deal they had made.
Game date: Saturday, March 30, 208
PCs:
Tod P. Quasit, Jr., Fighter 2, hp 14, xp 3105/4000
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 2, hp 10, xp 2571/4400
Caryatid, Magic-user 2, hp 8, xp 3599/5000
Vito Aneti, Thief 2, hp 10, xp 1516/2400
Retainers:
Brother Jibber, Cleric 1, hp 5, xp 1155/1500
Rutger, Fighter 1, hp 9, xp 614/2000
Ylil, Thief 2, hp 5, xp 1273/2400
Brother Jedidiah, Cleric 1, hp 1, xp 24/1500
This was to be the last session before a three week hiatus, as I was going on vacation with my family, so I told my players to make it a doozy. And while I'm not sure it turned out the way they hoped, it certainly left the campaign on an interesting cliffhanger!
Tod, Gulleck, Caryatid, and Vito reunited at the Rusty Lantern, ready to head back down to the catacombs in search of the necromancer Gregor Snapespindle and the brazen head he had stolen from the Runcible Trading House auction. Rather than bring his retainer Sprat along, Vito invited Brother Jedidiah to come with them again, with the idea that two clerics would be extra useful in the undead-ridden crypts below the city.
When they arrived at the Rusty Lantern, they found the tavern occupied by the Night Walkers, an unfriendly NPC party whose relationship with the PCs had escalated from rivalry to venomous hatred. Led by a pair of arrogant elf brothers named Death Watch and Cobweb, the Night Walkers mostly consisted of equally cutthroat and mercenary scoundrels, except for two dimwitted but good-natured dupes. One of those dupes was no longer with the party now.
"Ah, the 'Rat Catchers'," quipped Death Watch grimly. "It seems you have lived up to your name and caught a rat: our dearly departed friend George." It transpired that the Night Walkers had found Vito's offering of wine, that he had tainted with rat poison, and the elf brothers had ordered George to be their taster. "I hope you are proud of yourself. We shall abide by the rules of the Adventurers' Guild up here, but make no mistake - we shall have avenge our comrade."
(This was honestly all the result of a series of random die rolls that I make at the top of every session to determine if anyone else is at the tavern and what their situation is, but it fit so perfectly with the events of prior sessions. Sometimes the dice just seem to "know"!)
Leaving the Night Walkers behind, the Infestation Managers descended into the ruined city of Ancient Idalium. Down along now familiar corridors went the party, making their way to the plaza of the dead. They were cautious, in case the temple was still claimed by the bandits they had skirmished with a few days prior. In the plaza they encountered a group of giant bees, lapping at a sticky puddle of spilled wine. They seemed groggy and sluggish, and the party was able to pass them at a distance and move on by.
In the vestibule of the temple, Gulleck's attention was quickly drawn by a drop of blood which fell from ceiling to floor before him. He looked up, and discovered a flock of stirges clinging to the ceiling, bloated and sleepy. Blood dripped from their ruddy beaks. They seemed satiated, and did not stir as the group crept nervously beneath them.
In the hall of the temple, the group beheld a dreadful sight. Roughly a dozen knockers were dragging a dead human body deeper into the temple. The body was pale and dessicated in appearance, but they recognized it as being George, formerly with the Night Walkers.
"What do you think you're doing?" yelled the party at the horrid, shriveled gnome-like creatures.
"We come for the bounty," hissed the lead knocker, and they continued with their grim funereal procession.
The party argued briefly over whether to kill the monstrosities out of respect for George, but curiosity overruled that urge, and they cautiously followed the knockers into the chapel. In the chapel, they encountered a terrified bandit, presumably from the gang they faced several days before. His face was aghast at the sight of the knockers and their horrible cargo.
"You still here?" snapped Gulleck.
"Uh, we don't want any trouble this time!" whimpered the bandit. "The Night Walkers tricked us. This place isn't safe at all! We're just trying to get out of here."
They left the pathetic bandit behind and followed the knockers behind the large statue of the skeletal reaper and set eyes upon an even stranger sight. The great iron doors to the catacombs had opened, and a party of walking skeletons had emerged. The skeletons handed a few tarnished grave goods to the knockers - a copper urn and a bronze torq - and then took up the body of George and carried off down the stairs into the darkness. The knockers likewise retreated back out of the temple, glaring at the party as they did.
After taking a moment to collect themselves, and newly concerned about Snapespindle now that it seemed he was paying a bounty for corpses to the knockers, the group descended into the catacombs. The giant rats were still scurrying around the room at the bottom of the stairs, squeaking and hissing at the adventurers. Coins still lay scattered throughout their nests of shredded shrouds. Several of the party lit torches to frighten the rats away, and then Vito had an idea to put his remaining rat poison to its intended use. Gulleck had some rations in his backpack, and they quickly sprinkled the rest of the poison powder over the food and then tossed it towards the rats.
But then, a terrible thing happened. While they were taking the time to mess around with the rat poison, a wandering pack of ghouls approached from the western crypt hall. So many things went wrong here. I rolled arguably the most dangerous monster on the wandering monster table, and then rolled the maximum number appearing (six). The PCs were scattered around the room rather than in a tight battle formation in a doorway or hall. And then they lost initiative for the first round. On the bright side, the rats scattered in fear of the ghouls and didn't seize the opportunity to pile on as well.
The ghouls fell upon the party, tearing at them with tooth and claw. Rutger and Caryatid were struck before they could react, and were stricken with a paralyzing fear, and every muscle went rigid in their bodies, as though they were trapped in the sort of nightmare where you are being chased but you can't move or run. The rest of the party attempted to regroup into a proper formation and fall back to the foot of the stairs where they could fight the ghouls one or two at a time.
Brother Jedidiah raised his holy symbol aloft and uttered a nervous prayer. Though terrified, he mustered enough faith to ward off one of the savage beasts, which retreated back to the crypt hall, snarling and hissing at the elderly acolyte. Brother Jibber took a more direct approach and rummaged through his backpack for his vials of holy water. He hurled the blessed water at one of the ghouls, and it recoiled in agony. The dead flesh on its face rippled and melted where the water had splashed it, and the unholy creature fell to the ground in spasms, and then was still.
Gulleck, in desperation, dug in his belt pouch for the paper-wrapped fruitcake (labelled "Eat Me" with chopped nuts) that they had found in the bank vault many weeks ago. He quickly chewed and swallowed the small cake, and suddenly he felt terribly odd indeed, as his body doubled in size and suddenly there was an eight foot tall dwarf standing in the hall. This gave the others behind him a bit of protection, but Gulleck himself quickly fell under the paralyzing fear that had gripped Rutger and Caryatid. The ghouls crawled and squeezed past the bulky dwarf to get at Vito and Ylil behind him. They too were quickly rendered immobile.
Brother Jedidiah took one last pot shot with his sling, as he watched his entire party of employers go stock-still and silent, and then turned tail and ran up the stairs, with a final cry of "God be with you!"
All was quiet for a moment. And then the ghouls turned towards their immobile prey with a look of hunger and anticipation on their savage faces. The air filled with the sound of ripping flesh, cracking bones, and snapping teeth.
So... Total Party Kill? I took a bathroom break and considered my options while the players joked about who their next party should be.
Now, I'm certainly not afraid to let PCs die. I don't see much point in having any "danger" in the game (like combat) if it's not "real", with the actual risk of losing your character. And when I'm a player, I take a PC death as an opportunity to try something new and fresh. So I'm certainly not interesting in pulling punches or fudging dices. But TPKs are a bit more problematic. By cutting off the continuity of the party, it can really take the steam out of a campaign. Sure, you can start over with a new party, but it's basically going to have to be a new campaign at that point. So, how can this defeat move the story forward rather than bringing it to a screeching halt?
I returned to the table.
Another lantern light flickered on the walls of the room. A cold voice commanded, "Leave the rest of them, my pets." A man in plate armor stepped into view, accompanied by several more ghouls, which lurked near him like guard dogs. It was Gregor Snapespindle, but his eyes now burned with malevolence. "Well, well, well. What shall I do with you? My pets would like nothing more than for me to allow them to feast on you, but I wonder if you could be more useful to me alive. You are going to come with me, and we shall have a little conversation, and then you will decide your own fate. Serve me, or be left to the tender mercies of my pets." And here he idly stroked the ragged, filthy hair of one of the ghouls, creeping everyone out.
"Bring them!" he barked, and led the way out of the room. More ghouls seemed to crowd in around the PCs, grabbing and pulling at them. Still helpless and unable to move a muscle, the party members were dragged roughly along the flagstones and cobblestones of the crypt, through grim halls lined with wrapped bodies. Eventually they were brought to an empty tomb and bound with rope. Snapespindle said he would return once they were able to converse, and he left them there, watched by several ghouls that he warned to restrain themselves from devouring them.
The minutes passed anxiously, and one by one the PCs regained control of their bodies. Gulleck's enormous visage deflated back to his stout but diminutive norm. Now that they were able to look around themselves, it was discovered that Gulleck's retainer Rutger was no longer with them. Alas, there is always a price to paid when the DM converts a TPK to a more interesting plot twist, and in this case it was the loss of a randomly rolled retainer.
There was some discussion between Tod and Gulleck over whether they could take Snapespindle and his ghouls, but sanity prevailed and they decided to play along with Snapespindle until they could get out of this accursed place. Snapespindle soon returned to them, guarded by several more ghouls. He was clad in blackened plate armor and carried a wicked looking warhammer at his belt, whose head was forged into a leering skull.
Gregor Snapespindle declared calmly to the adventurers that their lives belonged to him now. He told them that there was some source of malevolent power in these catacombs, that was disturbing the sleep of the dead. He sought that source of power, for he believed it would grant him power and control over the dead and bring him forbidden knowledge of the nature of death and how to transcend it. He believed the adventurers could help him find that source of power. He gave them a Hobson's Choice: serve him loyally, or be fed to the ghouls.
He told them how he had stolen the brazen head because the legends told that it was able to answer questions that no one else could. "Shall we go and perform the ritual now?" he asked the group. Surrounded by ghouls, they could only nod and cheerily reply, "After you!"
"How, uh, how do you control them?" Tod asked as they walked, nodding towards the ghouls.
"They know me to be a kindred spirit," replied Snapespindle. "They serve me, and I feed them."
Snapespindle brought them to an empty tomb that he had repurposed as a sort of study. Bookcases held various leather-bound books and scrolls. On a small table in the center of the room sat a silver platter, on which was a life-sized brass head, constructed of riveted brass plates. Its eyes were shut. In the corner of the room lay the body of George, looking still worse for the wear. Snapespindle took up a ewer and a curved knife, and then slashed at the neck of George's corpse and let his blood drain into the ewer. This he mixed with oil from another urn, and poured the combined liquids over the brazen head. He recited a series of incantations from an ancient book over the head, including words in a disturbingly alien language. Then he lit a wooden splint on a candle and touched the flame to the oil and blood in the platter.
Blue flames leapt up around the brazen head. Its brass eyelids snapped open, revealing what looked like living human eyes inside, which darted back and forth frantically.
Brother Jibber's involuntary scream pierced the air.
"Speak," croaked the head, its brazen jaws moving stiffly.
"I seek the source of power that awakens the dead in this place. Where is it?" implored Snapespindle.
"You seek the Beating Heart in the Hero's Tomb." And then the brass eyelids snapped shut, and the flames died out, and all was again still.
"The Beating Heart in the Hero's Tomb," repeated Snapespindle. "Now you know what your aim is. Go now, seek it out, and bring it to me. So long as you are loyal to me, you shall be allowed to live. But do not think to betray, for my servants will be watching you. Return to me when you have what we seek."
He ordered several of his "pets" to escort the party back out of the catacombs. Once they were safely at the top of the stairs in the temple of the dead, they fled as quickly as possible back to the Rusty Lantern tavern, relieved to have been spared a horrible death indeed but deeply disturbed by the Faustian deal they had made.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Idalium Game 21: Friendly Fire
Session date: Monday, April 27, 2015
Game date: Monday, March 25, 208 to Thursday, March 28, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 2, hp 10, xp 2546/4400
Caryatid, Magic-user 2, hp 8, xp 3576/5000
Vito Aneti, Thief 2, hp 10, xp 1491/2400
Retainers:
Rutger, Fighter 1, hp 9, xp 601/2000
Ylil, Thief 2, hp 5, xp 1261/2400
Brother Jedidiah, Cleric 1, hp 1, xp 24/1500
After a day of rest so that Brother Jedidiah could assist with Sunday services at the Great Cathedral, some of the Infestation Managers regrouped as usual at the Rusty Lantern tavern. A few days ago in game time, Gulleck had left a message for Shorty "The Mouse", the leader of one of the NPC parties that the PCs were generally friendly with. Gulleck hoped to recruit her help especially because of the magical sword she had purchased at the auction, engraved as it was with skeletal designs. Shorty had received the message, and agreed to accompany the group for a full share of treasure and first dibs on any magical items that they might find. With Shorty temporarily joining their ranks, the group descended into the dungeon and quickly made their way to the temple of death, intent on finding Gregor Snapespindle and recovering the stolen brazen head.
When they arrived at the plaza of the temple of death, they found a group of nervous men gazing anxiously at two of the statues of weeping angels, which were bent over a body on the ground of the plaza. When the men heard the approach of the party, they whipped around in fear, drawing their swords in panic.
"Back off," one of the bandits exclaimed. "This is our headquarters now! Find your own place!"
Gulleck was completely unimpressed. "You guys are complete idiots. Do you realize there's a guy raising an army of the dead underneath there?"
"You can't fool us!" The bandits thought they had a handle on what was going on. "Hey, it's those guys the Night Walkers warned us about. Cobweb said they played dirty tricks!"
"If you guys are taking advice from the Night Walkers, you are in way over your heads!" Gulleck and Vito continued to harangue and mock the naive bandits. And then Caryatid said something particularly rude, and one of the bandits yelled, "We'll cut those words out of your mouth!", and then the mob of them charged, screaming.
"Oh, for God's sake," sighed Gulleck. He and Rutger attempted to defend themselves against the bandits without inflicting lethal force in return. But Gulleck was viciously wounded by the sword of a paranoid bandit, and blood trickled down his left arm.
Behind him, Brother Jedidiah drew forth his sling and stone with quivering hand. "Repent, sinners!" he shrieked, and let a stone fly unerring into the knee of one of the bandits fighting Rutger. The bandit howled in agony, dropping to the ground and rolling in pain, clutching his shattered knee. Vito wounded another bandit with a crossbow bolt, and Brother Jedidiah sent another vicious stone across the fray, cracking across the pate of yet another bandit and dropping him senseless to the ground.
The remaining bandits turned tail and fled back towards the temple. "Really?" shouted Gulleck. "You're really gonna run into there?"
The wounded bandit told them, between whimpers, that the Night Walkers had struck a deal with them where the bandits could have the temple as their hideout from which to launch burglaries and thefts, as long as the Night Walkers were allowed safe passage through the temple.
Gulleck sighed and prepared to enter the temple to drag out the remaining two or three bandits who had fled. With the party behind him, he entered the temple vestibule and called out, "Now come on, we don't want a fight, just come out and let's talk about it." He opened the inner doors to the temple and cautiously moved in, looking around. Suddenly, the original bandits plus a larger group of men came charging from two directions - "There they are! Get 'em!" - with swords drawn and rage on their faces. Gulleck and Rutger were staggered by the furious attack. Gulleck's sleeve, already stained with his blood from the earlier attack, turned dark with his blood as a sword bit into his shoulder. Unprepared for the intensity of this fight, Gulleck and Rutger pulled the door shut again, with the mocking laughter of the bandits echoing behind the door.
"All right," said Gulleck, "you wanna play that way..." and he pulled out hammer and iron spikes and began spiking the door shut. Vito ran a length of rope between the handles of the temple doors and tied them tightly shut.
They took the wounded bandit with them back to the surface and handed him over to the master of the Thieves' Guild, and then spent a couple of days resting, to allow Gulleck and Rutger's wounds to begin to heal.
When the group reconvened on Thursday morning, Shorty again accompanied them into the dungeon. They made their cautious way down to the temple of the dead again, and noted with some concern that the weeping angel statues had now vanished entirely from the plaza. The group approached the temple doors with caution, and saw that their ropes now lay on the floor in fragments, and a piece of paper was tacked to the doors. "To 'The Rat Catchers'", read the salutation. It was from Death Watch and Cobweb, the elf brothers who led the Night Walkers, and upbraided the party for interfering with their recent hires. The Night Walkers gave the party one last warning: interfere with them again and their rivalry would turn to outright war.
Vito felt that this had already happened, when the Night Walkers employed the bandits to ambush them, and decided to take matters firmly into his own hands. He set out two wineskins full of wine, one of them adulterated with a large quantity of everyday rat poison. He wrote his own note - "For the Night Walkers" and set it on top of the wineskins. Then the party passed into the temple of the dead and headed down into the catacombs.
They passed the nest of giant rats at the base of the steps, using flaming torches again to frighten the rats away as they passed them, and made their way to explore new areas of the catacombs. Eventually they found themselves at a heavy stone door with inscriptions in Ancient Idalian that declared it to be the mausoleum of a wealthy family. There were scratches on the floor that suggested that this door had been opened and closed more often than one might hope for a mausoleum door. Rutger pulled the door open and the party cautiously entered a long hallway lined with alternating crypt doors.
They pushed open the first door and their noses were assailed by a familiar sickly sweet stench, and a hideous corpse-like creature turned towards them, dropped a bone it had been gnawing on, and leaped at them with ravenous hunger in its dead eyes. Gulleck and Rutger quickly brought the creature to senselessness, but the noise of the battle had drawn the attention of another half dozen of the ghouls, and the adventurers' stomachs sank as they heard the sound of multiple crypt doors creaking open along the hallway.
The party attempted an orderly fighting withdrawal, hoping to get back to the door and use the time-honored "close the door and run away" strategy. Gulleck and Rutger were scratched and bitten by the filthy ghouls, and a tremendous nearly-paralyzing fear coursed through their souls, but they both kept their cool and fought on. Gulleck and Rutger hacked away at the ghouls from the front, while the others looked for openings for arrow, bolt, and stone. Brother Jedidiah attempted to repel the horrible monsters, but his faith wavered and he turned to his sling with more effective results.
"Try this, Gulleck," came Shorty's voice from behind him, and she passed up her magical sword, engraved with skeletal patterns. As Gulleck's hand closed around the hilt, he could feel the magical power thrumming through his arm, and the sword quivered as if it longed to plunge towards the undead abominations. He lunged forward with it, his hand almost guided by the sword itself as it sank itself effortlessly into the chest of the beast in front of him.
"Shorty, your sword is awesome!"
"Yeah, I'll want it back after this, too."
The tide seemed to be turning for the party, but then Ylil made a terrible, terrible blunder. His player rolled a natural 1 for his sling attack. This is the only situation where I enforce a possibility of friendly fire, and I randomly determined the target of his attack among the three allies in front of him. Poor Brother Jedidiah was the unfortunately target, which was bad because old Jed only had one hit point. This time Ylil's player rolled nice and high for the attack, and as Brother Jedidiah was refilling his own sling to attack the ghouls, Ylil's sling stone cracked him in the back of the head from point blank range, fracturing his brittle skull and sending the old cleric crashing to the floor of the crypt.
The party managed to get clear of the mausoleum door and pushed it closed against the scrabbling claws of the ghouls. The mission now became to get Brother Jed's body down to the resurrection pool on the second level. I think they were concerned that the Church wouldn't loan them any more acolytes if they kept losing them. And so they quickly crossed the undercity to the temple of hedonism, passing through and down the corridor to the resurrection pool.
Right outside the door to the room of the pool, they encountered a group of tall goblins, including the two they had met before: Margleton and Clabberpus. They were as friendly as before, in that rather unnerving way. The party explained that they needed to use the pool, and Margleton said, "Oh, be our guest! But you do know, of course, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and for every gift there must eventually be a repayment." Some of the players are already suspicious about the long-term effects of this pool, and this did nothing to make them feel any better. But the goblins strolled off into the darkness chuckling sinisterly, and the party entered the room of the pool and lowered Brother Jedidiah's frail and bloodied body into the slippery water of life.
Moments later, his feeble arms came thrashing above the surface of the pool and they pulled him carefully out. I'm not sure if they ever explained to him what actually happened back there with the ghouls. Yet another (albeit temporary) entry on the Memorial Roll of the Idalium campaign.
Game date: Monday, March 25, 208 to Thursday, March 28, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 2, hp 10, xp 2546/4400
Caryatid, Magic-user 2, hp 8, xp 3576/5000
Vito Aneti, Thief 2, hp 10, xp 1491/2400
Retainers:
Rutger, Fighter 1, hp 9, xp 601/2000
Ylil, Thief 2, hp 5, xp 1261/2400
Brother Jedidiah, Cleric 1, hp 1, xp 24/1500
After a day of rest so that Brother Jedidiah could assist with Sunday services at the Great Cathedral, some of the Infestation Managers regrouped as usual at the Rusty Lantern tavern. A few days ago in game time, Gulleck had left a message for Shorty "The Mouse", the leader of one of the NPC parties that the PCs were generally friendly with. Gulleck hoped to recruit her help especially because of the magical sword she had purchased at the auction, engraved as it was with skeletal designs. Shorty had received the message, and agreed to accompany the group for a full share of treasure and first dibs on any magical items that they might find. With Shorty temporarily joining their ranks, the group descended into the dungeon and quickly made their way to the temple of death, intent on finding Gregor Snapespindle and recovering the stolen brazen head.
When they arrived at the plaza of the temple of death, they found a group of nervous men gazing anxiously at two of the statues of weeping angels, which were bent over a body on the ground of the plaza. When the men heard the approach of the party, they whipped around in fear, drawing their swords in panic.
"Back off," one of the bandits exclaimed. "This is our headquarters now! Find your own place!"
Gulleck was completely unimpressed. "You guys are complete idiots. Do you realize there's a guy raising an army of the dead underneath there?"
"You can't fool us!" The bandits thought they had a handle on what was going on. "Hey, it's those guys the Night Walkers warned us about. Cobweb said they played dirty tricks!"
"If you guys are taking advice from the Night Walkers, you are in way over your heads!" Gulleck and Vito continued to harangue and mock the naive bandits. And then Caryatid said something particularly rude, and one of the bandits yelled, "We'll cut those words out of your mouth!", and then the mob of them charged, screaming.
"Oh, for God's sake," sighed Gulleck. He and Rutger attempted to defend themselves against the bandits without inflicting lethal force in return. But Gulleck was viciously wounded by the sword of a paranoid bandit, and blood trickled down his left arm.
Behind him, Brother Jedidiah drew forth his sling and stone with quivering hand. "Repent, sinners!" he shrieked, and let a stone fly unerring into the knee of one of the bandits fighting Rutger. The bandit howled in agony, dropping to the ground and rolling in pain, clutching his shattered knee. Vito wounded another bandit with a crossbow bolt, and Brother Jedidiah sent another vicious stone across the fray, cracking across the pate of yet another bandit and dropping him senseless to the ground.
The remaining bandits turned tail and fled back towards the temple. "Really?" shouted Gulleck. "You're really gonna run into there?"
The wounded bandit told them, between whimpers, that the Night Walkers had struck a deal with them where the bandits could have the temple as their hideout from which to launch burglaries and thefts, as long as the Night Walkers were allowed safe passage through the temple.
Gulleck sighed and prepared to enter the temple to drag out the remaining two or three bandits who had fled. With the party behind him, he entered the temple vestibule and called out, "Now come on, we don't want a fight, just come out and let's talk about it." He opened the inner doors to the temple and cautiously moved in, looking around. Suddenly, the original bandits plus a larger group of men came charging from two directions - "There they are! Get 'em!" - with swords drawn and rage on their faces. Gulleck and Rutger were staggered by the furious attack. Gulleck's sleeve, already stained with his blood from the earlier attack, turned dark with his blood as a sword bit into his shoulder. Unprepared for the intensity of this fight, Gulleck and Rutger pulled the door shut again, with the mocking laughter of the bandits echoing behind the door.
"All right," said Gulleck, "you wanna play that way..." and he pulled out hammer and iron spikes and began spiking the door shut. Vito ran a length of rope between the handles of the temple doors and tied them tightly shut.
They took the wounded bandit with them back to the surface and handed him over to the master of the Thieves' Guild, and then spent a couple of days resting, to allow Gulleck and Rutger's wounds to begin to heal.
When the group reconvened on Thursday morning, Shorty again accompanied them into the dungeon. They made their cautious way down to the temple of the dead again, and noted with some concern that the weeping angel statues had now vanished entirely from the plaza. The group approached the temple doors with caution, and saw that their ropes now lay on the floor in fragments, and a piece of paper was tacked to the doors. "To 'The Rat Catchers'", read the salutation. It was from Death Watch and Cobweb, the elf brothers who led the Night Walkers, and upbraided the party for interfering with their recent hires. The Night Walkers gave the party one last warning: interfere with them again and their rivalry would turn to outright war.
Vito felt that this had already happened, when the Night Walkers employed the bandits to ambush them, and decided to take matters firmly into his own hands. He set out two wineskins full of wine, one of them adulterated with a large quantity of everyday rat poison. He wrote his own note - "For the Night Walkers" and set it on top of the wineskins. Then the party passed into the temple of the dead and headed down into the catacombs.
They passed the nest of giant rats at the base of the steps, using flaming torches again to frighten the rats away as they passed them, and made their way to explore new areas of the catacombs. Eventually they found themselves at a heavy stone door with inscriptions in Ancient Idalian that declared it to be the mausoleum of a wealthy family. There were scratches on the floor that suggested that this door had been opened and closed more often than one might hope for a mausoleum door. Rutger pulled the door open and the party cautiously entered a long hallway lined with alternating crypt doors.
They pushed open the first door and their noses were assailed by a familiar sickly sweet stench, and a hideous corpse-like creature turned towards them, dropped a bone it had been gnawing on, and leaped at them with ravenous hunger in its dead eyes. Gulleck and Rutger quickly brought the creature to senselessness, but the noise of the battle had drawn the attention of another half dozen of the ghouls, and the adventurers' stomachs sank as they heard the sound of multiple crypt doors creaking open along the hallway.
The party attempted an orderly fighting withdrawal, hoping to get back to the door and use the time-honored "close the door and run away" strategy. Gulleck and Rutger were scratched and bitten by the filthy ghouls, and a tremendous nearly-paralyzing fear coursed through their souls, but they both kept their cool and fought on. Gulleck and Rutger hacked away at the ghouls from the front, while the others looked for openings for arrow, bolt, and stone. Brother Jedidiah attempted to repel the horrible monsters, but his faith wavered and he turned to his sling with more effective results.
"Try this, Gulleck," came Shorty's voice from behind him, and she passed up her magical sword, engraved with skeletal patterns. As Gulleck's hand closed around the hilt, he could feel the magical power thrumming through his arm, and the sword quivered as if it longed to plunge towards the undead abominations. He lunged forward with it, his hand almost guided by the sword itself as it sank itself effortlessly into the chest of the beast in front of him.
"Shorty, your sword is awesome!"
"Yeah, I'll want it back after this, too."
The tide seemed to be turning for the party, but then Ylil made a terrible, terrible blunder. His player rolled a natural 1 for his sling attack. This is the only situation where I enforce a possibility of friendly fire, and I randomly determined the target of his attack among the three allies in front of him. Poor Brother Jedidiah was the unfortunately target, which was bad because old Jed only had one hit point. This time Ylil's player rolled nice and high for the attack, and as Brother Jedidiah was refilling his own sling to attack the ghouls, Ylil's sling stone cracked him in the back of the head from point blank range, fracturing his brittle skull and sending the old cleric crashing to the floor of the crypt.
The party managed to get clear of the mausoleum door and pushed it closed against the scrabbling claws of the ghouls. The mission now became to get Brother Jed's body down to the resurrection pool on the second level. I think they were concerned that the Church wouldn't loan them any more acolytes if they kept losing them. And so they quickly crossed the undercity to the temple of hedonism, passing through and down the corridor to the resurrection pool.
Right outside the door to the room of the pool, they encountered a group of tall goblins, including the two they had met before: Margleton and Clabberpus. They were as friendly as before, in that rather unnerving way. The party explained that they needed to use the pool, and Margleton said, "Oh, be our guest! But you do know, of course, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and for every gift there must eventually be a repayment." Some of the players are already suspicious about the long-term effects of this pool, and this did nothing to make them feel any better. But the goblins strolled off into the darkness chuckling sinisterly, and the party entered the room of the pool and lowered Brother Jedidiah's frail and bloodied body into the slippery water of life.
Moments later, his feeble arms came thrashing above the surface of the pool and they pulled him carefully out. I'm not sure if they ever explained to him what actually happened back there with the ghouls. Yet another (albeit temporary) entry on the Memorial Roll of the Idalium campaign.
Saturday, May 2, 2015
Player Journals from Session 20
My players have been sort of slacking on campaign journals lately! I think it is partly because we've been doing these role-playing heavy sessions lately that have not given them any opportunities to earn experience points. But now that we have returned to our regularly scheduled program of dungeoneering, it starts to make more sense to earn that 10% bonus to experience points.
Gulleck's tenth journal
Gulleck's tenth journal
Turns out humans aren't totally crazy after all. At least some of em make sensible catacombs.
The other fellas did some investigating while I was dealing
with cousin Darneck's latest... issues. Sounds like they maybe forgot
what subtlety is, but that's about normal.
Seems like the skull was stolen by a nasty stinker looking
to raise a dead army. Not real good, so we headed down to the catacombs
where he may be holed up. Had to get a cleric from the temple cause most
of our group got busy with other stuff. Weird old guy. Real excitable. I
wasn't too sure we'd be able to get him back in one piece, but we did.
The humans showed at least a little bit of crazy even
there... Statues that move on their own are weird enough, but a door
that only opens if you bump a dead thing into em? That's pretty dang
nuts.
And since they're humans, the clues to open the door hadda
be hidden away in a skeleton statue that talks into your brain. Why not,
right? Never the easy way with those guys.
Down below we mostly didn't find much yet. Bunch of rats we
kept away with torches, and a dang big spider. Got its attention by
burning the webs. I find that's a good way to deal with that crud
without getting all hung up. Found a little treasure, finally! Been too
long.
Ran into another bunch of adventurers. Nasty pair of elves
and their bullyboys. They offered Muscle Boy a job, and he declined.
Figured he would, we get along pretty good. Offered their bullyboys the
same. Could make good trap-catchers at least, if they take us up on it.
We left em and went on. Didn't explore too much more as we
were getting tired, but we found an old dead fella holding a rolled up
scroll. Seemed like a caretaker type fella. The text was in that old
language, but it wasn't regular words. With Old Cleric's help and cousin
Birrel's big brain, we managed to get the thing translated. I'll attach
that at the end, in just a second.
On our way out we got jumped by an ugly dead thing. Old
Cleric didn't help a whole lot, but we managed to get it dead anyway.
Magic and axes work pretty good for most things.
And here's that translated text:
"Idalium has fallen. The barbarians have sacked what is
left of the city. The battle will not reach me here, but there will be
no replenishing my food and water once I have exhausted what remains
here. The treasure beyond the sea will be of no use to me now. I have
spent my last days completing the index to the roll of the deceased. I
have placed the map of the catacombs in the records room. Perhaps some
day our departed citizens will be remembered and honored once again. I
choose to believe I have done my duty in protecting their legacy.
Antovinius Nerpatian, Caretaker."
Idalium Game 20: Down Among the Dead Men
Session date: Monday, April 20, 2015
Game date: Saturday, March 23, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 2, hp 10, xp 2494/4400
Caryatid, Magic-user 2, hp 8, xp 3524/5000
Retainers:
Ylil, Thief 2, hp 5, xp 1237/2400
Rutger, Fighter 1, hp 9, xp 575/2000
Brother Jedidiah, Cleric 1, hp 1, xp 0/1500
We were short a few players this session, but the game went on. Our typical standard had been to have a week of game time pass per week of real time, but due to the introduction of a "time sensitive quest" into the game, the players were keen to pick the campaign up immediately where we had left off last time. Knowing they were going to explore the unquiet catacombs below the city of Idalium, and being absent Brother Jibber, their usual cleric retainer, Gulleck and Caryatid made their way to the Great Cathedral to inquire into hiring another acolyte for this expedition. I rolled up the stats for this new retainer at the table - Constitution 5, hit points 1 - and decided that their new retainer was a frail elderly man who entered the clerical order late in life as a second career. So that was fun, I got to use my goofy quavery old man voice. The players weren't so sure about Brother Jedidiah's long term prospects: "Can't we look for someone else?" "No, he's the only acolyte they can spare." "Yeah, I wonder why that is..."
At the Rusty Lantern, Gulleck left a message for Shorty "the Mouse", who had bought that magic sword with ominous skeletal patterns at the auction the other night. He was hoping to extend an offer to team up for this mission, thinking her sword might come in handy against the undead. Shorty was not to be found, however, and the group descended into the undercity and made their way back to the temple of the dead.
When they arrived at the plaza of the dead, they were disturbed to note that half of the angel statues were no longer on their plinths, but frozen in mid-stride in the plaza. The group quickly made their way past the angels and into the temple. Beyond the vestibule, they found a wide hallway with walls painted to depict a funeral procession. At the end of the hall, a tattered curtain of blueish-gray linen hung. Near the curtain was the body of what seemed to be an adventurer. He looked fairly recently killed, with his body marred with savage claw and gnaw marks. In rooms off the halls, they found a room full of embalming equipment and work tables, and other rooms containing ceremonial robes and prayer books containing funeral rites.
Beyond the curtain was a large chapel. Several rows of pews faced inward on an open area before a lectern. Behind the lectern was a larger than life statue of a frightful skeleton on a throne, dressed in a shroud, and holding a large scythe in one hand and a bundle of what seemed to be soothing herbs in the other.
Archways on either side of the throne led to a hall behind the chapel and a large pair of metal doors. The doors had no lock or even handle, and appeared to simply be two heavy plates of metal held tightly closed. No matter what they tried, no one in the group could pry the doors open.
Caryatid returned to the chapel and tried pulling on the scythe of the skeleton statue to see if she could somehow trigger a locking mechanism. The scythe did not move, but as she touched the statue it boomed out words in an unknown language. "Words from Ancient Idalium!" exclaimed Brother Jedidiah, who rather fortuitously knew some of that ancient tongue. "How fascinating! It said, 'Let the last act of the dead be to open the door to their place of eternal sleep.'" They puzzled over this at great length, and eventually deduced that only the touch of the dead could unlock the doors. The corpse from the hall was unceremoniously dragged through the chapel and up to the doors, and as they propped it up against the doors, there was a hollow metallic boom, and the great doors slowly opened, revealing a stone staircase that descended into the dark.
Down they went into the cool of the catacombs. The stairs led to a large square entry hall, with narrower catacomb halls exiting to the west and south. This room was overrun with more than a dozen giant rats, and the filthy vermin scampered and scurried around the shredded and befouled shrouds that had become their nest. The reflected glitter of hundreds of coins could be seen in the shrouds and on the floor, but Gulleck and Caryatid, remembering the rats to be surprisingly vicious in numbers (and keenly aware of their lack of a sleep spell) chose to deal with this more cautiously. They lit torches afire, and proceeded cautiously through the room, waving the flaming brands at the rats, which recoiled from the open flame and let the adventurers pass. They passed through the archway to the south and entered the crypts.
They moved through a long narrow hall lined with burial niches on both sides. Shroud-wrapped bodies, some embalmed and still preserved and some long reduced to skeletal remains, lay silent as they passed by nervously. Eventually they came to a door, beyond which was an old abandoned workroom, full of corroded tools, workbenches, sawhorses, etc. Beyond the workroom were other rooms, including a records room of some sort, full of shelves containing scrolls and books, as well a card catalog that seemed to provide an index to the documents on the shelves.
The party also found some sparsely-furnished living quarters here. In a bedroom a skeleton lay silently on a bed, and seemed to be clutching something to its chest. They nervously approached it, and drew a rolled up parchment from its grasp. It turned out to be a letter, but while the writing was in Ancient Idalian letters, the words were unrecognizable. Gulleck reckoned it to be some kind of cipher, and tucked it away to try to decode later.
Beyond the living quarters they found more catacomb hallways, and within one of the halls the found a heavy stone mausoleum door, standing ajar. Cautiously looking within, they found that the room was full of enormous spiderwebs. Corpses lay on the ground and on stone slabs, but seemed to be wrapped in silk rather than shrouds. A silver chalice sat glittering on a shelf, but it too was draped in webs. Gulleck lit a torch from Caryatid's lantern and set the webs on fire. They evaporated in the flames quickly and satisfyingly, but in response, an enormous shiny black spider came squeezing through a doorway on the opposite side of the crypt. It was easily six feet across, and an ominous red hourglass marking was visible on its bloated abdomen as it pulled itself into the tomb. It rushed at Gulleck, venom-dripping fangs snapping at him as he took cover behind his shield. Caryatid spoke the words of the Magic Missile spell, and a glowing golden arrow appeared at her shoulder and then shot past Gulleck to embed itself in the spider. Then Gulleck's battleaxe came crashing down firmly into the spider's head and it shuddered and fell still in the tomb.
There was a similar mausoleum on the opposite side of the hall, and the party heard voices within. As they cautiously entered, a rough-looking hobbit spotted them and called out, "We got company!" And from out of the inner tomb strode the arrogant elf brothers Death Watch and Cobweb, the leaders of the Night Walkers, a rival party from the Adventurer's Guild. As usual, a variety of barbs were exchanged, the elf brothers scoffing with condescension and Gulleck offering deadpan putdowns. Both sides made employment offers to the others' retainers. Eventually, the groups parted and the party decided it was time to begin returning to the Rusty Lantern.
As they walked through yet another catacomb hall, Ylil suddenly heard something shift behind him, and turned to see a corpse drag itself from one of the niches and begin sprinting towards him with frightening speed and unnervingly silent. It looked much like the creatures they had fled in Snapespindle's basement apartment, and as it approached they got the same whiff of sickly sweet stench that had accompanied the creatures there. Gulleck and Rutger quickly moved to get between Ylil and the creature. Brother Jedidiah raised his holy symbol and pronounced in a quavering voice, "Begone, thou abomination, in the name of God!" But his fear was greater than his faith, apparently, for the creature kept running. Caryatid and Gulleck repeated the same one-two punch that had worked on the spider, with Caryatid's Magic Missile softening it up, and then Gulleck's axe taking the head off the creature with one well-aimed blow.
They returned to the surface without further event, glad to be out of the oppressive, claustrophobic catacombs, but knowing they would soon have to return.
Game date: Saturday, March 23, 208
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 2, hp 10, xp 2494/4400
Caryatid, Magic-user 2, hp 8, xp 3524/5000
Retainers:
Ylil, Thief 2, hp 5, xp 1237/2400
Rutger, Fighter 1, hp 9, xp 575/2000
Brother Jedidiah, Cleric 1, hp 1, xp 0/1500
We were short a few players this session, but the game went on. Our typical standard had been to have a week of game time pass per week of real time, but due to the introduction of a "time sensitive quest" into the game, the players were keen to pick the campaign up immediately where we had left off last time. Knowing they were going to explore the unquiet catacombs below the city of Idalium, and being absent Brother Jibber, their usual cleric retainer, Gulleck and Caryatid made their way to the Great Cathedral to inquire into hiring another acolyte for this expedition. I rolled up the stats for this new retainer at the table - Constitution 5, hit points 1 - and decided that their new retainer was a frail elderly man who entered the clerical order late in life as a second career. So that was fun, I got to use my goofy quavery old man voice. The players weren't so sure about Brother Jedidiah's long term prospects: "Can't we look for someone else?" "No, he's the only acolyte they can spare." "Yeah, I wonder why that is..."
At the Rusty Lantern, Gulleck left a message for Shorty "the Mouse", who had bought that magic sword with ominous skeletal patterns at the auction the other night. He was hoping to extend an offer to team up for this mission, thinking her sword might come in handy against the undead. Shorty was not to be found, however, and the group descended into the undercity and made their way back to the temple of the dead.
When they arrived at the plaza of the dead, they were disturbed to note that half of the angel statues were no longer on their plinths, but frozen in mid-stride in the plaza. The group quickly made their way past the angels and into the temple. Beyond the vestibule, they found a wide hallway with walls painted to depict a funeral procession. At the end of the hall, a tattered curtain of blueish-gray linen hung. Near the curtain was the body of what seemed to be an adventurer. He looked fairly recently killed, with his body marred with savage claw and gnaw marks. In rooms off the halls, they found a room full of embalming equipment and work tables, and other rooms containing ceremonial robes and prayer books containing funeral rites.
Beyond the curtain was a large chapel. Several rows of pews faced inward on an open area before a lectern. Behind the lectern was a larger than life statue of a frightful skeleton on a throne, dressed in a shroud, and holding a large scythe in one hand and a bundle of what seemed to be soothing herbs in the other.
Archways on either side of the throne led to a hall behind the chapel and a large pair of metal doors. The doors had no lock or even handle, and appeared to simply be two heavy plates of metal held tightly closed. No matter what they tried, no one in the group could pry the doors open.
Caryatid returned to the chapel and tried pulling on the scythe of the skeleton statue to see if she could somehow trigger a locking mechanism. The scythe did not move, but as she touched the statue it boomed out words in an unknown language. "Words from Ancient Idalium!" exclaimed Brother Jedidiah, who rather fortuitously knew some of that ancient tongue. "How fascinating! It said, 'Let the last act of the dead be to open the door to their place of eternal sleep.'" They puzzled over this at great length, and eventually deduced that only the touch of the dead could unlock the doors. The corpse from the hall was unceremoniously dragged through the chapel and up to the doors, and as they propped it up against the doors, there was a hollow metallic boom, and the great doors slowly opened, revealing a stone staircase that descended into the dark.
Down they went into the cool of the catacombs. The stairs led to a large square entry hall, with narrower catacomb halls exiting to the west and south. This room was overrun with more than a dozen giant rats, and the filthy vermin scampered and scurried around the shredded and befouled shrouds that had become their nest. The reflected glitter of hundreds of coins could be seen in the shrouds and on the floor, but Gulleck and Caryatid, remembering the rats to be surprisingly vicious in numbers (and keenly aware of their lack of a sleep spell) chose to deal with this more cautiously. They lit torches afire, and proceeded cautiously through the room, waving the flaming brands at the rats, which recoiled from the open flame and let the adventurers pass. They passed through the archway to the south and entered the crypts.
They moved through a long narrow hall lined with burial niches on both sides. Shroud-wrapped bodies, some embalmed and still preserved and some long reduced to skeletal remains, lay silent as they passed by nervously. Eventually they came to a door, beyond which was an old abandoned workroom, full of corroded tools, workbenches, sawhorses, etc. Beyond the workroom were other rooms, including a records room of some sort, full of shelves containing scrolls and books, as well a card catalog that seemed to provide an index to the documents on the shelves.
The party also found some sparsely-furnished living quarters here. In a bedroom a skeleton lay silently on a bed, and seemed to be clutching something to its chest. They nervously approached it, and drew a rolled up parchment from its grasp. It turned out to be a letter, but while the writing was in Ancient Idalian letters, the words were unrecognizable. Gulleck reckoned it to be some kind of cipher, and tucked it away to try to decode later.
Beyond the living quarters they found more catacomb hallways, and within one of the halls the found a heavy stone mausoleum door, standing ajar. Cautiously looking within, they found that the room was full of enormous spiderwebs. Corpses lay on the ground and on stone slabs, but seemed to be wrapped in silk rather than shrouds. A silver chalice sat glittering on a shelf, but it too was draped in webs. Gulleck lit a torch from Caryatid's lantern and set the webs on fire. They evaporated in the flames quickly and satisfyingly, but in response, an enormous shiny black spider came squeezing through a doorway on the opposite side of the crypt. It was easily six feet across, and an ominous red hourglass marking was visible on its bloated abdomen as it pulled itself into the tomb. It rushed at Gulleck, venom-dripping fangs snapping at him as he took cover behind his shield. Caryatid spoke the words of the Magic Missile spell, and a glowing golden arrow appeared at her shoulder and then shot past Gulleck to embed itself in the spider. Then Gulleck's battleaxe came crashing down firmly into the spider's head and it shuddered and fell still in the tomb.
There was a similar mausoleum on the opposite side of the hall, and the party heard voices within. As they cautiously entered, a rough-looking hobbit spotted them and called out, "We got company!" And from out of the inner tomb strode the arrogant elf brothers Death Watch and Cobweb, the leaders of the Night Walkers, a rival party from the Adventurer's Guild. As usual, a variety of barbs were exchanged, the elf brothers scoffing with condescension and Gulleck offering deadpan putdowns. Both sides made employment offers to the others' retainers. Eventually, the groups parted and the party decided it was time to begin returning to the Rusty Lantern.
As they walked through yet another catacomb hall, Ylil suddenly heard something shift behind him, and turned to see a corpse drag itself from one of the niches and begin sprinting towards him with frightening speed and unnervingly silent. It looked much like the creatures they had fled in Snapespindle's basement apartment, and as it approached they got the same whiff of sickly sweet stench that had accompanied the creatures there. Gulleck and Rutger quickly moved to get between Ylil and the creature. Brother Jedidiah raised his holy symbol and pronounced in a quavering voice, "Begone, thou abomination, in the name of God!" But his fear was greater than his faith, apparently, for the creature kept running. Caryatid and Gulleck repeated the same one-two punch that had worked on the spider, with Caryatid's Magic Missile softening it up, and then Gulleck's axe taking the head off the creature with one well-aimed blow.
They returned to the surface without further event, glad to be out of the oppressive, claustrophobic catacombs, but knowing they would soon have to return.
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