Time: 11/19/22 - 11/22/22 active 11/23/22
PCs: Blair, Bigtoe, Braylen
Surviving Hench: Abyan
Back in the saddle after a few weeks off due to scheduling, Team B caught up on some downtime then decided to tackle a hook from Teutch the Alchemist. They followed a treasure map to a crumbled tower quite some distance from Teutchland but were graciously offered flying goats with butterfly wings for transportation. The intel they had on the place was that it was an old experimental ground for a mad wizard who specialized in Fear based spells. Functionally it meant that any random encounters were going to be some weird take on humanoids suffering from medical and psychological experimentation.
I think Teutch generated this hook originally just before Halloween but it didn’t get picked up. Definitely had some Halloween, horror movie vibes, but we’ll get to that.
They landed and found a dark tower with really strange architecture and a steel bound door that was locked. The tower was crumbling due to poorly aligned walls and bizarre angles to the structure. Bigtoe went to work picking the lock but a band of goblins showed up down the mountainside. Everyone hid but Bigtoe, who was surprised. Fortunately the Goblins didn’t notice him by the building and carried on their way. The party gained entry to the creepy tower into a small entry chamber with stairs leading down and a diner style two way door with a grimy window in it that they couldn’t see through.
Blair tracked around and found evidence of shuffling feet both old and recent leading in both directions. They were given Locate Object potions by Teutch but decided that they wanted to get deeper into the building before using them. They chose the diner door and very carefully inspected for traps but found none. While attempting to quietly peek into the door, Blair knocked it completely off the hinges. Oops.
The “diner” had a bar/counter with a few stools bolted to the floor, some places on the end cleared of dust as though someone, or something, had sat there recently. There was a door leading out and they were able to see through the window in it to the hallway beyond which had a floor of rolling waves that would be really weird to fight on. They carefully checked this door and EVERY BLOODY DOOR IN THE PLACE for traps before wobbling through the corridor to the next chamber.
Here they found a bunch of plush but poorly maintained furniture in haphazard configuration. There were drag marks all over the floor like the furniture was moved often. I had set the scene to have more encounters in the dungeon but the dice had different plans. Two hallways led out of this room, one at a slight grade up. The floors of the place were wooden and the whole place creaked and groaned due to the poor architecture.
Blair investigated the corridor that had the grade to it, finding that it rapidly increased until she had to Climb Walls to proceed. It leveled out but started to narrow Alice in Wonderland style until she was crawling. She put a Light spell on an arrow so she could see and continued on eventually triggering a trap door! It dropped her on a spiral slide and with a very loud “weeeeeee” she landed in a circular room. There was a wine rack along one wall with a key made of seashells hanging from a nail on it and a hobbit-like circular door with a doorknob in the middle. Blair grabbed a few bottles and the key and Climbed back up the slide eventually back to the party.
They traveled on, finding a dead end and eventually backtracking to the stairs at the start of the dungeon. Through all of this, no random encounter hits. It was a place that showed many signs of habitation but no inhabitants. Did this lead to more tension during the session? I’m not sure, but I’d like to think so.
Down the short stairway to a room with a very low ceiling, they found a door and another stair leading up. Again, much time spent on door investigation. Beyond the door they found a fireman’s pole with at least one level above and below. While tracking around finally an encounter! Orcs started sliding down the pole. Combat was on and the party made short work of the two orcs, but they heard footsteps retreating above them.
They ran out and up the stairs, chasing the orcs down through a hallway with both old and fresh blood trails on the floor and into a room with a dozen other orcs strapped to racks on the wall like Hannibal in Silence of the Lambs. The escapees were trying to free other orcs to help them fight but were quickly put down by the group. The party discovered the orcs all had different surgical deformities, missing teeth or missing eyelids or missing hearts. They also found a table with tools and some metamphora that contained various parts of dissected beastmen.
They determined that they were centrally located enough in the building to use a Locate Object potion, which allows the user to determine a generic object within range. They chose scroll as that was the payout item from Teutch and it indicated it was to the south and down a level. They considered the fireman’s pole but decided to look for stairs, which they eventually found and descended to a circular chamber with a hexagonal door on the southern wall that was lined with etched egyptian runes that glowed as Bigtoe got closer to investigate. There were also six different humanoid skins flayed and tacked to boards along the west side of the room.
Much talk was had over how to approach the CERTAIN TO BE TRAPPED DOOR. I mean, it glowed when anyone got closer. Bigtoe made the decision to chop through the sandstone wall and around the door, but the rest of the party felt the 5 turns to do so was going to be a challenge. Braylen the Battlemage just walked up, took a couple deep breaths, and opened the door with the little hospital pull latch handle. It dinged like a hospital elevator and the door slowly faded away to reveal a hexagonal receptionist office.
There was a desk with a telephone on it and a chair behind it that was spinning slowly and then stopped as though someone had been sitting there and fled quickly. They searched the desk and found an office calendar with doodles in the margins and an office phone that appeared to be magical instead of mechanical much to Bigtoe’s disappointment. It truly was a House of Horrors.
They chose one of two passages out of the room based on the guidance of the Locate Object potion that Blair had consumed, ending up in another hexagonal room with lockers along the southern walls and benches in front of them. The potion indicated there was a scroll in one of the lockers so they started searching. Shortly thereafter screaming could be heard coming from one of the exits to the room, loud but distant and a little hard to parse due to the weird shapes of the hallways and rooms. They ignored it and kept searching, taking the time to carefully examine each locker door for traps.
Eventually a gang of lizardmen in hospital gowns and clutching various surgical implements screamed down the hallway towards the party. Bigtoe rushed to try to hold the bottleneck while Blair threw a bola (tf?) at the leading lizardman, wrapping his feet and causing another one behind him to fall as well. The rest charged and battle was joined. Bigtoe the Extremely Tanky was hit like a bajillion times despite his wildly high AC, Braylen’s player confirming that my damascus patterned D20 was indeed rolling 20s left and right, and Blair summoned berzerkers to defeat the maddened beastmen.
They continued searching and found the correct locker which opened into an interdimensional space that held the items that they searched for on little pedestals: a ring made of scarabs that held hands and appeared to be frozen mid-skip, a potion bottle, a cape made of vulture feathers, and a scroll in a hard leather case. When Blair reached in to grab the items she could see through her skin like an xray. Someone asked when she pulled the items out if her arm still showed that way which didn’t occur to me so I rolled to see if it was permanent. It wasn’t. Disappointing.
The lighting in the place changed from orange to red and a loud klaxon started blaring when the scroll was removed. The party decided not to investigate the rest of the complex and made good their escape. They passed by the telephone that was ringing and when someone picked it up (I forget who, Braylen maybe?) they could just hear screaming and the klaxon in the background. They tossed the phone down and fled the tower, deciding to toss oil on and use a burning hands scroll to set the place on fire once they got outside. They hovered around on the magical butterfly goats until they were convinced the thing burned all the way down and then retreated back to Teutchland, narrowly avoiding some Frost Giant boulders thrown their way.
Musings:
Randomly generating a dungeon is fun. This one was unusual in that no encounters hit for the rooms themselves (every room was “Unique” which led to the bizarre funhouse vibes) and only a few random encounters in the whole thing. The receptionist that escaped was getting the Big Bad to cause some trouble, but the party was smart in securing the objective and GTFO. Anyone keeping interdimensional portals and telephones and high level scrolls was probably a BAMF anyway. Proud of them for playing smart, disappointed there wasn’t more risk. No traps, few encounters, good payout, good job guys. Maybe next time!
Xp from Kills: 330
Xp from Loot: 9117
Total XP: 9447
Cuts: 7
PC: 0% 2,699 5% 2,834 10% 2,969
Hench: 0% 1,350 5% 1,417 10% 1,485
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