Time: 2/11/13, Rest 2/12/23, Active 2/13/23
PCs: Blair, Bigtoe, Braxton, Benjamin
Hench: Goda, Doofus, Jahanaray, Isabel
The Dark Hymn Intensifies 2/1/23: The Dark Hymn that has haunted the dreams of everyone in Oberholt has intensified, some swearing that they can hear it ever so faintly during awkward pauses in conversations or other times of social anxiety. Sleep is at a premium, most peasants and commoners running on fumes and struggling with day to day life due to the persistent terrifying dreams.
Reaction and morale checks, including Domains, during the month of February are made at -2 due to fear, distrust, panic, and despair. Account for these in your dealings both in session and in downtime.
February kicked off with this update on the status of The Dark Hymn. It was apparently getting worse and the Patrons were starting to notice due to the severe morale penalty. Some efforts were made by various entities, with Teutch the Alchemist (Patron Mage) releasing the following in the Discord chat:
Teutch sends a message to Team A with the following information and lets Barbinikus pass along the following information to Team B if and when they are at the Friendship Tower:
Lockleaf has learned of a weirding dungeon many call the grotto of the Mad King. You will find an oasis of sparkling water that juts off from the river south of my tower. Around this possibly magical water are Statues of Tharizdun around the small blue pond which have mostly been defaced. There is an underwater cave there which leads to a beachside grotto where the Mad King long ago built a temple to entreat with his demons. We have reason to believe, now abandoned, a cult of Tharizdun is holding rituals at the temple which are helping to cause the Dark Dreams! Teutch has learned that the ritual is of a Chaotic divine origin and believes if this cult is dealt with the nightmares may stop or lessen. Teutch asks that Team A SUCCESSFULLY tackle this difficulty of which they will be rewarded with his forgiveness and good will. Team B, should they attempt it, will be rewarded with 5,000 gp. Good luck!
Teutch’s henches in downtime had been working on digging up rumors, which is that particular player’s justification for memeing things into the game that sound interesting to him. By stacking rumors together, it adds to the detail of the rumor and provides a more robust opportunity to world-build. In the case of world-altering events, this practice works well to get the ball rolling on responding to it. We saw it across several campaigns during the Curse of Lammala multi-world event over the fall and winter and I expect we’ll see it moving forward.
Anyway, Team A promptly hung Teutch a collective middle finger. They’re officially fed up with the fallout from the trial and felt that the reward of “forgiveness” was insulting. Team B, on the other hand, was offered gold. So that’s who the players decided to run for the mission.
It’s nice to be able to run a dungeon, also nice when it’s relatively close to a launching point. Wilderness travel is fun but can soak up a lot of session time. The team got settled relatively quickly for our table and took off, departing south from Teutch’s Purple Tower in search of the indicated oasis. They had tried to beg resources from Teutch but none were on offer.
They saw a band of troglodytes on the way, but neither group was interested in a roughly fair fight so they avoided each other. Eventually Braxton the explorer was able to dope out the location of the oasis, through a narrow crevasse and nestled in an isolated little cavity of the mountains. They squeezed in and started looking around, Blair and Braxton both tracking and Bigtoe testing water flow from the crystal clear pool in the middle of the spot to see what they could learn.
The pool’s water was cold and clear, tasted flat and slightly metallic, and filled eight separate tunnels that stretched out in every direction just under the water’s surface. Benjamin stripped down and jumped in, poking around a little and confirming that the tunnels ran off into the distance.
Around the pool were eight statues of Tharizdun, the chaotic god of destruction, which I described as abstract modern art pieces standing on plinths that were scribed with a bizarre mixture of pictograms and runes and random scribbles. They were also vandalized superficially by previous visitors to the site. There was information to learn from the plinths in varying degrees based on available proficiencies, with one of the henchmen coming in clutch with Caving. He was able to dope out a path described through the maze of underwater tunnels and share it with the party.
Using that info, some rope for safety, and a light spell on his dagger, Benjamin dove back in and swam through the first three of the indicated tunnels, confirming that they continued to branch and twist further in. There was a small pocket of air above each branching intersection where he could catch his breath and he continued as far as he could until he ran out of rope. In the last air pocket he saw a lush growth of lichen with some pinholes of sunlight coming through the roof of the small cavern.
Prior to entering they had discussed a simple code of two quick tugs to pull him out quickly. At this point he tugged three times on the rope, which confused everyone outside. They kind of tugged back and forth for a minute while laughing about codes. I’m still not sure they ever settled on what each series of tugs meant.
He used the rope to guide his way back and the party discussed their options. Several ideas were floated to navigate the cave system, eventually settling on Benjamin swimming back to the lichen room and lighting a torch so they could find him from above and dig through the cavern roof. I think the idea was to shorten the distance to the underground grotto that they sought so their rope would reach as a safety line, but I don’t remember.
The rest of the crew left him tethered to a horse and went to find where the roof of the cavern was thin. Benjamin swam in and rigged a standing loop so he could light a torch that would smoke through the holes. Eventually they found it and used spikes to hammer through the pre-existing cracks and reveal daylight. Benjamin swam out and met them topside where they retethered their safety line and extended it as far as they could with all the rope that they had.
Benjamin rigged a drop line on a grappling hook so that he didn’t get trapped and dropped in from the newly opened roof. The daring assassin swam forward as the water scout with another light spell cast on his dagger. He was able to make it to a much larger pool but ran out of safety rope. He decided to unhook and swim up, surfacing in a very large perfectly circular room with a softly sloping sandy beach area.
Benjamin could see a towel rack by the light of a burning torch near a corridor to the west but the rest of the chamber was too big for his available light. He immediately ducked back into the water and grabbed the guide rope, pulling himself out. He was very concerned that there would be cultists lurking about.
The party spent a bit more time discussing how to make it to the grotto, eventually extending the safety line by the length of the drop line that was rigged which gave them just enough length. They were concerned over how much difficulty their heavies would have in bigger armor. Swimming in ACKS is pretty forgiving until you miss a throw then you’re SOL, so they started a buddy system, swimming in twos.
Benjamin and Blair, the sneaky folk of the group, took point and made landfall in the grotto, sneaking around and securing the area where there were no obvious threats. The rest of the party followed and poked around. They had a massive natural corridor to the east, a little rat crawl where they found fresh evidence of giant rats with tracking, and then a structured hallway to the west where the walls were tiled with crazy black and white swirls painted in old blood that was brown and flaking.
The party decided to follow the western corridor as they felt the cult would more likely be towards the lit torches and fresh towels. They crept down a long hallway that had burning torches at irregular intervals eventually coming upon some kind of ritual entry chamber. There was blood splatter on the floor, the walls were damaged by many repeated sledgehammer blows, the tools themselves leaning against the northern wall, and several rows of votive candles burned on a cabinet on the eastern wall.
There were a few options here, one a short hallway to a very dark room where they could hear chains rattling, people moaning, and unsettled giggling and the other a door leading east. They chose to avoid the weird dark room despite many BDSM jokes and sneak through the eastern door.
This led into a large kitchen/dining area with a well-stocked prep station and two long trestle tables. Four other exits led from here and it was at this point that one of the players made the comment, “Oh wow so this is probably an actual dungeon then?” I blinked a few times and nodded. They thought the water cave was the raid boss, I guess.
They peeked into an empty hallway and listened at a door but were immediately intrigued by the sounds of ritual chanting coming from an open hallway to the south. Blair the nightblade used her last spell to cast invisibility on Benjamin and the two crept into the poorly lit room, trying to position themselves to greatest effect when the inevitable combat ensued.
A large eight-pointed star dominated the center of the floor’s surface with a human hanging from a meathook at each point. Periodically, the black-robed priest dancing in the middle would slice a piece off of a helpless captive and toss it into the pile in the center. Around him danced eight other cultists to the boots-and-pants beat that only they could hear. I may have demonstrated this dance. I am not ashamed.
Two other chaotic priests waited on the sidelines of the ceremony, hoods raised and hyping themselves up for whatever their part was to be. Braxton shot at the head priest in the center to draw them to the party’s waiting ranks, where the assassin type PCs would then gotcha them from the shadows. It worked great on the mook cultists who charged with wild abandon, but the two of the clerics stood back and cast spells. One of the other waiting clerics had to rush into the circle to keep the ceremony going apparently, which left him out of the fight.
So, Hold Person is really powerful. TPK powerful. Unfortunately, saves have to be failed for it to matter. The party made their saves against a few hold person casts, one of the henches failed a Cause Fear cast, and the battle continued. Blair the nightblade was not invisible and didn’t have a great path to the big dog, so she joined the scrum and cleaved two or three of them down. Benjamin, on the other hand, used the chaos to reposition and backstab the replacement cleric in the middle. Once he realized that the cleric literally could not stop the ritual he just slit his throat.
Meanwhile the main battle was not going well for the cultists. Most of their number were down and the high priest was out of spells. Benjamin engaged him and they traded blows for a bit, but eventually the PCs were victorious. Zealous morale bonuses kept the fight going longer than normal, forcing them to kill every enemy. They went to town destroying a small obsidian altar with deliberately sharpened edges in one corner and the bizarre metal octagram of pulsing red magic in the floor. They also found a weird metal door covered in strange runes behind a satin curtain but couldn’t figure a way to open it so they bounced.
The kinder members of the party tried to rescue the captives, but most expired as the ritual was disrupted. One particularly hardy fellow survived, punching the air and cussin’ at them in delirious belligerence. As they were helping him and some loot from the clerics out of the room, a patrol of enemies showed up from the north. This crew was a little different, with a handful of gnolls wearing blindfolds and two armored clerics at the helm.
Braxton was watching for them and sounded the alarm. He also plugged one with an arrow as they closed but was downed before they moved onto the rushing party. One of the clerics dropped Darkness on the melee, letting their blind gnolls go to town and waiting for something to come out of it. Blair and Benjamin struck out in a different direction, trying to find another way to get to the clerics on the backline without having to go through the darkness.
They found their way around and eliminated the clerics. The melee in the darkness was a slap fight with high ac, attack throw negatives, and no particularly impressive melee PCs involved. Eventually Benjamin fired arrows blindly into the scrum, rolling very high and very lucky as the chance to hit friendlies was high. A fate point (Heroic Fantasy Handbook optional rule) saved Braxton, who got some magical healing from a cleric hench so he didn’t have to rest and they continued their exfil.
The party got back to the entry chamber and decided to look into the “BDSM” room, shining their lights in and revealing more captives on meathooks who had gone mad. They also discovered an obsidian pillar that radiated chaotic energy. Attempts to save the captives were again not very successful, but two of the dozen or so were walking wounded and potentially able to be rescued. They also smashed the altar but their cleric didn’t think they had done enough to truly cleanse it.
Limping out to the grotto and unable to find a better way out, they needed a plan to get the freed captives out through the water. While they discussed, a booming voice called out to them from a hole in the wall high above the grotto’s pool. “Hey you! What dis? You tribute!” came from a giant head with a single eye attached to a presumably giant body. The head disappeared a big stomping footsteps could be heard receding.
The party knew they were either going to have to face this new threat or escape and didn’t think they could do so with the captives. The lawful cleric hench gave the punch-drunk one his shield and mace and pushed them into the hallway to hide with promises to return for them ASAP. The PCs then made their escape through the water using their safety line and buddy system, where several of them nearly drowned several times.
They gasped to the surface and climbed out, galloping back to Teutch tower to end the session. The cleric was very distraught at having to leave the captives. They know that they interrupted one ritual and still have an unresolved sinkhole of evil. There’s all kinds of dungeon left there and for once they haven’t gone a week or two into the future. Next week could get spicy.
Musings:
I worry that I’m too easy as a DM sometimes, but then situations happen where the party is a few missed saves away from death. I was a little surprised that NO ONE missed a save to the hold spells. The party has done right by their henches in general and if they go back I think the cleric will relax. There’s no telling how the dungeon ecosystem will change after their raid. It’s fun to consider these things but they may never go back so who knows? Tune in next time to find out!
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