PCs: Gwendolyn (Bard), Luther (Paladin), Redcorn (Cleric), Clete (Mage), Caspian (Bard)
Henches: Mulligan, Amadayo, Mahin, Madroff, Beyza, Eggie, Jaylen, Jarod, Gucci (temporary)
#ACKS
After the victory over the beastman occupying force of the Butzkrag, a religious or ritual location for the humanoids of the Bone Marches, Lord Issac and Bishop Redcorn put the word out for the famous Team A to clear the dungeon of evil and put a stop to the Dark Hymn once and for all.
The heroes answered the call, adding two new PCs to the group in Clete the Mage described as a sketchy tweeker that you’d hire in a Home Depot parking lot and Caspian the Bard, a swashbuckling singer of sea shanties. They also had a ton of henchmen, putting their party into the comically large range for a dungeon delve. They were taking this thing seriously, which is good. I mean, I abstain from any commentary on the validity of player actions.
The first part of the session was a lot of exposition for the benefit of the newer guys about setting and events leading up to where they found themselves. Clete’s player had a leg up having read the previous session reports so that was cool. Once we got that squared away the party set off from Talston towards Riverstride.
Redcorn introduced some of the party to Lord Issac (Patron Paladin) who hadn’t met him before while others avoided the notorious Hanger of PCs. Issac let them know that he intended to meet them out at his forward base and remain on site while they delved. With access to troops and magic from his retainers, this could be quite a boon for an injured party returning from the dungeon in the form of safety to rest and additional healing to recover.
The team set out towards Northbridge, stopping off at Hakim’s roadside emporium. There was grumbling about him not dealing in magic items but when do PCs not grumble? He was happy to see them as usual and sold them some rope and other normal things.
They had a pretty easy trip aside from having to leave the troops behind, realizing again that armies move slow. They set their mercs to travel with Issac’s supply train and carried on, arriving at the Yellow River Base camp a half a hex or so away from their target location. The mercs would catch up when they could.
Issac flew out to meet them on a giant hawk, wishing them well and sending some troops to guard the entrance to the Butzkrag, a giant Flannish aztec style pyramid with a winding, irregular staircase leading into a dark and evil dungeon. I’m trying to more clearly emphasize the supernatural nature of dungeons and will continue to do so moving forward. These are not mundane mineshafts in the ground, these are dark, dank, cesspools of danger.
They landed deep in the pyramid in a room with several doors. Every surface of the room up to about 8 or 9 feet was covered in layer on layer of foul beastman graffiti. Eggie the henchman thief started checking doors while others tried to decipher some of the graffiti. One door had fluttering sounds behind it and there were more recent symbols showing winged skulls painted on while another had symbols that the nerds in the group were able to determine meant food.
They chatted a bit about options before testing the winged skull door, Luther the paladin pulling it open to peek inside. He was immediately swarmed by winged anteater shaped creatures. One of the henches rolled high initiative and slammed into the door to close it before the creatures could bite anyone’s face off. The party chose to leave that room alone.
They went into what they called the “food” door, discovering dozens of bodies laid out on the floor with rough burlap tarps thrown over them. The group made no effort to investigate, picking their way through the room and out through another hallway. I guess a beastman meat storage wasn’t that interesting idk.
Down a dark hallway to an intersection and another choice of direction. The caller for this session was Gwendolyn who was trying to maintain a methodical approach to exploration by taking all left turns, so they took the lefternmost direction and the front rank immediately fell into a pit trap, Luther and Beyza collapsing at the bottom of everyone’s favorite trap. They didn’t blame the caller, climbed out of the hole, and carried on.
They rounded a corner and saw the door ahead of them closing. Eggie rushed forward to listen but didn’t hear anything. They busted in like big damn heroes to find a room filled with broken crates, barrels, and such but no sign of an enemy. The group checked it over carefully and found some stashed loot but nothing else while others applied a little comfrey to the pit-divers.
The crew proceeded cautiously and arrived at a six-way intersection which was fun to describe to the mapper. I succumbed to a moment of weakness and just showed him that section of the map for him to copy. I will burn that out of myself for next time. True to form they went left here to another four way and grumbling about so many directions to go.
This went on for a while, left, left, left, all the while they learned more about the dungeon’s layout, verified that it reconnected onto the original chamber in several places. They found a door which Eggie checked as was customary and determined there was definitely a trap. While trying to disarm it, he triggered it and took a spear from the ceiling, nearly killing him. He limped back to the group and announced, “Disarmed the trap, boss.” Eggie’s a trooper.
Entering this room and finding nothing obvious, the logic was thrown out that you don’t trap rooms with nothing in them, so they carefully searched over the place before finding a secret door in one corner. This led to another door that was locked. They chose violence on this one, applying a crowbar and the will of Heironeous in the form of Luther leaning on it.
The door popped open to a waiting band of berserkers, clearly unhappy at their back entrance being invaded. Gwendolyn rushed forward to parley and narrowly avoided immediate combat by confusing them with some chatter and then playing some music. The leader of the pack was Gucci, a wiry fellow with a weird tick when he talked and a strange unblinking stare. He was not super impressed by the adventurers but his crew was digging the music so he gave it a chance.
This turned out to be a mistake made by the uncultured berserkers as Gwendolyn’s Magical Music proficiency took hold, charming them into being much more friendly. From here it was a short jump to hiring the berserkers onto their already large party, nearly doubling its size. Gucci was much more forthcoming with information now, telling them about morlocks in the northern wing of the place that simply had to go. He also told them about a wild room just off of this one that would trip them out. He encouraged them to experience it and twitched again in a totally not suspicious way. Despite appearances, the berserkers informed Clete that they were out of mushrooms and pretty bummed by that. So was Clete.
The party investigated to find a very small closet, about 6 feet on a side, with a single coin-sized obsidian disc set into the mathematical center of each surface. Gucci laughed and said yeah touch them, and twitched again. There was much consternation among the players at this point. Luther detected evil and definitely found some glowing around each disc and Clete hit on a Loremastery check, allowing him to recall from his studies that this type of thing smacked of the involvement of the trickster god Olidammara and the god of risks, Norebo, as rites of passage, the effects of which could be virtually anything.
They briefly discussed interacting with it anyway, with the leveled, Lawful players jokingly pushing the new guys to touch it, what did they have to lose? Fortunately it didn’t go any further and no one lost any class powers as the decision was ultimately made to attempt a Dispel Magic from Redcorn, which worked in a shower of black sparks.
Gucci pointed out a few traps and a staircase leading down along their way to the morlock wing of the dungeon. Once nearby, Gwendolyn used her Inspire Courage ability since they were pretty sure the berserkers were going to fight anyway. Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song had the boys so geeked up that they charged off into the room, engaging the waiting morlocks in a rush.
This party was already relatively powerful for the first level of this dungeon. Adding a bunch of cannon fodder didn’t balance the scales any so the fight was pretty short and one-sided. They beat down a bunch of eyeless savage humanoids and white apes, the final one running away to be chased down by one of Redcorn’s tigers, and lost a few berserkers in the scrum who didn’t seem to care one bit.
They proceeded further into the wing, discovering the bulk of the morlocks in a bit of a better position to fight back. Their reaction was high which indicated they really didn’t want to fight. The party gave them the option of relocating or dying and they chose the former, packing their meager belongings and women and children and being marched out of the dungeon. They went down the opposite side of the pyramid from the waiting troops and Trail of Tears’d it out into the wilderness. They were at least lucky that night had fallen.
Back in the dungeon and running low on session time, the group rushed through the morlock wing that was clear now, finding the pen they kept apes in and their treasure trove. There was another pit that I think Gucci fell in, but he laughed it off and climbed out.
Continuing on, the group discovered a perfectly spherical chamber of some matte black metal that no one was familiar with. It gave off serious sinister vibes to the Cleric and Paladin but did not register on a detect evil or detect magic. It was wrong on some primal, instinctual level but did not appear to be actively harmful. At the bottom of the bowl was a crop of black mushrooms which Clete made careful note of but did not mention interest in yet. Maybe next time.
In a couple of these hallways on this side of the dungeon they found chimneys, one up and one down. I think the player reaction was such that they were thinking of a fireplace chimney that’s not really a passage. I need to do better about describing things that I take for granted as these chimneys were certainly large enough for people to pass through, albeit with some effort made to climb safely.
Anyway the crew looped back to the entrance and linked up with the waiting soldiers outside to rest at the Yellow River Base, which I consider safe enough to count as a stopping point for terms of resting and xp gain.
Musings:
New players are fun, glad to have them. Redcorn’s player is very outgoing and talks about ACKS at the local shops and things, so it’s cool to see his excitement infecting others.
This is another dungeon that’s been here for ages, so it’s interesting to see how it changes from what I originally wrote to several generations of restocking/conflict checks. The more or less random exploratory factions appeared to have settled into wings, of which the group has found two so far.
It was generated using Appendix A of AD&D 1e’s DMG. There are conflicting views on if dungeons should be totally random or totally DM generated or some mixture among people in the hobby that I respect. I find that, as in most things, I’m somewhere in the middle. I like the random generation to get something on paper, get a starting place. As I think more about what may or may not be there I can build out from it. It’s worked well in the Grotto and I think it’s gonna be fun here.
An important thing for dungeon delving is patience. Dungeons are often big, multi-leveled endeavors. Sometimes you’re only there to score big and bounce. Sometimes a Patron tasks you with clearing every room of every level, lol. I had no idea that was the case here until the session started, so it’ll be cool to see how the party approaches it, particularly the sessions where they don’t score very much treasure.
Coincidentally, I view dungeons in this manner when I PC. I want to take and seize ground, establish fall back points, continue forward. I am often the minority opinion for this strategy so I was definitely surprised to see it come up here. Hopefully the good guys win and stick it to the Dark Hymn, but we’ll have to see what happens next time.
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