Henches: Mulligan, Mahin, Madroff, Beyza, Eggie, Jarod
#ACKS
We ended up taking a week-long break due to some unforeseen IRL interruptions, but the party was pretty isolated at the Yellow River Base camp of Lord Issac’s (Patron Paladin) so there wasn’t a lot of downtime action.
The group is dedicated to ending the Dark Hymn and clearing the Butzkrag which was evident as they geared up for another delve into the beastman temple/dungeon/ancient Flannish pyramid. By clearing, I mean clear every room of every level. It’s good to have goals.
Oberholt uses 1:1 time, one day in game is one day out of game. The reasons for this have been discussed and I won’t go into them again here. What’s important to note is that much like weight, gold, and connections, time is a resource. Redcorn had previously left his mercenaries with Lord Issac’s supply train to arrive later because of how slowly they moved. The calendar caught up this session and his mercs arrived with Issac’s resupply, putting the party at full strength with PCs and mercs.
They made their way the short distance back to the Butzkrag, adding their mercs to the security force that Issac had already lent them. As they got organized to enter the dungeon, we discussed party size. I put a cap at 12 members of the party, for now, as it feels a little silly to roll into a dungeon with a platoon. There have been some discussions on the ACKS Discord about specific modifiers to larger or smaller parties, but frankly I’ve got enough to keep up with and don’t feel like taxing my already relatively smooth brain with more modifiers to forget when they matter.
They made their cuts, leaving a few henchmen outside to reload with in an emergency, and made their way down the irregular stairwell into the pyramid, spiraling at seemingly random intervals counter clockwise and into what Gwendolyn dubbed “the Lobby”. It was a large room covered in beastman graffiti of all heinous types and several doors leading deeper into the first level of the dungeon.
Last delve, Gwendolyn had hired Gucci the Berserker and his crew to help the party clear the level and she intended to get what she paid for, so the group started off by heading to the berserkers’ lair to find Gucci. They tried to go in the back door by a spear trap, but Eggie the Thief wasn’t confident that the trap had not reset and urged them to re-route. Clete the Mage was able to recall the location of a trap that Gucci warned the party of so they dodged that and came to the broken portcullis that acted as the front entrance to Gucci’s lair.
The party’s beef put their backs into it to lift the obstacle and stake it into place. They looked around and found that the berserkers had vacated the premises. Vowing a stern talking to, Gwendolyn the Disney Princess marched the party off in search of Gucci in the Morlock wing of the dungeon that they had liberated on the first visit. They had no luck tracking down the berserkers, but they did find a dead body lying among the black mushrooms at the bottom of the eerie metal sphere room.
Clete was keen to get a sample of those mushrooms for you know, reasons, but not particularly known for his courage. The group was curious about the body that was covered in young mushroom growths. This led to Luther surfing down into the spherical chamber on his shield and into the CLEARLY DANGEROUS MUSHROOMS. The paladin hit the mushroom field in a puff of noxious spores, prompting a saving throw versus poison. He passed and coughed and wheezed as he checked the body, revealing it to indeed be one of the berserkers. The party reeled him back in with the safety rope around his waist and Clete scraped the mushroom goo off of Luther’s shield to sample for later.
After a while, Luther’s eyes stopped watering and the party moved on, exploring areas not yet traveled. The next corridor opened into a T intersection where they encountered a handful of ogres headed their way. The ogres weren’t hostile and the party quickly hatched a plan to lead the big dumb brutes out of the dungeon and into the hands of the waiting mercenaries. They learned that the ogres were just roaming around looking for treasure and had seen other beastmen, mentioning goblins and lizardmen specifically. Luther gave them 100gp to help the party find and kill the goblins that chased them into the dungeon, or some other bullshit story I forget, and I started contemplating the paladin’s choices in regards to his vows.
I’m not terribly strict on these things, probably to the detriment of the game, but it felt a little off for a paladin to defeat the enemy by deceit. Cowardly, even. Idk, if it becomes a pattern we’ll talk it out.
Anyway, the ogres agreed and the party gave them verbal directions to the entrance, which the monsters claimed they had forgotten how to get to. The group was going to follow the brutes out and attack them or something. There was some bickering about the plan among the party and I tuned it out to try not to give the monsters any edge, again wondering about the paladin betraying an agreement, even if it was with beastmen.
Ultimately it didn’t matter. The ogres took the pay off and passed the party by in the direction of the entrance. But when they were supposed to turn at a crossroads they didn’t and chuckled when the party called them on it. Redcorn hit them with flamestrike and a short fight later ended with a bunch of dead ogres and some bruises on the front line that were healed up with holy prayers.
Shortly thereafter, Luther and Beyza the henchman fighter on the front line of the marching order fell into a trap door and disappeared, clearly different from the 10’ pits the group had seen in other places and not making any sound of hitting the bottom. I described nothing to Luther’s player because tension and he threatened to go home if he was dead because tension. The crew talked about options when they discovered the pit went a short ways then sloped into a ramp of some kind, spiraling haphazardly counter clockwise below.
Luther’s hench Eggie the Thief passed a morale check and volunteered to climb down to retrieve the two fallen warriors’ corpses. They dropped a rope and the thief easily navigated the ramp. Good thing it wasn’t greased or something. It led 40ish feet down the spiral and into a room with smooth black walls etched with runes and a couple of smokey glass doors. Luther and Beyza were climbing to their feet and dusting each other off, no bones being broken or anything else catastrophic. They used the rope to climb out and continue the delve.
Growing more confident in their map, the group called their directions systematically, coming to another portcullis barring their way that was manned by two rough looking human males in brigantine armor. The spokesman, fairly confident in the portcullis protecting him, was open to conversation and introduced himself as Manlius, thanks to the random name generator on the app I was using. The two bards in the party tried to serenade the conversation, but Manlius had apparently seen a thing or two and he plugged his ears, not trusting the siren song of the PC. After a short back and forth, the party convinced Manlius to introduce them to his leader. On the paladin’s word, they were allowed inside the portcullis that lifted with some winch inside the room beyond.
Here they met the ex-adventurer Antonius who was leader of the brigand band here in the Butzkrag. They were feeling pretty confident in their position, with a defensible lair and even a morlock captive to negotiate some ransom from the morlocks to the north. Antonius was disappointed to learn of the morlocks’ untimely exit from the theater, but shrugged it off and started trying to figure a way to leverage the captive for something else. The group tried to hire him to their side but he laughed and wanted no part of their crusade. They were able to convince him to show them the few rooms of their wing of the dungeon to make sure they were “clear of evil”. Aside from a heinous stench in the small room they used for a latrine, there was no evil behind them.
If it was evil that they were looking for, Antonius let them know about a small altar to Grummsh, the one eyed orcish god, a few rooms over. He also let them know about a stairway leading to the next level further on, but warned them it was guarded by lizardmen. The two groups parted on good terms and the adventurers proceeded on.
The party found the oddly shaped room right where they were told it would be and sure enough, there was a small altar with a skull on it. One socket had a wad of stained cloth shoved in it while the other was plugged with a black semi precious stone. None of this mattered much to Redcorn who immediately began smashing the altar to bits. Luther was able to confirm that this was not a sinkhole of evil or an empowered altar of evil so no other action was taken to cleanse it.
Underneath the smashed altar they found a cubby that held a journal bound in human flesh and held closed with a strange clasp shaped like a castle’s silhouette. Neither the cleric nor the paladin were jumping at the chance to read it, but Clete flipped it right open, thumbing through the scribblings of a madman. He would need some time to get real details out of it.
The party scoped out the rest of the floor, finishing their map and verifying that there was a staircase leading to the next level. They tiptoed down and tried entry through the stone door at the bottom after Eggie assured them it was clear of traps. Unfortunately, the thief had missed the gas trap that blew into the frontline’s face as the door pushed in. Beyza made his saving throw but Luther failed, coughing and wheezing again. The party retreated and Redcorn dropped a neutralize poison spell on the paladin before he died.
Low on resources and on edge, the crew decided to back out and rest at the base camp to replenish spells. It also would give Clete some time to study the book, which he discovered was written by a predatory madman who viewed women, particularly vulnerable, unspoiled women, as prey in a very much non-sexual way. The author’s name was Carstad von Malkin and the turns of phrase and writing style used in the lucid portions of the journal pointed to someone trained in an ecclesiastical oration method. Praise was given throughout to the primordial god of destruction Tharizdun, mentioning six different altars devoted to Silence, Despair, Deception, Rage, Fear, and Hatred that were tended to within the Butzkrag. It was a lot to process at the time and their goal remained the same, clear each level room by room.
After recovering from their rest, the party went back in the dungeon and towards the stone door on the next level. Unfortunately, they caught an ambush from two feral looking men with feline features that managed to strike right at the middle of the marching order. Jarod the cleric was felled immediately on one side while Gwendolyn the bard took some serious damage, but fortunately this group had made a concerted effort to get ahold of magic weapons and were able to eventually fight the lycanthropes off.
Redcorn threw some healing spells and cure diseases on the wounded and the party rethought their plan. Jarod was brutally maimed so they were down a cleric and they were running low on session time, so they decided to return to the only room they hadn’t considered “cleared” on the first level, the one with the flock of stirges inside.
A trivial matter for a leveled party, the encounter hinged only on whether they could time the opening and closing of the door properly to cast a stinking cloud before they got swarmed. They pulled it off and dutch oven’d the stirges, executing them after the cloud dissipated but before the flying bloodsuckers could recover. I was confident that the stirges had shit for loot but the team put in the work, let them collect some electrum or something. They got over on me again with a really solid haul, especially combined with the gold that the ogres were carrying, due to a very generous random treasure roll. Well congratulations, I guess, whatever.
They called it there with a finished first level map and a bit of loot, probably enough to level the rooks I’d guess (I haven’t calculated it yet as I write this). We’ll see how they approach the next level next time.
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