Session 40: Riddle Me This
6/25/23 - 6/27, rest 6/28, active 6/29
PCs: Gwendolyn, Luther, Redcorn, Cleet, Caspian, Flynn
Henches: Amadayo, Madroff, Beyza, Eggie, Mulligan, Mahin
Our brave adventurers returned to the Butzkrag, confident that they were making real progress and eager to eliminate the source of the Dark Hymn once and for all. Last session, they had made a Wish to destroy all chaotic entities in the hex and have seen evidence that it worked, coming across random scenes of exploded gore within the dungeon. They proceeded with the belief that all evil things were dead.
With a decent map and a plan, they zipped through the halls of the dungeon pretty quickly, covering a ton of ground and finding three more altar rooms among the notAztec aesthetic of the second level of the Butzkrag. The first was carved in a meadow motif with foxes prancing and frolicking all over. There was a fox statuette on a pedestal crouched waiting to pounce. Flynn and Luther tried to enter to break the statue so Redcorn could cleanse it, but were attacked by the very air in front of them.
Cramped hallways and large parties meant most of the party couldn’t even see the creature, but the first couple ranks were able to defeat it, reducing the large gelatinous cube to a puddle of goo and collecting a couple vials of perfume from it. The holy men then went to work, crushing the statue and cleansing it with a bless spell.
The next altar was hidden behind a secret door beyond a room covered in graffiti. On examination, Gwendolyn was able to learn that words for SHHHHH and Silence and Quiet were written all over the walls in various beastmen languages. The party found the secret door pretty easily and Luther entered to break the altar. He was struck by a curse that stole the strength from his voice, but after cleansing the altar, Redcorn was able to remove it and the crew carried on.
At this point I finally hit a random encounter. This dungeon has been eerily light on randoms so far, so hooray! Scorpions! Digging out of the ceiling right in the middle of the party! It was going to be an interesting and tough fight. I glance at the stat block, they hit hard, poison, all the nasty things. We prep the grid for the fight and get ready for initiative when I glance again and notice that giant scorpions are Chaotic… wait, what? Ugh, that stupid Wish. The way I was running the results of the Wish meant these scorpions should have been eliminated. So, turns out bits of pieces of scorpion dripped on them rather than assailed them with pincers and stingers and the party continued on.
The third and what they believed to be the final altar was a single crane flying away across a horizon, etched carefully into the wall opposite the door. Directly under it was a crane statuette on a pedestal much like the other rooms. Redcorn just blasted this one with Dispel Evil and the statue fell to pieces.
The party kept exploring, coming across several more gory bits and tripping a few pit traps before they arrived at a large oval shaped room. They searched and found a secret door on the eastern wall. When they opened it, there was an iron statue shaped like the Enderman from Minecraft (no I don’t know why) that only started pummeling them when Eggie approached to search for traps.
The creature was defeated pretty easily, falling to the ground and spewing forth coins from its mouth like a slot machine on tilt. They scooped up the cash and left the dungeon, resting to recover spells and prepare to take on the third level after their long day of delving. They also dropped off the bits of treasure that they had.
While they made their way to one of the staircases that they knew went down, a handful of pit vipers struck from concealment along one of the corridors. The adventurers were easily successful, Redcorn using magic to charm the snakes while Cleet the Tweeker scooped them into a large sack. He held these snakes as some sort of potential grenade the rest of the session, but I think the ultimate goal was to tap them for venom.
The third level of the Butzkrag was walled in a matte black metallic substance with strange runes etched in the walls. The doors were a smokey glass, deceptively strong and impossible to see through. The first chamber that the party came to was a very large circular room, the walls of which were lined with standing sarcophagi. The middle of the room was dominated by a very large dais with an obsidian altar in the center, clearly used for some blood ritual sacrifice by the stains on and around it.
The crew spent a lot of resources buffing themselves before entering, certain that there would be a fight. Once nothing immediately attacked them, they cautiously explored the sarcophagi, eventually revealing concealed mummies who attacked on sight. The room was large and the random displacement of the handful of mummies led to several smaller fights which the party handled with ease. They scooped up various trinkets and grave goods before destroying the obsidian altar with dispel evil, cracking it straight down the center.
The crew traveled along a very wide corridor etched with scenes of destruction identical to those caused by the Dark Hymn, discovering two large stone statues of armored notAztec warriors and a ritual preparation site complete with ceremonial knives and robes. The statues stood to either side of very large glass doors etched with a wolf’s head and followed Eggie the Thief with their heads as he approached to check for traps. He paused and threw his hands in the air when the statues spoke in unison, “It brings back the lost as though never gone, shines laughter and tears with light long since shone; a moment to make, a lifetime to shed; valued then but lost when you're dead.”
The last time we had some riddles in a dungeon was a little more interesting. Redcorn’s player immediately popped off the answer of Memory, which caused the statues to stare straight ahead and apparently ignore the party. Was hoping I’d get a little more hemming and hawing but can’t win them all! The crew pushed open the doors, revealing a very large chamber lit eerily by red torches attached to support columns throughout. In the middle of the floor was a wide magical circle with a bowling ball sized orb hovering above the center. Along the back wall were three sarcophagi carved much more intricately than the standing ones previously encountered.
I was a little surprised when the party noped right out of there, closing the doors behind them. They were convinced that that room contained some nasty stuff, so they wanted to poke around a bit more on the level to see what they could see. They were surprised by a mummy standing in a corner of the next chamber, but they easily dispatched it. Further on they discovered the room that Luther had fallen into several sessions before from a trap above. As they explored deeper in, the party discovered another room lined with sarcophagi, but it was much smaller than the others they’d seen. Never ones to pass up potentially free gold, they carefully searched for more grave goods, triggering a handful of mummies to explode from their resting places all around the room.
The following battle was much more heated than the prior ones, closer quarters and more enemies making things spicy. The party was covered up in clerics throwing protection from evil, so they had improved AC vs the undead creatures, but the protection against touch was broken by the party’s attacks. In the scrum, Jerod the cleric hench was rendered retarded by a mortal blow. He recovered but just wasn’t the same. Luther got beat on pretty bad but resisted the mummy rot and was not felled.
The adventurers were victorious but low on resources, so they gambled on leaving the dungeon to try to rest another day outside. They exited with no random encounters and returned not just to their base camp, but to the Yellow River Base under Lord Issac’s command to have a place for Jerod to rest and have drool wiped from his chin. They reloaded with Mahin the Assassin hench, rested up, and went back after it.
They were able to return the way that they came pretty easily, but once the group arrived at the large sacrificial chamber where they’d broken the obsidian altar and looted all the sarcophagi, they discovered a handful of very large reptiles with red scales lounging in the room. The heat haze of a desert sun on stone wavered around the creatures who were immediately quite hostile to the party, raising their heads and lumbering to their feet.
Luther closed the door after the bards in the party were able to share some information about the creatures from a couple Loremastery checks. They were very tough pseudo-elementals, hit pretty hard on several attacks, and damaged everyone around them with their heat haze. The glass door the party was hiding behind began to grow warm to Luther and most of the party decided to retreat to the entry chamber with the stairs. Cleet summoned a squad of berserkers to throw at the things in case the party had to run away while Redcorn buffed himself with the intent to negotiate with the creatures. Resist fire and Tongues and some other stuff, I think.
Luther the Paladin stuck by his boy and they cracked the door open, discovering that three of the giant lizards had moved very close and were scowling at the them. The two adventurers immediately took fire damage from the creatures’ radiating heat while Redcorn tried to calm them with appeals to good and evil and the nightmares brought on by the Dark Hymn. Unfortunately the elementals were not swayed by the argument and the party opted to extract, probably more due to RL session time running out than unwillingness to keep probing the lizard situation. They got safely back to the YRB before camping for the session.
Musings:
We don’t do AD&D grading here, but if I had to grade myself as a DM it’d be pretty poor this session. I missed some mechanical things which is not uncommon for me but always frustrating. More than anything, though, I damaged player agency with the fire lizard random encounter. The bards had relayed information that was adequate enough to inform the true danger of the scenario to the party and I should have left it at that. When Redcorn the cleric mentioned that he wanted to enter the room with all five lizards I broke the wall and told him that he was definitely going to die if he did that. It was bad DMing and I recommend that you, reader, avoid making the same mistake. Player agency is king. Do not interfere.
Why I chose to do that is hard to pinpoint. It could have been how late in the session it was. Maybe I didn’t want the session to end in a catastrophe. It could have been sympathy for new-to-the-system players not having seen this creature before. Ultimately it doesn’t matter. It was a disservice to the players and to the game. I will do better.
No comments:
Post a Comment