Session 44: The Journey is the Worthier Part

 Session 44: The Journey is the Worthier Part

7/30/23 - 8/1, rest 8/2, active 8/3

PC: Blair (Nightblade), Cracaryn (Ranger), Ferdinand (Barbarian), Maradangertheranger (Ranger), Arahana (Nightblade), Charles (Nightblade)

Hench: Goda, Platt, Takei, Kissare

#ACKS

The last time that Team B was in action they had negotiated for a treasure map that allegedly led to some material for Bigtoe the Wombat to use in his workshop. For this session they decided to chase down where that map would lead.

The party launched out of Teutch Tower in the Friendship Hills, named for the #objectivelyfriendly Teutch the Alchemist (Patron Mage). Unfortunately for them, the Alchemist hasn’t established an urban settlement of significance yet so the market availability is very low, but they were able to piece together some resources for the new PCs through what they already had on hand.

The group was almost exclusively elves on the PC side, so we talked a little bit about Fernblithe and Wounded Ear and then ran through some minor character introduction stuff. I personally find reading off a page of character description tedious, so I appreciate that my table kept it simple and we could get through it expediently. Once folks were settled, they set off.

Using our new finely printed physical map provided by one of our players (Cleet/Auto/Charles), the group set out to the northwest where they traveled pretty easily for a few hexes until they encountered a lone man on horseback. He gave them a wide berth and they let him. He was followed shortly by the rest of his adventuring party, a handful of folk that the players surmised had likely been to the Fallen Castle dungeon nearby. There was no confrontation and everyone moved on.

The group descended out of the hills above the rift that led to the Center of the Earth and within sight of the petrified tree at Wounded Ear. They did not investigate either location and kept their eyes on the prize, traveling many miles across peaceful grasslands before arriving at more hills to the north. Their keen elven eyes discovered a pass through the hills that was guarded by a fort manned by humanoid figures of some kind, but the party wanted no part of that and opted to divert their path around it. The figures on the wall seemed content to allow them, but the distance was great enough that more detail could not be discovered.

Ending their first day of travel back in the hills, the crew discovered an idyllic campsite. Where normally there’d be rough ground and no cover, this was a well shaded flat shelf that even had a small spring of cool clear water bubbling through the center. The party settled down to camp and I rolled for encounters.

During the first watch, three giants very quietly approached the party. Cracaryn the ranger was awake along with his henchman Takei. The giants gestured that the two should follow them out of the camp for a quiet word. Cracaryn almost obliged but thought better of it at the last second and began to holler for his companions to wake. The giants took this poorly and the fight was on.

Cracaryn was quick on his feet and shot one of the giants, who instead of bleeding simply disappeared. The other two giants closed, flattening Takei with one swing and seriously wounding Cracaryn with another. The rest of the party rose and engaged to quickly dispatch the other giants but not before Ferdinand the Barbarian succumbed to a Charm spell from an unseen caster. The barbarian was seriously distraught by seeing his friends murdered by his other friends and burst into tears with indecision.

Quickly scanning their surroundings, the party discovered a hidden shelf up the nearby hill. Cracaryn charged and most of the party followed, the elven ranger being first over the lip and into a small bunker to confront four identical half goat, half witch Lamia creatures. Meanwhile, Charles went wide and tried to gain altitude on the little defensive structure.

Cracaryn, Arahana, Charles, Goda, and a rotation of summoned berserkers all took turns in the smallish bunker, with several of the PCs taking shots and losing points of Wisdom due to the nasty witchy nature of the Lamia’s attacks. Goda the Fighter Hench, already extremely unwise, succumbed to the witch altogether, turning on his allies and attacking Blair directly and Ferdinand the barbarian burst into tears and ran back to the camp in shame. After a long fight where they finally overcame the creature’s mirror images and dispatched her, they were pretty beat up. The campsite degraded around them too, her illusion having dissipated with her death.

While the party was applying triage, the elves’ passive ability to detect secret doors revealed a compartment within the bunker leading into the hill. Blair was pretty sour with Goda for turning on her so demanded that he open the compartment. Already extremely unwise and reduced even further by the Lamia, Goda still required a loyalty check to carelessly open a potentially trapped door which he passed. Unfortunately for him, no attempts were made to detect the poisoned needle that started turning his hand black.

I went to refill my bourbon with the note that they had until I got back to decide what to do about Goda’s hand. When I returned, I was informed that they were going to amputate it in the field. Splendid. It took Charles two chops with his sword to remove Goda’s arm below the elbow then Takei the Cleric, who had recovered from the illusory giant’s damage, healed the wound. Poor guy was goin’ through it.

They discovered quite a trove of loot which they were able to disperse among their horses to carry and had to decide whether or not to continue on towards their objective or turn back. They were beat up pretty bad across the board and opted to head back to town considering the solid loot that the Lamia had stashed away. In ACKS you can’t level more than once off of a single haul of loot and with a heavy percentage of first level PCs they figured this would probably do the trick. They didn’t want to waste the overage.

On the way back to Teutch’s Tower, they passed by the Fallen Castle dungeon and noticed dozens of mercenaries camped outside. Covered up in loot and outnumbered, the group avoided the troops and made it safely to the Friendship Hills. Blair tried to leverage her relationship with Teutch to get him to buy some of the loot that they had, but he wasn’t interested, so they rested a day and went towards Deinwick.

The party arrived uneventfully in Deinwick where they discovered many hundreds of troops gathered. Hostilities between the local lord and his rival in Talston had been growing for a while and it looked as though shit was about to go down. But the elves, despite Cracaryn’s player doing his best to metagame info for his other PCs, didn’t really care and just sold their loot. Blair made a point to get Goda’s arm restored at the temple of Heironeous. Goda was converted to the Lawful faith on the spot, but will need to be read the holy word by a priest because he’s illiterate. Luckily he had two weeks’ recovery time to do that. 

It was a shorter session than usual but a productive one, with a big score off of a challenging encounter. I hope the visiting players had fun and look forward to seeing everyone next session, if I have enough chairs.

Musings: (Long-winded today, bear with me)

One advantage to playing the style that we do is that it makes it easy for people to join or miss sessions as required by their schedules but the game keeps going. One of our players just expanded his family (Congrats!) and we welcomed two new players to the table. Having this “open table” concept keeps from being shackled to a fixed set of PCs that must be present for their “hooks”. Alexander Macris speaks a bit about the importance of keeping the game going hell or high water here.

I’ve started having the players roll random treasure live at the table, a privilege given to the newest players at the session. It takes a little time but there’s some suspense and fun to be had with it. I’ve mentioned it before as an experiment but it seems to be taking off so I’ll probably keep doing it. I may have picked the idea up from a co-DM in Dubzaron, but I can’t recall now. If I did, thanks Ambrose!

I’m not RPing shopping. I apologize to any past, present, or future players if they want their time to haggle over the price of a horse. If we had longer sessions, I’d be more inclined to allow it, but with 4-5 hours and a usually large number of players, my priority is to get to the adventure. We have a downtime economy setup on Discord to handle that kind of thing. Impromptu purchases are done very easily using ACKS Market Availability rules. A simple “I’m buying a horse” will do, thank you.

The Lamia encounter was fun. ACKS calls for an encounter roll for each hex traveled through during the day. I hit the Lamia lair at the end of the day in their last hex, so decided it would be a prepared campsite. They chose to camp and I rolled another encounter for overnight, deciding that if it hit, then she was at the site and prepared to ambush them. Otherwise they’d likely walk right by her little hideout the next day. The rest is, as they say, history.

I need to be more firm on henchman stuff, which I started this session with Goda’s miserable experience. Fortunately he hit insanely high loyalty rolls and overcame demoralization. The other henches witnessed the party care for him which was great for their morale. It always bugs me when folks assume that henchmen or hirelings are throw away characters or expendable and I’m glad that ACKS has a way to adjudicate how that behavior affects the henches. But like most things I fail at with ACKS, I’ve got to remember to apply it properly. Fortunately, my player base in Oberholt is good about taking care of their people.

We have been fortunate to have folks add to this campaign throughout its history, even those who aren’t playing in it. I can’t thank them enough for printing maps, creating videos, bringing supplies for lunch, sharing figures or booze, and gifting me an engraved bourbon glass. To all my friends who have contributed to this game, thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy it along with the rest of us.

Session 43: Where is Sir Beam?

 Session 43: Where is Sir Beam?

7/16/23 - 7/20, rest 7/21-7/22, active 7/23

PC: Auto (Machinist), Galt (Venturer), Helm (Fighter), Heinrik (Ranger)

#ACKS

Due to time compression the players were on their third group of PCs. This can be a challenge for some to keep up with so several of them took a break this week, but I’ll run a session with as few as three players and we had four at the table, so let’s go!

The first part of the session was a throwback “errbody meets in a tavern” situation, suggested by Galt’s player and it sounded fine to me. The group had chosen to start in the capital of Bellport, a large port city, instead of their usual haunts of Riverstride or Teutch Tower for missions. We had another new player, welcome Heinrik, so we spent a little time talking about some of the broad strokes of the setting. Once that was out of the way it was time to do… something.

Bellport isn’t on the frontier, there aren’t woeful peasants looking for protection from the local tribe of goblins or bandits, there isn’t a conveniently placed dungeon less than a day’s travel away. Galt the Venturer took the lead on digging up some hooks down at the dock district, heading to taverns to check job postings and making a point to wink wink nudge nudge for any under the table shady work.

After sifting through mundane postings, visiting the local post 345 of the Mercenary’s Guild, and bribing a few barkeeps for introduction to the local syndicate capo, they came up with a few threads to tug on:

The absentminded merchant Mortimer Hule was paying to recover his lost ledger, which he needed to combat the tax collectors seeking to ruin his business.

Hule’s competitor Sir Beam was suggested as a contact for a different take on the story and potentially a larger score to turn the same ledger over to him.

The capo Caulson met the group at The Black Flag and sized them up, eventually offering them a racketeering job to “educate” a resistant Frutzii (notViking) trader on who runs the docks and where dues should be paid.

The Merc Guild had a straight up escort mission for a delivery to Vennor in the north, a mining town where many wounded veterans go to retire after their military service. The town is subsidized by the Baron in a rare display of altruism from “the Bloodletter”.

The group decided to see what they could learn about Hule first, heading down to the tax assessor to get some info on the fellow. Galt was convinced this guy was shady and using the lost ledger as an excuse to delay paying. They spoke with the local tax man who confirmed that Hule was in serious trouble could he not produce an adequate accounting of his dealings. He also revealed that he knew Sir Beam, sure, and gave them some general information on where to find him.

The first of many attempts to locate Sir Beam failed, with folks who clearly knew him or knew of him claiming he works just over there, next street over, can’t miss him, but the party could in fact miss him and did so every time they went looking for him, even landing a meeting with his real estate broker who gave them a description and confirmed that the business was handling property for him. I couldn’t help but laugh every time they failed to find him. I don’t play poker for a reason.

Some schemes began to rattle around the table regarding Hule, but the group wanted to maximize their hook per hour rate, so they chased down Captain Ulfgor and spoke to him at the warehouse where most of his crew was holed up while they did business. Turns out the Captain had no respect for the syndicate leader Victor sending him veiled threats and silver-tongued emissaries. He wanted an opportunity to speak man to man with the boss without all the lackeys around and would pay nearly double what the PCs were offered by the syndicate to provide him with a location/time that Victor might be vulnerable enough to approach on equal footing.

The group salivated at double crossing the syndicate and earning more money while doing it. They talked about how they might accomplish it while planning to heist Hule’s office looking for the ledger. Some keystone cop style shenanigans ensued, but eventually they were able to bust in and rob the place, with Heinrik the Elf coming in clutch finding a hidden lockbox that the party promptly stole. However, they did not find a ledger or any useful paperwork.

They staked out the Black Flag which turned into a raucous party after hours. The party saw Victor leave with a few bodyguards but were too scared to trail him. They returned the next day to share that with Captain Ulfgor, but he needed more detailed information before he could act. After failing to find Sir Beam again, the party surveilled Victor again, this time tracing him to a manor house. They shared that info with the Frutzii captain, got paid, and got out of the way.

The next morning, they reported for duty with the merc caravan to escort it out of town. It seemed like the players thought it would be a good idea to lay low pending an update on how Victor and Ulfgor’s talk went. They made their way out of town, traveled for two uneventful days, and arrived at Vennor where they were paid out by the merc office there. Standard rates for mercs are pretty unimpressive to adventurers but it was easy money. The party didn’t spend much time there, turning immediately around and walking back where they ended the session having returned to Bellport and unknown results of their actions prior to leaving.

Musings:

I didn’t know who was playing this session, what PCs I might have, where they were going to be at on the map, or what hooks they might be interested in. I leaned pretty heavily on the fantastic ACKS supplement Capital of the Borderlands, which has some cool city specific random charts, to flesh a little bit of Bellport out with the party. I think we had a good time with a departure thematically from our usual sessions. We haven’t done a whole lot of city adventuring.

Some prior play in Bellport fed this session a little too, with the syndicate boss Victor having been introduced to Team B during the session that they defeated the ghost ship of the vile Merlanteans. It was a fun session and it was a treat to introduce yet another new player to the game.

Session 42: Please, Not the Mountains

 

Session 42: Please, Not the Mountains

7/9/23 - 7/20, rest 7/21, active 7/22

PC: Blair, Braxton, Cracaryn, Zektel, Mordesh, Brumdor

Hench: Goda, Platt, Takei, Rocky, Ronin, Ragnar, Andy

#ACKS

The players were eager to get away from the Butzkrag this session and time compression plus a solid victory at that dungeon gave them the opportunity. They jumped back over to their neglected Team B PCs and headed over to Teutch tower for some work. Some players had the chance to create alternate PCs and we added yet another new player! I’ll have to expand my physical table space if we keep growing. Good problem to have and welcome Brumdor the Machinist.

Braxton the Explorer in downtime had hired a few platoons of mercenaries so we talked a bit about moving troops and resting and whatnot. He quickly picked up on the trade off between security and speed. In ACKS, troops must rest 3 out of every 7 days.

Teutch the Alchemist (Patron Mage) had some hooks out for the last few months while the party had been focused on the Butzkrag. The group scanned the Discord channel and learned that a chaotic dwarf was running amok trying to chase down a treasure map. He had offended Teutch personally which apparently was cause for his elimination. There was also a cluster of hill giants menacing the peasants nearby that the Alchemist wanted gone.

Bigtoe the Wombat’s player had been busy in downtime as well, scoring big on a near-death experience and retiring from adventuring. He had a bunch of magic items he was offering to sell to the party for standard rates. They pooled resources and haggled and I kinda spaced out but they came away with a treasure map and some magic items with some contingency about the map. If it led to what Bigtoe called “purple cake”, the material used in his fledgling firearm industry for ammunition, then he’d expect less of a return. Or something. Idk, they’ll figure it out, because the player is invested in getting what he’s owed. This becomes a “them” problem and not a “my” problem.

The group spent a few minutes discussing the wealth of options, eventually settling on chasing down the dwarf Domeko. They had four trackers in the party so that certainly wasn’t an issue, but this is where a big decision needed to be made. Do they bring the troops or not? They chose to bring them, which means they’d be tougher in a fight but slower, especially in the mountains through which their quarry traveled.

Armed with a general direction, the crew set out to track down Domeko, picking up his trail a little further on. They followed it for a day deeper into the mountains, surprising a manticore which they avoided, and camped. The overnight ogre attack was resolved using abstracted BR combat, with the party taking part in a Heroic Foray to reduce the enemy’s BR and emerging victorious. They patted themselves on the back for bringing the army because otherwise they were certain that they’d be dead.

Mordesh the Enchanter interrogated one of the captured ogres, realizing that the creature was too stupid to give directions but was otherwise very willing to lead the party to the ogre village. He respected the party’s strength having lost the fight and warned them that should they go to the village they had to act right. He couldn’t bring friends home and have them kill everyone.

The group as a whole didn’t have much patience for Murk or his ogre friends and decided to just execute them, pleasantly surprised by the amount of gold that they found in the oft-described and ever-hated shoulder slung fanny packs that the beastmen in Oberholt now carry as canon.

Braxton gambled on moving instead of resting the troops, kicking the can down the road in the hopes of catching the dwarves quickly. Unfortunately, that hook had been out there for nearly a month and Domeko was on the move. The headhunters moved another hex, through mountain terrain, following the trail but still not catching the dwarves. They camped again, this time uneventfully, and moved on the next day.

In this hex they found the dwarves, or what was left of them, at a gruesome battle scene. The trackers were able to determine that none of the dwarves escaped but they had trouble identifying them. They took the only intact head/face they could find which was not Domeko’s and put it in a bag. Hippogriff feathers were found and identified at the scene and a trail of blood splatter led away from the area. It appeared that whatever valuables the dwarves had were carried away by their killers and the party didn’t want to chase hippogriffs in their condition.

They camped there for a few days to rest the army without any harassment and then returned towards Teutch’s purple tower. Floating above them and heading leisurely west was a floating castle with griffons circling lazily in the air around it. The party kept their heads down and let it pass, the griffons apparently unconcerned with leaving their patrol to interact with the humans far below. Comforted by the dodging of that unknown bullet, they camped up again, eager to get back to Teutch’s and get onto one of the other available hooks and a potential score.

During the watch, two chimera burst onto the scene hot for violence. Braxton threw the troops at them while the party got organized to make a foray, or run, or something. One of the chimeras was destroyed by Braxton and the troops but not before blasting them, leaving Braxton down and one chimera for the party to battle. They engaged, with Mordesh using one of their bargained for scrolls to launch a lightning bolt at it and dealing massive damage to it, sparks flying among the other arrows and insults slung at it from the rest of the party.

Unfortunately, the chimera was able to withstand the onslaught and lined up a vicious breath weapon, strafing Mordesh, Cracaryn, and one of the henchmen with fire. First level mages aren’t known for their HPs so down the offending lightning bolt thrower went but the rest of the party was able to defeat the monster.

Zektel the Shaman sprung into action applying triage with his large stockpile of herbs donated by the party. Braxton was able to recover with another notable scar from his experience, but Mordesh had to use his fate point to avoid being crippled. The army was in shambles, a PC was walking wounded, and they still had to get back through the mountains.

Limping on, the point man came across a rock fall where a young woman was pinned by her leg. The party rushed to her aid, with Brumdor the dwarf able to expertly split the rock while Zektel gave first aid. She was delirious but they carried her on to Teutch tower where they debated whether or not to chase a score with a little session time left. They opted to cut their losses and call it, but were surprised by Meri the Fighter’s reward that she offered for saving her life. They tried to hire her as a hench but she was unimpressed with their levels. We called it there.

Musings:

This was a departure for sure from our dungeon-heavy sessions of late. It displayed some of the cool ACKS wilderness mechanics for our newer players which was fun. 

I had to consider a few times what information to offer the party from a mechanics perspective. With several newer players, I chose to be a little more open than I would be with the veterans, but even so there were some things that I couldn’t just tell them the answer on, like taking the army or not. Part of learning the game is weighing those decisions.

This is our first real experience with a leveled PC acting in the role of NPC in the form of Bigtoe negotiating for a potential quest/hook. We’ll keep an eye on that developing relationship, see if they go for his hooks or leave him hanging. Maybe double cross him?

I ran this session with the understanding that the hooks on offer were not “fresh” so to speak, the most recent being nearly a month old. I made some rolls to determine how ole Domeko was gonna play it, see if he actually found what his map led to, etc. I also rolled for some encounters. Was it something the dwarves could handle or not? Turns out not so much, as the party found out. The world is not idle while the adventurers adventure. It was a fun one, if a bit light in treasure. See you next time!

Session 41: Passing the Baton

Session 41: Passing the Baton

7/2/23 - 7/16, rest 7/17, active 7/18

PCs: Gwendolyn, Luther, Redcorn, Cleet, Caspian, Flynn, Max

Henches: Amadayo, Beyza, Eggie, Mulligan, Mahin

#ACKS

Everyone came out on this holiday (‘murica) weekend to try and put the nail in the coffin of the Butzkrag, so we had a full table of PCs and they were ready to rock. They shot down towards level three of the dungeon where they had fought a bunch of mummies just the session before and had discovered bigger badder evil ritual stuff. There was also a fistful of flame salamanders that had taken residence in the largest of the sacrificial chambers and the crew really didn’t want to fool with them.

They had a few alternative access points for that level, one a trapdoor slide that Luther found early on and the other a narrower stairwell on level two. After a brief discussion they decided the stairs were probably best and off they went. The party was very cautious as they proceeded, tracking and checking for sekrits often. They found a handful of copper pieces in one intersection but no sign of how the coins got there. Otherwise, it was a clean trip down.

The square room that the stairs let out into was consistent with their recollection of the architecture of the third level, matte black metal walls carved in strange runes and smokey glass doors etched with a wolf head symbol. The adventurers spent some time in this first room reading languages, detecting evil, and checking for sekrits, learning that the runes noted a lineage of the Von Malkin family that was less prominent than the ones they’d seen mentioned before. There was no blatantly evil aura or sekrit doors and the exit door got the thumbs up from the thief hench so out they went.

Luther and Max were first into the hallway which forked north and east. They chose to go north, where it opened into a wide gallery of sorts. On the west wall was a beautifully painted mural that went for hundreds of feet and depicted scenes of conquest over nondescript natives by a technologically superior invading force. The mural was old but still vibrant, reflecting a style reminiscent of the masters of the renaissance. On the east wall was a jarring mess of chaotic modern art abstraction, loosely resembling the horrific nightmares that the Dark Hymn had imposed on the region for the past six months. It was much more new and of no artistic value even among modern art enthusiasts.

The gallery linked up with the ritual preparation room that the PCs had discovered the prior session, where the riddle-spitting statues guarded the large double doors leading into what they were presuming to be their target destination. They piled into the ritual room and their front rank approached the doors to open them, expecting the statues to hit them with a hastily googled brain teaser.

Not so! The master of the house was aware of their previous transgressions and had changed his guardians’ commands! The statues animated, pointing their fists at the party and blasting them with fire. The crew rapidly engaged the stone figures and after a moderately challenging battle with fixed and not particularly intelligent foes, they were victorious.

While Eggie the Thief started examining the doors, Flynn poked around in the ritual things looking for treasure or clues or something. Unfortunately there was a mummy waiting there with a cultist robe covering its foul nature. The party wasn’t sure why it didn’t attack them during the statue fight but once it was discovered it tried to rip Flynn’s face off. It lasted until a successful turn undead had it huddling in a corner and the party beat it down.

At this point, the players started planning for a more challenging encounter. They had used some magical resources during the first two encounters and were carefully counting spell slots for the assumed next one. They had a rough memory of the features of the room beyond the defeated statues and planned to enter slinging dispel evil to try and break what they presumed to be the altar in the center.

Redcorn dropped a few buffs with Flynn planning to do so once inside the room, specifically to try and keep the protection from evil non-contact bubble in place. They chose to only bring a few PCs in the room at first, to cast and then see what happened. As Max, Luther, Redcorn, Flynn, and Cleet entered a long, wide hall dominated by a ritual circle and floating ominous orb, they did not see the black and red gas pooling to the floor in a corner on their far right.

It coalesced into a tall, pale man with slicked back black hair dressed in purple and black robes. Surprise rolls were rolled and Max was the only one able to act. While the clearly dangerous fellow began to cast a spell in their direction, Max ran at him and tried to stab him. Unfortunately, the man seemed to be immune to the barbarian's weapon and finished his spell. A black and red column of hellfire exploded down onto the remaining group, killing Flynn and Cleet instantly and spoiling Redcorn’s dispel evil cast.

The adventurers were unhappy but determined. They engaged as they could, bringing to bear the magic weapons and spells that they had left. Meanwhile, Max caught a blow from the creature, which dealt an irrelevant amount of damage but drained two levels of experience from the warrior! This was not Max’s first experience with this effect but it didn’t make it any easier to bear.

While some of the backline PCs pulled triage duty, the rest tried to affect the monster with anything that they had. Fortunately for them, Redcorn displayed his holy symbol and beseeched Ehlonna to turn the abomination. This was accompanied by a very good turn undead roll and the vampire cleric of Tharizdun was in flight.

The players are accustomed to turn being an auto win, mostly because their DM (that’s me) is lazy and rolling against a cowering defenseless foe is boring. Vampires, however, have quite a bag of tricks up their sleeves. Von Malkin turned to gas to escape, improving his ac significantly and allowing him freedom of movement. The party pursued, concerned he was going to instantly restore himself in one of the coffins on the far wall or escape through a secret door.

It was a running fight over several turns mostly due to high AC. The gas slipped through a secret door and continued to flee, but the party was able to find the latch for the door quickly. Max pursued the cloud of black and red smoke and smote it with a magic blade thrown to him by one of the henchmen. Motes of dust fell to the floor and were absorbed, leaving the party to wonder if it was another evasion tactic by the wily creature.

They considered leaving the dungeon to rest up since they were light on resources and there were three sarcophagi with unknown contents nearby. The players weren’t sure they could fight another vampire or two if it came to it. They opted to check the center coffin, discovering a comatose von Malkin lying in repose and recovering from the many wounds the party had inflicted on him. The players didn’t really know how to permanently destroy a vampire, but some theology and loremastery rolls got them there and they stuck a stake in his heart and Max chopped his head off. Oberholt has a house rule that if you strike the killing blow against the enemy that drained your levels you get a save versus Death to regain that energy. Unfortunately for Max he rolled a 1 so that energy loss would be permanent.

As the vampire’s body crumbled to ash, the orb that was floating in the center of the room released its dark energy above and below, grounding against the metal surfaces of the chamber and dissipating. What was left was a glass orb the size of a bowling ball that Cleet rescued before it got smashed by zealots. The party was able to discover a secret latch, sliding von Malkin’s coffin away to reveal a cavity piled with treasure and a grave’s worth of rich, moist soil. They also found a library and workshop of decent value which Cleet took a bit of time to investigate.

The rest of the session was bagging up loot and victory lapping, then retiring back to Talston to rest/level/recuperate which is where the big span of time hit. Random encounters were mundane and uninteresting so we’ll leave it at that. The Dark Hymn had been broken and the citizens of Oberholt could sleep peacefully again. For now.

Musings:

The party was very careful in resource management this session, with multiple clerics using spells as they could to ensure that they had some redundancy to recover people who may have fallen in combat. They were a bit more engaged in planning, particularly since they had a little advanced recon from their previous visits, and turned a bad situation into a win.

Energy drain sucks.

Fate points are an interesting mechanic from the HFH. Originally, Oberholt had none. Then we had 1d4 per PC. Then we backed off to 1. I still think this is the right balance, particularly since we don’t run the backup XP mechanic that ACKS offers. If we ran backup XP, I’d pull fate points. Something to consider next time around perhaps, but this session fate points came through again by saving Cleet.

I think the party will be relieved to get away from that dungeon, although they know that there is more to explore if they’re truly interested. This will be the first time compression since some of the newer guys joined the table, so they’ll get their first chance to roll new PCs for Team B and their shenanigans.