Session 81: The Venture in Adventurer

 Session 81: The Venture in Adventurer

8/19/24-8/25/24, rest 8/26, active 8/27

PC: Valda, Zektel, Brumdor, Cracaryn

Hench: Bazam, Crom, Zero, Nicky, Randy

#ACKS

The session started on 8/19 due to time jail from last week, but the party was fine burning a day so hey whatever. Team B started in Teutch Tower where they paid Teutch’s people to start researching the weird magic crown they found a while back. Zektel also started to see the effects of the conversion of Teutch’s mostly apathetic population to The Cult of the Foot under his weird Neutral Aztec god.

Zektel was adamant that the party finish their mission for Teutch to locate and map Simba the Sphinx’s lair. The reward wasn’t what they were accustomed to in terms of gold or treasure so there was some balking but with no real better options off they went.

Teutch had wanted to attune to the dungeon near his tower since the beginning of Oberholt. He even built a road for adventurers to get out there easily. Its upper levels have been delved a few times by PCs and NPCs, but no real attempts had been made thus far to “clear it out” or delve to the bottom or anything.

The idea was floated during downtime that there would likely be a backdoor to a lower level that Simba and his pride of Sphinxes would use to come and go, rather than traverse the winding, weird hallways of the upper levels. That sounded plausible to me and my trusty 2d6 supported it, so when the party started searching for it they eventually found a massive door with runes over the frame at the bottom of a hidden crevice in the rocky hills around the Fallen Castle itself.

Some estimation of “how deep in the dungeon would this door lead” from outside was met with “lol” and “lmao”. Mythic underworld dungeon environments don’t make sense in the light of the rational sun-kissed world of the surface. Just simply no way to guess that. What they were sure of is that it was significantly deeper than the first level of the castle just by nature of how deep the crevice was.

Zektel the shaman used his cooldowns of Spiritwalk and Commune to investigate and divine the nature of the door and dungeon beyond, learning of some hellhounds nearby and confirming that Simba was indeed laired within. Valda’s new sword that can Locate Object was unable to pick up on Simba’s trademark rings however, so the group suspected his lair was far from the door.

The group returned to the Tower and schemed. They would talk to Meowster and have his sphinxes set an ambush for Simba. They would upgrade their armament by buying from Bigtoe’s nearby workshop. They would commission a magic scroll to help read the runes on the door.

Fast forward a few days to the party camped above the door. Brumdor had a new mech robot thing, Meowster, Snowball, and the rest of his pride showed up, and the party was discussing what to do with the door.

It's only a matter of time before we see the Exosquad in action

Cracaryn wanted a war of attrition. Ambush anything that came out of the entrance. He felt that breaching the door would give them away and force Simba’s pride into action, which the party did not want to be a part of because sphinxes are scary tough. If they were gonna breach the door they had to find their target fast before it could respond.

Zektel wanted to breach and delve the level for treasure. He felt the group would eventually find the enemy lair and be able to complete their mission. The rest of the party had no real opinions. They argued back and forth for a while, despite not having learned how to even open the door.

Dispel magic didn’t work, but Meowster agreed to translate the runes for them just to watch them work at the riddle. I mean, all these sphinxes there had to be a riddle, right? They spent some time trying to dope it out, even trying to get Meowster to solve it for them. He of course would do no such thing, not for free at least, and they argued about whether to pay him and his motives for being here and why oh why did we agree to adventure? Some jokes were made about profit margins and only seeking Venturer style adventure (bean counting) and they slept on it.

I'm adVenturing!

Overnight, a sphinx and some hellhounds exited the door, but the hounds' incredible senses picked up something was amiss. Initiatives for the watch and monsters were tied! ACKS II says those who are outnumbered act first, so the enemy side hauled ass back into the dungeon. Snowball leapt down to try and hold the door open while Valda grabbed a big stone to try and block it should it close.

The sphinxes said they could try to hold it open for a while but it was obviously very difficult. The group did not trust the cat dudes and argued for a while until the rock holding the door open shattered and it slammed shut. They finished their rest and then Zektel paid for Meowster’s best guess at the answer to the riddle, which was fortunately correct. The party buffed up expecting hellhounds and went inside, the nigh invincible mantis robot thing in the lead.

A very large hallway led them to an intersection. Early tracking showed sphinxes and hellhounds parting and Zektel called to follow the hounds. They lost the trail at the next intersection and wandered a bit, finding a large room with a pulsing spiral of runes across most of the floor. I warned them that their buff spells had worn out, but that got missed I guess as there was confusion about that later on. 

They backtracked and located the hellhound lair which turned to combat fast as the hounds heard the stompy robot approach. The first round of combat had the mech near destroyed and some solid hits on the enemy. Valda was blasted down and the group called a retreat. They were able to throw summoned animals at the hounds long enough to escape. In the distance, they heard cackling and baying from the hounds as they tortured one of the summoned wolves.

Musings:

The history of the campaign has set unreasonable expectations of rewards for missions. That showed itself during this session in the arguments over why they were even pursuing the sphinx mission in the first place. The pursuit of adventure is clouded by the return on investment and profit margin conversation. A natural result of gold for xp systems, but exaggerated by the inflated economy in Oberholt where coffee runs are showered with more gold than anyone can carry.

There’s also a sense that NPCs are going to simply adventure for them. Arguments were made about why Meowster’s pride wouldn’t just go in the dungeon, but that wasn’t the agreement that Teutch struck with the Sphinxes. We’ll see what interactions shake out around that doorway now that each side knows the other is there.

I made a mistake in the combat with the hellhounds in that I allowed them to cleave with their fire breath. It didn’t feel right at the time but I couldn’t find anything specific in the book about it. Consultation with ACKS oracle Arb confirmed my suspicion. Even though it’s a single target effect, it’s essentially a spell-like ability which is not eligible for cleaves. I don’t know that it would have changed the fight significantly because most of the meat the party had in front were low HD wolves, but I pulled off at the end and decided the hounds would torture a captured wolf instead of pursue. I don’t mind killing everyone but not if it’s by a mistaken rule.