Session 62: To Catch a Predator

 

2/25/2-3/9/24, rest 3/10, active 3/11

PC: Valda, Zektel, Cracaryn

Hench: Elizabete, Arif

#ACKS

Team B was in play this session, having been locked away in the besieged vaults of the late Nekane the Great (Patron Dwarf Vaultguard, deceased). Finally free, they got with their latest employer Bigtoe the Wombat to get paid, and paid they got. It took a long time to get this session actually moving but it finally lurched into action by way of a trip to Millon.

The scheme was to get double-paid by Patrons for a mutually beneficial hook. Bigtoe had a map to a lair with potential components for his machines that the party had discovered a while back was guarded by or coincidentally located near or under a unicorn grove. Redcorn the Cleric wanted to befriend all Lawful fantastic creatures he could find. Easy money, what could go wrong?

They sent a messenger pigeon to Redcorn in advance to try to cut down on the days they’d need to spend waiting to see him. (I don’t allow PCs to just show up and meet with high level NPCs unless it’s a Patron with an explicit order of “I will see X Y and Z adventurers about such and such problem”) The travel to Redcorn’s domain of Millon was pretty tame, only running across a thief named Arif who was picked up as a henchman by Cracaryn and would prove to be useful down the line.

They languished in Millon for a few days waiting on their appointment, eating up Martha’s baked goods (throwaway NPC baker from way back that naturally became a cornerstone of the campaign because PCs). They haggled with Redcorn, got some rewards for information on unicorns and gnomes, and then were left with a lack of actual adventure to pursue. I think they expected Redcorn to drop everything and fly out to the location or something, idk, but nah bruh. What now?

They had pulled mysterious metals, weapons, and other goodies from a dungeon a while back and had it delivered to Bigtoe, but one item, a golden double-headed eagle sign, was stolen by the thief that had insisted on escorting the item. They decided that now was the time to hunt the guy down and get their loot back.

Zektel the Shaman smoked and shrooms and rolled around with his snakes and creeped everyone out to gain his Commune class ability, learning that the thief still lived, he was not in Riverstride, and he was not in Talston. So that pointed them towards Deinwick to start. I randomly determined if the thief lived and where he had ended up as they were drafting their questions but they didn’t know. Unfortunately, the dice said Deinwick so there wasn’t likely to be some wild goose chase.

When they arrived in Deinwick, they made all manner of claims that they were super tight with the thieves’ guild in the city because they bought some poison once last year. Nay nay, said I, for the thieves’ guild has layers of protection for just such an event. You don’t have a business card for the shady mfer you bought illegal goods from, sorry. The party went about trying to locate a contact, which is when Arif the new thief displayed his talents. He knew a guy who knew a guy and in short order they had a meet.

The fence they were meeting was modeled after Watto, the blue flying dude in the Star Wars prequels that owned Anakin. I tried once to do an annoying New Yorker accent (read: all New Yorker accents) but it was awful so I dropped it. My future with CR is in shambles.

He told them that their target was pissing off every fence in the city by haggling prices over the stolen item then backing out of the deal at the last minute. He’d be happy to lure him into a confrontation in order to get him out of everyone’s hair. Watto agreed to the party’s plan to offer a higher payout for the item and would set the meet.

Fast forward to an abandoned warehouse at night, the party set in ambush, and Watto with a couple thugs loitering near the rubbish inside. The thief Mel showed up, gestured to someone hidden in the shadows behind him, and approached. He clearly did not have the item on him.

The party stayed hidden and allowed him to haggle with Watto again, who just agreed to whatever price to get the item on site. Mel left then returned, sneaking up on the building with the large sign in his hands and a dozen or so zombies in tow. They burst in the front door and attacked Watto, apparently intent on stealing the money offered for the item instead of selling it.

Mel didn’t know the party was there and the ensuing fight was pretty one sided. The zombies were mostly turned and easily defeated by the adventurers, and although significantly tougher for some reason, Mel wasn’t all that formidable either. He did manage to beat Watto to death using the sign as a weapon, which gave the PCs pause, but ultimately he was killed by one of Zektel’s giant pythons. It squeezed him until his head popped off, blasting blacklight and violet gas into the air of the warehouse.

With the threats defeated, the PCs started looting the area. Valda the Fighter tried to carefully bag the sign, but failed the saving throw to avoid contact. I’ve been very soft on cursed items in the past and I think going forward they are going to be truly impactful. Anywho, the sign was a corrupted Aquila, the icon of the God Emperor of Mankind in 40k. The eagle heads were deformed and fanged, the proportions were wrong, and it was possessed by Khorne.

The fighter went into a bloody rage, attacking Watto’s surviving henchmen and beating them to death. She turned on the party but was talked into some semblance of calm, agreeing to have a drink back at the Helpful Hobbit tavern before resuming her rampage. When her back was turned, Cracaryn the Elf Ranger tried to lasso her so the party could take her to a church for help. It did not go well.

See, the sign behaved as a weapon in the hands of a martial PC, provided magical protection, and advanced their prowess by 4 levels. In the hands of Mel the thief, it was unwieldy and ineffective. In the hands of an actual fighter, oof. Valda made contact a few times, nearly killing Cracaryn before eventually being killed herself. The fight dragged and dragged as the PCs tried to subdue her rather than kill her, but eventually they had to get real before she started cleaving them down.

In another of many examples of why I hate fate points, Valda was able to stabilize to 1 hp but would require bed rest and/or magical healing. They tied her up anyway and left the cursed item laying where it was. She was ranting and raving and foaming at the mouth so they were pretty sure she was still affected.

A late night visit to the local Heironeous temple and a massively upcharged “donation” got them the Remove Curse spell that they needed while Zektel and the sneks stayed to guard the warehouse with the item in it. The following day, they debated whether to try to sell it to some unsavory entity or have it destroyed. “Well, how are we even gonna find someone to sell it to?” Arif the thief tentatively raised his hand and said he might know a guy. The implications of that were not lost on the PCs but hey, they’re tryna get paid. Arif was dispatched to make contact with a definitely not problematic entity and the rest of the party took turns guarding the item in the abandoned warehouse.

Musings:

I knew the eagle was cursed when they got it and I knew that’s why Mel the thief stole it. I didn’t really know what it did at the time but I do now. Had they interacted with it sooner, it’d have been developed then. It was fun to have that thread picked up and it served as a good session for a party otherwise a bit lost on what to do. It’ll be fun to see if they can sell the obviously cursed item. They’ve shed all their Lawfuls in that group so they don’t have anyone preaching at them.

Session 63: Balls and Cones

3/3/24-3/3/24, rest 3/4, active 3/5

PC: gwendolyn, flynn, legany, galt

Hench: amadayo, mahin, madrof, godfried, chase, thomas, mike, freddy, po

#ACKS

ACKS II is still in the final stages of development but there’s enough of a game there that we’ve swapped over. This was our first session after the conversion and it was a little slow getting off the ground mostly due to chit chat and last minute questions. Eventually, they settled on a team and a target. It was time to return to Ornaron’s Spear, lovingly referred to as “The Black Shaft”.

They’d done the infiltration into the underwater dungeon enough times that I didn’t require a roll. They had all the proper resources and safety measures to make it trivial. The place was humid and oppressive and they determined that today was the day they were going to clear Level 4 but the dungeon decided to fight back.

First, the abstract vaguely humanoid statue on Level 2 had 4 ghoulish creatures genuflecting around it when the adventurers stumbled into them. Armed with many Crusaders (artists previously known as Clerics), the party made short work of that encounter. The ghouls were branded with crossed thunderbolts, the same as the brass medallions that were pulled off of the troglodytes in a previous session.

The party continued to descend, arriving at the disgusting room filled with disgustingly placed statues that made up what their mapper was calling “the lobby” for each floor. They had locked some giant bug things behind a door to the west by stacking statues in front of it and those remained in place. To the east was the fireball trap room that did such damage during their last trip.

The replacement thief Thomas got to work searching the area for a trap that he knew was there based on description. With some bonuses due to foreknowledge and the new mechanic of “methodical” searching, he easily found it. They chose not to disarm it and so he continued to the door beyond and investigated it. No traps and it was stuck so he dipped out and let others take a look.

First was Gwendolyn, the new and improved Bard. The ACKS II conversion for the Bard class is pretty cool, making them quite a bit more martial and gaining some abilities at the cost of HD. She Listened at the door, hearing the sounds of chicken scratching and some clucking. Chickens?

Some of the players had seen this show before and suspected a cockatrice. I smugly flipped over to the new Monstrous Manual to dig up the revised stats for the classic little monster but what’s this? Cockatrice didn’t make the cut? Oh no. Good thing ACKS is mostly backwards compatible so I ran with it anyway.

Next, one of the mages cast Summon Berserkers, but no no, now it’s Summon Manes. For this mage’s level it equated to about the same thing except the manes would last an entire day. Neat. He threw a few of them at the door to bash it down and failed, certainly alerting whatever was inside. At this point Legany the Barbarian offered to bash it in and bash it in he did, stumbling into the waiting beaks of three cockatrices.

The new ACKS surprise rules are pretty cool, basing chances of being surprised on foreknowledge and line of sight to the enemy. In this case, both sides had foreknowledge and both sides had LOS since bam they were all right there. Surprise chart says no surprise for anyone and the heat was on.

Legany was able to win initiative and withdraw away from the creatures, who pursued and pecked away at the party. They were literal birdbrains so I decided to randomly assign targets, most of which targeted Flynn the Crusader and his ridiculously high AC. Only scoring one hit of significance before being slain, the cockatrices didn’t even get to turn anyone to stone. Bummer.

Certain of treasure beyond, the party rushed in to find naught but chicken shit and some exits to the room. They spent some time searching and listening, hearing a “sticky waterfall” to the north. On investigation there was a curtain of blood flowing down the northern wall in a gross viscous wave. There were angry faces protruding from it periodically and though it pooled, it did not flood the room. There was a brief conversation about how to destroy it but eventually they left off and retreated to the cockatrice room.

The next chamber had hundreds of different humanoid skulls bleached and hanging from large deep sea fishing hooks in the ceiling. The party was confused a bit by this but insisted that there must be treasure, so they sent the 3 remaining manes in to pull on every skull. Ok fine, it was thorough but it was gonna take a while.

Time is a resource, especially in a dungeon with random encounters, but alas there was no deadly enemy to assail them. One of the manes released a hidden cache of loot that crushed it beneath the weight of the treasure. 2 manes remained but they had a modest stack of loot. I made them roll it live off of the random table so I couldn’t be blamed. Good thing too because they missed a solid opportunity for a big payout.

The adventurers policed up the gear into sacks and beat feet back to the boat to store it in case the worst happened. I equate this to the regular advice given to establish a forward position as a base of sorts to store treasure and rest if needed. This dungeon requires something like that, but it’s good advice in other situations as well.

Anyway, back in the dungeon after a decent score, back to the blood curtain room, and on to the next where they discovered an abandoned camp used by 3 or 4 humans. There were bedrolls and supplies and WHO WOULD CHOOSE TO LIVE IN THIS PLACE ugh. No one was home and they didn’t find any treasure so onward the party went.

An obsidian sculpture of a giant coiled snake dominated the next room and the mapper declared that this had to be the last room before the big bugs that they had locked away. Despite there being two open passages leading that way, no effort was made to guard or scout. Instead, they sent the manes to investigate for them. 

Possessing no proficiencies and indeed being compromised by their state of undeath, one of the manes poked the snake in the head while they other climbed over and into the interior of the coils. The mage immediately lost contact with this one and the party was sure there was a sekrit to uncover. When they sent Legany to throw a torch down the hole within the center of the snake, we finally hit on a random encounter roll!

I didn’t even look at the chart, this was a no brainer. The encounter was the giant bugs from the next room over scrabbling up to see what the hubbub was. I rolled this dungeon a while back and while cockatrices had been removed, ankhegs had been replaced and upgraded by assassin bugs that carried the corpses of their victims as temporary hit points. What a badass monster, let’s fucking go.

Galt panicked, swearing they should have never come here and insisting everyone flee for their lives. Flynn went the other way, casting a protective spell that made him immune to normal attacks from “evil” creatures, defined as hostile creatures of an opposing alignment or explicitly evil creatures like undead, and standing in the breach. 

Most of the party fled while a few stayed to hold the line to give those in the room a chance to retreat. I had to endure a lot of whining and bitching about how deadly the dungeon was until someone offered a solution instead of a complaint. One of the mages cast a hypnotic sigil spell, similar to the old hypnotic pattern except it was a cone now instead of an AOE. This made it much more of a precision weapon and due to some poor saves by the monsters’ had them all hemmed up. It was really a matter of time now until they could defeat them, which given the AC and hps took a while. Unfortunately no other random encounters hit and after a long battle, the adventurers emerged victorious.

The bone pile lair of the assassin bugs had the chance for a real solid score in it, but again the players rolled poorly for random treasure and came out with something much more modest. They took their loot and bounced back to the boat, leaving a mystery with the snake hole behind.

Musings:

ACKS II is cool. We didn’t get a chance to use the revamped wilderness encounter tables, but we did spend a lot of time confirming new mechanics. The game doesn’t play that much differently in practice. It’s really about getting the small details like conditions and action economy down. Spells changed a lot but it’s reasonably intuitive and didn’t bog us down too bad. Practice makes perfect and I’m excited to keep at it.

Session 61: Catching Up

1/31/2-2/18/24, rest 2/19, active 2/20

PC: Gwendolyn, Cleet, Legany, Galt

Hench: Amadayo, Mahin, Madrof, Chase, Terry, Mike, Freddy, Cleric_02, Thief_03, Thief_04

#ACKS

The last time we played, the session ended on a cliffhanging revelation that “Oh shit, that pool in the dungeon turns gold into platinum, we have to go back!” Despite knowing better, I chose to stop time until the next session. I didn’t want to abstract the return to the dungeon which ACKS has rules for and there was tension over the pool being active for a limited time.

The entire session was overcoming the challenges of stopping time in a living world. It was exacerbated by the fact that my domain level patrons/players started a war with each other that had been going for about a month in the background. As the players began to interact with more of the world that had been moving into the future, the inability to really alter events that already transpired was telling.

Avoid stopping time in a fixed time game if at all possible. The preservation of the tension over the pool was not worth the clunky session catching up to the living world that had already moved on.

Anyway, the group got their supplies together and went right back to the dungeon. They brought every gold piece they could muster on the off chance of being to convert it to platinum in the pool. The sailors of the “Keef Richards”, Cleet the Mage’s boat and veterans of this trip, rubbed silver coins gotten from the dungeon for good luck as Galt dove into to secure the group’s safety line to the underwater dungeon.

Once the group got in it was pretty easy to descend to the deeper levels. The stairs were all located in the same room. The challenge was that going deeper meant tougher obstacles. The overall mission of the dungeon was to retrieve a spell formula somewhere in the dungeon but they had yet to locate it.

It was easy to locate the pool room but they arrived to find a pack? Clutch? Gaggle? Definitely a gaggle of giant draco lizards vibing around the boiling water of the pool. Previously, the water had been a whirlpool, so there was a red flag there, but of immediate interest was the very large potentially deadly lizards.

The party was surprised, all except Cleet, who fired off his signature move the hypnotic pattern spell. The crew didn’t really know the disposition of the lizards but given the surprise round chose to act rather than react. Several of the lizards were mesmerized but the remaining two closed on and started chomping on the front line. After a pretty tough battle in which Legany the Barbarian was downed, the remaining lizard broke morale and fled.

Experimentation with the pool went poorly, the party learning that the bubbling liquid was actually acid of some kind. The transformation magic was dead and I chose this moment to relate to the party that in the AD&D DMG, the magic pools that convert gold are one use only. I had generated this dungeon using Appendix A of that book and it was the second such pool they had found historically.

With the pool checked off, the group descended to the unexplored 4th level of the dungeon. Their first explored room away from the stairs revealed these massive bug creatures with prominent foreclaws that scared them very much, so they heroically closed and spiked the door shut and courageously went the other direction.

The door to the next room was dried and brittle in an environment that was humid, sticky, and gross. Legany asked questions about fire or heat, which was smart, but there was no obvious heat radiating from the room or anything. When the party broke in, they found an empty, dry, and brittle room with an exit. 

I’m a soft DM and asked several times what they were doing before entering the room. They didn’t send their thief in to search for traps, so when the group walked through as a whole the fireball trap that dropped from the ceiling was pretty scary. When the smoke cleared, Terry and Freddy the henches and Cleet the mage were toast and the rest of the party was quite wounded.

After the lizards, bugs, and fireball trap the group was very hesitant to continue so they bounced. Back in town they buried their dead, bought some healing, and hired some henchmen. They pivoted here trying to find a quick score through rumors and this is where the pain of catching up to the stop time issues ramped up.

The party long ago had tried to save Maisie of Millon from bandits or something around the city of Valestrian but learned that she had apparently run off to marry Lord Eros Tyring of Blackhold. Fast forward over a year to the very pregnant Maisie being present in Bellport for the birth of her child. There were some public comments and announcements in the Discord server from the Patron running Tyring about the situation so the players latched on to it as a potential hook They were convinced that Maisie needed rescuing and contrived for Gwendolyn to get a meeting with her and play music for her and braid hair and have pillow fights or whatever girls do.

It was nice to have knowledge of the principals in question and what they had done, but it was disappointing that the players could not really change the course of events leading up to the current date because we stopped time.

Convinced that Maisie was not a prisoner and earning an invitation to the reception after the naming of the child, Gwendolyn went back to the bar and chilled. Meanwhile, the others were tailing Chimichonga Applesauce (player generated name) the taxman and learning where he lived. That night, they broke into his house, rounded up all the staff into the cellar, and planned to educate Chimichonga about the thieves’ guild terms.

Somewhere in the chaos, Cleet the mage escorted the taxman to his boat and planned a very different intimidation tactic. While the party stripped the guy’s house bare of easily stolen valuables, Cleet’s new boat the “Going Nowhere” sailed out to sea with a magically sleeping government official stowed away. When he awoke, he found himself on the docks in a foreign town with a strongly worded suggestion to get on board with the thieves’ guild or next time won’t have a happy ending.

The party regrouped and counted their ill-gotten gains, got their reward from the thieves’ guild, and FINALLY CAUGHT UP WITH THE CALENDAR.

Musings:

Stopping time in a 1:1 game is not worth the squeeze most of the time. The exception that I can think of is if session play goes very far into the future. That works better because there are less moving parts stuck in a weird time paradox. It’s just the party and not the ENTIRE WORLD. If you can’t tell I was pretty frustrated with myself for stopping time.

The session went in an interesting direction, with the players craving some kind of score. The dungeon is tough in the deeper levels so having a fallback is an option, but if they want the big score, they’ll have to get in there at some point. I probably over-rewarded for the thieves’ guild thing but some interesting events happened there that will potentially develop into threads later.

Session 59: Trench Foot Epidemic

 

1/21/2-1/29/24, rest 1/30, active 1/31

PC: Valda, Zektel, Brumdor, Cracaryn

Hench: Elizabete

#ACKS

Today the players were back on Team B, looking to capitalize on the previous session’s score that was in transit to the patron who was going to pay them for it. Using 1:1 time means abiding by the calendar so even though they were sure to have a big payout, they still had to worry about logistics. We love logistics.

The group traveled across the map to the Friendship Hills, home of Teutch the Alchemist and Bigtoe the Wombat. Along the way they did a little shopping and Zektel sent a request to Gwendolyn the Goat for a song to be commissioned about his beautiful snake haired girlfriend. When they arrived in Deinwick they found the purple, pink, and gold magical walls that were a product of the Brigstein had been vandalized along the interior with crass anti-Teutch graffiti.

Between Deinwick and Rushford they ran across a small procession carrying a palanquin of a foreign noble. The group’s default signal for parley is for Zektel to hoist his underwear on a stick as a flag. The guards of the procession thought this was pretty funny and chuckled amongst themselves. After a brief chat both sides carried on.

Once across the Friendship Bridge and into the Hills, the party waited on their convoy to arrive. They were dismayed to discover that Mel the Thief henchman had run off with the golden Aquila of the Emperor that they were certain was worth quite a bit. The other goods arrived without issue. Bigtoe offered them some rewards that varied based on whether or not these items were powered by his white whale “purple cake” material. They agreed and decided to get to work on something else while waiting for the dwarf to tinker with the unfamiliar technology of an Astartes chainsword and frag grenade.

That something else turned out to be recon into the Order of Battle for Nekane the Great’s vaults directly to the north. Bigtoe was paying big to find a weakness that he could exploit in Nekane’s domain so the group began to plan their infiltration.

Nekane’s people are known to be a little ornery so they asked the dwarf craftpriest hench Elizabete to help Brumdor get into the vault. A poor 2d6 roll for obedience meant the dwarf hench was not happy with the dwarf on dwarf aggression and opted out. The party left her at the tower.

The guards on Nekane’s vault are characteristically grumpy and the first attempt to gain access does not go well, punctuated by an off-color joke attempted by Zektel who botched the punchline in a true Michael Scott embarrassing moment. The party was run off and decided to wait for a shift change and try again. Waiting in the mountains is dangerous but they were not punished for it.

The second attempt went better and the party was allowed entry and guided to the town far below through twisty confusing tunnels. No one but Brumdor had any chance of getting out the way that they came in. Some terrible attempts at trying to get in good with the locals at the bar led to a different approach. Zektel fabricated a parasitic trench foot type disease that was affecting only dwarves. He absolutely HAD to inspect the dwarven troops to prevent a massive epidemic.

The reaction rolls for this went significantly better, getting the group in front of the Master Armorer. Nekane couldn’t be bothered with it but his right hand felt it couldn’t hurt to have them inspect a platoon just to see. One of the players started offering ideas that Zektel could use the tenets of his order as an excuse to gain access. Zektel was Neutral however and had no order, which led to claims of being part of “Doctors without Orders” to many chuckles. 

The party was led through “The Tunnel” to a series of corridors where a platoon of dwarven soldiers were posted to guard. The NCO on duty was skeptical but allowed a quarantined area to be established and a thorough inspection performed of each dwarven soldier. Zektel found a few dwarves showing discolored toenails which he claimed was a serious indication of infection. This was of course bullshit but he used his high ranks in healing to inflict further discomfort on these poor dwarves and ratchet up the symptoms, all pointing at the Trench Foot that culminated in creeping nematodes, allegedly parasites that would burst forth from the foot and required amputation.

Great pains were taken to express how serious this disease was, including advising against any foot on foot contact which we all fell out over. Zektel’s player was on fire. The humor dried up quick when the NCO sent for the dwarven head medical official. When he arrived, he had a miserable roll to determine the cause of the afflicted dwarves’ red, rashy feet. He was suspicious and took the patients away to his own quarantine.

The party sensed that the jig was up but were denied a guide to exit at this late hour. They camped with the dwarven platoon and were sweating being arrested or worse. Overnight they were awoken by the sounds of combat to find a large amorphous blob of shifting flesh, carapace, and teeth attacking the dwarven soldiers on guard. The party joined the battle against the creature, discovering that it was very tough but sporadic, sometimes standing completely still or wailing in pain. It was still able to kill most of the dwarves and nearly Brumdor before the party was able to just run away. They fled down the primary corridor to the entry and their desperate cries for help against “the Trenchfoot Monster” convinced the guards to let them through. The doors were sealed and the session ended back at the Bearded Axe, the tavern that the party visited when they first arrived.

Musings:

I RP’d another of the same player’s high level PCs during this session. He doesn’t always agree with my takes on them but them’s the breaks. I suspect he would have offered much higher payouts for the Astartes equipment but what was offered was fair. I allowed a baseline then a reaction check to dictate whether he went higher or lower. I’m satisfied with the results.

The trench foot epidemic had us all rolling, it was a good time. Clever use of proficiencies to create a problem and offer the solution has developed into an interesting thread. I’m not sure what the players do next here, whether they double down on the trench foot or try to beat feet outta there before they get caught out. We’ll find out soon!

Session 60: Heavy is the Pocket

1/28/2-1/29/24, rest 1/30, active 1/31

PC: Gwendolyn, Flynn, Cleet, Galt

Hench: Amadayo, Mahin, Madrof, Chase, Terry, Mike, Freddy, Poe

#ACKS

Our players chose Team A for the session due to Team B being locked in downtime. They still had the dungeon known as Ornaron’s Spear to explore off of the coast of Bellport and this time their ship captain and definitely not a smuggler Cleet was available. It didn’t take them long to sync up in Bellport and then head to the dungeon.

Diving for the entrance of the Spear is an extra layer of security but their seafaring venturer Galt is well-practiced at it especially now that they had magical light to light their way. He overcame the penalties for attempting it in cold water and in short order the group was inside the dungeon, gaining entry through a zipper latch in the ceiling of the first room.

The strategy appeared to be re-clearing each level of the dungeon that they’d already explored in order to cover their asses before heading deeper. They also wanted to recover some copper and heavier goods that were left behind from the last session. After they dried off from the winter ocean water, they systematically explored both the first and second levels of the dungeon, their only real issues being stuck doors of pock-marked coral that needed busted open.

They broke an evil altar near the site of their previous demise and subsequent corpse recovery a la Everquest circa 2001. The Lawful clerics will gain a little bonus xp for it while the rest of the Neutral party eagerly counted their meager treasure. The following efforts to retrieve a couple hundred gold worth of loot was heroic. I was proud of them for properly calculating their encumbrance and how to carry it all out. Just a shame it was a small amount.

Some wandering Troglodytes tried to stop them and take their loot, but a tanky frontline and oversized party handled business pretty easily despite Cleet the Mage’s best effort to hit everyone with Hypnotic Pattern. The PCs stashed their loot right at the entrance then returned, seeking to make their first delve into level 3.

Now this is a reminder that in ACKS dungeon levels cap at 6, where in AD&D they go much higher and increase in difficulty at smaller intervals. So while level 3 doesn’t sound that high, it’s about mid range in power, so they were starting to get into level appropriate content. A horde of zombies met them at the first room, surprising and attacking them right on the stairs, but their beefy front line soaked the hits while the clerics turned em and made short work of the foes.

The following room contained a steel rod connecting floor to ceiling that hummed gently. Cleet naturally had to touch it which resulted in a shock that did a little damage. The party noped immediately out of that room and continued on where they found a circle of like 20 crabs dancing rhythmically in a circle. Gwendolyn the Bard played a tune and disrupted their tempo, which caused them to scatter into little cracks and crevices in the floor.

There was a whirlpool in the middle of the next room, which Cleet immediately dove into. They watched him flounder around for a bit until he was probably gonna drown before fishing him out. He didn’t feel any different and they moved onto the next room, which had the floor covered in skeletons of various aquatic animals. On closer inspection, the skeletons were formed from random bones broken, carved, and glued to make the correct shapes. There was a bull’s head roaring in pain at the head of a whale or shark or something I forget. One of the clerics turned undead and the evil was banished from it.

The crew was very suspicious of a pile of treasure sitting in a pillar of shining white light. One of their thief henchmen couldn’t find any traps and they didn’t expend any resources so when they scooped all the coins into bags there definitely weren’t any obvious or not so obvious repercussions. It was getting late so they made their way out of the dungeon and back to town with nary a random encounter. One of those light sessions.

After a while of shopping and chilling to wrap up the session, Cleet realized that the gold in his pouch had changed into platinum. A firestorm of OH WE HAVE TO GO BACK RIGHT NOW and other ways to immediately capitalize on the likely magical pool were floated, eventually settling on stopping time. While I avoid this practice in most situations, as long as the party committed to playing this group the next session I felt it was ok.

The other options were abstracted dungeon delving, which is an mechanic in ACKS but I don’t care for it for an active party of PCs, or just waiting 2 weeks to go back since we aren’t gonna have a session next week. We’ll see if it was a mistake for our next session.

Session 58: They Shall Know… Some… Fear

Session 58: They Shall Know… Some… Fear

1/14/2-1/18/24, rest 1/19, active 1/20

PC: Alari, Zektel, Brumdor, Cracaryn

Hench: Elizabete, Domeko, Mel

#ACKS

It’s been a hot minute since the last session, a little over a month. The crew jumped in on Team B to chase a treasure map on behalf of Bigtoe the Wombat (PCPatron Machinist) that led to some technology of some kind in the hills west of Bellport.

They had parked in Millon, the domain of John Redcorn III (PCPatron Cleric), and got into the game pretty quick, traveling to Riverstride. Some insignificant random encounters with a few elves and a squire out of Riverstride didn’t slow their progress at all.

Bigtoe had loaned them a truck to help carry the loads and loads of loot sure to be found at the location indicated by the map. Their last interaction had set the truck and it's escort to waiting for them in Northbridge. After 5 weeks, the soldiers were a little grumpy. The weather was cold and somewhat wet, with a bit of snow on the regular, and they were ready to do whatever they were out there to do and then go home.

I didn’t have a plan for this map. With these kinds of things I generally let whoever finds the map kinda meme into existence the general theme. I then try to find a way to apply it that isn’t them just creating customized treasure for themselves. The hook was technology involved so while they traveled I was considering what that could be. 

En route to the location, the party came across a lone Medusa in a secluded cabin. Her reaction check was pretty friendly so I played her reclusive. But she’s still a Medusa so when they knocked on the door she “forgot” to put her hood on when she answered. Fortunately they were lucky on the surprise roll and were able to avert their eyes. Zektel the Shaman attempted to woo his new girlfriend to little success and the party bounced. The shaman did leave a small “selfie” of a small picture of a snake for his new gf, but unsolicited snake pics are never popular.

The adventurers found the location indicated by the map on the first search roll. The soldiers and truck camped outside while the party investigated a wide hole in the ground descending at a pretty sharp angle. Brumdor the dwarf was able to determine there weren't any tool marks like it was dug, but it clearly wasn’t natural. Meanwhile, the others located some very large sheets of strange metal that were discarded nearby, kind of leaf shaped and convex and super heavy. 

They tied off some safety lines just in case and descended into the earth. The tunnel let out into a large cavern with stalactites, mites, and speleothem (we had to Google that during session). A wide path of destruction led eastward and they could just barely see some sort of artifice at the edge of their torchlight which revealed itself to be a teardrop shaped pod of some sort designed to carry a handful of something the size of hill giants. Exit ramps led down from the pod and into a scene of absolute carnage. 

Skeletons of hundreds of goblins and hobgoblins lay in piles all around the pod and led in a path further to the east, their injuries indicating extremely destructive impact and rending damage. They found large shell casings which due to Brumdor’s experience with some other found firearms from the campaign they were able to identify. The group also found a human skull with weird metal bits protruding from it and were lucky enough to determine it was trapped before setting off the grenade placed underneath. Brumdor was able to disarm it and they were picking up quite a little collection of alien artifacts.

At the far end of the cavern, there was a corridor leading out. This appeared to be where the battle broke for the beastmen as the corpses thinned and there were many more kills from behind as the creatures fled. Tracking indicated that it was a single giant sized biped responsible for all the death.

I’ve had 40k on the brain lately. If it isn’t already obvious, an Astartes drop pod delivered a Space Marine to Oberholt. He suffered not the Xenos to live and cut a path through on his own mysterious mission. The party figured this out here. They aren’t 40k junkies or anything, but they were suspicious and I dropped a picture of a servo skull and drop pod and they recognized the aesthetic.

This revelation had them very nervous the rest of the session that they would have to fight a Space Marine. Not being versed in 40k helped because they really had no idea what to expect; they just knew they were tough and could obviously wreck beastmen.

Cracaryn was able to continue to track the Astartes beyond the next intersection, bringing them to a spot where the supersoldier had punched a hole through the deadend and into a gothic chapel of some kind. There was a double-headed golden eagle prominent over an altar before which was kneeling a giant suit of power armor with a chainsword and a bolter tempting the adventurers.

The game halted here for a bit while the players tried to figure out how to approach the situation. They settled on Zektel’s snake companion as a scout. It slithered forward and disturbed some weird purple smoke or mist that wafted around like a heat haze wherever the snake moved beyond the threshold of the opening, but it didn’t seem to bother the creature. It returned to report that it didn’t smell, taste, or otherwise sense anything living in the room.

Again, a big halt while they hemmed and hawed over how to approach it. Was the warrior undead? A trap? What was the purple smoke? They tried to send henchmen in after long discussions over how likely dangerous it was. They mostly refused, but the thief hench Mel agreed to try to steal the golden eagle for 100gp gem and a PC’s share of the sale. The party agreed and off he went.

He sneaked his way along one wall to the edge of his light, but needed more to properly inspect the decoration on the wall. He signaled to the group who tried to throw like 4 or 5 torches that all went out. I had them roll 1-2 on a d6 to see if they were extinguished by the obviously horrible nature of this place. Eventually, Alari decided to creep in with a torch and light his way.

It was very tense as the thief pried and wrenched at the eagle, eventually pulling it loose. Everyone froze but nothing happened. The thief’s demeanor immediately changed, though, as he tucked the eagle under his arm and strolled past the kneeling figure. He patted the massive pauldron nonchalantly on his way by and exited the room. When prompted to stay and aid in getting the rest of the loot, he snickered and said nah, he’d be at the truck with the eagle. The party let him go.

With the eagle stolen and the armor interacted with no negative effect, the PCs were feeling pretty confident. The next target was the chainsword that was laying on the ground as though dropped. Alari moved in to get it.

Now, I had no idea what this map was going to lead to. Once I determined the Astartes busted into this chapel for… reasons… I wondered ok, what’s here? A random encounter gave me an energy draining wight lair. I turned them ethereal to explain how they could even contest a space marine and there we were. Our mysterious visitor died to spectral enemies his weapons could not harm, a last prayer on his lips, and the warp-magic pocket dimension this chapel was in kept the creatures trapped.

ACKS sneaking is weird at first, but basically check surprise, then if that fails check sneak skills. The thief and Alari were extremely lucky at first with their surprise rolls. I ruled the torchlight made no difference to surprise since the creatures weren’t really “seeing” into the room. Normally, if one side of an encounter has light then they cannot surprise the other. So it was just flat rolls which went their way. Until Alari grabbed the chainsword, which prompted another roll, which she failed.

The enemies materialized out of the warp and surrounded her. She was not surprised but lost initiative and was drained to death immediately. The rest of the party were shocked and most fled, but one heroic craftpriest henchman Domeko passed a massive morale check and attempted to turn the creatures. He got 2 of them but then lost the next initiative and was also drained to death.

The PCs were unwilling to leave Alari’s magical equipment and the space man’s gear, oh and totally wanted to recover their friends’ body for proper rites, so they crept back to the entrance and peeped in. The room was as they left it, two desiccated corpses and the motionless Astartes power armor. They could not see the enemy creatures.

They noticed the skull that they had picked up from the trap was sparking and reacting to proximity to this room. Domeko was Zektel’s henchman and dead right at the door, so he devised a plan to reach in with the servo skull in one hand and grab Domeko with the other to drag him out. The skull sparked to malfunctioning life, whining in wild vox tones that prompted a save vs paralysis due to the shock of it. Zektel failed and dropped the skull in the room but was able to retrieve his henchman’s body.

The skull rolled into the room and wailed and whined and screeched, drawing the wights back to the plane to swirl around and inspect it. Meanwhile, Alari’s body and the loot were 50ish feet further in. While the creatures were distracted, Zektel rushed in to grab what he could, getting a hold on Alari and the chainsword and dragging them both out. I ran this on surprise rolls too, since the wights were distracted. He made it going in but failed going out.

The shaman lost initiative and was certain he was going to be drained to death, but Brumdor the Machinist had like months ago developed a batman style grappling hook shooter thing. He was able to hook Zektel and yank him to safety before the creatures got him, their spectral hands pushing and forcing the threshold at the door to bulge out into the corridor.

Some attempts were made to retrieve the servo skull with the hook but each one revealed that the veil between worlds was breaking and the creatures were piercing further into the hallway. They abandoned the attempt and fled with their loot and allies’ bodies. They loaded up everything they had found onto the truck, all the while hearing loud ripping and tearing dimensional sounds coming from the hole behind them. Pedal to the metal and they were out, the truck heading back to Bigtoe far to the west while the PCs were returning to New Bridge. The thief Mel would not part with the eagle so he went with the truck.

A lot of discussion was had about trying to restore the drained characters but that just wasn’t going to work. They confirmed with a priest in New Bridge and opted to burn the dead on pyres so that they would not return as wights later. They ended the session there.