Cast of Characters
Boog, fighter – Rob Conley
Grim, thief – Brian
Corum, cleric – Rusty
Ailen, magic-user – Josh
DM – Me
Monday Night found the party’s number increased to
four as Josh joined the fray. The party
now has a representative from each of the four base classes as Josh took on the
roll of magic-user. Running on only
brain fumes for the session I skipped the whole clever introductions or
creating an organic situation where they would meet. Hell, there isn’t even a tavern to do the
cliché meet and greet.
After the players helped remind my sorry ass of
where we left off. (Side note: I always
have the best intentions of keeping detailed documentation for a campaign, but
it never seems to happen beyond a few sessions.
So no having the best memory ever created I often need reminded of where
we left off.) This time I did have an
idea and created a dungeon for the session.
With only minimal introduction I had Josh join the
party on the outside of the dungeon. The
party tracked one of their enemies to here, a not so abandon temple of the old
Death God, Ba’al. Abandon temples of
death gods are the best. After some
muscle work from Boog the barred door fell under his mighty onslaught.
Immediately upon entering the players saw the
strange sight of a crumpled pillar with long tentacles laying on the floor
about it. After a quick and cautious
inspection they deduced the pillar had been a roper. Ailen saw that its teeth and eye had been
removed. Someone with the knowledge of
components and Viz must have killed it.
Not long after the inspection of the roper was
completed the party was attacked by two 8’ skeletons with big ass swords. Corum was able to turn one.* The second one lumbered forward and shattered
Corum’s shoulder with a massive blow.
After trading blows with the giant skeletons the party limped away
victorious.
After this attack the players investigated a
couple of rooms and found the front entrance was under a good amount of
mountain from the initial earthquake that cut them off from the civilized
kingdoms. Ailen discovered a Pouch of Preservation (see New Magic
Item Section) with pipe tobacco stashed in it.
They avoided a room of zombies.
Although there was a nice scene with them scrambling with iron spikes to
keep the door shut as the zombies piled on on the other side. Zombies, always a good time.
Then the unsuspecting party came upon a locked
door. After some tinkering with the
lock, the door burst open with a cloud of dust that blinded most of the
party. A dust ghoul (from the Tome of
Horrors) attacked the players. The
players had no idea how much danger they were in. The dust ghoul was prepared to summon his
dust zombies, but after being wounded and the decisive strike from Corum, sent
the creature lifeless to the floor.
Boo-yah!
Inside the room the players found thirteen
pedestals, two empty, eleven with grotesque statues of the others gods in
perverse positions. Boog, being an art
connoisseur of perverse statuary wanted to take them with him, but decided they
were too heavy and would probably break off the most interesting parts during
the adventure. He put a Boogmark in his
brain to come back and grab funny statues.
On the floor the symbol of the death god was inlayed with black
quartz. Corum got a very bad feeling
about this room and had the party leave.
As they stepped out of the statuary room the floor
trembled with a loud rumbling noise that seemed to emanate from beneath
them. Scary.
The party then encountered a strange door that was
intricately decorated with thirteen skulls.
The eye sockets of the skulls were holes. After some monkeying around and a fail trap
check by Grim, Boog took a header into a 20' deep pit. At the bottom was black water. When he climbed out he was covered in transparent
leech like critters. Boog scream like a
little girl and as they burned them off of him he screamed a little more. After much deliberation they decided the door
was no match for them and moved on.
As we neared the end of the session the players
heard and felt the rumbling under their feet once again. Something must be pretty scary under there,
eh? They found a secret door that opened
to a small room with a pillar made of black quartz. The same kind of quartz the symbol in the
floor in the statuette room was made of.
They broke out the make shift wood platform around the pillar and
discovered it dropped a long way.
The final room where we ended for the evening they
found a storage room. It had enough
basic supplies for a hundred men. The
most interesting part of the room was the war chest they found. It had some money inside and a few other
things, but the chest itself was something they plan to drag out of this place.
*The players don't know this and if any of my
players are reading this stop now or lose 250xp. Corum still has the ability to 'turn' undead,
but it does not make them flee. Instead
it stuns them for a number of turns. At
the end of that time they can attack normally.
A house rule put into place since this is the dead god's home
field.
DM Notes
The fortunate thing was the players explored all
the rooms I managed to detail. And ended
where I had gotten to so that leaves me time to get it ready for out next
session. Which will be in a couple of
weeks because this week two players will be absent. I got a good idea what will be in the
remaining rooms, but I want to take the time to flesh them out a bit. So far in this dungeon I created two new
magic items. One of which will be
explained in a bit and a couple new spells.
Always cool. The addition of a
magic-user into the group I think will prove invaluable.
A short note about the magic item. I decided to use the ritual system that Rob
uses based off the ritual system that 4th edition uses. Which I think is a pretty good system. A magic-user can do a ritual that take 1 turn/level
in time and cost 10gp worth of components/level of the spell. The Pouch of Preservation was created for
this.
New Magic Items
Pouch of Preservation
This pouch can hold up
to 50gp worth of spell component to
keep preserved. It is a fairly common
item among magic-users. It is especially
useful when a component has a short shelf life.
It is not water sealed so liquid will run out. (250xp)
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