Dungeon Crawl Session

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)