AD&D Session 7: The Underground Church

Tonight's cast of characters:

Sir Goldborn, having just returned from the battle against the orcs. He had stayed in Borgogazze one day and discussed the situation with the military officers there. Borgogazze and neighbours are hunkering down, placing defensive outposts, and generally preparing themselves for Orc retaliation. Conscripts are being raised again.

Mad Mouse, a new character. He's a fighter, and was rolled up by Green Gary's player for the occasion.

Kai the Druid, who successfully recruited five mercenaries who are expert marksmen. The game requires you to equip your henchmen, so Kai bought them armor, shortbows and arrows, and dungeon supplies. Surely he can't have forgotten anything important...

Anyway, Kai talked to mysterious woman Xenia again, who turns out to be a Magic-User. She's not interested in adventuring, but is an expert in translations (of languages, not spatial).

The party decides to explore the village ruins to the north and the catacombs beneath them. It is Jan. 24, travel takes two days, and they arrive at the ruins in the evening of the second day. They decide to camp there and wait for the next day. But something alerts the night watch they post: strange animal-like shadows moving in the distance!

Everybody gets ready in time to react to the threat (no surprise) and they finally discern that these are wolves. 17 of them, and advancing quite rapidly towards the party. Initial encounter distance is 170', but these guys are fast. Everyone shoots missile weapons at the wolves (a shortbow with a rate of fire of two) but most shots miss, due to the agility of the wolves, and those that hit only damage the wolves, no kills.

As the wolves come upon them, the party realizes they're in deep trouble. Not only does the enemy have double the numbers, but Kai forgot to equip his soldiers with swords! So they decide to escape and retreat into the dungeon, hoping that the wolves won't follow them there. This unfortunately means the wolves get pretty devastating free attacks on them (only 8 wolves are near enough to attack). Four men fall: three soldiers and Mad Mouse the fighter. They're not dead, just KO'd, but since the rest of the party is retreating there's not much that can save them.

So, Mad Mouse's player takes over one of the soldiers, named Soldier One. If he can survive the rest of the adventure, he will be promoted, aptly, to a Veteran (Level 1 Fighter).

The party makes it into the dungeon, and once they're there the wolves stop following. At this point, I task the players to map along while I use Appendix A in the DMG (random dungeon generation) since I didn't detail this particular dungeon yet. It was a pretty interesting experience not to have a map under my nose and relying on the players for distances and things like that.

Anyway, this seems to be a sacred place/burial ground of some sort. The partly explores with torches lit. Crudely-carved stone statuettes line the walls, and foreign inscriptions decorate them. Kai dutifully transcribes these inscriptions to bring them to Xenia when (if) they make it back.

The party comes pretty soon into a big room/passage that looks like an underground church, with pillars, a sanctuary and altar, and two staircases that bring the party up a half-floor.

While exploring the dungeon, the party deals with pit traps, stuck doors, and winding corridors and comes into a larger chamber. There are two large sacks in the opposite corner of the chamber, and several exits. Two large man-sized slightly-mobile mushrooms stand in the center of the chamber, and as soon as they are sighted they emit a piercing scream.

The party is worried about monsters being attracted by this, so they make it back to the large church-room. Then for reasons I don't understand they go back and face the mushrooms again. They fire at one of the mushrooms and put it out of order; the thing begins to shiver and shrink and stops screaming.

Suddently, six figures come out of one of the exits into the chamber! The other mushroom stops shrieking. These are small, 3' tall humanlike armed guys (Gnomes). They aggressively gesture for the party to stay back as one of them goes to check on the downed Shrieker. The party stays back and observes the action. Then Sir Goldborn the Paladin offers to help. He steps forward and uses Lay on Hands onto the mushroom he helped take down just the round before. The mushroom seems to get better and starts getting back online. A faint version of his scream begins.

At this point, Sir lets the gnome take his torch, and the other gnomes gesture at the party to step back even more. They do so until they can't see Sir Goldborn, the gnomes, or the mushrooms anymore. The gnome extinguishes Sir's torch.

He is left in the dark, and decides to trust these creatures and wait.

The mushroom stops his scream. All is quiet for a moment.

Sir Goldborn starts backtracking after offering his cape to the gnomes, who don't take it. Eventually he is illuminated by his friends' torchlight and reaches them. He lives!

The party decides to explore the dungeon a little more before calling it a night. They come to a dead end covered by a painting depicting a clan of Gnomes cultivating giant mushrooms. They take the painting which reveals a secret passage. Taking the passage, they deal with another pit trap and finally come to a second dead-end where there's only a mattress against a wall, and seemingly no secret doors.

Soldier One suggests to take the painting in order not to go back empty-handed. Sir is against it; doesn't want to anger the gnomes. After some discussion, Kai decides to vote for not taking the painting, so the party retreats from the dungeon empty handed.

They make it safely back; it is still night. Their fallen friends are not there anymore, but their equipment is. So they take what they can use, and Soldier One now has a sword (Mouse's bastard sword I think).

The trip back takes two uneventful days: the party makes it back to Trilo. Kai will present his transcriptions to Xenia and use Locate Animals and Animal friendship (I think) to try and raise an army of animals over the week. Will he be successful? That depends on the entries for these spells in the PHB and on which animals inhabitate the area!

Soldier One can become a Veteran, he needs to rest, train and introspect until next session. For HP, he will roll a d10, apply constitution bonuses, and take whatever is higher: this roll or the HP he has rolled this session.

Sir Goldborn will collaborate with Frank the ferryman to offer healing services to any adventurers that explore Ashes Island or other dungeons... asking 5 gp per heal (but healing anyway if the person can't pay). And I'm sure I forgot a downtime order, please remind me!

Johnny Joestar, the Ranger from last session, will ride around on his newly-acquired light warhorse and check-out the outskirts of large fortress in the hills north of Ristoro A, being very careful and avoiding conflict.

This session was very interesting! Although not so much progress was made by the adventurers. Still, we learned who inhabits those catacombs under the ruined village, and what that dungeon is like. And also, that the wilderness can be very dangerous...

AD&D Session 6: The Cursed Cellar

This session, three of five players' characters are occupied (traveling or training), so three new adventurers turn up in town: Maraké the Druid of the proud tribe of Katu (the tribesmen we encountered last session), Johnny Joestar the Ranger, and Caicai the Fighter. They join Dirty Derrick the Assassin, Zelda the Fighter, and Q the Magic-User at the tavern of the village of Trilo.

Maraké, who knows Longuria's Common language along with his own tribal language (Katukai), tells the group that his village was raided and destroyed by marauding Orcs, and that whatever is left of his tribe is seeking a new place to resettle and from which to organize for revenge.

Our two returning characters have not been enormously busy, having mainly chilled out and enjoyed the holiday season. Dirty Derrick had been courting Tiffany the banker/thief, but she expressed only about 45% interest. Zelda has been painting every shield, shop sign, and suit of armor she could find in the village, for a nice limner's wage. As a result, everyone of Trilo's soldiers has exquisitely painted shields. Zelda did kinda exhaust the village's demand for limning though.

All this established, the players discuss what to do next. It is decided that the cellar of the abandoned pirates' hideout from session 4 will be explored. So our heroes make preparations and set off on foot. It is January 18, and the journey eastward takes the party two days through hilly terrain, with no interruptions. The on-foot journey was deemed safer than the waterborne one because Maraké foresaw that the seas will be troubled with Strong Winds (Predict Weather).

Little did they know they were being followed...

The party arrives at the ruined tower, and finds giant broken eggs inside. A bit of searching reveals the entrance to the cellars, stone stairs going down in the dark. The party establishes a marching order, lights a torch, and goes down the stairs, arriving at a square room with several exits. The cellar is cold and dry, and this room contains what look to be empty racks for holding bottles.

They enter another room and see a wooden barrel resting on a rack attached to a wall, and a small slab of marble in the center of the floor. On top of it, a sword colored with shades of red. The room contains stalactites and stalagmites here and there.

Caicai moves to grab the sword and Zelda goes to check out the barrel while the rest of the party hangs back. Caicai feels a surge of magical energy upon grabbing the sword! But two enormous stalactites drop on Caicai and Zelda, but fortunately either miss them by a hair or glance off their helmets.

The stalactites are actually alive! They are able to jump with supernatural force and try to skewer our heroes again after their first failed attempt. A few rounds of melee are fought, and the situation already looks dire. One of the Piercers pierced Caicai, knocking him clean out, sword in hand. Johnny Joestar the Ranger heroically moves in so that Zelda can retreat safely. He takes four d6 of damage! But since he rolled his own damage he was able to channel his skill at rolling low from last session and made it out ok.

Dirty Derrick moves in and goes directly for the barrel, hoping to find something useful or flammable in it while the monsters are distracted. Unfortunately, a third Piercer drops on him! He is instantly KO'd.

These things are very sturdy and hard to damage, so the party changes strategy and opts to retreat. Fortunately the doors are too big for the two big ones to pass through, although the small one might. So, they maneuver: Maraké attemps to save Caicai by lassoing him with a rope. Johnny retreats and withstands the free attack against him. Q runs back to retrieve another rope, which the party had tied to the trap door at the entrance of the cellars for some reason.

Unfortunately this gives the Piercers enough time to finish off their victims. Pour one out for Caicai and Derrick, who bravely challenged the dungeon. The Piercers also reveal some distastefully carnivorous tendencies, so the party falls back and closes the door. Then, they reopen the door and fire arrows at the Piercers and a flaming arrow at the barrel. The barrel catches fire, but the Piercers are again unharmed. Then the creatures jump up and vanish from line-of-sight from behind the door. The party closes the door and retreats.

Meanwhile, Q retrieves the rope at the dungeon entrance and encounters Green Gary the Druid, who had been following the party. But little did he know that he was being followed himself... by Kai the Druid!

So, everybody joins forces again in the entrance room. They decide to explore another way and come to a labyrinthine set of passages. Upon hearing noises coming from the end of a narrow passage, the party sends Maraké to investigate. He decides not to use light and go forward by feeling instead. As he approaches he can make out high-pitched humanoid voices, speaking a Language he does not recognize. He goes back to relate this and the party decides to trace their steps back and approach the Piercer room from another angle, from a side door.

They find the door and look carefully inside the Piercer room. The barrel is now burning and lights the room: the Piercers and their victims are gone. The sword was returned to its marble slab. Maraké grabs the lasso and tries to catch the sword with it. He succeeds! A Piercer drops down aiming to sever the rope. It misses! The sword is dragged into the party's custody, who makes it out of the cellars and starts going back home.

The uneventful journey lasts two days, during which Q Identifies the sword by grinding 100 GP into fine powder and saying a spell. It is a magic +1 sword, +2 vs. enchanted & magic-using creatures. The group decides to sell the sword upon arrival and divide the profits equally. Total score: 3000 XP.

Until next time, Kai will talk to Xenia the blue-robed village woman to find out what her deal is. He will then attempt to recruit normal soldiers for further adventuring. Green Gary will be out in the forest looking for material for his Druidical spells. Zelda will go on daily hikes to explore the surroundings of Trilo as much as possible with minimal risk. Maraké will depart from Trilo northwards reach the ruins of his village and try to find survivors of the Orc raid. Q will rest, study, and also talk to Xenia. Johnny Joestar will look to buy a horse (Warhorse?) and try to negotiate a 10% discount in exchange of some sort of sponsorship.

As for Sir Goldborn and Pocco, they will go back to Borgogazze and stay at the Pentagonal Fortress, if they are accepted back.

Another very exciting session where it felt like not a whole lot happened but also actually a lot happened. I'm definitely eager to see what our heroes will do next.

AD&D Session 5: The Battle of the Sunken Valley

We started the session with Sir Goldborn the Paladin and Pocco the Magic-User meeting in Borgogazze on January 12, after their respective training as brand-new Level 2 adventurers. Pocco learned a new spell, Magic Missile, in his training time, and became familiar with his scroll of spells.

It mostly contains higher-level spells that can be cast from the scroll at a risk, and a first-level spell (Mending) which Pocco can try to transcribe in his spellbook. He will need to make a special ink to do so, this needs ingredients such as an inexpensive gem (Hematite), a herb (Acacia), and a monster part (Giant spider silk).

Pocco's wizarding master was unhelpful in telling him where giant spiders live. He says they are all over the world, and for more specific information he will need to ask a specialized Sage (with considerable cost).

Sir's training went well without interruption, and there were no major events last month or so as Longuria celebrated Yuletide and the coming of the new year. Sir and Pocco are now broke though, having paid a lot for training and monthly upkeep.

They decide the only way to accomplish something this session is to get the help of Borgogazze's army. So they begin talking their way up the chain of command. Positive reaction rolls lead to recommendation letters for the higher-in-command, until they gain an audience with the Captain of Borgogazze's Army, Cpt. Reynolds, in his pentgonal-shaped fortress. They are able to convince him to mount an attack on the Orcish village that is troubling the region and have the two adventurers serve as guides.

The Captain builds up the army: three Lieutenants, their Sergeants, troops and conscripts join. The army composition is rolled for in the Hirelings table, and it turns out that the Captain thought best to send 10 artillerists with 5 ballistae to the mission. In total the army comprises about 100 soldiers.

As the army will take 3 days to gather in Ristoro A, the adventurers have some time to explore west of Borgogazze. They come across a 5-miles long swamp with a thin suspended wooden platform over it as a road. Crossing this carefully, they go through a forest and finally find a plain with... a giant city in the distance!

This is the city of Anch-Mar. Because it is not well-connected due to the swamp and all, it has only limited relations with Borgogazze. The adventurers can't pay the entry fee to the city gates, so are forced to spend the night in the city outskirts. There is a whole lively community of people here, who are not rich enough to pay the city's steep citizenship costs.

The party finds refuge at the wooden hut of Mr. Giorgione, who hosts them for the night in exchange of night watch service. He tells them a bit about the city: very money-oriented, the people's main concern is to swindle and rob each other for gold, and there's a marked social hierarchy based on wealth. Sometimes thieves from the outskirts scale the walls and return with some coin. There's also a sewer system accessible from outside the city, but everyone is too scared to enter it.

Naturally, our heroes go check the entrance to the sewers out, but find it barred by a rusty iron gate with an equally rusty padlock. They try to force it open by strength (lift iron/bend gates percentage chance times two) but fail. So they just return to Borgogazze and then Ristoro A to meet with the rest of the troops. On the way back, Pocco finds some Acacia herb in the forest for his ink.

The journey begins. The army is considerably slowed by the ballistae, moving at the Encumbered rate outdoors. They pass the point where the magpie was consulted and see the outline of a big fortress perching on a hill to the east, which Sir had missed last time. They go through the forested hills past the moathouse, and encounter a squadron of 110 tribesmen carrying big shields.

The tribesmen send what appears to be a chief figure to parlay. Even if they can't understand each other, the parties establish that they are friendly to each other and exchange gifts. Pocco gifts an incense rod and some belladonna and gets a small sack of lentils in return. Then Pocco tries to explain that they are to give battle to the Orcs by drawing a picture of Shrek on the floor and crossing it out. The chief frowns and steps on the picture. So it seems that the parties have a common enemy. It was too hard however to communicate an invitation to join the army, so everyone continues on their way.

The army comes to a Big Mesa that gives way to some mountains. They go around the mountains in hilly territory and see an ancient ruin of a village at the foot of a mountain. Exploring the ruins, the aventurers uncover the entrance to some ancient catacombs. But the army must march on! They close the entrance and remember its location for the future.

Arriving at the spot where the magpie suggested the orc village should be (20 miles northwest), they find... nothing. So they explore more toward the north-northwest in case the bird wasn't accurate. They find a small hamlet inhabited by battle-hardened humans. It's the village of Wide Berth. The villagers are in frequent conflict against the Orcs, and like the idea of raiding/destroying the Orc village with this big army, so 30 of their fighting men join Borgogazze's army. The villagers also indicate the location of the Orc village. It was in the west-northwest.

March and march (good that Cpt. Reynolds provided three weeks of food supplies...) they finally come to see the Orc village. It sits in the middle of a giant depression, the Sunken Valley, which extends for miles and miles. The village is defended by two watch towers, a palisade, a ditch and a gate.

Battle begins quite unsubtly as our heroic army marches in formation toward the village. At this point we set up the scene on the tabletop, using dice instead of miniatures, each die representing 10 soldiers. The battle is fought with normal AD&D combat rules (although after about 3.5 hrs of playing I didn't have it in my heart to also use weapons vs. armor adjustments...) where both HP and damage are multiplied by 10 for mass units.

Exciting tabletop action ensues. The battle starts in favour of our Human heroes as the unit of Orc footmen guarding the front of the village are overwhelmed and dispatched. Some very good shots by the ballistae are scored against the watch towers and many Orc archers up there take ballista missiles to their face. The ballista shots are easy to score, needing only a 2 on the d20.

But then the gate opens and a massive amount of Orc troops pour out, inluding elite units and the chief of the village himself bearing the village standard. The ballistae scores 1 on the d20 before being meleed by the Orc chief and his entourage. The side battles take too long to win, and as a general melee forms in the center, it is soon clear that the Human forces are just badly outnumbered.

Then the gate opens again, and a similar amount of troops storms out. The Humans decide to cut their losses and retreat, suffering free attacks against them. The Orcs decide not to press further and let them go, but they'll probably remember this daring challenge. 60 of the 130 Human troops escape and take refuge in Wide Berth to fight another day, while the Orcs lost about 50 soldiers.

This session accounted for 9 days of game time, so its events will be concluded on the morning of Jan. 21. As for XP, our heroes had some part in the battle, Pocco with a sleep spell and Sir with his halberd, so they get 145 XP each.