AD&D Session 15: Preparations for a Delve

Today, Soldier Number One, Kai the Druid with his hireling Soldier #2, Sir Goldborn, and a new adventurer, Kleptos the Thief, meet in one of the many Inns of Borgogazze. Kleptos introduces himself as a new adventurer to the group and is deemed trustworthy to join it. Our heroes decide to see Master Senju, Sir's trainer Paladin, to have him help them decide what to do.

Some obligatory tavern shenanigans have to occur first. The players ask me who's there, and I roll on the City Encounters table to determine it. A woman dressed in expensive clothes (let's call her Roxy) is having her morning coffee. Kleptos approaches her and tries to pick her pockets. He is noticed and Roxy cries alarm. Sir Goldborn intervenes and drags the thief away and everyone flees from the Inn.

Our heros enter the military quarter with the Pentagonal Fortress in it to look for mercenaries. They find 8 Hobilars which they hire. Then they hike to Senju's temple/palace whose imposing cold and austere beauty is described by the DM to the best of his limited ability. Senju introduces the group to Frieda, a Valkyrie-like initiate of his order who has completed her basic training and is ready to strike out into adventure. She has a strong personality, demands a whole share, and doubtlessly has a shining adventuring future ahead of her.

The group spends the night at the palace without incidents. In the morning, Senju reports of an evil ancient tomb some miles to the north that needs eradicating. The party now travels north and explores the territory mile by mile like Gary intended. They find a forested area, a marshy area and some scrubland. In the scrubs is the village of Scrubton and the marshy area is actually a flood plains with a river going into it, where the town of Floodton thrives.

On the north of Scrubton is an eerie magical desert: the air seem humid enough for plant life, but the area is devoid of vegetation, featuring only bare rocks. The villagers of Scrubton believe that this is due to the presence the evil tomb, now further identified as the tomb of the serpent god Rhyno.

Almost everyone is too scared to go there. But a thief named Trapunctus approaches Kleptos and reveals that he knows the location of the tomb. He will share it for a hefty share of the treasure (30% of the total). He explains that the tomb likely contains many valuable artifacts that either the Museum of Ancient History in Borgogazze or one the many illicit art collectors of the criminal underworld would like to have.

The party reluctantly goes along with the deal. Trapunctus will help discover traps etc. At this point, we decide that we'll play out the dungeon delve in the next session.

As for general campaign news, rumours are going around that a Druid is restoring one of the abandoned fortresses in the region.

AD&D Session 14: Reclaiming the Abandoned Fortress

Today, Sir Goldborn the Paladin, Kai the Druid, and Green Gary the Druid set out to explore the seemingly abandoned fortress north of Ristoro A, among the wooded hills. They persuaded the magician Walt (NPC) to come along, together with a handful of men-at-arms.

They found the castle deserted, but occupied by a great quantity of giant rats, which they cleared out piece by piece. The castle interior is composed by several small and large buildings, with a central Keep. Many "open doors" checks were made since the doors were ruined and hard to open.

The first group of buildings are dwelling- or house-like small buildings with nothing of note inside. A family of giant rats was found in one of these, but the party opted to close the door and continue.

Next they go to the Keep, with a large ruined ground floor, a cellar, and a central tower. They climb the tower and arrive at a room just before the roof. Giant rats are living here and the die indicates that the rats are surprised. The party finds a number of them having a bath in a large bathtub while others are brushing them vigorously with giant brushes. Someone notices something glinting/glimmering at the feet of the bathtub, so this person (don't remember who) runs forward to grab the shiny thing. The rats are not amused and begin to give chase. Walt the Magic-Missile-User Uses Magic Missile, killing one of the rats and scaring them off. This session I was running Walt as an independent agent, using a d6 from time to time to decide what he should to, and this is why he fired off the spell. Anyway, the shiny thing is safely retrieved and the party quickly take a look at the roof before descending back down to the cellar.

I didn't have this room prepared, so I generated it using Appendix A. A monster is indicated, which is... roll roll... giant rats! They are easily dealt with by the party, who now opts for a more eliminatory approach. There are no exits here, but the room contains barrels of wine which has gone bad and an iron trunk with 750 e.p. and... a magic scroll! Walt eyes the magic scroll eagerly.

The party exits the cellar and explores the rest of the castle: the remaing large buildings were once probably an armory, a church/chapel, and a tavern. They find 22 rats in the tavern and one who is probably their leader wearing a silver chain with a yellow-green gemstone identical to the one the party found in the Keep.

Instead of fighting these critters head on, Sir Goldborn asks the Druids for torches and tries to set fire to the old tavern by throwing oil flasks through the windows and following up with thrown lit torches. I use the rules for thrown missiles, oil flasks, oil puddles, fire, and item saving throws to the best of my ability to determine whether he succeeds. He succeeds. The rats begin swarming out of the place and are promptly caught in the overgrown weeds, which have animated thanks to the druids' Entagle spells. Their leader is also entangled, so one of the druids carefully removes the necklace. Then Sir Goldborn goes and takes out all the rats anyway, while the Druids look on in horror (they're supposed to care about animal welfare – this will incur a grading penalty).

The party finally retreats and goes to Borgogazze to tally up the treasure. They make plans to continue clearing out the castle and cleaning it up in order to eventually establish their base there. I tell them that if they want to do this in downtime, they should send me written orders as this could take some back-and-forth to resolve. Otherwise it is possible to do this in-session, of course.

The gemstones were two Chrysoberyls worth 130 g.p. each. The initial agreement with Walt on division of treasure didn't consider what to do with magic items. Walt argues that he should be able to give up his share of monetary treasure to have just the scroll. This doesn't sound fair to our heroes, as a magic scroll is potentially much more valuable than whatever treasure they found. So we agree to roll a d6, on a 1-3 the scroll will be sold and the money split. On a 4-6 the scroll will go to Walt and he will put in a good word for the party with his wizard trainer, Waltalf the Mage of Borgogazze. The die comes up a 4-6, so Walt really is unwilling to part with the scroll, as befits a Magic-User, and the second solution is adopted.

AD&D Session 13: Orc Removal

This session, Soldier Number One, Kai the Druid, and the hireling Soldier #2 woke up and chose violence. They made a quick plan to finish off the orcs in the cave system under Ashes Island. They met in the inn for breakfast, where they asked me to roll and see who was there. I rolled the adventuring party that was previously met by Sir Goldborn the Paladin. Since Sir healed them basically for free and they had enough time to recover, I rolled a reaction check for whether they would join the party on their mission. They do!

The spearheads of the party are Kurt the Fighter and Walt the Magic-Missile-User. They command 7 hirelings between spearmen and crossbowmen. Everyone takes the boat to the island, paying Frank 5 sp per person for the service. They arrive at the entrance of the cave and go in without looking much around.

The next 3-4 hours are a blur. The party just marches through the dungeon, murdering everything in sight. They pass the now empty entrance chamber and go straight to where they know the Orcs reside. Meeting their enemy, they charge! But the 16 Orcs set their spears against the charge, so this could hurt. Kurt the fighter impales himself on an enemy spear and perishes immediately. Since he was the leader, I check morale for the 7 hirelings. Thanks to high Charisma, Walt was able to hold the troops together and seamlessly takes the leadership.

(I realize just now that as a Magic-User he couldn't command >5 men... oh well, let's say that one of our fighters temporarily served as a Sergeant for Walt).

The fight turns around quickly. The Orcs suffer casualties and must make their first Morale check. Kai helps out with Faerie Fire and Insect Swarm to summon a group of biting ants. The Orcs' Morale breaks and they flee in panic! The party pursues the Orcs deeper into the dungeon, across a garbage-filled room with giant rats. But in the end, the free attacks are brutal and the Orcs are forced to turn around and make a last stand. They are all eliminated with no further losses from our party.

Unfortunately, after the last adventure the Orcs had no treasure left, so our party marches on. They enter an open area, a big cave with a deep chasm dotted by giant stone pillars connected by wooden bridges. Here, they continue their rampage by murdering a party of six Hobgoblins that was resting on top of one of the pillars. They loot treasure of 1000 sp and 250 gp. Not really satisfied but mindful of real-life time, they turn around to go toward the exit, when they encounter a small number of wandering Skeletons. I'll let you guess what happened next.

Eventually, they make it to the exit, and everyone minus Kurt make it back to the village of Trilo. Remarkably, the in-game time spent in the dungeon, 21 turns so 3h30, matched precisely the time it took in real life.

For downtime actions, SNO tried to hire soldiers but enough time passed before we got to our next session that his funds were gone in upkeep costs. Kai tried to persuade Walt and his men to join him on whatever the next adventure was going to be, and he succeeded at that (normal reaction roll for Walt, straight no-modifier reaction roll for each one of the men-at-arms).