If you’ve been reading this blog for a while,
you’ll remember the megadungeon which required so much effort for
my players to schematically map. You can read that post, The
Great Halloween Dungeon Dive, in the
archives, November 2016.
In the real world, it’s my birthday. And on my
birthday, I like to go big.
In the game world, the
valiant PCs are venturing back into “their” dungeon, because
what’s the use of owning a unique map of a multilayered labyrinth
if you don’t actually explore additional levels of it here and
there?
Last time, in The
Dark Pillar (June
2017 in the archives), the party had to touch one of seven runes in
order to “lock in” their next destination inside the megadungeon.
At that point, there was only one character left standing: the
cleric. So, he selected a rune at random..................
This time, the party passes through the same old
portal, but they appear in a chamber they’ve never seen before: a
peculiar L-shaped chamber with remnants of ancient, torn down walls,
and three large patches of black moss. The group immediately has to
start making Saving Throws. Both magic-users fail to save vs Spell
(ironic, I know) and lose all of their memories from the last 24
hours. The cleric of Boccob, Brother Thomas, also becomes amnesic.
But that’s not all. The magic-users, the barbarian, and one NPC
start experiencing a sudden, powerful thirst – and they are
irresistibly drawn towards a lone cask further away in the L-shaped
room, close to a pair of dark archways. Those who are not amnesic, or
amnesic but not thirsty, try to keep the others from reaching that
cask – it can’t be anything good in there, can’t it?
One of the magic-users, Klynch, has an intelligent
+3 dagger named Guthzan, and this cool 620-year-old weapon has seen
a lot of dungeons and monsters. Telepathically, it says to its
wielder, “Obliviax, also known as
Memory Moss. To
regain your memories and spells, you need to consume a tiny bit of
the moss itself.”
Klynch runs to the nearest patch of black moss and
starts to chomp away. But it’s the wrong obliviax, and now he’s
stuck with the cleric’s memories and healing spells.
Meanwhile, the barbarian drinks from the cask
while Landa, the cleric of Istus, tackles a thirsty NPC to prevent
him from drinking. That is when a rust monster comes bolting in
through one of the archways at the other end of the room. After
drinking from the cask, the barbarian fails to save vs Polymorph,
turning into a huge orc chieftain! That orc runs towards the rust
monster and expertly grapples it to prevent it from getting to his
(armor-clad) friends.
The rust monster manages to hit the
orc-barbarian’s great axe and the Hobbit bard’s chainmail. The
axe is ruined, but the +2 chainmail saves. Brother Thomas refuses to
attack the rust monster with a precious +3 mace that he brought back
from Hell, so the bard casts shillelagh
on his own instrument, transforming a guiterne into a magical wooden
axe. With that axe, the bard strikes the rust monster.
The second magic-user, Heir, drinks from the cask,
but since he wears a Circlet of Proof Against Petrification and
Polymorph, he’s fine.
Brother Thomas had had enough of that damn cask
and topples it single-handedly with an excellent STR check.
Klynch drinks from the cask even though it’s now
on the floor: he’s still thirsty as fuck, and urgently needs to
wash down the vile taste of the obliviax. He successfully saves vs
Polymorph, thus remaining his good old freckled, redheaded self.
Then, a gauth shows up in the central archway –
dispelling the two walls of stone
masquerading as floors in the second half of the L-shaped room. PCs,
NPCs, rust monster, toppled cask – everything and everyone falls
down into a pit below, except for Brother Thomas who wears a Ring of
Mary Poppins – I mean Feather Falling.
Inside the pit they are greeted by giant ants, and
something else
emerging ever so slowly from a gaping cave-mouth.
“Is that an otyugh?”
“I recognize the stink...”
In the adjacent pit, two NPCs are confronted with
a fire elemental and a moving wall of
fire. Now it’s kicking into high gear
– and really feels like old-fashioned AD&D.
No magic missiles
nor lightning bolts
available, since the memories and spells of the two magic-users are
still trapped inside the two remaining obliviaxes. Anyway, gauths can
reflect spells back towards their casters, so it’s probably better
this way. The barbarian – the orc chieftain, if you prefer –
fires arrow upon arrow at the gauth, hitting home most of the time as
barbarians are wont to do. The gauth’s eye-rays cause serious
wounds on both Brother Thomas and the
barbarian, and telekinesis
on one of the NPCs (look for a flying dude somewhere in the next pics). After
round four, a comically arrow-studded gauth retreats behind the wall,
and human cultists come forth in lieu of their master. They
start casting magic missiles
down on the party.
The otyugh is locked in savage combat
with Brother Tom while Klynch, Heir and
Landa are busy finishing off those pesky giant ants.
And where is the bard in all of that? Well, he
drank his Potion of Spider Climbing and got back out of that pit to
collect pieces of the Memory Moss. Oh, and now he’s singing too –
a special, enchanted song that can conjure up a wolf and a panther.
Those magical beasts appear out of thin air six rounds later, just as
the bard prepares to fling the pieces of black moss into the pit for
his hapless friends to snack on. He commands the wolf and the panther
to run along the top of the dividing wall between the pits, in order
to attack the cultists and the gauth at the other end.
Brother Tom is down to single-digit HP and has to
heal himself with the three cure light
wounds kept in his Ring of Spell
Storing. The otyugh is still swinging, and the orc-barbarian steps in
with his spare battle axe. “Damn rust monster!”
The bard spider
climbs back down into the pit and
suddenly feels like he’s being touched inappropriately. It’s a
stunjelly – appropriately voiced by Kevin Spacey.
The wolf and the panther surge through the central
archway and simultaneously jump right onto the cultists. Screams of
terror and pain are heard.
Heir gobbles up exactly the right piece of
obliviax, instantly regaining his own memories / spells. Brother Tom
swallows the remaining piece of moss, and gains Klynch’s magic-user
spells. The cleric can cast magic
missile? Welcome to the Twilight Zone!
After they finish off that otyugh and the last
giant ant, the party can finally breathe a little. They no longer
hear anything coming from beyond the archway upstairs. Several
cultists may be dead, but the bard’s wolf and panther are nowhere
to be seen, either.
Klynch heals some of his wounded comrades – and
actually contemplates switching classes and becoming a cleric. The
party breaks down a small wooden door in the corner of the pit, right
next to the otyugh’s cave; they enter the corridor beyond, except
for the barbarian. With one NPC to back him up, our favorite orc
chieftain climbs towards the archway where gauth and cultists were
last seen. It’s a ballsy move.
Glyph of warding
– ouch! Barbarian and NPC both take 10 points of damage. And there
are more archways back there with (maybe) more glyphs
of warding. They hesitate...
Of all the PCs and NPCs who entered the corridor
past the wooden door, any nonhumans are teleported into a room with
churning, billowing cloud walls, and an old stone sarcophagus in the
center. The other characters are transported into a room with
extremely high walls and a colossal statue of a wildebeest in the
center.
The cloud walls apparently allow someone to
perceive scenes from the past – or maybe other planes of existence.
After a while, Landa sees a clear image of the Cat Lord standing
alone in a forest glade, holding a shovel and trying to retrieve some
lost treasure. The PCs pry open the mysterious sarcophagus to reveal
an old skeleton, a broadsword, a shield, and two javelins.
In the other location, the Humans soon discover
that the room in which they stand will shift ever so slightly
whenever they are all near the same wall. Plus, there is an exact,
upside-down replica of the big wildebeest statue on the ceiling,
about 120 feet above their heads. Only, there is an exit up there –
a corridor. Heir casts spider climb
and starts making his way up. The room keeps shifting some more as he
climbs further up the wall. Soon the entire room becomes slanted
enough for the other three characters to “climb” that same wall
as if it were nothing more than a 30-degree stone ramp. They keep
climbing and the room keeps shifting towards a perfectly horizontal
position, with one colossal statue at each end.
When Heir is just 10 feet away from the “ceiling,”
and the rest of the party about halfway, five cultists jump inside
the room from that lone corridor – and their added weight suddenly
slams the whole room back into a vertical position. Everyone falls
headlong à la Wile E. Coyote, except for the feather
falling Brother Tom.
Heir drops from a height of 10 feet and only takes
3 HP of damage. The two others take 12 HP
of damage each after a 59-foot fall. Klynch – the party’s healer,
for now – is out cold at 0 HP. Martigan the NPC fighter is at -4
HP.
While peacefully feather
falling towards the action, Brother Tom
casts stinking cloud
on 4 of the 5 cultists. Heir then casts his fireball
at the same spot, engulfing all 5 cultists and creating a brand new
kind of D&D stench: the carbonized
stinking cloud!
Two of the cultists fail to save vs Spell, and
die. The three survivors attack Heir. One cultist charges him with a
dagger while the other two cast 4
magic missiles.
In the “nonhumans’ room,” two more cultists
emerge from the eerie cloud walls, accompanied by a displacer beast.
They attack the Elf cleric, the Hobbit bard, and a Dwarf NPC. For
some reason, the displacer beast avoids striking the Elf...
And this is where we had to hit pause. Yes,
it sucks, and I hate to be Captain
Buzzkill. It was 5 PM on a Sunday, and the FLGS was closing – we
were literally last out the door.
Regular readers know that I no longer build my
games on the traditional paradigm, with the boss fight at the end,
Hollywood-style.
It doesn’t work for my friends and I anymore. Our circumstances
have changed since the eighties. Many, many times, we didn’t even
get to
that boss fight. Nowadays my game design model is, 1) introduction;
2) boss fight; 3) role-play + puzzles +
lesser fights.
In this game session, we sailed through two and a half of those
three stages. What’s left is a little fighting, and some
role-playing.
The party did pretty well, all things considered. The session
ended with everyone still standing except for Klynch and one NPC. The
risk management in the opening scene made a real difference. That
chaotic polymorph cask / obliviax / rust monster trio could have
caused much more harm. When I play-tested it at home, it ended with
the two clerics in their undergarments, chain or splintered mail
gone, and Brother Tom turned into a hobgoblin. Klynch had been
polymorphed into a troglodyte, and Martigan into an orc. The bard was
amnesic, without any spells, and his short sword +2 was gone. Landa
was also amnesic. It was fun.
The unremitting mayhem was quite different in the actual game –
the cask only polymorphed one PC, and the rust monster only destroyed
a single, non-magical weapon, and no armor whatsoever!
The player characters remained within 8 squares of each other 95%
of the time. When they fell into the twin pits they all fell on the
same side. Good for them – they didn’t have to fight the fire
elemental; bad for me – I built the whole left side of that wicked
room for nothing. But it is part of a DM’s job: the players never
do what you expect them to do. Role-Playing Games 101.
Stay tuned for the conclusions – plural, aye, since the party is
now split in three!
