Dramatis personae
Xóran, fox-man scout
Kim, thief
Mayhem, short barbarian
Ash, squire
Áttikos, holy warrior of the sun god
Grymalkus, whiny cleric of the war god
Caleb, wizard
Kôštē, cleric of the farming goddess
Quid occurrit
The gang, weary from its fight with the grey pudding, rested in the room with the dwarf shrine. Luckily, nothing came while they were resting. Afterwards, Ash had the group go back through the maze, planning on taking a hallway later they had bypassed before.
However, back in the room where Kim had turned off the trap, they see a flash in the room. After taking a few seconds to gather themselves, Kim, Xóran, and Mayhem snuck into the room, where Kim and Xóran were able to see a big spider. Their sneakiness helped make short work of the spider.
From there, after a short rest for Caleb’s welfare, they pressed onward and went down one of the turns they didn’t take before. The walked from there into a room with many spider webs and no other ways out. Kim looked around and found 10 copper farthings (which nobody believed was all the loot, but thieving Kim had found loot first), while Mayhem torched the webs.
Afterwards, they wound through another hallway and found themselves at a stairs going up, as well as a hallway back to the big room with the little girl and the coffins. Rather than cut through the big room, they found their way back around and went down a hallway on the other side of the room through which they had yet to go. There, they found another stairs going up, and went up to check out the room, and, while this was the first time they had seen it, they did find some grey gunk that looked like it had come from the pudding.
They went back downstairs, and suddenly, the shadow struck. Áttikos was its target, and when it touched him, he started to feel faint. Still, he kept going, and a few seconds later, Mayhem, Ash, and Kim had beaten it back into the darkness.
From there, they went looking for the workdesk. Before stepping in a room with a big slab and a pickled lung in a jar, Kim saw a slit in the way inside. She prodded it with her torch, then a big axe swung down and smacked her in the chest, knocking her down. Mayhem bound her wounds and Grymálkus and Kôštē healed her, while they watched the axe swing like a pendulum every few seconds. Afterwards, they slipped past the swinging axe, and made their way down a few hallways until they found themselves in a room with
The desk.
It was a teak desk that somehow had not rotted away, and with some milky-white semi-precious stone inlay to make it look nicer. It had to be a desk from Aikîā Dungeons, an order that somehow hadn’t made it to the jade idol that had made it in a bygone time.
So they took the desk. They made their way back to the stairs, and, after a turn, found one of their marks on the wall. Mayhem had a good idea how to get back, and they soon found themselves in the room with the jade idol. The idol bade them how to put the desk in a corner and to put it on the desk, and it them told them that they had fulfilled their end of the bargain, and their necks were still safe in the dungeon. Whatever that meant.
Still, finding themselves without loot, they thought hard about the cloak, and started looking for it. They made it downstairs again, and ran into a doomchild, which knifed Kim before Mayhem threw it. Afterwards, Caleb realized (or, the GM, amazed that they hadn’t put two and two together, rolled Hidden Lore (Magic Items) for Caleb, and gave him a hint) that little girls don’t belong in dungeons. Maybe it was wearing something?
Thus, they made their way back to the room with the teleportation circle, and stepped into it again, finding themselves again looking at a young girl crying for help under a rock. Caleb, however, was taking no chances, so rather than lift the rock off the girl, he cast Apportation from five yards away. The girl stood up and, once she did so, he dropped the rock on her.
Xóran and Mayhem quickly slew the girl, who, in death again, showed that she was a dwarf zombie in a cloak. As the gang could hear the lids start to come off the coffins, Mayhem grabbed the cloak and they ran to the stairs.
They had just made up the stairs when the shadow caught up with them again. Alone, the shadow tried to keep the gang from taking grave goods, but the grave robbers easily took it down. From there, they easily made their way back to the shining sky and the chilly air.
Res aliae
The first thing that I want to note is the rolls that went right for them.
I went back and counted that I made 39 wandering monster rolls. As well as making the dungeon alive, wandering monster rolls are the time keeper in the dungeon, keeping everyone away from the ten-minute adventuring day. When my players camp in the dungeon, they make sure they are in a room with few doors that monsters can open. Wandering monsters happen on a 6 or less on 3d—9.3% of the time—with clues happening on a 7 (6.9%) if they are moving. For 39 rolls, you’d expect 3.6 wandering monsters.
There were only two: the spider and the shadow warrior. The only clue was left out of the log since the players and the characters missed it in their haste to leave (it was the skittering of little claws after they had reached the first level again). This was amazing luck of the dice; doomchildren roam the second level. These have been painful in sufficient numbers.
As such, they had an easier time; the shadow warrior, while mostly indestructible, doesn't do much damage on its own, while the spider is much weaker while looking for loot than it is in its web.
By the way, +Peter V. Dell'Orto, Roman, who plays Xóran the fox-man, thinks shadow warriors are great monsters, telling me twice how cool it was. I told him he wouldn’t have felt that way had he fought it while the zombies were coming at him. That was smart of them, though who knows what loot they missed?
John thought the cloak was on Caleb’s doppelgänger, and I had to remind him that I had given out the inside poop about that doppelgänger when we went to see Chris for the last time. Nothing to do with a cloak, everything to do with Weirdness Magnet.
Grand total for the last few sessions is 12 points. Had they figured out the cloak without my hint, I might have given out a point or two more; had they not, it would surely have been a couple of points less since they didn't get much loot.
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