Game log for 25 March 2018: Wandering shadows

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.

Game log for 13 April 2014

Present:

Yémos, human male cleric of Dōsaútōr, goddess of magic (Eric)
Mayhem, human male midget barbarian (Chris)

As NPCs:

Anêr, human male swashbuckler (Rett, Eric handled him)
Caleb, human male wizard (mostly held up a torch of Continual Light)

Log:

They started in the room with the shackles and found out that none of the shackles were worth keeping. Yémos tried looking for a tunnel that a man in bonds would have dug, but they found none.

They walked back to the small room with the five hallways out, and saw that the black pudding was slowly slinking down the hallway that led to the great hall. The pudding felt their air and started to turn towards them, and they chose to walk down the hallway to the right of the one that led to the chief's bedrooms whence they came.

Louis Farrakhan's favorite
D&D monster.

The door lacked a lock, so they pushed it open and walked down the hallway to a room which had some old broken chairs around a big dais. Atop the dais was a big nest, and before they could turn to run, five striges came out of the nest to fight. Luckily, the striges could never get through their armor with their stingers, so the fight was short. In the hive were 40 silver pennies and 3 gold pieces. After looking at the pillars along the side of the room, which were mostly carvings of the gods, they went out the other hallway, which was on the other side of the room from the one through which they came into the room.

This room was a court, and there was a spot where a throne had been. In its stead was a stack of books. Yémos took the first book, which bore the name Walk with Me, My Friends by one Feoílklis of Erstókkīs, an island land well to the west that once ruled the mainland. The book was about the worship of a god of whom Yémos had not heard named Glanéťūr, who seemed to like putting men through his tricks. Yémos put the book in his backpack, and they took a look at the torches in sconces on the wall. Someone had hand-lit the torches, and not all were lit.

Pushover.

To the right of the way through which they came into the room was another door, which they pushed open. They walked through the hallway into a crypt, in the middle of which were two skeletons. In the short fight, Mayhem took a hit, which Yémos healed with Major Healing after the battle. Yémos saw what looked like a door with no knob or hinges, and after some prodding, pushed it to yield a glowing dark teal light. They threw a rock through the light and heard nothing, and when trying to touch the stone door again, Yémos found he could not. Mayhem pushed one of the skeletons through the light as well. After some chatting, the gang chose to turn back, though Anêr thought he could handle going through.

Pushes over PCs.

Back in the old court room, they chose to go through the next hallway to the right of the last one. The walls and roof of hallway and the caves to which it led had a sticky amber resin all over them. In the back of one of the caves, they saw four men in shadows, and Yémos called out to them. They shambled towards the gang, moaning the one word all zombies can moan: "Braaaaaiiiin." The fight with the zombies was nasty, and swords were breaking or flying all over the cave. Mayhem fell unconscious at one point, but Yémos healed him back right away with Minor Healing.

For he served the
Dungeon Master.

After the last zombie fell, the gang could hear and see a red demon with horns and a big scythe, and a man in leather armor walking on the roof of the cave. Caleb said the wall behind where the zombies were standing was odd, and Yémos stuck his head through it, and saw a pile of gold coins. Alas, living was worth more than gold at this time, so the gang ran back the way it had come, and the man on the roof jumped to the floor when they went back to the court room. Once there, they outran the man and the demon, and the man yelled back at them, "Go to your goblin friends!"

Once outside, the gang went over the hill and set up camp. From there, they could see a bunch of withered trees, which they guessed to be around Dībités Rock.

Notes:

A lesson one of the players learnt was that your Dodge is almost always your worst active defense. A worthy lesson.

The long and short of this short session (Eric had to go after about two hours) was that the players got their asses handed to them. The zombies were hardly fodder, and Anêr kept fighting, being Overconfident and all.

We gave the chase rules in GURPS Action 2 a workout at the end. I let them get away when they won one of the Quick Contests; we were short on time and they were trying to keep from a total party kill. Besides, the evil cleric didn't care much about them.

I can't remember if I gave them two or three character points. No big deal.