SESSION 118g: When in Doubt Walk Away and Find a New Challenge
NOTE: For this adventure I changed things up and used a notable amount of the room descriptions directly from the adventure - UR1: Tomb of the Sea Kings by the Scribes of Sparn (L. Bennett & J. Johnson).
So a couple of things:
1) I am happy to take an axe to a lot of the 'pasted' material upon request by the author's.
2) Another micro-review: I really like the wackiness and unusual found in the adventures created by the Scribes, waiting for the chance to drop SS1 and XQ1 onto our map. We had a great time playing this, the players were regularly confounded and forced to revel in Old School nuttiness - that one will observe if they follow this series of side sessions. If memory serves I only needed to do one little tweak towards the end of the adventure as it was a 'gotcha' with an undesirable outcome for the larger campaign and I am not talking death, I don't care when that occurs. UR1 - Old School with a bullet. Read on to learn how an excellent adventure unfolds.
The hyaqueous vault stumped us. Time loops and giant sized loot was too much of a headache to solve. So, we said screw-it and headed back to Helix. We were not afforded much time to rest and relax as a new mission hit the deck.
Back at the Flowers Tart for some refreshing ales Bunny's respite from dungeon crawling was once more sent on an alternative path. Brett & Germaine our kobold chums and current tavern employees stepped up and shared some info. Hey boss lady, you see that dork in the corner?” (they point to a nervous looking man, pacing in the corner.) “He wants to speak to the Heroes of Helix about a job.” Hey was a plain fellow dressed plainly whom was plainly covered in a tan coloured dust. Bunny let out a grumble and sent Felix and Biff to talk with the stiff. "Nobody likes Felix so that should get rid of him", she chuckled to Bob - whom simply nodded as she is apt to do. Felix and Biff approached it was obvious the dude very anxious and not accustomed to being in such a laid back tavern in the wilderlands.
“Hhhellllo, my name is Perseus Dab. I am an archaeologist's assistant. I am seeking to hire a party of adventurers to locate an object for my boss. Our dig is about a mile outside of town to the east. Follow the road towards Ironguard Motte and I will meet you at the cross bridge. From there, our dig location must remain a secret. I can answer no more questions, everything you need to know will be answered by my boss overmorrow... I will meet you at the cross bridge an hour after sunrise.”
Biff knew that this kind of dork was exactly the kind of dork that Felix attracts and he knew that Felix would not shut up until they took the mission. He was right. Bunny saw his scowl as they returned to the table and she knew the vacation was once interrupted again..
"Looks like we need to do some recruiting" began Felix before trailing off into his normal blah blah blah. Brett & Jermaine quickly found three other murderhobos currently furloughing in Helix as the rest of their group recovers from a recent ambush. In exchange for a treasure share Bunny hired a cleric, fighter and an Elf. Nobody mentioned our luck with Elves. We then directed Brett and Jermaine to find a few more meatshields to round out our group. They provided us with three men-at-arms and two torch-bearers/ porters.
The time came and we hit the road. Arriving at the noted place a small cross bridge on the main road, Perseus Dab was there, delighted to see everyone. “Follow me!” as he began to cut swiftly through the woods. About 300 yards in, the woods opened onto a large archeological dig. In the middle was a large tent.
Entering the encampment there were picks, shovels, sifters, and tables full of artifacts. A tall, thin man in robes was barking orders at the workers around him: “Don't step on that platform! These go outside!” When he turned and notice the party his demeanour quickly changed. “Greetings and welcome! Please have a seat.” There were no seats just sand, looks like this guy is familiar with MurderHobo life.
“My name is Nap Talfor. I am a scholar and archeologist. Let me tell you a little about what we are doing here. We have located an ancient entrance to the great lost Tomb of the Sea Kings, where there is said to be an object of great power and importance. I have been hired by a king of the west (who chooses to remain unnamed) to find this entrance, and retrieve the object from the tombs. It is rumored that great treasures lie within, and you may have all you can carry. I ask only for this one thing: a black sword engraved upon the blade with a legged serpent. But be warned! Do not touch this sword! I have already sent one party in, but it has been nearly a week and no one has seen or heard from them. So, if you choose to go on this quest, there is the platform. It is a portal which will take you to the tombs.“
"Sea Kings? Where is the sea? Shouldn't this tomb be somewhere else?", grumbled Biff.
"The world changes my green associate. What once was a sea is now a swamp and what is a mountain may one day be a sea" Felix was just warming up and we all knew it.
Biff proceeded to noisily maintain his arms and armour so as not to hear the rest.
After some pissy nitpicking from Bunny we moved to the teleportation platform and entered the Tomb of the Sea Kings. We found ourselves in a grand hall. A large octagonal, star-shaped room with a 10' x 10' raised platform in the center of the room. This platform is the portal-way to and from the archeological dig. Each star point is a narrowing stairway that descends 30' to a small black, wooden door with a pull ring. On the south wall of the room is a set of large double doors of black granite with black pull-rings. Before the doors were the bodies of two men in leather armour. Their chests had a large burned hole in them. A 2' silver sphere is set into the wide frame above the doors. Bunny didn’t like the look of the big door and went to check out one of the others. The first opened to a wall and not much else, let us try another. Another wall but this time a black seagull materialized, flew across the chamber and disintegrated and so did one of Bunny’s prized items. Now our girl was more than a little pissed. “screw this let’s check the big doors out before things get any worse”. When Bunny approached the doors a crimson, horned demon-face will appear and speak the words:
“Halt, ye who would enter the Tomb of the Sea Kings. Why do you seek audience with the dead?”
“We are here to steal all the treasure!”, this proved to be the wrong answer as bolts of energy shot from the eyes of the phantasmal face slammed into Bunny - "what the shit! I was supposed to be on vacation with a nearly naked purple girl". Nara couldn't really console Bunny so they all just made a run through the doors. A long, 20' wide corridor with walls that rose far into the darkness. Large metal plaques were spaced at intervals along the walls.
HALL OF TOMBS: The plaques bore names and dates. Presumably of long dead Sea Kings, our guys didn't really care much for the history lesson. Well Felix did but definitely no one else. About 70' further west down the corridor was a 20' wide, clear flowing stream that required navigation to contiune.
THE RIVER: The stream appeared to be about 15' to 20' deep with a good strong flow to it. At the bottom 40 to 50 coins of various type were seen. The gang were already edgy after the entry chamber and assessed the stream as more than it appeared. Bunny elected to drop a coin in, the river became magically still and firm, and the party crossed by walking over its surface.
THE VELVET STANCHION: 20' beyond the stream is a passage leading to the north blocked by a red velvet rope supported by two upright metal stands. A sign hangs from the rope - NO ENTRY. There was a door on the west wall.
STYGIAN TOMBS: The 10' wide passage east of this point is distinctly Stygian in design. Rows of hieroglyphs lined the walls. There were more large plaques set into the walls, this time composed of great squares of stone, bearing curious glyphs and pictograms. The corridor widens out to a 20' x 20' area. There were more more stone plaques here, and 3 large stone benches. The hobos elected to screw with nothing, for the moment.
MUMMY OFFERING ROOM: A large triangular room with Stygian carvings and glyphs on the walls. In the centre of the room were 3 large sarcophagi laying in a triangular formation. In the gap between the sarcophagi was a pile of coins, flowers, antlers, and various other offerings. Our disturbance triggered mummies from their stony coffins. There was fighting and BoB was infected with mummy rot, fortunately we had a berry for just that problem. We had nothing to fix the absence of any real loot in the room. The chamber seemed to be a dead end (or should have been…) and so they turned around to return to the velvet rope. All of our noise however had attracted a horde of ghasts that demanded blood for the blood god. It was at this point we lost our first henchman of this adventure – Belck the Craven Possessor of No Special Knowledge was torn into itty bitty pieces. The random encounter ended in the hobos favour but they took a beating and injuries were mounting. It was decided that they should fall back to the surface and regroup.
Nap Talfor was not pleased to see their return so quickly and without 'The Thing' to show for it. Our Hobos explained the situation, he very grudgingly accepted the account and delay. Time for a rest and then back into the pit.
ROLECALL
Bunny the Raconteur (T8) 125505 xp <160001> +10% CRT 1d20/II
Light wound: permanent loss of pinky finger, off hand
Nara the Nearly Naked Purple Sadhaka Girl (P5) 25866 xp <33200> +5% CRT 1d6/I
Biff Bartley the Half-Orc Thug (HO4) 12289 <14000> +5% CRT 1d12/II
‘BOB’ the Shadow Dancer (N5) 12349<22400> +5% CRT 1d14/II
Felix Ignatius Hemlock the Criminalist (I5) 11590<20001> +5% CRT 1d12/II
Elapsed Campaign Time
262 days at beginning of session (also applies to recuperation)
Join us for session One-Hundred-and-Eighteen ‘H’ when we ask the questions:
Will we be smarter on the second run?
Where is the treasure?
Is Bunny becoming Ding-We and if so is that a good thing?
Tale of the Tape
We are back to losing meatshields, Belck the (Wo)man-at-arms was torn to pieces by a ghast
KILLS
Eelman 20
Mummies (3) 2580
Ghasts (6) 1140
LOOT
Huge crystal chalice (1’) 500 gp
Black iron and gem fragments 1800 gp
8 gp
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