Session Report – Barrowmaze – Session 9

[With two characters out for recovery, The Motley Crew skews heavily cleric this week.]

[Also?  SPOILERS!  This series will spoil what’s in Barrowmaze, so take that into consideration before reading.]

PCs (The Motley Crew)
Brock – male Dwarven Vaultguard, 3rd level
Radagast the Wanderer – male human Mage, 2nd level
Harkyn (the Hare) – gender fluid Elven Nightblade, 3rd level
Frank the Cleric – male human Cleric of Silvanus, 2nd level
Samsokn [the “k” is silent] – male Dwarven Craftpriest, 2nd level
Shal the Runt – male Cleric of Silvanus, heard Silvanus was making a stand against St. Ygg and there was loot to be had in the Barrowmoor

Recovering from Injury
Quillian the Green – male human mage, exploring Barrowmaze for the loot to establish a chantry [but mostly for the loot]
Kord – male human Bard, seeks tales of heroism to tell…and exploring Barrowmaze for the loot

NPCs
Norman – male human guide, hired to lead the adventurers to Barrowmaze but not fight
Chick-Magnet – female war dog (0-level), actually a male man-at-arms cursed into a different form
Peldar and Nollan – professional torchbearers


Sunday, May 12th, 23rd year of the reign of King Shurik the Nimble
A quiet day for most of The Motley Crew.  Brock traveled back to Helix from Ironguard Motte, easily making the acquaintance of a craftpriest [Solomokn] and a cleric of Silvanus [Shal the Runt] heading to Helix to make their fortunes.

In Helix itself, Radagast finished healing up from his wounds and let the rest of the Crew know he was available to travel.  Harkyn requested two potions of cure light wounds from the Shrine of St. Ygg, but was told to come back in the morning for them.  As this coincided when the group was heading back to the Barrows, they agreed to do so.

Arrangements were made with the Osen at the Mercenary Guild for hiring Norman, Chick-Magnet, and the two torchbearers, Peldar and Nollan.  All were told to assemble at the Guild just after dawn.

Moonday, May 13th, 23rd year of the reign of King Shurik the Nimble
Harkyn stopped at the temple of St. Ygg to pick up their 2 healing potions and they placed an order for a third, to be picked up later.

The trip through the Barrowmoor was uneventful [not really, but they didn’t learn that until later].  The Crew decided to take another look at Barrow #7.  They found the brass door with the symbol of Nergal on it.  Taking the time to carefully examine it, Brock noticed one of the pentagrams is actually a keyhole.  Harkyn put wax in it in an attempt to learn something about the key and ended up plugging the keyhole with wax.

Still blocked at Barrow #7, the Crew went over to Barrow #15 to break in.  Twenty minutes of hard work with a sledge hammer later, Brock shattered the sealing stone and opened the barrow.  Frank lit a torch and handed it over to Brock to throw in.  Brock tossed it in and it landed short, on the stairs.  This turned out to be a good thing, as the chambers under the barrow were flooded knee high with black water.  The group cautiously went down the stairs, keeping a wary eye on the ceiling.  Norman stayed on the surface, acting as a lookout.

The main chamber was circular, approximately 50 feet across, with a rusty portcullis on the left and right walls.  Not detecting any traps or hostile entities, the group entered the flooded chamber, Chick-Magnet staying at the stairs as the water was very deep for him.  As Brock approached the portcullis on the right, he detected movement and heard low moaning.  Suddenly a group of zombies appeared at the rusty portcullis, straining to get through to the adventurers.

The zombies broke through the decrepit portcullis, but were immediately turned by Frank.  The zombies fled back into the chamber they came from.  The group moved out into the center of the main chamber and peppered the zombies with bow fire and a little melee combat from Brock, Frank, and Harkyn.

With the immediate threat dealt with, the group split up to search the zombie room and the main chamber.  Harkyn located a secret door in the main chamber, directly across from the stairs to the surface.  The zombie room was a dead end with nothing of interest.  Looking through the remaining portcullis, the adventurers could see two sarcophagi whose tops just cleared the surface of the water.  After a quick consultation, the adventurers decided to check out the two sarcophagi first, then whatever was behind the secret door.

Brock used the sledge hammer to knock down the extremely rusted portcullis and entered the chamber.  Hoping the contents of the sarcophagi were protected from the water, the adventurers were careful to avoid making waves in the water while lifting the lids.  Unfortunately, the interiors were both flooded and the books and scrolls inside were water-logged lumps of pulp.  One scroll tube was floating in the water, which suggested it was still sealed, so it went into the loot bag for later review.

The group then sloshed over to the secret door.  Harkyn opened it and found a small chamber with single shelf on the back wall.  On the shelf was a urn with ash remains and a locked metal box.  The urn was not particularly valuable, but the box was promising.  The group returned to the surface to rest and for better light to examine the box under.  Radagast opened the scroll tube during the rest and found a scroll of Protection against Elementals (Fire), a valuable find.  [This spell does not exist in the ACKS system so I had to look it up and adjudicated it to be a 3rd level spell loot-wise.]

After resting, Brock examined the box and declared it safe to open.  He opened it and was pricked by a poison needle concealed in the opening mechanism.  The virulent poison made quick work of Brock and almost immediately dropped to the ground, twitching and foaming at the mouth.  Within seconds, he was dead.  [Brock rolled very low on both his Detect Trap and Poison save rolls.]  On the plus side, the box was open and the pristine gauntlets inside were certainly magic, but the cost was Brock’s life.

Now with Chick-Magnet as their only warrior, the group decided that returning to town was the best option.  They bundled up Brock’s body and gear for travel and headed back north, towards Helix.

Shortly after leaving the field of barrows, they were surrounded by Renata’s Raiders, whose leader called out, “Stand and deliver!”  There were 20 bandits plus their leader, Renata, and one of her lieutenants, and they completely surrounded the adventurers.  The adventurers didn’t like it and didn’t want to, but it looked like they were going to have to hand over their loot.  One of the bandits approached to receive the loot while the rest of the bandits waited with their weapons at the ready.  Frank handed over the box first.  The bandit scratched himself with the poisoned needle and almost immediately fell to the ground, spasming and foaming at the mouth.  All eyes were now on Frank…

…except Harkyn’s, whose elven boots allowed them to silently step away and outside the circle of bandits suddenly focused on Frank.  Harkyn then silently made their way around the outside of the bandit circle, using the swamp plants for cover.  At the same time, Chick-Magnet played up being a friendly dog and trotted over to some of the bandit archers, tongue lolling to one side and tail wagging.

In the center of the bandit’s attention, Frank tried to calm things down, but his loud voice and sudden movements only spooked the bandits and five of the crossbowmen fired.  Two hit Frank for little damage, one missed clearly, one planted a bolt between the feet of a fellow bandit on the opposite side of the circle, and one accidentally killed a fellow bandit!  This was not, apparently, a unique occurrence and the bandit whose feet were nearly hit charged at the crossbowman, swinging his broadsword and yelling, “That’s the last time!”  Renata moved over to try and stop the fight, but failed to and the swordsman killed the crossbowman.

Then Harkyn struck at Renata with a backstab attack.

The adventurers, waiting for a sign to attack, took this at the sign and started attacking the bandits.  Chaos ensued.

Chick-Magnet switched from “friendly dog” to “bloody-muzzled terror" in a flash as he leapt on one of the bandits and tore the bandits throat out.  Chick-Magnet then looked at the next bandit and clearly said, “You’re next,” which spooked the bandits badly.  Radagast cast magic missile, which drew attention but no successful crossbow fire.  Harkyn got a second attack on Renata before Renata could react, but despite solid hits, Renata was too tough to fall.  Renata tried to return the favor to Harkyn, but failed.

After less than a minute of furious combat, half the bandits were down and Renata was down to half her own hit points.  Realizing that there was a good chance the adventurers might win or kill so many bandits her victory would be pyrrhic, she fled.  Her lieutenant took the hint and did the same.  The remaining bandits, willing a moment ago to fight to the death, saw their leadership flee and did the same.

By accident and luck, the adventurers had driven off the bandits.

The adventurers stripped the bodies of their weapons and shields [the remaining armor was damaged or otherwise unsellable].  The fight provided the adventurers a bump in loot, but also earned them a measure of enmity from Renata.

Hernesday, May 14th, 23rd year of the reign of King Shurik the Nimble
The group traveled to Ironguard Motte to get restore life and limb cast on Brock.  Brock returned hungry and can no longer quite satisfy his hungers [“Bottomless hungers” on the Tampering with Mortality table].

End of Session


[So on the way to the Barrowmaze, I rolled “Rival Adventurers” on the encounter table.  Looking at the list of rivals, I decided that the Boon Companions were still recovering in Bogtown.  Next on the list was Renata’s Robbers, a group of bandits.  They normally operate in the Blackened Forest, but the players were very successful at bringing back loot from the barrows and word had spread, so I decided that the Robbers were following the adventurers and would not ambush them until after they extracted loot from the barrows.  On the way back to Helix, I rolled again to see if there would be a complicating incident and again rolled “Rival Adventurers”, so clearly this fight was going to happen.  I was fairly certain the adventurers were going to get robbed and later track down the Robbers for revenge.  Then Harkyn’s player asked if she could step away using her elven boots and Frank’s player had Frank hand over the box with the poison needle.  A couple fortuitous rolls later and the adventurers were starting to get the upper hand.  Renata is smart, so she bolted when victory started looking way too expensive.  Next time, however…]

[At the beginning of the session, the players debated waiting two weeks for Kord and Quillian to recover.  They eventually decided not to, so another round of backup characters stepped forward, Solomokn for Kord, and Shal the Runt for Quillian.  I decided to require Solomokn have a “k” in his name somewhere, being a dwarf, and his player put it before the “n”, like in “know”.  Having to type his name several times now, I’m starting to regret this decision…]



Session 1
Session 2
Session 3
Session 4
Session 5
Session 6
Session 7
Session 8


Session 10