[The Revengers follow a treasure map and find a shortcut…eventually.]
[Also? SPOILERS! This series will spoil what’s in Barrowmaze, so take that into consideration before reading.]
PCs (The Revengers)
Adam – male human Magician (4th level Mage)
Godric – male Dwarven Craftpriest (3nd level Craftpriest))
Boris the Fighter – male human Exemplar (5th level Fighter)
Daphne – female human Blade-Sister (5th level Bladedancer)
Hrglclxin [pronounced her-gull-klack sin] – male human Scout (1st level Explorer)
NPCs
Dergos – male human guide, still sold on the glory of adventuring, hired by Boris
‘Len – professional torchbearer, full name is Morgullen, but he never uses it, hired by Boris
Proximo – male human Footpad, Godric’s henchman
Cromsday, July 10th, through Magusday, July 16th, 1st year of the reign of King Vladik the Gamesman
Adam hosts an open party in Helix. While good, it is nowhere near the scale of previous celebrations and got poor reviews as a result. Many partiers leave Helix and go back to either Ironguard Motte or Bogtown.
During that week, the Revengers paid Tripp to make copies of all their maps of the Barrowmaze. They realized that if something fatal happened to Boris [who currently handles the mapping], they would lose all their stored knowledge of the dungeon. The copies are deposited in Daphne’s storage chest at Turgen’s Trade Goods.
Comparing the one of the maps they were gifted by Felix [who appeared only in Session 17 and is now off on a quest], Boris worked out that one of them connected areas they knew about to another surface entrance, one they had no knowledge of. Boris discussed it with the other Revengers and all agreed that it was worthwhile to investigate another potential entrance.
Magusday, July 16th, 1st year of the reign of King Vladik the Gamesman
As the week-long party wound down, several members of the Revengers arranged for their favored hirelings to be available and Daphne decided she needed a porter of her own. Boris hired Durgos as guide and ‘Len as a torchbearer. Hrglclxin re-hired Nolig as porter and Daphne hired Vorgand, a university student using working the summer to pay for her admission fees [she may also have been very drunk at the time].
Cromsday, July 17th, 1st year of the reign of King Vladik the Gamesman
Early in the morning the Revengers formed up at the Mercenary Guild building, meeting their hirelings there. They headed south into the Barrowmoor, on their way to the field of barrows. Along the way they ran into a pair of giant toads, but quickly dispatched them [only 2 rounds of combat].
Shortly before Noon, they arrived at the field of barrows and made their way to Barrow 12. They found the rope down, indicating that someone else might be in the dungeon. On their guard, they descended down the rope, one at a time. Boris was first, and when he stepped off the rope, he noticed some of the shadows in the room moved in ways they shouldn’t. He was calling up to ‘Len to hold the light steady when three of the shadows detached from the walls and attacked him!
Daphne and Godric shimmied down the rope to help Boris defend against the shadows. While Boris was nigh-invulnerable due to his magic plate armor, Daphne was hit twice and Godric once by the shadows before they were defeated. Luckily, the amount of strength drained from the two of them was minimal [because my dice rolls were low]. They knew their strength would return, but it would be a while [8 Turns or 80 minutes], so Daphne unloaded some of her equipment onto Vorgand to lighten her load.
From there they moved down the long corridor to the 2nd door on their left [Room 5], which was still empty. With a small sigh of relief they walked across the room and peeked through the door on the other side. The hallway and room they could see [Room 20] appeared to be clear, so they walked through, and then Boris checked the ceiling and spotted four giant centipedes on the room ceiling. Boris called a warning to the rest of the Revengers and then charged the centipedes, cleaving through them quickly.
With that “threat” dealt with, the Revengers went east, following the treasure map past the stinky room [Room 19] to secret storage room [Room 16], which Boris pointed out to the new members of the group. Just past that was an empty room [Room 18], which was the furthest the Revengers had explored in this direction. The treasure map they had showed a long corridor behind the door in the east wall, with doors and side passages. Near the end of the corridor a side passage lead [eventually] to a set of stairs that appeared to lead to the surface. This was their goal.
Boris opened the door at the back of Room 18, beyond which was the long corridor the treasure map showed. Thirty feet down the corridor was an open pit, that was not shown on the map. The Revengers discussed how to bypass the pit and settled on rigging a rough rope bridge using spikes driven into the walls. Proximo climbed across to set the spikes on the far side while Hrglclxin provided cover with his bow.
Once the adventurers bypassed the trap, they came to an intersection. The passage north was indicated on the treasure map, but not explored. There was also a bricked section, possibly cutting off a southern passage or room. The main corridor considered east, as shown on the treasure map. On the floor of the intersection were some chalk symbols. An arrow pointing east was marked out, a second mark pointed west. The chalk marks seemed recent and they suspected Dr. Venom West might have made them.
The adventurers continued east [planning to come back later to investigate the northern passage and the bricked off area]. The next door along was ajar. Peeking in, Boris observed several giant flies, feeding on strangely preserved corpses [Room 41]. Boris rushed in and slaughtered all of the giant flies by cleaving them. After some discussion, the group searched the burial alcoves lining the walls, finding platinum coins, a potion of unknown power, and a large ruby. All these were placed in the loot bag and the group went on.
The corridor continued east, past a set of double doors to a room that was more a widening of the hallway on the left, where a broken and defaced statue sat. There were doors on the southern wall, but the map indicated whatever was behind them was dangerous. The adventurers debated whether clearing the rooms was more important that getting to the stairs on the map. They eventually decided that getting to the stairs was more important and they could come back to clear the rooms once they establish where the stairs go.
The adventurers continued east to another intersection. They looked north and east to verify what was on the map before turning right to head south. Forty feet on they found the narrow side passage the map indicated led to the stairs up. The dust and cobwebs here were disturbed, showing people had passed through here, probably in the past month or so. [The players recognized where their characters were, even if these particular characters have never been here before.] They followed this side passage to a set of stairs up. At the top of the stairs was a rock slab with grips carved into it and a mechanism release. Triggering the release allowed the slab to be moved sideways, exposing the interior of a barrow [Barrow 20]. To the side they could see stairs lit by daylight.
The adventurers entered the barrow and discovered that the stone slab was the bottom of a broken sarcophagus decorated in bas relief with skeletons dancing in the Underworld. Godric and Proximo investigated the sarcophagus to discover how to open the secret passage from this side while Boris and Daphne went up to the surface to see where they were. On the surface the two of them climbed on top of the barrow and looked around. They spotted Durgos sitting on top of Barrow 12, several hundred feet to their west-northwest and waved at him. He waved back, somewhat confused about how they got there.
Satisfied they had a solid shortcut into the Barrowmaze, the adventurers descended again to investigate some of the side rooms with odd labels on the treasure map. They went north to the last intersection and turned right to investigate a room to the east labeled “Teeth” on the map. There they found an octagonal room lined with burial alcoves and with eight human teeth in the center of the floor, arranged to form an arrow pointing east, back the way they came from originally [Room 55]. They decided to not mess with the teeth, but searched the burial alcoves and found a number of platinum coins.
They next investigated a trapezoidal room down the north passage [Room 56]. The found a pyramid of stones along the northern wall, some graffiti on the wall stating “Don’t go on!”, and a door in the northeast corner. The map did not indicate what was beyond [the previous explorers took heed of the graffiti perhaps], but the Revengers were not going to let that stop them – although they did knock first.
Boris opened the door and saw what appeared to be an old woman crumpled to the floor. She weakly called for help, which seemed to make Boris quite suspicious. He looked around and spotted the mongrel men waiting in ambush as they attacked!
There were only three mongrel men facing the seasoned adventurers and the fight was soon over. Examination of the room showed piles of coins the mongrelmen had been sorting. The adventurers scooped up all the coins into the loot bag, along with four emeralds of good size.
Having linked in their minds that mongrelmen indicate secret doors nearby, the Revengers searched the walls for secret doors, finding one in the southeast corner. Beyond the secret door was a ten foot by ten foot empty room. They searched again and found another secret door on the far wall. This door opened to a grand hallway running north and a little bit south [“Room” 92].
The Revengers explored the grand hallway, finding two doors and two corridors leading out of the grand hallway. Proximo also found a concealed pit when he fell into it, but quick reflexes on his part kept the damage he took to a minimum as he got his feet under him before he hit bottom [I rolled a “1” for damage]. On the western wall was first a door that had been smashed in long ago [Room 90] and then one of the corridors out, which lead to another door, this one closed [to Room 89]. On the east wall the corridor and bashed in door both appeared to lead to a room and parallel corridor that connected [Room 100].
Aware that their planned departure time was approaching [they always leave the area around 4:00 to have enough time to make it back to town with the sun still up], they investigated the bashed door on the western wall. The long narrow room beyond was covered in thick dust with destroyed funerary baskets and three broken stone sarcophagi inside. Proximo and Godric started searching while the rest of the party rested. Proximo found little, but Godric was investigating the sarcophagi and after clearing off some of the dust, discovered that the sarcophagi were covered in gold filigree. He had the tools to remove the filigree [being a craftpriest], but it would take a couple hours to collect it all. Two hours was more time than the Revengers felt they had left to spend on this trip, so they scattered some of the dust to hide the exposed filigree and left, returning to the surface through their new shortcut.
On the surface they walked over to Barrow 12 and collected Durgos. On the way back to Helix, a walking pile of plant-matter approached them. At first they thought it was a shambling mound, but then Hrglclxin noticed the stone fists peeking out of the plants arms. Every adventurer in the duchy had heard tales of the animated statues released from the barrows, seeking the glowing sword stolen by the Motley Crew – the same sword Boris sheathed at Boris’ hip! Boris attacked with his enchanted axe, but the axe was ripped from his hands as it got tangled up in the plant-matter wrapped around the statue.
The rest of the Revengers pressed the attack and brought down the animated statue. Boris retrieved his axe from the vines while Hrglclxin knocked the fists off the statue to take back to town as trophies. This left two more statues still wandering the Barrowmoor.
End of Session
[So work and life got very busy and I did not get this typed up last week due to lack of time. I think I need to do another edit to check for tense and grammar, but I’m still pressed for time and want to get this posted before I have three sets of notes waiting to be typed up. I might get last week’s session typed up later this week, but I can’t 100% promise that right now – we’ll see how much time I have.]
The Motley Crew
Session 1: The Start
…
Session 11: TPK
The Revengers
Session 12: Rise of the Revengers
Session 13
Session 14
Session 15
Session 16
Session 17
Session 18
Session 19
Session 21
[Also? SPOILERS! This series will spoil what’s in Barrowmaze, so take that into consideration before reading.]
PCs (The Revengers)
Adam – male human Magician (4th level Mage)
Godric – male Dwarven Craftpriest (3nd level Craftpriest))
Boris the Fighter – male human Exemplar (5th level Fighter)
Daphne – female human Blade-Sister (5th level Bladedancer)
Hrglclxin [pronounced her-gull-klack sin] – male human Scout (1st level Explorer)
NPCs
Dergos – male human guide, still sold on the glory of adventuring, hired by Boris
‘Len – professional torchbearer, full name is Morgullen, but he never uses it, hired by Boris
Proximo – male human Footpad, Godric’s henchman
Cromsday, July 10th, through Magusday, July 16th, 1st year of the reign of King Vladik the Gamesman
Adam hosts an open party in Helix. While good, it is nowhere near the scale of previous celebrations and got poor reviews as a result. Many partiers leave Helix and go back to either Ironguard Motte or Bogtown.
During that week, the Revengers paid Tripp to make copies of all their maps of the Barrowmaze. They realized that if something fatal happened to Boris [who currently handles the mapping], they would lose all their stored knowledge of the dungeon. The copies are deposited in Daphne’s storage chest at Turgen’s Trade Goods.
Comparing the one of the maps they were gifted by Felix [who appeared only in Session 17 and is now off on a quest], Boris worked out that one of them connected areas they knew about to another surface entrance, one they had no knowledge of. Boris discussed it with the other Revengers and all agreed that it was worthwhile to investigate another potential entrance.
Magusday, July 16th, 1st year of the reign of King Vladik the Gamesman
As the week-long party wound down, several members of the Revengers arranged for their favored hirelings to be available and Daphne decided she needed a porter of her own. Boris hired Durgos as guide and ‘Len as a torchbearer. Hrglclxin re-hired Nolig as porter and Daphne hired Vorgand, a university student using working the summer to pay for her admission fees [she may also have been very drunk at the time].
Cromsday, July 17th, 1st year of the reign of King Vladik the Gamesman
Early in the morning the Revengers formed up at the Mercenary Guild building, meeting their hirelings there. They headed south into the Barrowmoor, on their way to the field of barrows. Along the way they ran into a pair of giant toads, but quickly dispatched them [only 2 rounds of combat].
Shortly before Noon, they arrived at the field of barrows and made their way to Barrow 12. They found the rope down, indicating that someone else might be in the dungeon. On their guard, they descended down the rope, one at a time. Boris was first, and when he stepped off the rope, he noticed some of the shadows in the room moved in ways they shouldn’t. He was calling up to ‘Len to hold the light steady when three of the shadows detached from the walls and attacked him!
Daphne and Godric shimmied down the rope to help Boris defend against the shadows. While Boris was nigh-invulnerable due to his magic plate armor, Daphne was hit twice and Godric once by the shadows before they were defeated. Luckily, the amount of strength drained from the two of them was minimal [because my dice rolls were low]. They knew their strength would return, but it would be a while [8 Turns or 80 minutes], so Daphne unloaded some of her equipment onto Vorgand to lighten her load.
From there they moved down the long corridor to the 2nd door on their left [Room 5], which was still empty. With a small sigh of relief they walked across the room and peeked through the door on the other side. The hallway and room they could see [Room 20] appeared to be clear, so they walked through, and then Boris checked the ceiling and spotted four giant centipedes on the room ceiling. Boris called a warning to the rest of the Revengers and then charged the centipedes, cleaving through them quickly.
With that “threat” dealt with, the Revengers went east, following the treasure map past the stinky room [Room 19] to secret storage room [Room 16], which Boris pointed out to the new members of the group. Just past that was an empty room [Room 18], which was the furthest the Revengers had explored in this direction. The treasure map they had showed a long corridor behind the door in the east wall, with doors and side passages. Near the end of the corridor a side passage lead [eventually] to a set of stairs that appeared to lead to the surface. This was their goal.
Boris opened the door at the back of Room 18, beyond which was the long corridor the treasure map showed. Thirty feet down the corridor was an open pit, that was not shown on the map. The Revengers discussed how to bypass the pit and settled on rigging a rough rope bridge using spikes driven into the walls. Proximo climbed across to set the spikes on the far side while Hrglclxin provided cover with his bow.
Once the adventurers bypassed the trap, they came to an intersection. The passage north was indicated on the treasure map, but not explored. There was also a bricked section, possibly cutting off a southern passage or room. The main corridor considered east, as shown on the treasure map. On the floor of the intersection were some chalk symbols. An arrow pointing east was marked out, a second mark pointed west. The chalk marks seemed recent and they suspected Dr. Venom West might have made them.
The adventurers continued east [planning to come back later to investigate the northern passage and the bricked off area]. The next door along was ajar. Peeking in, Boris observed several giant flies, feeding on strangely preserved corpses [Room 41]. Boris rushed in and slaughtered all of the giant flies by cleaving them. After some discussion, the group searched the burial alcoves lining the walls, finding platinum coins, a potion of unknown power, and a large ruby. All these were placed in the loot bag and the group went on.
The corridor continued east, past a set of double doors to a room that was more a widening of the hallway on the left, where a broken and defaced statue sat. There were doors on the southern wall, but the map indicated whatever was behind them was dangerous. The adventurers debated whether clearing the rooms was more important that getting to the stairs on the map. They eventually decided that getting to the stairs was more important and they could come back to clear the rooms once they establish where the stairs go.
The adventurers continued east to another intersection. They looked north and east to verify what was on the map before turning right to head south. Forty feet on they found the narrow side passage the map indicated led to the stairs up. The dust and cobwebs here were disturbed, showing people had passed through here, probably in the past month or so. [The players recognized where their characters were, even if these particular characters have never been here before.] They followed this side passage to a set of stairs up. At the top of the stairs was a rock slab with grips carved into it and a mechanism release. Triggering the release allowed the slab to be moved sideways, exposing the interior of a barrow [Barrow 20]. To the side they could see stairs lit by daylight.
The adventurers entered the barrow and discovered that the stone slab was the bottom of a broken sarcophagus decorated in bas relief with skeletons dancing in the Underworld. Godric and Proximo investigated the sarcophagus to discover how to open the secret passage from this side while Boris and Daphne went up to the surface to see where they were. On the surface the two of them climbed on top of the barrow and looked around. They spotted Durgos sitting on top of Barrow 12, several hundred feet to their west-northwest and waved at him. He waved back, somewhat confused about how they got there.
Satisfied they had a solid shortcut into the Barrowmaze, the adventurers descended again to investigate some of the side rooms with odd labels on the treasure map. They went north to the last intersection and turned right to investigate a room to the east labeled “Teeth” on the map. There they found an octagonal room lined with burial alcoves and with eight human teeth in the center of the floor, arranged to form an arrow pointing east, back the way they came from originally [Room 55]. They decided to not mess with the teeth, but searched the burial alcoves and found a number of platinum coins.
They next investigated a trapezoidal room down the north passage [Room 56]. The found a pyramid of stones along the northern wall, some graffiti on the wall stating “Don’t go on!”, and a door in the northeast corner. The map did not indicate what was beyond [the previous explorers took heed of the graffiti perhaps], but the Revengers were not going to let that stop them – although they did knock first.
Boris opened the door and saw what appeared to be an old woman crumpled to the floor. She weakly called for help, which seemed to make Boris quite suspicious. He looked around and spotted the mongrel men waiting in ambush as they attacked!
There were only three mongrel men facing the seasoned adventurers and the fight was soon over. Examination of the room showed piles of coins the mongrelmen had been sorting. The adventurers scooped up all the coins into the loot bag, along with four emeralds of good size.
Having linked in their minds that mongrelmen indicate secret doors nearby, the Revengers searched the walls for secret doors, finding one in the southeast corner. Beyond the secret door was a ten foot by ten foot empty room. They searched again and found another secret door on the far wall. This door opened to a grand hallway running north and a little bit south [“Room” 92].
The Revengers explored the grand hallway, finding two doors and two corridors leading out of the grand hallway. Proximo also found a concealed pit when he fell into it, but quick reflexes on his part kept the damage he took to a minimum as he got his feet under him before he hit bottom [I rolled a “1” for damage]. On the western wall was first a door that had been smashed in long ago [Room 90] and then one of the corridors out, which lead to another door, this one closed [to Room 89]. On the east wall the corridor and bashed in door both appeared to lead to a room and parallel corridor that connected [Room 100].
Aware that their planned departure time was approaching [they always leave the area around 4:00 to have enough time to make it back to town with the sun still up], they investigated the bashed door on the western wall. The long narrow room beyond was covered in thick dust with destroyed funerary baskets and three broken stone sarcophagi inside. Proximo and Godric started searching while the rest of the party rested. Proximo found little, but Godric was investigating the sarcophagi and after clearing off some of the dust, discovered that the sarcophagi were covered in gold filigree. He had the tools to remove the filigree [being a craftpriest], but it would take a couple hours to collect it all. Two hours was more time than the Revengers felt they had left to spend on this trip, so they scattered some of the dust to hide the exposed filigree and left, returning to the surface through their new shortcut.
On the surface they walked over to Barrow 12 and collected Durgos. On the way back to Helix, a walking pile of plant-matter approached them. At first they thought it was a shambling mound, but then Hrglclxin noticed the stone fists peeking out of the plants arms. Every adventurer in the duchy had heard tales of the animated statues released from the barrows, seeking the glowing sword stolen by the Motley Crew – the same sword Boris sheathed at Boris’ hip! Boris attacked with his enchanted axe, but the axe was ripped from his hands as it got tangled up in the plant-matter wrapped around the statue.
The rest of the Revengers pressed the attack and brought down the animated statue. Boris retrieved his axe from the vines while Hrglclxin knocked the fists off the statue to take back to town as trophies. This left two more statues still wandering the Barrowmoor.
End of Session
[So work and life got very busy and I did not get this typed up last week due to lack of time. I think I need to do another edit to check for tense and grammar, but I’m still pressed for time and want to get this posted before I have three sets of notes waiting to be typed up. I might get last week’s session typed up later this week, but I can’t 100% promise that right now – we’ll see how much time I have.]
The Motley Crew
Session 1: The Start
…
Session 11: TPK
The Revengers
Session 12: Rise of the Revengers
Session 13
Session 14
Session 15
Session 16
Session 17
Session 18
Session 19
Session 21
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