[This is the first time we’ve done a two-part session, where
I’ve ended one session with the PCs in the Barrowmaze itself and picked up the
next session still in the dungeon. This
is Part Two.]
[Also? SPOILERS! This series will spoil what’s in Barrowmaze,
so take that into consideration before reading.]
PCs (The Revengers)
Rhun Thruu – female elf Theurgist-Torturer (3rd
level Elven Nightblade)
Daphne – female human Blade-Sister (5th level Bladedancer)
Boris the Fighter – male human Exemplar (5th level Fighter)
Adam – male human Magician (4th level Mage)
Hrglclxin [pronounced her-gull-klack sin] – male human Outrider
(2nd 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
Nolig – male human porter, hired by Hrglclxin
Proximo – male human Footpad, Godric’s henchman
Vorgand – female human porter, a university student earning
coin, hired by Daphne
Sunday, July 20th, 1st year of
the reign of King Vladik the Gamesman
[Starting immediately where Session 22 ended.]
After concluding their arrangement to
rescue to supply a guide to The Revengers in exchange for the rescue of their
leaders from the necromancers, the mongrelman leader The Horned One, asked the
adventurers to do one more thing. A lone
adventurer was rescued in the dungeon by the mongrelmen. This adventurer needed an escort out of the
dungeon and back to the surface lands.
The Horned One asked Boris if the Revengers would take this elf back. Boris agreed, and the group was introduced to
Rhun, whose gear was battered but functional.
With that taken care of, one of the
mongrelmen stepped forward as their guide and led them north. They followed the path they’d recently
discovered from the mongrelmen room [Room 100A] to the diagonal grand hallway [Room
110]. From there they went north,
through two secret doors to the other grand hallway where Dr. West fell into
the teleporting pit and was never seen alive again. Their guide walked the group up the eastern
wall to the far end of the hall and opened a previously unseen secret
door.
Beyond was a corridor that 20 feet in was
a four-way intersection. Their guide
said, “Take the left passage and follow the left wall until you get to a
door. Beyond that door is death. That is where you are going. Return when you have freed our leaders.” He then left, heading south to presumably
return to the mongrelmen lair.
Somewhat nonplussed by this, the
Revengers entered the corridor. They
noted the passage forward ended 20 feet past the intersection and the passage
to the right [south] went further than their light illuminated. They turned left [north] and followed the
corridor to a right-turn. The corridor
around the corner was empty, so they continued, following the left wall. Just as Boris’ glowing sword illuminated a
Y-intersection ahead, Rhun’s keen elven eyes noticed a secret door on the south
wall.
Curious, and hoping for some treasure,
the Revengers decided to make a slight detour and opened the secret door. In a small chamber beyond were 6 skeletons,
each with a sapphire gem embedded in their forehead. Sensing loot, the Revengers engaged the
skeletons in combat in the doorway [to keep the skeletons bottled up and fight
as few as possible at once]. The
skeletons were a little tougher than expected, which did not concern the
revengers at first. It took two blows
from his sword for Boris to drop the first skeleton. As he and Daphne were fighting the next three
skeletons, the first one stood back up, all damage from Boris’ sword gone!
Realizing that time was not on their
side, Boris switched from his sword to his great axe and started targeting the
blue gems in the skulls. This time when
Boris dropped the first skeleton again, it stayed down. Calling out this information to the others,
the group started targeting the gems specifically. Adam discovered that the sapphire skeletons
were also immune to fire attacks when his fire-based Magic Missile spell
harmlessly splashed on one of the skeletons.
[Adam has the Elementalism proficiency and chose fire as his element. He invoked the option to make his Magic
Missile spell fire-based.]
It was a hard fight and several
adventurers were injured, but eventually all the skeletons were down and their
sapphires broken. Daphne gathered up the
sapphire fragments into the loot bag while Boris drank a healing potion. Everyone else who was injured ate some
comfrey to heal up some. The chamber the
skeletons came out of was a dead end with no treasure, which was slightly
disappointing to the adventurers. [The
map shows an attached room, Room 124A, but there is nothing in the text that
even mentions the room exists. With
nothing to go on, I just eliminated the room.]
Side trip done, the Revengers advanced,
taking the left turn at the Y-intersection.
Thirty feet past that, the corridor ended at a doorway, beyond which the
mongrelmen claimed was death. Boris
opened the door and found a 30x30 room with an open corridor out in the center
of the north wall and a closed door in the far corner on the east wall. The room was otherwise empty, so the
adventurers moved in. Rhun noticed a
secret door on the south wall [because who can hide things from elves?] and
pointed it out. The door was examined
and pronounced clear [despite no one having Find Traps as an ability and Adam
not casting Detect Magic]. Boris opened
it…and triggered the explosive rune hidden on it. He was able to dodge part of the blast [made
his save], but was still heavily injured.
Based on the size of the blast, Adam estimated a high-level Patriach was
necessary to place that rune [Level 12 Cleric].
This gave the adventurers some pause.
Having triggered the trap, the
adventurers went through the secret door.
Beyond was a short passage east to another room. Eight [ravenous] zombies rushed out of this
room to attack. Daphne brandished her
holy symbol in the name of Inanna and turned them. While Daphne maintained concentration, Boris
chopped up the cowering zombies. [These
were Ravenous Zombies – think piranha zombies – but they were turned before
they could demonstrate what made them different from other zombies.]
Looking around the zombie room [Room
206], Rhun located another secret door, this one again on the south wall. Cautiously opening this secret door, the
Revengers looked through. The room
beyond was 20x30 feet, with two wooden doors taking up the south wall and two more
doors and a portcullis on the eastern wall.
Peat-colored water was leaking in and had obviously swollen one of the
doors on the south wall and one on the east wall. The other southern door was open and the
remaining door on the eastern wall was ajar.
The adventurers entered the room and
started looking around. The open crypt
was bare and obviously looted. The
portcullis opened onto a larger [30x30 feet] room, where the mechanism to raise the
portcullis was visible on the opposite wall, next to a door out. The partially open crypt had a stone tablet
on the floor at the far end. Boris went
in and stuffed the tablet into his loot bag without reading it…which is when
the ochre jelly on the ceiling attacked.
[Ironically, this was the first time in quite a while that Boris had not
checked the ceiling when walking into a room.]
Despite attacking from surprise, the
ochre jelly was quickly dispatched.
Daphne and Adam performed healing checks on Rhun and Boris,
respectively, while Hrglclxin used Boris’ axe to chop down the stuck door on
the south wall. Both healers failed at
their efforts. Beyond the stuck door was
a crypt with some normal skeletons and no treasure. After another 10 minutes of chopping to open
the other swollen door, they found the same.
Disappointed and with no ideas on how to
open the portcullis, the adventurers backtracked to the room with the exploding
rune. From there they went through the
corridor to the north. They took a left
at a T-intersection and kept on that path around a corner, where they found
stairs going up! They went up the
stairs, emerging from a large pedestal in what was clearly a barrow. Next to the pedestal was a toppled and
defaced statue of Negal. Ahead of them,
on the far side of 50-foot circular room was another set of stairs to the
surface with light streaming down them.
There was a well-worn path between the two sets of stairs.
The group climbed to the surface and
found the barrow was not in the field of barrows, but in the moors nearby. They climbed on top of the barrow mound and
looked around to work out where they were on their map. They discovered they were just off the top of
their map [Barrow 35]. Having brought
Rhun to the surface and with several adventurers wounded, the group decided to
walk over to Barrow 20, pick up Dergos, and return to Helix. Rhun was all for this plan.
On the way back to Helix, a giant python
dropped on Adam and squeezed him hard enough he nearly passed out [he went to 0
hp, but made a roll against his CON to stay conscious]. In the rush to get the snake off Adam, Rhun
bounced her sword off Boris and into a deep puddle nearby, where it started to
sink into the mud [Natural 1 on the d20]. She dove after it
before it was lost. By the time she had
it again, the python was fleeing and she had to drop it [on more solid ground]
to free her longbow to shoot [and kill] the python.
Back in town, much healing was done. Rhun went to the newly opened Shrine of the
Green Man [built by Quillian on his property].
Daphne used the last of her magic to heal Boris a little, but he had to
go to the Shrine of St. Ygg to get healed the rest of the way. Daphne made use of the magic cup [from Barrow
24] to heal her wounds.
End of Session
[So I didn’t mention it in my notes, but Boris actually took
more damage from the party making critical failures – rolling a “1” to hit –
than he took from the actual monsters.
Daphne hit him at least twice and Rhun hit him once. Adam’s player could not roll above a 9 on a
d20 for the entire game except once, when he needed to roll low and then rolled
high. The laws of probability seemed to
be making up for previous sessions.]
The Motley Crew
…
The Revengers
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