Dyson’s Delve – Session 1

This session happened Wednesday, November 10, 2010. This is a new campaign being run by a first time DM. He is using the Dyson’s Delve dungeon pages on A Character for Every Game. We are using the Pathfinder RPG, so some adjustments were made (or so I’ve been told).

Adventuring Group:
Harkaitz of the Red Soul (male human cleric of Ra, Fire and Sun domains)
Wednesday (female elf rogue)
“Electric” Frankie Hu (male dwarf monk)

The village of Aldelle was a pleasant place to live. A farming community, it received some periodic trade in the form of travelling merchants. Recently, the merchants have started disappearing and rumors of bandits or worse started spreading. The village elders called a meeting and asked for volunteers to track down the source of these troubles. Three nascent adventurers were volunteered: Harkaitz of the Red Soul (a blustery muscular follower of Ra the Sun God), Wednesday (a quiet elven woman with an excellent eye), and “Electric” Frankie Hu (a nimble dwarf with something to prove).

After searching the area where the disappearances have happened, the trio ran across Old Man Tim (also known as “Tim the Quest Giver”), an itinerant beggar and wanderer. He claimed to have seen some forms making their way to the nearby cliffs and followed them. He saw them drop something on the path to a nearby cave. When he opened it, it appeared to be a map of the caves. Tim gave us the map and then headed back to the village to report what he’d seen to the sheriff. (Harkaitz is currently of the opinion that at some point, Tim will be found working for the raiders. Nothing definite, just a hunch.)

The trio followed Tim’s directions and found the cave in question. Frankie was sent in first, as he could see in the dark. He reported an empty cave with passages leading off, which matched the map Tim gave us. Searching around, Harkaitz found a goblin skull that rattled. He opened it with his morning star and found 12 silver coins. Frankie found some giant ferrets noisily eating something in an adjacent chamber and the trio picked a fight with the ferrets by Harkaitz firing a fire bolt at one of them. Bad positioning made this fight sketchy, but the trio eventually defeated the ferrets. After some healing, the trio investigated the side chamber and found that the ferrets had been eating on giant rats. Yuck.

Checking another side chamber, the trio found a dozen LIVE giant rats cowering. Harkaitz opened “negotiations” with a flaming hands spell that did minimal damage. The rats attacked. The trio fell back and used the narrow cavern entrance to bottleneck the rats and keep them from surrounding the adventurers. Even so, Wednesday took a nasty wound that looked infected [she contracted filth fever, but it wouldn’t manifest for a day]. Harkaitz healed the damage, but could do nothing about any potential disease.

Skipping a set of stairs leading further down, the trio instead followed their map to another set of rooms. Passing through the last of the natural passage, the trio was attacked by fire beetles (or Frankie attacked the beetles - it's hard to say any more). After a comedic series of fumbles (on both sides), the trio finally defeated the beetles. Carefully opening a door in the back of the cave, the trio found it did lead to a finished hallway as shown on Tim's map. Careful listening detected goblins shooting the breeze to the left. The trio stormed the room and killed the goblin guards almost immediately (Wednesday stabbing one through the heart).

Beyond the guard room was a goblin barracks with four sleeping goblins. Well, three sleeping goblins and one waking up, wondering why he could not hear the guards talking anymore. He awoke another goblin before Frankie charged the room. Frankie quickly killed one of the awake goblins as part of a flurry of blows, but missed the second goblin, who cried out in alarm. This woke the other two goblins and a fight ensued. Harkaitz killed one of the goblins while Frankie knocked out the goblin he originally missed and tied it up for later questioning. Harkaitz and Wednesday kept the fourth goblin busy until a goblin champion burst through the door in the back and joined into the fight. Wednesday was nearly killed (down to 2 hp) and Harkaitz was wounded before the remaining goblins were finally killed.

Quickly pushing through the door to check the room beyond for more combatants, Harkaitz found it to be the goblin champion's sleeping chambers and empty of goblins. The prisoner was dragged into this room with the goblin champions head set on his lap. Harkaitz healed the adventurers (but not completely as he ran out of healing magics) before he and Frankie revived and questioned the goblin. Wednesday searched the room during this time, finding a small coffer and not much else. Having a funny feeling about the coffer, she had Harkaitz open it. Harkaitz found it full of 5000 silver pieces, neatly stacked in rows. The goblin captive, meanwhile, claimed there were enough goblins here in the dungeon to completely destroy the village. This was serious news.

Wanting to get this information to the sheriff (and being completely out of healing magic while still down hit points), the trio of adventurers packed up the goblin champions very nice bed and retreated out of the dungeon, avoiding another pack of rats along the way. Back at Aldelle, they turned the goblin prisoner over to the sheriff and shared everything they had learned. After receiving 5 gold coins as a reward, the trio returned to their rooms at the inn to rest and recuperate.

The next day they sold off their goblin loot (shortswords, leather armors, and some shields) to the village trader for credit. The trader claimed he had something “real special” coming in that the adventurers would surely want. What the adventurers really wanted was the additional 25% value given for credit instead of coin.  Wednesday came down with filth fever, but quickly shrugged it off after some chicken soup and bedrest.

*End of Session*