[When the prisoner tries to escape, the crew of the Yardbird discover temple ruins on the “backside” of the Great Nef and investigate.]
[This session took place March 2, 2002. We were playing Champions 4th Edition with the Second Edition Fantasy Hero supplement.]
Player Characters
Tim, a Wizard – male human from the Free City of Freegate, graduate of Outlands University
Dangar Stonekleaver – male dwarf from the Northern Dwarven Kingdom
Kyle Logan – male human thief and stowaway on the Yardbird
Wendell Dorshield III – male gnome, Captain and Architect of the Yardbird
Malwyn – male High elf fighter and military expert
Darkfox – female human thief from Freegate, secret ID of socialite Karlyn Gryphshaw
Session Begins
Late July, 18 IC
[I don’t have the specific in-game date this happened in my notes, but it is a single day most likely somewhere in between July 18 and July 22.]
The Yardbird was flying north towards the Northern Dwarven Kingdom, taking the “backside” of the Great Nef desert, between it and very imposing Worldspine Mountains. One morning the Outlanders were awoken by an alarm. Kyle, the stowaway, had escaped the brig and was loose on the Yardbird!
Kyle was eventually discovered when he stole the Runaround Mark 1 [a very experimental landing craft] and tried to escape in it. It was designed as a small boat with a single fixed propellor that was supposed to auto-gyrate on the way down. Unfortunately, it did not work at all like Wendell planned and the best Kyle could achieve was a crash-landing in a wide, dry river valley below the Yardbird.
When he “landed”, the ground below the Runaround 1 collapsed. Kye and the Runaround dropped into an underground chamber. Wendell asked the Outlanders to investigate for him to determine if the Runaround 1 could be rescued. Oh, and recapture Kyle.
The Yardbird flew lower and landed Tim, Dangar, Malwyn, and Darkfox via a loading platform. The four adventurers climbed down into the underground chamber on ropes and discovered the chamber was actually a room with wall frescos, dioramas, and a weak poison gas.
The first thing they did was investigate the Runaround. It was clearly wrecked and would need to be hauled back up to the Yardbird. Then they spent some time looking around the room they were in, both looking for Kyle and taking in the dioramas lining the walls.
The dioramas depicted scenes of an ancient lifestyle. Tim believed that these were scenes of life from before the Mage War, 8000 years ago. He made notes, drew pictures, and argued with Darkfox over her taking some of the figurines. Eventually, two of them decided to take all the figurines and pack them up for storage on the Yardbird.
After a while, the adventurers located where Kyle was hiding and coaxed him out into the open. He solved the puzzle of how to open the door out of the room into the rest of the underground complex and got a rope tied around his waist for his troubles.
While the rest of the party was shipping the figurines up to the surface and asking Wendell for a fix to the poison gas, Dangar and Kyle pushed forward into the complex. They got caught up in the Hallway of Rushing Bamboo and were forcefully pushed along the hall to another door. Battered and bruised, they called out for the rest of the party to come rescue them. Darkfox disarmed the stone bamboo (easy to do from the back) and healing was provided to Dangar and Kyle.
The next several hours were frustrating as the party seemed to march in circles looking for a way deeper into the complex. Highlights include:
- An encounter with a talking, normal-sized crayfish and a ½-ton hermit crab. Dangar rashly attacked the crab and it cleaned his and Kyle’s clocks before Tim and the others intervened.
- The party discovered a naked elfin woman [Afrah, a Nereid] singing beside a pool. After getting mixed signals from her, they decided to move on.
- They discovered a secret door behind a heavy statue that fell when the catch was released.
- They found a shrine to a giant talking slug. When it attacked, the entire party laid into it and it fled into the depths of a moat.
- Kyle opened a pair of stuck doors, releasing the room full of water behind it. The flood pushed the entire party down the hall, back into slug room. Tim’s bottle of TDD cracked during this event and started to leak. Due to being drenched by all the water, he didn’t notice. [The cracking of the bottle was a retcon due to a player-induced TPK later.]
- They found a tomb behind a limestone block. The block was softened by the water and Kyle attempted to dig through it. The soft paste was now quicklime and destroyed his leather armor. Due to the inscription on the tomb behind the block, the party decided to leave it alone.
Eventually, they party realized they had to get past the elfin woman to go deeper into the complex. They returned to her chamber to negotiate.
She asked for something pretty before she would let them past. Tim offered her his magical Reading Glasses to see if they were acceptable. She liked them and took them to the bottom of the pool. Tim, wanting to negotiate further considerations, was caught off-guard and became upset. When Afrah, during the ensuing argument, summoned a water serpent [actually just water under her control in the form of a serpent], Tim pulled his bottle of TDD and attempted to threaten her with it. Only then did he realize that it was cracked and completely empty. [Also part of the retcon. See DM Discussion below.]
Session Ends.
NPCs Met
Afrah – a Nereid (not that anyone asked her name)
Happening Off-Stage
[Nothing in my notes, but the Empire was still fighting the various Hordes of goblins, orcs, and lizardfolk invading it.]
DM Discussion
[The ending was re-written as the original actions resulted in Tim killing the entire party with the TDD and pissing the rest of the players off. Rather than have the campaign come to a complete stop, we discussed a way to mitigate the self-inflicted TPK. Having the bottle crack and leak out all the TDD (Tim’s Double Distilled) meant there was no explosion that collapsed the roof and crushed all of the player characters to death. It also meant that Tim’s player was allowed to come back for the next session – that’s how upset the other players were.]
[The ruins the players were exploring was AD&D module C2: Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, modified for use with Fantasy Hero. The poison gas did not translate very well as I had it doing STUN damage. In hindsight, I should have made it do 1d6 STUN Drain or 1 pip BODY Drain every 10 minutes or so with greatly extended return rates. That would have made things more urgent. I also omitted a few rooms that were nothing but time-wasters – appropriate for a convention adventure, not so much for a non-competitive game.]
Flight of the Yardbird
Previous session: Session 1
Next Session: Session 3 [not edited yet]
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