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Introduction
Having secured the treasure of Ron Ragnar; including a Dragonslayer sword and a Protection from Dragon Breath scroll, the party moves on in search of Lord Inferno's lair.
Timekeeping
This session took place on 29June/2023, and the PCs adventured for 1 day.
Player Characters Present
Godleve (Level 5 Cleric of Machodor, E)
Giuseppe (Level 5 Paladin from Rome, Brovenloft, E)
Sever (Level 5 Pegasus Corps Ranger of Machodor, E)
Sheamus (Level 4 Irish Fighter from Dublin, Brovenloft, E)
Slippery Pete (Level 3 Thief of unknown heritage, E)
Bumblebore (Level 2 Magic User of Machodor, E)
Session Report
The session started with a rumour that some adventurer had challenged a group of Osser merchants to sell their wears at Castle Von Necro, located now not that far off the main patrol route leading from Schloss Ragnar through the Bandit Mountain and on to St. Raul in the east. Apparently, the merchants, fearing cries of discrimination & misogyny against the "life-challenged" woman said to reside below the crypts, went there overnight and have not been heard of since.
Apart from general amusement, the players were having none of this news; they were primed for dragon hunting.
With the acquisition of a Hawkman Rocket Cycle, which along with Sheamus driving could carry five passengers; and Sever's Pegasus, Convess, the PCs now had a lot more mobility. They were not, yet, so bold as to directly approach the active volcano from the air and potentially encounter Lord Inferno in his favoured element. They had another lead; tunnels, beneath the cyclopean city in the centre of the dormant volcano, which were said to lead to the active volcano approximately 10 miles further north.
Ignoring this encounter, they carried on and passed through the gaping crack in the volcano wall above the Sky City; and they were soon directly above the remains of the brain challenging cyclopean metropolis partly submerged in a glacier at the centre of the dormant volcano. The eerie effect of the giant irregular stone shapes was somewhat diminished by the huge section wiped out by the Sky City when it had previously been using the place as a landing pad.
Back in session #3 the party had noted the Sky City siphoning energy from deeper in the volcano via large vertical-tubes filled with a magical fire; bass relief carvings in the area had hinted that this fire was associated with a great dragon, and when Lord Inferno himself had appeared to re-claim the fire - and cause the Sky City to crash - the connection between the two was confirmed.
From their vantage point hovering above, the tubes were empty holes going straight down, and one seemed as likely to use as any other. The chose one at random and saw, very far below, just at the point where it was difficult to judge if it was their imagination, or not, just a hint of a glowing circle of light.
Shaemus lowered the Rocket Cycle down into the wide shaft, while Sever on Convess circled around them. The shaft went 600' straight down and led to a large chamber in the bowels of the dormant volcano, filled with steam; later they would estimate this area was about a mile in diameter. The ceiling of the chamber was covered with glowing fungus; and it was this phenomenon, when concentrated around the bottom edge of the shafts, that created the circular pattern visible from the surface above.
They continued down and found the floor below to be a coal-black, slippery, and uneven surface, made of porous stone. Here and there the black surface held small amounts of the glowing fungus, which, periodically, fell from the ceiling. The players all made it clear that they would avoid having any of this stuff land on them, or touching it in any way.
That cleared up, they continued exploring and found a weird chimney-like structure in the north wall that allowed concentrated steam to flow upwards out of the cavern. They also found a huge hole in the ground which appeared to be the entrance to a tunnel spiralling into the depths as it went down.
They proceeded down into the hole and found the surface inside to be much different, it didn't even really seem like rock at all.
Not long after the entrance to the hole was out of sight, the PCs were accosted by strange, bat-like, flying creatures with big suckers where a bat's head would be. They killed the first one, but a stray shot from one of the Hawkman energy weapons ( I think from Godleve ) missed its target and hit the wall. Then the whole place - apparently the ground was very unstable - began to move, convulse, and shake!
Having a bad feeling about this, Sheamus turned the rocket cycle around and sped back to the surface and presumed safety. Sever followed on Convess. They narrowly avoided a cave-in just before escaping the tunnel into the main cavern; but, they were not yet safe.
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| A giant maw, forty feet wide, belonging to some vast wormlike creature; launched itself at them. |
Fortunately, they were too fast to be caught before evading its reach. The creature simply retreated into its hole. The party were safe; but, they had no apparent way to proceed.
Hoping to find one, they explored further around the cavern, their continual light was stymied by the steam, which made visibility fuzzy beyond 60'. They soon found another steam chimney to the east, nearby they found another huge hole. Now forewarned, they could see that this hole too was occupied by a giant cave worm.
At this point I advised Sever that Convess had been flying for 3 hours and would need a 1 hour rest (as per the flying rules on pg. 50 of the DMG). The party chose to land the Rocket Cycle as well, and gave thought to the next move while the Pegasus fed greedily from the supplies Sever had brought for his mount.
Not long before the end of this rest period, a large group of riders appeared from the west. The lizardman like creatures, clad in armour and heavily armed; rode large, flightless, birds with long legs and big downcast eyes. The riders moved as though they owned the place.
They abandoned diplomacy and went on the attack; Bumblebore sent his familiar O'Malfoy (formerly a Firedrake) around the back of the other group of newt-men and had it use its breath weapon. The fire was shrugged off by most of the man-like creatures, with little if any effect, their mounts actually smiled in pleasure as the flames briefly washed over them. The attack did manage to spoil the spell of a shaman who would have otherwise cast something nasty, so they had that going for them.
There were 50 mounted enemy, staying on the ground was not an option for the party, so they took off and put some vertical distance between them; 50' up was decided upon. In frustration, some of the enemy threw their long pikes up at them, and a few lucky hits actually caused damage to unfortunate PCs while they were ascending. They flew away and soon outpaced the enemy, going far enough south to find another steam chimney and another worm hole. At this point they circled back, I'm not sure why, and in an unfortunate coincidence ran into a group of 20 of the same creatures riding in the opposite direction right for them.
These numbers were more to the party's liking; so, from the presumed safety of 50' altitude, they closed to give battle and fired off a volley of shots from their Hawkman weapons, while Sever charged and impaled and enemy rider with his lance.
The opening of the attack was solidly in the party's favour, but things were about to turn for the worse. The mounts of the lizard creatures fired small balls of fire from ducts near each of their two red eyes. Individually these weren't a big threat, but a bunch of them, combined with the area of effect; and the fact that they had a range of 50', made them deadly. I ruled that the Rocket Cycle was in range, but assigned hits randomly with a significant chance to hit the cycle itself. The resulting explosions nearly did for Bumblebore and Slippery Pete, but the Cycle itself also took significant damage.
After another round the lizard creatures had had enough, though their mounts showed no enthusiasm for retreat, the obeyed the commands of their riders and began heading back north. This allowed the PCs to tail them back to their main group; where they witnessed a strange sight. The newt-men had gathered together a large pile from the fungus which had accumulated on the ground; and even now one of the huge cave worms was slinking out of its hole and coming towards it. It swallowed the pile of fungus in one gulp, but not before the flightless-bird mounts of the newt-men had used to opportunity to go down the hole. Now here was a technique the party could use to advance. With this knowledge, they retired back to civilisation to plan another delve.
Treasure and XP
Trollopulous Adjusted Session 26 (Machodor #11);
Cash
15 sp
6 gp
Monsters
9 Mynocks 567
11 Giant Striders 1041
1 3HD Firenewt Elite 189
Items
Battle Axe
Longsword
Chainmail
Assume sold for a total of 83gp 5sp
Mynocks parts, and bag of glowing fungus: professor Dorol payed 50 for the Mynock parts and 100 gp for a bag of glowing fungus.
Monsters Total: 1797 XP
Monetary Total: 90 XP
Item Total: 150 XP
Total XP: 2037
Total of 2037 XP & 240 GP Weighted by Level
Godleve (Level 5 ) 423 XP & 50 GP
Giuseppe (Level 5 ) 423 XP & 50 GP
Sever (Level 5 ) 423 XP & 50 GP
Sheamus (Level 4 ) 339 XP & 40 GP
Slippery Pete (Level 3 ) XP Maxed & 30 GP
Bumblebore (Level 2) 169 XP & 20 GP
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