Timekeeping
Player Characters Present
Downtime
Session Report
Choosing to leave behind mounts and the Rocket Cycle, the party descended into the depths of the unsecured area of the Robopriest's strong hold (the Gassy Fortress). A staircase went down five levels, ending in a square basement with two doors in each wall. Sever was able to find tracks leading out of the western most door on the north wall. There were clearly the tell tale scuffs of the Robopriest, Alexus Murphius.
There were markings on the wall that were a mixture of pictures and text, and Slippery Pete tried to read them. Fortunately for him, I ruled that they were "special young readers" hieroglyphics, and he could make out the gist of some of them:
"All these girls are mid
So I'm back in my pyramid
Holdin on my king's rod
Sailing to the sun god
Creepin you like marty krofft
Out here in the Brovenloft"
'Relics of tha Kangsta' (BrOSR Publications 2022)
This dispelled all doubt, if any still remained, that they were no longer in Machodor.
A straight run down to a four way crossing, and straight beyond this to a 20' by 30' room in which a solitary, pale, skeletal thing wearing a brown hooded robe sat on a throne. Was it regarding them? Was it alive, undead? They could not tell.
 |
| "I poke it with my ten foot pole" -- Slipper Pete |
Slippery Pete poked it with his ten foot pole. The creature stood and raised its arms and shouted something in Neutral; then, all the PCs but Giuseppe disappeared!
Sheamus and Sever, the two toughest melee fighters, materialised in the same room, 600' east of the Crypt Thing. Godleve landed 200' east of them, and Jacques, to my horror, although also in the same direction, materialised 1000' away.
Slippery Pete appeared one dungeon level down. I interpreted this as directly down from the room the Crypt Thing was in, so, he potentially had the easiest job to get back; but, would the dungeon let him?
 |
| No way... |
I wonder how man DM's over the years have looked at this monster and thought: no way...
Now, some (actually quite a bit, Appendix A dungeon generation is addictive, I'll admit; but, it's practice, not prep!) of the first level of the dungeon was already done, but not 600' away, much less 1000' away! So I simply turned the page and began mapping again.
I considered resolving this highly unusual situation in separate chats, and keeping each separate group in the dark about the others; perhaps there is a method that would do this, but in the end I chose to just give each separate group 10 real time and/or game time minutes before moving to the next one. It was probably a pain for the players, but hopefully worth it in the end. I enjoyed adjudicating it, but it certainly helped that I've been doing some solo play Appendix A recently. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me at all if, when this monster was created, it was expected that you would resolve it using Appendix A or something like it.
Sever and Sheamus found themselves in a 30' by 30' chamber, with only one exit through the wall west. It was otherwise empty apart from numerous paintings on the walls. They immediately set to searching for secret doors and such.
Godleve found himself in a 30' by 30' room with no obvious exits at all, again with numerous paintings and some carvings in the walls. He too began searching for a way out.
Slippery Pete found himself in a 20' by 20' chamber with three exits. The room contained two large stone coffers, and 3 giant toads. His sudden appearance in the room had granted him surprise, and he hastily made for the nearest exit before the toads noticed him. Beyond there he found the passage turned left and ended in a pit.
Jacques found himself alone in a 20' by 30' room with doors in front, behind, and to his left. He set about using his torch to try and determine if there was a breeze coming from any direction (the 'always follow your nose school of dungeoneering') but with all the doors shut there was nothing noticeable for the novice magic user. He found the door ahead lead to an empty 10' square room, could not open the door behind him, but could open the door to his left; which lead down a corridor.
By good fortune, each transported player had a reason to head in the correct direction, whether by a door or corridor; but who knew how long it would take to find each other again? The teleports, though far away for the most part, could have been worse at dispersing the party, and they were all off in the correct direction to make it back together (what would happen at the end of the session if they didn't?)
Back to the room with the Crypt Thing. Bumblebore, who had been busy hitting the books in the Gassy Fortress, caught up with Giuseppe, and immediately drew the ire of the Crypt Thing by disturbing its treasure; three large chests and a big pile of loose silver coins. The monster quoted some Kangsta, in neutral, then tried to send the newcomer away (his ability only works once per party, but I allowed this since Bumblebore had just arrived) and the Machodorian Magic User resisted the teleportation magic. Perhaps this bred overconfidence, because he then started a fight!
Giuseppe, who was still looking for an alternative course of action that might cause his friends to re-appear, was forced to defend the magic user, who had attempted to cast Macho Mandalf's Flying Elbow. The undead beat him to the scratch and ruined the spell before it could be cast. And a very strange battle was on.
Meanwhile, Slippery Pete had found his way to a pit and found that it went one level up and one level down. Even the insides of the pit were painted in the same manner as the rest of the place, but, he noticed that the shading was subtly different on this level, and the level above him was the same shade as what he had experienced in the dungeon before meeting the Crypt Thing. Only a thief could have managed to scale the insides of the chute, open the trap door at the top, and get out again; so it was lucky that it was Slippery Pete who ended up in this location! He soon found himself at the bottom of the stairs and could hear the sounds of battle nearby and went to investigate.
Godleve discovered a secret door to the west, opened via a mechanism hidden in a likeness of Sobek's crocodile jaws, and leading to a short corridor also heading west, with a door 30' ahead at its end. Upon stepping into the corridor he activated a pit trap, falling 10' to the bottom, but which he managed to scramble out of before it closed him in. A potentially deadly encounter for a single adventurer.
He continued on and found that it was a one way door, stepping through found him in a 60' long corridor culminating in another one way door. Within the room beyond was visible two flights of stairs going down. There was yet another one way door to the west and here he had, unknowingly, reached the room Sheamus and Sever had started in. He followed their route right up until he found the flower foot prints they had left on the floor.
Sever and Sheamus discovered that the coins were in fact protected by 3 Shockers: man sized bipedal creatures, clothed in faint light blue sparks; which which proceeded to deal out 30 points of electrical damage between them before being discharged and collapsing into piles of dust. The pair of PCs, who had plenty of hit points left, were pretty happy with the results and were scooping coins into their sacks when Godleve, who had heard the noise and come to investigate, joined them.
Jacques proceeded west initially, but then turned south and then south east, before turning west again and entering a giant hexagonal room; it was the first he'd found with anything of note in it; treasure and a monster. A single, ghastly, obviously undead, creature, in the form of an animated putrid corpse, riddled with fat green worms. Neither side was surprised, but the magic user won initiative and proceeded to throw a flask of oil, which hit and very nearly killed the 4HD creature; who's hit point I had rolled very low for.
The creature charged and hit Jacques with a pair of flailing fists, reducing him to 1 hit point. He evaded a nasty case of leprosy; but, not the hideous fat green worm that jumped from the monster, onto his head, and immediately started burrowing in. Now, I had carefully worked out that Jacques was outside the range of the creature's fear aura when he threw his flask; but, when it moved to attack him, I forgot he was now in range and rolled for initiative as normal for the next round. Jacques won initiative and chose to smash another flask of oil on the creature; and actually killed it, but, splash burning oil damage got him for 1 hit point, and he went down. The ugly green worm went to work.
An improbably close battle for a 1st level character, but he probably should have just ran.
Slippery Pete did not immediately throw himself into battle when he saw what was going on in the throne room; instead he quaffed a sip of his Invisibility potion (I think he's used it 4 times now) and went to investigate the chest glowing under the effects of Bumblebore's Detect Magic spell, which he had cast because nothing else seemed useful against the robed undead creature. Meanwhile, Giuseppe was wailing away with his sword and certainly having some effect.
Pete threw open the chest and found, among numerous coins and jewellery, three glowing items; a suit of plate mail, a foppish hat, and a longsword. He grabbed the latter, and, after a short discussion about whether thieves can use longswords (they can), and next round ended the battle with a backstab. There was much rejoicing.
The creature did not go down with out a loud and lengthy monologue from the writings of the Kangsta. So loud in fact that it could be faintly heard by Sheamus, Sever, and Godleve. They gathered up the coinage on the floor and proceeded west. They came to a strange revolving stone door, which they navigated without incident, and came into a chamber; there, a Mummy was guarding the place from intruders such as them.
Sheamus and Godleve failed their saves vs the Mummy fear and froze in the face of the monster's advance. Fortunately, Sever passed and met the monster's attack. Unfortunately, in doing so, he took a hit and contracted mummy rot. With a Paladin and a Cleric in the party, however, he was not unduly concerned by this. Next round Sheamus pulled himself together enough to join in. Combat went on until Godleve, too, could join in. He was unable to turn the creature and so proceeded to help smash it into bloody bandages.
 |
| The monster's last words echoed through the dungeon |
Finding a mummy with no treasure prompted a round of searching, and with Sever's sword it was probably worth the time; however, while they were at this, 3 more Shockers came through the revolving door. Thinking fast, Sever used is wooden handled spear, while Godleve emptied out a water skin on the ground. Both tactics helped dissipate the damaging energy of the Shockers, and Godleve himself found out that his Hawkman Mace did not conduct electricity.
This last battle drew the rest of the party towards them, and they ended up meeting half way and then returned to the treasure pile where it had all begun. The session was nearly over, and they were in Brovenloft, famous for being impossible to leave during the month of October, what to do.
An Amber light appeared and surrounded them...then a gravelly voice could be heard:
"Listen up yo one two one two
I'm Macho Mandalf and here's what I'll do for you
There's a certain mad rule in a module of old
Covers resting an' healing or so I'm told
At the end of a session just look for the light
An' hope when Jeffro sees this he don't start a fight
Now don't be thinkin hey ole Macho's goin soft,
Just try to survive a month of Brovenloft"
Oh Yeah
No comments:
Post a Comment