Trollopulous Adjusted Session 134 (Machodor #85): The Treasure Map

 

The map, fresh from the Tomb of Acererak Kistomerces

  

Introduction

"...a map showing a location several hundred miles away which supposedly has a rich treasure (it is a fake, naturally)" -- Gary Gygax, Tomb of Horrors

In today's session a throw-away line from Gary turns into a long and arduous adventure for the heroes of Machodor, and one of them rues getting his clues mixed up. Creating the dungeon at the end of the map was an interesting experience, as I wanted it to be full of traps and danger, but ultimately lead to a dead end that made it abundantly clear the party had been had. To do this I set up a very linear dungeon, with rooms having one entrance and one exit, each connected by corridors of varying size and direction--to give the illusion of less linearity. I also decided that the entrance to the dungeon had only opened when the party had "defeated" the "lich" in the Tomb of Kistomerces and obtained the treasure map. This allowed me to start a new dungeon with its traps intact, combined with a kind of restocking exercise to work out how the local flora and fauna responded to this place opening for the first time.     

Timekeeping

This session began on October 9th, 2025, with the player characters adventuring all the way until the 16th. There is no downtime for these characters before the next session.

Player Characters Present

Sever the Wrathful (Level 9 Pegasus Corps Ranger of Machodor, wielder of Were'shbane and wearer of the Girdle of Cloud Giant Strength, rider of Mustang) 

with henchman Thomas (C6), and Rabbit (FMT 445)

Giuseppe (Level 8 Paladin of Rome, Brovenloft, wielder of the Dragonslayer and the Shield of Protection from Missiles, rider of Bonecrusher)

Fluid the Druid (Level 8 Druid, "Scourge of Trollopulous", former wearer of the Ring of Kings)

Sheamus (Level 8 Irish Fighter from Brovenloft, rider of the Rocket Cycle and wielder of the Drewblade)

Gurt the Green (Level 6 Paladin of Machodor, wielder of the Liberator, bearer of the Fabled Ice Jewel of Frigia, rider of Artax)

with henchmen Cedric (C4)

Connor (Level 1 Fighter, and dog)

Downtime

With an offer on the table from the Overlord of Trollopulous, Radomix Kistomerces, of 45,000 gold rilks for the couch the heroes were holding onto in Minas Mandalf, Giuseppe was keen to seal the deal. There was only 1 full day of down time available, however. In his favour was the availability of Sheamus and his rocket cycle to carry the couch, and Sever with his Pegasus scouts for support. Neither were present in last week's session, and that fact turned out to be important later.

The gold and XP adjudication for this was a little tricky, as it always is when a treasure is not immediately liquidated. In this case I had allowed 25,000xp to accrue to the adventurers who had obtained the golden couch when it had been brought safely to Minas Mandalf, as that was what the Adventurers Aid Society had offered to pay for it. Now it had sold for a tidy 45,000gp, I ruled that the same characters shared and additional 20,000 XP and 42,750 gold machos obtained after a 5% charge for currency conversion. This sum allowed Giuseppe's henchmen to train for the next level. It also allowed Sheamus to finally purchase the first of his chicken-cockatrice hybrid mounts, after which he sent McScales off in search of riders for them. 

Session Report

The heroes, now considerably richer—though even sums such as this did not spread as far as could be hoped—were ready to take on a new challenge. There were two main ones they knew of in the area: the disturbance in the Street of Gods in Trollopulous, with a likely Brovenloft connection; and the treasure map Giuseppe had been examining, which they had looted from the Tomb of Kistomerces some weeks ago. I reminded the players of the prevailing conditions in Brovenloft: ever since the Pope's Wish in 2022; though magical means can be used to enter the demi-plane, none can leave during October; and with that the treasure map was chosen for the session.

The scale here is 30 miles per hex.

Giuseppe had been able to create a version of the map from the tomb that incorporated current day landmarks. Even with the Rocket Cycle and Sever's Pegasus, they could cover about one hex per day, so it was going to be quite a trip. Each one of these hexes is about the size of the entire Bandit Mountains map!

Day 1: October Ninth 
Weather: Clear
Terrain: Plains

The party experienced an easy flight up to Nummi's tower from Minas Mandalf. Preparations began for the ground approach.

Day 2: October Tenth
Weather: Clear
Terrain: Plains

The adventurers reached the outskirts of Trollopulous. They chose not to camp inside the city and risk city encounters, but were still encountered by a patrol as they were setting up camp. The patrol leader—one captain Farius, was initially uncooperative; but when Giuseppe showed his wand of authority, that plus his Charisma and a very positive reaction roll had the man falling over himself to offer his services to this "Friend of the Overlord". The paladin strove not to take advantage of the situation.

Day 3: October Eleventh

Weather: Clear
Terrain: Plains

Giuseppe ordered his henchmen and Manticore mercenaries to wait at the camp and patrol the area while he was away. Taking to the skies, the group crossed the nearby river and flew north across the plains. Fluid cast Hallucinatory Forest as the party camped at the end of the day, which created a little safe zone for them. They encountered wandering adventurer Connor with his dog—a new player who joined unexpectedly mid session. I combined this event with the rolled encounter of 250 Orcs, with the result that the Orcs avoided running into the party, probably lucky for them.

Day 4: October Twelfth
Weather: Clear
Terrain: Hills

With a choice of direction, the party travelled over the hills instead of the jungle and had no encounters.

Day 5: October Thirteenth
Weather: Clear
Terrain: Jungle

Now the the jungle trek started.  They encountered only safe, non-flying wildlife—like dinosaurs. As it happened, Fluid’s tree house compound was in the same approximate area and would make a suitable spot to camp at the end of the day. Fluid informed the newcomer how he had been gifted five wives for his part in defeating prince Elric in battle, and now had upwards of fifteen children by them. If the druid had any qualms about revealing in detail the most long-term 1 to1 time domain builds ever attempted, he showed no signs. Fluid’s family entertained the party that night.

Day 6: October Fourteenth

Well, they looked like this.

Weather: Cloudy

Terrain: Jungle

The weather turned cloudy just as accurate aerial scouting was needed, this complicating their progress, but nevertheless, using Fluid's local knowledge combined with Giuseppe's maps they located what had to be to spot an opening in the hills.  As the heroes landed they could see a cave entrance—carved so as to resemble a pug man's head with an open maw—was being guarded by two cave men mounted on gigantic Paleoscinesus dinosaurs. What did these men look like?

The grug in charge, one Grugory, announced that no-grug was allowed to enter the cave, by the order of UCF (United Caveman Federation) Cave 6 Chief Fugg. When pressed, Grugory added, "Pug face opened, grugs go in—not come out. Grugs' friends go in, not come out. Chief Fugg say—no more!"

It transpired that runners had already been sent to alert Fugg to the presence of the adventurers. So they could just wait until Fugg sent a reply, at jungle speed it would take a few days. Sever fidgeted thoughtfully with his sword, while Giuseppe negotiated.

This encounter saw a lot of back and forth in cave-man-common, but ultimately it went well for the party once they (finally) made it clear that they hailed from Machodor, and so were not subject to Chief Fugg's prohibition on entering the cave. With the day drawing to a close, the grugs allowed the adventurers the use of their camp, so as to be fresh for the morning.

Day 7: October Fifteenth

Weather: Windy
Terrain: Dungeon

The party awoke in the relative safety of the grug camp, then entered the pug-faced cave’s open maw in search of treasure. 

With the combination of Fluid's and the clerics' trap detection spells, the party advanced and avoided a number of traps, some of which had already been set off by unfortunate grugs, and others which were still deadly.

One room was filled with mirrors and runes of various strange glyphs. A stone headed club lay on the floor, a sign that grugs had been there. It turned out the the center section of the floor of the room was illusionary and covered a large pit. Not only that, a questing giant snake had found its way here previous and had fallen in. It was not big enough to escape but the creature was big enough to be able to reach out a ways from the pit and attack passers by. The adventurers spotted it first though, used Speak with Animals got some information out of it, and decided to let it be.

A length they reached a long corridor with many carvings depicting people going about various activities, this was similar to one they had seen in the tomb previous, although in a different style. 

One in particular stood out.

Were'shbane, who could parse "Special young readers hieroglyphics", the lingua franca of the Dry Domain of Brovenloft, suggested it was some sort of homage, and not the real deal. Rabbit's thief intuition (read languages) suggested to him that the writing was some take in Old Trollopulean, the words "Hand" and "Speech" were involved in the meaning, but that was the best he could do.

All this was to facilitate my use of this trap by @PathsPeculiar.

To tilt the odds back a bit after giving out a clue in the previous corridor, I added an extra secret door in front of the hand so it wasn't immediately visible. I also changed the rope-ladder to one made of steel cable—since it was supposed to have been here for many decades, and of course I replaced the treasure beyond the original secret door. I also removed the door past the rolling ball at the top of the slope and made it a blank wall, as there could be nothing beyond it. 

Once again, the players were very careful, they certainly had brought all the caution and respect—previous learned from the Tomb of Kistomerces—to this place. They were also down to their last Find Traps spell, and were loath to use it initially. Eventually though, they managed to find and open the secret door hiding the "Hand". By "talking to the hand" they found it knowledgeable about it's operations—resetting the trap, opening the secret door, etc—and were able to free several grugs who had been smart enough to open the secret door but had then been trapped in the room beyond when the door closed. As long as someone stayed with the hand it was possible to prevent the same thing happening to them.

Behind the grateful grugs who rushed out at them, written on the wall at the far end of the hidden room was a message for the party—"X MARKS THE SPOT, FOOLS!"

The true trap in this dungeon—one that cost the most precious of assets, time—was revealed at last.

Not content with this outcome, the heroes now engaged in quite a bit of experimentation, spell casting, and fruitless search before they accepted the truth, which must have been clawing at them for some time, the treasure map was a fake. Fluid left his mark as a sign of defiance, and then they retraced their steps with the freed grugs and reunited them with their fellows. 

They had saved the lives of grugs and will be remembered for that; but, naturally still downcast, the adventures again took to the sky and returned to Fluid’s treehouse-camp by nightfall, concluding the session there rather than pushing on to Trollopulous. This was a pretty good move as there was no real benefit in using up the travel time in this session.

Session Statistics: 

Wilderness travel:  270 Miles

Downtime begins on: N/A
Combats: 0
Rooms mapped: 8
Combat rounds: 0
Losses: none

Treasure & Items

None

Monsters

None

0 XP & 0 GP Assignment

Sever (E) 0xp & 0gp 

and Thomas (E) 0xp & 0gp 

and Rabbit (E) 0xp & 0gp 

Giuseppe (E) 0xp & 0gp 

Fluid (E) 0xp & 0gp 

Sheamus (E) 0xp & 0gp 

Gurt (E) 0xp & 0gp 

and Cedric (E) 0xp & 0gp 

Connor (sp?) (E)  0xp & 0gp 

Graveyard

Rhoikos (Henchman Magic-User level 4), smashed by a Mummy fist in session #126. RAISED FROM THE DEAD

Thomas (Henchman Cleric level 6), Killed by a Symbol of Death in session #126. RAISED FROM THE DEAD

Josef Ironbeard (Dwarf Fighter level 1), Killed by a Symbol of Death in session #126.

Matthias Steelvein (Henchman Fighter level 4), Killed by a Symbol of Death in session #126. RAISED FROM THE DEAD

Sever the Wrathful (Ranger level 9), Killed by two pains in the Annis in session #122. RAISED FROM THE DEAD

Anri (Henchman Magic-User level 4), found dead with a ghastly chest wound in the Ice Castle, with her heart missing she was unable to be revived, in downtime after session #122 

Symeon (Henchman Cleric level 2), Only strong enough to wear studded leather, he was torn to shreds by Troglodytes in session #121

Paul (Henchman Paladin level 3) Effected by the Imprisonment spell touch attack from a Styx Devil in session #117. Might not be dead, but is definitely at least six feet under for all intents and purposes.

Gurt the Green (Paladin level 6) killed by a poison needle trap in session #114 RAISED FROM THE DEAD (with a roll of 94!)

Solaire the Fallen (Henchman Fighter (paladin) level 3) killed by Stone Giants acting as catapults in session #114

Paul (Henchman Paladin level 1), reduced to 0 hit points by white dragon breath when climbing down a rope ladder in session #108. Killed not by the fall; but by the sudden stop at the bottom. RAISED FROM THE DEAD

Ignatius the Smiter (Cleric level 1), horrifically mutilated and killed by double hit from a Shoggoth in session #106

Domby (Henchman with Dex 5), double surprised and turned into a pin cushion in session #87

Luke (Half elf Fighter/Cleric level 1), tragically killed by a normal hydra while trying to cauterise one of its neck stumps in session  #86

Gurt the Green (Paladin level 3), killed by a hydra bite in session  #86 RAISED FROM THE DEAD

Pleasance (Footman level 0), killed by a phase spider bite in session #81

Siegward (Henchman Fighter level 1), killed by a phase spider bite in session #81

Tawadros (Henchman Fighter level 4),  killed by a phase spider bite in session #81 RAISED FROM THE DEAD

Patria (Footman level 0), killed by a two headed snake bite in session #81

Deltacron (Dwarf Fighter/Thief level 1/1), threw his last flask of oil at, and was level drained to death by, a Vampire in session #76

Petrov the Prestidigitator (Magic-user level 1), wrong place, wrong time; killed by Sever the Ranger in session #72 RAISED FROM THE DEAD

Petrov the Prestidigitator (Magic-user level 1), killed again by the toxic gas of an Achaierai in session #72

Red (Paladin Level 1), always popular with the ladies, he was eaten up by a female Roc in the Pizza Slice of Doom during session #67

Jacques Ocular (Magic User level 1), a fat green worm burrowed into his head and turned him into a Son Of Kyuss in Brovenloft in Session #43

Pino (Dwarf Footman level 0), Killed by a Frost Giant axe to the head in session #39

Paro (Dwarf Fighter/Thief level 2/2)  Killed by Winter Wolves and frozen in session #39

Zabib (1/2 Elf Fighter/Magic User level 1/1), Killed by Frost Giant rocks in downtime prior to session #39