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Dates: 1/10/21 and 1/16/21

PCs:

  • Louis (FM 1)
  • Osan (Elf F/MU 2/1)
  • Omes (Half FM 2)
  • Arro (MU 1)
  • Habru (Cleric 2)

NPCs:

  • Guff – MU 1 and mule
  • Habru’s war dog, named Dog
  • Horace – Habru’s retainer – Cleric 1

Hirelings:

  • Arvay – wagon driver
  • Dramm – porter

Link to Discussion

Links to Previous Sessions

LL Notes:

These two sessions were really one spent in the dungeon, split into two real-time sessions a week apart. Normally when running dungeon crawls, I try to get the PCs out of the dungeon after each session, but it doesn’t always work, or sometimes I’m certain we can have the same players play the next day or week or whenever. What I do in that case is freeze time in the dungeon, and we pick up where we left off when we can.

Anyway, for these two sessions, the party explored part of the first level of a dungeon beneath a nearby hilltop ruin. They were joined by Guff, a Magic-User they befriended while searching the ruins.

The dungeon is my own creation and I was trying to do something different from the “kill the monsters take their treasure” type of crawl. Not that those types of games can’t be fun, but for this I wanted more exploration and the potential for dealing with dungeon factions, like the Duergar and Gnomes noted below.

Session notes:

A rubble-choked stair, once cleared, led down 30′ to level 1. On this level, the party defeated 13 giant centipedes with the help of flaming oil and a well-timed sleep spell, four Duergar in search of “Gnomes who stole their silver”, a gelatinous cube and a giant tick.

Curiosities on this level included a fully equipped dining room and kitchen, a sitting room with overstuffed chairs that made occupants sleepy, a windy tunnel that blew out torches and lanterns, a teleporter to the surface ruins, and a statue of a Centaur that attacked Arro when the Magic-User tried to play the statue’s flute.

The party befriended a group of Gnomish miners looking for gems, thanks to some clever parley from Habru, who warned the Gnomes about the Duergar.

A wandering swarm of floating bubbles proved both interesting and deadly. Some, when popped, showered gold and gems, while others sprayed acid or launched lightning bolts. Poor Dramm was killed by one such bubble when it popped near him and he was struck by a lightning bolt. Guff the Mage was sucked up and devoured by the gelatinous cube.

Despite the two fatalities, this was a lucrative session for the survivors. Louis found a ring of fire resistance in a wood stove in the kitchen. Osan found a suit of Elvish chain armor, worn by a former victim of the gelatinous cube. The axe held by the Centaur statue was a +1 hand axe. Then there was the silverware from the dining area, along with the gems and gold dispensed from some of the floating bubbles, and one of the Duergar had a pouch of gold ingots.