So, what happened in this session?
Dave rolls up a Cleric of Diana named JUSTUS. He brings along two hirelings, Numerius and Tettius, each armed with shield, sword, and javelin. He spends enough gold to bring Justus in at level 3.
Dakota rolls up an Archer named ATEMNOS, cousin to Antemion, He spends enough gold to bring Atemnos in at level 4.
So, for those keeping track at home, these are our actual player characters:
Me: Ingrid (Amazon 3) and Gwen (Witch 3)
Dave: Justus (Cleric 3) and Septimus (Fighter 2)
Dakota: Roboute (Bard 3) and Atemnos (Archer 4)
The first hour of the session is devoted to building characters, spending gold, and bookkeeping stuff. Then, we're back to the dungeon, and we continue to explore Stonehell.
ROOM 1. Justus casts detect magic on a mystical altar of skulls. It radiates an aura of enchantment and mind-influencing spells. We decide not to touch it.
ROOM 2. Ingrid and Septimus knock down a locked door and find a giant, bearded stone head with crystalline eyes. Is this the Well that Whistles that the orc told us about? We attempt to serenade it with song, bribe it with gold, and discourse with it philosophically, but all it tells us is, "Avoid pointed arguments. The results can be shocking." We shrug.
RANDOM ENCOUNTER. 3 fire beetles! We win initiative and kill them all with javelins before they can close ranks.
ROOM 3. A moldy old barracks full of ruined furniture. A desolate bunk house. A dead end. Four kobolds sneak up on us, but we bribe them with silver coins and they slink off into the dark.
ROOM 4. A pile of bones. Not much else.
ROOM 5. An iron door decorated with a danse macabre. We open it, and it's filled with 8 fire beetles! Prior to our level-ups, this would be a party kill. However, we are no longer the fresh-faced adventurers who nearly wiped on a pack of wolves. Literally. Except for Gwen, all those people are dead now. We kill the beetles, loot their carapaces, and move on.
ROOM 6, 7. Empty biers. Piles of plaster death masks. We all take one, just in case.
ROOM 8. A particularly creepy room (although I can't remember why - my notes just say "creepy"). 10 skeletons attack us, and Justus turns undead! We dust 'em effortlessly! Praise Diana!
RANDOM ENCOUNTER. 5 zombies. Justus turns 'em, and our javeliners polish 'em off without breaking a sweat. Clerics are awesome!
This turn-and-dust tactic becomes a trend. I'm not going to list every random encounter we have with skeletons or zombies this session, but I'll say this: At the end of this expedition, we had 138 kills. Most of those were skeletons or zombies. Seriously, Clerics are awesome.
ROOM 9. We find a strange, sky-blue potion on an altarpiece. Septimus puts it in his backpack.
ROOMS 10-20 (I didn't realize my notes were so messy!) We find some crypts and start to loot them! Yay! Looting crypts! Adventure! Wooo! We find:
1,200 g.p.
800 s.p.
800 c.p.
And, aside from some giant rats and crab-spiders, we encounter mostly skeletons. Tasty, experience-granting, no-threat-to-us skeletons. Yum.
We find a statue of a veiled woman holding a pair of sickles across her chest. There's a jug at her feet filled with glittering coins. Everyone is immediately very superstitious. Justus recognizes this goddess as Sorscha, a goddess of ice and famine, but can't recall anything else about her. Ingrid desperately wants to steal one of her sickles, but the group is vehemently opposed.
We find another statue of Krook Krog, a toad god, festooned with skulls. Roboute recognizes this one. Krook Krog is the toad of the apocalypse. He is only appeased, never worshiped. We pile some skulls at his feet and carry on our adventure.
In another room, we spy the skeletal remains of a giant serpent - at least sixty feet long. Bones surrounding it animate and attack us, but once again, Justus turns the undead, and they give us no serious threat.
In yet another, we encounter a bone-thing. It is a golem made from bones, and cannot be turned! However, it is frail, and Ingrid and Septimus bash it to smithereens without taking so much as a scratch.
The oddest discoveries were these:
A study, with desk, chair, bed, and other such accouterments. No paper, but a great deal of proto-Syrian script has been written in chalk on the stone walls. Madness! Gwen transcribes several pages. Who else is down here?
A map of the night sky made from copper coins. Gwen spends half-an-hour copying it into her spellbook. What could it mean?
We've been down here for 12 hours. As our torches gutter and our limbs begin to tire, we decide, unanimously, to return to our camp. We have had a great victory here tonight.
Kills: 131 (138 total hit dice)
Deaths: 0
Rooms Explored: 20
Hell yeah.
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