I've been playing in an ongoing campaign set in Urutsk, with The Grand Tapestry serving as referee, and Fantasy Heartbreak Workshop as my teammate. I like to take a few notes as we play, and I've had a little more free time lately, so I'm trying to turn a few more of my notes into session reports.
SESSION 3
Waking once more in the security office, Merope and Slunk decided to continue exploring the ship. By this point, they had deduced that they were on a vessel engaged in a generations-long voyage, that something had gone wrong causing at least the partial collapse of ship-board society, and that perhaps relatedly the ship had been invaded by monstrous outsiders. At this time, it seemed to Merope and Slunk that parts of the vessel's crew were still wearing the uniforms and following the rules laid down by their ancestors, but that other descendants of the initial travelers had fallen into savagery. They also assumed that the ship was still on its long journey, possibly traveling between the stars themselves.
Poking around a bit in the security office, Merope and Slunk found gas masks and canisters of some kind of crowd-control gas. Out in the hall, they met a badass warrior woman whose body was adorned with paint and tattoos and a scanty outfit made of colorful fabric that was also tied as streamers at her joints. The warrior woman wore a headdress of two wings that appeared to have been made by cutting up a metal can from one of the ration packs. Assuming that she was a native of the ship, Merope attempted to trick the warrior woman with one of her many failed gambits. (Throughout the time I played her, Merope's attempts at subterfuge never worked, usually because her lack of knowledge about her situation forced her to make many assumptions, and whenever one of those assumptions proved false, it also proved to the person she was talking to that she could not possibly be who she claimed.) Merope initially claimed that she and Slunk were part of the crew of the ship, but that they had become disoriented when the invaders attacked. The warrior woman said that was unlikely, since the attack had occurred before the ship crashed. Surprised to learn that the ship was no longer traveling, Merope tried to recover her lie by claiming that of course, it must have been the crash that confused her and caused her to forget that the ship was no longer being invaded. The warrior woman again demurred, pointing out that the ship had been crashed for a thousand years, and asking Merope and Slunk who they were really, and how they could be so unaware of their situation.
Slunk took over the conversation, using his smooth charlatan speaking voice to reveal how he and Merope had come to be aboard the ship. The warrior woman seemed impressed with Slunk's story, and introduced herself as Anjalik. When Slunk inquired how she'd learned these things, since the crew they'd met earlier seemed unaware, Anjalik revealed that the ship was not only crashed, it was broken open, and that she had enetered from outside on a scavenging mission. She was very interested to see the red cube that Merope and Slunk had arrived in, "the breach" as she called it. Slunk agreed to guide her to the cube in exchange for Anjalik guiding Slunk and his companion out of the ship when they'd finished. They successfully navigated their way back to the red cube's location, but when they arrived, it wasn't there anymore. Merope and Slunk expected a cube-shaped hole in the ship where it had been, but there was none. Somehow the cube had been able to pass through the solid matter of the ship as easily as two hair combs intertwining their teeth.
With "the breach" a dead end, they decided to consult Slunk's electronic familiar, Clippy, to find some high-value salvage to haul out of the ship. Clippy located a janitorial storage closet nearby. Their initial search of the room found mostly cleaning supplies, but on further questioning, Clippy pointed them to a pair of large boxes, which turned out to contain Sensoriums, ancient high-tech audio-visual entertainment units. Anjalik said she knew a place they could sell them, and thought that the pair of Sensoriums would fetch a pretty high price. Since the objects were fairly large, about the size of a small bookcase each, Slunk decided to test one before they went to the trouble of carrying them out. He found the interface a bit confusing, but was able to ask the machine to produce some "barbarian entertainment."
The three immediately found themselves in a cave, being attacked by neanderthals. Partway through the battle, Slunk was gored almost to death, and they realized that they were inside an immersive holographic illusion, and were able to shake off the most convincing aspects of the experience. They also realized that several animals had wandered into the open closet while they'd been experiencing the illusion, and that it was these alien beasts that had injured Slunk. Merope fired her handgun at the nearest one, and the super-heated projectile it fired annihilated one of the creatures ... and splashed enough molten metal around to set the whole room on fire. The other two alien quadrupeds broke morale and ran from the burning room. Anjalik managed to rescue one Sensorium, while Merope helped Slunk escape the room. In a moment, a fire suppression system turned itself on, dousing the room in wet foam. Slunk insisted on collecting a few cleaning supplies to sell from the now-soggy room, trying to salvage a few more coins once they learned that the second Sensorium had been rendered inoperable by being exposed to fire and then drenched in water and foam. Anjalik offered to carry the surviving Sensorium out strapped to her back, and encouraged her new companions to follow her to the "trade tower," where they'd be able to sell it.
SESSION 4
After finding an exit from the ship, Merope, Slunk, and Anjalik almost immediately found themselves in a humid jungle. The ground around the ship was swampy, the trees nearby had orange and yellow leaves. Over the course of the day, these changed to yellow and green, then green and blue, as they traveled away from the ship. Merope and Slunk were amazed by the double canopy overhead, and by the riot of life that buzzed around them. Merope saw six-legged lizards and furred snakes, alongside nearly every mundane variety of small forest creature she knew from the forests of her home.
Once in the morning, the trio crossed a game trail, but didn't see whatever beast had made the tracks. Around lunch, a mist of drizzle filled the air, and the group took shelter under a large tree. Anjalik explained that rain was common here. After the rain tapered off a bit, the group set out again, and crossed another game trail as they continued on their way. Late in the day, a heavy rain started, then deepened into a thunder storm. Anjalik spotted a treehouse, perhaps a hunting cabin, and the three took shelter for the night, a decision that seemed particularly wise as the storm worsened.
Partway through the night, the door to the cabin opened, and a figure let himself in. The figure turned out to be a short man, seemingly wizened with age, wearing only a loin cloth and teeth, revealed when he smiled, that had been sharpened to points. Anjalik seemed respectful, perhaps even frightened of the man, and explained that the cabin was available to any traveler, and that sharing during storms was not uncommon. The man seemed pleased to see the group, and cleaned under his sharpened, pointed nails with his wicked hunting knife. Slunk decided to offer the visitor a ration pack from the shipwreck. Merope debated trying to convince him to overdose on stimulants, but Slunk and Anjalik were both frightened of what the hunter might do if he became agitated from the stims. (This is another of Merope's failed stratagems.) Slunk managed to indicate how to open the can of potato crisps to the hunter, who seemed pleased by the popping sound of the lid, and by the salty flavor of the chips. Seeing that he was pleased, and hoping to avoid any violence, Slunk offered him a second ration pack, which the hunter happily accepted. Later, with his hunger sated, and the rain stopped, the visitor turned to leave, then turned back, and spoke to the group.
"It's interesting to see how people will treat you when they think you can't understand them," he said to the three, then explained that he and his brothers were master hunters, that they had killed many men, and become strong by eating the flesh of their enemies. The man also claimed that he had grown to become the strongest of all his brothers by hunting other versions of himself from other worlds, killing them, and eating their strength. Slunk hereafter dubbed this visitor "the fine old cannibal." (The referee also confirmed that this NPC was a fairly high level fighter, and that our only chance to survive the encounter had been to make nice. The world of Urutsk is filled with high HD dangers.) In the morning, the three friends prepared to head out again.
Showing posts with label actual play. Show all posts
Showing posts with label actual play. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Entering Castle Gargantua
I recently played a session in Kabuki Kaiser's Castle Gargantua, refereed by The Hapless Henchman.
I played Johanna the Giantslayer, a 3rd level DCC ranger, taken from issue 6 of the Crawl! fanzine. Johanna was a sort of mashup of Jack and the Beanstalk, Saint George and the Dragon, and Joan of Arc. She fought with a ranger's paired swords, but also wore chainmail with a red cloak, and carried a holy symbol and several vials of holy water in case she encountered the undead. I say "was" for reasons that will become apparent at the end of the adventure.
Johanna went to Castle Gargantua as part of a group of three, accompanied by Beadle Bailey, a former church guard turned sneak thief, and Rueng-ne'il, an elven demonologist with a Slavic imp familiar named Janush. The trio had heard rumors of an Easterling prince gone missing in the castle (and his retinue of 12 horsemen prepared to swear their fealty to anyone who could return his body to them), a magic mirror which would show its viewer their true self, and the Beadle had possession of a treasure map (unfortunately showing the treasure to be guarded by giant-sized wasps).
When the three summited the mount that held the Castle, they saw a storm in progress. The Castle itself reached almost to the clouds, which had opened up to reveal the spirit of Gargantua looking down on them. The Castle's grounds swirled with mists that seemed to brim with the souls of the damned. (The scene may have looked a bit like the Night on Bald Mountain sequence from Fantasia.)
Johanna brandished her holy symbol to try to repel the mist spirits, and the three made their way to the towering front door, only to find it already ajar. Although only cracked by giant standards, the door was open wide enough to drive an ox-cart through. Rueng-ne'il sent the grumbling Janush through to peek at the other side. The tiny demon disappeared for a moment, then reported back that there was a sporting event going on inside.
The group entered to see a truly enormous entrance chamber supported by four pillars along each side wall, flanked by four large doors on each side, and at the far end, a truly massive door atop a staircase. The scene in the center of the room was no game though, but more like a riot or free-for-all battle. The three friends quickly skirted to a side wall in an attempt to avoid the attention of the orgy of reveling maenads.
The first door they came across was marked with images of gnomes and dwarves holding poses to make the letters of some illegible script, with more writing in the same barbarous tongue below. Although none of the three could read the writing, the wealth of the wee mining folk was well-known, so the party prepared to enter after Beadle picked the lock and swept the door for traps. As they opened the oversized portal however, they heard a sound like thunder - footsteps on the enormous stairwell in the great entry hall, and the rioters breaking up their melee and beginning to flee. The trio quickly entered the doorway and began searching for some way to block the door behind them.
Upon entering the hallway, the group was immediately confronted by the smashed-flat body of an armored man. Despite the damage, his full-body suit of plate armor still shined with its mirror bright polish. A quick search revealed that he was not the Easterling prince, but the knave Olaf Gunderson, a generally disliked local official of some sort. Gunderson had been an enemy of the Easterling prince, so Johanna took his wooden shield, emblazoned with his coat of arms to offer up as proof of his demise. Rueng-ne'il, perhaps inspired by the symbols on the door, rearranged Gunderson's crushed body to form a warding sigil, then offered the dead man's soul to his demon masters in exchange for blocking the door. Neither Johanna nor Beadle was entirely comfortable with abusing a man's soul in this way, but tried to tell themselves that Gunderson's soul would have been forfeit for his crimes regardless of Rueng's actions. Suddenly Gunderson's spirit appeared, mocked Rueng for his decision to trade his eternal damnation for a few hours of guard duty, but vowed that none would be able to pass by while his spirit stood in front of the door.
Safe from attack from behind, Beadle Bailey crept forward down the hallway. He spotted a glint at the edge of the shadows, and discovered it to be Gunderson's hunting horn. As he was pocketing the precious object, he heard marching footsteps approaching from further down the hall, let out a quick warning to his colleagues, and then melted into the shadows out of sight. Johanna and Rueng soon heard the marchers as well, and saw four pinkish giants who appeared to be made of wax. The giants demanded to know who Johanna and Rueng-ne'il were, and insisted on seeing a permit to gather treasures in this section of the Castle. Johanna quickly bluffed that they had permission from the King of Elfland, and offered the bureaucratically-minded creatures a few pages of Rueng's ephemera as proof. (This is the type of deception that Merope often tried, but that never worked for her in Urutsk.) Fortunately for the pair, the giants were illiterate and rather gullible, so Rueng's shopping list served to convince them of Johanna's ruse. The waxen giants initially insisted on leading the adventurers to the east wing, but finding the door blocked by an annoying ghost, offered to them via a back route that went further into the west wing. The trio followed behind, with Beadle remaining in the shadows.
The wax giants led the group into a round room, and apologized for the spikes that had recently grown out of the walls, cautioning them to avert their eyes. The room appeared to have been a statue gallery, although all the statues now too seemed to be looking away from the center of the room. Rueng noticed some sort of script written on each spike, and cast a spell to allow himself to read magic. As a side effect of the spell, the wax giants grew increasingly agitated, but just as he finished reading the script, each spike grew and opened an eyeball at its tip, and the giants turned to stone and shattered. Johanna and the Beadle were unharmed, and Rueng believed he would be able to cast a new spell a single time, one that would allow him to step across great distances without moving through the intervening space.
Continuing past their shattered escort, Rueng, Johanna, and the Beadle entered an anteroom with three exits leading down a furnished hallway, or up some rough stairs, or through another truly massive door left just ajar. The three elected to go up the stairs, and soon found themselves overlooking a crowd of fey mechanics hard at work on some large cylindrical metal contraption. The friends speculated that these workers might be the same ones depicted on the great-room door. Moments later, Beadle's highly-attuned senses warned him of an impending disaster, but Johanna and Rueng were caught off-guard when the contraption exploded and a torrent of water began pouring out of the top of it. A tidal wave washed the ranger and the demonologist back down the stairs, while Beadle used a grappling hook thrown to the ceiling to hang on above the crushing waves. Only a miracle (and a very lucky throw of the dice) prevented Johanna and Rueng from being killed or swept beyond Beadle's reach. As it was, Beadle soon rejoined his companions in the anteroom, fleeing from the giant octopus that had emerged from the pipe along with the water.
A bitter combat ensued, with the weird mollusk catching Rueng-ne'il with several of its suction-cupped tentacles. Beadle Bailey used a device lifted from a previous adventure - a treasure chest trapped with a magical rune of sleep, the treasure still un-retrieved inside. Beadle opened the chest to show the octopus the sigil, but the strange creature was not affected in the way the thief expected. The trio managed to sever a few of the beast's limbs, but Rueng feared for his life and cast the spell he'd learned in the spiked room, transporting himself and his colleagues to a distant part of Castle Gargantua.
When the three recovered their senses, they found themselves in a room with a towering mirror in a golden frame. They suspected it must be the mirror Rueng had heard of, the one that would show them their true selves. Johanna blessed herself with holy water before looking, and saw herself as a giant cyclops. Johanna screamed and raged in protest, and then accepted the truth that she was descended from giants, from the noble cyclops of ancient Greece. Rueng looked eagerly and saw himself entirely given over to magical corruption, no longer even remotely elven. Excited to see his likely future fate, Rueng began to crow and shout in the demonic tongue. Seeing Johanna dissolve into screams and tears, and Rueng ranging in a guttural alien language, the Beadle wisely decided to turn his back on the mirror without looking into it, unwilling to risk learning the knowledge its magic might offer him.
Later, Beadle helped Johanna to construct a pair of stilts out of scraps of timber from around the room, allowing her to stand head and shoulders above her former puny human height. She gifted him with Gunderson's shield to thank him, and then, as though in a fugue state, wandered off and up, into one of the highest spires in the Castle. There she promised herself as devotee to Gargantua, promising to revere him in exchange for his blessing. She burnt her former holy symbol, and offered Gargantua one of her eyes, and an eye from her hex doll, and anointed herself and the doll with holy water to make it her new symbol. Somewhere high above, the storm raged, but Gargantua smiled, and Johanna was reborn. No longer a lawful ranger, she became a chaotic priestess in service of Gargantua. No longer Johanna the Giantslayer, she became Johanna the Giantess.
I played Johanna the Giantslayer, a 3rd level DCC ranger, taken from issue 6 of the Crawl! fanzine. Johanna was a sort of mashup of Jack and the Beanstalk, Saint George and the Dragon, and Joan of Arc. She fought with a ranger's paired swords, but also wore chainmail with a red cloak, and carried a holy symbol and several vials of holy water in case she encountered the undead. I say "was" for reasons that will become apparent at the end of the adventure.
Johanna went to Castle Gargantua as part of a group of three, accompanied by Beadle Bailey, a former church guard turned sneak thief, and Rueng-ne'il, an elven demonologist with a Slavic imp familiar named Janush. The trio had heard rumors of an Easterling prince gone missing in the castle (and his retinue of 12 horsemen prepared to swear their fealty to anyone who could return his body to them), a magic mirror which would show its viewer their true self, and the Beadle had possession of a treasure map (unfortunately showing the treasure to be guarded by giant-sized wasps).
When the three summited the mount that held the Castle, they saw a storm in progress. The Castle itself reached almost to the clouds, which had opened up to reveal the spirit of Gargantua looking down on them. The Castle's grounds swirled with mists that seemed to brim with the souls of the damned. (The scene may have looked a bit like the Night on Bald Mountain sequence from Fantasia.)
Johanna brandished her holy symbol to try to repel the mist spirits, and the three made their way to the towering front door, only to find it already ajar. Although only cracked by giant standards, the door was open wide enough to drive an ox-cart through. Rueng-ne'il sent the grumbling Janush through to peek at the other side. The tiny demon disappeared for a moment, then reported back that there was a sporting event going on inside.
The group entered to see a truly enormous entrance chamber supported by four pillars along each side wall, flanked by four large doors on each side, and at the far end, a truly massive door atop a staircase. The scene in the center of the room was no game though, but more like a riot or free-for-all battle. The three friends quickly skirted to a side wall in an attempt to avoid the attention of the orgy of reveling maenads.
The first door they came across was marked with images of gnomes and dwarves holding poses to make the letters of some illegible script, with more writing in the same barbarous tongue below. Although none of the three could read the writing, the wealth of the wee mining folk was well-known, so the party prepared to enter after Beadle picked the lock and swept the door for traps. As they opened the oversized portal however, they heard a sound like thunder - footsteps on the enormous stairwell in the great entry hall, and the rioters breaking up their melee and beginning to flee. The trio quickly entered the doorway and began searching for some way to block the door behind them.
Upon entering the hallway, the group was immediately confronted by the smashed-flat body of an armored man. Despite the damage, his full-body suit of plate armor still shined with its mirror bright polish. A quick search revealed that he was not the Easterling prince, but the knave Olaf Gunderson, a generally disliked local official of some sort. Gunderson had been an enemy of the Easterling prince, so Johanna took his wooden shield, emblazoned with his coat of arms to offer up as proof of his demise. Rueng-ne'il, perhaps inspired by the symbols on the door, rearranged Gunderson's crushed body to form a warding sigil, then offered the dead man's soul to his demon masters in exchange for blocking the door. Neither Johanna nor Beadle was entirely comfortable with abusing a man's soul in this way, but tried to tell themselves that Gunderson's soul would have been forfeit for his crimes regardless of Rueng's actions. Suddenly Gunderson's spirit appeared, mocked Rueng for his decision to trade his eternal damnation for a few hours of guard duty, but vowed that none would be able to pass by while his spirit stood in front of the door.
Safe from attack from behind, Beadle Bailey crept forward down the hallway. He spotted a glint at the edge of the shadows, and discovered it to be Gunderson's hunting horn. As he was pocketing the precious object, he heard marching footsteps approaching from further down the hall, let out a quick warning to his colleagues, and then melted into the shadows out of sight. Johanna and Rueng soon heard the marchers as well, and saw four pinkish giants who appeared to be made of wax. The giants demanded to know who Johanna and Rueng-ne'il were, and insisted on seeing a permit to gather treasures in this section of the Castle. Johanna quickly bluffed that they had permission from the King of Elfland, and offered the bureaucratically-minded creatures a few pages of Rueng's ephemera as proof. (This is the type of deception that Merope often tried, but that never worked for her in Urutsk.) Fortunately for the pair, the giants were illiterate and rather gullible, so Rueng's shopping list served to convince them of Johanna's ruse. The waxen giants initially insisted on leading the adventurers to the east wing, but finding the door blocked by an annoying ghost, offered to them via a back route that went further into the west wing. The trio followed behind, with Beadle remaining in the shadows.
The wax giants led the group into a round room, and apologized for the spikes that had recently grown out of the walls, cautioning them to avert their eyes. The room appeared to have been a statue gallery, although all the statues now too seemed to be looking away from the center of the room. Rueng noticed some sort of script written on each spike, and cast a spell to allow himself to read magic. As a side effect of the spell, the wax giants grew increasingly agitated, but just as he finished reading the script, each spike grew and opened an eyeball at its tip, and the giants turned to stone and shattered. Johanna and the Beadle were unharmed, and Rueng believed he would be able to cast a new spell a single time, one that would allow him to step across great distances without moving through the intervening space.
Continuing past their shattered escort, Rueng, Johanna, and the Beadle entered an anteroom with three exits leading down a furnished hallway, or up some rough stairs, or through another truly massive door left just ajar. The three elected to go up the stairs, and soon found themselves overlooking a crowd of fey mechanics hard at work on some large cylindrical metal contraption. The friends speculated that these workers might be the same ones depicted on the great-room door. Moments later, Beadle's highly-attuned senses warned him of an impending disaster, but Johanna and Rueng were caught off-guard when the contraption exploded and a torrent of water began pouring out of the top of it. A tidal wave washed the ranger and the demonologist back down the stairs, while Beadle used a grappling hook thrown to the ceiling to hang on above the crushing waves. Only a miracle (and a very lucky throw of the dice) prevented Johanna and Rueng from being killed or swept beyond Beadle's reach. As it was, Beadle soon rejoined his companions in the anteroom, fleeing from the giant octopus that had emerged from the pipe along with the water.
A bitter combat ensued, with the weird mollusk catching Rueng-ne'il with several of its suction-cupped tentacles. Beadle Bailey used a device lifted from a previous adventure - a treasure chest trapped with a magical rune of sleep, the treasure still un-retrieved inside. Beadle opened the chest to show the octopus the sigil, but the strange creature was not affected in the way the thief expected. The trio managed to sever a few of the beast's limbs, but Rueng feared for his life and cast the spell he'd learned in the spiked room, transporting himself and his colleagues to a distant part of Castle Gargantua.
When the three recovered their senses, they found themselves in a room with a towering mirror in a golden frame. They suspected it must be the mirror Rueng had heard of, the one that would show them their true selves. Johanna blessed herself with holy water before looking, and saw herself as a giant cyclops. Johanna screamed and raged in protest, and then accepted the truth that she was descended from giants, from the noble cyclops of ancient Greece. Rueng looked eagerly and saw himself entirely given over to magical corruption, no longer even remotely elven. Excited to see his likely future fate, Rueng began to crow and shout in the demonic tongue. Seeing Johanna dissolve into screams and tears, and Rueng ranging in a guttural alien language, the Beadle wisely decided to turn his back on the mirror without looking into it, unwilling to risk learning the knowledge its magic might offer him.
Later, Beadle helped Johanna to construct a pair of stilts out of scraps of timber from around the room, allowing her to stand head and shoulders above her former puny human height. She gifted him with Gunderson's shield to thank him, and then, as though in a fugue state, wandered off and up, into one of the highest spires in the Castle. There she promised herself as devotee to Gargantua, promising to revere him in exchange for his blessing. She burnt her former holy symbol, and offered Gargantua one of her eyes, and an eye from her hex doll, and anointed herself and the doll with holy water to make it her new symbol. Somewhere high above, the storm raged, but Gargantua smiled, and Johanna was reborn. No longer a lawful ranger, she became a chaotic priestess in service of Gargantua. No longer Johanna the Giantslayer, she became Johanna the Giantess.
Friday, March 27, 2015
Adventures in Urutsk
Over the past few weeks, I've been playing an online game that takes place primarily in The Grand Tapestry's world of Urutsk.
Urutsk is a couple of things. First, it appears to be one of only a handful of examples that I'm aware of, of a person having a particularly well-developed fantasy world as a child that they never abandon, and that they continue growing and expanding and creating for into adulthood. Other examples of such worlds, and their creators, are the Brontë sisters' shared worlds of Gondal and Angria, Henry Darger's worlds of Glandeco and Angelinia and his Realms of the Unreal, and MAR Barker's world of Tékumel. Like Barker's Tékumel and JRR Tolkein's Middle Earth, Urutsk also seems to include one or more constructed languages that seem to be more or less linguistically complete.
Second, Urutsk is a post-apocalyptic science fictional game setting. Information I've learned in-game suggests that the time period my sessions have been taking place in are approximately a millennium after some kind of interstellar cataclysm. In this way, too, its similar to MAR Barker's Tékumel and to his Empire of the Petal Throne game, to Kevin Crawford's Stars Without Number game, and I'm sure to any number of other stories that take place on an alien planet amidst the post-cataclysmic civilization of human(-ish?) people whose ancestors once built societies on dozens or hundreds of planets across the galaxy. Luigi Serafini's Codex Seraphinianus, Larry Niven's Integral Trees and Smoke Ring, and Jack Vance's "Miracle Workers" are also all set under similar conditions, and so by a process of convergent evolution or multiple discovery, have noticeable parallels to the world of Urutsk.
I'm creating a bit of a record now, because when I started this online game, I expected it to be a one-off, or to last only two or three sessions. That's been the general fate of the online games I've played in, where either scheduling problems or the difficulty of arranging and running online sessions has led to something more like tournament-style play than to ongoing campaigns. We've played ten sessions together so far though, and we seem likely to be able to continue for awhile. As a result, my memories of the earliest sessions are now a bit sketchy. I'll probably keep the more recent session reports brief as well, but since this is going so well, I wanted to preserve a small portion of it.
SESSION 1
The first session begins with Merope the troglodyte-speaking woodcutter, Fantine the sickly guild beggar, Magdalene the grave digger, and Florence the poison-resistant healer awaking inside a large red box along with a dozen or so other 0th-level commoners. The box is something like 20' to a side, and its occupants awake lightly dressed and entirely un-equipped.
In this session, Fantine was initially my favorite character, so she led most of my team's actions. Knocking on the walls of the red box quickly revealed that doors would appear when searched for, and the first door opened into what looked like an alleyway, facing a brick wall. Fantine was the first of several brave souls to venture outside, revealing a world of great brick buildings, smoke stacks, and plumes of black industrial smoke. Fantine felt comfortable in this familiar-looking world, but the many of bewildered commoners wondered if the other walls would open into the same world, or even if this door would reliably lead back to the seemingly-Victorian realm, so they all returned into the box and shut the door.
When the door was re-opened, it was not into a Victorian alley, but instead into a strange open roadway. Several wheeled metal carriages sped past at unbelievable speed, and I believe that at least one peasant was lost when he stepped outside and was struck by one of the horseless carriages. Other carriages veered out of the way, trying to avoid the box that had suddenly appeared in the middle of their path, and a spectacular collision and explosion resulted. The peasants noticed that they were surrounded by some kind of coliseum filled with a great audience, and that they were being approached by shouting men in some kind of black uniforms. If my memory serves, another peasant was lost to a gunshot wound delivered by one of the uniformed men, although he may have been saved by first aid after the door was closed.
The next door that was opened led into a bright and vividly colored jungle, but the first two commoners who stepped out of the cubed were burned by the heat and acidic humidity of the air, and one of two possibly died after being touched by a poisonous leaf that wafted down from one of the many trees. Once their companions were back inside, the group quickly closed the door on those inhospitable environs. Florence the healer may have attempted to save one of the injured explorers.
The following door opened only a crack into a world of waist-deep snow. The peasants feared they were too lightly dressed to survive the frigid cold of that world, as their initial glimpse showed lights only in the far distance. Unfortunately, the weight of the collapsing snow kept the door from closing properly, and the cube itself began to grow uncomfortably chill. Another door was opened, revealing some kind of cave. Fantine and her companions joined an expedition into the cave, while another eight or so peasants stayed behind in the cube to try to re-close the door leading into winter.
The cavern Fantine and her friends entered was poorly lit, but a tunnel that possibly led to the surface was visible across a great crevasse. The peasants decided to attempt to descend into the canyon, in the hopes of ascending the other side, and then taking the tunnel to the surface. They located a wooden scaffolding that might have been left over from some kind of mining operation, and began climbing down. As they did, they were assailed by a dozen or so blue creatures that had bodies like monkeys, but with beaked turtle-like faces. Merope the wood-cutter acquitted herself admirably in combat, but Fantine the beggar, having only 1 hit point, was felled by one of the weird beasts. First aid, possibly delivered by Merope or Florence, resuscitated her from her injuries. Fearing that this cave was too dangerous, the commoners returned to the red cube to check on their friends.
They arrived to find that their fellows who had stayed behind had managed to close the door on the icy realm. The snow turned out to be only frozen water, fortunately, and not frozen methane or helium, and so the commoners had been able to brave it for a few moments to hand-shovel the snow back out of the doorway and shut the door firmly.
Another door was tried, this one leading into the interior of a building. When Fantine and some other peasants found a window, they soon realized they were hundreds of feet above the ground inside a tower so tall it scraped the sky itself. They also soon met a balding man with injured feet who called himself "John McClane" and who appeared to believe that he was hallucinating the peasants. The peasants followed McClane as he explored the hall and adjoining rooms, but after more gunfire from McClane's enemies, they decided to return once more to the cube.
The final door the peasants tried opened into a fairly featureless white hallway, but quick exploration turned up a locker room. Each peasant pressed their palm to a door to open a locker, and each found supplies related to their profession, including some white coveralls, a computer tablet, and a gun.
At this point, the session ended and we all leveled up. Merope became a fighter, Fantine and Magdelane became thieves, and Florence became a cleric.
SESSION 2
In this session, and for the rest of the sessions that take place in Urutsk, I was one of only two players. We each chose one character to advance. I chose Merope, whose 0th level characteristics reminded me of JK Rowling's depiction of Voldemort's mother, and my fellow player chose Slunk, a wood-elf charlatan and snake-oil salesman. Merope graduated from being a 0th level Dungeon Crawl Classics woodcutter to being a 1st level 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons fighter. She also rolled for a random characteristic on the Arduin Grimoire's "Special Abilities" Chart. She got +1 with all axes and -3 against all dragon's breath, which seemed appropriate for some kind of reptile-loving forest-dwelling recluse. Slunk became a warlock and swore a pact of allegiance to Lord Worm, a demonic entity aligned with elemental silt. (I later learned that all magic users and magical creatures in Urutsk are associated with one of a few dozen elemental bloodlines.) Slunk also acquired a familiar in the form of a holographic projection of a woman from his tablet computer, quickly dubbed "Clippy."
Shortly after deciding his intention to make a pact with a magical entity, Slunk received a vision of Lord Worm, a silt-blooded demon king. Slunk discovered that he too had an elemental silt bloodline, and soon swore a pact to Lord Worm, gaining various magical abilities in the bargain.
Merope and Slunk exited the locker room and began exploring. In one room they found some emergency rations and ration cards as well as some med kits. They also found evidence that the crew might be abusing stimulants, and a quick peek inside a ration revealed twice the safe daily limit of stimulants available alongside one day's worth of food. In another room they found some humans in similar white coveralls who revealed that they were on a ship, and had been for their entire lives. Merope and Slunk decided that they were dealing with the degenerate inhabitants of the original crew of a generation ship and decided to look for some form of shuttle craft or escape pod. Consulting both Merope's tablet and Clippy soon revealed that the crew only controlled a relatively small area of the ship. They also discovered that Merope's handprint would open any door with palm-reader, while Slunk's elven hand was denied access for some reason.
A bit more exploring revealed a kind of interstitial space, a kind of scaffolding of walkways the appeared to run behind the walls and between the levels of the ship. Slunk and Merope tried climbing down a couple of levels, outside of the crew-controlled area, in search of valuables. I think our reasoning was that anything salvaged from an abandoned portion of the ship would be valuable to the occupants who no longer had access to that particular supply. Once in the uncontrolled portion of the ship however, they were quickly set upon by a towering centipede-like robot. Slunk was injured, while Merope was quickly felled and had a near death experience. She used what she thought was her dying breath to tell Slunk to run. Slunk decided to stand his ground however, and fired an overloaded blast from his stun pistol, seemingly knocking the robot out of commission. Slunk's CPR, and a bit of good fortune, brought Merope back from the brink of death.
Slunk helped Merope into the first room they could find on this lower hallway, where they found a number of crates labeled "Cedar." With Merope still at death's door, Slunk opened a crate and found a foil packet filled with some kind of glowing liquid, which he poured into Merope's mouth and encouraged her to drink. Merope did, and recovered a bit of her health, she also mutated becoming mildly radioactive. Her physical stamina permanently increased, and she became mildly resistant to injury. She also gained a kind of Ren-and-Stimpy-style detail vision that allowed her to inflict more damage with her attacks by striking her enemies' weakest points. The mutagenic liquid frightened both Slunk and Merope, so they decided to look for treasure in another room.
As they re-entered the hall, they saw that the giant robot was reviving itself. Merope put her newfound detail vision to work and fired her security gun at the robot. The super-heated round splashed liquid metal after striking the creature, revealing the source of the strange damage to some of the walls Merope and Slunk had seen earlier. Slunk called upon his patron and shot malevolent blasts of elemental silt at the centipede. Between these two attacks, the robot deactivated again, although this time the pair was unwilling to believe that it was permanently disabled. They continued attacking its prone form for another 20 minutes before rolling it off the walkway and into the bowels of the ship below. Merope managed to break off a few of the creatures legs to use as a short sword, a long sword, and a pry bar. Slunk was able to pocket a few of the shinier bits of the machine to try to trade later.
Concerned that the noise of this encounter might bring additional combatants, the pair abandoned their plan to look for valuables and re-ascended to a higher, and safer floor. They located a security office and used Merope's clearance to enter it. Inside they found a variety of colored jackets that seemed to reveal one's crew rank, along with a couple of gas masks and tear gas canisters, and a safe place to rest for the night. Merope settled on a purple command jacket, although a panel of the jacket, located where a name-badge might be placed, turned orange to identify her as security personnel. Slunk discovered when he wore a blue jacket this panel turned green, and in a green jacket it turned blue, so he left the green jacket on. The pair felt a bit better disguised and protected in their new jackets, and decided to take a long rest to recover from their injuries.
Urutsk is a couple of things. First, it appears to be one of only a handful of examples that I'm aware of, of a person having a particularly well-developed fantasy world as a child that they never abandon, and that they continue growing and expanding and creating for into adulthood. Other examples of such worlds, and their creators, are the Brontë sisters' shared worlds of Gondal and Angria, Henry Darger's worlds of Glandeco and Angelinia and his Realms of the Unreal, and MAR Barker's world of Tékumel. Like Barker's Tékumel and JRR Tolkein's Middle Earth, Urutsk also seems to include one or more constructed languages that seem to be more or less linguistically complete.
Second, Urutsk is a post-apocalyptic science fictional game setting. Information I've learned in-game suggests that the time period my sessions have been taking place in are approximately a millennium after some kind of interstellar cataclysm. In this way, too, its similar to MAR Barker's Tékumel and to his Empire of the Petal Throne game, to Kevin Crawford's Stars Without Number game, and I'm sure to any number of other stories that take place on an alien planet amidst the post-cataclysmic civilization of human(-ish?) people whose ancestors once built societies on dozens or hundreds of planets across the galaxy. Luigi Serafini's Codex Seraphinianus, Larry Niven's Integral Trees and Smoke Ring, and Jack Vance's "Miracle Workers" are also all set under similar conditions, and so by a process of convergent evolution or multiple discovery, have noticeable parallels to the world of Urutsk.
I'm creating a bit of a record now, because when I started this online game, I expected it to be a one-off, or to last only two or three sessions. That's been the general fate of the online games I've played in, where either scheduling problems or the difficulty of arranging and running online sessions has led to something more like tournament-style play than to ongoing campaigns. We've played ten sessions together so far though, and we seem likely to be able to continue for awhile. As a result, my memories of the earliest sessions are now a bit sketchy. I'll probably keep the more recent session reports brief as well, but since this is going so well, I wanted to preserve a small portion of it.
SESSION 1
The first session begins with Merope the troglodyte-speaking woodcutter, Fantine the sickly guild beggar, Magdalene the grave digger, and Florence the poison-resistant healer awaking inside a large red box along with a dozen or so other 0th-level commoners. The box is something like 20' to a side, and its occupants awake lightly dressed and entirely un-equipped.
In this session, Fantine was initially my favorite character, so she led most of my team's actions. Knocking on the walls of the red box quickly revealed that doors would appear when searched for, and the first door opened into what looked like an alleyway, facing a brick wall. Fantine was the first of several brave souls to venture outside, revealing a world of great brick buildings, smoke stacks, and plumes of black industrial smoke. Fantine felt comfortable in this familiar-looking world, but the many of bewildered commoners wondered if the other walls would open into the same world, or even if this door would reliably lead back to the seemingly-Victorian realm, so they all returned into the box and shut the door.
When the door was re-opened, it was not into a Victorian alley, but instead into a strange open roadway. Several wheeled metal carriages sped past at unbelievable speed, and I believe that at least one peasant was lost when he stepped outside and was struck by one of the horseless carriages. Other carriages veered out of the way, trying to avoid the box that had suddenly appeared in the middle of their path, and a spectacular collision and explosion resulted. The peasants noticed that they were surrounded by some kind of coliseum filled with a great audience, and that they were being approached by shouting men in some kind of black uniforms. If my memory serves, another peasant was lost to a gunshot wound delivered by one of the uniformed men, although he may have been saved by first aid after the door was closed.
The next door that was opened led into a bright and vividly colored jungle, but the first two commoners who stepped out of the cubed were burned by the heat and acidic humidity of the air, and one of two possibly died after being touched by a poisonous leaf that wafted down from one of the many trees. Once their companions were back inside, the group quickly closed the door on those inhospitable environs. Florence the healer may have attempted to save one of the injured explorers.
The following door opened only a crack into a world of waist-deep snow. The peasants feared they were too lightly dressed to survive the frigid cold of that world, as their initial glimpse showed lights only in the far distance. Unfortunately, the weight of the collapsing snow kept the door from closing properly, and the cube itself began to grow uncomfortably chill. Another door was opened, revealing some kind of cave. Fantine and her companions joined an expedition into the cave, while another eight or so peasants stayed behind in the cube to try to re-close the door leading into winter.
The cavern Fantine and her friends entered was poorly lit, but a tunnel that possibly led to the surface was visible across a great crevasse. The peasants decided to attempt to descend into the canyon, in the hopes of ascending the other side, and then taking the tunnel to the surface. They located a wooden scaffolding that might have been left over from some kind of mining operation, and began climbing down. As they did, they were assailed by a dozen or so blue creatures that had bodies like monkeys, but with beaked turtle-like faces. Merope the wood-cutter acquitted herself admirably in combat, but Fantine the beggar, having only 1 hit point, was felled by one of the weird beasts. First aid, possibly delivered by Merope or Florence, resuscitated her from her injuries. Fearing that this cave was too dangerous, the commoners returned to the red cube to check on their friends.
They arrived to find that their fellows who had stayed behind had managed to close the door on the icy realm. The snow turned out to be only frozen water, fortunately, and not frozen methane or helium, and so the commoners had been able to brave it for a few moments to hand-shovel the snow back out of the doorway and shut the door firmly.
Another door was tried, this one leading into the interior of a building. When Fantine and some other peasants found a window, they soon realized they were hundreds of feet above the ground inside a tower so tall it scraped the sky itself. They also soon met a balding man with injured feet who called himself "John McClane" and who appeared to believe that he was hallucinating the peasants. The peasants followed McClane as he explored the hall and adjoining rooms, but after more gunfire from McClane's enemies, they decided to return once more to the cube.
The final door the peasants tried opened into a fairly featureless white hallway, but quick exploration turned up a locker room. Each peasant pressed their palm to a door to open a locker, and each found supplies related to their profession, including some white coveralls, a computer tablet, and a gun.
At this point, the session ended and we all leveled up. Merope became a fighter, Fantine and Magdelane became thieves, and Florence became a cleric.
SESSION 2
In this session, and for the rest of the sessions that take place in Urutsk, I was one of only two players. We each chose one character to advance. I chose Merope, whose 0th level characteristics reminded me of JK Rowling's depiction of Voldemort's mother, and my fellow player chose Slunk, a wood-elf charlatan and snake-oil salesman. Merope graduated from being a 0th level Dungeon Crawl Classics woodcutter to being a 1st level 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons fighter. She also rolled for a random characteristic on the Arduin Grimoire's "Special Abilities" Chart. She got +1 with all axes and -3 against all dragon's breath, which seemed appropriate for some kind of reptile-loving forest-dwelling recluse. Slunk became a warlock and swore a pact of allegiance to Lord Worm, a demonic entity aligned with elemental silt. (I later learned that all magic users and magical creatures in Urutsk are associated with one of a few dozen elemental bloodlines.) Slunk also acquired a familiar in the form of a holographic projection of a woman from his tablet computer, quickly dubbed "Clippy."
Shortly after deciding his intention to make a pact with a magical entity, Slunk received a vision of Lord Worm, a silt-blooded demon king. Slunk discovered that he too had an elemental silt bloodline, and soon swore a pact to Lord Worm, gaining various magical abilities in the bargain.
Merope and Slunk exited the locker room and began exploring. In one room they found some emergency rations and ration cards as well as some med kits. They also found evidence that the crew might be abusing stimulants, and a quick peek inside a ration revealed twice the safe daily limit of stimulants available alongside one day's worth of food. In another room they found some humans in similar white coveralls who revealed that they were on a ship, and had been for their entire lives. Merope and Slunk decided that they were dealing with the degenerate inhabitants of the original crew of a generation ship and decided to look for some form of shuttle craft or escape pod. Consulting both Merope's tablet and Clippy soon revealed that the crew only controlled a relatively small area of the ship. They also discovered that Merope's handprint would open any door with palm-reader, while Slunk's elven hand was denied access for some reason.
A bit more exploring revealed a kind of interstitial space, a kind of scaffolding of walkways the appeared to run behind the walls and between the levels of the ship. Slunk and Merope tried climbing down a couple of levels, outside of the crew-controlled area, in search of valuables. I think our reasoning was that anything salvaged from an abandoned portion of the ship would be valuable to the occupants who no longer had access to that particular supply. Once in the uncontrolled portion of the ship however, they were quickly set upon by a towering centipede-like robot. Slunk was injured, while Merope was quickly felled and had a near death experience. She used what she thought was her dying breath to tell Slunk to run. Slunk decided to stand his ground however, and fired an overloaded blast from his stun pistol, seemingly knocking the robot out of commission. Slunk's CPR, and a bit of good fortune, brought Merope back from the brink of death.
Slunk helped Merope into the first room they could find on this lower hallway, where they found a number of crates labeled "Cedar." With Merope still at death's door, Slunk opened a crate and found a foil packet filled with some kind of glowing liquid, which he poured into Merope's mouth and encouraged her to drink. Merope did, and recovered a bit of her health, she also mutated becoming mildly radioactive. Her physical stamina permanently increased, and she became mildly resistant to injury. She also gained a kind of Ren-and-Stimpy-style detail vision that allowed her to inflict more damage with her attacks by striking her enemies' weakest points. The mutagenic liquid frightened both Slunk and Merope, so they decided to look for treasure in another room.
As they re-entered the hall, they saw that the giant robot was reviving itself. Merope put her newfound detail vision to work and fired her security gun at the robot. The super-heated round splashed liquid metal after striking the creature, revealing the source of the strange damage to some of the walls Merope and Slunk had seen earlier. Slunk called upon his patron and shot malevolent blasts of elemental silt at the centipede. Between these two attacks, the robot deactivated again, although this time the pair was unwilling to believe that it was permanently disabled. They continued attacking its prone form for another 20 minutes before rolling it off the walkway and into the bowels of the ship below. Merope managed to break off a few of the creatures legs to use as a short sword, a long sword, and a pry bar. Slunk was able to pocket a few of the shinier bits of the machine to try to trade later.
Concerned that the noise of this encounter might bring additional combatants, the pair abandoned their plan to look for valuables and re-ascended to a higher, and safer floor. They located a security office and used Merope's clearance to enter it. Inside they found a variety of colored jackets that seemed to reveal one's crew rank, along with a couple of gas masks and tear gas canisters, and a safe place to rest for the night. Merope settled on a purple command jacket, although a panel of the jacket, located where a name-badge might be placed, turned orange to identify her as security personnel. Slunk discovered when he wore a blue jacket this panel turned green, and in a green jacket it turned blue, so he left the green jacket on. The pair felt a bit better disguised and protected in their new jackets, and decided to take a long rest to recover from their injuries.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
DCC Peasants in the Purple Worm Graveyard
Last week's game put three players' 0-level peasants in Planet Thirteen's Purple Worm Graveyard.
I tried to make character generation a collective experience. Each player rolled 3d6 in order for the player to their left's characters. After all 12 characters had their stats, each player found their lucky roll, and we went through the various modifiers and bonuses together.
The players certainly embraced the idea that some of their starting characters were going to die, joking that a particular character was doomed or marked for death whenever they rolled low for an ability score or for hit points.
By coincidence nearly every character ended up with a low Agility and a high Personality score. It was totally plausible that this crowd could have talked the rest of the village into gambling their tax on a cricket match, and then blown the game when it counted. The players all really wanted to roll to determine the results of the game, but I hadn't figured out how to decide it at that point, so I simply ruled that they lost.
In retrospect, DCC provides a pretty good method for determining this kind of thing. Since unskilled characters roll 1d10 for skill checks, while skilled characters roll 1d20, I decided to roll for each cricket player. 1s are worth no points, and 10s and 20s explode into a second dice.
Using that method, I got a final score of Villagers 68 to Royals 107.
If the villagers had somehow earned a higher score, I suppose it would have meant that the duke and his men cheated. I've decided that the duke is a jerk, so that'd be totally in keeping with his character. We'll see if the players eventually decide to retaliate against him once they're stronger.
Knowing that these players prefer travel through every dungeon counter-clockwise might eventually make for an important design consideration. In this case it meant that they avoided the two most dangerous traps in the dungeon. They also missed finding the failed landsknecht adventurers' abandoned campsite, the Moroccan sorcerer's feast, and the source of those glowing glands in the Moroccan sorcerer's secret study. On the other hand, never encountering the fire beetles meant that they had no idea where the bio-luminescent glands came from. When the players expressed fear that the light source might attack them just as the puddle had, I knew that we really had achieved the "anything can happen" paranoia that DCC is trying to recreate.
The players were incredibly lucky in their wandering monster checks, only encountering one enemy that way. They also got lucky finding the secret door in the statue room on their first try.
I appreciate that the Purple Worm Graveyard instructs the DM to only check for wandering monsters when the players take a long time doing something or make a lot of noise. (Or more regularly in a couple of rooms.) I'm still not fully comfortable tracking turns. I think I had the candles go out after an hour each, but I was also reluctant to strand the characters in the dark when they hadn't really had any opportunity to buy additional light sources.
One thing I tried that I thought worked really well was to not let the players joke or think aloud without their characters acting out whatever they said. So when Hector's player said that he attacked Twinkle for waking him up, I immediately had him make an attack roll. And when Auhsoj's player joked about betraying the Worm God, I rolled a wandering monster check right away (which would have brought a purple worm if it'd come up as a 1.)
I was surprised that Hector's player kind of forgot to ask for a useful vision and instead only wanted permission to take the worm ivory. I was expecting to show him where one of the remaining treasures was. I also tried to communicate that the Worm God just really didn't care if they took the ivory, meaning that they wouldn't be punished, but also that it wasn't going to prevent a purple worm from showing up in the graveyard if they rolled poorly.
Poor Bovice is currently as good as dead, but his player has more free time than some of the others, so we might run some solo adventures later. If he wants Bovice back, I think a quest involving finding the Tomb of the Iron God and then venturing to Tempus Gelidium should be enough to turn him a return trip. If he wants Bovice to stay in the desert, then I'll probably make the distant city Krshal, the city of towers, and let him venture into the Ruins of the Undercity beneath it.
Overall, the adventure was a success. I awarded each character 10 XP and asked the players what they'd like their survivors to become. I decided that the 0-level adventures weren't really meant for exact XP counts or for giving different awards to different players, although I plan to get a bit more exact for the 1st level characters next time. I also plan to allow carousing for XP, but since I forgot my carousing results table last time, we'll have to wait to see what happens at the fête.
Converting the dungeon to DCC rules was pretty easy. The monsters took the longest, but that was mostly because I'm still not fully comfortable with the DCC monster stat block. I switched the "Dungeon Moves" to regular skill checks with DC 6 to get the middle result and DC 9 to get the good result. For most characters that works out to roughly the same probability that the Moves have, although characters with some reason to be skilled had a much easier roll. (Not that using a d20 actually helped Bobby Ray.)
I'm hoping that the Worm God will become a recurring deity/patron for the 1st level characters. I like the idea of an unhuman deity that hates the undead for entirely different reasons than living people do. If so, I'll have to come up with some Invoke Patron and Patron Taint results. I think I can base the spellburn table on the "Worm Madness" table from the adventure at least.
I tried to make character generation a collective experience. Each player rolled 3d6 in order for the player to their left's characters. After all 12 characters had their stats, each player found their lucky roll, and we went through the various modifiers and bonuses together.
The players certainly embraced the idea that some of their starting characters were going to die, joking that a particular character was doomed or marked for death whenever they rolled low for an ability score or for hit points.
By coincidence nearly every character ended up with a low Agility and a high Personality score. It was totally plausible that this crowd could have talked the rest of the village into gambling their tax on a cricket match, and then blown the game when it counted. The players all really wanted to roll to determine the results of the game, but I hadn't figured out how to decide it at that point, so I simply ruled that they lost.
In retrospect, DCC provides a pretty good method for determining this kind of thing. Since unskilled characters roll 1d10 for skill checks, while skilled characters roll 1d20, I decided to roll for each cricket player. 1s are worth no points, and 10s and 20s explode into a second dice.
Using that method, I got a final score of Villagers 68 to Royals 107.
If the villagers had somehow earned a higher score, I suppose it would have meant that the duke and his men cheated. I've decided that the duke is a jerk, so that'd be totally in keeping with his character. We'll see if the players eventually decide to retaliate against him once they're stronger.
Knowing that these players prefer travel through every dungeon counter-clockwise might eventually make for an important design consideration. In this case it meant that they avoided the two most dangerous traps in the dungeon. They also missed finding the failed landsknecht adventurers' abandoned campsite, the Moroccan sorcerer's feast, and the source of those glowing glands in the Moroccan sorcerer's secret study. On the other hand, never encountering the fire beetles meant that they had no idea where the bio-luminescent glands came from. When the players expressed fear that the light source might attack them just as the puddle had, I knew that we really had achieved the "anything can happen" paranoia that DCC is trying to recreate.
The players were incredibly lucky in their wandering monster checks, only encountering one enemy that way. They also got lucky finding the secret door in the statue room on their first try.
I appreciate that the Purple Worm Graveyard instructs the DM to only check for wandering monsters when the players take a long time doing something or make a lot of noise. (Or more regularly in a couple of rooms.) I'm still not fully comfortable tracking turns. I think I had the candles go out after an hour each, but I was also reluctant to strand the characters in the dark when they hadn't really had any opportunity to buy additional light sources.
One thing I tried that I thought worked really well was to not let the players joke or think aloud without their characters acting out whatever they said. So when Hector's player said that he attacked Twinkle for waking him up, I immediately had him make an attack roll. And when Auhsoj's player joked about betraying the Worm God, I rolled a wandering monster check right away (which would have brought a purple worm if it'd come up as a 1.)
I was surprised that Hector's player kind of forgot to ask for a useful vision and instead only wanted permission to take the worm ivory. I was expecting to show him where one of the remaining treasures was. I also tried to communicate that the Worm God just really didn't care if they took the ivory, meaning that they wouldn't be punished, but also that it wasn't going to prevent a purple worm from showing up in the graveyard if they rolled poorly.
Poor Bovice is currently as good as dead, but his player has more free time than some of the others, so we might run some solo adventures later. If he wants Bovice back, I think a quest involving finding the Tomb of the Iron God and then venturing to Tempus Gelidium should be enough to turn him a return trip. If he wants Bovice to stay in the desert, then I'll probably make the distant city Krshal, the city of towers, and let him venture into the Ruins of the Undercity beneath it.
Overall, the adventure was a success. I awarded each character 10 XP and asked the players what they'd like their survivors to become. I decided that the 0-level adventures weren't really meant for exact XP counts or for giving different awards to different players, although I plan to get a bit more exact for the 1st level characters next time. I also plan to allow carousing for XP, but since I forgot my carousing results table last time, we'll have to wait to see what happens at the fête.
Converting the dungeon to DCC rules was pretty easy. The monsters took the longest, but that was mostly because I'm still not fully comfortable with the DCC monster stat block. I switched the "Dungeon Moves" to regular skill checks with DC 6 to get the middle result and DC 9 to get the good result. For most characters that works out to roughly the same probability that the Moves have, although characters with some reason to be skilled had a much easier roll. (Not that using a d20 actually helped Bobby Ray.)
I'm hoping that the Worm God will become a recurring deity/patron for the 1st level characters. I like the idea of an unhuman deity that hates the undead for entirely different reasons than living people do. If so, I'll have to come up with some Invoke Patron and Patron Taint results. I think I can base the spellburn table on the "Worm Madness" table from the adventure at least.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Play Report - 11/22/2013
CHARACTERS
Bovice the Halfling Money-Lender
Jerry the Elven Forester
Twinkle the Halfling Glove-Maker
Ausoj the Baker
Harry the Beekeeper
Snow Queen the Jewler
Bobby Ray the Wizard's Apprentice
Calvin the Elven Sage
Jeff the Butcher
Hector "the Well-Endowed" the Con Artist
Shura the Ditch Digger
Tragodia the Ostler
Every year, the village pays a tax in harvested grain to the local duke. This year the rains have been poor, and the village cannot afford to pay its customary tax without risking starvation or being unable to save seed to replant in the spring. Our 12 intrepid heroes challenged the duke and his royal court to a cricket match. If the village won, they'd pay no tax for 3 years, but if the duke won, the village would owe triple tax. Somehow the inexperienced and clumsy villagers were unable to defeat the duke at a game he and his coterie had been playing since childhood, and the village was (seemingly) doomed.
The villagers were furious, the mayor was desperate, and the 12 young friends were chagrined, but fortunately, the village wise-man had an idea, and a scrap of an old map that claimed to show the location of a semi-mythical location where enormous ancient worms go to die.
As the only two characters with any real money to spend, Bovice purchased a battle axe, gifting his short sword to Twinkle, and Snow Queen bought some leather armor.
After an uneventful trip through the mountains, the party encountered a semi-circular tunnel mouth 5' high. The floor of the entrance was strewn with rough stone and debris which formed a ramp down to a floor 5 feet further below. Ausoj immediately ran into the tunnel and avoid fumbling his way to an early grave as he gamboled down the loose rocks of the entrance ramp. The rest of the party remained outside for a moment, where they discovered an inscription reading "moft hollee and facred palace ov thee godd worm." This was provisionally interpreted as a kind of "beware of dog" sign, as well as an indication that they were in the right place.
After entering the tunnel and lighting one of only two candles in their possession, the party followed the perfectly circular, 10' high smooth-walled tunnel until they came to a T-intersection. They decided to take the path to the left and soon came to a true crossroads, where they again turned left. This path led to another T-intersection where they could see that the left-hand path led into a small room with some kind of furniture, while the right-hand path led into a much larger and more open chamber.
Entering the small chamber to the left, the party saw a room full of broken bunk-beds with torn, rotten straw mattresses. The floor was covered with puddles of standing water and piles of garbage and debris, and the far wall was painted with some kind of fresco. The party moved to the wall to examine the fresco and saw images of skinny, emaciated humans serving platters of food to fat, bloated worms and weird worm-like humanoids. Twinkle panicked and ran to the entrance of the room. While the party examined captions reading "hapynef if fervif too thee king ov wormf" and "labour bringf joiye and falvafhun," Twinkle watched in horror as one of the puddles of dirty gray water reared up and prepared to attack the rest of the party from behind, taking them completely by surprise. Twinkle managed to stab the weird beast so that it began leaking vital fluids, and the monster failed in its initial attack. Tragodia scored a critical hit, causing the monster to lose its surface cohesion and splash to the floor once more. Following combat, Bovice tossed the room and found a dagger of exceptional quality under one of the overturned mattresses. The dagger was of impeccable workmanship, its handle wrapped with alternating strips of pale and dark leather, and its pommel topped with an ivory carving of a bee. Bovice graciously turned the party's resident bee-fancier, Harry. Jeff damaged the frescoes with is crowbar, rendering them illegible, and miraculously avoided either upsetting the Worm God or attracting the attention of any wandering monsters with the noise.
Leaving the dormitory, the party passed through the intersection and into a much larger section of tunnel with high vaulted ceilings held aloft by rows of columns along the walls. The tunnel the party entered from was at a right angle to this larger tunnel. To their left the party saw a two statues standing before a wall finished with fine Moroccan mosaic tiles, and to the right they saw the large tunnel end abruptly in a cave-in. Approaching the statues, the party found two figures standing against the wall, facing each other with 5 feet of empty space between them. One statue was an old, rusted and pitted iron statue depicting a stooped elderly man in a robe. The other was a clean, nearly gleaming bronze statue of a knight on horseback. The knight and horse were both armored in scaled robes, and the knight wore a towering peaked helm. One of the horse's front legs was missing. Jeff began prying tiles from the space between the statues, and amazingly located a secret door hidden between them. Just then, the party's first candle went out.
As the door opened, the party saw a room dimly lit by a bronze fire pit filled with weird, palely-glowing fleshy sacs and a starry sky seen through a window. Most of the party remained in the larger chamber, fearing that the glowing hunks of meat would rise to attack them in the same manner that the dirty floor water had done, but Bovice and Twinkle entered to inspect the chamber. They found a room with a floor covered in an enormous Persian rug, its walls and ceiling draped with fabric, low divans surrounding the fire pit, and a bookshelf along the wall. Twinkle and Bovice were immediately drawn to the bookshelf, and finding the books filled with incomprehensible scribbles, called on Bobby Ray to use his experience as a wizard's apprentice to inspect them. Bobby Ray thought they were a wizard's lab notes, and that another wizard studying them would be able to benefit. Bovice was unhealthily fascinated by the window. He peered through and saw a night sky overlooking an enormous expanse of sand, the onion domes and minarets of a distant city just visible along the horizon. He opened the window but found that neither wind nor sand nor heat entered the chamber. He found that he could enter the window, first sticking his arm and head through before climbing all the way into the desert night. Unfortunately, after entering the desert, Bovice could no longer see the window, nor could he pass back into the upholstered chamber. Ausoj entered the chamber, but was unable to save his friend, and Twinkle, Ausoj, and Bobby Ray watched in dismay as their friend began wandering toward the distant skyline. Ausoj mourned only a moment before proceeding to search the room, finding a blue Moroccan glass vial with a metal stopper. He opened it to find a medicinal smell. He conferred with Jerry, who had been trained by elven foresters, and thought that the fluid in the vial might be able ot help someone who was ill. He then tossed the vial into his empty chest, but fortunately the valuable substance did not end up sloshing around in a slurry of liquid and broken glass. On closer inspection, the characters found that the objects in the fire pit were more like fluid-filled bladders than pieces of meat, and Jerry tossed one into his chest, causing it to burst and coating the interior with a weakly-glowing residue. After carefully loading his chest with the remaining sacs, the reamining party members exited the secret chamber and the large hall, passed though the crossroads and entered the path that was now to their left.
Shura entered first, climbing up a ramp of loose stone and rubble into a low-ceilinged burial chamber. As he began climbing the ramp, he heard a German man's voice warning him to "Stay away!" and "Keep away from here!" Inside the dim room, he found the obviously dead body of a mercenary dressed in colorful landsknecht's garb with a polearm lying by his side. Closer inspection revealed that something had recently been eating the body. Shura was surprised by four gray-skinned women with thick worm-like tails where their legs should have been. He greeted them in a friendly manner, and received a favorable reaction. The creatures greeted him with rasping voices, revealing that instead of human mouths, they had weird circular orifices covered in tiny hair-like hooks. Jeff the butcher entered and offered the lamprey women his side of beef, which they happily accepted, allowing him to search the room in peace while Shura made off with the deceased landsknecht's polearm. Jeff found 16 gold pieces, a bright azure-colored gem, and a mysterious scroll. After questioning the lamprey women, Jeff was also able to get directions to the worm ivory cache. Bobby Ray inspected the scroll and thought that it might contain a spell to locate lost objects, but he was reluctant to use it, especially after Jeff had just received directions.
The party returned to the crossroad, and following the directions of the lamprey women, turned left again and entered a hall covered in painted graffiti and carved with strange unreadable glyphs, just as their candle went out. Fortunately, the glow of the fluid sacs in Jerry's chest combined with a glint of daylight from the far end of the hall provided enough light to see by. The graffiti seemed to bragging about "mad skillz," "phat loot," and other adventuring accomplishments in several modern languages. Twinkle and Ausoj elected to scout ahead at the end of the hall, while the rest of the rest of the party remained to look at the glyphs. Twinkle and Ausoj found a truly enormous chamber whose floor was littered with pebbles, the bones of humans and animals, and the slightly purplish teeth, ribs, and vertebrae that seemed to belong to the same titanic worms whose wale-sized corpses lay decomposing about the chamber. The whole scene was lit by a shaft of light from an overhead chimney, and a golden altar gleamed in the distance. Feeling both relieved and spooked the two friends rushed to rejoin the rest of the party in the glyph covered hall.
The party thought it would take at least an hour to try to study the language of the glyphs. Perceiving that the task might entail some risk if it were failed, only Hector, Harry, and Bobby Ray attempted it. Hector learned to read the glyphs, which told the tragic epic tale of a giant worm who wed a fair maiden before he was slain by a cruel knight that kidnapped his bride. Hector felt his mind expanding and made mental contact with the Worm God. He perceived that he could receive a helpful vision and that the Worm God would attempt to bargain with him. Wanting to bargain first, Hector asked what the Worm God wanted, and saw a small village to the south of his own, situated in a swamp, with a nearby hill covered in burial mounds. Beneath the hill a catacomb maze swarmed with undead and glinted with treasure, treasure that Hector could take if he were to dispatch the skeletons and corpses that wandered its halls. The Worm God wanted the dead to rest in peace and to be eaten by worms, and it hated the unnatural undead. Hector asked if he agreed to kill the undead if he would be allowed to take the worm ivory, and he perceived that the Worm God was apathetic about the dead worms' bones. Satisfied, Hector's vision ended. Harry the beekeeper also managed to learn the worm-sign script, and because it reminded him of the language of dancing bees, he was able to gain this knowledge without entering a potentially dangerous trance. Bobby Ray wasn't so lucky. He was unable to learn the alien glyphs, and was tormented instead by vivid hallucinations of masses of worms eating him alive. The lengthy time spent studying the walls also finally attracted the party's first wandering monsters, 3 stumbling corpses wearing half-skull masks over their faces and wearing black robes with human bones sewn on to them in skeletal designs.
In the uncoordinated combat that followed, three party members managed to wound all three zombies before they could retaliate, but none were felled. Hector, Harry, and Bobby Ray were unavailable to fight due to their studies and hallucinations. The zombies struck back against the three that had injured them, missing twice, but a critical hit killed Jeff and caused him to rise immediately as a fourth zombie. In the next round, Twinkle attempted dual-wielding his short sword and dagger before discovering that he wasn't agile enough to accomplish much with such an attack. Fortunately, Ausoj felled one zombie with a club, Jerry swept another off its feet with his staff, and Shura clove the final monter's head in twain with his shovel, and none rose again. Snow Queen spared only a moment to mourn Jeff before re-slaying his risen corpse.
After combat, Twinkle tried to wake Hector, who thanked the lad for his troubles by killing him with his dagger. Ausoj tried to calm the situation while looting Twinkle's body, and Hector steadied his nerves by helping himself to Jeff's gear.
The party entered the grave cavern and began collecting the valuable worm ivory. Only the characters who already had sacks or chests chose to carry any ivory, and only Jerry elected to carry a double load, with Tragodia, Harry, and Snow Queen each carrying only one batch. Their scavanging failed to alert any nearby worms, as did one party member's shouting, and another's speculating aloud that they could double-cross the Worm God after they left the cavern. Ausoj climbed the gleaming bronze alter while the others gathered ivory, and found a large gong and a small bell. He felt that prayers said upon the alter might have a chance to reach the Worm God, but he was more worried by the potential danger posed by the gong than he was excited by the possibility of additional mental contact with the god. He backed carefully away from the gong and rejoined his fellows, who also declined to pray at the altar.
Taking their heaps of treasure, the party left the dungeon and were unmolested by any further dangers. They elected not to explore the other path of the initial T-intersection and instead returned to their home village. They mayor felt convinced that the worm ivory would be enough to placate the duke, and the towns people rejoiced throwing a fête in honor of the returning heroes. The 9 survivors felt emboldened by their expedition, and began contemplating their possible futures as professional adventurers.
GAINS
exceptional dagger with ivory bee pommel
wizard's notebooks
unknown potion in blue Moroccan glass vial
16 gp
a fine azure gem worth 40 gp
an unknown wizard's scroll believed to contain a spell to find lost objects
500 gp worth of purple worm ivory
KILLS
1 Gray Ooze
3 Zombies in skeleton costumes
1 Zombie Jeff
1 Twinkle
LOSSES
Bovice - transported to a desert half a world away by a magical window
Jeff - slain by a zombie
Twinkle - impaled by Hector
side of beef - consumed by Lamprey Nagas
Bovice the Halfling Money-Lender
Jerry the Elven Forester
Twinkle the Halfling Glove-Maker
Ausoj the Baker
Harry the Beekeeper
Snow Queen the Jewler
Bobby Ray the Wizard's Apprentice
Calvin the Elven Sage
Jeff the Butcher
Hector "the Well-Endowed" the Con Artist
Shura the Ditch Digger
Tragodia the Ostler
Every year, the village pays a tax in harvested grain to the local duke. This year the rains have been poor, and the village cannot afford to pay its customary tax without risking starvation or being unable to save seed to replant in the spring. Our 12 intrepid heroes challenged the duke and his royal court to a cricket match. If the village won, they'd pay no tax for 3 years, but if the duke won, the village would owe triple tax. Somehow the inexperienced and clumsy villagers were unable to defeat the duke at a game he and his coterie had been playing since childhood, and the village was (seemingly) doomed.
The villagers were furious, the mayor was desperate, and the 12 young friends were chagrined, but fortunately, the village wise-man had an idea, and a scrap of an old map that claimed to show the location of a semi-mythical location where enormous ancient worms go to die.
As the only two characters with any real money to spend, Bovice purchased a battle axe, gifting his short sword to Twinkle, and Snow Queen bought some leather armor.
After an uneventful trip through the mountains, the party encountered a semi-circular tunnel mouth 5' high. The floor of the entrance was strewn with rough stone and debris which formed a ramp down to a floor 5 feet further below. Ausoj immediately ran into the tunnel and avoid fumbling his way to an early grave as he gamboled down the loose rocks of the entrance ramp. The rest of the party remained outside for a moment, where they discovered an inscription reading "moft hollee and facred palace ov thee godd worm." This was provisionally interpreted as a kind of "beware of dog" sign, as well as an indication that they were in the right place.
After entering the tunnel and lighting one of only two candles in their possession, the party followed the perfectly circular, 10' high smooth-walled tunnel until they came to a T-intersection. They decided to take the path to the left and soon came to a true crossroads, where they again turned left. This path led to another T-intersection where they could see that the left-hand path led into a small room with some kind of furniture, while the right-hand path led into a much larger and more open chamber.
Entering the small chamber to the left, the party saw a room full of broken bunk-beds with torn, rotten straw mattresses. The floor was covered with puddles of standing water and piles of garbage and debris, and the far wall was painted with some kind of fresco. The party moved to the wall to examine the fresco and saw images of skinny, emaciated humans serving platters of food to fat, bloated worms and weird worm-like humanoids. Twinkle panicked and ran to the entrance of the room. While the party examined captions reading "hapynef if fervif too thee king ov wormf" and "labour bringf joiye and falvafhun," Twinkle watched in horror as one of the puddles of dirty gray water reared up and prepared to attack the rest of the party from behind, taking them completely by surprise. Twinkle managed to stab the weird beast so that it began leaking vital fluids, and the monster failed in its initial attack. Tragodia scored a critical hit, causing the monster to lose its surface cohesion and splash to the floor once more. Following combat, Bovice tossed the room and found a dagger of exceptional quality under one of the overturned mattresses. The dagger was of impeccable workmanship, its handle wrapped with alternating strips of pale and dark leather, and its pommel topped with an ivory carving of a bee. Bovice graciously turned the party's resident bee-fancier, Harry. Jeff damaged the frescoes with is crowbar, rendering them illegible, and miraculously avoided either upsetting the Worm God or attracting the attention of any wandering monsters with the noise.
Leaving the dormitory, the party passed through the intersection and into a much larger section of tunnel with high vaulted ceilings held aloft by rows of columns along the walls. The tunnel the party entered from was at a right angle to this larger tunnel. To their left the party saw a two statues standing before a wall finished with fine Moroccan mosaic tiles, and to the right they saw the large tunnel end abruptly in a cave-in. Approaching the statues, the party found two figures standing against the wall, facing each other with 5 feet of empty space between them. One statue was an old, rusted and pitted iron statue depicting a stooped elderly man in a robe. The other was a clean, nearly gleaming bronze statue of a knight on horseback. The knight and horse were both armored in scaled robes, and the knight wore a towering peaked helm. One of the horse's front legs was missing. Jeff began prying tiles from the space between the statues, and amazingly located a secret door hidden between them. Just then, the party's first candle went out.
As the door opened, the party saw a room dimly lit by a bronze fire pit filled with weird, palely-glowing fleshy sacs and a starry sky seen through a window. Most of the party remained in the larger chamber, fearing that the glowing hunks of meat would rise to attack them in the same manner that the dirty floor water had done, but Bovice and Twinkle entered to inspect the chamber. They found a room with a floor covered in an enormous Persian rug, its walls and ceiling draped with fabric, low divans surrounding the fire pit, and a bookshelf along the wall. Twinkle and Bovice were immediately drawn to the bookshelf, and finding the books filled with incomprehensible scribbles, called on Bobby Ray to use his experience as a wizard's apprentice to inspect them. Bobby Ray thought they were a wizard's lab notes, and that another wizard studying them would be able to benefit. Bovice was unhealthily fascinated by the window. He peered through and saw a night sky overlooking an enormous expanse of sand, the onion domes and minarets of a distant city just visible along the horizon. He opened the window but found that neither wind nor sand nor heat entered the chamber. He found that he could enter the window, first sticking his arm and head through before climbing all the way into the desert night. Unfortunately, after entering the desert, Bovice could no longer see the window, nor could he pass back into the upholstered chamber. Ausoj entered the chamber, but was unable to save his friend, and Twinkle, Ausoj, and Bobby Ray watched in dismay as their friend began wandering toward the distant skyline. Ausoj mourned only a moment before proceeding to search the room, finding a blue Moroccan glass vial with a metal stopper. He opened it to find a medicinal smell. He conferred with Jerry, who had been trained by elven foresters, and thought that the fluid in the vial might be able ot help someone who was ill. He then tossed the vial into his empty chest, but fortunately the valuable substance did not end up sloshing around in a slurry of liquid and broken glass. On closer inspection, the characters found that the objects in the fire pit were more like fluid-filled bladders than pieces of meat, and Jerry tossed one into his chest, causing it to burst and coating the interior with a weakly-glowing residue. After carefully loading his chest with the remaining sacs, the reamining party members exited the secret chamber and the large hall, passed though the crossroads and entered the path that was now to their left.
Shura entered first, climbing up a ramp of loose stone and rubble into a low-ceilinged burial chamber. As he began climbing the ramp, he heard a German man's voice warning him to "Stay away!" and "Keep away from here!" Inside the dim room, he found the obviously dead body of a mercenary dressed in colorful landsknecht's garb with a polearm lying by his side. Closer inspection revealed that something had recently been eating the body. Shura was surprised by four gray-skinned women with thick worm-like tails where their legs should have been. He greeted them in a friendly manner, and received a favorable reaction. The creatures greeted him with rasping voices, revealing that instead of human mouths, they had weird circular orifices covered in tiny hair-like hooks. Jeff the butcher entered and offered the lamprey women his side of beef, which they happily accepted, allowing him to search the room in peace while Shura made off with the deceased landsknecht's polearm. Jeff found 16 gold pieces, a bright azure-colored gem, and a mysterious scroll. After questioning the lamprey women, Jeff was also able to get directions to the worm ivory cache. Bobby Ray inspected the scroll and thought that it might contain a spell to locate lost objects, but he was reluctant to use it, especially after Jeff had just received directions.
The party returned to the crossroad, and following the directions of the lamprey women, turned left again and entered a hall covered in painted graffiti and carved with strange unreadable glyphs, just as their candle went out. Fortunately, the glow of the fluid sacs in Jerry's chest combined with a glint of daylight from the far end of the hall provided enough light to see by. The graffiti seemed to bragging about "mad skillz," "phat loot," and other adventuring accomplishments in several modern languages. Twinkle and Ausoj elected to scout ahead at the end of the hall, while the rest of the rest of the party remained to look at the glyphs. Twinkle and Ausoj found a truly enormous chamber whose floor was littered with pebbles, the bones of humans and animals, and the slightly purplish teeth, ribs, and vertebrae that seemed to belong to the same titanic worms whose wale-sized corpses lay decomposing about the chamber. The whole scene was lit by a shaft of light from an overhead chimney, and a golden altar gleamed in the distance. Feeling both relieved and spooked the two friends rushed to rejoin the rest of the party in the glyph covered hall.
The party thought it would take at least an hour to try to study the language of the glyphs. Perceiving that the task might entail some risk if it were failed, only Hector, Harry, and Bobby Ray attempted it. Hector learned to read the glyphs, which told the tragic epic tale of a giant worm who wed a fair maiden before he was slain by a cruel knight that kidnapped his bride. Hector felt his mind expanding and made mental contact with the Worm God. He perceived that he could receive a helpful vision and that the Worm God would attempt to bargain with him. Wanting to bargain first, Hector asked what the Worm God wanted, and saw a small village to the south of his own, situated in a swamp, with a nearby hill covered in burial mounds. Beneath the hill a catacomb maze swarmed with undead and glinted with treasure, treasure that Hector could take if he were to dispatch the skeletons and corpses that wandered its halls. The Worm God wanted the dead to rest in peace and to be eaten by worms, and it hated the unnatural undead. Hector asked if he agreed to kill the undead if he would be allowed to take the worm ivory, and he perceived that the Worm God was apathetic about the dead worms' bones. Satisfied, Hector's vision ended. Harry the beekeeper also managed to learn the worm-sign script, and because it reminded him of the language of dancing bees, he was able to gain this knowledge without entering a potentially dangerous trance. Bobby Ray wasn't so lucky. He was unable to learn the alien glyphs, and was tormented instead by vivid hallucinations of masses of worms eating him alive. The lengthy time spent studying the walls also finally attracted the party's first wandering monsters, 3 stumbling corpses wearing half-skull masks over their faces and wearing black robes with human bones sewn on to them in skeletal designs.
In the uncoordinated combat that followed, three party members managed to wound all three zombies before they could retaliate, but none were felled. Hector, Harry, and Bobby Ray were unavailable to fight due to their studies and hallucinations. The zombies struck back against the three that had injured them, missing twice, but a critical hit killed Jeff and caused him to rise immediately as a fourth zombie. In the next round, Twinkle attempted dual-wielding his short sword and dagger before discovering that he wasn't agile enough to accomplish much with such an attack. Fortunately, Ausoj felled one zombie with a club, Jerry swept another off its feet with his staff, and Shura clove the final monter's head in twain with his shovel, and none rose again. Snow Queen spared only a moment to mourn Jeff before re-slaying his risen corpse.
After combat, Twinkle tried to wake Hector, who thanked the lad for his troubles by killing him with his dagger. Ausoj tried to calm the situation while looting Twinkle's body, and Hector steadied his nerves by helping himself to Jeff's gear.
The party entered the grave cavern and began collecting the valuable worm ivory. Only the characters who already had sacks or chests chose to carry any ivory, and only Jerry elected to carry a double load, with Tragodia, Harry, and Snow Queen each carrying only one batch. Their scavanging failed to alert any nearby worms, as did one party member's shouting, and another's speculating aloud that they could double-cross the Worm God after they left the cavern. Ausoj climbed the gleaming bronze alter while the others gathered ivory, and found a large gong and a small bell. He felt that prayers said upon the alter might have a chance to reach the Worm God, but he was more worried by the potential danger posed by the gong than he was excited by the possibility of additional mental contact with the god. He backed carefully away from the gong and rejoined his fellows, who also declined to pray at the altar.
Taking their heaps of treasure, the party left the dungeon and were unmolested by any further dangers. They elected not to explore the other path of the initial T-intersection and instead returned to their home village. They mayor felt convinced that the worm ivory would be enough to placate the duke, and the towns people rejoiced throwing a fête in honor of the returning heroes. The 9 survivors felt emboldened by their expedition, and began contemplating their possible futures as professional adventurers.
GAINS
exceptional dagger with ivory bee pommel
wizard's notebooks
unknown potion in blue Moroccan glass vial
16 gp
a fine azure gem worth 40 gp
an unknown wizard's scroll believed to contain a spell to find lost objects
500 gp worth of purple worm ivory
KILLS
1 Gray Ooze
3 Zombies in skeleton costumes
1 Zombie Jeff
1 Twinkle
LOSSES
Bovice - transported to a desert half a world away by a magical window
Jeff - slain by a zombie
Twinkle - impaled by Hector
side of beef - consumed by Lamprey Nagas
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