Steven Moore's history of the novel opens with a defense of difficult literature. The type of books he praises, books with stylized prose and experimental plot structures, are unquestionably books I want to read. The pleasure I feel when reading a love story told via a museum catalog of artifacts of a failed relationship, or a chronicle of academic failure inferred only through letters of recommendation, reminds me of the feeling I got as a child, reading the key to a dungeon and assembling a narrative of the place in my mind as I went. And really, several of the tricks Moore mentions sound like they'd make good organizing principles for dungeons.
"Give me fat novels stuffed with learning and rare words, lashed with purple prose and black humor; novels patterned after myths, the Tarot, the Stations of the Cross, a chessboard, a dictionary, an almanac, the genetic code, a game of golf, a night at the movies; novels with unusual layouts, paginated backward, or with sentences running off the edges, or printed in different colors, a novel on yellow paper, a wordless novel in woodcuts, a novel of first chapters, a novel in the form of an anthology, Internet postings, or an auction catalog; huge novels that occupy a single day, slim novels that cover a lifetime; novels with footnotes, appendices, bibliographies, star charts, fold-out maps, or with a reading comprehension test or Q&A supplement at the end; novels peppered with songs, poems, lists, excommunications; novels whose chapters can be read in different sequences, or that have 150 possible endings; novels that are all dialogue, all footnotes, all contributors' notes, or one long paragraph; novels that begin and end midsentence, novels in fragments, novels with stories within stories; towers of babble, slang, shoptalk, technical terms, sweet nothings; give me many-layered novels that erect a great wall of words for protection against the demons of delusion and irrationality loose in the world."
A recent comment on my post about the trend of naming books for "the occuaptionist's female relative" gave me the idea that it might be fun to use these as 0th-level occupations for Dungeon Crawl Classics. The result is a varied and interesting list, different from anything I would have written myself, in a way that I find appealing.
Roll 1d20 to determine your relative's occupation. This provides your trained skill, your starting weapon, and one piece of equipment. Roll 1d6 to determine your relationship to them. This provides your Lucky Sign and a single-use magic item.
Ronja, the (12) Robber's (2) Daughter
WHO IS YOUR RELATIVE? (roll 1d20)
1 Antelope - antelope's horns (1d6, use crit table M) - bottle of antelope milk
2 Bonesetter - bone saw (as short-sword) - bandage and batch of plaster
3 Clockmaker - clockmaker's tools (as dagger, usable as thieves' tools) - clock missing 1d4 parts
4 Hangman - length of executioners's rope (as garrote, wielder can Backstab as Thief) - 2 gold coins
In a game about traveling, it makes sense that experience might primarily come from travel itself rather than from finding treasures or defeating monsters.
In Ryuutama, players earn a single XP award each time they finish a "leg" of their journey, based on the most difficult terrain they passed through on that part of their trip. You can earn 100-500 experience per trip, depending on the terrain and weather, plus a possible bonus for the most difficult combat, typically another 30-60. The XP totals needed to level up are comparable to 5e.
Players are encouraged to keep travelogues about their journeys, but I don't think there's a mechanical benefit to doing so. There is one other possible reward though - once per section of the trip, a Minstrel character can write a song about either the weather or the terrain, then sing it later under similar conditions to help out the other party members.
One consequence of this system is that it's more rewarding to take trips with short legs and frequent stopovers than to travel long stretches without visiting a town. It's an experience system that is well-suited to a game where you're traveling through settled lands, and where you're interested in staying awhile in each settlement. It would work less well in a campaign where you're exploring trackless wilderness, or where you pause at waystations so briefly that they're little different from any other campsite. It's also an experience system that's better suited to maps where players have some freedom to decide both where they'll travel and how they'll get there. It would work less well on map with only a single fixed route.
In Neoclassical Geek Revival, Zzarchov also awards XP directly for travel and exploration. Zzarchov's system is intended to reward and encourage longer journeys. Each session, each new room visited within a dungeon is worth more XP than the previous room - but if the players leave the dungeon, the reward resets to zero. The goal is to tempt players, perhaps against their better judgment, to press on further each delve than they might go otherwise.
"Experience points for a dungeon are granted based on how many rooms
you had previously explored for the first time in this delve. The first
new room might be worth 0xp, the second 10xp, the third an additional
30, the fourth an additional 60. This leads characters to constantly
risk defeat by wanting one more room since leaving the dungeon to rest
will reset the XP clock as it were. Trying to make it through that 13th
room (which may be empty) is worth 780xp now or 0 if they return to the
surface to rest. "
If we applied this system to overland travel, the specific unit of exploration that replaces "room" would depend on the kind of map you draw, whether hexes, grids, points, or something else. The most important thing to notice is that this system discourages the players from stopping in town. The longer they can remain out in the field, the more each discovery will be worth. This encourages an entirely different playstyle than Ryuutama's experience system.
The Dwimmermount megadungeon includes supplemental rules for earning experience (and money!) by selling maps of the dungeon and by selling clues that help answer key questions about the dungeon's history. I first learned about these mechanics from Dreams in the Lich House's review of Dwimmermount. In any game where players earn experience for finding treasure, setting our rules to assign prices to maps and clues creates a way for players to earn experience for exploration that fits within the existing framework of gp = XP.
The review suggests some basic considerations for anyone designing rules for assigning values to maps. "The book provides guidelines on the value of player maps based on the number of doors and rooms, and these scale with the depth of the dungeon level from hundreds to thousands of gold pieces in value." I suspect this works best when the players actually draw out a map. You could probably come up with a similar framework for assigning monetary values (and experience!) to player-written session reports, if you wanted to make an incentive for keeping diaries as well as for drawing maps.
One decision you would need to make would be whether to have the value of the map increase with its size in such a way that players get more for making several small maps or more for producing a single larger map. It initially seems to me more appropriate to make a single large map worth more than the sum of its smaller parts, but there is one reason to set the prices so that several small maps are worth more than the single collected version.
Players could face an interesting decision-making dilemma if selling maps creates a risk where rival adventurers might use the maps to swoop in and snatch up treasures the players hadn't collected yet. This dilemma is more severe if small maps are worth more than large ones. If the multi-session map is worth more, then there's little incentive to sell the map until after all the exploration is complete and all the treasures collected. If single-session maps are worth more, then the players will have to decide if the predictable depreciation of the map price is worth more than the potential, unpredictable loss of unclaimed treasures to rival adventurers.
Deciding on prices for clues to campaign setting mysteries seems like it might require the game master knowing what the all the mysteries and their solutions are. Without knowing those things, it might be hard to decide what counts as a clue, and when the players have accumulated enough clues to sell off their accumulated evidence.
Unlike with the maps, there doesn't seem to be any trade-off holding on to clues until you can sell a complete answer - aside from the general financial dilemma of whether you need money right now so badly that you're willing to accept less money overall to get some of it right away. My inclination is to say that complete answers should be worth quite a bit more than the individual clues that lead up to them.
The review provides a glimpse of what the maximum level of game master pre-planning and organization might look like. "Players can monetize exploration by recovering the secret history of Dwimmermount. There's a thorough discussion of the secret history, organized numerically, and these key facts can be gleaned throughout the dungeon from a range of sources. There are over 80 of them! Bringing evidence corroborating the secret history facts back to the surface allows the players to sell this information for exorbitant amounts of money when they accumulate enough facts to answer key questions about the world."
Travel and collecting clues about campaign mysteries are both types of exploration. Mapping and note-taking are both ways that players document what they've explored. Melancholies and Mirth has a guide to awarding experience for both exploration and combat. The key idea here seems to be running a campaign where the players still earn XP for treasure, but where the primary source of treasure is bringing documents and objects to interested organizations within the game world, rather than treasure hunting per say.
As with Dwimmermont, earning any of these rewards requires the players to find an NPC who wants to buy what they're selling. In Dwimmermount though, I think the conceit is that basically everyone is interested in maps and clues about the megadungeon - so the players can sell to whoever they like, and might use these sales to improve their relationship with key NPC factions. In these rules, certain organizations exist in every town, and serve more as generic quest-givers than as well-developed NPCs. There's nothing actually preventing giving those buyers names and personalities though, so if your players seem to prefer some quests more than others, it might be worth developing the NPCs on the other side of those transactions a bit more.
Melancholies and Mirths assigns prices to both dungeon maps and maps of the countryside, to secrets and pieces of history, to proof-of-death for both monsters and human NPC criminals, and to a few other things, including rare materials, presumably the type that can be used to make magic items. Again, the main difference between this and any other campaign is that most of the money and XP the players earn will come from exploration and collecting non-monetary treasures rather than from finding hordes of coins; and none of the XP rewards are automatic, but only occur after the players bring the desired objects to their respective NPC admirers.
A couple other bloggers have suggested creating rewards like this, but they've built the chance to earn additional experience into specific new character classes, rather than writing them up as opportunities that any character might participate in. I suppose this has the benefit of letting interested players portray particular archetypes (with their game master's permission, presumably) while leaving the primary game rules untouched.
One possible downside though would be if this turned into "my character gets extra treasure and levels up faster for doing the same kinds of things as everyone else". So if you did introduce rules that award XP for exploration to some characters and not others, I think you'd want to be vigilant to the possibility of conflict arising over perceptions of unfairness. (Although I haven't tried that, so I might be worrying about a possibility that doesn't arise often in practice.)
Cavegirlpresents an Artist character class who can spend an hour of game time to paint "an unusual or impressive sight - which might be a strange landscape, monster, magnificent chamber in a dungeon, supernatural phenomenon, or something else". Paintings are worth 500 in cash and XP. The Artist's other abilities are pretty negligible, they're like a Thief with no thief skills, or a Wizard with no spells, so maybe leveling up really fast is fair compensation? I like the idea of roleplaying a character who's an artist, but I feel like the Artist would be a more interesting class if they were more like the Ryuutama Minstel or Goblin Punch'sBug Collector class, where the reward for identifying and studying an impressive site is to gain a new special ability that can only be acquired this way.
Monsters and Manualssuggests an Adventurer Sage class who earns money and XP for selling drawings of monsters, specimens of monsters, and of course, maps of dungeons and wilderness sites. The sizable rewards for bringing back complete monster corpses and capturing living monsters might even be enough to prompt players to approach combat differently than they usually would. This isn't far off from Melancholies and Mirth's alternate experience system, except that the Sage is the only character who benefits from it. Again, I like the idea of portraying a botanist or zoologist who's more interested in collecting natural specimens than in hunting for monetary treasure. It sounds fun. But beyond that concept, I'm not sure that being able to earn XP in an unusual way is very interesting as a character class's only special ability.
When I first saved the links to both these classes, I expected I'd be praising them, but on reflection, I think it would be better to make the cash and experience rewards for painting landscapes and studying monsters into general rules that could apply to any character. Aside from a class name that can provide a jumping off point for roleplaying a fussy aesthete or a nerdy scientist, neither the Artist or Adventurer Sage can actually do anything that other characters can't. They're like fighters with smaller Hit Dice, less armor, and lower XP requirements to gain levels.
In Final Fantasy VI, Relm is an artist who can sketch monsters and then summon magical monster drawings to fight on her behalf, Strago is a magician who can study monsters' magical abilities and then cast them as spells himself, and Gau is a feral child who can observe monsters' natural behavior and enter a rage where he imitates their physical attacks. Something like that interests me, personally, far more than class-specific experience bonuses.
So if I think that XP for exploration should be universal rather than character specific, what kinds of rewards do I think should be available to character classes that are especially exploration focused? I mentioned Ryuutama's Minstrel back at the beginning. Like most other bard-like characters, they can inspire others to do better on certain rolls, but with an added mini-game of learning songs while you travel that can only inspire under certain terrain and weather conditions. In some sense, the Minstrel is worse than other bards, since they can't sing their songs just any time, but somehow the mental challenge of deciding which songs to learn, and the emotional reward you experience when your planning pays off later seems to make up for that limitation. It's an ability that's less useful, but more fun. (It's also unlikely to ever be use-less, unlike some other "Goldilocks" abilities. You don't have to pick your songs in advance, unlike a ranger selecting their Favored Enemy or Favored Terrain, so you'll never be disappointed to discover that you can't sing Song of the Snowstorm because it turns out the campaign is actually set in the tropics.)
Goblin Punch'sBug Collector is a bit like a wizard who gets terrain-specific spells each day. Every morning before breaking camp, the Bug Collector finds a random assortment of local bugs, and can capture a certain number of them. The bugs live for 1 day in captivity, and each bug can perform a single trick, once, so mechanically this is very much like casting any other spell in D&D. But there's something kind of joyful about the presentation, and the fact that your spells are random each day, but the spell list they're drawn from is tied to the local landscape, provides a nice mix of surprise and player choice.
Pathfinder Ultimate Wilderness offers a similar ability in the Geomancer archetype for Occultists. The Geomancer can learn a set number of spells of the player's choice each level, but they also know bonus spells based on whatever kind of terrain they're currently inhabiting. These aren't chosen randomly like they for the Bug Collector, and they can change mid-day if the character passes from one terrain type to another. It still seems like it would add a fun bit of variety to the character, and would make decisions about where to travel matter in a fairly concrete way.
The Cartographer archetype for Investigators provides a mechanical reward for map-drawing that's pretty similar to the Minstrel's songwriting. Instead of inspiring others, the Cartographer can benefit themselves by studying the map they just drew of their current location. The only flaw here, ironically, is that you would never not be able to use this ability, so it lacks some of the charm of the Minstrel's matching-terrain requirement. (Potentially you could re-introduce the charming sense of limitation by only allows maps to be useful on a return visit to a previously mapped spot.) For a game master wanting to add exploration-based abilities to their game, the Cartographer and Minstrel do have one other upside. Unlike the Geomancer or the Bug Collector, this sort of simple bonus-granting ability doesn't require an extensive list of possible spell effects before you can introduce it at your table.
My Friday night group recently started playing Ryuutama, which got me thinking about the kinds of things you can do on a long journey. Which, in turn, got me thinking about the boardgame Tokaido.
The Tokaido game is named after a feudal-era Tokaido road between Kytoto and Edo. (Hiroshige also made a series of woodblock prints about traveling along the Tokaido road.)
In the game, you take on the role of a traveler walking the road by foot. Your goal is to have the most satisfying journey possible. When boardgamers review Tokaido, they usually talk about how it's unusually non-competitive; there's not all that much any player can do to interfere with another's vacation. But as a roleplayer, what sticks out to me is that Tokaido is like a resource that can be referenced for ideas for things that player characters can do on a journey, like the kind you take in Ryuutama.
Stopping in a village - In the Tokaido game, stopping in a village is
synonymous with shopping at the local marketplace. And visiting the
bazaar to see the unique wares each town has to offer is certainly one
possible joy of traveling. It's easy to imagine giving each village its own specialty ware - this town sells nice hats, that one makes excellent pottery, etc.
Collecting souvenirs - Collecting mementos of your travels is a pretty common practice. But beyond picking up postcards or guidebooks or miniatures of the local landmarks, Tokaido rewards you for collecting different kinds of souvenirs on your trip. You get the most points for collecting equal numbers of clothes, art objects, small gifts, and local food and drinks.
Old school D&D gives experience for acquiring gold, and some OSR referees award experience for spending it, either in addition or instead. If each souvenir acted like a minor magical item, most players would happily buy them up, even if there was no XP reward for the purchase.
Working on a farm - Several activities in Tokaido cost money, but almost the only way to get more of it is to stop in at a local farm beside the road and do chores.
The British travel show Race Across the World has opportunities for the contestants to earn extra spending money by helping out farmers, working in restaurants, assisting the staff at tourist attractions, and doing various kinds of cleaning, from buses and boats to horses and elephants.
In a game like D&D or Ryuutama, its easy to imagine a job board somewhere in town asking for help slaying various monsters, or retrieving small treasures from nearby dungeons. There could even be wanted posters offering bounties on specific criminal NPCs. In my Friday night game, Josh also hit on the rather clever idea of the locals taking advantage of the travelers' itinerant status, by posting jobs like delivering packages or retrieving purchases at various other stopping points along the way.
Admiring the view - The Tokaido game has several scenic overlooks where you can enjoy taking in what the game calls a "panorama". Stopping at an observation point to admire the scenery is a pretty classic thing to do on any kind long journey, whether a hike or a cross-country drive. You get the most points from enjoying the same panorama from several different vantage points.
Besides just looking, you could photograph the view, or draw a sketch or make a painting. In turn, you could photo, sketch, or paint a plant or animal, or I suppose, collect biological specimens - picking berries, gathering flowers, and of course, going fishing. The other thing you could do, at a particularly lovely natural trailhead or outdoor garden, would be go on a hike-within-your-hike to take in the whole site.
Bathing in a hot spring - Stop by a natural hot spring and enjoy a relaxing bath. This one is kind of culturally specific. Some parts of the world have natural hot springs, or some other tradition of collective bathing; others don't.
What else might be equivalent to going to a bathhouse? The characteristics that seem relevant here are that it's recreational and communal, possibly a bit intimate. When I think of communal relaxation, personally, I think of something like a picnic, brunch, high tea, or happy hour. Something where the ceremony of eating is at least as important as the food consumed.
Visiting some other sort of spa might fulfill the requirements I laid out; something like going for massages, or manicures, or for makeovers. For that matter, something like trying on dresses for a wedding or costumes for a celebration could work too.
Thinking of spas also makes me think of swimming pools and gymnasiums. In turn, that brings to mind participating in some sort of local sporting event. This could be something that tests each individuals against all others (like a race), or a tournament of one-on-one contests (like tennis or dueling), or even a team sport I can think of a dozen examples, and you probably can too. Participating in a festival, stage play, or religious ceremony could also fulfill a similar function.
Praying at a temple - Stopping in at a temple and making a cash donation is another way to earn points in Tokaido. Panoramas and hot springs are free, but temples cost money, just like souvenirs and meals. The difference here is that you get to decide how much to donate. When shopping, different goods have different prices, but you also might be able to buy the cheapest item and still have it help you most (or you could get unlucky, and have the thing you really need by the pricey one). Mealtimes are similar. But at the temple, how much you spend is entirely up to you, though obviously more is better.
It's not hard to imagine pretty direct equivalents. If religious services don't quite fit the mood of your countryside, you could substitute in tossing coins into fountains or wishing wells (perhaps with a very small chance of being rewarded for the donation?) Anything that costs money, and that calls on you to be more of an audience than a participant, could fulfill a similar role as well. Touring a museum or art gallery, watching a concert or play, attending a reading or recital, watching a sport instead of playing one, witnessing some natural phenomenon.
These are all opportunities to earn experience by spending money, and to watch some local color rather than taking part in it. These entertainments are likely to be briefer. Helping to throw a local festival could take up an entire session, simply watching a parade go by should probably be much quicker for the players.
Meeting locals and fellow travelers - To my mind, this is one of the most interesting possibilities of travel in an RPG. In Tokaido, choosing to have an "encounter" is a bit like choosing to receive the effect of one of the other sites at random. You might get a souvenir, a piece of the view, some cash, even just victory points added to your score. But in a game like D&D or Ryuutama, you could, you know, actually talk to the people you meet. Instead of just archetypes - traveling merchant, shinto priest, guide, noble, samurai - you could meet individual NPCs.
In Tokaido, you only have encounters along the road. In D&D or Ryuutama, traveling encounters are still possible, but you'd expect to have more of them in villages or at the inn. (In Tokaido, the only people you meet at the inn are the other players.) I think there could also be a useful distinction between meeting locals and meeting fellow travelers. Locals are, by definition, only going to show up at a single site, and if you want to see one of them again, you probably have to go back to that town. Fellow travelers are more unpredictable; you could meet them along the road or at any site you stop by. You never know quite when to expect them.
D&D has its rival adventuring parties, but fellow travelers are different - not so much wandering monsters as wandering allies. At their worst, they're more like annoyances or nuisances. If they're "rivals" it's more in the sense of them wanting to be better at traveling than you are. They want to get to the next town before you, or be the first ones to spot all the rare birds along the way, or show off their latest purchase that you didn't get. But most fellow travelers won't be rivals. Some will be friends, some will simply have some eccentricity that makes them interesting or memorable. Sometimes circumstances might force you to cooperate, or pool your resources, or spend time in close proximity, perhaps sharing stories to pass the time. Sometimes you'll simply be passing through at the same time.
Staying at an inn - In Tokaido, every player has to stop at every inn. In D&D or Ryuutama, it probably won't take much convincing for most players to want some time in a hotel after several nights of camping by the side of the road, especially if the hotel avoids any hazards, or permits a better quality of sleep or healing. Any kind of checkpoint or waystation, any place where tolls are collected or papers are presented could serve a similar function as well, albeit with a less friendly atmosphere. Tokaido rewards the player who arrives at the inn last, on top of the rewards that you probably accrue in the process of taking the slowest path and having the most stops along the way.
Eating a good meal - Whenever I think of Tokaido, I think of a vacation my grad school roommate once told me about, where she and her aunt planned to spend a couple weeks visiting different villages around her prefecture, trying out the local udon specialty. Apparently every village has its own traditional style, just a bit different from its neighbors.
(Later, in a different grad program, I learned about the idea of folk culture, where some way of doing things started out the same or very similar within a region, but then the people who do that thing in each particular place start handing down minor changes to the original way, from teacher to student, generation after generation, so that the traditions of each place slowly drift apart, a process that reminds me a little of island biology.)
The idea of enjoying food from other places is pretty well accepted as one of the benefits of traveling. There are entire series about it on the Food Network, the Travel Channel, even NPR. Describing the unique flavor of the local cuisine is a simple but visceral way to make a place feel different and special. There might not be any mechanical benefit, within your game, to eating at a restaurant instead of by a campfire, but this is still an opportunity to communicate about what kind of people live in each place, what sort of hospitality they offer. And the emotional connections we all have to both food and the sharing of food means that a well-described meal really is its own reward.
Tokaido board game logo
Traveling in the Tokaido game is about following a road dotted with landmarks and deciding which ones to visit. With one exception, there is no hierarchy, and each landmark is as important as the next. This is in contrast to both D&D and Ryuutama, where towns and dungeons tend to be much more important than other sites you can pass alone the way.
I think this is because each landmark has precisely one purpose in Tokaido, while in D&D and Ryuutama, the "size" of each site is variable. We could think of size here as the number of rooms in a dungeon or major buildings in a town - or as the number of potential encounters to be had at each site. Either way, in both D&D and Ryuutama, players spend much more time at some locations than others. Some spots along the road will be like a single room to explore, or a single encounter with a monster or NPC, but others will be both larger and more time consuming. A small town or dungeon might involve far more rooms and encounters than all the singletons put together; a megadungeon or city might be larger than all the other sites of any size combined.
The closest anyone can come to interfering with another players' agenda in Tokaido
is to stop at a spot they might like, forcing them to pass it by and go
on to the next one, making them arrive at the inn a little faster. Inns in Tokaido are a bit like the various "safe havens" that appear in various roleplaying games, but they still have only a single purpose (enjoying a meal), rather than allowing a full range of downtime activities.
The result of each landmark having only one interaction is that this keeps you moving along the road. There's no temptation to stay at a single site, exploring all the possibilities it contains. Instead, each stop is brief, and the journey continues.
I'm not sure it's possible (or even desirable) to partition things quite so strictly in a roleplaying game, but I think it is worth trying to emulate the idea that there are many possible pleasures, each stop contains only a few of them, and greater fulfillment will come from continuing onward to further sites than from delving deeper into the offerings of a single location.
"Control
is a coveted possession. The mesmerists and skeptics all seem to want
it; at any rate, they want to consider themselves rational and
self-possessed enough not to fall under anyone else’s. During this
brief, strange moment, mesmerizing another person - or seeing someone
get mesmerized, or denouncing mesmerists as charlatans - became a way of
stockpiling control for one's own use. At whose expense? Unidentified,
enslaved West Indian laborers planters tried to mesmerize; female
factory workers."
"Mesmerists made gains in America not
by denying that they exploited credulous subjects but by advertising
that they had found a new technique for doing precisely that. Once
calling people 'credulous' emerged as a way to justify singling them out
as test subjects, mesmerists could compete over experimenting with, and
hoping to control, the credulity of others. They became businesslike
experts in the profitable arts of human manipulation. Two of mesmerism’s
early adopters were plantation owners and factory managers."
"The valorization of the realm of a culture’s ghosts and phantasms as a significant and rich field of social production rather than a mirage to be dispelled. The valorization of a culture’s detritus and trivia as well as its strange and marginal practices."
"A general Gothic dialectic is born of a series of cultural contradictions that echo the structural contradictions of capitalist relations and production. These contradictions find expression in the mediated cultural superstructure. The material convulsions of capital constantly create new spaces for semi-autonomous social and cultural relations - only to tear them asunder. Each of these is a trauma to the social unconscious."
"The initial impetus for the Gothic in art and literature stemmed from the marginalization of medieval forms by bourgeois relations and industrialization. The Gothic castle and the abbey stood in ruins, projecting both a nostalgia and fear of the past - things that were lost but also alien and threatening to modern life. This dynamic is the cultural echo of combined and uneven development. The hard fought autonomy of the small businessman is destroyed as capital is consolidated in larger units. 'Self-made men' are proletarianized - as far fewer proletarians become 'self-made men.' In the process thousands of little gothic worlds are created. In the shells of factories, in the empty union halls, in the empty mansions of declassed small capitalists, in the photographs of failed revolutions and in the broadsheets of all but forgotten sects."
"Sarah Winchester had inherited a vast fortune off of guns. She built her house with shifts of 16 carpenters who were paid three times the going rate and worked 24 hours a day, every day, from 1886 until Sarah’s death in 1922. Winchester wove and unwove eternally. She built, demolished and rebuilt. Winchester hastily sketched designs on napkins or brown paper for carpenters to build additions, towers, cupolas or rooms that made no sense and had no purpose, sometimes only to be plastered over the next day."
"Her building is a ghost story of the American gun. Winchester became terrified that her misfortunes, especially the death of her husband and one-month old daughter, were cosmic retribution from all the spirits killed by Winchester rifles. A medium told her that she would be haunted by the ghosts of Winchester rifle victims unless she built, non-stop - perhaps at ghosts' direction, for their pleasure, or perhaps as a way to elude them. Haunted by conscience over her gun blood fortune and seeking either protection or absolution, Winchester lived in almost complete solitude, in a mansion designed to be haunted."
"About half of all marriages end up in ruins. A few start out that way. For some couples, abandoned buildings - train stations, warehouses and century-old churches, often found in declining or deindustrialized cities - are proving the perfect haunting aesthetic for their weddings."
"Logistically one of the biggest issues is that a lot of these buildings don’t really have addresses anymore. Ruins also change or sometimes disappear altogether."
"This method of gazing at such areas of a city doesn’t always examine the larger social and economic forces taking place in cities. Still, the forlorn sense of isolation sparks curiosity for some couples, along with a desire to bring former functions back to abandoned structures, even temporarily, as a way to honor them."
"The world’s rich are increasingly investing in expensive stuff, and 'freeports' are becoming their repositories of choice. Their attractions are similar to those offered by offshore financial centres: security and confidentiality, not much scrutiny, the ability for owners to hide behind nominees, and an array of tax advantages. Because of the confidentiality, the value of goods stashed in freeports is unknowable. Though much of what lies within is perfectly legitimate, the protection offered from prying eyes ensures that they appeal to kleptocrats and tax-dodgers as well as plutocrats. The goods they stash in the freeports range from paintings, fine wine and precious metals to tapestries and even classic cars."
"The early freeports were drab warehouses. But as the contents have grown glitzier, so have the premises themselves. The idea is to turn freeports into places the end-customer wants to be seen in, the best alternative to owning your own museum. The newest facilities are dotted with private showrooms, where art can be shown to potential buyers. The wealthy are increasingly using freeports as a place where they can rub shoulders and trade fine objects with each other. It is not uncommon for a painting to be swapped for, say, a sculpture and some cases of wine, with all the goods remaining in the freeport after the deal and merely being shifted between the storage rooms of the buyer’s and seller’s handling agents."
Raku Chihuly - dragonborn guid artisan, 4th level battlesmith artificer - played by Emily Willibald Honrblower - halfling noble, 4th level college of lore bard - played by Steve Nehryx - centaur outlander, 4th level brute fighter - played by Corey Demic - minotaur entertainer, 4th level oath of the dragonlord paladin - played by Ben Crow - tabaxi acolyte of Nuula, 3rd level swashbuckler rogue - played by Lindsey Owyn Lavashield - hill dwarf hermit, 2nd level circle of the moon druid - played by Eli
After they defeated the masters of Castle Cragmaw, the adventurers returned to the village of Alpenshire to enjoy some well-earned rest. Travelers reported that the mountain trails were currently free of bandits. All goblin sightings showed them heading deeper into the Grosseberg mountain range. Black Iris received a number of mysterious overnight deliveries, and her storehouses were soon almost overflowing with merchandise.
For several weeks, the group members trained in their abilities and began spending some of their treasure. Raku turned the frog statue she'd found into a figurine of wondrous power, able to turn into a living frog and deliver messages. Willibald cobbled himself a pair of boots of elven kind, which would help him scout ahead of the party more stealthily. After being introduced by Raku, Nehryx was able to commission the artisan's guild to enchant his mighty greatsword to make it a weapon +1. Demic commissioned the guild as well, but he had them make a statue of his revered Dragon Goddess so that he could begin consecrating a shrine. Crow and Owyn spent time at the temple for the Nature Goddess they both revered.
All the same, they began to feel a bit of wanderlust. Willibald still longed to show up the Brandybuck family, who he believed may have sabotaged his vineyard. Nehryx and Demic enjoyed their status as local heroes, but longed to venture back into the mountains. Together, the party agreed to investigate a the legendary Under-Mountain in heart of the mountain range. The map they'd retrieved from Castle Cragmaw seemed to show one path there. The party convinced Black Iris to let them use some of her secret smuggling trails for extra security. Owyn Lavashield also located some fellow dwarves in Alpenshire, and persuaded them to write him a letter of introduction that he could use to let the party stay in any of the dwarven mining villages that dot the Grosseberg mountains.
For two more weeks, the group traveled the mountains, sticking the Black Iris's smuggling trails when they could, staying the night in dwarven mining towns when one was available. Their last stay was in Dworfsborro, only a half day from the fabled Under-Mountain. The next day they arrived at the entrance to the ancient dungeon. It appeared to be just a simple mining elevator. At the bottom they found themselves in a room filled with loose sand and broken shields. On one wall, written in blood, they saw a dwarven warning that a Mad Mage waited somewhere beyond a place called the Pillar Forest.
There seemed to be only one exit from this first room, a dog-legged passageway that eventually led to a wider hall. This hall ran to the west, and its walls were decorated with bas relief images of demons. The skeleton of a birdman lay in the middle of the hall, pointing at one of the demons. The group felt suspicious of whatever might have killed the bird creature. Demic investigated the skeleton but saw no obvious signs of what killed it. Checking the wall the creature was pointing at, he thought he could make out some loose stonework. Nehryx helped ram a shoulder against the wall, and a secret doorway opened!
Beyond the secret door, a curving and roughly dug tunnel led into a strangely slanted room. It was as though it had been build on a different floorplan (and a different definition of "down") - and it was half full of fetid water that smelled like sewage. While the others held back, brave Nehryx waded in, and was attacked by a blob of grey protoplasm, the same color as the dirty water. The ooze lashed at Nehryx with its tentacles, but with support from his friends who used arrows and magic from the doorway, the monster was quickly defeated. Acid from the ooze sizzled against Nehryx's new sword, but couldn't harm its fine magical craftsmanship. Pleased with his purchase, he wiped the blade clean.
After the excitement was over, Nehryx spotted an alcove with a statue in it. Demic investigated and discovered a statue of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The statue was carved of black stone. One arm had broken off, and it was covered in melted wax and other stains. It had a screw on head that could be removed so that candles could be placed inside, allowing light to spill out of the Creature's eyes and mouth. Demic thought this was really cool, so he placed the rather heavy statue in his backpack, determined to use its special feature as a template for some additional decorations devoted to his dragon goddess.
After really thoroughly checking the room for additional secrets, ("There's got to be more to this place! It's too weird to just be standalone!"), they returned to the hall with the demon carvings on the walls. At the end of the hall, they descended down a double-wide staircase into an octagonal room filled with many pillars. The group theorized this might be the so-called "Pillar Forest" the graffiti near the entrance had mentioned. Several party members felt an unnerving sense that someone might be nearby, or might have snuck away just as they were entering. They spent awhile spreading out across the room to look behind every pillar to make sure no one could surprise them. They saw the skeleton of an enormous constrictor snake coiled around one pillar - and Demic smashed it with a rock. Owyn also found more bloody dwarven graffiti, this time warning of "certain death" down the south exit.
Besides the way the party had entered, the room had three other exits, all of them up a staircase, making this room a low-point within this part of the dungeon. Willibald climbed each staircase to peek ahead. He saw a short dead-end passage to the north, a hall lined with alcoves to the west, and a very long passageway to the south.
Gains
100 XP (grey ooze)
Creature of the Black Lagoon statue (no monetary value)
Session 8
Raku Willibald Nehryx Demic Crow
Taking stock of their options, the party agreed to avoid the passageway that was marked as "certain death". They felt curious about the alcoves and decided to investigate, but immediately felt worried about what might be hidden just out of sight. A single burnt out torch lying in the middle of the hall increased their anxiety. Willibald use a mage hand to float a lighted torch down the hall, and light seemed to reflect back from within the alcoves - mirrors! Raku decided to detect magic and saw that a couple of the mirrors were magical, and based on their placement, she thought one of the mirrors at the end of the hall might be magic as well.
As the group debated what to do about this situation, three giant centipedes entered the hall crawling on the ceiling and rapidly approached them! The centipedes seemed especially drawn to the smell of sewage clinging to Demic's and Nehryx's fur. Unfortunately for the insects, their chosen meals were quite capable of defending themselves. The party quickly dispatched one of the creatures and the other two began to scuttle away, but another was slain before it could escape. Demic and Nehryx both thought the creatures might possess some kind of poison, but since they'd withstood its effects, they weren't entirely sure what it would do to someone affected by it.
Still worried about the possible effects of the magical mirrors, Demic led the group the rest of the way down the hall. As he passed the final two mirrors, he looked in one and saw a distorted, funhouse reflection of himself that pointed behind him, he turned to see a similar reflection in the other mirror, then turned again - the distorted reflection was standing in the hall with him! Nehryx charged the rest of the length of the hall to help his friend. He wiped out the mysterious mirror creature in a single cut, but a mirror Nehryx hopped out to confront him too. Willibald magically shattered one of the mirrors. Crow ran past, hoping the spell might be broken too, but a semi-transparent and very angry mirror Crow appeared as well! Fortunately, with Nehryx's help, both reflections were quickly defeated. Willibald went up and down the hall shattering all the non-magical mirrors. He discovered that the other magical mirrors that Raku had identified were simply illusions, with no mirror present at all! Behind one, he found a bronze mask depicting the face of the Mad Mage. Raku carefully broke the remaining magical mirror without allowing herself to be reflected, then collected the magical glass for future study.
Past the hall, passages branched off to the north and south. Willibald scouted ahead, and thought that the northern passage had only a single dead-end room, while the southern branch led to a complex of several rooms. Entering into the rooms to the south, the group met a half-dozen goblins who were amusing themselves with a human skeleton they'd turned into a crude marionette. The skeleton looked very old, and a broken shield in the corner identified its bearer as "NIM - RATH".
The goblins were impressed that the party had fought their way through the "bad mirrors", and learned that the goblins never used that hall. Upon further questioning, the goblins told a sad tale of how they used to have a good life up on the surface, but a series of tragedies had chased them down into the Under-Mountain, where they still had no relief from their troubles. Once they had a simple life, living in a cave, robbing travelers, led by a bugbear boss. Then someone came in and killed their boss, flooded their cave, and stole back all spoils of their banditry. "It's probably that darned Black Iris," one of the goblins opined, "she never gives us no peace!" The survivors of that disaster had moved into a castle with some of their friends ... until one day someone massacred and entire dining hall full of goblins, and again, killed their newest bugbear boss.
The party members exchanged meaningful glaces with one another. "Gee, that's so sad." So now the goblins had resolved to leave the cruel surface world behind, but they were troubled again by a group of Draculas living to the north, who gave them all kind of hassle down here as well. The party felt alarmed by the report of Draculas, and took pity on the poor goblins, who at this point just wanted to live in peace far away from humans. Willibald and Raku used some simple illusions to create a disco ball, flashing lights, and ambient music playing "The Hustle". The goblins danced to celebrate their newly forged friendship, and got their skeleton puppet to disco dance, chanting "Nim-rath, nim-rath, nim-rath!" in time to the music.
Eventually, the goblins took the party to meet their newest bugbear bosses, who were also pleased to hear that someone else was going to kill the Draculas and save them the trouble. The bugbears agreed to deliver "big treasure" and to avoid bothering the town of Dworfsborro if the party was successful in clearing out the area to the north. The speed and apparent generosity of the bugbears' agreement may have struck some as inherently suspicious.
The goblins meanwhile were enthusiastically and unreservedly excited about this new alliance. They explained the layout of their group's "turf", which included several more rooms south of the Pillar Forest. The party worked out that the Draculas were somewhere to the north of that. But wait, how did the goblins get to and from the Pillar Forest if they never used the mirrored hallway? What about the sign warning of "certain death" to the south? The goblins couldn't contain their laughter - "hahaha! I can't believe you guys fell for that!"
Eventually, the goblins took the group to an empty room where they could camp for the night. It was the dead-end room Willibald had identified earlier. The floor was littered with trash, burnt torches, empty potion bottles, empty wine bottles of Chateau Brandybuck. In the distance, the party could hear the goblins disco-ing long into the night.
Gains
1200 XP (two carrion crawlers 450/each, three shadows 100/each)
bronze mask of the Mad Mage (50 gp)
sample of broken magical glass .
. . Session 9
Willibald Nehryx
The next day, the rest of the party stayed behind to disco with the goblins, while Willibald and Nehryx planned to scout out the so-called "Draculas". Based on the legends and folksongs Willibald had heard, and backed up by Demic's religious knowledge, vampires were believed to be incredibly powerful and dangerous, possibly moreso than the goblins seemed to think. The party was suspicious that something might not be as it seemed.
Willibald and Nehryx asked the bugbear bosses for their bravest goblin warrior to accompany them on their scouting mission, but the bosses were not entirely receptive to this request. "Ha! No. Tell you what, we'll give you our most expendable goblin." They were introduced to Pincushion, a goblin who sounded suspiciously like Don Knotts. When asked how he got his name, Pincushion explained that on several occasions, he'd somehow managed to shoot himself in his own butt. "Now they only let me have this one arrow..."
Nehryx and Willibald encouraged Pincushion to scout head as they went back through the Pillar Forest and into the northern hall. "Hot dog! I'm the leader, I'm leading the way!" Their first stop was a room just on the edge of Dracula territory. Listening at the door, Willibald heard voices coming from inside, so they steeled themselves for a fight. The room proved to be deserted though, and the voices were coming from narrow air shafts in the ceiling. Who knew where else in the dungeon those connected to? They also spotted some eye holes cut into the south wall. Peering through showed a view of the hall with the bas relief demons - in fact, the eye holes were probably positioned to be one of the demon's eyes.
The most interesting feature of the room though was a glowing sword nailed halfway through an upturned wooden table. The table itself was smeared with dried blood, and a skeletal forearm lay on the floor beneath. Nehryx held back the excitable Pincushion while Willibald investigated. He used mage hand to try to dislodge the sword from the table. It released easily, almost as if it wanted to be held, and flew toward Willibald's outstretched hand. He managed to dodge just in time, and the glowing blade clattered across the floor behind him. Willibald heard a scraping sound as the sword dragged itself across the floor toward him. He ducked behind the table, and the sword flung itself into the wood so hard it actually stabbed him coming through the other side! Deeply suspicious of the sword's apparent eagerness, Willibald offered the weapon to Pincushion, who felt no doubt or concern whatsoever. "Oh boy!' he exclaimed, waving the sword wildly from side to side, like a toddler with a sparkler, "My very own sword! Look out world, here comes Pincushion!"
A quick test revealed that it was impossible for Pincushion to let go of the sword, although the redoubtable goblin didn't see this as a drawback. "Set it down? I'm never lettin' this baby out of my sight! Hiyah! Ha! Take that!" Nehryx further spun the advantages of a blade that no enemy could ever knock from one's hands, while both he and Willibald kept a safe distance from Pincushion's enthusiastic practice swinging.
Past this room, the northern passageway branched again, with routes going east and west. Deciding to take the much longer passage to the west, Nehryx, Willibald, and Pincushion arrived in a room with black bone-covered pillars, its floor covered in the bones of goblins and some kind of beaked snake-like creature. Two large floating brains with nasty beaks of their own and dozes of wafting tentacles floated out of ambush positions and approached the two friends and their erstwhile sidekick. Pincushion rushed forward, eager to try out his new weapon, and was summarily decapitated by one of the floating brains, which crunched noisily on his skull. Nehryx had much better success with his greatsword, and Willibald used a combination of crossbow and magic to dispatch the other.
When they returned to the goblin hideout, Raku had just finished teaching the goblins to limbo under a rope.
Gains
1650 XP (cursed sword 4th level "medium" encounter 250, two grell 700/each)
Losses
Pincushion the goblin
Session 10
Raku Willibald Nehryx Demic Crow Owyn
After Nehryx and Willibald's scouting mission, the group was certain they knew the way to the territory controlled by the alleged "Draculas" and they were eager to learn more about the supposed monsters. After bidding a fond farewell to their disco friends, the party passed through the Pillar Forest and went north, then east, into a new region of the dungeon. At the end of the passageway, they found an alcove with more eye holes, and they realized they'd found a secret door into the entry chamber. Though there was no way to open it from the side of the mining elevator, they had discovered yet another hidden connector.
Backtracking slightly, they took a northern branching passage, and opened a door into room with three graffiti-covered statues ... and a crowd of vampires?! Half a dozen of the vampires were average human sized, obviously wearing white greasepaint, and simple black bandit's outfits that had been modified to look a bit like tuxedos. Another was a much larger man dressed much the same, and two were absolutely flawless images of Dracula! The smaller "vampires" brandished knives at the party. "Blah, blah!" they shouted, "I vant to suck your blood!" One seemed confused, ("I like to eat the peanut butter first!"), but he was quickly silenced by the others. "Blah!"
Nehryx rushed the crowd of smaller vampires, and rapidly struck down two of them. The others tried to run, but Nehryx managed to grab one before he could get away. The other party members concentrated on the surprisingly convincing Draculas, who unnervingly seemed to heal every injury only moments after it was dealt. One of these fled away too, but the party finally defeated the other. As it fell, it turned into a grey humanoid with fluid, clay-like skin. Another doppelganger, like they'd encountered at Castle Cragmaw! Now that it was dead, they could see that their attacks had injured it, but it had been using its shapechanging abilities to conceal the damage.
They questioned their prisoner, who admitted his name was Tony, and that he was not really a vampire. He belonged to a gang that used to be called the Jets, until their leader, Benny, met an actress and agreed to her plan to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies by disguising themselves as vampires. Tony was not altogether sold on this plan, ("I mean, it used to be, when you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way ... but now we're supposed to just give that up?"), but thought it was working pretty well against the goblins. Tony was also not enamored with the actress, Victoria, who in addition to leading the bandits into the Under-Mountain and rebranding their image, had also started building "a really gross flesh monster" in her dressing room.
Tony was able to explain a bit of the layout of the gang's territory. To the west were a small number of hangout rooms. To the north were a couple of hidden chambers they sometimes used for ambushes, ("plus there's an honest to goodness vampire coffin in there! it's just empty though"), and further north, a throne room where Victoria was likely to be found. Beyond that, Tony knew about a hallway filled with statues that led into a larger room controlled by a trio of lions with human faces.
With this information, and a tied-up Tony bringing up the rear, the group headed west into the vampire gang's hangout rooms. They found the surviving gang members hiding behind an overturned card table. Benny leapt out to fight the party, but was clearly outmatched, and then Willibald suggested that he surrender. Confronted with both the logic of his situation and Willibald's magical persuasion, Benny readily agreed and encouraged the other bandits to give themselves up. He helpfully offered to turn over his accumulated loot to the party, and agreed to hurry to Dworfsborro to turn himself in to the appropriate authorities. Before jogging off, Benny also confirmed the layout of the other section of the gang's turf, and again warned the party of the danger posed by Victoria and her "gross flesh zombie thing". The party debated what to do with the other bandits, but didn't feel able to take custody of a group of prisoners at the moment, and worried that they'd just escape, and possibly lead Benny astray, if they tried asking them to go to Dworfsborro. In the end, they released Tony and the other three bandits, on the promise that the Jets give up stealing.
Gains
1300 XP (doppelganger 700, six bandits 25/each, bandit captain 450)
21 gp in surrendered bandit pocket change
96 gp in bandit treasure (2 gp in copper, 9 gp in silver, 85 gp in gold)
dwarven rune ring (25 gp, given to Owyn)
Session 11
Raku Willibald Nehryx Demic Crow Owyn
As Benny jogged off toward Dworfsborro and the remaining bandits dispersed, the party returned to the room with the three graffitied statues and headed north, following the directions provided by their informants. In the northern passage, they spotted a pair of hidden doors.
Pressing his ear to the wall, Willibald heard someone banging around inside. The group burst in through both doors, and saw a giant, picture-perfect Frankenstein's Monster. Could this be Victoria's creature?! Their multiple attacks quickly subdued the monster. Upon death, it was revealed to be the other doppelganger from before. It's body showed both its previous injuries and the newest wounds.
Surveying the room, they saw that this was a bandit hideout, filled with bedrolls. In a side room, they found an ancient wooden coffin on a stone plinth. This must be the vampire coffin! Nehryx, Demic, and Owyn investigated the coffin by tapping on it and then using several magical senses. Eventually Owyn opened the lid and found it empty. The bottom of the coffin was covered in dirt, with a single vial of holy water inside.
Following a westward passage, they arrived at a more ornate looking doorway. Perhaps this was the throne room? Inside, they found large throne room. They had enetered just beside the large throne; made entirely of bone. In the middle of the room, they saw a small dragon skeleton surrounded by broken crystal or glass. Raku and Demic were both unsettled by the disrespectful treatment of a dragon's remains, and vowed to carry it back to Dworfsborro after they finished with the bandits. They saw another door just on the other side of the throne, and two more at the far side of the room. The group decided to check the nearest doorway.
Inisde, they found Victoria's dressing room! The walls were covered with posters of Victoria from various plays she'd appeared in. They saw her dressing table, costume trunk, changing screen, and of course, the woman herself, and her giant horrible flesh monster. Victoria was dressed in a much better version of the other bandits' costumes. The monster was an awful stitched together mess of various scraps of skin. "Blah blah!" intoned Victoria, "Who dares invade my sanctum? Blah! Get them, Frankie! Destroy them, my pet!"
For a few rounds, Victoria taunted the party as they struggled against her terrible creation ... until Demic channeled his deity to roar like a dragon, terrifying the woman. "Oh god, we're all doomed! He's gonna go crazy! I can't control him! He's going berserk for sure!" Ordinarily, she would have fled the room, but she was too afraid of Demic to try to run past him, and so just scrabbled backward against the wall. "Please! I surrender! Just take me in! Don't let him kill me!" Owyn changed shape to become a dire wolf and kept her cornered while the others fought. The monster, Frankie, did not end up going berserk, and eventually, the party managed to put down the horrible creature.
With Victoria in manacles, the group checked the side room and retrieved the remaining five bandits. The bandits volunteered to give up their life of crime, but the party tied their hands and prepared to lead them back to Dworfsborro to face dwarven law.
They also gathered the bones, realizing as they did that this was a wyvern, an animal that was related to dragons but lacked their noble intelligence. The broken glass appeared to be the remains of a display case that probably hung from the ceiling. Demic thought that he could begin consecrating a grotto to his Dragon Goddess in Dworfsborro, and this skeleton could be respectfully interred there.
When the party and their prisoners arrived in Dworfsborro, they found that Benny had turned himself in, and the group received a reward from the dwarven authorities for the capture of the seven gang members.
Gains
3075 XP (doppelganger 700, bandit captain 450, flesh golem 1800, five bandits 25/each)
22 gp surrendered bandit pocket change
1025 gp reward for captured bandits
Notes
Before the start of session 7 up there, I went ahead and totaled up everyone's experience and treasure from their previous adventures. The totals below don't include any cash that Nehryx and Demic made by selling used goblin weapons, and also doesn't include any deductions for purchases of armor, healing potions, and the like. I did go ahead and subtract out the cost of their magic items though - 500 gp each for Raku and Willibald to craft their own, 1000 gp for Nehryx to commission one, and 750 gp for Demic to commission his statue.
Raku - 3350 xp, 621 gp, figurine of wondrous power (same power as silver falcon)
Willibald - 4200 xp, 900 gp, boots of elven kind
Nehryx - 4200 xp, 400 gp, greatsword +1
Demic - 3225 xp, 650 gp, statue of dragon goddess
Crow - 2975 xp, 1275 gp
Owyn - 1850 xp, 996 gp
The party also started out collectively owning 3 healing potions that they'd found as treasure and not used, a scroll of revivify, and a scroll of silence. I think at the start of the next session I'll encourage them to officially divvy those up so that someone has responsibility for tracking when they get used up.
By my count, each party member got 194 gp from this adventure (1164 ÷ 6), Demic got a broken statue and co-ownership of a wyvern skeleton, Willibald got a brone mask, Owyn got a dwarven ring and a vial of holy water, and Raku got some magic glass and is the other owner of the skeleton.
So by the end of all of this, everyone's experience and cash are higher:
Raku - 9025 xp, 815 gp
Willibald - 11525 xp, 1094 gp
Nehryx - 11525 xp, 594 gp
Demic - 8900 xp, 844 gp
Crow - 8650 xp, 1469 gp
Owyn - 6325 xp, 1190 gp
