Dungeon Fantasy Nordlond #2: “LEEEROOOOY-“

by mshrm

Welcome to another thrilling tale of how a rag-tag bunch of dungeon delvers put themselves in harm’s way for the promise of gold… or if not gold, perhaps silver… and if not silver, maybe some nice-looking paste jewelry that we could pawn, or now that I think of it, with a little work we could pop those hinges right off, you know Erik the Scrapmonger would pay good copper for a hinge like that…

Spoiler Warning: Our heroes are currently playing their way through the back nine of I Smell A Rat, the adventure that came with the Dungeon Fantasy RPG. We’re using it as a sort of “tutorial level” for a game set in Nordlond, Gaming Ballistic‘s campaign setting. Beyond this point, there is a good change that one could be exposed to secret information from those sources. Beware!

Technical Notes

This session, we had one player who had a scheduling conflict and could not make it to the game. As a result, one of the PCs went uncharacteristically uncommunicative and faded into the background, by previous arrangement.

As previously mentioned, we’ve added a relatively-inexperienced player to the group. (“Relatively” meaning, a couple of years of occasional one-offs or short campaigns, mostly using Pathfinder, versus the experienced folks’ multiple decades with many systems.) One of the most amusing moments of the session, for me, was watching the experienced folks look through a door and recoil from the “obvious” trap, knowing that nothing in the dungeon is ever as simple as that seemed… only for “the Young Lion” to throw caution to the wind and joyously dive into adventure in pursuit of forbidden knowledge!

It’s great watching the kid get so much enjoyment from the simple pleasures of dungeon-delving: defeating a giant spider, surviving a magical trap, calling dibs on the possibly-magical loot… I can’t wait to see the first time the character falls down a pit trap.

Who’s Who

• Blixa, Half-elf Barbarian. Mute. Short-tempered. Breaker of things.
• Esen, Human Mentalist. Bald. Seeks forbidden knowledge.
• The Great and Mysterious Blaadao Bla’Dae, Elf Wizard. A really high elf. Less jolly than one might think.
• Ilmarë “Ray” Kem, Elf Cleric. Provider of blessings. Bringer of light into the dark places.
• The Kid, Nymph Bard. Entirely too pretty for this dungeon. The Kid’s pronouns are “The Kid”.
• Senderbloke Qwerthunderchugg the Naescott, Dwarf Holy Warrior. AFK.
• Slingshot, Human Scout. Has a bit of elvish blood. Scruffy and surly.

What Happened

Last session ended with our heroes camping out in the dungeon. They had been hired by Lee, a scion of a large merchant family active in the area, to clear out the giant rats in the cellar of the inn that her Uncle Merle once managed, and if possible, to see if they could find out anything about Uncle Merle’s disappearance. In the cellars, they first discovered that the giant rats had already been cleared out by a nest of giant spiders. After dealing with that situation, they then discovered a caved-in tunnel leading into the sewers, where they discovered a passage lined with Evil Runes that would keep out all but devil-worshippers. Passing through this passage, they discovered a ritual space used by some kind of devil-worshipping cult, where they fought a demon and a stored horde of zombies before cleansing the evil altar and discovering a highly-stylized dagger of apparent ritual significance. After a vigorous twelve hours underground, they had decided to take a rest before proceeding.

At the beginning of this session, our heroes had rested, healed up, then rested again. Ray used the divine power of the love goddess to transform ground zombie into edible food. As if that didn’t require an iron stomach on its own, Esen requested that she transform his portion into this sushi recipe with connections to the Elder Things that he had heard of, which he munched on happily.

Sender declared that the dwarven way out of this kind of situation was to pick a direction and start digging. In accordance with this philosophy, he went to the wall next to the passage of Evil Runes, and settled down to take extra time on a Prospecting roll. He would spend the rest of the session alone, contentedly drawing chalk outlines on the stone wall, licking the stone to get a feel for its composition, and planning how to turn the remains of the evil altar into supports for the tunnel he aimed to dig.

With a lot of the zombie-related mess out of the way, The Kid went to investigate the alcove where they had been stored. The Kid realized that the back wall of the space was actually a heavy wooden door, plastered over to give the appearance of stone! Sadly, the door was locked, and, being a master of delegation, The Kid handed off the technical challenge to the rest of the group.

With no dedicated rogue, and apparently feeling pretty safe from wandering monsters, the party chose to deploy a Nordlond Lockpick. Esen stuck their glowing, enchanted arrow into the wall next to the door to provide illumination and Blixa stepped up, readying his maul. After three powerful blows, the door cracked and gave way… only for a pair of hands to reach through and grab Blixa’s forearms!

It took a moment for the party to get itself sorted out to handle this unexpected threat. Blixa was caught flat-footed, giving the concealed attacker an opportunity to get a solid grip on him. The others had trouble seeing past the half-elf’s broad shoulders to even identify the threat, and were reluctant to shoot into close combat and possibly harm their friend.

After some initial confusion, though, they worked out a response. Ray called upon the blessings of the love goddess to bestow protection on Blixa, while Blaadao used magic to set the ruined door ablaze. With the blessing, Blixa was able to largely ignore the flame, but the attacker was not so fortunate. Finally getting his bearings, the barbarian started fighting back. His superior strength allowed him reduce the enemy’s hold and drag it into the light, where it could be identified as yet another zombie. It rapidly fell under the party’s combined attacks.

Upon examination, the zombie was found to have been stabbed in the heart by the ritual dagger they had found inside the evil altar. The Kid noticed some telltale tattoos and was able to identify the zombie as a member of the Thieves’ Guild. The devil-worshipping cult must have been killing thieves to make zombies.

The secret room turned out to be more of a secret closet. Inside, on shelves, they found a collection of miscellaneous magical paraphernalia. Blaadao and Esen puzzled over these for a while, concluding that the objects weren’t, strictly speaking, evil, so much as the kind of tools that an evil wizard might want. Furthermore, Esen realized that these were the kind of tools that were often found next to the greasy spots that used to be wizards who tried to summon and control Elder Things. It looked like someone had been up to some forbidden research. Blaadao wrapped the tools up to take back to the surface for sale to the Wizards Guild.

Esen recovered the arrow enchanted with light and gave it to Slingshot, who fired it into the darkness of the hallway leading out of the ritual space. He got a quick impression of a hallway with several closed doors and a arch forming a “T” intersection before the arrow struck the far end of the hall.

Satisfied that there didn’t seem to be much risk of immediate attack from that direction, the party turned their attention to the hole blasted in the wall behind the altar. The walls had a dim, unhealthy glow, which Esen identified as the kind of effect one finds after Elder Things manifest and mess around with the fabric of space. Blaadao meditated on the situation, spiritually consulting with “the Velveteen Dream”, a mystical cloud of comic space dust that he reveres. The Kid played some far-out tunes to assist. Blaadao concluded that the tunnel must lead to great peril, but might also offered answers that could be found no other way.

The party decided to enter the tunnel, discovering a roughly-blasted tube of around ten feet diameter, spiraling downward into the depths of the earth.

As they marched deeper and deeper, the party became more and more nervous, knowing that according to delver superstition, the deeper one goes into the dungeon, the stronger the monsters get. They walked several hundred feet without incident, before halting at the sound of grinding rock up ahead. The more-educated members of the party huddled up and concluded that they were probably hearing the sound of rock mites, a strange form of rock-based life known to inhabit the depths of the earth, as they dined.

The Kid advanced to see if he could make peaceful contact. The Kid strummed his bow-harp and sang a song of fascination as he came around the bend into sight of the mites. Unfortunately, the minds of rock mites are too different from those of mammals to be affected by such magic, but they seemed to enjoy the music itself. They left their meal to gather around the bard, throwing their hands in the air, swaying, and droning along with his song. Groupies!

The rest of the adventurers came to join the sing-along and were greeted peacefully. An attempt was made to get the rock mites to come along and help with the quest, but beyond a shared appreciation for harp music, communication seemed impossible. After a short, but pleasant, interval, the rock mites slipped away into cracks in the walls, and the party continued on their march.

Several hundred feet further on, the party came to a confused stop, feeling a rumbling from the stone around them. Three looming earth elementals stepped from the walls, surrounding the party on both sides and demanding that they halt. “How dare you surface dwellers come blasting through our realm?!”

Again, The Kid stepped forward to plead the heroes’ case. They weren’t the ones who blasted the tunnel, he explained. In fact, they were tracking that villain themselves, planning to drag him out of the depths of the earth and back to the surface, where he would face justice for his elemental-disturbing crimes.

They bought it.

With a stern look and a final warning, the elementals faded back into the tunnel walls, and the party continued down the spiralling tunnel. After a few hundred more feet, they came to a halt, first noticing that the sickly illumination was becoming brighter up ahead. Then, The Kid’s keen nymph ears detected the mutterings of a madman talking to himself up ahead.

In eerie silence, not shouting his mute battle cry, Blixa hefted his maul and charged ahead, full speed!

Blixa ran into a domed cavern, the source of the brighter illumination, while the rest of the party paused on the threshold. Inside, he found himself facing a thin figure dressed in a filthy hooded robe. The figure lifted its head as the half-elf entered, announcing that it had been expecting him. It was a human, clearly dead and reanimated, with blue lightning crackling around his fingertips and from his eyes and mouth. Blixa tried to crush the figure with her maul, only to have it parried by a blast of lightning.

The Elder Thing Formerly Known As Uncle Merle awaits our heroes’ charge

Slingshot slipped into the cavern unseen, peppering the robed figure with arrows calculated to immobilize and distract, while the spellcasters moved into position. Having been forewarned, they had prepared. Blaadao unleashed a full-power lighting bolt, then Ray followed up with a full-powered sunbolt! This was enough to disintegrate the thing’s robe and most of its flesh, causing it to appear as a skeleton being used as a puppet by a mass of blue lightning, but it would not fall and it would not stop laughing.

In the end, they just piled on the damage. Slingshot put a couple of arrows through its eyes, Esen blasted it with psychokinetic fury, and Blixa laid on the All-Out Attacks with his maul, taking fearsome damage but staying upright thanks to Ray’s healing support. Finally, they reduced the thing to nothing but scraps of burning cloth and charred bone.

While the party rested, Esen searched the remains, finding a signet ring still on a finger bone. The Kid recognized the ring’s design as belonging to the merchant family that Lee and Uncle Merle belonged to. Which must mean… Everyone looked guiltily at the remains of Uncle Merle.

This again brought up the question of their original quest. They had been offered a bounty on rat heads, and now they were fighting Elder Things hundreds of feet under town. There was some speculation that Lee and Uncle Merle The Elder Thing were in cahoots, perhaps with Lee acting to provide sacrifices to Evil Uncle Merle. There was some mention of closely interrogating Lee upon their return to the surface.

First, thought, there was more dungeon to clear. After a long rest, the party hiked back up the tunnel to the cleansed ritual space, and turned their attention toward the last remaining exit from the room, the hallway. They entered the hallway and moved up to the first pair of door, finding one sturdy iron-bound door with a serviceable lock and one wooden door with a better grade of lock. Figuring that a heavy door meant a monster, but a good lock indicated treasure, they turned towards the wooden door.

Again, the party realized they had no one who understood how to pick locks, but this time, they didn’t seem to want to risk the wandering monsters attracted by the noise of knocking down the door. This time, they let Esen give it a try with his telekinetic powers. He chose the brute force approach, blasting the lock with his psychokinetic lash until it shattered. Blaadao pointed out that this ran the risk of permanently jamming the lock, so that no one else could try to pick it.

Either way, this door was unlocked. They cautiously pushed it open, revealing a book-lined room with a huge table surrounded by heavy, comfortable chairs. On the far end of the room, a heavy black tome lay closed on a lectern.

Suspecting that the big book might be full of the secrets of the Elder Things, Esen sprinted into the room while the others watched. He made it about halfway across the space before chaos erupted. Books began flinging themselves off the shelves at him, flapping their covers to fly around the room in circles. The chairs started sliding around the floor, seeking to pin him in. Taking a painful blow from a swooping thesaurus, Esen fell to the ground and rolled under the table, seeking cover.

As Blaadao shouted “Don’t hurt the book!”, Slingshot fired an arrow directly into the black tome and Blixa bravely entered the bibliographical killing field, fending off books with his maul, sprinting towards the lectern. Esen was able to focus his mental powers enough to telekinetically pull the book off the lectern and bring it gliding to within arms’ reach of the big half-elf. Desperate to save the books magical secrets, Blaadao cast a spell of apportation, trying to pull the book the rest of the way out of the room and into his hands, but was only able to move it a short distance before the barbarian was able to strike. Blixa pummelled the book unmercifully, giving in to his barbaric opinion of the written word, but its leather binding was resistant to crushing damage. Then, over Blaadao’s shouted pleas for mercy, Ray blasted the evil tome with a full-strength sunbolt, driven by the power of the love goddess. The book exploded in a cloud of charred pages. When it fell, the magical animation effect ended; the other books fell to the floor, and the chairs stopped moving of their own accord. While the black tome itself was destroyed, searching the wreckage turned up two surviving volumes, one a magical spell book and the other a clerical spell book.

Back in the hallway, they decided to check the other door before proceeding down the hall, for fear of leaving some enemy behind them. Slingshot checked the door for traps, finding none, but becoming convinced that the room must hold treasure – after all, the previous door had been the trap, so this crude door must be the real treasure chamber.

Again, Esen addressed the lock, but this time, he used his telekinetic powers to assist his mundane, defaulted, Lockpicking skill, managing to unlock the door without damage. The party threw open the door to find three animated corpses standing inside, wearing leather armor made from human skin and bearing sickles where their hands should be.

The party faces a trio of animated corpses with sickle hands

Blixa charged inside, engaging the foul things, while the others blasted them with missile fire. Suspecting that Uncle Merle might be the things’ master, Blaadao created an illusion of the creature they had faced deep below the earth. The things didn’t exactly bow down in fear, but the illusion did confuse them for a crucial moment. Slingshot was able to put arrows into several eyes, and mopping up didn’t take long at all.

Blixa and the Illusion of Uncle Merle face three abominations, one of which is taking a little rest right now

Examining the bodies, they again discovered that the corpses had died from a dagger thrust to the heart, matching the ritual dagger they had found in the altar. Again, they appeared to be Thieves’ Guild members.

Moving down the hall, they came to the intersection. Seeing that the right turn seemed to lead to another hallway, they turned towards the left-hand door. Again, Esen used psychic powers to enhance mundane skills, picking the lock. Inside, they found another reanimated corpse, this time encased in elaborate, heavy armor. With a clicking of gears, it began an inexorable – but very slow – advance towards them, raising a sword and shield.

Quickly realizing that they couldn’t get damage through the thing’s heavy armor, but seeing that they could easily flee if necessary, the party took their time, aiming and calling shots to try for the weak points. In seconds, the thing fell to the ground, and the party advanced to search the room.

“Wait,” Blaadao said, remembering stories he had read. “Let’s make sure it doesn’t reanimate…”

With its ambush blown, the clockwork armor burst into action, dropping its sword to grab Blixa by the throat. Without the advantage of surprise, however, it didn’t fare any better with its second chance than it had with its first. Stripping off the heavy armor to try to sell as salvage, they discovered, to no one’s surprise, another Guild thief with a distinctive dagger wound.

Leaving the next hallway for later, they continued down the original hallway, coming to the final pair of doors. Again, one was heavy, while the other had a better lock. Even the better lock was no match for Esen’s telekinetic lockpicking, so they opened the door on the right. Inside, they found a blasted and destroyed alchemical lab, lit by a glowing green cloud in the center of the room.

Immediately, the party became suspicious of the cloud, remarking that if they ever saw a vaporous demon they would expect it to look just like that. With its surprise blown, the vaporous demon thing moved towards them, but appeared to be stymied by some unseen wall. As it swirled in fury, Blaadao happily set to using a spell he never expected to find a use for in the field: Purify Air. Several applications reduced the toxic cloud of demonic vapor to nothing more than a lingering odor.

The party sifted through some of the wreckage, scavenging a couple of packs of alchemist’s matches. Satisfied, they turned towards the opposite door. In accordance with their new operating procedures, Esen picked the lock with psychic assistance, while the spellcasters charged up their favorite missile spells. As they had come to expect, the cell contained another magically animated monster; this time, it was a stone golem. Having the drop on it, the party had no particular trouble pummelling it to rubble.

Settling down for a quick rest, the party planned to investigate the other hallway in the next session.

Experience

The standard award for each member of the group was 8 points.

Cool Point: The Kid, for handling touchy encounters with rock mites and earth elementals without combat or damage to the party

Booby Point: Esen, for diving in where wizards fear to tread and discovering the power of the written word