Saturday, October 12, 2019

A Fantasy Adventure – Act 10c.

This is the third and final instalment of a fantasy dungeon crawl taking place in the desecrated burial halls. It uses dungeon tiles from DMB Games and the Swords and Wizardry “Old School D&D” rules.

The party consists of 6 fifth-level adventurers: GIMLIT SON OF GROIN (dwarf fighter), ST.JOHN WILDBLADDER III (human paladin), BELWINA (human female ranger), KRANOVAL (half-elf magic-user), THE BISHOP OF BATHENWELLS (human cleric) and FRITO BUGGER (hobbit thief). The party was still carrying the dead and somewhat scorched bodies of FIDO and KOBBE.

The party camped for the night in the priest's welcome room and recovered from the toils of the previous day. Morning came, and now fully rested, the party decided to carry on exploring the dungeon below the burial halls.

The party descended into the dungeon and quickly arrived at the sinkhole. They had slaughtered the stirges and bats that lived there yesterday, and no new creatures had yet moved in.


They approached the rock fall that they had noticed the previous day. The pile of rocks was man high and would be tricky, but not impossible to cross. Gimlit examined it and his rock sense told him that these rocks had been placed there, they were not a natural fall.


After a short discussion, the party decided to cross. They were curious to see what lay beyond, and what creature had placed the rocks so. Gimlit and Frito crossed first, followed by Belwina. Then even Wildbladder crossed, but he needed help from Bathenwells to push him over on the second attempt.


While the rest of the party were pushing on, the tail end consisting of Bathenwells and Kranoval were attacked by Gorbash the Ogre. It was he who had piled the rocks to slow down any troublesome visitors.


After nasty fight, Bathenwells and Kranoval backed away from the dangerous ogre as Gimlit and Belwina climbed back over the rocks to assist. Belwina with her ranger training, was especially effective against the ogre.


This left Frito and Wildbladder at the head of the party, when Gorbash's wife, Bluzrog attacked.


Frito and Wildbladder fought a brave defensive action until the rest of the party managed to defeat Gorbash so that Gimlit and Belwina could come to their aid against Bluzrog.


Having defeated both the ogres, the party magically healed wounds and then searched for treasure. Bluzrog was found to be wearing a magic ring of protection and their lair contained 3 sacks with respectively  2,000 sp, 400 gp and assorted gems and jewellery worth 400 gp. There was also a small chest containing two potions.

The party then continued to explore and came to a door. Frito used his thieving skills to listen, but it was dead quiet.


So hearing no trouble, Frito opened the door and the party rushed in.

The room was in deep shadow. For some strange reason, Kranoval's lantern provided little light, no more than a flickering illumination, it was hard to see more than 10 feet. The room contained 8 stone sarcophagi.

As he party approached, a skeleton appeared out of each of the sarcophagi. Unlike "normal" skeletons these had bones which were bright pulsating red. They had glowing red eyes, like rubies.

Bathenwells pulled out his Holy Symbol and cried out "Flee before the power of LAW, foul undead things of Chaos!", but much to his surprise, nothing happened.


As the melee went on, the skeletons glowed even brighter every time they were hit, and when killed they exploded sending out a shower of jagged bones.

Bathenwells tried a second time to call on the gods to dissipate the skeletons, but he somehow felt that they were being controlled by a strong power. He didn't have to wait long to discover what that power was.

Hearing the fighting, Draeligor a demonvessel appeared out of an adjacent crypt. It was she who was controlling the skeletons. A demonvessel is a corpse that has been animated by trapping the essence of a demon within the body rather than relying on the more basic necromantic means of animating corpses.


Draeligor cast Fear and half the party fled with Gimlit in the lead.leaving just Frito and Bathenwells to face the undead creatures alone.


Bathenwells and Frito retired in the face of what they considered were unfair odds.

Luckily some of the party were recovering, and the party met the undead in the narrow corridor. Kranoval's lightning bolt hit Draeligor before Wildbladder and Belwina rushed in.


But Gimlit was still fleeing, heading for the stairs up and out of the dungeon.


Finally it was the magic swords of Wildbladder and Belwina that finished off Draeligor.



With Draeligor destroyed, Bathenwells yet again pulled out his Holy Symbol and cried out "Flee before the power of LAW, foul undead things of Chaos!"; this time the skeletons dissipated.

The party then explored the crypt and the shrine behind it. The shrine contained a coffin in which was the body of a warrior. The skeleton was dead, wearing rusted armour and with a rusted sword resting on its chest. On its head was a helm, but unlike the other pieces of armour it was still shining brightly after all that time in the coffin.

At the skeleton's feet was a small chest containing diamonds and gems to the value of 500 gp.

Gimlit eventually recovered from his panic and returned to the rest of the party, somewhat shamefaced.

The whole party exited the dungeon via the second set of stairs, thus avoiding summoning any skeletons in the skull room. They rested and recuperated by camping a third time in the priest's welcome room.

When they awoke in the morning, Bathenwells declared that they "really needed to make haste back to the city", so that they could take Fido and Kobbe's bodies to the temple to raise them from the dead. "If it takes more than a week to get there, it could be tricky", he explained.

So with Belwina in the lead, the party forced marched towards the city.

Monday, October 7, 2019

A Fantasy Adventure – Act 10b.

This is the second instalment of a fantasy dungeon crawl taking place in the desecrated burial halls. It uses dungeon tiles from DMB Games and the Swords and Wizardry “Old School D&D” rules.

The party consists of 6 fifth-level adventurers: GIMLIT SON OF GROIN (dwarf fighter), ST.JOHN WILDBLADDER III (human paladin), BELWINA (human female ranger), KRANOVAL (half-elf magic-user), THE BISHOP OF BATHENWELLS (human cleric) and FRITO BUGGER (hobbit thief). The party was still carrying the dead and somewhat scorched bodies of FIDO and KOBBE.

The party camped for the night in the priest's welcome room and recovered from the toils of the day. Morning came, and now fully rested, the party decided to carry on exploring the burial halls.

The party examined the "exploding secret door" and as it had closed they didn't want to risk opening it again. Led by Gimlit and Wildbladder, they peeked into the "skull room".


They decided that skeletons would appear every second turn, as long as they were in the room, so the pushed in Wildbladder to test their theory. Wildbladder entered and four skeletons appeared out of the skull.


The party rushed into the room. The Bishop of Bathenwells elbowed his way to the front of the party, he pulled out his Holy Symbol and cried out "Flee before the power of LAW, foul undead things of Chaos!". Only two of the skeletons were dissipated, the remaining two attacked Wildbladder!


As planned, the party fled from the room via the opposite door, leaving Gimlit and Bathenwells supported by Belwina as a rearguard to block the passageway.


While the rearguard were fighting the skeletons, Frito, Kranoval and Wildbladder turned right down another passageway which came to a door. Gimlit used his thieving skills to listen at the door, through which he could hear a confused mumbling.


So without waiting for the rearguard to catch up, Frito opened the door to find a 70ft long room containing 10 zombies and a red glow at the far end of the room.



Just in the nick of time, Bathenwells caught up and for a second time pulled out his Holy Symbol and cried out "Flee before the power of LAW, foul undead things of Chaos!". And somewhat to his surprise, all 10 of the zombies were dissipated.


Without waiting to see what happened, Kranoval the magic-user rushed into the room with Frito and Wildbladder following behind. As Kranoval approached the glow, a fiery Red Devil appeared and attacked the approaching Kranoval.


Kranoval was in trouble, and the rest of the party rushed in to his aid. Frito sneaked behind the Red Devil and back-stabbed. Frito was using his Hellfire Dagger which immediately got the Red Devil's attention, it turned immediately and concentrated all its efforts on the hobbit.They was a lucky stroke, as it gave the seriously wounded Kranoval a breathing space. Belwina wisely stayed out of the melee (not having a weapon that could damage a devil), instead choosing to use her magic arrow. After a hard fight, the Red Devil was defeated.


When the party examined the red glow at the far end of the room, they found it surrounded a hidden door leading to a stairway downwards.

The stairway and a winding passage led to a room 40ft square in the middle of which was a 20ft diameter sinkhole. The floor and walls were covered with bat guano. Faint rays of light hit the floor, as the sinkhole goes both up to the surface and down deeper into the earth.

There were two passageways leading out of the room as well as a second set of stairs leading up. The Bishop thought that the second set of stair would lead up to the secret door and pit trap that they had previously encountered.


As they party went across the room and up the other stairs they were attacked from behind by 4 stirges.


Having defeated the stirges, the party continued up the stairs, followed the passageway, and discovered that Bathenwells had guessed correctly; they arrived at  the secret door and pit trap that they had previously encountered.

The party retraced their footsteps back to the sinkhole, where this time the encountered a swarm of bats.


The party checked down the right-hand passageway. There they came upon two rockfalls partly blocking their passage. Gimlit examined the rock and could determine that these were actually "man-made" and not natural like the other party members had assumed.

So the party returned to the left- hand passageway instead. Frito listened and heard a noise that he had heard many times before: the sound of rats!

So the party rushed in. The room was long and narrow, the rats' nest was made of rotted clothing, straw and fungus. There were eight giant rats.


Alerted by the noise of the fight and the dying, a group of wererats rushed in from another room! The wererats were much tougher opponents.


Alerted by the noise of the fight and her dying servants, Quintessa Moonfall a female evil cleric appeared.



Quintessa waited for her servants to attack, and once the attack was finished she called "Darkness". The whole room was filled with a magic pitch black darkness. The party couldn't see their foes, but Bathenwells cast a light spell which dispelled the darkness.

Kranoval took out his wand of lightning, pointed it at Quintessa, and a bolt of lightning hit her doing great damage. It also sizzled a wererat on the way there. She was obviously not happy, pointed her finger back at Kranoval and cried "Wound".

Taking advantage of the hole created by the lightning bolt, Belwina rushed through and attacked Quintessa. Frito copied Belwina and rushed past the wererats to attack the severely wounded Quintessa from behind.


Frito stabbed Quintessa from behind, and she immediately vanished into thin air with a "wooosh" leaving all her clothes and possessions behind falling into a heap on the floor.

The fight was won but the party were in a sorry state and decided that they must retreat from the dungeon to recover, but first they looked for treasure.

The party searched the rats' nest, the rooms of the wererats and Quintessa Moonfall. They found two cleric scrolls and a +1 longsword in a bejewelled scabbard worth 100 gp. The priestess was wearing a necklace worth 100 gp and in her room were temple decorations worth 500 gp. Additionally 200 gp worth of assorted coins and gems was found throughout these rooms.

The party exited the dungeon via the second set of stairs, thus avoiding summoning any skeletons in the skull room. They rested and recuperated by camping yet again in the priest's welcome room.