The Halls of Arden Vul (ACKSen Vul?)

[yukiomo]

[if my players find this thread, please don’t read it]

The Halls of ACKSen Vul

The Halls of Arden Vul is the megadungeon’s megadungeon: absurdly large and chock full of traps, treasure, monsters, and lore. As a capsule review, one might describe it as “Dwimmermount, but more”. A vast dungeon that (1) is deeply embedded into the setting and (2) takes advantage of this. The reams of descriptive text describing everything from wall graffiti to item history to factions, to a shocking extent, are player-accessible and matter (with respect to solving puzzles, bypassing dangers, making allies, etc.).

I have no idea if this campaign will last long enough to encounter even a tiny fraction of it.

Bryce’s review of Arden Vul (https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=6633 7) is typically informative; there’s also a currently-running DCC campaign on this forum (Vul Yourself Together: A Halls of Arden Vul DCC Campaign Log | RPG PUB 37) that has a better name than mine. I’m happy to talk about other aspect of preparing/running Arden Vul.

Session I

The cast:

• Sabrina, a Sylvan Witch
  • Clive, the cacodemon she often chooses to summon
• Ferret, an Elvish Nightblade
• Frank Reynolds, a Dwarven Vaultguard
• Thesk, a Thrassian Gladiator

Arden Vul, jewel of the Old Archontean Empire, home to uncountable wealth, graveyard to a thousand heroes. Though the world is full of wonders, Arden Vul is known by all to be the crucible that decides whether a name lives forever or is swiftly forgotten. Most are forgotten, and we laugh at their misfortune as we dream of our ascendance.

With these words, and more, in their mind, an indefinite number of adventurers [read: the four current PCs plus any needed replacements or alternatives] have made their way up the treacherous plateau upon which the ruins of Arden Vul’s surface layer rest, in the hire of a merchant who plans to make a killing off of questing would-be heroes. The merchant has left them at a strange fortress-inn, the Luck in the Head, run by an uncannily-jolly man and his wife.

Some of the things they have learned, during the travel and at the inn:

• A priestess of Mithras has gone missing; some saw her being carried up the plateau in the guard of a band of pig-men.
• The two best ways to enter Arden Vul’s depths are (1) the Pyramid of Thoth, a great landmark that stands tall in the ruins, and (2) a small ruined building near the Pyramid, recognizable due its still-tall chimney
• A few levels beneath the surface are the “Obsidian Gates”, a strange barrier that not even the ancient Archonteans managed to open.

With these nuggets of wisdom, the adventurers venture into the ruined city for the Pyramid. Climbing to the top of this structure revealed a great statue of the ancient Archontean god Thoth, along with a set of baffling carvings. Although the party recognized that Thoth’s arms could be rotated, and that there were closed passages near Thoth that led downward, they could not decipher the ancient knowledge needed to gain entrance. Perhaps the mosaics on the stairs leading up to statue clearly revealed the answer, but reenacting the rituals they depicted failed to achieve that which was desired. Despite this, Sabrina’s sacrifice of gold to Thoth seemed to imbue in her an ability to discern the character of objects and remnants.

Thus, they moved next to the smaller ruined building near the Pyramid. Investigation here swiftly revealed a staircase leading downward; descending this staircase led to a vast underground chamber overrun with rubble and hints of vermin infestation. The company avoided the worst of this (a nest of centipedes) and were able to put to torch a number of large spiders without harm, recovering an appealing silver chalice. Continuing on, they found a room filled with yet more mosaics. The strangest of these, perhaps, showed a white baboon (thought to be a representation of Thoth) laying waste to a group of salamander-like creatures none in the group could recognize.

 

[yukiomo]

Session II

The cast:

• Sabrina, a Sylvan Witch
  • Clive, the cacodemon she often chooses to summon
• Ferret, an Elvish Nightblade
• Frank Reynolds, a Dwarven Vaultguard
• Thesk, a Thrassian Gladiator

The party continued their investigation of the ruined structure in the top layer of Arden Vul. Some of the things they encountered:

• a pool of sludge. Despite its ominous appearance, Frank deduced that it was, in fact, restorative when consumed.
• a giant snake in its lair. Thinking quickly, Thesk threw a fallen adventurer’s body at it, and it retreated to hungrily feast on this bounty.
• a strange and deeply malodorous old man who called himself Lankios. Lankios seemed not all there, but he was willing to parley. He suggested that the Pyramid of Thoth could be opened by either rotating Thoth’s arms to point aligned with the horizon, or to the sun. He couldn’t remember which was correct though, and suggested that the wrong choice would lead to certain death. He also warned against “the privy”, a dreaded location north of his home, and counseled them to eradicate the Cult of Set, should they encounter it. (Set, like Thoth, was recognized as the name of an old Archontean god whose worship was proscribed in these modern and civilized times.) Lankios seemed obsessed with a woman named Guivrel, perhaps his lost love, though he had forgotten most anything he had once known of her.
• a second vast room, covered in guano and inhabited by far too many stirges for comfort. Although a cleared path guarded by foul-smelling candles led through this room, past an intriguing circle of stones, the party grew concerned by their rapidly deplenishing set of torches. Thus, they chose to retreat to the Luck in the Head for the night.

Upon leaving, they met a hitherto-unknown major presence of the ruined city, a green dragon that called itself Craastonistorex. The wyrm was content to let them let them pass, although it hinted that it would henceforth expect tribute sampled from whatever treasures the group came across. (Frank’s initial tribute, a set of iron spikes, was luckily accepted with gentle amusement.) The return to the inn also put the group in contact with another group of adventurers; these had the snazzy name of Dalton’s Darlings. Their leader proved to be quite unpleasant, although he laughingly said that he knew of Lankios, and that his lost love had left the city, where she had died in a tower. Rather than the Pyramid of Thoth, the Darlings were consumed with Arden Vul’s obelisks, another mystery.

 

[yukiomo]

Session III

The cast:

• Sabrina, a Sylvan Witch
• Clive, the cacodemon she often chooses to summon
• Ferret, an Elvish Nightblade
• Frank Reynolds, a Dwarven Vaultguard
• Thesk, a Thrassian Gladiator

Having re-equipped themselves with torches, rope, and herbs, the party ventured for a second time into Arden Vul. Lankios’ advice fresh in their minds, they returned to the Pyramid of Thoth. Seeing that the statue’s arms would only be able to be pointed at the sun at the sun’s zenith, they instead rotated the arms to face the horizon. As Lankios suggested, this indeed revealed a staircase leading downward. Descending proved to be a tragic error.

Intriguingly, the area revealed by this statue manipulation bore minimal sign of prior habitation or exploration. Like much of Arden Vul, some corpses lined the stairs, but they were old and very decayed. “This is it guys, we’ve hit the jackpot” Frank suggested to his colleagues. Thesk was more cautious, especially after he found graffiti on the wall featuring quotes like “the way is blocked” and “where is the exit?”, so he carefully led the descent, tapping each step with his wooden pole.

This forethought proved insufficient, and, after taking one step too many, the steps turned to a ramp and sent the Thrassian sliding (thankfully without injury) into a lower room, lit with an unseen magic. As his compatriots threw down a rope that he might climb and rejoin them, however, the lizard-man triggered a second trap and was sent hurtling downward into the Pit of Bones. Perhaps mercifully, the fall knocked him unconscious.

As Frank prepared to descend and rescue his friend, Sabrina wisely summoned additional muscle, in the form of a cacodemon (named Clive as it happens). Unfortunately, as this all happened, three other things took place: (1) the party heard the trap door near Thoth’s statue that had granted them entrance to this region slide closed, (2) from the stairwells through which they had descended came the howls of the undead, (3) Frank saw a horrific winged eyeball crawl toward him on the pit’s floor.

The outcome at this point was likely inevitable. The howls proved to be from two ghouls, who dispatched Clive (with the inadvertent aid of Ferret, who fired upon his ally in the melee), and then threw themselves at Ferret. Ferret endeavored to escape to the Pit, but he misjudged his jump, and, like Thesk, fell to his death. Sabrina successfully descended to aid Frank, and, though they both fought bravely, they could not overcome their demonic foe.

 

[yukiomo]

Session IV

The cast:

• Nick the Bear, a Berserker
• Thorvald, an Explorer
• Rickety Cricket, a Venturer
• Augusto, an Ecclesiastic in the cult of Basileus

As the previous party was meeting its tragic and unexpected end beneath the Pyramid of Thoth, four more adventurers at the Luck in the Head stirred themselves from their morning ales and decided to venture into Arden Vul. Their stay had revealed some additional information from other visiting would-be greats; most notably, perhaps, that a number of disreputable merchants, venturers, and traffickers had often recently congregated near the lake at the bottom of the plateau upon which Arden Vul rested. They sought out “The Forum”, a marketplace of some sort located somewhere beneath Arden Vul.

Although they lacked some of the brute strength of the previous party, they had one key advantage—Rickety Cricket’s meanders across the world had left him with an impressive gift for deciphering writings; including, they hoped, Mithric, the tongue of the Old Archontean Empire, now known only in fragments by sages and scholars. Thus, they made plans to search for some of the obelisks of Arden Vul, ancient structures that stood untouched in its ruins, with purpose none alive had decoded.

En route to one obelisk others had told them about, they passed a great clear forum or plaza, dominated by a single vast oak tree. Nick’s attention was piqued, and a brief investigation ensued. The tree clearly had some enchantment guarding it—although Nick glimpsed a gleam of some sort hidden under its roots, no amount of digging let him reach it. The party moved on.

The obelisk was tall and granite, and covered in carvings that Cricket excitedly attended to. Some of these were clear in meaning: names of the old emperors, images of the sun. Others were more opaque, most notably, an inscription that read “The Beacon shall be revealed to those who bring midday life to the Sun, the Moon and the Stars” and encircled a space in which an ankh might be placed. Wondering if other obelisks might correspond to the Moon or Stars, Thorvald clambered up a guard tower. Across the city, in middle of a foetid swamp, he did see what might be another obelisk. He hastily descended his perch when he realized the tower seemed to be the nest of one or more things with too many legs, and violence was avoided.

Moving toward the swamp, the group passed the ruins of a structure. Its ebony doors retained an ancient enchantment that warned loudly against trespassers; after some minor interaction, the group decided to heed this. They also found, on each end of these ruins, two vast and destroyed statues.

The swamp proved to be more treacherous than anticipated, both in basic traversal and in inhabitants. Some of these inhabitants, a trio of giant frogs, soon made their presence known, and a frantic fight began. The frogs were fierce combatants—Nick and Cricket both took heavy wounds from the their thrusting tongues, and Thorvald fell in a hidden sinkhole while trying to maneuver himself. However, the group ultimately prevailed, helped in no small part by Augusto’s magic (a rallying of the faithful for extra HP, as well as a successful hastily-performed cure). In recognition, the other three adventurers immediately swore themselves to the cult of Basileus: “there are no non-Emperor worshipers in foxholes”, Cricket quipped.

With the frog population temporarily subdued, the obelisk beckoned. As anticipated, this one was dedicated to the Stars; it too had a slot for an ankh to be placed. After leaving the swamp, the party returned to the vast oak tree. As the others roasted a giant frog leg and enjoyed a tasty repast, Augusto sought to ascertain to what extent it might be magical. Ironically, here his ceremony fizzled and imbued him with stigma. More intriguingly, Thorvald spotted Kronos, the previously innocuous and slightly laughable keeper of the Luck in the Head, creeping around the plaza. Kronos and his companion were dressed in thieves’ garb, and they quickly vanished.

With each hour, it seemed that Arden Vul’s mysteries multiplied.

 

[yukiomo]

Session V

The cast:

• Nick the Bear, a Berserker
• Thorvald, an Explorer
• Rickety Cricket, a Venturer
• Augusto, an Ecclesiastic in the cult of Basileus

The party made its way back to the inn “The Luck in the Head”. At its entrance, Rickety Cricket, savvy stone merchant, recognized that the inn’s titular stone head likely belonged to one of the great statue fragments the group had observed on either end of the small island in Arden Vul proper they had crossed previously and seen near the palace ruins. Did the inn staff know something deeper about this head?

The venturer, with an air of mercantile friendliness, sold the remaining giant frog legs to the inn staff. This provided the impetus for a deeper conversation. As evidenced by his witnessed skulking, Kronos was aware of more than he had initially let on. With mutual shared distrust, the two men of coin danced and feinted around each other. Cricket perhaps emerged the victor, as Kronos revealed: (1) the Halls of Thoth, within Arden Vul proper, could be entered by rotating both of Thoth’s arms straight up to the sky, (2) within the Halls, factions of hobbits and beastmen dwelt, (3) if the party could identify how the beastmen typically moved between the Halls and the surface, Kronos would be appreciative.

Flush with new information, the party returned to the Pyramid of Thoth. Just as Kronos suggested, rotating both of Thoth’s arms upward revealed stairs leading downward. These stairs bore signs of obvious and frequent use: this was clearly how most would-be heroes entered the Halls of Arden Vul. “Man, this is so easy, it sure would be embarrassing to have been unable to figure this out”, Cricket quipped. “Say, what do you think Thesk, Sabrina, Frank, and Ferret are up to right now?” Thorvald responded (in a seeming non-sequitur).

Descending into the underground Halls of Thoth, the party encountered yet another Thoth statue. It too had rotatable arms, but deeper investigation was stalled by the appearance of a cheerful hobbit whose seemingly-innocuous demeanor lightly obscured a capacity of and propensity toward great violence. The hobbit announced himself as being in the service of one Phlebotomas Plumthorn, the hobbit king of the Halls. Those who sought to explore the Halls for treasure were expected to pay for this privilege and share any discovered wealth. Here Cricket protested mightily and did his best to bargain. With a tragic lack of success, the party was about to either attack the hobbit or make a run for it, when Nick revealed he could easily pay this initial toll. Violence was averted, for now.

Moving now into the Halls of Thoth proper, the party (now dubbing themselves “The Phlebotomizers” in honor of Phlebotomas Plumthorn’s unique name) discovered yet another Thoth statue (bypassed), a nest of giant rats (avoided), a pool of sludgy brown liquid (boring), a barrier adorned with the staked head of a hobbit (plausibly the territory of the beastmen and best avoided for now) and, most intriguingly, a medium-sized pyramid made of granite. In the process, they triggered two traps or spell remnants that each summoned vast red-lipped mouths that pontificated in tongues not even Cricket could understand. It did seem that one mouth’s message and language was designed to maximally interfere with the other’s, perhaps hinting at some ancient internecine conflict amongst the priests of Thoth.

Climbing atop the pyramid, the adventurers observed that its flat top featured a triangle of lapis lazuli with a steel bar in its centre. Nick threw a rock at this bar, and the group saw that it depressed into the triangle. A cloud of smoke emitted from the pyramid, and when it cleared, the rock was gone. “We need some way of easily triggering buttons from afar” bemoaned Augusto. “We usually refer to those as ‘henchmen’”, rejoined Cricket, “but they’re unfortunately a bit pricy.” Nick then poked at the bar with his trusty 10-foot pole. As the smoke again appeared, he felt some sorcery trying to pull the pole out of his hands. Quickly choosing audacity over caution, he held on and jumped onto the triangle. Following their friend’s lead, the others did similarly. A teleportation thus grabbed the adventurers and took them… somewhere else. Only then did they recall the note their predecessors had discovered stuff in a corpse’s pocket in the basement: “Use the little pyramid to access the Howling Caves, but beware of the Darkness.”

 

[yukiomo]

Session VI

The cast:

• Nick the Bear, a Berserker
• Thorvald, an Explorer
• Rickety Cricket, a Venturer
• Augusto, an Ecclesiastic in the cult of Basileus

After pushing down a rod atop a pyramid, teleportation took the Phlebotomizers somewhere else. Relighting their torches, their new surroundings were identical to the room they had just been in, save that (1) the rod they had pushed to trigger the teleportation was no longer to be seen, and (2) the passage that led out of this room was off a different wall. Had they traveled through time, space, or both?

Exiting, they entered another room, the floor of which was a great mosaic depicting the pyramid they had just teleported from, complete with its rod. Two bodies lay in the centre of the mosaic, their armor and flesh rent with great claw wounds. One of these sad souls had, in the moments before his death, scrawled “They are deterred by light, we should restore the well” in his blood on the wall. Furthermore, the tiles of this mosaic depressed when stepped upon, as if they could rearrange themselves. For now, the party saw no way to exploit this and moved on.

Exiting this room, they entered a hallway, dark and covered heavily with the foeces of beasts, its walls adorned with silver mirrors. The group discovered several small rooms, each depicting a different sacred rite the ancient worshipers of Thoth would perform; they also found a larger room with a hole in its ceiling through which sunlight, amplified by many mirrors, shone onto a heaping mound of foeces and white hair. Augusto had the clever idea to use his ceremony of magic rope to ascend to the light’s source, but Basileus deemed this plan foolish [a natural 1 on his ceremony roll, which also destroyed his implements].

Hearing screams of pain from the north and fearing attack, the party began to dig into the foeces mound—perhaps it was the well the inscription spoke of. Tragically, they set no guard and were surrounded by many albino baboons. Conflict seemed inevitable, but, by remaining in the sunlight, no baboon approached them. The ape leader, massive, four-armed, speech-capable, introduced himself as Trefko and gave them the choice between death in combat, death as sacrifice, or death after fleeing.

Only one of these options was at all palatable, so the group made a swift retreat down the one hallway the baboons were not guarding. This led eventually to another room with containing three stone faces and an inscription referring to “Thoth’s breath”. Feeling a hint of air from the centre face, brave Nick (after being tied to his companions to a somewhat excessive and potentially dangerous degree) climbed through it and discovered a set of stairs leading hundreds of feet downward. At the bottom of these stairs, inexplicably, was a marvelous marble statue of an ibis, its wings encircling a stone chair, in which sat an aged man wracked with terrible pain. Thinking quickly, Cricket lasso’d the man off his chair, where he fell heavily on the floor.

When he recovered, this man identified himself as one Anaximander. After seeking to match his will against Thoth’s, and failing utterly, he had been trapped in this chair for aeons. His attempt to gain omniscience had shattered his will but left him with scattered divine knowledge. For example, the hated Settites dwelt quite close by (albeit through tens of feet of thick stone wall, so further exploration was required). Thinking that a more cautious request of this statue could be beneficial, Augusto and Thorvald each sat in the chair and made requests of the Presence. It possessed them and spoke Truth, leaving them diminished (but sane).

Augusto asked what Thoth sought, and was commanded to “Restore to me my desecrated statue” (none of the statues of Thoth they had thus seen were overly damaged). Augusto then quipped to Anaximander “You should try this statue thing again, it’s really not that bad”; the poor sage vomited from horror. Thorvald was more ambitious and asked what lay beyond the infamous Obsidian Gates (a famed landmark of Arden Vul). Thoth was less clear here, saying “The inhabitants of the Shining Beacon of Glorious Heaven left rods, one platinum and one gold, that open the way”.

Neither of these questions addressed the more pressing issue: how could the party ever escape and return to the surface? Augusto’s cheerful suggestion to force Anaximander back upon the throne and query Thoth was ignored, for now.

 

[yukiomo]

Session VII

The cast:

• Nick the Bear, a Berserker
• Thorvald, an Explorer
• Rickety Cricket, a Venturer
• Augusto, an Ecclesiastic in the cult of Basileus

The party was trapped beneath the Howling Caves, inhabited by fierce albino baboons and with no obvious hope of escape in sight. Thus, Augusto carefully sat back in what he called “the crazy chair” and communed with Thoth. Forgoing any attempt at negotiation, Augusto offered his services to the forgotten god. Thoth accepted his worship and conjured for him from nothing a new set of theurgic implements: a silver ankh. Seeing the divine tides turn, Nick immediately converted to the cult of Thoth (after having only yesterday just as immediately converted to the cult of Basileus). Thorvald and Cricket were more cautious in throwing their belief behind Thoth: “He seems like a great guy and all, but are we sure we should all entrust him with our souls?” The proselytizers and proselytize-ees thus embarked again up the stairs, leaving Anaximander behind and saying they’d return for him after they cleared the area.

Upon reentering the Howling Caves proper (climbing the 150’ of stairs upward and tiring their legs greatly), the party saw no baboons. They thus moved to return to the large room with a hole in its ceiling through which mirrored light shone. As before, their plan was to dig up the heaping mass of accumulated foeces under this hole in hopes of finding a great mirror that would bring light to the entire level and drive away the baboons. Fortuna cruelly laughed at their plan though: the party was en route ambushed by four albino baboons that sought only blood and pain. Initially, their defensive line held, with Cricket and Thorvald landing skillful blows. However, when Nick’s famed skeggøx missed a crucial slash, a baboon clawed his face and cleaved through to Cricket. Things were undone.

Thorvald sought to escape to the mosaic room, but the baboons gave chase and slew him at the door. He had failed to make it as far as the bodies they had seen in the mosaic room.

The cast:

• Arachnick, a Fighter
• Brunhilde, a Bladedancer
• Mungo Jerry, an Elvish Enchanter
• Hamlin Dawnshield, a Paladin

The following morning, Arachnick awoke at The Luck in the Head and decided (with all of his 7 Wisdom) that Thoth had visited him in his sleep and shown him visions of four would-be heroes venturing into the Halls of Arden Vul, swearing fealty to Thoth, and then being overcome by baboons in the Howling Caves. “The god is telling us to return to the Howling Caves and rescue our predecessors!” he opined to his peers; speaking for the group’s remainder, Brunhilde decreed “sure why not let’s do it”.

Successfully traversing the Pyramid of Thoth, this new party entered the Halls of Thoth, where Mungo Jerry’s glamorous aura enabled a much more positive interaction with the hobbit bandits that laired near this level’s entrance. MJ easily negotiated a “License to Adventure” from this faction. The lead hobbit cheerfully communicated the lay of the land: to the south, beastmen; to the west, Settites; to the north, scattered undead; to the east, the hobbits themselves. He also had some familiarity with the small pyramid that had led to the previous party’s demise: “Those few we know of who have escaped the Howling Caves have used another portal shrouded in darkness, which took them to the borderlands of the beastmen territory.” Should these heroes prove successful in their initial ventures, the hobbit suggested an alliance with his master, the infamous Plumthorn. He also hinted that his master possessed the secret of “Mortality”, with which he could slay all his foes.

The party continued their plan to return to the Howling Caves, when they passed by the second statue of Thoth in the Halls and gave it a closer look than did their predecessors. The Thoth-worshipping Arachnick got “good vibes” when looking at it, and so the party pushed both of its arms upward, as they had done to the statue above to gain entrance to the Halls. This was either an excellent idea, or a deeply tragic one. Regardless, trapdoors opened around statue and sent the four adventuring plummeting hundreds of feet downward into an underground lake shrouded in darkness. “This is it, we’ve definitely found the dungeon’s lowest level; we’re gonna be so rich”, Arachnick triumphantly proclaimed. Only time would tell if he was right.

 

[yukiomo]

Session VIII

The cast:

• Arachnick, a Fighter
• Brunhilde, a Bladedancer
• Mungo Jerry, an Elvish Enchanter
• Hamlin Dawnshield, a Paladin

The winding chute deposited the party in a shallow pool, hundreds of feet below the Halls of Thoth. All was pitch black, and the air was oppressively damp and humid. Lighting a torch, the group saw they were on the shore of a vast underground lake, inside an even vaster cavern. Behind them, a section of the cavern wall was polished to an unusual polish. Looking upward, they saw that a wide twenty foot passage opened up directly over this polished wall.

Mungo Jerry sang a song that enchanted her rope, and it reached upward toward this passage’s entrance. Brunhilde deftly climbed up and looked around. The passage stretched into the darkness, periodically adorned with pairs of thick stone pillars. The pillars glistened with patches of mucous or oil of some sort, and they gave Brunhilde the proper heeby-jeebies: something about them was inherently evil. Below, the party heard splashing of some sort in the water. Although they saw nothing in the water, the pillars seemed less immediately threatening, and everyone clambered up the rope.

Walking down the hallway, they were accosted by multiple fat large toads. Despite their ominous croaking, Mungo Jerry’s affinity for beasts indicated the toads bore them no ill will. Hamlin had studied history while training to be a paladin: he suspected this room to be the famed Hall of Forty Pillars, which was said to lead to the even more famed Obsidian Gates. “We’re gonna be so rich”, Arachnick reiterated.

A fork in this grand hallway led to an octagonal room, its great bronze doors having in the past been forced open, their locks scorched apart. Inside the room, there was a surprisingly-new statue of a human man, garbed in Archontean symbols of authority (rods, a toga, etc.). A plaque in front read “Adrienic, Governor of Arden Vul, 2759 AEP” [250 years ago]. From rumors they had heard while traveling to Arden Vul, Adrienic had led an expedition to reclaim Arden Vul for the New Archontean Empire. He had failed, but the details escaped common knowledge. This, evidently, was where he had been laid to rest.

Mungo Jerry’s elvish eyes noticed drag marks near Adrienic’s statue, as if it could be moved. Hamlin thus pushed the statue aside, revealing a vertical cavity with a shroud-wrapped corpse. It was festooned with treasure, including a wax tablet written by none other (it seemed) than Lankios, the mad human hermit the first party had encountered in Session II. “Man, Thesk & co. said Lankios looked old, but they didn’t say he looked centuries old. This is pretty weird.”, Brunhilde noted. The tablet recounted the fall of Adrienic’s briefly-resurgent Arden Vul fiefdom, in battle against a horde of trolls.

Most mysteriously, Adrienic’s corpse had with it a severed hand made of a flesh-colored but iron-tough unknown material, with an azure eye in its palm. It would have been unlike anything the party had ever seen before, except that a set of oval-shaped double-doors on the opposite side of this octagonal room appeared to be made of the same material. These doors lacked any handles or keyholes, and the party was unable to find anyway to open it.

Hamlin proceeded to work through the other doors in this octagonal room. Each was small and contained a sarcophagus dedicated to another key member of Adrienic’s expedition. None led anywhere. Around this time, Arachnick noticed movement in the Hall of Forty Pillars: four ghouls, ravenous and horrid. They had caught the party’s scent but were thus far reluctant to launch a concerted attack on the octagonal room.

Thinking that escape could be effected by opening the oval doors with the hand item, Mungo Jerry looked for some mechanism of use. She discovered a button on this hand; when pressed, an azure beam shot from its eye. The beam did nothing when applied to the oval doors; however, when aimed at a ghoul, it, improbably, shrunk the undead abomination to three inches in height. “Honey, we shrunk the ghouls!”, and the tiny corpse skittered off in fright.

Tragically, this last shot seemed to have exhausted the energies in the hand. With no other avenue of escape, the party slowly advanced toward the ghouls. Despite additional help (Brunhilde’s summoned mane demon, whom she named Siegfried), Fortune turned decisively against the party. Arachnick and Hamlin were girded in the strongest steel their coin could buy, but strike after ghoulish strike found the gaps in their armor. The two warriors inevitably succumbed to paralysis. Brunhilde and Mungo Jerry soon followed them.

 

[thebigh]

Interesting read, and welcome to the Pub!

 

[S'mon]

If I was a player I'd be getting a bit discouraged around now.
I only had a couple PC deaths across two player groups in around 14 sessions. But I was using 5e D&D and started them at 3rd level, both of which helped I think. I don't think they ever got trapped or teleported, having that occur repeatedly seems really brutal.

 

[yukiomo]

Thanks all! Hoping that an actual play first post isn't overly gauche. I admit I only found this forum from the "Vul yourself together" thread, but it seems neat.

 

[yukiomo]

If I was a player I'd be getting a bit discouraged around now.
I only had a couple PC deaths across two player groups in around 14 sessions. But I was using 5e D&D and started them at 3rd level, both of which helped I think. I don't think they ever got trapped or teleported, having that occur repeatedly seems really brutal.

I am eternally surprised at how persistent my players are: this has definitely been much more of a meatgrinder than any of us expected. The Session VIII TPK was especially tragic, as the group had just found their first big treasure cache that likely would have led to a level-up.

With only level 1 and 2 characters, finding an "entry point" into Arden Vul is definitely challenging. Having actually read the module, I as the GM see that it probably makes the most sense to "clear out" the basement before doing anything else, but that's non-obvious to information-sparse players. I don't know 5e at all, but even a level 3 ACKS party would have much more diverse viability.

 

[Bunch]

Thanks all! Hoping that an actual play first post isn't overly gauche. I admit I only found this forum from the "Vul yourself together" thread, but it seems neat.

No issues with an actual play as a first post. I'm interested in both Vul and ACKS so enjoying the thread.

 

[Triumvir]

Really enjoying the thread.

None of my business, but are you / your other players cool that someone keeps picking names for their PCs like "Mungo Jerry"?? (I assume it's always the same person.) Everyone else seems to go reasonably serious.

 

[yukiomo]

Really enjoying the thread.

None of my business, but are you / your other players cool that someone keeps picking names for their PCs like "Mungo Jerry"?? (I assume it's always the same person.) Everyone else seems to go reasonably serious.

I see the primary goals of a PC name as being (1) something the players and judge can refer to unambiguously during play, and (2) something the player in question likes to say. In my personal headcanon, Mungo Jerry etc. are approximate but appropriate English translations of nicknames that make sense to the people of Arden Vul, similarly to how Gene Wolfe uses archaic Latinate words to translate some terms from Severian's account in the Book of the New Sun. I've tried to enforce setting consistency in PC names before, and I can't say it's ever added much (to the games I've been in; this is very much a YMMV situation).

Then as far as other players choosing more "serious" names, note that Sabrina was the (teenage) witch, and Arachnick was a horrible play on "arachnid" and the level one fighter's title ("man at eight arms and legs").

 

[Triumvir]

Sure, was just curious!

 

[yukiomo]

Session XI

The cast:

• Teddy, a Paladin
• Aaron Mahnke, a Loremaster
  • Squeeze, the mane he summons as needed
• Hans Moleman, a Dwarven Vaultguard
• Garnell, a Fighter
• Torvi, a Barbarian

Five adventurers awoke in the morning in Cronos’ inn. One of them, Garnell, had just had a nasty dream in which a laughing crocodile gleefully watched four would-be-heroes be devoured by ghouls, after descending deep into Arden Vul. “Well I guess it’s time to go into Arden Vul.” The party recalled a rumor that a priestess of Mithras had been kidnapped, likely by the beastmen of Arden Vul, and thus planned to seek out the beastmen.

Within the Halls of Thoth, the adventurers encountered the lairing hobbits of Phlebotomas Plumthorn. This instantiation of the party was particularly uncharismatic: when pressed to pay the toll, they glared at the hobbits and did nothing. The adventurers and hobbits whispered amongst themselves for some time, making frantic plans, when, finally, the hobbit leader beckoned a hero over. “We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, let us palaver and make peace”. Teddy, knight of justice, walked over slowly. He detected evil, glanced at Garnell, and then violently slashed at the hobbit leader. Melee ensued.

Although the hobbits outnumbered the heroes, the sturdy mail and plate of the party meant that no hobbit landed a single blow in combat’s first round. When Aaron summoned his mane, Squeeze, the numbers were now even, and the outcome less in doubt. After taking multiple fierce blows, the hobbit leader quaffed a potion and vanished, contributing little to his men’s morale. After Aaron unleashed a slumber ceremony from his trinket, and with no reinforcements forthcoming, the remaining hobbits surrendered. Plumthorn was a terrifying master, but he was less likely to murder them at this very moment.

The cowed hobbits sought to gain favor with the party by revealing Plumthorn counted in his service a wizard of unknown power, as well as claiming a beastman had died in the nearby “chimney house” [level 1: the basement] while carrying a powerful spear. The party felt unsure whether to trust this, so they explored the hobbits’ room further. Hans confirmed that this room’s statue of Thoth had movable arms, and he noted a stone chest in front of it. He ordered a hobbit to open the chest: “But I don’t want to do that!” “We’re all doing things we don’t want to right now,” the dwarf declared. Regardless, the chest was empty, though Aaron suspected something beneficial would happen were it to be filled with magical writing. The hobbit survivors were left unhurt, and the party continued on.

Moving south into unexplored passageways, they found a seemingly innocuous wall with a worn baboon mosaic. Garnell, who had moonlit as an art student while studying the blade, discovered that the mosaic concealed a secret door with stairs leading hundreds of feet downward. Remarkably, at the bottom of these stairs lay the same underground lake the previous party had discovered. Avoiding the Hall of Forty Pillars for now, they attracted the attention of a massively tall, gaunt, creature that called itself Gog. (Hans’ attempt to disguise their arrival at the lake with a mimicked frog croak was amusingly ineffective.)

Fortunately, Gog proved friendly, and even chatty. Above all, he wanted food: the flesh of beastmen was to him maximally delectable. He claimed to know the secrets of the beastmen, and their mother, one Deino, but he refused to say more: “I don’t like you enough yet.” When asked why the party should serve him, he was similarly straightforward: “You should bring me flesh because I’m bigger and stronger than you.” The heroes were delighted by this new ally of debatable loyalty. Teddy: “You make a great point”. Hans: “I like Gog a lot, he’s so open”. Aaron: “He communicates so clearly too”. Gog also made the mysterious claim that, beneath his lake, inhuman horrors dwelt; he then cheerfully rowed off into the darkness.

Gog wanted beastmen flesh. The priestess of Mithras had been taken by beastmen. Fortuna was, for once, being clear in her guidance. The party climbed back up the stairs to the Halls of Thoth and moved several rooms southward to the barrier a previous party had discovered. The hobbit head staked in front of it, as well as the claims of Plumthorn’s servants, suggested this was where the beastmen were.

 

[Gringnr]

Thanks all! Hoping that an actual play first post isn't overly gauche. I admit I only found this forum from the "Vul yourself together" thread, but it seems neat.

This is objectively the best RPG forum in existence, despite the fact that I post here.

 

[yukiomo]

[the previous session was of course Session IX, not Session XI]

Session X

The cast:

• Teddy, a Paladin
• Aaron Mahnke, a Loremaster
  • Squeeze, the mane he summons as needed
• Hans Moleman, a Dwarven Vaultguard
• Garnell, a Fighter
• Torvi, a Barbarian

After busting down a stuck door, the party encountered a group of beastmen digging through trash in a room filled with pillars. True to their name, they were humanoids with the heads of animals—goats, dogs, and such. Perhaps surprisingly, they were garbed in high-quality military gear and possessed soldiers’ discipline. Even more surprisingly, they spoke eloquent Archontean, albeit in a strange and antiquated style.

These beastmen were not immediately hostile. They viewed the hobbits as enemies but lacked the authority to initiate sustained action against them. They claimed to need or want little, but they were interested in the locations of mushroom fields. Thinking of a different hungry entity (Gog’s request for beastman flesh), Garnell told them he knew of such mushrooms and invited them to follow him. “We’ll consult our leadership and reach a decision; return to us in a day” was the response. Torvi also learned that their leader, Mother Deino, sought out beautiful men and women to be her “special guests”. None of this party [a single +0 Charisma in Teddy, everyone else at -1 or -2] qualified. Further questioning about the ultimate fate of these guests led to silence and suspicion.

Further exploration of the beastman territory would surely result in violence, so the party retreated to the north. Here, Torvi heard screams of hobbit pain. Creeping forward, she saw one of the hobbits the party had left alive (the primary one they’d talked to in fact) being slowly and painfully tortured by a dangerous-looking hobbit. “This is what you get for surrendering”, the hobbit leader was saying; turning to the other hobbits the party had left alive, he said “And I haven’t decided what I’m doing with you yet”. Torvi returned to the party. “I feel kind of bad, we clearly got those guys in trouble with their boss. Should we help them? Maybe we could score a hobbit army in the process!” This was tempting, but discretion proved the better part of valor for now.

Continuing to investigate the Halls of Thoth, the group found a pool; despite its turgid appearance and horrid smell, its contents could heal wounds. More intriguing was “The Chamber of Painful Knowledge”. When Garnell grasped the onyx pillar in it, he felt a divine mind intrude on him and ask for a question. “How can we calm the hearts of animals corrupted by Set?” he inquired. Thoth showed him a grey man surrounded by howling baboons, sitting upon a ruby throne. “Kill Gerrilad, and you shall receive my treasure.” Hans broke in: “Great, we just need to kill this Gerrilad guy and all his baboons, that’s something anyone could do!” Torvi also sought to query Thoth, but the pillar rejected her for reasons unknown. Hans thus asked her question: “What’s Deino doing with her ‘guests’?” Thoth revealed a beautiful witch ruling over a court of beastmen and ensorcelling beautiful visitors. Some visitors were turned into animals and played with; others were invited into her bedroom and… played with. In both cases, receiving Thoth’s knowledge was painful to Garnell and Hans; the healing pool proved invaluable.

While the others were healing, Torvi saw a strange metal dragonfly floating toward them. [The party had heard rumors of dragonflies like this while traveling to Arden Vul; they were said to be mostly harmless]. From it emitted a man’s voice, in a tinny tone, asking what wondrous information they had to offer. “Well the hottest gossip I know is what’s going on with Deino”, Torvi volunteered. The voice replied “I already knew this! But I appreciate your openness, perhaps I can help you in exchange. What would you like to know?” The conversation took a turn for the ominous when it added: “Of course, bargains must be sealed in blood!” A needle attached to a mechanical arm emerged from a hidden compartment in the dragonfly. Torvi deliberated for a surprisingly short amount of time and volunteered her blood. Torvi asked about the rods needed to open the Obsidian Gates. Surprisingly, the dragonfly knew something: “The nearest one is in possession of Lankios.” [the mad hermit living in a ruined room’s basement] “Man, that guy again, he’s involved in everything?!” was the party’s response. The odd dragonfly floated away, repeating “bargains have been sealed in blood!” intermittently.

In another room, the adventurers discovered a small square of white glass: Aaron suspected it to be enchanted and pocketed it. A secret passage from this room led to another room with pillars and scattered with bodies (including those of beastmen). When Squeeze the Mane was sent into this room, it was torn limb from limb by a bizarre floating octopus-like creature. Not wanting to expose himself to danger, Garnell had the clever idea to use his grappling hook and drag the beastman body away from the octopus. The party took this corpse to Gog. The gaunt giant tore the corpse apart and devoured it, but was not satisfied with the quality of the food. “Would you rather have a living beastman? We could arrange that” Garnell said. Gog was receptive.

Night was approaching, so the group retreated now to “The Luck in the Head”. Torvi asked the innkeeper Kronos where mushrooms might be found and learned that the Halls of Thoth were said to feature a large cavern covered in mushrooms to their south. Hans and Garnell met with a newly-arrived other party of adventurers, the so-called “Five Fingers of Destiny”. Their leader, Roger, was gung-ho about everything but, phrased charitably, knew nothing. He intended to lead his group to the donjon in the surface ruins the following morning and offered the party one of the advertising posters for his group he’d had made in the city of Noviomagus. Hans and Garnell were cagey and told Roger little of what they knew of Arden Vul. Torvi was more forthcoming and took one of the Fingers, a blond beefcake named Hixonius, aside: “Just so you know, you’re pretty hot. You should really stay clear of the beastmen.” Time would tell if her warning would be heeded.

 

[yukiomo]

Session XI

The cast:

• Teddy, a Paladin
• Aaron Mahnke, a Loremaster
  • Squeeze, the mane he summons as needed
• Hans Moleman, a Dwarven Vaultguard
• Garnell, a Fighter
• Torvi, a Barbarian

A new day dawned, and Aaron sought to replenish his spent trinkets. Tragically, the ever-watching stars and abstract entities that governed his powers did not favor him this morning; they destroyed his eldritch implements and, miraculously, left him only feeling slightly more dour than before. [two natural 1s on his ceremony throw triggered a minor mishap that drained his Charisma by 1 point, down to 3] There was a question of whether to return to Noviomagus and seek out its loremasters for replacement implements, but Teddy volunteered to pay the local merchant inflated prices to prevent a journey of uncertainty outcome.

In this excitement, the party had missed the departure of the Five Fingers of Destiny; when they set out some hours later, they chose to stop by the ruined city’s donjon and see how the Fingers fared. In a word, the Fingers had fared poorly. Hixonius, the blond beefcake Torvi had sought to protect from Deino’s depredations, was the only survivor: he had dragged himself away from the donjon’s bridge. Although his chest and eyes had been horrifically smashed, Aaron’s ministrations and Teddy’s divine powers were sufficient to restore him to a vestige of consciousness. As the savaged, blind man begged to be taken to safety, Garnell interjected with a calm “It’s time to interrogate him”. Hixonius knew little, and Garnell mercifully did not pry. Eldritch statues within the donjon had animated and slain all the Fingers but Hixonius; his leader Roger was surely dead. Satisfied, the party returned him to the Luck in the Head, to be (hopefully) nursed back to health. (None of them offered to pay for his stay, but none would expect such charity from strangers.) They took the time to investigate the inn’s titular Head statue. It was masterfully crafted, of the bygone era of Arden and Vul, and very solid solid; no one hypothesized who it might be a statue of.

Returning to the Halls of Thoth, the party chose to dash through the territory of the hobbits, in hope of keeping their appointment with the beastmen. They were successful and picked up a trio of beastman scouts, who they promised to take to the mushrooms their mistress sought. [The goal here was to cheerfully feed these beastmen to Gog and then receive some award in return] They discovered, however, that the relationship between the beastmen and Gog was more complicated than they had expected. Both were aware of each other, and they’d signed a pact of mutual non-aggression that forbade the beastmen entrance into Gog’s territory. Gog, though he clearly sought beastmen flesh above all other foods, was unwilling to invite retribution by attacking beastmen of such clear provenance. The party schemed and strategized, but ultimately could not devise a means to please Gog, so they and the beastmen returned to the Halls of Thoth.

This failed attempt at gaining Gog’s favor nonetheless yielded valuable information. En route, one of the three beastmen had spoken in hushed tones of the legend of “Rex, the first canine”, but he either could not or chose not to elaborate further. (“We are the beastmen, we are the children of Deino!” his comrades interrupted him by chanting.) He also confirmed that the mistress of the beastmen, Deino, was to be avoided at all costs by those who sought to retain their lives. Upon leaving the beastmen, the party thus returned to “The Chamber of Painful Knowledge”, where Teddy implored Thoth to tell him more about Rex. Thoth obliged, but the knowledge he granted was truly bizarre. Rex, it seemed, was a taxidermied dog, and it being watched by a number of giant-like humanoids similar in appearance to Gog. Their surroundings were unclear but reminiscent of the pebbles and amphibian slime near the Hall of Forty Pillars. This was deeply inscrutable to the party: was Gog in league with these entities, and his pact of non-aggression was a mechanism to keep them from discovering (the remains of?) “the first canine”? How many of these giant-like creatures dwelt in the Halls?

No progress through the beastmen territory was likely to be made without conflict, so the party returned to the hobbit territory (thankfully still devoid of foes). In an instance of the cascading bizarre, a small sideroom featured a floating bronze bust showing a man in the Old Archontean mode dressed as a philosopher. The bust proved impossible to move or activate, but underneath it was an odd circle of stones. The square of glass Aaron had found fit perfectly onto one of these stones, but this single square was insufficient to free the statue or do anything else.

While messing with the nearby statue of Thoth (“We might as well try rotating his arms a bit, just to see what happens”), the party encountered six more hobbits arriving from elsewhere in the dungeon. Tensions were high, and, despite the party’s previous victory, the hobbits proudly and vulgarly demanded tribute. Not having found any treasure, the party was reluctant to dig into their savings. Although these six hobbits could surely be easily slaughtered, they feared violence would soon draw hobbit reinforcements, and perhaps even the nefarious Plumthorn. Discretion was thus judged to be the better part of valor, and they retreated to the surface, with Teddy blocking the few arrows loosed at him in parting easily.

One further discovery awaited. While exploring the eastern half of the ruined city, Torvi’s sharp eyes noticed a small side path, overcome in bramble. Forcing their way through it, they came upon a ruined well. Its sides were blindingly lined in convex mirrors. Could this lead downward, to the realm of the albino baboons and their master? Brave Hans leaned over the well and shouted down “Gerrilad, we’re coming for you!”; from deep below, countless simian howls replied. Hans leaned back quickly and suggested that vengeance on Gerrilad could perhaps wait at least a little bit.

 

[yukiomo]

Session XII

The cast:

• Teddy, a Paladin
• Aaron Mahnke, a Loremaster
  • Squeeze, the mane he summons as needed
• Hans Moleman, a Dwarven Vaultguard
• Garnell, a Fighter
• Torvi, a Barbarian

Exploring further the vicinity of the mirrored well, the party discovered a nearby chimney. Dropping things into it suggested its depth was comparable to the well; they guessed it too led to the baboons. Aaron and Hans gleefully suggested a dual-pronged attack on the simians that would catch them by surprise and lead to great slaughter, but wiser heads prevailed, and the party continued exploring the ruined city.

Past the well, they came to a vast wide open plaza, with the ruins of a fountain at its center. Hans’ stone-attuned dwarfish senses realized that the area surrounding the fountain was unstable and that at most one of them should cross it at a time. This proved irksome, as inside the fountain lay a vast marble arm and hand. Garnell noted that this statue fragment was of similar make to both the head at the Luck in the Head and the feet that stood atop a pedestal elsewhere in the city. “If we just recombine all these statue parts, I bet every monster in Arden Vul will drop dead: all treasure, all the time!” the dwarf proclaimed. Various plans for removing the marble arm were considered, but it was ultimately left alone, at least until the party located the remaining statue fragments.

Pushing further east, they explored a ruined tower near an equally-ruined gate. Here luck prevailed, and digging revealed the corpse of an ancient Archontean official. In addition to platinum coins, he carried a parchment fragment referring to “the accursed ones on their fire-breathing mounts”. The phrasing was obscure, but Aaron wondered if this referred to the Priscians, an ancient sect in the Old Archontean Empire who sought to democratize access to magic, and, in doing so, caused a civil war that some claimed ruined the empire. Another nearby tower was inhabited by baboons, who announced their presence by chucking stones at the party. One grazed Teddy, and a rapid retreat was coordinated.

From the plaza, the party had also noticed, outside the ruined proper, the remains of a great villa. Although its surface had been looted and was abandoned, Teddy found a set of stairs leading downward. Here Torvi stopped the party and announced she detected the rank stench of an animal. Further descent led to a large basement, its walls lined with wine casks and its center the lair of an exceptionally large giant wolverine. Thinking that a cask of ancient wine might be worth something, Torvi dragged the nearest cask back to the stairwell, while the rest of the adventurers guarded her. With its territory intruded upon, the wolverine was on the verge of attacking, but Fortuna favored the party, and they escaped. The fickle goddess then immediately turned her back on them, as the cask felt and sounded as though it were completely bereft of contents.

Nonetheless, with night approaching, the party dragged it back to the Luck in the Head (an encounter en route with a pair of black bears cleverly averted by with a thrown lure of rations). Strangely, the innkeeper Kronos wanted nothing to do with the retrieved empty wine cask. He identified the villa as having belonged to one “Isadora”, a great intellectual and aesthete of the ancient era. “People die when they go into that basement, and the casks have been there for a thousand years; I want no part of it.” Inferring that the wine cask was cursed, the party debated all night between hiding it in Kronos’ room and giving it to Plumthorn’s hobbits. (They had plenty of time for this debate, as they all squeezed into a single room in the inn; luckily they’d gotten used to each other’s smells already.)

The next morning, Aaron purified himself of stigma and sought to recharge his trinkets. The ever-watching stars were mollified by his abasement, but only slightly, and they permitted him to recharge only one trinket before cursing him with more stigma. [A natural 2 this time, making the +4 from methodical performance insufficient.] Meanwhile, the rest of the party visited Hixonius, sole survivor of the Five Fingers of Destiny. This proved to be another interrogation, albeit a veiled one, as everyone was convinced the Fingers’ leader, Roger, had led his party to their deaths at the donjon and had then escaped. Nothing Hixonius said proved this, but nothing he said disproved it either.

With Aaron as ready as he would be this day, it was time to return to Arden Vul. Garnell made a compelling argument that they should seek out the donjon and look for the body of Roger (or verify its absence), but a chance encounter instead brought them into the path of Kronos and several other men, garbed all in thieving gear. The jolly innkeeper was no longer jolly, and he coldly claimed the donjon as something he and his “lads” would be taking a look at today. Surprised, concerned, and curious, the party instead returned to the Halls of Thoth, where they hoped to mollify (and then curse) the hobbits with their wine cask.

The outermost crossroads of the Halls were dark and quiet, seemingly free of hobbits, so Hans and Garnell cheerfully lugged the wine cask into the room, while the rest of the party lurked in the stairs. Shining his torch around, Hans, to his dismay, noticed eight hobbits lying in wait, all with crossbows pointed at him and Garnell. He tried to remain jovial, offering the hobbits his wine cask, but the hobbits had only violence in their hearts. In the first volley, three bolts pierced into Garnell and knocked him unconscious. Aaron and Torvi (both of whom had had their doubts about this plan from the start) promptly started dashing away, while Hans attempted to drag Garnell back into the stairwell. Meanwhile, Teddy bravely stepped into the breach to defend his companions.

Teddy’s courageous act protected Hans from eight more bolts. Unfortunately, he could not protect himself: two of them penetrated his sturdy armor and divine protection, and he too fell. With this, Hans cut his losses and ran. The hobbits loosed a few more bolts at the dwarf, but they didn’t pursue; they felt they had won a great victory over these interlopers. As they walked back to the “The Luck in the Head”, Aaron, Torvi, and Hans had no desires other than revenge upon these horrid hobbits. One way or another, they would be wiped out. “Hey, at least we left them that cursed wine cask”, Torvi remarked.

Meanwhile, Teddy awoke some time later, surprised to be alive and with only a scar near his eye. Unfortunately, he was surrounded not by his friends, but by the grinning, malicious hobbits. “It’s time for you to tell us everything you’ve learned about Arden Vul”, one of them said.

Death count:

• Garnell (mortally wounded and left to bleed out)

Mortal wounds count:

• Teddy (damaged eye)

 

[yukiomo]

Session XIII

The cast:

• Ms. Labonz, a Warmistress
• Aaron Mahnke, a Loremaster
  • Squeeze, the mane he summons as needed
• Hans Moleman, a Dwarven Vaultguard
• Tanyth, an Elven Courtier
• Torvi, a Barbarian

Aaron, Hans, and Torvi retreated to “the Luck in the Head” to regroup. The hobbits of Plumthorn deserved destruction, but the party was unsure they possessed the strength to enact this, even with the addition of Ms. Labonz and Tanyth. As they day-drank and plotted, they were shocked to see Teddy enter the inn, albeit wounded and limping. The hobbits had resuscitated, interrogated, and robbed him, but they had left him alive. “I was talking with their lieutenant, Roskelly”, the paladin said. [Roskelly had been the hobbit leader driven away and very nearly slain in Session IX when the party launched their attack.] “He wasn’t happy about it, but he said Plumthorn would rather we not waste lives and energy in a needless bloody feud. If we’re alive, they can keep charging us tolls, and ‘everyone’ wins.”

The party immediately agreed that they would never again pay the hobbits a single copper, but that it did seem wise to seek strength elsewhere before forcing a confrontation. Thus, they returned to the so-called “chimney-house” [level 1: the basement]. (Teddy, needing a week to recover, stayed behind.) The party recalled hearing from the hobbits that a beastman carrying a magic spear had been slain by a giant snake in this part of the dungeon, and Tanyth thought to use her enchanted song to ensorcel it. They also sought to speak with Lankios and perhaps retrieve the Obsidian Gate key the mechanical dragonfly had suggested [in Session X] the mad hermit possessed.

It had been only a week since the party’s first iteration had delved into the “chimney house”, and this new party found it much as they had been told. More savvy to Arden Vul’s secrets this time, though, they spent some time digging through the trash in the level’s foyer and discovered another marble statue leg. They then hastened to the room where they suspected the snake to dwell and found it there. Tragically, they caught it when it hungered, and Tanyth’s first sung note only spurred it to violence. To perhaps everyone’s surprise, the ensuing melee was short, at its end, Torvi had beheaded the snake, and no party member (or summoned mane) had been hurt even slightly. Aaron and Torvi immediately set to skinning and butchering (Aaron imagined decking Squeeze out in a snake-skin bowler hat and vest), although their lack of skill rendered the results of dubious quality.

Furthermore, investigation of the snake’s lair did uncover a large iron spear. It seemed more cursed than enchanted, as its weight felt designed to make using it maximally unwieldy. Aaron stowed the spear, and they moved on. Another room contained three monkey (not baboons, thankfully) statues, one with a vast gaping mouth, one with grotesquely large gazing eyes, and one with horrifically inflated ears. They were predicted to not be friendly; this was confirmed when Ms. Labonz entered the room, and the three statues sprung into body part-themed action. She dodged a fire blast from the eye statue but was rendered magically mute by the ear statue’s power. The party hurriedly backed up and closed the door.

Another nearby room, like others, was covered in trash and refuse. Hans balanced between dwarfish greed (most of the treasure they’d found was hidden in trash) and dwarfish caution (this room’s ceiling looked prone to collapse). Greed won out, and this proved a poor decision. Walking around shook the ceiling, and a falling chunk of stone knocked him unconscious. Aaron promptly sent Squeeze in for the rescue, and although the mane was also buffeted by ceiling, it dragged the dwarf to safety just as the room just as the ceiling fully fell in. Luckily, Aaron’s swift ministrations left the dwarf with nothing but some damaged hips. “That’s nothing, it’s just indistinguishable from getting old” were his first words upon regaining consciousness.

Tanyth and Aaron were in favor of seeking out Lankios, but Hans’ wound and Ms. Labonz’ silence weighed heavily on Torvi, and the party thus retreated to “the Luck in the Head”. (The curse of silence against Ms. Labonz luckily wore off on the walk back.) The first order of business was to sell the giant snake’s body to the inn’s cook and then commission him to start preparing the snakeskin for mane-sized accessories. Afterward, painfully slow experimentation eventually revealed that the unwieldy spear was in fact enchanted. Speaking its name (written on its shaft in old Mithric) caused it to become perfectly weighted and deadly sharp. Torvi, as the group’s strongest fighter [17 Str!] claimed this weapon. Tanyth spent additional time speaking with some of the inn’s guards, but those she spoke to seemed to have no knowledge of Kronos’ ventures into Arden Vul. The innkeeper remained a mystery in this respect.

The next morning, Aaron, once again, purified himself of stigma and sought to recharge his trinkets. This time, the ever-watching stars were not mollified, and he immediately failed [yet another natural 2!]. Despite this, the party returned to the dungeon. A newly-discovered room was guessed to be the lair of Lankios, as judged by its higher-quality door and light shining behind it. Lankios was either not home or not disposed toward visitors, though, as repeated knocking did nothing to open the door. Aaron thoughtfully left a note for the hermit, in the process dubbing this party “The Serpent Slayers” (“We slay serpents, and we’ll slay while wearing our snazzy serpent-skin clothes!” was the nominal motivation.)

Feeling they had been doing pretty well for themselves, the party was promptly ambushed by a colony of giant centipedes. Only Torvi spotted the vermin in time, and she bravely ran to the front line. Although the centipedes were weak, Fortuna here turned against the party and cursed their attempts to strike true. By the time the four remaining vermin scuttled away, only Aaron had not been bitten, and only Aaron had not been poisoned. Ms. Labonz, Hans, Tanyth, and Torvi were all vomiting uncontrollably and dry heaving when they had emptied their stomachs.

“I’m a healer, I can fix this!” Aaron cried, but Fortuna proved no more favorable here than she had in the battle. [None of his Healing rolls to neutralize poison succeeded.] Although the “chimney house” was the closest of the levels of Arden Vul to the surface, “the Luck in the Head” felt as thought it might as well have been on the other side of a continent. Would the party be doomed to die here?

Mortal wounds count:

• Hans (damaged hips)

 

[yukiomo]

Session XIV

The cast:

• Ms. Labonz, a Warmistress
• Aaron Mahnke, a Loremaster
  • Squeeze, the mane he summons as needed
• Hans Moleman, a Dwarven Vaultguard
• Tanyth, an Elven Courtier
• Torvi, a Barbarian

With Ms. Labonz, Hans, Tanyth, and Torvi vomiting despite Aaron’s ministrations, the loremaster was close to despair. However, he steeled himself, and a second round of attempts proved more successful; Torvi and Hans had their poison neutralized. [Some of the 18+ neutralize poison rolls panned out.] With only Ms. Labonz and Tanyth out of commission, the party was able to safely withdraw to “The Luck in the Head”. Estelle, the wife/paramour/companion of the innkeeper, Kronos, also had some skill in the healing arts. She suggested that Ms. Labonz and Tanyth would remain afflicted for ten days. Feeling useless, Aaron paid for her to attempt to neutralize the poison, but Estelle proved no more successful.

It took four days of rest before Aaron and Estelle were able to successfully treat Ms. Labonz and Tanyth. In the meantime, Aaron, amazingly, recharged all of his trinkets and learned that Torvi’s new magical spear was enchanted to be especially effective against humanoids. Hans spoke with members of another party, Dalton’s Darlings, and learned of a sub-level connected to the beastmen’s territory. Flying creatures immune to normal weapons dwelt here. They also heard that goblins laired near the hobbits of Plumthorn; these goblins hated the hobbits and beastmen. The possibility of working with the Darlings to eliminate Plumthorn’s hobbits was also raised, but discussions were tabled after Dalton insisted the party “with your great strength, might thews, and heavy armor” would be the ones leading any attack.

With everyone (save Teddy) recovered, the party returned to “the chimney-house”, again in search of Lankios. As before, he appeared not to be home, but, while they were banging on his door, Lankios appeared suddenly from around a nearby corner. This strange man, apparently centuries old and an, at best, incomplete conversational partner, nonetheless proved to be forthcoming in some respects. He had developed a stew that protected those smeared in it from the vermin of this level, which he shared with the party. He perhaps knew of other aspects of the dungeon (e.g., “Rex, the first canine”), but he was unable to divulge concrete details. He retained too an obsession with a woman named Guivrel, and he was sure she would soon join him here. It was clear that he had no idea how long he had been in Arden Vul.

Meanwhile, Tanyth’s elven senses revealed a hidden compartment in this room. Lankios claimed to know nothing about it; when opened, it revealed a veritable treasure horde: a giant diamond, a set of ceremonial codices, another glass square, and, most excitingly, an ankh (believed to be associated with the obelisks scattered through Arden Vul’s surface), and a gold rod (quite possibly needed to open the Obsidian Gates). The party suspected Lankios must have brought this treasure up from elsewhere, perhaps in a past time when he was more cogent. Luckily, he now exerted no claim over it and, other than a periapt, let them take it all.

This was wealth beyond what the party had any reason to expect finding, and so they promptly chose to return to the nearby town of Gosterwick. (They briefly detoured and killed a single zombie after spending far too much time debating whether to engage or avoid it. It was a single zombie that had not even attacked anyone before it was summarily destroyed.)

The journey took several days but passed without event. En route, they noticed an ominous ruined tower at the bottom of the plateau upon which Arden Vul was located. They recalled Dalton (of Dalton’s Darlings) claiming that Lankios’ lost love Guivrel had fled Arden Vul and died in this tower, but it seemed too ominous and too ruined to be worth exploring now. Gosterwick was a small town, but it had sufficient resources for the party to re-equip and ruminate on what they had learned. [Everyone hit level 2, the first in-game level-up in this campaign’s fourteen sessions.] Having accomplished something, they planned their next moves excitedly.

 

[yukiomo]

Session XV

The cast:

• Ms. Labonz, Warmistress 2
• Aaron Mahnke, Loremaster 2
  • Squeeze, the mane he summons as needed
• Hans Moleman, Dwarven Vaultguard 2
• Tanyth, an Elven Courtier 2
  • Thekla, Ecclesiastic 1 in the cult of Mithras
• Torvi, a Barbarian

Ensconced in Gosterwick, the party began a campaign to search for henchmen. They made this more difficult for themselves than it could have been by requesting prospective hires to meet them far outside the town’s limits in a forest grove. Only one aspiring employee, Ælfwild, an explorer, dared to make this trek. After a frantic search for their other prospects (during which Tanyth reaction-charmed the butler of an expensive inn to gain entrance for the party, shocking everyone with how quickly she adopted the mode of a haughty elven noble), they also identified Tobios, a thief, and Thekla, an ecclesiastic.

The party debated which of these, if any, should be hired. Torvi immediately latched onto Ælfwild as “a fellow big dumb blond lady” and felt a kinship toward her, but the others were unsure how useful an explorer would be in the underground depths of Arden Vul. Tobios became enamored with Ms. Labonz (“like a cat”, he kept offering to show off “this kind of agility” to her), but the party decided that low-level thieves were useless, and that Tobios, as a person, was an HR problem waiting to happen. Ultimately, Tanyth brought the somewhat-naive Thekla into her service, winning the young ecclesiastic wholeheartedly over to her cause. When Torvi tried to do the same to Ælfwild, something went wrong between the two somewhat awkward women. Ælfwild stormed off, promising to slander the party’s name to everyone in Gosterwick. Judging this to be a sign, the party forwent further any further hiring attempts (although Ms. Labonz was still somewhat intrigued by the prospect of hiring a cadre of men-at-arms).

During this week of hiring, the party also heard that Dalton’s Darlings (i.e., their most hated rivals and one of many, many nemeses) had apparently rescued the lost priestess of Mithras [a rumor heard back in Session 1]. Apparently, this priestess had been captured by the beastmen of Arden Vul and then sold to the resurgent Cult of Set that was now known to dwell somewhere in Arden Vul’s depths. The townsfolk of Gosterwick all agreed that Dalton’s Darlings were very cool adventurers that had the blessing of the gods. The party seethed in hatred.

Returning to Arden Vul, the group first stopped at the ruined watchtower that lay at the bottom of the plateau upon which Arden Vul stood. They had learned in town that this watchtower was said to be haunted by a powerful female ghost, a ghost with the power to drive mortals into madness. Thinking that this ghost was Lankios’ lost love Guivrel, the party (very) carefully and safely opened the trapdoor leading to the ghost’s lair. “Guivrel, we come from your husband Lankios and seek to reunite you with him!”, Tanyth proclaimed.

Somewhat implausibly, although this did appear to be the trapped spirit of a dead Archontean noblewoman (as they believed Guivrel to be), this spirit called herself Nyema. She sought for news on her husband, named not Lankios but Yrtol, whom she believed to have been taken by the Cult of Set. “Guys, I think we might have found the wrong long-lost ghost-lady. Also, anybody else feel like Dalton sent us here intentionally and tried to kill us?” Hans queried. The party again seethed in hatred and plotted the violent deaths of Dalton’s Darlings for sending them to the wrong castle, (somewhat) plausibly with malevolent intent.

The group then ascended the plateau to Arden Vul. On the way, they were surprised by a wandering mountain lion. It savaged Ms. Labonz and brought her near death, but Torvi was able to handily slay it with Nightwind, leaving a mostly-undamaged cat corpse. “Imagine how cool this cougar will look when she’s wearing a lion-fur coat in her snake-skin boots!” was Ms. Labonz’ reaction to the affair. Returning to the Luck in the Head, they party discovered that Teddy the paladin had recovered from his hobbit-induced wounds; Hixonius, formerly of the Fingers of Destiny, had also recovered and was now working for Kronos and Estelle to pay off his incurred debt.

Although Kronos and Estelle nominally acted as the party’s allies (and repeatedly mentioned how much better they were than Dalton’s Darlings), the party still trusted them little. Torvi had the clever idea to recruit Hixonius as the party’s spy within the Luck in the Head; as the party was his reason for survival, he agreed to this willingly.

Ms. Labonz also engaged Kronos in a verbal duel. During his henchman interview, Tobios had mentioned “The Benevolent Brotherhood” (a widespread somewhat-friendly thieves’ guild operating in most of the New Archontean Empire); he had advertised it as a mechanism for adventurers to offload valuable goods in exchange for payment, without attracting undue attention from the Empire. A natural inference was that Kronos, with his prime location on the outskirts of Arden Vul, had connections to this Brotherhood. When indirectly asked about this. Kronos made no explicit revelations, but he clearly implied connections that would potentially be of relevance should the party come into great wealth. Everyone went away satisfied.

 

[yukiomo]

Session XVI

The cast:

• Ms. Labonz, Warmistress 2
• Aaron Mahnke, Loremaster 2
  • Squeeze, the mane he summons as needed
• Hans Moleman, Dwarven Vaultguard 2
• Tanyth, an Elven Courtier 2
  • Thekla, Ecclesiastic 1 in the cult of Mithras
• Torvi, a Barbarian

As the morning dawned, the party returned to the “chimney house”. Torvi noticed small humanoid footprints near the trapdoor leading down into the dungeon: it seemed that Plumthorn’s hobbits had decided to expand their territory. The party seethed.

A comedy (of sorts) ensued. Hans first used his mimicry to sound like a hobbit; this worked, but he lacked the charisma or prepared bluff to entice the lairing hobbits below to come up. Returning later, Hans the hobbit-sounding not-hobbit claimed to be under attack and in need of aid. The hobbits below enquired more; when the party bluffed that “hordes” of beastmen assaulted them, the cowardly hobbits below evidently did not like those odds and refrained from joining. Resigning themselves to wait, the party spiked the trap door shut and covered it with rubble, hoping to trap the hobbits.

The group recalled hearing of the ruins of a palace on the surface of Arden Vul, with enchanted ebony doors [a previous iteration saw it back in Session 4]. En route, Thekla hypothesized that the statue remains on either end of this palace (as well as the statue fragments the party had seen spread throughout the area), were of Arden and Vul, the legendary heroes. This legendary duo (partners in love and in adventuring) had done many great deeds in the past, and each had a vast statue built into the side of the plateau upon which Arden Vul, the city, rested.

They maneuvered through the palace’s ruins (bypassing the still very solid doors by crawling through damaged walls), found and used a servant’s token to unlock a different set of doors, found another odd circle of stones and a glass square within it [identical to the circle found in Session 11], and then uncovered a vast and ancient greenhouse, foetid and humid with thick greenery.

Seeing another door on the far end of the greenhouse, obscured partially by overgrown vines, the party spread out and began to look around. Unfortunately, they awoke a vast and shambling mound of concentrated plant matter. With its horridly strong vines, it quickly knocked out Tanyth and Thekla, destroying the former’s genitals and smashing the latter’s hips. When a mighty thrust from Torvi failed to scratch the monster, the party decided their chances of victory were minimal. They ran away, dragging their fallen comrades to safety and resuscitating them. Retreating to “The Luck in the Head”, Tanyth was able to convince Estelle to magically heal Thekla with a demonstration of her magical powers of song.

The following morning, the party returned to the “chimney house” and pulled off the spikes and weights they had left there the day previous. All the way down the stairs, they talked loudly about how strange it was that someone would block off that entrance and how lucky anyone below was that they had come along and removed the obstruction.

This plan perhaps averted immediate slaughter or ambush, as Tanyth eventually saw six hobbits waiting in this floor’s entrance. Unlike other hobbits the party had seen, these were clad in shining new mail [looting Teddy and Garnell in Session 12 had let Phlebotomas acquire new minions and kit out his new hires nicely]. As with the hobbits in the Halls of Thoth, this group sought both a toll and a tithe. The party was loathe to pay this. After some light verbal sparring, they chose to withdraw. By re-spiking closed the trapdoor on their way out, they won an emotional (if not monetary or spatial) victory over the hated hobbits.

Looking for other things to do, the party ventured to the great plaza in the center of the ruins of Arden Vul that their predecessors had discovered [Session 4]. With the vast oak tree in the plaza’s centre still keeping its secrets, they noticed, for the first time, that there was a tall, nondescript stone tower on the eastern side of the plaza. Its main doors were found to be bronze and locked with Thoth’s sorcery; no one dared touch them. Although Tanyth noticed a secret door on the tower’s fall wall, it was locked. The party briefly bemoaned not hiring Tobios, but then changed their minds when they remembered how annoying he was. It fell to Torvi to scale the tower (carrying a rope to enable the others to climb up after her) and peer through one of its windows.

This top floor held three recently-deceased bodies (two humans, one hobbit), two sets of stairs (rickety, wooden, and shrouded in darkness), and one vast piece of statuary: an ibis head (ivory-sheathed, silver-eyed, red porphyry for a beak). Inspection of the bodies revealed no visible wounds and suggested they instead had been spiritually or sorcerously drained of their vital essence.

Ms. Labonz found an enchanted set of leather armor on one body and Thekla an ancient scroll on another that referenced dragons (perhaps another reference to the Priscians, mentioned in Session 12) and suggested that this tower might be called “The Tower of Scrutiny”. Everyone felt this was a pretty dangerous situation, and, as they’d already scored some decent rewards, there was no need to mess with the ibis or descend the stairs. Tanyth did, though, take the halfling’s body and stash it atop the bolted trap door to the “chimney house”. This confused Thekla slightly, but her fervent loyalty to her employer kept her from questioning.

With the two primary entrances to Arden Vul occupied by the hobbits, and others, such as this tower or the well of mirrors [discovered in Session 11 and likely leading to the baboons], being very dangerous, the group decided to kill the “exceptionally large giant wolverine” that laired in Isadora’s estate [Session 12].

Although Tanyth sang rousing songs to inspire courage, this was a battle of deep un-luck for the party. Squeeze the summoned mane was torn apart; Ms. Labonz’ famed curved swords were as useful as a pair of sausages; Hans chose to drop his shield, grip his sword in both hands, charge the wolverine, miss, and be slashed across the face and be knocked out; and, most tragically and/or hilariously, an errant arrow from Tanyth struck Torvi in the head and put her down.

The situation was dire. Aaron, creeping forward to administer healing, had just accidentally gone toe-to-toe with the wolverine. Although he, amazingly, hadn’t been slaughtered, his chances were minimal. Then a second arrow from Tanyth pierced the wolverine’s skull and killed it. Remarkably, no adventurer had suffered serious lingering wounds, despite the wolverine’s fury.

Excitedly (and perhaps unwisely, given his fellows’ statuses), Aaron pawed through each wine cask in the estate’s basement. One cask was revealed to be an illusion; beyond it, a circle of glyphs were inscribed on the wall. Aaron decoded the glyphs as letters; they read: O R C U S A I D S P A I R S. Another puzzle.

Mortal wounds:

• Tanyth: damaged genitals
• Thekla: damaged hips and lower back
• Ms. Labonz: minor scarring
• Hans: notable scarring
• Torvi: notable scarring

 

[yukiomo]

Session XVII

The cast:

• Ms. Labonz, Warmistress 2
• Aaron Mahnke, Loremaster 2
  • Squeeze, the mane he summons as needed
• Hans Moleman, Dwarven Vaultguard 2
• Tanyth, Elven Courtier 2
  • Thekla, Ecclesiastic 1 in the cult of Mithras
• Torvi, Barbarian 2

The party looted a number of bodies that lay strewn around the wolverine’s lair. Although three of their number were recovering from mortal wounds, the glowing letters (“O R C U S A I D S P A I R S”) nonetheless enticed the party. Upon Torvi’s suggestion, Tanyth and Thekla pressed first the two I’s, and everyone observed that the letters began to glow. Following up, they pressed the two A’s, then the two R’s, then the three S’s, and then the remainder of the letters. The letters all flashed, then lost their lustre, and an invisible presence was summoned to the room. It sought violence.

The party began to run, but Tanyth was smashed in the side by a powerful fist. She remained standing; the presence turned to Hans and slew him in a single blow before cleaving to Tanyth and smashing her knee. In the meantime, Ms. Labonz, Aaron, and Torvi ran to safety. When the invisible presence didn’t pursue them, Aaron used an enchanted rope to drag first Tanyth (quickly revived by Thekla) and then Hans’ body to safety. The party retreated to “The Luck in the Head”, gave Hans a heroic funeral (wrapping his body in the tapestry they’d found in the palace ruins last session), and rested for a week to let Torvi and Ms. Labonz recover from their mortal wounds.

Mortal wounds:

• Tanyth, ruined knee

Deaths:

• Hans

The cast:

• Ms. Labonz, Warmistress 2
• Aaron Mahnke, Loremaster 2
  • Squeeze, the mane he summons as needed
• Maximus, Thrassian Gladiator 1
• Tanyth, Elven Courtier 2
  • Thekla, Ecclesiastic 1 in the cult of Mithras
• Torvi, Barbarian 2

While waiting, the party welcomed into their number Maximus, a mighty lizard-man. Maximus had heard rumors that the depths of Arden Vul were the lair of a band of terrifying, black-armored undead knights. This seemed very cool and very scary, but also not of immediate concern. They also learned of an enchanted orange mineral (called arcanum) that some claimed Arden Vul had been filled with. In the meantime, Aaron envisioned ways to even the odds against more invisible opponents and procured a sack of flower from the inn’s kitchen, and Tanyth sought to incite further chaos by asking Hixonius to loudly talk of treasure found within Arden Vul’s donjon to any newly arrived parties.

Venturing back into Arden Vul, the party discovered that the door they had spiked to trap the hobbits in the “chimney house” had been unspiked. The high volume of tracks suggested the hobbits still occupied their new position, so the group respiked the door and ventured elsewhere. Maximus, using his lizard’s swimming prowess, explored a lagoon in the centre of Arden Vul. Its murky depths proved to conceal a stone torso (likely belonging to one of the ruined statues within the city), as well as a large sunken barge. Maximus dared not to venture into the barge by himself, and attempts to bait out whatever dwelt within it failed. Everyone agreed that the barge surely contained sick loot, and they briefly considered a vast engineering project to dam the river near its source and drain the lagoon.

Instead, the party crossed to the western half of Arden Vul. Rather than venture south (where the frog-infested swamp was (Session IV)), they walked northwest and spied in the distance a large bungalow house. Although the surrounding buildings were all in ruin, the house initially appeared to be well-kept. Further investigation revealed potentially-ominous signs: all the house’s windows had been boarded up, and it reeked with the smell of charnel.

Nonetheless, the party’s interest was piqued, and Torvi and Maximus spent some time throwing stones and rations at its door. Eventually, this door opened, and Torvi detected from within hints of shadowy movement. Drawing closer, she called out and was answered by someone who called himself Geleth. Geleth said he was an adventurer who had come to Arden Vul to seek his fortune, potentially many years ago, only to be cursed by a magical chest within this bungalow and trapped in some sort of stasis. He suggested that the party could free him by venturing inside.

Although this was a deeply suspicious encounter, Torvi nonetheless felt pity and concern for this creature. The prospect of treasure inside was also enticing. Tragically, she was deceived. As the rest of the party moved closer and discussed what they might do, Galeth spoke again and revealed himself to be foul, evil, and not at all what he claimed. He was an undead lord, and he sent from his house his band of servants, some eighteen (!) ghouls.

The party chose to stand and fight. Initially this went well, with Thekla turning four ghouls, and the party’s melee strength laying into the rest. Soon, though, Mithras abandoned Thekla, and her turning failed. The undead horde’s numbers took their toll, and Ms. Labonz, Maximus, Tanyth, and Thekla all fell. Torvi and Aaron (summoning Squeeze as a distraction) were able to escape safely, but, as they ran, they saw the ghouls beginning to feast upon the still-living bodies of their fallen friends.

This was truly a disaster, in no small part because of the treasure they had lost. From Lankios’ stash, Ms. Labonz had carried the silver ankh-key associated with Arden Vul’s obelisks, and Maximus (taken from Hans’ body) had carried the rod of gold needed to unlock the Obsidian Gates. The party had found yet another entity to scheme of revenge against.

Deaths:

• Ms. Labonz
• Maximus
• Tanyth
• Thekla

 

[Sable Wyvern]

Thanks all! Hoping that an actual play first post isn't overly gauche. I admit I only found this forum from the "Vul yourself together" thread, but it seems neat.

The only reason I arrived at the Pub is because I needed to find a non-shit TTRPG forum to post my session logs. Although I did start with some other posts, that was only because the game hadn't started yet.

Also, very belated welcome.

 

[yukiomo]

Session XVIII

The cast:

• Aaron Mahnke, Mage 2
• Torvi, Barbarian 2
• Baby Billy, Cleric 2
• Nimue, Elven Courtier
  • Five level 0 elf henchmen

After discussion and the gathering of reinforcements, the party decided that their most pressing task was to recover their lost treasure from Geleth’s bungalow. The ghoul numbers were deemed a great threat, but, if Aaron’s ability [from having been converted to a mage between sessions due to the campaign switching to classic arcane and divine magic] to summon berserkers and Nimue’s cadre of elven soldiers could be combined with well thought-out tactics, then victory seemed at least achievable. The unknown here in personal power was Geleth, master of the bungalow. The party hoped he was not himself of great strength and instead relied on his ghoul minions.

En route to the bungalow, Torvie heard voices coming from the building that housed the entrance to the “chimney house”. After being trapped within one too many times, Plumthorn’s hobbit expeditionary force had decided to instead occupy a more defensible position. Nimue met with the hobbits; she was charismatic and not known to the hobbits, and so they proved cheerful and surprisingly talkative. The party ultimately decided not to be distracted and continued to the bungalow.

They noticed, from a distance, that Tanyth and Maximus’ bodies had been torn apart in a frenzy of hunger, but Thekla and Ms. Labonz (i.e., the humans in the party) had had their bodies taken inside. Baby Billy counseled that the ghouls’ ranks would, the next day, be bolstered by these fallen friends, bringing the expected number of undead to around eighteen, after accounting for the casualties the party had previously inflicted.

Exploring around to find desirable location from which to center their assault on the ghouls, the party noticed a nearby set of towers in Arden Vul’s ruined exterior wall. One tower was nothing but rubble, but the other was in better repair. It proved to be occupied by some number of warriors clad in red mail. They did not seek violence but were unwilling to treat with the party extensively, and so the interaction did not last long.

The party decided that, the next day, they would construct a circle of sharpened stakes to protect against ghoul charges and cover the circle’s entrances with pitch to be set alight. They returned to the “Luck in the Head”, where Nimue learned from Kronos that red mail was the garb of the cult of Set. This was deemed ominous but lower priority.

The following day, the defensive position was constructed. A challenge immediately revealed itself: how would the party convince the ghouls to charge obligingly into their fortification and be utterly destroyed? No immediate answers were forthcoming; then, one of Nimue’s elves noticed a ghoul-ified Ms. Labonz watching all that had happened, but the ghouls took no immediate action. With a new bow (purchased at exhorbitant markup from the greedy merchant at “the Luck in the Head”), Torvi killed her undead comrade and then shouted in anger and threw rocks at the bungalow until at last Geleth revealed himself. With his pale, stretched skin and fine garb, he seemed to be a greater undead of some sort. The party’s insistent aggression perhaps inspired some admiration in him, and he welcomed them to join in his embrace.

Rather than respond with words, the party proceed to loose volleys of fire arrows at the bungalow house; it shortly was burning merrily. This would likely do some damage to whatever was inside the house, but the group had collectively decided that anything that could be burned by mere fire was clearly of minimal value. With his dwelling at risk of falling apart, Geleth at last sent forth his horde of ghouls out. Battle was soon joined.

The party’s tactics and positioning were solid. They had a few rounds for their archers to attack the charging ghouls, and, with summoned berserkers and Baby Billy’s ability to turn undead, the numbers would be near even. The tragedy, as ever, was instead cruelly delivered by Fortuna. First Mithras deemed Baby Billy’s attempts at turning deeply unsatisfactory. Then the first wave of summoned berserkers was quickly paralyzed. Although some ghouls were destroyed when thrown torch ignited the pitch, and others tore themselves apart scrambling across the sharpened stakes to reach the living, the undead numbers and ferocity could not be overcome. Torvi, Aaron, and Billy Bob were paralyzed, and Nimue and her cadre began to fall. The only survivors were two henchmen who fled frantically from the field of battle.

Death count:

• Everyone but two level 0 henchmen

 

[yukiomo]

Session XIX

The cast:

• Justin Nicholas (“Just Nick”), Fighter 1
  • Nicky Justine (“Justine”), level 0 bowman
• Yara, Barbarian 1
  • Theon, level 0 heavy infantry
• Chansey, Priestess 1 (of Mithras)
  • Brock, level 0 heavy infantry
• Klaren, Elven Ranger 1
  • Level 0 heavy infantry *
  • Level 0 longbowman *
• Teddy, Paladin 1

* the elven henchmen chose not to share their names with a group of humans, and Klaren respected their privacy

Some weeks after the previous party’s tragic deaths to the ghouls, Teddy, paladin of Mithras, led a new party of adventurers to Arden Vul. [Teddy had last been used as a PC in Session 12.] They made a new discovery: outside Arden Vul’s ruined eastern walls, a cracked cistern exposed a narrow passageway stretching downward. Yara and Klaren smelled the reek of apes, and the party suspected this was another entrance into the Howling Caves, home of the albino baboons [and site of a TPK in session 7]. Nick and Yara argued eagerly that, with their numbers and strength, opportunity beckoned, but cooler heads prevailed. Klaren set a snare near the cistern’s entrance as they left.

Moving on to “The Luck in the Head”, Klaren made contact with a party of elves who called themselves “The Arcane Vengeance” and who, unsurprisingly sought arcane power. Klaren learned that the famous Dalton’s Darlings had handily slain that subset of Plumthorn’s hobbits who had taken up residence in the chimney house [level 1 of Arden Vul]. The leader of the Vengeance, one Noreddin, had also heard that a bungalow house had recently burned down on the western side of Arden Vul; she wondered if this too was the work of the Darlings. The elves by this point had sampled too much of Kronos’ ale, and Klaren withdrew to check on “his human servants”, as he referred to the party amongst his fellow elves. Meanwhile, Chansey used detect magic and learned that (1) the titular stone head outside the inn was enchanted, and (2) Kronos and Estelle each wore a fair share of magic gear.

The next day, the party ventured into the chimney house, where they made contact with another group of adventurers, led by a friendly Wiskin named Harold Good-Ears. Harold and his men had located a secret room on this floor filled with baboon skeletons. The repeated expeditions into this level by previous iterations of the party, Plumthorn’s hobbits, and Dalton’s Darlings had cleaned out most of its contents. In particular the hobbits had apparently come across a large stone statue fragment and taken it elsewhere. Harold and his group knew of three remaining sources of potential treasure: a room with three enchanted monkey statues, a secret room filled with baboon skeletons, and a nest of stirges. The monkey statues were daunting and the stirges great in number, so Harold ventured a proposal to work together to destroy the skeletons.

Debate was had: Harold seemed likable enough, but his companions all had a distinctly unsavory look. It was decided that Nick and Chansey would work with two of Harold’s group, while the rest hung back and watched for signs of backstabbing. Harold led everyone to the secret door, which, as promised, led to a small room filled with skeletons. Nick and Harold’s dwarf gleefully charged in. After Chansey successfully turned the skeletons, a clean and quick victory was in sight.

Of course, the not-unanticipated treachery then reared its head. One of Harold’s party, a ranting acolyte named Hestia, suddenly and savagely smashed at Chansey’s face with her mace. There was a moment of contemplation as the remainder of the rival party considered their options, but Harold eventually sighed and ordered the party’s elimination.

A large melee ensued. The initial round heavily favored the party, as their primary force was able to set up a defensive line, and Yara and Klaren’s arrows interrupted spells from Harold’s two mages. However, a second bash from Hestia soon struck down Chansey, and the evil acolyte was shorlty similarly successful in eliminating Justine. With the priestess unconscious, the baboon skeletons rejoined the fight and tore apart Harold’s dwarf. Nick was kind of bummed by this, as the dwarf had actually seemed kind of an okay guy, but this gave him a chance to retreat and shut the undead back in their room.

Elsewhere, Teddy and Harold dueled, skillfully matching strikes, but the Wiskin proved superior to the paladin. Watching Teddy fall, Theon and Brock’s courage failed them; they threw down their weapons and fled. Klaren’s elves, though, proved of tougher mettle, and the elf squad picked off two more of Harold’s men. Seeing how his numbers had been decimated, and hoping to rest the blame on Hestia’s unneeded aggression, Harold made a quick but calculated decision and killed her. He then began to back away from the party. Yara attempted to force him to surrender, but when he refused, the group let him withdraw and tend to their wounded companions.

All told, the party had endured well, the only lingering injuries being some scarred eyes and knocked out teeth. During his flight, Theon had also discovered a privy in a nearby room; surprisingly, its shaft had ladder rungs built into it that led deep into the darkness. Such a privy was both spooky and smelly, and the party vowed never to descend it. They retreated to “The Luck in the Head” to drop off Chansey, Teddy, and Justine and then once again set out, albeit in reduced numbers. Stopping first by the cistern, they discovered that Klaren’s snare had been sprung, but it was empty: the baboons perhaps possessed a fell intelligence and organization.

They then made to return to the chimney house, but were surprised en route by a pack of four lacedons that crawled out of the river. Without Chansey, the situation was dire, and Theon and Brock were both soon paralyzed. Everyone else fled, leaving the hapless human hirelings to be consumed. Klaren’s elves were somewhat concerned about this (“Once all the humans die, you won’t just leave us to die too, will you?”) and negotiated a bit of hazard pay. The survivors rested a week, for Chansey, Teddy, and Justine to recover.

After this, the party quickly returned to the chimney house and sought a rematch with the skeletons. Despite the odds being more fully in their favor this time, Fortuna was less cooperative, and Chansey failed to turn them. The ensuing combat was messy, and Nick and Teddy both suffered stiff scarring. The room the baboon skeletons had guarded was sparse, ruined, and bereft of contents. Guessing there must be something of interest here, Klaren’s elf-senses revealed a hidden door, which the party eventually found the mechanism for.

Here at last was treasure! This secret room within a secret room was filled with ancient religious relics and icons from the cult of Thoth. Heavily laden, the party withdrew to “The Luck in the Head”.

Mortal Wounds:

• Chansey, knocked out teeth
• Teddy, damaged eye
• Justine, damaged eye
• Teddy, stiff scarring
• Nick, stiff scarring

Deaths:

• Brock, devoured lacedons
• Theon, devoured by lacedons

 

[yukiomo]

Session XX

The cast:

• Justin Nicholas (“Just Nick”), Fighter 1
  • Nicky Justine (“Justine”), level 0 bowman
• Yara, Barbarian 1
• Chansey, Priestess 1 (of Mithras)
• Klaren, Elven Ranger 1
  • Level 0 heavy infantry
  • Level 0 longbowman
• Teddy, Paladin 1

The party stood outside “the Luck in the Head”, laden down with heavy treasure. They considered returning to Gosterwick (Vetucaster, as the Archonteans called it) to sell it and resupply. However, the journey would take some time, and they were worried that other entities might move in and occupy Arden Vul in the intervening days. [The other, perhaps more pressing concern was that the treasure would almost certainly push Justine and Klaren’s elves to level 1 but would not necessarily be sufficient for Nick and Klaren. The party did not seek to invite the ensuing loyalty roll from newly leveled henchmen.] Thus, they rented a room for their treasure and paid some of Kronos’ guards to watch over it; so long as they didn’t all die suddenly, they felt confident it would not be stolen.

The next day, they returned to Arden Vul. Chansey was able to use her divine magic to purify the pool of sludge [first encountered in Session 2] near Lankios’ lair. It became clear, and its healing prowess was enhanced. The two remaining locations of interest on this level were the nest of stirges, and a set of stairs leading downward. Looking more closely at the nest revealed the glimmer of coin and treasure, and it became suddenly of great interest. Although Lankios’ gruel was sufficient to dissuade the stirges from wanton attack, cautious experimentation suggested the vermin would still move to defend their nest if pressed in force. The party settled for beginning to construct a barricade near the stirge lair, from which they might launch a concerted attack, and then they moved on, going down.

These stairs were surprisingly long, descending hundreds of feet. After finally climbing down the last step, the party initially worried they’d been the subject of a cruel joke: the landing room was nondescript and bereft of any connecting doors. Closer investigation won out though, and one wall was discovered to be a cunning illusion. Moving through this new dungeon level, the party dispatched two baboon skeletons guarding the bones of a long-dead priest. (The fight itself was resolved easily, although a stray arrow from Yara pierced Teddy’s mail and dealt him a minor wound. The stoic paladin calmly accepted this as a risk of his profession.) Found among the priest’s remains was an enchanted scroll, but the party’s only spellcaster, Chansey, was tragically illiterate, and so its mysteries would remain unread.

Continuing on, the party heard moans through a portion of fragile-looking wall; they chose to sneak past rather than invite a confrontation. After passing through more hallways, they came upon a larger room. Its walls were covered in tall carvings of ibis heads and it contained a great locked bronze double-door. Closer inspection, bizarrely, revealed that small holes had been carved in the wall near this door. The party wondered if these doors might lead to Thoth, but cursory interaction failed to open them, and they lacked a thief.

Worried that their return trip would feature undesired monstrous encounters, the group then retreated out of Arden Vul. Their concerns proved warranted, as they were set upon by a pack of centipedes, but Klaren was able to calm these vermin. The question remained how to defeat these stirges without undue risk. A full nest of stirges seemed insurmountable to attack head-on; more appealing was luring subsets of stirges out and defeating them piecemeal. Thus, the group procured offal from “the Luck in the Head”’s cook to act as bait and returned to the dungeon. This proved to be an effective strategy, and they slew several stirges before returning to the inn prior to nightfall. Seeing the elven “Arcane Vengeance” still whiling away their time drinking cheap beer, Klaren engaged the elven leader Noreddin and proposed a joint attack against the stirges. Noreddin agreed, claiming as reward only any “arcane” treasure recovered from the nest.

The following morning, the two parties made good on this plan. Noreddin’s arcane prowess put the vast bulk of the remaining stirges to sleep, and the two parties’ archers quickly eliminated the remaining monsters. Noreddin’s brother called upon his sorcerous talents to identify magic and then laid claim to a wrapped cone of incense, and a short bronze rod. At this point, those of the party who were greedier and more disposed to violence considered enacting vile treachery against the elves. Was it worth letting these elves claim the bronze rod, when it plausibly could be used to open to locked bronze doors they’d discovered below? Teddy and Chansey’s honor carried the debate though, and the “Arcane Vengeance” were allowed to leave with their share of the treasure. The group’s treasure included some coin, as well as a leather-bound journal. Intriguingly, this journal appeared to have been written by a prior adventurer to Arden Vul, and it contained potential guidance to the dungeon’s depths.

Mortal Wounds:

• None!

Deaths:

• None!

 

[yukiomo]

Session XXI

The cast:

• Justin Nicholas ("Just Nick"), Fighter 1
  • Nicky Justine ("Justine"), level 0 bowman
• Yara, Barbarian 1
• Chansey, Priestess 1 (of Mithras)
• Klaren, Elven Ranger 1
  • Level 0 heavy infantry
  • Level 0 longbowman
• Teddy, Paladin 1

The party once more descended the spiral stairs near the remnants of the stirges' lair. Choosing a different direction, they found a room with four large pillars; each was inscribed with the carving of a noble-looking humanoid. One was ibis-headed (presumably Thoth), but the others were less identifiable. Connecting to this room was a strange side chamber, sorcerously lit, and featuring an onyx table above which floated a single white ostrich feather. This was sacred and/or spooky, and no one dared risk the drawing the wrath of unknown powers by touching it.

Nearby was a human corpse, leather-clad and covered in nasty claw wounds. Teddy declared, without even a shred of evidence, that this was clearly the infamous Dalton. His days of interfering with the party had come to their end. As he opined "my only regret is that we weren't the ones to bring him to justice", the party all nodded sagely.

Continuing on, they found a room with three rusted iron levers and three shut portcullises. Two led to what looked like burial halls, with walls covered in countless carved out human-sized burial niches. These niches, and the nearby corpse, raised in the group concerns of the undead. The third revealed only another passageway. Teddy managed to pull the nearest lever to this hopefully undead-free portcullis; as expected, it slowly raised up. The passage led to a different set of stairs, these ascending roughly a hundred feet upward.

This new area of Arden Vul seemed deserted, although many of its walls were, strangely, adorned with rotateable mirrors. Most intriguingly, the mirrors' positioning was such as to allow bounced reflection of light across rooms Further exploration was stymied when Klaren smelled the musty reek of baboons and then later heard their apish grunts and calls. His ranger's reflexes were sufficient to allow safe withdrawals and prompt door spiking.

After the second such retreat, the adventurers grew worried about losing access to their escape route, and they returned down the stairs to the portcullises. They had found no treasure on this level, which Nicky Justine loudly bemoaned during the descent. Just Nick had no great response to his henchman's complaints; the best he offered was "well I'm sure the baboons will calm down at some point, and we can come back".

Back on the baboon-free level of Arden Vul, other passageways led to a statue of Thoth, sitting, and, further on, two dueling magic mouths enchanted in the walls. With a start, they realized they knew where they were. When the statue's arms were improperly manipulated, hidden trapdoors had sent a previous iteration of the party tumbling down to the lair of Gog [Session 7]. And just past these dueling mouths was the small pyramid capable of teleportation to the Howling Caves [Session 5]. Quite near too was the main base of Plumthorn and his hobbits [most recently visited in Session 12, when Teddy received his first scarred eye]. [With so many TPKs, we have not been especially strict in sequestering player knowledge across different party iterations.]

Some things were different on this visit. When before both of the dueling magic mouths had spoken in unknown tongues, now one spoke modern Archontean and proclaimed snidely that "the followers of the ibis are dead and gone". This suggested that the dread Settites, sworn enemies of Thoth, had s visited here. In addition, Chansey was able to purify another magical pool. She also uncovered an obscured carving of Thoth; the positioning of his arms in it was perhaps informative toward how one might safely manipulate the Thoth statues scattered around this level.

Revenge against the hobbits beckoned, but the party was unable to come up with a compelling plan of attack. [Klaren also really wanted to find more treasure to level up prior to a large fight.] Nearby, a cluster of giant fire beetles had come into contact with a nest of giant rats. Violence between vermin and varmint was incited when Yara adroitly tossed a ration between the two packs. The party watched the fight with glee; only Klaren correctly guessed that the beetles would emerge victorious.

As the few surviving rats scattered, the party spied the glint of treasure in their nest. Having just seen the beetles in action, attacking them seemed dangerous, and the day was beginning to grow long. They instead retreated to "The Luck in the Head", stopping only briefly to meet with Lankios. It did not seem that Lankios had written the adventurer's journal found in the stirge nest, although it did make reference to the tomb of one "Kaitor", a figure whose name caused Lankios to react in anger and hatred. Kaitor was evidently a figure of Lankios' lost past [discussed briefly in Session 8, when other evidence of this era was uncovered].

Klaren sought out the other elven party, "the Arcane Vengeance". Seeing them nowhere in the common room, he learned they'd not left their room this day. Their leader, Noreddin, greeted him warmly. Now that her party had found a task, she'd finally been able to distract them from the drink and cheer of the inn. She excitedly said that the bronze rod recovered from the "chimney house" had indeed proven to have arcane enchantments bound into it. The elves were still trying to understand in full its powers. This positive relationship maintained, Klaren left. He intentionally omitted his group's theory of the rod's purpose: namely that it might unlock the bronze doors in the Halls of Thoth.

Mortal Wounds:

• None!

Deaths:

• None!

 

[yukiomo]

Session XXII

The cast:

• Justin Nicholas ("Just Nick"), Fighter 1
  • Nicky Justine ("Justine"), level 0 bowman
• Yara, Barbarian 1
• Chansey, Priestess 1 (of Mithras)
• Klaren, Elven Ranger 1
  • Level 0 heavy infantry
  • Level 0 longbowman
• Teddy, Paladin 1

The next morning, the party returned to the Halls of Thoth. Seeking to fill in some gaps on their map of the level, they approached what they thought was the Halls' primary entrance, where Plumthorn's hobbits lurked and bullied. From the opposite direction, Yara's barbarian senses detected the tramping of organized soldiers. It was the beastmen! The party decided to welcome interaction and see what they could learn; however, when the beastmen turned a corner and came into sight, they, unexpectedly, shouted "It's them!" and attacked. Thinking quickly, Yara ran into the hobbits' room and proclaimed "We are attacked by beastmen, assist us!"

This was quick thinking, but, equally importantly, it may or may not have been sound thinking. The beastmen and hobbits had never shown signs of friendship, true, but they had also never before been witnessed engaging in open conflict. Furthermore, the hobbits were known bullies, always eager to exploit weakness when it presented itself. The adventurers were now sandwiched between hobbits and beastmen, and this was not a position of great strength.

The hobbit leader, Roskelly [last seen in Session XIII interrogating a captured Teddy], called for the party to lay down their arms and accept his (half) men's protection. Yara and Klaren were understandably skeptical of this purported generosity, and they chose instead to begin withdrawing from the hobbits' room toward the Pyramid of Thoth above. In the meantime, Yara's withdrawal left the party's rear in disarray, and the advancing beastmen phalanx downed Chansey with a savage thrust. Nicky Justine, however, held the line and was soon joined by Nick.

Teddy managed to drag Chansey to the comparative safety of the hobbit room, and the noble paladin then laid down his sword. However, the Chaotic proclivities of the hobbits and the continued ambiguity of Yara, Klaren, and the elves' intentions led Roskelly to order his men to loose their slings on Nick and Nicky Justine. Tragically, one stone caught Justine in the back of her head and killed her instantly.

Under fire, Nick was still able to withdraw from the beastmen. After great deliberation, he begrudgingly surrendered to the hobbits. [The meta question considered in parallel was whether angrily attacking the hobbits and, plausibly, dying would deny the next party the treasure this party had retrieved from "chimney house" and stored in the inn. When we all agreed the next party would be starting from scratch, the goal switched from immediate pyrrhic revenge to survival and planned revenge.]

The hobbits were deeply unpleasant during all of this, but their greed here outweighed their propensity toward violence. They permitted Yara to treat Chansey (the priestess had suffered a lamed leg and would need a week to recover), extracted a toll of 150 gp, and let the party withdraw to "The Luck in the Head". On the way back, the party set Nicky Justine's body alight and then pushed it into the river. Grief for his fallen henchman was clearly affecting Nick strangely, as his next comment, horrifying Chansey, was how this at least reduced the number of shares for the party's treasure.

Over the next week, the party recuperated at the inn. Talking further with "the Arcane Vengance", Klaren and Noreddin decided that the bronze rod did not appear to have any key-like abilities, although its full power was still not understood. The cone of incense, also recovered from the stirges' nest, was far more mundane: it simply made people feel attracted to you. A rumor hinted that, deep below Arden Vul's surface, there was an area of flooded and treasure-rich tombs. In his spare time, Nick whittled a cane for Chansey.

Meanwhile, other gossip suggested that the famous Dalton's Darlings had recently carried out a daring attack on the beastmen. The party seethed when they [correctly] inferred that this was why the beastmen had attacked them on sight. Being mistaken for the Darlings was even more atrocious and shameful than was being bullied and robbed by the hobbits.

Their wounds healed, the party delved again to the Halls of Thoth. After discussion, they broke through the fragile wall beyond which they'd heard undead moans [in Session 20] and spied two zombies guarding a chest. Although Chansey failed to turn these, they still fell quickly, and the adventurers were delighted to discover in the chest a blue glass square [similar to those found elsewhere, most recently in Session 16]. Shortly thereafter, the party surprised a scouting patrol of hobbits and withdrew rather than risk an extended engagement.

They next thought was of the rats' rest that had been occupied by fire beetles [last session]. It transpired that the beetles had not yet been evicted from their new location, and the nest contained within it the telltale glint of loot. The group quickly pushed together some trash to form a rough barricade and began loosing volleys of arrows at the beetles. Although no arrow in the first volley struck true, the second and third volleys together killed a beetle, and the cowardly vermin withdrew.

Among the jewels and coins of the nest lay a single unlit torch. Nick picked it up casually, only to discover it was now implacably stuck to his hand! This was somewhat concerning but not a deal-breaker for the expedition. However, Nick then chose the light the torch to see what would happen. (As he did this, the rest of the party noticeably stood far away from him.) Rather than normal light, bleak darkness emitted from torch. More ominously, Nick felt this light summoning to his location undead and fiends with violence in their hearts. They party decided to retreat.

As feared, the torch of darkness proved a magnet to the undead inhabiting Arden Vul's ruins. First, four ghouls attacked the party. After Nick killed one with his free hand, the ghouls fled, but not before Teddy was paralyzed while defending Chansey (who had failed to turn the ghouls). Next the party were set upon by zombies. Although the zombies were less dangerous than the ghouls, Teddy had not recovered from his paralysis, and Chansey failed once more to turn them. The party eventually vanquished their foes (Chansey's clever use of protection from evil to draw the zombies' attacks in particular proved effective), but Klaren and the elves had been wounded, and Nick had had his chest torn apart by the zombies. He would live, but his constitution had been reduced.

Back at "The Luck in the Head", the party thought for a bit. The simplest option was to return to Vetucaster and see if a cleric there could purify Nick of the cursed torch. This would mean an overland journey, which could be dangerous if Nick's torch continued to draw unwanted attention from the undead. If they instead severed the hand now and then sought later to heal the wound, they would need to travel to the more distant city of Noviomagus to find a sufficiently puissant priest.

Asking Kronos for his thoughts, the innkeeper mentioned offhand "Well the Settites claim to have some strong priests in their ranks…" but was horrified when the party proceeded to consider this option somewhat seriously. Klaren also consulted with Noreddin of "The Arcane Vengeance": the other elf was intrigued by the torch and offered to buy it (and Nick's hand, if need be) from Klaren. (Whenever the two elves talked, both consistently referred to the human members of the party as Klaren's servants and/or property; luckily, no one else in the party spoke Elvish.)

Mortal wounds count:

• Chansey, lamed leg
• Nick, damaged heart and lungs

Death count:

• Nicky Justine, instantly killed with a ghastly wound

 

[yukiomo]

Session XXIII

The cast:

• Justin Nicholas ("Just Nick"), Fighter 1
• Yara, Barbarian 1
• Chansey, Priestess 1 (of Mithras)
• Klaren, Elven Ranger 1
  • Level 0 heavy infantry
  • Level 0 longbowman
• Teddy, Paladin 1

The party were confronted with a host of choices, all of them bad in different ways. Nick still needed a week to recover from the wound he had taken while fighting the zombies. Given the torch's propensity toward attracting attention, it was unclear if the party would even survive a week of repeated undead attacks if they waited outside. Yara found that Kronos was, surprisingly willing to still host the party even with the dark-burning torch, but at a steep additional cost that the party all balked at. All the while, Klaren continued to bring up what he saw as the simplest option: amputating Nick's hand and selling the torch to the elves. Eventually, this proposal carried the day.

Yara skillfully cut off Nick's hand in a single stroke and then treated it to avoid infection. As the party had hoped for, with the torch no longer attached to living flesh, it went out. After haggling with the elves, the party convinced them to trade the bronze rod (properly speaking, a baculus carved with inscriptions in old Mithric) in exchange for the torch, a spellbook taken from the slain wizard who had served Harold Good-ears (Session 19), and a potion of invisibility they'd taken off a body. This was probably a good trade: the baculus could used as an enchanted weapon, and it possessed some further, unknown powers.

The party rested for a week (learning from tavern chatter that the baboons of Arden Vul primarily all lived on one level of the dungeon and were commanded in battle by two monstrous four-armed lieutenants) and then began the journey back to civilization. After safely descending Arden Vul's plateau, Yara noticed tracks from a medium-sized group of people moving away from both the plateau and the road, but the group counseled caution, and the tracks were not followed.

In Vetucaster, the group lucked out and found sellers in the small market for some of the sacred artifacts taken from the secret room in the "chimney house" [during Session 19]. [With this, the PCs all achieved level 2, and Klaren's elves hit level 1.] Though Klaren was not the most charismatic employer, his elves chose to remain in his service after he reluctantly advanced them some extra hazard pay. Flush with coin, Chansey hired a heavy infantry named Misty, and Yara brought into her employ Tobios [the flirtatious, peculiar thief the previous party had considered hiring in Session 15].

While asking around for possible hires, Chansey and Klaren found the city's guards repairing vandalism left by the "Thorcin Recovery League", a group of insurgents fighting to expel the New Archontean Empire from Thorcin lands. This League had increased their banditry in recent months, and trade had begun to be affected. None of the party were Thorcins, so they did not have strong feelings on the merit of the League's cause, but Klaren did detect a potential for profit and safer travel south.

The group approached one of the more prominent merchants in Vetucaster, an imperial goblin named Wicktrimmer, and offered to work as caravan guards the next time the goblin sought to move merchandise to the nearby larger city of Noviomagus. The goblin proved amenable to this suggestion. Between Wicktrimmer's original guards and the party, the caravan was well-protected, and the five-day journey proceeded without issue. (A flock of giant hawks followed the group from the sky for two days but were unwilling to attack.)

En route, the party learned a bit more of the local political situation from the guards. The strategos of the local theme (called "Burdock's Valley" by the Archonteans) bore the ancestral title "The Lord Burdock". Although it was part of his demesne, for obscure historical reasons, Noviomagus was not directly under his control: its protonotarios had more autonomy than was typical (although the city's municipal council also held power and influence). Further complicating the situation, The Lord Burdock's half-sister Alexia had returned in the past decade, proceeding to claim and rebuild an ancient Archontean citadel on the outskirts of Vetucaster (and thus very close to Arden Vul). The half-siblings bore each other enmity of some sort, but the guards refrained from indulging in any sordid gossip. More practically, the guards also mentioned to the party that an inn in Noviomagus named The Silk Pony was the place to go for casual violence.

Entering Noviomagus, the party chose to hide their remaining treasure on their persons and thus evade paying tolls to the customs officers. Tobios suggested that, for future hauls, the thieves of The Benevolent Brotherhood were known to be skilled at smuggling goods into the city. He, however, had some unspecified bad blood with this chapter of the Brotherhood and would be of little immediate assistance in this respect. Within the city, the party successfully sold more of their sacred artifacts, and Nick sought out the priests of Mithras. His hand was restored, but the divine energies had turned his stomach into a bottomless pit, always seeking sustenance.

Mortal wounds count:

• None!

Death count:

• None!

Tampering with mortality count:

• Nick, bottomless hungers

 

[yukiomo]

Session XXIV

The cast:

• Justin Nicholas ("Just Nick", "Nick"), Fighter 1
  • Nugs, chicken
  • Hethor, Mage 1
• Yara, Barbarian 1
  • Rodrik Jr., chicken
  • Rodrik, level 0 man
  • Tobios, Thief 1
• Chansey, Priestess 1 (of Mithras)
  • a mule
  • Misty, level 0 man
  • Baldanders, Dwarven Fury 1
• Klaren, Elven Ranger 1
  • Arbane, Spellsword 1*
  • Tanithel, Nightblade 1 *
• Teddy, Paladin 1
  • Stanley Yelnats VI, level 0 man

* now that Klaren's elves had attained level 1, they finally deigned to share their names with the humans of the party

Nick required nearly a month to recover from the restoration of his hand, so the party had some free time in Noviomagus. This was not entirely desirable: between Nick's new insatiable appetite; expenses from training, hiring, and wages, and general equipment resupply; the party's supply of coin had quickly dwindled from its post-treasure peak.

To mitigate some limitations of her lamed leg, Chansey hired a mule, and Teddy negotiated with a city merchant, Cyneburga, and arranged a caravan guard contract for the eventual return to Vetucater. (Driving a hard bargain, Teddy convinced Cyneburga to supply the party in beer and cheese for the journey.) Meanwhile, Klaren and Yara hired a street urchin carouser to besmirch the name of Dalton's Darlings to all in Noviomagus. Teddy was also able to learn more of the "Thorcin Recovery League". In particular, their leader was said to be named "Eadric Strigona", although details were scarce: this was perhaps a nom de plume, or Eadric might be a group rather than a singular individual.

Tobios spent most of his time at the city's amphitheatre, watching poetry recitations, plays, and fights. Somewhat intriguingly, a former gladiator named Maximos had, in recent years, come onto the scene, started his own school, and attained wealth and renown comparable to that of the established schools. Part of Maximos' appeal came from how he primarily used beastman rather than human and demihuman fighters; this hint of the savage was deeply appealing to the blood-craving populace. Tobios agreed completely: it made for great entertainment and violence. The newly-hired thief typically concluded his days gambling at the infamous Silk Pony Inn, although he shared little of what happened there with his employers.

As the month ended, the party began a henchman hiring spree. Chansey supplemented Misty with Baldanders, a bare-shirted dwarven fury who, at five feet tall, was possibly the tallest dwarf ever to have lived. She lacked funds to pay him as much as he wanted, but she won him over by spinning a tale of how, in her service, he would surely have a glorious death fighting Chaos. Nick procured a socially awkward and fairly unpleasant mage named Hethor who claimed his great knowledge had been gifted to him by his fervent adherence to the stars. Yara, after failing to seal the deal with a mystic possessing exceptional abilities, settled for another man-at-arms, as did Teddy.

Seeing that the party now numbered thirteen, Cyneburga had not hired additional guards. Her trust proved well-placed, when, on the expedition's first day, Klaren detected a hive of stirges feasting on the remains of a less-fortunate caravan. The party surrounded the stirges, Arbane put the bulk of them into a sorcerous slumber, and the archers dispatched the rest. As Chansey ceremonially burned the other caravan's fallen, Cyneburga was entranced by the value of the treasure taken from their bodies. This was far more than she could hope to make from her meager trade patterns. Engaging further with the party for the remainder of the journey, she, upon their arrival in Vetucaster, offered her own services once she had put her affairs in order. [She'll be available as a level 1 venturer henchman once she makes her way up to Arden Vul.]

The party left Vetucaster early the next morning. Chansey remembered the tracks at the bottom of plateau Yara had noticed the prior month. Following them, the party spied, on the other side of the Swift River, a tied-up rowboat. After pulling it across and crossing the river, the tracks continued, leading both toward the plateau (where they abruptly stopped) and further west. On this other side of the waterfall, another set of stairs, carved into the stone, was now visible. These stairs, though, were damaged and impassible. At the top of these stairs, many hundreds of feet above them, Klaren managed to spot some sort of landing or switchback that bore signs that it had been recently traversed. However, no mechanism, device, or enchantment was seen that might enable a climb to it without risk of deadly fall.

Following the other set of tracks west, four humans clad in furs and hides and bearing weapons of stone leapt from the rocks and knelt in obeisance before the group. This was unexpected; furthermore, communication did not seem possible due to the obscurity and crudeness of the humans' tongue. When no violence seemed forthcoming from the party, one of the humans approached Teddy and gestured longingly toward his weapons. Now having an enchanted baculus, the noble paladin gave to the stone-wielder his old sword, and this gift of worked iron won them great friendship.

The party was ushered back to the humans' lair, a cave where many dozens of them lived. Concerningly, the party looked in and saw these cave-men doing homage and worship to a squat soapstone carving; it looked something like a cross between a man and a salamander. These cave-men now seemed reasonably pleasant in demeanor, but the group's only other knowledge of salamanders was the mosaic in which Thoth's baboon-form was destroying salamander-creatures [all the way back in Session 1].

The party judged they would not overcome the cave-man language barrier in the near-term, and they were worried that the sun might set before they could reach "The Luck in the Head". Thus, they left the cave and started their ascent. Two-thirds of the way up, they encountered a merchant and his guards going in the opposite direction. As a man dressed in rich finery and commanding plate-clad warriors, the merchant saw the party's dirty clothing and immediately assumed them to be his inferiors. He imperiously demanded they hug the cliff's face so he could pass.

This proved to be something of a social conundrum for the party, without an obvious resolution. Teddy and Chansey felt that nothing could be gained by conflict, but Yara, Nick, and Klaren viewed this as one insult too many to be meekly acquiesced to. Furthermore, conversation among his guards suggested this man's name was Eadric, and the possibility of capturing or killing the Thorcin Recovery League's leader and being rewarded by the Archontean authorities was deeply seductive The standoff continued for some time: neither side was willing to either give ground or initiate violence, and hands drew closer and closer to their weapons.

The party eventually negotiated what they saw as a compromise: due to her mule and their more pleasant demeanor, Chansey and Teddy were allowed to move past Eadric and his merchants ("Now we surround them, this is exactly what we wanted", Klaren whispered to Yara); Nick, Yara, and their henchmen submitted and let Eadric through; and Klaren and his elves descended to the nearest switchback rather than show weakness to a band of humans. The collective reasoning was that this demonstrated strength to Eadric (it also put the party in a position to launch a sneak attack from the high ground), but the delays had meant they would certainly not be able to reach "The Luck in the Head" before nightfall.

Mortal wounds count:

• None!

Death count:

• None!

 

[yukiomo]

[in the prior session, as in this one, all PCs were actually level 2]

Session XXV

The cast:

• Justin Nicholas ("Just Nick", "Nick"), fighter 2
  • Nugs, chicken
  • Hethor, mage 1
• Yara, barbarian 2
  • Rodrik Jr., chicken
  • Tobios, thief 1
  • Rodrik, level 0 man
• Chansey, priestess 2 (of Mithras)
  • a mule
  • Misty, level 0 man
  • Baldanders, dwarven fury 1
• Klaren, elven Ranger 2
  • Arbane, elven spellsword 1
  • Tanithel, elven nightblade 1
• Teddy, paladin 2
  • Stanley Yelnats VI, level 0 man

The party stood on the narrow pathway leading up to Arden Vul. With the coming winter, sunset was less than an hour away, and they were two or more hours of careful travel from "The Luck in the Head". Below them, Eadric and his men lit torches and continued their descent downward. ("We could still attack them and teach them a lesson", Klaren whispered.)

Several options presented themselves. After discussion, the party chose to, as a group, jog toward the inn [i.e., moving at combat speeds rather than exploration speeds]. If they were to escape detection, this would let them reach "the Luck in the Head" in far less than an hour, which was perhaps a desirable tradeoff between safety and speed. The party boosted their speed further when Hethor summoned a floating disc to hold Nick's excess rations (due to his insatiable hunger) and other assorted items.

Fortuna was not with the party. After passing by the ruined baboon keep [discovered in session 12], the party was set upon by six albino baboons. The party's column formation had been designed for speed, and forward and rear defense: the flanks, where the baboons attacked, were weak. The ensuing melee was messy and long: although the baboons were comparatively few in number, each was a savage combatant who outclassed even Nick or Teddy.

After four of the baboons had been killed, the remaining two withdrew, howling angrily. They had done great damage, and, of the party only Nick, Teddy, and Baldanders remained standing. Tobios and Misty had been killed (the latter reduced to only a red smear), and everyone else would need at least a week of recovery.

Hardest hit was Chansey. After protecting herself with a sanctuary spell and retreating from danger, she nobly chose to step back into the fray to heal Nick and fight next to him. The baboon had turned its attention from Nick and casually crushed both of her arms with its horrific strength; she would need a month before regaining some semblance of autonomy. (With her previously lamed leg, Chansey now had only one properly functioning limb.)

The party collected their wounded and dragged themselves to "The Luck in the Head". Over the next two weeks, Hethor and Stanley both left the party in search of safer occupations: Hethor's mind had been grievously addled by a baboon's blow, and Stanley's vision had been impaired by a scarred eye. Nick was somewhat fine with losing Hethor, as the mage was weird and probably evil. [Due to her varied mortal wounds, Chansey was retired, at least for the moment, and her player promoted Baldanders to PC status.]

The talk of the inn was that Dalton's Darlings had recently announced a plan to venture to the Hall of Forty Pillars [visited in Session 8]. The party immediately worried that the Darlings might have acquired the rods needed to open the Obsidian Gates. Meanwhile, a group of dwarves had been attacked by a cadre of horrifying fish-man hybrids in the Halls of Thoth. No one had ever heard of such creatures before, but the dwarves claimed they'd caused a cave-in while escaping, so these fish-men might not be able to access the Halls anymore. It also appeared that no one in "The Luck in the Head" had met anyone matching Eadric's description, furthering the mystery of the merchant's identity. (Klaren took this as motivation to again castigate the party for not killing Eadric.)

With everyone but Chansey sufficiently recovered, the group, now eight in number, considered their next target. Without the ability to turn undead, an attack on Geleth and his ghouls [last seen in Session 18] seemed foolish, and the party's reduced numbers were judged too low to wipe out Plumthorn's hobbits (as previous intelligence suggest the hobbit had perhaps two dozen hobbit followers). The final decision was to return to the Halls of Thoth via the "chimney house" and look for ways to inflict casualties on the hobbits without forcing a general engagement.

No new faction or group had made its home in the chimney house in the party's absence, and Klaren was able to peacefully lead the group past a hive of fire beetles. When the party went to check on Lankios, though, something was amiss, and his room's door was ajar. Peering nervously inside, the strange old man was nowhere to be seen, but there was a pile of ash near where he often sat. On top of this pile was a simple gold ring with a "G" carved on it. The most likely inference was that this was the ring of Guivrel, Lankios' long-lost love. Had Guivrel returned and disintegrated Lankios? Had Lankios been dead these hundreds of years, and seeing proof of his love's demise had finally shattered the will binding his spirit to ancient flesh? No one was sure, although Klaren chose to blame the Darlings for whatever had happened.

Moving into the Halls of Thoth, the party verified that Teddy's enchanted bronze baculus could not open the locked bronze double-doors [discovered in Session 20], and then they ran into a beastman patrol. Klaren attempted to placate, saying "We're not the Darlings, we don't need to fight each other", but the beastmen were not swayed, and they attacked [snake-eyes on the reaction roll]. The beastmen proved to be significantly outmatched; after Arbane put three of the beastmen to sleep, the party disposed of the rest.

Lacking Chansey's moral guidance and looking for violence after the horrible baboon fracas, no quarter was given when the beastmen survivors made to retreat. Things took a further turn toward the grotesque when the party remembered that Gog, the strange giant who lived in the lake below the Halls of Thoth [first encountered in Session 9], had professed a desire for beastman flesh. Hoping to formally ally themselves with Gog with the gift of living food, the party navigated to the stairs and descended further downward.

Mortal wounds count:

• Yara: crushed ear
• Klaren: five teeth lost
• Chansey: both arms crushed
• Tanithel: damaged knee
• Arbane: three teeth lost
• Rodrik: crushed hand
• Stanley: scarred eye
• Hethor: Permanently addled

Death count:

• Tobios: Instantly killed but with an intact body
• Misty: Instantly killed and leaving only a red stain

 

[Longfingers]

Lordy, I've heard OSR games referred to as 'fantasy Vietnam' but even I'd be thinking of packing it in after the latest bloodbath.

 

[yukiomo]

Lordy, I've heard OSR games referred to as 'fantasy Vietnam' but even I'd be thinking of packing it in after the latest bloodbath.

When the henchmen are choosing to retire from adventuring rather than keeping going into the dungeon with the PCs, you know things are pretty bad!


(Somewhat) more seriously, ACKSen Vul is, by design, pretty casual. Starting characters at 1500 XP and not being especially careful about cross-party character knowledge contamination (see the current party repeating Session 11's plan of feeding beastmen to Gog) means that gains in player knowledge are always useful, even at the cost of character lives. Then the fact that the dungeon and its factions do change over time keep things from getting overly stale. At our current pace, we're unlikely to ever see the lower levels of the dungeon unless we hit a phase transition (which could happen!), but (I think) everyone has been consistently enjoying things.

(Somewhat) more seriously still, the baboon bloodbath was at least partially due to lossy player-judge communication on my end. My model of the world-fiction was that traveling at combat-speed for tens of minutes would be highly dangerous (there's a reason exploration-speed is so slow): thus, passing near a ruined keep known to host baboons would surely invite an encounter on the baboons' terms. The players instead assumed that traveling at exploration-speed through the night (inviting random encounter checks on the night-time table while carrying torches) was the riskier option. In the leadup to their decision, I think I tried to convey my assumptions while still not removing their choice, but post-baboon conversation suggested that things were less clear than they could have been.

[If, rather than move toward the inn, they'd chosen to invest time in looking for shelter on the cliffside path, they likely would have found a new secret entrance to Arden Vul, but that will (potentially) be the story of a future session.]

 

[AsenRG]

When the henchmen are choosing to retire from adventuring rather than keeping going into the dungeon with the PCs, you know things are pretty bad!

I like that comment...

At our current pace, we're unlikely to ever see the lower levels of the dungeon unless we hit a phase transition (which could happen!), but (I think) everyone has been consistently enjoying things.

Then why would it matter?

(Somewhat) more seriously still, the baboon bloodbath was at least partially due to lossy player-judge communication on my end. My model of the world-fiction was that traveling at combat-speed for tens of minutes would be highly dangerous (there's a reason exploration-speed is so slow): thus, passing near a ruined keep known to host baboons would surely invite an encounter on the baboons' terms. The players instead assumed that traveling at exploration-speed through the night (inviting random encounter checks on the night-time table while carrying torches) was the riskier option. In the leadup to their decision, I think I tried to convey my assumptions while still not removing their choice, but post-baboon conversation suggested that things were less clear than they could have been.

[If, rather than move toward the inn, they'd chosen to invest time in looking for shelter on the cliffside path, they likely would have found a new secret entrance to Arden Vul, but that will (potentially) be the story of a future session.]

Can I suggest giving them a bonus for the miscommunication? It's what I do, and consummables - like a scroll of Gate Home - are both useful to prevent another issue, and, well, finite!

Also, I think that adding something like the Inverted Encounter rolls from Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate/Sons of Lady 87 would be a good idea here. IOW, if you fail a "survival" roll (depending on terrain, time and place, the difficulty may vary a lot), you have an encounter.
If you succeed, the supposed encounter threat has an encounter with you - which you can also decide to skip, in most cases.
Basically, the survival roll determines who chooses the parameters of the encounter.

 

[yukiomo]

Can I suggest giving them a bonus for the miscommunication? It's what I do, and consummables - like a scroll of Gate Home - are both useful to prevent another issue, and, well, finite!

Also, I think that adding something like the Inverted Encounter rolls from Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate/Sons of Lady 87 would be a good idea here. IOW, if you fail a "survival" roll (depending on terrain, time and place, the difficulty may vary a lot), you have an encounter.
If you succeed, the supposed encounter threat has an encounter with you - which you can also decide to skip, in most cases.
Basically, the survival roll determines who chooses the parameters of the encounter.

I am not sure I fully follow how this "survival roll" mechanic works (or at least differs from standard encounter rolls), but it could be worth a look. Retreat is generally pretty viable in ACKS--enemies' choice to pursue is based on a morale check, and the mechanics for chase give decent likelihood of escape. In the worst case, the sacrifice of a henchman or two can enable a withdrawal. In the case of the baboons, the party had chosen to not really guard their flanks, in favor of reinforcement at the front and rear, so escape without heavy casualties would have been more difficult.

 

[yukiomo]

Session XXVI

The cast:

• Justin Nicholas ("Just Nick", "Nick"), fighter 2
  • Nugs, chicken
• Yara, barbarian 2
  • Rodrik Jr., chicken
  • Rodrik, level 0 man
• Baldanders, dwarven fury 1
• Klaren, elven Ranger 2
  • Arbane, elven spellsword 1
  • Tanithel, elven nightblade 1
• Teddy, paladin 2

The party paused after beginning the descent to Gog. The three sleeping beastmen were potentially a suitable gift to Gog, but would he take amiss at their being still alive? That is, would accepting live prisoners violate the non-aggression pact he had with the beastmen? Furthermore, could the remainder of the patrol they'd encountered, four now-dead beastmen, also be put to some use? They reversed direction back into the Halls of Thoth and made for the room they'd had their fight last session. [The players, I think, had considered and rethought their plans between sessions, although I wasn't privy to their discussion.]

Looking more closely at the sleeping beastmen, Nick and Rodrik shared a curious observation: the scale armor they wore was of Archontean military origin. Its make wasn't modern, being of a style popular perhaps a few centuries past, but it was certainly of the New Archontean Empire. "A few centuries, that's around the time Lankios' expedition entered Arden Vul, right?" Yara pondered. Combined with the similarly-somewhat antiquated mode of Archontean the beastmen spoke, this perhaps indicated something, but the matter was not pursued further at this point.

In a stroke of luck, either good or bad, they ran into another beastman patrol en route. Carrying three trussed up comrades made this new group disinclined toward parley, and violence ensued. The fight began dangerously when Rodrik charged forward ahead of the other fighters [girded and inspired by the 12 on the morale check I ruled this called for] and threw himself into the melee. With Fortuna shining on him, he dealt the first blow of the fight and survived until joined by the party's other warriors. Forming two ranks of spears and swords, the party's superior armor and skill eventually gave the engagement to the party, albeit not before Teddy was moderately wounded, and a lucky beastman spear pierce penetrated Nick's mail and skewered poor Nugs.

As the beastman line broke, one beat a hasty retreat, leaving his comrade to (unsuccessfully) hold the line. Yara attempted to pursue, but she held back when she heard shouts of "Comrades, invaders! To arms!" The party settled for heaping the six beastmen corpses in a pile. Klaren had the thought of using this violence to perhaps incite a war between the beastmen and hobbits; after wracking his brain for something appropriately vulgar and hobbit-like, he scrawled "Phlebotomas sez [sic] 'get fucked!'" on a note and stuck it to a dead beastman.

The party then successfully returned to where they'd fought the beastmen last session, retrieved their bodies, and then retreated to an out-of-the-way room in which they'd killed two baboon skeletons [in Session 20]. At some point during this trek, the sleeping beastmen woke up but were unable to do anything. The party had the thought of furthering the charade that they were working for Plumthorn and his hobbits, and they had Yara release one of their captives. After leading him out, she told him "You beastmen are claiming Phlebotomas' territory, retreat or be slain!" This was a clever addition to their plan, but one with a significant flaw: after the freed beastman had vanished, the party realized they'd devised it within his earshot. They had never said anything as explicit as "We want to start a war between Plumthorn and the beastmen because we wish both factions harm", so perhaps the beastman would be deceived, but the ruse's plausibility was certainly damaged.

Baldanders then began a brutal and short interrogation of the two remaining captives. They learned the beastmen's military commander was one Komes (i.e., Count) Skleros, and he commanded perhaps a hundred soldiers. "Ten fewer now!" Nick cut in, still bemoaning the violent slaying of Nugs. Baldanders asked the beastman if he wanted to be fed to Gog, and the calmness with which this query was delivered was terrifying. Now begging for his life, the beastman said his people didn't seek needless conflict, and relations would be improved were he and his companion to be returned safely. This was considered but deemed incompatible with the strategic goal of fomenting beastman-hobbit war, and so Klaren put the two captives to death.

Attempting to win Gog's friendship with a gift of six dead beastmen remained an appealing strategy. However, returning to the stairs leading to his lair meant either a short jaunt through the hobbit's central area (obviously infeasible) or retracing the party's steps and risking more beastmen encounters. Another option was to activate the statue of Thoth that had sent a previous party iteration tumbling down to Gog many months ago [Session 7], but this was judged unpredictable in reliability and safety.

Retracing steps near the beastmen was chosen as the course of activity. In the hour or so since the party had had their fight, beastmen had retrieved the piled bodies of their comrades but were not currently choosing to contest the hallway where they'd fallen. The party safely descended to Gog's underground lake and made peaceful contact with him.

Upon being gifted with the beastmen bodies, Gog dubbed the party "meat-friends" and became quite loquacious. Throughout the ensuing conversation, he demonstrated an unsettling predilection for reaching into a dead beastman's mouth, pulling out its tongue, and slowly nibbling on it between words. Nick was inspired by this to cook Nugs with the party's torch, as he snacked (feeding his insatiable appetite), he fed some bits of grilled chicken to Rodrik Jr.

• Gog's suspicion was that Deino, mistress of the beastmen, made use of the mushrooms she instructed her minions to catch to concoct some brew that extended her life and kept her young
• On his level, a tribe of goblins lived to his south: he saw himself as their guardian of sorts but said they were not inherently hostile to visitors
• When Baldanders asked if Gog knew of Guivrel, the giant suggested that a tomb dedicated to her was hidden north of his lake, accessible through the Hall of Forty Pillars
• Yrtol [the lost husband of the spirit Nyema, encountered in session 15] had, according to overheard conversations, been taken to the Temple of Set
• Between the dungeon level in which Gog lived and the Halls of Thoth above was a separate level Gog called "The Forum of Set", although he was not sure how to reach it
• He claimed some familiarity with "Rex, the first canine" [a taxidermied dog last seen via vision surrounded by Gog-like giants in Session 11], but this, and other queries about his people made him reticent. Rex and his people were "of his past" and "below us", but he revealed little else

As the conversation drew to its end, Klaren made sure to badmouth Dalton's Darlings to Gog.

Returning to the Halls of Thoth and evading further beastman encounters, the party thought to seek out the Temple of Set and advanced toward the Thothian burial halls [discovered in Session 21]. The party found their path blocked by a wandering gang of fire beetles and chose to withdraw from the dungeon rather than seek another fight.

Back at the "Luck in the Head", Klaren sussed out from Kronos that the goblins of Arden Vul were "unusually fecund" and were always seeking food and territory. Furthermore, they might currently have some beef with Plumthorn's hobbits. "Well that settles it, we're gonna go befriend some goblins" was Nick's immediate response. Thinking ahead to future delves, Baldanders purchased from Kronos' retainers a thick wool blanket (if soaked in water, this might protect from the fire rays of the monkey statue in "the chimney house" [encountered in Session 13]) and a shovel (for digging through baboon dung). The party also concluded that the gold ring carved with "G" taken from Lankios' potential remains [last session] was not immediately magical or harmful, nor was it of unimaginable value.

The following morning, the group returned to the Thothian burial halls. Finding the fire beetles gone, they used the levers to open portcullises and gain access to the catacombs. Their exploration revealed a labyrinth of intersecting corridors and no visible treasure. More ominously after thirty minutes of careful trekking, some lingering enchantment in the catacombs began to animate bodies and draw forth large numbers of undead. The group swiftly and skillfully retreated to safety and observed they were not pursued. As Klaren bemoaned the party's lack of the ability to turn undead, Nick cut in with "Those goblins are looking more appealing, aren't they?"

Mortal wounds:

• None!

Deaths:

• Nugs