Dwimmermount with Middle Schoolers -- XXVII

We opened what would turn out to be a landmark session with Vale the magic-user far from the rest of the explorers and surrounded by a squad of the thick-limbed, ruddy-skinned dwimmer-goblins.


The spells she had woven to maintain the ruse that she was one of them were quickly fading and already the goblins were becoming suspicious, but at just that moment the  floors and walls of the entire dungeon level began to vibrate!  As unseen pipes and conduits creaked, knocked, and groaned and distant lights flickered or flared and died in showers of sparks, Thaddeus V and the other recently awaken goblin clone soldiers hastened back to the command post of Rurik, their centurion.  Vale spared not a moment, but dashed off into the darkened halls.


[All this clamor was of course the result of Sergei's fiddling around in the room of lenses and levers down on level three, accidentally powering up various portions of the dungeon.]


At this point, since Y'draneal, the party's mapper, was down on level three, I cleared the table of all maps, insisting that Vale's player navigate her way out of the dungeon by memory alone!  Fortunately, Vale was up to the task and moved unerringly toward the stairs.


Never one to make things too easy, I also insisted on making three separate wandering monster checks as she fled, each at a 1 in 6 chance of an encounter.

Vale noticed that the steps leading up to level one were now damp, but continued to take them two at a time ... at least she did until an acid-weeping pseudo-pod detached itself from a tread to take a swipe at her ... a "2" ... Vale dashed onward, dimpling the top of the eyeless horror with the print of her shoe.

Crossing level one at a sprint, she tore past the decapitated statue of Saint Mavors and pressed on toward the entry hall.  With daylight in sight, she had little time to react to the crab spider that sprang from above another statue ... a "4" wasn't sufficient to catch her however.  She roasted the beast with "Bernie Hands" [sic], not realizing that a second spider was closing on her from behind.  Luck was still with the lady-conjurer, however, and when the spider failed to force its fangs through her robes she stunned it with a Ray of Frost.  Staying to trade blows struck me as ill-advised, until I recalled that in 5th edition this spell also slows its victims -- Vale made good her get-away.



Meanwhile, down in the guts of level three, Y'draneal, Ivor, and Sergei confronted a trio of shadows--negative, psychic silhouettes burned into the azoth-saturated atmosphere of the dungeon.  Y'draneal maintained his signature move, bolting away from danger at break-neck speed, while Ivor fended off attack after attack (the entities seemed to be drawn to him, perhaps sensing that much of his strength had been permanently drained by their kind in prior encounters).  To his chagrin, Sergei soon learned that mortal weapons couldn't harm these shadows, though his strokes were bold and well-placed.  In the end, the two fighters were able to flee their attackers, and fortunately their armor had been proof against nine separate attacks!

Regrouping, the trio pressed on in hopes of finding another route back to the surface.  In a domed chapel dedicated to Saint Tenen, patron of craftsmen and travelers, they found a thick, blue curtain of coarse felt.  Pulling it aside, they were at once set upon from behind by an animated statue of the saint!

Y'draneal executed his trademark dash, jinking past the imposing animated construct and toward the room's entryway, only to be clothes-lined by the statue's unyielding, outstretched arm.  The fleet-footed elf collided with such force that he turned a full somersault before landing on the flagstones with a sickening crack.


Sergei passed his shield to Ivor and gathered up the stricken elf, only to be hip-checked into the wall by the advancing statue.  Scrambling, he fled through an unexplored door as Ivor did his best to block the pounding stone fists, though the impacts buckled his shield and drove him to his knees.

Staggering into a broad, round chamber, Y'draneal flung over his shoulder, Sergei was confronted by a strange spectacle: three richly carved stone archways stood in the middle of the room, each marked with ancient glyphs far beyond his ability to comprehend.  Stranger still, the odd, polished, black rod that he had stuck into his belt last session began to vibrate of its own accord.  Before his eyes a shimmering, silvery mist filled the nearest archway.



"It's a portal!  Go through!"

"I don't ..."

"Go through!"

"Okay, I go through."

A battered Ivor at his heels, Sergei stepped into the mists and ... found himself in a hall of decapitated statues with bright light illuminating a set of steep steps.

"It's the entryway!"

"You got all the way back out!"

Just then the second crab spider, which Vale had narrowly escaped, struck from hiding.  It latched upon Ivor's leg, driving its fangs down in search of some fault in his dented armor.  Ivor responded by flailing with his torch and, in addition to driving the spider away, managed to set his own tunic alight!  Having survived countless dangers, the haggard fighter flailed at his own kindled beard and hair before collapsing within sight of the dungeon's front gate.


Sergei dragged his motionless companions upwards, step by painful step, making the fifty foot ascent to the Red Gates on sheer willpower alone.  By the time he finally reached the surface, however, it was clear that neither Y'draneal nor Ivor had any breath remaining and that he was the only member of the trio who could feel the wind upon his face.

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What a session!

With Y'draneal having at last shuffled off his mortal coil (he did amazingly well for having only 8 hit points), Vale is now the only surviving member of the original "Fabulous Five" who began back in September.

Ivor, NPC-turned PC, was the next oldest character and, like Vale had nearly achieved 4th level before meeting his ignominious demise.

Fortunately, since Sergei lived to tell the tale (and meet back up with Vale at The Green Dragon) AND recovered the bodies of his friends, the party still has Y'draneal's precious maps, including a marked route down to the yet-unexplored 4th level.

Also, Sergei learned the benefits of being the last man standing ... gaining all the experience points that the trio had accrued over the last several sessions.  He is now level three after having played only a handful of times.

The lads were most keen to get back in the dungeon ...

"Can we meet again over the summer and do this?"

... and soon the former players of Y'draneal, Kenny, and Ivor had rolled up new characters to use next week.

Dwimmermount with Middle Schoolers -- XXVI

With the party split (Vale off masquerading as a dwimmer-goblin and Hurtis in captivity on level two) our latest session focused entirely on the exploits of Y'draneal, Sergei, and Ivor down on level three.

The trio were fairly cozy, sitting in the dark, locked in some kind of old control room waiting for Vale to return, but as time wore on their patience began to wear thinner.
Did they have any food?  Yes, enough for a couple of days in a pinch.
Light? A half-dozen unlit torches.
Water?  Perhaps only half a bottle ... clearly not ample for an extended stay.

Without abandoning his duties as party mapper, elven Y'draneal stepped to the fore to became the leader in Vale's absence.

"Okay.  We're gonna go south.  I'm in the middle because if I get hit, I die."

Hearing a dwimmer-goblin patrol approaching, the explorers darted through the southern door and closed it just in the nick of time to avoid detection.

Before long, however, they ran afoul of a clutch of horrid, eyeless, flat-bodied arachnids, each about the size of a dinner plate.  These creatures, quickly dubbed "ticks", had appallingly thick hide that turned blow after blow.  After resorting to using Sergei's trademark crowbar to pry the nasty things free (just as often leaving a few of their limbs behind), Y'draneal saw that they were outnumbered, unlikely to rout this foe, and so he led the retreat through a nearby hatch.

One tick rode along on Ivor, its finger-like mouth parts scrabbling against his armor in search of a seam, even as Sergei heaved the hatch shut behind them.

A long, odd fight followed in which the adventurers took turns prying the solitary tick off of each other, trying to pin it in place without getting bitten, stabbing at it (an AC 17/2 defeated most of their efforts), and eventually splashing it with acid.


The dreadful parasite continued to twitch even after a blow from Sergei's ax cut it in half, leading to a decision to stash the remains in two separate cabinets chosen from among those shelves and niches lining the walls of the room.  This in turn led to the discovery of a strange, black baton that made the hair on the back of Sergei's hands stand up when he held it.

"Maybe it's magic, or some kind of electrical thing."

Cheered a bit by this discovery, the small group pressed on through another hatch into a chamber festooned with broad, translucent lenses, altar-like consoles adorned with levers and raised studs, and snaking cables of shining, braided orichalcum.

Sergei set aside his usual caution and began to fiddle around with the switches and buttons a bit.  His experimentation was soon rewarded as a low hum filled the room, lights began to flicker on overhead, and a bit of arcane scrawl crept across the curved nephilite lenses.


"I have no idea what I'm doing."

With his keen elven hearing, Y'draneal detected vibrations and humming at a variety of different pitches echoing through the floors, walls and ceiling, not just of this chamber but throughout the surrounding stonework for a considerable distance.  Elsewhere there were distant groans, banging sounds, and the occasional flicker of cold light as if the whole of the dungeon was beginning to stir and wake!

None of the three explorers had so much as a whit of arcane training, and they soon decided that they were into matters well beyond their depth.  They resolved to leave the room without any further tampering until Vale could be brought here to sort things out properly.

Passing through the far hatch they soon came upon a chamber choked with large, silvery-black fungus.  Realizing that more than a half-dozen of the ticks lurked beyond the hatches behind them, cutting off hope of a safe retreat, Y'draneal dared to enter first and promptly dropped in his tracks!

"Is he dead?"

"Am I dead?"

Ivor managed to snare Y'draneal's belt with the hilt of his great sword, and dragged the elf back within reach of the hatch, exposing a grim layer of bones just beneath the carpet of fungus.

Y'draneal still had a pulse (though we learned that elven hearts aren't located in quite the same place as human ones), but remained in his swoon for a time.

Trapped between dangerous fungus ahead and killer ticks behind, despair began to set in as Ivor and Sergei considered how long they might be stuck down here.

"It wouldn't really be cannibalism; you aren't human."

When Y'draneal eventually came round (thankfully not missing any important bits), it was decided that their best option was to brave a second dash through the chamber of the ticks.  This was accomplished and the two fighters had their platemail to thank for avoiding grisly exsanguination.

The trio discovered a chapel dedicated to the patron Thulian Saint Tenen, patron saint of craftsmen and smithies.  A statue of the saint graced the chapel, but the head had been replaced with the now familiar stone visage of Turms Termax, dating back to a time when Termaxian cultists had controlled Dwimmermount.

Looking for a reasonably safe place to hole up and rest, the party tried one more door -- an odd, translucent one.   Within the small room beyond they discovered a trove of carefully stacked, polished, metal disks -- each a foot across -- but the dim places beneath the storage shelves began to crawl and disgorged a trio of shadows, intent upon draining the explorers strength away!

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Thoughts:

• The smaller group size meant that the explorers blazed through a half-dozen rooms and made some major discoveries along the way.  
• The player of Y'draneal, our steadfast cartographer, really impressed me by stepping into the role of team leader, making swift and sound tactical decisions.  
• I thought that the ticks might just serve up a Total Party Kill ... their plate and shield equivalent AC totally set the tone for the combat ... and it took all three characters a number of rounds to destroy even a single one.  
• The absence of any offensive spell casting was pretty keenly felt ... still, they fared well enough for a thief and two fighters on the third dungeon level down.
• The shadows definitely brought on an unexpected cliff-hanger ending--Y'draneal has only nine azoth-infused arrows remaining and without spells the group may not have any other weapons that can harm these foes!

Dwimmermount with Middle Schoolers -- XXV

For the third time in a row we began a Dwimmermount session with the explorers cut off from the surface world and carefully counting every torch and day of rations still remaining to them.

The five survivors of The Damaged Souls were:

·         Vale the Grey

·         Hurtis, Sergei, & Ivor, doughty fighting men

·         Y’draneal, elven thief

After a battling a squad of the Centurion Rurik’s dwimmer-goblins to a draw, the group was holed up in what Vale determined to be some kind of ancient control room, festooned with levers, dials and switches of various types.  As Hurtis rested, some party members experimented with the controls, but to no avail – the place seemed to lack any source of power.

Meanwhile, knowing that Kenny lay dead just beyond the locked, red-steel hatch of the control room, Vale attempted a bit of necromancy, hoping to absorb enough of the recently deceased magician’s essence to gain some of his uncast spells.

While there are no rules governing this sort of action, Dwimmermount isn’t just any old dungeon either—the very air of the mountain fortress is tinted with azoth, the raw element of magic that fills the voids between the stars.  That, plus another couple details of this level that I won’t yet discuss here, meant that I was willing to allow Vale’s player a D20 roll … because … why not?

 

One natural 20 later and not Kenny, but the azoth-charged shadow of the space where his psyche used to exist slid soundlessly through the seam around the hatch!  

This living shadow wasted no time, but made an immediate assault upon Vale!  

While Ivor cowered (he’s lost about 4 permanent Strength points to shadow drain already) and Sergei gibbered, Vale hastily hit herself with a Light Spell to help ward the negative-energy entity off.  Hurtis kindled his last torch and bravely dashed to Vale’s defense; his protection plus the light kept the thing at bay.  Y’draneal fired three of his precious azoth-infused arrows (the points disintegrate upon impact) before eventually banishing the shadow.

Never one to dwell on a setback, Vale soon put her next plan into place.  She used a spell to disguise herself as one of the big goblins on level two and another to magically grant her an ability to understand their language.  With Y’draneal trailing silently far behind, she took Hurtis “captive” and proceeded toward the heavily guarded steps that led up to level 2.  Even as a container of oil bounded down the steps she called out, 

“It’s me.  I’ve taken one of the humans prisoner!”

Her bluff worked—fortunately all the super-goblins are clones, so fitting in was far easier than it would be in any other situation—and soon poor Hurtis was stripped, hog-tied, and getting the boot.

“Where are your friends!?  Where did they go?  What chamber are they in?”

Hurtis tried to hang tough for a little while, but when the goblin platoon’s cook was fetched to see if he would be good for steaks or only for the stew pot, he caved.  

“They’re in some control room!”

Fortunately, there was enough of a language barrier that his answer didn’t mean much to the goblins at first, and Vale kept up her banter, lest they figure it out. 

“He was alone, but I think he might be a Termaxian spellcaster.”

“What?  Why do you think that?”

The two kept the conversation spinning until Hurtis mumbled something about the Red Gate (the entry to the megadungeon), so persuading the goblin centurion that the rest of the group had slipped away (and also revealing that there must be another way from level three back up toward the surface).

His fate still uncertain, Hurtis was dragged off to the larder while Vale was send to man a guard post on the eastern side of the Reliquary level, her spells quickly approaching their termination.  She didn't waste a moment but fell to chatting with her fellow guards.

“So, how does a goblin get promoted around here?”

“What?”

“I mean, Centurion Rurik, how did he get to be in charge?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.  He's always been centurion.”

[Bingo: these goblins probably won't be nearly so menacing without their officer to direct them, and they seem bred to follow orders!]

“Um, so what’s the plan?  How many of those stasis chambers does Rurik have us looking for?”

“All we can find, but I heard that what the centurion is really looking for is a gate in the House of Portals.”

[Weird ... dwimmer-goblins are apparently from some other world; one possibly accessible from somewhere below level two.]

“Yeah, we’ve been on short rations as is … it don’t make no sense to bring more lads on without resupply.”

"So what should we do for fun while we are on duty?"

"What?"

"Do you guys know any songs?"

"Um ..."

Another sterling Charisma roll later and Vale had her two companions singing in rounds.

"Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, establish a beachhead and swarm em and smash em and stomp their guts out and cut em to ribbons and ..."

"Okay, I think that's about all that verse can handle, but you're getting the hang of it!"

by Adam Bolton 2012

As Vale boned-up on her goblin trivia, down below in their hiding place Ivor and Sergei were sniffed out by an indeterminate number of bi-pedal rat-things.  Without Vale to do the talking, Ivor chose to throw his helmet at the nearest one (an odd choice since it was the focus of the group's active Light Spell--their only source of illumination) before charging with his greatsword.  His single chop marked the one and only combat round of the session, and though he connected with the furry creature his blow didn't seem to do it any lasting harm.  The creatures scattered, but Y'draneal's darkvision revealed that they didn't retreat far.

With their light about to fail and no word or signal having come from Vale, things began to look tense for Ivor and Sergei, until Y'draneal mention the small tent that he had been lugging around with him for some time now.  They realized that the canvas could be torn into strips, wrapped around the poles, and dipped in the oil that the goblins had flung down the steps earlier to make a bundle of quite serviceable torches.  Now with light, food (the goblins had missed Ivor's pack when shaking the party down last session), and a secure hiding place, the trio could afford to hole up in the control room for several days if necessary.

At the same time, Hurtis had plenty of opportunity to question the wisdom of Vale's plan from where he hung bound in the goblin's supply room.  Perhaps hoping to win the goblins' trust, he tried a gambit of his own.

"Hey.  Hey I had this green potion on me.  I think it might be poison.  If I let you keep it ..."

It took a moment for the goblins to work out what he was saying, but soon the green bottle was located among Hurtis's possessions.  The company cook shrugged, unstopped the bottle and pinching Hurtis's nose forced a bit of the unidentified brew down the fighter's throat.  As luck would have it, the potion reinvigorated him, helping him completely shrug off the effects of the beating he'd just taken.  Unfortunately, though fortified, Hurtis couldn't quite burst the ropes that the creatures had bound him with.

Meanwhile, up above Vale realized that the duration of her spells was about to expire.

"Hey, I hear something out in the hall.  You guys wait here, I'll have a look."

"No, that's against orders.  Centurion says no splitting up."

"Hmm ... but you guys wouldn't rat me out would you?"

"Well ... it's orders ..."

"Come on, after the good times we've had?"

"I don't fink it's a good idear."

"Wait!  It's the Termaxian mage!  I can HEAR HIS THOUGHTS.  Quick, I know where the humans went!"

Alarmed, one goblin stayed at his post while the other hurried Vale back to the centurion.  Turning a corner, she lingered far enough behind to hastily refresh her spells.

"Well.  Where are they?"

"I can't hear the exact words, but I can see the place in my mind.  Maybe we can question the mage."

"Leave that to me."

"Okay.  I can probably lead us to the place I see."

"Fine, take a squad there, but just to have a quick look then report back.  No lingering."

Soon Vale was leading a small group of the big, red-skinned goblins back down to level three where she hoped her friends would be waiting in ambush ...