Dubzaron Session 148: Lights in the Dark

 Dubzaron Session 148: Lights in the Dark

Time: Dungeon delved on 04/10/2024. One day rest needed after. Can take actions 04/12/2024. 

Participating PCs

Bloodletter (the psycho formerly known as Reaver): L6 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral.

Kyrandis: L1 Wonder Worker, Wrathbringer, Lawful.

Martel: L1 Dwarven Pugilist, Streetfighter (hadoken!), Neutral. RIP

Rory: L5 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral.

Sheela: L2 Mage, female char played by male player for some reason.

Xanthos: L8 (now 7) Cleric, Mendicant, Lawful.

Hench

Bloodletter: Magos (L3 Mage, Magical Scholar [Mapping, Ancient Zaharan])

Xanthos: Ulysses (L4 Explorer, Mariner), Nestor (L4 Venturer, Merchant Mariner), Agenor (L5 Fighter, Legionnaire) Fang (4 HD Dire Wolf), Tig (6 HD Phase Tiger)

Experience

XP For Treasure: 18,000

XP for Kills: 13,545

XP for Magic Items: 0

Total XP Pool:

Cuts: 16

PC Cut: 0%: 3,943     5%: 4,140   10%: 4,337

Hench Cut: 0%: 1,972    5%: 2,071    10%: 2,169

Special: All Lawful PCs/Hench get 800 (and Lawful hench 400) for the elimination of 1 evil altar. This is also modified by Prime Requisite bonus, if any.

Session Report

As the eclipse fades into the past, time marches on, and I am back to DMing "Queens Rest Mountain" in the Dubzaron campaign. Will this dungeon ever end? Will it be "cleared"? Will I win the lottery? My sources say "no".

The party was in place well and set off for Queens Rest Mountain as soon as we all got done talking on the mic about how lame Denis Villeneuve's re-imagining of Chani from Dune was. We had a new player to the group from the Trollopulous 1e game. He was Kyrandis the Wonder Worker. A level 1 PC trying to tag along to a very high level dungeon. Will he survive? In a way. Read on! 

Welcome Kyrandis, or whatever your online handle is or your real name or whatever your future PCs are called.

This reminds me of a section in Mick Foley's book. He is a wrestler who had many personas; the most famous being the Hannibal Lecter inspired "Mankind". But he also wrestled as Cactus Jack in ECW and WCW and Dudelove in the indies and a few times in WWF (most famously where he entered into the Royal Rumble thrice, each time under a different of his three most famous identities). In one of his books he opined about how weird the wrestling brotherhood is in that they don't really know or interact with eachother by their own names. This reminds me of the BROSR specifically but of online social interactions as well. I will paraphrase Mick's book and add some BROSR guys to it instead: "Hey Brigadine can you reach out to Standing Mountain and tell him to bring his PC Rory for this session. If he can contact HereAndNow to play Xanthos or Proteus that would be good too. BTW How was Dorinal's DMing this week?"

So many names; none of them real (except in an Elfland sort of way). That's how I feel referencing Kyrandis when he's most certainly known by 2 or 3 other handles in the Trollopulous campaign.

Can you tell this is a short session report this week? It is.

The party went up the hill to Queens Rest Mountain with no random encounters during the travel. Last week it was spewing poisonous smoke again so they couldn't go. They went inside the cauldron of the volcano and I was slowing down a bit to give better descriptions since we had a new player who had never been here before.

Everyone else had been multiple times so the Caller took them to the center door of the Sepulcher in the inside of the volcano. They passed by Primanti the Cloud Giant who they made friends with in the first room 2 weeks back. He survived the smoke no problem and the party celebrated him for being so tough.

They then trekked deeper in the dungeon to arrive at a large room with a statue of the necromancer queen Alicia and a magically locked room which they believed they could open if they found an orb to go with the statue's scepter (which they found last time they were here).

Xanthos cast Locate Object with "orb" as the target and it pointed him to the northeast. The Caller went about exploring the dungeon in that direction to get them there. In some hallways to the east they came upon a random encounter of a white pillar of light with a red flaming tail. It moved at blinding speed to get right in Xanthos's face before we even rolled initiative. It burrowed into the Cleric's chest and drained a level from him. The party was bummed I think I heard "f this place" on the mic; but in full R rated glory! 

Little did the party know that if they didn't kill the thing right away it was about to get much worse! Thankfully Rory rolled a terrific attack and damage roll and killed the thing in one shot. It was sticking into Xanthos' chest the burrow deeper and deeper and he just sliced it in half; narrowly missing the cleric with his perfect shot.

The party explored further to the east where they had a random encounter with a big venomous snake. I think it got one successful attack off but the PC who was attacked made their Save Vs Poison. The party then chopped it to bits. Rory went as far as to try and carve it up to make snakeskin boots.

They found a secret door on the eastern portion of some side hallways which lead into a room with an altar and puddle of blood. When Xanthos began to smash the altar (Kyrandis was happy to help with this, to his credit) some bloody tendrils tried to attack from the puddle just like the last time they saw this sort of room. Once again this mid to high level party easily dispatched the 2 HD tendrils. 

This room had only one apparent exit which was a door that was sealed shut with iron welding. There would be no Trollopulous style "unhinged" stuff happening here! So the party tried to double back to the south of the dungeon and go back east then north. They did a similar thing to double back around sealed door last time. 

But this time there was a great gash across the dungeon splitting it in two. This made a canyon of about 30 feet wide across the dungeon which fell directly into the volcano lava. They could see other hallways across the canyon and may have been able to navigate this with climbing or flying or something but either didn't have the ability, resources, or thought better of it. "If we fail we fall in lava and die". Probably.

So they doubled BACK to the sealed door room with the intention of breaking it down. This would have taken a VERY long time but found something in the module (yes, a module, shut up Jeffro) where the room had a weak wall which a Dwarf would be very likely to notice. This party doesn't run with many dwarves but the new PC Martel saved the day here. He pointed out the weak wall and Bloodletter broke it down.

During all the travel after the snake I wasn't hitting many random encounters or monster restocking but I did hit a big one on their way back. The monster was very powerful and the monster entry stated it absolutely would have a Lair and Lair Treasure if encountered with 3 or more of them. Well there were 3 so I improvised that these could only be encountered at the next empty room the party would come upon or close to. I then decided that the noise from breaking down the wall was so loud that the monsters would hear it and I'd make a reaction roll of how they felt about all the noise and that obviously some folks were near their lair. Well the reaction was snake eyes, the lowest possible. So they were PISSED.

Right after the wall broke down and the party was getting themselves ready to go marching down the hallway they found beyond, 3 Willowisps came flying through the door directly across the hall from them and started attacking. I described these as red and black lights flashing and fading but the players seemed to guess what they were pretty quickly. 

The fight went two rounds where the Wisps downed Martel, Kyrandis, Fang, and Ulysses. Because the monster is super intelligent as per the monster entry, I had them trying to cleave through the weak opponents to essentially get free attacks on the others. This is the sort of tactics PCs do all the time. It was somewhat effective but the players smartly (or luckily?) didn't have more than 1 or 2 weaker PC/Hench lined up for easy cleaving reach for this fight. 

Eventually Xanthos cast Dispel Evil which makes summoned/evil creatures either get destroyed or (if they make their Saving Throw) just run away for 10 minutes. Two of the three Wisps were destroyed. But the third had disappeared the round previously with intention of going behind the party to kill the weaker members there (and get those sweet sweet cleaves). As such, the party didn't know for sure if the invisible wisp had been destroyed or simply fled.

Rory asked Xanthos "so were just waiting to cast that to see if we could hit it?"

The party then triaged their many wounded and after all the healing and such was done they ended up with only Martel completely dead. Our new friend Kyrandis had his legs completely destroyed, Fang got (another?) brain injury, and Ulysses was blinded. (In hindsight I think some of these fell in the second fight with the remaining Wisp but my notes aren't good enough to parse this.)

The party discussed whether they should abscond from the dungeon with their walking wounded or keep pushing on. The decided to push on in the hopes of finding the Orb. But right before they almost turned to go down a hallway in the direction they assumed the Orb, the Caller had an off hand idea to check the door to the room the Wisps came from.

They found a room with a bunch of sarcophagi and the Lair treasure. I decided to let the party roll on this so I spent some time typing in the percentage chance of 1d6 x 1000 GP and such into the chat with PC names assigned to who would roll it. The treasure came out ok and was a decent score. As the party left the room to go chase the Orb the remaining Wisp came at them. He downed Martel and Kyrandis I think during this battle, actually. But the party eventually killed it outright. 

Those things have insane AC and hit pretty hard. So, it was a tough battle.

At this point it was time to escape the dungeon. There were no encounters on the way out or on the overland travel. It was a decent score of gems, coins, and a rubied golden wifebeater than Kryandis found in another section of the dungeon I failed to mention above. 

Well done, new player and welcome!

Class Grades

Bloodletter (the psycho formerly known as Reaver): L6 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral. E. He dealt death and let blood.

Kyrandis: L1 Wonder Worker, Wrathbringer, Lawful. S. He missed investigating some Arcane/Divine themed art, statues, monsters and various things which this role would likely be interested in.

Rory: L5 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral. E. Dealt death, didn't flee a battle.

Sheela: L2 Mage, female char played by male player for some reason. S. No investigation of arcane things. No curiosity about very odd monsters found. (I may perhaps change my mind if the Template is such where she'd not care at all. hmu)

Xanthos: L8 (now 7) Cleric, Mendicant, Lawful. E. Healed as much as possible. 

Please keep in mind "S" is "Superior". It is the grade when there are 1 or 2 less than ideal role choices. E is reserved for there being 0 less than ideal role choices.