Dubzaron Session 152: Hole Lotta Adventure

During this session I was actually a PC! DM Vince McMaximus was the referee and I had a blast. If you’re stuck as the foreverDM at your d&d table you really need to embrace the BROSR methods and mindset; you’ll be a PC in your own campaign world in no time. 

I made a whole twitter thread about my experience as a PC during this session you can read here. But I’d like to emphasize that I had to roll a new PC because my main PC (who would have done this session’s goal) DIED IN DOWNTIME. Worse than that, Liano the Elven Enchanter died at the hands of CThaylor the Demi-goddess when she rose from the depths and wrecked Fishton during my Battle Braunstein event! 

Liano was chilling in Fishton’s elf district and I mostly forgot about it and didn’t care that much since I rarely get to PC. So at the start of Session 152 I realized oh man Liano was on site when CThaylor was raised at the Wet Wedding and went on a rampage. I decided to let the evening’s DM decide what shot Liano would have had to escape before his house was crushed or whatever. It was deemed 50/50 and the d100 roll went against me. So I and the co-DM retconned my character death; allowing CThaylor to claim another victim! Insane. Brosr play can’t be topped.

Just read DM Vince’s session report below and find out for yourself. God bless. -DM BDubs

Participants

 - Hermes L4 Mage (Edge Wizard), Neutral

1 MD CAV(Bob)

    Valor Cleric 6 Undead Slayer Lawful

    Honor Paladin 5 Gallant Lawful

    Esmerelda Mage 5 Warmage Lawful

    

    Wolf Eye 1st lvl elven ranger

Arcanist Avenger: L1 Elven Nightblade, Lawful

Platoon vet horse arch 

Platoon nomad horse arch

Session report:

The crew set out early morning of May 8th from FOB Dina 1 en route to FOB Dina 2 which was newly established thanks to the clearing operation this same crew did a while back.  Apparently (due to this odd fixation with Queen’s Rest) this crew likes hanging out with nomads drinking mares milk all day.

Because it is apparently not known about Dina and the Brovenmaidens..they are a group of lady fighters from Brovenloft.  What? Are they like Amazons or something.  NO! This is far stupider!  Because Eddie the Lich, during the original Brovenloft, sent every fighting age male to fight along side hordes of skeleton warriors to sack the Elf King’s Kabul Castle…all the fighting age males ended up in Red Frontier when they got World War Wished out of the Papal Solar attack in Elven Kandahar…

Later the next day, when Eddie’s Bass Pro Shop pyramid got bombed by the same Solars, he used what ended up being his final wish to make a company of fighting age females L1 fighters so they could use the platoon of tanks the Red Frontier mage, Boldvay, brought with him to Brovenloft, in order to be used on the assault of the Count’s Castle Brovenloft.  They Brovenmaidens (Eddie the Lich, iron maiden, brovenloft…you see?) Were led into battle by a one Smokey the Bugbear into the battle at what was called, in their journals: Sesylvaniagrad.  Captured by the Elf King, they were all treated hospitably after the impressive slaying of 1000 hippogriff riders and handing the “pope” the greatest PR defeat in Brovenhistory…circuitously, Smokey and Jake the Snake Roberts brought the Brovenmaidens with them back to Dubzaron.

Dina is their leader and hunched to Vince…thus the memetic importance of naming the FOBs “Dina”.  #BROSRLore

Anyway, the party met some more nomads in the night.  I rolled to see if these nomads knew the nomads that were already friends with 80% chance they were different.  I rolled in like the 90s…so they’re boys.  They keep going.

The important thing that happened was when they found a hole in the ground.  This hole is in the ground because of the results of the ACKS II wilderness travel rules.  They’re super cool.  The result was technically a “portal”…Well Dubs now STRICTLY controls the goings and comings to and from his precious little Dubzaron via the Black Lodge (I don’t blame him).  Therefore I decided to stick it to him by hollowing out his whole planet.  But the players don’t know that…they only guess it.

After nervously exploring around the hole, they finally got creative and figured out a way to float down this bottomless pit.  Hermes the Good Guy cast levitate on Arcanist Avenger who floated down about half a mile to discover that he saw an opening to the hole on the other side that looked like sky.  The party decided they would like to come back better prepared.

So they decided to hex clear.  They met some berserker types in a little palisade camp.  The painted their flag with a blue hand.  Honor the paladin is apparently the most charismatic dude in the Borderlands now that Vince is a good guy, and he went and convinced these guys to proclaim allegiance to Dina.  Nice!

The crew kept going and found a herd of 80 light horses munching on the grass.  The party cast “talk with animals” and appealed to the horses with the promise of oats…it almost caused a revolt of their own horses who thought they weren’t going to get any oats.  Apparently there were enough oats.  The price of oats has spiked in Turos Spen. 

There was a lot of bouncing around at this point.  Notably, they found some more Blue Hand berserkers…again this was the result of dice.  One night they got surprised by a pack of Blink Dogs.  The dogs attacked but after being given jerky by this lawful party, it turns out that the guy that got mauled by 4 dogs turns out to have been just been mauled with slobbery dog kisses by these good bois.  The pack of Golden Retrievers with visible halos blinked away in gratitude.

Eventually the party made it back to Dina 1 and had to wait for a while while Mike Tyson counted out their reward.  There are 2 platoons worth of nomads hanging out there too and are antsy about getting back to the main camp of the great Kubla Ken. The platoon leaders are Secretariat and Mannamead.  The naming convention for these horse warriors is names of famous race horses, save of course is the title of the Great Ken of the Kennhate.

So this whole session was completely no prep.  The hole itself was created by the table in the book hit from solo play that was to fulfill the conditions created in the last session.  I’ve never thrown as many 1s and 2s on encounter rolls before.  I felt good about how the session turned out from a DM perspective given that this is mostly wilderness travel.  It’s still wasn’t as good of a session as the no-prep session where the chaotic party ran into John Candy the Hill giant and ruined his life.

There were no aberrations in PC roll play.  E for everyone

.Experience

XP for Treasure: 7132

XP for Captures/surrender: 2713

Total XP Pool: 9845

Cuts: 10

PC Cut: 0%: 1969

Hench Cut: 0%: 984

Dubzaron Session 151: Securing the Orb

Time: Dungeon Delved on 05/01/2024. Travel on 05/02/2024. Rest on 05/03/2024. Actions can be taken 05/04/2024.

PCs

Bloodletter: L6 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral.

Doc: L1 Thief, (Alignment?).

George (of the Jungle): L5 Beastmasterm Lawful.

Rory: L6 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral.

Tuckonidas Bulk: L6 Barbarian, Neutral.

Tulsa Doom: L2 Shaman, Snake Handler, Neutral.

Hench

Bloodletter: Magos the L4 Mage

George: Fido the War Dog

Tuckonidas: Duck (L? Fighter), Ye (L? Bard)

Experience

XP for Treasure: 4,000

XP for Kills: 5,270

XP for Magic Items: 32,250

Total XP Pool: 41,520

Cuts: 16

PC Cut: 0%: 5,190   5%: 5,450   10%: 5,709

Hench Cut: 0%: 2,595   5%: 2,725   10%: 2,854

Session Report

The main parties of the campaign took a brief excursion the last few weeks to lift the Evil Muppet Curse (which they caused) back at Muppetlantis. This was mostly handled by the Dubzaron co DM Brig and he did some session reports about the curse and its lifting that I'll drop in this space soon. 

Today I'd like to talk about Session 151 of Dubzaron. 151 sessions. Good heavens can you imagine. Do the critics of the brosr have campaigns that even go into double digits? Maybe here and there. But even those flounder and die when their PCs levels go into the double digits. Because they don't know how to run real D&D. What a shame. 

If only they'd use 1:1 Jeffrogaxian Timekeeping, Patrons, and Braunstein play they could have real D&D campaigns like the BROSR. Like me, BDubs; the greatest long running DM with a current campaign still going. 

While this amazing feat of 151 sessions is mostly due to mine general greatness; I would be remiss if I didn't celebrate the many players who have made this possible. Primarily my Co DMs who kept Dubzaron going for about 6 months when I was dealing with some irl stuff: Brig, Ambrose, Vince, RM, and JB. Thank you!

Also, I'd like to thank all the players, current and former, whose excitement, passion, and engagement in the world of dubzaron kept us all ready to come back for session after session. Thank you!

I would have said all this in the session 151 session report but I had some irl stuff come up last week and had to bail. They broke the curse of muppetry without me! This is fitting since the curse itself happened without me. Once again, Mr and Mr Black Lodge Games, this felt foolishness was not my fault! 

With the muppetry out of the way and all the medium size or smaller bipeds of the world no longer made of felt; the party gathered again in the Sepia Hills to tackle the new tentpole dungeon of the campaign: Queens Rest Mountain!

They set off for the volcano on May Day, ignoring rumors of shamans and druids of the hills (in the more hidden villages) celebrating this druidic holiday with human sacrifice. I decided Patron Kyle OConner who runs this region isn't so into that part of druid faith system but turns a blind eye if it's practice is not too publicly celebrated in the deeper hills and hollows. I found this to be interesting worldbuilding but, as is the case with most all worldbuilding the DM does, the players DONT CARE.

Within a few game world hours they were at the dungeon inside a volcano. They passed by the entry room which is now controlled by a Storm Giant named Permanti who is friendly to them. He advised them that last week, during some lava floes on the outside of the mountain, the various chaos monsters he had to yeet had unnatural fiery aspects. Fiery hair and fur, breathing fire, things like that. Be careful if you delve the dungeon during a floe! 

The party has explored this place a bunch so it was a quick rundown of going three rooms north, two rooms east etc to get where they were going. Althought a made a couple random monster encounter rolls nothing hit so they got to the area they wanted to check out with no danger. Sad.

They passed through a room with a broken wall and into a hallway going north towards their assumed goal. They came upon an evil altar in a cubby with fire giants and the necromancer queen depicted on the side of it in bas relief. No one had any holy water or "Bless" spell to cleanse it so the Lawfully aligned members of the party didn't cop their nice 800 xp bump from doing so. And perhaps took a grade hit from not at least physically defacing it, stay tuned for grading below to find out!

Searching the wall behind the altar Tuck realized it was all cracked up and could be broken by someone with some strength so Bloodletter busted through it like the Koolaid man. On the other side I rolled up a random encounter of 4 vampires (lol, lmao) which I made a 30% chance was Bloodletter best from from Barsoom: Slenderman! and it was!

Bloodletter was charmed by this slightly altered version of the ACKS vampire (I won't tell you which of his abilities are changed; fog of war!) way back on Barsoom and he was happy to see his pal. The reaction roll wasn't great but Slenderman gave Bloodletter a ring, long ago, which improved his reaction with Vampires. So it was enough to make Slenderman simply vaguely annoyed.

You see, Slenderman had made this nice crypt room his new lair in the world of Dubzaron and he was enjoying some personal time with his 3 lady friends (the other 3 vampires in the encounter number roll). Surely they were up to nothing prurient, perish the thought! Slenderman was teaching them the Lindy Hop! Yes he has come to Dubzaron to spread the word of social dance; most especially swing dancing!

While Bloodletter advised Slenderman to hit the gym more to bulk up his spindly arms, the party notes 2 sarcophagi in the room with one piled high with Lair Treasure. Bloodletter made nice with his "friend", letting him know the part was in search of an Orb and Slenderman telling them it was in a room to the north. He saw it but decided to leave it be "but bring it to me for study when you acquire it". 

The party realized they revealed to much and Bloodletter made excuses. They really didn't want to give a vampire the Orb they've been trying to bag for like 4 months. So Slenderman said bring him some dwarves or other smaller slaves to rebuild the wall they broke and help him expand his lair and it was left at that. The vampire gals wanted to keep some of the party members but reaction rolls from the party deemed that Slenderman said "nah". He instead struck up his phantom Big Band and they all got back to Lindy Hopping as the party left.

The party traveled north and found a room which very clearly looked like a trap. It was huge with a magic circle in the center, a big fireplace with an Eternal Flame (magic) inside, braziers all around the room, and a big disgusting statue of a pregnant crone (thanks alot, Macris). The Orb was floating in the eternal flame.

I went to get a drink while the party discussed their plan to deal with it. Magos used ESP to read surface thoughts in the room and heard "Burn, Kill, Rest" and Tulsa asked the ancestors through Commune if an elemental was in the room "yes". and some other questions I forgot. 

The eventual plan was to tie a rope to Doc the Thief (???), let him pop off a Ward against Elemental to go in and grab the Orb. 

This plan took a while to develop with some back and forth between the thief being scared and Rory stating they were "[redacted]ing dead without a Cleric". 

But all said and done the thief was sneaking into the room, secure in the knowledge he couldn't be attacked by melee from elementals. He checked out the magic circle and saw 4 reliquaries around it made of gold worth about 1,000 each. He mentally noted that and went to the fireplace. He tried to use his sling to rope the Orb out of the fireplace. Before he could try the eternal flames burst out and lit the braziers around the room and 6 Hell Hounds (2 large, 4 smaller)  all about the room. And a massive earth elemental rose from the magic circle.

In my kindness I made surprise roll for the party (who were "set to ambush" from the doorway) to see if they could get a free round of attacks on the monsters. They could and downed one of the big hell hounds. Sadly a brazier blast out fire and healed it back up at the end of the round. 

Upon normal combat, the barbarians started attacking and beating down dogs and Bloodletter shifted focus to knocking over braziers so the dogs couldn't be healed back up. Doc tried to get out of the room with Duck shadowing to hopefully protect him. Magos put 2 of the smaller hell hounds to sleep which made them unable to be healed back up by braziers; taking them off the board. 

The elemtal smashed Fido the wardog, then Ye and George. He was not able to attack Doc as per the scroll of warding and the dogs (despite chasing the thief) never got an attack off on him because he won initiative at the right times. 

The combat took a while but that was most of the content. When all was said and done the party had a few beat up and beat down members. Upon triage all the fallen members (iirc) were able to get back up as walking wounded.

Doc, during the battle, had escaped back down the hallway. As this was very close to where they had encountered Slenderman I made a wandering monster check to see if he'd mosey along to check out the proceedings. The answer was yes. So he popped right next to Doc and used his charming gaze on the thief. Failing his Save Vs Spells, the thief found Slenderman to be his best pal in the world! So they went back to practice some swing dance and Slenderman pocketed the Orb.

Tuck's player was heard on mic "I [redacted]ing hate Queens Rest Mountain". 

While the party triaged the fallen comrades Bloodletter went to see if he could convince Slenderman to give Doc and the Orb back. Generally the reaction rolls favored the party so Slenderman said "this Orb isn't even magical, it's junk! But my ladies would like to eat the thief" to which Bloodletter replied "that's fine as long as you give me the Orb". 

As the ladies approached to kill Doc I allowed him to try and talk his way out of it and the Reaction Roll dice were kind again. They decided he was "too weak to eat yet; let him level a bit and come back". Doc agreed to that plan.

Upon returning to the big battle room Doc noticed a small gold key in the fireplace and Bloodletter reached into the flame to take it out, taking 3 damage. That would have killed the thief. 

They opened a door on the north wall and came to a room with a magic furnace anvil thing and shelves full of magic items. They bagged those, making nice XP, and left the dungeon. They traveled all the way back to the city of Claymore Crossing to have the items identified and split them up among the party. They were as follows:

Staff of Healing, Wand of Fireballs, Shield +2, Shortsword of Light +2, 5 crossbow bolts +3, 24 arrows +1, 27 crossbow bolts +1. 

So what will they do now that they have the Orb and Scepter? They believe it will open the door to the Twin Peaks curtain quest that Kyle Oconner gave them like a year ago. Will it? Will they die in the attempt? Find out next time!

PC Class Grades

Bloodletter: L6 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral. E for Excellent. Dealt death and played up his charmed friendship with Slenderman.

Doc: L1 Thief, (Alignment?). S for Superior. Failed to try and grab a little something extra for himself from Slenderman's lair or the magic circle room.

George (of the Jungle): L5 Beastmasterm Lawful. E for excellent. Didn't back out of battle. Tried to set ambush. Attempted to track.

Rory: L6 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral. E for excellent. Dealt death and didn't flee from combat.

Tuckonidas Bulk: L6 Barbarian, Neutral. E for excellent, bold and didn't flee from combat.

Tulsa Doom: L2 Shaman, Snake Handler, Neutral. E for good healing and using commune.