Our previous session left the party in the wilderness, running short on food, puzzling out how to cross the border into Hungary, having learned they'd been betrayed by someone, not knowing who. This session began with the party being caught off guard by a group of centaur archers, partisans protecting the local Hungarian peasantry from the Ottomans, acting as nomads throughout the Balaton Hills. After learning of the party's wishes to escape, the centaurs agreed to help feed and get them out of Bakony... but the centaurs could not help noticing the armoured members of the party and the presence of their gnome cleric Lexent.
They asked if the party wouldn't mind dealing with a nuisance that has plagued them for some time. A group of troglodytes, operating from an underground lair, inaccessible to their hoofed bodies. This "lair" was once built by orcish Huns who found themselves dwelling in the wilderness after the retreat of Attila (also an orc in my campaign). Thus, the orcs tunnelled, fashioning an underground dungeon that they occupied for 800 years... until 400 years ago, after some left to join the Mongols in the 1240s (again, an orcish people, though larger than orcs), the overall social system collapsed. It had been abandoned, until troglodytes either came up from below or entered from above. Either way, the trogs have been raiding and when the centaurs have tracked them back to their origin, they've found the trogs delving down into a place they can't follow.
The party agreed. I'd set up the first encounter expecting only three players, as Mikael the mage and Zoltan the cleric had both excused themselves from the session. Yet then Mikael showed up for the first two hours of the session, so we had a good number of combatants at the ready. This was the basic scene of the first occupied room the party entered:
This, once upon a time a place where the orc hunting parties would bring in scores of deer and other beasts for slaughter, consisted of drains, tubs, rings for hanging the animals up and so on. Obviously, the blood stains had long turned to dust in 400 years but the players figured out the purpose.
As they entered, they found one huge spider in the large centre room. This they killed in short order. Examining the room on the upper right, they found eight giant bats asleep. They moved down through the other rooms toward the exit at the bottom of the map, where they found a shrieker... which promptly began to scream, waking up the bats. A round later, three more spiders entered the room. One landed a solid bite upon Ti, the fighter, who began to suffer poison damage to the tune of 16 points, 2 per round over the next eight rounds. While fighting the bats and spiders (the former were not very dangerous), a carrion crawler entered from the bottom, passing the shrieker... and caught the Lexent's non-levelled soldier at arms as the first victim inside the door. The crawler attacked eight times... and missed every time. I mean, damn. If you can't kill a non-level, why even play?
Fenwick failed his morale check and fled. Outside, he failed his rally check and decided to stay outside. He'd managed to get 160 experience, however, putting him halfway to being able to start his 1st level fighter training, if the party should so desire.
Well, Ti came up, waded in, took two hits, did a little damage (I think, not sure if I remember that rightly) failed his save and was paralysed. But then Mikael unloaded Melf's acid arrow and the carrion crawler died. I should have made it two, but meh, it was what it was. I didn't know Mikael was going to play.
The spiders, bats and shrieker was mopped up and the party given experience. Arduin the first level druid, henchfolk of Pandred the 5th level fighter, finally reached second level. Mikael excused himself and the party was down to three players.
I should have had more prepared but, well, I let myself indulge in too many of my own projects, so I didn't. I had the party descend twenty feet of stair (finding a dead centaur's body along the way), to find more stairs, some going left, some going right. The cleric smelled both and declared that the left hand side smelled worse than the right, so expecting to find the troglodytes, they descended another 20 feet of stairs to find themselves at an unimaginably large underground temple, too large to reveal with their torchlight. Following the right hand wall, they found one shrine in the room's corner, then followed the wall to the left to find another shrine. They were attacked by three ghasts (which some of the party had fought before in Norway) and dispatched them easily. The next four were a little harder... Ti was paralysed again, Arduin was very lucky, but this second fight was a harder deal. Finally, the ghasts were overcome, experience rewarded, Ti went up to 4th level and the party gave ground. We ended the game with them stumbling outside.
I'll need to better prep my dungeon for the next session.
Skipping over the first session, in which the two did not take part, Pandred at 5th and Lexent at 4th have failed to level... though they're both much closer. Ti began at 1st nine sessions ago and has gone up 3 levels in nine runnings. If Zoltan had come, no doubt he'd have gotten to 4th as well. Mikael, who isn't getting hit very much (because although he's killing key monsters with his magic, if he doesn't actually engage in melee, he hasn't much chance of learning anything), is still 3rd, though he started at 2nd. Arduin has waded into many combats, but strangely, has usually avoided getting hit. Nice to see him finally climb from 1st to 2nd.
The benefit of Fenwick getting to be a 1st level fighter (though it will take plenty of training time) is that, if the party subsidises his training, he'll progress from "hireling" to "follower." Not a henchfolk, so not a fanatic member of the party that the players run, but someone who will come along, receive half as share of the bonus, ask for a share of the treasure and eventually rise, most likely, to act as a steward or someone the party can trust with their property someday, without worrying about being betrayed. He might even one day be counted as one of the party's "retainers," at which point he would become a fanatic joiner of the party, to be run by whomever his liege came to be, either Lexent or perhaps Pandred, as the party decides someday.
Well, that seems to be it. Glad to have this done.
Fenwick failed his morale check and fled. Outside, he failed his rally check and decided to stay outside. He'd managed to get 160 experience, however, putting him halfway to being able to start his 1st level fighter training, if the party should so desire.
Well, Ti came up, waded in, took two hits, did a little damage (I think, not sure if I remember that rightly) failed his save and was paralysed. But then Mikael unloaded Melf's acid arrow and the carrion crawler died. I should have made it two, but meh, it was what it was. I didn't know Mikael was going to play.
The spiders, bats and shrieker was mopped up and the party given experience. Arduin the first level druid, henchfolk of Pandred the 5th level fighter, finally reached second level. Mikael excused himself and the party was down to three players.
I should have had more prepared but, well, I let myself indulge in too many of my own projects, so I didn't. I had the party descend twenty feet of stair (finding a dead centaur's body along the way), to find more stairs, some going left, some going right. The cleric smelled both and declared that the left hand side smelled worse than the right, so expecting to find the troglodytes, they descended another 20 feet of stairs to find themselves at an unimaginably large underground temple, too large to reveal with their torchlight. Following the right hand wall, they found one shrine in the room's corner, then followed the wall to the left to find another shrine. They were attacked by three ghasts (which some of the party had fought before in Norway) and dispatched them easily. The next four were a little harder... Ti was paralysed again, Arduin was very lucky, but this second fight was a harder deal. Finally, the ghasts were overcome, experience rewarded, Ti went up to 4th level and the party gave ground. We ended the game with them stumbling outside.
I'll need to better prep my dungeon for the next session.
Skipping over the first session, in which the two did not take part, Pandred at 5th and Lexent at 4th have failed to level... though they're both much closer. Ti began at 1st nine sessions ago and has gone up 3 levels in nine runnings. If Zoltan had come, no doubt he'd have gotten to 4th as well. Mikael, who isn't getting hit very much (because although he's killing key monsters with his magic, if he doesn't actually engage in melee, he hasn't much chance of learning anything), is still 3rd, though he started at 2nd. Arduin has waded into many combats, but strangely, has usually avoided getting hit. Nice to see him finally climb from 1st to 2nd.
The benefit of Fenwick getting to be a 1st level fighter (though it will take plenty of training time) is that, if the party subsidises his training, he'll progress from "hireling" to "follower." Not a henchfolk, so not a fanatic member of the party that the players run, but someone who will come along, receive half as share of the bonus, ask for a share of the treasure and eventually rise, most likely, to act as a steward or someone the party can trust with their property someday, without worrying about being betrayed. He might even one day be counted as one of the party's "retainers," at which point he would become a fanatic joiner of the party, to be run by whomever his liege came to be, either Lexent or perhaps Pandred, as the party decides someday.
Well, that seems to be it. Glad to have this done.
