It's not a bad play if you win!
Session report for April 17, 2024. Three players adventured for three days.
Characters
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| sometimes deader is better! |
Hilfred the Yellow, human illusionist level 2
Jude, half-orc assassin/cleric level 2/2
Jude arrived at the mass grave outside Hartford and dug deep. Eight skeleton warriors crawled to the surface to tear him limb from limb. He held out his unholy symbol and commanded them to follow. Then he gave them all funny names such as Boner.
They met up with Hilfred and Bendbardo and returned to the catacombs below an archaeological digsite. And this week, the players had plenty of session time to carefully map the area.
The dungeon began with a long hallway that ended in large doors. They took a side door to another hallway, where they had ambushed an NPC party on a previous occasion. Then they took a side passage and came to another door. Bendbardo bashed it in and stumbled into a large room - as well as four troglodytes waiting to pounce!
The trogs took full advantage of their surprise segment but could barely penetrate Bendbardo's armor. He slew one in return. Jude's skeletons were unaffected by the troglodytes' stench and filed into the room to kill another one.
The other two saw they were outnumbered by creatures without olfactory systems and bolted out the back door. The party let them run.
Bendbardo tossed the room looking for secrets. He found loose blocks underneath a piece of furniture. Under the blocks was a cache of gem stones and a scroll case!
Fire beetles interrupted their rest, but they were scared off by a show of force. The party resumed their exploration.
At this point, the players found mapping difficult because all the rooms and hallways had taken 45-degree turns. That's hard enough to transcribe onto paper and they were using app.dungeonscrawl.com for sharing. Once they came upon a trapezoidal room, they threw in the towel.
Giant rats made a nest in a large fireplace on the short parallel wall. They made a lot of noise at the intruders, but did not attack. Bendbardo did. He realized he had underestimated the size of the nest when 16 rats swarmed out to kill everyone.
Jude called for a retreat and went back down the hall with Hilfred and skeletons in tow. There, Hilfred used phantasmal force to incapacitate several rats. Bendbardo bravely stood in the center of the room and was relieved when the rats tore apart skeletons instead of him. Two skeletons on the other side of the room heard the command to retreat and ran down a different hallway, never to be seen again.
After a few minutes, the fireplace was clear of vermin. Behind a loose brick was a small coffer with a stash of platinum bars!
At this point, the characters had expended most of their resources, including all the skeletons except Boner. They retreated to their camp outside the digsite and rested for the night.
On the next day, they ignored the winding passages and went straight down the first hallway. Bendbardo and Boner fell into a pit trap at the halfway point. They could have sprung that trap with their skeletons yesterday, and I savored the opportunity to rub it in. I'm savoring it again now.
A large door stood before them. It had carvings and writing on it that warned of a great evil trapped within. The players thought such a dire warning was awesome, so Bendbardo broke in.
They entered a large pentagonal room. Inscribed on the floor was a pentagram. A sarcophagus stood at the center. It was clamped shut by iron bars. Tapestries told the story of a mighty warrior who became king and turned to dark powers before he was defeated and entombed.
The players cautiously explored the outside of the room. They tested the inscription, lest they unleash some horrible magics. Nothing stirred and no one exploded.
It was time for the sarcophagus. Bendbardo never met a bar he didn't like to bend, and so he got to work on the iron straps. It took him about an hour to break them all. He removed the lid and peered inside.
Crack! Bendbardo was struck across the face by a withered hand and tumbled to the ground. His jaw ached, but what was worse, he felt completely drained of energy! A robed wight rose from the sarcophagus, gripping an ancient sword, and glared at Bendbardo with murderous intent.
I warned them.
Hilfred fled. Bendbardo was sure to be killed. But Jude had one shot to win, with only 10% chance of success, and he took it. He presented his unholy symbol, a hand with fingers curled around a cursed coin, and commanded the ancient king to kneel.
It worked! The cursed king unloaded thousands of gold and copper coins from his own tomb and carried it to the camp site. Then he leapt into the pit trap. He glared at Jude and spoke a curse in a long-forgotten language as the trap door closed.
The party returned safely to Hartford down a level, but in one piece.
THE VANQUISHED2 troglodytes
14 giant rats
1 fire beetle
XP for monsters defeated: 259
THE SPOILS
6 gems worth: 90, 1000, 10, 500, 80, 50
3000 gold
400 copper
100 platinum
4 tapestries worth 50 gp each
cleric scroll, 4 spells: know alignment, true seeing, aerial servant, word of recall (kept by Jude for +1900 xp)
XP value of treasure taken is 5450
THE SCORE
Bendbardo the Bender, LEVEL DRAINED, earned 1816 GP and 1903 XP and rank E for bravery in combat!
Hilfred the Yellow earned 1816 GP and 1903 XP. Rank E for using illusion magic to solve his problems.
Jude earned 1816 GP and 3803 XP. Rank E for leveraging cleric powers. (No opportunity for assassin work this week, which does not seem to be a reason to change the rating)
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