This session was me jumping in on a B/X game that was already going into its second session.

I had no clue what had been going on apart from the information that there had been an earlier delve, some people had run into trouble, and I was one of the few people who had retreated out of the cave when some flying bugs had attacked.

Augustus & Ginger

I rolled up a new character: a magic-user whom I called Augustus the Faithful.
In addition to the normal rolls I rolled a high number close to the d100 area, and then 2d6, again, and again 2d6, and 1d5, and for some reason that meant that I knew how to sail a small ship and I had a henchman, or to be precise, a henchgirl, called Ginger Fingers, who had the ability to read and write.

I got two spells, one from me and one from the GM. I picked Read Magic, because that is kind of important in case we find some new magic, and the GM gave me what I would otherwise have picked if I had my way, and that was Hold Portal … for defense reasons.

Ginger was meant to be my young apprentice, whom I was just teaching those very two spells I knew.

2 spells … wow, impressive. I know. But better than one, right?

Aftermath of Disaster

The game started right after some sort of Disaster: at least two comrades (“friends”) had died, one Gwyllen and one Chloe. The two of me and some others had retreated.

It was all a bit chaotic and incomprehensible. Names were thrown about, like Learton, Snips, Eric, Gothbert, and Flintstone the Dwarf. And there was a Fighting Woman called Raven who showed very good leadership potential. And with some people showing up unexpectedly and others missing, it took a good hour to get last minute characters rolled up, names found, NPCs remembered, and sorted out which adventure this actually was.

Which reminded me a lot of several other adventures. The GM was beginning to lose faith, but such things happens more often than one would expect: Adventurers are by nature a disorganised rabble, no matter their allegiance in the cosmic struggle between Law and Chaos.

Marching Order

To business:

After last time’s disaster the group was kind of split up and spread out, and at first we had to get together and try to make a marching order. That was a stab in the dark, because of some slight misunderstanding about where the front and where the back was.

Being a Magic User, and worse, having no clue where we were and what the party had done last session, I felt it was best to stay farther in the back and put my trust in Raven. Bit by bit it turned out that we, that is, the survivors of the old party and some people that found each other poking around in the dark and dank caves, were quite many. 14, all told, if we counted all the torchbearers, men-at-arms, and the Dog Fang.

Agreeing on a marching order of 14 was quite challenging. But we managed it, and finally we started out.

Hemotep went first, followed by Raven the Fighting Woman and Fang, her Dog, followed by Learton the Dog Handler, who was a henchman. Spork, Snips, Valgrid, then Eric, Gothbert, Flintstone the Dwarf, and then, finally, my Augustus the Faithful. He was followed by Ginger Fingers, Galder, and Solomon.

Spork and Valgryd carried torches.

Dead End

We had dragged out the dead bodies of Chloe and Gwyllen, to catalogue their belongings for sharing around later on, then we went back in. First we took a right turn and got into a bad spot with a Dead End. We backtracked and/or tripped all over our feet to get out again and chose to go forward in another tunnel.

Dead People

We went only for a handful of yards, when suddenly 2 (two!!) robber flies dropped from some dark corner in the ceiling. The GM let the dice choose who got attacked: Learton, the NPC dog handler, and Agustus – my character.

18, and 18, for the two attackes. Both comfortable hits.
Then 8, and 8, for the damage.

That meant that Augustus the Faithful, magic user of renown, even relatively tough with a +1 on his HP thanks to good CON, died within the first minute in the dungeon. maybe 60 feet from the cave mouth. Heroic stories!

Learton and Augustus fell, then the rest of the party attempted to strike back.

Ginger

Some heroic types (like Raven) ran towards the danger, some less heroic types moved away from it. With the death of my character I took over his apprentice, and she, still splattered with his fresh arterial blood, chose to observe the action from a rearward spot.

Bad Numbers

The whole party rolled pretty abysmally. Arrows arched through the cave and hit either walls or comrades, and in one case, the dog. Sword and axes missed the flies. And so the flies got the opportunity to kill the Dwarf and wound Spork. More arrows missed, but Raven, incensed about the wounding of the dog, swatted one fly out of the air. The other one wounded Solomon, and got a second attack in the next round to kill him before was finally taken out.

Shocked and demoralised we dragged our fallen out into daylight to bind wounds and inspect the damage.

We shared armor around, gave NPCs better weapons and paid some extra gold (out of the pockets of the fallen) for the unhappy men-at-arms who blamed us PCs for the disaster. One of them, Valgrid, now in plate mail, became Ginger’s retainer.

Bad Plans

Then we voted what to do next. We did not really know our options, but someone said “return to the goblins” and that kind of found a majority. So next session will find the party, bloodied, beaten and without success, turned back by insects, “return to the goblins“.

And that was it!
Ginger Fingers the apprentice is now Ginger Fingers the Magic User, with her master’s daggers, her master’s spellbooks and her master’s equipment: Everything a young mage needs to hit the ground running!

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Image: Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash