Another Delve into the Megadungeon. Running number? Not sure: Lencio had missed a session or two in between. So it is his sixth, but the number of delves for the group, “the Beatles”, might be hitting two digits by now. Anyway, now he’s back, and he brings Obelix (erstwhile second character, now bought with XP to become a Retainer) and Donald (already a Retainer).
The deal with retainers in these adapted rules is that the employer has to give up some of his XP for his retainers, essentially disincentivizing the use of retainers: game theory wise it would be ideal for everyone else in the party to bring retainers while playing a solo character oneself. But this is not game theory, it is a game. So I bring two.
Hubbub also brought a retainer, the Fighter Gal. Well-known companions, Arche the sneaky Magic User and Antonius the tough Cleric, were with us again, plus a comrade called Raven and two torchbearers named Anatoly and Jette – in other words, we were a pretty large group.
Safety in numbers, right?
Not so.
Morloc Attoc
Our numbers did nothing to stop a gang of Morlocs to come howling out of their abode and try to attack us even in broad daylight, no doubt egged on by their Grimloc leader. Since they had superior numbers and we feared they might surround us and pick off the weaker crew members from the flank, we ran to the mouth of the dungeon to bottleneck them behind a line of fighters or two.
The front line stabbed away at their front, chipping away at the Grimloc in small amounts, until P Cash the thief lit an oil bomb to throw into their ranks. He rolled badly, hit the wall above the door instead, and sprayed some burning oil on our front line of Antonius, Gal, and Lencio, reducing Gal to zero HP. At least the fire raining down from the ceiling made the Morlocs back off for a moment.
Everyone panicked and missed their attacks on the Grimloc, except for Donald, who kept his cool and stabbed the Grimloc dead right through the flames. Losing their leader, the morale of the Morlocs broke and they ran off, though carrying their fallen champion with them to revive him in one of their diabolic brewing pots.
Raven had enough and went home.
Gal got revived with some strong herbal tea during a rest, Hubbub healed Antonius who had taken some hits from the Grimloc.
Deeper we go
Mostly restored, we went down into the depths.
Two dared spinning the wheel of fortune: P Cash gained strong resilience, and Antonius even won a load of XP and a level that way, reaching Cleric 4 and becoming our highest ranking party member.
Down the stairs we went to level 2 and started exploring in what smelled like hospital corridors.
We checked out a handful of rooms that looked un-looted for once; finally we had a head start over the Ratters! Lencio became the resident door-kicker, because his strength and skill gave him the best chance to succeed on the first try.
In the rooms so opened we collected some money, until we reached a room with a suspicious coffin decked with Garlic and nailed shut. Lencio was opposed to opening it, suspecting there would be a good reason to bar it so. The idea was brought up to burn the coffin, but nobody was keen on actually spending the necessary oil. Ultimately we went to the next room, where ghostly voices claimed to know answers to questions.
Lencio again showed his customary fear of the supernatural and warned everyone not to trust these voices. He was sure they were liars, but the others laughed off his worries. Interesting: The voices claimed the vampire was not at home, only his possessions. Still, we decided to crack this on the way back and left the coffin in peace for now.
The next room showed an immobile giant adamantine armor sitting on a throne, all alone. Most of the others hesitated and shied away, only Arche and Lencio stepped forward to shine a light into that helmet to find out if the armor was empty or if rotten remains were inside.
It was neither: Ghostly eyes lit up and the door swung shut, and the knight pinched out the torch! Then he rose to his full height, towering above everyone, and started stalking towards the other light sources.
Hubbub tried to shield her lantern, Lencio shouted to her to douse it! She covered it to bring darkness without extinguishing it. We were plunged in darkness — and whoop!
The giant hexed us away to an unknown place.
As we brought back fresh light we found ourselves in an unknown, smaller room with a single door to what we would go on to call “south”.
[Commercial Break, 38 XP and 100 coin per person]
A spell cast placed the “stairs up” somewhere not quite close to the north-north-west. That would be difficult! But we started off with Lencio kicking open the door to reveal a creepy female dominatrix-style demonette; tall, garbed in heavy, spiked armor, and with a barbed whip in hand she towered over the small group lost in the deep dungeons.
Although, immobile, like a statue, thank the gods.
Demonette Maiden of Pain
Lencio assumed that she would get mobile if we were too cheeky, like, if we went too close to her or tried to open the door right next to her … and he also assumed that her getting mobile could be … problematic.
Most of the party sneaked past her to a couple of stairs leading up. Only Arche felt that this might be the ideal moment to nab a ring of keys from the only table in the room. Obviously that daring move woke the iron lady.
We ran up the stairs in the few moments we had. Lencio kicked the door open, we all raced through, and Donald as last man threw the door closed and kicked an iron spike into the gap – at the last second before the gigantic monster girl started banging at the door. That piece of rotten wood would not hold for very long.
We ran off, took a left and followed the corridor in a bid to get enough distance between her and us – until we reached a door at the end. Lencio kicked, but for once the resident door-opener failed. At the same point the demonette broke free, stormed forward and unerringly went left, stalking after us. We had no time to break down the door, she would be on us in moments.
We stormed toward her to lay an ambush in a slightly wider room halfway along, so we could surround her and bring our superior numbers to bear. That plan worked perfectly: she ran into our little half-circle and we started stabbing — only to find out that she was impervious to normal weapons!
Or her armor was, at any rate.
No damage by mundane means.
Arche fired a double set of magic missiles at her, doing a lot of damage and reduced her to 10hp. That managed to break a gap into her magic armor – a small gap, representing our only small chance to get through her impressive defenses. We needed high rolls to hit that: 19 or higher.
Lencio attacked with 23! His spear was destroyed as it touched her cursed blood, but she was reduced to 7 hp.
Donald rolled a natural 20! Another spear gone, and a solid 6 damage, she reduced to 1hp!! So it came down to Obelix, last with a chance to score. He had a magical armor (remember? he got that in delve 4) so he threw a punch with his mailed fist. Would he make it? He rolled 21!!! A series of incredible, legendary hits, culminating in a kill by uppercut!
Against all odds, we had destroyed a nigh-indestructible creature.
Now we looted her cursed armor and cursed whip off her, both unusable. We threw everything into a huge sack and let Anatoly the torchbearer carry it.
Temple of Pain
Exploring further, we found a weird underground temple with a gigantic door and two more of those pain-ladies, standing stock-still hidden under the stairs. 15 skeletons were scattered on the ground. Lencio warned that messing with that big door may wake those two Maidens and since we only beat the one with incredible luck we were sure to lose against these fresh two.
We sneaked off to go west, seeking access to those detected stairs – at the same time, some of us wanted to go through that gigantic door and brought the topic up repeatedly, arguing that the biggest door was usually an exit from a religious building, no matter which denomination. Hubbub boasted that she would slay 15 skeletons before breakfast without breaking a sweat.
In another room we found another pain lady, also standing still (so we stayed well out of her hair!)
In the next room were two skeletons. We all stood in the doorway and saw a chest inside. Lencio egged on Hubbub to go in, to show us how she handled skeletons. She and Gal really did dare enter, but the skeletons had a trick left in their old bones: They did not simply stand up – they housed two wraiths, and those streamed forth and menaced Hubbub and Gal. Wraiths were too much for Hubbub, they raced out, slammed the door, and fled. The rest of the party followed.
Master Thief
While we rested a while, looked for secret doors, checked out doors and found two cool crossbows and a huge treasure chest that took two people to carry, debates about the gigantic temple door never stopped. And since we found now way, neither open nor secret, to get closer to the stairs we knew of…. fine! Lencio agreed to go to the door, but bet five silver coins that this would end badly.
He lost that bet. Our thief P-Cash figured out the secret mechanism and opened the door, even while taking damage from a magical trap. The rest of us picked the dazed thief up and could go out of the temple unmolested.
Lencio will have to pay up once we get home.
If(!) we get back home.
Clowns to the left of us, jokers to the right
Through the door we got into a crossing: natural cave going up to the south, natural cave level to the north, and a cave ending and changing into hewn stone to the east.
Up was our desire, so we went to one side, but we found our way blocked by a smaller cave with hungry rust monsters blocking the way. We turned around and went to the other side instead, where we found a small gathering of ogres grilling some goblins over an open flame. These monsters had one with them who knew our language. He rejected our friendly request to pass through their lair. Denied the right of way we quickly retreated. East it was!
In that room east there was a huge wing of stairs up to that exit.
A dry pool, full of sand, with 3 giant scorpions! We hugged the wall and moved towards the staris… but the animals noticed us and stalked closer. Again we ran! But this time not back. We needed to get through. Up the stairs to reach ….
And at this point the adventure session ended.
We faded to black before we found out where the stairs would lead, but given that we were at level 4, we would still be below the level of the adamantine armor. A long way to go still.
Falling out
Antonius’ player declared that we were all craven chicken-shits for avoiding fights all the time; he felt the delve had been boring him out of his mind with all this walking, walking, walking and never any dramatic crisis and catharsis; and he was done with it. And then he logged off.
So there went our strongest fellow.
On the plus side, 210 XP per character, and Jette rolled for stats to become a second retainer of Hubbub’s. Our new retainer got lucky dice and earned exceptional strength, constitution, and wisdom.
Next time we would have to win back and get home, before the townspeople might get the idea that we were all dead like the Ratters, and cleared out our homes to make room for some others of our ilk.
Stonehell with simpler rules:
PAPIER UND SPIELE 