When last we left off in this campaign in 2023, we had returned from being teleported down to Level 3, and found refuge in a kobold township. The way back home to the human settlement was barred by a magical barrier, presumably erected by the authorities, worried about adventuring groups going missing in this dungeon.

We spent a lot of time with the kobolds and got some understanding of Level 1’s layout, made friends with denizens of the dungeon and learned some of the local slang, which will help us in reaction rolls.

The Magnificent Eight Beatles

Now we formed up and went out, eight strong, with Jette the MU, Hubbub the Cleric, and otherwise all Fighters: Gerion the Dwarf, Lencio with Obelix and Donald, Swords-Akimbo Fightress Raven and Eban the squire.

No thief. Dragon had disappeared on us for good, and Arche wasn’t in this expedition. But we felt that we would manage some progress at least: exploration can be its own reward, and we had a chatty magic sword, broken down to dagger-length, with us to keep us company and warn of traps.

We made sure to avoid the room with the unfriendly living adamantine armour and turned north, where creepy sights awaited – like piles of old shoes, all of them left ones. Brrr.

Big ass spiders

Lencio, still the resident door-kicker extraordinaire, kicked open one random door, and we discovered two huge sheepdog-sized black widows!

Disgusted, we fell upon them and stabbed their hard shells open, killed one with steel, then Jette fried the other one with a magic missile spell so it curled up and died.

In their room we found a fat sack full of gemstones, a fantastic haul that lifted our spirits greatly!

Farther north we encountered a nest of acid-spitting beetles, an encounter that we chose to avoid by doing a tactical repositioning at high velocity, a.k.a, running away.

Finally our long range corridor scouting ended at a dead end room with an ogre munching on one of those acid-beetles. No need to fight: Thanks to our kobold stay we were able to communicate and the bumbling hulk was nice enough to give us a hint about the approximate place of a secret door. We thanked him and went looking, and found it. Thus we discovered a hidden stairwell down to level 3 again.

Level 3

There was a brief discussion: do we really want to go down to L3 again?

We decided that, yes, we wanted to, and found a little study with a bookshelf, empty, apart from a few adult titles about hobb….halfling girls. In that rather unusual manner we discovered the existence of halflings, and unlocked the class for this game, which means from now on players can be halflings. And people claim that pr0n is good for nothing!

Lencio suggested we take them for Arche: Magic-Users love written materials, no matter what kind, he figured, and who knows, maybe there’s more to them than meets the eye? Jette pocketed them.

Horse Tick … or Tick-Horse

We spilled out into the corridors and snuck around, and a new mechanic was introduced: Instead of the usual way of determining random encounters, the GM was rolling on a countdown clock, ensuring that at some point a random encounter would come for sure, resetting the clock again. On the plus side for us, the encounter could be foreseen to a certain degree, and now we were sure that one was right around the corner.

We kicked open a door, found ancient dwarven barracks, and prepared for the attack to come.

When it came, it was a horse-sized tick that filled the whole doorway and crawled in, clacking steely mandibles and sniffing for fresh blood!

We fell upon it from all sides to stab and hack at it, but it had a hard shell and a big hunger. It grabbed little Gal and prepared to suck her dry. However, lucky for Gal, we got in a couple pretty good hits at this point and Gerion the Dwarf sliced off that ugly head that had attached itself to her torso.

With a crowbar we levered the jaws open and removed the pincers and sucking tube from her, but that cost her the rest of her HP and she sank down to the ground. Of course Hubbub was prepared for just this outcome and immediately cast a Cure wound spell — bathing the room in holy light for maximum effect, immediately restoring Gal to maximum.

The GM decided to award this stunning success by raising Gal’s maximum by 1.

During our following rest-turn, Lencio and Obelix could not resist to clean out some of the ancient dwarven drinking horns to hang them on their belts and take them with them. I mean: who would not want to have a real life dwarven drinking horn?

You decide your own level of involvement. ~ Tyler Durden

We went on, but ran into a trap: a pressure plate that sprayed Lencio and Gerion with darts. Both of them failed their saves, and while Lencio weathered the storm reasonably well, Gerion lost a whopping 8 hp. That gave us pause. Was it really wise to stay here on Level 3? Were we ready for it?

Gerion gulped down our healing potion and was restored, but the trap was still hot, and we decided to retreat back up to L2.

On our way up, we met that Ogre going down. Jette fled to hide from it, but the rest of us exchanged friendly greetings with him and we passed as pals. It is good to know the local idiom.

On level two we checked out the room formerly housing the ogre, then went back south and east. And there discovered a looted shrine that was at least somewhat close to the faith Hubbub was following.

Safe Space

We cleaned it out, spiked it and lit a holy fire, and thus made it a “Safe Space”, fit to give us an XP payout if we spent the whole night. That we did, letting the two casters have the bedrolls to regain their spells, and cashing in.

That’s where we ended the session.

Thanks to the massive gemstone-find a whole bunch of us levelled up, including Lencio (L4!) and both of his retainers (L2, L2), even with the harsh rule that demanded that the leader of retainers has to share his own XP with his retainers.
In theory this makes it less attractive to have retainers, but I like to have a troop more than I like fast levelling, so I am happy to pay that price.