A smaller party this time: Those afflicted with curses stay at home, and our Lizard friend has returned to his own crew. Lencio, and by extension: I, has missed one delve in the meantime. More areas have been discovered while I was absent.

The new session starts with the classic debate at the heart of the OSR: what should we do next?

• Fight Shades? We have only one paladin, he could fight Shades alone and the rest of us could watch him.
• Alternative: A new sub-dungeon, with, among others, a magical well that changes people. Lencio is for that, and nobody against it.
• Alternative 2: Random delving.

We go to the sub-dungeon, which is rumored to be full of orc, but so far, friendly orcs.

We start into a tight labyrinth twisting and winding in and around itself. Lencio and Obelix take the lead so they can pole the floor in front, and we mark the way with chalk so we can find back.

We find a gym with workout benches etc., well used albeit currently unoccupied.

The smell and small signs on the muscle machines tells us that this gym is orcish.

There is a packet of talkum powder, which Lencio pockets, but Jette takes a bit of it and throws it against the opposite door, to no effect. We continue through the warren and finally happen upon a horned, shaggy troll behind an eastern archway. He invites us to come forward and seems to mistake us for another group that seems to have hired an orc.

We clear up that little misunderstanding: we haven’t heard of the orc he describes.

Lencio suspects that this is another Ratter-thing, but without knowing it he keeps his peace.

The troll holds court in a room with a table that seats a rich goblin with a nice bishop-like hat and vestments, and four plate-armored orcs. Here they pore over maps of the dungeon, but stop and ask us what we are doing here and what brings us to these corridors.

“Are you the owners of this area then?” asks Lencio.

The Dungeon Master

“We are the rulers of the midsection of this dungeon”, they correct him: “Only one person owns the dungeon, and that is the Dungeon Master! Every dungeon has one.”

They seem to revere that “dungeon master” with almost religious fervor; but of the party none know the term. Lencio mentally pictures a wizard.

The little conferenc here is about a conflict with a group of necromancers, and since Lencio declares that we would like to do something for them, as they can do something for us, so we become partners, they hesitate about the partner-thing but are happy to direct us toward their enemies.

“Grac! Lead them to the necromancers!”

They sigh about us being here: “Consider this an act of good will!” they say. “We let you traverse this time because we know: if we piss off adventurers, more will come. It is like fighting a hydra.”

They have maps with exits to something like “Ifreet”, and other notes: “Dungeon Master” among them.

Grac leads us to a “highway” between the various areas.

“School” is written on one door. Lencio busts it open with the aim to quickly anakin those Necromancer Younglings … but we just end up in another set of labyrinthine corridors and never meet any necromancy-suspects.
— EDIT: It turns out this was a misheard description. It was not a school, there was a skull on that door. Now it makes more sense that behind it was a corridor, not a classroom. —

The next door Jette fails to bust, and we move on, leaving it closed.

Eventually Eban feels “Evil” somewhere to the northwest, and we follow in that direction. And so we find a room full of skeletons, looking at us, oozing evil, and guarding a treasure chest that sticks to the ceiling.

Eban is a paladin now, so he cannot just go away, he has to confront the skeletons, as he has sworn not to suffer any evil, undead, or whatnot to live.

The skeletons win initiative, and clobber Lencio – then Donald takes one of them out with the crossbow while Eban and Lencio trade places. Lencio damages one of them, then Jette takes out one with a magic missile.

The others fail.

Suddenly the skeletons pull a werewolf-move and crawl across walls and ceiling to go across the front line – and attack back ranks too.

They score a crit against Lencio, and sunder his shield!

Then Eban returns the favour and takes one out with a 20.

Lencio damages his foe, Obelix fails, but Donald switches to the mallet in melee and shatters the skeleton’s skull from below, hammering it through the empty jaw, so that skull fragments spray through the corridor. Hammers against bones, always a good choice.

Jette takes out a skeleton before it turns on our light source.

The skeletons win initiative for a third time and attack – but Donald’s armor turns a dangerous blow away.

Jette lifts Lencio’s mace from his belt and zips over to them to knock them on the skullcap.

She takes one out, Lencio and Obelix pincer the other — victory! All skeletons are destroyed.

Dr. Joebold the Kobold uses bandages and gives Lencio back 2 HP.

Lencio wants to lend his mace to Jette for this delve, but she feels it is her mace now, so he can’t “lend” her what is hers anyway.
They argue around about possession and ownership during their rest, neither giving way, and then loot the skeleton room.

Dancing on a Ceiling

We attempt to get at a stone chest fixed to the ceiling, and Jette falls down once, gets hurt down to 1 HP, but healed back up to 4 by Joebold the Kobold and Eban.

The second attempt goes better, with Jette playing Ethan Hunt on pitons and ropes under the ceiling, but ultimately the attempt fails as well: The chest remains up there and it remains locked.

Suddenly we hear the patting for little feet.

We light 3 more torches, for four in total, to scare the swarms of whatever they are away — and that works. Whatever it was, it leaves us alone. And we have now a lot of light going on.

Suspicious Drainage

We continue and find a room with various holes in the ground – around 10 per square foot.

Jette pours water into one of the holes, and the water disappears – it must be very deep or lead into an open room.
She takes her torch back and looks down into such a hole. She can see the torch glimmer back on water below.

On the ceiling, there are pipes, all over the place, and they feed into one central shower nozzle.
Apparently a liquid is dispensed here, then drains through the holes.

To test the room Lencio throws in the talkum-package, but it does not trigger anything. Regardless, we do not trust the room. It may spray acid. We leave it be and look for other ways.

The Evil Undead

Suddenly behind one door, we discover a room with a sarcophagus, and a pair of creepy white hands hold the coffin’s rim. An armored warrior, obviously dead and rotten, but still a strong force, rises from the bedding.

A wight!
Level-drains threaten: Lencio would slam the door and run,
but Eban MUST stay and fight it.
His oath compels him.
And so we must all stay, at least until Eban goes down….

Of all the party, only Donald can truly aid our holy warrior, everyone else must stand back and watch, useless mundane weapons in hand.

It is a tight fight in that chamber, where every initiative roll counts. Luckily, AC also counts! Eban expertly wields the mace offered by Jette, dodges multiple level-drain-attacks thanks to his combat prowess and armor, and puts his own massive strikes of smiting to good use.

Meanwhile Donald shoots once, a bolt that gets caught by the wight’s armor, then reloads his cumbersome but potent weapon, and finally takes out the wounded and reeling monster with an accurate shot to its black, shriveled heart.

Homewards as Heroes

Looting the crypt we find gold, a good amount of it, and decide that this is enough for the day.

Jette congratulates Eban and gifts him the mace … he thanks her and hands it back to Lencio.

On the way back we tell the troll that no, we did not find the necromancers. But when he hears about the wight he becomes excited and congratulates us; he is awed and even expresses his hopes that we will return – we have turned from a nuisance into an ally.

Simplified B/X in Stonehell Dungeon