After the battles against the giant pelicans, the explorers of the Sky Tower keep going on.

• Aita, the fearless magic user
• Eldric, the brave warrior
• Corga the Dwarf
• and the NPC archers Grace
• & Redmond.
• Delf’s player took over the abandoned PCs Hans
• and Gerta.

They inspect one room and listen on a door, picking up a low buzzing that Aita remembers from the run-in with the cruel giant flies. He warns the others, greatly alarmed. The party prepares, checks out the situation through the keyhole to ascertain that the number of insects is manageable, and opens the door: A single huge fly drones in and attempts to kill Corga the Dwarf, then Grace the archer.

Murder Fly

But the archers, while missing often, hit it three times, for some overkill in damage. The dangerous murder-fly dies on the spot.

Moving onward to the east the party finds itself actually in the west, and with a window to the north. The peculiar character of the wizard tower manifests itself again! They discover a big door leading south, and a wide alcove in the north. While most of them move to the door, Corga the Dwarf checks out the alcove first and discovers that it contains a hidden door. Behind it there is whispering.

Ghostly Whispers

The party pushes open and streams in, discovering … no-one. But the whispering remains and even reacts if talked to. Left and right of that level on the stairs there are two evil-looking statues, but they are only statues, no petrified people. However, they do have magical writing on their pauldrons. Sadly, Aita has used his spell for the day.

Dead Thief

Picking through the room despite the constant whispering the party discovers a hidden stash of gemstones, and a dead body: behind one statue there is a dead goblin with a sack containing gold pieces. He has curled up in the back of the statue, and died, apparently of a rather large stab wound to the belly.

Legitimacy of Leadership

Hans and Gerta pick up some of the traits of Delf from their new player: They protest against the exploration of the tower and keep demanding that the mission is broken off, while speaking ill of Lord Maldrak of Oakhaven. Aita can’t hear it anymore and storms off for a bit to cool down; they question his leadership abilities.

They even consider abseiling through the window and leaving the rest of the party behind, when suddenly three blue streaks flit down the stairs from the higher level. These are the kind of entities that have snatched away the glowing sparks back on the first foray into this tower — a theft that none of the party have forgiven them yet.

They ambush the creatures and pelfer them with arrows, then fall on them with swords and axes: the life force of the streaks snuffs out.

Hooooome….

At this point though, the dead goblin thief jerks up to un-life and crawls out of the room with his broken and half-decomposed body. “Want hoooome!” he hisses. “Hooome!”

The voice seems strange, not really goblinesque, and so the party hope to learn valuable secrets from this undead, but he seems quite single-minded: “Hoooome!!”

The party avoids the creeping broken body, nobody wants to get touched by that, but they also do not kill it. Instead, they retreat and discuss what there is to do.

After all: the mission they were sent out to do seems impossible. This tower is a trainwreck of weirdness, it will never become a useful base to anyone, and that’s before even counting the loss of vision that assailed the giants in it, and will most likely also assail militia using it. Delf — wounded and under the cleric’s care outside — is very happy to hear them say this: he has said so all along. Leave the tower, go away, report to the noble Baron, not the imposter-Lord Maldrak.

Cruelty of Fate

The party has discovered a sleek little box on a table in one of the first rooms. Before leaving, they want that opened, by Delf as the resident thief. And Aita wants his spell slot back and read that inscription.

Delf checks out the box — thief skill time!
I figure that it should be relatively easy to discover the poison needle, so I triple his chances. Instead of 20%, we are looking at 60% to discover it. However, he rolls a 97 on the thief skills. No trap is to be found.
So he goes to work on the lock, and says he’s going to fiddle with it until it opens, no matter if it takes hours, or even days.
The trap is sprung, and he rolls a Poison safe: Fail!

Will this result in an attack roll against the AC, asks the player? No, say I: These traps are not attacks triggered, the save is already the attempt to dodge them.

I give him 2d6 poison damage, but obviously, after his very recent near-death at the hands of the goblins, this puts him down into death-territory again, no matter the roll. He still wants to know, and we roll 9 damage.

Negative 8 … a good thing we don’t do negatives in this game. And we also don’t do death at zero, we do Death Save at zero.

He rolls his death save; with a bonus of +2 due to the cleric aiding him with his healing skills:
Fail, again.

Delf, the Thief, succumbs to the Poison Needle. And young Floss stood equally shocked and angry about the sudden death of his good mentor.

Shock

Now while the player himself accepted the dire fate of his enterprising thief bravely, the other players were taken aback. “Who does poison needles at level 1?” “The Thief Skills are a broken system” “The whole Thief Class is a Fake Class!” “Treasure Traps should not even exist. At least not at low levels.”

Levels in the World

I reject the idea of a world adapting to the level of players. Yes, it may be boring to overcome a 1st-level-town guard when you yourself are at level 12 — but if the town guards level with me I lose buy-in in the world. And my most memorable encounter with a dragon happened as a level 1 character, where we were all suitably fearful.

I do happen to agree though that the thief skills are abysmally explained, and need some twiddling to work. Chances of success between 10 and 20% for core competencies need to be adapted depending on the situation. But I already twiddled them by tripling his chances for something not so well hidden.

I especially think that the Thief as a class is not a stellar idea. I believe that the mere presence of the thief class holds other characters back from attempting some feats, on the notion that these actions are to be done by a thief, not them. (opening doors, sneaking).

Anyone can cook sneak

That is, I think, a big strength of OD&D in the form of the Three original little beige books: There is no thief — so everyone is a thief: anyone can sneak, climb, or fiddle with things. Anyone can ambush someone. The answer is not on the character sheet.

Ingenuity of players

Now with Delf the Thief lying dead on the grass, this old-school-quality lit up brightly in Eldric the Fighter. While everyone looked to boy-thief Floss to attempt this box-opening next, Eldric suggested breaking the thing. He picked a suitable blunt instrument, put the box against a strong backdrop, and smashed it to cinders.

He rolled under DEX to make sure he would not damage the payload.
Success!
Out of the wreckage of box, hinges, lock, and needle-trap rolled five beautiful gemstones.

Read Magic

The next day the wizard went in once more to read the magic script on the pauldron. He learned from it that the two statues were two out of four, and they were a prison of souls.
Four? He saw just two. Where were the other two?

He shuddered.

One more reason to leave, thought he.

And thus the party left the Sky Tower behind, explored in part, and returned to Oakhaven to report, bringing the dead thief along for burial in the temple, and with young Floss already stepping into his shoes as the natural inheritor of responsibility for the giants.

• Wonky Business
• The world around Blemish

Image: Bernd and RohmBernhard from Pixabay