The Dungeon of Graves - Session 2
Adventures of brave heroes delving into the vile lair of Demon Lord Orcus continue.
The Story So Far
September 12th 2021
- Thuban, Cleric 1
- Grudge, Fighter 1
- Ray, Fighter 2
- Tiberius Stone, Paladin 1
- Radish, Druid 1
Spending the night at the Bristleback Inn, Tiberius had an uneasy rest. In his dream, he was child again. Standing in a crowd at a town square in his home city. Figure in priestly robes stood in the middle of the square, falcon perching at their forearm. In front of them three unfamiliar men were tied to wooden poles.
"Tell me your name!", spoke the priest. Though they were facing away from Tiberius with hood over their head their voice was feminine.
"Tiberius Stone.", spoke first of the tied men.
"You speak lies!", replied the priest and the falcon swooped in to take man's tongue.
This repeated for other two prisoners. Both calling themselves Tiberius Stone. Both being accused of lying.
With that nightmare over, party reconvened in the common room. There they saw Odo talking to yet another patrolling knight of Duke Baduwin. This time they weren't interested in hunting outlaws and simply handed Odo a rolled up parchment and left.
Retainer prices being fairly steep, party didn't hire any of them. After buying some replacement boots from Rasmus, the local trader, they headed straight back into the dungeon.
Party decided to continue exploring where they left off last time, that is through the northern door. They checked on the door the the sticky room and found it closed. Crowbar, boot and dead body they left behind the last time were gone.
After bit more exploration and backtracking they identified one closed loop, connecting couple empty rooms to the Y shaped intersection near the sticky room. From one of these empty rooms, they headed south. At the edge of their torchlight, they saw an armoured figure approaching them. As it came closer, they realised it was no armoured figure but rather a set of chain mail armour floating in the air, as if suspended in liquid.
Suspended with it there were five arrows, a broken spearhead and couple handfuls of golden coins. The items loomed closer towards them and the party fell back. They tried throwing a pebble at the area and it likewise got suspended. They threw an open pouch of flour at it and it revealed the mass to be ten feet wide and just as tall.
Just for a good measure they threw a flask of oil in front of it and lit it on fire. As the mass rolled over the fire, the flames started to burn it away, sending plumes of steams into the air. As the party retreated to a nearby corridor, they threw and poured few more flasks of oil between them and the invisible mass. Fortunately the party was quicker than their enemy and it soon succumbed to the flames.
From what remained after the oil burned out, the party retrieved an ornate arrow unscathed by the flames, a small emerald and few dozen golden coins.
Exploring further south, they came into a room where several human skeletons were embedded in one of the walls. After brief examination, the party contemplated destroying the skeleton, fearing they might come alive. As a compromise Thuban invoked the power of Telophus, Lord of Crops and the Seasons. Skeletons remained unmoving, a clear sign they were not animated.
While catching a short break, they heard a bunch of squawking voices approaching. Despite quickly hooding their lanterns the pale birdfolk have found their hidey-hole and two of them poke their heads in. Party tried to communicate but none of the birdfolk spoke common and none of the party members spoke whatever language the birdfolk were speaking.
There was a bit of a tense standoff until Ray sat down, pulled three rations and placed them in front of himself. The group of five birdfolk huddled together and after a short discussion shoved one of theirs in front of Ray. Bird person raised their hand and gave a silver piece and three copper pieces to Ray. As Ray took the coins, bird person quickly snatched the rations and the whole group of them ran away.
Party decided not to give chase and instead explored further south, where they found stairway leading down. Iron statue of a peculiar hybrid of a cobra and some kind of insect was standing at each side of the stairway. Looking at their pedestals they noticed scuff marks around one of the pedestals, indicating it has been turned around in the past. Poking the statue with ten foot pole, the iron insect-cobra came alive and snapped the end of the pole with its powerful mandibles. Not feeling like fighting a living iron statue, the party quickly retreated and closed the door behind themselves.
Further exploration lead them back to the entrance room and from there into a corridor with five closed doors. Wanting to explore the full extent of the corridor before forcing open more doors, they came to a T-shaped intersection. There a pit trap was nefariously hidden beneath the flagstones. Both Tiberius and Ray fell in. Fortunately the pit was not too deep and they both survived just with some bruises. Radish threw them a rope and helped them climb out.
Deciding it might be for the best, Tiberius took the now eight foot pole and started tapping the floor as they continued. Eventually they came to a fork in the corridor and there discovered another pit trap. They collapsed it safely using the pole. Ahead they saw each of the split corridors end in a closed door. They could faintly smell smoke but it was hard to tell which way it came from.
Party hopped over the pit trap and examined the western door first. This turned out not to be the source of smoke. Beyond the door they found a small room with a simple stone altar and dozen linen mats arrayed in front of it. Eight human skulls were neatly stacked atop the altar. Each had a small hole drilled at the top.
They checked that there is nothing hiding behind the altar or under the mats. Thuban and Tiberius got into a bit of an argument about whether they should smash the skulls and whether whoever worships the skulls could be considered a good person. Suddenly Radish heard footsteps from behind him. Turning around, there were four humans standing in the doorway pointing their swords at the party. Greasy hair, ratty clothes, shabby leather armour, wide smiles.
"We got you now! You're in the River Rats' territory."
"River Rats? That's pretty bad name." "There is not even a river around."
"See, I told you we should call ourselves Long Snakes." "Shut up! And you lot give us your coin."
"Ah but we're the Dungeon Rats and since we're in a dungeon, we outrank you."
"Oh... Eh, but what if we were Long Snakes." "Yea. Snakes eat rats, so we outrank you."
"Dungeon rats are large and vicious. They can't be easily eaten by a snake."
Successfully fast talking the bandits and giving them couple golden coins as a toll, party managed to mine them for some information on the skull room, dungeon traps and wandering monsters. Meanwhile Tiberius was busy smashing the skulls in the background.
With the session nearing its end, they backtracked to the entrance room and left the dungeon. In the Zelkor's Ferry they gave the emerald gem for identification to Kalgor, the local gemcutter. He agreed to buy it off them and for his services he took whopping 20% of the value of the gem. In total more than they gave to bandits.
Treasure acquired: 40 gp, 1 small emerald gem (250gp), 1 ornate fireproof arrow
Monsters defeated/dealt with: 1 invisible liquid mass, 5 birdfolk, 4 bandits
Deaths: none
DM Thoughts
This time I wrote down a list of players/characters on good old fashioned piece of paper, instead of having it on my computer screen. This way I could quickly glance at it without having to switch to the correct windows/browser tab. Similarly I used graph paper split into sections to track dungeon turns. It was alright but not much more convenient than simply marking ticks on a plain paper.
One of these days I'll become less scatterbrained. Despite writing a list of things I want to bring up during the session, I forgot to ask players to pay for their stay at the inn and forgot to give new players some rumours. Neither of these fortunately had big impact on the gameplay.
Since many doors in Rappan Athuk are stuck, I slightly changed my ruling on opening stuck doors. Success on the roll means the door is opened quickly enough to surprised whatever is on the other side. Failure alerts whatever is on the other side but party can simply spend one turn (10 minutes) to pry to door open without any further rolls. This eliminates endless rolls to open the numerous stuck doors. So far I'm liking it.
I tried using dynamic lighting on Roll20 for the first time. Prepping it was fairly easy. Maybe 20-30 minutes per map. In game it worked pretty well. Opening doors took a bit and there was one spot I missed while prepping (revealing a neighbouring corridor they should not have seen). But I think it sped up game as I didn't have to give exact shape and measurements for every wall and room. And the dungeon has some funky shaped rooms down the line which would be pita to explain on the fly. I didn't specifically ask players for feedback on the dynamic lighting yet but I personally like it so far.
One thing I noticed about Rappan Athuk is that it has quite a few outright empty rooms and rooms with features in them are likewise very sparse in dressing. I personally don't like when dungeon rooms are completely bare (even if they're an "empty room"), so I'll consider adding some dressing during the prep or improvise it on the fly. If it turns out players are spending too much time poking around mundane chairs, I'll cut back on it.
I got feedback that party seemed bit undecisive and/or chaotic at times, so I'll be trying to assign a caller for the next session.
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