Arden Vul - Session 5
The party
Skeggi Arnbjorgsson, the Elf Thief
Basil Cydones, Archontean Magic-User, member of the Order of Thoth
Kaliban, the Thorcin Fighter, former child gladiator
Extras
Freydis, the Wiskin Cleric of Thor (hireling)
Bellringer, the goblin sub-chief and his two subordinates
Summary
The date: 2993 AEP, also known as the 8th year of Constans XXV. 1st day of Fourth-month.
We begin with the party on the stairs, just behind the secret door that they fled to after their former party member was turned into a wight.
They discussed their options and decided to hire more muscle and rest for the day. Instead of returning to town, they head to the Inn of the Lost, a neutral Inn located near the Arena.
On the way down, they talked to the helpful troll Gog who they asked about other ways into the haunted area above. Gog, luckily to them, is an expert on the levels above and told them there is a back entrance but it is blocked with rubble. He requested fresh beastman corpses to be delivered to him as a thank you.
The party’s stopped by Master Liefcrim, the halfling Master Trader in the goblin warren and asked him to appraise their new loot. He bought the looted holy symbol of Set from them and said it will take a few days to find a buyer for the rest.
The party made their way to the Inn of the Lost (the goblins said their farewells here and said they would be back in the morning) where they paid for a private room and met the proprietor, Thegen Whitebeard, an older human man, as well as their new companion Kaliban, the young and uncharismatic arena gladiator.
The party bought a round of drinks for the room and several folks came up to give their thank yous: One cleric of Mitra who was looking for experienced adventurers to help search for a lost shrine, and the handsome and naive paladin Prosper the Doughty, wielder of a handsome magical blade. Kaliban requested a bout of fisticuffs to win the paladins blade, which was accepted and set to happen at dawn in the arena.
A few hours after the party headed to bed, they were awoken by a banging coming from the front door of the inn. The party roused and watched Thegen allowed in an envoy from the Troll Thegn to arrest a group of adventurers who tried to rob the Troll Court.
The next day
2nd day of Fourth-month.
At dawn, in an empty arena, Kaliban and Prosper had a mighty contest, lasting over 10 minutes of punching back and forth. Prosper, holding back, took a mighty amount of damage from the young Kaliban but put forth enough effort to make the young gladiator give up. Kaliban issued another challenge, this time with weapons and armor at dawn the next day. Prosper agreed with the caveat that Kaliban must work for him if Prosper wins.
Prosper left and the party discussed how to best steal the blade from him, or scheme it away from him somehow. Freydis healed Kaliban’s wounds (most of which would recover by next morning) so they can get on with helping the goblins and she expressed distaste for the party’s methods.
The goblins arrived and the group headed back up to the upper level. They head north, following the directions of Gog, and pass by a strange side tunnel with a glowing black light. Skeggi sneaked inside and spied a group of zombie workman surrounding a strange glowing black salt-crystal.
The party arranged themselves for combat and attracted the attention of the zombies. They shuffled forth but refused to leave the borders of the cave they were in. Kaliban lined up in front and the party beat down the first couple zombies, but not before Kaliban took a few blows and fell beaten and unconscious.
He was pulled away from the front lines while Skeggi and Basil tried throwing lamp oil to burn the zombies, but found it ineffective as the zombies seemed to be regenerating.
The Aftermath
Kaliban was wounded enough to require a week of bed rest, so the party discussed their options for continuing this mission. Wait a week? Find a new fighter to replace Kaliban for now?
They decided to find many more adventurers and would be coming back the next day in order to find out more about the collapsed tunnel.
My take
This was a bit of a frustrating session for me, as my least favorite parts of running Arden Vul have been centered on the ‘neutral’ areas. They are complex to run and haven’t felt rewarding yet. They will eventually, I’m sure. It’s just a lot of prep and still I feel under-prepared.
I’ve stopped running these areas as a room-by-room exploration (unless that becomes necessary) and that is feeling a little better. That seems to relieve a bit of the danger though.
After this session, I made some choices regarding making my life easier: I started learning Perchance.org so I can move some of the complex generation (like the common room of the Inn of the Lost) to something I can just click a button to do. I used obsidian for this last campaign but this generation is too complicated for that. I’ve also installed a dark mode pdf reader since just paper is not doing it for me, plus I have been working in a massive list of npcs that I can refer to quickly. I have a lot of other things I want to do, like maybe making note-cards or obsidian entries for all the main npcs so I can get into their headspace quickly.
The decision at the end of this session was to try doing troupe play, so everyone is rolling up more characters. I am excited for it, I don’t think the party is big enough yet to handle to dangers and this will help a lot.
Thanks for reading!