Arden Vul - Session 6
Quick note: This is our first session of troupe play! Only one player was present (Skeggi) so only their characters were present.
The party
Skeggi Arnbjorgsson, the Elf Thief
Andreas Choumnos, Archontean Fighter.
Phillipos Tagaris, Archontean Cleric of Heschius Ban.
Basil Cydones, Archontean Magic-User, member of the Order of Thoth.
Kaliban, the Thorcin Fighter, former child gladiator. On bed-rest.
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. 2nd day of Fourth-month.
After the defeat of their new figher, the party decided to return to the Inn of the Lost to find new companions and put Kaliban on bed rest for a week.
Skeggi, along with two new members of the party, decided to scout ahead with the goblins and find the rubble-filled hallway that Gog told them about.
When they reached the landing into the level, a large lizard of some kind was prowling about and charged them. The new fighter Andreas met the charge with a set spear and the lizard was rebuffed. Quickly, the rest of the party surrounded the creature and began beating it. It seemed to want to flee but it had no where to run. Before it fell, it managed to deliver a sharp bite to Bellringer, who survived, and one of his subordinates, who did not.
Bellringer, morose, fell silent over the body of his goblin friend. Phillipos said some final rites over the body. The party found no value in the lizard corpse so they moved on and would pick up the fallen goblin on the way back.
Going north, they crossed a hallway and entered an unfinished room. In the center was a 3 foot golden cat statue with gems for eyes sitting on top of a rough crocodile mat, surrounded with 4 decomposing corpses. The party decided to avoid anything to do with it and moved on.
They went down small, wet cave passage that led down a few stairs into a moon-shaped room. They heard squelching sounds on the walls, as if many beings were fleeing from them. Two passages lay ahead: The west, filled with the sound of rushing water, led to a small underground river. Andreas stabbed the river a few times and a few furry creatures fled from the water, scattering up and down the river.
The passage to the north-east led to another unfinished room, with a few wheelbarrows with mining tools and a couple hidden corpses in the eastern reaches. The corpses held a number of valuable treasures:
- 1 sapphire shaped into an eye
- A fine short sword, possibly valuable
- A purse with 57 sp and 43 gp
- A piece of parchment that read "red-black-yellow-blue-green-white”
- A rough map of some sort of Archontean temple.
To the east was a passage filled with rubble! After a quick search, it seemed to not be completely caved-in, but instead where a load of rubble from the current room was stored. Another passage to the southeast led to a small cave with a beastman skull sitting on top of a bone, and to the west was another entrance to the underground river.
The party began to clear out a small tunnel through the top of the rubble.
After a few moments of work, they heard a loud scraping sound come from the south. The party hid in the west passage and awaited the source of the sound.
Two 4-foot pillars of crystals with six hands each dragging the pillars forward appeared. They seemed damaged and bits of crystal broke off as they skidded forward. Before long they reached the north end of the room, bumped into each other, and flipped their hands around and began pulling themselves backwards out of the room. The party waited until they were long gone to continue working.
After an hours worth of work, Bellringer was able to squeeze through the small hole and see what was on the other side. He went through and came back and said there was a small hallway and a door, but he did not approach it.
As Bellringer rejoined the group, a small bit of rubble shifted and 4 large fire beetles appeared and were disoriented for a moment. The party, learning from their fight with the lizard, stepped back and began banging their equipment and tried to scare the beetles away. The trick worked and they fled down to the south.
After another hour of work, the small hole was clear enough to allow a human through. It seemed somewhat more precarious however.
The entire group managed to pass through with no problems. They opened the door of the other side and were met with 6 spears and many scared goblins. They quickly explained who they were (and Bellringer came and shook hands with the other sub-chief) and tensions ceased. 10 goblins survived, along with their sub-chief and witch doctor.
The goblins explained they had fled here after a battle with a group of Set cultists and after fleeing some sort of haunted space, where many saw their worst nightmares. Neither had followed them into this room so they had remained here for several days as they rested and determined what to do.
The party and the goblins decided to head back to the warren and crossed with rubble with no issues again. On the way back to the stairs, they collected a sample of the crystal, found the beetles dead in the moon-shaped room (with squelching sounds fleeing from the party once again), and the goblin sub-chief and witch doctor prevented their troops from touching the statue and they inspected it themselves.
The Witch-doctor said it was likely a statue of Bast, the old Archontean god. They called over the party and the party could hear some faint meows in the back of their mind. Phillipa tried sending a mental message to the statue, asking it to meow once for yes and two for no. The statue responding with a purring sound. They all decided to leave it alone and ask Master Leifcrim about it.
They collected their fallen goblin friend from the base of the steps heading down to the arena. On the way down, they crossed paths with a Cleric of Set with her guards who demanded to know what they were doing up there, and were told to not come back, as that area was the domain of the Cult of Set.
They arrived back at the goblins warrens safely and the party was given their promised ancient platinum coin (worth roughly 375 gp to the right collector) and were promised an audience with the King.
Skeggi communicated the entire tale, including the strange fear apparition and unleashing the wight, along with a rough map of the area to Raskim. the goblin Baliff. He said the party should return the following night as this was enough of a gift to be granted the title Goblin-friends and the goblin warren would throw a party in their honor.
The party checked in with Master Leifcrim, who had very exciting news for them. He had happened to find a buyer for the whole Set set, which was only possible since they collected the archaic armor, strange wooden stick, and holy symbol altogether. He said the buyer was willing to buy it for roughly 10k gold, and Leifcrim would accept a 10% fee for conducting the transaction.
The party asked about transportation for the Bast statue and suggested a palaquin. Leifcrim said to give him 3 days to arrange something. They also tried to sell him the sapphire eye but he already had one and didn't need another. He said he could arrange a deal if they figured out a use for them or where they came from.
My take
This was both the first duo session (two of the players were missing) and our first troupe session. It went amazingly well. I've been concerned that the party just doesn't have enough members yet (I originally intended to find more players but I haven't really tried and don't care to, I like this group quite a bit).
This was the session with the highest amount of encounters rolled, at 3, which made a huge difference. The encounter tables are also a pain in the ass to look up, since there are like 8 separate ones for this level in particular and they are not always arranged in sequential order, since some areas will jump head in number. It's not the end of the world but I would kill for an easy look-up for each room that had encounter information, a quick summary of nearby rooms, and what type of architecture is present. I considered figured out a way of writing a script to strip out the room info from the pdf and doing some work to connect it all into a tool like that but that's so much work.
Thanks again to Skeggi's player who consistently writes and shares detailed notes, which makes writing these session reports way easier for me.
For the first time since maybe the first session, we ended without a concrete goal in mind for the players. Interesting to see what they will decide to do!
This is also the only time I will allow them to recruit a ton of level 1 adventurers from within Arden Vul. It doesn't really make much sense, as it is not easy to get to where they are currently, but we wanted to try troupe play and that has taken precedent. I will probably make them return to town (Gosterwick) for similar recruitment later.
I also decided to finally calculate treasure xp for them. I have been waiting until they left the dungeon but since they made it to the Inn of the Lost, they wont be doing that, until they need to find trainer I expect. They also have at least one mechanism for someone protecting their treasure, so I think it's time to give them the xp.
Plus, once they sell the set armor, they might have enough xp to level up, which would be very exciting.
Turns out the rubble filled hallway was supposed to be collapsed ceiling and walls, unlike what I decided in the moment. I would have known if I had remembered to read the goblin room clearly. Whatever, this was fun.
Thanks for reading!