Arden Vul - Session 7
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.
Maximos, Archontean Monk, from a Monastery of the Twin Gods. Twin of Satyrion.
Satyrion, Archontean Fighter, ex-monk from a Monastery of the Twin Gods. Twin of Maximos.
Kaliban, the Thorcin Fighter, former child gladiator. On bed-rest.
Petronas Phocus, Archontean Thief.
Titus Tullius, Archontean Magic-User, member of the New School of Arcane Might.
Extras
Freydis, the Wiskin Cleric of Thor (hireling).
Summary
The date: 2993 AEP, also known as the 8th year of Constans XXV. 2nd day of Fourth-month Lyan.
We resume later in the day, after the scouting team reunited with the rest of the group (along with all of the new companions). The assembled company met inside of the room in the Inn of the Lost where Kaliban was recovering in. They decided on a few courses of action:
- Skeggi took the lead on paying for a room for a month in the Inn for Kaliban's recovery. Thegan Whitebeard took the payment but moved them to a new room, for an unremarked reason
- Skeggi also asked Prosper the Doughty to reschedule his match with the currently bedridden Kaliban. He agreed and said it will take place in nine days.
- The party also investigated the map the scouting crew had found earlier that day. They found the huge crevice outside of the Inn (where the Trolls operate some sort of lift that moves people both across and up/down) matched a crevice on the map directionally, but the one on the map was much smaller.
They decided to head to where the scouting party began earlier in the day in order to secure their route to the surface. They traveled through the arena and up the winding stairs. They quickly reconsidered their plan and instead went back down, through the goblin warrens (where they needed to pay a bribe to be let in), and up through the secret door, near where they lost their companion Lucius the day before.
They traveled southwest, past the talking mouths, to a triangle-shaped room with a large pyramid in the center, its top going past the party's torchlight. Stairs on all three sides of the pyramid led to the top, which was a flat plane with a smaller blue stone triangle in the center, with a rod sticking straight up.
Maximos, the new monk, decided to try to operate the rod. It seemed to move both up and down. He pressed it down. Smoke emptied from the top of the pyrimid. When the smoke cleared, Maximos and the torch he had near him were both gone.
The party checked the rod, which was still in a down posistion. They pulled it up to neutral and farther up with no effect.
Satyreon mourned his twin and the party continued on. They headed back east and through a door to the north. Past a small hallway was a corridor that went north and west that was filled with trash. The walls were covered with empty niches. The party could see the outline of a statue to the north. They investigated west, finding a larger pile of trash in a corner that turned north.
While walking down the hallway, Skeggi detected something secret in a niche on the north side of the wall. After investigating, the party found they could slide the back wall open, revealing an expensively-provisioned secret burial chamber, with two sarcophagi.
Philipos and Satyreon were first to investigate. They were immediate assaulted by some hidden ghouls, who slayed Philipos immediately and paralyzed Satryeon.
The party reacted quickly, pulling Satryeon to safety. Basil attempted to use their looted Set wand to no effect, and Freydis failed to turn the undead. The back panel was shut and the ghouls scratched at it helplessly.
The party decided to start a fire and hopefully lead the ghouls through it. It took some time to set up using the trash in the room but Satyreon was still paralyzed, so they moved back south to find a safer spot to rest until he came to.
As they passed back near the talking mouths, they stumbled upon a group of six halflings. The halflings demanded to know how they had gotten here without their knowledge, and commanded the party to come and meet their boss. The party agreed and followed the halflings past the secret door and to the north, into a grand chamber.
The halfings brought the party to gate to the east of the chamber, where two halfing guards stood. One left and brought a blond halfling woman to the door, who told the party that they are the gang of Phlebotomist Plumthorn, notorious halfling criminal, and that anyone adventuring in the area needed to pay for a 'license' (25 gold), a fee every time they entered the area (10 gold), and a 10% tithe on all treasure found in the area. They also demanding a share of the clearly magic staff Basil was holding, which they valued at 100 gold.
After arguing, the halfling lowered the initial payment to 55 gold, with interest on the remaining. The party agreed, laid down the payment and began walking away. When the halflings’ guard was down, the party struck, surprising them and slaying three of the guards immediately. The blond leader called for a retreat behind the gate, and the halflings snatched up the payment and fled.
The party retreated back the secret door they entered through.
Maximos' Tale
Maximos, after pressing the rod down, looked down the pryamid and found his companions missing, along with the rod he had just pressed. He climbed down and out the east entrance, finding the hallway now went to the north. On one wall of the hallway was scrawled in blood "They are deterred by light. We should restore the well."
Past the hall was a small chamber with brass pegs on the walls and two corpses, shredded by claws. The floor of the chamber showed the entire pryamid room from before, and Maximos was able to see his companions, from the top, in a discussion and then leaving the chamber. He hit the floor, which magnified the enchanted image but he was unable to break through. Maximus looted the corpses (he found some money and a potion) and moved on.
Past the door to the north, he found a hallway with mirrors set at various angles to the east and west. He headed west, past the mirrors, to a magically lit chamber, with a decorated fresco to the north and 3 huge stone gaping maws with magical darkness in each of the mouths, with the phrase ‘those who would see Thoth’s knowledge must possess the wisdom to follow his breath’ carved nearby.
Maximos left the chamber and traveled north, past several doors. As he wandered, he heard thumping sounds coming from a room, and six giant albino baboons starting chasing him. Maximos fled back south, slamming open doors on the way to find something to help him.
He fled back to the lit chamber with the gaping maws, which the baboons seemed to fear. He prepared to fight them, hoping to throw one into one of the maws, but they backed off, giving him time to plan his next move.
My take
Honestly I don’t have much to say! Troupe play is going well. I started fleshing out the calendar and wrote a birthday generator. I want to add festivals and such to the calendar before sharing out fully.
I’m moving more to using digital tools since my headaches are starting to get better. I picked up a second monitor (I use a fancy eye care monitor from Benq and it’s a wonder for my migraines, so I picked up a second). I now have the character roster in an dm excel sheet from Anthony Huso.
Using Owlbear Rodeo has been great for combat. I like that I can have my players help get everything set up.
It was great having a session where the party got stomped by a surprise round and then later get a devastating surprise round of their own.
Cantrips is something I was looking into. It's a cool concept but universally they are intended for zero-level characters. It’d be fun to offer a few slots for low level magic users, they are so much worse than clerics at low levels.
I’ve been looking at the few third party classes that are available. I’ve looked at some in dragon, from Dragonsfoot, and from Anthony Huso. Besides Huso’s, most are boring as fuck. Monk-acrobat? Come on. It’s so wild how little creativity in classes came after Gygax was done with 1e. People wanted to stick with his vision, which is dumb given how many classes were like ‘this player wanted to play a guy from a movie’. I have some ideas for a class I want to put together, we’ll see what comes of it.
That’s pretty much it, thanks for reading!