Arden Vul - Session 8
The party
Skeggi Arnbjorgsson, the Elf Thief.
Andreas Choumnos, Archontean Fighter.
Basil Cydones, Archontean Magic-User, member of the Order of Thoth.
Maximos, Archontean Monk, from a Monastery of the Twin Gods. Twin of Satyrion. Lost.
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).
Prosper the Doughty, Archontean Paladin of Mitra, wielder of a powerful magical blade and his two torch-bearers.
Summary
The date: 2993 AEP, also known as the 8th year of Constans XXV. 2nd day of Lyan.
Maximos' Tale
We pick back up with our lost monk, who was teleported to some sort of Thoth temple, seemingly separate from the one the party has been exploring.
Upon the giant albino baboons who were chasing him fleeing, he investigated the chamber with the 3 giant maws more. He decided to smell the breath of each maw to see if he could smell anything resembling the diet of the Ibis, one of Thoth's chosen creatures (which was prominently displayed upon a engraving to the north).
He detected no smell and could not see inside, so he continued to search other areas in the temple, hoping to find something to light before his torch went out.
He went back to rooms he had searched prior. He ignored the set of two doors covered in baboon feces* and searched the bedroom he had ignored previously. He found a bunch of rotten furniture, none of it suitable to burn. Inside a rotten desk was a drawer containing the book The Courtship of Julius the Exarch, a popular romance that has been translated into modern Archontean. The pages were a little damp but would serve to burn in a pinch.
He explored east more and came across a grand sight: A huge chamber with a single 5' diameter beam of quickly fading sunlight coming from the ceiling, from a well of mirrors that rose to the surface. The light well seemed possibly climbable, if one were able to get up to it, which Maximos had no ability to do. The light shined down onto a pile of mud and feces.
Around the outside of the chamber were a number of chambers with viewing benches and murals, which contained writing that was not decipherable to the monk.
He could hear screams coming from the north, and investigated as close as he could without being seen. He could view some sort of court and torture happening, and he turn and fled back to the light well chamber, while his torch began to sputter out.
*I read a room wrong last time so this is a correction from the last report
The Main Party
We pick up with the party as they fled (yet again) behind the secret baboon door, just after ambushing and slaying a few halfling gang members near one of the main entrances to the outside world.
They decided to regroup and rest for the evening and headed back to the Inn of the Lost. Inside the Inn were some goblins hanging out, a flirtatious older warrior with tight leather clothes and a pocket full of coin, the cleric Drusus who was looking for help finding a lost shrine, and the paladin Prosper the Doughty who was deep in his cups and telling stories to his two hirelings.
Skeggi approached the older warrior, who shared that he was a retired fighter named Edwin the Wrinkled, and Skeggi shared his woes about the halflings. Edwin gave him a tip that the halflings were quite dangerous as they were the sole source of a deadly poison called Mortality.
Prosper's Oath
(Prosper the Doughty, taken from the Lions of Mitra from the Dark Tower)
The party met with Prosper the Doughty, who bought them all a round of a strong wine. The party told him that the halflings killed their former paladin (a lie) and that they injured young Kaliban (also a lie). Prosper was so furious that he grabbed his sword and told the party and his hirelings that they should head out immediately to deal with the gang. He charged out of the Inn before realizing he didn't know where they were, and asked the party to lead the way.
Freydis remained behind and said she would rejoin the party when they were finished with their horrid crusade.
The party led the paladin to the goblin warrens, where they were told by two Ogre guards that Prosper and his two hirelings needed to pay to get in (60 gold total). Prosper expressed sorrow that he was out of coin. The party successfully negotiated the fee down to 30 and they were on their way.
They traveled back up through the secret baboon door and up north to where the halflings were stationed. One halfling guard was stationed on either side of their installed gate. Prosper knelt upon the ground and swore an oath to Mitra, stating that he wouldn't sheathe his blade until every halfling on the floor was slain.
The halflings were beginning to shout and gather reinforcements on the opposite side of the gate.
Prosper (stumbling slightly) charged and the party followed, slaying several halflings with a mix of ranged attacks and Prosper's mighty enchanted blade. Prosper dropped his bloody sword (as he couldn't sheathe it) as he assailed the gate and tried to tear it down with the force of his mighty muscles but was unsuccessful. Other calmer minds found keys inside one of the guard's pockets and opened the gate as Prosper began to run inside.
The party caught up as Prosper raced south down a four-way intersection. They paused as they came across a wooden barricade with four halflings stationed on raised platforms, slings ready to fire. A voice from behind asked for peace. After the party said no, the voice told them that they would all be dead soon.
Prosper and the party's fighters charged, while the others stayed back and fired darts. Prosper charged the barricade, and in a feat of absurd strength he smashed it in two, throwing the halflings backwards and making an opening for them to charge through. The fighters begin to assault the prone halflings.
The rest of the party heard shouts and saw a group of halflings charging from the north, led by their blond halfling lieutenant who they ambushed earlier in the day.
My take
What a fucking session, I had so much fun.
This was also shortened by an hour and we managed to pack a lot of excitement in.
A Drunk Paladin's Oath
I had to make a big decision in the moment during the session: Would I let the party drag a mid-level Paladin (level 7) into their fights? I was having a really good day for other reasons (I bought a beautiful 2006 toyota camry XLE with leather seats and wood paneling from a old farmer for super cheap) and I think that influenced me going 'fuck yeah'. I already had expressed that he was drunk so I didn't even roll.
I think this was the correct decision. I don't remember who's blog post it was (it could have just been someone talking on the rainbow OSR discord too) about how it was a beginner mistake to hold back on the fun stuff for future sessions. I just want to let them take huge swings now and deal with the consequences, rather than force them to take the long road and make fighting the halflings a drawn out conflict, if that's what they want.
There's going to be huge consequences, regardless how it goes. I hope I have been clear enough that a TPK is extremely possible. Poison is no joke in adnd. But, also, they've survived fights that I thought would be impossible, and they could always abandon Prosper and run away.
Also, Prosper worshiping Mitra is an error in the book. He's listed as worshiping both Mitra and a different god in the table he's introduced in. He's listed as worshiping the other god more, so I think that's what it is supposed to be. Him worshiping Mitra is already happening and will bring in some fun complications if he lives through this crusade, so I am happy with it.
Poor Maximos
Dealing with the lost party member (poor Maximos) has been a little tough. I'd run a short separate session with the player so we can get Maximos either dead or back with the party, but unfortunately the player has no spare time, so we tacked on more with him as the other players arrived and got set up. You really get through a lot with just one character running around (as we saw with the solo session from a few weeks ago).
We ran into issues with communicating the map. The structure of the level Maximos is pretty important as the mirrors are part of a large puzzle (I don't think this is a spoiler, it should be obvious by now), and our verbal communication wasn't doing the job here.
Dungeondraft Map Project
There is a project to map out the levels using Dungeondraft, that I originally bounced off of since I thought they looked aesthetically horrid. However, upon reading a lot more of the book, they do a good job with adding in details from the room descriptions (I originally though that they were just one-to-one recreations of the original maps using an ugly stone texture) and honestly they don't look to bad.
I don't know if I want to pull in the maps full time, as the scattered flow-charts the party have been making have been working okay, but for some sections (like where Maximos is traveling though), using a map may not be a bad idea. The project doesn't include every map but it has many of the upper levels and that is plenty for now.
I started looking at them because since were in the middle of the large pitched battle (and I have a week to prep), I was going to draw a map, but these will work great. And Owlbear Rodeo has a simple fog of war painter, so we're pretty much set.
Other stuff
Our resident artist player also volunteered to draw up simple tokens for Owlbear Rodeo which is sick as hell. I asked him to do ones for some important npcs next session, so that will be sick as well!
I am finally getting my digital workspace feeling good. My new monitor is here but the arm for it isn't, so I am cramming a lot onto one screen but it's alright for now. The darkmode pdf reader I am using is a lifesaver and so are the tools from the blue bard. I still use a lot of paper (I really prefer using scratch paper for combats and random things I need to remember), but the move to having a bunch of pdfs is helpful. The printed versions of Arden Vul I like for running out of, but having the pdf separately open for a quick search is handy.
There's a lot of sections (like stocking the civilized areas) that include a lot of ways of generating npcs to hang around the area that have goals and secret goals and such. I found it easier at first to just use the examples in the tables but I am growing in my confidence to use the tables and generate some interesting npcs. I thought the tables were excessive at first but it's pretty fun coming up with some specific weirdos to hang around a zone. It's pretty easy to spit out the results from a table, connect them with a tomb or rumor, and await them coming and talking to the party later.
God this was a long post. Thanks for reading if you got this far!