The Greylands House Campaign - Session 4

Summary 

The party helps von Plarf with her divinely ordained quest. In the process they meet the remains of one a godling and get their first magical weapon!

Party Members

• Verasha - Level 2 Druid 
• Pipam - Level 2 Illusionist
• von Plarf - Level 1 Elf
• Zoltan - Level 2 Dwarf
• "Rusty" the Talasum - Level 1 Fighter

Followers

Jaro (Verasha's war boar); Jan "the Hard Up" (Torchbearer); Ludwig (Porter); Adam (Man-at-Arms); Walter of Potsdam (Man-at-Arms) and 3 War Hounds

"Rusty" the Talasum, art by Ellie.

Session Recap

At the end of the last session, von Plarf had gone carousing and gotten herself into some drunken shenanigans and for better or worse her payers to the Sun God were heard and she was saved...and tasked with a divine Quest. 

The quest sounded fairly straightforward - head south, near the Barrows, and find a hill with an old abandoned shrine to the Sun God on it. Underneath this shrine were the burial chambers of one Maximillian the Girthy, a pagan warlord that about a century ago fought one of the mortal avatars/heroic incarnations of the Sun God and in one of his victories managed to steal that hero's sun pendant. Von Plarf was tasked to retrieve the pendant and the skull of Maximillian and bring those to be buried in properly consecrated ground under the church in Greytown (The shrine itself had been abandoned for a while ever since the Chaotic event that left the Greylands in their current state).

Gathering up the rest of the party, the group set out south, making sure to skirt around the magical mists of the Barrows. Soon they spotted the lonely shrine next to an old oak tree and made their way there. The shrine was unfortunately infested with some fire beetles, which the party quickly slew (the beetles were mostly just minding their own business so it wasn't exactly much of a fight) in order to harvest their strange glowing nodules.

The party also noticed that the stone slab which leads down into the actual tomb was dragged aside and the tomb was wide open. Using a piece of rope the party descended down, save for Jaro the pig who absolutely refused to have a rope tied around him, instead jumping down into the hole and landing on Zoltan. 

The party explored the tomb, finding a secret door behind a shelf of old pottery and grave goods. The room it lead to seemed to contain a gaggle of drunk bandits, who either out of friendliness or inebriation mostly just chatted with the party and told them they're welcome to go do whatever they want in the rest of the tomb, and warned them to mind the hole down the hallway. Jaro, being a pig, couldn't heed the warnings though and so ended up falling into the pit trap and having to be dragged out by Verasha and the rest of the party.

As that was going on an elf and a squat, deeply ugly looking man walked by, chuckling at the absurd scene unfolding in front of them and demanding to know why the party were here. When they learned the party was interested in Maximillian's grave and not the bandits, they let them be, laughing as they went to join the rest of the bandit group.

Heading down a trap door and into another floor of the tomb the party was ambushed by a pair of bright red centipedes and von Plarf, in a bit of panic, simply put them (and Zoltan) to sleep before finishing them off and waking her dwarf butler. The party also found a pair of dead bandits, seemingly suffocated from something, in front of an ominous round stone slab door with a wolf engraved on it. Investigating the door, Pipam found there were some fungi with little balloon-like nodules on them growing all around the door - likely the reason for the two dead bandits.

Deciding to check out the one room they hadn't checked first, the party found a stone altar flanked by two stone braziers and with a wolf pelt and a carved wolf skull sitting on the altar. As they approached it the braziers and the wolf skull's eyes all burst into blue magical flames and the voice of Uncle Wolf, one of the Primordial Beasts, spoke to them. 

Verasha made an offering to the skull and chatted with Uncle Wolf, who explained that it had been quite a while since anyone has actually given him any offerings or attention (noting that the closest shrine of his has a congregation of one mostly crazy old man and two squirrels) and was happy to have someone talk to him again. Verasha offered to bring the pelt and skull back to her village, where they still worship the Primordial Beasts, and Uncle Wolf was grateful for the opportunity to have someone remember him again. In return he offered to answer the party a question. They asked him if the fungi in the next room over were dangerous, to which he replied yes.

Using oil and some flame the party set the fungi on fire, managing to destroy them without any spores getting in the air. Rolling away the stone slab, Maximillian the Girthy, who was now turned into a ghoul, and the skeletal remains of his combat bothers rose up to attack. The party were quicker and managed to roll the slab back so that only one enemy at a time can actually leave the burial chambers, and then proceeded to rip both Maximillian and his skeletons to shreds. 

Victorious the party severed his had, took the sun medallion he was wearing, claimed his nice looking two-handed sword and even gave Walter the Man-at-Arms the former warlord's chain armor. 

After they were done looting the place, the party decided that they didn't want to let the bandits off the hook, so went back upstairs, kicked the door in and proceeded to attack. The bandits, despite being quite plastered, managed to organize themselves, while the elf Charmed von Plarf, his ugly toady managing to magically scare away Jaro the boar, and then a big melee starting in which the trio of wardogs proceeded to rip the bandits apart. Pipam used a spell in turn to scare away the Toady who managed to run away and escape the tomb (and the wardogs), the elf surrendering instead. 

The party tied up the elf and said "Well, what do you have to say for yourself?" to which the elf, rather indignantly, pointed out that they had just attacked him and his men completely unprovoked. The party agreed, but also didn't' really want this guy around to cause trouble in the future. Verasha slid behind him and slit his throat, whispering "This is for laughing at my pig." 

Returning home from the expedition the group delivered the head and medallion to the church, where the priests promised to get them buried and properly kept safe. Pipam, in turn, did some alchemy and combined the liquid from the fire beetles' nodules with some of the oil to create a potent mixture known as Sun Fire.

GM Observations

So with that quest result because of the carousing mishaps table, I was kind of stumped as to what to do. So when in doubt, I looked for a one-page adventure or dungeon, and decided to use the Burial Mound of Gilliard Wolfclan while tweaking details and enemies to make it fit better with the setting. 

This also gave me a chance to do some more worldbuilding and setting definition in the form of Uncle Wolf. In my ongoing process of ripping off all the good ideas Chris Kutalik has had, I decided that in my setting there also are powerful primordial animals. 

Unlike in the Hill Cantons though, the Primordial Beasts in the Greylands are not as powerful, being very minor godlings of varying power, with almost no worshipers in the present day, and never really providing any actual spells to their worshipers. Svine, the pig that Verasha's people worship, is one such Primordial Beast, same as Medved (who unlike the Hill Cantons is not an amalgam, but simply powerful enough to also be able to shape change into a human form, among other things). Uncle Wolf was therefore another one, though he also has the major disadvantage of being dead, and so being mostly a fragment of the spirit of his old self, residing in the handful of scattered shrines to him around the world. 

The one page dungeon itself was fine and got the job done, the party were oddly bloodthirsty when dealing with the bandits as compared to the goblins under the boyar's manor, but that's how things go sometimes. The toady managed to escape though, so I suspect he might make another appearance down the line, a good way to tie this into the broader setting.

The fire beetles being used to make better firebombs was a thing I used in my first Greylands game too, where the goblins of the manor ended up using those to try and push back the adventuring party after repeated attacks. The main difference between Sun Fire and just regular burning oil is that burning oil does 1d8 damage, while Sun Fire does 2d6 and also is way way more sticky, essentially acting as napalm.

Speaking of burning oil, actually, while I decided to not use it in my OD&D game, I honestly kind of like it as a tool that players can have, and so I think I'll stick to it with the Greylands. And yes, this really is the same oil used to light lanterns...and yes, that does definitely mean that there are a lot of house fires all across the setting. It's something people just learn to live with.