The Greylands House Campaign - Session 5

  Summary 

The characters make camp in the topside part of the ruins of the Boyar's former manor and start securing the perimeter, as well as clearing out the rest of level 1 of the dungeon underneath it. 

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

Session Recap

During their downtime the party buy some good camping gear and large tent and set out to the ruins of former boyar's fortified manor, where the clear out some of the rubble, forming it into a defensive barricade and set up their camp within the walls. The reasoning being - there is no point in going back and forth an hour in each direction from Greytown if they'll be focusing on the dungeon underneath the manor anyway. Some of the hirelings complain that this is an odd choice considering the town is, ya know, right there but are quickly told that this is part of their contract (and technically, it is) and shut up.

Finally ready to head back in the group makes their way into the section of the first floor that houses the actual family catacombs and goes in. Exploring the place they find, unsurprisingly, a whole bunch of stone sarcophagi. They also found the resting place of one Saint Ulther - a man with a bristling mustache, bulging eyes and, more importantly, a former mortal incarnation of the Sun God.  Rusty, being a talasum born of this house, knows that the reason why the remains of Ulther are here instead of some temple, is that the former boyar's family are descendants of Ulther and so had spent a good amount of money to bribe several officials to have the remains moved to the private catacombs underneath their home. 

As the party were discussing about the potential of opening Ulther's sarcophagus and maybe even bringing/selling his remains to the church back in Greytown, Jan the porter started loudly protesting. He was someone already trending towards neurosis and religious fanaticism, and after some of the stuff he witnessed while in the employ of the party, this was starting to cross the line for him. Pipam made sure to take him aside and promise him that the party would not do something as reprehensible as desecrate the resting place of a saint. 

As this commotion was going on, one of the doors in the crypts opened and skeletons started marching out. The party rushed to meet them with a big ass melee ensuing. Rusty, who was now the wielder of Maximillian the Girthy's impressive +1 zweihander was having a rather hard time actually using the thing, on account of the sword being significantly taller than he was. That meant that one of the skeletons got a lucky stab at the poor talasum before being brought down by the onslaught of arrows, dogs and an angry war boar.

As the fight concluded, the party felt confident in opening up another sarcophagus, one they had (turns out correctly) suspected of housing another unquiet dead. The fight with the zombie was much briefer though, as Rusty finally figured out the hang of this two-hander business and along with Zoltan the dwarf managed to destroy the zombie before it even had a chance to do much of anything besides get up from its grave.

Taking its chain armor, longsword and the odd looking dagger it had stuck in its chest, the party still had some unfinished business to attend to. They asked Rusty, Walter and Jan the porter to stand by in this room and keep an eye out, as the party was going to go sweep the adjacent hallways and make sure there were no more skeletons.

With that diversion they went back to Ulthar's tomb and opened it, finding him mercifully still dead. They did however steal his suspiciously well maintained leather gloves though, as it was obvious they were magical. With that they returned back up. Also, just as an act of friendly pranking they spent some time banging on the door and howling and making noises, in an attempt to scare any potential talasums walking by at the time.

Satisfied with having the first floor of the dungeon secured the party returned aboveground to rest up.

GM Observations

A fairly straightforward session this week. The two most notable things having to do with Ulther's tomb. The tomb itself was already there in Dyson's dungeon, however it contained nothing of interest which to me did not make sense for the burial place of a saint. So instead I used the OSR miscellaneous magical items table and got a pair of magical gloves which fit quite well with the saint's supposed deeds. 

The other was Jan's freak out at the whole prospect. I try and give hirelings at least some personality, but often times doing so just takes too much mental energy while I am running, especially if there's a lot of them around (and there usually are). However Jan has specifically been already appalled at all the party have done and their general irreverence for the Sun God's ways (von Plarf being from a branch of the faith now deemed heretical and Verasha being an outright pagan) and the idea of opening a saint's tomb just had to be addressed in character. 

The party have also expressed interest in potentially rebuilding and claiming the boyar's manor house for themselves as a long term goal, which I think is a great thing to aim for in a sandbox game like this. I made a call as a referee that in order to make sure the place is safe, they needed to get the first 5 levels of the dungeons underneath secured in some way (either killing all enemies like with the rats, or simply making alliances with them like with the talasumi) and then making sure that access to the lower levels can easily be cut off. After that, of course, they would also need the funds to buy materials and hire laborers to actually reconstruct the building, along with a hefty amount of bribes to the Greytown council to let them do this in the first place. 

A difficult goal for sure, but in no way an unachievable one!