Summary
The party meet with the head priest of the Elemental Chaos cult and discuss a truce and potential alliance. They also get rid of the living statues on level 5. They then go and explore the abandoned prison and spend over a month of downtime preparing for upcoming delves.
Party Members
- Verasha - Level 4 Druid
- Pipam the Younger - Level 4 Thief
- von Plarf - Level 3 Elf
- Zoltan - Level 4 Dwarf
- "Rusty" the Talasum - Level 4 Fighter
Followers
Jaro (Verasha's war boar); Grub (Verasha's other war boar); Alois (Porter and Cook); Walter of Potsdam (Man-at-Arms); Tatana (Woman-at-Arms); Baba Tonka (a brown bear); Bluey (War Dog)
Session Recap
Anna and her warriors returned to act as a guide to the party on the way down into the temple. She showed them how to navigate the parts of level 6 that the temple were establishing as part of their territory along with various hazards (like the room full of gargoyles) to avoid. The group also met some of the other mercenaries employed by the temple, such as a group of magic-users. They also found out a secret door short cut that allowed them to quickly reach the staircase leading down into the temple proper.
The staircase, the party noticed, was quite new construction. Apparently an ooze of some kind had fallen through into the temple during a ceremony, destroying the old staircase and just making a big mess of things in general.
Once they were down on level 7, the party found themselves in the Temple of Elemental Chaos. The central ritual space looked surprisingly homely with a big ceiling and tapestries on the walls as well as altars and benches. The group were greeted by the head priest, a man by the name of Marek and his entourage. He greeted them the group and offered to go talk in his office.
Due to the priest politely asking that the animals are not brought into his nice bed chambers and office, Verasha stayed behind to keep them in check, while the rest of the party followed the high priest. Along the way they stopped at the Air Chapel, presided over by Emilia - a hideous harpy that acted as second priestess to Marek. The group then went into their private chambers to discuss what the whole situation was.
Marek explained that their temple was dedicated to the elemental forces of nature itself, the grand and powerful things like hurricanes, fires, earthquake and such that Chaos, being the primal matter of which all existence spawned, created when unbridled and unrestrained. Their beliefs, along with their practice of human sacrifice, was viewed as evil and heretical by the dominant cult of the Sun God, and so they had found themselves out into the Greylands just as many other heretics and pagans have.
The reasons the temple were offering a truce with the party were two fold. On one hand, the temple recognized the party as not being particularly pious Solarists either (what with one of their members being a Druid), and so Marek felt there was some connection there. The second was the servants of a black wyrm named Dulwin had approached the temple from below, with an offer to submit to their draconic master. The temple had refused and murdered the emissaries, and were seeking allies to help with the inevitable retribution coming from deeper into the dungeon.
That, combined with the fact that the party were clearly powerful enough to have cleared out and be able to hold the first 4 floors of the structure, was why the temple was now seeking a truce and potential mutual assistance in the future.
After appearing politely receptive to his pitch, the head priest also showed the group around the rest of the temple, as well as saying there was an old abandoned prison that one could access from the temple, that the temple members themselves avoided due to various creepy crawlies seeming to spawn in there. They extended an invitation to the party to go explore it if they wish, and the party took them up on their invitation.
After a week of preparations and rest, the group descended back through the temple and up into the prison. Exploration was slow and careful, which was helpful as the party almost ran directly into a gelatinous cube on two occasions! Luckily their liberal use of Sunfire and retreating+shooting arrows helped dispatch both of those. One even had gotten some very expensive looking jewelry in it, Sun God knows where from.
Exploring deeper into the prison the party found a door marked with a strange, but ultimately meaningless, symbol and exploring around the place managed to find the button that opens into a secret room containing two coffers. Cautious with what happened the last time someone touched a treasure chest without examining it first. After prodding them with a pole and giving the time for Pipam the Younger to examine them they found the coffers to be locked, but not containing any traps. They opened one to find it containing a splendid bejeweled scroll case. Deciding it was smarter to do this not in the middle of a hostile dungeon, the group dropped off the two coffers by the stairs, and went back to finally unlock and peek what was behind the door with the strange symbol.
As it turns out, that was when a group of the gaunt and strange looking talasum descended on the group, but with a Web spell that von Plarf had recently learned from the Greytown wizard, the group managed to isolate them and deal with them without much trouble.
Now, finally (again), the group opened the blasted door, finding a bedroom and office beyond it, with a crystal statue in each of the corners. As soon as Zoltan had set foot in the room, the statues (almost predictably) began to move and approach him. The group slammed the door shut and decided to just leave (von Plarf taking a chance to add some extra lines to the sigil on the door, making it appear like a man with a large penis).
With a big haul from their trip (6080 gp worth of jewels, fancy scroll case, gemstones and coinage) along with a scroll containing some very powerful and useful spells (Continual Light, Knock and Fireball), the group decided to settle in for a long bit of downtime.
Verasha took Baba Tonka and the rest of the animals and travelled back to her hidden village home, where with the help of the head priestess of the Wild Temple, she concocted a ritual that magically enchanted the bear's claws, allowing her to harm things that would normally be untouchable for her.
While that was going on, Rusty had gone off on tour of the taverns and drinking holes of Greytown, indulging in his compulsive need to sort household goods and arranging their bottles and jugs of alcohol in nice and neat ways, drinking himself into a stupor along the way and then needing to spend over a week of getting the alcohol out of his system.
Von Plarf had settled in to copy the two spells off the scroll that she could cast, and then started to cast Continual Light on a bunch of things, eventually replacing the party's oil lanterns with custom-made hooded lanterns that could house the enchanted glowing coins and have a little door that can be closed to stop the light from coming through.
Finally, after selling off the jewelry from the gelatinous cubes through her contact in the Thieves Guild, Pipam the Younger met with the Master Thief of the guild and convinced him to allow her to purchase one of the rare Thief's Candles . She also told him about the black wyrm lurking beneath the earth, and the promise of a dragon's horde made the Master Thief say that she and her party could come to talk to him once they decided if they want to approach the monster, and he might be willing to offer them some manpower and assistance in exchange for a cut of the treasure.
The staircase, the party noticed, was quite new construction. Apparently an ooze of some kind had fallen through into the temple during a ceremony, destroying the old staircase and just making a big mess of things in general.
Once they were down on level 7, the party found themselves in the Temple of Elemental Chaos. The central ritual space looked surprisingly homely with a big ceiling and tapestries on the walls as well as altars and benches. The group were greeted by the head priest, a man by the name of Marek and his entourage. He greeted them the group and offered to go talk in his office.
Due to the priest politely asking that the animals are not brought into his nice bed chambers and office, Verasha stayed behind to keep them in check, while the rest of the party followed the high priest. Along the way they stopped at the Air Chapel, presided over by Emilia - a hideous harpy that acted as second priestess to Marek. The group then went into their private chambers to discuss what the whole situation was.
Marek explained that their temple was dedicated to the elemental forces of nature itself, the grand and powerful things like hurricanes, fires, earthquake and such that Chaos, being the primal matter of which all existence spawned, created when unbridled and unrestrained. Their beliefs, along with their practice of human sacrifice, was viewed as evil and heretical by the dominant cult of the Sun God, and so they had found themselves out into the Greylands just as many other heretics and pagans have.
The reasons the temple were offering a truce with the party were two fold. On one hand, the temple recognized the party as not being particularly pious Solarists either (what with one of their members being a Druid), and so Marek felt there was some connection there. The second was the servants of a black wyrm named Dulwin had approached the temple from below, with an offer to submit to their draconic master. The temple had refused and murdered the emissaries, and were seeking allies to help with the inevitable retribution coming from deeper into the dungeon.
That, combined with the fact that the party were clearly powerful enough to have cleared out and be able to hold the first 4 floors of the structure, was why the temple was now seeking a truce and potential mutual assistance in the future.
After appearing politely receptive to his pitch, the head priest also showed the group around the rest of the temple, as well as saying there was an old abandoned prison that one could access from the temple, that the temple members themselves avoided due to various creepy crawlies seeming to spawn in there. They extended an invitation to the party to go explore it if they wish, and the party took them up on their invitation.
After a week of preparations and rest, the group descended back through the temple and up into the prison. Exploration was slow and careful, which was helpful as the party almost ran directly into a gelatinous cube on two occasions! Luckily their liberal use of Sunfire and retreating+shooting arrows helped dispatch both of those. One even had gotten some very expensive looking jewelry in it, Sun God knows where from.
Exploring deeper into the prison the party found a door marked with a strange, but ultimately meaningless, symbol and exploring around the place managed to find the button that opens into a secret room containing two coffers. Cautious with what happened the last time someone touched a treasure chest without examining it first. After prodding them with a pole and giving the time for Pipam the Younger to examine them they found the coffers to be locked, but not containing any traps. They opened one to find it containing a splendid bejeweled scroll case. Deciding it was smarter to do this not in the middle of a hostile dungeon, the group dropped off the two coffers by the stairs, and went back to finally unlock and peek what was behind the door with the strange symbol.
As it turns out, that was when a group of the gaunt and strange looking talasum descended on the group, but with a Web spell that von Plarf had recently learned from the Greytown wizard, the group managed to isolate them and deal with them without much trouble.
Now, finally (again), the group opened the blasted door, finding a bedroom and office beyond it, with a crystal statue in each of the corners. As soon as Zoltan had set foot in the room, the statues (almost predictably) began to move and approach him. The group slammed the door shut and decided to just leave (von Plarf taking a chance to add some extra lines to the sigil on the door, making it appear like a man with a large penis).
With a big haul from their trip (6080 gp worth of jewels, fancy scroll case, gemstones and coinage) along with a scroll containing some very powerful and useful spells (Continual Light, Knock and Fireball), the group decided to settle in for a long bit of downtime.
Verasha took Baba Tonka and the rest of the animals and travelled back to her hidden village home, where with the help of the head priestess of the Wild Temple, she concocted a ritual that magically enchanted the bear's claws, allowing her to harm things that would normally be untouchable for her.
While that was going on, Rusty had gone off on tour of the taverns and drinking holes of Greytown, indulging in his compulsive need to sort household goods and arranging their bottles and jugs of alcohol in nice and neat ways, drinking himself into a stupor along the way and then needing to spend over a week of getting the alcohol out of his system.
Von Plarf had settled in to copy the two spells off the scroll that she could cast, and then started to cast Continual Light on a bunch of things, eventually replacing the party's oil lanterns with custom-made hooded lanterns that could house the enchanted glowing coins and have a little door that can be closed to stop the light from coming through.
Finally, after selling off the jewelry from the gelatinous cubes through her contact in the Thieves Guild, Pipam the Younger met with the Master Thief of the guild and convinced him to allow her to purchase one of the rare Thief's Candles . She also told him about the black wyrm lurking beneath the earth, and the promise of a dragon's horde made the Master Thief say that she and her party could come to talk to him once they decided if they want to approach the monster, and he might be willing to offer them some manpower and assistance in exchange for a cut of the treasure.
GM Observations
An extra long post this time around, because oh man have the last two weeks been a lot. With so many disruptions due to real life the game kind of broke down into several small sessions, as we basically played whenever we could. This is why this is a combined report for what I am at least counting as two distinct sessions, but in practice was more like 5 scattered around the last two weeks.
So, finally the party made contact with another proper faction in the dungeon, the Temple of Elemental Chaos (no relation to the other Temple of fame. Or maybe there is. They haven't asked. Maybe it's a franchise location?) and are left in a strange position where these guys are clearly very evil (and making little to no attempt to hide it), yet also not someone the party actively needs to fight against either.
Beyond that, my main observation was that oh boy the prison area had a lot of fights. For a 1 in 8 chance of a wandering monster appearing, the party hit three over the course of the session! That turned out to be a stroke of luck though, as the second gelatinous cube was generated with a frankly absurd amount of treasure carried within it. That's where all that money came from!
As for the downtime stuff, this was a rather interesting proposition. The party want to go fight some gargoyles. Gargoyles are immune to non-magical attacks. The party has, between all of them, only 3 magical weapons which is probably okay to take on one gargoyle, but more than that would be outright suicidal to try and fight. Plus the party's best fighter, Baba Tonka the grizzly bear, can't hit them.
So using my already existing rules that allows magical characters of level 4 or higher to spend money and time to create minor enchantments on weapons (effectively just giving them a bonus to hit and damage without any other special abilities) I made the ruling that Verasha, being a Druid, could use this same downtime procedure to enchant her bear's claws, rather than one weapon. We also established that the reason the Hidden Village can do that is that they use this magical ritual to enchant the tusks on the war pigs birthed/gifted to them by Svine.
The other thing I had to make a ruling on is Continual Light. It is such a strange spell. From what I read in the OSR description, the spell is permanent until broken in some way, and can be cast on as many objects as on wishes. This means that with a downtime of a week a magic-user or cleric that has it can effectively remove the need for more mundane lighting from the game. Of course stuff like torches still have the use of being an open flame, and a regular oil lantern can be turned off more easily, but still...what a spell.
In a play by post game I ruled that a magician can only maintain as many Continual Light spells as their level, but that also makes it weird because then you couldn't, say, pay someone else to cast it for you. Or you could be very restrictive and say that only one spell per caster can ever be ongoing, but at that point this is a spell which is cast once and then never again, making it kind of a lame proposition.
I will have to figure out how I want to rule this in future games, but for this looser house game that this campaign is, it is fine.
So, finally the party made contact with another proper faction in the dungeon, the Temple of Elemental Chaos (no relation to the other Temple of fame. Or maybe there is. They haven't asked. Maybe it's a franchise location?) and are left in a strange position where these guys are clearly very evil (and making little to no attempt to hide it), yet also not someone the party actively needs to fight against either.
Beyond that, my main observation was that oh boy the prison area had a lot of fights. For a 1 in 8 chance of a wandering monster appearing, the party hit three over the course of the session! That turned out to be a stroke of luck though, as the second gelatinous cube was generated with a frankly absurd amount of treasure carried within it. That's where all that money came from!
As for the downtime stuff, this was a rather interesting proposition. The party want to go fight some gargoyles. Gargoyles are immune to non-magical attacks. The party has, between all of them, only 3 magical weapons which is probably okay to take on one gargoyle, but more than that would be outright suicidal to try and fight. Plus the party's best fighter, Baba Tonka the grizzly bear, can't hit them.
So using my already existing rules that allows magical characters of level 4 or higher to spend money and time to create minor enchantments on weapons (effectively just giving them a bonus to hit and damage without any other special abilities) I made the ruling that Verasha, being a Druid, could use this same downtime procedure to enchant her bear's claws, rather than one weapon. We also established that the reason the Hidden Village can do that is that they use this magical ritual to enchant the tusks on the war pigs birthed/gifted to them by Svine.
The other thing I had to make a ruling on is Continual Light. It is such a strange spell. From what I read in the OSR description, the spell is permanent until broken in some way, and can be cast on as many objects as on wishes. This means that with a downtime of a week a magic-user or cleric that has it can effectively remove the need for more mundane lighting from the game. Of course stuff like torches still have the use of being an open flame, and a regular oil lantern can be turned off more easily, but still...what a spell.
In a play by post game I ruled that a magician can only maintain as many Continual Light spells as their level, but that also makes it weird because then you couldn't, say, pay someone else to cast it for you. Or you could be very restrictive and say that only one spell per caster can ever be ongoing, but at that point this is a spell which is cast once and then never again, making it kind of a lame proposition.
I will have to figure out how I want to rule this in future games, but for this looser house game that this campaign is, it is fine.
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