Pack it up, we're moving!

 I have been side eyeing blogger for about a year now. While nothing is inherently broken right now, the website feels like it is abandonware. I've been wanting to move my blog to a different platform, but things just kept getting in the way.

Well, now they haven't.

As of today, this version of Gorgon Bones is no longer going to have any new posts. I have migrated my blog to bearblog, and you can find the new home of Gorgon Bones >>RIGHT HERE<< ! 

Please add that one to your RSS feeders if you are interested in reading my session reports or whatever other nonsense I have decided to waste people's time about on that given day. 

Cheers, and see you around! 

Zandan Megadungeon Session 6 - Hunt for the Basilisk

 

   

Characters

• Hoot (Owl Primal Chaos Worshiper)
• Varg (Wolf Troglodyte)
• Borg (Ogre Shock Trooper)
• Mortaron (Ogre Bogatyr)  

Session Recap 

    Last session the players agreed to assist the bogatyr Brainimir to help him hunt down the Basilisk of the Deep Forest. They recruit a pair of beefy ogres including Mortaron, another bogatyr and Borg, a former soldier and shock trooper. Stepping out of the comfort of the Domovoi Camp, everyone feels a sense of unease. It is as if the dungeon itself was darker, more hostile and on edge. The group head out to the crevice in the caverns to the east of them, which is the only certain entrance into the forest they know of. 

Descending down the ropes used by some of the hunters, the group find themselves in the Deep Forest - a strange place even the standards of the dungeon, with large vast rooms filled with all manner of twisted trees and plants. Having gotten some quick directions from the hunters in the cave above, they head to the second hunter camp down in the forest. Along the way they find a lost a John the Opossum (who had joined the hunting expedition a few sessions back) and helped him back to camp, where they boasted to the hunters about their victory over the Goat cultists and recruited two hunters to come join them in finding and killing the Basilisk. The hunters provided them some more directions, but the truth is they try not to roam too far off camp as the Deep Forest has the habit of sprouting entire new branches and rooms and so it's easy to get yourself turned around.

Returning back to the hall with the crevice in it the group then got their bearings a bit better, finding a suspicious pile of heavy stones but decide against trying to move them. Branimir also points out that it is unlikely a large beast like the Basilisk would be hiding its lair behind the rocks.

    The party decide to head westward, following the knowledge that a forest witch lives nearby and figuring she might be a good source of information. Along the way they see the Leshi of the deep forest - a pale and disheveled being made of sticks, moss and greenery. They hide and let it past, then proceed along their journey. As they try to find their bearings in the next wide "room" of the forest, Branimir and Varg sense something approaching them, and as they turn they find themselves face to face with the Basilisk itself. Branimir lets out a battle cry, while Varg uses his magic to conjure up a static illusion of Branimir right in front of the Basilisk's face. The trick works, as the beast is disoriented and ends up attacking the illusion, giving the rest of the party enough time to gather their wits and attack. Hoot unleashes a horrifyingly strong blast of chaos energies, using the power of the bronze sphere he found at the end of the previous session, nearly killing the Basilisk outright. Borg's shotgun and Branimir's club finish the job, the bogatyr viciously smashing its skull open and taking its fangs as a trophy for himself and Hoot (who also later takes the strange crown-like bone growth from the Basilisk's head).

 Finally making their way to the witch's cottage the party seem to aggravate...something. An invisible snorting animal of some kind charges towards them, smashing right into Hoot and knocking the poor owl unconscious. The commotion draws the witch Agata out who calls off her guard pig (named Dancho) and apologizes for its behavior, invites the party in and heals Hoot. They exchange information and small talk, she says she's willing to trade with them for various things, and the group heads out. 

Continuing south Agata catches up with them again, having completely forgotten to talk to the two hunters and they figure out some deal of their own, before she heads back out. Exploring the room the party find a hole in the ceiling, seemingly leading up into the dungeon (it does!), and also find another passage way hidden by thick vines. Deciding to investigate the group find a room with a giant oak tree and a camp full of people. Varg sneaks in and discovers some dangerous looking armed men. Bandits! 

Deciding that 12 guys with rifles are likely more than the party can handle right now, he sneaks back and the group proceed east, trying to make their way back to the hunter's camp. Along the way the poor wolf gets assaulted by strangling vines, and eventually the group make it to familiar (to the hunters) territory. A part of the forest overgrown with mushrooms and fungi and lichen of all kind. Gathering some of them, Varg discovers a passageway overgrown with a strange puffy type of mushroom. He decides to cut one of those off, but doing so releases a cloud of spores right into his face and he starts to choke, his muscles aching and convulsing. 

Everyone rush north back to the hunters camp, Varg barely alive as the poison from the spores spreads through his body. Luckily for them, the hunters have a potion from Agata the witch which can cure him, and it ends up saving the wolf's life. They share their adventures with the hunters and decide it is time to head back to safety.

The way home is slow, but mercifully uneventful, until the group are almost at the Domovoi Camp. A small old man dressed in scintillating green robes seems to be waiting for them near the staircases of the dungeon. Varg tries to distract him by summoning another illusion, but the old man is unimpressed and simply dismisses it, approaching the party. He introduces himself as Valvirian the Green Death. Hoot, still mostly out of it from his encounter with the invisible pig, tries to hide behind Mortaron but it is of no use. Valviran had sensed that magic was flowing through his bronze orb and kindly asked the party to give it back. Not willing to pick a fight with a powerful wizard the group handed the artifact back. Valviran, for his part, decided it was fair to repay them for finding his lost property and offered two spells of his impressive repertoire and as well as an engraved pesoglav skull which he had been using as a temporary magical focus. He then leaves down into the deeper parts of the dungeon, and the group finally make it home.

 

Map of the Deep Forest explored in the session, provided by one of the players.

 

 Observations 

    A lot ended up happening this session. I only had two players, so each ran two characters each (plus Branimir who is a fairly beefy NPC). They decided that even with reduced numbers it was important to honor their word, so off they went into the Deep Forest.That part of the dungeon I actually structured like a point-crawl rather than the typical detailed rooms. The spaces and size of the place are bigger, each node on the map taking 3 turns to traverse or to explore and each connection also taking 3 turns just to cross. While it didn't matter as far as encounter rolls (which happen once per node and once per transition), it did matter in terms of the light the party had as they managed to go through the entire large bottle of lamp oil the camp gave them, plus some of the batteries on their newly acquire flashlight.  Luckily for them a good chunk of the Deep Forest actually has a bioluminescent shimmering light in it, providing enough light to at least navigate on. 

For this session random encounters happened on a 2-in-6 rather than 1-in-6 chance and it definitely showed. Despite the session being only about 3 and a half hours, the party had five encounters, though to be fair not all of them hostile. The reason Agata ended up following the party for example is that she was rolled as the random encounter, and while I could simply just pick a different one if that made no sense, I thought it was kind of funny that she had ended up following the group when they left the node her house is in. 

Overall the deep forest pointcrawl worked quite well,  I think, and the upside of this over a more precise dungeon is of course it is very easy to just pile more and more stuff on there. The Deep Forest does have an effective depth of 3, which matters for Saving Rolls and general challenges to the party, but honestly they seemed to be doing quite well for themselves. 

The Basilisk deciding to ambush the characters was also purely a random encounter roll. The fight with him was quite short and brutal. It is likely the only thing of the session I found rather disappointing. Not that there was anything inherently wrong with it, but this has been the first fight using T&T that I felt just ended up feeling a bit flat. The players utilized their abilities and spells quite well and it lead to their victory. I had been worried the Basilisk had very low monster rating (85 in this case), but it also made no sense to have it be stronger. The fact is, concentrated ranged and magic attacks should, in fact, neutralize a singular enemy pretty well and they did. The illusion I thought was a brilliant way to give the party a chance to skip their surprised turn and let them act. Had Branimir and Varg failed their rolls (which both were very tight successes), the whole situation would have likely ended up much, much different. The Basilisk would have likely killed Branimir outright, likely also taking out at least one of the PCs too. 

While I do still enjoy T&T combat a lot, this was the first time I felt like this could have been a more entertaining battle using some version of classic D&D instead. 

Session Stats

Rooms Explored: 8
Enemies Defeated: 1 - The Basilisk 
Characters Dead: 0

Zandan Megadungeon Session 5 - Goat Cultists, the Final Chapter

   

Characters

• Flake (Owl Village Spirit)
• Zlatia (Human Troglodyte)
• Grismelda (Human Religious Radical)
• Hoot (Owl Primal Chaos Worshiper)  
• Reynaert (Fox Journalist)
• John Shepherd (War Bear Peasant)

Session Recap 

    Leaving the safety of the Domovoi Camp once more, the group decides to try a sneaky approach near the territory of the Goat cultists. Using only the jar of glowing grubs as a dim source of light the party sneak their way north-east. Unfortunately just as they approach the junction they were going to take, they see a patrol of five goat cultists heading off from their own camp and out to look for victims. Deciding to use their sneaky position to launch an attack Zlatia and Hoot fire off magical bolts, taking out two cultists (including the one holding their torch), and then Flake and Grismelda rush towards them, but the cultists manage to repel them and disengage. The party do not feel like following deeper into the cultist territory, so they also step back. The groups have a tense standoff broken by the cultists demanding what their fucking problem is. Accusations of "You guys killed our friends!" fly from both directions, and the cultists just tell the party to stay off their fucking territory and they won't kill them anymore.

The party agree and continue eastward, making it only a few meters before the (in hindsight fairly obvious) betrayal as a group of six cultists sneak up on Zaltia and shank her to death, then proceed to push into the rest of the party. Grismelda turns with a roar of "THE EARTH MOTHER WILL DEVOUR US ALL!" and launches herself in a doomed attack at the cultists, who subdue and take her down as Flake and Hoot run past them and back to camp. 

They quickly recruit some more help, with Reynaert the Fox joining up and John Shepherd (not to be confused with the other John), a ponderous war bear peasant who also decides to come along. Hoot and Flake also spend quite a few turns resting to try and recover some of their magical energies, before the group ventures back out, this time deciding to avoid the cultists entirely and instead explore the southern parts of the dungeon.

They make their way into the overgrown massive cavern where the Domovoi hunters make their camp (only running into a pair of guys watching over the camp, with the rest of the hunting expedition down in the Deep Forest), who exchange some niceties and thank them for the Soup Stone that the party gifted them last session. 

Heading past the yawning chasm in the middle of the large cavern (the entrance into the Deep Forest), the party head north, exploring the best they can the rest of the cavern system. Heading back west they eventually complete the loop, discovering the same passage where they were attacked by the cultists and Grismelda and Zlatia were taken frrom.

Continuing around the caverns they run into Branimir the Bogatyr, a rather haggard and tired looking warrior sitting on a rock. When he sees they are not hostile he greets them and asks for their help - a fearsome and arrogant beast lurks in the Deep Forest, the Basilisk. Branimir has been trying to hunt down and slay the beast to avenge his brother, his lover and other companions that have all fallen to its petrifying poison. The group agree, but ask that Branimir come with them first, so they can prepare for the expedition back in camp. He's willing to join them, and in fact becomes very incensed when he learns about the Goat cultists and what they have been doing, and demands the group go back and confront them.

Emboldened by the warrior's presence the group head back into cultist territory, immediately running into them, and engaging them in a fight. Branimir rushes forward, slamming his large two-handed club in the ground causing a small quake to happen, which knows out several of the cultists. This gives the rest of the party the opening to also rush in and with the Chaos Shard (found last session) humming with magical power, the group make short work of the cultists. They put up a decent fight, but after two rounds of bloody combat there are only three of them left. The group interrogate them about the goat and about why they do what they do, then simply kill them. Unable to find their lost companions, they however find a stash of various interesting and useful items - shotgun shells, a working flashlight, some lanterns, a bunch of leaflets with strange writing on them and a strange bronze orb, inscribed with symbols, including the sigil of one Valvirian the Green Death, a fearsome and powerful wizard. 

Satisfied with their haul the party pack what they can from the cultist camp and leave their corpses to feed the Goat, and head back to safety. 

 

 Observations 

    Man this was a hell of a session. Quite short, unfortunately, as two of the players had to leave relatively early, but in the short time they played they managed to get into several fights (and even won the last one!), recruit a powerful ally and finally get some resolution with the goat cultists.

The Goat cultist thing has been a running through-line since session one, as the party either unintentionally or not keep running into these freaks and the violence between the two groups has kept escalating since then. With over 20 of the cultists left, their power (what little there was) is now very much broken, which will lead to some dramatic changes I would need to make about who and what can now roam in the dungeon. 

Branimir is also one of the encounters I was very pleased with when I was stocking the dungeon initially, and it made me quite happy to see him actually appear in the dungeon! He is quite a powerful fighter, with a good weapon and some magical abilities (like summing a small earthquake), however he also comes with a rather dangerous quest - delve down into the Deep Forest and actively seek and fight a rather dangerous enemy.I, as the referee, am really looking forward to see how this goes for them. The PCs so far have not been particularly good fighters (see previous session reports filled with the group just running away from fights), however some clever use of magical attacks and their new found powerful artifact might be enough to win them that fight. 

Now it just means I have to actually write up the Basilisk lair, hah since I  had not expected them to have to look for it that early! But hey, this is part of writing such a daunting project as a megadungeon - you don't write all of it at once, you simply add and expand as needed. 

Finally, Tunnels & Trolls combat continues to be fast and brutal, and the high level of abstraction is a bit lacking even when compared to just something like B/X or OD&D, it has served its purpose well enough so far. 

Session Stats

Rooms Explored: 2
Enemies Defeated: 12 Goat Cultists 
Characters Dead: 2 - Zlatia and Grismelda

Zandan Megadungeon Session 4 - Chaos and Bones

   

Characters

• Flake (Owl Village Spirit)
• Leda (Human Vampire Hunter)
• Grismelda (Human Religious Radical)
• Reynaert (Fox Journalist)
• John (Opossum Trapper)

Session Recap 

    Venturing back into the dungeon proper, the party decide to check back on the locked and barred doors they found in the previous session. Going to the room with the well dressed skeleton bouncers they are told very firmly that they really need to leave and not loiter in the area, which they eventually do and simply go around to the other set of double doors. Just as they're pondering how to approach the problem, a solution presents itself - the gaggle of ten Small Folk guerilla fighters that they met two sessions back end up in the room, and after pleasantries are exchange the party recruits them to help unlock and then bust down the doors. 

The racket unfortunately attracts the attention of a group of ghosts that have wandered off from the party, and a young officer with a lot of bravado starts shit-talking the group, and challenges Leda to a dual of sabers. Leda clearly is a lot stronger, however her strikes simply pass harmlessly through the ghost's ethereal frame. She decides to go for a disarming maneuver on his ghostly sabre, but he sidesteps it and plunges his blade deep into her, knocking her unconscious.  Pleased with having show a dirty peasant her place he goes back to his group and they wander off. With all the commotion the small folk had also left the room, not wanting to deal with the ghosts.

Setting up Leda up against a wall to recover some of her lost power, the group start rummaging through the room, which appears to be a combination of a shrine and a storage room, with piles upon piles of old and half-rotten furniture, rugs, wall tapestries and other crap. Reynaert the fox sniffs out some feint signs of magic among the trash and starts digging, while Flake and Grismelda mess around with the shrine. They find that there is a pocket of raw Primal Chaos swirling around right in front of an abstract statue that represents it (how appropriate), and end up with a smooth stone out of the whole thing (later turns out this is a Soup Stone. You boil it in water and it makes soup. The group donate it to the Domovoi camp), and Grismelda spends several turns staring into the chaos statue, her understanding of it growing deeper at the expense of getting rather dizzy and making her less precise in her actions.

Finally, Reynaert digs up a strange shard of crystal which he realizes he can use as an improvised sword. Satisfied with their finds the group pack up and head north to the shimmering staircase that leads deeper into the dungeon. Once they get down to the next floor, the atmosphere is clearly different. 

The walls of the room are covered not with the usual primordial bas reliefs, but instead skulls and bones, millions of them all mortared into the walls. 

They also discover a pair of fountains, one with a deep purple, almost black liquid that smells of sickly sweet rot, and one with a thick, milky-like liquid. Grismelda, in her Goo Drinker way, takes a sip from the black one while Leda takes one from the white. Leda's body is wracked with pain as bone plates burst out and cover her skin. While they are hard and provide natural armor, they also end up messing around with her ability to wield her sabre correctly. Grismelda, on the other hand, simply falls unconscious and can not be woken up.

Leaving Leda to look after her, the rest of the party head up one of the nearby staircases and explore more of the dungeon, taking a while to navigate a room where the bones int the wall are shaped like spikes and make traversing the room very slow. While that is happening, Leda is visited by more ghosts. These ones tho appear to be revolutionaries, communists and freedom fighters, who recognize a fellow soul in her and give her some warnings and advice. They tell her that she and her friends have entered the domain of the Patriarch of Bones, that he claims all beings that have died as his servants and thralls. They also tell her that Grismelda will die from the liquid she ingested unless she is brought to a magician who can heal her.  They reiterate the danger of the Pesoglavi, and confirm that they do in fact work with the Red Caps to liberate them from their fate. 

Thankful for the help and the information, Leda rushes to warn the rest of the group that they should leave (which they do proceeding to slowly make their way back, having only made it halfway through the room of spikes). However as they return to the staircase, they find they are not alone. Grismelda's body is surrounded by four goat cultists, who clearly had plans for her, but when they see the group they attack them head on. Flake scares away one of them, and the rest engage the cultists in some close quarters stabbing and pushing, eventually defeating them and killing all three, taking their goat headdresses for themselves and lugging Grismelda's body back to camp.

They get Anya the Healer, a prominent member of the camp, to use magic to heal Grismelda, and set about doing their down time procedures, happy with the fact that they had taken out three more of the goat cultists and excited to have learned more about the dungeon.

 

 Observations 

    This session was kind of a roller-coaster. Initially it looked like I would have only one player (which is fine by me), then two more joined kind of last minute. As such I let everyone decide if they wanted to run one or two characters, which two players did, but one decided to just use a single one instead. Re-threading previously explored rooms also helped them realize errors in their map, which I had made a point to not correct them on (as their map was not unusable or anything, just not quite correct on the dimensions of the rooms). They almost ended up heading into the cultist territory again because of map misunderstandings, but managed to correct it this time and found the right way. 

Also the party have now breached level 2 of the dungeon! The goo drinking continued, mostly working out well for Grismelda.....until it didn't and she drank what is, effectively, poison. Luckily for her the black fountain does not kill anyone instantly, and as long as there was someone left to drag her back to the camp she would have been fine.

The other thing of note was that there were so many more encounters this time around. Which was curious, previous sessions would go for dozens of turns with one, or even no encounters at all, this one had 4! I also loved that I got to use both of my Dungeon Regulars encounters (those are always on a 7), which I had previously determined would be the small folk squad that are patrolling the dungeon and were thus friendly to the party, and the cultists who were explicitly looking for the party. 

It helped provide some good contrast between friendly and hostile encounters, with a 50/50 split. The ghostly communists could have been an outright kill on Leda and Grismelda, had they been hostile, however the dice were incredibly generous with the reaction roll so instead the party got some information and the lay of the land. One of the players also explicitly mentioning that they liked that they got to learn more about the dungeon itself. 

All in all this was a good, straightforward session, and it's exactly what one wants out of a session in a megadungeon campaign - some exploration, finding new things, getting good magical loot, fighting some enemies and leveraging previous encounters in the campaign to one's benefit. 

 

Session Stats

Rooms Explored: 3
Enemies Defeated: 4 Goat Cultists 
Characters Dead: None

Zandan Megadungeon Session 3 - The Ghost Party

  

Characters

• Flake (Owl Village Spirit)
• Leda (Human Vampire Hunter)
• Rabbit the White (Rabbit Professional Wizard's Familiar)
• Boris (Human Religious Radical)
• John (Opossum Trapper)
• Zlatia (Human Troglodyte) 

Session Recap 

Before the party heads out, they realize they don't really have any consistent light aside from the jar of glowing grubs. Having helped around camp they very politely ask to borrow one of the gas lanterns, which they get with the agreement they should bring it back in one piece and ideally without wasting too much fuel.

Without any clear direction or plan, the group decide to spend some more time exploring their surroundings, heading north west and finding some kind of high-society ghostly party, guarded by a pair of skeletons dressed in incredibly fancy clothes and incredibly heavy armor. The skeletons give the party one look over and immediately know that this ragtag group has no invitations to the party, but through some quick thinking Flake declares that they are actually entertainers. The skeletons don't entirely buy it, but are also not really paid enough to care beyond this, and the group looks mostly harmless, so they let them pass.

At the ghostly party the group tries to socialize and  talk to some of the guests, who are generally polite enough, but seem to not show much interest and get easily distracted. The party is looked over by the stern statue of a skeleton dressed in priestly robes and a fancy crown. Leda, Boris and John all decide to help themselves to the amazing  (if slightly transparent and ghostly) looking food and drinks. They each feel some of their Strength seep away from them, but their Metaphysical attributes become a bit more pronounced. They also are now very slightly transparent. Not as much as the ghosts, but more than they are normally used to.

After spending some time faffing about in the party room they keep exploring the place, finding a staircase leading deeper into the dungeon, and a statue of a one-eyed hunched out crone dressed in rags.Flake examines the statue for magical vibes, quickly realizing that this is an image of the Liho, a powerful spirit of bad luck and indeed the statue gives off majorly bad vibes. Almost to prove his point Leda gets attacked by the very darkness of the shadows in the room as soon as they came in, only barely managing to jump away before it grabs her.

Shaken the group keep looping back towards familiar territory. As they enter the next room (which has closed doors on all sides save the hallway they came in from) the dungeon itself gives off a sigh, a gust of wind seeming to materialize out of nowhere and nearly blowing away their lamp's flame (luckily the glass protects it). At that John just gets overwhelmed with stress and turns stiff as a board, doing his opossum thing of turning dead. The party are slightly concerned, but decide that he'll be fine.

They try and fail to open a pair of rusted up doors, but between the lock and the bar from the other side, they don't have much luck and the group of mostly tiny animal people does not exactly have a lot of brawn to help break the door down.

Heading back into familiar territory, the  group decide to head north-east, into the territory of the goat cultists. However the cultists have been on high alert ever since the encounter with the party in session 1  and so immediately rush them. Rabbit, who's in the nearby room manages to scare one away using some magic, and the group rushes back to try and get away, however the cultists are hot on their heels.

Desperate times calling for desperate measures, Boris takes out one of his makeshift firebombs, lights and throws it at the incoming cultists. The bomb bursts into a flaming puddle on the floor, however it ends up being mostly a show rather than doing any real harm. It does however dissuade the cultists for long enough that the party can disengage and hightail it back to the camp.  

 

 Observations 

Only three players in this session, so everyone got to play 2 characters each instead of just 1. After all the Tunnels & Trolls rulebook would often point out that small player groups with 2-4 characters each is often a preferred way of play, so we're keeping with the spirit of the thing.

The group has had a fairly consistent turn over due to people traveling, and as such there was a very interesting dynamic at play where one of the players was around for last session, but not session 1, while the other two brand new. So she could only remember some info that others told her, but not all of it, and between getting confused with her own map (partially down to her own mapping, partially due to me kind of making things confusing the previous session) the group ended up going towards the goat cultists when they had explicitly hoped to avoid them! 

The fire bomb was a hell of a play too. I told the player that if he failed his Precision roll to throw it, the bomb would also hit the party as well, since his targets were basically right on top of them. He succeed the roll only by virtue of the Humans' special ability to succeed on rolls they would miss by just 1 point (a thing I have always wanted to include as a special power or ability in a game), and then proceeding to throw three 1s on the 3d6 damage for the bomb. Still, while it didn't wipe out the cultists (a good possibility), it at least saved the party so that was worth it.

Overall the session was relatively short, as players took the time to chat with the ghost party, but they did explore some more uncharted territory, which does contribute towards the exploration Adventure Points goal, so progress was still made. 

 

Session Stats

Rooms Explored: 5
Enemies Defeated: None! 
Characters Dead: Also none! 

 

Zandan Megadungeon, Session 2 - Drinking the Goo

 

Characters

• Hoot (Owl Primal Chaos Worshiper)
• Varg (Wolf Troglodyte)
• Flake (Owl Village Spirit)
• Grismelda (Human Religious Radical) 

Session Recap 

During their downtime in the Domovoi Camp, Hoot and Varg get some more info from the "locals". Hoot agrees to spend several downtimes apprenticing and assisting to Anya the Healer, who in exchange will teach him a spell that can transfer the life force from one person to another. Varg learns that Gargaram the half-giant is willing to teach magic too, however in exchange he wants a flask of the black ooze the party found in the hidden shrine on the previous level of the dungeon. 

Further more, two members of the camp, Flake and Grismelda, agree to join the party in exploring the dungeon.

 Heading back up to Depth 0 of the dungeon, and decide to stop in the conical room in which all of them emerged in the dungeon, in order to partake in some corpse pilfering and rummage through the pile of corpses and trash. Hoot manages to find a sword and a decent looking shepherd's axe, Grismelda finds a knife and a strange canteen filled with apparently cool and still fizzy sparkling water, and Flake, for her trouble, gets a pin stuck in her arm.

The group then makes their way to the shrine and Grismelda declares that this is a place of importance to The Earth Mother, and shoves a handful of the ooze into her mouth. The ooze burns as it goes down, but makes her feel more in tune with the unnatural ambience of the Zandan. The darkness no longer feels as alien and concerning. The rest of the party are a bit less enthusiastic about all of it, and instead fill up some bottles, flasks and Grismelda's fancy canteen with the black ooze and head back down.

Returning to Depth 1, they decide to explore the southern side of the dungeon, finding rooms of varying degrees of dampness, a room with a fountain filled with magical water (which Grismelda promptly takes a sip from, only losing a bit of Power for her troubles), and eventually stumble into a small side room with an electric feel of raw magic in the air. 

Hoot, unable to hide his excitement, lights his Chaos Lantern, and in the sickly purple light of the device the group see the swirling colors of manifestation of pure, unformed Chaos. Seeing this as his moment to shine, Hoot performs a spell to invoke the power of Chaos and allow it to take material shape, at which the cloud spits out a fancy looking leather girdle, the only effect of which seems to be to make the already diminutive owl person look even slimmer. 

Flake decide to toss a coin into the chaotic energy, which responds by whipping a tendril of scintillating light back at her. With surprise she finds she know hows how to magically lock doors and containers, and has a bit more weirdness to do so. With this the cloud vanishes, its energies spent and formed into solid reality.

As the group keeps exploring they run into a pair of war bears, seemingly twins, that introduce themselves as Misha and Masha. They seem standoffish and make it clear that they would like the party to get out of their way, not follow them and just generally leave them be. The party take the hint and instead decide to go move a pile of wet rocks in the adjoining room, finding behind it a natural cavern filled with glowing grubs. In the middle of the cavern they spot an odd sight - a greenish blue man with webbed feet and hands, lounging on top of a submerged hut and smoking a pipe. The man introduces himself as Bogdan the Vodnik, and chats with the party, giving them a tour of his submerged home and offering them a jar of glowing grubs (light as candle, but longer lasting) in exchange for a crumpled up cigarette's worth of tobacco that Girsmelda manages to fish out of her pockets. 

Leaving Bogdan's place (and placing some of the rocks back so people won't disturb the vodnik, who in turn also won't just drown and eat any interlopers that stumble in there) the group decide they've given enough space to the weird pair of War Bears and head back to where they were, finding the regular dungeon shift into an overgrown cavern, filled with shrubs and strange trees. Hoot decides to see if he can get some sap from a particularly larger tree, while the others gather sticks they can use to make torches. As he approaches the tree he suddenly gets surrounded by 10 diminutive people, none looking quite the same as the others, and all wearing various red felt hats. The group brandishes knives and declares that nobody move or else the owl gets gutted.

 After successfully diffusing the situation the party get to talk to the fighters, who are escaped slaves of the Pesoglav mines who have been waging guerilla warfare against their much stronger foe, and are currently on this level of the dungeon to find a recent outpost that they heard the Pesoglavi have established. The party agree to keep an eye out and bring back information or, better yet, bring heads of any pesoglavi they slay. The small folk in turn warn the party to be careful, and to avoid the trap they had set, and then proceed to vanish into the bushes to keep laying in ambush. 

 

Continuing onward the party discover a vast cavern filled with vegetation, and a strange green-yellow light permeating the hazy air. Varg's sensitive nose detects the smoke of a campfire, and the party quickly discover a hidden campsite with several hunters. While Hoot and Varg have never met these people, Grismelda and Flake recognize them as hunters from the Domovoi Camp. The group exchange information and chit chat, and offer to bring some of the meat back to camp, which the hunters are thankful for. Warning them of the nearby ambush, the party pack up as much meat as they can carry and head back, along the way stopping to inform the small folk guerillas about the hunters, and also giving them a bit of meat, which the little fighters appreciate. Without much other incident, the group returns to camp to rest and continue on their activities. Hoot and Varg take a drink from the bottled goo, however they realize that its magic does not seem to affect them when not in the shrine itself. They still present a bottle to Gargaram in exchange for the study of magic anyway.

 Observations 

Second session was a lot shorter than the first (7 hours is....a lot. This one was 4), however the party still got quite a bit done. While there were zero fights and the group have not explored enough of this depth to really get the exploration bonus, they managed to run into various NPCs, and get some minor magical trinkets as they snooped around.

That and of course much goo was drunk, and the player was rewarded by some shuffling of attributes and gaining an ability which they have not yet manifested. Reaction rolls were very key in this session - Bogdan the Vodnik can be a very dangerous enemy if found in a foul mood, but he rolled almost as high as possible on his reaction, and so was genuinely friendly with the weird gaggle of talking animals that showed up at his home, even willing to trade with them.

The group were a lot faster this time around, not lingering in one spot too long unless they needed to, and just generally trying to avoid fights if they could (which was wise, considering they were relatively squishy and not well armed). 

The party again had insane luck with only rolling 1 random encounter for the 26 turns they spent exploring the dungeon! Honestly I never understand when people complain about random encounters in games, I rarely seen any and in these two session so far there have been even fewer than normal! And this is pretty standard 1in-6 chance per turn too! 

Not much else to really mention about the session, except that the way I handle experience (in this case called Adventure Points) in this game leads to odd moments where the entire party have not earned any actual XP (no combat, no exploration bonus), but between all the spellcasting and saving rolls involved in exploring the place characters did get some AP of their won anyway. It's something I am keeping an eye on, since while this is a levelless system, it is important to keep track of just how fast or slow characters can grow, and whether I need to adjust things. 

Session Stats

Rooms Explored: 7
Enemies Defeated: None! 
Characters Dead: Also none! 

 

Pesoglavi

 

Taken from Wikipedia, art by Nadezhda Antipova

 

The Psoglav (or Pesoglav as I write it, because it rolls off the tongue better) is a chimeric creature, having the head of a dog (with one eye), the body of a man and the legs of a horse. They also have very sharp teeth made of iron. 

Living in the deep and dark caverns of the underworld, where they hoard precious gems and are known to be man-eaters, digging and consuming the corpses of people, they make for ideal enemies in a dungeon, which is why I use them in mine. Below I present to you stats for using them in B/X and in Tunnels & Trolls. 

B/X or OSE Stats

Pesoglav Feral 

AC:  As Leather (7 DAC 12 AAC)

HD: 3+

Attacks:  2x Claws (1d4), Iron Bite (2d6)

To Hit: +3 

Saving Throws: As Fighter

Description: Feral Pesoglavi are little more than animals, running around naked and attacking anyone they are directed to in a deranged frenzy. They are used as shock troops by the other Pesoglavi, but can also sometimes be found serving as familiars and attack dogs for evil witches, sinister magicians or bankers. 

Pesoglav Warrior

AC:  As Chain+Shield (4 DAC 15 AAC)

HD: 5+

Attacks:  Weapon (1d8), Iron Bite (2d8)

To Hit: +4

Saving Throws: As Fighter

Description: Warriors dress in clothes and armor, often armed with spears, swords, axes and a shield. They too also attack in a deranged frenzy. They serve as the rank and file troops of the Great Wolf and utterly despise all beings that are not Pesoglav, the weak and small among them the most. They delight in torturing and devouring small folk like dwarves, halflings or gnomes.

Pesoglav Leader

AC:  As Plate (3 DAC 16 AAC)

HD: 6++

Attacks:  [Weapon (1d8+1), Iron Bite (2d8)] or Howl

To Hit: +7

Saving Throws: As Fighter

Description: Leaders and captains, often operating with ruthless violence (though they will also occasionally just attack in a deranged frenzy if the mood takes them). They are even more cruel and vicious than the warriors serving under them, but also possess a lot more cunning than the usual foot soldier. 

Special Abilities

Iron Bite: If this attack beats the enemy's Armor Class by 5 or more that enemy must immediately make a Save vs Death. On a failure the Pesoglav bites off one of their limbs (up to the referee to decide which one), destroying any armor the character is wearing and causing them to immediately go into shock and fall unconscious. That character will die within 1 turn if the wound is not closed and healed in some way. 

Howl:  The Pesoglav leader opens engagements they're in by emitting a loud, terrifying howl. All living things that are not Pesoglav within a 40ft radius must immediately make a Save vs Spell or freeze in terror, unable to act within the next 1d2 rounds of combat.

Tunnels & Trolls Stats 

Pesoglav generally have about 20 to 22 Monster Rating, with more powerful ones like warriors or leaders having 26 to 30 MR and have Armor 1 to 3. Leaders and their direct subordinates might also known spells.  Similarly to the above, all Pesoglavi have their Iron Bite, and leaders have their Howl.

Iron Bite:  Spite Damage from Pesoglav combatants permanently reduces the Armor of the enemy hit. For every 4+ Spite rolled in a single round of combat, a pesoglav tries to bite off the limb off a combatant. The person hit makes a Saving Roll on Luck (level as appropriate for the dungeon) to avoid it. If they fail they lose a limb, half of their maximum Constitution and immediately fall unconscious and will die within the next turn if not healed in some way. 

Howl:  Used at the beginning of a fight, the Pesoglav leader lets out a terrifying howl. Everyone who can hear it make a Saving Roll on Charisma. If failed they freeze in terror, unable to act in the next 1d2 rounds of combat.