[any editorial additions of my own will be placed in brackets, like this]
4/5/10
I think Carter had this recapped on his blog, but this would be the episode wherein we killed some yetis and Uncle Junkal charmed the rock troll. [There appear to be fierce territorial disputes taking place between yetis and rock trolls in the vicinity of the Minochian town of Fortinbras.] Somewhere we picked up a dwarf NPC called Gorgo; I think we picked up 1 or 2 other NPCs, because later my notes indicated we gave a crossbow to “SB” (see 4/14/10 entry) [that would be Steak-Breath, a human fighter hireling]. Hazel and Innominus gathered some info in Fortinbras (correct?) and as we got near to Greystone Mountain we clotheslined a near-dead guy with a map [see below], who’s dying words were “Fucking hobgoblins, man!” Then we got up the entrance of the ["Stony Hell"] dungeon, and after checking out a pool with a weird ball in it we decided to camp out in a cave above the pool, which was hot and steamy, and we managed to notice some goblins going from the magic copse to the ruined entrance to the canyon. I think somebody shot at us, or maybe that was the next night.
[Here's that map:]
Loot: From the 3 yeti pelts at 40gp each, UJ, H and I have 34gp, 2sp, 8cp; Gorgo’s ½ share is 17 gp, 1sp, and 4cp. The dead guy had 15gp and 37sp; once we confirm how many are in the party we can split up this little batch of crap.
4/12/10
Much of this session was spent searching around the canyon (Stonehell Ground Level map, attached) with Hazel growing increasingly impatient about not finding anything to kill or any loot worth talking about. We scoped out a ruined building, a magic copse with evidence of a hanging, a bear cave, a dark entrance that could not be illuminated, and then a non-magic copse that showed another passage in. The magic copse had an arcane scroll and a nautical treasure map (“Borogast’s Treasure”). We went into the entrance in the non-magic copse on the north side of the canyon and found a more or less crappy little ruined guard’s garrison (Map 1, attached) that was empty except for a rabid raccoon that put up a hell of a fight, if I recall correctly. We searched the whole thing and eventually found a throne room with graffiti and through a secret door we found a stone table with a hollow leg, which had 50 sp in a tube, a vial of liquid, and a brass ring with rainbow hues. The vial is a potion of extra healing, which heals 3d6+3 damage once or 1d6 three times. My notes say the brass ring is magic, but I don’t recall if we ascertained what it does; Hazel kept it. (I also have a note about “30gp Chamber Pot Gold”, but I’m not sure where that came from.) Even with that, the party felt we were just dinking around the edges of something bigger, so we decided to go through the main entrance to the dungeon.
The main entrance leads to a large room with a spiral staircase descending down 100’ to the first dungeon level (Map 2-1, attached). The party worked through a ruined kitchen, feast hall and a burned out room on the NE side of the staircase room, basically turning up nothing of interest. Moving out of the NW passage we passed two ogre-mouth arches and then to a 4-way passage with a sign pointing W towards “The Dragon’s Den”. To the east was a room of filth, and to the west the passage gave way to rough-hewn caverns, where we met with a group of kobolds hauling buckets of bat guano. We followed a passage south past a 60’ whistling well (we may have lowered someone down on a rope to check this out, and then hauled them back up?), past a chamber covered in green phosphorescent moss and then down to a ruined crypt, the doors of which had the name “Molzak” on them (I don’t recall if UJ did some legend lore business on this thing?). Here we had a crappy couple of battles with rats and zombies in two of eight small tombs in the entry way to a larger room with an altar (?) that Innominus determined was magical. Some searching in a desperate attempt to find something non-crappy revealed a secret side chamber where priestly vestments and a coffer were found. We couldn’t open the coffer, so we stuck it in the bag of holding and made our way back out (we fought the zombies on the way out, hoping to find some loot on the way out).
I believe we then retraced our steps all the way back out to the cliff face to rest for the night.
Loot: An arcane scroll (can’t read it); “Borogast’s Treasure” map; 50sp in a tube; 30gp from a chamber pot; potion of extra healing (3d6 or 1d6 x 3); magic brass rainbow ring (Hazel); coffer that we can’t open and therefore can’t get any XP for the loot inside!
4/14/10
This was an extra special session because we all felt, and especially Hazel felt, that we still hadn’t killed enough or got enough good loot out of this dungeon before the hiatus. So with unprecedentedly large balls in hand, we headed back into the dungeon with the main goal of by-passing random crap and going deeper immediately, down to the second level via the whistling well. Luckily we didn’t encounter anything on the way in, and we all jumped down the well onto a tarp strung up underneath it, perhaps to catch loot being thrown down the well(?). This led us to a diamond-shaped room with passages leading west and east out of it (Map 3-1, attached). We went west and came into a room with ~8 languid gollum-like humanoids lying around, semi-conscious. We decided to pass through the room without getting them all roused, and the clearest path took us out of the room via a NW passage. Along the walls was childish writing and scribbling. A ways along we ran into spear traps on either side of the passage (don’t remember if we triggered them and they missed or someone detected and disarmed them?). Eventually we reached a room with frescoes of sunny fields, which Innominus took to be a children’s play room, perhaps the scribbling in the passage was related to this? Further along past this room there was a hobby horse at a T-intersection, which Uncle Junkal decided he wanted to ride on ... there’s nothing in my notes about whether we got attacked here or if I just remember that Hazel and Innominus thought we were just asking to get attacked while Uncle Junkal was being a dufus. Or maybe the hobby horse collapsed under his weight? Anyone?
Just past that we entered a room full of 8 baths, one of which began to boil on contact (I think someone tested it with a staff). In this one we found a boiled up elf and hauled him out (did we feed him to the rock troll or something? He’s probably hungry.), and he had 700sp and a wand, which we can’t use since none of us are magic-users or elves .... We pressed on into what had been a big dining hall but was now covered in spider webs and looked like a giant black widow spider’s lair. It scuddered up into the webs and we spent a good bit burning oil trying to burn it out, with partial success. After burning up all kinds of webs and crap it eventually fled out of the room, where somebody finally nailed it at another T-intersection (Uncle Junkal with his Double Darts of Doom?). Back in the lair we searched around and found all of 47cp, which was universally denounced as bogus and not worth the encumbrance. Lame loot.
Out to the T-intersection we were ambushed (or surprised at least) by a trio of hobgoblins, one of which nailed somebody with a crossbow before we entered a pitched battle the details of which I can’t recall. My notes say Innominus unleashed the Sling of Madness (d30) and dealt one of them 9HP of damage, and it was subsequently beheaded by Hazel. After they were all crushed by our awesomeness, we searched them for loot and useful stuff. Collectively they had: 60gp; a voucher, perhaps an IOU, that said “Hort’s Snakes”; 2 battle axes; 1 crossbow, and 3 suits of chainmail. My notes say of the armor and weapons “Given to 2 NPCs – SB has crossbow”. I seem to remember that Gorgo refused to use hobgoblin gear (and also didn’t really need it), which leads me to suspect we had two other NPCs from Fortinbras. Anyone remember the details there? Hazel, Uncle Junkal and Innominus each took their uniform insignias, which looked like a skull and crossbones with a hobgoblin skull.
With a nice bit of killing under our belts, we then searched a ruined room with a shattered door and presumably killed a giant (or maybe just large) beetle ... I don’t have details on that. In the room we found a dagger which we kept (don’t know if it’s magic or anything), and a scrap of paper with 4 unknown words in the language of an unknown race, not a “learned language”. Retracing our steps past the dead spider we pushed on to another webby room in which we found a nearly dead halfling and pulled him out. We searched the room and found a secret door with a passage sloping down to a stairway leading further down into the unknown. This is as far as we went that day. We fell back into the bath room to sleep and recover from wounds, so that’s where we’d start off from next session.
I don’t remember the fate of the halfling, whether he just died or did Innominus cast cure light wounds on him before going to sleep? I have noted that he had 20gp, 47sp, a short sword and a partial thieves’ toolkit, but I can’t remember if we had disarmed him before we took him back to the bath room. Was there some distrust since he was presumably a thief?
Also, I have a little list at the bottom of my notes indicating that we kept the dagger from the beetle room, the wand from the boiled elf, didn’t take the spider lair loot (47cp), and then there’s “Mirror” with an ‘X’ next to it, meaning we didn’t take it. Does anyone remember what mirror this might be? Not the one UJ has from the Death Frost Doom cabin, is it?
Loot: 60 gp; 700 sp; a wand; an IOU; a dagger; chainmail, a battle axe, and a crossbow for 2 (?) retainers; and the halfling’s stuff if he’s dead.
A final cartographic note:
As Innominus studied the dead man’s map of Greystone Mountain and compared it to our maps so far, it seems likely that it depicts a portion of the first level that we didn’t explore. Innominus suggests that the room labeled “Start” on the dead man’s map is the room accessed by the spiral staircase, and the passage leading out to the SE (as far as we explored it) bears similarities, with a first side passage off to the east and then a dog-leg turn to the west. If this is correct then anytime we want to kill some orcs or go to the kobold market we know where to find it. Food for thought.
Awesome! Sounds like a good time was had by all. Sorry I missed those sessions
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