Yes, it's Zardoz! That ridiculous flying head is perfect for one of the wizard overlords of the nearby city-states, and his red-diapered goons make for great minions. He's only a 6th level magic-user, but he's got an endless supply of enchanted guns, and a great spiel about what those guns are better than... I only made him 6th level because the character is pretty much an ineffectual wimp, tossed overboard by Connery without much effort. It's his gigantic horde of Exterminators that make him dangerous.
The players actually stumbled across a group of Exterminators on the way to the dungeon 2 session ago, but since the Exterminators were surprised, I ruled that the party heard them coming. They chose discretion, and skulked off in the opposite direction, so they had no idea they missed an encounter with a bunch of baddies with rifles and red diapers.
Ferayn, Wizard of Tab-Nakel
No. Enc: 1
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 120' (40')
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 6th level magic-user (18 hp)
Attacks: 1 (+2 dagger)
Damage: 1d4 + 2
Save: MU 6
Morale: 6
Hoard Class: XVIII
XP: 820
Ferayn is the ruler of the city-state Tab-Nakel. He is a thin, sickly-looking man, with no natural hair. He wears a scarf on his head to hide his baldness, and has tattooed a small beard, moustache, and eyebrows on his face. Any comments about his lack of hair will send him into a murderous rage. He is a 6th level magic-user, wields a +2 protonium dagger if cornered, and wears bracers of armor, AC 5. Ferayn typically has these spells memorized: shield, sleep, arcane lock, invisibility, fire ball, and fly.
The city of Tab-Nakel is a ramshackle collection of crudely-built huts and buildings, surrounding a massive step-pyramid, with a 60’ tall statue of a human upper body atop it. The 20’ tall bearded stone head of this statue is both a flying machine and weapon. It can detach from the body, and fly at a rate of 30’ (10’). The operator may, once per round, fire high-energy lasers from the glowing blue eyes. They use the operator’s to-hit chances (use dexterity modifiers to adjust chances), and do 3d6 points of damage on a successful hit. Both lasers are considered a single attack; do not roll two separate attacks. The head must have a clear line of sight to attack, and since the head cannot be tilted, this typically means that the head must be floating very close to the ground to threaten anyone. The eye lasers have a range of 240’. The head may be treated as AC -2, has 90 hp, and saves as a 12th level fighter.
The operator of the head may speak into a microphone inside, and his words will be echoed loudly and deeply by the head. Entrance to the head may be gained through a trapdoor underneath (sealed in flight), or through the mouth.
When raiding for supplies and minions, Ferayn will fly alone in his giant stone head, and send his Exterminators forth to pillage. He will then meet them at pre-appointed locations, both to vomit forth enchanted hypno-weapons for the prisoners, and to receive the tributes of foodstuffs that the Exterminators plunder from the locals.
The hypno-weapons that the head vomits forth are swords, axes, spears, pistols (doing 1d6 points of damage on a successful hit, range the same as a short bow) and breech-loaded rifles (doing 1d6 points of damage on a successful hit, range the same as a long bow) and bandoliers of ammo for those rifles and pistols. The handles/stocks of these weapons have all been painted red, marking them as the instruments of the Exterminators. They are infused with Ferayn’s will, and anyone touching them must save vs. magic or become enthralled by Ferayn, seeking only to kill all non-Exterminators (unless Ferayn orders otherwise, which is rare). Breaking contact with the weapon is enough to end the enchantment in the early stages, but if a character should still be charmed after a week’s time, the enchantment will become permanent. Note that characters who save successfully are not granted immunity from the effects, and will have to save every turn they remain in contact with the weapon, until they become enchanted.
Should Ferayn be killed, his weapons will lose their enchantment, although those who have permanently come under Ferayn’s influence will remain psychotic killers. The head will cease to operate within a day, as it is powered by his insane will to dominate and destroy.
Ferayn’s minions are Exterminators. When raiding and otherwise terrorizing the countryside, he is always in his giant floating head, but may (25% chance) have a group of 4d6 of them leading the way.
Exterminator (Minion of Ferayn)
No. Enc: 4d6
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 120' (40')
Armor Class: 9
Hit Dice: 1
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d6
Save: F1
Morale: 12
Hoard Class: None
XP: 10
The Exterminators were once normal humans, but have been brought under the sway of the wizard Ferayn by extended contact with the hypno-weapons he distributes. They wear nothing but red loincloths and red boots, with the occasional red leather bandolier of ammunition, and are mindlessly loyal to Ferayn. They have an extra +4 when saving vs. charm person spells due to their single-minded devotion to the wizard.
The Exterminators are often armed with pistols (same range as short bow) or breech-loading rifles (same range as long bow), doing 1d6 points of damage each. If not, they will have typical melee weapons.
2010-11-10
PDF
2010-11-09
Wizard: Monsator, Lord of the Stalks
Several weeks ago, I mentioned this would be a megadungeon campaign loosely based on Thundarr's world. The players' interest in the outside world has been limited so far - the chance for mad phat l00tz in the megadungeon has entirely occupied their interest to date. Too's player has been talking about needing to get his shield identified, and about investigating the source of the stink in the aptly named Stinkborough, and with only 2 more rooms to write up on level 1, I'm going to devote a little time to coming up with some information about the outside world.
Wizards are great for outdoor encounters and quickly-thrown-together plots. Their sole excuse for existing is to provide a foil for players, so I don't have to worry about how they fit into the greater world too much. They just need to be memorable, and maniacally hungry for power. The more powerful wizards will rule city-states, but every wizard has to start out small. This fellow I outline below is an early-stage wizard, and given how silly he is, I'm hoping he dies an ignoble death rather than becomes a persistent feature. But that all depends on the players. I don't mind having him be so ridiculous, given the deadly serious nature of level 1 of the megadungeon - a little goofiness will provide a nice contrast.
Monsator, Lord of the Stalks
No. Enc: 1
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 120' (40')
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 3 (21 hp)
Attacks: 1
Damage: 2d4
Save: F3
Morale: 8
Hoard Class: XII
XP: 65
Monsator was once just a local farmer with a surly disposition. This changed when he discovered a strange vault door buried near his farm, while digging a new root cellar. Behind the vault door was an ancient cryogenic storage facility for a genetic engineering firm. Being an enterprising sort, he collected the various embryo and seed samples, ground them up, and used them to fertilize his cornfield.
The DNA from embryos, seeds, spores, and retroviruses proved a potent cocktail, and were nearly the end of Monsator. He had contacted and inhaled much of this DNA mixture, and became feverish after a few days, eventually lapsing into a coma. When he finally awoke, he felt invigorated and refreshed, despite the strange fleshy seed-pods that now covered his body. What was truly shocking was the spectacle that greeted him upon inspecting his cornfields: the cornstalks had become animate, marching about the field. They recognized their genetic brother and master in this simple farmer. Monsator had acquired an army.
They say that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Monsator’s power is something less than absolute, but he has put his corn army to work regardless, emulating the powerful wizards that all men fear. He has limited himself to raids on his hated neighbors so far, stealing their livestock, burning their farms, and enslaving the survivors. He brings the loot and prisoners back to his “wizard’s tower,” a structure much like a grain silo, on a grander and more martial scale.
Monsator attacks with a pitchfork he has modified with parts from a plasma pistol. It has a range of 120’, and does 2d4 points of damage. The weapon will cease to function within several hours of separation from Monsator, as it is only his insane will that keeps it functioning.
Monsator’s henchmen are Cornstalk Warriors, and he is always accompanied by 2d6 of them when he roams abroad, mounted atop his reliable draft horse, Tess.
Cornstalk Warrior
No. Enc: 2d8
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 90’ (30’)
Armor Class: 8
Hit Dice: 1
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d6
Save: F1
Morale: 10
Hoard Class: None
XP: 10
Cornstalk warriors are animated stalks of corns. They walk about on root-like feet, and attack with crude wooden spears and clubs that they grasp in their leafy hand-stalks. These creatures despise all animal life, especially those who eat corn. Cornstalk warriors are highly vulnerable to fire, and take double damage from it.
Wizards are great for outdoor encounters and quickly-thrown-together plots. Their sole excuse for existing is to provide a foil for players, so I don't have to worry about how they fit into the greater world too much. They just need to be memorable, and maniacally hungry for power. The more powerful wizards will rule city-states, but every wizard has to start out small. This fellow I outline below is an early-stage wizard, and given how silly he is, I'm hoping he dies an ignoble death rather than becomes a persistent feature. But that all depends on the players. I don't mind having him be so ridiculous, given the deadly serious nature of level 1 of the megadungeon - a little goofiness will provide a nice contrast.
Monsator, Lord of the Stalks
No. Enc: 1
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 120' (40')
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 3 (21 hp)
Attacks: 1
Damage: 2d4
Save: F3
Morale: 8
Hoard Class: XII
XP: 65
Monsator was once just a local farmer with a surly disposition. This changed when he discovered a strange vault door buried near his farm, while digging a new root cellar. Behind the vault door was an ancient cryogenic storage facility for a genetic engineering firm. Being an enterprising sort, he collected the various embryo and seed samples, ground them up, and used them to fertilize his cornfield.
The DNA from embryos, seeds, spores, and retroviruses proved a potent cocktail, and were nearly the end of Monsator. He had contacted and inhaled much of this DNA mixture, and became feverish after a few days, eventually lapsing into a coma. When he finally awoke, he felt invigorated and refreshed, despite the strange fleshy seed-pods that now covered his body. What was truly shocking was the spectacle that greeted him upon inspecting his cornfields: the cornstalks had become animate, marching about the field. They recognized their genetic brother and master in this simple farmer. Monsator had acquired an army.
They say that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Monsator’s power is something less than absolute, but he has put his corn army to work regardless, emulating the powerful wizards that all men fear. He has limited himself to raids on his hated neighbors so far, stealing their livestock, burning their farms, and enslaving the survivors. He brings the loot and prisoners back to his “wizard’s tower,” a structure much like a grain silo, on a grander and more martial scale.
Monsator attacks with a pitchfork he has modified with parts from a plasma pistol. It has a range of 120’, and does 2d4 points of damage. The weapon will cease to function within several hours of separation from Monsator, as it is only his insane will that keeps it functioning.
Monsator’s henchmen are Cornstalk Warriors, and he is always accompanied by 2d6 of them when he roams abroad, mounted atop his reliable draft horse, Tess.
Cornstalk Warrior
No. Enc: 2d8
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 90’ (30’)
Armor Class: 8
Hit Dice: 1
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d6
Save: F1
Morale: 10
Hoard Class: None
XP: 10
Cornstalk warriors are animated stalks of corns. They walk about on root-like feet, and attack with crude wooden spears and clubs that they grasp in their leafy hand-stalks. These creatures despise all animal life, especially those who eat corn. Cornstalk warriors are highly vulnerable to fire, and take double damage from it.
2010-11-07
Death Frost Doom
This isn't really a full-blown post, just a quick follow-up comment. I read through Death Frost Doom yesterday, and I like this one. It has the usual death traps, but I don't get the vibe that the players are being arbitrarily punished, for several reasons (some of which are SPOILERS so you might want to move along):
1. Many of the effects the players hit early on are non-lethal, and can be dealt with via remove curse and other typical remedies
2. Where the effects are lethal, there's often a repetition of the same trap, but with increasingly bad consequences (e.g. the inscriptions in Duvan'Ku)
3. Most of the nasty things going on actually appear nasty, and the players ought to know better, so they'll blame themselves if they goof it all up
4. A lot of the traps actually appear as traps or puzzles (e.g. coins on the children's crypt door). So there are quality hints that the players need to be figuring things out.
I find I like this a lot better than Tower of the Stargazer or the pirate lair in Weird New World. If players blame their own stupidity when bad things happen, then I'm happy.
I could drop this in my campaign and it would fit right in with the traps & tricks I put into my own encounters. And if they get bored of the megadungeon, Death Frost Doom will definitely be on the menu.
Anyhow, this isn't a review blog, so it'll be all content all the time again with the next post.
1. Many of the effects the players hit early on are non-lethal, and can be dealt with via remove curse and other typical remedies
2. Where the effects are lethal, there's often a repetition of the same trap, but with increasingly bad consequences (e.g. the inscriptions in Duvan'Ku)
3. Most of the nasty things going on actually appear nasty, and the players ought to know better, so they'll blame themselves if they goof it all up
4. A lot of the traps actually appear as traps or puzzles (e.g. coins on the children's crypt door). So there are quality hints that the players need to be figuring things out.
I find I like this a lot better than Tower of the Stargazer or the pirate lair in Weird New World. If players blame their own stupidity when bad things happen, then I'm happy.
I could drop this in my campaign and it would fit right in with the traps & tricks I put into my own encounters. And if they get bored of the megadungeon, Death Frost Doom will definitely be on the menu.
Anyhow, this isn't a review blog, so it'll be all content all the time again with the next post.
2010-11-05
Weird New World
When I wrote the session recap / review of LotFP: Weird Fantasy Roleplaying, I mentioned that I hadn't read Weird New World yet. I did read it later that week, but never got around to writing up what I thought of it. So here is my review. There will be SPOILERS, of course, so skip this if you don't want to see that sort of thing.
I have the sense that Mr. Raggi & I were reading the same books recently. Last year I read Dan Simmon's Terror, and Anthony Brandt's The Man Who Ate His Boots. Weird New World is heavily influenced by the search for the Northwest Passage, and I saw a nod in there to the monster from Dan Simmons' book. If you're planning on running this, I think you really do need to read one of the above books (or another about the search for the Northwest Passage), if you're going to get the flavor right.
The module is a sandbox, which is great, but it's mostly very very sparse on detail. You'll have to put a lot of work into this to play with it. It's more a campaign sub-setting than any kind of adventure. Most of the encounters listed are bare-bones, a few lines of great ideas, but all the work is left to the DM.
In practice, I can't see players just wandering about this wilderness aimlessly. The environment is deadly in the extreme, and they're going to need a reason to head out there, and probably some halfway-decent idea of where to go in particular, if you want to do more than watch the party flail around for a bit and die of exposure. So just stumbling across the encounter areas is unlikely. This is good and bad - good because you don't have to detail everything before the players set out, bad because they won't run into all the wonderful awfulness that's out there.
I really liked the map, it was really well done and very reminiscent of the arctic reaches of northern Canada. The only fault I find with it is the numbered encounter areas. The numbers are very tiny, and hard to pick out. Putting text labels next to the encounter hexes, in addition to the numbers, would make it easier to use.
Mr. Raggi did describe two encounter areas in greater detail, the pirate lair, and a ship impaled on a coral spike. The pirate lair suffers from the same issues that the the Tower of the Stargazer had - players are punished very very very badly for curiosity. If you go through all the work of getting past the lava and/or rivers, you most likely just end up being screwed over for your ingenuity.
The coral spike didn't have that sort of punishment. It is a bit lighter of an encounter though. My only quibble here, which probably won't bug most people, is that it is patently impossible from a nautical perspective. The sailors in my group would never suspend disbelief - boats that don't leak when pitchpoled onto giant spikes. Probably not an issue if you're not dealing with sailors, but I could never get away with it.
All this said, I probably won't be using this anytime soon. I'm in a Thundarr-inspired megadungeon right now, and wandering off into the Great White North isn't in the cards right now. When they get down to the lower levels, with the teleporters, black ziggurats, and other low-level tomfoolery, I expect I'll drop in a gate to the frozen north.
I've also been turning over in my head my criticisms of both this and Tower of the Stargazer, in respect to the player-punishment. I've read similar critiques of Death Frost Doom, which I also purchased, but have not yet read. I have to compare what I've read, though, against my actual experience running the Tower. The players mostly avoided the death traps, by being too scared to mess with anything, with the exception of the telescope. I'm curious to know what lethality other people have experienced when running through these adventures. I've only read speculation so far, and one run-through of Death Frost Doom where the party didn't touch anything at all.
I also forgot to mention in the Tower of the Stargazer post, that the "game for your soul" section was very well received. I only had 2 players, and both got involved with the game of checkers (chosen because it would be shorter than chess). It was a big hit.
I have the sense that Mr. Raggi & I were reading the same books recently. Last year I read Dan Simmon's Terror, and Anthony Brandt's The Man Who Ate His Boots. Weird New World is heavily influenced by the search for the Northwest Passage, and I saw a nod in there to the monster from Dan Simmons' book. If you're planning on running this, I think you really do need to read one of the above books (or another about the search for the Northwest Passage), if you're going to get the flavor right.
The module is a sandbox, which is great, but it's mostly very very sparse on detail. You'll have to put a lot of work into this to play with it. It's more a campaign sub-setting than any kind of adventure. Most of the encounters listed are bare-bones, a few lines of great ideas, but all the work is left to the DM.
In practice, I can't see players just wandering about this wilderness aimlessly. The environment is deadly in the extreme, and they're going to need a reason to head out there, and probably some halfway-decent idea of where to go in particular, if you want to do more than watch the party flail around for a bit and die of exposure. So just stumbling across the encounter areas is unlikely. This is good and bad - good because you don't have to detail everything before the players set out, bad because they won't run into all the wonderful awfulness that's out there.
I really liked the map, it was really well done and very reminiscent of the arctic reaches of northern Canada. The only fault I find with it is the numbered encounter areas. The numbers are very tiny, and hard to pick out. Putting text labels next to the encounter hexes, in addition to the numbers, would make it easier to use.
Mr. Raggi did describe two encounter areas in greater detail, the pirate lair, and a ship impaled on a coral spike. The pirate lair suffers from the same issues that the the Tower of the Stargazer had - players are punished very very very badly for curiosity. If you go through all the work of getting past the lava and/or rivers, you most likely just end up being screwed over for your ingenuity.
The coral spike didn't have that sort of punishment. It is a bit lighter of an encounter though. My only quibble here, which probably won't bug most people, is that it is patently impossible from a nautical perspective. The sailors in my group would never suspend disbelief - boats that don't leak when pitchpoled onto giant spikes. Probably not an issue if you're not dealing with sailors, but I could never get away with it.
All this said, I probably won't be using this anytime soon. I'm in a Thundarr-inspired megadungeon right now, and wandering off into the Great White North isn't in the cards right now. When they get down to the lower levels, with the teleporters, black ziggurats, and other low-level tomfoolery, I expect I'll drop in a gate to the frozen north.
I've also been turning over in my head my criticisms of both this and Tower of the Stargazer, in respect to the player-punishment. I've read similar critiques of Death Frost Doom, which I also purchased, but have not yet read. I have to compare what I've read, though, against my actual experience running the Tower. The players mostly avoided the death traps, by being too scared to mess with anything, with the exception of the telescope. I'm curious to know what lethality other people have experienced when running through these adventures. I've only read speculation so far, and one run-through of Death Frost Doom where the party didn't touch anything at all.
I also forgot to mention in the Tower of the Stargazer post, that the "game for your soul" section was very well received. I only had 2 players, and both got involved with the game of checkers (chosen because it would be shorter than chess). It was a big hit.
2010-11-04
More about last night's session
We had a new guy last night, who had never played D&D before. He seemed to enjoy it, so score one for Labyrinth Lord. He rolled up a magic-user with 1 hit point. I had left P.W.'s player to help guide him through the character creation process, and when I got back with the pizza, he had selected Floating Disk as his sole spell. Apparently there was some confusion about spell progression, he had thought you had to pick a "number" for your spell progression, and all your spells would be in that category - he liked the Floating Disk's later spells the best. I correct that confusion, and lightly recommended Sleep as being the "bad boy" of first-level spell casting, but he decided he liked Magic Missile better. He fired it off in the combat with the vagabond mushrooms (those weird yellow & red giant-kruller-monsters), and then asked how long before he could use it again. There was a certain amount of dejection at hearing "Oh, after 8 hours rest." Life is cruel for first level magic-users.
P.W.'s player and Rollo Jr.'s player (who wasn't hear tonight) have been mapping the dungeon, using the same sheets of graph paper. P.W.'s mapping style is technically accurate, but he keeps deciding he's out of room and drawing new rooms in random spots, and he had no idea what Rollo's player had done since then, because he wasn't at the last session. Thus the wandering monsters as the players huddled over the map, trying to make some sense out of the randomly scribbled notes and rooms scattered all over the place with no connecting corridors. I think Too's player was a little nervous, so he started making a second map. He brought his own ten-square-to-the-inch graph paper, and his second map is pretty good. I'm very pleased with this development, the players are picking up on the fact that without a map, they are all going to die.
Another development I enjoyed was during the encounter with the jawheads (those dog-like guys with the pyramid heads). Too's player was shouting at Gutboy's, "What are these? I don't know what those are! What are they, D&D boy???" "I don't know! Maybe he's making them up!" Oooooo you better believe I'm making up my own monsters. The flat shriekers on the ceiling didn't phase them, though. Pretty obvious they were shriekers, of course, despite the different shape.
In the previous session, I had been ruling that it took a full round with no attack to switch from bow to sword. I found that it made missile weapons kind of pointless, as monsters would close and attack while they switched weapons, and thus limit the player's tactical options. So for last night's session I changed that ruling, so that the players could just switch weapons with no penalty. I'm not worried about realism when making these rulings, only game play. If there's an official rule that says otherwise in Labyrinth Lord, I'll use that, but I haven't gone looking yet. Whenever there's an "official" rule I almost always defer to it, just in the spirit of playing games by their rules. My only house rule to date is that the characters have to spend gold to get XP from it.
Speaking of which, I very sadly (no wait, gleefully, very gleefully) informed the players that the money they had to spend on the bribe to Lt. Hammer did NOT count towards XP. Getting robbed by monsters doesn't have side benefits. I can tell the players really want to kill Lt. Hammer and take his stuff, but those plasma cannons on his arms have them deeply worried.
So far, the most important stat in the game has been Charisma. There are tons of reaction rolls. When I was much younger, I always considered this a throwaway stat, and every creature I ever fought would just instantly attack anyways. How wrong I was...
Half the night was spent in the henchman-hiring phase. I came up with a table in my head, and rolled up who was at the inn. Four goons, ready to hire. Of course, the failed reaction rolls led to some instant backstories to these characters - for some reason, the thieves, who I had stated didn't even know each other previously, hated priests. The dwarf despises halflings. Some campaign flavor is starting to build up here, maybe the priests and the Thieves' Guild have some bad blood between them. We'll see what happens.
During the equipping phase, there were some comments about how they didn't need torches, the ceilings were lit up anyways. Yeahhhhhh.... that didn't last, did it? Muahahahahha. I also enjoyed the panicked looks the players exchanged as they entered the throne room, and I described the room just going off into... darkness...
There were other comments about the general layout of the dungeon:
- Some wondering about how the jawheads got into that room. "Do they have opposable thumbs?" "No." I had actually wondered this myself but decided that I would stick them in anyways. To heck with verisimilitude. Let the players come up with a reason.
- A comment or two about some rooms being completely empty. Well, it's been three thousand years. Everything good is scavenged.
- In this Thundarr-inspired world, a dried up ballpoint pen is not going to be worth hundreds of gp, no matter how much the players believe it will be
- P.W.'s player is playing his halfling quite boldly. Well, we all know how this is going to end up: in tears.
- The gently curving corridor to the throne room had Too and P.W.'s players quite annoyed at me, as they made their maps. That warms the cockles of my heart. Let's see how well those rooms connect after a few hundred more feet of tunnels.
The players still don't know that they're in a megadungeon, although there's been a lot of hints dropped at this point about the depth of the place. They were heading in the direction of the throne room because P.W. wanted to "find the edge." Sadly, that actually is the edge, but given the scope of this level in the other directions, I'm not going to worry too much about it. It'll be a long time before they realize where the edges really lie, if ever.
P.W.'s player and Rollo Jr.'s player (who wasn't hear tonight) have been mapping the dungeon, using the same sheets of graph paper. P.W.'s mapping style is technically accurate, but he keeps deciding he's out of room and drawing new rooms in random spots, and he had no idea what Rollo's player had done since then, because he wasn't at the last session. Thus the wandering monsters as the players huddled over the map, trying to make some sense out of the randomly scribbled notes and rooms scattered all over the place with no connecting corridors. I think Too's player was a little nervous, so he started making a second map. He brought his own ten-square-to-the-inch graph paper, and his second map is pretty good. I'm very pleased with this development, the players are picking up on the fact that without a map, they are all going to die.
Another development I enjoyed was during the encounter with the jawheads (those dog-like guys with the pyramid heads). Too's player was shouting at Gutboy's, "What are these? I don't know what those are! What are they, D&D boy???" "I don't know! Maybe he's making them up!" Oooooo you better believe I'm making up my own monsters. The flat shriekers on the ceiling didn't phase them, though. Pretty obvious they were shriekers, of course, despite the different shape.
In the previous session, I had been ruling that it took a full round with no attack to switch from bow to sword. I found that it made missile weapons kind of pointless, as monsters would close and attack while they switched weapons, and thus limit the player's tactical options. So for last night's session I changed that ruling, so that the players could just switch weapons with no penalty. I'm not worried about realism when making these rulings, only game play. If there's an official rule that says otherwise in Labyrinth Lord, I'll use that, but I haven't gone looking yet. Whenever there's an "official" rule I almost always defer to it, just in the spirit of playing games by their rules. My only house rule to date is that the characters have to spend gold to get XP from it.
Speaking of which, I very sadly (no wait, gleefully, very gleefully) informed the players that the money they had to spend on the bribe to Lt. Hammer did NOT count towards XP. Getting robbed by monsters doesn't have side benefits. I can tell the players really want to kill Lt. Hammer and take his stuff, but those plasma cannons on his arms have them deeply worried.
So far, the most important stat in the game has been Charisma. There are tons of reaction rolls. When I was much younger, I always considered this a throwaway stat, and every creature I ever fought would just instantly attack anyways. How wrong I was...
Half the night was spent in the henchman-hiring phase. I came up with a table in my head, and rolled up who was at the inn. Four goons, ready to hire. Of course, the failed reaction rolls led to some instant backstories to these characters - for some reason, the thieves, who I had stated didn't even know each other previously, hated priests. The dwarf despises halflings. Some campaign flavor is starting to build up here, maybe the priests and the Thieves' Guild have some bad blood between them. We'll see what happens.
During the equipping phase, there were some comments about how they didn't need torches, the ceilings were lit up anyways. Yeahhhhhh.... that didn't last, did it? Muahahahahha. I also enjoyed the panicked looks the players exchanged as they entered the throne room, and I described the room just going off into... darkness...
There were other comments about the general layout of the dungeon:
- Some wondering about how the jawheads got into that room. "Do they have opposable thumbs?" "No." I had actually wondered this myself but decided that I would stick them in anyways. To heck with verisimilitude. Let the players come up with a reason.
- A comment or two about some rooms being completely empty. Well, it's been three thousand years. Everything good is scavenged.
- In this Thundarr-inspired world, a dried up ballpoint pen is not going to be worth hundreds of gp, no matter how much the players believe it will be
- P.W.'s player is playing his halfling quite boldly. Well, we all know how this is going to end up: in tears.
- The gently curving corridor to the throne room had Too and P.W.'s players quite annoyed at me, as they made their maps. That warms the cockles of my heart. Let's see how well those rooms connect after a few hundred more feet of tunnels.
The players still don't know that they're in a megadungeon, although there's been a lot of hints dropped at this point about the depth of the place. They were heading in the direction of the throne room because P.W. wanted to "find the edge." Sadly, that actually is the edge, but given the scope of this level in the other directions, I'm not going to worry too much about it. It'll be a long time before they realize where the edges really lie, if ever.
Session recap, 11/3/2010
Here's the recap email I just sent for tonight's session:
Gentlemen,
Here's the usual recap of the session. We'll meet next on Wednesday, Nov 17th.
The halfling P.W., fighter Too, and cleric Gutboy, gathered in the Stinkborugh village tavern, when they were approached by a magic-user, who called himself The Claw. He was accepted into the party after a few brief words, and they began scanning the tavern for likely henchmen. Two human men, a dwarf, and an elf looked like they could make capable employees.
Gutboy walked up to the first human, and introduced himself as the village priest. "Get lost, priest. Always taking money from the poor. You make me sick." Trying his luck with the second human, he was told to take a walk as well. Whoever these two were, they despised the priesthood.
Gutboy decided to try talking to the elf. He was 5' tall, with gray skin, pointed ears, a nose so small that the nostrils were almost like slits in his face, eyes entirely black, and a mouthful of sharp fangs.
"Hello. Would you perhaps be looking for an adventure? Something to make a little money?"
"Why yes I would! I could always use fame and fortune, more fortune than fame, if you know what I mean."
"Uhhhh.... no."
"Coin and I are never together for long, it's the ladies I long for. My name is Slezgar."
Too approached the man who first told the priest to take a hike, and offered him a job. "Yeah, I could use some coin. Just keep that priest away from me. I'm good at sneaking around. My name's Fast Eddie."
The Claw also decided to try his hand talking to one of the men who told Gutboy off. "What? Yeah, sure I'll work for ya! The standard half-share? I'm quick with a dagger, and I've done a bit of safecracking in my time. Call me Zarak."
P.W., also wanting a henchman, approached the dwarf, a flabby, squat, gray-skinned creature, with eyes also entirely black.
"Hello, good sir, would you like to join me on an adventure?"
"Get the hell away from me, you little freak! Say another word, and I'll knock your head clean off!"
P.W. quietly backed away, but Too liked the cut of his jib, and saw an excellent hiring opportunity. "Well, would you like to work for me?" "Yeah, sure, I'll work for you. I hate those halflings, though. The name's Dingo."
Employers and employees agreed to meet back first thing in the morning. After an uneventful night at the inn, the party gathered, purchased equipment for their new retainers, and Gutboy purchased a second war hound, which he named Ruckus.
They spent a day and a half tromping through the woods and up the slopes of Mt. Rendon, when they reached the cave mouth. They proceeded into the well-lit, white-walled complex, and stopped in the first octagonal room to try to figure out their map. This took quite some time, and while they turned pieces of paper over, tried connecting them in various ways, and otherwise flailed about in confusion, a lone automaton stumbled into the room, its body a mix of steel framing and bones tied to rusting stumps of metal with ragged strips of human skin. It rushed at the party, frenzied by the prospect of retrieving precious skeletons from the filthy meat-sacks, but was quickly dispatched by the party.
Gutboy had Slezgar drag the automaton's body along, as they made their way to the room where the party had met Lt. Hammer, during the last session. They passed a group of non-hostile five bone-and-metal automatons along the way, and Gutboy struck up a conversation.
"Hello! Are you interested in more parts?"
"No."
"Oh. Hmm. Do you like Lt. Hammer?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"He takes our parts!"
"Would you like to help kill him?"
"No."
P.W. then pipes up, "Do you want my parts?"
After thoughtful consideration, the automaton replies "No, your parts are too small."
One of the automatons then grabbed at the automaton-corpse they had been dragging along. Gutboy told him to stop, but the automaton just shouted "Parts!" The other automatons then descended on the corpse as well, and they began tugging it apart. The party decided to just move along, and made their way to the room where they had last seen Lt. Hammer.
The lieutenant was there, along with his three footlockers, but was in a foul mood. "Humans! Again?" He lined up one of his arms at Too, the black hole at the end of his arm-pod staring Too right in the face.
Gutboy spoke up, "Wait! Will you let us go down? We'll bring you back money."
Hammer laughed loudly. "Ha! You won't be coming back from down there!"
"What's down there?'
"More fleshy things like you. I shoot them. Want to see how?" He points his arm at Gutboy.
"No."
"You'll pay now if you want to go down."
"How much?"
"100 gp."
"How about half now, half later?"
"How about all right now?" Hammer grows impatient, and clearly prepares to fire his arm-weapon.
"Ok! We'll give you the money!"
P.W. says, "I've got 95 gp."
Hammer: "Give it to me!"
"Well not all of it!"
"Yes, now!" He points his arm at P.W.
The other members of the party quickly start handing over fistfuls of gold to the lieutenant, and he drops his 100 gp into a footlocker. Gutboy tries to sneak a peak inside, but was unable to see what else Hammer had inside. "Now get out of here!"
The party proceeded south into a 20' square chamber, with an opening in the west wall, blocked by protonium-metal bars running from floor to ceiling. On the south wall was an inclined metal shelf, with a lever and glowing screen. The screen read, "Safety period expired. Fuel replenished. Subsurface entry permitted."
Too sent Dingo to use his wide-spectrum vision to look through the bars. He saw a stairway heading down as far as he could see (that is, 60'). The stairway was of dressed stonework, there was no sign of the glowing ceiling or white walls and floors of the complex they had explored so far.
After much discussion, Too volunteered to pull the lever. The rest of the party cowered in the doorway, as Too carefully pushed the lever up. Nothing happened for a few seconds, but then the screen changed. It now read "Subsurface Research Facility Main Power Facility Re-Activating." Another few moments of silence, and then klaxons sounded, both within the room, and from somewhere deep underneath the room. Horrible crashing noises were heard from below, and the room began vibrating. Finally, the klaxons quieted and the shaking stopped, and the screen now read "All entrances open. Ready."
The party headed downstairs, with Too and Fast Eddie in the lead. The stairs went down for 100', before ending at an intersection: a door to the north, and corridors heading west and south. Too listened carefully at the door, and hearing nothing, opened it. A small room lay behind it, 20' square, with nothing but a skeleton, grasping an antique pen, and a few papers beside it. P.W. read the papers aloud: "To whosoever finds this note, they have locked us in. I don't know what happened in the lower levels, but I'm pretty sure they will never let us out. The soldiers at the top of the stairs were taking pot shots at us. Please let my wife and kids know I loved them. There is something outside in the dark."
After listening to this sobering message, Gutboy picked up the pen. It was not a mere quill, but a retractable ballpoint pen. The kind rich people have. He was disappointed to find that the ink was dry, but he claimed it as his own regardless.
Heading back out of the room, the party headed west, following a winding corridor til they found another door. Too poked his head inside, and saw a room empty, except for another door, and a dozen small holes in the northern wall, five feet off the floor. The party grew nervous, and wondered what traps could lie within. Except for the halfling, P.W. He boldly strode into the room, fearing nothing, not even the dozen darts that flew over his head as he stepped on a pressure plate.
After some experimentation with the pressure plate, the party gathered up two dozen darts for the thieves and The Claw to use. They then crawled on their hands and knees to the other door, and proceeded down a short hall and into another room. This room was empty except for dust, and a few dried piles of excrement. Seeking gold in unlikely places, Gutboy pawed through the piles of dessicated manure, but found nothing.
On to the next room. The party opened a door in the south wall, and beheld a strange sight. They lookd into a pair of corridors, one heading east, another west, and the walls opposite them bore large floor-to-ceiling carvings of grinning faces with empty recessed eyesockets and recessed mouths. Scattered on the floor were many skeletons. The party decided discretion is the better part of valor, and closed the door carefully, deciding to try a different exit from the dung-covered room.
Listening at this other door, Slezgar reported that he heard chewing noises. The party lined up, bows and darts at the ready, waiting to slaughter whatever beasts lay behind. One of the thieves crept up to the door, threw it open, and ran back to the party. Behind the door was a room with three horrific creatures savaging a bloodied corpse. The creatures were vaguely dog-like, with oily black skin, six legs that ended in knobby stubs, and heads like elongated four-sided pyramids, that hinged open into four toothed jaws and a toothed tongue.
The creatures didn't seem to notice the party, and they let fly with their weapons, and Gutboy released his hounds, Rufus and Ruckus. The creatures were slain within seconds. Entering the room to investigate the savaged corpse, they found it was too mutilated to determine what kind of creature it was, but it did have a gold necklace. Grabbing up the treasure, they exited south from this new room, and wandered through more maze-like corridors.
Eventually the hallway opened into another room. Approaching the entrance, the flickering torchlight revealed two clumps of a strange fungus on the ceiling, with knob-like growths on it. Holes opened in the knobs, and suddenly they gave out loud screeching noises. The party rushed in and pulled out darts and bows to kill the fungi before it attracted attention.
As they began to shoot at the fungus, two bizarre, twisted creatures, with gnarled semi-cylindrical bodies 10' long and 1' wide, one with 5 legs and another 8 legs, entered the room. They were yellow, with red splotches and stripes, and from the ends facing the party, each had a pair of "arms" that ended in long spikes. The hounds were released on one, but another charged Fast Eddie and gored him badly.
Arrows, darts, and magic missiles flew, and the gas-bag of one of the ceiling fungi was pierced with a loud flatulent noise, and its shrieking was silenced. Still, more monsters appeared from the gloom. From behind the party, five giant earwigs appeared in the corridor, but the insects did not attack. More fighting, swords were drawn, and the twisted yellow-red creatures were cut to bloodless pieces. Their bodies were fleshy and yellow, but there was no blood or internal organs to the creatures.
As the party killed off the last ceiling fungus, they heard horrible screams from off in the distance, somewhere to the east. They eyed the earwigs nervously, but didn't attack. The insects headed back into the darkness, and the party, fearful of whatever made the screams, headed south, deeper into the dungeon.
Following a gently curving corridor, they found themselves in the eastern end of a vast room. Their ceiling arched far above them, beyond the feeble illumination of their torches, and the walls stretched off into the darkness. Pulling back so the dwarf could look with his wide-spectrum vision, he reported that he still could see no end to this room. The party began walking along the wall, trying to determine the extent of this room.
After much exploration and surveying, they found that the massive chamber had a doorway in the southeast wall, a massive archway with a short corridor to a massive set of double doors to the north, and raised dais with a throne on the west wall. The throne was stainless steel, and covered with raised steel sculptures of winged cherubs. The cherubs were threatening in appearance, with empty eye sockets and cruel smiles. Other than the empty eye sockets, they didn't resemble the faces they had seen earlier.
Examining the area around the throne, the party noticed scratch marks curving away from the base of the throne. They had two of the henchmen push the throne, and it pivoted around one corner, revealing a hole in the floor. Dingo took a look down, and reported that there was a ladder that went down 40', and then a tunnel headed south.
At this point, the party took stock of their situation. They were deep underground, with an extortionist soldier-robot above, out of magic missile spells, and with a wounded henchman.
Too: "You want to heal Fast Eddie?"
Gutboy: "No, I want to save my cure light wounds. He's just a henchman."
Fast Eddie: "Hey, I'm right here! Stupid priest."
They briefly considered camping out in the vast hall of the throne room, but then decided that it wasn't defensible enough. They went back to the first room they had found, the one with the skeleton, clutching the note describing how he had made his last stand in that tiny room, some 3,000 years ago. Hoping for better luck, they spiked the door shut and made camp for the night.
Gentlemen,
Here's the usual recap of the session. We'll meet next on Wednesday, Nov 17th.
The halfling P.W., fighter Too, and cleric Gutboy, gathered in the Stinkborugh village tavern, when they were approached by a magic-user, who called himself The Claw. He was accepted into the party after a few brief words, and they began scanning the tavern for likely henchmen. Two human men, a dwarf, and an elf looked like they could make capable employees.
Gutboy walked up to the first human, and introduced himself as the village priest. "Get lost, priest. Always taking money from the poor. You make me sick." Trying his luck with the second human, he was told to take a walk as well. Whoever these two were, they despised the priesthood.
Gutboy decided to try talking to the elf. He was 5' tall, with gray skin, pointed ears, a nose so small that the nostrils were almost like slits in his face, eyes entirely black, and a mouthful of sharp fangs.
"Hello. Would you perhaps be looking for an adventure? Something to make a little money?"
"Why yes I would! I could always use fame and fortune, more fortune than fame, if you know what I mean."
"Uhhhh.... no."
"Coin and I are never together for long, it's the ladies I long for. My name is Slezgar."
Too approached the man who first told the priest to take a hike, and offered him a job. "Yeah, I could use some coin. Just keep that priest away from me. I'm good at sneaking around. My name's Fast Eddie."
The Claw also decided to try his hand talking to one of the men who told Gutboy off. "What? Yeah, sure I'll work for ya! The standard half-share? I'm quick with a dagger, and I've done a bit of safecracking in my time. Call me Zarak."
P.W., also wanting a henchman, approached the dwarf, a flabby, squat, gray-skinned creature, with eyes also entirely black.
"Hello, good sir, would you like to join me on an adventure?"
"Get the hell away from me, you little freak! Say another word, and I'll knock your head clean off!"
P.W. quietly backed away, but Too liked the cut of his jib, and saw an excellent hiring opportunity. "Well, would you like to work for me?" "Yeah, sure, I'll work for you. I hate those halflings, though. The name's Dingo."
Employers and employees agreed to meet back first thing in the morning. After an uneventful night at the inn, the party gathered, purchased equipment for their new retainers, and Gutboy purchased a second war hound, which he named Ruckus.
They spent a day and a half tromping through the woods and up the slopes of Mt. Rendon, when they reached the cave mouth. They proceeded into the well-lit, white-walled complex, and stopped in the first octagonal room to try to figure out their map. This took quite some time, and while they turned pieces of paper over, tried connecting them in various ways, and otherwise flailed about in confusion, a lone automaton stumbled into the room, its body a mix of steel framing and bones tied to rusting stumps of metal with ragged strips of human skin. It rushed at the party, frenzied by the prospect of retrieving precious skeletons from the filthy meat-sacks, but was quickly dispatched by the party.
Gutboy had Slezgar drag the automaton's body along, as they made their way to the room where the party had met Lt. Hammer, during the last session. They passed a group of non-hostile five bone-and-metal automatons along the way, and Gutboy struck up a conversation.
"Hello! Are you interested in more parts?"
"No."
"Oh. Hmm. Do you like Lt. Hammer?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"He takes our parts!"
"Would you like to help kill him?"
"No."
P.W. then pipes up, "Do you want my parts?"
After thoughtful consideration, the automaton replies "No, your parts are too small."
One of the automatons then grabbed at the automaton-corpse they had been dragging along. Gutboy told him to stop, but the automaton just shouted "Parts!" The other automatons then descended on the corpse as well, and they began tugging it apart. The party decided to just move along, and made their way to the room where they had last seen Lt. Hammer.
The lieutenant was there, along with his three footlockers, but was in a foul mood. "Humans! Again?" He lined up one of his arms at Too, the black hole at the end of his arm-pod staring Too right in the face.
Gutboy spoke up, "Wait! Will you let us go down? We'll bring you back money."
Hammer laughed loudly. "Ha! You won't be coming back from down there!"
"What's down there?'
"More fleshy things like you. I shoot them. Want to see how?" He points his arm at Gutboy.
"No."
"You'll pay now if you want to go down."
"How much?"
"100 gp."
"How about half now, half later?"
"How about all right now?" Hammer grows impatient, and clearly prepares to fire his arm-weapon.
"Ok! We'll give you the money!"
P.W. says, "I've got 95 gp."
Hammer: "Give it to me!"
"Well not all of it!"
"Yes, now!" He points his arm at P.W.
The other members of the party quickly start handing over fistfuls of gold to the lieutenant, and he drops his 100 gp into a footlocker. Gutboy tries to sneak a peak inside, but was unable to see what else Hammer had inside. "Now get out of here!"
The party proceeded south into a 20' square chamber, with an opening in the west wall, blocked by protonium-metal bars running from floor to ceiling. On the south wall was an inclined metal shelf, with a lever and glowing screen. The screen read, "Safety period expired. Fuel replenished. Subsurface entry permitted."
Too sent Dingo to use his wide-spectrum vision to look through the bars. He saw a stairway heading down as far as he could see (that is, 60'). The stairway was of dressed stonework, there was no sign of the glowing ceiling or white walls and floors of the complex they had explored so far.
After much discussion, Too volunteered to pull the lever. The rest of the party cowered in the doorway, as Too carefully pushed the lever up. Nothing happened for a few seconds, but then the screen changed. It now read "Subsurface Research Facility Main Power Facility Re-Activating." Another few moments of silence, and then klaxons sounded, both within the room, and from somewhere deep underneath the room. Horrible crashing noises were heard from below, and the room began vibrating. Finally, the klaxons quieted and the shaking stopped, and the screen now read "All entrances open. Ready."
The party headed downstairs, with Too and Fast Eddie in the lead. The stairs went down for 100', before ending at an intersection: a door to the north, and corridors heading west and south. Too listened carefully at the door, and hearing nothing, opened it. A small room lay behind it, 20' square, with nothing but a skeleton, grasping an antique pen, and a few papers beside it. P.W. read the papers aloud: "To whosoever finds this note, they have locked us in. I don't know what happened in the lower levels, but I'm pretty sure they will never let us out. The soldiers at the top of the stairs were taking pot shots at us. Please let my wife and kids know I loved them. There is something outside in the dark."
After listening to this sobering message, Gutboy picked up the pen. It was not a mere quill, but a retractable ballpoint pen. The kind rich people have. He was disappointed to find that the ink was dry, but he claimed it as his own regardless.
Heading back out of the room, the party headed west, following a winding corridor til they found another door. Too poked his head inside, and saw a room empty, except for another door, and a dozen small holes in the northern wall, five feet off the floor. The party grew nervous, and wondered what traps could lie within. Except for the halfling, P.W. He boldly strode into the room, fearing nothing, not even the dozen darts that flew over his head as he stepped on a pressure plate.
After some experimentation with the pressure plate, the party gathered up two dozen darts for the thieves and The Claw to use. They then crawled on their hands and knees to the other door, and proceeded down a short hall and into another room. This room was empty except for dust, and a few dried piles of excrement. Seeking gold in unlikely places, Gutboy pawed through the piles of dessicated manure, but found nothing.
On to the next room. The party opened a door in the south wall, and beheld a strange sight. They lookd into a pair of corridors, one heading east, another west, and the walls opposite them bore large floor-to-ceiling carvings of grinning faces with empty recessed eyesockets and recessed mouths. Scattered on the floor were many skeletons. The party decided discretion is the better part of valor, and closed the door carefully, deciding to try a different exit from the dung-covered room.
Listening at this other door, Slezgar reported that he heard chewing noises. The party lined up, bows and darts at the ready, waiting to slaughter whatever beasts lay behind. One of the thieves crept up to the door, threw it open, and ran back to the party. Behind the door was a room with three horrific creatures savaging a bloodied corpse. The creatures were vaguely dog-like, with oily black skin, six legs that ended in knobby stubs, and heads like elongated four-sided pyramids, that hinged open into four toothed jaws and a toothed tongue.
The creatures didn't seem to notice the party, and they let fly with their weapons, and Gutboy released his hounds, Rufus and Ruckus. The creatures were slain within seconds. Entering the room to investigate the savaged corpse, they found it was too mutilated to determine what kind of creature it was, but it did have a gold necklace. Grabbing up the treasure, they exited south from this new room, and wandered through more maze-like corridors.
Eventually the hallway opened into another room. Approaching the entrance, the flickering torchlight revealed two clumps of a strange fungus on the ceiling, with knob-like growths on it. Holes opened in the knobs, and suddenly they gave out loud screeching noises. The party rushed in and pulled out darts and bows to kill the fungi before it attracted attention.
As they began to shoot at the fungus, two bizarre, twisted creatures, with gnarled semi-cylindrical bodies 10' long and 1' wide, one with 5 legs and another 8 legs, entered the room. They were yellow, with red splotches and stripes, and from the ends facing the party, each had a pair of "arms" that ended in long spikes. The hounds were released on one, but another charged Fast Eddie and gored him badly.
Arrows, darts, and magic missiles flew, and the gas-bag of one of the ceiling fungi was pierced with a loud flatulent noise, and its shrieking was silenced. Still, more monsters appeared from the gloom. From behind the party, five giant earwigs appeared in the corridor, but the insects did not attack. More fighting, swords were drawn, and the twisted yellow-red creatures were cut to bloodless pieces. Their bodies were fleshy and yellow, but there was no blood or internal organs to the creatures.
As the party killed off the last ceiling fungus, they heard horrible screams from off in the distance, somewhere to the east. They eyed the earwigs nervously, but didn't attack. The insects headed back into the darkness, and the party, fearful of whatever made the screams, headed south, deeper into the dungeon.
Following a gently curving corridor, they found themselves in the eastern end of a vast room. Their ceiling arched far above them, beyond the feeble illumination of their torches, and the walls stretched off into the darkness. Pulling back so the dwarf could look with his wide-spectrum vision, he reported that he still could see no end to this room. The party began walking along the wall, trying to determine the extent of this room.
After much exploration and surveying, they found that the massive chamber had a doorway in the southeast wall, a massive archway with a short corridor to a massive set of double doors to the north, and raised dais with a throne on the west wall. The throne was stainless steel, and covered with raised steel sculptures of winged cherubs. The cherubs were threatening in appearance, with empty eye sockets and cruel smiles. Other than the empty eye sockets, they didn't resemble the faces they had seen earlier.
Examining the area around the throne, the party noticed scratch marks curving away from the base of the throne. They had two of the henchmen push the throne, and it pivoted around one corner, revealing a hole in the floor. Dingo took a look down, and reported that there was a ladder that went down 40', and then a tunnel headed south.
At this point, the party took stock of their situation. They were deep underground, with an extortionist soldier-robot above, out of magic missile spells, and with a wounded henchman.
Too: "You want to heal Fast Eddie?"
Gutboy: "No, I want to save my cure light wounds. He's just a henchman."
Fast Eddie: "Hey, I'm right here! Stupid priest."
They briefly considered camping out in the vast hall of the throne room, but then decided that it wasn't defensible enough. They went back to the first room they had found, the one with the skeleton, clutching the note describing how he had made his last stand in that tiny room, some 3,000 years ago. Hoping for better luck, they spiked the door shut and made camp for the night.
2010-11-02
Shining Trapezohedron
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the "special" rooms on the upper level will be dedicated to hints about what's deeper in the dungeon. Here's a little bit of information about the Shining Trapezohedron.
164. Chief Research Assistant’s Office
This room still contains ancient steel furniture, quite rusty by now. There is a desk, chair with tattered cushions, and a short cabinet. On the stone wall next to the desk is a large white square (6’ wide by 4’ high), with several ancient inkless pens on a small shelf below it.
The desk and cabinet are empty. However, the top cabinet draw has a false back, which will be found by anybody performing a careful search. Behind the false back is a bundle of papers titled “Spectrum and Wavelength Analysis of Trapezohedron.” The papers are in an unknown scientific jargon, and the party is unlikely to make heads or tails of it.
If a player is able to read and write, and rolls a 6 on a d6 (add the number of languages the player can speak as a bonus), then he understands that the paper discusses a shining black jewel the size of a man’s fist, somewhat in the shape of a trapezohedron. The paper mentions that the angles of the jewel’s facets change depending on its orientation to the viewer, and that light reflecting from the jewel follows a discrete square wave rather than a continuous waveform.
The cult of Science in Denethix has the ability to decipher the papers if the players cannot, and would purchase them for 25 gp.
The Church of Starry Wisdom would also be greatly interested in these papers, as they refer to the Shining Trapezohedron, a jewel that can be used to communicate with their god. If they find that the party has the papers, they would do anything, up to and including murder, to retrieve the papers and determine where they came from.
164. Chief Research Assistant’s Office
This room still contains ancient steel furniture, quite rusty by now. There is a desk, chair with tattered cushions, and a short cabinet. On the stone wall next to the desk is a large white square (6’ wide by 4’ high), with several ancient inkless pens on a small shelf below it.
The desk and cabinet are empty. However, the top cabinet draw has a false back, which will be found by anybody performing a careful search. Behind the false back is a bundle of papers titled “Spectrum and Wavelength Analysis of Trapezohedron.” The papers are in an unknown scientific jargon, and the party is unlikely to make heads or tails of it.
If a player is able to read and write, and rolls a 6 on a d6 (add the number of languages the player can speak as a bonus), then he understands that the paper discusses a shining black jewel the size of a man’s fist, somewhat in the shape of a trapezohedron. The paper mentions that the angles of the jewel’s facets change depending on its orientation to the viewer, and that light reflecting from the jewel follows a discrete square wave rather than a continuous waveform.
The cult of Science in Denethix has the ability to decipher the papers if the players cannot, and would purchase them for 25 gp.
The Church of Starry Wisdom would also be greatly interested in these papers, as they refer to the Shining Trapezohedron, a jewel that can be used to communicate with their god. If they find that the party has the papers, they would do anything, up to and including murder, to retrieve the papers and determine where they came from.
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