Nappendixia Campaign Session Report
Session #- 29 Session Date- 1/4/23
Time Passed- 2 hours (1-7)
Roll Call- Mandigor- ½ Elf Fighter 4
Malden- Paladin 4
Gunther- Dog
Gregory- Paladin 2 Squire
Thantas- Elf Assassin 4
Gruumsh- ½ Orc Thief 4
Ulster- Druid 4
Larry the Caveman- Ulster’s Henchman
Hirelings
Mondius- Fighter 2
LaSalle- Fighter 3
Adventure Log- We resume the action with the party Face to face with 17 slaves huddled along the wall of a long narrow room. The 2 half orcs who let them in through the trap door call out and 3 orcs, 1 small and holding a whip and a lantern. A third half orc stands at the back of the room wearing orc divine symbols and wielding a half orc claymore. They yell out in orc, only Malden understands, and he translates. They gruffly ask the party if they are here to purchase slaves, and the party quickly responds with a ruse, saying they are in fact here to purchase slaves for their master Lareth. Mandigor grabs one of the slaves and begins complaining of their quality, trying to elicit more information from the orcs or be taken to a place with better slaves. The orcs respond with a planned ruse of their own, the human slaves stand up and reveal that their chains were fake, and they are actually also half orcs. They pull out daggers from their rags and attack the party with the orcs. The half orc divine caster begins casting a spell, but the party manages to win initiative and Gruumsh bravely stands in front of Draden, absorbing hits while the mage casts Sleep. The half orcs are pretty ineffective, but Draden’s sleep spell only puts down 5, still quite a crowd to deal with. The half orc divine caster takes a wound while casting and his spell is disrupted. 2 of the half orcs appear to have some thief skills, and they both try to use the crowd to hide themselves. One is quickly spotted and cut down, but the other is lost from view. Fortunately on the following round, Draden drops another sleep spell, which is much more effective than the first. All of the remaining half orcs collapse in sleep, and the formerly hidden assassin is revealed and taken down, as are the orcs, the caster is slain while again trying to cast. A small amount of treasure is recovered, as is a valuable ring, 2 short swords and the claymore which could be magical. After the combat, the party is unsure of where they are in the fortress complex, so they listen intently to see if the combat has caused notice. Hearing only silence, they assume they did not catch anyone’s attention. 2 Invisibility spells are cast on the thief and assassin so they can explore the corridor beyond the slave room. The room to the north is an empty ruined room in an outbuilding that must be attached to the fort proper. There are some collapsed bunk beds here, and the walls and ceiling are rickety and reveal holes out to the outside of the fortress. It would be possible to break open a hole in the wall here and the party could leave. The corridor to the south reveals a long corridor filled with dirty water, an absolute no-no for this party; they avoid water and mud like the plague. Also in the south they find a door leading west, before the flooded part of the corridor. They briefly discuss making an egress from the fort and resting and memorizing spells, but decide to push on a little more. Beyond the door the corridor twists around and goes east, where they discover the other end of the flooded corridor, and west where it seems to lead back through the thick stone outer walls of the temple and ending at a door. Listening at the door they hear a few voices speaking orc, and decide to bum rush the room and take it by surprise force. They burst through the door with Mandigor leading, and Gruumsh and Larry the Caveman following. When they smash through the door, they are met with 3 orcs with crossbows behind an overturned table. It’s positioned to give them cover from both the door the party entered and also from the main gate of the temple, a raised portcullis leading out of the temple. This must be the guards who watch the main gate. Also in this room are 4 half orcs manning some kind of cart on wheels with a strange contraption on it. It seems to be some kind of tank of liquid mounted on the cart with some kind of tube or cannon protruding from the heavily armored front. The orcs are not surprised, win initiative, and quite accurately let loose 3 crossbow bolts that all hit their mark. Mandigor takes but a mere flesh wound from the bolt, but the other 2 thud solidly into Larry the Caveman’s barrel chest, and he drops dead due to his injuries. They then yell out “Light the Burna!”, to which the half orcs spin the cart towards the party, ignite something at the rear of the cart, and a gout of flame erupts from the tube at the front, showering Mandigor and Gruumsh in flame. Neither make their save and Mandigor is grievously wounded, but survives, and Gruumsh is moderately singed. He chooses to wield the newly found claymore, and it reveals itself to be a +1 weapon. After the first volley of effective hits from the orcs and half orcs, the party regains the upper hand, they push past the table barriers and rush past the Burna and dispatch all the enemies. As they are recovering and checking out the strange flamer device, a door opens up by the portcullis, obviously alerted to the sounds of battle. It appears to be an orc of some rank, better armed and armored than the rest. He sees he is outnumbered, and makes a run for a rear door that leads deeper into the temple. He begins to yell out “Intruders!” but the party quickly spins the burna to face him, and he is eliminated in a ball of flame. A valuable gem is found on his person, as well as some likely magic bolts. After another quick battle, the party pauses to see if anyone was alerted, and also looks out the open portcullis, seeing it free of patrols or enemies. Being very depleted of spells and having several wounded members, the party decides to rush out the open portcullis and away from the temple. They make it to the rocky outcroppings outside of town and make their way back to their camp to rest, heal, and rememorize.
Session Notes- So far in this adventure, the combats have largely been easy, but punctuated by a few major unforeseen setbacks. I briefly questioned myself, thinking should I be altering these combats to make them more challenging? Should I be more conscious of those unexpected events that occasionally really screw up the party? I quickly decided no. This is the result of emergent play, these combats go exactly as they party handles them. They mostly play at a very high level, they are thoughtful, plan well, and therefore should be able to roll through many encounters with ease. No one can plan properly for every contingency however, so despite good play and planning sometimes bad things happen to the most well-laid plans. Also, I think DMs are more conscious of too many easy encounters, they feel players aren’t being challenged. But players usually have a different view, they often enjoy the easy encounters more, seeing them as successful based on their planning and skill, and they also like that the story moves along, more encounters happen, and the game isn’t getting bogged down with massive hour plus long combats. The truly neutral arbiter DM shouldn’t think like this. The difficulty of the game is big picture, not every encounter has to be balanced against that moment’s party strength. The difficulty of the campaign comes from the sum of the whole of the encounters, how do they look in the big picture, also good planning and problem solving should boost the party and allow them to get through encounters easier. Anything else would be disrespectful of truly emergent play. The game develops directly from the player's interaction with the world, and any DM intervention against that is bad DMing. As far as the players go, the quality of play was above average. All class roles were well played. The druid has been creatively interpreting his relationship with his caveman followers, but that has some natural consequences that will work itself out. As for myself, DMing needs improvement. I forgot to mention the door that led west into the main portcullis room. I caught myself a few minutes later, but it was awkward going back and saying “woops, I forgot about that door.” had I not caught that, they probably would have left the temple earlier than necessary. I also did not read well, and I thought the burna attack was a no save attack. Better reading noted a save was granted, and they were retroactively allowed to make one, however it didn’t change the outcome. Still DMing needs improvement.
Treasure and XP- monster xp- 2875 + treasure xp- 2817= 5688xp divided by 6 PCs, + % bonus, - 15% for henchmen.
Graveyard- Larry the Caveman- died from orc crossbow bolts in the Slavers Hideout.
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