Red Frontier Campaign Session Report 38

 Red Frontier Campaign Session Report

Session #- 38 Session Date- 3/2/23 Time Passed-  6 days 3/3-3-8  

Roll Call- Laughing Fox- Druid 8

Dog Breath- Fighter 6

Laurentis- Cleric 7

Laurentis’ Henchmen

Ned- Magic User 1

Lucky- Illusionist 1

Dusty- Cleric 1

Alemondro- Fighter 1

Beacon- Cleric 5

12 Longbowmen

3 Pikemen

Adventure Log-  After completing training, the party used some of its remaining downtime to talk to the caster Beirut whose shop is in the common area of Bartertown.  He tells them of the spell casting he offers, such as contact outer plane, but he is also quite impressed with the party from another world, his own arcane prophetic visions hinted at such a thing.  He wants to aid the party and learn whatever he can of them.  They tell him of the strange location to the west, a mountain perhaps with caves and corridors within.  He also has heard legends of the locale, and offers to send his apprentice with the party should they assemble a safe expedition.  Once his man gets eyes on the location, should it exist, and is safely brought back home he can begin to cast clairvoyance and clairaudience on the location to monitor it for more clues.  They thank him and consider the offer.  He also performs a form of divination on the party’s mission and it reveals a strange etching, telling the mage the party seeks to penetrate a deep labyrinth, that their destination lies 7 layers deep, and that the first level is superfluous, and can be skipped.  A few days later Papagallo’s sage, a strange nameless man completes his vision of the party, being so intrigued by their presence as to ask the gods about them and if they can be aided in any way.  His vision consists of a strange facelike mountain located near a strange thin metal tower.  In the vision he sees the one eyed face of the Eyeless Void holding power over the mountain, the tower a marker to the correct location.  He ponders deeper on the vision and sees within the mountain a bird skull, the meaning of which to seek out the tribe of bird men, they will be able to assist.  The area has several groups of creatures vying for power.  Seek the thief-like bird men, they may seem untrustworthy, but will negotiate and know the location the party seeks.  Also during the time of training and living with Papagallo and his people, 2 more locals of note visit the group in Bartertown.  The Feral Kid, a non-verbal, wolf-like wild kid who is also an adept ranger, and The Gyro Captain, a badlands druid who rides a magic carpet.  They negotiate with both, as they are both knowledgeable of the local wilderness, and the Gyro Captain agrees to take Beirut the casters apprentice on a magic carpet scouting flight over the mountain and return him so he can begin scrying the location.  The Feral kid, through a local interpreter, agrees to track the party to the mountain location when they are prepped to travel for 500gp.  The party agrees.  Also during downtime the party secures horses for themselves and their pikemen, and supplies for their trip.  On 3/3 gyro captain returns with the apprentice from the scouting mission.  They report seeing a large flat topped mountain with a huge stone construction, only 1 story tall, but wide enough to cover the top of the mountain.  The eastern side of the mountain is sheer cliffside, the north and west sides covered with wide alluvial fans of awkward but negotiable rubble.  The south side has a gentle sloped path arcing from the top to the eastern base.  Strange ape men creatures man the southern end of the mountaintop stone structure, they have horses, a stable, and a couple of guard posts.  At the northern end of the stone structure a small keep lies unkempt but standing, manned by hundreds of wild naked man shaped creatures the shape of perfectly formed humans but only 2 feet tall.  They are wild and poorly organized, but outnumber the ape men, who wear leather armor and have horses, lances, and shields.  All over the mountain top, and on the flat grounds around the mountain small groups of 5-10 ape men engage in skirmish attacks with 15-30 manlings.  The scene is a chaos of small skirmishes all over the mountain area, the manlings seem to feed this front from some kind of village to the north, the ape men seem to receive their reinforcements from the south.  Armed with all that intelligence, the party asks the apprentice to cast clairaudience and focus on one of the mountaintop guard posts the ape men have.  He reports hearing some casual conversation between 2 ape men, mostly complaining about the manlings and keeping an eye out for any skirmishes that the ape men need reinforcements for.  In addition to the conversation, in the background, throughout the whole time he scried, he heard an eerie droning sound, coming from possibly the western mountainside.  They then elect to have him cast clairvoyance and focus on the western hillside, and he sees a cave mouth at the top of the western alluvial fan.  He also sees a set of stairs that descends down from the top of the stone structure into its interior; it is located in the south, between the 2 ape men guard posts.  They are most interested in the cave mouth on the western face, it seems climbable and will hopefully get them into a deeper layer of the dungeon and can avoid the manling/ ape men conflict.  They depart with the Feral Kid the following morning, who proves to be invaluable, he avoids them getting lost, and avoids an encounter with 20 manlings as they approach the mountain.  They arrive at the strange metal tower after 2 days of travel, it seems climbable, but the party is focused on setting up camp and getting a good night's rest with the help of the feral kid on watch.  The next morning they assess the scene, and decide to loop far to the west on foot, leave Feral Kid and the horses behind at camp, and make an approach on the western cave entrance without being noticed.  They make it to the cave without notice, and enter as the droning sound emanates.  It opens into a chamber with a spiral staircase leading down, leading into what they soon will discover to be a small dungeon complex of a few rooms.  They initially decide to head east, the droning sound impossible to pinpoint as it bounced around the corridors, but their light sources and party noise attracted an encounter, a massive 7 foot tall powerful creature, pitted with holes and passages in its form that blow a wind that makes the eerie droning noise.  The creature seems enraged by being disturbed and attacks by running down the corridor towards them. They win initiative and manage to split the party so one group made of the henchmen and archers ducked down a side corridor, the other group of PCs and pikemen scrambled to readjust order and get the pikemen set to receive a charge.  Laurentis’ fighter henchman fires an arrow, and is struck by the creature nearly killing him.  The creature then crashes into the pikemen but they cannot penetrate its structure.  Laughing fox casts faerie fire on it making it easier to hit, and the party peppers it with arrows and melee strikes.  Laurentis finishes it off with a mighty blow from his magic sword and gauntlets of ogre power.  It crumbles apart; the eerie droning stops.  The next chamber that triggers an encounter, the party begins being accosted by an unknown enemy throwing a dagger and a hand axe at them from out of a debris strewn room.  Unsure what to do, they search through the debris, set some piles on fire with flaming oil, cast dispel magic, and search for their unseen enemy, all to no avail.  All the while several of laurentis henchmen, the cleric and magic user are both struck, the mage is nearly killed.  2 archers are killed by flying weapons.  Then Laurentis manages to trap the dagger with his shield and the party attacks the axe with fire.  Then Laurentis realizes it could be an undead force and banishes the poltergeist with the power of his god.  The dagger looks magical and is kept.  The final room that offered an encounter was a room of bunks and furniture and a chest covered in a strange dry weed.  Laughing Fox approached to try to identify and was attacked by several fronds of the living plant, sapping much of his Dexterity.  He quickly retreated, and Dog Breath hurls flaming oil at the plant.  It lights right up in a puff of smoke, nearly killing Dog Breath by poisoning him, but he resists.  The smoke continues to build and the party flees.  They wait a full 4 hours in the spiral staircase chamber until it finally dissipates.  The contents reveal 2 potions, a crossbow, and 1000gp.  They are later revealed to be a crossbow of speed, potions of extra healing and polymorph self, and the dagger is +1.  After gathering the treasure, they depart into the evening back to the Feral Kid and camp, who in the twilight, points out to the eastern cliffside of the mountain, pointing to several birdmen like creatures flying out of a cave mouth high on the east side.  They make the 2 day trek back to Bartertown and arrive the morning of 3/9.  Laughing Fox finds that his dex is returning at a rate of 1 point per day and will be fully healed on 3/12.

Session Notes-  So the players did a top notch job, as is often the case with this group.  However, they were definitely stymied by the poltergeist.  There were 3 clerics in the party and they were racking their brains thinking of creative ways to try to defeat it, yet no one thought to try to turn.  It wasn’t until the weapons were both trapped and inoperative before i mentioned that the divine characters feel that the room may have a curse or taint, to which several said “well I don’t have remove curse memorized”, it was a real stretch for them to come to terms with the “creature” that they couldn’t see yet it is still an undead entity.  Obviously no party is going to get it right every time, and ultimately they figured how to make the thing combat neutralized, but for a bunch of guys trying all kinds of creative stuff, and having 3 clerics there but not trying to turn was kind of funny from my perspective. 

This was a session I front loaded with information for the party in the interest of getting a strong session with a lot of progress.  I know that Elffinder is planning on taking back the DM reins with his Star Wars game soon, so I’d like to get this adventure wrapped up while momentum is high.  Giving them a bunch of divination information and opportunities to supplement their expedition got their juices flowing and avoided a slow start to the session.  Sometimes I like a slow start to the session, keep it casual, joke around, talk about life, then get serious, but this session and next session I wanted to be focused and get a lot accomplished.  The players rose to the occasion and moved the mission along.  They should be well poised to finish the mission or at least get very close for the next session.  The question is what to do with PCs that don’t attend the session where they travel back through the stargate.  Should I offer absent players the option to “piggy back” (travel with the party but take no actions and earn no xp) with the mission completers, or should I strand those PCs in Nappendixia until they motivate to find the stargate themselves, or have a new mission for Red Frontier PCs to travel back to rescue them?  I’m pondering this.  

Treasure and XP-  Monsters- Sussurus 870xp, Poltergeist 38xp, Witherweed 213xp= 1121xp.  Treasure-  Potion of extra healing, Potion of polymorph self, Dagger +1, Crossbow of speed, 1000gp= 3200xp  Total- 4321-  / 4 PCs= 1080xp for Laughing Fox, Dog Breath, and Beacon.  Laurentis gets 594xp and his fighter, m/u, and cleric henchmen get 162xp each.

Graveyard-   (Death’s Door)- Robin- brought to -1 by the Caryatid Column, needs 1 week bed rest. #34

3 Mercenary Pikemen killed by a spiked pit trap in the Chambers of the Eyeless void, 1 at death’s door, needs 1 week bed rest.  #35

2 Longbowmen killed by a Poltergeist in the Eyeless Void Megadungeon. #38