Red Frontier Campaign Session Report 39

 Red Frontier Campaign Session Report

Session #- 39 Session Date-  3/10/23 Time Passed-  3 days (3/10-3/12)  

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

10 Longbowmen

3 Pikemen

Cindy- Fighter 4

12 H. Crossbowmen

12 Mounted Crossbowmen

10 L. Foot

Neil Young- Fighter 2 (Cindy’s henchman)

Adventure Log-  The party arrives back from its first exploration of the megadungeon mountain on the morning of 3/9.  The last thing they saw upon departing the area was the presence of bird men flying out of a cave mouth high on the eastern cliffside of the mountain.  The divinations they had performed prophesied that the bird men could be negotiated with and can lead the party to the 7th level.  They spent their travel time thinking on how to best use their clairvoyance spells from the apprentice caster, and ideas on how to negotiate with the bird men should they locate them.  They decide to have the caster perform a clairvoyance  on the eastern side in the early morning and at dusk.  The first day of casting reveals nothing, but morning cast on the 10th shows more bird men flying out of the cave mouth and arcing off to the north out of view.  He gets a decent description of these bird men, and their appearance is described by the following picture- During the 2 days Cindy also manages to hire some more mercenaries, she finds and outfits 12 heavy crossbowmen, and 12 mounted crossbowmen.  Shortly after the clairvoyance on the 10th they gear up and head out for a second assault on the megadungeon mountain.  Early on the first day of travel the party has a close call.  Moving through the scrub, the Feral Kid guiding them, a large red dragon flies overhead.  In a moment of pure terror, they quietly elect to casually spread apart, aware that a dragon breath at tight quarters could mean death for the entire troop.  Fortunately, likely through no effort of their own, the dragon passes overhead enticing or uncaring of the party below.  The rest of the travel goes uneventfully until the last morning, when early in the dawn light a patrol of 10 gorilla-men locates their camp and attacks, Cindy, Neil Young, and 10 crossbowmen are on guard to receive the attack.  The charging lances of the gorilla men take out several of the crossbowmen, but the party quickly counterattacks and takes out the riders with weight of force as they are surrounded and cut down by melee weapons, one gorilla- man is kept alive as a prisoner and charmed.  He reveals that long standing feud between themselves and the manlings.  Both tribes are drawn to the mountain and seek to establish a fortress here and keep the other at bay.  He tells them that the manlings occupy the keep at the north end of the mountain, and they occupy the southern end and the lower top level of the megadungeon.  He tells them the gorilla men do not inhabit deeper into the dungeon, and the party decides that finding the bird men is still the best course of action.  They arrive at the mountain on 3/12 and proceed to the east side under cover to scout and observe.  After watching the cave mouth for a while with no presence of creatures, Laughing Fox uses his shapechange ability to transform into an eagle which then flies up and enters the cave mouth.  Walking down a few corridors he comes face to face with several bird people.  He tries to communicate with them, they seem to not speak any known language, they regard each other with looks and gestures.  Laughing Fox then transforms back into a human, and one of the bird men opens a door behind him and enters the room.  A minute later, a human emerges from the room.  He greets Laughing Fox and says he recognizes him as a druid, but not one from around here.  He says yes he is from a far away world called the Red Frontier.  He explains that he is with a group of explorers from his homeworld and they seek a way home, if they can find the 7th level of the dungeon they can return home.  The birds say they will show them the way to the 7th level, but there is an odd room near their lair on this level that they are afraid of.  It seems to have mystical powers, and they have lost several of their own exploring the room.  Laughing Fox negotiates that if the bird men assist in flying the party up to the cave mouth, they will explore the room and try to eliminate the threat.  The bird men agree to bring up 10 party members of their choice to explore the room.  Upon success, they will fly up the remainder of their henchmen and men at arms and show them the way to the 7th level.  Both parties agree and they set out being led through the dungeon, through a couple of secret doors and into an area lined with the same green tiles around the floor and doors identical to the stone tiled rooms of the dungeon beneath the Power Station.  The kenku, as the bird men are known, begin to attempt to pick the locked door, but Beacon produces a green key and says this will open the door.  Mystified how these strangers had a key to this door, they step aside and the door is unlocked, revealing a new area of the dungeon, this one lined with orange tile.  They are led west through the orange section, past a few doors and intersections to a door rimmed with orange stone.  The kenku say this is the room they fear, and they retreat back down the corridor to await the party’s return.  Laughing Fox uses warp wood to bend the beams of the locked door and the party enters.  At the far end of this large room is a dais holding a creepy statue of a man whose skin is split down the middle and emerging from the man is a hideous purplish monster with one large central eye.  Also in the room is a contraption of different colored metal spheres on metal armatures.  Upon entering the room, the machine activates and the spheres begin spinning around themselves and around a central point in the room.  As the spheres start spinning, occasionally a ghostlike form will peel off of the sphere and begin flying around the room.  This happens about 15 times, and as the room fills with these 15 ghostlike forms with evil, hateful faces, they begin to attack the party.  Remembering their encounter with the poltergeist, several of the clerics try to turn the creatures, but they are unaffected, these aren’t undead.  However magic weapons, and even mundane weapons seem to have an effect, and eventually all the ghosts are defeated, but not before wounding several party members, and reducing Laurentis’ illusionist and magic user henchmen to possessed shells, their own personalities gone and replaced with evil, angry personalities.  Others who were injured by the ghosts find their injuries to be illusory.  Laurentis ties the henchmen up, hoping their true selves can be brought back.  They meet back up with the Kenku in a chamber in the orange area.  This room has a mosaic tile on the floor of a closed eye.  Upon entering the room and telling the kenku of their battle with the spirit creatures the mosaic tile eye begins to open as the tiles magically rearrange themselves into an open eye.  Thinking quickly, Laughing Fox tries to stab the eye with his magic spear.  The tiles are unfazed by the attack, but flowing up from the eye a swirling vortex forms in the cylindrical space above the tiles and draws Laughing Fox in, spinning him and swirling him around in the vortex.  Inside the party sees a small silver sphere spinning within the vortex, seemingly the only solid part of the creature.  The following round a second vortex forms and draws a kenku into it, spinning him furiously.  Laughing Fox begins to take damage from the vortex, but Laurentis with his massive strength from the gauntlets of ogre power grabs him and yanks him from the vortex, Laughing Fox goes flying through the air but deftly lands on his feet freed from the vortex.  Through various attacks, the party reduces the 2 vortex to nothingness.  The kenku are very thankful, first for clearing out the ghost room, and second for saving them from the vortices.  They pay the party 100pp additional in thanks, and assemble their mercs and lead them to a chamber in the south of this area.  Here they open up a trap door in the floor revealing a square shaft with a staircase carved into its outer edges.  They descend about 5 levels to a metal platform that can be raised and lowered via thick cables arranged around a pulley system.  Identical to the metal shaft and platform in the Red Frontier hideout.  They must be entering the nexus point, they lower the platform down into that area and see it to be identical to the hideout they know so well.  Curious to find any threats before they begin setting up the stargate, Laughing Fox transforms into a mouse and creeps into the next chamber from which the party hears the chanting of a spell being cast.  He sees the red haired cleric that formed from the pile of guts and bones in the power station dungeon, the one that then jumped through the tapestry into Nappendixia.  He appears to be casting a spell, and is surrounded by 10 gorilla-men soldiers.  Mouse Laughing Fox returns to the party and tells them what he saw.  They decide to take him out with the explosives they have.  They prep them and burst into the room prepared to throw.  Just then the red haired cleric completes his spell and phases out of view, likely plane shifting to another dimension.  The gorilla men remain to take the brunt of the explosions and they are incinerated.  However, the explosion causes a huge tremor, and part of the back wall of the chamber collapses.  Whether the explosion collapsed the wall, or the tremor of the explosion attracted a huge creature which collapses the wall as it bursts through.  Nonetheless the party is now faced with a massive armored creature with 4 feet and a massive beak like snout.  They try to crack through its armored plates but it is very difficult.  They do some wounds to it but it is slow going.  The bulette crashes into the set spears of the pikemen and slays 2, then seriously wounds cindy.  Things are not looking good and Beacon begins casting dispel magic on the stargate envelope, hoping to get the party to escape should they be unable to defeat the bulette.  The next round brings much more luck and skill to the party and they against all odds do considerable damage.  The creature reacts with a last ditch attack exposing its soft belly but getting off 4 attacks on 4 different victims.  Laurentis fighter henchman is squashed outright, but the others survive their attacks.  They manage to slay it by the weight of hits on its soft belly and the creature dies.  The druid harvests several of its armored plates as they can be crafted into magic shields, and the stargate finishes growing to full size and engages into active function.  Through the activated stargate they see the interior of Boldvay’s metal dome, everything under the 1 mile wide ½ mile high dome is made of or coated in metal.  They step through the portal and a surprised Boldvay is pleased to see them.  They promptly tell him of their success and eagerly await the other half of their pay.  He shows them around, the lower level contains the stargate, the upper level his main fortress.  He shows them the village of Kangsta clerics, the tribe of orcs, and the human pagan village run by his druid Britt.  He is grateful, and lets them know that the stargate has now been set up to travel to Nappendixia, Jull-Nar, and Red Frontier and back.  This is good as some of the party, Arthur, Ricarda, Robin, and several mercs were left behind in Bartertown, and they would like to at some point return to get them.  Boldvay tells them they are welcome any time to stay in his dome as a safe downtime location, and he will send them through the stargate should they want to use it again.  He also offers to teleport anyone who wants to stay somewhere else to a different location, and Beacon gets teleported back to the Power Station, the rest stay with Boldvay.  Well deserving of a long rest, the party begins their downtime on 3/13.

Session Notes-  So the adventure is over, the stargate mission has been completed and the PCs made it back home. It was a very fun ride running this adventure.  The player base was excellent, attendance was very good, I’m pleased as a whole on how everything went.  It’s also probably the perfect time to end things at least for a while.  Elffinder is looking to get his game back and start his short Star Wars campaign.  I’m looking forward to being in that as a player, and joining another game as a player.  In all, between the 2 campaigns I've been running since mid January, I've run like 14 sessions in 8 weeks and written like 50 pages of session reports.  I really feel the session reports are important.  They allow any player dropping in or just joining access to the group’s whole history, and it’s a very easy reference point from session for tracking time, xp, and all kinds of session info.  Running so many sessions was a ton of fun, excellent practice, and it really advanced both of my games, and managed to link them together for future adventures.  New players got to check out my campaign world, and maybe seeds are planted to get some cross pollination of the campaigns, getting some new players or patrons would be excellent. The intense period of DMing was a blast, but I'm definitely ready for a deceleration.  IT’s never good when fatigue sets in and you still are trying to get things done as a DM, like writing session reports when you can’t find the motivation or running sessions to get things to a good slow down point but not feeling it and the session goes flat.  It’s important to take the break before you get to that point.  Also something that came up was the sort of balance of keeping the game accurate, and keeping the play emergent and not railroady, but being cognizant of real world issues.  For example, I told the players in advance that this upcoming session they could likely finish the adventure.  I did this because I knew in the real world we only had one or 2 more sessions before the star wars game started, and I knew we’d lose momentum/participation if we didn’t complete the adventure and tried to come back to it later. I wanted people to enjoy the satisfaction of concluding the adventure, should they defeat all the obstacles in the way of that goal.  By telling them in advance they could do it in one more session, it got them more focused to get a lot completed in that session, and they also knew not to treat the mission like a long dungeon clearing slog.  It gave them confidence they could get down 7 levels through clever play, not room clearing combats and they persevered and we all buckled down and got a lot done in the climactic final session.  

Treasure and XP-  Monsters-  20 Gorilla-men  920xp, 15 Astral Searchers  1305xp, 2 Vortex  130xp, Bulette  2900xp= 5299xp   Treasure-  100pp= 500xp= 5755xp total.  Beacon, Dog Breath and Laughing Fox get 1151xp each.  Laurentis and Cindy get 979xp and their henchmen (Dusty and Neil Young) get 172xp each.  Add % bonus if appropriate.  Beacon, Laurentis, Laughing Fox, and Cindy also get 7500gp treasure and therefore 7500xp from Boldvay’s mission reward.  PCs can choose to tip out their henchmen from 0-15% of this sum.  

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

Ned- Magic User 1 and Lucky- Illusionist 1- souls destroyed by Astral Stalkers, Alemondro- Fighter 1, 2 pikemen- squashed by a Bulette, 5 Heavy Crossbowmen killed by Gorilla-men.  #39