Nappendixia Campaign 2.0- Session 41

 Nappendixia Campaign Session Report

Session #-  41 Session Date-  4/26/23

Time Passed-  3 days (4/26-27 travel/adventure, 4/28 rest light duty)  Bart and Caolite are in bedrest from  4/28-5/4, Harry training from 4/28-5/4

Roll Call-  Godhard C1

Bart F1

Tomas F1

Harry T1

Caoilte F1

Adventure Log-  We move back to Fort Turjmir where the new adventurers have been staying.  Godhard offers up his services as a cleric for the fort, and it is much appreciated.  He  is introduced to Naima Vance, a low level cleric who has been working at the fort as a healer for the past year.  She was formerly a member of the same adventuring group as Chance.  She thanks him for the offer as sometimes there is a need to heal horse trainers or lt cav who get injured during training.  Several party members purchase riding horses with their treasure procured from the last visit to Zelligar’s dungeon.  On Tuesday during downtime, Stewart sees a posting Godhard has made offering 10gp for information on the monster sign on the road north.  He uses his ranger skills to ride parallel to the road north scanning for any sign of monsters.  He spies 7-8 large hideous creatures staged by the side of the road in ambush.  Neither are surprised, and he spies them at a distance of over 100’, and is able to turn tail and ride off, a few creatures notice and amble off towards him, but the riding horse is swift.  He makes a sketch of the monsters upon arriving back at the fort, and gives all the information to Godhard, who is pleased with the new information, and he is paid the 10gp.  Godhard in turn quickly goes to the fort leadership to show them.  They are very alarmed upon seeing the sketch, as the caravan is expected any day traveling south down the road from the Mar-Millor region.  @ swift riders are sent to Lancebrass to mobilize troops to respond, and a squad of light cav moves out as an advance team.  Unsure if they would be any help assisting with the troop movements, the party decides to continue delving into Zelligar's dungeon, hoping they could clear out the remaining unexplored areas.  They travel in the morning, and arrive that night around 7pm, the light riding horses get them there more speedily despite the considerable wind and spring rain.  They arrive without incident, and hail the troops at the top hilltop tower.  Shortly Zellmex appears and greets the party.  Tomas, who had spent the last few days really thinking about the fire beetles in the strange cage, how they are still living.  He had purchased some picks, thinking that maybe he would chip open the cages to investigate.  In speaking with others though, he hears of the many magical tricks and traps that have been discovered about the dungeon, and there is probably something similar to the beetle cages, so he decides to wait on taking a pick to the cages for now.  Zellmex tells them things are the same around here, his snares and traps have not caught anything, and the party is welcome to explore the dungeon.  They discuss where they need to go, and decide to sleep in the secret door storage room as they did last time.  After a decent night’s sleep, they depart to head to the area where they fought the stirges as there were a few rooms near there still unexplored.  First they check on the forge room, the dead from the stirges battle still lying about.  They decide to light a fire in the furnace to burn the stirge bodies, then close the flue after the fire burns out, preventing further flying creatures from getting in.  They check a small adjacent room which reveals itself to be a mostly fuel room, some logs and coal piled in one corner.  There is also a door, which is searched and investigated and tried to force open, but it is determined it is a false door, just a distraction.  A second room nearby reveals a small room empty save a hole in the floor descending to a rough cavern 40’ below.  Harry deftly scurries down a rope the party affixes to an iron ring set into the floor.  He descends into a small rough cavern with an exit passage that leads north and south, and looking in both directions, he sees each corridor branches again.  He decides this is likely a second level to the dungeon, and returns up the rope to report before pushing his luck.  Certain the stirges area has been completely searched, they move on to the NE corner of the dungeon, to a right turn they found last week but did not investigate.  The hallways here twist around, eventually they approach a door.  Bart smashes it open to reveal a small 10x10 room with another door opposite.  He smashes through that one, into another 10x10 room, this one with a door on all 4 walls.  They decide to kick in the left door and work their way through a few more rooms such as this, clearly another of Zelligar’s strange dungeon architecture.  Finally, Tomas, pressed against a southern door in a tight room, hears the squeaky voices of monstrous creatures, and Bart kicks in the door eager to face a real enemy.  Neither party is surprised, but the adventurers are very off in this combat, they just can’t land very many hits, maybe exhaustion but the combat is quite scary despite it being only against kobolds. Several are wounded, Caolits drops to unconscious and Harry charges into combat to block the kobolds while Tomas drags Caolite’s body out of the melee, and eventually the tide of battle turns and the kobolds are defeated.  Godhard does som healing on Caolite, but the party is quite depleted on hp.  They realize the area the kobolds are inhabiting are a labyrinth of halls surrounding the strange sequence of door rooms.  They appear to have been using this odd mix of halls and rooms to set up ambushes and use guerilla tactics.  They spend time in the area searching and getting their bearings.  The kobolds have a small amount of gold in them, not nearly enough based on the amount of blood lost by the party.  As they wind their way out of the kobolds labyrinth, they make it to the farthest east corridor, and spy the series of 3 doors, the central of which is smashed and burned open.  The first room is searched revealing a humble guest bedroom containing nothing of value save a crystal goblet.  Tomas suggests the party save it to have a post dungeon delve toast from his bottle of wine.  At the second room, Harry sneaks forward to investigate, he spies a small red toad covered in warts sitting atop a pile of treasure, mostly silver, but some copper too, and possibly some gems.  The toad sits atop loungilly, small puffs of smoke emanating from its mouth as it breathes.  The treasure in open view is too much to resist for the party, despite not knowing the power of their enemy.  They decide on a quick fierce charge to overwhelm and slay the toad.  Several attacks land and it is wounded, but rears back and breathes a gout of flame at Bart, he is terribly singed, and drops to unconsciousness.  The toad rears back to breathe again, but the party wins initiative, and Tomas lands the killing blow just before the toad could breathe again, likely dropping a second party member.  Devoid of healing spells, Harry uses some basic first aid to bind and cover Bart’s wounds.  He comes around from unconsciousness to join Caolite as the walking wounded, both will need a week of bedrest upon arriving at a settlement.  They go through the toad’s treasure, and it is quite a haul, thousands of silver and copper, and 4 gems totalling 1200gp, the biggest haul so far in their short careers.  Weak and wounded, but knowing there is still one room to be searched in the SW corner of the room, they cautiously head there.  Upon arriving, they peer into a large L shaped room covered in fungi and mold of many colors.  They are taken aback for a moment by just how much fungi and mold is in this room, the colorful species alerting them to the likelihood of their poisonousness or other dangerous qualities.  They take note of the shape of the room and a few features of the fungi, and leave to head back to the fort.  

Session Notes-  So after 3 straight weeks of new people joining there is a new crew of 5-6 players that have been involved and are establishing their characters into the game.  Still it should be noted that after several weeks of new people joining the server, some expressing interest briefly then losing communication, some joining and never speaking at all, i’m finding about a 25% success rate of the amount of people who will join your discord vs the amount of people who actually follow through with an interest to play, and participate long-term.  I wonder if other campaigns that put out open calls are getting similar results.  The new crew is doing well with downtime activities, everyone has had some thoughtful ideas of things that assist their character in downtime.  Stewart’s player was first to see what traveling/scouting in downtime is like.  It can incur encounter rolls, potential for surprise and evasion.  Fortunately the PC was a ranger on a riding horse, so his sneakiness and speed set him up for success in downtime scouting, but other characters less suited may have gotten into serious trouble, it’s possible to get killed during downtime if you take on risky activities.  We also talked about the relationship between downtime and how frequently sessions are held.  With weekly sessions, the downtime days available until the next session can be quite limited.  After a few days of travel,and a day or 2 of adventure, the majority of the week is consumed, leaving sometimes just 1-2 days of downtime.  This obviously changes when sessions get more spaced out, allowing for longer downtime activities.  We had our first PC reach 2nd level, and our third almost killed.  I do not Use AD&D’s rule of death at -10, I think it’s too generous and allows for players to leave unconscious allies to lie bleeding because they know they have several rounds to act.  My rule on this is you can live to negative of whatever level you are, so 1st levels are unconscious at 0 and -1, dead at -2, and that scales as you go up in level.  It seems to be just enough to make a difference over death at 0, as we’ve already had 3 PCs benefit from this, while still making combat quite lethal.  As for leveling this is the first time in the campaign where a newly leveled PC will ask to train with an existing PC played by a different player.  The training PC will actually pay the trainer PC, creating a real inter PC economy.  Over the last week I realized I was doing some things wrong with AD&D initiative, and I spent a lot of time reteaching myself the correct way, finally really getting RAW after several years of being a little off.  The players seemed to understand, and the kobold combat went a little slow because I was being clear and trying to explain all the initiative interactions so people could start absorbing all this new information.  On a separate issue, PC rolls against the kobolds were very below average except for Bart who critted twice and missed several times.  I think the transition to the correct way to do initiative will transition well.

Treasure and XP-  Monsters-  8 Kobolds 67xp,  Firetoad 245xp, Treasure-  8gp/xp, 2 goblets 30gp/xp,  2000sp(100xp), 6000cp(60xp),  4 gem 1200gp/xp=  1710xp/ 5 PCs= 342 each, add 10% bonus if appropriate.  

Graveyard-  Rollo Tomassi-  consumed by a Bag of Devouring in Zelligar’s dungeon  #38

Ragenard- brought to Death’s Door by a stirge attack in Zelligar’s dungeon #39 (1 week bed rest)

Caolite- brought to Death’s Door by kobolds in Zelligar’s dungeon #40 (1 week bedrest)

Bart-  Brought to Death’s Door by Firetoad breath in Zelligar’s dungeon #40 (1 week

bedrest)

Nappendixia Campaign 2.0- Session 40

 Nappendixia Campaign Session Report

Session #-  40   Session Date-  4/25/23 Time Passed-  several months to the present

Roll Call-  Mandigor- ½ Elf Fighter 4

Malden- Paladin 4

Gunther- Dog

Gregory- Paladin 2 Squire

Draden- M/U 4

Thantas- Elf Assassin 4

Gruumsh- ½ Orc Thief 5

Ulster- Druid 4

Henchmen

Barry the Caveman

Julius the Caveman

Hirelings

Mondius- Fighter 2

LaSalle- Fighter 3

Adventure Log-  The party is primed to surprise the enemy leadership congregating in a below ground chamber.  The chamber is a large circular room with a stream of sewage encircling the room, 3 bridges and a staircase cross the stream onto a main circular landing.  The party has approached from the rear of the chamber, peering through a small corridor into a rear alcove of the main room, it is filled with crates and sacks, and in this rear chamber there are several orc archers and a couple of giant weasels.  The slaver cleric and Harriman the wizard are on the central circular platform, with more orc archers and a group of 10 slaves.  She is imploring Harriman to take the slaves and arrange for more to be moved because the fortress is compromised and is due to fall from the raids of good parties.  A plan quickly forms, Ulster will use speak with animal to befriend one of the weasels, if successful the weasel will obey his orders.  From there Draden will use sleep to put down the minions, and scare to try to incapacitate one of the leaders and the combat guys will rush in and attack.  The animal friendship is effective, and the weasel begins herding the slaves out of the way into the corner of the room, clearing an area for the fighters to charge across to the leaders.  Then Draden drops a sleep spell on the left side of the chamber, and several orc archers pass out, as well as several slaves who were providing cover for the cleric.  The party’s archers pepper the wizard with arrows, but most bounce harmlessly off, though Gruumsh’s magic arrow strikes deep past whatever magic protection the wizard had.  Aware they are under attack, the cleric calls out and throws a small wooden box at the bridge the party must cross to reach her.  The box lands and pops open, a small stone rolls out of the box, and after a second, a creature begins to grow from out of thin air and stands to block the path over the bridge.  Malden, Mandigor, and the melee henchmen bravely charge forward to battle the creature.  They have never seen one in person, but they guess it to be a troll from their knowledge of monster lore.  They know it must be stopped immediately, its massive strikes and ability to regenerate make this a tough foe.  The strikes prove incredibly effective, all the attacking the troll hit, and it is quickly brought to low hit points.  Then the wizard and Ulster begin casting, each trying to incapacitate the other party.  Harrimans spell erupt s with a web covering ⅔ of the rear chamber, trapping several party members and a weasel.  Ulster’s spell causes roots and vines to erupt from the ground and sides of the stream and grab and entangle the enemies in the center.  The wizard escapes entanglement, but the rest are held fast.  A few more weasels emerge from the edges of the room and try to push forward, but the crowd and positioning of the party prevents them from attacking.  If the web wasn’t enough to deal with, a thief, apparently silenced and invisible, appears behind Gruumsh and lands a wicked backstab that seriously wounds him, but the poison on the blade is resisted and he survives.  However, a nearly invisible Thantas due to his elven cloak emerges from the shadows and plants a blade in his back, dropping him.  Draden begins reading a scroll of Monster Summon 3, it will take time but the party needs the assistance.  The thief, in his dying breaths, staggers to the corner of the room, to a stone pillar type mechanism, his last bit of energy he presses down on the pillar and it descends, shortly after that, a great rumbling is heard to the west.  The next spell cast by the wizard causes him to disappear, and the cleric is the only remaining threat, after Ulster drops a produce flame spell on the corpse of the troll, making it die fully.  Mandigor charges across the floor and puts the point of his sword to the cleric's throat.  She is unfazed and simply offers up her neck if he wants to slay her.  Malden stops the violence and urges discretion, and she is spared, an angry Mandigor clocks her on the head knocking her out.  The summoned monsters from the scroll go after the remaining weasels, who lost their nerve at the death of their master the thief.  Unsure what the rumbling was, but it does seem serious, the party quickly searches the room and bodies, finding several stores of treasure and magic items, including a stone of diminution (what the troll was holding to make him shrink), a mace +1, some potions, a ring of protection +2, and the thief’s longsword +1 with a poison reservoir.  They also find some documents that reveal more of the slavers' plans, the location of their alternate base and the path their caravan takes.  They spy a ladder leading up from the rear room, and climb it to discover it leads out of the fort, they bring the 10 slaves with them.  On the surface, they see the cause of the rumbling.  The building must have been rigged to collapse part of the outer walls, they look and see the entire NW corner of the thick keep walls have collapsed, dead slavers among the rubble, and an opening from below that many slaves are beginning to emerge from.  They gather themselves in small groups on the surface, orient themselves to where they are and take off running from the fort and from Highport.  The party makes their way to the shoreline and lights a signal fire as a sign for Shadisse, the ship captain, to pick them up.  On board, they have time for Draden to identify all the magic items they acquired on this adventure.  They travel for several months west along the coast, then upriver to Niole Dra, and on through back to Orlane.  The people here are happy to see them, the curse of the town lifted, and the village back in harmony.  They travel all the way back to Mar-Millor, where they rest in Cedar Crossing and visit some of their old haunts.  Father Charleston and the church of St. Cuthbert are assembled at the temple, they have a ceremony prepared for Malden and Gregory.  He was told many months ago that after his adventure with the slavers, he must part ways with his non-LG party members, and move to the next stage of holiness in the life of a paladin.  Malden is knighted and presented with a fine magic blade as a symbol of his rule.  He is given 100 0 level man at arms, 10 1st level fighters mounted, 2 sergeants, and a lieutenant, all LG and loyal to Malden.  He is charged with some mission work, to travel south to the unknown land of Nappendixia, find the LG country of Brassmark, and work with that country to grow the influence of LG in the land.  The rest of the party are told tales of this strange land to the south, of its opportunities of open territory to be conquered, and the possibility for the adventurers to become conquerors or kings.  Mandigor takes the opportunity to ride off into the sunset, who knows when or where we will see him again.  As Malden takes command of his troop and makes preparations to travel south, the rest of the party also wonders where the future will take them.  They reflect on their first few weeks of adventuring, when they were first getting to know each other, they remember the fallen who were left behind along the way.  They remember those first rumors they heard about kidnappings happening on the road south of Cedar Crossing, and the world spanning adventure it took them on.  Who knows what the future holds for these heroes, only time will tell.  This concludes the second chapter of the campaign.  The heroes of Mar-Millor are victorious, and back in their home area.  New adventurers stir and rise from obscurity to begin their adventuring careers.  Chapter 3 will bring Nappendixia into full focus, and we will see what adventures call what heroes to future tales of glory.

Session Report-  So I’ll take a minute to talk about scheduling and real life stuff as it affects your campaign.  Obviously as adults, especially with kids/families we have busy lives and gaming always takes a backseat to kids and family.  You’re not doing right if you do it any other way.  This thrilling climax to our 2+ year game was supposed to occur in late January, but due to kids and scheduling issues, the whole group could not meet until yesterday.  Murphy’s law being a thing, my daughter decided to get herself in a situation that required a trip to the emergency room like 3 hours before the scheduled session.  Scary at first, but it worked out ok, and she is good, but coming down from all that anxiety and adrenaline wiped me out.  However I knew a reschedule would be difficult, and as we get closer to summer we tend to have more canceled sessions due to peoples various vacation plans, so I wanted to get this session finished.  The players were very understanding that I was still a little distracted and tired, I wasn’t that sharp but did my best.  I was unable to prepare for the battle much, I had to spend time looking up spell choices and a few things, but nonetheless the 40 session campaign ended on a good beat, the players victorious and flush with cash and new magic items.  The players already have some experience on the Nappendixia map, and now are free to interact as they see fit.  This also puts the campaign in full 1:1 time, all PCs are on the main campaign map, and all play from now on will be emergent and player driven.  There will be open sessions players can drop in/out of, and there won’t be narratives or modules per se.  The map is peppered with locations, some of them derived from modules, but it's totally up to the players how they want to interact with them.  They can take or leave them, check out whatever stuff interests them, leave the rest undeveloped until a future player shows interest.  I’m very excited for chapter 3.  There should be some patron activity that drives play, and there are now enough players that there will likely be a different mix of players each session.  I’ll run sessions weekly for a while until the new energy wanes, or I need a break from running weekly.  I’ll start a new document to begin Ch. 3 of the Nappendixia Campaign.

Treasure and XP-    Monsters-  Cleric 6  640xp,  Troll 821xp,  Thief 7 910xp,  5 G. Weasel 1033xp,  10 Orc 140xp= 3544xp.  Treasure-  Sword +1 Poison Res. 3000xp, Stone of Diminution 3000xp, Potion Speed 200xp, 2000gp/xp gem, 900gp/xp, 5000gp/xp, 3 jewelry 3000gp/xp, Ring of Protection +2 3000xp, Potion Invisibility 250= 18,300xp Total- 21,844xp/ 6PCs= 3641xp each.  Those with henchmen- 3095xp, henchmen get 546xp

All PCs get a 5000xp bonus for being dedicated, smart, funny players who completed a 2 ½ year arc from green adventurers to renowned heroes.  All the henchmen get 2000xp bonus, and Malden and Gregory get an additional 5000xp each for their fledgling LG army.  Gunter gets a suit of chainmail barding that gives +2AC.

Graveyard-   Larry the Caveman-  died from orc crossbow bolts in the Slavers Hideout. #29

Captain Caveman-  died in combat with an Aspis Drone in the Slavers Hideout #30

Rollo Tomassi-  consumed by a Bag of Devouring in Zelligar’s dungeon  #38

Ragenard- brought to Death’s Door by a stirge attack in Zelligar’s dungeon #39 (1 week bed rest)