Nappendixia Campaign Session Report
Session #- 37 Session Date- 3/29/23 Time Passed- 3 days (1/12-1/14)
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 session begins as the party is interrupted, Mandigor having taken a solo sneak ahead is cut off by an aspis drone and 4 soldier ants in the passage leading back to the party, he is still 50 feet away form them and the drone stands to face him in single combat wielding 2 halberds. The soldier ants charge down the tunnel down towards the party in the open chamber and the combat begins. Mandigor is unable to connect very well in combat against the drones exoskeleton, but it in turn rends him several times with the heavy blades of the halberds, seriously wounding him. Ulster begins casting entangle on the soldier ants but they still are able to get off melee attacks before several are immobilized by twisting roots that grow out of the earth. Gruumsh is struck but resists the ant's poison. After taking out 2, aided by a backstab from Thantas, the party backs up and takes out the entangled ants from range. Malden and Gregory charge forward through the entangled area to aid Mandigor. They get several rear attacks on the drone, and the 3 fighters drop the drone, but only just before 2 more drones come down a side passage to flank Malden and Gregory. Ulster moves into the passage and again is able to center an entanglement of roots on the monsters, holding them fast until they can be slain by Malden and Gregory, Mandigor is able to back away with very few remaining hit points. Seriously weakened from the several consecutive combats with the ant colony, they consider retreating away, but notice down the corridor the 2 drones came from contains a chamber that looks like the queen's hive. They see her huge, stretched carapace and several grubs crawling about on the floor, egg sacs hanging from slimy patches on the walls. They fire several volleys of arrows at her, and she groans at the damage, and they notice s slick slime covering her body that seems to dissolve the wood and metal tips of the arrows shot. They want no part of acid, so opt to fire bomb her with their remaining oil reserves and continue the attacks from range. She takes enough damage from the fire as do the grubs surrounding her. Searching the queens lair they find several hollowed out egg sacs containing a cloak, potion, scroll, quiver of arrows and 300pp. Draden’s alchemy tells him the potion is healing, and he gives it to Mandigor. With that they pause, and it seems the ant lair is quiet- for now. They decide to take the opportunity to leave to go get some much needed rest and healing. Nothing follows them or attacks, and they make it back to the rocky outcropping and spend 2 days resting, and dealing out healing spells. The hirelings give up their remaining oil reserves and ditch their lanterns and torches, and Draden makes them continual light rocks, while the cavemen craft some more spears, having thrown several in the ant combats. That first night of rest, in the darkness they see a mob of torches ato the slaver’s temple high walls. The mob appears to take a group of people, the same number of Ramsey’s party, and stake them down and horrifically set them alight, the mob whooping and hollering the whole time they immolate. If that was Ramsey and his party the group say some comforting words over them, whomever they may have been, and hope to never encounter such a fate. It seems their allies inside may have met their demise. The remaining rest time goes uneventfully, save the final morning, after the party has fully healed and is preparing its next assault into the temple. They watch in the morning when a coach approaches the temple bearing a familiar figure, the black spider web robes of Harriman the wizard, the trafficker they followed from Niole Dra. He and his guards are hailed in through the front portcullis. They also notice a new patrol of orcs, this one 10 in number, that seem to be working with the other group of 20 guards. The new group seems to mostly be patrolling the northeast corner near the ruined wooden outbuilding the party has been using to enter. Draden gauges them to be about 80 feet away from the gully the party is hiding in. He creeps forward slowly using his elven cloak just close enough to get in range to cast scare. From 60 feet away the scare goes off and 8 of the orcs collapse in fear, the remaining 2 are cut down by the rest of the party, and the fear afflicted are executed. They take them out quickly enough that the other group is not alerted, and they find their old entrypoint has been boarded up, but they pretty easily manage a new one with a warp wood spell from Ulster. The door to the room with the trap door down to the ant area has a new lock hammered across the door and its jamb, they must have realized intruders were accessing the room. Fortunately Gruumsh is able to quickly pick it, and no patrols of slavers are encountered. They make it through the still quiet area of the ants and their queen, perhaps they really did eliminate them all. They move west down a passage that seems to lead away from the ants. They follow it for about 100 feet and come to a right turn heading NE. they listen, and hear water sounds in the direction of the original path to the NW. Continuing their superstition of water and mud, they opt to go right away from the water sounds. It proves to be a good choice, as they make their way back along the corridor, as they move they hear a conversation in the distance. The corridor ends a short stairs leading down onto a landing, beyond which is a big circular room with a round moat of sewage circling it. On the landing in the foreground the party sees Harriman, negotiating with what looks like a female cleric. She is telling him that the slaver’s hideout has been compromised, and in the last few days sneaky invaders have gotten off several successful raids. She implores Harriman to take as many slaves as possible before the temple is lost completely. Also in the room are 10 orc guards with crossbows, and a clutch of 12-15 of the cleric's best slaves are being presented to Harriman. The session ends with the party planning, and hoping they can get the drop on this likely temple leadership.
Session Notes- Finally we have gotten to the finale of the module, and therefore the finale of this being a module based campaign. I feel it ran its course, I would have liked to have gotten it ended a little sooner, one of our players had kid sports obligations and we had to back burner this thread of the campaign. Fortunately we had already started the 1:1 clock, and the other players already had alternate characters, so from the point of view of maintaining 1:1 time and using a milieu of characters things are successful, but we still have our main party away from the campaign map finishing up this module and still using freeze time. In fact, due to our real life time issues, that party is still in mid-January timewise. The session ended on a cliffhanger with the party getting the gist of the final battle, but I still have time to prepare like a set piece final battle. I think I will use the discord camera to loosely “battlemat” the encounter. I’ll draw out the uniquely shaped room and its features, then place minis where the party can see things, and keep other minis off the map until they are in view of the characters. Not actually move minis around per turn, but just use them to get a general theater of the mind view of the battle with enough visuals to plan cool tactics. I find you can do quite a lot with the discord camera, it's kind of like a poor man’s vtt if you get creative.
Once again I find I’m having real world time issues affecting the game. In the Red Frontier sessions I was running I found I had a limited amount of time to finish the adventure idea I was running before the other DM took back over. This caused me to not alter the game but reframe the adventure intent and and goal and give them enough detail, motivation, and clues to complete it in one final tightly planned mission. This time the time issue is kids sports is taking away one of our players for the spring on our usual Wednesday night meeting so we have to plan a special session on a Tuesday to get this last module final finished. If we had just one more week we could and then slip into full 1:1 time where none of this becomes an issue. Players just show up to the sessions they can make, and every session is episodic so you can have a different group of players each session. Once we do the one off Tuesday session I plan to just go back to our consistent Wednesday night. That’s the night we have been using for over 2 years, and granted it’s unfortunate to lose a player for a few months, I don’t enjoy planning and replanning sessions so the consistent day is important. It also makes it so that now the campaign is totally open to new players. I will be making a bigger push to get new players now that I won’t have to account for a “main party” in freeze time, it’ll all just be emergent, player driven play, episodic, and living in 1:1 time. The players already have several hirelings and henchmen, and have explored hiring mercenaries a bit, so things are shaping up quite nicely as this game transforms into more of a wargame. There are already a few forces on the board, an army of hobgoblins was encountered, they need to be fleshed out, there’s the forces at Bartertown, the forces of Lancebrass, and one of the PCs will be getting a surprise. Plus Nelson the Dragon needs to be fleshed out ideally with a patron. On that note patron play has staggered. Not much communication from any patrons lately, though I still do appreciate all the things patrons have done for this campaign, and will continue to use it all as canon and grow their ideas. I would like to get a new slate of patrons. I’m finding the giving modules to patrons as seed resources didn’t work out that well. I had a few patrons kinda get jazzed about 1 of the module ideas and develop it a little, but not much traction. I think I will reassess what I have as patron slots, and try again, this time giving patrons more freedom to make their own ideas. Trying to integrate patrons while also trying to manage a hybrid freeze time/ 1:1 time game made the patron thing difficult to stick. I had some interest from some old high school friends on patron play, so I think I may develop a new pitch for them all and see if I can hook 2-3 people in as patrons all at the same time who all know each other. That may be a stronger tactic. Anyway this session report is getting a little scattered, nonetheless, I’m really looking forward to the next phase of the campaign of fully 1:1 time, emergent play, random tables, and player choice.
Treasure and XP- Monsters- 3 Aspis Drones 1620xp, 4 Soldier Ants 384xp, Aspis Cow 1840xp, 20 Larvae 960, 10 Orc 150= 4954xp. Treasure- Cloak, Potion, Scroll, Arrows, 300pp= 4720xp. Total = 9674xp /6 PCs = 1612xp each. PCs 1612. PCs with Henchmen- 1371, 241 for the hench.
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
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