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)
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