Nappendixia Campaign Session Report
Session #- 44 Session Date- 5/17/23
Time Passed- 7 days (5/17-5/23) Godhard and Bart training until 5/31.
Roll Call- Harry- T2
Bart- F1
Godhard- C2
Caolite- F1
Tomas- F2
Adventure Log- The session begins with our heroes at the Inn of the welcome Wench in the town of Lancebrass. They had made the decision to leave Fort Turjmir and head to Lancebrass to access the greater resources of the larger settlement. They arrive and begin checking out the town, looking for lodging, means to secure their treasure, and checking out all the vendors and attractions in town. Tomas has had several cups of ale and is feeling great, chatting up the local clientele and picking up some rumors. He has a few drinks with a traveler who tells him about ape men who live across the desert east in the badlands beyond. The party is dubious of his talks of “monkey men ''. Tomas ingratiates himself to a buxom serving wench, and tips her well and chats her up for rumors and information. She says he looks like a great cavalry man, and tells him of a secret grove to the north where a herd of strong horses can be found. A warrior capable of catching and breaking a horse from here would find himself with a high quality warhorse. For 25gp she offers to draw him a map to the location, and he agrees and pays her and she draws him a rough map with landmarks to look for. Meanwhile Bart and Godhard agree to arm wrestle. Bart wins easily, then challenges an old veteran traveling soldier, who accepts. Despite his old man strength, Bart’s youth and vigor manages to defeat him, and he congratulates young Bart warmly. Realizing the old man had some knowledge and wisdom about the local area, they begin to ask him questions about the thighs they have recently heard. Godhard asks about the Eyeless Void, a CE ancient god he heard once held sway over this area. The jovial warrior quickly gets deadly serious, and warns him to not go dropping that name where others may hear. He seems spooked by mention of the god, giving some credibility to the seriousness of the issue, there seems to be a need to learn more about this god, but with great discretion. Tomas asks about the ape men, and gets an incredulous look, as the man looks to see how many empty cups sit in front of Tomas, he also tells them about the desert east of Lancebrass, the Sind Desert is a SW-NE running berm of desert that runs through Nappendixia. It is possible to cross it with enough supplies and survival skills, and the terrain beyond becomes scrubland. There is civilization there, he tells them. He confirms some rumors that Harry secured that the desert has an old caravan route that runs SW-NE parallel with the desert. It can be used by travelers to speed up movement in the desert. He also confirms that there is an old wizard’s tower midway across the desert. If found it can serve as a shelter from the desert, and may still contain some treasures and secrets. They are grateful for the old warrior for sharing information with them, and they proceed to share more rumors that they recently picked up, conferring and considering all their options as to what adventuring opportunity they would like to explore. All of the new information from rumors and the warrior make them really want to move east, find the civilization out there, and the many adventure opportunities they heard about. Godhard does remind them about the rumor of the magic fountain to the north, and they decide that is a worthwhile endeavor. After attempting to find the shrine and fountain, they will then make the bigger trek across the desert. They get a night of good rest at the inn, and set out in the morning north looking for the shrine location.The travel goes uneventfully, until the second day, when they move into a hex of scrub terrain, their maps and descriptions form Naima said the trip should be entirely over plains. They pause, realizing that Stewart the ranger was a big help in keeping the party from getting lost. After conferring and looking at the map and the sun, they think they drifted east, and try to correct course by traveling slightly west all day, arriving back on plains hex, and back on course. The last day of travel, at dusk, a pair of jackals emerges from some shrubbery, hungrily eyeing the party’s horses. They make a loud racket banging on shields and yelling, and the jackals are warded off from trying to attack. They find the shrine location the next day. In a depression in the plains a stone shrine made of square stones emerges from the low spot, many old gnarled tree trunks growing over and through the stone walls. Two doors appear, one almost completely covered by a pile of large flagstones, other piles of flagstones lay about in front of the shrine. It is midday, and the warm sun shines on the rocks. The party spies 5 lizardmen, wearing no armor and having no weapons, they are sunning themselves on the hot rocks. Godhard, who happens to speak lizardman, approaches in an attempt to parley, but the lizardmen either don’t understand, or don’t care to parley because as soon as they notice Godhard, they rise to attack. The parties charge into each other, Harry trying to avoid melee, but getting pulled in, and Bart and Caolite are wounded, and one of the lizardmen falls in return. They are fearsome warriors, but eventually the lizardmen fall, the party taking wounds. They pause and do some healing and bandaging, and think it may be time to set up a camp and explore the shrine tomorrow. Before they can get a camp going, another 5 lizardmen emerge from some lowland woods nearby, they hiss at the party and see their dead comrades on the ground. Unsure if they can take down the party, seeing their numbers halved, they make a reaction check while the rather injured party gathers on some high ground of the piled flagstones and menace the lizardmen with spears and missile weapons. That is enough to get the lizardmen to retreat, and they creep back into the forest angry at their loss. The party approaches the shrine, and Harry searches for traps, and they enter into a small 20x20 room with a half staircase at the rear of the room, leading down into another chamber. Godhard shines his bullseye lantern down the stairs to get a better look, and out leaps a huge spider, landing in the room among the party, fortunately they were prepared for an attack and were not surprised. The fearsome spider is likely poisonous, ramping up the tension. It attacks Bart and hits, injuring him, and injecting poison into him, his stout constitution resists it however. Godhard cast light in its eyes, and it is blinded. Bart hefts a mighty strike, but before it lands, the blinded spider luckily strikes out and unluckily connects with Harry, who is seriously wounded and succumbs to the poison, suffering immediate paralysis and crashing to the floor, right before Bart’s slice lands and the spider is slain. Before they can collect themselves and tend to Harry, a second spider comes creeping up the stair, and before any combat can begin Harry’s body is grabbed, and the party flees from the shrine. Thankfully the spider does not follow. They hop on horses, securing Harry's body to his saddle and ride out of the area, unsure how many more spiders remain in the lair, and what the intentions of the lizardmen in the area are. After about 40 minutes Harry revives from his paralysis, only to find his Dex a little sapped. They travel on another day, and Harry’s constitution shakes off the neurotoxin and his agility is restored. They make it almost back to Lancebrass, searching for a campsite for one more night before returning. They choose some high ground, as that tactic was successful all trip, but this location turns out to be a mound of giant ants, and they pour forth from the hole. The mounted party turns and runs as over 30 ants give chase. They are chased for nearly 2 hours before the aggressive ants give up to the faster riding horses. Everyone safely makes it back to Lancebrass tired, injured, dirty, but alive, and aware how dangerous the wilderness of Lancebrass can be. No coin to show for their efforts either, they must be thankful they lived to tell the tale. They immediately begin planning a second expedition to the shrine, planning how many troops and what type they should hire for the next try.
Session Notes- another session, this one was kind of a flop for the PCs, they found no treasure and several nearly died, and they had to return with their quest unfulfilled. Spirits were high mostly, and people realized that’s just the way it goes, even the best laid plans have their hiccups. The lizardmen rolled pretty well, which started the attrition as several PCs were injured right from the first round. Then when the thief went down it was pretty much retreat or die. They were really close however, and were motivated to try again. The session started out in a newer much larger town, so I briefly introduced my city adventuring checklist that I have in the works. It’s basically just a list of all the options you can do in a town/city environment, how to add life and breadth to city adventuring more than just tavern time. I had laid out a bunch of the town’s resources and vendors over downtime and people did a good job of investigating the town, picking up rumors, shopping etc. to get the city adventure vibe going. A good bit of roleplay came about from a spontaneous arm wrestling opponent that they really chatted up, and I designed his personality on the fly. They then rolled on the encounter table, hoping for the ever popular harlot entry, and we amazingly actually rolled harlot on the table. It was quite the laugh. We then consulted type, it was a saucy wench I believe, which made sense since they were in a tavern. We did about an hour of city adventuring, and then they moved on with their plan to find the shrine. It was definitely time to move the campaign to a bigger settlement, the fort served them very well as a starting settlement, but they now have more cash and more clues and motivation to seek out more adventure ideas organically. They actually got a great deal of rumors, which I gave out to each of them privately, figuring that was a good way to encourage conversation and allow each PC to curate their own information, and decide when it should be shared. It seemed to generate a bit of discussion and ideas, actually they have already found out clues that would take them even further away, over greater terrain and distance to an even larger settlement. That settlement is also being run by a patron, so I'm really looking forward to getting that situation going- having PCs stay at a patron run settlement, getting adventure hooks and ideas from the patron and getting his assistance in stuff like developing NPCs. So definitely a lot of things to look forward to for the campaign, one kind of new thing that happened for some of the players this week is that some had 2 characters available for play, and we talked about different strategies people have for picking which character to play when you have access to both. We didn’t talk about running double characters. That is something I would allow if the session attendance was low, like 3 or less, and someone wanted to bring both of their characters. I would allow this, of course things like henchmen and hired mercs are also a very good option for beefing up a party. It’s looking like they will be trying for the shrine again next time, but anything could change, we will see.
Treasure and XP- Monsters- 5 Lizardmen 310xp, Huge Spider 181xp, No Treasure, 491xp x2 for rumors gathered, information gleaned, and plans made in town, plus rolling harlots on the table= 982xp/ 5PCs = 196xp each add % bonus if applicable.
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)
Ragenard- killed by Griffons exploring the plains west of Fort Turjmir #42
Vlana- killed by Troglodytes in the 2nd level of Zelligar’s dungeon #43
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