Nappendixia Campaign Session Report
Session #- 49 Session Date- 6/28/23
Time Passed- 6 days (6/28-7/2, rest 7/3) Max and Stigr training 7/4-7/11, due to 7/5 being a holiday. available 7/12.
Roll Call- Worm- MU1
JB- R1
Stewart- R3
Maximililion- F1
Stigr- F1
2 Lt Foot
Tomas- F3
Adventure Log- 6/27- many of the Bartertown PCs spend downtime pondering and/or asking around town about the supposed Megadungeon to the west. Several get confirmation of its existence, and Stewart and JB, both rangers confer and think they can track the party there. That night many of the party are visited with a dream, an abstract vision of a mountainside situated on the red dusty badlands of Nappendixia. The mountain has an odd landmark of a skinny metal lattice tower in the field to the south. The mountain itself seems to be a woman’s sleeping face half submerged in the earth. They awake the next morning and confer they had the same dream.
6/28- the party equips themselves for travel and heads west, the first evening they are encountered by a large caravan of desert merchants from the north. They share that they are headed to Bartertown to try to establish trade. They have some fine silks, incense, and well made barrels and pottery. They share camp for the night, share some stories and depart in the morning.
6/29- The Summer heatwave continues, however the day is met with a deluge of high rain and wind, causing a washout in the plains ahead, the party must alter its course, and in doing so gets lost. When the rain clears, they are able to use their goggles to locate the tracks of the merchants and lose a half day of travel.
6/30- by midday, the party spies the metal lattice tower, and a mountain beyond that vaguely has the facial features of the dream formed on its side. The party approaches from the south and are shocked at the sight they see. A mass melee is occurring on the mountaintop and the plains at its base. The 2 sides are Gorilla men mounted on horses with lances, crossbows, and nets. The other side is made of small 1-2 foot tall naked humanoids. They have the proportions and morphology of in shape humans both male and female. They are wild and filthy and attack the gorilla men in large blocks with sharp wicked looking knives. Some of the combats are very brutal resulting in deaths, others are more scuffles or fistfights. The melee chaos is everywhere. The top of the mountain is very flat, and there is a large stone rectangular structure built on top of the mountain. There seems to be a bivouac of gorilla men defending the south side of this structure, they seem to have some access down into the structure. At the north end of the stone structure there is a ruined small keep that is heavily occupied by the little naked manling humans. They seem to surge out from the keep in waves attacking the gorilla men. Reinforcements of manlings seem to be arriving from the north, while a road leading south has several fresh units of gorilla men arriving. While spotting here, they are approached from the rear by a Bartertown patrol, Auntie’s mohawk punks, they sighted the group this morning and followed them here, they are amazed by the sight outside the megadungeon. After several hours of observing, the party sees two cave entrances on the mountainside. One is high above a cliff side on the east side, and the other is at the top of an alluvial fan that spreads off the west side of the mountain at a much gentler slope. They decide to time an approach up the fan when there are few gorilla men troops massed on the west side. The mohawk punks agree to cause a distraction and then ride hard to the south, it catches the attention of some gorilla men who move away from the western side of the mountain. They make a break up the loose boulders of the fan and halfway up a giant ant nest is revealed and 2 ants emerge to block their path. The ants are pretty easily defeated, and a bag of possible loot is spied in their rocky hollow, but a quick grab missed and they must rush inside the cave mouth to avoid being seen. A small rough cave is found to have a 20’ diameter hole open from the floor and an iron spiral stair attached to one side. They descend to squared off engineered dungeon corridors. They hear buzzing to their right, so go left down several passages to a chamber with a mechanical iron snake coiled around a treasure chest which activates and begins guarding the chest upon entry. Despite its iron hide Max and Tomas are highly skilled, and pierce it and it fizzles and deactivates. Tomas wears it as a fancy necklace. They find a pile of electrum and several magic items which are later identified by Waiofar. They encumber themselves with the treasure and decide to exit, having found a possible entrance should this be the alleged megadungeon. However when they get near the iron staircase, a horrible hook horror comes bounding down a corridor right at them. They lose initiative and are unable to avoid the encounter completely, but JB manages to fire a bola shot and entangle the beast enough to make a hasty retreat up the stairs and out. Another quick grab into the ant hole fails but they get back to their rocky outcropping unseen.
7/1 & 2- after camping in the rocks, they travel back east to Bartertown. A nest of cobras is easily avoided, and the rest of the trip goes uneventfully.
7/3- rest and resupply, light duty
Session Notes- **EDIT- my vacation brain thought it was Wednesday, but it's Tuesday today, day of writing. No worries, Bartertown Independence Day is now July 5th!** Trying out a more abridged version of session notes- just bullet points for each day spent in session, made things a little briefer. I was on vacation all week and definitely don’t want to get in a situation where I’m backlogged on session reports. It’s really important to get the report done and published before the next game session. Once you get behind on this it’s very hard to get caught back up. Session reports are super essential for legitimizing your campaign. It no longer exists solely in the group of players' minds, but is accessible to new players and any observers of your game. It’s definitely a steady process, my blog got basically zero hits for a while, but now I’m getting like 40 hits a day and people are definitely reading the reports. At the same time, these reports can take a good 3 hours to produce, and the DM deserves a break every once in a while, thus the shorter version.
Also serendipity has struck, as it is today a session day, and it’s also a holiday, July 4th. Lately some discussion has come up about 1:1 time and how difficult it must be to run. Not so at all if you simply use our normal calendar, don’t change anything, don’t give your days of the week or months fantasy names, and don't make up fake holidays. None of that. Completely lean into what exists on our own calendar. Example i’ll be trying tonite- it’s July 4th, that’s Bartertown independence day, when the first group of Auntie and the fledgling bandits broke away from the constant pursuit form the police state of Hartford to the east, and founded the stretch of scrub and badlands that is now Bartertown. Tonight there will be celebrations, barbecues, and fireworks, diplomacy is to the max- all grudges between the factions are put aside in celebration of Bartertown Independence. So I’ll run a city adventure tonight, who knows if people will attend, some may be at 4th of July parties of their own. But I’m going to try making this casual holiday that players still may be around to attend, an opportunity to use a real holiday in game.
Treasure and XP- Monsters- 2 Giant Ant 46, Iron Cobra 98= 180xp. Treasure- 11,000ep (5500xp), potion super heroism 450, scroll- message, hold person, dimension door 800xp, keoghtom’s ointment 500xp, splint +1 700xp= 7950xp= 8130xp total/ 6PCs= 1355xp each. Add % bonus if appropriate. Plus a Manual of Quickness was found. The party is hoping to sell it for its gp value of 50kgp (no xp).
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
Stigr’s 4 Lt. Foot- killed by Zombies on the plains of Lancebrass #45
Godhard’s 2 Med Cav- killed by Firenewt’s mounted on Giant Striders #47
Stig- brought to Death’s Door by Orc raiders at the walls of Bartertown #48 (1 week bedrest)
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