Friday, July 21, 2023

Nappendixia Campaign 2.0- session 52

 Nappendixia Campaign Session Report



Session #-  52 Session Date-  7/19/23



Time Passed-  1 day, 7/19, return to Bartertown via air that evening.  Rest 7/20, Bart, Max,and Mook training 7/21-7/27.



Roll Call- Harry- T4

Bart- C1

Godhard- C4

Maximilion- F2

Tomas- F3

Mook- T1


Adventure Log-  After spending several days of downtime in the Kenku lair, the party is a little stir crazy and ready to do some more exploring.  They manage to get a little more information out of the human that hangs around with the kenku, and he tells them a little more about the interior of the dungeon, how to go up a level to access the gorilla men and the manling keep above that, and an access down to the next lower level.  A few of the party, upon closely observing the human, realize that it isn’t actually a human, but rather a kenku in an incredibly clever disguise.

7/19-  The party checks out the green area of the dungeon, seeing if it could possibly be secured as a permanent downtime location.  They then open up and enter the orange area, returning to the room they fought the stunjelly in.  It remains empty after the combat, and they proceed to a corridor and chamber to the south, with Harry searching and poking ahead with the 10’ pole.  In the chamber his pole prods a trigger and while examining the floor a swinging blade trap releases from the ceiling.  With a split second to react he backflips out of the way, and the party marks the trigger spot and resets the trap as a potential ambush should they be pursued.  They return north and begin exploring a corridor heading west, entering a darkened chamber.  As it is illuminated and the 10’ pole prodded inside, a tile mosaic of an open eye and eyelid on the floor, the party is unsure if it changed or reacted in some way when they entered.  The room is otherwise empty and the west corridor continues.  They begin hearing the sound of mechanical movement, possibly the rolling of something on tracks or spinning wheels.  Cautiously investigating to the west, an open door rimmed with orange tiles opens into a large chamber with a high vaulted ceiling.  At the north wall sits a semicircular dais,  upon which is an eerie statue of a man whose skin is peeling off revealing a vaguely anthropomorphic creature with a central eye in its head/neck/thorax area.  Around the statue, high up in the vaulted ceiling are many metal tracks that extend out of small holes in the walls and circle around the statue in intricate pathways.  Along the tracks roll grapefruit sized spheres of various materials, clicking and sliding in and out of the walls along the tracks.  The whole mechanism has a polyrhythmic sound and they come to a crescendo of moving spheres when before the statue a portal of blackness opens up obscuring it.  Emerging from the blackness of the portal is a creature of pure nightmare- a horrific mass of gore and bones held together by linen wraps. The clerics suspect it may be smited with divine power, but again the power of turning is thwarted by the chaos of the Eyeless Void.  Next several combatants attack it with mundane missile and melee weapons, only to either miss completely or see them pass harmlessly through the creature's mass.  Only after Godhard smites it with his magic hammer, and Mook unleashes his magic giant eagle does the foul creature fall.  Upon its death a pile of 2000ep forms at the base of the statue as the last of the spheres run their course on the tracks and the machine sits idle.  The party decides to take the treasure, and the mechanism engages again and the spheres begin releasing from the walls and rolling on the tracks, reaching the zenith the portal opens again and out comes a molten hot worm about 5’ long 2’ wide made of hot moving rock.  The party chooses to cautiously run from such a bizarre creature fleeing back down the corridor past the room with the eye mural, then resetting and spying down the hall to see if they are pursued.  Max at the rear is able to see the rockworm crawl out of the chamber and actually turn and head away from the party further down the corridor.  Curious, they move back towards and into the mechanical chamber, once again they hear the movement of the spheres and enter and the portal again opens.  This time a jelly comes undulating out of the portal, groping at the party with pseudopods.  Several slices from Tomas halberd along with other combat strikes take down the jelly, while the giant eagle is instructed to fly up and snatch a sphere from a track.  It manages to grab 2, and after the jelly dies, the machine makes a clicking noise up to this point unheard, as if the machine is stuck or trying to engage.  In moments the portal opens again, this time 3 wererats leap out and attack with wicked shortswords.  Bart takes several slices, but the rats are handled fairly quickly, while Mook has the eagle return the 2 spheres, 1 of copper and 1 of sandstone back on the tracks and they roll into the walls and the clicking ends and the portal closes.  A glint of magical energy appears at the base of the statue but no treasure appears.  Relieved, they move on.  Beyond the machine room the corridor only goes 20 more feet and ends at a door rimmed in orange tile; they use the orange key to enter, despite a 2’ diameter hole bored through the door to the other side.  Beyond, no more colored tiles rim the floors or doors.  They head NW to a raw, unfinished chamber, no tile floors have been laid and the walls are roughly carved rock.  The hot floor marks the impression where the molten worm has crawled, and in this room is a second rockworm, apparently it has lived here for a while as the walls and floors of this area are littered with swiss cheese like holes boring in and out in all directions.  Bart, undaunted by the second worm, quaffs a potion of fire resistance, hoping to grapple it to submission.  He misjudges 2 things- the fact that it reacts by coiling back and launching at him fast and hard into the chest, and the fact that it is made of very heavy rock and therefore difficult to grapple.  While it is tied up with Bart however, Godhard manages to conjure a considerable amount of water directly above the worm and douse it in a gout of cold water.  It is largely extinguished and killed after a few firm blows.  The second one is quickly pounced upon and dealt with before it can back out of its tunnel and attack.  The party finds a few places in the creatures bodies where the heat and pressure conditions were right for forming gemstones, and 8 crude gemstones are pried from the creatures limp bodies.  Battered and exhausted, they creep back to the Kenku lair and rest a bit, then negotiate a fee to pay for aerial passage all the way back to Bartertown.  The kenku are eager to get rid of their guests, and happily fly them all back for 1000gp, with Mook flying on his mechanical giant eagle.  They return them to Bartertown, and reveal a bit more about the megadungeon, that a 3rd exterior cave entrance does exist, it is on the south side and obscured by some rock formations, but it is there.  Several of the party begin training on 7/21 after a day of rest.



Session Notes-  I had this issue come up a few times this week, so I’ll include it here in session notes-  My overall Dm philosophy is keep it loose until it needs to be tight.  What I mean is that I do have an idea where things are going when I drop a hint or give an adventure hook or rumor, but I don’t overthink it or have it fully planned out.  It would be a huge waste of time to not drop hooks on players until they are 100% fleshed out, just dangle the basic idea out there and if it’s ignored/ given limited interest, that’s all the development you need, you haven’t wasted any time.  I wait until players prod with a thing and give it great interest, then I scramble  to develop into the complete thing it needs to be to be run in session.  The scramble part may seem unpleasant, but actually the player interaction feeds your creativity and gives you more to work with and frames exactly what you need to flesh out and what is ephemera.  This happened with the machine sphere device in this session, the last time I had PCs interact with this device they just saw it as a spinny magic device that produces monsters to fight, and left it at that.  That’s all it was until this new crop of players started prodding at it, how does it work, what happens if I pick up a sphere, what triggers it?  This new crop of players had all these questions and wanted to mess with the device a lot.  So I had to improvise in session, and use my creativity to react to the players. After the session when they continued to ask questions about it in downtime, I then had to take the time to figure out exactly how this device would work, probably like an hour of thinking, remembering and getting inspired.  It was time well spent because my plans and response will create both more downtime discussion, and also more interaction as they will surely at some point want to use their new information to further investigate the machine.  It’s all kind of a circular process.  At the end I’m quite happy as a reactive type dm I feel my time in between sessions is never wasted.



Treasure and XP-  Monsters- Blade trap 300xp, Huecava 891xp, Ochre Jelly 246xp, Wererats 774xp, Thoqqua 193xp.  Treasure- 2000ep(1000xp), 8 gems 80gp/xp= 3484xp/ 6 PCs= 581xp each, add % 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)


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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