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Nappendixia Campaign 3.0- Session 124 AD&D

 Nappendixia Campaign Session Report

Session #-  124 Session Date-  3/20/26

Time Passed-  5 days 

Roll Call-  Godhard- C10

2x P5 hench

Harry- T8

Kenny- M/U10

Boyo- C8

2xhench

Laurentis- C9

Adventure Log-  With a lot of the party wrapping up training from the defeat of Bartertown, scouts are sent out from Fort Dawnbreak to see if any more giant raids are coming.  Finding no giants after a few days in the field, the party gears up for an expedition back to the steading.  They fear they have left it alone for too long.  They take a larger party of cavalry to the old hamlet on the cliffside they liberated previously.  Here they bivouac the cav and horses, and head out on foot down the cliffside and back to the cave they were using to scout the hill giant steading.  The evening of the 23rd they arrive at the cave and during a meal and setting up camp they discuss if they should perform a nighttime raid or wait until dawn.  They decide to wait until dawn after Harry scouts the area using invisibility and a broom of flying.  He sees that the giants have acquired some new worg guards in the courtyard area, and  a few more hill giant guards are now posted at the front gate and on the perimeter.  They send Harry forward first with silence cast on him.  He sneaks up to the top of the guard tower and backstabs the hill giant there, wounding it badly but not killing it.  He drops down a rope for more of the party to climb up and squares off with the giant in the silence.  Laurentis makes it up into the tower and helps slay the giant but not before it dives down the stairs out of the silent area and yells out for help.  A huge melee breaks out in the lobby of the steading with giants and ogres coming out from interior doors, and the hill giant guard at the front gate getting involved too.  Kenny manages to create a wall of fire, blocking off 2 of 3 of the doors, and the giants and ogres already in the room are taken out.  They quickly leave through the one door not affected by the wall of fire.  In this part of the steading, they find a barracks full of juvenile hill giants, still dangerous, and they get the drop on them while they are still rousing, and slay them outright with the help of a wand of lightning.  A little further on as the yells and movement of defense grew, they encounter a room with several female hill giants, and one is the aggressive matron of the clan.  She attacks the party, but is cut down.  The other giantesses refuse to fight, and instead negotiate to share the matron's treasure and some information on the steading to the party.  They get some potions and some gold, and find out the giant chief’s trophy room and bedrooms are just ahead.  Kenny casts hold portal on what fortunately turns out to be the chief's bedroom door, and they pilfer both the trophy room and the queen's bedroom (after dispatching her pet cave bear) while the chief pounds on his held door.  They manage to escape the area just as the chief smashes through the door and the wall of fire expires.  They flee out of the steading with the queen’s jewels and a magic shield.  They make it back to the hamlet and wonder what the impact of the queen's stolen jewels will be on the tribe.

Session Notes-  Once again proved you can run games with no prep.  I had a super busy week at work and had no time to think about the game at all this week.  Regardless, players still had several choices about where they could take the game in ways that I could handle with 0 prep.  We also had a little discussion this session about some different ways the game could go from session to session including further assaults on the steading, mass combats vs the nearby brigands, both threats that will need to be dealt with.  We also have the option of playing with the Gamma World PCs that made it through the portal and using the conversion rules in the DMG, restarting with some 1st level PCs, and even having sessions run for/by Godhard in his new domain once set up.  

Treasure and XP-  Monsters-  3x Hill Giant 5640xp, 3x Ogre 635xp, 12x ogre 2125xp, Matron Hill Giant 1808xp, Cave Bear 755xp= 10,963xp.  Treasure-  3000gp, potions- hill giant control, extra healing, healing, poison, +3 Shield, gems- 1x2000gp, 1x5000, 3x1000, 4x500, 8x100, 5x50, 8x10gp= 17,980xp  Total= 28,943xp/ 4 players= 7236xp each.  

Graveyard-   4 Med Cav, 5 Lt Cav- smashed by Hill Giants outside Fort Dawnbreak.  Stigr (will be raised by Godhard) and more Med and Lt Cav- Blasted by Fireball from the Brigands M/U outside Fort Dawnbreak.  (session 122)

Laurentis of Red Frontier- turned to stone by a Medusa in the Ghost Tower. (session 123) Recovered with a Flesh to Stone scroll.  

Nappendixia Campaign 3.0- Session 123 AD&D

 Nappendixia Campaign Session Report

Session #-  123 Session Date-  3/6/26

Time Passed-  2 days

Roll Call-  Boldvay  M/U12

Godhard C9

Laurentis of Red Frontier  C8

Kenny M/U9

Harry T7

Adventure Log-Adventure Log-  Harry the Thief returns, locating Fort Dawnbreak after some time on his own.  He is so intrigued when he hears of Boldvay’s option to try to use the Soul Gem to eliminate the Blood things that have taken over Bartertown that he implores the party to try the plan, ever regretful for letting the original blood things they encountered get away to multiply to such extreme levels.  They decide it should be attempted immediately, with this threat to the north, and the lack of any decent sized settlement from which to recruit troops nearby, a very needed resource.  All is arranged via clairvoyance communiques with Boldvay, and on the 6th they begin by using the amulet of recall to open the portal to the Ghost Tower.  Stepping in, they find themselves in a kind of time tunnel, with civilization and celestial bodies gradually ticking backwards, as directly ahead they approach the ruined tower regressing through time and reassembling itself.  Just before arriving at the tower, their path diverts and plunges deep into the ground, ending in an open underground chamber void of any doors.  The tempest of the time tunnel swells when they step through, Boldvay can barely hold it back with the amulet.  He implores them to get to the top quickly, find and grasp the gem, and he will be called to them via the amulet when he can cast teleport and bring them back to Bartertown to unleash them gem on the blood things.  They step into the room containing nothing but 4 stone chaise lounges.  A rhythmic beeping begins, and Godhard calls for everyone to recline in a lounge.  At the 5th tone a massive force upwards hurls the entire chamber up.  After a few seconds of this it rests again, and a hole is revealed in the ceiling.  Harry investigates it with his broom of flying, emerging into a wispy, windy, and foggy area, with nothing but loose stones and gravel for a floor.  After dropping down a rope and resembling the party they realize they can only see about 10’ through the fog.  Unbeknownst to them, each level of the Ghost tower embodies the 4 elements, and they have just entered the Air level.  First they are dive bombed by a Heircosphinx, then nearly speared by Pteranodons after finding the iron spiral staircase up to the next level.  They never do locate the sphinx’ treasure, The next level represents the element Earth- it consists of a labyrinth cut from a dense forest growing from mounds of rich soil. They are ambushed several times by Su-Monsters- 4 armed monkeys with mental blast powers. After narrowly defeating several ambushes of them, they encounter a hooded figure tending a garden. She reveals herself to be a medusa, and Laurentis is turned to stone by her gaze, however the party reflects her gaze back with a mirror, and defeat her. To get Laurentis stone form back home to find a flesh to stone spell, they place the stone of diminution in his open palm, and shrink him down and store him in a pack in hopes to revive him later.  They find some magic bracers amongst the medusas treasure and find the stairs up to the next level- Fire.  They emerge onto a series of narrow stone pathways set just inches above a lake of fire.  At the far end they spy a fire giant, a pile of boulders, and another iron staircase.  Harry turns invisible, planning on setting up a backstab, while Kenny casts a dome of force over the fire giant’s pile of boulders, stymying any missile attacks.  He also takes out some emerging fire bats with his staff and wands while Harry takes the broom up over the lake of fire to get closer to the giant and backstab.  He is creeping ahead silently when he enters an area of reverse gravity, and is hurled upwards towards a hole in the ceiling, through it he sees a huge lake suspended upside down in the reverse gravity.  He mounts the broom again just before falling through, and continues forward.  Kenny also casts fly to quickly engage the giant and it is slain after wounding several of the party.  The giant's treasure includes a ring of featherfall, and the stairs near him are revealed to be false.  Using the still active fly spell and the broom, they navigate the hole into the reverse gravity water level.  Several large fish await them in the water, but the flying avoids this.  They find a hatch amongst some thick jagged coral reefs and enter into the final level- the Soul Gem level.  The white marble floor of the level is divided up into 8 pie slices, delineated in black onyx.  As they emerge and settle on one of the slices, another slice is struck with a blast of bright white energy emitting from the gem.  It shimmers with a nearly invisible force field around it.  They approach the gem, but their slice is next selected as the quadrant to get blasted, and both Godhard and Kenny are turned ghostly white, and one of their magic items is drained of power.  Harry is more unfortunate in that he is actually sucked into the gem, first his soul, then the rest of his corporeal form.  He finds himself trapped inside the gem.  Kenny tries magic, and Godhard tries blunt force, the smashing mace destroys the force field and he reaches out to grab the melon sized gem.  It tries to take his soul, but his faith resists.  Boldvay is immediately summoned to the moment, and with a teleport they are all whisked away with the help of the amulet back to Bartertown.  Arriving, Godhard drops the gem into the hands of the first imitation citizen of Bartertown.  The guard at the gate grasps the gem, and the gem, finding no soul, causes the creature to explore in a haze of gore.  The gem immediately attaches itself to the next Bartertowner, and it subsequently explodes.  This chain reaction of bloody explosions courses through the 2000 person population of the town, fountains of gore and blood everywhere, but no souls to be found.  The stress on the gem causes it to fracture, and Harry manages to squeeze his ethereal form out of the gem back to mortal form rejoining the party.  The last creature to be tested by the gem is Auntie, who at this point has fully transformed into a massive alien symbiote creature, complete with silver mohawk and giant hoop earrings.  She enters a test of wills with the gem, and both explode to atoms.  Afterwards, lamenting in the haze of gore that now covers all of Bartertown, Boldvay has one last trick up his sleeve.  He calls forth to a yonder ridge, and emerging is Papagallo in his strange vehicle, along with the juggernaut, and several hundred troops and citizens.  He plans to clean and purify the town and restart the settlement, and Boldvay is happy for the Lawful Good leader and followers to relocate away from his domain.  He shares some cigars with the party before departing back home, but not before giving the party a stone to flesh scroll so Laurentis can be revived..  The party is happy to have a future ally to their north instead of the Blood thing threat.  

Session Notes-  Well this was a pretty epic session, lots of positive feedback at the end.  It didn’t hurt that this was the biggest xp haul I’ve ever given out, but the guys are up there with high level, pretty elite play, and they suffered through the Ghost Tower of Inverness pretty brutally, they almost lost 2 PCs.  I was inspired when perusing the Ghost Tower Module to use it as a hook to give the game a way to fix the Bartertown problem.  I love throwing in old TSR stuff in my game, it’s the true lore of the game imo.  That coupled with the always present session reports, caused Harry’s player to regain interest in the campaign, bringing an old player back into the fold.  I really appreciate this type of play, the dropin/dropout style, it’s so great for episodic play, I wish more players would feel comfortable coming back to a game they have left.  There’s always room for old players, and the session reports facilitate a seamless rejoin, the player can easily catch up with what’s been going on.  Write your session reports bros! 

• Harry’s rejoin- (from the player)

• To recap for Harry, he started as a level 6 thief in Session 75 (and shows up again in Sessions 75, 76, 78, 79, 81, 83, 84, 85, 91 and 92). I added up all the xp he has earned during these sessions and he is at 38,621, so he is close to leveling up to 7. Regarding what Harry has been up to, when in Session 102 the blood thing monsters from Outpost 31 devastated Bartertown, Harry took refuge on the second floor of the Iron Quarter's Stone Manor which he had a hand in building. He watched the horrors of chaos run wild in his town, and as a lawful neutral aligned person obsessed with laying down the law in Bartertown, lost hope and felt incredible shame for not being able to stop what happened. Harry had been with the group when they had investigated Outpost 31 and blamed himself for all the bad things that happened by not tracking the monsters when there were only a few in number in Bartertown.

• While he was thankful for being rescued by Godhard and Kenny in Session 111, he constantly thought about how hopeless it was to return to Bartertown to save the day and thus felt like a complete failure. Refusing any leadership roles or adventuring opportunities, he spent his days despairing and avoiding responsibility at the ruined keep near the Slime Cults lands with the rest of the surviving members of the Iron Company. He also spent a lot of his time reading every book that Kenny read as well in an attempt to escape reality. When the bulk of the remaining forces moved to hex 3008, he went with them to distract himself with the new lands they were traveling in.

• During Session 119, when Boldvay told the group of how the Soul Gem exists and how it might be able to defeat the blood thing monsters in Bartertown, for the first time in a long time Harry felt hope, and with that hope, the possibility of being a hero again. He thus began preparing for one more great heist to take the power to bring the law back to Bartertown and obliterate every last monster of chaos there. Harry Flugleman was back on the prowl!

Treasure and XP-  Monsters- Hieracosphinx, 3x Pteranodons, 3x Su-Monsters, Medusa, 12x Fire Bats, Fire Giant- 7779xp  Treasure- Sweet Water, Bracers AC4, Ring FeatherFall, Crown, gems, gold, silver- 28,810xp=35,589xp/ 4 PCs= 9148xp each.  + 2000 Blood Thing Monsters- 936,000xp/ 5Pcs= 187,200xp.   Godhard, Laurentis, Kenny, and Harry get 196,348xp each.  Can’t double level.  Add % bonus if applicable.

Graveyard-   4 Med Cav, 5 Lt Cav- smashed by Hill Giants outside Fort Dawnbreak.  Stigr (will be raised by Godhard) and more Med and Lt Cav- Blasted by Fireball from the Brigands M/U outside Fort Dawnbreak.  (session 122)

Laurentis of Red Frontier- turned to stone by a Medusa in the Ghost Tower. (session 123) Recovered with a Flesh to Stone scroll.