Recent Session Reports

Wednesday and yesterday, I wound up running three sessions worth of gaming, and man were they awesome. It's probably noteworthy to mention that my campaign currently has over ten active or semi-active participants.

First, the normal Wednesday night game delved the Dwimmermount again. The party was as follows:

Rory, bladedancer 1
Doric Bosley, cleric 2
Rain, elf nightblade 1
Whelan-Thiss, mage 1
Daymana, nobiran wonderworker 1

This group re-entered the second floor of the Dwimmermount, hewing east, having gone west before. It was basically a miserable clusterfuck for the party. Several zombies were encountered and put down easily, before a gargoyle managed to get the jump, quite literally, on Whelan-Thiss, flinging him into the wall and breaking his hand. (Mortal Wound). The party continued on a bit, finding a scroll in a desk and a trove of Zaharan books in a secret chamber. Doubling back to prepare to leave, they decided to go one more hallway, and discovered a room full of grisly bone sculptures, chief of which was a serpent with a human head.

Whelan-Thiss immediately identified it as a necrophidius, but this didn't stop it from entrancing Rory and Rain with it's dance of death. On it's first attack, it paralyzed Doric with it's venom, but with effort the party destroyed it, finding quite a haul beyond it.

The party chose to leave the dungeon, making a few trips to carry the books they had found out. This was slowed only when Rory walked into a gelatinous cube which had oozed around a corner from the western hallways.

After leaving and cashing out, Whelan-Thiss and Rain both gained a level.

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At the same time in-game, but after this session, others of the group who could not make it to the planned session chose to adventure. This group consisted of:

Olan the Incautious, barbarian 1
Trogdor, thrassian gladiator 1
Vartan, elf ranger 2

And former NPC followers Felix (fighter 1) and Gurn (dwarven vaultguard 1) now elevated to fellow (if NPC) adventurers, deserving of full shares of XP and treasure (mostly due to the fact that they know they are as badass as their former employers, and have gone adventuring themselves with their own 0th level henchmen).

Felix and Gurn mention a "cave" that they encountered on their way to some ruins they had delved, and the gathered adventures decide this would be an ideal place to go in lieu of the Dwimmermount.

Heading north, the party encounters, far off, three huge 30' worms sunning themselves on a mound of turned earth. Discretion outweighing valor (this time), the party chose to go around them.

The part continued another hour or so, finally finding an amphitheater dug into the stone wall of a hillside. There were two doors into the wall of stone, each surrounded by a motif of bones and serpents. As the party approached, they discovered a fallen pillar, carved like a stone dragon.

The party entered, and found this to be an ancient temple complex. Fights ensued with poorly-armed orcs, then with Thrassian skeletons, before the party chose to go south past a ruined Chaotic altar.

There they found a strange orb, which turned out to be a gray ooze in some form of stasis. This ooze dissolved Gurn's arm and heavily wounded Trogdor, forcing the party to retreat and ending this session. Gurn narrowly survived- Doric has Healing 3, and the party still had to blow a cure light wounds on him.

This resulted in Trogdor finally levelling up, after a good dozen or more sessions.

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Thursday night,  the following day in-game, the Trogdor party, with the help of a few others, progressed back north with a few intentions.

The adventurers were:

Olan the Incautious, barbarian 1
Sander Ulfson, barbarian 1
Trogdor, thrassian gladiator 2
Vartan, elf ranger 2
Rory, bladedancer 1
Doric, cleric 2
Rain, elf nightblade 1

And Felix, fighter 1. Gurn is on bed rest for two weeks, with a fresh new arm courtesy of the Church of Typhon.

The party decides that maybe, since they've gained some muscle, the 30' gray worms aren't so bad, so they go pick a fight. Amazingly, they succeed, only losing Sander to a worm-swallowing (which resulted in Doric and Rain having to dive down a worm tunnel to retrieve the unconscious Sander). Sander still needs a night of bed rest, so they return, and Rory levels up to 2.

The following IG day, the party returns to the temple, meeting a pack of ogres with orc corpses slung over their backs. The ogres and party eye each other warily, but the ogres suggest in halting Common that the two parties go their separate ways, which everyone agrees to.

The party finishes cleaning out the temple complex, finding the submerged skeleton of a dragon, a magic sword, and several other minor trinkets.

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I'm really very proud of all my players. They accept getting face-stabbed with laughs, and when they find good stuff or freaky things, they are definitely good for roleplay.

I've attached the dungeon that Wednesday II and Thursday I went into, entitled "Temple of the Plaguebringer". It uses one of the esteemed Dyson Logos' maps:

Dyson's Dodecahedron

I really can't say enough good things about Dyson's products, and I'm sure I'll use more of them in the future. What suited me nicely was I printed this map blank, and filled it in with random traps, monsters, and treasure, building the backstory as I went along.

The Forgotten Temple of the Plaguebringer