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Post by Erik Larson on Aug 27, 2023 7:35:25 GMT -5
So... Lareth's unholy symbol is an upside down golden d4? An excellent representation of it, in my view, yeah. Or flattened into a triangle.
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Post by Erik Larson on Aug 27, 2023 7:37:31 GMT -5
I debated on whether or not I was going to include the EEG in the campaign. I was leaning 'no' for a while, but now that I am planning on expanding the adventure I have been tossing around a few ideas. I'm thinking the cult of the EEG was active in the area in the past, and there are dungeons related to that original cult in the area. The ToEE was a ruse, but it was built on a site that already had an evil reputation. With the Temple rising again, but no sign of Zuggtmoy, and Iuz still keeping a low profile, followers of the EEG have come to the region and are attempting to infiltrate the ToEE and make it a cult really devoted to the EEG. Another version is that the EEG is not involved, but the cult was active in the area in the past, and the Temple was built on a former site, and there are other ruins in the region that are related to the EEG, and the Temple, and the players, ma be looking for them for elemental related magic. I like that layered approach. It wasn't that Elemental Evil was the EEG, but some earlier fane had the right stuff for Iuz's and Zuggy's ruse. And that stuff turned into the nodes.
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Post by Scott on Aug 27, 2023 11:29:10 GMT -5
We cancelled the game last night. Found out a few hours before the game was supposed to start that the 'bug bites that weren't going away' ('well stop scratching them') on Liam's arm ended up being impetigo. Liam, my 13 year old, hangs out in the area we game in on a daily basis.
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Post by GRWelsh on Aug 28, 2023 13:55:14 GMT -5
Bugs can be pretty annoying this time of year. I got stung by bees twice in the past month and had some allergic reactions. And mosquitos drive me crazy after sundown when the lights are on above my back porch. I guess the creative thing to do is filter these experiences into monster encounters... A giant insect that makes you scratch uncontrollably if you fail to save versus poison!
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Post by Scott on Aug 28, 2023 15:49:17 GMT -5
I just had to deal with two ground hornet nests. And of course the ever present threat of ticks.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 28, 2023 16:15:56 GMT -5
Just this past weekend, an acquaintance, who is into gardening, told me that they deliberately "plant" wasp nests to kill the nearby insect pests. I never even heard of that.
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Post by GRWelsh on Aug 28, 2023 21:03:25 GMT -5
That could be an idea for a monster that plants giant insect nests to keep away other monsters or act as guards and goes back to the symbiotic relationships EGG suggested in OD&D. In a recent game I had piercers in a troll cave lair as they couldn’t hurt it permanently…
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Post by Scott on Sept 9, 2023 23:36:07 GMT -5
We played tonight. The party started in Hommlet. The gnome the party rescued from Lubash has asked the party for an escort back to Greenway Valley. He said they could find a buyer for the small sized magic cloak while they were there. After the party had rested a bit after their last trip to the Moathouse, Elmo met them at the Inn of the Welcome Wench and led them to one of the private rooms. In the room were Terjon, Jaroo, Burne, Rufus, and Adalgar (the Village Elder). Elmo had told them what had expired on the last trip to the Moathouse and brought back one of the cloaks with the Eye of Fire symbol on it. The assembled council gave the party a short history lesson on the Temple, and explained that they were, obviously, concerned with recent events. They explained to the party that they needed more evidence that the Temple had really returned, and this was not the work of imposters using the Temple symbols to intimidate. If possible, the party should bring back prisoners alive. The party agreed. They told the gnome if he could wait a few days they would take him home. The gnome said he would travel with a caravan if one came through, but otherwise he would still be in town. The next day the party returned to the Moathouse. They returned to the corridor with the cells and Zombies, and there were more zombies there than there should have been. Lareth had re-reanimated some of the killed zombies since the party’s last visit. The party ended up turning the zombies and fleeing back to Hommlet. They decided to take the gnome home. They made it to Greenway Valley without incident. Mingled with the gnomes for a few days, sold the cloak and headed back to Hommlet. As the party was nearing town they spotted a loan figure approaching them. It appeared to be a farmer who was badly injured. He was staggering and had a blood stained rag wrapped around his head. The party was suspicious and told him to stop. He kept trying to come closer but the party threatened to attack if he didn’t stop. Seeing how things were playing out, the brigands in hiding attacked. The ‘injured farmer’ drew a weapon and attacked. A volley of arrows rained down on the party. Mike’s monk PC knocked an arrow aside that would have hit him. Jerin cast entangle on the brigands who were hiding and they all failed their saves. The monk hit the original brigand on the road and successfully stunned him. Several brigands outside of the entangle area of effect fled. The party killed some of the brigands and took several back to town and turned them in to Rufus and Burne. They recognized one as one of the laborers working on the castle. After interrogating the prisoners they did learn the Moathouse was the base of operations for whoever recruited them, but they had only been to the upper ruins, and all communication was through a currier and they did not have specific details.
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Post by Scott on Sept 11, 2023 7:56:34 GMT -5
After returning from selling the cloak, everybody in the party made it to level 2. After the meeting the party inquired about Rufus or Burne coming with them, but then changed their minds when they found out the cut they wanted. The party went back to the ruins and headed to the zombie corridir again. Even though they had alreay seen that the zombies they destroyed previously had returned, they proceeded as if they only expected a few zombies to be there. They again saw the two zombies at the southern end of the hall. The monk, assumng most of the cells would be empty because they had already killed the occupants, opened the northernmost door and was attacked by the two zombies within. The overconfident party declined to try to turn the zombies at this point, and round after round more zombies emerged from the cells. The party did not start out in a good tactical formation, and were quickly in trouble. Once they realized it the cleric decided to turn the zombies, made the turning roll, but only rolled a 1 on how many. The only thing they kept this from being a TPK was Elmo. As it was, the monk PC was killed and two others ended up unconscious by the end of the batle.
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 11, 2023 13:14:01 GMT -5
The players think Rufus and Burne are too expensive and then they have near TPK... It's an all too familiar course of events!
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Post by Scott on Sept 11, 2023 13:20:39 GMT -5
I am pretty sure they will reconsider after that.
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Post by Scott on Oct 8, 2023 11:35:21 GMT -5
The party was in the common room at the Inn of the Welcome Wench when the noticed a gnome walk in. The small demi-human scanned the room, focused on the party, and approached, “Are you be the party that rescued Krim (the gnome the party resumed from the dungeon) and brought him home to Greenway Valley?” The party stated they were. The gnome then bowed and introduced himself as Torb, nephew of Krim, and he wanted to join the party to help fight those responsible for torturing Krim and killing others he knew. The party agreed to let Torb join the party. Torb is Mike’s new PC, a gnome 1st level thief. The rest of the party now: Jilleene; 2nd level human fighter Bertram: 2nd level human cleric Rando: 2nd level human ranger Jerrin: 2nd level human druid Roswell: 2nd level human magic-user Additionally, during the downtime Jerrin used animal friendship to tame a wolf and large hawk. After the last debacle the party revisited the idea of hiring Rufus and/or Burne. The party settled on Rufus. When ready the party headed back to the Moathouse and were planning on exploring the torture chamber. They were again surprised when the zombies were back and finally realized there must be a cleric around reanimating them. The party did much better against the zombies this time, and rather than waiting for all of the zombies to emerge before turning them, they attempted turning each round as they were emerging from their cells, In this way they really limited the number of zombies they had to fight, and spiked the doors shut to try to keep the zombies from coming back out.
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Post by Scott on Oct 8, 2023 13:48:07 GMT -5
Elmo and Rufus are also with the party.
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Post by Scott on Oct 8, 2023 21:55:12 GMT -5
After dealing with the zombies the party moved east to explore the torture chamber. At first glance it appeared long deserted with a few cobweb strewn skeletons, but when asked specifically about the skeletons, I explained that they weren’t all old. One or two were actually pretty fresh. Looking at their map, the party saw they had no where else to go, so they decided to look for secret doors. They checked the walls in the torture chamber and didn’t find anything. They were getting ready to head back to the zombie hall when somebody said to Jerrin, “what about your wolf, can he smell anything”, and “we have a ranger, can he see any tracks?” So the party started investigating the floor, and found a trail of blood drops that lead to a pillar. Searching the pillar revealed a secret door, beyond the door iron rungs set in the stone led down. One of the biggest, long lasting dilemmas the party faced was should we take the wolf down the shaft, and if so how do we get him down? The eventually decided to take the wolf. They tied a rope to the druid and slowly let the rope down as he carried the wolf down. Anyways, after the finally got to the bottom the followed a narrow tunnel until it ended in a dead end, and nobody was surprised when they found another secret door. The door opened into a small tomb that showed signs of ghouls: a coffin on a stone slab had been broken open and the body inside torn apart and eaten. The tomb opened up into a long hall lined with other crypts and they could see four humanoids squatting just at the edge of their light radius. The humanoids rose and advanced, one uttering in a hideous voice as they approached, “fresh meat!” Bert tried to turn and failed. The party realized that they should invest in some missile weapons as the ghouls advanced. The ghouls one initiative on the first round, and after half a round, with three party members paralyzed they thought they were done for, but the ghouls did not have many hit points and the party was surprised how quickly they went down.The combat ended with no more party members being paralyzed, but it took an hour for the paralysis to wear off the party members that were.
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Post by Scott on Oct 9, 2023 12:10:58 GMT -5
While they were waiting for the paralysis to wear off, the rest of the party did a walkthrough of the crypt, but they were too afraid to go into any of the individual tombs. They did see the broken out back wall at the back of the tomb the should were sitting in front of and the passage out. When everybody could move they decided to take the passage out. A series of turn left, through the door, etc. and they found themselves opening another door. Jilleene pushed the door open and was surprised by a human wearing a black tunic with the gold symbol they had found on the cloaks in the supply rooms. He was holding a crossbow. His point blank shot sunk a bolt into her chest.He then started making a strange hooting sound, dropped his crossbow and drew a sword. The decisions the party made over the next few rounds absolutely saved them. The front rank quickly killed the guards at the door. Roswell put the remaining troops in the initial group to sleep. Because they assumed there were more guards they rushed forward as fast as they could and ended up creating a bottle neck between the first guard room and the room north of it where the remaining guards were stationed. I’ve been using strict line of site rules for spell casting so far this campaign, so the party could not cast any spells for a while, but more importantly, neither could Lareth. After a few rounds the party, not knowing what was in store for them, started to break through the bottle neck, and immediately Lareth cast a hold person spell. Rando was held, but the other targets saved. The new thief tried sneaking around a few times for a backstab and failed every time. Jerrin and Roswell maneuvered around the far far side of the melee until both Lareth and his lieutenant were visible. Roswell cast his magic missile and Jerrin cast heat metal on Lareth and his lieutenant. Lareth used resist fire to nullify the heat metal spell on himself, but the lieutenant started cooking inside his armor over the next few rounds. Lareth used his last hold person spell and both Roswell and Jerrin failed their saves. I ruled that heat metal was a concentration required spell and the hold broke the spell. The party was closing in on Lareth now. His next few spells were all disrupted, He tried to bribe the party but they refused. Eventually Bertrim, with a rear attack bonus, dealt the killing blow to Lareth, who was the last villain standing. The battle had been raging for a long time, and we called it after Lareth fell.
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 10, 2023 9:13:51 GMT -5
Rando is such a rando name. Is that the same player that came up with 'Plasolder'?
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Post by Scott on Oct 10, 2023 9:48:06 GMT -5
No, Rando is Liam, my 14 y/o son’s PC, and it is gamer slang for random. Plasolder is now Roswell.
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 10, 2023 9:57:09 GMT -5
I know it's gamer slang for random. I have nephews at ages 21 and 17. I just thought maybe there was a pattern forming with the lazy naming convention. Jokey or nonsensical names used to bother me, but now I just don't care anymore.
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Post by Scott on Oct 10, 2023 10:32:12 GMT -5
He didn’t initially pick Rando as a name. At the start of the first game he still couldn’t think of a name and his brother told him to just go rando, and that’s what everybody started calling him for the rest of the game and it stuck, Rando the Ranger.
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Post by Scott on Mar 10, 2024 19:28:32 GMT -5
We played last night for the first time in a long time. The party was approached by the traders who told them they heard that there was still suspicious activity going on at the Moathouse. They offered to sponsor the party for an expedition to investigate; they'd even throw in a man -at-arms at no cost. The traders were working with some reinforcements at the Moathouse snd and were planning a ambush. The party entered the upper works and were surprised by two groups of brigands, one from each of the side passages, and a round later the leaders emerged from the Black Chamber. The encounter turned out to be more dangerous than I expected, thanks to the surprise and the bandits being within melee distance with the surprised party, A few speels got ruined, but the party took the leader out with a heat metal spell. The lieutenant tried to escape, but the party caught him and charmed him. The party M-U was knocked out, but the killed or drove off all the brigands. From the charmed lieutenant they learned that they were expecting the party, but only the leader knew who from town told them. The party suspected the man-at-arms, so they took him again a few days later, but this time they stopped just out of town and cast know alignment and charm again. They discovered he was chaotic evil and the charm worked and he told them the trafders were working with the inhabitants of the Moathouse and had arranged the ambush. The party plan on confronting the traders in the next session.
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