Dungeons and Dragons Session Log 05

This post is about Session 05 of my Classic Dungeons and Dragons Campaign. This session was played on February 7th, 2015. We are playing with the Molvay Basic Dungeons and Dragons book with some minor house rules. The log for Session 04 is on this site while the logs for sessions 1 through 3 can be found at this site.

I am running the Keep on the Borderlands (B2) with new stories added to the sandbox for players to explore or ignore as they wish. I placed a strong hook in the game for the party to trek out to the Caverns of Thracia during this session.

The Cast of Characters were as follows. Levels of the characters are as of the beginning of the session:

Player Characters:

Wyngate, Gerald: He’s a strong tough, charismatic level 2 fighting man who wears heavy plate mail armor. He wields the Blood-Drinker Blade which is a sword that sucks the blood from all enemies he kills in battle; healing Gerald after the fight commences. It drips blood everywhere, elsewise. He arrogantly refers to himself as a golden god. He is quite pragmatic when it comes to life, death, and adventuring. (Player: Chris)

Rita: She’s an elf from a level 1 magical forest. She can speak many languages, such as Hobgoblin and Gnoll… and medusa, but she doesn’t trust the creatures whose language she knows. She will kill any poor sod that she doesn’t trust and begrudges the humans in the party for bossing her around. So watch out! (Player: Leybel)

John Henry: He’s a level 3 thief from Loftwick. He’s looking for easy money and some high stakes poker games to cheat at, I mean play in. He steals from the Keep when he thinks he can get away with it and hasn’t been caught (yet). He travels with Kate and their romance in the stuff of legend. (Player: Bryant)

Kate: She’s a level 2 cleric of Norebo, the god of gambling. She is John Henry’s woman and tags along with his gambling expeditions since it pleases her god. She has no fear, broad shoulders, and wades into battle with her mace and heavy armor. (Player: Heather)

Heime Stein: He’s a level 2 Magic-User from Ekbir. He’s whip-smart but will blurt out a rude comment now and again (who in this party doesn’t?). He’s an accomplished silver-smith and known about the Keep for his skill. He has a tendency to cast Sleep spells as soon as any serious danger arises. (Player: Carl)

Theo is not about sowing.

Theo Greyjoy: He’s a level 2 cleric of Xerbo, the god of the sea. He is a grandmaster fisherman and misses his home by the ocean in the Hold of the Sea Princes. Why he left is a mystery but likely not by choice. He is quick to judgment and to insult others; except for the ladies. He loves the ladies. (Player: Robert)

Tar-Tar: He’s a level 1 Halfling from the nearby shire. He was named their Champion and given instructions by their Sheriff to travel to the Keep and find out what might be done to stop the attacks from orcs and bandits on their wagon trains. It’s unclear if he takes this quest seriously or sees it as an excuse to be a murder-hobo like the rest of the party. He comes off as friendly and eager for adventure. (Player: SB)

Brumhilda: She’s a level 2 fighting woman who worships an odd unknown god named Freya. She speaks in long monologues about how all of her actions are to glorify “her lady” Freya. Some think her a bit touched. (Player: Renee)

Retainers (NPCs):

Raggle: Level 1 thief retainers for Gerald Wyngate. He’s a guard at the Keep but the Captain dismissed him for being a useless old senile drunk. He has a positive and respectful attitude (while sober) and Gerald has designated him as Torch-Bearer. Quite an honor.

Brother Giles: Level 1 Fighter retainer for Theo Greyjoy. He is an acolyte of Geshtai who wanted to be a cleric but his goddess never answered him.

Kobold retainers ready for battle! (Except Virgil... he didn't get armor)

Dead Mike: Level 1 Kobold retainer for Gerald Wyngate. Gerald raised him as a pup (after killing his mother and family) and stuffed him in a backpack until he was old enough to fight. The time is now.

Kanye: Level 1 Kobold retainer for Theo Greyjoy. Theo raised Kanye after slaughtering his family. He beat Kanye mercilessly until the boy would ‘act right’. Now Kanye is grown and ready for battle.

Virgil: Level 1 Kobold retainer for John Henry. Virgil is weak and John Henry is disappointed in him. Virgil wishes to fight for his master but John Henry found him too pathetic to even hand him a dagger. Kate still loves the useless pup and is proud of his doggie tuxedo.

Session Log:

Brumhilda the fighting-woman arrived at The Keep on Wealsun the 8^th (low summer). She met the guards and told a tale of her liege having been waylaid on the road en route to The Keep. She was hired to protect The Collector; a magic user of 5^th level, but The Collector’s entire guard unit was obliterated by bandits near the Abandoned Village. The Collector’s magical spells were somehow suppressed by a steam machine that the bandits wielded. Brumhilda was released by the bandits to bring their ransom notice to the Castellan of The Keep: 5,000 gold pieces worth of refined steel.

The Castellan couldn’t spare such an expanse and he couldn’t send his men to attack the bandits as more than half of them were out ranging, ironically enough, for the bandits. He introduced Brumhilda to our intrepid adventurers who were busy stuffing their face at the Frolicking Fox.

After some hijinks where the party refused to dismiss their kobold buddies from the tavern at the insistence of the Castellan’s honor guard, the party went about hatching a scheme to save the Collector and collect some phat stacks. The Castellan tired of the party’s general disrespective attitude and retired to his chambers.

Brumhilda, between monologues about the greatness of her goddess Freya, relayed to the party that The Collector was coming to The Keep to meet with the party and offer them grand rewards for any artifacts they brought back from the Caverns of Thracia.

Worth Phat-Stax.

Minor Artifact: 250 Gold Pieces

Major Artifact: 600 Gold Pieces

Epic Artifact: 2,000 Gold Pieces

The bandits were actually in the process of trying to unlock and de-trap the three chests full of riches that The Collector was travelling with. To no avail, for his locks and magical traps were quite serious and sinister, respectively.

Their eventual scheme (the planning time of which allowed the DM to mix a delicious rum and coke) involved filling wooden crates three-fourths full with junk and them placing some fine steel on top of that. Their assumption was that they could bluff their way through a meeting with the bandit leader, have The Collector freed, and be long gone by the time the bandits realized the depth of the party’s shenanigans.

The next morning, they set off, arriving at the Abandoned Village around second breakfast of the following day.

The party approached the bandits on horseback and ass-wagon on the road towards the Abandoned Village. Brumhilda took the lead on guiding the diplomacy as she had already dealt with the bandits before.

John Henry snuck off with his thief skills and skirted the edge of the Abandoned Village hiding in the high grass. The bandits didn’t notice him because their attention was on the very large crew of adventurers gathered just outside the village in front of them.

Bandits are always  Counting money and looking ragged.

Brumhilda demanded to see The Collector; the bandits obliged. She demanded they hand him over; the bandit leader scoff that he wanted to see the steel first. He got annoyed enough with Brumhilda to mention that if she didn’t hold her tongue he would rip out her heart and use it to power his mechanical man. One imagines he wanted all of the refined steel to build said man; or perhaps it was already built and waiting for a heart? The bandit leader was called The Crooked (because of his crooked teeth) and his second in command was a former barbarian from the mountains called Drago. The Crooked was intimidating due to his twisted intellect and apparent sadism and Drago was intimidating because he was huge and tattooed across the neck with a fire breathing dragon.

John Henry, for his part, had gotten to the back of the Abandoned Village and found the steel horse that the bandit leader was rumored to have. There was one mentally challenged looking bandit oiling its joints.

The bandit leader sent one of his men to check out the party’s ransom of steel. Brumhilda made her bluff check and the bandit red-shirt gave a thumbs up to his boss across the windswept field. Soon-after The Collector was released, hands tied, and urged across the field. The party unloaded the crates from the wagon because the cost of the wagon and mule had left them dangerously close to starvation (apparently).

John Henry didn’t get the memo that a peaceful solution had been found to the hostage stand-off

Steel Horse pictured above. Bon Jovi sold separately.

and he proceeded to murder the slope-head oiling the steel horse, scatter the 6 regular horses in the bandits' possession, and ride off laughing on the steam spewing steel horse. He left a playing card behind so the bandits would know who ripped them off. It was some slick thievery.

The party caught up to each other about a mile down the road towards The Keep. They arrived back at the Keep the next day because they road through the night. One can assume the bandits couldn’t make chase because they were too busy rounding up their horses that John Henry had scared off. The thief spent the travel time seeing what the steel horse could do and flaunting its ability in front of The Collector with the attention of selling it to him at a later date.

The party arrived back at the Keep and the Castellan was happy to see The Collector safe. He praised the party they received a decent reward of 100 gold pieces each from the Castellan and then the same reward (100 GP each) from The Collector. (That’s 200 experience points each for you kids keeping track at home.)

John Henry was able to convince the Collector to purchase the steel horse for 800 gold pieces. (The DM gave John Henry 100 of the experience point value and the other 700 to the rest of the party split evenly, rationalizing that the slick feat of thievery skillfulness wouldn’t have been possible without the party. It takes a village.)

The Collector met with the party the next day at the tavern to enlighten them as to his purpose of being there.

The Collector’s Crafty Classy Climactic Hooks:

The Collector.

1. He used to adventure with a great magic user named Tazimack the Red. On their first ever adventure they found the Caverns of Thracia.

2. All of the party except Tazimack and The Collector were killed. But The Collector was fascinated by the Caverns and the artifacts there. He wears some metal gauntlets depicting the image of Zeus, the king of the Thracian’s gods. The Collector will reward the party with gold (see above for values) for artifacts from Thracia. Some may be quite large, some quite small.

3. Thracia was a grand civilization in the mountains long before the Twin Cataclysms. They fell when their mongrel-men guards turned on them and killed or ran off the humans. The mongrels infest the caverns and the place is dangerous.

4. Tazimack has a home in the forest east away from the Keep and closer towards civilization. The Collector is certain that there are many magic items there and Tazimack recently died, leaving it unguarded (by him at least). The place is called Shadowbrook Keep.

5. The Collector will remain at The Keep until the middle of Harvester. He wants to depart back for Loftwick before summer ends.

A collector.

6. Brumhilda witnessed the Collector teleport his three chests of (assumedly) great coinage wealth just outside the door of the bank. The bankers then hustled it into the building and safety. The bandits were unable to deduce the chests’ locks or traps.

7. The Collector won’t join the party because he is over a hundred years old. His soul is still hanging on but his body is a mess. His teeth fell out and were replaced with a gold grill. Bling!

7. The Collector gave the party a delightfully colorful hex-map of The Borderlands. Useful!

After The Collector departed the party debated what sort of adventure they should partake on. Many options still lay in their path.

For Instance*:

The players can't say "No" to all my hooks, right? RIGHT?!

A. The Caves of F#!@ing Chaos!

B. Shadowbrook Keep

C. White Dragon on the Loose: somewhere in the forest to the north of The Keep.

D. Crazy Elf Girl Named Toxic on the Loose: somewhere in the swamp

E. Mermaids Gone Wild!

F. Shrine of Geshtai that is infected with some sort of poison

G. Talking Fish that Grants Wishes near the Shrine of Geshtai

H. The Caverns of Thracia

I. …and much much more!

*(some of these hooks are according to rumors that may be unsubstantiated.)

The party chose a combination of A and H, planning to “make a pit stop” at the Caves of Chaos on their way north towards the Caverns of Thracia. One hopes the denizens of the Caves can make a good cup of coffee. Heime and Rita petitioned the party for two days of study with The Collector so they could stock their paper-thin spellbooks with spells that would confound their future enemies. The party agreed to rest a few days for the purpose.

The Collector happily hung around the Frolicking Fox Tavern (and Gaming Emporium) for two days to allow Rita and Heime to copy spells from his book. Rita copied Shield and Light from the Collector’s book. Heime took different spells so that the two of them could trade spells between each other at a later date. (DM Note: I am using a house rule where a spell can be copied to a Magic-User or Elf’s spell book for 100 Gold Pieces per level of the spell. Each spell copied in such a way takes one day of work regardless of the spell’s level.)

Theo spent the two days of down time searching for retainers as he had become jealous of Gerald Wyngate’s many red-shirts. Theo found a retainer named Brother Giles; a fighting man who worships the goddess of Geshtai and wishes he could be her cleric.

Team Kobold!

Theo gained an additional retainer because his kobold pup, Kanye, had come of age. So did Gerald’s kobold (Dead Mike) and John Henry’s kobold (Virgil). John Henry was very disappointed in Virgil who had seemed to gain no results from his extensive weight training. One assumes Virgil worked too often on glamor muscles; ignoring his core and skipping leg day. As such, John Henry refused to even buy his kobold a weapon. Kate was still in love with Virgil and made certain his puppy tuxedo was in a fine state at all times.

The party departed north along the road. Their first destination was the Caves of Chaos then The Shire. Both locations were on the way to the Caverns of Thracia. The Caves of Chaos would be their last stop this session, however.

Three days after leaving the Keep the party came upon the Caves of Chaos. The climbed up the hill towards cave K. A few feet into the cave revealed a long and wide passageway going north and south. The floors were well travelled and smooth. Their boots echoed their steps all through the cave system. They were certain they would sneak up on no one in this eary place.

They went all the way south until they discovered two large chambers without doors at the end of the hallway. There was also a large pile of boulders and rubble blocking another passageway. This rubble could be dug out given enough time and would almost certainly lead to great adventure and treasure! The party decided against manual labor and explored the open chambers.

In the first chamber they were attacked by 8 zombie guards hiding along the walls in shadows. The group dispatched the zombies without much trouble thanks to Kate and Theo turning undead. Most of the zombies were turned and the rest were sliced and diced into mush. The zombies were wearing amulets which the clerics believed made them resistant to turning. But not resistant enough.

The next chamber was the Hall of Skeletons. A dozen skeletons lined the walls of the hall and a throne stood at the other end. The throne was encrusted with 4 huge gems (500 GP each) which John Henry coveted immediately upon seeing them. The rest of the party encouraged John Henry to go on up to the throne and pry out a gem because they had his back…way back. The skeletons sprung to life when the thief got close to the throne, of course, but the party had little trouble turning and smashing the bony minions into dust. The party looted the gems.

They turned north up the wind and echoing hallway and came to three decisions: a door on the north wall, the east wall, and a left turn of the wide passage turning west. John Henry heard a slight hissing sound from behind the door to the east; lots of snakes? The party saw lamplight flickering under the door on the north wall. They opened the northern door and the lamplight turned off suddenly. Someone was trying to pretend they weren’t home.

Rita will shoot you right in the face.

Gerald hollered into the room “is anyone there?” and some human men responded. The men appeared to be acolytes of some cult where they all wore red robes and amulets (the same as the ones the undead wore). Gerald shot the breeze with the insane evil cultists who seemed under the impression that the party might join the cult (sign me up!). Gerald convinced them to let the party all join them in the small quarters and the party filled the place up. The cultists were asked about the hissing sound and they were proud to inform everyone that a medusa lived beyond the door to the east. The cultists were likely stupid enough to ramble on some more about Cave K but Gerald gave the high sign and the party all pulled out weaponry and executed the cultists simultaneously.

Heime was a bit disgusted about the party murdering un-armed humans and started for the door to leave the room of their unfortunate brush with homicide. Tar-Tar the Halfling grabbed Heime’s arm when he heard some echoes in the hallway on the other side of the door. It seemed someone was planning to ambush the party when they exited the room.

Before entering the room to converse with (murder) the cultists the party had laid combat oil all about the floor just outside the room. Heime realized that the would-be ambushers were likely standing right in the oil. He lit a torch and dropped it down in the oil that was leaking from under the door. Great barking and angry pained howls were heard on the other side of the door. The door itself set up in flames and smoke filled the small chamber and the hallway beyond.

The door swung open and burnt up gnolls came barreling into the room with vengeance on their mind. Tar-Tar and the rest of the party easily killed the injured gnolls that had survived the fiery sneak attack before they could lay a hand on any of our heroes (murderers). There were 4 gnolls set to ambush the group. Two died from the flames and the other two died soon after. The gnolls were looted but no gold was found on them.

She looks friendly, right?

The party left the room, finally, and travelled west down the wide hallway. They decided against opening the door to the medusa’s abode despite the fact that Rita the elf was certain she could strike a deal with the medusa and get her to work with the party. What party of adventurer’s doesn’t want a pet medusa, am I right? Rita was adamant but she was voted down. No one in the party was anxious to become a statue.

Travelling west then south the party came to an evil looking chapel. It had a bloody altar, bloody goblets and pitcher, and a disconcerting tapestry on the back wall. The tapestry depicted “a black landscape, barren trees, and unidentifiable but horrible black shapes in silhouette – possibly demons of some sort –holding aloft a struggling human” (great description, Gary). John Henry quickly realized that the goblets and pitcher were worth thousands of gold so he shuffled on up to grab one. And the fun began.

John Henry failed his save versus magic and decided that he REALLY liked the evil looking blood-stained goblet that he had picked up. He was certain that he would never sell it. He started getting images of human sacrifice and of an atropol in his mind. These waking nightmares should have horrified him but, instead, he thought they were pretty sweet.

Kate had never seen John Henry with such a wild and evil look in his eyes even though she had been at his side for years. The party asked her what they should do. “I don’t know!”

Theo tried to exorcise the evil from him by pressing his holy symbol to his head. The symbol burned John Henry’s forehead with pain, leaving a red mark in the shape of Theo’s holy symbol (the god of Xerbo, god of the seas).

John Henry left the party to go and find the corpse of the cultist he had personally killed earlier, got some of the victim’s blood in the goblet, and returned to the evil chapel. The party had had enough when John Henry began some bloody cultist ritual with the goblet and they slapped it from his hand and smashed it.

John Henry got a massive jolting headache as the goblet was smashed and a large gong sound quaked through the halls. The bad guys would be here soon! (John Henry may stay have lingering effects from dabbling with the possession of dark artifacts...)

The party scurried up to the T intersection they had come from and set up a defensive position. It was their intention to fight back whatever came from the north (the only un-explored direction) with great tactics and planning. Just for a change of pace.

It worked. The Priest of Evil Chaos sent wave after wave of skeletons and zombies at the party and Kate and Theo drove them away or destroyed them with the power of their gods Norebo and Xerbo. The plate mail wearing party members kept the waves at bay since the undead had much trouble landing a damaging attack on them. Gerald and the fighters blocked and absorbed the undead attacks with little injury.

This fight was easy. But we had trouble with the kobold cave...

When the Priest and his cultist followers joined into the action the bow wielders in the group, Rita, John Henry and Tar-Tar, shot them down with no quarter. The Priest saw that the party was holding off his massive assault and fled north deeper into the caves. He left his cultist followers to die at the party’s hands (some leader). The undead were either broken or turned away. Some of the turned away undead might come back to harass the party if enough time passes.

The session ended with the party still in the midst of Cave K with the Priest of Evil Chaos still at large but injured. Will he come back for revenge? Will the party find him huddled in a corner begging for mercy? Only time and session 06 will tell.