AD&D 2e Play Report: Session 13

We played the 13th session of our ongoing AD&D 2e campaign last night. The previous session's play report is here.

To recap briefly, the party pressed on through the ankheg burrow, following a trail picked up by the NPC ranger, Jakayla. Along the way, they encountered a friendly gremlin, Weasel, who enlisted the party's aid in the gremlins' conflict with a tribe of urds. The two group of creatures were vying for control of a sunken shrine from the surface world, which they believed to hold great big people treasures.

The party agreed to help the gremlins, if Weasel would lead them to the ankheg nest and pay them in treasure from the gremlins' hoard. Weasel agreed, and showed the party on their way.

The party arrived at the ankheg nest, where the ankheg queen had laid a fresh clutch of eggs on a pile of corpses. The party began smashing the eggs, and the ankhegs soon emerged to stop them. In the ensuing battle with the ankheg queen, the elf fighter, Ash, was killed, but the party eventually triumphed.

The party harvested the ankhegs' acid and shells and looted some treasure from the ankhegs' victims. Bernhardt Dalton found the corpse of a cleric bearing the holy symbol of an evil god, as well as a mostly-intact journal.

The party decided to return to Grimerun, then come back to aid Weasel's people. They parted ways, and the party went back the way they had come. Along the way, they encountered one of the urds, and learned the location of their lair and the name of their leader, Zabu. The party kept the deal with Weasel to themselves. Later, they encountered more gremlins, who intended to rob them, until Karven Stone informed them of the deal with Weasel, at which point the gremlins left the party alone.

The party finally arrived back at the entrance to the ankheg burrow and found that their halfling hirelings were still waiting for them, despite the party being a few days late returning. We ended the session there.

Running Back to Grimerun

The party arrived back in Grimerun without incident. The halfling locals saw that the party came with several ankheg shells strapped to their mules, and rejoiced that the beasts had been slain. The party spoke with Shaelie Bouldershadow, the village's religious leader, who gave them a slightly larger reward in light of the fact that one of them had died.

At this point we introduced Ash's player's new character, Corym Vadercast, an elf fighter/mage. As I've explained before, I try to introduce new characters as quickly as possible - "plot" be damned - and in the case of a player character's death, the sooner the better. In this case, Corym was an adventurer who "happened" to be in Grimerun looking to join a party. Convenient!

The party spent the night in Grimerun, where they were the guests of honor at a proper halfling celebration. 

In the meantime, they discussed their next course of action. There was some interest in returning to Grasshold to deal with the ogres in the area. Since the party had recently had a resounding triumph against a pair of ogres, they were now confident that they could handle these ogres, too. Still, Bernhardt was curious about the sunken shrine at the ankheg burrow.

Bernhardt had been reading the journal he found on the corpse of the cleric. The journal belonged to one Brother Laurentius, who had come to the burrow in search of the lost shrine. The journal described a "true shrine" hidden by secret doors within the "false shrine". The true shrine contained a sacrilegious altar to the Dark Sun, God of Lies. A blood offering and a blasphemous prayer uttered at the altar would grant the supplicant certain dark powers, or so Brother Laurentius wrote.

Bernhardt wasn't interested in dark powers, but felt that the party should visit the shrine so that he could consecrate it. Karven, on the other hand, was very much interested in dark powers, and treasure. Haymond Baler needed some persuading, and Corym hadn't been with the party when they made the deal with Weasel, so he was indifferent to the idea.

The party consulted Shaelie, who didn't know much about the shrine, except that it was something of an myth to the locals. When the party told her about the gremlins and urds and expressed hesitance to return to the burrow, Shaelie said "Well, at least you didn't spit-shake on it." Which, of course, the party had done. Shaelie suggested there could be some cosmological consequences for breaking such a pact, but I was just ribbing the players. I made it clear that they could do whatever they wanted.

Ultimately, they decided to travel overland back to the location where the shrine had sunken, bypassing the gremlins and urds altogether.

The party's route to the sunken shrine

Somebody's Watching

The party set out in the morning for the shrine. They would travel north around the edge of the forest before diving into its heart and making for the shrine. They would attempt to pass directly over the top of the gremlin's lair without being noticed. They still didn't trust Weasel's intentions. The journey would take about three full days.

The first day of their journey brought them up to the edge of the forest. They could press on into the forest for the rest of the day, but that would mean camping in the forest, where there would be a higher chance of random encounters, so they decided to end the day early and camp on the forest's edge. The night passed without incident, and they pressed on the next day.

They ended the second day atop the gremlin's burrow. They didn't see any obvious entrances (remember, the gremlins are tiny), so they decided it was safe to camp there. They set up camp a little way's away, just in case.

During Corym's watch, he got the eerie sense that something was watching him, but couldn't find the culprit. He woke Haymond and let him know. "So you woke me up because you think something might be looking at you?" Haymond irritably asked, then went back to sleep. Corym spent the rest of his watch patrolling the area, his sword drawn. The night passed without incident.

In reality, Corym was being watched by a pseudodragon. 

The pseudodragon's reaction roll was friendly. It's Monstrous Manual entry contains the following details:

The pseudodragon that searches for companionship will stalk a candidate silently for days, reading his thoughts via telepathy, judging his deeds to be good or evil. 

 And:

Pseudodragons have a chameleonlike power that allows them to alter their coloration to blend with their surroundings. They can blend into any typical forest background with an 80% chance of being undetected by creatures which cannot see invisible objects.

 So essentially, I decided that the pseudodragon was curious about the party and their intentions, and would watch them, invisibly, to discern their true nature. If they passed its "test", it would later present itself as a helpful companion.

Red in Hoof and Horn

Later that same night (actually the wee hours of the morning), Haymond was on watch when he heard movement nearby in the forest. He waited cautiously until a small herd of deer appeared, led by a pair of stags. The stags seemed agitated, pawing at the ground with their hooves, shaking their antlers, and grunting at Haymond.

I had rolled that the stags were unfriendly, and decided they were territorial. Haymond tried shooing them away, waving a torch at them, and grunting back. I made a few subsequent reaction rolls, and the stags kept getting more and more ornery. Finally, I got a result of hostile. The stags charged.

Haymond braced his trident to receive the charge, which would grant him a +2 initiative bonus, and double damage if his attack hit. The stags, in turn, would have an Armor Class penalty of 1. Haymond's attack unfortunately missed. One of the stags crashed into him, doing 5 damage. The other one charged past him.

The rest of the party woke to the sound of angry stags trampling through their camp. They gathered themselves quickly and tried to drive them off. The stags' morale broke quickly at the sight of a large campfire and brandished weapons, but it was too late. As they tried to flee, the party cut them down. The rest of the herd fled as soon as the fighting started.

Kind of a dumb encounter, but it was funny. The party rejoiced at the unexpected source of fresh venison.

The Sunken Shrine

By the end of the following day, the party arrived at the shrine. There was a 30-foot pit in the ground. Below, the party could see a floor mosaic of a jawless skull on a purple-black sunburst. Just as they had heard, it seemed as though the entire building had been swallowed up into the earth. Dead gremlins and urds littered the floor, appearing as though they had done battle with one another.

The party lowered a rope and climbed down. A flight of cracked stairs led up to the shrine's entrance. Karven crept inside to check for traps. The far wall had a pair of arches flanked by a trio of seven-foot-tall stone columns, carved to resemble lithe assassins in jawless skull masks. 

The floor was another tiled mosaic like the one outside, but the eye sockets of the skull were iron bowls containing a foul-smelling, murky grey liquid. One of the bowls had cracked, and the liquid had spilled out. The stone around the cracked bowl had somehow turned into putrescent flesh.

Karven did not find any traps, but he did detect a pair of shifting secret doors built into the two archways. He also noticed that the column-statues held razor-sharp swords, coyly concealed behind their outstretched arms. The statues had the edgy dungeon-punk aesthetic of a 4th edition rogue - all superfluous belts and buckles. Karven noticed that one of the center column's belt buckles was actually a button.

Bernhardt followed after Karven and cast find traps. With his magically-augmented trap detection, Bernhardt noted that the statues seemed enchanted. As a cleric, he was able to conclude that the statues were likely magical guardians, enchanted to protect the temple from heathens and do-gooders. There was no obvious means of disabling them.

Karven stood back from the statues and - using a 10-foot pole he had purchased in Grimerun - pressed the button on the center statue. The secret doors opened. Beyond them, the party saw the blasphemous altar they had read about in Brother Laurentius's journal. The altar was surrounded with religious items - treasure! - and long-ago spoiled offerings of food and libations.

The party was certain that the statues would animate and attack if they tried to get into the altar room. They deliberated for some time as to how to disable the statues. Could they topple them? Probably not. Could they slip past them, grab the treasure, and get out? Maybe. Could they smash them with Bernhardt's magic warhammer?

That seemed like the best option to them, so Karven took the hammer and approached the statue on the left to smash it. He struck true, and the impact reverberated through the hammer's haft and rattled the bones in Karven's arms. It felt like the hammer might shatter, but it held true. The statue cracked and chipped, but didn't fall.

Suddenly, the statues brought their swords down to block passage through the archways. They animated, and stepped out of their alcoves. We rolled initiative.

May Thy Knife Chip and Shatter

This was a pretty straightforward, but long, combat. The statues were caryatid columns, which take only half damage from nonmagical weapons. Each time a weapon strikes them, there is a 25% chance that the weapon breaks (-5% for each +1 of a magic weapon). This was only slightly relevant, as most of the party relied on ranged weapon attacks (arrows and such are breaking and getting lost all the time anyway). Karven broke a few daggers, but he's been hoarding them, so it was inconsequential. However, the first time Haymond attacked one of the columns, his trident shattered into a million pieces. He had to retreat and resort to using his sling, instead.

For the most part, the statues attacked the party members closest to the entrance to the true shrine. Once Bernhardt starting casting his cleric spells, the statues turned their attention to him. Corym and Haymond took a few hits, as did Derrell, the druid henchman, but the party was never at risk of losing.

As a side note, the liquid in the iron bowls in this room was actually stone to flesh oil. Caryatid columns can be instantly destroyed by a stone to flesh spell, so I included an oil which duplicates the effect of that spell as a possible clever solution to the problem posed by the statues. I did my best to telegraph the fact that the liquid turned stone to flesh (via the one cracked bowl surrounded by stone tiles that had mysteriously turned into meat - weird!), but for whatever reason, the players never asked any questions about it.

With the statues eventually destroyed, the party looted the treasure inside the altar room. Bernhardt performed some sacred rites to sanctify the altar, and purified the spoiled food and libations surrounding it. The players seemed satisfied that their work here was done, and that's where we ended the session.

I'm happy with the direction this session took. I like to offer the players mechanical incentives for doing evil things, just to see how they react. In this case, there was some discussion about the merits of receiving a dark boon from an evil deity, but ultimately, the party is mostly good, and usually does the good thing. 

I enjoyed the lengthy discussion of how to approach the trapped shrine, even if it dragged on a bit long, and even if the players missed the easy solution which (I thought) was somewhat obvious. I would say that about half the players regularly zone out when we get into the weeds with traps and puzzles, but the other half seems to enjoy them, and I enjoy them too.

Between now and the next session, I have to determine if the gremlins or urds are likely to come across the party before they exit the shrine area. In the back of my mind, I knew that either group was likely to betray the party, even if the party helped them, so I imagine they'd both be pretty peeved to find that the party had gone (literally) over their heads to loot the shrine for themselves. Ultimately, I think they'll probably get away with it.

I'm especially interested to see what happens with the pseudodragon. It's definitely keeping an eye on the party. The butchering of the stags was grisly business, but it wasn't evil to do, I don't think. The pseudodragon would certainly be impressed by the party's rejection of dark boons and the sanctification of the unholy shrine.

All of that is for next session. I imagine the party will return to Grimerun, and then probably travel to Grasshold to deal with the ogres. Or maybe they'll stay in Grimerun and travel next to the City of Oni to rescue the kidnapped villagers. Time will tell.