AD&D 2e Play Report: Session 14

We played the 14th session of our AD&D 2e campaign last night. The previous session's play report is here.

To recap briefly, the party returned to Grimerun with ankheg shells in tow, where they were joined by the elf fighter/mage Corym Vadercast. They decided to head back into the forest to investigate the sunken shrine of the Dark Sun. The shrine was believed to house a blasphemous altar to the god of lies, which Bernhardt Dalton has an interest in sanctifying.

On the way there, Corym felt himself being watched by an invisible entity. The party was attacked by a pair of territorial stags.

Upon reaching the shrine, the party deduced that a number of statues there were guardians which would attack them if they tried to enter. Karven Stone attempted to topple one of the statues, which caused them to animate and attack. In the ensuing battle, Haymond Baylor's trident shattered after striking one of the statues, but the party ultimately emerged victorious. They looted the religious treasures from the shrine, and Bernhardt performed certain holy rites to consecrate the unholy altar, and that's where we concluded the session.

Meet Magicheart

The party left the shrine and headed back the way they came. They didn't get far before I rolled a random encounter. I had decided that their first encounter on the way back would be with the pseudodragon which had been invisibly watching the party on their way to the shrine. I had in mind that the dragon was invisibly following the party in order to assess their character, and had seen Bernhardt consecrate the unholy altar. That was a good enough act for the dragon to feel comfortable introducing itself.

The pseudodragon remained camouflaged for now, until the party could properly prove themselves. Telepathically, she introduced herself as Magicheart. I used one of my favorite name generators, Fantasy Name Generators's Fursona Name Generator.

My girlfriend has been playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and I find the voice acting - for Zelda in particular - to be hilariously bad. I decided to channel that in my portrayal of Magicheart. I conceptualized her as being like the cutesy dragon that an elementary school girl would draw in her diary (maybe that's more apt for a faerie dragon, but whatever).

Magicheart told the party that she had seen what they did at the evil shrine, and asked if they would again prove their goodness by ridding the forest of yet another evil presence. There was an ancient elf burial ground to the north, just across the river, which had become inhabited by flesh-eating ghouls.

The party wondered how they could trust Magicheart without seeing her, and asked if she was even real. She allowed herself to be seen, just a bit, in the form of a translucent shimmer against the forest backdrop - think of the cloaking device in Predator. In exchange for their help, Magicheart said she would become their companion, and provide them with her magical protection. 

Karven grumbled that it didn't sound like there was any material gain from undertaking this quest. Haymond pointed out that having protection from a magical creature would sure be nice, and waxed poetic about the various benefits that friendly forest spirits could provide to crops. The party said that ghouls sounded dangerous, but Magicheart assured them that they were competent, brave, good-hearted adventurers (a little encouragement/egging-on from the DM never hurts).

Ultimately, the party agreed to help Magicheart, but they wanted to return to Grimerun first. Haymond needed a new trident. Magicheart provided them with a location in the forest where she could be found in the hollow of a great tree. They parted ways.

The First River Children

Later, while setting up camp, the party heard a group traveling on foot from the hills above them, to the northeast. A group of tribesmen came into view. I determined that the tribesmen were Lawful Evil, but friendly. They began to gently question the party as to their purpose in the forest.

The party told the tribesmen that they had been in the area to deal with an ankheg infestation, and that they were headed next to the elf burial ground. They didn't mention the shrine, so the tribesmen asked if they had been there. Bernhardt's player asked if the tribesmen looked like they had any association with the shrine. I said that they didn't bear any holy symbols to indicate they followed any organized religion. The party said that they had been to the shrine.

I decided that the tribesmen would lay claim to any treasure found in the forest, so they began questioning the party as to whether they had found anything. The party played coy and denied having taken any valuables. Since it was a friendly interaction, it wasn't difficult to convince the tribesmen.

Bernhardt introduced the party, and the tribesmen identified themselves as the First River Children (Fantasy Name Generators's Tribe Names Generator). Bernhardt asked about their name, and the tribesmen explained that their people believed that the river the party was currently traveling on was the world's first river, which gave birth to all later civilization. They warned the party about the dangers of the Second River Children, but admitted that the Third River Children were alright. 

The party asked about the elf burial ground, which the First River Children said was ancient and abandoned. Recently, a pack of dead-eaters had moved in. The Children had been careful to protect their own burial grounds from such monsters, but wished the party luck in dealing with them. With that, they parted ways.

Eyes in the Dark

The night passed without incident, and the party rose the next morning and had an uneventful day of travel. That night, Karven and Sheyla the thief were on watch when they noticed two sets of glowing red compound eyes in the dark, near where Derrell the druid was sleeping. By the dim light at the edge of their campfire, they could see the silhouette of hairy legs creeping closer.

Karven sounded the alarm, waking the party from their sleep. The party took up arms and readied to fight. They saw four giant spiders - eight to twelve feet in diameter - encircling their camp.

Giant spiders (not to be confused with large or huge spiders) have Type F poison, which causes instant death if a saving throw is failed. I was prepared for a (literally) very dicey encounter. Fortunately for the party, they won initiative resoundingly. Several ranged attacks struck one of the spiders at once, reducing it to fewer than half its hit points. This meant that I had to make a morale check when its turn came around. Of the spiders, it was the first to act. It failed its morale check and retreated back into the darkness.

This meant that the remaining spiders had to make morale checks as well. Two of the remaining three failed and fled. The last one passed its check and pressed the attack, but missed its target. The party surrounded the spider and slew it easily. Karven took the spider's thorax so that he could get someone in the village to extract its venom glands.

This obviously did not go how I anticipated when I rolled up the random encounter, and I'll admit that I was a bit disappointed by the results of these morale checks. At the same time, it does feel like the party is constantly flirting with disaster - whether they want to or not. They've had a few encounters now which should be very dangerous, where the dice end up more or less rolling resoundingly in their favor. They were pretty close to a brutal slugfest with an ankheg queen a few sessions ago, before their chad elf henchman bailed them out. 

The way I see it, sooner or later they're going to run into some very bad luck. Until then, they can have these wins, even if they feel a little unsatisfying to me at the moment.

Grimerun Again

The party had an uneventful day of travel and made it out of the forest. By the end of the following day, they were back in Grimerun. They had an encounter with a patrol of halfling bounders from the village, and warned them about the spiders in the forest.

In the village, the party restocked on supplies. Haymond got a new trident, and Karven got a dose of Type F poison from the dead giant spider, courtesy of the village alchemist. They also spoke to Shaelie Bouldershadow about the elf graveyard, though she didn't have much more relevant information to impart. Being a priest, she did give them some vials of holy water, however.

The party spent the night in the village, and embarked the next day for the burial ground.

Greetings, Boys and GHOULS

The party had an uneventful two-day journey to the burial ground. It was late afternoon when they got there, and they didn't see any ghouls roaming about. There was a large mausoleum in sight, so they concluded that the ghouls most likely hid in there during the day.

Proceeding across the boneyard, they noticed several graves had been dug up, the bones cracked open, and the marrow sucked out. The bones had teeth marks on them.

The party entered the mausoleum and found it seemingly empty. There were a number of sarcophagi with the lids cracked open, and gnawed bones littering the floor.

As the party moved inside, five emaciated undead creatures with long, clawed hands, sharp teeth, and lolling tongues emerged from the sarcophagi. I had determined that the ghouls' reaction was unfriendly, so they would not immediately attack. Instead, they went wild at the smell of fresh flesh, giving me the opportunity to delightedly yell "Fresh flesh!" over and over again in my best ghoulish voice.

The biggest and strongest of the ghouls beckoned the party closer, demanding only a "morsel" of flesh from each of them. Then, the party could remain here as the ghouls' prisoners, until they "ripened". Obviously, the party was not enthused by this possibility, so we rolled initiative.

Yuliana the cleric stepped forward to turn undead (which has a speed factor of just 1, making it one of the faster actions in the game). She failed her roll by 1, so the ghouls were not turned. Corym leapt forward to attack the ghoul leader, but missed. The leader attacked him in turn, scoring a hit with one of its claws. Corym failed his saving throw versus paralysis, and would be paralyzed for 6 (1d6+2 rounds)! The remaining ghouls charged in for a feeding frenzy on the helpless elf. Karven moved in and backstabbed one of them, killing it instantly (I had rolled minimum hit points for that one).

This certainly seemed like the end for Corym (whose player had just lost their other character, Ash, to the battle with the ankheg queen). At the top of the following round, Bernhardt stepped forward to try his own hand at turning undead. He rolled a 19, meaning he could turn something as powerful as a wraith! He rolled 4 on 2d6, turning all of the remaining four ghouls.

As far as we could tell, turn undead has no duration in 2e. So long as the cleric continues using their action each round to maintain the turning, the turned undead must flee from the cleric at top speed until they are able to break line of sight. The ghouls shrieked and fled into the shadowy corners of the mausoleum. The party pursued them, with Bernhardt following to ensure that the ghouls could do nothing but flee each round.

There were plenty of places for the ghouls to hide, and with the party pursuing them into these nooks and crannies, the ghouls inevitably got a few more attacks in, but only Yinvalur Sparkguard was injured, and even he wasn't paralyzed. The party handily mopped up the cowering, slavering undead.

Once again, this is an encounter that could have gone very poorly, but quickly and decisively swung (or should I say turned?) in the party's favor due to a good die roll. I'll get 'em eventually!

With that, we concluded the session. Corym gained a level in fighter, and is now a 2nd-level fighter/2nd-level mage. Haymond leveled up, and is now a 4th-level fighter. Yinvalur the henchman leveled up, and is now a 2nd-level fighter. Corym gained half a d10 hit die, and Haymond and Yinvalur each gained a full d10 hit die. All three gained a THAC0 improvement.

I'm not entirely sure what the party will do next session. First, they will probably return to Magicheart, then head back to Grimerun. After that, I imagine they will either investigate the City of Oni, or return to Grasshold and deal with the ogre den near town.

I'm realizing now that this session introduced (or at least threatened to introduce) to the players both save-or-die poison as well as paralysis, two notoriously swingy and incredibly deadly effects in old school D&D. It also gave us our first experience with turn undead, which is much more powerful than its 5e counterpart, and really drives home the value of having a cleric in the party. Without it, I'm pretty confident that Corym would have died. I'm excited to finally be getting to the good stuff and to see where it takes us.