Play Report (AD&D 2e): In Search of the Unknown (Session 17)

We played the seventeenth session of our Dungeon Module B1: In Search of Unknown AD&D 2e game last night. You can read past play reports here.

The roster for this session was as follows:

• Llombaerth, CG elf thief 4 (Adam)
• Mirkle, N human fighter 2 (Maya)
• Rory the Small, LN human fighter 1 (David)
• Egbert, human necromancer 1 (NPC)
• Indur, gnoll (NPC)
• Bilodeau, man-at-arms (NPC)
• Graves, man-at-arms (NPC)
• Brazile, halfling porter, and his dog, Ripper (NPC)
• Ejiofer, human porter (NPC)
• Lendeborg, human porter (NPC)
• Steinbach, human porter (NPC)
• Walgretor, half-elf porter (NPC)

Last we played, the party prepared themselves to encounter some orcs, planning to lure them onto the pit trap in the floor of the tunnel they currently occupied. Instead, the orcs stopped short, and their leader Ghudgak, attempted to negotiate with the party. The party learned that Ghudgak's orcs worshiped the Stone Below, and had been enemies of Drak Stonespeaker's orcs (now deceased) who worshiped the Stone that Speaks. 

Zommernar challenged Ghudgak to single combat and easily prevailed, but Ghudgak had set a trap. He retreated back behind the ranks of his followers as more orcs charged the party from another tunnel. These orcs did not stop short of the pit trap, and Egbert cast a reduce spell on the pit's iron grate covering to drop all three orcs into the pit. Llombaerth threw a flask of alchemist's fire down into the pit to finish off the single orc that had survived the fall. Ghudgak and his remaining two orcs retreated back from whence they came.

The party let them flee and went down the other tunnel. They eventually came upon a huge cavern filled with bat guano, with no bats to be seen. As Llombaerth, Rory, and Egbert shoveled guano into a sack, Mirkle and Zommernar explored a catacomb of natural stone pillars. There, they encountered a pair of man-sized mushrooms, which began shrieking loudly when light was shone upon them. Mirkle and Zommernar butchered the mushrooms, and the party extinguished their light sources and hid in the darkness to see if anything would come to investigate the noise.

Llombaerth spotted a gnoll which entered the cavern, looked around for a bit, then left the way it had come. They explored a raised cavern at the other end of the cavern of the bats and found that one of its walls was streaked with veins of blue ore. With nothing else to investigate, they went back the way they had come.

As they returned to an earlier cavern, they found themselves surrounded by four gnolls. The gnolls were enemies of Ghudgak's orcs, so the party managed to convince them that they were friends. The gnolls' leader, Endur, mentioned that they worshiped a Freezing Pool. Thinking it might be magical, the party asked the gnolls to show them the pool.

The gnolls obliged, and escorted the party to a cavern with an 8' deep pool of freezing water. Two dead adventurers and a mysterious vial laid at the bottom of the pool. There appeared to be a trap door in the ceiling above the pool. Endur explained that he had been trying to prove himself worthy of the pool by diving to the bottom and retrieving the vial, but had failed because of his thick, heavy fur.

Rory decided to attempt the pool's trial himself, and succeeded after three tries. He claimed that the pool had chosen him as its high priest, which angered Endur. The party managed to goad the gnoll into shaving his body and attempting the trial again himself, with Rory tossing the vial back into the depths.

As Endur dove underwater, Rory and Zommernar shoved two of the remaining gnolls into the water, while Llombaerth slew the third with a backstab. When Endur surfaced with the vial in hand, Llombaerth filled him with arrows. The party allowed one of the gnolls in the pool to drown, then fished out the last surviving gnoll, Indur. Rory convinced Indur that it was the pool's will that his friends be sacrificed, and that Indur alone should survive them to rebuild his tribe. He convinced Indur to join them in destroying the remaining Stone worshiping orcs.

We picked up there. The party fished out one of the dead gnolls and searched the bodies, finding only meagre coinage. They had been at it for almost a full day at this point, so they returned to their hirelings, who were camped at the base of the cliff beneath the secret entrance, and joined them to rest. They were pretty deep in the caves at this point, but because they travel five times as fast along mapped routes, they were able to exit the dungeon in just one turn. 

The whole camp was awakened at around 6:30 am by the sound of dogs barking loudly. Four wild dogs had approached the camp, Ripper had started barking at them, and they had started barking back. The dogs weren't menacing the camp themselves, but there was a chance that their barking would attract something else. Llombaerth tossed the dogs some his vinegared fish. They fought over the scraps for a moment, but were eventually convinced to quiet down and be on their way.

The party returned to their bedrolls for another 30 minutes, then rose to start their day. The weather remained fair for the season. The party spent a four-hour wilderness turn setting up a bivouac to guard their camp against predators, since the bulk of their hirelings would remain outside. During this time, Egbert used read magic to open the scroll tube they had found on the body of the dead wizard outside the dungeon's secret entrance. He was able to determine that the scroll contained a sleep spell.

Since Egbert is a necromancer, he cannot learn spells from the enchantment school of magic, so he could not copy this into his spellbook. However, I decided that he could still cast it from the scroll. Since the power of a spell cast from a scroll is determined by the level of the spellcaster who scribed it, and because wizards must be at least 9th level to scribe scrolls in 2e, this was a 9th level sleep spell! 

Ordinarily this is actually an interesting tradeoff - do you scribe the spell into your spellbook so that you know it and can prepare it as much as you like, or do you save it as a one-use exceptionally powerful casting of the spell? In this case Egbert can't learn the spell anyway, so the party simply pocketed it.

The player characters, Egbert, Indur, and two of their porters, Lendeborg and Walgretor, returned to the dungeon by way of the secret entrance.

They returned to the pool room, hoping to find a way to open the trap door in the ceiling. Llombaerth climbed up the rough, slippery walls beneath the door and fastened a rope. He looked for a mechanism to open the door from this side, but couldn't find one. He took his crowbar to the door to try to force it, spending nearly an hour doing so, but failed to get it to budge. 

(There's nothing in the module about opening the door from this side, but I wanted to give the players a chance to try it. I allowed a Find/Remove Traps roll to identify a latch or mechanism and how to operate it, which Llombaerth failed to do. I suggested that they could try to pry the door open with something like a crowbar, which would be an Open Doors check with a +4 bonus. Llombaerth needed an 11 or lower to succeed, but rolled a 14. He could keep trying, but each attempt would take time and would have a cumulative -1 penalty. He tried four more times, rolling an 18 and three 16s in a row. If only this were a situation in which he wanted to roll high!)

Defeated, the party decided to keep exploring. Exiting the cavern with the pool, they found a door on their left. They opened it and found a small, empty cavern with more streaks of blue ore in the far wall. Mirkle touched it and found that it crumbled easily at her touch and stained her hands blue. With no way to identify it, she collected a bit of the ore in a vial with the hope that someone back in Timbershore might tell them what it was. If it was valuable, they might be able to mine it.

The party deliberated as to where they should go next. From the room with the ore, there was a tunnel immediately to the left, and another tunnel to the left in the next cavern over, which was straight ahead. They asked Indur if he knew what lie in each direction. 

Indur told them that the tunnel immediately to the left curved right and went a great distance before coming to a worked stone chamber with lots of mining equipment and stairs to the world above. Ghudgak's orcs were sometimes there, and it was a sort of disputed land between them and the gnolls. The second tunnel led to a cave of phosphorescent fungi. To the right of it were more narrow, winding tunnels which also led to the orcs' lair and were similarly disputed. The party decided to explore the closer of the two tunnels to investigate the room with the mining equipment.

The party followed the tunnel as it curved to the right for about 15 to 20 minutes. They found several copper coins spilled across the floor. Finding this odd, they searched for secret doors and found one. A section of the tunnel wall shifted out of the way. As the party's light shone inside the cavern beyond, four more man-sized mushrooms began shrieking. Mirkle and Indur each managed to dispatch one of the mushrooms in the first round. Mirkle killed another in the second round, and Rory killed the last one.

(Shriekers have a 50% chance of attracting wandering monsters each combat round they continue shrieking - compared to a 1-in-6 chance every three dungeon turns when exploring normally. This resulted in one of the gnolls coming to investigate in our last session - and the remainder of the gnolls then getting the jump on the party when they retraced their steps. This time, I rolled gnolls again, but since the party had already dealt with the gnolls, no encounter occurred.)

With the shriekers dead, the party searched the cavern and found that the floor was littered with loose coins - thousands of them! Too many to quickly be counted. Unfortunately, it looked to be mostly copper. They filled a sack with 300 such coins and gave it to Indur, promising that he could have the rest if he served them well. This pleased Indur well enough.

They followed the tunnel for another 10 minutes or so and found the worked stone chamber with the mining equipment and stairs leading up. There was also a door to the right and another tunnel exiting to the left, on the same wall from which they had entered. The room contained rock rubble, carts, jacks, timbers, and pickaxes, but nothing especially of value. The party figured this could be useful if they decided to mine the blue ore.

They explored beyond the door to the right. A 10' wide corridor beyond it went straight for 50' and turned left, opening into a small chamber. The walls to the left, right, and straight ahead were adorned with faded, painted frescoes. Hanging next to the frescoes was a framed piece of parchment, a curved sword, and a skeleton hanging from the ceiling by manacles with an engraved plaque beside it.

The fresco to the left depicted a young boy raising a sword, a young man slaying a wild boar, a warrior carrying off a dead barbarian, and a hero in the midst of a large battle hacking barbarian foes to pieces. The fresco to the right depicted a boy gazing upward at a starry night sky, a young man diligently studying a great tome, an earnest magician changing water to wine before a delighted audience, and a powerful wizard casting a death fog over an enemy army from a hilltop. The fresco straight ahead depicted the two great men together, shaking hands as young men, winning a great battle against barbarians in a hill pass, and gazing upward together from the wilderness to a craggy rock outcropping. The fourth space of this fresco was blank. There were no hidden switches, buttons, or doodads in any of the frescoes.

The parchment was addressed to Rogahn and Zelligar, and appeared to be a letter of thanks for the two men's help in a war against barbarian invaders. It was signed by the elder of the hamlet known as Timbershore, and was dated some decades ago.

The plaque beside the skeleton identified it as that of a barbarian chieftain. The sword had runes etched into the blade. Egbert examined these and identified the sword as belonging to the barbarian chief. He could not determine whether it was magical, so the party held onto it for now.

They decided to explore up the stairs. They led up to an empty room. Beyond the door, a 40' hallway to their right led to a familiar sight - Drak Stonespeaker's throne room! The party deliberated for some time here. Should they ambush Mangug's orcs from here? Perhaps they could lure them into a trap and hit all of them with the sleep spell? Should they return to the secret bedchamber where they had stashed most of their bulky treasure and start moving it out through the secret entrance on the lower level?

They decided to return to the lower level, finish exploring, and deal with the remaining orcs there. Then they could deal with Mangug's orcs, and it would be easier to haul out their treasure through the dungeon's main entrance after that.

Before they left, they noticed that the door to the chamber with the Stone had been spiked shut from outside, but they decided not to investigate it.

Back on the lower level, the party headed down the tunnel (now on their right) which exited the room with all the mining equipment. 30' down the tunnel, they found an empty cavern on their left. The tunnel continued, turning sharply to the right. They followed it for another 90'. It turned sharply to the right again. 30' ahead of them, it turned sharply to the left, but straight ahead they found another tunnel opening which had been completely covered in thick webbing. They found four rotting humanoid corpses tangled in the webs.

As they approached to investigate, one of the corpses moaned and began to stir. The remaining corpses followed suit. Three appeared to be human - two dressed as a fighter and one as a wizard. The fourth appeared to be an elf, outfitted like a thief. 

The party wanted to set fire to the webbing and the zombies, but Egbert convinced them not to. The party had not yet discovered any "master" that would have animated these corpses, and being a necromancer, Egbert had a macabre interest in determining how that might be. Besides, the one dressed as a wizard surely had a spellbook, and Egbert didn't wish to see it burned.

Mirkle decided to try fishing the wizard zombie out using her grappling hook. It too got tangled in the webs, but the zombie grabbed onto it like a baby clutching at a set of jangling keys. Mirkle dragged the zombie out. It didn't attack, but simply stood there, motionless, moaning. The party could swear they saw it smiling faintly at Egbert. Mirkle knocked it to the ground and bound and gagged it with her rope.

Egbert searched the restrained zombie and found both its spellbook and a wooden box containing 35 gold pieces, which he handed to Mirkle. Egbert explained that, contrary to popular belief, simple undead such as this are not inherently evil, but exist solely to carry out the whims of their masters. In the absence of a master, they become more malleable, albeit less predictable. He demonstrated by commanding the zombie to "speak", to which it responded with a moan. They untied the zombie and experimented with having it "sit", "stay", and "come". 

Once they were satisfied, they freed the remaining zombies, all of which seemed docile and nonthreatening. They searched the zombies' persons and found some more coinage and a couple of gemstones. They decided to employ the zombies against Ghudgak's orcs. They ushered the zombies down the tunnel ahead of them, following at a distance of 30' as the zombies shambled along.

Because of the zombie's disorganized, shambling gait, it took 30 minutes to herd them some 180' as the tunnel turned left, right, and right again. The tunnel began to curve right again and came to a fork which led both straight and hard to the right. From the rightmost tunnel, they heard orcish voices sounding an alarm at the sight of the party's torchlight, and the party ordered the zombies to follow the sound of orcs.

We wrapped there. Pretty much a pure exploration session with a little bit of social interaction. It really feels like the players have mastered this dungeon now that they found the secret entrance into the lower level and a way back to the upper level. They've explored almost all of the lower level and a very big chunk of the upper level as well. It feels like the days of exploring Quasqueton are numbered, but we will see! It's great to see them finding new ways to reach previously explored areas and figuring out how to use those paths to their advantage.

I'll admit to being really happy that they didn't burn the zombies. When I was stocking the dungeon, I rolled zombies in the webbed cave and got an "enthusiastically friendly" result. What does that mean? Well, maybe these zombies used to be adventurers, and they have some sort of instinctual memory of adventuring and view other adventurers as allies. At times I felt like I was using Egbert as a blunt instrument to get the players to give the zombies a chance, but really, Egbert the necromancer was just the perfect NPC to be present for this encounter.

The party now has an entire river boat crew, five porters, two mercenaries, a henchman, a gnoll ally, and four zombies servants. It's totally unwieldy, and I love it.