OD&D Session 005: Remy's Got Hands

 Ran a game online today, I haven't done this for a group in a long time, but it felt great to just clock in for a little 2-hour dungeon crawl after the chaos and cognitive load of the Braunstein. The party wanted to check out the dungeon that was discovered beneath the newly-taken keep. 

Tabletop Simulator for the Win

We had 4 characters:

1. Clovis the Cleric (Not to be confused with the other Cleric named Clovis)

2. Tnk (Pronounced "tank") the Elf

3. Ander the Fighter

4. Olaf the Cleric

    Things were kept fairly straightforward, there isn't a lot to tell. The players came across a large set of double-doors, wherein a pit trap killed Ander. Because the dungeon is beneath the keep, so travel time is negligible, the party fell back, found another fighter (Andrew) and returned to keep delving. They came across another party of adventurers who were on their way out, warning them of flesh-eating undead in one area of the dungeon. The players decided that area was probably already looted, and went in a different direction. They came across a statue-fountain of an ape-man playing the lyre. Fishing around in the dried silt of the fountain bowl they found some paltry coinage, petty gems and a brass bracelet in the shape of a snake eating it's own tail. 

    Delving further they found a tapestry of ape-men fighting orcs, and a large square pillar with a rusty iron cage at the top. Flanking the pillar were three doors, all with stairs leading down. This was not investigated further. They found a torture chamber and a wine-cellar room with some barrels of very good, very aged wine (Cha-Ching!). Most interestingly, though, was a bare room with an arcanely-carved archway in the center. The archway radiated cold, like it had been in a freezer for months. The elvish script was antiquated by Tnk was able to discern the words "Home" and "Warmed by the Blood". After some experimentation, he applied some of his own blood to the archway, which hummed and absorbed the blood like a sponge. It produced steam like dry ice, and inside the arch in the steam Tnk saw spectral images and shapes of his family estate back in the Old World. Erring on the side of caution, they chose to leave this artefact alone for the time being. 

    The final room of the evening was an archive of census data, shipping manifests, court rulings, and the like from when the keep was still governing over an imperial city. The party rightly concluded that this was information that might be worth some reward to the authorities, but first:

    The fight with giant rats in the archive should have been a cakewalk, but the dice have a sense of humour, and there was one rat who managed to kill Andrew, nearly kill Tnk and Clovis, and generally survive and deal far more damage than he had any right to. Very amusing. Reduced to almost no hitpoints, the party elected to cut their losses and head back to the surface. 

    This session was interesting because it lasted only 2 hours, much shorter than our usual IRL game, and was very easy to run. I suspect that more games like this will crop up, I can see myself treating low-level excursions the way many people treat video games, if I have an evening free and my friends wanna hang online, we can hop into TTS and get some stuff done. The 1:1 calendar will be helpful with this, keeping everything consistent and moving at a standard, non-arbitrary pace. Overall I am greatly looking forward to this particular arena of play in conjunction with the regular, much larger in-person sessions.