The adventures of my medieval-fantastic Ottawa Valley continued this past Wednesday as our squad of adventurers awoke from a night of raucous carousing at the Shucked Oyster and sought to replenish their reserves of gold. We had 5 players compared to last week's 3, introducing 3 new characters, making the party this week:
1. Francois Jean-Marc Marseilles, with his 4 surviving men-at-arms
2. Jonathan the Once-Herder, looking for a good time
3. Alden, a sell-sword who styles himself as a disgraced knight, along with his squire (porter) Belvedere
4. Taff, a fighter.
5. Gard, a fighter with only 1 hit-point.
THE ADVENTURE
The players did a little hob-nobbing around town to resupply and in doing so had a few town encounters. They saw Gaston the Righteous, the greatest paragon of goodness and strength in the land, arguing loudly with his sword. They overheard one of the women from the Oyster enthusiastically prattling about a "Adventurer School" being set up on the outskirts of town. Finally, they are approached by Janice, who lures them into an alleyway in an attempt to peddle her "Mystically Enlightening" vials of Mystiflux Slug venom. Francois becomes convinced she is a witch, but Jonathan takes her up on the offer and hallucinates prodigiously. During his trip he encounters the spectral likeness of Mondopolis Gangler, the towns reclusive and eccentric tailor. He asks if there is any bandit hideouts nearby, but a middling reaction roll leads to Gangler instead relaying the location of a smugglers cache in a corn field outside town. The players decide to investigate!
The cache has a burried box containing some sort of dark indigo liquor, a bag of coins, and a note that instructs the reader to "Avoid moving the product until after the festival, he has eyes everywhere and I think he suspects us", signed "Jasper". The crew recognize the name as belonging to Jasper Cunningham, a local moneylender and shifty individual. They elect to take the money (As it is harder to trace) and relocate the liquor to a different spot so that after the festival they can try to move it themselves. Happy to have gotten some easy loot straight out the gate, they conspired to try and find some kind of dungeon or lair to expand their profits further.
The townsfolk speak in hushed tones about a shrine to Andal, the god of death, in the local cemetery. I'll spare my dear readers a prodigious lore-dump about the pantheon of the setting, but in short-hand Andal is the third of three principal gods known by the Yurdish, and represents death, chaos, evil, darkness, etc etc etc. He is never directly worshipped or prayed to, and while there is always a statue of him looming over any given cemetery, it is taboo to ever look directly at it. This shrine is the only known "place of worship" dedicated to Andal anywhere in the Yurdish kingdoms, and has not seen regular use in 180 years, since the great-grandfather of the current king of Aberlin constructed it in a fit of delirious fury. Either way, it seems that the place has been mostly sealed for a long time.
When the party arrived to check it out, they noticed that Pleasant Peter, the gravedigger and groundskeeper of the cemetery, was uncharacteristically absent. Approaching the shrine it towered over the headstones of the graves, a featureless stone edifice standing some 30 feet tall, with a 20x20 footprint in the dead center of the cemetery. The only adornment of the shrine was the smiling face of Andal carved above the brass double-doors leading in (Which the players piously avoided looking at). Pressing in, they found a corridor that slopes down into the earth, with damp flagstones covered in over a century of dust and grime. They ventured forth, wary of what they might find in this seemingly forgotten fane of darkness.
The sloped passage opened into a much drier chamber, with footprints in the dust indicating recent traffic. The flagstones of this room were made of chopped-square tombstones, the players felt deeply uneasy. Doubly so because laid out on the floor was a toppled statue of Andal, his head cracked off and his nose chipped off. On a pedestal where he stood before was a horrible statue of a wretched Ape-Demon. The players groaned "Of course, the Spongs are back. 210 feral spong women occupy this dungeon". They had three potential doors they could go through, and true to form they took the door to their left.
This next room had a copper-lined cistern in the center, and Alden decided to lower a stone on a rope down into the water to feel around for what might be down there. He felt the clank and jingle of small metal pieces, and it was determined that there was loot down about 15 feet into the cistern. He requested that his porter go for a swim, and it was here that we needed to determine his loyalty. Dragons Beyond uses the "Ego" ability score to determine the loyalty and courage of hirelings, and we rolled. 6, SIX, was the score determined, and thus is was established that Belvedere was a bit of a coward. He staunchly refused to swim, and so Jonathan stepped up to see what he could do. Fastened at the waist, he descended into the waters, only to find himself stuck in the carcass of a slime! We rolled to see if he was hands-first or feet-first, as this had not been specified, and he got lucky, with his free hand he tugged the rope and the party pulled him back up.
Being of much sturdier stuff (Strength 18!), Francois went down to retrieve the goods. He had an easier time, and returned with some coinage and some very nice-looking weapons and armour. A shield and mace, and a coat of chainmail, all shining as though just polished yesterday. Given the "low-fantasy" milieu we are operating in, I kept it extremely vague as to whether it was "Magical" or if the bonuses to hit and protection were instead the product of advanced alloys or craftsmanship. However, as we shall see later, the party decided that it was cursed anyways. Alden put on the complete set, and I hinted at a minor enchantment "You feel at peace, nothing in this dungeon can frighten you". At this moment a random encounter came up. Eight Berserkers were barreling into the room, wielding two-handed swords and garbed in patchwork leather armour. I described them as having skinned faces sewn over their own faces, and this generated the desired response of disgust and virulent desire to smite.
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| Berserkers deserve a spooky, autumnal theme |
How we've been handling written/declared orders is that I jot down what the bad guys are going to be doing on an index card as the players are deciding what they are going to do, so that my declared actions aren't revealed to them while they are in the tactics phase but also keeps me from having an idea of what the players are going to do when I decide my actions. Actions were declared and the Berserkers won the initiative. They elected to move first, 3 charging Taff, 2 charging Jonathan, and 3 just charging in the general direction of the players, hoping to make contact. The charge movement was enough for them to close the distance, and melees broke out. Much like Dab's duel with the Bandit Leader last week, weapon class became a really important variable, as the Berserkers got first strike in every melee they entered. We resolved the attack made on Alden first, clad as he was in his shiny armour and shield. Despite the bonuses to protection present from the new gear, the berserker landed a blow and dealt the maximum of 6 damage, Alden was beheaded without ceremony. His porter-squire, Belvedere, loosed a crossbow bolt in a fit of uncharacteristic courage, "MY LORD!!!!!" and felled the berserker.
Everyone else fared much better, I landed very few hits in comparison to the players, and when I did hit I rolled a 1 on damage 3 consecutive times. The berserkers were quickly slain, and looting commenced. There was some paltry coinage, and nobody wanted the leather faces or rusty zweihanders. The party decided to quit while they were ahead and head back to town. Alden's player took over Belvedere as his new PC, and we gave him a 1-6 chance that he could raise his Ego stat after this blistering act of courage which ascended him to the ranks of "Levelled PC". A success! What was once 6 is now 12. As they approached town, Gaston the Righteous was waiting for them.
Gaston (A Shucked Oyster NPC) has a mechanic wherein if he sees a PC with 18 Strength, he immediately challenges this PC to a contest of might. He had not had the chance to challenge Francois in a match previously, as he was preoccupied arguing with his sword. But he was ready now, and in a booming voice that exists somewhere between Brian Blessed and Kermit the Frog demanded this contest occur immediately. Francois, equipped with the shiny chainmail and shield, decided to accept the challenge. Throughout the duel, the poor guy could not roll a single hit, the dice felt loaded against him, a truly wretched string of bad luck. Gaston thrashed him thoroughly. After the match, Francois lamented that between this and the decapitation of Alden, the armour was almost certainly cursed. Gaston was appalled, and demanded a rematch during the tournament that is happening next week "When you are feeling more like yourself". Francois has earned the respect and admiration of Gaston, who may prove to be a powerful ally going forward.
We ended the night here but people did message me afterwards indicating if they wished to carouse for downtime. Various minor things happened but there were two that matter most. First is that Taff had a Mystiflux Slug Venom trip where he asked Mondopolis Gangler "Where are Mystiflux Slugs found?" and learned of their location in a nearby marsh. Second is that the OYSTER BURNED DOWN!!!!! The true culprit is unknown at the moment but as it stands everyone in town is blaming Mungo Borlov, a suspicious-looking aristocrat from the horrible wild-lands north-east of the river.
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