Stonehell: Lost Level: Rust Monster? Or Rust Friend?

Session 221 was played on 7/9/23

Morgana, Magic User (Rob)
Borumar, ½ Orc Thief (Josh)
Koltic, Cleric 7 (NPC)
Aroon, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Jameth, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Lor’Koth, Dwarf 5 (NPC)
Nick, Fighter 7 (Me)

Continuing along in the dungeon, the party finds a mostly empty store room, but searches through it anyway. Nick finds a slashing blade trap the hard way. Sadly nothing of value could be found among the trash and debris.

Moving on, they come to a door that’s barely holding together, and on the far side of it, a pair of fat content rust monsters. Being creatures of very little brain, confronted with a party largely covered in their favorite food, they amble toward them, feathery feelers waving excitedly. The plate armored members of the party back away and shoot at the beasts, causing both to run back into the room away from the party. Morgana collects random non-magical steel from the party and tosses a bunch to the rust monsters, who cautiously nibble at it.

Morgana removes any iron and steel from her person, and heads into the room to investigate the creatures while they’re feeding. They’re unconcerned about her, and ignore her. She goes back and collects more steel, and brings it to the rust monsters. A couple of repeat trips, and the rust monsters are beyond full, and feeling docile around Morgana. She convinces the rest of the party to help her capture and bring the monsters home. It takes some wrangling, but she gets the teleport ritual circle completed, and everyone gets close enough without needing to get too close to the monsters.

Back at the manor, the plate armored party members flee the teleport room, while Morgana and Borumar wrangle the monsters into a wooden stall in the stable.

Gains: 2 rust monsters
Kills:
Losses:

DGS Freeblades Snake Sorceress & Thief

As 2024 is my year of trying to paint as many non-reaper minis as reaper minis (at least) I picked out these 2 to work on. I bought both at ReaperCon not because I have any interest in the Freeblades game (who needs another game that I'm never gonna get to play) but because I liked the sculpts.

However, as much as I liked them, they gave me issues. I think this is in part because I was using some old Stynylrez primer to start them, and the bottle of yellow seems to have gone bad. The reddish brown that I switched to worked, but then fought me as I went along. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that I'm so used to using either black primer or Brown/Blue/Grey Liner (all dark colors). 

The thief and snake sorceress both gave me problems with their skin tones. I started with tanned flesh and worked up with Rosy skin, and they looked ghastly. Literally. Somehow their skin ended up looking grey. Since I was using auburn shadow as the base for both their hair, I gave their skin a glaze of it, which helped but still looked wrong. I then used that same glaze and mixed a drop into the rosy skin. Finally I had something that didn't look dead, and I could work with.

For the thief I painted her jerkin with carbon grey then washed it with black wash, followed by a highlight of carbon grey. I used the same color for the sorceress' pants. The thief's cloak was Orchid Purple largely to give it some color. One of the problems with painting thieves is that they're going to tend toward lots of dark muddy colors to help them blend in to shadows, but that can be really boring to look at. I try to compromise with using dark colors, but still having them be colors other than brown and grey.

The snake sorceress’ top and snake were painted with a base of wilderness green, brought up with viper Green for highlights. I decided to use bronze for her bracers and greaves, gold for the necklace and belt. Originally it was all going to be gold, but I didn't like the way it looked, and painted over it.

All in all these were fun minis to paint, and they'll look even better when I get around to basing them.

Stonehell: Lost Level - You're not fooling anyone

Session 220 was played on 7/2/23

Morgana, Magic User (Rob)
Borumar, ½ Orc Thief (Josh)
Koltic, Cleric 7 (NPC)
Aroon, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Jameth, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Lor’Koth, Dwarf 5 (NPC)
Nick, Fighter 7 (Me)

After spending some downtime around town, the party gears up and sets out for the caves leading to the lost level. On the way they scare off a mountain lion that had gotten too close to town, then Koltic dispatched a troop of 10 skeletons in the swamp.

Once in the lost level they make their way back over to the mostly unexplored central area where Morgana fries a mimic that did its best to look like a comfortable bed. The lack of dust was the giveaway.

In a too hot kitchen an angry fire elemental did its best to cook the party, but Morgana summoned a water elemental to deal with it. The fire elemental was SUPER upset at this development, and climbed up the chimney to escape. Once the fireplace had cooled enough, the elemental's treasure was collected, and the party checked their map to decide where next.

Gains: couple thousand coins in silver and gold, Potion of Greater Healing, Potion of Treasure Finding.
Kills: 10 skeletons, Mimic, Fire Elemental (defeated)
Losses:

Stonehell: Teleport Traps and Friendly Giants

Session 219 was played on 6/4/23

Morgana, Magic User (Rob)
Borumar, ½ Orc Thief (Josh)
Blotto, Goblin Fighter (Lanse)
Koltic, Cleric 7 (NPC)
Aroon, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Jameth, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Lor’Koth, Dwarf 5 (NPC)
Lt. Marthek, Fighter (NPC)
Nick, Fighter 7 (Me)

Still in the lost level, the party next comes across a Chimera in an adjoining circular room. Blotto bravely leaps upon the dragon head of the beast, keeping it from breathing fire on the party, while Morgana tries to Polymorph it, but it resists her magic. The dragon head shakes Blotto around and manages to get him into its mouth, biting hard. Neither Blotto nor the dragon head enjoyed it. The fighters pile into the monster, and Morgana Magic Missiles it, dropping it before it can eat Blotto. The scorpion tale is taken as a prize.

The next chamber contains a lone hellhound, that Morgana Ice Storms to death. They’re then caught in a teleport trap that sends them… somewhere in the dungeon… They think they’re still in Stonehell anyway… Morgana makes use of the scroll of mapping, but no one recognizes anything that shows up. While carefully looking around, a stone giant wanders by and seems generally amused. Unfortunately they don’t share a language and the giant wanders off. Morgana begins her ritual to teleport the party home, and as she nears the end the giant comes back with a few friends to watch the ritual.

Gains: chimera tail
Kills: Chimera, Hellhound
Losses:

Stonehell: Lost Level Investigations

Session 218 was played on 5/28/23

Morgana, Magic User (Rob)
Borumar, ½ Orc Thief (Josh)
Koltic, Cleric 7 (NPC)
Aroon, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Jameth, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Lor’Koth, Dwarf 5 (NPC)
Lt. Marthek, Fighter (NPC)
Nick, Fighter 7 (Me)

The party decides to head to the lost level, and gets attacked by giant bees that had built their hive nearby. Morgana dispatched them easily before they could get into melee.

From the bubble fountain, they head toward the ogre troop, and get ambushed by a displacer beast that quickly realizes has picked off more than it could chew, and it ran away.

The ogres were busy arguing about some aspect of their performance, and so the party snuck by without getting stuck resolving the dispute or needing to see yet another production. Continuing to explore they come to a hydra fairly quickly. Borumar’s bow and Morgana’s lightning spells make quick, if loud work of it. All the noise caused the ogres to investigate, and they happily take the hydra’s corpse for dinner.

Turning to the north, the party continues on, and ends up in a fight with 4 skilled human fighters, but they’re outnumbered and out classed. After 2 drop, the remaining fighters call for parlay. They surrender, tell what they know of the dungeon, and depart heading toward the exit as directed by Morgana.

As the fighters had picked a defensible spot, the party opts to make camp and rest.

Gains:
Kills: 2 myrmidons, giant killer bees
Losses: