Stonehell: From the Sewer to the Sepulture

Session 272 was played on 11/10/24

Morgana, wizard 10 (Rob)
Borumar, Triton Thief 11 (Josh)
Blotto, Goblin Fighter 8 (Lanse)
Nick, Fighter 9 (Me)
Koltic, Cleric 9 (NPC)
Aroon, Fighter 8 (NPC)
Jameth, Fighter 8 (NPC)
Lor’Koth, Dwarf 8 (NPC)

With just a single location left to explore in the sewers, the party makes as direct a transit to the last closed door from the Hermitage as they can. Behind it is a completely spotless room. Everyone’s guard is immediately raised, and they begin to look carefully for cleaning slimes like gelatinous cubes… but find nothing. They check more carefully, and don’t even find any damned dust!

Or the regular kind of dust for that matter.

Blotto pees around the room, and the party decides that’s good enough.

Conferring for a moment, they decide to use the ring of scintillating orbs to travel to the Sepulture of the Kion. Avoiding the magic draining of the sparking room, and as in the sewers, head to the next unopened door. Unfortunately the big door they try to get through defies Borumar’s ability to open, and Blotto’s pee.

Heading up north to the upper halls of the Sepulture, they manage to open the door to yet another room full of the floating sarcophagi… and some giant spiders that get the drop on Borumar. In spite of their speed, they fail to land a hit on the triton, and are quickly slaughtered.  

Through the door on the far end of the room, they’re set upon by an Ochre Jelly, but Morgana drops an Ice Storm on it before it can get close enough to hurt anyone. Following the corridor, they come to a set of busted doors…

Gains:
Kills: giant spiders, ochre jelly
Losses:

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DM Note: I finally updated everyone's levels...

November ‘24 In Review

Fuck. Just…. Fuck. We're all going to be dealing with the negative consequences of this election for years, if not decades. My wish is that everyone who voted for Trump personally gets everything they voted for.

In less horrible news, Friendsgiving was wonderful… minus the stomach bug that we all passed around starting Thursday night. Once I finally stopped puking, I slept like I haven’t slept in YEARS. Basically all of Saturday I spent unconscious.

With the holiday season now in full swing, I’m looking at what I can actually accomplish with the remainder of the year, and thinking about what I want to do for next year. Back in 2023 I did my #Dungeon23 daily writing prompt, and I really enjoyed the experience. I’m thinking about doing a similar project, #Hex25


Gaming
While I didn't actually get 2 session reports per week written, it kinda averaged out to close enough.

In Stonehell my players wrapped up their exploration of the sewers and moved back into the Sepulcher, and then ended up down on level 8, and talking with a friendly stone giant. They decided to head home, and do some research on the Plated Mage. We’re pausing Stonehell for December, and one of my players is going to run some Mothership.

The Caves of Chaos game has had too many bumped sessions due to work conflicts, but I’m looking forward to getting in a few more sessions before Christmas and New Years.


Miniatures
I decided to paint up the Frostgrave cultists I'd assembled and primed ages ago. You can guess why cultists were suddenly on my mind. It's too bad I assembled them with skull face masks rather than red baseball caps. I painted them up to work with the king in yellow cultists that have been the main type of cultist that I paint. I also finished the fish faced Stargrave grunt I started months ago, a stained glass construct, and a couple of gelatinous cubes (and their meals).

I started working in earnest on Baba Yaga's hut, but that didn't get done this month. It's a big mini…


Media
Star Trek Lower Decks (season 5 and rewatch of seasons 1-4)
Deadpool & Wolverine
Silo (season 2)
Ghosts

Loot
I’m adding this section because it’s a rare month that I don’t get something new, usually in the mail from some Kickstarter that I backed months, or even years ago. Honestly I tend to ignore most kickstarter updates, assume everything will be late, and am just pleasantly surprised when it does show up.

This month's delivery was Stewpot, tales from a fantasy tavern, a game about a group of adventurers settling down and making a new life for themselves. I finished reading the book, and… It is a very different sort of game than I’m used to. Much more in the storytelling side of things. The actual rules for the various mini games that make up the scenarios are simple. I would be interested in actually trying it out, but reading through it, it feels less like a game and more like a loose framework to tell a very specific sort of story. Maybe when you boil it down that isn’t all that different from basic D&D, but…

Goals for December
Keep up with the Stonehell session reports, and get at least 1 Caves of Chaos session report written per week.

Caves of Chaos: Goblin Guards

 Session 3 was played on 8/22

Dramatis Personae:
Io the Thief
Wannabe Gizzard the Wizard
Tiptoe the Thief
Venus the Halfling

Starting in the tavern, feeling flush from the wyvern’s treasure, the party hires the 3 caravan guards who are between jobs, and willing to follow the party off to the caves. Norwood, Barin, and Harmyr are hopeful that the adventurer’s luck continues.

Taking the Old King’s Road, they head to the box canyon and to the goblin cave on the southern side. Almost immediately they’re confronted with 6 goblin guards. The fighting is chaotic, and the party begins to back track almost immediately after Norwood drops. Things are looking better as they get back to the cave mouth and half the goblins are down, but then Barin takes a nasty hit and drops. The remaining goblins suffer a string of bad luck and drop right after Barin goes down. Harmyr and the thieves grab the bodies of Norwood and Barin and start making for the exit of the canyon.

Their escape is interrupted when 6 more goblins come out of the cave, and start tossing spears and loosing arrows at the party. They drop the bodies of their fallen and book it back to the road.

The party makes it back to the keep, and has a somber dinner. Their spirits are lifted by a visiting priest who joins them for some lively conversation. His acolytes are less jovial, having taken a vow of silence. In the end the priest excuses himself, as he needs to converse with the castilian. It isn’t until after he’s left the tavern that the barkeep informs the party that the priest left them to pay his bill. If nothing else, they do hear a rumor about some lost magical armor hidden on one of the southern caves.

Gains:
Losses Norwood, Barin
Kills: 6 goblin guards

DM Notes: So many 1s were rolled on both sides…. SO MANY!!

Stonehell: Slime Trolls!

 Session 271 was played on 11/3/24

Morgana, wizard (Rob)
Borumar, Triton Thief (Josh)
Blotto, Goblin Fighter (Lanse)
Nick, Fighter 7 (Me)
Koltic, Cleric 7 (NPC)
Aroon, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Jameth, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Lor’Koth, Dwarf 5 (NPC)

The party wraps back around to the southwest corner of the sewers. Along the way they’re confronted with a trio of slime dwarves sloshing their way in the muck. Nick and Borumar are hit by them. Blotto pees on them. The fight is quick and they drop after 2 hits each.

They make their way to the closed door marked on the map, and find a pitch black room. The slime troll hands that reach out of the darkness only manage to graze the party before Morgana dispells the darkness, and the party uses their weapons while Morgana and Koltic use flaming oil to make sure the trolls stay hurt. Investigating the room they find 3 mostly intact corpses of adventurers, and a decent haul of treasure. They take the corpse to use Speak with Dead to see what they know.

On the way back to the hermitage the party sees a trio of green slimes on the ceiling of the passage ahead. Morgana fills it with fire.

Gains: coins, gems, jewels
Kills: Green slimes, slime trolls, slime dwarves
Losses:

Stonehell: Sewer cleanup

 Session 270 was played on 10/28/24

Morgana, wizard (Rob)
Borumar, Triton Thief (Josh)
Blotto, Goblin Fighter (Lanse)
Nick, Fighter 7 (Me)
Koltic, Cleric 7 (NPC)
Aroon, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Jameth, Fighter 5 (NPC)
Lor’Koth, Dwarf 5 (NPC)

The party continues their exploration of the sewers, heading to the area the area Morgana marked on the map as “death pits” due to the concentration of ochre jellies in the bottom of it. Borumar checks the room, avoiding the pits themselves, but the jellies begin to slowly crawl out. Borumar, on the far side of the room, heads up the corridor out of blast radius, and Morgana tries to fry them with a Lightning bolt. After it bounces back and forth inside the room, the jellies are unimpressed. Morgana drops a fireball on them. That would have impressed them, had they survived.

Blotto checks out the bottom of the watery pit and finds a weird wolf-ish skull with too many eye sockets. Borumar, returning to the room once his ears stop ringing, also checks out the pit and finds a waxed leather bag with a stash of mostly gold coins.

Heading to the south they reach the crude barrier blocking the way, and talk to the Morlock hiding on the other side. It takes some convincing, but they get him to come out and follow the party so that they can get him somewhere safer, away from the oozes and the reach of the vrylia. They head back north and come to a pit covered with a bridge. In the pit are a bunch of black puddings. Morgana fireballs them, and when that isn’t quite enough, the party drops some flaming oil in to finish them off.

Gains: 21gp
Kills: Ochre jellies, Black puddings
Losses:

Caves of Chaos: Donkeys & Dragons

Session 2 was played on 6/12/24

Dramatis Personae:
Glyn the Dwarf
Berm the Fighter
Thorin Oakenshield the Dwarf
Io the Thief
Wannabe Gizzard the Wizard
Lighter the Fighter
Fraud the Dwarf
Trina the Elf
Tiptoe the Thief
Poppy the Barbarian

Sighting of a dragon in the nearby hills got everyone at the Keep talking. Several smaller caravans and lone wagons have gone missing nearby. The speculation is that it might be lairing at the old abandoned watchtower. Our bold adventurers decide not only to go face this dragon, but to bring along every able bodied individual in the tavern willing to go with them. For extra gold they managed to convince 4 caravan guards to take their day off and spend it dragon hunting! 2 specialists (thieves) and an elf also tag along. The party also bought a donkey and half a dozen chickens. I thought the donkey was to help them bring the dragon’s treasure back, but I was wrong.

Heading up into the wooded hills north of the Keep, the party kept a lookout for the dragon. They spotted the watchtower and approached carefully. Sending the sneaky ones ahead to scout, the rest keep watch on both the tower and the sky…

The thieves make it to the base of the ruined tower without attracting the notice of the dragon… Easy to do since it wasn’t home! One thief climbed a nearby tree to get a look at the top of the tower, and built on it was clearly a nest. The ruined tower was easy to climb, and the thieves scaled it and began to dig around in the nest. The rest of the party went to the base of the tower to collect whatever the thieves could toss down. A few of the hirelings kept the donkey and some chickens nearby, but away from the base of the tower.

As the thieves started tossing all the gold and gems they could find over the edge of the tower, the rest of the party scrambled to pick it up and bag it. They were working fast, and managed to find a decent haul before the dragons roar echoed across the hillside. The thieves ducked down, trying to keep out of sight. Under the trees, the hirelings with the animals started making a ruckus to get the dragon’s attention, and set the donkey to run. The dragon roared and chased after the animal, and as soon as it had passed the adventurers and their meatshields, they all took off running in the opposite direction away from where the donkey and dragon ran. As they ran, they could hear the scream of the donkey end abruptly.  

The party’s plan worked, and they’d made off with a good chunk of the wyvern’s (not a true dragon) treasure.

Gains: roughy 1500ep, 1500gp
Losses donkey and chickens
Kills:

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There was a minor interruption during the game, as a bat managed to get into the building and several players worked together to make sure the doors and windows were opened to let the poor creature escape.

The Caves of Chaos! Session 1

Back in June at a work retreat I ran a couple of evening sessions of B/X D&D for my coworkers. At the end of July we picked back up again, and I’ve been running a near weekly session since. At the time I’m writing this, we’ve played through 11 sessions. All of my players are novices, never having played an RPG before,

My introduction to them was that this is an old school game where death is pretty common if you’re stupid or unlucky, that success is measured by gold far more than by bodies, and that there is a literal war being fought by civilization and the forces of law against the agents of chaos, and while this battle is largely fought by beings like angels and demons, the efforts of mortals can shift the balance. That I would be starting the game on one of the borders between law and chaos, a Keep on the Borderlands. How they choose to play, and where they go in the world is entirely up to them. There is no plot line for them to follow, there is no story that they’re expected to adhere to, that I would be presenting them with NPCs, places, quest choices and that the tales that would be told of their adventures would depend on what actions they take, and the success or failure of those actions.

The first night there were over a dozen players and observers. The second was about half. Since then it ranges from 2-5 players, which isn’t bad given that we’re playing from 4:30-6pm on Thursday afternoons. I’m thrilled to be able to share this with my coworkers, and now I’m going to share their tales with you!

Session 1 was played on 6/10/24

Dramatis Personae:
Glyn the Dwarf
Berm the Fighter
Thorin Oakenshield the Dwarf
Io the Thief
Wannabe Gizzard the Wizard
Lighter the Fighter
Fraud the Dwarf
Trina the Elf
Tiptoe the Thief
Poppy the Barbarian

The party arrives at the Keep on the Borderland, and their first challenge is to get into the keep. The guards keeping watch question the party, logging their names and professions. They warn the self described “thieves” that antisocial behavior will not be tolerated within the walls of the keep, and to keep their noses clean. Also, maybe announcing to the town guard that you’re a thief is maybe not the best intro.

After getting some directions, they make their way to the inn and secure accommodations for the night, and then head to the tavern for food, drink, and rumors. They talk with a guard captain, learn about the Caves of Chaos, that there’s a local dragon that has been causing problems lately that they think is lairing up in the hills in an old ruined watch tower, and that there are both lizardmen in the swamps and bandits all around (10gp/bandit killed, 15gp for any brought back alive).

After lunch they explore the keep more, and try to visit the jeweler, but he doesn’t want to talk to them till they have something to sell, or enough cash to buy something, and isn’t letting them into his store.

The next morning they head out to the canyon. In a copse of trees the party hears someone. Wannabe tosses a vial of burning oil into the trees, and with an amazing stroke of luck manages to hit someone hiding in the brush! His screams echo in the canyon as he burns to death. A second human runs screaming from his burning friend and the party deeper into the canyon. THe party puts out the burning body and the brush that was starting to catch, and check the body, recovering a crude copper medallion inscribed with a 7 pointed star.

Heading up to one of the cave entrances on the north side of the canyon, and looking in see a wall of heads looking back. Within they hear someone speaking, though no one knows the language. Getting ready to head into the cave and turn east to the voices, they’re charged by 4 guards. The party manages to kill 2/4 in the initial assault. More orcs arrive from the other direction surprising the dwarf who was supposed to be keeping watch. The dwarf took 2 hits and dropped. Wannabe sleeps the still standing orcs to the west, while Poppy is cut down before Tiptoe and Berm cut down the last of the standing orcs.

The party quickly checks the pockets of the fallen orcs, grabs their fallen, and runs for the keep.

Gains: orc pocket change, copper medallion
Losses Poppy, Fraud
Kills: 8 orcs, 1 cultist