Rappan: Running Away & Unexpected Friends

After lunch we decided to swap to the main team for some epic game play. 

Session 293 was played on 08/16/25

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

The party departed Castle Black Rook, catching the ferry to Zellcors Ferry and then down towards Sanctuary on the coast. A pack of wolves stopped the party on the way, and dropped a scroll for them. Drusilla needs assistance with some missing property. She also mentions a list druidic retreat that was destroyed by barbarians. It might be a good place to expand.

In Sanctuary they picked up a few rumors
1. Be careful on the river, there's a monster
2. You can't recover spells on the lower levels
3. Great scorpions guard the tomb of the fell king
4. There's a cavern inhabited by living stairs

The party departs Sanctuary and arrives at the graveyard above Rappan. They grab the key to the mausoleum from the dwarf statue, killing the giant rats that had a burrow under/around it. 

Above the mausoleum lurked 3 gargoyles who were quickly and efficiently dispatched, with 2 solid chunks of onyx claimed from their crumbling bodies. 

Descending into the dungeon they explore a side passage, and use passwall to enter a blocked chamber, finding a fancy coffin within. Carefully exploring they find a scroll case and a shiny sword. Within the case was a scroll with Shield, Mirror Image, and Levitate. The coffin was destroyed. 

Further exploration resulted in Jameth and Aroon getting slimed. It took a fireball to deal with the entirety of the green slime. Jameth and Aroon were toasted in the process, but not too badly. Deeper in they encounter a gelatinous cube with some small coinage within. Beyond that they found a secret door behind which they found another scroll with magic spells; Sleep, Charm Person, and Hold Person.

Finally making it to the fungal cave with the stairs down to level 2, they see a small campfire at the far end, and a bit of movement. “Leave us alone” a sad sounding female voice calls out. As it was at the far end, away from both the steps and the way out, and there wasn’t obviously a large group, they continued on their way, giving the voice its wish.  

At the bottom of the stairs a troop of orcs was waiting, most in plate mail! A quick and brutal fight, and the orcs were laid low, stripped of their valuables, and bodies left to rot. The party continued around to the golden door, and began investigating how to remove it from the frame. Borumar unlocked the door, missing the poison needle trap, but the trap failed to hurt him. Beyond the door, once opened, was a charred chamber, and standing in the middle a skeletal figure in a heavy black crown with a large bastard sword. 

“I am Sarak. I have fallen. Prepare to die.” The skeletal figure warned. Sarak’s mere presence was enough to break Nick, Morgana, Jameth, and Aroon and they all ran from the room. Sarak steps forward, sword lashing out and cutting hard into Borumar who finds himself nearly alone. Blotto and Lor’Koth leap to defend Borumar, and all three hit the skeletal figure back, but it just laughs, and heals itself, before lashing out at Borumar again, dropping him. Lor’Koth and Blotto grab their friend and book it. 

The party rallies at the base of the stairs, and attempts to make another assault on Sarak. Morgana throws a lightning bolt through the door at the first sight of the skeletal form, but it just shrugs it off as if it was a static shock. It marches toward the party.

The party runs away back to the fungal cave not stopping till they reach the top of the stairs. 

“I told you to leave us alone!” The female voice from before, this time more angry yells, and follows that up with a volley of Magic Missiles. Morgana returns the favor, and the young woman drops like a rock. Going over the small stream, and through the various large and medium fungal growths to the body. Numerous rats of various sizes hiss but back away as the party approaches. She’s small, maybe a bit malnourished, and wearing a mismatched set of scrounged up dirty clothing. Her magic wand is taken before she’s given a healing potion and touched by Koltic’s staff to revive her. 

She relates a story of another group of adventurers who invaded the dungeon, and indiscriminately dropped a fireball on her wererat mate Jarvix and her family. Her name is Fillaar, and she’s still in mourning from the assault some 6 months back. In an offer of friendship Morgana offers to see what she can do for her mate. Squeezing through some too tight tunnels, she’s brought to the body… what’s left of it after 6 months, and as she already had it memorized, casts Resurrection on it, and manages to bring him back in his original form!

The rats and wererats reward the party with 2 sacks of sneezing and choking, a helm of read magic, boots of elven kind, and a small bag of gold.  

Amamao Paint Pens Review

2 years ago a friend gave me a box of Amamao paint pens for the holidays.. and I was skeptical. I'm really happy using my reaper paints on my minis, and I didn't see what advantages these brought to the table.

I remain skeptical on their use painting tabletop minis, but I discovered back in April that they are fantastic for working on my 3D printed terrain. I also this month discovered that they're great for my 5 year old to use to help me paint my terrain. 

Not only does it minimize the mess he can make as compared to the craft & hobby paints, but he has a lot more control with the pens. An additional benefit is that he has the entire array of colors to choose from, and a love of rainbows, so everything he's worked on has ended up a lot more colorful than it would have been if I'd been doing it by myself. 

Being 5, and easily distracted, he's a little sloppy, but with the pens it's easy enough to go back over and tidy things up. I've also made sure to use the craftsmart antique white somewhere on all the buildings to help tie it all together. 

As for the pens themselves, each pen actually has 2 colors, one on each end. Interestingly the tips on each end are different. One has a larger tip, and the other a smaller one. Both come to a pretty fine point, but for terrain painting, I've largely found the larger tip more useful, and have switched pens and colors if I wanted the bigger tip. There are a few narrow spots the pens can't reach into, but that's a minor issue overall, and mostly spots I'm going to paint a dark shadow color anyway. I've also found that the paint colors don't always match the tip. Not a wild difference, but enough that I've a couple of times swapped pens for something more to my liking. 

 

The color selection is almost perfect. My biggest issue is the lack of a good red in the set. Seems an odd oversight. The selection of metallic paints is fun, but I would have liked a dirty bronze color to work with. 

I have to say that for the price these are absolutely worth it, especially if you have a bunch of terrain to paint. 

November ‘25 In Review

Busy month. But then when was the last time I didn’t have a busy month? Probably early-mid 2020…

Anyway, this month included the following highlights: Voted, came down with a nasty cold in the middle of the month, got better, gave blood, Thanksgiving.


Gaming
Again with the holidays, work only managed a pair of session, and I lost one of my players to a job change, so that sucks. They’re currently in the middle of the Pilgrimage of Yaldabythos from The Painted Wastelands.

Stonehell has the B team dealing with the Fey who’ve taken over the Kobold Korners, and the vampire who took up residence in the Quiet Halls.

Over Thanksgiving I got to try out Horrible Therapist, a very Cards Against Humanity style game. We stayed up way too late playing it, and laughed oh so much. Definitely NSFW or for kids.


Miniatures
While it wasn’t super productive on the miniatures side of things. On the terrain side, I got a lot done. The hamsterling had a couple days off this month, and as one of the activities I used to keep him entertained, we worked on a bunch of my 3D printed terrain, mostly using paint pens (come back tomorrow for a review). One of the cool things with this is that there’s a lot less mess, but also because of his help, they ended up more colorful than I’d have probably gone myself. It’ll make for a more interesting looking table, for sure.  Oh and I went ahead and got a few more things printed up, so this is going to be a very cool terrain set…

And since I need somewhere to put it and play with it, I finally cleared off the piece of plywood that had been sitting on top of the dog crate in my office gathering junk and painted it up. One side is green (using the leftover from the spider) with swirls of darker green, grey, and brown while the other is black. It took an entire 8oz bottle of craft black paint to do it too… 

Not perfect, but better than bare plywood, and certainly good enough to play some Rangers of Shadowdeep on! 

Media
Nightmare Before Christmas (yes, again)
Ghosts
K-Pop Demon Hunters
Superman
Farscape
Hacks

Loot
Dolmenwood kickstarter... these are some big books in the slipcase. They're just tall enough that they will only fit on one shelf of my current bookshelves. Specifically on the bottom, behind the doors... 

Rules Cyclopedia for scale

I also got a walking pad for under my standing desk. 

Goals for December
Finish painting Valfuryx the green dragon (and a handful of other minis)
Finish the session reports from August
Play one mission for Rangers of Shadowdeep or Stargrave 

Stonehell B Team Big Trouble in the Kobold Korners

This was the start of our long gaming weekend! I’ll be breaking the events into appropriately sized chunks for the session reports.

Session 292 was played on 8/16/25

Sonara, Wizard 3 (Rob)
Adorellen, Elf 2 (Me)
Glimmer, Kobold 3 (Lanse)
Kessaren, Cleric 3 (Cindy)
Loahn, Halfling 3 (Josh)
6 Kobold meatshields

The dead rise! It’s been a long time since anyone forced their way through the halls of the dead, and wave after wave of skeletons and zombies poured forth, smashing their undead forms against the might of the B Team. Weirdly, the tombs treasures also seem to have respawned in the darkness… Strange how things work in the underdark. The grave goods found in the once again emptied tombs was a welcome boon for the party, but their objective remained, and they pressed on toward the back door of the Korners.

Just outside the Korners, they were jumped by a pair of crab spiders who should have thought better of it.

The kobold guards at the back door were surprised to have to do anything, and more surprised that it wasn’t Morgana and company. A bit put out to have to do work, the escorted the party through the Korners to meet with Keeper Nolti. The main hall of the Korners was busy, and teeming with fairy-kind. Wasp nest-like structures spiraled around the eves and tucked up against the support pillars full of pixies and other small flying things. Various animal headed fey worked the stalls and shopped, while the kobolds themselves seemed relegated to the more menial tasks.

Nolti arrived quickly to greet the party, and they were surprised to meet a hunchbacked kobold. Morgana hadn’t mentioned that. Nolti took the party to meet with the bookkeeper Roi. They passed by the fighting pit and the slave pens. Nolti tells the party that they reopened the slave market somewhat recently, and that it has been doing good business for the Korners. The guards include Kobolds, Bugbears, and some pixies, though if the pixies were actually guards, or just harassing the enslaved folk, it was hard to tell.

Roi the accountant seemed put off to be forced to make a report on the books. Nervous even. Sonra drops a sleep spell on the lot, but Nolti remains awake! Glimmer doesn’t wait, and backstabs Nolti before he can yell for help. There’s a weird noise from his hump as he falls, and pulling aside the kobold’s robe they find a massive 7 legged starfish on Nolti’s back and shoulder. They remove the starfish, stuff it and Nolti’s body into their bag of holding (it’s good kobolds have such narrow shoulders) and then go across to the slave pens. All the guards dropped from the sleep spells so releasing the slaves was easy enough. The party and their freed slaves make a break for the surface and back to the manor, passing a 10 headed hydra eating… something in the swamp on the way.


Gains: 500ep, 100gp gem, scroll of protection from undead, potion of speed, potion of invisibility
Kills: 14 skeletons, 11 zombies, 1 ghoul, 2 crab spiders, Keeper Nolti
Losses:

Stonehell B Team Into the Quiet Halls

Session 291 was played on 8/3/25

Sonara, Wizard 3 (Rob)
Adorellen, Elf 2 (Me)
Glimmer, Kobold 3 (Lanse)
Kessaren, Cleric 3 (Cindy)
Loahn, Halfling 3 (Josh)
6 Kobold meatshields

It was a short session as a good chunk of time was spent on confirming logistics for our upcoming weekend of gaming...

The party holed up with Rocky for a day in order to be sure to be able to ask another round of questions. Barricading the door from the inside, they hung out and got to know the big stone head.

The following day they asked “How to get to where Sabrine is?”
A: South of the Korners
“What species is Sabrine?”
A: Elf
“Is there anything else you want?”
A: Tasty rocks

With this new info, they thank Rocky, and head out to the Quiet Halls. As ever, the dead do not rest as quietly as the name suggests, and almost as soon as they begin to pass by the crypt doors, the dead begin to rise.

Classic 80's Horror Quick Reviews

Over the course of October I watched a handful of classic 80's horror movies. Some silly, some serious, and some that surprised me. 

Phantasm - Okay, technically this was 1979, but close enough... As for the movie itself, I don't even know... I think the best way to watch this one is after being up 2 days straight, and watching it at like midnight. It's so messy. I get what they were going for... mostly... kinda? Of all the movies on the list, it's the one that has most stuck in my brain. Apparently it stuck in the writer/director's brain too, cause they made 4 sequels, the last of which came out in 2016... Is it crazy I'm considering watching them?

Killer Klowns from Outer Space - Campy, silly, and shockingly restrained on the gore. They were really keeping to the PG-13 rating on this one. Aside from making it somewhat kid friendly, it was pretty much exactly what they promised. 

Chopping Mall - Teens locked in a mall at night with killer security robots. When you think of 80's horror/slasher type films, this is exactly the type of movie you're thinking of, with all the expected levels of questionable writing & acting, nudity, and gore. 

From Beyond - An HP Lovecraft story updated with 80's tech. Better than it deserved to be, but I'm also a big fan of Jeffry Combs from his days on Star Trek DS9, so I'm sure that influences things a little. I want to go read the original story and see how much it diverges from it. There's definitely a lot to talk about in the framing of BDSM in the movie, but it's really too much for this quick review, not really in the theme of the blog, and I'm sure others have already written on it. 

Re-Animator - Also an HP Lovecraft story adaptation, made the year before From Beyond, with many of the same actors, but not as good. It just didn't hold my attention the same way, but then I think things from other dimensions make more interesting antagonists than zombies.

Lifeforce - Sexy Space Vampires who spend most of the movie naked. Mathilda May is stunning and otherworldly, and make watching the movie worth it all by herself. It was a wildly ambitious movie in scope, storytelling, and special effects (which hold up remarkably well). Unfortunately it ends up a bit of a mess reaching has far as it did, but it's still impressive. 

October '25 in Review

What a month! I'm honestly not entirely sure how I managed it all! Between all the various things the kid had going on, getting ready for Halloween, watching a bunch of horror movies, and getting all the minis painted that I did? It is important to note the lack of blog posts in October, so that should tell you something.

Gaming

Sadly the work game has missed far more sessions than we've played recently. I'm hoping things ease up a bit for November.

Stonehell continues. The B team is still doing their best to resolve the fairy situation, having now encountered the Witch of the Deep and the ‘fairy’ king. I'm really looking forward to seeing what's going to happen next.

I also had the pleasure of running 2 totally new players and their family in a far too short game. It was a steampunk train robbery, and I wish I had a little more time with them. 2 hours was just too little... 

 

Miniatures

Okay, I’m super impressed with myself. I got so much more done this month than I was expecting. For the month:

5 imps

1 barkeeper

1 heroquest barbarian

2 spiders

1 skeletal pirate

6 Tau Defender Class Escorts

Baba Yaga’s Hut’s chicken legs and base

3 vampire daughters

1 small 3D print kiosk/shop

1 ork runtherd

1 tiefling warlock

1 bollard & gas can

1 sign post

 

15 Reaper minis, and 11 non-reaper minis. 

I also made a big start on 8 Tau Orca class escorts, and a big green dragon! 

Oh yeah, and I finished the GIANT spider for the yard. 

Media 

Killer Klowns from Outer Space

Farscape 

Fisk

Chopping Mall

From Beyond

Reanimator

Nightmare Before Christmas

Ghosts

Lifeforce

Loot

Reaper October Order!

Goals for November

Get through the session reports from the gaming weekend

Finish the dragon