Stonehell B Team: Smells so bad

Session 318 was played on 1/25/26

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

Continuing their exploration of the former hobgoblin redoubt, the party finds the midden, which seems to be back in use. It smells worse than before… who knew the smell could get worse? As everyone gags, Sonra decides that the best way to deal with the smell is to light a match. A really big match. She sends a mini-fireball into the room. 

Now it smelled like burning troglodyte shit. 

Making use of their new Secret Hut spell, the party climbs in and waits for the flames to die out and the smoke to clear, and hopefully the smell to be less bad. 

Eventually they climb out and continue exploring, heading around the room with the big pits, and down toward a room marked barracks. A pack of troglodyes approach the party from the other end of the hall. One of them casts a web spell on the party, and suddenly things go dark, as a magical darkness follows the web spell. A moment later Sonra throws a fireball in the middle of the troglodytes and yells “go away!”

Once again, burning troglodyte doesn’t smell any better than non-burning troglodyte. 

The sound of one troglodyte running away, screaming in pain can be heard, but not seen. 

Cutting their way free was a very slow process, both because of the darkness, but also the blades kept getting stuck in the webs. After about 10 minutes, iGor starts screaming in pain, yelling about his feet. The darkness makes it all worse, and everyone can feel the thrashing in the webs. It doesn’t take long before someone pulls out a torch and sets the webs alight. Everyone is burned, but free, and Kessaren grabs iGor, and pulls him out of the magical darkness… or what’s left of him. A grey ooze had completely enveloped him, and was now working its way up Kess’ arm. They hack at the ooze, and manage to kill it, or at least kill enough of it that it stops trying to eat Kessaren. 

Scooping up what they can of iGor and putting it in the portable hole, the party makes a run for the stairs and back up to the Korners. The party spends a week recovering, and then hires 3 new kobolds to join them, as well as a pair of hobgoblin warriors. 

Gains: 
Kills: troglodytes, grey ooze
Losses: iGor 

Stargrave Trashbash Fuel Tower part 2

With the construction complete, it was time to get to painting! Because of the use of foam on it, I used my mod podge and black paint mix on all the foam before taking it outside on the first 60+ degree day we had this year and giving it a solid coat of Rust-oleum flat black. That was back in March...

Fast forward to MAY, and I was getting sick of looking at it and it's black primer coat... Not really sure what else to do with it, I decided to use the same green on the tank as I'd used for my other trash bash industrial terrain, but first was giving everything that was supposed to be metal a coat of brown metallic craft paint. Originally I was going ot use the airbrush paint, but I wanted to test out the bottle I got from Michaels to see how it worked.

 That worked out about as well as I could have hoped for! And as it's a lot cheaper, and I don't have to have it shipped to me, this will probably be my go to for undercoating my industrial terrain. 

 The main tank got the aforementioned industrial green, leaving the metallic brown in the groves showing, and the connector bit on top got a hazard yellow ring. I also painted the logo on the tank withe the yellow as a base. 

 

Onto the wood and stucko for the build-out portion, which was painted with the usual antique white, and a random mix of browns for the wood. 

 

Then I started picking out other details, like the wires and the junction box. 

And the final steps were to make the bands around the tank and the radar dish more silvery, black hazard lines on the yellow coupling, and add some weathering using a mix of dark sepia and black wash, putting streaks where it felt most appropriate. 

It's nice to finally have this wrapped up, and now it's time to get it on the table and play with it!  

Norkers

"The little bugger bit me!" Nimble yelled, as much from pain as embarrassment. 

The pink little bugger in question was barely 3 feet tall, but had sunk it's teeth into Nimble's hip. The others giggled with their wide wet toothy mouths. 

"Don't let them get so close next time" Rathgar laughed, booting one prone and running it through with his sword. He jerked to the side just in time to avoid the tusks of the boar that went racing past him, but not far enough to avoid the mounted norker's heavy club.   

"I can see why the village asked for our help" Feris said, knocking aside the blade of the norker poking at him. 

Norkers

Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 2+1
Move: 90 (30)
Attacks: 1 weapon 1 bite
Damage: 1d6/1d3
No. Appearing: 2d6 (5d6)
Save As: F2
Morale: 9
Treasure Type: E
Intelligence: 9
Alignment: chaotic
XP Value: 25

Monster Type: Humanoid, Uncommon

Norkers are noxious and obnoxious creatures, superficially of goblinoid stock, but twisted and nastier than the average gobbo. They organize themselves into roving bands that loot, pillage, and burn an area before either moving on for greener pastures, or being driven off. All their loot (whatever isn't destroyed) is kept at their base camp under lock and key of the norker chieftain (4+2HD) and his 1d4+1 guards (3+2HD). 

Norkers keep boars as guard animals, mounts, and beasts of burden. All roving groups of at least 5 members will have 1 mounted on a boar. 

There is a particular enmity between norkers and fairies, and norkers will always be wearing hobnail boots, and as many bits of iron as they can. Cookpot helms are especially popular and fought over among them.

---

I hadn't planned on painting them pink. Originally I wanted them to have yellow skin, but since painting yellow is a pain in the ass, I went with the paint it pink first trick. The thing is, I liked how they looked with the pink skin. They're rather cartoony already, and it felt appropriate. And if you look really close at the mounted norker's boot, you'll see a squished pixie stuck to the bottom! 

Stonehell: B Team: It Smells Worse

Session 317 was played on 1/19/26

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

Sonra, managing to keep lunch, uses the wand to cast Fireball on the troglodytes at the end of the hall, and the foul smell of troglodyte is replaced with a new, slightly less bad smell of burned troglodytes. Among them they had several items of jewelry, mostly made of silver and copper. 

Continuing to explore, Glimmer checks a doorway, but triggers a falling portcullis trap, getting himself stabbed by the weighty pointy gate. Adorellen grabs the gate, and holds it up while Glimmer is removed from the pointy bits and given a healing potion. Beyond the portcullis is a decently sized, if empty room. They search around and find a loose flagstone on the floor. After checking for additional traps, they lift it up and find a bag of silver coin within. 

Grabbing the torched troglodyte bodies, they drag them into the room, and Sonra writes a note “take this to Borglope, your life depends on it” along with 15 copper coins, and places it under the loose flagstone. They then leave the room, close the door, and reset the trap. 

Deeper into the level they find some dead kobolds fairly recently butchered and clearly being kept for food, and not too far from the larder, a room that had clearly been set aside as a midden. It was hard to believe that anything could smell worse than troglodytes, but troglodyte shit manages it. 

Gains: silver coins, cheap jewelry
Kills: troglodytes
Losses: 

Kalanzar the Wicked part 2

I finished painting Kalanzar a long while ago now, and forgot to circle back around to show off how I did it and how it looks all finished off.  You did get to see it in the Year in Minis post from back in 2023, but here's a detailed look at the process. 

 

I wanted to keep the palette somewhat limited, both for consistency across the mini, but also for my own sanity, so this was the selection of paint I picked.   

I started with the wings... 

 It looks really bright here... and it is, but this is just the start. 

Then it was off to blocking in the colors on the body. You'll notice the head is missing. I neglected to take work in progress pics of the head, but it was painted separately from the body. 

 There were a few small gaps, but it was big enough to bug me, so I filled them, and sculpted some kinda matching scales to blend it all in. 

More work on the body, deepening the shadows, trying to hit all the highlights. So many scales... 

I regularly plugged the wings into the body to make sure everything was still looking good. I didn't paint with the wings attached both because they got in the way, but also because it was really difficult to try to keep hold of the dragon without them. 

More highlighting...

 

The foam on the base was obviously the wrong texture, so I coated it with mod podge and sand. 

Then I got to painting the lava. Oh, and there's the head. 

And checking how Kalanzar fits on the base... 

 Turns out it needed some extra support. I added some more foam bricks and chunks and then gave them the same mod podge and sand covering.   

 And here it is, all finished up! 

Stonehell: B Team: Six & Violence

Session 316 was played on 1/11/26

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

The party takes the stairs down from Kobold Korners to level 2, and are almost immediately caught by 6 giant spiders. Fire arrows prove somewhat ineffective, but molotov cocktails proved explosively effective. The party cuts and burns themselves from the spider's sticky webs and then notice a smell, a foul odor that cuts through the various burning smells that currently dominate the area. 

Exploring further Loahn checks out a side room, and finds himself alone with another pair of giant spiders. There’s some screaming and hacking and slashing, and eventually the rest of the party goes to see what all the noise is about, and then they take care of the spiders.

All the noise does attract some of the local’s attention. The foul smell from earlier has grown stronger, and everyone in the party is feeling at least a little queasy, while some are actively rediscovering their most recent meals. From the far end of the hall, 8 humanoid lizards can be seen. The stench keeps getting worse…

Gains: 
Kills: 8 giant spiders
Losses: lunch

April ‘26 In Review

As far as the goals for the month, this one was a bust. Didn’t get the tower painted, didn’t get in a game of Hope Eternal, didn’t get a lot of session reports written, and I’m now 4 months behind…. All of this because of the audit at work, traveling out of state for spring break and then again for a neifling’s birthday party, and inevitably coming down with a nasty cold right at the end of the month… What a joy it is to be working on pulling audit documentation while your head is stuffed up. 

On the other hand I got to spend time with family I don’t get to see often enough, and 2 different friends welcomed their first kids into the world! I can't wait to meet baby River and baby Spenser! 

Miniatures
With all the travel going on, and the audit at work, mini time was extremely limited this month. I am however extremely pleased with these 2 goblins. Overall though most of the work I got done was at much more of a tabletop standard, and could have all used far more attention. It really shows with the pirate. He looks good from a distance, but up close, his skin highlights were rough. 

 

I have bigger plans for next month…


Gaming
My work game has taken an unexpected turn. They expressed to me that they weren’t really interested in returning to The Caves of Chaos, and asked for some options. I offered them these:

Option 1. Various small local dungeons 
Option 2. Barrowgate and the expansive barrowfields beyond. Undead slaying and grave robbing
Option 3. Megadungeon delving (one big dungeon you keep returning to over and over. Does it have a bottom level? Who knows?)
Option 4. Fairy tale forest crawl
Option 5. Giant desert plateau crawl

Everyone got to pick their top 2 choices. Everyone picked the fairy tale forest crawl as one of their choices, so they wrapped up the little dungeon I had planned for the week, and then went off down a fairy road that’s dropping them inside the woods. I got to bring back Bertie Brittlebones the hag to chat with them.

The Stonehell/Rappan game has us continuing to make our way up from the semi-civilized trolls toward the surface. It's slow going and rough mapping. Stonehell is far more mapper friendly. 

Media 
Hacks
Daredevil Born Again season 2

Books
Dolmenwood campaign book

Loot
Printed out some more Flatline City terrain. 

Goals for April
Play scenario 4 of Stargrave Hope Eternal
Finish January & February session reports