Rel
Liquid Awesome
Hello one and all. On Saturday, it was my great pleasure to run a one-shot game for my regular group, plus our special guest, Old One (of Faded Glory fame). We all had a great time (at least that’s what they are telling me to my face) and I promised Old One’s players and other readers that I would write a Story Hour about it so they could see how their fearless leader performed on the “other side of the screen”.
Again, this is a one shot and not an ongoing campaign so I’ll be posting all the installments to it in the next day or two (all you folks who are out there saying, “But that’s what you say about your Faded Glory Story Hour, Rel, and you are always tardy updating that one,” can just shut your pie holes right now).
Just a quick note before I begin our intrepid tale: I’m never shy about adding GM commentary into my SH posts. But in this case I’m going to be especially liberal with them because my thoughts as the group progressed through the adventure as well as some real life events are an integral part of the story of the session, if not the story as it took place in the game world. If you don’t like that sort of thing, I’m sorry. But trust me that much of it is pretty darn funny. From this point onward, I’ll try to offset the GM commentary with italics like this.
On to the adventure…
When Old One told me that he was coming to the area for a visit, I instantly agreed to have him game with us. However, I am not currently running the game in our group and it can sometimes be problematic to slot in a new character for one session in an ongoing campaign. So I immediately thought of doing a one-shot.
I wanted it to be fun but I also wanted it to be unique and memorable (in short, I wanted to try to impress one of my GM Heroes, Old One). I wracked my brain trying to think of something I hadn’t done before. Then I stumbled onto an old idea: I’ll start the party naked! Everybody has done this before, right? Ok, well not precisely “naked” but with very little equipment. From there, I quickly jumped to the concept of doing a 3E rendition of the old AD&D module A4 “In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords” and voila – “Return to the Dungeons of the Slave Lords” was born.
The Party (all 5th level):
A wily Halfling Rogue who’s a dead shot with a thrown rock, Blodgett (Played by The Lone Corndog, AKA the player who ran Rhys and Scar in my Faded Glory campaign).
A surly Dwarven Cleric, and the founding (and still only) member of the Dwarven Temperance League (DTL), Karraway (Played by Raven Howeveryouspellhislastname, AKA the player who ran Krase and Raven in my campaign).
A dangerous (and not just to the enemy) Gnomish Sorcerer, Delgath the Dread (Played by Speaks With Stone who ran the character of the same name in my campaign).
And last, but almost always first, a gravely voiced, burly and mean hunk of Dwarven woman, Elwita the Fighter (Played by our guest of honor, Old One).
The Setup (i.e. Welcome to Rel’s Railroad! All Aboard!)
The party are prisoners of a nasty band of pirates and slavers who they fell prey to on the high seas. They have been held captive for several weeks and forced to work in the diamond mines of the pirates’ island stronghold. One member of the party managed to escape from the sea battle (an NPC Druid) and has been trying to figure out a way to help the party bust out of their prison. But now he has sent a desperate message: The island is a volcano about to blow and the group can’t wait any longer. They must make their escape attempt now!
Fortunately, just that day (What a coincidence!) as they were mining, the group discovered that there must be a hollow on the other side of the place they were digging (thanks to the Dwarves’ stonecunning).
The Druid’s message was delivered to the party by a Boggun named Mulch who snuck in past the guards disguised as, well, a pile of Mulch. Fortunately, the cargo capacity of a Boggun’s belly is such that he was also able to cough up (quite literally) a few other small items of value: A +1 Dagger that also glows (5’R of light), the Cleric’s holy symbol, the Sorcerer’s spell pouch, a divine scroll with 3 low level spells on it and 6 Goodberries. Except for these items, each party member is equipped with nothing more than a canvas tunic tied at the waist with a 5’ length of rope.
Armed with this bounty of newfound equipment, the path to freedom is clear: The group must use the Cleric’s magic (either Loosen Earth and Stone or Stone Shape) to clear a path to the hollow. Then they will follow that cavern, which hopefully leads to the surface, whereupon they will attempt to steal the pirates’ ship, The Water Dragon, or one of its longboats and flee the island.
Here I am with more commentary again already. I’m not terribly fond of linear campaign design. I think that one of the things that is fun about roleplaying is for the characters to have choices and to have to live with the consequences of those choices. However, in a one-shot game, I’m willing to railroad the party a bit more in the interests of moving things along.
The Druid had offered that the party could send a return message by way of Mulch to indicate when and where they would be making their jailbreak and this would allow the Druid to cause a distraction at the appropriate time to aid them. For the moment, they opted to hang on to Mulch for his use in scouting and his glowing personality.
With only the dagger among them to use as a weapon, most of the group set to making slings out of the hems of their tunics and gathering rocks for ammunition. Meanwhile, even though it wasn’t the appropriate time of day, the Cleric selected his spells and prayed to almighty Moradin to help them get the heck out of there. Their situation was desperate. The volcano was going to blow any time now and Elwita was starting to think that the Gnome looked sexy in his tunic. Under these dire circumstances, Moradin cut Karraway a break and granted the spells he asked for pronto.
At this point, I introduced a little metagame device to the group: The Doomsday Clock ™! I took the clock off my mantle and set it down next to the gaming table and said ominously (at least I hope it sounded ominously), “It is now 5:45 PM. When the Doomsday Clock strikes 11:00, the volcano erupts…”
As a great sense of urgency overcame the party, the Cleric finalized his spell selection and Elwita ceased her comments on the possible sexual uses of the Sorcerer’s heightened sense of smell. In short, they got down to business.
Karraway went to work on creating an opening into the next cavern. Using Stone Shape, he withdrew a large plug of stone from the wall and set about shaping it into the rough shape of a battleaxe for use by Elwita (she had Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization for the battleaxe). Elwita used her talent at stoneworking to assist in this endeavor and wound up with a somewhat brittle but serviceable rendition of a battleaxe.
Blodgett meanwhile gazed into the cavern that they were about to make their escape into. What he saw was dark and Blodgett complained loudly about Halflings’ general lack of low light vision. In the interest of shutting him up, Karraway cast a Light spell on a sling stone and gave it to Blodgett. The Halfling again looked to the cavern that was to be their salvation. It was some 20 feet across and extended in both directions. He dangled and dropped the 10 feet to the sandy floor of the cavern and noted that the cavern quickly dead ended in one direction and narrowed but continued in the other direction. The “toot-toot” noise you are hearing is the sound of Rel’s Railroad, where the trains always run on time!
The group entered the cavern with Karraway bringing up the rear. Hoping to confound their jailors as to how they escaped, he used another Stone Shape spell to seal their exit behind them. That done, the group pressed on with the Blodgett in the lead. His keen eyes and utter lack of Darkvision guaranteed that any enemies would see the glowing rock he carried long before he saw them.
The passageway descended and curved around, narrowing all the while until it was a scant 5 feet wide and only 3 feet tall. Blodgett grinned in satisfaction that his short height was serving a purpose other than a basis for crude sexual humor by Elwita. But his smugness was short lived as he could see the cavern opening up again ahead of the bottleneck. He could also see a pile of something up ahead, including what appeared to be bits of broken furniture. He called Elwita forward and hid the Light stone while asking her to employ her innate Darkvision (which he desperately envied) to see what lay ahead.
Elwita could see that the pile was various bits of cast off refuse, probably dropped into this cavern through a shaft in the ceiling from which a very dim and flickering light emanated. Among the pile, he could see several dead bodies in various states of decay.
With the possibility that the Slaver’s trash men could be lurking directly overhead, the group decided to proceed with the utmost caution. They would sneak around the pile and exit the chamber through the passageway opposite them. Then they would send the Halfling back to conduct the onerous duty of searching through the pile of dead bodies and garbage in the hopes of locating something useful, like a bustier for Elwita, gravity being a bitch and all.
Alas, this plan was confounded when (to the surprise of virtually nobody) the dead bodies rose from the garbage heap and moved to attack Blodgett and Elwita who were first to enter the chamber. The undead were comprised of a trio of skeletons and a pair of zombies, all of roughly medium size.
The Rogue stood stark still (due to a surprisingly bad initiative roll) as did the Warrioress (due to an unsurprisingly bad initiative roll). But Delgath the Dread, anxious to live up to his name, reacted quickly and neutralized the threat (to himself) by casting a Web spell into the chamber. The webs engulfed virtually the whole room and were placed so precisely that they enveloped Elwita, who stood a scant 5 feet away, while leaving the Gnome to breath easy.
Thanks to the obscurement provided by the Web, nobody could see the utter embarrassment on Blodgett’s face as he failed his Reflex Save. Nor could they see the horror on his face as he realized that on one of the skeletons had made his save and was preparing to gouge his little Halfling eyes out.
Meanwhile, Karraway, never one to rush in while Delgath was flinging his magic about, dithered around near the back of the pack, generally bemoaning the troubles that had befallen them so soon in their attempt to escape. Elwita held up the Dwarven end by tearing herself free of the webs with her mighty strength. Lacking such mighty strength himself, Blodgett attempted to extract himself by more dexterous means and succeeded. Unfortunately he was still trapped in close quarters with a skeleton and a dagger. Never a good combo there.
The skeleton struck at the Halfling and landed a claw on him, tearing his tunic in the process. Since the piece of ragged and smelly canvas comprised a substantial portion of his worldly possessions at the moment, Blodgett screamed more in anger than in pain.
To add insult to minor injury, Delgath gleefully summoned a small jet of flame to his hand by way of Prestidigitation and called out, “I can set the webs on fire if you want me to, Blodgett! You’ll get out faster that way.”
Elwita christened her new stone battleaxe by sinking it deep in the side of the zombie entangled in the webs in front of her. The creature did not fall, but it did let out a deep gurgling noise. Then again, it might have made that gurgling noise regardless of the blow. Who can say?
Karraway finally decided that being imbued with the holy power of Moradin is great for conversation at the Dwarven Temperance League meetings and all, but the best part about it is actually using it. He scrambled ungracefully through the low opening into the Slaver’s landfill and let loose with a wave of positive energy that swept through the webs turning the skeletons and zombies into so much powder.
A reverent silence filled the chamber over which could be heard Blodgett’s shrill voice, “Don’t set the webs on fire!”
Disappointed, Delgath turned off the jet of flame shooting from his finger and began to contemplate using his Prestidigitation to make Karraway a bit more fragrant to his sensitive nose.
A moment later, a hint of movement caught Blodgett’s attention and he saw a cluster of rags, stick and other detritus rise from the garbage pile in a small whirlwind. The dust devil moved in his direction, seemingly struggling against the webs just as much as he was. “Get me out of here!” he shouted.
The smile returned to Delgath’s face as the jet of flame once again sprang from his hand and he obliged the Halfling’s request by igniting the webs. If there was one thing more pleasant to Delgath than enwebbing his friends and foes, it was freeing them from those bonds via fire. They didn’t call him Delgath the Dread for nothing.
The rest of the party was reduced to following along in the wake of the burned out webs as they inexorably approached Blodgett. Also approaching the Halfling was the swirling pile of debris. He didn’t know what it was (it was a Raggamoffyn from the MM2) and he didn’t want to find out by having to battle it with a dagger either.
A few seconds later, the fire had consumed enough of the webs for the rest of the party to see the mysterious whirlwind of detritus and Delgath let fly at it with a trio of Magic Missiles. They (of course) struck home, but it kept on coming and plowed its way through the webs and make its way adjacent to the Halfling.
With a grimace, Blodgett struck out with the dagger and it struck some sort of solidity within the swirling junk. Apparently the blow was enough to do it in because the bits of debris fell lifelessly into the webs. A moment later, the fire swept over Blodgett and his fallen to bits foe inflicting minor burns and further damaging the Halfling’s prized tunic and 5’ of rope belt.
Delgath gleefully exclaimed, “You’re free!” as the sooty faced Halfling took careful notes of the Gnome’s vital areas. He resolved that one more flaming web was going to earn Delgath a dagger to the nose.
Wanting to escape the area before the fire, smoke and yelling drew the attention of the Slaver’s trash men (or Sanitation Engineers as they prefer to be called), the group conducted a hasty search of the remaining garbage pile for any useful equipment. The pile yielded enough broken furniture to arm everyone with a club, a small shield sundered in two and a breastplate with a big rent torn in the center. With such a bounty of treasure in hand, the group beat a hasty retreat into the passageway beyond.
“Your turn to take the lead, Elwita.” Said Blodgett, wary of foes ahead and the Sorcerer behind.
Next Up: “We put the ‘kill’ in ‘overkill’.”
Again, this is a one shot and not an ongoing campaign so I’ll be posting all the installments to it in the next day or two (all you folks who are out there saying, “But that’s what you say about your Faded Glory Story Hour, Rel, and you are always tardy updating that one,” can just shut your pie holes right now).
Just a quick note before I begin our intrepid tale: I’m never shy about adding GM commentary into my SH posts. But in this case I’m going to be especially liberal with them because my thoughts as the group progressed through the adventure as well as some real life events are an integral part of the story of the session, if not the story as it took place in the game world. If you don’t like that sort of thing, I’m sorry. But trust me that much of it is pretty darn funny. From this point onward, I’ll try to offset the GM commentary with italics like this.
On to the adventure…
When Old One told me that he was coming to the area for a visit, I instantly agreed to have him game with us. However, I am not currently running the game in our group and it can sometimes be problematic to slot in a new character for one session in an ongoing campaign. So I immediately thought of doing a one-shot.
I wanted it to be fun but I also wanted it to be unique and memorable (in short, I wanted to try to impress one of my GM Heroes, Old One). I wracked my brain trying to think of something I hadn’t done before. Then I stumbled onto an old idea: I’ll start the party naked! Everybody has done this before, right? Ok, well not precisely “naked” but with very little equipment. From there, I quickly jumped to the concept of doing a 3E rendition of the old AD&D module A4 “In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords” and voila – “Return to the Dungeons of the Slave Lords” was born.
The Party (all 5th level):
A wily Halfling Rogue who’s a dead shot with a thrown rock, Blodgett (Played by The Lone Corndog, AKA the player who ran Rhys and Scar in my Faded Glory campaign).
A surly Dwarven Cleric, and the founding (and still only) member of the Dwarven Temperance League (DTL), Karraway (Played by Raven Howeveryouspellhislastname, AKA the player who ran Krase and Raven in my campaign).
A dangerous (and not just to the enemy) Gnomish Sorcerer, Delgath the Dread (Played by Speaks With Stone who ran the character of the same name in my campaign).
And last, but almost always first, a gravely voiced, burly and mean hunk of Dwarven woman, Elwita the Fighter (Played by our guest of honor, Old One).
The Setup (i.e. Welcome to Rel’s Railroad! All Aboard!)
The party are prisoners of a nasty band of pirates and slavers who they fell prey to on the high seas. They have been held captive for several weeks and forced to work in the diamond mines of the pirates’ island stronghold. One member of the party managed to escape from the sea battle (an NPC Druid) and has been trying to figure out a way to help the party bust out of their prison. But now he has sent a desperate message: The island is a volcano about to blow and the group can’t wait any longer. They must make their escape attempt now!
Fortunately, just that day (What a coincidence!) as they were mining, the group discovered that there must be a hollow on the other side of the place they were digging (thanks to the Dwarves’ stonecunning).
The Druid’s message was delivered to the party by a Boggun named Mulch who snuck in past the guards disguised as, well, a pile of Mulch. Fortunately, the cargo capacity of a Boggun’s belly is such that he was also able to cough up (quite literally) a few other small items of value: A +1 Dagger that also glows (5’R of light), the Cleric’s holy symbol, the Sorcerer’s spell pouch, a divine scroll with 3 low level spells on it and 6 Goodberries. Except for these items, each party member is equipped with nothing more than a canvas tunic tied at the waist with a 5’ length of rope.
Armed with this bounty of newfound equipment, the path to freedom is clear: The group must use the Cleric’s magic (either Loosen Earth and Stone or Stone Shape) to clear a path to the hollow. Then they will follow that cavern, which hopefully leads to the surface, whereupon they will attempt to steal the pirates’ ship, The Water Dragon, or one of its longboats and flee the island.
Here I am with more commentary again already. I’m not terribly fond of linear campaign design. I think that one of the things that is fun about roleplaying is for the characters to have choices and to have to live with the consequences of those choices. However, in a one-shot game, I’m willing to railroad the party a bit more in the interests of moving things along.
The Druid had offered that the party could send a return message by way of Mulch to indicate when and where they would be making their jailbreak and this would allow the Druid to cause a distraction at the appropriate time to aid them. For the moment, they opted to hang on to Mulch for his use in scouting and his glowing personality.
With only the dagger among them to use as a weapon, most of the group set to making slings out of the hems of their tunics and gathering rocks for ammunition. Meanwhile, even though it wasn’t the appropriate time of day, the Cleric selected his spells and prayed to almighty Moradin to help them get the heck out of there. Their situation was desperate. The volcano was going to blow any time now and Elwita was starting to think that the Gnome looked sexy in his tunic. Under these dire circumstances, Moradin cut Karraway a break and granted the spells he asked for pronto.
At this point, I introduced a little metagame device to the group: The Doomsday Clock ™! I took the clock off my mantle and set it down next to the gaming table and said ominously (at least I hope it sounded ominously), “It is now 5:45 PM. When the Doomsday Clock strikes 11:00, the volcano erupts…”
As a great sense of urgency overcame the party, the Cleric finalized his spell selection and Elwita ceased her comments on the possible sexual uses of the Sorcerer’s heightened sense of smell. In short, they got down to business.
Karraway went to work on creating an opening into the next cavern. Using Stone Shape, he withdrew a large plug of stone from the wall and set about shaping it into the rough shape of a battleaxe for use by Elwita (she had Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization for the battleaxe). Elwita used her talent at stoneworking to assist in this endeavor and wound up with a somewhat brittle but serviceable rendition of a battleaxe.
Blodgett meanwhile gazed into the cavern that they were about to make their escape into. What he saw was dark and Blodgett complained loudly about Halflings’ general lack of low light vision. In the interest of shutting him up, Karraway cast a Light spell on a sling stone and gave it to Blodgett. The Halfling again looked to the cavern that was to be their salvation. It was some 20 feet across and extended in both directions. He dangled and dropped the 10 feet to the sandy floor of the cavern and noted that the cavern quickly dead ended in one direction and narrowed but continued in the other direction. The “toot-toot” noise you are hearing is the sound of Rel’s Railroad, where the trains always run on time!
The group entered the cavern with Karraway bringing up the rear. Hoping to confound their jailors as to how they escaped, he used another Stone Shape spell to seal their exit behind them. That done, the group pressed on with the Blodgett in the lead. His keen eyes and utter lack of Darkvision guaranteed that any enemies would see the glowing rock he carried long before he saw them.
The passageway descended and curved around, narrowing all the while until it was a scant 5 feet wide and only 3 feet tall. Blodgett grinned in satisfaction that his short height was serving a purpose other than a basis for crude sexual humor by Elwita. But his smugness was short lived as he could see the cavern opening up again ahead of the bottleneck. He could also see a pile of something up ahead, including what appeared to be bits of broken furniture. He called Elwita forward and hid the Light stone while asking her to employ her innate Darkvision (which he desperately envied) to see what lay ahead.
Elwita could see that the pile was various bits of cast off refuse, probably dropped into this cavern through a shaft in the ceiling from which a very dim and flickering light emanated. Among the pile, he could see several dead bodies in various states of decay.
With the possibility that the Slaver’s trash men could be lurking directly overhead, the group decided to proceed with the utmost caution. They would sneak around the pile and exit the chamber through the passageway opposite them. Then they would send the Halfling back to conduct the onerous duty of searching through the pile of dead bodies and garbage in the hopes of locating something useful, like a bustier for Elwita, gravity being a bitch and all.
Alas, this plan was confounded when (to the surprise of virtually nobody) the dead bodies rose from the garbage heap and moved to attack Blodgett and Elwita who were first to enter the chamber. The undead were comprised of a trio of skeletons and a pair of zombies, all of roughly medium size.
The Rogue stood stark still (due to a surprisingly bad initiative roll) as did the Warrioress (due to an unsurprisingly bad initiative roll). But Delgath the Dread, anxious to live up to his name, reacted quickly and neutralized the threat (to himself) by casting a Web spell into the chamber. The webs engulfed virtually the whole room and were placed so precisely that they enveloped Elwita, who stood a scant 5 feet away, while leaving the Gnome to breath easy.
Thanks to the obscurement provided by the Web, nobody could see the utter embarrassment on Blodgett’s face as he failed his Reflex Save. Nor could they see the horror on his face as he realized that on one of the skeletons had made his save and was preparing to gouge his little Halfling eyes out.
Meanwhile, Karraway, never one to rush in while Delgath was flinging his magic about, dithered around near the back of the pack, generally bemoaning the troubles that had befallen them so soon in their attempt to escape. Elwita held up the Dwarven end by tearing herself free of the webs with her mighty strength. Lacking such mighty strength himself, Blodgett attempted to extract himself by more dexterous means and succeeded. Unfortunately he was still trapped in close quarters with a skeleton and a dagger. Never a good combo there.
The skeleton struck at the Halfling and landed a claw on him, tearing his tunic in the process. Since the piece of ragged and smelly canvas comprised a substantial portion of his worldly possessions at the moment, Blodgett screamed more in anger than in pain.
To add insult to minor injury, Delgath gleefully summoned a small jet of flame to his hand by way of Prestidigitation and called out, “I can set the webs on fire if you want me to, Blodgett! You’ll get out faster that way.”
Elwita christened her new stone battleaxe by sinking it deep in the side of the zombie entangled in the webs in front of her. The creature did not fall, but it did let out a deep gurgling noise. Then again, it might have made that gurgling noise regardless of the blow. Who can say?
Karraway finally decided that being imbued with the holy power of Moradin is great for conversation at the Dwarven Temperance League meetings and all, but the best part about it is actually using it. He scrambled ungracefully through the low opening into the Slaver’s landfill and let loose with a wave of positive energy that swept through the webs turning the skeletons and zombies into so much powder.
A reverent silence filled the chamber over which could be heard Blodgett’s shrill voice, “Don’t set the webs on fire!”
Disappointed, Delgath turned off the jet of flame shooting from his finger and began to contemplate using his Prestidigitation to make Karraway a bit more fragrant to his sensitive nose.
A moment later, a hint of movement caught Blodgett’s attention and he saw a cluster of rags, stick and other detritus rise from the garbage pile in a small whirlwind. The dust devil moved in his direction, seemingly struggling against the webs just as much as he was. “Get me out of here!” he shouted.
The smile returned to Delgath’s face as the jet of flame once again sprang from his hand and he obliged the Halfling’s request by igniting the webs. If there was one thing more pleasant to Delgath than enwebbing his friends and foes, it was freeing them from those bonds via fire. They didn’t call him Delgath the Dread for nothing.
The rest of the party was reduced to following along in the wake of the burned out webs as they inexorably approached Blodgett. Also approaching the Halfling was the swirling pile of debris. He didn’t know what it was (it was a Raggamoffyn from the MM2) and he didn’t want to find out by having to battle it with a dagger either.
A few seconds later, the fire had consumed enough of the webs for the rest of the party to see the mysterious whirlwind of detritus and Delgath let fly at it with a trio of Magic Missiles. They (of course) struck home, but it kept on coming and plowed its way through the webs and make its way adjacent to the Halfling.
With a grimace, Blodgett struck out with the dagger and it struck some sort of solidity within the swirling junk. Apparently the blow was enough to do it in because the bits of debris fell lifelessly into the webs. A moment later, the fire swept over Blodgett and his fallen to bits foe inflicting minor burns and further damaging the Halfling’s prized tunic and 5’ of rope belt.
Delgath gleefully exclaimed, “You’re free!” as the sooty faced Halfling took careful notes of the Gnome’s vital areas. He resolved that one more flaming web was going to earn Delgath a dagger to the nose.
Wanting to escape the area before the fire, smoke and yelling drew the attention of the Slaver’s trash men (or Sanitation Engineers as they prefer to be called), the group conducted a hasty search of the remaining garbage pile for any useful equipment. The pile yielded enough broken furniture to arm everyone with a club, a small shield sundered in two and a breastplate with a big rent torn in the center. With such a bounty of treasure in hand, the group beat a hasty retreat into the passageway beyond.
“Your turn to take the lead, Elwita.” Said Blodgett, wary of foes ahead and the Sorcerer behind.
Next Up: “We put the ‘kill’ in ‘overkill’.”
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