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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Boendal2" data-source="post: 7811163" data-attributes="member: 7015844">1st session:The characters wake up without any equipment, just wearing their common clothes in a dim lit prison cell. Eeria immediately realises, that Ebert is missing. Everybody just levelled up to level 3, but has -5HP due to the poisoning and treatment of the drow.Veldyn finds out that magic is not working inside the slave pen. After a quick discussion with Eldeth and Prince Derendil two drow scouts appear to put the prisoners to work. As the two drow come closer Eeria and Thar’den decide it’s best to attack them. Together they knock out the first one, by stealing his dagger and sticking it in his throat. The second drow calls for help. 2 more drow and 12 quaggoths arrive and go berserk on all the prisoners. Way to make friends! Vanya tried to hide a crossbow, but fails her stealth check.The aftermath: On their manacles on the prison wall in front of the cells are now hanging Eeria and Thar’den. Both are down to 1 and 2HP. Illvara arrives really angry to explain to the prisoners how exactly this is going to play out in the future: they are nothing to her and the drow and will follow every single command or be executed or worse. She casts ray of sickness on Eeria and Thar’den, but their relentless endurance brings them up to 1HP. The party is a bit shocked by the whole situation (Illvara essentially tried to kill Eeria and Thar’den with the ray of sickness) but at least now they know a prison break won’t be that easy.Day 1The prisoners are put to work: Vanya and Jimjar are on kitchen duty. Jimjar bets who can make more food. Vanya steals a small stone knife (1d2 dmg). Veldyn and Sarith have to empty the chamber pots of the drow at the waterfall (a duty that Sarith has to fulfil every day). The two of them don’t get along very well. Veldyn saw something move down in the water pool. Eeria and Thar’den stay on the wall and are being tortured by the drow guards. Back in the prison cell they started talking more with the NPCs, finding out, that they are here for up to 14 days. Sarith is probably in here the longest (he doesn’t mingle with the others). In the evening Eeria and Thar’den are being tossed in the cell. A drow brings mushroom soup for everybody. They make friends with Stool. Together with Eldeth, Stool, Jimjar, Turvy, Topsy, Prince Derendil and Buppido they decide to attempt a prison break soon. Shuushar is indifferent. Ront and Sarith don’t really care. Turvy and Topsy say they have a plan. On further investigation the plan is “run… really fast, when none of the guards is looking.” The PCs agreed to inspect the waterfall and the (depths of the) pool further, otherwise running sounds good to them.Day 2Eeria and Ront were put on lift duty and made a lot of strengths checks. Eerias natural 20s and 18+ rolls seemed to impress Shoor who was today in the barracks and the kitchen.Thar’den had four drow escort him down to the cave floor, all of them carrying bows/crossbows. They put him against the southern wall and the leader of the four told him to “run, when I say so”. The drow then took position 35m away and let Thar’den run towards them. Every 6 seconds one of the drow released an arrow. Thar’den decided to dash, therefore the drow had advantage on their attacks. Two of them hit before Thar’den reached them. The other two were quite pissed that he was that they didn’t get a shot.Veldyn and Vanya were sent to gather mushrooms on the cavern floor close to the water pool. Four quaggoths and Jorlan kept an eye on them. Besides the edible waterorbs Vanya found three little fungi (timmask = poisonous). She also saw something move in the water, maybe a fish swimming close to the water!? Veldyn was not very successful haresting the waterorbs and feared punishment by the drow. Suddenly Vanya to decided to check for the depth of the water– by throwing Veldyn as far as she can into the pool. A combat between Veldyn and the ooze in the water followed. Vanya tried to command the ooze, which didn’t work. Veldyn did a bit of damage but was nearly killed, when the third big attack of the ooze kicked him high in the air and out of the water (1d6 fall damage put him at -2HP). Vanya reanimated him and gave him all her waterorbs, which he gallantly took. Jorlan, who watched all of this, scolded Vanya, but didn’t hit her, and told her there are other ways prisoners should try their escape.Everyone but Eeria was brought to the cells again. She helped a drow patrol come up the lift. The patrol had a tall human slave with them. Shoor talked with Eeria, promising her freedom if she defeated the other slave. Eeria hesitated, but feared further punishment. A fight between her and the human (also barbarian) followed. The drow warriors made bets on the fight, much to Jorlans amusement. Eeria defeated the slave, who was lying unconscious on the floor. Jorlan approached her, gave her a dagger and asked her to finish him if she wants freedom. Not really believing him, but still afraid of punishment/torture she slit the humans throat, screaming loudly. Jorlan laughed and had her escorted back into the cell.The PCs told each other what they found out (poisonous mushrooms, water is probably deep enough but houses an ooze) but couldn’t really decide on an escape plan. Veldyn tried to craft the small stone knife of Vanya into a lock pick, failed the safe and broke the knife in two. Now he has a very small stone blade without handle, still doing 1d2 damage. Ront bullied Stool but was intimidated by the PCs.GM notes:I didn’t describe any of the torture of Eeria and Thar’den, just said “think of a torture that the drow come up with yourself – that happens today to you two”. Weirdly I think that made it worse, at least for Eeria. That’s the power of the human mind I guess…To differentiate better between the drow, Jorlan is “the one with scars in the face” and Shoor “the one with an especially beautiful face, even for a drow”. Honestly the biggest problem for me during this sessions were all the weird drow names (characters, cities etc.).Due to the cleaning of chamber pots by the waterfall and simultaneously harvesting waterorbs close to the pool of water the players now imagine the daily mushroom soup way more disgusting than I initially planned. I haven’t corrected them so far.The skill challenges may sound a bit boring, but I use them to further increase the grim picture of the drow: every time the PCs fail a skill check, a drow hits them with an unarmed strike (or worst case an arrow). Also I felt, that OotA really lacks on content in chapter 1. The text to hard labor is merely a paragraph long and doesn’t offer much for storytelling. I can just recommend making a prerolled list of (interesting) prison duties including skill checks for 3-5 days. Really helped me keeping the game going.The fight with the ooze: Oh boy, did I make this harder than it had to be…. New GM here… Somehow I spontaneously decided that Veldyn landed exactly on/in the ooze (don’t ask me why)…. Which let furthermore to DEX saving throws to escape the ooze (don’t ask me why)…. Which Veldyn failed round after round! As Vanya threw him really far and all the quaggoths were also far away (don’t ask me why)…. Basically the ooze would have killed Veldyn…. So in the fourth round of combat I let the ooze kick him out of the water. I just didn’t want to kill a (new) player in the first session (also by my kind of own mistake… he could have landed NEXT to the ooze). Well, at least we now have a running gag on the table: “Vanya, do you want to check how deep the water is?” Veldyn steps further away from VanyaEerias fight with the human barbarian: Two barbarians fistfighting each other would have taken 10-15 rounds of combat. Even though a well received idea, after approx. four rounds of combat the players became visibly bored (session 1 after all), so I let the drow shoot some arrows at the barbarians, both loosing instantly 12HP. In hindsight it would have been better for the story if Jorlan just hurt them before the fight started (“so you two have a motivation to end this fast”).</blockquote>

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