After checking out several villages, the party returned to Castle Morbis for some R&R. Monty, meanwhile, had abandoned Crow Dance to his barbarian wanderings and finally reached the castle as well. After offending the guards at the main entrance, he bluffed his way into a postern gate. He wandered around the town, searching for his party, and ended up taking a liking to the Buxom Witch.
The rest of the party (sans Zel and Rikkit) also bummed around town, searching for a venue for Kat's bardic stylings after she rolled two natural 1s in a row on perform checks in the Rusty Glaive. They returned to the Buxom Witch - Kat in disguise since she had punched the barkeep last time - and met up with Monty. Soon, the barkeep offered to sell Monty a map to a treasure guarded by an orc horde. Monty, not realizing that this was the same map that sent Sir Hardrig to his doom, and also not wanting to pay for the treasure map, punched the barkeep, threw down a smokestick, and tried but failed to steal the map. He ended up fleeing down the street pursued by the barkeep's hired thugs, where he ran into Guy de la Rue. Guy was a seasoned fighter who had served with Sigrid's oldest brother Ranulf and had come up in search of Sigrid with her middle brother Bjorn. Now that that situation was resolved, he was just bumming around Castle Morbis looking for work. He helped Monty dispatch the thugs while the rest of the party stole the map, failed to remain unnoticed, and failed to convince the barmaids that they were just rescuing the map from a fire. The whole party fled to the dwarven smithy, where they told their side of the story to Dorninn the armourer, who promised to pass it on to the guards. The party decided to head out to the mountains in search of the rumored underground pass while the situation in town cooled down.
Guy's knowledge of geography identified a likely area to search for caves - a series of limestone cliffs. As they camped beneath the cliffs that night, a mysterious figure entered their camp, dressed in black studded leather with dark blue or purple wrappings over his limbs and face and a wide-brimmed hat, leaving very little showing but his silver holy symbol. He introduced himself as Chernyx, priest of Milas the Moonmaiden, and said that his party had been killed by skeletons in a cave not far from there. They investigated the cave that morning and fought through a band of skeletons wearing the armour and surcoats of Castle Morbis soldiers.
The only way further into the caves was a deep pit, at the bottom of which they found the bodies of Chernyx's party. Two narrow tunnels intersected with the pit midway down it's depth. Monty went off to investigate one of them and came back trailing more skeleton soldiers. Those that tried to swarm out of the pit were quickly dispatched by the party at the top, and Monty struck down a few as well before being grappled by two skeletons who jumped down the pit with him in tow (he survived; they didn't). Soon, the party advanced through the tunnel and dispatched the rest of the skeletons.
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| "A scanner? No, I have no idea what you're talking about. A cell phone camera is the way to go." |
They proceeded through the next chamber, where they discovered the hazard posed by piercers.
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| source: Wizard's |
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| source: d20srd |
The party rested after the fight. Kat, spurred on by bardic curiosity, asked Chernyx why he was so mysterious. A diplomacy roll of 30 (modified to 50 by a well-played Plot Twist Card, one of my favourite peripherals) convinced him to reveal to the party that he was an undead creature. He had been killed by the skeletons along with the rest of his party, only he had awoken outside the cave, infused with the divine energy of his goddess and a need for revenge. Now he hid his true nature with stylish cloth wrappings and oils of gentle repose.
Guy, realizing that this dungeon might take a while, left to take the horses back to town and put them up at the stables. On his way there, he met up with Zel, Cameo at her side and Rikkit in her backpack, and pointed them back in the direction of the party. After the reunion, the party decided to try out the narrow ledge along the canyon lip. It ended up leading to a narrow stream-carved cave full of various slimes, molds, and fungi. They followed a fork of the stream into another chamber, intensely dry and occupied by the sweet-smelling, moisture-sucking purple moss. None of them succumbed to its sleep effect, so Kat ran out into the middle of it to investigate. Monty, more wary, told her to get off and then burned it all. The final chamber of this interlude was full of half-eaten fungal growths, criss-crossed by huge slime trails, and occupied by the dreaded Flail Snail!
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| source |
Sadly for me, the slow-moving gastropod was quickly dispatched by the players. It only succeeded with one of its flail-antennae and it never got to warp a spell with its magic shell. The players recovered a wand of magic missile slimed to the cavern wall, but decided not to try to roll the huge, valuable flail snail shell out of the cavern and along the narrow canyon lip.
~~~
A couple things: first, it should be pretty apparent that I love the old dungeon-crawl feel evoked by these classic monsters. Although my dungeon design is a lot more modern than Gygaxian, I try to bring elements of old dungeons into my game. I recently got the Dungeons of Dread compilation, which includes the classic Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and the Lost Caverns of Tso... Tjo... Tsojcanth. It is a very fun read, and though I would recommend against actively trying to confuse, frustrate, and kill your players, there are a lot of things to be learned from the old dungeon classics. (Note to my players: don't buy this book. I want to GM some of these bad boys.)
And now I should probably talk about DMPCs. I may go into further detail in a later post. There is a lot of hate out there against DMPCs, and I think I know why. Oftentimes, a DM who has been stuck DMing for too long and hasn't had a chance to play from the other side of the screen will make a DMPC and use him to sort of "play the game" while also running it. This just can't work. You cannot experience the game simultaneously from both sides of the screen. You end up stealing the players' thunder and spend too much time rolling dice against yourself. A good DMPC should not necessarily be a character you want to play, but a character who can enhance the story in some way without dominating it, a character who can aid the party without directing it. It is never appropriate to drop a character 5 levels higher than the PCs into the game and have him lead them all around the map; the game stops being an interactive, collaborative story and starts being a movie.
I like a DMPC who sticks around for one dungeon at most, who is just badass enough that the PCs are happy to have him on their team, but not so incredible that he steals all their kills, and who is an interesting enough character that the PCs have something to play off of and get invested in. So far in this campaign, my DMPCs have been Spider the undead-hunting ranger of the Church of Death, Sir Hardrig the tortured paladin and object of Sigrid's affection, and Chernyx the revenant priest of the moon goddess. I would love to play any of these characters as a PC, but I know that my role in this game is to facilitate the fun and the story of the other players, not to talk to myself and show off how badass I can be when I play the monsters and the heroes.
-your spelunking d20 despot
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