Beyond the GLoG - Session 7
Eugène Ciceri. Design for a Stage Set. 1830-90.
After a hiatus for the holiday break, we picked up again with our fantasy GLoGhack micro-campaign, using characters and a setting generated using Beyond the Wall. You can find the details of our last session here.
A Daring Raid
Having thoroughly scouted the upper floors of the mausoleum complex, three party members decided to make a decisive foray into the dungeon. They would fight their way down to the abandoned barracks on the third floor down and see if they could find out what was past the skeletal phalanx. They were:
- Nagina Setimir – gifted dilettante, fifth in line to the Setimir seat
- Rold von Dietmar – would-be knight, newly elevated by the late Mergen Setimir
- Berlynn Setimir-Strauss – wild daughter of a Setimir cadet family
With Rold in the lead, the trio surged down to the checkpoint where Nagina and Berlynn had been detected the night before. The two skeletal guards were back, but the party hit them before they could raise the alarm. Nagina's bowstring snapped as an arrow whizzed wide, but Rold stole a horn from one and jammed it over the skeleton's head. Berlynn dispatched the other with a thrown knife, while Nagina finished the first with a splash of holy water.
The party listened closely, but no one seemed to be reacting to the scuffle. Berlynn grabbed a few silver coins from the table the skeletons were gaming on before dragging that table out onto a nearby pressure plate. She reasoned that the extra weight would prime it to trigger if a skeleton passed over it. Rold grabbed the skull from inside the horn and found it still alive, but currently unconscious. He tied it to his belt.
The Lowest Level?
The party pressed on east, down a steep flight of steps and into the ransacked barracks. They passed out the far side and came to a juncture where the tunnel was collapsed to the east and open to the north. In the darkness to the north, they heard a creaking, rummaging sound.
Nagina volunteered to climb through the rubble to scout to the east. She wormed her way through a tight U-bend of collapsed masonry, emerging into a hallway that curved south. Following the bend, she found herself on a stone balcony in a huge cavern that overlooked a deep pit. The sound of running water could be heard to the west. She followed the balcony to a pair of double doors that she recognized as another access point to the smithy and training complex of the skeletal guards. Then she turned back to rejoin the others.
In the meantime, Rold decided to scout to the north, creeping ahead without a torch. He came quickly to the circular antechamber with a stone statue leaning in it that the party had found before. Peering around a corner to the east, he saw two huge creatures, chickpea-like in their roundness, rummaging in the dark. He too fell back, and the party planned their next steps.
Eventually, they decided to press on and see what the chickpea-creatures were and where the skeletons had gone. With Rold in the lead again, they passed through the antechamber and into the mouth of the training room beyond. In the full light of the torch, they saw two rust-red bugs. Each was larger than a cow, bulbously round, and covered in rusty red plates. As they watched, one scooped a spear out of a rack of training weapons and devoured it. Its touch seemed to corrode the metal in an instant.
Despite their size, the creatures seemed more wary than hostile. The party decided to try their best to snake between the two. As they pushed through the training room, they rounded a corner and came face to face with six skeletons, seemingly hiding from the insects in the other half of the chamber.
To the Death!
Catching the skeletons by surprise, the party sprang into action. Nagina threw a bundle of holy water-soaked rags, destroying three in a shower of radiant sparks. Berlynn moved to cut off the exit while Rold tried to hold the skeletons’ attention. It worked, as two of them slashed at him ineffectually with rusty shortswords.
The third dashed towards Berlynn and, with a hasty chop, caught her in the leg with its blade. She dropped with a yelp, and the skeleton unbarred the door before disappearing onto the balcony beyond.
All this commotion had upset the bugs. They began to move menacingly towards the combat, stamping their feet and lunging. Nagina and Rold finished off the remaining skeletons with a mix of swordplay and holy water, but they did not want to tangle with the oxidizing creatures. Nagina dragged Berlynn's limp body around the corner onto the balcony and away from danger. The bugs seemed content to leave the party alone now that their turf was secure.
Nagina tried to rouse Berlynn, but alas, the wild daughter of the Setimir-Strauss was dying. “We're more alike than you think,” she whispered as she pressed the family banner into her cousin's hands. Then she was gone.
The remaining two party members took a somber moment to grieve their friend before considering their options. Getting her body out would not be trivial. Rold went to the balcony and hefted a lit torch over the edge. It fell some hundred feet before bouncing off a huge mushroom, then disappearing into an underground river below.
They hefted Berlynn's remains and made their way to the collapsed tunnel. With Rold's immense strength and a few acute observations by Nagina, they managed to bolster it enough to get through safely. Fortunately, the remainder of their journey to the surface was uneventful.
The party brought Berlynn's remains to the family's hunting lodge to lie in state until a representative of the Setimir-Strauss house could be summoned to collect them.
GM Notes
Our first character death in a long while, across any game. I think this one was telegraphed, or at least warranted. Fighting three on six was always bound to be risky, even with as strong an advantage as the fonts of holy water the party has been making ample use of. Berlynn's character is busy rolling up someone new, pulling in some other GLoG material they have been testing.
The XP system seems to be working about right. The surviving characters have all hit level 2, but are far from level 3. That feels warranted, given it has been a hard week plus of adventuring with many close calls and challenges overcome. The system rewards a mix of flat XP, 1 XP per SP and 50 per HD of defeated enemies. The idea is that the HD bonus trails off in value relative to treasure for the higher levels.
In order to get down to the action, we just used the engagement roll from Blades in the Dark verbatim. I will probably write a post about this at some point, since my post last year on using Otherkind Dice was such a hit. This is the kind of ruling that I imagine many of my learned peers would consider anathema, but it really helped us get to some juice and not spend the whole session combing the five rooms we have explored every previous week.
One thing I am noticing is a lack of treasure. Part of that is the fact that the players have already scoured most spaces. They also have not searched very studiously for secret rooms, despite a few passing hints. They also are not far from a huge haul when last we left off. What are those skeletons guarding, anyway?