Dwarrowdeep #17

In the month of Bloomingtide Lord Khundrar returned from his embassy to Orzammar. Prince Bhelen's effort to try to convince the Assembly to recognise Khundara Thaig was defeated by Lord Harrowmount, who argued that the proposal was moot as the Deep Roads between Khundara Thaig and Orzammar remained close. As a result, Lord Khundrar ordered the district of East Gate be explored and the lost route to the Deep Roads be found.

When the company of scouts sent on the mission failed to return after the appointed time, our heroes (see PC profiles here) were sent to find and recover them.

The party tracked the dwarven scouts to a royal tomb in the East Gate district, where they were besieged by darkspawn. Our heroes slew the darkspawn and freed the scouts, and learned that they were attacked by darkspawn not long after arriving, and several of their members had been captured, including Ethel, whom the party had rescued several months earlier.

Although they were weak from hunger, the scouts insisted on joining the party in finding and rescuing their compatriots. But before they could leave the tomb, a large party of darkspawn, led by an ogre, attacked them. While our heroes held the ogre off at the entrance to the tomb, several shrieks entered the tomb via a tunnel at the back of the tomb, but were held off by the dwarves.

After a hard fight, our heroes were able to slay all the darkspawn. Examining the remains, our heroes noticed that the darkspawn appeared to be smaller than the ones they had faced previously.

Led by the scouts, our heroes returned to where they were first attacked by the darkspawn, and followed tracks from there to a tunnel that led out of the halls and into natural caves.

Still following the tracks, they soon came upon darkspawn sentries guarding a small cave, where they witnessed one of the scout being dragged from within and into another tunnel. Our heroes attacked the sentries and slew them. Inside the small cave, they found some of the captured scouts, who told them that the darkspawn had held them there since their capture, but had taken them away one by one, starting with Ethel.

Sending some of the scouts to take the rescued prisoners back to the halls, our heroes ventured down the tunnel with the rest to find where the prisoners had been taken.

At last they arrived at a large cavern. At the far end of the cavern they saw a grotesque giant humanoid, which gave out a piercing shriek, and then attacked them with long tentacles that emerged from its sessile body. The creature's shriek drew darkspawn, who flooded into the cavern from other tunnels.

While the scouts held off the darkspawn, our heroes battled and eventually struck down the creature, whereupon the darkspawn fled.

Searching the floor of the cavern, our heroes found the bones of the captured scouts, their flesh gnawed off their bones.

In a small cave to the side of the cavern, they found Ethel, her face pallid and her body and limbs bloated.

She revealed that she had been force-fed darkspawn flesh, which caused her body to be corrupted and her mind to be linked to those of the darkspawn. She realised that her body was slowly being transformed into that of the creature in the cavern, which ate flesh and gave birth to darkspawn, and she begged the scouts to kill her.

The scouts were unable to bring themselves to do so, and so Boggart dealt the merciful blow.

In another cave, the scouts found juvenile darkspawn, which they put to the sword. And then they set all the darkspawn corpses on fire, and left.

Prepping and Running the Game

At 17 sessions over 7 months, this campaign was one of our longer ones. We didn't do as much domain play as I had hoped to, but I think for a megadungeon campaign it had enough elements of that to give some context for events that took place.

The session itself was straightforward, with a couple of big fights. The chief purpose of the session was to reveal the secret of how the darkspawn, well, spawned, and to give a conclusion to the whole thaig-building enterprise: with the broodmother slain, the darkspawn threat would recede for a time, perhaps enough for the dwarves to reopen the Deep Roads to Orzammar.

This was the second Greg Gillespie megadungeon I have runned. Of the two, I think Barrowmaze was the better one in terms of the premise and playability - the sheer size of Dwarrowdeep and the number of enemies made it hard for me to believe that there is any chance for the PCs to "clear" the dungeon.

Our next fantasy campaign will likely by Blood Sword, which I plan to run using the new edition of Fantasy AGE. But I do think we will return to Dragon Age in the future, perhaps after the release of the computer game later this year.