Chronicles of the Adventurers Guild #3

On the 25th Day of Lenzin,

Guild members Moonshadow, Kimly, Tamira and Leowe (see PC profiles here), with the bearer Lennard in employment, returned to the tombs below barrow #20.

Exploring to the east, they came upon two unsanctioned tomb-robbers, and observed them breaking into a burial chamber, where they were attacked by an undead. The undead slew one of the robbers and caused the other to flee. The guild members were able to vanquish the undead, and obtain the grave goods within its sarcophagus.

Proceeding then further to the west, and then to the sealed chamber north of the one they had earlier explored, they entered a burial chamber, whereupon the remains of those within rose. The party withdrew from the chamber, all the while assailing the undead with fire and arrows, until at last they fell, and the grave goods within the chamber were recovered.

Turning then to the east and thence south, they came upon a sealed chamber with archaic dwarven runes upon the door. Breaking into the chamber, they found the remains of a dwarven warrior upon a plinth, with a steel warhammer upon its chest. The members were able to discern that the chamber held a trap by observing certain vents upon its walls, and that a second stone door was hidden in the antechamber, poised to close down and trap those within the chamber. The party contrived to overcome the trap by occluding the vents with their clothing, and placing pieces of the broken door beneath the hidden door. As they have surmised, when the warhammer was removed from the dwarven warrior, a gas of viridian hue issued forth from the vents, and the hidden door descended from its place, but was prevented from sealing the chamber by the stone pieces placed beneath it. Our members were able to vacate the chamber, and by displacing the stone pieces, seal the chamber before the effects of the green vapours could afflict them.

The hour being late, they returned to the Guild.

Grave goods recovered assessed to be 55 Gros in value, and the warhammer was assessed to be 59 Gros in value. 40 Gros was disbursed to the members, according to the terms of the contract.

Signed,

Jeras, Guild Chronicler

Prepping and Running the Game

Square joined the campaign, and we now have five players and nine characters in the campaign.

As you can see from the account above, the PCs did not cover many rooms this session. Part of the reason was because they spent a bit of time tackling the last room. Nevertheless, I was okay with that, as I think they really got into the OSR spirit in the way they tried to problem-solve their way out of the situation, instead of using brute force: a prudent decision when your characters had 5, 3, 2, and 1 hit points left respectively!

I had earlier had some vague idea of how the gas trap would work, and when the players asked for more details of the room, specifying where their characters were examining, I was forced imagine exact details and to tell them enough for them to plot a counter to the trap. I am pretty impressed by how they solved the problem... even if it meant they had to make the trek back to the Guild half-naked.

There were some gonzo moments, like when they were planning to use the dead body of the tomb robber to do an "Indiana Jones swop" for the body of the dwarf - when told that the human tomb robber weighed more than the dwarf, they contemplated amputating the dead fellow's legs...

The trope of "corpse that only animate when you take their stuff" also gave rise to the cunning plan of using the telekinesis cantrip to steal grave goods, or otherwise pour lamp oil over the corpses and then lighting them on fire with another cantrip. The problem with this plan, however, was that this put the party a Gold behind each time it was used due to the price of oil, and (I only thought of this later) would potentially damage the grave goods, lowering their value.

I still feel I am not in full OSR dungeoncrawl GM mode, as I am still too focused on making sure I got what's in each room correct, rather than to give a more immersive description of the surroundings. I will need to be conscious of that the next session.

Three of the characters managed to level up this session, which will mean they will need to take some downtime, forcing their players to use their other character. However, when they return, they will have much higher hit points, which will change the whole dynamic of the delve.