Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Session Report: Aldsburg Chronicle [A9]

... in which a new adventure begins & the GM learns his lesson ...

The Party
Mirk - Halfling Thief
Mynock - Mighty Fighter
Alois - Cleric of the Unfettered Raven
Pendegast - Dusk Mage of the Void
Tronheim - Dwarf Dusk Mage of the New Moon

The Adventure
With numerous contacts burned and rumors discovered, the party is going to sneak into Juniper Tower to find a huge ruby that has been hidden there by thieve's unknown.  The ruby is rumored to be part of some ancient arcane artifact from the Tower of Steel.  Seeing as the Tower of Steel has been closed off for several months and, on a more worrisome note, the steel of the sttel tower has been "bleeding" into the surrounding landscape - rocks and grasses are taking on a hardened metaillic sheen.

After gathering as much information as possible, the party used a contact to get snuck into Juniper Tower.  Sigmund (the contact), a tall,wiry, one-armed fellow who had an unsavory look about him, but was vouched for.  With some bribe money in pocket, he smuggled the party into Juniper Tower ... of course things didn't work out quite as expected.

The party emerged from their crate and were at the bottom of a strange elevator.  Above them bars were crisscrossing the way out, blocking both adventurer and elevator from going back up.  Cursing Sigmund's name, the party began exploring, looking for the ruby, knowing full well they were in the Underworld.

Pushing through a chamber that appeared to be an old warehouse or storage area, overrun with vines, the party hacked through some vegitation only to be attacked by a tremendous worm covered in spines and insectoid plates.  Some deft combat maneuvers quickly took it out, and the party moved on.  Exploring the crates and the area they discovered more useless crap - rotted grains and mouldering silks.  It was, at that moment, one of the huge boar-creatures that they had been warned about came crashing through some doors and tore shit up.  A few moments later the party was stading knee-deep in demon-boar guts, Mynock chopping off the huge board head and Alois working claiming a bell-encrusted tusk.

Making note of a small chamber that was obviously once used for some sort of arcane ritual (binding? summoning?  it was tough to tell) the party moved on through a chamber where thick pinkish vines stretched like webs between floor, all, and ceiling.  Ignoring some other passages they deemed "Not interesting enough" they suddenly became aware that some small humaoids in the next area were watching their torchlight (thanks, Dwarf Low Light Vision!).

A wizard spell later (a black cloud obscured the humanoids line of sight) and a combination charge and sneak attack from the party laid waste the small creatures wielding make-shift weapons and strange  overly-complex and ineffective armor. 

However, the damage was done and the party, now understanding they were not quite prepared for this, fled.  Also, because real-life time was short, time to roll on the "The Session is Over and You Didn't Escape the Dungeon Table".  The SODED table is hand for keeping things episodic.  I've seen some other tables like this and loved the idea.  I'll add that to another post.


Notes
Not to put too fine a point on it, this is not the best adventure I've ever run.  We perhaps had a bit too much to drink and were all a bit loud and excitable and my organization wasn't the smoothest.  However, in the end, some adventure happened, some experience was handed out, monster were battled, and dungeon explored.  I was a bit overconfident this round ... I'll take it as a lesson learned and do better moving forward.  Trying new things doesn't always work and I need to take that into consideration ... perhaps a more focused brain storming activity - getting an adventure generally planned and using player rumors to help define it more rather than flat out starting from scratch. 



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