[Maius 8th to the 10th – Exploration of the areas under the ruins gets started.]
[This game uses Adventures in the Green, a RPG based on the original rules for the world’s most popular roleplaying game. These rules are under development with Draft C available here. Game sessions happen an average of once a month. This is Part 2 of the session that happened August 14, 2021.]
Biggz’z Troop, CAC (Chartered Adventuring Company):
Biggz Bigguns of the Big’uns Clan – gender neutral goblin Family Priest (6th level Cleric)
Tiny – male minotaur Swashbuckler (6th level Fighter)
Porkins – male human Conjuror (6th level Magic-User)
Pio Vento of Piccolo – male human Veteran (1st level Fighter)
Mannin Darkshield – male dwarf Robber (4th level Thief)
Kunigunde Gruber – NPC female goblin Footpad/Petitioner (4th level Thief/3rd level Cleric)
Hirelings:
Larn the Linkboy – male human hireling linkboy
Isidoros of Delphis – male Tolk hireling translator [specifically, German to Mü]
Deniska – female human hireling Veteran bodyguard (1st level Fighter) [for Larn]
Ivan – male human hireling bodyguard [for Larn]
Bernagi – male human hireling bodyguard [for Isidoros]
Hardkira – male human hireling bodyguard [for Isidoros]
Spring
Moonday, Maius 8, 524th year of the Empire
Morning
Biggz went by the local office of the Guild of Condotierre, Linkboys, Roustabouts, and Stevedores [a very small place as Stralbruck does minimal business] and hired 6 roustabouts to act as diggers for the day. The pay was 1 silver coin each with the standard 5 gold coin deposit for death benefits [they were being hired by adventurers after all]. Porkins stopped by the general store to pick up some additional digging tools and buckets for moving dirt and rocks. By 8:00 AM, the expedition left Stralbruck on foot.
9:00 AM
The expedition arrived at the ruins [and future mill site]. The adventurers did a quick walkaround to verify the site was still safe and then had the diggers start excavating the stairwell down in the gnole barracks.
This job took most of the day. The debris in the stairwell was hardpacked in, clearly having been there for a long period of time. As things progressed, the diggers were instructed to only clear a five-foot width on the right side of the stairs. This allowed the diggers to make more progress quicker.
4:00 PM
The diggers breached the twenty-foot-thick debris plug in the stairs. The air from the opened stairwell was damp and cool. The diggers quickly returned to the surface as facing subterranean horrors is what adventurers do, not roustabouts.
Tiny went down and inspected the opened-up area. He told the rest that the stairs went down another twenty feet before ending at the beginning of a corridor.
After a short discussion, the adventurers decided to start actual exploration the next day. Everything was packed up and the expedition returned to Stralbruck. The roustabouts were paid and the deposits returned to the adventurers, everyone pleased with the day’s efforts.
Hernesday, Maius 9, 524th year of the Empire
8:00 AM
The adventurers left Stralbruck, heading to the ruins.
9:00 AM
The adventurers arrived at the ruins and decided to do a thorough sweep of the above ground ruins to verify they were actually empty. They also checked and mapped the handful of places they had not either checked or mapped on earlier expeditions. This entire process took five hours to accomplish.
[NOTE: There is an area they have repeatedly not searched behind the gnole barracks building. It is full of phase spider webs and they either decided a while back to leave it alone or have forgotten the webs are there.]
2:00 PM
Confident the above ground area was secure, Biggz’ Troop descended the stairs to explore. The corridor at the bottom of the stairs went a short distance before becoming a four-way intersection. Ahead [to the south] at the limit of their torchlight they can see another four-way intersection. To their right the corridor ended in a door but to their left was an open doorway and a room. For several reasons, the adventurers went left [east].
The short corridor opened on a square room that had long ago been stripped bare. There was a door on the far wall, which proved to be locked when they checked it. The room was carefully searched and Tiny and Mannin both noticed a secret door on the same wall as the locked door, just to the locked door’s left.
The secret door led to the next room, which is where the locked door also went. The adventurers found this confusing. This room was also square, with a door in the middle of the south wall and torch holders along the east wall. It was otherwise damp, moldy, and empty. Porkins cast Infravision on himself so he could keep a watch behind the group. The adventurers messed with the torch holders for a bit to no effect. They lit a torch off the one Larn was holding and set it in the middle torch holder. Nothing happened. Shrugging, Tiny opened the door on the south wall and was attacked by a shadow!
Luckily for Tiny, the shadow failed to land an attack. Biggz cast Bless, catching all but Tiny in the spell. Porkins, cast Magic Missile and hit the shadow three times. Kunigunde used her sling and landed a solid hid, killing the shadow.
The area beyond the south door was a large closet. Inside the adventurers found a suit of armor with two potions and two scrolls in a belt pouch. The party took a rest here.
3:00
After the ten minute rest, Porkins took a sip of each potion to identify them. One was Oil of Slipperiness [with an awful taste] and the other a Potion of Heroism. He chose to hold off identifying the other items and they were packed away.
The group backtracked to the first intersection. With his improved range of visibility [Infravision spell sees to 60 feet], Porkins looked south. He could see past the next intersection and into a room with a large statue on a pedestal in the center of it. Slightly unnerved by the statue, the group went west to investigate the door at the end of the corridor that way.
The door was rotten and easy to push open. Beyond it was a large circular chamber with a pool full of water in the center. The walls were once covered in murals but were heavily defaced long ago. Initially ignoring the pool of water, the adventurers spent 40 minutes searching this room, finding nothing beyond what they saw when they entered. Porkins went back to the stairs, picked up a piece of stone from the debris there, and returned to this room with the chunk of stone. He dropped the chunk of stone into the pool of water. Once the waves from the stone being dropped in calmed, Poring could see the stone sitting on the bottom, two feet under water. It looked much cleaner than when he dropped it in. He dropped a silver coin into the pool and when he retrieved the coin, it was like new.
The party needed a rest, so they took one and discussed their options. Porkins wanted to change up his spell selection and they were in no hurry to keep exploring, so the group decided to return to town once their rest was over.
4:00 PM
On the way back to town, Porkins took a moment to cast Detect Magic on the armor and scrolls. All three were magical. Porkins checked the scrolls to see what spell or spells they contained. The first one turned out to be a Cursed Scroll and Porkins was struck blind by it. Biggz sighed and cast Remove Curse, curing Porkins. The second scroll held the spell Smite Undead.
While in town, Tiny purchased an extra water skin.
Magusday, Maius 10, 524th year of the Empire
9:00 AM
The adventurers returned to the ruins and descended into the dungeon. They returned to the room with the pool of water. Tiny pulled out his new water skin and filled it from the pool. Once he was done, Porkins cast Detect Magic. The water in the pool detected as magical, but the water in the water skin did not, meaning the water was only magical in the pool, not of itself.
Not certain what to do next, the adventurers left the room and went south to the second intersection. The air to the west was noticeably damper and they could see stairs descending an unknown distance. To the south they could see the room with the large statue. To the east they could see a corroded copper door.
After a short discussion the adventurers went left [east] to copper door. Pio forced the door open. Beyond the door the was a long corridor of rough masonry walls and uneven flagstones [as opposed to the stone walls they had seen so far]. The adventurers carefully moved down this corridor until they reached an intersection with another corridor on the left.
While the adventures discussed their options, two partially burned mummies loomed out around the corner from the corridor to the left and attacked. The first mummy failed to land a blow on Tiny, but the second shattered Pio’s shield.
Porkins responded to this surprise attack by starting to cast Lightning Bolt [3rd to 6th level spells take an extra spell phase to cast]. While Porkins was casting, Biggz compelled both mummies to flee by the power of the Many-King! Pio readied a new shield and both mummies fled Biggz, retreating further east and not back the way they came. Porkins finished casting and threw the lightning bolt down the corridor, electrifying both mummies. Tiny pursued the still fleeing mummies and hacked at one when they all ran into a dead-end room.
Biggz cast Bless at this point, not affecting Porkins, Tiny, Pio, or herself as all were already “in combat”. The adventurers pursued the fleeing mummies [leaving behind Biggz and Porkins, who had cast and therefore could not move], catching up to them and Tiny in the dead-end room. Biggz cast a sling bullet at the one mummy Biggz could still see and dropped it. It started leaking some form of liquid. Tiny and Pio both attacked the remaining mummy and destroyed it.
The room the adventurers were now in had complete frescos decorating the walls. The frescos showed ancient armies fighting, one side Porkins identified as Roman Legionnaires but the other side were wearing black robes and could not be identified. The black-robed figures held banners showing a black sun. The Romans were shown winning the battle and putting all of their foes to death.
Biggz investigated the mummies. The leaking mummy had two potion vials inside it, both were shattered and the source of the leaking liquids. The other mummy had a rolled up map stuffed inside it that was in multiple pieces but could still be read. The map was in Latin, which Porkins translated. There was a location marked with the words “General Euclid Appius Bruttius Mallus buried collected tribute here before leaving to put down an uprising in Raetia.” It was a treasure map!
Tucking away the treasure map, the adventurers backtracked to where the mummies originally appeared. Looking north, down the side passage the mummies came from, they saw a corridor that went twenty to twenty-five feet and then angled off to the right. The group advanced to where the corridor angled right and found a miniature skull, painted green, facing them. The corridor beyond went as far as they could see. Mannin picked up the green skull and took it with him when the group decided to return to the surface and head back to town.
Back in town the group celebrated defeating the undead and finding the treasure map.
End of Part 1
Behind the Green
[So I didn’t keep good time records on the last day they were in the dungeon, but they did return to town much earlier. This was mostly a function of what time it was in the real world. Once back in town, Kunigunde leveled again due to being only one experience point away from leveling in both of her classes. That was due to the huge amounts of experience the party got the previous session – it technically was enough for Kunigunde to level twice in one session, so she stopped one point short and lost all the excess. Again.]
[The player characters are at the point where leveling starts taking much longer, especially Magic-Users now that I corrected their experience track to use the same pattern as the other classes. Kunigunde is just under the lead characters in level, but ahead of Mannin and Pio as she started accumulating XP before they did. As an NPC she gets half the experience actual player characters get, so they should catch up and pass her relatively quickly.]
[I should also note that Deniska is also gaining experience points. Anyone wielding a magic sword should be leveling, even if they are NPC and only get half experience.]
Biggz’z Troop, CAC
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