Post by diogenes on Mar 15, 2023 7:52:57 GMT -6
Hello everyone, here is the third “Session Report” from the ongoing Viper Archipelago campaign. By now, I expect you all know what you’re getting with these session reports, so we’ll get started without any long-winded introduction.
The players for this third game were:
L: A relatively new player, returning to the campaign for his second OD&D game.
R: An experienced OSR player and referee, who has played in every one of the sessions in this campaign so far.
T: An experienced OSR player and referee, who has played in a number of previous games with me, but this is his first session playing in this particular campaign.
In this game, R was playing Hamilton (F-M 1) and Colby (W-P 1). L was playing Egrus the Frail (M-U 1). Yes, that’s right, Egrus, not Egnus. I accidentally misspelled his character’s name in my notebook last time, so I’ve made sure to get it right this time around. T was playing a pair of related characters, Odd Secundus (W-P 1) and Onedead Secundus (M-U 1). Both of these characters were imported from the previous campaign I ran, in which T was a player.
The players made it clear that they were set on venturing out the lighthouse once again, so no pre-game rumours were provided for this session. Before the party could leave town, Onedead used one his magic scrolls (acquired in the the previous campaign) casting “Cure Disease” on Hamilton, in order to remove the lingering necrotic effects of the Violet Fungi. With this effect removed, the party elected to postpone their expedition for two days, allowing Hamilton to regain some hit points. Once that was taken care of, the party assembled once again, and Karbash and Barlow were hired on as retainers for this expedition.
The party set off northward towards the lighthouse, travelling along the sandy coast, and arriving without any difficulty. Making their way into the lighthouse courtyard, the party went north, and inspected the modest single-story house that they had walked past before. The party observed that all of the doors and windows were boarded up from the outside, but that was no deterrent to this band of treasure-hunters. Hamilton went to work with his crowbar, and before long, the half-rotten planks that made up the barricade were torn down, and the front door of the house was pushed open.
The interior of the house was cluttered and disorganised. Unwashed plates were piled high on the dining table, bundles of decaying herbs hanging up from the rafters, dirty alchemy equipment scattered around, and a thick layer of dust over everything. There was a strong smell of long-ago death in the air. There were two doors on the west side of the house, which clearly led into two separate rooms.
The party listened at the nearest door, and although no sound could be heard from the room beyond, it was apparent that the smell of death was emanating from that adjacent room. The party formed up in a “fighting formation” outside the door, and the two Warrior-Priests amongst the party readied their holy symbols, as they suspected there may be some kind of foul undead lurking on the other side of the threshold.
The party members in the front rank cautiously pushed open the door, revealing a grim scene in the room beyond. It was clearly a “master bedroom” of sorts. Against the western wall, there was a large bed, the sheets stained with the long-dried remnants of a dark reddish-black substance. Lying on of the bed were three skeletons, one male, one female, and one smaller, child-size skeleton, sandwiched between the two larger skeletons.
A large wooden wardrobe was placed against the north wall, and there was an “armour stand” in the south-east corner of the room, which had a set of “Conquistador-style” armour on it, with the smooth steel cuirass and iconic morion helmet. There was a sword belt buckled around the armour stand, with an Espada-style sword and a matching dagger hanging sheathed on the belt. An ornate halberd was tucked into the south-east corner of the room, next to the armour stand. Like any good dungeoneers, the party searched the room. Hamilton used his the tip of his spear to move the bundled bedsheets aside, revealing a golden signet ring of the skeletal man’s finger, a signet ring engraved with a stylised image of a sun over water. Meanwhile, the rest of the party raided the wardrobe, opening it to reveal two separate locked chests.
The pair of chests were quickly levered open with the crowbar, revealing the contents. One chest contained fine men’s clothing, some small bottles of men’s cologne, and a leather satchel filled with silver and gold coins. The other chest contained fine women’s clothing, some small bottles of perfume, and an ornate jewellery box containing some valuable women’s jewellery, as well as a slender, ornate silver dagger. These treasures were quickly stowed away, and distributed amongst the party for transport.
Meanwhile, Ondead was inspecting the gold signet ring that had been picked up, and was able to ascertain that it was magical, given the slight electrostatic-like charge it was giving off when handled, a tell-tale sign of the magical energies contained within. Ondead decided to take a chance, and put the ring on. As the magical ring attuned to his mind, Ondead became aware of the ring’s abilities, and how to make use of them. By means of a silent mental command, this magic ring could cast the spell “Light” up to three times per day.
As a momentary aside, I will give you an insight as to what was going on “behind the referee’s screen” at this time. Without giving away too much, as my players do read these session reports, I can reveal that there were in fact some dangerous monsters in the vicinity, which had a very reasonable chance of dispatching the sentry that the party had standing on guard outside the house, that being Karbash, one of their retainers. However, these players were getting very lucky with the wandering monster checks I was making, it seemed like I was rolling 5’s and 6’s for every check I made.
Back in the game world, the party left the Conquistador armour and weapons behind for the time being, intending to collect that as they left the house. For now, the party made their way out of the master bedroom, and listened at the door to the second room. This time, their caution was rewarded. They heard an insectile scuttling and scratching coming from the room beyond. The party hypothesised that these noises were likely being made by more of the giant tiger beetles that they had fought previously, down in the cluttered basement of the shed that was over in the south side of the courtyard.
Some of the party went back outside, leaving the house entirely and circling around the exterior, until they reached the corresponding window that looked into the room that they had heard the scuttling and scratching coming from. However, the window was boarded up pretty thoroughly, and they couldn’t see inside to any great extent. They considered ripping down the boards, but decided they were pretty confident in handling whatever was inside, and they didn’t want to give the creatures any advance warning of their presence. So, the party returned inside, gathered in battle formation around the door, and pushed it open.
The door opened into a smaller bedroom, with a small, child-size bed in the middle. Immediately, three giant centipedes came scuttling out from under the bed, each one about two and a half feet long, and about eight inches around. They made their way towards the party, who made short work of them. Two of the centipedes were slain outright in the first round, and the last turned to flee. It won initiative, making it halfway back across the room, before Hamilton’s thrown spear stopped it dead, pinning its writhing body to the wooden floor beneath as the spearpoint impaled it clear through the middle.
The party searched this room, finding a box of children’s toys under the bed, and a small lump of rough orange quartz on the bedside table. Curiously, the orange quartz gave off a faint light when it was picked up and shaken. The toys in the chest were interesting as well, they were mostly small clockwork wind-up animals, like little mace and crabs and so on. The party didn’t have much interest in these, taking only the quartz.
With a fair bit of treasure stowed away, the party decided to head back into town, retrieving the armour from the other room on the way out. The party made it back to town without any issues, loaded down with loot. This session was a bit light in terms of monster encounters, but that’s how the dice roll sometimes. This session was a bit shorter than usual, we only played for one and half hours, as I had a bit of a sore throat on that evening, and one of our players had to leave earlier anyway, so it worked out well overall.
The next session has been scheduled for the weekend, and there’s some interesting rumours that have been laid down for then, so I look forward to seeing what happens in the course of the next game. Until next time, readers.
The players for this third game were:
L: A relatively new player, returning to the campaign for his second OD&D game.
R: An experienced OSR player and referee, who has played in every one of the sessions in this campaign so far.
T: An experienced OSR player and referee, who has played in a number of previous games with me, but this is his first session playing in this particular campaign.
In this game, R was playing Hamilton (F-M 1) and Colby (W-P 1). L was playing Egrus the Frail (M-U 1). Yes, that’s right, Egrus, not Egnus. I accidentally misspelled his character’s name in my notebook last time, so I’ve made sure to get it right this time around. T was playing a pair of related characters, Odd Secundus (W-P 1) and Onedead Secundus (M-U 1). Both of these characters were imported from the previous campaign I ran, in which T was a player.
The players made it clear that they were set on venturing out the lighthouse once again, so no pre-game rumours were provided for this session. Before the party could leave town, Onedead used one his magic scrolls (acquired in the the previous campaign) casting “Cure Disease” on Hamilton, in order to remove the lingering necrotic effects of the Violet Fungi. With this effect removed, the party elected to postpone their expedition for two days, allowing Hamilton to regain some hit points. Once that was taken care of, the party assembled once again, and Karbash and Barlow were hired on as retainers for this expedition.
The party set off northward towards the lighthouse, travelling along the sandy coast, and arriving without any difficulty. Making their way into the lighthouse courtyard, the party went north, and inspected the modest single-story house that they had walked past before. The party observed that all of the doors and windows were boarded up from the outside, but that was no deterrent to this band of treasure-hunters. Hamilton went to work with his crowbar, and before long, the half-rotten planks that made up the barricade were torn down, and the front door of the house was pushed open.
The interior of the house was cluttered and disorganised. Unwashed plates were piled high on the dining table, bundles of decaying herbs hanging up from the rafters, dirty alchemy equipment scattered around, and a thick layer of dust over everything. There was a strong smell of long-ago death in the air. There were two doors on the west side of the house, which clearly led into two separate rooms.
The party listened at the nearest door, and although no sound could be heard from the room beyond, it was apparent that the smell of death was emanating from that adjacent room. The party formed up in a “fighting formation” outside the door, and the two Warrior-Priests amongst the party readied their holy symbols, as they suspected there may be some kind of foul undead lurking on the other side of the threshold.
The party members in the front rank cautiously pushed open the door, revealing a grim scene in the room beyond. It was clearly a “master bedroom” of sorts. Against the western wall, there was a large bed, the sheets stained with the long-dried remnants of a dark reddish-black substance. Lying on of the bed were three skeletons, one male, one female, and one smaller, child-size skeleton, sandwiched between the two larger skeletons.
A large wooden wardrobe was placed against the north wall, and there was an “armour stand” in the south-east corner of the room, which had a set of “Conquistador-style” armour on it, with the smooth steel cuirass and iconic morion helmet. There was a sword belt buckled around the armour stand, with an Espada-style sword and a matching dagger hanging sheathed on the belt. An ornate halberd was tucked into the south-east corner of the room, next to the armour stand. Like any good dungeoneers, the party searched the room. Hamilton used his the tip of his spear to move the bundled bedsheets aside, revealing a golden signet ring of the skeletal man’s finger, a signet ring engraved with a stylised image of a sun over water. Meanwhile, the rest of the party raided the wardrobe, opening it to reveal two separate locked chests.
The pair of chests were quickly levered open with the crowbar, revealing the contents. One chest contained fine men’s clothing, some small bottles of men’s cologne, and a leather satchel filled with silver and gold coins. The other chest contained fine women’s clothing, some small bottles of perfume, and an ornate jewellery box containing some valuable women’s jewellery, as well as a slender, ornate silver dagger. These treasures were quickly stowed away, and distributed amongst the party for transport.
Meanwhile, Ondead was inspecting the gold signet ring that had been picked up, and was able to ascertain that it was magical, given the slight electrostatic-like charge it was giving off when handled, a tell-tale sign of the magical energies contained within. Ondead decided to take a chance, and put the ring on. As the magical ring attuned to his mind, Ondead became aware of the ring’s abilities, and how to make use of them. By means of a silent mental command, this magic ring could cast the spell “Light” up to three times per day.
As a momentary aside, I will give you an insight as to what was going on “behind the referee’s screen” at this time. Without giving away too much, as my players do read these session reports, I can reveal that there were in fact some dangerous monsters in the vicinity, which had a very reasonable chance of dispatching the sentry that the party had standing on guard outside the house, that being Karbash, one of their retainers. However, these players were getting very lucky with the wandering monster checks I was making, it seemed like I was rolling 5’s and 6’s for every check I made.
Back in the game world, the party left the Conquistador armour and weapons behind for the time being, intending to collect that as they left the house. For now, the party made their way out of the master bedroom, and listened at the door to the second room. This time, their caution was rewarded. They heard an insectile scuttling and scratching coming from the room beyond. The party hypothesised that these noises were likely being made by more of the giant tiger beetles that they had fought previously, down in the cluttered basement of the shed that was over in the south side of the courtyard.
Some of the party went back outside, leaving the house entirely and circling around the exterior, until they reached the corresponding window that looked into the room that they had heard the scuttling and scratching coming from. However, the window was boarded up pretty thoroughly, and they couldn’t see inside to any great extent. They considered ripping down the boards, but decided they were pretty confident in handling whatever was inside, and they didn’t want to give the creatures any advance warning of their presence. So, the party returned inside, gathered in battle formation around the door, and pushed it open.
The door opened into a smaller bedroom, with a small, child-size bed in the middle. Immediately, three giant centipedes came scuttling out from under the bed, each one about two and a half feet long, and about eight inches around. They made their way towards the party, who made short work of them. Two of the centipedes were slain outright in the first round, and the last turned to flee. It won initiative, making it halfway back across the room, before Hamilton’s thrown spear stopped it dead, pinning its writhing body to the wooden floor beneath as the spearpoint impaled it clear through the middle.
The party searched this room, finding a box of children’s toys under the bed, and a small lump of rough orange quartz on the bedside table. Curiously, the orange quartz gave off a faint light when it was picked up and shaken. The toys in the chest were interesting as well, they were mostly small clockwork wind-up animals, like little mace and crabs and so on. The party didn’t have much interest in these, taking only the quartz.
With a fair bit of treasure stowed away, the party decided to head back into town, retrieving the armour from the other room on the way out. The party made it back to town without any issues, loaded down with loot. This session was a bit light in terms of monster encounters, but that’s how the dice roll sometimes. This session was a bit shorter than usual, we only played for one and half hours, as I had a bit of a sore throat on that evening, and one of our players had to leave earlier anyway, so it worked out well overall.
The next session has been scheduled for the weekend, and there’s some interesting rumours that have been laid down for then, so I look forward to seeing what happens in the course of the next game. Until next time, readers.