We last left our heroes standing around a flight of old stone stairs in a ruined building in the old Onorian town of Maransa. The steps lead down into the darkness, and Niam the rogue has discovered that there is a cobweb choked chamber at the bottom of the stairs.
The characters slowly worked their way through a series of decrepit old chambers with dirty floors, crumbling wall sections, and lots of rodent tracks of various sizes. There were many visible tunnels bored into the exposed dirt areas behind the crumbling walls. The dwarves' stonecunning made them nervous in this part of the dungeon.
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| Part of Castle Langborne's East Basements |
The party slowly worked their way northwards (left to right in the picture), being very methodical and cautious. In an early chamber, there was a heavy wooden door barred from the inside. The characters avoided this door, fearing what might be behind it, and continued northwards.
In the first of a series of very good Perception rolls, a secret door was found behind some water barrels that were obviously recently used. This led to a series of hidden old storage chambers. As the party advanced, they were set on by a dozen or so giant rats, which were disposed of without too much difficulty. In the last of these 3 storage chambers, a pallet of crude furs and bedding was found, along with a small amount of treasure. The owner of this was nowhere to be seen.
Doubling back, the party then found another secret door that led into a hallway which soon came to a partially opened door. The door was covered with a very thin sheet of hammered brass, and was covered in runes and sigils. The hallway immediately beyond the door descended down a steep flight of stairs that disappeared from view. Forty feet down, the stairs ended in a chamber with a number of doors leading from it. A double door to the north had a barely noticeable chalk symbol in Thieve's Cant that meant "Danger - Traps".
The party went through the door and quickly determined that they were in a labyrinth full of traps of all kinds. Over the course of the next couple hours of game time, the party used Duncan's Unseen Servant to lead them slowly through the labyrinth. They found nothing, but due to their cautiousness took minimal damage.
Returning to the chamber outside the labyrinth, the party moved west (up in the picture). The next chamber had a high ceiling obscured by a multitude of large spider webs. A pair of giant spiders were noticed high in the webbing, and a brief fight ensued. The party was able to dispose of the spiders fairly quickly, but not without taking some damage in the process.
At this point it was determined to be late in the day (in game time and real time), and the party decided to bed down for the night in a lockable chamber with one known entrance.
Next - The party will sleep for the night and see what the morning brings.
GM Commentary - Dungeon crawling went very slowly. This was due to a few things. Of the four players present tonight, only one was from our very experienced bunch. The other three were our newbies, and were still getting used to things. This made them cautious. The desire to be thorough and make sure nothing was being missed (secret doors etc) provided the benefit of successfully finding everything there was to find, but had the side effect of making things go slowly as well.
The main challenge coming out of this for me as a GM is to give some thought to how I can make sure that dungeon crawling moves at a pace such that we can cover enough ground (and therefore see enough stuff) to keep things interesting. I have some thoughts on this that I will post separately. This is an important topic, as having dungeon crawl sessions get tedious and boring would have a seriously negative effect on the campaign.
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