July 15, Monday [day 2] - The party continues east on the well-traveled Underdark road, following their maps and notes. They pass a junction where another sizable passage branches off to the south, but continue east, arriving a a location called "Razor Rapids".
Razor Rapids - The map notes say that Razor Rapids is a location where a foot bridge and cargo ferry cross an underground river. Above the bridge (top of picture, with the ferry), the water is calmer. Below the bridge, the water drops down into cascades and rapids churning between sharp rocks. Falling in would be bad.
 |
| "Razor Rapids" - goblins trying to burn the bridge |
As the party arrived, the cavern was lit by torches and a fire. The fire was a group of goblins trying to set fire to the middle of the bridge. Attacking by surprise out of the dark, the party was able to shoot down the half dozen or so goblins who were actually on the bridge and moved to put out the fire that was beginning to catch. Meanwhile, the spell casters dealt with the remainder of the goblins on the far bank, including a sorcerer, primarily by means of a well-placed Spike Growth spell. After gathering food and water from forage-able areas, the party continued east.
 |
| Putting out fires while dead goblins float away |
Wind Tunnel - A couple miles further east on the main road, the party came to the location where they would branch off to the south, taking a smaller more difficult passage. Entering the area (from the right of the picture), there was enough dim light from phosphorescent fungi to see the entire area. A large rift of indeterminate depth was oriented north to south, with another branch to the southeast. They would need to cross an ancient stone bridge (which did have a post and chain railing), and then get across the open rift (top left of picture) before moving on to the south. A gusty breeze moved through the area from north to south.
 |
| "Wind Tunnel" - a Cloaker attack |
Melior shape shifted into a giant spider and investigated the area, crossing the bridge to the far side. Arian followed successfully, then Malachy. When Mal was in the middle of the bridge and Niam and Badric were only starting out, something large and dark (and flying) attacked Badric. This turned out to be a cloaker, a terrifying and tough creature. A cloaker has two special abilities - to project multiple copies of itself (so that you had a hard time actually damaging the real one) and a frightening moan to scare people. A frightened character fights at disadvantage and cannot move closer to the creature.
The fight turned out to be easier than it should have been, although Niam and Badric did both end up with only a few hit points each. Malachy was frightened for one turn, but then did manage to shake off his fear and help. The cloaker didn't hit on too many of its attacks. But the real hero was Arian the sorcerer, who cast a lightning bolt as hist first action, picking the real one of the four images to shoot at. In subsequent rounds, he cast a number of other spells at the creature, never failing to hit the right one. That and the fact that the cloaker as never able to successfully "engulf" a character certainly saved one or two characters from death on the bridge.
After healing, and a bumbling effort at crossing the smaller rift via ropes, the party headed south away from the well traveled road.
July 16, Tuesday [day 3] - The party continues south, through areas called Sink Holes and Five Forks. The day is uneventful.
July 17, Wednesday [day 4]...
Troll Haunt - In the afternoon, the party arrives at the location noted on the maps as "Troll Haunt". The scribbled notes indicated that the Silver Swords fought several trolls here, killing two (but not with fire), and running from several more. When the party arrives (from the right of the picture), the cavern is mostly dark, continuing off out of eyesight. There is a fire in the distance, and a smell of something cooking. There is one troll near the fire, and another crossing the cavern in its direction.
 |
| "Troll Haunt" - 2 trolls cooking dinner |
A vicious and long drawn-out fight ensued, with the two trolls quickly joined by a third. A Called Lightning storm flickered around the chamber, doing substantial damage to the trolls (and sometimes to friends). As the first three trolls were being finished off, a final two came out of the darkness, but fortunately for the party they arrived in sequence and not at the same time, because the party was in pretty bad shape. The 63 hit point damage-resistant barbarian was down to 3 HP, and the Niam and Badric were also on the verge of unconsciousness. This was the party's toughest fight ever (but a huge XP victory...).
 |
| 5 dead trolls and a battered party |
We ended the session with the characters standing over the burned bodies of 5 trolls; battered, bloodied and bruised, and having spent most of their higher level spell slots.
Next - Surveying the troll wreckage.
GM Commentary - This was a different kind of session for us. There has been a good amount of "story" in the past few sessions, and not a whole lot of fighting. I thought that a first full session of journeying through the Underdark would be a good opportunity to have a combat-heavy session, and get a chance to use a lot of the various terrain bits I have crafted over the last few months. Combat takes a while, and we got through three major encounters, all on detailed terrain set ups (in 4 hours). I wouldn't want every session to be like this, but every now and then it is a nice change of pace, and the experience points gained by the characters were huge.
A note on XP - The goblins with sorcerer and boss were worth 1,000 XP. The cloaker was worth 3,900 (which should have been much more dearly earned). Five 5 trolls were 9,000. This is 2,780 per character, plus 200 each in "per diems" (see below). This is massive XP given that our characters started the session with between 6,300 and 11,000 total depending on how many sessions they have been at over the course of the campaign. I have been stingy with XP (intentionally), as I think the game plays best at the lower levels. Our 5th level characters already seem tremendously powerful now.
Niam the Rogue (assassin) achieved 5th level, and Melior the Druid reached 6th.
A note on Underdark travel - The recent Out of the Abyss adventure book from Wizards of the Coast says to roll for Underdark encounters every hour. I did make a fairly detailed encounter chart that we will use on occasion, but I have elected to go with more of a "travel montage" way of getting through this journey. With ~10 days of travel to get to the Tombs, and 6-8 hours of travel per day (due to the difficulty), it would take us forever to get to the destination, and we'd all end up bored silly. I've told the players that they will get a 100XP per day "per diem" of XP for all the little minor encounters and challenges that we don't need to play out. Every combat with a pair of giant spiders, or some snakes or lizards causes no real or long term threat to this group. So we'll skip it. We'll have a random encounter every now and then that will be worth playing out, and the rest will be planned encounters and events. This makes sense in this situation given that they are following a predictable route using detailed maps and notes. This couple of sessions is 100% railroad. We'll see how it goes.
[I will continue backfilling the missing write-ups (from sessions 23-28), but I wanted to get this in while the details were fresh in my mind]
No comments:
Post a Comment