Quasqueton, Level One Combined

The party did some more exploration, and was able to join up their two level one maps.  And here it is:

Connecting the Dining Room’s Dots [session 17]

Adventurers Present

Bilbo - hobbit

Mossmullet - dwarfley tempest cleric

Orsek Ungart - dwarfley barbarian wizard

Red - elfin rogue
SMASH - dwarfley life cleric

Thik Thak - orcine fighter
Wilfred Fizzlebang - gnomic paladin

It was a large group of explorers who roamed the halls of Quasqueton on this leisurely outing.  Although perhaps not a great deal of territory was covered during this day’s perambulations, some good treasure was recovered and a fine task was accomplished – connecting up the party’s two maps of the upper level of Quasqueton, thus combining them into one, seamless whole.

The massed army of adventurers started in the longish room of the deceased flying monster, exiting out the other side into an oddly-shaped and relatively boring barracks room.  Nothing of value or interest was discovered, so the group backtracked over to the dining room area.  Deciding to head North from there, they soon stumbled into the great wizard’s bedroom.  An expensive bed frame worth hundreds of gold pieces was discovered, broken down, and made ready for transport by the party.  The moving men attempted to examine his nightstand as well (and pilfered 37 gp inside), but Thik Thak got a splinter or something, so the miffed marauders SMASHed the thing to bits.  Some annoying zombies showed up to distract the party from the serious work of moving furniture about, but they couldn’t provide union cards and were dispatched without pay.

The carefully disassembled bed having been safely tucked away for later retrieval in the trophy room, the party then riffled the wizard’s closet.  Putting on his dress-up clothes, trying to read his indecipherable books, and harshly judging his taste in cloth bolts, the group generally made a mess.  They did keep a cob-webby old magic spider-web-cloak, which was immediately coveted by the gnomish paladin to such an extent that he gladly traded away his magic +1 sword for it.  Thus began the sad wanderings of the most un-loved magic weapon in all the lands around Deeyin Deel.  Once praised for its good work at slaying zombies and given the name "Redead", the poor short sword was tossed aside by Fizzlebang for a newer, moldier magic item.  Red took the displaced sword in for a while, rather than simply leaving it to tarnish upon the floor.

From there it was on to the wizard’s spell-practice blast-chamber, where a extra-large skeleton with a great axe was hanging around waiting for some wood to chop up.  Failing that, but not caring much for the squirmy living humanoids who wandered in either, he settled for using his axe upon them.  Which didn’t end that well for him, I must say.  While he did inflict a sizable wound upon one of the group, the horde of the living soon overwhelmed him and sent him on to his final reward.

That done, the party wandered on to the false-door pit-trap room.  This lovely trap sent 5 of the 7 party members plunging 40’ down into the icy pool last seen in session 15.  The one with the shelf of skeletons, in close proximity to the FORBIDDEN ROOM of session 14?  Yeah, there.  So, Mossmullet almost drowned, being pulled to the bottom by his heavy chainmail.  But he doffed it smartly, swam out, and joined his other slightly-injured brethren upon the shores of the icy pool.  After using a little ingenuity (spike tied together at end of rope) and a little magic (Mage Hand), the dwarf’s beloved chain armor was recovered.  A couple spells were cast to repair the fallen heroes to a semblance of fitness, and they then trekked back upstairs to rejoin their less accident-prone fellows.

The group again returned to the area of the dining room, making it by far the most-visited area of today’s session.  This time, they set off to the West.  They discovered a long, skinny kitchen, complete with moldy old food.  SMASH did the Purify Food & Drink thing, gaining the party two days of rations when they otherwise might have gone hungry.  This being something vaguely resembling a root cellar (or the closest anyone’s seen to date in Quasqueton), perhaps the cleric’s god was made happy…?

Exiting out the other side of the kitchen, the explorers were delighted to (re)discover…the library!  Yes indeed, they were back on the map, so to speak!  The dots all finally connected, the group celebrated by burning some books to warm themselves up from their earlier icy bath (and picking up a few odd spellbooks for the wizard).  Once all fit, warm and hale, they set off again to locate new challenges.  Finding a nearby storage room containing all kinds of goods and oddities, their search was temporarily interrupted by the appearance of a swarm of stirges.  Although they did manage to suck some blood from a couple of the party members, they somehow missed the candy-flavored gnomish fluids coursing through Fizzlebang’s tiny veins.  So their deaths were both unnourished and un-mourned.  Ah well, nobody ever said a stirge’s life was easy.  After slaying the pests, the group sorted through the random junk left behind when the complex was originally abandoned.  Unsurprisingly, nothing of value was found.  EXCEPT for an exceedingly well-crafted light hammer, of clearly magical origin!

Needing a good way to deal some bludgeoning damage, Red gladly accepted the shiny new hammer!  I think somebody else might have taken his unpopular short sword.  Or maybe he kept it.  Or maybe it’s just lying there on the floor of the storage room to this day…?

Thus ended the session.

Party Experience Gained
Combat:  48 each

Exploration:  35 each

Quasqueton Map - Level One, Part Two

Here's the second map of the first level of Quasqueton:

[click to embiggen]

Part one of the upper level is here.  Once the two maps meet up, i'll stitch them together...

Up and At ‘Em! [session 16]

Adventurers Present

Bilbo - hobbitish rogue

Hugh Kha-Rez - draconian barbarian (joined late and left early)

Mossmullet (Kronral Ungart) - dwarfley cleric

Orsek Ungart - dwarfley barbarian wizard

Red - elfin rogue (joined late)

Thik Thak - orcine fighter (joined late)

Awakening in the depths of the lower caverns of Quasqueton, the group was a bit on the small side: only Bilbo, Mossmullet and Orsek were present for the first couple hours of play.  However, this team proved plenty capable of tackling the challenges they faced.

Heading up the stairs back to the upper level of the dungeon, they raced through an unprecedented number of rooms.  They found a trophy room of the original inhabitants, filled with moderately valuable statutes, tapestries, and other nice but ultimately overlarge treasures.  Making a careful note on the map (“dragon skin”), they had little choice but to leave these items behind and continue looking for smaller, more valuable trinkets.  Heading on, they found a large throne room with a small but valuable onyx dragon statue.  Carefully exploring the room for traps and deciding it was safe, they pocketed the statue and moved on.  A nearby corridor ended in a suspiciously walled up wooden alcove, so the party successfully explored it and located a secret door.  The door led to the long-dead fighter/owner’s wood-paneled bedroom (very 70s, right?), and crossing the room immediately led to an attack by the monsters under the bed: 4 giant centipedes.  They were dispatched, but not before striking a monstrous critical hit on Orsek, doing enough damage to fell a rhino and even overcoming his dwarfley resilience to poison.  Happily, Orsek’s a tough little SOB, and he just walked it off.

The three then found some additional loot in some girl’s room, then some more loot in a storeroom.  They then followed a ridiculously long corridor back around to the throne room, where they finally noticed another door which they’d somehow missed before.  Inside was an ash pit with some filthy, filthy lucre in it, and an ugly demon-face statue on the wall.  As they looked at the demon-face (and broke off its nose), 5 ratlings found them and attacked.  The battle was extremely one-sided, and 4 of the 5 were dispatched to the ratling afterworld when the fifth surrendered.  He was tied with rope, and forced to lead the way to yet another bedchamber.  This new room belonged to the fighter’s retainer, and held even better loot than the fighter’s room had.  But before they could explore and collect, they had to deal with a VERY whiny giant mushroom (Shrieker), which only stopped its infernal racket when the party chopped it up into veggie burgers.  The party discovered a cask of tasty ale, which  healed up everyone’s wounds (liquid courage!), while also leaving Mossmullet and especially Orsek a bit inebriated.  So much so, in fact, that this second ratling prisoner AGAIN managed to slip away from the group!

Bunches of Fun
It was right about this point that the three were joined by more players: Red, Hugh and Thik Thak.  The enlarged party soon came to an enlarged room, filled with 14 different small pools of watery stuff of variable interest and lethality.  The first pool, once the heroes decided to drink from it, had magical healing properties (much like the ale but with far less drunk-and-disorderliness about it).  The remaining pools revealed fun things like: goldfish, super-inebriants, acid, boiling water, sparkle-glow water, green slime, magical muteness, mud of unknown qualities and sleeping potion.  It was fun, but took FOREVER to explore.  Next the group found a secret door, and found yet another bedroom.  Which had some valuable stuff in it, but nothing of real interest.

The group then wandered through a bunch of corridors and some rooms which they’d previously explored, like, 7 or 8 sessions ago, culminating in actually locating the exit!  Hooray!  Hooray for mapping!  Hooray for not wandering in circles until you drop from boredom and exhaustion!  Mapping GOOD!!!

After finally having a beginning-end connection to this dungeon, the group went back to exploring new territory.  They went and found a long room with some kind of flying pac-man monster in it.  The monster was probably big and bad and tough, but his attack was poorly timed in a meta-gaming sense; the players were tired and about to end the session, so they pulled out all the stops, used their Inspirations, and unloaded upon the poor beast.  Frying pans did 19 damage, Guiding Bolts of Lightning did even more, and the creature was nuked before it could so much as emit a whimper.  Thus ended the gaming session.  But more fun awaits the intrepid interlopers (yeah, there it is - you know you’ve been waiting for my inevitable alliterations!) in Quasqueton, since it appears that about half of the first level remains unexplored.  Hooray!

Party Experience Gained
(for those who could be there the whole time - the others earned less)

Combat:  148 each
Exploration:  325 each