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

Quasqueton, Lower Level

The adventureres have expanded (slightly) on the Sleestaks' map, completing the level.  For your edification, here are two versions of those updates.

Qausqueton, lower level

[terramariae version]

Qausqueton, lower level

[lacumagna version]

Session 15 report

Adventurers Present

Bilbo - hobbitish rogue

Hugh Kha-Rez - draconian barbarian

Mossmullet (Ungart) - dwarfley cleric

Orsek Ungart - dwarfley barbarian wizard

Red Shpee - elfin rogue

Wilfred Fizzlebang - gnomic paladin

First we searched the forbidden room, and then went to the next room on the map.

It was the room of water, and it had a pool of water and debris. The water was crystal clear, and appeared to be harmless, but very cold. After Orsek got close enough to the debris, he realized they were skeletons. We defeated the skeletons, surviving with but a scratch.

We went to the “Howard” room next, which split into several paths. Wilfred and Hugh took some dry paint and plaster from a room with paintings of the original inhabitants of Quasqueton. We also found mining equipment and some zombies. We fought the zombies, smashing them to bits.

We went to the spider room next, burning away webs. We found a passage leading to talking spiders. We fought the spiders, smashing them to bits.

In the next leg of the dungeon, we found a strange glowing rock. Red remembered a rumor that this would give us wishes, so we each put part of the rock in our mouth, and made a wish. None came true, but Bilbo became more dextrous, Wilfred’s short sword became more powerful, Mossmullet disappeared for a short time and Hugh Kha-Rez didn’t change at all (ha!). Very little happened to the other characters. As we traveled, we found very little down the path we took, so we turned back to take an extended rest in the painting room.

Party Experience Gained
Combat:  86 each
Exploration:  120 each

Down and Almost Out [session 15]

Adventurers Present

Bilbo - hobbitish rogue

Hugh Kha-Rez - draconian barbarian

Mossmullet (Ungart) - dwarfley cleric

Orsek Ungart - dwarfley barbarian wizard

Red Shpee - elfin rogue

Wilfred Fizzlebang - gnomic paladin

The adventurers continued their exploration of the lower level of Quasqueton, this time making good speed and covering the remainder of that level.  First up was the room with the pool of water, which proved relatively uninteresting other than a 15’ deep pool of icy-cold water, and a pile of indiscernible refuse on the other side of the pool from the entrance.  Only a narrow, acrobatically-challenging ledge led past the deep pool, and so the unarmored Orsek shimmied across to explore.  Unfortunately, what he found on the other side was 5 skeletons, who roused themselves to slay the lively dwarf.  Naturally, they screamed a shriek of 1,000 dying babies as they did so.  But Orsek survived the undead onslaught, and burned their boney bits to ash with his Burning Hands.

The adventurers next braved the rooms of the Humans (Howards?), where they discovered a small warren of carved-wall rooms, a staircase leading up to the upper level of the dungeon, and 6 zombinoids.  This undead challenge proved more difficult than the skeletons.  Each time the cursed rotters got knocked down, they just sprang back up again.  The unfortunate situation might have continued indefinintely until the inevitable demise of the living, except that first Orsek and then Bilbo managed the well-placed headshots necessary to actually achieve a full zombie kill.  Thereafter, the group was able to decapitate the downed corpse-critters before they could revive.

The group decided to do some more lower-level exploring before heading back up the stairway, so the next encountered the giant spiders’ lair.  Actually, they also located a giant emerald laying upon the passageway floor before that.  But they next creature-encounter was a passageway blocked by sticky spiderwebs.  Cobbling together some torches from the ruins of mining equipment back in the zombie room, the heroes put the spiders’ protective webs to the torch.  The (apparently intelligent) spiders cried out their dismay by saying “Here they come!”  This interesting revelation didn’t overly faze the party, though.  They still immediately began killing the articulate arachnids.  Except for Orsek, who decided that a spider-ride was what was needed from the pony-sized creatures.  Successfully jumping upon one’s back, he managed to ride it up to the cavern ceiling, before the spider caught a nasty Chill, and shattered into ice fragments.

A very odd rock was the next encounter of interest for the group.  A large, glowing magical stone, the rumors of which proved to be inaccurate, although not completely untrue.  Instead of granting a wish to a person who breaks off a chip and places it in his mouth, the magical stone simply did random, magical things to that person.  Bilbo got a dexterity boost, Mossmullet got teleported to another room, Fizzlebang’s shortsword was magically enchanted into a +1 sword, Orsek got a charisma boost, and Hugh Kha-Rez was temporarily rendered an idiot by the magical boulder (we did actually notice a before-and-after difference).  If there was an effect on Red Shpee, they did not notice it.

Having determined that the magic glowing stone had given away all the buffs and bonuses that it would, the party explored a couple more empty rooms, and then headed back toward the stairway.  They encountered some leftover goblins on the way, but handily defeated them without incident.  Bedding down for the night in a relatively enclosed space near the stairway, they all gave thanks that they’d survived yet another day in the depths of Quasqueton.

Next session:  Up and at ‘em!

Party Experience Gained
Combat:  86 each
Exploration:  120 each

The Sleestak Map (Quasqueton, lower level)

The adventurers got this crude map from some friendly sleestaks on the lower level.  The crudeness of the drawing / writing is solely due to the difficulty sleestaks have holding pens in their claws.  It has nothing to do with the fact the DM was in a hurry...

[click to embiggen]

Player Maps (so far)

Here are the two levels of Quasqeton that the players have mapped.  They're rather incomplete, but i'm chalking that up to the darkness and dankness in which they were made.  It's totally not just that we can't keep track of stuff...
 

Quasqueton, lower level

Quasqueton, upper level