Helgacon 12 - The Lost Tomb of Ra Hotep

 Saturday morning started bright and early with the mighty Delta running the storied pre-cursor to the infamous Tomb of Horrors, the Lost Tomb of Ra Hotep. Well... not so bright and slightly late, as I just managed to get up, showered, and dressed and cram down breakfast in time to start. I'd been up late talking to folks the night before. It's an easy trap to fall into at Helgacon.

And speaking of traps, that was what was on the menu for this adventure. I grabbed a dwarf fighter/thief named Belarus Blue Eyes, and since I was stockier (and more durable) than yer average footpad I was up up front doing scouting with Miz K's halfling thief whose name I don't recall at the moment thru most of the game.

At the very start of it all my dwarfly eyes caught sight of a secret magic rune trap around the front door of the eponymous tomb that would have set a bunch of Invisible Stalkers on our tail if we'd crossed the threshold without noticing it. We got past it using a Passwall spell a little bit to the side. (We wound up fighting a bunch of what was probably Invisible Stalkers later on, but I dunno if they were just in the room we were looting (how could you tell?) or if they'd been summoned by runes that we'd missed.)

Fresh from that triumph, I headed down the first hall and fell smack into a 50' pit trap with spikes at the bottom. Thankfully that only half killed me, so I got hauled back up and we kept going.

Otherwise, we did pretty good detecting traps and avoiding them, although another memorable bit is when I thought I was being clever by dropping flat to try to activate what I thought was a horizontally aimed spear trap. If the group hadn't stopped me from following thru with that "clever" plan I would have been smushed by a falling block instead. So... yeah.

Otherwise, aside from finding traps the Tomb of Ra Hotep was all about punchin' mummies for me, and I punched quite a few. Some of 'em weren't doin' nothin' but being dead, but I punched 'em anyway. Got a fancy necklace from one of 'em. The ones in the final grand hall where we fought the lich Ra Hotep and his minions were a bit more lively, and when I got ensorcelled into fighting on the big bad's side I had to switch from punchin' mummies to punchin' my friends, which I wasn't so crazy about. (I tried to loophole my way around doing too much damage to my comrades by being super literal about the orders that ol' Hotep was giving me, but Delta put the kibosh on that. Eh. You try things, sometimes they work.)

The big shenanigan of the game was when Paul's character was summarily evaporated by a big magical jewel as soon as we entered the main tomb area. Having watched his & Delta's livecast and read their blogs, I was probably the first player to twig to the purpose of that sudden and severe HP reduction as setting the stage for Paul playing the Adversary role for the grand finale. He threw himself into the part with relish, particularly against one of the party fighters who'd been trash talking Ra Hotep to aggro a bunch of stone golems we fought outside the tomb proper. I thought that part worked really great, and look forward to seeing more of those sorts of things in future games. I may try it myself someday. We'll see.

So anyway, all told I had a great time with this adventure. Comparing it to Tomb of Horrors, also run by Delta all those years ago in the early days of Helgacon, I'd say it felt a lot more like just a good solid dose of dungeon crawling instead of the merciless exercise in character culling that ToH was. It was challenging and tricky, and Delta was running it with his usual aplomb, but it didn't feel as bleak and desperate as I remember the ToH being. There definitely weren't as many dead ends or any pixel bitching in Ra Hotep. There wasn't this sense that there was only 1 right answer per obstacle and if you didn't get it you were donesville. So I'd say the original adventure was a lot better and more fun than its notorious successor.

So yeah, it was a good session of some nice crusty old school dungeon delving. Thanks, Delta! :D

Huzzah for Helgacon 12 !

Well, another Helgacon has come and gone, and I can unequivocally say for me personally that this one was the best one yet!

This year, our mighty con organizer Paul set up an extra "Premium Day", giving attendees an extra day of hanging out and gaming if we so desired, and I so desired. (Plus, since I moved back to PA he's been been my ride down to the venue. So showing up for just the regular days would have been something of a logistical kerfluffle.)

I enjoyed every game I played in, and all three of the games I ran I consider smashing successes. I'll be spinning the tales with lots of visuals and a bit of analysis in the following days.

As for the non-RPG gaming, which I consider sort of the side dishes to the seven course banquet of dice bouncing that I did, we played a couple of rousing games of "Escape the Dark Castle" which was jolly good fun in a "we're all gonna die, probably from rat bites" kind of way. Both times the hapless escapees got medievally murderated before we could make it out of the donjon. T'was fun, tho.

On Thursday night the Premium Day attendees all took part in a marathon session of "This House Is Haunted" which is kind of a weird cross between "Werewolf" and sardines, where you turn off all the lights in your house and send missions off from a home base to various selected rooms where there are stacks of cards you have to retrieve. Some cards are good, most either saddle you with ridiculous curses, like having to speak in an accent or walk like a zombie without benefit of your knees, or tally up to make you be possessed by evil spirits, which cause you to actively work against your human former colleagues. You could also get trapped in one of the rooms, until such time as a subsequent searcher met the conditions for your release. (Several players spent at least an hour in the venue's enclosed porch trapped in a ghostly dance party.)

I sat this game out as I was a bit weary after running my first game that evening, but I did perform a vital function as the guy who could call "olly olly oxen free" in case everybody got stuck in rooms. It was a hoot to watch, let me tell you.

Aside from that, the food was uniformly delicious. (Particularly Paul's pumpkin chili w cornbread.) The accommodations were excellent, as usual, and I had a great time seeing all the folks I only get a few precious chances to see each year.

So here's to another Helgacon for the record books. Gotta start planning what I'm gonna run at Helgacon XIII ! :)

BTW: Here's the Wandering DMs' take on the proceedings:

I played in Dan's "Lost Tomb of Ra Hotep" game and in Paul's "Stay Frosty" game, and shall be discussing them presently. Enjoyed 'em both!

Merry Christmas!

 

Peace on Earth. Good Will to All.

The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Session 69

Attending
Tarvinir – Lvl 5 Magic User
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 5 Flying Dampyr Head and zombie body.
Greed – Lvl 6 Homanculus
Tysis – Lvl 5 Fighter

Henching
Srehn – Lvl 5 Barbarian
Ritzy – Lvl 6 Homanculus

Monsters Mashed:
8 Bugbears – Sliced, diced, backstabbed, and generally murderated.
800 EXP/5 Players = 160 apiece

1 Troll – Magic missiled and coup de graced by Tysus’ acid sweating sword.
600 EXP/5 Players = 120 apiece

1 Giant Tarantella – Whacked like a gruesome, hairy piñata.
135 EXP/5 player =  27 apiece

TOTAL EXP: 307 apiece.

Items acquired:
Granny’s giant cleaver.

Current situation:
Ritzy and Greed squared off with the fearsome Granny Maw, finding her the toughest of tough old broads as she effortlessly parried their attacks with her giant cleaver.

Eventually, she decided the cleaver was slowing her up, so she cast it aside and transformed into the grisliest, biggest monster wolf creature and started attacking with her slavering bite and iron like claws. Greed landed a hit with the big red d30 and did 31 pts of damage, causing the monstrous hag to reconsider her options.

“Gotta go, kids on the stove.” she demurred, and vanished in a puff of blue flames.

 

“Smell ya later, chumpenstiens.”

Meanwhile, the rest of the party, forced downstairs by Granny’s antipathy spell, were met by a squad of bugbears led by a wild eyed troll hopped up on fungus. The magic users blasted it and then Srehn proceeded to do her Xena, Warrior Princess thing on the rest. Tarvinir managed to disarm one by accident, but was protected by his Mirror Images.

The homanculi came barreling down the stairs to join the fight, prompting a cry of “Oh no! Dey got monstas!” from the bugbears, who turned tail and fled at ½ their original strength.

Srehn pursued with the rest of the party in tow, and was jumped by the giant guard spider watching the wine cellar downstairs. After shrugging off the horrible (and potentially hilarious) effects of the creature's bite, she killed it with extreme prejudice and the party finished off all but one of the bugbears.

They pressed the brute for info but didn’t get much beyond knowing there were a couple of nasty giants in the complex as well as an awful thing known as “Bitty Bitey”. Srehn shanked him, then drank a draught from one of the elderberry wine bottles laid in in the cellar, and is now a bit tipsy (instant fail on surprise and last on init for 4 turns)

High on life, and booze, the party charged down the next set of stairs, and found some human prisoners in the cells in the bottom level, plus a bugbear jailer with a mancatcher and a bunch of gnolls chained up to a stake driven into the stone coffin. And that’s where we left off.

Commentary:

Another more in depth recount once again doesn't leave me with too much to comment on. 

Granny Maw started out as one of the lurking villains in the original sandbox campaign I started this whole blog over back in 2009. She was a critter I first encountered in the 3rd. Edition called a barghest, essentially a fiendish goblin/werewolf thingy, although I guess they go back to the original Monster Manual II, which is a book I never owned in the olden days of AD&D. 

She was the leader of that campaign's goblinoid presence, surrounded then, as here, with a brute force of bugbears who she treated like her grandkids. Bitty Bitey (a.k.a. "Pookie") was another, younger barghest who played the role of the spoiled baby of the "family" and ran with a pack of goblin wolf riders. 

The only other bit worth mentioning is that I greatly regretted that Srehn made her save against the spider's bite, as it was a Tarantella, and the resulting dance party would have been epic.

Tune in next week for more sturm and drang.

The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Session 37

Greed – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Rael – Lvl 6 Thief/Werewolf
Tarvinir – Lvl 5 Magic User

Henching:
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 4 Dampyr
Ritzy – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Arongoth of Hogendaus – Lvl 6 Cleric/Vegetable

Monsters Mashed:
Fog swimming bull shark who attacked Greed, Ritzy, & Arongoth in their room at the Rusty Bucket Inn. Bludgeoned to death and sold to the inn for soup stock to offset room repairs.
30 EXP/3 = 10 Exp for Arongoth, Ritzy, & Greed

Scrag in Leviathan Temple: Zapped, shot, and evaporated in a fireball.
               600 EXP/ 5.5 players = 109 Exp Apiece

               50 gp worth of copper, silver, and brass scrap from sea chest in shrine. /5.5 players = 9 exp apiece

Total Experience = 118 + 10 for Arongoth, Ritzy, & Greed

Addional gain: +1 cutlass with etched design of mermaid kissing a sailor under waves on the blade

Commentary:

In this session the conflict with the Cult of Leviathan escalated, with the cult sending another of its signature monsters after them: enchanted bull sharks that could swim through thick fog, which they sent after our heroes at the inn. 

I smile with fond nostalgia at the name of the inn, The Rusty Bucket, which is a call back to the second campaign I took part in with Paul and Delta and my Boston gaming crew. Somehow our group wound up buying a tavern and running it, in addition to fighting angry volcano gods, giant spiders, and midget vampires in a campaign set in the multi-doomed city of Treague.  

But I digress. After fending off the shark that crashed through their window and selling the fins to the inn to pay off the repairs, they sought out the squid cult's home base to get them to call off their repo-fish. 

I do recall some shenanigans with Rael trying to climb in wolf form onto the roof of the dilapidated dockside warehouse they tracked their foes to, but eventually they found the secret entrance and began their raid on the Shrine of the Leviathan. 

They made their way down into the entry hall, and Fireballed a sea-troll that crawled up thru the sea portal, and that's where we left off for this session.

To prep the cult's temple I used a small dungeon/temple map I'd run across as a 1 Page Dungeon entry titled the Lost Temple of Tyrandraxu written by Mr. Joshua J. Laboskie, proprietor of Jasper's Rantings.But I needed to make it a bit more maritime in tone, so here's my modified key:

THE HIDDEN TEMPLE OF THE LEVIATHAN

1: Shrine

The rickety steps lead down to a large 40’X50’ room with a thin pillar of barnacle encrusted stone every 10’. 

    There is a corridor in the N wall behind a rattling curtain of seashell beads strung with about 50 gp with holes punched in their centers. If any of the coins are gathered, it will cause enough rattling to alert other parts of the complex. 

    In a 10’ alcove to the E there is a prow of  a wrecked ship with a mermaid figurehead. The head has been struck off, replaced by a jagged bloom of bone white coral. A sea chest sits on a low stone slab in front of it, full of copper and silver pieces and smashed compasses and astrolabes. (about 50 gp worth of coinage) Beneath the coins is a cutlass +1 (1d6+1) that allows Water Breathing as long as it’s clenched in a user’s mouth. Its blade is etched with an image of a mermaid kissing a sailor under the waves. If the coins are disturbed, the coral head of the idol will start screaming like a shrieker for 1d4 rounds.

    There is a locked door to the W. A puddle of wet sand streams out from under. It bears a hammered copper image of a whale and a squid locked in a death struggle. 

2: Pool Room

    This room is 30’X30’ with walls of grime streaked green marble. A low well lies in the center, about 10’ across. If the shrines in 1 or 5 are disturbed, underwater guardians will be summoned to defend the temple. Monsters will also be called by Brother Strangel in 3 at will.

Roll 1d4
1: 1d4 Grindeylows HD: 2, HP: 14 each, AC: 7, Claw Claw Bite 1d3/1d3/1d4, Blinding eye flash Save vs. Paralysis or binded for 1 Turn (-4 to hit, 1/2 move) Mv: 90(30) Sv: F2, Ml: 8

2: 1d8 Tentacultists HD:1, HP: 8 each, AC: 7, Dmg: Tentacle grapple 1d3 per turn of constriction (-1 to hit per tentacle on victim) Mv: 90(30), Sv:F2, Ml: 12. Retributive strike save vs. Death or take 1d8 in 10’ radius. Ink cloud: Obscures vision for 1d8 rounds. 

3: 1d6 Bull Sharks (can swim and breathe in air in temple) HD: 2, HP: 12 each, AC: 4, Bite: 2d4, Sv: F1, Mv: 180(60), Ml: 7

4: 1 Scrag: Troll with gills: HD: 6+3, HP: 28, AC: 4, Claw Claw Bite 1d6/1d6/1d10, Mv: 120(40), Sv: F6, Ml: 10

3: Priest’s Chamber

The door to this chamber is ajar, and leads to a dank 20X20 room full of battered antique furniture and decorated with mildew spotted sea charts. A well stocked liquor cabinet sits in the E Corner. This is the dwelling of Argus Strangel, the priest and prophet of Leviathan.  A grizzled man of nautical bent with one wide, staring eye. He’s willing to negotiate sale of the hook. 

Argus Strangel: 9th. Level Cleric, HP: 27, AC: 5 (Bracers of Armor), Belaying Pin 1d6 or Broken Bottle 1d4
Spells: 1: Cure/Cause Light Wounds, Detect Magic, Purify Food & Drink, Resist Cold 2: Silence 15’ Radius, Resist Fire, Hold Person, Speak With Animal, 3: Animal Growth, Cure Disease, Dispel Magic 4: Lower Water, Detect Lie 5: Insect Plague (crabs instead)
Magic Items: Decanter of Endless Water hidden among liquor bottles.

4: Sandy Corridor

A corridor leading to a 30’X20’ flooded room with ankle deep brackish water. There is a lot of sand in the otherwise roughly worked stone corridor, which will slow movement by 1/2 (4a). Under 4b there is a pit trap (1d6 dmg from fall)

There are rusted manacles set in the walls of the room, and this is where the party will be taken if defeated. The corridor ends with a water swollen door in 5, which takes a 1 on a d6 to open.

5: Deep Shrine

There are two pressure plates in the corridor for 2, which will activate Poison Dart traps (Fire as F1, 1d4 damage, Save vs. Poison or affected by hallucinogen as Confusion. for 1d6 turns (1-4 Fight Phantoms, 5-6 Babble, 7-10 Fight Each Other). Past the point where two corridors meet, the hallway is hung with fronds of half rotted kelp, which slows movement by 1/2 to pass thru, and save vs. Paralysis or get entangled, needing a turn to get loose. 

    The shrine beyond is 40’X20’, carved in black stone with a row of polished, salt crusted steel columns leading to an 8’ wide porthole opening onto a vast dark underwater vista with vaguely perceptable shapes moving in the distant shadows. If touched ripples will flow across the wet surface. 

    On a small rock platform on the other side is a stone chest full of treasure. (2000 GP, 3 Pearls (10gp, 75 gp, 250 gp) nestled in a polished Oyster Shell (30 gp), A silver and coral bracelet (400 gp), A jade pendant depicting fish swimming around a crown (600 gp) And a silver ship’s clock and inlays of frolicking mermaids in walrus ivory (900 gp)

 Passing things through the portal has a 1 in 20 chance of attracting the attention of one of the creatures. Stepping through will put you at the bottom of the ocean, save vs. Paralysis or pass out from the immense sudden pressure. A giant squid will attack a moment later. 

Giant Squid: HD: 6, HP: 48, AC: 7, 8 tentacles(1d4) 2 Attack Tentacles 1d8, Bite 1d10, Mv: 120(40), Sv: F3, Ml: 9, 6 HP to cut small tentacles, 8 to large, will blast 30’ diameter cloud of ink to escape if fight goes bad. 

The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Sessions 34 & 35

Session 34 Attendants:
Greed – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Rael – Lvl 6 Thief/Werewolf
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 4 Dampyr
Tarvinir – Lvl 5 Magic User

Henching:
Ritzy – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Arongoth of Hogendaus – Lvl 6 Cleric/Vegetable

Gold Acquired: 800 GP payoff from Professor Scarabus for being an accessory for the undead axe murder of the composer/mage Phillipe Von Zann.

800EXP / 5 players = 160 EXP

Session 35 Attendants:
Greed – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Rael – Lvl 6 Thief/Werewolf
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 4 Dampyr
Tarvinir – Lvl 5 Magic User
Arongoth of Hogendaus – Lvl 6 Cleric/Vegetable

Henching:
Ritzy – Lvl 5 Homanculus

No combat or cash in, but a lot of contacts made around Kroenenburg the last couple of days:

Lew Kelp of Kelp’s Apothecary down on the dock front. If asked where Arongoth got the Mandrake Powder he’ll deny ever having met you.

Adolphus Gunn from the Shrine of St. Heironymus, who hipped you to the existence of Krenshaw’s Powder and some info about Isengrim the Werewolf King.

The nice people at the Hostel of St. Gwenivere took care of Vlad until his case of the sewer pukes were cured.

Gertrude Getz, a widow and owner of Getz, Havram, & Felderman’s, a bookseller in the market district that deals in bad romance novels and good poetry. A point of contact for the Occluded College. Also a big poetry fan.

The clerk at the Shrine of St. Eumenides, where students go to make offerings for good grades.

Knowledge that the pub called “The Moment of Clarity” is a front for the Occluded College of Mages, where you met Hiram Voss. Tarvenir has presented the late Heinrich Howel’s spellbook cover and wand, and is under consideration for membership. This will entail an entry fee of 90 gp, an annual fee of 110, which will entitle you to research and magic item identification in exchange for the same from other members, and writing scholarly papers on your own discoveries.

Greed got a box from a desperate seeming old salt who foamed at the mouth and fainted when Greed tried to stop him from hobbling away. As yet unopened.

Rael got whacked with a broom and chased off by a washerwoman, but eventually obtained the makings of a disguise to pass as one of the city’s ragamuffin street urchin/guides. Tarvinir bought a nice sturdy travelling coat and looks less scholarly. Whether that will throw the town constabulary off their trail for the shocking murder of Von Zann remains to be seen.

Whilst paying for the Von Zann job, Professor Scarabus has given you a large sealed envelope with the words “For Dr. Friedrich” and an address on it.

Commentary:

These two entries were a couple of those runnin' errands, makin' contacts, pickin' up plot leads kinda sessions that inevitably happen in campaign play. A lot of NPC's made up on the fly to serve as DM's handpuppets for conveying information. 

Rael and Tarvinir made the drop off of the violin case at the residence of Philippe Von Zann, and were dismayed a couple days later to hear about the mage/composer being hacked to death by a pair of floating skeletal arms that popped out of a violin case with a hatchet. They were even more dismayed to hear that the local constabulary was looking for a couple people who matched their description who'd been observed dropping off the case at Von Zann's place. 

(This supernatural assassin was an old monster from the 2nd. Edition Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume 1 called a Dread. I'd had Scarabus pull the old Dread in the violin case trick before, back in the Wardicon campaign when I first introduced him and he was doing an Avengers (as in Steed & Peel) style murder list on his former colleagues.) 

Handy and horrifying.

Arongoth found a source to feed his growing (in a couple of senses) mandrake root habit. This time in concentrated, powdered form. 

And speaking of dubiously obtained and possibly dangerous powders, the green powder that Morgus the Malevolent's money mummy coughed up to turn Arongoth's entourage of undead against him was identified as Krenshaw's powder, which is a vile concoction that can either wrest control of animated corpses or just make them murderously free willed, depending on how it's formulated. There will be more on this in later Chronicles.

Vlad either suffered some infected bites or fell in the sewer (I don't rightly recall.) during last session's visit to the wererats and came down with a nasty case of something gastrointestinal. He convalesced at a hostel run by the order of St. Gwenivere. 

Tarvinir followed the trail of breadcrumbs I laid down with the spellbook cover and wand they found in the spider wolf's lair, and worked his way toward induction into the Occluded College. This was made a bit more difficult from having to keep a low profile thanks to his involvement in the Von Zann atrocity, but he managed to make some connections and grab onto one of my plot coupons. 

And finally, in a Lovecraftian twist, Greed the homanculous was accosted in the street as he took the air in front the inn they were staying at by a wild eyed old sailor who handed him a macguffin mysterious wooden box and promptly expired as he staggered away. 

Just what all these plot hooks are attached to we shall see in subsequent entries. Stay tuned.

The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Session 32

Welcome to Kroenenberg

Session 32 Attendants:
Greed – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Rael – Lvl 6 Thief/Werewolf
Ritzy – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Arongoth of Hogendaus – Lvl 6 Cleric/Vegetable
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 4 Dampyr
Tarvinir – Lvl 5 Magic User

Monsters mashed:
Morgus The Malevolent’s Money Mummy – Kerploded by a Lightning bolt from Tarvinir.
962 EXP (Factoring in the two coins in its eyesockets)

3 Zombies and 7 Skeletons – Formerly in Arongoth’s employ, gone rogue from the green powder. Stabbed, arrowed, explosively turned and otherwise smushed by party.
               178 EXP

The Skull Vulture – Also Kerploded by a Lightning Bolt from Tarvinir

Commentary:

This session was spent on the outskirts of the port city of Kroenenberg, battling an assortment of undead horrors.

Morgus the Malevolent's money mummy initiated its shakedown of the party by coughing up a vial of vile green powder that caused Arongoth's entourage of shambling corpses and skeletons to turn on him and his living companions. Whut oh!

Thus they were forced to smack 'em down, but it was better that way, since they were new arrivals in town and the welcome wagon generally brings torches and pitchforks (or in this case, probably gaff hooks and belaying pins) when you've got a gaggle of zombies and skellies following you around.

They also encountered a monstrous vulture with a human-ish skull for a head. I'm pretty sure I just reskinned a standard harpy for that bit. I think the creature was terminated at a distance. I also think I had rough plans for a dungeon connected to it but the party was intent on getting to their destination and didn't follow up on it. Such is the way. That's why it pays to play it loose.

I love doing re-skins on monsters, and had a lot of opportunity to do it in this campaign. Just like when I was a kid my action figures never really stayed as who they were on the package they came in. I was always coming up with my own characters and making up my own stories, even as a wee tad.

(Except for Han Solo and Chewy, although they flew around with Hammerhead, Walrus Face, Snaggletooth, and even Greedo (Dunno if he forgave Han first or what.) as kind of an ersatz pirate crew in the back compartment of my Millenium Falcon vs. Darth Vader and his one solitary stormtrooper. (Who kinda became like Professor Fate and Max, thinking back on my youthful frolics on the living room floor.) But I digress...)

By my use of the term "kerploded" in the email, I can infer that in both cases it was a one shot kill from Tarvinir's lightning bolts. I'm sure in one of those he used the Big Red d30. Like I've mused before, getting to roll a d30 for damage might be a bit overpowered, but the players enjoy it. As Jeff Rients famously said "Your NPC's suck and they are all going to die."

Tune in next week as our heroes hit the town, and the town takes a couple swings right back at 'em.

 Push the button, Max.

The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Session 30 & 31

Attendants:

Greed – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Rael – Lvl 6 Thief/Werewolf
Ritzy – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Arongoth of Hogendaus – Lvl 6 Cleric/Vegetable
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 4 Dampyr
Tarvinir – Lvl 5 Magic User

Monsters mashed:
Werewolf: Stabbed and bludgeoned, then finished off with a bisected skull from Greed
190 EXP

Rael: Subdued after moonstone boulder caused a wolfout.
320 EXP

TOTAL: 510 EXP/6 Players = 85 Exp apiece

Items acquired: Head of the kreuzschlusselwulf, to be delivered to one Professor Scarabus in Kroenenberg at 13 Bettlerstrasse.

Items un-acquired: Gerald the Pony

 + assorted skeletons and zombies.

Tune in next week when Morgus’ Money Mummy says:

 Morgus wants his money!
MORGUS WANTS HIS MONEY!
MORGUS WANTS HIS MONEY!!!

 Creepy crawl correction:
Sorry. It was Vlad who split the werewolf’s head in half with his dagger, wasn’t it?
My apologies.

Commentary:

Whoo. A lot of threads laid down and picked up in this session. 

The party completed their exploration of the Spider Wolf's lair, encountering the moonstone boulder in the deepest part of the webbed up forest that caused Rael to involuntarily wolf out and rampage. They put her to sleep B.A. Baracus style and fought one of the enshrouded werewolves in the multi-legged monster's larder.

I think they put both the couriers out of their misery, rather than go thru the trouble of gathering all those herbs and dire wolf blood and whatnot for a cure. They saved at least 2 silver pieces, plus not having them around to contest where they might have gotten the paperwork and signet ring that gave them the title of Cardille Keep was probably a factor. 

Hey, bein' monsters and monster adjacent ain't always pretty...

Gerald the pony finally had enough of all the terrifying goings on and fled the scene at top speed, dragging Vlad behind him part of the way. Vlad managed to get loose but Gerald got looser, and vanished over the horizon. 

One thing I know from growing up around horses is that these huge animals can spook at the sight of a fluttering gum wrapper. With all the werewolves and giant spiders and death and decay going on around him I'm honestly surprised Gerald's head didn't explode. 

As they finished up and were picking their way out of the horrible webby woodland, they were met on the path by an animated monkey skeleton carrying a brass trumpet that magically played a message from one Professor Scarabus, a secretive wizard based in Kroenenburg, who offered them a princely sum of money to collect and deliver the lycanthropy tainted poison glands from the spider wolf to an address in town. 

So they obligingly went back and sawed the head off the dead kruzeschlusselwulf and bagged it up. There's no way a fast acting toxin that turns people into werewolves could be used for anything but peaceful and socially edifying purposes. No way!

Professor Scarabus was a villain I introduced in the original round robin Wardicon campaign that I participated in back in those distant days when I first started gaming with my coworkers at Genetic Anomalies, which included such luminaries as Paul and Delta. 

My character at the time was a square jawed, superhero styled paladin named Calvert McCallister, and Scarabus was created as a super villainous counterpart. 

The Professor was always running city wide schemes of horrible, Dr. Phibes style revenge on his former wizardly colleagues or cartoonish mass destruction, like the one time he turned the entire population of Wardicon to stone, or that other time where he tried afflicting the whole city with mummy rot by spreading powdered mummy from a hot air balloon. 

Thankfully, he was foiled time after time, but he was a real rum customer.

In the Creepy Crawl his methodology and style were very much cribbed, aesthetically, from the work of Jan Svankmajer. They never met him in person, which seems to be the only way you can preserve a villain in an RPG campaign. Although even that's no guarantee...

And speaking of remote villains, this session ended at a bit of a cliffhanger a few miles outside of the Kroenenburg city limits, as a hulking mummy with gold coins for eyes blocked their path. Seems the evil sorcerer and rival tomb looter Morgus the Malevolent had figured out who'd stolen Count Gore De Vol's treasure out from under his nose and had begun sending supernatural collection agents after our ghoulish group, furious that they'd stolen the treasure that he'd intended to steal.

Tune in on Friday to see how that particular pecuniary pickle wraps up. 

The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Session 25

Just drink your tea and don’t say anything about her surgery scars.

Attendants:
Greed – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Rael – Lvl 6 Thief/Werewolf
Ritzy – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Arongoth of Hogendaus – Lvl 4 Cleric

Henching:
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 4 Dampyr

Monsters Mashed:
1 Ghoul – Cut down with Greed’s awesome sword of undead slaying before its scabrous brethren nearly TPK’d you all.
               47 EXP/4.5 players = 10 EXP apiece

Arongoth attained the second mandrake root and ate it. Is now an ambulatory plant with green, mottled, potato like skin and other unknown effects.

Party nearly TPK’d by ghouls (frikkin’ ghouls) and rescued by Alexi Von Himmel and his wonder dog Rex before being eaten.

Have struck a deal with Deiter Von Himmel to obtain some troll blood in exchange for reduced rates for homanculous upgrades.

That's Doctor Von Himmel, I didn't get my degree just to be called Baron.

 Commentary:

This is the session where the weirdness of the campaign began to gain some real momentum. 

The party sought out the other mandrake root that they knew about from Bark Eatin' Ted's woodsy wisdom, and found it in a patch of greenishghoul, which is a sickly whitish green plant known for attracting the undead. (I got that herb list for Rael's wolwelf cure from Abulafia btw. Best use of a random table I've ever done.) Which it had, in the form of a pack of frikkin' ghouls. 

Well, ghouls are pretty nasty, even for a bunch of 4th. to 5th. level characters, so the party came really close to getting TPK'd. Claw/claw/bite plus paralysis and a lot of blown saving throw rolls often makes for a bad time. Frikkin' ghouls... 

But lo! Galumphing through the woods astride his faithful reindeer Snowflake was Alexi Von Himmel, adventurer, nobleman, and gentleman hunter, with his amazing hunting hound Rex (a german shepherd with a human arm grafted to his back armed with a flintlock pistol, a gift from his elder brother). Between Alexi's hurtling hand axes and his dog being a crack shot, the ghouls were sent packing and the party was saved. 

One tangential historical note, Alexi was a character my brother created and played in a kinda gothic 2nd. Edition D&D game back when we were sharing an apartment in Cleveland while going to school at the Cleveland Institute of Art. I'd say back in 1993-1994, if I'm doing my math right. He was cossack inspired, and we were using the A Mighty Fortress campaign sourcebook. 

We'd decided between us that the Von Himmels were an Addams Family style clan of aristocratic oddballs and misfits. In a lot of ways that old campaign was the buried corpse that the deep roots of the flowerbed of bizarre that was the Creepy Crawl campaign drew it's nourishment from. I brought the Von Himmel family back in a big way for this game, and the rescue from Alexi was my golden opportunity to slot them into the campaign.

Von Himmel invited the party back to his family estate, an imposing castle in the next valley over from Ghoulardia Pass. There they were introduced to his elder brother, Dieter Von Himmel, the greatest mad scientist in all the land, and Deiter's lovely wife Hyacinth, a velociraptor in a dress with a barely noticable surgery scar running across her cranium under her blonde wig. (A result of a tragic trip abroad that the Von Himmels decline to discuss. The poor dear gets so upset and starts lacerating the throw pillows... and the servants...)

Over tea, I got to introduce one of the campaign's best patrons, and also gave the homanculus characters something to strive for. When they found out that Dr. Von Himmel could do any kinda modifications their artificial little hearts desired, if the price was right, right then and there they knew what their goal in life was gonna be: earning enough bling to pimp out their chassis.

I tried dangling the troll blood discount thing in front of them to get them to go back to the cave where they'd gotten the mountainroot morels, but they didn't bite on that. Their adventures were soon to take them further afield. 

Finally, Arongoth got himself back up to 5th. level after eating the second mandrake root, but it had started to... change him. 

It never came up in play, but in addition to his plant like complexion, he was also capable of regrowing severed limbs. (Although the process would be rather... fraught, in many disturbing and inconvenient ways...) 

And he wasn't done yet. This... change made him wonder what would happen were he to acquire more mandrake and consume it without needing to replenish his levels.

Like I said, here's where it really starts to get really, really weird, and I'm lovin' it. 

Tune in on Wednesday, group, as we proceed.

Go! Mighty Orbots!

Back in 1984 ABC's Saturday Morning lineup was graced with one of the best cartoons ever made. It only lasted for one season, before a baseless lawsuit from Tonka claiming infringement on their "Go Bots" line took it off the air.

 But while it was still on, back when I was a tender lad of 12 summers, I taped every single episode on our early model VHS recorder. (So early that its remote was attached to the unit via a wire.) I treasured that tape for years, until the inevitable breakdown of the magnetic media forced me to discard it. After that, I had to content myself with crappy bootlegs obtained at conventions, usually digitized from other fans' decaying VHS tapes.

Finally, Warner Bros. has put the entire series out as a Manufacture on Demand release. I've been waiting for this since they invented DVDs.

It's as gorgeous as I remember it, with top notch voice talent like Don Messick and Gary Owens, high quality character design and animation from assorted Tezuka productions alumni, and the jazziest soundtrack since Jonny Quest. If you remember this show, or don't but can appreciate vintage TV animation at its finest, then check it out. You can find it on Amazon or wherever fine DVD's are sold.

My joy circuits are overclocked!

Little Big Score

While we're on the subject of the history of my mini-collection, I suppose I ought to talk about the foundation of my fearsome (and perhaps farcical) force of figurines. Most folks who know me and have gamed with me have heard this one a few times. I might have even talked about it here on the blog before.

Well, long story short (pun intended), in the last post I talked about seeking a "DM's Set" of minis, a bunch of placeholder goons that players with their unique and personally chosen minis could go up against in my games. I got that modest boxed set of skaven for that purpose. And eventually I bought that one undead expansion for HeroQuest, which gave me a nice selection of skellies, zombies, and mummies to throw at them. (I'll pull those out and post a shot of 'em here eventually.)

But my big score, as it were, was acquiring a copy of the Battle Masters game just as it was getting remaindered at KayBee Toys at the local mall. I paid all of $10 bux for it. My memory is vague as of the time frame, but I wanna say it was around 1994-95. I remember setting about painting 'em all up over the subsequent summer break from college, with a bit of help from my brother. I spent an additional $10 on individual bases from the hobby store, so all told that adds up to 100 miniatures for around 20 cents per guy, which is good value any way you slice it. (Especially considering the ogre, all the mounted figs, and the cannon crew.)

I painted most of them, with the exception of the orcs with the skulls on their shields and the good guy knights, which were my brother's handiwork.

The human soldiers made a pretty good contingent of town guards, with a crossbow auxiliary to boot. The cannon crew pretty much hung out on top of the tower as tchotchkes on various shelves thru the years. As you can see we kinda ran out of steam before we got the main force of knights painted up, and I have no idea where the other two mounted human lords got to. The archers' faces were kinda flat and featureless, and I never really liked 'em too much, so while I painted 'em, they wound up in storage without bases. I dug 'em up for this shot and stuck 'em down with fun tack.

On the monsters' side, you'll note we left the riders off the wolves, because they were more useful to me as just dire wolves without goblins on 'em. I often wish that I'd just painted 'em up all black like I did #5 in the middle there, but since they're pretty much relics now there's no goin' back. No idea what became of the gobbo riders. I did the chaos archers up in those kaleidoscopic colors and have always called 'em "dragon men". Never used 'em much 'cos I don't tend to have a lot of use for archer figures in a dungeon setting. The beast men I did up in animal skin patterns and have always used them for gnolls. As I've said, the standard Games Workshop green skin on goblinoids and their ilk kinda bores me stupid, so with the orcs and goblins my brother and I went with skin tones reminiscent of shrunken heads or bog mummies, so that the eyes and teeth would really pop. The shields on the orcs and the doom guards were originally drawn on with fine point marker, but that faded over time, so recently (around last year or so) I dug up a bunch of WH shield decorations I had in my bits box, painted 'em up, and glued them on to gussy the old goons up a bit.

And of course, most of the massed marchers got their own rub on numbers so I could keep 'em straight in combat. 

So that's pretty much been the backbone of my mini collection for a while now.

Skaven and Me.

Waaay back in the day, back when I was a fledgeling DM just out of high school in the early 1990's and running games for friends in college, miniatures were kind of scarce, and I was kinda growing frustrated with the vagueness of "I attack the nearest one" when running combats in the dungeon. Most players could scrounge up a figure to represent their character, but massed mobs of monsters were a tough thing to conjure on the tabletop.

So to rectify this situation I purchased a box set with the idea of having them be general purpose dungeon goons. This was back when Games Workshop was just getting into plastics. Even back then goblins and orcs bored me to tears, so I decided to go with this old box set of GW skaven, since I liked their look and there were 10 of them which is a serviceable number for not a lot of money. (How times have changed. Games Workshop's products and "not a lot of money" don't tend to wind up in the same sentence these days. Bah.)

The way things were at most hobby shops, you just couldn't cheaply or easily get a large number of the same thing if you were buying blister packs of metal minis. (I think by now you've noticed that I've perennially been reluctant to spend a lot of money on minis. Well, to be clear, I mean not a lot of money PER mini. I still buy enough minis for it to be a minor material vice. Say what you will, buying toys makes me happy. My sweet spot right now is between $2-$4 dollars per dude, unless they're especially large or unusual.)

I wasn't quite the ultra-literalist mini-user I am now, so I figured they could do duty as anything from goblins to orcs to gnolls to whatever the encounter tables coughed up. As long as I had some consistent baddies to act as tactical tokens, I was satisfied.

These guys are some of the oldest minis in my collection. Alas, poor #2 got cronched by a friend's parents' hyperactive Australian shepherd when my minis case was left open on the floor of their house in a moment of inattention. (His mom felt so bad about it she got me a gift certificate to a local restaurant as a weregeld, which was totally unnecessary but still greatly appreciated.)

I have a bunch of these old style Warhammer Quest skaven in my copious unpainted pile. I could do up a replacement for him. But I dunno. He'd stand out. My techniques have evolved a lot since I painted these guys. (I think they were actually painted with my art school acrylic paints out of tubes, rather than the bottled craft store paint I work with these days.)

Actually, the one thing about these guys that was truly irreplaceable were those rub down numbers. They're really hard to find these days. (At least for cheap. :-\) A lot of art supply and hobby stores just don't stock 'em in that size. I dearly wish I still had that sheet. It was lost in the endless shuffle of papers I've always been surrounded with long, long ago.

The numbers were my big solution to "I hit the nearest one." Now I could have my players tell me what number they were aiming for.

A lot later, I bought a box set of Rat Ogres and Giant Rats, when I was filling out my assortment of dungeon dangers. I blogged about it a while ago here. I was inspired by Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition when I painted up the Clan WhateverblahblahWHFluff handlers. Because if I'm anything at all, I'm a huge nerd.

And that's that about my rats.

Hobbits and History. A personal reminisce.

This week, my good friend Delta wrote a very interesting post regarding his reading The Hobbit for the first time. This led me to reminisce a bit about my own history with the book, and its much grander sister work The Lord of the Rings.

I was gaming regularly with Delta back when the Lord of the Rings movies first hit the scene back in 2001. I remember being taken aback that several members of my gaming circle had reached adulthood as D&D players never having read the books. Then as now I just took it as a lesson that you can never take shared cultural context completely for granted. Everybody's got a different path, after all, and they're all valid.

As for me, the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings are dear old friends. I was a child of five years old when the animated Rankin/Bass Version came out, and was instantly taken with the tale. It still holds up, in my opinion, especially with the likes of John Huston and Hans Conreid in the vocal cast.

    Not long afterward, I think perhaps on the night of its original broadcast if not a few years later, my parents pulled out their copy of the book and started reading it to us every night before we went to bed, followed eventually by the Lord of the Rings.

    My folks weren't hardcore fantasy nerds like I wound up being, but they did have enough interest to sow the seeds. They had all of Tolkien's works, and my Dad had a collection of Howard's "Conan" paperbacks, complete with Frazetta covers and all.

    Flash forward to a few years later. Every summer my Mom would can fruits and veggies for the winter, and while my brother and I helped chop up green beans or run apples or tomatoes thru the squeezo, we'd listen to a 2 record set that was essentially the soundtrack and vocals from the Rankin Bass animation on beginning to end repeat over the course of the long afternoons.

The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.
Today and tomorrow are yet to be said.
The chances, the changes are all yours to make.
The mold of your life is in your hands to break.

    My folks saw Ralph Bakshi's animated Lord of the Rings in the theater, but we were much too little to see it at the time, so the most I saw of that movie until much later when I rented it on VHS from our local video store was a coloring book.

Certainly makes the animated movie look better than it was.
Dig those groovy hobbit hairdos.

It wasn't that impressive even in the mid to late eighties when I saw it, and I've always kind of viewed it as a case study of ambition outstripping resources. (Particularly toward the end when it devolved to colorized film footage of guys in bad wigs and gorilla masks acting out the climatic battles around Minas Tirith).

All told, between that, and Rankin Bass' perfunctory attempt at animating "Return of the King" seeing Lord of the Rings on the screen was kind of a mixed bag until the big breakthrough of Peter Jackson's magnum opus in 2001.

Doubling back to the books, however, was a regular thing for me and my family. Especially the Hobbit, which is much more of a complete morsel of a story and easier to savor and digest. (I'm not going to dignify the three part cinematic monstrosity of recent vintage with any more mention than this. Dig up the Rankin Bass version, you'll enjoy it more.)

Autumn was usually the best time to read it, when cooler days and changing leaves formed the perfect natural backdrop to the tales Tolkien spun.

It will always be a good old friend, no matter how the tropes and story elements it introduced are revised and repackaged by fantasy media. Well worth the time getting to know it, which is why I'm happy to see Delta, or anybody else, packing up a bindle of seedcakes and their elven dagger and joining those of us who've gone on this hobbit's holiday before.

Side Note: I have now matched my output for 2016 and beaten my number of posts for 2017. Go me!