The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Session 23

His bark eatin' has really gotten out of control...

Attendants:
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 4 Dampyr
Greed – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Rael – Lvl 6 Thief/Werewolf
Ritzy – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Arongoth of Hogendaus – Lvl 3 Cleric

Henching 4 Evah:
Richard Darkmagic – Lvl 5 Magic User

Monsters Mashed – 6 Stirges – All but one Sleep spelled and fell to their death. One kerploded with magic missiles
96 EXP/5.5 Players = 17 EXP apiece

The conditions of Rael’s condition:

Wolf Form: AC 6, Mov 150(50), Bite 2d4, +2 to save vs. Breath Wpn, 60' Darkvision.
+30 to Move Silently. May bite as backstab. Cannot use Climb ability. Make Save vs. Petrify/Paralyze to change 1/day and back.

Commentary:

So, after brewing up the worwelf cure as perscribed in their research in Doctor Von Rattschmid's library, Rael held her cold, wet nose, swallowed a silver piece, and then downed the nasty concoction. Then she rolled a save vs. Poison...

And made it. When her character was done gagging, I explained to her player that now she could control her wolfly transformations, more or less. She could only shift from person to wolf and back once per day, and if she blew either save vs. Paralysis she'd be stuck in whatever form she was in until the next day.  

In a normal campaign I'd probably be more inclined to play up the curse part of lycanthropy, what with the random transformations and the gnawing on comrades and whatnot, but in a schlock horror movie styled game like I was runnin', it seemed more apropos to just have it be part of the party's skill set. And thus the enweirdening of the party began...

So having solved Rael's problem, the group turned their attentions to helping Arongoth get over having almost half of his levels drained by the vampire Lobovich. 

They sought out the herbal advice of Bark Eatin' Ted, the mad druid of Ghoulardia Pass. Ted manifested as a face on the side of a tree, and they had a splintery conversation about what could be done. B.E. Ted suggested they rustle up some mandrake roots, which were known to be a restorative. In short, if Arongoth dug up a mandrake and ate it, he could get a level back. 

Of course, picking mandrakes is supremely dangerous, what with the killer scream they emit when pulled from the ground. S.O.P. was to get a dog and tie it to the root, toss a ball or a stick or something, and then run for the hills as the dog pulled the mandrake loose and got sent to heaven.  Since Rael wasn't too keen on volunteering for that gig they had to come up with something else.

Ted hipped them to the locations of a couple of the deadly tubers in the woods around Ghoulardia Pass, so they thanked the plank and headed off to do some more herb harvesting. 

The first mandrake they found was growing on a high ledge on a cliff that was also home to a nasty colony of stirges. They bested the little bloodsuckers with a Sleep spell, and then prepared their clever plan to get up there and pick that mandrake. 

Tune in Friday, to find out how they planned to do it, and how it all went horribly, horribly pear shaped. Heh heh heh...

The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Session 22

Attendants:
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 4 Dampyr
Greed – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Rael – Lvl 6 Thief/Werewolf
Ritzy – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Arongoth of Hogendaus – Lvl 3 Cleric

Henching 4 Evah:
Richard Darkmagic – Lvl 5 Magic User
Ivan Fedyeka – Lvl 2 Ranger Hireling

Monsters Mashed –
4 Dire Wolves – 560 EXP. / 6 players = 93 EXP apiece

1 Gallon (plus) of Dire Wolf blood successfully obtained.

Commentary:

Today's session was a quest for soup stock. Having obtained all the various poisonous and otherwise obnoxious herbal ingredients for Rael's wierwalf cure, as well as a nice copper pot to cook it all up in, they needed some dire wolf juice to really meld the flavors. 

So they hired Ivan, an NPC ranger, to help them track down a pack of the big beasties and went tromping about the pine forests around Ghoulardia Pass lookin' for trouble. Since that particular neck of the woods is crawling with wolves, dire and otherwise, they scored the necessary bucket of blood and headed back to the hunting lodge and got cookin'. 

I think they had the wine covered from an earlier looting haul, and contrary to his general MO of making shambling undead minions out of every corpse he could lay his hands on, and despite his reduced level from the battle with Lobovich, Arongoth could Purify and Bless enough water for the recipe's requirements. Or maybe they just left the holy water out. Or maybe they substituted a bottle of cheap vodka and some tomato juice. My records on this are vague, and my memory even vaguer.

Tune in Wednesday to find out how the medicine went down.  

P.S.: Of course the song is stuck in your head, it's stuck in mine right now. Here's the video, 'cos I love my readers (if there are actually any of you out there) and don't want to force you to have to search YouTube yourselves. 

You're welcome. 

Doo doo doodoo doo doodoo doo doodoo doo doodoodoo doooo.

The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Session 21

Attendants:
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 4 Dampyr
Greed – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Rael – Lvl 6 Thief/Werewolf
Ritzy – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Arongoth of Hogendaus – Lvl 3 Cleric

Henching 4 Evah:
Richard Darkmagic – Lvl 5 Magic User

Casualties:
Top battlement of Cardille Keep:

Loot Acquired –
Fancy gold stringed, semi-precious stone inlaid balalaika – 700 gp
               700 EXP

Monsters Mashed –
8 Giant bats – Stabbed, shot, and then awesomely exploded via Fireball
               160 EXP

Experience award total:
               860/5.5 Players = 156 Exp apiece

Commentary:

 As you'll note from the note in the attendance card, the player who ran Richard Darkmagic was unable to continue playing with us due to an uptick in his work schedule, so his magic user was converted to a permanent henchman. 

Well, permanent might not be the best word, as you'll soon see...

Anyway, our friendish fiends continued their looters tour of Cardille Keep, making their way up to the upper floors. 

One of the rooms was a conservatory where the skeletons of several elegant ladies, as could be determined from the moldering silken finery the bones were bedecked in, sat on dust covered couches. There they found the fancy balalaika, which Rael the Werethief claimed for keeps. (I love it when players take a personal interest in treasure they find rather than just marking down the gp value and cashing it in at ye olde fantasy cheque cashing and payedaye loanes establishmente.)

From there they made their way up to the top of the tower, where they were attacked by Lobovich's squad of giant bats. (There are just some features that come standard in a vampire's castle, although I guess the old boy sprang for the deluxe option here.) The party fought them off, punctuating a death sentence on the leathery beasts with a Big Red d30 fueled Fireball! BOOM!

Leaving the top of the keep in flames, and resolving to come back and check out that iron cauldron hanging from chains in the topmost battlement after the fire had died down, our party of pyros quit their castle casing for other pursuits. 

Stay tuned, group. It just gets more oofty mcgoofty from here. 

The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Session 20

Attendants:
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 4 Dampyr
Greed – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Rael – Lvl 6 Thief/Werewolf
Ritzy – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Arongoth of Hogendaus – Lvl 3 Cleric

Henching:
Richard Darkmagic – Lvl 5 Magic User

Monsters Mashed – 10 Doom Guards – Kerploded with magic swords and magic missiles, backstabbed in the neck, bludgeoned or arrowed and quarreled into rusty bits, bone shards, and dirt.
               350 EXP/5.5 players = 63 EXP apiece

Commentary:

In this session the party made their way up from the dungeon levels of Cardille Keep and found their way into the great feasting hall, where a troupe of Doom Guards (super old super dead guys packed into super antique rusty platemail with a bunch of grave earth as filler) stood guard. Then they didn't, after our gruesome group laid an old school whuppin' on their creaky kiesters. 

Not much more to say about this one, just one of those all fightin' kinds of sessions. We only had an hour to play over lunch, so often that's how things would go down. After four years I can't really recall much of interest. Dice were rolled, fun was had, lunch was eaten, and we all went back to our desks both satisfied and hungry to take it up where we left off next time we sat down to game.

Stay tuned for the next installment, where things will heat up a little.

The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Session 19

Attendants:
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 4 Dampyr
Greed – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Rael – Lvl 6 Thief/Werewolf
Ritzy – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Arongoth of Hogendaus – Lvl 3 Cleric

Henching:
Richard Darkmagic – Lvl 5 Magic User

Monsters Mashed –

Carpet of Rats descending staircase in catacombs. Slept then stomped.
               89 exp/5.5 players = 16 EXP per player

Acquired:
1 Nice copper kettle, some shields, some phat lewt via pickpocketing, and 1 ominous possible threat from maybe the gypsies.

Commentary:

Not all too much to report from this session. A lot of it took place in town. In addition to some other necessities they bought a clean copper pot to stew up all the strange and deadly herbs they'd acquired for the wurwilf cure, although they still needed a gallon each of holy water, fine wine, and dire wolf's blood as a soup stock. 

Rael practiced her thiefly craft just to keep her hand in (as in hand in pockets of wealthy looking chumps) and did pretty well, but at the end of her larcenous lark she found something had been slipped into her own pocket: a chicken foot with a black ribbon tied around it. This was the equivalent of a red card from the local gypsies for horning in on their territory. (Alas, this plot thread didn't get to go much of anyplace, 'cos they didn't hang out in Strangeldorf for too much longer. Que sera sera.) 

Unsettled, the party headed back out to Ghoulardia Pass to finish exploring Cardille Keep. They ran into a wave of rats coming down the stairs as they were going up, which they dispatched handily. (Or footily, with their hulking homanculi heavies doin' the flat rat flamenco.)

Tune in Wednesday as the mayhem begins to escalate in that foreboding fortification. 'Til then, keep them toes a tappin'.

The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Session 18

Attendants:
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 4 Dampyr
Greed – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Rael – Lvl 6 Thief/Werewolf
Ritzy – Lvl 5 Homanculus

Henching:
Richard Darkmagic – Lvl 5 Magic User
Arongoth of Hogendaus – Lvl 3 Cleric
               Fritzy zombified rat creature minion

Casualties:
               Fritzy the zombified rat creature minion. Spine ripped out by Troglodite, partially eaten by Troll. Alas, Fritzy, we hardly knew ye.

Monsters mashed:
               12 Troglodites – Variously arrowed, crossbowed, stabbed, slashed, beheaded, and generally murderated. Several chased off as well.
               456 EXP

               1 Troll – Successfully bribed to sit out combat and gnaw on fallen combatants, and then further bribed to obtain Mountainroot morels.
               100 EXP

               TOTAL: 556/ 5 players = 111 EXP apiece

Lycanthropy cure ingredients acquired: Mountainroot Morels.
               All (herbal) ingredients are acquired.

Commentary:

This session found our horrid heroes in pitched combat with a stinking tribe of troglodites with their claw/claw/bites. Things might have gone very south for the group, especially when the trog alpha sent an emissary off with a throat sac full of gold to call on the mercenary assistance of the trio of trolls living deeper in the caves. 

Thankfully, Vlad somehow tweaked to what was going down and made a counter offer to the troll when it showed up, buying it off before it could pull any of his friends' arms out of their sockets. With their erstwhile ally happily munching on the wrecked corpse of Fritzy the musclebound rat zombie and watching the party slitting them up a treat, the trogs cut bait and retreated into the depths of their cave. 

With a bit more negotiation and some more gold crossing its warty, rubbery palm, the troll happily lumbered off into the fungus caverns and came back with the morels of the story. 

Their mission accomplished, our merry mob of morel midgets hied themselves back to Strangeldorf.

Stay tuned for morel next week. 

The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Session 17

I’m amenable to playing this Friday to catch up on the session we missed on Monday.

Who farted?

Attendants: - Full House!
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 4 Dampyr
Greed – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Rael – Lvl 6 Thief/Werewolf
Richard Darkmagic – Lvl 5 Magic User
Ritzy – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Arongoth of Hogendaus – Lvl 3 Cleric
               Fritzy zombified rat creature minion

Monsters Mashed:
7 Troglodites – 266 exp/6 Players = 44 EXP apiece

Commentary:

So having cleared out the cockatrice, the party delved deeper into the mountain cave. They pushed thru a chamber full of the stony death chicken's petrified victims, and ran smack dab into a large settlement of troglodytes. This whole session was pretty much just lumpin' on lizards.

The cave complex was based on one of Dyson Logo's wonderful maps, which was my go to source for on the fly dungeons for this wacky campaign. In this case, the map I used was The Reeking Hole. You can find it in his first Dyson's Delves compilation, which is where I found it.

In fact, since I'm feeling magnanimous today, here's the key I did up. I think this was one of my better extemporaneous dungeons, and it's a good random delve for a mid to low-mid level party, IMHO.

 I leave it as an exercise for the reader to match the numbers to the chambers, since I'm not sure if it's okay for me to post the map here. The trolls and toads were in the north passage, the trogs were to the south, and all the fungus amongus was in the central channel that went under the connecting cave between them.

01: Cockatrice: HD: 5, HP: 27, AC: 6, ATK: Beak 1d6, Petrify (Save vs. petrify), Sv: F5, Ml: 7, Mv: 90(30)

02: Gallery of petrified victims. 1 dire wolf, 2 woodsmen, a grimling, a horse. All covered in slime molds and reeking of troglodites in 3.

03: Troglodite lair.
    32 Trogs, HD 2, HP: Alpha[14] Bodyguards[13,13] EggGuards[11, 11, 11,11,11]
    Warriors [12,5, 9, 10, 10] [12, 10, 6, 10, 7] Guards[12, 4, 7, 7, 4, 9, 5] Hunters[12,5, 4, 9, 9, 6, 8]
    AC: 5, Atk: Claw/Claw/Bite 1d4/1d4/1d4. Alpha: Axe 1d8, Bodyguards: Spears 1d6
    Save: F2, Morale 9, Mv 120’(40’), Surprise 1-4/d6, Stench Save vs Poison or -2 to atk.
Flat rock in alcove where alpha and bodyguards sit. Eggs kept in underground pool. Stinking carcass pit with giant puffballs occupies center of cave. Alpha has key to treasure room in throat sac.  Has defense pact w’ trolls in 13

04: 2 Crudely Carved Bas Reliefs of ancient kings, one set in gothic arch that is clearly a doorway. Leads to small hallway (5’x10’) with second, locked stone door. Inside is troglodite treasure in stone bowls,  total: 50 GP, 2000 SP, 200 PP. Many empty bowls. Lime encrusted skeleton w’ heavy crossbow (20 bolts) in sw corner. Murder Hole in mouth of other carving alcove in 3.

I envisioned the carvings all looking kinda like this.

05: Weak floor drops anyone who walks across it 20 ft down into 7. Floor looks cracked like dried mud. Leaves 10‘ pit

06: Walls glow with bluish light, puffballs around crude, stepped incline that goes down 20’. If puffballs burst by touch, will coat all in chamber and affect them as with faerie fire for 4d8 rounds)

07: Yellow Mold Patch: 2 HD, 11HP, Acid does 1d6 dmg to flesh, leather, or wood. Spore cloud on contact 3 in d6. Fills room. Save vs. poison or die in 6 rounds. Only fire affects, 1d4 per strike from torch. Secret passage around mold hidden by fungus membrane.

08: Fungus Garden: Plenty of mountain root morels, as well as a bizarre sampling of other fungi. 1 Shrieker wanders here, HD: 3, 17 HP, AC: 7, Sv:F1, Ml: 12, Mv: 9(3), If senses move in 30’ or light within 60’ will shriek for 1d3 rounds. 3 in d6 chance attract monsters from elsewhere in complex. 1-4 trogs, 5-7 giant toads, 8 troll.
    
09: Wraith: Half rotted corpse of thief in fetal position around small coffer. Will manifest if chest touched.
    HD: 4, HP: 19, AC: 3, Atk: Touch 1d6 + Lvl Drain, Save: F4, Mo: 12, Move: 120(40), Fly 240(80)
    Silver does 1/2 dmg. Incorporeal to normal weapons.
    Contents of coffer: 6 gems (25 gp, 100gp, 25 gp, 25 gp, 75 gp, 75 gp), 30 Platinum Pieces

10: 3 Crude statues of ancient kings carved from stalactites. in corners. Heads knocked off.     Stalactites thick, 1/2 mv in area

11: Giant Toads HD: 2+2, HP: 6, 11, 11, 11. Surprise on 1-3 on d6, AC: 7, Bite 1d4+1, Tongue: 15’ roll save vs. Paralysis or get disarmed/de-shielded. Save: F1, Ml: 6, Move: 90’(30’) Can speak, will give prophecy.

Giant Toad Prophecy Chart: Roll d20
    01 It is certain
    02 It is decidedly so
    03 Without a doubt
    04 Yes definitely
    05 You may rely on it
    06 As I see it, yes
    07 Most likely
    08 Outlook good
    09 Yes
    10 Signs point to yes
    11 Reply hazy try again
    12 Ask again later
    13 Better not tell you now
    14 Cannot predict now
    15 Concentrate and ask again
    16 Don't count on it
    17 My reply is no
    18 My sources say no
    19 Outlook not so good
    20 Very doubtful 

12: Tears of the Seeress fountain.

13: Troll Lair: 3 Trolls, HD: 6+3, HP: 37, 35, 25, AC: 4, Atk: Claw/Claw/Bite 1d6/1d6/1d10, Regenerate 3/rnd, Sv: F6 Ml: 10, MV’ 120(40)
Treasure: 3 gold crowns worth 1200, 1100, and 800 gp worn by the trolls (most valuable on the smallest) A golden statue of a chicken worth 700 gp, and 300 GP in an egg shaped stone chest.

And now a good chicken to counter the bad chicken.