Date: Lapin 5th through 7th
Weather: Overcast, then sunny, before beginning to drizzle on the 7th day.
Party:
Jace (Expert)
Kla'ir (Warrior)
Sebastian (High Mage)
Cohorts:
Alucard (Warrior / Vowed)
Melzgar (High Mage)
Gil (Axebeak)
Summary:
(Slight retcon, as a new player had joined, one player opted to drop his hireling to bring on Kla'ir)
As Jace and Sebastian discussed their next plan, they bump into another mercenary looking for work. She introduces herself as Kla'ir, a barbarian from far-off lands. They quickly reach an agreement following the inn's requests to immediately vacate from the premises.
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| Despite wielding that branch like a club, she prefers to chop first, axe questions later. |
The party travels past Lugosi to the shanty town of Tarryfield, resting for the night before traveling through the forest in search of the Molybdenum Tombs. With the forest being oddly quiet save for some errant wildlife, they make camp and decide to explore the tombs in the morning.
Looking around the domed buildings, they spot two entrances with a river between them flowing into a grate leading into the tombs . Immediately wishing to go in the more difficult route, the party latches onto this watery entrance, getting themselves wet in knee-deep water as Kla'ir spent time bending the bars of the grate open. Everyone save for Sebastian, whose wizardly grandeur allowed him some protection from the elements.
Inside, they discover a strange peaceful garden with crystalline plantlife. Sebastian elects to check under the bridge for anything hidden, only to find old graffiti of a troll, to which he leaves an offering of a silver piece. Kla'ir wanders around the garden, taking in the strange iridescent sights. As they lingered in the room, a thrumming noise began to reverberate in their head, Sebastian seeing ethereal tendrils probing at their heads and causing a sensation not unlike a migraine. Jace goes to open a door and the party immediately goes through to escape the strange head-pounding sensations.
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| There was also a crab, just hanging out. |
A cursory examination of the rooms reveals they're in some sort of art gallery. Jace leaves everyone behind to inspect a statue of a woman, shattering the priceless art to take the shiny necklace that was around her neck. The party catches up to him and they head into a room labeled "Historical Works". There, Jace and Kla'ir see an image of a white-clad warrior holding a banner in the middle of a starry wasteland and a painting a man standing in a boat as others row across an icy river. Sebastian, however, sees the images for what they actually are: the Apollo moon landing and Washington crossing the Delaware. He ends up having a breakdown due to this, much to the confusion of his compatriots.
While Sebastian tries to figure out why this fantasy world has imagery of historical events, the rest of the party moves on. There they discover a lost group of explorers from the Academy of Thought who explain their situation. They were exploring the tombs when a monster appeared and scattered them all, now they're holed up in the art gallery figuring out their next move. Jace doesn't seem to care much about their plight, moving on as the party finds imagery of a more idyllic future of the time Sebastian came from.
The party soon comes to a massive dimly-lit underground lake. They see the river from the garden terminates here. Inspecting large grooves made into the walls of the cavern, they deliberate on what could have done such a thing. As Sebastian finally catches up, the creature that made those grooves shows up, and it is hungry.
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| It even came with its own combat theme. |
Treasure:
Ruby-inlaid necklace (worth 150 gp to a collector)
Experience:
Jace (lv 2, 4 xp)
Kla'ir (lv 1, 0 xp)
Sebastian (lv 2, 4 xp)
My Current Thoughts: This is the first dungeon larger than ten rooms that I've actually stocked. It turned out to be an enjoyable experience and didn't take me much longer than 2 hours to actually make. I'm finding that the majority of my preparation time is in drawing those postage stamp-sized tokens. This slips me into a habit of laziness as I constantly look to the tokens I've already drawn to find monsters that could fit, but I only have so much time and energy to prep from week to week.
I find it interesting that my playerbase tends to bring in OCs from their other games or RPs. This is honestly a new concept for me, as I've always just made new characters for new campaigns instead of holding onto a stable of character ideas. I'm not sure how to feel about it. Perhaps I should try bringing back a character from an unfinished campaign if I ever get the chance? I suppose I already am doing that in my solo game, as Daichi is a fighter from a D&D 5e campaign I was a player in that fizzled out and died.
As one of the players had to leave early, I took two of the players and ran them through a combat scenario to get used to the combat. Kla'ir and Alucard are scarily potent in combat, taking on four Dober-Men and two wolves before succumbing to a single frenzied survivor. My players seemed to be satisfied by Worlds Without Number's combat system, as the mechanics of Shock, Screening, Snap Attacks, and Delays seemed to provide that bit of tactical depth they enjoy.
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