ASE: Session 16 (Tomb of the Serpent Kings Part 2)

Date: Aries 23
Weather: Sunny

Party:
Korbin (Elementalist / Warrior 1)
Mia (Vowed / High Mage 1)

Cohorts:

Summary:
Retreating back to the entrance, the party decides to rest outside. Korbin meets up with the party and introduces himself to Mia, the pair deciding to explore together as the rest of the party was currently preoccupied.

Gruff, tuff, and all around no-nonsense fluff.

Mia leads Korbin to where they were last, going down the corridor where they met a strange jellied skeleton. After a short tussle where everything they did left skeleton jelly unfazed, Mia decided to kick the skull out of the goop and Korbin took the skull and ran. Skeleton-less Jelly gave chase, but the party quickly lost it.

Soon, the duo found themselves in a large room with pillars. Mia scouted ahead, going invisible to get a good look at a basilisk that was resting in the room. They decided to double back instead, Korbin falling right into a pit trap. Thankfully the loud noises didn't seem to alert anything. Passing along a furnace room the pair wandered around until they found a seeming dungeon. Mia got caught in an animated manacle, the delay in freeing her allowing several goblins to catch up and ambush them! With questions!

With a few quick negotiations, the pair learned that there was a Basil and a Thingy in the dungeon, and the Basil protected the Thingy that could point at things and kill them. A lot of wordplay about basil (the herb) and basil (the basilisk) was exchanged, and that ended up with Korbin being crowned the Goblin King. As King, he was accepted in all goblin territories as long as he remembered the full moon.

With this newfound sovereignty, Korbin and Mia were able to explore the goblin warrens. They saw the goblin farms (where various items were being planted in hopes they'd grow), the goblin throne (the stuffing was taken out of the cushion and replaced with rocks), and the goblin spawning hole (where more were created by the minute). Korbin found a wall that rotated, activating a spear trap on accident. Four goblins attempted to protect their king, rushing valiantly into the trap, ending with the trap, and subsequently, the door, being held stuck by goblin bodies.

Heading up north, the pair found a strange door made of carved snakes and what seemed to be the abode of a powerful wizard. Attempting to ambush him, the wizard shrugged off their attacks, introducing himself as the great Xiximanter, and ordering the pair to be his lab assistants in creating an immortality potion. The pair went with it while Xiximanter worked fervently, trying to figure out a way out of the situation. Eventually, Xiximanter handed Mia a ritual dagger and ordered her to stab herself.

Mia complied. It hurt.

Perhaps that snapped her out of things, and the pair ended up tricking Xiximanter and running away. Korbin patched Mia up, and they decided to get out of the dungeon before the wizard realized their trick and tracked them down. They run out of the dungeon and into the light. Now that Elias has his information, the party is now free to set their sights on the rest of the lands surrounding Denethix, including that dungeon sitting at the base of Mt. Rendon...

Monsters Defeated:
-Skeleton (Statue) Jelly (20 xp)

Treasure:
-Snakeman Clothes (4 sp)
-Goblin Sovereignty (Korbin)

XP Banked: 4

Rumors:
-A new goblin king has appeared! Goblins all around Denethix are chattering about this. Wait, how do they all know?!
-That place called Broken Huts seems to have changed its name to Pumpkin Hills...

Crafting:
-Quick-Draw Mechanism for Aria's Sword (Progress: 14/14) (Complete!)
-Hurlant Repair (Progress: 7/7) (Complete!)

Experience:
Arduunal (lv 1, 148 xp)
Aria (lv 3, 9000 xp)
Cedar (lv 4, 14000 xp)
Celica (lv 3, 8000 xp)
Cloud Nine (lv 3, 6148 xp)
Firion (lv 2, 4000 xp)
Korbin (lv 1, 12 xp)
Laguna (lv 3, 10,148 xp)
Mia (lv 1, 2150 xp)
Nanashi (lv 1, 1000 xp)

My Thoughts: Honestly, I don't know if I think this dungeon worked out too well as a teaching dungeon. There were several lessons in boxed text, but conveying those lessons ended up falling flat. This may have just been my style of refereeing, as I'm already somewhat experienced as one, but there was a big lack of dynamism or tension that I could convey to the players. As far as tutorial dungeons go, I feel like Prison of the Hated Pretender teaches its lessons in a more digestible format for the players.

ASE: Session 15 (Coming out of Hiatus)

Date: Aries 23
Weather: Sunny

Party:
Arduunal (Expert 1)
Cloud Nine (Invoker 3)
Laguna (Elementalist / Healer 3)
Mia (Vowed / High Mage 1)

Cohorts:


Summary:
It's been several months since Mt. Rendon was cracked open, prompting treasure-seekers and adventurers to plumb its depths. A certain group of adventurers managed to make a living from it, being among the first to discover the secrets lying under the mountain, before they suddenly became homeowners. After clearing out their spooky haunted mansion, it was soon made into a spooky haunted guild hall. All was well and good, up until the mountain blew up. Nobody knows how or why, presumably either a wizard did it or someone activated a powerful artifact, but a big chunk of the mountain had been blown up. This left the entrance to the third floor (now the first) exposed, and allowed for easier access to the box canyon in which it resided in.

However, when the party was planning out this new excavation, snags were hit when the Iron Fist was sent from Denethix to stop people from actually going in for several months, to ensure nobody would activate any more explosive runes. Additionally, a certain lich (who came with the place), Dr. Elias Fenwick, chimed in. He had apparently divined the location of one of his rivals by the name of Xiximanter, and he put in a... Forceful request for people to head to a ruin down south, thought looted and forgotten, in order to find out what his potential rival could be plotting and make sure it didn't interfere with his own plots.

So now, a party of faces both fresh and weathered stand before a rocky cave, sunlight filtering through the dusty halls as stone serpents flank the entrance.

Welcome to the Tomb of the Serpent Kings.

The party starts by investigating the hall. They manage to get inside the false tomb without any incident, and easily discover the upper tomb. They caught on quickly that secret passages were behind statues. After dealing with mummified hands attempting to choke them, they began to investigate room after room. Adruunal, a blacksmith and craftsman by trade, managed to help disarm many of the traps, while Laguna and Cloud Nine provided magical support. Mia was mostly happy to be there.

Here comes the boy.

After a fresh amount of looting and a conspicuous amount of not disturbing any coffins, the party finds themselves in a large arena, face to face with an animated statue!

(Theme of Tower Knight plays here)

... A liberal application of The Decree of Lithic Dissolution took care of it, along with a few lucky Elemental Blasts. The thing crumbled, though it took quite a bit out of the spellcasters.

Mia then went to the opening at the end of the room, now standing on the precipice of a void of inky blackness. The party follows the path south, finding a door, disarming its trap, and finding themselves in a room where they can rest... For now.

Monsters Defeated:
-Mummy Hands * 2 (40 xp)
-Snake Guardian Statue (60 xp)

Treasure:
-Silver Icon (5 gp)
-Bangles (14 gp)
-Electrum Disc (10 gp)
-Emerald-Silver Icon (20 gp)

XP Banked: 590

Rumors:


Crafting:
-Quick-Draw Mechanism for Aria's Sword (Progress: 14/14) (Complete!)
-Hurlant Repair (Progress: 7/7) (Complete!)

Experience:
Arduunal (lv 1, 148 xp)
Aria (lv 3, 9000 xp)
Cedar (lv 4, 14000 xp)
Celica (lv 3, 8000 xp)
Cloud Nine (lv 3, 6148 xp)
Firion (lv 2, 4000 xp)
Laguna (lv 3, 10,148 xp)
Mia (lv 1, 2148 xp)
Nanashi (lv 1, 1000 xp)

My Thoughts: We're back, baby! Except not quite the same as before. I've completely redone the way I'm going to approach this campaign, with less of a rigid schedule and more of an open table structure. I've gone completely with silver for XP and replaced spending money for additional XP, and I now count enemies defeated for XP purposes at the rate of 10 XP per hit die. Additionally, I've replaced the entire dungeon of Anomalous Subsurface Environment with Stonehell, making this somewhat of a soft reboot of this campaign. Maybe I should retitle this Anomalous Stonehell Environment? I adore the surrounding area of Denethix and the factions, but I don't feel confident enough to finish the rest of the megadungeon.

Anyways, to ease back in, I offered to run Skerples' Tomb of the Serpent Kings as a dungeon for newer players (and to give myself time to prep the maps for Stonehell, as I run on a VTT still). I'm not sure if I like the upper tombs of the dungeon, but the players seemed to have fun figuring out the traps. I hope the lower portion of the dungeon will add more dynamism to the dungeon, as the upper tomb felt far more like a modern-style dungeon to me than anything else. I may have to write more on this, as I have been running the Abomination Vaults adventure path from Paizo, and boy do I have some criticisms (it's okay for Paizo writing but it completely fails to be the megadungeon it claims to be, for one).