Session 10: No Honour Among Thieves

Worn out and slightly hung-over from a lengthy carouse in Catapesh, the party was nonetheless eager to return to the catacombs beneath the necropolis to wrest even greater treasures from the cold, grasping hands of the dead.  They chose to explore the southwest quadrant of the dungeon, beginning with a trio of crypts just south of the dungeon's main entry chamber.

The crypts contained giant rats and skeletons that needed to be put down before looting the grave goods, which included a mysterious runic tablet.  From there they had begun to head south down a corridor when Balinor discovered a spike-filled pit trap with his ten-foot pole.  The trap extended from wall to wall with no ledge to safely walk around, and none of the characters wished to try jumping across it, so the party elected, instead, to abandon this part of the dungeon for now and explore some rooms they had previously bypassed, including a bricked-up doorway.

Soon, the preternatural silence of the catacombs was disturbed by the sound of sledgehammer on stone as the party attempted to smash down the bricked-up wall and discover what lay beyond.  Fearing that the noise would attract attention, the party posted their crossbowmen as lookouts while the characters were preoccupied with hammering.  Sure enough, the sentries reported flickering torchlight approaching and soon after a band of tomb robbers showed up, drawn by the sound of the hammering.  An uneasy standoff resulted as each side contemplated whether it would be easier to fight their rivals for pre-looted grave goods rather than having to confront the undead for them.  The standoff was broken when the party thief told the newcomers that there was an unexplored section of dungeon to the southwest that they were free to investigate.  He neglected, however, to mention the pit trap in the corridor.  The party was very pleased with themselves as they imagined the rival band impaled on the spikes that lined the hidden pit.  When the bricked up entrance was finally broken through, the party found a quartet of Shadows within.

From there, the party decided to explore to the east, and encountered a trio of Huecuva, one of which struck a telling blow upon Balinor, leaving a wound of blackened flesh.  No sooner had the Huecuva been put down than four skeletons with glowing sapphires on their foreheads staggered down the corridor toward them.  It became quickly apparent that these were no ordinary skeletons, for shortly after slaying one, it would rise again, whole, to fight once more.  Finally, when one character was able to smash a sapphire, its glow faded and the skeleton did not rise again.  Though they now knew the secret of how to defeat these sapphire skeletons, the party chose not to employ it, hoping, instead, to put all three remaining skeletons down, then smash their gems before they could rise again.  This proved to be a futile tactic as they were not able to put all the skeletons down before the fallen ones rose.  Finally, after a long battle that the party was slowly losing through attrition, they finally decided to aim their blows at the gems, instead, which ultimately proved successful.

Exhausted and bloodied, the party retired from the catacombs to the safety of Catapesh to rest and recuperate.  While sniffing out rumours in the city, Brother Tohm, the monk, heard tell of a band of tomb raiders who had just come out of the necropolis with a trove of magical treasure, though they had lost one of their group to a pit trap.  Incensed that this party of adventurers had the temerity to not only survive the pit trap, but to profit from their explorations, the PCs are now plotting to track down the rival band and steal their loot.

Meanwhile, Balinor discovered, to his alarm, that the patch of necrotic flesh surrounding the Huecuva wound  was growing larger...

Session 9: A Burial Niche Bonanza

The inevitable consequence of putting off writing session reports for so long is that the details start to become hazy, and try as I might, I can't recall which rooms were explored in which session, but thanks to my Dungeon Master's Adventure Log, I do know what monsters were fought and how much treasure was recovered.  So, this report is going to be very short, which is actually a blessing, since I have two sessions to catch up on before this evening's session.

During this foray into the Barrowmaze, the party was short-handed due to the absence of several players.  Nonetheless, it was the sort of expedition that every adventurer dreams of: very few monsters and a great deal of treasure!  Of all the creatures encountered, swarms of giant carnivorous flies proved to be the most persistent and annoying.  And, aside from a battle with a giant rattlesnake, the only other fight was with six skeletal undead in tattered robes that crawled out from the burial niches in which they were interred.  Ironically, though these Huecuva posed one of the deadliest threats they were quickly dispatched with little harm to the party, thanks to a long succession of lucky saving throws.  Although the party was short a couple of characters, their mercenary crossbowmen acquitted themselves well, providing some deadly accurate ranged attacks proving, once again, the value of hirelings.

The party recovered a veritable fortune in gems from the burial niches - enough for every player to gain a new level, and to celebrate with a drunken debauch in Catapesh.  During the course of the revelry, the warrior, Ebin, came to blows with an off-duty guardsman over a tavern wench.  The angry and humiliated guardsman stalked off, vowing revenge against the upstart outlander, and it was only after he left that a nervous bar keep told Ebin that his adversary was Watch Captain Jerhyn Dragomere.  Scions of noble houses make for bad enemies, and this one is sure to make trouble for Ebin in the future.

A History of Dice

I just wanted pass a long a fascinating post on the history of dice, by Brian Wood on his blog, Awesome Dice. If you aren't already familiar with it, Awesome Dice is, as the name suggests, a blog devoted to all things dice.  Brian also has an online store that sells dice, dice jewelry, and dice bags including a plush Cthulhu bag that I have my eye on.  If you haven't done so it is worth checking out.

Posting Sitrep

I realize that my posting frequency has been pretty sparse lately, but I have a good excuse for a change, beyond laziness and apathy.  For the past several weeks I have been devoting all of my free time to working on Covert Ops, the old school espionage role playing game that I announced last year.  This hasn't left me a lot of time for blogging, and my head is so immersed in the clandestine world of the secret agent that it's hard to shift gears into fantasy.  Consequently I've fallen several sessions behind on my campaign session reports.  I apologize to everyone who has been missing them, and I will try to get one up in the next few days - just in time to have another session and fall behind again.

I am really thankful to have Barrowmaze, though.  It has been a real time-saver to be able to run such a great adventure right 'out of the box,' so to speak, which has allowed me to concentrate on Covert Ops instead of spending all of my time trying to stay ahead of the players.

Anyhow, things will likely be quieter than usual around the Flaming Faggot for the next little while, but I will be making frequent development posts on the Hopeful Monster blog, so if you're interested in following the development of the game or reading my musings on the spy genre, head on over there and check them out.

Goldgrim the Dwarf

Sometime last year members of Bugman's Brewhouse, a forum community of fellow Warhammer dwarf players decided to pool their resources and commission a commemorative dwarf miniature for the community.  Concept art was drawn, a sculptor, John Pickford, was contracted and around two hundred miniatures were cast for those members who were part of the project.  Mine arrived in the mail the other day and I was very pleased to find that the finished product exceeded my expectations.  The concept art and pictures of the green really didn't do this guy justice.

The miniature was intended as a dwarf king, but since I already have a king for my army, I decided to make him my army battle standard bearer.  Such a fine and unique miniature deserves a name, and I've decided to call him Goldgrim Auricson in recognition of his impressive gilded armour.  Now that I have him painted I wanted to post a few pictures and show him off.

I'm sure that most Canadians will recognize the scene painted on the banner as the view of The Valley of the the Ten Peaks from Moraine Lake in Banff National Park in Alberta.

The photographs really don't do him justice, though, and fail to adequately convey the amount of detail in the sculpt.  This is, by far, the nicest dwarf in my collection and I can't wait for him to take his place in the line of battle and march forth to cleave my enemies and settle my grudges.

Traveller Nostalgia

After reading James Maliszewski's post on Grognardia this morning about Traveller Book 4: Mercenary, I've had Traveller on my mind all day. While I never got to play Traveller as often as I would have liked I did spend an awful lot of time lying on my bed listening to Electric Light Orchestra on my 8-track player and reading my collection of Traveller books. It's funny how music can become so closely linked with certain times and events in our lives. To this day, I can't listen to a track from ELO's Time album without looking around for a Traveller book.

Although I didn't play a lot of Traveller, I did play in a campaign run by my best friend that remains one of my favourite role playing experiences to this day.  All the other players had uber-characters generated using the rules from Mercenary and were fully kitted-out with battle-dress and plasma rifles.  They were bad-ass.  Not me, though.  My character inspiration came less from space opera than from spaghetti western, and I was playing a far less impressive character from Book One: a Jack-of-all-Trades who owned nothing more than a leather jacket, a 9 mm slug-thrower, a boot knife, a pack of smokes, and a bad attitude.  I can't remember the character's name, which is appropriate since he was largely inspired by Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name.

Having missed the first session of the campaign, I was introduced to the action in media res and found myself swept up in a situation beyond my control; an unwilling participant in a raid on an Imperial penal colony to free some political prisoners.  Now, here's the funny thing: my character - the lame duck amid a group of highly skilled and well-equipped killing machines - was the only one to survive the mission.  In many ways, I think it was the superior prowess of the other characters that got them killed.  Where the other players charged head-long into battle with Imperial guards, I desperately tried to avoid notice.  When our party was trapped in a cell, I used my boot knife to pry the hatch off a ventilator shaft and squeeze into a crawlspace that none of the others in their battle armour could fit into.  Meanwhile, a dumb-ass with a plasma rifle tried to blast the door open, and the ricochet ended up killing half the party.  So I guess the lesson here is that it's not the size of your skill list that's important - it's how you use it that counts.  Smart and careful play always trumps an awesome character sheet, which is the lesson that old-school play has driven home for so many of us.  So even though the characters from Books 4 & 5: Mercenary and High Guard were over-powered compared to those from the original books it didn't seem to make much difference in their effectiveness, and I always stuck with my Jack-of-all-Trades, leaving the retired fleet admirals and such to the other guys.  And he remains one of the best characters I've ever played.

Now, let's set our time machines back to 1981 courtesy of Youtube.  Where are those Traveller books?

Session 8: Into the Barrowmaze

I've been remiss in keeping up with session reports; I'm already two behind, with another session this evening, so I'd best get a quick summary posted before I forget too many details.

Recently returned to Catapesh, the survivors of Black Goat Wood made the acquaintance of a thief who had obtained a map that revealed an entrance to the catacombs beneath the necropolis.  Pooling their resources, they hired a couple of crossbowmen from the Armsmen's Guild, purchased crowbars and sledge-hammers, then followed the map to a long-abandoned crypt where they found a rope descending from a block-and-tackle into a hole in the crypt's floor.

After first dropping a torch down the hole to illuminate the chamber below, the party descended the rope one by one, into a room whose walls were adorned with frescoes depicting an ancient Atlantean burial procession, and they soon became aware of a total, almost oppressive, silence in the catacombs.  They heard none of the familiar subterranean noises, such as dripping water, or chittering of rats.  Steeling themselves, the party carefully proceeded into the preternatural stillness beyond, while Balinor probed the floor ahead with his ten-foot pole.

This turned out to be a wise precaution because, as he probed the floor beyond the first doorway they came to, he triggered a pressure plate that caused a stone wall to descend from the ceiling, bisecting Balinor's ten-foot pole into a five-foot walking stick.  Had anyone passed through the doorway they would have been trapped in the chamber beyond.  After a quick return to Catapesh for a new ten-foot pole, the party continued their exploration, this time opting not to explore any doorways.  Instead they stuck to the corridors, and chose to spend their time mapping out the dungeon area to get a better feel for its layout before risking ingress into any more chambers.  Consequently the remainder of the session yielded little treasure - only a few hundred gold pieces gathered from some burial niches - and the party devoted themselves to exterminating vermin such as rats and stirges that occupied the catacombs, though they did encounter some zombies roaming the halls, and had a very tense encounter with a band of rival tomb-robbers who decided to eliminate their competition and help themselves to some pre-looted treasure.  Despite being outnumbered the party gave a good account of themselves, slaying several of the tomb-robbers, causing the rest to flee the dungeon.

After a fairly conservative evening of exploration, the players decided to call it a night and return to Catapesh  to spend their loot on a good carouse.  Ebbin furthered his reputation as a lucky gambler, winning big at the gaming tables and increasing his stake.