Epic of Extravagant Explorers, Clean Version [Do not comment]

[SilverLeaf167]

This just a thread for me to post cleaned up versions of my campaign journal posts, with nothing but the journal part itself, so that I can link to them. If this is prohibited for some reason, just tell me so.

The original, main thread is here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=235805).

[SilverLeaf167]

Chapter 1
Party the Gathering
The group starts out in a tavern late in the evening, located in the small village of Bluewillow, where they’ve all ended up through their random travels. Technically, they're not a group yet, just a bunch of strangers who haven't even met each other yet. Each of them is drinking in their own cozy corner. Rakleb, very drunk, steps up to the bartender.
Rakleb: “Hey, I’m the bartender here. You got fired.”
Bartender: “Uh, I don’t think so, ‘cuz I own this place.”
R: “Bah. Do you speak Dwarven?”
Bt: “A little bit, yes”, he says with a weird look.
R: “What about Halfling?”
Bt: “No…”
R: “*curses in Halfling*”
Edward is trying to enjoy the lousy human liquors and has been looking at the humorous exchange but tries to ignore Rakleb as he approaches.
Rakleb: “Hey, how are you…”
Edward: “Leave me alone”, he says, ready to draw his greatsword.
A half-orc steps up, cracking his knuckles: “Is this man bothering you?”
Rakleb jumps out the nearby window (they’re on the first floor) and takes a few scratches but nothing serious.
The bartender sighs: “These bums are getting worse…”

Edward walks up to the bartender and asks for a refill.
The bartender smirks as he’s pouring the ale: “This is the first time I see a dwarf who actually likes my drinks.”
Edward mutters something ironic. “Would you know, what is the largest city around here?”
Bartender: “Uh, I think that would be the capital Quillswipe…”
Edward: “How long is the journey there?”
Bartender: “Oh, I don’t know… seven, maybe eight days by horse.”
Edwarf: “And where can I get a… horse?”
Bartender: “I think the sheriff runs a horse rental system these days. He doesn’t really have much to do, apart from chasing drunks, and I think he’s kind of getting old.”
Edward thanks the man, finishes his drink and pays for it before stepping outside.
Outside the door, he runs into Rakleb again: “Oh, not you again…”

Meanwhile, Beppo has been just listening to the bards and observing the amusing scene. He pays for his drinks and goes out to explore the city. He decides to go the church of Julope, God of the Sky and Heaven, to see if it’s open. He’s always interested in churches, even if they aren’t devoted to his deity in particular.

Meanwhile, Edward heads out to the sheriff’s office, Rakleb following for no real reason. He knocks and the sheriff, a middle-aged human, answers.
Sheriff: “Good evening sir, how may I help you?”
Edward: “I need a horse”, he says, trying to ignore Rakleb.
Sheriff: “Very well, follow me”, he leads them to a small stable behind his office. There are three horses and two ponies. “What kind of horse would you like?”
Edward has never actually touched a horse, only seen a few and has no idea how to ride them. “Uh... the fastest one that can also carry me?”
Sheriff: “Very well… Hm, I got his one from a local farmer. He had no use for a fast horse unsuitable for hard work.”
Edward: “I’m going pretty far away, would it be possible to buy it instead of renting?”
Sheriff: “Oh, sure, no one around here has any use for it. 70 gold pieces, please.”
Edward hands him a small pouch of money and clambers on top of the horse. “You might wanna arrest that drunk for a while, he’s been bothering me all night”, he says before riding out of town as fast as he can.

Rakleb hops onto a pony, “I name it ‘Lightning’”, but doesn’t get it to jump over the gate of the pen. Frustrated, he tries to run after Edward on his own. The sheriff attempts to grab him by the shoulders but misses. He chases after Rakleb for a few seconds, but then settles for shaking his fist in anger and goes back inside.
Edward quickly shakes off Rakleb, who decides to fall asleep in the middle of the road.
The dwarf rides clumsily for a good ten minutes, until realizing how late it is and he doesn’t have any idea how to get to Quillswipe, so he decides to return to the tavern for the night. He almost runs Rakleb over on his way back, but manages to get around without waking him up, books a room at the tavern and goes to sleep. So does Beppo, who didn’t get into the church after all (it was closed for the night).

In their sleep, each of them experiences a vision:
Each of you dreams of an endless, featureless plain. As you wander around for a few hours, it gets darker and darker, until a beam of light emerges from the sky and a wordless message is transmitted into your head. It tells you to come to the church of Julope at dawn, for you have been chosen for an important mission.

As they wake up, Beppo and Rakleb head to the church straight away. Edward, on the other hand, has a very bad impression of the divine, and decides to continue towards his own goals. He goes downstairs to speak to the bartender and asks for directions.
Bartender: “Ahem, ahem… you just, have to, um, go south on the path and then turn… east?”
Edward facepalms: “Do you know where I could get some better instructions?”
The bartender is slightly insulted, but answers anyway: “To my knowledge, the sheriff is an experienced traveler. Maybe you should ask him.”
Edward nods and heads once again towards the sheriff’s office.

At the plaza in front of the magnificent church, which the village was originally built around, Beppo and Rakleb encounter an elf, dressed in a gold and white robe, standing on top of the stairs leading to the church.
Arlius: “Greetings, my friends”, he says in an exaggeratedly gentle voice. "I am Father Arlius. You have been called here by Julope himself, to embark on a divine quest."
Beppo: "And what exactly is it?"
Arlius: "Explorers have recently discovered ancient ruins, just a couple dozen miles from here. Julope has told us that there is a prophecy of utmost importance hidden inside, and it must be recovered."
Beppo: "Do you have any idea what the prophecy is about?"
Arlius: "No, Julope didn't consider it necessary, or perhaps possible, to tell me. Still, we must trust in His divine grace. I can provide you hors... ponies for the journey, as well as a guide. There were supposed to be two more of you, but it seems they've declined his call... such a shame. Anyway, the sheriff will grant them to you, just go see him right now."
Rakleb: "How will we be rewarded for this?"
Arlius: "You will be given the blessing of Julope..."
Beppo: "Aaaand?"
Arlius: "You'll also get to keep whatever treasures you find within the ruins."
Beppo: "You got yourselves a deal!"
Arlius: "I must warn you though, there are some elf and orc tribes fighting in the area. You mightn't run into them at all, but be careful."

Edward is already speaking to the sheriff: "Could you provide me with directions to Quillswipe? I'm not familiar with this area."
Sheriff: "I'm afraid our village is quite remote, and the way is complicated... you'd need a map, but we don't have any. My only assistant is also busy right now, he's working as a guide for some adventurers... Oh, I think that's them!"
Beppo and Rakleb appear. They ask for their ponies and the guide. The sheriff glares at Rakleb for a while, but decides to just let the matter be: "Here are your ponies, the guide should be here shortly."
Rakleb mounts 'Lightning' and Beppo takes the other one.
Edward: "Where exactly are you going?"
They tell Edward about their quest.
Edward realizes this is probably what the dream was talking about: "Meh, I guess I might as well come with you, I could use the money."

A mounted elf arrives: "I am your guide, Varalyn. Are you ready to leave yet?"
They agree to go, and Edward takes the horse he bought yesterday. They ride for a while, following the guide. Rakleb spots an eagle that seems to be following and observing the group, shrieking every now and then, but he doesn't mention it to the rest of the group.
As they're crossing a bridge running over a river, a black bear leaps from the forest to block their way and a wolf appears from behind them. The eagle seems to dive into action as well.
All the riders hop off their horses, just before the bear charges the guide, hitting him with a flurry of claw swipes and a bite and causing serious wounds. Meanwhile, the wolf bites Rakleb, who twirls around and gets ready to attack it from behind.
Beppo, utilizing his knowledge of animal physiology and behavior, fires a crossbow bolt at the wolf.
Edward pushes the bear against a tree with great force, shattering the tree and making the bear roar in pain.
The eagle is finished with its weird spinning and shrieks loudly. A lightning bolt comes down from the sky and strikes Beppo, who manages to avoid the brunt of the shock but still takes some damage.
The bear wrestles Edward, but Varalyn slays it with a well-aimed arrow. Immediately upon dying, the dead bear turns into a dead orc instead.

Beppo now realizes the threat posed by the eagle and Commands it to drop down into the river, which it promtply does.
Edward throws aside the dead orc, draws his sword and charges to finish off the wolf with an all-out strike, slicing it cleanly in half. Both pieces turn into halves of an orc; the other piece drops onto the bridge and the other half slides into the water.

The eagle floats down the river, but is now free from the spell. After a second of flailing, it turns into a fish and swims to safety.

They loot some mundane equipment from the two dead orcs, discuss whether the two orcs were Druids or not and then proceed to argue what to do with the bodies. In the end, they stab them a couple of times and dump them into the river. Beppo heals the party and they continue their merry journey.
They finally come to the excavation site, where the entrance to the ruins (a huge slab of stone) is located at the bottom of a deep hole. A robed, bored elf is sitting at the bottom smoking some kind of primitive cigarette and looks up at them: "Oh, it's you. Come down here.
This here is the door to the ruins... We haven't found any kind of opening mechanism, but I can open it with a spell. Unless you find some kind of lever inside, just yell and I'll open it again. One person, a young elf, already went inside, but I haven't heard back from him yet. I can open the door once you're ready."
All: "We are."
The elf proceeds to mumble a spell. The slab slowly slides into the ground. The group steps inside...

[SilverLeaf167]

Chapter 2
Dungeoncrashing Fools
The group steps through the stone door, which then slams shut. The watchman and guide stay behind: "I wasn't hired for this", the guide says and leaves. It is pitch dark inside: Edward, who has darkvision, leads the way down a long corridor, Beppo just tries to follow him and Rakleb leans on the wall. Suddenly, the wall opens up under Rakleb’s weight, making him fall into a secret passageway, and closes again. The others are somewhat confused by his sudden disappearance, but carry on. They don't really have that much affection for the guy.
They come to a large room, dominated by a dark watered pool in the middle with some doors and corridors at the sides. Around the room Edward sees a bunch of zombies; most of them typical, but three with unusually long and slender limbs. They're all shambling and reaching towards an elf in the farthest corner of the room, flying and trying to stay as close to the ceiling as possible.

Edward charges the closest zombie in an attempt to push it at the horde harassing Hazir and knock them down, but only manages to push the surprised monster halfway.
Hazir, the elf stuck in the corner, tries to keep the zombies at bay with his eldritch blast.
Beppo casts a Light spell on his armor, which is enough to see the most nearby zombies, and digs around his memory for some useful bit of knowledge that might aid them in battle.

One of the long-limbed zombies gets tired of fooling around, crouches and leaps at Hazir, baring sharp teeth, but he moves out of the way and makes the zombie slam harmlessly into the wall beside him. Another of these odd zombies succeeds to bite Hazir in the arm and tries to drag him down to the floor, in reach of the other monsters. The third leaper zombie focuses on Beppo instead; it is seemingly too far away from Beppo to be a threat, but a single mighty jump later it's right on top of him.

In order to shake off the clingy zombie, Hazir blasts and rekills it with a blast fired from his eyes. Edward unleashes a stream of sword strikes on one of the zombies, flinging it away with the last. This turns out to be a good idea, as the zombie soon explodes in a burst of negative energy. The explosion doesn't harm any of the adventurers, but some of the energy seems to "cling" onto a struck zombie.

Beppo flails under the leaper zombie, but manages to lift up his divine symbol of Ventoer: a wooden miniature rudder. “The power of Ventoer compels you!” he shouts, his voice amplified and symbol shining. A brief flash of sacred light fills the room. Most of the undead monstrosities disintegrate into dust, leaving behind nothing but their ancient equipment. The zombies around Hazir manage to avoid the effect, while the ones near Beppo and Edward explode violently.

From hidden "ventilation tunnels" near the ceiling, skeletons with 8-inch long claws appear. They use their claws to scuttle around on the walls and ceiling. One claw-skeleton appears near each party member. The one closest to Hazir leaps at him and attacks with its claws. Through collective effort, the undead manage to drag the badly wounded Hazir down onto the floor and leave him to bleed to death.

The monsters abandon Hazir's "dead” body and move on to Edward, their next victim. Beppo heals Hazir from a distance with a quick spell, bringing him back to consciousness, but he decides to play dead for a while. The other two skeletons try to attack Edward and Beppo, but fail. The one attacking Beppo actually drops onto the floor beside him.
Edward slams the negatively charged zombie into the nearby wall. In a dramatic bullet-time sequence he sees most of the zombie's decayed body splatter around the wall on impact, while the rest of it explodes in an unusually powerful blast that causes damage to Edward and clings onto the nearby zombies, but knocks them all prone. Edward stands up and shrugs off the explosion, ready to continue the battle.
Beppo tries to run away from the skeleton and jump over the pool. He barely makes it across. His right foot swipes the water though, and he feels a couple toes go numb.

As the newly-charged leaper zombie tries to stand up, Edward dramatically strikes it down. It doesn't explode; it seems not all kinds of undead do that. The skeleton stands to try and attack him. The other skeleton tries to chase Beppo and easily jumps over the water, but Beppo manages to block its strike and make it fall helplessly into the pool.
The grateful Hazir decides to help Edward out: he fires a powerful dragon blast at the skeleton. The skeleton's head explodes on impact, as well as most of its torso.
Apparently, all enemies are now taken care of.

After lots of healing spells cast from a wand, everyone is finally at full health. They proceed to investigate the different hallways. First off, Beppo takes a closer look the room: the liquid in the pool is a specific kind of unholy water used by clerics of Charen, God of Undeath. Shockingly, a couple of his toes look dead, like if they'd been rotting for a couple years, but he decides to take care of that later. Also, there is an altar of Charen, over which hangs a winged skeleton, his symbol.
There is one totally collapsed hallway that they're unable to open up. A spiral stairway descends down, but is filled with water and nobody is up for a swim. They investigate other the doors instead, discovering a dining room, a crafting room and sleeping quarters. From the sleeping quarters' chests they find some uselessly decayed crap, but also a fairly well-preserved black robe, which Edward tries on. Suddenly, he feels his skin itching: he now has zombie fleas.

They proceed down the last remaining hallway and come to a crossing of four corridors. On the right there are some doors guarded by a pair of zombies, on the left a large but climbable pile of rubble and the corridor ahead is too long for them to see properly.
Edward charges the nearest zombie and squashes it against the wall, easily rekilling it. The explosion, however, harms him and supercharges the other zombie. The other zombie takes an eldritch blast and a crossbow shot, but survives, and instead attempts to charge Hazir. Edward kills it with an AoO, but the supercharged explosion damages and knocks them all down. From behind the pile of rubble a ghoul, wearing a chainshirt and carrying a fancy shortsword, takes his chance. It leaps on top of the prone Hazir and bites him, leaving him barely conscious.
The ghoul quickly dies from the party's combined efforts.
The party is convinced this was just some diversion or hold-up and that they would soon be ambushed by another, more powerful monster. Of course, that doesn't stop them from looting and Detecting the equipment: they discover that both of them are magical, but fail to identify how exactly.
DM commentary (players, do not read)
Lots of behind-the-screens design to talk about here.
Rakleb's player couldn't make it to this session, which explains his sudden disappearance and the solo adventure he got in exchange. I had to improvise the hidden door, sue me. :smallwink: Hazir, on the other hand, was a player who couldn't make it to the first session, so I had to think of some way to introduce him.

I was frustrated by the weak and boring nature of normal undead, so I spiced them up a little.
For the explosive zombies, I applied the standard Corpsecrafter and Hardened Flesh feats from Libris Mortis to make them tougher, but also Destructive Retribution to make them explosive. I homebrewed a new twist on the latter feat: any undead in the radius can be healed "over the limit", giving them temporary HP, and "charged" undead will deal double damage upon exploding and knock any targets prone.
At first, based on my description, Edward's player thought the "leaper zombies" were simply zombies made from elves. Instead, they had the benefits of the Nimble Bones feat (Libris Mortis), which made them more agile and faster. I also used the Bloodthirsty and Fast variants from Libris Mortis, giving them a bite attack that does CON damage on a crit and making them much faster. Their huge speed of 70 ft. gave them a nifty bonus to Jump checks.
The skeletons had Corpsecrafter, Hardened Flesh and Nimble Bones. Their signature claws and climb speed were given by the Nimble and Vicious variants, also from Libris Mortis. Seriously, that book is simply great for any undead encounters.
Hazir would have technically died from his wounds, but the whole group thought it would have been just stupid and not very fun to let a character die in his first minor combat, especially if the biggest reason was bad positioning determined by the DM. So, we instead let him live at -7 HP, which Beppo soon restored.
The damage to Beppo's toes was in fact caused by contact with the pool, which was filled with special unholy water. Though healing the HP damage had no effect on the appearance of his toes, all he needs to do restore them is use a good ol' Cure spell.
There isn't really anything but boring, empty tombs downstairs, robbed and salvaged for animation. The zombie fleas Edward got from the robe were simply comic relief, with no real effects. I and Beppo already discussed Turning them, but I said that they gain total cover from Edward's beard and thus wouldn't be affected. :smallbiggrin:

As mean as I might seem, I didn't intend to make all the enemies focus on Hazir. He just happened to have such bad positioning, it was logical for the ghoul to target him first. The ghoul, by the way, was level 6 Rogue. I definitely didn't intend on him being this easy... I'll have to learn to adjust to the party's power level. He wasn't really a distraction, though the players insisted on thinking so. The chainshirt they looted from him was just +1, but they also got a +1 Shortsword of Ghost Touch with the special ability to deal half Sneak Attack damage to undead (which, combined with Rakleb's Penetrating Strike alternate class feature, would mean full damage).

[SilverLeaf167]

Chapter 2b
Rakleb's Magnificent Solo Adventure
Rakleb, leaning on the wall for support in the pitchblack tunnel, accidentally triggers a hidden door and stumbles in. The door closes behind him before he can react.
He finds himself in a small tunnel, at the end of which is a holey wall of rubble. From the holes of the wall he can see that the tunnel is actually near the ceiling of a larger mineshaft. Below him, Rakleb sees three kobold miners, tattooed with various red markings, having a break: eating some kind of crummy bread and discussing something in their own language. Rakleb drops one small stone in an attempt to lure them closer. They notice, but don’t think it’s anything to worry about.
Frustrated, he just kicks over the piece of rubble and leaps onto the nearest kobold, skewering it with his magical rapier. He quickly proceeds to kill a second worker before they can react. The third kobold, terrified, desperately climbs onto a magic-powered minecart of sorts and tries to start it up, surviving a hit from Rakleb and finally getting it moving. Rakleb, however, manages to charge after the cart, and pierce the heart of the helpless worker.

The empty minecart moves up the sloped tunnel until finally stopping at the top. Rakleb foolishly follows it head-on, and comes to small storage room with three kobold workers and three guards, armed with spears and shields. They have heard the racket from the shaft and are ready. The guards approach with their spears ready, while one of the workers flings a flask of alchemist’s fire, coating Rakleb in flaming goo. Apparently, Rakleb’s clothes are fire retardant, as he takes barely any damage from this and the following flasks. He ignores the fire, knowing it to be short-lived anyway, and attacks one of the guards. Another worker throws a flask, hitting but doing little damage. The third worker stumbles and accidentally throws the flask onto a pile of explosive powder barrels next to Rakleb. The kobolds don’t notice this, but Rakleb sure does, and knows that it takes approximately fifteen seconds for this kind of powder to explode. He has to hurry.

On his second try, he manages to jump over the kobolds blocking his path to the exit from the room. While the kobolds consider whether to give chase, Rakleb barely makes it out just as the barrels detonate, killing all the kobolds and collapsing the room in a magnificent explosion, the pressure wave strong enough to knock Rakleb down on his face.

From ahead, he hears reptilian chatter and a booming voice in Draconic. Following the sounds, he comes to a primitive balcony overlooking a large chamber. At the back of the room is a huge red dragon, busily roaring orders at kobolds until flying out through a hole in the ceiling. The kobolds scatter into different hallways while some guards come up to investigate the explosion. Unwilling to fight, Rakleb notices a small vent and manages to crawl in unnoticed right before the nervous guards walk past. At the back of the vent, he sees light… coming from a room with some storage boxes, unworked gems and ores and three guards: two of them are just like the ones from before, while the third is carrying a delicate spear and wearing a fine suit of leather armor. All of them are apparently confused by the ruckus outside and are glaring at a door.

Rakleb assaults the third, most powerful one from behind, but fails to kill it immediately. Instead, the two shocked guards try to surround him while the third one suddenly grows a pair of wings, flies up to the ceiling (somewhat useless, as the ceiling is quite low) and breathes a cone of fire at Rakleb. He fails to properly evade the surprising attack, and in addition to grievous burns he can feel his strength being sapped away. Everything he is carrying suddenly feels heavy as lead.

He gathers his strength for one last strike against the wounded kobold and manages to drop it unconscious. Frightened, the remaining guards dash out of the room to get reinforcements.
Rakleb feels his strength return and drives his rapier through the kobold’s throat, killing it for sure. With a hurried search of the body he finds nothing of value other than the spear, armor and a ring that looks like it’s covered in dragon scales of various colors.

Just as a large group of guards burst in, he jumps onto a minecart and manages to get it moving at high speeds down a hallway. Unfortunately, he has no idea how to slow the thing down! It flies right off the rails and through a weakened wall, breaking a supporting pillar in the process. He finds himself again in the pitchblack ruins, the entrance collapsing behind him.
DM commentary (players bluh bluh)
This adventure was a pretty short one, mainly because I didn't have too much time to throw it together, there was only one player and it had to fit into the in-world timeframe. It was a simple one, as well, but Rakleb's player seemed to enjoy it: he really prefers the combat portion of gaming.

Not much to say here... the kobold workers were level 3 Experts, as that's the usual "minimum level" for adult humanoids in my campaigns. They weren't really equipped or trained for combat, but even they could handle the Alchemist's Fire touch attacks. The fumbling kobold and explosion were results of a natural 1 on its attack roll. It was also a handy way to add excitement and give him a time limit of sorts.

Afterwards, the player said he would probably have attacked the dragon if it hadn't flown away so quickly. :smallamused: Don't worry, they might get to do that later in the campaign. Anyway, the vent he found was "scripted", which means that I let him spot it automatically, because it was the only real way for him to use stealth in this adventure, which I admit was a fault of mine.

The kobold he fought at the end was a Dragonfire Adept, who used Draconic Flight and Weakening Breath. The guards running away was an act of mercy from me, as Rakleb was really low on health, and it kind of made sense for cowardly kobolds to get reinforcements rather than fight, especially when the enemy is in an apparent dead end.

While I admit the transitions from and into the ruins might have been a little clumsy, it all makes sense. Really. Just sit and watch (or read).