Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

[Talakeal]

Chapter Two: July.

Spoiler: Market Street Expedition 2

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July is a slow time for the temple of Dionysus. Though in many lands the High Summer festival is a large one, in this region, most people choose to spend it by making a trip to the seashore. Perhaps it is because they remember being seafaring folk before the Cataclysm and still honor Poseidon and his ways, more likely it is because it is the only time of year warm enough to warrant a swim.

Kumiko remarks that it doesn’t seem like High Summer without fireworks, and Flossie wonders if it might be possible for her to make some.

Arianna moves her large stuffed black panther, Monquiro, into the wood-cutters lodge. Kumiko, who still thinks of her as a housekeeper, finds this strange, but Flossie allays her suspicion.

Their next expedition into the buried city follows much the same path, though they are slightly better prepared. This time, the tulpa is in the shape of a large but unobtrusive spider with a glowing round abdomen. It prefers to crawl on the ceiling like a living lamp while staying safely above the combat.

Their first stop is the building labeled “The Eternal Mortuary”. Inside is, as to be expected, a funeral parlor, with an upstairs sitting chamber and an embalming room in the rear. It is also home to eleven bodies that have been sealed in here for almost a century, and which have been animated and with no place to go for several decades, likely a product of the Night of the Restless Dead that presaged the return of the Black King to Pangaea. They would be mummified in any other climate, but down here their skin has been wetted and dried so many times it is more like putrid canvas flaps hanging from a moldy skeleton.

Kumiko’s response is to leap up their stairs. Her warrior instinct is sharp, but she is not used to working with a team. The hungry dead shamble toward her companions, Jesse’s bolts doing nothing, and Feurlina grapples with them, being strangled by several pairs of rotting hands before Flossie is able to channel the right prayer to lay the zombies back down to rest.

There is no treasure in the mortuary, and a search of the back room reveals only slabs built into a dozen lockers along the rear wall.

They exit and go to the far end of the street. There, they find a zig-zagging tunnel of crystalline glass. Along its sides are statues that might be meant to represent angels, smooth humanoid figures with large disks above their heads; a traditional depiction of a halo. Jesse notes how this hall has near-perfect acoustics.

Our heroes come around one corner and find a group of eight kobolds listening to what appears to be a sermon given by the shaman. The warriors attack, and some of the diminutive humanoids flee while the others grab crude spears and try and hold them off. The kobolds go down, but not before putting up a tenacious fight, hiding between the statues and darting out to stab their attackers, and inflicting more wounds than such small beings have any right to.

As Jesse binds their wounds, the group jokes about how they should be ok as long as they don’t encounter any more kobolds. Then they move to the end of the chamber and open up a door into what a sign calls “The Ancient Lyceum”. Inside, they see a vast dark chamber and, reflecting back at them, a hundred pairs of tiny kobold eyes.

They immediately back out into the Hall of Silent Angels, and Feurlina uses her great strength to push one of the statues down behind them, blocking off the door. They backtrack a bit and take the southern fork out of the chamber back to the main street. The ceiling has collapsed to the East, burying the passage under tons of mud, and trying to dig it out would be folly as it would surely collapse again, likely burying them alive.

Further south, the road dead ends, the cul-de-sac containing stores called Falconer’s Square, Cordwood Junction, The Merciful Bleed, Dissenting Discoveries, and Cryptic Stores. They enter the latter and find an old building that appears to be a storehouse, long since gone to ruin. As they are adjusting to the light and trying to pick valuables out of the mess, Kumiko is startled by a mewling thing, eyeless, skinless, and with six long arms. It wraps its hands around her throat, leaving a dark purple bruise that will endure for a month, before Feurlina smashes it to a pulp with her mace.

Jesse finds a few instruments that she thinks might be of some value, and Flossie confirms they are precision weights and measures for alchemical or scientific work.

They exit through the service entrance in the back, and exit into another street. This one is flooded and sloped, with knee-deep running water. A swinging sign proclaims it Winsome Heights, but all of the buildings they see are ruined and the doors boarded shut. They decline to venture into the dark water to see where the street leads and decide to head back.

Near the entrance fissure, they find a small side door. Feurlina opens it and is surprised to find a man inside. He is kneeling, breathing heavily, and covered in tattoos and sweat. He looks up and groans something that sounds like “No!” in a panicked voice, and then rises to his feet. He is nearly as tall as Feurlina is, but he keeps growing, his features rounding and his beard swelling. In a moment, he has transformed into an enormous bear and lunges for the armored woman. She strikes him across the mouth with her mace, and his jaw shatters. He swipes her away and then laughs, pushing his jaw back into place and says something nobody quite makes out, although they think they hear the word “silver” in his thick northern accent.

In the end, the companions can put him down before he kills Feurlina, although it takes a tremendous amount of damage, and he is finally slain by a blast of lunar energy that leaves Flossie’s hair gray. After death, he resumes his human visage.

Within the room, they find a small roadside shrine dedicated to Callisto the bear goddess, and among several sticks of incense and moldering offerings of nuts and berries, they find a bowl of holy water which Flossie adds to her store.

The group returns to town to rest up that night; they took a pretty good beating and can use this opportunity to heal before pushing on. Jesse picks up some silver arrows in case they encounter more were-beasts.

Spoiler: Market Street Expedition 3

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The next morning they return, and decide to venture into the eastern reaches, but first Jesse asks if they might return to the Hall of Silent Angels for their morning hymns. It is a mistake.

As they draw close, the cobblestones collapse under them, leaving Jesse and Feurlina at the bottom of a deep muddy pit. Suddenly, the door in front of them opens and kobolds armed with crude bows pour out, and behind them, a small door that they had previously missed opens in the wall and spear-armed humanoids push them toward the pit. An ambush!

Kumiko drops a rope while Flossie conjures up a wall of tentacles between them and the tiny encroaching phalanx. They are pelted with arrows. Jesse climbs up next to them and returns fire along with Flossie, but Feurlina, born down by her heavy metal harness, is much slower in getting up. When she does, she grabs Flossie and leaps across the pit, scattering the archers. At the same time, one of the kobold shamans manages to banish the tentacles back to limbo.

Past the door in the crystalline hallway, Feurlina spies a kobold champion approaching. The tiny figure is clad in crude armor, wields a pair of human sizes gladiuses, and is flanked on either side by a pair of trained scoffins. Scoffins are creatures that are distantly related to drakes and crocodiles, but with only two legs and a stubby tail, resembling nothing so much as walking jaws. Feurlina rushes forward to engage them before they can near Flossie, but as soon as she moves into the Hall of Silent Angels, the door swings shut behind her and there is a loud crash, the kobolds have learned from her tactics and figured out some mechanism to topple the statues on their own!

Flossie and Jesse take out many of the kobolds, but when she attempts to conjure a second wall of tentacles, her magic goes wrong, and a wall of white-hot fire appears above the pit, cutting her off from her companions.

Feurlina duels the kobold champion in the dark, wedging herself between two statues so that the scoffins cannot bite at her knees. It is more or less a stalemate, she cannot hit the tiny creature in the dark, but it cannot pierce her armor and must make do with small cuts to non-vital areas. Still, it is only a matter of time before one of them grows too tired to defend themselves, and the gigantic woman is not likely to win out in a contest of endurance.

Backed up against the wall of fire, Kumiko and Jesse are soon brought low. Before the shaman can move to finish them off as a sacrifice to their god, Kumiko pulls out her coin purse, hands it over, and then gestures to the ceiling; pantomiming the ransom they are worth. The shaman calls off the attack and drags the bleeding captives back to their lair in the Ancient Lyceum.

The four companions are reunited and disarmed.

The Lyceum is a great two-story library. It was once grand, but most of the books and shelves have been converted into crude huts and nests for the kobold families. Around a small bonfire, a deal is made between the four companions and the one shaman who speaks a pidgin form of the Terran language.

Then Jesse asks if, instead of a ransom, they could purchase items in town that the kobolds can’t acquire for themselves. The shaman floats the idea, and the hordes are visibly excited at the prospect of luxuries, and they seem to accept, providing a crude list of all the things that they want.

They come to the following deal; the humans are allowed to journey freely through the kobold’s territory, but if they take any plunder, half of it will be used to buy the things that they need in the human town. In addition, half of all prisoners will be taken to their god for sacrifice. They will not escort the humans, as there are many invaders these days and they cannot risk their warriors protecting outsiders, especially ones who were once enemies and might turn on them in time.

They learn the following:

The kobolds are called the “three heads”.

Their territory extends from the river in the north to the mine in the west.

They collapsed the eastern road and don’t go down into the under-city for fear of the bone men.

They have lived here since the beginning of time.

To the north is a castle inhabited by “two heads”.

They are protected by a god and a goddess who live to the south. The god’s name is the “world eater”.

There is a door in the back of the Lyceum. A sign above it reads “Royal Furnace. All printed materials are to be brought here to check for sedition. Templar Lord Bellhuon.”

The kobolds say that danger lies behind that door, the shamans blessed it to keep the clan safe. The big folk are free to open it if they like, the kobolds will assist by cheering for them (or maybe he said laughing at them?)

The humans explore the shop next to the lyceum called “Tungsten Tomorrows” and find that it is a specialty store that sells prosthetic limbs of exquisite craftsmanship. A clockwork servitor still lives here, a marvel to them all, and with a phonographic voice it tells them that they appear to be whole and healthy, but if they bring a patient to it, it would be happy to arrange a fitting. They decline.

The secret passage on the main street leads to a tunnel that one can crawl through to find the remains of an abandoned and buried apartment. It is not pleasant, but could be cleaned up to serve as a safe place to store treasure or to hide from a larger creature.

The group heads north beyond the Path of Tribulations and the charred remains of the gong house. They come to a castle as the kobolds said. Before the castle is a drawbridge that is fed by an underground stream. The stream continues to the northeast, and they think they hear something big splashing about further up the tunnel. The castle itself is guarded by a pair of giant two-headed ettins. The guards seem completely unconcerned, as if they have nothing to fear from the inhabitants of the buried city.

Leaving the castle behind, our heroes finally decide to make for the western side of town. Beyond the fissure is a rundown dry-goods store called Grover’s Mercantile. When they open the door, they free a short humanoid creature shaped like a salamander. Its flesh is rotted, its eyes large and milky white, its nails reduced to talons from clawing at the door. They hope it will be content with its freedom, but it attacks them nonetheless. Kumiko decapitates it, but the body continues to claw at them until they pound it to mush, and even so it still twitches. Flossie dissolves it with conjured acid, her hair turning a sickly green.

Kumiko helps herself to a box of silver coins hidden beneath one of the shelves. They exit through the back into a small street called The Lost Lane. They can hear drums to the south.

The only shop on Lost Lane is called The Last Ember, a candle maker’s shop. They open the door and find it to be a total mess, melted wax everywhere, smashed shelves, lamp oil pooling on the floor, and, inexplicably, a pair of great apes. When Feurlina crashes in the door, the gorillas respond with aggression. Flossie strikes out with her magic, and as she becomes an unnatural redhead, the room goes up in flames, taking the panicking apes with it. They shut the door and wait for the smoke to dissipate and the pained screams to subside.

When they again venture into the shop and over the char, ignoring the smell of burning fur, and enter a small chamber in the back called “Candlelight Studies”. It is lined with bookshelves and writing desks, and it is surmised that it was a place of tutelage. Four hooded figures stand about a table, and Kumiko greets them.

They look at her with baleful red eyes, their features completely dark, and in a whispering voice, say “We have been denied the warmth of life for a century. You best be here on a matter of grave urgency if you wish to stay our hands.” At a loss for words, Kumiko apologizes and excuses herself. The quartet of wraiths floats toward them. Kumiko draws her sword, but the ghostly figures pass right through it.

Flossie lets out a prayer, and the four recoil from the holy word. She then blesses her allies’ weapons. The wraiths attack again, and even blessed weapons and silver arrows pass right through them. They travel straight through Kumiko and Jesse, chilling their souls with a touch. They move to drink Flossie’s life force, and Feurlina can do little but watch and swat at them ineffectively.
Kumiko draws her lighter and sets a book aflame, and bids Jesse do the same. They then bat at the wraiths with the flaming books. The books do little to harm the wraiths, but distract them long enough for Flossie to banish them with a holy word.

Each was wearing a golden amulet, a fine prize.

Behind one of the shelves, they find a secret staircase leading deeper underground, but they decline to investigate.

At the end of the Lost Lane, they come to double doors leading into something called The Vernaculum. It is a vast chamber, what once may have been an indoor arena, with a sandy floor and rusting gymnastic equipment scattered about. They hear distant drumming, and the breathing of something massive. Soon they see its source, a great four-legged creature the size of a dinosaur, with three long necks and three sharp-toothed heads. It looks as them slowly and approaches languidly, but as it does so, they run. The beast lopes along behind them, and when they slam the doors behind they can hear it baying in disappointment.

They calculate their odds against the huge monster, and don’t think they have a chance. They consider trying to get it stuck in the doorway, but aren’t sure if that will work. Flossie stares winsomely at the door, she sensed something powerful and at the same time familiar within.

They return to the main street and follow it to the west, coming to what was once an expensive covered bridge running over another underground stream. It is called the Rose Wine according to a plaque. Through the windows on the bridge, they can see small watchtowers built into the walls on either side, good places to snipe at invaders. Upon the bridge is a an armored kobold riding on the back of a scaly drake. He squeaks that they are not to pass without permission, and then they explain their deal with kobolds in the library and he waves them on and follows behind.

The road continues to a crossroads. The kobold tells them that if they continue on they will find the mines, called the Fibrous Delve, but warns them against it, for it is now home to a dangerous breed of big people who kill kobolds for sport. They are square, with two legs, two arms, and two horns, are even less scaly than the humans, and all covered in metal and fur.

Instead, the group goes north, to a small tailor’s shop called The Becalming Windle. The kobold warns them not to touch the door with their bare hands, and they narrowly avoid a poisoned needle trap.

Within they find many moldered cloth goods and another money box. Kumiko thinks it odd that this room intersects with the mortuary on her map, and wonders if she has made a mistake or if the floor has sloped beneath it. Jesse soon discovers a hidden passage, and they find that it leads to one of the crypts in the back of the mortuary.

The back door out of the tailor’s shop leads to something called the Industrial Park, and they turn around instead, heading south along Tabernacle Lane, past the Rose Wine Bridge and Fibrous Delve.

At the end of the hall is a great bronze idol, in the shape of a giant full-figured woman with no face. The statue is covered in green patina, but her pregnant belly is rubbed clean and glistens in the lantern light like a new penny.

Two shops are on this street, the Forgotten Gyre and the Parthenon Savings and Loan.

The latter is obviously a bank, and it has collapsed. They find some coins in the wreckage, but Flossie theorizes that the vault, which is totally inaccessible from here, but they might be able to get in from next door.

Next door is the Forgotten Gyre, a boat-builders' shop. A pair of large crustaceans have made their lairs here, hiding in the hulls of half-finished boats like hermit crabs, but they are dispatched without injury. Above them, the party can see hoists which once lifted the finished boats up and out a great bay window that is now covered in dirt.

The tools and money box are plundered, while the crustaceans are shelled to the best of the adventurer’s ability, and the flesh is cooked using one of the locals' many recipes for crawfish. They look at the wall, and find that it is solid stone once the rotted wooden veneer is cut away. Jesse surmises they can make their way into the bank, but doing so will require an explosive charge.

They return to town for the explosives, as well as the items on the kobolds' list. Jesse wants to renege on the contract citing a technicality in the wording, but Kumiko will not hear of it. Monsieur Gallefort is surprised to fulfill an order consisting primarily of explosives, toys, and recreational drugs, but keeps his mouth shut.

Spoiler: Market Street Expedition 4

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The next morning they return to the underground, and they find the kobolds waiting for them on the main street. Their forces were pushed back from the bridge by invaders from the mine, and they warn the humans not to go there.

Instead, they move north through the cloven heap back to Shakey Lane. Kumiko tosses a grenade into the dark water, and soon a pair of angry bunyips leap forth and bite at her legs. The group slays the wounded and disoriented creatures and then moves down the street. The only shop on the street is called Long John’s Union. The group has to climb through waist-deep water and mud to reach the door, and it is slow going. Feurlina enters first along with the tulpa, and disturbs the inhabitants, a pair of batlike ahool.

The creatures attempt to destroy the tulpa first, leaving the invaders helpless in the dark, but when Feurlina gets in a lucky hit and kills the female, her mate loses all sense of tactics and attacks in a rage, and he soon joins her in death. The group sees a large room full of desks, decorated in a nautical theme, and cannot decide if this is a yacht club or a secretarial pool. Flossie senses something above her, and has Feurlina boost her up onto her shoulders, climbing into the ahool’s nest built from a ship’s rigging.

Inside, she finds several knickknacks that do not interest her, but also a lime green orb that feels both familiar and strange. The material is odd, totally smooth, soft and yielding but at the same time indestructible and eager to return to a spherical shape.

Shakey Lane turns into Privateer’s Street, where, a large monitor lizard is eating the guts of a slain wild boar. Flossie doesn’t want to kill the beast and tries to sneak past, but it takes offense to Jesse, and when Feurlina moves to protect her, the large woman gets bitten in the unarmored spot between her legs for the trouble, and they decide to put the animal down.

To the south is a jeweler’s store called Willie’s Trove. Inside they chase off a pack of large weasel-like earth hounds. They find that this place has already been ransacked, and suffered severe damage from the eruption of the gong house with which it shares a wall. There is an obsidian unicorn statue that is valuable but too large to move.

Across from Willie’s Trove is a door upon which someone has scrawled “Your Last Chance!”. Opening it, the group finds what looks to be a half-flooded beer garden. It is inhabited by a tribe of kobolds wearing oversized executioner’s hoods and wielding huge war-hammers. They do not attack and they do not speak. They warn the group not to proceed north, miming chomping jaws and convulsing from poison, but allow them to enter the tavern on the garden’s edge, called The Wolf’s Head.

This was once an upscale saloon, built in imitation of a hunter’s lodge; lots of polished wood and taxidermy, animal heads adorning every wall. Within are three huge figures which, in the dim light, the group first mistakes for more were-bears, but then they realize are either ogres or trolls wearing the skins of animals. They are drinking through the bar’s stash at an alarming rate, and are laughing and making animal noises. When they see Kumiko, one of them pulls her toward them, scooping up her backside in its enormous palm.

She objects most harshly, aiming her sword to cleanly sever the brute’s radial artery. He pulls back and shouts in pain as she dashes outside, Feurlina blocking the door with her shield, set to receive the charge.

Flossie attempts to conjure up a spell to destroy the giant trio, but, as it so often does, her magic goes wrong, and a flaming meteor falls into the ground beside her and explodes. The kobolds shriek and run, and Flossie is down for the count.

The group calls a retreat, but Jesse insists they stop for the unicorn statue despite the danger.

It is massively heavy, over 20 stone, and Feurlina cannot carry it and Flossie, so Jesse takes the priestess despite her large friend’s protestations and her own aching back.

Feurlina staggers under the statue’s weight, and when it comes time to climb out of the bog that was once Shakey’s Lane she needs help lifting it. Kumiko tries to steady it, but isn’t strong enough, and they very nearly lose the statue forever in the mud.

By the time they get the statue back above ground, Feurlina’s and Jesse’s backs are shot, and they will not be up for any more adventures this month.

Once Flossie has recovered, she begins experimenting with the strange orb. She does alchemical tests upon the sphere, and finds that it is of no substance known to Imperial or even Atlantean science.

She casts a spell of oinomancy, divination using a wine glass, and receives a vision of herself as a child, and of the milky orb she brought out of a child’s game which was the source of her supernatural powers.

Kumiko thinks it looks like it could socket into something, and so they try, and find that whatever it is put into gains supernatural powers.

When placed in a weapon in a pommel stone, it guides the bearer’s hands and makes it impossible to miss, even when firing blind.
When put in armor, it reflects damage back on the attacker.
When put on an amulet, it amplifies the wearer’s strength.
When put in a cloak, it absorbs magic.
When put in a wand, it delays one's spells.
When put in a staff, it can bless attempts at medicine or fortitude.
It does not react with any tool they have to put it in.

Finally, Flossie throws caution to the wind and wants to know if it can grant supernatural powers like the one from her childhood, and she swallows it, chasing it down with her strongest red wine.

She finds that is gives her a compulsion to climb trees, and amplifies her skill at doing so. In addition, when she touches a wall, grapevines spring forth and hold her up. She has eaten the heart of leaves, and is now arboreal.

Mayor Hallbreight invites Kumiko to his office and asks for a report. She is honest, but leaves out the part about their alliance with the kobolds. She is sad to report she has not yet found the other exit or the missing child. He pours her a glass of expensive bourbon and tells her that there have been no more deaths, but one of the farmers found a nest of infant monsters in his barn. Horrible things unlike anything found in the region. He then asks her if joining this Imperium of hers might bring a railroad into town, and she enthusiastically says yes, thinking nothing of the logistical and engineering nightmare of attempting to build and maintain train tracks in the Sundered Lands.

Later, Flossie casts doubt on the mission as a whole.

“We don’t have the training for this. We don’t have the skills for this. We don’t have the gear for this. We aren’t prepared for this. We aren’t heroes, we are just a bunch of random idiots. We got out butts kicked by kobolds! Three times!”

All in all, the campaign is going really well.

Still have some concerns about the characters, both their builds and quirks, but overall its great.

The party really has trouble dealing with crowds, and they are struggling with the kobolds. I am really proud of them for surrendering and then making a deal with them, that is a level of maturity I haven't seen before; normally they fight to the bitter end out of pride or spite.

Its sad that they are planning to betray their new allies, actually having alliances with the dungeon's denizens could really help them in the long run and make for a richer game overall imo.

Not much story line yet, but there are hints of lore that they are putting together. I hope to introduce some more townsfolk next time and maybe they can put some information together to formulate a long term plan.

I had concerns about pacing, but they are pushing on at just about the right pace with no nudging. I think its more about the players than anything I did, normally Bob wants to turn back constantly and Brian wants to push on until the end. In the previous campaign Johnny and Sarah would side with Bob, this game the new girl and the new guy (need to get them proper KoDT alliases) tend to side with Brian. I have also been vague about the mechanics with them, merely telling them that they get XP for progress but the dungeon gets more dangerous over time. Right now, I give them one character point for every five rooms they secure, and each time they leave the dungeon I roll a dice for every room to see if new monsters have moved in, and give the dice a +1 bonus each time. I will almost certainly tweak these mechanics when they move onto the next floor.

See you again in two weeks!