MGoU-H: Mysterious Temple of The Serpent God, Final Session

Well, we finally finished up this monster of a module. All in all, it wasn't nearly as deadly as it probably should have been. +Gabriel Perez Gallardi has already blogged about it, over here. I am going to steal shamelessly from his descriptions and add a bit of my own to them, as well as some thoughts about the the first playthrough of this module.

Our players this week were +Adam Muszkiewicz, +John Iverson, +Gabriel Perez Gallardi, as I've mentioned, +Bear Wojtek, and +Wayne Snyder, each with 2 characters. +phil spitzer had a time conflict, and was not there for the final session, but we've got a bit of treasure for him. Phil, talk to the guys about your fabulous parting prizes.

The characters were:

Denny: 2nd level Thief
Jerkal: 1st level Wizard
Vane: 2nd level Warrior
Abel: 1st level Wizard (Abel was paralyzed. Bear went with Vane, only)
Banvha: 1st level Halfling
Aram: 1st level Cleric
Doug: 1st level Warrior
Chuck: 1st level Warrior
Formerly Ian: 1st level Wizard
Morfans: 1st level Dwarf
4 Urchins, a.k.a. "The Blue Vaners" (Don't ask me; I didn't name 'em.)

The PCs had ascended from Level 3, and had emerged once more from the secret door that led down to that level. Now on Level 2, they were in a corridor just outside of the Brooding Chamber. They had no idea what they might find, but something nasty was behind Curtain 2, or at least behind another high tech door. They crept up to the door and found another panel. Using the proper buttons, they somewhat recklessly opened the door. Occasionally these guys just do things. I blame Vane, the chaotic fighter (and now a youth mentor to four Urchins). 

The door opened on a truly frightening scene. There, before them, stood a monumental machine with a vast, central, egg-shaped chamber (about 40 feet high) full of swirling red plasma, atop a high platform, surrounded with six smaller chambers, also red and egg-shaped, but only six or seven feet high. A vertical pipe of black metal stretched from the central chamber up through the ceiling of the chamber. One of the players speculated that the pipe might lead up to the altar's drain. That was the correct answer. The blood of those children was fueling the fearful apparatus, which, now it can be told, was being used to create serpent men. The other monsters, like the Degenerate Serpent Men and the Chaos Serpent Blobs were mistakes, created before the Eternal Egg had been repaired and tuned properly. And who was doing this repair?

The Serpent Lich! This is the high priest of two-headed snake god of cyclopian visage, Sssaa'a Laasss (sounds snaky, doesn't it?). The Serpent Lich, of course, had plenty of minions on hand, including several True Serpent Men, 2 Chaos Serpent Blobs, and 3 Hunter Automata. Things looked grim indeed for the gang. Nonetheless, they (or at least Vane) were game.

Vane charged into the room. The Serpent Lich cast Spider Web to great effect. Vane was entangled, and the stair and hallway behind him were filled with webs. Some advocated to close the door and escape. The True Serpent Men were also spellcasters, and it could get ugly. Ultimately, though, they relied on... team work. What the hell? How did that happen. A combination of Strength Checks liberal application of flaming oil, Flaming Hands spells, and the span of only a couple rounds, and the webs were pretty much gone. So much for my early successes. It would only get worse for the bad guys after that. The players' rolls were just ridiculously good. Mine were, at best, mediocre, at least after the Serpent Lich went. However, not everyone was quite as lucky, or at least not just lucky. Occasionally things when the other way, and the PCs became their own worst enemies.


Gabriel said:

The Wizard Formerly Known As Ian cast 5 Sleep spells in a row, sending into a deep slumber between 2 and 4 serpent men each time. And grew five inches of hair too! That streak granted him the nickname of "The Sandman".

This was just sad to watch. After the wizard had Slept most of my bad guys, it was up the the Serpent Lich to hold down the fort. Unfortunately, he got made dead, but not before he had paralyzed Chuck. The Serpent Lich went POOF! and disappeared upon his defeat. If the Eternal Egg hadn't been destroyed, he would have respawned the next day, and resumed his grim work. I wasn't that lucky. Formerly Ian continued to Sleep the bad guys, and Jerkal the Blazin' lived up to his name by rolling criticals with his Flaming Hands spell. Fabulous! He was like a fucking napalm strike on a whole group of three enemies. Eventually Jerkal was taken out by a Hunter Automaton, and paralyzed.

After wiping the floor with the remaining enemies through a combination of swordplay and spellcasting, the PCs approached the Eternal Eggs, seeming instinctively to know What Had to Happen to Fuck It Up. Aram the lawful cleric wound up and smacked the shit out of it with the Frosthammer of Graki Deathstalker. It erupted in a gout of plasma, burning Vane pretty badly, but he rolled (yet another) saving throw, halving damage. Aram was protected from fire by the Frosthammer's magic. The Eternal Egg lay in ruins, and the threat posed by the Serpent Men had been averted. And they made it look easy. All my hard work had come to naught.

Curses, foiled again!

Wayne observed in a comment:

I was feeling pretty kick ass last night when I maxed out the rolls for Jerkal the Blazin's Flaming hands spell. Twice! Dude was a virtual walking flame thrower. Awesome. Only to be completely side lined later in the same turn when The Wizard Formerly Known As Ian cast Sleep and his mighty dice had him sleep every enemy in the room (5) who wasn't already asleep from his previous Sleep spells. The blood fueled sci-fi and sorcery birthing chamber of the hideous serpent men was looking like "serpent man sorcerer sleep over party" and we calmly walked through poking holes in the sleeping snake men like it was nothing. Ian is the sleep master. When it's good, it's so good, and when it's bad, he's in a magical coma for a week.

The party could, at this point, have left the Temple behind and returned to Samsara. They did not. This proved consequential. Entering another passage to east brought them to another sci-fi door. They opened it and found more enemy. It was a little crazy for a short while, but they eventually defeated them. This was, I believe, when The Wizard Formerly Known as Ian had a bad outcome with his final Sleep spell, putting himself into a coma until magical healing could be effected. On top of this, Aram the cleric had some trouble Laying on Hands, and incurred Deity Disapproval, putting his healing checks at -4 for the rest of the session. He was out of commission, and Vane who had (once again) charged into a meat grinder, was badly wounded. Banvha the Halfling also had depleted her Luck supply for the interim. Things were starting to turn my way again. Mwahahaha!

Then it got better. They opened another room, finding a large chamber with rows of Serpent Man-sized holes about 3 feet off the floor on opposite sides of the chamber. At this point we lost about 5 minutes to jokes about glory holes. I observed that the holes were pretty damned big, and they were about to get fucked roughly by the now-enraged True Serpent Men. This was, it was now revealed, the barracks for the True Serpent Men (and an Armory, as well, though the PCs had to run before exploring it).

The problem started when Vane decided to throw flaming oil into one of the holes. This activated about nine more enemies. They fled the chamber, and kept heading north. They found a locked door and activated the panel to open it. A tunnel led toward a chamber they'd been in before, the one with the first machines they'd encountered. Unfortunately, there were also two hidden rooms that suddenly opened, revealing 6 Hunter Automata. Things were pretty grim for our PCs, at this point, and they started getting a little whiny about it. After killing my guys and destroying a very, very expensive machine? The gall!

I reminded them that they could have gone through safe areas to escape, but they'd gotten greedy. Not satisfied with the treasure they'd gained already, they wanted MORE. Now faced with overwhelming odds, they ran away.

Yep, pretty much like this.

They broke the electronic panels on two of the doors, and escaped through the safe areas of the temple. Then they used Ward Portal to block the other entrance, from under the Snake God Statue cum Laser Turret, in the main temple. This was pretty awesome, as their result on that spell made the door simply disappear for several weeks. WTF? So, the pursuit had been neutralized for all intents and purposes. That's what you call lucky.

Gabriel observed:

Having defeated the serpent men and destroyed their wicked breeding machine, the party, instead of leaving the place (Chuck and Jerkal were paralyzed, and Vayne badly wounded), decided to keep exploring for more treasure. That's when Wizard Formerly Known As Ian ran out of luck or lost the favour of the Metal Gods. He fumbled a Sleep spell and fell into a coma. With the serpent men closing in the group grabbed their out-of-action comrades and ran the hell out of the Mysterious Temple of the Serpent God. 

We sailed all the way back from Samsara to Ur-Haddad avoiding a huge storm. Upon arrival, we handed the Eyes of the Serpent to Amor Ba'Gish, the wizard who employed (and poisoned) us, along with the chest  full of platinum bars we were supposed to give Balas Forktongue (who we found dead, tortured and killed by the Serpent kin) as payment for the Eyes. After receiving the antidote and a succulent reward we headed to celebrate, with the promise of more jobs from the wizard.

They got their treasure. Instead of keeping what they knew to be 50,000 gp worth of platinum bars (and this is a silver standard monetary system, mind you), they returned the unused payment to Balas Forktongue. This was the right choice. The Wizard, Amor Ba'Gish, would have killed them if they'd attempted to hide it from him. They got their payment in silver from the Wizard, for which they'd already been contracted. In addition, they were given 25 of the platinum bars with a total value of 2500 gp. That's a shitload of money in this world. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it. 

I think this would be a really, really good time to continue working on the faction rules we've only playtested once. Adam, please send me your notes from the playtest.

So, that was The Mysterious Temple of The Serpent God. This is one of the most intense projects I've worked on, and I got a chance to do some really fun and interesting (to me) things. Once again, I used the "song titles to name your scenes" method to write this. The band High on Fire were the stars this time. It was incredibly challenging to conceive a story that only used those titles as prompts. It often drove the story in ways I hadn't intended, to begin with at least. For example, this was going to be in the frozen north, but "Snakes for the Divine" precluded anything but a jungle adventure, in my mind, conjuring visions of blocky, jungle temples, huge snakes, high priests and sacrifices, and other neato stuff like that.

I'm not really "done" with it at this point. There are a lot of rough patches in the written material, partly because I had some better ideas as I went along. I also forgot to do some of the things I had planned, or had to adapt the plan a bit to make sense of things that I hadn't anticipated. All in all, I think the module has a lot of promise. I'm going to continue to polish for the inevitable Kickstarter (Yes, I'm kidding). However, I will actually try to get it into shape for other people to try out. I had fun running it, and I hope my players enjoyed the experience of running through it.

Next up: Adam will run a zero-level funnel for us. We're all gonna die! Fun!

MGoU-H: Mysterious Temple of The Serpent God, Session 7

As we began the 7th session of this adventure, Aram the lawful cleric had taken possession of the Frosthammer of Graki Deathstalker. The PCs had looted (to the extent that they could) the Vault of the Frosthammer and the associated treasure room. The PCs consisted of:

Denny: 2nd level Thief
Clave: 2nd level Warrior
Vane: 2nd level Warrior
Abel: 1st level Wizard
Banvha: 1st level Halfling
Aram: 1st level Cleric
Vergil: 1st level Warrior
Klaus: 1st level Thief
Doug: 1st level Warrior
Chuck: 1st level Warrior
Formerly Ian: 1st level Wizard
Morfans: 1st level Dwarf
4 Urchins

Everyone showed up for this session, so we were rolling with a large PC contingent. Resistance was futile before their might. Nonetheless, Van managed to get himself nearly killed a whole bunch of times.

The first thing that they did was to return from the Vault. They decided that the urchins and the characters not running with the party this session would loot the Vault and take the treasure up to the main temple. Denny the Thief decided that he'd skin some of the dead giant snake for later, and someone else took snake teeth. There was some discussion of just taking the Eyes of The Serpent and heading back to Ur-Hadad, but a combination of greed, murder-hoboism, and a tiny amount of concern for humanity got them to stay around. They decided to explore the passage leading east from the room with the Vault entrance in it.

The way east was blocked with a cell-style barred gate. They proceeded through it and discovered a 4-way intersection a feet yards further on. To the east was a barred gate, beyond which were two of those giant lizards with the brillant blue and yellow striped hide. There was also a nest of eggs. A few potshots were taken, and then fire was applied liberally through the use of Flaming Hands. It worked out fabulously. One Spike Lizard was killed outright, and the other fled down the passage to the east. At this point, Denny decided to go check for more treasure, finding 1d6 Spike Lizard eggs. The number was 6. Those could be fun later.

Another portion of the party proceeded to the south, finding a passage ending in a cave-in, and containing a nest of these guys (7 of them):

Claw Wyrm of Sssaa'a

Init +1; Atk claw +3 melee (1d8+1) or sting +3 melee (1d6); AC 13; HD 1d10+2; MV 20’; Act 2d20+1d20; SP If it manages to hit with both claw attacks, it will use its Sting- if it makes a successful sting attack, target must make DC 13 Fort save or take 1d4 damage and be paralyzed for 1d6 rounds; SV Fort +1, Ref +1, Will +0; AL N.

These guys were both unlucky and lucky in the encounter. The Claw Worms were pretty tough, and the party didn't roll particularly well. As a result, Vane got nailed a couple of times, as did others. Vane took the most damage of all. The were lucky in that the Claw Worms failed to get a sting attack against anyone. Eventually, a combination of fire, melee and missile damage did the trick, and the foes were vanquished.

They went back the intersection and headed north. By this time, Denny and Klaus had finished with the Spike Lizard nest and found the gorge-side entrance partly hidden by the waterfall. Denny had disarmed a trap, and was prepared to open a door he'd found to the north. The party opened the door and found 12 of the villagers, the only remaining group of the hundreds taken by the Serpentkin. The village of Samsara has been much depleted by their losses. The party sent the villagers topside to wait for the trip back.

Before leaving, the villagers warned that a Hunter Automaton was nearby, through a door in the same chamber. The door was locked, and controlled by a panel with four buttons on it. I let the party mess around with it for a while, but eventually they found the "open" combination, and the door did a Star Trek "whoosh" to open into a wide corridor. Only one Hunter Automaton was here, and they managed to dispatch it before it did much damage. They opened the next door, and entered a very strange chamber.

Here's the description:

These are holding cells of bizarre design, made of jade glass and black metal. Inside of each one is a black metal table with a vaguely humanoid depression in it. Some tables lay flat, and some are elevated. Each has an integral system of manacles and other restraints.

3-6a: This cell has been damaged, and the "glass" portions are shattered in their frames, but the glass hasn't spilled out onto the floor. There are signs of fire within the chamber, and a charred, dwarven skeleton. Close examination will reveal that the skeleton is heavily infused with black metal.

3-6b through 3-6d: This cell is empty. The front of it consists of an empty doorway in the shape of a long, hexagonal lozenge. Peculiar knobs of black metal protrude from the inner frame of the doorway at intervals of about six inches, all the way around.

3-6e through 3-6f: Holds a human being, immobilized by restraints, and surrounded by a greenish glowing aura. The victim's eyes blaze with greenish yellow light, and plasma of the same color arcs like flailing whips around the interior. Whereas the fronts of the empty chambers are open, a glowing wall of pure magical force blocks the entrances of these chambers, and the metal knobs blaze with whitish-green energy, crackling almost like lightning. Any attempt to touch this will cause 1d8 damage, though a DC 15 Fort save will reduce damage by half.

The human prisoners are undergoing the first stage of conversion into Hunter Automata, wherein their bones and sinews are infused with black metal. 

So, the first thing that happen was that Vane decided to break the glass on one of the active chambers. He make a saving through, and took only half damage as a mighty gout of greenish-white plasma vented through the hold and out of the chamber, pretty much right in his face. He took a lot of damage (again), but not enough to kill him. This guy is running low on Stamina, though, due to repeated... miscalculations.

The other PCs figured out that you could turn off the active chambers by pressing the lighted buttons, and shut down the other one. The prisoner was beyond help at this point, with metallic bones and sinews, and the beginnings of a bizarre, ophidian transformation. They killed them, of course.

So, at this point, the party has pretty much explored the lower levels. It took a little while, but they remembered that there was more of Level 2 that they haven't seen. Could it hold the secrets of the temple? Will they be able to derail the fell machinations of the Serpentkin? Only time can tell.

Oh, and speaking of time, the Hourglass poison is still active in their systems. They've been gone about 10 days at this point, and only have about 20 days to finish their business, return to Ur-Hadad, and seek the antidote. There's also the small matter of what to do with the chest of platinum bars they left on the ship sitting back at Samsara's wharf. The man they were to pay, Balas Forktongue, is dead. So, who gets paid? There are 50,000 gp worth of platinum bars (and this world is on a silver standard). It seems like they've had an incredible windfall, doesn't it? Surely Amor Ba'Gish, the wizard who has employed them, would understand if they kept it for themselves, wouldn't he?  Surely he is the soul of generosity, and would agree that they'd earned it, once they return with the The Eyes of The Serpent. Of course he would.

So, next time we'll see if the PCs can avert the unseen apocalypse that's about to be released on an unsuspecting world. Or maybe they'll fuck it all up, and we'll be hip deep in Serpentkin bent on conquest, thereby reversing the man's ascent, and throwing into doubt the true power of the Metal Gods. That would be... unfortunate.

MGoU-H: Mysterious Temple of The Serpent God, Session 6

Oh, boy, did we have a hell of a session tonight. The players who were able to make it were Adam, Bear, Wayne, and Phil. John had to work, and Gabriel was on vacation. James is in school till May, and won't be able to rejoin us until then, which is sad because we found some stuff he might find... interesting.

So, we joined the party at the bottom of a long tunnel leading from the surface to the second level of the temple. They'd found the High Priest's secret entrance in the ruins on the surface, and, rather than face the stiff opposition they'd seen going down through the main tunnel, they went in through this backdoor. When we joined them, they had just finished killing a true (not degenerate) serpent man and a chaos serpent blob. The PCs consisted of:

Clave: 2nd level Warrior
Xalto: 1st level Cleric
Vane: 2nd level Warrior
Smolken: 1st level Cleric
Banvha: 1st level Halfling
Caifenn: 1st level Cleric
Vergil: 1st level Warrior
Klaus: 1st level Thief
4 Urchins (More about them, later.)

Immediately, I asked the PCs closest to the bottom of the stairs to make a Luck check. Two of them succeeded well enough to spot an older trail of blood and shit emerging from the western wall at the bottom of the stairs. They figured out that it was a secret door, and quickly learned how to open it by manipulating a wall sconce, Scooby-Doo style (as someone mentioned at the time). They didn't spend too much time exploring the corridor they were already in before opening the secret door. All they learned: The corridor went east quite a ways. They could hear water trickling down from above. So, they opened the door.

They found a long sloping passageway that led down to a landing with an arched doorway, about 30 feet deeper. The doorway led to a staircase that wound around and around to the left in a series of right-angle turns. It probably dropped another sixty feet. Along the way, Klaus the thief did a good job scouting and checking for traps. He found none, and no damage was taken. Eventually, the stairs ended and they found themselves in a long corridor leading to the east, and ending in a secret door. It wasn't so secret from this side, as a lever in the wall made the mechanism for opening it quite obvious. They checked for traps, found none, and opened the door.

The door opened into a large, square room with three major features: a gate of black metal bars in the east wall, a large, black metal grate in the floor, covering a cistern (the water they'd heard in the corridor upstairs dripped down into the cistern in a steady stream), and, most importantly, a large, black metal panel in the floor. The panel was about 10x10 feet, and marked with a dwarven hammer being constricted by a large, two-headed cobra-like snake. They had found the Vault of the Frosthammer! (musical interlude)

Songs about ancient relics make for great DCC fodder!

So fucking metal!

I was not, however, going to make getting inside easy for them. Vane, the big, dumb, chaotic lummox of a warrior decided to touch the door. He got zapped with electricity and knocked back about 10 feet, but made his Fort save. He took 3 points of damage. "Maybe it's discharged now," they guessed. Nope. Vane (or someone--can't remember who--got zapped again). After watching (with much amusement) as they attempted to figure out the trap, Bear (I think) came up with a plan: They would soak some rope in the cistern, and use it to draw the power from the trap. They soaked the rope, left one end in the water and threw the rest of it on top of the metal trapdoor. ZAP! The rope more or less vaporized, only the smoldering end emerging from the cistern surviving. The trap was disarmed. They opened it, and found a ladder descending into the depths, leading to a landing about 20 feet below. They descended.

Side note: Up to this point, there had been lots of jokes about throwing the urchins on the door to discharge it. They were kidding, of course, but the urchins were just sort of... there. We decided that they (for whatever reason) think Vane the chaotic warrior is The Shit. Strangely, he welcomes their attention, and clearly could be source of many wholesome teachings about life, love, and proper adventuring technique. Also, he could explain the facts of life, especially if those facts include hacking the testicles from giant apes and using them as trophies. It was decided that this could make a really cute family comedy on, say, the CW or ABC Family. We started thinking of names. Someone said "Vane in Charge," and then a meme was born: Witness this exchange from Roll20 chat:


Edgar J. (GM):Who's the Balls
Bear:"Who's the Balls?" Oh, fuck.
Wayne S.:check that shit out

Oh, how we laughed. I managed to choke out, at some point, "Failed... Will Save... versus... Funny." and then laughed some more. And this morning in my feed, Bear said, I'm going to sleep, dreaming of writing the pilot for "Who's the Balls?"


So, yeah... we now have a role roll model for our urchins, it's just that, well... it's fucking Vane fergawdsakes! This is going to be a running theme, I can tell already. I have so much fun in this game.

Anyhow, moving on...

There were more stairs, lots of them, leading down through a series of 90 degree turns to the left. Klaus the thief, once again, scouted the stairs and checked for traps. There were none. The stairs went down a long way. No traps, no distinguishing features, and eventually let out into a corridor leading east to a stone door, which was mortared into place.

At this point, I really have to pat myself on the back for designing this adventure the way I did. All of this time without traps had made the players just a little incautious. Three of them rushed down, including Vane (who led the charge), Smolken, and Xalto. Note: those last two were two of the party's three clerics. Well, of course they walked straight into the worst of the traps they would encounter (at least to this point). Even more hilarious... Oh, just read the description from the adventure text:

This trap is likely to be deadly, though it is, potentially pretty easy to spot, due to the sheer scale. The floor and ceiling both look oddly "constructed" compared to the rest of the natural stone which surround them. This is especially true of the ceiling, which might keep the PCs from looking at the floor. If the PCs look, they could see that both are a bit "off" pretty easily. DC 5 to spot (Intelligence mods apply).

The trap itself consisted for a 20' pit below, and a whole bunch of falling rocks from above. Vane (the guy who triggered it) managed to jump back at the last second, but both clerics dropped, got rocked, and I rolled for damage: Dead as doornails, the both of them. Here's the thing, though. They didn't actually die. Because of this rule (from DCC Core Rules, p. 93):

Recovering the body: If the body of a dead ally can be recovered, there is a chance the ally may not be truly killed. He may have been knocked unconscious or simply stunned. If a character reaches a dead ally’s body within one hour, the dead character may make a Luck check when his body is rolled over. On a successful check, the dead character was badly injured but is not permanently killed, and the ally is able to keep him alive. The “dead” character was simply knocked out, stunned, or otherwise incapacitated. Once an ally shakes the downed character awake, he recovers to 1 hit point. The character is groggy for the next hour (-4 penalty to all rolls) and sustains a permanent injury of some kind, reflected as a permanent -1 penalty to Strength, Agility, or Stamina (determine randomly).

*sigh* They both made their Luck rolls. They both survived 5d6 points of damage that should have smashed them like bugs. They totally deserved to die for being stupid, yet they survived. IIn most rulesets, they would have been dead, but not in DCC. This doesn't seem very Metal to me. From now on, new house rule: Recovering the body is not going to be a thing in my game. If you die, you die. The other players can quest to resurrect you or get you reincarnated or whatever, but recovering the body is just ridiculous in this context. I mean these fuckers were smashed to Hell and back, and they really, really deserved it! I really don't mean to be a psycho GM, but fair is fair. Playing dumb should get you killed, and from now on it will.

In a spirit of fairness, the players decided that those two were not going to be able to continue the adventure this evening, and they were sent upstairs to meet up with the rest of the party, up in the main temple. Denny the theif and Abel the wizard were sent down to replace them.

The party crossed the pit, and were able to chip free the sealed, stone door. Inside they found an altar surrounded by a bluish glow. On top of it... THE FROSTHAMMER OF GRAKI DEATHSTALKER!

Go listen to that song again. I'll wait. ... Okay, now on with the adventure.

This was a very, very special trap. It more or less created a sort of Spell Duel situation, but was not a spell duel: It was a test of wills. From the adventure text:

This altar has a magical trap. If triggered (This will happen if someone attempts to force it), it will do Chain Lightning damage to all within 30 feet of the door. This version is more deadly than the spell of the same name.

Chain lightning! A single lightning bolt that jumps between up to six targets. The lightning bolt cannot loop back to a prior target. The first target takes 4d8 damage, the second target takes 3d8 damage, the third target takes 2d8 damage, and the fourth target takes 1d8 damage. The final two targets take 1d6 and 1d4 damange, respectively.

Once triggered, it will take 1 hour to "reset," at which point it will be fully armed, once again. Only a wizard may attempt to disarm this trap. Treat the attempt by the wizard to unseal it as an opposed casting test with the door itself: The door's check is 1d20+6, and wizard may act to counter with a straight casting roll of 1d20+Personlity Mod+Caster Level. The wizard will be hard pressed to succeed without either help or Spellburn. He must make three rolls in this Spell duel, and the door makes three opposed rolls. Each other spellcaster helping adds his or her caster level and Will mod to the total. If the door "wins" after three rolls, the spell is triggered as normal, plus the wizard (and any helpers) takes attribute damage of 1d8+total difference in rolls made.

In the end, two wizards took it on. Abilities were spellburned. The halfling added two points of Luck, and they succeeded in disarming the trap. Whew! It could have been ugly.

Host: Edgar! Tell our players what they have won!

Me: It's a handsome Frosthammer of Graki Deathstalker!

The Frost Hammer of Graki Deathstalker:

Warhammer; Atk +1 (+2 against coldblooded creatures); damage 1d8+2 (+1d4 against cold-blooded creatures); AL L; Bane: Serpent People; SP  natural 20 and the target must make Fort Save or be frozen solid. Only useable by Lawful PCs. If not Lawful, take 1d4 cold damage per round.

The hammer is about three feet long. The haft is made of a grayish, ivory-like material (actually frost giant bone), and set with a head of opalescent star metal which ripples with colors like the aurora borealis. It is clearly a masterwork of dwarven make, and designed such that each striking surface of the hammer is in the form of screaming dwarven warrior rendered in a compact, blocky style, almost like a tiki, but more, well… dwarven.

But there are some complications. Did I mention that everybody in the party is chaotic or, at best, neutral? That's a problem. I rolled some stats and alignments and HP for the urchins. Two were Lawful. Crisis averted. Francois the (French) Elf is also Lawful, but has a Strength of... wait for it... 5. Oof. Better leave it to the urchins, then.

Also in this chamber, they found a secret door. After entering the door, this time, they remembered to check for traps. Good thing. Spike trap was disarmed. Inside they found the following:

Inside the treasury is the corpse of a gigantic snake. Mummified and inscribed with arcane writing like that which covered the body of Balas Forktongue, the creature's belly bulges with its contents. If investigated, the PCs will discover that it contains the mummified corpse of an armored dwarf. These are the remains of Graki Deathstalker, still in his armor.
By freeing the body of Graki Deathstalker, the PCs each gain 1 point of Luck, permanently. Lawful characters gain 2 points of Luck, permanently.

The writing on the snake's body is a spell. If Read Magic is cast it is revealed as the Binding 3^rd level Cleric Spell.

The Armor of Graki DeathstalkerThis armor allows the wearer (who must be a Lawful dwarf) to receive an automatic "3" result on a mighty deed of arms once per day, and to reroll (without penalty) a "1" on an attack roll once per day. Otherwise, it's a suit of dwarven plate mail made from an unknown, nonferrous metal of bluish-white opalescent hue, which gives it the the encumbrance effects of banded mail (+8 to AC, -6 to Checks, -5’ movement, d16 fumble die).

If the wearer is not a dwarf of lawful alignment, the metal will affect the wearer as if it was iron and the wearer was an Elf.Other treasure

There are several metal caskets here.

Casket 1: This is the largest one. It contains ingots of black metal (weight: 250 lbs). There is twice as much of it as in Casket 3.
Casket 2: This is the smallest one. It contains 5d30 cut gemstones worth 1d100 silver pieces each (weight negligible).
Casket 3: This medium-sized casket contains ingots of mithril (weight 100 lbs).
Casket 4: This one is flat and just a bit larger than Casket 2. It contains a grimoire made of thin plates of black metal. The cover is decorated in blood-red gemstones and graven with enchantments in the script of the Serpent Men. ... However, anyone who attempts to pick it up and read it must make a Will Save at DC10, or will be put in stasis (duration as per 3^rd level Cleric spell, Binding—assume the maximum result of 34+)

The wizards, Jerkal and Abel (bless their hearts) tried to read it and failed their Will saves (hehe). They are in stasis for 7 and 8 days, respectively. Once again, impatience leads to bad outcomes. Yep, the wizards are furniture now, at least for a while, and will need to be carried by someone. At the end, the players were trying to figure out if a period of rest would be wise. I'm gonna go with, "Yes."

So, they're gonna be rich, but first they have to get a whole bunch of really, really heavy treasure out of here, through the jungle, and back to Samsara. They'll have to be carrying the static wizards. Also, they need to avert the impending Serpentkin Crisis. Please also remember that these Serpentkin are spellcasters in many cases, and now the party is down some wizards. Oops. Oh, and don't forget, they're on an "Instant Death Countdown" due to the poison with which they are infected.

They set the urchins to carrying treasure up to the main temple, where the rest of the party is, and that's where we ended.

MGoU-H: Mysterious Temple of The Serpent God, Session 5

When we last left out party, the group was light two players, Phil and Gabriel. Tonight they were back. This left us with a group of about 20 PCs. This wasn't so much a party as it was an armed mob of murderhobos. Very murdery murderhobos with snake murder in their hearts. A lot of them. So, we split the party, sending some of the guys outside of the main temple building. That happened a bit later.

In the interim, we found the PCs pinned down by two-headed laser snake fire. Their monkeying about with the jewels from which the beams emanated had paid off handsomely in the last session. Though Scrum burned off an extremity (You really got to hand it to that guy...), one of the laser snake's eyes seemed to have shorted out a mechanism and one of the jewel fell into the PCs' greedy little hands.

This left them under fire from just the one, remaining, functional head, pressed up against the base of the statue. I, of course, had forgotten this fact due to... well... why don't we just say, "circumstances involving a rich assortment of hoppy malt beverages," and leave it at that. In any case, they went to search the unexplored rooms in the main temple building, and didn't come under fire until after the first room was explored. It was opened. It was full of shit and piss. Apparently lots of prisoners had been held here very recently. Next room... more poo and pee. Next brought a surprise: Four Urchins! This was an Easter egg for the party, as its supply of urchins had worn somewhat thin in recent days. The last room: more sewerage.

Recap so far: Laser snakes? Check. Piss and shit? Check. Urchins? Quadruple check.

As all of this is happening, John's characters are investigating the other door on the bottom of the snake statue's dais. Inside he saw a series of glass tubes filled with a glowing red liquid. It didn't look like blood. After a few moments of discussion, somebody thought it would be a good idea to break all of the tubes. First, there was a terrible roll, and no tubes were destroyed. So sad. Next strike was a bit better, and the person taking the shot avoided the gout of plasma that vented from the pipes. This also had the effect of powering down the serpent idol. Laser snake disabled? Check.

It was time for the split party to do its thing. One group would go back down the stairs under the statue, and the other would explore the temple grounds. We followed the exploits of the latter group. They investigated the ruins to the north/northwest of the temple. A successful search turned up a partially blocked tunnel, leading down and back in the direction of the temple. What they actually had discovered was the High Priest's private entrance to the underground portions of the temple.

The PCs immediately encountered resistance in the form of several degenerate serpent men. They were dispatched pretty quickly, and the group continued downward though a series of turns, downslopes, and stairs. They encountered a trap or two, but took no real damage. As they reached what seemed to be the bottom of the stairs, they were confronted by another chaos serpent blob, this one accompanied by a true serpent man. While these creatures fought hard, they did not fight for very long.

This was where I had to call the game for the night.

All in all, they resistance they're encountering has been pretty stiff, but that back entrance at least seemed to be marginally less well-guarded than the main temple entrance, at least so far. They also still haven't turned their attention to the other opening they saw below the temple, down in the gorge. They'd encountered a giant lizard which presumably came from that opening. There could be more, but that also could have been the last one.

Next time, we'll pick it up from the end of the last fight. We also have the option of following the other part of the split party back down into the bowels of the temple via the main entrance. Of, if they choose to do so, they also could try they gorge-side opening. Lots of choices, but plenty of PCs to make them.

Tune in next week for more.

MGoU-H: Mysterious Temple of The Serpent God, Session 4

Update: Blog Post #100 for Edgar's Game Blog! Here's to meaningless milestones!

For this session, we lost the services of two players. One was on vacation and the other couldn't make it for some reason. We gained the services of a new player, John, who typically plays in my face-to-face group. He seemed to fit right in with everyone else, and particularly so with Bear. They both have characters with the surname "Jenkins." (a la "Leroy Jenkins" of Internet fame. Just Google it, if you haven't seen it before.)

Despite our discussion after last session about limiting the number of PCs per character, the loss of Gabriel's PCs, the wizard formerly known as Ian, in particular, must have daunted the players. They didn't want to leave anyone behind, so we had sixteen PCs for this session:

+John Iverson
Doug Fleagle-1st level Warrior
Scooter Jenkins- 1st level Cleric
Sophia - 1st level Thief
Chuck Smidgeon - 1st level Warrior

+Adam Muszkiewicz
Banvha - 1st level Halfling
Absalom - 1st level Elf
Aram - 1st level Cleric
Caifenn - 1st level Cleric

+Wayne Snyder
Clave - 1st level Warrior
Denny - thief
Jerkal - wizard
Xalto - cleric

+Bear Wojtek 
Vane Barbute - 2nd level Warrior
Smolken, zealot of Ahriman - 1st level Cleric
Scrum Jenkins - 1st level Thief
Abel Ashencamp - 1st level Wizard

Question: Could Scrum Jenkins and Scooter Jenkins be related? Inquiring minds want to know!

Yeah, so these guys were fresh from combat with some god-awful monsters including degenerate serpent men and chaos serpent blobs, the the former of which can be pesky and the latter of which are some tough sons-of-bitches. Everyone was pretty much healed, but some of the clerics had increased their disapproval ranges and some of the wizards had lost spells. Ol' Sucker the egg-sucking hound was paralyzed. Magical healing did the trick and put him back in action.

I began by providing them with a reminder of their options. You can continue downward into the depths of the temple, or you can head back up to rest and/or check out those doors you ignored last session. They (of course) charged ahead, right into more peril. Peril, of course, was in good supply for this session.

Denny and Scrum (the thieves) crept ahead of the group to check out a corridor leading off from the room they started in. One of them managed to fumble at being sneaky. This draw unwanted attention from some creatures in the next room. A degenerate serpent man crept into sight, then another. They thought maybe it'd be a good idea to fall back into the other room so they wouldn't end up with another bottleneck situation in the narrow corridor. In fact, this time they came up with a Clever Plan: Instead of getting strung out in the corridor, they'd fall back into the room they came from and lay in wait until their enemies arrived, catching them in an envelopment from all sides. Then, of course, the Clever Plan fell apart.

A new and even more fiendish foe came on the scene, the True Serpent Man.

True Serpent ManRun True Serpent Men as intelligent creatures with knowledge of the terrain. If they feel the tide is turning against them, they will attempt to flee into the jungle to rest and recover, using Degenerate Serpent Men that might have survived to cover their escape. They also will wait for opportune times to attack (e.g. night time, from ambush, etc.).Init +3; Atk bite +4 melee (1d4 + poison DC 15 Fort to avoid paralysis) or as weapon +4 melee; AC 14; HD 1d10+2; MV 30’; Act 1d20; SP Infravision 50 feet; Venomous Bite (paralytic); 1d3 Spells (roll d6 for each, ignoring repeated results): (1) Curse (2) Darkness (3) Ray of Enfeeblement (4) Scorching Ray; (5) Force Manipulation; (6) Binding; SV Fort +4, Ref +3, Will +3; AL L.

I ended up running them as stupider than the description, but at that point we'd been in battle for about 2 hours it seemed like. Here's why.

One of the TSM cast Darkness in the corridor where the thieves and, by then, Vane had congregated. This cut them off from the rest of the party. So, everyone pretty much abandoned the Clever Plan and went with their usual strategy of running toward the enemy in a mob, and cutting them into little bits. This worked, mostly, but Ol' Sucker the egg-sucking hound got done like Ol' Yeller (i.e., put down like a rabid dawg, for you youngsters). Similarly, Vane got critted by one of the degenerate serpent men. It was ugly. He totally got aced by that pathetic creature. Luckily one of the clerics managed to resuscitate him before the clock ran down, so he will live to fight again, but with one less Stamina.

The true serpent men couldn't cast a spell to save their lives and the only real trouble lay in killing the chaos serpent blobs. Eventually, they managed to kill everything in sight, and entered the next room. There, they found an empty sarcophagus and some weird machinery. Vane played with some of the levers on one of the machines, but it didn't seem to do much (that he could tell) beyond changing the pitch of the humming coming from the equipment in the room. Denny investigated the sarcophagus and found that the interior showed evidence of claw marks--shallow, but gouged into the stone. He also located the chest in which Balas Forktongue had found the Serpent's Eyes, which now were upstairs in the Serpent God statue.

They also found two doors. The first door led to a partially collapsed room with some odd, roundish platforms with partly hollowed-out tops. These were roughly eight feet across. They also found some human corpses, and looted them of treasure. There wasn't much else in the room. The other door was a massive double door. Denny checked and found a trap. He disarmed it and pushed open the door, revealing a downward sloping corridor. At this point I made it clear that they had other options besides heading downward. Surprisingly they decided to head back up to the main part of the temple.

Once upstairs, Denny and Scrum decided it would be a good idea to steal the Serpent's Eyes from the giant, two-headed statue of the Serpent God. Denny (I think) tried to pry one of them out of the silvery metal socket in which it was fitted, using the ceremonial blade he found at the site of Balas Forktongue's ritual murder. This... was a mistake. He got a nasty shock and activated the statue. From the adventure as-written:

Giant, two-headed, cyclopean snake idol. Looks like twin cobra heads, but with only one large eye in each head. The eyes glow with a baleful red light. Any attempt to remove them... will result in activating the statue's defensive eye beam weapons.Stats for Serpent God StatueRange 80 feet; Init +3; Atk eye rays (Missile +3, dmg 1d6+5); AC 20; HD 2x 8d8 (36 hp each head); MV 0; Act 2d20; SV n/a; AL n/a.
Each head covers a 270 degree arc of the Main Temple. While they can be brought to bear on anything within those overlapping arcs, the base of the pedestal and the doors leading into the pedestal and down to Level 2 are not targetable.

Using a mirror, Scrum attempted to reflect the eye beams. He lost that hand and took damage. So, mirrors do not protect from these. John sent his characters toward the other set of doors, the ones they had not opened the first time they visited this room. Everyone else tried to run/hide.

One good thing came out of this, though. The statue fumbled a to-hit roll, and the result was damage to the weapon wielded. I determined that the socket Denny had pried at had overloaded, and, in a spray of sparks, the head shut down, the eye falling from the now-melted socket.

And that was where we left off.

An observation: This is still far, far too many PCs to manage. We really ought to do something about that.

DCC, the Minor Leagues, and Some Ideas for Domain Play

So, I mentioned (several times) in my last post that there were too many PCs in too small a space. The corridor in which they fought their largest (and longest) battle to date was too tight to allow any real maneuvering. This resulted in having too many characters with too little to do. This is a problem, but one of our own device. And it is fixable by another such device. This will result in fun. This will be good. So what is it, then?

We're going to institute a new rule for our game: No more than two characters for each player. No zeroes unless it's a funnel game. We may fudge this to some extent, depending on who's playing, but this is going to be the way of it going forward. When you have five players in the game, each with four characters, and you ram them into a narrow tunnel... well, let's just say this is a suboptimal gaming experience.

What I'd rather do is have fewer characters, but the DCC system really kind of relies on having a pipeline of characters to rely upon. When you get 1st level guys, you still worry about death, and about (to put it in baseball terms) the "minor leagues." This is where your up-and-coming talent is recruited, trained, honed into the weapons of your heart's desire. I'm thinking that I want to do something with +Adam Muszkiewicz' Winos and Wastrels rules for PC down time. I'm starting to think that could be turned into a Long Game sort of thing.

Here's the thing. I'm not certain, to what extent I want to leave "domain-level" stuff up to the whims of the dice. Sure, it's fucking DCC (Hells yeah!). I get that part. But I think having a mechanic be player-driven adds a level to it that helps people like me-- i.e., guys who fight ADD with OCD. I like to tweak on the details like this. This is about narrative. This is about My Story. The fact that I write a lot of stuff for my campaigns, pretty much a whole, playable module (beta version at least... okay, maybe gamma), means that I do get pretty invested in story, as such. So, I want the characters to be a part of it and, very importantly, to have my players make their own places in it. I don't say "to let them tell their own stories," because I mean to say something a bit different. I mean that I like to see them work within the context of the game I present. I like to see them use things in the game-as-presented to do shit they want to do. Yeah, that's the definition of "sandbox play" pretty much. It'll be nice to have a way to do it more systematically, with a "system" and dice and whatnot.

So, I was thinking about just plowing ahead with it in narrative. Fuck that, though. Let's do something that at least involves dice and strategy. I want something a bit more complex that Winos and Wastrels, and probably something that uses a common deck of cards as a randomizer. A lot of people have done stuff with those. So, both dice and cards. A gambler's wet dream. That sounds fun.

I also think that Stars Without Number (from Sine Nomine) has a neato faction system that could be examined for its possibilities. It's got some ways, mechanically, to do some things I want to do. It helps with creation of factions, a mechanic to have them "compete" for influence and resources and whatnot. It has a turn system to manage that sort of meta-play. Those are all good things. But notice that I'm keep this description in terms of how the system functions instead of what it is. I'd like to see it work more like DCC and less like SWN. Blood and Treasure might also be a place to look (Yeah, and ACKS, but I don't own it, and don't want to spend any more money.).

Some observations about DCC:

The emphasis that the rules put on things like guilds for fighters and thieves, particularly, suggests that they are aware of the impact of zero level entry on longterm play style. Essentially, these give the player the possibility of running a stable of PCs. He or she might have a whole bunch of characters to play, but uses the one(s) he/she wants to. That's pretty cool. You can find a way to keep your characters together, make a story about why they're together, etc. It helps to tell the PCs' story. That's the bottom line. It's the longterm answer to the "Why?" of PC motivation.

In the Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad campaign, they players have decided to form a mercenary company. I may have suggested it when Adam was running the game, but I could just have well have done it while GMing. In any case, I really love Glen Cook's series of books about the Black Company. I love them a lot. I've probably read them all at least 8 times. At least. (BTW, it's all just a romance in the end, and a good one at that.) Anyway, that's about a mercenary company over the course of about 30 or 40 years. It's such an incredible source of ideas about things like how a Company interacts with patrons. It talks about lore and people and legends from the Company's history. It gives them a symbol, and a wyrd. That results in some compelling fantasy. Well, I really like it at least.

We also will probably start doing zero level funnels separately from regular campaign stuff. It's the minor league game that gets those PCs ready to compete in the "big leagues." Also, having a stable of players allow us to make use of more modules, especially to mold a party to match the module in term  of level and number of players recommended. Now, mind you, I'm willing to run a higher level thing for lower level characters. Not so much the other way around.

So we need to make Winos and Wastrels work for domain play. We need to consider the notion of factions and faction interaction. We should make the players drive the formation of their faction. We should make that a Thing in the campaign, and use it to talk about what players on their "downtime" are doing. Hell, maybe we can even use their stats to make things happen. A high Personaility could be crucial back in Ur-Hadad, but may conflict with the players' need to have a cleric in the party. There's a lot of ways to leverage individual player powers against the adventuring party's needs.

So, following that, we need some way to incorporate the PCs' stats into something related to faction play. I don't think it need only be Personality. We could also think about how many are Warriors or what the total mods for Strength or Agility might be, and how we could incorporate them into Toughness and Espionage, or some other variables in a faction mechanic.

Finally, and this is important, I think, to managing the stables, domain play should be a feature of DCC from the point where a Zero levels the very first time. It shoud be on players minds for their PCs. It shoul drive the story of the campaign. Most importantly, it should be really, really, fucking fun.

Anyway, this is the preliminary sketch I have in my head.

MGoU-H: Mysterious Temple of the Serpent God, pt. 3

Last night we found our intrepid explorers murderhobos  rampaging mob in the first level of Kraa Ssaa'a Laass (aka Temple of <god="Ssaa'a Laass">). They'd just discovered the vast piles of dead children and the vast pools of tacky blood on and around the altar where they were most likely sacrificed. As they explored, the party discoverd that the altar had a drain which went down into its interior. The drain was near, but not in, the central bowl-like hollow on top of the altar. They were unable to determine where exactly it went. 

Further exploration of the interior of the temple revealed that they were in a vast pit, about 10 feet below the entrance level of the temple, which could be reached via a set of stone steps. The temple's ceiling was vaulted in a stair-step pattern, and very high. There were doors in the north and east walls of the interior of the pit. In the center of the pit was a pedestal (with a door on each side), atop which stood a giant, two-headed serpent. It's heads were hooded like cobras, and each only held one eye socket. Unlike during Balas Forktongue's visit, the statue of Ssaa'a Laass now held large, red, faceted stones. These presumably are the Eyes of the Serpent referenced in his letters. This is what Amor Ba'Gish sent them for. They did not elect to investigate further, as some of the many dogs summoned by Abel the wizard were now agitated, growling and whining at the closest door. They seemed somewhat confused, as well.

The PCs went around to the other side and were checking the other doors for traps when they heard a noise. The first set of doors were opening. Out came a whole bunch of Hunter Automata. Basically, what you're dealing with is a mecha-golem snake guy with paralytic eye beams and clamp hands. Ol' Sucker, the egg-sucking hound, was the first victim, paralyzed for six hours. Jerkal the Blazin' was also hit, but make a Fort Save. Long story short, the Hunter Automata were overcome by the PCs' sheer numbers. The fact that they couldn't hit shit with their eye beams didn't help, either. At that point, the PCs had no further aim than to descend into the tunnel under the pedestal. They never investigated the other door, either, but it was not apparent from the side they entered.

They entered and were immediately confronted with two more Hunter Automata. They also were confronted with something that would be another major factor in tonight's game: Large groups of PCs do not fit into narrow corridors very well. When it happens, it becomes very difficult to use all of the resources at their disposal. It also makes it very difficult to withdraw when one is wounded. At this point, we had four players with four characters each. Adam had a prior engagement (happy b-day, Momma M!) and didn't arrive until about nine-thirtyish. Even so, we had 16 dudes in a corridor less than 10 feet wide. Nonetheless, it was easy to take out the Hunter Automata. This would not last. 

They descended a bit further and encountered a group of Degenerate Serpent Men (DSM) and Chaos Serpent Blobs (CSB). The DSM are beings that seem to be like snake men, with arms, clawed hands, snake heads, and snake bodies, but they seem wrong. Their physical aspects seeming like part-melted wax more than real flesh. Their attacks also seemed weak and their movements slowed. The CSB were another matter entirely. These large blobs of scaly flesh extruded pseudopods of various sorts, with snake and lizard heads, oversized ape arms, squamous tentacles, and the like. Fun! Also, pretty damned hard to kill as the guys would discover. 

Here's the monsters:

Degenerate Serpent Man

These pitiful creatures are underdeveloped versions of the real deal. Their features look somewhat "melted" and they are a bit slow in their movements. They are not intelligent, and require no morale checks. They just try to kill (and drag off to eat) the PCs. Init -1; Atk bite +1 melee (1d4 + poison DC 12 Fort to avoid paralysis) or as weapon +1 melee (1d6); AC 10; HD 1d8; MV 25’; Act 1d20; SP Venomous bite, paralytic; SV Fort +2, Ref +0, Will +2; AL L.

Chaos Serpent Blob

 An abomination with 1d8 appendages in the form of snake-headed tentacles and various other non-ophidian parts. The blob flows from place to place and can protrude its appendages in any direction, but never more than two in the same direction. It's not particularly intelligent, and is very, very aggressive.

Init -1; Atk varies (see below); AC 11; HD 8d8 (42 hp); MV 20’; Act 4d20; SP varies (see below); SV Fort +10, Ref +6, Will +2; AL C.
1d6 appendages each. Roll 1d8 to determine the nature of each appendage.

Appendages for Chaos Serpent Blob

1	Snake, Venomous (paralytic)
2	Human head on snake neck
3	Snake, Constricting
4	Ape Head
5	Spike Lizard Head on snake neck
6	Oversized Ape Arm
7	Squamous Tentacle
8	Human Arm

 
1.  +3 Melee (1d2 damage + Fort Save DC15 or be paralyzed for 1d4 hours).
2.  No Attack. May groan or mumble.
3.  +4 Melee (Constrict for 1d4 damage per round, requires successful DC 12 Strength Check to escape)
4.  No attack. May make noises.
5.  +5 Melee (1d8 damage)
6.  +4 Melee (1d4 damage)
7.  +5 Melee (1d4 damage+ will constrict for 1d4 damage per round, requires successful DC 12 Strength Check to escape)
8.  +2 Melee (1d2 damage)

Just a bit further down the tunnel, the PCs faced a major fight. Major. This fight was sooooo fucking looooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn(see what I mean?)nngggggggggggg. Again, a shitload of characters in a narrow corridor doesn't lead to much fun, especially because a lot of the characters were somewhere back up the hallway, around the corner, unable to do much to help the ones at the front. The ones at the front were getting hit. Hell, man, it was rough. Clave, who is the bearer of the savage spear of the Lizard King was awesome. He used the spear's bloodthirsty nature to hit and hit and hit some more. Unfortunately, the Chaos Serpent Blobs are hard to kill. They also killed Clave at one point. He was down some serious hit points. He was saved through intervention of Smolken the cleric, I believe, or maybe it was Xalto. Anyway, he was saved before he bled out, but he's down another Stamina. Fun! 

Eventually, after aforementioned interminable battle, they were victorious. We had gone over by over an hour, so it was time to stop at that point.

We learned some things this session, which I'll go into in my next post. 

MGoU-H: The Mysterious Temple of the Serpent God, Session 2

When last we left these druken, tentacle-addicted louts our intrepid heroes they had arrived at the port of Samsara, a den of villainy and scum (naturally), only to find it ravaged by Serpent Men. Through questioning of the few survivors, they managed to find their way to the home of Balas Forktongue, a man with a reputation for being odd, even in a place full of weirdos.

They were joined there by another group of zero level characters led by Phil, who will be joining us in our campaign. Phil seems to fit right in, making the absence of +James MacGeorge somewhat easier for us to bear. I handwaved the zeroes in by suggesting that the village (having been annihilated, pretty much), does not really favor the prospects of anyone who tries to return to his or her "old life." So we had a Radish Farmer, a Hunter, a Woodcutter, and an Elven Navigator. The Elven Navigator was someone from one of the recently arrived ships in Samsara's harbor. He claims he's just interested in finding out what's happening. It may be that his motives are somewhat less pure than that, but that's up to +phil spitzer to decide.

My readers may remember that last time the party found Forktongue himself killed in a brutal (totally metal) ritual. This session, Denny Smedd the thief recovered a ritual knife from the victim. There are designs and terrible runes engraved on the blade, and the overall design of hilt and hardware is suggestively Ophidian in flavor. It's made of that extremely hard black metal they keep stumbling across in my games. For mechanical purposes, I needed to make it a thing in the world. So, it's a big knife, bigger than a normal dagger, smaller than a shortsword. So, damage is 1d4+1. It's also made of that black metal, which is harder than steel. So, +1 to hit. I worry that I might be putting too many +1 items in the world. However, given what they're about to face, I probably shouldn't worry too much.

The party (Well, really they are mercenaries, now--They have a flag, you know.) searches the room, looking for whatever they can find. First item of business is a sheaf of papers found in the smashed chest lying next to the hidden compartment in the floor. They were coded in some crude cipher. I gave Formerly Ian the wizard and Nimue the cleric a chance to read them. They were not successful. However, Phil's plucky Woodcutter offered to take a look. BTW, check out this fuckin' guy:

STR 14
AGI 17
STA 10
PER 11
INT 18
LUCK 16

If this poor bastard survives, he should make a really, really excellent thief. He'd also make a really, really excellent wizard. Pretty decent warrior, too, come to think of it. Phil will probably want to keep this 2 hit point prodigy safe and sound until he levels up. The rest of his zeroes seem to have somewhat grimmer prospects. However, this is DCC and we all know that the dice don't favor anyone, longterm. He may fall and some other champion may arise.

Anyhow, the (apparently very well-read) woodcutter crits his check to make sense of the papers (Natural 20+3!).

Here' the relevant section from my module:

A valise containing a sheaf of papers, still lies in the hole.

Note: This chest held The Serpent's Eyes, which were stolen from the Temple of the Serpent God. The papers are in some sort of cipher or shorthand. Any player character with an Int of at least 9 may make a DC 10 Intelligence check to attempt to make sense of them. If successful, the PCs will learn some or all of the following, depending on the degree of success (Give them one of the following items of info for each success, and one additional for every point above the target DC for the check):

The Revelations of Balas Forktongue

1.    This person was Balas Forktongue. He was indeed the contact of Amor Ba'Gish. And there are several correspondences between them in the packet of papers.
2.    Balas Forktongue, his manservant, and four mercenaries visited a ruined temple that lies within the jungle about 10 miles to the northeast of Samsara.
3.    Within the temple, he found a large idol, depicting a huge, two-headed cobra-like, cyclopean serpent, each of the heads containing only one eye. The sockets of the eyes were empty.
4.    They also discovered a vault in the underworks of the temple where two large, red stones were stored in a locked casket of unfamiliar black metal. They managed to open it and removed the stones.
5.    The Eyes of the Serpent themselves were made of a heavy, dark red, faceted stone with luminescent properties.
6.    Balas Forktongue sent a message to Amor Ba'Gish, detailing the find and asking a truly staggering price of 50,000 gold pieces for the Eyes of the Serpent. Surprisingly, Amor Ba'Gish accepted the price without haggling, which fact Balas Forktongue bemoans in his notes. He was sure he could have gotten twice his asking price or more.
7.    There are a variety of mechanical traps which they managed to avoid, for the most part, though one of the mercenaries was grievously wounded, and was later killed by a large lizard
8.    They also managed to escape from a gigantic lizard-like creature. The wounded mercenary and the manservant, on the other hand, were not so lucky. Their deaths, however, allowed the others to escape just steps ahead of the creature.
9.    Balas Forktongue's true target was a weapon he refers to as the Frosthammer of Graki Deathstalker. The Serpent's Eyes were an unexpected discovery, but one that soon became more interesting to him.
10.     The temple contains, at its heart, a gigantic egg-shaped machine, made of the same weird stone as the Eyes of the Serpent.
11.     The name of the temple is Kraa Sssa'a Laass ("Temple of Sssa'a Laass" in the tongue of the Serpent People).
12.     They found strange beings in the temple, their bodies metallic and in the form of Serpent Men. They seemed inanimate, but they were not statues. They had flesh on their forms, but it was cold and unresponsive, though uncorrupted by time. Perhaps they are the guardian the ancient scrolls spoke of (but they don't seem to match the description which suggested that a powerful master of the arcane guards the ruins).
13.    They found other machinery there, but all of their fumbling around with it only resulted in illuminating a red glass panel of some kind and initiating some kind of droning sound which grated on the nerves. They left soon afterward.

So, they party is operating with all of the relevant information. Though the info is not complete knowledge, it's a nice way to start their adventure.

Then the party searched the rest of the place. It was filled with old junk, none of which appeared to be particularly valuable. The also found things on Balas Forktongue's desk:

There is, in addition, at a desk in this room, a long scroll case made of waxed leather. It contains a map showing the coastline, the port of Samsara, and a marked destination some distance to the northeast. The location is on the other side of what appears to be some sort of chasm or ravine. There are a series of notes on this map, sketches of places, a drawing of a magnificent egg-shaped construction, and another of what appears to be, perhaps, a door. The door is massive and decorated with disturbing runes and a large inscription of something that appears to be a war hammer, possibly dwarven, wrapped in the coils of a constricting, two-headed serpent of evil aspect. Next to it is a scribbled note that asks, "Frosthammer of G. D.?"

Also, on the back of the map is a remarkably well-rendered charcoal drawing of an immense tumble of ruined towers and buildings, their cyclopean stones strewn like the dice of the gods themselves, and overgrown with vines and trees. A squat, blocky, roughly pyramidal building with crude snake head architecture, and sitting on a rocky prominence, is marked with the note, "Kraa Sssa'a Laass." The language is Common, but what these words mean is unclear, for they are not words in the Common language.

After some dicking around, it was decided that the party would start out for the temple immediately. The Hunter (Vergil, by name) used his knowledge of the area to inform the other PCs regarding what they could expect from the terrain. Using this knowledge, they were able to make good time. Their trek through the dark jungle seemed interminable, but they eventually followed the game trail to a semi-cleared area. There, the found that a whole lot of the smaller trees had been snapped off at the base. Toward the northeastern side of the clearing, they spotted a teepee-like structure. Vane and Denny decided to have a look. Denny was fairly silent, but Vane sounded like a bus tub full of saute pans. Their movement away from the rest of the party put them about 60 or 70 feet away when Vane's noise woke up this guy:

Four-armed ape-man: Init +3; Atk bite +6 melee (1d6+5) or slam +8 melee (dmg 1d8+5); AC 15; HD 6d8 (27 hp); MV 40’ or climb 20’; Act 4d20; SP rend for additional 1d8 damage if more than 2 slam attacks hit same target in one round; SV Fort +10, Ref +6, Will +2; AL C.

The ape attacked Vane and Denny, clouting them soundly, inflicting damage and knocking them prone. I knocked them prone in lieu of the other two attacks the ape could have made. Basically, I chose to grant the monster an Advantage instead of rolling the other two attacks. However, I couldn't really justify not attacking them at least twice. 

Then the ape saw the rest of the party. Enraged, it charged toward them. Jerkal the wizard (who looks like Kenny Rogers) got hammered by the ape after it beat down Denny and Vane. He was the only guy in the area, and both attacks (again, minimum 2 of the 4 allowed attacks) landed very, very hard. He was reduced to something like -10 hit points.

The rest of the fight was a bit touch-and-go, but the party eventually did in the ape, and didn't take as much damage in the process as they could have. Jerkal was healed by one of our many clerics (a must in this game), but lost a point of stamina, permanently. The other injured party members were also healed. However, Smolken incurred Diety Disapproval, and now will Heal at -1 until his completes a Quest-to-be-determined. Bummer for that guy. Bummer for the rest of the party, too, come to think about it. Dice can be quite contrary in this DCC thing.

So, Virgil the Hunter skinned the ape, Vane claimed yet another set of giant ape balls (*sigh* + *head shake* ... What is wrong with that guy? I think if he were alive today, he'd have a mullet and would drive a truck with those Truck Nutz things on the trailer hitch).

Vane, IRL.

Anywhoooo... The party camped in the clearing overnight, and the new zeroes were introduced to the miracle of Purple Meat, ingesting a dose each of the powdered form of the the Purple Tentacle from Beyond Space and Time. Again, Muppets were witnessed. Other things happened as well, but I didn't write them down so I won't report them here. The important thing is that Phil is clearly fitting in quite well with the rest of this party. Hmm... maybe not "party." More like "Party Van."

Hey, how else you gonna solve a groovy mystery? 

You gotta have one o' these bitchin' vans, right?

So, the Party Van moved out again the next morning. After a few hours, they crested a steep, rocky hill and beheld the temple:

At last the PCs reach the edge of a cliff. Below lay a vast, ruined landscape of broken architecture. The former temple complex has been reduced to little more than house-sized blocks strewn across the landscape. The sole, remaining structure of any note is the Kraa Sssa'a Laass, or "Temple of Sssa'a Laass" dedicated to the two-headed serpent god, whose aspect is that of a cyclopean, two-headed cobra. 

The temple, of course, was across a gorge. The span of the gorge was around 50 feet and it dropped probably 70 feet.

The temple itself is a partially-collapsed, pyramidal structure, overgrown with vines and surrounded with and overgrown by gigantic tropical hardwoods. Colossal snake heads spout waterfalls which cascade down into broken fountains and spillways, and into the gorge itself on the collapsed side, where the temple gapes open.

The gorge itself contains a variety of debris, including what appear to be large statues (of Serpent Men and of Sssa'a Laass, the Serpent God) and other monumental features. The wall of the gorge on the temple side dropped enough masonry into the gap that crossing is possible below.

There is also a waterfall cascading into the gorge, not too far from where the PCs first catch sight of the temple from the trail on the other side of the gorge. (Waterfall Entrance—As the PCs walk down the trail near the gorge, have each player make a single Luck Check to spot, using the highest Luck mod for their PCs) If successful they see what seems to be a natural cave behind the falls.

To reach this entrance, they either (1) climb down over the wet stone surface (DC 10, or DC 5 with rope) from the temple side, or (2) climb down from the Samsara side of the gorge to the massive stone obelisk that spans the gorge to within 8 feet of the entrance. The climb down to the "bridge" is about 50 feet (DC 5 with rope). 

The PCs decided to cross there, though there was a bridge further to the West. Formerly Ian the wizard cast Rope Trick to good effect, and the PCs used it to cross over to the temple. They didn't descend to the entrance behind the waterfall, because they saw a huge lizard come out of that hole and climb off along the wall, to the west (in the direction of the bridge). The lizard was a brilliant yellow color, with electric blue stripes.

In crossing, Banvha the halfling haberdasher almost fell, but used her Luck to survive. I ruled that even zero level halflings can regenerate Luck, as it's a racial trait. Hey, it's a halfling thing. You wouldn't understand.

They made it across the gorge and entered the lower level of the main temple building. There, they found the remains of a fire, and signs of human habitation (smells like piss in one corner). They began to explore the interior when the lizard made its comeback appearance. Here's what they were dealing with:

Spike LizardInit +2; Atk bite +5 melee (1d10) claw +5 melee (1d10); AC 15; HD 3d12 (20 hp); MV 50’/30'; Act 2d20; SP spiky claws on limbs allow creature to climb sheer surfaces at speed of 30; SV Fort +1, Ref +2, Will +1; AL N

Abel the wizard cast summon animal, and conjured a quartet of dogs. They attacked the lizard, and the lizard slaughtered two of their number. Vane thought to go full Steve Irwin on the lizard, but I said that he probably could not actually get his arms around the jaws of the beast. He tried a Mighty Deed to leap upon its back. Failed. Was right in front of it. Eventually, though, the PCs killed the damned thing, and nobody died. Their immediate thought was to make cowboy boots out of the beast's hide. The Banvha the halfling haberdasher thought that was a FABULOUS!! idea. She's got real plans for that hide. Vane is getting into professional wrestler territory, possibly verging on pimpdom, with his wardrobe choices. Sort of a hypermasculine (trying too hard) combination of Rob Halford,

Rob, we love you!

the Road Warriors,

600 lbs of "Please, please don't hit me."

and just a little bit of rainbow viking on a unicorn with an AK-47, if you know what I mean, and I think that you do.

I love giant ape balls in a totally manly way!

In any case, this party will soon be easy  even easier to pick out in a crowd.

Before we ended the session, Ol' Sucker, Clave's Egg-Sucking Hound, and Morfans the Dwarf had gone off to explore the temple's interior. Morfans called out for the rest of them to come quickly. They were confronted with a scene of utter horror:

A grim scene confronts the PCs as they approach the ancient stone altar of the Serpent God. It has been used very recently, and flies swarm everywhere. The altar itself is caked in mostly-dried blood. The bodies of many dozens of children lie in piles here. They have had their throats slit and their hearts ripped from their chests. The hearts are nowhere to be seen, but the blood… oh, the blood. It must have run in rivers for there to have been this much blood. 

And that's where we ended. Call me Captain Buzzkill.