Wednesday, January 14, 2015

A Dungeon Runs Through It - Palasé Dungeon Crawl 2015, Part 2

This is a continuation of last week's post


Having found their way down the waterfall, Lady Clothilde and the rest of her band made their way around the side of the lake and into a room cloaked in magical mist. They found what appeared to be a small urn constantly filling with some sort of red liquid...


The Imperial troops found a large pile of gold and a magical portal. They began to debate the merits (and dangers) of passing through. 


One of the adventuring parties (and apologies, but their name has unfortauntely slipped my mind) lost a man to a giant face in the wall. He walked in of his own choice - heavily weighted by his fellows, of course - and failed to reappear. Not wanting to lose more of her men, the player sent her warband to investigate a pile of treasure on the other side of a rickety-looking bridge. Unexpectedly for one of Bob's games, it wasn't trapped.


The pirate goblins drifted closer towards my Salvage Company, but managed to anger a tribe of troglodytes. Their poisoned darts killed one of the crew members, who fell overboard and sunk into the murky depths. 


A second Wall of Flame sent pirates into the drink, along with a few of the other goblin gang who had crawled their way onboard. The magical boat kept drifting towards the dock, albeit with a few new passengers. 


Senator Rudiger and his men found a magical talking door that posed to them a riddle. They solved it quite handily - the answer was "Thirst" - and inside they found a magical orb. Quite the find!


The pirate captain and his first mate struggled to get over to the edge of the water, where there was a small ledge they could stand on. Deciding to investigate a small alcove, they found the nesting site of the troglodytes, including a mass of slimy eggs! This angered the dungeon dwellers, and the two goblins were swiftly turned into poison-filled pincushions. 


The dwarves had managed to find a Ring of Teleportation (that would only short out on a roll of 1 or 2 on a d20) so they started to hop around the dungeon in search of treasure. One of their finds, a large chest, acted like a portable mega-flashlight.


As it turned out, the 'Brian' I found was actually Brian van Hoose, of Knights of the Dinner Table fame, who decided to break character and offer me help in the form of a loophole or cheat with the rules. This was just at the moment when the magical boat drifted over the dock, and the goblins attacked. Brian's cheat came in handy, and for a few moments the goblins took damage from their own infighting. Unfortunately my archer took a goblin dagger to the stomach and died. 


Still curious about the man-eating face, the remaining adventures decided to go back and enter. They were transported to another section of the dungeon and reunited with the previously lost member, who had been quite worried after sitting in the dark all by himself for some time. 


One of the surviving goblins, clutching at a pillar of rocks rising from the water, was astonished to find a blue-skinned woman looking down at him. She asked him to retrieve a certain scroll from another area in the dungeon, and offered a reward. 


In a somewhat nostalgic moment, the dwarves used their Scroll of Fireball (remember that from last time?) to attack another warband, managing to kill four of them. Unfortunately, one of the dwarves had activated a trap, and had been killed when a giant bear-trap closed on him.  


An unfortunately timed 'Plot Card' - you'll remember them from some of Bob's other games - caused the magical boat to sink. The remaining goblins and the thief and fighter from my party end up in the water. 


One of the remaining goblins from the non-pirate crew saw the commotion involving the dwarves and decided that he wanted to get in on the action against his race's ancient enemies. Looking over his spell list, he decided to summon a swarm of spiders. What he got instead was a sea monster! 'Nessie' quickly laid into the dwarves, who hadn't been expecting an attack from the lake. 


Remarkably, another toot on the horn at the dock brought the magical ship back up from the depths of the lake. My men clambered back on, leaving the goblins behind. 


Lady Clothilde's group emerged from the mist - after battling a undead horror that had killed a large part of their party - only to find one of their party members had been murdered by goblins while guarding a raft. They decided to attack!


The last remaining goblin swam over to the other side of the lake and discovered a discarded urn on a pile of rocks. This urn contained a genie, who promised the goblin three wishes, and then his destruction. For the first wish, the goblin asked for the genie to disappear after the second wish. There was a moment of silence, then laughter as everyone realized this meant no third wish. 

So for his second wish, the goblin asked for his crew to be returned to life, and to have their boat back. Apparently feeling magnanimous, the genie did so without any twists. It then disappeared, taking the surprised goblin with him. I expect we'll see the two in some other game.

Another player forced his way into the sealed room in the picture above and found that it contained ghostly hounds and a pyramidal crystal. A mad dash for the crystal revealed that it, like other features in the dungeon, sent the touching party member... somewhere else. He wasn't seen again.


The last struggle of the game was between the Empire warband and the summoned lake monster. I also threw my remaining party members into the fight, but it seemed as though Nessie had the upper hand. 

At the conclusion of the game, it was determined that the dwarves had gathered the most loot, thanks in large part to the ring of teleportation they had found. 

Like all of Bob's community game, this dungeon crawl was full on unexpected surprises and some pretty funny moments. I'm eagerly waiting for the next level of the dungeon to be found, hopefully sometime next year. 

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