Play report: OSE Session 2 (Tomb of the Serpent Kings)

19^th day of the first month of spring, Year of the Rat

Tomb of the Serpent Kings, ran with OSE, using the Death & Dismemberment Table from Skerples' GLOG hack.

Player characters:

Lonya, Thief

Urpert, Thief

Valbona, Fighter

Lonya the Fighter

Another group of adventurers, having been sold a supposed treasure map from a mysterious old man, prepared to venture out of the town of Tor’s Field. Unbeknownst to them, the old man has been plagued by horrific dreams. The only thing that soothes his mind appears to be luring people to a location in the Northeastern wilderness with those damned maps.

Having asked around town, the party learned of a previous group of miscreants who, after venturing into the same general area, returned with various cryptic items, before meeting various abrupt and violent ends. Prior to dying however, they seem to have enlisted the help of an acolyte (still living), who, in the end, did not decide to pursue the same adventuring lifestyle. They met him outside of the palisade of the decaying town, in the surrounding fields and orchards, peppered with ruins of the town's former... mediocrity. Beside a collapsed church, in the town’s cemetery, the acolyte was busy burying the remains of two adventurers. He relayed their story and gifted the party what looked like the map of the inside of a tomb, before immersing himself in prayer for these poor souls.

They arrived there the next day, finding a set of ransacked rooms, and a smashed stone door with a stone slab lying on the floor. Upon entering further, into a large chamber filled with rotten grave goods and scattered bones they saw a clay statue of a snake-man, surrounded by fragments of clay, to his left, laid a snake-man skeleton. Lonya disturbed the remains by trying to scatter the bones with her foot, in an attempt to prevent it from being animated later on and endangering their rear. The attempt animated the skeleton, leading to a quick fight, from which the party survived unscathed, while the snake-man ended scattered.

Not willing to leave any possible accursed dead undisturbed, Valbona knocked on the remaining statue, which erupted in a rain of clay fragments, unsurprisingly revealing another skeleton inside. The party escaped into the outlying corridor, hoping that the blessed light of day may have an adverse effect for the enemy. That did not seem to prove true. In the ensuing scuffle, they did, however, manage to lodge a grappling hook into his ribcage and pulled him down to the ground, leading to his demise.

(They started trying to use the environment to their advantage and being more creative in combat, which was a welcome change and worked well in the end. Too bad they didn't think of springing the hammer trap on the skeleton.)

Disappointed at the apparent lack of treasure, the group ventured deeper, encountering a vile statue, that they investigated thoroughly. Founding no way to interact with it, they dove into the hole at its base and entered a corridor flanked with statues of snake-men warriors. Remembering that they’ve been informed that one of these statues was moveable, they decided not to investigate it further.

They entered an octagonal chamber with exits on every side, multiple snake-men statues bearing various implements, a pool of black water in the middle, and a smashed mummified hand near the pool (unfortunately I forgot to mention the blood that must have been there, since that is where Priest bled out to death during the previous session). They carefully approached the pool, but nothing emerged from within.

Then the party started investigating the surrounding doors, starting with the wooden ones to the Southeast. Inside they found a small room with rotten beds, shelves, piles of scrolls in an unknown language and a gold and emerald icon depicting a Snakeoid figure. They quickly pocketed the icon and some of the scrolls.

Next, they investigated a stone door to the North, which they moved without much hassle using Lonya’s crowbar. Inside they found collapsed rubble, with a small hole which might have enabled them entry, if it weren’t for a furious snake-man skeleton aggressively trying to attack anything that came close. They decided to forego this route for now and sighed with relief when the skeleton stopped making noise after losing “sight” of them. They attempted to make sense of the various implements that the statues around the octagonal room are holding regarding the rooms and their contents, but they find no logic or reason connecting the two.

Opening the elaborately carved doors to the East and seeing ominous-looking stars leading down, and walls covered in reliefs of snakes “performing indeterminate movement between the sky and the ground”, they decided not to venture deeper just yet.

Then they decided to enter the room to the Northwest. Inside, on the wall, a circular shape glittered with the light of their torch. Upon noticing a raised tile on the floor, they apprehensively rolled a large stone from the collapsed corridor on the floor towards it and hid outside. With a deafening sound, a bolt of lightning shot from the room, destroying the wooden door to the Southeast. They entered the room, crawling on the floor and avoiding the pressed tile and stone. The adventurers expressed worry that the dungeon seemed to be causing them to behave like snake-men. Inside the room they stuck close to the walls, waiting for another lightning to shoot, it did not. Then they carefully took the electrum disk from the wall, being careful not to touch it with their skin, and only manipulating it through a bag. They expressed heavy disappointment that the sarcophagus in the room is empty.

Next, they entered the crudely carved room to the Northeast, and upon hearing squelching sounds from the stone coffin, prepared a plan ofaction. After a lengthy deliberation on the possibility of baiting the potential enemy to be zapped by the lightning trap from the Northwestern room, they abandoned that idea. They were not sure whether the electrum disk that they took was necessary for the trap to activate. Instead poured oil around the sarcophagus (again thinking creatively), Valbona braced to push the lid off and Lonya stood with a torch prepared to burn whatever emerged. As soon as it opened a bit, a black pseudopod shot out, grabbing Valbona’s hand. She managed to break her hand out, but not without sustaining painful burns. The adventurers hastily exited the room after Lonya threw the torch on the oil. A blob of black jelly pursued them, emitting a horrific sound while passing through the flames. They did, however, have the advantage of speed, Lonya and Urpert escaped to the upper level, while Valbona remained, trying to bait in to fall into the black pool. She succeeded and rising black water washed over her boots as the creature fell. She called for the rest of the party to come back down. As they were descending to join Valbona, the monstrous jelly emerged out of the water but was promptly put down by the steel of her axe. They investigated the scorched room from which the jelly originated but found only clay jars and copies of goods.

When investigating the Southern room, they found only an unfinished chamber with various mining and masonry tools scattered around. They took the tools to the Northern room and threw them through the hole at the unruly skeleton until he stopped moving, then used the remaining tools to clear their path. Inside, they found various golden funeral trinkets, Urpert also took the axe previously wielded by the animated skeleton.

I love this amazingly legible map.

The party then entered the corridor to the Southwest and smashed one of the clay snake-men warriors standing there. Finding neither treasure nor foe, they left the rest undisturbed.

Having apparently exhausted all other routes, the party decided to venture down the stone stairs, without performing any prior investigation. Upon stepping on the third stair, Valbona activated the trap – the stairs turned into a smooth ramp, and she slided down into spikes below, somehow managing to survive with only a flesh wound. She found herself in another octagonal room, this one had a huge stone statue of a humanoid figure with a cobra-like head wielding a huge sword, the walls were covered in various old and mostly decayed shields. The thief was shocked upon seeing that the stone figure started to approach her but managed to escape it into a narrow path overlooking a dark chasm on the other side of the room. She heard a swooping sound but did not look back and managed to avoid falling off the slippery stone ledge. She heard the statue stomping away (the ledge was too arrow for it to follow) and sat down in the dark, shaking with fear.

Meanwhile her comrades tried to fix a rope to safely descend down the ramp to aid her. The ramp, however, soon turned back into stairs, so Urpert tied the rope around Lonya’s waist instead and had her walk down the stairs (avoiding the third), while she carefully prodded the stairs in front of her. No other stairs turned out to be trapped.

As soon as the cobra guardian, now also bearing a shield, noticed them, he approached, but they were able to easily avoid him, as he did not fit up the stairs. Shouting over the foe, hoping he did not understand Common, the adventurers coordinated a plan to bait him to approach the slippery stone edge of the chasm and throw him down there using ropes. Shenanigans ensued. Valbona narrowly escaped doom while running on the slippery ledge multiple times. They did not manage to do it exactly how they planned, the guardian turned out to be too heavy to push/pull him. However, when the statue leaped near the ledge to attack Valbona, who was taunting him and throwing stones, he did slip and fall into the chasm. Valbona escaped the same fate, but her ribs got cracked by the impact of the stone guardian's leap.

(I was glad to see that they did not even think of fighting a huge stone enemy head-on.)

The party decided to recuperate in the octagonal room formerly occupied by the cobra-golem. They dragged down the beds from one of the rooms above to start a fire and get comfortable. Before they managed to do that, they were startled by chittering sounds and creepy laughter coming from the direction of the chasm. They ruled to rest in town instead.

(Death is a quick teacher, after the previous session they were markedly more cautious and creative, both with traps and with enemies. They also seemed to have consistently good rolls throughout the session.)

The travel back was uneventful, in town, they found callers roaming the streets with handbells, and people gathering at the chapels. It was the day of Resurrection.

Lonya went straight to the local wizard and, upon introducing herself as “Tulia Rostfhausen”, tried to sell him the emerald snake icon, he was interested and greedy, but suspicious. She was unwilling to name the source of the treasure, so the wizard brushed her off, openly citing fear of the local ruler as the reason for his unwillingness to make business before being aware of exactly the kind of risk he is taking.

She then roamed the streets, saw wanted notices promising 500 gold pieces for the head of a local bandit leader, named as “Bloody Henry”. She inquired a bit about this figure (she learned that they call him Henry-who-does-not-close-his-eyes) and about the local ruler also.

(I will be dropping various hooks for other opportunities of adventures throughout the sessions, so they should have no right to complain about only venturing into the one dungeon, but they seem to be ignoring them so far - the dungeon seems to be adventure enough for them.)

Valbona also visited the wizard and paid him to have the scrolls translated.

They waited for a week, until Valbona’s ribs healed and for the wizard to translate the scrolls. They turned out to be mad ravings of dead kings, desperately calling to their descendants, describing visions of dark eternity. One name seemed to pop up throughout the texts, “Baltoplat”, described only as “the demon of the deep”.