Play Report: MÖRK BORG Party B: session 1 (Rotblack Sludge)

Player characters:

Alberta von Dup, Wretched Royalty,  with a small but vicious dog, Maurice von Cip
Larv, Gutterborn Scum
Urvarg, Cursed Skinwalker
Theras, Heretic Priest

I ran Rotblack Sludge again with a different set of players. This time, the Seer’s “truths” were:

·      Gasses leak from holes and cracks, driving anyone who breathes them insane!

·      I fear none have ever willingly escaped the Accursed Den!

This time the party’s descent started with Theras peeking into the Dining Hall, while the rest of the characters investigated the Library/Bedroom. While trying to read one of the books, Alberta felt an overwhelming urge to scream “you dead, arise!”, summoning a crystal demon, who hit the surrounding characters with a mental shockwave. This alerted the three crooked guards in the Guard Room, who reacted aggressively and demanded the party to surrender, which they actually did, giving up their weapons (at least those that were immediately visible on their persons [the guards did not search them thoroughly]). The guards took them down to the Chain Room, they knocked on the locked door, summoning their boss, Fletcher.

Alberta von Dup

Fletcher questioned them, and upon learning that they were there to retrieve Aldon, the Shadow King’s heir he proposed a deal: he would give them Aldon in return for them helping him get rid of Lesdy, that damned woman living within the Den. Theras was uneager to take up this mission, tried questioning Fletcher (Is she your associate that you want to get rid of? Is this some sort of trick? Are you just doing that to get us killed?) until he finally pushed him too far (How do you spell your name?), causing Fletcher to lose his patience and raise his flail agains Theras. Combat ensued, and Larv fell within the first round (however, thanks to her Dodging Death specialty, she would return later with an unlikely explanation).

The party tried to calm Fletcher down, saying that they get it, he’s serious, he proved that (by apparently killing Larv), but they did not manage to convince him. Urvarg started her horrifying transformation into a life-and-death lizard. Alberta’s dog rolled a fumble, which in this case meant grabbing Fletcher’s arms with its teeth, but ending thrown off westwards into the Gem Room and falling into the sludge. Again the game surprised me in how formidable even the seemingly fragile first level characters can be. Despite being without their main weapons, and getting targeted by multiple of Fletcher’s spells, they managed to finally defeat him and his henchmen.The cursed skinwalker proved to be a real powerhouse, especially with the regeneration ability and the armor–reducing spit, Urvarg’s player also rolled A LOT of 20s during the fight. During the combat, Theras got hit by the chocking spell (reducing him to 0hp and causing him to collapse with internal bleeding), and Alberta von Dup got fried by the lightning attack (fatal).

Midway through the fight, Larv awoke thanks to her Dodging Death ability (50% chance to come avoid death, with an unlikely explanation [“I sorta winked at him sexily, distracting him, so the hit was not as deadly as it seemed”]). She crawled back and ran upstairs to retrieve a flail and get back into combat. After the fight, Larv  revived Theras using her medicine chest (as the players described in one of the funniest moments of the session – healing his internal hemorrhage due to a crushed throat by giving him a suppository). Theras then quickly restored the rest of his strength after reading his Blasphemous Nechrubel Bible. They also looted the corpses.

They lingered around in the room for a long time, so I rolled an encounter, resulting in all the sounds in the room being inexplicably muted. They investigated the effect for a bit. Then, feeling safer than they probably should in a dungeon (because they just killed the “boss”), they split up, peeking into the Gem Room, Statue Room, and into the Corridor. They went into the Cells, trying to talk with the mad prisoners, but seeing that they only keep screaming for help and tring to grab anyone coming close and are unwilling to calm down and talk, they ignored them. In the last cell they found an imprisoned woman and a diminutive man in a jester’s garb who were more communicative, so they decided to free them. The jester also pulled a seemingly dead man from the corpse pile -who turned out to be just unconscious and incredibly scrawny.

(It was the next day in the real world, and Alberta’s player wanted to rejoin the game. Additionally, a new player wanted to join in)

Player characters (day two):
Adalberta von Dup, Wretched Royalty, with an annoying jester, Mr. Giggles
Eusebius the Defecator, Forlorn Philosopher (he started with 1 max HP, no surprise they figured he was dead)
Larv, Gutterborn Scum
Urvarg, Cursed Skinwalker

Theras, Heretic Priest

 

Adalberta von Dup and Mr. Giggles

They figured Adalberta looked a lot like the recently burned Alberta, and soon learned that they were actually twins (what a coincidence).

They went into the Debris Room, where Urvarg (in lizard mode) got attacked by a single dusk gnoum, whom she promptly devoured. In the Debris Room they found Adalberta’s and Eusebius’ missing equipment. Urvarg climbed the stepladder in the Forge into the Pump Room, encountering the giant spider, which she fought alone while blocking the stepladder itself, while the rest of the party waited idly downstairs (after getting a feel how strong her character is, she became a bit of a showoff). Theras also plied a bunch of gems in the gem room (not provoking the gutworm, which sunk into the sludge dead but dreaming due to Fletcher’s death).

Pump Room with the hound-sized spider

While they were looking into the statue, the floor tilting trap activated, throwing all the characters except for Larv fell into the Rotblack Sludge. They all actually managed to survive it, some climbed the wall, some climbed a rope fastened to the statue by Larv while they were splashing around in the sludge.

When they all got out, Eusebius put an eye from one of the corpses into the statues bloodstained eye cavity, opening the secret door into the Son’s room. They discussed who is supposed to go in first into the new room for so long, that a fat kid dressed in finery finally peeked out of the room himself. He scoffed at them and went back inside.

(The funny thing is that by now, Theras’ player completely forgot they were meant to rescue someone, and figured they were just screwing around, experimenting with the dungeon after killing who they were supposed to kill)

Used to sending Urvarg in lizard mode upfront as the most resilient character, they got her into the Son’s room. This terrified him, so he grabbed a crossbow from the shelf and started shakingly loading it. However, they managed to convince him that they were not going to hurt him, and that if he stays, he is going to starve to death, since his caretakers are all dead. After that, he agreed to follow them. They also took the bullwhip with cryptic runes, and Eusebius took Alberta’s armor, after scraping her charred remains off of it.

They emerged from the Den into the outskirts of the Shadow King’s Palace (“so basically like the kid got mad to his dad and ran away from home and into the basement?”), where they met the Masked Seer and his guards. The escort promptly stuck Aldon into a windowless litter. The Seer pointed at Eusebius and Mr. Giggles and said “They didn’t go down there with you,  kill them” (he ignored Adalberta, whom he mistook for Alberta) – however, they managed to convince the Seer to spare their new comrades.

The Seer then handed the Shadow King’s Iron Letter to Theras, who was the first to emerge, so the assumed leader. He also gave sacred scrolls of Bestial Speech to Theras and Larv, an unclean scroll of Nine Violet Signs Unknot the Storm to Adalberta and 9 silver pieces to Urvarg (lol) – rolled from the Getting Better table. Eusebius got nothing, because he wasn’t among the people who were given the job.

The adventure description promised “wealth” but we started the game in the middle of the night and forgot to read that part, so that is all they were given.

Some conclusions:

I probably should have had all of the Fletcher’s henchmen (D4 Guards with sharpened teeth, mongrels) from the listed encounters rush to them to help him in the big fight. On the other hand, perhaps they saw him getting wrecked as an opportunity to escape his cannibalistic necromantic reign.

After the session I figured that since the Skinwalker’s class is supposed to be a curse, but mechanically is actually a huge blessing, to later add some additional rules to have the character get slowly overpowered by their bestial half – Preliminary idea: if they shapeshift over the power limit, they have to do a Presence test, if failed, they permanently lose 1 Presence, cannot increase their Presence when Getting Better anymore, and look more and more like their animal form even when human (rough skin, hairy, change of eyes, fangs, forked tongue, later getting actual fur/scales all over), after four stages (which are increasingly difficult to avoid, due to decreasing Presence) they stay in their animal form forever and lose their human mind, either running away into the wild or attacking the rest of the party.

Entries into the Book of the Dead:

†Alberta von Dup, fried by Fletcher’s lightning in the Accursed Den