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

Player characters:
Rachela, Heretic Priestess, with a small but vicious dog, Leon
Aldona, Wretched Royalty
Margar, Forlorn Philosoper, with a Hegelian Owl
Shnee, Gutterborn Scum

The party, facing execution for heretical theft, accepted the offer of a masked Seer to instead risk their lives in an attempt to retrieve the Shadow King’s lost heir, Aldon from an infamous accursed locale known as the Accursed Den.

After rescuing him, they were to discreetly bring him to an abandoned inn, known as „the Ratcatcher”, which lies halfway on the Road to the Shadow Kings palace.

The Seer guided them there together with an armed escort, and offered to scry them two truths, which were as follows:

·      The lamps burn red, the lamp-oil touched with human blood!

·      Something hungers in the depths, an enormous creature, like a vast intestine!

Stepping down into the first cavernous room, with a small stream of water flowing through, black-violet butteflies flying around, and two doors in the wall before them, they carefully ventured forth, at first throwing  stones before them, anxious of potential traps.

Listening at first at each of the doors, they all moved into the Dining Hall, in which they encountered an ancient man. Margar, the Forlorn Philosopher however stayed behind, scared of the contents of the dungeon. After their attempts at communication with the ancient man were unsuccesful, they launched a slingshot stone at him, hitting him straight in the foreahead. He bleeded a bit, but did not react. Shnee searched him, upon which she noticed him breathing, got scared and left him alone.

The Ancient Man

Then they moved into the guard room, where they encountered a single Crooked Guard. Figuring his reaction might be uncertain, I rolled for it, and it came out as helpful, which would mean that he figured that his boss, Fletcher, might want to strike a deal with the Party for his own designs (getting rid of Lesdy and her cultists from the Greenhouse), perhaps even allowing them to take the heir for their aid. The guard guided them into a dark corridor, meaning to lead them through a hatch in the Pump Room down into the Fletcher’s Forge/Slaughterhouse. He remained unaware however, of Margar, the Forlorn Philosoper, who stayed back in the entrance cavern, and who decided to run up to him and attack him from behind. A fight ensued, in which they managed to kill the guard, mainly thanks to Margar’s Hegelian Owl, which scored a critical hit against the guard, tearing him to shreds.

They searched his body, and Rachela smashed his face to retrieve the guard’s teeth for her necklace, as per her custom (rolled in the Bad Habits table). Worried about the hatch that they had seen in the pump room, Shnee decided to drag the body there, to weigh down the hatch. Then she noticed a black sarcophagus (rolled from the random encounter table) that she was sure that she had not seen before from the corridor. Perplexed, she abandoned her idea.

Meanwhile Aldona started tinkering with one of the paintings in the corridor, activating a pit trap, leading to the fall of herself, Rachela, and Rachela's dog. Margar used his long chain to help them out. The trap started to slowly close itself up.

Then they dawdled for so long discussing their next steps, that I figured I’d roll on the random encounter table.

(The way this dungeon is written, it seems that encounters are to be rolled only upon entering a particular set of rooms, which left the players without sufficient urgency, in my opinion, that’s why I decided that a possibility to encounter some denizens of the dungeon was called for)

The roll resulted with two guards with sharpened teeth, who approached with indifferent intent. However, when Aldona loudly exclaimed „You will not take us alive!”, they were eager to comply. In the ensuing fight, the party tried to escape jumping to the far side of the pit, Rachela and Shnee succeeded, while Aldona and Margar fell into the pit.

Fittingly, one guard managed to jump over the pit, and one fell in. Aldona and Margar managed to decapitate the guard that fell into the tunnel, again with much help from Margar’s Owl, which scored another critical hit.

Rachela and Shnee fared much worse, barely making it in the fight, and losing Rachela’s dog, which fell down the pit, shortly before it closed (the dog fumbled the attack, I figured it's like losing a weapon). Finally they managed to reduce the guard to half his HP, after the morale roll he surrendered and begrudginly agreed to join them.

Margar and then Aldona took off their armor and squeezed through the tunnel westwards, entered the stuffy greenhouse, densely covered with plants. Margar tried to stealthily approach a campfire he saw, but his habitual whistling lead him to be quickly discovered by Lesdy and her three „hosts”. He and Aldona agreed to join them in their meal. Rachela’s dog stayed behind and gnawed on the guard’s corpse/pissed on his decapitated head.

After the meal and a short conversation, the „hosts” rised and attacked the Player Characters, who felt slowed down, and sweaty after the food and drink they were given. The attackers brought Margar down to 0 HP (making him fall unconscious for 4 turns). After a short struggle Aldona surrendered, and allowed herself to get tied down. The Blade of her Ancestors laughed at her incompetence.

Meanwhile Rachela and Shnee interrogated the guard about the Den, Fletcher, and the lost heir. They learned the guard knew about the heir, but did not know where he is held. He was afraid of Fletcher, and unwilling to aid them in fighting him. He also told them Fletcher would be willing to make a deal, just to get rid on "the woman". The upstairs half of the party decided to reactivate the closed pit trap, and use the table from the Dining Hall to safely move to the tunnel below. They told the guard to go first, so he eagerly obliged, slided down into the tunnel and promptly ran away to Fletcher (I forgot that the only door this way is supposed to be unopenable from this side, oops). Rachela told her dog to guide them toward their friends, the dog went into the tight tunnel, so they decided to disrobe and also squeeze through the tunnel, after which they heard a loud roar from somewhere behind them (it was Fletcher upon getting a report from the escaped guard).

Just about time they finished donning their armor back, making a huge noise (especially Rachela with her plate), Margar regained consciousness and escaped as quickly possible in his state in their direction, surprising his enemies. The "hosts" rised and went to investigate, upon encountering all three remaining party members, they were willing to parlay, and brought her to Lesdy. She, assured that they were no friends of Fletcher, told them that she has been consuming the sludge and trying to commune with the Gutworm dwelling within, and had them promise that they would get rid of Fletcher (while offering no aid from herself or her friends, basically using the PCs with no risk of her own). After that she rised, and left together with her men, after which the campfire went out (I though it might be cool), after that they were nowhere to be found (also thought that it would be cool, seeing how they all barely made sense to me as written anyway, I found it appropriate to give them a mysterious flair).

The party decided to rest in the Greenhouse and sleep the night, restoring their HP and Omens (another occasion where I felt the dungeoun lacked Random Encounters, but didn’t roll for any, Lesdy and her friends were apparently able to stay there undisturbed there, after all). When they were asleep, Margar dreamed of going down the hatch into a hellish realm of fire and flesh, meeting a monstrous entity and then stabbing Lesdy in the ribs (the dreams of what he should have done sent by his Hegelian Owl - if they followed the guard and made a deal with Fletcher, it would all have been over by now).

Upon resting, the players squeezed through the passage one by one. The body of the killed guard was missing, but the table blocking the pit trap was still there.

They scouted the Gem Room, but retreated back (they were tempted by the gems, but decided against disturbing them after what happened with the paintings) and instead climbed up on the table. They investigated the Pump Room, Aldona tried drinking the muddy liquid, but did not feel any more understanding of the Worm afterwards. Rachela opened the sarcophagus, which led to her and Aldona (the only PCs who were in the room) being sucked inside andbeing teleported into the Greenhouse.

Surprised but unfazed, they met up again in the corridor, and went back to the Dining Hall and experimented a bit with the ancient man. Knocked him over, then figured he might be hungry or thirsty, since he was sitting at a set table, with mugs and plates and all, so they tried to give him food or drink, but to no avail.

Then they sent Leon, Rachela’s dog to scout the guard room to the East. They heard the barking of a much larger dog. Soon, both dogs, together with two guards (one of them was the one they captured before, with a black eye – a sign of Fletcher’s frustration).

(They were awaiting around the Chain Room to ambush the party – figured it would make sense after their previous fights with the guards, and with the escaped guard notifying Fletcher)

After a short scuffle, Fletcher himself appeared, a huge bald bear of a man, wielding a huge red-hot flail. In the fight, both the guards and the dog soon perished, with only Fletcher remaining. Rachela however, became infected from the dog's bite, leaving her future bleak and uncertain. Shnee managed to score a critical hit on him, tearing apart his hardened skin (reducing his armor), but died soon after from a hit of his flail. Another casualty was Rachela’s dog, fried by Fletcher’s bolt of lightning.

Shnee, Gutterborn Scum. Donned in fur armor and armed with a femur.
Fough valiantly but died.

Thanks to their sacrifice, the remaining characters managed to defeat Fletcher, despite Aldona’s ancestral sword working against her. They brought him down to 0 HP, Aldona dealt the final blow, severing his arm, then Rachela stabbed his heart for good measure. The surviving party members quickly robbed Shnee of her belongings. Thus the session ended.

Entries into the Book of the Dead:

†Shnee, killed by Fletcher in the Accursed Den