Having not been able this week to finish anything original due to family and work pressure, instead here posted is and actual-play of the inaugural session of a campaign I ran for most of 2018. Starting out, I had intended to run
Portal Under the Stars with some modifications to fit it better into a bronze-age setting - but a week or so prior to the session, I said to myself, "This dungeon is a bit small - and a bit linear. I should tack on some additional side passages to make it fit a bit better!" The result was a much larger adventure that ended up taking three sessions to get out of: but I mention this because,
spoiler alert, if you have played in
Portal Under the Stars and recognize significant elements of it - that's why!
One of my players provided back some pencil-and-Photoshop drawings at the end of each session, based on what had grabbed his imagination. Art for this post are his.
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| Original Drawing by My Friend Dennis |
March 4
Captured, the party got to know one another in the bowels of a slave schooner, amid floors of straw and filth, eating barely enough to survive out of leaded half-bowls wedged in a trough-like bench like animals, a brotherhood was forged between them.
- Barek, former caravan guard
- Cuno, a beekeeper from Bushelland
- Cyril, the trapper
- Dagmer, illiterate Bushellander gong-farmer
- Garet, a farmer from Bushelland
- Glorandal, forester and Elf
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- Jerrah, the soldier
- Orphan, the tactless minstrel
- Steven, the Dingbat – and healer
- Turo, Demotic scribe
- Tymon, a farmer
- Zot, a beggar, devoted to an unseen patron
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They encountered an unexpected relief in a storm, wherein the transport schooner was dashed on jagged rocks! The fastener to which their common chain, run singularly through lead loops on shackles, exploded as a shaft of granite pierced the planking: setting them free, but likewise granting free entry within the hold to the raging saltwater outside. Zot quickly attributed their good fortune to the providence of an Unseen One and made to lead the way out; the group, motivated by freedom, by not-drowning, or by escaping a religious rant (or perhaps a combination of the three), quickly located their meager possessions, pilfered from them by their captors and stowed in crates towards the prow, and ascended out the hatch into an assault of rain, excoriation of whipping wind, and encroaching fulminations from peals of thunder.
Atop the deck, no pirates were to be found – having been thrown to the sea or otherwise departed. Two dead on the ship – one from a fall; the other from some “help” – and one additional on the beach with a broken leg, asking for help. The party passed him by; if it was his fate to survive, a mean would be provided – though Steven, unable to walk past without some sense of compassion, set the pirate walking again with a driftwood cane; and Aaron the Pirate hobbled south, towards the potential shelter of breakwaters.
Seeking shelter from the storm within a perceived crevasse atop a flight of winding, aged stairs carved into the rock, the party found a portcullis – purposefully but modestly carved: an arch topped by a crescent moon, encased by a pillar and lentil, flanked by a cat and owl – eyeless, both. The door was covered in embossed stars which glowed to the touch: and the party, recognizing a constellation associated with the goddess of the moon, Astarte, traced The Furrow into the celestial pattern: at which point, the door slid upwards, open.
Into the entry chamber, the party found a host of six statue guards – made of stone and bronze, armed with daggers and nets, clad in onyx scale. Entering the room, Jerrah disarmed one statue to inspect the blade – disarming it just in time, it would seem, as Orphan, the bard, stepped to a hidden trigger plate in the floor, causing the mechanical arm of the statue to heave its missing payload – disaster avoided narrowly, by chance of the draw as to which statue drew the eye of the soldier. Subsequent walkers avoided the touch plate until all statues were likewise disarmed – and disrobed – their scale mail serving a new master in the more adroit among the party.
Passing out of the guardian foyer, the party stepped into a grand marble hall – pockmarked and burned, under the light – but housing a massive statue of Astarte. The party, upon inspection of the statue, found it mechanically capable of rotation – and rotated it with elbow grease several counter-clockwise rotations. Finding this to be accomplishing nothing, Garet the farmer sought to exit the room to the south-east, but upon touching the door, the statue rotated on its own to face him! Upon opening the door, it release a gout of flame from one hand, knocking the breath from him and setting him alight. Garet executed a practiced stop-drop-and-roll, and Steven, the healer, ran over to help – but the statue flamed again, killing Garet instantly and wounding the healer. Fortunately, Garet’s pet hen survived; dumping an egg in the process. To disarm the trap, a pitchfork was borrowed from Garet’s body and its tines were jammed into the cog mechanism barely visible beneath the statue; preventing it from moving. A couple of doors later, just to try, showed the statue incapacitated.
Splitting up, part of the party then investigated the south-east door – finding a stairwell leading down. At the base of the stairwell, an altar for incense and kneeling benches. Within the benches, the party found some long abandoned treasures – but beside the altar, they found only a gaping hole in the wall, leading into a cob-webbed cavern.
A second part of the party then investigated the south-west door – finding a small crypt. Stepping in, Orphon the Minstrel piped up, there were bones in these alcoves among the wall! But horror! The bones began to rattle to life. Though the magic was not strong enough to lift them into full stature, it was enough to propel the animate bones into battle; sinking their teeth into Orphon – felling him – and likewise injuring Cuno the beekeeper. Turo, the scribe, was likewise struck – but in a bout of good fortune, the skull which had struck him had indeed broken its teeth but a moment before, biting into the stiff onyx of Dagmer’s scale: Turo was addled, but unharmed, by the attempt. In the following melee, the party filed in through the open door (the pyroclastic monument straining against the iron of the pitch fork tines), pounding skulls to dust and ending the threat.
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| Image of Minis with Photoshop Filter |
| Not sure which fight this actually was... |
March 18
Returning to the statue chamber at the sound of fading violence, the party decided to head north-east, opening the door with a blank face. Behind the door was a stairwell down, much similar to the south-east door, but opening into a hallway. Along the hall the party explored five rooms: first, a supply pantry from which they retrieved a handful of sealed but foul-smelling jars filled with a viscous material – which shortly thereafter was found to be flammable. Next, a boudoir – a lounge with pillows and fine rugs: bitten by time. Concealed in the cushions however, they came across a large spider – eight inches in height, rearing up as though to attack. It was made quick work of by spear and sword, but served as a reminder of the tomb’s hazards. Then, they found a display chamber – small benches in the corners, but in the center, a table at an angle large enough to hold a man. Across the ceiling, they saw dozens of stars – gemstones embedded in the painted ceiling. Some work with a spear and a pitchfork made short work of the ceiling: freeing the gemstones from their sockets – 91 of them in total. Looking downward, Tymon found a box hidden at the base of the table, behind where eyes would see: in it, burial spices and incense. The penultimate room appeared an embalming chamber: more jars, these with organs suspended in them, and a dozen or so antique iron tools, sharpened for the trade of the mortician. No hazards availed this room but a seeping unease. Lastly, the party entered into the octagonal culmination of the hallway – a large room with broken furniture, signs of struggle, and a large hearth, adorned with kitchen utensils. When all was thought explored – cabinets upended, cupboards raided, torches fashioned – Glorandal’s elf-sense tingled and he was drawn inexplicably to the hearth, where a smear on the floor revealed something out of place. Following the smear, he found a trapdoor in the wall, coming loose with some prying, leading off into a small corridor.
Their torches burning low, the party wrapped some velvet cut from the curtained walls of the boudoir around errant furniture legs found within the kitchen and pinned them in place with the iron embalming utensils – the quest for light satisfied, the party crept onward, doubled over to fit into the space, into the flickering darkness.
A handful of yards in, the curving passage opened through another trapdoor into an ominous space: a space permeated with dread – the source, perhaps, of the creeping suspense as it neared. In it, an intricate brass chest, locked and adorned with yawning sphynxes, and a hemispheric depression: painted as a circle with a crescent moon, but with another indentation – a second celestial body – in the moon’s dark. Zot spent the next 10 minutes inspecting the symbol; the rest of the party turned their attention to the chest. Some quick work with the narrow point of Jerrah’s spear caused the ancient lock to pop open, revealing contents of velvet, a locket, some rubies, an intricate, sacrificial knife, and a desiccated heart, no bigger than a Halfling’s fist. Leaving the heart, the troupe pocketed the remainder of the goods and moved out, through a thick, locked, vault-like door.
Initially, the party was then greeted by cobwebs and the rear side of a grand tapestry. Peaking underneath and then wriggling under, Cyril the Trapper was greeted by a great statue of a priestess of the moon, behind which a glimmering pool, filled with stars against a painted bottom, stretched off into the darkness. The remainder of the party took the more economical approach (going around rather than under the tapestry); they were then greeted by a troupe of crystalline beings. Approaching with caution, the creatures seemed attracted to torchlight – mesmerized – and using that to their advantage, the party was able to defeat the half dozen creatures with only one casualty – the beekeeper, Cuno. Inspired, Zot cut the warm heart from his chest and attempted to commune with the hidden moon from the previous room – much to the chagrin and surprise of everyone other than himself – regrettably, to no avail. But then again, Cuno wasn’t using it any more.
From there, the party continued down a spiral stair – splitting up, at first, to cover more ground; then reconvening upon the discovery that the staircases turned back in on each other, spilling out into the same foyer – to find a room with a miniature clay army in it. A table with topography, painted in grease pencil, and soldiers all across. Glorandal came across a silver officer, which he pocketed.
At the end of the room, a door opened into a larger area with a small army of man-sized clay amazons: a sling bullet across the chamber awakened them – directed to attack by a dry corpse clad in the same garb as the moon priestess statue! The clay army began to overwhelm the party – perched precariously on a slight ledge, 3 foot elevation over where they stood. Tymon was stabbed and felled; Jerrah wounded. A bullet fired to strike a glowing orb atop the throne of the corpse priestess caused it to fall – but the army pressed on. Several tossed jars of the flammable liquid from the embalming chambers dampened half the room with flammable liquid – one indeed set alight – but the catching of flame was slow – and the army pressed on. Cyril attempted to crush clay statues in the prior room, hoping a connection between them and the small objects: alas, the army pressed on – though he did find one made of curiously heavier metal – another silver figure, perhaps?
In retreat, Turo the scribe was felled.
The remainder of the party ran back up the stairs – easily outpacing the slow, methodical golems – and locking themselves tightly into the room of the sphynx locker. From there, the party catches its breath: contemplating their next move.
April 7
From the confines of the Blood Coffer, the party snuck into the hall. From behind the tapestry blocking them from view from the gazing pool, they could hear shuffling. Peeking out confirmed that four of the golems had followed, taking up a defensive perimeter, blocking the party from proceeding back to the lower level. One botched sneak attempt later, it became evident that though the golems were able to detect the party – and prepared to fight – they were not pursuant. Finding this, the party – in search of egress – parted into the caverns to the south.
First, they came across an open area – following a fork in the cavern to the south west. The area, carved and wrought as though a begun but unfinished expansion to the gazing pool room, had a blank area to the east wherein the party discovered some antique masonry tools; to the south, a narrow tunnel entrance, and to the west, a bridge over a 30 foot deep crevasse. Electing to follow the crevasse, the party went – tied off, one by one – across the bridge: which held, into another natural cavern, this one, unwrought by mason’s tools at all and covered in spider webs. The party, fearing spiderlings not unlike that which they had seen in the boudoir, used their torches to burn away the spider webs. In so doing, they flushed out three spiderlings – though they poisoned Zot, the party dispatched them hastily.
From the spider cavern, the party continued into a tunnel to the north, finding themselves in a small room leading back to the antechamber, where they had found kneeling benches, gold, and incense. Exiting back up the stairs, the party proceeded around the familiar immobile fire-spewing statue of Astarte, to the door on the North West. Opening it, they proceeded through a small hallway to a door – behind which they found a seeing chamber: home, it would seem, to a snake demon! A quick skirmish resulted in the death of Stephen – pierced by the snake demon’s horn, in his final moments proceeding from pained to confused to abject horror – wherein the horn sucked his life force out and into the demon, renewing its vigor! However, the renewal was not sufficient to allow the snake demon to prevail – as Glorandal severed its life force with his bronze scimitar. The snake turned to ash, burning from inside, until the horn remained, only. Glorandal picked up the horn, holding it closely, and wrapped it up for its (and the party’s!) protection.
Of note in the seeing room, the party found dozens of metal sheets engraved with astrological symbology unfamiliar to them and a large mirror, encased in wrought iron. Some experimentation later, the party was unable to see through the mirror (though convinced it was a magical tool), but in order to prevent incursion from other realms, they destroyed it with a sling, shattering the mirror and dumping most of the shards onto the floor.
From there, the party – obsessed with finding a way out of the death-trap they thought a haven – went back through the temple chambers and through the secret passage into the tomb below. The golems had retreated, and the party went to investigate. Their noise was noticed, as two golems came up to investigate through the spiral stair – but two versus six, they were quickly dispatched. Continuing down, the party was able to sneak unnoticed into the strategy room wherein the toy soldiers were found: and they saw the corpse priestess suspiciously huddled in the pit of the burial chamber. The party threw two jars of the embalming fluid they found, coating her with it and two torches, setting her alight. The golems turned and began to pursue: but as soon as the flames burned out the life force of their patron priestess, they fell motionless: the room filling with rank smoke.
Searching the room, Dagmer and Barek retrieved the loot and gear from the unmolested corpses of their friends Tymon and Turo; Glorandal and Jerrah investigated the room; while Cyril searched the throne. From the throne, the crystal orb – now flickering due to damage from the fall and from the sling bullet – was pocketed, and under the throne, Cyril discovered a laundry-chute into a hidden chamber. Several party members slid down into a tight space: finding a trove of treasure: including fine armor and arms – in addition to another hemisphere: a circle with a crescent moon and depression in the moon’s dark. The party took these – and a brass rod: with half a demon’s face on the head and a groove down the shaft.
Proceeding back to the monument chamber, the party deliberated how to exit the tomb/temple. The decision was made to free the statue – turn it to face East, pointing into a wall – and then re-pin it with the pitch fork: after which they proceeded back to the guardian chamber with the knife-throwing statues of stone and bronze. Avoiding the touch-plate that had almost knifed one of them on their first entry, they proceeded back to the main exit: finding an un-concealed lever that, upon pulling, caused the portcullis-like portal to open. Stepping back into the evening air – the party was liberated from the Crypt of the Moon!
Moving down to make camp at the beach, deciding what to do on the morrow, the party encountered a wandering wizard, Odius, who – curious about their travels and troubles – took a liking to the group and guided them to a nearby village: Cuttlefish Bay. Seeking out the Temple of Athirat (who is called the Sea Mother), they met two priestesses – Nan the Elf and Yaba the Halfling – who, on grounds of hospitality in the name of the Sea Mother, agreed to house the party while they recuperated: requesting 1 silver piece per day as a token to the temple, covering resources expended.
From there, the party sat back to rest, to heal, to reflect on the learning they had experienced through their adventure, they who remained:
- Cyril, trapper, and Warrior
- Dagmer, gong-farmer, and Warrior
- Barek, caravan guard, and Warrior
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- Glorandal, Elf
- Jerrah, soldier turned Rogue and Thief
- Zot, mendicant – newly Cleric
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...and foremost, to tally their haul!
