Session 13: The Face in The Mirror

Preface - This was one of those sessions when a random object becomes the center of the session. Generally I use donjon.com to generate my dungeons for my face to face sessions. This may not be considered RAW, but that is a whole other discussion. I do not pre read them, so I never know what traps, monsters, or treasures fill the dungeons. All I do is come up with a theme for the dungeon and roll with it. The dungeon generator throws in random descriptions of what is in the rooms sometimes. It can be cool sometimes, but mostly lame, so I choose weather or not to keep or alter it to fit the theme.

My setting was established long before I learned about Prep Addiction and went into recovery. It was worked on in 2020 and was a shared world between my friends. That being said, I had some big mysteries built into the setting that were not being interacted with, completely dormant but always in the back of my head. When I started running weekly sessions, I was doing no prep so it didn't bother me, we were having a blast playing AD&D correctly.

Before I printed this dungeon out, I had been binge watching analog horror YouTube videos. Specifically Wendigoon's explanations of specific series as I watched through the original content. This session, one random object made everything came together.

Player Characters

Party: The Silver Claw

Rameses Numeral Uno - Level 1 Human fighter / Luchador, Lawful Neutral, trains at L.W.O. gym in Paradiso, oils up before every lucha match

Smoker - Level 1 Human Fighter, Lawful Neutral, ex Paradisan marine turned mercenary, fallows a warrior's code, smokes 2 cigars at once.

Padre Pedro Sanchez - Level 1 Human Cleric, Lawful Good, From the mission of Andeen outside Paradiso, always a little late to the party.

12/10/22 The Adventurers' Guild in Paradiso is looking for an adventure party to investigate a strange door found during a sewer expansion project for the city. A newly formed group of adventures going by The Silver Claw, plan to take up the challenge. Unfortunately one of the members, Padre Pedro, is nowhere to be found. Looks like the fighters, Smoker and Rameses, are going to have to take their 3 men-at-arms and go it without him. They enter the sewers where the expansion project is being worked. The workers lead them to the door and they open the door to a dark stairway and descend into the dungeon below.

The stairs end at a 10' by 10' room with a door heading West and a door heading East. The party takes the door to the West. It opens into a 30' by 70' rectangular room. The ceiling of the room is a depiction of an exceptionally gruesome battle between 2 savage tribes, notably the skinning of living prisoners. What is even more interesting about this room is the large 8 foot mirror on the Northern wall. The mirror has a very ornate frame carved from a pitch black wood. The mirror does not match the rest of the room. This place was clearly made by ancient savages but the design and craftsmanship of the mirror appears to be something you would find from "The Old World". Rameses takes a torch from one of his men and approaches the mirror to investigate.

There is no reflection in the mirror of Rameses, the torch or anything in the room. All he sees in the mirror is a what appears to be a face. It has 2 circles for eyes and a long mouth. It floats at eye level with the viewer and stares as if waiting for something. The party is left speechless at the uncanny scene. The party is very interested in the mirror and how it even got in this place, but they would rather wait for their cleric Padre Pedro before they start messing with it. There are 2 doors on the Southern wall and they take the one closer to them. 1st attempt to open the door is a failure. A loud knock is rings throughout the dungeon. The party gets it on a 2nd try but find themselves in the presence of 10 very prepared orcs with pit vipers and Hawaiian shirts. The rumors of the Boogaloo Boiiz Tribe are true! No one is surprised so initiative is rolled and the orcs win.

The orcs engage with the party. Luckily for the party, the orcs are armed with flails and long swords so they can only attack with 2 at a time due to the doorway. Combat goes on for 3 rounds. The party slays 4 orcs triggering a retreat. They run to another exit in the room. Ramses wants to persue the fleeing orcs, but smoker and his men are more enamored with the treasure and torcher devices in the room. Without the torch light of Smokers men, Ramses is forced to stick with the party. Smoker pulls out a glowing shield from a pile of 6,000 Copper Pieces, and 41 Electrum Pieces from the 4 dead orcs' bodies. Smoker wants to leave the dungeon so he can get the shield identified. They leave the dungeon and are able to find a magic user in Paradiso to identify the item at the cost of 125 gold. They do not have all of it but make a deal to put 100 gold down and pay back the remaining 25. (This included the 6,000 copper) The party rests for the night hoping their cleric will arrive the next day.

12/11/23 The party waits around the Adventurers' Hall to see if Pedro has arrived with 3 spearmen. Sure enough Pedro enters the hall and shuffles over to speak with the rest of the party. They tell him about the orcs and the mirror. The plan is to eliminate the rest of the orcs, and then decide what to do with the mirror. Before they head to the dungeon, Pedro can not decide which spells to prepare. He tells the party he is preparing 2 cure light wounds and command, but changes his mind last minute and prepare cure light wounds, bless, and detect magic not telling the party. They head down into the dungeon back to the mirror room.

The rooms eerie feel comes over Pedro and he shutters in fear when laying eyes on the mirror. Ramses says," not now me hermano. " They move to back to the torture room and then open the door the orcs retreated through. It leads to a 70' by 50' rectangular room. its empty with and archway on the Eastern wall. This leads to a 50' by 30' room with an archway and 2 doors. They decide to go through the Southern door. They open the door to a short 30' hallway heading West, and then take a door at the end of the hall on the Southern wall.

The door opens into a 70' by 70' square room. The room has a slight slope towards the center of the room with a pit of spikes. The orcs from before are in here throwing captive sewer workers in the pit. The party holds the high ground and now outnumber the orcs thanks to Pedro's men. they decide to hold the doorway. After killing 2 orcs Pedro casts his 1 heal on Smoker after he took a big hit thanks to the orcs flails against his shield. The battle more and Smoker gets low on health again. He asks for another heal and Pedro finally reveals he changed his spells to the party. They ask him if he could use command but he changed it for bless, BIG OOF. Smoker is hit again and put exactly at 0, KO. Pedro steps up and holds the line as his men pull out Smoker. Ramses is able to finish off the fight with the men at arms with no party deaths. They roast Pedro and tell him to plan better while they search the bodies finding 49 Electrum Pieces. They head back to the mirror room and discuss the mirror.

Once facing the mirror Pedro casts detect magic on the mirror. I thought this was apparent from the face in it, but yes the mirror is magic. Pedro then has a good idea. Maybe they should talk to the mirror. They start communicating with the mirror. The mirror speaks in a creepy monotone voice. He seems to be somewhat aloof on where he is from and why he is here. They find out its name is Gwyn, and he was transported into the dungeon a few months ago. The party thinks the strange mists might be involved but can not confirm. They ask the mirror what it can do? Gwyn states that he has knowledge that no one knows about the New World. The party asks it to tell them something no one in Paradiso would know. Gwyn says their are colossal beasts that slumber beneath the New World. The party then asks if any are close. The mirror ponders this question. He says their are 2 close that slumber, and the corpses of some that have perished in the past. Then they ask is one close and Gwyn says yes. Gwyn's face then morphs into a image of The Sunken Temple, which these PCs know nothing about. They ask how would one awaken this beast. Gwyn's face morphs again, this time into a line of people falling into a large pit.

The party now has no idea what to do with this thing. First they were going to sell it but now Smoker and Ramses want to keep it as a tool. Padre Pedro strongly insists they need to take it back to the mission. Ramses points out to Pedro that the church is not the authority in the New World and says he needs to lose his Old World mentality. Smoker is still in bad shape from the battle so they decide to wait a week till Smoker can adventure again. Ramses carries the mirror with his 18 / 78 STR. They buy Smoker his own room and stash the mirror in the room with him.

12/12-17/23 As Smoker recovers in his room, he has constant nightmares. Notably him being tied up and pushed into a pit that seems impossibly deep, and Gwyn's face whispering unknown secrets to him that he can not remember when he wakes. Smoker becomes fearful of the very sight of the mirror and does whatever he can not to look upon it.

12/18/23 They Silver Claw meet again in Smokers' room. Seeing his current state Pedro casts remove fear on Smoker and he returns to his regular cool and collected self. Pedro then casts detect evil on the mirror, it obviously is and the spell not really needed, but yes it is evil. Ramses and Smoker can not be talked out of keeping the mirror somewhere safe for later. Pedro, a lawful good cleric, allows them to take it to an undisclosed location but says he must tell the Mission of Andeen about the mirror. They accept this deal and decide to wait a day for Pedro's spells to return whilst they find a location for the mirror. Smoker and Ramses buy some cloth to cover the mirror, and find a location called [ REDACTED ]. They are then given [ REDACTED ] for the price of [ REDACTED ]. Smoker and Ramses store the mirror and ask if it wants them to bring it anything. It simply replies," A Child." This creeps out the two and they cover the mirror back up with the cloth and leave.

11/19/23 The party travels to the mirror room and takes the other exit on the opposite corner on the South wall. It leads to a short turning hallway that has another door, they open the door which leads to a 50' by 70' rectangular room filled with 12 giant rats. The rats attempt to rush the party at the doorway. The front line starts smashing rats left and right whilst Pedro lobs an oi flask from the back killing 3 rats. Almost all of the rats are wiped out before 2 retreat through a small hole in the wall. This room contains a partially drawn map of the dungeon sprawled on the wall with yellow paint, most likely by the sewer workers the orcs killed. They also manage to find 1,000 Silver Pieces and 100 Platinum Pieces. They decide this was enough adventuring for the night IRL and leave the dungeon and end the session.

Treasure and XP:

4 Orcs - 59XP - Split 50/50 between Smoker and Ramses

"The Big Blocker", Neutral +1 Magic Shield - Sale Value 2,500 - 250 XP Split 50/50 between Smoker and Ramses, claimed by Smoker

6,000 Copper Pieces - 30 XP - Split 50/50 between Smoker and Ramses

41 Electrum Pieces - 20 XP - Split 50/5- between Smoker and Ramses

6 Orcs - 81 XP - Split 50/50 between Ramses and Pedro

49 Electrum Pieces - Split 50/50 between Ramses and Pedro

"Gwyn's Prison", Magic Mirror, Sale Value Unknown, 2,500 XP Split 3 Ways, Claimed by Smoker and Ramses

1,000 Silver Pieces - 50 XP Split 3 Ways

100 Platinum Pieces - 500 XP Split 3 Ways

Rankings:

Smoker - S - If he wouldn't of gotten knocked out it would of been a E ranking. Blame Padre Pedro.

Ramses - E - Killed things and took charge.

Padre Pedro - P - Because of lack of communication in changing his spells, he got Smoker Knocked Out and almost killed. He allowed an unholy object to be taken to an undisclosed location. He cast Detect Magic instead of Detect Evil when they already told him mirror was magic.