Session 30: In Search of The Drakes' Bane Dagger

Player Characters, Henchmen, Hirelings, and Animals:

Heinrich - Level 1 Human Magic-User, Lawful Neutral

Manfred Van Leopold - Level 1 Human Fighter, Lawful Neutral

Hunting Dog, Goat with Bucket Harness (Heinrich)

2 Men at Arms (Manfred)

4/7/24 This Party is made up of locals from Taco Island. Heinrich is a student of Gielinor, the local archmage who studies the volcano that sprouted the island. His studies have gained the attention of some fire drakes that have been burning buildings and terrorizing the town. Gielinor is looking for adventurers brave enough to retrieve his dagger of drake slaying from an abandoned university building.

The building has been abandoned ever since dungeon monsters took over it, crawling up from the depths below through a hole in the basement. Now with the drakes causing problems, it is now up to some brave adventurers to go in and retrieve the specialized weapon.

Gielinor gives his student Heinrich a map of the ground floor, but explains that the dagger is on another level.

Heinrich requests the assistance of Manfriend Van Leopold, a local fighter with a couple of goons by his side, to be the muscle for this adventure. He agrees and they make their way to the front door of the building.

They find that it isn’t locked or stuck, so they bust in to find a room with two fire beetles and 1000 copper in coffers. Manfriend slices through one spilling the contents of its glands on his sword. Then Heinrich bashes the other with his staff.

They now have glowing weapons since they were covered by the glowing fire beetle goo, this effect will last 6 days. Heinrich lights up a torch and continues down to room 1 where they find broken furniture, a pile of bones that have been picked apart by rats, and a pile of banana peels that still have some yellow left on them. The dog goes in and happily takes some of the human bones and gnaws on them. The party searches the banana peel pile and finds 100 platinum hidden underneath, Manfried holds onto the platinum and Heinrich picks up some banana peels in case he wants to comically trip somebody later.

Manfred is strong, but not exceptionally. He fails to open the portcullis to room 11. They go back around towards room 17 and hear a scream as if somebody is getting their fingernails ripped off to the West.

When they get into room 17, they find a bunch of empty crates that smell like they had bananas in them at some point. They approach room 11 and find a hidden nook in the back of the room containing 750 electrum in sacks! They take 100 electrum and stuff banana peels into the sacks so it looks like they’re still full. They load the loot on the goat and head to room 16 in search of the tortured soul they heard earlier.

Manfred goes first into the archway to room 9 and makes his saving throw, leaping backwards before a 10’ pit trap emerges below him. They see some corpses below in the pit trap and find 300 copper on them. They climb up the other side of the pit to see a rat that run into a room with a door to the north.

The party chases the rat to room 4 and finds a handful of south pole elves in a large room with a couple normal looking doors as well as one fancier wooden door between two beautiful stone columns, and a pool that they recognize from their map. They question the elves who advise the party to take a dip in the pool, which they claim is magical.

Heinrich, the magic-user, digs magic so he goes in first. He finds that he is nimbler now! (+1 DEX) This gives him a bonus to AC so it’s a pretty big deal!

Harold (Man at Arms) goes in next and finds the pain in his back is gone! (+1 CON). Then Adelbert (Men at arms) wades into the pool and looks stupefied with a 1000 yard stair. He gets out and asks, “Duhh what do we do now boss?” in a dopey, slow voice. (-3 WIS)

Manfred realizes his hireling is much dumber and gullible now, so he refuses to go into the pool fearing the same. The South pole elves laugh and leave the party, happy to have sown some chaos. They tell the party the dagger is behind the door between the pretty columns before leaving towards the entrance.

NEVER TRUST AN ELF!!!

The party tries to open the door behind the columns, but it’s locked. They attempt to chase down the elves who are now on the other side of the pit trap between rooms 9 and 16. The party is hoping they know where to find the key.

“Chop it down, it’s just a wooden door!” The elves throw a hand axe to the party from across the pit trap in exchange for 5 electrum. They continue laughing as they leave the building. The party is a little skeptical of the maniacal laughing, but Adelbert is now a gullible doofus, so they give the axe to him and tell him to chop down the door.

As Adalbert approaches the door with violent intent, the columns around the door shrink down and become like fair maidens with steel swords known as Caryatids.

The Caryatids tell the party they should not chop this door down, but may be able to help them find what they are looking for. Their advice is predicated on Manfred jumping in the pool, because they think it would be funny to see what happens since he’s so afraid of becoming a doofus like Adalbert is now. They won’t help unless he takes a dip in the pool. Manfriend still refuses, and the party doesn’t want to mess with these intimidating beauties, so they look at the map and consider alternative routes.

They decide to take the door to room 5. They find a lounging area with couches and ottomans. They lift up the lid on an ottoman and find another huge score of 750 electrum. This time they take all of it and load it up on the goat, who’s buckets are now full of the precious alloy coins.

They enter room 7 and find a disturbing scene. A man sitting at a desk has committed suicide with a flintlock pistol. He left a note that reads “The Carbuncle made me do it!”

Manfred loots the flintlock, but doesn’t find any ammo laying around. They leave the gruesome scene and open the door to the West. They are greeted with the strong stench of burnt gunpowder. The party continues down the hallway and come to an open portcullis.

Manfred walks through first and triggers a gun powder powered spear trap! It goes off with a bang and knicks him for 4 damage. The rest of the party go low to pass, but the trap’s charge has already been exhausted so it doesn’t shoot again.

In this room they find a desk and search the drawers to find a rare chameleon transponder snail.

Since they are locals, they know how to operate it. It works pretty similarly to a walkie talkie or basic cell phone. They press the “callback button” and are able to hear another snail’s ringtone from another room. They try to follow the sound but a horrible stench on the way there makes the goat refuse to come with them.

They leave Harold behind with the goat and follow the ringing of the snail. They come to a room (8) filled with smoke, that smells like burnt meat. They keep following the ringing to room 10, and find another chameleon snail in the drawer of a desk. They also find a drawing labeled Carbuncle. They take one of the snails and bring it back to Harold with the goat, so they can call each other if they run into trouble. They tell Harold to go to the entrance and wait for them.

They go back past the smokey room and down into room 20, a long chamber with a red carpet and unlit torches on sconces that ends at a closed portcullis. They check under the rug and find a key, which they take. The bars are hard to pass again, so they go back to the smokey room and head to room 2.

They find a kitchen that’s got an empty oven and a fume hood. They flip a switch which activates a fan that sucks all the smoke out of the nearby rooms through the hood. They then go North and around to a staircase leading up. The upper floor is blocked off by a portcullis, so they go back and take the key to the Caryatid column door. The party call Harold, who saw the smoke from outside which spooks the party. They think that a magic user may have noticed the smoke and be after them, so they try to hurry up the dagger retrieval as fast as they can!

They try the key on the door, which unlocks it. The columns seem to not care that they pass opening the door with the key. Perhaps it was only a brute force entry that the columns had a problem with. They go through the unlocked door and down a spiral staircase.

They are now in a room with one closed portcullis exit, and one lever. They get Adalbert to flip the lever, and the portcullis opens up, but they hear what sounds like a bunch of portcullis’s on the upper level open up as well!

They continue on this level through the newly opened portcullis and encounter a group of 6 giant rats. The party kills one, but Heinrich faints after taking a bite from one of the rodents. Manfred scoops up the fallen wizard and tanks some opportunity attacks to retreat to the room with the lever.

Manfred pulls the lever, closing the portcullis and blocking the rats from following the party any further. He carries the magic user out of the dungeon, and the party takes a week to rest up, resupply, and get some ammo for the flintlock pistol for a second entry into the dungeon. Heinrich also buys a healing potion for 400 gold, and Manfried buys some arsenic and cheese to help deal with these rats.

4/14/24 They come back into the room with the lever. The rats are still on the other side of this portcullis, so the party tosses the rat poisoned cheese through the gaps in the portcullis. The rats violently fight each other over the scraps. The party waits for an hour for the poison to take effect, and eventually the rats die… but since it took an hour a random encounter roll is made, and rot grubs come up as a wandering monster.

Now, rot grubs are usually used by DM’s when they are tired of having players poke around in dead bodies or feces. They essentially simulate the natural diseases that you would encounter if you poked around in disgusting places like that. However, since I rolled them as a wandering monster, and not a as a monster in a room, they were going to be active threats, and not the poison/trap style monster they usually are.

After the rats succumb to the rat poison, it becomes apparent that they were infested with rot grubs. The rats’ immune systems must have kept the rot grubs at bay, and since rat hearts are small, the rot grubs never had the chance to enter them and cause instant death like they normally would for humans.

The rot grubs burst out of the dead flesh and sense the living blood of the party, which they prefer, and begin a slow crawl towards them. Since they’re very small, they can easily squeeze past the portcullis bars. The party contemplates their options. They could run away since they’re 9x as fast as the grubs, but decide that the rot grubs are in their path towards the drake slayer dagger, so they try to squish the small bugs and continue on. What could go wrong eh?

Manfred shoots one with his flintlock pistol, but Heinrich misses with his staff. One of the grubs manages to leap onto his staff and crawl up onto his arm, embedding himself under the magic user’s skin. Heinrich tries to fish the grub out of this arm with his knife, but ends up cutting his own artery, and faints again. Shoulda cast a spell instead buddy!

Manfred and his hirelings stomp the remaining grubs while this happens, and the next turn he comes to Heinrich’s aid to save him from the inevitable death of a rot grub reaching his heart. In an attempt to amputate Heinrich’s arm to save him from the rot grub reaching his heart, Manfred rolls a natural 20 with his broad sword. Due to his natural 20, he is able to surgically remove the arm, killing the rot grub but severing most of the magic user’s arm from his body, without killing his comrade.

Manfred takes a rope and uses it as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, and uses a torch to seal the wound. He then takes the wounded magic user and his severed arm back to town where he drinks a healing potion and preserves his arm in a bag of salt, hoping to find a healer capable of reattaching it.

Unfortunately no such healer exists in Edinburgh. However, Gielinor knows of a rabbi capable of casting such a clerical spell on East Jew’s Point. If Heinrich can make it to the other side other side of the island and pay appropriately, Rabbi Shmuley would certainly offer his services to a friend of Gielinor.

Treasure & XP

Treasure:

100 Platinum – 500 XP

845 Electrum – 1690 XP

1300 Copper – 6 XP

Flintlock pistol – 50 XP

2 chameleon transponder snails – 600 XP

Monster XP:

2 Fire Beetles – 33 XP

6 Giant Rats – 48 XP

3 Rot Grubs - 69 XP

Total XP: 3996 XP split two ways, 1998 XP each

Ranking:

Manfred Van Leopold – E - fought bravely and saved his party member from death

Heinrich – P - fainted twice, engaged in melee combat often, didn’t cast any spells... oof!