Session 36: Nothing but 1's!

Player Characters, Henchmen, Hirelings, & Animals

Macready – level 4 ranger

Macready’s horse left at base with Albertus

Ars Face – Macready’s mule

Dogmeat, fido, Cleveland – Macready’s 3 dogs tamed from last session

The party starts off in Halifax, and notices the bars are packed, but a few notable regulars aren’t there. Not acquaintances per say, but the drunken gnomes who always sit at table 1 are gone, and the type of folk who are always found at this hour are nowhere to be seen. Times are good with the oil flowing and the Marines keeping pirates at bay, so the townsfolk have plenty of extra cash to blow on drinks and food. Someone even buys the heroes of Team Tundra a round of drinks. The generous individual mentions a concert that was supposed to be a couple weeks ago. He wanted to go but had other matters to attend to. His brother went to the concert, but still hasn’t come back.

The party decides to investigate this concert, and figure out what happened to the attendees. They decide to take the same route the concert goers went, which will be about a week of travel by foot. They purchase a mule for Tharn, and the ranger dumps a large sum of money for a backpack flame thrower, Gnoma Scotian tech he has been saving for months. They also load up with yeti-oil to ward off the cold throughout the journey, and animal feed.

The ranger is aware of a white dragon’s lair along this path, so before heading off he spends a day collecting local foliage so he can make a “ghillie” cloak and camouflage for the party, including the supply carts. They would rather evade an encounter with the dragon on the journey. This will prove to be a wise choice!

As they head off, a gnomish maiden named Juliet asks to come along. She claims her beloved went to the concert and she stayed behind to watch the children. She fears he is dead and begs to come along. The ranger looks the weak gnome with zero survival skills up and down and decides she would be more trouble than she’s worth. They reject her offer and head off without her.

The first day is uneventful, as the protection of the city still affects travelers along the road here. But the next day, the ranger and the whole party don their camouflage, since they will be passing the vicinity of the dragon’s lair this day. I roll a 1 for morning encounters on the dragon’s lair hex! I had previously decided how effective the camouflage would be from this distance, so I roll a d100 and the dragon doesn’t immediately notice them – he has set his eyes on a giant owl that he is tracking down instead. The ranger watches from his spyglass from afar as the dragon pounces on the giant owl, and flies the corpse back to his den for lunch. The party sit in silence for the rest of the day, and begin their journey again as night falls, hoping to cross this hex while the dragon sleeps. After they leave the dragon’s lair hex, they set up camp and take a rest.

The next morning they follow the road down from some mountains and into a valley of plains. They get about halfway through the valley before night falls, and they set up camp again. An Aggressive bat notices something shiny during Macready’s watch, and attacks. Macready expertly dispatches the bat with his blue-stringed bow using a couple well placed arrows. They continue through the valley in the morning and run into some Bactrian camels. The 7 camels bite and spit at the adventurers, but the half-elf casts a couple of sleep spells which puts three of the camels into a magical sleep. The remaining camels get scared off by the rest of the party, but not after temporarily blinding some men with spit shots to the eyes, and biting Dan for 3 damage putting him at 3/6 hp – which will be important later. Ultimately they flee due to the half-elf waving his flame sword and the party ties up the 3 remaining camels. The party gets the chance to hit the fleeing camels with opportunity attacks, but they respect nature and choose not to.

Regulus Tharn – level 3 fighter/magic user half-elf

Bill Murray – Tharn’s dog

Dan, Ulrich – Tharn’s spear guys

Greeny, Charlie, Scud – Tharn’s hired Paradiso marines

Gerald – Tharn’s Mule

One of the three tied up camels, Demitri, takes to the party quickly. Kamel Joe, the hardiest camel, doesn’t fall in line immediately, but he doesn’t stay aggressive for long. The third camel, we’ll call this one “bad camel” hems and haws at the party every chance it gets, and spits in their face when they try to befriend it. The ranger binds his mouth for now. The sun sets as the party comes to the border of the plains and mountains, so they decide to set up camp while still in the plains. As night falls, a small horde of roughly 100 bandits, comes along the road in the same direction the party has been going. The Ranger helps the party maintain the element of surprise, so they hide in the brush and allow the massive group of ruffians to pass before being able to get to sleep for the night. Dan will restore a hitpoint and be at 4/6 hp this night.

The following morning they will take out their best rations, the finest foods and cigars, and have the fanciest meals they can make with what is available. The feast is even shared with the animals, even the bad camel, before binding his mouth again (as he is still aggressive) The party will try every day this session to see if the camel comes around, but it never will.

After the feast they begin to ascend the final mountainous region before reaching Annapolis. They make it to the top without encounters, and look down at Annapolis below. They set up camp for the night under some trees. Regalus Tharn takes up watch for the first segment of nighttime. As he searches the horizon for enemies he begins to hear a thumping, coming closer and closer from behind him… stomps echo from the side of the mountain they just came from. Eventually 4 frost giants come into view. His dogs start barking, waking the rest of the party up, and preparing for battle.

Frost giants are no joke, so Tharn uses up one of his precious casts of ice blitz, freezing and stunning the giants. Two of the giants made their saving throw, so they are back in action soon but the two who are stunned get executed by Tharn's dog and the musketeers while the ranger torches the other two frost giants with his flamethrower. Now it’s the giants’ turns; Frost giants do 4-24 damage per hit and are 10 hit die monsters, which according to the table on page 75 means they are effectively +10 to hit… The first club swing still actually misses and lands at the feet of Regulus as he prepares a magic missile spell, and the second smashes directly into Dirty Dan, the spearman with 4/6 health.

Now this is where the miracle happens, I roll 2 d6’s at a time, the first two rolls – snake eyes. 1 and 1. It’s possible Dan lives! But still, very unlikely. Then I roll another 2 d6’s – snake eyes again! All four 1’s! – meaning Dan is knocked unconscious by the club even though it was almost certain that he would be slain. Dirty Dan pulled the 1/1296. The table erupted.

The giants roll very low and fail their morale check caused by the death of the two executed giants and the fact that they’re on fire. They run away towards Annapolis and leave the two fallen giants behind with a giant sack of loot. The party gets opportunity attacks, and Regulus fires magic missiles, but they escape down the mountain and disappear into the night. The party stabilizes their incredibly lucky hireling, and then turn to the treasure.

The party loots the giant’s sack and finds a large pile of gold coins, a fabulous necklace (with all sorts of gems and pearls, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, gold and white gold ect.), a scroll of protect from undead, and a short sword that glows light blue. One half of the sword has an elven maiden with emerald eyes, and on the other side, the visage of a man with sapphire eyes. The ranger carefully uses some cloth to retrieve the blade without touching it directly and ties it along with the necklace to the underside of his cart. They put the coins in the exposed area of the cart and take the giants’ toes as trophies. During his shift he will gather some sap from the nearby pine trees to preserve the giants toes until they make it to town. He’ll string these onto the mules and camels necks.

The party heads back to camp for the night, but the gunshots and smell of roast giant flesh has seemingly attracted some hungry mountain lions, who show up not long after Macready preps the last toe. They approach from a distance when actions are declared. The lions chose to walk right up to striking range. Macready swings his flamethrower back and forth to create a makeshift fire wall, hoping to keep them back and scare them away. They are very hungry and do not get deterred by the flames so the next turn they will attempt to pounce around the fire. The party wins initiative and the mountain lions get cooked by Macready and then finished off by a magic missile from Regulus while mid pounce.

Since the night was very eventful, the magic-user needs more rest, so he will sleep late and wake to prepare his spells around noon. Macready will use this time to follow the mountain lion tracks. The Ranger cannot make sense of the tracks that seemingly go everywhere. He has no luck tracking the lions, but he still has a good read on the bandit’s trail that seems to head straight to the city.

The party can hear a low frequency humming coming from the central large ziggurat in the North half of the city. It will get louder and louder as they get nearer and nearer, but never unpleasantly loud. Night creeps up on the party as they approach the city, but they are close enough to finish the journey without stopping so they continue on and get to the gates between midnight and 2am. They ask the guards about the “bandits” and the guards seemed to recognize the “bandits” as concert goers, here for the show that’s been going on. The party asks some questions about the concert, and the guards tell them that people have been going in and out of the Ziggurat for about a month, leaving to get food and sleep then going right back in. They aren’t really causing any trouble and they bring commerce so the guards don’t have a reason to stop them. Just no one knew the concert would last this long. They and get some directions to the nearest inn.

The first one they go to is a nice place and goes for 5 gold a night. Regulus will pay for the unconscious Dirty Dan to rest here for a week to regain his strength. Mostly old people are at the bar, drinking whiskey and eating oatmeal, sharing stories of battles fought long ago. Regulus wants to save some money on the able bodied so he goes scouting around for a cheaper place to let his men stay, and he finds a “Motel 1” fenced area with a gazebo someone will let them stay at for 1 gold a night. They’ll sleep in shifts to watch for thieves in the night.

The next morning the party is looking to set up a base of operations for Team Tundra in Annapolis. They take out the fancy necklace from their hidden spot on the cart and put it on Regulus's mule. It constricts and ends up killing the mule – as a necklace of strangling would do. They decide to keep the necklace and not release such a trap out into the world. Regulus will touch the magic short sword they found earlier. However, the sword on his hip will jingle with jealousy and more steam than normal will bubble up through his magical scabbard in defiance. Regulus puts the sword back down as not to offend. After weighing their options, the ranger decides to keep the sword until they find a rightful owner. They promote the two good camels to be their primary cart pullers, and sell the bad camel and the armored mule. The bad camel gets sold for 3,500 gold, and the armored mule goes for 300 gold. They’ll use this money along with the gold from the giants to purchase the cheapest place they could find in the city with a stable for animals, which they get for 4,000 gold.

They search the place they just bought, and find a trapdoor hidden in the carpet under the couch. They pop open the trap door, and peer down into the darkness. The light pierces down to reveal a circle of 13 humans. They do not react to the door being opened or the light being cast on them. They have just been sitting in the dark in what looks like a meditation circle or something. Their lifeless reaction spooks the party and they slam the trap door shut, spike it, and split off in two directions for help. The fighter/magic-user will go to the church to look for local clerical help, and the ranger will go to the guards.

Macready goes to the guards and asks for help with the people squatting in his basement but they want payment for guard duties and they dislike regular humans. He let’s the guard, Joseph, know that if he ever needs help, Macready will remember him and not help. Joseph replies “I wouldn’t expect it from the likes of yee!”

Tharn has now made it to the church. He finds the Church entrance locked, and no one is coming to the door to greet him as bangs the handle for a turn. He’s chaotic good, so he breaks in by casting the knock spell and enters the church. He comes into the lobby and calls out “is anyone here?” and 9 ghouls crawl out from under the pews and begin to engage with him. He quickly pulls out his scroll of protect from undead and begins casting it. The ghouls make it up to him as the scroll takes effect, and the holy force pushes them back while opening them up for attacks. He proceeds to cast ice blitz and magic missile while the ghouls scramble around unsure of how to deal with this magic.

Ghouls never flee, but they do have a certain level of cunning that would prevent them from being slaughtered without exhausting all means of fighting back. So they seem to run away the next turn as Regulus strikes them down one by one, but it turns out they were running towards the altar and reaching for unholy symbols. Tharn rushes up and gets some hits in, then casts magic missile, zapping the last one as it turns around with the symbol in his hand. Tharn finds in this room: two golden unholy symbols, 7k copper, 1k silver, a scroll of protection from lycanthropes, Level 1 MU Scrolls of tensor’s floating disc, enlarge, write, Level 4 MU Scroll of Dimension Door.

He doesn’t want to waste the protection from undead scroll’s effect while it is still active, so he rushes through the church banging on doors and spends a lot of time trying to get into some doors that just never open. After around 10 failed door attempts he finally makes a successful throw and barges into a back room. He sees the corpses of a priest, 2 nuns and one seemingly regular guy. He walks closer to identify them and when he gets close, the protect from undead scrolls aura begins to push away the “bodies”! Knowing exactly what they are, he pulls out his flame sword and jams it into the priest zombie’s neck and kills him. The other three get up and begin moaning as zombies do with blood running down their chins. With his last round of protection from undead, Regulus slices one of the nuns in half. Now that his protection is off, he goes for the defensive parry, a skill he has learned with his flame sword, boosting his AC like a normal parry but also allowing him to inflict a d6 of fire damage to the zombies on each successful block. He misses a block and catches a zombie claw in his nose, but two zombies end up getting killed by flaming parries in the next couple turns. Regulus finishes off the last one with a sword swing. There’s a handful of coins around but he ignores them to exit the church and meet back up with the party.

Since Joseph and the other guards weren’t any help, due to not trusting newcomer humans, Macready decides to go back to the house and kick out the squatters himself. They’re basically limp and don’t resist being carried out and placed into the street. They slowly meander back into a circle and sit down like they were when the party found them. When Regulus comes back, Macready tells him about the racist police and how they wouldn’t help him because he’s a human. Regulus explains the showdown at the church, and they decide to go there in the morning after talking with the guards with a half-elf. When Regulus talks to him, he theorizes that the squatters were on some sort of drug that makes them behave that way. Regulus pays the guards 10 gold to watch the house for a month, and 4 extra on top of that as a tip.

The party carries the treasure into the basement, and find 78 gold coins hidden down there, along with a bunch of clothes that were similar to what the squatters were wearing. They bury the magic short sword and treasure, (including the holy symbol Macready traded with the owl for in downtime), and leave the dogs to watch the house with Ulrich for a bonus of 5 gold. They’ll also restock on oil for the flamethrower.

In the morning they go back to the church and find the door is still unlocked from the last time he used the knock spell. They spike the door open to let as much sunlight in as possible, fearing a ghost or similar.

They go to the door that Tharn couldn’t open despite many attempts, and bust in this time. The party doesn’t know it yet, but this has prompted an evil cleric on the top floor to start chanting from an evil clerical text that will begin a ritual that takes 3 full rounds to complete. They hear the chanting, but do not recognize the dialect, it sounds like “vrok-kakaww-kakaw”. It takes them two rounds to make it up the stairs and to the door that leads to the cleric. The party busts in on the third round of chanting. The Ranger uses his flame thrower, and Regulus casts magic missile, and the fire and missiles take him out with ease, but unfortunately the flames destroy everything that was on and around him besides the ceremonial dagger he was holding. They look around for clues but everything is burned up so they go back to the house.

The party will notice people are coming and going to the hippy circle outside their house, and it is growing. They aren’t too fond of this so they pick the hippies one by one and put them on camels and cart them to a park on the other side of town. Tharn will successfully learn to “write” from the scroll he found and successfully copy the scroll into his spellbook. They wrap up the session by paying a messenger 100 gold to bring a message to the church in Halifax about the state of Annapolis, mentioning the unholy symbols, evil cleric, and undead that have ravaged the church here. Asking for help and also letting them know about the “possessed” hippies.

Monsters defeated

1 bat – 6xp

2 frost giants – 5844 XP

2 mountain lions – 220 XP

9 ghouls 94hp – Regulus Tharn only – 773 XP

4 zombies 28hp – Regulus Tharn only – 136 XP

1 evil cleric 4hp – 105 XP

Macready total monster XP: 3,088 XP treasure XP: 4,139 total XP gained: 7,227

Rank: E

Tharn total monster XP: 3,996 treasure XP: 6090 total XP gained: 10,086

Rank: E

Treasure

4 Giants’ toes

3 bactrian camels, 1 sold 3500 xp

Necklace of strangling – 0xp (it’s canonically zero xp for obvious reasons)

Scroll of protection from undead – 1500 xp

Unidentified Magic short sword, emerald elf woman and sapphire human man decoration – 800 xp

2k gold from giants – 2000 xp

78 gold - 78 xp

Ceremonial dagger – 400 xp

2 Unholy symbols– Regalus Tharn only – 200 xp

7k copper – Regalus Tharn only 1xp

1k silver– Regalus Tharn only – 50 xp

Scroll of protection from lycanthropes – Regalus Tharn only – 1000 xp

Lvl 1 MU Scrolls of tensor’s floating disc, enlarge, write, – Regalus Tharn only 300 xp

Lvl 4 MU Scroll of Dimension Door– Regalus Tharn only 400 xp