Dungeon Fantasy 1
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| Not relevant to the delve, except that I was painting him (poorly). |
Weather was cool and cloudy with intermittent rain.
Albrecht (swashbuckling dwarf thief), Tressina Gefahr (Cleric/mage), Jex Vespar (NPC Knight volunteer), and Phineous Stromchylde (NPC volunteer, half share) met at Elishes Dirt Cheap Coffin Hostel to discuss their plans. They had only heard one useful rumor, that there was an entrance to the undercity at the west end of a huge warehouse basement near the piers in Low Vlolk, and after some set-up work casting continual light Tressie's staff, and Albrecht's buckler, made their way there. They passed the typical big city street vendors and all their appetizing food, and made their way to the warehouse, discovering that it was basically unused at the west end. Pretending they were supposed to be there worked and they strolled by the workers unloading product into the east end, and made their way down and walked towards the mentioned room. Two moldy flour sacks covered an old grate, which Jex pulled up easily. Albrecht was the first to drop down, finding a 3 yard by 10 yard room with a pile of junk and a door at the far end. This was a room pattern that was to be repeated. The whole room sloped down about 15ยบ and all the contents had slid down the floor to the south end.
They cautiously avoided stirring the junk, until they hit on the idea of having Phineous light it on fire. He did so, and 3 large (6') centipedes slithered out, one slightly toasted. Albrecht was proximate, but avoided damage, returning it with interest and exposing some brains on the first one. The battle went badly for the centipedes though, and they were soon quivering bits of leftovers. Jex notably whacked one in half with his first hit. Phineous attempted a flame jet and critically failed, causing a blowback into his face, which produced a lot of whining. Tressina healed him quickly and they were back on the move.
They gathered up, and Albrecht and Jex discussed who was to move the junk, settling on Jex moving junk and Albrecht risking the poison needles, scythe traps and various potential dangers of opening a door. They opened the door and found a wet floor, covered with slick mud. No monsters, and another 20 minutes of moving junk, and checking the door. The next door was stuck fast, and after Jex and Albrecht tried to open it, Tressina shoved Albrecht out of the way and insisted on trying, getting the door open with Jex. At this point Gillam (2 pistol crossbow packin' bowslinger) showed up bearing cookies, so it was decided that they early starters left a note at the Hostel letting him know where they'd be. Excellent cookies. Bribery works!
The next room, approximately the same (the players concluded that it was a castle wall with an interior corridor that had sunk underground), had no monsters and only a few minor pieces of equipment as loot. At this point, spirits were low and the prospect of an empty delve loomed nigh, so a lunch break was declared and spirits were restored by Tressina using create food on the centipedes to make lunch for herself and Phineous who didn't bring any rations.
However, the room after that had a well stuck door, and was a similar shape, but sideways, and two exits. One door proved to be easily opened but there was nothing behind it but hard dirt. Gillam noticed a glint of silver in the corner and they scored a small silver ring with an amethyst in it. First money of the delve!
After searching the junk at the end of the room, a few cheap items equipment were found and they stacked up for the next door. This opened south into a dug-out cave area, with a stone wall south and another door. Albrecht looked around and spotted some gnawed bones, which prompted some fairly serious discussion of what gnawed them, how big it might be and whether it might have treasure or not. Gillam checked for tracks and found evidence of a great number of long-clawed small creatures moving around the room, and a lot of traffic on the west end, which, when inspected proved to be a low, dark tunnel. This was not inspected at this time, but noted on the map for later checking out. They stacked up on the next door, and found a few skeletons with bows; Albrecht played his character well (overconfidence, but justified) and charged in, followed closely by Jex. A quick bash with a buckler and a couple of axe and sword blows and the skeletons were mostly down. Tressina marched up the last skeleton (none of whom got past drawing their bows) and put him down with a solid clop to the noggin. The bows and quivers were inspected and found to be sound but very old and possibly worth something, so they went into the packmule's pack (Jex).
The next room was half filled with water, and our brave Albrecht finally volunteered to open the door; he got soaked and stinky doing it but nothing chewed his flesh. The water cascaded out into the next room and drained. This door got opened with a lot less ceremony than the previous and proved to have a 7' ghoulish creature in it. Jex and Albrecht charged it, and it missed a few blows, and took a few. Tressie glued it to the floor, and Phineous rolled his second critical failure of the game (poor kid!) and stunned himself. The chopping at the glued ghast-thing commenced and Gillam put two pistol crossbow arrows into it's neck. Albrecht then became certain that this creature would have valuable chemical components and insisted on a surgical breakdown that Tressina rolled sucessfully on a half dozen times, extracting the brain, then the eyes, then taking off the whole head, and then the hands which she noticed had sticky pads on the fingertips and palms. There was a few trinkets and some cheap gear (a knife and a staff) in the junk.
It was getting late by this point, but there wasn't enough loot to get everyone their cost of living for the week, or at least not if you didn't count the ghouloid bits as a few hundred copper, so the delvers went for one more door. This room proved to have no monsters, but did have a waterproof chest in it, trapped by a poison needle that Gillam noticed, but Albrecht didn't, resulting in Albrecht taking a needle poke that didn't penetrate his gloves. The chest had mostly young men's clothing from a century ago, in not bad shape, but not worth anything. Albrecht began throwing the clothes around in fury at someone poison needle trapping a chest full of cheap clothing and they found a bag of coins and a knife in the bottom.
The final take, once they made their way back out was 272 copper each, of which 160 went to food and rent, but they were only down for about 6 hours, so it was concluded that delving was a helluva pay off for time spent. The various ghoul bits were sold to an alchemist who gave them 20 coppers for the hands and didn't want anything to do with the rest of the bits; I felt he probably gave them the money to get these blood covered crazy people out of his shop.
I awarded 3 exp each, 1 for success in Cost of living, 1 for no deaths, and 1 for going on the delve. The post game feedback was pretty positive and while I know there's a dozen things I should have thought about, the mood was fun and light and there was a lot of joking and laughter and mocking of Phineous, the cowardly pyromanical Fire mage who hurt himself twice with fire spells.

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