Session O1: In Search of the Marble Halls

Note: Since I'm a dirty plagiarist and like taking shortcuts, I'm just going to steal the session report format utilized by the Holgard Campaign blog and others, and fiddle with it enough to at least pretend I'm being original. Good ideas deserve good praise, so check his and other BROSR campaigns out.

Summary: The campaign begins with four misfits buying a map from a drunkard and hoping it leads to treasure. All they find is rats.

Time Record: This sessions begins on Monday, June 27 (7th day of the 4th Month in game) to Monday, July 4 (14th day of the 4th Month). That's exactly seven days, so session 2 will begin with these characters returning to town with NO DOWNTIME this week. Sucks to suck.

 Characters: 

Se'Lune Fe'Foress- 1st level Fighter Half-Elf- Has big dreams of joining Bard College one day.

Mikk Rasaft- 1st level Magic-User- Fresh out of his apprenticeship and searching for new spells.

Ciarra O'Faolain- 1st level Cleric- In service to a raven goddess, quickly learning that folks don't cotton to pagans round these parts.

Remington Ross- 1st level Assassin- Contract killer by night, goat-herder by day.

Session Report: 

7th Day of the 4th Month: Our session begins in the Town of Rhenar, with the party drinking in a local public house, the Red Cock. They listen to local drunk, Captain Jacob Pigeon, recount the tale of how his band of daring mercenaries once found a subterranean labyrinth full of glittering prizes and monstrous dangers nearby the town. As the sole survivor, he offers to give them a map he drew to show the way to the maze in return for enough coin to pay his lodgings for a week. 

The party attempts to haggle to no avail until Magic-User Mikk suggests he and Cap't Jake go head to head in a drinking match. Mikk wins (barely passing his save vs. poison to hold his liquor) while the old mercenary collapses into delirious sleep. The characters pocket the map and but pay off the drunkard's tab (both Mikk and Remington are evil, so I secretly track their alignment nudging slightly toward neutral for this).

Armed with a map to potential treasure, the party decides to spend the rest of the day chasing after specific needs. 

Remington makes contact with his superiors in the Assassin's guild. He accepts a contract to assassinate a fighter who's run off in the direction Cap't Jake's map points to. He figures with any luck he'll kill two birds with one stone.

Ciarra goes to the local chapel to meet Rhenar's priest. A quick aside on religion in this game. The dominant faith worships the Creator, mediated through lesser gods known as the Divine Council- think of Tolkien's Valar. They're all in the Good range. Ciarra worships a Neutral deity, so naturally she's viewed as a pagan and thus with a healthy heap of distrust. All this is to explain how and why her meeting with the priest ends with him politely telling her to shove off if she's trying to proselytize. 

Mikk, noting how Cap't Jake's map indicates a local river flowing by the dungeon, seeks out some rivermen to ferry he and his friends where they need to go. After some negotiation, its apparent that the party is too damn broke. 

Se'Lune the Fighter comes to the same conclusion after trying to seek out some henchman by making the tavern circuit. Her efforts are for nought although her encumbrance is several coins lighter. She does, however, meet a group of five mercenary horsemen, and they'll be sticking around for a month (unless one of the Patron players decides to muster forces for a brewing conflict- more on that in a later post).

8th Day of the 4th Month: Light of coin and short of patience, the four adventurers set out for the dungeon following along the nearby river. Remington pulls along his herd of 13 goats. Mikk, being a weak nerd, has to load up his supplies on a draft horse since his poor strength means he can only carry his spellbook and a couple of torches if he doesn't want to be weighed down in any way. Fortunately, they encounter nothing unusual or dangerous even after they make camp for the night.

Early in the night Ciarra sneaks off to sacrifice a chicken she bought while in town. We agree this is a suitable application of the "the teachings of and prayers to his or her chosen deity," the DMG notes clerics require to prepare 1st and 2nd level spells. It's also good role playing on her player's part.

9th Day of the 4th Month: Turns out Se'Lune is a terrible navigator. The party gets lost, and spend the rest of the day back-tracking to search for familiar landmarks. Luckily for them, they avoid any encounters both during the day and during the night.

10th Day of the 4th Month: Back on track after the day before, the party continues to follow the map. By the end of the day they reach their destination and decide to make camp. No point delving into a dungeon after another exhausting day of travel. A pack of wolves wanders nearby around midnight, but neither they nor Remington (who was on watch at that hour) feel in the mood for a fight and they quickly slink off.

11th Day of the 4th Month: They made it to the dungeon- about time! The party plans their next move as they wait outside of a cracked, marble archway. Remington leaves 12 of his goats tied to a post outside of the dungeon entrance. Mikk likewise takes what supplies he needs from his horse- his weak, soft frame trembling from the added weight. Mikk lights of a torch, Remington and Ciarra light up their lanterns and the part carefully delves into the darkness- or they would have, if it wasn't for Remington. 

Remember how he tied up only 12 of his baker's dozen of goats? He thought it would be a smart decision to bring his 13th goat into the dungeon as a sort of 'canary in the coal mine'. It would have been smart, but goats spook easily in dark, marble mazes, and this goat in particular goes off running after failing a morale check. Half the party makes a split decision to chase after the goat, and the other two follow along begrudgingly. 

I role to randomize the route the goat takes, although the dice indicate a straight path through the main entrance hallway. After two turns of chasing after the goat, Se'Lune takes out her frustration on the creature's neck. She's a Neutral Good character so killing an innocent domesticated animal out of pure frustration will chart a dip towards Evil...not enough to shift to Neutral just yet, however.

The loud CLANG of the beheading sword swinging through to the floor does provoke an early wandering monster check. As fate would have it, I roll the magic 1. I describe the sound of mass chitters and squeaks as a swarm of 50 rats of unusual size pour from around the corridor. The PCs win initiative, and neither side gets surprised. 

Mikk casts Sleep, and his spell goes off at an earlier segment than the rats. His spell places the front rank of 15 rats to sleep, but its not enough to stop the furry tide. Ciarra and Se'Lune form a tight front rank, and the latter brandishes her torch in an attempt to fend the rodents off. However, in a moment of rare genius, Remington lifts up the corpse of his beloved goat and successfully throws it into the mass of rats (way to make lemonade outta lemons). This drives the swarm into a feeding frenzy and they devour the goat as well as their sleeping brethren (netting the party some xp since the sleep spell caused these kills).

Using this distraction, the PCs flee back the way they came. Instead of going all the way to exit the dungeon, they bust through a door on their right in hopes of putting barricade between them and the rats (as far as the party knew, the rats could have still been chasing them). It was a risky move, but it paid off. The room was empty and only had one other door, opposite the entrance. Se'Lune hammers some iron spikes into the door to basically "bolt" it in. Ciarra and Mikk search the room and Remington tries to hide in a corner (note that, as a 1st level assassin, his thief skills outside of backstabbing are all non-existent). 

Another three turns pass while the party searches the room. This prompts another wandering monster check, which comes up as a 1. Suddenly, the characters hear the sound of several grunts and THUDS from boots kicking at the door.

The party prepares for trouble, and I tell them how they heard guttural voices growling unintelligible obscenities at through the door. 

At least, they would have been unintelligible, until Mikk's player suddenly piped up.

"Wait a minute," he said. "I know orcish, can I understand these voices?"

Affirmative. 

And then both Remington and Se'Lune's players point out they, too, know orcish.

What follows was some of the best roleplaying I've seen in a while. This patrol of orcs was small, and had no leaders. I want to make this point, because the regular old orc grunts are low-intelligence. 

Leveraging the fact that the orcs cannot see through solid wood doors, Se'Lune, Mikk and Remington begin to pretend to orcs and answer back in perfect orcish. They trick the brutes into thinking that locking the door is "smart strat-e-jicks" and learn that patrol is searching for a humie who matches Remington's assassination target. The also manage to tease out of the orcs how they're in conflict with a group of gnomes somewhere on this level.

Se'Lune ends the conversation by telling the orcs about "hearing the sound of a bunch of goats down that-a way." 

The party waits a couple more turns in relative safety before removing the door spikes and leaving the dungeon. Much to Remington's chagrin, all that's left of his goatherd is some bloody stains and happy memories. A die roll determines that Mikk's horse survived the hungry orcs. Lucky him.

 12th to 14th Days of the 4th Month: At this point of the night we were running out of time for the session. I mostly glazed through their return trip to town, but I made sure to roll for encounters BTB. Nothing came up and so they arrive back in Rhenar shaken, but unhurt.

Goat Count: 0 (-13)

 Treasure & Experience: No treasure this time, but everyone did get some x.p. from the dead rats.

Ciarra - 36 x.p.

Mikk - 39 x.p.

Remington - 36 x.p.

Se'Lune -  39 x.p. (the goat was defenseless and couldn't put up a fight, thus it earned her no x.p.)

Character Performance Rating:

Ciarra - E - She overall did what a cleric needed to do, and spending g.p. on sacrificial chickens was a nice touch. Her spell choices were also well-thought out for any contingency the party needed, although she didn't have to.

Mikk - S - That Sleep spell saved the party a lot of headaches, and helped earned the only x.p. the party received this session. The only thing keeping him from an Excellent rating is the fact he voted with Remington to blindly follow the goat through the dungeon. Not very 16 Int of him.

Remington - P - Why the goats? Just why? Why chase one through a dungeon? You're a cold-blooded killer-for-hire not a goat nanny (if Remington's player is reading this blog, I want you to know I love you, man. But why'd you have to chase the goat?) Throwing the goat carcass to distract the rats was clever though.

Se'Lune - E - A lot of smart dungeoneering savvy here. Se'Lune had the wherewithal to bring iron spikes to use as door bolts. She also thought use her torch to fend off the rats, Indiana Jones-style. That would have provoked a morale check from the rats, I'd wager, but it was a moot point after the goat carcass trick.

Downtime Requests: No time for downtime. A week-long round trek means session 2 will start immediately after returning to town.

(However, my four Patron characters will be active, as you will see later on).

Comment: Could've gone better. Could've gone worse. I enjoyed the puns and memes that went flying around, and a few of them will end up seeing some screen time in this campaign, I feel. 

Overall, the players were a little disappointed to not find any treasure after all that time. Bear in mind, we also rolled up characters right before starting the game. Since two of our players had little to no experience playing any game bearing the name Dungeons & Dragons outside of 5e, it unsurprisingly took a a little over an hour and a half. We generally have 4 hours of game time, so you do the math. 

Good news is session 2 will jump right back into the action. At the time of writing, that's tomorrow. I'm excited to see how it unfolds! Session 2 update soon.

Remember: you really CAN WIN AT RPGs!