Mord Mar - Session 6

We weren't able to play Mord Mar last week, due to a family funeral. This week we played on Monday for the first time, due to kids returning to school and Scouts. As it was our first delve on a new day (and a player needing a ride and getting home late,) we had a short session. It was just one encounter, but it was a doozy.

The party this week:
Moira, the Magic-User
Radovan - Human Cleric (of Odin?) now of Marshield Ironbeard
Khazgar Stonehand - Dwarf Fighter
Boris - Dwarf Fighter/Thief
Seed - Human Fighter
Red - Human Ranger
Firban Brighthand - Halfling Thief
Dustin's Brother - Human Wizard

A new paladin hireling
A magic-user hireling

The party is working on making good their promise to Ander, making their way toward the Forge. A step in this direction, they decided, was taking the bounty on the hydra. The talked with Tammerick Alebeard (the head of the Adventurer's Guild) about the bounty. He offered 15,000 gp. They asked some questions. Where's the hydra? What else is in the area? That kind of thing.

3 potions of healing were available this week, and bought by the party. The magic items for sale were extremely powerful, but the only one bought was a Ring of Protection +2 (by Firban.) He is paying through the nose for it, over time.

What they didn't ask is how to get there. So they headed into the dungeon, looking for the hydra, knowing where it was, but not how to get there. They found Inkweaver's Wall, a written legend of how the dwarves transitioned from runes and stone to parchment writing. They followed the Wall to the first intersection. They looked for street signs, and found that the dwarves carved the road names in the center of intersections, diagonally. So, without knowing which road was which, they realized they didn't know where to go, so they headed back home.

They went to purchase a map from the local cartographer. They bought a map of the entire Forge District for 1000 gp, and headed back in.

Following their map, they headed near the hydra's lair. Blocking the way, orcs and gnolls were having a battle in the street. They stayed back a bit, and watched. Seeing a couple of trolls on the gnolls side, and the same ogre-creatures from session 4 on the orcs side. They waited and crossed the intersection, avoiding attacks. Then they heard the rumbling, from the direction they were travelling. Khazgar looked for a quick way off the street, and kicked open a door to an apparent old records office. He made a save as he stepped inside. Most of the party followed, just as the hydra charged down the street at the battling humanoids.

Hydra battle!

The hydra breathed fire on the combatants! The remaining gnolls turned to face the creature, while the orcs fled. The party stepped out to surround the hydra, but as the paladin hireling stepped back to prepare bowshots, he noticed 3 little hydras too!

The mommy hydra continued to engage with the humanoids, while the party dealt with the little ones. They all breathed fire, killing the new paladin. Almost everyone in the battle group took damage. (Moira was smart enough to be off to the side, as was Dustin's Brother.) Khazgar killed a hydra-ling, and mommy was enraged. She breathed fire, and charged. A few party members managed a couple of hits in the meantime (including magic missiles from the both magic-users.) As she stepped up to breathe again, Seed delivered a mighty blow (max damage!) to bring her down. Somewhere in the chaos, the other hireling also dropped.

Searching her lair, they found lots of scrolls. Protection from Elementals (double duration), Protection from Drowning (2 targets for 3 days!), hold moster, teleport(!), detect invisibility, lightning bolt, magic missile (x2), bless, and Raise Dead!

Four gnolls remained alive. They parlayed, and the gnolls have agreed to become henchmen (!) to the group. They're not sure what to do with them, yet, so they left them in the records office, and said they would return in a week.

They claimed their 15,000 gp reward and the session ended. We will see what happens next week. Khazgar's player won't be available, so that may change the dynamic. We'll see...

Mord Mar - Session 5

We had another successful delve into the dungeon yesterday.  The delvers:

Moira, the Magic-User
Radovan - Human Cleric (of Odin?)
Khazgar Stonehand - Dwarf Fighter
Boris - Dwarf Fighter/Thief
Seed - Human Fighter

Red - Human Ranger

Firban Brighthand - Halfling Thief

Dustin's Brother - Human Wizard

This week a few magic items were available for sale:

+1 Short Sword - bought by Seed

Potion of Clairvoyance - bought by ???

Figure of Wonderous Power: Onyx Dog - bought by Firban

This purchase made Seed unable to afford the plate mail he ordered. So, Red bought it instead.

The party listened to some rumors, again none directly pertinent to the delve. They decided to head to the Citadel, and finish up what they missed last time.

On the way in, they ran across four large black ants "harvesting a large dead humanoid." They waited about 20 minutes, and stayed out of the way. The ants left, jaws full of meat, and ignored the party. The party checked the dead body and grabbed a pair of nice boots, but they smelled like death.

In the statue room, they ran into some serious trouble: a "brain with a beak and 8 tentacles hanging down." They engaged, poorly, and the grell spread out damage between 5-6 party members before going down. Nothing seriously though.

They headed up the stairs to the second floor, and found most of the paintings in the "gem-tree room" were gone. Only Auror Oaktooth's portrait remained. The party grabbed it and headed south. They explored a couple of bedrooms, which were empty. Following the corridor first to the south, then to the west, they came to a large room.

A skeleton was sprawled over an open chest. A chunk of the ceiling had fallen into the center of the room, leaving a large pile of rubble. A few doors led out of the room, too. Part of the party approached the chest cautiously. The rest waited a ways back.

While the chest was being inspected, the party that hung back noticed movement in the rubble. Everyone threw some oil, and then a torch. The chest inspectors went back to searching for traps.

Meanwhile, the fire from the oil was "sucked down and went out abruptly."

The party stood around trying to figure out what to do. Suddenly, an ooze dropped from the ceiling onto See, Red and Khazgar. A fight ensued, with Red taking some damage from the party (the ooze attached to him, and shared all damage taken.) Again, they won without major injury. Radovan burnt some healing, and they checked the loot: A bunch of coin, and a magic coin too!

They played around with the coin for a bit, and eventually found that when flipped onto the ground, a "warrior from valhalla" shows up for an hour. Dubbed Mr. Valhalla, they moved through one of the doors, into a kitchen.

The kitchen had several bugs in the cupboards, including a giant tick that attached itself to Mr Valhalla. No permanent damage to the party, but no treasure either.

The next room was the old king's bedroom. A talking face on the wall in the corner conversed with them. Eventually, they figured out the way to get the face to open the secret door. Inside, they found a teleporter node with the following runes: protection, sun, treasure.

They grew a pair, and tried the teleporter. Nobody expected what happened next. They showed up in King Johan's throne room. With a pile of treasure falling on them...

A few got buried in the avalanche of coins, and guards showed up almost immediately. The guards moved the party away from the treasure and waited for the king to arrive.

The king was quite thankful for the new pile of treasure. Each of the PC's received 1000 gp as a reward from the king's new horde. Well, not Firban who backtalked the king. He was given a ring, with a geas "to find my father's crown." Then he was give his share of gold. 

Not a lot of gold this session. But, there were a few magic items:
the Magic Coin of Mr Valhalla

the Stinky Boots give +10% move silently

plus all the purchased magic! A pretty good score, overall.

Overall, a fun session. The party thinks they don't want to mess with the Citadel anymore. We will see next week.

Mord Mar - Session 4 at The Girffin's Rest

Tonight's Roster:

Tharum - Elf Thief/Magic-User
Firban Brighthand - Halfling Thief
Radovan - Human Cleric (of Odin?)
Khazgar Stonehand - Dwarf Fighter
Boris - Dwarf Fighter/Thief
Seed - Human Fighter
Sylvester - Elven Thief

Two hirelings also went with the party:
Moira, the Magic-User
Tomas, the Paladin

The party started tonight's session by asking around, gathering rumors, and shopping. Oil, holy water, plate armor (ordered last week by Khazgar) and a few other things were purchased. It was noted that the price of oil is going up... 15 flasks were bought, and no store had any left.

Three potions of healing, one potion of extra-healing and a potion of fly were available. Seed, Firban (I think,) and Khazgar grabbed the potions of healing. Khazgar scraped up enough gold to also grab the extra-healing.

They asked about the runestones first. They were told several pieces of information about them:
1. There were weapons that runestones could lock into and empower.
2. Shields also were once slotted for runestones.
3. Some runestones could be used to power spells. The example given by the Old Man was "using a fire runestone will create the biggest fireball possible." (Translation: using a runestone while casting will max out the spell.)
4. Runestones can be used in ritual spell casting. Not much else is known about this ...

Next, Firban headed to the temples to get the curse from the coin looked at. He was told it was basically a soul jar, except someone else had control of when the soul would "jump." Remove Curse? 4000 gp.... Firban didn't have that much, so he made a deal with the Church of Lady Luck 250 gp and a favor....

Rumors were bought, nothing truly notable.

The party headed back to the "goblin section" of the Citadel. Along the way, one of the teleporters activated, with a 10' tall, gray skinned humanoid carrying a primitive axe and dressed in rags stepping out. The party moved into a standard attack vector. The brute attacked Tomas, chopping off his head. As it did so, a second creature stepped out of the teleporter. Someone shot the second "ogre," but it ignored the party. As it stepped up, the first creature fell dead from arrows and blows. The second creature grabbed it by the hair and drug it back to the teleporter, grabbing Tomas's head as a trophy.

Khazgar, "trying to appear casual," watched this creature jab its finger into a rune-hole to activate the teleporter. They were gone.
Since they were still close to Var Nae, they returned Tomas's remaining body to the city before continuing. The gate guards told them that the creatures were some type of statue bound in skin, but they hadn't been seen before (at least not since the Fall of the City.)

Without further incident, they found their way back to the throne room. But, the secret door was open! Tharum creapt up to see what was going on and found a green-skinned dwarf as it finished un-burying the Goblin Mirror. He was polite, introducing himself as "Ander."
The party took some time conversing with Ander, and almost threatening him. He shape-changed into a green dragon, and continued the polite conversation. Ander asked if goblin was a delicacy among the people of Var Nae as well. Boris said yes, but everyone else looked a little sick from the question.

Ander requested that they delay a rival, a red dragon in the Forge. He suggested that they would not be able to kill the red, but if they could "lock him in for a month or so, they would be rewarded with magic treasure." Ander gave them a Scroll of Communication as well, "in exchange for the mirror, with generosity." The scroll allows one brief conversation with Ander.
Ander heads out with a bunch of food (to lure goblins!) that Firban gave him and the mirror.

The party then moved up the stairs, finding a large room with a stone oak tree, 7 paintings, a couple of doors and the stairs continuing to ascend. Hanging from the tree were 10 sapphires, rubies and citrines. Seed shot a citrine off the tree with his bow. They inspected it, and found an eye "inside of the gem. It looked to be etched on the inside of the gem." None of the gems on the tree had an eye. A ruby was plucked from the tree, and immediately an etched eye appeared within that one. Seed used his pick-axe to destroy the citrine, which caused a thump somewhere above them.

Moving up the stairs to investigate what evil this could be, they find a room with two passageways out. There is also a painting of a young dwarf boy hanging on the wall. Khazgar deduces that this is young King Johan, and grabs it to return to Var Nae. They head through the south passage.

They follow it around a corner, and see 6 statues, all of which have looks of pain on their faces. They were not made of the same stone as the citadel. Instead, they were made of a "material almost like concrete."

Next they checked the two doors from this room, and found a bathroom with still-running water and a handless dwarven skeleton. As Boris is "inspecting" a toilet, two skeletal hands attack him! One attaches, almost killing him. Sylvester and Tharum throw holy water, killing the attached hand. The other hand attacks seed, but misses. The party makes quick work of that one as well. The corpse had a silver and mithril belt, worth 1000 gp.

The next door was once a bar, but nothing of note was there.

They head down the hallway from the statue gallery, and open a door to find the remnants of a library, with a large glowing crystalline golem inside. Through trial and error, they find that it is an information "robot." Seed, Boris, and Khazgar all successfully use it to ask questions.
Then Tharum touches it. And it zaps him with lightning until he is dead. Apparently, dwarves are racist against elves.* Before Tharum died, he spotted a secret door on the far side of the library.

The secret door led to a small chapel, with a golden chalice and silver bowl on an altar. The chalice was noticed to have a symbol of Bashael Ashmouth hidden on it underside. The bowl had 5 good gods symbols on its underside. Both went into loot bags.

The party pushed ahead one more room, as it was getting late, and found the source of the THUMP from earlier: a stoneflower. My poor stoneflower could not make any good rolls, only scoring a few points of damage, spread around the party, before succumbing to the onslaught of the PCs. But, they found an artifact attached to it! The Rune Burruk, a magical bell, that when rung removes all enchantments within 30' of it. Permanently.


*The reason that elves cannot touch the golem is actually in the histories of Mord Mar. Egg, the great wizard, was human and created the golem for the dwarves. But, it was during a time of war with the Dark Elves. So, as a precaution, they decided to make it unusable by elves. Poor Tharum paid the price of paranoia.

Mord Mar - Session 3 at the Griffin's Rest

We were full up at ten players this week. Here's the roster:

The new characters:
Sylvester - Elven Thief
Holin Hammerback - Dwarven Cleric
Grumble - Human Magic-User

The established characters:
Red - Human Ranger
Tharum - Elf Thief/Magic-User
Firban Brighthand - Halfling Thief
Radovan - Human Cleric (of Odin?)
Khazgar Stonehand - Dwarf Fighter
Boris - Dwarf Fighter/Thief
Seed - Human Fighter

We started of in Var Nae, as always. Radovan had special ordered 2 healing potions, which were available. This took up a lot of the Mother Shena's (the alchemist) time, so only one was available for general sale (which was bought up.) The party spent gold on rumors, the most notable of which was "My grandfather worked in the castle, and always said there is a secret door behind the throne." Seed buys  a pick-axe. (Other equipment was bought, but this is notable.)
The bounty board had changed. Goblin ears went from 1 gp to 5 sp bounty. The owlbear was removed because the group was successful. Thora Silverbeard now needs more silver for her smithy, price based on quantity. Acidander has gained the attention of the Guild. The green dragon's head is worth 5000 gp, and a map to his lair is worth 1000. The Church of Blain Oreweaver has begun offering 500 gp for recovered religious texts.

After some discussion, they decided to head toward the Citadel again, taking the Transport Hallway toward the east end of Forge Road. Along the way, they encountered 19(!) goblins and their hobgoblin commander. Someone tossed a flaming oil to drop 1. Tharum cast a weak sleep spell, getting 4-5 of them as they moved up to encounter range. Then he casts another sleep from a scroll he had penned. This one knocked out around 13 more. Two goblins were left standing. The ranged attackers: Sylvester, Firban, Boris and Seed blasted the hobgoblin with projectiles. He dropped almost immediately. The two goblins turned to flee, and the archers dropped them too.
They looted the corpses finding: 38 cp, 7 sp, 10 gp, 2 pp, a longsword, shield and chainmail. 18 goblin ears were recovered, one set burning away in oil.

The rest of the trip to the Citadel was uneventful. Reaching the gate, they find that the Northeast Tower doesn't have doors like all of the other towers. (I think) Sylvester snuck ahead to the edge of the courtyard. He peered into the darkness to see . . . a decapitated 1-clawed owlbear hunched in the deepest shadows waiting for something to enter the courtyard.

Sneaking back, he describes the scene. The party decides to lob oil to the corner close to the owlbear, and throw a rock to trigger it. They threw a lot of oil. Khazgar arcs a torch high in the sky to land on the huge puddle of oil, then throws the rock and misses. Firban connects with the second rock, animating the owlbear. As this happens, a statue of a minotaur steps from around the other nearby corner. The owlbear charges through the fire, dying again before it reaches the party.
The minotaur statue communicates telepathically, telling them it wants the goblins out. A few seconds later it disappears, leaving a copper coin in its place, which Firban snatches up. The coin is "ancient, with a mountain on one side, and a dwarf on the other." Firban passes his save.

They find a broken wall into tower, scout it and are attacked by two red ants. Red takes a hit, but makes his save from the poison. The ants are dropped quickly. In the rubble they find a dwarven runestone: Protection. It is noted that the red ants were immediately aggressive, while the black ants met a week ago were not.

Finally entering the Citadel, the party finds their way blocked by a door. It isn't trapped or locked according to the theives, but they can't get it open. Seed uses his new pickaxe to break the door, and immediately falls prone on the far side. The 10 goblins in the room all attack him, bringing him to 0 hp.
The party, now in full recovery mode begin to move in to save their dying friend. Boris steps over Seed to protect him, while both clerics move up with Cure Wounds. The archers get into position to shoot any goblins that they can see through the door. The goblins move and all strike at Boris with 6 of them hitting, dropping him dead instantly. Seed stands up, rejuvinated from  Cure Wounds, and they make quick work of 9 of the goblins. The tenth goblin runs through a far door. Tharum moves up to see what happened while most of the other party members are scooping the pile of treasure in the corner or tending to Seed and Boris.
Tharum watches the goblin open a door, and several large mosquito-like creatures swarm out of it, killing the goblin. Tharum shuts the door. They bar the door haphazardly with some rubble, collect the rest of the treasure and Boris' body and head back to Var Nae.

So, we have an hour left of playtime at this point. We have a discussion about making one more delve. In the interest of time, I allow Boris to be Resurrected for 500 gp. Firban fails his save against evil, and is enthralled by the coin he picked up earlier. His face has replaced the dwarven face on the coin. They spend the night in town, paying 10 gp for curative magic as needed and head back to the Citadel the next day.

No random encounters to be had :(, they end up back where they were and pop the door open. Tharum goes down by the "bug door" and sees another door, but doesn't open it. Meanwhile, Firban is drawn in the opposite direction, going into a room with several statues. Most are kings, queens and heroes of Mord Mar, but one statue is faced toward the corner, its details hidden.This is the statue (Bashael Ashmouth) that Firban is enthralled by, and he stands in front of it, not moving. (At this point another character became enthralled by the statue as well, I just don't remember who.)
The dwarves of the party quickly notice that unlike the other statues, this one is not carved from the stone, but placed here instead. The tell Seed to take it down with hisy pick-axe, which he is happy to do. This breaks the curse on the characters and nets a 500 xp bonus.

They enter the throne room, to find 10 dead goblins and several dead mosquitoes there. A magical mirror hangs on the wall, and the fabled Throne of Mord Mar rests quietly. They grab the ears, find the secret door behind the throne (damn Tharum's elf nose.) and three more runestones: Treasure, Ore, Sun. They remove the mirror from the wall, and hide it in the room behind the secret door, piling rocks on top of it. (The room had a thick layer of dust and "hadn't been entered in several hundred years.")

The session is over, with Firban leveling up.


GM's notes:
I don't have a hard rule for Raising Dead people yet. That was a one-of because: 1. He sacrificed himself for another party member 2. We were late on time 3. They could return to town easily. I will work on it.

S&W is GREAT for a large table game. At no point did anyone feel like they didn't contribute or were part of the action! If they did, they didn't mention it to me (and I asked.)

I began using the Dwarven Forge tiles as 5' squares instead of 10'. I like it better this way. OD&D allowed 3 people across in a 10' section. This ups that to 4, but I think it will be good. It took all of us a little getting used to. The rule will be "no more than 3 characters on a tile." It may or may not work. We will see long-term.

The rumors are really helping the party. I have about 300 of them, with about 33% being false.

The Transportation Hallway is now "open." They have a few runes, but no idea what they do, or where they go. We will see what happens with that. PLAYERS: Var = Sun in the dwarven language. Nae = portal, opening, door, gate etc.

Bashael Ashmouth has shown up a couple of times. Was he a player in bringing down the Old City?