Session #4

(Edit: Oops forgot room A83.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened this session.
Much time was wasted. But the DM can't point the finger at any one person. Especially because the DM caused his fair share.
Less overall fighting, but traps seemed abundant.
I added a few things on-the-fly. Basically to hurry some things up, guide the party, or for simple entertainment.

Session #4 map
(Black areas of the map are unexplored. White areas are explored but irrelevant to this session)

Day 4, 2pm

Room A21: Nothing of interest until they left through the door to room A72. The rogue detected no trap, but there was one. Luckily no one was hurt. The worst thing this trap did was waste 5 minutes of time while the party tried to get through the doorway it protected.

Rooms A72, A70, & A71: Lots of rock and rubble, but otherwise empty rooms.

Room A73: Another empty room except for a large 250gp iron censer. But it was too large to carry, so they moved on.

Room A74: The door to this room from A73 was trapped with a Color Spray spell trap. Once again the rogue detected no trap (magic spell traps are hard to find though; DC25+spell level). Thunderclease took the full brunt of the spell. While he was dazed many jokes were had at his expense (especially about his gay mustache...oh wait, that was Justin, not Thunderclease), but when he came to, he tried to open the door again and this time successfully dodge the spell.

Room A75: Quick work was made of a rat swarm here. Otherwise this place was just rubble.

Room A76: This room was someone's sleeping quarters. Nothing of interest until a secret door was found. Thunderclease decided to open (after the rogue checked it for traps and the DM said something didn't look right about the door). The door and other rocks fell on Thunderclease for 3d6 damage. Luckily it all landed on his head and he was fine.

Room A77: This room contained many skeletal bodies that were chained to a central spike. The whole room radiated evil. So the two goody-two shoes in the group, Dugan and Krieg, set to releasing the bodies. Once they began this they began having vivid visions of people being tortured in this room which then left its "evil stench" on the room. Then a creature, a small ball of golden light, appeared before the group. It took no aggressive action, and surprisingly, neither did the party. It set about investigating the party. The party asked questions and stumbled upon that it could answer questions, but could only answer in "yes" or "no" but instead of speaking it changed its lighting color. Red for no and blue for yes. They named it Augury. They general questions to find out general information about the locale and to see if they could cleanse this room of evil. The questions they asked were too general for them to get any significant answers. Eventually Augury faded away.

Note: Yes, Augury was modeled after a "bit" from the movie Tron. This idea was read about in the ENWorld forum spoiler thread for the WLD. Augury also did a point of "Smartass damage" to Thunderclease.

Room A80 (Not shown on map): Before the party entered this room, Augury, or another identical creature blocked the party's way and flashed red three times. The party took this as a warning and moved on.

Room A81 (Also not shown on the map): Before the party got too close to the door, a voice in broken common warned them not to get too close. After parylaying with an orc, the group found out that they were led by an orc named Orghar. A deal was worked out with the party in the manner of 1 question = 1 food ration. After 2 rations (one being about what was in the room that Augury warned them about; many many evil bird things) and a refusal to be allowed to see and speak to Orghar, the orc offered to tell its story for a weeks worth of rations (10 days since this is the Forgotten Realms).

His story was simple and broken (and hard for the DM to speak in dry orcish speak for long). Many orcs, kobolds, goblins, troglodytes, and lizardmen were lured with a promise of power by a ratman named Longtail (who had some evil looking thing living on his shoulder that constantly whispered into his ear). After the groups realized that they could not leave, their unsteady alliances began to crack. When Longtail disappeared, things went from bad to worse. The orcs began fighting anything that gave them trouble. Then things went from worse to "Dungeons & Dragons Movie" bad. Rat swarms, giant rats, evil bird things, and flying black octopi descended upon everything. This forced the orcs to find a place to fortify and defend until an opportunity presents itself.
When asked about Longtail, the orc replied that since the orcs barely survived the attacks, there is no way a sniveling ratman could have survived.

With a thanks, the party moved on.

Room A84: A totally empty room save for a stone pedestal with a metal box. Dalron detected no traps so he opened it, only to have yellow mold spew from it. He failed save #1 for 2 points of Con damage (from 1d6), but saved the 2nd required save (2d6 Con damage which had the potential to kill Dalron who only had 10 con at that point).

Room A85: This was a peculiar room. There was a five foot column that had a clear glass sphere embedded into it. Standing on its point on the sphere was an ivory, rune-laden tusk that seamed to have been made in the shape of a dagger and radiated evil. On the floor were two motionless darkmantles. The party rushed into the room to make sure the darkmantles were dead. The darkmantles weren't but they soon would be, and so would the 3rd one that was hiding.

When that was done, the party investigated the column and its contents. When someone touches the sphere it emits a Flare spell, which dazzles all those who fail the save for 1 minute. When someone touches the "dagger" it emits a Sleep spell. Thunderclease, being a barbarian, grabbed the dagger from its location. He grabbed it just fine, but failed the Sleep save. But since he was still holding it, everyone in the room had to make the save every round. Dalron, the only elf in the group, pulled the dagger from Thunderclease's hand.

Zorak attempted to decipher the runes with Detect Magic and Read Magic, but all he could detect was a faint aura of necromancy. There was much discussion what to do with the dagger. Thunderclease & Dalrom saw many possibilities in a dagger that could put people to sleep. Dugan and Krieg said that no good could come from the use of an evil item.

Eventually it was decided to destroy the item. But no weapon they had could do anything more than chip the dagger and possibly ruin their own weapons. So they figured that trying to destroy it by smashing it into the globe had a chance to work. So Dalron volunteered to do it, because he was immune to sleep. After a couple of attempts, Dalron was able plunge the dagger into the sphere. It worked, but the concussive blast from the release of the magic threw Dalron into the wall and knocked him unconscious (-4 hp). Krieg rushed in to aid Dalron from the hallway (the blast conventiently knocked the door off of its hinges).

A quick Detect Evil sweep by Dugan showed that the evil was gone.

The party then rested and some leveled!
Thunderclease added a level of barbarian (2 brb / 1 ftr)
Krieg added a level of cleric (clr 3)
Zorak added a level of Sorcerer (sor 3)
Dalron added a level of Rogue (rog 3)
Later Dugan would level and add a level of paladin (pal 3) (He's lagging a little behind because he missed a session)

Room A83: The hallway to this room is trapped with a fireball spell. Thunderclease went down this hallway alone and set off the trap. Unfortunately, Dugan and Dalron were standing directly in front the door and took damage from it as well. Thunderclease shrugged it off and checked out the room beyond. It was 100% empty. So Thunderclease had to run through the firball hallway again. Luckily his new level gave him a good hit point roll.

Room A86: Krieg detected the secret door to this room. After a long hallway that reaked of filth, they found a room that had so much trash and goo it was bubbling. They turned around and went back the way they came.

Room A78: Another room with moldy barrels. The party walked carefully through this room. The rogue once again missed a magical trapped and Thunderclease was narrowly missed by a Scorching Ray spell.

Room A79: More moldy junk.

They then proceeded to fill in more of the map.

Links and such.

Well, my Texas Hold'em weekend was a bust. Ya know what? Two bad beats in a row REALLY hurts. But I did double up when I had 2 pocket kings and flopped two more. Something like that is quite memorable. But hey, I had fun. Of course it would have been more fun had I won that $10,000.

But oh well. Them's the breaks I guess. And it was for charity (Make-a-wish Foundation).

Now onto some links of websites of others going through the WLD:

A Mighty Crawl

Alpha Station Gamers Core

What Would Gary Do?
A play on-line version of the WLD.

K-Man's Adventures

The Gits

Spike's Journal
Possibly my favorite blog from the perspective of the rogue Spike.

The Sanguine Sentinels

The World's Largest Dungeon Campaign Journal

RPG MP3
A British gaming group that records their role-playing sessions.
A definite time-killer to listen to.

The World's Largest Dungeon Fansite
A good source of info for DM's running the WLD

The Arcane Army

Cosmic Games

Copyright stuff

To make sure everyone gets their credit for anything I may use on this blog...


"All maps, images, and characters from the World's Largest Dungeon
are copyright Alderac Entertainment Group. All references to the
celestial event that created the dungeon as well as the events in
each Region are the property of AEG."


Brought to you by...

Alderac Entertainment Group

The makers of...

www.worldslargestdungeon.com

Session #3

Well this week was better for everyone.

Half of the party was diseased at one point. But with some lucky rolls, the diseases being minor, and a cleric with the Healing skill, only Dalron is diseased now. But it, the Devil Chills, is hitting him kind of hard.

The party also had some less than logical actions when it came to exploring. Instead of clearing out everything in a semi-logical way (such as clearing out blocks of the map), the party just kept heading in one direction until they were deep within the eastern side of the map. A dangerous place to be. The encounter in room A91 woke them up and they got back to a more intelligent course of action.

Next week there will be no WLD game. The DM (me), will be out of town playing in a Texas Hold'em tourney.

Oh yeah, I've got a plug for an item I just bought. It ain't the cheapest DM screen around, but it is the best one I've found since the old Master DM's Screen from the Basic D&D series. I'm talking about the Kingdoms of Kalamar DM's Shield. This thing probably has every chart you could want. It even has a pizza matrix for trying to figure what kind of pizzas to get from week to week. It's a little unwieldy, but nothing that paper clips can't handle. And it also has some information for the Kalamar setting, but it's in an out-the-way location. So I don't truly consider it a "bad thing". (What I consider a "bad thing" would be forcing psionics and Eberron on us like WotC has done with all of the recent general D&D books.)

Session #3 map A
Session #3 map B

Note: Of the 7 secret doors found this week, 4 were found by Thunderclease and 3 by Dalron. Four of those seven were found because of the free secret door checks that elves get in general, and dwarves get because of their stonecunning.

Room A52: This large room radiated great evil. The focus of the evil seemed to radiate from a dwarf-sized stone throne. After a great deal of discussion, the party left the throne alone. Dugan, the gold dwarf paladin, and Krieg, the gold dwarf priest of Moradin, agree that this place should be cleansed of the evil at their first opportunity.

Room A53 & A54: These rooms are full skeletons of various humanoids, both the "good" kind and the "evil" kind. All skeletons have been spiked to the wall. The party removes the skeletons from their walls and tries to give each one an honorable burial as much as possible. While doing all of this, Dalron and Zorak hear whispers and see things move just outside of their vision. Both pay little notable attention to these and believe it all just to be part of the taint of the dungeon.

Room A56: Nothing in this room but a broken table.

Room A55: Empty room. So they thought. The rogue Dalron begins to explore the room, then everything goes dark. Three more fiendish darkmantles live in this room. While one of them created the darkness, the other two attack Dalron. Once again Dalron drops. But with teamwork, the combat only lasts about 30 seconds. The party decides to rest in this room. But they foolishly do not spike the doors this time. While Dugan is on watch, he hears a sound outside the door. His Detect Evil shows two evil things outside the door. He wakes Thunderclease and they open the door to find nothing. Dugan's radar no longer shows anything. Thunderclease believes that Dugan is full of it. They then decide to spike the doors. The hammering wakes Krieg, their walking band-aid, who was resting to get spells back. This requires him to rest again.

Room A49: This is a huge hallway (30'x260'). The party gives a quick check of the western end and check room A50.

Room A50: Another empty room. The party returns to check room A49 and thoroughly check the full length of the hallway.

Room A91: The door to this room was open and appeared to be full of rubber and other clutter. Dugan's radar detected 6 evil creatures on the other side. From the group's multiple fights with fiendish darkmantles, they've learned to check the ceilings. So when Dalron entered the room he immediately checked the ceiling. He found that it was 20' high and there was the largest darkmantle he'd seen so far. He shouted the alarm and combat ensued. Half of the party had rushed through the doorway. Then when they noticed that all of the darkmantles were much larger than those they'd seen so far AND there were several recently slain orcs and other humanoids they realized they were out of their league. They decided to create a "conga line of death". Full teamwork turned this combat from a potential TPK (Total Party Kill) into a total success with minimal damage to the party. But the combat did drain the group, so they went back to room A50 and rested.

Room A51: More skeletons. This room was left alone.

Room A69: This room was occupied by some creatures that they could not see, but could talk. The party attempted to parlay with the occupants, but the occupants (and Thunderclease) wanted nothing of it. After repeated demands for the party to leave the room, they did and continued on.

Room A20: This is the bedroom of someone. The party checked it thoroughly but found nothing save a secret door.

Session #2

Friday October 8th, 2004:
All players were present save Brian. Brian's paladin Dugan was controlled by Aaron (per Brian's request).

If you have any comments or questions, feel free to e-mail me at seannester@hotmail.com

We are also looking into the idea of a webcast for our sessions. Joe is looking further into it.

The DM rolled poorly this night so fun was had by all :)

Note: The group's travels involved alot of backtracking, so their movement appears to be a little random.

Day 2, 4PM

Session #2 map

From Room A18 to Room A22: Dalron, in his standard action, scouts ahead of the group no more than 40'. They come to this room and do their standard routine of checking the door for traps, listening for sounds, and checking for evil. Nothing is detected save for the sound of running water. The group investigates the room cautiously. Then an ogre attacks Dalron during Dalron's searching of the room. (Note: the ogre was conveniently just outside of Dugan's Detect Evil sweep.) The ogre missed Dalron and Dalron darted towards the group. A few brief seconds later the ogre lay dead and Dalron dying. Post-combat, Krieg healed Dalron and discussed with him about improving his tactics and staying more out of combat.

The group investigates the pillars in the room, and finds that water slide down from the ceiling, along the pillar, and into a little pool. Thinking they've found a chance at fresh water, the group notes this. But they don't want a dead ogre to pollute their new find, so they try to drag him out of room. But the ogre's size and the hallway don't match too well. So the group pulls the ogre into the center of the room, and hope that his blood and such won't spread too far out.

The group's walking band-aid, Krieg, is out of healing spells, and the paladin, Dugan, appears to have caught a little something from his rat bite. The group decides it is time to take another rest. They return to rooms A17 & A18 to do so. To ensure a safe nights rest, they spike all 3 doors closed. Aside from a couple blood-curdling screams, they manage to rest for a night...well they think it is night's rest, they've kind of lost track of day and night by now.

After their rest, they return to room A22. Unfortunately for them, overnight a half-dozen fiendish dire-rats found themselves a hefty feast in the shape of a dead ogre. The rats aggressively defend their new find. The combat is quick and decisive. The only person in the group who managed to be bitten is Dalron, and from the looks of it, he and Dugan are going to both be sick soon.

Using Deltin's skills and Thunderclease's stomach, the group believes that the water is potable and refill their skins.

Room A23: A similar room to A22, the group carefully investigates it, but find nothing out of the ordinary.

Room A24: Another room similar to room A22, save that it seems to have a permanent Silence spell in effect inside of it. The group finds this upsetting (and reeking of ambush) so they quickly investigate it and leave.

They then do a little map exploration then decide to fill in a few unexplored areas.

Room A19: The scout of the group determines that this room is the latrine. Despite some cajoling by Krieg, Dalron refuses to investigate the "pit".

Room A11: The group finds a skeleton of a kobold in this room and nothing else. The standard paladic "radar" and rogue detection suite detect nothing special at either door.

Room A12: The group briefly investigates this trash filled room and finds some minor trinkets.

Room A14: This room appears to have been a bedroom for someone. A search under the bed finds a small tin box. After Dalron determines there to be no traps on the box, they open it to find 1 broken potion bottle and 1 intact potion bottle. A Detect Magic spell cast by Zorak determined the potion to be magical with a faint feeling of conjuration magic.

Rooms A15 & A16: Dalron found no traps on either of the doors, but dugan detected evil in each room. Before they could react, a pair of fiendish dire rats attacked Dalron. One rat bit him and gave him quite a gash. But the rats were easily dispatched by group. While Krieg healed Dalron's wounds, Dugan entered room A16 and everything went dim. Knowing that the was probably the work of those black octopus things again, the group went to work. Two fiendish darkmantles attacked the group. Although the group defeated them, Dalron was hurt badly. He had nearly been suffocated to death by one of those things yet again.

This was not Dalron's best week.

The group spiked themselves into room A14 while they rested. More screams were heard. Some screams were much closer than others. But they rested themselves and moved on.

Room A3: Nearly two dozen very decayed corpses of kobolds and troglodyes were found in this room. Unfortunately for the group, the bodies were a breeding ground for a disease and some of it was airborne. Soon enough, Thunderclease will find that combat may not be the only way he could die.

Room A4: The door to this room was trapped. It was a small but clever trap. Thunderclease, Dugan, and Dalron each get a little singed from cone of fire that shoots out from the door. Dalron is mildly irritated because he was quite sure that he had determined that there were no traps.

Inside of the room they find a few nasty sacks with mold and mushrooms growing on them. Krieg warns the party to leave them alone. The group listens and moves on.

Room A5: In this room the group finds opened crates, opened barrels, and more sacks, all of which are covered in the same kind of mold and mushrooms that were in room A4. In spite of being warned again by Krieg, Dalron could not resist some investigation and search for some treasure. He paid the price for his curiosity when the mold filled the air with its spores and he inhaled a healthy amount of them. He spends the next few hours hacking and coughing while his body tries fight this new infection.

Room A6: While moving into this room, an acid arrow just narrowly missed Dugan and Thunderclease. Every few rounds another arrow narrowly misses a member of the party. By the third arrow the party realizes the trap reloads itself and decides to leave the hallway entirely. While one half of the party is being shot at by magical arrows, the other half is investigating the room but finds nothing they don't have already.

Additionally, Dalron's elf eyes spot a secret door. With some effort, the door is opened, but this path would lead the group too close to some moldy sacks. The group is faced with the decision of going forward and risking more damage from the mold or having to go back through the trapped corridor. They risk the poor aim of the trap. Unfortunately for Thunderclease (the first through the doorway), the aim wasn't so poor this time. (He lived through it.)

When the group moved back into room A3, they encountered a dozen humanoids (4 orcs and 8 kobolds to be specific) who were looking for a place to rest. The party retreated back into room A5 with the hopes of using the sacks to their advantage and to create a "Conga line of death". Thunderclease attempted to talk to them, but the orcs saw some easy pickings. Thunderclease used himself as bait to lure them. But the orcs already knew about the rooms and the mold. The orcs closed the door and refused to be mindless fodder for the group.

The party decided to spike their door closed and got some rest. For reasons unknown the group, the orcs never made an offensive into the room.

Level up!
Thunderclease adds his 1st level of fighter (barbarian 1 / fighter 1).
Dalron adds a 2nd level of rogue.
Krieg adds a 2nd level of cleric.
Zorak adds a 2nd level of sorcerer.

The group re-enters room A2 and finds no orcs or kobolds.
They explore a little further into the northeast.

The Adventure!

Day 1, hour 12 Noon
After a tenday of travel, the adventurers finally made it to their destination with the aid of their gruff ranger guide Deltin.
Deltin was simply supposed to lead the adventurers to the dungeon mouth, but when a rockslide blocked his way and crushed his mule carrying his payment, the adventurers offered him a spot in their group to help make up for his loss. He accepted because he wanted nothing to do with clearing out rubble for 30 days. They offered because their mentor loaded them down with preparative equipment and felt they could have someone to lighten their load.

So with a new partner in tow they entered the cave mouth (rogue first of course).

Session #1 map

Room A1: Nothing special other than a steady rush of air travelling through the cracks in the doorways. They opened the Eastern door only to see an inky blackness beyond the threshold. Krieg used his 10' pole to poke into the darkness and found that he could not pull it out. Now they understood the meaning of the warning they'd been given "Once you enter there is no turning back." But they came here to do a job, so in rapid succession they entered.

Room A2: They examined their new surrounding and got to work. They heard a short series of coughs so Dalron went to investigate while Dugan began using his Detect Evil ability (an ability he puts to used almost constantly). They discovered a few orcs that vehemently wanted to be left alone. The group decided that a combat was not necessary and moved on into the Eastern most door.

Room A7: A giant pile of trash and a horrible smell greets them here. They don't even enter the room. So they move on to another door from room A2.

Room A8: They find a dead orc in this room. Krieg investigates the body and finds wounds about the body. Consensus agrees that these could be caused by stirges, but they aren't 100% sure.

Room A9: One at a time they enter this room. First is Thunderclease and then Dugan. Then everything goes black around them. Something attacks Dugan and a crazed combat ensues. Although they had trained for a year for this, their eagerness to do battle gets the best of them. Before the end of the combat, everyone except Zorak and Delting had been knocked unconscious. The combat was horrendous and the damage great. When the octopus thing had been defeated (they still do not know what it was), they had to spend a full day to recover.
Much time was spend discussing how to avoid another catastrophic fight with those things.
Luckily for them Caldera had supplied them with spikes so they could keep the doors held closed because at some point in their rest they had heard a fight going on and some yelling where the orcs were. Later they returned to check on the orcs only to find them slain. They did a quick check to make sure that whatever killed them was no longer around. Nothing showed up on Dugan's "radar", so they continued...

Room A10: The moment they open the door to this room hundreds of rats with glowing red eyes swarmed through. Once again a 10' pole proved itself to be quite useful, for it saved him from being overtaken at the time. This combat did not cause as much havoc as their first one, but when the smoke cleared it appeared that several of their front line had numerous rat bites. After some investigation, one bite on Dugan looked particularly nasty. Krieg feared it may have caused an infection.

Room A16: Empty room for the most part. The group travelled on.

Room A17: Dalron was about to investigate this room when he was besieged by a swarm of stirges. He was quickly able to get out of harms way while Thunderclease made quick work of the vermin. But not before a grapplefest ensued with the last one that had drained alot of blood from Krieg. It was then decided that Krieg will hang back for the time being.

Room A18: This was determined to be the nesting room of the stirges.

And so it begins...

Our cast:
Thunderclease

Shield Dwarf Barbarian/Fighter
Played by Justin
Quote: "Forget the rogue, I'll open the door!"


Dalron Shadowhand

Wood Elf Rogue
Played by Dale
Quote: "Hey watch this. Ah! Get it off me! Get it off me!"


Zorak Ghostal

Human Sorcerer
Played by Joe
Quote: "Do I cast it now?!"


Krieg Sherr

Gold Dwarf Cleric of Lathander
Played by Aaron
Quote: "Oh...this can't be good."


Valden Glitterlode

Gold Dwarf Cleric of Haela Brightaxe
Played by Jeff
Quote: none yet


Dugan Steeledge

Gold Dwarf Paladin of Moradin (Mordinsammin)
Played by Brian
Quote: "Good people are honorable, not idiotic."
Deceased