Rappan Athuk #7 - The Power of Web Compels You
Ernest Gary Gygax
R.I.P. 1938-2008
Let’s just jump right into the game shall we?
We last stopped with Javier (Brian’s PC) & Saver (Dale’s PC) alone on the second level of Rappan Athuk with Javier about to search a dead body.
(We had to stop because it took me forever to find the entry for the Rot Grub monster in the module’s appendix. Rappan Athuk is an awesome dungeon, but its organization of information leaves much to be desired.)
Javier was about to search the corpse when he spotted some 3” long maggot-like creatures crawling towards his hand. Taking no chances, the two PC’s stepped back and killed the grubs with Javier’s mace and Saver’s spells.
It was a good thing too because rot grubs are particularly nasty in this module, pretty much just as nasty as they were in AD&D 1E. Had Javier failed his spot check, they would have automatically dug into his skin and started burrowing to his heart, dealing constitution damage every round until he died and saving throws only delay the damage by a round.
Saver dumped some oil on the body and torched it (and they killed more grubs fleeing the body). After that, they very warily “rescue” 120gp from the body.
Then they notice the flames don’t seem to be warming to them too much, and see a patch of brown mold on the ceiling growing as it leeches heat from the fire. After they take some subdual cold damage, they leave the room and head back to the entry room of this level.
There they meet up with Slam (Justin’s PC) and Dargo (Aaron’s new PC – a deep halfling sorcerer/scout) and resume adventuring together.
(I sure am glad I’m not worrying about how adventurers meet up in this campaign. I’d be out of ideas already.)
There are two exits from this room the party has not yet taken, one to the north and one to the south. Since the north locked door has an axe embedded in it, they head through the south locked door.
After walking about 60’, they come to a T-intersection. To the east, the passage continues out of sight. To the west, the passage dead-ends after 20’ with no door.
Since dead-ends scream secret door, their new scout searches the area and finds a secret and the familiar smell of decaying flesh coming from behind it.
(I was really hoping they didn’t find this room so quickly, but oh well.)
After setting themselves up in a defensive formation, Dargo opens the door to find a natural passageway whose floor is cluttered with broken bones, some with rotting flesh still attached.
After 20’ the passageway ends in a door, so Slam and Dargo move up, search the door and open it when they find no traps and hear no noise.
In the star-shaped room are nearly 3 dozen ghouls and ghasts, and initiative is immediately rolled with no surprise for either side.
Dargo and Slam immediately back up into the main hallway where the party can set up a Conga-line-of-death, giving the ghouls rushing through it limited targeting while everyone in the party can attack if needed.
Javier hurts one ghoul, and then Slam kills it and cleaves to the next one hanging out in the mouth of the passageway. All this time Dargo and Saver are delaying actions with spells to blast any that aren’t dropped in order to hopefully prevent the front line from being overwhelmed.
This works for several rounds until the first ghast come through. The ghasts have better a higher AC, more hit points, and a higher paralysis DC. A moment after the first ghast paralyzes Slam; Javier botches a saving throw and is paralyzed by a ghoul. This allows other ghouls to get into the room and go after Saver and Dargo.
Saver then casts Web, filling the passageway up to prevent more ghouls from coming into the hallway. Amazingly the two of them hold off, and kill some of the three ghouls and one ghast for a few rounds before the paralysis wore off their front-line and mopped up the remaining two ghouls.
While the party spent a few moments healing up and prepped a new plan, the undead did the same. Take a look at the intelligence and wisdom of ghasts (14 and 13). Those buggers are smart enough to plan and counter-plan. Some of them have fought adventurers for awhile. Heck most of them probably were adventurers.
The ghouls trapped in the Web had fled back into their star-shaped lair, so after Saver dismisses the web, Slam and Dargo inch their way down the passageway.
They hoped to lure the ghouls back to the conga-line-of-death, but instead they were lured in themselves.
The ghouls never moved to attack either Dargo or Slam until the two of them moved about 10’ into the room. Then the undead swarmed them.
Even though the DM rolls poorly throughout the evening, the party’s luck didn’t do so well for this fight.
Within moments Dargo and Slam were paralyzed, surrounded, and then torn to shreds. Javier and Saver attempt to save them, but that is quickly seen as impossible.
Javier and Saver are quickly chased by ghouls back to the entry room of this level. Saver casts Web once again to block their pursuit long enough for them to get back to that room and lock the door.
End results:
13 of 21 ghouls dead, 2 to be replaced
2 of 6 ghasts dead, none to be replaced
2 PC’s dead, both to be replaced
Note: Aaron and Justin took so long to make their new characters that they didn’t get to make an appearance this night. It’s not like I didn’t warn them to have a lot of backup PC’s.
Once again, Javier and Saver are alone in the dungeon and have no way to get out. But that doesn’t stop them from trying.
They snuck all the way back to the mausoleum and tried to pry open the large green-stone mausoleum doors with a crowbar. That obviously failed, but they did notice that the small scratch the crowbar put in the door regenerated quickly.
Unless they figure out how to open those doors, or one of them is able to shrink enough to crawl out of the rat holes, those two are stuck until someone else opens the door.
Next on their agenda: find a place to rest. First they search for the secret door on level 1 to the room they slept in there. Not only could they not find the door, Dungie came wandering down the hallway and ran the two of them back down to level 2.
They have no option but to try the locked northern door with the axe embedded in it.
The hallway leads north about 30’ before it T’s to the east and west. To the east the hallway goes out of sight, but with doors along the corridor. To the west the hallway opens up after 30’.
(Once again the DM shudders. I had hoped they wouldn’t go this way either.)
This room has no door and reeks of body odor. Inside is the floor is strewn with straw and various animal pelts.
Oh and then there’s the crazed human barbarian with more muscles the most juiced up steroid freak. The barbarian yells out his rage and combat begins.
Saver wins initiative and Webs the part of the room the barbarian is in, who fails to save against it. The next round Saver follows it up with a Sound Burst, stunning the barbarian for a round.
Over the next few rounds while the Barbarian is pulling his way through the webs straight to the party the two PC’s nickel and dime him with arrows, rocks from sling stones, and the last charges from Saver’s Wand of Magic Missiles.
By the time the barbarian finally makes it through the webs, his rage has ended. At that point he effectively has a strength score of around 14, about half his original strength.
A couple of rounds later he is killed by Javier, having only dealt 9 points of damage when he could have done an average of 20 per round.
The two PC’s do what comes naturally, they loot the place. They find several arcane scrolls, a magic greatclub, some usable pelts and other treasure totaling over 500gp, and three ceramic jars holding green slime. They take it all.
Everyone at the table was surprised they had beaten him. Perhaps the power of gestalt PC’s is finally kicking in.
Then they started quibbling over the magic greatclub
Aaron: “Hmmm. My next character will be using a great club.”
Brian: “No my next character will be wielding a greatclub.”
Sean: “Now now, you’ll all get a chance to use that greatclub.”
After using the last of their healing spells they resumed searching for a place to rest (and now they really needed it).
The first few rooms were interesting, but not usable as a place of rest.
The first room was locked, but the barbarian had a key to it. Inside were over a dozen starving dire rats that fled once the door was opened. It’s where the barbarian kept his food.
The next room they had to break open the door, and it stank of rotted meat and another exit that lead down to another level.
The room after that was also locked. Once they broke into it, they found a room full of destroyed boxes and other containers. Since the room didn’t stink, they barricaded the door and attempted to rest the night.
Amazingly they were able to rest until morning (random encounters didn’t pan out) and soon got back on their way.
They continued east down the hallway, and then south when it turned.
The first door they came across was a very nicely crafted one of ebony wood with gold bindings and runes that make them feel uneasy.
Having no rogues they couldn’t search the door for traps. As a reward Javier was stuck with a poison needle when he tried, and failed, to open the door, and took a point of Str damage (and another 4 later when they forgot about the poison).
Properly disconcerted they skipped that door for now.
A little further south and the hallway turned west, leading presumably where the ghoul/ghast lair was.
They searched a couple more storage rooms along the hallway. One room was full of debris that had been swept into a tidy pile by a magical broom (which they took) and another room was full of materials for building coffins.
In a fit of metagaming (and the need for healing and stat restoration) the two of them decided to head back to the storage room they had just left, hoping to give Aaron and Justin enough time to finish their characters. It wasn’t.
As a reward for trying to rest they got a random encounter.
A trio of ogres had been walking the hallway when one of them noticed that the door to the storage room had been damage.
They pushed open the barricade on the door and saw some “food” in the shape of Javier and Saver.
Once again, Saver won initiative and cast Web in the hallway. The combined effects of Web and the ogres trying to fit into a medium-sized doorway put the ogres at a tactical disadvantage.
Javier was still low on hit points, so he was first to have to deal with the new hp rules when the ogre in the doorway was able to smash him (even through the webs).
But somehow Saver was able to heal Javier up and the two of them took down one ogre, then a second, and then the last one. Each one was taken down one at a time with spells and a mace.
The two PC’s once again looted bodies and we stopped there.
R.I.P. 1938-2008
Let’s just jump right into the game shall we?
We last stopped with Javier (Brian’s PC) & Saver (Dale’s PC) alone on the second level of Rappan Athuk with Javier about to search a dead body.
(We had to stop because it took me forever to find the entry for the Rot Grub monster in the module’s appendix. Rappan Athuk is an awesome dungeon, but its organization of information leaves much to be desired.)
Javier was about to search the corpse when he spotted some 3” long maggot-like creatures crawling towards his hand. Taking no chances, the two PC’s stepped back and killed the grubs with Javier’s mace and Saver’s spells.
It was a good thing too because rot grubs are particularly nasty in this module, pretty much just as nasty as they were in AD&D 1E. Had Javier failed his spot check, they would have automatically dug into his skin and started burrowing to his heart, dealing constitution damage every round until he died and saving throws only delay the damage by a round.
Saver dumped some oil on the body and torched it (and they killed more grubs fleeing the body). After that, they very warily “rescue” 120gp from the body.
Then they notice the flames don’t seem to be warming to them too much, and see a patch of brown mold on the ceiling growing as it leeches heat from the fire. After they take some subdual cold damage, they leave the room and head back to the entry room of this level.
There they meet up with Slam (Justin’s PC) and Dargo (Aaron’s new PC – a deep halfling sorcerer/scout) and resume adventuring together.
(I sure am glad I’m not worrying about how adventurers meet up in this campaign. I’d be out of ideas already.)
There are two exits from this room the party has not yet taken, one to the north and one to the south. Since the north locked door has an axe embedded in it, they head through the south locked door.
After walking about 60’, they come to a T-intersection. To the east, the passage continues out of sight. To the west, the passage dead-ends after 20’ with no door.
Since dead-ends scream secret door, their new scout searches the area and finds a secret and the familiar smell of decaying flesh coming from behind it.
(I was really hoping they didn’t find this room so quickly, but oh well.)
After setting themselves up in a defensive formation, Dargo opens the door to find a natural passageway whose floor is cluttered with broken bones, some with rotting flesh still attached.
After 20’ the passageway ends in a door, so Slam and Dargo move up, search the door and open it when they find no traps and hear no noise.
In the star-shaped room are nearly 3 dozen ghouls and ghasts, and initiative is immediately rolled with no surprise for either side.
Dargo and Slam immediately back up into the main hallway where the party can set up a Conga-line-of-death, giving the ghouls rushing through it limited targeting while everyone in the party can attack if needed.
Javier hurts one ghoul, and then Slam kills it and cleaves to the next one hanging out in the mouth of the passageway. All this time Dargo and Saver are delaying actions with spells to blast any that aren’t dropped in order to hopefully prevent the front line from being overwhelmed.
This works for several rounds until the first ghast come through. The ghasts have better a higher AC, more hit points, and a higher paralysis DC. A moment after the first ghast paralyzes Slam; Javier botches a saving throw and is paralyzed by a ghoul. This allows other ghouls to get into the room and go after Saver and Dargo.
Saver then casts Web, filling the passageway up to prevent more ghouls from coming into the hallway. Amazingly the two of them hold off, and kill some of the three ghouls and one ghast for a few rounds before the paralysis wore off their front-line and mopped up the remaining two ghouls.
While the party spent a few moments healing up and prepped a new plan, the undead did the same. Take a look at the intelligence and wisdom of ghasts (14 and 13). Those buggers are smart enough to plan and counter-plan. Some of them have fought adventurers for awhile. Heck most of them probably were adventurers.
The ghouls trapped in the Web had fled back into their star-shaped lair, so after Saver dismisses the web, Slam and Dargo inch their way down the passageway.
They hoped to lure the ghouls back to the conga-line-of-death, but instead they were lured in themselves.
The ghouls never moved to attack either Dargo or Slam until the two of them moved about 10’ into the room. Then the undead swarmed them.
Even though the DM rolls poorly throughout the evening, the party’s luck didn’t do so well for this fight.
Within moments Dargo and Slam were paralyzed, surrounded, and then torn to shreds. Javier and Saver attempt to save them, but that is quickly seen as impossible.
Javier and Saver are quickly chased by ghouls back to the entry room of this level. Saver casts Web once again to block their pursuit long enough for them to get back to that room and lock the door.
End results:
13 of 21 ghouls dead, 2 to be replaced
2 of 6 ghasts dead, none to be replaced
2 PC’s dead, both to be replaced
Note: Aaron and Justin took so long to make their new characters that they didn’t get to make an appearance this night. It’s not like I didn’t warn them to have a lot of backup PC’s.
Once again, Javier and Saver are alone in the dungeon and have no way to get out. But that doesn’t stop them from trying.
They snuck all the way back to the mausoleum and tried to pry open the large green-stone mausoleum doors with a crowbar. That obviously failed, but they did notice that the small scratch the crowbar put in the door regenerated quickly.
Unless they figure out how to open those doors, or one of them is able to shrink enough to crawl out of the rat holes, those two are stuck until someone else opens the door.
Next on their agenda: find a place to rest. First they search for the secret door on level 1 to the room they slept in there. Not only could they not find the door, Dungie came wandering down the hallway and ran the two of them back down to level 2.
They have no option but to try the locked northern door with the axe embedded in it.
The hallway leads north about 30’ before it T’s to the east and west. To the east the hallway goes out of sight, but with doors along the corridor. To the west the hallway opens up after 30’.
(Once again the DM shudders. I had hoped they wouldn’t go this way either.)
This room has no door and reeks of body odor. Inside is the floor is strewn with straw and various animal pelts.
Oh and then there’s the crazed human barbarian with more muscles the most juiced up steroid freak. The barbarian yells out his rage and combat begins.
Saver wins initiative and Webs the part of the room the barbarian is in, who fails to save against it. The next round Saver follows it up with a Sound Burst, stunning the barbarian for a round.
Over the next few rounds while the Barbarian is pulling his way through the webs straight to the party the two PC’s nickel and dime him with arrows, rocks from sling stones, and the last charges from Saver’s Wand of Magic Missiles.
By the time the barbarian finally makes it through the webs, his rage has ended. At that point he effectively has a strength score of around 14, about half his original strength.
A couple of rounds later he is killed by Javier, having only dealt 9 points of damage when he could have done an average of 20 per round.
The two PC’s do what comes naturally, they loot the place. They find several arcane scrolls, a magic greatclub, some usable pelts and other treasure totaling over 500gp, and three ceramic jars holding green slime. They take it all.
Everyone at the table was surprised they had beaten him. Perhaps the power of gestalt PC’s is finally kicking in.
Then they started quibbling over the magic greatclub
Aaron: “Hmmm. My next character will be using a great club.”
Brian: “No my next character will be wielding a greatclub.”
Sean: “Now now, you’ll all get a chance to use that greatclub.”
After using the last of their healing spells they resumed searching for a place to rest (and now they really needed it).
The first few rooms were interesting, but not usable as a place of rest.
The first room was locked, but the barbarian had a key to it. Inside were over a dozen starving dire rats that fled once the door was opened. It’s where the barbarian kept his food.
The next room they had to break open the door, and it stank of rotted meat and another exit that lead down to another level.
The room after that was also locked. Once they broke into it, they found a room full of destroyed boxes and other containers. Since the room didn’t stink, they barricaded the door and attempted to rest the night.
Amazingly they were able to rest until morning (random encounters didn’t pan out) and soon got back on their way.
They continued east down the hallway, and then south when it turned.
The first door they came across was a very nicely crafted one of ebony wood with gold bindings and runes that make them feel uneasy.
Having no rogues they couldn’t search the door for traps. As a reward Javier was stuck with a poison needle when he tried, and failed, to open the door, and took a point of Str damage (and another 4 later when they forgot about the poison).
Properly disconcerted they skipped that door for now.
A little further south and the hallway turned west, leading presumably where the ghoul/ghast lair was.
They searched a couple more storage rooms along the hallway. One room was full of debris that had been swept into a tidy pile by a magical broom (which they took) and another room was full of materials for building coffins.
In a fit of metagaming (and the need for healing and stat restoration) the two of them decided to head back to the storage room they had just left, hoping to give Aaron and Justin enough time to finish their characters. It wasn’t.
As a reward for trying to rest they got a random encounter.
A trio of ogres had been walking the hallway when one of them noticed that the door to the storage room had been damage.
They pushed open the barricade on the door and saw some “food” in the shape of Javier and Saver.
Once again, Saver won initiative and cast Web in the hallway. The combined effects of Web and the ogres trying to fit into a medium-sized doorway put the ogres at a tactical disadvantage.
Javier was still low on hit points, so he was first to have to deal with the new hp rules when the ogre in the doorway was able to smash him (even through the webs).
But somehow Saver was able to heal Javier up and the two of them took down one ogre, then a second, and then the last one. Each one was taken down one at a time with spells and a mace.
The two PC’s once again looted bodies and we stopped there.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 7:07 AM
1 Comments:
That's a great story. I don't want to spam but I have a blog sharing everything I got about DnD. I don't play anymore, but you could use my blog as a reference.
Have a nice evening.
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