The Dungeon Game: Weekends at Stonehell, session 10
With Captain Nasty as a guide, the party make it to the Kobold Market, strike some deals and also discover the secret entrance into the wizard's laboratory that they were looking for.
Party Members
- Tiny Tina - Level 4 Cleric
- Telperion Desh - Level 3 Magician
- Vaco Adjacent - Level 2 Paladin
Followers
Zorrel "Captain Nasty Gnast" ** (Fighter 2), **Medium Sized Marta (Fighter 2), Rutger (Robot 1)
Session Recap
After the last expedition, Tina the Titanic had made a big show to advertise back in Zorb that Crownfall Keep is the place to be, should you want to adventure into the depths of Stonehell. This attracts numerous colorful characters, among them a robot with a big lamp for a head, Vaco Adjacent takes a liking to. Naming the robot "Rutger" the mechanical man joins the party.
With Captain Nasty to guide them, the Crownless Company use the brigand elevator down into floor 1, and head towards the Kobold Market. While they wait for everyone to get ferried down, Telperion gathers some curious red liquid that oozes off the walls of the cavern, which he can recognize as a potentially valuable alchemical reagent.
After everyone is down, the group head south, passing various painted rooms, killing some giant centipedes along the way, and eventually head east. As they do, they hear some noise up a head - some orcs observing a fight happening in a nearby room and taking bets on who the fight will go.
Telperion tries to use their distraction to put them to sleep, but only 3 of the orcs fall to the spell, with the others rushing out of sight. The group proceeds further ahead to see what the orcs were watching, and find some kobolds slowly losing a fight to a giant shrew.
The party decide to take the opportunity to aid the kobolds and slay the shrew, just in tome for the orcs to attack the group from the rear. Some attack Tiny Tina, but can't quite land enough hits to cause some serious damage to her (but not take her down), while others detach and rush at Marta and Vaco, slaying the warrior woman on the spot with their vicious polearms. Telperion uses his sleep magic again to dispatch some of the orcs (and Tiny Tina), while the party finish off the rest.
With a fallen comrade and a magically asleep one, the group debate heading back, but decide to press forward and the grateful kobolds are happy to show them the way, bringing them to the Kobold Market. The group have to check in their weapons, also paying a few gilders to check in Marta's body as well for safe keeping, then they go into the market proper. They explore it for a bit, seeing the odd collection of monsters and people who would shop there. The market itself is mostly just junk, subpar quality food and drinks and just overall shoddy goods. The kobolds are clearly enamored by the idea of running a market, cafe and tavern, but they don't seem to be particularly good at it.
Stopping by a soothsayer (a cockroach kobold by the name of Shrimp) the group ask it about the mage's laboratory that they have been searching for, and shockingly to them they are given a clue and directions. As the group grab a bite to eat at the Rat Kebab Kafe, they also encounter some strange looking men, who Tina guesses correctly are hobgoblins, servants of the Elves. The hobgoblins confirm that their masters have not yet arrived, but refuse to offer any real information. The group also see some snake men in the nearby tavern, but those refuse to answer at all, only staring at the party with cold, unblinking eyes, until the group leaves.
Deciding to explore further, the group find themselves in the kobold common areas where an elderly racoon gives them a rather cold welcome, but directs them to Trustee Sniv, the kobold who runs the market after they show interest in forming some kind of trade relations. Meeting with the corpulent rat kobold, Tina and the Crownless Company bribe Sniv to potentially begin a trading relationship with him, with them offering to bring in luxury goods from the surface down to his market. He's interested but will talk with them more later.
Finally done with the market, the group head back south to find where the entrance into the mage's lab is. The reading they got from Shrimp directed them to the latrine, which they eventually find a secret door on the wall of. Passing into the dusty halls of the mage's sanctum, the group explores some of the rooms but get attacked - First by some strange undead, shades formed out dust, bones and scraps. Tiny Tina's magic turns them away and they dissipate in fear after they get away from the party. Secondly some odd speckled oozes attack them, but are quickly dispatched by Vaco and Captain Nasty.
Exploring the sanctum some more the party realize this is going to take a bit more time and resources to properly investigate, and having been battered for a while on the expedition they head back to bring Marta's remains up to the surface, as well as the orc gear from their slain foes. Once back in town they bring Marta to the temple of Law and pay for her to be resurrected.
Observations
Finally made it to the Kobold Market! The group have been interested in finding this part of Floor 1 ever since they first heard about it, and on top of that they now also finally found the forgotten mage's laboratory, a mission they had going in the background for sessions on end. This happened fairly late during the session itself, so the plan is to go back and explore and map it more thoroughly next time.
This was mostly a session of social encounters, as the only real fights were with the orcs and then a pack of wolves on the way out. And the wolves were not much of a fight, as they got blasted with a bomb and then put to sleep by Telperion's magic. The players enjoyed futzing about in the Kobold Market, though later there was a comment from one of them that as a market, it is kind of boring and there's nothing of any value worth getting there. Which is, in fact, true, and kind of a running issue with Floor 1 of Stonehell. It is a perfectly serviceable dungeon, but it just does not have much in the way of sauce, and the Kobold Market underlines that in the low quality of the services and goods present.
I chose to keep it that way instead of just adding some good stuff around mostly because I like the idea of the kobolds just putting on this pantomime of human behavior, but their actual output is just kind of crap. I suspect we'll see a lot more of it as the game continues, as the plan is to establish a trade relationship with the kobolds and potentially allying with them even.
A big overhaul I did on the rule set side is that every PC now has only one single companion. This was the case last session, and now Vaco gets his, in the form of Lamphead (now renamed Rutger) the robot. I really like the Robot class that Bateman wrote up for Devil's World Heroes so I plan on using that for this character too. In Nathan's version Robots don't get xp, they just pay money for upgrades, but I'm going to make them do both. Their level does not affect anything, except the amount of upgrades they can have installed at a single time. To compensate for that I am giving him the XP progression of a thief, so pretty quick.
With the party now hovering around 3rd and 4th level, and even their followers being level 2, fights are a lot less of a slog, though still quite brutal. The orcs managed to dish out 15 damage to Marta in one turn, who only had 12 HP. The fact is, in D&D the dice can screw you over no matter what else happens.
But with resurrection being available and relatively cheap, it is now definitely worth bringing back even a dead companion, especially one that offers a valuable addition to the party.