The Dungeon Game: Weekends at Stonehell, session 12
The Crownless Company deal the final blow to the Open Sores Orc Gang in Stonehell's first floor.
Party Members
- Tina the Titanic - Level 5 Fighter
- Telperion Desh - Level 5 Magician
- Vaco Adjacent - Level 4 Paladin
- Jimthorpe - Level 1 Assassin
- Matthias - Level 4 Fighter
- Petrol Petrikov - Level 4 Bombard
Followers
Zorrel "Captain Nasty" Gnast (Fighter 4), Tiny Tina (Cleric 5), Rutger (Robot 4)
Session Recap
Having had enough of the constant orc attacks whenever they set foot in the dungeon, the Crownless Company decided they were done with this shit and were going to get rid of the problem permanently. A small team headed down into the dungeon and ambushed an orc patrol, with Telperion Desh using Charm Monster to enthrall the orcs and bring them back with the group, using them for intel. The orcs were more than happy to provide information on the numbers and layout of their former comrades' territory, along with willing to join them in slaughtering the other orcs.
The Company make some plans, stock up on bombs and mobilize their various followers they have back in base, along with some new fresh level 1 recruits in the fighter Matthias and Petrol the Bombard.
In total, the group had all the PCs listed above, along with 10 Ghost Beggars bandits equipped half and half with sword+shield and polearms, Kurgan and Konan, the party's faithful wardogs and Sinthia and Medium Sized Marta, the women-at-arms, along with 4 charmed orcs.
They break into two teams - a breach team of heavily armored fighters who will engage the orcs with bombs and in melee, and a rear guard who's job is to guard...well the rear and the flanks of the main group, using bombs to keep any potential ambushes at bay before the main fighting force can go deal with them.
As they descend into the dungeon the group charge into the first orc guard post, taking them out with explosives. They hear more commotion coming down the hallway and the four orcs they have with them rush in to fight with their brothers. All the commotion does attract the attention of an orc patrol which attack the rear of the group, getting into a brutal hallway fight with the ghost beggars. While the orcs manage to slay two of the bandits, between polearms and bombs they manage to push them back, and eventually slaughter them.
With the rear secured the party then push forward, running into magical darkness which Tiny Tina dispels using her own magical abilities. Many bombs are thrown, and Telperion Desh finally runs face to face with his target/prize - Grim Maw the orc wizard. A Sleep spell knocks out the orc and his guard, which the party slaughter. The orc is tied up and left alive.
Continuing with the push deeper the group run into the final stand of the gang's boss and his closest followers, but sleep takes out most of them, and the orc boss puts up a valiant fight but ultimately gets killed by Tina the Titanic and Vaco Adj.'s steel.
Finally victorious the group reap the spoils of war. They dispatch the orc boss's pet snake and steal his gold and gems, they loot the expensive jewelry off the orc leadership and Telperion gets the orc wizard's grimoire, a bunch of alchemical ingredients, a strange egg that looks like a Fabergé egg, but organic, and the biggest prize - Grim Maw himself. The orc is willing to be cooperative, but Telperion uses magic to enthrall him just in case and the orc says he can teach the magician the ritual to brew orcs.
The group call in their porters and start hauling out all the gear, corpses and treasure. Grim Maw is put under strict guard by Sinthia and Marta, as the group delve back again to do some more exploring now that the orcs have been dealt with.
This turns out to have been a lot more dangerous than the orcs themselves. As Matthias and Tina the Titanic lift a rusted shut portcullis a green slime falls on the two of them. Thinking quickly Tina Tina casts Protection from Fire on Matthias and then the pair are doused in fire bomb liquids and lit on fire to burn the slime off. It does work, and the two are saved the grisly fate of being turned into slime, however their armor and helmets are ruined and Tina the Titanic's hair is completely melted away.
Undeterred the group keep exploring, finding a locked door. Jimthorpe gets to work on picking the lock, with Telperion and Captain Nasty stand guard. The rest of the party head further and find some kobolds, from which they learn that this is the territory of some goblins. Tina the Titanic pays the kobolds for the goods they were going to deliver to the goblins (which the kobolds accept, since the goblins have been dragging their feet on paying) and the kobold traders head back to the market.
However before the group can return with this knowledge, the door wings open right in front of Jimthorpe and a bomb flies over his head, exploding right into Telperion and Gnast's faces, before a pair of wolves jump them. Jimthorpe himself is then assaulted by a swarm of angry muppet goblins, which proceed to kill him and attack the wizard and his bodyguard. At this point the group manage to rush in to help, finishing off the little jerks. Bruised and hurt they decide to call it a day and head back up to reap the generous spoils of their expedition.
Observations
Jesus Christ what a session. So, the ongoing theme in these last few reports has been the effect me deciding not to split XP among the PCs right? Well in this session, between the magical egg (which is a permanent +1 dexterity to whoever eats it, a very rare effect that I'm sprinkling around as magical items in the dungeon), the absurd loot that the orc boss and his toadies have and just the sheer amount of orcs slaughtered the party gained 18,624 experience points. That's 18k each, which put the two new characters from level 1 to level 4 in an instant and made every single PC and Companion also level up (bumping up against my limit that you can't level more than once after you're past level 3).
Now, curiously enough - not everyone bumped up against that limit! Telperion for example is actually just starting to reach high enough levels that it simply takes a lot to level him up.
The fight with the orcs was also a complete curbstomp hah. The party was overleveled and had just a shitton of bombs on them, and so it was not much of a fight. Initiative also was in their favor, as some bad rolls could have resulted in some serious damage or even a death or two, but they just were on top of everything. Which makes sense - the party started with multiple characters at level 4 and 3, plus numerous followers. This is still, need I remind you, floor 1 of the dungeon! These orcs are a challenge for a group of level 1s or 2s, but a mid-level party? Yeah this went exactly as expected.
And hilariously enough, that did not matter shit when facing a green slime falling on people or goblins chucking bombs around! Those are still low level threats, which for me really underlined how important it is that the enemy has just something to do besides simply it's HD and AC and damage roll.
We had two new players join, though both of them are going to be there for only one session - one of them leaving the country in a couple of weeks and the other one having a different thing scheduled for the usual time slot of the game. But it was great to have people relatively new to RPGs play in the game, and they at least seemed to enjoy it!
Also the poor player who plays Jimthorpe has now had 3 PCs die, which accounts for 3/4ths of all PC deaths in the campaign so far. He's taking it in good stride, but it does suck that he couldn't reap the insane rewards of the session due to being killed at the end of it. Tis the life of a level 1 I suppose.
On Discord we had a fairly long discussion about the interaction between darkness and continual light, and in the end it turned out do not matter. With a cleric able to just cast light as needed it basically just meant burning some spell slots to get rid of it. I should have probably given Grim Maw some kind of AoE attack of his own just to combine it with his wand of darkness, but I also didn't want to redo him at the very last moment. Doing so feels a bit cheap. Should have thought of it before hah.
Running the fight was fairly complex, since there were two fronts and things happening out of view of the PCs, but things worked fairly smoothly and the whole thing was short enough that we even got to do some regular dungeon exploration at the end of it. The next downtime session is going to be big, with the huge influx of cash and the access to the orc making ritual now in the hands of the party!