The Dungeon Game: Weekends at Stonehell, session 17
The party finish mapping out all of the North West of Stonehell's second floor, and have a bad run in with some rude fairies.
Party Members
- Tina the Titanic - Level 6 Fighter
- Telperion Desh - Level 6 Magician
- Vaco Adjacent - Level 5 Paladin
Followers
Zorrel "Captain Nasty" Gnast (Fighter 5), Tiny Tina (Cleric 6) and Rutger (Robot 5)
Session Recap
With Crownfall Keep expanding significantly as the Crownless Company keeps growing their domain, they decide to head back down to the northwestern quarter of floor 2. During downtime Tina the Titanic had ventured down there with some porters to bring food, clothes and other aid to the people living in that part of the dungeon.
While on the way down Vaco Adjacent and Captain Nasty both stop to spin the wheel, getting a minor blessing each, and then the group make it down into the hallways of floor 2. Going through the yet un-mapped parts of the dungeon they run into giant black widows, traps of various kinds and perhaps the biggest hazard yet - a large room filled with murals of impossible to count people, which seems to induce madness and confusion within the party members.
Most who become affected simply stand there unmoving or start inexplicably attacking the mural itself, though in an unfortunate turn of events Tina the Titanic instead goes berserk, attacking her Tiny lackey, Vaco and basically anyone else around her, though the rest of the group manage to somehow subdue her for long enough to drag her out of the effect of the maddening room.
Among their exploration the group run into a friendly bunch of inmates and help them finish setting up a trap in an otherwise empty room. Another thing of note is a locked pharmacy of some kind, with elixirs, components and all kinds of other stuff inside it. Lacking a thief the party had to use Rutger the Robot's drill hand to bust through the door.
Later the group find King Rythik kind of disappointingly staring at his destroyed door, explaining to them that he keeps that place locked because his subjects keep going into the room and taking random medications and it is just not good for them. The party offer to instead empty out the whole room and just take all the components away. Rythik agrees, as he never thought of just getting rid of the whole place anyway.
Lastly the group have probably their most challenging encounter of the expedition, as they go into a big chamber to confront the "jerks" that King Rythik had asked them to clear out. As soon as the group (minus their porters and Rutger the Robot, who stands guard over them) enters, they become hit with a Web Spell. Unable to move they struggle around as invisible fairies attempt to stab at the party, some succeeding, most not. Eventually the fairies start just shouting obscenities at the party, telling them to fuck off for their own good. The group decide to take the opportunity and retreat while they can, as they were not equipped to handle invisible opponents, but start to make plans for how to deal with the assholes.
Observations
Another session of exploring quadrant 2A of the dungeon. Plenty of friendly encounters, as the locals at this point know the PCs (and are also significantly under-leveled compared to them) and treat them on friendly terms. Not much to say in regards to the actual exploration and mapping, beyond me simply throwing out a complaint at the diagonal passages and weird rooms said passages form, and how obnoxious that is to map. Luckily I just draw those bits of the map myself, as its faster.
The main thing I want to draw attention to was the encounters with the Psykes (which the book helpfully explained are evil pixies, as if normal fey are not fucking awful anyway). I kept the invisibility element as that is important, but also gave them a weaker form of Sleep as single-shot spell they could use. Their version of it only hits 1d6 targets and they get a saving throw.
Now as I was running I did not stop and think (my brain has been rather foggy lately which is my excuse in this case) and what ended up happening was Telperion being put to sleep and then his throat slit. Now, at this point the party is high enough level that this is not much of an issue - they retreated, Tiny Tina resurrected him and healed him up - all good!
Except only after the session end did I realize that he should never have been affected by the spell at all, being a 6th level Magician. So I retconned that bit away, which nobody was really unhappy about. The psykes having a spellcaster among them and being able to fly and be invisible definitely makes them a potent and challenging encounter, though I suspect next time the group runs into them they will be able to deal with them via just a single fireball (or maybe two at most).
A thing some of my players noted is despite the insistence of the module (and something I've conveyed to them in turn) that deeper you go into Stonehell the more treasure you find, 2A is quite bare in terms of actual money. Sure, some of it is held by the inmates and Rythik, which the party have been friendly with and thus haven't robbed them, but this part of the dungeon feels rather thin compared to the floor 1 orc territory or even parts of the catacombs in 1B. Something to keep in mind for next sessions for sure.