The Caves of Chaos
Apr. 5th, 2018 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyofastolat6 years ago, a group of us did a brief bout of old-style basic D&D, and this year we decided to continue the campaign started so long ago. Since we only played for a couple of hours back then, nobody could remember a single thing about who we were or what we'd been doing, but brief LJ posts from the time provided at least some clues. With this in mind, here is a long - and I mean long - account of this year's adventure. I don't expect anyone else to find this remotely interesting, but am writing it as a reference for the future, should we return to these characters and world.
Last time, 5 first level characters killed a few goblins, found some loot, and fled back to the pub, clutching their remaining hit point. This time, with 2 players absent, we decided that their characters would stay in the pub, guarding our shared loot, while the remaining 3 players rolled up a second character each. This was old-style, uncompromising character generation, in which you roll your stats in order, accepting your result even if it's rubbish, then choose a character class to fit. My existing character was Errol, a swashbuckling dwarf, although I have no idea now why I looked at his stats 6 years ago and decided that it suggested swashbuckler. My new one turned out to have excellent constitution and fairly good wisdom, with everything else on or below average, so I decided that he was a wiry and tireless cleric, perhaps a below par missionary. He became Hubbins, cleric of the god Dobly.
Errol and his existing companions - Monty the handsome but incredibly unintelligent hafling (INT 3!) and Basil Goblinsbane - joined up with Hubbins, Bonjela, an elf, and Amandapondo Spoo, a mage, and set off on the 6 hour walk back to the Caves of Chaos. A shortcut from briefly considered, but dismissed on account of rumours of a mad hermit with a fierce lion or wolf or maybe bear.
Many Caves of Chaos presented themselves, neatly arranged in a distinctly non chaotic way on either side of a nice glacial valley. Lacking anything helpful like cave numbers or a telephone directory, we decided to return to the one we'd previously visited. Last time, we killed many (or, rather, a few, due to being level one and flimsy) goblins and their boss. This time we killed some more goblins and sent a few more to sleep, but took some damage. Wiping away the blood and concealing the injuries, Errol tried to persuade the newly-promoted replacement leader that we were indeed mighty and could and would fight them to the last goblin, but would spare them if they promised not to raid any more caravans. He was not receptive to this idea, showing his rejection of it with his blade, so we killed some more, then fled back to the pub, clutching our few remaining hit points.
The curate in the Keep was disinclined to heal us, but someone told us that there was another cleric in town, a frequent visitor to the keep. He was called Alphonse and was an obliging chap, who gave us port, healed us for free - a process that was strangely painful, burning with a fire like unto a thousand hells, but maybe this is normal? - and was positively brimming with enthusiasm about smiting evil, so much so that we offered to meet him after an early breakfast and take him out a-smiting with us.
Along with Alphonse, we returned to the Caves, where we decided that the goblin cave was all very well, but we wanted to try a new cave. Lacking helpful reviews on Tripadvisor, we lurked awhile, watching the comings and goings. Some putative kobolds came out of one cave and headed into the woods, doubtless doing nefarious things. We followed them in, where we spotted them in the nefarious act of nefariously collecting firewood. Our sneaking was scuppered by Alphone's loud enthusiasm about the necessity of smiting evil, but we still prevailed.
Then to the cave, where Monty, leading, immediately fell into a pit trap. (Errol almost fell, but at the last minute recollected that he was dwarf and knew about underground things, so after teetering for a while, stepped back from the brink.) Hampered by ongoing kobold attacks, we attempted various rescue plans, using, in order, a careful dwarf, a plank and a precisely-aimed spear, with Alphonse helping each time. Each one went inexplicably wrong, resulting in Errol, Basil and a plank joining Monty in the pit, and Hubbins teetering on the edge...
At which point, the penny dropped. Alphonse was in league with the enemy! "Come and get them, lads!" he shouted to the kobolds...
...so Amandapondo cast Charm on him, and turned him into her new best friend.
With the immediate kobold threat dealt with - mostly through a combination of a sleep spell and their poor morale rolls - we rescued our trapped friends, then fled back to the pub, clutching our few remaining hit points.
At this point, we realised that in Basic D&D, Charm lasts for AGES - at least a day, and sometimes months - which raised the question of what on earth we did with out formerly evil, now charmed new best friend. We solved it by getting him to take us to his house, ask his servants to cook us a nice dinner and offer us port. I mean, who wouldn't?
Unfortunately, the servants were actually acolytes of Evil, and weren't fooled by this. The authorities turned up, and we, being lawful types (at least, most of us) had to admit that, yes, we had indeed charmed him, but we did so in self-defence because he was evil, and yes, the dinner and port thing was a mistake, but we'd had a bad day. They didn't believe us, but let us go, on parole. In the morning, the charm had fallen off, and Alphonse had told them that it was all a huge misunderstanding, and no hard feelings. "But...! But...!" we protested, but nobody would believe us.
So off we went to the kobold cave again, where we killed a few more kobolds, only to realise that we were now facing terrified civilians, teenagers, children and non-combatants, and it was all really rather uncomfortable and angst-ridden. Yes, we found evidence that they were eating humans, but, still...! Certain party members had little sympathy for such a view, saying that Chaos should be extirpated wherever it was found, but we still withdraw, fleeing back to the pub, clutching our few remaining hit points.
At this point (or maybe not at this point, but at SOME point, anyway), we started to wonder if there was an alternative way to spend our days other than six hour walk, ten minutes of fighting, desperate flight, then a 6 hour walk back again. Since we were beginning to get some nice, pricy loot, we wondered if we could build a forward base. A ruined watchtower offered some opportunities. Could we hire someone to renovate it? We spent most of a day (in-game time) getting quotes, before deciding that the whole process would take too long. So we asked about hiring horses, but worried about secure parking at the other end. At which point we concluded that since the 6 hour journey always happened in the blink of out-of-game time, and we always got back to the pub in time for dinner, WHY ON EARTH HAD WE JUST WASTED A DAY GETTING QUOTES FROM CARPENTERS?
So we headed back to the caves on foot and watched them for a while. There were upsetting signs that the neighbourhood orcses had taken advantage of our killing of the kobold warriors by moving in and slaying all the non-combatants we had spared, so we guiltily turned to another cave - a sinister cave, with evil trees outside, and carved stonework redolent of evil - in the hope that it would offer us a chance to slay things without guilt.
Inside we found skeletons, who died pretty easily, and zombies, who didn't. Hubbins the cleric tried desperately to turn them, only to fail, and fail, and fail, and fail... oh, and suddenly succeed when it was almost too late to the useful. Sadly, Basil fell in battle to zombies, and we were unable to recover his body, since hordes more zombies, with attendant necromancers and/or cultists appeared, not far from the exit. We made a fighting retreat, fleeing back to the pub, clutching our few remaining hit points.
Although we mourned Basil, the adventure had one good result, in that we noticed that all the undead creatures were wearing an amulet bearing the logo - sorry, sigil - of the Blind Guardian, Alphonse's god. We showed the curate, who admitted that he had suspected Alphonse for ages, and this, finally, was the proof that he needed! We charged off and roused the authorities, who rushed to arrest Alphonse, but the bird had flown.
A replacement for Basil was rolled up at this point, luckily ending up with excellent stats all round, and an obvious cleric. Since we were intending to return to the undead cave of evil, and since we were feeling particularly rich after the sale of our latest piece of loot, we hired the 3 female mercenaries we had been unable to afford back in 2012, and bought them all plate armour and shields to try to ensure that they would survive the experience. (Spoiler: they didn't.)
So back to the evil cave we went - taking horses this time, in case we needed to carry home Basil's corpse, along with a boy to handle the parking - where we soon came across a sinister altar in a room full of evil soft furnishings. We poured holy water over it, which - we learnt later - earned us more xps in that single act that we'd earned in 2 days roleplaying thus far. Then down the corridor... where we met loads of necromancers, zombies, skeletons and all sorts of things. Mercenary Willow died almost immediately. Mercenary Tara was blinded, and panicked, and spent most of the battle panicking all over Errol. Mercenary Buffy, however, was very useful. Even so, it looked as if we might facing almost certain death by superior numbers, until most of the bad guys were taken out by way of a sleep spell, a charm spell and some very successful turnings.
With Amandapondo's new best friend, a charmed necromancer, now on our side, we fought through several rooms, taking out loads of undead. Alphonse was there, and tried to run, but was cut down just as he was about to disappear from view. Sadly, the high priest and several other minions escaped, although the high priest left his staff - a magical snake thing - behind.
We paused for a while, where the DM kindly allowed us to level up - Hubbins went from level 1 to level 3 in one fell swoop! - then carried on into the rest of the temple complex. We killed a torturer and a gelatinous cube, within whom we found a magic wand. We also found a prison cell containing a female prisoner, Andromeda, visible only as shapely legs in diaphanous clothing. We tried to free her, but as soon as we entered the room, we saw that she was a Medusa, and one look could turn us into stone!
We desperately backed off just in time and shut the door again, before heading off to deal with the other denizens of the complex. Mostly we just found empty, abandoned rooms, with the cultists having fled. As we explored, we continued to debate what we might do with Andromeda. Leave her chained in prison, where she would starve? Free her with ours eyes averted and trust her to run off and do no harm? She swore that the whole turning into stone thing was unvoluntary - more like a curse, really - but, then, she hadn't warned us before we entered the cell, and only luck and reflexes had saved us. Maybe we could leave her in prison, but send a message to her friends and family to retrieve her, but how? Bonjela - who had been the one to open the cell and therefore was the one almost turned to stone - decided that no matter what the rest of us thought, she had no qualms about killing her as she was chained, and went in alone.
She failed. Fatally.
At which point Amandapondo - not content with having a tame charmed cultist following her around as hew new best friend - offered to release Andromeda if she put a bag on her head and joined the party. This offer was accepted.
After that, all that remained was to enter the final room, full of sarcophagi. One contained a barrow wight (or so I've been told; we'd all assumed it was a mummy) who proved immune to damage, until the wiser ones in the party suddenly - and conveniently - remembered that silver weapons might be a good idea. A certain amount of inventory rummaging and games of pass the silver dagger ensued, but in the end we were able to kill it, and pick up the magic items from its tomb, one of which turned out to be a a cursed helmet, now stuck on Errol's head.
The Medusa, meanwhile, had taken the opportunity to flee.
And then there was nothing left but to ride home, bearing with us the corpses of Bonjela, Basil (who we found in a room of future zombies) and Willow, along with some magic items - including a longsword plus 2 - and more loot than the local merchants could afford to buy.
Last time, 5 first level characters killed a few goblins, found some loot, and fled back to the pub, clutching their remaining hit point. This time, with 2 players absent, we decided that their characters would stay in the pub, guarding our shared loot, while the remaining 3 players rolled up a second character each. This was old-style, uncompromising character generation, in which you roll your stats in order, accepting your result even if it's rubbish, then choose a character class to fit. My existing character was Errol, a swashbuckling dwarf, although I have no idea now why I looked at his stats 6 years ago and decided that it suggested swashbuckler. My new one turned out to have excellent constitution and fairly good wisdom, with everything else on or below average, so I decided that he was a wiry and tireless cleric, perhaps a below par missionary. He became Hubbins, cleric of the god Dobly.
Errol and his existing companions - Monty the handsome but incredibly unintelligent hafling (INT 3!) and Basil Goblinsbane - joined up with Hubbins, Bonjela, an elf, and Amandapondo Spoo, a mage, and set off on the 6 hour walk back to the Caves of Chaos. A shortcut from briefly considered, but dismissed on account of rumours of a mad hermit with a fierce lion or wolf or maybe bear.
Many Caves of Chaos presented themselves, neatly arranged in a distinctly non chaotic way on either side of a nice glacial valley. Lacking anything helpful like cave numbers or a telephone directory, we decided to return to the one we'd previously visited. Last time, we killed many (or, rather, a few, due to being level one and flimsy) goblins and their boss. This time we killed some more goblins and sent a few more to sleep, but took some damage. Wiping away the blood and concealing the injuries, Errol tried to persuade the newly-promoted replacement leader that we were indeed mighty and could and would fight them to the last goblin, but would spare them if they promised not to raid any more caravans. He was not receptive to this idea, showing his rejection of it with his blade, so we killed some more, then fled back to the pub, clutching our few remaining hit points.
The curate in the Keep was disinclined to heal us, but someone told us that there was another cleric in town, a frequent visitor to the keep. He was called Alphonse and was an obliging chap, who gave us port, healed us for free - a process that was strangely painful, burning with a fire like unto a thousand hells, but maybe this is normal? - and was positively brimming with enthusiasm about smiting evil, so much so that we offered to meet him after an early breakfast and take him out a-smiting with us.
Along with Alphonse, we returned to the Caves, where we decided that the goblin cave was all very well, but we wanted to try a new cave. Lacking helpful reviews on Tripadvisor, we lurked awhile, watching the comings and goings. Some putative kobolds came out of one cave and headed into the woods, doubtless doing nefarious things. We followed them in, where we spotted them in the nefarious act of nefariously collecting firewood. Our sneaking was scuppered by Alphone's loud enthusiasm about the necessity of smiting evil, but we still prevailed.
Then to the cave, where Monty, leading, immediately fell into a pit trap. (Errol almost fell, but at the last minute recollected that he was dwarf and knew about underground things, so after teetering for a while, stepped back from the brink.) Hampered by ongoing kobold attacks, we attempted various rescue plans, using, in order, a careful dwarf, a plank and a precisely-aimed spear, with Alphonse helping each time. Each one went inexplicably wrong, resulting in Errol, Basil and a plank joining Monty in the pit, and Hubbins teetering on the edge...
At which point, the penny dropped. Alphonse was in league with the enemy! "Come and get them, lads!" he shouted to the kobolds...
...so Amandapondo cast Charm on him, and turned him into her new best friend.
With the immediate kobold threat dealt with - mostly through a combination of a sleep spell and their poor morale rolls - we rescued our trapped friends, then fled back to the pub, clutching our few remaining hit points.
At this point, we realised that in Basic D&D, Charm lasts for AGES - at least a day, and sometimes months - which raised the question of what on earth we did with out formerly evil, now charmed new best friend. We solved it by getting him to take us to his house, ask his servants to cook us a nice dinner and offer us port. I mean, who wouldn't?
Unfortunately, the servants were actually acolytes of Evil, and weren't fooled by this. The authorities turned up, and we, being lawful types (at least, most of us) had to admit that, yes, we had indeed charmed him, but we did so in self-defence because he was evil, and yes, the dinner and port thing was a mistake, but we'd had a bad day. They didn't believe us, but let us go, on parole. In the morning, the charm had fallen off, and Alphonse had told them that it was all a huge misunderstanding, and no hard feelings. "But...! But...!" we protested, but nobody would believe us.
So off we went to the kobold cave again, where we killed a few more kobolds, only to realise that we were now facing terrified civilians, teenagers, children and non-combatants, and it was all really rather uncomfortable and angst-ridden. Yes, we found evidence that they were eating humans, but, still...! Certain party members had little sympathy for such a view, saying that Chaos should be extirpated wherever it was found, but we still withdraw, fleeing back to the pub, clutching our few remaining hit points.
At this point (or maybe not at this point, but at SOME point, anyway), we started to wonder if there was an alternative way to spend our days other than six hour walk, ten minutes of fighting, desperate flight, then a 6 hour walk back again. Since we were beginning to get some nice, pricy loot, we wondered if we could build a forward base. A ruined watchtower offered some opportunities. Could we hire someone to renovate it? We spent most of a day (in-game time) getting quotes, before deciding that the whole process would take too long. So we asked about hiring horses, but worried about secure parking at the other end. At which point we concluded that since the 6 hour journey always happened in the blink of out-of-game time, and we always got back to the pub in time for dinner, WHY ON EARTH HAD WE JUST WASTED A DAY GETTING QUOTES FROM CARPENTERS?
So we headed back to the caves on foot and watched them for a while. There were upsetting signs that the neighbourhood orcses had taken advantage of our killing of the kobold warriors by moving in and slaying all the non-combatants we had spared, so we guiltily turned to another cave - a sinister cave, with evil trees outside, and carved stonework redolent of evil - in the hope that it would offer us a chance to slay things without guilt.
Inside we found skeletons, who died pretty easily, and zombies, who didn't. Hubbins the cleric tried desperately to turn them, only to fail, and fail, and fail, and fail... oh, and suddenly succeed when it was almost too late to the useful. Sadly, Basil fell in battle to zombies, and we were unable to recover his body, since hordes more zombies, with attendant necromancers and/or cultists appeared, not far from the exit. We made a fighting retreat, fleeing back to the pub, clutching our few remaining hit points.
Although we mourned Basil, the adventure had one good result, in that we noticed that all the undead creatures were wearing an amulet bearing the logo - sorry, sigil - of the Blind Guardian, Alphonse's god. We showed the curate, who admitted that he had suspected Alphonse for ages, and this, finally, was the proof that he needed! We charged off and roused the authorities, who rushed to arrest Alphonse, but the bird had flown.
A replacement for Basil was rolled up at this point, luckily ending up with excellent stats all round, and an obvious cleric. Since we were intending to return to the undead cave of evil, and since we were feeling particularly rich after the sale of our latest piece of loot, we hired the 3 female mercenaries we had been unable to afford back in 2012, and bought them all plate armour and shields to try to ensure that they would survive the experience. (Spoiler: they didn't.)
So back to the evil cave we went - taking horses this time, in case we needed to carry home Basil's corpse, along with a boy to handle the parking - where we soon came across a sinister altar in a room full of evil soft furnishings. We poured holy water over it, which - we learnt later - earned us more xps in that single act that we'd earned in 2 days roleplaying thus far. Then down the corridor... where we met loads of necromancers, zombies, skeletons and all sorts of things. Mercenary Willow died almost immediately. Mercenary Tara was blinded, and panicked, and spent most of the battle panicking all over Errol. Mercenary Buffy, however, was very useful. Even so, it looked as if we might facing almost certain death by superior numbers, until most of the bad guys were taken out by way of a sleep spell, a charm spell and some very successful turnings.
With Amandapondo's new best friend, a charmed necromancer, now on our side, we fought through several rooms, taking out loads of undead. Alphonse was there, and tried to run, but was cut down just as he was about to disappear from view. Sadly, the high priest and several other minions escaped, although the high priest left his staff - a magical snake thing - behind.
We paused for a while, where the DM kindly allowed us to level up - Hubbins went from level 1 to level 3 in one fell swoop! - then carried on into the rest of the temple complex. We killed a torturer and a gelatinous cube, within whom we found a magic wand. We also found a prison cell containing a female prisoner, Andromeda, visible only as shapely legs in diaphanous clothing. We tried to free her, but as soon as we entered the room, we saw that she was a Medusa, and one look could turn us into stone!
We desperately backed off just in time and shut the door again, before heading off to deal with the other denizens of the complex. Mostly we just found empty, abandoned rooms, with the cultists having fled. As we explored, we continued to debate what we might do with Andromeda. Leave her chained in prison, where she would starve? Free her with ours eyes averted and trust her to run off and do no harm? She swore that the whole turning into stone thing was unvoluntary - more like a curse, really - but, then, she hadn't warned us before we entered the cell, and only luck and reflexes had saved us. Maybe we could leave her in prison, but send a message to her friends and family to retrieve her, but how? Bonjela - who had been the one to open the cell and therefore was the one almost turned to stone - decided that no matter what the rest of us thought, she had no qualms about killing her as she was chained, and went in alone.
She failed. Fatally.
At which point Amandapondo - not content with having a tame charmed cultist following her around as hew new best friend - offered to release Andromeda if she put a bag on her head and joined the party. This offer was accepted.
After that, all that remained was to enter the final room, full of sarcophagi. One contained a barrow wight (or so I've been told; we'd all assumed it was a mummy) who proved immune to damage, until the wiser ones in the party suddenly - and conveniently - remembered that silver weapons might be a good idea. A certain amount of inventory rummaging and games of pass the silver dagger ensued, but in the end we were able to kill it, and pick up the magic items from its tomb, one of which turned out to be a a cursed helmet, now stuck on Errol's head.
The Medusa, meanwhile, had taken the opportunity to flee.
And then there was nothing left but to ride home, bearing with us the corpses of Bonjela, Basil (who we found in a room of future zombies) and Willow, along with some magic items - including a longsword plus 2 - and more loot than the local merchants could afford to buy.
