Continuing south to the Golden Pyramid, the group enter into large mounds of giant termites.
Today's card is...
- 142 - 3d4 Giant Termites, with additional inspo from...
- 104 - 3d6+4 Cave Locusts.
The text on 142 says the termites are hostile and will attack the PC with the most wood, and that's... weird. Like, how many PCs are carrying wood around in any game. I guess normally you might have a bow. Maybe a wooden cart.
In this case, I'm going to change it up. Instead of 3d4, we'll just say... 1-2 per character. And the "locusts" will indicate the creatures are hungry. Maybe they have eaten all their available food and so are hungering for human (et al) flesh.
As for stats, I glanced through a few of my OSR books [including those from before the OSR was a thing] and didn't really see any exact matches. I think in this case, treating them much like AFF's Giant Ants will work (Return to Pit, page 21. 7/8 creatures with large bite and no armor. Though maybe we'll say Medium Bite and Medium Armor.
Ok, very quick roll of 5d2 = I get... 9. Fun times!
Note: based on my way of mapping the way to the Pyramid, 142 + 157 = 299. There will be a third one.
The next day, they find themselves wandering through a veritable wasteland. Though the Yeule maps indicated the group should be moving through a forest at this time, there are several miles of sun-baked dirt and clay and every bit of wood spotted is old and decayed.
As they pass through a few large structures which resemble small hills, a low buzz alerts them of the cause of both phenomena.
"Are those bugs?," Nadya asks.
"If they are, there is a lot of them," Derron says.
"That, or a few really big ones," Barston replies.
He indicates they should keep some distance from the hills...
What I'll do is set the bar at the standard 15. The more than pass a sneak test, the fewer giant termites that attack initially.
If not every termite attacks Round One, then 1d2 will join each round until all nine are attacking. Presumably there are more, but starvation and in-fighting as the mounds collapse has taken the toll on actual fighters.
- Barston (7 Skill, 3 Sneaking) = 10+7 = 17, Pass.
- Derron (8 Skill, 2 Sneaking) = 10+11 = 21, Very Pass.
- Faruin (7 Skill, 2 Sneaking) = 9+7 = 16, Pass.
- Nadya (8 Skill, 1 Sneaking) = 9+9 = 18, Pass.
- Chungly (8 Skill, 0 Sneaking) = 8+10 = 18, Pass.
As anti-climatic as it is, it feels very OSR that they were able to avoid a conflict.
...and while keeping a general gist of their course...
None of them have any navigation type skill, so we'll do a roll versus the highest skill of 8, +3 for the additional support. A failure will add +50 to the threshold.
Skill of 8 + 2d6 = 8+6 = 14. They get a bit sidetracked and will need another day. +50 means they now need 51 more points to hit it.
...but by that night, they realize that avoiding the termites will cost them some time.
Nadya's Skill of 8 + Hunting of 2 + Assist from Faruin = 12+9 = 21. That's a couple degrees of success. That and Faruin casting Create Food will provide more than enough without tapping into their stores.
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