The Doug Alone
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The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 14 - The Sad Encroachment of the Cyclops Grobnir Fronk

By

On 2024-09-19

In Actual Play, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

The lifecycle of your average cyclops is barely studied by civilized folks because your average cyclops is prone to tossing large rocks (see also: large sheep, small boats, horses) at any one who gets close enough to ask where do cyclops babies come from. The answer is essentially the obvious one. Despite being very solitary, despite being very territorial, cyclopes are born the same way as you and I. Just more aggressively. There are certain species of large cat that roam the Pearl that have a similar mating cycle. A temporary truce, of sorts, is established to allow for procedures.



Unlike big cats, the typical cyclops mating ritual involves a gift of a few sheep, a few barely missed boulder throws, and a loud argument about who should approach first. At some point, the offspring are deemed old enough to be interfering with the mother's territory and more large boulders and shouting tends to commence. However, sibling groups can occasionally tolerate each other a shade better and so the distance between them can be reckoned in miles rather than counties. 

Grobnir was the oldest Fronk of his generation and in the early years of Encroachment he got along fair enough with his three brothers in a valley large enough that they never, technically, needed to see one another. At least until Almot Fronk, the youngest, lost a sheep and crossed over Grobnir's territory for a few hours. The resulting argument among all the sibling caused Grobnir to become so enraged he left the region and kept walking the Southern Plains until he found a great wide grassy area he could call his own. Attempts at cultivating the region by the Barthic Empire had failed, there was no important trade routes to be had, here, and a few fishing villages miles and miles to the East were no problem in that there was no game to lure hunters to attempt Grobnir's ire. 

As the Encroachment and the horrors broke the back of his people, Grobnir flourished by simply fading into the ecosystem. His sheep were nearly wild. His habits were largely ascetic. He was happy to spend days just lounging in the grass and occasionally wondering where everyone else had gone. Over time, the grass changed. Slowly enough he barely noticed. Over time, the sheep that fed from the grass changed. He noticed this, noticed that his sheep's wool was now more like brambles and vines than fur. But so it goes. 

And he, who fed from the sheep, also changed. This he definitely noticed, though the Grobnir Fronk who lives now in a large stretch of the Southern Plains is not exactly the same as the one who came from the west all those years ago. He is already twice as old as the age most cyclopes live. His strangely smooth skin has a deep red color. His head is now hairless. And, perhaps most damning for any cyclops in history, the ultimate insult for his entire kind: 

Grobnir Fronk has a second eye. 

The second is small, human-sized and slightly below and to the right (his right) of his true eye. Unlike his normal eye, this second one does not sleep. It watches. It plans. Grobnir will wake up from an exhausted rest and find he has been gathering stones into strange shapes. Planting odd seeds. Cutting bulbs from his sheep. Why is he doing these things? He never knows. He senses his second eye knows, but he does not talk to the second eye. 

He is afraid what it might answer back.

"So, what you are saying..."

"Yes."

"Is that you want us to take out a cyclops."

"Yes."

"That has killed a couple of your...um...tribe." 

"Our clutch, yes."

"So you can eat some sheep?"

"Right!"

"And then you will help us find where a group of people were killed by another group of people...nearby."

"Not that nearby. But, yes."

With that, the gargoyles start giggling slightly and acting excitedly. Rance and Tom have been trying to talk to them after initial negotiations with Rance and Grusk ended with one of the gargoyles, one that looks a bit like sulphur and seems to be called "Sully", coughed and shot out a magic missile that struck Grusk in the arm. 

Inar's one attempt at communication ended when he asked the clutch of gargoyles why they were out in a massive flat space space as opposed to somewhere where there were buildings and ledges to which they could cling. He was told by the gargoyle that seems to be in charge, one seemingly made out of meteoric iron and called "Hansam," that such questions were racist and besides they were perched, on a hill, pointing to the slight rise in the ground where everyone currently was. After this, Inar has gone back to his bunk and keeps staring at his teeth in a mirror. The poor halfling has become convinced that his teeth are changing shape. Maybe they are.

"Alright," says Rance before turning to Tom. The goblin merely shrugs. Turning to the half-orc still nursing his slightly wounded arm while staring at Sully. "Alright?"

"Yeah," says Grusk starting to pull his armor on. "Alright. Let's go kill a one-eye."

Hansam does not comment on this. The clutch is over there excitedly discussing their favorite recipes for mutton. 

Grobnir Fronk, the Cyclops

Grobnir's second eye means he can never be surprised. He is a very strange, very old cyclops. His eating of Encroached animals has sped up his own Encroachment, changing his body to a more jelly like appearance. This had led to an overall decrease in stats though an increase in intelligence.

AC 11 (leather), HP 35, ATK 2 great club +5 (2d6) or 1 rock (far) +4 (1d10), MV double near, S +4,D -1, C +0, I +3, W +3, Ch -3, AL C, LV 7

Second Sight: Cannot be surprised. Hydrophobia: Grobnir's strange gelatinous body breaks down when exposed to water. It will swell up and eventually rupture. 

Grobnir's Sheep

Strange creatures like large sheep whose wool is more vine like that wool like. Attempting to hit the sheep can result in weapons and limbs getting tangled into the "wool". Flesh and wool are almost like brittle plant matter and so can catch fire. 

AC 12 (from tangled vine-like wool), HP 12, ATK 1 bite +0 (1d4) or 1 ram +3 (1d8), MV near, S +3, D +0, C +3, I -2,W +1, Ch -3, AL N, LV 2

Tangled Wool: Any melee attack against them has a 1:6 chance of getting caught up in the strange vine-like wool. Sensitive to Fire: Fire does double damage to the creatures that are about half-plant. 

The boulder falls down in the early morning light, scattering the four adventurers and their horses as they pull back. Rance and Tom from the saddle while Grusk and Inar manage to stay on. [1]

"Ok, that one would have hurt. Wait...is he asleep?" Rance asks as they see Grobnir propped up on a pile of stones. His right hand is moving around to grab another stone from the pile. Little do they know the strange Bleak eye is piloting the body right now. It will take the very elderly cyclops some time to wake up. [2]

Grusk roars and rides hard to face the cyclops head on. Tom drops behind the boulder (not big enough to hide a human but enough to hide a goblin). Inar rides forward behind Grusk while Rance works on reining in horse. Another boulder comes crashing down near Grusk and his horse while Tom gets an arrow off (that goes wide). Rance's horse runs off in the confusion. Inar casts Holy Weapon on his Mace.[3]

Another boulder tossed, this one for the goblin. While Tom has good cover the rock smashes into the one he is behind and shards of stones bite into the goblin. Tom manages to get his shot off all the same and sees it sink into the strange red flesh. The war horses near the gap and both Grusk and Inar land blows. The axe, Bloodlust, bites deep in the right arm while Inar brings his magically enhanced mace down against the knee. Grobnir wakes up dazed and confused and something starts to happen. A chunk of his head begins trying to tear away. [4]

The cyclops comes up swinging both arms as a sizeable thing pulls out of its head. One arm slams Grusk hard in the chest plate, crunching ribs but the half-orc stays on. The other fist flies over the halfing's head as the nimble priest leaps from the pony to hide in the blue grass. Grusk returns the hit after very nearly slipping but buries Bloodlust deep in the chest of the cyclops as Rance holds the magical arrow steady. The old cyclops collapses as the strange creature wallows on the ground. Grusk pulls Bloodlust out and chops into it before dumping oil on it and setting it aflame. [5]

Taking a few deep breaths, everyone is looking around and checking out their friends. 

"What in the Bleak was that about?" Grusk asks, staring down at Other Grobnir. Looking at the strange corpse of a creature so utterly changed, Grusk begins gathering up stones and piling on top. The others join in, and by the time the sun is fully up, Grobnir has been laid to rest. 

An examination of the area around him finds plenty of junk stored over his many years including obvious loot taken from others that were attacked by the odd, sad creature. [6]


A few days later...

Imari Denish stares at Rance and Cal from across the small den in the back of his shop, a more cozy place than the first time. Cups of tea are being held by the trio. "Well, has the deed been done?"

Rance answers, "Yes. Well, we turned over what we found at the site. It was mostly picked clean but a lucky find of a sword of Marr's distinct red steel along with a bit of a map in crude hand showing someone had mapped out the route. We gave it over to Neuman assistant and Neuman himself came out to verify some details. We did not mention you, only that we had heard 'rumors.'" 

"I do not hear shouts or riots in the street." 

"I cannot answer that. Maybe they are saving that for a more opportune time. Or maybe the Free Merchants are too afraid of House Marr to fight. Or maybe..."

"Or maybe," Cal finishes the thought for Rance, "They are going to treat the death of a trade route as another commodity. No rebellion in exchange for juicy pickings of official Marr business." 

"Maybe," says the old elf before gesturing to the old human behind him to hand over two reams of dragonsilk. "A deal is a deal even if there is less blood in the street than I would have hoped."

"You believe, us, then?" asks Rance

"Of course! I had Stanford here," gesturing to the old servant, "lace all three of our drinks with a Potion of Absolute Honesty."

"Wait, did you?" 

"I drank the tea, too," cackles the old elf, his gray eyes dark and deep and all the rumors of him being once one of the best assassins in the Barthic Empire seem reasonable. "I must be telling the truth."
With the completion of this and getting the dragonsilk, that will be another 3XP and it will take our four adventurers to 4th level. We will work out those details in a brief intermission before going on the Everburning Forest.

MECHANICAL NOTES

  1. Reaction roll was a 5, so pretty hostile. Grobnir missed with a 2 but still did DEX rolls to see who stays mounted. 
  2. Checking to see what Grobnir might want now that he has transitions quite a bit into "something else," got Acquire Crime + Capture Help. The "Other Grobnir" is trying to find some sort of different host. "Can the Other Grobnir take over another sentient body?" 13 ==> Yes, but... it is most compatible with other cyclopes so it is looking for a host to travel to where it can spread. Sort of a strange cordyceps type infection. "Is Grobnir resisting?" 3 ==> No, but... he is too fragile and old to resist but has long lost the ability. 
  3. The party will need a turn on horseback to close the distance. The Other Grobnir gets another boulder off with hits a 13+4 = 17 but we'll subtract 2 because Grusk is in motion. So it still misses. Rance gets a 2 on getting his horse. Tom shoots for the cyclops and misses.
  4. Grobnir wins initiative. The boulder hits for 15+4. Even with cover, it's a hit. it does 4 points of damage. Even with the moving penalty, Grusk gets his hit (15+7-2 vs 11). It sinks in for 8 points of damage. Inar doesn't hit initially so spends a luck token to get a high enough roll. It hits for 6. Rance shoots off an acid arrow and gets a nat 20 (giving back the luck token and doubling the damage). As long as this is sustained, it is for 2d6. The first round it does 6 points of damage. Tom manages to hit this time for 3. All told that is 23 points of damage versus Grobnir's 35. The "Other Grobnir" will attempt to "escape" next time since it failed its morale check. Will Grobnir try to help the Other Grobnir? Yes, but... he won't understand so instead will try shielding it with his body. 
  5. Grobnir wins init again and gets two swings. The first connects with Grusk for 6 points of damage. Grusk makes his save to stay on his horse. Inar is going to use his "go invisible" halfling ability to avoid being seen by the creature. Grusk misses his first roll but spends a luck token to succeed. With Rance keeping up the focus, this does enough damage to kill Grobnir. "Does Other Grobnir survive for long outside of a host?" 9 ==> No, but... it will try immediately to find another. Grusk uses his Grit: DEX to stay far enough back to pour out the oil (gets an 18 on the roll). 
  6. They find a gold censer shaped like an angel [70gp], a potion of polymorph [200gp], and a potion of healing [150gp]. This grants them 3xp each. 
  7. Using Random Realities to generate the sort of clues found: 5, 4 ==> went with sword icon + 1, 1 ==> After a moment, I think the one that looks kind of like a quill makes most sense.

DOUG'S NOTES

The adventure was on the cusp of turning into a fetch quest so I cut it a bit "early." Early in the sense that originally it was going to have them get to the site of the massacre, possibly fight some undead related to the site, and have their adventure there. Instead, we met some goofy gargoyles and a sad old cyclops. When I first started and had either a planned gargoyle fight or more traditional cyclops fight, the general scope was a bit more OSR-ish. I am not exactly an OSR guy though so as I started weaving bits of the more jelly-like grass and the way it changes people, I just let the prep-is-play aspect take over. 
Grobnir's design (a jelly-ish red cyclops that is slightly old and bloated looking) is a nod to a monster you fight in Saga Emerald Beyond that is slightly based on the old "slime"/Sensei character model from the Gameboy era of the series. Picture this but taller and redder... (image credit: Romancing Saga Re;Universe, it's the S-style of Sensei). 

That's not exactly what I was going for but I figured its best to establish why The Bleak is such a bad thing. It is shifting reality. Once we get to the Deeps, it will be even more so. The party is basically cursing themselves by carrying out their quest but by helping Grunce they are buying other people a chance to live more freely again. 

Anyhow, once I got to the fight with a cyclops and had the weird backstory for a couple of sessions about the strange changes, the kind of key/central quest took a backseat to just doing some world building. After Grobnir's death, I could have worked out another session's worth of adventure but I figured let's skip ahead. This was meant to be a quick "get something so you don't burn to death" before we get to the start of a meta/arc shift once they learn more about what actually is happening with The Light. 
Next time we will level up the characters to 4, have them take on the Everburning Forest (or at least start to...) and then after that we will be getting the truth of the Monolith, finishing the fuelstones, and juggling the whole thing with the growing civil war in the last great bastion of society. Where it is unlikely that even House Grunkheart is completely innocent (though Cal is 100% a good guy...the rest of his family, maybe not so much). 
Note: The "Eye" at the top of this (though modified in my "SoloDark" style) is from Insspirito on Pixabay. There's a lot of good vector style art there. 

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 13 - The Boot & Wares, The Southern Plains, and the Ring of Gargoyles

By

On 2024-09-11

In Actual Play, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

"The Bleak" (in this case, using the term to mean the remains of the Barthic Empire that have been attacked and absorbed by "The Bleak," folks in Grunce use the word to mean roughly eighteen different things at the same time) is the large scale corpse of a once thriving empire built upon the back of an even more Ancient empire whose technology once dominated the world even beyond the late . Though the spread of The Bleak took decades, that was relatively abrupt for an empire stretching back two millennia. Even a hundred years into Bleak's spread, several of the great Houses and Cities attempted to hold fast, gathering up their people and their treasure into a open air grave. 

Now those many, many last stands are abandoned or their new residents no longer remember what it was like to be human. Strange misshapen things wandering through halls full of gold and silk crying out in a voice of a language that no sane throat could make. 

For those brave enough to travel far past the light of Grunce or the relatively protected towns near the Gray Channel, there are riches to be had. 

If you survive.

And if you can find a buyer.   

This is where the expedition shops come into play: selling many vital goods to adventurers while also acting as a primary buyer for unearthed relics and treasures (both tending to be tangled up into the same contract). 


The "shallow" edges of The Bleak are largely plucked clean. One must dive deep to get true treasures. Spending weeks or months past the new boundary of civilization, though, comes at a price. Even for those who do not fear Encroachment upon their own skin must know that each and every crossbow bolt will fly true. Adventurers become fiercely loyal to their home shop: trusting their very lives to the wares inside. Likewise, shops become loyal to their customers. Without the relics, the shops could not afford to stay open. 


The Boot & Wares is one of the oldest of the shops. In the early days of Grunce, when it was essentially a home for the families that worked under the auspices of House Grunkheart, it was an eel pie restaurant that doubled as a cheap inn. After the Five Families came together and made Grunce into the Last Great City on the edge of The Bleak, The Boot & Wares went through several iterations. Selling food. Selling passage. Selling off goods for people fleeing. 

One hundred years ago, Imari Denish won The Boot & Wares in a card game. At the time, it was used to mostly shuffle debt around for families that had long tried to flee Barthus but had become stuck and left behind with years of collateral stockpiled into a madcap pawn shop. Denish, who was old by elf standards, saw the potential for a new type of business and gave many of the families tied to generational debt a choice: go back into The Bleak and bring stuff out. Each relic bought back a piece of the family legacy. 

Most did not survive. Some did. Denish sold off relics and the remnants of now gone families and brought in enough money to start shipping equipment and goods from the Free Merchants and the Pearl craftsfolk. 


Other businesses grew up using the same model. Some did it better. Most did it worse. Denish is not always an easy elf to work with, but he has his charms. A cottage industry he created - feeding off those desperate or foolhardy enough to brave diving into The Bleak - has somewhat left him behind and if you asked him he would tell you that he is fine with it. In reality, the old elf has a few tricks left up his sleeve. 

There are rumors that Imari Denish, hundreds of years ago, was a professional killer for several generations of some of the most powerful Barthic families, that he held out for decades in The Bleak until his old masters were too thin and too poor to retain him. If the Encroachment ever struck him, he has hid it well. 
 
Boot & Wares is an old shop. The shop owner, one Imari Denish, an elf old by elf standards, has only owned it for a bit [Shop name and own generated using tables from ShadowDark (ShD)]. Denish, an established but childish proprietor, won it in a game of cards around a decade back. His only goal is to find pleasure in his remaining years, Rumor has it he was an assassin some years back and fled some job deep in The Bleak [details generated, in part, by Universal NPC Emulator (UNE)].

The B&W has an item that can be valuable for long term survival in The Everburning Forest: dragonsilk. Clothing made from it can protect the wear from heat and smoke (in game terms, all saves and attempts to avoid damage from those sources will be done at advantage, on a fumble the silk will rip. Roll 1d6, if you roll under the number of rips, the silk is too compromised to continue working). [SoloDark (SoD): "Is there something in Grunce the 4 heroes can use to stave off heat damage?" at disadvantage and got 13 + 14 so "Yes, but..." there is some catch to obtaining it and it won't work forever] 

["Is Denish willing to sell the dragonsilk to new customers?" SoD 3 "No, but..." "What does he want to part with it?" SoD 97 Destroy 30 Lead + 48 Evolve 81 Path] He won't want to sell it, but he will trade it for a task. One involving taking down someone who is leading and whose downfall will open up paths to return The Boot & Ware back to better business. 

"I want you to break the balls of old Talbot Galfreet!" The old elf, white haired and wrinkled, cackled out this ludicrous phrase like a small, petulant child. 

It was Cal Grunkheart's aunt Moreena, current Lady of Grunkheart, who put them on the search to find The Boot & Wares, a large crumbling barn of a building that is either fairly empty or pretty full depending on how you looked at it. Fairly empty for a warehouse meant to be stocking delvers into The Bleak with all the best gear and equipment. Pretty full for a place in Grunce's slums that looks like it should have fallen over several years ago. 

As they asked around to find out where The Boot & Wares or its proprietor, Imari Denish, might be located, the people who answered did so from somewhere between awe and irritation. Some refused to talk about it. Most just broadly gestured to someplace roughly "over there." 

It was late at night before Rance found someone willing to answer. A bartender in the middle of the slums who seemed to be on good terms with Denish and the elf's customers. "Oh, you want 'Old Denish, well...that way, go down...past Kardent's old Keep...up the graveyard lane past the church..." and then proceeded to list another dozen streets and half dozen landmarks. "Can't miss it!" 

To Rance's credit, he did not. He came to a building around a third the size of a city block that looked like it had been set on fire once or twice with a large red door that was probably painted around the time that Rance was born and he and Cal knocked. Despite the time of night, a surly old man, human old, brought them and soon enough they met Denish himself. 

To call him "Old Denish" is to put a lot of weight on the word "Old". Most travelers who meet an "old elf" might be shocked to see a centuries old person who still had smooth skin and bright hair. Denish would have been old when the Barthic Empire fell. Now he was the kind of old that you could use to frighten youth. 

Here was a man who had been alive before the entire Grunkheart family took its name from the small fishing village of Grunce's Hearth and might, maybe, be alive after the last Grunkheart passes from the earth (especially in light of neither Cal nor Gryff having any children, yet). Except "Old Denish" still acts a bit like an excitable child. 

"Excuse me, what?" asks Cal, after a few good moments of confused silence. 

Even a relative newcomer like Rance knows of Galfreet: the walking smile who owns The Tinman's Whistle. The biggest expedition shop in Grunce and one of the few that looks like a proper, respectable place to shop (others consider it poor taste to look so friendly).

This all started as Rance asked a simple question, "What can we do to survive the potential dangers of the Everburning Forest?" and the answer, in the books, was largely, "Do not go." A couple of the books did give some possible solutions, and of the relatively few answers the one that seemed to be most possibly helpful was dragonsilk (neither silk nor made from dragons, being made from the crushed larva of fire beetles and treated in a many step process). The second question, "Where do we get dragonsilk," was both simpler and harder. It is not that it is rare, per se, it is simply rarely in demand. When you have thousands of square miles of landscape ripe for the plucking, there is little cause to go to portions of the landscape that happen to be on fire. 

One of the Keepers, though, had a cousin whose uncle owed some debts and so forth and so on and the gist being that Imari Denish had taken three large reams of dragonsilk as payment a couple of years back. 

Once Cal asked about the dragonsilk, Denish had cackled for a few seconds before saying the above ludicrous phrase, but the story he told them was not ludicrous at all. 

"Galfreet is in the pocket of House Marr, and they have been very naughty children." It turns out that Marr's never-ending fight against the Free Merchants has turned violent only its unsure if the Free Merchants even realize they are in the early days of a war. The Merchants tend to run the expedition shops. Marr wants to cement that trade so has been making sure a few bad transactions have slipped through, a few unlucky accidents. Nothing too egregious. 

Until Frond Neuman's Sand Divers left Grunce a couple of weeks ago, going to Mist Lake in the center of Sofron Desert. They never made it. Sometimes trade expeditions do not, though the border towns rely heavily on them for supplies. It is dangerous to go into The Bleak. That is why the pay is so good. 

Only, Denish has heard that Neuman was waylaid by a gang of thugs employed by Marr through the management of Galfreet. The very shop that had supplied the mission and so knew exactly what path they would take was able to lay a trap and then steal back most of the valuable supplies from the corpses. Besides, Mist Lake has been hoarding relics and refusing to make any sort of deal with Talbot Galfreet. If he can cut off supplies to them, it gives him another revenue stream. 

"Marr plans to take this town. Not as the elected leader of the Great Houses but as his own personal playing field. And he plans to crush the Free Merchants and claim sovereign power over expeditions. He has decided that killing his own subjects is an ok path to his rise. If we can get proof that Talbot is helping, then we can turn the tide before sets his sights on my place," gesturing around to the various odds and ends and rubble in the building. "Do me that favor, and the dragonsilk is yours and I'll toss in a discount on your other goods." [1]

"Do you want us to bring back the proof here so you can use it for blackmail?" Cal asks. 

"No, share it with everyone. Better there are riots in the street as people know the truth rather than this city let the enemy in to feed off its corpse for any longer." [2]


The caravan was lost around at around 4 hexes travel away from Grunce (1 day for adventurers moving lightly, at least twice that long for those actually on the caravan). [Note, this was determined by rolling 8 dice and then keeping only those 3+]. 

It tracked west across the South Barthic plains to the River Orneth and then headed south. The first section is "plains" and then the remaining three are "river" [using ShadowDark hex mapping rules]. The road will run along the river with the plains out to either side. In the distance, the Caux Mountains will be visible.  There are no places of interest on this route. A few old bridges from when roads were more plentiful and a few fording spots. Everything else is just ruins of homesteads long gone. 

If you dug deep enough into the tall grass, you would find broken plows and bricks. Two generations before Jonias Grunkheart and his father built up the family name, the Grunkhearts were prone to less savory money making schemes. Elias, the third Lord Grunkheart, Jonias's Great-Uncle, brought in a lot of people to the South Plains in a scheme to strand them and force them into a form on indentured servitude by having them farm land not suited for any profitable agriculture. The farms would fail and Elias would then enlist the destitute farmhands into service to carry out military campaigns or other thuggish activities. It was his nephew, Basil, that actually turned the Grunkhearts around after a brief familial war. Basil and his son, Jonias, reworked the farmland into grazing pasture and moved many farmers into fishing and boating as a prime livelihood [(SoloDark) 90 Mislead 57 Failure + 67 Secure 09 Trial]. 

The grass here has altered here in the many years of Encroachment. The color is tinges towards deep azure. The blue grass is smooth and if pressed hard reshapes slightly at the touch, like one is touching some sort of hardened gel or quicksilver. Heavy, it barely moves in the wind that flows over the space. Instead, the air moving through the oddly smooth grass makes strange dissonant tones that might sound like a sigh or a gentle humming. During particularly strong breezes, it takes on the sound of a choir warming up. During storms, it can sound like a shriek before the grass deforms and has to be rebuilt. Slowly springing back into its semi-liquid shape. [(Knave) Place Traits 88 (Texture --> 66 Quicksilver) + Color 11 Azure + Place Traits 11 Singing]

The morning is largely uneventful. A few small animals and occasional traveler spotted. Just the long miles of road and river and strange singing blue grass [Doug's Note: I blame the oracles for this, pun not intended but now canon]. After a restful lunch, the team will spot a herd of 10 wild horses. At least, what was once horses. The Encroachment has altered the structures of the beasts. They are of a similar substance as the strange hard liquid grass. Their outer skin a more translucent shade - blues and purples and reds - with inner bones and organs slightly visible underneath. Their manes flex and flow even when there is no wind. In the grass, they can stand still and so thoroughly match the colors of the sky and land around them as to be practically invisible. Up close, they can attack with their hooves or by shooting off ooze-spines from their mane. 

Southern Plains Horses 

(built using Horses + ShadowDark's creature generator). 

AC13. HP13. Attack 1 ooze (+3 1d8) or 1 hooves (+3 1d6). MV Double Near. S+3 D+1 C+2 I-3 W+1 R-2 AL N LV 3

Unfortunately, the horse-like things are extremely hostile to others [rolled double 1s on reaction roll and "What are they doing" was a "nesting" so this is a group with young, half of their number are young]. Though on the other side of the river, they will notice the PCs and some will start crossing the river [rolled a 17 vs DC15 DEX check] and be across in two rounds]. There are 2 males who will carry out the attack while the mothers stay back.

The four travelers have been riding for hours and are feeling sore for their effort, being not used to any sort of horse-bound activity. They grew up poor and got really used to long hikes but time is enough of the essence here that they need to move a bit quicker than they could on foot. 

They are also feeling the strain of being out in the Bleak after having more first hand experience of its impact, its...Encroachment. Inar was the first to note the strange texture of the grass, and still has not really come to grips with the fact that if they were to spend enough time out in the Bleak, the same shift might happen to him. 

"Cal says this is the Shallows, Gale, the Encroachment here is very small," says Grusk. The half-orc has shown no outward sign of being disturbed by the fact that chances are, on some minute level, the Bleak has already changed some slight portion of himself. Cal Grunkheart assured them it was very unlikely they would ever have any effects from it. The Bleak is extremely "shallow" here and some folks spend most of their times past the walls with little to no impact. "As long," Cal said, "as they don't have kids. Then it gets...odd." 

"It does not have to be very big. I am not very big." 

"Well, Inar, you could use a makeover." Like Inar, Tom is on a smaller pony while Grusk and Rance are riding on horses. These are Bleak-stock. They are chosen for good breeding and trainability and raised, like a lot of the agricultural stock which keeps Grunce running, on farm islands out in the Channel. Fixed so they can not get pregnant and then brought to The Bleak where they spend the rest of their days. Good Bleak-stock is hard to find and the quality of these is pretty exceptional. Some large favors were called and losing these horses would likely earn them the ire of some relatively rich people.

The four of them had been following a map given to them by Denish. How he got it, they do not know. It shows the route from this past delivery to Mist Lake. There are no real roads between the various Bordertowns. Caravans take a variety of routes and switch them up regularly in order to avoid any sort of bandits, rivals, or strange cults. Navigators get paid big to map out safe routes. Only, if the navigators are in on the swindle, as happened here, they can lead the group right into a trap. 

Denish said that some of the goods that should have been on the caravan re-entered the Grunce blackmarket only a few days after the caravan left, suggesting that it was only a day or two out at the most. Why attack so close to Grunce? Because if you go a few more miles you have to traverse a fairly Deep section of The Bleak and it does not take a lot of superstition for house retainers to worry about that fact. 

Some caravaners get paid good money to trek through the Deep: giving up having children. Giving up their own humanity if they do it for long enough. A couple of small shanty towns near Grunce take care of the old-timers who have been hit too hard by Encroachment. 

They ride in silence for several more miles until they final come across a break in the monotony. A herd of horses. Or at least, things in the rough shape of horses on the other side of the river. The skin on these creatures ripples and flows in strange ways, showing bones and organs in odd swirling glances. The color is a deeper shade of the grass overall, though some lean a bit more red or a bit more green. 

"I guess you are what you eat," quips Tom as Inar gasps and breathes heavily in the rear, sounding like he might be fighting the urge to vomit. 

"Let's not eat those, then," answers Rance. Grusks laughs. Inar breaks down into a coughing fit and looks like is about to fall from his pony's saddle.

Unfortunately, two of the larger horse-things start rearing and loudly snorting. "Ah, I think they don't like our horses," Rance notes. Sure enough, the aggressors start plowing into the water and quickly crossing. 

"Grusk, we cannot kill them. They might be the only members of their species," says Tom despite notching his arrows. 

"Then let us put some space between us. Uffolt, can you buy us time?" 

Rance pulls out his Wand of Webs and casts it on the shore right as the two horse-things walk out. The spell gathers around them in white, glowing strands before hardening into a gray materials. The creatures buck hard against this but are trapped, for now. The group is able to make an escape. [3]

A ring of stones the characters stop at to rest for the night turns out to be 8 gargoyles. The gargoyles are currently sleeping but will be aware of the adventurers whom they will consider interesting curiosities.  Rather than attack, they will keep something of a guard on the party and eventually will fully wake up and try chatting. They are bored and mostly wanting company. [(SoD) Do they get any regular visitors? 2 No] [(SoD) What do they want? 52 Awaken 65 Control + 56 Break 85 Truth... they want to rule this chunk of The Bleak but they need the real leader to be destroyed.] [(SoD) Is there a more powerful creature that the gargoyles fear? 18 Yes.] [(SoD) Will the gargoyles be able to help the adventurers find the destroyed caravan site? 16 Yes]. 


The creature the gargoyles fear is an ancient cyclops. What does the cyclops want? We will find that in play... 

[Are the gargoyles impacted by the Bleak? 10 --> Twist! 56 Break 37 Wisdom + 83 Ascend 52 Sorcery. They are goofy, silly acting gargoyles are who prone to casting random spells on accident.] 

[Doug's Note: This is the adventure that never ends...it goes on and on my friends...]

Note: Gargoyle stats are on page 216. Their WIS is adjusted to -2 but their Charisma to +2.

Unsurprisingly, it is Tom who first notices that the strange stones around them are moving. Seeing the rocks unfold into wings he decides to skip any attempt at stealth or decorum and screams, "GARGOYLES!" Sure enough, the eight stones the party had camped out in are all moving into large, 7' living statues. 


Grusk is up in a flash and Bloodlust is brought forward. Inar is slower to waken but is somewhere between grabbing his war hammer and hiding deeper into his sleeping bag. Rance wakes up and casts light on the dying campfire, fully illuminating the scene in harsh colors. [4]

The armor is in a pile nearby. The group got too used to the silence. Once they found the bridge over Orneth that would allow them to keep following the caravan they had decided to try and get a full rest so they could push it the next day to hopefully find the attack site and then get back to Grunce in quick time. It is a mistake they are not likely to make, again. Only Tom has kept his leathers on. A goblin does not relax easily. 

"I knew we should have just kept riding," Inar says. Tom notes the halfling is trying, and failing, to quietly put his armor on to the side. 

"The first one who comes closer, I break into tiny pebbles," Grusk, even unarmored is slowly spinning in place trying to keep an eye on as many of the gargoyles as possible. 

"Now. Now," says one of the largest of the creatures. "No need for all that. We were keeping an eye on you while you were eating and everything!" 

"Excuse me?" says Rance, looking to his friends. 

The smallest of the gargoyles, still larger than Grusk, breaks into a large, toothy smile and says in a quiet, almost squeaky voice, "You guys got any more wine. Pffrak never shares any wine."

MECHANICAL NOTES

  1. Using adventure tags from Scarlet Heroes (ScH), got an urban adventure tag of "Stolen Authority" and a Wilderness Adventure Tag of "Massacre Site". Combining elements of those two we have a story of the Free Merchants being targeted by an increasingly power hungry Marr and there being a place in the wilderness with a mass grave. The Free Merchants do not yet know that Marr is doing this and if they did, it would spell a lot of trouble. 
  2. (SoD) Does Denish want to expose Marr/Galfreet openly? 16 --> Yes.
  3. Casting roll is a 13+4 = 17. The two horse things rolled a 14 and a 10. They are trapped. One will bring free in 3 rounds and the other in the 4th. Rolling a DC9 to check for horse riding (these have been established as good quality horses used to the Bleak) all make their roll. These horse things might still be on the way back but for now they managed to get away without bloodshed. 
  4. 16 + 4 = 20. So a solid cast and fairly bright.

DOUG's NOTES

After the super busy couple of weeks, I had prepped about 2/3s of this post (though the original version was a lot more abrupt) and then proceeded to get super-ill for most of the next week. It worked out ok because as I went through cold meds and fevers and all that I had some time to mentally parse some of the world and give it some thought. Essentially, the "this game is be my dungeon crawl story and eschew story" is well and dead and instead it's going to be a LOT more story and goofy NPCs and such (as well as some dungeon crawls, point crawls, and all the classics). 
On one hand, this gives me the freedom to just go all out and make the story very Doug where there will be essentially no "just baddies" and the world will be weird and have a lot of RP opportunities and weird fiction influences. On the other, it has one strangely unintended impact: I have to decide what to do with my entire Blood Hands storyline now. Though the Dark and the Bleak were kind of the same story, there was the difference that BH was all about the social interactions while B+P was all about the dungeon delving and such. By folding both elements into this one there is little reason to keep up the original version of The Bloody Hands. I have an idea on that but I am essentially going to take the best parts of both of those and pull them into this story and probably make that story much more as written on the tin: not a corrupting force but a war between the outside and inside. Drop some of the drug angles and focus more on fighting the monsters trying to invade the veil. We'll see. 
For this campaign, expect the elements of "world lore" + "gm mode" + "player mode" to continue, though. 

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Intermission 3: The Effects of the Bleak and The Pearl

By

On 2024-09-02

In Campaign Design, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

On Being and Becoming and the Fall of the Ancients

In the language of the ancients the names of the twin islands were Artuunila and Siluutila: the place of being (siluut) and the place of becoming (artuun). There were not mere philosophical notions, but a way to describe the great immanent energy in these lands. Artuun warped and changed those exposed to it. Siluut reinforced the nature of things but in doing so made things outsized. Artuun turned a mountain into a magical plateau of strange fay magic. Siluut turned a mountain into a huge monolith beyond comprehension. 

Both took time. The creatures and plants on Artuunila shifted and merged in strange ways. The creatures and plants on Siluutila grew large and strong and severe. Neither was a place for civilization, both would inherently destroy any attempt to tame the land. Until the Ancients did just that by discovering uuxa: a form of energy generated by the tension where the two forced clashed. 

Uuxa is the same energy that Jonias Grunkheart later dubbed The Light. It feeds off the Being and the Becoming and repels them both, simultaneously giving the resource to fight back but also to make a safe place where the great teeth of the land can not grind those within it. Jonias suspected that the two energies were outsized here because of the Ancients who might have actually increased their output to create more uuxa, but the result was the opposite. Both energies decreased until they were barely noticeable: taking centuries to recreate the impact that a few years might have. 

The twin lands became just two large landmasses with somewhat unique ecosystems. The great engines of the Ancients ceased to function. 

And so the Ancients entered into millennia of decay, until the Barthic Empire rose to the west, led by the mage tyrants tapping into latent amounts of artuun as a mystical force further decreasing it. 

To the east was Silt, a semantic degradation of Siluutila. Remnants of siluut meant magic struggled to take hold so the Barthic mages avoided it. Left it a wild and unexplored land. 

On the Bleak and the Impact Upon Those Within

It is unknown exactly how the primal energy known as artuun became corrupted into The Bleak but the effects are known in more recent history. There is no immediate indication of your exposure to its foul energies. Buildings might decay faster. Certain fast growing life forms like molds will spread and grow new and strange spores. New growth on plants will be more gnarled, more diseased. Stranger. Darker. 

New generations of life are where it is always most obvious. Offspring of two healthy parents might show some strange mutation. Deer with spider legs. Two headed serpents. Birds with odd number of wings. For the people of the Barthic Empire, rumors of strange "witchery" in the provinces gave way to panic when it was their own children. A generation later, the children of people impacted by The Bleak were even more twisted. If it was every child, every generation, the society would have collapsed before it could attempt its great failed migration. 

The effects were tenuous at first. Even as they became stronger they were never automatic. A small village might find all of its newborn children born more mushroom than goblin but then the dwarf clan a few miles away would merely see a slight shift in hair color. This was the great cruelty. Because of this, people turned on each other. Those who suffered The Encroachment were blamed: a sign of the gods' disfavor, a sign of some great sin. 

As wars and fleeing marches of refugees wiped out the Barthic Empire, researchers like Jonias Grunkheart realized it was already too late. The slow increase of The Encroachment meant that everyone sailing across The Gray Channel was already infected to some degree. Still, he and others fought valiantly to buy people time, to stop the flow of the strange destroying energy before it could cross. 

People spending days and weeks in The Bleak may show very few symptoms. A general sense of unease. A tendency to nausea. Of not feeling well. After a few months, shifts might be minimal. Fingers slightly different in length. Joints that bend at slightly new angles. 

Years in, and people will almost definitely show some changes. Different for everyone. Lifespans will decrease, even for those who manage to avoid the new dangers and monsters. New sicknesses and curses will be found. 

And then, for others, the Encroachment will never begin. Others can spend decades in The Bleak and never show any changes at all. 

Those that have children may see the true cost of their adventuring days because while not every child is born Bleaktouched, enough are for every person driven to expedition to understand the true cost of exploring the twice great land. 

On Borders and Shores

Another element unknown about The Bleak is why there are pockets where it does not reach. Jonias believed it was like an ocean that flowed to the rhythm of a tide we could not see. Islands rose out of this ocean and there some semblance of normalcy could remain. Other places he classified as Shallows and Deeps. In the Shallows, effects would be relatively minor. Entire generations could live somewhat peacefully if they were lucky. In the Deep, people will find it nearly impossible to survive even a single generation without risking great harm and change. 

As an old man, Jonias began to suspect that the material used to make the fuelstones were possibly the cause of these small regions of normalcy. He had believed them to be unique to the Everburning Forest, but grew to believe they were the leftover generators of the Ancients. People naturally gravitating to the places The Ancients had harnessed uuxa. Unfortunately, Jonias died before carrying out an expedition to study these energies. And the infighting in Grunce meant that the Keepers had to switch fulltime to keeping the Lighthouse functioning until Jonias's dream of retaking Barthus had morphed, like everything in The Bleak morphs. No longer was it a conquest, it was merely a last stand. 

Others call these pocket zones of safety "The Borders" and several towns and villages and forts have grown up in them. Expeditions to raid the corpse of The Barthic Empire use them as layovers. An entire economy based on people willing to brave the miles and miles in between. Sometimes only to find that some border fort or border town had fallen in the weeks since it was last visited. Another victim in the centuries of Encroachment. 

DOUG'S NOTES

The general crunch of the new academic year is not precisely over but I am getting some time to actually sit down and play things and think about playing things again so wanted to try and work out some ideas and concepts. The intention was to jump straight into the short hex crawl related to the Everburning Forest but while prepping that I decided I wanted to go back and actually answer some questions. This is one of two campaigns I am running about some non-specific dark energy force that does...something. Figured it was best to work some mechanics about what that something might mean. 
Reading through Made in Abyss and thinking about the Southern Reach trilogy got me into the mindset of the broad "Stalker" genre greatly influenced by Roadside Picnic. The fictional trope of there being some place where reality and normalcy breaks down and people risk going into that place for knowledge and for fortune. 
The idea of a great civilization that was built on the back of an even greater civilization means it is logical that many, many treasures are buried out in a realm infested by an unknown source. But...did I want "The Bleak" to be something more allegorical - a general decline in civilization (the rough explanation at the start of the campaign) - or something more tangible - an energy that actually does something? I have been leaning towards it as an active force more and more so I decided to dive into the latter. The Bleak is an energy that corrupts. Everything. However, at its core it is a natural, primal force of change. One that is merely accelerated. And itself corrupted. I might not ever get around to getting more specific than that. I do not really need to be. 
When it started, this campaign treated "The Bleak" as basically a land where old magics had shifted reality and burned out the old cities but there was really no reason not to immediately retake it. In this new "twist," no one can stay out in The Bleak for too long. 
Eventually we may get around to how The Pearl is a sister force to this, but there is no rush. It is the sword and sorcery counterpart to the grimdark fantasy of The Bleak. That is enough, for now. The "Being" and "Becoming" energy trope, by the way, is a nod to my very first RPG product from some years ago: Ghostlight. In the never completed "second edition," the notions of being and becoming were going to be more definite forces with the general world built out the energy at the center of the two. 
The plan from this point on with the campaign is to lean into worldbuilding and plot development from here on out. While the campaign essentially started as a way to just dungeon dive without any real explanation, I think we are past that. 
Probably was from the get go. 
I'm also going to try a new style of art for this campaign using high contrast two-color art to highlight the "twin" nature of things but also to tap into the sort of dark art of the source material. 

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Intermission 2: Creating the Everburning Forest

By

On 2024-08-18

In Design Philosophy, ShadowDark, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

The adventurers have a map to lead them through the Everburning Forest. Let's break this down and start figuring out what this means. 

First, some lore. The Everburning Forest is going to be a valley with a lot of geothermal activity, lava pools, and the burning smell of sulfur. At some time in the past, the pre-Barthic Ancients developed flora which could resist the constant burning heat and low oxygen and which to this day thrives in a place where even the Bleak has trouble penetrating. 350 years ago, a young Jonias Grunkheart found this forest/valley through local legends and went in with a team to build a workshop to study the Ancient technology and to find out how to channel it. Such technology was used by him to create the burning light of the Lighthouse. 
Now, let's populate it. 
Flipping through Bestial Ecosystem Created by Monster Inhabitation (Courtney C. Campbell and others), I wanted to pick a couple of "faction" types that made sense in an ever burning forest. Efreeti made sense to me but I was thinking maybe just a single entity who has been cast out from the City of Brass and found some solace in the valley (and possibly, long ago, worked with Jonias). Another one was lizard folk but I was immediately put in mind of Romancing Saga 2's Salamanders and so we'll use them instead. Besides this we can use fire elementals and fire beetles. The salamander tribe is not necessarily going to be an enemy (at least not until I absolute fail reaction rolls again). I'll save the question about the efreeti being a boon or bane if the adventurers encounter it. 
With those ideas in mind, let's make up a basic map using some ideas talked about at the end of my contemplating hex-crawls post. Rolling 10d6 "green", 1d6 "red" (to represent the workshop), and discarding all green 1s I come up with the points of interest and get a rough number of paths. I then roll another set of 5d6 "on top of it" to represent difficulty of terrain. 1-3 is varying degrees of easily passable. 4-6 gets increasingly hard to traverse. Then for each path, I roll another d6 with 1-3 being "in good condition, lower is better" and 4+ being a path that will require some trouble. Putting that all together, I get...

I pick the blue star to be my starting point. There are two dead ends off of it that are passable. There's another path the south that is harder to traverse with very rough terrain to get through. The air is harsher and the lava pools are wider while the path breaks down. Then, there is a clear and obvious chunk that takes a couple of hours (the left over bits of some road that has not yet been reclaimed) but it passes by a significant element. We'll make that the salamanders who hunt the road. After another point in the road, another long stretch through less passable terrain happens. However, the workshop's path is collapsed (workshop was a 6 so no paths to it). At this point, the characters will have to go off road and deal with the issues. 
In the distance, in the deepest and roughest portions of the Everburning Forest, is the makeshift manse of the efreeti. Now I'm going to roll on the Overland Hex Maps table to learn roughly what everything else might be though I will not dig too deeply into elements. I get the "4" and the rightmost "3" are holy shrines. Stopping spots on the way for researchers to reset and to perhaps even worship the Ancients. the "middle 3" and the "topmost 2" are "natural landmarks". We'll have one be a crag and another being one of the largest trees. We'll make that the one-time home of a Sulfur Dryad but we'll see what's up when it is found. The other "2" is a cave complex which could be interesting. 
Putting this all into Hex Kit (using Thomas Novosel's Strange Tile BW hex pack) and then taking some liberties with exact layout, we get... 

The intended path will then be to start at a ruined tower (which was the 5/crossroads). Head south to the crumbled roll until you get the first shrine. Head deeper into the relatively clear forest past the salamanders you come to the First Burn tree and then find another shrine. Here, you have to leave the path and head through the rough terrain until you find workshop. Go to far, and you end up in the territory of the efreeti. 
What exactly the shrines are and the cave complex and such...we'll figure it out. 
Step one is to start at the beginning: gathering up fire protection something and then figuring out the tower as a start and going deeper and deeper. 
Other details will be developed as I go. For those that want to see this with a hex overlay, with each hex this time being about 1.5 miles or so...it looks like this... 

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 12 - The Grunkheart Golem

By

On 2024-08-13

In Actual Play, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

 

Doors to either side are locked and require DC18 DEX to open.

This is a 40' by 30' research library with a 20' by 10' alcove along the south wall storing many important texts about the running of the Monolith and about experiments towards fighting the Bleak. [SoloDark (SoD): 99 Rest 16 Information + 73 Assist 41 Danger]. The books are still in generally good condition, partially because of defense system installed which was also once an assistant used in running the complex.

In the center of the room is a strange stone automaton (the Grunkheart Golem, aka "The Librarian") connected to the floor with four rotating wheels that spin upon a central axis. The top wheel has four mouths and four ears and four eyes and can answer questions as well as communicate. The eyes reflect the mode/mood: red = attack, blue = processing, green = librarian, black = off. They are currently in red mode. The Librarian is waiting for a passcode to back into its processing and helpful state.

The second wheel down has 3 long and articulated arms capable of reaching 15' out from the center. They are equidistant around the wheel and each arm can strike for 1d10+2 damage. They hands attached (with seven digits) are capable of retrieving books from the shelves as well (but not the more restricted alcove). 

The third wheel has four orbs which extend out on thin arms if needed. Red casts Hold Person. Blue casts Telekinesis. Green casts Protection from Energy. Orange casts Wall of Force. 

The fourth wheel, closest to the ground, has enough space that it can rise up and slam down. The bookshelves are designed to absorb this impact. 


The Grunkheart Golem (The Librarian)


AC 18, HP 40, ATK 3 slam +8 (1d10+2) and 1 slow, MV none, S +6, D +0, C +6, I +3, W +0, Ch -2, AL L, LV 8 Golem. Immune to damage from fire, cold, electricity, or non-magical sources. The bottom wheel's "pound" causes all targets in near to require DC15 CON or speed halved 1d4 rds. For the four orbs, spells are at +2 to cast.

Three questions about the current state of The Librarian (SoD Oracle):

  • Is it still fully functional as its original function? 17 ==> Yes, but... requires repair.
  • Does the House Grunkheart still have the password required? 4 ==> No. This requires a trip to somewhere else.
  • Will it be mindlessly aggressive? 5 ==> No, but... it will defend the library.

The strangest door off the main Artery, as Rance calls it, was once brightly colored and still retains some elements of its glory after all these years of water and weathering. It is better sealed than the others, giving no indication of cracks or taint, still resisting mold and decay. The front has a series of interlocking wheels that make up some sort of opening mechanism the adventurers have not seen before. Despite time spent listening, no one has heard any sound from inside. 

On the door, in very faint letters, are markings in a complicated language that neither Rance nor Tom recognize. Terk mentions that some of the oldest books in the library in the Lighthouse use this text and Cal has been trying to decipher it. Progress is being made but more about the language is lost than found. Tom's theory is that was a secret code for the five families to communicate about the construction of this place. [1]

Now that the other avenues are starting to get explored, Grunce wants to knows what is behind the door and tasks Tom with getting opening while everyone re-kits after backing away from the large crocodile's lair. 

It eventually takes Tom, Rance, Nelf, and Terk some time to figure it out before the proper arrangement of wheels is made and the door releases with a deep hiss as the space beyond depressurizes. The siblings pull back and stare at the adventurers. 

"You're up, bigun!" Tom calls to Grunce who stands, takes a breath, grips his axe, and pushes the door open. The room beyond is a library. An extensive one. Rance almost forgets himself and goes to walk in but Grunce pushes him back. "Watch it, Uffolt, this place is full of surprises." 

One such surprise is in the middle of the room. A...structure. Like some primitive totem full of strange angles and shapes. Four wheels of differing sizes have been stacked on top of each other. The bottom one thick and heavy. The top one smaller and covered in strange carvings that look like a parody of the human face. Another one near the bottom with four orbs and a fourth, above this, wider than the others by a notch, with long...appendages. 

As the door is pushed open and Grusk is standing there holding the others back, the thing begins to "wake up" as some of the shapes in the primitive face start to glow red. The long appendages stretch out just a bit and start to resemble complex arms like those of some strange giant bug trying to imitate a human. The wheel with the four orbs starts to spend faster and faster while the heavier wheel on the bottom lifts up. 

In on time at all the thing seems to be fully "on" and one of the shapes in the face-parody starts barking in an unknown language: "ERIYL TOROL....ERIYL TOROL!" [2]

Grusk, entering the room, shouts back: "Yes, yes, Eriyl Toural." Then stops as the "four orbs" disk stops and points the red orb at him...which flares and then turns off... before spinning back around to the Blue orb and Grusk flies back past the door and slams into the others. The half-orc manages to twist with the movement and prevent anyone from suffering more than embarrassment. [3]

The door slams back shut and moments later, when reopened, Grusk finds himself running into an invisible wall. Despite the "barrier", the calls of "ERIYL TOROL!" are followed by "FARON IX!"

"Well, this is a funny thing," says Inar. 

***


Rance and Tom sit around with Cal Grunkheart around the oversized stone table on the second floor of the Lighthouse. Outside, the sounds of Grunce night can be heard in the distance. Yet another festival being thrown by Mayor Marr to distract the people from the encroaching darkness threatening to devour the town. The drunk calls and loud shouts as the city folk let their worries free. 

Gryffin Grunkheart and Father Marnit enter the room. The young guard officer tosses an old scroll on the table in the direction of Cal. 

"Here, cous, this is what mother gave me." 

Gryff, a junior member of the officers of the Grunce guard, is Cal's cousin and middle son of the Lady Moreena Grunkheart, current matriarch of the House. Once the party had returned to the Lighthouse and told Cal about the strange door and the even stranger contraption inside, Call summoned Gryffin to talk Lady Grunkheart to find out if the current House library has any note about the commands or passwords to control the machine. 

The library in the Monolith potentially will answer all the questions the Keepers have about saving the light. [4]

Unfortunately, Lady Grunkheart was unable to find anything conclusive about how to get past "The Librarian," so the team has to take a different approach. Hence the scroll that Gryffin tossed to Cal. It is a map. A few miles northwest of Grunce is the Everburning Forest, a place of thick trees and constant smoke from fissures deep beneath the ground. Somewhere in there, and the map shows roughly wear, was Jonias Grunkheart's old workshop where he studied and puzzled at pre-Barthic technology that later formed the basis of the Lighthouse and the Monolith. [5]

Cal looks over it and then hands it to Rance. Rance and Tom look over it and then call in the other two who had been playing cards in the next room with several Keepers. 

"Pack your bags, boys, we're going on a walkabout." 

MECHANICAL NOTES

  1. Is the language an actual secret code? 9 ==> No, but... it is an old Barthic language that was largely lost by the time of the construction. Not secret, per se, but something from the past. Jonias was tapping into some old technology/lore when he built this place. 
  2. Just rolled 4 times on Random Realities to generate some syllables. Probably won't try and make any functional degree of Grunkheart's language.
  3. The Librarian failed it's Hold Person spell but managed to get the Telekinesis off. Grusk made his DEX save to prevent from damaging himself and the others. The Librarian gets the Wall of Force spell to seal off the room. 
  4. I'll save any rolls related to that fact once they figure out how to get past the Librarian or ending up fighting and destroying it though the thing hits like an absolute truck.
  5. Is the map easy to read? 9 ==> No, but... it shows enough details to get them roughly to the spot once they actually explore. 

DOUG'S NOTES

Tried my best to create (in GIMP) a rough sketch of The Grunkheart Golem. I think it works ok. I want to start working in more and more of my own illustrations to this even though I absolutely suck at it. 
Once I got a "boss monster" in a room right off the main "artery" I had a slight problem about what kind of "boss" would be around 30' away from action that has already taken place and not yet involved. I decided it would either be a cool, higher powered undead, or some thing more "magi-tech". I basically flipped a coin and then got to work making a weird golem that turned increasingly weird. I went from wanting it to be a "fight" to something that could be worked deeper into the lore. I spent half the time of this session doing a very prep-is-play format. 
From here we will try out the first hexcrawl of the series which is kind of exciting for me. It will be a bit more of a "point crawl" than hex crawl but I have ideas. 
The name "Everburning Forest" was because I just used a quick "generate a site name" and it was "Immortal Fire" or some such and I wanted to "bleak" it up. There's been a building towards the classic trope of age-of-technology becomes age-of-magic and I am down for it.
With something like an hour of writing and designing some the backstory, the actual play here is at a minimum but so it goes. The GM-Doug + Player-Doug aspect offers opportunities like that.

CREDITS AND RESOURCES

This game is played using Shadowdark and SoloDark, both by Arcane Library and Kelsey Dionne (et al). The map in this delve is "The Halls of Amon-Gorloth II" by Dyson Logos with added annotations and colors by me. 
The page of the Voynich Manuscript (an inspiration for the strange pre-Barthic language that will be featured in this next bit) was taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica and has the caption: "Botanical or pharmaceutical illustration, Voynich manuscript (page 99 verso), 16th century; in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University." 
Other resources used in this campaign are
  • Knave 2nd Edition by Ben Milton
  • Random Realities by Cezar Capacle
  • The Monster Overhaul by Skerples
  • Bestial Ecosystem Created by Monster Inhabitation by Courtney C. Campbell and others.
  • The Book of Random Tables: Dungeons, The Great Book of Random Tables, and The Great Book of Random Tables: Quests by Matt & Erin Davids. 
  • The Solo Adventurer's Toolkit One & Two by Paul Bimler
  • GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing by Raging Swan Press.
The illustrations for this delve are a mix of elements from the game/map as credited above, Pixabay stock art (often used more for effect than precision), elements made by me, modifications of maps using Gimp, and various pieces generated using ChatGPT4o [or some combination of multiple of these things]. 

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 11 - On Waterfalls in the Dark, Painting the Past, and When Fighting Is Best Saved for Another Day

By

On 2024-08-12

In Actual Play, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

Room would be 30' by 20' except for the sharp angle cutting through the eastern wall. Said angle has a secret door. [ShadowDark (ShD), Room Contents = 2, Empty]. The room was once [SoloDark (SoD): Secure Dream || Acquire Secret] a measurement system for the whole Monolith. Vials and dials are upon shelves and alcoves, pipes and other conduits are built into the wall. None of the equipment functions any more [SoD: Does equipment have any spark? Disadvantage: 2, No]. 

Roughly 80' corridor. [ShD, Room Contents = 1, Empty]. There are two alcoves showing very old and decayed artwork. Just visible with some effort [SoD, Are any details still presently visible? 19, Yes, but...] (on the left) is a shows a bright scene of dragon flies flying in the foreground while in the background a wave of darkness destroys the land [Random Realities (RR): 5,1 --> image element of dragon fly + wave]. The second (on the right) shows a obelisk with a light floating over it while all around darkness presses in [RR, 4,5 --> obelisk + lightbulb]. These are the paintings of Jonias Grunkheart showing off his early understanding of the Bleak pressing in on Grunce and the whole of the Empire. 


Rance Uffolt looks around the room in clear excitement. "Ah, this is very useful. This looks like one of the rooms that was originally used to...INAR, no!" The latter shout to try and discourage the halfling shaman from pulling a pipe out of the wall. Inar Gale looks back a bit sheepishly and then pat the sensitive equipment a couple of times to show no harm done (and to hide the fact that he had pulled it slightly out of alignment).


The room the group find themselves in was once either some sort of control room or a measuring station. Mildew stained glass runs in tubes along the walls (and some are smashed upon the floor) while dials filled full of mud just barely show an arcane system of measurements. Bottles and metallic scoops and other cylinders that seems to have been used to store something lies in disarray on the floor and across the metal, rusted tables. Basins long rusted into gaping holes are connected to some of the complex clusters of the tubes and vials. 

Considering its proximity to the entrance, this room could have been either to measure the salt water flow that makes up the "blood" of this construction or instead be something that actually handled some of the energy flow into the Lighthouse, above. 

Unfortunately time (and sea water damage) have not been kind to the room. It has held up more than some of the others they have explored but only just. Rance and the Keepers will likely be able to make use of it but it will take weeks, if not months, to fully appreciate what this room did and how they can use it. Something to bring up to Cal (this being Cal Grunkheart, Jonias's descendent and the reason they are here: to save the ancient Lighthouse that has long protected this region and stopped the Bleak from spreading across the Gray Channel). 

"Check this out," says Spotted Tom as he explores a patch of wall over to one side, one now covered in roots and black mold. A few pieces of old piping are still attached to it but none of the more solid pieces. As he pushes against it, the whole bit of wall slides out. [1]

Rance comes over to explore the opening and figures that maybe some of the tubing could be run out from here into the chamber outside (where the salt water flowed) to better collection some samples. He makes note of this and recommends they spike this door open to help this room air out. He'll get Nelf and her brother to take a look (Nelf and Terk Haskins are two of the more senior Keepers handling the exploration of the Monolith). [2]

Grusk Obe, the half-orc warrior, beckons to the far door. He has been spending the last few minutes slamming his shoulder into it to try and get it open but has had no luck. "Tom, see if you can open this." With a little bit of fiddling, Tom figures out the locking system and gets it open and the adventurers go deeper into the complex. [3]

Past the room, they find themselves in a corridor with steps going up. Along the righthand wall they see a couple of alcoves and in them are large oil paintings that have just barely survived the decades of decay. 

The first seems to be an idyllic scene. A sunlit day. Only in the background a town (possibly Grunce itself) is being washed away by a dark tidal wave. 

"I can't make out the other one," Grusk says before Tom steps up and replies, "It is the Lighthouse, I think. At least an artistic rendition of it. A shining light in the dark that is consuming the rest." [4]

"These are either by Jonias himself or he had them commissioned. Like a reminder of what this Monolith was built for...why they were fighting," says Rance, walking back and forth and staring at both. 

"That or what they lost," says Inar, an uncharacteristically downbeat proclamation from the usually mirthful halfling.

A 50' by 70' room with open archways on either side. The room's original purpose was for [SoD ==> 78 Sacrifice 62 Pain +  14 Assemble 35 Asset] training purposes. Soldier's would gather here to train and stay in physical shape. In the chance the town had evacuated into the complex, this is where they would have maintained some physical discipline. Now the training dummies are rotted and sagging and the gear is largely decayed. 

The sound of water can be heard trickling to the south. 

The room inhabited by a Giant Spinder (ShD, Room Content --> 5, Solo Monster. Spinder was rolled on the random creation table and given two mutations). The creature looks like a cross between a large spider and a porcupine. It can shoot spines from its back up to distance near. Each spine is poisonous but due the projectile state the DC to resist poison is CON 9. On a natural roll of 1-3 on a d20, the spinder has its last ready spine though it can still attempt close range attack. They hunt their pray by hiding along ceilings and getting a sneak attack. 

(Note: the Spinder is currently sleeping [ShD Random Encounters: 12 --> Sleeping].)

Giant Spinder 

AC15, HP25, ATK 2 Spines (ranged, near, on nat 3:20, it is out) +7 (1d6 + poison), MV near (climb), S +4, D +1, C +2, I-2, W +1, Ch -2, AL N, LV 7.  

Poison. DC 9 CON or paralyzed 1d2 hours.
Sensitive to Sound. The spinders many spines act to pick up sounds and can aim at targets not facing it (making it dangerous even to approach from behind) but this also means that loud sounds can confuse or disrupt the creature. It needs to make a D12 WIS check to avoid. 

Tom sees the dead body of a gar folk warrior on the floor. Desiccated with several large spines sticking out of its back. The goblin raises a fist in the air and signals the others to hold. Looking inside, he can sense something is wrong but not make out exactly what. [5]


The group backs up down the hall a good space away, slightly past the oil painting of the obelisk. In an absolute whisper, now, they talk about Tom's fear. "Something killed that gar and since it looks like said something ate his insides I don't look forward to joining them." 

Grusk grumbles, as usual: "It's easy, we send Gale in at a run and whatever chases him I will chase in return." 

Inar takes the jest in relatively good humor but says maybe they should go back the other way for now. The halfling ends up outvoted. In quick succession, Rance wraps himself in Mage Armor and Inar gets a Holy Weapon spell cast on his and Grusk's weapons. The halfling's voice might be shaky but he stays resolute in his faith. [6]

Rance hands his glowing staff to Tom who goes ahead and wedges against a wooden figure once roughly human torso shaped so the room is lit. Tom looks around the rest of the room. More of these torsos - training dummies going all the way back to this Monolith's heyday are rotted and decayed past use. Punching them now would have your hand sink inside and you'd end up with a splinter or worse. 

A few archer targets and other training gear are on the walls and floor. This area was above the main waterline so the decay (and smell) isn't as bad here. 

Tom sneaks across the room with the the plate-mailed half-orc holding back. He senses that something before he can see it but is unable to get fully back in time as a spine shoots from the back corner and stabs him in the shoulder. [7]

Seeing this Grusk runs in (along with Inar) and they square off against a large spider...thing...coming out to face them. The size of a pair of horses lashed together, its back is a series of large and dripping spines. "Do you know this one, Uffolt?" Grusk asks. 

"No!" Shouts Rance while already casting the first of soon to be many magic missiles. [8]

The creature shoots out two more spines with one glancing off of Inar's armor but the other catching Grusk in the arm. It does not slow the half-orc down as he runs across the room and chops at one of hte large front legs. Inar uses the half-orc partially for cover and dives past him to bring his mace down on another leg. Loud cracks can be heard. A magical arrow flies out of Rance's hands and strikes the creature for even more damage even though Tom's aim is thrown off by the spine in his shoulder. [9]

The creature starts climbing up the wall and is able to get out of range of the adventuring party. [10]

From this position it continues to shoot its strange poisonous spines. Another strikes an enraged Grusk while the other hits Rance closer to the doorway. Grusk looks around to find something to throw and decides to throw the most obvious answer: his axe. It flies up and strikes the ceiling but does not make contact. Inar takes this time to hunker down behind one of the training dummies while Tom lets loose more arrows: still missing. "Acid Arrow!" Shouts the wizard as a green, acidic bolt shoots forth and strikes the spider. Which causes it to screech and become even more aggressive. [11]

Grusk runs and grabs up his axe and throws it again, this time missing so hard the axe - Bloodlust - embeds into the ceiling. Inar has completely gotten under cover and so Tom and Rance try and make up the difference. Tom manages to get an arrow into the spider beast and returns the earlier favor. Rance sweats as he wills the acid bolt to burn through and soon enough, it does. The creature, dying, falls from the ceiling and collapses into a twisted shape. [12]

"How the hell do I get my axe back?" 

***

While Grusk is ranting about his axe being stuck in the ceiling Tom makes a discovery in the corner near where the spider thing was resting. A collapsed marble pedestal had a large amber "egg" with a wyvern hatchling inside. Made to look the size of a wyvern egg (and roughly 50lb) this decoration is a rare survivor of the various wealths and treasures that likely once adorned this place. Tom places it in the bag of holding and then tries to help Grusk out by looping some rope around the axe. While he is able to hit the axe with the tossed rope, the blade is wedged too deep and keeps slipping out of the loop. [13]

Grusk agrees to head back to the base camp and see if Terk still has scaffolding and can help. [14]

This platform juts out a just a few feet over a underground river. Down in the water below, a number of crocodiles can be seen sleeping blindly in the dark [Room content itself = empty, but this explains where some of the crocs are coming from]. Claw marks show where occasionally one of them makes the climb but they are slow to try most days. It is nearly 30' down to the water. In the distance, another platform is visible but in the dim light it is hard to make out clearly. 

In the past this room [SoD Prompt ==> 47 Lose 12 Time + 70 Win 94 Luck] was a place to relax and enjoy the flowing water below. People would toss small trinkets and coins in, many of which have been washed away. Some remain, though. If anyone braves the crocodiles, they will find still in the gravel 25 gold pieces, 40 silver pieces, and a polished pearl worth 40gp. 

Crocodile stats are on page 203 of ShadowDark. 

[Does the river flow into the channel? [or, if "no" from the channel] ==> 10, twist. RR 3,6 Ambient Noise + 6,6 ==> reverberation of sound... so no, it flows from here into some large cavernous space, possibly notes for another day.] 


This 55' corridor ends with a door back into the main flow chamber, sloping down a few degrees at a time. This corridor is cracked and sunken and silt and mud still retains a few inches of water around halfway and a few feet of water at the far end (water that will flow out once the door is opened). The smell is poignant because an absolutely massive crocodile considers this to be home and has grown increasingly agitated as the water has drained. In another week, this behemoth will move back to the river (above). 

In the mud near the croc has bones of many victims and some washed up debris. A copper flask with an owl is covered in patina but represents an old Grunce emblem and is worth 30gp. There is 20% chance for an additional treasure on the 0-3LVL chart. 

Big Croc

AC 16, HP 30, ATK 2 bite +4 (1d8),
MV near (swim), S +5, D -1, C +2, I -2, W +1, Ch -2, AL N, LV 6. 

Entering into the hallway, the four note the sound of loud water to their right and carefully walk over to investigate it. Here, the sound is much louder than before with the air feeling humid, but in a much less stagnant way. Down below, at some distance, the light of Rance's staff shows the eyes of several crocodiles lounging against the bank. 

"A...waterfall?" Rance asks, no one in particular. 

"So you are telling me there's a waterfall the goes deep...under...a large body of water?" Inar asks, as confused as everyone else. The two continue to stare into the darkness, noting another platform across the way. Considering the dangers of being lost into the darkness below and swept into some madman's dream of a functional water system if you do not get eaten by a dozen angry crocodiles, they silently and mutually decide to not worry too much about getting across for now. 

"The crocodiles climb up here," Tom says noting where parts of the platform have broken off and form a steep but relatively gentle slope (only 50 or so degrees instead of the normal 80-90). 

"Then let's not tarry before you three end up lecturing me about the morality of eating croc eggs, again," says Grusk, already heading south. 

***

"This way," says Rance, looking at the rough map and the updated notes he has been taken," should head back towards the central artery." 

A gentle slope down in this place means that like the staircase from the previous day, mud and muck and debris have had time to build and the smell of the stagnant and fungal water is pretty strong. There is something...else. 

Grusk tells the others to stay behind him. He has had this smell in his nose before. "Croc," he says. Moving forward he prods the water in front of him with his axe. Then raises his fist in the air to stop the others. 

"There." Where he points is the largest crocodile they have seen. 

"It's not far from the others, maybe we can...I don't know...bonk it on the nose and then lead it back." Tom makes a smacking sound on his own nose by way of demonstration.

"Bonk...the giant crocodile?" Asks Inar. 

The four begin having a debate while the crocodile stares on, suspiciously. Mouth open as a threat, but also not approaching the four strange things.  [15]

After a few minutes the party makes plans to leave some food at the end of the tunnel, double back and leave some more food near the edge, and then maybe check on the croc in a few days once they have cleared other parts of the complex out. [16]


MECHANICAL NOTES

  1. Tom got an 18 on spotting the door. 
  2. This room will be +5 to the check of getting the sea water flow working more properly. 
  3. Have been rolling 1:6 to see if the doors are locked. That one was. Grusk whiffed a few times to get it unstuck using STR but Tom got through with a pick locks. 
  4. Kind of minor but I did DC15 checks for the characters to see if they could make out the paintings. Grusk + Inar only passed the first painting. Tom only passed the second painting. Rance passed both.
  5. Goblins cannot be surprised. However, I rolled an INT check by the spinder and got 19-2 = 17 and neither of Tom's "Spot Hidden" rolls hit 17. So...the spinder has hidden itself well. Still, he can sense something. 
  6. Took a couple of rolls on the Vote Dice but eventually all BUT Inar decided to push forward. Inar rolled a 16 and 19 for the spell checks so he is well good. By the way, a "hearing check" on the spinder came back with a 7 total so the spinder is not hearing them and is well asleep. 
  7. Even giving the sleeping spinder disadvantage versus waking up at Tom's sneaking, the spinder rolled a 19 and a 20. Then, again, at disadvantage to shoot the war goblin, two high enough rolls landed. Tom takes 4 points of damage but makes the save to resist the weaker poison. 
  8. Rance studies the creatures of the Bleak a lot and so gets DC[N] rolls based on how common. In this case it would be DC18 and he did not make it. 
  9. Spinder wins imitative. Missed Inar but got a hit on Grusk. Only did 1hp of damage and Grusk saved the poison. Grusk and Inar both hit doing a total of 15 points of damage and taking the spinder down to below half health in a single burst. 
  10. I did a weighted d3. 1:6 = 10', 2-5:6 = 20', 6:6 = 30'. Got a 3 so 20'.
  11. Spinder wins initiative and makes its morale check. Goes up high and keeps picking away. Keeps getting hits but rolling crap for damage. Tom and Rance the ranged attackers but Tom misses. "Can Grusk use anything on the floor as a weapon?" No. Throws axe. Treat it as a dex based roll AND at disadvantage. It misses. Inar cannot do much but hide and wait to cast some healing magic. 
  12. Heroes won the init roll. Grusk made another throw but this time got a Nat 1 so it's funny to imagine a magically sharp axe being able to chop through stone. Inar got a 18 on his hide roll so I think he'd be good if the fight went on. Tom finally landed a shot and that left the spider with 1hp overall which Rance won by spending a luck point to maintain the acid arrow. 
  13. Got the wyvern egg out of the 7-9 treasure table. At first thought it was too big for the bag and then realized that it should be roughly a 1 slot item, just a chunky one. Tom made the roll to toss the rope but I asked the oracle "Can they get the axe back without help?" and got a no. 
  14. Can they get Terk's scaffolding into position? Yes. In fact, Nat 20 so very yes. It's quite portable and might be used in other places. This was taking some time so I skipped head about an hour and rolled 3 wandering monster checks. All were "no." Rance re-ups his light spell. 
  15. Reaction Roll = 7, Suspicious. The team generally has tended to lean towards trying to minimize chaos when the creature isn't outright attacking them so I figured I'd play it down to a reaction roll. 
  16. Made a somewhat collective INT roll and in the way I've been doing used the highest (i.e. Rance's) to see if they could hit DC12. No. Even spent a precious Luck token. So, they don't really have a plan. However, an oracle test of "Will the crocodile leave the tunnel and go back to the others?" ended up with a 20. So, very much so yes. And, in general, that giant croc will actually be somewhat "neutral" to the party. Basically as silly as it sounds I'll give the crocs +2 reaction rolls to them. The dumb dumbs earned it.

DOUG'S NOTES

Fun fact, I have 100% been calling Rance Uffolt "Uffort" in the last couple of sessions. Ah, well. I'll fix that in post sometime. 
Real life got a bit in the way of me making this any longer but it's a decent spot to end it for today.
I realized some of my frustrations I talked about in the past session were due to an interesting aspect of this campaign. For most of my campaigns and one-shots, the scenery is simply an extension of the characters. A temple or a school yard or a old factory are set pieces for a campaign mostly about what the characters do and in principle the flavor might shift if the characters were in a different place but I can add in just enough flavor to make it interesting for myself and maybe others. 
While I love world building, during actual play I tend to like to world build in the context of characters. 
With this campaign, the place the adventure takes place in is another character especially in the context of this complex/Monolith. Some rooms are empty. Some are full of stuff. Some had an important role in the old days. Some have an important role now. The method of making up the rooms as the characters are in the room while also properly building up a narrative  and just dealing with a sense that the dungeon is too full of things in order to have something to write and do kept itching at me. My usual approach of "just focus on the characters, everything else is background" ended up with me having the weird stuff like the gar folk encounter get kind of out of hand. 
Thus, I have decided this campaign will try a dual approach. I'll take a moment to build up a few rooms and be in full GM mode working out oracles and tables to make interesting encounters and background information for 1-3 areas and then I will swap into player mode to lead the characters through it and do it in such a way that GM-Doug and Player-Doug are not necessarily seeing eye-to-eye even if they both want to tell an interesting story. 
The GM-mode flavors the Player-mode for sure but it gives me time to work out the mechanics and the ideas and the history without having to essentially do both. The dungeon gets to be a fully fledged character which has improved my mood greatly. It takes more time but it enables me to make a better world and that better world enables me to tell a better tale. 
I like it because in potential I could build a dungeon in this method, strip out the stuff I did as the characters, and still have something like an adventure: albeit one built by oracles and madness. 
As it should be. 

CREDITS AND RESOURCES

This game is played using Shadowdark and SoloDark, both by Arcane Library and Kelsey Dionne (et al). The map in this delve is "The Halls of Amon-Gorloth II" by Dyson Logos with added annotations and colors by me.

Other resources used in this campaign are
Knave 2nd Edition by Ben Milton
Random Realities by Cezar Capacle
The Monster Overhaul by Skerples
Bestial Ecosystem Created by Monster Inhabitation by Courtney C. Campbell and others.
The Book of Random Tables: Dungeons, The Great Book of Random Tables, and The Great Book of Random Tables: Quests by Matt & Erin Davids.
The Solo Adventurer's Toolkit One & Two by Paul Bimler
GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing by Raging Swan Press.
The illustrations for this delve are a mix of elements from the game/map as credited above, Pixabay stock art (often used more for effect than precision), elements made by me, modifications of maps using Gimp, and various pieces generated using ChatGPT4o [or some combination of multiple of these things].

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 10 - Drying Off Just to Get Wet Again

By

On 2024-08-04

In Actual Play, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

 [The Unknown Fish Army and Getting Back]

I used random dice to determine that there were 16 gar folk warriors as part of this tribe (with 16 non-warriors + Garoshen, the tribal leader). The group has already fought and beaten 10 of them, leaving only 6 more warriors + the chief. However, the group does not know how many warriors there are, etc, so opinions vary. Grusk (half-orc warrior) wants to push the fight. Rance (human wizard) is ok with pushing the fight AFTER the group prepares again. Inar (halfling cleric) spends a lot of time trying to not get into fights. Tom (goblin thief) is a bit in-between. Partially because Tom knows that now they are really taking the fight back to the gar folk, that they might slaughter the tribe and Tom has always tended towards trying peace first and not just, like Inar just to avoid the work. Despite it going badly for the group and then them managing to crawl out of hole (in Tom's case, literally) Tom will rarely choose the killing of everyone until he is pushed into that corner: which by going back they will be. 

Part 10 - Drying Off Just to Get Wet Again

"GRUNFFJF," grunts the half-orc as he pulls the goblin from the deep mud and then turns to the half-submerged-in-muck halfling to do the same. The human in the very dirty wizard robes holds up a staff glowing brightly while also trying to keep watch as the team deals with yet another insult to their dignity after the past few hours that have involved being stabbed by angry fish folk, being chased through a stinking corridor, talking to a massive toadstool who thought they were funny, scrapping with giant spiders and crocodiles, and now being stuck in mud. 

"I dropped my food," Rance (the human) says staring sadly at his sack of rations that fell into the much. 
"Sod it," returns Grusk, the half-orc. "We have that croc's eggs to eat. She took a bit out of me, it's only fair". He has managed to get both of the shorter companions through the muck and on the other side. [1]
"Why does everything down here have to stink so badly?" This one is Inar, the halfling. His plate mail suit currently making a squishing sound as he moves. "WHY DO I HAVE TO STINK SO BADLY?!"
"Keep it down!" The final one is Tom, a goblin thief and general nanny to the others. Sure enough, to the east they can hear something sludge through more of this disgusting sludge. The sound fades into the distance. 
"We need to go fast. Through the corridor, we should be back into the main flow tunnel and hopefully above the...um...the spot," says Rance, trying to not remind the group that a couple of hours ago their entire plan went up in smoke as the group slide through back mold right into an angry band of gar folk. "If we do not hurry, Garoshen might launch an assault on the Keepers above. That or some of the Marius guards might have heard us slip and have decided to go down and check on us." [2]
Tom looking back over the mud points out a flaw they need to face. "If we come back this way, we have to get through that...muck...again. If we go the other, we have to slide down mold." 
Rance agrees but suggests they can set fire to the muck using lamp oil and dry and char the surface. And then come back down with some wood and plans to get over it. [3]
By the time the group reaches the end of the corridor, they can see the bright phosphorous "day lamps" installed further north to try and disorient creatures more used to full darkness. And, luckily, they are above the "mold line". They are able to get back to statue of Marius and set about resting and reorganizing their supplies. And eating croc eggs. [4]
After a good few hours rest, the team has resorted their options and equipment, one member always on guard to help back up just in case their actions have awakened creatures in the deep. Strangely, there seems to be no retaliation. Grusk takes this at a sign that now is the time to go. The others agree, except Tom who feels that what they are doing is going to end up with a lot of dead gar children. 
"We need to go down as a large enough group to dissuade them from fighting back and then escort the survivors out." 
The plan is to go with a double-pronged approach. The House Marius folks will make their way carefully down the main hall by using ropes and spikes to not slide. The main team will take the alternate route behind. The Marius squad will help but will not be the primary engagement, they are just there to help round up folks. If the gar folk tribe attacks, the guards will fight back. [5]
The main four adventurers slowly make their way back through the back path. When they get to the mud and the muck, they lay down some boards and scrap they had brought along and start making their way across. Unfortunately Rance falls into the charred mud and struggles for a few minutes to pull himself to the other side. When he is fighting is way back out, something comes out and starts attacking him. [6]
Blood erupts from his arms and face and he starts crying out for help. Grusk immediately jumps in. He does not see the invisible slimes clinging to his friend but he does take the wizard, forcefully pull him out of the mud, and fling him up on the rigged up planking. Rance holds on to the staff lighting up the way as the shadows and illumination swirls madly. This (unknown to Grusk and Inar, though Rance at least can tell) does shake the slimes off though they are going straight for the wizard. Only Tom can make them out. [7]
Grusk and Inar start slamming madly around as what appears to be bits of mud slither and splatter around. Neither make contact. Tom gets an arrow into one and it looks like the arrow is stuck in a particular thick pocket of air. Rance sees the floating arrow approach him and feels the touch as the slimes get to him and lets out a ring of fire from a Burning Hands spell which catches the arrow and several small squelching pockets of slime on fire, now clearly visible as they drop dead. It also sets the wood on fire so the wizard and the thief and priest flee to get off before getting burned themselves.
Tom and Inar easily get to the other side while Rance, pretty deeply injured by the surprise attack, starts coughing and collapses. Tom runs over and gets the fire put out while Inar gets a healing spell off to get the wizard moving again. 
"Why is it always me?" he asks, throat sore from the smoke. [8]
The party only takes a few minutes to work rest after that. Inar sets about blessing everyone and they get into the mindset of what might might be a fight to the death coming up very shortly, and then they are on their way. [9]
A quarter hour later...

The group readies their weapons and Grusk shoves open the door. Expecting to be facing down several gar folk warriors they are surprised to see the leader sitting, seemingly alone. His throne a structure of bone and driftwood surrounded by moss and mold as years of debris and detritus have turned to mush in the years since he has taken this place. 
Between the group and the throne a pool of water so dark and stagnant it looks close to reflective in the sunlight filtered into the room from some cracks and holes above. Another way to Grunce is here. 
The rot and decay of the gar folk's daily life is strong. Nearly overpowering, though the group of adventurers have tried to get used to it. 
Grusk pushes Inar forward and the portly halfling priest tries his best in common and then in primordial, but alas it is clear that the gar folk do not speak the language of the surface dwellers. Inar then tries to gesture and point back towards the surface but the gar king just glowers at them and waves them to come closer. 
Tom shakes his head "no" and barks in primordial not to trust, that something is up. 
At this, Garoshen screams out something in Merran tongue and the water in the pool erupts at 6 of the warriors leap up and attack the heroes. [10]
The first one to reach the line of heroes is completely cut down by Grusk while Tom's arrow (and Inar's hammer) fail to hit their marks. Rance gets a magic missile off to wound another. The charging hoard slams into Grusk and Inar as the two fend of bites and tridents and Grusk takes some deep scratches but luckily stays ahead of the hits. 
Rance picks up a sound from near the throne and notices a shimmering light surrounded Garoshen. "They have a mage!" 
As the frontal assault continues, Grusk and Inar hold their ground with Grusk managing to drop another one (and Inar continuing to miss). Tom changes tactics and shoots an arrow at Garoshen himself and is satisfied to see the arrow sink past the glowing magic armor. Rance takes Tom's lead and launches a magic missile at the gar fish leader. For now, though, Garoshen refuses to be prodded from his throne and the "mage" on the other side. 
Starting to back the fish folk up, Grusk and Inar team up on a third and drop it next to the other corpses while Tom and Rance keep pressing their advantage of attacking Garoshen until finally the gar folk leader screeches some words and flings down his trident, causing the others to do the same. From behind steps a scrawny half-fed gar folk who looks like they have been the target of neglect and abuse for some time. 

The next hour goes smoother than Tom could have hoped. A large chamber to the north of the throne room held a number of gar folk and their young. With Garoshen and his mage talking to them, they manage to gather up these scragglers and slump up the slope into daylight before disappearing into the water of the channel. The four heroes prevent violence between the groups from breaking out, not letting any of the Marius guards overstep. At one point, Grusk even helps carry a couple of gar folk youth up the steep slope (despite being covered in the blood of their fellow tribesmen, something the gar folk do not take too angrily...bloody fights is a way of their life). 
After this, the team finds a lot of cleaning up with need to be done, eventually. In Garoshen's throne room, they find a number of small trinkets. Tom is more excited by a small leather pouch in the area behind the throne, where the gar mage must have slept. "It's a bag of holding!" [11]

MECHANICAL NOTES

  1. On the way back up had a couple of designated rooms/areas to check and a random monster check. Rolled a random encounter and got another crocodile. Grusk and it went toe to toe with Grusk killing it but taking 3hp damage. "Did it have eggs?" came back with an 18, yes. So he pocketed them for food. The major hazard was "entrapping terrain". Considering it is at the bottom of a stair well where water was designed to flow down...it's mud and muck. Everyone rolled a STR test get through it (Inar and Tom failed) and then a DEX test to see if the dropped anything. Only  person that did was Rance but he rolled a 1 so I rolled twice on his pack and both items were rations. How the wizard dropped ALL of his food I have no idea, silly man. 
  2. Will the gar folk push the offensive? 6, No. Have some of the Marius retainers gone down to see how the heroes are doing? 3 on disadvantage, so no...but they are contemplating abandoning their post. 
  3. Made an "open" INT roll with Rance. Got an 11 total so passed DC9 but did not hit DC12. I'll say that it's a weak hit. The team can come back this way with his prep but will need some luck to do it with speed. DC12 DEX rolls to pass without getting stuck again. 
  4. Had previously rolled that the tunnel entrance is above the line. 
  5. "Will House Marius go along with the plan?" Yes, but... 
  6. Everyone else passed with flying colors but it took Rance 4 rolls to get out which triggered enough time that a wandering monster showed up. Got a random monster. Went with making a new one. PL-3 so fairly weak. I'll say level 1 with some disadvantages. These are STEALTH SLIMES. +1 to hit. 4hp but take double damage from most attacks. They are HARD to see unless you pass a DC15 WIS check or spray the area with something that shows them. Quick and fragile. They most do piecemeal damage (1d4) but will swarm presumably weak enemies and kill them in the confusion. There are 5 here. Since Rance just took 7 damage on turn 1...wellllll....
  7. Tom passed his check. Other three failed. Grusk made the check to pull out Rance and throw him. "Are slimes still on Rance?" No, but... Rance did pass a DC15 check to hold on to the staff with the light spell, though.
  8. Poor man failed another "get out of dodge" roll and took 2 HP damage which left him at 0hp. Inar had to burn a luck token to get the healing off. I'm not going to punish the wizard even more for now. 
  9. Bless is very...itself, eh? What a spell...anyhow, I compressed all the rolls and checks until they are entering into the chamber to stop it from being a paragraph or two of them just wandering and passing by Ollazelle again, etc. 
  10. "Are the warriors with Garoshen?" 10, a twist. 29 Waste, 34 Science. 36 Surprise, 35 Asset. Ummmmmm...without overly complicating this I am going to say he sets a trap and has a "wasted mage". Rolling on the table for a couple of spells I get Floating Disk and Mage Armor. Yeah, that feels wasted alright. For the trap I thought it might be nice to roll on the "rivers and coast" encounter table and see if I could more widely apply it got 54: a weighted and barbed net launches out of the silt and sand...so the plan is try and taunt them forward towards a net the gar folk have set up. 
  11. After Garoshen failed his morale check I went ahead and sped up the aftermath. They have the rest of the gar folk leave. I did check (once) to see if they would go, at advantage on the oracle and got "yes". Dropped the game a bit out of "real time" for the resolution so I don't end up spending another hour working out the logistics. The team helps get the gar folk out and keeps them safe but insists they leave. They found 3 trinkets (some silver spikes, a random holy symbol) but I'll just skip ahead and give them 80 gold. They also got a bag of holding which is pretty significant. Having cleared out one of the major threats, I'm granting them +7XP total for the treasure and the "boon" of being able to solve this problem and making the area safer without having to resort to going against their principles. 

DOUG'S NOTES

That took me a few days to mentally work out and it shows how bad I can be at certain portions of the "OSR Mindset," at least the "murder hobo" bits. I get mired down (pun not intended but still a delight) in the issues of working out the ecosystem and such. Frankly, taking a "there are some gar folk" and then turning that into a "there is a tribe and you need to approach it from a broad perspective" is not too far outside of the old school mindset, really, but these past two sessions show how I pluck at it. Even with the weird misfortune of the previous session I felt that it was worth going for at least one more dive into this theme but also wanted there to be an ending this time, one way or another, so I can get back to using this series to my simpler dungeon crawl experience. That makes two enemies that have been cast out. Something that might show back up in the future. Maybe not. I have no idea. Garoshen and Tidepool Alice are both "baddies" that were impacted by the Bleak and brought to a place where they could sense the Bleak somewhat at bay. But both of them represented a kind of decay that was letting the Bleak in. 
I spent a lot of time going over aspects and considerations but really decided it was best to have the fate of the whole tribe be down to this core group. I was doing some math about how salt water and how food and flow and such would work but ehhhhhhhhh... this is a good balance between the broader "Doug style" and something that might make sense at a table. *Looking into the Mirror* I don't have to write out an entire history of the tribe. 

CREDITS AND RESOURCES

This game is played using Shadowdark and SoloDark, both by Arcane Library and Kelsey Dionne (et al). The map in this delve is "The Halls of Amon-Gorloth II" by Dyson Logos with added annotations and colors by me. 
Other resources used in this campaign are
  • Knave 2nd Edition by Ben Milton
  • Random Realities by Cezar Capacle
  • The Monster Overhaul by Skerples
  • Bestial Ecosystem Created by Monster Inhabitation by Courtney C. Campbell and others.
  • The Book of Random Tables: Dungeons, The Great Book of Random Tables, and The Great Book of Random Tables: Quests by Matt & Erin Davids. 
  • The Solo Adventurer's Toolkit One & Two by Paul Bimler
  • GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing by Raging Swan Press.
The illustrations for this delve are a mix of elements from the game/map as credited above, Pixabay stock art (often used more for effect than precision), elements made by me, modifications of maps using Gimp, and various pieces generated using ChatGPT4o [or some combination of multiple of these things]. 

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 9 - Bringing the Fight to the Fish Folk

By

On 2024-08-02

In Actual Play, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

 [Starting Checks and Recaps]

  • Repairing the "Heart" Flow: Failed. It is technically impossible at this stage but Nat 20 should have some fun effect. Just not yet.
  • Secrecy Check: Still nothing noticed from above.
  • Barrier Check: Barriers actually hold this time. 
Mostly just status quo as the team preps to dive back into the Monolith of the Cyclops (which is not a proper Monolith but naming tables going to name and I thought it was funny) and this time will start out focusing on fighting Garoshen, a fish folk leader, and his tribe of fish folk that have taken up residence. Last time the team let a Sea Hag go in exchange for information about the location of the fish folk. However, her advice was for them to be a Sea Hag. So there might be some dress up involved.

Part 9 - Bringing the Fight to the Fish Folk

"Why haven't they reacted to us, yet?" Rance Uffolt wonders. The human mage takes on the role of lore master for the team and has found the rare case of a monster he does not know. It has now been ten days since the barriers were completed to block the tidal flow into the Monolith and yet the gar folk have not attacked. Surely their lair is starting to dry out. [1]
"At least we aren't dressing up like Sea Hags," quips Inar Gale, halfing priest. Checking his equipment and preparing for today's delve, Possibly the most dangerous the four have ever faced. Despite Tidepool Alice's advice to use the gar folk fear of sea hags to frighten them into fleeing or hiding, the four had a long debate and decided a direct approach is best. [2]
Step one. Try talking. Is it possible? Who knows.
Step two. Let Grusk get to chopping with his axe and Rance blasting with his spells while Tom and Inar try to keep them alive. 
Step three. Flee back up the main tunnel and keep the gar folk mad enough to follow. 
Step four. House Marius has loaned five soldiers that will take point along the various pillars and join in the fray-and-flee. They have been warned that these soldiers are to not be expended gleefully. 
Step five. If it gets to step five, the mission is considered lost. Blow the barriers holding back the tidal water. Flush the fish back deeper inside and are likely to be placated until a bigger force can be gathered to drive them out. 
Step six. "Get drunk or panic. Both." This is Spotted Tom, goblin thief. He has spent the last hour pushing forward with Grusk Obe, half-orc fighter. They have been placing bright, long burning lanterns along the walls. Rance figures that gar folk have lived in near complete darkness long enough that day-bright light will put them off. [3]

Rance has wrapped himself in mage armor. Inar tried to get a holy weapon spell to stick to Grusk's gear again and did not pull it off. Tom packs an extra quiver of arrows into his pack. At this point, it feels like they are stalling and so Grusk nods to the other three and they begin the slow descent down. They pass by side tunnels not yet explored. There's still a lot of Monolith to explore. 
Unfortunately, not far past the last the lanterns, the ground is wet. Quite wet. And very, very slippery. Stepping into the black mold on the floor, Grusk is the first to go and it is not long before the other three join him, sliding down a dozen feet and slamming into the brackish, stagnant water at the bottom. Backpacks and equipment are scattered. At they kept grip on their weapons. And Rance's staff emitting light. But it will take them some time to gather the other bits. Time they do not have. [4]
Five of the gar folk are aiming tridents at them. Their long snouts (full of teeth) are shouting back in a strangle gurgling language. 
"Tell me, Uffolt, about the steps again. I like the steps." Grusk is not amused by the sudden collapse but Inar is nervously chuckling at least. Or gagging. The water down here stinks. Tom and Inar both look quite ill. "Ah, that's it, time to die, then," says the half-orc before Rance gets a hand on him. Let Inar try the friendly approach. Unfortunately the sick Halfling is unable to figure out the language and just ends up sounding like a person puking. Which he is. The gar folk are not amused and clearly go to stab the halfling in his throat. [5]
Grusk goes for the nearest one and chops the head clean from its shoulders with a single slice. This has the expected result as the others scream and target him. Rance dives for his backpack but is unable to get to it in time. Neither Tom nor Inar can recover in time to get into the battle. 

The enraged gar folk begin trying to bite and stab Grusk as they close in on him. He manages to keep distance between him and then by swinging his axe around in wide sweeps but one of the tridents catches in on the side. [6]
Trying to press the offensive and by the halfing and goblin some time, Grusk steps forth and downs another of the gar folk by chopping through its torso. Behind him, Rance has managed to find his pack and with a quick search pulls for this Wand of Webs. Inar is still clearly struggling but Tom recovers enough to land a solid hit against one of the gar. 
Grusk's luck is clearly running out, though. One of the remaining gars bites through the plating on Grusk's arm and and another lands a spot on hit against the half orc's neck as his blood joins the corpses on the floor. 
This last injury takes the fight out Grusk for a moment who slams Bloodlust into the floor and stumbles to the side. A flustered Rance tries to focus the webs from the wand to the corridor beyond and fails to channel the proper energy. Inar is by Grusk's side and manages to get a weak healing spell off. Tom gives cover fire and drives one of the remaining gars back. Another runs forward in the opening and leaps on Grusk, biting him deeply and the two go down in a fight. [7]
"ACID ARROW!" Chants Rance, shooting off a bolt of acid that embeds into the back of the one struggling before Grusk shoves up and slams the gar into the wall, an axe in his chest. This buys times for Inar to get his mace into the stomach of another while Tom's arrows continue to ring true and fly over the halfing in his foe to land in the throat of the final gar folk warrior. The fish folk do not run from the fight, though, and now turn their attention to the halfling who is the closest target. 
Inar squeaks and pulls back into his armor as blows rain down on it but do not manage to pierce through it. 
This is the change in tide that the others need and in the next few seconds magic missiles, arrows, axe swings, and mace slams have finished off the last two. [8]
Grunts echo down the the corridor, coming this way fast. The adventurers gather up their stuff in a hurry without any real time to sort it. "Back up the slippery slide to doom or do we run into the unknown?" No thought of trying to make another stand right away. 
Rance takes the lead on this one: "We head south, screw the plan." Tom runs ahead with Grusk right behind. Inar and Rance take up the rear. They can move faster than the gar folk on land but have to be careful of wading too deep into the sludgy water. 
Unfortunately, their flight is interrupted nearly immediately because they tear through the hallway to the south they come across a giant spider feasting on another of the gar folk, and the spider is angry about the interruption, leaping at Tom! Tom takes the bite but at least resists the spider's poison and Grusk and Inar finish it off. No time to investigate further, they push further into the south, trudging through the water. The gar folk at least not getting closer. Based on the sounds, the creatures might either gathering their dead...
"...or eating them," Tom finishes a sentence no one else spoke out loud. This buys them a short amount of time and the quartet notice a door over to their right. Tom, despite the spider hit, still pushes forward into the lead, slams open the door and...
Disappears under the surface of the water.  A few seconds later he resurfaces. "What in blazes, it's some sort of pit..." [9]
"Not that one then," the deeply wounded Grusk grunts. And now takes lead as Rance helps Tom to his feet. They manage to get to some steps and start angling their way back up until they are completely out of the water and are walking across the floor when Tom stops them. 
"WAIT YOU BASTARDS!" 
Grusk's feet a few feet for stepping onto a large sigil in the floor. It's edges already starting to glow. Rance looks at it. "It's an old Barthic sigil for a sleep spell. Just out in the open!" [10]
"Yes, yes, fascinating. Gale, can you heal me?" Grusk points to the deep gashes in his arm and side. The halfing tries again and despite initial exhaustion, gets the spell off. The half-orc's skin heals quickly. 
While distant, the gar folk grunts still grow closer and closer. [11]
"I have a plan," says Tom. 

There are five of them now though none of them can count that high. The people. Driven out of the swamps to the north after generations of fighting against the catfish folk. Forced to find a new place to live. Brought here because of a familiar energy. The other creatures here being either food of foe. The sea hag feeding on them. Them feeding on the slimes. It felt a bit like home.

Until these new things washed up. And suddenly those that had gone to find out what the new noises were were gone. Chopped to bits. Delicious. The people do not let good food go to waste, even when it is each other. These things are dumb. Not like the people. Leaving their scent in the water. 

Leaving their weird finless footprints on the dry stone. Maybe they think people are too weak to come out of the water, but they will...

A bright flash as the sigil lights up, and 3 of gar folk collapse immediately. Two stand tall but are deeply confused. At least until an acid bolt flies out of the nearby darkness and joins an arrow bolt and finally a thrown axe. Now only one remains. He snarls, and charges at the darkness that took his fellow warriors. 

Before falling asleep just the same. [12]

"Is the trap sprung, Uffolt?" Grusk asks and before Rance can check the half orc grabs-his axe and finishes off all the gar folk and tosses their body down the steps back into the water pool below. 
IT. WAS. FASCINATING. 
The new voice they can all hear in their heads. Outside of language but all can know exactly what the words are. Looking back into the room they were hiding in, they see the bulk of the being calling itself Ollazelle. A massive example of the mushrom folk. Too big to leave by the doors in the room. 
THAT. SPELL. HAS. BEEN. THERE. FOR. MANY. BLOOMS. 
And then a sound in their brain that is just like a mushroom laughing. Which it is. 
While it was a shock to open a door and to find an impossibly large mushroom man with a bright red head (well, multiple bright red heads, he is quite big) it was a somewhat welcome surprise to find something that wasn't immediately trying to kill them. Because Olla is very, very bored. 
THE. OTHERS. AVOID. I. TALK. TO. RATS. AND. BUGS. AND. EAT. RATS. AND. BUGS.
When asked why the other mushroom folk were avoiding this area, Olla happily showed a ghastly series of memories of itself devouring other, smaller mushroom folk with glee. It is apparently how the people ultimately share information and learn. Just not quite so viciously. Or wholly. And not without sharing a little of yourself in return, which Ollazelle definitely does not like to do. 
Inar tried asking if it was the eating or not sharing that was the crime and Ollazelle seemed mostly amused by the question. Tom asked if he was going to try eating them and again: amusement. 
YOU. BRAIN. SIZE. OF. RATS. FUNNY. FUNNY. 

Despite this, they are a bit reluctant to stay inside the room with the giant psychic mushroom for too long. Just in case it gets confused. Grusk keeps grimacing and squinting while staring at it, obviously keeps trying to think loudly at it, to test Ollazelle it is able to read their thoughts but apparently that is a one way street. That or non-fungal thoughts are simply of no interest. 
Rance has noticed a series of levers and cables in the room, some now semi-consumed by the bulk, but it would require crawling on top of Olla to reach them. Something he is not quite ready to do, yet. However, based on the issue of aligning the flow of salt water above, Rance feels this is something important. Unfortunately, Ollazelle seems to mostly consider the levers and contraptions to be mostly a series of weeds and vines.
Still, the talkative mushroom might have its uses. Rance has tried arguing the group can rest nearby if anyone or anything approaches it can send a psychic alarm and wake them up. The rations survived the fall and most of the other stuff is dry-ish now. Though prone to stink. [14]
Grusk, however, has said the best approach is attack right now. Not Ollazelle (maybe also Ollazelle), while the gar folk are damaged and hurt. Inar is leaning towards heading back. If the people up talk think the four of them are dead or captured they might try a rescue mission and he does not see it going well. He also wants to wash off a bit after being covered in crusty mud for the past half hour. 
It comes down to Tom. Who goes back and forth. Rest can help Rance reattune to some of his spells and his wand. Let them heal up a bit. An attack makes sense because Tidepool Alice has been running population control on the gar folk for years. There cannot be too many. And going back makes sense because if he was up there and the people failed to return he might try to go in and rescue them. 
The latter moves Tom the most so he suggests going back. Which brings us back to Rance who has a rough sketch map and needs to work out the best way to go. [15]
Rance figures that one of the side tunnels they passed by on the way down the main flow path should connect up to the tunnel they are on and it might get them higher up before the black mold makes the whole surface too slippery. What's more, it gives them a path to try and come around from behind and avoid the dangers of that initial path. [16]
They get ready to head back up the surface and regroup for a second push against the gar folk. As they pack up and start walking north, they "hear" Ollazelle say,
COME. BACK. AGAIN. SOME. TIME. FUNNY. LITTLES.
And Rance, in full honesty, turns and says, "Oh, we will." At some point, they are going to have to figure out how to get past Olla an examine those levers.

MECHANICAL NOTES

  1. Are the gar folk causing issues for the rest of Grunce. 10 --> A TWIST! 40 Avoid, 74 Essence + 34 Forbid, 77 Vision. So, no. The creatures are disrupted by the energies of the Lighthouse and remain staunchly below. 
  2. Vote dice. First rolls were inclusive. Final roll was three 6s and one 2. So "high road" wins. 
  3. "Will it put the gar folk at disadvantage?" 18: Yes and a lot of it. As a note, the gar folk are going to use sahuagin as a base but then be modified to be the following: AC13 (leather), HP 8,
    ATK 1 trident (near) +1 (1d6) + 1 bite (close) +2 (1d8), MV
    near (swim), S+0, D+2, C+0, I-1,
    W+0, Ch-1, AL C, LV 2
    Half-Amphibious. Must be
    submerged in water every 2 hours or suffocates. They are very slightly less tanky but also a bit more dangerous in close combat. Garoshen himself will get +2 to basically all of those numbers.
  4. Is the sloping hallway slippery, I asked, to establish some potential hazards and got a nat 20 on the oracle so "so slippery that a DEX DC12 roll would be reasonable to keep their feet" and just whiffs galore. I then did a second DEX DC12 roll to see if they kept at least their hand held equipment and at least they passed that one. They are armed but things like extra arrows, torches, etc, are missing. And they will have to do a DC12 to try and flee back up the tunnel they were planning on fleeing back up. Rance also is missing the map that makes it obvious which way to go. 
  5. Why not kick them while they are down. CON DC9 to see if they can resist the heavy stench. Rance and Grusk did. Tom and Inar passed. Funnily enough, even rolling init at disadvantage, Grusk and Rance act first.
  6. All attacks against Grusk missed but one which only did 1 point of damage. It could definitely be going worse, all things considered. 
  7. There's the worse. Grusk gets hit with a critical attack and knocked pretty hard and then fails his next roll. He has 4 hitpoints remaining (but Inar gets him back up to 8, managing to complete the healing even at disadvantage). Rance fails to cast the spell from the wand even with a luck point, so the wand is useless for the day. Tom keeps landing hits but it'll take a minute. One of the gar lands another attack on Grusk and this one is a 6hp bite. Heh, it might still take me a minute to balance this game a bit.
  8. Now they finally decide to hit. Grusk is down to 2hp. Luckily thanks to a couple of Nat20s, they have 3 luck points. But Rance has lost his web spell AND his magic missile spell and Inar has lost his Holy Weapon spell. I'm going to give them one roll to retrieve their backpack or they have to leave it behind. All make it (Rance already has his) 
  9. Got a solo monster right away. Then did a check on the room and it was "minor hazard: a short fall". Rolled d20 and got 16 feet deep. Except, in this place, that's water, not a fall. I randomly rolled to see who would go first because if it was someone in plate mail, it would have been a problem.
  10. Trap: Ancient. Magical. Effect is 2d8 sleep. Rance Nat20'd being able to recognize it so there you go. This actually refills all their luck tokens. They likely need it. Note: the team had been moving at speed earlier and had no chance to really check for traps. However, each roll to see how close the gar folk have shown the gar as falling back so by now the team has a chance to slow down and move more slowly. And then Tom Nat20'd the trap check so the trap is realllly obvious. 
  11. A whiff with a spent luck point leading to yet another Nat 20. This team just got walloped in a fight and scored three 20s in a row while hanging out on some steps. Typical. As for "Are the gar folk still tracking them?" I got a 16 so yes. 
  12. Tom got a DC12 check to help rehide the trap and to add to it (the footprints). The 5 gar folk warriors took a save at disadvantage. They did not spot the trap and 3 of them fell asleep. The other two made their morale check but one got cut down by three successful hits (out of four) and Rance got a sleep spell off on the last. 
  13. This room has an NPC//Captive. "Does it make sense that the NPC is still alive?" a TWIST! So I roll on Random Realities. 2, 4 and my eyes are drawn to the the mushroom image and the phrase "corpulent". 1,2 and my eyes are drawn to the broken change and "exile". This is someone brought here by fellow mushroom folk to the south some time ago but he is not chained inside so much as too large to leave now. A great big myconid. Ollzarelle. He communicates with his mind. His initial reaction is curious. The room he is in "allow path" so it has levers and chains to open and close certain gates. Possibly part of the "Brain" or "Lungs" portion of the Monolith. He was exiled because "Consume knowledge" and "Conceal Wilderness" he has been devouring other myconids to absorb their knowledge but then also not sharing it. 
  14. Did the rations survive? 20. What is up with this dice all of sudden but yes. They are extremely environmentally protected.
  15. Rather than try "vote dicing" a three way vote I set Tom to be the decider. The other three have pretty definite choice paths in this situation - Grusk to attack, Rance to prepare, Inar to retreat - but Tom's tendency to try the more interesting choice does not quite easily solve. He is, however, the kindest of the four so the consideration of others will move him. 
  16. Rance got passed a DC15 INT check to make a decent read on the map. I also asked "is this above the super slippery bit" and got a 18 so yes. However, they don't know that, yet. 

DOUG'S NOTES

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and Doug's characters, eh? I figured we'd have a few large fights, maybe a parley, or maybe some heroes getting captured and having to make a compromise. Still, it can be fun to ask questions like "How slippery is it?" and just...almost literally...rolling with it. The surviving but not greatly leading to the run into unexplored tunnel is the kind of thing that took twice as long to think about than it did to play and write but I enjoyed it. I had planned to NOT explore these parts of the tunnels until I had worked out some themes. I had to improvise. A jumping/ambush solo spider and then a large, talkative myconid exile. Weird NPCs and goofy set pieces like sliding down a slope are better than boring fights, any day.
Figuring out how get Ollazelle out of that room should be a fun puzzle after the gar situation is under control. I have no clue how I'll handle it. We'll get there.

CREDITS AND RESOURCES

This game is played using Shadowdark and SoloDark, both by Arcane Library and Kelsey Dionne (et al). The map in this delve is "The Halls of Amon-Gorloth II" by Dyson Logos with added annotations and colors by me. 
Other resources used in this campaign are
  • Knave 2nd Edition by Ben Milton
  • Random Realities by Cezar Capacle
  • The Monster Overhaul by Skerples
  • Bestial Ecosystem Created by Monster Inhabitation by Courtney C. Campbell and others.
  • The Book of Random Tables: Dungeons, The Great Book of Random Tables, and The Great Book of Random Tables: Quests by Matt & Erin Davids. 
  • The Solo Adventurer's Toolkit One & Two by Paul Bimler
  • GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing by Raging Swan Press.
The illustrations for this delve are a mix of elements from the game/map as credited above, Pixabay stock art (often used more for effect than precision, elements made by me, modifications of maps using Gimp, and various pieces generated using ChatGPT4o [or some combination of multiple of these things]. 

Solo Advice: Consider Rolling TWICE

By

On 2024-07-28

In Oracles and Tools, Solo Advice

Solo play is a spectrum and in that spectrum you tend to have different pieces that make up your engine:  some kind of yes/no style oracle, a series of prompts, some random content generators, a level of situational framework, and/or a base game that the above pieces are placed upon. When learning to play, oracles in the broad yes/no sense are "easy". Is the door locked? Does she know what the secret is? Is the monster still following me? Yes. No. Yes, and... Maybe. Etc. 

Asking the question is usually the hard part of the yes/no layer but that is a different blog post from this one. 

This one addresses a different sort of problem that creeps up from time to time. In your prompts and random tables of events/people/dungeons/colors/clouds/whatever a lot of those seem definite in a way that yes/no + and/but are not. By this I mean, if I ask "Does she say yes?" and get a "Yes" then she says yes, sure but if I roll a random event table and get, "A farmer has lost his sheep and is seeking adventurer to track them down" then that feels much more contained. 

For the former question I could have asked "Is she excited?" or "Does she seem hesitant?" or "Does she already have a date?" or "Is she going to the dance already?" or a relative infinity of related but different questions and, in principle, the dice would have still said yes. Again, the question part is hard the answer part is much easier. Each variation of the question is a different angle you might get a snapshot of your world. 

But for that farmer that feels like a photo already taken. 

On the positive side, if you want a quest then you have a quest. If you want a snippet of something happening in a town (presumably one where a farmer and his sheep make sense) then you have an event. But while that yes/no oracle was about you the solo player exploring the world you are creating AND to which you are reacting, a lot of these tables to generate other elements are less about exploring and more about being told. 

A way to address that which I have been working on is to consider rolling twice on a lot of these tables. Roll two doors. Two sets of room features. Two quests. Two icons on the image table. Two emotional states. Two rumors around town. 

Then, as you see fit to what figures best into your world you can either

  1. Combine the two wholly
  2. Take elements from the two and fuse them together
  3. Pick the one that makes the most sense
  4. Make one primary and one secondary as a sort of background detail
  5. Make on primary and the other, or at least elements from the other, as a kind of answer to a question about the other
Let us look at a few examples of what I mean. Take the "Town Quests" table from The Great Book of Random Tables: Quests by Matt & Erin Davids. Let's say you roll...
  • 4: "An arrogant noble has won the archery competition five years in a row. The town is ready to cast honors and glory on anyone who can beat him." +
  • 57: "A string of burglaries has the city’s nobles on edge. The party is asked to investigate."
Either of those might work as a quest just fine though if play a lot of sessions using that table you might get some repetition. Using the above, though, you might get something like this...
  1. There is a string of burglaries in [City] and PCs are asked to investigate. While there they find that [City] has an archery competition and there is a noble who always wins so PCs also might boost moral by showing up one of their nobles that hired them. 
  2. One noble has been challenging other nobles to compete and during these competitions things go missing so one of the losers wants PCs to investigate the one who keeps winning... OR PCs investigate a string of burglaries and while doing so find an underground archery contest where people compete for the things stolen. 
  3. It makes no sense to be involved in archery contest so you ignore that one and focus on the other. 
  4. The main focus is on the burglaries which started some years ago after a noble that had long run rigged archery contests was finally beaten.
  5. Something important was stolen from a noble and he is willing to pay good money to get it back. What was stolen? A bow his family used in some past war and which is considered to be a symbol of the house name.
Of course the #4 option and the #1 option might be pretty similar but the idea is that though you are using both, one is the actual quest while the other is more a background flavor or certain elements are brought over rather than the whole.
Another example might be the image oracle from the various Tricube Tales micro-settings. For instance, in "Arcane Agents"  you get one that looks like this (at least the first half):

Let us say you get the 1,4 (House on Fire) and 3,4 (People Talking) icons. In the context of Tricube Tales these are meant to be interpretive. The house on fire might mean a fire, a house where drama is taking place, a family breaking apart, a house "under fire", or a literal house fire. Likewise the people talking could be a more literal conversation, a need to talk, a reference to language/words, a crowd, or some other interpretation. In that, they already offer a good deal of freedom. However, combined we might get things like:
  1. A house burns down and there are lots of rumors going around town (maybe about the house, maybe not).
  2. Inside a house you hear shouts and loud conversations OR a group of people are talking about starting a fire somewhere.
  3. You stick with just the house fire icon because you don't want another talkie scene.
  4. Two people are getting together and having whispered conversations in a coffee shop...the twist is both of them were patients at a hospital that once shut down due to an investigation but otherwise seem to not know one another (until now).
  5. People keep seeing weird lights over an old hotel. What about them is weird? There lights make a strange buzzing sound as they sparkle... 
Because the nature of this second oracle is already meant to be more open to filling the blanks, some of the combinations are a bit more obvious but even then, having both images at once can spark connections that might not be immediate if you got one or the other (either one could lead to the details that matched all of these). 
The main benefit is that this method returns some of the self-exploration elements to the kind of tables that might be more about specific details or facts. Even if you need those set-in-stone details having two rolls in front of you means you have more control over which one is picked.
It also helps to extend the tables. If you play a lot of Tricube Tales like I do, you will quite likely get at least some of the image oracle results more than once. While they are open to broad interpretation, having two at the same time just makes it more interesting to me. 
In a cyberpunk game maybe you get "Corpo assassin is targeting laundromats in Old Town due to money owed" and the second time it comes up (being maybe a d20 style table) you end up rerolling it, maybe more than once if you had played even just four or five off that table. But if you take that and mix it with "Body of well known local boxer washes up at docks with all of her augmentations ripped out" you can slice and dice those together in a many different ways. Corpo assassin was blackmailing the gym the boxer worked at OR the boxer was the one shaking down the laundromats OR local boxer has become a corpo assassin AND so on. 
This can be applied to meaning tables. Prompt tables. Element tables. You can definitely do it across tables. 
It should not be applied to yes/no oracles since those are already pretty extensible based on how you ask the question and how you apply the results. 
Likewise, even for those rolls where it makes sense you might not want to do it more than 2-3 times because too many options and oracles just bogs the flow down. 
At any rate, give it a try and see if it helps spark some more joy out of your games. I like it and it might also work for you.

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 8 - The Monolith of the Cyclops Delve 2

By

On 2024-07-27

In Actual Play, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

 [A Few Baseline Checks]

Doug, here. 

At the start of these "Monolith" sessions, there will be (currently) three basic checks to establish the flow of things and to add a little tension and uncertainty:

  • Repairing the Flow: D20 + # of Rooms *Cleared* + Rance's INT bonus vs DC36
  • Secrecy of Project: Monolith Activity Level Die (currently d4) vs City Activity Level Die (always d20 unless something big happens).
  • Barrier Check: Barrier Die (currently d10) vs Threat Die (currently d10).
In the above, a failure/fumble does not mean the quest is loss while a critical success will not mean the quest is won, etc. An extreme result will be baked into the story. Likewise, a failure of the barrier check does not mean the barriers are just reset, just that they require extra work/activity/cost to keep up. Right now, Marius is covering that. Fact is, let's say that House Marius has 30 House Points. Each failure will do 1d6 damage to those house points. Each success will allow 1d6 House Points to heal. If Marius runs out of HsP, then another quest might be required to help get funding/etc and restore them. I like that.

As for secrecy, once the secrecy check ends up with the secret being found out, it is also not end game, we'll swap that for an interference roll each session. Other factions might end up claiming part of the Monolith. 

As for the Flow, the Ocean Water "Heart" of the system, once that is repaired, it should give some boons and bonuses to the team. There will be a similar system (brain, lungs, stomach) in each other quadrants and we'll pull them in when it is time.

For this session, the results we get are 12 + 5 claimed rooms + 2INTBonus = failure to repair the Heart. Secrecy is well in hand (3 vs 14) The barriers lost the fight (6 vs 8) so Marius took 1 House Point worth of expenditure. Currently have 29 remaining. 

And now on with the show!

[Building a Stronghold]

Grusk, Rance, Inar, and Tom are talking to Nelf in the new "War Room" set up in the area where the old Monolith Crew kept some sort of zoo or menagerie. Inar, Cal, and Blkalkkbl had spent some time discussing the primordial slime entity's experience. From Inar and Cal's approximation, there seems to be a section to the east of here that rises up and so was above the water line the whole time. However, "Blick" (as Inar calls them) avoided that because there were some rather hostile creatures calling it home. 

"At least it is dry," Rance says, "Which means that it might contain some paperwork or writings that were not destroyed by water. We can handle danger, guys." Tom has been agreeing with Rance that it should be a priority. Grusk, though, feels they should go south and clear out some of the newly dried out portions first. 
"We can take these frogs an gators and slimes by surprise as they get used to cracked skin. Secure the other tunnels, and THEN we find out what might be lurking in those sealed off tunnels above us."
Inar has generally sided with Grusk, figuring that dehydrating fish people are less a threat than the complete unknown. 
Nelf ends up casting the deciding vote. "We are precarious right now. Marius had to bring in more troops and retainers. Once those things below decide to come to the surface to find out why their home is turning into a desert, the barriers might not hold."
And with that, Rance and Tom agree that a quick assault might be for the best. It has only been a week since the barrier to keep the tidal water out was built. The area will be flooded, still, but more accessible. Once that dries out, there will be some irate things that might risk pushing through the Grunce folk to get to the sea and that could be dangerous. 

[Tidepool Alice: The Terror of the Sea Hag]

Rance casts his light spell and attaches it once again to his staff [1]. The four push down the stairs where they could go no further last time. Now only the bottom two steps are underwater and as they walk into the sludgy water Tom keeps sweeping the floor with his pole to make sure they are not going into any surprise drop off. 
Shortly they come to a door on their left and stop to stare at it. It is less decayed than would expected by the surrounding area which was just, until recently, almost 60% submerged. Despite the water stained and brackish mildew on the surrounding walls, the door is actually a light creamy color. "Bone," Tom marks, gently examining it. And in the middle of the bone door is a mask in the shape of an old woman from the Old Grunce theater. [2]
"I vote Inar goes first," Tom says with a chuckle. A whispered chuckle. The team prepares. Rance summons Mage Armor around himself. Inar casts Holy Weapon on both his mace and Grusk's axe. [3]
Tom starts to work on the lock, as quietly as he can. The mechanism is in the mask itself and with some work he has it solved. "Long fingers," he quietly calls back. And then, with that, they push the door open and rush inside. 
To find a cowering youth inside. Strangely dry and looking a blinking their eyes at the sudden light coming in from Rance's staff. "Oh...m..mmm...my. Are you...he...her...hhear. to help?" 
It is Rance who punches through the illusion first, though it is clear that most of the others are aware that something is up. "That's not a person that's a... SEA HAG!" At his cry, the Sea Hag roars out an inhuman gurgle and switches back into her true form, a warty dark shape with a crown of bone and carved skulls, and everyone (but Tom) is clearly shaken as she advances to tear them apart. [4]
Grusk goes to check her advance and to keep her back from the others. He sweeps up with his axe and with a bit of luck manages to land a good hit against her shoulder. Inar rushes in to close in the gap and protect the other two but does not get a hit with his mace, mostly slamming the stone at her feet. Tom's arrow bounces off the brick wall behind her and Rance is forced to also rely on a bit of luck just to get Magic Arrow cast despite the fear quaking him and holding him back. 
In her rage she sweeps one claw towards Grusk and one towards Inar. The high + low assault by Grusk and Inar have definitely caught her off guard because she trips forward and misses both hits. This helps to cheer up the guys who push forward to press their luck. [5]
It also angers her because she goes first and continues to slash out at the Grusk and Inar. Her right claw tears a bit through Grusk's armor and scratch his chest but the left one goes over Inar's head. 
Grusk returns the favor by getting a solid hit against the arm holding him, nearly severing it from her body. The dodging Inar cannot land it. Rance screams "ACID ARROW" and gets a solid hit in her torso while Tom continues to fail to get any solid hits. 
The Hag drops to her knees and screeches "NO! WAIT!" to halt any further attacks, the Acid Arrow still burning inside her chest. "Please. Let me live. I can help you!" Looks from Grusk to Rance to Tom to Inar. I can tell you how to get past Garoshen and his stinking fish people! I know what they fear!" [6]
"Why should we trust you?" This from Tom, whose goblin blood absolutely does not like surprises. Rance, though, is absolutely sure they can. He knows that Sea Hags are usually not this close to the surface. Something drove her up here. 

"Why are you here at the edge of the ocean instead of below?" the young wizard asks, already cancelling his spell before it can finish her off. 
"My...coven...was overran by my sister's and those who survived joined her. Drove her off. I fled up out of the temple that had been my home for centuries to find a safe place and to plot my revenge. Here worked as well as anywhere. It amused me to listen to all the petty talk of the people above. When the city soon falls, the above will be ripe for the taking and maybe something there will help me fight my sister." 
"So, what do you need from us?"
"Free passage out of here, to let me find somewhere else. Some place I can lick my wounds and call out to my old coven sisters so we can get our home back from Specklesnout." [7]
The team discusses it for a moment but all end up agreeing to help get her back to the ocean in exchange for information to help them speed up this process. [8] They find out that her name is Tidepool Alice and Specklesnout is her actual sister (the term sister and sister being a bit confusing in Common, one being a member of a cousin and being from the same brood). In exchange for her pointing out to where Garoshen lives on the map they in turn tell her about the Citadel and how it might be a spot worth for her to use to hide, at least some of the caves nearby. 
"The place with the bull man? Why should I go there? He's a bigger a threat than you."
Grusk holds up Bloodlust, "This was his axe. We have solved that problem." Leaving out the part of slaughtering the tortured minotaur while he was sleeping.
Tidepool Alice laughs at this. "Oh you, you four are fun. It makes sense why I might have had trouble fighting you."
After this she agrees and the group escort her, under guard, to the shipwreck. The Marius retainers and the Keepers are clearly nervous but Rance explains. Inar notes that there is some fear about the four youths in the eyes of their allies. Working with Sea Hags is strange business. She is warned if she ever returns that they will no longer protect her. If they hear any human settlements nearer the Citadel are attacked, they will come and find her. And if Sea Hag fights break out nearby they will intervene. Tidepool Alice agrees to these terms and goes to swim away.
"WAIT!" shouts Tom, "You haven't told us what these fish folk fear!" 
"Why, my little goblin, they fear me. I have long feasted on their babies and their old. They have tried to appease me by driving slimes and beasts to my door. If they think you are sea hags, they might even pay you to get no closer." And with that, she is gone.
Returning to Alice's room, the party finds a golden statue meant to look like some deep sea isopod, a serrated coral sword that might have been Alice's own, and a pearl in a strange green jar. [9]

[A Bit of Luck, a Bit of Ooze]

Pushing south into the Monolith, the party finds a large, long room that looks to be a gathering place. A massive area to one side has a stone throne upon it, the emblem of Marius nearly lost in the years of water and mold damage. Pillars wrapped in barnacles stand tall to either side. This appears to be some sort of court room of house Marius, possibly to discuss the everyday details. [10]
This is the first room in the place that was not actively trying to kill them so it gives them a moment to take a rest and regroup, with the throne being dry enough they can actually get out of the water for a minute.
After a quick sweep through this room (and a brief recasting of a light spell), the team pushes further south again and find sunlight in front of them. The room they enter was once a store room with a ladder to the surface but now a large hole leads to the air above while trash and detritus wash up below. The team are just starting to poke through the rubble when a large gray ooze (much bigger than the previous one) slithers out from the back wall and washes over Inar before the halfling can get out of the way. [11]
Tom misses and Rance stumbles over the words of his Magic Missile spell and feels the spell disappear from his mind.
Grusk, though, is able to splatter the ooze and pulls it from the enveloped halfling before chopping into little pieces. Tom gets a torch lit to help mark the room from above and the team works out a plan to back out for now and report this opening. And work out where it would be from the surface.  

Before heading back, though, they do find a suit of deeply rusted chainmail in the debris still wrapped around the bones of its owner. That same adventurer who died has a strange ironstone egg inside. [12]

[Another Connection to the Surface]

Tracking back outside, the team finds the opening is behind Baelur's moneylending shop. Baelur is an elderly thief with a stubborn streak. The hole, from the surface looking like a cracked and busted well, has been used by years by Baelur to dump junk and people who have failed to pay him back. The irony being that until the water was drained from the Monolith, it would have actually functioned something like a well...just terrible brackish salt water. 

House Marius options to buy the shop out so they can lay claim to the hole (without it being obvious), claiming they are trying to just run the business. They are able to do this but Baelur makes it cost. 4 House Points (25 remaining) are spent to claim the area. With the slum area dismal vibe and Baelur's own reputation, Marius has some privacy building a new ladder and trap door down into the area. [13]

[Wrapping Up]

The boys sell off their finds and then decide the spend the money from the pearl on a night of party. Down at The Jolly Dragon, know for the various young wizards who gather there, Rance ends up getting into a drunken knife throwing contest and wins. [14]

Doug's Notes: the Blue is the "known" locations of the fuelstones. The Red is Garoshen/Gar Folk territory. Green represents areas controlled by the Keepers. yellow are areas that have been cleared but could be lost because no barriers help to protect them. "X" show alternate paths to the surface.

MECHANICAL NOTES

  1. Spell Check 11+4 clears the DC11. Note, I am not going to list out every single spell check/etc but will mostly just encapsulate it in the story though I'll highlight a few rolls when it helps to explain.
  2. Used Knave 2's tables for this one. Color was 31 --> Cream. Symbol was 57 --> Mask. I had rolled room contents before the door and got 10 --> Boss monster. On my table I got "make or choose" and will go with a Sea Hag. So some care is given for her to take care of her lair. 
  3. Inar got a success on his first casting and a Crit on his second. Grusk's Bloodlust has +2 to hit (total +9) and gets +2 to damage (+5 total). 
  4. Sea Hag was not surprised (had probably heard them talking, knew it was just a matter of time). So I went with her making herself into a (Random Realities) 6,2 --> Timid | 6,4--> Youth. However, her roll to cast the glamour was just a 3+2 = 5 and everyone's WIL check was higher with Rance's being highest. On the other end of the luck spectrum, only Tom made the DC15 CHA check to resist the terror effect so 2 rounds of combat the other three will be hitting at disadvantage. At least they get to go first in initiative.
  5. ShadowDark only has fumble tables on spells as far as I can tell however she rolled 1s for BOTH of her attacks. That's the kind of bad luck that normally inflicts Rance trying to get his spells off so in this case I am going to say it dispels the terror a round early. Note, I had to spend a luck point just to not lose Magic Missile with Rance.
  6. She failed her morale check. Rolled twice on the SoloDark prompt and got "Start Plan" + "Secure Victory" which felt obvious. Did check the oracle and yes she is telling the truth. In exchange she wants "Fortify Order" and "Defeat Glory". Slightly harder to full on explain but I have an idea. I also checked to see how forthcoming she will be and it's decent. Besides, what good is it to hide details in a solo game for a completely optional side quest? I'd rather build the lore than punish myself.
  7. These names and a couple of the details are derived from Skerples' The Monster Overhaul. If the Sea Hags ever return, I will use more details from that.
  8. This is the first time in this entire campaign that a vote roll ended up with everyone agreeing "yes". Neat. 
  9. Since this could have been a proper boss fight in a world where the rolls didn't speed run it so much, went for 3 treasures. Rolled a tapestry that made no sense so rerolled and got "jewel encrusted scarab" so made it more "oceanic" (45gp). Got a serrated great sword that I made into a coral sword (12gp), and a Kytherian Cog [+1 Luck at the start of the session] that I swapped into another deep-sea variation. This last is worth 300gp. All told, I'll give them +5XP for this encounter and to make up for skipping out last time around, since there are treasures and boons and such [and I am purposely inflating the XP to help accelerate the campaign some]. Since +1 Luck is a bit weirder in SoloDark I rolled a random description for Alice's Pearl and got that it allows the user to teleport a short distance away but gives the carrier disadvantage on CON checks. As useful as that is, they are probably going to just sell it.
  10. Room's contents are empty and prompts were Pursue Victory and Push Mundane.
  11. Finally triggered the first passage to the surface. Rolled a "Treasure" room with a guardian monster. This one was marked as strong so I'll give them +6HP and +2AC and +2 (+5 total) STR. There is just one, though, feasting on the animals (and unfortunate people) who get washed into tossed down from the hole above. Rance and Tom are not surprised, but Inar and Grusk are. The Ooze is attacking Inar. It hits with a crit but luckily only does 4 total damage. Then Tom misses, yet again, and Rance even with advantage whiffs (but not fumbles) the spell.
  12. Armor is worthless after being underwater so rolled again and got an egg of a cockatrice but Rance, for once, whiffed his knowledge roll and has no clue what it might be, yet. 
  13. A mixture of ShadowDark's own tables with Random Realities to get these results. Slum. Poor shop. Money Lender. Bael-us. Elderly. Stubborn. Thief. Since it's a poor moneylender in a slum, rolled at advantage on oracle to see if Marius could purchase it. Got a 19 so very yes...with a but. The but was to roll on HP to see if they have to put in a good chunk of resources and they lost 4. 
  14. Carousing roll +2. Total = 8. Knife throwing contest. They get their luck token back and +4XP, bringing them all the way to Level 3 +17XP each. The name of the tavern was just generated using ShadowDark. 

DOUG'S NOTES

Combat continues to be basically a single monster versus the squad so I think next time I'm going to make it more 2+ or some such because have to scrap is part of the fun. Grusk is a danger and I'd like to see some sweat (besides Rance and/or Inar getting hit from behind).
Garoshen leads me wanting to make the "fish folk" into alligator gar derived. So, taller, thinner but with a worse bite. 1 trident +1 (1d6) and 1 bite +2 (1d8). AC and STR reduced by 1. 

I enjoyed the Sea Hag "fight" because it was exactly the sort of fight that could have gone south but it ended up adding some lore. It might be fun to bring the Hags back soonish. 
Otherwise I think the story mostly works for itself as is and look forward to the boys trying to work out some more territory and build up towards a big fight with the gar folk. Also, I've now set myself up to there being the "dry tunnels" with some danger inside. Have no idea what that is about but I'll wait and figure it out once I get there. 

CREDITS AND RESOURCES

This game is played using Shadowdark and SoloDark, both by Arcane Library and Kelsey Dionne (et al). The map in this delve is "The Halls of Amon-Gorloth II" by Dyson Logos with added annotations and colors by me. 
Other resources used in this campaign are
  • Knave 2nd Edition by Ben Milton
  • Random Realities by Cezar Capacle
  • The Monster Overhaul by Skerples
  • Bestial Ecosystem Created by Monster Inhabitation by Courtney C. Campbell and others.
  • The Book of Random Tables: Dungeons, The Great Book of Random Tables, and The Great Book of Random Tables: Quests by Matt & Erin Davids. 
  • The Solo Adventurer's Toolkit One & Two by Paul Bimler
  • GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing by Raging Swan Press.
The illustrations for this delve were generated while testing the the new ChatGPT4o + Dall-E. It is partially an exercise at futility (heh) but I am using the weird glitch outs to add in another layer of oracle in this experiment.
The Alligator Gar photo is by Greg Hume - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30364231

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