The Doug Alone

Prep is Play and Play is Prep

A man wanders through a liminal space with dice and dominos.

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The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 18 - Entering the Lab

By

On 2024-11-10

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

 

<< GAME MASTER PHASE >>

A couple of weeks ago, a group of rebellious salamanders pushed back against the rules of the tribe to the southwest section of the valley and set off. Live in the Everburning forest is slow and steady for the lizard-like folk. These youngsters did not like the quasi-truce with the cultists nor feeding off fire beetles and so went north to cause trouble. The clash with the cultists actually went pretty well for the group, with several humans dying before the salamander youth pulled back. 

Unfortunately for them they came across a much different foe next. Uuld Alloces, the ancient Efreet, did not take kindly to the upstart punks. They thought they could push the "old man" around and he cut three of them down. The others fled back the way they came only to find the cultists had been tracking them. This time the fight was not so one-sided with only eight of the Salamander youth surviving. 

Currently they are holed up in the first and upper floors of Jonias's laboratory. They can sense the strange energy of the place and have not pushed too deeply. The cultists are searching for them and may only be a few days from finding the lab. As for Uuld, if he thinks someone is actively trying to destroy his own old friend's Jonias's work, he will intervene. 

1. The Vestibule

This large opening resembles a temple rather than the foyer of a research station. Pillars with carved images of Ancient symbols and technology are spread throughout the floor and the remains of long desiccated tapestries can just be made out in a few barely hanging threads. The overall state of anything not made of fuelstone laced brick is in stark contrast to the core structure which remains notably stable.  Ash and dust from the forest have piled up on the floor. A strange hum can be heard from the door to the left which is locked with an intricate mechanism (INT DC 15 to being understand, DEX DC 18 to pick after this, key is found in the basement in Jonias's room). 

Room Content: 9 --> Treasure (1, Hidden). 5 of the pillars contain golden statues representing the 5 final fuelstone statues in the Monolith. Time has not been kind to them, the constant heat has caused them to warp (otherwise, they would be in the 1000s of gp). As is, each statue is worth 40gp if found. 

Footprints from the Salmanders can be clearly seen going up to the north and east. A lone set tracks to the door to the north but seems to have quickly left and the ash and dust on the door is mostly undisturbed.

The door to the east is unlocked. The doors to the northeast are left hanging open. 

>> PLAYER PHASE <<

Grusk waves the others to join him and they stand in a large room full of pillars and covered in ash and dust over years of slow build up. By the door, the light from the everburning wood manages to illuminate the room (admittedly in a dim sort of orange-red light for the back half) but pushing much further in will require a light source.

"Akalat TRUN'am," intones Rance as his lantern starts growing a shimmering light.[1] The pillars are covered in a variety of runes and designs but the ash and smoke cover the majority and they will be hard to read - assuming anyone could read Ancient script here - without cleaning. Directly across from Grusk and Rance is an ornate door. 

Tom points to footprints across the floor and going up and to their right. "I'm not saying those are brand new but considering how much dust this place accumulates, they look to not be very old." [2]

"What about that door, then?" asks Grusk, "That looks exactly like the sort of place that some ancient secrets we've spent several days trying to find might be." 

Tom approaches the door and looks at the interlocking gears and strange knobs. "Hmm, I can get this open. It's like a kid's puzzle wrapped in another kid's puzzle and spoken backwards. Strange sound inside. Humming. Something clicking? Want me to get this open before we track down whoever made those, assuming they are still here?" [3]

"Uffolt, Gale, come with me. We are going to pop our head in over there." 

Grusk and the others track up to the other door and glance inside while Tom gets to work getting through the locks of the door. 

<< GAME MASTER PHASE >>

2. The Transit Room

This smaller open space has railcart tracks coming from the southeast and moving west to another pair of intricate doors, which they follow inside. Several smaller rooms branch out from here. The ash and dust is much lesser here, only a thin layer, so that the Salamander tracks bring *more* dust and ash rather than clearing it away. A set of counters on the eastern wall have fuelstone rubble on them and were once used to sort stones. 
Looking at the intricate door is a larger Salamander. This is the group's leader - Hucleo. The rest, as is seen by their tracks, have headed north and through the staircase there to the second floor. Hucleo carries an axe rather than a spear. His skin tends to an orange shade. Neither he nor the players will be surprised. He hears them coming but still remains fairly cocky despite the losses against the Efreet (and the cultist). 
Using UNE, Hucleo is a 57 Naive 90 Charmer whose motivation is 36 Encourage 09 Success. The source of his cockiness is the fact that he was a pretty rough fish in a small pond, so to speak. He is a natural leader, though perhaps not full of common sense. He really thinks his small band will lead a revolution to take over the whole forest and the last few days have been a set back. 
The remaining rooms will be left a bit vague for now and will be fleshed out more as they are used.

3. Prep Room

Door is locked. DEX DC15 (or key from Jonias's room, downstairs) required. This room has robes, boots, goggles, and gloves as well as other wear on the wall hanging from hooks. INT DC 12 to identify that fuelstone elements have been woven into the cloth. There are chairs and other furniture here to assist in getting ready. Most of these have decayed to time while the fuelstone enhanced bits have survived.

4. Cleaning Room

This room had tanks of water (long since dried up) that were used to wash and polish fuelstone elements. Now only thin chunks of fuelstone remain near washbasins and ceramic pots that have rusted and cracked. 
A group of 12 fire beetles have burrowed through the wall and are nesting in here. 

5. Tool Room and Stairs

A series of shelves with old greatly decayed tools are in the outer section. The inner section is a way down. 

6. The Down Tracks

The railtracks turn here and go down a somewhat steep slope (DEX DC15 to not slide on the ash covered ramp) to the east. A switch on the wall is no inactive, but at one point in time would have powered the tracks to help the minecarts bring the fuelstone up from below.

7. Antechamber

The railtracks continue to another pair of doors similar (but larger) to the ones in the vestibule. Stairs on either side lead up to the second floor. The salamander tracks, now fading, go up to the one to the north. 

>> PLAYER PHASE <<

"Um, hi...," says Inar after Grusk taps the halfling slightly forward, "My really astute goblin friend says it's like a kid's puzzle wrapped in a kid's puzzle and spelled backwards. Which would be elzzup s'dik!"
Hucleo turns. His scales shimmer in Rance's magical light and his neck frills start to stand out a bit, making him look a bit bigger than his actual height (Hucleo is shorter than Grusk, but roughly the same musculature, giving him a heavy, stocky appearance). He...laughs...in a sort of sibilant hissing way. Then says something back to the group in reptilian. 
"Dammit," quips Rance, being the only person in the group to speak the tongue [and his last attempt at diplomacy going so well]. "We are not here to fight, but we will if we need." 
Hucleo spreads his frills even further and contemplates the words of the seer. Speaks in a slightly stilted Barthic, "You not cultists or my boys slice you, yeah?" [4]
"Yes. I mean, no, we are not cultists. We do not get along very well with them." 
"Like you already. Why you here in my valley, cold skins?" 
Rance looks at Grusk and Inar and Grusk takes Rance's meaning. Do they share the reason they are here? This laboratory is filled with potential treasures that can change the shape of an empire. They have no idea how many salamanders (Rance does recognize the species) are nearby and what stance the fiery lizards might take if they think this place is valuable. On the other hand, trying to lie might make it hard to actually explore the lab. Grusk decides to go with his usual blend of very-nearly-honest and abruptness.
"Person who owns this place wants a book. Sent us." 
"You three come all this way for a...," the word 'book' throws him because a species that swims around in lava would have a tricky time storing even the toughest materials for anything book like. Rance knowing some of the basics of their structure translate the word to roughly <stack of obsidian tablets>. 
"Also," says Rance, "We are four. The other one is in the room behind us." 
"Sa sha sha," laughs Hucleo in that his hissing chuckle, "I know cold skins got four. Little test. Forgive! Forgive!' 
The salamander walks forward and holds out his hand. Grusk walks up and shakes. Thanks in part to the dragonsilk, Grusk takes no damage from blistering hot scales. 
Hucleo seems impressed. "Come. Meet my fellows. Come, come!" He starts toward the north stair and heads up. Grusk and Inar follow but Rance mentions going back to check on Tom. 

<< GAME MASTER PHASE >>

8. The Upper Balcony

Years ago, this room's shutters could be opened to look down into the temple room (9), below. now the heavy metal shutters are locked into place and the mechanism to open them on the south wall has long worn down. High windows in the walls allow for light outside to filter through, casting the whole area in a pale orange glow. The curtain to the east (now only rags and thin shreds) has fallen down and the door to the east is left open. 
Stands holding pew-link benches are on the north and south of the room. Being made out of everburning wood, they have sustained better than a lot of the other furniture, here. 
Five of the remaining salamanders are on the north set of pews, eating fire beetles. The other two have gone through the door and are exploring the upper rooms. 

>> PLAYER PHASE <<

Grusk and Inar have been talking with the salamanders upstairs for a bit. The conversation is a bit stilted without Rance to translate so it is mostly Hucleo's broken Barthic and every time he lapses into reptilian the other salamanders laugh. Grusk is big enough to be a bit intimidating to even these young roughs but Inar definitely feels out of place. At least the salamanders think it is sign of brethrenhood that the two adventurers have faced (and beaten) cultists. The valley is such a tiny ecosystem, though, that it is obvious the youth have trouble contemplating some of the scale of it. 
"And then this one," says Inar, knowing when to keep up a narrative even if he does not know why the salamander are happy to hear about it so much, "brought his axe down and chopped the cultist in two!"
Hucleo hisses out a translation to this and the other five cackle and making threatening swipes with their claws. The four adventurers have gone from being a neutral entity to one the salamanders seem to quite enjoy. They even offered fire beetle meat to the adventurers (who in turn offered up some rations) but Grusk and Inar politely declined. 
Unfortunately, discussion of needing to search this place has tended to swing the conversation back to the more negative even with Hucleo's prodding. 
"The fellows worry more coldskins will come. They like you but coldskins not good." [5]
As Grusk contemplates debating the point even more, or perhaps trying his luck at attacking six people he actually is enjoying talking to, a shout from down below alerts everyone that Tom and Rance have run into problems.

<< GAME MASTER PHASE >>

9. The "Temple"

This large chamber's most obvious feature is a large mirrored object on the western wall which glows with a pale white light. It is a semi-active portal that can not be fully entered until the machinery in this place is reactivated. However, even once that is done, attempting to enter it without precaution is dangerous. The energies of the vortex will tear you apart. The energy can be better sustained if you are wearing gear from the prep room (3). Even then, DC12 to not take 4d6 damage in transit. 
The railtracks coming up from the basement travel from the western door to the platform underneath the portal. Jonias was using this system to transport materials up from below and carry them to his pocket dimension. 
Two automatons guard this portal. Both give the appearance of viperian ophids: tall creatures with a human like body and a long snake tale. Both are carved from fuelstone and have glowing green eyes when activated. They have four arms each. In three of these arms is a fuelstone scimitar. In the fourth is  a locking box. Bringing the key from the control room in the basement can allow you to unlock the box and to disable the automatons and give them new commands. For stats, they have the same as regular automatons but are immune to mind control and similar spells.
They have been awakened by the new activity in the place and have sensed people at the south and eastern doors. Their last command was to keep people from this room as Jonias entered into the portal (to never return). They will be aggressive in that regard. 
Will they chase people if the people leave the room? (Advantage) 17 --> Yes, but they will not go downstairs, they have commands to not interfere with Jonias's work. 

>> PLAYER PHASE <<

Once Tom has sussed out the general puzzle he gets it open in essentially no time at all. [6] Rance has been catching Tom up as the final gears of the door give way and it starts slowly opening, increasing the sound of the hum.
"...it was a salamander, strong looking guy, but friendly, Grusk and Inar are.."
Rance stops talking in mid-sentence as they see the glowing green eyes of the vipherian ophid automatons turning to look in their directions. Behind the two strange stone golems is a strange swirling light that looks like silver glitter turning in glowing sap. 
"...are...ok, we do not go in there, right? We stay out here?" 
"Agreed."
Unfortunately the automatons are not as bound to the entry into the room as the pair hopes, and after a few rusty moments of getting their internal workings going again. 
Rance pulls out his wand and shouts the activation phrase - "Glunnis Paloshi" - and magic web starts pouring out and covering the creatures who struggle in the web but being shouting their own words back at them (the words are "intruders must be stopped" in Ancient). [7]
Even with the strange creatures trapped, it is obvious that the strands of magical webbing are starting to tear and fade and will not hold them for long. The two start running for the stares to follow their friends and shout for Grusk and Inar. As they do, they hear webbing start to snap in the room behind them and move just a bit faster. [8]
Grusk comes running down the stairs and bumps into the other two in the transit room. Right as they go to explain the situation in hurried simple words a loud crash hits the door behind them as one of the automatons pushes through. Grusk pushes the two aside and goes to meet the creature with his axe out and his shield up. He gets a hefty blow and tears a chunk out of the creatures abdomen. 
A winded stops and gets an acid arrow off which embeds into the body of the creature while Tom gets his bow up and also lands a shot. Grusk, keeping his shield up and forcing the automaton to stop in the doorway, gets hit by the two upper arms bringing the scimitar down. [9]
Grusk shrugs off the bleeding for now and gets his axe, Bloodlust, into the face of the creature to see if the glowing eyes are actually needed for it to track. At the same time, Rance keeps control of the acid arrow that finally burns the inner works of the stone mechanical. It's eyes stop glowing and it collapses in a heavy (STR DC 15 to move it) pile of stone on the floor, blocking the door it was just trying to get inside. [10]
Inar, Hucleo, and several of the salamanders are coming down the stairs right as Tom and Rance are sitting on the floor and Grusk is tearing some cloth from a pouch to bandage up his arm. Inar sees that and rushes over and casts cure wounds which causes the new gashes to heal. [11]
Hucleo shouts, <<What is that thing?,>> in reptilian and Rance tries to explain in more precise details but only gets some of the basic ideas out. The salamanders, realizing they are now staying in a place with such dangerous hazards, begin to worry about looking around much deeper. At the same time, seeing Grusk take it down single-handedly (in their eyes) makes them also worried about the half-orc. They are hastily debating leaving right away [12] when the second automaton tosses the first aside and comes into the room with scimitars out. 
Hucleo barks and order to his wavering band and charges in. Only Hucleo manages to get a hit while dodging the arms but their unmagical weapons just bounce off the stone hide. Their extreme body heat also does no damage. Grusk pushes to join in the fight (also having to resist the heat coming off the salamanders, which he does) and gets a good slash along the back while Inar tries to get his made into the otherside of the creature. Rance fires off another acid arrow while Tom's arrow glances off the side of the automaton's head. Its fast moving arms digs deep gashes into the two salamanders to either side while the third heavily wounds the one standing next to Hucleo. [13]

Grusk shouts them to be careful, the creature seems to be shrugging off the hits. Unfortunately no one puts together that this creature is immune to magic. The salamanders again several hits in but no damage shows on the automaton. The one by Hucleo takes another severe gash, this one across the face, and starts to fall back while another slice by the fuelstone scimitars catches the one on the right and slices the head clean off. The salamanders are enraged. While they shout and continue to attack pointlessly, the adventurers use the distracted automaton to land a series of shots and blows to finish it off. [14]
Inar immediately starts casting cure wounds on the two living injured salamanders and gets them back to full, though the damage from their heat clearly blisters him as he lays his hands upon them. One of the salamanders just healed realizes the danger the halfling is putting himself in and bows his frilled head and says some words in reptilian. [15]
"Thank you, coldskin. You fellows very brave. Strong. Fire like us in blood, eh?" Hucleo says. He is clearly upset about the loss of yet another of his band and is now facing the fact of having to go back and ask forgiveness of the tribe. "We leave you to your search, just ne..." 
Upstairs, one of the salamanders still exploring shouts something faint and outside humans can be heard talking and getting closer. The cultists have found the lab. 

== MECHANICAL NOTES ==

  1. 15 on spellcasting check.
  2. Only Tom succeeded on the INT check to determine the age of the footprints (with a 15, the rest did quite a bit worse, their attention is on the door). 
  3. Tom the superstar got a Nat 20 on deciphering the door. I probably should have rolled on advantage but I forgot and it's not like it matters. Since he is going to stay and take his time, he will get it open just fine (eventually). 
  4. Even with his CHA penalty, Rance got a reaction of 9 so Hucleo is mostly neutral and will play to his cocky charm. 
  5. SoloDark "Will they allow the adventurers to keep searching? (Advantage) 10 --> twist 53 Deny 91 Success. The salamanders are worried that allowing things to be found here will bring in more invaders. 
  6. Once again, our boy rolls a Nat 20. Tom is special.
  7. Rance got a 19+4=23 on his Web casting check which means the automatons will be trapped for 5 rounds or until they roll a 23 on their STR check. 
  8. On the third round (1st round in something like shock, 2nd round in getting moving, 3rd getting to the transit room) one of the automatons gets a nat 20 and breaks free. The other is still 2 rounds out.
  9. All three attacked at disadvantage but all three managed to make their hits (Rance spent a luck point). Grusk did 10 points of damage, Rance did 6, and Tom did 5 (a total of 21 out of 28). The automaton will not have a morale check so will get its turn. It gets 2 off its three hits on Grusk, doing 7 points of damage. 
  10. Grusk gets another solid hit and Rance maintains control. That finishes it off. 
  11. Cure Wounds required another luck point but cured 8 which is enough to put Grusk back to full.
  12. Do they want to leave right away? 14 --> Yes. The second automaton got a STR roll of 16+4=20 and easily tosses the lifeless "body" of the other aside. 
  13. Actually decided to do a three way initiative for this one. Salamanders got first, then adventurers, then automaton. Salmanders made their morale check and so decided to move in to show they can also fight. Is it immune to their heat? 13 --> Yes, but...it's immune to this level but not immune to higher levels of heat. Grusk only gets 6 points of damage (and Rance only 4). The automaton gets all three hits on three different salamanders doing 10, 10, and 6 points of damage.
  14. Rance did not recognize the Viperian Ophid fuelstone and so is presumably unaware of the abilities of the species. He will realize the problem the round after this. Two salamanders again got hit (the one nearest Hucleo has taken 17 points of damage). The one that got hit for 6 last time took a critical hit for a full 20 points of damage, ending him. Grusk gets 10 points of damage in. Rance maintains the acid arrow for 5 more. Inar gets a hit for 4 and Tom gets a shot for 4. This is enough to finish off the second automaton. 
  15. Took a luck point (one remaining) to get the three cure wounds spells needed off. Inar missed his resistance check even with advantage and took 5 points of damage.  

== DOUG'S NOTES == 

Halfway through, I decided it felt weird to always capitalize species names so I swapped to lower-case. It will likely glitch here or there. 
The lab is a bit less random than some of the adventures. Trying to justify a completely randomized place kept feeling a bit stilted. There are still elements. The fire beetles in the wash room was decided a head of time. The use of the rooms is fiction-first. The fact Hucleo was by the doors was a random "boss monster" roll. I wanted to work in more fuelstone golems. The treasure was a random roll. I'll keep it at this level because a few random rolls is what got us to half the campaign being about getting into a burning forest and secret lab. I want to tamp down some of the chances for this to become 10-sessions of more side quest.
I also have begun working on a lot more lore and just injecting in, here. We knew from way back when than Jonias's artifact to power his fuel stone was in some place beyond the physical realm. We also have learned through largely random rolls that there is more to this forest than initially thought. I am not sure if I ever specified that Jonias died in any specific way but the lean now is that he full on left the world and for some reason did not come back. Everything is just guesswork. 
The set-piece with the cultists was something I had decided would happen whenever a stopping point was reached and it feels like now. Just a good old fashioned siege meets a sort of western-style shootout. That'll be for next time, though, as the team has to rapidly learn what else the lab has in store. More golems? Ancient visitors? Let's find out together.

== CREDITS == 

This campaign is played primarily using Shadowdark and SoloDark, both by Arcane Library and Kelsey Dionne (et al).

Additional sources include a variety of things for tables, especially Knave 2nd Edition and Maze Rats (both by Ben Milton), Random Realities by Cezar Capacle, Universal NPC Emulator by Zach Best, and various pieces from Worlds without Number and Scarlet Heroes (both by Kevin Crawford).

The illustrations are created by me using GIMP and Hex Kit (featuring the Lil Hex Pack and Strange BW Hex Pack). The sources of the images I edit to make the "two color" splashes range from personal photographs to Pixabay stock art and bits from other public domain and CC-0 sources.

The map is from Dyson Logos's "Temple of the Worm" series. There will be some slight modification on the lower levels because those go on longer than I need (so a few passage-ways edited out in some way or just ignored). As usual, I just sort of take each room as I see it so some of the drawn elements will not necessarily match my description.

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 17 - Past the Salamanders to the Second Shrine

By

On 2024-11-04

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

 

Passing the Salamanders

A tribe of Salamanders make their home on the south edge of the valley in some of the slower moving lava pools. The road between the two shrines acts as a sort of edge to their hunting grounds and sometimes a few hunters will camp out here or there to snare a fire beetle backing in the road or to catch a cultist who dares wander south from their usual digs in the more northern arc of the valley. 

The road itself is amazingly well kept. Jonias Grunkheart used fuelstone in the cobble and unbeknownst to him the technology "feeds" off the Light (of which the energy is massive abundant here) and repairs itself slightly over time ("Does fuelstone itself feed off the light as a side effect of its alien origins?" 13, Yes, but... the full control requires an interface which is mostly lost (but might be regained)). 

Since the road does not connect directly to the Salamander tribe and since the tribe is not extremely sizeable and therefore unlikely to patrol the whole 15 or so miles of road, the chance to just randomly encounter is pretty small. There will be two encounter dice per "round" (once per six miles traversed). The first one is for non-Salamander encounters. The second is for Salamander encounters.  This second dice starts with a 1:6 chance for encounter. Once any sort of serious noise has been made, it goes up to 2:6. Once any kind of encounter that might agitate the Salamanders is made, it gets to be either 3:6. If the Salamanders are actively hunting the party, it gets even worse. 

Note: Salamander stats are on page 249 of Shadowdark. One adjustment is their flame aura. As long as the adventurers are wearing dragonsilk armor, DC9 at advantage will be the roll. 

The Old Oakburn Tree

In the time of Jonias, a Sulphur Dryad lived in this tree. In the hundreds of years since... (Does the sulfur dryad still live in the tree? 4 --> no..) she has passed on and the tree is now (Shadowdark room content table, 2 - Empty) mostly just a husk of its former glory. The everburning wood still catches fire but the tree itself is hollow and the leaves are long gone. The party will be able to camp here (without need of a campfire). 

There is one more round of encounter checks past the tree before they get to the second shrine.

Encounter checks:

  • On the path to the tree: 6,6 --> No encounters
  • First watch: 5,4 --> No encounters
  • Second watch: 4,6 --> No encounters
  • On the path from the tree to the shrine 3,6 --> No encounters [Doug's Note: there will be adventure in this adventure game, right?]

The Second Shrine

Like the first, it is a monolithic structure built out of a single large piece of fuelstone after Jonias Discovered *something* post-construction of the Lighthouse. It again appears to be a small stone building with a large cupped hand. Unlike the first one, though, this one is occupied (ShadowDark room contents --> 10, boss monster!) A Fire Elemental has moved into the structure feeding off the ever increasing pulse of Light. 

Fire Elemental

AC 15, HP 30, ATK 3 slam +6 (2d10) or 1 inferno, MV near (fly), S +4, D +3, C +3, I -2, W +1, Ch -2, AL N, LV 6 Impervious. Only damaged by magical sources. Fire immune. Inferno. All within near DC 15 [12 for the dragonsilk] DEX or 3d8 damage.
At the time they are approaching, the Fire Elemental is... (11 --> Guarding) guarding the entrance to shrine (is it pretty openly? 18...so yes, very openly). It likes its home very much.
Was it told to guard the shrine? (disadvantage) 15 --> Yes, but... (1-3: recent, 4-6 Jonias' time: 2, recent (Did the Efreet summon it? 19 --> Yes, but... Alloces summoned it and told it to guard the shrine but... )). Can it leave the shrine itself? (disadvantage) 6 --> No. Why did he summon it? 67 Secure 71 Magic + 12 Disagree 68 Kindness. He summoned it to help him manage the Light energy flowing into the valley but the elemental did agree with Alloces' "kindness"...Alloces wanted something like a friend and the elemental is way too...elemental.. for that, so Alloces bound it to the shrine and left it there to help protect it. 
Will it allow the characters to pass as long as they do not approach the shrine? 9 --> No, but... they could in theory convince it (this would likely require them to actually know about Uuld Alloces or to convince it). 
In some years recent, Uuld Alloces, an Efreet and once Jonias Grunkheart's ally, summoned forth a lower fire elemental to help guard the road and shrines. Over a few months, Uuld kept trying to have conversations with the strange creature and found the elemental simply did not respond besides in very basic, very logical sorts of ways. He could command it to cook dinner for him or to fight alongside him but it was not even a pet. It was simply a being of primordial fire. 
A little shocked at his own lonesomeness, Uuld decided to bind the elemental to the eastern Shrine and to report any activity that might indicate that Jonias' "battery" was being interfered with and to help dissuade anyone from pushing north into the forest. 

The four have been moving slowly but steadily along the road for nearly a full day now. Last night, in the strange light of a burning hollow oak tree larger than any tree they have seen before, they made camp. The forest has been quiet since that initial encounter. There are signs of life. Beetles reflecting the fires as they run into the underbrush, strange jeweled snakes, bird cry like a deep horn. But by the very nature of its anti-Bleak energy the strange warping effect that no doubt would have created an entire host of creatures was denied. Meaning most life that lived here before the cataclysm that made this valley died years ago and has only be partially replaced. 
The adventurers did hear sounds of activity in the night. To the north, at a good distance, were drums and chanting. To the south and west, and at a much smaller distance, the sounds of joyful shouting and something like song if it was sung by a creature with a mouth full of burning rocks. Neither sound got closer. The four have seemingly passed unnoticed through the valley of burning trees and lava pools. 
At least down here, along the bottom of the valley, the smoke tends to be high enough above their heads to clean out the air. [1]
Approaching the middle of the day, they see the large cupped hand of the second shrine and coming around the corner find themselves only a few yards from a pillar of fire. One that seems quite agitated to see them there. [2]
"Ah," says Rance. "That bonfire seems to be irritated at our presence."
"What is it?" asks Grusk.
"A fire elemental. Not a particularly massive one, but big enough to make me want to avoid it." [3]
"Ok, fine," joins in Tom, "we avoid it." 
"The path is past the shrine, we could back up and try going the long way around, but...," Rance says, broadly gesturing at the woods around them which are also randomly on fire. Going off the beaten path here can be a death sentence. 
"You know, I wonder," says Inar, "Do you think this place has flaming quicksand?" 
"Almost definitely," responds Tom. 
"Good, good. That sounds fun" And the halfling, still ready to try and save the Lighthouse and full of new found courage, finds himself giggling uncontrollably. 
"Can we kill it?" asks Grusk.
Rance ponders a bit. "I mean, sure. We killed a minotaur. We killed a...slime-cyclops. It's just..."
"Just what?"
"It's just, why would we kill it?" Tom once again brings up the moral question. 
Grusk sighs. The other three know the half-orc has been a bit bored these past few hours but they also know he will not engage if the others oppose, especially not after the events with the gnolls. All four back up slightly while the big of the pillar of fire that looks the most like a face tracks them the whole time.
They debate for a while and the eventual vote is 3-1 for backing up and trying to track towards the workshop the long way round. The dissenting vote is surprisingly Rance. He is nervous about going too far off the planned route and also feels they will eventually have to handle it but Inar and Tom both hold that it can be faced when it comes. 
Making some calculations about the new directions to take, Rance is able to find the way to the Jonias's lab... the structure stands large and feels out of place in the stark orange and yellows and blacks that dominate much of the color palette. The front door is missing - allowing any number of things inside - but the structure remains brick and industrial and pale in places. [4]
The lab remains functional and powered by fuelstone for 300 years. 
"Well, boys, here we go." Grusk walks up to the front door and walks inside. 

== MECHANICAL NOTES ==

  1. Checked, here, to see if Rance noticed the road was made of fuelstone. He did not. 
  2. Tom cannot be surprised so they were going to see the fire elemental before they got too close but I did a broad awareness check to see if any spotted it far enough back and no, the general answer is no. They are aware of it about the time it is aware of them. It is still bound to the shrine.
  3. Rance rolled a 2 on his INT check but since he has "Primordial" as a language it would make sense that he has exposure to elementals in his training, so I decided to say he would recognize one. Of course, the last time he tried to be the "face," it ended up with two critically wounded characters. 
  4. Rance Nat 20'd the remapping roll. "Is the door sealed to the lab?" 5 --> No, but.. there are sealed portions. 

== DOUG'S NOTES ==

This one got delayed from a Sunday posting because I had it mostly finished besides these notes when I realized I needed to update my hexmap. Not required, really, but I like having it all in place.
I put off playing this particularly episode because after the the random breakdowns back during the stuff with the gar people and then with the gnolls I wanted to give this one plenty of space to breathe if I was having to figure out how to get through the forest while being hunted by angry Salamanders, if the Salamanders had some deep quest, etc. Then, each moment since leaving the tower was "Nah, no worries, no encounters." I even wrote in a method to double the chances of encounters at one point and rolled high. All to find an actual fight (the elemental) and work around it because good lord that one could have sucked. But also, there is a clear Doug-OSR hybrid here. These are four orphans from the collapse of a massive empire in its final days. There has generally been a stance of working with everyone (and it often failing). These aren't the guys who will kill a elemental if they can walk around it. 
Each of my ongoing campaigns has its own structure. The Bloody Hands is closest to how I would play a solo game without a blog (the one change would be that I would probably write even more dialogue and graphics into the actual notes portion). The Alabama Weird is a bit different in that I write out more extended fiction with one or two game points added in to force me to change up the narrative. 
This one allows me to work out campaign design and then switch over and play in my own campaign and sometimes it leads to sessions like this where if I cut out the adventure design portion it would be about 5 minutes of "not much happens" but the joy of the campaign is that I spend at least half, if not more, in campaign design mode where things like a elemental not moving from the door of a shrine becomes a bit of backstory about a lonely Efreet who misses his long gone friend and a quick image for a shrine ends up hinting that at the time of this legendary scientist/lord's death there was some massive project. 
For instance, the fact that fuelstones regenerate was based on the post where I was working on the hexmap and found out the the road between the two shrines was in much better condition than most other things in the forest. I was trying to think how a place that eats other structures through harsh conditions could lead to to a road remaining open and easy to traverse. We have established that Light is not a positive force (in other words, Light wouldn't fix or heal things) but instead one that cancels out two other forces. Hence the notion of fuelstone, which is at least somewhat related to a crashed space ship, being powered by the same energy that the Ancients used to run their Atlantean empire. Does this mean the Bleak and the Pearl are both energies that derive from a Roadside Picnic situation? I mean, it's me so probably but I'll leave those specific to some future session or not at all. At this point, all we know is that visitor's craft changed the material in this valley so that the raw energy has reshaped the land and a later but still early Ancient scientist (techno-priestess in their language) harvested that, along with the new material found in the valley, to create an engine that could power an empire for thousands of years until they had drained the land. 
Now we also know that Jonias had made some large discovers at the end of his life about how to bring back Ancient technology but most of his research seems to be lost. What we do not know is if the alien visitor was an isolated incident or if it ever left, so...stay tuned.

== CREDITS ==

This campaign is played primarily using Shadowdark and SoloDark, both by Arcane Library and Kelsey Dionne (et al).

Additional sources include a variety of things for tables, especially Knave 2nd Edition and Maze Rats (both by Ben Milton), Random Realities by Cezar Capacle, Universal NPC Emulator by Zach Best, and various pieces from Worlds without Number and Scarlet Heroes (both by Kevin Crawford).

The illustrations are created by me using GIMP and Hex Kit (featuring the Lil Hex Pack and Strange BW Hex Pack). The sources of the images I edit to make the "two color" splashes range from personal photographs to Pixabay stock art and bits from other public domain and CC-0 sources.

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 16 - Healing Up and Moving Out

By

On 2024-10-27

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

A NOTE ABOUT SOME MISTAKES

It is clear I was a bit rusty on running ShadowDark combats after I went back and was checking off the notes. 1) The gnolls were suppose to be doing 1d6 damage, not 1d8. A few of the swingier parts of combat still might have gone pear-shaped but while it is likely that Inar would have been taken out it is very unlikely that Grusk would have also been knocked to 0HP. The gnolls had special spears. 2) There were several "misses" that probably should have been hits. Grusk gets a +8 to hit. He needed a 4+ to land. Inar needed a 8+. Tom needed 7+. I think I head in my head that they needed to roll a 10+ or so. 3) The enraged mechanic probably should have gone on another turn. Maybe not. 4) The gnolls should have had bows so it is likely early combat would have required the team to avoid arrows while breaking in, which also meant that the gnolls would have likely been more split by the first and second floors. All these things would have made for a different fight, one that required a bit more strategy but overall would have involved a stack less damage and scrambling.

The sum total of changes I will make, though, to balance out the fact that the battles was about twice as deadly as it should have been is to give 2 additional treasures and to rule that Tom's excellent roll to reseal the door means the party makes a recovery without the worry of a wandering monster. 

The two additional treasures (for a 1-3 level monster are): a bundle of 5 red dragon scales (5gp each) and a cracked handheld mirror (8gp). I think both of those make sense as stuff that scavengers might have picked up in the debris of an everburning forest. The smaller treasures will be +1XP each. The statue, if retrieved, is +3 (it is a fuelstone prototype). The magic book would be +1XP but somewhat valuable. 

Back to our regularly scheduled comedy of bad rolls and goofy GM errors.

"Tom, it's a fuelstone," Rance remarks while looking at the statue of a strange snake-human hybrid. Rance is going on the assumption that it is some sort of medusa offspring, possibly a local legend (and, alas, has failed to notice the tie into House Mistamere). [1]
The two of them are downstairs where they have been gathering bodies of gnolls, along with their particularly heavy and barbed spears and burying the best they can in the rubble. Both human and goblin are exhausted by this point. Upstairs, Grusk and Inar have been resting as best they can. Food, water, and time have worked magic but Rance has decided to wait until morning. Hence why they are take care of such tasks as honoring the dead and searching the area. 
The fuelstone in reality is a viperian orphid and is an old symbol of House Mistamere. As a fuelstone prototype it would provide definite information for Cal Grunkheart and his Lighthouse Keepers. It is quite heavy even though it is only a third the size of the smallest fuelstone in the Monolith. [2]
The team left a camp with some retainers back a mile or so from the forest to help transport them home, so if they can get it there, Rance wants to keep it. 
From upstairs, Grusk shouts, "Tom, come up here and check out this door!" 
On the second (and currently top) floor of the tower, the general decay is even further along. The sulfur and ash of the forest slowly dissolving the 300-year-old tower back into rubble. Ash and burned out embers cling to the portion of the floor closest to the stairwell up to the long-gone third floor. The gnolls used this area only a little. However, to the west side, a surprisingly sturdy door is half buried by rubble and at a glance seems to be have been unopened (and therefore, unlike the rest of this tower, not thoroughly ransacked by the gnolls). 
Grusk starts heavily moving some of the rubble and after a few minutes of sweat work, breaks through to the door itself. After watching Grusk sweat for that time, Tom goes up and starts working through the lock and manages to get it open despite the rust and decay on the metal. [3]
Downstairs, Inar has drifted over to where Rance is looking at the fuelstone. "Rance, can you feel the difference here, in this valley?" 
"Which difference is that?"
"Like a weight has been lifted off of my back for the first time in years." 
Rance stares over at his old friend [4] but gives the halfling a chance to continue.
"We were being raised as sacrifices. Some of our friends were sacrifices. Then you and Richarade escaped only he...well, anyhow, we met up with Tom and then Grusk and it was nice,  you know. Having a place where people did not want us dead quite so hard. You had your dreams and we came here and I have been mildly panicked ever since. Wondering how many teeth I have. Wondering if my heart was turning blue or some such. [5]
"Only..," Inar trails off. 
"Only we realize now that the Pearl also is changing us. Here we become something different. There we become more and more what we are. Evil cults become more evil. Powerful wizards become more powerful. Things changing into their truer forms which reshapes and warps them all the same."
"Exactly. We grew up becoming more halfling. More human. More orc. The old empire had people from all sorts working together. Over in The Pearl, the human-orc war is on the verge of starting. Halflings have gone to hiding in their various shires. We grew up thinking The Bleak was terrible but at least here people can change."
"Kind of forced to..."
"I know. I have been panicked about it until I woke up this morning, sore from all the fighting, and realized that my connection to Gede is stronger here than it has ever been. Not 'here' as in the Bleak, but here in this valley with the smell of sulfur and ash clogging my nose. I can feel HER right here...," Inar says as he taps his chest. 
"What Cal calls The Light. This valley and this forest was where the Ancients discovered the principle. A balance between the two great engines of Being and Becoming." 
Inar nods. "I think what I am trying to say that we cannot cling like Barnarcles on the edge of two great continents. The empire clearly had problems. But the people who fell from it, they need a chance. If Cal can get The Light solved, build up fuelstones to cover the land, we can fight back, make a new home."
Rance walks over to his friend and pats him on the back. "What are you going on about, I thought this was all settled?"
Inar responds, "I mean I think it is worth us fighting and risking death to give a chance for everyone to feel what I am feeling right now."
Tom comes downstairs carrying a book. "Looks magical, Rance, you should take a look." Tosses it to the Seer. It is indeed a grimoire with a handful of spells remaining legible inside. 
"What else was up there?" 
"Looked to be some sort of study or planning room. Maps and scrolls and books. Nearly all burned and broken. The air is harsh on paper and vellum alike. Doubt this tower will still be standing in another generation or two." 
"About that," says Rance, "Looking at this fuelstone prototype I am thinking that we need to go and get the basecamp and bring them here. Maybe one of them can help shore up the tower. Inar says the Light here is strong enough to be felt and that's significant. This area is safer from The Bleak than even Grunce. What's more, according to Cal's map there was a mine down in this valley where they harvested the original fuelstones. There might be more of that ore down there. We need to start working on getting this valley safe. You know, besides all the burning trees..."
Another day is spent tracking back to the basecamp and moving men and horses into the tower. A few have some knowledge of repairing structures like this one and will get to work on it while the adventurers are heading deeper into the valley to find the workshop. [6]

Descending into the Valley of the Everburning Forest

A couple of miles past the tower to the south, the terrain drops of fairly steeply and goes into the forest proper. The air is more foul, the heat more noticeable, and it is regular to find patches of everburning wood takes off as the primary vegetation. Any plants that are not resistant to fire will eventually catch fire after this point. 

Tracking down the switch backs into the valley requires a DC12 CON roll every half hour. A failure means a rest is required (of another half hour). It takes three such checks on the way down and five on the way up. As the body gets increasingly used to the harsh atmosphere, it becomes easier. One day of exposure drops the check to DC9. A second day drops the check altogether. However, a failed check without the subsequent rest will result in a cumulative -1 penalty to all physical rolls until a full rest is made. Any spells, items, or so forth that provide pure air will avoid the penalty but also prevent the ability to grow more accustomed to the atmosphere. 

At the bottom of these switch backs is the first of the "shrines" built by Jonias.

The four get to the floor of the valley covered in grime and sweat. It took them some time to make it down the path. [7] Looking back up the way they came, it is several hundred feet of rugged forest and rocky terrain. Some trees burn a gentle red flame that does no damage to the plant itself while pools of molten lava catch in a few pockets. Down here, the ground is very warm to the touch but the dragonsilk wrapped around the boots is doing wonders to prevent the heat from seeping too deeply, or too fast. 
Looking at the map that Cal copied from them, Rance tries to predict their next moves. "Looking here, the next general landmark will be one of two shrines Jonias had constructed."
"What were the shrines for?" asks Grusk.
"Unknown. Some of his notes are pretty vague. On a practical side, it marks one end of the valley. Then, tracking along some miles, a full day's travel at least, we will find the twin shrine. Assuming the old road remains in any condition. That's when we head north towards the workshop." 
The sky above is yellow and gray with smoke and steam but there is a definite sense of sunlight somewhere up there, illuminating everything in a strange orange tint. 
"How long do you think it will take us to hit the next shrine?" asks Inar. 
"Hard to say. If this was just a regular valley we could probably be there sometime after dark, pushing it a little. With this air and the chance of rough passage, could take us a couple of days pushing inward." 
Grusk gives some thought. "Ok. We check out this shrine and get a slight rest, then we push on until we need to camp."

The First Shrine

What was the purpose of the Shrine? SoloDark prompts: 65 "Confront" 54 "Spirit" + 08 "Resist" 87 "Help". Taking the second pair in a slightly different path (rather than "resisting help," more "helping to resist"), these shrines are something like buffers at the end of a road Jonias created that builds up a kind of energy loop from one side of the valley to the other. It creates a sort of barrier that both keeps the elemental spirits of the land from escaping but also helps to strengthen the energy inside the valley. 

Each shrine is a place of rest and towering over them are massive fuelstones, larger than the ones in the Monolith by far. Each shrine has one, looking together like a pair of cupped hands: left at the west shrine and right at the east shrine. Sparkles of The Light crackle along the fingers. Neo-Ancient technology, like the type that Jonias built in the Monolith, runs in the shrine even centuries later powered by this energy loop. 

SoloDark, are they able to turned or moved in any way? 1: Critically no. These things are massive and they and the shrine are made out of one huge chunk of fuelstone. How Jonias got it here is unknown.

SoloDark, did Jonias get it here? 10. 71 "Scatter" 14 "Light + 70 "Win" 99 "Shelter". So, yes. Jonias at some point in time (after The Lighthouse by technology levels) was able to harness Ancient technology to perform miracles at a level similar to the ancients. This means something else occurred to stop him from taking The Lighthouse to further extremes. OR that the Lighthouse has untapped potential. Maybe both.

SoloDark, did Jonias plan for this valley to become an extreme haven against the Bleak? 20. Critically yes. Grunce was a temporary stopgap. The Everburning forest was the ultimate goal. Why did it fail? Did it actually fail? Good thing the adventurers are going towards the library, eh? 

== MECHANICAL AND STORY NOTES ==

  1. Mr. "I can identify a monster in the middle of battle with a Nat 20" critically failed this check. Off to a great start.
  2. Rolled 1d20 to see how many slots it would take to carry: 9. 
  3. Rolled a 5 for pieces of rubble, requiring STR15. Took 8 attempts but got two crits along the way. Tom got through the DC18 lock on the first roll (because of course he did). 
  4. Something not brought up much since the very beginning of this campaign is that Rance and Inar were both children raised in a offshoot Cult of Shune and had a fairly rough childhood. They escaped and ended up being brought into the Shrine of the Blue Grove and raised alongside Tom and Grusk.
  5. For a description of what the impact of prolonged exposure to The Bleak can cause, see Intermission 3: The Effects of Exposure to the Bleak and the Pearl. 
  6. SoloDark, "Does anyone in the retainer camp know enough about repairing the tower to make a difference?" 12 --> Yes. 
  7. Without being too precise, basically everyone failed at least one check, requiring two additional stops (so around 2.5 hours total, making it now close to midday of their first day into the valley proper). Tom and Rance both a critical success on the last check [which everyone passed], giving back two Luck Points and showing they are getting used to the atmosphere (+3 to their rolls). I made two encounter checks and both came up negative. 

== DOUG'S NOTES ==

Going to end this one on the story note since 1) that will be more interesting than having them in a stone structure full of ash and dust and 2) the next stretch will almost definitely involve an encounter with the Salamanders. This one went a bit harder on exposition than I realized but it is nice to start pulling some threads together. 

When this campaign started the essential plan was to do a series of dungeons generally leading up to some mishmash story stopping some cataclysm once the guys got strong enough. It quickly shifted towards the "cataclysm" being Grunce's Lighthouse failing. It took me something like two months to work out (in play) why that might be. The opposing energy of Being and Becoming will destroy the people whichever they choose. Only by restarting the Ancient's technology to harness that energy is there any chance that people will survive long enough to maybe set sail to other lands and rebuild. 

The loss of Grunce would be a final nail against the last storehouse of knowledge of how to truly fight back. Except now, there is a potential other source. The birthplace of the the fuelstones that channeled new power to the Ancient machinery by harnessing alien technology left behind and fused with their own. The ability to create a Light which sustains instead of burns out the balance of energy around it. 

== CREDITS ==

This campaign is played primarily using Shadowdark and SoloDark, both by Arcane Library and Kelsey Dionne (et al).

Additional sources include a variety of things for tables, especially Knave 2nd Edition and Maze Rats (both by Ben Milton), Random Realities by Cezar Capacle, Universal NPC Emulator by Zach Best, and various pieces from Worlds without Number and Scarlet Heroes (both by Kevin Crawford).

The illustrations are created by me using GIMP and Hex Kit (featuring the Lil Hex Pack and Strange BW Hex Pack). The sources of the images I edit to make the "two color" splashes range from personal photographs to Pixabay Stock Art to a few old pieces generated by ChatGPT/Dall-E (though I am planning to generate no new AI content for this blog due to a lot of reasons).

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 15 - Entering the Everburning Forest

By

On 2024-10-20

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

The Everburning Forest

In his youth, Jonias Grunkheart was fascinated by a strange stretch of land two days travel from the Grunkheart Manse. In old tongue, it was the Tarulukki Ran: the Valley of Sulfurous Smoke. In the distant past, before the Barthic Empire had largely pushed aside all Ancient Technology and buried it out of fear of a Third Cataclysm, the Ran had been the site of contact. This fact Jonias found in scrolls written in Pre-Barthic tongue that his family treasured above everything else.

Something, a creature of long eyes and many teeth, had arrived there. Seeking tarulang: now known as sulfur. The Ancients and the Outsider built an engine to pull great rivers of molten earth up to the surface and harvested from the destruction. The scrolls do not make it clear whether or not the outsider got what it needed. The next story takes place hundreds of years later. A young techno-priestess named Elizin Urnlight, attempted to save the everburning valley by settling the eruptions and by creating an entire ecosystem of flora and fauna that could survive the sulfurous atmosphere. The roots of the unburning trees helped to heal the stones and eventually the lava ceased to flow so freely. 

Thus the place of fiery death became Tarulukki Ran, a place where the air was harsh to breath and the heat was unbearable to many, but a place where life could grow. 

As Jonias grew older and had begun gathering the great families into the new city of Grunce, forming the Pentarchy to fight back, he knew their final stand would be brief without a weapon against the Bleak. The rumors had been ignored for too long and the amount of soil left free from the spreading darkness decreased by the day. 

He went into the now nearly forgotten Ran and built up a network to tap into Elizin's network of lines and conduits of power, barely understanding the science he used but desperate to harness it to his own ends. At the spot where the machine had once been planted to cleave the earth into fire, Jonias built a workshop. He believed there was a source of primal Light, there, a energy left over from the Outsider, which could be harnessed and elevated and magnified. The same light that Elizin Urnlight had used. 

There he met an outcast Efreeti named Uuld Alloces and made a pact with the creature of fire. He would leave the valley to Uuld with the old technology still potent enough to keep the Bleak out. 

After a tense decade where the Pentarch was under siege not only by the growing number of refugees and the Bleak-filled monstrosities beginning to increase in frequency, but by other great houses from now destroyed cities who demanded their own right to rule. At a time in which the five core families were on the cusp of losing Grunce, Jonias managed his last great miracle. Five fuel stones carved from the rocks of the Everburning Forest to channel a form of Elizin Urnlight's forgotten technology into a singular source: the Lighthouse. 

Where the Light shines over the city that was once the Grunkheart Manse, the Bleak cannot encroach. 

While two days ride away, the Ran still sits in acrid yellow smoke and things entangled in that ancient magic seek a way to leave. The very mystical technology that gave hopes to the last bastion of a crumbling empire weakened the original version of the techno-priestess's great salvation. Different things crawl there, now, things that might grow in power if the Bleak can find a way in...
The Everburning Forest is a place of feral magic where a great working has destabilized natural order and given forth to great energies. In the core, a hole to another place has allowed strange creatures to come forth.  At that place, a group of people long twisted and broken by exposure to the nearly toxic air and high heat have dedicated themselves to the worship of Them. Placating Them so They will be content with a small grove. [Worlds Without Number (WWN): Ruins Tag --> Feral Magic + Wilderness Tag --> Devil's Grove]. 

The Tower

At the top of the valley there stands a tower once used by Jonias Grunkheart to store supplies while he struggled through the rough air and heat. 30' by 60' at the base and rising four stories in the sulfurous, it was much more a wayfinder than a defense of any strength. In the three hundred years since, the top two floors have been eaten away and collapsed into the path. 

At its base, two paths stretch. One east along the side of the valley and one south down into the depths. The east-most path quickly splits with a north trail going to one of the crags and peaks surrounding the valley while the trail continuing east goes to mines used by Jonias once to harness the mystically-infused stone used to carve the fuel stones. 

The tower is currently home to a group of nine gnolls who have been gathering old equipment and junk from the tower. 

Gnoll

AC 12 (leather), HP 10, ATK 1
spear (close/near) +1 (1d6), MV near, S
+1, D +1, C +1, I -1, W +0, Ch -1, AL
C, LV 2 

Rage. 1/day, immune to morale
checks, +1d4 damage (3 rounds).

The gnolls know the way through the path to the south but do not go far into the valley to avoid conflict with the Salamanders and the other things which live in the valley. 

The most recent find by the gnolls is a strange statue of a viperian orphid that has been buried under rubble. It is made out of the same stuff as the fuelstones and represents an early draft worked out by Jonias: a symbol of House Mistamere before the design was perfected and the four statues of the non-Grunkheart houses were replaced by replicas of Pentarch leaders (the fifth, the Cyclops, is carved like a large version of Jonias with a single eye looking up into the base of the Lighthouse, the only non-human variation). 

The tower has otherwise long been ransacked by the gnoll tribe and mostly filled with their own refuse and junk. However, in the second floor is a locked door (DC18 DEX to open) which has been closed off by collapsed rubble (DC15 STR to move one of the pieces of 1d6 rubble). Inside, most of the books and notes used by Jonias have been long destroyed by the climate but one magical book, a Tome of Dead Words remains. 

Tome of Dead Words

Contains each of the following scrolls: create undead, magic circle, protection from evil, and speak with the dead. Can also cast Turn Undead but on fumble draws undead to attack the holder. 

[ShadowSpark (ShS) Treasure 8 and Dungeon Encounter Card 41. Increased number of gnolls to better fit party size and altered the powers of the Tome slightly to make using it more a threat]. 

[Doug's Note: In the interim since episode 14, the quartet have gained and had made dragonsilk cloaks, boots, and gloves. These will get advantage on saves versus fire and will (in notebooking terms) make it where "incidental" checks versus heat are not required. I was not going to make those, anyhow, so there you go.]
"Krs'kal'k SHEBAK!" shouts the voice from the tower and the four adventurers come to a stop. 

"You would think we could sneak into a lake of fire without so much hassle," quips the shortest of the four, the Halfling Inar Gale. Invoker of Gede. Jokester. And a person who decided around six months ago that the adventurer life might not be for him. 

"It is the little things, Inar, we should cherish them. By the way, do you recognize the language?" The person asking the question is Rance Uffolt, the Seer. Human and walking encyclopedia for the group. Also the person who's apocalyptic dreams lead the group to a city called Grunce and got them involved with protecting the last major stronghold of civilization in the Bleak.

"No, you?"

"Yes. Bugger. Goblin. Guess I'm doing the talking, then. Umm, Binoshi chok? Akka NObak?" After a minute, screams and angry shouts can be heard inside as rocks and rubble are flung, ineffectively, at the adventurers. [1]

"And what did you say, Uffolt?" asks Grusk Obe, half-orc Barbarian. Many assume he is the group leader, including him. He at least makes it his business to be the group's big brother.

"They asked us to leave and to go away. I said that we were not worried about them and would pass by the tower. Roughly speaking."

"Roughly," says Spotted Tom, the fourth and final member. A goblin Outlaw. One half of the Inar + Tom comedy duo. Also the moral compass of the group. 

"I kept my sentences short just in case but it was something like 'We stay, Nevermind Tower' which really is ripe for misinterpretation now that I say it out loud."

Tom looks at the others and says, "We can ignore them mostly. If they had bows and arrows I am pretty sure they would have already shot us."

"I don't like having enemies at my back, Tom." Grusk is friendly enough but there's a reason he carries an axe called Bloodlust. 

The group talks a minute and with the exception of Tom decides that having folks potentially stalking them or gathering reinforcements or somehow blocking off an exit would be a bad idea, so now they make plans for attack. [2]

"Uffolt, watch our heads, shoot anyone who tries to brain us with your magical sparkles," says Grusk before slamming bodily (and painfully) into the rubble to knock through the door. Inar and Tom help. Only a minor dent is made. Inside, they can hear the creatures' voices tracking downstairs. "So much for a quick entry," says Tom. [3]

It takes a surprisingly long time for the group to bust their way inside with Grusk finally punching through (and pushing back two gnolls were keeping the door shut). He lands inside as Tom and Inar pull and push bits out of the way to get a more even shot. [4]

Grusk erases one of the gnolls behind the door from existence with a single chop while one of the others gets a glancing stab against Grusk's side. Inar rushes in to help while Tom and Rance prepare for long distance fire the next turn. [5]

Grusk returns the favor by removing his stabber's head from its shoulders and pressing deeper into the fray. Inar and Tom miss their shots while Rance's magic missile catches a third. The enraged gnolls have come to some consensus to focus on the halfling and one of them manages to stab Inar deeply in the guts. [6]

A very angry Grusk fails to connect as Tom's arrows and Inar's swings go a bit wild. Two more stabs catch Inar who collapses. Grusk barely notices that he, too, has been hit. An acid arrow flies out and strikes the already injure gnoll. [7]

Grusk drops his shield and shoulders aside all but one spear thrust and he brings his now double-handed axe deep into the chest of the gnoll who struck down Inar. Tom whispers the activation word to his bow, Lucifer's Breath, and the arrow flying out catches fire as it strikes another gnoll. Rance keeps the acid arrow burning inside his victim as he follows up with a magic missile and another gnoll falls. With four gnolls down and another one injured, the five remaining Enrage and press forth with the attack. [8]

Grusks whittles the remaining down to four with another heavy blow while Tom puts another arrow into his target and drops that count to three. Rance dives in to start tending to Inar as the bleeding Halfling is at the edge of death. The gnolls are being pushed back by Grusk and are unable to get him with their spears. [9]

One of the remaining three gnolls gets a hefty stab into Grusk's chest while both the half-orc and goblin fail to keep up their tally. Rance stops the bleeding and starts pulling Inar back through the door to safety. [10]

Grusk's delaying tactics have cost him dearly as the half-orc hits the ground himself. Rance shoots off another acid arrow which is especially potent as it slams into the chest of the one the remaining gnolls. Tom tracks the same target and lets' loose another flaming arrow. With only two left alive, the remaining two gnolls push past the Seer and Outlaw and start fleeing into the forest. [11]

Rance runs in and rips off Grusk's platemail and staunches the blood flow. 

Tom enters pulling Inar back inside and begins rapidly building the ersatz door he helped tear down just a few minutes ago [12] . Rance is covered in the blood of his friends and surrounded by dead bodies. The Seer had just managed to keep his friends alive. 

The goblin sniffs, upset but as always hiding his anger behind a joke, "I told you attacking was a bad idea." 

== MECHANIC NOTES ==

  1. Unless I am missing it, Gnolls don't have a language specified. I rolled a 15 on an INT check for Rance (+3 for 18) so I figured it's a language he does know. Goblin being one of them. Unfortunately, with Rance's -2 and a reaction roll of 4... this means the Gnolls are going to be extremely hostile. 
  2. Vote Dice. Gave everyone but Grusk a d6. Grusk got a d8. Rolls 4+ were for attack. 3 to 4 with Tom being the only vote no. SoloDark, Is the door still intact (disadvantage)? No. How intact is the not-intact door? 1d6 --> 5. So the gnolls have piled bits of the long corroded door and rubble up in a way to make a door. STR15 with 4 total success to get through it. Otherwise DEX15 to get up to the second floor windows in anything like a successful fashion with gnolls jabbing spears. 6 of the gnolls (just rolled a d8) are on the second floor, leaving only 3 at the bottom. However, this will change depending on sneaky the characters are.
  3. Only one success on the first round of rolls. SoloDark, "Do the gnolls start running downstairs?" 18. So yes. In 2 turns all 9 will be on the bottom floor.
  4. Took 4 turns which gave the gnolls plenty of time to prepare. Grusk ended on a nat 20, so he is a bit more in control. The others will have issues joining in on this turn of the battle. 
  5. Grusk gets a crit. With Bloodlust, that's a minimum of more HP than a Gnoll has. All the gnolls missed but one who got 2 points of damage. 
  6. Another crit by Grusk. A crit by Rance. Misses for both Inar and Tom. All gnolls chose Inar as a target and one of them got a critical (!) hit for 14 points of damage. Inar is very hurt. 
  7. Inar takes another critical hit (only 2 doing 2 damage this time) but then a regular hit that drops him to 0. Only Rance's Acid Arrow hits and it only does 1hp damage (leaving that gnoll with 4). 
  8. Grusk will be AC16 but do more damage. Tom has 5 rounds with his bonus. Inar has 3 rounds to stabilize (failed the first time). 
  9. Spent all the Karma trying to Inar stabilized. He has one more turn to live. 
  10. This is the last round of the gnoll's enrage. They do make their morale check, though, and will keep pushing the fight the next round. Rance makes the stabilize roll (finally). Tom and Grusk miss but one gnoll gets the hit with the +4 damage. Grusk is ALSO hurting. 
  11. Grusk is downed and only has one round to go. Rance is going to have to get to him. Luckily Rance's own critical hit gives him a slightly better chance to stabilize the orc. 
  12. Got a WIS 16 so tearing it down will require a STR 16, etc. 

== DOUG'S NOTES ==

Considering the last fight (versus the technically more dangerous cyclops) went really well it seems the tides needed to change. Two downed heroes kept alive at the very last second in both cases. Since the group will need to regroup and next time will pick up with a few checks for random encounters (which will be bad) while the other work on protecting their friends. This is the closest this campaign has gotten to new characters. 
Current plan is to have the The Bleak & The Pearl posts go into a weekly cycle. Sunday's at 5pm, my time zone. 

== CREDITS ==

This campaign is played primarily using Shadowdark and SoloDark, both by Arcane Library and Kelsey Dionne (et al).

Additional sources include a variety of things for tables, especially Knave 2nd Edition and Maze Rats (both by Ben Milton), Random Realities by Cezar Capacle, Universal NPC Emulator by Zach Best, and various pieces from Worlds without Number and Scarlet Heroes (both by Kevin Crawford).

The illustrations are created by me using GIMP and Hex Kit (featuring the Lil Hex Pack and Strange BW Hex Pack). The sources of the images I edit to make the "two color" splashes range from personal photographs to Pixabay Stock Art to a few old pieces generated by ChatGPT/Dall-E (though I am planning to generate no new AI content for this blog due to a lot of reasons).

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Intermission 4: Leveling up to Level 4 (and the Hunt for Magical Weaponry)

By

On 2024-09-19

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

Note: This whole post will be out-of-character and just in "Doug Notes" mode.

Leveling Up to Level 4

The four adventurers hit level four with the most recent outing so we will work on that, first. 

  • Grusk gets +6HP (bringing his total to 21). His Weapon Mastery will also hit 1+2 (1+1/2levels rounded down). This brings his total bonus to hit to +4 for all weapons (STR+ & Talent) and +7 for axes. He also gets +3 damage when using axes. My boy! His title rank remains Barbarian
  • Inar gets +3HP (18 total). He gets an additional 2nd level Priest spell. While Smite is tempting, I'm going for Cleansing weapon (+1d4 extra damage, +1d6 vs Undead) since he tends to be the kind to cast spells on others for effect. His title remains Invoker.
  • Tom gets +4HP (15 total). He gets an additional dice to his backstab (+3D in total, though that is +3d4 for his attacks). His title remains Outlaw. 
  • Rance gets +3HP (12 total). He gets an additional send level Wizard spell. I'm going for Misty Step since scooting back out of battle will likely be beneficial to him. His title remains Seer. 
All four need 40xp to hit level 5. 

Acquiring Magic Items

In the pre-written adventures, low level magic items are not super rare. I have been using random tables for around 2/3s of the campaign and have really not generated a usable magic item since the Wand of Webs. This leads us to a place where there is a single magic item (the axe, Bloodlust), a Priest who can temporarily magically enchant weapons based on a DC11/DC12 check, and a Wizard who can cast spells. The team is high enough rank now that plenty of creatures require some degree of magical damage to actually take damage. By level 4, if I was GMing for a group, everyone would likely have 1 magical item or more at this stage. I have also been very, very stingy on GP. This is putting the group behind a bit on material possessions. 
To rectify this, I will not add any Gold/etc to their total but I will roll for 2 magic weapons (one for Inar, one for Tom, page 292 of the book) and then generate 2 additional magical items. 
  • Inar gets a +1 Mace that is studded with gemstones (ruby). It gives advantage to initiative checks but grows stupidly heavy in water and causes the wielder to make swimming checks vs DC18. It will be called The Crimson Star. 
  • Tom gets a +1 Short Bow. Arrows shot from it trail sparkles. The arrows can pierce through any material and once per day the bow will shoot flaming arrows (+1d4) for 5 rounds. This will, of course, interfere with any sneak attacks. The Lucifer's Breath.
  • A Potion of Mind Reading (all creatures within near for 1 hour).
  • A statuette of a phoenix (with actual phoenix feathers) that makes the wielder immune to cold damage. 
That should be a good balance check. Tom's is a bit OP BUT it also makes him a clearer target since his arrows will sparkle as he shoots them, etc. I am not sure if cold damage will be even in this campaign but there you go. 

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]. 

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