Dark Elves: Legends And Lore

The last session ended with some dissatisfaction that I hadn't revealed that dark elves can detect magic at will. Although this is a common enough spell that you just need to expect it almost anywhere you go, I figure it's worth putting up some common information about Drow (in this case, modeled after the original Gygaxian presentation) as localized to the Green Pass setting.

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The underground citadel of Emru-Marol, Gateway of the Shackled Passage, is the primary trade hub connecting caravans from the pirate states of the Larcenous Coast that pass into the Undying Lands beyond the mountains. The city is cosmopolitan in its population (beastmen, underworld fiends, and even more otherworldly types), but local political and civil functions are dominated by the noble houses of the dark
elves, the Drow.

All Drow classes have the following racial abilities:

• Drow add +2 to their own surprise rolls when underground (they are wary and normally be surprised).
• Drow are highly resistant to magic. They have a +2 bonus to all saves vs spells, and have additional magical resistance of 50% + 2% per level.
• Drow are sensitive to bright light. In sunlight, a light spell, or any similarly bright illumination, they suffer a -2 to attacks and saving throws (replacing the usual bonus). Their realm is enchanted to ward against bright lights.
• All Drow can cast the following spells once per day: faerie fire, darkness.
• At 5th level and above, they gain detect good/evil, detect magic, and levitate, once per day.
• Female Drow can also cast dispel magic and clairvoyance once per day.
• They have superior visual acuity extending into both the infrared and ultraviolet spectrum. Their realms are dim and shadowy in visible light, but glow continually in these extended spectral ranges. Creatures with only infravision perceive their cities in a hellish red-oranges. Ultravision reveals brilliant iridescent shades of green and purple.
• They have all the stonecraft and dungeon detection traits of both dwarves and elves.

Drow gear is also potent:

• They wear spider silk cloaks and boots that make them virtually invisible and silent, allowing them to surprise opponents on a 1-5 out of 6.
• They coat their missiles (crossbow bolts and javelins) with sleeping poison (save at -4, or sleep for ½ to 2 hours). Drow are themselves immune to this poison.
• Drow items are often powerful but are enchanted to function only in their dark realm. If brought to the surface they will decay in the sun. Even if kept in the dark, they will permanently be reduced to mundane items within a month.

Noble Drow classes include the following variants on the elven courtier class:

• Drow House Priestess (as elven courtier, but cast as full clerics, not ½-level mages)
• Drow Arcanist (as elven courtier, but cast as full level mages)

House Priestesses are always female, and Arcanists are always male. Commoner female Drow are often fighters. Commoner male Drow may be either fighters or (more rarely) spellswords.

Travelers from the east will need to clear a security checkpoint before boarding the Block Lift. The Lift is a solid hollow cube of granite which rises and descends through its shaft by magical means. The checkpoint is garrisoned by dark elven patrols. They enforce a strict limit on the use of the elevator, allowing only six passengers at once. Additional passengers can be transported only after being chained by the wrists to shackles set into the wall which immobilize hands behind the back. (The Drow are very paranoid about slave insurrections, and so insist that transported captives be restrained whenever being transported.) If more than six caravan members wish to enter unchained, they must make multiple trips. This occupancy limit is enforced by rune wards, so even the current garrison commandant cannot negate it.

The Drow are very hostile toward surface elves, and look suspiciously on followers of any Lawful faith, especially clerics of the monotheistic faith of Durnovar and any of the dwarven/barbarian gods (Thor, Odin, Freya, etc). Drow have “detect good” as a racial at-will ability, making it difficult to conceal such allegiances. Such persons will not be allowed to enter the city except as restrained and disarmed captives in shackles. If surface elves or Lawful heroes (paladins, bladedancers, etc) are freely part of a caravan group, that group will suffer a negative reaction penalty that will make it likely that they will be arrested or attacked.

Rather than kill intruders, Drow will almost invariably attempt to capture them using their spells and poisons. High-level captives are valued as potential sacrifices to their goddess, the Spider Queen, and hardworking dwarves and gnomes are coveted as slaves. Even ordinary captives are often used for recreational torture, or fed to prized pet spiders (who like their meat fresh!)

Green Pass Campaign III, Session 2: Why Are We Killing These Trolls?

August 30-31, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP
Things picked up in the hill country with the party driven off the road by a patrol of three trolls. Figuring that they have taken out over a dozen ogres last week, the party saw no particular reason to flee from trolls. The trolls were little match for an entire warband of heroes, although they did manage to draw some blood before going down.

Instead of continuing along the road toward the mountains, the party set up a base camp and dispatched all but the reserves to hunt down the lair of the trolls. After a few miles of relatively simple tracking through the hills, they began to notice signs of other organized patrols of a similar composition, all converging on a troll sizable troll village.

To test the strength of the trolls (and over the objections of Vandar), the party arranged a small ambush with a pit trap a few hundred yards outside the village. The trolls remained awake through the night, and grew increasingly agitated about the missing patrol, until eventually they sent out a number of search and rescue squads in all directions. One of the squads almost immediately blundered into the trap, one troll stumbling in and the others tottering off balance at the edge of the pit while the squad leader roared behind them. The party, watching their silhouettes against the stars from just outside of infravision range, rushed forward to assault the others.

The battle progressively saw an increasing number of trolls pushed into the pit on top of the first one, who by now had been set on fire with some judiciously applied incendiary oil. When the squad leader went down, the party hauled his body to the edge and tossed him over too, creating the worlds least-appetizing BBQ grill. (Well aside from the lizard goons, who sawed off some troll limbs to save for later.)

Troll patrol

All the commotion of battle attracted the attention of the rest of the villages squads, which had not gone farther than a few minutes away. A few stealthy members of the party (including both gnomes, Conan and Grimdark) hid again and counted no less than 20 trolls running past, in three groups. The final group obviously featured the leaders of the village, include a skull-adorned shaman and a chieftain at least a dozen feet tall. Having no interest in tussling with that many trolls, the rest of the team decided to make a run for it, breaking into multiple groups.

Meanwhile, the stealthy observers slipped past them to investigate the village. The village was still watched by a few dozen troll wives and whelps, who occupied several buildings set up against a main hall dug into the hills. The village was discretely set to the flame, torching out the guards and catching a few to perish in the conflagration. Conan put his talents as a multilingual librarian to use by inscribing the orchish message that the carnage had been wrought by a "Drago the Destroyer" and his band of marauding orcs, and then everyone headed back to base camp. (The trolls abandoned the chase in the morning.) The party moved on, puzzling over the mystery of why the trolls were so well-organized.

The expedition advanced into the mountains, and camped for a night on the edge of the tree line before the final leg of the overland journey. Advance scouting revealed that the path lead directly into the side of mountain through a crevasse guarded by dark elves, the notorious spider-worshiping slavers of the underdark. Ceremonial spider motifs decorated the entrance gate, and the doorway itself was covered by a great lattice of adamantine bars.

The gnomish Sup Foo Master, Grimdark Thunderstain, decided that the most logical course of action would be to parley with the dark elves and trick them into opening the gate, and then attack them (hahaha no that would actually make sense and we're talking about gnomes here) to mesmerize the dark elves by performing an interpretive dance. Alas, the elves were totally unimpressed by this display of lithesome gnomish artistry. So as a backup strategy, the party elected to present themselves as "monster part traders", showing off their impressive collection of slightly singed troll kneecaps. The elven sentries and their commandante waved them through (perhaps a bit too quickly, in hindsight) and gave them clearance to descend down the block-lift shaft with their caravan wagons -- but only in groups of a half-dozen or so, and only after securing their elven "captive" to shackles set into the walls.

As each group arrived at the customs inspection station at the bottom, the occupants were dismayed to discover that the lift compartment was filling with knock-out gas. After several trips, the entire party had been incapacitated, and awoke to find themselves immobilized in a rather unpleasant torture chamber with a large number of other recently acquired captives, bound hand and foot on iron racks.

The torturer-on-duty methodically branded everyone in the room on the left shoulderblade with a hot iron, to a tumult of agonized screams -- accompanied by Conan the Librarian's incessant questions about how exactly the branding irons were heated and what application of metallurgy was responsible for the sturdy construction of the shackles.

Whereupon an elderly matron with an air of authority entered the room, dressed in black velvet and lace...

Casualties
None, although pretty much everyone is in a bad spot at the moment

Treasure and Experience
Coins: None
Gems/Jewelry: None
Trade goods: None
Items of special interest: None

Total nonmagical treasure value: 0
Gold per share: 0

Killed: 2 troll champions (2x 900 xp), 5 trolls (5x 680 xp), 5 trollwives (5x 140 xp)

Total experience from treasure: 0
Total experience from kills/captures/deceptions: 6100 xp
Total experience from exploration: 0
Total experience: 6100 xp
Total experience per member: 469 xp

(Note: Mort the Wardog and Zigg's henchlizards are taking an experience half-share (and also a treasure half-share, for the lizards). Inactive "reservist" PCs are claiming neither experience or treasure -- unless their players want to split treasure between both a current and inactive PC, at their discretion.)

Green Pass Campaign III, Session 1: The Road South

As usual, no one would bite on my encounters. At least it did get everyone nearly to the entrance to the underdark in a single session!

June 28-August 30, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP
Green Pass region having become no longer as hospitable as it once was, the party (now expanded to an even larger warband of 15 members) elected to embark on a long journey to find an alternate route under the mountains. The mountains Great Barrier Range, true to its plot-functional name, stretch for thousands of miles with not prospect of being scaled with anything but elite climbing equipment and cold-weather gear -- and even then, there are always dragons to worry about. Instead, the goal was to find a passage under the mountains. Somewhat encouragingly, the amount of trade traffic under the mountain suggested that the passage must be navigable by even large caravans. Somewhat more discouragingly, most rumors described it as a thoroughfare for pirates and slavers, transporting ill-gotten loot and captives for the human sacrifices and weird magical experiments practiced by the dark necromancers of the Undying Lands.

The party now consisted of the following new members:

Into the wilderness

• Aramis Gabreath, an apparently simple-minded rustic warrior with a curious starburst symbol on his armor
• Saraina Idran, a martial woman in exotic clothing and bearing a similar symbol
• Bob, an explorer
• D, a dwarf (presumably "D" is short for "Dwarf")
• Boudica, sister to the departed Helga Omega, a spellcaster of some skill
• Vandar Darkslayer, a grim elf of the winter court
• Conan, a gnomish (wait for it, wait for it...) librarian

Returning adventurers from the summer's tour of disasters included:

• Reed Stormcliff, the one-eyed lion-druid
• Bar Helm, the similarly one-eyed barbarian (buy stock in eye patch manufacturers, kids)
• Zegzinu Yeggtatt, scaly gladiator, and his three lizard henchmen
• Grimdark Thunderstain, gnomish martial artist
• Mort the wardog

Helga Omega flew back home on her baby giant roc, and the treacherous nightblade Meros was hardly expected to return after his defection to the cultists, but the rest of the summer's additional survivors (Malcolm Hawk, Terra Daystar, Orym the courtier, and Dunflow the barbarian) followed along as reservists and "rearguard defenders" to watch the baggage while everyone else fought.

The party thus consisted of 16 members. Some additional food stocks (just enough for the overland trip as it turned out, by sheer luck) were purchased, along with miscellaneous supplies and some donkeys and wagons for transportation.

While some of the (non-exiled) members of the expedition had returned to the Keep for supplies, Zeg's lizardman companions went back for food more to their own liking, various decomposing meats of a source left best to the imagination. They also returned with a simple map of the southlands, including a forest path. They gave advice to stay on the path, particularly in the haunted woods just beyond the domain of their own master, Raszu.

A lizardman map, in charcoal and pigment, on an old hide

The journey began in open grassland, with no hint of a path. Just to the south of Raszu's territory, before the edge of the forest, the party found traces of the passage of a large army, with entire companies of beastmen on maneuvers. Aramis detected the aura of something wicked emanating from a nearby mountain, but no one felt sufficiently courageous to investigate whatever was responsible.

A few days to the south, they found the edge of the forest spread between two ridges of mountainous terrain, with a trail marker indicating the beginning of the road south. The marker was notched with the line-runes used by lizardmen, as well as orcish markings and even stranger languages. The party's linguistic expert Conan translated the orcish markings as denoting the passage of thousands of orcs from the arid steppes to the south, and was able to identify the other language as an underworld street-cant from the subterranean realm -- although as this was not a written language and its vocabulary and syntax showed signs of frequent flux, it was more difficult to decipher.

The lizardmen looked ill at ease as they entered the forest, hissing at the very air, which felt heavy with mystical dweomers. The gnomes Conan and Grimdark communed briefly with the local wildlife and found a squirrel willing to drop nut-related topics long enough to confirm that there were no "two-legs", but plenty of hoofed forest guardians -- the party immediately suspected centaurs, consistent with the paranoia of the lizardmen about "arrows from the shadows". But after several days of travel, the only danger they encountered were a pair of giant poisonous snakes that passed the party by, disinterested in a confrontation. The rest of the wood felt wholesome; the signs of small centaur patrols suggested that it was, at the very least, not haunted by anything of a truly malign origin.

Thunder in the darkness

Beyond the forest they passed through a pair of high mountain saddle passes with a small woodland dell between them. The passes themselves were bare of large trees, and showed signs of the passage of enormous mountain giants. To the east they could see a great mountain peak, and a road winding up its sign and around to some concealed location in the back. Again the party declined to investigate. That night they camped in the dell and heard the sounds of a terrible crashing and tumbling of rock from the same direction, as though some kind of storm or landslide were occurring at the peak of the mountain. This disconcerting nocturnal symphony only doubled their resolve to stick to the path and forge ahead.

The dragon's teeth

Another week to the south, the mountains rose high enough to allow a view all the way into the deserts of the east, the fabled seat of power of the ancient imperial cities of Nerigos and Thule. No ruins were themselves visible, but a mountainous array of stone teeth rose up beyond miles of flat desert, like the lower jaw of a sundered dragon skull. At a distance of over a hundred miles, the mountains must have been of truly vast size to dominate so much of the horizon. The desert looked trackless and impassable, with no water and no sign of civilization for a hundred leagues in any direction.

From that point, the path descended away from the mountains into another forest, this one gloomier and wetter. Signs of the passage of slimes and oozes suggested it was the unnatural demesne of an practitioner of dark magics. Two days into the swamp forest, the party encountered a column of club-toting ogres trudging through the mist. Initially they were inclined to let the oblivious brutes pass by without interference, until the observation that their sacks seemed to be twitching and folding, suggestive of recently captured victims destined for the stew pot (or worse).

The party launched a multi-directional ambush, luring the ogre bosses forward with the sounds of an illusory host of ducks, and baffling the remaining ogres with an angelic choir (not one of duck angels, just regular angels). As the air filled with arias and quacking, the party shot out of the mist like a thrust spear, seizing sacks and hacking confused ogres. By the second attempted pass, the ogres had recovered their wits and turned to fight. The bloody melee left the ogres completely defeated.

Every ogre's worst nightmare

The sacks proved to contain the remainder of a recently raided caravan. Five human captives were immediately released, as well as two not-quite-human creatures that radiated an evil aura, the former masters of the caravan. The party slaughtered the bizarre slave traders, and swords revealed that their internal anatomy of unfamiliar blue organs resembled no natural creature of this world. The dismembered bodies immediately began to deteriorate into a foul azure slime. The only valuables of distinction recovered from the caravan spoils were two bolts of peculiar cloth, the silk taken from some unnatural creature of unknown taxonomy.

Farther south, the party finally reached the Shackled Path, the great road between Nerigos and the west, once paved in stone but now mostly in ruin. This led through hill country populated by trolls of various sizes, back up toward the mountains. After another day or two of no encounters, the party happened upon a trio of troll and quickly fled the path before the trolls could notice them....

Casualties
None (even against paladins in leather, ogres have lousy aim)

Treasure and Experience
Coins: None
Gems/Jewelry: None
Trade goods: Four mysterious bolts of otherworldly silken cloth (8000 gp)
Items of special interest: None

Total nonmagical treasure value: 8000 gp, assuming these things can be sold
Gold per share: none yet (but up to 727 gp each if everyone survives to find a buyer)

Killed: 1 ogre subchieftain (380 xp), 2 ogre champions (2x260 xp), 9 ogres (9x140 xp)
Rescued: 5 human captives (500 xp)

Miles traveled: 432 (11.5*432 = 4968 xp)

Total experience from treasure: 8000 xp
Total experience from kills/captures/deceptions: 10760 xp
Total experience from exploration: 432 xp
Total experience: 23728 xp
Total experience per member: 2063 xp

(Note: Mort the Wardog is taking an experience half-share but not a treasure share. Inactive "reservist" PCs are claiming neither experience or treasure -- unless their players want to split treasure between both a current and inactive PC, at their discretion.)

Wilderness Encounter Avoidance

Last Saturday's session featured a reconfigured party with improved wilderness exploration skills, including an explorer (an ACKS class that, somewhat oddly, merges abilities from the halfling and ranger classes in B/X-era D&D). The party generally responded to random encounter checks by attempting to avoid contact entirely, with a great deal of success -- almost to the point of making the session feel slow and uneventful, which is never a good thing.

To ensure high tension, I'm going to make some official rulings on how to use encounter avoidance techniques. There are three basic ways to avoid an encounter:

Hobbits: Difficult to spot!

1. Hiding. This is possible only for certain classes. Thief-types have a hide in shadows ability that improves with level. Once hidden, thieves can either remain motionless, or try to move (away, or in for an ambush) using move silently. A few other classes (explorer and elven ranger) have the difficult to spot skill.This is a hiding ability that works very well in the wilderness, and moderately well in dungeons, but does not function at all in crowded urban areas. Any other class can only be hidden through the use of magic, like the massmorph spell.
2. Evasion. Evasion is, essentially, running from a combat before it even has time to start. It is an obvious activity and will result in the party being detected temporarily and at least briefly pursued. If successful, it means that the pursuit has been abandoned. It will, however, result in lost travel time and some risk of getting lost. In particular, it typically requires leaving any marked path or road, and at least one navigation check will be required to locate the road again.
3. Parlay. Every encounter requires some sort of reaction roll, to see if the monsters encountered are hostile. If they are intelligent and someone has a language that allows communication, then it may be possible to advance that person forward to function as a spokesperson, to add modifiers to the roll from things like charisma or diplomacy. (In narrow dungeon passages this is only possible if the speaker is already standing in front. In an outdoor environment, anyone can easily step forward out of the group)

These options are mutually exclusive. If you are hiding, you aren't running away or attempting negotiations, and so forth. Hiding and evasion become impossible if the party is surprised, which happens 2 in 6 times. (Exception: Explorers have a 10% chance to allow the party to evade even when it is surprised.)

A fourth option is to simply run away after the encounter starts. This is always possible, unless the party is slower than the monsters. However, it always has the same drawbacks as evasion, and becomes very difficult to execute once in melee contact.

Green Pass Campaign II, Session 9: Summer Wrap-Up

I can't really proceed with the fall semester campaign until I get the results of the summer transcribed for posterity. So here's a short summary of the final session, and of the full campaign.

June 27, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP

The party broke into a series of smaller groups, and slowly worked their way back to Balewood Keep. Elven nightblade Terra Daystar and Dunflow the Barbarian had already arrived the previous evening with a report of the shrine battle. The less respectable duo of Meros and Wulfhere arrived together the next morning, Wulfhere sporting a new winged helmet he had looted from his extensive pillaging of the shrine's back rooms. Regrettably, the helm had born an enchantment with the effect of permanently altering his alignment to "Chaotic", and by this point he had decided that the most chaotic course of action was to isolate and murder the castellan. The jewel-snatching nightblade Meros had always been something of a bad seed, and was hardly one to stand in his way.

The two of them lured the castellan and his scribe down to the dungeons, on pretext of having some secret news to report. Wulfhere's mystic aura proved persuasive enough to set up the ambush, and upon arrival, the nefarious pair bolted the dungeon doors behind them and sprang to the attack. Terra, who had never quite trusted the other elf, followed the two of them from the shadows, and observed them through a grated window.

The initial round of combat went poorly, as Meros successfully opened with a choking grasp against the scribe, lifting him helplessly in the air before he could cast a prepared clerical spell from his scroll case. But the castellan was cast from a sterner mold, and his enchanted armor proved impervious to the initial assault. The battled turned hopeless against the conspirators when Terra slipped a magic missile past the bars of the window into Meros' back, disrupting his spell and releasing the scribe. The completion of the scribe's hold person spell ended the assassination attempt abruptly. Terra, true to form, teased both the immobilized villains with some of her typically charming flirtation techniques (nudity, full body patdown, and subsequent tongue mutiliation).

Fortunately the castellan did not immediately check the belongings of the traitors, or he would have discovered a freshly cut medusa-head with still potent petrification capabilities. (It was also a small blessing that neither of them thought to use it on the castellan during the fight.) When the rest of the party arrived in the upper bailey, they discovered a warrant had been issued for their arrest, and they were unceremoniously locked into the dungeon.

The following morning, the clearly insane Wulfhere attempted to overpower his guards and was quickly slain. The rest of the party was hauled up to the great hall for an improvised trial, with the keep's bailiff functioning as prosecutor. They stood accused of having awoken the dead against the expressed recommendation of the castellan, of having stolen cursed insanity-inflicting relics from the tombs, of harboring assassins, of fraternizing with hobgoblins and cannibalistic lizardmen, and of generally disrupting public order.

The previously arrested (and stripped, and mutiliated) visiting cleric, Father Isembart, served as a key witness for the prosecution -- despite being forced to testify by written statements due to the splitting of his tongue. His sorry condition earned him great pity from the assembled throng of civilians assembled for the trial, and the official ruling of the castellan (under some pressure of rising political unrest and insurrection) was that the party should be immediately exiled into the wilderness. Privately he communicated to them his hope that they could find some way to resolve the regional crisis, and he also lent them a fragment of a stone tablet artifact, a fragment recovered by another adventurer decades ago -- one who had emerged as the sole survivor of a doomed expedition.

Let's review: Friendly flag...

The party attempted to return back up through the mountains into Green Pass and take refuge at Centerpost, but found the gates at Footman's Notch occupied by hostile forces flying a sinister black

...not-friendly flag. Any questions?

banner in place of Durnovar's White Ship. Meros slipped away under pretense of scouting the walls, but instead opted to simply defect to the ranks of the conquerors within, and rat out his former traveling companions. When the party was assaulted by a pack of hellhounds during the night -- easily enough dispatched with the use of the medusa's post-mortem gaze -- it had become obvious that the occupation force was of an entirely diabolical nature. Earning passage across the mountains would only be possible through subterfuge, or by another route.

Cumulative Summer Casualties
Wulfhere: Cut down by the Keep's guards as he attempted to bolt for freedom, after a night in jail
Piper, the bard: Driven insane by a tablet, and vaporized by Lord Varghoulis
Finkle Bagnozzle, the gnomish trickster: Turned to stone
Bar Helm, the barbarian: Blinded in one eye
Brother Bartimaeus, the cleric henchman: Brain trauma
Reed Stormcliff, the druid: Blinded in one eye

Cumulative Summer Experience
Total experience per member: 55+356+741+509+301 = 1962

Green Pass Campaign II, Session 8: Boss Battle

I can't really proceed with the fall semester campaign until I get the results of the summer transcribed for posterity. So here's a short summary of the final session, and of the full campaign.

June 27, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP

The party broke into a series of smaller groups, and slowly worked their way back to Balewood Keep. Elven nightblade Terra Daystar and Dunflow the Barbarian had already arrived the previous evening with a report of the shrine battle. The less respectable duo of Meros and Wulfhere arrived together the next morning, Wulfhere sporting a new winged helmet he had looted from his extensive pillaging of the shrine's back rooms. Regrettably, the helm had born an enchantment with the effect of permanently altering his alignment to "Chaotic", and by this point he had decided that the most chaotic course of action was to isolate and murder the castellan. The jewel-snatching nightblade Meros had always been something of a bad seed, and was hardly one to stand in his way.

The two of them lured the castellan and his scribe down to the dungeons, on pretext of having some secret news to report. Wulfhere's mystic aura proved persuasive enough to set up the ambush, and upon arrival, the nefarious pair bolted the dungeon doors behind them and sprang to the attack. Terra, who had never quite trusted the other elf, followed the two of them from the shadows, and observed them through a grated window.

The initial round of combat went poorly, as Meros successfully opened with a choking grasp against the scribe, lifting him helplessly in the air before he could cast a prepared clerical spell from his scroll case. But the castellan was cast from a sterner mold, and his enchanted armor proved impervious to the initial assault. The battled turned hopeless against the conspirators when Terra slipped a magic missile past the bars of the window into Meros' back, disrupting his spell and releasing the scribe. The completion of the scribe's hold person spell ended the assassination attempt abruptly.

Fortunately the castellan did not immediately check the belongings of the traitors, or he would have discovered a freshly cut medusa-head with still potent petrification capabilities. (It was also a small blessing that neither of them thought to use it on the castellan during the fight.) When the rest of the party arrived in the upper bailey, they discovered a warrant had been issued for their arrest, and they were unceremoniously locked into the dungeon.

The following morning, the clearly insane Wulfhere attempted to overpower his guards, and was quickly slain. The rest of the party was hauled up to the great hall for an improvised trial, with the keep's bailiff functioning as prosecutor. They stood accused of having awoken the dead against the express recommendation of the castellan, of having stolen cursed insanity-inflicting relics from the tombs, of harboring assassins, of fraternizing with hobgoblins and cannibalistic lizardmen, and of generally disrupting public order.

The previously arrested (and stripped and mutiliated) visiting cleric, Father Isembart, served as a key witness for the prosecution, forced to testify by written statements due to the splitting of his tongue. His sorry condition earned him great pity from the assembled throng of civilians assembled for the trial, and the official rule of the castellan (under some pressure of rising political unrest and insurrection) was that the party should be immediately exiled into the wilderness. Privately, he communicated his hope that they could find some way to resolve the regional crisis, and he also lent them a fragment of a stone tablet artifact, a fragment recovered by another adventurer decades ago -- one who had emerged as the sole survivor of a doomed expedition.

The party attempted to return back up through the mountains into Green Pass and take refuge at Centerpost, but found the gates at Footman's Notch occupied by hostile forces flying a sinister black banner in place of Durnovar's White Ship. Meros slipped away under pretense of scouting the walls, and instead opted to simply defect to the side of the captors within. When the party was assaulted by a pack of hellhounds during the night -- easily enough dispatched, with the use of the medusa's post-mortem gaze -- it had become obvious that the occupation force was of an entirely fiendish nature. Earning passage across the mountains would only be possible through subterfuge, or by another route.

Regional Map Overview

The last couple RPG sessions have seen some discussion of simply running away from the Green Pass region entirely, and leaving the area to its grim fate of eventual conquest and pillage. Here's a short summary of all the different directions that the party could go, based on a zoom-in view of the world map.

The world of Proxima, at the northern end of the occidental basin

Notes:

• The party is currently at the very easternmost edge of the hex with the fortress icon, labeled "Green Pass".
• The scale is roughly 200 miles per hex. Traveling along roads means that it's possible to cover this distance in a week or so. Traveling through rough terrain can more than double this time. Moving through a thousand miles of hill or forest hexes would take several months.
• That's all desert to the southeast. Desert requires you bring along water as part of daily rations, consuming a stone of food and water per day. For a party of ten, that works out to 3000 stone of water per month, which would require a fleet of camels to carry. Although there are alternatives to bringing water along...
• There are other passes through the Great Barrier Mountain Range, in addition to Green Pass, but none of them are civilized.
• Most of the realms on this side of the mountains are chaos-states run by high-level necromancers, witches, or evil warlords who rule populations of orcs and such, and who use humans only as slaves.

Directions the party could try to go:

• Directly back through Footman's Notch, into the Green Pass region: This follows a presumably safe road. However, it's under the control of a Durnovaric garrison that might not be entirely willing to allow the passage of normal traffic from the east, especially for a party under a cloud of suspicion as being the kind of grave-robbers who probably triggered the crisis in the first place. There's already been serious political pressure to close the gate, to prevent the migration of suspected cultist infiltrators.
• North along the edge of the mountains: This leads to a vast wilderness of cold high-elevation pine forests, and eventually to the northern sea. At this time of year the weather is mild enough to be above freezing, but still chilly overnight. In the winter, this area is choked by snows. There are plenty of fierce beasts and magical creatures here, but the only sentient inhabitants are small and isolated settlements of hostile kobolds and other such mountain-dwelling beastmen.
• South along the edge of the mountains: This is the rumored direction in which lies a great passage through the underdark beneath the mountains. Pirates far away on the Larcenous Shores send their prisoners to the east in desert caravans, using the tunnel to deliver their captives to the chaotic lands in the east to live unhappily as slaves for the various immortal Undying Lords who live in the Hyperborean Basin, hundreds of mile to the south of Green Pass. The exact tunnel location is unknown to Durnovar, but probably well known to the slavers in the area.
• East into the Hyperborean Desert: This is the location of the vast ruined cities of Thule and Nerigos, the true imperial centers of power, citadels of which the nearby city of Umeskelion was merely a satellite. Both cities are nearly a thousand miles away, accessible only through the trackless wasteland of shifting sands that have slowly buried them.

Green Pass Campaign II, Session 7: Sneakers, Speakers, And Streakers

I'm moderately disappointed that no one in the party decided to charge a valley full of 100+ gnolls, orcs, and hobgoblins. That would have been the evening, right there. Maybe next time.

June 25-26, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP

Getting out of the keep ended up being trickier than anticipated. A furious mob of local merchants and their mercenaries had gathered in the lower bailey to demand the right of egress, and to insist that if they were denied it, then no one else should be granted permission to leave either. The bailiff was attempting to maintain order with small force of guards. Worse yet, the locals were not apt to be especially well-disposed to the news that the "adventuring team" who had been robbing graves and (most likely) awakening the dead were attempting to leave after having dragged away the well-liked visiting priest, Father Isembart, to the dungeons for who knows what kind of mistreatment.

After a good deal of debate over the virtues of simply lowering a rope over the walls and slipping away, the party elected to buy a large keg at the tavern and invite the mercenaries back for a free round of drinks on the house. The bailiff seemed a little relieved at the resolution of the situation, but also warned that leaving the keep during a crisis would be regarded as evidence of guilt without counter-evidence that the real conspirators had been located and eliminated. The party elected to march to the secret back-entrance into the catacombs seen by Malcom's ESP investigations. Meanwhile, Zigzinu took a horse down to the swamps to parley with the lizardmen, and slowly brought them around to the conclusion that helping the party against the cult would be a better source of tasty mammal flesh than raiding the dwindling traffic of zombie-averse caravans.

The trees, they're full of elves!

The rest of the party (along with the chapel's curate Father Hubert, replacing the injured Brother Bartimaeus) advanced to the valley entrance, where they discovered a small battle already on the verge of erupting. The local factions had drawn up into two camps, with the gnolls and orcs allied against the hobgoblins and a few goblins. Terra Daystar went on overwatch by stealthing up a tree on the ravine slope, and Dunflow and Wulfhere constructed a few simple traps. At this point the elf decided that her elevated position was ideal for launching a few sling bullets. Given the range it wasn't too surprising that they both missed, but they did attract a bit of attention from the orcs, who deployed a squad to investigate the trees in search of "hobgoblin snipers". The hobgoblins knew perfectly well that something suspicious was afoot, and sent some reluctant goblins to keep an eye on the orcs.

At this point the orcs blundered into the traps, and all hell broke loose. The hobgoblins made some effort to warn the orcs, but the orcish response only further infuriated them, and by the time the gnolls closed into melee the battle was inevitable. With the orcs support infantry partially disabled by traps, the gnolls were easily taken apart by the well-organized hobgoblins. Unfortunately, the paranoid hobgoblins had little interest in rewarding their unseen benefactors, and Terra remained helplessly treed like a squirrel by hounds.

At this point, Finkle ensorcelled Wulhere's steed into an illusory dragon, with Reed casting some fire out of its snout for good effect (and incinerating some goblins in the process). This got the attention of the hobgoblins long enough for a parley, with Wulhere presenting himself as the champion of a "hobgoblin spirit" living up the tree. Elves speak the hobgoblin tongue with sufficient fluency that Wulfhere and Terra were able to conduct a sort of strange three-way conversation, with the talking tree issuing orders to the hobgoblin chieftain to attack the cult of the horned god in the shrine. When the chieftain seemed unpersuaded by this somewhat implausible tree-given request, Wulfhere went double-or-nothing and challenged the chief to a single combat. Fortunately hobgoblins are always itching for a fight, and the chief took the bait despite his wounds. The brawl nearly cost Wulfhere his life and left the party facing three-dozen angry hobgoblins... but at the last minute the chieftain went down, and left the in control of the remaining forces of 12 spear guards, 2 crossbows, 9 hobgoblin wenches, and 3 of the chieftain's harem's most beautiful consorts (well, beautiful by hobgoblin standards, at least).

The lizards, slow as ever, arrived late in the evening, and gorged themselves on the corpses of the dead, leaving a gruesome arrangement of half-gnawed bones and viscera all over the valley. The chambers of the defeated orcs and gnolls were plundered for treasures, and the party set a hobgoblin watch over the entrance to the cult's tunnels.

The next morning, Finkle decided to down a potion of gaseous form and go exploring in the tunnels. (Note: This leaves behind all equipment and clothing, but the cursed gem's enchantment forced it to constantly follow him down the hall, dropping to the floor with an echoing clunk and then teleporting to his new position to repeat the cycle.) This being a poor substitute for invisibility, the acolytes of the shrine spotted the billowing cloudy outlines of a buck-naked gnome within the first hundred yards of the shrine's entry hall, as he tried to slip into their private chambers through a keyhole. The resulting chase had a temporary lull when he found a blocked-off tunnel full of boulders and slipped between them, discovering a long passage leading up to the barrow catacombs. Unfortunately, by this time the entire shrine was alerted and a company of four acolytes, four adepts, and an evil priest had arrayed themselves on the far side of the boulders to intercept his escape. Finkle released an phantasmal courier to race past them to the exit, announcing his discoveries to the guards outside, and then created a brief covering illusion to slip past them.

Unfortunately, the entrance had already been corked shut by the arrival of a nearly-transparent gelatinous cube, closing off any crevice of escape. Finkle raced back into a maze of tunnels in the other direction, finding a small prison cell with a rather attractive female prisoner inside (even by non-hobgoblin standards). Alas, when she turned to look it him it was obvious that she was having a bad hair day everything, being coiffed with a collection of writhing snakes, and Finkle turned from gas to stone without stopping at flesh in between. Kinda figures that the hot chick in the cult dungeon turned out to be a bakku-shan.

The cursed gem finally managed to materialize in Finkle's stone hand, triumphantly crowning his new career as an X-rated lawn ornament.

To close, here's an illuminating dramatization of the elite gnomish espionage protocols on display:

Casualties
Finkle Bagnozzle: Turned to stone by a gorgon medusa (because in D&D gorgons are actually giant metal cows with bad breath, for some odd reason)

Treasure and Experience
Coins: 50 crowns (500 gp), 139 gold, 76 electrum (38 gp), 202 silver (20 gp), 200 copper (5 gp) (=> 702 gp)
Gems/Jewelry: 2 gold chains (100 each), bloodstone gem chain (500 gp) (=> 700 gp)
Trade goods: orcish wine barrel (55 gp, weighs 4 stone), fake gold bowl (1 gp) (=> 56 gp)
Items of special interest: evil priest's plate mail, evil priest's shield, evil priest's mace, clerical scroll with two spells (hold person, silence), mysterious orc rope, curiously preserved boots

Total nonmagical treasure value: 1458 gp, less 11 gp (20% fee) to appraise jewelry
Gold per share: 138 gp

Apprehended as spies: evil priest (65 xp), 2 acolytes (20 xp)
Distracted with alcohol: guild master (5 xp), 2 guild clerks (10 xp), 4 guild guards (40 xp), jewel merchant (5 xp), 2 merchant guards (40 xp), war dog (50 xp), banker (5 xp), banker clerk (20 xp), banker mercenary (10 xp)
Killed in single combat: hobgoblin chieftain (200 xp)
Killed by one another through trickery: gnoll chieftain (50 xp), his 2 sons (70 xp), 13 gnoll guards (260 xp), 20 female gnolls (300 xp), orc chieftain (50 xp), orc bodyguard (15 xp), 11 orcs (110 xp), 1 hobgoblin consort (15 xp), 7 hobgoblin guards (105 xp), 3 goblins (15 xp)
Conscripted as lackeys: 15 hobgoblin guards (225 xp), 3 hobgoblin consorts (45 xp), 9 hobgoblin wenches (90 xp), 7 goblins (35 xp)

(Note: Lizardmen don't count as "defeated" for xp purposes, since they weren't initially hostile, but hobgoblins do.)

Total experience from treasure: 1458 xp
Total experience from kills/captures/deceptions: 1855 xp
Total experience from exploration: 0 xp
Total experience: 3313 xp
Total experience per member: 301 xp

(Note: Mort the Wardog is taking an experience half-share but not a treasure share. Father Hubert, the curate, is taking both.)

Green Pass Campaign II, Session 6: Stalling For Time

This session consisted of everyone standing around trying to figure out what to do next. Eventually Sherlock noticed that ESP is totally broken, and used it to render the whole encounter trivial. This impudence will not go unpunished!

No treasure or experience, since there wasn't much in the way of treasure or exploration. I'll roll it over into the results of the next session.

June 25, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP
Everyone enjoyed a good night's rest, as the arrival of a crew of new adventurers from Centerpost at the end put the tavern in good spirits. Naturally this would not last, as the next morning's weather featured unusual atmospheric disturbances of a necromantic sort. Everyone piled out to gawk at the portent of doom, while the keep's upper echelon of officials moved into the upper bailey to hold an emergency town hall meeting. Helga the wonderworker went into another prophetic trance and had a vision of the shadow spreading out from the Hyperborean Desert's ruined cities of Nerigos and Thule hundreds of miles to the east, and eventually dominating the continent -- but not before a great deal of infighting between various chaotic factions.

After a good deal of deliberation about the best direction to run away, the elf Terra Daystar finally suggested that it might be polite to at least give the castellan some notice before abandoning ship. The party had little difficulty convincing the guards they could be useful as participants in the meeting and arrived in media res, as everyone was discussing the source and nature of the present crisis. The chapel curate had already brought up the mosaic showing the Black Legion parading as it once was in life, and the idea of facing an elite fighting corps of the ancient world sworn to the service of a dark god of chaos wasn't welcome news.

A good deal of speculation arose about the next course of action that might be taken by Lord Varghoulis. After a great deal of discussion, the following conclusions were tentatively drawn:

• The newly raised forces loyal to Nergal would face local opposition from other factions already raising undead in the catacombs, and would probably need to consolidate power before marching to assault Balewood Keep.
• As knight-captain of the Black Legion, the death knight Varghoulis would probably have limited necromantic skills himself, and need to make an alliance with some more powerful necromancer in the area to augment his forces and seize control of the free-willed undead in the area.
• He'd probably want to raise some kind of undead mount, swift enough to travel the long path to the ruined temples of his masters in the east. The castellan's elvish advisor speculated he might try to seek the grave of a long-dead black dragon, to animate the skeleton.

The visiting priest recommended seeking out one of the rival chaotic cults in the catacombs, to see if they could join in an alliance of convenience against the forces of Nergal. This suggestion horrified enough of the party to cast suspicion on the priest's motives. The castellan suggested the possibility of a infiltrator already at the meeting, with the result that the mage Malcolm Hawk elected to interrogate the entire room simultaneously with an ESP spell. The visiting priest was immediately revealed as a servant of the cult of the Horned One, but without solid proof, this was only good for a severe case of Cassandra syndrome.

Everyone adjourned while Finkle scouted the high moors from the air, mounted on Helga's baby roc. (He would eventually return to report that the Legion had gone underground already, apparently through the main barrow entrance.) Petitioned by Malcolm in private audience, the castellan seemed deeply suspicious of the accusation against such a well-liked member of the community, but still approved of pursuing it to the point of investigation. Once the meeting went into recess, a single well-placed sleep spell -- by a mysterious newly-arrived paladin named Wulfhere who shouldn't have been able to cast arcane spells in the first place! -- immobilized the priest and his two acolytes and they were unceremoniously hauled off to the dungeon.

At this point, everyone in the party went a little psycho-crazy. The acolytes were murdered in cold blood, and their bodies burned and crushed into powder ("so they can't be raised as undead"). The priest himself was stripped down, and bound with chains on every limb. The sweet and innocent elfchild Terra made of point of permanently mutilating his tongue with a knife, then shaving his head and checking "his inner thighs" for evil runic tattoos. (It's always the shy ones who are into that stuff, eh?) So much for a fair trial with witnesses and evidence and all that.

Meanwhile, the saurian Zigzinu was dispatched back into the swamp to parley with the local lizardmen tribe. Because there just hasn't been enough talking already today, apparently.

At the end of the session, the party had just about settled on forming an expedition to the catacombs, looking for additional volunteers to accompany them from among the local adventurers...

Coming soon: A roster of everyone of local interest, for sake of reference.

The Four Temperaments Of Elves

One peculiarity of Tolkien's reinvention of Northern European mythologies is that it appeared in several distinct forms: the "children's fiction" of The Hobbit (along with some similar early poetry), the high fantasy Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the elaborate mythology laid out in the Silmarillion and other unpublished works. The result is that the reinvention of fantasy staples like "elves" and "dwarves" created not just a single depiction, but a number of competing presentations. Elves in The Hobbit are frivolous and wild merrymakers, while elves in the trilogy are noble warrior-sages.

Mucha, The Four Seasons

While the setting of Middle Earth creates an explanation for why elves come in different varieties, I think the basic idea of elves being divided by history and genetics is less interesting than the idea of them being divided by temperament. In a game setting, no one has enough time to listen to a long discourse on the history of your pseudo-Tolkienesque elves. But the personality types are immediately obvious. I've grouped them by "season", which seems appropriate for a nature-oriented magical race.

Vernal Elves
Vernal (springtime) elves are lighthearted and full of nonsense. They love jokes and jests, and are prone to singing and dancing. They are sanguine and make for pleasant company, at least for those with a tolerance for their foolishness. They are hard to motivate, and tend toward the vice of frivolity. (Example: Rivendell elves in The Hobbit)

Estival Elves
Estival (summer) elves are seekers of pleasure and leisure. They love wine, feasts, and hunting, and favor epic poetry and romantic ballads. They are skilled at entertaining, although they often dislike the intrusion of uninvited outsiders.  They are boastful and stubborn, and tend toward the vices of arrogance and passion. (Example: Elves of Mirkwood in The Hobbit)

Autumnal Elves
Autumnal (autumn) elves are melancholy, weighed down by sorrow and longing. They secret themselves away in distant forest groves, either dreading change or else seeking a quiet reconciliation with the loss it brings. They are wise and noble, and have a fondness for ancient lore. But they are tragic, living in a world of fading dreams, and prone to the vice of despair. (Example: Galadriel and the elves of Lothlorien in the trilogy)

Hibernal Elves
Hibernal (winter) elves are brooding and intense, and are susceptible to anger or jealousy. They value craftsmanship and warfare, and are quick to take offense and slow to forgive. They make for powerful allies, but fearsome enemies. They are prone to the vices of cruelty and vengeance. (Example: The Noldor, particularly Feanor and his sons, in The Silmarillion)

Again, these aren't subraces or species of elves, but elves of a given personality type and philosophical outlook. In a fantasy game world where elves are often found in the same geographical regions as fey creatures, it would make sense that these tendencies would emerge not genetically but from contact with that aspect of the faerie realm. Vernal elves would be influenced by the company of playful sprites and pixies, estival elves would make their homes amid lusty satyrs and centaurs, autumnal elves would prefer to live near dryads and nymphs, and hibernal elves would be hardened by living a constant state of war with sinister fey like boggarts and formorians.

In my own game world setting of Proxima, I imagine that these classifications are explicit -- so that someone could actively refer to a group of elves as "Elves of the Summer Court", and everyone would know exactly what that meant.

Religious Affiliations In Proxima

It's becoming important to nail down the precise relationships between different groups in the Green Pass region, now that the agents of the long-forgotten evil god Nergal are running amok and threatening to cause trouble. Ordinarily the logical response would be to create a Combined Army of Good to combat the threat, but of course that's easier said than done. Here's a rough breakdown of where different religious views are in conflict, complicating that kind of cooperation.

The Church of Durnovar

Description: Basically medieval Catholicism with the serial numbers filed off. Formally monotheistic, though with the usual assortment of celebrated angels and saints who have their own private cults (which the Archbishop of Durnovar grudgingly tolerates).

Alignment: Lawful (with some neutral adherents)

Popular Saints and Angels: St Michael, St Raphael, St Gabriel, St George, St Brendan, St Martin, and inevitably, St Cuthbert

Common Classes: Cleric, Wonderworker, Paladin, and a few fighting Mystics

Enemies: Pretty much any religions that follow other gods, but especially cults. More liberal members might argue that the more benevolent gods of the old pantheons are "angels freelancing under different names" -- but you wouldn't want to say that in front of the Archbishop.

Old Faiths

Description: Basically pre-Christian medieval paganism. Instead of filing off the serial numbers, I'm inclined to just leave the names the same, but change up their domains a little. It's easier to say "This dwarf is a cleric of Thor, but Thor is also a god of smiths in this world", rather than say "This dwarf is a cleric of Norvek, who is a god kinda like Thor -- and now I expect you to memorize two dozen gods I made up the same way, and also to know which real-world mythological figures they most resemble."

Alignment: Neutral (with some lawful adherents)

Popular Gods:

• Dwarven (Scandanavian): Thor, Odin, Loki, Freyja
• Elven (Celtic): the Dagda, the Morrigan, Brigid
• Human (Greco-Roman): Apollo, Athena, Artemis
• Ancient Civilizations (Mesopotamian/Egyptian): Marduk, Horus, Isis

Common Classes: Priestess, Shaman, non-chthonic Witch, Bladedancer, and any divine Dwarven or Elven classes

Enemies: The Church of Durnovar (which wants to absorb/replace them), other pantheons, and underworld gods within the same pantheon

Cults

Description: All pantheons have a malevolent underworld god who is tolerated but rarely loved. Sometimes a cult will spring up of unscrupulous types who try to curry favor with the underworld by expanding its ranks through wars or human sacrifice. These groups are secretive and try to conceal their structure and leadership. The Church of Durnovar regards all these "gods" as merely diabolical fiends from the Abyss, although that's mostly a matter of semantics.

Alignment: Chaotic

Popular Gods: Tiamat, Orcus, Sutekh, Nergal, Demogorgon (all in their classic D&D incarnations, not their more nuanced real-world ones)

Common Classes: Anti-Paladin, chthonic Witch, plus evil versions of any standard divine class (usually casting reversed versions of healing/buffing spells)

Enemies: Pretty much everyone, but especially rival cults (hey, that's chaos for you!)

Green Pass Campaign II, Session 5: Swatting Mosquitoes While The World Ends

Tether went home for the summer, so we're down by one player. At this rate, I'm not sure if there will be anything left when he comes back. I spent a while frantically prepping the catacombs before the session, so predictably that was the one place that nobody wanted to go.

June 24, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP

While Malcolm recovered from his excessively intimate encounter with a spiked pit, the rest of the party went back to Centerpost for the week. Piper the bard decided to propose to the long-suffering sage Fridaswitha with a 300 gp ring, which in hindsight should have tipped everyone off to start checking his socks for suicide notes. Frida implored him to retire to a life of musical performance, but instead he slipped off on some scheme to create a complete tailored set of vestments to robe himself as a Necrolyte of Nergal. He decided to keep this new costume secret from the rest of the party as a surprise. Everyone loves surprises.

On the way back, he elected to have a peek at the runic tablet that the sage had pushed away in horror. One glimpse of the cursed runes and Piper promptly took permanent leave of his sanity. No one noticed immediately, given his reputation for erratic behavior. This gave him plenty of time to slip off toward the haunted moorlands by himself, once they had settle back in at the keep's tavern. More on that later!

That face is so wrong

Meanwhile, everyone else (except Meros, who wanted to loot more graves) voted to head to the orc-infested cave area for more clues about the threat from the east that had initially most worried the castellan. They set out along the road, and carefully scouted the entrances to the caves upon arrival. Most of the entrances were dead quiet, but one of them stank horribly and another was emitting a mysterious din of beastly noises. Scouts reported a number of small flying monstrosities within in a generally agitated state (agitated mainly because Finkle dumped a drive-by faerie fire on one). The prospect of something worth smashing excited the martially inclined saurian Zegzinu, who began lumbering toward the cave at top speed (20' per round) in hopes of a fight -- with everyone else following a few steps behind. Upon his unsubtle entrance into the first high cavern in the tunnel network, a group of angry ACKS-style stirges immediately descended to feast upon the party's blood.

The tumult of battle attracted the attention of the cave's real master, a grumpy minotaur, as well as a few hungry beetles. They all moved quickly to the entrance in time to to intercept the second wave of the party's reinforcements and create a thoroughly chaotic melee. The minotaur brained Bartimaeus with an axe, despite heavy damage from Reed's earth's teeth. The stirges managed to extract enough blood from Bar Helm to render him comatose, perforating his limbs, abdomen, and face with their greedy proboscuses probisces probosci pointy-type-noses. Meanwhile, Dunflow's evisceration of the beetles back at the entrance tunnel suggested that Renata was probably rather more unhappy about losing her broadsword (+3, in fact) than was previously appreciated.

Minotaur (by Speeh)

The minotaur's lair was at the end of a mazelike set of passages that would have allowed him to easily pick off scouts one by one, so it was probably lucky that the fight lured him into the open. Behind a stone slab in the lair, the party discovered a collection of treasures, including two locked chests which Zegzinu promptly smashed into smithereens with a spear, the classic lizard lockpick. (Breakin' stuff!) This violent approach tragically resulted in the loss of a growth potion.

Meanwhile, the chorus of voices now swirling inside Piper's head were full of all kinds of helpful advice. Most of the advice revolved around applying his prodigious diplomatic skills toward the considerable challenge of befriending the lonely long-dead champion of Nergal sleeping in the southeastern-most barrow mound. A bit of small talk via more blood-seeping messages in the dust revealed that the Black Legion captain's favorite food was "the marrow of a righteous man's bones", and Sir Pants-on-Head the Bard felt comfortable interpreting this as a generous dinner invitation, to the resounding approval of his newfound cranial interlocutors.

He set himself to work with good cheer, smashing apart the great band-wrought doorway with a pickaxe, and donned the bespoke ceremonial vestments that he had purchased in Centerpost at great personal expense. Oh, but he looked absolutely fabulous in the matching pair of demon-face gloves, crooned the voices. Descending the stairs into the crypt, he discovered a sarcophagus with a bas relief stone-carved knight on the cover, and pushed it aside to reveal a wight -- who was not, in fact, Varghoulis at all, but only his faithful gonfaloniere.

The gonfaloniere was greeted by a rollicking birthday-celebration polka.

Varghoulis himself was in a matching chamber beyond a secret door in an even finer sarcophagus. Opening this sarcophagus (which the wight accomplished with contemptuous ease) had the effect not merely of releasing Lord Varghoulis (Captain of the Black Legion, Champion of Nergal, Inquisitor-General of Umeskelion, and general Scourge of the Living), but also of similarly arousing the entire guards-corps of the legion, including four nearby lieutenants and ten sergeants from an adjacent barrow with their accompanying contingent of adjutants and attachés -- all in an advanced state of decay and undeath. As they broke forth from the earth like frogs boiling out of swamp mud, the sky darkened and erupted into a swirling and crackling vortex of necrotic energy that stretched up into the heavens, a hellstorm that announced apocalyptic doom to everyone for miles in every direction

It was a good bit of solo work, and with his last vestige of sanity the charming and charismatic bard rolled a successful reaction check that established himself as an honorary officer of the Black Legion's fife and drum corps. Which just goes to show that combat skills are vastly overrated, whereas diplomatic specialization comes out ahead every time.

Lord Varghoulis: "Sup, bro."

Casualties
Brother Bartimaeus, addled due to brain trauma (-10% experience, -2 proficiency checks)
Bar Helm, blinded in one eye (-2 ranged attacks, requisite eyepatch)

Treasure and Experience
Coins: 903 gold and 310 electrum (=> 1058 gp)
Gems/Jewelry: 3 pieces of jewelry (1600, 900, 600) (=> 3100 gp)
Trade Goods: a pair of minotaur horns (320 gp)
Items of special interest: 2 potions (gasous form, ?), the minotaur's spear, a suit of ornate plate mail, and a staff

Total nonmagical treasure value: 4478 gp, less 64 gp (20% fee) to appraise jewelry
Gold per share: 465 gp

Explored: minotaur cave complex

Kills: 1 minotaur (320 xp), 9 stirges (117 xp), 3 fire beetles (45 xp)
Put to flight: 2 stirges (25 xp)

Total experience from treasure: 4478 xp
Total experience from kills: 507 xp
Total experience from exploration: 100 xp
Total Experience Gospel Choir: ft. Barry Manilow
Total experience: 5085
Total experience per member: 509 xp

(Note: Mort the Wardog is taking an  experience half-share but not a treasure share. Brother Bartimaeus takes a half-share of each.)

I can't see how Peter's bard is going to survive this, but we can at least rest assured that he'll be remembered fondly as another exemplar of his celebrated profession.

Balance And Social Contract

After the last session, I had one of my players chatting with me about how different games systems are good for different purposes. In particular, he mentioned the way that PFRPG encounters have an automated system for ensuring encounter balance through a detailed challenge rating formula.

My immediate reaction was that this was something that came at the cost of strategic decision. If an entire area consists of nothing but balanced encounters (yielding level-appropriate treasures), then there are really no encounter-selection decisions to be made. Whatever you attack, it will give you about the same challenge, scaled to your level, with roughly the same reward. There's no need to exercise selectivity in deciding whether or not to bash down a door and kill what's inside. It's just guaranteed to be something you can defeat, given average luck. Nor does it help to avoid that encounter, since the very next one will be about the same difficulty -- and yield about the same treasure. You'll just waste the time explaining how to avoid the encounter only to move on to a reskinned version of the exact same thing. So the game becomes a methodical room-clearing exercise, like many computer RPGs.

This isn't always necessarily a bad thing. In 4th edition D&D, in particular, the intent of WotC was clearly to make a good tactical miniature man-to-man combat system, and to allow that tactical combat to have a lot of richness and complexity. For someone wanting to luxuriate in a detailed tactical simulator with lots of crunchy gamist decisions to make, this is exactly the mechanics you want. Anything else would be silly -- like having everyone set up a Warhammer 40K Table, only to roleplay a parley between the Space Marines and the Tau that resulted in a truce that required everyone to pack up the table and go home.

In my current campaign, though, the ACKS rules pretty explicitly emphasize strategic-level decision. Character classes are designed around non-combat capabilities; a bard, say, is a wimpy fighter with powerful non-combat proficiency options. But more importantly, the game itself employs an old-school approach toward the integration of "balance" into the game's social contract. The philosophical contrast is this:

• In a modern RPG, balance is a one-sided GM responsibility.
• In a retro RPG, balance is a negotiated aspect of emergent play.

In an earlier post, I noted how old-school RPG play really has four distinct modes: (1) dungeon-crawling, (2) hex-crawling, (3) mass combat, and (4) strategic resource management. The "dungeon crawling game" bears a strong superficial resemblance to a modern packaged adventure path, with monsters populating a traditional dungeon. But the mechanics of the old-school dungeon-crawl are vastly different than in more modern systems because of the pivot away from session-long resource management. Really, most modern games have more in common with the "hex crawling game" in terms of structure, as isolated encounters that don't share resource pools.

The critical difference in the system is how hit points are understood. A modern game (4th edition onward, or any recent computer game) tends to interpret hit points as "luck", or "stamina", or "the favor of the gods". When they run out, the next hit kills you because you exhausted your supply of those intangibles. It's easy to regain those intangibles between battles with a "healing surge", or a "quick rest", or some similar mechanic. Even some spell-like effects work the same way, implemented as "per encounter" or "at will" abilities, or by allowing a quick rest to recover some or all spell slots (points, whatever). Death is replaced by a temporary knock-out effect. As a result, each combat can be balanced in roughly the same way: You assume everyone starts at full health, and build a mirror-image collection of enemies. This makes it perfectly sensible to put together a series of encounters that all have identical challenge ratings, maybe with a slightly harder boss fight at the end for drama.

A simulationist retro-RPG like ACKS extends resource management over the entire session. Hit points (understood as "flesh wounds" or "blood loss") can't easily be returned, since healing spells are pretty weak and natural healing takes forever. Spells are "per day", not "per encounter". Death is permanent, and serious injuries are realistically incapacitating. This means that putting together encounters that are "balanced" will beat down the party quickly (which might be fun for a Tomb of Horrors-esqe tournament module, but not for a long campaign). Instead, the responsibility of the GM is to ensure that most encounters are weak, and the few strong encounters are either avoidable or else are capstone events for which the party will be able to carefully plan and prepare (to wring every advantage out of combat-as-war strategems). The weak encounters never yield good rewards and drain resources, so it's more efficient to bypass them when possible. If you want a tough encounter with good rewards, you need to do the legwork to find one.

(Incidentally, I'd say that 3rd edition D&D and PFRPG are both centrist systems that encourage a little of both approaches.)

The party bears a much heavier level of responsibility for finding methods of identifying and classifying potentially difficult encounters, to know when to avoid them or how to prepare for them. Kicking down every door will eventually lead to a total party kill. Several common methods of gathering strategic information include:

• Dungeon geometry tropes: E.g. the deep caves have nastier monsters, so dwarves get a "detect slopes and depths underground" racial perk
• Scouting techniques: Listening at doors, for example, is usually prudent before bashing them down
• Parley with dungeon denizens
• Interrogation: Leave an orc alive after combat to see if you can get a sense of where the Big Bads are holed up (hopefully you took "orc" as a language!)
• Exploiting dungeon faction rivalries
• Disguise and infiltration
• Divination magic (once you figure out the right questions to ask!)
• When all else fails, exploring recklessly and then running away from that demilich...

The social contract for a GM is to provide a lot of non-fatal encounters that slowly nickel-and-dime the party's resources (spells and hit points) to the point of feeling progressively more weak and vulnerable as they approach a major objective -- so that "Do we really want to keep going?" is a tough call, not a no-brainer.

Green Pass Campaign II, Session 4: Grave Robbing

Note: I'm adding a cumulative +10 xp bonus counter for exploring rooms in a single expedition (i.e., the second room gets +20, the third gets +30, and so forth, up to +250 for the 25th room this week). Since this session was a continuation of last week's expedition, the counter wasn't reset.

June 10, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP
After dispatching a room of zombies, the party elected to break for a short lunch. Finkle the gnome had apparently wandered off (with Mort the wardog and his new pet rat) to do something odd and gnomish. Attempts to inspect the glowing gem in his pot resulted only in the immediate disappartion of the gem with a small 'pop'.

In a room beyond the zombies, searching revealed a set of strange boxes, each full of bones and a single right-handed glove with a weird demon face on them. After lifting the boxes the examine them, a set of four small levers were discovered under each box. Using gloved hands, the party successfully triggered a secret door into a nearby burial chamber containing the remains of a priest of the old nature god Silvanus, with a shrine beyond. The priest's vestments and cudgel were well-preserved, and stashed away for future study. The bard Piper left a small offering and received the blessing of Silvanus in return.

Progressing through a series of similar hidden doors to the south earned egress into a well-traveled hallway that led to a gruesome scene. Two grave-robbers were impaled into the solid stone wall by spears as a warning, their intestines ripped open and slowly rotting. There were also a set of peculiar tracks (definitely non-human) leading east out of the room. The party elected to split into two groups, one following the tracks, and the other positioning as a rear guard.

Following the tracks led to a strange little poltergeist shrieking curses in some lost language to break the silence of the dungeon, and hurling small bits of rock and pottery. A single arrow dispatched the creature. Beyond the ghost, a door led to a small cache of abandoned supplies, including a sledgehammer. Beyond the cache was a bricked door, easily dismantled. Inside the sealed room beyond they found a strange scrying basin surrounded by a set of six carved stone knights in alcoves sunk into the walls. Fearful of the guardian knights, the explorers elected to leave the basin (mostly) undisturbed and returned to the main party.

(Art: Thomas Denmark)

Just beyond the entry point, the party decided to explore up a short hallway... and discovered a pressure-sensitive plate that set off a portcullis. The front lines of the party were briefly cut off as a wave of skeletal guards poured into the room. A judicious application of lizardly force to the gate allowed for a swift reinforcement, although with a powerful incantation from Reed crushing most of the skeletons with earthen teeth, it was hardly an emergency.

After some reshuffling of party members, the exploring group found another bricked-up entrance that led into some private burial chambers. All three tombs contained minor bits of coin and jewelry, and only the middle one had any guardians, some recently risen skeletons. (Well, unless you count a cluster of those nasty little rats squashed beneath a saurian-opened door.) On the way back out the party was jumped by a few more zombies, but dispatched them with relatively little effort.

Feeling uneasy about emerging onto the barrow moors at night, the party elected to return to the Keep (and Centerpost) to recuperate. The sage, Fridaswitha the Scriptrix, identified the ring (as a ring of protection), the cudgel (as a simple enchanted club), the vestments (as an elementally-warded spidersilk robe), and the gem by reputation (clearly something cursed, and now bound permanently to Finkle). She looked with dismay at the small stone runic tablet recovered from the skeletons' tomb, on the grounds that it might contain useful information but would just as likely contain a horrible curse of death. Apparently the party will need to discover someone braver (or more gullible) than her to read it!

Terra and the barbarians continued to investigate the strange travelers passing through Centerpost from the east. Meros the nightblade found an underworld fence willing to purchase his dubiously pocketed gem.

The bard applied his considerable skill at seduction to arrange a charming dinner date with Frida (a perfect 10 on the Hot-or-Not Dice Check, just for the record), deciding only at the last minute that it
might be ethically dubious to propose marriage to her solely in order to get a long-term discount on magical item identification. For now.

Treasure and Experience
Coins: 400 gp, 30 gp, 20 gp, 91 sp, 400 sp, 123 sp, 300 sp, 200 sp (=> 561 gp)
Gems/Jewelry: 15 gems (200 each), electrum necklace (56), 2 electrum bracelets (52 each), silver locket (60), 2 platinum necklaces (174 each) (=> 3394 gp)
Trade Goods: 4 demon-face ceremonial gloves that are really good for disguising your right hand during... a puppet show, maybe?
Items of special interest: a magical ring, a glowing gem, spidersilk clerical vestments, a cudgel, a runic tablet, a pale grey potion, and a sky blue potion smelling of lilacs

Total nonmagical treasure value: 3955 gp, after -679 gp (20% fee) to appraise jewelry
Gold per share: 312 gp

Explored: 25 rooms (1 barrow mound with 3 rooms, 22 catacomb rooms)

Killed: 11 giant rats (55 xp), 7 skeleton guards (91 xp), 4 zombies (116 xp), 7 skeletons (91 xp), 1 noisy poltergeist (5 xp), 6 zombie patrollers (174 xp)
Turned: 7 zombies (203 xp)
Tricked into wandering off to certain doom: 11 tomb robbers (550 xp)
Squashed by a punched-in door ('saurian lockpick'): 8 giant rats (40 xp)

Total experience from treasure: 3955 xp
Total experience from kills: 1325 xp
Total experience from exploration: 3250 xp
Total experience: 8530 xp
Total experience per member: 741 xp

Note: Meros the greedy nightblade receives an additional 200 gp and 200 xp for his malicious act of thievery. And possibly also the eternal seething hatred of the rest of the group -- but, hey, shiny gem!