Tuesday 11 February 2014

WB2, Session 12: Brave New World

Session 12: "Brave New World"
Thursday 1st, April 1001 AC
(destiny token: 1)


Companions
  • Urist, dwarven cleric of Kagyar (level 2)
  • ​Danik, human scholar mage (level 2)
  • ​Serrin, human bounty hunter (level 2)
  • ​Adran, gnome bard (level 2)​
​Lost companions
  • ​Grom, half-orc druid, went missing during dragon attack.

Some time after the black dragon flew away, the companions realized that Grom had gone missing during the encounter. With no obvious tracks, little time was spent, as it was assumed that the druid changed form to flee and might be back on his own time, or never...

Hurt and exhausted, the group decided to take a long rest within the cave and discuss their current situations. There was no way back, the cave-in in the buried structure a couple days ago made sure of that. Ahead was water as far as the eyes could see. On each side, cliffs, straight as walls and seemingly endless.

After some time investigating their options, Danik and Adran decided to use the crude canoe - which seemed to have been cut out from a large mushroom trunk - and paddle around the small rocky shore outside the cave, looking for any path access or cove. Meanwhile, Urist and Serrin decided to give the cliffs a go and using spikes, climbing kit and rope, began the ascent.

At large on the water, the mage and the bard found nothing but cliffs and more cliffs. After a couple hours however, Danik spotted what seemed like land, some miles east of the them. Quickly, the two decided to paddle over and investigate.

The climbers had little luck as well though Urist proved to be quite the climber, while Serrin, still shaken by the dragon encounter, had issues finding proper holds. After a couple hours, Urist, well ahead of the bounty hunter, noticed something that explained why his dwarven sense were still tingling: The cliffs, about 600' above the water, joined into what looked like a rock ceiling. They were still underground! Discouraged, the two then climbed down back onto the shore, and waited for the paddlers.

Meanwhile, Danik and Adran had indeed found land, a rocky beach, covered with an odd moss or algae, about 10 miles east across water from the cave. The mage then sent the gnome back with the canoe (his size allowing both Urist and Serrin to climb in as well) and investigate the area while his companions joined him:
  • The beach seemed to go North and South as far as eyes could see.
  • About a mile inland, the rocky beach stopped and gave way to a high grassland, with blades sometimes as tall as a grown man. The grass itself was odd, like some kind of algae. It was also emitting a very faint glow, much like the one permeating the entire area, though stronger and more concentrated on the blades themselves. Touching them sent puffs of dim light in the air.
  • Above, the clouds had mostly dissipated. All around, the dim glow in the air was giving distant locations a blurry grey aura, making things very hard to identify.
Once everyone was back on shore safely, Urist purified some of the sulphurous water for everyone, then they decided to further move inland, Eastward. Serrin led the party among the tall grass, while Danik was trying to map the area. Urist, meanwhile, kept tasting everything he found, trying to gather whatever edibles he could.

A couple hours later, they arrived at the border of a forest of mushroom of all size, mixed in a chaos of algae vines. Without birds, and very little wind, the area was oddly silent, with very little life it seemed. Pushing further east, into the forest, the companions began hearing odd noises, animal cries of sort: "Oohhaahhh" and other "AAahhhoohhH". The further they pushed, the more the noises. 

The forest itself lost it's deep and chaotic overgrowth of algae vines (which Urist determined tasted like spinach). As they went ever deeper, the noises seemed to follow them and circle them somewhat for a time, but a couple hours later, the algae vines and the overgrowth returned, while the noises were left behind.
While closing the eastern border of the mushroom forest, Urist spotted something odd: rocks. Since they had entered, there hadn't been any whatsoever, everything being covered by a thick moss layer, making every step a bit spongy. Investigating the rocks, the party soon realized that they had found ruins actually, ruins of a building made out of the now common crudely shaped white granite stone, with thin veins of black.
The building itself was clearly in disrepair, probably abandoned for centuries, if not millennia. The ceiling was mostly broken through and giant mushrooms and algae vines had grown inside of it here and there. Moving in carefully, Serrin found an old bedroom, with nothing obvious of interest.

Danik and Urist meanwhile moved in through what was left of the front door. Exploring the entrance, they found odd tracks in on the ground, somewhat recent. They seemed to be only within the room, going from one corner to the other, and coming and going from and to the various overgrown mushrooms present. As Urist approached one, a big mushroom suddenly moved, quickly followed by 3 others, another one big and two much smaller!

Danik and Urist were a bit confused. One of the smaller ones rushed past Urist, it's head, shaking all around, sent a cloud of spores into the room, almost blinding them both. That was all the dwarf needed, and he started waving his hammer around, as combat erupted!


The enemies were acting very oddly. The smaller ones seemed, after sending spores, to try to just relocate to another corner of the room and stay immobile, as if hoping that the intruders would not notice them. The bigger ones however, picking up sharp sticks from the ground, attacked relentlessly as Serrin joined the fray.
After a few seconds of chaos and even more spores, affecting all companions and very intoxicating this time, the group decided to bail as Danik caused magical Fear on them to cover their retreat.
Quickly, they realized that mushroom-men were not following them, and after a quick rest, resumed their journey east toward the edge of the forest. There, they found another vast grassland, with grass blades as tall as before, with the same strange properties.

With Danik exhausted, the companions decided to rest for the "night" (which, without any sun, is relative).

During Urist's watch, he heard noises, all around the camp. Strange high pitch cries, coming from all around them in a cacophony of "tweeeekeelee" and "teeekeweeelee". Waking up Serrin and Danik, they realized that they were surrounded by something. The tall grass all around them was making it hard to see anything and Urist could not find any tracks of what was circling around them.
Minutes passed, the cries continuing, circling, hidden in the grass. Suddenly, a loud roar came from a distance to the East, on the same tone, but much louder: "TWEEEEEEEK!". As the roar echoed, whatever had been circling them for a time seemed panicked and soon ran east in a fury of high pitch cries.

Not liking being played with by anything, Urist started heading straight East toward whatever was the source of the loud roar, a tired Danik and Serrin in tow. Soon, all around them was silence once more, but Urist pushed on. After an hour going East without as much as track or sound from whatever creatures had stalked them before, Danik was exhausted and in high need of rest...

The companions stopped, weighting their options...


Post Session Notes:

  • First time trying some true Hex-Crawling exploration. Was not sure how it'd go but D&D Next exploration rules, a map I made use Hexographer and roll20 hex grid, it all combined pretty nicely. Since a lot of things needed description (mushroom trees, leaves, grass, etc), it was a bit slow at first, but then the pacing picked up nicely.
  • Used the Basidiomids his time, at the ruins. Was quite fun I think, though when one of the soldier spore cloud affected everyone with Intoxicated Status, the group quickly retreated: Disadvantage on EVERYTHING is rough.I played the workers very timidly and a bit dumb, but I think it fits with their very basic nature.
  • Lots of rolls during the cliff climbing. I handled things in "frames" of 30 minutes, since the party was split, going from one to the other as we went. Basically, I went with 1 roll per 50' (per 30 minutes). Since they were using spikes and rope, I ruled that if a roll was failed, they would just risk to fall a bit, then potentially slam against the cliff face (Serrin succeed his acrobatics check against it, Urist later failed). As for the Spikes, I rolled a D6 for each at each frame, that was the number of "charges" they had. Each fall cost one charge. Overall, the whole scene was very fast and easy to handle, which really showed the beauty and simplicity of Next.
  • Grom's player had left us a couple sessions back for personal reasons and couldn't find a proper time and place to phase him out. Finally decided to just do it and be done with it, players agreed and so Grom was just gone, period. Since we got some problem with our newest member, Adran, might have to phase him out as well...annoying.

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