A0 - Danger at Darkshelf Quarry Parts 4 & 5 | D&D Sessions #9 & 10

Concluding Danger at Darkshelf Quarry

With one short session and one long session, we were able to finish the module A0 - Danger at Darkshelf Quarry, the first in several modules that make up the Against the Slave Lords D&D Adventure series.

Trying to head in through the cave near the river

Having learned from the captured Bazili Erak where the hidden entrance to the caverns beneath the mines of Darkshelf Quarry, the Mürmaids took the skiff from the River Maven and hired the hunter they met in the first episode of the module to help them track down the entrance. It didn't take long for them to locate the entrance, unfortunately, bickering about tactics among the party did take a long time. First, there was a debate about whether or not they should even attempt to approach the caverns. Guido, (correctly so, as we would find out), thought that if Bazili feared it to greatly, they should perhaps approach from the upper levels again and make more progress thinning the ranks of goblins and bugbears within. The rest of the party disagreed, and the next debate started with whether or not they could trick the hunter into assuming the majority of the risk in exploring the entrance to the cavern. Thankfully for him he wasn't buying it. Next, there was a debate about exactly how they should carry forward with getting inside the cavern and discovering exactly what Bazili was so frightened of. They were provided the opportunity its to notice that something was creeping up on them, and when their rolls failed, the mud tigers left out with a surprise round.

Horace was pretty grievously wounded and attempted to fight back, which is when they realized these new, wicked beasts with gnashing teeth and whipping, scaly tails had special properties which helped protect them against metal weapons. Clyde stepped forward heroically, brandishing his shield and Bazili's magical broadsword against the quasi reptilian monsters. He yelled for everyone to run as he covered for them, and with one critical hit from sweeping claws and one solid bite, one mud tiger tore through his chain mail to pull his insides to the outside, and the second latched onto his leg, shaking it's head back and forth until the limb was removed entirely.

He had bought them enough time to step back away from the gore-covered beasts as the continued their disembowelment of the dwarf. Igrom, enraged at the death of his fellow dwarf, rushed forward to assault them with his wooden maul. He was much more effective, and together with spear attacks, thrown stones and arrows, the two beasts eventually were brought down.

Unfortunately, their misfortune didn't end the arguing about tactics, and a new plan was somewhat hatched as Horace and their hired hunter started digging a pit trap in the sand beach. They didn't quite finish before the mud tigers' keeper, a foul-smelling troglodyte came out to investigate. He was dispatched with ease, and Igrom got tired of waiting, so he went all LeRoy Jenkins on the plan and just charged into the cave.

Dwarven battleragers are known for three things; being impressively effective at clearing out enemies, terrible hygiene, and short lifespans. Once the giant poisonous frogs (food for mud tigers, they would later learn) got a hold of him and he lost his cool, so to speak, Igrom's fate was sealed. Sure, it didn't really help that Kathryn rolled a 1 and ended up dealing the killing blow when her hand axe slipped from her grasp and buried in his chest, but as the Dm, I can tell you that the poison coursing through his veins ensured his death in another round anyway. Even with the frogs defeated another round later, and the party having pulled the dwarven corpses out of the cave, the majority of them having aurvived two very difficult battles, they finally all agreed that they should limp back to Darkshelf village and rethink their strategy. Hopefully they learned their lesson thst a shaky plan, when most of the party doesn't agree, doesn't usually end well. But hey, they still love splitting the party too, so who knows. Also, for the record, yes....Jon has experienced three character deaths now, with Phil, Clyde & Igrom all falling in recent history.

Two Dwarven Funerals; a couple of new characters

The old fisherman patching up his boat rolled out of his cot a few mornings later and asked the two robed humans why, exactly, a human, half elf and halfling were passed out in their own vomit on the docks. "Dwarven funerals apparently require copious amounts of moonshine," said Jon's new character Jim, a friendly wizard specializing in the darker arts.

Much had changed in the past week as the party recuperated from the losses at the riverfront. Nirn, their guild leader, had staged an election to please the populace, and installed a town sheriff who would be friendly to his needs and not so to his opposing guild masters. On the same boat as the sheriff had arrived Vauss, a bard in Nirn's employ who would replace Snake and install some more stable sources of nefarious income. As Horace and Guido noticed the influx of prostitution and gambling set up in the area, they pieced together the plot; Snake comes in as the plow, and Vauss arrives to sown the seeds of profits.

Most importantly to them, though, we're the two new characters that arrived. A Cleric named Pippen, an associate, though not an employee of Nirn's, who offered his services for a share of their profits to be donated to charity. And Necromancer Jim, a surprisingly kind and generous character of Jon's, a freed slave himself who was taken under Nirn's wing as a child and when offered the opportunity, chose to study necromancy to better understand the workings of the enemies in that area, the orc shaken who captured him, murdered his family and sold him to the slavers.

Trying to lure out the goblins

Once everyone was sufficiently healed up and familiarized with the situation, they decided that perhaps a direct approach would be best. The party headed back to the guardhouse, and arranged with Clyff Sharp Junior a plan to create a more frontal assault on the creatures still inhabiting the mines. First, Guido took the draft horse from the guardhouse's supplies, and purchased a light lance that would be useful in the wide open field between the guardhouse and the mine's proper entrance. Next, Horace used his change self spell to convert himself into a (albeit tall) goblin, and walked into the mine to confront the goblins therein. Meanwhile, Pippen and Jim negotiated with Clyff Sharp Jr to grab a few of his mining crew, arm them with crossbows and spears, and line them up across from the mine's entrance. Clyff, as he is want to, negotiated a pretty high price for their services, and finally agreed.

Horace first confronted a single goblin who was standing guard near the entrance, and pointed to the humans lining up across the way, hooting and hollering as they prepared for battle. He convinced the guard to go deeper into the mine to find their leader, Stinky Pete.

The bugbear did arrive, and harassed Horace about how long it had been since they had heard from Bazili or Glythriel, and very forcefully argued that they needed more specific orders to follow. Finally, he was convinced to head downstairs and grab yet another authority, and after a few minutes, he returned with a flock of goblins behind him, as well as one human, wearing dark brown robes, and bearing a stone-headed mace. The man, a priest of some kind, asked, using Stinky Pete as a translator, where Brubrock was. Horace played dumb (possibly because the player couldn't remember that Brubrock was Bazili Erak's real name), and the gig was up. The priest ordered Stinky Pete to kill the imposter, and the Bugbear took a wide swipe with the railroad tie he carried as a club, clipping Horace on the shoulder. Horace decided that there was no more convincing he could do, so he dropped his wall of fog spell on the area, and sprinted as fast as he could back out the front entrance.

Rats & Cavalry

Screaming to his companions to prepare themselves, our half-elf mage-thief-in-goblin-disguise bolted out of the fog and into the quarry. A few javelins followed him out of the fog and harmlessly skittered across the quarry floor, but the group waiting across the way knew that danger was approaching. Stinky Pete led the charge of goblins out of the fog-covered mine entrance, pursuing Horace as he sprinted towards the cover of his allies about 50 yards away. First, their new ally Necromancer Jim pulled out a sack of dead Rats and shook their rigor-mortised corpses onto the ground. With a wave of his hands, the rats came to life, or undeath, as it were, and began their slow march across the field. Next, Pippen, their new cleric, led the four miners they had hired to shoot a volley of crossbow bolts over Horace's head into the oncoming score of humanoids. Then, the rhythmic pounding of horse hooves on the stone quarry floor overtook all noise as Stinky Pete and his forces turned in horror to see Guido bearing down on them.

It was impressive to see what Guido could do with his full range of cavalry proficiencies. Even with this nag of a draft horse, he charged in, throwing his spear ahead of him, and lowering the tip of his lance to impale one of the goblins. Most impressive, though, was that the score of goblins fell to fifteen in a single round as the horse trampled straight through the center of their formation.

It takes two rounds to complete a charge. First to turn the horse, then pick up speed, and second to barrel through the opposition until the second round is complete. In those four rounds, Guido had killed or maimed somewhere between eight and ten goblins, terrified one into fleeing, scattered the remainder of the pursuit of Horace and skewered Stinky Pete on the end of his lance. Of course, in that time, the archers had made a dent as well, wounding Pete and laying out a few of the goblins, and Jim's Rats had made their way across the expanse to take on opponents of their own.

On the sixth round, though, Guido's third charge into the goblin forces, one of the goblins had found a way to stop his relentless assaults. Emerging from the cave was a goblin on a mount of his own, a bristling grey warm that threatened to charge at Guido were he to ride off and attempt to turn about again. Knowing that this giant wolf could outpace the old work horse he was riding, Guido decided it best to stop the charging, and fight his mounted opponent right here. Of course, to wasn't lost on any of the players that hiding in that fog-covered cave was the human, a menacing threat that none could predict what he was capable of.

ZOMBIE GOBLINS

The first sign of the evil priest was the awakening of the goblins Guido had trampled, which actually happened before the war appeared. Knowing how much danger he was in with the big, mounted danger combined with the hidden, unknown powers behind him in the cave, Guido yelled out that he wanted an expensive funeral, and turned the tip of his lance at the warg, while at the same time, Jim's 4 Rats were gnashing at its ankles. Panicked, the warg bit into the horse's hind leg, while a hail of crossbow bolts and Horace's arrows continued to eliminate the zombie goblins shambling their broken bodies around the battlefield.

Angering the horse was possibly the worst idea the warg and it's goblin rider could have had. Guido grabbed his nag's mane tightly and leaned forward, digging his heels into its flanks to cause a wicked backwards kick from the thing, which immediately caved in the warg's skull (it had already been gnawed upon our two rounds by the rats as well, and had taken a few crossbow hits and been stabbed by Guido's lance). It fell, pinning the goblin rider's leg underneath.

The High Priest of Darkshelf Quarry

With a sigh at the ineptitude of his forces, the priest stepped out from behind the concealment of the fog, brandishing a stone-headed mace and preparing to do battle with Guido, who was still just before the cave opening. Kathryn, playing Guido, was very uncomfortable with the one-on-one approach, but knowing that running away would only cause attacks of opportunity, Guido spun, pulling his lance-tip from the corpse of the warg rider beneath him, and reared up. The priest shouted a cry of praise to the Earth Dragon, and mightily swung his mace up at the mounted Guido. And so his bad luck began.

First, he rolled a 1. His mace skittered harmlessly to the side. He pulled his shield up in front of him, but it was to no avail. He never even had a chance pull out his warhammer or cast another spell. First, Jim's rats laid into him, scrambling over each others' rotting corpses to gnaw on whatever exposed flesh they could. One of them even rolled a 20 on his attack, which we played out as a ferocious bite to the back of his knee, dropping him down before the mounted Guido. Then, Guido reared his horse up while pulling back with his lance to plunge it down towards his opponent. The heavy hooves of the animal swung forward as it reared onto its hind legs, one of them clipping the priest on his unarmored scalp, the metal-shoed hoof knocking the priest's head back at an unnatural angle. By the time Guido's lance penetrated deep through the priest's chain mail shirt, the body was already falling backwards. He held the man down to the ground with his lance to be certain, and stepped across his body to plant a heavy hoof into the priest's skull with a satisfying "splat."

The Aftermath

We didn't bother to play out the remainder of the dungeon, though there were a few more cool rooms inside, including the interesting terrain of the slippery hallway, and the fun of the puffballs and the old school Gygaxian-esque nature of the poisons therein. Fact of the matter is that the majority of the problems were solved at the entrances to the mines. If anyone is more familiar with the module, they might complain that not all of the mud-tigers were taken care of, but in reality, that would just be dungeon-crawling for the sake of a few encounters, and although i do like a lot of action in our games, i try to keep it from being straight munchkin hack-n-slash. So, the party headed back to town the triumphant heroes, and handed Bazili Erak over to the new sheriff, after having collected the bounty on him that was available from Nirn. They also showed the town an example of a dead mud-tiger and the town's hunter promised to do as much to resolve that problem as possible. Pippen agreed to desecrate the temples of the Earth Dragon found within the caves, and remove any influence that religion might have had on the area. Still, though, the legends of the old elementalist wizard who once lived in the area does provide fun lore for potential future treasure hunts.

Speaking of the religion of elemental evils, the party, in speaking with their new members and the bardic knowledge of Vauss, discerned that there is apparently a more powerful collection of those priests somewhere inland to the south, perhaps near the town of Nulb or the village of Hommlet. They also gathered information that there was another town north of them, called Fog Harbor, that was a little more nefarious than Darkshelf. According to Vauss, this is where Snake went off to, in order to secure another port for Nirn's trade activity. It would be a bit more difficult than Darkshelf, since there was already apparently some sort of guild or gang activity there, and the slavers were more active there than around Darkshelf. As a party, they seemed to mostly agree that rather than wintering in Darkshelf, or heading south to Hommlet, they should head north along the Sea of Fog coastline in the River Maven to assist in growing's Nirn's empire of crime and trade.

The citizens of Darkshelf ended on good terms with the Mürmaids, including the new quarry manager, Clyff Sharp Jr. The day after the part left, he took all of the loot they had either passed by un-noticed or he slipped out under their noses, and sold it off to become a very wealthy man. By the time they return, they will find him owning several local businesses, and with even Nirn in his debt, paying off high interest rates on loans for a variety of goods and services. He's a smart one, that Clyff, and kind of an asshole about it if you hadn't noticed.

Until next time; be excellent to one another, and party on, dudes.