I felt like running Shadowdark tonight. Pop-up dungeon!
Hired by a young boy to locate his missing brother, the crawlers traveled to the tiny (and oddly underpopulated) village of Blackbridge. Tonight’s crew consisted of:
- Tulk: marked half-orc, ranger 3
- Vraazox da Pryist: wolfchild goblin, priest of Memnon 3
- Ylva Fekyue: outcast halfling, bard 2
- Yuri Völvason: witchborn human, priest of Ord 2
[Spoilers follow for The Blackbridge Labyrinth, which appears in Shots in the Dark #1.]
Making their way to Blackbridge, the crew quickly learned that an odd apathetic malaise had fallen over the town. Only the lad who hired them, Leofric, and the retired crawler tavernkeeper, Grimma, seemed immune. Grimma clued in the crew to the presence of an ancient ruin in the woods outside town. With that, Tulk led the way, finding footprints which seemed to be those of a child matching the description of one of Blackbridge’s missing kids.
Reaching the ruins, the party found an overgrown set of stairs descending. These led to the antechamber of a stone labyrinth, apparently of orcish construction or one-time ownership. Wandering the labyrinth led them to the exsanguinated corpse of a goblin, whose killer – a giant leech – quickly revealed itself and was just as quickly dispatched. The corpse had an octagonal shield with a faint magnetic aura, which Vraazox appropriated (+1 shield, wielder treats incoming crits as normal attacks but ranged attacks against wielder are at advantage).
Navigating the labyrinth, the crew tripped a couple of minor traps and discovered a well-wrought set of chainmail, which Tulk claimed for her own. Ylva then discovered two skeletons, which swiftly fell to Yuri’s faith and Tulk’s greatsword.
Moving deeper into the strange underground structure, the party was assailed by a fairy. It attempted to dart Ylva into an enchanted sleep, but she resisted its magics. It didn’t get another chance – Vraazox smote it a mightly blow and two halves of the fairy plopped wetly to the floor. Vraazox recovered them, hoping to sell them to an alchemist, and the crew continued delving.
Sadly, one of the missing children, Leofric’s brother Wyot, was found on a ritual altar, missing his liver and blood. With vengeance in their hearts, the crew continued. The howling of wolves behind them was cause for no small amount of alarm, though, and they doubled back to deal with this new threat. Dispatching three wolves and sending the fourth fleeing back into the labyrinth, they resumed their forward progress.
The trail ended in a large circular chamber, lit with the glow of magical blue-fire torches in sconces on the walls. In a deep trench ringing the room, a score of ragged, malnourished peasants labored, muttering untranslateable phrases in eerie unison as they strove to inscribe the stone walls with an infinitely-repeating fractal pattern. In the room’s center, the other missing child, Bille, sat in silence beside a brass pedestal bearing a large purple gem.
Yuri, being a cleric of Ord, whose domain is secrets, attempted to scrutinize the pattern on the walls and became fascinated by it. Vraazox, heeding no god but Memnon, attempted to engage Bille in dialogue, but became likewise mesmerized by the tiny patterns inscribed on the gem which mirrored those being carved into the walls. With that, the gem – the Caretaker – began glowing and levitating, and the workers turned as one to repel Ylva and Tulk, who had not fallen prey to the hypnotic patterns.
Tulk wound up with a shattering stroke which claimed half the Caretaker’s hit points in a single blow. The animate gem darted away and unleashed a magic missile in response. The peasants swarmed Tulk, hammering through her defenses with a torrent of minor but cumulative injuries. Vraazox, and eventually Yuri, shook off the enchantment, but not before Ylva fell beneath a flurry of blows. Yuri restored her to health, but the workers turned on him and battered him into unconsciousness.
Remembering that she was a bard, not a thief, Ylva abandoned her sword in favor of her voice. She was only able to fascinate the workers momentarily before a magic missile shattered her focus, but that bought the crew time to finish the fight. Vraazox charged the gem and pierced it with his enchanted blade, shattering it into a hundred amethyst shards. The ensorcelled workers cried out as one, then fell unconscious.
After resting in the unnatural, glowing hall, the crawlers led the workers back to Blackbridge, where they were met with much rejoicing (and some mourning from Leofric and his family, when Wyot’s remains were returned). Grimma rewarded the crawlers with one of the artifacts she’d kept from her own delving days, a wand of sleep.
With that, the crew returned to Plainwood for well-deserved carousing. Ylva leveled up to 3, gaining a wand of cure wounds – with two new wands plus the Wand of Wisdom from Skorgald’s tomb, she’s becoming quite the versatile magical dabbler.
This was a quick session, running about three hours – seemingly typical for the material in Shots in the Dark. I’m quite enjoying the delves in that work. Not all of them fit the campaign, but enough of them work for my purposes that I greatly appreciate it. Better yet, it’s a free work – can’t beat that price, but I’d gladly have paid an appropriate PDF rate for it.
This was not a particularly perilous delve, though it had the potential to go sideways. If Ylva hadn’t gotten her fascinate off when she did, she probably would have been dropped on the NPCs’ next turn. Yuri almost bled out, as Vraazox fumbled his healing magic, but Tulk’s herbalism was the clutch heal needed to stabilize him.
For my random encounter rolls, I used the Underclock (from this Goblin Punch post) rather than the standard 1d6 rolls. It seemed to build a bit of tension, though I probably could have called more attention to it and telegraphed it better. I like the concept, and I expect I’ll keep using it.