Plunderers! of Thracia: #2
At the end of last session, the party arrived at the Ruins of Thracia.
I did a couple bits of housekeeping at the start of the session: one was getting the players' permission to retcon distances because I didn't like the hexes on the Isle of Thracia being only 1 mile long, so they're each 6 miles across now. The other was introducing my new language rules: instead of making a test every time they encounter a language to see if they can speak it, characters can learn languages either by having a high WIL or by spending skill points (if they're an Expert). One PC, Carlfel the Elf Mage, has a WIL of +1, so Carlfel's PC decided they know Ancient Thracian.
The party arrives at the northeastern section of the ruins, next to a marble quarry. Seeing that it's a long way down to the bottom, Carlfel secures a rope and climbs down nearly to the water bottom. Carlfel sees a tunnel in the marble, waves a lantern at it, and throws a rock inside, producing the sounds of bats rustling. Deciding it's safe to enter as long as they don't disturb the bats, mercenaries Stranglix and Nurgan stand guard at the entrance while the rest of the party put out the lantern and follow the long tunnel by candlelight.
I prepped all the NPCs and random encounters on the first level and about half on the second level, so I knew somehow the players would immediately jump into the area I hadn't prepared. The Lost Lore of Thracia supplement for DCC Caverns of Thracia recommends connecting the Marble Tunnel to the Caverns, possibly by connecting it to Area 2-23, which I did, so the PCs ended up in a complex within the 2nd Level of the dungeon. Old school dungeon levels often correspond to recommended PC levels, so this means the PCs also skipped to a more difficult (though possibly more lucrative) part of the dungeon.
The PCs enter through stone doors, inscribed with an ominous message in Ancient Thracian, into a small complex. Peeking through another set of doors, Carlfel sees a half-lizard half-human creature in some kind of stasis, and quickly shuts the door.
This "minotaur lizard" is a tough monster and can be a big threat to the unwary PC, but I let it stay asleep since no one technically entered its room. I think this is fair since the PCs were approaching it from the opposite side of how it would usually be encountered.
Going north, the party finds crates full of weapons. Most are useless for their purposes, and are subsequently dragged in front of the lizard room to barricade the doors. The last box they open, however, contains a number of strange weapons, perfectly preserved by some manner of magic. Carlfel grabs a longsword-like weapon while Albilee takes some small metal throwing stars.
These players really don't want to be encumbered, so they actually left behind a crate containing some magic plate armor, but it's nonetheless very cool that Carlfel will be wielding a jian while Albilee throws around some shurikens.
The party sees a staircase leading up to a stone door, and listens at the door for some time. Albilee recognizes faint voices speaking Gnoll, and eavesdrops on the gnolls for some time. The party learns the gnolls are part of the beast men serving the Minotaur King, and there's bad blood between the beast men and human death cultists elsewhere in the caverns, as well as some suspicion of the lizard men.
I was happy to see the language rules come into play so soon, and since Albilee's player was expending a limited resource I wanted to make it worthwhile, so the players learn some pretty useful (or at least interesting) info here.
The party exits and finds themselves standing outside a tall open temple in a large underground chamber, the door they just came from built into the platform on which the temple rests. They know the gnolls they overheard are inside/on top of the temple, so they creep around the exterior of the temple, hugging the platform.
Stealth is one of the more annoying things to account for in tabletop games: I just had Albilee make the test as a representative of the whole party and she succeeded, which I think is a fine way to do it.
The party passes by a sleeping owlbear in the northeast corner of the cavern.
One of the players has a thing with bugs, so I turned the few giant spiders in the Caverns into owlbears, kind of like that one Skyrim mod.
Peeking out of the northwestern corner of the temple, the party sees a statue of Apollo up against the western wall of the cavern, as well as some gnolls guarding a staircase to the southwest. Realizing they would likely have to interact with the gnolls at some point, Carlfel casts a Shapeshifting spell on Albilee, turning her into a Gnoll Beta.
This was the first time anyone cast a spell using Plunderer!'s magic rules. At this point, Carlfel knew just 3 spells: Excavate, Shapeshift, and Ward. Carlfel's player spent their 1 mana to get a +1 to the spell and ending up rolling a 13, meaning not only did Albilee get the maximum duration of 1 hour, but that she could be turned into a stronger (2 HD) gnoll. Crucially, Albilee had to be turned since she was the only one who spoke the Gnoll language.
Albilee (in gnoll form) introduces her/himself to one of the gnolls in the temple. Initially hostile at the thought of new management, the gnoll, by the name of Grigrigri, explains how his group is guarding the temple and warns about the death cultists.1 Albilee, calling themself Rarari, shows Grigrigri their "captives" and shares a plan to have them infiltrate the death cult. Grigrigri expresses skepticism over the loyalty of the slaves but allows them to continue, and the group heads to an inhabited complex to the south.
We ended the session here. After the session, my players expressed some confusion over how exactly to engage with the room-searching rules. This was totally reasonable, as not only are they not used to dungeoncrawls but I don't think I had a totally clear procedure for dealing with traps and hidden things, so my homework for next time is developing a checklist and some examples to better explain how this all is supposed to work. Who knows, maybe this will even lead to a revision of the rules.
Footnotes
I love playing goofy NPCs so this interaction was a highlight of the session for me.↩