Open Table Session Report (#16) - Tomb of the Serpent Kings
Player Characters
Wynn (Cleric 2), accompanied by Gorato the Ox (Fighter 1)
Poppy Tumbletop (Halfling 1), accompanied by Artos (Fighter 1)
Mercy (Fighter 1)
Prep
5 White Apes moved up from the 3rd dungeon level to the 2nd. Robin set to learning Lightning Bolt, which would take 3 weeks - Mercy joined in his stead. Wynn created a scroll of Cure Light Wounds, costing 100sp. Poppy bought a shortbow & 20 arrows (55sp). Wynn bought plate maille (150sp), holy water (25sp), a cheese wheel (5sp), iron spikes (1sp) and 100' of rope (6sp) using party funds.
Wynn was elected Captain of the delve. Poppy took on mapping duties. Mercy recorded their progress.
The party chose to explore the second level in search of the strange market they had heard about, with investigating the rumoured hooting growths a secondary goal.
Events
The party moved with practised speed through the 1st level, levering open and spiking the portcullises which barred the way to the shaft down to the 2nd level. They hammered their long rope into the flagstones with a spike and roped down to the crypt room.
Heading through the south-east door, they came to a room filled with ordered piles of gnawed and cleaned bones, mostly humanoid and arranged in order of size. They headed through a door SE and came to a long room with a dark pool running the centre and old braziers at the corners. A pale hand twisted up from the still surface of the pool. The party lit several braziers and probed the pool's depth - ~3' at the edge. The light allowed them to see more clearly and Wynn identified the body in the pool as Connell, a Halfling PC who had attempted to jump a dark crevice beneath a crypt in the second session and plummeted into the darkness. The group retrieved the body and recovered the valuables Connell had had on him when he fell - 35sp and a silver necklace worth 100sp.
They examined the pool some more, which had black and white tiles around the rim with a single one bearing a flaked green snake painting on the southern edge. The wall back from it was built in the same cyclopean style as the others but the stone joins made a serpentine line between wall and ceiling. The party examined closer, finding a small tile bearing an ouroboros at the base of the join. They pressed down on it and the section of wall swung open with a grinding sound.
The party ventured down the corridor within. The stonework changed to an ordered, patterned brick resembling snake scales. They entered into a corridor off which lay several small tombs. These they ignored and came to an ancient door, barred. Wynn cast Protection. They examined the door and found the bar hooks were connected to grooves in the door frame - they spiked these and levered the bar up, noticing the large hammer in the shadows of the ceiling above as they did so. They proceeded into a larger tomb and again ignored its contents, choosing to examine a strange statue to the south. Water had dripped down and eroded the stone around it, revealing a secret tunnel which they uncovered and entered.
The tunnel led to a wider corridor flanked by huge serpent-man statues, one of which was slightly out of alignment. They pushed it aside and found a secret guardroom, taking a silver snake icon worth 50sp and two hooked polearms. The main corridor ended in an octagonal room with a pit in the centre and a passage on each face. Poppy examined the closest door which bore an intricate serpent-man inscription, Wynn an open hallway leading to several ranks of terracotta snake soldier statues, and Mercy looked in the pit.
The pit was deep and filled with a dark, licorice-smelling liquid. A pair of mummified, scaled hands leapt out at her but failed to connect. In the melee that followed, both hands were destroyed but claimed the lives of Artos and Gorato the Ox, faithful followers both. The party arranged them respectfully near the corridor and examined the passages around the pit. Hearing thumping and moaning from one caved-in door and another with a sarcophagus smelling of tar, both of which they avoided, they successfully gathered a collection of ancient papers in a strange language and a silver icon of a snake god worth 200sp. Another room held an electrum plate on the wall and matching disc in the corridor. They triggered the trap with a pole, luckily being out of the way of a blast of lightning which arced across the main room and into where they had recovered the papers shortly prior. The grabbed the disc, worth 100sp, and deposited some spare equipment in an empty room.
They decided to exfiltrate, taking the bodies with them and collecting Connell's on the way out. As they returned to the bone room, they heard harsh voices in High Korathi from the NE door in a demented conversation about courtly etiquette against discordant music. Hustling to the other side of the room, the door through which they entered burst open and a group of Ironcursed surged through intent on violence. The party dropped the bodies and ran back to the rope, spiking the door closed behind them.
They ascended to the first level and were able to retreat to the exit.
Outcomes
Treasure retrieved: 485sp
Combat XP: 2 mummified hands (25XP) - 50XP
XP from funerals: -
Shares: 161sp - 178XP
Feats of Exploration:
Uncover additional information about a lead, or open a new lead (Serpent-man Tomb) (2%)
Explore 5 areas of a single dungeon level (2%)
Overcome a trap x 2 (hammer trap and lightning trap) (4%)
Uncover a secret x 3 (secret door to tomb, secret passage beneath statue, secret guardroom) (6%)
Total: 16% required for next level, plus bonuses for player roles.
Wynn is now a 3rd level Cleric.
Thoughts
This was a great session. It was a direct continuation of last week's group, with the same players attending, and they fell quickly into the new routine of resolving downtime, shopping, electing roles and setting objectives. Wynn's player had a great moment when Connell's body was rediscovered - that character had fallen into a pit in like the second or third session of the campaign and their fate was a regular point of conjecture. The fact that they could recover some treasure was an added bonus. The players really feel like they've honed their dungeon-crawling skills - when I started running things a few months back most of them were confused about why they'd ever need an iron spike and now they're worth their weight in gold.
I used Tomb of the Serpent Kings as a little extra to this dungeon level, accessed as a sub-level from a secret door. I'll need to work out a way to integrate it into the wider dungeon via the chasm - I already had plans for a big hole on a lower level so this should work out nicely. It's been good seeing the players discover new routes of traversal to different areas - they now have a confirmed route down from the surface instead of having to traverse part of the 1st-level should they so choose. The adventure so far has been quite good, although the layout of the document frustrates me as the room sections for the secret tomb are often on different pages to the relevant map segments and the main map page is double-sided with part of the dungeon key on the back. Perhaps this is just my poor organisation but I did a lot of paper shuffling during the session.
I felt bad for the hirelings - the rolls just didn't favour them, even with the party flanking the hands. I do like how empathetic the players have been towards their lackeys, even though they have functionally 0 personality outside of when the players have to negotiate with them to take on extra risk. I've found I don't really like how OSE handles hirelings - they're either mercenaries who exclusively function in the domain realm, specialists who complement domain play, and then retainers who function as mini-PCs, requiring a wage and a share of treasure. I'm thinking of something along the lines of the following, which several games on the Gay Beholder Discord reflect:
Hirelings are additional labour, paid a daily wage to bear torches, porter goods etc. They have poor morale and won't fight except to save their own skin. Specialists like alchemists etc. fall into this category but rarely travel with the party on adventures.
Mercenaries are effectively level-0 Fighters who are paid a wage, maybe they take a share of treasure as a group. They don't gain XP (save for doing something really impressive, whereupon they become a classed retainer) and they check morale in combat as normal.
Retainers are classed characters who are in some way bound to a PC. Think a squire, apprentice, or bewitched thrall. These do claim a half-share of treasure each, but don't have a daily wage and gain XP as normal.
I've raised it with the group and await their feedback. They want to go hiring during their downtime so it seemed like a good time to experiment with it.
We also changed the magical research rules. The LotFP ones we were using seemed interesting from a push-your-luck perspective but in reality they just enforced dirt farming so we moved to a simpler 100sp & 1 week of research per spell level for creating scrolls and copying spells. Wands and potions are a bit more complex but I'll probably just steal from the Super NatheQuest rules or something.
We have a new player joining for our next session, so I'm excited to hopefully get a new person involved!