Skyfell Campaign: Session 13
Skyfell Introduction
I started a once-per-month Dungeons and Dragons game in my Skyfell campaign setting. I wanted to provide my players with a log of their adventures and then realized that such a log might make for fun blog posts. See the Session Index for a complete listing.
The cast is:
Rodney - Tauffae Twofeather Topshelf - male orc, Fighter (Champion)
Michelle - Bronte Whitewinter - male firbolg, Cleric (Tempest Domain)
Session 13: Discombobulated
Preparation
We wrapped up Session 12 with a minor cliff-hanger; it was the opening scene to a new arc. I had been concepting this arc since before Session 7. One might think that meant I had everything all planned out. One would be wrong. I’d laid the groundwork, sure. Several ideas had overridden each other so many times in the intervening months though that I found myself doubting the entire arc. I also had some concerns regarding the impact the arc would have on overall campaign story as well as problems with overlapping themes with another arc I had in the works.Caught up in that analysis paralysis, I had changed the plot multiple times even up to just a day before the session. It was nerve wracking because I really wanted to use a particular creature and I had a dangling story hook that the players latched onto. I couldn't just let it drop. Eventually, I found the story that I felt would work despite the continuing doubts so I completed the map and started on the NPCs and monsters.
True to my audiophile nature, I spent some time putting together background music. This I had settled on months ago. You can check them out on Spotify.
RPG Mood - Discombobulated
RPG Adventure - Discombobulated
RPG Combat - Discombobulated
Since the player characters acquired the Howling Wind (and renamed it Howling Wind II), I wanted to create a stable model of the ship that would be scaled for the Heroscape miniatures. I already had a design as shown in my airship post (which I've been slowly updating). This meant I had a clear idea of its shape and contents. I started, then, by cutting out each deck from a sheet of foam board and then experimenting with LEGOs to build out the supports.
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| The Airship Model, Initial Cut |
I was pleased with the results. I then started planning how I would go about constructing the interior. Unfortunately, life kept interrupting this process. The Wticher, Strong Girl Bong Soon, Voltron, Mythica, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and a passel of movies and books offered quite a bit of distraction. I also ran a one-shot for Time2Tabletop at a local brewery so that took some time. And there was normal life stuff. As you can imagine, all progress ground to a halt on this ship. I must return to it before the next session, which is rapidly approaching.
Along with the ship, the players expressed a desire for additional crew. After some discussion on Discord, we settled on two fighters and a quartermaster. I then created the portraits and stat blocks for these new NPCs. This included using the random background tables in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything as a brainstorming tool. Here they are.
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| Eldith, Dwarven Quartermaster Source: Heroforge design |
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| Gubrash, Orc Fighter Source: Heroforge design |
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| Huru, Orc Fighter Source: Heroforge design |
I wanted to expand on my Organizations of Highwater post with a follow-up I’m calling Guilds of Highwater. I’m still working on this one because of the before-mentioned distractions. I did manage to put together a random-encounters table for the Open Skies though. I plan on using this on the Howling Wind II's maiden voyage.
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| Open-skies Encounters Source: Ebberon, 5e |
Pre-game
At the last minute, a couple of players couldn’t make it over to my place but could “call it in” over Discord. Ultimately, this worked in a pinch but we had a number of streaming annoyances throughout the game, including frozen screens and audio drops. I kicked off the session with a summary that was maybe a little more detailed than usual. It felt like it had been ages since we last played and I wanted to really bring home some details regarding Bronte’s new arm since it had been a focus for so long. We then jumped right into the game.In-game
The party was in the gear hoard of Gearmount Foundry, gathered around a trap door that Omagoshno had found in the floor near the back of the chamber.Skyfell Cultural Note
Tinkers cannot bring themselves to throw away the remains of a failed or destroyed gadget. This shouldn’t be all that surprising given how much time and effort they put into their inventions. But there is a practical reason for this hoarding too. It provides a readily available supply of spare parts for new gadgets. It is, after all, much easier to cram an existing part into an unintended purpose than to fabricate a new part, the right part, from scratch. Besides, there’s nothing a tinker likes better than a big pile of random bits to rummage. Given this quirk of the tinker psyche, it’s a sure bet that every relatively active workshop has a pile of clockwork remains stored nearby. Workshops in large gnome burrows are likely to have several. Such collections are referred to as scrap hoards, junk yards, gear heaps, rust dumps, gear hoards, or any of a number of other more colorful, but perhaps less complimentary, names. Gearmount Foundry, being a tinkers’ guild near the High-tunnel Grind burrow in Highwater, is blessed with a triple-helping of this particular quirk. (That's gnome math for you.) It is, in fact, the largest collection of bits and pieces in the eastern hemisphere of Skyfell. Its four chambers are carefully curated by Rustmaister Scheppen-dunturo, who has a supernatural ability to navigate what appears to most visitors to be a devilishly confounding maze of rusting inventory.
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| Pile of Spare Parts Source: Pixabay |
Beyond the trap door was an unlit, three-foot-wide tunnel that plunged straight down into the bedrock a few feet before becoming an inclined tunnel. A faint odor of mildew and sewage drifted up from the darkness. Both Meribore and Omagoshno could tell that the passage was artificial. The dig scars from equipment were still fresh on its walls. Oma’s trained eye and general experience as an artificer led him to conclude that the markings were made by a construct rather than by humanoid muscle and sweat. With this preliminary knowledge, the party dropped down into the tunnel with Omagoshno in the lead. Since there was no light source, the gnome infused a coin with the light cantrip and gave it to Bronte.
Shortly, the party found gnome-sized boot prints in the dust and dirt that was thinly dispersed across the tunnel floor. There was a “trail” running down the center of the tunnel that looked like something had been dragged. It reminded Omagoshno of Slinky (the scout construct he had found way back in Session 3). They followed these. Shortly, the party came upon a secondary tunnel veering away from Gearmount Foundry whose floor was also marked with the same trail they were following but had no boot prints. Given the circumstances, it appeared that whatever was sneaking into the gear hoard was also likely sneaking into other locations.
While they traveled, Meribore kept hearing a clicking noise, like gear churning always coming from up ahead. Once this clicking was accompanied by the sound of metal on stone, as though something was digging into the rock. Later, the party discovered a six-inch wide tunnel where the floor and wall met. It was back filled with freshly turned debris. When Omagoshno listened more closely, he could hear a clacking, rock-churning sound receding deeper into the earth. Soon after, the tunnel opened into a large chamber. Its uneven floor was littered with piles of debris. Omagoshno was the first to scout this new area.
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| Omagoshno Scouts the Chamber |
He followed the boot prints to an area where there appeared to have been a struggle of some sort. There, he spotted a gnome-sized boot. The trail continued on through another tunnel on the far wall. This initial look around accomplished, the rest of the party joined him. As they started to investigate the area, a portion of the back wall suddenly lit up with hundreds of points of red lights. These quickly swooped down on the party and coalesced into a pair of roughly shaped giant spiders whose surface roiled with the points of red light.
Meribore cast faerie fire on these new threats. The green outline that appeared around the enemies revealed that each one was, in fact, composed of dozens of much smaller, clockwork spiders. They weren’t the careful craft of an obsessed tinker though. These were cobbled together from random mechanical parts, the remnants of common household items, and other sundry metal bits. As they moved, their bodies crackled with threads of lightning.
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| Dozens of Clockwork Spiders Attack |
Tauffae, who had been itching for some destruction since his return from Shadowfell, very quickly destroyed the first of these clockwork-spider swarms. While the party members closed in on the remaining swarm, a third enemy, a large clockwork snake, snuck up on Meribore and attacked her from behind. Fortunately, her new armor kept her safe from getting hurt. This new creature was roughly constructed just as the spiders were.
In the next few moments, the second swarm was destroyed and the clockwork snake took a great deal of damage. Calculating its chances of surviving the encounter, it concluded that retreat was now a necessity. Its mouth gaped open to deploy a digging mechanism. It then burrowed underground, slipping into a passage that it back-filled with debris. Once again, Omagoshno was reminded of Slinky.
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| Exploring the Spider Chamber |
Though the foot prints ended in the cavern, the trail continued into another short tunnel that broke through a stone-lined wall. The party followed the trail through two rooms. Both were old and appeared to have been abandoned some time ago. The air was slightly damper and the odor of sewage that had initially greeted them at the tunnel entrance was stronger. The first room seemed to have once been a small sleeping quarters or barracks. The second room seemed to have been a small dining commons. In both rooms, while there was enough debris to hint at these purposes, there were no complete pieces of furniture or other wholly intact objects. Even stranger, all of the metal had been removed from what little debris there was. The party did find a painting of a dwarf proudly posing with a squat construct that held what looked like a shield with dozens of metal scrubbers on its surface.
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| Exploring the First Room |
The second room also included a hall that dead-ended in a recent collapsed and another doorway that opened into a third room absolutely free of debris. A lever and box were on one of the walls of this third room. A thick, pipe ran from the box up the wall, across the ceiling, and down to a gate in the opposite corner of the room. Behind the gate was a submerged flight of stairs. There were also bits of metal squares affixed to the ceiling and a grooved, metal jam that wrapped around the doorway. Both looked like more recent additions.
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| Entering a Strange Chamber |
Omagoshno recognized this as a circuit most likely for opening the gate (and maybe even draining the water). The circuit, however, had been hastily constructed with random bits of metal in the same way that the spiders and snake had been built. Worried that pulling the lever could cause some sort of malfunction, Omagoshno sat down to do a little tinkering on the circuit to improve it. It took only an hour for him to be confident that the lever was all fine and dandy and ready to be pulled without causing (much) adversity or deadly pain. So he pulled the lever. As expected, the gate lifted but the water didn’t drain.
(Hi. Hello. Hey. Is this thing on? Oh, yes? Okay. Hey. Your friendly dungeon master here. I normally don’t like to go all meta during the in-game summary but I feel I must say something here. Kindly indulge. <deep breath/> There comes a moment in a dungeon master’s career when one spends a good deal of time devising a trap that will torture, maim, emotionally scar, disarm (teehee), confound, rob, and harass the player characters in a most devious yet satisfying manner. That was the case for this lever trap. I even devised a wonderful back story regarding its real purpose and initial construction. Oh, yes. There was that much effort put into this little bit of dungeon mastering. There also comes a moment in said career when the players of said player characters drop a solution to said puzzle that said dungeon master never considered, though in hindsight probably should have. Throw in a natural twenty tinkering check on top of a wonderful solution and there really is nothing a dungeon master can do other than be a little proud of the players for being so creative and a little chagrined that a wonderful trap went unsprung. Oh, the machinations of a dungeon master truly are bittersweet cherry blossoms in an April twilight. They bloom into a full but ephemeral beauty before drifting into oblivion, leaving only their memory. There, I said it. I’ll just recede back into the shadows now, nursing my ambivalence and a bottle of soju. No, I’ll be fine. Really. Please. Just keep reading.)
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| My Evil Plan is Foiled Again Source: Ranma 1/2 |
It was Meribore’s turn to scout ahead. She wild-shaped into a water snake and swam down the stairs. They descended into a short passage that led to another flight of stairs (“They go up.”) and another room with another lever. As she swam through the passage, Meribore also noticed what was clearly a door that had been cleverly disguised as a portion of the wall. Armed with this knowledge, she returned to her companions and used snake-tail sign language (a new invention, patent pending) to communicate her findings. Omagoshno hitched a ride on Meribore’s snake tail to the second room. The others simply swam their way there.
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| Meribore, Snake Scout Extraordinaire! |
Omagoshno was not entirely sure what the lever would do. In fact, the only way to know would be to pull it. So he did. After a few tense moments filled with loud banging and clanking coming from behind the walls, the water level began to drop. The passage now safely drained, Meribore led the party back to the secret door.
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| Piling Around the Secret Door |
Drekzhar, with his burgeoning roguish talents, located and triggered the mechanism to open the door. Beyond was a room that looked like a large storage area where things such as pipes and bricks might have once been stored. The room had obviously been underwater for some time. As they looked around, they found what looked like a pipe through which the water had been drained. A very strong odor of sewer wafted out of that pipe.
They continued on up a flight of stairs into a hallway where to their right was a toilet closet and to their left was a very old clockwork whose joints had fused and whose surface had rusted. It was squatting in a “rest” position and holding what could easily be mistaken for a shield but for the myriad of rusted scrubbers on its surface. It was clear now that the party had found a utility station for maintaining the sewers under Highwater. It was equally obvious that this particular station had been abandoned for quite some time.
Skyfell Cultural Note
The sewers under Highwater were originally designed by Ickabod Stonegut, the same gnome engineer who broke ground on High-tunnel Grind burrow in the years following the Wars of Possession (see my Doraku geography post). The nascent system started beneath The Aerie and spidered out into the surrounding structures that would later become known as the Maht District. The system was later improved by Grunder Stonethumb, a dwarf who served as royal engineer his entire life. (He was also the engineer who rebuilt Fort Delakor into the stalwart stonework it is today.) The sewers rely on water from the Emerald Lake (again, see my Doraku geography post) to move the waste to purification field some miles away from the city. After processing, some of the solid waste is used as fertilizer but most is left to decompose on its own. The excess water, which is about as free of disease as water taken directly from the lake, is channeled out to the farms of Mayraki Flats. In the early years, the sewers had been maintained by highly trained engineers using the latest technology. More recently, however, the task has fallen to the kobolds who live in The Haven beneath Highwater. In some ways, they are more efficient in ensuring the sewer water keeps flowing but they have little skill for actually maintaining the infrastructure in any sustainable manner. They invariably abandon areas they can no longer manage.
In addition to the toilet closet and clockwork depot, there was a third hall that led to a large room littered with heaps of scrap metal. Against the far wall, Omagoshno and Tauffae could make out the faint outline of a cage. Above the cage was a glass or crystal surface embedded in the wall. Inside was the Rustmeister. He looked both relieved and worried as he frantically banged on the cage and gestured to the trash filling the room. He was shouting but his voice was muffled, as though he were behind something. A closer look suggested that the cage was in fact an enclosure of some kind with either glass or crystal panes between the metal bars.
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| There's a Big Room Up Ahead |
Bronte cast dispel magic on the cage. This effort did banish a spell of some sort, but the physical properties of the cage remained unaffected. Cautious of the junk pile but curious about the cage, the party slowly filed into the room. They hugged the wall so as the skirt around the debris. This path led Omagoshno past another artificial tunnel cut into the wall of the room. This new tunnel ended in a small chamber filled with what looked like giant nests made from pieces of metal and other debris. It was a struggle for Omagoshno to put aside his curiosity to focus on the Rustmeister instead.
Did I say the party hugged the wall for safety? Well, really, I meant everyone in the party except Tauffae hugged the wall. Tauffae plunged straight into the room, climbing into, over, and through the garbage with impunity. When he was nearly at the center of the room, the air filled with the smell of ozone. Suddenly, splinters of lightning exploded out from and around the junk heap. Omagoshno cast absorb elements as a reaction to being hit by the lightning. Bronte cast reflection to send some the lightning back to the junk heap but nothing came of it. At the same time, large tentacles began to take form out of the trash. Their ends shaped into gaping mouths with spinning gears and twisting metal shards for teeth. They arched up and over Tauffae, poised to crash down on him. The party was clearly in for a fight.
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| The Battle Begins...But the Session Ends |
End session 13.
Experience earned:
Bronte - 1480 (10,520 total)
Drekzhar - 1495 (11,206 total)
Meribore - 1915 (11,685 total)
Omagoshno - 1760 (12,085 total)
Tauffae - 1685 (11,658 total)
Supplemental Materials
A Final Word
I always had a general idea that plumbing was by no means a modern invention but I never really had a sense of just how old it really is until a few years ago. Check this out. Skara Brae (a neolithic settlement circa 3000BCE) had indoor toilets for Pete’s sake! It makes sense though. Any sufficiently large settlement will have an equally large need to move waste out of its homes and off its streets otherwise people get sick and die.Also, this . . . (warning, there’s a naughty word in this clip).
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Also, check out my DMsGuild offerings:
- Epic Gnomish Inventing
Rules supplement for creating gadgets. - Gnome Concept Packages 1
Collection of gnome-related backgrounds, feats, magic items, and more. - Great House Servants
Collection of backgrounds centered on the servants of a great house. - Mildew's Revenge
A first-level adventure. - Random Plot Generator
A tool for creating adventure prompts for one-shots and story arcs. - The WhatNot Shop’s Absurd Accoutrements
A collection of unusual magical items. - The WhatNot Shop's Bracing Beverages
A collection of strange potions. - The WhatNot Shop's Common Curiosities and Trivial Trinkets
A collection of common magic items and trinkets. - The WhatNot Shop's Dastardly Doodads and Orc Oddities
A collection of orc-themed common magic items and trinkets.
Ah, Skara Brae. Inspirational home for the start of the Bard's Tale series. :)
ReplyDeleteI recently read the first book in that series.
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