I haven’t used this blog for anything useful in a very, very long time (arguably ever), so I might as well use it to store my session recaps for the lunchtime D&D game I’m running at work. I’m using The Black Hack with Labyrinth Lord along with The Race Hack and Additional Things to run Greg Gillespie’s Barrowmaze Complete. I’m doing something like open table, since not everybody can show up every week. I neglected to write up reports for the first few sessions, and I don’t recall what happened well enough to write up something narrative with just my notes, so I’ll just start with what I do have.
Adventuring Party:
Kärl – Level 1 ShieldBreaker Dwarf
Wollus – Level 1 Sensitive Conjurer
Phamond – Human Man-at-Arms
Jamert – Human Man-at-Arms
Kärl and Wollus, along with their trusty men-at-arms Phamond and Jamert, made their way back to the Barrowmounds. Their trip out was quiet, and they quickly set about to exploring more of the mounds. The first they approached was sealed by a bronze door, covered in verdigris, festooned with the imagery of a skull and a dozen pentagrams. Feeling the door, Wollus discovered that it was enchanted with some sort of magic, and in doing so, discovered that the pentagon within one of the pentagrams was a swinging cover over a keyhole. Lacking any keys or the knowledge on how to pick locks, they moved on.After finding several mounds sealed with large coverstones, they stumbled upon one that was already opened. A small amount of rubble outside hinted at the full coverstone that they found at the bottom of the stairway within. Cautiously, they entered the tomb, finding naught but a broken sarcophagus containing a disturbed skeleton. In Wollus’ torchlight, they found a ring, and after much deliberation (and an attempt by the Conjurer to remove it using two torches as chopsticks), the Dwarf removed it. Cleaning revealed it to be made of gold, but Wollus didn’t sense any magic on it. Kärl, respecting any dead that doesn’t try to kill him, returned the jewelry, but Wollus took it back out of the sarcophagus for himself.
Seeing nothing else of value in the barrow, the four made their way up into the grey mist of the barrow marsh once again, only to be ambushed by three stone-colored giant toads, each the size of a wolf. They deftly dodged out of the way of the toads’ tongues and began their attack. The Dwarf and the men-at-arms swung at the monsters, while Wollus used all of his mystical energy to throw a bolt of magic at the beasts. All of the heroes managed to avoid being ingested by the toads’ attacks, but nobody was left unscathed by the combat. Kärl and Wollus escaped with relatively minor wounds, but the men-at-arms, Phamond and Jamert, met their end under the foul creatures’ onslaught.
The adventurers fled back to Nexus, leaving the bodies of their hirelings behind them. Lucky for them, no other hungry beasts impeded their escape.