We wrapped up the last session of At the Mines of Madness last week, a session that I’ve forgotten much of the fine details. I do recall that in a fit of characteristic paranoia the party buried their treasure since they were afraid of it turning them into aberrant horrors, which to be fair was apt since the aberrant corruption caused Liz to grow a carapace over her arm, and Beth’s character to grow a gibbering mouth on her side (but since Liz wanted the mouth, they decided to trade). Picking up where we left off, the characters following a trail of dark green slime that lead into the mining quarry, deducing mine 13 to be the source of the problems due to a steady stream of water trickling forth. They figured there was a lot of bad shit inside, but unable to make any worthwhile preparations ventured forth and trounced my skill challenge to avoid getting lost from dimensional warping and psychic static fairly easily. It’s good when you have associated skills.
They located the shrine, which had a heavily damaged earth tumbler sitting just outside the entrance. The damage allowed an elemental to mostly free itself from its Khyber dragonshard prison, meaning that they had to fight it and try to rebind it to the shard so that it would stop escaping and harassing them. Despite only being a level 2 solo, its combined slams allowed it to immediately bloody Randy’s battlemind, to which he proclaimed that it was a good thing he would doing his job proper, as it could have outright dropped or possibly killed anyone else in the party. I wasn’t worried since Liz’s rogue is thoroughly optimized and Beth’s liberal use of Thunder keyword attacks kept it’s Defenses perpetually reduced to brute levels.
Repairing the earth tumbler cost them a Make Whole ritual scroll, but with the net gain of an elemental vehicle I think they’re more than willing to call it a wash. Inside the shrine they found more fell taints, some orc skeletons, and a pool containing some chuul nymphs that they sealed with stone sarcophagi because they were ridiculously paranoid at what might happen if they had to go into the water (and Josh failed numerous skill checks to try and freeze it). They did fish out a dead body before hand that had a time-warping wondrous item, so it wasnt all that bad. Their brief venture into the aberrant shrine ended once they’d found a reality tear, sealed it, and toppled an idol dedicated to Dagon.
On their way out of town, they decided to hit up the inn and discovered the last reality tear, so took precautions that involved burning the entire inn to the ground, detonating ale kegs in the cellar where it was located, and then burying the whole site (just to be sure). The only surviving creature was a lowly flumph that the two female players (Liz and Beth) immediately befriended…and queried as to whether it could wear a snazzy hat. The little guy proved useful when they made camp in town and were attacked by a leveled-up ethereal marauder…or rather he would have, had Liz been able to successfully pantomime to the party that there was a monster outside. Eh, it died quickly regardless of its Elite status, so whatever. Randy can drop it off at a Gatekeeper organization in Zarash’ak to up his reputation.
That was the last session in a nutshell, next Tuesday they’re off to Greyshore so that they can try and find a boat back to Zarash’ak so that they can report what happened. They do know that someone from Greyshore had stopped by Shardpit to try and buy all the golden relics that they buried, but they don’t know why. So…we’ll see what happens next week.
Category Archives: adventure log
At the Mines of Madness, Part 2
After camping out in a cramped, blood-soaked, very hot single room “house” (more like a hut) the party continued investigating the mining camp. They decided to hit up the Shardpit garrison, with Moxie (Liz) and Hawkeye (Josh) scouting ahead to see if it was clear. The doors to the garrison were open, and they could see something moving about inside in the morning light. Moxie tried to get closer while Hawkeye went back for the rest of the gang, and on the return trip Randy’s character knocked over some crates, causing one of the warped hounds to investigate. Unfortunately, Moxie was a bit too close and she was the first thing it saw.
The encounter was pretty brutal, with a level 2 elite, some normal level 2’s and a quartet of warped hounds to round it all out (600 XP). Most of the fighting occured in the gate, so there wasn’t a lot of room and Randy ended up getting gang-raped by powerful strikes and dog bites. Though the XP budget was high, this encounter shouldn’t have been as hard as it was since the monsters had Defenses of 15 or less (and the elite had an AC of 14). No, the real culprit here was shitty rolls on both sides of the screen. There was a string of bad luck for me where I didn’t roll anything higher than a 6, and brutes are already suffering for attack bonuses. I threw in the warped hounds hoping that they could teleport into key locations and grant the guards and hunter combat advantage, but the party refused to move out of the gatehouse (to their benefit).
Further investigation of the garrison had them hewing their way through more warped guards, a few warped Tharashk hunters, and even the Tharashk patriarch before discovering a +1 byeshk scimitar. True adventurers, they even scrounged up the leftovers out of the pantry for a few days of rations. In the last wing of the garrison barracks they found out the source of the problem; a planar tear connected to Xoriat (Far Realm) that was bleeding warping energy into the natural world. While Beth’s character tried to seal it using Arcana, various forms of fell taints slipped out and attacked. It took them quite awhile as Beth was only able to succeed when she had her ferret roll for her. I’m not kidding; when Beth rolled she couldn’t get a single 9 on the die, but if she put it in the ferret’s paws and let it drop, it worked every time.
After sealing the rift they rested up in the kitchen since it only had one door and some tables to prop against it, they head over to the House Tharashk enclave. They rummaged through personnel files–which were mostly complaints from miners about various illnesses and symptoms–and found a logbook with entries pertaining to a man named Obed from the small fishing town of Greyshore who’d apparently showed up prior to the incident hoping to purchase any relics found in the mine. Hawkeye had heard of the place, it was poverty-stricken and almost never received visitors because it had nothing to offer anyone except a meager existence.
Further exploration had them face off with a few more hunters, an insane dwarf artificer and his chisel-wielding assistants, and sealing a second planar tear. This was a more lucrative run, as they found hundreds of gold pieces worth of unfinished and finished dragonshards, gemcutting kits in case they wanted to try their hands and improving the value of the small horde, a Khyber dragonshard, and a tangler (which Randy isn’t so sure he trusts). Oh, and they found a dried mucus trail leading down into the mining quarry, which I’m sure will not result in anything bad, no siree.
At the Mines of Madness, Part 1
I’ve finally started off a new campaign after shelving Songs of Erui since the only original character’s was Josh/Shazbot’s, a razorclaw ranger named Greymalkin. I’ve been itching to run something Eberron since it came out last year, and after building up on a one-shot idea I had am glad to be back in Khorvaire, or more accurately the Shadow Marches. For the curious, here’s the party roster (the reason I list the player’s name first is because I only remember the name of Liz and Josh’s characters).
- Liz is playing a changling rogue named Moxie.
- Randy is playing a half-elf battlemind whose name I forget.
- Josh is playing a half-orc seeker named Hawkeye (or rather, Hok’Ai, or some such spelling)
- Beth is playing a kalashtar bard that uses a bow.
I mentioned a long time ago that I was going to start out this adventure with a flashback vignette, in which the players played commoner-type characters running from something in the middle of the night. They didn’t know what it was, just that people in Shardpit started going crazy, killing and eating each other. Naturally they and a bunch of other townsfolk legged it and after many hours were severely dwindled in number and exhausted, which was about the time I started murdering them. It started off shaky, and in the final adventure writeup I’m going to note how I think it would be better initiated, but suffice to say it did a good job of getting the players freaked out and wondering what the fuck was going on.
Of course, I did forget to mention that some of them had golden treasures of various sorts, but I added them in later when the party looted their digested corpses.
The adventure opened up with the party guiding a caravan through the Shadow Marches, along with a few minion soldiers to try and even up the odds with the 938 XP encounter that they ran into. It had bullywugs and frogs, which they laughed at until they realized that the croakers hit pretty hard and that if they burn healing surges then they get weakened for a turn. Yeeep, that shut ’em up.
After losing half the guards and chasing off the last remaining bullywug, they found some fish-themed treasures, half-digested corpses, and one without a head (their characters from the vignette). They didn’t laugh at that, but it did start getting them to ask questions (and Beth accusing frogs of being the BBEG). Realizing that they were getting closer to whatever it was they killed them before (but unable to act on out-of-character knowledge, heh heh), they proceeded to loot their previous characters–something that hasn’t happened since OD&D–they trekked on and arrived at Shardpit.
The gates were open, but finding everything abandoned looted the everburning torches and proceeded. They found a blood-spattered stone, and a stable with lots of dead horses. As they stood around arguing for a bit until crazy-eyed people started emerging from their houses. When a crazed human horde arrived, Liz described it as a very, “Left 4 Dead moment,” which I guess is apt.
And then a girl packing a hammer came rushing out of the stable, except that she had a shark mouth in her stomach. Actually, that’s still pretty similar to Left 4 Dead.
Okay, she wasn’t that ugly. Blegh.
They barely scraped by this fight with a few healing surges left, but still kept going until they got ambushed by dog-crab things that could teleport and the guards with tentacles for arms. I had the guards on top of the houses, hoping to grab characters and strangle them while the dogs distracted the rest of the party, but Josh fucked that plan by lighting the buildings on fire with his elemental spirits power. This attracted more of the crazed horde who upon seeing the warped guards and dogs didn’t stick around long.
At this point the party has abandoned the caravan wagons and lost two out of three merchants. The general prediction is that they will all die, which probably won’t happen because I’ve got at least five more adventures planned out. We’ll see who makes it through the next session.
Awful Good Games 
