At the end of a long week, I looked at my next session plans for our D&D 5E group and found my creative energies spent. Then I thought to myself, last time I was unprepared, DCC saved me. So I read over my copy of The Wizardarium of Calabraxis. There were laughs, augmented intelligence, death, and even some emotional damage, even though we didn't get through all of it yet. Thanks Claytonian JP for the great adventure and thanks to Raven Crowking for the recommendation! On to the session recap...
Last session's survivors:
George the Apprentice (Dwarven Blacksmith) (lvl 1)
George the Astrologist (Merchant) (lvl 1)
George, Zealot of the Hidden Lord (Potato Farmer) (lvl 1)
Vos (formerly Callie) the Thug (Confidence Artist) (lvl 1)
Scoops the Wildling (Trapper) (lvl 1)
This session's additions:
Mom the Midwife (lvl 0)
Emo Deathrock the Dwarven Dirge Singer (lvl 0)
Whiskey Bert the Sailor (lvl 0)
Blint Westwood the Outlaw (lvl 0)
Seaman Pavel the Ferryman (lvl 0)
Aseir the Soldier (lvl 0)
Anton the Tax Collector (lvl 0)
Fezim the Cultist (lvl 0)
After having made it out of the Portal Under the Stars with less than half of their comrades, the party spent a couple weeks flaunting their newfound wealth and spurning common labor. Not to mention they didn't bother burying or building monuments to their fallen friends. Forget the past and always the look to the future, right?
One day, the party woke up early to the local reeve and one of the blacksmiths screaming that during the night horrible hairy men from the mountains had come and abducted their son and daughter respectively. The Georges, Vos, and Scoops immediately put together a posse to recover the kidnapped children. Eight intrepid villagers gathered, armed with only knives, sticks, and rumors of the mysterious caverns of the nearby mountains.
After tracking all day, Scoops finally brought everyone to a cave entrance at around dusk. The more experienced party members let their foolhardy friends walk up to the cave while they waited at the tree line. Whiskey Bert drunkenly yelled in the cave for the inhabitants to fight like men. Several stocky, hairy men with strong ape like features stumbled out of the cave. Wielding rocks, clubs and fists the ape men quickly fought the invaders to their territory.
The peasants and Dwarf-George rushed madly into melee while the other leveled adventurers attempted to shoot arrows and fling spells from the trees. Scoops narrated his own fumble with expletives as his bow snapped back and knocked him flat on his face. George the Astrologist failed casting sleep. Dwarf-George jumped into melee with success until an apeman threw a rock at his head and he got knocked prone. Mom ran to help Dwarf-George to his feet. Vos nailed a backstab attack with his bow, driving an arrow through the back of the neck and out the mouth of the largest apeman. Whisky Bert narrowly avoided a flying stone between the eyes due to a drunken stumble. He laughed but the distraction proved his undoing when another ape man's club collided with his temple, scattering teeth, blood, and even popping out an eyeball before the life went out of him. (sorry for the run on sentence!) Soon enough the party finished off the last of the ape men.
While seeing if the ape men had anything worth looting (and honorably looting Whisky Bert's mangled corpse) they found nothing worthwhile but noticed both tattoos and warpaint on the bodies. The first cavern was littered with food, bedrolls, tools and other living supplies used by the ape men. Five ape wives and three ape kinder howling wildly at the death of their men. The party demanded to know where the reeve's son and blacksmith's daughter were. Suddenly the ground shook all around them. Fearful and huddled in a corner the ape folk pointed to a battered and abused body in a tattered nightgown on the other side of the room. Sadly it was the corpse of the reeve's son.
Seeing a narrow set of stairs on the other side of the room the party decided to continue on. As they approached the stairs, a ghostly visage of a wizard with three eyes walked towards them, looked at them, and then left the cave. One side of the wet, mossy and thus slippery stair fell into, what seemed, an endless black abyss. All made it safely down except Emo Deathrock, who while whistling a sorrowful tune, slipped and fell screaming into the abyss until no one could hear him anymore. Vos, the last to come down the stairway, threw her rope down to the others, had them tie it around a stalagmite and then tied it to her own waist. Now that's some old school precaution. Their torches revealed a large black obelisk, a partial cave in, a narrow path ascending upwards, and a wall covered in crude cave paintings. The cave paintings depicted tattooed ape men worshiping the obelisk and defeating non-tattooed ape men tribes. The obelisk suddenly vibrated, dislodging a dirty loincloth from the top, and the earth shook again.
Curious about the obelisk, Aseir decided to tap it with his sword. Nothing happened, but getting closer, he noticed more intricacies, and glowing moving parts deep inside. Fezim brashly touched the obelisk and he suddenly knew no fear, which circumstantially made room for more intelligence. After sharing the visions he saw when touching the obelisk, everyone took a shot at it. Many of their minds were expanded with concepts of mining and non-euclidean mathematics. Others felt their emotions frayed, melted, or torn away. Aseir lost his concept of compassion. Anton forgot his sense of humor. Mom let go all his envy. George the Zealot turned his back on sadness. George the the Astrologist stopped caring what other people thought, and never felt embarrassed again. But as the one who would have benefited from an intelligence boost the most, George did not receive one.
They decided to move on and go up the narrow, single file path that continued onward. Halfway up, they found a disembodied head, with strange tentacles trailing out the neck. They decided to hold on to it. At a fork they decided to go right. They eventually came to a short hallway to their left with a door at the end. They opted note it on their map, but pass it for the moment. As they continued straight they came to what at first appeared to be a dead end. Closer inspection revealed worn away engravings of eyes (27 to be exact). They first tried poking them to no effect. They next tried staring at them, which opened a secret door. George the Zealot said the Hidden Lord would be pleased, and he was.
Fezim lead the party on, and ran into two stunted looking humanoids with heads and features of a pig and eel. After a moment of surprise, Fezim began to attack. Being sorely outmatched, and without much room for maneuvering in the tight space, the archers of the group yelled duck and started shooting arrows down the hall. Fezim at one point felt an attack on his mind and was blinded until a few minutes after the battle was over.
The mongrel men being taken care of, they continued down the path and could see a hexagon like structure made out a black stone beneath them. As they came around on the first side, they saw an indentation and placed the head in it. Further off they heard the creaking of a metal. As they passed a couple more sides of the structure they found an opening with a raised portcullis. Between the light of their torch and a green glow from within the structure, they saw a horde of treasure.
Before they entered, a bored sounding alien voice warned them from entering from within. "Listen if you come in here, I'll have to kill you. And I don't feel like doing that. I'm tired." While the party conversed with the guardian, Vos told Fezim that a real man would just go in after what he wanted. Fezim's low self esteem and lack of fear overwhelmed his better judgement and he rushed in. Immediately a tentacle with many eyes and mouths grabbed him from the ceiling. Fezim's ribs and spine were crushed with several sickening cracks before he was thrown on the stone floor with a splat. This was followed up by several fiery rays from the ceiling which only left a smoldering pulverized mess of what used to be Fezim's body. Vos then suggested that they use the grappling hook to pull things out, but the guardian suggested against that.
After conversing with the voice for awhile longer, they concluded that perhaps if they rebound the guardian somewhere else, they could enter freely and loot the hexagonal room! George the Zealot attempted to cast word of command by yelling "Unbind!' twice, but failed. The guardian mentioned that perhaps the Calabraxis' old library might hold some knowledge about how to rebind or unbind it.
Soon afterwards, they made their way back to the door they skipped before and found it unlocked. Inside they saw a myriad of strange bones of men beast chained to the wall. One of the walls was a thick green, partially translucent material with what looked to be diamond shaped slots on the other side. Seeing a grate in the corner, the party used the rope and the grappling hook to pull it out of the wall so they could crawl through the space. On the other side they found the library they were looking for!
Finding most of the books uselessly decayed, they felt dejected until a book with a long spine crawled toward one of them and introduced itself and Baxter the Jolly Book-Axe. He was excited for company, having only had the bats to talk to for so long. Hoping that Baxter might be able to help them on their quest, they began to ask him about Calabraxis, the guardian, and the secrets of the wizardarium!
Those who have fallen:
Whiskey Bert the Sailor - head smashed in with a club.
Emo Deathrock the Dwarf- fell to his doom.
Fezim the Cultist - death by tentacle and rays.
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