Solo Session 21; He Shall Bruise Thy Heel, but Thou Shalt Crush His Head

Session 21; Begun on the 5th of December and finished on the 7th of December Of 2023. 

After casualties and discovering Bede’s fate, I have returned to the soloing game, with a new Lawful party.  A Chaotic party (run by a different player) has been working elsewhere on the island, but at the moment is unlikely that we will discuss them. 

Cosoricalta’s Cleansers. 

Richard the Charming.

Bard 1st Level. 

Tacitus the Wise.

Catechist 1st Level.

Master Keneth. 

Catchiest 1st Level.

Frail Brindle. 

Man at Arms 1st Level.

Straight-A Aquarius. 

Arcanist 1st Level.

Miles Bradwith Longstreet.

Arcanist 1st Level. 

On the 4th of December there was a massive earthquake in The Grave of Fell Heroes and the place has changed.  (Out of universe this is because my art program crashed and my in progress art projects and maps were lost.).  

On the morning of the 5th the party leaves town and heads towards The Grave of Fell Heroes.  They lose their way in the badlands and find the sea before moving through the newly carved hills and gullies before moving towards the 'graveplex'.  This is interrupted by Frail Brindle stepping on a pit viper and finding out that there are six of them within sight.  The one stepped on immediately bites (pit vipers do not roll initiative… which is kinda cool, but also makes this more likely to be a party wipe) but Frail Brindle’s chain mail is too good.  Another is in range (there other 4 are still slithering closer all around) waste some venom in the empty toe of a leather boot far too big for the owner.  Then the adventurers strike back.  Tacitus takes a mace to the nearest and bloodies it.  Master Kenneth utterly splats one of them with his intense lifting regime backed mace.  Frail Brindle misses with his attack. Richard the Charming flicks a dart at one of the oncoming, but it misses.  Straight-A’s Aquarius reserves his mystic powers and lifts his staff for a blow. Despite his spindly arms and under-defined musculature, he hits, halving the snake’s health.  Miles applies his Sleep on the oncoming snakes, three of which loose their focus and sink into a slumber. (Note/Question; does Elementalism apply to Sleep?  If so all the snakes should sleep)(Further reading, it seems unlikely in the common ACKs world). 

Next round. The snake Frail Brindle is still standing on takes another bite and rolls a 1!  The high leather boots are clearly not a mere fashion statement! The other snake continues its slithering path in and bites Frail Brindle while he isn’t looking and does 3 damage, plus poison.  He fails his save vs. poison, but unless I am mistaken, he may make another save he round for the next 1d4+2 rounds (in this case 4). Straight-A’s Aquarius pokes at it with his stick and misses. Frail Brindle makes his rebuttal and strikes at the snake underfoot he almost kills it, leaving it with 1 hp.  Then Master Kenneth reduces it to a substance comparable to that of ground beef with a mighty blow.  Tacitus another hater of chthonic snakes, he makes a mash of its back and tail, though it continues to wriggle forward.  Richard clips it with his dagger, but not enough to end its misery.  Miles misses and we go for the third round.

Morale holds and though bleeding broken and likely going to die the snake is too angry to slither off.  It attacks at those nearest it, hitting Master Kenneth through his robes.  He makes his saving throw the poison dribbling harmlessly from his body.  Frail Brindle fails his second poison roll, but he still has time to make one.  Richard strikes first at the snake, dagger ever shining but misses badly.  Tacitus misses, but Master Kenneth finishes the brute.  

Sadly, Frail Brindle does not make any of his savings vs. Poison and he dies here.  The rest of the sleeping snakes are killed and all are buried by the party and they camped there for the remainder of the day.  On the 6th the diminished party went into the Grave of Fell Heroes.  As they enter the confront 5 goblins.  The goblins announce they will spare the man things if they are fed to which the mage begins a chanting and the cleric lock shields.  Aquarius casts the arcane version of Protection of Evil, which is best imagined as flames licking the area around them with flames.  Tacitus holds action as does most of the rest of the party. Richard chucks a dart at goblin, piercing and ripping its throat.  The goblins then try to close against the shields and arcane fire. All but one miss due to the weakness of the goblins, the arcane protections and the strength of armor.  1 still does 2 damage to Tacitus. 

Round 2.  Master Keneth goes first and leads with his mace and hits one for half its health.  Tacitus, still injured, makes his strike and misses. The goblin chief then hits Master Keneth for half his damage.  Everyone else is busy keeping concentration or missing 

Round 3. Tired of messing about, Miles casts sleep and knocks out all of the goblins except for the goblin chief.  Tacitus tries to smack this one down, but misses. The chief misses.  Aquarius keeps concentrating on his protection from evil.  The rest of the party misses.

Round 4.  The goblin begins backing away, but he will not escape. The bard throws another dart, missing.  Master Keneth advances and misses.  Aquarius keeps chanting, while the others leave his protection and make attacks.  Both miss. 

Round 5.  Miles clocks the chief with his staff with a short burst of speed.  Aquarius keeps chanting, but Master Keneth gets hit and the chieftain goes down.  The remainder are then slaughtered in their sleep as Lawful Men do to Chaotic creatures.

Healing is done in the aftermath.  There is no treasure and the party is sad.  They must get that score.  Good deeds require funding and they push through the tunnel.  

Richard charming immediately falls into a covered pit trap, clunks his head and is down.  Fortunately, we have rope, grappling hooks and medicine.  Tacitus descends and tries to help quickly.   Richard is kept from death, but his left hand is crushed.  The group slips around the trap leaving it uncovered.  We do find 1000 loose pieces of silver and 2 turquoises (150 gp total)

The door is easily opened and the room to the left is entered.  There is an armory.  There are four weapons on the walls and all are special to some degree.  This is clear to one of the mage’s detect magic.  1 is a sword, 1 is an axe, 1 is a quiver of arrows, 1 is a Warhammer.  This is sufficient and they carefully leave the place.  

It is a tense ride through the Badlands, but the party makes it back to Punishment without any damage.  

Treasure was as follows

1 Sword +1 with +2 vs. spell casters.

1 Axe of +1 

1 Quiver of +1 (8) arrows.

1 Warhammer +1.

1000 silver.

2  turquoises.

Master Keneth keeps the Warhammer, which I think means we don’t get experience if we don’t sell it with out using it. The sword will also be kept while the remainder will be sold.  Per my understanding, these are halved in value, and get a total of 5000 sold together.  Thus the party has earned 5150 treasure experience and 215 combat experience.  This works out to 1073 experience to the 5 survivors, exact experience earned due to bonuses will be explored later.  

Conclusions.

As I have gotten a few more ACKs books since last time, I will begin playing with them in the coming weeks, hiring some odd classes as henchmen before these fanatical purifiers descend back into the depths. Throughout the fight with the snakes I was mentally reviewing Brian Sauvé’s singing through of Psalm 91.  Arguably one of the better parts of the session.

(I meant to post this immediately after the 7th, but things got busy, so we get a late publication.)