Tomb of The Serpent Kings -Part 2a
Having defeated the skeletons of the snake-man king and his two brides in Room 6 - False Tomb the party explored the southern end of the chamber and discovered the horrific statue of a snake-person god in the wet and mildewed Room 7 - False Temple. Water leaking in from the mountain above ran in small trickles down the walls and pooled around the base of the statue. Over time this had done considerable damage, and the once secret passage down to the second level of the dungeon lay revealed.
Ill prepared and under-equipped the party decided to return home, give the bailiff of Bebbanburg Keep a report on their progress with the local goblin problem and gear up for a return to the Tomb of The Serpent Kings.
A week later healed and rested the party was once again standing on the threshold of the tomb -though without their specialist, Ramen. There were no signs of anything having disturbed the sight since their last visit. However, when they reached Area 5 - Door/Hammer Trap the party found the iron spikes with which they’d jammed the deadly trap earlier were removed and laying on the floor.
DM Note: Although the first level of ToTSK is a very mundane dungeon I wanted to establish early on the idea that the dungeon actively, if slowly, resisted the intrusion of the player characters.
Several elaborate and mildly paranoid theories about how the trap got reset . . .
DM Note: Mission accomplished.
. . .and Eefje was once again hammering the spikes in to hold the trap’s activating mechanism in place so that they party could continue onwards. The pounding of mallet on iron spike awoke a hungry trio of stirges who had taken up residence in the gears and chains of the hammer trap since the party’s last visit.
Taken by surprise, the party was ill prepared for the stirge’s attack and one of the creatures managed to attach itself to the cleric. While Eefje and Maul the Dwarf fought with the remaining two creatures, Alonzo Machete, not wanting to harm the cleric further, dropped his sword and attempted to beat the stirge attached to Cletus to death. Unfortunately he missed and his mailed fist crashed into the back of the cleric’s head, dropping her to the ground. Combined with the stirge’s bloodsucking ability this dropped the cleric to -4 Hit Points before the party was able to dispatch the aerial threat.
DM Note: In original B/X when a character reaches 0 Hit Points they are dead. In Lamentations of The Flame Princess (the version of B/X that we are playing) at 0 Hit Points a character is incapacitated. At -3 Hit Points they are mortally wounded and will die in 1d10 rounds. At -4 Hit Points they die instantly. While more generous than OB/X, this still feels a little arbitrary and unsatisfying to me. At -3HP a character is doomed. Maybe they live long enough to give a rousing death speech? I don’t know. I thought it was particularly silly that the bulk of the cleric’s damage came from a bad roll by another player who was trying earnestly to help them. So I decided on the spot that -5HP was when instant-death occurred in my game.
Applying medieval first-aid the party dragged the unconscious and blood-drained cleric out of the ToTSK, and the party desperately tried to come up with a new plan of action.
Ill prepared and under-equipped the party decided to return home, give the bailiff of Bebbanburg Keep a report on their progress with the local goblin problem and gear up for a return to the Tomb of The Serpent Kings.
A week later healed and rested the party was once again standing on the threshold of the tomb -though without their specialist, Ramen. There were no signs of anything having disturbed the sight since their last visit. However, when they reached Area 5 - Door/Hammer Trap the party found the iron spikes with which they’d jammed the deadly trap earlier were removed and laying on the floor.
DM Note: Although the first level of ToTSK is a very mundane dungeon I wanted to establish early on the idea that the dungeon actively, if slowly, resisted the intrusion of the player characters.
Several elaborate and mildly paranoid theories about how the trap got reset . . .
DM Note: Mission accomplished.
. . .and Eefje was once again hammering the spikes in to hold the trap’s activating mechanism in place so that they party could continue onwards. The pounding of mallet on iron spike awoke a hungry trio of stirges who had taken up residence in the gears and chains of the hammer trap since the party’s last visit.
Taken by surprise, the party was ill prepared for the stirge’s attack and one of the creatures managed to attach itself to the cleric. While Eefje and Maul the Dwarf fought with the remaining two creatures, Alonzo Machete, not wanting to harm the cleric further, dropped his sword and attempted to beat the stirge attached to Cletus to death. Unfortunately he missed and his mailed fist crashed into the back of the cleric’s head, dropping her to the ground. Combined with the stirge’s bloodsucking ability this dropped the cleric to -4 Hit Points before the party was able to dispatch the aerial threat.
DM Note: In original B/X when a character reaches 0 Hit Points they are dead. In Lamentations of The Flame Princess (the version of B/X that we are playing) at 0 Hit Points a character is incapacitated. At -3 Hit Points they are mortally wounded and will die in 1d10 rounds. At -4 Hit Points they die instantly. While more generous than OB/X, this still feels a little arbitrary and unsatisfying to me. At -3HP a character is doomed. Maybe they live long enough to give a rousing death speech? I don’t know. I thought it was particularly silly that the bulk of the cleric’s damage came from a bad roll by another player who was trying earnestly to help them. So I decided on the spot that -5HP was when instant-death occurred in my game.
Applying medieval first-aid the party dragged the unconscious and blood-drained cleric out of the ToTSK, and the party desperately tried to come up with a new plan of action.
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