Tomb of The Serpent Kings Part 3: Goblin Night!

Player map in sections that are revealed in play. DM map & notes on the graph paper.

This session covered a lot of ground. As it was also a special session with some guests I think a summary of events is appropriate. It will probably still be long.

Since we were running a “Goblin Night” with a few guest players, I thought it would be fun to use Goblin Punche’s very excellent WTF Are Those Goblins Doing? table as well as their D6 Shitty Goblin Traps, so all goblin encounters in this session were randomly determined.

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As a dwarf, Maul was quite bothered by the fact that his party had not yet completed the task for which they’d been hired many weeks ago -eliminating the goblin threat to the farmland surrounding Bebbanburg Keep.

Alonzo Machete was dead. Ramen Nudell was in the clink, and Sister Cletus with the assistance of Effje was trying to unlock the secrets of the jabbering serpent-person mummy which they had discovered. 

So Maul assembled a B-Team.

Joining the dwarf was a halfing named Dilbo, Melrond the Half-Melven elf, and Young Haco who claimed to be a relative of Alonzo. Though his weak mustache implied that this might not be true.

Approaching the Tomb of The Serpent Kings the party heard voices issuing from beneath the roots of a mighty oak. A secret staircase, some surprisingly alert goblin guards, and a secret door were soon discovered. Skulking, bloody combat, and frustration caused by a firmly locked stone door followed. The party moved on.

Travelling deeper into the mountain the party entered a partially collapsed area of the Serpent Kings Tomb that was being used by the goblin tribe as a home. Goblins muck farmers were encountered in the first room (a mushroom farm that was lit by eerie phosphorescent fungus lights) and semi-successful negotiations were followed as Melrond attempted to befriend the goblins. As that situation resolved itself . . .

[DM Note: One goblin named Gus slightly befriended. One not. This one stabbed Gus in the eye for betraying the tribe and ran for it.]

. . . A goblin patrol appeared from a tunnel to the south. A brief and one-sided fight erupted, and as the Party fought in the shin deep sludge of the farm they discovered a fair bit of treasure hidden in the filth. The best piece by far being The Crown of The Serpent Kings made of eight gold and platinum snakes, with emerald eyes, and diamond teeth. Which Dilbo immediately stuck on his idiot halfing head and crumpled to the ground gibbering and hooting in horror. It took several Game Turns for him to recover. Mostly.

[DM Note: Failed Save-vs-Magical Device.]

The party slung a restrained and gagged Dilbo across Haco’s pack and explored a small tunnel leading east. This lead to an outpost at the edge of the crumbling goblin warren where the party encountered a lone sentry. The goblin carried a strange U-shaped crook and despite being rather drunk it’s attention was fully engaged with watching a broken stone door in the east wall. Maul dispatched the creature with a single blow before Melrond could attempt to befriend him as he had with the farmers, then finished the fermented rotten goat’s milk which the goblin had been getting inebriated with. 

Beyond the stone door they reentered a fully intact area of the Tomb of The Serpent Kings, which the goblins were clearly not inhabiting. In short order they discovered several interesting things. An iron door that required a key they did not (yet?) have. A large sacrificial pit with an eternally burning fire within it. A slave chamber containing enchanted manacles. A skeleton covered in dense orange jelly that made it invulnerable to axe, hammer, and Merlon’s casting of The Metamorphoun of Fire from a scroll he carried. Though it did burn quite well.

Retrieving the strange U-shaped polearm from the dead goblin sentry the party managed to shove the blazing jelly skeleton into the sacrificial pit. The fire in the pit probably wouldn’t kill it, but it was hoped it would be unable to scale the walls. The party hastily returned to the relative safety of the goblin warren.

The next dilapidated chamber that the party entered contained a large and obvious lever mounted on the east wall. Scrapes and furrows were gouged into the stone floor, and a locked door to the west impeded the party’s progress. Examining the ceiling they saw only darkness and thick cobwebs, though Maul suspected there was some sort of trap mechanism up there. After some debate they pulled the level which opened the door in the west wall but also unleashed a half-dozen giant bladed pendulums that struck sparks from the floor at the low point of their arcs. Luckily, goblins are dumb as stones and the patern of the blades was simple to discern. However, when the party was only halfway across the room something went wrong with the trap. Several of the deadly pendulums became entangled and brought the entire rig from which they swung crashing down from the ceiling. All 4,000lbs of it. The floor collapsed taking the machinery of the trap, along with Haco, into a dust filled tunnel on a lower level.

[Dm Note: All but Haco passed a Save-vs-Breath Weapon check.]

Amazingly, Haco suffered only minor wounds and a length of rope was sufficient to retrieve him from the tunnel. Which brought the party to their next obstacle: a serpent-person statue holding a blazing torch. In a high squeaky goblin voice it asked, “What number is green?” 

[DM Note:  Magic Mouth was set to go off when anyone approached the statue. The answer was “One”. Because goblins are Number One. Obviously.]

Maul worked out the idiotic riddle but not before Dilbo blurted out an incorrect answer. Oil sprayed across the torch from an unseen spout in the statue’s serpent mouth creating an ad hoc flamethrower and everyone dove for cover. 

[DM Note: Again the party was very lucky with their Save-vs-Breath Weapon rolls.]

Casting The Call To The Unseen Servant, Melrond brought forth an invisible butler who removed the torch from the statue’s hand and plugged the oil spigot with a bit of cloth. As the party congratulated itself on overcoming yet another goblin trap the statue gave a mighty groan before its crotch exploded covering everyone in oil. 

Behind the statue was a short hallway in which they found a closet full of small oil casks, presumably for refilling the statue trap. Beyond that they opened a door to reveal the goblin throne room where almost a dozen goblins and an enraged bugbear chieftain were waiting for them behind makeshift barriers. 

As goblin arrows flew, Dilbo, Maul, and Haco hurriedly made giant molotov cocktails out of the oil casks. In an attempt to buy time Melrond cast The Hypnotic Charm on the bugbear chieftain and convinced him that his own goblins were about to overthrow him! This came at a cost.

[DM Note: We are using James Raggi’s alternate magic rules for LoTFP that allow for Dangerous Casting once a magic user runs out of spell slots. They must make a Save-vs-Magic in order to cast a spell and if they fail, bad things happen. I think the spell also fails to go off, but it was late so I let them work either way.]

While the bugbear began smashing the nearest goblins with his morningstar, a fully functioning third eye erupted where Melrond’s left nipple had once been.

Maul and Haco both threw burning casks of oil at the nearest goblin barricades. They both missed, though a large part of the room was engulfed in fire. Knowing what he must do Melrond again attempted to cast The Metamorphoun of Fire. His right leg exploded in a spray of blood and bone and in its place was a writhing slime-covered tentacle. But the spell went off and a tsunami of fire swept the goblin ranks. As the goblins danced within the fires Melrond collapsed to the floor in agony. His new best friend, the bugbear chieftain, leapt through the wall of fire to aid the fallen elf.

Unable to resist checking one last room, Dilbo entered a chamber that was covered in old guano. The floor collapsed and he found himself in what might have been a deadly snakepit. Deadly if the goblins had not forgotten to feed the snakes. Instead he lay sputtering in a pile of old bat poop and snake skeletons.

Having had more than enough of these shenanigans the group retreated back to the surface. 

Uneasy about killing the bugbear under his charm, Melrond devised a compromise. He told his bugbear friend (and Gus, the lone-surviving mushroom farmer) that they needed to find a new lair far away from the hostile Men of Bebbanburg Keep. The bugbear agreed wholeheartedly. Maul grudgingly agreed to the compromise though his great axe thirsted for bugbear blood.

[DM Note: That ended the evening. Because I did my math wrong, and because I heavily modified the goblin section of ToTSK I gave out nearly 87k worth of experience points. I meant to give out 8,700. When you are rushing that 50/1 silver/gold conversion will mess you up! :) Taking mercy on me for my goof the Players were content to just reach the next Level and call it a wash. Because Maul was already half-way to Level 2 I let him advance to half-way to Level 3.

I’m excited for the next sessing with the regular group. Between the areas discovered during the second delve and this one, they now have two points of entry into the Tomb of The Serpent Kings, two mysteries in the form of locked doors that only Ramen has a real chance of opening, and nine doors with gods-know-what waiting behind them to investigate.]