Beer: Brewdog - Jack Hammer (Scotland)
System: Dungeons & Dragons, Moldvay Basic
Characters:
Elf of the Speedway (Sexless Level 1 Elf, XP 0) - Ineta
Monsters: Green Slime
Experience: Nil
 |
| The Elf is dead. Long live the Elf! |
My girlfriend was quite enthusiastically asking to play again, so we sat down for another session.
After being introduced to the Wizard's apprentice, it's pretty clear that the Elf of the Speedway is not after a companion to adventure with. On the contrary, what he wants is some outside support and some insight on how to carry on the exploration of the Putrid Vault, which the Wizard is quite happy to offer. In change of the promise to bring him whatever strange fungus or mysterious item found in the dungeon, among with some information on the architecture of the place, the Wizard shares some wisdom on the Vault. According to the legends, the dungeons used to be some sort of Dwarven mine, abandoned in mysterious circumstances. Bands of Dwarves occasionally wonder back to the Vault, looking for something they've left behind - one of such parties was apparently in town a few weeks ago, and they left toward the mountains not to be seen again. He also suggests for the Elf to hire some mercenaries if he wants to go back to the Vaults, but he refuses saying that he's better off by himself. Satisfied with the information, the Elf leaves promising to come back soon. He spends a few more days in the village healing up completely, and back to the dungeon he goes.
Taking a right turn at the first room, the Elf of the Speedway goes straight down the mysterious stairs descending in the darkness of the underworld. A quick exploration reveals a few twisting corridors and some heavy, locked down doors. He eventually finds an arch leading to a small room: a days old, unidentifiable corpse lays in the middle of the floor, his ribcage wide open like something jumped out of his chest. There's a small sack next to the body. Moving carefully, she slips into the room, just to be surprised by some very slimy monstrosity dwelling on the ceiling. The thing drops on the Elf's head, and slowly digests it to death as he desperately tries to get rid of it. The Elf of the Speedway is no more.
Notes: Needless to say, the girlfriend was really bummed out at the death of her character. There was a feeling of inevitability, a little like "what the fuck! you mean you can just walk carefully into a room and some fucking slime kills you like that? seriously?" yeah, seriously. To be fair, she could've done better with hiring some meatshields and whatnot, but on the other hand she had some complaining about the fact that the village wasn't described quite enough, and it wasn't clear to her what could or could've not be done there. Now, fantasy villages are such a trite trope and my head they're all more or less all the same - yeah, there's probably a grumpy blacksmith if you need one, some guy is likely to be selling ergonomic 10' poles in some weird-ass emporium, and there has to be a local church where you can get holy water and pay for a healing spell. Not so much for her, obviously.
I don't expect to be playing together anytime soon, so in the meantime I decided to take her advice and work a little more on the setting and the lands immediately surrounding the Vaul. It's been a good exercise in style so far, and I managed to recycle some ideas for a campaign I was working on a few years ago. I have about five levels of the dungeon mapped and stocked anyways, and a few more in the works so that should be good for a while.
An easy fix for you might be to just lift the Village of Hommlet straight out of the old module, map and all reflavor a little and BAM you have a village for the environs outside the vault. Don't worry about the wider world. Or do an image search for village maps choose one you like and fill it in too.
ReplyDelete