GM Commentary: Scions of Punjar

I had a lot of fun with these sessions. The Saturday group tends to deal with situations much more differently than the Friday group. Saturday sessions tend to have more role-play, character development, unique problem-solving techniques, and fewer combat challenges. The combat challenges they do have also tend to be more difficult, maybe because there are only four of them usually. I think it makes things more intense.

I ran "Scions of Punjar" pretty close to the written material, which made it easy on me with my limited time to prep. As a module I think it's fairly interesting, but my standard complaints about Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics still apply. The maps are practically useless, the encounters are wildly variable in challenge level, and there are many editorial errors in the text and in the monster stat blocks. I had to replace or modify many of the monsters to better fit my group.

Some of my favorite moments from this game were Corvus getting cornered in the family tomb by zombies, Chiana biting Aletha for a quick healing surge to get back in the fight, Regnor getting a magical lobster bib, the entire session with "Regno" in the tavern, the introduction of Mongo, frustrating the party with the smelly wererat in the mines, and watching the party get more and more pissed off at Cadavra and her hit and run tactics. I also enjoyed listening to the party try and decipher the clues she left behind.

Here are some notable changes I made to the module. Since the party skipped a solo encounter in the pawn shop I replaced the, in my opinion lame, elite dire stirge with a young green dragon encounter to give them some more XP. The windmill encounters were reworked a bit. I added the wraiths in the basement, which were inspired by the rumors about the miller's family. The undead marsh troll on the first floor became a cauldron corpse in the final room, since the party skipped the whole upper levels of the windmill. I took the cauldron corpse stats from the Penny Arcade inspired module in Dragon Magazine. The inner sanctum battle with Cadavra was retooled a bit, I got rid of the fleshripper vampires just because they didn't fit with any of the other undead we'd seen in the game so far.

I had to wing the encounter in the Rudebakers' house. The module ends at the inner sanctum and only gives hints as to the other potential encounters. I really had no way of knowing where the PCs would go next so I didn't prep anything specific. Despite me goofing up the map, I think it was fun doing some impromptu DMing.

Going into the last session I agonized over how to reintroduce Earl's character when I thought he was going to be able to make it. It turned out not to matter since he couldn't be there, but I had all sorts of ideas on how to explain how he went from Elkridge to the windmill just in time to catch up with other group during their cliff-hanger. Just goes to show you, don't over prepare because your time will be wasted.

This next session we will be cleaning up loose ends and exploring the connection between Cadavra and "The Sisters".

Scions of Punjar, Session 6: Skeletons in the Closet

Aletha, Regnor, Chiana, and Corvus faced Cadavra across her inner sanctum. She stood well away from them, across a narrow stream of icy water that flowed through an iron grate set in one of the cavern walls. Between them was a massive black iron cauldron adorned with symbols and pictograms depicting the reanimation of corpses and their subsequent terrifying and consuming of the living. A foul smelling miasma bubbled and leaked over the sizes of the cauldron, covering the ground around it in a greenish mist.

Cadavra taunted the party, "Ee-hehehe. You're too late, my lovelies. My creations are already in place and will attack when the moon is no more. My vengeance will be complete and there is nothing you can do about it. Now I will destroy your spirits and your bodies will join my growing army!"

Before they could react, the zombies shuffled forward at Cadavra's command and corralled the party at the stairs. A couple of the animated corpses must have been soldiers in life because they wore mud covered armor and wielded rusty swords, as if their gear had lain in the ground for a period of time. Most of the others appeared to have once been commoners and were dressed in the clothes they were buried in.

Cadavra shot out lightning from her finger-tips which struck Regnor and then forked and burned Chiana and Corvus. Then the party watched in horror as the massive bulk of a large humanoid with greenish and dripping skin broke the surface of the liquid in the cauldron and stood forth. Necrotic sludge dribbled down from its sharp toothed maw and it's hands ended in vicious looking claws. Cadavra had found or captured a marsh troll and revivified it as a foul hulking brute under her control. The creature began slowly climbing out of the cauldron as the liquid contents sloshed about onto the ground.

Corvus decided it was time to do something about all these undead blocking their path to the evil witch. Invoking the power of the Raven Queen, he sent out a wave of rebuking divine power that washed over the zombies and the cauldron troll and drove them backward. Many of the commoner zombies were destroyed outright and the soldier zombies were damaged and driven backward, giving Regnor, Chiana, and Aletha some space to maneuver. The undead troll was caught with one leg out of the cauldron and was knocked over by the wave of power, tipping the cauldron and spilling the rest of its foul contents onto the stony ground. The liquid followed the slope of the cavern floor and poured into the natural stream to be carried away through the iron grate and into the city's water supply. The undead in the blast were all dazed from the attack, but several motes of greenish gas floated away from the troll where it was wounded and hovered toward the party.

Regnor and Chiana killed the remaining commoner zombies and closed in on the zombie soldiers. Aletha cursed and blasted the troll. More motes of necrotic gas were expelled from the creature each time it was wounded. Cadavra shouted curses at the party about their destructive behavior in her home. Fresh corpses laying about the cavern stood at her command and shambled forth to take the place of those that fell. One of these new zombies appeared to be relatively fresh, possibly the missing girl who had come to the windmill in search of easy prey. Cadavra used her necrotic powers to bolster and heal the zombie soldiers and the troll monster so they could continue to fight for her. Finally she followed up with a blast of ice, catching all of the party in it and slowing them down.

The zombies and cauldron motes closed in around the party and continued to harass them. The troll stood up and spewed forth a vile goo from its maw onto Regnor and then reached over the backs of the zombies to slash at him with a claw. Regnor dodged the claw, but felt the vile goo eating away at his flesh between the scales of his armor. The pain drove Regnor into a dragonborn fury and he cleaved about him dropping a pair of zombies. Chiana was forced to lend a majestic word to Regnor and keep him in the fight. Corvus and Aletha destroyed the floating motes of gas with their ranged attacks and then the group turned on the remaining troll beast.

Cadavra, sensing that the tide of battle was turning against her and knowing that her arcane resources were quickly dwindling, cursed the party's impudence one last time before turning herself into a living shadow and swiftly fleeing through the grate and down the stream toward the city. The troll blocked the party from getting to Cadavra before she escaped, but they quickly brought it down with their combined focused attacks.

The adventurers could not follow Cadavra down the stream, due to the passage rapidly narrowing. They instead turned their attention to searching and looting the caverns and the windmill lair above in the hopes of finding something useful or a clue as to where she would turn up next. Among the witches personal effects they found gold coins, a small statue of a raven, a suit of shadow warlock leather armor, a suit of astral fire chainmail, Cadavra's ritual book, and a book entitled "The Necromantic Devices of Illserves". Aletha took the shadow warlock armor and Corvus took the raven statue and the suit of astral fire armor.

Chiana spent some time examining the books. Cadavra's ritual book contained her favorite spells, but also served as her personal journal. Chiana skimmed fragments of the witch's deranged past and learned that Cadavra was really once Lakasia Dev'shir. She wrote of how she hated her older sister and killed her in the stable fire in the hopes of becoming the next heir to the family fortune. When her parents named her younger brother as the heir instead she flew into a jealous rage and attempted to kill her entire family, but she was young and easily overpowered. Her parents packed her off to sanitarium in another city to forget about her and then spread the rumor that she had died in the fire along with her sister.

Ironically, during her years at the sanitarium she slowly went insane. Lakasia was discovered by a mysterious group known as "The Sisters" who recognized her latent talent and paid to have her spirited away with them. She spent many years with "The Sisters" training and learning to harness her magical abilities. Lakasia renamed herself Cadavra and began plotting her revenge on her family. To this end she stole a tome from "The Sisters" and used it construct the Cauldron of Illserves with which she could raise an army of undead to do her bidding. She spent the last few months hiring grave robbers to bring her fresh materials from which to make her army. The last few pages of the journal were filled with cryptic notes and numbers on the progress of her army.

Chiana surmised that Cadavra had small groups of undead hidden in various locations around the city, all pre-programmed to attack on the next night of a new moon, which was in two nights time. The final page held clues as to what these locations might be. The group discussed these new revelations and talked strategy. Although the party was worn out and their resources were low they felt like they could still beat Cadavra in her weakened state if they could find her before she got a chance to rest. They hypothesized that she would have retreated to one of the hiding places in her journal, but they had no way of knowing which one she would flee to first.

After the group spent some time guessing, Corvus decided to invoke the Hand of Fate to help them decide. They asked the disembodied hand which location Cadavra will be at in an hour. The hand pointed at a symbol on the journal page marked "23GR" with the picture of a house and fifteen tick marks next to it. Pooling their knowledge of the city the group decided that the symbol must be a reference to an address on "Guilder Row", a major streets connecting the Souk and Wharftown districts of Punjar. They immediately set off for the city in the hopes of catching the witch off guard.

Along the way, Aletha, Corvus, Chiana, and Regnor, stopped by GoHAC headquarters, the abandoned and rotting Beggar King's mansion along Rat Catcher's Row. There they found Mina, Vismund, Rael, and Mike Mitchell just hanging around, so they enlisted their help to go warn the remaining Dev'shirs of the impending attack and to investigate some of the other suspected locations of hidden undead minions, including the well at Low Court and the Copse of Dead Jenys. Vismund, Mina, Rael, and Mike Mitchell happily agreed and went off to pursue their own adventures at the Dev'shir estate and nearby locations.

Aletha, Corvus, Chiana, and Regnor found a three-story townhouse at 23 Guilder Row. A sign above the door marked it as being "The Rudebakers' Residence". A candle shone through soot stained window on the first floor and perceptive members of the party could hear the mumbling of a woman's voice coming from within.

Regnor burst through the door, startling a young woman sitting at a table in the front room. The young woman screamed and called out "Mistress! Mistress! They're here!" and then cowered in fear as the rest of the party entered the building and questioned her. She called herself "Marie" and was a paid servant of the Rudebakers. A week or so ago, Cadavra came to the home with skeletal minions, killed the Rudebakers and made Marie her slave. Cadavra was now in the attic along with her minions and the reanimated bodies of the dead owners of the home.

The group told her to stay put as they investigated the house. In the back they found a small kitchen and access to a shallow root cellar. Chiana brought up some vegetables and potatoes from the cellar so Regnor and Corvus could make frittatas for everyone. After they'd all had a bite to eat, they took the stairs to the second floor.

On the second floor were the family sleeping areas. The back room contained a large wardrobe and a ladder heading up to the attic. The wardrobe contained a suit of dwarven drakescale armor that would fit Regnor. They took it for later use. Regnor then proceeded to climb the ladder into the attic.

In the attic Cadavra was waiting for them along with 5 skeleton warriors, 5 skeletal minions, and 5 rotting zombies, the shambling remains of the Rudebaker family. Regnor cut a path for his companions into the room while Cadavra commanded her allies to attack. Cadavra waited for Aletha, Chiana, and Corvus to enter the attic before she hit them all with lightning and ice attacks again. Corvus rebuked the undead in the room, destroying the minions and the zombies, and pushed the skeleton warriors back. Cadavra bolstered her warriors and sent them back into the fight. They all charged Regnor and cut him down. Chiana revived him with a majestic word.

The party fought past the warriors and backed Cadavra into a corner of the room. Corvus summoned his angel of fire to help surround and attack her. When cornered Cadavra fought like a wild thing, swinging a heavy wooden cudgel about her. Although she took grievous wounds she gave as good as she got. Corvus's angel was soon destroyed and Regnor was knocked unconscious once again. Aletha blasted the final skeleton warrior to pieces while Chiana revived Regnor one last time. Regnor stood up and delivered a fatal blow to Cadavra with his great axe, severing her head from her neck.

When the fight was over the group took a moment to congratulate themselves on finally catching and defeating the witch. After a brief rest they searched the attic and found an old whistling songbow +1 stashed among other old Rudebaker heirlooms. Chiana claimed it as her own.

Ruins of an Empire, Session 4: Bogs & Bullywugs

Jym, Mongo, Lethe, Dawn, Scion, and Macros (along with Snarl the gnoll huntmaster) had just defeated the giant ant queen and the kruthick hive lord, but they still had an entire hill of angry giant ants to deal with. They decided to leave rather than risk being discovered. Jym pulled out the compass again and they followed it along a winding path in the direction from which the kruthick invaders came. These tunnels were strewn with many dead ants and a few dead kruthick, but eventually these thinned out and they passed into empty kruthick tunnels. They took a downward sloping tunnel which eventually opened into a natural cavern.

Across the cavern was an opening to the outside. Outside was a bog stretching in all directions and the sky was darkening to night. The party decided to make camp in the cave for the rest of the evening. They noticed that they all smelled pretty ripe, from the ant juice, but Snarl was particularly smelly. He didn't seem to mind however, and even commented on how good Dawn smelled to him. Dawn was a bit disturbed by his attention.

Snarl also looked very emaciated and watched the rest of the party eat with salivating envy. Scion took pity on him and convinced Snarl to take a bath in a pool of water conveniently located in the cave while she foraged up some frogs, lizards, and crayfish for him to eat. Jym spent some alone time in the bog looking for signs of life and found some suspiciously large webbed footprints in the soft ground.

In the morning the party headed out into the bog following the path of the compass. The bog was contained within the walls of a massive crater and was teaming with life. The webbed-footed prints grew more numerous as they approached a primitive looking settlement of reed huts surrounding some ruins. On closer inspection the ruins appeared to be of a broken tower that looked as if it had been dropped from a great height. Guarding the front of the ruined tower were a pair of bullywugs, an amphibious humanoid resembling frogs, carrying reed shields and clubs. The sound of croaking and chanting could be heard coming from the inside of the tower. Suddenly there was a female scream and the croaking chorus grew louder.

The adventurers hadn't been noticed by the bullywug guards yet. Jym sneaked closer to the side of one of the reed huts, but Mongo charged straight at the guards. The bullywugs croaked and hopped into battle. They leaped onto Mongo flattening him into the muck. More bullywugs hopped out of the huts, armed with javelins, to join the fight. The rest of the party took the bullywugs by surprise and attacked, but they were in turn surprised by a pair of giant frogs wallowing in nearby pools of muck. The giant frogs shot out their sticky tongues, entrapping Dawn and Macros, swallowing them whole and then leaping away from the battle to digest their prey in privacy.

Jym and Snarl went after the frog that swallowed Dawn, chasing it around the corner of the hut and to the edge of the bog. Lethe and Scion helped Macros escape from his frog and killed it. They then helped Mongo deal with most of the bullywugs, although they learned that bullywugs cause weakness to anyone who attempts to heal themselves near them. A pair of bullywug twitchers ran from the fight and leaped over the ruined wall of the tower to warn those inside. After the group caught up with the final frog and saved Dawn they returned and surrounded the tower.

They could see into the tower through the many breaches in its walls. The center of the area was taken up with a large bubbly muddy pool. A piece of scavenged masonry served as a crude altar near the puddle. On the altar was a young girl being held in place by two evil looking bullywugs adorned with totemic charms and painted with dried mud symbols. At the back of the room was a crude wooden statue depicting a fat and multiple armed bullywug. In its lap was another large pulsing chaos crystal, apparently the pole that the compass was drawn to. Around the edges of the room were arranged a number of fat bullywug worshipers acting as the source of the chanting and croaking. A few bullywug bodyguards, including the two twitchers from earlier, were standing around watching the sacrifice. A muddy pit occupied one corner, its contents hidden from view.

A massive battle followed as the party attacked from multiple sides at once. Mongo, Lethe, Macros, and Jym barreled into the room while Dawn, Scion, and Snarl sniped cautiously from without. The mudlords, the bullywugs holding the girl who was now unconscious, dropped her to the altar and summon forth a pair of mud men from the puddle to defend them. They croaked forth magical energy that blasted the adventurers with fire and thunder, but also caught their own allies in the blast, killing the weak croaker minions around the edges. Mongo waded into the room and savaged the mud lords. Macros kept the mud men and a few of the bodyguards busy. Jym and Lethe dealt with the brutes who kept charging them.

The battle was frantic but brief. After the last bullywug was slain Mongo lifted the unconscious girl onto his shoulders, Jym put the crystal into their bag, and Macros looked into the pit. The bottom of the pit had many muddy and rotting bodies in it, but there was one terrified young boy still hiding down there. The rest of the group was certain the boy must be an evil entity, but Macros was brave enough to climb down and talk to him. The kid called himself "Rudiger" and had a severe speech impediment. Macros brought him out of the pit to meet the rest of the party. He told them that the girl was his sister "Lisa" and that they had both been taken from Elkridge by the "fwying dwagons" and then left in the middle of the bog.

Lethe noticed the child was clutching a necklace and when he asked about it Rudiger said, "My dad said the Waven Qween would pwotect me." It was a piece of jet carved to resemble a black raven wing. Lethe took the necklace from Rudiger and decided he could use it as a holy symbol of battle +1. The boy stayed close to Lethe since he was the only human in the group and had the necklace. Jym searched the bullywug bodies and the corpses in the pit and found a muddy, but still serviceable, short-sword and 200 gold coins. He gave the sword to Macros who after cleaning it up discovered that it was an oathblade +1, which would synergize nicely with his defender abilities.

Ruins of an Empire, Session 3: Why did it have to be more bugs?

After the team's first encounter with the giant ants the prospect of wading through an entire army of them lost it's sheen. The acidic smell of dying ants surrounded them and they could hear the sounds of more ants coming up the tunnel. They quickly devised a plan, using their knowledge of nature, to avoid detection by covering themselves in the pheromones of dying ants. They watched with cautious curiosity as new worker ants arrived and began to lift and carry the corpses of the dead ants away back down into the hive. Feeling brave the group decided to hitch a ride along with the dead ants and hid themselves among the corpses. The worker ants did not detect them, due to their camouflaging scents, and dutifully carried them away along with the dead ant husks.

Along the way Jym kept an eye on the crystal compass. As they passed a major crossroads the compass took a distinct turn, but the group was carried swiftly past the area. Suddenly the worker ants carried the party out into an open area and marched toward a cliff. Over the cliff was a massive midden heap largely made up of the corpses of giant ants. Before they could be tossed onto the heap the group was able to get safely off their rides. The workers were confused by these "dead ants" that moved and attempted to grab them and toss them into the pit, but the party fell back and stayed out of reach.

Just when it seemed that they had been backed into a corner a high pitched screech pierced the air. The sound seemed to come from deep within the hive and the worker ants immediately responded to the sound, surging back into the tunnels. When the cliff area was cleared the party was alone. They decided to go see what the commotion was about and followed the ants back inside. When they reached the cross-roads they had passed before they found a raging battle underway. An invading group of kruthick were fighting their way into the hive. Kruthick appear to be a twisted cross between insects and reptiles with poisonous spines protruding from their chitinous armor. Giant ants were swarming over the invaders and dying in droves as the much tougher kruthick tore them apart.

The high-pitched cry came again, this time sounding closer and coming from the tunnel the compass pointed out before. Jym checked it again and found that the crystal source was moving. Could it be a living thing? The party watched from the side-lines as the battle raged on and the ants began to lose ground to the invaders as more arrived. The huge ant queen entered the area, covered in crystal shards protruding from her massive body and pulsing with magical light. The newcomers attacked the party, pulling them into the combat.

Lethe charged past the middle of the fight to single out the queen. She lashed out with vicious kicks from her many legs and spitting acid. The kruthick shot poisonous spines at their enemies and cut and slashed with their razor sharp mandibles. Dawn noticed that patches of the tunnel gave off an arcane aura that could possibly be exploited offensively. She targeted one of these patches near the insectoid combatants with a burst attack and was rewarded by a chain reaction of arcane explosions, devastating the creatures. Scion's elemental attacks also reacted with the arcane patches, compounding damage on her targets. The party focused their attacks on the ant queen, weakening her, until the kruthick pulled her down and began to devour her. Most of the ants had been slain at this point.

A massive kruthick hive lord entered the fight, sending the remaining kruthick into a killing frenzy. Macros got its attention quickly and was savaged by it. Jym and Mongo stepped up to support Macros allowing him enough time to take his second wind. The front line fighters were drenched in venom spit from the hive lord. The party surrounded the remaining kruthick and eventually brought them all down. During the short breather after the fight Mongo collected poisonous spines from the kruthick and Jym harvested more chaos crystals from the corpse of the dead ant queen.