Bradley Keep - Session 6

Bradley Keep is the name of my Labyrinth Lord sandbox campaign. The goal is to highlight some of the best that the OSR community has to offer.

Date: Sunday April 15, 2012

Adventurers:

• Corolla Clayfoot - Halfling Fighter (Dan)
• Jaffa the Blade - Human Thief (Dan)
• Gork - Half Orc Fighter (Allen)
• Carl "Suicide Machine" Weathers - Human Magic User (Allen)
• Crimmin Thorndodger - Dwarf Fighter (Tim)
• Slynthe Vorhees - Human Cleric (Tim)
• Fin, Tylde, Crump, & Snape - Men at Arms (NPC)

Regular player Dave was unable to make it to the game this week. Since he was the only one to survive the blood-bath last session, I decided to run a side quest - Modnar's Cellar from Stonehell Supplement 2. Next game we'll pick up with him recruiting some new guys to finish the Shadowbrook Manor job.

Since we were missing the crux of the current story arc, I tossed this bone at the players -- They were recruited by the Keep guard to track down a bandit. I reward of 250 gp for his return or 100 gp for his corpse. Some information regarding his whereabouts was provided, in addition to 4 men-at-arms from the guard. The players took the job and headed towards the ruins.

Arriving there without incident, the group of ten quickly descended into the labyrinth. Tylde slipped on some slime on the steps, tumbled to the ground and made one hell of a racket. Wandering monster check - hit. A pair of skeletons lumber down the hall. Slynthe succeeds in turning them, so the party starts investigating. 

Heading down the eastern hallway, they find a statue of a wizard with a glowing stone in the chest. Not sure what to make of it, they had back down to the first room then continue west. They come across a room filled with rats and trash. No bandit, they the follow the hall to the south. After navigating the corridors for a bit, they come to a room guarded by a hungry albino ape. It charges the heroes, but misses with both claws. A pair of critical hits by Crimmin and Gork take it down. In the next room, Jaffa notices a pit trap in the floor. To be safe, they set off the trap, and again make a heck of a racket. No wandering monsters this time, although it does alert the two bugbears in the next room. The party crashes through the door, the bugbears launch themselves from the shadows and get the drop on the party. Tylde is run through by a spear, but the rest of the party makes quick work of the beasts (due to some lousy rolls on my part and good rolls by them). They snag the chest of electrum and move on.

They listen at the next room and hear a group of kobolds conversing about what they should do. In my mind, kobolds sort of sound like Beavis. "Dude...I don't think it's the bugbears." "Dude...who else would be out there?" "Dude...there are like, too many of them or something..." Instead of engaging, the party spikes the door from the outside. Thinking that someone is knocking, the kobolds call out, "Dude...we don't want any. Like go away or something." The players giggle about their cruel trick and move on.

They stumble into a low gravity training room, a library with a nasty crab spider, and a pile of refuse crawling with giant centipedes. Some lucking rolls and everyone is still standing. The thief managed to snag a new suit of +1 leather armor off a corpse and the magic user found an old spell book. 

The group enters a room to find a lone, unlocked chest. It was sitting on a carpet in the center of the room. A little leery, but not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouse, the thief approaches, checks for traps on the chest, and not finding any, opens the lid. Lifting the lid sets off a different trap -- an invisible net and pulley yank anyone on the carpet up to the ceiling. Since it was assumed that the other players were milling around in the room, I gave everyone besides the thief a save vs. paralyze to avoid being caught. Two of the guardsmen and Crimmin avoid the trap. At that point, the bandit saunters in saying, "Well what do we have here...." Then noticing the dwarf and the guardsmen, shouts "Oh SHIT!!" and takes off running. Crimmin takes advantage of his infravision while making chase and manages to catch up to the fleeing criminal, knocking him out with the flat of his sword, while the rest of the party takes to cutting themselves out of the net.

"Suicide Machine" wants to check out a couple of the other rooms on the way out. He finds a well that appears to be filled with quicksilver. Around the mouth of the well are some eldritch runes. He rips the Read Magic spell out of the newly found spell book, casts the spell (I have a house rule that spells in books can be used as scrolls, but the process destroys it), and discovers that swimming the well can impart some benefit on the character. In the end, Grok, "Suicide Machine", Corolla, and Jaffa swim the well. Everyone besides Corolla managed to increase one of their attributes (who lost a couple points of constitution).

The party lead the criminal back to town, collected their reward, and headed to the tavern to spend some of their hard earned loot.