| Campaign 2000 6 November, 2000 |
Player Characters
The party headed down to the Sunless Citadel on the morning of the 12 day, 3 days before the Summer Solstice.
The trip was pretty routine at first. They climbed down the rope into the ravine. They walked down the zig-zagging stone stairs. They went to enter the fortress proper. And then it stopped being routine.
2 large dire rats came out of the surrounding rubble and attacked Lothar and Viper. The party turned to deal with the rats. Then the door to the tower that they had been about to enter opened up and a force of goblins weilding morningstars rushed out, accompanied by a big bugbear wearing a helmet with antlers.
The party fought well, killing 1 of the dire rats and 6 of the goblins, but were eventually overpowered and pummelled into unconsciousness.
Viper awoke first. The party was in a small stone room with a locked wooden door. They had none of their armor, weapons, or backpacks. Even their shoes were gone. Everyone kept very quiet as they pondered what to do. Viper sent his snake familiar under the door to look around and maybe find their equipment.
Lothar investigated the door, saw it was locked, and then searched the whole room looking for something he could use as a lockpick. Finding nothing, Torlic convinced him to just bash the door down. It took 3 tries.
The lone goblin, a survivor of their capture, was so surprised by the door being destroyed that he delayed running away and was killed by Drai.
The party found itself in a large cavern with glowing fungus on the walls, a large shaft in the ceiling leading up-up-up, and a huge pile of compost. 2 skeletons who had been tending the compost pile, and 2 twiggy-thorny creatures also in the cavern, rushed to attack the party. Being without weapons or armor, the party fought on the defensive, and was able to defeat the attackers without sustaining too much damage.
As they were assessing their situation after the short battle, Viper's snake reported that he had found "his home" (Viper's money pouch) and was going to take a nap. Viper sensed his familiar to the north, so the party headed that way.
The smaller cave to the north looked to be the living quarters of some big creature, but it also had their equipment stacked on a table. Since nothing appeared to be missing, it seemed that it had just been dropped their hurriedly. The party donned their things and went back to the larger cavern and looked up the shaft, wondering if that was the way out.
The shaft had a think vine attached to its walls, forming a natural ladder. Torlic, Drai, and Lothar climbed up the shaft, with Viper staying down to keep watch. Torlic, who was in the lead, heard goblin voices in the chamber above them and the party went back down.
The party left the large cavern in a tunnel heading south, which eventually was split by a rift in the stone. Exploring the tunnel beyond the rift, the party found an empty room, so they explored along the rift, going southwest.
In a cave off of the rift, the party disturbed a glowing rock worm thing. The party killed the worm, but not before it hurt Lothar enough (including setting him on fire) that he became unconscious.
The party decided to hole up in the cave to wait for Lothar to wake up. On a short scouting run, Torlic saw that a couple of goblins were coming down the tunnel, so the party setup an ambush-at-range.
The party setup another ambush at the point where the rift intersected the tunnel, and managed to surprise another group of 4 goblins, killing them all.
A surprise attack from further up the rift was thwarted by bad sneaking on the part of the attackers, so the party retreated from their ambush spot into the empty room they had discovered earlier.
Torlic scouted the rift to the northeast and found that it ended in a small storeroom. Using some of the rubble from the rift, he setup a small "alarm" to warn them if the door was opened again.
Back in their hidey-room, the party settled down to wait. 2 hours passed before they heard the door "alarm" rattle. Moving to where the tunnel insected the rift again, they waited for the attack. There was a small hoard of the twiggy-thorny creatures coming at them.
Retreating down the tunnel to their room, Torlic lobbed a makeshift molotov cocktail, and Viper followed it up with another pint of oil, catching a number of the creatures on fire. The party made their stand at the door of the room, taking some damage before the fire finally took out the last of their attackers.
After waiting for the fire to die down, Torlic again went out to scout. At the mouth of the tunnel, he was surprised to see the bugbear from before swinging a large morningstar at him. The attack missed, and that seemed to catch the bugbear by surprise since he ended up hitting himself with the weapon.
Torlic ran back to the room, just ahead of the bugbear, which burst into the middle of the room. The bugbear laid out Torlic and turned on Drai. Viper managed to hit the bugbear with several magic missiles, while Drai succeeded in stunning the bugbear. Between them they whittled it down rather quickly, though both of them were barely conscious by the time it was over. Feeling frustrated yet triumphant, Drai and Viper cut off the head of the bugbear, antler-ed helmet and all, sneaked up the tunnel to the big cavern with the compost, and threw it in, running back quickly.
The party managed to get about 16 hours of rest, which was enough to allow Lothar and Torlic to become conscious again, and even helped out Drai and Viper. Realizing that they couldn't just sit where they were any longer, the party struck out, heading up the rift.
The party explored a fairly large area, including several storerooms and subterranean arboretums. With a combination Viper's notorious sleep spells and range attacks, the party manages keep trudging forward, killing several goblins and even a couple more bugbears (gardners, so not as well-armed as the first one).
Finally, finding a staircase leading down, the party decides that it's going the Wrong Way, and that up the shaft is probably the best bet to getting out again. So they retraced their steps back to the large cavern with the shaft, surprising, frightening, and killing the 4 goblins stationed there to guard it.
Grabbing the bugbear's head, the party climbs up the shaft. They throw the head out of the shaft, and then all four swarm up out of the shaft, ready to take on whoever might be up there...and come up on the opposite side of the shaft hole, across from 5 hobgoblins, 1 of whom is seated on a crude throne.
Seizing the oppurtunity, the party flees the room down a side corridor, which leads to another, larger corridor. When they reached the end of this second corridor, they found the door blocked...because they had blocked it from the other side their last time down here...oh, the irony... ;-)
Backtracking a bit, the party took a different door, and found themselves in the trophy room where they had subdued the baby dragon, and charged out the back door...forgetting that there was a trap on the outside of that door...so Viper, who was in front, fell in...
A couple of goblins caught up with the party while Lothar was helping Viper out of the pit, but arrows from Torlic and sling stones from Drai kept them far enough back that the party could again start running again.
Now in familiar territory, the party kept going until it was out of the Sunless Citadel and climbing up the rope.
Back in town, having paid the gnome cleric, Corkie Nackle, to heal them up once again, the party began making plans to go back down and kill a lot of goblins...
The day they returned to Oakhurst was the day of the Summer Solstice. [an error occurred while processing this directive]