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| There are many kobolds, but Sam Wood's 3e one is mine |
In which the party is nearly slaughtered by an owlbear in the very first room, avoids green slime and a giant spider, fails to search an unusually treasure-filled toilet, wanders around long stretches of empty corridor and battles some elite rootin’-tootin’ crossbow-shootin’ kobold guards. They do not find any money.
Trigg Sunbold, fighter 1: aspiring hero and party leader
Gimwort of Greydelve, dwarf 1: a doughty young dwarven warrior
Sassaran, elf 1: aloof elvish archer, doesn’t speak common
Eldred the Enchanter, illusionist 1: weak of body but sound of mind
Tansybell of Merry Meadow, halfling 1: a lass of great courage but little ability
Old Dolf, thief 1: how is this stupid old coot still alive?
LOG
Following the dubious guidance of Old Dolf, our group of greenhorn adventurers hikes the five miles north from the bucolic town of Eveningstar to Starwater Gorge.
TURN 1 – Since Dolf has never actually explored this dungeon beyond tailing other parties to the entrance and trying to steal stuff from their base camps, I rolled the oracle die to determine which entrance he would take them to. He picks the owlbear cave. Eldred and Old Dolf light their lanterns, and they venture inside.
TURN 2 – A1: Owlbear Lair. These dark passages have a musty, rank reek. Their uneven dirt floors are choked with gnawed and split bones, loose stones, and other rubble.
This is all pretty ominous for a bunch of 1st level PCs. I ruled that there was a reasonable chance that the party would get scared and leave, which they did. As the owlbear likes to lurk and attack intruders from behind, I rolled a Morale check to see if it would follow them out of the cave to kill them. With ML 9 this had a good chance of happening, but fortunately I rolled a 10. Perhaps the creature was asleep, or doesn’t like the sun.
TURN 3 – A2: Entry Doors. A short, rough-walled, square passage… lichen-encrusted and obviously unused… leads to two closed doors made of stout oak… Upon close examination, intricate twisting runes can be found carved on their panels.
As we’ll see, I think Ed Greenwood likes throwing out ominous little go-nowhere clues that are designed to scare and waste the players’ time. The “now-forgotten” runes protect against rot.
Ignoring the existence of the Read Magic spell, I decide that Eldred the Enchanter can tell that these are magical runes and has a vague understanding of what they do. He tells the party that it’s safe, so Trigg and Gimwort pull the doors open and the party enters The Haunted Halls of Eveningstar.
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| at last! |
Note: the module does not include a Wandering Monster table and the explanation for why the hell not (“the best encounters use creatures and situations deliberately chosen by the DM”) is buried at the end of the Introduction, which I hadn’t read. I didn’t want to kill my momentum at this early stage, so I didn’t roll for random encounters on this first delve.
TURN 4 – A3: Forechamber. A pile of weapons and a shield lie at the center of the chamber. A passage opens in the middle of the west wall, leading westward, but the way is barred by a pair of gates made of metal bars. Beyond them is a wooden tripod and loaded crossbow, pointing into this room!
Old Dolf stirs through the pile with his stick, triggering the dire warnings of a Magic Mouth: “Beware! These were carried in by those who will never carry them out again!”. Dolf hurries to his place at the back of the group, but Tansybell the Halfling has always wanted her very own sword from an ancient tomb (and I remembered that shortswords exist in OSE), so she selects a battered blade from the pile. Sassaran the Elf didn’t understand the warning anyway because she doesn’t speak Common, so she takes an old longsword.
TURNS 5-6 – A3: Forechamber. The party examines the portcullis blocking the (as far as they’re aware) only entrance out of this room. Lantern light reveals a broken crossbow trap that I’d completely forgotten about (it is actually broken in the module), and Trigg laughs. “Lucky for us! We’ll have to be more careful”. It takes him and Dolf a while to figure out the right leverage to hoist the gate open. Beyond the gate they come to a crossroads, and the dice determine that Trigg leads them left. I decide that “when in doubt, head left” is his preferred method of navigation.
TURN 7 – A4: Guardquarters. Smashed, triple-tiered wooden bunks line the walls. A table and six stools occupy the center of this room. Wooden chests can be seen under some of the bunks… Something odd and grey is huddled on the floor in front of the door: the shattered, petrified remains of a goblin.
Tansybell and Eldred examine the petrified goblin while Gimwort and Dolf look through the chests (all empty). Sassaran pokes her head into the nearby privy, her elvish eyes piercing the gloom to see “an evil-smelling hole, with a stout wooden seat wedged above it”.
I know that this room contains some really good treasure and a lurking 2HD spider, but I think Sassaran is pretty dismissive of a human dump and leaves without fully entering the chamber, telling Eldred it contains “nothing”.
TURN 8 – Thinking they’ve hit a dead-end, the party returns to the crossroads and heads left again.
TURN 9 – A8: Welcoming Trap. “A pair of closed bronze double doors, flanked by two bronze statues. The statues stand on stone pedestals and represent humans in archaic, fluted plate armor… Both are posed with one hand on sword-hilt and the other outstretched to indicate the doors between them. There is a faint metallic smell in the room, and the doors and statues radiate strong magic.”
This is a funny room. The doors aren’t locked, but the statues have a repeatable chain-lightning trap that has the potential to kill an entire party in one stroke.
Going by my own preferences and the way the room descriptions are written, I think that Eldred can just feel the strong magic in the same way that the others can smell the electricity. He’s not sure what they do, but it feels dangerous – which an observant player probably would’ve guessed anyway even without the hint.
While the party suspects a trap, neither Gimwort nor Old Dolf detect any obvious trigger mechanisms. The party discusses whether to brave the doors. Trigg and Dolf argue for it, but the other four agree that it seems too dangerous. They retreat.
TURN 10 – A6: Guardquarters. “This room appears empty. The doors in its north and west walls are closed. Its 14-foot-high ceiling is entirely covered by green slime”.
Old Dolf detects the slime with a Find Traps roll, but he’s at the back of the party holding his lantern. By the time he’s able to see the ceiling, the party’s front rank (Trigg and Gimwort) are probably in the room. I give the green slime disadvantage on its attack roll as it drops at Trigg, and it misses. With no suitable container to bottle and weaponize the slime, the party pours an oil flask on it and sets it on fire.
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| "You wouldn't burn a slime, wouldja?" |
TURN 11 – A7: Privy. “This passage leads to an evil-smelling hole,” etc.
Sassaran briefly scouts the privy with her darkvision and assumes it’s not worth exploring this one either.
(This toilet also contains some nice magic items and an evil bug, but she doesn’t know that)
They open the door to “A24: Ambush Elbow”. Old Dolf declines to scout the passage for traps (he thinks it’s too scary), so Trigg Sunbold triggers the waiting triple-crossbow trap, which shoots three bolts at +10 to hit (lmao). Amazingly, only one strikes our hero, who sustains a minor wound.
TURN 12 – A6: Guardquaters
I remember that you’re supposed to rest every 6th round in OSE, so the party retreats to examine Trigg’s wound. I roll on the “Dungeon Dressing” table and Old Dolf discovers three chests in the corner that they’d previously overlooked… all empty.
TURN 13 – A24: Ambush Corner
The party returns and examines the hallway to try and find the source of the trap. Sassaran does not detect the secret door, but Trigg does. They head through it and…
I discover that huge sections of the dungeon map are unkeyed in a very confusing way. Rather than describe a section of the dungeon and then tell you to fill the rest in, bits of the map are just unlabeled, with some keyed rooms separated by large stretches of blank rooms. In places some effort was made to wall these sections off with secret doors (presumably so that the DM would have time to key them, although the module never actually says to do this), but not others. Fortunately this was one of those sections, so I decided that they wouldn’t discover any secret doors this time and I’d think of a solution later. The end result was that they burnt several turns and lamp oil tramping through empty corridors.
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| Are we forever doomed to roam these Haunted Halls? |
TURNS 14-15 – Blank Corridors
TURN 16 – A25: Chamber of the Chain. “This 20’ x 40’ room holds only cobwebs, dust, and an 8 foot-long bronze chain hanging from a large, circular bronze boss set into the 15 foot-high ceiling. The bottom link of the chain has been twisted open, and whatever was on the end of it is gone.”
The best encounters use creatures and situations deliberately chosen by the DM.
TURNS 17-18 – Return to Blank Corridors
With no wandering monster checks this is just wasting lantern light.
TURN 19 – A6: Guardquarters.
The party rests and checks their supplies. Their lamp oil is getting a little low, but that stuff costs money so they decide to risk forging ahead.
TURN 20 – Return to Ambush Elbow
Proceeding down the corridor towards A21 “Kobold Guardroom,” Tansybell’s keen hobbit ears detect the elite kobold snipers in the next chamber. A roll determines that the kobolds are not surprised, so what she hears specifically is a kobold’s soft bark of warning (these guards are set to watch the chambers West of here and the party is coming up behind them). Trigg and Gimwort exchange a look and then burst through the door.
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TURN 21 – COMBAT in A21: Kobold Guardroom. “The room contains low wooden benches on the west and south walls, numerous weapons, and kobolds who keep watch here (and will fire without warning at any intruders)”
There are 8 kobold guards with max HP and some special rules for how slickly they can operate and shoot their special hand-crossbows (once per round, even with a shield). Fortunately the party is carrying lights and outside of the kobold’s preferred shooting gallery, which drops their to-hit bonus to a mere +1.
Sassaran opens the combat with a critical hit longbow kill, and the melee fighters wade in to slay two more and wound another. The kobolds pass multiple Morale checks (they are elite kobold guards after all), and Trigg is nearly killed in a hail of darts. Gimwort sustains only minor wounds but eventually succumbs to the sleeping venom coating the darts. Even Old Dolf manages to drop a wounded kobold with a thrown dagger, likely saving Trigg’s life.
The last kobold standing rings an alarm to alert the entire unkeyed kobold citadel that I just now learn exists until Trigg cuts it down.
TURNS 22-25 – Retreat!
With Trigg at 1 HP and two characters needed to support the sleeping Gimwort, the party grabs what they can and runs (which turns out to be a hand crossbow and d12 bolts apiece for Dolf and Tansy, as the kobolds carry no money) and runs for it before reinforcements can arrive.
Scanning the book for what I can find about this kobold citadel, it seems like all of their defensive plans involve preventing intruders from getting up at them from the dungeon. I decide that means they go into high alert, expecting an imminent attack, and that they don’t venture down into the dungeon for several hours until they’ve realized that no attack is coming.
The characters don’t know that, however, nor do they know about the 2d4 hours Gimwort has to sleep before the poison wears off. They spend the rest of the day huddled under a patch of scrubby trees, watching fretfully for a kobold army or whatever horrible creature lived in that cave to come out and get them.
When Gimwort finally wakes up they trudge the five miles out of Starwater Gorge and arrive at the inn in Eveningstar well after midnight.
THE TALLY
Enemies Slain
8 kobolds: 40 xp
1 green slime: 25 xp
Treasures Found
2 old swords: 0 xp
2 hand crossbows: 0 xp
Yield: 11 xp each and no money
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| The party's route on this delve |
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