Fear and Loathing in the Arduinian Wilderness
by: Ethan Karp, 2004, way back time machine
When we arrived at Dave’s house for the game, it turned out that Dave had not written up a game at all and said instead that he was open to “whatever we wanted to do”. We all knew that David was quite capable of writing up a game at the spur of the moment, so the four of us, Beth, Michelle, Marc and myself sat down and decided that we would put together a nice hefty group of PC’s, say 2-3 each, and go find one of the Great Mythical Treasures of Arduin. Michelle played a very tough 14th level Amazon named Chari-La, and Morweena, a tough elven mage of about 11th OP. Beth played Bimbila as usual, now about 12-13th level, another Amazon warrior named Suri-La, hearth-sister to Michelle’s and about 11th level, and a 8th level hobbit thief named Pembry Sweetfoot. Marc played a 12th level assassin named Davos and a low level human mage named Asden Whiterune. I played Shazzak, a 12/12 Buddhist monk/priest Death Ogre, Lysander, a Dwarven warrior/thief 14/14 and a 3rd level human priest of Skirin named Irm Bando.
We told Dave our plans and he seemed agreeable so we assembled this mighty group and hit the road. We had traveled about 3 days out of Talismonde and were traversing a forest approaching the mountains in which, according to our best info was a hidden crypt and the last resting place of the fabulous treasure we were seeking. We were camped out at the foot of the mountains when a white light awakened us suddenly. “Trespassers” said a voice. “Pay the price for your impertinence”. David then asked us to each take out a piece of paper, write down the names of each of our characters and then write down next to the characters name that characters “greatest fear”. With great trepidation we did so and passed him the notes. He studied them with an occasional chuckle and a sorry shake of his bearded head, and then finally turned to us.
One character at a time had to deal with his/her greatest fear materialized or made flesh. I only remember vaguely what the various fears were, one involved drowning, one involved being crushed slowly by a cave-in, one was being eaten by insects, one was being confronted by a Dragon that the character had robbed a long time ago. The two of mine I remember were: Lysander who was sired by a storm demon had to face his father and do battle with him. Shazzak who was a Buddhist priest/monk had to combat a Lich of the Dali Lama.
The aftermath of the battle was grim; out of the 10 of us, 8 of us were dead. Only Shazzak and Chari- La were standing. Chari-La was inconsolable, sobbing over the body of her sister. Shazzak grimly surveyed the corpses trying to figure out why his death-breaker wasn’t working. The voice we had heard earlier came back. “Alas, so many dead heroes. Whatever shall be done?” We looked up. A small, dark fuzzy figure stood there. “I am Blackie. King of all the evil Brownies. You trespassed on my property and have paid for your indiscretion with your lives. I am not entirely merciless however. For a price I will resurrect all your slain comrades.” “Name your price,” said Shazzak. Blackie chuckled. “The price is simple. Everything you carry. All your money, all your goods.”
I looked around at the other players. Four pairs of mouths hung open in shock. Michelle said, “You mean all OUR stuff, right? The two people who are still alive?” Dave looked at her. “Watch my lips move,” he said. “EVERYTHING”. I looked down at my characters and gulped. Lysander by himself had a stack of items about half an inch thick and about 55,000. GP. “Don’t do it man” said Marc looking at me. “We’ll figure out another way”.
Dave looked at him. “Do you have a player here who isn’t dead? No? Then don’t say anything.” I looked at Michelle. “Shazzak will go over to Chari-La and ask her what she thinks”. Michelle looked grim. “She’s crying over her dead sister and won’t even look up at you. She’s clearly leaving it up to you”. “Great” I said. Well, my character was a Buddhist. He looked at the dead comrades and made the choice in a split second. “Agreed. You may have everything we carry. All of our money and items of value in exchange for the lives of our friends. I assume we may keep the clothes on our backs and our non-magical equipment?” Dave pursed his lips. “Noooo, I don’t think so. I said ‘everything’ and I meant it.” “Very well, your majesty. It is all yours.”
With some sobbing and cursing we all handed over all of our carded items and began erasing stuff from our character sheets. The final stack of items from everyone was 3 inches thick. “Wow” said David. He held up the stack. “Look at that. I think that’s the most items I’ve ever taken from a group. Heh.” We were un-amused.
So, Blackie raised all the dead PC’s and there we were. The 8 fallen characters were alive but incapable of any action as they recuperated. We sat in the woods, naked, with no weapons, no horses, no money, no nothing. Ten characters of 3rd to 14th level and we didn’t even have food or a means of making fire. We didn’t have a blanket. Chari-La got busy making a fire from scratch, and Shazzak went into the woods, grabbed a enormous branch to use as a club (we didn’t even have a knife to make a pointed stick) and went hunting war-ogre style till he could run down a deer and club it death for food. Then he stripped off the skin with his bare claws, ripped off a haunch of venison and we roasted it over the fire. We used the skin to make hasty loincloths and hiked barefoot to the nearest outpost of civilization, a small castle with a minor lordling in attendance. He was nice enough to take us in and give us some basic clothing to wear and let us ride loaner horses with the next caravan back to Talismonde.
We limped into town depressed, downtrodden, impoverished but still undaunted. Two of the characters had some money stashed away at Multiversal Trading Company and the total amount pooled came out to about 30,000 GP. We decided this: We would take the money and buy the best magical equipment that we could. We would then go to the nearest basic low-level dungeon that we could find and try to recoup some of our grievous losses. It was agreed that the 30,000 GP would be paid back out of whatever booty we could find. We bought things like +2/+1 broadswords, +2 chain mail, a ring of +1 str., a +2 shield that could cast “light” 3 times/day, +1 leather armor that protected the wearer 25% from fire, stuff like that. We bought basic equipment and rations. We spent every copper of the 30,000 GP outfitting ourselves and made our way to some beeny little dungeon called “Cloud Castle” or something like that. It was about a 4 day walk (we couldn’t afford horses) out of Talismonde, most of it on main or secondary roads.
We arrived and entered. A hallway going straight away from us with doors on either side confronted us. The group seemed intent on ignoring the doors and plunging straight into the place with an eye towards going to one of the lower levels. We were all outfitted now with gear (such as it was), we were badass and were ready to go mix it up and take out our frustrations on something nasty. Irm Bando thought it was silly to ignore the two doors, but he was mostly argued down by the more experienced adventurers who said that anything decent on the first level would already have been picked clean by prior adventuring parties. Stubbornly he insisted that they check at least one door and if nothing panned out, he would grudgingly agree to just plunge ahead instead of being systematic. “Fine” they said, “then you get to go in first”. “My pleasure” he replied. He opened the door, the room looked to be about 15 ft square with furnishings of some type against the far wall. He stepped into the room...and disappeared. “T-PORTED! GODDAMIT” Someone yelled. “Freaking stupid priest wouldn’t listen to us and now he teleported!” “We must follow him of course,” said Chari-La, the Amazon. “We cannot leave a comrade behind.” There was some argument and discussion and lots of trash talking about Irm Bando and his willful ways, but the decision was a foregone conclusion and we all knew it. One by one we each stepped into the room and t-ported.
We found ourselves in darkness. Someone brought out some lanterns and we lit them. We were apparently in some kind of cavern, stretching up and away past the limits of the light. Irm Bando was sitting there with a bleak look on his face. “Sorry about that” he said, “but I’m sure glad you good people followed me.” “Huh. I guess we’re under the tower in some kind of cave system” said someone. Dave sat impassively. “Have Lysander roll a D12,” he said. “10” I replied. “Lysander falls to his knees clutching his head and moaning a low moan,” said David. We all looked around each other confused. “Is he in pain?” I asked, concerned. “No” David answered, drawing it out. “He’s a dwarf. Dwarves can instinctively sense things like depth underground, densities of rock, etc. Lysander has just realized that there is approximately 4 1⁄2 MILES of rock over his head. You are 4 1⁄2 MILES underground. Undoubtedly deeper than you have ever been before.” We looked at each other again. “Then where the f*ck are we?” asked Marc. Dave was silent. We got our group together, picked a direction and started moving out.
It was quickly determined that we were in a single, vast cavern with 3 smaller tunnels running out of it. The "smaller” tunnels were still each about 100 ft in diameter. We picked one at random simply because Lysander determined it was running roughly north, and started up. We heard commotion up ahead and advanced cautiously. Around a bend we saw a disquieting vista indeed: 3 Valpyr’s were in battle with each other. We decided not to take that tunnel and went back to the cavern. We picked a second tunnel, and after a few hundred yards heard more sound up ahead. We turned yet another bend and saw a train-sized silver slyth meandering about, apparently aimlessly. We turned around and headed back to the cavern.
We were discussing things in general, like what to do next, when Dave passed Michelle a note. Michelle put her face into her hands and made a muffled sound. She looked up at us. “You see Chari- la freeze and turn white.” Michelle said. “She looks absolutely terrified”. Someone asked the amazon what was wrong. “I’ve been here before” she whispered. “I recognize these tunnels, and the things we just saw...this can only be one place.” We looked at her, waiting. “This is The Great Wurm Road. Possibly the most dangerous place in all of Arduin. And, if Lysander is correct about our depth, we are at the bottom of it.” We were silent. “I came in here once, years ago with a powerful party of heroes” she continued. “We only penetrated the very early, shallow areas before we had to flee for our lives.” Pause. “We’re all going to die here”. She turned and began praying to Megalon. We looked at each other bleakly. “All right, people. Look.” Said Lysander to the group. “We’ve been kicked around quite a bit since we started this little jaunt. We’ve been slain by our greatest fears, had all our belongings stripped from us, wore bloody deerskins as clothing and limped our way out of the wilderness only to re-gear, come back and now this; we’re dumped into a place that’s going to try it’s best to kill us.” He stood in front of the group, fists on hips, challenging.
“Are we going to quit now? No. We’re going to go up that third tunnel. If something gets in our way, we’re going to go thru it. We’re going to keep heading upward and we’re going to kill anything that tries to stop us and we’re getting out of here. Now let’s go.” Well it was mostly bravado, but it seemed to work and soon everyone was headed up the third tunnel in formation. We passed branches, but with a combination of Dwarven instinct and priestly “boding” we managed to stay on what we believed to be the main pathway. We avoided some encounters with Balrogs, slimes and a Maggoth, and eventually found ourselves in an area where the tunnel widened out into a long oval shape. At the far end, the main tunnel continued up. At the left side of the oval however was a truly MASSIVE set of double black iron doors - the first actual construction we had seen thus far – guarded by a matched pair of Manticores. They hadn’t seen us, and with a combination of surprise, distance weapons and some spells, we managed to kill them with only a few scratches to show for it. Preening ourselves in our glee at finally having a successful encounter, we decided to throw caution to the wind and have a peek behind the doors.
The huge doors swung open easily and silently. We stood there looking into the room with our jaws hanging down around our feet once Dave described the scene. It was a fairly good-sized room, roughly rectangular, about 30 x 60 feet and carved from black basalt. It was LITERALLY COVERED with treasure. Gold and gems layered the entire floor 1-3 feet DEEP. Fantastical items lay scattered about like so much discarded trash.
Pembry the hobbit thief started quivering like an Aspen leaf. One of our mages did a mass detect magic and was almost BLINDED by the sheer number of magically glowing items in the place. “It’s gotta be an illusion” someone said.
“There is NO WAY this treasure is sitting here guarded by nothing but a pair of Manticores”. “Why not”? David asked. “Maybe it’s been sitting here for a thousand years. Manticores are practically immortal. Maybe it’s the horde of someone who has been dead for centuries. Or maybe not. You just don’t know. What I want to know is, what are you all doing?” We looked at each other, shrugged and poured into the room. “Ok” said Lysander. “Lets do this systematically. Let’s have that detect again, and this time our mage will point out exactly what items are magical. Four of us will gather items, the rest of us will start finding sacks and stuffing as much gems and gold as we can stuff. Remember, gems first, we don’t have bags of holding anymore.”
We had barely started getting ready to loot to our heart’s content when someone accidentally kicked over a large chalice-looking object half buried in the gold. A tiny winged glowing figure flew out of it and started buzzing around the room squeaking in Pixie for a second and then reverting to low Elvish. “Find the HORN!” it squeaked. “Find the horn before HE comes! The alarm has rung! He’s coming! FIND THE HORN!!!!”. We didn’t need to be told again. We started scrabbling around the room looking for a horn. We took the pixie quite seriously. A pair of huge black doors started to form at the other side of the room and the doors we had entered thru clanged shut with a final sort of clang. We searched madly. The new black doors started to swing open and we could see a shape behind them, dimly. The figure strode into the room. It was apparently humanoid. It looked like a youngish man a long black cloak His features were perfect, his skin looked like black porcelain. His eyes were pools of solid black shimmer that radiated evil. A faint smile was on his face. The doors closed behind him. “Thieves” he said calmly. “Now you will all die”.
We charged. “Pembry, Asden and Irm, find the horn! The rest of us attack!” Lysander yelled. The fight began. The man in black with the faint smile did not seem concerned. He reached out lackadaisically and touched Suri-La with his hand. “Roll a save for Suri-La” said Dave, “Your save is at –8”. Beth rolled a 15. “She drops to the floor dead” said Dave, impassively. “We’re in bad trouble,” someone said. We began wailing on the man in black, our blows were barely noticed.
“Pembry, roll a D12” said David. “9” said Beth. “You see an intricately carved Viking-type golden horn sitting on the gold coins, with a silver mouthpiece. “I found it” yelled Pembry. “Use it!” Lysander yelled back. “Pembry raises the horn to his lips and blows it as loud as he can” said Beth. The horn resounded in the room over the clash of our battle.
The pixie, still buzzing around the room squealed out “NOT THAT HORN! That the WRONG horn! FIND THE HORN! Nothing else will harm the Ultimate Demon!!” We paled. We kept fighting.
The man in black reached out to touch Shazzak. Shazzak used his option to parry the hand with his naginata and then counter-attacked hitting him 3 times and doing only “plus” damage. Pembry, Asden and Irm scrambled around trying to find another horn. The rest of us fought the Ultimate Demon doing 1-2 pts per hit against him. The pixie flew around firing pixie blasts into his face to try and blind him. He reached out again and touched Shazzak, a D20 was rolled and the Death Ogre fell to the ground dead. The Ultimate Demon still smiled and still looked amused and casual as he strode this way and that. He touched Chari-La and down she went. Bimbila stabbed him from behind and did some damage. He reached out and killed her. Four of us were now dead. Morweena the mage was having some small effect on him, she used homing mystic darts and enhanced webs and it was annoying The Ultimate Demon enough so that he pursed his smiling lips and walked over to her and touched her on the forehead. Death #5.
“Irm, roll a D12” said David. “7, plus two because I’m currently blessed, so it’s 9” I replied. “You see a narrow, ebony box half buried in gold, do you want to take the time to open it, or move on? It will take you 2 options to get the box, and open it, assuming it isn’t locked or trapped”. Dave smiled. “I’ll go for the box, Monte,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “Fine. We’ll return to you in a moment.” At this point, only Lysander and Davos the assassin were engaged in hand to hand with the demon. Asden Whiterune, seeing Morweena go down started firing more mystic darts and tangle traps. With the smile on his lips and ignoring Lysander and Davos’ pathetic attempts to hurt him, the Demon strode over to Asden and touched him. 6 dead. “Irm has the box, he’ll open it on his next option” David reported. Lysander and Davos whirled and parried, and attacked, trying to avoid being touched. Lysander got touched. “Roll a D20 said David calmly. I rolled...it was a 20. “Holy Crap” I muttered. The fight went on. “Irm opens the box,” explained David “to find a 2-foot long, white, spiraling, stick- like object tapering to a point. Have Irm roll his intelligence.” He rolled it successfully. Dave passed me a note. “It appears to him be a Unicorns horn” the note read.
My heart leapt. Irm ran with the horn into the fray. “Demon!” he screamed. The figure in black turned and Irm struck. It stabbed into The Ultimate Demon who made a snarling gasp and his smile disappeared. At this point, Irm, Pembry, Davos and Lysander were left. (Plus the pixie). “For the first time, The Demon turns on his Demon fear. Anyone alive who is 8th level or less?” Irm and Pembry. “Irm and Pembry scream and run at the locked doors you entered the room by. They are trying to claw their way out.” Said David. Davos snatched up the horn and made an attack. The Ultimate Demon screeched in anger and pain. Critical hit. “Chest. Impalement. Weapon is stuck there.” Said David. “I try to pull it out” said Marc “hopefully doing more damage as I extract it”. The Demon reached out and touched Davos.
7 out of 10 dead. The Demon stood in the center of the room and grasped the handle of the unicorn horn snarling as he tried to pull it from his chest. It was Lysander’s option. “I charge him, and I’m going to try smash into the horn with my body and push it deeper into him”. “Hmm” said Dave thoughtfully. “Ok, make an attack roll”. I rolled. The 20-sider came up 20. Dave’s eyebrows raised. “Interesting. I’ll give you 3 chances to roll an applicable critical hit”. 39. “Nope” said David. 54. “Head, general. Nope” said David. Everyone held his or her breaths. Roll. 72. David pursed his lips. Cocked his head. Smiled impishly. “You see The Ultimate Demon’s eyes widen. His mouth opens slightly, he looks rather astonished.” He paused. “He then crumples to the floor. His eyes are still open in shock as he begins to fade away. Pembry and Irm stop trying to claw their way thru the doors.” Dave closed AG I with a snap. “Heart Pierced. Die Immediately” he said. “Lucky shot”. Everyone let out his or her breaths.
“We don’t have much time,” squeaked the pixie. “I am Entellia, princess of the Pixie kingdom and you have rescued me. I can gate us all to my father’s kingdom where we can help your friends, but we must hurry. The Ultimate Demon is only sent back to his plane. In minutes, he will return.” “How many minutes?” asked Lysander. The pixie shrugged. “I will begin to cast the gate, it will take a few of minutes to do so. In the meantime, do whatever you wish.” Lysander and Pembry snapped into action. After gathering together the 8 bodies and putting them into the area where the gate would appear, we told David we were going to stuff every item that looked interesting and all the gems we could grab into whatever bags we could scrounge. “You have 2 minutes to grab what you can.” Said David. “Irm is a priest, and his mass detect will only tell you what is magic, not how good it is, but both of you are thieves. Tell me your levels, and then both of you roll percent die and try to roll as high as you can. The higher you roll, the better choices you’ll make given the fact that you don’t have the time to study the stuff.” We rolled. I made a 54, Pembry rolled a 94. “Ok.” Said David. For the next 2 minutes the three of you will grab whatever you can”. 2 minutes passed. Pembry and Lysander grabbed items, Irm stuffed gems into a hastily emptied backpack. “An orb of light expands to cover your friends. The Pixie looks exhausted. She’s weaving around as she flies. You hear a sound coming from the doors.” We split.
Well, the Pixie King was quite pleased to have his daughter back after thinking she had been dead for 75 years while she was trapped in The Ultimate Demon’s horde. He gladly raised everyone fully, performed complete detects on our new items and returned us to Talismonde with thanks. All 10 of us survived. David said he needed about 30 minutes. We roleplayed for that time and then he came back to the table.
“Are you ready?” he asked with that Dave smile. “Are we ever” said Michelle. Ever the showman, Dave nodded to himself. He took a breath and let it out. He cleared his throat. “David!” Yelled Beth. “Come ON”. Dave chuckled. “My” he said. “Aren’t we the anxious one”. “DAVE!” we all yelled. “Well” he said. “Let’s see what happened. Pembry, Irm and Lysander had 2 minutes to grab everything they could. They naturally concentrated primarily on items. Pembry is an 8th level thief and rolled a 94, which was an excellent roll. Lysander rolled only a 54, not nearly as good but he’s a 14th level thief and much better at appraising items on the fly. Here’s what they managed to come up with.” Dave came out from under the table with a stack of cards. He began laying them out on the table. Flipping them down one by one. He laid more of them down. More. “Oh god” said Beth. He lay even more of them down. They were forming rows. “Holy crap” said I. When he was done, the tabletop was covered with carded items. “Luckily for you, this being a greater demon horde, almost every item in the room was magical. By my count, you looted....67 magic items.” Stunned silence. “Oh, and exactly 179,532 GS in gems” he said offhandedly. “Not really a bad haul at all, wouldn’t you say?” We nodded dumbly. “And now” he said “Let’s see what they all do.....”
This will live in my memory as one of the most harrowing, roller coasters of any Hargrave games I had the pleasure to live through.
by: Ethan Karp, 2004, way back time machine
When we arrived at Dave’s house for the game, it turned out that Dave had not written up a game at all and said instead that he was open to “whatever we wanted to do”. We all knew that David was quite capable of writing up a game at the spur of the moment, so the four of us, Beth, Michelle, Marc and myself sat down and decided that we would put together a nice hefty group of PC’s, say 2-3 each, and go find one of the Great Mythical Treasures of Arduin. Michelle played a very tough 14th level Amazon named Chari-La, and Morweena, a tough elven mage of about 11th OP. Beth played Bimbila as usual, now about 12-13th level, another Amazon warrior named Suri-La, hearth-sister to Michelle’s and about 11th level, and a 8th level hobbit thief named Pembry Sweetfoot. Marc played a 12th level assassin named Davos and a low level human mage named Asden Whiterune. I played Shazzak, a 12/12 Buddhist monk/priest Death Ogre, Lysander, a Dwarven warrior/thief 14/14 and a 3rd level human priest of Skirin named Irm Bando.
We told Dave our plans and he seemed agreeable so we assembled this mighty group and hit the road. We had traveled about 3 days out of Talismonde and were traversing a forest approaching the mountains in which, according to our best info was a hidden crypt and the last resting place of the fabulous treasure we were seeking. We were camped out at the foot of the mountains when a white light awakened us suddenly. “Trespassers” said a voice. “Pay the price for your impertinence”. David then asked us to each take out a piece of paper, write down the names of each of our characters and then write down next to the characters name that characters “greatest fear”. With great trepidation we did so and passed him the notes. He studied them with an occasional chuckle and a sorry shake of his bearded head, and then finally turned to us.
One character at a time had to deal with his/her greatest fear materialized or made flesh. I only remember vaguely what the various fears were, one involved drowning, one involved being crushed slowly by a cave-in, one was being eaten by insects, one was being confronted by a Dragon that the character had robbed a long time ago. The two of mine I remember were: Lysander who was sired by a storm demon had to face his father and do battle with him. Shazzak who was a Buddhist priest/monk had to combat a Lich of the Dali Lama.
The aftermath of the battle was grim; out of the 10 of us, 8 of us were dead. Only Shazzak and Chari- La were standing. Chari-La was inconsolable, sobbing over the body of her sister. Shazzak grimly surveyed the corpses trying to figure out why his death-breaker wasn’t working. The voice we had heard earlier came back. “Alas, so many dead heroes. Whatever shall be done?” We looked up. A small, dark fuzzy figure stood there. “I am Blackie. King of all the evil Brownies. You trespassed on my property and have paid for your indiscretion with your lives. I am not entirely merciless however. For a price I will resurrect all your slain comrades.” “Name your price,” said Shazzak. Blackie chuckled. “The price is simple. Everything you carry. All your money, all your goods.”
I looked around at the other players. Four pairs of mouths hung open in shock. Michelle said, “You mean all OUR stuff, right? The two people who are still alive?” Dave looked at her. “Watch my lips move,” he said. “EVERYTHING”. I looked down at my characters and gulped. Lysander by himself had a stack of items about half an inch thick and about 55,000. GP. “Don’t do it man” said Marc looking at me. “We’ll figure out another way”.
Dave looked at him. “Do you have a player here who isn’t dead? No? Then don’t say anything.” I looked at Michelle. “Shazzak will go over to Chari-La and ask her what she thinks”. Michelle looked grim. “She’s crying over her dead sister and won’t even look up at you. She’s clearly leaving it up to you”. “Great” I said. Well, my character was a Buddhist. He looked at the dead comrades and made the choice in a split second. “Agreed. You may have everything we carry. All of our money and items of value in exchange for the lives of our friends. I assume we may keep the clothes on our backs and our non-magical equipment?” Dave pursed his lips. “Noooo, I don’t think so. I said ‘everything’ and I meant it.” “Very well, your majesty. It is all yours.”
With some sobbing and cursing we all handed over all of our carded items and began erasing stuff from our character sheets. The final stack of items from everyone was 3 inches thick. “Wow” said David. He held up the stack. “Look at that. I think that’s the most items I’ve ever taken from a group. Heh.” We were un-amused.
So, Blackie raised all the dead PC’s and there we were. The 8 fallen characters were alive but incapable of any action as they recuperated. We sat in the woods, naked, with no weapons, no horses, no money, no nothing. Ten characters of 3rd to 14th level and we didn’t even have food or a means of making fire. We didn’t have a blanket. Chari-La got busy making a fire from scratch, and Shazzak went into the woods, grabbed a enormous branch to use as a club (we didn’t even have a knife to make a pointed stick) and went hunting war-ogre style till he could run down a deer and club it death for food. Then he stripped off the skin with his bare claws, ripped off a haunch of venison and we roasted it over the fire. We used the skin to make hasty loincloths and hiked barefoot to the nearest outpost of civilization, a small castle with a minor lordling in attendance. He was nice enough to take us in and give us some basic clothing to wear and let us ride loaner horses with the next caravan back to Talismonde.
We limped into town depressed, downtrodden, impoverished but still undaunted. Two of the characters had some money stashed away at Multiversal Trading Company and the total amount pooled came out to about 30,000 GP. We decided this: We would take the money and buy the best magical equipment that we could. We would then go to the nearest basic low-level dungeon that we could find and try to recoup some of our grievous losses. It was agreed that the 30,000 GP would be paid back out of whatever booty we could find. We bought things like +2/+1 broadswords, +2 chain mail, a ring of +1 str., a +2 shield that could cast “light” 3 times/day, +1 leather armor that protected the wearer 25% from fire, stuff like that. We bought basic equipment and rations. We spent every copper of the 30,000 GP outfitting ourselves and made our way to some beeny little dungeon called “Cloud Castle” or something like that. It was about a 4 day walk (we couldn’t afford horses) out of Talismonde, most of it on main or secondary roads.
We arrived and entered. A hallway going straight away from us with doors on either side confronted us. The group seemed intent on ignoring the doors and plunging straight into the place with an eye towards going to one of the lower levels. We were all outfitted now with gear (such as it was), we were badass and were ready to go mix it up and take out our frustrations on something nasty. Irm Bando thought it was silly to ignore the two doors, but he was mostly argued down by the more experienced adventurers who said that anything decent on the first level would already have been picked clean by prior adventuring parties. Stubbornly he insisted that they check at least one door and if nothing panned out, he would grudgingly agree to just plunge ahead instead of being systematic. “Fine” they said, “then you get to go in first”. “My pleasure” he replied. He opened the door, the room looked to be about 15 ft square with furnishings of some type against the far wall. He stepped into the room...and disappeared. “T-PORTED! GODDAMIT” Someone yelled. “Freaking stupid priest wouldn’t listen to us and now he teleported!” “We must follow him of course,” said Chari-La, the Amazon. “We cannot leave a comrade behind.” There was some argument and discussion and lots of trash talking about Irm Bando and his willful ways, but the decision was a foregone conclusion and we all knew it. One by one we each stepped into the room and t-ported.
We found ourselves in darkness. Someone brought out some lanterns and we lit them. We were apparently in some kind of cavern, stretching up and away past the limits of the light. Irm Bando was sitting there with a bleak look on his face. “Sorry about that” he said, “but I’m sure glad you good people followed me.” “Huh. I guess we’re under the tower in some kind of cave system” said someone. Dave sat impassively. “Have Lysander roll a D12,” he said. “10” I replied. “Lysander falls to his knees clutching his head and moaning a low moan,” said David. We all looked around each other confused. “Is he in pain?” I asked, concerned. “No” David answered, drawing it out. “He’s a dwarf. Dwarves can instinctively sense things like depth underground, densities of rock, etc. Lysander has just realized that there is approximately 4 1⁄2 MILES of rock over his head. You are 4 1⁄2 MILES underground. Undoubtedly deeper than you have ever been before.” We looked at each other again. “Then where the f*ck are we?” asked Marc. Dave was silent. We got our group together, picked a direction and started moving out.
It was quickly determined that we were in a single, vast cavern with 3 smaller tunnels running out of it. The "smaller” tunnels were still each about 100 ft in diameter. We picked one at random simply because Lysander determined it was running roughly north, and started up. We heard commotion up ahead and advanced cautiously. Around a bend we saw a disquieting vista indeed: 3 Valpyr’s were in battle with each other. We decided not to take that tunnel and went back to the cavern. We picked a second tunnel, and after a few hundred yards heard more sound up ahead. We turned yet another bend and saw a train-sized silver slyth meandering about, apparently aimlessly. We turned around and headed back to the cavern.
We were discussing things in general, like what to do next, when Dave passed Michelle a note. Michelle put her face into her hands and made a muffled sound. She looked up at us. “You see Chari- la freeze and turn white.” Michelle said. “She looks absolutely terrified”. Someone asked the amazon what was wrong. “I’ve been here before” she whispered. “I recognize these tunnels, and the things we just saw...this can only be one place.” We looked at her, waiting. “This is The Great Wurm Road. Possibly the most dangerous place in all of Arduin. And, if Lysander is correct about our depth, we are at the bottom of it.” We were silent. “I came in here once, years ago with a powerful party of heroes” she continued. “We only penetrated the very early, shallow areas before we had to flee for our lives.” Pause. “We’re all going to die here”. She turned and began praying to Megalon. We looked at each other bleakly. “All right, people. Look.” Said Lysander to the group. “We’ve been kicked around quite a bit since we started this little jaunt. We’ve been slain by our greatest fears, had all our belongings stripped from us, wore bloody deerskins as clothing and limped our way out of the wilderness only to re-gear, come back and now this; we’re dumped into a place that’s going to try it’s best to kill us.” He stood in front of the group, fists on hips, challenging.
“Are we going to quit now? No. We’re going to go up that third tunnel. If something gets in our way, we’re going to go thru it. We’re going to keep heading upward and we’re going to kill anything that tries to stop us and we’re getting out of here. Now let’s go.” Well it was mostly bravado, but it seemed to work and soon everyone was headed up the third tunnel in formation. We passed branches, but with a combination of Dwarven instinct and priestly “boding” we managed to stay on what we believed to be the main pathway. We avoided some encounters with Balrogs, slimes and a Maggoth, and eventually found ourselves in an area where the tunnel widened out into a long oval shape. At the far end, the main tunnel continued up. At the left side of the oval however was a truly MASSIVE set of double black iron doors - the first actual construction we had seen thus far – guarded by a matched pair of Manticores. They hadn’t seen us, and with a combination of surprise, distance weapons and some spells, we managed to kill them with only a few scratches to show for it. Preening ourselves in our glee at finally having a successful encounter, we decided to throw caution to the wind and have a peek behind the doors.
The huge doors swung open easily and silently. We stood there looking into the room with our jaws hanging down around our feet once Dave described the scene. It was a fairly good-sized room, roughly rectangular, about 30 x 60 feet and carved from black basalt. It was LITERALLY COVERED with treasure. Gold and gems layered the entire floor 1-3 feet DEEP. Fantastical items lay scattered about like so much discarded trash.
Pembry the hobbit thief started quivering like an Aspen leaf. One of our mages did a mass detect magic and was almost BLINDED by the sheer number of magically glowing items in the place. “It’s gotta be an illusion” someone said.
“There is NO WAY this treasure is sitting here guarded by nothing but a pair of Manticores”. “Why not”? David asked. “Maybe it’s been sitting here for a thousand years. Manticores are practically immortal. Maybe it’s the horde of someone who has been dead for centuries. Or maybe not. You just don’t know. What I want to know is, what are you all doing?” We looked at each other, shrugged and poured into the room. “Ok” said Lysander. “Lets do this systematically. Let’s have that detect again, and this time our mage will point out exactly what items are magical. Four of us will gather items, the rest of us will start finding sacks and stuffing as much gems and gold as we can stuff. Remember, gems first, we don’t have bags of holding anymore.”
We had barely started getting ready to loot to our heart’s content when someone accidentally kicked over a large chalice-looking object half buried in the gold. A tiny winged glowing figure flew out of it and started buzzing around the room squeaking in Pixie for a second and then reverting to low Elvish. “Find the HORN!” it squeaked. “Find the horn before HE comes! The alarm has rung! He’s coming! FIND THE HORN!!!!”. We didn’t need to be told again. We started scrabbling around the room looking for a horn. We took the pixie quite seriously. A pair of huge black doors started to form at the other side of the room and the doors we had entered thru clanged shut with a final sort of clang. We searched madly. The new black doors started to swing open and we could see a shape behind them, dimly. The figure strode into the room. It was apparently humanoid. It looked like a youngish man a long black cloak His features were perfect, his skin looked like black porcelain. His eyes were pools of solid black shimmer that radiated evil. A faint smile was on his face. The doors closed behind him. “Thieves” he said calmly. “Now you will all die”.
We charged. “Pembry, Asden and Irm, find the horn! The rest of us attack!” Lysander yelled. The fight began. The man in black with the faint smile did not seem concerned. He reached out lackadaisically and touched Suri-La with his hand. “Roll a save for Suri-La” said Dave, “Your save is at –8”. Beth rolled a 15. “She drops to the floor dead” said Dave, impassively. “We’re in bad trouble,” someone said. We began wailing on the man in black, our blows were barely noticed.
“Pembry, roll a D12” said David. “9” said Beth. “You see an intricately carved Viking-type golden horn sitting on the gold coins, with a silver mouthpiece. “I found it” yelled Pembry. “Use it!” Lysander yelled back. “Pembry raises the horn to his lips and blows it as loud as he can” said Beth. The horn resounded in the room over the clash of our battle.
The pixie, still buzzing around the room squealed out “NOT THAT HORN! That the WRONG horn! FIND THE HORN! Nothing else will harm the Ultimate Demon!!” We paled. We kept fighting.
The man in black reached out to touch Shazzak. Shazzak used his option to parry the hand with his naginata and then counter-attacked hitting him 3 times and doing only “plus” damage. Pembry, Asden and Irm scrambled around trying to find another horn. The rest of us fought the Ultimate Demon doing 1-2 pts per hit against him. The pixie flew around firing pixie blasts into his face to try and blind him. He reached out again and touched Shazzak, a D20 was rolled and the Death Ogre fell to the ground dead. The Ultimate Demon still smiled and still looked amused and casual as he strode this way and that. He touched Chari-La and down she went. Bimbila stabbed him from behind and did some damage. He reached out and killed her. Four of us were now dead. Morweena the mage was having some small effect on him, she used homing mystic darts and enhanced webs and it was annoying The Ultimate Demon enough so that he pursed his smiling lips and walked over to her and touched her on the forehead. Death #5.
“Irm, roll a D12” said David. “7, plus two because I’m currently blessed, so it’s 9” I replied. “You see a narrow, ebony box half buried in gold, do you want to take the time to open it, or move on? It will take you 2 options to get the box, and open it, assuming it isn’t locked or trapped”. Dave smiled. “I’ll go for the box, Monte,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “Fine. We’ll return to you in a moment.” At this point, only Lysander and Davos the assassin were engaged in hand to hand with the demon. Asden Whiterune, seeing Morweena go down started firing more mystic darts and tangle traps. With the smile on his lips and ignoring Lysander and Davos’ pathetic attempts to hurt him, the Demon strode over to Asden and touched him. 6 dead. “Irm has the box, he’ll open it on his next option” David reported. Lysander and Davos whirled and parried, and attacked, trying to avoid being touched. Lysander got touched. “Roll a D20 said David calmly. I rolled...it was a 20. “Holy Crap” I muttered. The fight went on. “Irm opens the box,” explained David “to find a 2-foot long, white, spiraling, stick- like object tapering to a point. Have Irm roll his intelligence.” He rolled it successfully. Dave passed me a note. “It appears to him be a Unicorns horn” the note read.
My heart leapt. Irm ran with the horn into the fray. “Demon!” he screamed. The figure in black turned and Irm struck. It stabbed into The Ultimate Demon who made a snarling gasp and his smile disappeared. At this point, Irm, Pembry, Davos and Lysander were left. (Plus the pixie). “For the first time, The Demon turns on his Demon fear. Anyone alive who is 8th level or less?” Irm and Pembry. “Irm and Pembry scream and run at the locked doors you entered the room by. They are trying to claw their way out.” Said David. Davos snatched up the horn and made an attack. The Ultimate Demon screeched in anger and pain. Critical hit. “Chest. Impalement. Weapon is stuck there.” Said David. “I try to pull it out” said Marc “hopefully doing more damage as I extract it”. The Demon reached out and touched Davos.
7 out of 10 dead. The Demon stood in the center of the room and grasped the handle of the unicorn horn snarling as he tried to pull it from his chest. It was Lysander’s option. “I charge him, and I’m going to try smash into the horn with my body and push it deeper into him”. “Hmm” said Dave thoughtfully. “Ok, make an attack roll”. I rolled. The 20-sider came up 20. Dave’s eyebrows raised. “Interesting. I’ll give you 3 chances to roll an applicable critical hit”. 39. “Nope” said David. 54. “Head, general. Nope” said David. Everyone held his or her breaths. Roll. 72. David pursed his lips. Cocked his head. Smiled impishly. “You see The Ultimate Demon’s eyes widen. His mouth opens slightly, he looks rather astonished.” He paused. “He then crumples to the floor. His eyes are still open in shock as he begins to fade away. Pembry and Irm stop trying to claw their way thru the doors.” Dave closed AG I with a snap. “Heart Pierced. Die Immediately” he said. “Lucky shot”. Everyone let out his or her breaths.
“We don’t have much time,” squeaked the pixie. “I am Entellia, princess of the Pixie kingdom and you have rescued me. I can gate us all to my father’s kingdom where we can help your friends, but we must hurry. The Ultimate Demon is only sent back to his plane. In minutes, he will return.” “How many minutes?” asked Lysander. The pixie shrugged. “I will begin to cast the gate, it will take a few of minutes to do so. In the meantime, do whatever you wish.” Lysander and Pembry snapped into action. After gathering together the 8 bodies and putting them into the area where the gate would appear, we told David we were going to stuff every item that looked interesting and all the gems we could grab into whatever bags we could scrounge. “You have 2 minutes to grab what you can.” Said David. “Irm is a priest, and his mass detect will only tell you what is magic, not how good it is, but both of you are thieves. Tell me your levels, and then both of you roll percent die and try to roll as high as you can. The higher you roll, the better choices you’ll make given the fact that you don’t have the time to study the stuff.” We rolled. I made a 54, Pembry rolled a 94. “Ok.” Said David. For the next 2 minutes the three of you will grab whatever you can”. 2 minutes passed. Pembry and Lysander grabbed items, Irm stuffed gems into a hastily emptied backpack. “An orb of light expands to cover your friends. The Pixie looks exhausted. She’s weaving around as she flies. You hear a sound coming from the doors.” We split.
Well, the Pixie King was quite pleased to have his daughter back after thinking she had been dead for 75 years while she was trapped in The Ultimate Demon’s horde. He gladly raised everyone fully, performed complete detects on our new items and returned us to Talismonde with thanks. All 10 of us survived. David said he needed about 30 minutes. We roleplayed for that time and then he came back to the table.
“Are you ready?” he asked with that Dave smile. “Are we ever” said Michelle. Ever the showman, Dave nodded to himself. He took a breath and let it out. He cleared his throat. “David!” Yelled Beth. “Come ON”. Dave chuckled. “My” he said. “Aren’t we the anxious one”. “DAVE!” we all yelled. “Well” he said. “Let’s see what happened. Pembry, Irm and Lysander had 2 minutes to grab everything they could. They naturally concentrated primarily on items. Pembry is an 8th level thief and rolled a 94, which was an excellent roll. Lysander rolled only a 54, not nearly as good but he’s a 14th level thief and much better at appraising items on the fly. Here’s what they managed to come up with.” Dave came out from under the table with a stack of cards. He began laying them out on the table. Flipping them down one by one. He laid more of them down. More. “Oh god” said Beth. He lay even more of them down. They were forming rows. “Holy crap” said I. When he was done, the tabletop was covered with carded items. “Luckily for you, this being a greater demon horde, almost every item in the room was magical. By my count, you looted....67 magic items.” Stunned silence. “Oh, and exactly 179,532 GS in gems” he said offhandedly. “Not really a bad haul at all, wouldn’t you say?” We nodded dumbly. “And now” he said “Let’s see what they all do.....”
This will live in my memory as one of the most harrowing, roller coasters of any Hargrave games I had the pleasure to live through.