Friday, October 25, 2024

Nightwick Abbey Centennial Scaretacular!!! (Session 100)

Previously, in Nightwick Abbey...

Want to learn more about the world of Nightwick from Miranda? You can follow her blog here and the ongoing development of Nightwick Abbey at her Patreon here.

Session 100 - 24th of Shocktober, 1398

This week's adventurers:

Blossom (Rogue 6)

Mayfly (Magician 5)

Ulf (Magician 5)

Liminal Space (Changeling 5)

Poppy (Fighter 4)

Thekla (Magician 4)

Krupe (Cleric 5) 

Marguerite (Magician 1)

Hirelings: Niklaus (Fighter 2), Helusch (Magician 1)

Downtime in the Village

Ulf searches for rumors of his missing Shawl of Protection, mysteriously lost last week. Since all of his coinage was similarly mysteriously lost in a drunken escapade, Liminal and Mayfly offer to help fund his search.

He hears of rumors that the Brotherhood (of Thieves and Assassins) has taken the Shawl to their home in the foothills of the Nameless Mountains far to the South.

This week, we decide to celebrate session 100(!!!) by exploring more of level 4.

Into the Abbey

We enter through the graveyard directly into level 3. Last week we remapped a route to the sigils that contain the entrance to level 4.

Going down a long spiral stairs, we come to a room with columns of faces screaming and a baptismal font with a depiction of the first emperor of mankind being boiled alive by demons.

It's a fun place down here.

Delving Level 4

We go south from this room and debate our next move.

We're not at full enough strength right now to fight Plutus, the fly-demon lord of this area, so we decide to explore the southwest area of the level.

As we go in that direction, we come across a door that appears to have been smashed through.

Through the dark hole we hear a groan, "feeeeeeed meeeeeeee...."

The Flesh-Eater

From the hole, a walking, upright sarcophagus emerges and repeats its cry.

Image
Like this. I don't know how to describe it. Thing's freaky.

Liminal attempts to reason with it but it continues to shamble(?) towards us, demanding food.

We begin a retreat back to our starting room.

Do Lightning Bolts Bounce Off Of Stone Enemies?

Blossom shoots a crossbow bolt into it and the "lid" bends in where it hit.

Mayfly and Ulf both shoot Lightning Bolts at it and we smell the smell of burning flesh where they hit.

Finally, Thekla ensnares it with a Web spell.

While it's caught in the web, we see it thrash around and its lid opens and closes like a clam. We get a glimpse of rotten fleshy bits inside the stone.

It struggles with such strength that we think we only have 2 rounds until it breaks free.

Like Fish in a Barrel

After a volley of very well placed crossbow bolts, the creature falls down in death.

Studying it, the sarcophagus is filled with rotten human flesh - the knowledgeable party members think that its actually undead possessing the sarcophagus.

We step carefully over the clamcophagus into the next room with a fountain.

The door to the south was broken open by the clamcophagus and there's another door to the west.

Exploring Level 4

We continue south to a room with four pillars, carved like swords and exits in all four directions.

To the west is a large room filled with blood-draining mist.

Mayfly peeks in and sees a single, large column in the middle of the room. Bodies litter the room and there is a single large body, all drained of blood.

We decide to throw a fireball into the room.

Tenrils of mist reach out - reaches for Krupe and Poppy but miss.

Vampires Well-Done

Helusch thows a bag of flower into the room, misses, and hits Ulf in the back of the head.

Several people thrown oil flasks into the room, many miss, and Krupe gets hit in the back of the head with a poorly-thrown flask.

Mayfly finally casts a Fireball into the room and the room erupts into flame. Several bodies burn up and we see several of the mist vampires burning up as well.

In the light of the fire, we see that the room is 50' deep by 60' wide.

Best Spell to Treasure Ratio Ever

The mist does not seem to clear up, however.

There's doors north and south and a large opening to the west.

On the bodies, after 1 turn of searching, we find a total of 300 gold pieces!

We rest for 1 turn, then spend another turn searching more bodies we find one wearing a decorated crimson robe, Blossom values it at 3,000sp.

Among the bodies we see large one-eyed creatures, fly-men, blood-spitting armors, cultists of the lady, and pale armored figures. 

Mayfly studies the pale figures but doesn't recognize them.

We keep searching! Liminal carves up fly people and we find 3 big chunks of gold, which Blossom estimates to be worth 1,000sp each.

Blossom listens at the doors north and south out of this room and hears a frantic, sensuous whispering and whooshing respectively.

Back to the Village

Content with our findings, we decide to return to the surface tonight.

We recover a total of 12,000sp for 1,333sp each and we each get 1,289xp.

Marguerite and Helusch level up as a result!

Ulf teaches Helusch, his apprentice, the spell Light and Marguerite learns Magic Missile.

 

We celebrated session 100 with a fairly normal dungon crawl. Not a bad way to celebrate - we found a good treasure haul and nobody died! We still need to explore more of level 4 and refind the stairs down to 5, but we're slowly gaining more mastery over the floor, learning about its different denizens and how to best handle each one.

It's really exciting to have played in this group - I joined at session 13 - and we seem to be going strong. In the 2.5 years that I've been in this group, I've learned a lot about old-school dungeon design and dungeon mastering from Miranda. Nightwick Abbey really is one of the premier megadungons of the modern scene and Miranda is an exceptional dungeon master. If you've never played or ran Nightwick Abbey, I wholeheartedly recommend checking it out.

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