Castle Mordengard Session 2
I recently started co-refereeing half of a (more or less) open-table OD&D campaign, with my domain based around a megadungeon called Castle Mordengard. The first report is here.
Start Date: 11/20/1024
End Date: 11/20/1024
Members of the expedition: Ronald Kronkle, acolyte; Altruism Johnston, conjurer; Lyra Falsehood, medium; Leslie Meow, seer, Trouble McSneeze Jr., veteran.
Summary:
While staying in the Mitochondrion Motel, those members of the party that has crossed Checkpoint Bob in October were visited by a Proboscidean (elephant-folk) official wearing a 10-foot tall conical felt hat and flanked by two dozen heavily-armored footmen. The Proboscidean was a representative of the Hrönir Rectification Bureau named The Autarch upon the Omniscient Throne. The expatriates had their physical possessions confiscated until such time as certain bureaucratic errors made when registering their border crossing could be ironed out. To facilitate adventuring in the interim, they were offered equipment vouchers with which to equip another expedition to CASTLE MORDENGARD.1
Once outfitted, Ronald Kronkle secured the services of Abelard Barsinister, Calpurnia Cantilever, and Violet Mandelbrot for 1/6th of his share of treasure each.
After ascending the ski lift, the party entered through the same Northeast-facing door as before, electing not to add any death haiku to those hanging in the vestibule. Hoping to explore more of the Castle’s layout, they followed a large hallway south to a semi-circular chamber with a statue and three doors.
Through the center door, they found a passage leading to a room they had explored on their last expedition. Ten chattering skeletons were quickly dispatched, largely thanks to Ronald’s use of Turn Undead. From those dispatched by more kinetic means, Altruism harvested 36 teeth.
The adventurers investigated a fountain of clear water that they remembered as running with black goo during their last expedition. Trouble Jr. & Leslie were able to gather 7 besants that had presumably been tossed in by wishful dungeoneers. Abelard was goaded into sampling the waters and suffered no ill effects, but when Ronald tried them he was pained & weakened.
Returning to the statue chamber, they entered the rightmost door and found a small room with twelve coffins and a heavy, locked chest. They looted the coffins for various pieces of detritus (some thread, a brush with dry, unusually black paint) and used a mallet & iron spike to pry a small hole in the chest from which they laboriously shook 14 besants. Although the chest clearly remained quite full, they chose to seek out a key instead in order to avoid attracting monsters to the (seeming) dead-end room.
Beyond the leftmost door, they surprised two Morlocks transporting a valuable potted teak tree but chose not to open hostilities.
Proceeding South along the hallway, the explorers entered a door and encountered another pair of Morlocks, this time collaborating on a typewritten document. Although initially wary, friendly offerings of 3 teeth and 1 besant enabled a tentative dialogue. Through a process of pantomime, the adventurers learned the words Probock (proboscidean) and Uchock (human), and learned that the Morlocks associated rooms in the Easterly direction with Centrist Bandits. The party was also able to get close enough to observe that the document being typed was some kind of balance sheet written in Morlock but with abstruse words in the common tongue periodically interspersed.
After a friendly parting-of-ways with the Morlocks, the adventurers arrived at a hallway intersection and proceeded East, approaching the other side of the bowling alley they had discovered during the last expedition. They found two valuable-looking ornate bowling pins in a third lane, but unfortunately 11 skeletons were in the way. An illusion spell cast by Altruism prevented immediate combat, but the party was forced to withdraw as three skeletons wandered obliviously in their direction.
The party followed the skeleton trio East for several hundred feet until the spell wore off, then dispatched it handily. Intrigued by the length of the passage, they forged ahead for several thousand more feet. Along the way, they found a discarded lanyard bearing the name Jouissance Limberger and the logo of the Concavitan Coalition for Progress (the centrist-aligned Bandit faction).
Eventually, they encountered two Centrist Bandits guarding a ladder. Leslie Meow donned Jouissance’s lanyard and bluffed the guards into thinking that Jouissance’s physiognomy had been transformed by malign sorceries while exploring the Castle, and that she was accompanied six new recruits. The credulous guards admitted them to the CCP HQ (a castle guarded by catapults & gargoyles) and led them to She of the Celestial Firmament, the Centrists’ Proboscidean chairperson. Seeing few other viable options, the whole party swore a solemn oath to serve the Centrist cause and took up new residence at the castle.
Deaths: None
Foes Encountered: 21 Skeletons (6 killed), 5 Morlocks, 2 Centrist Bandits
Treasure Recovered: 21 rhodium besants
Player-drawn maps from this session:
The person who had the character notecards forgot to bring them, so we had info on experience & stats from an online character tracker spreadsheet but no equipment. So I let them each buy 3d6 gp worth of equipment with the 'vouchers'.↩