Castle Whiterock: The Thane and the World Outside

At the point where the party retreated fully from the dungeon, several things were happening.

Within the dungeon, the Thane had become aware of the threat presented by the party. He was also going through some troubling diplomatic issues with the stone giant clan living atop the mountain, though he was unaware that the party was in cahoots with the stone giants in order to keep the peace between them and the local villages outside Cillamar.

Thus, the Thane has put the word out through his web of affiliations that there is a price on the party's head. Grime, the dust mephit, has been taking notes on the party as they pass through the dungeon and collected fairly accurate descriptions of them. The following NPCs/factions within the megadungeon setting which can be leveled against the party are as follows:

• the aboleth and its servants on the Watery Way
• The troll band near the entry to the Immense Cavern (I've been rolling really badly at encounters so far)
• Vulgaris, the minyad druid
• the young stone giant band (unaffiliated with those atop the mountain)
• Gar and Nar (who doesn't trust the duergar AT ALL)

I've decided that the duergar have finally cleaned out the last holdout orcs from level 3. Drugila can go hang; it's not likely to be worth their while to get her out. The least of the orcs will be offered to the aboleth, while those of any worth will be taken to the Theater for sport, or as slaves. 

This will make the aboleth encounter a significant roadblock. Likewise, the troll band may be a good speedbump as the party re-enters the cavern. I don't see Vulgaris or Gar and Nar getting actively involved in fighting the PCs, as they have direct experience with them and don't have a vested interest in helping the duergar. 

The stone giant kids are likewise insufficient a threat, unless they do something sneaky like throw rocks and then summon a purple worm on the group, then run away. 

Adding something to spice up the trap at 9-11 seems likely, since the party would have to pass through that area to get to the Theater anyway. Maybe a few fire-friendly mercenary monsters, or at least something tough enough to weather the damage from Incendiary Cloud until the characters are dealt with. 

But what I really need here is an enemy character party. Another group of murderhobo are being paid by the Thane to track down the party and eliminate them; or better yet capture them! 

A rival or enemy party with abilities roughly equal to the PCs, and hopefully with a foil or two for the group's normal MO, would serve both to up the threat level and promote the kind of hate that motivates players to pursue enemies. I'll have to start working on that idea. I'm thinking a group led by a Lawful Evil cleric devoted to a god of oppression and slavery would be the perfect counterpoint to Fhaariys' Shellyn cleric. I'll have to come up with something suitably irritating for the rest of them, too. 

That pretty much handles the dungeon, but what's going on in town? The party has said they are returning to town and I'm going to use this visit to advance the plot a bit. 

Now, in the past, there's been a struggle going on between the local baronies and the far-away Duke Garth. Garth has been expanding his realm and gobbling up the little baronies along the royal road. He hasn't violated any of the laws governing the use of the road, but exploiting every opportunity to bring every neighboring land under his banner, one way or another. He has secretly been using dark magical items to build his power, items of a kind not seen in ages; mildly vampiric weapons that derive power from their victims, but also armor that feeds that power up the food chain. Thus his military units fight normally until they begin to take casualties, but then the remaining troopers become stronger. This makes his army greatly feared and he takes great care to ensure no one outside a small, necessary group knows about these items. 

He's also allied with a group called the Inquisitors of Nuln. The Inquisitors are an anti-magical cult. They operate mostly as fighters and members of the Inquisitor classes, but eschew magic use in any form. Their magic use has been supplanted by enhanced Counterspell ability, using special feats to increase their ability to stifle magic used by opponents. The Inquisitors may have started out as benevolent, but over time and through their affiliation with the Duke, they have warped into a ruthless, if not outright evil, organization. 

Their battlefield role is to listen for cries of "Witch! Witch!" and ride out to start dealing with magic, usually by countering spellcasters. If they get a chance they move in and apprehend or kill the offender, regardless of class or alignment. Staging mass witch burnings is a favorite past-time for them. 

On each return to Cillamar, the party hears tidbits of news from the "war in the North" about how this barony has been annexed, or that free town has been burned to the ground or occupied, as the Duke's reach slowly expands. By this time, his forces have reached almost all the way to Cillamar... it makes sense that these forces come into play soon. 

Castle Whiterock: The Immense Cavern, part two

In the previous installment, the party made a lot of noise and then camped on the spot where the combat occurred, drawing some attention to themselves while they snored away inside a Secure Shelter. Upon awaking, they found the front door almost glued shut by what turned out to be webs.

The webs were not so thick as to be unbreakable (they were placed there so the arachnids would be warned when the party emerged). But whoever had placed the webs was long gone. Kemp did some tracking and found many "small, light humanoid" and "claw or dagger-like" prints on the ground, circling the Shelter and leading off in two directions - one set of tracks toward where they buried Bear's body, and another off towards where they buried Bear's equipment. No tracks could be found leading away from the area, so after some deliberation, they determined that the robbers must have come from above.

<aside: the location of the banshee's clearing is precisely below the Inverted Tower, 400 feet or so above.>

After cobbling together a way for everyone to travel up, via a combination of levitation, flight, and using Reduce Person spells to make people tiny, the group ascended. Eventually they came within sight of the Tower, it's portcullis down and two humans (disguised drow spider riders) inside, desultorily grooming their mounts while a half dozen dog-sized spiders scurried about the place. The group entered via some quick thinking and Dimension Door and began a fight.

After the first round, however, things turned south. Two driders appeared from balconies above the spider stable and began raining down spells on the group, who had not gained much momentum in their efforts to secure the area. It was at this point that Paco, the hobbit, took a hard left turn into the land of unintended consequences.

Paco noticed two doors. One on the right, past the drow and their spiders, was standing open and apparently that is where the two riders had come from. The one on the left was closed. Thinking it might be a good way to get around behind the driders <edit: I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here, I don't know that he thought it through any further than "Oh look! A door!" and ran to open it.

The door was, of course, a trap which released a Most Excellent Prismatic Spray, damaging pretty much everyone in the room, killing off all the spiders and both driders, but hurting the party as well. Paco himself was driven mad by a beam of green energy, while Kemp was driven off the material plane completely. His whereabouts is currently unknown.

This could have been a TPK if I'd decided to press the issue; the drow high priestess, the  fighter lord, the monk, the two sneaks and various other underlings were untouched at this point and only showed up after the Prismatic Spray. The behir hadn't even shown up. I decided instead to parlay with the group, and we proceeded to broker a deal whereby the drow would return Bear and his equipment, even returning him to life in return for performing a task and promising never to return to the Tower or speak of it to anyone.

This was acceptable to the party, of course, so the party left to spend several days recuperating and figuring out what happened to Kemp. Nothing conclusive was determined about Kemp's destination, and a Divination spell revealed to Fhaariys that "This is not the warrior you should be concerned about at this time..."

Meanwhile, the drow were as good as their word. Bear was sewn back together and Raised, and became the temporary plaything of Matron Cheliax, the high priestess. He got to see a bit more of what the drow had to hand, such as the behir, the gargoyle fighter and a number of other NPCs the party never saw, and learned that these were not people he wanted to toy with.

In three "days" time, the party returned, accepted the Geas spells from Cheliax, and departed.

At this time they decided to return all the way to town, feeling out of their depth in this cave and wishing to stock up significantly for the more serious effort required to travel onward.

Castle Whiterock game update: The Immense Cavern

When last I posted here, the party had finally won through to the Immense Cavern (level nine) after defeating the last derro slaver outpost on level 7.

This was really a landmark, because this was the first step beyond what my previous group accomplished. The old group stalled out at the derro slaver camp on 7 after 2 players moved away and one got a promotion. At that point we had to build up a new group and I let another player run games for a while before the current group finally spun up.

The party had done well for themselves up to this point, having handily beaten the derro slavers, the Wight Lady and numerous random encounters on level 7, but I was a tad concerned. I strongly dislike the flavor of levels 8 and 8A in Castle Whiterock, and had put in place a home-tooled replacement for it using various online resources and the excellent Dolmenwood setting as a template. However, the party wasn't interested in chasing down any leads to Fairyland, and so they returned to the derro camp, rolled aside the stone blocking the tunnel, and headed downward.

Now, level 9 is a quantum leap in difficulty. The Watery Way (level 7) was designed for 8th level characters (the party consists of 5 7th level pcs) while the Immense Cavern was designed for 9th level characters (i.e., characters with access to things like Raise Dead and Teleport; game-changing mechanics that make life much easier in the harder levels).

In addition, there are at least two other sub-levels *within* level nine: the Inverted Tower, a secret hideout for a small drow enclave, and the Tomb of Ankhotep, a fairly traditional tomb-raider-style dungeon. The Inverted Tower is exceedingly hard to stumble on, since it hangs from the roof of the Immense Cavern hundreds of feet above the cave floor and well beyond the range of darkvision. The Tomb, however, sticks out like a sore thumb. Inadvertently dropped there by an improperly phrased wish centuries before, the giant, obsidian pyramid stands surrounded by a veritable mountain of sand, standing in stark contrast to the moraine and mucky humus of the surrounding cave.

My players were not to be daunted, though. They made their way down the tunnel to level 9 and promptly set their sights on the pyramid. After some noodling around the exterior and narrowly avoiding being crushed by the falling slab traps, they found their way inside and ran smack dab into the clay golem. They wisely beat a hasty retreat and watch from afar while the golem emerged to reset the slab trap.

They then went on to meet and befriend Gar and Nar, the lonely ettin. I'll admit I made him seem sympathetic, but I felt the need to provide more foreshadowing and local history for the cave system and how it relates to the duergar. The cavern began to take on shape and scale to the players...

They set off from the abandoned ettin lair to find the way down to the Bleak Theater, but wound off getting sidetracked in the fungus forest by the "old trail" leading off to the north. (NEVER follow the "old trail") The party wound up crossing swords with a drow banshee, which they dispatched, but at a cost - Bear died as a result of the banshee's wail.

Knowing they didn't have access to Raise Dead yet, but that a Resurrection could be performed back at their little secret lair in the Fane of Justicia, they prudently decided to cut off Bear's head and bury his body and equipment rather than slog all the way back up there with a corpse weighing them down.

Here's where my party's short-sightedness may have cost them. Gektas cast Secure Shelter right there in the banshee's clearing so the party could rest in relative safety, not bothering to consider whether the sounds of combat - much less the banshee's wail - might have drawn any attention. It's worth noting that there's a significant aerial component to this dungeon, as the party has been attacked by giant bats and frequently heard the distant, echoing growls and flutters of the eponymous Immense Cavern. Oh well.

While camped out, one of the folks on watch detected the sound of scuttling (feet? claws?) on the roof of the shelter, followed by timid scratching and clawing around the walls of the solid Shelter. The party chose to ignore the sounds and rest fully, so they could meet whatever threat presented itself when fresh in the "morning".

This they did, and had some difficulty opening the door, because it was being held closed by something stretchy. Webs.