Adventures in a Doomed World: Session 13

Mothric. Image by Midjourney

I'm playing a mashup of Scarlet Heroes and Basic Fantasy RPG with a few supplements to turn it into a solo fantasy hexcrawl in the world of Eilobar, a doomed land entering its end times. I'm using the Level 0 Character Tumbler, Hexcrawl Aventures and also 47 Critical Hit Tables to Spice Up Your Game. Starting with level 0 characters I'm attempting to keep them alive long enough to level up from -100 to 1 XP and become actual heroes.

Introduction

We left Stilda, Bryne, Cyna and Helia in the Tunnels of Mothric, clearing the last section of the first level.

The Adventure

The party leaves the kobolds' room and walks north up the corridor. Taking a door on the left, it opens into a room with a bed and some simple furniture. A giant crab spider is sitting next to a treasure chest. This will be a dangerous fight.

Helia shoots first, but misses. They rush towards the spider, Stilda charging it and bringing her longsword down. It hits the spider in the middle of its head, splitting it in two. Wow, not so dangerous after all! If I hadn't re-read the hexcrawl rules we'd probably be facing four of these poisonous beasts right now. Anyway, everyone gets 25XP for that. They open the chest and find 6GP.

The next room is another common room with simple furniture strewn about. There is a bandit here standing over the corpse of what looks like one of the peasants from Keyham, brandishing a short sword. The heroes charge in except for Helia, who spies another door behind the bandit, and decides to sneak back out through the corridor and try to get behind him. No sooner has she left the room, Stilda impales the hapless bandit on her sword and he slumps to the floor. They get 6XP each and find 6GP in the bandit's purse. They also take his shortsword and leather armour.

Does the dead man have anything on him that could identify him? (50/50)

No, but "wisdom".

I think what the oracle means here is he has been looted thoroughly but he appears to have been some kind of wise man, perhaps he is old and dressed in scholar's robes. The heroes make a note to speak to Yormath, the local wizard about this and see if they can find out who this was and inform his family (this can be a side quest for a bit of XP).

They try a door in the west wall. It opens into a bunkroom with beds arranged neatly, a rug on the floor (too soiled to be worth anything) and a big pile of trash in the corner. There is a goblin and a kobold here. Stilda immediately kills the goblin. The kobold shrieks and runs for the door, but Helia holds out her shortsword and it runs into it, dying instantly. They each get 5XP and find just over a gold piece in coins.

They go back out to the corridor and walk to the end. There are four more doors they haven't tried yet, so they open the last one on the left. The room is in chaos. There is rubbish strewn on the floor along with tables and chairs arranged haphazardly. There is a bandit and and a giant bee - bizarre!

Are they fighting each other? (Almost certain)

Yes.

It seems one of the bees escaped from the library a previous bandit told them about. They watch the fight. The bandit, an old man, shoots at the bee from across the room with a shortbow, but the arrow bounces off the wall behind it. The foot-long bee zooms across the room and drives its stinger into the bandit's chest before pulling back, the stinger remaining in the bandit. He cries out in pain and falls to the floor, dead, followed by the bee a few moments after.

The party finds 3GP in his purse and takes his shortbow. He has 8 shortbow arrows so Helia refills her quiver.

The door opposite leads to a large kennel filled with 12 wolves. This is a lair so it makes sense for them to be on the loose rather than locked up. Ok, this could be a pretty tough one since they have two hit dice and we can't use our fray dice (except for Bryne's magical one). As they outnumber the party three to one I think they'll definitely attack, desperate for fresh meat.

The party enters the room, Helia shooting at one but hitting the one next to it in the side for one damage. Bryne casts magic missile, the glowing orb smashing into one and burning it a bit.

The wolves howl and run at the heroes, crowding around them. One of them runs across a tripwire which releases a large stone cube disguised as a ceiling tile. It falls directly on the wolf and crushes it. The fight is long and bloody from then on. Bryne kills one with magic bolts, Helia and Stilda kill two, and Cyna impales three on her trusty pitchfork, but they are all badly wounded.

The two surviving wolves seem determined to fight to the death though, passing a moral check. One bites Bryne, reducing her to 1HP. She fires an energy bolt back, burning its shoulder, then flees the room to hide in the corridor with Helia (who already fled). Helia, badly wounded, sneaks back into the room and stabs at a distracted wolf from behind, but messes it up and hits thin air. Stilda hacks into a wolf's neck with her longsword, killing it, dodges another's attack, then ripostes and slashes its belly open.

The wolves lie dead. Eleven killed by the party and one squashed in a trap. Each hero gets a whopping 206XP from this, but they use up four bandages healing 2HP each, which brings most of them back to full health.

There are still two more rooms left on this floor which they'll need to clear out before confronting Mothric downstairs, and they feel strong enough to push on for now. They open the next door along, which opens into a food storage room lit by three braziers. There's a secret compartment in the floor here - does anyone notice it?

Check: Average (DC 11) +Wisdom modifier

No one finds it.

The final room of this floor is an empty kennel, devoid of wolves luckily. That's this whole floor cleared, and yet again I've forgotten another rule of the Hexcrawl supplement! We were supposed to get 25XP per room cleared, and 500XP for clearing the floor. I can't remember how many rooms it's been since I awarded any XP, so I'll dish out enough to cover all the rooms in the west and east wings of the level, except the two libraries that we didn't enter because they were filled with giant bees and cobras.

That's 1050XP in total, 262 each! Will we get a levelup?

No. But here's everyone's progress towards level 2:

Stilda: 1731/2000

Bryne: 1049/2500

Cyna: 773/2000

Helia: 773/1250

Before we go to the next level of the dungeon I'm going to add a new rule: Doors and chests/secret compartments will be locked on a roll of 1 on a D6, and Helia will get 1D10XP for picking them. Also the heroes are feeling quite tired out and still wounded after the big wolf fight, so they make their way outside to rest for the night before going down to find Mothric in his lair.

They get a good night's sleep with everyone except Stilda fully healed in the morning. Unfortunately just after putting on their armour three giant leeches crawl up out of the swamp water near their camp. Since they're animals, what's their reaction?

Unfavourable. Let's try and slip by them into the dungeon without aggro-ing them. Everyone will do a simple check and add their dex modifier plus any useful traits. I'm really trying hard to avoid this fight! Let's say three out of four heroes need to succeed in order to hustle everyone into the Tunnels.

Check: Simple (DC 9) +Dexterity modifier and useful trait

Stilda: Success.

Helia: Success.

Bryne: Success.

Cyna: Success.

They're in! Let's see if they can make it down to the second level without any more random encounters. They're downstairs!

The party finds itself in a winding corridor with a door to their right and another straight ahead  before the corridor turns again. They approach the first door, which is unlocked, and open it to find a bunkroom with a 6ft long venomous pit viper in the middle of it. This is one of Mothric's guardians so it's definitely going to be hostile.

Stilda and Cyna know what they have to do. They march towards the creature, hoping one of them will be able to get it before it bites and kills someone. They needn't have worried though, Helia takes careful aim at it, shoots and the arrow goes right through it, sending its lifeless body skittering across the floor. There isn't anything else in the room except some beds, so they continue to the next room.

As they approach the door, a gnoll is patrolling the corridor around the corner. Let's give them a wisdom check to see if anyone hears it. It's a 7ft tall lumbering creature so it probably makes heavy footsteps.

Check: Simple (DC 9) +Wisdom modifier. No one has a useful trait here.

Helia is successful.

She holds up a hand to stop the others, and takes up a position by the corner of the corridor, awaiting the gnoll with her shortsword out. The gnoll turns the corner and Helia whips around it, driving the shortsword under its chin and upwards. It dies silently, and they find 6.1GP on its corpse.

They go to the next door and Helia offers to hang back and try to get a stealthy shot off at any monsters inside after the others have entered. Cyna opens the door, revealing Mothric's lair. There are large wooden storage boxes around the room. Mothric stands to one side of one of them surrounded by his guardians: four giant crab spiders and a kobold archer. This definitely will be a hard fight since a single bite from one of them can kill.

Mothric is a small blue-skinned humanoid with sharp teeth and a bald head, wearing a robe. He shouts to his minions to protect him, and hurls all kinds of abuse at the party.

The heroes have a problem. The fighters' metal armour only allows them to move 2 spaces per turn but the enemies are all further away. They can go in but they could get surrounded by spiders and bitten multiple times. There's not much else they can try though! Cyna and Stilda both move into the room. Bryne can see a spider opposite her, so she stands in the corridor and casts Magic Missile at it, which blasts its head open. Next to her in the corridor Helia points her bow through the door at a spider, but it sees her and makes itself small (no sneak attack for now). She shoots at it but it dodges the arrow.

Mothric chants some magic words and a shimmering forcefield rises in front of him, protecting him from attacks coming from the front and sides. The crab spiders scuttle towards Stilda and Cyna, attacking but parried by longsword and shield. The kobold archer shoots Stilda, the arrow grazing an unprotected part of her arm for 1 damage.

Stilda chops into a spider's body, wounding it, before Bryne hops through the doorway swinging her jawbone merrily. She completely misses but then points at the wounded spider, sending a green energy bolt into its body, killing it. Helia slips into the shadows and shoots at the spider distracted by Cyna. The arrow thuds into its head, killing it.

The monsters have been reduced by half, each must make a morale check now. The kobold archer, seeing the quick death of the spider, screams and runs. It won't get past the heroes so it heads for a big pile of trash in the corner of the room. The last spider charges at Bryne but she dodges out of its way. Mothric steps out from behind a storage box and casts Magic Missile at Cyna. The magical orb smashes into her chest but her hauberk protects her from the worst of it. She takes 1 damage.

Stilda and Cyna surround the last spider, but it dodges both their attacks. Bryne misses with her jawbone but blasts it with an energy bolt for 1 damage. Helia can't reach the spider but she can see Mothric across the room, so she takes a shot at him, but it's deflected by his Shield spell.

The broken kobold continues running towards the trash pile while the spider fights back. It gets a critical hit on Cyna for double damage, luckily only doing 1 (because that's double the number rolled on the damage die, which in Scarlet Heroes doesn't equal the actual damage taken). Cyna feels the poison in her veins but grits her teeth and takes the pain (passing a DC11 saving throw). Mothric has no spells left and only his staff to defend himself with, so he backs up against the wall, hoping his spider will be able to take all the heroes.

Everyone surrounds the spider now, hacking away at it. Within seconds Cyna stabs it deeply with her pitchfork and it slams into the floor, quite dead. Bryne and Helia haven't attacked yet so they charge Mothric together, Helia launching herself through the air in a graceful flèche and running the devious creature through with her shortsword. He screams in a high pitched voice and slumps to his knees, head bowed forward, dead.

Finally the reign of Mothric is over and the villagers of Keyham no longer have to fear being snatched from their beds by his minions! The heroes all cheer and whoop in celebration, hugging and slapping each other on the back. Cyna walks over to the trash pile and shoves her pitchfork into it. A quick scream comes from within. Let's award them 100XP for finishing the quest to slay Mothric. Together with the XP from killing him and his minions that comes to 547 between the party, 136 each.

They search the bodies and start opening the storage boxes, which are filled with Mothric's ill-gotten gains: 91.63GP in coins, a copper and obsidian belly chain, a lapis lazuli amulet, a silver and amber anklet and a gold and green garnet ring. A good haul! Stilda cuts the blue bastard's head off and stuffs it into her pack. She bandages the party's wounds.

The dungeon isn't cleared out yet though. Upstairs there are the two libraries with dangerous animals in them, but they can be left alone as with no minions left to tend to them they'll slowly starve to death, locked in their rooms.

There are two more rooms here. They check one: a small room with some furniture and a lit brazier. The second door opens into a medium sized tomb with sarcophagi and torches on the walls. The heroes have no desire to go tomb raiding now though, they've dealt with Mothric and received a big treasure haul. That's this dungeon level cleared, so they receive 600XP in total, 150 each.

Stilda advances to level 2! She gains +1 attack bonus (now 2) and +4HP (now 12). She also gains one trait point, so she spends it on Heal, which is now 2. I'm making a note that she can heal diseases and slow acting poisons now, as long as she's somewhere she could realistically find common healing plants.

They escape the dungeon without encountering any wandering monsters. The hexcrawl supplement has rules on clearing out monster lairs from hexes in order to reduce the threat of wandering monsters from 1 on a D6 to 1 on a D12, so we'll say the Tunnels of Mothric counts as the only lair in this hex. No wandering monsters are encountered on the way out.

The Tunnels of Mothric Level 1

The Tunnels of Mothric Level 2

While crossing the ruined village in the swamp, a tree falls on Cyna and she doesn't manage to dodge it, but only takes 1 damage. The rest of the journey is uneventful. When they arrive in Keyham the villagers are so happy to hear of Mothric's demise that they mount his head on a pike and have a festival that lasts three days.

Ducking out of the celebrations for a while, the party visits Yormath the wizard and describes the dead man they found in the dungeon, who looked like a scholar. Yormath tells them it sounds like Bertio, a man who went missing a few days ago.

Does Bertio have a family in Keyham? (Very likely)

Yes.

They locate the family with Yormath's help and deliver the bad news, receiving 100XP between them for their efforts. After the festivities die down they sell their loot for a chunk of gold, leaving them with 481GP. Bryne goes back to visit Yormath and asks for magical tuition. He agrees, saying he can teach her any spell suitable for her level of experience for 100GP. She spends a day with him learning the Sleep spell.

Soon enough however the jubilant mood in Keyham ends. A travelling merchant comes to town and tells them that the hamlet of Laford to the west was recently overrun by goblins after a group of its people launched a daring raid on the goblin caves north of town but failed. The heroes look at each other and don't need to say a word - they strap their gear on and hit the road again.

My Thoughts

F*cking finally! Mothric lies dead and his reign of terror is over. I think I've been interpreting some of the hexcrawl rules a bit too harshly, so I'm going to make an effort to check them more often from now on. I'm looking forward to seeing how the party fares against a whole tribe of goblins now that Stilda is level 2 and Bryne has two spells... We'll find out soon.