Adventures in a Doomed World: Session 32

The battle in the temple storeroom

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 Adventures, Mythic GME 2nd Edition and some homebrew rules. The characters started as level 0 peasants and have since levelled up to become heroes.

Introduction

The party are exploring the demonic temple built by beastmen close to the town of Seethorpe, while the dwarven scholar Thiri researches the strange symbol they keep finding in monster lairs.

The Adventure

After finding an empty box in the relic chamber the heroes look to door in the western wall. It opens into a rectangular room with eight stone slabs, rough blankets on top of them. There are several crudely made wooden cabinets containing herbs and primitive medicines, and the floor is covered in straw which seems to have absorbed a lot of blood, now dried out.

"I suppose this is where they treat their injured." Says Ellyn, peering into one of the cabinets. They search the room but it's clear there's nothing actually useful here. There's a door in the north wall and a second one near it in the east wall. Stilda opens the eastern one.

They walk into a smaller room with bags, boxes and crates strewn haphazardly around the floor. While they search the room an enthralled slave watches them from her hiding place in a crate, then jumps out. Since this is an ambush I'm going to roll for surprise on a D20.

The Party: 8

The enthralled slave: 16

Suddenly the lid of one of the crates pops off and a feral-looking human woman jumps out!

Who is she closest to?

Ellyn.

Ellyn has her hands in a crate nearby at the time and the woman swings a shortsword down on her back, cutting her for 2 HP.

In response Stilda darts across the room and launches into a flèche attack. Both feet leave the floor and she flies forward through the air, longsword extended. The woman turns toward her and Stilda's sword pierces her chest, puncturing her lung and coming out of her back. She collapses onto the floor, quite dead (25 XP).

After Stilda bandages Ellyn's wounds, the mage looks inside the crate the woman was hiding in and finds a pile of straw, some chicken bones and a small leather-bound book. Examining the book, it appears to be the slave woman's diary. She flicks through the pages and finds references to what the woman called "the work". It appears the slaves and beastmen were doing strenuous daily rituals of some kind which left them exhausted each night. She didn't know why they were doing this and never questioned it. Ellyn pockets the book, intending to give it to Thiri when they get back to town.

The heroes continue searching the room but find nothing. I've rolled a wandering monster encounter here, and the rulebook has specific rules for wandering monsters in dungeons. The table tells me it's 2D4 +the dungeon's threat level in hit dice. That's 16, so I'll roll on my encounter tables for this dungeon.

While the heroes are searching the crates in the storeroom, a large figure appears in the doorway by which they entered. Stilda turns around and sees a monster with the head of a cow and the body of a man, brandishing a handaxe in each hand. There appears to be a large crowd of monsters behind it too. Stilda rushes at the beastman beserker swinging her sword. She slashes a deep gash in its chest and it moos in pain (2 damage). Cyna approaches the door but can't reach the beastman to attack it. She can hear a cacophany of animal noises coming from behind it now, and see bits of muscular bodies jostling for space and all trying to get through the door. From across the storeroom Bryne points her finger at the beastman beserker. A green bolt of magic shoots out of her finger (using her fray die), curves around Stilda and hits the monster in the face for 1 damage, killing it.

As soon as it hits the floor another beastman tramples the body and attacks Stilda. This one has the head of a silver fox. Standing in the doorway, it brings a mace down on Stilda's shoulder, battering her for 1 damage.

"I can't do anything from here, let them in!" Cyna shouts. Reluctantly Stilda tries to break off from combat, so the beastman gets a free attack on her. It hits her arm, doing another point of damage leaving her with 14 HP. She retreats back into the storeroom, while Bryne shoots another bolt of magic. It hits the beastman, burning its chest for 1 damage. Ellyn attempts to do the same but the less experienced mage's bolt fizzles out as soon as it leaves her finger.

The silver fox-headed beastman runs through the door after Stilda swinging its mace madly, and missing her completely. From behind it a cat-headed beastman rushes in with a flail. Stilda easily parries its attack with her longsword. Next a boar-headed beastman runs into the room, sees Cyna and goes for her with a shortsword. She bats its sword away with her shield. Then a wolf charges at Stilda and leaps through the air. She ducks under it and it lands on its feed next to her. The same thing happens to Cyna but this second one digs its teeth into her leg (2 damage). While all this is happening an enthralled slave creeps into the room and manages to flank Stilda. The ragged man thrusts a dagger at her but she dodges it.

Stilda and Cyna look at the five enemies surrounding them, glance at each other and then attack. First Stilda slashes the cat-headed beastman across the chest and it crumples to the floor. Then Cyna stabs the boar-headed one in the face with her pitchfork, pulls it back out and impales the nearest wolf with it. Both enemies fall to the floor dead. "Magic Missile!" Bryne shouts as she casts her spell, and a glowing orb of white energy flies at the other wolf, burning its hide for 1 damage. She flings a bolt of magic at it as a followup, but it misses and hits the wall. Ellyn casts her new spell at the slave, Shapeshifting Bone. The man looks pained for a moment, then his entire body tenses up as his whole skeleton begins to warp out of shape. He cries out just as jagged shards of bone erupt from beneath his skin, splattering the walls and floor with his blood before he keels over and crashes onto the floor still rigid like a statue. Everyone in the room is stunned for a moment, then Ellyn comes to her senses and throws a bolt of magic at the wounded silver fox beastman. It slams into the wound in its chest and kills it.

The lone survivor of the battle is a wolf. It passes its morale check and jumps at Stilda, its teeth scraping across her splintmail harmlessly.

Stilda stabs at it with her longsword, running it through and killing it. The heroes take a moment to catch their breath. "That was quite a crowd." Cyna remarks. Unbeknownst to the party, that group of monsters included a pair of imps. Loitering at the back, they made themselves invisible and flew into the room during the fight to perch on the crates, intending to finish off the heroes after the others weakened them. They can't make sneak attacks but they can ambush the heroes, meaning they'll go first in the fight. They'll become visible as soon as they attack, so let's see what happens. I'll roll a D4 to see who each imp attacks.

Wiping sweat from her brow, Cyna feels something like a rush of air coming at her suddenly. Instinctively she raises her shield and feels something bounce off it. When she lowers it she sees the malevolent grinning red face of an imp hovering in front of her! She doesn't have time to react though, as the same thing happens again from her right flank. She brings her shield up just in time to block the nasty stinger of a second imp.

"Look out, they're poisonous!" Bryne shouts from across the room. Stilda is standing right next to both imps so she swings for one of them but it easily dodges out of the way, zipping about in the air. Imps have an armour class of 1 in Scarlet Heroes's descending armour class, so it's lucky the heroes have their fray dice handy. Cyna rolls a 19 on her attack however, slashing one of the imps with her pitchfork before impaling the other on two of the prongs and slamming it into the floor, crushing its skull. The wizards don't have any spells left so Bryne uses her sling to launch a stone at the last imp, which has landed on the floor. She misses, curses in frustration and then hurls a magical bolt at it, burning a hole through its small torso and killing it.

"Are there any more?" Stilda shouts. They all stand in a circle, Stilda with her longsword up, Cyna with her pitchfork and shield, Bryne's hands raised like claws and Ellyn with her cutlass. A few moments pass and they decide the coast is clear. Stilda bandages the wounds she and Cyna received in the fight, leaving them both with full hit points again.

For that huge brawl the party receives 695 XP! Bryne is very close to reaching level 3 now. Unfortunately the Scarlet Heroes rulebook says wandering monsters almost never have any meaningful treasure, so I won't do any rolls for that. The party has now explored five of eleven locations in the temple.