The Rise and Fall of Hakken Aksa-Dak

I died on Monday in my friend Carter's Labyrinth Lord campaign.  Not the usual haul-the-body-out-and-get-raised kind either.  I got the wrong end of the old school Teleport spell and materialized some undisclosed number of feet straight down into solid rock.  I have been thinking about it a little and I don't think there would be any body to speak of or recoverable remains even if an attempt was made to excavate for it.  Just little specks of blood and flesh and bone embedded in solid stone.

In many ways this was a very fitting way for Hakken Aksa-Dak (a.k.a. Dak), the Steve Buscemi of dwarves, to meet his end.  I tried to roleplay Dak's low wisdom (6) and decent intelligence by constantly coming up with risky harebrained schemes and throwing myself into any possible trap head first.

 Way back in Stonehell in our earlier adventures this resulted in Dak being blinded by poison gas from a trap.  Not deterred, I removed the container of poison gas from the trap and used it and the fact that I was already blind as a weapon.  Dak spent several sessions blind in Stonehell; when the party encountered monsters they would point me toward them and I would charge ahead, screaming bloody murder and releasing blinding gas.  It turned out to be a remarkably effective tactic.

More recently the party has been exploring a vampire's lair in the deepest dungeons underneath the free city of Kaladar.  Confronted with a glowing red magical archway, I had my dwarven compatriot Yor (Yor for a better tomorrow!) tie a rope around me and I went through.  I was expecting deadly poison gas at the minimum because I had tried this tactic in an earlier section of this lair when confronted with an archway of glowing green mist and it turned out to be a save vs. death gas (luckily I saved).  Instead what happened is all my gear right down to my beard ring of protection was sucked from my body and I had some hazy sense of a misty cavern that I was being tugged to, and then Yor pulled me back out of the archway (naked).

I did fight an encounter completely naked and wielding a borrowed hand ax that session.

Losing all my gear rankled a bit, but we could not figure out a couple puzzle rooms in the dungeon and were stuck... unless we wanted to go through that damned archway and end up naked on the other side with no gear.

Last session I had the bright idea of bringing a high enough level wizard to have the Teleport spell memorized down to the arch to send him through (naked).  The idea was he would quickly examine the area that the arch led to, trying to mark it for a future Teleport destination, then Teleport out to safety.  We persuaded/conned NPC Tim the Enchanter into this duty; he was eager to make up for the fact that his master in the wizard's council had recently been revealed by the party to be a balrog!  Poor Tim walked through the gate, ended up in a misty cavern, and was attacked by something he didn't see which drained a level before he could Teleport out!

Once back at the wizard's tower Tim and four other high level wizards scried the misty cavern with a crystal ball for an hour until they had a reasonably good lock on it to Teleport the party down there.  There was a 10% chance of a missed destination "Low" result, which basically meant instant death in this situation, and we knew that.  The "High" result wasn't as big of a risk as the misty cavern was quite large; in fact, two party members did arrive 10' in the air and dropped to the ground.  While 10% chance of unraisable death is pretty iffy odds to be putting the whole party through, for once everyone else seemed ready to join in Dak's foolish plan.

 Remarkably, three out of the eight total party members that the wizards Teleported down arrived too low and instantly died.  Dak, Arthurius (follower of Innominus the cleric), and Muckley (dwarf henchman of Dak) all met their ends in this unceremonious manner.  A vampire attacked the remaining party members and was promptly destroyed in one round by Yor (thanks to his nightly d30 roll, his girdle of giant strength and his ancient Noffellian blade Mellion).  The vampire turned out to be a lacky, not the vampire master we had been seeking.

Dak is Dead.  Long live Flipwayter, Dak's trusty follower, who shall pick up the mantle.  Hopefully the party finds the real frickin' vampire and all Dak's old gear so Flipwayter can really keep the name of Dak alive.  In particular, Dak's family heirloom refilling flask of dwarven whiskey will not go unused... as Dak would have wanted.

I am looking forward to next session, a quick turnaround (for us) as we are meeting up again next Monday.  Dak may have died, but his hairbrained scheme did get the party down to the lowest section of the dungeon which we had not been able to access before. As long as we kill the vampire, get the loot and find a way out it will not have been for vain!  If we happen to save Ara from demonic invasion (another story) in the process, so much the better.

Two Men Down

Roderick and Claude the Ranger dropped yesterday at the hands of slime hounds in the catacomb levels below the sewers of Kaladar in my friend Carter's Labyrinth Lord Lands of Ara campaign.  While these were two NPCs, followers of Vivuli the assassin and Uncle Junkle the bard, the loss still hit hard.  The party was a bit stunned, actually, because we completely underestimated the pack of seven dogs that attacked us in the tunnels.

Seven dogs covered in filth and disease didn't exactly strike fear into our hearts after disposing of three green dragons and a half dozen winged Balrogs over the last two sessions.  We did have a string of terrible rolls, including several critical fumbles resulting in dropped weapons, as well as Innominus rolling a 6 for damage on his nightly d30 roll in an area attack that hit all the dogs in the surprise round before combat proper started.

Still, we figured we were going to dispatch these critters handily and I even advised Innominus against blowing a Bless or Prayer spell on the second round because I was sure these things couldn't have many hit points left after they all took 6 damage on the first round.

That all changed in a heartbeat when they started spewing acidic bile at us, scoring a hit on Roderick that did 35 damage!  We were all sitting around silently digesting that tidbit when Carter asked us, so did that kill him?  35 damage?  Did it kill the 5th level thief with 5d6 HP?   Yes, yes it did.

The vicious Arandish Slime Hound

Nothing like a 35 damage breath attack to put the fear of the lord in a bunch of 5th through 7th level Labyrinth Lord characters!  Plus the dogs turned out to have HP in the 30's.

While Roderick and Claude are going to be raised, they are out of commission for two weeks game time - which could well be a year of real life time at the rate we are going - the last 4 of our game sessions have only covered three days in game time I believe and we meet every other week at the soonest.

Playing with the expectations of veteran players is a great way to introduce a little fear into a game.  I don't know if Carter made these slime dogs up or if somebody else did (their breath weapon had a recharge mechanic which makes me think these are someone else's creation - that is just too 4e for Carter) but either way they were an awesome foe because they seemed like something in the 2 to 3 HD range (they were described as normal dogs but covered in slime and disease as they had been living in the sewers) but turned out to be quite a handful indeed!

I am actually thinking about house-ruling the Labyrinth Lord / Old School style "you are out of commission for 2 weeks following a raise - 1 HP - cannot fight or undertake any strenuous activity" Raise Dead into my 4e game.  I have managed to kill a PC quite a few times in that game but then they get raised with no real consequence at all.  2 weeks of game time is simultaneously not that outlandish of a penalty for coming back from the dead, and a real nuisance for a game like mine in which all kinds of stuff is happening outside of the PCs control and will continue to happen during the 2 weeks that a player is out of commission.

Of course the PCs in my 4e game are all experienced time travelers at this point so that might throw a little wrinkle into this :)