Rusty the Rust Monster
Game System | Blood & Treasure Complete (1st ed)
Setting/World | The Lost Lands by Frog God Games
Dramatis Personae
Blitz Dunkelsturm | Mountain Dwarf Cleric of Jamboor 6 [Death domain] | Berndt
Haxxl Rosethorne | Wild Elf Duelist 5 | Berndt
Angelina d’Monica III | Human Assassin 5 [Acrobat variant] | Djuro
Alba Dayanite | Half Elf Psychic/Magic-User 3 | Djuro
Hoder | Ogre Fighter 4 [Brute variant] | Flan
Fenrir the Vain | Human Barbarian 4 [Thane variant] | Flan
The Old Sleaze | Human Sorcerer 5 | Martin
Make Me | Human Paladin 4 | Martin
Meatshields & NPCs
Man-At-Arms | Garfield
Absent this session
Rektolas | High Elf Fighter 4 | Mats
Nitrolas | High Elf Magic-User 4 | Mats
Session Seventeen – Spiders and shit
Level-ups this session: Alba Psy/M-U 4, Hoder Ftr 5, Fenrir Bbn 5 and Make Me Pal 5.
Obituaries (Gallery of Honor)
The preivious session ended with a bang, followed by a massive assault by the flying vermin known as stirges. This happened as the PCs tried to traverse the great wall in the main cavern on level 2. We started this session with the PCs tired, bleeding and in Blitz’s case toasted by the green fiery blast of some arcane fire trap. After some rest and healing, using up a lot of the party’s healing reserves, our reluctant heroes decided to press on.
The natural wall seemed to divide the cavern in two parts as they had seen from the top, with a steep drop on the other side as well. It also acted as a ledge/path, with two dark cave openings on each side, leading into the rock. Above each entrance, an eerie runic pattern was glowing faintly. After some bickering on who was going in there, Angelina D’Monica the assassin went into the right (south east) opening. Almost immediately, the pathway started sloping down leading to a stair cut from the rock and turning straight east. The stairs ended in a corridor, tapering up to become a narrow but high ceilinged cavern with several smaller side corridors to the north and south. The most striking thing though was the thick spider-web like structures walling off passage to the east, north and south. Dead end it seemed. Angelina (being a human) tried to set the nets on fire, but they wouldn’t burn. After trying to cut them end getting the sword stuck she tried to shove the torch under the webs to see further, noticing dead stirges trapped in the nets. It seemed the eastern approach (the main cave) was all impenetrable, but the side corridor going south wasn’t that thick. After gathering the rest of the party, Alba the psychic wizard used her Ray of Frost spell to insta-freeze the web strands, which made them easy to break. After som intensive spell casting and hard work they moved south, finding themselves in a new corridor going east-west, but walled-off to the east by more webs.
They PCs carefully snuck west, finding themselves in a small circular 3-room cave system. One room contains several corpses. Some desiccated and some fresh. The desiccated ones seem devoid of content, like a “skin costume” with no innards. Pretty gross.
The floor of the other room is littered with shiny things, mostly coins. As the PCs are moving about investigating, a huge 8-feet spiky spider suddenly manifests in their midst and attacks! There is a frantic fight, with the spider mysteriously disappearing and re-appearing in another place, but they manage to slay it without any casualties and continue to loot the area, finding some jewelry, a magic sword and a ring of invisibility (which the assassin takes).
Since they now are wounded and loaded down with loot (which they transport by means of a Floating Disc spell by Alba) they decide to head back to the hidden Temple of Law, which has become their sanctuary and loot collection place while in the dungeon, to take a longer rest and tend their wounds. However, while in the Temple, settling down to rest, Make Me the paladin hears a scuttling noise in the corridor outside. Angelina and Haxxel goes out to scout, Angelina taking point with her invisibility ring. What they find is most disturbing. A huge spider (like the one they slew earlier) has apparently followed them into their hiding place! Maybe it’s not as safe as they thought it would be…? The PCs attack and with joined forces they manage to put down the evil creature. And finally, they get some rest.
Well rested and recuperated, the PCs decide to check the right (north west) corridor upon the ledge. Angelina D’Monica puts on the ring of invisibility and ventures into the dark opening. After but a few feet, everything turns black. Like really, really black. She has to feel herself back to the opening. It seems that even darkvision cannot pierce this ungodly darkness. Hoder the Ogre warrior decides to brave the danger. The dark corridor slopes down, turning right (west) as he goes. After some 50 feet, a stairway leads down, ending up in a non-black corridor leading west. Hoder fetches the rest of the crew and they continue exploration, moving into a small cavern, where they catch a faint purring sound. On a heap of old fabric scraps, a strange creature is resting, a rune-engarved dog collar around it’s neck. It has an armadillo-like body with a long tail ending in a fishtail-like shape and it’s head is adorned with twin feather-like long antennae (like a night-moth). Upon spotting the PCs, the creature gives up a yelp and jumps up like a happy dog, approaching the PCs.
(GM note: The players immediately recognize the creature, but the characters have never encountered anything like it so we play out their ignorance, supported by a few botched intelligence and monster lore checks, resulting in a very fun encounter).
After a few rounds of battle (and a few destroyed metal items) some of the players suspect that the monster has something to do with their rapidly decaying weapons and armor, but they keep attacking as they can’t do anything else. The creature is eventually slain, but at the cost of armor details, weapons and even one mighty magic sword. The PCs realizes that the rust-bringing antennae can be usable and cut them off (one more dagger gone). Then Blitz casts Gentle Repose* on them to keep them from going sour. They then decide to try the antennae on the bronze door they couldn’t force in the partially flooded area on level 1. Without searching more where they are, they hurry to the bronze door (to ensure that the antennae doesn’t lose their ability to digest metal). And yes – touching an antenna on the previously impenetrable bronze door makes it rust and crumble in an instant*, revealing a steep staircase leading down into the bowels of the Earth. The first stop is a small room (10×20 ft) with no apparent exits, and a stairway going even further down. They decide to follow the stairs.
*= I don’t know if Rust Monster antennae are supposed to work after death, but this was good and creative thinking so of course it worked 🙂
After a long climb down, they end up in a man-made corridor making a 90° turn toward the right (west). Faint cries of agony (or ecstasy?) can be heard echoing… They peak around the corner, Miami Vice style, and see two rotting zombie-like undead with swords and shields and three of the blood soaked, red eyed skeletal abominations like they encountered at the diabolic blood-fountain up above. One of the zombies is also carrying a filthy skin drum around its decayed neck. The dwarven cleric jumps around the corner, trying to turn the abominations, but he fails miserably, as does the paladin. The only option now is to fight, bu the cramped corridor only allows a two-man front. Haxxel suspects that the drum might be an alarm device and manages to put an arrow through the drum skin, muffling the sound and nailing the drum to the chest of the zombie. And here we leave our heroes, weapons drawn, facing a group of unrelenting undead…
Actually a good cliffhanger and the end of Season 1 of our adventures in the Lost Lands.
Next session we will create characters for the 1920s Call of Cthulhu mega adventure Masks of Nyarlahotep. And of course, play reports will be posted here as usual.
Stay tuned for more tabletop RPG action from A Fistful of d20s!
With a Fistful of d20's 