MALCHOR'S DARK HOUSE - SESSION 3

After searching the Orcs, Arnor shouldered open the door the Orcs had come out of and the party moved into a large 30x30 room with many dogs, all identical basset hounds (79). Twenty or so are feeding in the south side of the room, at a wall-long trough, otherwise, around twenty or so are lounging upon old pillows about the rooms. They all notice the party, but pay them little mind. The dogs all resemble the dog that they had seen on the trophies in the other room, as well as the large version in the middle of the room. All small, white, with long droopy black ears, and a red tuft of hair atop their heads.

Gill spoke to one of them: "Toby?" The dog stood up on its hind legs, and said, "Hello, kind sir, if you're looking for Toby you can find him here. A lot of him. Everyone of us." After a brief discussion, Gill influenced three Tobys into joining the party. They all left the room. Bogwater took a liking to the three Tobys and along with occasionally riding upon Arnor's shoulders, he also started riding one of the Tobys occasionally.

Passing back through the Trophy Room (78), they grabbed three trophies at random, put them with their possessions, and then traversed back up into the hallway and north, where after wrapping around a bit, they came to a staircase leading up.

Moving up the stairs, they came into a wavering hallway traveling SE, which after about 60 feet, took them into a 30x50 room that appeared to have at some point been a meeting room, or perhaps a mess hall. A number of tables were upturned and sideways. Wood chairs about, as well. A room in disarray. Norman the Acolyte of the Great Church of Furthermoor* suddenly felt dreadful, as they entered the room. Down in the NE corner of the room, he could sense a presence with a power outside of his experience. As the party paused, to acknowledge this, they could see the troubled eyes of a Wight in the darkness on the far side of the room. Norman suggested their moving through the room in the quickest way available, therefore Arnor busted through a door ten feet away leading south.

Wight by John Howe. Technically, a Barrow-Wight, in the Tolkien vein.

The party moved into an antechamber type room, that had numerous tables with maps upon them. Maps of known Furthermoor, as well as showing the Wall of the Endless Edge, and the rumored--but not believed to be real by all--land of Kush to its west; similar to the map in the room they saw below with the Seven Kushy Moons revolving around the table. FYI.

Click for larger image. I plan to have a "complete" map at some point, but for purposes now this is the best I have. The party is currently in Nevergreen Depot which is in the middle of the map, north of a lake at the bottom.

Looking over the maps, Gill picked up one of the Tobys, showed it the map, and asked, "Where is Malchor on this map, compared to where we are now?" Toby said, "Oh Malchor is here, down below. Us Tobys end up meeting him sooner or later." Gill tried to get more info on exactly where, etc., but Toby didn't know. While he had seen Malchor before, he didn't know exactly how to get to Malchor, as he had been transported there in a blind cage by Orcs, but it was a number of levels down.

The party decides to backtrack. They successfully slip back through the room with the Wight, enter the wavering corridor, then go down the staircase. Once back down they wind back around the hallway and decide to take a hallway east they have yet to explore. This ends up wrapping them back west and to a another and different staircase leading back up.

Arnor ran up to the top with lantern and saw that the concrete shifted to a dirt floor, and rock walls, but also, in about 20 feet, he could see a tile floor, and what appeared to be the resumption of the house. The rest of party ended up coming up and they all walked through the primitive area into a 30x30ish octagonal room with a tile floor. They quickly noticed that there was a symbol in the tile, a symbol they have seen a few times now, most specifically on the back of the robes they grabbed the previous day. This being a chapel room.

Dawnbringer symbol (for now)

Leif sensed something interesting about the west wall, and after Gill got involved, they located a secret door which took them through a closet-like section of ten feet to another secret door, and into another octagonal room, about 30x30, and the most glaring thing about this room--where robes hang about with the Dawnbringer symbol, pink on red--is the busted out north side, into the grass north of the house.

They can hear a buzzing outside, as well, and Gilleegan surmises it's Striges, and therefore prepares them for a battle. When they roll out, they find three Stirges hovering in place, watching them, undecided. After the party places themselves, battle starts.

One of the Stirges started in but Gill plucked it with his bow, it just missed one of the gnomes, and made a thud into the wall. Then Bogwater, riding atop one of the Tobys charged, and with his mace battered one in a surprising blow, it dropped from the sky like a fly. The other Stirge attacked and briefly latched onto Arnor, but was shaken, not getting fully attached, doing just 1 damage.... Then Arnor swung his sword, and knocked it dead.

Striges from original AD&D Monster Manual, drawn by David C. Sutherland III.

After the brief battle, the party collect themselves in the grass outside the north of the house, and talk of walking over to the Depot.

It's the 25th day of the month of the Hummingbird, 8:30 AM.

"Then Bogwater, riding atop one of the Tobys charged, and with his mace battered one in a surprising blow, it dropped from the sky like a fly." Drawing by Bogwater aka Ram.

[Everyone gets 250 experience points. Please add to your character sheets, etc., to whatever is already there. Y'all also need to decide how you want to split up the loot, and add that to respective sheets, as well. From my notes, loot is as follows (let me know if there's anything I'm missing?):

1029 gp
300 sp
Gold bracelet
Brass ring w/ curvy glass design
Two white robes, w/ Dawnbringer symbol in black on back
Two maps showing different possible locations of the landing of the Dawnbringer
Letter in Orcish
Fish w/ green eye, wrapped
Map of Furthermoor, also showing Kush, and Wall of the Endless Edge.
Three dog trophies]


* For now, Norman will be considered a cleric of the Great Church of Furthermoor, unless something else happens.

MALCHOR'S DARK HOUSE - SESSION 2

The party moved around the busted-out floor and into hallway and north, in twenty feet busting open a door on the west wall, and propping it with a spike. They flood into the room, and as the lantern sets within the 30' x 30' room (58) fully, it reflects on a 10-feet-in-diameter sphere on sawhorses in the center of the room. Three sections are on the floor. Gilleegan gets up inside the sphere, which has a crimson felt lining. He wedges himself up in there, as Leif and Arnor pick up the three missing sphere pieces on the floor, and replace them, with Gill still inside.When the last piece snaps in place, the sphere starts to hum, then it rises a bit and the top starts to open, flowering out, rising in the middle, and where Gill is sitting now still among the unseen machine works, pops and drops 300 sp, 1000 gp, a gold bracelet, and a brass ring with a curvy glass design on the outside. After collecting the treasure, the party tries the door to the south, but ultimately can't get it opened, so they go back to the corridor to the east and then move northward.

Places explored so far by party on Level 2 of Malchor's Dark House. This write-up starts at top right (53), and ends in room at bottom right (78). Note that on this map, up is south, down is north.

The party continues north where they can see a room opening up ahead after 20', but then go down a corridor to the west and then further down this corridor north where they come into a room occupied by two Bugbears (69). As if caught in the act of something, the Bugbears seem surprised as the light of the party's lantern hits their faces. They stand, huge, pumpkin-headed. The party looks about the room and sees long, white robes hanging on the walls, some hooks and stands about, chairs, a few cots. The Bugbears stare, their heads flaming.

Bugbear, as drawn in OD&D supplement, Greyhawk. Drawn by Greg Bell.

The party moves toward the door on the north wall, and the Bugbears leave the room to the SE. As the Bugbears are leaving, and before the party totally exits, a number of the white robes are snagged. On the back of the robes is the symbol of the Dawnbringer. Opening the north door, our heroes come into a room that's in a Furthermoor way, a Planetarium (71). There's a long flat table/model at center that holds a topographical map of Furthermoor, and also, in a gravity mobile Calder-style the Seven Kushy Moons are slowly revolving around it, held by a mechanical arm at the middle. Leif takes an interest in the moons, and studying them, notices how one is painted red, while the other six are grey. The most interesting part of the map, other than the moons, is the fact that the map not only shows known Furthermoor, but also has a bit into the land of Kush, west of the Wall of the Endless Edge. Many in Furthermoor have heard of this land's existence, though few believe it actually does.

Next, the party bust their way through the east door and spike it, and as they moved into the room (70) the atmosphere changes, as suddenly they're in a tropical setting, looking north at a beach, sand, waves lapping in... A bit suspect, the party sends Bogwater, on a rope, to enter the water, and after wading in a bit, Bogwater drops down about five feet under the water, and on the floor of the drop is a floor of bones, animal and humanoid. He picks about the bones for about ten minutes or so, but finds nothing of interest.

As others enter the water they do not feel the water, just the drop-off to the bones (except for Leif), so a rope walkway is made to make it to a door on the north wall, that originally looked suspended above the water. Bogwater, the first there, is able to push the north door open, and as the others arrive, and they open it further and light the way, they see into a 30' x 30' room (76) with two tables, both stacked with maps. Most of the party is eager to move on, either through the door at north or east, but Leif holds them up so he can study the maps, and after a good looking over, is able to surmise how each table carries similar maps surrounding a different location: that is, two main theoretical locations of where the Dawnbringer once landed, perhaps bringing Orcs to Furthermoor. The party snag a map from each table, and then bed down in the room, and decide on a watch at 8:40pm. Leif studies his spell book for two hours within this time, as the others fall asleep.

With no intrusions over the night, the party wakes and moves at 5 AM, relighting the lantern, and passing through the door to the north. They spiral about the corridors to the north a bit and Leif exclaims in Elvish, "This place is huge! (for a house)," then moving NW they come into a 30 x 30' room that has shelves lining the walls, all filled with trophies displaying a dog on the top. In the middle of the room (78) is a large version of what is seen atop each trophy, up on a post of about four feet: a gold-painted dog with big ears flopped down. At the base of the post, it reads: Toby.

Next thing the party knows, three Orcs come busting into the room from a door at the NW. Gilleegan attempts to lure them from the room, perhaps to chase him, but the Orcs stay put, perhaps over-confident, but sizing up the party and standing their ground with machetes. Gill then wraps around as if to talk with one, and then surprise slices an Orc, and battle ensues.

The second Orc blunders after swinging at Bogwater, missing, its machete sticking into the dog statue at the middle of the room. He is then promptly slain. After that it was number three that took Leif's "White Knife" to the throat, decapitation style, quick and easy and terrible, blood spewing all about the nearby dog trophies.

The party searches the three Orcs and finds 29 gp, a letter in orcish, and a fish w/ a green eye wrapped, as if for delivery. 

It's 6:00 AM.

MALCHOR'S DARK HOUSE - SESSION 1

Five characters congregated in the SE corner of Tino Rorschach's depot, that is, the namesake of the settlement, Nevergreen Depot. The characters: A human fighter named Arnor, an elvish ranger named Leif, a halfling thief named Gilleegan, a gnome cleric named Norman, and a gnome fighter named Bogwater. Gilleegan purchased a magic dagger from Tino for 50 gp. Otherwise, everyone gathered around the table while Kentley Oaks poured a few rounds of his brew, the Gremlin. Hilary Huckabee, a cabinetmaker who lives at the settlement, was also there. It was 4PM.

Speaking with Rorschach, Oaks, and Huckabee, the party hears stories of dark figures recently traveling through ND and down toward White Widow Abbey and Octopus Lake, also that undead have been recently seen more frequently outside of town to the west closer to the ancient barrows there. Ultimately however, the party becomes most interested in the historical figure of Malchor, a magic-user considered the founder of the settlement, and his now-abandoned house across the path from the depot (which sits next to the old stone tower, known to be the oldest structure here, dating back to the Great War with Fezco). Also, rumors have been going around the settlement that some orcs have been seen entering and exiting Malchor's Dark House.

After their second round, the party indeed decides to move out and explore Malchor's Dark House. As it is still light out, almost 5PM, the party eyes the double door entrance to the house, as well as boarded up windows, etc., and decide to move around the south of the house for a possible alternate entrance. As they are coming around the south wall, one of the gnomes (I believe it was Bogwater?) detects that the south wall here is unusually weak, though this cannot be seen. With this information, Arnor suddenly runs and jumps into the wooden wall with all his might, crunching through it fairly easily as it appears to give way, leaving a perfect hole where he traveled through it horizontally. He takes no damage (*20*).

As the others come through the hole, they see four dwarves in the room, standing there next to an altar, perplexed by Arnor and what just happened. Standing at a distance, the dwarves look on. The party tries to hire the dwarves, but are unsuccessful. The dwarves tell the party they have been here for some time, using this room as a base-of-sorts, and have made it down to the third level of the dungeon below the house. They also point out to the party, a mural on the south wall, now ruined by Arnor's hole. It was a mural of the Dawnbringer--related to an orcish religion--and therefore this room had been an altar room for worshipers.

Drawn by Randall (aka Bogwater)

Leaving the dwarves in peace, the party moves deeper into Malchor's Dark House, lighting Arnor's lantern. Moving into a spacious room with a few tables and some couches on the south wall, they notice some somewhat-recently prepared food rotting on a few plates atop tables, flies zipping about. The thought is that this ties back to the dwarves, and they move on to the east down a corridor. As it opens into another room they come upon 10 orcs, standing about, holding clubs and machetes.

While at first the party is fearful, and considers running, they hold their ground, and the orcs do not attack. Gilleegan decides to offer a few of the orcs a puff of his Rat's Meow weed, which ends up lightening the mood a bit, and while not making friends with the orcs, it does suspend any violent reactions, and eventually allows the party to move through the room without having to engage in combat. They move on to a hallway at the SE, which leads them to a staircase down.

Once down the stairs, and coming around a hallway into another room, the party comes upon five hobgoblins. The hobgoblins do not attack, and seem quite amused by the party, a few of them chuckling. Gill offers them a taste of his weed, but they seem to find it disgusting, and are not interested. They laugh, and look at one another as if they are in on a joke that the party is not privy to.

Leaving the hobgoblins, the party travels west down a corridor, where after a bit they come to a closed door. Opening the door, they enter a sizable room with a dusty statue at its center. It is a statue of a magic-user, in pose, and inscribed at its base, in human, reads: Malchor, the Greatest of All Magic-Users. Aside from the dusty statue, there is also a lot of mold in the room.

Noticing another door on the west side of the room, the party moves into another room, a library of sorts, with books broken up into various subjects: History, Alchemy, Geology, and Trees. Bogwater notices a book that interests him, The Dream of the Blue Mountain, pulls it down, and puts it with his things. Gilleegan finds and keeps, Creating Your First Potion. Leif takes Blisterwood Companion.

With doors at the north and west, the party moves west into a new room. There's an open hallway on the west wall, and strangely, there is a sizable bunch of mushrooms growing on the floor at the opening, but inside this room. Gill moves toward them, bends down, and investigates the shrooms, picks and pockets one, but ultimately, they appear to be common growth. Arnor, who has been leading the party, steps upon the shrooms moving toward the corridor, and suddenly the rotted floor gives way and he finds himself falling 10 feet onto a spike that deals 4 damage. Barely alive, the party pulls Arnor back up to the room with a rope, and then Norman casts Healing of Light Wounds on him, bringing Arnor a bit more health.

It's 6:40 PM

NEVERGREEN DEPOT

Nevergreen Depot is a small community in the southwestern part of Furthermoor. While its history goes back to a wizard named Malchor, its becoming a way station/supply station extends into now with Tino Rorschach and his amazing selection of supplies ("if you can think of it, we might have it").

In the SE corner of the depot building (1), Rorschach keeps an open tap going that's brewed by Kentley Oaks (9), who happens to be here now, hanging out. A woman named Hilary Huckabee is also here.

It's the 24th day of the month of the Hummingbird. 4PM.

NW FURTHERMOOR

WATER & WINESKIN BLUES

[This post is from five years ago--just pushing through now]

With Furthermoor on hiatus, I recently started playing in a game, and the DM is using 2nd edition AD&D. Outside of how long it takes to make a character, it got me thinking a bit more about the differences between B/X and AD&D. First, this post has nothing to do with the AD&D game I was playing in, but something that came to mind while looking through the 2nd edition PDF.

Video Games and AD&D

While I can enjoy a video game like Skyrim for what it is--knowing I will never actually finish it or care that much about the story--it's simply the video game equivalent to AD&D. In other words, while folks playing AD&D when it first came out could enjoy a game of Zork on their Radio Shack computer, Skyrim (I'm using Skyrim as the all-encompassing example here) brings AD&D to the video game console in a modern way that works, though the game is the same for everybody, and let's face it, like many video games today, it looks extremely realistic (versus, say Minecraft, which is also obviously heavily influenced by D&D), even if it's in a fantasy world. Though Skyrim looks realistic, however, a player can technically walk for days without sleep, can walk for days without eating food (even if they have tons of it), etc....

If food and sleep don't matter much to Skyrim, why include them? Perhaps for the budding chef gamer who prefers to play Skyrim to collect food items and cook up interesting stuff? Why not? For me at least, none of these realistic elements really make the game any more fun, in fact, these tend to be the parts of the game that seem most like real life and work (no, I am not a chef, but just sayin'), exactly what one is generally distancing themselves from when playing a game. This is why I prefer B/X (I'm using B/X as the consensus here, despite the fact that on this blog I'm generally focused on a weird mash-up of Holmes/Mentzer) when I'm DM, versus anything too much more complex. From my experience, at least, complex tends to mean more realistic, and while I can love realistic in say a hex-and-counter Mexican War game, it isn't what I enjoy about D&D at all, in fact, I find that the more complex D&D gets, for both the players and the DM, the expense is the fun, and the spontaneous nature that the game originally came from.

Water and Wineskins

Take a look at the wineskin. In Holmes, the equipment list takes up the bottom third of a page in the back of the book. There's a "Water/Wine Skin" that goes for 1 gp. A quart of wine is the same price. Furthermore, standard rations cost 5 gp for one adventurer for a week.

It's only with regard to encumbrance, that wine and water are mentioned elsewhere in Holmes, and it's during discussion of where things are on a character's body, however, this appears to simply highlight editing to Holmes with regard to the imminence of AD&D ("1 quart wine (in pack)... 1 water skin, shoulder slung, right side,"), for the whole of this encumbrance section is missing from Holmes's original manuscript.

This seems telling with regard to various playing styles of D&D. Holmes, an early admirer and passionate player of the game, respected the players themselves to come up with the game that suited them, but then the published rule shift into more complexity, which meant more realism. In Holmes there are no rules for water consumption, ration consumption, etc. It's left up to the DM. One can assume a beginning character will buy a week's worth of rations, but what if they don't? Does it really matter? It could... What if the DM knows the character/group doesn't have water, they've been delving for a while, and they may soon enter a room of pools (B1: In Search of the Unknown came within the initial Holmes boxed set)? If they are thirsty, and told they may die because they have no water, this room of pools could be super interesting, and a highlight, especially given they therefore have a solid reason to test more than one of the pools. Though the rules say nothing of this deeper angle to the puzzle, that is the way of the Basic... This is a wonderful example of how thirst/lack of water, while yes realistic, is interesting simply because of the possible repercussions gamewise.

Take a look at Mentzer, specifically the section of sample characters in the Players Manual which stresses their use in "group adventures": a cleric equipped with 2 full waterskins; a dwarf with 1 full wineskin; a magic-user with 1 waterskin and 1 wineskin, both full; an elf with neither; a thief with neither; and then a halfling with 1 wineskin and 1 waterskin, both full. While it may be assumed that the elf and the thief would be members of a party with a water or wineskin, who knows... Furthermore, similar to Holmes, with no other rules present, the rations and water/wine options end up more for the DM to play on versus the deepening of character realism. It should also be noted that Mentzer suggests the possible use of water and/or wine in disarming some types of traps.

In other words, what makes dealing with rations/water/wine fun, and somewhat interesting, is not realism. It's because a thoughtful DM perhaps has certain puzzle pieces in their game that could possibly fit in with those factors. Otherwise, it's a pointless wash...

BROWN & RED WORM

[sometimes encountered in the wilderness of SW Furthermoor]