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zippdementia · 7 years

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Part 19 Alignment May Vary: Where the Good go to Die

The Pit of Thudd is the final, intentional, resting place of the elven wizard, Udo the Gray, friend of Haggemoth, who devoted the last decade of his life to building the tomb, a place where the good elf would go to die. The tomb was meant not so much as an altar to his life as it was meant to be a giant treasure chest for his greatest and most powerful creation: the Rod of Storms. The Rod of Storms—contained in his crypt with the cryptic message: “Beware the rod, I was its creator but never its master”—is the reason the desert of Thud exists. Such was its power that it sucked the moisture from the air and gathered it around itself, to create the Pit.

From out of the hazy distance, you begin to hear a sound mounting over the endless murmuring of the winds. It is a keening, hollow sound, like a distant cry. Almost before you realize it, the ground drops away sharply into an irregular bowl-shaped depression filled with weathered rock. At the bottom, a jagged hole is open to the sky. The wind seems to swirl in an endless circle around the aperture like a gentle cyclone, and the play of air across the gap sounds like the moaning of a lost soul. Every so often, a loud, low rumble can be heard from below.

There is actually moisture in the air here, and as you approach the pit, you see that its bottom is hidden in a cloud of roiling mist. The sound of water can be heard far below. To one side, an ancient stairway descends along the edge of the pit and into the depths.

In terms of aesthetic, the Pit reminds me a lot of the Cave of Mists from Final Fantasy IV. Platforms connecting to each other over deep pits, mists wallowing through the caves, a monster hidden in the fog... lots of interesting stuff for descriptions. In terms of dungeon style, it is what I call a “keycard” dungeon, where there is a locked door or barrier that you have to explore the dungeon to figure out how to unlock. In this case, the barrier is a magical waterfall that is actually passable right from the beginning (with an extremely good set of rolls) but which gets easier to pass the more of the dungeon’s puzzles you solve. This helps keep the dungeon from being too linear and railroady. In fact, my group bypasses a good third of the dungeon and its nastiest trap by tackling the water wall early.

For obstacles, most of the danger comes from the fact that the fog obscures everything beyond 25 feet. There are a lot of traps, like lightning sigils or a particularly vicious sonic trap centered around ice (this is the one they avoid). There are also platforms that open beneath you to dump you in the water 40 feet below, a scary experience if played right by the DM because you can describe things like the following:

Abenthy, the platform tilts sickeningly underneath you and suddenly you are falling into the mists. Your vision completely obscured, you spin and tumble in a thick fog until suddenly you are enveloped in cold, dark water. You try to get your bearings and eventually surface, but all around you is white fog and black water. Waves buffet you to and fro as you call out for your companions. Your only answer is the distant boom of thunder.

Karrina, Tyrion... you see Abenthy topple off the platform and into the fog. He makes no sound. He is gone.

There are stairs that lead back up, but finding them can be a harrowing process of guesswork, all the while wondering if something is in the water chasing you.

As far as enemies, the most dangerous fight is against two mummies, who used to be Udo’s most trusted apprentices, still serving him in the afterlife. This fight almost kills the players, though I remove the mummy’s curse (withotu a cleric, they don’t have a good way to fix the curse at this level and I don’t want to lock them in an unwinnable situation because they "don’t have the right classes”). The others are elementals, two waters and one air, released as part of solving the dungeon’s puzzles. The elementals try to knock players into the water below and then fight them where the players are at a disadvantage. This leads to one of the coolest moments of the dungeon for us, where the party gets separated.

The bard ends up being a true hero of the dungeon by forcing the Air Elemental (one of the most dangerous creatures here) to flee by using Dissonant Whispers. Love how powerful some of these DND 5 spells are! They don’t do a ton of damage always, but they have great side effects, making casters really interesting support characters. The Air Elemental comes back, but by then the party has fled through the water barrier (and since they didn’t deactivate it, it works as a shield against the elemental. A little bonus for tackling the barrier early!

The last fight is against a Criosphinx, but only if they don’t solve its riddle (or piss it off enough to attack them). In this case, the players solve the riddle really quickly and avoid the fight, but next post I’ll detail what the Criosphinx would’ve looked like and how I converted it from third edition. Making monsters is the most involved piece of doing a conversion; I’ve been wanting to make a post about it for quite a while.

The dungeon ends with the players getting a ton of magical items, as well as the Rod of Storms, which brings rain back to the desert. They also get a map to Rori Rama, but the key which they came to find was taken months ago by Raiden, Karina’s old commander. They’ve been beaten to the punch!

Other than that, I add in a little twist of my own. One of my bosses at work is a nurse named “Leigh.” She said if ever she joined us in Dungeons and Dragons, she would play a ball of slime. As her actual participation is unlikely, I told her the next time we played I’d work in that ball of slime.

Enter Lambl Excresence (or “LEE” for short). He’s a lovable little goober who burbles his way through conversations, loves everyone, and likes to speak in acronyms (HAYD means How are ya doin?). He’s got a slime’s perspective on life: things go slow and that’s okay, everything can wait till another day. When you’re on a bumpy ride, just hit that wall and slide, slide, slide.

He becomes a session favorite and after the party inadvertently destroys his home (they take the Rod of Storms and return the Pit’s water to the desert) they carry him in their bag of holding back to the Fuzwah, who keeps him as a pet.

Other than that, here are some of the coolest moments we had in the dungeon...

The Mummy’s Touch

Abenthy felt cold stone under him, the sensation heightened by the loss of his chain mail, destroyed by the acidic slime at the pit’s entrance. Above him, the mummy loomed, a twisted figure with a hunched posture, the smell coming off of it reeking of equal parts vinegar and the grave. The mummy’s movements were like those of a bird—quick and precise—but also uncontrolled. It's fingers twitched sporadically, as if playing an invisble instrument. It’s head swiveled back and forth between Abenthy and Karina, the bandages where the creature’s eyes would be lingering on her retreating form. The death lust which empowered the mummy was pulling it in two directions. The tiefling was still active, but she was fleeing. Meanwhile, Abenthy lay at its feet, no longer a threat, but here... near... warm...

With a sudden movement, the mummy made its decision, reaching down the wrap its claws in the soft flesh of Abenthy’s neck. Abenthy readied his weapon for a final desperate strike, but the need never came. The mummy suddenly was rearing back, trying to swipe at something behind it. Verrick was there, driving a curved knife over and over into the creature’s dessicated skull. The blade came out bloodless with each strike, but pieces of skull and bandage broke off and fell like dust around Abenthy. The mummy moaned long and slow and then fell, twitching once on the ground and then staying still.

Verrick, breathing heavily, reached a hand out to Abenthy. Abenthy took it, and with that, his anger at Karina vanished. He had just been saved by what he had called “her mistake.” Verrick had proved himself able to overcome his past betrayal. And if the demon-born could do it, if he could find forgiveness, then maybe Abenthy’s own god could forgive Abenthy.

“Thank you,” was all he said, but it was enough.

Storm Eagle

Tyrion was relieved to feel stone under his feet. The water still came up to his chest, but at least now he wasn’t being buffeted around by the waves and could catch his breath.

“The darkness lies heavy But my heart is ever light. My stature may be little But my size disguises my might.”

Tyrion hummed the old tune softly to himself as, holding his lute high above the water, Tyrion stepped gingerly, his bare feet (tough as river stones, his mother used to say when he was young, as a good halfling’s should be) feeling for the inevitable edge of his little underwater island. He could see barely anything. The magical light cast on his lute showed him only the edge of the fog and had no ability to penetrate the blackness of the water. He had to rely on other senses, like his ears and feeling what the water around him was doing, and what they were reporting was disconcerting.

A splash. A ripple in the water. These were the only warnings he got before the water elemental rose up behind him, pounding down with fists made of storm and sea. Tyrion dodged to one side and the wake of the creature nearly threw him off his island again. He tried to strike out, but the elemental was already gone again, morphed back into the water.

Little did Tyrion know, but far above him, Abenthy, Karina, Xavier, and Verrick were fighting another water elemental on one of the stone platforms. It was a battle of wills, not brawn, as Abenthy tried to dominate the elemental, forcing it to obey him.

“It’s still coming,” Xavier said, backing away from the creature as it sloshed ever closer to him and Abenthy. Verrick threw one of his knives, but it only passed through the elemental, leaving a sprinkle of water in its wake, doing very little.

“FLEE.” Abenthy spoke, first softly, then with confidence and a touch of anger. Like waves upon a shore, the elemental broke, turning and throwing itself off the platform. Abenthy and Karina breathed simultaneous sighs of relief and next to Karina, Verrick sheathed his blades. “Fighting water doesn’t feel very satisfying,” he said.

They all heard the distant splash as the water elemental fell through the fog and hit the water 60 feet below them. And then Karina turned pale. “Shit,” she said. “Tyrion is down there.”

Tyrion heard the splash, too. He didn’t know what it was, but anything down here with him he was willing to bet was not a friend.

“Down in the valley-o I left my bally-ho The comrades sally for The call to go to war”

Not really appropriate for the moment, but in his fear he could only remember the most traditional of songs he had memorized: old marching tunes. He began to play louder, hoping that his allies could hear him and would locate him soon.

The attack came swiftly from two sides. The only warning was a welling of the water, like a small wave that continued to grow of its own power. Tyrion saw it coming and backed up, but his feet hit the edge of the island and suddenly the deep was opening up beneath him. He fell backwards with a shriek, just as the fog above him split, out of it bursting the winged form of Abenthy, dropping towards him like an eagle from a storm. The halfling reached out his lute and the Aasimir clasped a hand around it. Then Tyrion was in the air. Beneath him the two elementals crashed together with a spray of water, the droplets turning into tiny hands that gripped at his furred feet as they splashed up around him. But they had no power to drag him back down.

“Thank you!” was all that Tyrion could manage to pipe out. It was enough.

#dnd 5e #playthrough #tomb of haggemoth #dungeons #epic #Dungeons and Dragons #Journey Log #Wizards of the Coast #fantasy #RPG

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