GM Notes - Morgansfort Session 2

This second session took place a month after the first which became our normal schedule. I had started running this module as a one-shot, or least intending it to only last a game or two, before we moved onto something of my own. Instead this has turned into a campaign which, after all, is the intention. The open-ended design makes this pretty easy. What follows are my notes as remembered to the best of my ability. There was a lot of role-playing in this session which the party didn't re-enter the dungeon until late into the game. They were only a little way through the actually underground adventure when we had to break for our three-hour hard stop. Like the first recap, I've used the present tense to allow the reader to follow along more easily in their own mind.

Adventure Recap/Synopsis:

The party emerges into mid-afternoon daylight from the dungeon underneath the Old Island Fortress. After a brief discussion, they decide to go back into the dungeon to retrieve the two desiccated bodies found in the room across the hall from the stirges’ nests. They portage the small boat to the other side of the river and find a quiet place to bury the bodies up the hill from Grelda’s cottage.

As they start on the road back to the fort, they spot the same pretty blond girl who was loitering outside the herbalist shop that morning quickly dart into the cottage. Pater attempts to sneak up to the house and listen. The front door opens and the girl asks Pater who he is and what he wants. The rest of the party announce themselves, ask her name, and inquire if Grelda is home. The girl is Jyni. Grelda is her aunt and is out for the moment. She assures the party that she is fine by herself. The party bid her leave and make a pretense of returning back to Morgansfort. Once out of sight of the cottage, the group circle back and hide in a copse of trees behind Grelda’s and wait.

A few hours pass and the group eat, rest, and recuperate from their recent bloody excursion. Mel and Nyphus take it easy in particular. Just as dusk arrives, so too does Grelda. She returns from out of the sky, flying low astride her garden plow. She enters the small cottage and shortly after Jyni exits heading back up the road to the fort.

The party follow Jyni at a distance in the deepening gloom to make sure of her safety. At the gate the adventures are asked if they have any treasure to claim as there is a 10% tax on all treasure returned to the fort from the area. The tax pays for the upkeep of the fort’s military garrison which protects the local farms from bandits and any threat of invasion from evil humanoids. The punishment for shirking the tax by hiding treasure is public flogging. Renik tells the clerk at the gate that any treasure they bring came with them when they first arrived at the fort.

Dinner is had in the tavern and the party heads off for rest. Pater goes to bed early, but wakes in the middle of the night to have a look around. The square is lit up outside from an unseen, omnidirectional light source. Pater sees a man knock and get let into the building next to the tavern. Following the other’s example, Pater knocks and is questioned at the door by a large surly man. He is almost turned away when a voice from inside says, “Oh Bargus, let him in.” Pater enters what appears to be a normal residence, but is lead down a hallway where a bookcase masks a hidden door leading downstairs into a basement. The room is immediately recognizable as an illicit gambling hall (gambling is strictly forbidden in Morgansfort). There is a bar against the right wall and several table where games of chance are being played. Pater sidles up to the bar and asks for a drink. His neighbor on his left tells the barkeep to put it on his tab. That neighbor turns out to be the Baronet Halden Rathwynn. After a short conversation Pater mentions the nightmares of his party members which seems to spook the Baronet who quickly leaves. The barkeep mentions to Pater that the Baronet is a regular who has a bit of a gambling addiction. Pater tries his hand at games with some off-duty soldiers and loses money.

The next day Renik goes to the bank and gets the jewelry the party took out of Island Fortress appraised. The teller questions him where he got them and Renik gruffly mentions something about family heirlooms. He leaves without liquidating the goods.

The party spend the next few days rest up and healing, and prepare to return to the Island Fortress. No nightmares occur. The party enter the dungeon with the intent on dispatching the foul ape-with-a-crow-head, Ghazold. When they reach his octagonal antechamber they see nothing but his empty chains and shackles hanging from the ceiling. Having gone westwards previously, this time the party goes down the east passage which quickly ends with a stuck door. Pater finds no traps on the door itself, but once opened, a trap in the floor immediately opens and Nyphus and Renik fall in 20 feet down taking damage. Pater and Mel spike a rope down, but not before surveying the room above. It is only an empty banquet hall covered in dust. Mel and Pater head down too where they find themselves trapped in the east end of a large, though odd-shaped, room with a gray ooze creeping towards them. Pater scouts the other end of the room and finds no way out. There is a small room off this one separated by bars – bars too close for even small Pater to slip through. Within the small room is a bench with three ceramic flasks and a crate, another door on the north wall. The party engages in combat with the ooze, but to no avail. Arrows and sling stones dissolve on contact and the torch thrown at it sputters, dies out and is absorbed into the mass. The party retreats to the rope, but the trapdoor above them is now shut. Luckily Mel finds a secret door leading out of the room close to where they fell in.

The party finds themselves in a new passage which leads north with another passage heading east 10 feet up. Here we leave our heroes until next session...