Old School Hack AP: Karst Chantry Part 2a

After the flurry of activity surrounding the release of the Ryth Chronicle, I now find myself with almost double the traffic that I normally see. No doubt this will soon settle back to normal, but for the moment I will try to remember that I am writing for readers that may not be familiar with what came before.

Today's post concerns the play report for part II of my Old School Hack dungeon crawl. For you real old schoolers who came to the site for Ryth, Old School Hack may or may not be your thing. It is not a retro-clone and it not compatible with any particular D&D rule set. Instead, it is a modern, rules-light game that attempts to capture a certain "old school feel". There is a random assignment of ability scores and the game emphasizes rulings over rules. But characters have "cool powers" and are fairly resistant to fatalities. It may not be how you remember the games of yore (and it is not quite how I remember it either), but it still seems to scratch that dungeon fantasy itch. It's also a hell of a fun game to play, especially for one-shots. For that, I recommend that you check it out here.

Now, when we last left our party of intrepid explorers, they had just defeated a collection of servitors of the Flayed God in the legendary Karst Chantry. Owing to the absence of his player, Colin the Swashbuckler became strangely two-dimensional (except when other players spent Awesome Points to have him do something stupid or dangerous). At the same time, the party heard three-dimensional cries of "help" coming from an adjacent corridor. These cries were uttered by Zog the Younger, an arrogant but recently humbled sorcerer who was currently awaiting sacrifice to the Flayed God in a nearby cell.

[Aside: Joining us for the first time, Zog's player used the Sorcerer template from Barsoomcore's excellent Dino Pirates of Ninja Island hack].

Responding to Zog's cries, the party charged up a flight of stairs to a set a rooms that were once used as housing for apprentices of the chantry. They were met by yet more servitors of the Flayed God and a brief and bloody combat followed, punctuated by Zog using powerful magic to blow off the door of his cell, thereby crushing the last of the flayed guardsmen.

Zog introduced himself and the party recognized him from their pre-expedition planning session at the Silver Wolf Inn. Yes, Zog was a member of the other expedition that beat them out of town. Alas, Zog's party was waylaid by flayed men before they had even penetrated the chantry and most of his companions were slain or taken prisoner. One of his former companions, a female druid languishing in an adjascent cell, was cruelly slain during Zog's rescue.

While Zog and the party discussed terms for his cooperation in further exploration, Eck Redbeard opened the last of the cell doors, thereby freeing a starving minotaur who ravaged the party before being put down.

[Aside: I made extensive use of my DungeonWords supplement during this session and I rolled minotaur when I wanted to know if there was anything else interesting in this section of the chantry].

Down the hall from the converted cells, there was an open set of doors that led to a precarious chain bridge that connected this karst to another. A ruined observatory could be seen upon that rocky formation and Zog confirmed that his party was ambushed within sight of that old structure.

Being a proper group of dungeoneers, the party agreed to finish exploring the present karst before moving on to the next. They backtracked through the abattoir of flayed corpses and emerged in a room decorated by ancient and morbidly heroic tapestries. The tapestries, radiating a faint aura of magical preservation, depicted glorious scenes of the chantry's necromantic exploits. In an adjacent passage, a gallery of portraits depicted famous masters of the old scholomance, including the infamous Ulthar the Undead (a reputed vampire).

With some careful searching in the gallery of portraits, a secret door is uncovered that led to a gap separating this karst to another. Investigating clues in the tapestries, portraits, and mosaics on the wall led the party to conclude that the bridge only appeared under full moonlight. As the moon was not yet visible in the gathering dusk, the party decided to finish exploring the present karst.

Returning to the tapestry room, the party took the western exit to a room with a mysterious well. Having had bad experiences drinking from magical fonts in the past (and this one was definitely magical), the party doesn't follow through on the various proposals to extract water from its depths. This is despite the fact that a stifling room that smelled like old sweat to the north seemed to instill in them an unnatural thirst.

To the west of the well, the party found an old kitchen that has been ransacked like most everything else in the dungeon. Surprisingly, it also contained the biggest cache of treasure that the party had thus far encountered. The treasure was in the form of some excellent quality cutlery and a half-dozen magical kitchen appliances (including one that magically toasts bread). These should command outrageous prices back in Sanctuary and the western cities.

The party does not tarry in the room to the immediate south of the well due to what appeared to be a slight crack in reality. Drak the Wild recoiled with horror after catching a climpse of lakes of fire and suffering souls.

Moving south down a winding stair, the party finds a room filled with rotting stores and the sound of horrible buzzing. The party is then attacked by a swarm of irridescent bugs that almost carry party members over the edge of the karst and into the darkness below. It takes some creative spell-casting by Zog and Drak as well as some judiciaous use of fire to finally drive the creatures off. The party is rewarded for their efforts when they discover a mostly intact wine-cellar filled with a variety of magical libations (not all of them being magically preserved blood of exquisite vintage).
It is also at this point that the party levels up, having spent the last of their Awesome Points to incinerate the glowing bugs. The tale of the Karst Chantry will continue with the exploration of the karst south of the "moon bridge" in the next post...