Play Report: Wheel of Evil by Faster Monkey
It’s not often that I get to run a game for 4 PCs over a
couple two-hour sessions so when I do, I like to pull out something special and
Wheel of Evil did not disappoint.
Branded as a Dungeon Crawl for 4-6 characters of levels 3-5, I decided
that with henchman, it was an appropriate challenge for lower-level characters:
Cinderblock, 1st level thief
Cinderblock’s NPC henchman Dithaniel, 1st level fighter
Gruber, 2nd level fighterCinderblock’s NPC henchman Dithaniel, 1st level fighter
Gruber’s NPC henchman Falden, 1st level fighter
Wolfgang, 4th level druid
Wolfgang’s menagerie (black bear, wolf, fox, hawk, rat)
Gerilynn, 4th level cleric
Gerilynn’s henchman Ehlark, 1st level fighter/cleric
Gerilynn’s henchman Caitlynn, 1st level ranger
Wolfgang and Gerrilynn decided they needed a little space
from their elvish patrons. Renneton, a
town a few days ride away from Hommelet and famous for its fine cheeses, had
advertised for heroes, and was willing to pay them in stock options—shares in
the profits of the annual cheese sale.
The assignment, as explained by the local priest, Father Desmond, was
straight forward, from a practical if not an ethical point of view. The town of Renneton used a local cave for
aging cheeses and been doing so for centuries.
Now strange little monsters, presumably from deeper in the earth had
found their way up and been found to be stealing and destroying cheeses. These creatures were only about three feet
tall and cowardly in battle, but also thoroughly wicked and treacherous,
“Kobolds” they were called locally. And
they needed to be dissuaded somehow from stealing the human’s cheeses. Father Desmond brought the party to the caves
and provided them a map, showing the upper caverns where cheese was prepared. He
had gone missing in the caves overnight, pursuing the kobolds after a raid. He also introduced them to Harzar, foreman of
the cheese guild. Before going below,
the party to look around the cheese preparation areas and tool to the cheesers.
Cinderblock noticed that the other cheese workers seemed
uneasy around Harzar, treating with not only the deference due a superior, but
with veiled revulsion. Although he
didn’t like to talk about his experiences, he had become even more thoroughly
dedicated to his job.
The party learned that a few kobold were being held prisoner
in a storage room, and asked to meet them.
“Little good it will do you,” the cheesers said, “they can’t talk human
or elvish, only their nasty monster talk.”
The kobolds expressions were plain enough—they looked miserable and
bitter and glared at their captors and whispered among each other. The cheesers explained that a week ago, a
wandering magician had offered to translate the prisoner’s speech. No useful information, only the highly
dubious claim that the kobolds blamed the humans for ruining their food. “If they like their food so much, why they
stealing ours?” Gerrilynn asked what the
kobold’s ate and the cheesers shuddered and shook their heads. “Don’t even want to think about it. That would be a good question for Father
Desmond, right Bert? Why killing these
monsters would be any different than killing a prowling wolf, I can’t see. No offense, your woodiness.” Gerrilynn shared some of her own food and the
kobolds eat it hungrily—except the cheese which they flung back in her face as
if it were an insult.
Gruber asked about what weapons of powers the kobolds
had. The men laughed. “Spears and rocks and these.” A clay flask. “Smell it.
Careful, not too close. We reckon
they fill it with their own piss and if they can get a jump on a man they would
smash it on his head. Who knows what it
might do? Bless us, no one here has had
to find out.”
Nosing around a little more, Cinderblock learned that some
of the cheesers had a sideline business in moonshine. And that the Cheesers Guild was preparing an
extra-large cheese, a five-foot diameter wheel that would be shipped to the
King of Alyan.
At last the party was ready to proceed. They lit torches
and, as they proceed beyond the makeshift barrier the cheesers had assembled
against the kobolds, Cinderblock assumed the job of continuing Father
Desomond’s map. Soon, the party came to
a fork in the tunnel, and peered into what must have been a cheese storage
room, now a jumble of broken shelving coated with dust. The party decided to explore the room further
and found a deep fissure. Wolfgang asked
his rat Alexis to climb down and report what he found. As Alexis disappeared beyond the light of the
torches, he squeaked that he had found a mass of blue and pink cheese. Then there was a rat-scream and silence. A cloud of blue and pink dust exploded from
the fissure; Wolfgang, Gerrilynn, and Gruber fell into a deep slumber. Caitlynn and Cinderblock found that they
could barely rouse them enough to mumble a few words before falling back into
sleep. Caitlynn, despairing of how to
explain what had happened to the rat when Gerrilynn and Wolfgang woke up,
climbed down into the fissure holding a torch.
She saw the blue and pink gelatinous mold that the rat had described as
cheese. She slipped into it up past her
knees and felt herself being sucked under.
Cinderblock climbed down and helped pull her out. The party decided that the rat would fend for
himself for now and that the sleeping humans should be carried to safety.
The heroes found their way back out of the caves and by the
time they got back down the hill to town and to the inn, everyone was awake and
walking under his or her own power. Talking
over their misadventures and laughing down the many jokes at their expense, the
heroes supped in their room (“Yes, we’ll all get plenty of sleep tonight!”) and
made a plan. The plan involved urine,
seven wineskins full of it, plus seven more wineskins full of raw material in
case they needed more. No one remembers
who first suggested it, but everyone agreed the kobolds didn’t have any use for
cheese and seemed to know something more about what they were really up
against.
Sure enough, the horrible pink and blue mold that had
swallowed Alexis the rat had a tougher time digesting urine. It took four wineskins, plus the bladder
contents of five humans and a wolf to the job, but the urine turned the mold
into cool, sweet-smelling steam.
The deep dark hole inspired some debate as to whether they
were forgetting their charge to eradicate kobolds, but a lit torch that found
the bottom about 50 feet down settled it.
Rope and iron spike time.
Dithaniel was the first down and his scream, abruptly cut
short brought Cinderblock down immediately after him. A three-foot tall figure seemingly composed
of mold had speared him with its skeletal claws. In the ensuing battle, this mold man, and
three others like it, proved to be skeletons completely grown over with mold. The other three wineskins were used on these
creatures before desperation intervened to prove that they could also be
destroyed by normal weapons. Horrified
at what they had just experienced, there was some talk of climbing back
up. But the rope was lying on the
ground. At the top, Wolfgang’s wolf was
howling and barking. “What happened?”
“The stinky one.” The wolf explained to Wolfgang. “He cut the rope.”
“The stinky one?” Harzer.
“I bite him and he run away.”
Although Wolfie was encouraged to
go get help, no one wanted to wait for it. Dithaniel was dead, but Gerrilynn
tended to the others and, after a brief and solemn ritual, Dithaniel’s
belonging were distributed among his companions. The heroes drank their wine, filled all the
empty wineskins, and pressed on.
The tunnels through which they walked was spongy, glowing,
pulsing mass of mold. They prodded ahead
to avoid walking on anything the horrible mass that had consumed the rat, and
breathed a sigh of relief when they came to a large pool of clear water with no
sign of mold. Eschewing the stepping
stones, Gerrilynn tested the water with her toe and then waded in. The others followed.
On the other side they found themselves a cavern of mold so
nauseating in its shapes, textures, smells, and sounds that it made everything
else they’d experienced look like white stilton. There were more of the walking mold men. There was something invisible that paralyzed
Wolfgang. And there was Harzer.
In the ensuing battle, there were several casualties. The mold men were easy to kill. Harzer turned out to be the husk of a man—when
hit a larger mold man stepped out and was taken out by Caitlynn and
Falden. But the party was endangered by
numbers. And by the globs of black
pudding that seemed to be falling from the ceiling. Falden and Caitllynn were killed by moldmen. Ehlark was killed by a black pudding.
Someone noticed that an invisible force was pushing the
paralyzed Wolfgang toward a particular part of the cavern. Cinderblock did some reconnaissance and
located a particularly complex patch of mold that seemed to be responding to
the battle. Lots of urine and a little
moonshine later and that patch had been turned to gray flakes. The moldmen collapsed.
The black pudding continued to quiver and slither toward the
party. Cinderblock charged with his
short sword. The blobby thing shrank
from blow but then expanded, enveloping the brave and resourceful rogue.
His companions killed the blobs from a safe distance. There was treasure. There were stolen cheeses that the heroes
decided should remain with their fallen comrades.
On the way out of the caves, the party encountered a band of
kobolds. Both parties agreed, happily,
and in their own languages, that the mold was retreating. After a mimed non-aggression pact the kobolds
went deeper into the caverns and the humans went up to report their success.
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