Session 19: Stymied

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Here I have a new motive to writing these posts about the party's gaming, and there really isn't that much to tell about last Friday's session. The party had previously set out at the end of the prior session for Vac (correctly Vác, pronounced "vahts") from their semi-established base at Keszeg. Vác is on the Danube and it can be seen that it's in a type-1 hex, so that it has a full market available, the equivalent to that in Budapest. The town, rolling the population now, with the players not asking during the game, is 1,140—so, a substantial place. The party spent the first half of the running purchasing things for themselves, but not as it happened for the dungeon they were entering. They've gotten so used to my permitting fast movement in and out of dungeon environments, as the party usually arrive unexpectedly, encounter no traps and merely follow the entrance to whatever is inside. This will be their first time for returning to a dungeon of intelligent creatures (trogs have a 5 intelligence in my game)… and they did get caught unprepared, as the reader will see.

The dotted line shows a foot path through the "hinterland" hex between the type-5 and the type-1, which is a wilderness with proximity to civilisation. I don't normally record footpaths on 6-mile maps, of which this is a part, unless they matter. As a route, footpaths are uneven, narrow routes over a hard clay surface and are impassable to carts. Mounts must be ridden single file. The width is typically between 4 and 6 feet. Surfaces are covered with roots and scrub, with brooks and rivulets that must be jumped. There are occasional places, every few miles, where the path squeezes between trees or rock outcroppings. I did not roll the 1 in 30 chance of a rockfall, but I would roll for an avalanche if they were moving through the same area once it was snow-covered, as the hills shown are a thousand ft. above the bottom.

Last session, to remind the reader, Ti rolled up his ranger hench Orban. Now Zoltan paid for Edvard the soldier-at-arms to get his training as a 1st level fighter, just as Fenwick had in an earlier running. He thus is gone from the party until the 22nd of September. The party managed their equipment needs, with much discussion of the equipment tables—always hopelessly in a state of disrepair—before setting out back for Keszeg. Pandred set up a work gang of nine housebuilders to arrive on the 10th of September, to arrange his property according to the post here. I really should add the details to the wiki. Sigh. That’s set to be done before the end of September, and now other party members are considering what to arrange for when that's done. They can commission the same people, who would be glad for the work through to the first snows and thence on after that.

ChatGPT tells me that the practical lower limit for outdoor carpentry in the era would be what I call "cold conditions," down to about –10ºF. For that temperature, they'd need woollen clothing, leather gloves and substantial footwear; sawing, chopping, drilling, shaping beams and assembling timber frames would remain practical. Their principal inconvenience would be keeping their fingers sufficiently warm for delicate work. But that's for another session.

The party returned back to Keszeg and readied themselves to set out for the bugbear dungeon on Sep. 3. Employing their augury, they asked a number of questions: were there more than 50 bugbears in the lair? The answer was "yes." They asked if there was a human-sized entrance other than the one they found (I took this to mean, was there another entrance a human could enter through—the gods are not stupid). The answer was "no." These things interested them a great deal. They also asked other things, but for the time being I'm going to keep those of this account for reasons I won't give now.

This was about halfway through the session—and shortly after they entered the dungeon, things ground to a halt as they entered these familiar layers:

My logic was that the bugbears, knowing there was a dangerous group out there aware of their presence—more dangerous than the local Ottomans, more dangerous than anything they'd encountered before—decided to build traps through the upper levels and ensconce themselves down below. They are self-sufficient, with their own water and food sources, so they don't actually need the surface. So, for the next hour and more, the party found themselves avoiding offal-covered stakes, pungi traps, swinging arms, falling planks with stones and such, with Pandred braving these with his formidable dexterity of 14. It was check after check, and both he and Lexent took damage as a result, but no one died. Lexent failed a poison save but Mikael cleaned out the wound with his clean cantrip, which permitted Lexent another save (DM arbitration mid-game, page in the wiki needs updating)… so, no ensuing disease. There was only half-an-hour of play left in four hours by the time the players got to the bottom, where they found the gate they'd used on their previous adventure had been sealed closed with molten iron. Worried that attempts to break it with banging away would produce the bugbear archers from their previous adventure, with the party caught in a small ten-foot-wide pocket—and lacking the tool anyway—they backed away to the straggled room in the bottom right of the image, where they'd fought rats last time. By this time their torches were running out; no one had bought any in Vác, nor lanterns, nor anything really to help them with their present situation. They have candles, but that won't help them with moving in a fight.

They agreed to send Lexent into the outside, with his tentatively heading out to find the earlier discovered Balint in Felsopeteny, whom the party once had as a guide. He's a contact in an inhabited place nearer than Keszeg, which offers perhaps something other than what the party has in storage. But the choice is inevitably Lexent's in the next session. Meanwhile, the rest of the party is hunkering down to allow Mikael to rest and regain his break cantrip—which he used to get through one of the blocks up above, a board blocking the bottom of a stair fixed with two-foot sharpened stakes, which stumped the party a bit until the mage split it in half. The cantrip would break the iron-sealed door and let them move further.

So, this is where we left the session. I'm just going to add this updated image of the Lokos Valley that's been mapped that the party knows about. There's more map to add between this and Vác that I haven't drawn yet.

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