Session 17: Hunting, Hunting

Continued From Session 16: The One with the Flail Snails

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This session, played October 2, 2026, began with the party having dealt with the snails and being on their way back to their undeveloped base in the abandoned hamlet of Keszeg. Taking advantage of the recent rules related to falcons, I had Pandred's falcon drift in a circle over a place some three hundred yards west of the footpath they were venturing upon, and the party went to investigate. There they found the slaughtered bodies of nine Ottoman soldiers in the woods, with tracks that looked like upright standing bears. The party (correctly) identified the tracks as belonging to bugbears (there are limitations to playing with a game-savvy party) and then did the right thing. They went straight to the Ottoman outpost in the area, introduced themselves, and sorted out any possibility that the "new adventurers" in town might be mistaken for the killings.

Leading the Ottomans back to their slaughtered soldiers, the Turks managed the bodies while the players discussed the repercussions of this. They were told that the Turks were under orders not to investigate again, because already scouts had headed up into the low mountains adjacent (they're just big hills, really) and had unsuccessfully lost all such scouts. As such, they were under orders to let the Sanjak handle it, which the Sanjak hadn't yet; a new missive would be sent and that is all the local constabulary plan to do about it.

Here the party surprised me. They had made noise about wanting to build their house, which is why I'd built this design. Now they skipped all that and decided to take the bit in their teeth; without prepping themselves or anything, they marched straight up into the "mountains" to search for the bugbears, which durn it, they were going to find.

Normally, a DM would just help them along. I had enough of an idea for where the bugbears were and the basic structure of the dungeon… but I hadn't physically designed the dungeon and in any case, my feeling from the start was that you can't just go up into a moutain ridge and instantaneously find a hole in the ground that's about eight feet wide. That is not how the wilderness works and I wasn't buying it. I figured, if they were resilient enough, they'd find clues and eventually work it out, and that when they got physically close, I'd set up an "event" (I knew what this was going to be and it did happen during the session, as will be seen), but I was going to make them figure out themselves how to get "physically close" without my helping them.

Here, GoogleEarth proved to be helpful. The path at the bottom where it meets the trees is about where the party found the Ottomans. One has to recall the above image is 1985, while in 1650 all this would be forest. Thus the party faced the gully to get up said ridge above them, which they did without a ranger in the party, thus taking them some time. But the image importantly gives them a sense of place and shape of the land.

And here the party began to employ it's two clerics, one 5th, one 4th, both of whom possess the augury spell. They did not go at their questions as cleanly as Jerome suggested (that post being inspired by this session). They asked general questions about "north", "west," "south"… until I had to more or less explain what logical interpretations of such answers would be. My premise during the session was that thousands of clerics employing the augury spell over the course of at least two centuries (since the spell's formulation, which must have happened at some point historically) would produce a "scientific" interpretive basis for how to apprehend the meaning of the yes/no responses received. As I was raised in a time of definitive textbooks (Dana for geology, Gray's for medicine), I postulated a "Jerome's Guide," to the comprehension of augury, which surely both clerics would have read in their seminary days, as required reading. It was after the session that I conceived of writing the blog post that I've linked to above.

Thus the characters found themselves atop this ridge, looking by the compass for the direction they should go next. I pointed out that they could literally see from this height the mountains on the horizon to the west. the bigger mountains to the southwest (on the left hand of the map) and the hamlet of Agard (circled) down below them, not really that far away, though over various foothills and, of course, again, everything in the map being forest. Likely, the top of this hill is bald, since it doesn't show a field, but then again it might have been logged since 1650, so one can never be sure. The view is telling enough to give a real sense of place in 3D that most game maps simply cannot offer.

Then decided to turn about on the basis of their augury investigations (somewhat accurately, they missed the bugbear dungeon (they had wisely asked if the bugbears were underground by about a thousand yards.

That brought them down this sharp slope all the way to the bottom, moving through trees until they came out on a footpath they recognised as putting them a few hundred yards east of a hamlet called Felsopeteny, about halfway between it and the burned-out ruin of Alsopeteny, where they'd dealt with the flail snails in the previous running. So, their familiarity with the land was growing.

Here they camped (red circle), at the bottom of a low knob (off the bottom of this image), looking up at the gulley on the left side of the above. Futzing around with Augury again, they eventually determined to go up that gulley, sure they'd find what they were looking for. This time they passed about two hundred yards from the bugbear dungeon entrance, again missing it (and I wouldn't have been saying this except that we have played the 18th session now and they know where this entrance is), climbing right to the top of the ridge. That frustrated them somewhat.

In fact, I'd rolled a die to see if they'd stumbled across the "event" I spoke of before, declaring it a 1 in 10 in my head. I told the party that I had rolled, because they were quite aware that the bugbears were there somewhere through their augury, since the compass direction had changed which meant they'd gone past it somewhere. I did not tell them what the chance was of finding that ", however, or even why I had rolled a die. I only said I had rolled a die and left it at that.

By this point, a little more than two hours of session had passed. The players were not bored, they were a wee bit frustrated and they had the bit in their teeth; but that last miss did get under their skin and they talked about giving it up until another day. Then they decided they'd climb down the slope and have another look. I doubled the likelihood of their finding the "event" and rolled a 2.

I had readied this battlemap and the party fought it out with seven bugbears, including one 1st level bugbear as a leader-type. The bugbears have 2d4 per die, so their hit points were 6d4+1 each, with the leader adding an additional d10+2 constitution. Their strength was +1+2 and their unmodified THAC0 18.

I'm afraid I didn't save a copy of the battlemap pre-fight. This is the aftermath, where the battle ended. The druid was able to use "entangle" to great effect, and one of the bugbears literally rolled minimum hit points: six 1s +1 for 7 h.p. I could not believe it. But this wasn't a patrol; in my mind, this was a hastily assembled group that were "available" and got drummed up out of the dungeon without prior notice… thus one hyper-weak link is feasible, so I let it stand. The party evicerated them. They didn't even get hurt enough to stop looking for the dungeon entrance. One of the above, the one with "-2" on it, is unconscious at –2 hit points. That is where the 18th session began two days ago.

Continued on Session 18: Down into the Bugbear Lair