Play Report: Aryngrave, Session 2
This has taken a while to come about, but we got there. Between me having awkwardly timed migraines and others being busy it's been hard to get this group together for a second session, but it finally came together this past Saturday. I'd planned on doing play reports for my other group I'm running this setting for but they weren't amenable to it, so there'll only be posts about this one group.
There's been some setting changes since the last play report for this game, I won't go into much detail about it here but you can read about why decided to change things in this post. The key changes are that we are in a region of Aryngrave called the Aryn Isles, and the settlement the group started in is called Adaran. On with the play report!
The Characters
Ico - Cleric of the Court of Rot seeking to guide the Northern Sanction through this time of decay.
Atelaine - A Fighter who chases the woman she sees the world in. Her love, her shame.
Owena - A Fighter with high-minded ideals and notions of chivalry, here to bring Law to a Chaos-ridden realm.
Part 1: Real Play
We picked up with the adventurers standing in a rocky cavern that reeked of ammonia, just after their conversation with the Gnome Fimir. Continuing their exploration to the east they reached a set of 3 wooden doors, each carved with a face: the north bore the visage of a bull, the middle that of a laughing jester, and the south door the face of a lion. They chose to head through the lion door, reasoning that it represented courage; within they found 7 giant fire beetles slowly eating the corpse of an enormous lizard, and a small tunnel about a meter high they couldn't see the end of after throwing a torch in. They backed out of this room, not wanting to try squeezing through the tunnel, and as they did they were met by 2 stinking humanoids with strange fins protruding from their backs, dragging a wet leather sack with them. A brief conversation ensued, but as is so often the case, the Lawful characters and Chaotic monsters quickly came to blows.
The group did a pretty good job of working together to bring down one of the monsters before turning their attention to the other. Owena took a claw to the arm and bite to the shoulder, nearly falling, but the group successfully dispatched the last one before any more harm could be done. After discovering the sack they'd been carrying was full of blood, Ico decided to bring it with them.
They then checked the jester door, finding a circle of small stone seats surrounding a number of red candle stubs. After a quick search of the room they were spooked by the anachronistic presence of a silk-lined bowler hat, which Ico declared must be some kind of "fey trickery". Leaving the hat on the corner of one of the chairs, like a glove you find on the street and leave on a nearby garden wall, they left the jester room and tried the bull door.
This room was full of stalactites that grew almost to the floor, and they carefully ducked and wove their way through them, coming into a tunnel lined with many holes and crevices. They thought they could see something in the holes when shining a light down them, but decided against sticking their hands into the holes (booooo). Continuing down the tunnel they came to a worked-stone corridor with a number of exits out of it. Taking the first, they came into contact with a large lizard which slowly approached Ico, who met its misty purple eyes. Their mind was filled with visions of lizard-men engaged in some kind of erotic ritual before a large sandstone altar. Eventually they were pulled away from the lizard, which simply returned to its nest. The group then decided to try to luring the fire beetles to the lizard by leaving a trail of blood from the leather sack between the lizard's nest and the lion room.
Continuing their exploration they took the next turning off the corridor, finding a green-tiled room completely caked in algae. Scraping some away from the walls they found writing in Utheran (Common in my setting) hinting at deeper secrets within the dungeon. Rather than continuing on through this passage, they doubled back and headed north into a larger chamber with a large statue of some chameleon-like being with its hands outstretched. The lizard in the room eyed the group lazily, but was generally uninterested in them. Owena uncovered a bowl made of gold in the left hand of the statue, filled with a large number of discs carved with a lizard's eye. When the lizard made no move to stop them from taking the bowl and its contents, the party stashed the goods and started making their way out of the dungeon. On their way out the roots they had burned had begun to grow across their path again, but Atelaine reached out and touched them with her transformed hand, requesting they allow the group passage. The roots withdrew, and the party returned to the surface and made camp for the night, which is where we finished the session.
Part 2: Spoiler Talk
Boy this was a fun one: the group got their first taste of combat; started to get to grips with dungeon exploration; and really thought about how they could get different elements of the dungeon to interact with each other. I spent some time between sessions transferring the information from the Hole in the Oak PDF to a spreadsheet, which proved a worthwhile time investment. Running it from that spreadsheet with a numbered map open on my other screen was a lot smoother than running from the book directly.
Something I was really pleased about is how quickly the players got into mapping the dungeon themselves, I didn't even have to prompt or remind them they could do this. I've been resisting the urge to correct the map, but when there's been a clear miscommunication about something I'll clarify. We're using tldraw for mapping purposes, which feels pretty nice to use and very simple. Here's the players' map so far:
The combat was surprisingly engaging for being so simple, and even though the first round or two were clunky as we got used to the phased combat sequence, the fight moved really fast. I really appreciated that; I like combat a lot, but in a lot of games it overstays its welcome and becomes tedious. There was a bit of discussion after the combat about using Whitebox's optional rule allowing players to bandage themselves and heal wounds sustained in the combat that had just occurred. I decided to rule against this, as that rule is there to support parties who don't have a cleric or easy access to healing magic. This party does in fact have a cleric - though they're currently too low level to use magic - and so it made sense to forgo that optional rule.
With the first - living - lizard the group encountered, I kept rolling reaction rolls throughout the interaction and they came up friendly each time. Ico intentionally meeting its gaze and getting the visions of the horny lizard-men made the friendly reaction rolls and the lizard's slow approach a lot funnier.
When the group made the blood trail between the lizard nest and the fire beetles, the stated intention was to try and get the fire beetles to eat the lizard since that's what they'd seen happening when they encountered the beetles. I'm not quite sure it's going to work out that way given the lizards are 6HD creatures and the beetles are only 1HD + 2, but I'll make some rolls between sessions.
The writing they found on the walls of that green-tiled room hinted at the Incandescent Grottos module which can be tacked onto Hole in the Oak. It's very much left up to the referee whether to include that module but given I have it and the players are enjoying the tone of Hole in the Oak so far I think I'll run it. The Kezek name drop left the players with a lot of questions, and was a big part of them wanting to return to town. They're wanting to a good chunk of research on Kezek, pre-Imperial lizard cults and the stone monolith they found on the way to the dungeon.
Something that gave me a good chuckle was that they were worrying about how they were going to manage the rest of the dungeon with Owena on low HP. I reminded them they don't have to do this all in one delve, they can absolutely head back to town to rest up, sell their loot and do some research, "how you approach these adventure sites is entirely up to you." It was one of those fun moments where you can see the horizons broadening in your players' minds as they start to realise the kind of freedom they have in this style of play.
So, my homework for next session is going to be to flesh out information on the Story Stone (the monolith they found), lizard-man cults, and Kezek. I'm not sure whether Adaran has much of a library, but the margrave Ser William Blackwood knows the history of the area pretty well, and there's a sage a day or 2 south-east of town.
I think that about covers everything for this session, until next time folks!