This week the gang embarked on their journey to Mitra’s Fist. Their desperate night time escape ended safely enough on the southbound road. Poundfoolish noticed some unusual firework-like lights in the south during his watch.
The next day the party met Sizneroz the Vorpal One, Bearer of Om’s Oath the Balancer, the Rectifier of Weedia. He’s a wizard that bears the signs of a higher level practitioner in DCC. His hair stands on end, perpetually smoldering, with a third eye in the center of his chest. He also has a 4th and a 5th eye on the second face on the back of his head. And the skin on his gaunt, sinewy body is blue and iridescent.
The party found him sitting by a fire staring at three severed heads posted on stakes. Two of the heads had circlets, while one did not. The lack of “balance” clearly upset the Vorpal One. He explained to the party he had slain the three the night before. He had been searching for them for quite some time. But one of the dead had hid his circlet in a nearby cave. Spell burned and weakened by the battle he was in no shape at the time to retrieve it. Sizneroz then offered the party to teach them spells and heal severed limbs if they recovered it.
The party also met Sizneroz’s traveling companions, two mohawked dwarves named Jackson and Livingstone. Inside a covered wagon that conspicuously had a chimney, one was manning (dwarfing?) the bellows of a small forge, the other was preparing molds. The inside of the wagon was also filled with small figurines the dwarves had crafted. They offered build Calvert and Poundfoolish a prosthetic limb, although they only had enough materials to do one. With their latest quest in hand, the party then proceeded towards the foothills of the Mountains of the Fifth Prince and found the passage to the chamber of the missing circlet.
The common stone door (the craftsmanship of which Calvert turned his nose up to) was unlocked and no traps were detected. Past the door, however, there was. A spiked board swung from two chains and grazed Chandler.
Down the hall that followed, the party reached a room where the walls to their left and right were covered with spikes. Down the center of the room forming a grim line from door to door was a row of dagger-like blades in the ground and longer, sword-like blades from the ceiling. After testing the ground with some grappling hooks, the party figured out that the spiked walls were rigged to swing down on hapless wanderers. That left them straddling the dagger-lined path down the center of the room. Naturally, the floor around the daggers was greased, and Chandler failed his reflex save. He managed to survive being impaled, and Stacia again reminded everyone why you never leave home without your cleric.
Again the party walked down another long hallway and found themselves in a room where they were indeed not alone. Goblin-like creatures with large spiders attached to their heads attacked with blowguns and spears. The spiders themselves attacked as well. Both Umbobo and Nick were nearly killed and got to add another notch to their Wound Table tracker. And the poison was truly devious- a save meant the temporary loss of a STR point, but failure resulted in 1d4 points of permanent loss.
And that’s where we left the our dungeon crawlers this week. With more potentially* trap-filled tunnels to explore, one can only expect more mayhem will ensue.
*Let’s be honest, I didn’t buy Grimtooth’s Old School Traps just to read the colorful descriptions.
