T w e n t y S i d e d

Four hours after the party began their rest, Eomer rouses the them with a yell, “Hey, I heard something!”

Before they can act, another centipede is on them. They leap to their feet and engage it. This time the fight goes more smoothly and the thing dies without inflicting much harm.

Skeeve has recovered his magic, but Enoch has not. They elect to move on at this point anyway. They head down the hallway and find the trap door has been reset, and is now closed again. Not wanting to set it off again, they jump over the solid ground. Thordek mis-jumps and lands on the trap area. This doesn’t set it off. A few other party members make the jump, and then Beck fails. The trap springs, the door opens, and he falls.

They are confused by this. Wasn’t this the second time it was touched? Thodek points out that the centipede would have been the first thing to cross it, making Beck the third.

They levitate him up and Enoch heals him. They lament once again that they lost their ropes in the shipwreck.

They follow the hallway around until they are on the north side, beside the trap door. They go into another room which is not a filthy mess like the others. The door is left open a bit.

A crude bed frame is here, built from newly cut, untreated lumber. The mattress looks like two blankets, sewn together and stuffed full. There is a lantern on the floor by the bed.

They go to the next room. Thordek goes first and a trap door over the entrance to this room drops a pile of stone blocks on him. He is pummeled.

Eomer, sick of waiting outside, decides to join the party. Beck goes outside, since this place seems too crowded for six people.

This room is empty, save for a small wooden chest in the northwest corner. Thordek walks over to it. The brash Dwarf attempts to open the chest. Fine powder explodes from the chest, covering everything in the room. Thordek manages to hold his breath, thus saving him from breathing in any of the foul grey dust. He dashes from the room looking like a floured dumpling.

Eomer rebukes him for being so reckless.

They wait twenty minutes or so for the dust to settle out of the air in the room so that it will be safe to enter. Thordek goes back in and searches the chest.

He finds a book, some gold, and a bleached human skull which is being used as a bowl to hold some strange powder.

They open the next door. It is a simple room with a new wooden bed and a small (unlit) lamp. The bed is poorly built but looks used. The blankets are not filthy, rotting rags at any rate.

They move on to the final door. This is a large door facing east. Before attempting to unlock it, they decide to deal with the trap to the north, since it is pointing right at them and probably tied to the door in some way.

Thordek wants to smash it, but Eomer has him back off so he can try to disable it. He fails and sets it off. He tells Thordek to smash the trap. Thordek walks over and whacks into the center of the mechanism with his hammer. Bam! Four arrows shoot out over Eomer’s head and into the opposite wall. Thordek tries again and breaks the mechanism.

Eomer now moves onto the door. He tries to pick the lock but manages to fail again. It is jammed.

Skeeve tells everyone to stand back, and then uses flaming sphere to burn out the door. The door is engulfed in flames. The aged, thick wood gives off a thick acrid smoke as it burns. The chamber is filled with smoke and they retreat to the entrance for a while until the smoke dissipates. The group is now concerned that if the children are inside they may have asphyxiated.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Much to the dismay of the others, Skeeve knocks on the first door. When he gets no answer, he shrugs and opens it. A huge, vile centipede, ten feet long and the width of a small tree, scuttles forward as he opens the door. Its ugly, eyeless head raises up and bites him on the chest.

The party wants to move in to attack, but Skeeve is in the way. He wants to retreat but they have all gathered around him. The battle is a disorganized mess. Skeeve hurls magic missiles and the fighters bring their weapons to bear. Skeeve earns himself another severe bite on the chest and passes out. The hammer of Thordek and the blade of Thu’fir begin to tear the creature apart. Enoch burns it with a beam of holy white light. Skeeve wakes up and crawls away. Thu’fir chops part of it off. Beck finishes the thing with two quick stabs from his rapier.

Enoch heals Skeeve.

With the battle over, they step over the nasty carcass and examine the room.

This room looks to have been some sort of dorm room once. The remnants of a ruined bed frame sits in one corner, as well as a few bits from a rotted desk which now sits legless on the floor. Thordek searches the room and finds nothing. They move on to the next room.

Enoch carefully peaks into this room. It is entirely empty, although the northeast corner bears the mark of new construction. There is an area encased in more rough wood. While crude, it is heavy and sturdily made.

Thordek tries to smash it. Bam, bam, bam! The others comment on his obvious dwarvish-ness. “Is he trying to dig a new mine?” says Beck.

After a half hour or so the wooden walls give way to his hammer. He finds that there is a big contraption here with crossbow bolts. It points out into the hallway. If it were to fire, it would come out of a picture frame (through the canvas) and traveled north down the hall. They note that out in the hallway there is another picture facing south.

Looking at the pictures more closely, they see that they are “new”. The frames are cheap and the paintings are quick, simple pictures.

Making sure everyone is out of the hallway, Thu’fir attempts to take the crossbow bolts out and disable the machine. He breaks the mechanism.

They leave the room. There is another painting out in the hallway that faces east. Thu’fir takes the painting down, but finds no trap behind this one.

Thordek carefully looks in the next room.

This room looks to have once been some sort of dorm room. The remnants of a ruined bed frame and rotting desk are piled together with newer filth. Several Alidian uniforms are piled here, slashed and burned to rags. There are newer bones (small bones) on top of the pile, and a few iron ration wrappings.

Thordek examines the bones and determines they are probably from small game, and not children as they at first feared.

Thordek looks down the hallway carefully. He finds a painting stuck firmly to the wall. It faces south, opposite the crossbow trap painting they encountered earlier. After some debate, Beck walks over and cuts the canvas off, finding a crossbow trap concealed behind it. They discuss how to disable the trap and whether it needs disabled. They elect to leave it alone for now, since it shouldn’t pose much threat now that they are aware of it.

Thordek notices a foul odor from the next room. He cautiously opens the door.

This room smells like excrement. The stench was bad BEFORE the door was opened, and now it is overpowering. Using his dark-vision, Thordek can see that some of the stones have been pulled loose from the floor and a latrine hole has been dug here.
There is a pile of recently cut leaves beside the pile. Thordek quickly shuts the door.

They follow the hallway the rest of the way around, turning west and then going thorough the door at the end, which they already suspect to be the kitchen. Beck stands outside the room and Enoch enters.

The kitchen was obviously as filthy as the rest of the basement, but it is clear that someone has taken time to clean this area. The counter-top looks to have been recently replaced by a fresh piece of raw untreated wood. The wood still bears bloodstains. There is a stone fireplace on the east wall. A cooking pot hangs over the cold ashes.

There is a basket of mushrooms here on the counter, and a stale loaf of bread. A pile of wrappings and strings from iron rations sits in one corner. Also on the counter are a few other food prep items: knives, spoons, and such.

There are three doors in here. Enoch tries the door to the south.

This looks like a small food pantry. The shelves are mostly empty, although there are a few items here: 7 iron rations and a few small vials of spice. There is also a canister of salt. Enoch takes the food.

Thordek comes to the kitchen to see for himself. As he walks to the door, the floor gives way, dropping him and Beck down 20 feet onto more spikes.

Skeeve levitates them out and Enoch heals them.

At this point they are spent. Everyone is tired and injured a little. They have been in here only a few hours, although this seems like a long time for such a small place. They decide to rest before proceeding. Enoch and Thordek take the table from the dining room and lay it over the hole so the others may use it as a bridge instead of jumping. They retreat to the front door. Beck protests that they ought to sleep outside of the door they smashed in. The hole is a bit difficult to climb through, and Beck believes it would be better if a foe had to emerge from the hole to reach them. Also, he didn’t want everyone to have to struggle through the gap if they needed to escape.

The others ignore him and they bed down in the hallway. Eomer keeps watch.

As they rest, Thordek and Enoch ponder the trap doors. Why did they go off when they did? At first they suspect that a certain weight is required to trigger them, but that doesn’t seem to match with events. At last Thordek realizes that the trap doors are activated the third time someone puts his weight on them.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Grey Moor was the site of our very first campaign. At level one, the players stepped off the boat in the city of Bayhaven. By the time they were done they had walked all over the island many times, broken an evil curse that was killing the crops and draining the land of life, and then joined in a battle to prevent a single greedy nobleman for siezing control of the Island. Along the way they teamed up with Eomer and Endo and attained level 3.

Grey Moor is about 90% human, 5% halfling, and 5% “everyone else”. Dwarves are known to live in the mountains but their number is not known so they are not included in this total. Elves are very uncommon and usually never leave Bayhaven. The whole island is seen as rather bumpkin-ish to the other islands.

The area north of the mountains is uninhabited. The coast this mostly low rocky cliffs or very steep slopes. In other places, the coastal area is shallow and rocky. This means that for a majority of the island it was difficult or impossible to bring in large ships safely.

Bayhaven was the only good port for ships capable of inter-island travel. The others couldn’t support much more than small fishing vessels. It is also the biggest and most sophisticated city.

The town of Stackroot is home to a modest but profitable gemstone mine. About a third of the population is Halfling. The Halflings work the mine, while the humans handle the governing of the city and growing of crops.

A little infomation on the city of Bridgehold and Highstone Monastery can be gleaned from Endo’s backstory.

The other cities are just tiny little farming villages and not worth mentioning here.

At the end of our first campaign, the players had founded a new city, knocked a nobleman out of power, and established the council of Grey Moor.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.