Lands of Cantona - Session 2

This is the recap of Session 2 of my new campaign "Lands of Cantona" that I am running for my two nephews, my son and my wife. The party is composed by Ragnar the elven fighter, Larry the human fighter, Tak the human cleric of St. Cuthbert and Cesar the human druid.

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After getting directions to the elves they leave the dwarves. On the way they cross paths with a giant scorpion which they manage to avoid, only to find it behind them! Cesar casts Faerie Fire while Ragnar and Larry rushes to melee and Tak throws a bottle of wine at it. A fight breaks out with Ragnar and Larry throwing blows but having to sunder their shields to survive the creature’s claws. Tak and Cesar keep throwing bottles of wine and a torch to light it up. The creature finally collapses and Ragnar cuts out its claws as a trophy. Shortly after, a blinding trap leaves everyone blind except Ragnar and Tak’s men-at-arms. They wait until an elven patrol finds them and guides them to their quarters . There they wait until everyone gets their sight back and they trade 4 bottles of rare wine for 2 shields for the fighters, 2 spears for the hirelings, 1 longsword for Ragnar and 1 chain mail for Larry, whose splint mail goes to Tak. The elves let them rest there.

The next day, they leave for the dwarves but get lost in the dungeons. They manage to avoid a Giant Toad but shortly after a spear trap claims the life of Ragnar's torchbearer and wounds Larry. Behind a stuck door they find a lit room with vases & roses. After fooling around they find what looks like a treasure map inside one of the vases. Cesar finds that if the roses are taken from the vases they quickly wither, but regain life if put back in. That gives Larry the idea to put his wounded arm into a vase. He is healed but all the roses wither. Tak gets the idea to use them to revive the dead torchbearer, but to no avail.

More exploration ended in finding a rhino that charged at them, wounding several, but it ended up being all an illusion. They found a secret door in the room where the “rhino” came from and proceeded to follow the corridor behind it. After several twists and turns, and a spear trap that claimed the life of another hireling, they reached a corner where they found another secret door that led into a dusty, clearly unused corridor. They followed it and reached a dead end… with another secret door. This one led into a room with a spiral stairs leading up and several exits.

They followed one of the exits and after a T intersection on a long corridor they found yet another secret door. Larry opened it and found 3 skeletons. Two rush forward to attack, but the other, a slightly bigger one with lightning eyes, stays back. As Ragnar and Larry moved to meet them, Tak tried Turn Undead on them and Cesar cast Faerie Fire on the bigger one. As the turn failed, the big skeleton pulled its head off and threw it at the cleric. The head exploded and rolled back to the skeleton. Ragnar moved to attack the big one as Tak successfully turned it. Cesar cast Shillelagh on his staff before moving to attack. After many hits, misses and shields being splintered they destroy the skeletons and find some treasure in a chest, 400 gp, a potion (of Polymorph, but yet unknown) and a clerical scroll with 2 spells (Resist Cold and Remove Fear). 

After the fight they decide to rest in the secret room, and after some hours (luckily without any random encounters) they go back to the elves’ to get some food and possibly shields. They get the former, for them and the hirelings, but not the latter so they decide to try with the dwarves. They do get a couple of dented metal shields for the fighters (no wooden shield for the druid) in exchange for the last bottle of rare wine.

Healed and equipped they take the circular stairs…

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The session ended with the party unsure about going down deeper into the dungeon or up and out to look into that treasure map.

Lands of Cantona - New Campaign!

 Last Sunday I started a new campaign for my two nephews, my son and my wife. I introduced the kids to the game some time ago (you can read about it here) and played sporadically at best, but now I wanted them to play regularly. They were thrilled when I dropped the idea on them and, to be honest, it's always refreshing as a DM to run the game for new people.

The campaign is set on the Lands of Cantona, a relatively undeveloped region of the Wild Coast, in the World of Greyhawk 576 CY. I developed the village of Baz on the fringes of the Welkwood forest, in the style of the famous village of Hommlet, surrounded by several nearby locations for them to explore: an abandoned mine on the hills, an ancient cemetery among dead trees, a supposedly haunted tower deep in the forest, and some ruins sunk in the marshes. The first three are short low-level Labyrinth Lord scenarios (Den of the Morlock Shaman, The Tomb of Sigyfel and The Gibbering Tower), while the ruins were initially going to be the Ruins of Ramat adventure, which I have ran before, but then discarded it and I have not yet decided what to do about that location. I also expanded the tunnels under the mine with another dungeon (Lair of the Morlock Chief) and put, a bit further away, the Castle of the Mad Archmage. 

I had the players randomly roll on Rogues Gallery to see what characters the would be playing. The party ended up being Ragnar the elven fighter, Larry the human fighter, Tak the human cleric and Cesar the human druid. 

So, after hiring some men-at-arms (3) and torchbearers (3) they left early in the morning heading South looking for the Gibbering Tower. After a couple of hours they reach an ominous 40’ tall tower, built out of black stone, lying hidden in a small valley among the dark woods. 

Upon entering, they found a room with rotting chairs, couches, and rugs. A fireplace at the west wall, spiral staircase at the north wall leading up, and a staircase at the south wall leading down. On the fireplace mantle is a terrarium filled with a silvery fungus. They took the stairs down. 

Exploring the tower dungeons they find an ossuary, three cells (two empty, one with a shackled skeleton), a torture chamber and a cauldron chamber, both with two undead (ghouls), bodies of adventurers and two more undead (zombies), a trapped hall and some giant rats, a winery that they proceed to plunder, and finally a room with a 10” diameter glass sphere, on a metal stand. Someone touched the crystal ball and all were teleported somewhere else…

They found themselves in a circular room with a secret door that exits into a circular staircase with steps leading up and down, and an opening into a large square room with exits on the three other walls. They went straight ahead, opposite to where they entered and took the corridor until they reached a Y intersection with the corridor continuing ahead.

They took the right  passage until an X intersection where they came across a group of dwarven warriors. They were led by Hilding Ironhelm of the Bloodaxe clan. He told them they were in the first level of the dungeons of the Castle of the Mad Archmage, known as the Storage Rooms. The dwarves held the northern section, the elves the southern and the kobolds the east. They controlled the access to the lower levels and charge adventuring parties with a percentage of the treasure found.

There ended the first session. 

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