What follows is a session of a B/X hexcrawl I'm running with friends.
Session 4
Cast:
Kishar the Hollow Agate - Magic-User 1
Marko - Thief 2
Guardsman Vanon - Fighter 2
Book of the Dead:
Shaggy - Fighter 1
Upon the morning the party takes stock of their goods and recovered treasure, and their concerns:
- Shaggy went for a midnight walk to look for the corpses of his bandit band and found nothing, but saw more skeletons on the horizon.
- Kishar suspects that staying in the village is not good (spurred on by Marko's bizarre nightmares and the general feeling of the curse seeping into the earth) and wants to leave immediately.
- Marko suspects that the grasshopper-men may have something to do with the missing keystone, since the village is so old it may have fallen out of human hands.
- Vanon is torn up and wants to rest up before they engage in any more danger.
Appropriately, the party then decides to head due south out of the hills and back onto open grassland instead of back home. They have spotted a tower days out over the southern horizon, reasoning that with their newfound grain they can have days worth of travel before cutting into the pemmican and overall lightening their load per day.
Mister Fist the donkey also receives a crown of woven grass and a mane full of tassels.
Due south they head, out onto the open world. They light a campfire in the dark to announce their presence. The second day of travel they notice they have been trailed by a band in the distance. It turns out to be grasshopper-men astride giant caterpillars and dogged by hunting worms; Vanon deduces the hunters are gauging our heroes' strength before engaging.
Talks are amiable and polite. The party is warned off from going near the tower; apparently there is some terrible song that the grasshopper-men are averse to, it "fills through the body" and seems to be carried on the winds in all directions. Kishar wants to get the word out about the party and offers food as a peace treaty—there's the all-clear that they are welcome in the insect people's village far to the east.
Both groups part ways, and the party identifies what the song's source is: a menhir of black stone, stories high, standing like it has cut away the earth to take up space. It is riddled with honeycomb tunnels and handholds, large as a man. Kishar knows that these are created by a stone shaping spell, and that the whole place is of a magical nature.
Marko goes up the sheer surface to establish a foothold in the closest tunnel entrance: it leads into a maze of tunnels with regular alcoves, all the same smoothly shaped stone as the rest of the menhir. It is also dark as anything. The party stacks up with lamps and weapons ready, and takes their time pacing up and down the crossroads where the wind-song is constant and near drowning out all other sound.
Closer to the core of the structure: alcoves three feet deep lining the walls, all with short stone benches, many with clay figures sitting in repose with palms up. Each has a different face, all have coins in their eyes, some have artifacts in each palm. They come across treasures but believe the spirits will rise angry and vengeful were any to be taken.
They also come across a sarcophagus with the lid ajar. Tensions are on the rise.
Circling back seems to spend the last moments of quiet travel in the tunnels, and the party is accosted by a spirit made of billowing smoke, outline like a large cat with heavy paws and terrible claws. Its head is a flowing mane that is at once a jaw and a snout and a thousand mouths. The spirit after every turn fills itself with embers deep from its core that burst into open flame, or shifts from smoke to thick storm clouds full of lightning.
A formidable foe, it moves to defend its territory! Kishar takes the initiative with a sleep spell before the beast can get an attack off, but the party cannot seem to hit its semi-corporeal body. Vanon and Shaggy take the worst brunt of fire and lightning breath, and Vanon burns his blessed charm from the shrine keeper to stave off death from flame—it is to no avail, he is at death's door.
The party is fully routed; Kishar drags Vanon's charred body out towards the exit, Marko makes a valiant fighting retreat with crossbow and sword, keeping the beast at bay enough to make a break for it. Shaggy is brave and foolhardy, and in his rage he fails to hit the beast. In turn, he is decapitated in a single swipe. He dies in a dark tunnel.
Outside, Kishar stacks up the bodies of her dying companions on Mister Fist. She is intelligent enough to triangulate the rough path of where the grasshopper-men would have headed, and charts the correct path to meet up with them by the end of the day.
The hunters take pity on the humans, two near death and one so frail that a cat could take her in the fight. Offers to take the party back to the village are accepted, and night falls around a group materially diminished and with nothing to show for their struggles.
The party reflects on their losses, and sleeps deep.
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