What follows is a session of a B/X hexcrawl I'm running with friends. A big session this time.
Session 5
Cast:
Kishar the Hollow Agate - Magic-User 2
Marko - Thief 3
Guardsman Vanon - Fighter 2
Retainers:
Croaker - Grasshopper-man Ranger 2
Sunflower - Grasshopper-man Ranger 2
Book of The Dead:
Shaggy - Fighter 1
Gains and Kills:
15 Clay-painted bandits (150 xp)
5 Pupal ghouls (75 xp)
4 Ghouls (100 xp)
Cut azurite (25 gp/xp) Cut eye agate (10 gp/xp)
Gold collar (1300 gp/xp)
Gold ring (160 gp/xp)
Medallion (20 gp/xp)
Statuette (20 gp/xp)
Gold Anklet (300 gp/xp)
6x bag of coffee (8 gp/xp)
Crystal-crusted femur (warhammer +1)
100 gp/xp
800 sp (80 xp and 100 sp given to the grasshopper-men)
Four days had passed since the party's rescue: three of straightforward travel, one of rest.
The grasshopper-man village is set in a territory marked with long trails of eaten grass; it appears the giant caterpillars will eat anything put in front of them. The village is built of giant butterfly wings made into pavilion tents and the party was set aside to rest and do as they will.
Into the fifth day they are approached by the clan and told the situation: humans to the south have recently come raiding under the cover of night and rustled the giant caterpillars that act as livestock, threatening the clan's overall safety and survival. If worst comes to worst and more livestock are stolen, the whole village will have to leave the territory and set up again elsewhere.
More importantly Kishar is a human who communicates in Field Sign (a kind of lingua franca of the grassland nonhumans) and also the human tongues. This sidesteps the fact that neither the grasshopper-men or the cattle rustlers can speak to each other. The clan offers in exchange for having saved the party, that the party goes and "drives off" these thieves and recovers the livestock.
Much is made over the mutual bonds of friendship that a quest would reinforce—also, the grasshopper-men have no use or want for human treasures or tools, so the party is free to take what they find.
Kishar relays this to Marko and Vanon, both healed up. Backup is requested and is got in "Croaker" and "Sunflower", two young and promising rangers who have seen the thieves. Kishar tries flirting with Croaker as he is also the one who led the expedition that saved the party in the first place. (It does not work. More information on insect-man romance is needed.)
More on the thieves: they are strange, covered in a pale blue-grey clay, and they only do raids or even leave their layer in the latest hours of night when even the moon is hidden behind the horizon. Sunflower has tracked them to a mound in the southeastern hills and knows the route well. There are twenty some of them, emerging in small bands.
In spite of being told to drive off the thieves, Kishar jumps immediately to killing every one of them. Vanon advocates a more diplomatic option however; a consensus is found in killing half of them to put the party in a strong bargaining position, then driving away the rest. The humans plot bloody-handed work while the rangers are kept in the dark.
While traveling a little more is learned about the grasshopper-men. They are clans from the same egg clutch, who grow in number and prosperity until hunger or conflict splinter the groups into smaller, successor clans. And the cycle goes unending. They also seem to be born with knowledge to make up for their short lifespans: on how to tame and keep the giant caterpillars, on tool making, on the picking of songs and names.
There is also apparently a rivalry between these and the clan further northwest near the tor village that has come to violence before.
The party contemplates that maybe this is the real utopian society that the Circle is aiming to build. Could be. Kishar talks about the rise and fall of the Sorcerer in exchange (whitewashing her part in it). Croaker is much impressed by the show of force.
At long last the grasslands give way to scrub and scattered savannah, and finally to bare round-topped hills of bare stone and windy aspect. Night comes close and the lair is revealed: a mound set halfway up a low hill ringed by higher ones, and on the mound seven standing stones in a line. Magic is suspected. Plots are hatched.
It's concluded that if the alarm is raised and the whole twenty some thieves come out into the open, they would easily surround the party; so the plan is to lure out a band with a fire atop a hill about a mile back and cut them down before going into the mound in a quick raid.
The fire is set at first dark; Kishar and Vanon in improvised ghillie cloaks with spell and spear at the ready, Marko atop another hill with crossbow aimed, and the two retainers acting as bait with slings and natural blades. The trap is ready.
A band of five catches Vanon's watch. They have noticed the flame and travel over, each armed with a club or flint blade. Vanon pads behind to set up the ambush—and the thieves tried to spring into action when on the edge of the firelight. However the use of a Sleep spell took them all out before any could get more than a sound out.
Kishar immediately beings judiciously cutting throats. She leaves one alive, bound and ankles cut and hands shattered, to be interrogated come morning. He tries to escape a few times crawling hand over elbow, but by the dawn is docile and in enough pain to answer to questioning.
She lets the thief know that every other person in the lair will obviously be killed, but he can survive by answering some questions. His hesitation or lies will earn a spear through the head. Threats of terrible violence delivered in a very polite tone.
The scene is set, the tension runs high. They find out the following:
- Numbers? Twenty four strong.
- Livestock inside? Yes.
- What kind of lair is this? A tomb.
- Tomb to who? An archer.
- Armaments? Swords.
How many swords? Enough to kill all of you, the thief says as his resolve comes through and he starts screaming for help. Vanon stabs him through the head. But the call went out, and the party watches carefully in new daylight for enemy movement.
The mound only has two entrances both facing southward, which are encircled by humans to the north and insect-men to the south (it's long agreed that the grasshopper-men should front any losses). Just in time as two more thieves emerge. It's a surprise round, and with bolt and cut throat they are taken down in seconds and dragged away from the entrance.
False screams of help are called into the hole to draw out more thieves; this feint only takes down one, the other fleeing for help back into the lair. Not waiting for retaliation the party sets up cutting grass into large bales of hay to burn and smoke the whole lair out while calling for surrender. It seems to work in setting the thieves against one another: there is the sound of steel on steel and cries of battle from inside.
Or not: the battle sounds cease and out come four exceptionally gross looking thieves, distorted features caked with clay, bodies long and distorted, flesh pale enough to be see-through. All are cut down in turn, and Kishar recalls from long-ago study that progressive ghoulification has an intermediate stage: a pupal ghoul that is on the line between life and undeath. Every one of these most current foes are pupal ghouls. Ominous.
The party's moral compunctions over violence go out the window when the ghoul status is revealed. They stack up and investigate the lair carefully. It is a low, smoky earthen mound inside, a meeting hall smeared with countless clay footsteps. To the west is an alcove with a bare altar, to the east a room of seated mummies in repose.
Also discovered is the source of the earlier struggle: the body of one Ilem of the Illuminated Circle, one of many sent out on scouting missions ahead of the main force. It seems like she had been hiding in a foxhole in an adjacent tunnel, and died trying to fight her way out when fire came rolling in. Vanon guards the body, Kishar makes an offering of her circular cloak pin on the altar.
More discoveries: a lake of natural oil seeping out of the walls and down to some lower level, a warren of chewed on bones with one bone heavy enough to act as a warhammer, a supernaturally dark room that turns out to be full of offering boxes. Tremendous wealth in jewelry and carved previous stone is checked for curses, then looted promptly.
When a door leading down ends up being too much for any of the party to force or unlock, a new and decisive plan is set up: soaking a length of rope in the natural oil and setting it alight to blow the whole pit to hell and complete the grasshopper clan's request. The fuse is set. The torch is lit.
When it all blows up the heat is immense, and the smoke pours out for hours. Flame gouts out from even the loose soil around the mound. All inside is surely dead. The party heads down to the second layer to count exactly twenty-four corpses and complete their task.
However, only twenty one are found; most charred, some eaten in a frenzy by the full ghouls, some dead from smoke inhalation and in quiet repose. All the food stolen from the clan is just as charred. A small loss that the party accepts.
More important are the three remaining ghouls. East from the charred ruins is a chamber of sealed stone doors depicting a regal looking archer with arrows, club, and flanged helmet. The air inside is baked but unburned. And out from two doors come the remaining undead! Horrifying visions of death, the clay baked into a terrible cracked crust over raw transparent flesh and boiled eyes, pallid blood and ravening jaws.
To arms! Vanon and Croaker are stunned by the undead horrors at close range, but careful crossbow shots and sling stones take down the last remnants of the thief band. All falls silent.
In the rooms of the ghouls more wealth is found in coinage and a single spell scroll: create pale gruel. Set beside a wide dish on the floor, the spell creates a gruel for six to twelve out of any medium sized corpse. The party sacks up the wealth and hustles out of the mess.
They suspect the gruel is what created the ghouls, and contemplate selling it to the grasshopper-men as a medium of trade (assuming it doesn't also make ghouls of the insect people, who can speak to the truth of that).
Returning to the village bloody, soot-streaked, and bedecked in ancient jewelry, the party counts their profits while their patrons party it up with relief. All in a day's work.
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