Nightwick Abbey Session 1

You have no idea how long I've been waiting to use this picture.

Finally we get to the actual campaign.

I had four players who had contacted me earlier when they found out I lived in Knoxville.  The party consisted of a Thief (specialist), a Magic-User, a Cleric, and a Changeling.  The Changeling's player decided he had ram horns and a generally satyr-like aspect.

Unfortunately, character creation took a bit longer than expected, but not so long as to prevent play all together. Still the actually descent into the dungeon was far less extensive than the outings of my old gaming buddies.

We decided, due to time constraints, to skip over play in town.  I won't do this next session, but I thought it was a good idea as we only had an hour left to get any playing done.  They did hire two hirelings, one torch bearer and one man at arms named Clodivec and Oderic respectively.  My players assert (perhaps correctly) that they had the life expectancy of a mouse at a cat convention.  At the shaft that lead to the entrance, the players suggested tying Clodivec with a rope and lowering him down with a barrel attached to see if there was a "nibble."

At the base of the stairs they found a small chamber.  Opening the door to this was rather difficult, and once open the found that the room was filled about an inch deep with water.  The room was otherwise empty, which deeply disturbed all of my players.  Since the ceiling was too high for their torchlight to reveal it, they elected to leave it the hell alone and crossed into the dungeon proper.

Anyway, they took much the same route of the earlier party and ended up in the torture chamber/prison.  Here, since it's a keyed encounter and they hadn't been in the dungeon before, they found the same Death Worm that had been so easily slain by the previous delvers.  It put up a much more vigorous fight here.  Its hypnotic dance immediately transfixed everyone in the party other than the cleric.  To his dismay we discovered that Death Worms are not in fact undead.  He went toe to toe with the beast but was sadly slain.  Still, he managed to hold it off long enough that it only had one round to attack before the rest of the party left their stupor.  The Magic-User pelted the thing with Magic Missile and they returned to town to bury their friend.

Not the most exciting session, but it's a start.  The players seemed to enjoy it, and have asked me to run it again.  Hopefully we're looking at the start of a regular campaign.

 Sorry I don't have the character's names, but they only got an hour of play time and I can't find where I wrote down their marching order.