Nightwick Abbey Test Session II

Again I warn any readers living in the Knoxville who may be playing in this dungeon starting Tuesday to find something else to do.  Spoilers ahead.

This session began with the party recruiting a few more hirelings before heading off into the dungeon.  That done, they sought to explore a hallway that they had bypassed the previous session.  To their surprise, they found that it was quite short and ended in a large chamber.  Here some men in red robes seemed to be at work, painting various things on the walls.

The party quickly surmised that these were not truly living men, but rather undead revnants.  Alma managed to turn them and they fled from her sight before battle could be joined.  They then set about exploring a southern corridor.  At the end of it they found a door that was rather difficult to open, but Schlog managed to force it anyway.  Beyond they found a massive chamber filled with bats and their rather foul excrement.  The ceiling was far out of their torch's range, but they could tell by the squeaking that they had stumbled into a bat cave.  Armand elected to hurl a few vials of flaming oil into the room, neglecting the fact that the party had spied a large crack in the ceiling where the sun shown in.  The floor quickly caught ablaze and they exited.

After leaving, they heard a deafening noise emanate, as if a large creature had been stirred.  They were not the only ones who heard it.  They proceeded (quickly) down a side passage and found themselves confronted with a set of fat, saucer-eyed creatures.  The Goblins, upon seeing that the party was not in fact some horrible collection of beasts, seemed rather disinterested.  They let down their guard, but refused to let the party pass. Fearing the large number of Goblins, the party elected to treat with them a bit.  The squat things referred to a master, simply called "the Boss," and they had a bizarrely long conversation about the number of whippings they received from this figure.

Realizing a deal could not be reached and that the Goblins were growing impatient, the party decided to seek down a corridor they had not yet ventured into.  This corridor lay beyond the room where they had first seen the zombies diligently painting.  The undead had since returned and continued their work in eerie quite.  The Cleric again shooed them away with a wave of her cross.  They entered and began to debate their next course of action.  Unfortunately, the zombies quickly returned and set upon them while they were in disarray.

The fighting was fierce, and though the party was triumphant they were badly injured and most of their hirelings went to meet their maker.  They wisely decided it was time to return to town and recoup.  This took a number of days, during which time Coll heard that several loggers and trappers had gone missing after entering the woods.

They soon found the source of this trouble:  several giant bats that laired in the large chamber they set ablaze.  Angered by the flames, the bats had set forth to hunt and reek terrible vengeance on men.  The party found these creatures and did battle with them in the forest outside of the dungeon.  The party made it away relatively unscathed and set forth to return to Nightwick Abbey.

This time, at the behest of Coll's player, they decided to look through the cemetery that lay near the abbey proper.  In it they found a vault that concealed an entrance to some (apparently) extensive catacombs.  These were guarded by two iron statues that looked like this.

These proved to be insanely tough, though the party was luck in that they left the Paladin and the Cleric alone.  Unfortunately Coll -- whose player had suggested they enter in the first place -- perished along with his hirelings.  The party returned to town and he rolled up a Magic-User in short order.

When they returned, they elected to not tackle the remaining statues, but instead to continue down the path they had intended before the fight with the zombies.  One of the rooms along this corridor was a storage room with miraculous properties.  It appeared as though it had recently been cleaned and occupied, and a torched blazed on its wall.  However, any material brought outside this room aged as though it went through one hundred years in an instant.  The players spent the rest of the evening conducting experiments in this chamber. My favorite of which was when they brought several books from the library inside and found that they had reformed and were almost brand new (until being removed from the room).

All in all it was a fine session.  When Coll's player had to make a new character, I realized that I need to reform certain things about the Druid before it is a viable class for my system.  LotFP:WFRPG's strange encumbrance/armor rules (which I enjoy) are largely incompatible with the requirements of a Druid.  I will also need to decide how much Scale, Banded, and Splint armor add to encumbrance.