Nightwick Abbey Session 21

Last night's session was remarkably similar to session 1.  The three players who were able to make it made three new characters.  One of them normally plays Slimey, and he will resume doing so next week, but the players initially wanted to have a "Paladin party" and so he decided to make a reckless Paladin on the condition that he got to keep half of his experience.  I agreed because I liked the joke and didn't really see any problem with it.  However, another player couldn't qualify for Paladin so we had:

Rory le Douche, Paladin and brother of the late Roger (played by a different player)
Beauregard E. Beauregard, Reckless paladin
Scrotie McBallsworty, Magic User of feeble countenance with a strange accent

Scrotie's name is a distortion of Scrotie McBoogerballs from South Park, which I suggested he should use as his name jokingly.  He decided to go with it, noting that the one thing he had control over was his name and I couldn't take that away from him.  One cannot argue with that logic.

They started at level two.  Despite this, Scrotie only had 2 hp.  They hired a few linkboys and a man at arms to help the odds of surviving in the ruined abbey.  They then set off down the vine-choked path to the dungeon.  I've always described the vines as "space kudzu," and we managed to discover some things about that noxious plant.  First it's bluish in color, though there is a hint of green.  At night it glows a color which is alien to our Earthly color spectrum -- Scrotie's player suggested it was mauve.  It is difficult to light, and when it does manage to burn it gives off a foul-smelling, poisonous vapor.  It's spring now in the campaign world, and the once sickly weed is now displaying a disturbing fecundity.

After messing around with the vines, the party found themselves confronted with the only two structures left standing in the Abbey.  These were two squat towers whose tops had toppled in the siege which took place over a hundred years before play began.  They picked the right one to enter and inside found an open trapdoor in the center of the otherwise bare floor.  This was the same tower the previous party had descended several times before.  No characters have yet ventured into the left tower.

They traveled down the trap door, where they found a large, spiral staircase which lead to a squat, square structure somewhere beneath the tower.  In this structure was a 20' x 20' room with a small pool in the middle.  In the first session the players had avoided this room because it's emptiness spooked them.  This time they were more foolhardy and were attacked by the goopy creature that lived in the pool.  Numbers won the day and the party was victorious.

They then preceded into the torture chamber where in the first session they had encountered a necrophidius.  This time the found only its remains.  This was a bit strange since every other part of the dungeon gets cleaned up by unknown booglies in the weeks the party isn't exploring.  I usually gloss over rooms the party has already been to (except to check for random encounters while they travel through them) but since they had no map we lingered a bit longer in these chambers.

What were formerly gates were not portcullises, and they saw no way out short of immense strength.  First though, they decided to investigate some of the cells.  Luckily enough the very first cell they inspected contained a secret door which led to a small and empty chamber.  They only managed to open the door beyond this before they were ambushed by a band of mites.  Scrotie used his sleep spell to good effect and the Mites were easily defeated.  At that point the party returned to the surface and we ended the session.

I continue to be amazed at how much gaming I've gotten out of the first level map of Nightwick Abbey.  Early in the prep process I added I added several geomorphs to my initial map in order to make it fill a sheet of 6 to 1" graph paper.  After 20 sessions the party only managed to discover a little bit of the initial map.

As a bonus, here is an unedited version of my first draft of the map.  If you're one of my players, please ignore this map:

click to embiggen

I've changed quite a bit of it, and added a few more geomorphs as I've already mentioned.  I've also put in a few secret doors, traps and other things which aren't marked here.