STONEHELL Cairn 2e Play Report 02
Autohitting is very swaggy
Albums while writing this report:
Session 2
Da Dragon’s Den
The Party:
Silas the Cutpurse
Hawk the Fletchwind
Yarrow the Greenwise
Thorn the Marchguard
Stonehell’s Antechamber
Having descended 100 feet into the earth, the party puts the canyon behind them and is now in Stonehell proper. Thorn lights his lantern to provide light for the group as they disperse to check out the four exits provided to them. Silas listens to the northeast and hears nothing on the other side, while Yarrow tries the door to the east and quickly gives up after realizing it’s stuck. An immediate branching hallway dissuades the party from heading southeast as Hawk takes the initiative and presses onward to the northeast to a long-since burned down and sacked lounge room.
Continuing east, the party enters a (once) grand dining hall now reduced to utter chaos, littered with damaged and destroyed tables, chairs, and dining supplies. Underneath the centerpiece dining table, Yarrow spots a fungal colony partially obstructed by the damage. Investigating further, she sees that the mushrooms and spores are actually double in number — and a part of the mushroom outlines vaguely bear a resemblance to a man in repose. With her Greenwise background, Yarrow is able to glean that these fungi are likely not poisonous and are possibly unique to Stonehell. Perturbed by the sight, the party heads south.
More remnants of destruction and pillaging meet the party, as everything they’ve heard about the upper level of Stonehell being picked bare of goods rings true with every step. Here, they discover a ruined kitchen and are beset by the stench of mold, mildew, and spoiled foods. In the southeast corner of the room lays a still-functional sink. Yarrow turns the crank and hears the sound of water flowing into a stoppage. Quickly after, viscous green ooze begins to seep out of the spigot, followed by a “shlorping” sound that the party has quickly associated with Green Slimes from previous encounters. Wanting nothing of the sort, they run back out to the main chamber and then head out the northwest door.
[I’m typically used to just inserting the OSE dungeon turn procedures regardless of the game I run but have decided to use the procedures supplied in Cairn 2e’s playtest. Here, it seems to be up to discretion when to actually roll on the Dungeon Events table. I’m also not familiar with the “overloaded encounter die” that has multiple results on the d6 instead of just an encounter on a 2-in-6, so there are a couple of missteps as I try to interpret or adjust the results of the dungeon shifting or explaining how there’s some sort of resource loss. Additionally, I’ve decided to be light on Dungeon Event rolls as I figure the first level of Stonehell is still relatively… “safe”]
Silas, claiming the door to the northwest is “his door” because he listened to it, decides to open it. Immediately, the group faces down horrific mouths carved into the archways and depictions of imps cavorting along the walls.
Silas immediately denounces ownership of this door. After quick deliberation and full expectation that there’s some sort of trap behind these mouths, Yarrow prods the first mouth-archway with her ten-foot pole and determines that it it must be safe. She jaunts through, followed by Silas, who immediately flips off the mouths and everyone still beyond him in celebration of not being chomped in half. After passing through the next three mouth-archways, the group comes to my favorite dungeon device: the four-way intersection.
In the center of this four-way intersection is a rusted metal sign that says “Da Dragon’s Den”, written in the crudest handwriting possible. With reckless abandon and a desire for treasure reinvigorated by Yarrow and Silas both echoing that the stories always tell of dragons protecting hoards, they break from the manmade rooms of Stonehell into the natural caverns to the west.
In their current position, the group is welcomed with the stench of bat guano. To the south, echoes of pickaxes and mining. To the north — quiet. That is, until the party scurries to the north and awakens and alerts scores of sleeping bats. Fortunately for them, the bats are not particularly hostile, nor do the sounds of screeching seem to draw anyone to their location… or so they think.
Running out of the cavern and back to the transitional period of the manmade rooms and natural caves, the group locks eyes with a group of six muscle-bound, blueish-green-skinned humanoids heading south down the four-way intersection. With this group armor-clad and resting weapons at their sides, Thorn does what he does best and calls out to them, offering his now-signature stiff, left-to-right wave. The apparent leader of this group, wearing a bulging chainmail shirt, leather pants, and a skullcap with two large bones affixed to the sides, frisbees a “ration” over to the group before continuing on south.
[Encounter: 2d6 Orcs, Reaction Roll: Helpful — Thorn was friendly and wasn’t aggressive by any means; I imagined the Orcs were heading south to group up for a raid on some Goblins and wanted to curry the favor of a potential neutral party to potentially persuade them towards joining their side to help wipe out the Goblins in a later encounter so thought this would be a nice resolution of the situation.]
Untying the cloth packaging of this ration reveals that it is some type of not-so-fresh but not-so-old mystery meat. The party intelligently (although to my slight disappointment) does not take a bite and presses on towards the south, where they heard the sounds of pickaxes and mining from before. With the source not found, the group continues south and now finds the mining culprits: a pack of 3-foot tall, naked molerat-esque humanoids with particularly oblong torsos, short stubby legs, and arms that hang down to their knees. Thorn, the now-elected diplomat of the party, again waves and calls out.
The creatures immediately tense, gather their mining supplies and bags they were shoveling bat guano into, and press up against the cavern walls immediately opposite the party, fearful of any confrontation. Thorn and the rest acknowledge this and instead slowly approach the stone well in the center of the cavern, with the molerat-resembling creatures matching their movements and inching their way along the walls outside of the room.
Shining their lantern down the well, the party notices that this well extends far beyond their lantern light, at least 50 feet deep. Staring down into it also yielded a slight breeze, an unusual upward draft emitting from the well. Silas, wanting to see if he can determine how far down the well actually is, tosses a coin along the side of the well to hear it clatter down.
Clink… clink… clink… followed by silence, as a ghastly, greying, decayed-flesh arm emerges from the cover of darkness and catches the coin in its palm. Another arm emerges from the darkness and they begin to scrape against the sides of the well, climbing upwards. Not wanting to see what is climbing up to meet them, the party decides to turn tail and run towards the cave opening to the west.
Accurately deducing that this must be “Da Dragon’s Den”, the group runs blindly into a small cave littered with bones and other broken equipment as a small pond fills the back of the room with the faint sparkles of coinage and other shiny goods tucked behind some rocks in the back. Astutely noticing that there is a distinct lack of a “Da Dragon”, Yarrow looks up… and saves her life in the process! Resting atop the ceiling, primed to pounce, she sees a gargantuan six-foot-long lizard with a snakelike tongue coiling around, eyeing down the group. Spotting it prevented the ambush, but now the group must stand their ground or escape!
Thorn and Silas draw their weapons, unable to attack the lizard as it’s about 20 feet up on the ceiling, but stand their ground. Hawk is slow to react and is fumbling to draw out his bow while Yarrow whips around her briarvine and launches it up at the lizard, hoping to entangle it and potentially cause it to fall from the ceiling for an easy kill. Unfortunately for her, the briarvine is no match for the raw strength of the lizard as it breaks its entanglement with a mere flexing of its muscles and pounces down at Yarrow for an enhanced attack from its advantageous position.
Yarrow is pounced upon and nearly eviscerated by the lizard as the acidic saliva dripping from its mouth sizzles on the ground next to her. Yarrow immediately must make a Critical Damage save and has a slim margin of success as she has to roll under a 3 on a d20. She narrowly avoids an acidic death as with her remaining strength, she dodges her head to the side and avoids getting chomped, rolling a 1 on her Critical Damage save and narrowly avoiding death.
Hawk notches an arrow and lets it loose into the hide of the lizard, as Silas harries it with dual dagger strikes and Thorn delivers the finishing blow with a deft longsword slash across the creature’s spine, freeing Yarrow from the weight of its body as she, near-death, crawls away to safety.
[Moments like these are why I absolutely love the autohitting in Cairn and ItO-derived games. Combat is much more deadly but also that much more engaging as you KNOW you’re going to hit — the only factor of randomness is the damage, leaving interesting tactics and maneuvers as the most deciding factor in combat. Granted it didn’t shine through here, but this fight would have been a slog if I ran it in a system with to-hit combat as the party would have likely missed about 60% of their attacks and ‘Da Dragon’ would have been widdled them down. Also, the moment of Yarrow being knocked down to 3 STR and meeting the 15% chance of survival can’t be beat!]
Yarrow, with the aid of her companions, recuperates herself by applying a Healing Salve she brought with her as part of her Greenwise kit. Thorn decides to decapitate the lizard and take its head as a trophy. Diving into the pond towards the shining glints, the party finds 80 GP and a slightly foul-smelling golden circlet after digging through some rocks and lizard excrement. The celebrations are quickly cut short, however, as Hawk hears the footsteps of whatever creature crawled up the well behind them.
Emerging from the darkness, in surprisingly noble attire, is a 6-foot, decaying Ghoul who introduces himself as Szoban (after Thorn’s signature stiff wave greeting). Reeling from the combat, Yarrow’s near-death experience, and the juxtaposition of a regal and pleasant interaction with a talking, decaying corpse, the conversation ends quickly after introductions with Szoban thanking the group for the coin and telling them to visit him on the second floor of Stonehell… if they make it there alive. He also suggests selling the lizard head to the kobolds in their bazaar, all but confirming Thorn’s rumor he heard. With this behind them, the party presses on out of Da Dragon’s Den and to the south.
To the south, they enter a cave eloquently described as “the shape of Tennessee”, filled with phosphorescent moss that is numerous enough to overpower the light of Thorn’s lantern. This cavern is empty, save for a beetle carapace described as “refrigerator-sized” (and an ensuing debate for a couple of minutes about what refrigerator-sized actually means") before the group decides not to anger whatever now-larger beetle may be lurking nearby as they run out back into the manmade halls of Stonehell into another four-way intersection.
To the east, a hallway swallowed into darkness. To the south, grand stone-carved double doors. The party heads west and opens the door to a room completely layered with caved-in rubble from the walls and earthen surroundings. Through the cracks in the walls and floors, an unnerving constant chittering and crawling of insects, yet none to be seen. Yarrow, recovered from her near-death experience, decides to carefully proceed across the rubble to a door they spot to the south. With the potential dangers of the room with the stone and earthen rubble and hidden insects, Yarrow rolls a DEX save and narrowly succeeds in pulling away from an arm-sized Giant Centipede she was about to step on and immediately dashes back to the group who leave the giant creepy crawlies behind them.
They quickly stop at the stone double doors and find no way of ingress, surmising that there’s something keeping the doors locked on the opposite side as there is no obvious lock on the front. They head to the east instead, entering a room with a large stone fountain in the center, adorned with a large sculpture of a fish broaching water and joined by two long-dead skeletons lying against the fountain, each with one hand in the dry basin.
Silas inspects the fish statue atop Thorn’s shoulders and spots caked white residue around the mouth of the fish, while Yarrow taps the fish sculpture with her root knife and hears hollowness inside. Guided by the drive for treasure, Yarrow swaps spots with Silas and jams her root knife into the mouth of the fish statue to dig around. Unfortunately for her, this triggers the trap mechanism as a cloud of poisonous gas rushes out into her face. Yarrow succeeds on the STR save and avoids death for a second time this session as the party dives for the ground and out to the south.
[In another instance of clearly foreshadowing traps instead of springing them as “Gotcha’s” — the dead skeletons with their hands resting in the basin should tip someone off about something being unusual with the fountain as this is an odd position to die in. The caked-white residue is evidence of the poisonous gas residue.]
At this point, the party is eager to continue heading south as they were told by Szoban to “just head south.” Distracted from this task is the draw of a rusted portcullis that Silas cuts apart with his fence cutters as the party files in. On the south wall, Thorn spots an unfinished mural that has long-since been abandoned, but he can make out that it depicts once again St. Ras, the patron saint of duty and honor. Exploration in this room does not last long, however, as the party begins to get buffeted by a gale wind from all directions as a voice booms throughout the room, shouting, “Fools, flee before your bones rest here forever more!” followed by cackling, witch-like laughter. Heeding this call, the party doubles back and heads south.
Fully expecting the kobold bazaar they are desperately seeking, the group instead finds a stone “wheel of fortune.” After much deliberation (and some above-table taunting from myself I couldn’t resist), they decide to spin the wheel one at a time, smartly transitioning goods outside the room incase one of them blows up or something. In short, the results were as follows:
Yarrow: +1 to all damage for 24 hours.
Silas and Thorn: All coins held double
Hawk: A ‘permanent’ -3 to strength, the only negative outcome.
[I had to reroll on these tables multiple times as I realize a handful of these results didn’t actually fit Cairn, as there were no magic-user spells to recharge for example, and I couldn’t come up with anything similar on the fly. I didn’t want to give out a spellbook, although I suppose writing this now that giving out a scroll would have been an outcome that I think would have been very cool for the players, especially if they get to roll on one of Cairn’s tables to see what spell they get. I think the lesson I learned here is that despite Stonehell being made for pick-up-and-play access, I should probably read ahead and prepare a bit more to see what I would want to adapt to Cairn specifically, even though Cairn is a super lightweight system that’s compatible with many things.]
The group now backtracks to the original four-way intersection with the sign pointing to “Da Dragon’s Den” and opens the door to the east, immediately closing it after seeing it is a combined refuse and trash room. They double back and head up and to the west, drawn again by the sound of mining. Here, they meet Lob, another one of the naked molerat-like humanoids who identifies to the party that he and his type are Kobolds. After exchanging pleasantries and reinforcing that the Kobold bazaar is to the south — “If you haven’t found it yet, you just aren’t going south enough” — the group thanks Lob for his friendliness and heads back south to the grand staircase of Stonehell and the unexplored passages south.
Blocking passage is a procession of 6 skeletons walking around the grand spiraling staircase in a ritual-like manner as Silas approached quietly and peered into the room after being tipped off by the sounds of shambling bones. After tossing some rocks to get their attention, the party funnels back into the hallway they came from as Hawk notches an arrow laden with his bow’s explosive pine sap and launches it as the skeletons funnel through the door after them!
Ending on a cliffhanger for the group and a potentially very dangerous combat encounter.
After Action Report
So far, the game is going as I expected. I enjoy the flexibility of Cairn, and the second edition is much of the same, just with expanded player options in the form of background. I don’t recall if the loaded encounter die was present in the first edition, but it is taking me some trouble adjusting to after using the standard 2-in-6 wandering encounter die.
For example, I find the “traces of an encounter” and “environment shifts” results a little hard to come up with on the fly (which is unusual for me). I think I will probably come up with some type of supplementary d6 or d12 table for each of these results ahead of time (and will provide them here) just to assist when I can’t think of something that narratively makes sense.
I’m also going back and forth on if I want to look ahead and convert monsters ahead of time. Cairn’s bestiary has the standard monsters, but things like the Giant Lizard (Giant Gecko in Labyrinth Lord) aren’t there — but it’s easy enough to come up with on the fly as 10 is the baseline in each stat, and start with a baseline of 3 HP and add 1 HP for each HD afterward.
These will also be shorter in the future. Maybe. I like keeping them as notes but also see that a lot of other play reports are a lot more terse and punchy.