GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Adrienne Mueller, Adrian Vazquez, Mari Amend, Ryan Fox Squire
System: Shadowdark
Our fifth and final session in the Tomb of the Sea Wolf King for my home open table. It was tense, it was dramatic, and when two Nat 20’s were rolled at once it was triumphant!
Party Roster
- Solveig (played by Ryan)
- Hrovic (played by Adrienne)
- Zzadrix (played by Adrian)
- Malchor (played by Mari)
Journal of our Note Keeper
[Additions by me in brackets]
Background
- Amaranth currently held mostly by Horth
- We’re in a tomb of a Human [Nord] Warrior
- Deliotte is the goblin leader hunting us
- Went into caves to find weapons and safety.
- Just heard a group of goblins enter the cave.
- God -> Odon (Law), Fulmit, Lurga and Mmenon (Chaos)
- Skorgald -> Halls of the Sea Wolf King.
- Axe of Nine Eyex
- Garatha -> granddaughter returned for the Axe of Nine Eyes. Made a pledge to Solveig to take her back to the Five Nations as honored kin of the Axe was given to her [Oaths sworn].
- The follow the old gods (Odon, Lurga, Fulmit, and Thrune)
Records of the adventure
Solveig lit a damp torch.
Horvic pulled a belaying pin out of the junk pile [It collapsed on him and Rylene, one the Sea Nymphs came out to pull him from the rubble]
Traveling to Garatha’s camp [to find]
- Gorm -> Big Human, big scar
- Eric -> Lithe, chatty
- Harl -> [Rune tattoos, imposing]
[Hrovic] trades Skorgald’s signet ring to Eric for 4 rations and 4 torches. Torm [grey bearded and fatherly] also gives a shield to Solveig
Scarlet Drake, Garatha’s boat, we ask to borrow [for further exploration]
When we return the sea nymphs are very sand and don’t know what else to do than kill Garatha [for slaying their sister Mireern].
[Exploring the lake, with the boat on loan from Garatha, we found] Kaxla, a goblin who showed friendship to Hrovic. [She was laying flat on the raft, now missing it’s sail, hiding from the hobgoblins].
We bring her aboard and two the raft behind us.
At the back of the lake we see a small island with a large boat and something shiny.
In the boat a skeleton dressed in a tattered tunic, the boat if filled with gold. The skeleton holds a steel grey great axe (well made, zero eyes, an old axe of a sea wolf).
Solveig grabs the axe and a shadowy figure appears behind her with a great magical axe with 9 gems! [It wispers] “….. Vengeance….”
“All my decedents fell upon my favored son Mordeme” [He looked to the skeleton in the boat with sadness in his dull grey eyes]
He demands we kill Garatha or we will Perish.
Solveig chooses “Honor goes to those who survive!”
Try to flee and Skorgald tried to attack but gets a Nat !! Drops the axe! [With this fist] he breaks the boat. [The realize he cannot go beyond the island, as though his hand struck an invisible barrier. The could flee now… but when has that ever happened?!?]
TORCH GOES OUT!
Zzadrix tries to flee through the underwater river, trouble fighting the current.
Solveig in the dark goes the for the axe, rolls a Nat 1. [Grabs hold of it, but Skorgald pins her hand to the ground by stepping on it].
Skorgald slams a mailed fist into Solveig [Drops her to 0 HP] and starts forcing her body into the stone.
Malchor magic missile success!
Zzadrix [returns to the island] and heals Solveig with great heroics [they had a moment where Zzadrix asked the dying Solveig if her life was worth saving]
Solveig struggles to grab the axe and escape but fails.
Hrovic [enters a rage from the Ring of Ramlaat] and forces Skordald off Solveig but Skorgald pickes up the axe and kills Solveig (AGAIN).
Thank you for the notes Adrian, I’ll fill in the rest.
Once again Zzadrix tried to save Solvig but said he would only do it if she gave up her foolish allegiance to Garata and helped Solveig rest. In the dark she broke one oath [and lost 4 HP permanently] but swore another, this time to Skorgald.
The party limped back to the docks and by the time they got there the Scarlet Drank had taken on too much water to be seaworthy. The returned to Garatha’s camp and told her they found the axe (true) but they were not mighty enough to claim it (also true, if not the whole truth). They said she must go alone to claim it but they would take her here. I asked for Solveig to make a difficult Charisma check with Advantage (all of this fed into Garatha’s belief but it was a dangerous plan). The dice hit the table and there were TWO NATURAL 20S! We all cheered in delight.
Garatha, armed with a single flask of holy water (she got it from Agatha’s bowl) and entirely mundane axe was taken to the island on a dinky raft (What happened to my boat?!?!) and fought her great great great grandfather. She realized, too late, that this was a trap. While the holy water did burn, her weapon could not harm his stony undead skin.
Skorgald slew his final decadent and, finally at peace, descended back into the earth, leaving his great axe behind. [You really can’t take it with you! 3XP for all!]
The party claimed the Axe of Nine Eyes and escaped the sea caves on their dilapidated raft with Kaxla and Baz in their company. The Sea Nymphs finally had some measure of peace as well. They held the body of their dead sister who could now finally be put to rest (proper dead, not undead anymore).
Final Map
Here’s a side by side of the dungeon map vs. what our cartographers created (thank you Adrienne for mapping this final session). Considering the natural caves, the waterways, the lake, and my sometimes very ad hoc drawing on the battlemap, I think our crew did a remarkable job of recreating it. I’m sad they never met Ruggamort, but in another universe Malchor almost traded a finger with him!
Thoughts on this game
I am so, so impressed with this adventure. Our home group completed it in five sessions, at Go Play we got through a good portion in three sessions, and when I ran it as a birthday game, we still got a lot of enjoyment out of it in a single session. Each of them ended with a feeling of accomplishment. Things I loved the most:
- The lack of resources meant character were constantly scrambling for basic gear. Torches were going out all the time and it was a serious problem. The number of times they scrambled in the dark, defiled a grave to create light, or otherwise improvised was incredible.
- Nearly all the encounters had some way of being avoided or negotiated with. As they learned more about the history, the realized just how entangled in family drama they were getting!
- I loved the moments of change between Solveig and Zzadrix, breaking the oath and pledging a new one. Garatha needed to die and I was so pleased when the plan worked in the end (TWO NATURAL 20s!!).
- This dungeon is filled with so much good stuff, graffiti on the walls, rivers and a lake, lamenting sea nymphs, goblin bandits with varying degrees of loyalty, secret passages that were hinted at by the wall murals, and finally a sad undead man who just loved his son so much that losing him was unbearable.
- Of all the artifacts created in play, I think I loved the map the most. It was the easiest way to track what had been explored and what hadn’t as well as to leave notes for future players (“buzzing, flapping noise that way!”)
- The ending felt really satisfying. They got the treasure, escaped their captors, but they also put the dead to rest and ended an ancient family dispute. And walked off with a shiny new axe!
There were also some challenges I faced
- Having new players every time meant that even with AP reports and a note keeper’s journal we often spent a lot of time catching people up on what happened last time and I often missed details. Some of the characters like Hrovic (slowly transforming into a choker), Solveig (swearing multiple oaths) and Ixil (gaining multiple prophecies) had pretty complicated stories so I’d keep remembering thigns like “Oh yeah, Zzadrix had saved Hrovic’s love (a few times) and Hrovis swore to serve Memnon, but also he’s got the Ring of Ramlaat that is whispering in his ear…” Open tables are tough to manage.
- Some of the very details I loved about the dungeon also made it very hard to map. The natural caverns and rivers were tough. In some places I didn’t know if they ran over, under, or through passages. I made a lot of guesses which I think mostly worked, but sometimes I thought I was overcomplicating things. Also, I realized too late I didn’t know which way the water was flowing, which became very important later in the game.
Note for next game. Ask Ryan to fill out the question about Death changing you for Solveig (though she didn’t kill Garatha with her own blade, it was her deception that led to Garatha’s demise).
