Lair Of The Orc Lord - Deep 1 (Part 2)

It is Oct 2, 2006, a Monday and a public holiday. What better way to spend this day than with a double session of RMFRP and having a shared meal?

Note: If you can't read the text in the images, clicking on them will show you them full size. Use the back button to return to the blog.

Asmodeus' player brought his brand new digital video camera to the game and, after playing for 6.5 hours with a break for dinner, there ended up being 11+ GB of video. I wish I had a dynamic DNS account with DynDNS so that I could make the videos of our role playing available, eventually I will, but at the moment I haven't looked deeply enough into the setup and security requirements so that I can operate a web server running off my computer. If and when I do, I will make some of the better videos available so you can see our role playing sessions for yourself. Don't hold your breath!


Today's gaming saw the party moving south from room 7 down the corridor (8) and into room 4. See the map below.


Shashari and another listen at the south door in room 7 and hear nothing. The corridor (8) is apparently empty, so with only a cursory mention of "should we check for traps?" amongst themselves, though no one actually wanted to do it, or at least told me (GM) they wanted to, the PCs head to the next door south and open it, this time without listening.

Cavell and Rikku are leading the group and immediately open the unlocked door into room 4. As the two sitting ducks, oops sorry, heroes peer into the room and take in the surroundings they notice six Kobold archers on the far side of the room aiming and subsequently shooting at them. Cavell, wanting to protect his friend Rikku beside him, swings his shield out so that Rikku has the full benefit of the shield DB. With surprise on their side, the Kobold archers let loose their arrows. Four target Cavell and two Rikku. Only a little damage is taken by Cavell and Rikku is left unscathed by the initial attack.

Cavell and Rikku both React and Melee, charging forward and taking on their assailants. React and Melee is a specific RMFRP combat manoeuvre so that one may move and attack with an OB penalty of -10. Two of the Kobolds take damage, but none die.

Kodos targets an archer with his longbow and rolls 100. Attack rolls in RMFRP are open ended, meaning that if you roll high enough, or low enough, you roll again and add, or subtract in the case of a low roll. Kodos skewers the Kobold and kills him.

Within four rounds the Kobolds are removed from the equation of life, except for two who flee in fear out through the eastern door into corridor 2, and the PCs sigh with relief that no one is dead or seriously injured (just minor bleeding and concussion damage). A search of the bodies reveals some bronze coins and a stone jar full of a blue paste, later found to obtain healing properties.

The party heads east following the path of the fleeing Kobolds. The door into room 3 is ajar as are the doors leading into corridors 5 and 6. Rikku and Shashari stay at the T-intersection just in case the Kobolds double back around the corridors , they check the door heading south out of the T-intersection to see if it is locked but do not investigate further. The PCs ultimately find a secret door left open by the fleeing Kobolds heading into corridor 9 on the map. Description as follows:

Behind the secret door is a corridor. It is damp and smelly and the walls are covered in moss, mould and fungi. At the end is a metal-bound door.

Making their way down corridor 9, I ask each member of the party to make their own Awareness-Perceptions - Alertness skill check to see if they have spotted anything strange. (For a discussion on Alertness rolls, check out the comments for my blog post A Little Boredom.) As they pass the middle of the corridor, Kodos spots a strange pattern in the moss on the wall to their right. After being alerted to the situation, Shashari investigates what appears to be a line in the moss. She pushes on the wall and it shifts slightly, revealing a secret door into room 10.

Kodos then fantasizes about how pushing the door open ...

"triggers a button which sends down a swinging axe, chops her in half."

"And you, you're standing right next to me." replies Shashari.

"No. Yeah, next to. It goes like this [hand motions involved here] and just chops you.", Kodos.

"And you as well. It would be like a sideways scythe that comes out ...", Shashari retorts.

After which the conversation degenerates into Shashari saying that it happens because Kodos is a vampire. Ah, the joys of role playing.

Since I am using a Warhammer Quest scenario, I pull out the appropriate floor tiles and we use miniatures to represent the players and monsters. Below you can see a picture, from Asmodeus' digital video camera, of the initial move of the characters into room 10.





Everyone except Xera moves into the room, she is concerned about reopening her recent wound if she engages in combat.

At the far end of the room is a platform with a fire burning in front of a bronze idol. At the base of the platform there is a pile of bones and skulls. Peering into the darkness you can see something moving at the far end of the room. The firelight is being reflected off a pile of coins at the foot of the idol.

Kodos gets scared and moves back out into the corridor to stand beside Xera, the rest stay put.

"You hear what appears to be scuttling noises.", GM

Cavell moves forward to investigate, Rikku follows behind 5 feet. Shashari moves forward 10 feet on the right and Xera decides to move into the doorway, leaving Kodos all by his lonesome. Too afraid, Kodos goes and stands besides his heroine, Xera. She'll protect him!

The noises are more obvious now and from the darkness behind the statue emerges six beetles.

"Awh, it's just beetles!", exclaims Shashari.

"These ones are about two to three feet long.", GM.

"Do they look like they're poisonous beetles?", Shashari.

"They look nasty 'cause they're coming for you.", GM avoiding the question.

Shashari's player chooses to ignore an opportunity to use a skill check here, though it is probably more the GM's fault because I should have asked her to perform the check, either Lore-General-Fauna Lore or Lore-Obscure-Creature Lore. Creature Lore is not a listed skill, however, RMFRP provides opportunity to create new skills. I like using these skills, but with the characters at such a low level, their priorities are to build their primary skills up so that they can survive the rigours of adventuring. The more esoteric skills are usually ignored in favour of survival, however, players just can't ignore such seemingly useless skills as Fauna Lore as their application could provide valuable information to tell them that this is a situation they need to run away from, as we will see shortly.

Actually, a couple of minutes later Kodos' player does ask Cavell's player, "Do you have Creature Lore?" and Cavell responds with a negative. As GM I prompt for more information on this topic but no one has the skill and so no checks are performed.

Three beetles move to attack Cavell who is closest on the LHS of the room.

Xera decides to enter the back of the room 5 feet behind Shashari and Kodos reluctantly moves in and to the left of Asmodeus.



Now the remaining three beetles attack Shashari, likewise the closest on the RHS.



Kodos rolls another 100 when attacking a beetle, trying to help Shashari. He then rolls another 100 on the E severity critical, a very rare event (a one in ten thousand chance over three rolls). The critical description is as follows: He finally saw your point: through his eye! He's dead instantly. No witty exit line for him. This is classic Rolemaster endangerment from criticals with a dash of humour thrown into the mix.

With all the excitement going on, Shashari sees a flash and realises she has been attacked by a beetle which jumped up and released her left ear from the captivity of her head. Aaahhh! They are down here because Rikku lost his eye and now this! Lucky for the party they get free healing services at the Temple of Eissa for two weeks. Shashari is now bleeding lightly (6 hits per round, considered a light wound, though not to Shashari who has only got 33 for her Constitution and is on death's door already - she has about five rounds to live - that's 50 seconds!).

These beetles are tough. Jadebacks are their official RMFRP C&M (Creatures and Monsters) name, however, since half the party are level 1 characters I modified the Jadeback stats. Their original stat line reads as:


You can see the modifications I applied above. Having an AT of 20 (equivalent to plate mail armour) means that these guys take little in the way of concussion damage due to weapon attacks, I also decided that once these little beggars had taken 50% of their hits, they would scurry away to heal. It is lucky for the party that this was the case since three party members ended up unconscious; Shashari, Asmodeus and Rikku. Two, Shashari and Asmodeus, were bleeding and making their way speedily to the afterlife.



Xera, ignoring the minor bleeding of Asmodeus' shin, concentrates her efforts on keeping Shashari alive. Every round that follows, Xera pumps Shashari with herbs. This does the trick and Shashari survives.

One by one the remaining five beetles take 50% of their hits and retreat into their burrows in the darkness behind the idol. Just in time too, because others in the party had almost had enough.

A massive healing session went on for a good five minutes (game time - 15 mins real world) at least and all three unconscious party members were brought back to the world of the conscious. Rikku and Shashari checked to see how badly they had been poisoned. It was only mild and they should be feeling right as rain in a couple of days. Healing recovery was also performed.

Shashari: 1 day recovery for her hurt knee, 1 day for the nausea to go as the poison is flushed from her system and 5 days recovery for her ear (that is, if it is simply left off and not magically reattached).

Rikku: 2 days nausea to deal with due to the mild beetle poison in his system.

Asmodeus: 2 days recovery for the light cut on his shin.

Xera: still has the majority of 2 days to heal her light cut received earlier this day otherwise it will reopen and start bleeding again.

Just when things seemed to have settled down the PCs decide to check out the idol and coins on the floor. As one approaches a voice is heard saying:

"Who dares enter here? Pay tribute or die!"

The door behind them closes shut. The PCs are now trapped and must pay tribute.

Cavell thinks fast and casts 5 bp onto the pile of coins. Nothing seems to happen, then, all of a sudden the idol blows flames into the bowl of fire, causing the fire to flare out doing D10 hits of damage to Cavell and Kodos who is also standing adjacent to the bowl. The idol speaks again:

"There is no way out! Place offerings before me or die in agony!"

Shashari casts 2 bp into the pile and the process repeats, hitting Cavell, Shashari and Asmodeus.

Cavell herds the animals (PCs) to the back of the room in hopes that people will not be hit by the flames. Xera and Cavell heal Asmodeus and Shashari who fall unconscious from the fire damage.

Shashari donates her cooking pot to Cavell to scoop up coins to test a theory he has. Cavell gets blasted, again! Examining the pile of coins, Cavell finds the top of the pile has only bronze coins while silver and gold and gems are found at the bottom of the pile.

The party eventually decide to send Kodos outside the room to the corridor (9) so he can try and open the door from the outside. The group watch as an expression of constipation forms on his face as he tries to teleport himself. It doesn't work.

Rikku thinks of putting on an essence shield to protect him from the flares of fire as Cavell throws in a 1 gp gem to see what happens. Nothing happens. Cavell has paid tribute.

Asmodeus throws in 17 bp and the fire flares, this time hitting Asmodeus (and Rikku standing next to him, who finds out the hard way that the flame is not of essence origin). Asmodeus only takes 1 hit of damage and Rikku, 8 hits, is surprised by the pain and loses concentration on his spell.

So far Cavell has tributed 1 gp gem + 5 bp, Shashari 2 bp, Asmodeus 17 bp and now Xera is about to throw 30 bp onto the pile. Holding onto her breath, she tosses the coins ...

... nothing happens. Xera has now paid tribute. She sighs with relief.

The rest of the party now knows the required tribute is somewhere between 17 and 30 bp.

Kodos now throws in 30 bp, knowing it is a safe number ... nothing happens. Kodos has paid tribute.

Rikku is reluctant to lose 30 bp, and considers testing the "magical number" of 30 needed to pay tribute. Meanwhile Shashari throws in another 28 bp. Shashari has paid tribute.

Rikku decides to throw in 27 bp ... nothing happens. Rikku has paid tribute and saved himself 3 bp.

Lastly, Asmodeus checks his coins with the assistance of Xera and Shashari. The two women are surprised he still has a lot of money, especially since they were robbed a few nights ago. Asmodeus explains he must have been restless the night the thief stole their money.

Asmodeus throws in 10 more bronze pieces ... and pays tribute. In fact, the required tribute is but 20 bp.

With all characters having paid tribute a voice is heard:

"Your tribute is accepted. You may go safely on your way."

The party leave the Idol Chamber in disgust and head back to their starting room adjacent to room 3. This room has only a one door entry on this level and a vertical shaft up to the level where their horses are "stabled".

The party decide to send Shashari shopping for more healing herbs when she returns to Sel-kai. Her ear can be healed free of charge at the Temple of Eissa and Kodos is given the task of teleporting them there. She has been given Goblin hearts from Rikku which she can sell at The Compleat Alchemist for 10 gp each and Xera gives her green-purple flowers that can be sold for 1 gp each at a herbalist store called Herbs and Tobaccos. The rest of the party intend to camp in the "safe" room for a couple of days to allow for complete healing of wounds and poison.

What will happen next? Will Shashari and Kodos make it back successfully or will the unnatural tempest outside affect their plans? Will the rest of the party survive their stay over the coming days? This and more will be answered in the next instalment of Destiny Awaits.