Vindstadt Campaign Through the Green Door John Sasso 9/21/99 Cast of Character Elgar of Snarl Swamp - elven woodsman from Snarl Swamp (Doug Jackson) Brandt Ravenscraft - former guardsman and good looking hunk (Martin Shaver) Patch - overly precocious Guild thief and flirt (Martin Melhus) Tivil - pixie who is too damn nosey (Chris Davis) Drkstarr Damonis - big soldier, enjoys snails and oysters (John Nigro) Tybirus Legend - Knight of the Duchess of Bervyn (Art Andersen) Jaxton Pandoor - rich boy, Guild thief (Andrew Walsh)

Part One: Through the Green Door

Quick round of introductions. New employees were just hired as additional muscle for a dangerous assignment. The restaurant closes for the night, and Papa Lezano, in full battle gear, comes down from his office with three strange fellows. Patch and Drkstarr stop flirting with each other (and discussing possibilities that include Brandt) long enough to listen. A wizard of the Guild, decked out in his star embroidered pointy hat, a blackened dwarf with a fire singed satchel, and a small shadowy cloaked figure. He explains that the mission is to go in and scout around. Find out who is behind the strange door in the basement, and how to deal with them. Get back with any information. He passes out a potion of total healing to each member of the party, and refills the jug of healing potion, which Patch carries, and two lanterns. Everyone prepares for battle. Elgar proudly wears his elven skull and scalps on his belt.

Down two hundred feet of dank stairs to Papa's basement, back and around to the strange green metal door. The wizard sets up his magickal paraphernalia, and begins his cryptic rituals at the door. Light and smoke, electrical discharges, eyes of spirits floating in the shadows, and an hour later, no results. Tired and just slightly embarrassed, the magician is escorted back up the stairs. The dwarf begins setting up. When they see the strange casks of black powder and the blackened twine that he wraps around the door, everyone ducks around the corner. A match is struck, followed by a fizzling sound, and the dwarf leaps around the corner as the walls shake with a deafening explosion. When the smoke clears, the door is unharmed, but the surrounding walls and floor are in rubble. He promises a less than pleased Papa that the mess will be cleaned up and repaired by tomorrow, and he leaves. The shadowy cloaked figure steps forward to the door. In a wisp of white vapor the cloak falls to the ground, with no sign of the figure within. From behind the door are heard the sounds of bars and chains being rattled and clanked. With a creek the door slowly opens, revealing a small nude woman, who nonchalantly picks up her cloak and slips it around her shoulders. She talks quietly with Papa as Drkstarr, excited by the spectacle, decides that his hormones are more important than his safety. He walks over to the door and Papa turns on a dime. "Get back or I swear I will do nothing to save you." The woman smiles seductively, showing her shining white fangs, and Drkstarr begrudgingly returns to the group of employees. (Papa missed his command roll, but the player decided that losing his character this early in his career to a vampire is probably not such a good idea.) With a graceful stride, she leaves the other way down the pitch black corridor toward the stairs.

Through the green door, with Papa in the lead. The walls are roughly carved, and the whole place has a sinister look to it. Down another one hundred feet of stairways, and into a room with two doorways. The first doorway spews sulphurous smoke, and leads to a corridor heading down. The other is musty and quiet, and leads up. Papa explains that he is "heading down to talk to some folks. The rest of you head up and look around. Don't get yourselves killed. Listen to the knight. He's in charge. We'll meet back here." With his great battle axe glowing and growling over his shoulder, he confidently strides forward, and disappears into the noxious vapors.

The plate armoured Tybirus is quite a crafty leader, and immediately asks for volunteers to take the point, since all good commanders must lead from the rear. With Drkstarr and Brandt up front, backed by Elgar and Jaxton, they set off to explore. Tivil buzzes around too and fro. The corridor leads up and across fifty feet to a door, and beyond to a room with large corridors north and south, and a huge set of double doors straight ahead. After some initial confusion and discussion, Jaxton and Patch quietly move forward to try to pick the lock on the large doors, but after ten minutes, neither has any success. They continue up the northern passage, twisting and turning, past an empty room, past another room which looks like it is still under construction (Drkstarr grabs a moldy brown tarp off the wall and wears it as a cape), and around a corner into a charging two headed ogre.

With a cry of "snarl, grunt, belch!" ("Hey, you don't belong here!" in its own tongue) the ogre attacks. Armed with a gnarled club, and wearing nothing but a moldy rag around its loins, the two thousand pound brute none-the-less poses quite a formidable opponent. Jaxton steps back to allow the two bruisers, Drkstarr and Brandt, to engage the creature. A flurry of club, sword, and axe blows leaves the ogre hacked in two, and the warriors only slightly bruised. (The ogre took a D wound from Drkstarr, and Brandt rolled multiple sixes to finish it off.) The rest of the party discovered a new pastime, as wagering ensued. Who would draw blood first? Who would get the final blow? Who would fall first? Patch and Drkstarr cut off its penis as a souvenir.

Another set of huge double doors proves unpickable, and the scouting party continues around curves and bends, past storage rooms filled with crates of food and casks of bug juice, mining equipment, and giant mushrooms. Light and murmurs can be heard ahead, as they approach a party of nine goblin miners, with pick axes and shovels. The miners start backing away, jabbering in their guttural tongue ("They're paying us to dig, not fight. Let's get, the hell out of here!"), but Brandt, Tybirus, and Drkstarr give chase. In the ensuing melee, the goblins are all cut down, with Brandt accounting for the greatest headcount. Jaxton searches the bodies and comes up with a few pazuzas, but nothing much else of interest. The coins are minted with the image of a troll on one side, and a manticore on the other. Quite different from the allseeing eye stamp of the Midgradian pazuza.

Several hundred meters later the tunnel exits into a huge cavern, lit by greenish glowing lichen. Almost a kilometer away can be seen huge stone walls and towers, and before that a hundred small huts. An underground town of goblins! Drkstarr discusses a program of extermination, but is summarily dissuaded. Seven verses several hundred do not make good odds. Back into the tunnels, they retrace their steps. Large forms loom ahead, and Tivil warns of ogres. Elgar and Jaxton fire arrows into the shadows, wounding one of the creatures. Two single headed ogres burst into the light. Drkstarr and Brandt engage them, with Brandt again accounting for the death blow on each.

They turn down an unexplored passage south, past a couple more empty half finished rooms, around several corners, and into a pack of eight goblin guards, armed with sword and shield, and wearing leather armour. With a yell in their goblin tongue they charge. ("For the glory of Drek!") Patch and Tybirus, now in the front rank, dispatch the creatures quickly taking nothing more than minor wounds themselves. Jaxton finds a few more of the strange pazuzas, as the others bandage wounds and quaff healing potion.

A doorway to the north. Brandt cautiously opens the door, and is immediately confronted by six clanking bone white goblin skeletons wielding maces. He backs up, allowing them to spill into the corridor, where the usual three engage and destroy. They find nothing of value or interest in the bits of splintered bone. The two thieves search the room beyond the door. It has chairs and a small desk, with a locked door on the east wall. Patch pulls out her picks and gets to work. After five minutes and a distinctive click, the door opens. (She made her normal pick locks roll, requiring two successes.) Inside is a room with a larger desk, writing implements, a wall full of filing cabinets filled with administrative documents in various indecipherable tongues. Patch ponders how to carry all the documents back without a dozen wheelbarrows, while Jaxton searches the desk, pocketing whatever looks valuable. Inside one drawer he finds a large set of keys! Very useful, since the party have had to pass by two doors that they could not pick. Patch grabs a handful of papers that look important, and they all head out and continue down the corridor.

Interlude:

The armoured figure strides into the cave filled with noxious smoke. Yellow and green vapors spew from underground chimneys. Glowing red eyes, and a bright red burning figure steps forward. In his own tongue the flame daemon speaks. "I know you. You are Guiudo, and no friend to my kind." The armour answers in the same tongue. "I know you too, and you do not belong this close to the surface, where your kind shall never be tolerated." "It is the rats in the walls that woke me from my sleep. Come, let us talk about old times."

Part Two: Damn Dwarves

At this point they realize that they have come all the way around, and find themselves back by the first set of unpickable double doors. Jaxton strides forward with a sarcastic "I bet I can pick this lock now!" With a turn of a key, the doors are opened. Beyond, the corridor is smooth and finished with fine decorations. Elgar snorts "dwarves." Just like they burrowed into Papa's basement, the goblins burrowed into some ancient dwarven tunnels, and sealed it up with a door. Down the tunnel to two huge ornate archways, leading into a pillared vault, with a throne for a giant, and two gigantic statues of lions. Holes and indents mark where there was once jewels and precious metal inlay. Murals of dwarven life and death cover the walls, with epic poems in dwarven, but no one can read the language. Patch insists that they should write it all down, with no concept of how long that would take. They ignore her. Jaxton climbs up to sit in the throne. His feet do not reach half way to the ground. Elgar points out that dwarves are sneaky bastards, and often hide doors to secret passages in their chambers. They all commence to looking. Tivil finds a particularly suspicious bit of inlay, pushes it in, and a door silently opens in one wall. (Made a level three search roll.)

Past the door, and down the stairs. Dust covers everything, as if it had not been disturbed for a thousand years. After fifty feet, they egress into a gigantic room with a dozen tombs carved into the walls. In each tomb is a sarcophagus of dwarven size, inlaid with gems and gold, platinum and eldiron. Pillars reach a hundred feet to the vaulted ceiling. In the center is a large bronze statue, which Elgar recognizes as an effigy of Schmeldor, the dwarven god of the dead. Before him are two urns with glowing weapons, covered in dwarven runes of power. Tivil flies around excited by the strangeness, studying the murals of great kings and battles, gods and the afterlife. The others decide that this a dangerous place, but it would not be a desecration to take the offerings, as long as they left something else in their place. A one for one swap ensues, as characters leave their weapons, and take dwarven ones. Patch and Jaxton swap for a new sword each. Brandt swaps for an axe. Drkstarr ends up with a huge mace, and Tybirus accepts the final axe. (One weapon is cursed, as the character will find out when the time is right.) No retribution ensues, and they all decide to grab Tivil and get out before something wakes up.

Back up the stairs to the giant throne room, and out to continue down the dwarven tunnel. A doorway to the east leads to another crypt like room. On the threshold are three goblin corpses. On closer examination they are at least a year old, with no obvious wounds on them. As a sign that they have delved deep enough into these ancient crypts, the party decide to head back, all except for Patch and Tivil. As the others try to convince Patch to get her head screwed on the right way, Tivil flies off into the room. They yell to the pixie that they are leaving, and he ignore them, as he explores the strange room. They march back to the double doors, Patch dragging her heals. Suddenly the pixie comes flying past them faster than they have ever seen him move before. His hair has changed color to the purest white. His only response to questions is, "I don't want to talk about it." (These things happen when you see a ghost. Or several.) Locking these doors, they head back around to the other locked double doors, where they killed the two headed ogre.

Jaxton again takes out the keys, but he hears a low growling and rumbling from within. The three armoured fighters stand before the door, dwarven weapons at the ready, glowing faintly, and one or two quietly humming to itself. The thief turns the key, pulls open the door, and jumps aside. A monster rears just beyond the doors, as it strains against its chains. Body of a lion but much larger, the gigantic face of a man, wings of an eagle, and the tail of a scorpion. Tybirus suggests to Jaxton that he might want to shut the door, as the two goblins within the room pull the lever to release the chains confining the manticore. It rampages through the doorway, and combat ensues. (The manticore rolls three d6 for combat as a bonus for its poison. The characters get an additional d6 also, since they have the beast surrounded on three sides.) The warriors are bashed and bitten, bruised and stung, but for each wound taken, one of them sneaks in a blow to the great beast. Twice it has a fighter down on the ground, only to be distracted before it can deliver the death blow. Drkstarr takes a mighty swing with his magickal mace, and bashes in the monster's head once and for all. (Twice the manticore rolled multiple sixes, but so did the character he attacked. Drkstarr eventually got multiple sixes and the monster rolled poorly. Combat lasted eight rounds.)

The goblins peek out of the room, throw down their weapons, and surrender. More bandages and healing potion. Inside the room are piles of gold, silver, and copper, probably from the dwarven section. They grab up the gold and silver, and head back to meet up with Papa, Drkstarr with a goblin under either arm.

Back in the room of two doorways they find Papa, a bit singed but none the worse for wear. "What have we here? A couple of captives, ey?" They inquire as to his success. "I talked to some people, but they don't listen so good. Let's head back."

They shut and lock doors as best they can, barricade the basement, and head back to the restaurant for a debriefing. The goblins are left in the guest room. (Papa's torture chamber.) He is intrigued by the two lion statues described. After conferring with his dwarven construction contractor, he calls in the troops. "I have a job for you. We believe that the lion guardians can still be activated with the right key. I need you to go talk to some friends of mine up north."