Tauster's Mother (well, not really...)

[skunkape]

That's just suitable creepy!

[dmdubbledee]

Fantastic setup Tauster. I can see while your players would be smiling. This is incredible.

[pyromaniacpenguin]

That is amazing. The Deepspawn and all your terrain are killer (literally). The plot twist is epic. Kudos on all of it!

[DMScotty]

Fantastic!

[grogg]

man, that flesh terrain is creepy

[Draklith]

Awesome

[tauster]

This past weekend, Mother found a new child: Two of my friends had time for another one-shot combat room session, the player of the Torrag, the derro ooze druid (the one from the story above) and a player who came up with the idea of playing a troll priest of Gaunadaur, a underdark god of slimes and oozes - without having any knowledge of Torrag's oozy character background! This was simply too good not to use, so I agreed on his quite powerful build (mix of ADnD 2nd edition plus bits from 3E's 'Savage Species', plus some houserules blended in for good measure). We had a wonderful session.

The two were a great team, fighting against a bunch of lizardmen and later just barely surviving the battle against a bullette. The monster locked it's jaws around the the troll's arm and one round later, bit it off:



To save his new ally, and frustrated with the extremely strong armor class, the derro (armed with a x-bow with poison bolts) frantically searched for a weak spot...



He didn't went for the eyes (which would be the traditional weak spot) but the opposite way: He shot the bullette ...in the a**!
The dice rolled well (the law of drama), the bolt went right in, the poor critter spectacularly failed its saving throw, and a few morningstar bashes on the head later, the paralyzed landshark was history. Guess that's one of the fights that will be retold for years.

Although the troll got killed by the landshark, he regenerated back to full health (yes, I'm aware that this might be not quite what the rules say...). The duo healed and continued on their way to meet Mother - the derro had promised the troll a reward for helping him, without going into details what exactly Mother is. My players know what a deepspawn is, but the troll didn't. So while my player saw it coming from miles away, he bravely played his troll without metagaming. He was sure the DM wouldn't kill a character freshly rolled up for this evening, with me hinting that the troll could be a recurring villain for the main party of this campaign...

...teh fool!
Naturally, the inevitable happened: Mother ate him.
My player's face was priceless.

Of course the story had a happy end... sort of. Like the derro, he was reborn as an identical copy of the original PC, the only difference being that he's now unshakably loyal to Mother and her other children. Which is actually a good thing, as for the first time he experienced such strange feelings like trust and friendship. And of course he now has a base in the underdark, plus much better access to resources than before.

Lesson learned for all:
1) Combat Room sessions don't have to be just fighting - you can have plenty of roleplaying in one-shot sessions.
2) Every monster has a weak spot. Or ring...
3) Don't trust the DM. Ever.





I took a few detail shots of Mother, and even if the colors still don't match the original, it looks suitably disgusting for adding it to this post.


(large version)


(large version)

[Draklith]

Lol, that's fantastically groovy, greasy, and somewhat unsettling

I love it

Great story too! 

[beerfrog]

That's truly epic, bro. You have a knack not only for crafting, but story telling as well.

[halloweenville]

Dude That Is Wicked! I Would not want to encounter that beast, Great Job!

[tauster]

The story of Mother's children continues: Yesterday we had another Combat Room session, which was great after a game-less summer!

It's already late, so I keep it short. Or try to.

The derro druid and the troll cleric (of Ghaunadaur, an elder god of slimes), plus Tanagra, the eldest of Mother's children went on a trip to a distant cave with a portal where they met an underdark merchant: Zungar, a bad-tempered beholder with it's retinue of charmed bodyguards/servants. Mother has a longterm agreement with Zungar: She delivers rare crystals and even rarer mushrooms (used for unknown alchemical purposes, presumably) and the beholder brings spell components, high-quality paper and spellbooks as well as delicious fruits from the surface - all stuff that is hard to come by down there. The three had an uneventful journey, the trade went as planned (they even got the chance to give the beholder their own wishlist: alchemical components for the derro and two steel axes sized for the troll) and even the return trip was without any complications (i.e. battle).

The most important thing however was that Mother and Tanagra got clues from Zungar regarding a portal they were so far unable to open, one that is rumored to lead deep into Mag Turea, a legendary Fomorian fortress in the Feydark. The next months were full with research for Tanagra, and the derro assisted him more and more since he has a diary of his grandfather full with information that was related to that topic. In the meantime, the troll started to train another child of Mother, a rather dumb hill giant.

When it was time for the next trip to the merchan's cave, Tanagra continued his research and sent the two alone, accompanied by the hill giant. They went there, traded the goods with Zungar's herald (the beholder was absent) and when they left the cave, their trade partners ambushed them by causing a part of the ceiling cave in (a wink & nod to the famous 'rock falls. everyone dies' trope, just for fun). The party got badly hit: The hill giant was immediately at -1 HP, the derro took 19 out of approx. 50 HP and the troll 9 out of 55 HP. The resulting dust cloud gave them 3 rounds of time. It was the first time that they doubted the wisdom of creating a cleric without any healing spells: The troll can regenerate, and serving an evil deity meant that healing others is just no priority for him, especially since he started out as a lone wolf. And the derro was a druid, but since his other focus was alchemy, he figured that he would create some kind of alchemic healing down the road. He didn't, at least up to that point. Now their brother the hill giant was at -1, which in ADnD 2nd edition means he loses 1 HP each round until arriving at -10 HP where he truly dies. The countdown started, as did the battle.

The troll was attached by two human warriors in melee, an overly agressive giant wolf and an archer standing on a giant mushroom. The latter got quickly wiped out by a thrown rock, but the other three proved to be very persistent. The derro turned into a slime (he always had a mysterious link to slimes, something in his bloodline... ) and slithered up a cave wall towards Zungar's herald who was standing up there and attacking with a magic staff. He managed to shove him down, the poor guy's landed on it's head and the slime simply dropped on the unmoving herald's head. Game over.

Not quite game over: Zungar itself bexcame visible and started attacking with its eyestalks. The PCs got some lucky saving throws and escaped major harm. Unfortunately, an umber hulk broke suddenly through the cave wall (now where did that guy came from!??!) and attacked the derro, who blinded it but the 'hulk seemed to have other senses compensating for the blindness. The derro evaded most but not all of the hits and finally cursed his foe - from that point on the battle got considerably easier for him. And the troll even managed to entangle the beholder's eyestalks with a bola!

While the two slowly whittled down their foes, they took quite some damage. So much that the troll finally los it's consciousness (-1 HP). The derro now faced an umber hulk and a beholder - alone.

Fortunately the troll regenerated back and was up and running after three rounds. He got up just at the moment when the beholder floated to a rock arch, where some unseen force tried to unwrap the bola. The troll threw another large rock, hit first the poor beholder's eyestalks and then the invisible creature helping it - which turned out to be a Mindflayer. Both players were a bit shocked, which soon gave way to relief, when the beholder seemed to break it's domination and disintegrated the mindflayer together with the giant mushroom it was standing on.

Zungar rampaged through the cave for another few moments (the PCs hid and waited the storm out) and then was very embarrased having to thank those hideous non-beholders for having saved him. He was even more humiliated by having to ask them to finally unwrap the bola from it's eyestalks (big laughs at the table). It turned out that he had no healing potion or other healing magic, which sealed the faith of the unfortunate hill giant. They agreed to forget about the incident, disintegrated the dead and parted company.

The end.
For now.



The map is either from PAIZO or WotC (don't know from the top of my head, already packed it away & too lazy to look it up). The green & pink mushroom was picked up on ebay, the rest of the dungeon deco was done by me.


i.imgur.com/ibGWMGP.jpg


i.imgur.com/I9l12Xf.jpg


i.imgur.com/kRirg72.jpg


i.imgur.com/gkT9nqW.jpg

[grym247]

Great Work as Normal Dude

[chiefsgtbradley]

Amazing stuff. You are a great inspiration!

[GM-Jen]

Holy cow, a veritable wonderland of things to kill PC's! Great work!

[DnDPaladin]

hmmm... i remember my 2nd edition advanced monster manual.... there was a monster like that. not exactly like it mind you.

the creature would eat for the ressources and when eating up enough of the meat it would be able to spawn a children that would be a duplicate of the creature it ate. the major difference was that the children didn't have the mentality of the victim. it would be a slave to the creature and it would only serve as a way to go outside to find new preys to feed upon. to create the clone it would require 24 hours.

my players were never high enough to fight that thing so i just never used it, but it was by far the best monster in the book.

so yeah, really cool idea for a monster, greatly done as well.

[tauster]

thanks for the praise, all.

DnDPaladin:
you probably mean the Deepspawn (see the initial post and following discussion).

[tauster]

Since my friend's other campaign was cancelled today due to too many players being away, we had a spontaneous Combat Room session this evening with the derro slime druid and the troll priest of Ghaunadaur (god of...you guessed right: slimes). It what a session it was!



Full of glorious lizardmen-bashing (2 PC (approx. level 8) against a good dozen of lizardmen,...




... plus two fungoid undead.



We had absolutely weird dice rolls resulting in awesome combat drama (two scrawny myconids each scoring a critical hit, clubbing the troll priest (level 7) from full health in a single round to death's door!).



We had the derro summoning Torog's worm for the very first time, who proved to be a very valuable ally. He swallowed several lizardmen whole, and bit the two myconid in pieces. The lizardmen started to retreat. Their two shamans, who had retreated several rounds before to the relatively safe deeper part of the cavern, started to chant. Chanting shamans are never a good thing.



Then came the earthquake, starting as a soft vibration and ending in large parts of the ceiling collapsing.




After the dust settled a little bit, the troll saw ...something ominously large dissappearing in a large hole in the ground that wasn't there before



Both players were ...worried, but intrigued. They continued to harrass the shamans,...



...but it was already too late: Two rounds later the earth started shaking again, and from below burst...

the Great Pruple Worm!




I put the purple worm 'mini'-ature on the table, not before dramatically wiping away all dungeon deco in this corner with my arm. Both players were shocked and just stared for a heartbeat - exactly the reaction I had always pictured! Then it was a mixture of admiring the creature and wondering what would come next.

Both PCs got swallowed whole.

The troll was in the negative hitpoints - for the second time this evening, so he was unconscious for a few rounds (until regeneration set in). He is completely immune to acids, thanks to being a priest of Ghaunaduar, so no immediate fear of being digested.

And the Derro druid shapechanged into a slime. Both rode it out so to speak, feeling through the vibrations that the worm made it's way through miles and miles of solid rock. They lost every sense of time and finally found themselves in a large cavern, where they exited the worm ...on the other end.

Which means that next session will start with a completely new location, and a giant pile of dung!


I'm completely happy with how the battle turned out. Normally, no DM plan survives contact with the players for more than one round. This time I could put a lot of things I had planned before into action and it turned out to be one of the battles that we'll surely speak of in the years to come. Now I'm totally overtired but completely happy.

[beetlewing]

tauster said:

Which means that next session will start with a completely new location, and a giant pile of dung!

YAY! You found a use for it!

And congrats on what sounds like an amazing game! Glad you had so much fun - you deserve it after all that hard work!

[tauster]

Oct 31, 2014 3:29:41 GMT beetlewing said:

tauster said:

Which means that next session will start with a completely new location, and a giant pile of dung!

YAY! You found a use for it!

And congrats on what sounds like an amazing game! Glad you had so much fun - you deserve it after all that hard work!

Yeah, we had a blast. Several blasts, actually.

I am really happy that we have this Combatroom format, it really helps me having some games at all, in spite of all the difficulties to bring the whole group together. But 'deserve' is probably the wrong word, because I already have a blast while crafting - that would be like deserving a cookie after you had to eat the cake.

An interesting development is that we started the combat rooom sessions as originally intended, i.e. nearly storyless, focused on combats and trying out magical equipment and character build variants. Backstory was minimal, only to give the combats some logical sense (to avoid someone asking in the middle of the fight why they are fighting at all). But from session to session, story crept back in, and after I introduced Mother (which also radically changed the story of the Derro druid) story was firmly established in the combatrooms. We still don't spend much time on campaign story and keep these games as combat-focused as possible, but I think we have found our 'personal equilibrium'.

That is, btw, exactly what I had intended: Weaving another story arc into our main underdark campaign (which started in 2001). In some months this terrible duo will encounter the main party (so the two players will play both their primary and secondary characters). Which will be a pretty tense and unpredictable meeting: A group of powerful goody-twoshoes surface adventurers meeting a troll and a derro. They have derro as enemies and also as allies before, so they know these little buggers already. They have also processed several trolls before; around level 6 (iirc) they wiped out the tribe of the troll priest. If this comes out during the talks (if they talk at all), I have no idea the troll will react. but that's something I can prepare together with the player beforehand, so we can plan that.

[tauster]

Just finished another combatroom session, hurray!


I had the general layout of the cavern done before the players arrived to save time. You can see the unpainted cork mats below, plus the giant pile of dung which I put only just before the game's start on the table. It got some very good laughs!



I asked my two players before we started which magical items they would want to try out today. After all, this is part of the combatroom concept: Try out new feats, abilities and magic items that you can't just use in your regular campaign(s). The original concept was that each CR session is independent from the ones before, but with these two characters we seem to develop a sidetrack campaign with a consistent backstory, one that will eventually blend in our main campaign (even though it's not at all guaranteed that these two will get along with the main party - we're talking about two evil characters, one troll priest of Ghaunadaur and a derro druid that must has some slime creature in his family tree. No, don't ask.)

So the players leafed through various rule books for almost one hour - but didn't really find anything nice they wanted. Which is something I had never expected: players who can't fill a magic item wishlist.

I had searched in parallel, so in the end I made a list and we finally started where we left off last sesion: Both had been swallowed by a giant purple worm. The derro had shapeshifted into a slime to survive the agressive interior and the troll is acid-proof anyway.* They had lost track of time, but what seems like a few days, they left the worm through the read end.

Btw: A troll priest of ghaunadaur is a real killer-combo. The only thing that would make the mayhem complete would be a ring of fire protection.



Feeling very dizzy, it took them some time to get their bearings and discover their surroundings:



It seemed like the worm carried a shitload (sorry for the pun) of parasites with it, as all kinds of creepy-crawlies were feasting upon the giant pile of dung, which filled the cavern with an undescribable stench. They found a violet glowing, crystal-like thing sticking out of the pile. It was a small rectangle (15x10x2 cm) made of either glass or clear crystal. A pattern of dark purple 'clouds' was moving inside the glass, so it was obviously magical. The derro quickly pocketed the thing as there were more pressing things at hand - the creepies made them nervous.

And rightly, since only moments later a giant beetle-thing jumped at and clawed into the trolls back while he was fighting a creature that had just spat him in the face, leaving a large glob of an extremely sticky ...substance. He killed the spitter with two quick blows, but the far larger problem was the beetle on his back that was almost the troll's size and weight. He slammed into a stalagmite and tried do scrape it off. The derro tried to help him and sank a poisoned x-bow bolt between the carapace parts - before getting carried away by another giant, flying thing.

...which dropped him only moments later because it got hurt by the derro's protection from insects spell. The bad news was that it dropped him right into the hole in the ground where the purple worm had exited. (the derro mini is visible in the background of the pic below)

Fortunately he could catch himself after a few meters and didn't tumble several miles down. Still he got only 12 HP left. He transformed into a slime again and crawled out...



...just in time to see the troll finish off that damned beetle.



Just before that fight, they discovered that the moldy growths were feeding on heat and standing near them was quite painful (4w8 cold damage - brown mold from 2nd edition). That made moving around the cave quite tricky, but several insects died accidentally as well.

They had not much breathing time, as one giant flying thing attacked the troll and got simultaneously caught with a claw in the troll's pony tail while the he tried to hack it out of the air. Hey, I just love those drama dice!

Due to it's size and flight speed, the sudden stop ripped the troll's head sideways with a very unhealthy sound. He toppled over, landed at the axe-skewered giant fly/beetle ...and stopped moving. The derro finished off the animal. The troll's neck was snapped.



...which isn't as bad as it sounds: After all it's a troll we're talking about!
After a few rounds (and some bad jokes about a paraplegic troll priest), regeneration kicked in and he healed back to normal. No other creature wanted to attack them, so they had some breathing time and explored a bit.

They discovered finally that the purple-glowing crystal thing is some kind of magic detector and identificator, and with it's help they scoured the dung heap for more magic. And they found quite a lot:

- a magical silk rope (150 m long if completely uncoiled) on a magic spool (of dwarven make) that can be fastened to the belt
- a dwarven tankard that conjures a half-liter fine dwarven ale, 3 times per day
- a black stone disc, 20 cm diameter, with a skull in basrelief: a explosive device that can be activated either by time detonator or 'proximity sensor'
- a small magical rock that lets you teleport 10 m far (with a 1 in 10 chance of failing permanently after each use)

They also found several magical oddities that the crystal couldn't identify:
- a magical flute. None of them wanted to try it since they just had drawn it out of youknowwhat)
- a small remotecontrolled mechanical bat that can fly for 30 min
- a 40 cm long crystal that crumbles easily but immediately reforms itself
- two weirdly shaped spectacles, one with a magnifying effect and one with an ugly green tint
- a cube (10 cm) of frosted glass that clears when touching it and shows inside what seems to be a live-scene from a ruined city in a forest. The first thing they saw from the surface world. Didn't impress them much.
- a lump of clay (1 kg approx.) that formes itself into different shapes from time to time: geometric shapes, a little hand, the troll's face,...

They finally explored the rest of the cavern and found a ruined stone arch of an unknown culture. The magic detector said it was a portal, and provided the pass phrase.




The magic detector has a 1 in 20 chance of failing permanently after each use. Neither of them can cast identify, but I don't want to make it too easy for too long. I found this kind of failing mechanism in Monte Cook's Numenera game system and like it quite a lot. It's a nice change to the standard DnD charges. The magical oddities are also taken from the Numenera corebook. I like them because they are magical but have no obvious use, and some hint at more - which brings the mystery back into magic items.

We called it a day at that time. Both will rest until fully healed and prepare thoroughly before going through the portal.