So last game the party finally met the elves.
Sharing what information they had about the Wells of Vessa, they were allowed an audience with the Lady of the Mithril Crown, the mistress of the elven lands.
Sitting council was the mysterious and long-lived Edryn, encountered earlier in the game at his castle of sand, who was able to vouch for the party.
Conclusion of the meeting:
- Edryn knows the location of the next Well
- Party is not yet strong enough
- Lady of the Mithril Crown knows about some old Gnomish cities (gnomes are extinct) where there are some magic items that could help
- Those cities are full of Gauns (from Vance's The Dying Earth, except I made them extraplanar teleporters who leech your life)
- There will only be one of the magical cloaks, but some outcast elves nearby practice dark magic, which means the reversal of any spell including enchantments, by which means they can learn how to make more. They may comply, but for a price as yet unknown.
- Then Edryn will tell them where the Well is
The elves had a wild man captured to lead them to the Gnomish city.
The city of the Gnomish stone-shapers has been largely looted and all that is left is just a big stone labyrinth filled with gauns. Fifty wild man warriors were waiting outside to make the place into their own new fortress since lots of zombies have been all over the area.
The gate was sealed, hence the waiting wild men, but with the help of some grappling hooks, battle ensued. What was over one hundred gauns became zero gauns and some weird loot they horded, and what was fifty feral men unfortunately became five.
The party found a ring that camouflages them with their surroundings
and a cloak that sticks to them with fins and gills when wet.
Gauns collect weird things, so they also have a few hundred spoons they hope to sell back in town.
A lot of this sounds really cool. The ruined labyrinthine city, odd magic weapons, weird creatures that teleport - this all sounds awesome.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I have some gripes. Really just one gripe: you made an ancient abandoned labyrinthine city and filled it with only one creature they had to fight over and over again? Anytime you kill a hundred of something, there's just no impact from killing them anymore. It starts to feel like more like sweeping off your patio than fighting creatures from the nether-realm.
It is my firm belief that in dnd fights are better when they're smaller and against tougher enemies.
I've grown fond of our relatively common large-scale warfares, but I do agree: a mysterious and rare creature is more interesting, so there were some amendments made:
Delete1. The city also had a small number of "Gaun Lords", larger more powerful creatures with piles of bizarre treasures from other planes and times
2. Because the Gauns are extraplanar, they disappear when killed, which prevents examination, retaining some air of the unknowable.
3. In part because you are right, in part because of time restrictions, we ended up playing a large portion of the conflict as a sort of Risk-in-a-maze game with feral men as troops, which everyone took to with surprising volumes of enthusiasm. It may not be pure DnD, but it was pretty well balanced and spiced things up.