West King's Field Campaign Report #3

 

World Building and Dungeon Delving

    What you're looking at is a draft of the campaign map I made last night. I tried not to go super detailed but I wanted to give myself enough of an idea of the area so I can begin planning war games primarily. A week ago I made up a wargame army using the Chainmail Medieval Miniatures rules but I've yet to design a scenario for them. Nevertheless I have an idea of the world I'm playing in now. 

    I decided to play something fairly lite and fun today. I broke out my dungeon tiles and used those to quickly generate a dungeon for my fighter to explore in. Note that the dungeon generated is not the main dungeon of Malborg Castle as that is still under threat by the Wyvern. Instead of going after the Wyvern initially as I did with my last character, I want this character to level up at least one level and find a few ally NPCs along the way before trying to storm the castle. 

Encounter #1- The Dwarf Fighter

The first being my fighter encountered was a dwarf fighter walking my direction from a long corridor. On the reaction table I rolled a positive reaction so I knew that the dwarf would not attack me. He warned me of a giant spider who is waiting for its next meal down the hallway and that going down that way would be suicide. He was a treasure hunter like me. He tried to take this route further into the dungeon but towards the north he encountered a few unfriendly skeletons which would have been a challenge by his lonesome. Now that he had found me, he wanted to join together to clear the way of the undead so that we both could venture past the giant spider. To this, I agreed. Although he had good armor on, he didn't have many hit points (that being a roll of 2hp). With an agreement to split the treasure gained 50/50 we pressed to the north to face the undead. 

Encounter #2- The Undead

The bodies of long-ago slain warriors littered the chamber to the north. As the dwarf and I entered we saw the bones begin to swirl around violently until they began to join together to form three skeletal warriors who armed themselves with battered, rusty weapons. This encounter looked scary but with some strategy it wasn't so much to handle. We pulled back to the narrow hallway so that we couldn't be easily overwhelmed by the skeletons who outnumbered us by one man. Having lined them up we hacked and slashed at them until they all crumbled into dust. I took a pretty bad would which brought me down to 2hp. Thankfully, my dwarf friend had some healing supplies on him and was able to restore most of my lost wounds.

Encounter #3- Ghouls

This encounter was really scary to come across. I've always struggled against ghouls in these OSR games because they are extremely powerful against low level characters. In some systems, ghouls can straight up murder your character with one failed saving throw. In White Box, however, they can paralyze you for 3d6 rounds if you fail a saving throw against them. It also doesn't help that they are 2HD monsters so they can be quite meaty. There were three ghouls to slay. Thankfully, I rolled low on their hit points so we were able to take care of them and I passed the saving throws needed to ensure that my character would not fall to paralysis. I could see why it would be so dangerous for a solo adventurer to traverse this dungeon. It was wise to team up with that dwarf. I don't know if I would have survived without that magic armor I won in the jousting tournament. 

Encounter #4- Dark Elves

Once again, another TPK waiting to happen. The two dark elves can surprise their enemies on a 1-4 result of a d6 roll. Their swords and crossbows are also coated with poison which could surely kill a level 1 character in just one hit. However, these elves had bigger fish to fry. I rolled a positive reaction on the reaction and worked out that they had come to this dungeon to slay an abomination to their race- a drider who had taken up a lair here. They hired the dwarf and I as extra muscle for their assault on the monster and promised us the drider's treasure. It was either be their meat shields or die by their hand right then and there, so the dwarf and I agreed to join them. 

Encounter #5- Drider

    We walked south down a hallway and reached a door that led to the drider's lair. The dark elves came up with a plan to sneak through the shadows into the lair and rain paralysis arrows on the drider- immobilizing it so that the dwarf and I could rush in with melee weapons and drain its 24 hit points with free attacks. The plan kind of worked. With the drider paralyzed the dwarf and I rushed in and chipped away a lot of hit points from it in the surprise round and the round that followed. However, the drider's paralysis faded and with one attack it killed my dwarf ally (I wanted to make him into a player character but that was the fate of the dice). The dwarf would be the only casualty of this fight, and my character would walk away with 30 gold coins paid to him and a bunch of exp for slaying a high-level monster. I thought maybe there could be much treasure and exp earned by working with these dark elves and I offered my services further. However they wished to part ways with my character after the battle. Therefore my character Geoffry returned home to the village of Backwood to rest and meditate on his most recent adventure.