Our cast of characters continues to explore Death Frost Doom (DFD), but the ending of last game session was perhaps one of my favorites. First - about Death Frost Doom. In the early OSR period (pre-2010), this stood out to me as an adventure that took D&D style gaming in a new direction. Once I started running a game with my old high school friends, I knew this was an adventure that we'd work into the campaign, especially because they like the horror genre. In DFD, the players explore an ominous dungeon full of catacombs and the creepy trappings of a long defunct death cult. The tension builds as they continue to loot crypts but aren't finding any monsters - but they know something bad is going to happen at some point, they just don't know how and when. Last game ended with the first bad thing.
The players were in a kitchen in an area of the dungeon dedicated to priest quarters. They found a hidden air duct in the ceiling that led to a 3' square crawl-space. The party's halfling, Remi, asked for a boost - he felt some cold air coming down the shaft and wanted to see where it went. He lit a candle and crawled through the duct, discovering a long vertical shaft that seemed to go up and out - cold air was coming down the shaft from the surface. But the duct kept going forward, so he kept going. The other characters called for him to come back, but Remi said he'd be fine. In the dim light of his candle, he could see the duct opened into the ceiling of another chamber, and it looked like some kind of crypt was down below.
He yelled back at everyone to hang tight while he dropped down to check out the room. (Mind you, he had no rope or similar gear - once he dropped himself down into the next room, he had no way to get back into the duct). "It'll be fine", he said, "I'll find my way back one way or another".
The lid of the stone crypt was carved with a relief of a gruesome tyrant standing on the skulls of victims; he passed by the sarcophagus to see if there was a way out of the room before looking into it any further. Yes! There was a door out. Unfortunately, it was barred from the outside. Why would someone put a bar on the outside of a crypt, as if to keep something in? That's when he heard the grinding of stone behind him, as something with a grip of iron slid aside the lid of the sarcophagus from the inside and sat upright. That was the cliffhanger ending of the game night, with the mummified remains of the cult's "grand inquisitor" jerkily lurching towards the trapped halfling and his little candle. The mummified inquisitor began to interrogate him with a sepulchral voice from beyond the grave, while the other players watched on in horror.
It turns out Remi has been carrying a potion of gaseous form with him since very early in the campaign, so he's confident he'll escape the crypt of the undead horror if he wins initiative, and that's why he was so nonchalant about the risks. The tension at the table eased a little in anticipation of next game. But the players are now boggled with the idea that the sprawling dungeon is not entirely quiescent, and there are dark horrors waiting for them, lurking in undiscovered tombs.
By way of reminder, here is our cast of characters, The Pillories:
- Reverend Blackburn - L4 cleric
- Remi Knotwise - L4 halfling
- Allister - L3 magic-user
- Yuri - L3 elf
- Henchmen - Wood (fighter), Toby (specialist), Geoff (fighter)
Other events since last game report included discovery of endless catacombs, filled with thousands of mummified cult members - warriors, priests, commoners, and even children. There have been traps and curses, including the cleric, who fell victim to a spell that saw him inscribing a tattoo of the death cult on his own forearm while caught in a mindless frenzy; he learned to his horror that he can longer receive the benefits of his own healing magic. They also discovered the source of the ominous susurrus sound that permeates the dungeon, but quickly retreated when an ooze-like monster crawled out of a well to defend the spikey plant growth that was producing the sound. They know they'll need to defeat the ooze monster and hack through the spike growth to reach their goal, but decided to double back and finish exploring some other areas and confirm there wasn't another way around it first. This is how Remi ended up crawling through an air duct to the tomb of the inquisitor.
I had great fun running it, and I'm looking forward to the next installment.
It's such a good adventure, one of the best ever written.
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