Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 14

   

Into the Depths

Episode 14, laying explosives, climbing stairs, and falling into traps.

Played March 1, 2024

A Link to the Summary Post

The Party for Episode 14

• mtb playing Manqoba
• CaptainSabatini playing Esgorman
• Igneous playing Fiske

Picking up where left off in the Andruissian Temple, beneath the mural of an unfamiliar sky, at the top of endless winding stairs. They observed the mural to try to suss out its secrets but quickly moved on to the one exit, a large opening into a truly massive chamber. Receding far beyond their torchlight, only their echoes revealed to them the size. They proceeded to follow the wall to the left and eventually found the foot of a grand staircase heading directly away from them, covered with a scree of fallen stonework. They deduced that they'd found the sought-after exit.

Testing the fuse of the explosives found that they had perhaps an hour delay after setting it up. Someone proposed using a candle carried by Fiske to set up a delay on the fuse, which Fiske readily sacrificed his candle for.

It made sense that you could attach a fuse to a candle and when it burned down low enough, it'd set off the fuse. I don't think you'd consider this a standard use of candles, nor something that's really rewarded when gear is too abstracted. Igneous has had Fiske often obsessed with fire and he's now rewarded once again by bringing tools in unpredictable ways.

Before lighting it up they proceeded to explore the rest of the massive chamber and found only the feet of a massive statue. Fiske pulled out his grappling hook and rope and scaled it. Above the level of their light, he found that it was humanoid with a great beard of tentacles and an open mouth that showed signs of having been the mouth of a fountain and though he could climb down it to explore, he chose instead to climb the statue's face where he could see the gleam of something. Before approaching he obscured the light on his lantern due to fear of waking the bats that must be somewhere above judging by the abundant reeking guano (which they had noted was a good sign: they must be near the surface and thus had found the correct stairs). Climbing up, he found a crystalline eye. He too realized that former cat burglar Manqoba was more suited to this and so descended so he could be replaced.

They didn't initially have the lantern or later some thief's tools, but they had some remaining quantum items, something that stands at odds with my last interjection. Finding a balance between bean-counting and substanceless abstraction is a constant battle.

Manqoba proved to be less adept than advertised as he freed the stone but with a loud crack. Immediately he was swarmed with bats which he could only weakly slash at with his knife. They came in such numbers that the two below found themselves similarly beset and so Esgorman took the same strategy, though he took some wounds from the swarming, but Fiske had finally found his opportunity to use his newest spell, Deafening Scream. Esgorman hastily covered his ear as half the bats fell in a rain of furry corpses. That was enough for the bats who flew away. 

I hadn't actually noticed that it may paralyze foes but it killed animals, and I judged even a swarm of fearsome fantasy vampire bats still counted. A lucky random spell roll for them.

Manqoba patched up Esgorman before they lit the candle and started back down the stairs. Winding down past many strange stories carved into the walls, they passed by the place they entered and continued down into the depths. Far far down they found another wide entrance and a pair of bronze doors that opened into a chapel of sorts. A floor clearly meant to accommodate water, rows of steps, and a hemispherical ceiling created a space that must have once served a purpose for singing. But it was dried out now and they found naught but a door in the back.

Inside was a water distribution system for the previous room, a giant open pipe coming from the rest of the plumbing system, and a giant clam open with pearl and gently waving seaweed sitting in an inch of water. The party suspected it might close on them, but failed to clock that seaweed doesn't wave in air so when Manqoba reached inside to grab the pearl, it instead grabbed him and tried to swallow him. He struggled with it but Fiske thought quick and went to his default response to all obstacles, he threw his torch in its mouth and cast the magic to cause the flame to explode. Which it did, blowing the struggling combatants away from each other. The Crab Wranglers picked themselves up, checked that they weren't missing any bits, and proceeded to end the deflated mimic limping away. The pearl wasn't real but the creature had at some point swallowed a candle snuffer and failed to pass it, so they walked away with something for their struggles.

Since being hit with many back-to-back challenges, the PCs suddenly find themselves needing to call on Doom dice constantly. The mechanic felt fairly vestigial but if you hit them with enough dangers that they couldn't all sustain it suddenly becomes very neccesary.

Continuing down they came to an unobtrusive door leading into hallways of cells. They systematically searched them and found only a dead merman, empty bedrooms, an abandoned kitchen, and a clay tablet written with unfamiliar script. They continued downward and started to see that they were approaching the floor of the great stairwell. But first, there was one more room off to the side, a chamber of contemplation, with water pooled and tiny stone islands with mermen meditating atop them, and who had weapons close at hand.

And we'll continue the next session.

Statistics 

Days Passed: 84

Kegs Recovered: 11
Total Party Members: 8
Hexes Explored: 26
Caves Explored: 4
Dungeons Explored: 2
Players Participated: 8
Megafauna Captured: 2
Skirmishes Survived: 14
Foes Vanquished: 1 feral dog, 9 anglergoblins, 4 anglergoblin shaman, 1 albatross, 4 sea-plagued, 1 sea monk, 5 waterlogged revenants, the sea speaker, 1 mimic (this session)

Treasure Obtained: 3746 previously + ornate candle snuffer, strange clay tablet, 

Tragic Deaths: 2 (Crabcakes the Giant Hermit Crab and Albert de Manc, Hedge Knight)

Map

The map after episode 14 (no updates).

Episode 14 Notes

You might notice that I'm not complaining about the text. It's because I was so unconvinced by its Temple Andrussia design that I dispensed with it entirely. I salvaged a couple of ideas but developed a more grand layout, some new monsters and traps, and a design that made more sense with the text, which described the prior expeditions as taking hours. Meanwhile, the dungeon provided was about 12 crowded rooms laid out in such a way as to only take up a single column's worth of space on the page.