Decaying Lands Campaign

Landing page for any posts having to do with my Decaying Lands campaign. I ran this using Lamentations of the Flame Princess but I no longer support that publisher. Campaign is over, retrospective is HERE.

Completely ripping this idea off of Peter Dell'Orto because that's how I got up to speed on his Felltower campaign and I love looking at his ever-expanding graveyard. Thanks Peter!

Current Party

PCs in bold, NPCs in italics

Barthelm Schade, Specialist (James)

Bertilak le Verte Gallant, Fighter
Claus Drexol, Magic-User (Vegas)
  Phillip Bachman, linklad
Cyril Hachette, former mercenary now horrible stone spider-taur (Peanut Butter)

Jehan, Woodsman [reskinned Halfling] (Helpful Waffle)
Tenkos, Cleric [plague doctor kit] (Sugarplum)

PCs in Reserve

Boris "Iron Guts", Fighter (Vegas)

Caleb, Fighter [farmer kit] (Just Yolks)
  Suzie, a stubborn but loyal mule
Edmond Renault, Fighter (Skarne)
Jewel, Really Good Dog (Rudy)
  Buddy, ratter dog [Specialist]

Session Summaries

Note: There won't be any written summaries past Session 46 but any further deaths will still be noted in the graveyard with a session number.

Session 07 - Finishing the Feathered Swine

Session 08 - Heartless Intro Session
Session 09 - Return to the Wandering Isles
Session 10 - Return to Hommlet
Session 11 - Polde's Homecoming
Session 12 - Tower of Bremmlecht 01
Session 13 - Tower of Bremmlecht 02
Session 14 - Tower of Bremmlecht 03
Session 15 - Bremmlecht BizDev
Session 16 - Search for Ralf
Session 17 - Storming the Fight Club!
Session 18 - Ralf's Return
Session 19 - Digging at the Crossroads
Session 20 - Dogs Are Dumb
Session 21 - Bottom Floor Exit
Session 22 - Skeleton Staredown
Session 23 - Bodies to Barter
Session 24 - YOLO
Session 25 - Hoot-Hoot and Sarah
Session 26 - Wolf Howls
Session 27 - Zero Murder Somehow
Session 28 - Meee-OW
Session 29 - Down Stilton Way
Session 30 - Milkin' It
Session 31 - Six Plates?!
Session 32 - Plan C
Session 33 - Murder Cow Murder
Session 34 - What Is Happening In This Basement
Session 35 - Stilton Escape
Session 36 - Gastrotourism
Session 37 - A Princely Request
Session 38 - Accounting Homework
Session 39 - It's a Hexcrawl Baby
Session 40 - Rain Rain Go Away
Session 41 - Scurrying in Place
Session 42 - Chasing Trees
Session 43 - Ratfolk & Smoothies
Session 44 - Invite Only
Session 45 - Paper Airplane Thom
Session 46 - Dickstaches

Graveyard

PCs in bold, NPCs in italics (session number of death)

Buttercup, horse, shot by Barthelm while a wizard was trying to steal her

Heidi Fassbinder, Fighter 3, infested by worm tumours (Peanut Butter)

Helga Frelse, Elf 2, fell to death in a rocky hole (Sugarplum)
Grizzle / Shado, grizzled mongrel, impaled by a fancy bear trap through a luxurious rug
Wiebke Bott, linklady, burned to death
Karl Gelt, Exiled Prince 1, crushed by a 2x4 (Helpful Waffle)
Viggo Marklund, Specialist 3 [bounty hunter kit], sliced and diced in a basement (Peanut Butter)
Margot Hachette (Teake's Teeth), Infantry, rent by awful claws
Robbie, Margot's horse, neck bit clean through
Three ratfolk, unnamed, mauled by a roving pack of animals and eaten by their kinfolk
"Eye-van", ratfolk, squashed and squelched by big stone hands
Tenkos' right forearm, (just the arm), sucked through a portal while he hesitated (54)
Basile Léger (Teake's Teeth), Infantry, torso dissolved by a previously frozen gelatinous cube (55)
Freddard, ratfolk, turned into melty rat-soup by caustic, viscous grey stone while sleeping (57)
Lucien Courtet, Claus' bodyguard, dissolved by vomit while guarding his charge (59)

Walter, Jehan's poacher-turned-student, exsanguinated by a summoned blood beast (74)

Viggo Reborn, Pyreborn 4, eaten by mini-shark magic missiles (74) (Peanut Butter)

Decaying Lands 07: Finishing the Feathered Swine

PCs Present & Played:

Barthelm Schade, Specialist 3 (James)
Claus Drexol, Magic-User 2 (Vegas)
Heidi Fassbinder, Fighter 3
Helga Frelse, Elf 2

PCs Present, Not Played:

Brian, Ratman 2

NPCs Encountered:

Aspeth Montesquieu, infested and down a leg
Felix Longworm, foreshadowingly named wizard missing his spellbook

---

This play report will contain all the SPOILERS for Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine. Review incoming at some point.

The party's last session into the cave ended mid-delve with Heidi infected by awful worm tumors and Claus in serious danger as another burst out of the depression he was investigating in Room VIII. Claus figured he'd come back and have worms coursing through his flesh in short order.

Luck was on the players' side, however, and not only was Claus not surprised but Barthelm won them initiative! The party murdered the once-man in short order and collected themselves. None of us could remember if they'd gotten the blackfire bombs or not so I gave it to them because explosives are awesome and a great potential way for PCs to kill themselves.

After the excitement died down they posted up in the cave, set a bear trap at each exit, and set about trying to figure out if they could cure Heidi. When Heidi got infected her roll on Logan Knight's Body Horror table (which will disappear at some point) ended up on "genitalia" so no chance of amputation saving her. Their plan ended up with fetching Aspeth (NPC) to do experiments on her to better their odds of something working on Heidi without killing her. Aspeth had been guarding her unconcious friend Felix the Shitty Wizard (NPC) but left him once Barthelm convinced her they were going to try and save her. Felix was unconscious because he fell down the pit in Room IV and went to just enough negative HP to be out for hours but not dead. This fall would prove pivotal later on.

Claus took point, I think partly because Claus is a magic-user but also potentially because Claus' player had previously worked as an exterminator. Overlap? Maybe. Their first attempt was to try and find some fat or lard or something to rub over the flesh where parasitic worms were, the rationale being that some parasites suffocate to death when denied oxygen. They had a heck of a time finding a suitable material in their gear but eventually came up with something that was close enough. I thought the idea was good but since they don't die inside the swine's cysts I figure it only slowed them down a bit instead of killing the worms. I gave an extra exploration turn or two delay before the worms spread further in the body. If nothing else, I think it taught them that carrying items they can get creative with is important.

Digression: suffocating parasites with grease and fat is apparently a thing! I should write a post about parasites at some point.

The next strategy was to kill it with fire. Aspeth had cut her infected leg off and cauterized the wound but Claus wanted to take it a step further and apply the burning directly to the wound with the worms. At this point Heidi's infestation had spread a bit, so they gave up on proving ideas out on Aspeth and went straight for parallel applications. They emptied out the gunpowder from one of Heidi's apostles (shot bags) directly onto her worm infection and lit it up. I really liked this idea and this is how we played it out:

1. Rolloff between the fire damage and the worms
• Worms roll d4, torch is d4 and gunpowder is d6
2. If the fire damage is greater than the worms' roll then that area of worms is dead
3. If the worms' roll is higher then the infection stays but the PC still takes the fire damage

The more damage they can take the more likely they are to kill an infection. In retrospect, I should have maybe given the worms a d6 or something to make them a little harder to get rid of. Watch out if you play in a one-shot with me! In this instance the worms rolled well and although Heidi took some damage the worms didn't seem to suffer for it. They tried a torch on Aspeth, and she didn't get helped much either.

Resigned to her fate, Heidi pushed to explore the rest of the caves before her time was up. They went for the "rotting hair, sour skin" smelling branch (Room X) as opposed to the "acrid smelling, low vomiting sound" branch (Room IX) which maybe saved them a few more loses. They reset their bear traps to both be in front of Room IX and went towards the other end. Barthelm stayed behind a moment to end Aspeth's life, at her request, and hurried to catch up to the rest. This is what greeted them in the next room:

I'm pretty sure it's okay to post this since Logan put the whole adventure in the preview. Go buy the damn thing though.

The creature's mass slowly rose and fell in the deepest of slumbers. Barthelm failed his stealth roll but luckily the feathered swine did not awaken. He was carrying all three vials of sedative from Aspeth and attempted to inject them, one at a time. The base chance of success is 3-in-6, which he just made with a 3. I wasn't thinking they would dump all the sedative, but since they did I gave them an additional 1-in-6 for each one that was already in. The third dose, at 5-in-6, almost woke the creature up, but Barthelm got his 5.

The creature had 25 translucent, worm-filled cysts dangling from its flesh and Barthelm greedily harvested them all. I gave him three re-rolls, one for each dose of sedative, and he ended with one in reserve. Twenty-five worm-bearing cysts should be more than enough to satisfy the peculiar demands of Wilhelm the Wily, the wizard that they had bargained with for help. Claus wanted to try one last time to cure Heidi, however, and narrowly avoided getting infested with worms himself when he attempted to extract some of the liquid from one of the cysts. I don't recall if his winter gloves saved him or not, but it was a good precaution. After that no one wanted to mess with the cysts and the party headed out, collecting their bear traps along the way (because of course).

The only obstacle remaining on their exit was the hole that Felix fell down on the way in. A twenty foot drop is nothing to sneeze at, especially at low levels. The party reasoned to set up a safety line along the edge of the pit. Barthelm handily crossed, tied off the rope, and then James (Barthelm's player) stepped away from the table for a moment.

Everyone else crossed the pit pretty handily, even with the unconscious Felix. After everyone had crossed, I half-jokingly asked "What, no one's going back for the rope?"

Helga, emboldened by their success so far, said "Yeah of course, I'll go untie it!" She made it over, untied the rope, and started back aided by only her natural ability. The mechanic is written as roll under Dex, so she only had to roll under a 16.

The die comes up a 20.

Okay, well 20' down let's say 2d6 damage. Helga has 9, that's pretty good.

2d6 came up 12.  Twelve damage put Helga down to -3, and in LotFP that means you've got 1d10 minutes before you're dead with nothing able to save you. Barthelm's player came back, did not believe any of us that Helga fell to her death going back for the rope. "Why would you go back for the rope?!"

Heidi said some very poignant farewells as she prepared to descend into the pit with Helga. "You were always a light in the dark, you should not die alone in the dark." Barthelm gave her a torch, Claus gave her his pistol, and Heidi climbed down. She tied off her gear, signaled to bring up the rope, and watched her friends leave.

"I wish I could have been outside, I always loved the trees and walking in the forest with my father." (Heidi)
"That was deep." (someone)
"Yeah that hole was very deep." (Helga)

As they exited the cavern Claus and Barthelm weren't sure if they could hear the crack of Claus' pistol or if it was just their imagination. Down two party members and with the additional burden of an unconscious Felix it would be down to the wire for Barthelm and Claus to make it back in time to their rendezvous point . If they didn't return within five days there was no guarantee  a that theptain who would take them back to Wilhelm the Wily would still be there. Luckily nothing interrupted their journey and we ended the session.

ps: I thought I messed up with Claus and Barthelm having to carry Felix all the way back to the boat because he only should have been unconscious for 1d6 hours. However, for him to get back enough HP to be able to walk with them they would have had to do nothing but rest all day for a couple of days, making them miss their rendezvous anyway. So in the end, no harm no foul.

pps: This was Heidi's worm status at the end of the session. Every circle is a "forearm sized" chunk of tumultuous, writhing worm shapes seething beneath her flesh and boring through the bone and tissues beneath her skin.

---

HEIDI'S EPILOGUE

SPOILERS FOR MY PLAYERS. Don't read this if you want to maintain lack of knowledge about what Heidi did after going into the pit, even though I don't personally really care.

Heidi stayed with Helga until the last breath left her. Then she got up, Barthelm's torch in one hand, a candle in the other, pistol through her belt, and went exploring. Her aim was to see what else she could find in the cave, maybe give what remained of her life some final meaning.

She skirted the edge of the swine's cave and discovered a small alcove full of luminous mushrooms swaying like the sea and the sound of running water. She bathed in the water and relaxed, accepting her imminent death but now even more resolved to do something with the time left. Her dip in the stream calmed the worms below her flesh but only until she got out again.

The reverie was broken when Heidi moved to exit the calming side cave because she saw, tucked into the corner, the most hideous shit of armor imaginable. Blasphemous and utterly grotesque imagery adorned it's every inch down to the tiniest detail. Even more disturbing was that the body within the armor, while shrunken, did not seem rotten or dessicated in the slightest; instead, the flesh seemed supple still but drawn in and wide open eyes stared straight ahead at the doomed warrior.

Not wanting to delay beyond the briefest examination, Heidi continued to the corridor that the party had protected themselves with bear traps (Room IX). Inside she encountered too of the worm tumors vomiting impossible amounts of worm-filled gore into the mouth of a still-living member of Felix's party. Finding the battle she craved, Heidi draw her spear and approached.

The slavering man-things had a difficult time landing a blow on Heidi. Chainmail, a shield, and maybe even a Dex bonus made her quite resilient, giving her time to kill one of them before finally succumbing to their assault.

Site Format

This thing looks terrible. It's going to look terrible for a bit, want to get at least Maze Rats and Troika! posts out before tinkering too much.

IntroCONso 3: Prep

I'm still coming down off the high that was IntrCONso, a minicon named for the glue of our gaming group James Introcaso. The inaugural IntrCONso marked the first game I ever ran and I've been adding onto it ever since. Due to a shortage of refs for this iteration and an incredible amount of enthusiasm for some recently purchased games I volunteered to run three sessions.

I don't know what the hell I was thinking.

In a short period of time I had acquired Blood in the Chocolate (BitC), Troika!, and Maze Rats and I was way too excited about running all of them to only commit to two sessions. BitC stands alone enough that I just needed to prep the adventure (which sort of ended up being true) but I had no idea what to do with Troika! or Maze Rats. I started collecting adventure locales and maps to get inspiration and dropping them into my Trello board for the con.

Aside: I know others have said it before, but Trello is a really nice tool for RPG prep.

Prepping Troika! and Maze Rats wouldn't have been as big of a deal if I didn't like running more open ended things. I figured to make it easier I would combine them into the same mini point / hex crawl area with the gimmick that the events of the Maze Rats game (played first) would have an effect on the setup of the Troika! game. Shortly thereafter, cecil howe kicked out a lovely beta for Hex Kit maybe two weeks before the con. Trimmed down my list of adventure locales and came up with this map:

"Came up with" should really be "spent incredibly too much time on" but here we are. The seed of the map crystalized around The Ytroth Larvae of Scarsea Cliffs (with the town renamed to "Wormroot") and a whole mess of PDFs from Gus L. I threw in The Cave of the Druid and The Hand of Dominion from Arnold K., Dyson Logos' Goblin Gully, and Tales of the Scarecrow just in case.

0102 - Hel's Crow's Final Rest
0205 - The Cave of the Druid (unmarked for players)
0305 - Goblin Gully (unmarked for everyone, it seems)
0404 - Tales of the Scarecrow
0406 - Brittlestone Parapets
0503 - Wormroot, town that hosts the worm delve every 50 years
0505 - Prison of the Hated Pretender
0603 - Shanty Town of Worm Explorers
0705 - The Hand of Dominion
0804 - Wormsign! (Ytroth Larvae)

With the map more or less set I got to work trying to convert everything to Maze Rats and Troika! stats. I got through Ytroth Larvae and halfway through Prison of the Hated Pretender. Close enough! I also decided that I wanted to try out Logan Knight's usage die rules for light that I'd pulled from Last Gasp Grimoire (bit down the page). It only really came up once but I'm interested to expand it a bit and see how it shakes out during more play. I liked it, at least.

Sort of prepped, tons of material, 2.5h late driving because I spent too much time at Kinko's. Next time I'm ordering ahead the night before.

Next post is going to be a play report from Maze Rats, the first game I ran.