Is there a duck in this dungeon? I specifically requested ducks.
I'll bet you thought I forgot all about this! Having left our intrepid heroes on the very verge of entering their first orc dungeon, it's only fair that we let them kick open the door and inside find – almost anything.
When last we met, we had finished putting together the characters and the things they're likely to run into inside the dungeon, as well as created some battle boards to represent the combat space within the dungeon for conflicts. Some of that went more smoothly than others. But now at last we have what we came for.
In fact, we have a little bit more. Because it is difficult to turn miniatures which look exactly the same on the front and the back to represents being ducked back, I pulled out my old Duck Back tokens and put them in an infinite bag along with some Dead tokens and some Out Of the Fight tokens. Maybe some gold, silver, and bronze coins to mark XP gain. We just need some convenient markers.
Looking good! Now let's go to the dungeon generator! We already have a corridor ahead that we haven't entered. Time to generate.
Digging In
We'll flip dungeon drawing as we go to mimic that old school style. Plus, random generation by line of sight is fun. It means early PEFs are going to be right on top of us but -- life is hard. If we run into a room that can't be generated, we'll just roll again. (Look, its explicitly in the rules. :P)
To be sensible, we'll declare this dungeon has a maximum size of 20 tiles. We won't need nearly to achieve our Goal of mapping three of them, though.
We only have the one group right now, so we'll just send Thelar Vrai in as our marker for the group. If things go badly and we split up, we'll figure things out then.
The first Activation Roll is a 5, 3, so no doubles and thus no PEFs come looking for us. Awesome!
Now the roll for the next room. I kick open the door and inside I find --
5, 2! It's -- a corridor. Fair enough.
We'll just move on up into that and see what happens next. We're a third of the way to our Goal, though!
Activation ... 5, 1. Nothing ugly happens there.
Technically if we rolled a 6 for the red Activation die, we'd have not been able to move into the next room. That's mainly an issue when you're being chased by angry -- anything, really.
Next dungeon tile is 2, 1. It's a Room. Huh. Okay, kind of a dead end here -- but there might be a Secret Room. Let's do that check.
We don't have any Thieves in the party to do an awesome search, so Thelar'll do the poking about himself. The highest REP should give him all the advantage we can eke out.
6, 3. Well, that's clearly no good, we need doubles.
[looks left, looks right] -- you know, just between you and I, let's fudge it! There's a secret room off to the right with an exit that goes further on.
Thelar looks disgruntled as he and the party strolled straight into a dead end.
"Well. bugger this," muttered Aefwurd, shaking his spear in frustration. "You led us into a hole, necromancer!"
"Shut up! Just -- shut up. There must be a latch here somewhere. I've never heard tale of an orcfast that didn't have a --"
One of the twins, Era or Arda -- it was hard to tell -- perked up. "Orcfast? I thought this was more of a little hole in the wall guard site out in the mountains, where they could bring lady-orcs back and have a quick shag .."
The other twin smacked the Elf of the shoulder. "Shut it, dreckhead." Ah, Arda, that.
A twist of a rather rusty lever marked mainly by the scrapes of rust along the wall next to it shifted a false stone panel a bit inward to let it slide back. "Smugglers, maybe," Thelar muttered to himself, then shrugged. Anette, with me through the gap first."
The mercenary was only too happy to head in.
And inside the secret room, we find ...
Secret Tunnel, Secret Tunnel
3, 3, for an 8. Looking up what that is on the Secret Room list ...
A Challenge! A cross-over challenge, to be more exact. There's a barrier to getting across the room and we need to see about traversing it. Hmmmm. What would be interesting in a dungeon orc cave which might've been used by smugglers?
Rickety rope bridges across what might be a bottomless chasm but which probably was just a forty-foot ankle-shattering drop onto rough stone was not what Thelar considered a good time. The twins were bouncing on the balls of their feet like kids at a picnic, however, so maybe it wasn't all bad.
"I'll go first. Anette, you follow me, then Arda, Era, Lyssa, and Awfwurd -- you bring up the rear. I want no surprises here, people. No careless moves. The bridge looks to be in good condition and someone has to have been using it, right?"
Dubious looks around the group.
Thelar gets a 5,5, which is pass 2d6 -- barely.
Thelar strides confidently out onto the bridge but the combination of his armour and the unwieldy slung sword and shield makes it rough going. At one point he begins to topple and, in nervousness, the hair on the backs of everyone's necks begins to rise as a bolt charge builds and fades just as quickly.
The other side finds him taking a knee in relief before turning to help the next along.
Anette is only REP 3 and her roll of 5, 1 only gives her pass 1d6. A roll of 4 means that the person behind her (Arda) can help. Arda gets a roll of 5 -- and fails!
Anette falls off the bridge! We need to take a Knock Down Test for the poor girl. Her 4, 2 gets a pass 1d6, knocking her Out of the Fight. Crap.
Anette makes her way across the bridge gingerly, shield and spear just as awkward for her as Thelar -- but the combination of unsteady footing and unwieldy gear prove too much, and she falls, slipping through the woven supports to either side!
"I've got you, Ane!" Arda shouts -- but she doesn't, not by a long shot, and Anette makes the plunge to the gorge below.
On the positive side, it didn't sound like forty feet to Thelar. That was something.
Arda hissed breath through her teeth before shouting, "Anette! Anette! Are you alright!?"
Nothing. Quite a lot of nothing. And then a quiet groan of pain. Then a bit more nothing.
Thelar lays on the edge of the crevasse, peering down into the darkness. A few words of sorcery under his breath and there's a light, gently floating down the fifteen feet to the rubble-strewn floor.
"There's an opening," sharp-eyed Era says. "If we can get down to the next level, we may can get her out."
Well -- not good.
Since the corridor on the other side of this room must go down to the next level, let's just agree that the room after wherever it comes out is the room where Anette landed. We can pull her out of here, surely. Right?
Now we have two goals for this dungeon.
Let's see how the rest fare.
Arda: 6, 5. Crap! Pass 0d6. Off she goes. 5, 2 for pass 1d6 on the Knock Down -- and she's Out of the Fight, too.
Era: 3, 3! She passes 2d6 on the Crossing Test and makes it across by the skin of her teeth.
Lyssa: 5, 3 for pass 1d6, calls for help from -- her front, which is both Thelar and Era, since they're both across. It'll be Thelar. with a 3, he easily scoops her in.
Aefwurd: Seriously, this place is deadly. 5, 5, and he passes 0d6 and hits the ground. 1, 3 and he passes 2d6, thank Hell, so he's just Knocked Down and can get up next round -- but he's still at the bottom.
Arda has stretched too far, overbalancing and toppling over the edge face-first into the more-scary-because-there's-light crevasse. She hits hard, winded, maybe with that broken ankle that Thelar was worried about earlier.
Era doesn't hesitate, stepping lightly past the place her sister had just been falling from, without even a downward glance. "Cold fish, that one," Aefwurd thinks as he secures his spear against his back.
Lyssa, right behind, is caught awkwardly by the bounce of Era's exit from the bridge and stumbles, right onto Thelar's arm. A dirty look at Era goes unseen or unacknowledged by the rugged warrior.
"I am not going to fall off this gods-cursed bridge!" is the bellow that proceeds one plodding step after another. It's the third that proves the danger and too far from help, Aefwurd tumbles to join his fellow party members at the bottom of the gouge. The resonant clang of the shield landing underneath him and cushioning his fall proceeds a very impressive round of cursing in languages Thelar wasn't aware the rough warrior even know.
"You fell off the gods-damned bridge, Aefwurd," Era shouts helpfully.
"Aye, and when you get down here you little elf-bitch I'm going to throw you back up so you can try it for yourself!"
"Is everyone down there alive?" Thelar needed to recontextualize the situation before there was more blood than expected on weapons, not floors.
"We're all alive. I'm no healer so I'm no good to anyone down here."
"Stay there," Thelar was firm. "Don't try climbing up. Just -- watch over them as best you can. We'll be right down."
There we go – exotically high detail dungeon drawing to represent what's going on. We have three party members stuck in a hole, two of whom are unconscious or at least unable to act, the conscious one being one of our heavy hitters who we are not going to be able to use if we do run into someone unpleasant – and the stairs down into the next level.
And this is before we actually run into any orcs!
Taking It to the Next Level
Time to roll the bones and find out what Activation has in store for us. And then will find out what kind of room we end up in once we get down the stairs.
6, 5, so we can't act but the dungeon doesn't have anything going on either. Probably the end of the dialogue above.
6, 6 -- and now we're screwed. A PEF comes in somewhere, 6 tiles away if it can. If we were using a pre-gen dungeon, it'd come in ahead but as we're building as we go, the furthest it can come in away from us is the entrance.
Between us and the exit.
PEFs are REP 4 and try to Fast Move every time they wake up. Directly toward us. Maybe we can get folks back together before something catches up to us?
Activation hates us and loves us. We get a 6, so no movement, and the dungeon gets a 5, so the PEF can't move either, but at least no more come in.
Activation again. This time we get a 3, so movement is assured. The dungeon gets 6 once more, so the PEF stays at the door. Somebody's come home and they're taking their sweet time noticing the footprints going into their little hidey-hole.
There's no point in trying to sprint down and maybe separate the party, so Thelar leads the remaining group down the stairs carefully and finds ...
A T-corridor splitting left and right. Good. Good!
Activation again!
Us, 5. Dungeon, 5.
We are getting hugely lucky in that the extant PEF can't move. We are hugely unlucky that we get another PEF 5 tiles away. That makes two PEFs right there in the opening area. Are they just gathering there to drop a massive ambush?
Technically we've achieved our Goal for this dungeon, seeing a whole floor or three rooms. But we don't leave people behind! (Unless being chased.) We need one more room to res in which'll be whatever is at the bottom of the crevasse.
6, 6 for a 12? Really? These dice truly are cursed! Still, it's only a Room with a potential Secret Room off of it. That makes sense.
Checking for secret rooms is fun when you're a mage, really!
Aw. Crap. Dungeon vermin.
"About time, you old conjurer! We've been sitting her for hours!"
"Minutes. At best. I think I can still hear the echoes of that last shout."
Aefwurd scowls, but it's a different, more intent one than his usual bitch-face. "Not the echo. There's someone come home 'round the front. It sounds like a fun bunch."
"Excellent. Maybe we can help carry this bunch out?"
Aefwurd gestures toward a darker niche at the end of the crevasse. Better we know what's coming up behind us first. There's noises coming out of there I don't like at all."
"Alright, just to be safe. You and me. Era, Lyssa, start tying up the gear from Arda and Anette. We don't need them wondering where their swords or bows are if things go sideways."
A short gesture at the niche. "Let's go, Aefwurd."
Alright, Thelar and Aefwurd take a Knock Down Test!
Thelar gets 6, 2, which is pass 1d6. Out of the Fight.
Aefwurd gets 2, 2, for pass 2d6, making him fine!
Thankfully, Thelar has Star Power. We'll roll his 5d6 Star Power and see if we can get out of this scrape.
6, 5, 4, 3, 1. Well, he's not still Out of the Fight, thankfully, but his Star Power is reduced by one for the rest of the dungeon, leaving him with 4. I say that's a fair trade! The 1 and 3 reduce the damage to not even Knocked Down.
Thelar pushes a shining ball forward into the niche -- and out boils a wave of hundred-legged darkness!
Centipedes! Thousands of them! Swarming out of the niche, they crawl over everything, everyone, with Aefwurd and Thelar their sole impediment.
There are roars! There are screams, surely manly and not like a scared little girl at all! And in the aftermath, Aefwurd is disgustedly picking bugs out of his huge, bushy beard and Thelar is lying on the floor, completely unconscious, a red, swelling bite clearly visible on one hand.
"Fuck," is all Aefwurd can say.
"Looks like you're in charge, big boy."
"Shut up, Lyssa." Aefwurd's voice is nothing so much as tired. "I'll grab the necromancer. Era, grab your sister. Lyssa, the mercenary. We'll get out of this hole even if I have to burn the stone down to the ground to get out of here!"
Era and Lyssa look at each other a moment, then shrug. "She's not heavy, she's my sister."
Thelar stirs. Crawling bolts of necrotic energy slithers around the wound, puckering the skin, drying it to a grey-white sheen. Other dark shimmers can be seen flickering through the veins and arteries in his skin.
"I hate bugs. Did you know that? Hate them."
Aefwurd stares, somewhere between disgusted and amazed. "Black sorcery has it's uses" he finally croaks. "Don't use it on me if I fall."
"It wouldn't work for you, warrior. Come on, let's get out of here."
Cliffhangers!
So – there we are. Down in a cave used by orcs or smugglers or orc smugglers, almost half the party incapacitated, and quite a number of potentially bad guys hanging around the entrance – which we have to get out.
"Not looking good" would be an understatement.
And I think I'll leave the story there for the moment! Will our motley heroes be able to fight their way out of the depths of the pit in which they stand? Will carrying their fellows across the rope bridge prove to be deadlier than the trip in?
And what of the floor show?
These questions and more will be answered on the next episode of – Two Hour Dungeon Crawl!
Epilogue
The astute among you probably picked up on the fact that I actually forgot to roll Star Power on the first run through but luckily didn't get too far before it occurred to me that there is one way that my caster could still be on his feet.
Not that it guarantees anything, considering there are two PEFs hanging out right near the entrance that we are going to have to go through, and there's still that rope bridge that hates us, but at least I remembered. It could have been so much worse.
It feels good to get back in the harness and jump back into playing, even if this might seem like a bit of a short post compared to my usual. I could've probably run another turn, but always go out with the narrative at a high point, I say!
The hybrid wargame/role-playing game has a very long history, going back to the earliest days of [kriegespiel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel_(wargame), where officer referees would simply decide on the outcomes of conflicts between junior officers on the battle board.
I'm on the edge of my seat wondering how this is going to turn out, and no one has even crossed swords yet! Spicy!