Shadowdark Thracia 19
Date Played: 10/26/2026
Players:
Xaayr - Iniquitous
Orkhon + Wine - Kut
Zema Zafat - Laumry
Yipblot - Emo
Recap:
The party made their way from Minos to the dwarven observatory. Now that ZZ was able to speak and read Dwarven he investigated the runes on the telescope and discovered they were a Detect Magic enchantment on the device.
Heading to the basement the party knocked on the door of the grey dwarves. ZZ greated them in dwarven, and offered them brandy as a gift, They were a bit more at ease. They explained that the high-astrologer in charge of the observatory died many hundreds of years ago while searching for Lambent Star Metal. The grey dwarves, who called themselves Duergar, explained that an ankheg infestation had gotten out of hand at that time and that the ankheg Queen had consumed the last deposit. She got mutated and started spawning weird ankhegs who do funny things to your mind.
As a token of gratitude for the brandy the Duergar offered the party to take one of their pigdogs, Billi. Billi's ownership was handed over to Xaayr. The Duergar in chief, Oggi, asked the party to take good care of Billi, for he is a good dog. When asked about the overworld, the Duergar were clueless. They had no interest in anything other than the ore in this cave. Until they are ordered by a commander of the Ancient Dwarven Empire to leave this outpost they will happily stay put. They have been doing so for at least 500 years.
The Duergar offered the party some of their equipment, like war picks and crossbows, but no one took anything. They told them that if they wanted to come through the door back into this complex from the caves they had to yell for their three names Oggi, Boggi and Stroggi. Any other set of words or actions will prompt no response from the Duergar.
Armed with the knowledge of the ankhegs, and a pigdog, the party went into the caves. They immediately entered a room where there was a cart full of ore, which Orkhon looted some Star Metal from, and a trail of blood leading up a crevasse to the east. The party investigated west. Billi sniffed out some star metal deposits for them but they had nothing to harvest it with. So they went east.
The trail of blood led them to a dropoff of 30ft. Below them was a large cavern with 4 ankhegs present, devouring the rotting carcass of a pigdog. One strange purple one was eating the dog's brain. After much deliberation, ZZ fireballed the ankhegs and rolled a crit, eviscerating all of them.
The party investigated the eastern wing of the large cave. Orkhon threw Yipblot over a chasm, but the throw was shoddy and nearly send him down the abyss. Instead Yipblot crossed over onto a landing where there was a pool 10ft deep where the well-shaft connected to.
Yipblot returned to the party and they moved south via a narrow ledge that overlooked a dark chasm. To prevent a lethal fall they pitoned the rope to some rock and tied it around all their waists. During the crossing they were attacked by some roosting stingbats beneath the ledge. The stingbats nearly killed them all but they managed to pull through. Across the ledge they found a cavern where the dwarf astrologer was killed all those centuries ago (by stingbats it seems). On his body was a bronze key (they deduced it was for the library they broke into last session) and a wand of Acid Arrow, which they looted.
Moving westward there was another chasm, and across from it was a room full of 33 ankheg eggs, 3 of which were purple. 8 ankhegs guarded this chamber. Beyond lay darkness. Moving back up the ledge they party sent a fireball down a tunnel that also connected to the egg room, incinerating 4 of the ankhegs in one hit. Due to knock on explosions from two of the lambent (purple) eggs, the remaining ankhegs were gravely wounded.
The party fled and climbed up the cliff to get back to the room with the door. As they were ascending, Xaayr slipped down and didn't make it up in time. The 4 ankhegs made their way into the room but were collected at the mouth of the tunnel. ZZ cast another fireball, finishing them.
The party then heard the screams of the ankheg queen as she moved to the egg room to check on her brood. The party then decided against fleeing and charged the queen. Yipblot got a good hit in first with his arrow. ZZ then finished her off with a mighty fireball (also crit). The queen exploded in 1 round and the lambent star metal, and one lambent egg were left for the taking.
With their loot the party went back to the duergar, returning Billi, then ascended to the observatory.
They then used the lambent star metal to power the telescope and discovered the invisible wizard tower built atop the nimbus cloud over the desert. They then made it back to Minos.
7XP total earned this session.
Thoughts:
Fucking fireball.
Player behavior never ceases to amaze me. They spent 15 minutes today debating whether they, a squad of 5 PCs + a dog, could take on 4 ankhegs. When I finally called for an action to be taken it was fireball, and a crit no less. The total damage was 1 point over the HP value of each ankheg. In Shadowdark, enemies don't save for half damage. They were cooked. Instantly.
There was one point in the session where things got dicey. It was the ledge bit with the stingbats, who were hitting hard and with numbers. The thing is when that encounter was over, I realized I forgot to describe an alternative entrance to the room they wanted to access, which they would have seen before deciding to brave the ledge. I gave them back the spells they lost in that encounter plus d6 regained HP to make up for the error. So fireball came back.
The rest of the session was an exercise of just watching fireball destroy every encounter the dungeon could offer. With a level 5 wizard in the party, these smaller delves are not really going to present much of a challenge.
I'm not that annoyed ultimately. Fireball is a tier 3 spell for SD and the player who has it has been on the most delves. He's earned it. Also, it's the tradeoff with the roll-to-cast system. If I had not retconned the attrition from the stingbat battle they wouldn't have had it for the ensuing encounters.
I'll see how I feel about it after a few more sessions. I do worry about it being the trigger happy solution but it's not a bulletproof one, especially since I don't allow Luck tokens to be spent on crit-fails.