ANGUISHEDWIRES - Session Two

I ran a second game of the legendary fortress ANGUISHEDWIRES using my system Begone, FOE. In real life, a couple months have passed since the first game, but I set the game a day after the last run.

Two parties of adventurers and a maniple of the Brazenkragg City Watch have disappeared into the excavation at the base of the old tower. Rumor says that a single survivor returned alive, carrying fabulous riches and telling stories of the treasure that awaits in the legendary dwarven fortress ANGUISHEDWIRES.

I had two returning players, both of whom brought new characters since their previous ones had died. In attendance:

• Jack Fatherd, Neutral Thief and brother of the deceased Thomas Fatherd
• Olga Benedek, Lawful Cleric of the Grain Goddess

I decided they had been briefed by the only survivor from the previous expedition, so that the players wouldn't have to pretend to "discover" a bunch of stuff they already knew out-of-character, and could proceed to exploring the areas that hadn't already been mapped and looted.

Like last game, I elided the trip across the river, and let the players begin outside the dungeon entrance.

The players knew that Level 1 had already been looted, and didn't spend much time there. They descended the stairs down to Level 2 right away. They paused in the checkpoint, Olga listening at the door to the staircase while Jack searched the room for hidden compartments. Their caution was rewarded by the patter of tiny feet, coming up from the staircase to Level 3. They hid in the space behind the door, and waited quietly as three ratmen came into the checkpoint. They decided an ambush was in order, and sprang into action.

They quickly killed the first two rat-people before they could draw their hand-crossbows. The third fired, missed, and ran out of the room. Jack felled him with a sling bullet, but didn't kill him. Olga moved to finish the job, but the rat man spoke intelligibly in common, asking them what they were doing and why they were killing him. Olga insisted that rat people ate crops, which he vehemently denied. He broke his hand-crossbow into useless pieces as they argued. The rat offered to lead the adventurers to a map of the fortress, in exchange for being left alive. The players agreed. He took them down the stairs to the Fortress Planning office on Level 3, and true to his word, there was a wax tablet there with maps of Levels 1 through 4.

They let the rat guy go, with a stern warning from Olga not to eat any more crops. She was really convinced the guy was after the crops.

INTO THE COLD LAKE

The players consulted the map and decided to explore West. They were surprised to find a downward hatch in the next room, not marked on the map. There was a rime of frost on the steps. Jack peered down it, and almost ran into a halfling running up from the floor below. The halfling introduced herself as Dora. She told the players that if they gave her a nice gift, she would tell them something useful about a powerful wizard downstairs. But if they didn't, she would tell the wizard about them instead. They gave her one of the hand-crossbows, and she filled them in: Pegora the Ogre Mage was downstairs in the reactor complex by the cold lake. He was trying to bring it back to life, so he could seize its power. He had three halfling slaves, all of whom he controlled by keeping one of their teeth in his bag. He could kill them at any time via sympathetic magic.

The players hatched a plan with Dora. She would complete her errand (getting wax tablets from the records office) and return to Pegora, concealing the hand crossbow and its poisoned bolts from his view. The adventurers would follow her by stealth. When the time was right, all three would attack him at the same time, killing him before he could react.

The staircase to level 4 descended into an octagonal courtyard on the shore of a massive lake, fed by snowmelt from a glacier that sloped upward to the cavern ceiling. A door from the courtyard led into a large dome, connected to the ceiling by an enormous pipe. The players followed Dora at a safe distance as she entered the dome,

The reactor complex was a maze of tunnels and passages, arranged around a central assembly of machines. Pegora was fussing over some diagrams, while his other two slaves Byron and Seamus attended tasks requiring finer dexterity than his giant fingers could manage. Dora handed over the wax tablets, then waited for the players to initiate battle.

Jack threw a stone that half-killed Pegora with one hit. Olga sunk her knife into him. Dora fired a poisoned bolt from the hand crossbow, but missed. Byron attacked Seamus before he could rise and attack the ogre mage. Then the ogre mage turned invisible. He avoided the next volley of attacks and killed Dora by crushing her tooth. Byron struggled free from Seamus and threw a handful of snow, which outlined Pegora. The players hit him with another volley of attacks, and he assumed a gaseous form and escaped through a vent in the ceiling. (The fight had reduced him to just 9 HP).

The players helped Byron subdue Seamus. He explained, quickly, that Pegora was about to kill him, and they needed to avenge his death. Pegora could only become a gas once a day, but he could turn invisible whenever he wanted, and cast cone of cold once daily as well. Then he and Seamus died, teeth crushed by the ogre mage.

The adventurers debated leaving right there, but they decided not to go out emptyhanded. A search of the reactor complex found Pegora's stash in the locker room - money, potions, scrolls, and a mysterious ring. They had to leave a thousand coins behind to carry the rest out, but they were able to sneak out of the cold lake without being caught by the ogre mage.

Back on Level 3, they heard movement from the checkpoint leading up to Level 2. Lots of movement. A large group was waiting behind the door, and they had heard the adventurers come up. So Jack engaged them in a dialogue. There were ten orcs, led by the Orc Sergeant Cortez. He was happy to let the adventurers go where they pleased, provided they compensated him for the wear and tear they inflicted on the dungeon with a suitable payment. Thomas negotiated and eventually gave up a whopping 2,000 silver pieces for the privilege of avoiding a fight. He also told the orcs that there was a weakened ogre mage downstairs, guarding even more treasure. Cortez thanked him for his generosity, and led his squad downwards to the Cold Lake.

(The players hoped this would spark a fight between the greenskins and the sorcerer. Cortez rolled a 10 on his reaction roll when he encountered Pegora, and the two became fast friends).

The adventurers consulted their map, and explored the burrow to the West of the unmarked staircase down to the cold lake. Jack broke down the door to the ticketing booth for the train station, and was rewarded with a squirt of acid from an ancient dwarven trap. Olga levered open the strongbox in the ticket booth, and found a hefty sum of money in chrome steal train chits. The duo barricaded themselves in the ticketing office for a short rest, then hauled their loot back to the surface.

BACK INTO THE FORTRESS

After hiding the treasure, the pair agreed to return to the underground for one last delve, before heading back to town. The first floor held nothing of interest after being looted previously, though the pair noted that the door to the Fiend's lair had been augmented with the door from the train car in the Citadel. It was inscribed with the Sign of the Starhelm, and the Fiend had engraved on it in every language she knew: NO GHOULS ALLOWED. They heard the sound of laughter, grunting, and someone moving furniture from the other side of the door. They decided to leave the Fiend to her debauchery and go downstairs.

They wandered Floor 2 for a while, and ended up going in circles in the exploratory tunnels leading to the coal seams. They avoided starting a coal dust explosion by using a mining lantern they found to explore one of the coal mines, but didn't find anything interesting inside. They hid when a couple of mushroom men shuffled past them in the darkness, but decided against starting any more fights with the dungeon denizens.

Floor 3 had not yet been thoroughly explored, and they decided to fix that. They entered the old train station where the previous group had unleashed the ghouls, intent on searching the luxury train carriage. The inhabitants were long gone, but some of the furnishings might prove of value. Jack grabbed the furnishings while Olga stood watch.

She spotted an enormous shape in the door to the checkpoint. The enormous shape flickered and disappeared. She threw a handful of dust, but missed. Jack threw a sling bullet, and missed. Then Pegora the Ogre Mage cast Cone of Cold. Olga was flash frozen and instantly killed Demolition-Man style. Jack's arm was reduced to a frostbitten club, which fell off when he turned to run. Casting the spell broke Pegora's invisibility, and Jack was able to sneak past the clumsy ogre mage and escape the dungeon.

(Begone, FOE has a result on the wandering monster table that draws in a monster from a nearby keyed room. Any time the players antagonized an NPC or NPC faction, and rolled this result while near their location, it provoked an encounter with the aggrieved party)

Jack returned to the City of Brazenkragg, up two levels and down one arm. He went straight to the wizards of Elftown to have the magic ring from Pegora's stash identified: it was the Ring of the Reptile, which concealed the user from infravision, heat vision, and any other form of sight based perception outside of visible light. Then he went to the priests of Brazenkragg, to beg healing for his missing limb. The compensation they asked in return for their services was outside his ability to pay, but he got himself a discount by swearing to faithfully worship the Earth Mother (he spent one of his levels on a point of HEART, the game's clerical stat). 2,500 silver pieces in donations later, he walked out of the temple with a brand new arm.

POSTGAME THOUGHTS

I'd estimate ANGUISHEDWIRES has about one more session worth of content to discover. I'm working on some extensions to the dungeon, which will lead to new areas extending from the bottom of the Fortress.

Twice in two sessions, we've had one player character walk away with all the treasure from the dungeon, while the rest died. That means most of the low hanging fruit has been plucked, but we still have players showing up with first level characters. It's not a huge problem, since Begone, FOE characters are pretty capable even at level one. But there's always the possibility that the remaining sections of the dungeon will be too tough a nut to crack, and the players will be left without a way to advance.

I have a hard time ruling on stealth and surprise. Whatever rules I use always feel inadequate. The standard OSR table with sliding results from players-surprised to monsters-surprised falls apart when you offer player characters the chance to specialize in either spotting monsters or stealth. It becomes complicated when you have a character ahead of the group scouting. It doesn't fit when the player characters are actively sneaking up on monsters whose location is known, or vice versa. DM fiat feels arbitrary, since who-surprises-who is usually the biggest factor in who wins (or avoids) a combat.

In the latest version of Begone, FOE, I switched over to a more modern alertness rolls versus stealth rolls approach. It takes more die rolls, but better encompasses the spread of who-noticed-who results, while accounting for relative expertise at spotting things versus hiding from them.