C Series Session 1: The Caverns of Contemplation

Frans Post

 

Fazenda Sanitarium, a lakeside estate in the sweltering Rubberlands below the Marble Cliffs. Formerly the estate of a Don who staunchly supported the Old King, currently a hospital run by the healing Church of Leper Heart. On the patio, a mutant with fleshy lobster claws pours cold anise liquor mixed with sweet, citrusy tonic for eight adventurers:

• Al-Hafiz, Self-Sacrificing Preserver, and his three henchmen
• Eric the Hired Barbarian
• Gowonry and Grit the Mutoids
• Grenthrum Doorknocker, Dwarven Monster Hunter
  
• Jack Fatherd, Coureur des bois
  
• Roddy Applecreek, Mad bomber
  
• Wakefield, Burglar and Confidence Trickster

The sentient green slime Doctor Pleroma explained the mission with such precise diction that his Common took on an accent of its own.

There’s a monster underneath my hospital. It opened a hole in the ballroom and when one of my patients went inside it killed him. There was a loud sound and a flash of light from the hole and he was burned. We lifted the body out with a hook. Go down there and kill whoever did it. All of them. Your pay is 5,000 silver pieces plus any treasure you find. Except the red stones, those belong to the Heart. Don’t take any of the patients with you, even if they ask.

This was agreeable to the adventurers. They made their way to the ballroom, where a pair of Thouls stood watch over the hole in question. These monsters were volunteer super-soldiers created by Rope Trick during the rebellion against the Monarchy. With no rebellion left to fight, the monstermen were confined to the asylum where they served as orderlies in the management of the Mutants who formed the main body of the patients. Former adventurers themselves, the Thouls speculated that it was a Lightning Bolt that killed the unfortunate Mutant who investigated the hole.

Mysterious red crystals glowed in the hole below, which went down about seven feet to a recently excavated mine tunnel. Something else glowed on the ceiling of the tunnel, not visible from the ballroom above but giving off a red light distinct from the natural crystals in the cavern wall. The team fast-roped into the hole, intending to get the drop on whoever was guarding the tunnel.

The glow on the cavern ceiling was a rune.

"I prepared flashpowder"

The rune exploded.

 

Al-Hafiz and Jack called on their respective Gods to cure the blinded members of the party. From deeper in the caves, over the whine in their ears from the explosion, they heard panicked jabbering in an unknown language. Al-Hafiz advanced at the head of the group, chasing down the retreating foe. The mine tunnel opened into a gallery where the red crystals had been dug out of the walls, save for a central pillar to stop the chamber from collapsing. Jack Fatherd spotted tracks in the rock dust. A set of wheelbarrow tracks and another set of footprints, deliberately effaced but leading to the rock wall.

Wakefield the Thief explored the wall and found it to be an illusion, concealing a Gnome-sized door. He used his steel mirror to look under the frame and saw a magic mouth on the wall of the tiny room, speaking every word the party said out loud. It was a listening post, and though it was deserted he surmised that the inhabitants had already detected him.

 

Al-Hafiz and Wakefield heard a sound from the mine tunnel like a razor on leather. Jack Fatherd peered into the red-lit tunnel and recognized the deformation in the cavern floor as sure sign of something burrowing beneath the earth. Roddy used mechanical parts salvaged from the library of Lanthorn to craft a "thumper" that would disrupt the hidden beast's tremorsense, while Al-Hafiz used his amulet of ESP to scan the earth below him. His psychic probe detected an Umber Hulk lying in wait. These creatures were intelligent ambush predators and, on realizing they'd been spotted by a peer adversary, would normally scuttle away to try their luck somewhere else. This Hulk was controlled by some superior force, compelling it to lurk just out of reach until it detected a moment of weakness in the party.

Well, it wasn't going to detect anything for the moment. Roddy deployed his thumper and the group went down the mine tunnel to explore elsewhere, not interested in forcing a door the miners clearly knew they were coming through.

 

Trampier

Exploring the northeast end of the mine, the adventurers penetrated another illusory wall and found the Umber Hulk's den, full of cave crickets and loose change dropped by whoever was feeding the big bug. A pistol ball bounced off Jack's shield, generating neither sound nor smoke cloud. The group fell back and Wakefield took Jack's place, using his buckler of reflection to screen Grenthrum as the Dwarf hoovered up the dropped coins. A pistol ball bounced off the magic buckler and struck the unknown firer, who cried out from his position behind an illusory wall to the west. The gang rushed forward and stacked up the Gnome-sized door behind the wall, while the Mutoids and Barbarian covered their rear. 

Roddy tossed a grenade through the door at the same time whoever was inside fired a wand of lightning. The bolt singed the adventurers, while the grenade (boosted with a handful of Djinni dust) incinerated everything in the tiny tunnel. The adventurers closed the hatch and decided to come back once the flames died down. 

The mine tunnel continued north to a Gnome sized door, this one not concealed by an illusory wall. The adventurers crouched and entered the tiny room. They found Gnome ceramics and gems, and a ceiling trap that would dump something to block the entrance. Jack propped the hatch closed with his spear. The tiny tinkering lab had a single bloodiron crystal harvested from the walls, and a bunch of red rocks painted to look like said crystal. Footprints in the rock dust on the floor led to the west wall. Al-Hafiz probed the illusion and found a switch, which released poison gas into the room. The ceiling hatch blocking the entrance went clunk, jammed by the spear. The group ran out without any casualties, Jack yanked the spear out and a pile of gravel blocked the tunnel.

Roddy realized he could no longer hear the thumper. He knew the spring couldn't have wound down yet, someone must have run out and grabbed it. Wakefield decided to check the burned tunnel again. The flames had died down and the hole was home to the charred remains of two Gnomes, their broken wand of lightning (which Roddy repaired so it looked functional), a bunch of jewels and a couple clockwork pickaxes. The picks were too damaged by the blast to be repaired, but the engineers on the team noticed the heads were cushioned with insulating wool so that they wouldn't make too much noise when they broke rocks.

 

Wakefield crawled further down the Gnome-size passage and discovered a pit trap, which would collapse if anything heavier than a Gnome crossed it. He was an expert in climbing, even in a space where he couldn't jump or stand, and wriggled around it to explore a branching tunnel to the south. It led into a human-size crypt, which predated the gnomish excavations in the area. The alcoves of the crypt were full of skeletons, who were decked out with gems. Wakefield grabbed some of the treasures and the skeleton woke up. He lopped off one of its arms and it used its remaining hand to crack his ribs with a one-inch punch. The dead man clearly knew how to fight, and Wakefield got the hell out before it showed him any more tricks. He could crawl faster than the skeleton and it couldn't cross the pit trap. It lounged insouciantly until he shot it with his crossbow, forcing it to retreat.

Jack lay his shield across the pit trap as a bridge, allowing the whole group to cross and enter the crypt. The skeleton was back in its stone bed with the others. Al-Hafiz asked it what it was doing down here. The skeleton gave a martial arts demonstration, assuming a fluid stance and delivering lethal palm thrusts to the air before rolling backwards in a drunkard tumble and springing up again. Al-Hafiz brandished his own weapon in response. The skeleton grinned and pointed to the next chamber.

The next chamber was a gymnasium with a huge training dummy, wielding four magic weapons. Jack and Al-Hafiz advanced on the dummy and it woke up, flailing away at them. Al-Hafiz stripped the armor off it and they focused it down, although it dealt them some serious wounds in the process. They looted a magic mace, ax, dagger and sword from the remains.

With most of their divine resources expended and several adventurers injured, the gang decided to leave the way they came. The training room led back into the central junction of the mine tunnels. But the earth was disturbed in the signature fashion of the Umber Hulk, which lurked underground between them and the exit. The beast clearly sensed their weakness and was now blocking their avenue of escape. They decided to rest in the training room and get their strength back. Which prompted the Hulk to tunnel toward them.

 

 

The gang got up and ran further into the crypt, through a kitchen and demonstration hall where a piled stone altar of the Strong Man stood watch, into a dead end. The last chamber had a staircase going up to the ceiling, where the Fazenda above had been built to seal the ruins. A gray ooze on the ceiling promised dissolution to anyone who tried to break through to the surface. Trapped, the team made their stand in front of the altar. The Umber Hulk burst out of the floor, interrupting Jack in mid-sentence when he tried to warn the team not to look the beast in the eye.

 

Grit, Gowonry, Wakefield, Eric and Grenthrum were confused by the monster's gaze. Grenthrum ran out of the room in a panic, as did the rest of the group. Jack called on the Liberator and the Grain Goddess and the Tower of Pain, spending his last reserves of energy to clear the confusion from his friends so they too could run for it. The beast raked the fleeing adventurers with its claws and mandibles, sending Eric, Wakefield and Grenthrum to the ground. Eric and Wakefield got out on their own, Grenthrum was hit in the head and had to be dragged. They had to drop a bunch of gear to escape and barely made it to the rope, and only made it out in time because the Thouls on the surface hauled them up fast. The Umber Hulk climbed out of the hole after them and Thoul number two dealt it a vicious backhand with the enormous bone spike extending from his forearm, sending the beast scuttling back into the caves.

The Thouls made a sound in their throats like a fist hammering a door, drawing Clerics of Leper Heart to heal the downed Dwarf. They demanded to accompany the adventurers on their next delve into the caves. This was their home, and the Gnomes killed their friend. Doctor Pleroma didn't want them to fight because he wanted them to be something besides living weapons, but they weren't interested in that. They were super soldiers and they were going to die fighting.

 

Doctor Pleroma arrived and the adventuers briefed him on what they found. The Gnomes had dug a mine and were extracting the red stones therein. The Doctor swore the group to secrecy and explained the real stakes. The bloodiron crystals under the Fazenda neutralized the psychic powers of anyone living on the estate. Several of his patients were Brainchildren, psychic mutants created by the Old King. Suppressing their abilities let them live a normal life, instead of going insane and psychic blasting everyone. He kept the crystals a secret because psychic defense was valuable enough that adventuring organizations would send armies to raze the sanitarium and steal it for themselves. 

Juntti

 

As for the Gnomes, they no doubt held some racial animus toward the Mutants of the hospital. The Old King once sent his creations to slaughter the small men in the tens of thousands, and they no doubt wanted revenge. The Doctor would really appreciate it if the adventurers killed all the Gnomes. Something they were confident they could do and enjoy doing.