DCO with Randos: Session 2

Picking up from where we previously left off, the party departs up the river from Carrowmore, leaving the ruined town behind them. A fourth member of the party was introduced, leaving us with a fellowship of four.

• Eren, human ranger
• Alteriel, human monk
• Durlan, wood elf life cleric
• Ganel, fallen aasimar paladin

Since we were playing over Discord, I took advantage to throw in some musical cues, which shall be scattered about in link form. For normal boat travel, it was the wonderful sounds of Sunless Sea.

Into the silent, elegiac, greyness they went.

The Sarcophagus of Ambatoharanana

The party attempts to throw a rope to the two survivors clinging to the sarcophagus, to no avail. Pulling up alongside the coffin reveals that one is already dead, and the other is barely alive and non-vocal. He is taken onto the skiff and cared for by Durlan.

After a bit of equipment scrambling, Eren produces a crowbar and with Ganel's help opens the sarcophagus, revealing the mummified king inside. Ganel goes for the treasure.

King Ambatoharanana lives! The mummy springs up, laying about with his sword. Several solid hits are made by Alteriel and Ganel, but Ganel is struck by the king's attack and is overwhelmed with the sure and certain knowledge imparted in his animal hindbrain - that he shall be pursued to the ends of the earth for his transgression against a god-king.

Ganel  panics and runs to the back of the boat with Durlan. Alteriel is the next hit and is dropped in one shot. He passes his save on death's door, Durlan pulls him out of harms way and heals him.

At this point Eren tackles the mummy and both plunge into the water. A shaken Ganel pulls him up, and Durlan heals Arteriel. The king dissolves in the deep water, and soon that remains is a muddy smear on the water, and some limp silken bandages floating downstream. His treasure is lost to the muddy river bottom.

Fool's Duel

Grey silence again envelops the expedition, until they come to the dueling wizards, Rem and Ruskin.

The party attempts to learn what is happening by making authoritative demands, but the wizards are immune to such things as befitting their ego. Conversation goes nowhere, Ruskin is hit with a magic missile and demands their aid. But to no avail for the scrawny wizard, as the group leaves the two to their squabbling.

As they paddle away, they are able to watch the blue eggshell of Ruskin's shield disperse, and the wizard is knocked into the water by a second magic missile. A sleek, black, spied fin rises from the water, and the frantic splashing swiftly ceases.

The group was understandably enthusiastic to reach the dry land ahead.

Church of Selminimum Tem 

The party reached the overturned church without much incident. Ganel uses his hand axes to carve out footholds in the soft and water-damaged foot, so that he can climb up to the doors and gain entry. The party follows, and make a quick investigation. Ganel opens the shrine and finds the wafers and vials, Eren harvests some dry pew-wood for a fire. With evening approaching (and several players in need of retiring for the night), a watch is set, with one outside the church to keep watch over the boat and make sure that the giant pike has not been following them.

END OF DAY 1

The string of good, if short, sessions and good luck continues. Thanks are to be give to +Daniel Davis, whose notes on DCO really helped smooth things along.

Also, it appears that I really, really like to run pointcrawls!

DCO with Randos: Session 1

In an effort to get around to actually playing games, I decided to brave the wilds of looking for an online game. I quickly found one that was looking for a DM, and with immense luck it turned out to be a great time for all parties involved.

When I asked about what sort of adventure they wanted me to run, the group was quite enthusiastic in their support of the "weird and dark" parts of my module collection, which meant Deep Carbon Observatory, for there are none weirder or darker, and hacking it to 5e is not much trouble.

The party consisted of:

• Eren, human ranger
• Alterial, human monk
• Durlan, wood elf life cleric

It was a short session (one of the party had to leave early), and so they did not end up leaving Carrowmore, but we did get through all the chaos. Man, what an opening.

The sequence of arriving in Carrowmore, with everything happening all at once, is perfectly overwhelming. Not enough to impede running it (by the second or third series of events the flow begins and you are carried along as if in the flood itself), but enough to get you really into things.

The group's opening arc was something like this:

• The group rushes in to help Callao rescue the children and elders of Pollnagollum Village.
• Alterial and Durlan go and try to round up Sue Trouin's schoolchildren.  With some food they're able to collect the band and lead them back to Callao's group.
• Eren goes to investigate Busla Rant and her clocktower fishing spot. He learns of the gold dust, and is nearly but not quite pickpocketed by Wit Tambdoun. Eren trades a portion of rations to have Wit steal one of  Busla's treasures. 
• Eren saves Theodore Brosen.
• Wit returns with a severed head, mouth full of gold dust.
• Alterial and Durlan nearly have the lynch mob turn on them, but are able to . The rescued sailor leads them to the Snail-Shell Zarathustra. The captain makes his offer, as normal.
• Eren (followed shortly thereafter by the other two) comes across the Snowflake Squad accosting Constable Stary. They call the bluff and send them packing, and get quite excitable when Stary makes her offer of 5000 gold for proof of there being no treasure (as well as catching on to the inherent silliness of the claim and potential avenues for abuse - there's no treasure north of the Lock if we've already stolen it, now is there?)

We had to end there, but that's still two hours of thoroughly enjoyable game for six pages of module (and more time to prep for the next session. Eagerly looking forward to the continuation.