Session 3 Report: Bad Guys and Basilisks

During the last session, a party of adventurers broke into the lower dungeon and the rogue wizard Gale Venta became the Goblin King. Following that, another expedition was mounted to follow them and make sure the newly minted goblin royalty wasn't preparing anything nasty.

Our victims cast:

Gale Venta (Magpie-ling Wizard, Goblin King)
The Batman (Bat-ling Barbarian)
Augustus (Human Fighter)
Shaggeth and Scoobeth, hirelings

The Session

The session began with the Batman, waking up from the past night's carousing at camp, finding Shaggeth and Scoobeth returned from the Tomb, covered in grime and shaking. He quickly learned the story of the previous excursion, and the mad wizard's ascent to the goblin aristocracy. Summoning his friend Augustus (whom he knew through a debacle involving Augustus' evil mother, yet to be elaborated on), they let the hirelings get a night's rest before taking them back down.

Shaggeth and Scoobeth had wandered the goblin warrens as Gale was getting his royal tour, and managed to find the stairway up to the surface, exiting between the roots of a great tree. They took this path again, this time going down. At the first intersection they elected to pass through the secret door, even after hearing the clanking of chain behind it. Entering into a gigantic, pillared cavern, they elected to split up, hugging the wall. Augustus took Scoobeth east, and when he heard the houndling warrior stop and whimper (due to the stare of the basilisk) ran immediately and without hesitation, abandoning his hireling to his fate.

Crashing through a broken stone door, he encountered none other than the Goblin King, renegade wizard Gale Venta. He was admiring his newly equipped platoon of goblins, who had scavenged the blade trap for improvised arms and armor. Finding Gale to be about as sane as when he entered (not especially) they struck up a friendship.

At that moment, Scoobeth burst through the same doorway with the Batman and Shaggeth in tow. Thanks to a critical success on his save, Scoobeth managed to escape, find the rest of the party and bring them together. Reuniting with the wizard, they set about strategizing. With echolocation and some Intelligence checks, they determined they faced a Basilisk, lurking in the dark. Lucky for them, Gale had prepared Lock.

Adorable ain't it?

The Batman, in a fit of courage, ran into the chamber with an armful of candles, hoping to illuminate the Basilisk so that Gale, who was sneaking around the side, could target it. He was frozen in place, and barely managed to dodge its charge. Then the battle began.

Judicious (and very lucky) repeated castings of Lock prevented the Basilisk from using its petrification, leaving it vulnerable. The party struggled to hit it at first, neither the players, nor their hirelings, nor the swarm of armed goblins (statted as a Many Goblins) could make a dent in it. They got a better result out of getting it to crash into the room's pillars, weakening it. A few lucky hits from Augustus, who managed to pierce a weak spot in its belly, and from the Batman, who climbed up its flank with an iron spike and managed to get several hits in from close range.

Slowed and deprived of its senses, the Basilisk soon fell to the heroes. They carved it up, taking its eyes and tasking the goblins with skinning it to get its skeleton (very valuable to collectors). Afterwards, the party continued west, encountering the snake door (currently closed, owing to half being missing). They took the north door, and came into Xiximanter's chamber

The big man himself

A snake-man lich. A dessicated human corpse fused at the waist to a snake, his eyes two pinpricks of fire, fangs poking out from thin lips. He was also unfailingly polite, and asked the party how their tour of the compound was. Playing along with his delusion, the players inquired as to his immortality experiments and magic. Xiximanter was more than eager to provide these services, in exchange for mammalian test subjects. The rest of the session focused on this negotiation, the players creating a plan to kidnap people from the nearby city of Urga to feed Xiximanter's vats. The campaign has officially gone off the rails.

The party concluded their negotiations with a promise to provide a test subject as a sample. They resolved to explore the dungeon further before embarking on this, at the very least finding the door that the Basilisk's key opened. Our new player, Augustus, got on board with the organ harvesting and people-juicing altogether quickly, though he refused to sacrifice his own camp follower. Mentally adjusting the party's collective alignment firmly towards 'evil', we ended the session.

Takeaways

This session was primarily roleplay, between the players, goblins and Xiximanter, punctuated with the Basilisk combat in between. I made a bunch of rulings in the moment which, looking at the rules now, were a bit off. Nevertheless, much fun was had, and the players regarded the fight as epic. They were also glorying in their evil plots. I wasn't sure if the players had the guts for the Veins campaign I'm cooking up as a possible follow up. Now I'm fairly sure they're up for it.