A Monster And A Squirrel Named Charlie

Under the Drink, the adventurers hear guards from the kitchens above. But the cavern past the snakes looks like a dead end! However, a closer inspection they notice that the rock wall does not look as convincing as it could. Despite the herculean efforts of the two gargoyles, they could just barely get it to budge. The rogue Billy took a look, and with a bit of experimenting they managed to open the secret wall. An obvious lever on the other side rapidly closed the door behind them. Billy, also being a naturalist, easily noticed the two green slimes up ahead, ready to pounce. Unfortunately for the slimes, they cannot eat the thick skin of a gargoyle, who rapidly shredded them.

And a 4 way intersection, they decide to go right, and found what appeared to be a small cell, with a pile of rags. In the space around it was a saber, hammer, and a well-used set of chainmail. While Billy decided to see if the chainmail would fit, Thade, our Elf vampire, decided to see if anyone was in the cell.

"Oy, yah, there be me in this cell. Me being Olly. And whatcha doing in me armor?" I grabbed a semi-random card from the set of characters we had from the Kickstarter. I had the prisoner in case my friend's son decided to come along and play and we would stick his character there. He did not, so now they have a meat shield, err, NPC companion. 

The gargoyles, Tecton and Argon, let the disheveled man from the cell, giving him back his rapier and hammer with the assurance that he would help them out. Of course, they do not trust him as he did mention he had crossed Derig Goldensunder, the dwarf proprietor of the Drink that they had just killed. 

Looking back at Billy in his chainmail, Olly takes the lead, and the cross to the other side of the intersection. Argon and Tecton batter down the door, and there they find what looks to be a small office. A ledger is found with varying amounts of money listed, and a list of names. All crossed off except for Ollie. A giant vault door stands before them, and, digging out a key that Billy looted from Derig, they find it opens the vault. Inside is a pile of gold in the corner. Warily they enter, checking for giant spiders, slimes and whatever may hang from the ceiling. Nothing is there.

Olly pokes at the treasure with his saber, which rapidly reveals itself to be a large mouth with large teeth!

so I have this mimic bed....

A fight ensues, the creature never quite hitting any of the adventurers, and the quickly slay this beast. Seeing bones, they surmised Derig used it to dispose of his enemies. Unknown to our crew, Derig had named it Charlie, and kept it well fed. Charlie was as fond of the dwarf as a mimic can be. Raised him from a mimic pup, he did. 

Finding a few pieces of real gold and silver, they head back. Billy relented and gave Olly back his armor. Which is good as Oly managed to fall into a pit trap in the corridor, but only suffered minor damage to his pride. Getting pulled out, the others  managed to get across without incident. A cool draft was coming from the corridor in front of them.

Opening into a larger room with two columns holding up the ceiling, they decide to investigate what looked to be a library. They find an odd collection of what looked to be romance novels of some sort, but also a scroll of weapon scalding (a magic scroll). There is an upstairs room they visit, complete with a bear skin rug, and a romance novel on the bedside stand. This appears to be where Derig would sometimes live. Being a Dwarf he did prefer being in a proper stone hold rather than some flimsy building above ground. Argom, with his excellent hearing, heard what sounded like the guards coming into the underground complex. Knowing that going forward was the only way, they continued into what turned out to be a frozen room.

Everyone but Thade slipped on the slick ice. That is when they saw the two ice snakes, clear as ice, slither across the ice. The battle was fierce as they had to often fight from the ground, unable to stand up. I really should have read the slippery floor rules, but I ended up making it a 4D against DEX to get up, and 4D against DEX each turn to stay up. And if fighting the snakes from a prone position, 4D instead of 3. But eventually (and much later than I expected!) the snakes were killed.

And that is where we left it: the guards are getting closer though one did fall in the pit trap. Is there an escape ahead or will it be a dead end? Why is there a frozen room under the city? What do ice snakes even eat as there cannot be enough adventurers coming down to feed them? And why was Charlie named Charlie?

I think they had fun, and I got to use a lot of my terrain and things. Of course, with a weekly cadence I need to figure out things faster. And I do have answers for all the above actually:

1. Yes, there is an exit ahead of them. Somewhere. 
2. The frozen room was there because I wanted something different and I had this ice room. In the game world, an ancient ice spell was used in this area in an arcane attack. The spell became permanent. Derig was using it to keep some of his food stores cold. Though it could also be an opening to a frozen plane of existence. There are gates in this world...
3. Ice snakes eat from the stores of food, Derig figured it was nice to have guard snakes.
4. Charlie was the name of my stuffed squirrel from when I was little. I still have it 50+ years later...

Charlie

Painting the sewers

Archon has managed an early delivery on a Kickstarter project! Of course, they do everything in-house in Poland. The sewer set finally showed up, and while I can't (yet!) paint as well as what they do there, I can get something that looks pretty good.

who let that Goblin shaman into the sewers?

First, the before and after pictures. The translucent sewer water also includes the walkway next to them. 

I connect a few of them together, then using painters tape, cover up the water. By connecting them it makes for an easier paint job as I only have 1 thing to spray paint in.This was round 2 so I am re-using the tape where possible (hey, I'm the one who made Sir Caffeine's tower from a coffee container - I like to recycle things. Eventually with practice I may even get good at it!)

Spray paint and let dry...and yes, that is some shipping paper. Sadly, not recyclable after spray painting on it but at least it is getting a second (and third, fourth) use as I can use it to keep from painting anything else.

Peel of the tape and it actually looks pretty good.

Now do some of my cheap wash (Wal-Mart black acrylic paint watered way down) I also did the walls with the same wash. When it dries, the splotchiness, at least to me, looks like water stains. Which technically it really is as it is just watered-down paint.

Again, let it dry. I also noticed that I did not get the paint all the way down on some of the edges - reusing tape may be getting too cheap! But I'll correct that with the 1st dry brushing, as the 1st layer is a just a lighter shade of the same grey used in the base coat (which is just spray paint, not a specific mini paint company spray which costs 10x as much. And for rocks, the $3 can works just as well for me at least).

Some crude dry brush (I am still not great at this except by happy accident!) and then some green for slime (Naga green - for this final bit I did actually use a "real" mini paint as for some reason I have a few vials of naga green!)

And there we have it - perfect home for a sewer mermaid! Okay, I do have more appropriate creatures for the apparently ever-present sewers that fantasy cities seem to have.

The only issue I have with the sewer set is that the translucent plastic is more brittle than the normal stuff they use. Clipping it off the sprues requires a bit more attention, and you will have to file it down as it does leave little spurs. Or else my clippers are getting dull! But overall, I am really happy with this set. 

Now just 2 more sprues to work on! And the 3 big boxes of stretch goals. And the other rooms I bought...

More catchup, and slightly more revised Sir Zay

 After finding out I was looking at the wrong set of microlite rules and, you know, reading the last email from the DM with the current rules, finally got all the rules so some minor revisions. Most of these were made during our session 0 / session 1 game last Monday. Sir Zay was transported to the Galon Empire several weeks before our group gets together, and has fought in at least one battle against the dark tide rising out of the Warlands. While a follower of Pholtus, in this strange new land no one has heard of that god, but there is a god of the light, Peltos, Father of Light. Sir Zay has had many discussions after battles with the Sea Wolf, a leader of a human fighting force. Now in the city of Bastian, with his one time commander wounded beyond the touch of Sir Zay's healing hands, Sir Zay is starting a new path. Still in the battle against the dark, he has met up with new companions: Flick, a quiet dark Elf who seems to move with the Shadows; Stern whose name matches his demeanor, a monster hunter with a tragic story; and Father Tobias, a cleric of the Lady of the Hills, the Argent Lady. Our group has been brought to the Council of Five and tasked with retrieving manticore poison to fell the dire beast attacking the last city against the horde. 

Oddly, I actually have an entire page of notes I was trying to keep while playing. I've said that I want to grow into the skin of my character, and Sir Zay, raised since birth by his mother, a follower of Pholtus and a cadre of clerics, knows no other way to think. His father was not an adherent of that particular faith, and is one of the reasons, other than being the 8th child, he is wandering the world. He has a need to prove himself and his faith, and as Flick is a self-avowed atheist, I'll see if I can role play that without moving into parody or crossing any personal, real-life boundaries. So I'll have to verify with the player to make sure he understands it is all in-game. And in keeping with my general PG-13 approach to role playing games, we should be okay as that boundary also applies to the more philosophical elements of the game. And now I'll hop off that soap box. It was just a long-winded way of saying I am going to try and role play a cleric with a firm belief in his god and his attempts at adding more followers. Not that paladins do that as much as clerics, but that's my current version of the lawful good paladin I am playing.

Now, back to the character himself. Stats have all stayed the same (and oddly he is actually weaker than the other players in many ways, but I actually favor playing an underdog in some ways as it makes you think). And I do roll crappy when gaining hit points for leveling up.  

So we're still at strength 17, dexterity 14 and mind 14. He has +2 weapon mastery, soldier 2, aristocrat 4, Cleave, lay-on hands that cures 3d4, divine smite that acts as a silver weapon when attacking evil or undead if I read things correctly. He has a 23 hit points, armor class 17 and a single action point to use judiciously once per session. His weapons are as before - the great sword doing 2d6, the great ax for 1d10, a heavy cross-bos for 1d10 and a javelin for 1d6. He carries in addition to the regular adventuring gear equipment to maintain his armor. Each evening he meditates, and part of the meditation is a ritualistic yet effective cleaning and polishing of his armor. Not your traditional armor, it is more Asian styled similar to the image below but adorned with the sun and moon symbo; of Pholtus. It is, as noticed by his travelling companions, shiny though he does have a cloak should stealth be required. Or as stealthy as he can be wearing several pounds of chain armor.

Now I did say last weekend I'd try & get another Solo Traveller post in. So far there just has not been time and opportunity simultaneously. I have been working on painting the science fiction terrain tiles from my Kickstarter. I made my own wash that I am pretty happy with, and trying a few different things that the camera is not really picking up too well. The core set is the dark wash, then a heavy blue dry wash, then copper wash on top of that for the flat pieces and some other colors here and there. The AI control room will have the same dark wash, but trying for a lighter blue first layer of dry wash, then a light blue wash on that. The engine room has the dark wash and dark blue first dry wash, then a silver/blue wash on that for a more stainless steel approach. At least that was the idea. The xenogensis room is dark with a dark green wash to give us that Aliens vibe. I can use that in the Fantasy Trip as well I think. Below is my attempts at this so far. Going for a scuffed, well used Star Wars vs the pristine Star Trek ship style. None of my characters could ever afford the good ships :)