Intro

In the original book, Rexus was going to take seven weeks to translate the documents from the Livery trove, giving the party a chance to run that many strategic turns, run the original set of filler missions, and deal with Blosodriette’s shenanigans.

Here, me-the-player took care of the imp more or less immediately (with a little nudge from me-the-GM). And three game weeks in, I feel I’ve run through all the filler missions I cared about, and our revolution is now pretty close to the maximum level it can reach in this adventure.

So I think we can move on to our finale earlier. We just say Rexus finishes his translations now, allowing us to move to the finale.

[GM] Thinking About Dungeon Preparation

And so as the GM in this story, I must also prepare my dungeon. This dungeon is the capstone delve of the module, so it’s quite extensive compared to everything else we’ve seen so far. It has two distinct levels with several rooms each.

While I think I am getting better at it I’m not sure I really enjoy the process of preparing a dungeon delve in Foundry. Not unless there’s something else in there to hold my interest other than just trying to copy the book. There was a pause of a few weeks between me writing the first sentence in this section and the rest of it, and I procrastrinated by publishing everything up to scene 05 of the adventure to the blog.

Before that pause, I managed to extract a proper map of the first level from the same old module that gave me the Livery map from Scene 05. I drew walls, and I think I did a decent job of adding proper lighting on it. Nothing fancy, just a slightly dimmed global light level. If that turns out to be a problem, I can just disable that and rely on pure imagination to handle lighting and walls. My player, who is also me, is very understanding about these things.

Were I running this for other people, the correct thing to do would be to adapt the whole level at once, statting up every trap, every hidden treasure, and every monster in GURPS. After all, there’s no telling where the PCs would choose to go and they’re supposed to take at most a couple of all-afternoon sessions to go through each level. I can’t exactly stop the world to “compile” the dungeon room by room.

But I’m running this for myself. I can do exactly that. My “sessions” are whenever I have 30 minutes to a couple of hours to spare and “prep work” is supposed to have the same importance and fun value as “planning”, or at least it’s supposed to. Let’s take that approach. Everything is going into the same file, but ideally each “session” would involve choosing the next room the PCs visit, preparing it, and then playing through it.

That would mean we have more frequent sessions and maybe actually get through this faster, because the thought of preparing a whole level at once terrifies me into inaction, as previously demonstrated.

[GM] Dungeon Overview

We have two levels here with distinct traits.

Level 1 on the surface is Hocum’s Fantasmagorium, which was abandoned 70 years ago during the Chelish Civil War. The place had been stealthily maintained by the Archivists, so despite the ruined state of its exhibits the building is structurary sound.

This level is currently secured by a few reanimated skeletal exhibits, by zombies created from the corpses of victims of the Night of Ashes (including Rexus’ parents), four redactor monks, and one asshole priest. There was another but he died of greed.

Exterior walls and doors are heavy wood (DR 3, HP 33). Interior walls and the boards covering the windows are average wood (DR 3, HP 29). Door locks and hinges are heavy and high-quality (DR 9, HP 18, -5 to Lockpicking) but the mithril key can open all of them.

During the day, the Fantasmagorium is dimly lit by sunshine filtered through the boarded-up windows (-3 Darkness penalty). At night, it’s pitch-black. Areas where human enemies are working are brightly lit (+0) by scattered Continual Light lanterns.

There’s some treasure scattered around this level, most of it in the form of loot from the two priests’ bodies.

The Aroden statue in the center-north part of this level is a secret door to the Archivists’ underground base, the Many-Steps Monastery.

The Many-Steps Monastery is secured by a summoned scrivinite, a large group of Asmodean redactors, a big ogre brute, plus Mephiry and Nox. The layout is effectively a gauntlet that funnels the party through the bulk of these forces and into a confrontation with Nox.

Interior walls are 6-inch thick stone (ablative DR 78, HP 75). Doors are identical to the ones up top, and the mithril key also opens them all. The entire level is brightly lit by Continual Light spells.

Aside from Nox’s loot, most of the treasure in this level consists of recovered Archivist documents that can be sold to collectors.

[Player] The Silver Raven Documents

Rexus is done with his decryption of the document cache retrieved from the Livery, so the Ravens spend some time going over the documents. Some of what’s in there is ironically already known to our PCs, as Jade personally knew the Ravens and could tell the others about the basics of who they were.

But she was too young to actually take part in operations, so there’s still new stuff to be had here. The Ravens were successful in preventing the conquest of Kintargo and Ravounel nearly a dozen times during the Chelish Civil War: five attempts by various power-hungry noble families, four attempts by House Thrune specificially, once by vampire priests from Nidal, and one by the dragon Rivozair.

The fifth attempt by Thrune was the one they felt they couldn’t fight, at least not without destroying the land and city they were trying to protect. So the group decided to surrender. Jade remembers this one - it’s when she was sent away.

The documents also say their main headquarters was under the Opera House (which Barzilai is currently using as his home), and that their main tool in defending the city was something called “The Song of Silver”. Jade remembers this is an actual song with magical powers, but again she was too young to grasp more details. Rexus believes the score and lyrics for the song might still be out there - finding them would be a major boon to the revolution.

Last but not least, all the operational advice in the papers gives the new Silver Ravens a permanent +2 to all three organization traits. I’m keeping track of it in the org sheet, and will post the updated version on our next strategic turn.

[Player] Hocum’s Fantasmagorium

Rexus tells the group that translating the documents has left him with a strong conviction that his parents might still be alive. He knows the Archivists kept a hideout under an abandoned museum named Hocum’s Fantasmagorium, and that among the things his mother had Urist deliver him was a small mithril key that he knows will open the way to the hideout.

He thinks his parents and other survivors from the order might still be hiding under there, and are in need of help.

Urist… kind of agrees, but he’s not as optimistic. When he returned to Kintargo from his away mission, he approached the Fantasmagorium but noticed that all of the pre-arranged telltale signs on and near the surface building were flipped to “danger”, so he never tried to get in. He still thinks the group should go there in force, but he doesn’t think they’ll find the place intact.

This ends their meeting in a kind of somber note, and they get to preparing for the delve.

[Player] Delver Preparation

Supplementary Actions

If we had managed to acquire one team of Spies or Saboteurs at this point we could have used a Covert Action to get a basic layout for the Fantasmagorium, or a Sabotage action to rig a trap on the main door to catch fleeing enemies.

We slacked a bit on the team upgrade front, so we can’t do either of those.

However, I am going to “cash in” the biggest story benefit from Urist’s origin as the Last Archivist here. He’s been here before, though not since before the place was raided. So he knows and can share the entire layout of both the Phantasmagorium and Monastery levels, retrieved from the but he has no idea about the number and disposition of the enemies inside.

This means he does know how to open the secret passage to the Monastery. The party could go right to the second level and skip all the opposition here if they wanted to.

However, They don’t want to. We’re going in there to clear the monastery of Asmodeans.

Tactical Planning

Let’s do this the same way we did back in Scene 08, by looking at the characters’ personality traits and figuring out what approach they would prefer and how they would argue for that with the others.

As mentioned above, they know the detailed layout of both dungeon levels, and they have a magic key that opens (or locks!) every door in the dungeon. Rexus gave them that, along with a request to go in there and look for Archivist survivors. But this planning session is being held without him.

You see, Urist believes that if any other Archivists remain, they wouldn’t be there. There were secret danger signs posted around the place, which caused him to turn back when he went there alone. This means that someone else might have escaped, but it also means that the hideout isn’t empty. The place is likely full of Thrune lackeys of some description.

As he lays all of this out to the rest of the group, he proposes a new “main” goal: get those fascists out of there, with maximum force. Even if all other Archivists are dead, there are things in there that should not fall into their hands.

  • Arcturus, who is Impulsive and Overconfident, obviously thinks they should kick in the front door and fight the whole enemy force head on. It’s a perfect plan! Nothing can go wrong with it!

  • Jade advises a little more caution. She thinks this is likely to devolve into a big fight anyway, but there’s no reason to give up the element of surprise so early. A quick, decisive, and stealthy raid is the way to go here, trying to catch at least some of the enemies unaware.

  • Jania doesn’t think any forces remaining there would pose too much of a problem to a group like theirs, but she believes being clever and sneaky is part of what makes them so strong. And that she provides that cleverness and sneakyness, of course. There’s no reason to make things harder than they need to be, so she thinks they should maintain surprise for as long as possible.

  • Rosalia just wants the rest to pick a door and go in, and says they’ll adapt as they go along. She knows the opposition might be strong, but she’s not big on memorizing complex plans.

  • Urist, on balance, agrees with Jania. He’s confident in the group’s ability to handle the opposition but he’s spent a long time with an organization that values wisdom and prudence.

In the end, they end up agreeing on the stealthy plan. Scout out the best entrance, try to stay sneaky for as long as possible, go loud once the fighting starts in earnest.

Equipment Acquisition

The PCs actually have very little in the way of personal funds, since they dumped most of what they had into the organization. So our shopping spree here is very anticlimatic.

Rosalia buys a second pouch and 12 paper cartridges of pistol ammunition so she can finally use her Gunslinger trait with the pistol we found a while back. That costs her $16. You might remember she made a note to do this “as soon as possible” back in Scene 06.

Urist and Jade spend three silvers ($60) to buy a couple of light vials.

Next, I will distribute some of the potions they have stashed in the Wasp Nest here.

  • Rosalia leaves the guitar home for this one, and gets the Healing Gem.

  • Urist and Jania each get 1 vial of Paut.

  • Jade gets 1 minor healing potion and Art gets 3.

  • Urist will carry the 2 vials of Universal Antidote.

Point Expenditure

So far I’ve spent some of our team’s earned character points to make them better at directing the rebellion, but now I feel the need to spend what we have stashed in making them better delvers, following the wishlists from their published starter sheets and their current delving plans.

  • Urist has 8 points. Let’s spend 1 to improve Hidden Lore (Demons) to 14, 2 to buy Physiology (Demons) at 13, and the remaining 5 to get Higher Purpose (Slay Demons) 1.

  • Art has 8 points. He improves his Lifting ST to 2 for 6 points, and his Knife skill to 17 for 2.

  • Jade has 6 points. I want to save until I can get an extra point of ST for her, so she won’t spend any here. That’d be 4 more points.

  • Jania has 5 points. While I really want to save for another level of Spell-Thief Expertise, I think we must acquire Trace and Glass Wall for this delve, so we spend 2 of those points.

  • Rosalia has 5 points. Her primary wishlist item was getting a gun and ammo for it, which we have now, so let’s spend 4 of those points on Guns (Pistol), and one on Off-Hand Weapon Training (Pistol).

[Player] Delving Hocum’s Fantasmagorium

A dungeon map of a building with wooden floors and walls. There's a big circular room in the middle and several rectancular rooms all around it, with different museum exhibits in each one. Rooms are labeled E1 to E10.

With Rexus’ mithril key in hand, the Ravens can finally raid the monastery. And a raid it will be, as they don’t just want to look for survivors, they want to send an even stronger message than the one from the Salt Works rescue operation. The Night of Ashes will not go unpunished.

Mechanically, we’ll still be using the mechanics from my Old School Movement post, but they will be moving at five times the default pace since there will be no mapping. This means our exploration turns will be 2 minutes long, and they can spend a turn to either search a room or to move up to 40 meters. They automatically roll to detect traps, secrets, treasures and enemies during their movement.

The mithril key will be used to open any locked doors, as Urist assures the others it fits every lock in the hideout. It will also be used to lock any doors they go through as they leave cleared rooms.

There are two doors into the Fantasmagorium, the front entrance and the gift shop exit to the side. Which one will they use to enter? I make a d2 roll, 1 is front entrance 2 is gift shop. I get a 2. Gift shop it is. That’s Area E9 on the book’s map.

We’ll assume the party managed to get here without incident, as I want to get the main event started. They sneak up to the door and Jania casts Glass Wall on it (all related tests succeed). She immediately sees that the door is boarded up, and though the boards block her vision, she can see there are people milling about in there.

Still riding on their Stealth success, the party instead goes around to the front door, where Jania drinks a vial of Paut and tries Glass Wall again. This door is unblocked and there seems to be no one on the other side, so they quietly unlock it and enter. And now we’re really on.

Turn 1

The door leads to a small empty anteroom with an open door to the left and a grand passage to the front, leading to a hall full of exhibits. Daylight spills in from the opened front door, but further in the interior is dim. Jade and Art activate and begin wearing their previously purchased light vials.

The party enters and Jania and Art quickly check the small side room. Art of all people immediately spots a few coins and a ring half-buried by the dust on the floor, and Jania scoops them up. She can sense the ring is magical but will await until they’re out before doing any further analysis.

Turn 2

The whole group proceeds to the big round room (E3 on the map). It’s full of skeletons and crumbling taxidermied animals posed in menacing ways, and a midling quality fresco full of monsters adorns one of the walls. Before they can examine the place further, two of those skeletons, which look like they belonged to very large apes, animate and attack!

Jania quickly hides behind Arcturus as the two large skeletons charge the group, flailing their clubs and limbs around. One engages Urist, and the two become locked in combat. The other engages Arthur, who parries the skeletal arm swinging the club.

The wrestler holds fast and uses the leverage to deliver a devastating kick to the monster’s rib cage, all but shattering it. Jade finishes it off by decapitation.

Urist continues to defend himself against the remaining skeleton as every other PC closes in on it. Rosalia steps to its flank and hits its left leg with her saber, causing the creature to wheel around to attempt to hit her and lose its balance, making it easy prey for the rest of the party.

They take a moment to breathe and decide on their next move.

Turn 3

There are three doors leaving this room, aside from the one they came in, and only the “map west” door is open. Our want to clear the place of Asmodeans and so they decide to move through the open door and lock it behind them, going through every room in the complex.

This leads them to a large exhibit of marine animals. It’s full of skeletons both mounted and accidental, as it used to contain several aquariums with live specimens that dried out decades ago. There doesn’t appear to be anyone here, so the group takes the open passage to “map north” (to area E5).

(GM: They wouldn’t have met the undead ningyos here since they only rise at night, but I decided to remove them anyway. This filler figth is an awkard fit for GURPS.)

Turn 4

The party moves into Area E5, the Insect Exhibit. There are many terrariums here filled with ruined environments and the shells of dead bugs.

There’s also a bunch of taxidermied giant insects mounted around the place, including a giant spider that reaches almost to the ceiling. And a dessicated dead body wearing Asmodean armor with its skin full of red welts fallen by a broken terrarium on the north wall.

The party doesn’t have time to speculate any more before the eight juvenile giant spiders responsible for his death scuttle from under the furniture and move to attack them.

(GM: The book calls these Scarlet Spiders. Here, they’re Big Spiders from DF Monsters p.32. They’re actualy quite a bit more dangerous than the originals, but I feel this might be a better challenge for our DF delvers.)

The spiders are quite large, and reddish in color. Starving, they charge the party right away, attempting to bite them, though the PCs largely fend off this initial clumsy assault. Jade kills a spider with her sword, while Arcturus squeezes another to death, but the creatures prove too agile for the rest of the party to hit just yet.

With the spiders stuck in, their attacks become more careful and precise, forcing our heroes to retreat to avoid their bites. There isn’t a lot of room amid the terrarium displays, so they cannot keep doing this for long. One of the remaining spiders manages to briefly jump on Arcturus’ back and bite him, but its fangs fail to penetrate his scale armor. Whew! Before any of the others can get lucky, however, the party manages to kill them all. Most of the work is done by Jade’s sword and Art’s stompy boots.

Turn 5

The party spends the next two minutes searching the room. Jania finds out that the spiders likely came from the shattered terrarium to the north. There are traces of a long-term stasis effect on it, something so expensive to set up the wonders if it wasn’t the reason the Fantasmagorium went bankrupt. It held a very large amount of giant spider eggs, which have all hatched.

The newborn spiderlings were probably responsible for killing the Asmodean cleric on the floor. And then they spent a while eating each other until only the eight survivors were left, having reached a larger size. She doesn’t know, and doesn’t particularly care, why the Asmodeans in the building chose to leave their dead buddy lying there. All she cares is he has plenty of loot.

A comemorative Fantasmagorium gold-plated medal clutched in his hand, a money purse, a scroll belt with several magical scrolls, and a suit of armor that pings her magic sense. She takes the scrolls, and makes a mental note to come back later and take the armor.

(GM After conversion, the souvenir medal is worth $250, and and the money is 19 silver coins ($380). The scroll belt is the one from Adventurers: $60, 0.5kg holds 10 scrolls. The scrolls are all universal and charged: Panic (Spells p. 55, 1-hex radius, $400); Bravery (Spells p. 53, 2-hex radius, $400); Curse (1 point, Spells p. 51, $300); Deathtouch (2d, DF spells. p 20, $200).)

Turn 6

The party resumes exploration, heading east through Area E6. Urist knows the entrance to the Many Steps Monastery is below the statue of Aroden prominently displayed here, but the PCs decide to leave this for later. They know there’s a large group of Asmodeans on this level and they want to clear it before going down.

They proceed to area E7, a wax museum with statues of varying quality. One of them is of Professor Mangvuhne, the infamous Temple Hill Slasher who was found out and executed 116 years ago. They can only tell because of the name plate, as the statue’s face was mostly disfigured.

They notice some movement in the rooms ahead, so they stop for a while to prepare.

Turn 7

Jania takes the opportunity to search the room and notices that the remaining eye on Mangvuhne’s face seems to be some kind of worked semiprecious stone, so she spends a bit of time removing it. It’s a work of art, and worth a pretty penny.

She then decides to spend her newly acquired Deathtouch scroll here, casting it on her cane to save time in the fight ahead. The rest of the party all prepares their weapons, and they begin the process of sneaking to area E8.

(GM: At this point I prepared the enemies for areas E8 to E10 because this is going to turn into a major slugfest with all of them if combat breaks out at any of those areas.)

Turn 8

Jania sneaks ahead, and manages to spot two of the zombies in area E8 without being noticed. She doesn’t spot the others because they’re off in the little side room to the left, on the other side of the wall she’s hiding behind. Still, she signals the rest of the party that there are enemies ahead.

They also know there are more enemies on the room after that, so Jade guesses it’s time to go loud. Urist casts Armor, giving himself an extra +2 DR, and they march forward. The zombies see them coming, but don’t seem interested in leaving their assigned room. The fight starts as soon as our heroes enter, and the PCs spot the extra three zombies as soon as that happens too. No one is surprised.

Rounds 1-3

The party begins fighting the zombies, who try to grapple and bite them in return, with little success. The sounds of the fighting alert the redactors next door, who quickly spot the battle through the open passage from their room and begin shouting to warn their boss about the intruders.

Raul, the cleric in charge of the redactors on this level, exits his office and yells at the monks to go kill the intruders already. They draw their knives and run towards the PCs, arriving within melee range after the party has destroyed four of the five zombies.

One of the redactors tries hitting Jade with a fancy kick, and gets his leg crippled for the trouble. She finishes him off right after this. Meanwhile, Raul struggles to catch up as he was both more heavily armored and farther away.

Rounds 4-6

The remaining three redactors do only a little better than the zombies. They’re more agile, but also more fragile. Jade quickly wounds one and kills another, with Urist finishing off the first one. The third manages to stab Jania and wound her, prompting Jade to do a Heroic Charge across the room and kill him. Raul has time to arrive and cast a Deathtouch spell on his mace, but Art begins grappling with him before he can swing it. He is now the only enemy left standing.

I could continue the fight here. Raul has a full energy pool and might be able to do some damage before the PCs take him down. But the original adventure emphasizes that he’s a coward. In Pathfinder he has 21 HP and surrenders unconditionally when he reaches 5. In GURPS, where he might be taken down with a single turn’s worth of lucky attacks, I think it makes sense for him to surrender right now. Plus there’s plenty more dungeon below and I want to get to that. So we can call the fight right away.

Turns 9-10

Raul surrenders and begs for his life. After some discussion, during which Rosalia uses her Healing Gem on Jania, they end up accepting the surrender. None of them like Asmodeans very much but they also don’t like killing surrendered opponents. The party strips him of his gear and possessions, which include a magic mace and a magical suit of armor, a gold unholy symbol, a bag of gems, and the ancient book he was studying in his office at Area E10.

The party ends up locking Raul in the office, after checking that he can’t escape through the boarded-up window. His gear and treasure they store behind the counter here, to take home later.

No one picks up his armor or weapons right now, as they don’t want to use gear festooned with Asmodean marks. They’re going to stash them in Area E9 for retrieval and “cleaning” after they’re done with this place.

Turn 11

Once again ready to proceed, the party returns to Area E6, where Urist uses the secret combination on the mechanism disguised by Aroden’s statue and opens up the stairs to the Many Steps Monastery.

This concludes this level of the dungeon, and this scene of the adventure. We’ll make a new one in our next post.

[Player] Loot Tally

  • Money:
  • 22 silvers ($440, 0.22kg)
  • 1 copper ($1, 0.01kg)
  • Ring of Swimming (+5 to Swim when worn, $2600, neg.)
  • Golden medal ($250, neg.)
  • Scroll Belt ($60, 0.5kg)
  • Charged universal scrolls:
    • Bravery, 2m radius ($400)
    • Curse, 1 point ($300)
    • Panic, 1m radius ($400)
  • Alabaster Snake Eye ($1500, neg.)
  • A Balanced Dwarven Mace with Puissance 1 ($5450, 2.5kg)
  • Magic Armor (brigandine chest, light cloth limbs, no helmet, Fortity 1 and Lighten 1; $4674, 11.7kg)
  • An unholy symbol worth $1000 as jewelry.
  • 8 onyxes, each worth $250, for a total of $2000 worth of gems.
  • A rare sacred text for the dead god Aroden, worth $1000, in the museum offices where he was working when the alarm was raised.