My Greyhawk 4E campaign continued on Friday with the group continuing to explore the ruined Moathouse near the Village of Hommlet. They’d just discovered a priestess examining some artefacts which the group recognised as being part of the cult of Tharizdun, and they were unsure of what else they would find. One door from the room they were in led to an empty room that had held the skeletons they’d just fought and, as the group didn’t search for secret doors, that just left one door left to go through. It brought them into a room where demonic gnolls waited on guard.
Preparing for these sessions has mostly consisted of looking for appropriate stat blocks. I’m a subscriber to Wizards’ D&D Insider, so finding them in the Adventure Tools/Monster Builder is pretty simple. Yes, I could design my own but, when you get down to it, I’m much happier running sessions than designing monsters. So, I type in “gnoll” into the search engine and let it find what the official designers have done. It probably won’t surprise anyone that most gnolls are quite low-level, certainly a lot lower level than the 24th level this campaign is set at! So I just change the level of the gnolls and the Monster Builder does the maths for me. Well, most of it; I generally go in and adjust the damage codes as often it doesn’t convert between old and new damages (pre and post Essentials). The gnolls of the original adventure became demonic gnolls – which fit pretty well into what I’m writing.
I should also mention that, despite the maths of 4E presenting a world where there’s a big difference between 1st and 24th level characters, I envisage a world where the difference is much less than that. In a lot of ways, this campaign assumes a flatter, more D&D Next-type world. So, despite the gnolls and other monsters being presented at 24th level (or thereabouts) so they’re appropriate threats for the characters, if a 5th level group had run into them, they would have been something like 9th level threats. For this campaign, I use monsters for their narrative purpose, not because the world dictates they should be a particular level and should only be faced by characters of that level.
Two gnolls aren’t really much a threat for my characters, but an Abyssal Ghoul was also lurking just out of sight in an annex off the main chamber. As three of the characters engaged the gnolls in melee, that ghoul rushed forward, surprising Martin’s psion, who was on his own using his controller’s powers to lock down the gnolls. The ghoul had a very unusual attack – even if it missed, it was still able to grab and drag away the character it attacked. Normally I’d say that was bad design, but it felt right for this encounter. Martin was dragged out of sight of the other players, who suddenly had to choose between fighting the gnolls or going to the aid of their teammate.
In theory, this campaign has six players, but it’s dreadfully common that two of them can’t make it. This session we had Rich’s paladin, Greg’s slayer, Paul’s monk and Martin’s psion present – no leader providing healing. The group didn’t miss him much, as they were well supplied with healing surges and the opposition wasn’t too difficult. (One way of providing easier encounters is not to lower the level of the monsters but just their numbers). Still, the gnolls could do a lot of damage, as Rich discovered. Paul’s monk bounded away and aided Martin fight off the ghoul. Martin managed to break its hold and used force grasp to hold it immobile so it couldn’t grab him again. Once that complication was dealt with, the group were able to easily defeat the gnolls.
A pillar was discovered to be hollow and the group made their way down the shaft to an old crypt, where more ghouls waited for the group. With the ghouls dragging the characters into alcoves, it made it a fairly amusing fight. Martin’s psion has a really insane power called dishearten: when he spends two power points, he gives all creatures in a burst 1 a -8 to their next attack and a -6 to all further attacks. He can use it a lot of times – enough so that I’ve learnt to spread out my monsters if I want them to have any chance at all. He doesn’t hit with it all the time, but he hits enough. That was enough to put paid for the ghouls.
It seemed that the ghouls had dug their way into the earth, creating many mazey passages. I ruled that Martin was able to find his way through them easily (as part of the insight that his Epic Destiny – Godmind – gives him). That led the party to what the ghouls had unearthed – a large square pillar sacred to Tharizdun, showing his four aspects. The group were able to loot the items from it, three of which were items used in worship of the deity. Those three were destroyed by the group, as they sought to deny his cultists any possible advantage. The obelisk itself could not be destroyed.
Returning to the ghoul’s chamber, the group took the more regular exit and came upon some stairs which they chose to avoid for the moment – which just gave the lone ghoul lurking there a chance to sneak up behind them and grab one PC; its last mistake!
The group then came across some cultists, who they slew, and found a journal entry detailing the cultists’ activities in this place. Although I’m running the adventure from my original copy of the adventure, which I bought when it first came out, I’ve also bought a PDF version of the adventure from dndclassics.com for prepping purposes. As I’d neglected to photocopy the handout of the journal, I instead loaded the adventure onto my tablet, found the proper page, and handled the tablet to the players to peruse. (I also use the tablet to store all the monster stat blocks… I’m creating a big Word document on Skydrive with all the stats).
Further passages led to gnolls (soon slain) and back to the original chamber through a secret door. That left two escapes for the characters: through a passageway blocked by a wall of stone, or down the stairs. Interestingly, the group opted to go through the wall, using a power that allowed them all to phase through it – although it would allow them to return until they’d had a long rest.
As it turned out, that led to a ruined portion of the caverns where now only a pair of cockatrices laired. Several magic items, including some ritual scrolls, were found amongst the ruins, and a passageway outside also beckoned. The group took it, pleased to be back outside once again. However, they weren’t done with the moathouse; instead of returning to Hommlet, the group went back inside and made their way to the stairway they hadn’t explored. There they found the great excavation and obelisk mentioned in the journal entry. Two priests guarded the entranceway, but both were overcome easily. Making their way down was made much easier by the “lifts” the cultists had constructed, and soon enough the group were awed by the scale of the great discovery beneath.
Fully two-hundred feet tall, the great obelisk was perched on an impossible point on top of a pyramid beneath it. The group found a mad priest there, driven insane by the symbol of the Black Sun, inscribed on the nearby rock. His sudden attack on the group was not unexpected, but they found him a difficult opponent due to his ability to fly and his madness-fuelled magic, some of which caused Greg to attack his friends! Once he was slain, Martin found a gateway from the Far Realm, which he lacked the magic to seal. (In the adventure, Grell guard the obelisk, but as it was running late, I chose to omit them and just run the discovery part of the encounter). All of this seemed most unholy and somehow sacred to Tharizdun, but the party was unable to cause greater disruption to it than to seal off the pit once again.
We ended the session there, with the group having finished the Moathouse section of the adventure. We should certainly have Adam’s bard with us for the next session; the next session should see a fair deal of role-playing in Hommlet, as further activities of the cult come to light.