My home campaign has continued its quest for the Rod of Seven Parts. With the first part in hand, they discovered the second part was possibly in the land of Ket; which was the place with which their nation was at war and why they were seeking the Rod in the first place!

As it turned out, the second part wasn’t in Ket! Instead, it was on the far side of the nation that they had to travel to, and this took them a couple of sessions as they made their way through the forest and then avoided the patrols.

Finally they entered the mountain pass leading to Perrenland, and there attempted to find the location of the next segment of the Rod, which I had placed in the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.

I have written about the caverns before, in my reviews of early D&D adventures. Tsojcanth is an unusual place, which very much emphasises exploration and combat, with most of the monsters brand new to the D&D game at the time. These days, they’re more familiar to players, though a few are still rarely seen.

I am running this campaign with the fifth edition rules, but I am taking cues from the older game. Thus it was, as the characters first entered the cave, they came up against a golem that was immune to all but a few spells and most of their weapon attacks.

Yes, it was the terrible clay golem, as I described a few weeks ago! I did not realise when I wrote that description that they would face one! Fate smiled on me.

Unusually, the Lost Caverns have no random encounters, and so the characters were able to rest whenever they wanted. This led the adventure to feel more modern in some respects lots, with attrition rarely playing a part and individual encounters often quite dangerous!

The exploration of the Upper (or Lesser) Caverns took two sessions, played on Roll20. We will return to the Greater Caverns this Friday.

The characters are now between 10th and 12th level, and the players are enjoying their competence! I am feeling confident enough to now add a few magic items and spells from earlier editions. And so, the spell of phase door has been found by the party’s magic-user. I mean, Wizard.

What’s phase door, you ask? It is a fun spell which allows the caster to create a user only version of passwall, which lasts for some half dozen uses. I am curious to see what use they put it to!

I have been playing up the darkness of the caverns. One rule I am making more use of, is that dark vision in darkness gives a penalty to perception checks. That also means a -5 penalty to passive Perception. The players soon realised that a light source was needed as I kept on ambushing them.

Of course, the lesser caverns have galleries of bats who are disturbed by the light, and then fly around causing distractions. And yes, I do send monsters after the characters at that time!

One thing I need to investigate is the expected gold rewards at Tier 3. Gold in old Dungeons & Dragons is quite plentiful as it was needed to advance. There is less, perhaps by a factor of 10, in this edition, so it is one of the elements I need to pay more attention to.

But all of this has been good fun. The players have outwitted Dao, overcome Golems and a Gorghimera – that last a terrifying combination of Gorgon and Chimera that petrified two characters! – and braved the waters of the upper caverns to find treasure, magic and, now, the way down.

The second part of the Rod of Seven Parts lies below! Will they discover it?