Well this was officially the least populated D&D Day ever so far. It was more or less us and one other group--and both were apparently whole player groups. We had one new guy who we don't play with regularly. I was really hoping for an opportunity to show 4e off to a bunch of people. Hopefully other places had better turnout. We were outnumbered by the Yu-Gi-Oh players. Ouch.
Anyway I'd flipped through the module, Into the Shadowhaunt with my wife and a friend at a restaurant. We started figuring out how to retool it for D&D Day. I wanted all the characters to have backstories, I wanted the fights to be engaging and to showcase 4e mechanics, and I wanted to showcase the two main story threads: the lonesome spirit of the Shadowhaunt, and the griefstricken silversmith and the children they'd lost. I also wanted to play up the history of the place and the NPCs mentioned in the pregame knowledge skill rolls and make them pertinent to the game.
I set the game in Fallcrest, gave the pregens story hooks to introduce them to the region and to involve them personaly in the adventure.
The adventure began on an old road headed up into the Gray Downs region where Staci's ritual had indicated his kids were. On the road they ran into Bybee, the local beggar a crossbow bolt in his thigh and another in his shoulder, assailed by kobolds (one leader with full hit points, and another five minions)--one of whom had a noose around his neck, . After they save him, he gives them the information normally given for the Streetwise skill check--while scavenging for berries and small game he'd seen the malifactors, two big brutes and a scary looking elf, head into a section of forbidding forest known as the Shadowhaunt by locals. I ran the encounter on
The PC's head to the entrance of the Mausoleum. The half-elf is able to mist step her way inside and remains unnoticed in the shadows. She sees all the sarcophagi are completely intact and hugely valuable, despite the general ruin of the surrounding structure. Next the cleric comes bursting in. The spirit manifests, and I give a physical description of it. The cleric, not wanting to take much time to let it do whatever it's going to do, attempts to turn it. Rolls a one, and staring into the creature's visage, stammers helplessly. The others make their way inside and the spirit tells them to leave, that they are unwelcome here, that these halls belong to the honored dead. The characters think back to the information given them about the Gray Downs about the Dragonslayer Vendar, and wisely attribute this spirit as one of that line of warlords. They appeal to the loss of his son, and tell him that they are looking for two young boys who disappeared. With that the spirit seems lost to inner musings and discorporates.
I decided to change the entry room a lot. I thought the puzzle was too obscure while prepping the game and did not want things to grind to a halt. Besides, hadn't the elf and his goons already been through here? Obviously. So I had the obelisk gimmied open. The locking mechanism broken and the heavy scrape marks even more notable. Instead of the deeds of the 20 (6?) guys interred here, there was simply a warning in ancient common, elven, and dwarven--to know what you seek for before you seek after it. The beautifully intact and valuable sarcophagi were illusions linking to a number of traps that thankfully none of the players messed with. After seeing the spirit and getting a little hospitality through clever talking they were anxious to head on in.
The passages below were the real crypt, where instead of trapped illusions, the real sarcophagi of the Kaius lords lay enscribed with their names and deeds (I printed up a custom color print of this section of the map and glued it on, with an additional six sarcophagi). This section was flooded in my version and stunk of huge amounts of lamp oil. People made their passive perception test, which revealed some of the hidden mercenaries. I hated the idea of having this battle boil down to just two hobgoblins. 4e is about big huge battles after all, right? So I gave them a third hobgoblin leader--a big one with some ogrish ancestory and a cool facial scar. I also packed four goblin minions into the encounter.
The hidden figures are atop the sarcophagi lids. The PC's suspect something awful in the water and are loathe to go in. When none of them take the bait and wade into the water, an infuriated goblin tosses in the lamp and lights up the oil slick over the floodwater across the entire chamber. PC's and goblinoids hop from sarcophagas to sarcophagas, having to make athletics checks to avoid tumbing into the fire. Likewise anyone damaged by an attack has to roll acrobatics to balance themselves on the slick masonry to avoid a spill. At the end of each round of initiative I roll to see if the oil fire begins to die out (first failed roll I drop the bonus of it's attack versus save, second round it goes out). Once the fires go out, the remaining hobgoblins who had bottlenecked the PC's get surrounded and die in several rounds of furious fighting.
The tunnels appear to be fresh excavation, with support scaffolding and digging tools all around. Bodies are there too, but when examined by the ranger, it appears that the dead workers are entirely skeletonized--seeming years older than the comparitively recent dig site. They get to the devil door and see the light and hear the kids beyond. Across the front of the double doors is a placard that reads in old phonetic runes "Tersinis".
Suddenly something drops from the cieling, wings unfolding. It's a shadowhunter bat. They roll initiative, but instead of rolling initiative, the bat folds its wings around itself and blends seamlessly into the darkness. A couple of folks roll natural 20s on initiative though, so I let them take a shot before it's totally gone. One hits. Then it's gone! They can feel it fluttering around, but it's totally invisible. People are freaked. It takes its suprise action, slashing the half-elf wizard with it's razor tail. With this, the dwarf who failed his first shot uses his big awesome attack and levels the thing with a giant flying leap and hammer blow. The ranger sneaks forward to spy into the next passage to see if the guys involved in whatever ritual have heard them. As he pokes his head out, all he sees clearly is an osyluth! He swallows his tongue and sneaks back to the group with big bug eyes. Some time passes and there's no pursuit, though, and the voices of the desparate kids inside are starting to get pretty insistant. They roll various knowledge skills and figure out that this was likely a private lab in some sunken Bael Turathi stronghold, and that the infernal cleverness of whoever warded it was likely designed to mock and detain them--like a modern system password. Finally they stumble onto rearranging the letters. "Sinister!" The doors unlock. The kids inside warn them that the wizard who bound them in the glyph warned them that releasing it would cause their deaths. Before they can much worry about that though, the heroes open BOTH doors. There's a distinct "click" from the right door. "Sinister means...left." And the passage begins to rumble. A giant crash of earth and stone blocks off the tunnel back. Uh-oh. More rumbling. Now it turns out several of the PC's have ritual skill. They study the circle that means certain death, presumably, and use their aptitude with ritual to attempt to reverse it. Everyone who rolls combined get a result higher than 40 so the two statues that would have animated instead crumble to dust. The PC's are elated. Then the first trap goes off again and lands a huge pile of rocky debris in the middle of the passage. They run. As they get to the tunnel they hear two things. One is a secret passage open and some sounds of people escaping. The other is a small army of skeletons rattling their way toward them. One of the players had already rigged a rope to trip anyone going down the tunnel, and the first skeleton totally falls for it. The wizard, cleric and ranger unleash a ton of their blast area effects and blast them all to bony shrapnel (minions! yay!).
They run in and apparently the elven wizards thugs have abandoned him through the still open secret passage. He meanwhile is stuck attempting to finish his ritual with the big devil in the center of the room. As the PC's burst into the room, with a look of vindictive hate--victory robbed from him, the elf begins the process of undoing the gylph around the devil, freeing it. They can't possibly fight a creature like that! They have to stop him! Roll Initiative! The cleric shoots off blast of super augmented lancing light. It misses. Now it's just the warlock left going before him, and he's got all his hit points left. She uses her power to suck an enemy into a waking nightmare. She blows through his Will save like it weren't even there, and uses the push effect of it to have him scramble back--into the ritual circle!!
The devil greedily munches him apart. Then, discovering it is still trapped within the circle, it attempts to talk to the party. They fill him full of arrows until, helplessly and desparately trapped, it dies--vowing revenge with it's last gurgly devil-breath.
So yeah. That's that. It went great. It ran longer than I expected (about four hours). I just wish more people could have been there...
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GC, sounds like you ran a great game. We had two tables at the store I went to here in the Springs, but the second DM didn't show, so I wound up running the adventure as I read it. And I still haven't read a PHB, so I was making a few things up as I went along, and probably for the worse. The party saw the locked door in front of them and an open passage to the left, and so went right for the BBEG. When the statues showed up, they got pretty well toasted, Cleric and Wizard killed, 1 Fighter down and out, carried out by the other Fighter and the Rogue. Not a TPK, but close, and definitely a win for the bad guys. One less point of light, I suppose.
Well, as one of the players in Grim's game I have to throw you some props for handling the new system as well as you did. Not an easy task to be sure. Certainly a good game and enjoyable afternoon.