Solo 'Through Sunken Lands RPG', a Tilly and Moonwane adventure, session 6

 

Prolegomenon

In the last session we learned that the Southern Lands have been invaded by men of chaos or children of chaos as they are called in the Through Sunken Lands rule book, it describes them as  degenerate and twisted individuals, often crippled by rampant mutation and madness.

We then picked up a couple of possible threads which I may follow up, 

The tomb of Agellar in the plains of Aganderis, Tilly, Moonwane and Farhad, (as well as Whiskers), have been warned by an adventuring party not to stay on the east road, this group of adventures had been looking for the tomb but found only chaos men.  This is actually a mini adventure from Johnn Four's 5 room dungeon book (check out 

roleplayingtips.com) and if my party end up there I will run the adventure.

The second thread is the village in the south which has been over run by children of chaos, (according that is to the 7 soldiers my adventures met), although Tilly and the gang are heading in a different direction its possible something may happen to take them there sometime in the future.

So the game is starting to take a little more shape, and I expect thing to start and hot up.

I also found this picture whilst browsing for public domain images I could use on my blog and I thought it quite inspiring, an island medieval citadel, I hope to fit that in somewhere in this session.

Tools used in the session and other stuff.

We will be using the following toolkit for this session,

Through Sunken Lands and other adventures RPG

Zathrum 2.2 GM emulator

UNE for any NPC's that may come up
Randomlists.com for a few verbs if I need a hint to work out what is going on.

Any cave is a sandstorm

Using the desert encounter table in Further Afield I roll for desert encounter (3 in 6 chance),

 and d6 roll = 2.  I roll to see what the encounter is on a d6 = 5, sandstorm.  the party have to make a 

wisdom check to find cover d20 =10, they pass the wisdom check (needed 12 or less).

I then make a quick 1d4 table to find out what kind of cover they find, 1 = village, 2 = castle or fortress, 3 = cave, 4 = other terrain

I roll 3 on d4 = cave 

Rolling on Zathrum 2.2 theme table (roll d20=20) I get Capture, I also get a couple of random verbs from Randomlists.com, "continue" & "welcome".

The party continue east along the costal road, Farhad leads the way, he notices the wind is getting stronger and then he sees a large black cloud heading towards them, realising they are walking into a sandstorm he suggest they quickly head to the sea and they should find shelter there before they are engulfed in the storm.  Sure enough they find an entrance to a cave.

I ask the oracle if the cave entrance is large enough to get the camels in as well, I roll 14 so 'Yes(if)'.

I ask if the camels are reluctant to go into the cave, I roll 13 so 'Yes(but)'

The cave entrance is just large enough to get the camels and equipment in if they bend their legs, the camels are less than happy about entering the cave but just then the sandstorm hits and the camels are even less keen to be out in the storm so they all enter the cave.  Although the sandstorm blocks out much of the daylight, the cave, although gloomy, is still light enough to see in.

I ask the oracle if there is anything else in the cave, roll 5 on d 20 = 'No(unless)'.

I ask the oracle if there is any other exit from the cave entrance, roll 18 so 'Yes(surprisingly)'.

Once inside the cave the party are surprised to find that is has been carved out of the rock by, possibly, human hands and there is a passageway, tall enough to lead the camels down in single file, on the opposite side of the cave wall from the entrance.  The cave seems to be empty unless something is to be found hidden in the passageway.

I am not sure how wise it will be for them to go down the passageway, so I get each of them to make a wisdom check, Moonwane only has a wisdom of 9 and rolls 18 on d 20 so he is keen to go down there, Tilly and Farhad have wisdom 12 and roll 3 and 11 so they both decide to stay put.  2 to 1 in favour of not exploring.

Although Moonwane is keen to carryon down the passageway to see where it leads, the others are not happy, Farhad points out that it would be unwise to leave the camels and equipment here and to take them down the passage would encumber them too much if attacked, better to make camp here and wait out the sandstorm,  Tilly agrees and says she can train her hand crossbows on the passageway entrance, if anything unfriendly pokes its head through she will let them have two bolts.  reluctantly Moon agrees and they settle down to rest, eat and wait.

I ask the oracle if anything comes out of the passageway, rolling 7 = 'No(if)', I am not sure what the (if) means so get two random verbs 'drum' and 'flood'.

I roll 1 d6 to see how many hours pass until the sandstorm passes over and get 4. 

As the storm subsides, Tilly thinks she can hear a drum beating outside, the camels also get a little restless and Whiskers also seems uneasy.  Tilly cautiously looks outside and sees a small force of foot soldiers and camel riders coming towards the cave.  They soon realise that there are about thirty well armed men on foot and about a dozen on camels, the drumbeat is getting closer and it becomes apparent to them that the soldiers are heading directly for the cave entrance.  Moonwane suggests that as nothing or no one has come out of the passage, it may be an idea for them to leave the camels and just see where the passageway leads.  Farhad is the first to point out that the passageway is indeed empty if you do not count the rising sea water that is suddenly starting to pour of of it and it it is rising.  With this the camels panic and push their way out into the open, instantly spotted by the soldiers.  There seems little Tilly, Moon, Farhad and Whiskers can do except follow the camels.

As they exit the cave they find themselves surrounded and with no chance of escape of fighting their way out, they surrender themselves to the armed men.  relieved of their weapons, they are taken towards the shore, as they round the hills that form the cave complex, an island fortress comes into view and the leader of the soldiers opens his arms wild towards it.

"Welcome to my island citadel, we have a short wait until the tide recedes before we can enter but while we wait, you can tell me who you are and your reason for being here".

And that is all I have time for this session, so we leave it there until session 7, the fortress of Tavin.