Dungeon23 - Wk 18 - The Death of Brog in the Black Maw
I've started populating and keying Level 6. This is going to represent a definite shift in the dungeon, the players are halfway through and things are about to get... interesting.
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As I'm building my Dungeon23, I'm also running it! It definitely keeps me motivated, who knows when the PCs are going to get brave and dive down deep in pursuit of fame and fortune?!
Brog's player, Greg, is a fun player and writer and he'd written three journal entries from Brog's POV. Submitted for your pleasure are the final two entries of Brog, and his death notice. If you read any of them, do read the death notice!
Death Notice - A Letter to Brog's Maa
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Brog's Journal - Entry #3
Well we shut the door! Simply shut the door! Who wants to face screaming walls?
Thankfully not this group of loll’pops. We had had enough-- enough of raving arguing maniacs, of gore rooms, and underground pirate venders, and pools that whisper to you, enough of shat rooms, and the bedroom of an invisible bunghole who cuts your stuff, and pit traps room and now this... a room of screaming faces in the wall.
No, no, no, no.
We went back through the pit trap room... back through the bung-hole room... back through the shat room... back, back, back... up the stairs out of the place.
Once outside we found we had lost the male-slattern and Bora. Now where could they be? WHAT could they be doing? Oh Maa, I don’t wanna think about it.
Someone came up with idea of checking out town so...
We-- the elf-dude-dudette, the Richman’s Mistake, and me-- we all went over the hill to a ramshackle town-- “Oile Messe”. A shanty-ass town of drift wood planked buildings and dusty three dusty streets. We looked about and were pleasantly ignored.
Found a bar. Talked to a bar keeper.
Found a walled manor house. Talked to the "mayor's" orc security guards.
Found a healer’s shop. Talked to one of the town's "healer / potion seller". The other healer’s shop was a “temple” so we ignored it.
And finally, found the “law” of the place. Went into the police office and stuttered to the most beautiful littling that is also the town's sheriff-- a “kill you focking dead kind of littling”. [Ed note: The Sheriff is actually a halfling sized woman of 18 Charisma. And utterly deadly!]
Maa, not much to tell. Just learned the obvious-- this is a shat prison town, run by a shat prison mayor and that if you get over 1000 gp then talk to the sheriff about getting a ship home.
Also, shat, don't trust anyone.
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Brog's Journal - Entry #4
After the town-tour, Richman’s Mistake suggested we go to the general store. We went, me, Mistake-y, and... what the fock happened to the elf-dude-dudette? Who the fock is this? A holy man? I guess he’d come with us onto the island and I must’ve missed him.
Well, we went to the store, talked to the tall slooooowwwww talking manager-- a neat freak freak-- and his malformed mouse-minded giant assistant. Evidently Mouse-mind had been like us. He had gone down into the dungeon three times, came back with gold, and on the fourth trip to the forth level had found some cultist and come back this intellectual-midget.
Well we bought more oil, made arrangements to sleep the night (Maa, can you believe I’ve not been here ONE DAY!). For a gold piece, we all got locked into a room with a fire and Mouse-mind as our teddy-bear.
Before falling asleep, I tried to get to know the new (old?) guy some, but he’s a Drumbler, Maaa, you know like Cory Calver of the south Bowlanders, the drunk one who always mumbles. A drumbler-- a drunk mumbler. So Drumbler drumled and I nodded and...
But none of that really matters because the next morning we went back to the dungeon and walked to the right instead of the left and found a cross-intersection and one of the dungeon branches was a dead end and anther was a dead end piled with clothes and right across from that was a room and in the room was a bunch of naked bodies all gored in cuts and dead and dead and in the corner were the two mumbling idiots that we first met covered in blood looking guilty. I greeted them the only way you greet idiots in a corner by saying, “HEY! Hey, ur there, loll’pops what the fock you doing! Get over here!”
That’s when they started babbling about the “darkness” and then tried to hide a black candle and, and... just normal crazy dungeon ramblings and doing. So, I said to Richman’s Mistake, maybe he could make good use of his arsonist ambitions. He, in his open-shirt arrogance, disagreed and thought neck slitting was better. But before we could decide which of us were in the right we were unceremoniously interrupted.
Raving-mad One and Raving-mad Two decided-- for no reason-- to take that exact moment to run across the bodies of the room with their knives out. It happened fast, Maa-- Richman’s Mistake threw the oil, I shot an arrow, Drunbler flailed and the Raver-one and two stabby-stabbed.
The oil missed and hit the far wall.
My arrow missed and hit the oil-slick far wall.
The flail flailed and hit the air above everyone’s head.
Stabby missed.
Stabbed stabbed.
Maa, the sound of metal ripping flesh and scraping the sternum deep through the bone-- not pleasant.
Richman’s Mistake went down without a sound, with this goofy grin on his expression.
I took to ax and Drumbler to flail. After two minutes of blade and blunt wrestle, a raver went down. The other, outnumbered, wounded, ran over the pile of bodies across the room and out the door.
Richman’s Mistake laid dead.
We took the body out of the dungeon.
We took it-- him, my prison friend-- to the beach. We buried Caius under a pile of rocks. Drumbler drumbled some prayer and I just stood there staring out to the sea. Maa, why does everyone I know fall dead around me?
The new weight of richman’s 80 gold pieces and his spell book felt heavy in my pockets.
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Postmortem (The Entry That Never Was)
Dear Miss or Mrs. (one can’t be too presumptive about marital status these days, especially concerning how lecherous how men have been known to be and the high rate of widowhood said actions cause) Maa Toelander, I apologize for my reticence to send you this missive.
Darling, I feel, as one mother to another, the dire obligation to inform you of news so delicate that silence in the matter would cause you more consternation than a quick succumbing to the melancholy that this news will surely engender. I, my words on the matter, will surely cause you displeasure, and for that I am truly regretful to be the bearer of such preponderance of bad news. Darling, Maa Toelander, it is my unfortunate fate in this cruel life to inform you that your son, Brog, is no longer among mortal men, big or small.
Now, when I heard such rumors, I did my own speculation and inspection of the situation; I interrogated said party members who bore witness to the rumors of said reality to confirm or deny the validity of such stark assertions. Your littling, though gruff and unsavory upon the eyes as he was, had an endearing quality of some kind. Between grunts and growls I glimpsed what must’ve been a full set of teeth, quite an uncommon sight in this day and age especially among a littling of his age.nbsp; That I bear the burden as his last orator of his eulogy is a testimony to Only a mother’s tough love to teach such vital oral hygiene would cause me to lift this gruff mask I’m forced to wear, to take time to chronicle a condemned criminal’s last moment.
As confessed by his corrupt cohorts, your son’s last moments were opening a chest in a hidden storage that he and them had broken into. Yes, ma’am, I know that such an extinguishment from this mortal coil can be seen by some as anticlimactic or, to the cynical, ironic, but one such as myself, who has seen all manner of skinning and disembowelment of men knows that that there was a merciful way to gather the ghost.
Evidently after having a conniption of chopping the air and touching his nose and telling his companions to “be careful” that “traps abound” your littling stepped up to a stack of chests, not looking, still lecturing, used his sword blade, jammed it into the chest lid’s lip and--
Well, Maa Toelander there was puff and the puff became nothing and, well... enclosed is his toe.
Sincerely,
Sheriff Annabelle Slisindiser
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- Levels: 8 (+ 4 sublevels)
- Rooms: 370 (0 added in wk 18)
- Levels 1 - 5: mapped/keyed.
- Levels 6: mapping completed/keying in progress
- Levels 9, 10 connected
- 4 sublevels mapped/keyed
- Town: Created, 7 locations/NPCs keyed.
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