OotA: Ep. 2: The Oozing Temple

Last week, me and my small current group found ourselves behind our coffee mugs yet again, ready to pick up our DnD action where we left it, two weeks ago. The group were in serious trouble, as two rivalling bands of demons had crashed the prison escape scene and started a minor air combat inside the large cave.

Jimjar, Deep Gnome Gambler

The drow captors were suddenly too busy to mind their prisoners, so the rather large group of prisoners decided to act, in the belief that this was the signal from the friendly drow who had let them out of their cage. They jumped down the waterfall and found themselves submerged in ice cold water. Soon afterward, a terrible shout echoed in their minds: ”Flesh for the Faceless Lord!”. It came from an Ooze, while it suddenly attacked Jimjar the scoundrel, by the shoreline.

I decided to fill out the two-man group by handing out the NPC prisoners, so I had prepared small monster stats for the players to use. I figured that the players could thus decide their own encounter difficulty, and be rewarded by the XP system accordingly. The more characters they would throw into combat, the less XP they would get. It worked out fine!

The shoreline Ooze was no big problem, but the players learned that equipment soon deteriorates when struck against or by an acidic Ooze. They continued into the Underdark, headed for Blingdenstone, and left the drow outpost to its destiny. Far above, they heard the battle continue.

Travelling to Blingdenstone takes a while, so we had the opportunity to test the survival-in-the-underdark system. I am sorry to say that it seemed way more fun on paper than it was to play out at the table. We rolled 1d6+1 for amount of days travelled, followed by encounter and survival dice. I would then improvise the foraging and hope for something interesting to happen. It didn't, so I decided to add the Oozing Temple dungeon to keep things interesting.

Just your friendly Gelatinous Cube

The group was suddenly caved in, with only a small passage out. It led to an abandoned temple, and after a couple of more Ooze fights, the characters figured out that the temple was slowly filling with water, and that the air was quite difficult to breathe. Further in, they encountered a friendly Gelatinous Cube and excellently bartered for a magic mace and some coins. 

Later on, when the shield dwarf guide had misstepped into a trap containing a dangerous black pudding, the friendly Gelatinous Cube came around and helped out by engulfing one half of the pudding. The other two mini-puddings were soon cut down (neither of them hit anything, which would probably have had disastrous results) and the group continued on. They discovered a cavern containing the water source and were just heading into the temple's main chamber when we decided to quit for the night.

Next time, we'll find out if they escape a second predicament and whether the characters ever reach the relative haven of Blingdenstone.