I’ve been wanting to run The Caverns of Thracia for a while and finally have the opportunity and confidence, so I’m giving it a shot and posting here about it.

Rules and Tools

I’ll be running my own hack, As Above, So Below, and have so far just been grabbing monsters from the Cairn SRD. I gave my players access to the weird spellbooks from Lost Pages, in addition to the Cairn table and Maze rats generator.

We’re playing weekly using discord for voice, chat, and sharing images. Sometimes I’m on camera to talk with my hands or show off a cool T-shirt, lol.

Prep

I am notoriously bad at reading adventures before I run them, and this one is no different, lol. I have only read the first floor so far, but unlike my usual "process" I am taking fairly detailed notes, largely as an excuse to play around with Obsidian. Im following the, so far, natural separation of each area and breaking my notes down as such.

I’ll share my notes on each area Here

Characters

Jordsqueak

• Nomad. Hates Mom. Kicked out of his house. Hates Mom.

Brian Queeber

• Astrologist. Robbed by a client and now seeks to regain his fortune.
• Spellbook: Comprehension – The caster may understand any written or spoken language or understand the true meaning of poems or riddles. Lasts for 1hr/L.
• Didn’t start with a weapon, borrowed a crowbar.

Billhelm

• Magician. Educated. Family lost fortune and he has fled the shame.
• Learned Thracian in fancy private schools.
• Spellbook: Compulsion – by placing a marked fetish in the targets home, and then whispering a falsehood to the target, the target may be convinced of the irrefutable truth of that falsehood no matter what evidence is shown. A Will save negates the effect entirely.

Flax the Eel

• Petty Thief, raised religious.
• Learned to read Thracian in religious school.

The Setup

I’m staring a fresh "campaign," for lack of a better term, and neither the players nor myself felt like spending a session fooling about in town and on the road. Plenty of time for that later. To that end, I re-skinned one of the more "hooky" rumors as a easy setup to get us straight to the dungeon without any politicking.

The Call to Adventure

• The recently appointed Magistrate Swargelas is offering to pay well for Artifacts from the ruins in the mountains. He is looking to make a name for himself in his new post and is sure that the right artifacts will draw the attention of the Autarch.
• He has hired the PCs to delve the dungeon and will pay them for any artifacts returned.
• He has taken care of their travel to town.

Region

• Rocky wooded lowlands to the South of the Mountains of the Moon.
• Nominally under the control of the far away Autarch Gehennos, a mysterious sorcerer who rules over a declining and overstretched Empire.
• Monsters, best men, and bandits stalk this sparsely populated borderland.

Town – Athelborg

• A frontier town built of Stone blocks stacked on top of ancient ruins. The older construction is superior in every way.
• New magistrate is trying to throw his weight around.
• townsfolk are hearty with tan complexions and dark features.
• some small farms.
• plenty of empty untilled fields
• hunters and trappers sell pelts and meat in town
• Ruins in the mountains are known of. Animal men are said to attack those who stray to close.

Session 1:

Town

We hand waived a tour of the town and gathering rumors. Some rations were purchased and rumors distributed.

(I totally flubbed the rumors and assumed a 4 meant 4 rumors, instead of none. More info is always better though. Also happily only got one false rumor. I don’t like false rumors.)

Rumors:

Jordasqueak

• a remnant of an ancient pre-Human civilization may yet exist deep in the bowels of the earth.
• The rope bridges are rotted and unsafe. (false)
• Buried with a dead king is a powerful but evil sword.

Brian

• The Beast men are enslaving humans

Billhelm

• The leader of the beast-men hoards vast amounts of wealth.
• Reads Thracian.

Flax

• Reads Thracian.
• Beware of the Death God
• The Hall of Laughing skulls leads to riches untold.
• Deep under the earth there is a sunlit garden and a sparkling palace.

Into the Dungeon

• With the setup and town out of the way we jumped into play proper. The party hiked the day and a half to the ruins as directed. They camped overnight on the way but it was entirely uneventful. On the afternoon of the second day they approached the Ruins. The Gnolls that often guard this area were not present (60%). The party checked out the largest and nearest of the 3 obvious ruins and quickly lit a lantern and descended down the stone stairs they found there.

• Inside they were greeted by the thick stink of slippery guano and soon discovered its source, as the ceiling of this room was covered in bats who appeared to be mildly agitated by the light. From there they headed down the eastern hall. wanting to avoid the slippery bat shit which their noses revealed was only going to get worse if they headed north.

• After ~80" of careful travel down long empty halls turning a few times, the party found an architectural anomaly; As the hallway turned north the floor tiles were raised up about 1/2". Flax probed at the raised tiles with a pole and when that yeilded no results, they took a closer look and found two 3" holes in the southern wall at belly button height, with about 1′ of space between them. Billhelm bravely tried stepping on the tile but there was no reaction. After a brief but futile attempt at prying up the tile, Flax decided to crawl down the hallway, staying beneath the level of the holes. His movement down the hall brought no reaction, but he did notice the tile returned back to the normal height beyond the corner. Jordsqueak followed. As he crawled over the "normal" tiles just beyond the suspext area he felt the tile give, clicking ever so slightly. Immediately two metal spears flew overhead and smashed into the far wall.

• mechanical noises emanating from the spear holes convinced them the trap was resetting and they should move one. (Trap reset in 4 turns.)

  There was supposed to be a Gnoll here, possibly asleep. I misread however, and instead of being asleep, I moved him into room 7. Also of note the gnolls in 7 failed to hear the party multiple times despite them being quite noisy

• Once they all crawled through, they spotted a cracked door around another turn. From within they heard squeaky bestial voices.

• The Gnolls in seven somehow do not hear the loud armored party crawling or setting off the trap.

• The party hears squeaky yelping voices speaking a bestial tongue through a cracked door.

• Brian Queeber, retreats a bit to cast a spell without making too much noise. He casts Comprehension and is able to understand the yelping voices.

• The voices speak of food and fighting. They complain about being on guard duty and of fearing the minotaur king. 7 voices are heard.

• Fearing themselves outmatched, the party retreats back to the Bat Room (1) and begins to investigate the doorway to the north, finding a 6" thick layer of guano coating the floor.

• The air is filled with swarming bats.

• They press on, clustered tight around Flax’s lantern, which seems to both agitate the bats and hold them at bay.

• As they reach the far side of the room they discoverd an enormous crevasse cutting into the room. Their lanterns revealing nothing but rubble, stone, and darkness within.

• Beyond the crack they came upon an alcove containing a pile of rubble and maybe a statue, covered in bat shit.

• Flanking the pile they saw a pair of doors, the one to the east ajar.

We called it a night there, after 6 Turns of devling.