Nice. Now these are the type of campaign recaps that even I can read

You are fortunate to have a solid group to play with. I am hoping to get a regular game going again this summer with a few peeps.

Thanks, Chainsaw!

Yeah, we manage to have a pretty good time.

lige wrote:

After meeting you all this weekend this all makes so much more sense!  I see J doesn't exaggerate!

Good point, Eli! 

Handy Haversack wrote:

That lucky hat will have to last them the rest of the year!

 
Don't forget that Sword +0 you gave them!

Handy Haversack wrote:

capitalbill wrote:

Handy Haversack wrote:

That lucky hat will have to last them the rest of the year!

 
Don't forget that Sword +0 you gave them!

You're right, Bill--I've been getting soft! I'll tell J you said playtime is over!

Just so you know, J's new line is, "Bill understood--and Jeff's a Red Sox fan anyways!"

You see how hard it is here.

4/11: So, a slightly more detailed recap (and spoilers for Slumbering Ursine Dunes):
 After much debate, the party decided to go back downstairs to check out the two areas of magical darkness: the one in the corner of the corridor that the eld leader had been running toward when they shot him in the back, and the one through the secret door that Taliaktrug (Esq. cleric of Kthulhu 1) discovered while statue bashing--the one with the alarm gong and, that time at least, a hail of arrows. They decided to try the former first. In the room on the left before the dark corner, the crystalline turtles maintained their vigil. After much discussion and one experiment that indicated the things were still in a shoot-lightning-at-intruders mood, 100' of wire was wrapped around Qannmorr's (Common thief 3) 10' stick with loops at either end. He moved through the room trying to toss the stick so the wire would conduct between the turtles. It wasn't a great throw. In the ensuing kerfuffle, Utropia (Kimmerian ranger 3) shot arrows, Bodicca (Pict witch 2) held the light and taunted, and Qannmorr ended up dashing between the turtles and getting down the hole in the floor. The rest of the group retreated to the hall and decided to try exploring the darkness around the corner and find Qannmorr later.
 Fearghas (Kelt shaman 2) tapped ahead with his spear. He and Eydis (Viking berserker 2) were in the front. Too late, Fearghas realized his spear touched empty air--he and Eydis fell 20'. Fearghas was in coonvulsions and bleeding badly from the skull. Eydis heard something massive moving toward her. She swung her swords and felt one connect as she saw huge, glowing red demonic eyes. A second later, massive tusks tossed her into the air, and enormous skeletal hooves crushed the life from her body. By that time Utropia had a rope tied around herself and followed a lit torch into the pit where she saw an undead mastodon (zombastodon!) venting its fury on Eydis's corpse. Utropia tied the rope around Fearghas and scampered back up, but the thing saw her and attacked. Its tusks passed on either side of her, and she made it safely up. They hauled up Fearghas, whose Atlantean armor saved him from an impaling as well. Leaving fallen Eydis and her gold behind, they headed back for the stairs.

Qannmorr had emerged from the tunnel into another chamber, mainly empty. He left it and came into a corridor on the other side of the magical darkness, where he could hear the rest of the party in a panic, trying to get Fearghas away before the shaman died. Figuring they were fine on their own, he went the other way and found himself back in the room with the statue that Taliaktrug had smashed. The secret door trigger was jerry-rigged with a stone fragment now, and Qannmorr activated it and eventually passed through the magical darkness into the room beyond, which was a large chamber dominated by an enormous open forge in the center. The coals therein glowed a strange eldritch green, though they cast off no heat. Many areas of the walls were hung with enormous smithy tools, sized for giants. Qannmorr dug through the coals with his short sword until he felt something metal. This he scraped over toward himself and finally reached into the coals to grasp. Strange feelings as of power moving through him prickled his arms as he reached into the coals and faded as withdrew them along with a broken black blade about a foot long, ending in jagged shards at one side and a deadly point at the other. He stowed this and a few of the coals in his blanket and then looped the long way around to find the others as they were ascending the stairs back to the main floor of the tower. There they rested the afternoon and the next day until Fearghas was well enough to go on. One of the soldier-bears ushered into the room a Viking fighter (1) who had been picked up by the centaur patrols and brought to the Tower. He joined the party, and when Fearghas was well, they all decided to head upstairs (after Solon flirted with Medved for a while).So then upstairs. The first room at the top of the stairs had three eld guards in it and two massive white-steel boxes, 5' wide, 5' high, 15' long. The eld attacked but Solon dropped two of them with a sleep spell. The third was dispatched. Bodicca had cast charm, and one of the sleeping eld proved to have succumbed. With cool, calm, collected questioning that never, ever involved the making up of the entire eld power structure out of whole cloth in order to convince the eld that someone higher up had told him to spill the details of the plan (though totally with some agreeing that everyone else in the party was some ape-maggot combination), Bodicca learned that the boxes concentrated ley-line energy, which the eld were using to open a portal to their world and bring more of their number through, eventually to conquer of of Hyperborea and impose their rigid alien order over it. Bodicca convinced him to turn off the machines. Then Andrew's new fighter convinced him to not be charmed anymore by trying to cut off his hand. The eld was dispatched quickly, and Utropia decided that even though the machines had been turned off, they were still not to be trusted. Undaunted by the sparks that flew from the machine the first time she struck it with her war pick, she did it again.
 Utropiasplosion!
 Solon, Fearghas, and Hesperos (Amazon Fire Lord 1) were killed outright. Qannmorr, Bodicca, and Andrew's new fighter were reduced below 0 (I think). Only Utropia was still conscious. As fast as she could, she stabilized the unconscious and dragged the living and the dead downstairs. There she managed to convince Medved that if he really wanted to teach the Sublingual Embraces of the Seventh Circle to Solon, he'd have to bring him back to life somehow. Medved agreed. The next day Solon was back--though with an unhinged jaw that could open wide enough to encompass an ostrich egg and with golden fur covering his body. And a curious sense of shame.
 And then many dice were rolled.

"Utropiasplosion! RIP, Fearghas, Hesperos, and hinged-jaw, furless Solon. And Eydis (zombastodon!)."

Last edited by Handy Haversack (4/14/2015 1:48 pm)

The Moon Bog! from our own joseph. Spoilers kind of.

I sent three level 1 Hyperborea characters into it, Clerica Strada, half-breed Pict cleric of Thaumagorga (played by J); Bergthor, Viking fighter (Andrew); and Lugotorix, Pict scout (Manny). The cleric started with two mooks and a mission. An enemy of Thaumagorga had come to Hyperborea from *beyond* and brought with it something that Big T did not want on the world--or so he claimed through intermediaries to his first-level cleric. They set of from Copen on the Lizard Coast, went inland a ways to avoid most of the swamp, and then headed for Stillwater on your map. An acidic swamp amoeba (ochre jelly) took out one of the mooks and almost got eveyone else before they drove it off with fire. Just as they reached the causeway out to the village, four giant mosquitoes attacked, and the scout was knocked unconscious. But their show of prowess impressed the villagers, or "Bretheren of the Deep" as they styled themselves, who took the party in and let them stay in the traders' hut in the center of the village. They revivied the scout with bog wine, which tasted of eel, rot, and fire but got him on his feet again. The party was complimented for destroying the blood suckers who prayed on the Bretheren. When the cleric mentioned that they were looking for a gathering of man-frogs in order to destroy them, they gained even more respect. But when they asked for directions, they were told that all enlightenment had to come from the Deep. Their escorts left them in the hut, and soon the sound of chanting filled the village. Every man in the place, it seemed, even those bringing in the eel boats, had joined in the eery eldritch chant, and many of those gathered around the stilted huts accompanied the chanting on drums of pale leather.

A slave child came to their hut bearing water, more bog wine, smoked eels, snails, herbs, and kelp. They realized she was the first female resident of the village that they had seen. When questioned, she named herself a Brdie of the Deep, as were the other girls, though since she had been chosen to serve those who occasioned the Sounding of the Depths, she thought soon she would be wed. Though they could not get from her any details that were not couched in superstition, they began to guess what all this meant. Not seeing any profit in rescuing the child, though, they decided to wait and see what happened.

The chanting and drumming lasted all night, and the party passed a wary and watchful night. The next day, they found that the elders of the village maintained the chant while some of the younger ones began to set about other tasks, readying boats and other items. They found the youth who had brought them in the day before and asked him what was going on and whether they could go ashore since a 20'-long bridge section of the causeway had been removed. He told them that all were preparing for the sounding and that while no one could spare any boats to let them go ashore on their own, they were welcome to join his party in going to propitiate the Ghost Turtle deeper in the swamps. Informed that they would have to remove their armor to go safely in the small boats, Clerica Strada and Bergthor declined and returned to the Traders' Hut, but Lugotorix accompanied the small flotilla.

The boats passed through the swamps along a winding stream. The villagers were wary, looking anxiously around and keeping near the bundles of small spears and arrows they piled in the bottoms of the boats. They took these and other large bundles with them after landing and passed along winding trails to an area of lakes and ponds. Here the villagers began to drum and chant until from one of the ponds a monster rose, a snapping turtle 20 feet across, its head the size of a wolf. Its shell was dead white, streaked with slime and algae. Its eyes were red and flat, and they burned as the massive head loomed over the villagers. These shook loose the bundles they carried, revealing skins of mottled white and gray woven with moonstones and pearls. These they shook and rattled until the Ghost Turtle snapped up the offerings one by one. Hastily, the villagers all drew their favored weapons and held out the spears and short blades to the massive thing. It moved its head down the line, dripping its saliva on the weapons and taking each into its beak. The youth who was his escort gestured for Lugotorix to copy their actions, and the Pict hastily drew his long sword. He stared into the Ghost Turtle's flat, red eyes as it took blade and hand in its beak. Then the creature withdrew and was gone. The villagers congratulated the Pict and, boisterous with triumph, returned to the boats and the village.

[More . . .]

Guided by the memories Bergthor now possessed and by Barry's knowledge of the area, they set off along the lake shore and turned in to another stream that flowed more or less coherently through the swamps. Barry indicated that a line of dark trees on the (Hyperborean) southwest horizon was called the Flooded Forest. To the (HYperborean) southeast, the hills that separated the Moon Bog from the Copen road were visible, and Barry told the party that a flock of bird-men lived there that was often at war with the man-frogs of the swamp. As they followed the stream deeper into the swamps, the animal life around them grew louder and more insistent. Sometimes they glimpsed creatures that seemed diseased or strangely enlarged. After several hours, they poled past an enormous boar. It stood as high as mule, and it glowed a sickly green in the ruddy light of the setting sun. It charged into the water with a bellow, swimming strongly for the fragile boats, but they were soon able to out-distance it. They passed a quiet night on a small island, keeping a wary watch.

Several more hours of travel the next day brought them close to the lake where the island of the man-frogs and the strange ship lay. They pulled into the shore before reaching it and concealed the boats. Lugotorix left the others behind and crept away across the boggy ground, though the rest of the party could clearly hear his footsteps through the sucking, clinging mud. They settled into wait, and Lugotorix found a slight rise on the lake shore where he could observe the island. It was shaped something like a spear head, pointed at the river that drained the lake. At its far end, he could make out a low stone wall that surrounded a dark circle, which had to be the craft Bergthor had described. On the nearer end, several wooden huts were scattered. He could just make out the forms of the man-frogs as they moved among these, though it was impossible to tell how many there were. It seemed that they came and went, in and out of the lake, slipping across the boundary of the water as if it did not exist. He resolved to watch until nightfall to try to understand the disposition of the man-frogs.

Lugotorix shifted his weight and focused on the far island, though he tried to stay alert to the underbrush around him as well. He heard a wind move through the trees and realized only too late that he could feel no breeze. Even as he tried to turn and gather his feet, a spear slammed into the soft ground next to his back, driven by a single man-frog, that had leaped from concealment and only barely missed. The Pict scrambled to his feet, and the bachtrian horror again stabbed with its wooden spear. This blow was turned, barely, by the scout's stiff leathers, and though his return stroke decapitated the thing, he was coughing bloody spume as he sank back to the boggy turf. Though wounded, he resolved to keep his watch, and he concealed the dead man-frog as best he could in the shadows. As the light faded, he thought he saw several man-frogs emerge from the lake water and move among the huts on the island.

When he returned to the others, he found that they, too, bore wounds. Five of the man-frogs had found them. Clerica Strada showed off the stone axes he had taken as trophies. The cleric healed the Pict. After hearing Lugotorix's report, they decided to wait until full dark before setting out in the boats. They stayed close to the shore until they had passed the island, and then they circled back, approaching it from the broad far end, where they hoped the stone wall around the sky craft would hide them from anyone within. From inside the wall, a bright white light shone out, casting the wall's back side into even deeper darkness. Here they found a narrow purchase and tied up the boats. Lugotorix climbed over the wall, which was made of loose and dry-piled stones. He let down a rope for the others, but Clerica Strada dislodged a stone that rattled down the wall and plunged into the lake with a loud splash. The party froze, but it seemed nothing had heard them.
[more . . .]

Ghul wrote:

Looks like I need to read this Moon Bog by Joseph! 

Clerica Strada? That's nearly criminal. If one of my players came up with a name like that, I'd have to ponch him in the nose!

It was two of my players! They're dangerous when they gang up.

Handy, this is the best use of any "one page dungeon" ever and I'm stoked that you have taken the time to run it. You've taken the bare bones of an adventure and turned it into your own outstanding tale. Keep it going, can't wait to see how it turns out for your hapless adventurers!