The Darkness Over Nijmauwrgen #5

The Ancient Tomb of Kahnvisser (played 29/03/2024)

System: The Black Sword Hack
Adventure: The Darkness Over Nijmauwrgen (from The Chaos Crier issue #0)
Players: Faaya (Capingreen), Kvam (Janitor911)
GM: Me (Feirsteax)
Session length: 3h ish

 

Figure 1: Area explored by the party in the old tumulus.

 

The Ghost

Icy rain stung the explorers’ faces as they huddled at the foot of the black, wind-battered cliffs. A strange glow above them caught Faaya’s eye. A ghostly form, cloaked in a blue-green robe, loomed in the sky. Faaya stood motionless as its faceless hood stared directly into her soul. As it drew nearer, it began to radiate an eerie green glow in the rain-soaked dark of the night.

Piercing through the raging storm, the spirit’s baleful cry filled the air. Slowly, strained screams seeped through the torn veil of mortality and formed into words. “Take what you need,” it commanded, “and no more.”

Lighting their torches, the explorers stepped into the tomb. Though the ghost had not directly threatened them, they knew that to try and deceive the otherworldly entity would be the last mistake they would ever make.

 

Report

Last session ended with the party of three (Faaya, Kvam and the NPC Sfen) in Bonifacio’s shack. They’d planned to hold a secret meeting in three night’s time with Alcantor to build a resistance movement against the Black Sun.

But the meeting would be a flop without Alcantor there, not just in body but in spirit, and that meant finding a way to break his Mnemophagia curse. Duke Taineri already told them that he would be able to cure it if he had a strand of the town’s founding hero, Kahnvisser’s beard. So, they set off to find Alcantor and head out on an expedition to the ancient tomb to the west of the city, where it’s said Kahnvisser’s remains still lie to this day.

I didn’t roll any random encounters for city travel this time. The party were on their way to an actual dungeon, and I didn't want to risk not having enough time to run it.

Alcantor was hiding in an abandoned villa, camped out in a makeshift den. When the party told him their plan, he was on board straight away. He’d been dreaming of the Roodr, the ancient trident of Kahnvisser that could be the key to defeating the Black Sun and had been planning to search the old tomb to try and find it.

The Roodr is not in the tomb, but stowed away in an encampment, two days journey beyond the city walls. Alcantor himself put it there, but his Mnemophagia has led him to forget this. In bread.wizard’s review of this module, he mentions that he ignored all the stuff about Mnemophagia. I can understand that, as it mainly serves to prevent the party from finding Roodr right from the beginning. However, I liked the idea of slowing the pace down and inventing a quest related to Alcantor regaining his memory, so I ran with it.

A problem I’ve encountered with Roodr is motivational. The players don’t have any idea why it would be beneficial to even have the trident in the first place. I began dropping hints via NPCs that the trident would be able to slay a sea monster in a single strike. Hopefully that will be enough to whet their appetite.

As they made their way west towards the old tomb, the party saw the Black Sun’s templars nailing posters to the walls and doors of various buildings. They were missing person posters for Hans and Klees, two of the templars who were foolish enough to try and arrest Faaya and Kvam back in session #3. Not wanting to look suspicious, the two hurried on to the tomb.

The tomb was a little way out of town and was set into the side of a black cliff face. The rain hadn’t let up all day and was only getting worse as they arrived, with the wind howling and thunder rolling in the distance. But amidst the din of the raging storm, Faaya thought she heard a moaning noise above them. It was a ghost!

The ghost was not immediately threatening - the adventure text specifies that a “curious ghost” is haunting the tomb on a roll of 1 on a d6. However, if the party take anything from the tombs that they have not asked permission for, then it will try to take it back off them by force.

The ghost asked what their purpose was in coming here and Faaya bravely spoke up, telling it that they had come for a strand of Kahnvisser’s beard. The ghost allowed them to pass but warned them to be careful and listen for the sound of waves.

I thought it would be cool to give them a hint since they had engaged the ghost in a friendly manner. It told them to listen for the sound of waves, which was a clue on how to find the true resting place of Kahnvisser. One player took the message on board and very keenly listened out for noises at different places throughout the tomb, which led them to the right place.

They entered the tomb and came across some traps and various pieces of treasure. There were secret tunnels and strange pulsing noises coming from side areas that the party did not investigate, thinking it better to stick to the main task (see Fig 1, at the top of this post).

Something came up during this session that we hadn’t thought about until now, which was dungeoneering equipment. The party didn’t have any torches, rope, ten-foot poles, or anything of that nature on hand and I didn’t want to stop play so we could retroactively spend half an hour shopping, so I decided to try a remix of a solution that I had read before.

After I read episode 2 of diregrizzlybear’s Beneath the Missing Sea campaign report, I thought I’d yoink the bit about quantum inventory. However, to give it some uncertainty I decided to base it off a Usage Die rather than just a specific number. I gave them a Ud6 and said that if they wanted to retroactively buy a piece of adventuring gear, they could do that. Each item they retroactively bought this way caused a roll of the Usage Die.

After the session, we discussed this and I thought it was a little too lenient, so I made some changes which I’ll post at the bottom of this post.

After traversing some rooms, including a false tomb that contained a skeleton and the corpse of an unlucky tomb robber of times past, they eventually made it to the real tomb of Kahnvisser. This small alcove was set into the other side of the cliff face and had a direct view of the sea. The sarcophagus of Kahnvisser was extravagant and tempting, made entirely of gold, and inlaid with gems and pearls. What’s more, the tomb itself was full of gold coins!

Sfen was extremely tempted by all this wealth and wanted to take some home. Faaya, however, was the voice of reason and reminded him of the presence of the ghost. She suggested they come back later, perhaps approaching this cave from the other side using the Babaselem once it was repaired. You can’t outrun a ghost, but you might be able to outsail one!

Faaya’s player probably saved the party’s lives here, the ghost is immune to all attacks that aren’t made with weapons dipped in the wielder’s own blood. I’m not sure how the party are supposed to figure that out, I think it’s left to the GM to provide a clue. Either way, it could have been a nasty fight. But thanks to Faaya, the party only took exactly what they needed and no more, so the ghost never attacked them.

I also really like the idea of them coming back once the ship is repaired and grabbing all the loot. It could make for a satisfying epilogue / finale / escape from the city!

Kahnvisser’s remains were also inside the sarcophagus, including his full, fiery red beard. After taking a strand of his beard hair, the party paused briefly to rest and take in the sights. From here, they had a view of the rocky crag that jutted out of the ocean to the north of Nijmauwrgen. The storm was as furious as ever, but they could just make out the distant flicker of a bonfire on the crag behind the rain.

However, their brief reverie was interrupted by two fish-like beastmen, clawing their way up the cliffs and into the cave. Faaya immediately cast her Darkness spell and incapacitated the two fishmen for two rounds each. Stumbling blindly and clawing wildly at thin air, they were easily dispatched by the party. Only Sfen suffered a wound, taking a nasty bite on the shoulder from one of the blinded creatures.

I still don’t know all of Faaya’s powers, and the Darkness spell came as a great surprise. It was extremely cool and really made the encounter a lot easier. To simulate the chaos it created, I rolled a d6 and used it to determine the creatures’ movement direction. Since any movement to the north, northeast or northwest would cause them to walk off the cliffs, they had a 3-in-8 chance of plunging to their doom. Surprisingly however, neither did, and the party had to finish them off by hand. 

With a strand of Kahnvisser’s beard hair acquired, the party made their way back the way they came, and the session ended.

 

Thoughts

I loved this session. It was mostly just a straight dungeon crawl, with not a whole lot of NPC dialogue or city encounters to deal with. The dungeon crawling felt like such a breeze compared to the other stuff, which I’m still struggling to run in a way I find satisfying.

This part of the adventure is well laid out and easy to run. In contrast, the city stuff can be dense and page-flippy. In the heat of a game, you sometimes end up scrolling frantically to find a certain piece of information. It’s something that I think could have been done better, especially since the occasional typo (Roodr printed as Noodr, NPC names misspelled) means that ctrl+f will sometimes fail.

Another thing I think could have been better is the interconnectedness and dynamism of the adventure and its factions. The archpriest of the Black Sun, Sarakasas, is presented in the text as this terrifying, chaotic warlock. As far as I can tell, though, he only appears in one random encounter in the city and otherwise sits at the bottom of his temple, waiting for the players to come and kill him. The problem with this is that the players don’t really have a sense of who he even is, and he hasn’t yet caused them any direct problems, so they don’t really feel driven to defeat him.

However, the Anonymity Die will probably reduce to a d6 soon, which is the point at which the Black Sun starts following the party and interrogating everyone they talk to. It also means they get introduced to the Thieves Guild who are also enemies of the Black Sun. I am hoping to use this opportunity to add some chaotic energy to the city and provide motivation for them to fight back against the Black Sun. I’m thinking Sfen (who is now the player’s full-time companion) could be a prime target for interrogation, possibly even arrest!

The quantum adventuring pack idea I mentioned above seemed to make it too easy for the players to just completely ignore equipment. I tweaked it a bit, and here’s how it works now:

At a market, you can buy an Adventuring Pack (Ud4) for d6 x 10gp.

• In the dungeon, you can use the Adventuring Pack to roll its Usage Die and retroactively buy another item and have it in your inventory.
• You still have to pay for the item. If you don’t have enough gold, you waste a use of your pack.
• If you roll a 1 or a 2, the pack runs out.

I’m still testing this out, the balance might be a bit out of whack, and we might find later that it needs to be tweaked again (less / more expensive, starts off at a higher Usage Die, other ideas). So far, it’s worked okay, but I have a feeling it might be needlessly complicated. We’ll see how it goes!

Good morning,

Feirsteax