Finale (played 03/09/2024)
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: 4h ish
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| Incomplete snippet of campaign notes taken using OneNote for this adventure. |
Explosions in the Deep
The players ingeniously brought a big barrel of gunpowder with them to blast open the portcullis below the temple and were therefore able to enter the evil Black Sun Temple from below!
This did not spare them, however, from a cruel ambushing at the hands of four Deep Infiltrators of the Black Sun, who had been tailing them in secret for some time now. These four assassins were quite brutal, and through the battle, managed to kill all of the player characters’ allies (including poor old Bonifacio, the dog-shaver and secret hit-man for hire).
The rules for inter-NPC combat in Black Sword Hack mean that PC allies will take d6 damage four times in six. It felt a bit too punishing and NPC allies tended to die quite quickly.
I prefer when NPC actions are simply ruled the same as PCs. When players ask their hirelings to do weird non-combat actions, you just rule it as you would a PC.
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| So much I didn't use in here |
They pushed through the depths of the temple, clearing rooms of any tentacled Deep Ones that they encountered thanks to the insta-killing power of the newly acquired Roodr.
Upstairs, in the central chamber, they saw a gruesome scene. Sarakasas was acting like a one-man army, standing atop a pile of corpses as rebels came forward to slash at him in total vain. Sarakasas was completely impervious to damage from non-Roodr sources, and it led to this terrifying outcome.
Faaya spotted someone lurking in the alcoves – it was the leader of the Thieves Guild, Zvoorinius! After a brief chat with them, she determined that they didn’t pose an immediate threat, but if things went south they would probably try to jump in and try to benefit from the fallout.
Alcantor and Lady Estabana were still standing, but their morale was almost entirely shaken by the sudden disaster that befell their rebel army. Thankfully, Kvam was here with the giant trident, Roodr, to sort things out.
In the first few rounds of battle Kvam turned invisible and entered barbarian rage, and Faaya cast Darkness and Withering on Sarakasas, which meant he couldn’t directly target them. Things went pretty quickly downhill after that for Sarakasas.
Within a couple of rounds, Sarakasas was slain by the mighty power of the Roodr, and everyone celebrated. There was a moment of slowed down time where Sarakasas’s immortal soul hung in the central chamber, and the cursed ring that Faaya was wearing started glowing and pulsing.
The otherworldly entity she had made a pact with, Emptalar of the Void, wanted her to plunge the ring into the soul so he could absorb it into his power vortex. She did so and was rewarded with EVERY STAT being boosted to 20!
At this point, the adventure had concluded, and I was just riffing for the finale to make it feel climactic. Every stat at 20, why the hell not!?
Great Deep Old Freak!
They emerge onto the streets as the earth shook and the gigantic Deep Old One quaked towards the temple. Kvam and Faaya performed an amazing feat of athletics and ingenuity by using one of the big monster’s huge tentacles to fling themselves into the air and perform a massive plunging attack on the beast.
This meant they flew for three turns and dealt TRIPLE damage when they landed. By an amazing coincidence, the total damage output after this calculation was 45 HP – the exact amount needed to slay the Deep Old One!
Epilogue
The session ended with a brief reunion with key NPC friends, like Sfen who washed up on the reef, and Rhosa who was saved from the depths of the temple, and even Julovern and his amazing airship.
The party decided to leave the city via airship and visit Taineri for a final goodbye as well – and the adventure ended with both of our heroes setting off into the clouds…
Goodnight,
Feir
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