Heather Under Moonlight

Session 13, 5/8/25

Holy shit we're up to date (this will be really funny if I end up publishing this post next week.) New player this week! We finished up her character, which took a while, and then started to play.

The party leaves Kelling to move along the lakeshore and warn the slaves at the vineyard of the oncoming ogre attack. Along the way, they spy an isolated Holdman fort; they elect to move on past it. They encounter an escaped slave in the woods. A few days later, they meet with the ogres and inform them of the fort; the ogres drive everyone out of the vineyard, then meet up with the party on their way North.

At the fort, Valeucou on his Giant Strider mounts up and charges one of the holdmen on the beach - he kills the man with his spear, but to his horror, discovers that what he had thought was a man was undead - and, worse, covered in Yellow Mold. Valeucou collapses, hacking up blood. The paladin runs in to rescue Valeucou with Lay on Hands, then Nissa throws a Web over the whole affair. The ogres recover the party's members, watch the zombies cook, and then decide that since there's no tasty humans around, they're going home.

The party takes brief stock of their situation; Valeucou is on 6 HP, even after the lay on hands, and they're down a spell. They elect to press on anyway. They enter a wooden building and encounter a mob of the undead; they torch the place, then let the paladin (immune to disease) handle cleaning up the stragglers. Pressing inward, they kill more undead in the dining room, shut some up in the larder, kill more in a filthy barracks-room, torch a master bedroom and a small tunnel leading to one of the outlying towers, and recover a suit of plate.

Ahead, they spy a stockroom absolutely caked in toxic yellow mold; throwing four flasks of oil in, they check the other corridor and determine that it ends in a stockroom exactly as toxic as the other one. While moving fuel (driftwood!) in from the lakeshore and forest to encourage the fire, the party are accosted by twelve zombies and a titanic humanoid pile of yellow mold; they throw all of their remaining oil, killing the zombies, but the titanic pile is apparently unaffected. The party steels themselves for battle, shuffling the wounded Valeucou with his magic greatsword to the front line. Valeucou lands a single strike in the thing's guts, and is killed instantly. Panic sets in, and the party flees down the corridor; the paladin, too, is wounded. They return to Kelling, to plot revenge - and purchase vinegar.

I think from this session and last we can see the cracks start to show in my existing prep. Last session involved a town run off the cuff; this session, the whole dungeon was stocked (if not mapped) by Vibes. I'm told that they plan to return to their original dungeon, the one with the giant ants, next session after handling the mold-creature - I need to restock the first level of that. Also, I need to expand the area of keyed hexes in all directions - they've run off the edge of the map more than once, and I need to stop that from happening. The lake creates a real problem, because it's a big ol' obstacle to the party getting around. Also, it's nearly the new year in game time! That's cool. I've been having a lot of fun with this group.