Out of the Abyss Session 1 Part 1
Just like premiers for TV shows are usually extra long (I
think. I don’t watch that much TV), the beginning of my new campaign went for way over my normal 4 hours. It was
probably closer to 7. Therefore, this… what exactly are these, anyway? Session
reports? Recaps? Anyway, this one will be in 2 parts. This is part 1. Part 2
will be out in a few days (hopefully).
I bought Out of the Abyss ages ago (2016), but only ran the
first chapter. I ran it horribly. So, here we go!
I began with my usual three
players (the ones from the Planescape campaign). We had:
- · Robert as Mishann Duvahkin, a female Halfling Rogue (how original*)
- · Wayne as “Jake 😊”, a male Half-Orc Barbarian (also original**) and
- · Jason as Darrak Unqart, a male Hill Dwarf Wizard (slightly original***)
*Sarcasm
**Also sarcasm
***Not sarcasm
Note that Wayne told me at the end
of the session that he wanted to a make new character, which I allowed. Unless he
changes his mind, Wayne will be a Tabaxi Cleric (cat people from Volo’s Guide).
Also, Robert recently told me he would be quitting the game.
We began in a Drow prison. The
heroes had been captured on a raid. Also, it turns out that Drow is pronounced
like drown without the N. The players refused to say it like this (we had
always said it like it rhymes with row). I ruled that this was because they had
a “surface accent”.
 |
| The Prison |
- Buppido, a mad derro (mutant dwarf) who secretly believes himself to be a god.
- Prince Derendil, a mad quaggoth who believes himself to be an elven prince transformed into a quaggoth.
- Eldeth Feldrun, a dwarf scout from Gauntlgrym.
- Jimjar, a deep gnome with a gambling problem. He is secretly actually a god.
- Ront, an orc who is very mean.
- Sarith Kzekarit, a mad Drow who killed a friend.
- Shuushar, a kou-toa (fish person) who refuses to fight and mediates a lot.
- Stool, a child mycronid (sentient fungi).
- Topsy & Turvy, twin deep gnomes who are secretly were rats.
As soon as the adventure started,
Jake attacked Darrak so as to assert himself as the prison “top dog”, so that
none of the other prisoners would attack him, and would do as he said when it
was time to escape.
Because magic didn’t work in the
cell, Darrak got massacred. When he went down to 2 hit points, and Jake wasn’t
showing any signs of stopping, the guards came in to break up the fight. They
did this by shooting Jake in the chest. He made his save against the poison (he
has good constitution) and backed down.
Darrak took advantage of the open
door to slip out. He rolled well on stealth. He was free! His next move was to
come up with some sort of plan to get everyone else out. He tried to get
Buppido’s attention (they’d been talking earlier). Buppido noticed, but so did
the two guards. They chased him, but he climbed around a stalactite (unless it
was a stalagmite. I don’t know. It
came from the ceiling). Three more guards arrived soon after.
Meanwhile, Jake decided to make
another attempt to become “top dog”. Now, after my last campaign, I explained
to the players that I wasn’t OK with child murder in my games, but I don’t
think the message sunk in. He immediately attacked Topsy and Turvy, who’d been
whispering to each other in the corner. Seeing as they were wererats, his
punches did no damage to them. This weirded him out quite a bit.
He chased them to the other end of
the cell, goaded on by Ront. Eldeth, however, stepped in and told him to knock
it off. He responded with a slightly sexist comment.
I wasn’t quite sure how to handle
this, and after a moment of thought I had Eldeth attack him. Hey, he was
half-orc (her people were at war with orcs), he was beating up kids and he had insulted her. Generally, Jake
would smash Eldeth in a fist fight, but this time around he was cursed by the
dice gods. Not a single hit landed, and Eldeth started to really beat him up.
The guards noticed what was
happening at this point, and broke up the fight. It was around this time that Robert
realised the guards hadn’t taken back the poisoned
arrow they had shot at Jake earlier. This meant they had a weapon!
The guards eventually captured
Darrak, and took him to their leader. Along the way, they passed a shrine to
Lolth that took the form of a giant spider statue. The adventure said that you
had to make a check to realise it was fake. Otherwise, you thought it was real.
Well, it turns out Darrak has arachnophobia.
Let’s just say the Drow were not
amused by his attempts to set their sacred shrine on fire. He ended up dangling
from the ceiling of the cavern upside down while real giant spiders scuttled
around in their webs above him.
In hindsight, I should have given
him inspiration for this. I will next session. If there is a next session.
After a few days of doing menial
work for the Drow, during which Mishann managed to swipe a few crossbow bolts
and a hand crossbow, they attempted their escape. Mishann began to threaten to
hang herself with a 5-foot piece of rope she’d stolen if the Drow didn’t let
them go. They came in to confiscate the rope. As they left, Jake slipped a rock
between the door and the wall, so it wouldn’t close completely. I rolled really
badly for the Drow’s perception.
A bit later, Jake, Mishann, Darrak,
Eldeth and Ront charged out. They quickly disabled the guards and went for the
armoury. They were challenged by 2 normal Drow and an elite Drow warrior. The
non-fighters in the group branched off and headed for the cavern floor. The
rest attempted to fight their way through, but were outmatched.
The non-fighters reached the
cavern floor, but encountered two more Drow guards. Darrak ran forward, and
heroically cast burning hands, taking them both down with a single spell.
A few rounds later, things started
to get crazy. Flying demons attacked, which distracted the Drow for a couple of
rounds. The heroes (who were about to become quite a bit less heroic) fled the
scene, along with the rest of the prisoners.
The made it down to the bottom of
the massive cavern, and decided to go down the south passage, which leads to
Gracklstugh, Buppido’s home city.
I’ll end this part of the review
here, but keep an eye out for the second part (a few days. Hopefully). Hang on!
I’ll just quickly explain what they did to become less heroic.
They ate Shuushar. They killed him, cooked him and ate him (Darrak
refused to eat him, but didn’t object). And why did they do this? Because it was funny. The exact same
reason they killed those two ten-year-old’s in my last campaign!
Sorry, I just needed to get that
out. Anyway, some of the people in the party ate him, and others didn’t (leave
a comment if you’d like me to try to remember exactly who participated in the cannibalism,
or if you’d like me to answer any questions about the session.
If you enjoyed this post, you might want to check out my report on my first Fifth Age session here.
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