Kharmlund 6: The party meets the hate wall and deals with their first Moon-Haunted encounter. And..the battle of the entrance!

Once again, the party enters Kharmlund! Why this time, you ask? Well, it certainly won't be to talk to people, that's for sure! Having met the desperate Imperials of NewForge the party decided it wanted more money, fast.

So, without much delay Kharmlund 6: The party meets the hate wall and deals with their first Moon-Haunted encounter. And..the battle of the entrance!

Our Players...

Ildaberd played by anon

Turk played by anon

Nibbles - DMPC

Lemmy - DMPC

Lemmy has done ever better for himself, spending all of the "chaff" money (which is still a lot but dismissed by the party as having no value) on some basic arms and armor. He's basically a base level hireling, and that's pretty good for what was effectively a torchboy. Nibbles is unchanging and strange, his weapons and clothing always spotless (rumors say he spends hours on this), but always odd and mysterious. Ildaberd has many questions! 

The party went deep into the depths of Kharmlund this time, north of mighty NewForge and discovered some interesting things, many of which they absolutely refused to touch. The bloody cowards! Since there was a lot criss-crossing and back-tracking in this session, I decided to draw an arrow of the party's progress, because they did a loop here. This won't be 100% accurate but it will be close enough.

 

The order of party movement is Red - > Yellow -> Blue -> Purple -> Green

RED

The party decided to strike out in a different direction than before. Entering into the large area, they found it mostly empty except for a chest on a small island, surrounded by bubbling green liquid. So, they roped the chest and yanked it off, which caused the (unlocked) chest to noisily spill its contents all over the room. The subsequent divvying up of coins was interrupted by people hiding right to the south. It's a simple "bait and ambush" operation by some of Kurgan's men. The party used entangle and murdered them all in short order. Good stuff, to be honest. Can't let bandits start pushing you around. 

After this, the party continued to the south before running into a repeating dart trap. Lemmy made his save by 1(one) number and managed to block the insta-killing poison dart with his shield. 

YELLOW

After waiting a full ten minute time block for it to stop firing, they shrugged and moved around to find a way to shut it off. They didn't find one, but they managed to find a cache of gold, and green wins out over caution.

BLUE

Not to be deterred, Lemmy and his small shield were recruited to lead the way, as it was determined that the darts were firing down three corridors. They pushed all of the way to the far right of the three hallway chamber, plugged the arrow, causing a buildup of ammo, and ultimately a jam. They were then attacked by their first moon-haunted: an eyeless man with a lantern who shrieked loudly when his lantern glazed against them as they leapt around a corner to avoid this. The shrieking caused more moon-haunted, the ones with obsidian black eyes, to peel off the walls around them and attack. Ildaberd, trapped in a corridor and with nothing else to do, fired his lighting rod wand at them. It did exactly what it needed, but then bounced back and killed Ildaberd - with a save - and he was forced to use one of the five mellinated man confections he bought in the first session. He spoke briefly to the same wight that sold them to him, which cheerfully warned him that he had four things left - and then he would be theirs.

Then they fled into a room where they found another wall-face. This one, speaking only in text appearing on the wall, told them it had a quest: kill yourselves. It also began to angrily quote AM from I have no mouth and must scream so the party shrugged and moved on. No gold, no glory. They followed a path and emerged into the starting room, having found their first major shortcut. 

PURPLE

At that, they went to the northwest in search of gold. Exploring rooms, the party found a dead wizard surrounded by skeletons.

The party responded with a resounding "hell no", and then entered into an open room, to find their first wandering adventurer group. These guys were hauling a massive statue out of the room - solid gold. There was an extremely tense minute where the party deliberated robbing them - they chose not to. They allowed them to leave with that beautiful gold statue worth 2500 gp! Crazy, these adventurers. 

 Finally they checked out the south-western part of the revealed maps. There, they found some ratmen drilling into a wall in the room there. A simple use of a sleep scroll dealt with that, and then the party found the switch to open the secret door to the room the Ratmen were trying to dig into. 

They found their first gemstone wand and statue, alongside a ruby gem in one of the Ratmen's pouches. With this find, and unlocking their own fast travel system, the party decided they had done more than enough and headed back. The gold take was okay, but the real win was the wands. On the way out, they caught up to the rival adventurers, current in battle with some of Kurgan's men over the statue. Hiding out of sight, the battle between the NPCs generated enough noise to summon a battle group of ratmen, and the NPC party lost two, but managed to barely make it. The players followed them up and pinched the gemstone statue in the entrance. 

Awkward cart ride back home, but at least the PCs had managed to get their own fast travel system working!

So, here's the awkward question, but how many games did you play this year?

 I struggled with writing a funny preamble for this, but since the beginning of last year, I decided to try and get down just how much I actually played games and really tried to beat the forces of laziness and novelty to try and get as many games of Battletech as I possibly could in. I also decided to just sort of record every game I played and what that has led to is a hell of a lot of extra game time. It turns out gamifying playing games helped me want to play more games. Laziness and Novelty are the hobbyists greatest fears - there's always a Cool New Thing to buy - Warhammer: The Old World is coming out next year and I can't say I'm not tempted, but with 200+ models to paint including and entire Skaven and Cities of Sigmar army, I don't really have the ability to justify any more Warhammer (or any hobby stuff) that isn't outside of more art supplies, novels etc. Models have to go away for awhile, doubly so since I'm also waiting for my Torch and Shield rewards, which will be dumping a massive set of Dungeon Tiles onto my lap along with 30+ dwarfs and I think like 20 monsters. 

Anyway, here's the games I played this year with number of times played, dates omitted for privacy protections:

Battletech(Classic): 8 games

Battletech(Alpha Strike): 8 games

Mechwarrior Destiny: 4 sessions (DM)

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: 6 sessions (DM)

Cyberpunk RED: Two sessions (player)

Space Weirdos (3 Games)

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar (2 games)

Blood Bowl (3 Games)
Dungeon Bowl (2 Games)
Blood Bowl 7's (1 game)

War of the Ring (2 games)

Inis (4 games, I have no idea how to play INIS)

Return to Dark Tower (2 games) 

Escape the Dark Castle (1 game)

MESBG - (2 games)

OSE (6 games, DM)

Torch and Shield (3 games)

Warcry (2 games)

The Dwarves (1 game)

This is a marked improvement for me, since I only played three games in total in 2022, and they were literally just Battletech teaching games. So my goal of 2023 was basically, "Play a shitload more of the games you have." and I have succeeded tremendously.

That being said, I bought way too many god-damned miniatures this year, so it's going to be time to paint all of them....it's only 908 miniatures.....

If you are in the OSR and you're interested in trying a Wargame, you should be looking at Torch and Shield [COREBOOK REVIEW]

 If you're following this blog (lol) then you may have seen my previous impressions post on the technically released game Torch and Shield. Released to backers(of which I was literally the first, which was kind of neat to find out) yesterday in PDF format, I have torn through it with the intensity of a starving man trying to open a tin can with his teeth. AND....

This game is really good, and if that's all you need, you can simply walk on from here.

The Full Game

Let's do a little recap before we get going here. In Torch and Shield, you play as either one of three(more incoming) rival clans of Dwarves(or a generic clan), and as that clan, you assemble a "crew" of Dwarves and delve into the lost Holds. Each game is basically at the pain point where you and a rival crew meet, demand the other one back off, refuse, and then battle it out for treasure. Defeated dwarves are either killed outright(rare) or they're injured(common) and you record these injuries, deaths and victories. Dwarves can rank up and become powerful heroes, breaking the generation rules of Torch and Shield and allowing you to have things that wouldn't be 'legal' at crew creation.  So if you've played Mordheim, it's very, very similar. To the OSR people, that might be less familiar, so let me go further as to why you should give it a try:

Here Be Monsters

Doing battles in what is effectively one of many "Morias" is a good way to make noise, and yes, once the battle begins, you will be facing potentially attacks from various hordes of monsters every single turn. There's several kinds and they have an excellent "A.I." system inside of them, with actions chosen based on factors like if they have someone in line of sight etc. This typically makes the game much harder than expected. Monsters do better when they're in darkness (more on that below) and also have an easier time spawning when they're in darkness, but this is also based on various what's going on in the scenario. Monsters have no allies but there's some fun rules about Dwarf honor, two dwarves fighting to the death will allow their enemy to engage the enemies of dwarfkind without punishing them. Monsters also don't just generically attack, they may instead just try to pull you away to their entrances, found at least once in every scenario. So I mentioned Darkness...

Let There Be Light

You need to equip your crew like a DnD party - specifically an OSR party, so making sure you have light sources is tantamount. There's two stages of a "tile" in Torch and Shield. One is simple - it's illuminated or it's shrouded. One dwarf must be the bearer of the source, torch or lanterns, and yes in true OSR fashion you can risk it all and throw it at people and set them on fire, at which point they become a light source. You can also become "soaked" with water and have it go out, or have it become extinguished by a random event and so on and so on. Light travels in eight tiles in every direction and your enemy's torches light you too. Not being in the light means you're "shrouded" and being in darkness has an average chance of nothing happening. Then there's a higher chance of a certain type of enemy spawning and killing you. You can also just straight up die, being grabbed by something in the dark. This is a HUGE part of the game, and there's a reason it clicked to me that the OSR might be interested in this. 

Battles

Gameplay is really simple. Your stats determine how far you move, how easy it is to do damage, etc. Players draw cards = number of crew and an extra if you have a leader every turn and you activate based on the number/nobility on the card. Leaders can "sheathe" a card to save for later turns, but no leader = no sheathe. Then it's pretty easy to extrapolate - combat is phased, so move, attacks, resolve successful attacks, draw from the event deck to see if something really bad happens to you or not. Missions typically have different objectives but it's not really about a straight deathmatch (naturally you can play it that way) especially with monsters spawning in to kill you both. 

Crews

The Crew creation rules are pretty simple. You won't be rolling for stats in this game, as the "profiles"(stat blocks) will be the same for each dwarf starting out. There's some different "types" of Dwarves, from a "Greyshield(leader)" dwarf to a "shortbeard(grunt)" dwarf. Again, this is pretty typical of most wargames, and naturally these guys can advance from lowly grunts to powerful heroes - assuming they survive. There's three kinds of Dwarves as mentioned and they bring their own special types of Dwarves, berserkers, knights, gunslingers and everything in between. If a dwarf is still standing at the end of a game, he gets an advancement point(basically XP) and after 6 of those are accrued, he becomes the next "level" of it, so shortbeards become Clansmen, clansmen become thanes, and thanes become greybeards. Clan specific dwarves just get another "trait" which is basically a "talent" that adds something good. The hero Dwarves are able to do fun things like upgrade their weapons to Baduraz steel or buy lavish displays of wealth for themselves to intimidate other dwarves. Dwarves can also equip maps, keys, dwarven ale that offers buffs and more! It's got a very in-depth character creation system and despite that, I was able to, after reviewing the rules easily create a crew.

Campaigns

This is the meat and potatoes of the game. While Torch and Shield is perfectly serviceable as a standalone battle game it lives and dies on it's campaign. Campaigns are as described above - you get levels and treasure for surviving, more for winning, so it's not entirely a winner takes all situation. Often, it does depend entirely on the scenario, and there's also co-op scenarios. Caught in a death spiral? If your crew is so beat to hell that you can't do a proper scenario anymore, you can do a raid mission in order to make money (you have to win, though). It's entirely possible to lose and lose and lose so hard you have to basically disband the crew and start again. Painful, sure, but if you're used to loss in the RPG world this shouldn't hurt you too hard. Likewise, success in your ventures will lead to leveling up. You can also end a mission at anytime, cutting and running with no punishment - you will still get your 3 gold for trying but you don't fuck over the other side. As for injuries, this is pretty simple, you either die, miss the next game, start with less health, or you're fine. It is possible to get killed instantly, taking three damage in a single hit - this kills the Dwarf outright(unless a fortune point is spent). They have stated leveling options, and injury options, will become more in depth in the future. The rules mentions at least once dwarves missing limbs, so....

 

Once you and another crew can scrape twenty coins together, you enter a trio of scenarios. These are very difficult - once you complete all three(in a row), you take what's left of your bedraggled crew and battle for title of King Under the Mountain, and that's the basic, core campaign. New campaigns are promised in the future. 

 

Finishing up

Good game. Very fun, easy to learn, lots of campaign stuff. It's more complicated than Battle Companies or Warcry, but doesn't have as much stuff as Mordheim or Blood Bowl, getting a nice medium between the two. An absolute gem of an indie game. Ever Deeper, dawi!

Devlog: The BPC system

 The most important stage for the development of a forever DM is the development of their own weird pet system that's objectively better than any commercial option. If you don't do something like this, you're probably not cut out to be a game designer. 

Anyway without further ado, let's talk about...

The Bones Picked Clean System!

With a lot of work and careful thinking, I've managed to begin to cobble together 2/3rds of the BPC system, a (forever free) system neutral game where you, the players, will enjoy a campaign-based TTRPG miniatures game. This is very much a hideous mix of the original "Ten Dead Rats" game, with lots of work to make it even weirder - it also uses a mixture of "Hail Caesar/Warmaster" and "MESBG" and other games. 

The purpose was to make the game that allows you to easily and without a ton of math, be able to swap from a character in a typical (rules lite) tabletop RPG to a skirmish wargaming profile and then finally a 10mm massive battle profile on top of that. And then back and forth. Other systems, like ACKS, do this as well, but holy shit there's too much bullshit going on there. So much crunch. And there's other mass battle systems but man, they suck. I will never again purchase an RPG that offers stronghold gameplay and then it's like "oh just roll some d10s and you win the battle". 

Enter mighty Cona- I mean the BPC system, which is there to resolve all of this. It's also (I personally believe) flexible enough to be a way for players to also do something a little Dwarf Fortress-y or Dungeon Keeper-y. You want to be a bunch of Dogs of War-type mercs? The BPC system has you good. Or so I like to believe. No, I know with a capital K. It's going to be a masterpiece for anyone with a lot of miniatures. 

Anyway, that's all for now, just the introduction. Kharmlund #6 will be up in a week or so. 

Kharmlund 5: Loredumping and Munchkinery, meeting the Byzan of Newforge.

It's another day before Kharmlund once again begins play, and I continue to be extremely late on my session reports. This session report in particular is for a session from almost exactly two weeks ago, but I just haven't had the time or interest in updating it. Mostly it's the fact that I didn't get the map for the players updated at this time. 

Anyway, Kharmlund 5: Loredumping and Munchkinery.

Our Players...

Ildaberd played by anon.

Turk played by anon.

Talci, played by my girlfriend. 

Nibbles - DMPC

Lemmy - DMPC.

Begin

The party began by assembling as they do. Carousing tables all, and mostly bad things. Talci's absence was explained by being turned into a pig for the last two months and now a little annoyed at the whole affair. Turk accidentally burned down a tavern, and Ildaberd joined a spider cult.

Fun.

They also were joined by Nibbles and Lemmy, Nibbles dressed well and about the same as before, and Lemmy now kitted out like he'd been reading the Byzan equivalent of Soldier of Fortune Magazine, so picture equipment with too many slots, useless ornamentation on the hilts of weapons, things like that. His entire loot spent, he needed to go back in there. Guy needed to get himself, I dunno, a scope for his crossbow he was definitely going to buy one day. 

Into Kharmlund

Party made it to Kharmlund just fine, and then decided to forgo much searching and to look for an entrance to "Newforge", the bastion of Byzan power in here since the forges fell. And they didn't have to look far, since they'd accidentally found an entrance (near the spider orb of hell room, just south and a little bit west from the tiny goblin brewery) to the underground settlement.

Traveling there without issue, the party were accosted by guards hiding behind false walls, spears pointed at them like a thicket. They explained they were adventurers and that they'd heard Yoki, the Legate of Newforge was looking for skilled adventurers, and such. 

After some discussion, they were allowed in, warned they'd be getting watched by the Vulpes- the Wolves, think secret police, elite scout, etc of the Byzan army, but could explore freely. 

I've provided a map of Newforge below. The party, before running into anything resembling the Legate's quarters, found a fairly squat, bunk-heavy area of underground rooms filled with working peasantry, grim soldiers, quiet slaves, busy workers. They found evidence of piped in running water, free to anyone who needed, and they found evidence of, at the very least, semi-frequent cropcrowing, although very similar to the kind of fare you'd see in Dwarf Fortress. The Arin-Vosdht(Orcs) were getting used to mushrooms, it seems! 

 

 

And then off they went to Yoki's quarters. Yoki is, despite being the head of a primarily Orcish settlement, as the Byzan empire are Orcs, a human male fighter, the chaddiest of race/class combos. Yoki lives in a very, very nice place and it's right next to a heavily guarded door, and among a massive pile of treasure, magic items, and Kharmlundian curios. A friendly chap, he took the invitation more seriously and assumed the party was there for some free citizenship in the (still, for now, who knows) largest Empire there was and ever had been. 

Now it's important to understand why a human would simp for the Byzan, and why that's so odd. Here's some facts about the great Byzan empire. 

When they conquer an area, they typically rename the people from whatever they call themselves, to a version of themselves in their own tongue. So the Dwarves are called Basht-Vodsht, or, "Mountain-Men" and so on. Most people chafe under this, but they really chafe under the nightmare construct known as the Byzantown, which is a multicultural society free of hate*, in these places, the various peoples are placed, given jobs, educations (careers typically useful to Byzan military needs like engineers) and stripped of useful identities. Voshdt(people) are typically allowed to choose parts of their own leader, but make no mistake, every Byzantown is run by a Legate(military governor, basically), which reports directly to the people in the Capitals of Arin, the homelands of the Orcs. That's not a typo, there's been some issues on where the real centers of power are, now that the forges have fallen. 

Yoki is the first human Legate, and he earned this position by leading a hundred and twenty five Arin-Vosdht survivors: slaves, plebs, patricians, etc from the smoking ruins of the qephom forge as it was cursed five years ago. He took them to Kharmlund, and helped settle it, keep it safe, and organized, and was generally well-liked enough that the Patricians finally decided that race-gating(in this one instance) the levers of power was maybe not the vibe, as the zoomers say. 

Yoki is understandably one of the first people to actually benefit from more than the cleanliness, law and order (cue Life of Brian scene here) and actually see his ambition rewarded, and he's full-on on the Empire train now. He expects that this crisis will end, the forges will be un-cursed, and a new, changed empire will lead the Voshdt of the world into a new empire.

The party almost unanimously decided he's a retard, so I may have not done a good job of showing that Yoki does have a point, since, if a system rewards you immensely, even if it sucks, you tend to support the system. When asked about the Forgecursing, Yoki had no information for the party. He was there, shit went bad almost instantly, and the few scraps of information he could muster means that it's world(when Yoki says world, he means Empire) wide. There is also talk of an "invasion" far to the north, from beyond the icewalls that, as legend tell, sealed around the lands that are known. Who knows?  The point is, help isn't coming, and Yoki is looking to become the help for everyone else. This empire isn't dead yet damn it, and even if he has to declare himself Khulmar(Emperor) well he um haha nevermind that last part. 

He gave them more information on the various other major factions that populate Kharmlund. 

First, there's Kurhgan, the Bandit king. He definitely is the guy resetting and laying new traps everywhere, and he does want any and all magical items. An attempt to raid him with a war party lead to what I described to the players as "dungeon vietnam". The guy is entrenched and only his men know the tripwires. Killing Kurgan and bringing back his head? That's how you get the massive treasure hoard he had in his quarters. 

Ratmen are an unknown. They swarm and they attempted to destroy the Newforge once. The attack lasted nearly half a year, with seemingly endlessly replensished chittering ratmen swarming but also literally incapable of learning tactics of any kind whatsoever. But the endless numbers worked against them under a Vulpes agent was able to turn them against each other - with absurd ease, I might add, and the attack fell apart in hours. 

The tainted area is a nightmare hellzone. Every single faction, as far as Newforge knows, has sealed it off in some form or fashion. It's filled to the brim with moon-haunted, people cursed into the mad slaves of Lund, the moon(the moon is evil in this setting). There's been attempts to purge it - these have never worked. They take prisoners. Those prisoners then show up as more moon haunted. It's a problem. They can't be reasoned with. They are innately hateful. Communication seems impossible.

There's some discussion with them about heart theory, something that the Solarguard believe in - they claim that Lund-tainted areas are controlled by these odd things called hearts, and destroying them removes the taint. They also believe that hearts exist every where, buy Yoki reminds the party that the Solarguard were, before the cursing of the forges, a bunch of religious extremists the Empire was "getting around to" exterminating before bigger issues arrived. He also has a massive lump of Solargold in his study, and the party did mention that Vandus would likely be returning in search of it, since he was interested overall. Yoki also attempted to pay the party to kill someone who was rousing up the workers, forming something called a "union" but the party wasn't interested. 

Talci wished to speak to a moon-haunted. It was not really useful, they look like the moon-burnt, but their eyes are replaced with obsidian polished black orbs that constantly leak blood(?) and they jabbered incoherently, seeming to know Talci but having no ability to communicate what that meant or why. Then the party realized they'd spent basically the entire session more or less grilling someone like it was a goddamn bethesda game and needed to make some money, so they decided to go smash up the goblin brewery. Why the fuck not? Although, smash up isn't the right word.

Basically in an act of extremely based DnD play, the party drilled a hole in the door, stuck a magic stave through, and fired a lightning bolt into it. Since the room is half the size of the projectile, they barbequed everything inside, took the gold and left Kharmlund about 300 or so GP richer.

Christ on a cracker. It took five sessions to turn them into literal sociopaths. 

There was some leveling once they made it to the settlement of Lester's Folly safely and I closed the book on a session that had more roleplaying than I've ever seen in a game of DnD. 

Anyway, until next time, cheers!

 

*by the point of a sword. You will not be racist against elves, Dwarf, or you will be hang from a gibbet. 

Kharmlund #4: Stomping around the dungeon with your big gold giant.

 It's yet another wonderful nightmare in the depths of Kharmlund - an OSE campaign using a homebrewed megadungeon. 

Today, we had two players again, giving us two characters - 

Ildaberd played by anon.

Turk played by anon.

They were joined by allies this time, as the roll on the "pre dungeon events" table happened, and the players were able to get a member of the Solargaurd to come with them. Who are the "Solargaurd" you may ask? Well, they're certainly not me being extremely lazy and using Stormcast Eternals miniatures in my setting because I think they look cool! But yes, that's the reference I gave them, and that's what I will be using if we ever get to mass-battles. Involving that specific type of person, since the Solarguard are weird little guys and one would probably have to join them to get them to fight with him. They were also informed that since they've been having henchmen die, dwarves want shares of the treasure now. So instead they hired worse henchmen, including a lantern boy named Lemmy and a halfling(?) named Nibbles, who was as vague about his reasons for wanting to go into Kharmlund as he was good at picking locks.

This is probably the single largest exploration that the party has ever done, since they found a shitload of rooms, but didn't have much in the way of combat to worry about - the wandering monster checks did spawn a hellish encounter of a single Ratman(and his 19 Giant Rat Pets) which would have been one hell of a nightmare combat but I decided that a seven foot tall, golem looking mother fucker with a hammer the size of a person might do a morale check, and yes, the Ratman did not like that idea and took off at a run. The party returned to the "skull room" at Dracondir's urging (there was gold there) and opened the skull-chest with some of Nibbles's engineering, removing the top half and rendering it safe. This is where the Ratman encounter was rolled, and they were ready to ambush the party, hearing the divvying up of loot and wealth. The players gave all copper and silver coins to Lemmy, buying his undying loyalty. Vandus accepted nothing - he had no interest in the worldly treasures, but did mention he was looking for "solar gold" or "sun gold" and refused to explain its properties or value.

As stated before, the Ratman ordered his rats to attack, got a better look at the Solarguard, Vandus, and promptly noped out of there. The party decided to explore some more around the dungeon floor. Exploration was mostly finding small trinkets here and there, some traps, etc. Then, exploring the north east end of the first floor of Kharmlund, they find a door that had been nailed shut, with more, large spikes driven into the tiled floor to prevent it from opening. They decided to not go this way, despite my cajoling. Vandus was fine with going - he made many references to the land being tainted and liked to purge the land from it. This did not encourage the party to go forward into the Dont Dead Open Inside door, but you can't fault a DM for trying! Otherwise, nothing too impressive, until they found a pair of goblins enjoying a meal of Giant Rat in a small 5x15 hallway. 

The Goblins looked to be Byzan Legionnaires, and they were kind of, well, not supposed to be sitting around eating tasty rat. Nibbles and the goblins chatted in Titchy cant a bit (it's a tiny person thing, you wouldn't get it) and then there was some information gathered. They were relatively low-level greenskins but there was some information that could be gleaned. 

Kharmlund has four "factions" vying for control of the place. Newforge is comprised of the survivors from when the Forges(not literal forges, they're like giant towers and the purpose for them is completely unknown) fell, becoming cursed. The Arin-Vosdht(Orcs, the main movers and shakers of the Byzan Empire) fled here with their slaves, plebes, soldiers and carved out a small niche. There's the "Kurgan", followers of a bandit king who is also behind the resetting of traps and such. The gobbos didn't know a lot about them, but they did know he's an asshole, to the point that there's a kill-on-site order for any "adventurers" working for him. The Ratmen seem impossible to understand, but they are if anything, deeply numerous and whatever is sealed off, the Goblins were not privy to know. 

The party spent a good 40 minutes in game time resting, chillin', (in real life, this was nearly half the in-game session. a lot information isn't really pertinent here, and there was some good roleplaying, but not important for our purposes) then bid them farewell and went north, to find a room that was extremely well furnished, with a fire elemental offering them nice Lay-Z-Boys to sit on and listen to some lore dumps if they wanted. The party declined, mostly because who the fuck trusts sentient fire? Ildaberd wanted to, but the rest went norther and found a room where there's a lot of miniatures in display cases - beautifully hand-carved and incredibly well painted - with a sign telling them and everyone else not to touch the miniatures, especially the gold ones, in the display case - they would regret it. The party was generally quite cautious and left the miniatures alone, finishing up their new room exploration to the north-east a bit. They found the half-eaten dinner and still-warm bed robes of some people, and a beautiful silver hand-mirror face down which they immediately destroyed(lol). 

After that, the party simply shrugged and returned back to the surface. Most of their gold/exp was based from the skull room but there were some levelups. The Elf, Ildaberd found some stuff written in Dwarvish code, and got Read Languages as a scroll, so maybe there's something there. No deaths due to the randomly rolled super-golem that joined the party, and Vandus vowed to return to do something about the "taint". He then stepped backwards into a sunbeam and vanished while they were in town. Weird guy.

Overall the party continues to map the floor, and that's good. They're in the opening stages of a Bethesda game - learning how to play, and hopefully soon they will meet the other factions and start making choices. 

Current Player Map of Kharmlund: 

Kharmlund #3: The players find themselves a magic hammer - and Ori the Unwise gets eaten by a treasure chest.

 The sages have sung, the seven weirdstones have been gathered, and the clouds crack apart to reveal...another session report of Kharmlund!

In this session of Kharmlund, we see our first levelup and magical item as the party goes deeper...deeper into the depths of Kharmlund (about a hundred or so feet deeper. The...the point is the map is getting mapped more:

Our players this time around was:

Turk - Level 1 Assassin

Half-Elf - Level 1 Bard (I do not know his name atm)

and two Dwarves - Ori and Nori, because the Dwarves of Lester's Folly weren't a fan of how people might be getting killed for a single GP, so they were concerned about negotiations for "shares".

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So far, the party hasn't had much, er, direction to what they've been doing, basically just choosing a different direction each and every time, and this was mostly not any different, they decided to go south from the intersection containing the strange altar that shocks people, and found and open room where a pack of Kurgan's bandits were chillin' and talking to one another. I gave them some useful information(through the bandits): Kurgan rewards handsomely for magical items and artefacts brought to him from Kharmlund, and these men were discussing how to get the dagger(assumption was it was magical, otherwise why protect it?) from the altar - the party was offered a large ruby(100gp, 10 coins weight) if they could figure it out.. 

The party thought of taking this on, but instead decided to head south into a large room where they discovered a cabal of the verminous ratmen, who were, funnily enough, also discussing something - how to get water from the wall-face from last session. They wanted the password(they scream at it and it gets angry and unleashes a gelatinous cube on them) and bartered mightily with the party for the password, including the "stick" one of them was carrying (actually a magical wand, but). After getting the "password" the rats scurried off. The "stick" was thrown backwards as a reward and the ratmen ran off to get access to basically just free water, I suppose. 

Ah well. Onto some searching for hidden rooms. There were four in this room, all on the west wall. It's a big-ass room, too. After some kind and clever searching, the PCs were able to find for themselves a couple hidden rooms. One of them was basically just a "how cautious are you" test, with a lever in a hole in the wall - just reach in and pull it! I didn't get this idea from rewatching The Mummy Returns at all. Anyway - they opened it - nothing inside. Just a fun prank, having a laffy laff of a time, friends. The other one was a kind of military Cache - stored away and hidden by Arin-Vosdht(orc) runes. After some guessing, they party arranged it and got their first magic item - Dracondir! It's a hammer for dwarves, with cool runes inscribed on it and the - and I swear I rolled this randomly - an ability to detect gold in a 40 foot radius. With that finished, I promptly pulled out a shredder and fed my maps and notes int- no I'm just kidding, but I have, with this simple item, changed the nature of the campaign hilariously, as players will be able to have far more lucrative delves going forward. On session three. Ha ha. Oh well, this means faster level-ups and likely will take away some focus from the actual Kharmlunding - but that is entirely okay, the campaign only starts at Kharmlund, and won't be ending in it unless that players choose to do so.

They did their first ping and located a treasure cache nearby. Eastwards, so naturally off they went. They found a goblin brewery northeast from the big ping - goblins chillin' and offering brews. Nominally, allies or henchmen of Kurgan, but just happy brewmasters looking to get wasted and placated dangers with brews. Otherwise they found, in no good order - a floating glass orb with a giant ruby inside alongside many poisonous spiders. Turk remarked there's no ratmen around when you need them. There was also a reading table, and a book of a man writing a memoir of his regrets (said regrets were mostly just him bragging) with many pages earmarked. They did find the last major get of this floor, the blood-drinking box. Basically it's a treasure chest with fangs, feed them things and then it will open. After some negotiating with the henchmen, Ori took the chance - he died. Nori wasn't too happy with how things went after this but he wasn't going to cry about it - accepting a share instead of a wage for his silence on the cruel throwing away of Ori's life (and the discovery of the lost hammer Dracondir). They got a decent get for it - a gem worth 1500 gp. With that, the party decided that enough was enough, time-wise and left Kharmlund, passing all WM checks with no attacks. Money money! We got some levelups and such, so the party will be better served, but I'm very curious exact how Dracondir will change the campaign going forward.