Edmond had this idea of acquiring some sort of ballista on wheels and I had to explain the impracticality of it inside a dungeon environment sadly. Could have said yes and he wouldn’t have get past the chasm and rope bridge of Level 1 and crushed his dreams that way…

Short session: 2 hours.

Gunderholfen by G. Hawkins: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/265629/gunderholfen

Player Characters (PCs) – The Battle Brothers:

• Aracyne, Elf Hunter, fearless Guild Leader, (Isaac)
• Jedri, Ratman Thief, he likes his rat-shape curse (Isaac)
• Grimoire, Goblin Mage, frail but smart (Isaac)
• Forka, Dogman Knight, fierce warrior (Edmond)
• Torch, Goblin Knight, not expendable anymore (Edmond)

This session’s main goal: kill the orcs’ first line of defense

What the other adventuring guilds are doing at the moment:

• Green Imps: training in Longfelt
• The Protectors: exploring Longfelt’s underworks
• Black Axes: adventuring, try to find a tower in Ganfal swamp
• The Musers: left Longfelt but kept quiet on their objective

Longfelt

• The Battle Brothers stay the night at the Hare & Hound Inn. They buy some field rations. Jedri pays to repair his morningstar. Torch would like to buy an oversized crossbow but finds it too expensive. Forca pays some rounds in taverns and listens to rumors: « The Wizard Balfour’s tower is rumoured to hold great treasure. » And: « A group of bandits is operating out of Prickly’s End Forest. They have so far been able to evade the Baron’s forces. Their leader, Uthbarth the Pike, is wanted, dead or alive. »

Ganfal Swamp

• On their way to Gunderholfen they encounter a group of four hostile Ogres and have to fight them. Forca got hit by a powerful blow and barely stands on his feet but Grimoire heals him back to health after the fight. They find suspicious meat, foul-smelling tobacco, smoking pipes and a few coins but not much else.
• Closer to the dungeon they spot some broken statues of hobgoblins in awkward poses. The elf hunter can see oversized chicken feet tracks all around. The « statues » are the work of a Basilisk it seems, but fortunately it’s nowhere in sight.

Gunderholfen

• They make a stop at Fryniwyd’s new shop. They chat a little and buy a vial of paralytic poison extracted very recently from a local cave scorpion.
• They go down via their usual shortcuts, have reached Level 3 and only have a few rooms to go to the stairs leading to Level 4 but… they can see that the series of doors leading south are all open! That means… Yes, there it is, you can see it, can you? The floating sword! The Gelatinous Cube is upon us! Torch the goblin reacts quickly and burns it with his torch and it seems that fire work amazingly well against it. The Cube counters on Torch, firing a big ball of corrosive slime but most of it didn’t touch the goblin (minimum damage). Forka is reluctant to get close to it, Aracyne let go of two arrows, doing very good damage. Grimoire channels maximum mana into a spell to send 3 Fireballs at once into the Gelatinous Cube and slays the big slime monster! The freed sword clanks on the ground. Jedri takes it, remove the scabard and everyone can see a dim purple light emanating from the blade. There’s writing on it, its name is Perseverance.
• This done, they go directly to their Level 4 outpost. It hasn’t been disturbed in their absence apparently. They add another barrel of dry meat to their emergency food stash.
• Thence, they go south and east to reach the great cave inhabited by the orcs. Exactly as the previous time there’s 10 orc archers, 5 sentries on each side of the cave entrance, on higher grounds than the invaders. The orcs act first and fire a volley, no questions asked, inflicting a few wounds on the adventurers but nothing too bad. Grimoire casts Levitate on Forka who lands on the western promontory and immediately kill an archer with a massive hammer blow. Aracyne kill two orcs with arrows. Torch wounds another with a thrown spear, finished by a thrown dagger from Jedri. Now five against six, the adventurers continue the onslaught as Jedri joins Forka with another Levitate, and kills an orc with his new magic sword. Aracyne kills another orc but then his bow almost breaks in two and is damaged. Grimoire the goblin mage is the target of a deadly arrow but he is saved by his fellow goblin companion who takes the hit instead on his armored self, with lesser consequences. The adventurers have the upper hand and finish off the orc archers who chose to fight to their bitter but swift end, their calls for reinforcement not yet answered.
• The PCs are now all together on the western promontory and they can hear a lot of commotion from further north and west. The orcs are far from defeated.
• TBC…

Closing comments:

• The past few years I’ve slowly learned to embrace random tables as a Dungeon Master, having « learned » my trade (if we can say that) in the 90s when it wasn’t a popular thing to do at all. Random encounters are simple enough to use or design, and a staple of dungeon-delving and understandably a main component of OSR gaming. But I’m still trying to improve my homebrewed random tables, specifically for the other adventuring parties’ actions. I could easily decide by myself what they’re up to but that’s not the point. Impartiality is the point. Emergent story is even more the point I should say. Anyway, a work in progress it definitely is.
• For the Gelatinous Cube I’ve used the statblock of the Giant Amoeba from the DB Bestiary, simply added a camouflage ability. It’s a pretty powerful monster in fact with 64 hp and ferocity 2, but takes double damage from fire, which fortunately the players exploited almost immediately.
• Isaac had the idea of hiring mining folks to dig a tunnel to reach the orcs from a less unfavorable direction, but he changer his mind after I said it would take at least 10 days of digging, maybe a month, with something like 6 gp per day to pay the crew in salary and food. So it had to be frontal assault instead. Their characters are better equipped and stronger than last time but the orcs are a lot more numerous than the players suspect.