My friend Chris visited us and I’ve introduced him to our Gunderholfen campaign and he created a character for the occasion to become a temporary member of their adventuring guild. My son chose to explore the Gates of Power or what I call myself the City of the Smiths, a counterpart to Nharzed, the City of the Masons, two of several broken remnants of the underground dwarven kingdom.

The Gates of Power is basically the big, main dungeon (section 2 of 3) of the Path of Glory adventure module from Dragonbane, now only a small part of the megadungeon. They dipped their toes into it some sessions ago but now we’ll see a good chunk of it.

3 hours session

Player Characters (PCs) – The Battle Brothers:

• Aracyne, Elf Hunter, fearless Guild Leader, (Isaac)
• Jedri, Ratman Thief, he rather enjoys his rat-shape curse (Isaac)
• Bumwild, Gnome Mage, want to become a summoner (Isaac)
• Forka, Dogman Knight, fierce warrior (Edmond)
• Timbo, Human Arcanist, wields both crossbow and lightning (Edmond)
• Magnus, Dogman Thief, cautious dungeon explorer (Chris)

What the other adventuring guilds are doing at the moment:

• Green Imps: adventuring in Uzul’s Manor
• The Protectors: adventuring in Prickly’s End forest, except Delevan (convalesent)
• Widowmakers: adventuring in Gunderholfen
• The Musers: leisure in Longfelt
• The Ravens: depravity in Longfelt

This session’s main goal: explore a big chunk of the City of the Smiths

En route

• Right before entering Ganfal swamp, the Battle Brothers encounter the returning Musers. They look exhausted and wary, even if they try their best to hide it. The two guilds talk about their progress so far in Gunderholfen, both clearly hiding many things. They say goodbye to each other, those going in and those going out.

Level 4 (Gates of Power)

• They go through Level 1 swiftly and reach the dwarven elevator, going down directly to Level 4.
• As before, they have to fight skeleton warriors when they enter the Gates. The adventurers take care to keep close to the wall so the skeleton crossbowmen can’t shoot them. Using a few bottles of holy water, they dispatch the skeletons and go do the same with the crossbowmen to the south.
• They then come back to the entrance, examine a bit the dwarven statues each side but don’t find much and Magnus do some reconnaissance upstairs but can’t go very far as there’s more skeletons blocking the way.
• They all go up. More holy water, some lightning bolts from Timbo and they shatter the ranks of skeleton warriors, with only a few remaining. But all this fighting attracts the attention of something else, something horrible: a Death Dog. A huge two-headed, undead hound. Forka, Jedri and Torch are frontline against the monster but can’t flank it because of the remaining skeletons. They manage to hurt it with several good blows and evade its claw attacks but then the Death Dog let go of a poison breath attack and Forka, who’s right in the middle of it, inhales a lethal dose. He still fights, and he and his companions defeat the monster soon after, but he’s not feeling good. At all.
• The PCs decide to go see if the hobgoblins, not very far at the Forge, have some antidote. The fastest among them, Jedri and Magnus, don’t wait for the others and rush to go there as fast they can. The others follow behind. But it’s all futile, the hobgoblins don’t have any antidote (5-6 on d6). Poor Forka dies in agony. The Battle Brothers ask the hobgoblins if they can leave their friend’s body temporarily to them and they accept. And so, they go back to exploring…
• Back where they fought the Death Dog and skeletons, they go south in a narrow corridor and explore a series of rooms along another, long corridor.
• One room as a charred (dwarven) skeleton and traces of fire on a wall. Another as more (unmoving, dwarven) skeletons on the floor with obvious signs that they fought and killed each other.
• Next, there’s a peaceful room with sea motifs on the walls, some kind of ambassador room.
• They get into a library and a ghost librarian appear when the PCs start messing around with the books. They dispatch the ghost quickly and take some books with them, some tome of spells among their findings.
• Thence, they go north on a long, narrow corridor. They open a door halfway into a vast banquet room but decide not to explore it and go further north. They disturbed something from the banquet room though and they a hear chilling (nazgul-like) scream.
• A signal to which skeletons seem to be attracted, many get out of the northern door. The fight in the narrow corridor is a slog but the adventurers try their best to use a side corridor to their advantage.
• Just when they think they’ve finished they hear loud iron boots coming from the south and soon they see a frightening figure appearing in the torchligh: a Death Knight. The adventurers brace themselves for another fight. The Death Knight can’t swipe with his 2-handed sword in the narrow space but he’s obviously a formidable opponent. Aracyne switches places with Jedri as the latter is the best suited to fight him. He’s quickly put on the defensive, trying to evade all incoming attacks. This leave time for Timbo, and then Bumwild, to cast offensive spells at the undead commander. Jedri is becoming exhausted though (no more willpower) but fortunately the Death Knight, severely wounded by now, decides to retreat but one last fireball from Bumwild leads to his demise. His corpse and armor disappear, leaving behind only his evil-looking sword.
• The adventurers can feel that the sense of oppression they felt earlier is greatly relieved with the end of the Death Knight.

Closing Comments:

• Turns out lethal poison is indeed lethal (if you miss your save). Second character to die in this campaign and Forka is a major component of the team as the best frontline fighter they have. Edmond was understandably distressed of his main character’s death and we rolled in advance his resurrection roll (75% of success) and succeed. Recovery is d4 weeks though and he rolled 4, starting when the ritual will happen, that’s a lot of in-game time.
• Unfortunately Chris’ character was not very useful most of the time, as a light-armored, sneaky type put in undead territory. He’s not the kind to complain but I would have liked to offer him a better experience.
• This session was also a kind of test for me. The Gates of Power, this Dragonbane dungeon, isn’t bad but it’s not excellent either. I find in particular that the rooms are too light in interactivity, there’s just not enough things for the players to mess around.