Cauldron OSR Eurocon 2024 Day II

 

    After a crazy day of an exhausting trip, a great on-train session provided by Nico and an unbelievable Braunstein game, we took a much needed nap. However it wasn't meant to last for long because at 7:30 we had to be awake to bath, reach the dinner table at 8 and after that enlist ourselves for a game! Let's go!

THE BREAKFAST

    It's worth mentioning that our food was delicious and it was all created by the volunteers and the families of the Nexus club that hosts the event! They worked endlessly to make sure everything was provided and the result was unbelievable! I wish I could express how grateful me and everyone else is for this effort! A lot of cheese, coffee, sausage and juice found its way to our bellies and we were ready to begin our adventures!!!

    Once again be warned that the rest of the report contains spoilers for every module that I took part in, so if you want to avoid them, skip the specific section.

CHILDREN OF THE SEA

    Nico, Mitch and me looked for the list of the games and we decided to play the tournament module that blackrazor made. We had decided that we wanted to participate, it looked really fun (and it was) so we began our day with that.

    The great DM Philipp would run it, unfortunately we had way too many participants on our table while another one that also was for the tournament had less players. So Mitch went over there and the rest of us took our place on the table to begin!

    For my character I picked sir Fairburne, a 7th level paladin! We also had two clerics on our party so evil begone, here we come!!!

    Philipp explained the adventure hook to us. A pirate named Rodrik the Red has stolen a very important leric, a very important glove for the church. They had a lead about the location of the pirates and they tasked us to retrieve it. It was on an island and they transported us there via ship. He also explained us that there were spare characters so if someone dies we could return to the ship to use them.

    Now that the introduction was gone, we got in the action! The enemies' lair was on a temple on a cliff by the sea so we could approach it only by one side. However, we opted not to enter by the main entrance but scoot with the magic user's familiar and find a weaker spot. Indeed at the roof there was a small opening and quickly our thief climbed the walls and with a rope he helped us all get up.

Standing at the top of the temple

    Taking a look inside, we see a wyvern eating something that it was fed to by a pirate. We could also hear more pirate voices. Using our arrows and a sleep spell we took care of everyone there besides one pirate. We interrogated him and he revealed that Rodrik, the captain of the crew dissappeared and there was unrest among the crew. Many were thinking that the second in command, Stannis the heartbreaker could take his place but for now, they were waiting their captain's return. He also revealed us that there was a second level of this temple, the undertemple. We decided to descend there and continue our search for captain Rodrik and therefore the glove!

The undertemple and our marching order

    

    As we were searching the second level, we were attacked by shadows. Thankfully the holy might of my paladin and the two clerics forced them to retreat.

Our party attacked by the shadows, represented by the dice

    A few rooms later we encountered a mummy that by its clothes we deduced that it was what remained of captain Rodrik. We attacked him but he survived and retreated! Being so close to complete our task we followed him on a cave that had a little lake and unfortunately we came face to face with 3 of the PC's demise. 3 sea hags!!! 

    These monsters used their death gaze and sir Fairburne alongside two of his comrades lost their lives. The rest of the party however caught the mummified Rodrik, destroyed him and took many valuable items from his corpse.

Our characters laying dead by the sea hags(purple dice) while the rest of the team reached Rodrik(green dice)

    At the top of the roof where Rodrik was slain there was a small opening. The four remaining PCs used levitate and entered a room where Stannis, the second in command and a few other pirates were standing. We tried to use our knowledge to persuade them that we were sent by Rodrik but unfortunately they recognised the jewels of their captain that we just killed and attacked us. A combination of web and hold person helped us overpower them. Then our group retreated back to the ship to get reinforcements.

    

    My second character was a fighter/thief dwarf named Black Morran. We came back once again from the roof and when we descended to the undertemple we used locate object to find the glove! Voila! We finally got it and then by searching the rest of this level (avoiding of course the lake of the sea hags), we reached a hidden lake where the ship of the pirates were!

    We saw some small boats that were used to reach the ship and besides them a barrel full of meat. We threw some of it on the lake and we quickly saw a squid's tentacle collecting it! Not wanting any surprises we threw a lot of it on the sea to make sure the monster's hunger was pleased and then we used the boats to reach the ship.

    We easily overpowered the few remaining pirates there and had them help us steal claim the ship for the forces of good!

    The session ended there and our mission was complete! We loved the game so much although we were kind of disappointed of our performance. We lost 3 PCs which we thought would most probably lead us to the last place on the tournament and when we talked to Mitch we saw that we didn't have that much loot.

    Of course at this point we hadn't ask Philipp what was the value of the items we retrieved, we had just written down the gold pieces and the value of the ship. When the awards ceremony would take place, we would face a big surprise!

    No matter what the result however, it was a great game and we had a lot of fun!!! The fights were intense and despite the fact we had our losses we cleared the lair and found the glove! Mission accomplished!

ASSAULT ON THE PYRODOME

    After we had lunch, we signed up for Settembrini's session of Assault on the Pyrodome. It's a follow up of T1, where after the heroes defeat the first outpost of the cults of elemental evil, they move on to the next one, the outpost that the fire cult was using.

    My character was a thief named Ragfenova the Mantled.

    We followed up a lead from the locals and while we were venturing in the woods, we fell upon a group of bugbears. We managed to ambush and kill them. We found out that they were residing on a nearby fort and we decided to search it even further.

    We invaded the fort and managed to defeat the guards of the first floor.

The party dominating the first floor of the fort

    By interrogating a blinded troll that was working in the kitchen, we realised that this was the outpost of the fire cult and they had a dragon below! Also we were lucky enough to find a ring of fire protection on a opposing cleric, which is always good when you are facing a red dragon!

    There were two ways for us to reach the dragon. Either by going down the stairs and explore most of the second floor or by going directly through the chimney to the room of the dragon. We decide to take the more normal approach and go down the stairs.

   

The party entering the second level of the fort

       Unfortunately when we turned left to reach the area where the troll told us the dragon is, our thief (not me, there was another one in the party) tried to open the door but a ton of hot coal falls upon him. He rolls a save, he misses it and he is instantly killed! WOW! We decide not to go that way and we went back once again!

    Since we wanted to scout the area, we take one of our party members and have him drink a potion of gaseous form. Then we put him on a bottle, cast silence on the bottle and throw him through the chimney. The perfect plan! The dragon won't be able to hurt the gas even if he is awake and the glass will make no sound when it crashes down!

    "And now ", Settembrini says, "we will have to roll to see if the bottle endures the fall!". Crap! We hadn't thought of that! What if the glass doesn't break???

    Fortunately the glass does break and our comrade sees a sleeping red dragon on top of his hoard! He returns to us and we decide to go down and slay him!!!

The party descending through the chimney

    I am the first to go down since I am a thief using a rope. Then I try to pull the rope as far away from the bottom of the chimney as possible because its very hot and the PCs would be damaged! We also had watered the rope to make sure it doesn't get on fire! We succeeded and we descended one after the other. Then we surrounded the dragon and began our attack!!!

    The dragon was still appeared to sleep, unfortunately it woke up as we approached it and we lost the element of surprise! However, Mitch used his phantasmal force to double the party and as a result any damage that a party member did, his phantasmal clone also did!

The party surrounding the dragon

    With that trick we were able to cause it 46 damage in one turn! Then he used his breath weapon on us, and fortunately he picked our clones as his targets! He also hit Nico's character who fell unconsious but didn't die! In the next round we ended its life and the loot was ours!!! We cheered with joy for the gold and glory that our party achieved!!!

Nico, Mitch and Prince of Nothing rules lawyering

    After that we went for dinner and then we prepared for our next adventure of the day, which would be run by Prince of Nothing. It's worth mentioning that I was a player in his slyth hive playtesting and the convention was the first time I met him in person! Great!

LAIR OF THE BRAIN EATERS

       

    The last game of the night was a LotFP module that Prince had reviewed and decided to put his copy to good use. I must admit that the game started at 9 pm and yesterday's trip plus the 8 hours of gaming that we completed the same day started to get to me. However this was a suitable module for the occasion as it was a relatively less risky situation than fighting red dragons or sea hags and the funny voices that most of the guys on the table used made it a more relaxed game, which was what we needed at the time!

    My character was a magic-user who just now I realised remains nameless.

    Our characters heard stories of people getting lost in the cemetery of the village and never return. We went there and we were attacked by some hairy monsters called Yoinog. Despite the fact that I mentioned that this was an easier module, my character fell unconsious during this fight. Another one of our PCs fell when after the battle we found the secret entrance to a cave that was also accompanied by a poisonous gas that caused out thief to pass out.

    After a couple of weeks we went back to the cemetery and entered the cave. We encountered more of these hairy freaks and had to retreat. Unfortunately the party split in that moment with our thief staying hidden in the shadows on our enemies' room and Nico's assasin, realising how stupid they were he infiltrated their ranks posing as one of them. When we met them again the assasin backstabbed them and gave us an advantage that we used to beat them. With them out of the way we started searching the rest of the dungeon.

    We encountered some rat that we killed before it could do anything. Prince informed us that it could use a breath weapon of some sort. Good thing it's dead! Then we had a crazy encounter where we met a female of these monsters which believed it was one of the missing people we were looking for. We relaxed it, reassuring it we could turn it back to normal and continued our research. With our new ally help we quickly found the room of our enemy. 

    When we met him and took a look at his lab, we realised that he was feeding these monsters the brains of his victims and then the monsters took on the victim's memories! We killed the monster that was helping us to release it of its agony and then Nico assassinated the evil wizard that ran this place. It was a relatively quick battle with our opponent not being able to do anything!

    The highlight of this game was out attempt to use the grappling rules, which we did successfully! It was a great game and a perfect way to end day II!

CONCLUSION OF DAY II

    As I already said, I was really tired and I had decided that I will go to sleep when the lair of brain eaters end. HOWEVER, when we went to the dinning room to get some water we saw a couple of guys with a great collection of drinks around them and we thought that a couple of minutes of relaxation wouldn't hurt anyone. 

    There I met a co-player from the slyth hive playtest, the heaviest drinker of the con named Lynchpin! So the new party that was formed there a few minutes after midnight, decided to test a lot of rum, vodka, beers and a serbian drink that I am not exactly sure what it was.

    A lot of drinks later we were all laughing with most of us being unable to walk in a straight line. A good time to use discord and write random rumblings on servers with Americans most probably! Fun times!!!

    We went to sleep I think close to 3 am but we still had to wake up early because we already had signed up for the most demanding session of the convention, the huge naval battle that lasted almost 9 hours! It will be covered in the next and last recap of the convention! 

    In the meantime, here is a shaky, drunken picture of shaky, drunken men having a great time! 

    Fight on!!!