CAULDRON OSR EUROCON 2025

The journey towards Cauldron 25

    The time has come once again! The Greek delegation has grown from 2 people last year to 3, with the addition of mighty Theo! So, the trio met at the airport and began it's journey towards Germany and whatever legendary adventures await us there!

The greek trio: Nico, me and Theo

    The flight was pretty cool, but the real danger was one of the strongest enemies of foreigners attending Cauldron, the mighty DB. The train company in Germany is notorious for its delays and deadly surprises! The first one for us was forcing us to pay the InterCity Express ticket, a much costier one, but forcing us to take the regular train, ending up paying 50 euros to travel standing in the regular train. 

    But that wasn't DB's final word. In an attempt to completely derail our journey, they announced while we were on the train (only in German, no English translation) that the train was going to split. And worst of all, the part of the train that we were currently in, wasn't going to arrive in our destination. Thankfully, Nico speaks German fluently and guided us safely! From there we met with some other fellow adventurers, took a cab and reached Cauldron!

Outside the train station

 

 Cauldron Day I

Our room

    First of all, I think it's fair to say that the facility was much better than the previous one. The rooms were very cosy and the game rooms were cool! The only downside is that the wargame table could be a little longer and in a wider area were you can move more freely like last year (although I didn't use it) and that the room that had the game tables one next to the other was a little too noisy sometimes. But I am nitpicking there, the convention was already improved from the excellent 2024 version and we are all looking forward for the next one! So, now let's get to the games!

Coliseum of the Lunar Lion

    The first game I joined was Mitch's Coliseum of the Lunar Lion! In that module, we had 5 hours to grab an important scroll case from the Coliseum for a handsome reward of 6000 gp. Otherwise, the lunar items would activate and bad things would follow.

    We slaughtered everyone we could get our hands on in the entrance hall and started searching the rest of the coliseum. Soon enough shenanigans started happening. A skeletal wizard managed to split the party sending most of the group in a different room. My character, Bharak Blackbraid the dwarf fighter with two other comrades continued forward! 

Bharak Blackbraid

    After a while, we have found the scroll, alongside a corpse! Unfortunately, I failed my saving throw and Mitch took me to the side to explain to me what's happening. I was possessed by an evil wizard who has stolen the scroll and now I wanted them dead.

    I tried casting a spell but my armor messed it up! The two members of the party knocked my unconsious, taking care not to kill me, but then the loyal imp of the wizard attacked them. Meanwhile, the rest of the party arrived, grabbed the scroll and left while the wizard's monster killed my two friends with its poisonous attacks!

    So, the party retrieved the scroll, but if I remember correctly three of its members perished and now the evil wizard lives through the body of my dwarf!!! Fun session with a lot of twists!!

A map of the coliseum

Rivers of Blood, Death and Glory

    After an excellent session in Mitch's game, we decided to finish the first day of Cauldron by participating in the tournament module, made by Blackrazor! Me and Nico joined a group of gamers from Czech Republic and our DM was Henning!

    

Jolith Lafayette, my fighter - mu elf

    In this module, an ancient enemy long defeated had his fortress still standing and we were sent to explore it and root out whatever evil forces my live there still!

    We followed some wolves to the castle and soon enough we discovered some tunnels from an old mining operation. We entered the castle through the tower and fought with some yetis. As we continued searching the castle we fought even more of these monsters and I decided to charm one of them, a yeti named Carl Heinz. With his assistance we found the secret stash of the yetis and searched the whole area. 

    We arrived in a dead end guarded by a golem. We figured that a secret entrance should be there but we couldn't open it up. With the golem fighting us, we had to keep moving. We evetually found a lot of treasure, with a flying carpet included, although one of us died from an explosive rune. 

    Just when we thought we were done and decided to leave through a corridor we had found, our human magic user decided to use his wizard eye to scout ahead just in case. Most of thought that there was no point in that since we were done there, but it turned out he saved our asses! He saw that ahead of this corridor was a cave with three white dragons!

    So we used our flying carpet to escape through the skies and the module was over! Great adventure and we were really pleased with the amount of loot we gathered! Nice way to end the first day of Cauldron!!!

Map of the tournament module, with my loyal yeti 

in the front line of our marching order

Cauldron Day II

Bad Myrmidon

    The first game of our second day, was Bad Myrmidon ran by ghoul. It was an extremely fun session that me and Nico joined because it was set on Homeric Greece with a lot of easter eggs for us.

    It was a funny module that presented Achilles as a selfish and coward warrior who tried to create a marketable image for himself, avoiding real danger as much as he could. We went to the island of Lefki, to find his hidden treasure.

    There, we met a crazy and obviously weak guy who wore a shining armor and pretended to be Achilles. We easily killed him and threw his body in the sea. Then we started hex crawling through the island!

The explored map of Lefki, overshadowded by terrible threats and my phone

    A really fun fact is the fact that ghoul didn't mention that the module is R-Rated (Raggi even wrote one of the hexes) and as a result two teenagers joined the group, something that put him in an awkward position! Still, we had no problem at all and he didn't have to adapt anything!

    In the island we faced many bizzare dangers, like a dragon and giant centipede fighting, man-eating plants trying to devour us and eventually a group of soldiers looking for the mad man we killed earlier. We didn't reveal his tragic fate and followed their instructions towards the island's city, Achilleis.

    Turns out that the guy we threw at the sea was named Kelippos and was the son of a very important figure of this island. We pretend to be interested to assist in the effort to find him in order to sleep for free in his father's mansion.

    The next day we are heading towards a temple of Achilles' fanatics. We eventually find it, after we encounter a feathered woman that wanted to mate with our halfling and some hungry trees and plants, that are willing to trade information for food. This exploration leads us to the temple and the final part of the adventure is about to begin!

The temple of Achilles

    We entered the temple and soon we realised that we were not the only ones to infiltrate it! From its three entrances, one was opened with a dead guard, another one was heavily guarded by a phalanx and the last one had a small room with a door. We picked the left one, the one with the dead guard and soon enough we faced a puzzle! Another fun fact is that the puzzle was based on Homer's Troy, so me and Nico were able to solve it instantaneously, much to the group's happiness. It was based in the order in which Agamemnon bedded Kleitemnistra (his lawful wife), Chrisiida (the daughter of an Apollo's priestess that had to return to Troy to calm Apollo's wrath) and Brisiida (Achilles' loot that was grabbed by Agamemnon once he was forced to return Chrisiida). In the module the players would have to roll an intelligence check to understand it, since it's impossible for someone not Greek to know such a small detail, but the group had its "inside men"! 

    We also met a robot named Talos that we managed to beat. We also encountered some Amazons who were there to avenge their fallen leader. We also found a lion that we fed and managed to turn in our companion and the module ended when we fought an undead woman. Unfortunately we didn't have the time to complete it, since it was time to eat and rest!

    It was really fun adventure and from what ghoul said, we avoided a lot of its R-rated content!

CONCLUSION

    There were many more iconic games in the rest of the con. Unfortunately real life has forced me to abandon my attempt to finish my report and now I have already posted the report of Cauldron 2026. So I will throw a few photos of me and my teammates winning second place at the Blackrazor Cup, or from the Attronach's epic game where I burnt 5 of my allies alive!

    I dislike the fact that I post a half report but I prefer to at least have this instead of nothing!

    Anyways!

FIGHT ON!

Well done team!

Pic from our participation on the Prince's of Nothing tournament that we actually won, although my contribution was not so great 😋

Cheers!