Welcome to Serpents of Chaos. This is an AD&D 1e RAW dungeoncrawl through the Cursed Chambers of Tsennacherib. We game in classic adventure style: focus on exploration, a mapper and no VTT, and player skill is central. The setting is Iron Age Hyborian Steppe.
Tonight, four intrepid adveturers head into the dungeon: Ursula the Thief, Buddy the Cleric (now level 2), as well as two newcomers: Leinahtan and Lurin the Fighters.
Drawn here by the promise of treasure and by the secrets of the Serpent-Men, they headed in. Soon, Ursula discovered that her covered pit trap had fooled two ape-men, who were now dead from their headlong fall into the snake tunnels below.
The party decided to lower themselves down, but not before spotting a glow of red up ahead in the gloom. A few adventurers crept up to investigate. It was a fire beetle.
Buddy and Leinahtan stayed to play "Beetle," a game where you charge a giant beetle and the first one to back out loses (apparently played by Buddy when he was a youngster).
With my newly-acquired mastery of the grappling rules (we had a couple of brawls during downtime), we dove right in. For all the flak that Gary's unarmoured combat receives, it is not that complicated. It's not quick. But it's not complex, either. There are some choices to make and some math. But it took all of 30 seconds to get things rolling and only a couple minutes to finish combat.
This was due to Leinahtan's luck. He beat Buddy to the beetle and dove right in for an overbear. He scored a great hit, putting this thing in a headlock and immediately subduing it. For the rest of the game he had a glowing fire beetle tied around his neck, giving him some light down in the snake tunnels. Awesome.
After combat, the whole party descended the snake tunnels. They checked the dead ape-men and found one of them had a blowgun and some darts. Myriads of snakes slithered every which way and attempted to get into boots and up pant legs. But luckily a couple lit torches and some fire beetle glands kept them at bay.
The party came to a tunnel lined with large snake skulls, each one marked with symbols from the outer planes. Most of the symbols were those of Tarterus, where the Old Serpent-God is said to be chained in gloomy torment.
They smashed all of the skulls, naturally. This yielded a small stash of assorted coins.
Another tunnel offshoot they ventured down was dotted with pools. The first one held a glinty hint of coins. The second: bubbles.
These bubbles turned out to be a calm and observant crocodile. It watched them while they picked some handfuls of coins. By this time a wandering monster roll came up positive (hasn't happened often!) and a Khitemian slaver is rolled on the chart. I then roll to determine how many: one. Great, let's do this.
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| A Khitemian. Thanks Frazetta. |
He holds a torch and the party hears him coming around the corner roughly 30' away. As he appears he is in the usual Khitemian getup: a wicked bronze scimitar and a large, horned helmet. They get one segment of surprise on him. Ursula tries to sneak through the shadows for a backstab (but fails) and the others draw their weapons. The Khitemian is too slow to run and he receives an arrow right between the eyes--thanks to Lurin's bow.
They loot him and find a few coins as well as a double-sided piece of paper. One side contains notes about some contract between the slavers and the Serpent-Men. The other side is a treasure map!
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| A contract? |
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| A treasure map? |
The adventurers left the crocodile alone and nosed around the rest of the tunnels. They got bit by some small snakes, found a secret door to the long entrance corridor where Jorduu got darted last time, as well as another secret door to a large cavern (Ursula sees a fallen stalactite as she closes this last door). Both of these are doors were in the ceilings of the snake tunnels, so they must lead back up to level 1 of the dungeon.
Some more coins are found, and pocketed, and the party retires to town with a decent padding of cash and a handy note for next time...
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