Serpents of Chaos - Delve 14 - The Serpent's Pit

Serpents of Chaos is an AD&D 1e campaign set in the lands of Hyperborea, a vast region of steppe, inland seas, deep mountains, horse-hordes, fierce barbarians, and hardened adventurers. The current events surround the return of the Serpents of Chaos, elder wyrms who had been chained in Tarterus, now brought to the material plane by a dark magic known only to ancient Ashurian astromancers.

Tonight's session was manned by Prosulius (Gnome MU 2/Thief 2) a hired guard of five men-at-arms. He ventured to the Serpent's Pit, one of the three locations in the mountains southeast of Svargorod that the Great Serpents and their Serpent-Men had taken over. Later, they were joined by Talon the Courser (Ranger 4).

Serpent-men!

 

Prosulius made good speed on the road east, camped for the night at the feet of the mountains, then headed south in the morning. He came to the ruined fortress and tower that sits above the cursed tunnels of the Serpent's Pit. He found a hole in the wall and clambered in with his men.

Soon, he was approached by a serpent-man greeting party. Two soldiers and a serjeant attacked Prosulius, who defeated them while losing one of his own. The serjeant started running back to the tower in the middle of the ruins. Prosulius cast an illusion of a freezing cold interior in the doorway to the tower, then backstabbed the confused serjeant. Blood poured from the monster's back but he managed to run away while serpent-men archers and soldiers attacked from the tower.

Great Mosque of Samarra

Prosulius gathered his men and they fought their way up the tower. Meanwhile, the ranger Talon showed up and put his magic arrows to use. He showered a quiverful on the fleeing serjeant (who managed to get away on a dromedary) as well as the archers up in the tower.

The attack was not successful. Prosulius, his men-at-arms dying around him, decided to make one final act of intelligence gathering. He took a slain serpent-man and body-surfed him down into the hollow interior of the tower (which led waaaaay down into a black pit). What he saw there, only he knows.

Talon, seeing as his arrows could not do enough to help his fellow adventurer, drank a potion of gaseous form and floated away to join a Svarnic patrol and tell them everything he saw.