B/X Stonehell Dungeon Session 6, Feb 6, 2021

Dramatics Personae: 

Benji Boggins, a halfling with more ambition than caution

NPCS

Case O’Beer, fighter who talks like the peasant from Warcraft 1

Dank Holden, the 1 HP wonder

Mik the Torchbearer, who is scared of the dark 

Tonight was a solo session featuring Benji Boggins the halfling. Together with his newfound hirelings Case O’Beer, Dank Holden and the torchbearer Mik, he braved the night haunted halls of Stonehell Dungeon. 

They first examined the remaining crypts, and dispatched a skeletal dog which failed to do much damage. They then encountered a ghoul (ghouls just wanna have fun!) which paralyzed Dank and sorely wounded Case. However, it was guarding a large amount of electrum pieces, which the group grabbed and ran back to town after using both of Jane’s healing potions to heal and remove the paralysis. 

Once in town, Benji realized he had learned a lot from that short delve and was levelled up to level 2. They outfitted themselves with more gear and headed back to Stonehell, where they opened the main abandoned crypt. Inside was nothing but dust and an altar made mostly of of bones, and a large bas-relief of a skull on the wall behind it. When tampered with, the altar let out ear-piercing laughter (presumably an alarm), but nothing else happened. The skull had eyes in it which looked to the east. A secret door was found, leading into a small room containing a large stone coffer. Rather than investigate for traps, Benji flipped the latch and was rewarded with a poison needle to the thumb for his lack of care. However, with Benji being well, Benji, the poison was ineffectual. The coffer contained literally thousands of pieces of silver, some priestly vestments, jewellery, and two potions. Jackpot! 

The party then explored north, ran into a kobold work crew who were busy resetting traps and repairing walls, and also ran into Snorri and his Dwarves again. The Dwarves pointed out the the party had walked right over a pit trap without triggering it, which they marked for future reference. 

They then were stopped by a group of three orcs that demanded a toll of 5 gp/head. Rather than get into a potentially dangerous fight for little reward, they paid the toll (a very smart old school move), and investigated an offering room containing an altar with a bowl full of silver coins. Instead of pilfering the silver and trigger a fairly obvious deadfall trap, they threw in a silver, resulting in a blessing (a free re-roll) from the evil-looking altar. 

Finally, they came across a cistern of exquisite potable water that was incredibly cold and refreshing. They then headed back to town. 

This session was almost perversely profitable. The two potions also turned out to be healing potions, which were handed back to Jane to replace the two that were used in the fight with the Ghoul. Benji is now well on his way to level 3, which will greatly enhance the survivability of the party. He also purchased a trained war dog (statted as a wolf: it's a very large mastiff) named Qiwi. He bought her leather barding to improve her AC by one. I ruled that it didn't provide coverage to the legs, and thus did not give the 2 bonus to AC that leather does for an adventurer. 

See y'all in two weeks!