Adventures in Questing – Second expedition, Delving deeper

After gearing up, the four heroes finally returned to the dungeon.

Note: Just like last time, I’ll keep the general description fairly narrative and add my own commentary in red text.

They descended into the dungeon and hurried towards the stairs to the second level, keen to avoid running into any Skaven patrols that might still be wandering around.

The map of the, already explored, first level of the three-level dungeon. An “E” indicates that the room is empty.

Those hopes were quickly dashed, as, rounding the very first corner, the party ran into a couple of very surprised Skaven warriors.

Fortunately, the Skaven patrol didn’t include a sentry, and the two ratmen were unceremoniously cut down by Croaker and Allum before they had a chance to act.

The heroes quickly looted the corpses and hurried to the downward stairs without encountering further problems.

The second level of the dungeon was quiet and dusty. The first room proved to be empty and so the party followed the winding corridors deeper into the darkness

Eventually, signs of habitation became more frequent and the heroes tightened the grip on their weapons. Then, upon turning a corner, they nearly ran into three Skaven warriors. Behind the Skaven was a closed door and at the end of the corridor a set of stairs appeared to lead upwards and out.

I rolled a “stairs down” on the “passage end”-table but followed the convention from most of the published quests that the stairs to the next level would only be found in a quest room and that any “stairs down” in a corridor would be treated as “stairs out” instead.

This was actually really useful for the heroes, as they’d now have a shortcut to this part of the dungeon.

The ratmen were quickly dispatched and the party carefully opened the door. On the other side was an empty room (boring) with two (less boring) doors leading out.

The first door opened out to an empty corridor that ended in a rockslide, so the heroes instead gathered around the second. From the other side came muffled screams which were suddenly cut off.

Croaker threw open the door and the party came face to face with the biggest and meanest-looking Skaven they had ever encountered (a warlord in fact). The thing turned from the grizzly remains of a prisoner that still lay on a rack in the room, picked up an evilly glowing polearm and screeched:

“Ahhhh… luck-luck. More-more playthings. You die-die”

Before Croaker could act, the thing had charged him and almost smashed his skull in. The warrior lashed out at the Skaven, but the blow simply glanced off its armor. He then took a step back to give the others some room.

Before anyone else could act, however, Ellandiel had calmly nocked and fired an arrow. It hit the Skaven in the middle of the forehead and continued right through. The ratman stood wobbling for a second and then silently toppled backwards.

This might require a bit of explanation. A Skaven warlord has a toughness of eight and four wounds. Ellandiel rolls four damage dice with his bow, and the he rolled 12, 12, 8 and 6. Since 12’s give you an extra damage die he then rolled twice more and got 9 and 3. The Skaven died instantly - not bad for the absolutely most useless member of the party.

After some relieved celebration, the heroes looted the body and the chest in the room, finding some arrows and gold coins, and gathered in front for the door at the back. Shuffling feet could be heard on the other side.

The heroes kicked the door open and came face to face with a group of formidable looking Skaven (A warlord, three champions and a night runner) who were guarding the stairs to the third level!

I rolled a 12 on the room table, which gave me the quest room at the earliest possible moment (I’m using the updated tables from Terror in the Dark, which modify the chance of finding the Quest Room based on the number of other rooms you’ve found – at this point it was a 1/12 chance). Lucky me!

With a cry of “Holy s*it!”, the heroes charged…

To be continued.

Croaker