extra rules for Dwimmermount[5e]

Thulian Passion

Prerequisite: Rage class ability, a Thulian-compatible Background
The Thulian people are an intensely passionate people, and the ones who have mastered their formative arts of combat are sometimes... a little too intense. You can initiate Thulian Passion during any kind of social interaction, this counts as one of your uses of Rage until you take a Short Rest. You cannot be both Passionate and Raging at the same time. While you are being Passionate you gain the following benefits:
- You have advantage on Charisma checks and Wisdom saving throws.
- You can apply your Rage Damage bonus to any rolls you make to Intimidation or Persuasion.
- Others have disadvantage when trying to use Deception, Intimidation, or Persuasion against you.
If you are able to cast spells, you can't cast them or concentrate on them while being Passionate.
Your Passion lasts for 1 minute. It ends early if any of the following conditions get applied to you: Charmed, Frightened, Incapacitated, Paralyzed, Petrified, Poisoned, Prone, Stunned, or Unconscious.

Specialty Priest of Typhon

Prerequisite: Lawful alignment, Knowledge Divine Domain
- When you cast Guidance, the target rolls the highest die type equal to your level (i.e. if you are 6th-level they roll 1d6, if you are 8th-level they roll 1d8, and so on).
- The duration of any abjuration spell you cast is now doubled.
- You may use Channel Divinity to cast Banishment. The spell functions as if cast using the highest spell slot you have access to.
Also, you really cannot lie anymore.
- You always have disadvantage on Deception checks, regardless of the circumstances

no more reports

I don't plan on writing any more session reports for my Dwimmermount game. We've had three sessions since my last update and writing out what happened feels more and more like a chore to me.

Some interesting things that have happened in the last three sessions:

1) they destroyed the chaotic psychoplasm but now that room is just filled with rotting gore and intestines, some of it still levitating in the air under it's own unnatural power
2) the demoness, Aishapra, was slain and the library she was lairing within has become an outpost for Tsetsig and a small band of horngoblins
3) a band of goblins from a town neighboring Muntburg have ventured to Dwimmermount to pledge service to Queen Ilona
4) they re-activated the power on the 3rd level then used a portal to visit the Manufactory level where Ilona temporarily allied with the Termaxian cultists there
5) Horatius captured one of the doppelgangers who had been impersonating a dwarf, they slayed the rest
6) many magic items have been discovered and identified
7) led by Varazes the wizard, the Orcs who had retreated down to the second level had finally regrouped and surged back onto the first level to slay the horngoblins and anyone else they found, but they were routed and fled back down to the second level, Varazes was slain - literally cut in half by a horngoblin's sword
8) Queen Ilona has decided to stay on the first level and commanded Horatius to "go downstairs and slay every orc you can find!"

All of the PCs are at 7th or 8th level, which means some of the encounters in the dungeon have become tedious or downright boring. We had a fight during one session where I realized the green guardians spread across two rooms could only hit the two main fighters if I rolled a 19 or 20.

I resolved the mass combat between the orcs and the horngoblins by treating ability and skill checks like Dungeon World moves and having a narrative declaration for the roll results. The beginning of the battle seemed like a losing fight, with orcs streaming up from below and a few horngoblins falling while the rest of the horngoblins seemed hopelessly outnumbered. But the tide of battle turned after a series of lucky rolls, and soon the players were having the horngoblins rush forward to take out the wizard before he could unleash any more magics.

We're taking a short break at the moment, and when we get back into the swing of things I can't say for certain when I will write about the campaign again, or what it will be about. But for now, the session reports as I have been writing them are done.


the image is Marilith by zelldweller

return to the dungeon [5e Dwimmermount]

Queen Ilona had spent some time with her horngoblins cleaning out parts of Dwimmermount while the rest of the party were absent. She took several horngoblins down to the cloning chamber and left one of them there as a guard, to insure the cloning chamber would not be used. Surveying the equipment she learned that the power was drained and it may take several days for the machinery to be powered up for another cloning experiment. As she returned to the elevator, her group encountered two minotaurs in the corridor and brief fight and chase ensued down the passageway. There were more minotaurs near their dead king's throne room, and soon only one was left standing. Ilona demanded for it to bend the knee and he did, on the condition that she allow him to clone himself and live on this level. The minotaur, Mangarak Vigileye, told a story of a room that had a stairwell down but it was being blocked by a pool of flesh and muscley sinew, he offered to show Ilona the room but cautioned that her view would have to be quick.

For the minotaur negotiation I googled, and was not entirely surprised to find, a minotaur name generator. It worked pretty good actually!
Because Ilona was by herself, I gave index cards to the other players with stats for the horngoblins. Everybody had fun using the horngoblins' racial abilities during the fight, but in straight one-on-one fights they were clearly outmatched against the minotaurs.

Ilona spent the rest of her time delineating work to the horngoblins. She sent a squad to scout the level the orcs were on and they quickly returned with reports that the passage was blocked, trapped, and set with an ambush. More horngoblins reported seeing dwarves running to the eastern stairwell, and a single kobold had been captured and locked into an unused storage room. Ilona questioned the kobold, Folly, and learned that the dead dwarf, Guran, was a custodian to Dwimmermount, and there are more dwarves living in the lower levels.

She made successful Persuasion checks to get the information out of him, otherwise he would have spat on her.

Days passed and her advisors finally returned. Ilona allowed Mangarak Vigileye to describe the fleshy object blocking the stairwell to Sulla and he immediately noted that the creature sounded like a Psychoplasm, though he wouldn't know what variety of disease had spawned it (atavistic, chaotic or retributive) unless he saw it for himself. They took the elevator down to the level with the cloning chamber and Sulla insisted they stop at the door where the woman Melissia had been trapped. Her voice could be heard inside and he opened the doors with his newly learned Knock spell.

Inside they saw a fairly spartan circular chamber with a beautiful redheaded woman sitting in the center of a summoning circle. She stood up and pleaded that they break the seal of the circle so that she could leave. When questioned about how she had gotten here and why she was trapped in the circle she decided to be honest with them and explain that she was a demon, summoned 200 years ago by a wizard who fled during the fighting of the Typhon Rebellion against Turms Termax, she wanted to find the descendants of this wizard and torture them to death before returning to her home in the Abyss. Horatius didn't have a problem with that and he cut a line in the circle, but this made Sulla and Levity immediately do everything in their power to prevent her from leaving. Melissia charmed Ilona in order to assist her escape but in the end she simply could not get away, and was cut down by Levity and Sulla's magic. As she died Ilona realized she had been charmed and congratulated them on killing her before she could escape.

They finally ventured to the object of their search and prepared themselves to enter the room holding the Psychoplasm.

That's where we ended. It seems like it was a short session, but only because most of it was filled with fighting.

three races for [5e Dwimmermount]

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HORNGOBLINS
(modified Hobgoblins from Dwimmermount, a playable race for 5e)



One of the later experiments of the Thulian Empire, horngoblins were created from goblin stock and had their genetic markers mixed with rhinoceros, but also a multitude of other odd-toed ungulate mammals. Horngoblins were designed to act as guards for forts, blockades, and throne rooms. They were not kept as slaves, but like most of the beastial races that came before them they were never treated as equals by their Thulian rulers.

Horngoblins have immense bodies and large heads, short necks, and broad chests. The center of their head is dominated by a single horn that protrudes upward and protects the skull. All horngoblins have thick, protective skin, and tend to subsist off of vegetarian diets. Horngoblins had a strong affinity for the Great Church and many worshiped Typhon and Mavors openly, those that didn't still held a strong sense of duty to their birthplace, wherever that may be.

When the Termaxian Coup occurred many horngoblins were turned into slaves or forced to fight each other as entertainment. After two hundred years of servitude, many horngoblins were being held in stasis when the Typhon Rebellion destroyed Termaxian control over the Empire. There are still said to be horngoblins serving old remnants of the Empire far to the south, but those that lived near their birthplace have either died off or displaced to farther lands and warmer climates.


HORNGOBLIN NAMES
Male Names: Araus, Arorir, Char, Chud, Diedel, Dieth, Druf, Durge, Gerid, Gred, Poach, Peafyuch, Prefet, Pred, Prieth, Pulip, Rogaud, Rukru, Setho, Sodau, Suled, Thaud, Trauche
Female Names: Augib, Bab, Bafib, Bitha, Brelib, Brib, Brisor, Chauthis, Grilea, Libut, Lobel, Lolath, Pechief, Relib, Rigob, Rorib, Rupa, Sitheb, Sopib, Teaf, Tebu, Thaugib, Thiep

HORNGOBLIN TRAITS
Ability Score Increase: Your Strength score increases by 2 and your Intelligence score increases by 1.
Age: Horngoblins grow to maturity by their early teens and usually die of old age before they're half a century old.
Size: Horngoblin are taller and more muscular than most humans but are still considered Medium sized.
Speed: Horngoblins have a walking speed of 30.
Bellowing Challenge: As a bonus action you can yell a battlecry at one humanoid creature that you can see and that can hear you. They must make a Wisdom saving throw (against 8 + your Proficiency bonus + Charisma modifier) to avoid confronting you directly. On a failed save, the creature is drawn to you and if it does not spend it's next action attacking you then it suffers disadvantage on it's next attack roll. If it succeeds on the save, it can readily ignore you without consequence.
Horn Slam: In combat, you can use a Dash action to slam into another creature with your horn. Make an attack roll (you are considered proficient with this ability) and if you hit you cause 1d10 + Strength modifier in damage and your target is knocked Prone to the ground until the beginning of your next turn. The creature must be within your Reach and your Dash ends when you make your attack roll. If you miss the attack roll, you will either fall Prone yourself (from misjudging the distance then slipping and falling) or the DM can call for you to be Stunned (if your target was standing in front of a stone wall or similar obstruction) until the beginning of your next turn.
Intestinal Fortitude: You gain advantage on any rolls to resist poison.
Thick Skin: When you are not wearing armor, you have a natural Armor Class of 12 before applying a Dexterity modifier. You can use a Shield on top of this and it doesn't decrease your natural AC.
Languages: You can speak both Common and Beastial.

Base Height: 6'
Height Modifier: +2d6
Base Weight: 140 lb.
Weight Modifier: x (5d6) lb.

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RANINE
(modified Bullywugs, a playable race for 5e)



Human and frog hybrids born out of the early Azoth experiments of the Thulian Empire. Possibly created in order to clean and maintain the vast plumbing architecture of Dwimmermount, the ranine now live as scavengers often fleeing from larger threats. They militantly worship the demon lord Tsoth-Dagon.

RANINE NAMES
Male Names: Bez, Gax, Groak, Mona
Female Names: Bulk, Plup, Pop, Puck, Puh

RANINE TRAITS
Ability Score Increase: Your Constitution, and Wisdom scores both increase by 1.
Age: Ranine grow to maturity very quickly and live exceedingly short lives, a Ranine who lives for two decades is venerable
Size: Ranine are short, sometimes not exceeding five feet in height. You are considered Small sized.
Speed: Ranine have a walking speed of 25.
Malleable Bones: You can use your Move action to travel through a small space that would otherwise not accommodate your Size. You are considered Tiny when moving through this space, and you can continue this movement for as long as you are able. If you are still in the small space at the end of your Move then you lose any Action or Bonus Action you might take until you have freed yourself from the space (you can still use Reactions).
Amphibious: You can breathe both air and water.
Strong Leaping: You can long jump an additional 20 feet and high jump an additional 10 feet, with or without a running start.
Languages: You can speak Beastial.

Base Height: 3'2"
Height Modifier: +2d6
Base Weight: 100 lb.
Weight Modifier: x (2d4) lb.

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THORGRIM
(spider-people, a playable race for 5e)



The Thorgrim are a unique beastial race because they are the only magically created race that were not designed and developed by the Ancient Thulians on purpose. A infused mixture of Goblin and spider, the Thorgrim have developed their own rudimentary culture of thievery and scrounging far below the surface of the world. Because they have existed on their own in the bowels of the earth, they have come to worship the demon lord Arach-Nacha who adopted them as his chosen people.

THORGRIM NAMES
Male Names: Feckle, Klayqus, Kook, Zzarch
Female Names: Aran, Carna, Szizi, Tlatla

THORGRIM TRAITS
Ability Score Increase: Your Dexterity and Wisdom scores both increase by 1.
Age: Thorgrim grow to maturity very quickly. Their bodies reach adult development within 5 years, though their brains are slow to mature and sometimes Thorgrim are not fully realized personalities until their tenth year. Thorgrim age in maturity considerably slowly in comparison and can live as long as 120 years.
Size: Thorgrim are short, averaging about 3 feet tall, and weigh very little, usually around 50 or 60 pounds. Your size is considered Small.
Speed: Thorgrim have a base walking speed of 25.
Iron stomach: You only eat half as much, and when you do eat it doesn't matter if food is spoiled or rotten because it will still sustain you. You also get advantage on disease saving throws and poison saving throws when they are ingested.
Spider climbing: You are proficient with Athletics and get advantage when making checks related to climbing.
Inscrutable: Your emotions and mannerisms are not easily understood by others. You always have advantage when using Deception against humans or other surface-dwelling races, but you also have disadvantage when using Persuasion with same.
Languages: You can speak Beastial.

Base Height: 2'7"
Height Modifier: +2d4
Base Weight: 45 lb.
Weight Modifier: x 1d4 lb.

a city adventure [5e Dwimmermount]

Skull.18 10:45pm, the party - consisting of Tsetsig the cleric of Typhon, Gaius Marius the dragon sorcerer, Brughat the dwarf, and Sulla the necromancer - makes the long trek back to Muntburg from Dwimmermount, in their company are the 25 surviving members of the ratkin clan

Skull.19, the party arrives in Muntburg, they negotiate safe passage for the ratkin without issues then wait for the general store and the gemcrafter's to open their shops

having exhausted everything that Muntburg can supply Sulla announces that he must head for Adamas, the rest of the party in Muntburg agrees to join him on the road, Tsetsig magically messages Horatius and tells him to leave Dwimmermount and accompany them to the city-state of Adamas, they begin preparing to leave Muntburg for the city

Tsetsig, Gaius Marius, Brughat, Sulla, Horatius and the ratkin all leave Muntburg, headed for Adamas


Skull.20, the party arrives in Smerdlap's Crossing, they take a short rest for 8 hours then travel by boat to Adamas, the ratkin stay in Smerdlap's Crossing

the party arrives in Adamas and begins shopping, they're mostly going to the same stores so they do not split up, Sulla has bought inks and spends the remainder of the day transcribing new spells into his spellbook

Tsetsig purchases a book for 20 gold entitled "History of Kinship of the Dead Plane" by Viscount Vidath Donafroth, afterward Tsetsig is confronted on the street by a former cellmate he was imprisoned with and stole from, Tsetsig pays him back the money he stole from him and apologizes the only way he knows how

Gaius Marius visits with the city's guard captain and successfully bribes him to erase Tsetsig and Brughat's wanted bounties

Tsetsig and Brughat visit Baron Jagor Futhabìn - the noble who had Tsetsig thrown into prison, Tsetsig tries to makes amends with the Baron but the noble simply wants him to leave and Tsetsig eventually leaves but promises he'll be back, Tsetsig also spends half of his time restraining Brughat from killing the Baron

Brughat returns with Horatius and Gaius, they see that some city guards have been called and Gaius successfully bribes one of them to leave the house, Brughat kills Baron Jagor Futhabìn (and his butler) then they loot the Baron's library and bring the books back to Tsetsig (a lot of titles concern demon-worshiping cults) after setting fire to the Baron's home

Skull.21, the party leaves Adamas early in the morning, they spend the remainder of the day in Smerdlap's Crossing

Skull.22, they arrive back at Dwimmermount at midnight

a return to the surface [5e Dwimmermount]

We were missing the player who plays the party wizard, Sulla, last session. Rather than have him split from the party somehow I just ran Sulla alongside the group, paired his initiative with Tsetsig's, and always announced what I intended to do with him so other players could veto or give commentary on what they thought Sulla would do.

I've been treating the random encounter tables for Dwimmermount as a finite list of monsters.
For the Path of Mavors, level 1, the random encounters listed "gelatinous cube (1)" which I translated as "there is 1 gelatinous cube somewhere on this level" and likewise when the same entry appeared on the next level down I only ever had one gelatinous cube appear.
This means I look at the random monsters as the active components to the level, which are sometimes a part of the factions and groups that are also on the level. But as the forces are whittled down in the rooms, I look at the random encounter list and think "what do these guys do when their friends are no longer in the rooms? what do they do when they find their friends' dead bodies?" or I look at the more beastial monsters and think "when this creature isn't roaming, where does it nest?"

Last week, the session ended with Horatius exiting the cloning chamber and running smack into a pack of rust monsters. The party made short work of the four beasts, and only Ilona came away from the fight with a damaged weapon - everything else used was magical.

The noise drew the attention of some nasty fellows coming down the hall, and as Horatius looked around the corner he saw the troll that had killed Braak followed by his holy warrior friend and two other miscreants. All of the PCs each uttered the word "Micma" to prevent the teleport trap from affecting them, and one of the troll's friends noticed and loudly announced "That word, Micma, must be what turns off the teleport trap!"

Levity dropped a stinking cloud in their enemies' path and one of the troll's friends unleashed a fireball into the party. Several fireballs were thrown on both sides and Levity worked hard to keep his companions alive and fighting. The troll fell to Horatius'es blade and one of Sulla's firebolts, and the battle ended when Sulla placed a crown of madness upon the dumb fighter accompanying the troll who then attacked his wizard friend. They had one friend left, an elf, who ran.

This is the rival adventuring party I mentioned before. The party could have easily TPKed from these guys and some of the characters did almost die. The stats I gave them are:
Greenfellow, straight Troll stats out of the MM, but his double claw attacks were replaced by the flaming sword which did magical 2d10+4 damage while he was wielding it
Tarf the dumb wannabe palading, Gladiator on page 346 of MM
the elven rogue, Spy on page 349 of MM
Gimble the short wizard, the same stats and spells as Sulla - the party wizard

The second fireball that the party got hit by was incredibly weak though (I rolled a 15 on 8d6!) and if Levity hadn't made his saves from the fireballs then the quick healing he performed might not have happened.

At the end of the fight, Horatius picked up the troll's sword and he heard a voice telling him to kill orcs. He dropped the sword immediately and Sulla began casting detect magic as a ritual while Tsetsig cast identify as a ritual on the troll's sword, but after 1 minute the teleport trap activated and the party was forcibly split up!

Every time somebody declared they were doing something I kept asking "Right here?" and nobody announced that they were moving away from the trap, so I figured it would activate on them. No sense in giving them the benefit of the doubt. I rolled for random monsters for each group that split up but nothing was encountered. The teleportation ended up being nothing more than a nuisance, this time.

They reunited and sat just outside of the teleport trap while Tsetsig took the troll's sword then cast animate dead on the holy warrior (who had been dubbed Paladumb by the players). They decided to work their way to the elevator and return to the Path of Mavors.
They found the elevator easily enough, it was right where they expected it to be (after aligning the maps) but it wasn't operational. Horatius found the secret door to the power room behind the elevator. Levity was the only one who could make out the instructions on the control panels and powered up the elevator. They returned to the first level and Ilona instantly sought out Rigob to inform her of Poach'es death.

Rigob spoke of more soldiers and people coming from the town below, all were brought by the priest of Typhon, Louys Herint, and Ilona decided to confront the priest. Horatius led the way. When they got to the chapel they found him writing letters while two personal guards lounged behind him. Horatius confronted Louys by burning the letter he was currently writing, one of the guards stood and a fight seemed imminent. Ilona interrogated them and determined that one of the guards had let the troll in. Tsetsig commanded him to kneel and Ilona cut off his head - though it took two swipes of her axe. Ilona then informed Louys that he was not to bring any more people to Dwimmermount without her authority, otherwise she would take his head next.

Then they divvied up their loot, Krishka and Puzz insisted on bringing the rest of their people up from the lower levels (which they did without complications), and then Tsetsig and Sulla returned to town.

It took about 2 hours to play out the scene with the priest and then determine who was going back to town and what was being bought. Mostly minutia, but everybody received about 300 gold and 375 gp worth of gems. In previous games I've always played with a silver standard so that seems like a lot to me, but something tells me 6th-level characters should be getting more from a dungeon crawl. I've decided to start using the treasure rewards as written from now on - though I will continue to add quirky magic items wherever I see fit.

My players meta-game too much [5e Dwimmermount]

Table talk included banter about my last blog post, specifically the rival adventuring parties they might cross paths with and the fact that Melissia was, in fact, probably not a woman trapped behind a magical door. Last week they were really keen on freeing Melissia from the room she was trapped in, but this week they couldn't care less. So Melissia is now somebody else, and that somebody else is now Melissia. This means Melissia is going to starve to death if they don't get her out of that room, and fuck it, she's the daughter of a powerful noble and wizard, so there's probably good rep and rewards to be earned from rescuing her. And the somebody else will be far less helpful to them when they finally do encounter her. Or him.

My players who insist on using player knowledge for their character's actions will now simply have to ask themselves: Is Patrick lying on his blog? Maybe. But there's only one way to be sure.

So, what happened this session?
Bik and his entourage of minotaurs in the throne room were taken down. The players won initiative and got judicious use out of Stinking Cloud and Fireball, and Bik was dead within 3 rounds despite his virtual immunity to poison (this was imparted from a magical item he was wearing, see below).

While the fight was going on, the minotaurs in the dining hall heard the battle, grabbed their axes, and proceeded to rush in, but by the time they started coming into the room the dust was settling and Tsetsig had started casting Animate Dead on Bik's corpse. The second combat took about the same amount of time (7 rounds), but the minotaurs all died tried to rush into the room.

The ratkin that were accompanying the party, Krishka and Puzz, were severely injured and much healing was spent making sure they survived while Horatius went around the room and made sure all of the minotaurs were dead. And then an accounting of Bik and his treasure was performed:

A chest of the mundane held everything, it was only after they dumped out the contents that they saw everything for what it truly was.
A scroll of Knock
A scroll of Speak With Plants.
A wand of magic missiles (per the DMG).
A bag of holding (per the DMG, except this bag has a 1% chance of summoning a spectre every time it's opened) currently holding the corpses of three ratkin - Tsetsig removed two of the corpses but held onto the third (for animating later).
Everice (an ice cube that never melts)
Spike of woodland suicide (the players got a huge kick out of this one)
Amulet of Hope (when worn, shines like a candle, the light will point into the direction of the closest non-portal exit)
1908 silver
1 gold devouring coin (will devour gold coins when placed with them - Ilona wants to spend this at a bank)
Bik's silver crown (worth some gold)
Bik's battle axe (does extra +2 damage, requires attunement)
Bik's bracelet (+2 AC, requires attunement)
Bik's leather belt of Kythirean annhilation (damage resistance to poison, inflict double damage against plants, protection from plants - plant attacks have disadvantage, requires attunement)
Weirdstone (gives advantage on wizard/sorcerer spellcasting rolls, if either dice roll a 1 the wizard/sorceror suffers a mutation, requires attunement)

I outsourced half of this hoard from Goblin Punch because Arnold's ideas appeal to my gaming sensibilities. I've been using his ideas for other parts of the dungeon already so it would be fair to say that if you've been reading his blog for the last year then you could possibly see where some of my inspiration for changing Dwimmermount has come from.

The characters retreated to the cloning chamber to rest. Ilona placed all of her coins into the Chest of the Mundane and some of the magic items were divvied amongst the characters.

Horatius got cloned.

Since I established that the ratkin had been using the cloning chamber to replicate food for themselves (there are four chicken and a single sheep in the cloning chamber) I gave Krishka a relatively good ability to operate the machine. Still, she only succeeded on one of three rolls.

Horatius'es clone came out opposite gender and with a very different personality than his own. He's impulsive and adventurous, and she's careful and cautious. For now, she's a follower, but Horatia is also only a 1st-level Fighter which means could be easily killed by many of the things living on these lower levels.

We ended the session with Horatius exiting the cloning chamber only to be confronted by four rust monsters trying to sniff their way in. (I kept forgetting to roll for random encounters so I decided to just have one and rolled up the rust monsters randomly.)

Megadungeons are pinball, and the party is the ball [5e Dwimmermount]

While I was thinking about the party's progress through Dwimmermount, it occurred to me that their foray into the first two levels was careful and planned but now that they're encountering more of the factions in the lower levels they are bouncing around exploring and pillaging and destroying quite randomly. Like a game of pinball, the ball comes out at the top in a predictable and measured way but then gravity and the bumpers propel the ball into new directions and you have no idea if it will sink down the center of the table (TPK) or if it will fly along the sides of the bumpers to be smacked upward and propelled through the turnstiles and targets again.

Today I asked the player of Horatius to show up early so we could hash out what happened to him when he split from the party.

Turns out, Horatius almost got killed. Repeatedly.

Braak had mentioned he saw a mimic and he led Horatius and Poach back to a room closer to where they first entered this level. Braak pointed out the room, there was no door but inside the floor was lined with silvery-black mushrooms. Horatius stepped into the room to investigate and promptly fell asleep.

The mushrooms are a sleep trap, and after both Braak and Poach failed their saves as well I decided this was the perfect opportunity to say that Horatius had been asleep for an indeterminate period of time.

Horatius awoke to see Klayqus above him, pleading for him to wake up and help him and his friends. A human wearing the old, battered plate mail of an Adamas soldier was fighting some of the thorgrim alongside a gigantic 7 foot tall, green-skinned repugnant man with a flaming sword. The flaming sword skewered one of the thorgrim, and Horatius tried to plead "These guys aren't evil, they aren't going to hurt you." The green man saw Braak and shouted "Goblin! Kill the goblin!" That settled it for Horatius, these guys had to die.

These are Greenfellow and Tarf, from here. Scarleaf and Gimble will be with them the next time they appear.

The green man charged and Horatius tried to stop him, but failed to do much. Braak ran into the room of silver-black mushrooms and the green man followed while the plated human killed another thorgrim. Braak was stabbed through the chest and was almost certainly dead, and the green man was moving to Poach'es still sleeping body to do the same to him. Kalyqus turned to Horatius and said "We should run."

They fled north, down a corridor to the west, and into a circular room filled with pipes, seemingly a dead end.



Klayqus turned a wheel attached to one of the pipes and sliding wall revealed itself. Horatius was escorted through several secret doors until he arrived at the main thorgrim camp, Klayqus explaining who Horatius was as they encountered every new thorgrim. Horatius had begun to learn the Beastial tongue and was picking up some of what was said, but not all of it.

Klayqus pointed down a corridor and said "The ranine are this way, perhaps your friends are as well?" and Horatius continued onward. He found dead ranine, burned to a crisp, and a few more trying to hide from him. He threatened them with his sword and asked where the wizard that had fried their friends went, they said "Downstairs." Horatius returned to the room with the tapestry and the now-destroyed animated statue and ventured down to the next level.

Encountering another statue, he warily approached it and it spoke the name "Micma!" in an echoing voice. Horatius continued on, fighting a rust monster in the next chamber, finding a secret door concealing treasure, continuing west he was bespelled by confusion and then fell into a pit with a black pudding.

I wasn't trying to kill his character, I never even rolled for random encounters, but he was rolling really poorly whenever he fought anything or rolled a saving throw.

Nearly dead, and stumbling north, he found a minotaur slaughtering ranine with a heavy axe. The minotaur asked if he was friends with the wizard and Horatius impulsively replied "No." The minotaur was also nearly dead and asked for help getting back to his king, Bik. Horatius agreed and they were soon separated by the teleport trap.

Horatius saw light coming from the door where his friends were and his arrival was soon followed by the minotaur, who recognized Sulla and attacked. After a brief fight the party took steps to secure their resting place.

We went slightly backward in time. The last session ended with this rest ending, but now at least Horatius had returned to the group.

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Shortly after Horatius reunited with the party, the minotaur found his way into the resting area and attacked Sulla. After a short battle, the ratkin were asked to keep guard while the party rested and healed, and while they rested they debated about what their next action should be. The ratkin insisted that Ilona meet with their leader, Krishka, and so they set off down one of the corridors to find her.

Using ratkin instead of wererats was a big departure, but it allowed me to expand on the connection with sapient rats. The ratkin are the only race within Dwimmermount that I set up to automatically be allies with anybody coming in since their primary agenda is to escape, this means the party did not receive any XP for making an alliance with them.

Upon finding Krishka she asked if the way out of Dwimmermount was clear and Sulla explained they would need to be escorted if they hoped to make it past the horngorblin patrols as well as the mercenaries following Louys Herint, the cleric of Typhon. When asked how they managed to survive for 200 years Krishka explained that there was a small farm where they could produce meat.

Another addition on my part, I put a few chickens and sheep into the cloning chamber and decided that Bik has the key because he killed the former ratkin leader for it. The ratkin have been cloning the chickens and sheep whenever they need more food, but now they're starting to starve because the minotaurs have the only key and won't share.

Ilona was keen on having a guide who knew the layout, even after Krishka drew a map of the level.



Ilona insisted on being shown where this chamber was, and Krishka explained that they wouldn't be able to get in. Along the way, Sulla and Horatius discovered that saying "Micma" would deactivate the teleportation trap, making the level more accessible. They found the cloning chamber doors and couldn't get in, as Krishka predicted, but Horatius found the alteration chamber and they began experimenting with the canopy. Horatius was healed slightly, but Ilona insisted they move onward and confront Bik.

They passed a set of double doors and Horatius tried to open them. A voice spoke from the other side "Hello? Is somebody out there?" and they determined that a woman was trapped behind the doors. Nobody could force the doors open so Sulla explained they did not have a way of getting her out of the room and they would be right back as soon as they found something.

This is Melissia (page 202) and I figure she's absolutely desperate to get out but isn't going to make any offers until she actually sees those doors open. Her powers are slightly different in 5th edition compared to, say, 2nd edition and I don't really like that, so I'll be scanning 2nd edition stats when the party returns to this room.

Incidentally, the past few sessions the Knock spell would have been extremely useful and I've put a single Knock scroll into Bik's treasure hoard. They could use the scroll on Melissia's door or Sulla could spend a week trying to learn the spell. Actually, I've put a ton of minor magic items into Bik's hoard because I assume the ratkin would have amassed a lot of items and the minotaurs are basically slaughtering the ratkin and taking their stuff. The evidence of ratkin deaths has been minimal so far, but a pile of bodies will likely be found in the next session.

Ilona was now determined to confront Bik and led the party down the halls she believed would end up where he and his minotaurs were camped. Indeed, they stumbled into his throne room. Bik almost immediately singled out Levity as somebody to negotiate with since Levity had small horns, and while Levity tried to mollify Bik and make peace with him (in Beastial) Sulla interrupted and soured the conversation by challenging Bik's self-proclaimed authority.

A fight was about to occur, but it was the end of the session...

"You realize I could kill all of them right now?"[5e Dwimmermount]

Missing another player this week, the beginning of our Dwimmermount session started with a diversion in order to justify one character's absence and another character's return.

The party heard a bellowing roar echoing from the hall and chamber behind them, and Ilona went rushing back down the way they had come to find the source of the noise. They found Poach surrounded by four squat frog-like men with spears. Poach was bruised and wounded but seemed to be holding his own. The party engaged the frogmen and cut them down rapidly. Poach led them to another room where they found Levity tied up in front of a hideous statue of a frog creature carved out of charred wood. Tsetsig destroyed the statue while Levity explained he had been exploring, looking for one of those mimics, and was captured (again) by the frogmen, the Ranine.

Braak mentioned to Horatius that he thought he saw one of the mimics in another room closer to the stairs and the two of them split off from the group to find the mimic. Poach followed.

Levity led the group through the corridors back to where he had been captured and they found a group of a dozen ranine. Sulla cast a fireball into the center of the group of the frogmen and every single one of them died instantly. From another room, a ranine peered out and surveyed the carnage, he was wearing copper loops around his wrists and ankles and rings jangled from piercings in his lips and nipples. He immediately retreated and the party followed, quickly killing or cowing the other ranine with this cultist.

Rather than wait for them to search rooms, I just had the lead ranine cultist on this level poke his head out of a door and lead them straight to him. I was surprised at how easily Sulla's fireball took out the entire group of them and was expecting them to just slaughter the rest of these guys. I used bullywug stats for the ranine, but I gave them a shrink ability and the cultists can cast some spells (obviously).

They interrogated him and asked him what his people were doing in Dwimmermount. He only spoke Bestial so Sulla questioned him and translated for Ilona. He explained that his people came from a place called the Deep Hollow and they were chased out by giant lizards, they searched upward for a place to breed and many of their people were killed by the Dead Ones but they escaped when they found the Water Ways. The Water Ways led them to this area and they have been fighting "the Black Men" since they arrived (Klayqus and his people, the Thorgrim).

There's not a lot of explanation for why the ranine are on these levels. The book says they come from the Deep Hollows level but they clearly didn't traverse the hallways to get all the way up to this area. I used my best judgment while the players were interrogating them, and gave scant details about the Ossuaries, then in a moment of inspiration decided to give the ranine malleable bones and the ability to shrink their bodies and squeeze through tight spaces. The "Water Ways" was born. None of the players have questioned any of the ranine further about the Water Ways, but if they do this will essentially be the water pipe travel method that is detailed in the introduction.

They tried to negotiate a treaty with this ranine and he spoke of their high priest, Groak, who resided one level lower. "If he's down there, then why are you up here?" "Me told you-wor already, we need more room-wor." "Take us to him, now." and that was that. This ranine cultist, Mona, led them through a few halls and rooms, down stairs, past two groups of other ranine. They were stopped once by another cultist, Bem, who insisted on going with them to find Groak.

Mona and Bem led the party to the cistern in the Hall of Lesser Secrets (level 4, room 30) and Groak was not there, but they did see about two to three dozen other Ranine within the cistern. Another cultist, Gax, stepped forward and challenged Mona and Bem in the Bestial language, saying these creatures don't need to negotiate with Groak because he would just order their death. Levity could understand Bestial and remarked "We are very outnumbered down here." and Sulla replied "You realize I could kill all of them right now? One fireball in the center of this room would do the trick." and since Mona could partially speak Common he stepped toward the door, trying to stay behind Sulla, and spoke in Beastial to Gax "These creatures can understand everything you say." Gax relented and explained that Groak had gone to inspect the trapped corridor, and led them to the western double doors that led to the teleportation trap on this level.

The party experimented with the teleportation trap, accidentally getting split up. Ilona got lost into darkness with Sulla. Tsetsig heard and saw a group of minotaurs fighting ratkin, and judging them to be inferior beasts decided to quietly slip away and ignore them. Levity found a jail cell. Their efforts meant they collectively were learning that each circular area acted as a teleportation pad, and that the destination was random.

You can see the fruits of their efforts on the right, you can also see how I fucked up one of the maps

One of the ratkin had seen Tsetsig and followed him, but after being caught by the teleport trap Sulla was the first to encounter the ratkin. The ratkin immediately recognized Sulla as human and spoke in Ancient Thulian "Do you come from outside of Dwimmermount?" which began a conversation about Queen Ilona's expedition and how the ratkin had survived inside of Dwimmermount for 200 years.

When I first read Dwimmermount, the wererats were the only faction I could imagine being allied with the players because their goal was simple and didn't confront other characters on any level: to escape. I didn't like the lycanthropy aspect of the faction and that's when I wrote up my ratkin race for 5th edition.

Tsetsig, being teleported again, found a series of doors and decided to start opening them, one led to webs and he closed that one, and Ilona caught up with him by the time he opened a second door and saw a statue of Turms Termax. Tsetsig stepped forward to smash the statue, but the statue came to life and smashed him, nearly killing him in one blow.

I'm using stone golem stats (minus the Slow ability) for all of the animated statues.

Hearing the sounds of battle echo in the corridors, the other characters began to frantically jump through teleporting pads. Levity found his way to the fight with the animated statue while Sulla got teleported near the fight between the ratkin and minotaurs. Seeing two ratkin dead and one survivor surrounded by four minotaurs, he lobbed his fireball at the minotaurs and managed to kill three of them. The ratkin ran to Sulla's side and the remaining minotaur charged with his battle axe and struck Sulla down with one blow.

Sulla spent the rest of the fight rolling death saving throws, but the last ratkin pulled him back down the corridor and they both got teleported. Sulla ended up next to the first ratkin he met, Nirkz, and the second ratkin, Puzz, found the fight with the stone statue. The minotaur chased after them both and found the ranine!

The fight with the stone statue was long, and if Levity hadn't been there to heal Ilona she might have fallen to the stone statue's fists. Battered and beaten the party retreated along the corridor and ran through teleportation traps until they were all in the same corridor. They debated trying to rest in the hallway but Tsetsig opened a door, hoping this would be an empty room that they could possibly rest in, and found the armory and weapon storage.

The party didn't bother to bar the doors but simply began to rest quietly with Nirkz and Puzz, the ratkin, keeping watch for them, and that's where we ended the session.

We played far enough along to get to the end of the rest - in truth, I wanted to see if there would be a random encounter (there wasn't) and everybody wanted to learn my new resting rules. Tsetsig and Sulla both wanted to identify the magical suits of armor in the armory and that took an hour, the remainder of their rest took 5 hours. Horatius might have found them and rejoined the party by then, but we won't really know until next Sunday.

"I'm gonna pimp my undead."[5e Dwimmermount]

I was planning on including another one of Arnold Kemp's rival adventuring parties in this weeks session, even wrote up stats for this group of NPCs to harry the PCs with, but we were down one player and I didn't want to unleash these enemies without everyone being present.

The session started with some fine-tuning details about hobgoblin patrols on the first level, and then Sulla, Ilona, and Horatius ventured down to the second level to search for the four hobgoblins who refused to follow "Queen" Ilona.

The party ventured south and found the Hall of Truth, a place of legend in Dwimmermount where one could become blessed by the gods. Sulla took a look at the letters on the pillars of the room and translated them for the others. Horatius, led by his lack of self-control, immediately touched the pillars in the correct order and was bestowed with the permanent ability to cast Healing Word. Sulla attempted to do the same but was not blessed by the gods (instead, lost 2 hit points permanently). Ilona declined to make the attempt.

The player of Sulla knows Latin and he asked a few pointed questions about the room and kept saying the letters on the pillar were slightly off because the word was "veritas" and that's when the player of Horatius followed one of his character traits and touched the pillars in the right order, I don't remember if I gave him Inspiration for that or not. I determined the spell by rolling a 1d15 and using the 1st-level cleric spell list.

Horatius led the party west, looking for the western stairwell leading down from the first level, but they eventually found that there were no paths that led that far west. They began looking for secret doors and found a small cache of books worth a great deal of money. Sulla mentioned how valuable he thought the books were and Ilona suggested that at some point they would need the hobgoblins to act as labor to clear out the heavy treasures.

Using Passive Perception merely as an indicator that something was off in the room really helped this scene, because it meant everybody started looking for a secret door and Sulla wasn't merely pointing them out anymore.

They entered a room with broken statuary and one lone statue, Sulla recognized it instantly as an elemental creature of some kind. He attempted to address the creature and it spoke of soft things that deserved death. Horatius grew impatient and struck the creature, it fought briefly but before it could fly away Ilona split it into pieces with her silvered pick.

In the room beyond they found graffiti in a multitude of languages, none of which Sulla understood. There was also a chest (a mimic) filled with 27 scrolls of Comprehend Languages. Sulla used one and found that every line of graffiti said "Seek not the gods!" but behind the identical phrase in a plethora of languages was a spell: Tasha's Hideous Laughter. Without the materials to transcribe the spell Sulla would have to return later.

I'm thinking of including a few unofficial spells from now on since I discovered that Sulla already has a copy of the spell but has simply failed to learn it. More details on these new spells once the PCs stumble upon them.


The room full of graffiti looked nothing like this!

The mimic revealed itself by getting up and walking out of the door. They followed it for a bit then realized it must be going to the same place the previous mimic had traveled to, on a lower level, and so they let it go and returned to exploring the southern areas of the second level.

I cross-post these blog entries to G+ and one of the players read a comment there that asked if these were surveillance mimics and so now he believes these mimics are spying on them, but he hasn't tried to hinder them or kill any of them yet. Primarily because he has no reason to in-game, the two mimics they have crossed paths with have only given them treasure and magic scrolls.

They ran into the four hobgoblins, camped out in one of the southern rooms, and one of them tried to hit Sulla but failed miserably. Sulla responded with a Fireball which incinerated all four of the hobgoblins. (If they had killed or defeated the leader, then the other three hobgoblins would have joined up as followers, especially after the leader's feeble attempt to hit Sulla. I rolled a 1.)

They traveled onward and found a room with more of the silvery-black skeletons guarding an abandoned workshop. Another secret door was discovered behind a tapestry and a small panic room with the centuries-old corpse of a Termaxian cultist was inside. Some very well-preserved wine and food were found in huge barrels and Ilona pointed out that they would have more things for the hobgoblins to carry upstairs.

Their path finally connected to the eastern part of the map and they returned to the throne room, but before they arrived they encountered a gelatinous cube. Horatius almost walked into it and Sulla's skeleton was engulfed and absorbed almost instantly (farewell Zombie Lord skeleton, we hardly knew ye), however this cube was much easier to defeat than the previous one which had harried Ilona and Horatius (and Marius and Brüghaht) on the first level.

I use Gelatinous Cubes often enough that I ought to have a miniature for them! (see image) Everybody's higher in level and does a lot more damage. I was surprised at just how quickly the cube died. I had been rolling for random encounters throughout the session and we were getting close to a good stopping point so I decided to just put a random encounter in, rolling up the cube randomly it made sense that the cube would be trying to get into the throne room since Levity was supposed to be there waiting for the rest of them to catch up.

The party returned to the old throne room, and Sulla took one of the burned hobgoblin corpses and reanimated it as his new skeletal servant. He put the old breastplate from the Zombie Lord onto the skeleton and gave it the Zombie Lord's old greatsword then discussed other ways he might be able to "upgrade" his skeleton, and that's where we ended. We're not playing next week and Levity's player won't be with us the next time we play, so it's possible that Levity was not in the throne room at all.

"When this day is done, I will make you bow to your new Queen."[5e Dwimmermount]

So, the last session started with me opening up to my players about how I don't really like the 5th edition rules as a whole. I don't plan on changing the ruleset that we're using for this campaign because this started as an experiment. I wanted to GM Dwimmermount and I also wanted to try out the 5th edition rules. I'm enjoying both, but I'm not enjoying the feel of the rules as the PCs ascend in level. The crux of my complaints can be read throughout the comments at this link. I've played a little loose with the gameplay timeline so that I can highlight in this post moments where the rules hit up against my own personal preferences for gameplay.

After resting, the party interviewed the hobgoblins about the dead-but-not-dead things roaming the halls. Rigob spoke of a Zombie Lord that controlled the dead things, and Poach drew them a map which included where their guard posts were. The map was informative, and later they learned it was mostly accurate, but it added very little to what they had already explored.

They ventured to the room where the Zombie Lord could be found and in a very short time came face-to-face with him. He was dressed as an ancient Thulian guardsman and he spoke Old Thulian, surrounded by his zombie minions the Lord declared that the group were trespassers who should submit to his rule. When Sulla declared "Queen" Ilona the rightful ruler of Dwimmermount the Zombie Lord spat "I will never bow to her!" and Sulla disagreed as battle was engaged.

During this fight I got to use reaction on the monster side, which surprised one of my players when he broke through the zombie ranks. It only took them about 4 rounds to destroy the Zombie Lord and all of his zombies, with only a few injuries sustained on their side. At the time this rankled me a little bit because the Zombie Lord only got about two hits in, and he was supposed to be the "boss" of this level. He lasted longer when compared to King Rukruk, which was also a fight I felt was over too quickly.

After they defeated the Zombie Lord, Sulla used one of his spells to reanimate the corpse of the Lord as a skeleton servant and also spotted a secret door leading eastward from the room. Following the path they found another secret door which opened into a pristinely preserved temple.

Passive Perception became something I didn't like in this room. The module doesn't really give a difficulty for discovering the secret door here, but I assumed it would be pretty difficult to find. Sulla's Passive Perception is above 20 and in the moment I simply said "You've found a secret door" but in hindsight I think Passive Perception is too much like a video game mechanic. I don't want it to be an ability that just hands the players a solution to a problem. I decided that from now on when somebody's Passive Perception triggers something I will simply give hints as to what it is, whether it's noise at the end of a tunnel or an unnatural breeze inside of a closed room, but they have to make the narrative decision to engage with the environment and discover what their senses are telling them.

Horatius felt uncomfortable entering the temple, and Levity's skin burned when he tried to pass the secret door leading inside. Horatius had made it to the other side of the temple and discovered a vast crevasse in the next chamber beyond. Levity refused to enter the temple at all. There were two statues on their side of the crevasse and Horatius looked for the closest place to cross over, tied a rope around one statue and himself, then jumped across the chasm. He made it to the other side, and Braak soon crawled across the crevasse along the rope, but nobody else was willing to follow Horatius.


The party decided to split up at this point, with Braak and Horatius continuing east beyond the crevasse and the rest of the party following the northeast passage from the Zombie Lord's chamber.

I just accidentally misspelled that as Xombie. NEW MONSTER! Anyway. I rolled twice for both groups to possibly encounter a wandering monster but the dice favored the players and they didn't encounter anything.

They both found a wide hallway, and very soon met up with each other since they could see each others' lanterns.

Horatius began opening the doors in the hallway, They found a pair of huge dogs that appeared to be on fire. He quickly closed the door and announced to everybody what he had seen. They prepared to reopen the door and engage in a fight, with Sulla muttering that he didn't have many magical options for fighting creatures made of fire, and Horatius said "I thought all wizards could throw lightning bolts?!" The players frequently tabletalk about Sulla's spell list and I translate this as their characters arguing about what magic is capable of, it allows me to say things like "These orcs come barging into the room, they clearly heard you arguing about Sulla's spells."

Horatius flung the door open and the dogs were gone. They took a few cautious steps into the room and one of the dogs came running from around the corner, flame sputtering off it's sides, and it breathed out a gout of flame that engulfed most of them. Battle was engaged and soon they were surrounded by the two hounds who burst forth fiery sprays of heat from their jaws. They killed the two dogs with little trouble then decided to continue down the hall to the south.

Here is a situation where I used two monsters with intelligence and tactical aplomb, only to see it come to no avail. The hell hounds were flanking and using their breath weapons to maximum effectiveness and the party was never afraid of the danger, they cut down the hounds in literally 2 rounds of combat.

Behind another set of doors, they found some zombies and a mimic. They managed to communicate with the mimic for awhile, and Sulla tried to have his zombie servant escort the mimic back to the throne room, but it wandered off further into the dungeon. Mimics only appear in two places in Dwimmermount as written. I have decided to add mimics to Dwimmermount in copious amounts, and I've also made them intelligent, and I've also given them an agenda. Before this adventure I have never, ever used mimics before.

Venturing southward, the party found a room filled with wooden statues. When Levity expressed interest in one by knocking on it, one of the statues came to life and knocked him down to the ground. Before anybody could react, the wooden statue stomped Levity into unconsciousness then proceeded to stand still again. They dragged Levity away from the room and forced a potion of healing down his throat, then collectively decided "We don't go back to that room unless we plan on setting it on fire."

From this point forward, I have beefed up the monsters to make them more challenging. I also got lucky with the rolls for those attacks against Levity. The monster was a wood golem that took everybody by surprise and managed to get a critical hit in on Levity before he could act himself.

After a little more healing for Levity, they pressed onward. Horatius led the way and took the party west and away from the wide hallway. He soon found himself in an impenetrably dark room where his lantern seemed to attract the very shadows along the walls. Surrounded by shadows he felt his strength draining, and both Horatius and Ilona lashed out at the shadows futilely. Sulla's magic made quick work of the shadowy creatures, but not before they had weakened Horatius to the point where he could barely stand carrying the weight of his armor and weapons.

This combat took 4 rounds! The shadows nearly killed Horatius which seems appropriate given that they no longer have a cleric in the party, but one long rest later and Horatius is back to full HP and the effects of the Strength drain are completely gone. *shaking my head*

Retreating back to a hobgoblin guard post north along the corridor, the party decides to consolidate what they have. Both Rigob and Poach were feeling a bit confused that the Queen was exploring the ruins as if the hobgoblins weren't there and ignoring that the food supply was diminished. They demanded that they be given attention and Ilona agreed, they needed to be fed if they were going to follow her. The party decided to retreat from the second level with all of the hobgoblins for now and rest on the first level while they drew up their plans.

Ilona decided she needed to cement her control over Dwimmermount and the hobgoblins gave her the perfect opportunity to do so. Between Ilona, Sulla, and Horatius they coordinated how they would send Braak back to Muntburg to buy food, and they also needed to send a message to Tsetsig and Marius that they would need a regular supply of food to be brought to Dwimmermount.

The last hour of the game was literally just working out all of these details.

Upon returning to the first level the party turned the desecrated temple to Mavors into their base of operations, ignoring the secret door for now.

The hobgoblins would need to patrol and maintain the first level, so they showed the hobgoblins their map and explained all of the dangers of the first level. Guards would be set at the main entrance and the two stairwells leading down into Dwimmermount (but not the secret entrance or the elevator!) and both Tsetsig and Marius would need to return so that they could recognize him and give him safe passage. Ilona set about constructing a makeshift sigil for her house so that her family would also recognize the hobgoblins and not attack them when they arrived.

Braak returned to Muntburg with Poach following behind him. Having grown bored in Muntburg after the last three days, Marius was climbing up the mountain to Dwimmermount and encountered Braak along the way. All three traveled to Muntburg to acquire food then return to Dwimmermount, and the next session is set to begin with their return...


The reason the map looks like its constructed of three pieces of paper is not because I'm bad at drawing maps (though I did make one mistake when drawing one of the hallways of this level) but when I start drawing a map for a dungeon level I hand the piece of paper to one of the players and instruct them how to draw a box for the stairs, letting them place the entrance on the paper. That way, I don't purposefully reveal how the dungeon is laid out by putting the stairs on the grid paper myself.

I will likely offer this explanation every time I show off a map that looks like it was put together with scraps of paper rather than one sheet.

"This ugly little thing is under my protection!"[5e Dwimmermount]

After a month of not gaming at all and a long recap with the players, we got back into the dungeon. We've had two sessions since our long break and this is a summary of the first of those two. I'll write up the second session tomorrow and also share the current map.

The characters met Rukruk, the Hobgoblin "king" of Dwimmermount, and proceeded to murder him. Rukruk was holding a smaller creature, with a row of segmented eyes and black skin, that he was convinced had somehow betrayed him. He let the creature go in order to fight the party, and his elite guards came to assist him, but Rukruk fell before any of the guards could affect the battle. As the guards fell, soon only two were left and Sulla demanded that they surrender to Queen Ilona. One backed away from the battle, but the other vowed to fight to the death, and he was cut down by Ilona.

With only one of Rukruk's bodyguards left alive along with the small black-skinned creature, Sulla and Eppius began questioning the two, while Braak occasionally translated for Ilona and Horatius. They soon learned that from Poach, the hobgoblin, that there were about 20 other hobgoblins on this level and at least one scouting party that should be returning to Rukruk's throne room. Klayqus, the small black-skinned creature (originally a thorgrin) detailed how his tribe had no leader, that they were merely trying to survive and he was sent to negotiate a treaty with Rukruk. During the conversation he mentioned that he worshiped Arach-Nacha, the demon lord of spiders, and this enraged Eppius. Sulla declared that Klayqus was under his protection and a fight ensued, and Ilona cut Eppius down almost instantly.

the player playing Eppius had already planned on swapping out to a new character, so everybody was just looking for an excuse to kill Eppius off

Poach spoke of dead-but-alive things that roamed the halls of Dwimmermount, and Klayqus spoke hatefully of his tribe's enmity with the ranine. Klayqus then retreated to a lower level, informing Sulla that if they travel deeper into Dwimmermount they should use the stairwell next to Rukruk's throne, since the other stairwell is being guarded by others of his kind.

As the party backtracked their route, looking for a safe place to camp and rest, they ran into the hobgoblin patrol that Poach spoke of. The patrol was composed of mostly females, led by an outspoken hobgoblin named Rigob. They were dragging a captured tiefling behind them. Poach declared that Ilona was their new Queen and they were charged with retaking and restoring Dwimmermount, which Rigob was skeptical of at first but when Ilona spoke in common to her "subjects" Rigob quickly accepted her rulership and in turn revealed that the hobgoblins all understood the common tongue. The tiefling was freed and introduced himself as Levity, a jester from another world.

Levity is a bard, and it was explained that Levity traveled through a portal to Telluria into Muntburg and has learned a little about Telluria and Dwimmermount and decided to go exploring after hearing recent rumors of groups going up the mouintain, Levity found many headless orc corpses and eventually found a stairwell that he ventured down, while examining a room with many broken silvery-black skeletons (level 2B, room 1) he was captured by the hobgoblin patrol

Levity forgave the hobgoblins rather quickly once he was released, and the group decided to make camp in the main throne room. Over the next 10 hours, the other hobgoblin patrols and guard posts were recalled to the throne room, and most of the hobgoblins swore fealty to Queen Ilona. Only four hobgoblins left claiming that they would not follow Ilona, and Sulla made a mental note of which way they traveled so that he could help hunt them down and kill them later. Ilona also made note that a great majority of these hobgoblins were female.

I made hints that Rigob and Poach were a little restless with Rukruk's rulership, and tried to hint that they were hopeful for more information about how Dwimmermount had fallen, but at first the players were ignoring the hobgoblins' personalities. You can assume that this is what Poach and most of these hobgoblins looks like...

deeper into Dwimmermount

Our gaming group hasn't been able to meet up regularly for some time now. We're averaging about one session per month due to multiple schedule conflicts. Since I have a lot of time to think about the game and no time to really play it, here are some more things I changed about stuff from Dwimmermount:

Red Elves
Considering how "regular" elves are described (under the Adventuring in Dwimmermount chapter), I have made the Red Elves even more alien and strange. I took inspiration from Pearce Shea's post and made sure "Something about (Red) Elven biology is transmittable." The Red Elves are the Ancients' greatest experiment made flesh. A magical disease that has found god, or its own idea of god. The disease must be shared, but only with those who are considered worthy. The Thulians proved their worth when they managed to overthrow the Red Elven empire, but the Red Elves won't make any mistakes when they attempt to reclaim their old kingdom. They are coming back to Telluria to turn the Thulians into Red Elves just like themselves, to share their disease.
the Gift
If a Red Elf spits or bleeds into another person's open wound (they lick their weapons when forced to fight somebody they consider worthy of the Gift) they must save vs Constitution (DC 20) or begin turning into a Red Elf. On a failed save, the character now has a Gift score. Roll 1d4 and add this to the character's Gift score, successive failures will add to the Gift score. The Gift is considered a magical disease for purposes of reversing or preventing progression, however once the Gift Score reaches 15+ the disease has done it's job and can no longer be reversed short of a Wish spell.
the Score
1-5 = your skin turns a pale red hue, ears begin to grow pointed, body begins to grow lithe (the changes are quick to appear but are subtle, after 1 Long Rest this change takes full hold and is completely apparent and permanent)
6-9 = you acquire Darkvision (if you didn't already have it) and moonlight will refresh you during a Short Rest removing the need to eat (dehydration is still an issue)
10-14 = all magical forms of reincarnation, regeneration, and resurrection no longer work upon you however you no longer age, are immune to nonmagical disease, and barring injury are effectively immortal
15 = after 1 Long Rest you will fully transform into a Red Elf gaining all of the racial qualities of the new race and losing any racial qualities of your old race (this may include adjusting ability scores appropriately), you are also now considered a 1st-level Sorceror as well in addition to any class you already were (if you were already a Sorceror in some capacity then there is no change, otherwise it acts as an "extra" level)

goblinoids as animals
I've mentioned before that I'm using the old school pig-faced orcs, at least how they were depicted in 1st edition rulebooks. I also didn't like the wererat descriptions, because I didn't think it made much sense that a group of wererats had been locked away into Dwimmermount for 200 years, and so I changed them into ratkin. I changed hobgoblins into rhino-faced men. The other races in Dwimmermount are largely unchanged:
Gnolls will more closely resemble a variety of dogs, and not hyenas
Minotaurs are unchanged
Ranine are unchanged (they look like frogmen)
Thelidu are unchanged (they resemble mind flayers)
Throghrin are peppered throughout the adventure without any good descriptions, I've decided to make them the most alien and scariest looking monsters by making them half-spider, similar to driders though about the same size as halflings
Troglodytes are going to resemble bears that can walk upright
Everything in Dwimmermount suggests that the variance in races was created by experimentation by the Ancients and rather than hew to the familiar fantasy tropes of chaotic races I decided to just make the races more distinctly recognizable as "animal+human" hybrids. Elves and Red Elves represent the Ancients perfection of this technique by applying the hybrid to self-replicating (and immortal) diseases.

hobgoblins of Dwimmermount

I always forget that deviantart exists, and so this morning I found some more artwork to use as inspirational examples of the rhino-faced hobgoblins in my Dwimmermount campaign.


The Rhino by dankatcher

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Rhino General by JoseAlvesSilva

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Ragin' Rhino Man by paulabrams

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Durge the Rhinoman inks by joeydes

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Rhinoman by brainfog

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Rhinoman by 89as13

"These are hobgoblins?"[5e Dwimmermount]

It's been three weeks since we last played Dwimmermount, and with a brief recap of events the players were ready to confront the enemies they heard in the caves swiftly approaching their position.

The party came face to face with Guran, the mad dwarf who had been creating the kobolds. Though they never discovered this as their conversation quickly became combative and antagonistic. When they refused to leave Dwimmermount, or even acknowledge that it belonged to him and his "dwarves," he went berserk and attacked. He was quickly defeated, and his fleeing kobolds were easily hunted down and slaughtered.

They debated over a place where they could rest for an hour or so and mentioned the hidden chapel in the eastern part of the level, but quickly stopped talking about it since they didn't want to reveal the location to Appius. They ventured back to the "timeless room" and discovered three orcs camping. They killed two of the orcs before they could react, but the last one surrendered by offering to show a map to his leader's throne room.

For initiative during combat, I've been having the players roll 1d10 and add their Dexterity bonus. I feel like this gives a better timeline to the round and makes the Dexterity bonus more important than the d20 skill check that the 5e rules call for.

He led them to the circular mosaic room and showed a crude map drawn into the lines of the mosaic, explaining that the circular room here led to another circular room down below and the elaborate graffiti marked Segur's "throne" room.

Sulla, unsatisfied with the map, slit the orc's throat.


They rested in the "timeless room" then explored the magically locked doors to the last circular room off of the main "Mavors corridor" with the key disc they had recovered from the Spawn of Arach-Nacha. Inside they found a chamber that responded to the key disc and Sulla sent his familiar to scout the vertical shaft within.

Three things:
1) I allowed Sulla's familiar to search the entire shaft. 5e rules limit some of the usefulness of the familiar beyond 100 feet, but I decided to allow telepathic communication throughout the entire shaft. Additionally, I don't like the way 5e uses familiars as there seems to be no drawback to using them carelessly.
2) The book doesn't state where exactly the elevator is, so I parked it at the upper level effectively blocking the door to the Divinitarium. Meaning the players will either be forced to turn on the elevator's power or destroy the elevator before they can ever explore this level.
3) We recently discovered that any character can Identify a magic item during a short rest (DMG p. 136) and Ilona used this ability on Guran's warhammer, which she had looted. Rather than make it a +1 weapon, I gave it better damage and a magical +1 to offhand attacks if the warhammer is used one-handed (even though it is also a versatile weapon).

The party decided to explore the rest of the caves (they had two rooms left to discover) and found Guran's treasure chests as well as two more giant spiders, which they made quick work of. Using my previously detailed method for generating treasure, they found roughly 1600 copper pieces. They also found the shrine to Tyche, where Horatius placed a gold coin amongst the small hoard already in her outstretched hands.

They discovered the Hall of Memories, where I implied that the pillars could potentially be removed from the floor, transported elsewhere, and sold for a vast sum. The scholar amongst them, Sulla, watched the memories and discerned that there were some things revealed in the images that did not match the history he had been taught.

They continued downward to the Reliquary...

---

at the bottom of the stairs the party was attacked by more of the silvery-black skeletons they had seen in the chapel on the first level, but they made short work of the magical constructs.

Sulla and Ilona wanted to find the other stairwell that led back up to the first level and so they ventured west and came to two doors, one north and one south. They chose to go north and found a storeroom with smashed crates and rotted goods, along with five burlap sacks with man-sized shapes groaning and struggling to get out. They opened one of the sacks to find a dessicated but animated corpse fighting to free itself. They bashed its head in and then spent a few minutes stabbing and bludgeoning the other four sacks.

I'm not sure why this room has five zombies trussed up inside burlap sacks, maybe its detailed somewhere and I forgot, or maybe this is just one of those weirdly random rooms, but it was at this point that I made a little note that one of those sacks did not have a zombie inside of it. This death will come back to haunt them. (maybe even literally)

Continuing to the north, they passed through several rooms. One with four pillars representing the elements surrounding a tiled mosaic of Telluria, and another with pillars made of rare metals. They discussed ways of removing the rare metal pillars but eventually decided to continue onward and return to this room later. They approached the door at the end of this hall, realizing they had traveled quite a distance north, and Sulla could hear voices beyond the door. They were arguing about their leader's decisions and

Sulla's Passive Perception is 20 and he is the only character who can speak Bestial.

They burst into the room and found damaged glass tubes stretched out in rows across the room. On the other side of one of these rows they could see four creatures unlike anything they had seen before. Roughly humanoid forms with thick bulging arms and squat legs, the length of their faces ridged with short black horns protruding where their noses and foreheads should be. They charged in and killed all four of the creatures with little hesitation.

This room is called Stasis Chamber #2. It is described as being identical to Stasis Chamber #1. Stasis Chamber #1 is described as "filled with two dozen vitreum tubes that stand slightly taller than a human being. The tubes are found in four rows of six..." except the shape of both of these rooms doesn't match how that configuration of rows is described. Frustratedly, I just filled in rows of "tubes" on my map and told the players that it would require an action to move through the tubes - due to smashing and forcing their way through reinforced glass (vitreum) - and that each square of vitreum tubes counted as difficult terrain.
You can see in this picture where Ilona smashed through some of the tubes and later Sulla placed a Grease spell on the floor to prevent the hobgoblins from escaping.

This room, and this entire level, is described as having hobgoblins living here, but I should point out that I've been deliberately describing the orcs to my players as "pig-faced" and using 1st edition AD&D images of orcs to hammer this point home. I decided pretty early on that I wanted every unusual race within Dwimmermount to have some kind of animalistic feature, to imply that when these races were magically created by the Ancients that they were made using existing species.


I'm using the 5e stats for hobgoblins, but I've searched up these images to show what the "hobgoblins" look like.


They explored the southeastern door because one of the hobgoblins had tried to escape through this door. Inside were shelves and cabinets filled with vials and jars, some still held powders and liquids. Sulla cast Detect Magic and took anything that radiated with magic, they abandoned the rest and moved on.

I don't like using nonmagical means for creating potions and since this room has some weird alchemical objects sitting around, I decided on the fly that Sulla's spell would detect anything that was already made and ready to use. I rolled a d10 and got a 7, that's how many potions he found. If the party had an alchemist with them then perhaps I could have played this room out a bit more, but the players were also keen to track down where the hobgoblin wanted to retreat to and a few potions weren't going to slow them down.

They began to turn south in the next room, another chamber filled with vitreum tubes, and immediately saw light at the end of one of the corridors. The party began using ranged attacks as soon as they saw more of the hobgoblins and a brief fight ensued. Two of the hobgoblins tried to escape, but were cut down before they could get very far. Loud noises still echoed down the halls and the party could hear footsteps approaching from beyond the circular room.

At the end of that last round of combat the minis looked like this

their map currently looks like this

and according to my timekeeping they've been awake for a little over 13 hours...

losing track of the hours underground[5e Dwimmermount]

It's been over a month since I wrote a session report, and that's due to a combination of not having free time to write and not having the energy to write. I was not too worried about being behind because I had been recording the sessions, but now I seem to have mislaid the recordings and I have no idea if I accidentally deleted them or simply filed them somewhere that at the time I was sure I would "remember." Here then, to the best of my ability, is the most I can recall from our next three sessions.

As the delve continues I find myself altering more of the adventure. The map was originally meant to be on the inside of a wineskin, but I felt this was totally impractical for a group of dwarves to be using a map that they themselves couldn't even see. Instead, I created the prop map you see below.

The map they acquired from the dead dwarf...click to make big
...the party decided to return to the eastern portion of the level and clear out the final room along the easternmost corridor. But first they had to fight the gelatinous cube in the hallway and they delayed this fight by first inspected the training room, and Ilona destroyed one of the training devices upon Horatius discovering the control panel that activated them.

Returning to the hallway door they prepared for a fight and opened the door, letting the creature slowly glide into the room with them. They fought it with little injury then ventured to the eastern hallway without incident.

The room they sought to explore was an ancient chapel to Mavors, though it appeared to have been desecrated and converted to a shrine of Turms Termax. Tsetsig boldly entered and was instantly surrounded by silvery-black skeletons that lurched out from sconces within marble columns. He attempted to turn the undead to no effect. A brief but intense fight ensued as the rest of the party tried to protect Tsetsig from the brunt of the attacks from the skeletal constructs. At the end of the fight, Tsetsig found the secret passage leading to the hidden treasury. As they took stock of these newfound valuables Tsetsig grasped a scarab wrought of moonsilver and enameled blue. This is when he almost died.

Fifth edition doesn't have very good rules for cursed items and the object in question is a scarab of death which doesn't even seem to exist beyond second edition rules. The item is also one of those "save or die" kind of items which I always regard as dumb and not-fun. I wrote up my own "fifth edition" version that offers a few choices in case someone should happen to grab the scarab recklessly. When the player annonced they were picking up the scarab, I handed him this index card...
...and that's pretty much how I'm going to rewrite "save or die" bullshit for this and any other fifth edition game I run.
It doesn't say it on the card but cutting off a hand would have reduced the character to zero hit points. I think I forgot this in the moment and just had Tsetsig pass out.

After Tsetsig cuts off his own hand they spend a few moments rousing him from unconsciousness and discover the scarab is cursed. The party then decided to rest here, since the secret treasury room was the perfect place to hide. When they were ready to move on they decided to travel southward down the central cross-shaped hallway, expecting to find another circular room with giant centipedes, but along the way they were called out to by voices in the dark. Kobolds in the caves had seen Brughaht traveling with the party and extended an invitation to meet with their master, Guran. They only trusted dwarves and refused to escort Brughaht's friends into the caves, but Brughaht managed to persuade them that Tsetsig wasn't a threat and could be trusted. One kobold insisted on venturing forth to ask Guran for permission and Tsetsig had no objections. After several minutes the kobold returned and welcomed Tsetsig along. While the rest of the party waited, Tsetsig and Brughaht were escorted into the caves to meet with Guran.

They passed several empty chambers as well as a glowing pool of water lit by radiance from above, but Tsetsig began to suspect that something was amiss. They were traveling to far away from the group and he sensed an ambush lying ahead. When he questioned the kobold about the length of their journey the kobold tried to dash forward into the darkness, but Brughaht managed to fell him with one blow. They hid the kobold, now dead and turned to stone, underneath a pile of bones then Tsetsig sent a magical message to the rest of the party warning them that the kobolds were hostile. With a little bit of coordination, the party managed to overcome the kobolds they were with and Gaius Marius unleashed several Sleep spells to disable the remaining kobolds. It was a slaughter!

Tsetsig and Brughaht returned to the rest of the group and they searched the rooms, and upon finding a library they quickly looked for books that may assist them in the dungeon. One stuck out, a manual on the strategy game the two ghosts in the northern portion of the dungeon had been playing. They took the book back to the room and placed it where the ghosts seemed to be handling it, and the ghosts disappeared.

Feeling weary, they decided to return to Muntburg to rest and resupply, and were only ten hours behind Climent.

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In Muntburg, Tsetsig and Brughaht both decided to stay in town with some of the money they had acquired. Gaius Marius also stayed behind to assist Tsetsig and Ilona's ancestral claim upon Dwimmermount. A priest of Mavors, Eppius, and a wizard friend of Ilona's who had just arrived in Muntburg, Sulla, both joined the group as they returned to Dwimmermount.

Upon re-entering Dwimmermount, the group heard movement coming from the long main hallway and braced for combat. More silvery-black skeletons strode out of the darkness and they cut them down. The priest, Eppius, having not encountered these creatures before attempted to turn them as undead fruitlessly. The group made their way to the caves quickly, stopping only to examine the double doors leading to the circular room which Ilona believed to hold only "more centipede bullshit." They couldn't enter as the doors were magically sealed, and they had no method of opening the doors.

Technically they did. Horatius carried a rod of opening but the player was concerned about the number of charges it contained and didn't elect to use the item.

In the caves, an ambush was waiting for them, but from the kobolds. The party spied a single spider that shied away from their lantern light, then skittered away into the darkness quickly as they approached. Ilona gave chase and as the rest of the group confidently followed in the darkness with their newly purchased lanterns, they suddenly found themselves surrounded by giant spiders.

I decided that Guran, a servant of the demonspawn, upon realizing that his kobold was not returning with a fresh dwarf for him to corrupt would search for his soldier and discover the betrayed and dead kobolds. He would then report to the demonspawn, whom I named Bram. Bram commanded his spiders from afar to search out for signs of the party and upon hearing the fighting from the hallway the spiders were organized by Bram into an ambush for the group in the caves.

Very quickly, the characters began to fall to the paralytic poison of the spiders' bites. Soon the only one standing was Horatius as he beat back spider after spider and managed to survive just long enough to kill them all. Exhausted and near death, Horatius collapsed around his fallen comrades and soon they began to revive from the poison. In the aftermath they discovered Climent had died during the battle, and around his neck Horatius found a symbol of Termax, signifying that Climent was secretly a cultist.

Because this group had levelled up several times by scouring every single room of the first level I decided to make Bram's spiders slightly tougher than the ones described in the module and this almost killed the party. I have no regrets, they charged in without scouting or preparing, and now they're terrified of spiders.

They re-entered the caves and with no resistance found the room with the moonlit pool of water. Horatius decided to bathe and swim in it, searching the bottom for treasure but finding nothing. In the process every magical item on his person was destroyed, but he picked up a temporary magical resistance which still lingers. In this room they made enough noise that scouting orcs found them and another battle ensued. They managed to defeat the orcs and needed rest, retreating to the library where they spiked the door to protect them from being barged in on.

The orcs were being allowed to search the caves by the kobolds, who had temporarily allied together to repel the human invaders. When Bram's spiders fell, he instructed his kobolds to treaty with the orcs and inform them where they could claim vengeance for their fallen comrades.

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The next session started with the players needing a bit of a recap and I was very tired and disorganized due to getting very little sleep.

After Identifying water from the moon pool, Sulla suggested trying to pour water on the magically locked double doors. They tried this but it didn't work. Rather than linger at the double doors longer they entered the caves and went about searching those passageways that they had passed before due to following or evading conflict.

They found the secret back door entrance and saw sunlight outside, not realizing it was still daytime, and then encountered shriekers (which have WAY too many hit points for a creature that just screams) which made the kobolds believe that new invaders were approaching, and so they prepared an ambush. Venturing westward they ran into these kobolds who had set up a quick and makeshift ambush. During the fight, a kobold tipped over a barrel of oil and set it aflame in order to prevent the party from following them. Amongst the spilled oil was a small barrel of gunpowder which exploded with thunderous force.

The gunpowder was my addition, but the kobold fights at this point feel like its just slowing everything else down so I'm trying to make them interesting. The players were really taken aback by it, and the 5d8 damage that some of them suffered from it helped soften them up to make the kobolds actually seem threatening.

Sulla found the Holy Phalange when the party explored the dead end where it was hidden.

The next fight with kobolds was amazingly brief and only lasted three rounds. The party heard them before they saw them and simply rushed forward to catch the kobolds by surprise, which they did. At this point the group decided to explore the dungeon north of the caves so that they could have their map link up where they knew a missing connection had not yet been explored.

They found a room with murals and more ghostly images of Thulian troops marching in the hall. Deciding to take a short rest in a nearby storeroom, they soon heard scrabbling and scratching at the door while Sulla cast an Identify ritual upon the Holy Phalange. They prepared to fight and threw the door open to see the hallway filled with giant beetles. Horatius and Ilona pushed the giant beetles back, defeating them with little expended effort. At the end of Sulla's Identify ritual, he put the Holy Phalange around his neck to Ilona's disgust.

They opened the southern door leading back to the caves and were met by a spider, which then spoke. The voice of Bram spoke through the spider and offered rewards if the characters would ally with him. He claimed to speak for Arach-Nacha and the priest knew this was a demon lord, but played along for now. The rest of the group was willing to hear his offer but only if they could discuss it in person. Bram revealed he had a key to open the magically-sealed double doors along the main hallway, something which had become an obsessive point for some of the players. They agreed to meet with him, but Eppius was very vocal about destroying Bram and all of his spiders. The spider escorted them to Bram's lair and he offered to use his spiders to guard the entrances of Dwimmermount to help cement Ilona's familial claim upon the land. Ilona was considering the deal when Bram revealed that the key looked like a symbol of Mavors, this was the final straw for Eppius and he declared that Bram was an unholy blasphemy.

A long fight ensued between the party and Bram with his spiders, and the party were triumphant without a single person succumbing to the paralytic poison of the spiders. As they began to loot the caves, they heard the approach of more creatures from behind them...

Their map now looks like this: