Whale's breath

The long-awaited conclusion to the Flying Island adventure. The final session may have been many months ago but the memories last forever or something. Part I, Part II

Classic scenario: you and your buddies are exploring the undercroft of a temple complex only for one of them to get bisected by a giant halberd-wielding statue after he tried to open a sarcophagus. 

The party took a moment to rifle through his belongings mourn their lost ally and then chiseled off the mechanical statue arms. Then it was onto the sarcophagus. Ignoring the disarmed statues' futile swings they found a sallow corpse adorned in fine chain burial shroud (snagged), a golden death mask (also snagged), and a dusky pendent clutched in the corpse's hand (snagged, and then donned by Slyq the thief whose player immediately was like "this is definitely cursed isn't it"). The tomb, further searched, yielded no more secrets. 

As one exploration turn passed to the next, a rustling was heard from back passageway. The party looks and lo—two tengu-men lurk in the darkness, unsure of whether to engage while the party is occupied or retreat and gather more of their brethren. But before they have a chance to act, Gront icily sends one to the hereafter with an arrow through the throat. The other lets out a terrified "yip!" as it flees into the darkness. The party takes a moment to assess what just happened, decides they better get a move on, and makes for the nearby stairway leading deeper into the crypts.

Emerging into a spacious corridor, the party takes stock of the scene. The air in the great crypt is choked with ash and rockdust. Shattered ceramics and masonry litter the floor. Walls that once held ordered rows of funerary urns are scored by deep claw marks and smashed by heavy impact. All signs indicate a recent rampage of some great and terrible beast. In the distance, lit by some gap in the ceiling an indeterminate span above, a great pile of treasure glistens temptingly—more wealth in one place than anyone in the party, as well everyone they've ever known, has ever seen in their lives. Nearer though, just beyond the edge of torchlight, a lone figure sits crosslegged, facing away toward the distant hoard. 

Now finally the party meets that darn wizard they've heard so much about. After some whispered debate about how to approach, they decide to call out to Zazomel (don't think I've mentioned his name yet) and find that he doesn't immediately turn their insides into outsides or whatever they fear evil wizards do. 

Here's the deal with Zazomel: he's on the flying island to steal the dragon's egg. His plan was to locate lair, find the egg, and use a modified version of Drawmij's Instant Summons to transfer it to his floating tower once he has leaves the island. From an adventure design perspective he was meant in part to provide another way for the players to escape the island if they didn't want to pursue the main adventure. I was inspired by Cave Story, where you get the option to just finish the game 2/3rds of the way through.

Anyway all he tells the party that he came to the island to crush this tiny gemstone here onto the dragon's egg just beyond that pile of looted funerary treasure and be on his way. Innocuous, right? He was going to wait for the dragon to go on its crepuscular hunting sweep but for whatever reason (PCs look around awkwardly) the dragon was woken up a few hours ago. Now not only could be back at any moment but it's whole schedule might be thrown off and Zazomel here hasn't another day to lose. If someone in the party would just be willing to assume the small risk of getting swooped on by the dragon to just push the aforementioned gemstone into the egg, Zazomel would happily give them a lift on his magic tower. 

Now, the party has ample reason not to go along with this guy: aside from the clear danger and suspiciousness of it all, they had encountered his henchman a few sessions ago who told them all this guy was a jackass and not to be trusted. But on the other hand, this is exciting and when you're level 1 it's pretty easy to say "why not?" Party decides to help Zazomel and in return he would make sure they get to the Mistral Horn safely. 

Slyq the thief's time to shine. There is a not-insignificant chance the dragon might come back to its hoard since the runaway tengu may have informed it that the intruders were in the undercroft. But the dice decided that was not to be. Gem in hand, Slyq circumnavigated the hoard and entered the small offshoot chamber with the egg. Pausing for a brief moment for dramatic effect, she cast the gem upon the pearlescent egg's shell and then scampered cat-like back to the party (but not before swiping a handful of gold and jewels from the hoard, 1d50x10 sp in the bag). With that over Zazomel says "great follow me to the Horn."

The wizard ally drops an Invisibility 10’ Radius to get everyone around the tengu now patrolling the undercroft and then the party uses a twisty key they picked up a few rooms back to activate a giant cube elevator.

It leads them too... a pavilion atop a tower, enringed with ornate columns. On the eastern edge of the pavilion: a giant bone alphorn covered in intricate silvery etchings. the Mistral Horn! But wait—the gale picks up, the sky thunders but no lightning's in sight. Suddenly, the green dragon swoops in from out of view and tears off a portion of the roof to make space for it to land. A brief pause to spread its wings menacingly, and then it addresses the party: It's all "you have the honor of beholding the majesty of Smaragd, the Poison Storm; forfeit your treasure and swear fealty to me." The players are in a conundrum. To one side, 20' away, the Mistral Horn. To the other, also 20' away, a dragon glares at them expectantly. Zazomel is nowhere to be found. 

As the players desperately scan their character sheets for inspiration, someone's like "how about that stinky cloud potion?"  There's a moment where everyone's all "should- should we throw it?" but then, of course, they go for it. Slyq tosses the potion at the ground directly in front of the dragon, Amos the Cleric makes a break for the horn. The dragon fails its save and begins to wretch. Amos gets to the horn, takes a deep breath, and empties his lungs into the mouthpiece. The blast splits the air, clearing the sky of clouds. Moments later, another tone could be heard as though in response, coming from something far away. An undulating fish-like form manifests in the sky, approaching the tower. The Ancient has awakened from its slumber. 

The winged whale unleashes another low, resonant call. The party feels but a gentle breeze, but the dragon, still reeling from the stinking cloud, gets blasted away team-rocket style. The Ancient regards the party for some minutes, and then in a low resonant voice it thanks them for waking it. That marks the end of the session, and the conclusion to the Flying Island adventure. 

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The session ran pretty late already but I wanted to give the players a conclusion, so I emailed them some end cards like you see in old video games where the epilogue changes based on your decisions. 

And a little bonus:

Somewhere, in a black tower sailing through the sky...

Zazomel withdraws from his robe a small, clear gem. Once it had a perfect twin, but just the one remains. He stands in a darkened room, cleared of all furnishings save for a motley arrangement of pillows and cushions that loosely encircle a chalk "X" marked upon the floor. He allows himself a second to savor the moment—all the searching, all the scheming, all the sacrifice has led to this. In a sudden movement he casts the crystal upon the chalk-marked floor. Sparks of weird energy fly as it shatters, and in the same instant a pearlescent dragon egg appears in its place.

Cleft in twain

Next session from the Flying Island adventure. Continued from here.

The rest of the party, elsewhere in the temple, had been poking around a sparse room with cloudstuff in place of floor—it felt like stepping on cotton candy. They pass time discovering where the safe spots were amid patches of cloud too insubstantial to hold weight, and otherwise pondering what their next move should be and how long to wait for Hawthorne before heading onward. Suddenly, the temple begins to shake. Streams of dust pour from the ceiling. From outside, sounds of fierce gale and a great winged beast, punctuated by whoops and shouts of frenzied tengu-men. It was decided unanimously among the party that whatever had happened, their absent comrade was to blame. 

Meanwhile, knocked on his ass but otherwise unharmed, Hawthorne the cleric felt he had done enough for the time being and decided to rejoin the party. As the temple quaked around him, he made his way back to where he initially split and stood before the passageway everyone else opted to take. It was a covered walk, exposed to the outside. Dragon sounds and angry tengu flapping past made it clear there was some risk to crossing. But luck was in his favor, and the party once more was whole. 

Cosimo Galluzzi

Traveling north, the party enters a storage/maintenance room. The chamber was secure enough that the room barely trembled, yet a flurry of stirges (wouldn't be a 1st level OSR adventure without them) nonetheless were agitated by the commotion and rushes at the PCs. A few quick and dirty combat rounds follow, during which time Gront the fighter catches not one but two of flying menaces and stuffs them in a sack. Some blood was lost but otherwise the party was fine, the living trophies a boost to their resolve. It was then that a PC noticed a porthole-style window on the far end of the room, through which all that could be seen was a giant red eye peering back. Slit pupil dilates in a moment of recognition—and then the dragon flies off. No hiding from it now; the great beast knows of the party.  

Undaunted, the PCs thoroughly search the workroom. Slyq the thief discovers a big key and three potions: stinking cloud, ooze form, and liquid sword. [Three might have been excessive but I had just finished compiling a d100 list and was eager to put it to use.] Someone pockets a chisel and other stone-working tools and the group moves on.

The tallest tower of the temple lies to the east, where presumably waits the Mistral Horn, but getting there requires crossing a courtyard and climbing a staircase fully exposed to the wind, dragon, and tengu-men, and so was out of the question. Instead, players opt to descend the altar room staircase to see what more the undercroft holds. 

Darting past the stone guardian again (No time to shed tears over Berda's still-bleeding corpse) and crawling over a giant stuck fan in a stagnant circulation vent, the party finds themselves in the tomb of some kind of high priest. A grand sarcophagus covered in fine etchings sits atop a dias, flanked by two statues of armored warriors, oversized halberds gripped in menacing anticipation. 

Dear readers, believe me when I tell you this trap was given ample warning. All but a sign saying something like "the statues will swing at you if you lift the sarcophagus lid without disarming the trigger latch." Maybe I could have made the latch more obvious and threw in a corpse or two but alas I felt it fair enough as it was. 

And here is where poor Hawthorne's luck ran out: with the aid of Gront the fighter, the two PCs throw care to the wind and lift the sarcophagus' lid. The rest of the party stands by watching, deciding it best to just let their two headstrong companions do their thing. Just as the faintest glimmer of treasure could be spied within the casket, the mechanized statues click to action and swing their fearsome weapons. Saves are rolled; Gront dodges just in time to avoid the worst of the blow, earning a clean cut to the arm. But, regaining his bearing, he hears the cries of shock and dismay of the rest of the party. His deceased comrade was split in two, twain halves cleft by the now-dormant statuary. 

High times on the Flying Island

A bunch of new players joined our game recently, and I wanted a brief starter adventure to get everyone on board and teach them how to crawl before they're left to fend for themselves in the big scary world. The previous players are already very new so this would be a good time for everyone. 

The ideal starting adventure for me is:

• vanilla fantasy enough that embellishments can be made without disruption and everyone more or less understands what's going on without having to wrap their head around any oddball setting details
• ...but not so generic that my friends check out and lose interest.
• appropriate for level 1 but reasonably epic and high-stakes. Rats in the basement fuck off. 
• mechanical gimmicks and special rules kept at a minimum. Manually tracking inventory is already the most daunting game-related task anyone here has ever done before; no need to pile on more things things. 

Now given that the number of starter adventures is probably in the high thousands and more are being produced every day, I'm sure there are hundreds of suitable modules that fit the bill but shopping around for modules is uninteresting to me and I was unemployed when I was first planning this out so time was no issue. 

The adventure I envisioned would serve as a little intro so we wouldn't have a flock of new players just show up in the middle of the in-progress dungeon excursion returning players are currently embroiled in. 

The trickiest part is being vanilla but not too vanilla. Once the feel is figured out, everything falls in from there. There are probably a lot of ways to triangulate the appropriate setting vibe and thread the needle between familiar and new but the easiest one I know of is to put familiar things in unfamiliar contexts.

So what I did was take a generic D&D sandbox and put it IN THE SKY.

Flying island. Sandbox. Maybe its from seeing Castle in the Sky at an early age but the concept of a landmass floating above the earth is like a shortcut for my brain to think "this is great!"

Anyway, the adventure I banged out has an inciting incident, time pressure, a starting town with well-meaning yet down-on-their-luck villagers, a wizard of dubious intentions, humanoid mooks, peculiar treasures, a dungeon, and a dragon. Everything you need for a balanced D&D.

Session 1: The characters all awaken in a giant nest, surrounded by eggs the size of carriages. The last thing they each remember was going about their days as normal when, all the sudden, the sky went dark as a giant bird blocked the sun and plucked them from their terrestrial trappings to soar off into the clouds. 

They messed around the nest a bit, gathering equipment from corpses old and new and trying to get their bearings. A couple PCs found a rocky outcropping on the far end of the nest they could climb to get a lay of the land. To the left: the edge of whatever landmass they're on and then ocean hundreds of yards below, the sun slowly descending toward the blue horizon. To the right: windswept fields, hardscrabble farmsteads, and low-drifting clouds casting long shadows along the ground. 

The players decide to get a move on when one of the eggs starts to tremble. Wandering down from the giant nest, the party came across a little ranch where a bushy man tends to a herd of giant pill bugs.

Introductions are made, but cut short when the ground begins to shake and the wind picks up. The man urgently rushes everyone into his hovel. Peering through the rough planks of the ceiling, the PCs see a freak storm roll in, rapidly accompanied by a giant winged serpentine shape flitting in and out of view above them. "Was it the thing that brought us here?" they wondered. No, that's no bird—for each PC, it was their first time seeing a dragon.

The dragon flew off as night descended on the island. Spending some time around the little hamlet of past bird-survivors, the party learns the following:

• They're on an island flying high above the earth
• The island is watched over by something they refer to as the Ancient. Normally it stays around the island, but recently it fell into its centennial slumber and drifted to the upper firmament. 
• Since it has departed, a malevolent dragon has made its way to the island and lairs in the Sky Temple. A bunch of other probably related bullshit has been going on, namely the tengu-men native to the island have gotten dramatically more hostile, people have been disappearing in clouds of ghostly fog, and freak weather patterns are causing chunks of the island to break off.
• Pillbug milk is thin and grassy.

And so the PCs are beseeched to travel to the SKY TEMPLE, brave its perils, and blow the MISTRAL HORN to awaken the ANCIENT so that it may set things right once more—and hopefully get them off the island. 

They also broke up a bar fight, befriended the strange alewife lady and received a gift in her secret makeshift alchemy lab, learned of a mysterious fellow with an ape-like henchman who also recently stopped by the hamlet (everyone's first thought was "wizard," which goes to show how strong genre conventions can be even for non-fantasy people), and charmed the town bully into journeying with them. He died by crossbow bolt not more than several miles outside of town during an encounter with a pack of recently marooned sky pirates. But dead follower be damned, the encounter ended happily with a delegate from the party and the pirate captain getting drunk together.

This is what sky pirates look like.

Session 2: After the engagement with the pirates, the party got a rude map of local area and was informed of some of the dangers surrounding the temple. They also heard that the pirates recently espied a strangely dressed fellow wandering around near the temple with his ape-like follower. 

After traversing through ruined gardens and terraced fields the party finds a floating tower like a column of purple obsidian hanging in the air, tethered to the ground by a long thin chain. Near the foot of the chain is a small tent with the remains of a campfire outside and a hunched figure sitting in the grass. Immediately all interest the players' have in their current goal is supplanted by urge to partake in the venerated tradition of plundering a wizard's tower. 

I was almost certain the party would pounce on the unsuspecting henchman and climb blades-in-teeth up the chain to take a crack at what lies within the mysterious hovering tower on the mysterious hovering island but they in fact did not—the more diplomatic voices of the group won out, the henchman was consorted with (reaction role dictated he was overwhelmingly happy to see the party) and some info was learned about this wizard who's been looming in the margins of the adventure.

The party makes it to the temple, skirted some tengu-men sentries guarding the main entrance by traverse-climbing dangling roots and vines to get to a wide crack in the side of the lower temple structure leading to the undercroft. From there the party navigated the temple complex, avoiding unquiet spirits, toppling a stone guardian through the nimble maneuvering of a 10'-foot pole, beheld some ancient murals, and messed around with a strange altar until it granted them a magic prayer flag that makes weightless whatever it is tied to. Poor Berda the torchbearer was brained by the stone guardian but otherwise setbacks were navigated and morale was high.

All throughout the interior parts of the temple complex, the party noticed a strange chlorine-like acridity in the air and massive claw-marks on the walls, shattered masonry all strewn about. While the rest of the party decides to move on after they were done investigating murals and playing with the altar, one PC splits off and heads in the opposite direction, eventually leading to the main entrance chamber. It looked like a bomb went off inside—big enough at least to blow the roof off and collapse most of the floor. 

Hawthorne, the level 1 chaos cleric with barely an experience point to his name, examines more cryptic murals before peering into the hole in the floor. Far down below, he sees the form of a fearsome dragon sleeping atop a gleaming hill of gold. At that moment, something primordial gripped poor Hawthorne's player: the atavistic drive, known well to generations of D&D players since the hobby's dawn, to do something really stupid just to see what happens. Reaching into his meager coin purse, perhaps still transfixed by the dragon's majesty, Hawthorne withdrew a single silver piece and let it fall into the chasm. 

I ruled there was a chance the dragon would stay asleep—normally I apply Smaug logic, where a dragon can sense even the faintest manipulation of its treasure horde while laying atop it, but there may have been enough complicating factors that consulting the dice would be appropriate. Nevertheless, said dice dictated the dragon was roused. Seconds after the faint tinkling of the dropped silver piece met Hawthorne's ears, a rumble shook the room and the dragon burst forth from the pit, driving upward out of the absent ceiling and into the open air above. 

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So the party is entered the temple, won some treasure, lost a couple followers, and now has a menacing dragon on their hands. Fortunately for the party, there are enough nooks and crannies in the temple that they can hide from the searching dragon, but many dangers are still as yet undiscovered. 

A lesson I learned with this group is that a lot of these new players, and new players in general I guess, are more turned off by the sort of boring, neutral things that can happen in sessions than their seasoned counterparts. Where experienced players may have more practiced patience to apply to internalizing whatever framing information may prove useful later, even slight bits of expository background info were causing these newbies' eyes to glaze over and hands to reach for snacks in the hopes that chewing and swallowing would provide enough stimulation to make the passing moments more bearable. Just more reason to leave the slow stuff to the side and keep the action front and center.

But I love playing with this group. New players who don't immediately lose interest always prove how the way the game is played is a function of what make its a good time. People want to push and prod and mess around not just because it's what you're supposed to do in the game but because it's fun. Everything the players come across is something new to latch onto—is that guy in the distance friendly or hostile? Will these pirates choose booze over treasure? Will flipping this switch open a door or blow my head off? Every problem, every challenge, every ambiguity is begging to be resolved or understood because the act of doing so is in itself engaging.