They Met at a Tavern 11: Shadowdarking 'The Howler'

Ok, had people show for this session, so things were good.

• Betsy - "Charm" - Dwarf priest (pageboy haircut)
• Candace - "Driznag" - Goblin Priest (Banded helm)
• Seana - "Ad Bather" - Halfling Fighter (Hood w/ ancient symbols)

First, we must note that none of the PCs were over four feet tall. This will be important later. I also provided each PC with a random magic item to bait the Howler.

As I mentioned before, I ported over the monster stats for JV West's "The Howler" to ShadowDark, and wanted to give it a run-thru, since it will likely be a con game, as well.

I've run the adventure before, so I'll go light on the details.

We started off among the barrows and graves with the party finding the body of Gundrin O’Noggin. Some questioning, and I shared that they heard the fellow's name in the tavern and that he was going to poke around the tombs. Probably because that's where kids would go to smoke.

They went through the corpse's pockets, respectably, of course. And threw rocks at the vultures harassing them.

The party listened to their common senses and didn't desecrate any random tombs. The blood and drag-trail led them to the tomb entrance, and the fun could begin.

Driznag caught a sneezing fit, which started the "Howler timer." They found some minor items in the entrance chapel, and poked at the slimy water in the ritual pool. More investigation alarmed a giant spider, which they killed without too much effort.

Into the dart-trapped hallway. Remember, they're short. And crept down the hall, unbothered by the darts firing over their heads. Finding a ranting, nearly-dead Rains Calibrin, they attempted to heal him, and only got more ranting.

And the warning that the Howler was creeping along the ceiling behind them. Battle was closed, and a knock-down drag-out occurred. The Howler alternated between attacking magic items and PCs. The creature's ability to heal from magic energies was quite frustrating. 

The priests attempted turning, but found that the Howler was not undead. Spells failed. Driznag went down but was revived with a healing potion. And finally the halfling made two crits to put the thing down. A vision upon the killing blow revealed the Howler's true nature.

The battered PCs recovered a handful of abandoned items from the temple chamber, and chased off lurking spiders with fire. 

Finding the crypt, they investigated. Driznag knew enough Primordial to piece together the epitaph on the sarcophagus plinth. But made the mistake of reading it aloud as she sounded out the words. Oops.

The mummies arose, attacking and chasing the party from the chamber. The dwarf got zeroed out (plus some CHA damage). The goblin and halfling each went invisible and fled (I'd randomly rolled a Cloak of Elvenkind for Driznag). Satisfied, the mummies returned to their sarcophagi, and the surviving PCs dragged the dwarf free. 

A quick check of the remaining chamber, and mushrooms were found. These did not revive the dwarf, although a third Nat 20 by Ad Bather allowed for a stabilization. 

Fleeing with their recovered goods, the party stopped to recover Gundrin O’Noggin's body to return him to town. And if the mummies somehow arose and started to wreak havoc, well, the party wasn't admitting to anything. It was probably those kids sneaking into tombs to smoke.

DM Notes:

I've reviewed the adventure before, and my opinion is similar after this run. Because of its organization and wall of text style, it can be less straightforward to run than something of a more bullet-style or concise format. And this DM got the pages out of order during the session so had to do a lot of flipping. For the next run, I'll probably pull more salient details into my text document with the monster stats, as well as highlight important bits. It's unfortunate, because it detracts from a good concept and creative monster. For instance, I missed some overly-complex if-then details on the Howler's abilities.

If anyone is interested in running the Howler using ShadowDark, I've put a document with stat conversions here.

And, with the presence of a goblin priest, we established the alignment of "Goblin Lawful."

In other notes, we met up with Jonathan (B/X Blackrazor) Wednesday night to playtest an AD&D tournament-style adventure he wrote for an upcoming convention. Let's just say that we wouldn't have scored well. But we had a fun time pulling the levers and opening doors we shouldn't have.