I had this post ready to go sometime last year, but had been waiting for my other group of players to finish the campaign before I posted the rest of Fizzle’s Diaries. And then I promptly forgot all about it, even after the other campaign was completed. So here it is … much delayed! … but here! (There will be a total of 8 chapters when it’s all said and done.)

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From the ongoing saga of Fizzle’s and his hired companions.
written by Fiznarthian Ooglenook (played David Pettit)
Featured image (Under A Violet Moon by MegziePegzie)

Chapter 6

Game Day 6/1/2019

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Riddle Relief

We continue forward with our hooded lantern and flame, flame as light. We see cobblestone floors and natural cave walls. We come to a wall with relief carving on it, it is a 3×3 grid depicting different creatures.

 I pull out my copy of Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. (Oops wrong story). There is a riddle on the wall as well. 

Skip the maze
and the flames
Secret doors one two
will get you through
To open the way
and survive this day
the relief most unique
blood doth seek
Fear not my tread
to end thy dread
Wrong cave dweller choose
their wrath doth arouse
to strike down the weak
they only warning seek

-inscribed on the wall of the cave

Tholin investigates the reliefs and notices that all of the reliefs except the Harpy are covered in a thin layer of dust (rolled a nat 20). Kromnak cuts his hand and pushes the Harpy relief. His blood is drawn to the mouth and the wings flutter, a click is heard, and a door opens.

Crossing the Hallway is the Hardest Part!

Through the open door we hear the sound of stone grinding. It sounds a lot like the rolling boulders we heard earlier. That doesn’t bode well for us. As we look through the door, we see a large boulder roll by. This must be the other end of the corridor they were rolling down. One rolls by about every 6 seconds. Across the corridor, I spot a door ajar. We decide to cross to the door and go in. Kromnak runs across with ease. Tholin just barely makes it too. I’m laughing at Tholin’s clumsiness, and trip and fall on my face. Kromnak (ever heroic) runs back and grabs me but is laughing so hard at him he gets hit by a boulder. So I end up back on the original side of the passage. I, now, try to save Kromnak and fails miserably (Rolled a 1). Now Tholin saves my fallen gnome body and we are both back on the original side of the passageway. Boulders are still zipping by and rolling over Kromnak’s. He seems to have trouble getting his feet beneath him. Tholin and I try cross together and make it! Kromnak manages to crawl out of the way of the next boulder and joins us.

Ends the “rough” exterior of the dungeon.

Into The Interior Dungeon

Passing through the door we enter a tunnel and see on the left a smooth man-made wall. To the right is a natural cave wall. The tunnel leads east. We follow it along the smooth wall. The tunnel ends abruptly, but there is a narrow passage continuing around the corner. We squeeze through and continue on. Following along the continuing smooth wall we come to a door. Tholin checks it for traps and Fizzle runs into it when he tries to open it and its locked.

Tholin unlocks it and we all enter a man-made 10×15-foot room. We look around. To the left on the same wall as the door we came through is another door. The floor is cobblestone and very clean. Tholin checks the door for traps and gives the all clear. Kromnak opens it and looks in. He sees a hallway that ends at a corner. We continue. Around the corner the hallway continues, as do we. We come to another corner that turns right. I, Kromnak, and Tholin continue in that order. Around the corner we find a human body wearing adventurer’s gear. Looks like he died with a smile, weird. We relieve him of any useful objects that he was selfishly hoarding. We find:

• Scroll of chill touch – Kromnak
• 2 red potions of greater healing (4d4+4) – Fizzle
• Scroll disguise self – Kromnak
• Potion of climbing – Kromnak
• Bag of holding – Fizzle (Fizzle also puts the healing potions in it)
• Scroll of enlarge and reduce – Tholin
• Mithral chain shirt (13dex 8lbs) – goes in the bag too
• Long Sword – magik +1 – Tholin

Hall of Desires

Rounding the next corner…

Unknown to us, we are seeing what we desire the most. We also see that the others are trying to take it from us! (GM note: The group unanimously failed their saves for the first 3 rounds. The Charisma save DC started at 15 and went up 1 each round.)

Tholin thinks Kromnak is stealing his treasure, so Tholin attacks him with his sword. Kromnak see Fizzle with his beautiful moon bride and tries to intimidate the gnome away from his lady. (Nat 20)

No one takes my baby dragon! Kromnak is hurting my dragon! I pull out my mace and whack him on the head really hard! Kromnak sees Flippy (The barbarian calls me Flippy, I don’t know why.) with his beautiful moon bride and goes after me with “Flame,Flame”. Fortunately for Fizzle he misses.

I swing and misses Kromnak with my mace. Tholin knocks out Kromnak and takes my dragon, gerrr. I get out the big guns know and summon my Pooh (spiritual weapon)! Tholin is in for it now… it’s a hit! Ha-Haa! Take that you dragon thief! Tholin hits me with his sword. Then he comes to his senses and realizes it is all an illusion.

(GM Note: This was at the top of 4th round and the save DC was up to 18. At this point, I was positive it was going to be a TPK. But we were all laughing so hard I think it wouldn’t have been so bad.)

I take another swing at Tholin with Pooh and miss. Tholin counters and knocks Fizzle out. He ties us up and gives us each a greater healing potion. We are still under the influence of this cursed space and struggle to get loose and attack. Tholin drags us down and around the next corner out of range of the illusion’s influence.

Tholin, being the only one to successfully resist the spell, goes back and collects our dropped sword and mace. We continue down the hall and up to the stairs. 

Dora the Door

I am suddenly frozen with an unnatural fear. Kromnak noticing Flippy has stopped comes back and snaps me back to my senses. 

(GM Note: This was the Hall of Fear that required a Wisdom saving throw. Failing this simply incapacitates a person. Only Fizzle failed the save but rolled a 19 on the follow-up.)

Meanwhile, Tholin finds the stairs ahead are trapped and will turn into a slide if sprung. He disarms the trap without breaking a sweat (Rolled 25 for disarm). At the top of the stairs is a 25×15 room. To the west and north are doors. Checking for traps reveal nothing. Opening the door on the west wall reveals stairs down. In the back of the room is a cupboard with linens, blankets, plates, cups, and other household items. We discover a blue bubbly Potion of Heroism (1hr 10hp). [Goes in the bag of holding.]

The door on the north wall leads to a softly lit room is softly with a cobblestone floor patterned with numbers in a grid. Across the room on the opposite corner is a door. Tholin deduces that there is a path across if you step only on the prime numbers. Kromnak just barrels straight across the room. We find stepping off the primes gets you zapped. Kromnack gets zapped a lot. We make it across to find a door. Tholin checks it and find the doorknob hot. We back up a little and Tholin opens it with Mage Hand. We hear a “Tee hee hee! That tickles!” as the door swings open. There is a face in the other (front) side of the door that greets us.

There is a 10×10 platform on the other side. Lower down is lava and flame. There are some ropes and cross beams to help, but it is very hard to cross. You’d have to be very agile or lucky to make it across! Kromnak is especially persuasive and gets the door to tell us about the room beyond. She is there to let the survivors out if any make it. She tells us the man with the pointy ears usually just floats across. Well we can’t do that! We give the door the name Dora and decide to take it with us. Kromnak removes the hinges and straps the door to his back.

Looking back the way we came, we see a door we missed hidden behind the open door that we came in through. We cross back to it (stepping on those prime number spots) and open it to find a 15-foot hall with a door on the right. Here we decide to take a short rest here. 

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From the ongoing saga of Fizzle’s and his hired companions.
written by Fiznarthian Ooglenook (played David Pettit)
Featured image (screen capture from the film “Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom”)

Chapter 5

Game Day 3/23/2019

Pits of despair continue

We come across yet another trap door in the floor. As we are discussing what to do, Kromnak ties a rope to me, says, “let’s test it!” and pushes me onto the trapdoor. The trap springs and I dropped into the trap. I’m beginning to wonder whose side Kromnak is on. Tholin catches me on the rope and pulls me out. Checking the ceiling for anything useful and finding nothing, it’s decided that Fizzle should jump across. Jumping, I just barely make it, but twist an ankle on landing and fall back in (Rolled a 1). Once again Kromnak and Tholin grab the rope but not before I get stuck on a poison spike in the pit. Now instead of rescuing me they concentrate on how to cross the trap safely! I’m going to hire better help next time. (Will Fizzle survive? Tune in next paragraph on this same Bat channel.)

Kromnak tries sticking a javelin with a rope tied to it into the ceiling. It sticks but only a little, and when they test it, it dislodges, and they pull it back. Next they try throwing it all the way across. It sticks into the floor. They test pull it and it stays put.

Meanwhile back in the pit trap Fizzle is slowing sliding down onto the poison spike. “Help?”

Back up top Tholin makes it across on the rope to the other side of the trap. As Tholin starts looking for a way to disarm the trap, Kromnak remembers to pull me up with the rope tied to me. I’m saved!

Tholin finds a trick stone in the floor that disarms the trap. The trap closes with a click and we can cross (after Kromnak test with me again)!

Finding a crate, we break them open and find some vials with red potion in them. Looks like healing potions. Kromnak gives me one that he has tasted, but it does nothing of course since he tasted it. Barbarians ugh. I take one of the other vials and heal up some. We find 3 more vials in a second crate. Green underwater breathing potions (1hr). We continue.

Boulder bowling

Coming to a convex passage with a smooth groove in the center bearing left we see to the right a small ledge up a ways with a large boulder held back by a net. We can hear wind coming around the bolder and I see something blink up there behind it. We decide to investigate before going down the passage. Tholin attempts to climb up to the ledge; he gets to it but can’t find purchase to get up on it. He tries standing on Kromnak’s shoulders, as Tholin puts his head above the edge of the ledge something releases the net! The bolder plunges down and Tholin and Kromnak barely get out of the way in time. The boulder rolls off down the passageway in the groove and disappears. Another boulder rolls off the ledge 12 seconds later. I think we started something! 

In the gap between boulders Tholin boosts Kromnak up. He sees, over the edge of the ledge using his lit sword, a short passage with gears and a bolder lifting up at the end. Also a small alcove in the passage to the left with some sort of mechanical attendant. He jabs the attendant with his sword and jumps down out of the oncoming boulders way. After the boulder has passed Kromnak goes up and into the passage grabbing the mechanical attendant and throwing him in the way of the next bolder, which flattens it, while Kromnak is safe in the alcove. 

Back below Tholin hears something skittering behind him. He throws a firebolt at whatever it is, scoring a hit. 

Up top Kromnak smashes the control panel he has found in the alcove with his axe and the gears stop moving. Now a small squarish boxy thing crawls up out of the boulder delivery hole on spidery mechanical legs. It looks as if it is for repairing things. It doesn’t quite know what to do about Kromnak so it tries to poke him. It fails. Kromnak swings and slides the repair drone in half with his sword. Hearing the commotion below he jumps down.

Meanwhile Tholin and Fizzle have been fighting 3 more mechanical scouts. As Kromnak jumps down they are just finishing dispatching the last one. The floor starts to rumble, messing with the boulder machinery seems to have started a major breakdown. As we look for a way out, Fizzle spys a small gap. Running over to it is turns out to be a small passage. We take it the commotion.

The spider swarm

The passage zig-zags all over the place. Towards the end there is a lot of dust and cobwebs. I sign the wall with my chalk, ‘Fizzle was here’. We come out into a cavern with lots of cobwebs, many concentrated towards the back behind something large with glowing eyes. We think its a huge spider and attack! Tholin Firebolts the concentration of cobwebs we think is a nest, while I shoot it between the eyes and Kromnak slices it with his flaming sword. CLANG. Its metal, but Kromnak and I continue attaching. Tholin realizes it’s only a statue of a spider. He thinks it may be a distraction. We all consider this as I take the green eye jewels from the statue – after all – it doesn’t need them.

Spiders start dropping from the ceiling. Lots of spiders! Everyone is wounded, but I am overwhelmed and knocked out. Tholin gives me a healing potion and I regain my wits and cast sacred flames on myself in order to target the swarm of spiders crawling all over me. I succeed in killing some. They don’t like flames. Kromnak squishes many with the side of his axe blade. The swarm is down to half strength. I cast sacred flame on the spiders mobbing Tholin, but hurt him as well. Tholin is out. Kromnak continues squishing spiders on himself and knocks himself out. He’s down too! But, all the spiders are dead. I casts healing word on Tholin and cure wounds on Kromnak. Good thing I’m a cleric. With all of us conscious again, we take a rest.

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From the ongoing saga of Fizzle’s and his hired companions.
written by Fiznarthian Ooglenook (played David Pettit)
Featured image (screen capture from Elder Scrolls)

Chapter 4

Game Day 2/23/2019

After our short rest, Tholin looks for any hidden ways to move forward. Finding none we decide to distract the fish and make a break for the far shore. Throwing some armor into the lake on the side we came from, we see the fish congregating around that area. We hastily head for the far shore as fast as we can. (Athletic Rolls: Fizzle – 15, Kromnak – 14, and Tholin – 2.) Kromnak and Fizzle make it, but Tholin gets only about half way when the fish catch up to him and attack! He gets chewed on, which spurs him on to an outstanding effort, and he makes it to the North shore to join us. He does have to use a potion to heal when he arrives.

Kromnak lights a torch while Tholin and Fizzle take a look around. Tholin finds something shiny and metallic in the sand. It looks a little like a cog from some machine. We find nothing else so we continue down the passage, keeping left; Tholin looking for traps, Fizzle, then Kromnak following. We soon come to another wall of darkness. We handle this one the same as the last patch of darkness with Fizzle exploring ahead on a rope. 

Moving forward by touch, Fizzle feels the floor transition from soft sand to flagstone. Someone has improved the floor in this section of cave. He briefly hears a click and whirring coming from the left ahead, but nothing further comes of it. Soon he comes out into another cavern that’s about 60’x40’. There is some light now from glowing moss on the walls. He ties the rope to a handy 40lb bolder and gives the rope the prearranged 2 (3 for help) tug signal for the others to join him. The rope and rock immediately disappear back into the darkness!?! Kromnak finding a rock on the rope instead of Fizzle and thinks he has disappeared. Tholin convinces him the tugs were the signal to follow. Fizzle can’t figure out what’s taking them so long. Tholin and Kromnak start after Fizzle, Tholin following the left wall as Fizzle did. Kromnak doesn’t know his left from his right and follows along the right hand wall. Tholin joins Fizzle, but Kromnak goes off in a long circle following the right hand wall and ends up back where he started. “It’s magic! They are gone.” He continues on around the loop again. Finally after another time around he hears Fizzle and Tholin yelling to follow the wall with his “wiper” (left) hand and he joins them.

Searching this cavern we find some large scratches in the wall about 10’ up. We continue on.

Tholin in the lead spots a trap in the floor of the passage we are following. It’s a trap door the full width of the passage and about 20’ across. On the far side about 3’ up the wall is a dry patch of brown moss or algae. Maybe its a switch. Before they can discuss it, Kromnak says “lets throw “Flippy” across!” and does. Fizzle yells “Nooo…” and flies gracefully end over end across the 20 feet and slams into the wall face first. Sliding down in a heap he takes 5 points of damage. Tholin and Kromnak jump across after. (With no damage.) It turns out the moss covers a button that disables the trap door. Fizzle recovers, muttering something about barbarians under his breath. The party continues on.

Next we come into a cavern with small alcoves to the left and right. We each check one, finding nothing but algae on the walls, which reaches out and grabs Kromnak and Fizzle. “Not my wiping hand!” cries Kromnak. Tholin attempts to hack the stuff off Kromnak. but it is resistant to hacking. Kromnak tries his flame sword, which is very effective at burning the stuff up. Seeing this I use Sacred Flame and manage to make a dent in mine. Tholin and Kromnak both shoot it with bow and crossbow and it expires. All free again, we move on.

Tholin finds another trap in the passageway. This one is only 12 feet across. Tholin jumps it and Kromnak tosses me. Kromnak carefully trips the trap to see what happens. The trap door opens onto a 30 foot pit with spikes at the bottom. He jumped it easily and Tholin pushes the button to safe the trap and we continue on down a wider corridor into another chamber. Finding more algae creatures we kill them and settle in for a long rest.

During my watch I hear a noise which turns out to be a mechanical bronze scout on the ceiling. It drops down and attacks us. Tholin swings at it with his rapier and gives it a good hit. I cast spiritual weapon and manifest a large yellow bear in a red jumper (a Pooh Bear), but Pooh misses his swing. Pooh looks very cross. I cast enhance on Kromnak to give him more strength. He takes a mighty swing with his great axe. Whack! Tholin misses with a fire bolt and I manage to miss with both my crossbow and Pooh Bear. Then Kromnak hits it with his flaming sword and Tholin finishes it off with fire bolt. I cast cure wounds on Tholin and we finish our rest.

After resting we move on further. Tholin finds yet another trap! Tying a rope to himself as previously, Tholin jumps across only to land on a second trap door which springs open! He falls but we catch him with the rope, saving him from certain doom. Pulling him up with the rope Tholin manages to get up on the narrow section between the two traps. Fizzle spots the disarm switch on the far wall, but it’s too far to jump across both gaps and Tholin can’t get a running to jump from the narrow 1 foot section of floor he is on. We are discussing trying to shoot the button when Fizzle, having seen Tholin use magic before wonders if he can do “Mage hand”. He can, and uses it to push the disarm button and both traps lock shut. We all move across and are free to continue on.  

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From the ongoing saga of Fizzle’s and his hired companions.
written by Fiznarthian Ooglenook (played David Pettit)
Featured image Ghost town by IIDanmrack

Chapter 3

Game day 2/23/2019

The next morning we eat some more of Kromnak’s goat, and prepare for our day.  This morning Kromnak manages to actually get up and stay on one of the horses. He names his horse, Horse.  Fizzle and Tholin share the other horse, Matilda, with Fizzle driving.  

We approach the ruins of Amara midafternoon. Tholin’s keen eyes discern possible movement on some of the ruined towers of Amara, so we vear to the west (inland) to some light tree cover.  There we leave the horses in a small clearing with plenty of grass to eat and Kromnak picks some wild garlic (which turns out to be dandelions) to ward off vampires. We move closer to the tree line to observe the ruins and take cover behind the trees, except for Kromnak whos idea of hiding is to pose as a tree.  Fizzle convinces him to actually hide behind a tree, where he amuses himself playing with his flame sword <sigh>. 

It is about 50 yards from the trees to the broken city wall.  Tree cover is sparse near the ruins and the trees appear more and more dead and petrified the closer to the walls you get.  We can’t see much from cover so we decide to send Tholin in closer for a look, as he is better at stealth than Kromnak or Fizzle. After Tholin leaves Fizzle tries to get the concept of patience and waiting quietly across to Kromnak with some limited success.  At least he puts out his sword.

Tholin gets right up to the wall without being seen.  He peaks around a gap in the wall and has a good view of the northern section of the ruins.  He sees several groups (2-5) of ghosts roaming about in no discernible pattern. They don’t ever pass outside the walls, leading to the conclusion that the walls might be a barrier to them.  Returning to us, he passes on what he has learned. We decide to wait until nightfall to make our entry to the ruins, hoping to avoid detection. We take a short rest.

When night arrives Tholin dons the Circlet of Protection. We stealthily make our way to the walls of Amara. Before entering we peak around the gap in the wall and make sure the coast is clear.  It is. Tholin uses the circlet to cast protection on each of us which will last 10 minutes. We hope this is enough time to make it to the path down the cliff that the old man told us about.  Based on the map we have and the old man’s story we think the path down the cliff should be somewhere near the top of the cliff overlooking the only cove depicted, which is near the northern part of the ruins.  This is why we chose to enter at this northern gape in the wall.

Avoiding that ghost we see another group approaching and move down the row and into the end house before they spot us.  Leaving Kromnak Mor to watch the door, Tholin and I look around for anything that might be of use to us. All I find is a rusty knife in the kitchen, but Tholin finds a book of some kind and, in the bedroom of the house, a ghost of a girl child.  We all join him and Kromnak is able to persuade her to help us in return for the book Tholin found. She guides us across through another broken down house to the cliff edge, avoiding more ghosts along the way. There we find the beginning of a steep narrow path down the cliff.  Kromnak sends our ghost guide home and I cast some healing on Kromnak whose interaction with the ghost cost some health.  

We tie ourselves together to minimize the danger of one of us falling and begin our descent.  Fizzle in the lead and Kromnak anchoring the end. We make it down uneventfully. We make our way through some boulders (it’s a tight squeeze for Kromnak).  Tholin leads us as we sneak across the cove to a large boulder near where we think the entrance to the caves is, Tholin having heard some voices. We decide to have Tholin use the Chime of Opening to open the entrance to the cavern as we don’t know exactly where it is.  (This uses up one of our five uses.) The guards mistake the opening for their leader coming back, so we take them by surprise! (Also this might confirm the leader is out.)   

We take out the guards.  Ha. Thought I was going to describe it, didn’t ya.  Well I will. Tholin and I keep to cover and take shots with my crossbow and his bow while Kromnak goes in with a frontal assault.  He manages to miss every blow while taking every shot the two guards can dish out. I plug one of the guards full of bolts and Tholin fills the other with arrows.  Then Tholin moves in and finishes both of them with his sword. Kromnak is a pin cushion and down, so we use one of Kromnak’s healing potions on him and he comes around.

We enter the cavern which funnels down to a 3 foot diameter hole in the rear wall about two feet off the floor.  It is completely black and we cannot see inside. When Kromnak sticks his lit sword into it the light disappears. The same thing happens when I try a torch.  There is some kind of dark enchantment on the hole. Tying a rope to myself, I crawl into the hole and head straight back. Coming to the end of my rope without coming out of the darkness, I go back and tie on another length.  Heading back in I stay to the right this time, and eventually emerge from the darkness into a cavern lit by glowing moss or something. The cavern contains a lake with a waterfall and an island. The only way forward seems to be through the lake.

Kromnak, of course, immediately jumps into the lake and starts swimming for the island.  Tholin and I look around a little first before jumping in and spy a ledge we want to check on.  We swim to that, but have a little trouble climbing the wall up to the ledge. We are soon surrounded by quipper fish, which want to eat us.  We climb the wall! On the ledge we find bones all arranged neatly by type, creepy, but nothing else. Kromnak having reached the island and found neatly arranged weapons and armor, throws us a rope, attached to a javelin.  

Kromnak, of course, immediately jumps into the lake and starts swimming for the island.  Tholin and I look around a little first before jumping in and spy a ledge we want to check on.  We swim to that, but have a little trouble climbing the wall up to the ledge. We are soon surrounded by quipper fish, which want to eat us.  We climb the wall! On the ledge we find bones all arranged neatly by type, creepy, but nothing else. Kromnak having reached the island and found neatly arranged weapons and armor, throws us a rope, attached to a javelin.  

I try to cross hand over hand on the rope and slip.  The quippers close in, and Tholin throws me another rope. Climbing back out with the help of the rope h, I manage to make it across on the second try, taking the end of the second rope with me.  Tholin ties the second rope around himself and crosses over too. Now we are all on the island. Kromnak throws a spear at the waterfall to see if its open behind it. It is not. We take a short rest.