After waiting through Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and all those other occasions between November and January that make scheduling difficult, my group is finally beginning our latest D&D campaign. We're using Lamentations of the Flame Princess for our game system, and I plan on taking the party through Maze of the Blue Medusa. But first, since the players are coming from different levels of RPG experience, I thought it'd be a good idea to start off with a one-session adventure to help them learn the system and get a feeling for a more old school style of play.
Knowing I wanted something set in a desert, I found Lair of the Lantern Worm. The adventure is written and illustrated by Michael Prescott of Trilemma Adventures, with additional art by Juan Ochoa. It features a lizard-man death cult, a prophesying worm monster, and an entrance to the underworld in case you'd like to expand the adventure further.
The Setup
Character creation took longer than I had expected due to one late player and a few too many beers before getting started, but the end result was a group of four competent-ish adventurers:M'baku - a tribal warlord from fantasy Africa
Telman - some kind of hillbilly elf
Tordek the Stout - "he's a dwarf"
Temoid - a cleric of some fate goddess
Lair of the Lantern Worm, being a small 2 page dungeon, doesn't include any sort of "adventure hooks" besides a table of rumors the players may have heard. It assumes that a GM will drop it into the game world at their discretion. I decided that the adventuring party was starting out in a desert trade outpost sort of town named Julta. Some players decided they had been hired as protection for a caravan that had passed through, others decided that they were simply wandering around.
The wizard Pantome who lives in his tower on the outskirts of Julta caught wind of the rowdy travelers who had been posted up at the tavern and decided he'd make use of them. Pantome's adventuring days are far behind him, and now his pursuit is researching the mysteries of the desert. Like the player characters, Pantome has also heard many rumors about the High Plateau to the East and the magical lantern within that supposedly has prophetic powers. He made a deal with the party: bring back the lantern, I'll reward you with treasure and information about a painting far more valuable than any coins or gems.
The painting he refers to is the gateway to the Maze of the Blue Medusa. I wanted to hint at the upcoming MotBM crawl.
The party set off through the desert toward the High Plateau. It's only a 4 day journey but the party unknowingly attracted a Water Shade, a creature I borrowed from another one of Michael's adventures that licks up traveler's footprints and drains their energy, making travel through the desert much more difficult as they consume twice their normal food and water supply.
The Lair
After a hard trek through the desert, the party reached the High Plateau and discovered a cave entrance. Water replaces land not long after entering, and after testing the first of many, the party continued along on a path of stepping stones placed in the water to keep dry. Unfortunately for Tordek, the last stepping stone was on a hinge and he fell into the water. He quickly scrambled up onto a smooth stone surface where he saw the skeletal remains of some unfortunate creature that had been picked clean. The slightly acidic water caused his skin to itch, but nothing serious.The splashing, however, attracted the attention of 8 Heelan Proudskull warriors.
Not knowing how the Heelans should react to trespassers, and since the players had no weapons drawn, I gave them a reaction roll, and it turns out that the Proudkulls were not immediately hostile, and were in fact curious about the strangers who had come to their cave. Perhaps they'd heard of the mighty tribe and come to learn of their prophesies.
Playing along, the party followed the Proudskulls to their dry living quarters. Along the way, they passed a clutch of strange eggs, which glowed with a dull blue light (Lantern Worm eggs). Curious, and while the Proudskulls weren't looking, Temoid the cleric punctured an egg and filled a small vile with the glowing blue fluid inside. It may prove useful to him later, we'll see.
The Proudskulls and the Mystics gave the party the rundown on the situation in the caves. The players learned that, according to the Heelans, the Lantern Worm who lives in the caves has the power to reset time whenever it is killed. If one is killed by the worm, and the worm is killed, time will reset and the worm's victim will have experienced some kind of prophecy of the future as they're brought back to life. The Heelan Mystics wear spiked collars and intentionally feed themselves to the lantern worm in order to experience these visions. The worm (usually) eats the spiked collar and is killed, bringing the Mystic back to life, and due to special masks they wear, the worm doesn't remember the collars and will eat them again. The Proudskulls hunt the worm eternally to prove their might, and toughen their skin in the acidic waters of the cave until they are admitted to the order of the mystics.
The party explored further where they found some sort of otherworldly forge and a tomb of the fabled enchanter and weapon smith Carduros, who was banished from his home in the underworld and lived out his life in exile within the cave thousands of years ago. The masks the Heelan Mystics wear were created by him to prevent those in the underworld from skrying on him and seeing his shame. The party managed to open his sarcophagus (something the Heelans hadn't figured out, due to it's false lid) and inside were ingots of white metal, ingots of black glass, and a mold for a key.
At this time, the party was attacked by 3 undead Heelans. Heelans that die in the light of the Lantern Worm rise as undead and swim the cave waters mindlessly. The undead were easy enough for M'baku to dispatch, but with character death at -3 and the average party HP total being somewhere around 5, they made sure to make less noise while near the water afterwards.
The party's dwarf Tordek used Carduros' forge to create a key using the black glass ingot and key mold found in the tomb, though they don't know what the key opens. The white metal and black glass can also be used to forge magical weapons, but the party doesn't know that either.
The Conclusion
We unfortunately had to end the session right as the party decided to explore the Upper Vault where the lantern worm is usually found. Character creation ran long and the party had been slow and methodical with their exploration, so we'll have to conclude this mini-adventure next session.
We all had a blast with the kickoff session. Lair of the Lantern Worm gives just enough information about the scenario and encounters that I felt well equipped to handle everything the party encountered, but not so much information that I couldn't be flexible when the players asked questions or took actions that aren't explicitly covered in the adventure.
While I'd have preferred to have had more than one combat encounter, I'm pleased with the interaction between the players and the Heelan. Through them, I was able to impart plenty of information to the players so they can hopefully devise a plan to defeat the worm next session. The fact that the Heelans' crests are full of small silver bullets never once clicked with the players as a source of treasure, or if it did, they didn't let on.
I'm calling session one a success. There were plenty of laughs going around the table and by the end of it, all the players were speaking in character voices without embarrassment (likely due to my absurd lizardman voice), and we're all eager to play again in two weeks.
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