A Sundered World: Grimlock Cave Finale

Cast

• Dymlos (level 1 human monk/level 4 spellsword)
• Miyoshi (level 5 nekobito shaman)
• Severus (level 5 human battlemind)
• Yao Lao (level 5 human monk)

Session Highlights

As with the first totem, Miyoshi frees the trapped spirit. This one provides her with a handful of mushrooms with curative properties, which will be nice if anyone needs healing and she's all tapped out of spirit boons.

Or if she can't get to them in time.

The party continues exploring the caves until they come across a large chamber with a number of grimlocks wrapping up a ritual sacrifice involving a dwarf. They step in, too late, and the shaman beckons and clicks to an engraving of a great bat behind it.

A bat spirit emerges, but since he's a spirit only Miyoshi can see it.

She tries to reason with him, but the spirit explains that he is obligated to aid the shaman due to various bargains and offerings. Miyoshi asks if there's any way she can change his mind, to which he responds that if they slay the shaman he will cease attacking.

Sounds good, except that the bat spirit begins chowing down on Severus—revealing that he's not only invisible but cannot be harmed by mundane weaponry—while the rest of the party goes after the shaman.

Once they slay both the shaman and his entourage of bodyguards, the other grimlocks retreat into their various alcoves. As previously stated the bat stops attacking, but explains that he will continue to demand blood: if none is offered for a time he'll seek to slake his thirst of his own volition, so they offer up the shaman and other slain grimlocks in the interim.

They'll do, for now.

They find most of the dwarves in a pit. They're grateful, and as promised will reward them with a small percentage of the mine's profits once they get things going. Miyoshi explains the bat situation: the spirit is currently bound to the engraving, which will take some time to remove, but if they remove or try to destroy it the bat will attack: she'll need to find a way to bind it, first.

Either way the dwarves will need to continue "placating" the bat spirit until then.

Design & Development

Shaman is coming along nicely, though thinking of changing some of the spirit boon talents to being save for half instead of hit-or-miss. Still plunking away at the swordmage, seeing if it's Recharge mechanic needs to be tweaked. Shane is again unable to play for awhile, so Severus is getting relegated to NPC status, which sucks because the battlemind could use more playtesting...

I think the monk did okay this session, but it was well before the monk overhaul. In regards to that, Conner thinks that while the monk is much better than before, there are too many talents to a tree: a monk needs to be really high level before they can get any of the cool stuff like Kirin Races Across the Heavens and Phoenix Wings.

So probably going to merge some of the stuff (like Blinding Speed and whatever the entry-level teleport is), and give them Ki Strike for free (but change it so that you need to burn ki to make your fists magic instead of having that be an always-on thing).

Announcements

You can now get a physical copy of Dungeons & Delvers: Black Book in whatever format you want (the PDF is also on sale on DriveThru)! We've also released the first big supplement for it, Appendix D, so pick that up if you want more of everything.

The first issue of The Delver, a magazine featuring fungal-themed content for both players and GMs (including an adventure in which myconids find religion), is available!

Our latest Dungeon World class, The Ranger, is now available.

Dwarven Vault is our sixth 10+ Treasures volume. If you're interested in thirty dwarven magic items (including an eye that lets you shoot lasers) and nearly a dozen new bits of dungeon gear, check it out!

By fan demand, we've mashed all of our 10+ Treasure volumes into one big magic item book, making it cheaper and more convenient to buy in print (which you can now do).