After the last adventure, both Castlebar and Sorel chanced upon a nest of feverworms; they got all bit up and incapacitated, shivering under piles of blankets. Vecna had to wait out the fever or give up on reclaiming the Forge.

Fortunately reinforcements were on the way. Roffle and Korvask were traveling to reinforce the effort to retake the Forge. They were on their way up the road to the front door when they encountered a lone fungaloid out hunting. The fungaloid offered to take them to meet up with the other dwarves, in exchange for help in the future. Roffle agreed, and they made it to Vecna without further incident.

INTO THE FORGE

Then they headed down the crude shaft cut in the side of the mountain. At the bottom, they encountered another giant frog, and had a desperate battle that they won handily, though both Vecna and Roffle were giggling hysterically in a drug-fueled bout of uncontrollable hilarity. They pulled back and waited twenty minutes for the effects to subside, but in that time a pack of goblins with skull helmets came to exit through the vent, and violence threatened.

Vecna told them to back off, and the dwarves stepped out of the passage, letting the goblins go. It was tense, but did not descend into violence. Continuing on they found the Glitterhame, and followed the trail to the massive door. Vecna unlocked it, and they headed into the area with the forge and the great hall.

Vecna remembered the hidden door and avoided the traps by the statues, and even remembered which stair was rigged to trigger an alarm before entering the great hall. All was still and silent as they ascended into the massive chamber.

They smelled brittlestone, a horrible material that grows on bones and remains and renders them animate, filled with a hate for the living. Keeping a careful eye out (and not investigating a weird skittering noise,) they continued to the doorway into the forge. It was right where they remembered it.

THE MASTER FORGE

They passed through the door, and explored the forge cautiously. At the very back, they found the Master Forge. The entire chamber had taken decades of intensive work to complete, but the Master Forge was surrounded by glittering darkness, next to a vast pit, out of sight from the rest of the forges. It was laced with runes, a mighty tool for a master that was designed to withstand millennia of use. Korvask used his skill as an enchanter (and some of his blood) to activate one rune on the anvil of the forge, and that was enough for them to say they claimed the forge.

They withdrew through the doors and were attacked by a pair of skittering bone constructs. After pitched battle, they slew the things, though Korvask and Roffle were both wounded pretty badly in the fight. They withdrew to a secure storage area in the forge to stitch up their gashes and rest.

While there, Korvask heard the whispering of a long-dead spirit that was trying to tell him sanity blasting truths; he focused his mental energies and actually destroyed the ghost. Newly wary (and bandaged) they decided they should look in on the shrine before they left.

THE SHRINE

In the unfinished shrine, they found four animated corpses of the dwarves that were left behind to keep the site maintained when the clan marched off to war. It appeared they had died from violent injuries. The fellowship slew them, and saw that brittlestone had been planted here; the bone creatures were also not “local.” So, some necromancer (or hireling of a necromancer) was trying to cultivate this site to eventually serve as a place to create masses of undead. That plan was failing! They resolved to return with numbers and neutralize the brittlestone.

As they left the great hall, they were attacked by three sporehounds. The battle was sharp but over quickly; even wounded, the dwarves made short work of the lunging fungal monsters. They withdrew, and in the wilderness on the way back they were ambushed by a fungal ogre. The monster fell to their persistent attacks, and they finally reached relative safety.

The forge was reclaimed. Time to go home and Tell the Tale.

(The session took two and a half hours, including making a character and taking a 10 minute break to deal with childcare.)

The Fellowship had traveled to Solemn Lake, a town on the edge of Stout Narrows in the southeast corner of the Caskbound Pocket. Across the Narrows lies territory of Clan Stonebridge, trading partners of Clan Caskbound.

The town is called Solemn Lake because the water in the Narrows tastes normal, but hits a person’s system as though it was vodka. If you don’t boil the magically polluted water you’ll bounce back and forth between euphoric and hung over. It is a great party town, but most of the time the place gives the impression of being hung over.

• Devron Leveler. Berserker, Chosen, Mason.
• Korvask Wryt. Vanguard, Enchanter, Scholar.
• Revelle Lateminder. Mauler, Delver, Jeweler.

They were in town for a festival, and as they were taking in the sites they saw a badly injured dwarf staggering down the street. They rushed up to him, he collapsed, and they took him into the tavern. His insignia was of Clan Caskbound, he had once-fine clothes ripped to tatters by briars and blades, and he had the hands of a delver. Intrigued by the mystery, they got him conscious, and he privately admitted he was Sardell, the huntsman for the subarchon Kell Glyte of Clan Stonebridge (a subarchon is like a prince.)

The subarchon and huntsman had taken a fine pack of hunting stag beetles out to get a salamander; sometimes the fiery amphibians worm up from the deeps and cause trouble. Hunting them is utilitarian and sport. (Hunters use mastiff-sized stag beetles for the hunt, as their chitin does not melt; these prized creatures have their iridescent chitin polished to a high shine.) During the hunt, they were ambushed, and Glyte didn’t get a good look at his foes but he was lucky to make it back to town.

Leveler used the litanies of the Gods of Ur to help him rest, then they sought out the Head Alderman, Ferrig, a somewhat notorious alchemist. They figured he should know about the lost subarchon. He agreed, and decided to look after the huntsman while the Fellowship went looking for the subarchon; should not start a panic over a missing person if it could be quietly sorted. Off they went.

HUNTING IN THE NARROWS

As they were moving over the polished iridescent stone of the narrows, a salamander rushed up from a fissure and attacked! Leveler wounded it grievously, his weapons melting on its hide. Wryt exploited a crack in the stone to break off the shelf where they fought, and the salamander slid back down into the fissure as Lateminder snatched Leveler to safety. After that clash, Wryt used his bloodbrush and enchanted two weapons to be safe from the heat of their blood.

They continued on and found a foraging expedition of fungaloids. Lateminder cautiously approached and let them spray her with telepathic spores. She found out they were looking for choice ingredients to add to their melding beds, and they wanted dwarven “crackers” because that added something to the experience. She shared, and they told her that a Deep Worm had been compelled to surface nearby; that might be relevant.

The Fellowship went looking for the Deep Worm surfacing site, but got lost and instead found a withered old dwarven woman named Mother Service. She offered them chemical weapons (as she was an accomplished alchemist) in exchange for Ledger she could use to trade with the local clans (who didn’t want to trade with her for some reason.) They camped nearby for a few hours, then headed out with the directions she gave them.

Soon they found the breach where the Deep Worm had been compelled to surface, disgorge passengers, and retreat. They followed the tracks (in internal worm slime) until they got to the bogs of the Narrows, where the occasional print of the warband was enough to keep them on the right track.

They found the ambush site, and a little further on a hunting stag beetle, grimed up and hesitant. Lateminder befriended it by feeding it a dead rat and talking to it soothingly, and it happily accompanied them on to find its master. (Its name was Mister Stab.)

They discovered a rearguard, mostly submerged in a pool on the warband’s backtrail. They attacked and defeated them, noting they were trollkin with some regeneration and loads of violent muscle. Even more cautious, they continued along the path.

THE LIGHTHOUSE

A local landmark by the Narrows is “the Lighthouse.” It looks like a house of some kind, built far up on the cavern wall, and suffused through with powerfully bright luminescent fungus. It is like the North Star when navigating the Pocket, visible from all around. And the tracks led towards the Lighthouse.

Finding the hidden stair carved into the rock, they saw it had a human enchantment mark as well as the stonework being signed by Clan Stonebridge, centuries ago. Wryt used his bloodbrush and put a rune of invisibility on Lateminder, who explored up the staircase and found two more trollkin guards. After reporting her find, she slipped past them, and the other two dwarves approached up the stairs. One trollkin jumped up to cling to the wall and drop in ambush, the other pretended to be a boulder; the dwarves sorted them out fast, and kept moving (even though blood spatter ruined the invisibility rune.)

Wryt made two more invisibility runes, one for Lateminder and one for her to take along, on a headband. She slipped past more guards, into the wonderland of the Lighthouse (after climbing hundreds and hundreds of stairs.) She reached where the subarchon was held prisoner, and the trollkin were rapt at the horrific poetry recital of their bloated leader.

Her psyche grimly enduring the poetry, Lateminder slipped into the group (pinned to a pillar once by a leaning trollkin, and slipping loose after jabbing him while making a cave centipede noise so he moved.) She slipped the invisibility rune on the subarchon, and together they made their escape, slipping out of the trollkin perimeter and racing down to join the other dwarves.

The subarchon told them he fooled the trollkin into thinking him a lowly hunter. They questioned him about what was in the area; over thirty strong, the warband is looking to set up a power base near or in the Caskbound Pocket. But that is a problem for another day! He was desperate to get back to safety.

The successful Fellowship was feasted in the Happy Hut, the subarchon brought in a troubadour to sing songs of their clan, and he gifted Mister Stab to Lateminder for her heroics in rescuing him.

This is the first test of the “GM-less rules” for Axes and Anvils. The “Frame Master” sets the scene; they are headed to a music festival (now called Kegapalooza) and some other competitors do not want them to arrive.

The two performers have an act, the merchant has the merch, and the healer is to fix them up after bad ‘shrooms so everybody makes it home safe.

Everybody gets 2 words generated by Dungeonwords or Wilderwords, and when we get there, a scene type. Then “Encounter Masters” GM for a scene, before passing it off to the next player.

• Thrustin Magroin Timberlake. Mauler, Engineer, Merchant.
• Rebecca Blacksmith. Skirmisher, Healer, Alchemist.
• Anvaland. Vanguard, Enchanter, Performer.
• Wikit Kumbersnatch. Support, Gunsmith, Performer.

Scene 1: Ambush. Three fungal ogres jumped them on the road. After a spirited battle, they put the fungal ogres down. Then they rested to recover before heading onward.

Scene 2: Ambush (torture, slab). They headed into a “shortcut” to shave 4 hours off the trip, a mountain pass tunnel. It was full of murderous swarms of torture pygmies–“short” and “cut” indeed! The dwarves waded through them in short order, and took some time to throw their torture machines off the mountain too, then proceeded onward.

Scene 3: Chance Encounter (bloody, piercing). Right outside they saw a sign, “I Belieb” and a knight in armor was strumming his instrument and morosely staring into a stream. (He could emit a piercing shriek that punctured eardrums.)  The dwarves tried to sneak by, but were detected, so they piled on and mowed him down.

Scene 4: Ambush (firepit, casks). At the end of a long day of travel they saw some casks around the embers in a fire-pit; looks like there was a party there. Two dwarves went to check out the ale, the other two warily watched the scene. The two who drank found the keg was drugged; as they shrugged off the effects, a vegan vigilante emerged and demanded they give up all animal-related products. They attacked and butchered him, then spent the night at the campsite.

Scene 5: Environmental Hazard (sorcerer, swarm). They saw a sign that pointed either to the lowlands, to walk along the dusty road and maybe hitch a ride on a wagon, or the highland shortcut through a geyser field. They chose the geysers, and in the yellow stinky fog they saw a dead necromancer dressed in a red leather robe with lots of buckles and zippers; looked like his hair had burned off. A horde of zombies crouched around him, infested with flies. While the performers distracted the zombies with dance, the other two dwarves snuck around the side. A geyser erupted, but they escaped it; while it distracted the zombies, the performers made a run for it, and they all got away.

Scene 6: Free choice (radioactive, homestead). Towards nightfall they found a house with a sign out front that red “Zed’s B&B: Vacancy.” They saw a big penguin and some zebras dancing in the yard; through the glass door and windows they saw people enjoying themselves inside, but all the people had mutations. The dwarves moved on to a campsite, where they chatted up a penguin who waddled through, and acknowledged a 3 legged man on his way through. In the morning they found they were mutating; a third nipple here, a sixth finger there, and so on. They fled the scene, and their mutations faded.

Scene 7: Hunting Monster (hatch, pool). They came across a Mustang hatchback from the 80s. Since it was a magical carriage, the enchanter got it started; had he failed, it would have gone all “Christine” on the group. They rode on towards the festival in style.

Scene 8: The FINALE. Environmental Hazard (crystal, stonework). A crystal wall lay across the road, and as far as the eye could see in either direction. It was animate, with blade-like protrusions, and it was 30 feet tall. Fortunately the miner brought explosives, so the magical car was rigged and sent at the wall; it exploded, showering the dwarves in shrapnel, and they managed to run through before it self-sealed. Nothing now stood between them and the festival!

Our story concluded, with the assumption they do great at the music festival.

I ran Stonesky Delve, adapted for Axes and Anvils.

• Devron Leveler: berserker, chosen, mason.
• Korvask Wryt: vanguard, enchanter, scholar.
• Revelle Lateminder: mauler, delver, gemsmith.

They were hired by Gantar, a priest of the Gods of Ur who is under the shield of Clan Thunderforge. A new secret vent was found into Stonesky Mountain, famous for the site of first contact with the Gods of Ur, riddled with pilgrimage sites. If there truly is a new undiscovered area in the mountain, better to check it out before sending in the faithful. Devron was a chosen, Revelle a delver, and Korvask a scholar and enchanter; their expertise should reveal what’s up with this new potential site.

Loaded with gear for climbing and mapping, as well as cave moth pupae that would tell them the time, they headed into the timed adventure. They climbed down the bat vent, passing through several chambers to get to a tall vertical shaft where Devron sensed holy energy far above. They decided to return to check that out, and kept going. They saw a trickle of water down the rock, but this high up on the mountain slope, where could it be coming from? They continued exploring downwards, and ran into a nest of cave morays that tore Devron up.

Going a different way, they climbed up to the source of the water and found a cracked decanter of endless water, made at the beginning of the enchanter tradition among dwarves and still using some Shaper magic. They took that, and some ancient trinkets that were with it, and retreated. Revelle went down the moray shaft and killed the eels with Korvask’s help, and they continued to a ledge by a pool. Something was in it, but didn’t show itself.

Continuing down, they found a muddy area where the mud contained the traces of magic from the decanter and formed humanoid shapes that tried to kill them. After a fight that ended when the shapes lost coherence, they clambered through the sticky mud, around the sinkhole, and climbed up through a narrow vent. They found a pond with blind catfish, and rested.

Returning to the mud room and knocking the mudmen down again, they descended the next shaft. At the bottom, a strange crab/oyster/fungus monster attacked them and they killed it, but it released many spores. Escaping that, they found the massive bat-cave, and at the back of the cave a lake. Thinking they’d clean up one by one, they sent Revelle up first; a pair of giant archer fishes narrowly missed her as they shot globs of water, and everyone retreated.

They climbed through a passage so narrow they had to remove armor, and rubbed against red slime that acted like poison ivy. On the other side, they followed a corridor but realized the stone had stress fractures, a dam ready to burst. They carefully pulled back, and rested again. Then they continued on a long climb through a narrow passage, coming out where there was a sign on one side that was ancient, warning not to ever go that way because of the danger.

They went the other way, and found a cave untouched for at least a thousand years, where young hopefuls had candlelight vigils. Devron took a special enchanted candle, and they found a magically protected corridor leading back towards some civilized dwarven territory. They solved the riddle that protected it, followed the corridor to the end, and found it had been sealed by the dwarves long centuries ago.

After resting and healing, they headed for the exit. They did not want to investigate the “danger” site, though their imaginations ran wild as to what could be down that way that frightened the ancients so badly. Eventually they climbed up to where Devron sensed the holy energy, and he and Revelle risked the climb while Korvask guarded the cracked decanter.

After the brutal climb, the two dwarves found a chamber where a crystal stood; when the Gods of Ur first came to the holy mountain they spoke, and this massive crystal captured a single syllable of that utterance and reshaped the stone around itself. Devron had a massive religious experience (as a chosen) and as silver streaked his hair he gained permanent Resolve.

Already the bats were starting to escape through the vent, and they risked it being impassible and them missing their deadline. So they climbed down, forced their way out through the thickening swarm of bats, and reported on their findings. They got 5 Ledger for their great service.

The dwarves of Clan Caskbound were asked to go on a dangerous mission for the clan! Who answered the call?

• Vecna Sorrenvaas: vanguard, diplomat, chef.
• Alexander Sorel: leader, brewer, athlete.
• Castlebar: support, adept, alchemist.

I used the delightful “Forge of Fury” map for the adventure, partly because I’ve played through the scenario in multiple systems with my group before. Some of the same members are in the playtest, and they have both mapped it and have memories of playing through. Therefore, I can say they remember when they’ve been there previously in their long lives. Of course, now things are overgrown and different, after the site was shuttered about 40 years previously.

BACKSTORY

Khundrukar was founded by Durgeddin 158 years ago. He was a smith for Clan Bastion (under the Thunderforge shield) and he wanted to become a forge master, something he could not do at another master’s forge. He took his family and allies and carved out a settlement in the mountains. He also sought to connect the dwarfroads of the mountains with the human lands, easing trade to the local human city state Rothveldt.

He chose a site at the far end of the Caskbound Pocket, the haunted twisted wilderness that spawned around the ancient disaster of the Armageddon Ale bomb in this area. Khundrukar is at the end of the Basilisk Road, 36 miles from Whiskey Forge (the clanhome of Clan Caskbound.)

About 40 years ago, a necromancer named Kryaldi led the Weeping Death into dwarven territory. He was barely stopped, but the dwarven clans called on all hands to fight the menace. Khundrukar was shuttered and left with only a few caretakers, and Durgeddin’s warband took such heavy losses in the fighting that they could not return to their new tributary forge.

Clan Bastion’s clanhome is Coldstream Falls, about 50 miles away. They are allies with Clan Caskbound. They are currently embroiled in their own troubles, including a new clan moving in on their territory. Clan Vaultcracker, under the Stonebreaker shield, is planning to move into the area and claim Khundrukar as a mercenary fort. From there they will hire out to the humans and whoever else can afford them, and that will bring down the tone of the neighborhood, as they are violent and very un-diplomatic. It seems certain their presence would damage trade agreements and local goodwill.

They cannot move into Khundrukar if others get to the master forge and claim it for their clan first. So, with  a twenty day  head start, the dwarves of Clan Caskbound set out to claim Khundrukar!

ADVENTURE!

Three intrepid dwarves closed in on the main doors to the forge. Vecna remembered there was another way in, and did not want to use the front door. She remembered that in a spore-addled weeks-long celebration Durgeddin’s people proved they could dig a passage to human lands by digging a passage from the interior of the proto-clanhome to the chamber beyond. They could find that entrance and bypass the front door.

So they roamed the shroom-coated wilderness of the mountain flank, triggering spore clouds and by and large resisting their effects. However, the mule Alexander brought along was not so lucky, and struggled with paranoia. That was a real problem when they disturbed a massive (and high) caterpillar. They tethered the mule and left it to distract the caterpillar, pushing on with two massive casks on their own back instead. (They didn’t want to be caught without drink this expedition.)

Entering Khundrukar

They eventually found the vent into the lower halls of Khundrukar, and they cautiously followed the vent down. After a long hike, they entered a big chamber resonant with massive croaks. They found a broken gate, and beyond it, a frog as big as a horse, covered with psychotropic skin venom. They put it down after a fierce fight, but three more jumped them.

Using a combination of firebombs, steel, and magical bolts, they downed one and drove the others off. Unfortunately, in the battle Vecna was sprayed with the skin venom, and she thought she was a penguin for a while. (It wasn’t pretty.)

After she pulled herself together and everyone agreed to never speak of this again, they continued on, following Vecna’s memory into the deep. After a few twists and turns they came out in a massive chamber, the Glitterhame.

Vecna unerringly led them into the towering fungal forest full of psychadelic wildlife, ignoring blissed-out centipedes writhing across the path and groovy massive caterpillars that hung out on the mushroom caps.

Sporehounds Attack

As the path led them by a rocky cliffside, they were attacked by four spore-hounds–once human, these twisted creatures were transformed by fungal rot into something horrible. They attacked ruthlessly, but the dwarves put them down after a savage clash. Bruised and bloodied, the dwarves grimly pushed on to the impregnable door leading to the master forge.

They rested and got some strength back, also studying the door. It was covered with snippets of holy text, glyphs of the lineage of master smiths of the clan, and other decorations, surrounding a stylized face of Durgeddin himself. Enough of the door had interactive elements that they realized they might need clues for how to open it. The most decorated part of the clanhome, according to Vecna, was the burial ground at the other end of the chamber. The stone coffins had many markings and might bear a clue.

The Open Crypt

The coffins were in a peaceful balcony overlooking the Glitterhame. As the dwarves approached, they saw a massive frog-mount with a goblin champion mounted on it; she was high as a kite, and had two spiked chains implanted in her forearms and laid across the frog’s flank to pick up the hallucinogens. They tried to scare her off with a flashbang, but she hallucinated that they were a beholder, and she attacked savagely. They managed to balk her mount and knock her off, and the frog hallucinated that it could fly, leaping out over the Glitterhame (and not flying.)

They killed the champion properly, and Castlebar tore her spiked chains out of her arms (noting they were elven make.) Then he stood guard while Alexander and Vecna tirelessly worked on the caskets, using a keg of ale to help clear the frog excrement from the stone to look for clues.

Due to her extensive diplomatic background working with Clan Bastion, Vecna realized the order of the master smith glyphs were out of order.

Conclusion

They returned to the door and solved the riddle, opening the door to the Master Forge area. However, it was dank and dark, and they figured it might be best to return to the wilderness outside to camp before tackling it.

(They got 3 Ledger each, enough to get an upgrade!)