Session Log: Palace of the Vampire Queen

I got to run Palace of the Vampire Queen (1976) for a dear friend today! I think it went extremely well overall, and its fun to hopefully have a game going which requires significantly less scheduling to make happen. She played multiple characters, mostly a mechanical conceit to make the dungeon work, but I loved to see the life she gave these characters (each written on a space the size of a cue card).

Vampire Queen is great, also! It's kind of the perfect amount of actual dungeon for me, where I know exactly what's in every room right away, and have a lot of space to improvise and embellish as I go. I definitely recommend this adventure if you're into that sort of thing.

The Premise

A dwarven isle has been plagued by the Vampire Queen for centuries. Recently, she has captured the princess of the dwarves. The king has offered land, titles, and power to any who can return his daughter to him, though he expects these rewards to go unclaimed. He has lost hope.

Dwarves here have no hair anywhere on their bodies. Their bones are stone.

The Party

Giblet. A halfling, which in this case means she's feathery, but with a human face. Hates the world for her lack of wings.

Leyol. A dwarf, twin knives of bone, quiet and somewhat sinister.

Ginger and Cinamon. The twins, cleric and fighter, have a bet on who's going to die first. Always laughing about something, they're mean like that.

Powder/Pollen. A cribswap. Two aspects--Lunar (mage) and Solar (fighter). Fluffy moth antennae.

 The Delve

Dwarven Ruins -- Mark Poole for Magic: the Gathering

Powder is in her lunar aspect during this delve. She prepared Hold Poral. 

The party enter the dungeon, taking the first door to the right. Four scraggly muppet-looking-creatures sit around a table--One plays solitaire, the others sleep. Before anything else can happen, Powder shoots an arrow through its throat, and the others are killed in their sleep. The party loot some coins off them, and weapons: a firepoker, bread knife, etc. Powder notices a secret door.

The party successfully forced the door and surprised the creature. I decided that the arrow would have been quiet enough to kill the first without waking the others. Also these were goblins.

The party proceed through the secret door, finding a human who has been tied up, gagged, and stashed here. They are injured. After being freed, they identify themself as Jeordi-of-the-orange, a warrior, here for the same reason as the party, to save the princess and acquire landed titles. All their weapons and armour were eaten by a giant bug, and then they got jumped by the muppet-things. Jeordi anxiously follows the group for the rest of the delve. Powder notices another secret door.

I love elves! The automatic chance to detect secret doors is great for a dungeon like VQ, which has a lot of them.

The party continue through the next secret door to another room. No auto-detection this time, but after a turn spent searching, they uncover another one anyway. Opening this one, they see the rust monster Jeordi had described: a cow-sized pillbug, fluffy antennae, a ruddy coloration, hard shell of interlocking metal plates.

Powder casts hold portal on the door. The group retreat back the way they came, taking the western door. It leads to a hallway, and then to a room which contains three more of the muppet-things. They were talking quietly amongst themselves. When the party entered they reach for weapons.

Rather then get into another fight, Giblet tries to talk to the creatures. "No need to fight, we're all friends here." The creatures seem open to this, and ask for gifts since they are now friends. They are given some rations, which pleases them. Their names are Finger-Picker, Blood-Needle, and Flower-Ripper.

These creatures live down here because it's dark and the sun burns them. They have no love for the Queen, being creatures with blood. The party ask if they might part as friends, one of the creatures curtsy as they leave.

I made two reaction rolls for the creatures, which came up as a 9 and a 10. I figure their morality is largely pragmatic.

The party return to the main hallway, follow it to an intersection, and go west. Opened a door, chamber with stone pillars, 5 figures stand stark: slender, pale, desiccating corpses, clad in armour. On the first round of combat, one of the corpses grabs Ginger and plunges its sword into her, moving as if this takes no effort at all. She bleeds out and dies. The rest of the party move to retreat, save for Cinnamon, who starts laughing.

I was interested by the decision on my player's part to essentially leave Cinnamon and see what happened. She was situated in an interesting way here, essentially holding a choke point.

Cinnamon trades blows with the corpse warriors. They largely struggle to hit her in her plate and shield, while she starts mowing them down, eating two hits without dying, and eventually she is the last one standing. She takes two trophies: the head of one of the corpses, and the shield of her sister, who's body she leaves behind.

I was surprised how this turned out, as was my player. High AC is king, and the choke-point made a big difference. When the skeletons hit, they rolled poorly as well. 

The party fled the dungeon.

Delve Summary

Foes Slain:

• 4 goblins.
• 5 skeletons, with all XP from these going to Cinnamon.

Treasures Found:

• 10 copper pieces, 10 gold pieces.