D16-18 : Catching up the blog

 Hey! So with the beginning of school, life got in the way. As you know, the more days past without me being able to update, the more unmanageable the deficit felt, and the harder to get started. So I've officially given myself permission to try to post a handful of rooms a day until I've caught up, not try to rush through the 19 rooms I haven't shared. I have been mostly caught up on actually sketching in the rooms, but not necessarily putting them in Dungeon Scrawl or posting them here (or putting in a concrete writeup). Anyway, we'll cover a few rooms today, working our way to get to the towers of level 2 when we get there.

1-16: Wrecked Controls

This small room has been trashed by the giant ants (likely encountered in 1-15), and determining what was here is a challenge. The south wall has been destroyed by the ants, leaving rubble. In the southeast corner of the room, runes are faintly glowing (DC 16 perception or a dedicated effort to search). A DC 18 Identify Magic check informs the player that these runes control the trap in room 1-02; a DC 15 Thievery or counteract check can disable the runes and the trap. The ants have made quite a mess, and anyone can see their trail leads through the wall to the south.

1-17: Ant Farm

This room is dominated by an enormous hole in the center of the room. The walls and doors are badly scratched up; a nature (DC 14) check confirms that the damage was done by giant ants. The door to the North is a heavy steel door, barred on this side. The door to the west was locked but heavily damaged and the lock is ripped out; refuse has been piled against it from the far side to keep it shut (DC 16 athletics to open the door enough to squeeze through). The door to the east is locked with key 1B. The hole is a tunnel which leads down to level 3; a DC 15 athletics check is needed to climb in a controlled manner (on a fail a character lands prone and probably attracts unnecessary attention).

Encounter (trivial 2)

Another giant ant is hanging out guarding the top of the hole and will attack a character entering the room

1-18: Squatter's refuse

The bandits have set this room up as a base for their exploration into the rest of the fortress, but the leadership has gone onwards and inwards, leaving these mooks behind. The door in the NE is barricaded moderately, enough to deter the ants (see 1-17). The doors to the north and east are barred from this side, and the door to the west is currently unsecured.

Encounter (Severe 2)

Three bandits are hanging out here. One is in the northwest, keeping an eye out to deter ants trying to enter; the others are resting in the southeast, weapons to hand. There is one guard (with the _ cantrip) and two bodyguards ( and ).

Treasure

There is considerable junk scattered around; the bandits are not keeping their space neat. The party can find pretty much any of the adventuring gear they might like here, although it's in such bad shape it's worthless to re-sell. In addition, half an hour of searching comes up with Doubling Rings, a vial of black adder venom, a flask of spiderfoot brew (lesser), and 9 gp and 7 sp in total.

Other thoughts

Progress made. In the back-end, I've improved my ability to track treasure and encounters (for example, I can assess how much more XP I need to provide in areas where I expect the party to still be at level 1 so that they're actually level 2 by the time they face the challenges over here), plus started to design the second level (the towers). I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. I'm traveling to visit friends next weekend, so my goal is to be caught up by Feb 10; that's an average of 4 rooms a day, so I will try to pick up the pace.

See you tomorrow!

-Rob

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