The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 10 - Drying Off Just to Get Wet Again

 [The Unknown Fish Army and Getting Back]

I used random dice to determine that there were 16 gar folk warriors as part of this tribe (with 16 non-warriors + Garoshen, the tribal leader). The group has already fought and beaten 10 of them, leaving only 6 more warriors + the chief. However, the group does not know how many warriors there are, etc, so opinions vary. Grusk (half-orc warrior) wants to push the fight. Rance (human wizard) is ok with pushing the fight AFTER the group prepares again. Inar (halfling cleric) spends a lot of time trying to not get into fights. Tom (goblin thief) is a bit in-between. Partially because Tom knows that now they are really taking the fight back to the gar folk, that they might slaughter the tribe and Tom has always tended towards trying peace first and not just, like Inar just to avoid the work. Despite it going badly for the group and then them managing to crawl out of hole (in Tom's case, literally) Tom will rarely choose the killing of everyone until he is pushed into that corner: which by going back they will be. 

Part 10 - Drying Off Just to Get Wet Again

"GRUNFFJF," grunts the half-orc as he pulls the goblin from the deep mud and then turns to the half-submerged-in-muck halfling to do the same. The human in the very dirty wizard robes holds up a staff glowing brightly while also trying to keep watch as the team deals with yet another insult to their dignity after the past few hours that have involved being stabbed by angry fish folk, being chased through a stinking corridor, talking to a massive toadstool who thought they were funny, scrapping with giant spiders and crocodiles, and now being stuck in mud. 

"I dropped my food," Rance (the human) says staring sadly at his sack of rations that fell into the much. 

"Sod it," returns Grusk, the half-orc. "We have that croc's eggs to eat. She took a bit out of me, it's only fair". He has managed to get both of the shorter companions through the muck and on the other side. [1]

"Why does everything down here have to stink so badly?" This one is Inar, the halfling. His plate mail suit currently making a squishing sound as he moves. "WHY DO I HAVE TO STINK SO BADLY?!"

"Keep it down!" The final one is Tom, a goblin thief and general nanny to the others. Sure enough, to the east they can hear something sludge through more of this disgusting sludge. The sound fades into the distance. 

"We need to go fast. Through the corridor, we should be back into the main flow tunnel and hopefully above the...um...the spot," says Rance, trying to not remind the group that a couple of hours ago their entire plan went up in smoke as the group slide through back mold right into an angry band of gar folk. "If we do not hurry, Garoshen might launch an assault on the Keepers above. That or some of the Marius guards might have heard us slip and have decided to go down and check on us." [2]

Tom looking back over the mud points out a flaw they need to face. "If we come back this way, we have to get through that...muck...again. If we go the other, we have to slide down mold." 

Rance agrees but suggests they can set fire to the muck using lamp oil and dry and char the surface. And then come back down with some wood and plans to get over it. [3]

By the time the group reaches the end of the corridor, they can see the bright phosphorous "day lamps" installed further north to try and disorient creatures more used to full darkness. And, luckily, they are above the "mold line". They are able to get back to statue of Marius and set about resting and reorganizing their supplies. And eating croc eggs. [4]

After a good few hours rest, the team has resorted their options and equipment, one member always on guard to help back up just in case their actions have awakened creatures in the deep. Strangely, there seems to be no retaliation. Grusk takes this at a sign that now is the time to go. The others agree, except Tom who feels that what they are doing is going to end up with a lot of dead gar children. 

"We need to go down as a large enough group to dissuade them from fighting back and then escort the survivors out." 

The plan is to go with a double-pronged approach. The House Marius folks will make their way carefully down the main hall by using ropes and spikes to not slide. The main team will take the alternate route behind. The Marius squad will help but will not be the primary engagement, they are just there to help round up folks. If the gar folk tribe attacks, the guards will fight back. [5]

The main four adventurers slowly make their way back through the back path. When they get to the mud and the muck, they lay down some boards and scrap they had brought along and start making their way across. Unfortunately Rance falls into the charred mud and struggles for a few minutes to pull himself to the other side. When he is fighting is way back out, something comes out and starts attacking him. [6]

Blood erupts from his arms and face and he starts crying out for help. Grusk immediately jumps in. He does not see the invisible slimes clinging to his friend but he does take the wizard, forcefully pull him out of the mud, and fling him up on the rigged up planking. Rance holds on to the staff lighting up the way as the shadows and illumination swirls madly. This (unknown to Grusk and Inar, though Rance at least can tell) does shake the slimes off though they are going straight for the wizard. Only Tom can make them out. [7]

Grusk and Inar start slamming madly around as what appears to be bits of mud slither and splatter around. Neither make contact. Tom gets an arrow into one and it looks like the arrow is stuck in a particular thick pocket of air. Rance sees the floating arrow approach him and feels the touch as the slimes get to him and lets out a ring of fire from a Burning Hands spell which catches the arrow and several small squelching pockets of slime on fire, now clearly visible as they drop dead. It also sets the wood on fire so the wizard and the thief and priest flee to get off before getting burned themselves.

Tom and Inar easily get to the other side while Rance, pretty deeply injured by the surprise attack, starts coughing and collapses. Tom runs over and gets the fire put out while Inar gets a healing spell off to get the wizard moving again. 

"Why is it always me?" he asks, throat sore from the smoke. [8]

The party only takes a few minutes to work rest after that. Inar sets about blessing everyone and they get into the mindset of what might might be a fight to the death coming up very shortly, and then they are on their way. [9]

A quarter hour later...

The group readies their weapons and Grusk shoves open the door. Expecting to be facing down several gar folk warriors they are surprised to see the leader sitting, seemingly alone. His throne a structure of bone and driftwood surrounded by moss and mold as years of debris and detritus have turned to mush in the years since he has taken this place. 

Between the group and the throne a pool of water so dark and stagnant it looks close to reflective in the sunlight filtered into the room from some cracks and holes above. Another way to Grunce is here. 

The rot and decay of the gar folk's daily life is strong. Nearly overpowering, though the group of adventurers have tried to get used to it. 

Grusk pushes Inar forward and the portly halfling priest tries his best in common and then in primordial, but alas it is clear that the gar folk do not speak the language of the surface dwellers. Inar then tries to gesture and point back towards the surface but the gar king just glowers at them and waves them to come closer. 

Tom shakes his head "no" and barks in primordial not to trust, that something is up. 

At this, Garoshen screams out something in Merran tongue and the water in the pool erupts at 6 of the warriors leap up and attack the heroes. [10]

The first one to reach the line of heroes is completely cut down by Grusk while Tom's arrow (and Inar's hammer) fail to hit their marks. Rance gets a magic missile off to wound another. The charging hoard slams into Grusk and Inar as the two fend of bites and tridents and Grusk takes some deep scratches but luckily stays ahead of the hits. 

Rance picks up a sound from near the throne and notices a shimmering light surrounded Garoshen. "They have a mage!" 

As the frontal assault continues, Grusk and Inar hold their ground with Grusk managing to drop another one (and Inar continuing to miss). Tom changes tactics and shoots an arrow at Garoshen himself and is satisfied to see the arrow sink past the glowing magic armor. Rance takes Tom's lead and launches a magic missile at the gar fish leader. For now, though, Garoshen refuses to be prodded from his throne and the "mage" on the other side. 

Starting to back the fish folk up, Grusk and Inar team up on a third and drop it next to the other corpses while Tom and Rance keep pressing their advantage of attacking Garoshen until finally the gar folk leader screeches some words and flings down his trident, causing the others to do the same. From behind steps a scrawny half-fed gar folk who looks like they have been the target of neglect and abuse for some time. 

The next hour goes smoother than Tom could have hoped. A large chamber to the north of the throne room held a number of gar folk and their young. With Garoshen and his mage talking to them, they manage to gather up these scragglers and slump up the slope into daylight before disappearing into the water of the channel. The four heroes prevent violence between the groups from breaking out, not letting any of the Marius guards overstep. At one point, Grusk even helps carry a couple of gar folk youth up the steep slope (despite being covered in the blood of their fellow tribesmen, something the gar folk do not take too angrily...bloody fights is a way of their life). 

After this, the team finds a lot of cleaning up with need to be done, eventually. In Garoshen's throne room, they find a number of small trinkets. Tom is more excited by a small leather pouch in the area behind the throne, where the gar mage must have slept. "It's a bag of holding!" [11]

MECHANICAL NOTES

1. On the way back up had a couple of designated rooms/areas to check and a random monster check. Rolled a random encounter and got another crocodile. Grusk and it went toe to toe with Grusk killing it but taking 3hp damage. "Did it have eggs?" came back with an 18, yes. So he pocketed them for food. The major hazard was "entrapping terrain". Considering it is at the bottom of a stair well where water was designed to flow down...it's mud and muck. Everyone rolled a STR test get through it (Inar and Tom failed) and then a DEX test to see if the dropped anything. Only  person that did was Rance but he rolled a 1 so I rolled twice on his pack and both items were rations. How the wizard dropped ALL of his food I have no idea, silly man. 
2. Will the gar folk push the offensive? 6, No. Have some of the Marius retainers gone down to see how the heroes are doing? 3 on disadvantage, so no...but they are contemplating abandoning their post. 
3. Made an "open" INT roll with Rance. Got an 11 total so passed DC9 but did not hit DC12. I'll say that it's a weak hit. The team can come back this way with his prep but will need some luck to do it with speed. DC12 DEX rolls to pass without getting stuck again. 
4. Had previously rolled that the tunnel entrance is above the line. 
5. "Will House Marius go along with the plan?" Yes, but... 
6. Everyone else passed with flying colors but it took Rance 4 rolls to get out which triggered enough time that a wandering monster showed up. Got a random monster. Went with making a new one. PL-3 so fairly weak. I'll say level 1 with some disadvantages. These are STEALTH SLIMES. +1 to hit. 4hp but take double damage from most attacks. They are HARD to see unless you pass a DC15 WIS check or spray the area with something that shows them. Quick and fragile. They most do piecemeal damage (1d4) but will swarm presumably weak enemies and kill them in the confusion. There are 5 here. Since Rance just took 7 damage on turn 1...wellllll....
7. Tom passed his check. Other three failed. Grusk made the check to pull out Rance and throw him. "Are slimes still on Rance?" No, but... Rance did pass a DC15 check to hold on to the staff with the light spell, though.
8. Poor man failed another "get out of dodge" roll and took 2 HP damage which left him at 0hp. Inar had to burn a luck token to get the healing off. I'm not going to punish the wizard even more for now. 
9. Bless is very...itself, eh? What a spell...anyhow, I compressed all the rolls and checks until they are entering into the chamber to stop it from being a paragraph or two of them just wandering and passing by Ollazelle again, etc. 
10. "Are the warriors with Garoshen?" 10, a twist. 29 Waste, 34 Science. 36 Surprise, 35 Asset. Ummmmmm...without overly complicating this I am going to say he sets a trap and has a "wasted mage". Rolling on the table for a couple of spells I get Floating Disk and Mage Armor. Yeah, that feels wasted alright. For the trap I thought it might be nice to roll on the "rivers and coast" encounter table and see if I could more widely apply it got 54: a weighted and barbed net launches out of the silt and sand...so the plan is try and taunt them forward towards a net the gar folk have set up. 
11. After Garoshen failed his morale check I went ahead and sped up the aftermath. They have the rest of the gar folk leave. I did check (once) to see if they would go, at advantage on the oracle and got "yes". Dropped the game a bit out of "real time" for the resolution so I don't end up spending another hour working out the logistics. The team helps get the gar folk out and keeps them safe but insists they leave. They found 3 trinkets (some silver spikes, a random holy symbol) but I'll just skip ahead and give them 80 gold. They also got a bag of holding which is pretty significant. Having cleared out one of the major threats, I'm granting them +7XP total for the treasure and the "boon" of being able to solve this problem and making the area safer without having to resort to going against their principles. 

DOUG'S NOTES

That took me a few days to mentally work out and it shows how bad I can be at certain portions of the "OSR Mindset," at least the "murder hobo" bits. I get mired down (pun not intended but still a delight) in the issues of working out the ecosystem and such. Frankly, taking a "there are some gar folk" and then turning that into a "there is a tribe and you need to approach it from a broad perspective" is not too far outside of the old school mindset, really, but these past two sessions show how I pluck at it. Even with the weird misfortune of the previous session I felt that it was worth going for at least one more dive into this theme but also wanted there to be an ending this time, one way or another, so I can get back to using this series to my simpler dungeon crawl experience. That makes two enemies that have been cast out. Something that might show back up in the future. Maybe not. I have no idea. Garoshen and Tidepool Alice are both "baddies" that were impacted by the Bleak and brought to a place where they could sense the Bleak somewhat at bay. But both of them represented a kind of decay that was letting the Bleak in. 

I spent a lot of time going over aspects and considerations but really decided it was best to have the fate of the whole tribe be down to this core group. I was doing some math about how salt water and how food and flow and such would work but ehhhhhhhhh... this is a good balance between the broader "Doug style" and something that might make sense at a table. *Looking into the Mirror* I don't have to write out an entire history of the tribe. 

CREDITS AND RESOURCES

This game is played using Shadowdark and SoloDark, both by Arcane Library and Kelsey Dionne (et al). The map in this delve is "The Halls of Amon-Gorloth II" by Dyson Logos with added annotations and colors by me. 

Other resources used in this campaign are

• Knave 2nd Edition by Ben Milton
• Random Realities by Cezar Capacle
• The Monster Overhaul by Skerples
• Bestial Ecosystem Created by Monster Inhabitation by Courtney C. Campbell and others.
• The Book of Random Tables: Dungeons, The Great Book of Random Tables, and The Great Book of Random Tables: Quests by Matt & Erin Davids. 
• The Solo Adventurer's Toolkit One & Two by Paul Bimler
• GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing by Raging Swan Press.

The illustrations for this delve are a mix of elements from the game/map as credited above, Pixabay stock art (often used more for effect than precision), elements made by me, modifications of maps using Gimp, and various pieces generated using ChatGPT4o [or some combination of multiple of these things].