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Here's the second to last chapter of Deep Carbon Observatory. Enjoy!

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Having had enough of dealing with the frustrating locals they set off again in their barely floating boat. They pass by something that looks like a huge riverboat made of gold, which makes everyone exited. But they have nothing to carry it on, let alone wedge it off the mud, so they just have to let it be. For now.
As a precaution, they tie it to a nearby bloody rock.

They arrive to the Dam. Once it had been majestic, but now a massive crack had divided it in half. The mindbending mass of water it had held was in the valley and only a (comparately) small waterfall dribbled from the tear. At the base they see one of the golems praying at its base. They keep a safe distance.
That's when the woman they saved from the windmill, Tana Che Urla, gets anxious.
"We cannot follow you up that dam! Please, let us have your boat once you don't need it anymore!"

This sparks a heated debate between the party. Not surprisingly none want to give up their only boat. Rekt argues they should just leave the woman and the children on land.
"What land?" asks Reggie. "The rocky, steep cliffs that are only things not under water? Why don't you just kill them now and save them the wait!"
No one is ready to kill them, so eventually they decide to let them have the boat. Tana's gratitude knows no bounds and she promises to return the boat, if she's able. The teacher leaves with the children.
"We aint gonna see her again", Reggie guesses. He's not wrong.

They still have to deal with the golem, which gets antsy every time they get close to the Dam.

Long story short, Boris and Rekt are enlarged while Siegfried stands at the Dam. The Golem engages and is soundly defeated. Siegfried did most of the work, but also got most of the punishment.
Petrus flies up to scout while the others inspect the Dam base. Boris uses his dwarven knowledge to know the Dam is made from 'concrete', a mystical material used by Romans and the dwarves.
"It's concrete", Boris states.
"Yes. We're gonna need concrete evidence on who made the damn", Reggie agrees.
"No! It's concrete!"
"What? You already know! Then tell us!"
"You imbecile! It's made of concrete!"
"Well, then DON'T tell us, you dwarfish pygmy asshole. Be that way!"
"Argh! Keep believing what you want!"*

Then Petrus returns and shares what he saw: a great expanse of exposed lake bed.
They use the golem's eye to open one of the hatches at the base of the Dam. A pathway inside lets them climb to the top.

Having climbed the dam they briefly survey the upside and make special note of the peculiar village and the square hole in the ground, both at least a day away.
But what draws their immediate attention is much nearer: the crack through the Dam has revealed a room.
Petrus still has his fly spell active, so making a pulley ride there is easy. They enter something that resembles a tomb but with all the grave goods washed away by the water. A door has been torn open and leads deeper into the Dam. A sprung log trap hangs from the ceiling.
They go deeper and find another tomb, this one untouched by water. It seems identical to the previous room except: Here the depicted king is shown as noble and merciful, when earlier he was wrathful. The door they came through was clearly hidden from the opposite side. And all the treasure (including a familiar golden boat) were only gilded replicas.
Another door lead deeper. It was trapped, but Wilbur took care of it easily.
Somewhat worriedly Siegfried noted that all the traps were aimed towards them. So whatever they were built against was inside the Dam.

The next room contained eight canoptic guards - statues with embedded canoptic jars in them - who all animated and attacked, when Wilbur tried to steal one.
A battle was joined and the statues fought with machine-like precision. Every smashed jar released something: stomach acid, animated intestines or such. The League fought hard, but the guards were durable as stone they were built of and they hit with the strength of a mountain.
Then Petrus made a plan that might take them all out: he aimed a magic missile spell towards all eight 'head jars' and let loose.
That was a bad idea. Jars shattered, but did not destroy the guards.
Instead, eight floating brains emerged from the jars, each of wich forced the PC's to utter their deepest regrets or be paralyzed.
The battle soon turned against the League.

They manage to kill the brains but are forced to cast haste and retreat back into the previous room. The guards follow, but very slowly, so the PCs have time to chug their last healing potions, regroup and make defensive lines at the doorway. Rekt and Siegfried took positions beside each other.
The guards pursue and battle begins anew. This time the League fares a bit better, but their ill luck isn't completely gone: A fumble makes Rekt hurt himself and Siegfried also hits him twice by accident - killing the poor sod where he stood.

This was the fifteenth dead character for his player. And the funny thing is that after his last character, Will the Elf, had been killed by Ragath Statue, the player had told be he was a bit sick of constant rerolling and was considering leaving the game, if I killed him one more time.
As a Referee I swear I won't favour nor hound any individual players, but he is a good player and it is more than likely I'd been subconsciously protecting him to keep him from leaving.
Tonight, however, the problem was surprisingly averted by having another PC kill him instead.
The player let out a long sigh and set out making his new adventurer.

Eventually they do kill last of the guards. Wilbur even managed to steal one of the jars.
They lament Rekt's death a moment ("Now we have two corpses to carry! That's not a normal amount of corpses!" "Technically it's just one and half") and venture forth. The next three rooms contain traps that are easily avoided by the party. They have become good at this.
Eventually a door opens into open air and they see they've reached the top of the Dam.

The party descents into the newly formed valley and go through a forest of drying kelp. There they meet the Bush Knight, who fights using a large pair of scissors. (A visiting player)
The scissors give immediate flashbacks for Petrus and Reggie, who both were savaged by a similar pair of scissors back in Villa Cavallo.
Bush Knight almost has to reroll his character right there and then.

As they exit the forest they spy a tribe of lake creatures assembling on the other side of the small river that divides the valley. Reggie recognises them as Kapeks, freshwater cousins to Deep Ones.
He also sees the staff their leader is carrying.
"That one! It's meant for me! I need it!"
The rest take one look at the adorable, yet menacing army and convince the Reggie to wait. As the both groups were heading in the same direction, they would inevitably meet, so the party should take their time and observe.

They went on towards a pale formation they had seen from atop the damn. Now they saw it for what it was: the belly of a giant, dead pike, probably the father of the one that menaced them downriver, that was being devoured by hundreds of small crabs.
Luckily, these where more shy than their downriver cousins and scattered as soon as the PCs came too near.
The party's casters, Petrus and Reggie, took an immediate interest in the pike's jawbone.
"You could make a kantele out of this!" Reggie exclaims.
"Cough, I mean, this bone is full of potential to become a finnougric instrument of might!"
Petrus agrees and so they take the bone with them.

They pass a field of dying lungfish that have become bloated with gas emissions. There Reggie prods Wilbur, until the Specialist agrees to shoot one.
It causes a massive chain explosion that clears the whole field.
Soon after they reach a natural "bridge" that they could use to cross the river, a huge rok bird, still clinging to life, slowly being eaten by man sized leech and dying. Its body lays in the middle of the river with wings forming a natural bridge.
The party decides to make the crossing though they shiver each time one of them makes the bird shake from agony.
As the last of the members makes their way across, the rok lets out its last pitiful shriek.
Which draws the attention of the kapeks.
Their leader points its scepter at the party and bellows a war cry. The army answers.
"Mii mii! Miimiimii! Mimii!"
They begin their charge, which is about as fast as the group's walking speed.
The League is torn: the kapeks are too adorable to be taken seriously, but their spears would hurt regardless.
They decide to power walk away from the advancing army, towards the peculiar village.

At the village, a group of warriors greets them in an unknown tongue.
As the Leagueers seem mostly human and are chased by the kapeks, the people of the reeds decide to lower a bridge and let them in.
In the village, Reggie notices he can understand some of the warriors' speech and they trade stories.
The People tell about their centuries long feud with the kapeks and about the apocalypse that took the water away. They query whether the outsiders are gods as they have come beyond the god wall.
Reggie doesn't doubt long before going on with the story. He asks about the kapeks and learns that the creatures are only afraid of the tribe's old chieftains - who might be able to save the village, if warned of their need.
Reggie replies that the adventurers are just the right people for the job.
Petrus rubs his arms together, it would be no problem getting the chieftains move.

Over at the grave site, they see that the chiefs need no magical aid. The revenants break free from their tombs and begin a slow lurch towards the village.
"The battle will be over before they get there. Is there any way to make them go faster?" Boris ponders.
Eventually they just decide to out pace the chieftains and flank the approaching army.
They hide in the drying underbrush and Wilbur aims his bow at the Kapek leader. He lets his arrow fly, while Petrus and Reggie prepare their magic missiles
But to their amazement, missiles are not needed as Wilbur's sneak attacked arrow makes the 1HD kapek leader explode.
This sows immediate chaos in the kapeks' ranks, who waddle to and fro in panic. They are no match for the experienced adventurers, who easily carve their way to the fallen shaman and its distraught honour guard.
"I almost feel too guilty to do this", Wilbur laments as they fight the guard. As the last blow to the kapeks' morale Reggie conjures a phantasmal version of a Turbine golem.

The triumphant Reed Warriors rally to capture prisoners. For the People this was a day of a great loss and great victory. They lost many capable warriors, but the gods from beyond the wall and the risen chieftains proved that the times would soon turn for the better.
It was time for a feast.
The adventurers awkwardly take part as the guests of honour in a party that inlvolves roasting, disemboweling, draining, torturing and eating the kapeks alive. To their horror they discover that the mewling and crying kapeks taste absolutely delicious.

Next morning they gather themselves and head towards what the locals call "Door to Hell". On the way they go search the mountainside and find the sun forts - aimed lenses that were clearly made to reflect light towards the hole.
Similar lenses were built around it too.
Whoever made this wanted to drown that place in light.

They seriously consider repairing the lenses and letting the place be. But eventually their curiosity and greed win and they take their time climbing down the reverse ziggurat that has been dug in the ground. At the bottom they find iron-wrought twin doors, now covered in rust. Despite their immense age the doors open easily and reveal a stairway into the darkness.

*The dialogue has been changed to translate the joke into English. The original wordplay was between Finnish words 'betoni' (concrete) and 'peto' (beast) and it went something like this:
"Se on betonia / It is concrete."
"Kyllä, näin ison padon on voinut rakentaa vain valtava peto! / Yes, a dam this big could only have been built by an enormous beast!"
"Ei! Se on tehty betonista! / No, it's made from concrete!"
"Mitä? Pato on TEHTY pedoista? Et voi olla tosissasi! / What? The dam is made from beasts? You can't be serious!"
"Minä luovutan... / I give up..."

Haha, problem or not, I'm really enjoying how your guys use the painting! It reminds me of a Cthulhu campaign I played in which had a painting that transported people to hyborean era, in the middle of a lizard man sacrificial ritual. We used it whenever we broke into somewhere to get rid of witnesses...

From your posts it seems that the PC's have quite easy access to the painting? Perhaps it's time to throw a curveball? If the PC's carry it with them, it's good to remember that the painting is fragile and flammable, easily harmed during combat. And it's not very good painting, so the critics would surely take offense to anyone carrying it.
If they leave it somewhere, a monster could stumble upon it and either carry it away or, if its still open, venture into the real world to cause chaos. If this happens, while PC's are not in the maze, they could be in for a surprise, when they next enter!
If Aelfraded still has the painting, perhaps she'll become antsy of all people going back and forth and begins to demand tribute or servitude (or just various crazy tasks) of them before letting them back?

Just my two bits on how to make life with it interesting, I hope they are of some use to you.

Here's the next chapter from our campaign report. Here we'll begin Deep Carbon Observatory proper. The League of Extraordinary Opportunity arrives in Carrowmore and traverses the Lock River Valley. They have a brief encounter with the Crows and reach the dam on their third day in the valley.

---

A day from Carrowmore the crew witnesses an end of a world.

It starts with a deep rumble, strong enough to reah their ship. Reggie immediately draws his spyglass. With it he sees Carrowmore and the hills that surround it, he sees the mountains (one of the few blank spots on their map) and the great dam. He sees a crack and the storm of water that breaks free.
In a few short moments they see most of the Lock valley wiped from the face of the earth. Siegfried yells to raise all sails and for men to row.
They wouldn't get there in time.

When their ship arrives at Carrowmore, the sun has already set. The last of the voyage had been perilous as the waters were full of flotsam and the drowning and the wave had rearranged the shoals.
They anchor and mobilize their boats. They would fit in one, but reckon there might be others in need of buoyancy. Both are quickly filled to the brim, when the League rescues a raft full of children and Benedict insists rescuing a priest calles Selminimum Tem. One of the children rewards their aid by whispering something to Wilbur's ear: "She made all the mums and dads into ghosts. She had nine lives - they poisoned her first. Then they stabbed her and smashed her and burnt her and drowned her. That. Makes. Eight. If you kill her once more, that's it!" This would trouble Wilbur for a long time.

Their boat raises a lot of attention and soon they have a small flock trying to get in. One particularly crafty child pulls another into water to make room for himself.
Unfortunately for him, Siegfried notices this foulplay and jabs his sword through the kid's chest.
"We're all in the same fucking boat. Everyone play nice", he says as the dying boy slides back into the water.
No one tries the same trick again.

Things get confusing in the town as the water levels fluctuate, building's slowly crumble and distances are scrambled by the GM trying to hold two boats and seven players (two of which can fly) together.
Ultimately they run into a group of suspicious people that most certainly want to help the children and not eat them. Foolishly they leave Ben alone with the cannibals. He gets mobbed and tied up.
"Boy, these people got desperate fast", Siegfried notes.
They also run into a scholar named Tzani Spillios and catch another child trying to steal her research. Tzani gets along well with the adventurers, so the League agrees to take her with them upriver.
They also interrogate the boy, who eventually breaks and tells that bad men took her sister and will kill her, if he doesn't return with the scrolls.

Meanwhile Ben wakes up in a dilapitated attic. He's alone with a sink that's been converted into a makeshift deep fryer. The oil's boiling.
You know you have a few moments left to try and escape. Please describe how you plan to do it, I tell him.
Ben cannot wriggle his way out and he could already hear the chef returning. So he prayed to Jesus for aid.
When Jesus didn't answer, he prayed to Satan.
Then another player asked "don't you have 19 strength? Why don't you just break the ropes?"
"Oh, can I do that?" Ben asks. Sure, I answer.
He easily breaks the ropes and jumps out of the window.

Ben runs into the rest conveniently as they are staking out the house, where bad men wanted the boy to come after the heist. It was situated on higher ground than most of the town, so only its ground floor was flooded.
Everyone got into position. Petrus and Reggie became invisible and stayed near the child. Wilbur took position near a window. Siegfried and the rest waited some distance away.
Everything was quiet, a bit too quiet.
Wilbur took initiative and peeked inside. All was dark and silent except for a low whimper. He also spotted a crossbow trap rigged to shoot when the door opens.

When it seems the house's empty, they disarm the trap and rush in. The boy scampers straight to the back, where a small girl has been nailed to a ceiling. Ben rushes to heal her, but she's too far gone - her gut has been slashed open and pulled out into open. She was barely alive and in great pain, so Siegfried did the merciful deed.
The sight was too much for the boy, who collapsed by her sister. He no longer responded to anything.
"Hot damn", Reggie remarked.

They did a sweep in the house, but find nothing. Whatever had been waiting, had had time to retreat. Not even flying Petrus could catch anything in the darkness.
They decided to return to the ship with the refugees.
Once everyone was fit in snugly, their new cargomaster quietly informed Reggie that they would have enough food for everyone for barely a week.
"We ain't prepared to run a hostel here, Cap."
"Then we'll be done in a week."

Next day the League sets out again. The priest they saved, Selminimum Tem, says he needs to check on his church as he saw it swept away by the tide. The Leagueers agree as Siegfried and Wilbur reason the church might be a good place to deposit excess refugees. They also take Tzani with them as her knowledge might come in handy.
They row through Carrowmore, but don't encounter anything - it seems that most of the survivors had either drowned or fled deeper into the city.

On the way to the church they witness a peculiar sight: two wizards floating on the water. They pause to follow the battle and witness one of them triumph - and soon after get eaten by a gigantic pike.

They find the church moored in a nearby field. Unfortunately, a group of toads have claimed it as their home. The toads had gorged themselves on the drowned and now bulged and wobbled from their poorly digested food. The party manages to go past them to the church, but when they have to stop to wait for Tem to fiddle with the locks, the frogs begin approaching menacingly.
During the nasty battle (the toads have a tendency to burst open, when they take too much damage), someone begins firing on the party from a nearby hill.
Petrus immediately soars in the air to pursue and easily catches his prey. It's a dwarf.
He returns with his captive to the church.

Inside Tem thanks the adventurers and rewards each of them with a vial of holy water. He begins to regret his gratitude, when the League gets to business with their captive.
"So, a child murderer, huh?" Siegfried begins.
"We're all murderers. Why should I tell you anything?" the prisoner answers.
"Bold words. Luckily I was counting on it", replies Siegfried as he takes his flensing knife and begins working on the dwarf's fingers. He relents after a few.
"Wait. I'll talk."
"Shh, not yet. Not until I'm done", says Siegfried and works until all of the hand has been skinned.

They find out the dwarf is Ghar Zaghouan and he's part of a group called the Crows. He claims that their goal here is to save the world, but he doesn't know their leader Hölloch's plans and that one of them can control the dead.
Ghar tries to negotiate with the party and say that he would do anything if he could keep his bow. But he's not much of a social butterfly and the offer might've come across as a threat.
Ultimately Boris breaks his neck. "I know his type. We used to hunt them all the time in the KGB."
Selminimum Tem is offended by this murder and violence and shoos the group out of the church. He then locks the doors behind them.
"What a dick", says Petrus.

Coming back they notice their boat has attracted a swarm of lungfish. They're too numerous to kill, but slower than the boat, so they decide to just deal with it later. They also witness a challenge that they'd have to confront later: a massive whirring golem. This one stood guard in a drowned orchard. They wisely decided to take the longer route.
The longer route took them to the hunting ground of a gigantic pike. (What do all these animals eat?! - Reggie) They try to steer their boat as not to agitate the pike, but fail - the pike roars and lunges from the water.
It strikes at Ben and bites deeply. It has tasted human blood.
Siegfried disciplines the fish with a well placed sword strike and the beast is forced to retreat. But not without draggin Benedict down with it.
The pike retreats, but the lungfish it had been hunting are driven into a frenzy by the smell of blood.
Fiercely they attack Ben, seeking holes and gaps in his armour, while Ben himself struggles to stay afloat. Not an easy task as he wears chain and full backpack.
The others try to help him up, but their attempts are futile as no one dares to join Ben in the water and Ben cannot find a steady grasp in the wet oar. Blood now pillows in the murky water.
Suddenly, Petrus and Siegfried find Ben becoming less heavy and they manage to haul him up.
Then they discover the reason, why he lost weight: the entire lower half of his body has been eaten and only hanging, half eaten guts and bones remain.
Ben is irrevocably dying and only has time for a few last words:
"Fuck... you... all..."
"Don't worry, Ben! The Meatsmith can sew you back together!"
"Fuuck... youuuuuuuuuuu."
And he dies.

Solemnly they continue their way. They pass a hill, where a plethora of animals has taken shelter, both predator and prey in a temporary truce. The League considers hunting some rations, but think again, when a giant tentacle lazily rises from the water, grabs a cow and slithers back under.
"Again, what's with these animals?" Reggie ponders.
They wisely steer away from the kraken towards a distant windmill.
As they come nearer a cry of help comes from the windmill - it's base's covered in a sea of hungering white crabs that try to get at the mill's upper loft. Or more precisely, the refugees holed there.
It is getting late and the crew needs a place to spend the night. So they try to save the villagers.
Compared to the other horrors they've met during the trip, the crabs fall easily. Petrus conjures a wall of flames around their boats and the air is filled with the smell of roasted crab. Only few of the refugees die when the adventurers reach them.
The one who cried, a woman named Tana Che Urla thanks the League for their heroism and the PC's agree to take the refugees on their boats.
Tonight everyone gorged themselves with crab and happily they put up the watches.

During the night they are attacked by a group of ghouls that try to sink their boats. The undead are barely driven off after they almost drown Reggie.
Later in the night a gigantic hill crawls near the windmill. Its sight keeps Boris and Siegfried awake.
Morning they see it's not a hill, but a house-sized mudcrab. (This place is nuts! - Reggie)

It seems docile and first the adventurers decide to leave it alone. But then Siegfried spies something shiny lodged in the crab's shell. He takes their lone boat and carefully rows nearer.
The shiny thing proves to be a fist sized lump of gold.
Oh so carefully Siegfried rows nearer and then tries to climb towards the treasure.

The crab doesn't like that.
Lazily it lifts one claw to smash at the thing pestering it. It barely misses, but smashes the boat. Siegfried jumps out at the last minute and hangs onto the only leverage nearby - the crab.
He snatches the nugget and scampers up the crabs shell, while the crab tries to shake him off.
Luckily, Siegfried takes only one hit before getting away.
"Worth it."
Unfortunately he wrecked their second boat in the process and now they had to fit all of the refugees in the only boat they had. It was a very tight fit.

They rowed upriver awkwardly and stopped by Pollinacrom village that was in middle of the process of being dismantled by one of the Turbine golems.
"Hey! You guys have any food?" one of the villagers shouted as they saw PC's boat.
"No! Can you take in refugees?" answered Siegfried.
"Not really! We're literally running out of space!" the villager shouted back and motioned towards the golem.
"Do you have a problem with a witch?" Wilbur interrupted.
"No! We have no idea what you are talking about!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes! ... Is there any room in your boat?"
"No."
"Oh... well... we'll manage... somehow."
So, they moved onwards.

Onwards, the water suddenly erupted and a fell beast rose from the depths. It was the Cow-sized killer platypus. It was finally free. The battle began once more.
It turned its attention towards the PC's boat, it's eyes gleaming with red rage.
Everyone shook in horror, everyone but Siegfried who was immune to the fear. And ready to meet the beast in combat.
He was, after all, a professional.
Siegfried raised his blade and took stable position on the boat's prow. The Platypus roared and came forth, accepting the warrior's challenge.
They met and clashed.
And then.
"Magic missile! Magic missile!"
Petrus and Reggie, the two mages, who had deathly startled of the platypus simultaneously let forth volleys of magic death. The platypus was torn into pieces and Siegfried was left standing on the prow dumbfounded.
"WHY THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT? DIDN'T YOU SEE WE HAD A MOMENT THERE?!"
"Sorry, we got scared."
"... I'll never forgive you."

Around midday they reach the point where the river turns and they can finally see the Great Dam. Or what's left of it, as its stony side was marred by a huge tear from which water now flowed freely.
At the base of the Dam they saw one of the golems kneeling, as if in a prayer.
"If I had any knowledge of modern turbine dynamics, I'd say the golem was trying to charge itself. But I don't, so I won't say anything", Siegfried ponders.
On a nearby hill they spy a family gathered around a small bonfire, they decide to greet them as they might have advice on where to dump their extra passengers.

As they reach the hill, they see what the family had been burning.
"Hey, that looks like a ninth level spell scroll!" Reggie shouts and charges towards the fire. "Gimme that!"
"Wot are you doin' to ah fire?"
"Do you realize what kind of fortune you have destroyed?! Is there anything left?!"
"Ah realize mah li'l uns an me darlin' woulda frozen last nite, if we aint been burnin' these."
"Aargh! I could kill you! I swear!"
"Shut up, Reggie", Wilbur intervenes, "do you know about the hills here? Could we leave our refugees nearby?"
"Nah, aint nuffin but underbrush an' gravel 'ere."
Eventually they manage to calm Reggie down and return to the boat.
It wouldn't be long until they reached the Dam.

The referee book's been due out "soon" for a year or so. I think the last news were that it might be divided into monster book and ref guide.

But last new stuff came early summer so I think Raggi has something coming before end of this year. Broodmother Sky Fortress, Blood in the Chocolate are just few examples of what's coming. So far the production quality has been really good, so I've always felt that I've got my money's worth.
But this being OSR, there's more than plenty of non-LotFP stuff to follow. If you enjoy Vornheim, Maze of the Blue Medusa is a megadungeon by Zak and Patrick Stuart. It's also one of the few dungeons that actually have gameable layout.
Patrick's Deep Carbon Observatory is another excellent adventure that's compatible with LotFP. Fire on the Velvet Horizon on the other hand is a monster book with extra weird monsters. (No stats tho, you have to plan them yourself!)
Yoon Suin -campaign setting gets a lot of praise and people say it would fit well with Qelong.

I'll also recommend the Vacant Ritual Assembly and the Undercroft fanzines. Issues don't cost much, but come with lots of interesting content. If you like haunted mansions, Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem and Hell house beckons are both interesting and good takes on that genre.

The room descriptions are the best part of the book, so it's only natural to recite the best parts for the players!

An easy way to deal with 1st level lethality is to start the players at the 2nd or even 3rd level. They get a little more hp, mages get some new toys, but everyone's still weak enough for it to be interesting. Tell them to roll a Dwarf or a Fighter, if they want to survive!
(And it's easy to forget LotFP has minimum hit points for first level. 4hp isn't much, but it's more than 1 hp you get in some systems!)

I don't remember, where it says that there's no HP regen in a dungeon. I've always run it that if they can eat and get a full night's sleep they recover hit points normally, no matter where they decide to camp.
Naturally it's harder to do in a dungeon than an inn, but not impossible.

A lot of MotBM's reward comes from discovering and interacting with the weird inside. Some players love that while others never will. You might have to find players who seek OSR experience or ease up a bit to make the game more suitable to your group.

"...dankest adventure ever..."

"You deserved this adventure"

"This was like you turned this up to eleven and higher until all the knobs broke"

"...what the fuck is this shit..."

"It's like completely over the top all the time, but never becomes lame"

"Most we've ever laughed at this game"

Wow. Just wow. This is the story I've been itching to tell you. In fact, I've been churning these chapters out quickly just so I could get to this one.
Towers Two was a spectacle, where the ingenuity of my players met the absolute craziness of the Brockie's brain. And it exploded into tiny pieces. Of flaming shit. Fukken metal.

Before we get to the nasty, I have one thing to say: For all Portugese reading this, I am truly sorry. We don't really think your nation is like this. Nor do we want anyone to think it is.

Alright, lets get to it.

The crew had been sailing along the coast of Portugal and when they entered the shores of Hune, they immediately knew something was awry. It might have been the murky brown ocean water that faintly smelled of shit. It might have been the heavy drizzle that seeped through even thickest clothing and left a sticky, slightly brown tang. Or it might have just been the air.

Mlag might once have been a prosperous town. Now it was far from it. Through their spyglass the League spied one abandoned and defiled house after another, neglected and overgrown salt pits, a ruined lighthouse and few boats with their lethargic inhabitants. One of them was taking a shit in the water.
"Do we really have to go there?" Siegfried asks, though he already knows the answer.
They don't want to dock, so they anchor in the middle of the bay and row towards shore. There's one ship moored there, tha charmingly named Sea Slut. Its captain Olaf comes to meet the visitors.
"What the fuck are you doing in this Odin forsaken shitcastle?"
"None of your business, even if I'm beginning to wonder too", Reggie replies.
"I'll give ya one piece of advice. Get the hell out, there's nothing in here."
"Then why are you here?"
"I swear I'd rather be anywhere else. But my ship was caught in a storm and we had to take shelter here. Now our sails are torn and my worthless crew is too drunk to make repairs."
"Then stop giving them rum!"
"You think I didn't? They go to the Slippery spot, the only drinking hole remaining. This place used to have thriving salt business, but nowadays the locals don't do nothing but drink."
A sudden realisation hits Reggie:
"There's nothing but shit in here... What is the booze made of?! What is it MADE OF?!"

They feel pity for the old captain and make a deal to rent their (currently) sober crew to repair his ship. In return Olaf gives them one barrel from his cargo, ten kilos worth of opium.
"A steal, but it's not like I can sell it here."
Reggie vows that their crew won't be making it to the shore. "I'll double your rum ration, if you stay on the ship! Not even a foot on land, you hear me! It's made of shit! Everything is!"

At this point most of the adventurers only want to leave, but then they would have made the trip for nothing. And besides, Sea Slut's repairs would take a day or two to complete.
"Fuck Portugal! Fuck Portuguese! No wonder they all want to leave!" Siegfried curses.
"Hey, have a little pity. These people have nothing but shit and booze", Reggie says. "- that is made from shit."
"Lets hang on a little further. I was told to meet Razzak here. Maybe he's not that bad", Petrus cheers them up.

The party starts making their way towards the Slippery spot. Locals are not the most welcoming bunch - most they pass by are black out drunk, fornicating with boars or both. Most of the buildings are abandoned and barely hold together.
They pause, when loud racket comes from one of them. Wilbur spies a monstrous giant of a man, who's apparently frustrated and waiting for someone.
So, having no better ideas, Ben knocks the door. This confuses Gorbai, the monstrous boar-man on the other side. So, he does the thing he does best, opens the door and tries to kill the intruder.
Unfortunately for Gorbai, Ben takes shit from no one and has had Enlarge cast on him and with Petrus helping a little, the leader of the boar men is killed. The one he was supposed to meet gets away.

They reluctantly loot the monstrosity and find few things with anything value - the only valuable jewelry is Gorbai's cock ring, which no one wants to touch for obvious reasons. Except Ben, who pockets the stone happily.

The League reaches the Spot that has been shoddily barricaded and, when they knock on the gates, they are greeted by a sullen group with crossbows loaded and ready.
"Get the fuck out, Osuka! You an' your friends not welcome!"
"Who the fuck is Osuka?" Siegfried asks.
"The big'un!"
"No, he's Ben. We've never heard of any Osuka", Wilbur helps.
The debate goes on for a while with the locals either too stubborn or too stupid to listen. Eventually they agree to let everyone in - but Ben.
"We not letting the giant in. No Osuka, we tell you."
This makes Ben mad. He's sick of always being left outside and he's sick of the sickly sweet smell of this town. He roars in rage and swings his maul over the gate at the villagers, who put up a weak defence, but get crushed easily with some managing to flee inside.
They hear the door getting barricaded and Will decides to have some fun, so he throws some of his special coin inside.
Special in the way that they have explosive runes cast on them. A moment later explosion booms from inside and a desperate cry "Enrique, why ya hafta die?!"
So Will casts the runes on his wooden apple and throws it in.
He doesn't get to listen to the results, though, because Siegfried and Reggie get enough of tomfoolery and drag the rest away.
"Lets just get to the towers, deal with whatever's in there and get the hell out", says the ever-professional Siegfried.
"You fiend! These people only have shit and booze. And friends. And you took them away Ben!" Reggie berates his comrade. "Do these pitiful folk really deserve your anger? Really?"

On their way they hear a child's cry from an overgrown field and decide to shoot bolts at it. They move on, when Ben spies with his true sight that the monstrosity flees underground.
"That's probably the Suck-thing the locals mentioned", Reggie knows.

Soon after Gorbai's cock ring and Ben's new prize begins vibrating and emitting strange noises.
Ben fumbles for it and when he touches the gem, a pale, pudgy face appears on its surface.
"Gorbai, do your arse-pimples bleed again or why the fuck you are so late? Wait... You are not Gorbai at all! Explain yourself!" says the image in the gem.
"Hello. I'm Big Ben and I killed the pig man with my friends. Was he your servant?" Ben answers.
"You ignorant fool! Do you not know whose wrath you've incurred by killing the foul Gorbai? It is I, Razak the Magnificent, Lord of Hune and Master Necromancer!"
"That's a long name."
"But you must be mighty for only the mighty could have felled my champion. You should come to my tower for I could offer you servitude."
"Okay! But I have someone that wants to meet you. Petrus, come here!"
"So, this is the lich-spawn that the Ghouls talked of? Come closer!"
Petrus reluctantly does so. "Shit, I'm starting to regret taking his offer seriously..."
"Yees, very good. I have much to teach you. Of Power and Magics! You all must come to my tower for us to discuss!" Razzak concludes and closes the connection.
"The sick fuck. That was a cock ring. Does this mean that every time Razak and the thing talk to each other, the monster was handling his own junk?" Reggie ponders. He clearly thinks too much for his own sanity.

It's dark when they reach the two towers.
"What? They're right next to each other! How is it even possible to wage war here, you can't even fit one army here save two!" Siegrfied rants.
They knock on the gates they hope are correct ones (the tower has more shit smears, so it's obviously more evil). No one answers the door, but after awhile a lantern appears on the top.
"Behold! For it is I, Razak the Great! Cower before me!"
"Hey asshole! Lets get this done quick!"
"Yes of course! I shall prove you my power with my second-grandest invention! Behold the fearsome cunt whip!" Razak bellows as he brandishes something that looks like a leathery string tipped by a vagina.
"Oh lord, are we seriously dealing with this guy?" Siegfried asks.
"That's kinda cool", Petrus admits.
"You must slay my limp-dicked gay brother Zal and I shall teach you all about mighty Deathfuck magic! And you shall gain a boon that is 50 000 silver pieces in size. Take his lump of black tar heroin I've cut with rat feces. He will not be able to resist its lure."
"Alright, alright, we'll do it. Just give that... thing to us and we'll leave", Siegfried says.
"And remember to cut his shriveled cock, jam it into his mouth and then bring it to me, for I want to know that he's been gelded! And I desire to see spit on it!"
"Alright. Yup, yup. Oh boy, so this is what we do now", Reggie says.

Under the cloak of night the party crosses the miniature battlefield to the other tower. After about an hour of knocking someone finally answers from the window. No, they're not interested in buying anything.
"Not even this big lump of heroin we have?"
"Err.. Umm... Just get it."
The gates open and several of Zal's ripped palace guard escort the adventurers in, only Boris and Will are left outside because one refuses to be disarmed and the other doesn't really bother going in.
"Don't worry, Boris, I have an idea", Will promises.
"Get your fucking hands off me, degenerate elf!" Boris yells as Will casts Invisibility and Fly, grabs Boris and flies up towards the roof. Meanwhile the guards bring some moldy blankets for the others to sleep on.

Imagine the surprise of the night guards when they spot a flying midget invading their airspace.
"A dwarf, not a midget you fools!"
"State your business!"
"I have no business! Fucking let me down, you idiot!"
"Err, what do you mean? -Don't move!" the guards shout as Will lets go of Boris.
"We're being attacked by an invisible flying terrorist elf! Quickly! To arms!" Boris shouts as he assumes his most commandeering tone. The guards, still confused, scramble to fire at the air. They manage to reveal Will, but can do little when he flies away.
"Lucky you had me to save your from that terrorist! He works for vile Razak, you know?" Boris continues. The guard, having no other ideas, declare him a hero and bring him into the keep.
"We'll introduce you to General Cromwell on the morrow."

His plans foiled, Will recasts Invisibility and flies to the other tower. There he spies few of the pig guard playing cards, engaging in sinful deeds and neglecting the loaded catapult. He decides that something has to be done and whispers into the nearest pig man's ear:
"Hey there. I am wind. I want to help you."
"Oi? Grog, ya say sumfin?"
"Nah, jus' let it rip real wet."
"Go to the catapult! Aim it and destroy the tower!"
"Wassat? Dun min if I do, hehe."
With a lot of patient advice Will eventually teaches the pig men to aim the catapult. They fire it, but the shoddy bricks manage little other than make a racket and scratch the already worn side of Zal's tower.
Will tries to kill his comrades a couple of times more before Zal's guards launch a counter-offensive with their ballista.
Dejected, Will flies away into the mountains. He finds a nice cave, creates a door with Minor Creation, Wizard locks it and sleeps.

Come the morning the party is woken up and served breakfast. It's roast pig.
While waiting for Cromwell they chat up a few of the guards and find out something peculiar: few remember how long they've worked here or even where they're from. They seemed to be vaguely aware of Mlag, but didn't know much of the wider world.
"I think I don't like this Zal", Reggie decides.
Cromwell, who looks old enough to be a walking corpse, proves to be competent enough and the League is given a tour around the tower. Boris is commended for his bravery against the elven terrorist and gifted a piece of palace guard armour. "No way I'm ever wearing that", he replies with gratitude.
Cromwell says that Boris might have a career in the guard, if he wasn't a short and hairy dwarf (he personally has nothing against them, but the young lord has his standards). Siegfried worries about Hildi and her safety, and Cromwell assures she won't have a finger laid on her.
"Too young for the young lord."

Eventually they are allowed an audience with Lord Zal, who sits in his oval throne room awaiting... and apparently snoring.
After a small beat Cromwell awkwardly suffles beside his lord and gently nudges him - and sending waves through his massive gut.
"Hurhg, waf? O yeff, tfe heroef! I hear you haf bufineff to do wif me."
"Yes. We heard about your evil brother and are willing to hear, if there's a reward for his head."
Zal licks his lips. Hildi almost vomits.
"Yef, he'f a nuifanfe. But you had fomefing for me?"
Deadpan sigh erupts from the whole party.
"Yes, we have a clump of pure heroin right here."
"Exfellent! Let uf retreat to my chamberf to difcuff thif deal!"

With great amount of effort (and some help from Cromwell) Zal rises from his chair and wobbles towards a door. When it opens, a sickly sweet smell of opium and decay wafts into the throne room.
"Hurgh, do we have to?" Wilbur asks.
"Oh yef, it'f not proper to do thif in front of the guard."
Reluctantly they follow Zal into his bedroom, where the floor is crusted with used syringes, battered opium pipes and rags wet with vile ichors. There are a bunch nubile maidens scattered around the bed, all in some stages of stupor. Zal heaves himself onto the bed.
"You fee, I would much like to get rid of my brother. He'f a mighty wifard, but I have found where hif powerf come from."
"I'm not sure we want to hear it", Siegfried interjects.
"Hif magic comef from hif pair fwollen tefticles and fhrunken weenie. You fhould really fee them, it'f like a bratwurft fitting on top of two li'l melonf."
"There's one mental image I'm never again getting out", Reggie says.
("I was right, I didn't want to hear it" - Siegfried)
"Cut the wiener off and he'f helpleff!"
"And how are we supposed to do that?" Petrus asks.
"Eafily! My brother if a raving fex addict. Offer him fome homofex and he'll drop everyfing an rufh for your bum."
"... This was exactly what I didn't want to hear", Wilbur says.
"I can do it", Ben says.
"What." go everyone else.
"One more fing! A great magician made me thif: Invifible Chaftity Belt of the Dentata!" Zal says and reveals something from his drawers. "It haf a hole where bum goef and if you put anyfing through it, thif happenf."
He picks up a carrot from god knows where and sticks it through an invisible hole in the invisible belt. There's a loud snap and the carrot is cut in half.
"O-kay... Was there a reward for any of this?"
"Yef, of courfe! I'll gladly pay you 10 000 filver to bring me my brotherf wiener and of courfe you are entitled to any loot you find from the tower."
"Oh well, for the lack of any better ideas, we'll consider this. We should go."
"Waf there fomething you were fuppofed to have for me?"
"What no... Oh for fucks sake, here you go", Siegfried says and Petrus gives Zal the heroin. Which Zal promptly devours and immediately passes out on the bed.
"Lets just go", Siegfried says.
"Why go back? He's out cold. We could kill him right here and now and get this over with. Besides, Razak promised us more", Petrus asks.
"Do you really want his money? It's probably crusted with shit... Lets talks to Razak one more time. We can return and do the deed, if we decide otherwise", Wilbur says.
"I'm beginning to think we should kill them both, while we can", Boris adds his two cents.
"Wait just a moment", Reggie says and goes to Zal. He takes a good look at his penis, measures it and even cops a handful.
"... Why the fuck did you do that?" Siegfried asks, shocked.
"So I can make an illusion to fool Razak."

They get past suspicious Cromwell by pointing out sleeping Zal and then accept an escort outside. By happenstance they ran into Will, who had returned from his mountain retreat.
On their way to the tower they fiddle a bit with their Kazza stone, figure out it has a call directory (with penises instead of names), accidentally call Cromwell twice and fail to reach Razak.
"Lets just knock."
They do so and no one answers. They do so second time and a bestial grunt tells them to screw themselves.
"I meant Knock", Wilbur says.
"None of us have it prepped", Petrus replies.
"I have!" Wilbur says and lifts his sleeve. "I got this tattoo from the Skinsmith."
"Neat", the others reply.
So Wilbur Knocks the gates that open and reveal one very surprised pig man.
"Wot? Dun come, the ceiling's tra-"
The League piles in and thus trigger the trap. Rocks fall. It triggers the Gorillabear in the guard room. It charges in.
Siegfried bull rushes it back to the room. Will casts Wizard lock on the door.
Siegfried kills the beast.
"Fuck this place", Reggie states. The others agree.
They go further in and meet a hungover ogre (who's also well hung, now that you mention it). Before he has time to get angry, Siegfried starts yelling at him and demanding he show them around. He obeys, if just to get the noise to stop.
In the next room they encounter a chest. Wilbur considers cracking it open, but decides against it when he hears snoring inside.
They move towards the top, barely glancing at other floors. The tower is mostly empty. Now that Gorbai isn't keeping order, everyone is out raiding.

Up top they ditch the ogre and look through Razak's rooms. They are especially impressed by his throne ("A throne fit for a mighty wizard!" Reggie praised it). The undead Voiden give them slight concern, but they don't bother doing anything to them as they fail to do anything but bump into each other so far.
In Razzak's lab they encounter and swiftly kill an amputated... thing that resembles Razak with tits, but when prodded grows spiderlegs.
"That table is a genuine rape table. At least +4, it's probably the best rape table on the whole continent", Reggie knows.
Ben finds a peculiar mirror behind a curtain and briefly converses with a space satan Maloderus Bungus.
But when the satan flenses Ben with hooks, he gets offended and closes the connection.
"Should we try to figure out what it thinks of all this?" Petrus asks.
"Don't you remember? We only deal with unionized demons now!" Reggie reminds him.

Having snooped around enough they get bored and again try to contact Razak with the Kazza stone. This time they succeed.
"Where the hell are you?" Razak yells through the connection.
"We did what you asked. We have Zal's dong. We're in your tower."
"The fuck you have! Oh Loigoi dammit... just stay where you are!" Razak rages and closes the link. Soon after a huffing and puffing Razak appears from the throne room.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" he demands.
"We did what you asked, your brother is dead", Reggie says and shows an illusory version of Zal's dong. (It might also have been made with Minor Creation, I'm not sure.)
"That ain't his cock and you didn't kill my brother. Perhaps I was wrong about you."
"How can you know we didn't kill him?" Siegfried asks.
"I just know. And now I'll show you lying bastards..."
"Before you try to kill us, lets have a quick fuck, okay?" Ben says.
"What? Oh yes, you should have said so immediately!" Razak replies, his bloodlust replaced with pure lust. "Come with me, won't you? And the rest of you, stay the fuck where you are!"

So, Razak escorts Ben into his lab. "Get on the table", he commands while licking his lips and undressing. To his horror Ben sees that Razzak's member really resembles a bratwurst.
Yet he undresses and obeys. I dare not ask why.
Ben flinches when the shackles fasten around his limbs, but still he stays silent.
As silent as he's when Razak clambers on the table, his thing up and ready. He comes uncomfortably close.
"Did you really think I would be fooled?" he whispers into Ben's ear, picks up a death phallus and violently rams into Ben's rectum.

Outside, as the others hear Ben's cry of pain, the throne room door bursts open and Razak's Voiden warriors rush into combat.
Will conjures up a Wall of Fire that manages to keep most of them away while Boris, Siegfried, Petrus, Reggie and Wilbur rush to confront Razak.
The self proclaimed mighty magus has no time to utter a single spell as two volleys of magic and Siegfried's blade are rammed inside him. As he dies his bowels empty and foul smell of shit fills the room.
Wilbur immediately begins fiddling with Ben's locks, while the others finish up the Voiden. Siegfried (I think) reluctantly cuts off Razak's cock.
But they're not safe yet: after being gelded Razak's corpse begins rumbling. Bloody shit, ejaculate and intestine begin squirting out of his ass while his face sinks into his neck. Soon a shit-crusted face pushes out of the intestine - and it's Zal's. Eventually Razak's gone and replaced by the very confused Zal.
"I knew it!" Will yells.
"Zal! You have some explaining to do!" Siegfried demands.
"We did what you wanted, now pay us", says Wilbur.
"I (burp) don't feel so good", Zal mutters and his arse violently prolapses spraying diarrhea everywhere. Razak violently pushes itself from the rectum, gets stuck in the middle. The two amalgamate into an abomination. Shit and blood rain from the sky.
It dies as easily as the last one.

And when the fighting ends, the looting begins. They begin piling interesting stuff on the table. Reggie casts shrink on the throne, Petrus takes a liking to the cunt whip. Will is disgusted by everything and flies away.

Outside he sees the horde of pig men that is racing back to the tower. Wanting to vent his frustration he unleashes his considerable magic upon them.
He didn't count on the fact they were fleeing something - a fearsome golem that was steadily jogging towards them and the tower.
Will casts Wall of Fire on the ground, but the monstrosity is not fazed. Instead it turns its stare towards Will. And jumps. One hit from its great sword makes Will explode into gooey bits.
Then it resumes its journey towards the tower.

Inside the others hear the noises and decide its time for them to go. They enchant the table and pick it up.
"Are we REALLY going to take the table?" Siegfried asks.
"Of course, it's probably the best rape table ever. Someone will pay for it!" Reggie answers.
They are a little too slow as when they reach the ground floor the statue is already at the front gates, hammering at the tower with his weapon.
They run for the backdoor. It is locked.
"I'll pick it!" Wilbur says.
"If you want, you can take additional penalties to rush it", I say.
"Why would I want to do that?"
"Because I'm gonna roll how long it takes for the statue to topple this tower."

This gives them something to think about and Wilbur isn't too certain with his chances. When I nonchalantly roll the lone d30 on the table, it's like a fire was set under the players.
"Wilbur! You have the Knock tattoo!" Petrus advices.
"But I used it already!"
"You can use it twice, it'll just burn away!"
Wilbur heeds the advice and the steel gate swings open. Reggie casts haste on the whole party and they speed towards the ship. To their misfortune, the statue turns to follow them.

Thanks to Haste, the League easily outraces the statue to the harbour. The others jump into the boat, while Ben has Enlarge cast on himself, so he can pull the it.
"All hands on deck! We're leaving!" Reggie yells, when as they climb onboard the Ecstasy of Gold.
"No can do, Cap'n! All the crew's away repairing Sea slut and our sails ain't nearly ready!"
"Fuck. Do what you can, we'll get the crew!"
At Reggie's command Ben pulls the boat to Sea slut and fervently loads their crew into it.
"We're too late! It's here!" Petrus shouts from the skies, pointing towards the shore.
"Maybe it cannot swim?" Boris asks hopefully. Soon after the statue steps into the water and sinks.
For a moment, all is silent.

"All into the other boat!" Siegfried suddenly shouts.
"Why?"
"It's coming towards the ship. We can't let it sink the ship!" he shouts as he lowers the boat.
The others scamper to follow suit.
And they are just in time, just as their boat's tugged away from the ship, a shadow appears in the water.
The statue jumps. It lands on the boat. It shatters it.
Everyone's suddenly waterborne and most are wearing heavy armour. Ben is still at the Sea slut and won't reach them in time.
Siegfried, Boris and Wilbur manage to latch onto ropes thrown by their crew, but Reggie isn't as lucky.
"Come on, Reggie! You're a sailor, only one of us who can properly swim!" Wilbur shouts.
"Zero... hit points... I think this was it for me", Reggie utters and sinks.
"Nooo!"

Not planning on letting Reggie drown, Wilbur jumps back into the water. With strength stemming from desperation he dives for Reggie and shoves something into his mouth.
"Please work... you're not in the negatives yet..." he pleads.
"What's that now?" I ask.
"Angeldown, from our gardens", Wilbur replies.
"Alright. Well, Reggie, you wake up surrounded by water. You feel surprisingly fine, but Wilbur beside you is about to drown."
"Perkele, you shouldn't have done that. Now I have to save you", Reggie curses, but he already has a plan in his mind: "Ref, Phantasmal Force can create anything I've seen, right?"
"By RAW yes, but I wouldn't abuse it too much, if I were you."
"Of course not, but I've probably seen many kinds of fish during my voyages?"
"Yeah, sure?"
Reggie works his magics and conjures forth a swordfish. "Giddy up, Wilbur!"
They both fail their saves against Magic meaning the fish stays corporeal for them. They take hold and Reggie commands it to head towards the open sea.

Meanwhile the statue has been trying to swat Petrus out of the sky. He's doing too good a job at it so when Petrus is forced to flee higher and further, it again turns its attention towards Reggie.
"Reggie, you still have a trick up your sleeve?" Wilbur asks.
"Fuck. All my spells are gone. Gunpowder's wet. Weapons won't hurt it. Aye, Wilbur, I got one trick left: praying", Reggie admits. Petrus turns around, but he's too far away and not fast enough to reach them.
So they pray to the Deep ones, they pray to the Kraken and other gods. Reggie even reads from a suspicious scroll he stole from Other Wilbur. But no one answers, when the shadow appears in the water.
(As Reggie often plays out making offerings and being devout to the Kraken, I gave him his level's worth of percents on d100 for a miracle. He wasn't lucky this time.)
The death was inevitable.

"Did I... Did I become a Great Wizard?" Reggie asks, coughing up blood.
"Yes! Yes you did and are! Hang on!" Wilbur yells, while he struggles to keep both afloat.
Reggie turns towards me.
"I wasn't asking just for drama. I'll be dragged to hell, if I don't fulfill the oath I made to Testifier."
I pretend to throw some dice behind the screen and make tally of everything happened so far.
"Last thing you feel before the void is the hellish burden falling off your shoulders", I say.

The statue, battered and cracked from dozens of magic missiles, has another target. It detects Petrus hovering above and jumps in to deal the finishing blow.
But this time Petrus was prepared.
"Here it goes, my last magic missile!"
He lets them fly towards the advancing golem. Large slabs of stone fall away, but a spectral energy keeps the golem moving.
They meet in the air.
And the golem falls apart, the last of its power gone.

Rest of the session goes quickly. Petrus, who also was on his last few hit points, picks up Wilbur and Reggie's surprisingly intact body (-3! Barely dead!). They erect Razak's old throne on their ship and place the embalmed Reggie on it.

"Well. That was definetly a session", Reggie's player says.

---

And so concludes our playthrough of the infamous Towers two. As you can defer from the excerpts in the beginning of this post, my players really enjoyed the ride. Running this was a real blaze and everything just fit together with the player's twisted imaginations.
Only thing we hated about it was Ragath's animated statue that came in and ruined everyone's day in the end of the adventure. The stats on the thing are just ridiculous: 20DH, 4 attacks all 2d20. Immunity to physical weapons and practical immunity to most status effects.
There's nothing wrong about strong or even unbeatable monsters, but the golem was just boring and reeked of unfinished design. And the lack of any set up only amplified the problems.
(I admit that I fucked up by giving the thing an ability to exchange two attacks for jumping, but by this point all our magic users can fly, and it didn't do the adventure justice to have the last boss be an easy kite.)
Well, atleast it made good prose.

Anyhoo, this was the last chapter in the buffer. Next up is Deep Carbon Observatory and I won't be posting it before we're done with it.

Edit: Here's the link to our Death tracker. This should be the one that'll be updated as we play, so it might be worth following: http://tinyurl.com/ToGtracker

Here's another chapter of our report. These chronicle the adventure Cursed chateau and about three sessions of play. I have to admit that I didn't particularly enjoy running this adventure. One part was that our PCs were clearly overleveled for most of the content, but the Chateau was mostly uninteresting with only random spooky encounters to fill the void - and they lost their luster immediately, when players figured out they were random.
Additionally I try to run my sessions with as little prep as possible and this module's room key was downright horrible when compared to other haunted house's such as Stygian Garden or Hell House. Enemy encounters and random effects that were needed right when PC's enter the room were mostly placed last in the text with nothing to draw attention to them. I think the adventure had enough interesting content for a mansion half the actual size.
Some probably enjoy the space and to each on their own, but the lack of content wouldn't have been so glaring, if there wasn't a barrier preventing adventurers from simply leaving after they'd had their fill.

But enough rant, this is a report not a review. Due to reasons above, I've only written the highlights and interesting encounters. (I've simply forgotten how most of it went.) If my players think I left something out, feel free to add your commentary!

---

As we found out last time, the League of Extraordinary Opportunity had set their next venture. Buying a vessel was no challenge as they could offer so much above the market price.
So, they claimed a nice caravel as their own and christened it Ecstasy of Gold. Reggie was made the captain and he recruited the crew personally.
They set sail for the coast of Occitania. A day out Reggie orders the ship to stop at something that looks like an ordinary shallow stone. Reggie orders the "gift", a blind emancipated child, to be brought from the holds and alone with her he rows to what is, in fact, a pylon rising from the sea.
He takes old, rusty chains that hang from the pylon and ties the child up. Then he leaves.

When the others questions him he only cryptically utters that the Sea Father needs his due. The crew knows enough not to question.
Feeding Big Ben becomes another problem. As a temporary solution the crew begins to drag a net behind the ship and then throwing the fish down the stowage hatch, where Ben waits mouth open. But when he develops a taste for dolphin flesh, Will takes great offence. When he tries to free a hapless dolphin the crew hunted for Ben, Ben flies into rage and kills the poor thing.
Will goes back to his cabin to brood.

Hildi, the farmer girl the League grabbed from Schwarzton, had been assumed to silently follow the party around so far, tending the camp, staying out of trouble and occasionally getting some bits of wisdom from Siegfried, Reggie or Wilbur. (Mostly about Lorenzo and how men like him can be stabbed in the crotch or throat region.)
During their voyage she however takes a liking to Siegfried and he decides to tutor her. Hildi proves to be an adept climber and she also picks up the sword surprisingly easily. They decide their mascot is big enough to join their next adventure.

Eventually they reach Basroucher, a small coastal town in French Occitania. They dock and pay the freak tax for Ben. In the local hotel they learn that Basroucher lies conveniently in Ayarai line's old lands and the Chateau is only short ride eastwards. They also learn that they are not the first adventurers to go into the mansion - and that no one has returned.
"No need to worry. We've become experts at returning from that kind of places" Wilbur muses.
Their plans of claiming the estate as their summer home is halted, when they learn that Ayarai line isn't dead.
In fact, one of them is sitting in the same room opposite them.
He, Severian Ayarai, has been holding house in this pitiful town for better part of the year. He wants to claim the mansion for himself, as is his right, but has no interest in spelunking haunted houses. So he's been hiring adventurers.
The League gets offered the same deal as the others: 50 gold pieces for exorcising whatever demonic force calls the place home and for finding proof that old lord Joudain was nothing more than a devout servant of the God the annals claim him to be. When the League isn't impressed enough by the amount offered, Severian also adds that he'd be willing to introduce such heroes to the court of Paris, where opportunity lies.
And when it doesn't work, he gives up and says he can always find other adventurers, in fact, just the other week he hired one looking just like Wilbur over there. Only without a freaky tongue.
"From what I've heard, lord Joudain doesn't sound like a saint. We probably won't get to cash that reward", Siegfried ponders later.
"Don't be so sure. Long time ago I worked for KGB, the Kääpiö Great Bureau*. And you know what they say of us dwarves: We are great at forgin... evidence!" Boris reassures him.
(*Kääpiö is Finnish for dwarf.)

As the League is leaving the town, they are halted by a plump man and a handful of guards. The man introduces himself as Domovoi Beauclair, the local mayor.
"I know you heard the young lord's offer. Our town is poor and has little to give, but please, hear us out."
"We're listening. For now."
"Lord Joudain was a cruel master. When he still lived his tithe was not mere coin and wheat. He also demanded working men and women, who were never seen again. After that one night of horror he was no longer seen and nothing has come out of the chateau since. We know he was a satanist and dealt with devils. If we had proof, we could make a case to ecclesiarchal tribunal, where they could revoke his titles, seize his lands and redeem our people from our history of sorrow.
We don't have much, but I can offer you 50 pieces of silver from my personal coffers for every piece of evidence that would damn him."
"Hmm, your tale doesn't really move our hearts. The lord promised fifty times what you have."
"Of course, if Joudain is declared a heathen, his lands will be auctioned off. The heroes who exposed him would surely get the chance to bid first."
"That changes everything! Consider your good lord excommunicated!"

It's late evening when the League camps out in front of the Chateau Ayarai. The foreboding estate is walled and the main entrance hidden inside a hedge maze. Some probing with spells and stones gives the jig away: the whole area is surrounded by a magical barrier and the maze entrace is the only place it can be penetrated. Big Ben confirms this with his true sight.
They camp until morning and enter the maze. Its gates swing shut behind them. They are trapped inside.

They wander follow the narrow passages passing by some peculiar sights: a blood red pear tree, each pear grows with the name "Catarina" on it. (Will takes some for himself.) A lilac tree which lulls Siegfried and Reggie to sleep.
A bush, with feet sticking out of the ground in front of it. When they decide to dig out the victim, a pale man appears and asks them to stop. He attacks when they don't comply.
They are accosted several times by a ghastly apparition of a man, who lunges at them, but vanishes when struck. One time Will decides to try the spell Form made flesh and when he casts it, blood rains and the bushes, the ground and the trees are covered in fresh entrails and viscera. This greatly frightens little Hildi, who seeks shelter behind Siegfried's legs.
"What the fuck did you do, you degenerate elf?"
"Never do that again, I swear!"

Later he tries that again. Same thing happens.
But this time, Hildi springs from her hiding place and pierces Will with her sword. Will is surprised, but before he has a chance to counterattack, Siegfried and Reggie run in between them.
"Hildi! That is a dangerous weapon! You cannot poke friends with it!"
"But you said it's used to kill bad men! He did the bad thing again. He's a bad man!"
"Well, yes. You are right, he's a bad man. But he's our bad man. You need to learn the difference."
"O-okay. I'm sorry."
"There, there. We're not angry. Look, Ben healed him, you did no lasting harm."
(under her breath) "Darnit"

Eventually they made their way through the maze and enter the mansion grounds. Before going in they circle the mansion and encounter a smith trapped in his own smithy. They enter through the back door and fight a bunch of animated furniture. They head towards the dining hall, where they meet the mansion's butler and his squad of blood thirsty maids. They act cordial enough before Will (who had fallen behind) came to the room and was immediately attacked. The servants were then slain.
Upstairs they converse with an old man, who claims to be the mansion's master. He mentions other quests who now had been 'escorted to the green suite'. The League decides to investigate.
The green room is barricaded and when they pound the door a familiar voice answers:
"This is our turf! Get the fuck out!"
"... Wilbur, is that you?"
"How in hell you know my name?"
"Long story. Let us in, we're adventurers too!"
"Alright, but no sudden moves!"

As the door is unbarred from the other side. Will (or might have been Reggie) casts Invisibility on Boris. Just to be a dick.
The door opens and behind is Wilbur the Specialist. But not the Wilbur we all know and love. The original Wilbur, way back from the Pale Lady's Boudoir.
He reluctantly lets the party in and motions for his compatriot, Flavio (another face from the past), to lower his bow.
"Alright, tell me all."
"Well, we have a Wilbur too. But he's much more handsome than you."
"Very funny. So, where's the fucker?"
"He's waiting outside. What happened to Boris, weren't you supposed to have one too?"
"... He went a little coocoo after seeing the Word of Creation. Now he's seen another two and has gone full mental. As far as I know, he's somewhere east gathering an army of Boris'"
At this point Boris decides to have a little fun and grabs Wilbur from behind, shouting a loud greeting.
He's almost shot by Wilbur in retaliation.
"We're not saying the B-word", Flavio helps.

The two parties trade stories. Apparently, Wilbur, Flavio and Boris 2 got shunted into Scotland from the Pale Lady's place, where they made their way back only to hear their payment had been claimed from under their noses. They did some adventuring around England, helping some halflings and looting an old church's labyrinthine basement. This raised them enough capital to fund an expedition to Isle of Thule. They, however, didn't find much treasure and instead got lost in the Under-Earth. There Boris found another Word of Creation, which lead to them parting ways.
Now they were here looking for the ceremonial cloak of Deep Ones.
It comes as no surprise that the two parties don't get along well, especially when Wilbur-two joins the rest of the party. So the groups agree to make their separate ways through the Chateau as much as possible.
(It doesn't help matters that the Originals accused the League of adventure crashing and the League began to mock their slow progress.)

So, the League moves on with searching the mansion. At some point they realise most of the 'spoopy stuff' is randomly generated without any context and that the servants could be killed with one or two blows, after which the search becomes a routine chore.
Eventually they find Lord Joudain's secret study, where they catalogue its arcane riches before noticing the huge demon trapped in the middle of the room. (Really, the huge demon is mentioned last in the page long exposition! This module could have used some practical editing.)
"Hey, guys! Mind letting me out? This dude here died before he bothered to do it. It's really frustating..."
"Oh, it's another demon... How are you gonna screw us over?"
"No no no, I just want to be let out. Hey I'll throw you a bone. I'll tell you how you'll get out of here! And when you let me out, I'll fulfill one wish!"
"Alright. We'll negotiate about the wish later. Shoot, why are we trapped?"
"The fool who trapped me here, Joudain, is as much a prisoner as I am. Free him and you'll be free."
"... that doesn't sound like a good idea. Tell you what, we'll finish scouting this place and then come back for you."

They find a deceased wizard, Joudain's earlier guest and defeat the spirit guarding it. Lorenzo pockets rest of the poisoned wine, while Petrus takes his magical cloak. "Sweet, now I'm a true great wizard!"
In a hidden gallery, a small boy advises them to look at Joudain's telescope that would be able to answer their questions. They find the telescope and begin asking questions: First the telescope claims Joudain has possessed one of them and urges them to kill each other, but eventually Reggie realises that listening to a demonic telescope might not be the sanest idea.
"Is it really reasonable to ask haunted house's telescope which of us has to die for us to get free?"
They begin asking the same question several times and thus determine its general accuracy. Eventually they gleam two mostly accurate bits of information: Joudains ennui upholds the barrier and he takes pleasure in the suffering of others.

The League returns to the Green parlor, where Wilbur and Flavio wait, and start planning how to proceed. Again an argument breaks out, this time between Flavio and Reggie, who accuses the italiano of being a weak coward.
So, Flavio challenges Reggie into a duel.
"Alright. I cast Haste. Then I shoot him. Then I shoot him again."
Flavio dies before he has a chance to react.
This angers the original Wilbur, but he's grappled by Siegfried and Petrus and eventually self preservation instinct wins and he yields.
The League considers just killing him, but something about it doesn't feel right, so they just take all his stuff and cram him into a closet.

The League then returns to the demon Bayemon and after negotiating a deal they free him.
Bayemon laughs maniacally and attacks. He doesn't last long.
"That does it! That was the last demon we're dealing with! Unless they're in an union!" Boris says.
"Hey Ref, we saw him, so does this mean we can now conjure a Bayemon with Phantasmal Killer?" Reggie and Petrus ask.
"...", I reply.
They move onto the basement and mostly scout it with Will's Wizard eye. They don't bother going to the wet froggy places, but find the cloak of the Deep Ones (tho it mostly resembles a froggy onesie). Petrus immediately dons it.

One room is full of suspicious gas and when Siegfried enters to take a look around, the hallucinations conjure up his worst nightmare.
"Your Warrior ability makes you technically immune to fear, but this is half-chemical and we don't want to completely trivialise these kinds of traps. Are you okay with making your Magic save, but with advantage?" I ask.
"Sounds reasonable. *rolls* One. And One."
"You keel over dead. From fear."

"Holy fuck! Siegfried died!" Boris yells.
"His hair has turned white and he looks slightly concerned. It truly must have been a horror that appeared to him", Reggie continues.
"Great, now I'm even more like Geralt", Siegfried's player mutters.
"THE CURSE IS LIFTED! AT LAST I AM FREE" disembodied voice of Lord Joudain shouts.
"... What was that?"
"That was surprisingly sudden."
"Well yes, according to the table players get one point every time they curse and you all curse like sailors, so the Joudain's Fun has been near the cap for some time now. Siegfried's death just tipped it over", I clarify.
The party decides they've had enought of the place. They embalm Siegfried and retrieve the original Wilbur. They cannot let him go free when there's still treasure to catalogue, but can't justify killing him. Luckily Reggie and Petrus find a solution: they can repair Bayemon's circle and trap him there. Which they do.

They spend a day gathering everything of value to their cart and free original Wilbur (who leaves hoping they'll never meet again). They locate the nearest entrance to ghoul market and with several trips haul most of the treasure to Vespero.
They also take Siegfried to the Skinsmith and pay it to restore him to life.
"Oi know jost wot he needs", Skinsmith says and begins hammering. He brings two pairs of rotten angel wings and welds them into Siegfried's back. "Fing o' truu beuty he is."
"So, I basically became a bad Second Life OC? White hair, silver skin and now angel wings?" Siegfried sums.
"Our marriage was 'til death do us part, Siegfried! You died, that makes me a widow, bitch!" Boris says, takes off his ring and throws it at Siegfried.

Now that the brunt of the loot had been sold, they only returned to the chateau to pick some little things for mayor Domovoi and returned to Basroucher. They cashed in their quest, boarded their ship and went on their merry way to Amsterdam.

---

At the moment of writing, we're about three sessions ahead. Autumn has meant more work and study for all of us (not to mention new campaigns) so our pace has significantly slowed down. The next two chapters will be about our group's visit to Amsterdam with them meeting Joop van Ooms and the short time they spent in an idyllic village of Mlag in coastal Portugal.

I'm sure you will!
In my opinion the best groups are not found, but develop during a lot of playtime.

---

Alright! Here's the exciting finale to our campaign's Switzerland arc and also the point where the League became an economical and physical powerhouse. I suppose a little exposition is in order before everything makes sense: in the beginning of our campaign the we had multiple sessions with barely any XP, so when we played Tower of the Stargazer and for the first time ever our PC's got a good haul, we agreed not to limit advancement to one level per session. And because of our fairly large party, it hasn't been a problem since - until now.
You see, I placed several interesting, but low level adventures around the valley. To make them more desirable locations I didn't chance the gold standard to silver. Again, it made the loot gained considerable, but not too abundant compared to our level. All was well
But alas - I made the mistake of not converting Hammers of the God to silver standard. Risk seemed appropriate to the reward. Math has never been my strong suit.

So, the two above facts combined to my players' increased cunning equals our level five party hass turned into a level eight party. O boy, I'm running out of adventures to run.

... Can any of you recommend interesting high level adventures for our campaign? Eventually I have to resort to my own material, but I don't want to rely on it yet.

Disclaimer Me and the players remember the part with the tubes a little bit differently. I'll write the version I think that happened, but you guys are welcome to correct be and tell our listeners how it really went!

---

Hammers of the Gods

The gang was finally back together and the Leuven valley had delayed them too long already. It was time to finish their business for good and excavate the Temple of the Old Miner.
They made sure their wagons were packed with supplies and set off to the mountains.
Again the Temple was found without much trouble. They had the god map of the valley to consult. On the way, however, they met some interesting folk: Dwarf the Wizard (Bob's new character, Zak's variant fluffed as a dwarf sage) and Irish Specialist Halfling (Big Ben's "can fit into dungeons" character).

In the spot indicated by the map most of adventurers find a great cavern door and some (mostly ISH) find an ordinary mountainside. The League has some fun with, in their perspective, floating halfling until they tell him about the Temple and he too sees the entrance. (And falls down.)
Behind the doors lies a hallway full of purple, odorless mist. This is an immediate warning sign and they're not stepping in.
While Petrus (only one not needing to breathe) scouts the hallway, the others hunt for animals. They catch some, which they promptly throw into the hallway. The scared animals yelp and whine and run away.
They don't die in agony and Petrus returns and says he only found a coat check before he came back. So the mist seems safe enough.

They go in and and arrive to a large hall, covered in mist. Quickly they discover the floor is littered with corpses, human and dwarf, and fresh blood. Everything looks like it happened mere moments before the PC's stepped inside. On the walls murals made with techniques lost to modern civilisation. They depict dwarves uplifted from primitivity, developing unseen technology, uniting the races and eventually reaching the stars. Althought it's made clear the dwarves will never reach their fate because of their sins.
In the back room they find an ancient dwarf, apparently still alive, meditating in front of a firepit, where the purple mist is pouring from. Yearning for answers they lift the elder and return outside.
They cannot wake him up even when they try to slap him, heal him and speak to him. They cease their attempts at rejuvenation, when "Bob" laughs coldly, cruelly and tells them the dwarf is long dead. And the signs of life are merely his air and blood weeping his passing so much that they will eternally try to bring him back.
Until now, that he's taken out of the preserving mists: soon the blood will coagulate and the decay set in. Thus the last vestiges of life are stripped from the dwarf and he will cease this false-life.
"Bob, that's a bit too edgy."
They leave the old dwarf near the entrance and venture back in. There a dozen reanimated corpses, undead sentinels, have risen to greet them. Short fight later they are no more. Boris' Echo Doom makes short work of them.
The League decides to take a few hours to break every bone on every dwarf and haul the corpses to the high priest's chamber. They do their best to bar the door, but occasionally one or two more intact sentinels get past.

They briefly examine the strange altar, but agree to inspect it later. They venture deeper.
There they loot golden shears from a room filled with shorn beards. Clearly the dwarves here were deeply regretting something. They find a vast library and an entrance to a separate place in the temple.
No one can read the Old Dwarven Runes, but Petrus uses Comprehend Languages to know they are entering the Tomb of Emperor Mar-rune. Boris has never heard of him.

They ignore the glittering gems that lie in a pond in the first room. Instead their attention is drawn to the tomb's intricate rune walls: layer upon layer of carved runes that analyse every aspect of the late emperor's life.
Going deeper they are attacked by a strange, shapeshifting beast that can only move 10 feet per day, but inconveniently parks itself in front of the doorway.
Fighting it is a chore and tragically Dwarf the Wizard is pierced by hundreds of needles.
Behind the thing is a well. ISH descends down and is attacked by a flaming slug that spits burning oil on the poor halfling.

The others hear his death screams and decide not to go down.

Instead they go back to the library. Using Bookspeak and Comprehend languages Petrus translates the index and gains some interesting tidbits from a random tome. The players get properly interested, when the info is given to them via a physical piece of paper the Referee has to cut out of a larger sheet of paper.
They decide they have to get them all.

The League retreats outside and camps for the night. In the morning Petrus prepares all his slots full of Bookspeak and they are joined by Will the (probably) Elf, Dwarf's replacement. (You might notice how his naming conventions have evolved  from William and Huxley to Bob, Dwarf and Will.
Jokes were immediately made: "Will the Elf... survive? ...die horribly? ...be of any use?"
He can prepare Bookspeak, so he's recruited.

So the League spends the next two to three weeks reading through the whole library. They learn much of the world's history including how much they fucked up by doing their pact with the Duvan'ku. Especially Boris is greatly affected by the forgotten culture of his kind and he learns to curse Mar-rune's name.
"You dwarves sure are something. Did you really excavate this whole mountain and then rebuild it, just to add in waterworks?" Wilbur asks Boris.
"Err... Yes, of course!" he answers.
During the nights Petrus tries to befriend Cyris Carnithrax Maximus, but the wight does not warm up to him, so their discussions devolve into cryptic statements and philosophy. Edit: Boris was also part of the befriending effort, when Petrus asked about necromantic lore, Boris tried to pry out Cyris' hobbies and favourite books. Unfortunately, all the answers he got were emo backtalk.
Well, Petrus does learn that a collective suicide is the noblest thing for a species to achieve, that only the unified empires of old were able to defeat the Duvan'ku and that Cyris believes the League's bloody work ultimately serves his cause. Not much of a conversationalist.

Having read the whole library they briefly debate transporting all of the books back to civilisation, but then decide to explore rest of the dungeon.
They return to the underground well, where IRH met his demise and break open the floor, thus making the ladder more accessible to their gear.
They descent and startle the content and full fireslug which dies after it's hacked apart.
They go forward until the cavern broadens into a massive chasm. A single railingless stone bridge crossing across it.
"This must be the chasm the book (literally) told us about", Wilbur says.
They begin their crossing, which takes a while, and for some time they are alone in the pitch darkness with only far away sounds to accompany them.
Petrus has a religious experience.
Nearing the other side, the party's noises wake a fell beast, feathered shadow serpent, from its slumber. It unleashes a horrifying shriek that jumbles everyone's sense of balance and pounces to defend its nest.
Fighting on a narrow stone bridge is precarious and there are few close moments.
But when the serpent is making one of its circles and aiming to drop Wilbur into the abyss, Petrus hits it with his signature spell Stinking cloud.
"Wilbur, please don't fall off the edge!"
He saves Wilbur while the paralyzed serpent falls off into the empty nothing.

They find nothing but a few curios from the serpents nest and so proceed forward to a ornate entrance hall.
Inside there is a wide double door barred and decorated with twelve rubies. In front of the door is a small altar and beside it stand two massive statues of dwarf guardians.
They examine the door and realise the bar is magical.
"You evaluate the door and count that each of the rubies should be worth about 100 gold. The bar is made of an unknown alloy and even without the enchantment it would be worth 500 gold for someone who can appreciate it", I read from the text.
"... Do we really want to go in there? If we take the rubies, we'll be richer than anyone in Italy. Hell, we could just take the bar and be rich!" Siegfried says having done some calculations. "That's an absurd amount of money! And someone has seen a lot of effort to make sure nothing INSIDE that room is let out."
"Äää, are we really going to come this far and then not go inside? Is that what the League is about?" Wilbur retorts.
(And this is where I begin to notice I made a Huge mistake, when calculating (or more accurately, not calculating) the treasure totals.)
"We're not touching the rubies.  Lets just go in", Boris says.
"These statues look suspiciously animate, should we destroy them before they animate?" someone asks.
"No. They'll let us in. I know, it's a dwarf thing", Boris knows.
Edit: Updated the dialogue a bit.

Like always, greed wins over reason, they decide to camp in front of the door and after everyone's prepared they remove the bar and open the door.
Ill wind blows from the chamber, but the statues don't move. Inside is a tomb with thirteen sarcophagi, one of them raised above others, clearly regal. A statue of a dwarven smith is poised atop the grave, ready to strike it with its hammer. It's the only sarcophagus that's locked.
The party cautiously steps inside. Wilbur inspects the lock mechanism and doesn't like what he sees.
"If that statue's going to hit the stone when the lock's opened, it's impossible to get out of the way even if you know its coming."
"Maybe I can use knock?" Will offers.
Meanwhile Siegfried and Boris have been opening and searching the other sarcophagi.
"These honor guards wear pretty impressive armour. Probably worth 1500 gp at the least, if you include their weapons", Siegfried says. "I'll try this one more time. Lets not open that grave. If we take these, we'll be so rich nobody can afford to buy these off us!"
"I'll have to second him. I feel uncomfortable desecrating the tomb of an emperor. Especially this emperor", Boris says. Even now he feels the restless dwarven spirits stirr and anger.
"Alright, we've pushed our luck this far. Lets call it a day, before it runs out", Wilbur says. The rest agree.

Carefully they dust off the old bones from inside the armour and pile the golden plate to the entrance hall. While doing so they keep a close eye to all the statues, which, for the time being, remain calm and not bloodthirsty.
After they have everything they want, they close the doors and replace the bar on the door.
"Do we take the rubies?" Wilbur asks.
"Nah, they're spare change now", Siegfried answers.

It takes three trips to get everything over the chasm and out of the temple. During the journey I re-read my notes:
"Hah, the spirit of vengeance is after you even if you didn't touch Mar-rune! ...öö, remind me again, did you take the bar with you?"
"No, we put it back to its place."
"..." "Fuck."
And so the bastards got off scot free.

"Do we even want to explore the other side? We're already richer than the Pope" Siegfried asks the rest.
"I kind of want to see what's there. The books said something about a giant keystone diamond", Wilbur says.
"And the banes. They are the real treasure in here", adds Boris.

The central hall has begun to stink. Most of the preserving mist is gone and the corpses have begun to rot. Luckily flies cannot get through the illusion.
They examine the central altar once more, but now with keener insight. They strike the meteor with the golden tools provided and, as was written, the doorway in opens.
They find fountains in the next room and thanks to their well read knowledge know that they are part of a cleansing ritual.
"We've trampled this place enough. Only proper to show a bit of respect, eh?" Petrus says and they perform the simple ritual.

Next on the line is a large natural cavern. They can hear the sounds of water and see shapes of construction further in. The waterworks and the subsurface transportation system that was written in the books.
Siegfried climbs atop one of the cranes and finds a sentinel there waiting for him. When the undead strikes him, his grip loosens and Siegfried falls thirty feet on coarse gravel. This only makes him angry.
The warrior stands up and climbs back up. Petrus uses Fly to aid him and together they destroy the guardian sentinels.
Edit: There was no health potion, only sweat and grit.

The party learns that the cranes are a control system for a series of submarine tubes, which were  tubes in total: three moored along the shore and one apparently on the other side. As an experiment the League reels in the extended line and goes to look inside a returning tube.
Their opening of the hatch also stirrs up the brown mold inside and everyone gets a lungful of spores. Siegfried, Will and Petrus can take it, but Boris and Wilbur frenzy and in their confusion think it's best to jump into the whirlpool.
The party manages to restrain Boris, but Wilbur wriggles free and jumps in. He's quickly sucked down and disappears.
"Oh well, that was that. We had a good run", his player says.
"Wait a moment, I think you get a save versus Magic Device."

Wilbur miraculously survives the ordeal and is thrown on the opposing shore. Back on the other side the rest hurry up to mount a rescue operation. (They have to wait for Will to scrawl some symbols on the wall.)

To make certain they have a way back, they first let the tube they reeled back get sucked in. Then they board another tube and follow. On the other side everyone is relieved to find Wilbur none worse for wear.
Having gathered their bearings they have a look around. There are five lifelike statues along the shoreline that trigger immediate flashbacks to Abelia Prem's mansion. Partial relief comes, when one of them is inscribed with the words "We stare willingly into the stone lizard’s eyes so that we may stand vigilant in memory of what our people have done.”
"So there might be a basilisk down here."
The party comes to an intersection. Rightward room is infested with fungus nobody's willing to touch, so they go left towards the strange noises they've been hearing. There they are attacked by a thing resembling upside down shark that keeps screaming louder and louder. It is killed and blessed is the silence.
They return to the intersection and choose straight this time.

They reach another intersection. Left way has nothing interesting in it, and right way has been partially collapsed. There they find remains of an earlier party and loot some interesting spells: Form made flesh and Greater form made flesh.
Continuing forwards is a gigantic hall and in its roof a jewel that cannot be anything else than the Keystone diamond.
"I can fly up and fetch it", Petrus offers.
"Wait, the book might have also mentioned something about the gem holding the weight of the mountain. Lets save some treasure for Reggie and the others who are absent", reasons Wilbur.
They solve the puzzle that's holding the door shut with little effort and move to the next corridor.
"This looks like a trap", says Siegfried while eyeing the wide hallway and something looking like rails on the floor.
"The books said something about a 'juggernaut'. Maybe it's here", Wilbur ponders.
They ignore the side railings for now and cautiously walk the middle path. They don't spring the trap.
Second to last room is a pair of doors.
"This must be the final test. According to the book 'Always choose right' is the Miner's motto. So they trapped the right door", Wilbur remembers.
"Then lets open the left one", Petrus decides and opens the left door.
And triggers the trap. Remember the motto? Always choose right? Clever, eh eh?

They make their tests and no one dies. Once the poison gas has evaporated, they take the right door and enter the Bane tomb.
And they see they're not the first visitors. All except the Elf bane are missing and the remaining bane is locked behind some kind of mechanism.
"Seems that the golden tools would fit here. Now, who has them?" Wilbur asks.
"Erm, I think we left them at the altar?" Petrus says after everyone's awkwardly looked at their inventories. "Someone should go get them."
They draw straws. Will gets the short one.

Having no other choice he boards their tube and reels himself back to the other side.
Somewhere in the middle the tube hits something and stops. Will is alone under several tons of water. Oxygen is running out.
That's when he draws an arcane symbol on the wall and casts Seven gates. He hops in and emerges near the cranes.
"Whew, good thing I prepared these."
He goes back to the altar, gets the tools and returns.
He remakes his runes and boards another tube, releases the cable and goes under.
It also gets stuck. And he didn't prepare another casting.
"Curses. Well, Wilbur made it, so can I." Will accepts his fate, he opens the hatch and throws himself into the current.
And by Jove he makes it!

Wet and cold he returns to the others holding the tools.
"What took you so long? We didn't ask you to go for a swim!" Boris berates him.
"Our way back is stuck. And I have the only way back, so check your attitude", Will retorts.
The League considers clearing the collapsed tunnel from before, but according to their books it's collapsed for fifty miles, so they have no choice, but to trust Will.
Then they remember why they sent him. Boris takes the tools and places them on the pedestal, which then disappears into a slot. Then, just before the party thinks they've been fooled, another slot opens revealing Elf Bane, the magical warhammer and a silver gleaming shield. Boris claims their prize.
The party makes camp and rests until Will has prepared his spells for the day.

Next day Will casts Seven gates again, they return to their camp, pack it and send word to Altdorf hiring several carrymen. They pay absurdly well, so absurdly that no one wants to look at their belongings.
Before heading home they make a detour to Zürich, where they drop off Cyris Carnithrax Maximus.
He walks through the city gates without saying even a goodbye. Will considers shooting him in the back, but then decides otherwise. He has an interest in staying alive.

On the way home the League visits the Ghoul market and sells some of their choice items to Vespero. They also inquire, if they can make orders and Vespero, seeing the value of returning customers, promises to keep his eyes open.
Particularly, Petrus wants to find necromantic lore that would advance his condition to proper lichhood while Siegfried asks for something to make him look normal. Wilbur asks about the nature of Ghoul market and if it'd be possible to get an entrance near their castle.

The journey home is uneventful and back in Venice they decide to throw a gigantic party. First, they auction off their hoard and then they reserve Venice's most extravagant tavern for the next two months. It's a proper carnival, where they dam and empty one of Venice's canals just to fill it with booze.
It is said that during the party Ben is turned into a boar by a scorned witch, then inducted into a blood cult and engaged to a lizard. Siegfried and Boris wake up naked in a bed with a succubus who's wearing priest's lovage. Both have rings on their fingers.
Two thirds of Venice burn down. How? No one knows?
(Our best theory goes to Reggie, who said that one house caught on fire and other houses didn't wish to look square - so they lit theirs on fire too.)
They nearly wrecked the economy. Luckily most of the inflation went to repair the massive property damage caused. League of Extraordinary Opportunity is home and is content.

They enhance Castle Greyskull: a church is built for Ben (which doubles as a tent), while the castle proper gains a tower and a new wing. They begin making plans for an underground tunnel leading to some mysterious place.
They hear Bernoulli, the famous artist, is nearby and decide to hire him to do the interiors. They don't care he has a commission from the Pope. They'll pay more.
Edit:They hired the famous sculptor Bernini, not the mathematician Bernoulli. Tho his work would probably been interesting too.

The League also receives a letter from Vespero. He writes that a group of deadites are interested in Petrus' condition and would be able to make it more stable. In addition, two necromancers expressed an interest for cooperation and might be able to make Petrus reach new states of being. First of them, Henriette, operates from Paris but was about to leave for Khirima, Nigeria for an extended research leave. The other, Razak the Great, was waiting in his tower near village of Mlag, Hune province, Portugal.
For Siegfried Vespero delivered a rumour that prince Zal, lord of Hune, possessed a mask that would make anyone beautiful. Also a certain eccentric Joop van Ooms of Amsterdam had promised a portrait for anyone, who would spend a night in the Ayarai mansion in Occitania and tell him the tale...
Of ghoul market Vespero couldn't say nothing else than that Count Madrigal was the realm's sole lord and all queries would need to be directed to him.

After their hangover had passed, the League began to plan their next journey: they shall buy a ship and sail to Occitania, France. There they will spend the night in the Ayarai mansion, sail to Amsterdam, claim their reward and on the way back they'll visit Hune and its lords.
Last they will stop near Catalonia, where according to Malando's notes lies an ancient empire's deep carbon observatory.

And so another glorious chapter of the League of Extraordinary Opportunity has closed and next one begun! The sinister metaplot is creeping ever closer toward our heroes, who have thus far managed to evade every plot I've thrown at them. The world's end is creeping closer and the League must decide whether they'll fix what they broke or shake this dead world's ashes from their shoulders.

Edit: My players are true thespians and cannot bear when the tale goes wrong. Thus I was convinced to make some adjustments that have been marked.

Heh, I've never really looked at it that way! That does make them quite a force to be reckoned with.

Of course, before they get to enjoy their new power they might get lost in a valley multiple Astral Units wide, fall to their death trying to escape the Plateau, get eaten by the mentioned anglerfish, be confounded by the Owls or get lost in the titular Monolith.

And if they do escape the valley with their instant healing and auto-guarding they will be immune to any and all magic effects, so there will be no magical healing nor hasting or flying away, when the city guard comes asking why they slaughtered everyone in the inn. So they'll need to say goodbye to city life for good or eventually get hunted down.

So I'd say it's appropriate to say they're doomed. Not for death maybe, but at least for some very Interesting Times.

And by all means, I'm excited to hear how it went for you!
(There's a chance that my players are actually going to seek the Monolith in my own campaign.)

Alright, it's finally time for the story you've no doubt been waiting for. The story of how the League of Extraordinary Opportunity FUCKED FOR SATAN. Before we dive into the adventure, I'll mention that I was struck by inspiration and decided to map Altdorf, its surrounding area and the dwarven temple to a hex map and pepper the resulting valley with other modules and interesting locales. I've been long wanting to run a hex crawl and this was also good opportunity to let the players explore and decide which adventures they wanted to touch. The specific adventures in the valley were: Fuck For Satan, Thine Eyes Beheld; Smile with us, friend; Hammers of the Gods and Death Frost Doom. I called the abomination Leuven Valley.
Edit: I forgot Lair of Velkis the Vile from my list. On another note, I generated Altdorf with Lastgaspgrimoire's revised Dunnsmouth tables and Vespero from Vacant Ritual Assembly also made a cameo.

But that's enough preamble. I give you

The Schwarzton Incident

The group made their way to Schwarzton with little incident and arrived late in the evening. They headed straight to Un maga praag's hut to claim their reward. They had little interest in the crone's warnings about a certain Doom that would be waiting for them in the valley.
They are quickly recognized as adventurers by the townsfolk and soon the village blacksmith meekly approaches.
According to him the town has a small problem, namely some of their children are missing. They suspect that an old satanist shrine has been reopened.
"So, where did the satanists come from?" asks Reggie.
"We don't really know. Don't they spawn from filth and impure thoughts?" the blacksmith replies.
"I heard north is fulla them! There they're called protestants!" random villager interjects.
"Ma granpa's really wise. We could ask him," blacksmith continues.
"We don't really care. Just lets get to it," rest of the League says.
"... There was a reward promised, wasn't there?"

"Well, we dun really got money and all that jazz, but ye'll be heroes! Lots of local gals in nice marriable age and ye'll get lands as a dowry. How's that? And Satanists! They always making their false gods out of gold, ye'll get those!"
"... Right. You have food right? Give us a barrel or two and we'll make a deal. Lets call it a 'get on with it' discount."

So, the group went to the abandoned seeming shrine. In front of the entrance they discovered an astrological tome and a note urging them not to bother with the cave. Writer of the note, enigmatic Iri Khan, also revealed a secret hidden in the tome - the party followed the note's instructions and spoke out an incantation. The spell drew the attention of an eldritch being in the sky, Twinkly, who hates me (and probably YOU too, as you get kicks out of the PC's suffering) and granted the PC's a boon: in the beginning of the next session they would have a full minute to peruse my notes and GM material.

The session was ended immediately because of player pressure.

Next time we gathered together to play, I was prepared. I decided to handle the Leuven Valley hexcrawl as one big adventure and thus I would give my players a huge stack of notes, printed material and bound books. They wanted information, so let them have it!
To add insult to injury, only three people made it this time: Petrus the undead Magic User, Dirk Keen the Specialist and Boris the Dwarf.
I gave them the stack and began to count time. Their panic suffused the air.
Unfortunately they were far too clever for me and my plan was trumped by modern technology. First thing they did was to snap a picture of the hex map. Then they began photographing the notes as fast as they could. A minute went by faster than it had any right to and when they had to give back the stack they had dozens of blurry photo's from the adventures.

Armed with the pictures they ventured inside the shrine. They waste no time finding the secret passages. Our friendly neighbourhood zombie Petrus immediately sprints to the sarcophagus in the west to snatch the treasure within. Conveniently he doesn't need to breathe, so the devilish sand trap merely slows him down.
On the other side, Dirk rappels down the other well and manages to get his foot stuck in a hidden bear trap. He's too impatient to wait for help and gets the foot cleanly cut off as he fails to get it free. At least the bear trap wasn't rusty.

The rest haul Dirk back up and Petrus snags and embalms the loose foot. "We can stitch it back at home... or at least I'll have a spare part."
They then break down one of the wooden tunnel covers for planks they use to cover the bear traps allowing Petrus to crawl down unimpeded. He finds three levers and luckily their combination key was one of the more clear pics they had, so he knew exactly what they did.
He made some preparatory adjustments and came back up. They left the rope hanging so it would be easy to use the levers.

Having investigated the side passages, our group moved the statue and descended down the central passage. They entered a room with a chasm in the middle and a suspicious altar on the other side. They had no photos of this place. (One or two players did have hazy memories from their previous playthrough.)
The chasm immediately drew their suspicion, as its bottom was covered in tiny holes. Dirk immediately began shoveling gravel from the cavern to cover them. Ultimately they just jumped over the chasm with little trouble.
The altar had an old book on it, but  because of Boris' warnings (from an earlier life) they left it alone.
Several following doors were easily, if a bit slowly opened by Petrus backtracking to the levers and administering the right combinations. It also helped them map the complex, as they knew room/door numbers but had no map of the place.
A curious staircase drew them in and they descended the long dark corridors until they were deep under the mountain. There they met a dead end with only a menacing stone eye and a basin filled with dark liquid.
Not impressed with the piece of art. They turned and climbed back.
And they climbed.
And they climbed.
And they climbed. With no exit in sight.

They backtracked back to the eye and this time counted their steps. No, the exit wasn't were it supposed to be. Peculiar.
They turned to their ill gotten pictures. Text was blurry and only parts of it were readable. "Seeing the eye... illusion... sacrifice... heart..."
"Alright, so we're in an illusion!" Petrus said.
Once again they descended until they could see the eye and this time they tapped, felt, examined and prodder every part of the walls, the stairs and the roof to find a secret door, illusory wall or something else. Finding none, they threw rocks and fired bolts up and down the stairway to see whether they were in a loop.
Then they marked the walls, left belongings behind to see, if they would encounter them again going forward or if they'd run into them as they returned.
They spent all their uses of Detect Magic.
No exit in sight.

"Ref, are you sure you're running this right? This part clearly reads 'illusion'"
I check my notes for the tenth time and keep my face straight. "Yeah, I'm certain we're doing this right. Just keep on trying."
Eventually they go back to the ominous eye. They empty the basin and find several shriveled hearts. Removing and adding the existing hearts fails to reveal an entrance, so it begins to dawn on them that only way out is to sacrifice a new heart.
"I'd love to do it, but I don't know if my heart will do. Being undead and all that", Petrus says helpfully.
"I'm the senior member here, no way I'm sacrificing anything!" Boris says and draws his warhammer.
Both of them start looking at Dirk.
"I won't do it! I won't! Why didn't we bring any hirelings?!" he says.
"We brought you", Petrus and Boris reply.
"Lets think this through. What exactly does the text say?" Dirk pleads. His companions still have some humanity left and they agree that killing Dirk should be the last desperate measure. Each of them takes turns reading the text and after a while a strenuous plan is made.
"I don't think it explicitly says the heart has to be removed from the cavity. Can any of us fit in the basin?" Petrus asks.
The basin itself is quite small and cramped, but after Petrus breaks a couple of his ribs, he manages to cram his chest in the basin in a way the heart is technically inside.
Edit: I was reminded by Boris' player that the one to sacrifice his heart was, in fact, Dirk, not Petrus. Dirk had the highest dexterity score, so he was crammed into the basin.
Then they backtrack up to see, if they're free.
"Wait a bit, I have to read this through", I say, holding up my hand.
"Alright, the text technically allows your solution to work. It's a bullshit plan, but this is a bullshit adventure, so it's only fair it works."
And after two hours of nightmare the players are free. Clever bastards.

The players had little patience left for the rest of the dungeon. They ventured forth double time, figured the magnetized corridor out quite quickly and by dumb luck turned the right level to avoid the vacuum trap in the next room. They did not touch the tombs on the way. Then they chose the left corridor where they were ambushed by a vaguely penis-like worm called the Luck sucker. Fighting it was nasty biz, but it was defeated.
"Sweet! Now I can summon that thing with Phantasmal psychedelia!" Petrus celebrated.
"...Lets not look what's in the right hand corridor."
Going straight they come to the final room where a treasure waits atop a pedestal, watched over by stuffed dragon heads.
"This is definetly a trap", says Boris.
The whole party backtracks to the side corridors and use Petrus' Unseen servant to tie a rope to the goblet. Then Boris pulls.

Removing the goblet causes a spray of acid spurt from a destroyed dragon head that fills the corridors and destroys most of the doors it passes through. All of Petrus skin burns off and he barely survives as a skeletal monstrosity, Dirk completely melts and Boris survives mostly unscatched. Air begins rapidly sucking out of the room, but destroyed doors make sure it will take some time.
The party makes a run for it.

They return from the mountain with one conclusion: there weren't fucking children there. Back in the village Boris explodes upon the villagers (no, not like that, you perv!) and seeks someone to blame. This gathers the attention of the village as the folks try to calm the dwarf down and convince the party to continue investigations.
Petrus spies one of the villagers leaving nervously and motions Boris to stop his tantrum. The situation calms down and they follow the tracks.

The unaware villager leads them to a cavern in the woods (which the PC's already knew was there as they had photographed the map!) and goes in.
According to the noises, there are several others in waiting. The party briefly debates setting the entrance on fire, but Petrus has a better idea:
He boldly walks in and casts Stinking cloud inside the cave. The move incapacitates everything inside, including a grotesque penis-like alien that had been strutting around. Petrus barely pays any attention to it before he kills the beast and ties up the retching villagers.
The party disregards the villager's excuses as they round them up and take them to the village. There an ad hoc jury decides to tar and feather the culprits and hold them in a pig pen until a better verdict is reached.
But there are still no sight of the children.

"Oh, lets stop this farce. It's the fucking bear!" Boris shouts and the party charges back into the woods to kill the bear that's the real culprit of the adventure.
It takes them a day, but ultimately the bear has been killed and finally our heroes can present the mostly digested kids to the townsfolk who finally believe them.
Wilbur, Lorenzo and Reggie appear as the loot is counted. They are also joined by a monster hunter named Siegfried and not suspicious at all Bob the Cleric, who made sure to get the Duvan'ku tome from the mountain cave.
None of the League are interested in the townsfolk's amorous advances, but Lorenzo barters with one family for a child.
"She'll live a good adventuring life!"
"Hmm, well we cannot feed all of our tots. You can have Hildi."
"... Hmm, can I call you Tim?"
Lorenzo was promptly shoved away from Hildi by Wilbur, Boris and Siegfried and declared the team mascot.
"We'll teach you to survive. If someone ever looks at you like Lorenzo again, remember, go for the jugular!"

---

And that's how it went. The adventure has become too famous here in Oulu and so it lost a bit of its ooompf. Those from my group who hadn't experienced the module yet were overeager to get the ultimate Raggi-experience while those who had just rolled their eyes, let the kids have their fun and hoped their foreknowledge would help them survive.
All in all, we had hella fun and, funny enough, I think the imperfect photo's the group had of the adventure made it even better. Especially the infinite staircase turned from a random and frustrating trap into a devious and confusing one. Their sneak peek also let them get some satisfaction in avoiding the worst traps, while the module still had enough shit to throw at them that the adventure didn't become a complete cakewalk

My players seem to like these shit storms. Our group completed Towers Two just yesterday  and gauging from the laughter it looked like they had most fun ever. (Remind me to churn these reports out faster, so I'll get to tell that tale.)

Next report will be about the League's travel to Altdorf and the fun adventures they had on Deathfrost mountain. Do not adjust your set.

Intermission: Maze of the Blue Medusa

I ran Maze of the Blue Medusa at Ropecon, Helsinki last weekend and since the adventure is all the rage right now, I'll tell our experience of it before I write the next proper chapter. We used random level 1-6 premades and the playtest rules with magic from Wonder & Wickedness. Here's how it went:

Ulrich the Fighter, Aristihe the Magic User (and his companion, Dog the dog), Ferian the Fighter, Harald the Fighter and Gilbert the Fighter were an ordinary group of thieves and adventurers that had stumbled upon an extraordinary opportunity: They had stolen a painting called False Chanterelle and all the tales were true: when exposed to moonlight, the painting came to life and the depicted woman pleaded for help. She introduced themselves as Ashen Chanterelle and claimed to be imprisoned by the cruel Blue Medusa. If freed, her noble lineage would reward the adventurers greatly were it still existing - and if not, they would have free reign to loot the Medusa's maze.
The group was skeptical at first:
"What if you're the medusa?" asked Harald.
"Do I look like a medusa?" she replied.
"Come on, guys! She doesn't even have snakes for hair!" Aristihe said. "Doesn't any of you read anything?"
"... I cannot read." Ulrich said.

Eventually Gilbert took the first brave step and as he touched the painting he was transported into the red room with the Chanterelle. This made Harald bold enough to follow and together they struck at Chanterelle's chains. She was freed and the door was unlocked.
"Now where's the treasure? Is this the treasure?" Harald asked as he fiddled a stray painting in the room.
"I'm pretty sure it's just art." Gilbert said.

The Chanterelle was ever so thankful and the smitten heroes told her to wait on the other side as they would make the Maze safe. She stepped outside and after no one had turned into stone, died horribly or met any other calamity Ulrich, Aristihe and Ferian stepped through the treshold too as they wanted an even share of the treasure.
Last thing they saw of the Chanterelle was her smile turning wicked as she covers the painting and their only escape.
"Should've known she was scottish!" Ulrich rages.

Having no other choice the party goes through the only door available, where they encounter a lady with midnight blue skin and gorgeous horns. The woman seems to be willing to talk and after some confused exchanges of words, she and Aristihe find a common tongue in Latin.
The lady introduces herself as Crucem Capilli and tells that she's been hired to destroy the Maze. She's in no hurry though and is willing to wait until the group has gone their merry way. That is, if they collect any interesting art they pass and sell it to her.
She also seems to know the maze, but refuses to give directions as 'she's unwilling to ruin the painting the group will create with their wandering'.
After some negotiating by the players she relents a little and gives some general directions about gardens to the west, a wedding hall to the east and gallery to the north.

The party decides to head to the gallery, for what other place would art be found? They take the middle door to the room that's empty except for a curious mosaic woman that springs to life and recites a riddle about crossing her.
The party solves most of the riddle easily and half of them pass the room with no problem. (Heartbroken Aristihe sacrifices his dog to be the fourth and the killed crosser.)
Harald and Ferian, to their misfortune, missed the last part of the riddle and had no idea how to get through safely. When Harald tries crossing by doing circles, the mosaic attacks.
The party is lucky and no one's hit before the monster dies.
"Was that the medusa? Are we done now?" Harald asks.
"Have you read even one book? Medusas don't work like that!" Aristihe complains.
Next room is a deep pit with a rickety bridge that takes some time crossing. Behind that room they find a grub-like snake-boy thing that's arguing with a bunch of chess pieces.
Snakething introduces himself as Gibba and is mostly interested in the mosaic bits, Ulric looted from the mosaicmonster. Chess pieces want the players cut Gibba open.

The party is initially keen on allying with the chess pieces as they believed the full set was needed to solve a puzzle, but they weren't desperate enough to kill a child. They dare not go into the further rooms (one black, one white) as they might be part of the puzzle.
So, they convince Gibba to slither through the black room with the jade eyes. To their surprise he's paralyzed by the eyes and the party accidentally strangles him to death when they try to pull him to safety.
"Oh well, this solves our dilemma," Aristihe says and prepares his knife.
Chess pieces thank the party by giving some information about the rooms: black floor is a kind of dense liquid that can be walked across (unless you get paralyzed) while the white room has a black line that draws the crossers worst nightmare.
Gilbert refuses to go through the white room and see Harald's mother, so the party uses Ulrich's shovel to push the jade eyes out of their way and cross the western room.
They reach a room empty bar for a glass of winelike liquid on a silver platter. Whích Aristihe immediately consumes. (Being a bit disappointed when it doesn't kill him or nothing)

Among the several exits the party chooses the one leading to gallery. They go in and spend a second admiring the goat skull arch in the room.
Then a crack forms into the wall and Pellory-of-the-Wall, a cancerous flower, squirms through. The creature isn't interested in talking, but has to retreat after a couple of rounds, when the party's combined strenght is too much.
After the battle, everyone notices how ravenously hungry they are (due Gallery's special effects). And to add insult to injury, most of their rations have become spoiled.
Thinking fast they retreat from the room to see if their hunger would recede.
It doesn't, but it isn't turning worse either leaving them with a slight problem.
Their next course is towards the Gardens as "plants are food, right?". In the first room they meet a gigantic snail minding its own business.
"Snail! Food!" Ulrich shouts and they attack.
The racket caused by the fight lures a group of Oku, insane thieves pretending to be tengu, to investigate and ambush the hostile party.
The fight almost goes in the bag for them and they even manage to strike down Ferian, but when Aristihe successfully charms one of them and Harald slays their leader, the rest flee.
Party pursues until the gallery, where they dare not go yet.
Aristihe raises one of the fallen Oku to be his undead servant.

Licking their wounds the adventurers revive Ferian and inspect the snail. They are greatly disappointed to find its made of clay and confused to find some packed rations inside its shell. Ulrich doesn't complain though, the meal's as good as any.

Going forward they investigate the dark room in the south. Apparently its lack of light is caused by a peculiar species of rose that the party immediately decides is awesome. Behind the dark room they trade some words with a gigantic mantis creature and retreat as they cannot handle the more and more creepy garden area.
Retreating to the wine room, they next head to the grand hall in the north as "the medusa might be there". Instead, they find Chronia Torn, one of the more willing prisoners of the Maze. Aristihe immediately makes fast friends with Chronia's pet Fracture-of-the-bone and tries to bribe it to fetch art from the Gallery.
They learn from Chronia that the hungering effects permeates all of Gallery. They find it hard to believe that she's there voluntarily, but eventually relent as she seems to be on first name basis with the medusa.

They politely decline Chronia's invitations to stay and head east through a door which Chronia politely unlocks. They find themselves in an orange room housing some kind of anomaly.
There they get caught by Torgos Zooth, medusa's majordomo, who's in his crescent phase.
This means that no truth can be uttered in his presence making his interrogations and the party's excuses difficult.
Eventually they find some common group, when the party promises to help Torgos rescue his children. He agrees to escort them through the Almery, if they agree to be blindfolded.
He leaves them to the prison area and goes back to his business.

The adventurer's prefer not to mess with the eerily lifelike statues and head the only way they can: west. There they reach another grand hall, that's sectioned with bookshelves and weapon stands. It's like christmas, everyone wants a weapon.
In their greed, they stumble in the centre of the hall, to the dwelling of Blue Medusa herself.
"You fiends took your time enjoying my armory, but the fun is over! You are not the first to try and kill me and you won't be the last!" the Medusa exclaims.
"Err, if it's alright with you, we don't really want to kill you", Aristihe says meekly.
"You don't? Then why are you here in the first place?"
"We'd prefer if you'd let us have some of that", Aristihe continues and gestures towards a table laden with food.
"Very well then. It would be dishonourable to battle you, whilst you are weakened by hunger."

The adventurers feast on Medusa's table and Harald tries to desperately polish the silver tray he took to serve as a mirror.
After they were finished, Psathyrella, the Medusa, again brandished her rapier.
"Now you are fed. Shall we battle?"
"Umm, actually... We don't want to kill you", Ferian says.
"What."
"It's a long story... but in a nutshell we got lost. In fact, we'd just prefer, if you'd show us the way out."
"And you should probably know that there's a dragon lady who DOES wish to kill you!" Gilbert adds.
"Dragon lady? I probably should deal with that, but... I can't really bother. Maybe she'll find her way here and then I'll have some excitement."
Saying so, Psathyrella slumps back to her bed, dejected.
Then Harald decides to be a gentleman:
"Very well, medusa. If you wish to duel someone, I will challenge you!"
And there's life in the Medusa's eyes again.

The duel goes surprisingly well for Harald. Psathyrella has loads of HD, but Harald gets more strikes through with his two weapons. He's almost winning.
That is, until he fumbles and accidentally slaps away the mask Psathyrella covered her eyes with.
Half of the party (including Harald) is exposed to her petrifying gaze and everyone fails their saves and so Harald, Gilbert and Ferian are turned into stone.
"... Now this is embarassing", says Psathyrella. "I'm sorry."
"It's alright, can we keep the swords we stole? And what Harald stole?" Ulrich replies.
"I guess that's a fair game. Here, let me show you the way out."

The Medusa escorts Aristihe and Ulrich to the labyrinth's original entrance, the stairway to the island of Eliator.
"Do you want your friends? I can lend some of my handmaidens to carry them?"
"Nah, you can keep 'em."

And so the duo descended the stairs to Eliator, where they were greeted as gods.
"I think were in Scotland now", Ulrich commented their escape.

And that's how it went. We had premades in reserve, but didn't need them as the Maze treated by players quite gently (and they didn't mess with the more dangerous stuff). It was quite long in the night when they reached Psathyrella, so we decided to end the game there instead of continuing with new characters.

All in all my players really enjoyed the experience. Some of them were mostly new to DnD and none had much experience with OSR. They especially liked the weird narrative the Maze built - they could never guess what would be in the next room, but it was all interesting and it all made sense in certain kind of way. Shame Ropecon was only weekend long as it would've been fun to continue the game later.

Here's the next part, where the party investigates the Horsehead Manor from module Hell house beckons on behalf of Doge Monteverdi.

Oh, and before I forget! A player in my campaign wanted to prove he had most dead PC's so he made a spreadsheet with every PC, adventure they joined and cause of death.
You can view it here: http://tinyurl.com/zv3mtjp

---

Not wanting to leave their work half finished, the party decided to deal with villa Cavallo next. "We could always use a summer villa" summed Wilbur.
Thus they headed back to Venice and were introduced to the exorcist group prepared by the Doge.
The party had already met the Doge's aide Gertrude, who would be supervising the mission, and they seemed to get along well with the seer Vidalia and the mason Lydia. Appearance of Lydia's little brother Torrance, however, didn't cheer the League. "The kid behaves or the kid gets left behind" was the ultimatum Boris gave Lydia.

During their two week journey to the manor, Gertrude shared the Manor's ill history among the others. Apparently it had meen built upon an ancient elven burial ground, then used as a school of witchcraft and a brothel. Last 50 years the building's been abandoned, altough there have been occasional reports of squatters. All of the residents had one thing in common: they either went insane, killed themselves or vanished without a trace.
"Sounds like a place fit for us", said Reggie.

Before we delve into the adventure proper, the Hell house beckons has a couple of interesting mechanics: first, the mansion feeds on the suffering, souls and sanity of its victims and the amount of madness, bloodloss and death determines the ending of the adventure. To support this the module adds a sanity attribute that can and will decrease as the players experience the mansions horrors. While I made my players roll themselves a SAN score, I decided failing a sanity test had no mechanical effect other than feeding the mansion (and determining the effects of possession in some causes). By this point the Player Characters had gone through a lot of fucked up shit, and they didn't need me or a mechanic tell them, if they are scared or not. So I told my players they could dictate how they cope with failing a SAN check themselves. Trusting my players worked and most of the more hilarious outburst were due them riffing the Sanity mechanic.
Second, in the module, Vidalia's a real medium capable of restoring the dead to life. I thought that a genuine resurrection mechanic didn't fit our campaign, so I made Vidalia's power a bit more Lotfpy. You'll see what I mean.

The League arrives to the Horsehead manor. As they arrive, present are Petrus the Magic User, Kaylee the Halfling (the dragon/monster slayer from last session), Eliana the Elf, Boris the Dwarf, Wilbur the Specialist and Gilbert the Brave (Alice). Rest of the group were quite acquaitanted with each other, but Gilbert had just appeared on the road and pretended to know the group.  They tie their horses and circle the premises. Finding old, unmarked graves from the backyard doesn't make the explorers any happier, but when there's nothing overtly suspicious, the party steps in through the main door.
Upon entering the party hears racket from upstairs, but they decide to ignore it for a while and follow their code: "Always go left".

They investigate a corridor that appears to be servants quarters. An upside-down nursery confuses them, but their jimmies get really rustled, when Gilbert investigates the bathroom and is momentarily trapped inside a black void. He's thrown back out inexplicably after he casts a light spell, but he didn't come alone: an invisible minotaur decided to join him to eternally loom and breathe down his neck.
The party spends some time trying to kill the minotaur, but give up when it proves to be a good dodger.
"Your own problem, obviously", says Boris, ending the matter.
In the bunk room they find a pile of copper coins guarded by a miniature dragon. Wilbur and Reggie fall instantly in love with the critter: they name it Smög and lure it to their wagon cart by strategically placing bigger and bigger piles of silver along the way.
They note that each and every painting features a pale painter which makes them uncomfortable, but not interested enough to do anything about it.

At this point the party hears racket and see their horses crashing through the mansions front-side windows. They try to help the animals, but their equines are set on killing themselves and in the end there's nothing the party can do.
"Fuck horses, god made them stupid on purpose", said Reggie.
To achieve something, Petrus decides he's got his fill of the racket and the party makes a jaunt upstairs to off a nest of harpies.
After dealing with that nuisance, the League is told that Vidalia's gone missing. Unlike the NPC's, they know to track her by her dusty footprints, so the medium is quickly recovered (she had been scratching her fingers bloody on the grand hall door, murmuring something about "releasing it"). The PCs are not daunted. They debate, if Vidalia should be tied up, but let the plan go when Gertrude protests.
Then they decide that if there's something wanting to go free in the grand hall, they're happy to oblige. Picking the lock fails so they resort to their skeleton key: an axe.
First swing: the door bleeds human blood.
Second swing: the wound gapes deeper, whole house shudders. Agonised souls beg release.
Third swing: Door remains closed, axe starts to get a bit scratched. "Perhaps we should stop this, we don't want to dull the blade."

Then they resume their clockwise sweep of the manor.
The League finds a parlor room hosting a ghostly tea party. The floating tea cups aren't hostile and so the adventurers aren't fazed by them.
Reggie, however, gets a fit, when one of the mounted horse heads whispers to him from the fall "Hey, hey. Reggie. Kill yourself."
He lets out a bloodcurdling howl, buries his dagger deep into the stuffed horse, tears it from the wall and hurls it through the window.
"Hey, Reggie! Just kill yourself, ok?"
"Fuck youuuuuuuu", answers Reggie as he empties his pistols into the head.
"What's his problem?" Petrus asks.
"He's a witch. What do you think?" Boris replies, nonplussed.
They also have a brief encounter with Quiet Annah, the spectral maid, but she leaves, when she cannot possess any of the party (dusting is hard without a body) and the players act mean to her. The PCs discover that ghosts cannot be hurt by mundane weapons, but can be seen through mirrors.

Next in the line is a corner room that the party soon discovers to be an atlas room. During their sweep Petrus investigates a locked chest that, to his ill luck, hides a deformed crazy mutant halfling - Sackcloth boy, the manor's current tenant - and its favourite garden shears.
Sackcloth boy wins initiative and before anyone can do anything, it cuts Petrus' throat open.
Petrus has enough time to look surprised as he collapses on the floor in a growing puddle of his own blood.
Rest of the players prepare to avenge the death of their intern, but never get the chance when Petrus' familiar, a small unassuming raven that no one had really noticed before begins to gurgle and bubble. Oh yes (oh crap), we are still using the rule about familiars erupting as a Summon. Now the players remember why magic users weren't supposed to die.
The Raven is evaporated as a radioactive tentacled horror made from light and colours emerges from its insides. Its tentacles attack everyone in its vicinity and to the players luck, they can flee through the door while Sackcloth boy is snared between the monster and the corner.
So, our always pragmatic PCs retreat outside to follow the battle of the century through the windows.

Somehow the mutated killer halfling actually manages to slay the beast and when the PC's return they only find a rapidly decaying colourbeing (being in the room with it makes your skin tingle in a funny way, Wilbur notes) and a trail of blood heading upstairs that terminates at the second floor. No corpse.
"No chance that thing's dead yet", Boris reminds the others.

Meanwhile Petrus is very surprised when he wakes up in the manors ghost world, empty except for a cold, cruel and distant laughter.
He seeks out the party and confirms his suspicions that they cannot see or hear him. Eventually though he gets their attention through mirrors and minor possessions for them to get worried. (Luckily, Reggie was out of magic missiles)
The League regroups outside to discuss their haunting problem. That's when Vidalia the optimistic Medium interjects: "Oh oh! I can help! We can perform a seance and then ask the spirit what it wants before moving on."
The players suppose Petrus is a safe enough guinea pig to see, whether Vidalia's a hack or not and proceed with the plan.

They use Petrus' corpse as the vessel to perform the seance and after Petrus has a brief tussle with a ghostly dwarf named Vargas, he's back among the living - or at least, sort of.
Vidalia explains that his wounds were too extensive for a proper resurrection, so for now his spirit is strenuously chained to his physical corpus. That way, the giant gash across his throat and the general lack of blood wouldn't bother him. On the plus side, this meant that he didn't need any food and with proper surgery he could swap his body parts for better ones.
But on the minus side, his existence was directly tied to the integrity of his body and thus his CON score. And he would no longer heal naturally nor by divine magic.

Rest of the day is wasted in shenanigans: Torrance has gone missing and when the party finally finds him, his hand has been mutilated by Sackcloth boy.
Gertrude is possessed by Vargas and almost strangles Wilbur to death. And no, she still doesn't believe in ghosts.
The party makes a coup as they detect absolutely no sense of self preservation from their entourage. "The Doge will hear about this" Gertrude protests.
"This place is a fucking death trap filled with ghosts and evil. You will get your important papers, but first you will be a good girl and wait outside or we will make you", says Boris.
"I outrank you!" Gertrude replies.
Boris doesn't bother replying. The petite woman is no match for him, so Gertrude, Torrance and Vidalia are tied up and left by the cart. Lydia has not caused any trouble, but hasn't been useful either, so she gets to go free as long as she stays outside and watches the others.
Having done this the party calls it a day.

Night goes by uneventfully, but Gilbert has trouble sleeping with the minotaur panting behind his ear the whole night.

Next day the party begins by investigating the basement. This is partly because of Lydia's request they'd inspect the manor's foundation and partly because it can be accessed from the backyard and so doesn't require entrance in the mansion proper.
They first descend into the meat cellar, where Eleana is assaulted by Sackcloth boy that had been hiding in a cupboard. This time the halfling was finished off rather easily, as it was still weakened from yesterdays fight. Always pragmatic, the party chopped and incinerated its remains.
Next room appeared to be some kind of laboratory with a polished copper ceiling. There they found scattered notes detailing some of the mansions ghosts and made acquaitance of an invisible nosferatu.
By make acquaintance, I mean that they saw it skulking about via reflection and when it didn't seem to do anything, they teased it ceaselessly. Poor monster.
This caused Evetta, spirit of a trapped and restless succubus, to take an interest in the party. She was especially intrigued by Petrus, who was stuck in a half life similar to her current state.
She made the first move using an ancient demon flirting technique of pinning the victim to the ground and administering one of her soul draining kisses.
To her surprise, Petrus didn't recoil in horror, but answered her adoration. He sucked Evettas tongue deeper in a grotesque french kiss and bit it off - losing hundreds of xp, but disturbing the succubus enough that she saw it best to retreat.

At this point I realised that my players were worse horrors than the poor ghosts and mutants hiding in the mansion. This horror story wasn't about a mansion full of the restless dead, but a roving band of demonic murderhoboes.

Continuing their search the party find a cell block and have another encounter with Quiet Annah and Vargas. This time they are prepared though, and Vargas is defeated by holy water and magic missiles. Annah doesn't appear hostile and instead tries to lead the PC's somewhere.
Following her cue, the PCs ignore the ghost of an elven prisoner and find a hidden room behind a tapestry. There they find treasure, royal papers sought by Gertrude and Annah's remains.
Her grievance satisfied, Annah finally moves on from this world and the party performed its first good deed in a long, long time.
While packing up the treasure to be moved, Reggie finally pays attention to the elven prisoner. It is too thirsty to provide information and when Reggie offers it a sip from his flask, the thankful spirit dissolves into a pile of white powder.
"Sweet! Cocaine!" Reggie squees and rubs the stuff into his gums. He discovers the hard way that the powder was acidic poison made by elves especially to kill humans. His face melts off and he falls down, dead.
... causing Polly, his parrot-familiar to explode into its true form!
Before the party even has a chance to mourn their longtime companion, they are assailed by a being made of wind and genitalia.
Petrus, Boris, Wilbur and Gilber manage to flee its molesting gusts, but Eleana and Kaylee are trapped.
After Eleana runs out of magic missiles and is slain, they have no weapons more capable of hurting it, so Kaylee makes a plan of desperation: she empties her powder horns into the wind and ignites them to cause a dust explosion that would hopefully disperse the otherwordly wind.
She succeeds too well and she is incinerated by the blast along with the beast.

Reggie, Eleana and Kaylee wake up in the ghost world. Reggie heads straight to the party to beg for resurrection, but Eleana wants to do some spectral sleuthing and drags the poor Kaylee with her. They do discover the source of the not-so-distant-anymore laughter: manor's original owner Countess Beauregarde, who now haunts the ghost world to serve her master.
Eleana and Kaylee try to fight, but their spirits are devoured by the malevolent wraith.

Reggie is more lucky and he manages to convince the party to perform another seance. There his luck runs out as the seance again attracts Castellan Vargas. Petrus manages to keep Vargas away using a wall of force, but accidentally also blocks the way for Reggie. This stalls the ritual enough for Beauregarde to track and devour Reggie allowing Vargas to take control of the pirate's burned corpse.
And as he's not very subtle ghost, he is put down and his spirit is finally defeated by a hit from Boris' enchanted hammer Echo Doom.

Shaken by their losses, the party nevertheless decides to carry on. They finish their sweep and find a humid laundry room with a tub of curiously hot water.
Gilbert, who had stuck to the sidelines thus far, suddenly desires a bath and tries to hop in. He's interrupted by Boris and Wilbur who, just to be sure, demand he tie a rope around himself, so he can be pulled away from whatever nasty biz is hiding in the tub.
He obliges, but when he steps in, he disappears leaving an empty noose float in the water.
The party never sees him again.

(What happened was that he was transported to another tub in another part of the cellar. As he was trying to regroup with the others, he ran into the twisted spirit of once-midwife Merigold, who mistook him into one of Countess' children. She nursed him by force and the curious qualities of her milk made Gilbert younger and younger until he really became a baby.
"Hey, a little help please?", Gilbert yelled to the ever-looming minotaur, but he never discovered whether it heard him or not. The party never found him, as they mistook his cries for just general spooky phenomena.)

Some posts earlier I had hoped that this adventure would remind my players of the meaning of fear and it had succeeded perfectly. Shaken by their losses, the PCs became careful and vent nowhere until the room or the corridor had been inspected through a mirror. Thus rest of the ghosts became easy to dispatch. And when they are about ready with the manor, they hear a loud slam, as the once impenetrable grand hall's doors slam open heralded by a demonic laughter.

By a coincidence another party arrives to the manor just before League has a chance enter the Hall: Lorenzo the Fool, a less famous member of the venetian Assassins guild has been sent by the doge's wife to assassinate Reggie Harlock for buggering her husband. Along the way he had met Father Benedict and two unnamed clerics who had been sent by Vatican to exorcise the manor.
The quartet is quickly inducted into the League of Extraordinary Opportunity and everyone heads into the Grand Hall.

Once inside, the demonic laughter begins anew and Boris starts having the worst constipation of his life. With the lowest Sanity of the group, he has become host to the Hand of Satan, who promptly attacks the party.
"Fuck you, Satan! We were supposed to be friends!" Boris yells, but his cries drown in the clash of battle.
("Does it count as a dwarf as it comes from Boris? Can we use Echo Doom on it?" Wilbur asks)
Satan puts up a good fight and manages to crush one of the clerics, send Wilbur into negatives and almost pulverise Petrus, but he falls before the combined might of the angry adventurers.
And with the Hands demise, the manor begins to shake and grow smaller. The adventurers see they are no longer welcome, grab those alive and run out just before Villa Cavallo blinks out of existence.

Exasperated, but alive, the party has little time to celebrate victory. Their horses are dead and the nearest hamlet is two weeks away by foot.
So they make their way back to Venice. Luckily they had prepared an overabundant supply of food and as they had fewer mouths to feed, there was no risk of starvation. Back home, Vidalia and Gertrude (grudgingly) support their tale and so the League was given their reward and they managed to stay in doge's good graces.
Lorenzo presented Reggies corpse to doge's wife and got his reward as well. Then he decided that he'd had enough of killing for money and joined properly joined the League to kill for treasure.
Benedict as well decided that he would best serve God by joining them as the League seemed to encounter satanic forces on a regular basis.

Then the group returns to Villa Grayskull to ponder their next move. After some debate they retrieve the Stygian rose from their vault and feed it to charred Reggie. Some wanted to save the rose, but Boris and Wilbur were insistent, Reggie's a founding member, after all.
To their astonishment, Reggie's burned and melted skin sloughs away revealing healthy skin. Rose crumbles, but the pirate is again among the living.
"I saw only darkness before me", he comments his brief visit to the other side.
Later, Wilbur puts up their old magic mirror and calls forth Lucifer.
"What the fuck, Lucifer!" I  thought we had a deal!" he demanded an explanation and when Lucifer had nothing more than vague excuses and mystical mumbo jumbo, they put the mirror away.
"The fucker's been lying to us each and every time. This is the last time we ask anything from it", said Boris, who wasn't convinced, when the thing tried to promise them treasures to make up for all the hassle.

Instead Boris convinces the others that their next expedition should be to the dwarven temple that they had located in swiss alps near a town named Altdorf.

And that's were things began to get weird.