Iron & Gold
Lost in the Borderlands is based on the module Borderlands of Adventure, by J (who I presume is Walter J. Jones Jr., the copyright holder) and published by New Realms Publishing as NRP 31001.
It was written for Labyrinth Lord and I have converted to Iron & Gold by Precis Intermedia Games. It follows a few other adventures with these characters.
Lost in the Borderlands
Previous Chapter 7. Inside The Old Keep —=— Next Chapter 9. Getting Out
8. Hrelgi’s Side Quest[1]
The floor gave way, and Hrelgi tumbled down.[2] She managed to land on her feet but spikes of hot pain still shot up her legs. She mumbled the words to the spell she had known since she was…a toddler, since she could talk,…and healed herself.
However, the lantern had fallen out of her hands and worse luck, fallen closed. A tiny amount of light came through the hole in the ceiling, but it was really just a lighter shade of murk. Maybe if she were down here an hour, her eyes would adapt, but for now, she needed that light. Without that light, she had only the three spells she had memorized, and two weren’t useful here.
She took one careful step and nearly bruised her foot against something. Probably something that fell from the ceiling, she told herself. She lifted her feet high and slowly made her way across the room, to get some idea of what the space was like.
If I can find a wall, I can crawl along the floor, trying to find the lantern.[3] In only a dozen cautious steps, she found a wall.[4] She picked a direction, and started moving, shuffling her feet this time and bending over to examine everything her feet could move.
From upstairs, she heard Felewin. “Hrelgi! Can you hear us?”
She kept moving, but yelled back, “Yes, but I can’t find the lantern! I dropped it and it closed!”
“Are you hurt?” Uthrilir called.
“Was, but I fixed that. Here, this might be—” She picked up a box. It felt like the lantern, and she cracked open the door, and light flooded out.
There was a chittering sound.
There was talking from the boys upstairs, but she couldn’t make it out. She looked to one side, then the other. Nothing. She looked up.
Slithering down from the ceiling was a huge maggot thing, with spindly arms of some kind. “Hrelgi!” shouted Uthrilir from upstairs.
The maggot thing blocked that end of the corridor.
“Found the lamp,” she called. “Gotta run. Maggot as big as an ox.”
“Forget the lantern!” Uthrilir said. “Get out!”
“Carcass scavenger!” Ninefingers shouted. “Mind the stingers!”
Hrelgi was already running. The corridor turned left and the remainder was lined with cell doors: three on each side.
Maybe it can’t reach me if I’m inside a cell! she thought. The first cell was unsuitable: the door was broken. The second was on the other side of the corridor, and had an obvious carcass-scavenger-sized hole in the ceiling.
The next cell might do: the door looked intact, it was ajar, and held nothing but some bones, filthy straw, and a wooden bowl. They had been there so long that the smell was no worse than in the rest of the area.
She grabbed the door to see if it moved.
It did not; the chittering sound got louder, and she kept moving.
The next cell had a key still in the door’s keyhole, but the door was broken. She grabbed the key and ran but was stopped by the end of the corridor; she headed to the last cell, which was occupied by three relatively fresh corpses. It’s good they haven’t been eaten by something called a carcass scavenger. The door was closed, and she quickly fit the key into it, unlocked it, and entered. The door shut easily if noisily, and she stepped over the corpses to the back of the cell. She scanned the ceiling for openings and found none.
Safe. Unless these corpses rise up as zombies.
The carcass scavenger reached the door. It moved in a flowing motion, rather like a caterpillar, and its skin looked moist and slimy. The mandibles clicked and it adjusted position so some of the spiky arms could reach into the cell.
She held her breath and pressed against the back of the cell.
The stingers came close…but if she pressed against the wall, they couldn’t quite reach her. She could smell the venom on the stingers: they were so full that they dripped. She very carefully set the lantern on her head, turned to look at one side, and flipped pages in her grimoire.
There. There were the words for the life drain spell she had used before. Her voice trembled as she read it off.[5] The arms became less searching. She tried again but mispronounced one of the words.
The carcass scavenger moved and tried to flow up the door. She stopped and took a deep breath of bad dungeon air, and then tried again.
The arms stopped moving, but they were still there. The venom still glistened on the tips, ready to spear her if she moved wrong.
Hrelgi flipped pages.[6] Ah. She settled on a spell to move the thing, if her magic was strong enough.
Hrelgi cast the spell and shoved the carcass scavenger across the corridor, but then stopped. The venom-tipped arms still stayed through the door, blocking her from getting near the exit. Still, now she could sit in most of the cell.
She looked at the three corpses. That one was clearly a fighter: mail and sword and shield. That one was probably a thief or monk of some kind. But middle one….that one had a grimoire.
That made her decision. She avoided the arms, and grabbed the grimoire. It was in a holder like she used; she got the grimoire out and flipped pages. The name was of an ethnicity unfamiliar to her, but most of the text was familiar, and all magic used the same symbols.
She put the grimoire next to hers.
What else are you carrying, human wizard? He or she hadn’t been armed with more than a dagger, so the magic must be powerful…or these three came here underequipped. She searched the corpse.
Tucked in the tunic was a scroll. She glanced at it and recognized the symbol for ‘image,’ so it probably dealt with senses. Good; she didn’t know that sphere of magic at all. The belt pouch held a pen and a set of nibs, a dried-up jar of ink, a tinderbox, and two sealed potion bottles. Judging by the symbols in the wax seals, one was a healing potion and the other was holy water. Because they had been wax sealed, the fluid was still fluid.
She checked the contents of the backpack. The food was gone to mold, but beautifully wrapped; the magic user had been a human, yes, but Hrelgi decided that she had been female. Hrelgi felt kinship with her. The wineskin had a small quantity of wine that smelled as if it had gone to vinegar. There was a sack of coins, a mallet, and two wooden stakes.
Stakes? You were looking for something bad, she thought. Then she flipped open the bag of coins.
All silver.
Oh, they were definitely looking for something bad.
The wight, maybe? Wights are affected by silver. Or the vampire rumored to be in the area.
She spent a little time in contemplation, and then searched the other bodies. With them she didn’t care so much.
The fighter was, well, a fighter. It had armor and arms that maybe Felewin would like (though the armor was too small for him), and a pouch with jewels. She decided she didn’t like this fighter much at all. Besides moody food, the backpack held 3 torches, a tinderbox, and a flask of oil. The torches were wax-soaked rushes wired to wooden sticks.
Hm. Did none of them carry a lantern? They had oil, but no lantern?
Hrelgi let the fighter’s body fall back (there was a hint of a squelch and an awful smell) and looked at the third, the one she thought might be a monk or a thief. Leather armor and a knife — not any of the monastic traditions she knew. A thief, then.
This one carried thieves’ tools in his belt pouch (they looked like the ones that Ninefingers carried). Also a tinderbox, the ubiquitous flask of oil, and two beeswax candles (?). He had carried a crossbow and bolts; presumably Felewin would be glad of those. Besides the moldy or vinegary victuals, his backpack held a long coil of hemp rope, three iron spikes, a hammer, and a crowbar.
Hrelgi settled in for a wait, occasionally yelling for Uthrilir so he would know she was still alive.
Monsters
Carcass Scavenger
| Abilities | Fitness 3 Awareness 3 Creativity 0 Reasoning 0 Influence 0 |
|---|---|
| Skills | Athletics 5 (≤8), Brawling 5 (≤8), Stealth 6 (≤9) |
| Gimmicks | Musclebound, Oversized, Natural Armor[3], Special Weapon (Stingers: Venom vs fit+Composure ≥ diff 2) |
| Weapons | Stingers |
| Armour | Natural(3) |
Game Mechanics
[1] Mythic suggested theme: Inform Magic (PC Positive)
[2] We’re going to say Hrelgi fell 18 feet, and she made her Athletics roll with a margin of 1; say that subtracts 1 injury from the 3 the fall would have given her. Her leather armor, miraculously, spares her another point of injury, so she only takes 1. One of her memorized spells is healing herself, so she does it fine (margin 5) and makes the overheat check by a margin of 4.
[3] Rolled a d4 for direction (N,E,S,W) and got a 3.
[4] Left or right, with her back against the wall? 1d2: 2, right. (East, as we’re looking at the map.)
[5] Hrelgi rolls 16 for the spell; we assume it’s +2 Diff because the carcass scavenger is big, but it’s +0 for distance. A roll of 16 makes it at difficulty 16. It has lost 4 health levels. She rolls 17 for the Reasoning+Composure, and difficulty is 12. She doesn’t make the next one (11), but she does make the R+C roll, with 16 difficulty 13. She does make the third one (9+5+4 vs difficulty 14). She doesn’t make the R+C roll (gets 13 instead of 14). So she takes 1 fat but kills the carcass scavenger.
[6] Hrelgi’s going to try Fabrica motus to shove the carcass scavenger away from the door. She rolls 16, which is enough, given the difficulty of +2. So apparently she can move it 4 meters.
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