The Shadow Over Lippok Play Report 1
Meg Cowfrog wanted to playtest her adventure, a dungeon for her Mesopotamian-inspired River Kingdoms setting, so the Sunsetters decided embark upon it. We did about half of it in the first session.
I am writing the first part after the first session, and will write the second part after the second session, so as of writing this I am not aware of what comes at the end or the fate of our characters.
Delve 1
The pitch for it was this:
A nightly terror afflicts Lippok, three days’ travel downriver by boat from Uruk. The village is small, little more than a waystop along the way to the larger settlements in flatter regions of the floodplain. But it is nevertheless nestled solidly beside the red fork of the river; it thought itself safe from unnatural dangers. You were not prepared for the shadow that comes each night to drain men of life with a single touch: their muscles spasming until they shrivel like raisins, their blood dried into a fine red powder within their bodies.
The first night, it killed six people—your cousins, friends, enemies alike. The second night it came for the blood bulls, raised for Lugal’s tithe, killing two of the beasts and three of the humans who leapt to defend them. They feared what they’d have to sacrifice in order to make up the difference to Lugal more than they feared the shadow.
It is the morning of the third day, and now everyone knows the shadow will keep coming back each night. You have gathered beside the river to find the place it flees to when the sun rises and deal with it however you can.
With that background, we were set free to investigate around the village. Meg gave us the option to start at the dungeon directly, and initially we refused it, but eventually we accepted. It didn't seem like there was much to be found in the village that wasn't already given in the pitch. Meg said that, in a campaign, the players would be expected to find the dungeon on their own.
We arrived by day at the dungeon, around noon. It was discussed whether we should arrive at night, when the shadow would presumably not be around, or during the day, but we went with the second option as it sounded more interesting.
Arriving on the outside of the dungeon, we found c. 22 otters in the river competing amongst themselves to be the ones to taste the honey that was dripping from a beehive which dangled from a riparian tree. Two of them were preparing to climb the tree but they were too feeble and incapable to do so.
Malachi, played by Mr. Mann, can speak to birds and the other creatures of the sky, as well as balance on anything, so he climbed the tree to notify the bees of the otters and ask about the shadow. The Bee Queen didn't tell us much that we didn't already know, however, but we did feel better about it. She also told us that the river in these parts was covered by clouds of mosquitos at dusk. After thanking her, we went in.
The entrance to the dungeon was ovular and on the riverbank, and the river itself was already infiltrating it so most of the floor had ankle-deep water. Besides, the entire structure was slanted to the east. Meg explained that this was because the structure, when it had been built, had grooves and tiny canals on the floorw which the river water would be directed to pass through the entire structure and then flow back to the river. Praise Lugal!
First room has 3 doors.
A bronze one to the east which was littered with otter shit, now covered in crabs, and had more water. Unlocked, sediment keeps it open;
A wooden one to the west, where the water stopped and smelled heavily of petroleum, which in this world is associated with the Underworld. Unlocked;
And what originally had been a plaster wall to the south, depicting a very masculine man wearing a helmet with the horns of an auroch and an obsidian-tipped spear. We didn't know this at the time, but this guy is important. The "plot" of the dungeon, so to say, seems to rely on his figure. This was originally some sort of secret passage, but the otters had burrowed a hole through the bottom.
We peeped inside each of the rooms and decided to go south first, to try and loop back around to the other two doors.
As we carefully broke the plaster, we noticed that the eyes of the aurochs-man were hollow and could be used to pull the door open.
The next room was an intersection with two fluid channels carved into it, flowing east. It had 3 doors:
Bronze one to the east depicting a smiling woman holding a swaddled baby, a dove was on her shoulder. It was once sealed but the river seemed to have opened it already;
Bronze one to the west, sealed, depicting a different woman with bangles, remarkably with less detail than the other woman;
And a plaster wall to the south, similar to the one we just broke through.
Also in this intersection was a fat otter who had clearly gorged itself on some fish. It threw fish bones at us, looking intimidated, so we just stood to the side and let it pass - not before stomping after it to intimidate it further. The otters, Meg told us, were renowned bullies, and were known to kill people if they showed weakness, but these ones had done us no harm, and we didn't mean any harm in turn.
We deliberated a bit. We didn't want to go deeper in the dungeon, to the south, and we didn't want to break open sealed doors since it seemed like the very issue that got us in this mess in the first place had been someone messing around where they shouldn't. We weren't here to get loot or monster XP, we're here to right wrongs!
At this point we turned back and went back to the first room, and through the wooden door. We didn't get very far: a couple of faceless Shades of the dead appeared in the corridor and aged my character 6 years. I failed a check and my character started panicking, faced with his own mortality, and so we backed away from the room. The Shades stopped at the doorway, where there was one of those river channels I mentioned. Useful!
We peeped inside the bronze door and went through half of it. A fresco on the wall depicted people killing themselves, cannibalising their comrades, murdering, etc, doing all sorts of taboo of that sort. The water here got deeper too, and we detected something approaching in the water very slowly, so we backed away, not wanting to fight something in the water.
We decided to go south and south again in the intersection this time.
This room was similar to the first one, but it only had a door to the east and a hole to the south, where the river was flowing to. By the side of the hole was a small frond of Tamarix, which the Heretic Puabi - played by Sahh - could tell was an indicator of the Underworld. A symbol of its supposed guardian, even though the faith of Lugal held that there was no such thing.
The door to the east was bronze, open, and depicted the man with the aurochs helmet praising Lugal. We went through it and found a long, straight corridor with some frescoes, and another bronze door at the end. It depicted the man with the aurochs helmet either praising together with many people, or praising with them. We went inside.
Here we found what was clearly his tomb. A sarcophagus with the man himself carved on the lid stood in the middle of the room, on top of a stone platform surrounded by those little canals with protect against the undead. At the foot of the platform, the statues of two aurochs covered in lapis lazuli, and at the head, a mural of the aurochs-headed man posing with his head bare, his helmet under his arm, and without his spear.
At this point we were very intrigued. We had conjectured that one of the women at the other bronze doors was his wife, but we didn't know who the other one was. We got inside and carefully rummaged through the room.
Inside the sarcophagus we found bones and a seemingly very precious ring, which we left behind. Interestingly, the bones were not human, but rather those of a few pigs and maybe a chicken, so it seems like this was a fake tomb.
Malachi had been balanced on top of my character's sword while I explored the room (he's weightless when balancing on things) and from above he noticed that the image to the east was tilted inwards. After some more investigating we also found that one of the aurochs statues was made of clay and could be turned. Turns out that the mural was a hidden passage with a stairway behind it, but we didn't go inside just yet, we had more to do.
First off, that bronze-doored room with the woman and the dove had no entrance from here, which we thought it would, so we went back in there.
It was a pretty big, barrel-vaulted room with rich frescos. Eight pillars sculpted in the shape of trees with many songbirds framed the image of the aurochs-helmeted man looking young, also lacking his helmet and spear here, along with his wife and swaddled child. Verdant paintings of forest and woodland adorned the walls, and the ceiling depicted the night sky and the moon fighting with the sun and the day-sky.
Malachi, who has affinity with birds, noticed that despite having many songbirds, there weren't doves here, despite there being one on the door, so he searched for one and found it carved out of one of the pillars. It looked like it could be depressed, and when he did it, he found a pair of wedding bands, one of which was clearly larger than the other. We pocketed it for safekeeping, seemed too important an object to leave here to sink with the rest of the tomb.
As we were investigating we heard wet stomping outside, so we ran to investigate and found a large salamander staring at us a bit nervous and confused. We let it pass and it went in its merry way.
The other order of business was figuring out that dead-ended room, A3. It didn't loop back to the main tomb, so we figured it either took us further into the dungeon, or be a dead-end (which it was).
Going inside we examined the death frescos while keeping an eye out for the thing in the water. We noticed the men looked like they were pushing against the very borders of the fresco. Thinking this might be magic, I started ripping off chunks of the border. Unfortunately this disturbed the water and we didn't notice the large, soft-shelled turtle come up and bite my ankle for half my health.
Yelping like Mel Blanc, we fell into a brief combat. I missed my attack but Malachi landed a good hit with the spear, so the turtle retreated back to the end of the room.
We didn't feel like killing the poor bastard; we had nothing to gain from it and the thing itself was just an ambush predator, can't kill an animal for going along with its nature. Plus, at this point we had an inkling of what the room was and checked to see if the door was somehow weighted from the inside to keep shut, which Meg confirmed. This was originally a trap, the door would be weighted by the slanting, slam shut, and trap tomb robbers to die, that's what the frescos were depicting.
With that cleared up, and not wanting to face the Shades, we steeled ourselves to go down the stairs behind the tomb of the aurochs-helmeted man. This is where the session ended.
Further thoughts
This was unexpectedly fun for me, as a renowned dungeon-hater. Usually, whenever I get inside a room in a dungeon that has even more doors to check, a part of me gets anxious to finish exploring the damn thing and covering every nook and cranny so we can get the hell out. I'm not the kind of person who loves fiddling with nonsense or checking which side of the door the hinges are on, I want to get to the interesting bit - be it a boss fight, treasure, or character goal stuff outside the dungeon. To me, the dungeon often feels either like a formality necessitated by the quinquagintennial inertia of D&D, or an interstitial space which exists solely to get XP and then get out to do more interesting things.
This wasn't like that. I think the framing of it changed the entire tone to me. Like I said, we weren't here to Get Rich Quick, or to Vanquish Evil Foes; our village was attacked by a shadow and we wanted to find out why that happened and how to stop it. This is infinitely more interesting! We didn't get into unnecessary fights and we were genuinely interested in learning about the life of the aurochs-headed, obsidian-speared man who lived here, and through that we started learning and getting interested on the setting.
We took things very slowly, Meg already DMs in a bit of a slower fashion, but we really got on our bellies and crawled through this, and it was pretty pleasant. Slowly learning about how the canals on the floor protected us against the undead, trying to piece together what was the story of the aurochs-helmeted man, I even started feeling sympathy for him. This guy isn't even an NPC, his whole presence is through paintings on the walls, but because we were focused on it, it almost felt like we were exploring different chapters of his life and getting to know him and why he received such a massive tomb.
I'm looking forward to finishing it next session... on...
THE SUNSETTER SIDE STORY!!!
