The adventurers continued exploring. They remembered that they now possessed some colored door cards, and began opening the numerous portals keyed to “Jet Black”.
These were more of the chambers of the long-gone inhabitants, mostly trashed, but with occasional trinkets to be found among the debris.
Prevously…
What We’re Playing
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
During this adventure walkthrough / playthrough, I use primarily the original module, with some extras lifted from Goodman Games fantastic Original Adventures Reincarnated hardcover.
Amazon | DriveThruRPG (PDF)
Gorgeous hardcover Original Adventures Reincarnated #3: Expedition to The Barrier Peaks at Amazon
NEW! Quests from The Infinite Staircase adapts Expedition (and other classic adventures) into 5e (Amazon)
VTT Maps are by Jon Pintar. He’s kindly extended permission for me to use them in the game and session posts. (Link)
Treasure List for Empty Rooms
This derelict space ship in Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is massive. An early example of a megadungeon. Two sessions in, and the group has explored only a small portion of level 1.
There is a sea of unnumbered rooms; Gary Gygax describes them in one paragraph:
These rooms are typically apartments, activity rooms (those with doors which require no color card), and utility/maintenance/storerooms. Unless noted by a number code each such area is thoroughly looted, has some jumbled furniture or rotting goods therein, and from 0-3 (d4, 4=0) inanimate skeletons of generally human appearance. Everything is worthless or in bad condition, the furnishings plastic or metal, and only bits of rag or odd pieces of junk can be found.
You’ll see debates online as to the design philosophy and utility of empty rooms in old school dungeons. There are proponents and detractors. Some advise the DM place their own fixed encounters, or roll from a table. The recent OAR hardcover added extra encounters in some of the rooms. Dyson made new maps reducing size of the ship.
To preserve the old school experience, I’m using the original S3 layout. Most of the empty rooms, I’m keeping empty. I’ll stock a few of my own encounters in a handful of chambers, but most will remain empty. I allow the players to comb through the rooms, looking for tech treasures.
Gamma World, 1st edition (DriveThruRPG PDF / Reprint) has a wonderful D100 table, last page of the book, of various tech items. Most are incomprehensible, and not terribly useful. Some are dangerous. All are interesting, and fun to describe to the primitive adventurers. Here are objects that turned up in the rooms thus far:
- Boxed engine tune-up kit for a 2302 Chrysler-General model 407 moonflier – good condition
- Metal box containing 24 50 cal. machine gun cartridges
- Stopwatch – good condition
- Steel drum – full of intensity 6 radioactive wastes, markings rusted off
The stopwatch I described as “a palm-sized circular object, metal cased with a clear cover on the front, symbols inside running around the circumference, with two lines pointing at the symbols, and a twist knob at the top“. The characters discovered that the knob at the top, if turned repeatedly, seemed to power the device. Once it was running, Del-Li the gnome theorized it was akin to a highly-miniaturized version of water clocks he’d seen.
Anyhow, that’s one way to make the empty rooms interesting and memorable.
A few Vegepygmies turn into a Horde
While the party was investigating the empty chambers, Tagren was wandering ahead. A portal opened next to him. Out stepped a particularly large Vegepygmy.
Tagren could see into the room, the smaller vegepygmies mostly cowering at the sight of the half-orc, who’d become legendary for eating the fungoid animates [See last session. We even programmed his unique attack style into his character sheet!].
The Chief and the dog-like Thornies were not demoralized however. The fight was on.
And more vegepygmies rushed down the adjacent hallways toward the party. Some came from the south.
The party was confident. They’d fought these little guys before. Not just here, but back at the tower as well. They went down quick, and were usually unable to land blows on the party.
The chief went down quick.
Wilhelm Pembroke sent a Fireball down a hallway, incinerating 15 of them at once.
More kept coming. They were in a battle frenzy. Another Fireball. More vegepygmies replaced their burned comrades. Another Fireball. The gap was filled again.
The party – while slaying the fungoids by the dozen – were starting to take hits. Their spells were finite. And there was no end in sight.
Yebarinscrud cast Spirit Guardians around himself, and the party pushed forward to channel the creatures in the hallway.
The vegepygmies, though nonverbal, made plenty of noise moving en masse. The party realized they’d only slain a small fraction of them.
One of the ship’s metal golems arrived on the scene, and stopped. It seemed to be sizing up the situation.
Continued next session!
A note on vegepygmies
Vegepygmies were introduced in Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and were standardized in the Monster Manual 2. They carried forward through the years into Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.
The 5e version is much more dangerous than its predecessors. The modern version regenerates! They’re basically little trolls, only truly dying by fire.
I only played the Vegepygmy Chief as regenerating, and he revivified 3 times before being burned down. Just imagine if this horde all did that…
Swords & Stitchery blog has a great essay about the horrors of vegepygmies! I’m going to channel that more next time.
See also:
Expedition’s Cousin!
Another time the party held their ground…