Kaldera of the Sickle-Dancer, Session 1
Shadowdark, Level 4
Into the Caldera
Four adventurers descended into a smoking volcanic caldera to stop the Sickle Dancer from rebuilding her demonic cult. The heat was already unbearable before they found the first monster.
Faewick the Duelist led the way into a massive chamber of charred treasure piles and black stone columns, discovering a set of magic finger cymbals from the hellish city of Dis. Almost immediately, a 20-foot armored telecobra burst from the rubble. It ripped Gadmoki (Knight of St Ydris)'s bastard sword right out of his hands with telekinesis and turned it against him, floating the blade beside him like a threat.
Gadmoki tried to draw on demonic power to hypnotize the snake. Failed. Taking a diabolical mishap for his trouble, foaming at the mouth as dark energy withered him from the inside. Arun the Cleric, talking to his staff, threw a lasso and rolled a natural 20, pinning the cobra's jaws shut against a pillar. Faewick carved her initials witha flourish into its stone hide before Arun finished it off with a second nat-20 Smite, divine light spikes pinning the serpent to the ground.
Deeper in, the dungeon got nastier. Faewick grabbed a basin off a dais and triggered an Indiana Jones cage trap, descending toward a magma pit. Gadmoki crowbarred the cage bars apart; Arun jammed his 10-foot pole into the mechanism to buy time. Meanwhile, a ballista manned by undead belly dancers started firing chain-attached bolts — one hit Arun and dragged him toward the ledge. Another nearly pulled Gadmoki into the magma. He survived on a nat-20, ripping the bolt back hard enough to jam the ballista for a round.
Herald the Seer joined the party mid-dungeon — a grubby old man banished from his village for failing to fix the dying crops. He hit the ground running, casting Read the Runes to warn the party away from that cursed bowl of baby teeth, then dropping Evoke Rage on Faewick when the next fight started.
That fight: a four-armed sickle-wielding dancing sentinel, singing and moving in a constant figure-eight pattern. She carved up Gadmoki repeatedly. Arun healed him three separate times to keep him standing. Faewick parried a killing blow and landed a poisoned taunting strike. Finally, Gadmoki buried his bastard sword in the sentinel's hip — and she dropped a smoke bomb and vanished, escaping across the cavern wall above the magma.
The volcano rumbled again. The heat spiked. Mundane metal armor became too hot to wear. The gang stood in front of a pair of massive glass doors full of magma with skeletal mermaids swimmng in the magma...
Players reported loving the change of pace from Delta Green, the rules-lightness and the GM flexibility. Some wished for better dice and noted the game didn't feel as deadly as advertised...partly thanks to Arun's cleric keeping everyone alive.
I loved it, but mostly because of how simple a pre-written dungeon is to run in Shadowdark. Even with VTT setup, this was a very very low-prep adventure for me.
