Dungeon Merlin
Run 2026/03/24 with 4 other players in person.
Characters present: Bin Go, Edmund Blackadder, Henrick Candleswick, Rowan Malksmilk
In-Game time covered: 6:30 PM of Hayme, 3rd of Symswald - 6:00 PM of Eggfast, 6th of Symswald
Player-Safe Session Report
If you are a player in this campaign, don’t click on (or scroll to and read) the footnotes!
Since Bin Go and Edmund weren’t there for session 2, we quickly went through what they did during that time. That is, they each lost some money to their lifestyle expenses, but also heard two useful rumours during this time:
- Lord Malbleat has a magical book he uses to control the minds of his enemies.
- There’s a fairy lord in the east of Dolmenwood that keeps unicorns to hunt on his hunting grounds.
Afterwards, as we did last session, we opened on Rowan in front of the Bladesmith’s door. From him, Rowan learned that the sword that slew his father belonged to a fairy lord called Herzog Mai-Fleur. Mai-Fleur is said to be the best hunter in all of Dolmenwood, and his “wild hunt” can often be seen tearing through the woods. Though why Mai-Fleur would kill Rowan’s father, the bladesmith couldn’t tell.
Rowan then went back to the Hornstoat’s Inn, and the party was ready for their first day of real travel. Their goal was to search the Hex to the north-east for the statue of St. Pastery1 the curate had talked about. So they decided to leave Lankshorn via a road to the north.
As they did so, they noticed that there were a lot of crows gathering in the south of town, around where the graveyard is.2 And then Henrick noticed a soup ladle hitting him in the head. Ghrend’s mother wasn’t very amused to have her sweet boy come home besmirched with blood! She told the party to stay away from Ghrend, and then marched off angrily.
The road to the north turned out to be a road that went past a complex of crypts. The guards there informed the party that this is the personal graveyard of the Malbleat family, and that following the road further would lead them to Lord Malbleat’s Redwraith Manor, and that it went only north.
This is why they decided to simply head straight into the thick woods to the southwest of the road here. Eventually, this led them to the Trothstone — a plinth flanked by two monoliths. In town, they had already heard that this is where Breggle often come to marry3. Since they had only one hour of travel time left in the day, they decided to make camp here.
This was our first encounter with the camping procedure, which I like a lot, but which is pretty involved. Especially if everyone at the table goes through it for the very first time. People have to look for firewood, build a campfire, cook, tell jokes, keep watch, etc., all to accumulate bonuses on their constitution check which determines if they manage to get a good night’s sleep. I decided it would be fun if we used the optional rule to check if someone falls asleep on their watch, which would derail the whole thing.4 Of course someone did. And then a witch owl showed up, waking them.5 Rowan offered her the dead mouse he had gotten from King Pusskin, but the owl didn’t much care for it, spitting the mouse into Rowan’s face and flew away.
Rowan didn’t get a good night’s sleep, but everyone else managed to.
The next day, the party decided to split up. Rowan and Henrick would search the hex for food, while Edmund and Bin Go searched for signs of the statue.
Heading into the direction the owl flew, Edmund and Bin Go soon found a little cave inside a hill. Edmund’s Firelight spell revealed it to be occupied by 4 witch owls, as well as a vaguely human-shaped stone in the very back of the cave. Believing this to be the statue they were looking for, they decided to attack the owls, and Bin Go fired a first arrow at one of them.
Meanwhile, Rowan and Henrick were creeping through the undergrowth, when they suddenly heard people up ahead. They hid themselves, and observed five shorthorns, dressed like bandits, also creeping through the undergrowth. The breggles didn’t hear or see them, but were clearly up to no good.
Back at the cave, it quickly became clear that Edmund and Bin Go had tragically underestimated the owls. The owls made short work of them, tearing through their flesh, leading to the first two character deaths of the campaign.6
Rowan and Henrick camped another night at the Trothstone, waiting for their friends. In vain, of course. The next day, they went looking for them, and quickly found what was left of their bodies in front of the cave.
They improvised a stretcher to carry the bodies, and then erased any footprints in front of the cave as to not alert the Breggle they spotted yesterday to the potential value of the cave’s contents. They also split most of the items their fallen comrades carried among them, and buried the rest very obviously at the Trothstone.
Heading back into town, they came upon a group of 5 priests on their way to High-Ankle, who were a bit weirded out at first, but in the end promised to pray for Edmund and Bin.
In town, they left the bodies with the church, who informed them that the burial would be in two days, on Colly, the 8th of Symswald. And when heading back across the marketplace to the Hornstoat’s Inn, they spotted the cart and driver that brought them here almost a week ago coming down the road again, with two Breggles in the back — these would be Edmund Blackadder II. and Bun Go.
DM Notes
If you are a player in this campaign, you probably want to stop here!
What Worked Well
- For now, I didn’t let any of the random encounters be outright hostile or dangerous, but rather placed them at a safe distance or let them “play with their prey” rather than attacking immediately. This gelled well with the rolls, so no blorb lost, but it also allows me to use these in more interesting ways later on.
What Could’ve Gone Better
- Rolling for random encounters is still a bit of a process right now, as I’m juggling multiple tables. The good thing is that the official DM screen contains all the tables I need for this.
- I’m not entirely sure if I did a good job signalling danger.
Footnotes
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I misremembered this when I told the players this rumour last session. As written, the statue is of St. Nuncy. It’s not important, but I still think that I’ll simply reveal the statue to be of Nuncy instead of Pastery, and say that the rumour was only partly true. ↩
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This is something I wanted to point out last session but forgot, even though I put it on my calendar. The players quickly realised that this meant the carcasses were decomposing, but still chose to ignore it. ↩
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As written, it’s only Longhorn Breggle who come here to marry. Another thing I didn’t remember when I told the players about it. ↩
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The rules inform us that this adds “an element of slapstick and danger”. ↩
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This was actually entirely random, and the first “real” random encounter I rolled during this campaign. It’s amazing that it should gel so well with what came next. ↩
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I think this actually hurt me more than the players. But I really didn’t want to pull any punches here or anything. They were simply outnumbered and -classed by the owls, no way around it. I really tried to signal that this is a dangerous situation beforehand, but I think I could’ve done a better job here. ↩