Deep Carbon Observatory adventure log - Session 19

Characters and Retainers at the start of the session: 

• Ash - Xiaverine, Level 2 Grimalkin
• James - Tomkin, Level 4 Hunter
• Marcus - Melysee, Level 5 Knight
• Peter - Chadwick, level 1 Mage
• Ythan - Clement, Level 5 Enchanter
• Max (Hunter, level 2) follows Clement.
• Petra (Thief, level 2) follows Clement.
• Ella (Bard, level 2) follows Clement.

The Giant is Death, Death to the Giant!

The session opened with the party scattered across the Observatory. Clement and Tomkin stood at the base of the Weighing Station. Xiaverine lingered below with the Salt Dryads. The rest—Melysee, Chadwick, and their companions—remained in the Mirror Cell, still carrying the unease of what they had glimpsed there.

Those in the Mirror Cell chose caution and began retracing their steps toward the Nightingale Hall. Hearing movement below, they descended the Weighing Station to reunite with Clement and Tomkin.

Elsewhere, Xiaverine crossed the Nightingale Chain shaft and slipped into the Geo-Samples room. From there, he climbed to a chamber stacked high with crates. Ever curious, he scrambled atop the pile and pried at one of the boxes—only to awaken what hid within. A roll of precious silk burst free, propelled across the floor by skeletal thumbs, scuttling like a monstrous textile centipede. It hissed and lunged.

Xiaverine did not stand his ground. He retreated swiftly to the Salt Dryads’ chamber, positioning himself at the doorway with the crystalline figures behind him. The creature followed but hesitated at the threshold, unsettled by the presence of multiple humanoids. It stalked the edge of the Nightingale shaft instead, hissing and twitching. A well-placed crossbow bolt and the threatening flare of Xiaverine’s lantern were enough to drive it off, and the silk horror retreated upward along the chain.

Here I made an error reading the map. Xiaverine should have reached the Hall of Silk; instead, I made him reachthe Boxed Art section. When I realised the mistake, I did not retcon. I simply swapped the locations of the two rooms. For context, in my prep, I chose to change Hall of Silk: in my game, the Cludcraddle Golems seek to retrieve the Tapestry of Pain, which is instead hidden inside the Boxed Art section.

Back at the Weighing Station, Clement and Tomkin advanced cautiously to the Cervit storage. There, they found only a pool of Albert’s blood from the previous session—no body, no monster. They gathered the lamellae already stacked and began collecting more.

Greed and misfortune converged.

They failed to notice the faint, unnatural snoring drifting from above, and they made just enough noise to wake it.

Canonically, the Giant should not sleep. But when it devoured Albert in the previous session, it also swallowed the kilogram of opium the woodgrue had carried for a long time—loot from one of the Crows. I ruled the drugged colossus would sleep for 1d6 hours. The die showed six. Yet its rest was light and easily broken, and its stupor imposed a penalty on its attacks and saves.

The Giant

The adventurers chose to flee. Tomkin was swift. Clement was not. Laden with Cervit, he stumbled as the Giant’s vast arm burst through the Nightingale shaft and seized him mid-stride. Bones cracked audibly as the creature squeezed.

The killing blow did not come from the Giant.

Petra, trying to shoot the hand that held her master’s limp body, critically missed. Her arrow struck Clement instead.

The Magpies, desperate, resolved at least to recover the body—and the treasure it carried. They hurled themselves at the titanic hand, inflicting enough pain to force the creature to shift its grasp. But the Giant responded by seizing Melysee. One squeeze brought the knight to death’s threshold. With Clement dead and Melysee near crushed, the spectre of total annihilation loomed.

The party rallied. Every blow fell upon the hand, crushing Melysee. Somehow, they forced it open. She dropped free, barely alive. The Magpies fled up the spiral stairs of the Weighing Station to the Nightingale Hall as the Giant began climbing the chain after them.

In the Hall, retreat turned into audacity.

Chadwick unrolled a scroll and cast Passwall, but instead of carving a doorway, he used it to sever the Nightingale Chain itself while the Giant clung to it. The colossal chain tore free, crashing down the shaft and dragging the Giant with it. The monster managed to arrest its fall before plummeting into oblivion, but not before suffering terrible damage.

Passwal should only work on stone, but that was a cool and creative way of using a spell. I decided to go with it. Using their objects and the environment to level the plainfield against overpowered enemies is exactly how I want my players to behave.

The snapping of the Nightingale Chain by Ythian

Down with the Salt Dryads, Xiaverine vowed to kill the monster and retrieve Nacla's heart, exited their hall and attempted to hit the creature from below with his crossbow. Immediately after his shot, the mastodontic chain gave way, dropping through the shaft, accompanied by the giant moans of pain and drips of black, tar-thick blood. He immediately claimed credit before the astonished Dryads, who rewarded him with a dagger of salt crystal and urged him to finish the beast and retrieve Nacla’s heart.

Xiaverine had no intention of dying heroically. He stepped out boldly—then slipped into the Geo-Samples room opposite and concealed himself. While hiding, he manoeuvred a heavy stone rod into position near the shaft.

Above, the wounded Giant resumed its climb.

The Magpies, thinking quickly, poured oil onto the mechanism that turned the massive wheels supporting the broken stump of the chain. They heaved. The wheel shifted just enough. The precariously balanced links—each the size of a man—slid free and cascaded into the shaft onto the ascending Giant. More moans. More blood.

At last, the creature began to retreat, descending to nurse its wounds. As it passed Xiaverine’s hiding place, the grimalkin waited. He let it drop two floors lower before pushing the stone rod into the shaft. It struck the Giant’s shoulder, unbalancing the already weakened colossus. The monster lost its grip.

It fell. The darkness below swallowed it.

Xiaverine returned to the Salt Dryads triumphant—only to see several of them dive into the shaft in search of Nacla’s heart. He then explored the lower chamber and discovered it filled with shells of strange and varied kinds. After careful searching, he found a completely transparent shell of a human-sized predatory shrimp—awkward, cumbersome, and undoubtedly valuable. He dragged it laboriously back toward the Dryads’ hall.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Magpies, elated by victory, explored the greenhouse above the Cervit storage. There, they recovered four luminous, alien crystalline micro-ecosystems sealed within glass spheres and began hauling their accumulated treasures back into the Nightingale Hall.

The Giant—the central terror of the Observatory—had fallen. But the sailors of the Laputa draw nearer. It is only a matter of time before they begin their own descent into the Deep Carbon Observatory, and the Magpies will not have the dungeon to themselves for long.

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All the details about Deep Carbon Observatory belong to Patrick Stuart - Buy the module - His Blog - My Review - Video Review

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All the elements of Dolmenwood belong to Gavin Norman - Buy the system - Video Review

Deep Carbon Observatory adventure log - Session 18

What happened in Session 18

Characters and Retainers at the start of the session:

• Freddy plays Trunchkin, Level 5 Friar
• Peter plays Albert, Level 5 Woodgrue
• Ythan plays Clement, Level 5 Enchanter
• Calum plays Hogrid, level 2 Cleric
• Elain - Clement's dog, level 2
• Gunter - Trunchkin's dog, level 2
• Max - Clement's retainer - Hunter, level 2
• Petra - Albert's retainer - Thief, level 2
• Ella - Albert's retainer - Bard, level 2

Friday the 12th, from 11.00 to 13.30

The session opened with the Magpies already inside the Deep Carbon Observatory. Most of the party stood in the Nightingale Hall beside the yawning bronze pit that housed the gravity knife. Only Albert was elsewhere, having slipped away to explore alone at the base of the Weighing Station.

Albert passed through the chamber of the colossal Nightingale Chain and discovered a storage room. Several crates contained precious Cervit lamellae - very valuable but time-consuming to collect. Estimating roughly half an hour’s work, he set about gathering them.

About twenty minutes into the task, with most of the lamellae secured, he heard a sound from the direction of the Nightingale pit. He attempted to hide, but was not successful. A pallid, flaccid arm of grotesque proportions unfolded itself from the pit, bending in ways no limb should bend, reaching outward into the chamber. Rather than flee, Albert tried to affect the creature with his enchanted music. The magic had no effect.

The snatching of Albert by Ythan

The hand seized him. He struggled as the colossal fingers tightened around him, attempting to hack through one of them, but his blows failed to inflict meaningful damage. As the creature lifted him toward its mouth, he hurled an axe at its face, missing as it crushed him between its teeth. The rest of the party heard only his scream while he was devoured alive.

Albert died there, alone among his prized Cervit lamellae.

The Giant

Peter’s new character, Chadwick the mage, joined the Magpies immediately afterwards.

For the sake of pace of play, he simply appeared. I do not enjoy contriving improbable justifications for replacement characters; I am content to sacrifice verisimilitude when it serves the flow of the game, and the table was happy to accept him without question.

Shaken but undeterred, the party pressed deeper, descending into the slave caves below. The chambers contained only meagre remnants of former occupants, but the purpose of the space was unmistakable. In one cell, they found a living prisoner locked inside a cruel, razor-wired stockade. His tongue had been cut out. Communication was slow and limited to blinking eyes.

Working carefully under a magical bubble of silence, they broke the mechanism without alerting the rest of the dungeon. Once freed, the prisoner was asked how to pass the Calcite guardians. He took a blade, carved the word “Observation” into the wall, and then crawled weakly toward the exit.

I altered the source material here. I struggle with portraying mental illness in a way that feels respectful and not reductive, so instead of presenting him as insane, I made him mute. It felt cleaner and less prone to caricature.

The Razzor locked

The Magpies also noticed a brown, yeasty growth clinging to the ceiling of another cell but chose not to disturb it. In the final chamber, they discovered two heavy brass-bound bells on a shelf and four squat, headless lead constructs on the floor—sealed suits of opaque hydraulic tubing, reinforced as though meant to withstand immense pressure.

Curiosity prevailed. One bell was taken while the second was connected to one of the suits; the machine lurched fully into motion. When it could not find the other bell immediately, the construct turned aggressive. Rather than fight it, the Magpies returned the second bell to it.

The suit crashed the bell under its feet and then smashed itself violently against a wall, rupturing and releasing a black ooze from the suit and the bell both. Both viscous shapes slithered toward the open bronze pit and vanished into the darkness below. The magpie understood that the Observatory civilisation used slaves, but not all slaves were human.

At this point, the party split. Clement and Hogrid returned to the Weighing Station, while Trunchkin and Chadwick descended into the central pit of the Fulgarium and followed a corridor toward the Mirror Cell.

At the Weighing Station, Clement deciphered the function of the scale and set it to measure “Loyalty.” Hogrid discovered something unsettling: not only could his loyalty to his church be quantified, but it weighed less than Gunter’s loyalty to Trunchkin. Clement, meanwhile, looted the most valuable weight units from the lower chamber.

In the Mirror Cell, Trunchkin and Chadwick examined a slab of polished obsidian. It reflected their images, but something else moved faintly behind the surface. Focusing his mind and risking psychic harm, Trunchkin forced his perception beyond the reflection. He glimpsed fragments of life within the Observatory before its fall—flashes of activity, ritual, and purpose—and through sheer mental discipline he extracted a word. It appears to pacify the second rank of Calcite guardians.

Here, too, I modified the original text. The module provides only a single way to learn each password required to progress through the Fulgarium. I introduced multiple instances of the same passwords to prevent a dead end. Given how quickly the party is recovering them, I may have been too generous.

The session closed with the Magpies deeper within the Observatory than ever before, one companion dead, new knowledge in hand, and the dungeon slowly yielding its secrets. The delve goes on.

XP Summary

Treasure Recovered

• 700 gp worth of precious materials were found in the weight room

This shouldn't be counted until taken to safety, but this is the last stretch of the campaign, and I am going to be flexible about this.

Hostile Encounters Overcome

• Survived a slave engine powered by a black ooze

Feats of Exploration

• Explored five rooms
• Opened the stocks and freed a slave prisoner
• Gained information from the prisoner about the Calcite Guardians
• Discovered additional insights in the mirror room
• Figured out how the weighting station functions

Totals

• Trunchkin gains 888 XP and reaches 18279 XP; they have 30% of the necessary XP to progress to level 6
• Chadwik gains 1185 XP and reaches 1185 XP; they have 47% of the necessary XP to progress to level 2
• Clement gains 0 XP and reaches 21107 XP; they have 50% of the necessary XP to progress to level 6
• Hogrid gains 1185 XP and reaches 3177 XP. LEVEL UP! Character ascended to level 3

• Elain (dog, level 2) gain 296 XP and reach 6094 XP.
• Gunter (dog, level 2) gain 296 XP and reach 5263 XP.
• Max (Hunter, level 2) gains 296 XP and reaches 2683 XP.
• Petra (Thief, level 2) gains 296 XP and reaches 2683 XP. LEVEL UP! Character ascended to level 3
• Ella (Bard, level 2) gains 296 XP and reaches 2683 XP.

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All the details about Deep Carbon Observatory belong to Patrick Stuart - Buy the module - His Blog - My Review - Video Review

All the art belongs to Scap Princess - Buy her stuff - Her Blog

All the elements of Dolmenwood belong to Gavin Norman - Buy the system - Video Review

Deep Carbon Observatory adventure log - Session 17

What happened in Session 17

Friday the 12th Player

Characters and Retainers:

• Ash - Xiaverine, Level 1 Grimalkin
• Freddy - Trunchkin, Level 5 Friar
• Marcus - Melysee, Level 5 Human Knight
• Ythan - Clement, Level 5 Human Enchanter
• Peter - Albert, Level 4 Woodgrue
• Trunchkin is folowed by Gunter the dog
• Melysee is folowed by Lizzy, a giant geko
• Clement is followed by Max Kosciusko - Level 1 Hunter and owns Elain the dog.
• Albert is followed by Petra, a Level 1 thief and Ella, a Level 1 Bard.

The explored section of the Observatory

The session opened with the aftermath of the previous day’s bloody struggle in the profundal zone. The immediate danger had passed, but the consequences were already unfolding. Zaratusa’s sailors are making their way toward the dried lake bed, and the kapeks, having lost too many warriors to the reed people, no longer have the strength to oppose them. For now, only scouting parties will venture ahead, but it is clear that the entire crew of the Laputa will follow in time. Their plan is simple: secure the abyssal zone, then descend into the dungeon. The magpies are working against the clock if they hope to plunder the place before their rivals arrive.

Kapek scouts reported something more unsettling still. Strange, low shapes had been seen slipping out from the Dam itself. Light bent around them in unnatural ways, as if they were negative images cut from the world. No one knew what they were, but all agreed they were deeply wrong.

Preparing to avoid open conflict with the sailors, the kapeks have begun migrating upriver. They will leave traps behind to delay pursuit. In gratitude to the magpies, they offered to resupply the party and agreed to store whatever burdens the Magpies did not wish to carry. Among these were crates of documents dating back to the court of Ambatorana, prophet of the Pluritine Church.

From the spoils of the defeated army, the party also claimed a remarkable haul.

They acquired three jars of Amber Nectar, each a small sphere filled with thick, honey-like liquid. A dose restores a measure of vitality and brings a rush of euphoric clarity, though it risks plunging the drinker into a heavy, dream-filled sleep.

Melysee gained a giant gecko as a mount, a powerful creature capable of charging, climbing sheer surfaces, and lashing out with its long tongue to snatch objects or trip foes. Along with it came a magical lance whose properties remain unknown.

Xavierine received a Ring of Vanishing, which allows its wearer, once per day, to teleport a short distance and vanish from sight along with all carried gear. The invisibility lasts only so long as the wearer refrains from violence or spellcasting.

Turchkin claimed the Bracelets of Passage, a matched pair through which sight and touch may pass regardless of distance, allowing objects to be manipulated from afar.

Albert took up the Wizard’s Pipe, a red clay instrument inscribed with astrological signs. When lit, it produces smoke that can be shaped into perfect, motionless illusions.

Clement received the Amulet of Density, a talisman that allows its bearer to become either a drifting cloud of vapour or a statue of iron for a short time, gaining near-immunity to mundane harm in either form.

The pit

Thus equipped, the party approached the black pit from which a column of steam used to rise. The shaft was searingly hot and utterly dry. Around the lake’s edge, mirrors caught the sunlight and cast it downward into the depths. After a long descent, the magpies reached a heavy yet perfectly balanced door. By manipulating its counterweights, they opened it and left it ajar behind them.

Beyond lay a narrow spiral staircase. It began carved in black stone, shifted gradually to white stone, and finally became metal. At the bottom, they emerged into the fulgarium, a vast chamber shaped like an inverted ziggurat or a funnel, with its lowest point at the centre where they stood. Broad ten-foot steps rose in tiers around them. On the first tier stood three white statues on each side, four on the second, and five on the highest. Two exits opened at the lowest level—an arched corridor and a rough hole in the wall—while two doors stood above, one obscured by a coiled metallic serpent. 

The calcite guardians

The party recalled Sorla Ghyll’s prophecy.

In the deepest part of the pit lurks a pale, vile giant. It will try to trap you and eat you.

The calcite statues bow to no-one who does not address them correctly.

The Vault is sealed by a serpent-shaped door. It demands a sacrifice you may not want to make.

When the magpies attempted to climb to the first tier, the statues there began to descend toward them. They withdrew at once, fleeing through the arch and along the corridor.

This brought them to the Nightingale Hall. Here, they realised the stone guardians would not follow. The chamber contained two stairways leading downward, a bronze sculpture of a grinning mouth set into the floor, and a shattered piece of transparent quartz resting upon it. Nearby stood a great mechanism: a ribbon of animal hide wound around a colossal wheel; it was further connected to a massive chain that disappeared into a hole in the floor. A final exit spiralled downward into darkness.

The party split. Some ventured down the spiral stairs and discovered a titanic scale equipped with an intricate calibration system and thousands of weights of varying shapes and materials. Unfortunately, none among them could read Laxian, and so the glyphs on the gauges and the labels on the weights remained an enigma.

Elsewhere, Turchkin and a retainer employed a bit of magical ingenuity to gain access to a chamber above the bronze mouth. There, they pulled a lever that opened the bronze sculpture into a pit, revealing a blade and the heavy chain below.

The gravity knife

At the same time, Xavierine used Fay magic to teleport onto the chain itself. He descended in total darkness before swinging toward a faintly illuminated balcony many tens of feet below.

A salt dryad

There, he encountered a group of salt dryads, kin to Nacla, who had lost her heart and longed to recover it so she might return to her post in Zeernebooch’s service at the Slime Embassy. He vowed to return the heart to her.

XP for session 17 

Treasure recovered and hostile encounters: 

None 

Feats of explorations:

• Entered the Observatory
• Explored 5 rooms
• Applied lore (Sorla Ghyll’s prophecy)
• Solved a puzzle (Opened bronze mouth)
• Made contact with faction (Salt dryads)

Totals:

• Melysee gains 2712 XP and reaches 22584 XP; they have 25% of the necessary XP to progress to level 6
• Trunchkin gains 2034 XP and reaches 17391 XP; they have 24% of the necessary XP to progress to level 6
• Xiaverine gains 2712 XP and reaches 3712 XP. LEVEL UP! Character ascended to level 2
• Clement gains 1356 XP and reaches 21107 XP; they have 50% of the necessary XP to progress to level 6
• Albert gains 1356 XP and reaches 16716 XP. LEVEL UP! Character ascended to level 5

• Elain (dog, level 2) gain 678 XP and reach 5798 XP.
• Gunter (dog, level 2) gain 678 XP and reach 4967 XP.
• Max (Hunter, level 1) gains 678 XP and reaches 2387 XP. LEVEL UP! Character ascended to level 2
• Petra (Thief, level 2) gains 678 XP and reaches 2387 XP.
• Ella (Bard, level 1) gains 678 XP and reaches 2387 XP. LEVEL UP! Character ascended to level 2

Join my Discord Server. We only play in person, but you are welcome to pop in to say hi

All the details about Deep Carbon Observatory belong to Patrick Stuart - Buy the module - His Blog - My Review - Video Review

All the art belongs to Scap Princess - Buy her stuff - Her Blog

All the elements of Dolmenwood belong to Gavin Norman - Buy the system - Video Review