General Chat

Sure. It is only hell here. Invite away.

Absolutely! I've played many games with Abyssal Chimera and they are top notch.

Yes! Tell them we need a cleric 😆

Excellent! Thank you!

I was just looking around to see what the party comp was XD
I just finished the Session 0 thread, so I gather: two thieves, an elf, and two fighters? I'll get my rolls later today when I get the chance :)

Yeah, I keep running up against discrepancies between different versions. I have it as Sleep now, but in the RAW B/X, you're supposed to pick the one L1 spell Gabbro has in his spellbook. Would you like to select one?

I've made my attempt at a hand-drawn portrait for Orelia

Awesome!

Any thoughts on what our next move should be? It feels like we are all on different pages.

Personally I'd rather not bother with exploring side caves until we've explored the whole surface area so we can better know where to gamble our meager hit points. This area smacks of Caves of Chaos so far and the key location in that module is at the apex of the canyon...

The note we found on the wall could just be a waste of time, but...why? Who wrote the message just for the purpose of misdirection? if it's not a practical joke, it heavily implies that there is a way down somewhere nearby. That makes me not want to dismiss this as a real entrance. That said, I'm willing to either a) put a pin in this with the idea that we'll come back to it later, or b) thoroughly search this room for secret doors while others do a quick recon of the rest of the canyon. I don't like getting separated, but I can see some value in just looking into each cave mouth to see if it's man-made (I suspect most of them are) or naturally occurring. I'm also a bit leery of the thick copse of trees in the center of the canyon, so if we do investigate the rest of the canyon, I'd recommend avoiding that.

I don't think we should split up, I'm good to search for secret doors before we leave.

The outside is just a means to an end, we are looking for the prison entrance which I think should be recognizable since it was a state penitentiary at one point.

OK, I'll search one section of wall and see what happens, and we'll take it from there. If someone else wants to search a different section at the same time, that'd save time (assuming success, of course - we could search all day and not find a door that is there).

I think the entrance to the prison was the gatehouse. I figure that's why the gatehouse has all those arrow slits and murder holes pointed inward: so the guards could attack the inmates if they tried to revolt or escape.

Although, it has been hundreds of years since it was a prison: plenty of time for intrepid monsters/villain masterminds to move in, settle down, and rework the existing tunnel entrances with tricks and traps to protect their lairs.

I'm still wondering what/who wandered in and got eaten by that beetle. That's a recent meal.

Well we know the prison is underground, so we can assume there will be an additional entrance in the canyon. Kind of like a keep with a curtain wall and gatehouse around it except this time the canyon makes up three of the four walls.

OK, so from my sense of the space (and my map), we've searched the walls most likely to have a secret door, aside from the westernmost 10' of the north wall (*). We could search in that one space, or move on to the door, return to the bug, or move to different location (there's been a suggestion of exploring the gatehouse, and a suggestion for choosing a different tunnel - "C" in particular). I'm OK to either search that one last wall space, or move on. Before we leave this passage, though, I'd like for somebody to stick their head in the chamber with the beetle to at least know the dimensions and whether there are other exits. The mapper in me is really bothered by not knowing what's there.

* - that's clearly making a bunch of assumptions. For instance, it could be that there's secret trap doors leading up or down. There could be a secret door that connects to the west, even if that may just be the "stinky room" we can smell through that northern mildewed door.