Building Bhakashal - Session Report  

My Friday group has achieved status as Bhakashal nobility, based on their successful execution of a task, namely building a teleportation circle between the underworld and Bhakashal. A few sessions ago one of my players asked if we could do a “classic, old-school module”, his dad had played AD&D BITD and had a bunch of modules at home. I was, of course, happy to oblige. The obvious choice was the Drow modules, but I have an almost pathological aversion to elves.

So I decided that the Drow were the ONLY elves in the setting, exiled to the underworld thousands of years ago, and a drow raiding party found their teleportation circle, skirmished with it’s guardians (a group of mid-level chitin archers and a pair of purple worms) and left. The party decided to track them back to their home to assess the threat to their holdings.

Last week’s session was pretty straightforward; they encountered a group of troglodytes. As it happens there are fewer humanoid monsters in Bhakashal, so they hadn’t encountered trogs before. They were fortunate in that they managed surprise on the trogs and used a combination of AOE spells and some excellent melee combat to slay enough of them that the remaining trogs fled, and they followed them back to their cave, slaying enough of them that the remainder fled. A small treasure haul whetted their appetite, and they pressed on.

Play in Bhakashal is factional, and routine hack and slash is not the regular fare for my group, so they found this all to be quite exciting. No need to negotiate or parley, no need to play one faction against another or consider the long-term consequences of their actions, just sword and board then find the loot.

All was good.

They pressed on into the main caves towards the Vault of the Drow, images of piles of loot dancing in their heads.

What they wee not aware of, and what they were to subsequently learn, was that the drow are not easy marks. Every drow has innate spell casting abilities, ridiculously low AC, and they are intelligent. Very intelligent. Many of the foes they have fought have been unintelligent monsters, animals and low to average intelligence 0-level soldier types. They are used to fighting opponents where there will be skirmishing groups with a single mid-to-high level spellcaster.

Bhakashal is different from traditional D&D in a few ways, the HP are on average lower for everyone and they are always rolled, never assigned or inflated. Magic items are always rolled for, never assigned, and thus less common for PCs. Also, AC values are higher (e.g., worse) as it is a tropical setting, no one is running around in full plate, and most of the heavier forms of armor are eschewed as it is part of a martial honor culture to fight without extensive armor protection.

Gygax designed the drow to be a challenge for high level parties who were used to being overpowered due to excessive magic items, with bloated HP and low AC. Your average 2^nd level drow fighter has an AC of 1, anyone higher level than that often has negative ACs.

With all this in mind, they encountered a large drow caravan at the end of last session. They have encountered caravans before in Bhakashal. They usually have a bunch of 0-level soldiers, a few mid-level mercenaries, and a single mid-to-high level spellcaster.

This was a large caravan, with 9 giant lizard pack animals, 14 drow guards, 16 bugbears, 4 drow sergeants, 8 merchants and a train of 20 slaves. What makes this so challenging is that even the Drow mooks are 2^nd level, AC 1 and have innate spell casting ability, and the “merchants” are 4/4 fighter/clerics with innate and clerical spell casting ability and AC: -3!

The party was spotted easily by the drow caravan, who were used to operating in the dark, and they engaged in parley. This is where the party made a fundamental mistake, they saw this huge caravan, with 18 fully kitted out drow guards, 16 bugbears and 20 chained up slaves and thought, “they are just a merchant caravan, no big deal”.

During the parley the party tried to present themselves as harmless travelers, but they were obviously topsiders, and trespassers in drow territory. I rolled an encounter reaction and they got lucky, a mildly positive result had the drow essentially warn them off, tell them to leave immediately or they would be dealt with.

The party took that as a challenge.

Initiative was rolled.

I roll everything in the open, and as it happens I rolled TERRIBLY this session. I think that may be the main reason they didn’t get slaughtered.

The lead drow fired off hand crossbows and javelins and all missed. The players had a good laugh at that, thinking these were low level mooks and that this would be a cakewalk. The two party tanks charged forward and through rolling a pair of criticals got extra attacks and neatly polished off the four lead drow warriors (all 2nd level).

One of the players did note with concern that even the “mooks” had low AC (in Bhakashal you add your opponent’s AC to your to hit roll so you know their AC when you attack them), but they brushed that off.

The party warlock has Power Word Stun. He loves casting it as it is a no save spell, so it takes out whoever he targets handily. What he should have realized was that it only takes out one target, and there were over 40 enemies in this fight. He targeted one of the mounted drow and took him out, there was much back slapping and hooting at the table.

The party gyre (he’s an earth gyre) created a pit between the mounted drow warriors and the party to stop them from charging, it was a good tactical move against mounted warriors. Three of the bugbears fell into the pit, but none died. There was a bit of mumbling about that, they had no idea bugbears were 3HD creatures. The party necromancer and thief took off on the necromancers worra (giant bat), planning to fly to the rear of the caravan and attack from above. A good tactical move, but it took them out of the fight for a short time while they moved from place to place. So far though, everything was going well.

“These guys are going to be easy!”

Then things went pear shaped.

Charging the drow in the front rank put the two party tanks in spell casting range.

They are all high level PCs, with great saving throw numbers, however, there were 8 fighter/clerics and 14 fighter drow with innate spell casting ability in range at that point. D&D is a numbers game at some point, and with that many saving throws to make, sooner or later you fail.

In addition, when the party first appeared the caravan dispatched 4 drow warriors, with their elven cloaks and boots to conceal them, two to either flank of the party. When the fight started they fired off their sleep poison coated bolts at the party.

First, the party Myrmidon was blinded by a Light spell from a drow warrior.

Then the Justiciar was blinded by another warrior drow.

The Warlock was paralyzed by the lead fighter/cleric’s Hold Person spell.

The Necromancer was paralyzed by a Hold Person spell while passing over the caravan.

The Slayer guide (an NPC) was paralyzed by a Hold Person as well.

Finally, the party’s newest member, a Theurgist (Bhakashal fighter/illusionist) was put to sleep by a crossbow bolt.

The only two party members that made it through this FIRST ROUND of combat was the thief and the gyre. Both of whom decided to flee. The thief was already airborne and simply kept flying. The gyre has Wings of Flying, he scooped up the sleeping Theurgist and they fled.

Fortunately for them, although there were four drow close enough to fire at them as they fled, all missed due to my terrible rolling.

Now they are in a panic. The party members who were blinded and paralyzed were quickly rounded up, stripped of magic items and chained, prisoners who would be taken back to the drow homeland to be either sold as slaves, slaughtered or left to some other nefarious fate.

The remaining three PCs are trying to figure out what to do. Initially they planned on flying back to the teleport circle, heading back to Bhakashal and coming back with a few House Quannar patrols to raise hell, until I pointed out to them that by the time they did that the caravan would be long gone and they might never find them again.

They considered maybe tracking the caravan from a distance until it got rid of the PCs somewhere, but at that point if they went back to the city for reinforcements who knows where the captured PCs would be, or even if they would still be alive when they returned.

They will have the week between sessions to contemplate this dilemma and come up with a plan. In the mean time, the captured PCs will be marching, in chains, along with the caravan. Perhaps they will figure out some way to gain their freedom, but that seems unlikely.

The only slim hope they have IMO is that there is a NPC drow fighter/magic-user who is travelling with the caravan but not aligned with them, if they can somehow gain his trust they might be able to swing something with his help, but that is a long-shot.

Big fun!