Introduction: Portal Under the Stars Playthrough
Portal Under the Stars, Chapter 1
Portal Under the Stars, Chapter 2
Portal Under the Stars, Chapter 3
“I can’t see anything,” Hilda Breadon panted in the darkness. “We– we have to stop.”
Seven Graymoor residents bumped into one another in a halting, huddled column, all breathing heavily from the surge of fear they’d just experienced escaping the pool room.
“Does anyone have a torch or lantern?” Leda asked. Her burned and painful back pressed against the rough stone of the wall through her black-scaled armor, seeking solidity and support in the dark.
“The halflin’s an’ I don’ need it,” Umur panted. “But this might work for the rest of ye.”
Soft white light filled the space as the dwarf opened his palms to reveal the glowing jewels Ethys had retrieved. Leda smiled despite her pain. She hadn’t relished bumbling blindly in this deadly, alien place.
“Ah,” Hilda chuckled. “Ya, those work.” Soon more light spilled into the cramped staircase as she held a handful of the beautiful, spectral gems.
Ethys followed suit, then Leda herself, fishing the gems out of a pocket at her belt. They passed stones to Verik, Erin, and Bern. Soon all of them had at least a few of the luminescent jewels, which banished the shadows as well as any torch.
For those who know Portal Under the Stars: Technically, the adventure doesn’t make the jewels themselves luminescent. Instead, as written the light is from the room below and shines up through the gems. But I liked the visual of white, glowing gemstones that had some utility as torches (especially since I unfortunately hadn’t really been attending to light sources throughout the rest of the map… something I didn’t realize until the pool room. oops). As an additional perk, they add to the otherworldly and magical vibe of this unexplained structure beyond the portal.
They stood on a descending, spiraled staircase, the stairs wide enough that they could almost walk two abreast without their shoulders scraping against the stone. Almost, but they assembled themselves single file to proceed down to the lower level of this palace-beyond-the-portal. Leda maneuvered herself to the front of the line. Umur and Bern followed behind her gripping weapons in one hand, glowing jewels in the other.
At the bottom of the stairs, the residents found themselves in a long, narrow room, perhaps ten steps wide and five times as long. A door, iron-banded and wooden as all the others, stood firmly closed at the far end of the room. The room itself was bare except for ledges that ran the length of the long walls. Veric, short even for a halfling, stood on his tiptoes to peer up and into them.
“Um,” he whispered in a small voice. “What are those in– oof! What are those in there?”
Bern raised his handful of the glowing gems near the ledge and squinted. “Huh, good eyes you’ve got there. Little soldiers. Made of clay, if I’m not mistaken.” He plucked one from its place and handed it to the haberdasher. Veric made a pleased sound as he turned the solder over in his hand.
There is a small bit of treasure for those who search the length of the ledges. Who would do so? I think the two halflings, Veric and Ethys, are too short for a thorough search. Leda and Umur are both injured and are acting as the de facto leaders of the group so wouldn’t allow themselves to be distracted. I’ll roll for the other three:
Bern rolls a [7 + 0] 7.
Erin rolls a [4 + 1] 5.
Hilda rolls a [14 + 0] 14 and hits the Search DC of 10. This makes some sense to me, since she seemed the most excited by finding the gems. I think Hilda has a little bit of greed in her.
As the group moved towards the door warily, Hilda lingered behind. Tongue lodged between her lips in concentration, she brought the glowing jewels up to peer into the ledge nearest her. Her eyes darted left and right, scanning the clay figures.
Leda noticed the baker dawdling with some annoyance. Now that they had some treasure and had realized the deadliness of this place, she considered Little Gyles’ death… not avenged, per se, but at least serving some purpose. The town councilor was anxious to see if now they could find a way back to the old stone mound. She opened her mouth for a reprimand, but then Hilda surprised her with an excited yelp.
“I found some silver ones!” she whooped, not at all whispering. Tamping down a growl, Leda followed her companions to crowd around the sturdy woman in her patchwork armor.
Hilda had to tuck the rolling pin into an armpit as she displayed what she’d discovered. Sure enough, they were small figures of soldiers, like the one that Bern had handed to Veric, each as long as a finger. Yet the four Hilda held up gleamed metallically.
For several minutes the other humans searched the ledges, but to no avail. Hilda had spotted the only obvious treasures and seemed none too eager to give them up. She proudly tucked the figures beneath her breastplate and blouse, smiling broadly the whole time. “For safe keeping,” she chuckled, patting her armor.
“Away with us then,” Umur growled. “See if tha’ door can lead us out or if we ha’ to go find out what all the crashin’ was about upstairs.”
“I’m certainly ready to leave,” Leda nodded. The others agreed, and, with a quickly held breath, Leda opened the door.
The room beyond was as breathtaking as it was intimidating. As large as the room with the giant statue and the pool room combined, the cavernous space was thrice tiered. An oversized throne rested upon a raised dais at the back, and seated upon the throne was a large clay statue. To Leda, the warlord on the throne looked identical to the visage above that spewed fire from its fingertip–barrel-chested and wearing animal hides and charm-laden necklaces, with a heavy sword at his hip. The deadly stone statue above had been as tall as three Graymoor dwellings, and this clay one was perhaps half that size and seated, yet no less intimidating. Atop the throne, light pulsated from a crystal globe, illuminating the entire chamber. Absently, Leda tucked the glowing jewels from her hand back into her pocket as the others did the same.
Below the dais, at floor level, seven other clay statues–these perhaps half again as tall as a person–stood motionless. Each looked fierce and distinct from the others, carrying a variety of clay weapons in menacing poses. Below them, in a huge sunken pit that ran the length of the room, stood an army of identical clay soldiers, all the size of a human, their clay armor and spears seemingly ready for war.
The ceiling above had partially collapsed, sending debris and water into the sunken pit. Carnage from the collapsed ceiling had settled, though dust still drifted through the air. Many of the clay soldiers lay broken or canted to one side, and all of them drooped from the pond at their feet. With a start, Leda realized that the pool room must have been directly above this one, and the crashing they’d heard earlier had been the collapse she now witnessed. A pang of guilt ran through her at the thought that she and her companions had utterly ruined not only the beauty of the shimmering pool, but this majestic statuary garden. Then she remembered Little Gyles’ dead, empty stare and all guilt vanished.
Suddenly, the large figure on the throne jerkily and mechanically raised its arm, pointing at the doorway in which Veric, bringing up the rear of their line, stood. In reaction, the seven figures at floor level snapped to attention and mimicked the gesture, their fingers leveled at the party of villagers.
And then, with a yelp from Veric and scream from Hilda, the entire army of damaged clay soldiers lurched into motion.
My first DCC combat! And what an epic combat it is. There were originally 70 clay soldiers in the pit, plus 7 generals and 1 warlord. Each statue, regardless of rank, has an AC of 12, 9 hit points, and a spear. On the surface, this is a completely and utterly unwinnable combat for a handful of Level 0 peasants.
But the party’s perseverance in getting the jewels from the floor of the pool has helped them immensely. The debris from the falling ceiling did 1d6 damage to every figure in the room except the warlord (I spent a very long time rolling, like a maniac, individual damage for each figure). More importantly, the pit has filled with water that is rapidly dissolving the clay soldiers. Every round they stay in the pit will mean an additional 1 damage. I’ve let two rounds “tick” since the collapse, which has destroyed more than 20 of the soldiers. The remaining 47 or so have between 1 and 6 remaining hit points. The soldiers are slow (10 feet of movement), and only those at the edge of the pit can climb out, which uses a turn. All others will continue to take damage. So the party will soon have far fewer opponents to fight than they would have without the collapse, and the longer they can keep them in the pit the fewer they’ll face.
The generals and warlords will remain motionless while the soldiers attack and are non-combatants. If a savvy character can deduce it, taking out the generals will cause the soldiers to become disorganized and more random. If they destroy the (currently undamaged) warlord, all remaining clay statues will become inert. I’m not sure how I’ll determine that a PC can puzzle out this tactic, but without good tactics this is absolutely a Total Party Kill (TPK), so I might just give it to them. Dang these solo games are tough!
I’ve rolled initiative for each PC and the soldiers. Erin, Veric, Hilda, and Leda will go first, then all of the soldiers en masse, then Umur, Ethys, and Bern. Remember that the soldiers won’t be able to attack until they’ve climbed out of the pit, whereas the PCs can attack from higher ground (giving them a +1 to hit as well).
Oh boy. Here we go.
I’ll roll the first four PC attacks here and then narrate the action:
Erin with her dagger rolls… a natural 20! That’s a critical hit that destroys it. Wow what a way to start.
Veric rolls a [2+2] 4. Yep, he’s a haberdasher.
Hilda rolls a [10+1] 11, missing by 1 with her rolling pin.
Leda rolls a [11+0] 11, also missing by 1 with her father’s longsword. Not a great start, and things are about to get scary…
Quick-witted Erin Wywood, town councilor’s daughter and local minstrel, was the first to act. While the others stood goggling at the army rising up before them, she jabbed out from the lip of the pit into the head of a rising clay soldier. Like a log briefly surfacing in swamp water and then sinking below, the soldier toppled backwards and into the muddy pool behind.
“Get to the one on the throne!” she yelled at the others. “It’s controlling them!” Against all sense of reason, the girl then began jogging her way around the edge of the pit, deeper into the room, as clay soldiers rose up all around her.
Veric, wide-eyed and clearly near panic, followed close behind her. As he passed a rising soldier he flailed with his iron scissors, missing it by a country mile. Cursing and screaming, Hilda was right behind him.
Without realizing she was doing so, Leda pulled her father’s longsword free of its scabbard. Yelling in fear and pain, she swung at the first clay soldier climbing out of the pit nearest her. Yet she had never swung the sword, however, and misjudged its length. The blade sailed in front of the oncoming figure ineffectually.
Clay soldiers were boiling out of the pit on all sides, many missing arms or large chunks of their heads from the fallen ceiling, with legs soft and distorted by the water filling the hole. Some within the pit listed and fell without rising again. It was chaos, and every one of the Graymoor residents yelled or screamed in visceral peril.
Any soldier near and edge of the pit climbs out of it, spears to the ready. Those within the pit move to the nearest edge and tick a damage. Seven more die, leaving 24 in the pit and a terrifying 16 that have climbed out.
Umur lashes out with his shortsword for [17+2] 19, dealing 5 damage and killing another!
Ethys stabs at one who’s cleared the pit with a roll of [17+0] 17, dealing 3 damage with her spear! Another soldier down.
Bern stabs with his spear, rolling [19+0] 19, dealing 5 damage and killing another one that rises!
Okay those last three rolls made up for the first group. But there is still a long way to go.
14 clay soldiers are alive and have cleared the pit, but the walkway around the pit is narrow and will prevent many of them from attacking.
Round 2 attack rolls:
Erin [9+0] 9. Veric natural 20 with a hit in the eye! Hilda [17+0] 17 for 2 damage! Leda [19-1] 18 for 5 damage! Woo!
Roaring, Umur lashed out with the shortsword he’d plucked from Mythey’s corpse before even entering the portal. How long had it been, some part of Leda’s mind wondered hysterically. Two hours? More? The dwarf cleaved an oncoming soldier nearly in two as it toppled, inert. To his right, Ethys and Bern stabbed in tandem with their spears, pushing two soldiers off the ledge of the pit and into the muddy slurry below.
Out at the edge of the pit, halfway to the warlord sitting motionless atop his throne, Erin swung wildly and then, panting, stepped back. Veric leapt forward, both hands holding the ends of his scissors, and plunged them into the clay head of a soldier while Hilda bashed one aside with her rolling pin. Soldiers crumpled and slumped, even as more used their bodies for purchase to climb out of the pit.
Leda saw all of this out ahead of her. The grip on her father’s sword was slick with sweat, but she had the balance and length of the weapon now. Drawing inspiration from the others, she screamed and cleaved a soldier’s head from its clay body.
I won’t try to describe the mayhem on the map I’m using to track all of the PCs, soldiers, and their movements. Suffice it to say, two of them have cleared the pit and are adjacent to PCs, giving them an opportunity to attack, one on Veric and the other on Leda. They each have a whopping +4 to attack with their spears and deal 1d8 damage if they hit.
The clay soldier facing Veric rolls a [3+4] 7 and misses.
The clay soldier facing Leda rolls a [13+4] 17 and hits. Leda only has 2 hp remaining, and the soldier rolls max damage. Our fearless town councilwoman is very, very dead.
Six more soldiers die from the water in the pit. That leaves 12 still in the pit and now 16 up on ground level with their spears. The way is clogged, but Erin is going to see what’s going on and shout out a new tactic for the others to follow.
Leda shouted triumph as she felled the soldier. In that moment, she felt like a warrior of old, black-scaled armor shining under the light of an alien, mystical orb as she cleaved foes with her ancestral longsword, all while some alien warlord god looked down from his throne. She wished her father could see her now, like an avenging angel of battle.
“Ha! Did you see, Umur?” she shouted. Then she felt a sudden, sharp pain in her back.
“No!” Umur yelled, eyes wide. Leda looked down, confused, to see the clay spearhead protruding from her chest, and then thought nothing at all.
Erin watched the town councilwoman fall to her knees and then face-first to the stone floor, a clay spear protruding from her back. Umur was swinging his sword, beating back soldiers as they crawled out of the pit in a vain attempt to reach her fallen form. Bern and Ethys were near him, stabbing with their black spears. Ahead of her, Hilda swung her rolling pin and Veric his scissors.
But a tidal wave of soldiers were climbing up ahead of them all, blocking the way to the warlord on the throne. The odds were impossible, and she realized with fatal certainty that they could not survive the dozens of clay soldiers.
Using a voice honed by countless hours of singing, she called out across the cacophony of battle. “Into the pit! Dive into the pit!”
It’s the start of Round 3. At the end of the last round, Umur, Ethys, and Bern all hit with their weapons and felled one soldier each, but Erin is correct that they are all going to go the way of Leda unless they change tactics.
Attack rolls this round: Erin rolls a [7+0] 7, Veric rolls a [2+2] 4, and Hilda rolls a [9+0] 9. Ouch. None of them hit, so I’ll say they just swing wildly as they follow Erin’s lead into the slushy, muddy pit.
The advantage of being in the pit is that the clay soldiers now outside of the pit can’t hit them (assuming they move away from the edge, which they all will do) without taking a turn to reenter. The downside is that any remaining soldiers in the pit can move to attack them. Each of the three who’ve dived in are facing a spear.
The one facing Hilda rolls a [2+4] 6!
The one facing Erin rolls a [2+4] 6!
The one facing Veric rolls a [10+4] 14. Poor Veric only has 1 hp, so he dies.
Then there are the soldiers at ground level and one of them is facing Bern. The soldier rolls a [14+4] 18, hitting. Bern has an impressive 5 hp, but it rolls 7 damage with its spear. The herbalist dies as well. Dang. The body count is getting high!
Two of the soldiers die from the continued water exposure, and every other soldier in the pit now has 1 hp.
Up on ground level, Umur dives into the pit and rolls a [19+1] 20, killing one of the soldiers there (the soldiers are slow, whereas the PCs can get into the pit and attack in one round). Ethys jumps in too, but rolls a [4+0] 4, missing the one nearest her.
This next round is going to be huge.
Dagger in hand, Erin took her own advice. She leapt into the pit, stumbling in the knee-high water across ceiling debris and half-dissolved clay figures. The minstrel moved away from the edge and any spear thrusts. A splash from Veric signaled that he had followed her lead, and then a thunderous crash and whoop as Hilda joined them.
The three shouted for the others at ground level to follow. Ethys dove as nimbly as she’d done in the pool above, despite the shallow water and debris. Umur, roaring, landed directly atop a soldier in the pit. The impact of dwarf on soft clay utterly crushed the thing.
Bern readied his leap, but not before a spear clipped his side. He turned to face the soldier attacking him, which allowed another soldier to jab out. Erin watched the herbalist die under a barrage of blows, mere fingerspans from the edge of the pit.
The clay soldiers that remained in the slushy, muddy pond had lost much of their cohesion and moved sluggishly, but they were still threats. Erin ducked under a swing from one. Hilda blocked another spear with her rolling pin.
“Veric! Behind you!” Ethys yelled out. The haberdasher spun and made a brief squeal as the spear thrust through his neck. Soldier and halfling went down beneath the water’s surface.
Round 4 and it’s a desperate run across the pit now. Erin zigs and zags to make it as close to the southern part of the pit as possible, killing a soldier in front of her thanks to a [14+0] 14 roll with her dagger. Hilda is right on her heels, but unfortunately rolls a [3+0] 3.
Thankfully, when it’s time for all the soldiers to go, Hilda continues her preternatural dice luck. One soldier rolls a [2+4] 6 to miss her and another rolls [3+4] 7. No other soldiers can reach any PCs this round. Amazing.
The soldiers do, however, start piling back into the pit in pursuit. At the end of their turn, there are now 15 soldiers in the pit, 11 of which die to water damage. Only 4 more are outside of the pit and ready to climb in. None of the 8 remaining clay soldiers (4 in the pit, 4 outside) are at a single hp, however, so the PCs will either have to evade them more than a turn or kill them to survive.
Umur drops one in the pit with a roll of [14+1] 15, doing 3 damage. Ethys doesn’t stand and fight, and instead dashes to Hilda and Erin’s side.
Can I just pause a moment and say: This is crazy! I’ve heard DCC adventures are epic and gonzo even at Level 0, and this feels like a good example. Nice job, Joseph Goodman.
The flood of soldiers had become a trickle. Several slogged slowly towards them, but often the water took their legs and they fell face-down into the slurry. Other clay soldiers moved from the pit’s edge back in. Their numbers were manageable now, Erin thought. Her eyes darted left and right, trying to judge each soldier’s relative cohesion, the speed of the damage done by the water, and her companion’s retreat.
Two soldiers made it to either side of Hilda. As they pulled back their spears to attack, they slumped like melting candles.
“Keep going!” she urged them on. “To the back! To the throne! Keep them in the water!”
Panting, laboring, and terrified, the three Graymoor residents followed Erin to the far southwestern corner of the pit. Clay soldiers moved awkwardly towards them, stumbling, falling, and never rising as they went. Eight soldiers became six, then four, then two.
A mere handful of feet from Erin and her group, huddled in a corner with weapon raised, the last soldier collapsed.
Rounds 5, 6, and 7 are like a game of “Marco Polo” in a pool. The PCs move to the far southwestern corner of the pit while the remaining soldiers slog their way through the water towards them. But they can’t reach the PCs in time. Erin, Hilda, Umur, and Ethys have survived! Holy crap!
Without pausing, Erin pulled herself up and out of the muddy mess. Hilda followed, then turned to pull Ethys and Umur up.
“Careful,” she cautioned. “Now the generals might attack.”
At this alarming statement, the others leapt to a defensive formation, weapons ready.
But nothing moved. The warlord on his throne and generals assembled at his feet had been merely the catalysts to activate the clay army. They stood, fingers pointed accusingly at an empty doorway far across the cavernous room. That is, until the residents of Graymoor destroyed them with repeated blows to their clay bodies. Eventually, not even the giant warlord on the throne remained.
Only then did Erin allow herself to relax, hands on muddy knees. Of the twelve who’d assembled around the portal beneath the stars, only the four of them remained.
My Hero Brain 
Pingback: Portal Under the Stars, Chapter 3 – My Hero Brain
Pingback: Portal Under the Stars, Chapter 5 – My Hero Brain
Pingback: Reflections: Portal Under the Stars Playthrough – My Hero Brain