Trying out Dragon's Delve, Monte Cook's Dungeon-a-day Dungeon

Remember when Monte Cook was creating a mega-dungeon online and asking people to subscribe to get the content?  Well, Rick was a subscriber and after sitting in on our last Vaults of Ur game, he had an itch to run his own game.

After a brief debate about whether to use 3.5 or Pathfinder, we settled on Pathfinder as the rules set.  And last Sunday evening, Dean, Jeremy and I set out to explore a bit of Dragon's Delve.

Dean was playing Little Sparrow, a Human Friar (currently Monk, intending to multiclass Cleric to get a "monk" who is more of a Gregorian or Franciscan than a Shaolin).*  Jeremy was playing Harathys, a Human Fighter (the name is recycled but the character is new).  I'm playing Wooderson, an Elf stoner (of undetermined class at the moment...).  We were joined by an NPC Elf Rogue (and kudos to Rick for playing the Rogue well as an NPC, and putting the burden on us to order him to check for traps and stuff).

From the initial chamber, there were three sets of stairs.  We chose one which the Rogue said contained a strange pool.  The room had a pair of goddess statues, the pool, and large bronze doors at the far end.  The pool contained perfectly fresh water, and a crescent moon was painted on the ceiling above.  There were also a pair of corridors leading out of the room, both headed east, at the flanks of the east wall (which also had the brass doors).  We could hear scratching sounds from the northern passage.

Well, after detecting divination magic in the pool but being unable to activate it, we tried the brass doors.  The rogue unlocked them, and we found the remains of a library.  We scooped up all the books that were intact, and one was a sort of log-book of what we assume to be the scrying pool in the previous room.  We've got a command word to activate it, and a warning that bad things happen to those who abuse the pool's power. 

We heard fluttering of bat wings approaching while searching the room, but closing the doors allowed us to avoid that encounter.

Next, we went to investigate the scratching sounds.  The corridor was a dead end with a pair of locked doors.  We could hear scratching from behind each.  The Rogue failed to unlock the first door, but with a toke of some of my special herbs, he was able to unlock the next. 

And the room contained a ghast!  Harathys heroically tried to hold the door closed while we retreated to the pool room so that more than one could attack it at once.  He didn't manage to shut the door all the way, but bought us time to get into position and avoided an attack of opportunity running back to join us.  The ghast sickened Wooderson (that's me), but the rest of the party managed to be unaffected by his stench.  Undeterred, we used good teamwork to slay the beast.

No more treasure, and pretty sure Harathys had caught some nasty disease from his wounds, we retreated back to town.  Sold all of the books except the one about the pool, donated that gold to the temple, and got our Fighter on the mend.

It was a fun session, and I'm looking forward to playing more in Rick's game!