This was a drop-in session of Troika! running an adventure I wrote called The Worm’s Finger, which is a wet and sad dungeon that I’m pretty proud of.
The players are told where they’re going and what might lurk there, namely an abandoned wave-wracked research facility on the shoreline, in which is likely a great deal of treasure and ancient secrets all guarded by the Vermiform Hag.
Sodden Trudge
As the wind and driving rain lash the shore the camera pans down to reveal our five hearty adventurers. Leading the way is Brian the Argent Giant of Corda, a 3 metre tall man with a long coat. Behind him, sheltering from the rain in his leeward side, is Nickel the Claviger. Behind them are a pair of Sorcerors, though of different schools: Abraca David of the College of Friends and Arcanon of the Academy of Doors. Bringing up the rear, adorned with very small hat and very small spear (in comparison to his large size) is Bash the Rhino Man.
Soon, the black slick rock of the sea stack comes into view, garlanded with the ancient rusty iron of the Tidespar facility. A long thin iron bridge extends out from the clifftops to the entry hall, and along it we plod.
Coral Beheads
In the guard post, the gang spies three corpses in a heap in one corner. Their heads are completely covered in bleached-white coral growths. Bash goes to “investigate”1. He finds nothing of interest, but as he pulls back, a sallow cold hand clutches his wrist as the body stirs to life. It takes a vicious bite out of Bash but Nickel smacks it very hard with a sledgehammer until it stops.
Fearing further mischief, Brian twists the head of the other two.
A rope bridge extends out over a long drop to the ocean below, leading to another part of the facility. It’s old and grimy, but sturdy. Brian carries Bash across, as they have put their heads together and concluded if one is carrying the other the weight on the bridge will be halved. The wizards look on sceptically, but the bridge does hold.
In the next room a smell of mould and damp hangs over the scene like a shroud. This is the living quarters, a big hemispherical room with a set of beds and a small kitchenette. There’s a trapdoor leading down, and another door leading out to a balcony.
Brian and Nickel head down the trapdoor to the storeroom below, to have a quick rummage. Nickel does so, revealing some rotten food, but as they do so Brian spies a mysteriously familiar head. He was pretty sure he tore this of a corpse not too long ago. Regrettably, this appears to be a brand new un-torn head, attached to a scrawny and hungry-looking body.
The creature lunges over the crates, and a furious battle in the darkness commences. The wretched zombies fight like cornered animals, and the crew takes a severe beating from them.
Arcanon attempts to turn one into a cockroach, unfortunately his magic fingers appear to be malfunctioning perhaps, or he’s forgotten which finger is magic.
They eventually take them out, mostly due to Bash’s impressive and now very bloody horn. Midway through, Brian bodily hefts a coral-head, impaling him directly onto Bash’s face.
Body Disposal
Patching themselves up, wiping off gore and coral bits from their clothes, and all quite pissed off, the gang decide to hurl the corpses off the balcony above. Just really to send a message more than anything else.
Out on the balcony, hucking a corpse over the rail to a satisfying plesh far down below into the churning waves, the party hear a voice call out from above them.
“‘Ere, waste of good eatin’ that!”
They whirl around to see Retch, the Gull Harpy, clung to the ladder a bit above them.
“Whatcha goan do that for, eh? Coulda ‘ad that, could’n I!”
Very fortunately, there is another corpse still impaled on the face of Bash, and the party gamely offer it up. This makes Retch’s day, and definitely puts the party in his good graces (for all that’s worth). He invites them all up to meet his wife Yolg at the top of the stack.
As they climb, Retch natters. He’s really good at it.
The Infinite Purple
At the top of the stack, a great big metal contraption lurks like a giant rusted beetle. Nearby, the party are introduced to Yolg, also very pleased to be given an entire corpse. They invite the party to stay as long as they like, regrettably their home is really just a patch of dirt under a scrabby tree.
As they natter, Arcanon has remained down below to ask the stars for a sign of the future using his astrology skill. The stars reveal, beware the Hag, beware the Shark, beware the Water. Above, Retch is telling everyone else about Sleeper the shark man, he’s a piece of work apparently.
As the conversation draws to a close, with promises to drop by again soon, the crew turn back to the large metal machine, just as Arcanon joins them. David & Arcanon identify it as a void condensor, a machine to peer behind the veil of reality.
Abraca David is excited to peer into the void, and gamely hops into the machine, fitting the iron helmet over his head.
He experiences a brief second of a glimpse behind the cosmos.
He wonders if this would be more fun on drugs, and casts Purple Lens on himself. He sees the infinite and perfect form of true partying.
Beware the Shark, Beware the Water
The party moves on, not fancying the ladder back down they decide to head down into a cave mouth near Retch & Yolg’s house2. The stairs down lead to a wide open bowl-like cave and a strong scent of guano.
In the centre, is a small pool of water, and Arcanon urges the party to beware! Beware! They do, skirting round the edge of the pool to the tunnel entrance on the other side of the cave. As they do they notice a shiny glint from the pool. Healthily sceptical due to the warnings from the stars, Nickel casts See Through to glimpse through the rock down to the bottom of the still pond. A good view of the glinting object reveals it to be a small bio-luminescent lure attached by a fleshy stalk to a very large creature. Beware indeed!
Moving hurriedly on, the party continue down the tunnel, briefly passing the entrance hall where the tunnel breaches the wall, but continuing down the central rock stack until they find another large open cave.
It is filled with stalagmites and the other ones, which are all crudely carved into shark heads. Arcanon is on edge. There is another tunnel at the back of the cave continuing down, and the cave also opens up onto a rocky outcrop.
At the edge of the cave, looking out over the wave, the party see the bridge they crossed far above, and spot a little hatchway poking from the waves some distance out in the sea. Abraca David casts Helping Hands on the outside of the hatchway to pull it open, and the party watch as tiny arms pop out in the distance and heave open the hatchway. It is still about 50 metres away from them, and as they are debating quite how to get themselves over there, a very large grey clawed hand slams into the rock right next to David’s foot.
Nickel reacts automatically, swinging their sledgehammer down onto a massive finger. A howl of pain bellows from below them, and the party takes that as cue to get the hell out. Of they scarper, down the tunnel leading further down.
Around this point Arcanon’s player had to leave, but did say they were more than happy for Arcanon to continue to adventure with the party!
Lock In
Racing down the tunnel, the party crash out into the rain again down on the old dock, a large open expanse of iron. Still afraid for their lives, they quickly look around to spot a ladder leading up into a metal facility sphere. Up they rush!
Within, there is a door leading to a long sloping tube up (they can easily tell this leads back up the storeroom where they fought the coral heads) and another hatch in the ground beyond the one they just came up. There is also a panel in the centre of the room with an intercom and 2 buttons on it.
Flipping the intercom on, to a whine of static, the party hear faint sobs. Brian calls out a bracing “Hello”, and the sobbing stops. Mysterious. Also mysterious, what do these buttons do! The party slams both of them at the same time, which slams the hatch they came up and the main door shut and start a glaring red light flashing in the ceiling. At the very least, this might slow the shark-man down.
Luckily3 the second hatch, leading further into the facility, remains unlocked.
Creeping further into the facility, through the airlock, the gang find themselves in a very large open warehouse room. Within they spy a large mechanical lobster looking thing, lurking in the middle of the room alongside a big closed hatchway.
Brian’s MO is swiftly becoming a bracing “Hello” at full volume, so he deploys it once again here. The machine grinds to life, large glass faceplate glinting with blue lights.
A mechanical voice grinds, “It’s been so long.” The lights begin to blink to red “HOW COULD YOU LEAVE ME?” A huge mechanical clawed arm slams down toward Brian who braces, and just catches it, straining furiously.
Abraca David is fortunately a friendship expert, and has dealt with truculent pre-friends before. He casts Amity, and the huge mechanical creature calms, lights blinking back to blue.
Ch0am turns out to be a strange and lonely lifting and logistics robots, with a penchant for not particularly good poetry. The party spend some time chatting, and opening shipping containers to reveal the bizarre contents within.
They’d love to take Ch0am with them, but he’s quite large and would have a hard time leaving the room. Luckily, Arcanon knows how to turn people into cockroaches4 and happily obliges here. Ch0am is experiencing a new mode of being, and while he can’t communicate that he’s finding it fascinating we know that he is. Bug-Ch0am is stowed safely in Abraca David’s pocket.
No Really, Beware the Water
Operating the door controls5 for the massive hatch in the floor of this room. As it heaves open, a billowing cloud of sulphurous gas blooms up out of it.
Nickel has no fear, and decides to just dive right in.6 They land down in the ruined lab below, with a thudding splash. They’re below the smoke cloud, which they can now see is pouring from what looks like a hydrothermal vent erupting from the middle of the floor.
As they pick themselves up out of the knee-high water, they hear an alarming splash from behind them. They whirl around, just in time to spot a giant hagfish wriggling through the water toward them. They quickly scoop up a massive glass specimen jar, and deftly plop it over the head of the leaping hagfish as it lunges toward them, perfectly trapping it.
As they spy some more large shapes slipping through the water, they grab the ladder up and heave themselves onto the gangway. They’re just in time to meet the rest of the party, who decided to take the ladder rather than just sort of leap into the darkness.
Peering down, below the layer of black gas, at the huge menacing fish below, Abraca David wonders if the jolt spell would electrocute the hungry fish. Only one way to find out, and they shoot off a vicious blast of lightning.
It surges through the water with an almighty crack, and the smell of cooked seafood wafts steadily up, mixing with the heady sulphur stench.7
The Hag, The Rhino, The Pig
Now on the hunt for the hag, the party heads down through one of the doors on the lower floor of the lab. They quickly begin to smell blood and rotting meat, and soon emerge into the lair of the Vermiform Hag.
On the top balcony, surrounded by piles of wrecked and ruined corpses, they can hear the shuffling and muttering of the hag below them.
Abraca David sneaks forward and peers down, to see the hag down below. He hustles back, and the party decide to at least try talking to her first.
Brian fires off a third hearty hello, as the party approach the balcony, and peer down to the lower balcony about 3 metres below them on the other side of the room (each edge of the two balconies are just about over each other). Directly below them is a pool of freezing seawater. As look down, the hag whirls to face them, a huge humanoid form of writhing hagfish, which part slowly around the head to reveal the grey and sallow face of the Vermiform Hag herself.
The conversation goes poorly, the hag is largely immune to flattery and the party has very little to bargain with. They can feel themselves losing her, so David quickly attempts to casts Amity.
There is a blinding flash, followed by a shriek, the wizard is now a pig.8
With a roar of fury, the hag begins to weave her foul magic, and a battle begins.
Raising her arms through the curtains of wriggling hagfish, she incants the spell open vent, and the entire party feel the metal balcony below them buckle as a hydrothermal vent is torn open under their feet. Most of them are hit with a blast of heat, and tumble down into the water below, but Bash keeps his feet.
He leaps, heroically, spear in hand, down onto the Hag. He misses (still heroically mind you) and is slammed sideways by a tidal wave of wriggling coal-black fish. He is torn entirely to shreds by their rending jaws.
Seeing their friend fall, the rest of the party fight on, Abraca David lets of a jolt of magic from the water, as Brian heaves himself out and hefts a very small (comparatively to himself) knife.
He charges forward, tears blurring his eyes, remembering his friend or at the very least acquaintance Bash, and stabs his knife in to the hilt. It lands home incredibly, and the hag falls9 in a sluicing torrent of hagfish.
Closing Thoughts
That was loads of fun! I really do think The Worm’s Finger is a great mini-dungeon, nice easy single session of good clean soggy fun. Ok it’s not very clean, on the whole, but it is definitely soggy!
Troika! is such a joy to run & play, I haven’t had a lot of time for these drop-in sessions over the past few months, but I’m hoping to get more in over Spring & Summer!
Footnotes
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Rifle through their pockets for loose change. ↩
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Tree that they sit near? Patch of damp dirt? Pile of rotting offal and decayed clothing? ↩
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I mean, depends entirely on your point of view I think, but still. ↩
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Arcanon does not know how to people back into their original forms, a detail which totally escapes me in the moment (and Arcanon’s player had to step away so wasn’t here to tell us either). ↩
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It’s actually not supposed to have any door controls, but I was pretty conscious of time and that’s GM magic baby. ↩
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Are you sure? “Yes”, Ok but I did warn you. ↩
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It was a double one to cast, so doubled damage as if it were a mighty blow. ↩
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Ok, I’ve been GMing this game for I swear blind on and off well over 5 years, and this is the first time I have ever had a player roll on the oops table. I’m really glad we got “now a pig” though, it is one of the best options. ↩
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Another incredibly timed mighty blow! ↩