Ten of +1 Swords

Into the Mountain Play Report, Session 4

Date: September 28th, 2026
System: Cairn Barebones (with dungeon procedure changes)

PCs:
Barley Brewer- Tax Collector (45, he/him)
Dorian Glover- Weaver (29, he/they)
Evander Gradnick - Scribe (26, he/him)
Rush Kuchar - Gong Farmer (30, he/him)
Lief Lewelyn - Oil Collector (16, she/her)

Today we on-boarded some new players and jumped right in after a strategy session. The players wanted to investigate beyond the portcullises in the direction in which the Silver Knight approached from. Today the only PC from last session was Dorian, so together him and Evander made calls for the group.

First, they investigated the Gorilla Pig lair. They found them cut up, dead, rotting from a week away from the dungeon. Their young still remained guarding their bodies, but they didn't attack the PCs who searched the Gorilla Pig's previous victims. They moved past the Metal Eye statue to the North and mapped the room where they found the caged fairy in the last session. Here, they found a dead man with two destroyed zombies. The man, stabbed several times and clad in frilly robes, had a bag with a Wizard Mark spellbook and a strange crunchy slime in a bottle. This was a dead end so they went down the stairs where they originally encountered the Silver Knight.

A river has carved out a tunnel through part of the room and they know from experience that it's too rapid to cross without risk (they found a room dissected by it in an earlier session further north). They decided to risk fatigue by tying someone to a rope who would cross while everyone held on to stop them from flowing toward a waterfall. While crossing they found flickering light up stream in the river tunnel. They decided to continue on down the spiral staircase on the other side of the river.

Once on the next level they investigated some burnt zombies and a blast mark on the ground and decided to move toward the sounds of frogs chirping to the East. They found a room with another metal eye statue, a few hallway exits, and a cave tunnel leading into a pond. Knowing that the Underclock was getting close to 20, they rushed away from the metal eye and explored the pond below. Lit by a shaft of light, they found a pond holding some chunky fish, pale white frogs, and a tunnel leading deeper under water. They didn't want to defend against an encounter down here since they'd have to swim into a tunnel, or climb slimy rocks in a rush. They returned to the first room on this level.

As they entered, the random encounter burst in from the opposite side, a zombie getting tackled by giant ants. I also rolled earlier to see if the metal eye summoned the Silver Knight, which it has a chance to, and it did. They heard the Knight approaching far down the hall behind them. The ants made short work of the zombie, but neither the PCs or the ants wanted to fight the Knight. Together, they ran in the opposite direction, no longer mapping. Evander led the group in evasion, and with his DEX score of 7, failed to break pursuit twice. They finally escaped after getting much further in the level and without their bearings.

They decided to forgo mapping to avoid inconsistencies while also moving faster. They found a study with a chalkboard framed in bones and runes. Dorian decided to erase what was written: "I will capture and incarcerate fairies". Rush and Barley found a vesuvian diagram of a fairy and some chicken scratch notes that were too difficult to decipher without spending more time. They stashed them and started to retrace their steps. The giant ants communicated that they wanted to move South from here and the players followed (the worker ants can only communicate through bursts of pheromones that cause emotions in addition to pointing with their head and antennae).

On their way, they found a bronze statue of a king surrounded by treasure, which is also encircled by runes scratched in the stone. There were also two full skeletons with little more than scraps of cloth. In spite of the omens they still decided to grab the treasure. The floor of the room sank 50' down in an instant trapping them with nothing but sheer walls on either side… Except the worker ants were still with them! They offered them some treasure and asked for help getting out which was not a difficult task.

Once outside, the ants brought them next door to their destination; the tunnel below the anthill on the first level. There, The Praetor of the Moss was stationed with 7 of her soldiers. The PCs and the workers explained to her what happened, and gifted her some jewelry. The Praetor told them that this makes up for unleashing the Silver Knight on the first level. She added that she would put in a good word in her report to the queen. The workers gave them a lift through the anthill and they were able to exit the dungeon without further encounters.

Downtime actions:

 

Ending thoughts:

It was fun to see the transfer of knowledge and strategizing between two nearly separate groups. They picked up where the last group left. Now that I've organized a discord for them, the information sharing is already getting easier between players.

The players expressed how spooky it is to know the Silver Knight is out there, but not finding it room after room of exploring. I'll have to keep that in mind with recurring encounters.

This was my first time doing D&D evasion rules with Cairn, and I liked it a lot. Because the PCs got lost, they learned the trade off of moving slow to map. They liked how quickly they covered ground and enjoyed getting lost and finding something they potentially wouldn't have.

After the session, a player approached me to discuss roleplaying. He said he feels that in this campaign, he doesn't get a lot of chances to roleplay. I talked to him a bit about the differences of spotlight with this campaign and our last. It was an interesting conversation and I'll do a little mini post later about it.