Into the Mountain Play Report, Session 5
Date: September 28th, 2026
System: Cairn Barebones (with dungeon procedure changes)
PCs:
Saoirse as Genevieve of Troy - Witch (16, she/her/it)
Dorian Glover- Weaver (29, he/they)
Today Saoirse and Dorian were the only PCs and they were really interested in gathering intel on the Caprix without getting into too much trouble. They also wanted to pick up their reward for rescuing Maveria's fairy friend two sessions back.
They started out entering the dungeon through Maveria's secret tree entrance. She offered them several options of trinkets to choose from and they landed on an Oread's Tear. From there they traveled through the anthill to talk to the Praetor of the Moss. They asked what information she could provide about the Caprix and asked what information she would find useful. She made it clear that information that leads to an end of the conflict would prove useful and that any other guidance she gave would interfere in her analysis of human utility. However, she did let them use the ant tunnels to descend to the third level where the Caprix conflict is taking place.
On this level of the ant tunnels there were several beings in the ant colony's employ defending the entrance to the colony, including humans, dog-like humanoids, and a tall shaggy creature with freakishly long arms. They decided to talk to the humans to see if they were more willing to give out info. They were friendlier, and explained they are part of the colony by necessity and are only given the info necessary to serve their purpose. They did however write down a note secretly telling them that the ants can't read human writing as of yet, and that they'll be listening in. The only other information they gained was that the Caprix are devious, immoral, impish things and they don't think they'll be easily infiltrated.
Before heading out, they decided to try talking to the dog-like humanoids. The two PCs were less interested in intel and were more curious to meet these people under the charge of the ants. At first they seemed to think the conversation was going poorly only to find out these guys really like rage baiting and messing with people. In the end they had a very explicit conversation with the most morbidly vulgar beings in the mountain. They learned the name of the one who spoke for them was Vrikth, and that they are called the Cynocs. Once they finished talking they decided to not fuck with the giant shaggy thing and get up to their own intel gathering.
Saoirse drank the Oread's Tear and melded with the stones of the dungeon. I rolled with a dice app to get a d18 for the amount of rooms on the level. The Oread's tear gives 3 random glimpses on their current level. They saw a key hanging from a string in one room, surrounded by sitting zombies who were peacefully watching it. They saw a room that they have deduced connects to the vertical tunnel from the first 2 levels, as well as a bunch of large spider webs. Last they saw a room full of Caprix, seemingly planning with a bat-like humanoid. The room only had one door and it was barricaded.
Before ending the session, they decided to send out Saoirse's bat familiar to try and snag the hanging key. She has no direct control of him, so I had them roll to see if he could find it without help (I gave them a cardinal direction that each of the visions came from). The bat did find the room but reported he couldn't get past the door. With that the three of them decided to head back to camp.
Final thoughts:
This was an interesting one for me. My players were a lot more focused on discussion with faction agents than exploring, which I was happy to see because I tried to make quite a large web of relationships for them to fuck up.
This session was only "rollplaying". Both had mentioned recently that they had been missing the zoomed in nature of our last campaign. I now see where I failed to set expectations in such a shift. I take interest in fun, in-character hyjinks, but I made a dungeon for it to be played with. At some points tonight, I felt like we could have just played a different game. I don't want this to seem like I am inflexible, I LOVE playing weird characters and talking with them. But I felt like I was a facilitator for their fun rather than an active participant, particularly when they wanted to go on talking to themselves in character. I found myself frozen not knowing how to move forward. I'm sure I could have thrown an encounter at them, but I don't want to be antagonistic because someone enjoys different parts of the game from me. I tried to consider how the dungeon was moving on without them, but they spent a majority of the time in a safely guarded room with an almost friendly faction.
I had more fun than I had internal tension about it. And these are my close friends, a conversation is always a welcome option. I'm just not quite sure how I feel about it yet. I think one thing I'll do is rethink how "safe" friendly faction rooms are. That's a really easy fix. Anything further gets less black and white. I don't even feel that upset, maybe just a little caught off guard. I want to learn how to run this game so everyone gets a chance to have fun. I want people who have fun expressing themselves through their character to get that kind of play. This is D&D, it's totally possible. But also, I started this campaign to get that OSR megadungeon experience. I'll have to sleep on it.
One other thing I'll note; I need to get better at telling my players when they're spinning their wheels. A lot of times they want to think of the most elaborate ways to get around the risks I just established. Whether its a puzzle, a challenge of space, or in a lot of situations tonight, a social encounter. I often forget that I can just tell them "guys, I like your thinking, but this obstacle needs a solution you don't have right now" or "No matter what you say at this point, nothing new will come of it until you find more leverage". It's an extension of ending a combat when there is just one goblin left. "Do you want it to die? Cool, it happens." This kind of refereeing would have aided me tonight.
Sorry this got so ranty, I know I'll read it tomorrow and see I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. I know my immediate thoughts and feelings are not as nuanced as my actual understanding, but I want to expose that little, angry, ranting child in my brain. Thank you to anyone who made it through to this point. You're a real one for that.