The Keep on the Borderlands 2025 - Session 2 How it Should have Been

Keep on the Borderlands is one of my favorites, you don't have it follow the link. If you click that link, you'll get the DriveThruRPG page to purchase the module. 

You can read session 0-1 here. There is also a post on observations and rationales for things here. The second post explains why I made many of the choices I did. 

For Session Two, we will follow the former hirelings, Rety, Punch, and Lefty at the Keep. They are flush with cash and ready to find adventure. Lety is in the drover's seat and knows what she wants. Punch and Lefty are all geared up and love their new equipment. They are the core of The B Team. 

Rety uses her drover skills to locate some horses. More importantly, she trades on her clan skills. She finds a family of drovers selling horses. She selects two older, but healthy draft horses for Lefty and Punch. She takes a headstrong pony for herself. That costs The B Team 150 gps. This premium cost nets them something extra. The seller was willing to tag along with his two daughters to care for the horses while the B Team adventures in the Caves of Chaos. They have their own ponies. 

This horse is 18 hands. Ponies are smaller.

Just an aside, a pony is a smaller horse. It is approximately 14 hands tall, which is suitable for riding but not for carrying burdens, such as treasure. Rety knows this and wants their speed and doesn't care about carrying capacity. That is what the draft horses are for. Draft horses are huge, suitable for a man in armor to ride, but they are unable and unwilling to let someone fight while riding. That's fine for Lefty and Punch; they don't know how to fight from horseback anyway. 

Rety is looking for something else: Security. She needs to hire a cleric or healer. Being world-savvy, she gravitates to the Loan Bank, looking for someone down on their luck. She skips over a bunch of gamblers, farmers, and other people seeking loans and targets a poor, down-on-his-luck travelling priest. Thomas of the Fen agrees to join the group for 25 gps a month, plus a share of the treasure. 

This has taken all of 48 hours, and the B Team is almost ready to leave. Throughout this shopping excursion, Rety keeps everyone well lubricated with beer. A chance happening allows the B Team to round out their party. The barman's son takes a shine to the drover's daughters, and it is decided that the barman and his son will join the party for 10 gps a month plus a share of treasure. 

B Team spends another 100 gps on supplies like boots, sacks for treasure, cloaks, rations, etc. 

All of this has taken the B Team about 4 days. They will set off for the Caves of Chaos on the morning of Day 5 since the encounter with the Hermit.

It's time to name names. B Team is made up of: 

Rety, Punch, Left, Thomas, and the Barman Hender. In order, they are a Thief, 2 fighters, a second-level Cleric, and another Fighter. Everyone but the Cleric is first level. 

Bela, Liz, Sonny (real name is Henderson), and Simon round out the party. They are the two drover girls, the son of Hender the barkeep, and the drover girl's father. 

A treed ridge-line, Mt. Prospect, NY

Back to the Original Scoobies, disaster in progress. 

Let's give them names: the Ranger is Pavel, Dunkin the Half-Elf, Dorian the Cleric, Slammer the Fighter,  Belaphon is the magic-user, and Solvo the Elf. I should have named them from the get-go. 

The A Team is not having fun. They are slogging through the forest ridge at a very slow pace. Worse, Rety took their map. As a reminder, the party thought a contour line on the map was a road. They know if they follow this line, they will get to the Caves of Chaos. Occasionally, they can sight the river or road below by climbing trees. They can't get lost easily. 

They end up spending a full day on the forest ridge, unsure of how far away from the Caves they are. The next morning, they break into the clearing surrounding The Caves of the Unknown. Since they saw six deer, and the area is heart-shaped, they called it The Hart. They party breaks in two to search the perimeter of The Hart. They sacrifice one of their magic items for safety. They break the Eyes of the Eagle into two lenses so they can watch each other from afar. 

The search was cut short as they made it to the north-eastern side of The Hart, nearest the valley of the Caves. I decided to throw in a little detail, the foundation of some sort of small tower or manor house. On the western side of the ruins, they find a collapsed cistern. The ruins are a 20-foot square with two 40-foot squares to the north and south. The center section does have the remains of a low wall on the western side. The party guesses the ruins are hundreds of years old.

A cave mouth, Panama Rocks, NY.

It makes a nice camp. As the sun sets, the A Team is now 3 days out from the encounter with the Hermit. After this boring break, days 4 and 5 will involve some combat.

At around midnight on day 3, the party hears gongs and drums in the distance. This was a ceremony from cave K. They couldn't determine where the noise came from, and nothing much happened. Day 4 has the party searching the ruins and finding nothing. As the sun sets and the party settles down, they have their first encounter. 

Belaphon and Dunkin alert the party with a light spell. Giant bats or something are approaching the camp from the valley. The characters armed with bows take the four corners of the ruins, while Belaphon and Dorian take the center, with a huge pile of throwing rocks and sling stones. The 5 flying creatures scream in. 

The party has the initiative, and missiles fly. All but one arrow finds its mark, plus Dunkin scores a hit with his sling. Belaphon doesn't throw a rock due to the distance. Three creatures fall from the sky as the last two dive on Pavel. Pavel has no armor on, but receives +2 due to cover and another +2 for Dex. One of the creatures strikes for 3 points of damage, while the other wheels around for another attack next round. 

"Stirges!" shouts Pavel. The party has initiative again, but the Stirge has locked on Pavel and sucks away 3 more hp before anyone can act. Pavel kills it with his dagger. 

Three more arrows fly, but only one hits. The last stirge with one hit point left retreats over the trees. Pavel is down to 9 hp, so Dorian casts heal on him. Pavel regains 4 hp, bringing him to 13. I should have mentioned that the Belaphon was back to full health. 

About 30 minutes later, two more stirges appear wheeling in the distance. The party lights a huge bonfire about 50 feet in front of them. What the party doesn't know is that six stirges are circling, but they only see two at a time. Belaphon and Dorian do their best to study while the rest of the party stands guard. The stirges retreat at dawn. 

Slammer and Pavel attempt to track them, but lose sight of them as they enter the valley to the east. The party spends day 5 resting up while Solvo the elf brings back a deer for dinner. 

The evening proceeds the same way as the prior day, with the gongs and drums sounding at midnight, followed by the stirges buzzing but not attacking the party. Since the party was using bonfires, the B Team sees the light from the other end of the valley. It makes them very cautious, to the point of backing away and south of the valley. 

On day six, the party has used their ropes of climbing to descend into the valley and has located the entrances to K, I, and in the distance, they can make out entrances D and E. They push into K, expecting the stirges. 

They are shocked to see 8 zombies shuffling towards them. No one is surprised, and the party has initiative. Dorian rolls well and turns 5 of the eight zombies. Arrows strike all three of the still advancing undead. The zombies have 2, 4, and 6 hp left as they melee the party. Pavel, Slammer, and Solvo are all hit. I decide that Belaphon can attack last and strike with his dagger, which does 2 points of damage. 

Here is the scorecard: the zombies have 2, 4, and 4 hp left. Pavel and Slammer have 12 and 19 hp, respectively. Solvo was hit for 2 hp damage, which was eaten up by his armor. 

The zombies attack last, so the party goes first again. Belaphon and Dorian miss. Slammer, Solvo, and Pavel make horrible rolls. Slammer splatters zombie brains everywhere. Dunkin rips down a second zombie with his sword. The last zombie misses, and in the next round, it goes down quickly. 

The fighting men sheath their weapons and move to recover their dropped bows and arrows while the Cleric and Magic User search bodies. Belaphon casts light on a rock to help in the search. The party examined zombies' amulets and meat cleaver-like weapons and believed them to be magical. 

A minute or two later, Belaphon hears something. He throws his rock, and it sails over the heads of 8 more zombies. Worse, it lights up room 53, where the 5 turned zombies are milling about. 

It will take the zombies two rounds to reach the party. Dorian attempts to turn them and is shocked to find it doesn't work at all, despite a very passable roll. The archers try a different tactic. They target just two of the zombies with arrows. All four arrows hit, and two zombies go down. 

In this round, the party backs up a bit as they target the zombies again. This slow retreat keeps the zombies out of reach for this round, too. Dorian makes a terrible turn roll again, and the 6 undead shamble on. Three arrows hit, but none of the zombies go down. 

Decision time. By backing up, the party can stay just out of reach of the zombies this round. In the next round, the zombies will be upon them. The party splits up, Dorian and Belaphon retreat to the entrance to look for anyone sneaking up on them, while everyone else readies their melee weapons and charges. Three zombies go down. The remaining three hit Dunkin and Solvo. 

Zombies: 4, 8, and 8 hp. Pavel has 12, Slammer is at 19, and Solvo has 6 hp. 

Belophon and Dorian spot two different things: first, they see a pair of knights and several attendants at the mouth of the valley. This is the B Team. Lefty and Punch are misidentified as knights since they are wearing the plate armor they stole from the party. Second, they see the stirges circling high over the valley. They back up, hoping nothing saw them. 

Two more zombies are down while the third hits Slammer. Pavel has 12 hp, Slammer is at 15 hp, and Solvo has 6 hp. 

A halfling with a bow.

The stirges dive towards the cave entrance as the last zombie goes down. The party quickly moves to the hallway leading to room 53, the guardroom. Dorian warns the party that if they threaten the zombies, they will attack. Not having much of a choice, they stay in the hall and let fly with missiles. One zombie goes down to arrows and sling stones. A second is injured by a magic missile. In the next round, two more go down, and a third is injured. There are just two injured zombies left. It only takes a moment for the party to take the remaining two down. 

Belaphon grabs the rock that is shedding light and pockets it just in time. There is a flurry of wings as stirges go by and enter Room 52. Dorian quietly heals Solvo, restoring 5 hp. 

After about 20 minutes, stirges leave the cave complex. After another few minutes, the party advances to The Hall of Skeletons. From the doorway, they see the skeletons and decide not to venture into the room. They gather the zombie weapons and amulets and beat a retreat. As they climb back up the wall of the valley, they can see some sort of skirmish on the valley floor. There are two types of humanoids fighting each other while the stirges opportunistically attack both. There is no sign of the B Team. 

The party returns to the ruins to lick their wounds. They received 452 exp for the monsters, plus they have 16 amulets and 16 battle axes. I deem the battle axes are worth 272 gp, and the amulets are worth 400. That is 187 exp per character. I round to 200 each. So far, the A Team has earned 240 per character by session 2. They have surpassed the B Team's 216 experience points. 

Thanks for holding on for this very, very long post. Since you made it this far, perhaps you'd consider this ad for Chessex dice from Amazon. I may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.