• 14 Dec, 2025 *

Eugène Ciceri. Design for a Stage Set. 1830-90.Here we continue our makeshift GLoG micro-campaign, following the exploits of characters generated using Beyond the Wall. You can find the details of our previous sessions here. This report covers two sessions. I’ll endeavor to be brief, but I might not succeed...

Under Attack!

The morning after Nagina and Rold’s foray, the full party gathered to delve into the areas they had explored. They were:

• Nagina Setimir - gifted dilettante, fifth in line to the Setimir seat
• Rold von Dietmar - would-be knight, newly elevated by the late Mergen Setimir
• Sabine Setimir - apprentice court sorcerer, Nagina’s older step-sister
• Uwe Manfred Deitmar - self-taught mage, soon to be married into the Miller family
• Berlynn Setimir-Strauss - wild daughter of a Setimir cadet family

As the party approached the mausoleum, they heard the din of combat. The skeletal phalanx that Rold and Nagina had encountered had emerged to the surface!

The party rushed to the aid of the two peasants they had left on watch duty. Sabine summoned illusory fighters to bolster their ranks, Berlynn swung her banner in a dazzling display, and Rold dove headlong into the formation, disrupting and scattering the skeletal soldiers. They routed in short order, Nagina picking off a few of their number with her bow as they fled.

You may note I haven’t mentioned Uwe. While all of this was going on, the self-taught mage had rushed to the Setimir Manor. Pounding on the door, he roused Johann, the family’s seneschal, and talked the old man into sending aid to the mausoleum. Uwe used the distraction to sneak into the manor and "borrow" an ancient warhammer from within.

Sir Branweig

By the time reinforcements arrived, the fight at the mausoleum was over. Rold patched up some injuries with a full body poultice provided by Minne the Salvemonger and Johann begrudgingly agreed to station more stout villagers to guard the hatch down into the tomb below.

With the entrance secured, the party made their way down into the depths. They swept through the scorched ossuary and down the secret passage into the fountain room. As they approached, they heard a crunch. Rold and Berlynn peeked into the room ahead to see an armored skeleton standing over the powdered remains of one of the skeletal soldiers they had just battled.

Berlynn recognized the skeleton as the armored corpse they had found on their first excursion and, thoughtfully, returned the shield she had stolen from the knight. He introduced himself as Sir Branveig, and in a nasally voice, demanded to know their business.

When the party introduced themselves as Setimirs, the knight scoffed, "there are no true Setimirs." Sir Branveig was part of Artur Viera Setimir’s court. He had tasked himself with keeping everyone in their rightful place, the dead below and the living above.

Berlynn asked some pointed questions, and the skeleton elaborated on his earlier claim. Artur had no heirs, so there could be no Setimirs after him. At least not from his line.

Around this time, Uwe deeply insulted the skeleton in the language of the dead. What little grace they had bought by returning his shield evaporated and the knight made a dire pronouncement. To pass this point, the party would need to either fight him in the ring of honor or pay a toll in skulls of the wandering dead.

Grudgingly, the party agreed and headed below.

Below

Down the stairs, the party found themselves in the rectangular room with the sagging plaster hanging on the west wall. Rold and Nagina checked the robed ghoul corpse they had left here. The creature was still dead.

Uwe, ever curious, threw a rock at the bulging section of plaster. It punched through, releasing a steady stream of water. Rold moved over to peek through the hole. He got a brief glimpse of stairs going up into a room beyond before something lunged out at him.

This was another of the thin oozes that he and Nagina had lunged before. Thinking quickly, Rold pinned the ooze to the ground with his knife. Uwe ran up with a shortsword (pilfered from the skeletons above) and began sawing at the creature, accidentally cutting the thing into two smaller oozes.

Sabine threw a jar of oil that Nagina set lit with her torch, then Rold wrestled one of the slimes off his shoulders and into the blaze. The oil fire began to spread through the room. The pinned ooze burnt away in an instant, but the loose one lunged onto Uwe, knocking the mage prone and lighting him on fire as well.

As the party rushed to put out the mage and finish off the ooze, they checked on their friend. Uwe was okay, but his limb was badly mangled. He wouldn’t be able to walk on it for weeks without support.

The Toll

All of this was too much for the party. They scurried up the stairs as water gushed from behind the torn plaster.

Up above, Sir Branveig demanded his toll. Before he could stop them, Rold grabbed his brother Uwe and rushed down the secret passage. The skeletal knight barred the way for the others.

Sabine had had enough. She demanded to duel with the knight. They took opposite sides of the room, then Sabine cast Flash of Brilliance. The knight was too quick, blocking the light with his shield then careening into the court sorceress. Sabine pulled a bundle of flash paper from her belt and detonated it in the knight’s skeletal face, blinding him and sending him staggering.

As soon as the knight was dazzled, the whole party sprang into action, clobbering him and, eventually, beheading him. They all agreed to tell Rold it had been a matter of self-defense.

Nagina, Berlynn, and Sabine emerged dragging Sir Branveig’s beheaded corpse in tow. They found the others in the market. Minne had tended Uwe’s wounds, and Uwe had found a local daytaler named Marvin to help carry him into the dungeon in exchange for a silver per day.

The party offered Rold the twice-dead knight’s antique plate mail. He refused at first, but eventually agreed, taking it with due reverence.

The Manor Heist

After a night of rest and recuperation, the three noblewomen gathered outside their family manor:

• Nagina Setimir - gifted dilettante, fifth in line to the Setimir seat
• Sabine Setimir - apprentice court sorcerer, Nagina’s older step-sister
• Berlynn Setimir-Strauss - wild daughter of a Setimir cadet family

Their plan was to sneak into the manor and find any evidence they could pertaining to Sir Branveig’s claim that there were no true Setimir heirs.

Led by Nagina, they snuck in by a side entrance, made it up the stairs, and all the way to the door to the study of the late Mergen Setimir before being caught. Lady Marthe strode into the room and demanded to know what they were doing.

Nagina, well versed in baiting her mother into arguments, pulled her into a sidebar conversation. She told the lady about what they had found (eliding key details about the skeletal knight). Lady Marthe seemed unsurprised and chastised Nagina for bringing this up, especially in front of a Setimir-Strauss!

In the meantime, Sabine and Berlynn waylaid Johann. Sabine bullied the old seneschal into opening Mergen’s study. Inside, the duo found a small library, a fireplace, and a big claw-footed desk. All Sabine’s memories of her father washed over her in this intimate space.

Then they quickly turned the place over. Berlynn found an ancient heraldic ledger, clearly set aside by Mergen. Sabine found some recent correspondence. Rechtold Setimir, her eldest brother and only male child of the house, was dead.

Pocketing the letters and the tome, Sabine and Berlynn hastened out of the study. Sabine pocketed 16 silver from her father’s desk and gifted Johann a silver pen-knife for his discretion.

The party reunited outside of the manor to discuss what they had learned. If Rechtold was dead, then the women of their generation would inherit. Specifically, the inheritance would be split between Sabine, Nagina, and a few of their more distant sisters who had been married off or entrusted to neighboring lords. The group schemed, but decided they might find useful information (or even family artifacts) down in the tomb.

The Wandering Ghoul

For now, the trio headed back to the strange mausoleum. Their plan was to check out the sealed sarcophagus on the first floor that they had previously left untouched.

As they entered, the peasants on watch mentioned hearing wet crunching sounds from the tunnel below. Indeed, as the party descended, they heard the same sounds. Creeping closer, they saw one of the robed ghouls from the lower floors, carefully cracking bones in the ossuary in search of marrow.

The party wasn’t subtle. Sabine threw a bottle of holy water like a grenade, blasting the creature, then Berlynn pinned it to the wall with her banner. Still, the ghoul wriggled out, managing to swat Nagina’s sword from her hands before landing a paralytic slash on Berlynn’s arm. Before the creature could seriously injure anyone, Sabine followed up with another splash of holy water, destroying it utterly.

The Sealed Sarcophagus

Fortunately, Berlynn recovered after only a few moments, so the party ventured on. They wound their way down to the treasure room with the sealed sarcophagus, still covered with soot from where they had activated the flare trap hidden within a chest.

The sarcophagus sat on a raised platform and depicted an armored figure in low relief. An engraving in classical read "King Artur Viera Setimir."

"Oh," the party said in unison as they pulled out daggers to chip away the clay seal.

As soon as Sabine breached the clay, a greenish, sulfurous gas began to vent out. The party hastily pulled back, recognizing this as supremely flammable tunnel gas.

Sabine went back to the surface (her player had to leave early), leaving Berlynn and Nagina to deal with the problem. They decided to seal the trapped room and deal with it later.

The Flooded Halls

Down to two, the party decided to scout another unexplored area of the tomb. They descended through the fountain room down into the now extremely damp rectangular chamber where Uwe had been mauled by an ooze.

Inside, they found the way west was now clear. Behind the tattered plaster, a half-flight of stairs ascended into an L-shaped stone room beyond. The space was full of stone blocks, masonry tools, and unfinished statues reminiscent of the ones Nagina and Rold had encountered in the halls to the east.

The room had two exits, a small door to the north on the lower part of the "L" and a pair of double doors to the south. Everything was pretty water-logged, but the doors south looked like they would need to be hacked open to proceed.

Following the path of least resistance, the duo cracked the north door. It opened onto a small platform overlooking a room almost fully submerged in dark water. The heads of two sarcophagi emerged above the waterline, as did the top of an arched tunnel headed west.

The Newt and the River

Not wanting to swim, the party investigated the southern doors. Berlynn used a chipped greatsword (borrowed from Sir Branveig the day before) to hack a hole. Beyond, they could make out a damp natural cavern and the mangled corpse of a ghoul. Something big had crunched its spine. The sound of rushing water echoed from the south.

The party proceeded to dismantle the door, stepping out only to encounter a colossal newt. The creature’s pallid skin was plated with mirrored scales that reflected their torchlight into dazzling starbursts.

Nagina gently tossed the creature a wrapped ration. It wolfed the food down, seeming more curious than threatened. The duo decided to head south, following a tunnel out of the cave room rather than antagonizing the creature any further.

The room to the south was home to an underground river that ran west to east. Berlynn pointed out this might be the river the skeletons had told them of a few days prior. Along the bank, a small tunnel headed northwest.

The party followed the tunnel and, to their relief, it wound its way back to a familiar door. Nagina knew this would lead into the cross-shaped intersection to the east of the rectangular room with the stairs up.

Skeletal Sentries

Their relief was short-lived. Nagina pushed open the door, revealing two skeletons playing dice at the small table across the way.

Berlynn threw a dagger, but it wasn’t enough. One of the skeletons picked up a curling horn and belted two low notes. The sound of reinforcements could immediately be heard to the east.

Worse still, the other skeleton scampered forward and slashed at Berlynn. The blow caught her off guard and raked her face, dropping her to the ground stunned.

Nagina grabbed her wounded cousin and dragged her back through the door before slamming it shut. In the winding hall, she roused Berlynn. Setimir-Strauss’ wildest daughter was wounded. She couldn’t see out of one eye, but she could walk.

The duo hobbled back down the tunnel. They offered the newt another ration out of an abundance of caution. Skeletal footsteps echoed behind them.

Back in the masonry room, they paused and doused their torches. The two skeletal lookouts were still across the way. Feeling her way along the wall, Berlynn led them through the darkened room, up the stairs, then out of the tomb as fast as they could muster.

GM Notes

Some action-packed sessions!

I appreciate Uwe’s player always being willing to push the scene forward. Yes, their interventions basically strictly made the character’s lives harder, and yes, it nearly cost them a leg, but look how many interesting developments have come out of them.

My custom, Mothership-style D&D table is bearing fruit. When a character goes down, their fate is uncertain until another character turns them over. At that point, they roll a d6: 1 or 2, dead; 3 or 4, injured; 5 or 6, just dazed. We were lucky with a couple mere 3s or 4s...

In the first half of the second session, we did a little bit more of the intrigue gameplay that our noble characters from Beyond the Wall seemed to suggest. Players expressed some interest in a domain-level game navigating the political crisis after our current dungeon-level game. It feels like there is some juicy irony in potentially running a GLoG domain game on my private server...

#GLoG [#session reports](https://mediumsandmessages.bearblog.dev/blog/?q=session reports)