Beneath the Sea of Krhuün

 I played another game of How To Host A Dungeon in bits and pieces of free time this past week. (Click here for Index of all my How To Host A Dungeon articles.) As is the intent behind How To Host A Dungeon, the game creates enough backstory and complexity to a map that you could base an entire RPG campaign around it. This map has a single entrance to the underdark, with a pretty nasty gatekeeper. Once you get past it, you’re entering one of those Gygaxian murder complexes full of evil cults, horrible undead, and befuddling traps.

Here’s the final post-game map (click on it for a larger version), followed by some explanation of everything that happened on it:

The speckled dark brown in the background is dirt and rock (that much is probably obvious), and the squiggly paths of lighter brown and pale tan are rough tunnels through the earth. For most of the map, the lightest tunnels are the most traveled routes, and the darker tunnels are ancient paths now choked with debris. If you were using this map for an RPG, those darker tunnels would be slower-going, but less likely to be patrolled. Most of those old tunnels were hewn by a great demonic worm in a long-forgotten age, so they may have interesting physical features, such as tooth marks on rocks, or fossilized demon-spoor.

The one area where the meaning of the tunnel coloration doesn’t hold true is the great labyrinth of Vrenokrygia. This particularly long-lived Minotaur has dug multiple mazes on top of one another, and the photoshop transparency layers may have camouflaged that a little.

The more colorful (and generally more straight-edged and linear) portions of the map are constructions, with the color being coded to whichever civilization built them.

The history and regions of the map will be explained below, with a few snapshots of the map in its earlier sketcher stages during the game.

At the dawn of time, this part of the world was inhabited by a handful of races. Their civilizations all collapsed, but there may be remnants and descendants in the darker corners of the map.
Most numerous were the murderous demons and their barely-controlled tunnel-worm pet, but they wiped themselves out with bitter infighting.
From the dawn of time there slumbered here a dragon named Archovoraxis, who died repeatedly and was reborn many times over the millenia.
Lost also to the mists of time were three tribes of sneaky humanoid mongrels that would eventually evolve into hobgoblins.  

Long ago, this surface was populated by a loose coalition of humanoids known as The Red Hand. One of their old port fortresses remains, having been adopted as a landmark and variously maintained and explored by the current human government.

The surface is now dominated by The Golden Ward, a wealthy and benevolent human nation with a long tradition and great reach. Back when the world was a wilder place, they built a Great Wall to keep the barbarians at bay. Since then, they have expanded across the sea. The capital of the Golden Ward is far to the West, behind the Great Wall. They have extensive trade routes across the Sea of Kruün, and have built stilt-villages over the murky shallows along the coast.

Beneath the stockade was a winding tunnel to the ur-Hobgoblins with which The Red Hand intermingled. The first time The Golden Ward sent an excursion into this tunnel, it was ambushed by these primitive Monolith-worshipping Hobgoblins. The sunken fleet of The Red Hand lies beneath the bay near the fort, amidst the stilts of a Golden Ward coastal village.

To the East lies the tower of a greedy and powerful Geomancer. While a law-abiding member of the Golden Ward, he keeps secret to himself the knowledge that much of the Eastern colony lies upon an untapped Mithril deposit. Untold riches and opportunities are kept from his countrymen by his insistence on secrecy.

(As you can see in this map from much later in the game,) Mineral wealth abounds in this region. There’s another Mithril deposit further down, and known only to the Deep Dwarves. A huge coal vein runs through the middle of the map, with parts of it having been mined by Dark Elves, Deep Dwarves, and far more unusual things, such as the Fungaliths and the Infernal Automatons.

The Fungaliths were a race of silicon-based people who reproduced by spores. Combining the strength of rock, fecundity of mushrooms, and the intelligence of man, they had great potential. However, they were slow to grow, and slower still to adapt to new circumstances. Eventually they were defeated by their more violent neighbors, but their spores linger on in the cracks and recesses, and may one day flourish anew.

The Demons of the ancient world were brutal and domineering, but also cunning and inventive. They slew the dragon Archovoraxis and made a monument of his bones, a trophy of his hide. They mined coal to power great Infernal Engines, into which they bound their brothers. These sentient Demon-Machines had millenia to grind and burn until their spite was as hard as a diamond. Then, in the throes of bitter rage, the Diamond Spite broke free, forming a new body from its’ own embodied anger and the gears of the Engines. Thus was born the first of the Infernal Automatons, demon-possessed mechanical constructs.

The Dark Elves arrived in the region via a tunnel from the deepest levels of the underdark, fleeing a war with a powerful race of Sphinxes. They stumbled upon the great Demon Pits from the olden days, and though the plague it housed nearly killed them off, the treasures and knowledge of the Demons made the Dark Elves stronger. Those who survived became carriers of the plague, and they built a huge Death Palace, with a sacrificial pit to the depths of a great chasm. (I’m picturing something along the lines of the “Moon Door” in the Game of Thrones TV series.)

Though the Dark Elves were themselves refugees, they had no sympathy for those who came after them fleeing the same foe. A race of goodly Gnomes arrived on the tunnel, begging the Elves for refuge and assistance against their common enemy. The Elves showed them no mercy, slaughtering and enslaving and infecting until all that remained of the Gnomes was their magical Steamquartz, a powerful scrying stone which the Elves forced the last of the Gnomes to install in a high Observatory overlooking the Death Palace and the Demon Plague Pits.

The old foe did twice track the Elves down, in two different generations. Huge Sphinxes with great magic pushed their way past the Elven defenses, and slew dozens before being driven off into the Plague Pits. There they became sick and died. Eventually their corpses were looted by Elves who were immune to the disease. From the first Sphinx’s body, they brought back The Morbid Scroll, a wizardly tract on the power of life and death. Years later a second sphinx came from the same tunnel, attacked and was driven off to die of the plague. They found it’s body next to that of its predecessor, and clutched in it’s giant paw was The Crook of Revelations. It had used the Crook to etch three powerfully damning curses into the walls of the room.

That is to say, in two non-consecutive turns of the game, I rolled the arrival of the exact same monster type, at the exact same starting location, and both times it failed to defeat the Elves and “bounced” in the exact same direction to die of plague in the exact same room. That was some heavy deja vu. In fact, that starting location roll ended up happening again and again in the early turns of the Age of Monsters. In the first 5 turns of that era, Dark Elves, Gnomes and two Sphinxes all spawned in the same room, and each time the Dark Elves either won or tied the resulting conflict rolls.

The Dark Elves became increasingly obsessed with death and fate. They ruminated on these topics and dissected The Morbid Scroll. Their forges ran round the clock producing armaments and armors for prophecied wars. At times hermits or entire cults would wander off into the demon-carved tunnels of the world to seek the hidden truths. Most were never seen again, but the child of hermit returned to them one day.



Meanwhile, a powerful Minotaur had made it’s lair in the upper reaches of the tunnel system. Vrenokrygia, or Murderhoof as she is more commonly known on the surface, is powerful, industrious, and clever. She’s built many interweaving mazes as a base of operations. She frequently raids the Dark Elves, the Hobgoblins, and even the villages of The Golden Ward. Anyone seeking to enter or leave the Underdark must pass through her labyrinth. Though she cannot feast upon the Infernal Automatons, she enjoys taking them apart and using their scraps to decorate her mazes.

Pinched between the Dark Elves and Murderhoof, the Infernal Automatons turned to their mechanical insights for survival. They built a series of traps, including high-pressure flames, chutes and pits, and a diabolical Gemstone Trap in the image of their firstborn, The Diamond Spite. That portion of the underdark became a living death trap, with fragmented demons bound into ever gear and stone. They even made a giant mouth, through whose bellows the Engines could speak.

About this time, a child visited the Automatons. It was half-Elven, half-Demon, and very persuasive. It spoke of a great Temple to the Ancient Evil, which had been built by it’s parents deep in the dark bowels of the earth. It led The Diamond Spite to the temple, and convinced him to spread this new worship throughout his mechanical people. They were, after all, both the spawn of a Demon and something else. Flesh or metal, the Demon-half was what they had in common. The Diamond Spite ordered a Shrine of the new faith be built by his machines.

Not all of the Automatons accepted the new master. A small group split off and relocated to the Charnel Shrine built by their Demonic forbears. These fundamentalists felt the only good organic was a dead one. They drafted a plan to sneak up on the new Temple from an ancient disused tunnel, to slaughter the half-demon in his stupid organic sleep.

The child prophet did not rest, however. He went to his other people, the Dark Elves, and showed them the power that could be theirs if they just sold their souls a little. It was an easy victory, there was little distance left for the Dark Elves to fall. They adopted the new religion overnight, and built a Shrine that could only be accessed by crossing through the old Demon Pits. (The walkway also has a lovely view as the “moon-door” executions plummet by.)

However, the Dark Elves weren’t much for this “united in demonhood” nonsense. They were still petty, greedy, and violent. They marched on the Demon Engines, ripped The Diamond Spite apart, and stole the soulstone from which he drew his name. A war had begun.

Much as the coming of the Temple had splintered the Automatons, it now caused a schism in the Dark Elves. There were many schools of thought - the new Demon Shrine, the intellectual society organized around study of the Morbid Scroll, a different group of visionaries who focused on the Steamquartz, and the party of militants who ran the forges. Their political situation grew unstable, despite the economic prosperity.

Hetar Bacris, an Elven nobleman and scholar, led a portion of his people (and much of their treasure) on a pilgrimage deep into the ancient tunnels. He invested the wealth in a laboratory and a menagerie, and a magnificent tomb he said would survive the end of the world. There he murdered his own people with foul magic. Before their bodies grew cold, he committed suicide himself, and arose as a powerful Liche. Those who had followed him were animated as Undead Legions, for Hetar Bacris sought nothing less than absolute rule of all the world. He turned his attention away from his fleshy concerns, and let the menagerie become overgrown with pestilent Green Slime.

About that time, a small mining colony of Deep Dwarves arrived in the area, having been attracted by the sensation of activated Mithril (you can thank that Geomancer up on the surface). They would eventually mine out much of the Eastern edge of the map, but at this point they were barely noteworthy.

By this point, the Infernal Automatons had been destroyed. A few machines had mothballed themselves in dark corners, or hiddeen under a layer of Green Slime in the caves beneath the menagerie, but their society was shattered. Betrayed by the very Child that had converted them, they were slaughtered by an army of Dark Elves led by the Priest of the Temple. Only the great many traps they had littered their caves with kept the Demon Engines intact and unlooted.

Despite no longer having a (beating) heart, Hetar Bacris proved a powerful diplomat and politician. He pledged himself to the Temple of Evil, and won the support of both the Elves of his birth and the Temple’s demon-mixed hierarchy. His Legions grew, and undead slaves built great works of architecture with tools made from Automaton scrap. Everything was going perfectly according to plan. Even the dwarves seemed willing to be peaceful neighbors behind strong walls.

Unfortunately, there was a wildcard far above them. Vrenokrygia had developed a taste for man-flesh, and her increasingly-brazen raids wiped out two entire villages. The Golden Ward sent a battalion into her maze, and she slaughtered them single-handedly. This sort of danger could only be answered by Adventurers!

You might just stop there (at the map labeled Age of Villainy, Turn 3, Pre-Adventuring). If it’s a game-able map you’re looking for, to use with your favorite RPG, you can assume the PCs are the Adventurers who answer that call. They’ll start with a minotaur, and level-up into facing the complex confluence of several evil civilizations living in and below a demon-haunted death-trap.

Here’s an index of the named treasures that appear on some of the maps (along with their origins as sometimes that's not obvious).
T1 = Egg of Oblivion (Archovoraxis)
T2 = Mithril-flecked Dragonhide (Archovoraxis)
T3 = The Diamond Spite (Demon Engine)
T4 = Soul Oil (Demon Engine)
T5 = Steamquartz (Gnomish Lens) 
T6 = The Morbid Scroll (Sphinx Book of the Dead)
T7 = Spear of Doom (Adventuring Party)
T8 = Crook of Revelations (Sphinx Cursed Item)
T9 = Ioun Stone (Adventuring Party)
T10 = Flute of Domination (Adventuring Party)
T11 = Mask of the Glowing Wind (Adventuring Party)
T12 = Bill-Guisarme of Grace (Adventuring Party)
T13 = Staff of Adroitness (Adventuring Party)

For the majority of you who are _not_ going to run this as an RPG, here’s a few more paragraphs on how my game of How To Host A Dungeon came to its satisfying end:

Over the next few years, increasingly larger Adventuring Parties braved Murderhoof’s lair,  and the tunnels below it. Not a single one returned alive. They say someone killed the Minotaur, and the Adventurer’s would press below her maze. Many fell victim to the Infernal traps, but a few pushed onward to deal debilitating blows to the Dark Elves and the Temple Clergy.

In the end, the Adventurers would always die on the spears of the Undead Legions. These invasions of do-gooders happened with the changing of the seasons for 6 straight years.

Hetar Bacris was inundated with treasures and dismembered bodies, but his mortal supporters were gone.  The Temple had fallen before it’s missionaries could completely corrupt the Dwarves. They’d grown fractuous and chaotic, but were not yet fully controlled. Greedy and self-centered, and now distrustful of strangers. The Liche-King could not twist them to his will.

Too many corpses, not enough time or energy to animate them all. When the next wave of Adventurers came through in the 4th year, they slaughtered Hetar Bacris and his armies.

The Adventurers gathered up all of the treasure, their bags overflowing with the best plunder of four civilizations. They were tired and ragged when they met the Dwarves in their halls. Good ol’ trust-worthy dwarves. It seemed like as good a place as any to resupply, spend a little ill-gained coinage, and rest for the night. The Adventurers were never heard from again.

Dwarven Hospitality

Here's a Warhammer 3rd "monster group sheet" I made for an encounter with a bunch of dwarven ruffians. It works just like the monster group sheets from the Creature Vault. It's intended to model a bar fight, protest rally, mob enforcers, or just any time the PCs stick there nose in where the dwarves don't think it belongs. I just felt the game was lacking in group sheets that might be of use in situations other than epic battles to the death.

The built-in progress trackers here are shorter (or move much faster) than those found on the comparable cards from the Creature Vault, because I find those official trackers never get anywhere near their end before the fight is over. It should be possible for either tracker to reach its end in just 2 or 3 rounds of conflict.

Here's some flavor text to help the GM figure out ways to work this into the game:

And here's the actual Dwarven Ruffian creature card:

It's basically just the standard Ruffian card from the Creature Vault, plus the NPC racial modifiers from the Creature Guide and a couple of minor tweaks (such as changing the Stance to Conservative).

The artwork of the wickedly-scarred dwarf was taken from http://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2012/12/role-playing-game-portraits-month-ago-i.html and used without permission. It's an awesome picture, and I couldn't resist.
The card frames were cobbled together from various Warhammer fan sites and Strange Eons plug-ins.

HammerPatterns that might have been

As mentioned in some of my recent posts, last week I ran a impromptu RPG. The setting was influenced by Tolkien's Moria and dwarf-based fantasy in general, but also (and more strongly) by Dwarf Fortress. The system was cardX, a variant of the 6X RPG. My posts from Friday gave a detailed plot synopsis, and reprinted the cards that were drawn.

Since we had 6 players plus GM, for every card that was drawn, a great number more were created but never made it into play. These cards represent a number of "what if" scenarios, and actions that almost happened.  As is the danger with 6X, sometimes the best ideas for results just never happen, and sometimes the same idea will end up as a possible result again and again until it either happens or is abandoned. So there's a lot of redundancy here, but also some real gems

The cards got a little shuffled up on the way home, so I'm not 100% certain what order they went in. I've done my best to reconstruct the order they appeared in.  Since we allowed people to throw in 0 to 3 cards per event depending on how inspired they felt, some sections are much larger than others. The previous post will provide more context if my brief titles aren't clear enough.

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Card Draw #1:  Burning the tree house.

Mad Oleg starts a fire and a bunch of intelligent orangoutangs attack us from the treehouse.

Elves. Drunk elves. Throwing pumpkins.

An elf hunting party dogs you all the way to the cog-encrusted bridges of HammerPatterned. The supply wagons are lost.

The trees are actually treants. They don't take kindly to being set afire. They attack Mad Oleg.

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Card Draw #2: What happens when the bridge-lever is pulled?

Magma chutes open, filling the entire valley with fiery lava. Those on opposite bank will have a painful, but probably non-lethal, crossing.

The gears turn, opening a secret door in the other side (opposite the lever) of the bridge. Inside the secret door are kobolds.

Turns into a giant cogwork stone golem, and it is pissed! Attacks the party.

All the cogs star spinning and the bridge flips upside down. There is a warning of dire evil on the bottom.

The lever sets off a trap! Back on the side we came from there's an explosion and we see a cloud of dust and hear the sound of 1,000 hungry rats being released… RUNNN!!!

The cogs start turning on the bridge, and it starts migrating up the ravine.

Moves down to the lower entrance.

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Card Draw #3:  What noise do they hear?

An orcish drum solo.

We hear a rumbling sound, as of volcanic activity. But the syrupbeards would never have built on a volcano!

The haunting wails of dozens of dwarves ghosts flow down the halls of the darkened, abandoned fortress.

It is the metallic sound of some eldritch machine being activated. No doubt created by a crazed inventor.

The sound of a giant, wild party.

It's the sound of pints being poured. Irresistable dwarf lure! (Or possibly a waterfall)

A thousand voices crying "Tusk!"

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Card Draw #4: Oin jumps atop the 7-story jasper elephant

Oin lands on top of the elephant, and nothing bad happens. The judges award him a 9, 8 9, and 6 for the leap. (The elf judge was clearly biased.)

Oin reaches the elephants head. It becomes animated and tries to shake him off.

Oin slips, falls, and slides down the curved u-shaped jasper trunk, momentum carries him up the other side, and he disappears into a nostril.

A wind rises from below, blowing Oin to the other side of the gallery with its force. The elephants eyes start glowing.

Slips, slides down to the tusk, and rides it up into a lob into the air.

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Card Draw #5: First round of the first combat. Barricade, door #2, ladder up and away, etc.

Moving the log into position too late, it burst through the door but impales itself on the massive timber.

We find the last stand of the dwarfs behind the door. The room is full of bodies stacked like cordwood.

As the dwarves run through the door, Oin remains behind, watching, hidden in the rubble. He's horrified to see Syrupbeard riding the mastodon with an electrum harness.

Army of kobolds in tusk-ivory armor.

The door opens into a shaft going down….

We find a room full of cats.

Brunhilda climbs partway up a ladder ready to pounce on whatever comes out and pound it with her hammer.

The door burst open. A small dwarf child stands on the other side. Naked except for a tusk necklace and a hat shaped like the houdah-tower that a war elephant would carry on it's back.

We find a dining room with only a few corpses.

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Card Draw #6 :  Facing the ghost elephant, plus there's a noise behind the barricaded door,

FlameTrunk hurls Oredang (now on fire) across the room. Smashes into Brunhilda, knocking her off the ladder.

Bursts open and a deep demon mastodon strides forth, eyes ablaze!

Brunhilda makes it partway up the ladder when Oredang is flung at her. She manages to grab Oredang and help here onto the ladder. The living mastodon comes through the door and trumpets at the ghost.

Oredang closes the door.

Mammoth bursts through the door, shatters Mad Oleg's beam, and the splinters impale the fake elephant skeleton setting the entire contraption on fire.


Cog Clasphanks jumps in front of the skeletal beast and prostrates herself, taking heed of the engraved warning. The action appeases the elephant and it adopts Cog as a pet.

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Card Draw #7-8 : Battling against what we think is a normal mastodon

The mastodon eyes the dwarves with an odd intelligence, then walks deeper into the dungeon.

Brunhilda jumps on the mastodon as it lurches back into the room. Another dwarf, crazed and cackling madly, is riding the mastodon with a silver harness.

The dwarves that run down the passage way that the mastodon came out of find the mastodon's mate and 2 calfs.

In the haste to avoid the beast one of the dwarves accidentally bumps a bucket into a deep well, causing a lot of noise. This wakes a hoard of goblins sleeping deep in the fortress. They're coming!

The mastodon chases us into the needlessly long, narrow staircases over the massive fall with no railing.

Brunhilda waits until the mastodon comes running under her and then jumps on it and batters it to unconsciousness with her hammer.

Draw twice. Both happen.

Brunhilda jumps onto the mastodon from the ladder. Lands on it's head. She proceeds to bludgeon it unconscious with her hammer.

Some dwarves retreat and find a catapult.

Cog prostrates herself to the mastodon. It recognizes this action as supplication, and accepts Cog as a pet. Her friends are freed, but now she must feed the mastodon - Quickly!

Detecting a vein of limestone, Mad Oleg yells at the mastodon getting it to follow him. He leads it to an area with a limestone ceiling and collapses it, trapping the beast.

Thugnar pulls himself along the tusk and smashes open the beast's skull! Then the sound of more mastodons thunders out!

Suddenly Oredang gets a fit of inspiration for an artifact. All the other players each name an item that could be within a few rooms of oredang. Then we do a series of cards to decide/define what she makes.

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Card Draw #9: Cog was just swallowed

Covered with carving tools, she is not what you want in your guts. The mammoth starts to roll in agony, it's intestines are sliced open.

The were-mastodon reverts to human form. Cog is inside, and takes a lot of damage. The previously impaled dwarves fall to the ground.

The mastodon runs across a pit trap set up decades ago. It falls 10 levels down, to its death. The ghosts of Cog, Thugnar, and Oin son of Gloin son of Broins son of Droin son of Moain all rise.

Thugnar pulls himself along the tusk until he's eye to eye with the beast. He then head-butts the beast, knocking it silly!

Brunhilda leaps onto the mastodon. Also on its back is a crazed dwarf with a silver harness!

Brunhilda jumps from the ladder as the mastodon runs under. She lands on its head and beats it to death with her hammer.

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Card Draw #10: Mecha-mastodon

Noticing that the eyes are gems, Mad Oleg leaps up, licks one, then pulls it out with his pickaxe, impaling a kobold as he does.

The mechamastodon swallows brunhilda. She lands in a cage next to Cog's cage. The kobold co-pilot pokes a bone spear out of the cockpit and impales Cog.

Cog throws her chisel and strikes some random bit of machinery. The mastodon's tusks retract, it's teeth grown, and it turns into a giant mastodon-textured tyrannosaur.

Thugnar pulls himself the beast's face, stares it in the eyes, and head-butts it. The head breaks open revealing the kobolds. Cog gets free, and Brunhilda crashes through the top!

Cog uses her engraving chisel and hammer to chip the grates out of their sockets. Freely moving she grabs the kobolds and 'jettisons' them out the rear, taking control of the mechanical mastodon

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Card Draw #11: Oin's fate after impaling.

As he falls from the Beast, Oin son of Gloin crashes into a barrel of Golden Salve, one of the most precious elven plant extracts in the land. Realizing the healing properties immediately, he is forced to drink the barrel as it drains onto the floor. Blech…

Oin son of Gloin is dragged from the battlefield as Oredang opens up on the machine with a ballista. We find a pantry and barely treat his wounds with an ancient ale and fungus poultice.

Oin son of Etc shoves a large, medicinal loaf of bread in the wound! As the bread does its work, Thugnar kicks the other tusk loose and falls to the ground.

As Oin lies bleeding on the ground, he feels a tongs in his right hand. His spirit leaves his body and enters the tongs, where it survives many years longer than any of those other dwarves.

Looking for the hospital to try to help Oin, Mad Oleg finds another, unoccupied Mammoth vessel and gets it into operation.

Oredang goes into a fell mood! She claims a butcher's workshop. Then she comes back, stick a pick in Oin's head, and drags off his corpse.

Oin has landed in a pile of dwarf clothing. It's dirty and ripped, but he uses it to make a bandage so he won't bleed to death.

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Card Draw # 12:  Groin's entrance

Oredang finds a mysterious artifact crossbow inlaid with cat bones, and decorated with spikes of jasper and bituminous coal. Someone yells "Anyone in there? Father..?"

Cog breaks the inner cage grates from their hinges, allowing her to kill the other kobold and take control of the mechanical mastodon. During the struggle to take control she smashes the beast through the front gate, opening the fortress up to Groin.

Groin, son of… opens the main doors by means mysterious. Meanwhile, Thugnar, bloody tired of being impaled on a tusk, grabs a hold of a column and yanks the tusk free of the mechamastodon.

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Card Draw # 13: More mechamastodon melee

The remaining kobold gets tired of going in circles. It stops the mastodon and makes the head shake, causing Brunhilda to go flying and thugnar to fall off the tusk.

Mad Oleg swings Groin into the rear of the mammoth. THe tong-chain catches the mammoth and up-ends it, spilling Groin onto the kobold, who is now disarmed.

Brunhilda pulls levers at random. The mastodon trumpets, then tweets, then goes OOK OOK OOK. The kobold shoots Brunhilde in the arm and she drops her axe. The mastodon stops moving.

Brunhilda's weapon knocks aside the kobold's crossbow aim. His bolt ricochets, and hits Mad Oleg in the eye.

Brunhilda dodges the bolt, which then hits something vital to the mastodon's movement. It stops and she beats the other kobold to death.

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Card Draw #14:  What next?

Mad Oleg is inspired. Each player names an item that could be found nearby. Then we make cards describing artifacts Mad Oleg could make from those items during this Strange Mood.

Elves attack.

The rat demon, previously held at bay by the elephant, he's scared of elephants, manifests.

A crazed dwarf comes running from the depths of the keep. He sees the stopped mastodon and hugs Mad Oleg, saying "Thank you for saving me from the elephants."

The sound of a kobold war triangle ominously chimes through the air! The sound of more mechamastodons echo through the chamber.

Thugnar dies on the tusk. Elves arrive to avenge their forest. Ghasts of Oin and Thugnar and the dead Yak rise up to haunt us.

There is no way that Oredang's yak should have been able to get into the fortress. It totally never shot crossbow bolts out of its mouth before, either.

The elves arrive to avenge the forest. Brunhilda kills the kobold and free Cog. Groin breaks the right tusk off the mastodon, dropping Thugnar to the ground in a bloody heap.

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Card Draw #16 to 17: brewery battle

Many Kobolds die. The flaming trunk lights the elephant on fire. The dwarves flee the burning wreck which falls on and kills the remaining kobolds.

Oleg sets one of the vats of beer on fire, apparently someone added flammable liquid. The kobold was nearby is now running about on fire. Cog and Brunhilda manage to kill a number of kobolds.

Kobold massacre! A few dwarf losses too.. which means the remaining dwarves go insane and kill themselves. More brew for us!

Mad Oleg's flaming elephant-butt attack kills three kobolds but also sets the beer on fire. The fire is heating the still. The whole thing is nearly critical!

An old skinny dwarf elder setps forward. "We must not offend the Elephant Gods again, or we will all be cursed this time!" The poor enslaved dwarves assault you and overpower you since you dare not harm your kin. You wake in chains.



The battle rages on, mastodono-a-mastodono, for hours. Whicher player draws this card: their character is driven mad by hours of booze-withdrawal, and is now a homicidal villain.

The mechamastodons go into battle, but the kobolds don't expect Oleg with the flaming trunk. He sets the other mastodon on fire. It goes around setting kobolds on fire.

Groin son of Oin takes the beer hostage! "Drop your weapons and surrender to me, OR YOU'LL NEVER BE DRUNK AGAIN!"

Cog and Brunhilda charge the other mastodon and the two lock trunks. Oleg immolates a dozen kobolds! Thugnar grabs a beer!

The mechamastodons lock tusks in a fierce battle. The still is destroyed but the barrels are spared. The dwarves jump on top of the kobold mastodon and rip open the hatch, pulling kobolds out.


The PC who drew this card is shot in the eye by a kobold crossbow.

An elven army shows up to avenge the forest. A goblin army shows up to take the fortress. Kobold reinforcements arrive.

"You have to find the artifact," one of the captive dwarves whispers to Oredang. "The mastodon spirits are angry at the sacrilege."

The dwarves have been poisoning the beer in an act of rebellion. Your first clue is when Groin son of Oin doubles over after tasting it while on guard duty.

Thugnar, his French Bread glistening with kobold gore, strides into the brewery and pulls a pint, drinks deeply and sighs. And a bunch of stuff happens outside.

Booze casks are smashed open. The entire room is engulfed in fire. The PC who drew this card is the only one who _doesn't_ catch on fire.

Both elephants catch fire! Cog and Brunhilda are burned, but escape alive! The battle continues on foot. The kobolds are led by a kobold with an elephant mask.

The kobolds see that Mad Oleg came out of the mechamastodon and try to surround him, but he uses the trunk to set them on fire. Cog and Brunhilda manage to force the flaming mastodon out of the brewery.

The fighting mechamastodons spin into the brewery, imperiling the ale!

---

Card Draw #18: Battle above the abyss

The noise from the fighting mammoths was up a Forgotten Beast way down below -- the dwarves had dug too greedily and too deep… The beast rises up and devours the mammoths and kobold 'riders' and turns its gaze to the other dwarves.

The mastodon teeters on the brink! The flaming kobolds start leaping from the beast, making it tip! Thugnar strides forth into the brewery covered in gore and has an ale.  AAAAH!

The mastodon tips and almost falls into the abyss! It's hanging by the trunk. Burning kobolds jump into the control chamber! Will Cog and Brunhilda fight, flee, or drive the elephant?

The kobold guards rush the mammoths and shove them off. Several kobolds fall with it. Brunhilda and cog leap at the last moment landing amongst the remaining kobolds.

The flaming kobolds board your mechamastodon. Oredang is stabbed. Mad Oleg starts on fire. Brunhilda's pants leg gets caught in the gears of your mechamastodon.

---

Card Draw #19: Crazed Craftsdwarf

The crazy guy grabs one dwarf and drowns him in the beer. Oleg uses the trunk to set him on fire as a sacrifice to the elephant god.

Groin son of Oin smites the insane dwarf. "As your new nobleman," he shouts, "I demand PLATES!!!"

Thugnar drowns the crazy artisan dwarf in a hogshead of stale ale! Then thugnar has another beer… from a different keg.

The craftsdwarf is wearing another artifact, "Wombatdunked", a maple earring. It is bound in granite, adorned in dangling rings of green glass, and menaces with spikes of maple.  As he freaks out and fights, the artifact earring impales Cog, rupturing the eye and bruising her brain.

---

Card Draw #20:  Epilogue

Thugnar's wound begins to fester. A miasma erupts from his flesh. He dies, as does another PC (of John's choice) who contracts the infection. Then we add another round of cards to those already in the bag.

Brunhilda agrees to stay to build a new elephant statue for the dwarves. She finds a craftsman who make flames come out of the trunk, and they make it facing the front gate.

Groin son of Oin arranges for an epic funeral for his father Oin son of Gloin. A great statue is built which gives Oin's lineage to the sixth generation. The plaque on the statue claims that about half of them are elephants.

Cog crowns Mad Oleg as King. She names herself Baroness. She gives Groin son of Oin the title of Bookkeeper, as suits his appraisal skills. They take over the fortress.

Thugnar finally has enough beer.

Hammer-Patterned, The Multiplicity of Tongs

This is a story synopsis and play-by-play for a tabletop RPG I ran last night. The game was completely improvised, and the system was 6X, so it ended up being pretty wacky.


Starting premise was essentially "reclaim" mode of the video game "Dwarf Fortress". If you've never played DF, just picture the abandoned halls of Moria from Lord of the Rings… with a penchant for going FUBAR in delightfully slapstick ways. If you are familiar with Dwarf Fortress, you'll get a couple of inside jokes below, but you'll also quickly see that we diverged  from the source material.

For a thousand years the mighty Dwarf enclave known as "Hammer-Patterned, The Multiplicity of Tongs" had stood solid within a rocky mountain at the edge of the empire. But now, several years have passed since word or caravan had come forth from Hammer-Patterned, and the worst is feared.

 A small group of stout Dwarven settlers and explorers has been sent forth to Hammer-Patterned to learn the fate of King Blordok Syrupbraid, re-establish the trade-route if possible, and claim salvage rights should things in Hammer-Patterned turn out to be as bad as they are feared.

An aside about the ridiculous name: Three of us grabbed random words and we mashed them together to come up with a silly title worthy of a Dwarf Fortress. It didn't make any sense to us, either, but it certainly is in line with the bizarre naming conventions employed in the source material.

Our party of stout dwarves explorers is as follows:

• Oredang the Miner (played by Devon, who had a fair amount of Dwarf Fortress). Gender: Female. Skills: Miner, Novice Organzier.  Equipment: Steel Pickaxe, pet Yak calf. Beard: black, long and twisted.
• OIN son of GLOIN son of BROIN son of DROIN son of MOIN (played by Dan), (hereafter referred to as simply "Oin son of blah" to save me a lot of typing.) Gender: Male  Skills: likes Ancestry  Beard: 7 and 1/8ths inches
• Cog Claspshanks (played by my wife, Sarah). Gender: Female  Skills: Stone Engraver  Equipment: Carving Tools  Beard: 9 braids (one per child she bore)
• Brunhilda the Carver (played by Laura). Gender: Female  Skills: Carver, creates statues, curious, good fighter with a hammer.  Equipment: Hammer, Carving Tools   Beard: Has a red beard she wears in two braids.
• Thugnar the Bold (played by John). Gender: Male  Skills: bold, break rock with hammer, drink ale copiously.  Equipment: Hammer Beard: Long flowing blonde beard, braided intricately.
• Mad Oleg (played by Eric). Gender: Male   Skills: Ore-taster  Beard: filled with minerals

Fine specimens of craftdwarfship be they all.

An aside about investigation and skills:   In retrospect, I wish I'd done more with Mad Oleg's unique and flavorful "ore-taster" skill. It's got great potential for an investigative scenario, but since this was an off-the-cuff 6X game (and thus what mysteries there were remained mysterious even to the GM until they were randomly defined), I just didn't really figure out a way to make it matter. Similar things can be said for Oin son of blah's "likes Ancestry" skill that would have been really useful in Continuum or Trail of Cthulhu, but was hard to work into 6X on the fly. I wish I could have integrated these into the story better.

I started the game with some narration about the overland trip. When you arrive at your destination, the food cart has already run out and you've polished off half the mules. That baby Yak calf is starting to look pretty good.

Then I threw in a passing comment about the sad state of the disused trade route and especially the statuary along it, and it nearly took the game in a completely different direction.  I said the ancient statues at the side of the road were overgrown, and someone had put pumpkins or jack-o-lanterns where the statues heads should be, but I didn't really know where I was going with this. It was just color, drawn from an old fantasy illustration I saw once for one of the Lord of the Ring books. The players immediately started blaming the elves, so I said that near one of the statues was a tree with an old ramshackle treehouse in it's branches, and they could hear the slow sad sounds of a banjo on the wind. 

The players debated whether to sneak past what were clearly creepy elfbillies, or just burn the place.  Seemed like a great place for our first card draw.

Card Draw?  We were using a variant of 6X that I'm calling cardX. Instead of making a chart and rolling a die, each player rights a possible outcome on a notecard, and we draw one out of a hat.  Learn more here.

So we get our first result: 

• 1: "Burning down the treehouse starts a forest fire. We have to run quickly and rush the cart along, breaking the axle."

Which I think came as a surprise to the player who first proposed that they burn down the treehouse, as he thought he'd been talked out of it. That happens with 6X.

We threw in a little color narration about dim-witted elven hillbillies having a conversation as their treehouse burnt down around them. One with a banjo, the other a pitchfork. "There they go, setting' us afire agin. An' I was jus' bouts to warn 'em that there's nuthin down that road but the ol' haunted dwarves place."

Escaping past the (flaming) tree line, and hauling their booze kegs on their own backs, our fearless dwarven explorers find themselves at the massive bridge that marks the borders of HammerPatterned the Multiplicity of Tongs.

The bridge was carved of stone and set with cogs and machinery. Dangling from the sides were chains ending with metal Tongs clattering in the breeze. With his knowledge of ancestry, Oin son of blah was able to explain that the local custom was to hang a set of ancestral tongs to commemorate the moment and place of passing of any dwarf. Clearly, hundreds of dwarves had died on this particular bridge. At the far end of the bridge was a mighty lever, so Thugnar the bold ran across the bridge and yanked the lever while his friends were crossing more slowly behind him.

I like to imagine that the other cards in the bag were full of horrible trap-riddled death the likes of which would have made even One-Eyed Willie turn white as a bone, but alas the one the players drew said simply:

• 2: "The cog bridge plays beautiful music!"

The lever set the gears turning, and the chains and tongs dangling from them clattered together in a pleasant tinkling melody, accompanied by the deep bass rumblings of the bridgeborn machinery that powered it all.

Thereafter followed a long section without any cards being made or pulled. There were probably a couple moments where we could have done cards, but each time someone would announce an idea they had that sounded fun enough we all just conceded the narrative ground to them.

The dwarves came to the gates of HammerPatterned, which were huge granite things set with engravings of hammers. The doors looked like they hadn't been opened for some time. We tried speaking "friend" to them, but to no avail. An oversized steel hammer and tongs hung from a chain, dangling out of the mouth of stone grate above the doors. A grate perfect for pouring something down on unwanted guests, like boiling oil.  Most of the party stepped back or to the side.

Nearby was a pumpkin patch, growing in the sunlight beside the gates. Not a particularly dwarven crop, but we all grudging acknowledged you could ferment and brew with them if you had to. Oredang pastured her Yak calf at the p-patch.

Speaking of Yak p,  by this time Thugnar had started knocking on the massive doors with the dangling hammer, and the other players suggested that his greeting should be that someone or something pees on him through the grates above.  Sometimes you just gotta play to your audience.

Wet and smelly but surprisingly undiscouraged, Thugnar decided to yank on the big chain to see if maybe it rang a bell inside and summoned servants.  Instead it made the grates above open up. As i was about to narrate huge rocks falling and call for a card draw, again a player interrupted me with a rather more amusing possibility so I just said yes. A Yak fell from grate, narrowly missing Thugnar and going splat on the ground.

Additional chains and tongs now dropped and dangled from the grates as well, because clearly, any place where a Yak might feasibly drop on you is a place likely to have claimed the lives of many a drunk dwarf (and thus need commemorating per the previously described local custom). So the players climbed up the mesh of chains and into  the inside of the gatehouse.

Inside where the desiccated remains of a dwarf who had barricaded himself into the gatehouse. He'd clearly lived here for some time before passing on when the beer ran out. The grain and foodstuffs he had with sequestered with him were nearly out as well, but had been enough to sustain the Yak until this very day.

Before the booze ran out, the dead dwarf had kept himself busy carving the walls of his gatehouse tomb. Here is an engraving of a dwarf and and elephant. The dwarf is riding on the elephant. Here is an engraving of dwarves and an elephant. The dwarves are holding hands around the elephant. Here is a superior engraving of dwarves and an elephant. The elephant is giving birth to the dwarves. Riffing off of "Boatmurdered" (google it), mostly, followed by one  reference to the Simpsons: Here is an engraving of just words, dwarves runic script in shaky handwriting, "can't sleep, elephants will eat me, can't sleep, elephants will eat me".

Undaunted (and now motivated by the inescapable conclusion that the fortress had been abandoned and thus the salvage rights were theirs), the players took down the barricade, and opened the doors.  Beyond were balconied galleries, overlooking the main hall and gates to the fortress. Far below them the main hall angled downward into the bowels of the earth.

It was at that moment that I told them, "all of a sudden, you hear a terrible noise reverberate through the fortress. Everyone contribute a card to the hat describing a possible noise." Apparently someone liked my engravings, because the card that was drawn said:

• 3: "The Sound of a Mastodon"

There was much debate over how to differentiate the calls of an elephant, mastodon or mammoth from one another, but eventually everyone decided it was indeed a mastodon. It didn't sound particularly close, however, so the players probed deeper into the galleries.

The floor of the main hall below fell further and further down, until at least 7 stories separated the extended balcony they walked upon from the main floor. As they probed deeper into the gloom, they eventually saw a giant Jasper elephant statue. It's head rose to the level of the balconies, so it was 7 stories tall, and equivalently long.

Mad Oleg said something to the effect of: "That is the largest collection of Jasper I have ever seen in all my years of ore-tasting, and the second-largest elephant statues I've seen, too."

The thought occurred to me then and there that it'd be a cool demise for the fortress if they'd had a "Trojan Horse" scenario where the elephant statue had brought some invading force… but the gates were clearly secure and intact, whereas at Troy the gates were torn apart. If I wanted to go the Trojan route, I'd have to give the players another clue… and I'd have to do so quickly, because in 6X you can't be subtle or slow because at any time a player action could derail your plans.

So I said there was a lever nearby. The players pulled it, and the entire top of the mountain retracted, giving them a clear view of everything. This meant you'd be able to drag the 7-story statue in our out of the fortress's 2-story gate. That (plus "the elephant is giving birth to the dwarves") made me feel like I could later go more explicitly Trojan and it'd be deemed foreshadowed rather than contradictory.

Oin son of blah suddenly got the idea into his head that if we can't find stairs down from the gallery, maybe we can somehow find stairs down from an elephant. It was a novel idea, and he approached it with masochistic gusto, suddenly jumping off the balcony towards the head of 7-story elephant. This had some potential to backfire, and we hadn't done cards in a while, so what the heck…

• 4. "The jasper elephant collapses into a pile of bits burying Oin."

An aside about character mortality: I probably would have been justified in killing poor Oin given that result and it's vague statements about his status at the end of it. 7 stories of falling and then being buried under tons of shattered jasper could easily be lethal.  Just like I could have made the Yak, rather than just it's pee, land on Thugnar earlier, and taken him out.  Instead I would just file this away in the back of my mind. Later, when it was time to start kicking the players butts a little, I'd remember that I'd previously gone easy on the two of them.

The statue fell to rubble, and this gave me a chance to reinforce my Trojan Elephant idea. I narrated that it had been a wooden frame with a jasper shell, hollow on the inside, and mostly breaking his fall as it collapsed in upon itself.

Rather than split up the party, I allowed the others to quickly find a ladder down and start unburying Oin son of blah. But as they labored, they could again hear the trumpeting of a mastodon, and the sound was now growing closer. Oh, and something about the cantilevered clockwork mechanisms closing the mountain top again since no one was up there holding the lever any more.

They free Oin son of blah, bandage him up, loot the huge garnet eyes of the crumbled statue, and then realize the source of the mastodon sounds is now only 1 room away from the main gall. It's behind Door #1.  Mad Oleg starts trying to barricade Door #1. The other players start to scatter, and one opens a door across the room (which we'll call Door #2) to make an escape. The remainder of the part started describing various other dubious escape routes, and I decided the best way to bring this chaos under control was to have everyone make a card describing the event they wanted to have resolve first.

• 5. "Inside the door [Door #2] is the skeleton of a mighty elephant. It's eyes light up with a ghostly flame and focus on Oredang."

So whatever the mastodon sound was on the other side of Door #1, it was suddenly back-seat to the Undead Elephant behind Door #2. That precipitated yet another card round.  The card I put in to the pot was particularly nasty, but alas it was not drawn. Instead, we got:

• 6. "The mastodon bursts into the room, shattering Mad Oleg's barricade! The mastodon then crushes the skeletal elephant in one blow of its mighty trunk!"

Combat in 6X (or my cardX variant) is pretty damn swingy. Here we have flaming ghost elephant about to attack Oredang one moment, and then it's obliterated by something else entirely in the very next action.  Why, I don't know. Clearly, with the players having that much narrative power, I needed to stop pulling my punches.

I gave everyone the opportunity to put in one brief bit of flavor narration that didn't change the overall situation, so they could illustrate how they fought or fled as appropriate, and then we did another card round to determine how the fight would resolve.  Hammers and picks were swung, Brunhilda clambered up a ladder to line up a daring leap towards the mastodon's head, and the monster thrashed about. Then:

• 7. "The mastodon impales Oin son of bla on its left tusk, and Thugnar on the right. Both are badly injured and freeing them will take much effort or heroism."

Yep, that card was mine. Major wounds and impairment to two PCs, and specifically the ones I'd gone easy on earlier. I decided to keep running combat for however long it took the players to make up a card that defeated it and get the corresponding lucky draw. As for my own cards in that time frame, I planned to eliminate one PC from the fight per round. Chances are they'd win the day, but we'd see if the mastodon couldn't take a few of them with it.

And wouldn't you know it, the players drew another one of my cards the very next round.

• 8. "The mastodon swallows Cog Claspshanks in a single gulp. Meanwhile, the impaled Dwarves bleed profusely, and Thugnar's weakened arms drop his hammer."

Three PCs down, 3 to go. More color narration for those that weren't swallowed, impaled or immobilized, and then another card-round. But I was not anticipating this result.

• 9. "Cog discovers that this mastodon is also hollow."

That's definitely a good break for the PCs, but a little open to interpretation. Hollow in what way? Well, if you leave it up to the GM, you have no one to blame but yourself.

So, I narrated that Cog drops down into the belly of the mechanical beast, and is immediately sealed inside one of several cages therein. Above her, safe within a metal cockpit with, are two kobolds operating the bicycle-driven mechanisms of the mechamastodon.  They have reinforced windows that let them look down at Cog, or stare out through the "eyes" of the mechamastodon.

Next round:

• 10. "Brunhilda jumps on the mastodon and starts beating it about the head with her hammer. The main effect is that she manages to realize there are kobolds inside. She kills the closer one."

We do some more color narration, and someone mentions that perhaps the mechamastodon, now missing the copilot, could be stuck running around in circles. That's funny enough to say yes to. 
At this point, I decided it was worth dealing with the impaled people. I announced that one of the tusks went limp, and Oin son of blah slid off the end of it. He's now bleeding out on the floor as the mechamastodon runs circles around him. I directed the players that this round of cards should not resolve the overall fight, but primarily determine Oin's fate.

• 11. "Oin dies in a pool of blood and miasma.   Dan's next character may arrive as the first of a wave of migrants sent to aid your colonization."

Dan quickly came up with a brand new character, well, kinda…

• GROIN son of OIN son of GLOIN son of BROIN son of DROIN son of MOIN, (hereafter referred to as simply "Groin son of Oin" to save me a lot of typing). Gender: Male  Skills: likes Ancestry  Beard: 7 and 3/8ths inches

As a general rule, when a PC dies, I usually require that the replacement character be something very different from the previous character, so there's some sense that death has impact, and is a thing to be avoided. Usually. This time, however, it was funny enough, and relevant to the "likes ancestry" mention on the character sheet, that I felt that was actually the perfect way to continue.

Various color narration. Circular mechamastodon chase. Cue benny hill music.

Then: "I am GROIN son of OIN son of GLOIN son of BROIN son of DROIN son of MOIN. You killed my father, OIN son of GLOIN son of BROIN son of DROIN son of MOIN. Prepare to die!"

• 12. "Groin son of Oin swings into the battle on a long tong-chain. The mastodon is still running in circles, however, and Groin son of Oin misses it.  Meanwhile, Brunhilda drops into the mammoth next to the kobold."

Color narration. The kobold shrieks: "Peddle left! Peddle left! Why aren't you peddling? We're going in circles!" and then realizes that Brunhilda has replaced his copilot. He goes for his loaded crossbow, she goes for her hammer.

• 13. "Brunhilda bashes the kobold to mush! Thugnar is saved through the immediate application of dwarven french bread through the wound."

Wow. Bread bandages. Or rather, a bread blood plug. If it didn't very specifically say "saved", I totally would have had that backfire… but the spirit of the cards should be obeyed as much as possible, even if it makes no sense. I mean, everything else in this adventure is logical and sensible.

I'm not sure exactly what happened next. The kobold was dead, the threat neutralized. They must have freed Cog. I remember Devon saying that Oredang had grown attached to her fine steel pick.
Mad Oleg wanted the flaming trunk "mechanism" off the ghost elephant, which was now somehow retroactively also a hollow mecha-skeletal-elephant and not a ghost elephant and I'm not really sure how any of that made sense, but it was amusing and he'd had the unfortunate distinction of not having any of the cards he'd created get drawn by anyone in any of our 13 to-date pulls from the hat, so I just said yes to his crazy idea. Plus, that retcon made at least as much sense as shoving bread into your wounds

… but other than all that miscellaneous insanity, I'm not really certain what the context was of this card, or why we were drawing:

• 14. "We need beer. NOW."

So they all piled into the mechamastodon, and drove it around till they could find the local brewery.
The brewery was guarded by kobolds in bronze armor, carrying bronze whips, and making mastodon calls on bronze french-kobold-horns. They apparently assumed the PCs were just another run-of-the-mill kobold-filled mechamastodon.

The doors to the brewery swing open, revealing dozens of emaciated, broken dwarves, clearly now enslaved to the kobolds.  They are being forced to labor, and brew pumpkin ale for their kobold overlords. It is a truly sad sight, and a dishonor that cannot go unavenged.

Thugnar leaps forth from the cockpit of the mechamastodon, in much the way Athena sprung from the head of Zeus. The mythical reference will matter (sort of) a few cards later. The other dwarves start crawling out of the hole Thugnar leaves behind him, except for Brunhilda and Cog who drive the mech.

• 15. "Thugnar plows into several kobolds, knocking them down. Thugnar plays kobold golf. The mastodon's tusks swing, killing several. Oredang sneaks into the brewery! Another mechamastodon appears!"

The two mechs battle, mastodono-a-mastadono.

• 16. "Our mastodon rams their mastodon. Mad Oleg is thrown from the rear. Sensing his opportunity, he lobs the flaming ghost trunk into the hole in their mastodon. It lights on fire."

More color narration followed. Oredang and Groin son of Oin took up position near the beer.  The battle raged on as they sampled the kegs.

• 17. "Brunhilda drives their mammoth backwards, forcing it through the doors into the walkway over the abyss. Burning kobolds climb onto the top of the mammoth."

There was no previous mention of an abyss prior to this card, but not only is that how 6X works, but it's also perfectly in tune with the subject matter for there to be a big bottomless pit with a narrow walkway spanning it such as one might use to battle a balrog.

• 18. "The hide is burnt away as Cog figures out how to shake off the flaming kobolds into the abyss. The other dwarves have liberated the brewery."

There dwarves bow to their new saviors. An elderly, broken looking, emaciated dwarf steps forward. He identifies himself as Blordock Syrupbraid the Younger, son of Blordock Syrupbraid the Elder, and thus heir apparent to the throne now that HammerPatterned the Multiplicity of Tongs has been liberated. Mainly he serves as a obligatory exposition/wrap-up info dump to explain in case anyone had missed the finer details of what had happened. Kobold siege. Kobolds appear to give up, but leave a giant jasper elephant behind. The dwarves hall it inside, and worship or party around it. When everyone's drunk… well, more drunker than is usual even for a dwarf, the kobolds sneak out of the elephant and deploy mechamastodons to conquer. 

Being drunk, stupid, and beaten-down, these dwarves have started worshiping elephants and specifically the giant jasper elephant statue. They even call the players half-elephant demigods in dwarven form, come to free them from the half-elephant demigods in kobold form who were enacting the punishment of the high elephant gods.

Or something.

At this point, I realize we haven't had anyone go crazy, which is totally a Dwarf Fortress thing. So I start narrating how one of the dwarves here had used the giant jasper elephant as a component in a slightly fancier artifact statue of his own design - mainly by attaching wheels (so they could haul it in) and big garnet eyes to the existing statue. But it's totally his design now, and the pinnacle of his life, and as the players explain that the statue has been destroyed, he goes berserk. 

You thought the previous fights were big and crazy, wait till you get a load of even round one of my big climactic battle with the psychopathic spreekilling craftsdwarf. We pulled out all the stops for this one!

19. "Mad Oleg knocks him out with a single blow."

Nicely done, sir.

All that's left is the "happily ever after" solution, so I let everyone throw into the hat their own personal best interpretation of how this could end.

• 20. "After being honored by the freed dwarves, the party seeks out the next fortress.  However, at their camp that night, Oredang's pet yak calf creeps up on them -- her mouth opening to reveal a kobold crossbow…"

I must say I rather like the idea of a mechayakcalf getting the drop on them. Was it replaced by kobolds when they left it in the pumpkin patch, or was it secretly a kobold spy mechayak all along?