His Majesty the Worm: Tomb of the Golden Ghosts, Session 1

 Friday, January 17th, a few others and I did a "playtest" (more of a let's-see-if-we-like-this-test) of His Majesty the Worm, an OSR-adjacent dungeon crawler that styles itself as highly procedural, phase-based game, with tarot cards acting in the stead of dice. I was one of the players, and conscience1121 was our gracious game master, who had introduced the idea of testing out the system. We used a set of well-made pre-generated characters, of four different paths (classes).

An intrepid guild of four souls ventured down through the Ossuary underneath the Great City of the Tyrant into a recently rediscovered tomb-- they had a well-drawn map, a well-supplied pack, and their wits about them. 

    

They were the Trabajadors. In marching order, they were:

        Champion Tohma Ironpax, a hired human bruiser of the Path of Pentacles.

        Bizmuth Mourn, a young human crusader of the Path of Swords.

        Shalsor Sable-leaf, an elven arcanist of the Path of Wands.

        Tovald, Sixth Son of Five, a dwarven retired solider of the Path of Cups.

A bond chart of the four characters, mocked up by conscience with art by Goran Gilgovic

The party had two goals: recover the mystical elven Tripartite Crown for their desired aboveground faction, and to search for the mythical griffin that will signal the end of the Tyrant's reign-- this was Bizmuth's current quest.

Entering the tomb, they were immediately given the choice between walking north, past an ornate mural on the wall which seemed to shine and luster, or east, down an empty hall to the room marked "102" on the map. Bizmuth beseeched Tovald for advice. He was quite wary that the lustrous painting was an obvious trap, so the party went east instead, where they found another mural, this one depicting great flying beasts circling a castle-- particularly intriguing to Bizmuth. Champion Tohma opened the door to the south within the hallway, revealing a once-fine scriptorium, with bookshelves full of rotting papyrus. In the middle of the room, the earth had been churned up by some sort of beast-- Tovald studied it briefly and concluded it was the work of massive, dangerous Dire Centipedes, which quickly led to an argument about how many legs these centipedes have. Shalsor used her innate heightened senses to determine while there were centipedes nearby, they were not immediately close. Champion Tohma found an intact scroll case on the wall, marked that it should be saved for a special occasion. Shalsor believed right now was occasion enough, and when she opened the case, the scroll inside began to lengthen as text appeared describing the events happening to the party as they happened. Soon, it changed to describing every action and thought from Shalsor's point of view. Bizmuth's quick-thinking solution was to shove the scroll into the churned earth, hoping it would block up the centipede's tunnels and thrust them out somewhere else. 

The party continued east and then north down the long hallway, encountering a door shut tight, but unlocked. Champion Tohma attempted to open it using Tovald's hatchet but was unsuccessful. When forcing the door open, the party was greeted by a series of large, spiderweb-like silvery strings spreading out from the ceiling, attempting to hold the door closed. Cutting the silvery strands apart with their swords, the party was able to fully enter into the large hallway, which opened to the north into a large cavern, to the east to a circling series of alcoves, and a series of doors to the west. 

Tomb of the Golden Ghosts Map, from His Majesty the Worm.

The party continued to the east, finding another mural on the north wall of the room marked "106" on their map. This mural depicted a group of people fleeing in terror of a giant asteroid heading towards the land. Tovald predicted perhaps the tomb itself was a vessel to hold souls fleeing from the threat of an asteroid, real or fictional, until they could be reincarnated.

This is how I imagined the mural personally.

The intrepid guild ventured into the first series of alcoves along the left-hand side of the rotunda-style room. Within, they found a series of alcoves, including one with a golden light shining through a veil. When Champion Tohma attempted to brush the veil away with his dagger, a golden, shimmering ghost crossed past it and through the Champion's dagger, hovering above the ground. It moved its incorporeal mouth in an attempt to make sounds, but none would come out. Shalsor used her preternatural senses to read its lips-- the ghost was thanking the party profusely for freeing it from control by the silvery tendrils, which seemed to have attached to the Ghost's decomposing body but had been since been cut as they entered through the wall from the previous room. Freed, it hovered north, and when asked if its friends buried in the tomb needed assistance as well, it shrugged and pointed east down the hallway to the rest of the rotunda. 

Set on freeing the rest of the golden ghosts from their predicament, the party attempted to move east to the rest of the rotunda, but before they could, they heard the sounds of screaming and running down the hall. In height order, the party of four peered around the corner, watching as a stout halfling and skinny wood elf booked it down the hall, fleeing a writing, wriggling dire centipede. The party stepped out, letting the pair of cartoonish runners pass by, before engaging the centipede. Not seconds later, and Shalsor had cast a spell which commanded the creature to eat the entire scroll that was likely expanding in the centipede tunnels. The creature promptly ran off. The halfling, Justin Pepperoni, and the elf, Finch, thanked the group for saving them, and rewarded them with a slime bomb. They'd also found a signet ring, which the elf Finch gave to Champion Tohma, much to Justin's chagrin. They were down there for the artifact, probably the same one as the party, but had decided their delve was over. They ran off back to the surface. 

The party continued on their path to the opposite end of the rotunda, first stopping at the central room. When they opened the door, they saw more silvery strands penetrating the corpses within the walls. One corpse stood up, puppeteered by the silver strands, and when the party asked if they should cut its strands, it violently shook its head. That was a good enough answer for everyone, and Tovald decided he was going to let his lightning bolt deal with the problem. (That's right-- it hadn't come up before, but Tovald had a living lightning bolt which he had to hold at all times, or else it would fly around in a path of destruction. The only rest he got from this task was when he fed the bolt an adequate amount of pepper whiskey, which wasn't very amenable to Tovald).

Shalsor and Bizmuth stood back while Champion Tohma readied himself to slam the door shut. Tovald let the lightning bolt go into the room, and Champion Tohma slammed the door shut. When they were thoroughly sure the strands and the corpses they puppeteered were destroyed, Tovald pulled out the four-pronged tongs he made to catch the lightning bolt, and Champion Tohma opened the door again. Tovald expertly caught the bolt. More Golden Ghosts appeared, thank the party, but one sat near its destroyed corpse, crying. After some communication issues, it was discovered the ghost was missing a death mask. The party decided they'd give it a look and exited the room to continue their search for the crown.

Finally, at the bottom of the rightmost rotunda room, the party came upon the Crown, sitting upon a pedestal, surrounded by depictions of the elven gods who made up the Tripartite. Below the pedestal lay a corpse, dessicated and dry, but not decomposing. When Tovald opened up the corpse for a look, he discovered its insides were still present, aged but not at all decomposed. The party deduced the crown was trapped, which they proved right when Shalsor used her magic to attempt to take the crown off the pedestal. She successfully removed it, and the other three successfully dodged the red rays of (death?) which shot out from the pedestal. Shalsor twirled the crown on her finger. 

Hoping to explore more of the dungeon, the party traversed all the way back to the door to the north of the long open room 105, descending down the sets of stairs to a room with four limp corpses on the ground, silvery strands once again gripping them from the ceiling. The party attempted to all cut the strands of the corpses at once, but one of the strands escaped Shalsor's cut, and the corpse stood up, fighting against the rest of the party. It was quickly dispatched, though not before its arm had been cut off and had been puppeteered all on its own. 

The party then ascended to room 110, where a procession of Golden Ghosts stood expectantly at the doorway. Inside the room, a chest lay at the other end, protected by an obvious boulder trap in the ceiling. Shalsor promptly tried to use her flesh-magic to disarm it, cutting off her arm at the elbow and attempting to float it up to the boulder to disarm it. Instead, the arm got stuck in the silvery strands which held the boulder aloft. Champion Tohma was able to scale the wall and disarm the trap while also recovering Shalsor's arm. Inside the chest was a collection of treasure, including a set of golden masks-- for the Golden Ghosts, it seemed. 

Returning to room 105, the party was disgusted to find the culprit of these silvery strands-- a massive brain with spiderlike legs extruding from it. The party decided it was time to bring down this horrible creature, bringing out all the stops-- Shalsor's magic, Tovald's lightning bolt, and Bizmuth's bow accosted the creature, but it took the tutelage of all of Bizmuth's mentors for her to get off the multitude of precise bow shots needed to slay the creature. 

With the creature slain, the party decided it was time to ascend from the delve for a day. They did so, coming up into the great city once again, unharmed and with a big sack of coins in their pocket. The authoritarian lackeys of the Tyrant took half of the Trabajador's gold. For this, Tovald knew they were going to need to kill those motherfuckers.

But that would have to wait for another day.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My Initial Impressions: It took way too long to finish this blog post, but I really liked this system, particularly the pre-generated characters, their in-built bonds system, and the die-less system of skill checks and combat. For all intents and purposes, doing all your dice math with tarot cards is basically novelty, but it's cool novelty. The GM's drawing of "major arcana" cards helping define random events within the dungeon sounds cool, though I haven't gotten a peak behind the curtain. I do concede it's a bit difficult how a game functionally 100% about the dungeon crawl has no mechanics for the actual act of dungeon crawling, but the combat system is superb. Hopefully we'll get to try the camp and city systems in future sessions, if I can make it for the next delve. Long live Bizmuth Mourn!