On the 12th of October, a black tank and a black stallion left Budapest early in the morning. The former was a sturdy Honda Insight, ridden by the battle-scarred veteran Premier, the excited neophyte Hangyi, and yours truly. The latter was a Ford Mustang carrying the ever jolly Chomy, mister-banned-from-reddit Melan, and 60+ kgs of his new Gamemaster’s Guidelines. In Munich, the most grognard of us all, Iudex, joined our ranks. As usual, we had a hearty German dish for dinner to make sure we won’t have a restful night’s sleep.

October 13, Thursday

We left my Honda behind for Iudex’s more spacious Volkswagen Touran. We took a detour to visit the Dürer house in Nuremberg, and arrived in Rosenthal just in time to miss the opening ceremony. I spent the afternoon block networking, and it wasn’t until after dinner that I joined Attronarch’s table to play Halls of Viridian Mist (OD&D). The premise was simple: our party had to escape a labyrinth engulfed in green mist and inhabited by nasty critters. The dungeon, on the other hand, was a damn complicated Jaquaysian affair. We left the mapping to Hangyi, and boy did he have a hard time!

Navigating the dungeon wasn’t the only challenge, though. Right at the start, ghouls ambushed us while a screaming monster simultaneously drained our levels. After some frantic exploration we found the broken elevator leading up. The shaft went way too high for the climb to be worth it, so we started looking for spare parts for the elevator. Hangyi’s thief lost his arm at this point while checking for traps. It was partly my fault: I was so freaking tired that I forgot about my trap-detecting magic sword. Alas, sleepiness got the better of me, and I left the table midway. I later heard that Chomy’s character grafted a minotaur’s horns to the thief’s arms, the elevator was found, and the party lost only one of their numbers during the escape.

October 14, Friday

The next morning I joined Attronarch’s table again This time he ran Abattoir of the Impotent Idolater (OD&D). Our party was looking for an ancient banner in a cavern. After finding dozens of footprints at the entrance and coming to the conclusion that the inhabitants are diurnal, we made camp nearby to rest until nightfall, when we planned to attack. We didn’t expect an ambush by a huge rotten elephant with seven horse heads on its body. The fucking asshole tore through our camp, killing one of our own and barely feeling all our attacks, while our magic-user caused more harm with Sleep than good. We recklessly followed it into the cave, evaded a bunch of giant rats, until the elephant stopped at to the edge of a lake, and started crying. Unfazed by the disturbing scene, we massacred it.

Then the harpies came… They lived above ledge near the lake, where they stored a half-dead caveman and a treasure hoard covered by shit. They managed to charm most of us, but probably regretted it when they found themselves with a party of helpful (i.e. harmful) idiots, disturbing creeps, and an obsessed psycho. Our adoration caused them more harm than good, and after a drawn-out battle all of them fell. Our cleric tried to heal the half-dead caveman in the middle of combat, hoping for an ally, but it wasn’t happy about it and had to be put back to sleep in violent ways.

We found tons of treasure, and after further exploration, we found the banner too. The wizard carried it around while invisible. On our way back, we ran into harpies again, with results similar to the previous encounter. My character killed one while trying to help her, but he couldn’t shake off the charm and wandered after the rest of the flock into the darkest depths of the caverns. The rest of the party successfully retreated with the banner, completing their mission. It was a fun game with lots of laughter.

Both of Attronarch’s sessions were valuable lessons in running OD&D for twelve players without letting the game descend into chaos. Strict use of callers, ten minutes of IRL discussion costing one in-game turn, and a Referee who was organized as fuck all helped make the sessions as run smooth as butter.

In the afternoon, I felt ready to face our nemesis, B/X Blackrazor, who ran Assault on Sky Fortress (AD&D1e). Our party attempted to hijack a duergar flying fortress. After we defeated a patrol and interrogated its lone survivor, our goal became crystal clear: get to the top, find the witch controlling the castle, and take over her place. We only lost zombies and one character before reaching the top. Unfortunately, the whole fortress was already on alert and the courtyard was teeming with duergars, ogres, and ballistas pointed at our exit.

Early on, things went surprisingly well for us. With the help of our dwarf-in-duergar-clothing and zombies, we managed to pull some mobs into exploding symbols, decimating their ranks. The battle in the courtyard went smoothly, too. The shit hit the fan when a fucking blue dragon and the witch appeared, resulting in a slow, agonizing, painful TPK. A cool raid, although two things would improve it a great deal: a greater variety of enemies and more traps. Until we reached the courtyard, we only fought duergar, as far as I remember.

Despite not planning to play that night, Chomy bullied Hangyi and me into joining Calithena’s Sunken Redoubt of the Serpentine Lich, or Grok’s Revenge (AD&D1e), which was a continuation of an older game he ran during a visit to Hungary. One of the player characters from that game, a lizard-man druid originally played by Iudex, stole an artifact, turned into a lich, and hid in the underworld. Grok was Chomy’s lizardman fighter from the same tribe, seeking vengeance. The adventure itself was an underworld hex crawl from one of the issues of Fight On! It was heavy on exploration, had a cool atmosphere, and was effortlessly refereed. Alas, I had to leave midway again because my body was yearning for rest.

October 15, Saturday

The time had come to participate in this year’s Becker Cup. After last year’s horrible accident with the white dragon, we were extremely eager to prove our mettle. And so we did. We played at Elderthing’s table as usual. This year’s adventure was Nightmare Realm of Death (AD&D1e), a remake of a Dragonlance classic. The party’s goals were to break the curse upon an elven forest, protect the princess among them, save the king, and gather as much treasure as possible. One of the characters had a Luck Blade with two wishes left. We used the first wish during an encounter with angry treants to bypass the first half of the adventure and teleport to the castle.

It turns out that was a wise decision, because according to other players, getting to the castle sucked ass and was a huge waste of resources. There, after getting through a suspicious door and exploring the corridors with a Wizard Eye, we found the mesmerized king and the sleeping green dragon in the throne room. With Silence 15’ Radius and Haste, we massacred the poor beast in the surprise round. We spent the rest of the adventure questioning the king and the dead dragon and gathering up the treasure in the castle. Later we learned we could have earned more advantage if we left some treasure for the elves and married the princess with some of the characters, but fuck that noise, we were there to play AD&D1e. We don’t leave treasure behind, except for he one we didn’t find.

In the afternoon I joined Lkh’s Blackmoor (Chainmail + OD&D) session. After all the OD&D and AD&D, it was a real palette cleanser, partly thanks to how different Chainmail combat felt, and partly due to its more theme park-like nature. Our party was a bunch of heroes accompanied by an elf and a seer. Everyone except for the seer had a group of light foot, heavy foot, or archers with them. Castle Blackmoor’s courtyard felt like a ren faire. After some shopping and preparations, we descended into the dungeon and immediately found ourselves on a seemingly infinite staircase, with weird marching music playing.

The top led to a platform over the sea, and the bottom to a cavern. We chose the cavern. The place was chock-full of orcs and ogres. After suffering serious losses in an epic battle, we retreated to the staircase, sealed the entry, and went up again. We climbed out through the trapdoor onto the platform, which turned out to be an illusion. My hero died when he fell into the water in full plate armour. The rest, I think, managed to survive because they either wore leather armour or successfully undressed before hitting the waves. The survivors then faced and successfully chased away a kraken before coming ashore. Good times! Later we learned from someone who played in the same Blackmoor campaign before, that there used to be balrogs too along the orcs and ogres, but they killed those before they retreated. Thank you!

The auction was solid, though not as tumultuous as last year’s, probably because TerribleSorcery was missing, although people did their best to evoke his spirit. The buyers seemed to have been more generous than last year. There was a nightly block after the auction, but I didn’t participate in any games this time.

October 16, Sunday

After a surprisingly restful night, Chomy and I decided it was time to split the party. Neither of us planned to play this morning, and Chomy wasn’t in the mood for driving in the dark. Thus we only stayed for the closing ceremony, where our team received the bronze award for this year’s tournament. Haven’t felt so proud in a while! We packed our shit, took some photos with the crew, had tearful goodbyes, then got into the Mustang and left for Munich. The others caught up with us later that night. We had some great Greek food for dinner, then went to bed so we would have enough energy for tomorrow’s journey back to Budapest.

The End

This year’s Cauldron Con was a blast as usual. Good games, great company, ample food, lots of beer, zero drama, no bullshit. The only disappointment was how slim the silent auction was this year, but I didn’t come to spend money anyway. I came to play some fucking old-school D&D, and I can’t complain about the experience. It’s invigorating and inspiring.