[Travelogue] Cauldron Con, Saturday and Sunday

Saturday: Tigers & Taverns

After a hearty breakfast, I played in Der Oger's Tower of the Tiger Tyrant. Our party started in a camp at the end of a valley, where the titular tower — a legendary site of a bygone era — stood. After hearing some rumours about hobgoblin amazons, a water spirit, and the tower itself, we hired ten horsemen and began our journey into the valley. Our hex crawl didn't last long: after evading a hunting chimera we discovered a floating balcony over a river. Hobgoblins were feeding the hungry eels that lived in the water. We ambushed them, left our mercenaries behind to guard our back, and climbed the aerial structure.

Behind its door was a storage room, beyond which awaited our doom. It turned out we had both found a shortcut into the tower and alerted everyone within. What followed was a tense and seemingly never-ending encounter with hobgoblins, their mother, their beastmaster, and two smilodons. Those goddamn cats had hit points like a truck — and hit like one too. It was mostly sheer luck that we survived. I vividly remember my character lying on the cold floor for half the encounter, too busy trying not to bleed out, and praying to the gods that a smilodon wouldn’t hit him again.

Once we prevailed, we wandered around a bit. We evaded further encounters, picked the diamonds out of a vault door that was meant to hold something back, had some weird hallucinations of dead sisters, and activated an ancient defence mechanism that carpet-bombed the valley into oblivion. Remember how the sessions in the first report all ended with more henchmen than we started with? Not this one... While this session began a bit slowly and we were acoustically challenged till the end, it still ended up becing a fun gonzo science-fantasy romp. Fingers crossed we'll see this one published.

The moment where shit hit the fan.

Grützi ran Lipply's Tavern, which was published in the Adventure Sites I compilation by Coldlight Press. Can one create a tavern adventure, which has a cool layout and engaging exploration? Turns out the answer is yes. Lipply's halfling hill complex has everything a proper dungeon needs: multiple entrances, two levels, loops, branches, secrets, traps... Our Dungeon Master utilized every piece of technology at his disposal to ensure we didn't have to do any mapping. I'm thankful for that, because the tavern didn't seem to have a single straight corridor or 90-degree corner in it.

Our zealot-heavy party ventured into the old, burnt-down tavern to investigate if it has anything to do with recent disappearances. It turned out the owner owed both his fortune and his eventual demise to making a deal with a devil. His ghost still haunted his old office, waiting for someone to bury his corpse in sacred ground to free his soul. Meanwhile, an imprisoned erinyes waited in the cellar for someone to release her, so she could claim the halfling's soul. If this wasn't enough, a bunch of giant spiders had taken over one of the upper sections, while an entire orc tribe had tunnelled into the tavern from below, and began refurnishing it into their lair.

On our first trip, we smoked out some spiders, explored Lipply's known and secret offices, massacred half the orc tribe, stopped our thief from making a deal with the devil, and escaped with Lipply's corpse. After giving him a proper burial, we returned for a second round to clear out any leftover orcs. They expected our return and were better prepared this time, but not enough to make us sweat. We cleared the entire place and rode off into the sunset with fat loots. A damn fine adventure, I can wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone.

High adventure using high tech devices.

This year's auction featured a bunch of awesome items for sale, many offered to support the noble cause — aka Cauldron Con. As usual, it was filled with moments of friendly trolling, duels of will, great losses, and great victories. Settembrini has a knack for presenting even the biggest piece of trash as something worth dying for, which made the whole event immensely amusing. I didn't pick up anything this year, since I already paid a small fortune on a stack of HackMaster 4e books Iudex saved for me.

Sunday: Awards & Au Revoirs

Since Sunday was sabotaged by the castle's owners, there were no official sessions that day. I do remember Melan holding a guerilla session in the morning. We packed our shit, threw out our trash, had breakfast, then patiently loitered around until the closing ceremony. I was pretty satisfied with the magyar raiding party's results. Chomy, Premier, and I earned a runner-up certificate for our participation in Children of the Sea. Our group looted the most treasure and would have won if we hadn't suffered three casualties. Premier also got a small cauldron for "human resource management", for having the most hirelings and henchmen on an adventure. Of course, it helped greatly that he participated in a naval wargame with a fleet rowed by 800 slaves...

Settimbrini announcing his future plans for dominating the german scene.
Behind him his family, who put the "awww" in "awwward ceremony".

Leaving the con was bittersweet. Behind every handshake was a shared adventure, a sense of camaraderie, or at least a foggy memory of having a drink together. There wasn't an ounce of enmity between the players, despite all the conflicts their characters had with each other over the last few days. Alas, the farewell also meant that many of us won't see each other again for a year.

The journey back was mostly long and uneventful. I'm now eagerly waiting when the registration for Cauldron Con 2025 starts. It will be at a different place, it will be bigger, and I'm pretty sure it will be better too. Kudos to every organizer, staff, player, and DM who participated! I hope we'll see each other again soon. If any one of you is planning to visit Budapest until then, drop me a line.

I'm off to Lisbon soon. Once I'm back, I'll compile and share my remaining photos of the event.

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