Antarctica Campaign Session 4 - Heriotza the Necropolis Pt. 1

02 Apr, 2026

Players

• Txori Van Lotus the Black Magus (Jay)
• Ganix Deg the Armsman (Mistuh)

Summary

The giant ground octopus roasts in the dim dome of the ruined city. Ganix carves off 6 rations from it. The smell of calamari and gunpowder hangs in the air.

Txori finds the skeletal remains of a house, managing to climb up a set of stairs to a ruined second floor, and sees obsidian columns some 300 yards away.

From the darkness, another ground octopus crawls and climbs up the black spires, clearing and surveying the scene for the source of the sounds of combat. A hooting, keen emanates from it.

The Black Magus and Armsman make a quick exit as the ground octopus climbs over the ruins in a near-simian-like way.

The two adventurers light their lanterns, and after nearly four hours, they found the foundation ruins of a grand estate.

There, the two find a descending earthen staircase that terminates in a rotunda filled with mosaics of waves, piscine forms, Mollusca, Bryozoa, triskele, copulating giants, and women.

Within this room, a sizzling and crackling burnt orange hexagonal bipyramid. Ganix tempts fate, reaching out to be severely burned. The Armsman sees fissures and hairline fractures running along the entirety of the structure. The smell of ozone is strong around it.

The smell of fetid water to the east, and the ground finds the rough-hewn tunnel that descends slightly into shin-high water that smells of a dying animal's abscess. Ganix knocks down a long-rotted wooden door to find another rotunda.

The walls, once brilliant mosaics, now dull and faded with history. The ceiling spared. Thousands of arborescent and arcuate lines. Amongst the graphomanic hieroglyphics are interspersed more images of waves, piscine forms, Mollusca, Bryozoa, and triskele.

A verdigrised iron door to their south attracts the adventurer's attention. Ganix attempts to knock it down, and from behind it hears the splash of water and light touches against it.

Ganix yells out and only receives silence as the door crashes into the water, revealing twenty-one zombies, each with a purple crystal sticking out from their skull. They all wear opalescent spandex body suits. The pleasant scent of lavender and vanilla wafts from their room into the rotunda.

Txori the Black Magus attempts to command these undead back, uttering the abyssal tongue, only for his powers to be rendered useless against these fiends. Ganix fires his matchlock fusil, but the damp conditions only make his fusil puff in a plume of smoke.

Both are torn asunder by the zombies in the fetid waters of Heriotza.

Aftermath

Treasure Found:

• 6 trail rations of charred giant ground octopus

Foes Encountered:

• 1 Giant Octopus
• 21 Zombies of Heritoza

Rumors:

• n/a

Deaths:

• Ganix Deg torn apart by zombies of Heriotza
• Txori Van Lotus torn apart by zombies of Heriotza

XP Awarded:

• n/a

Notes

• Matlock rifles and fusils ignore 5 points of AC at short range.
  • 4 and -8 to hit at medium and long ranges.
    • 2-in-10 chance to misfire.
    • Damp places like dungeons increase the chance to 4-in-10.
    • Rain increases this chance to 8-in-10.
    • Clearing a misfire takes 3 combat rounds.
• I will need to create POIs within Heriotza, the city, for future games. Players immediately tried to find vantage points and other POIs within the domed necropolis.
• My section of Antarctica saw five total PC deaths, three within the large tent pole dungeon.
  • Heriotza is a high-level dungeon, and the players were woefully underprepared, but so it goes, and leaves a fresh start for a bunch of new adventurers to explore the region next go around!
• My general thoughts
  • Writing my section of the Antarctica Game was an experience (obviously), but after first contact with players, I quickly found where the underdeveloped parts of the hexfill existed. POIs, some larger general procedures for lore, additional flavors, and more.
  • It was good to kick the tires and see where the missing bits lay
  • The sessions felt a bit flat imo, as the general rumor was to find a dungeon, and sometimes there's juice in the journey, but I think I should have done a more proactive job of seeding rumors elsewhere, for the group only explored a relatively small section of the map.