My Pathfinder game is having a short break between sessions with the usual scheduling issues we’re all familiar with. The week was also a rough one for me with the first anniversary of my mom dying, so I still wanted to get some game time in.
Only one of my usual players was available, so I took a look through what I had that advertised itself for being GM-less with 2 players, or meant for duet with one GM and one player. I’ve been listening to a lot of Party of One and so I was pretty hyped about doing a 2-person session.
We settled in after going over options on playing Warforged or Warforged Unknown, a solo adventure for D&D 5e, written by Bob Carnicom. The adventure was Bob’s first ever written adventure, written for the Summer 2020 RPG Writer Workshop
The basic premise of the adventure is that the player character is a warforged who wakes up with their memory cell removed, no knowledge of who they are or how they got to the forest they’re in. They have to figure out a way to track down what happened to them and how to get their memory back. Also, there’s a mechanical Valenar Hound just waiting to greet them. My player named it K-9.
Artist’s rendition of K-9
K-9 and the Unknown Warforged began looking around the forest clearing where the Warforged woke up and discovered gnome tracks leading away. So they followed them because nothing else seemed pressing. Along the way they were attacked by mushrooms. The mushrooms were slow, so when the warforged just disengaged and ran, they could not keep up.
Eventually the Warforged and K-9 reach the village of Marketplace. Here they enter the only tavern in town and find the gnome whose tracks they’ve been following. The Warforged leaves K-9 (who has the attitude of a hyperactive golden retriever who just saw its favorite ball) to watch the outside for any danger and begins speaking with the gnome, who is introduced as Yebis Toybar. Toybar is completely intimidated and spills the beans. Yeah, he drugged the warforged, but only because there’s a weird mind flayer who has a taste for warforged memories. And the warforged has threatened to kill Toybar if he doesn’t make a certain quota of tasty warforged bits.
As the Warforged is getting ready to ask more questions, K-9 interrupts with the news that there are bandits and other mechanical dogs in town harassing another warforged.
We enter the first real combat of the night which is actually a pretty rough one, even with the mechanical puppy and Toybar as sidekicks. The Warforged is almost killed by the Steel Defenders who are with the bandits, but eventually retreats back to the tavern and uses the front door as a choke point to defend themself from being surrounded and clobbered. The dice also finally made a turning point for the Warforged at this point.
The Warforged was also slightly helped by my deciding to let Toybar have a single spell slot worth of Cure Light Wounds cast as if he were one of the spellcaster sidekicks from the Essentials Kit. Three Steel Defenders acting with advantage on a single player gets rough FAST.
The bandits are carrying a letter from Magnetor, the mind flayer mentioned before. Toybar is concerned about the fact that the mind flayer is now targeting innocent warforged on the streets. He tells the Warforged that the mind flayer is holed up in an abandoned factory near the Eldritch Groves that was once used for scrapping decommissioned warforged. The Warforged takes an opportunity to explain to Toybar how it is a good thing he seems remorseful for what he’s done and is willing to join in a quest to right this wrong because otherwise, the Warforged might not look to kindly on what was done to them.
The travel from Marketplace to the factory has a table with random encounters, but we were a bit pressed for time, so as per the suggestion in the book right next to the table, we just narrated an uneventful couple day hike to the factory.
The Warforged immediately decides to check the whole building before entering the factory. They find the back door that skips basically the whole dungeon and use Toybar’s thieves’ tools proficiency to crack the lock. They then search the back room and find the secret door that leads them RIGHT TO THE BOSS FIGHT.
I honestly have zero regrets how this happened. It worked, the key was written planning that this could happened and like I said, we were at a time to start thinking which encounters would actually fit in
The Warforged sneaks up on the Mind Flayer sitting in its throne made of warforged pieces and pulls their two swords on it. They then crit with one of the opening attacks and deal about a quarter of the mind flayer’s HP in the opening strike before being stunned by its Mind Blast.
Enter K-9. K-9 is a good boy who does not want to see its master hurt. K-9 bounds in and attacks the mind flayer (though K-9 does not have the HP to survive a mind blast if the mind flayer can get one off). Natural 20. And the mind flayer needs a save to stay on its feet. It fails horribly and is knocked prone.
Here I rule of cool that taking a massive blow like that disrupts the stun effect of the Mind Blast. As written, it’s a time effect, but “Oh your turn is skipped” is even worse of a consequence when you’re the only player at the table and the DM just gets to murder you without mercy. So I decided that a cinematic shake it off at just the right moment was called for. I mean, Eberron is nothing if not based in trying to hit those cinematic pulp action beats.
The Warforged walks over to the mind flayer and strikes it again, taking it close to a third of its maximum health. The mind flayer’s turn comes, and things are going poorly so it uses its Plane Shift ability to get out of dodge and live to fight another day.
The Warforged takes a look around the room and into three alcoves. One is full of treasure, and also a Grick. Another is full of Warforged Memory Units, including its memories. Darreon Graysteel is restored and checks the third alcove to find a deactivated Warforged with tentacle marks on the slot for its memory unit. Magnetor ate this one fresh. Darreon swears he will have his revenge on Magnetor the Mind Flayer and asks Toybar’s support in this new quest. Toybar is in. They search the factory to find a power supply for the warforged and slot one of the other memory units from the pantry into the deactivated unit. Bastion, the warforged soldier, joins the party. Along the way, they fight a Grick and another Steel Defender, making short work of them.
The party is thus fully formed and has a mission to track down the other Warforged units missing their memories. And also, find that mind flayer and get revenge.
We had an absolute blast with this adventure and the player instantly said we need to do it again. And that is the story of how I accidentally started a solo Eberron campaign.
I have plans involving Lightning Rails. Maybe airships too. And definitely strange things from Khyber.
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