Another Fitting Conclusion

The prison warden was in fact a strong muscle man, who managed to cripple the totemist’s legs, as well as to do serious damage to the party as a whole. Interestingly the totemist actually pulled out his crossbow to shoot the man, missed, so threw his crossbow, missed again and then promptly gave up, simply too far to actually attack. The party was strong enough to haul him out of there, and with some help from a friendly saber tooth tiger and the engineer’s slow flying abilities they made it out safely.

So yet again the party is ejected from pleasant society and sent out to an unknown world. They didn’t even have time to spend all their ill gotten gains. What a shame. After leaving the city in a hurry they ran into significant trouble with some local wildlife, including a long respected party member meeting his ultimate fate, as well as a recently acquired factotum coming to an unfortunate end.

Before the party quite left the city they had to go to a tavern, because sometimes you just need a drink after a prison break. Some peculiar choices regarding healing after the escape were made, namely the complete lack of it, making what should have been an easy battle into something significantly more difficult. The previous owner of the party’s gold had finally caught up to them, and sent a few demons to deal with them.

These particular demons actually reflect some damage dealt to them back upon anyone in the area, resulting in mass casualties from the patrons of the tavern, as well as fairly large casualties from the party itself. The shapeshifter extraordinaire decided it was best to deal as much damage as possible to these creatures in as brief amount of time, despite his severely weakened team-mates objecting quite a lot.

In the end he came close to killing everyone else, but only killed the engineer and factotum, who were the victims of not having quite enough health, unlike the totemist who had just enough. With the party’s numbers down to 3 they decided it was best to leave the town they were wanted in, and headed towards their employer, the man who sent them after the bow. They were not the only ones sent out that day though, as a bard and his Warblade compatriot were sent off as well, by the crime lord still not known to the party.

This bard infiltrated the party through a few successful bluff checks, not difficult given the collective wisdom of the party is effectively negative, and then they were off together, ready for adventures of all kinds. The bard was very successful in his attempts at subversion, and at the first opportunity gave the large satchel of the money to a devil employed by his employer. This caused notable derision amongst the party, but a Warblade’s chain quickly put a stop to that, effective as it was at putting people down when its owner rolled well.

The party still continue their journey expecting a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but unfortunately all they would get is more pain and suffering. Not that they weren’t used to it, with so much personal and professional death happening around them all the time it had really become routine. There were several escapades on this journey, mostly involving bodily harm to a variety of wild life, but nothing of spectacular importance.

In the end they ended up at their destination, though it looked a little different than the last time they were there, given that the keeper had been grounded, or destroyed, so the huge animal lay slowly decomposing because a gentle repose just didn’t cover something the size of Chicago. Here they searched for their employer but all to no avail, in the end they decided to head back down towards the dragon egg just to see what would happen. That was when shit went down.

The dragon did not wake up no, so they weren’t completely screwed, but a different dragon teamed with some kobolds was still a significant threat. In the end the party was stuck between a rock and a hard place, with a dragon pelting mind bullets at them from the top of a ladder, kobolds descending quickly, and gnomes on the other side who looked none too friendly.

The bard was able to garner a truce, though with some difficulty given that the resident baboon rapist had bitten a few in two, but he was subsequently slaughtered by the bard as a show of good faith, one PC down. A wall of fire here proved difficult as it so often is, and even a brave man can be devoured by kobolds when there are enough of them. The Totemist here climbed up the ladder, clawing and throwing down numerous kobold corpses, though taken plenty of battle damage himself. In the end it was something not quite in his control that caused his death, but fateful gravity, killer of so many everyday.

He fell quite some way, nearly all down the ladder having killed dozens of kobolds, ripping them to pieces but it just wasn’t enough, because a dragon simply has too many tricks up its metaphorical sleeves. The truce with the gnomes however worked spectacularly and a battle plan was set up with a pincer formation. Unfortunately the enlarge person wand had broken again, just as it had done the three previous days. In the Warblade’s insanity he ripped apart a few gnomes in the hope the blood god would give him strength, but it did not, and simply resulted in a few pissed off gnomes.

The battle worked out in the party’s favour, with one of their new members having infiltrated the kobold’s ranks, and erupted to eat a few of them. He was truly the master of the forbidden feast, with a bag full of arms and a taste for flesh of any kind, as a part raven man. The gnomes took heavy losses, but just when things looked most dire and the dragon was advancing on the slowly dying party a miracle dropped through the sky.

First a strange gentleman calling himself Saxton Hale dropped through, creating a gap for the new party member who spoke only Gol-Ka, and who would subsequently be known as Penis-Man due to his introduction about home and a picture of a penis. Saxton Hale defeated the dragon with his bare hands, and then ran off never to be seen again, as is his way. Now in the after battle mop up the party is left tired and unsure of what to do next, but is quickly commissioned for some murder, as is their typical plan.

The party was recruited by a local leader of the church of Helio, the god of law and order, to go and investigate some necromantic happenings down below the city. This leader is actually a devil in disguise, who is planning for them to be murdered in this task, but they don’t know that quite yet. So they investigate the necromancer, who is actually building a nice little city for him and his undead buddies, but they can’t let that happen, because all undead are evil, so they begin the fight to end all fights, one way or another, but probably in TPK.

In Rememberance

We last left off with two party members dead and no healing for any future encounters, meaning those who are damaged stay damaged. Unsurprisingly this was a problem. Even so the brave adventurers continue on valiantly on their quest for the bow.

The next real encounter is inside of a room containing an enormous device on the floor. Once the engineer steps out to investigate, the mechanism is reveled to be an enormous fan, and like any good dungeon this is not the only obstacle in this room, which includes two pissed off sphinx, who can actually maneuver inside the windy environment.

The three comrades then charge ahead, but with extremely limited success due to the strange environment. Luckily with the timely arrival of two strangers (New PC's) heralded by a quick incarnate zooming onto the scene accompanied by a cat on his back.

The battle is still difficult, though the party had closed in on to the sphinx, boxing them in and denying them their maneuverability.Once they can actually get a hit in it's a matter of a few blows to bring them down, and the factotum is given a chance to show off his new skills, grappling hooking to the ground and disabling the fan, with the engineer feather falling everyone safely to the ground.

With that done the party can move on. Next a small puzzle presented a problem, a button connected to a timer which dealt damage to whoever pushed it. There were of course barriers blocking the door backwards and forwards.

The solution is simply to let the time run out, but given the atmosphere and circumstances this was less than obvious. Eventually the solution was puzzled out, but not after they had already bashed through a wall to get to the other side of the door, thus passing the puzzle in a slightly different way.

Finally the party found the ranger they had been pursuing for some time, who then promptly shot many arrows at them. He also provided a unique challenge by being on a 50 ft. high platform, adding to the difficulty of getting to him.

Now the incarnate managed to actually jump up and get him while running his max speed, and the factotum's (cat's) grappling hook helped the totemist and engineer, while the shaper's eagle strike beat everyone to the punch, or claw as the case may be. The shaper then babooned the shit out of the archer, while the rest of the party preceded to make nice little meaty chunks of him, to everyone's great satisfaction.

The entire time however the party had been avoiding the elephant in the room, a genie. The genie had been standing, floating, in the middle of the room the entire time, and had challenged the party to a fair contest, which if they won they could get the acquire the bow.

The first of these fair contests was the genie fighting with the totemist, one on one, with a wall of fire preventing others from getting in, as well as damaging the totemist, and healing the djinn, who also happened to be an efreet. The continuous assault from the totemist proved to not be quite enough, with the genie driving him back to the point of unconsciousness, and past, though he still refused to yield because of his furious claws.

Luckily an adventorous incarnate managed to leap into the fray and to heal the totemist, as well as rescue him. The next fight was between the shaper and the genie, with the shaper changed into a polar bear. This was a much more even fight, with the shaper falling just as he delivered the final blow to the genie, who disintegrated into smoke.

No one had officially won a contest so far however, so the incarnate challenged him to a race, which surprisingly he accepted. Even with him transformed into a cheetah, and actively hurting the incarnate during the race it was not quite enough, and he conceded defeat, granting the party one wish and also delivering the legendary bow to them.

With much deliberation the wish was eventually decided upon to give them large quantities of gold, and they got as they wished, thought the gold was stolen, and the owner of this was in all likelihood watching and waiting to make his move.

Moving on to the finale they were granted the bow, and took their leave. They decided to head to the kobold, and see if he could discern anymore about the bow, given his immense knowledge. There is one more obstacle on the way though, a now gnoll who had been killed once before by them, and once before by an ogre. They would not have him come back this time though, once he was dead they would burn and crush and maim his bones to the point of no return.

I'd like to take this moment now to discuss a tragic loss. Someone who had been with the party for many months, who slept with the party, who was always trusted on to deliver that ever important finishing blow. He was truly, the greatest of them all, and without him it is doubtful whether the party can go on. His name was Thrusty, and he will always be remembered for his great contributions to the rape and pillage of so many people and places, before being tragically destroyed by a cruel and insensitive greatsword.

And so the party arrived at the kobold, though first completely and utterly destroying the bones of an old PC. While visiting however, they learned little information, and when asking him for a teleport were mistaken in a belief that it would always succeed. With a botched reading the party ended up in the town they started in, where one of them is wanted for murder.

Not much more was accomplished, though the incarnate was arrested for reckless destruction of property, and a breakout attempt was subsequently started, though not completed, as that will have to be left until next time.

The Bell Tolls Twice

Last time the second party left off they had just encountered some druids just outside of the kobold's lair in the basement of a house. They were subsequently dealt with so there was only one more thing to do. Deal with the blacksmith, in the kindest way possible.

This is where the amazing assassin attempts again to show off his skills. After his failure to immediately kill a cleric he needed a confidence booster. So he strolls right up to the blacksmith, invisible courtesy of the wizard and performs a sneak attack instantly killing the dwarf. Oh, no, no he doesn't. He stabs him once, misses, and doesn't even kill him with that attack.

The blacksmith responds to this unkindly, and beats his initiative and smashes him with a hammer, rightly deserved. The party wizard then comes to sort this out, but the rogue will have none of this, and stabs the blacksmith again, this time actually bringing him down. The party totemist, the only original member of the party that hated the blacksmith so much then does some unmentionable things to him.

So the party sets off, having accomplished everything they needed to. On the way to the location of the bow, they encounter two strange gentleman mounted on bears, who attack them without provocation. Bear cavalry is proven to be quite a formidable force, doing good damage to the party, though a summoned ape combined with a transformed ranger swiftly deal with one, though the other does a few ride by attacks before finally being brought down by the totemist and his leaping.

Without too much more trouble they arrive at the place where the bow should be, and find two doors, and two large gentleman, one wielding a bow, the other a sword, who are apparently beginning a race to the bow. They run in, and the doors close. After a little bit of scouting the party decides the best option is to smash the door, and go after the sword wielding of the pair.

Smashing through the door takes some time, but with the rogue's handy dandy admantine dagger it is eventually destroyed. They then rush ahead, and see a pit. A very deep pit, with a door on the other side, and a corpse at the bottom. Everyone can easily jump across, except for the engineer, who has to take off his armor to have a hope, and then fails his jump check falling all the way to the bottom, though using his insight to slow his fall significantly.

After getting back up with some help from friends with ropes, everyone arrives into the next room, which has a steady drip of water, something the engineer is utterly terrified of. After the party is entirely in the room, the drip becomes more of a rush, and it appears that the ceiling is buckling. With this unfortunate predicament the ranger and wizard run to the door opposite the one they came in on, and the rest of the party tries to smash down the previous door.

Then an enormous abberation collapses downwards, but the party assassin actually kills something for once, planting an arrow directly through its brain. The water continues rushing, but luckily the party is strong, and smash their way through both doors, continuing on through the dungeon.

 They are subsequently attacked by the man from before, wielding the enormous bow. After shooting them a few times, he runs off through the next door. they decide to follow him, breaking their way through the small partition separating them from where he was, and go charging forward.

Here they encounter a minesweeper room, with the mines being traps. Through a very long and animal sacrificing process they eventually uncover where most of the traps are, and acquire some very nice loot. Then things go bad.

Every other chest in the room was fine, why wouldn't this one be, thought the party rogue. This one was a mimic, a very sticky mimic, who got stuck to the rogue. The party didn't help things either, getting stuck or actually attacking him, the finishing blow was dealt by the engineer who threw a javelin straight through the rogue into the mimic, pinning his corpse to it.

This was not the only life claimed however, as there were a few other monsters in this room, including one tricksy earth monster, a xorn. This thing can float through walls like their air, or water or something, and had attacked the wizard previously. This time the wizard was weakened, and decided to attack head on with a dagger, instead of using spells like he should have.

This resulted in his head being bit off, and spit out. Finally the party found the lever, pulled it, and disabled all the traps. They also destroyed all the few remaining creatures, and then got ready to enter the next room, next session.

A Forestfull of Mantises

The second party now on an epic quest to do absolutely nothing. First things first, they meet up with a strangely charismatic warforged who offers to sell a thunderstone to the party totemist. This is then shat right back at him, and the totemist skips off merrily. Great first impression and all. Luckily the rogue is there to smooth things over, and with a little convincing he goes to meet the rest of the party, including the engineer who was forging his full plate very slowly.

Struck by lack of things to do, they retreat back to the tavern. Luckily they run into a holy man carrying an enormous sword who threatens them asking for the location of the dragon egg. He then takes the rouge hostage with permission from the the party, and they agree to meet tomorrow to figure out where they are going.

The trip down is fairly uneventful, running into no beasties, and in fact running into no kobolds. What they do find is a mass of gnomes who claim to have slaughtered the kobolds, the paladin then begins praying in front of the egg, and the party runs off while his back is turned. They run all the way back to town, but encounter a small cloaked figure flanked by two very much larger figures. They are asked by him to go and find the dragonslayer bow, and to kill the dragon egg below.

Conflicting opinions on exactly what to do next but in the end they decide they will definitely find the bow, though not necessarily kill the dragon with it. The engineer is still working on his full plate, so they have to wait a few more days before they can leave the city, and go ask a particularly knowledgeable kobold about the bow.

In the mean time the new warforged party member goes and sells his wares to passers by and tavern people netting a fairly decent amount of money, which he promptly goes off and spends on scrolls. By this time the session is coming to its conclusion, and so we pick up next week with the journey through the forest.

Everyone has bought all their equipment, and is prepared to set out for the dangerous journey to the town. Before they leave they bought maps of the area, as well as the town and the continent. And so they decide to take the quickest way off the city, and dive off with feather fall prepared for when they just about reach the ground.

This works perfectly fine, except for maybe indicating insanity to any watchers. So they set off towards the town, and have a fairly uneventful travel for the first maybe 4 hours. Then there is a dire bear. RAWR!. The enormous bear takes a swat at the party engineer, dealing enormous damage.

Luckily the party is fairly ready for this, and deal out an enormous amount of damage before the bear has a chance to respond, and then the mauling starts. The rogue had a brilliant plan, run up and stab the beast, but after his first attack was quickly knocked down for his insolence.

The summoned beasts from the warforged wizard are also subsequently dealt with, though not without significant damage done to the bear. Eventually the totemist brings it down with a great pounce tearing right through it's head. Its claws are subsequently made into gauntlets for him.

The travels conclude with a praying mantis encounter, in which the rogue is again lifted off and brought closer to death than he would ever like to be. Eventually however the party arrives a the town, and finds it nearly completely destroyed, plants having taken over much of the surroundings and few buildings left standing.

A short discussion with the only remaining guard reveals there are a few families left, him, and the blacksmith. The blacksmith especially peaks there interest because he was not the nicest of fellows and they had been planning his torture for many weeks now.

But the target of their search was to be found, and they discovered the approximate location of the bow, as well as a little bit more information about the dragon. They learned it was one of an ancient species of dragons long wiped out, Regulator dragons. They leveled up then, and the session ended.

Kobolds, Kobolds, Everywhere, But Where is There to Sit and Drink?

We began this weeks adventure with the early stages of combat, as a large group of kobolds guards an even larger group from the interloping adventurers. Most of them go down with the ease that first level warriors should, one hit and they're down.

A few prove to be sticklers though, with one having blows just glance off of him, and another merely rolling with them. Luckily a kobold can not tank hits forever, and one goes down. Now the party had met a shapeshiter previously, who now had a perfect opportunity for an Eagle Strike! One roll and it's a twenty. Next roll also a twenty, excitement was building now. Then boom, only a 19, even still, quite a crit.

And what a crit it was, decapitating the opponent, as the eagle whisped by and whisked off his head. Now there were just a few kobolds with crossbows hiding in the corners, who were easily disposed of. Then came the Coup de Gracing, easy murdering of the sleeping kobolds. Now the party had a decision to do, once back at the fork, north, west, or south.

The west path lead to no good, though it was the first taken. The only result was a pit trap, followed by some enormous strength checks to pull up the dwarf enginner who had significant difficulty with his climb checks. Then the ceiling collapsed a little while later, due to a baboon triggering a trap, and they had to go back across the pit. Once again, the engineer fell in, as did the party rogue.

A little finangeling later and everyone was off down the south path, and after a short period they came upon the door. The rogue detected not one, not two, and not just quite three, but four separate traps. Some pokes here and prods there and there were no traps, or so the confidently striding rogue thought. CRUSH!

The rogue was crushed by an enormous spiked pillar, and slowly crawled his way as it crashed into the ground again. A resetting trap says the warlock, why I'll just stride right in to the door, what could really happen? One greataxe bisection later and his top half decided that it was not a good idea, and that was his last idea as he died.

The orc behind the greataxe satisfied with himself was subsequently destroyed by the remaining party members, with the totemist completely shredding him. The party rests here, and gets prepared for the final fork. No more traps but they discover an enormous egg being worshiped by a large group of kobolds. The party decides now is a good time to report back to the quest giver, and receive a bag of holding for a reward. How nice. There are some mutterings and we end the session with no clear idea what to do next.

Catching up

Too long. It has been far too long since I've wrote something, done something creative. So the galavanting heroes or at the very least protagonists continue on their perilous adventures. The first party now 6 strong decides to go and visit Dr. Satan, a nice friendly trip to the underground which was sure to result in victory.

One small problem is a couple of hundred rats swarming. These are no normal rats though, ghost rats from outer space they are, ready to gnaw and to gnash and to drain all the strength. A little help from some dead adventurers though provided the party with much needed ghost destroying weapons and a way to restore some of the strength that the nauseous rats gnawed down.

So a little worse for the wear but still on their feet they descend to the very welcoming arms of Dr. Satan, who's actual name is Ptolemy and henceforth I shall call him by that name. Ptolemy is flanked by two large armed guards bearing the likeness of guard dogs with enormous scimitars. They convinced by his facade decide to descend on an elevator, traveling past several enormous objects in an empty black room of cavernous proportions.

Only then does he reveal that he is not too happy with their activities, agreeing to work for the city and all that. But doublecrossers that they are they decide to doublecross the city, and agree to work for Ptolemy once he shows them his secret project. On an enormous platform revealed to be the still beating heart of the dog they find an ancient being sitting on a throne, threatening to wake and to bring the world to a new sort of order.

Ptolemy reveals his entire plan was to conduct a series of murders and catastrophes at the same time so all the blood can feed into his new god, and bring him back from the edge of extinction. He also reveals that every city is controlled by this one man, and that killing or destroying him may have dire consequences. Suddenly there is a huge quaking, as the city shakes from a collision with a nearby town, the one the party is planning to raid.

Now after a few hours spent with grafts the party is ready to face the clerics in the new environment, and gets prepared for a war. They ascend quickly to the surface, and digging, jumping, and flying there way down they meet the welcoming comity. Unfortunately the group's collective charisma is not of the diplomacy sort, so an armed conflict is inevitable.

Luckily they are better armed, equipped with their new arms and legs courtesy of Ptolemy. They easily dispatch the guards, and capture one who was presumed to lead them to the clerics. Again though, they are too trusting, and are led into an ambush, involving archers and a few footsoldiers. This combat lasts quite some time, great damage being done on both sides, with the dragon shamans healing just barely keeping the party up as the constant volleys seek to perpetually annoy them.

Again they seem close to their goal, and seek a warehouse containing a group of clerics. After some mighty deliberation and dispatching of more guards they come up with a cunning plan. They will forge a document to enter the warehouse, and then easily backstab the guards claiming their reward. This does not go well, as the party gnome is grappled as his paper thin disguise does little to help, and as the rest of the party busts in the session comes to an end, to resume next week.

As for the other party, they are doing fine with their resting and all that, and have a brilliant plan, find some quests, and go kill stuff, something which their record clearly shows they can do. Their immediate target is the mansion of Mathew, a dwarf crime boss who can not be eliminated legally, but since when have adventurers cared about legality?

Their attempts at reconnaissance and stealth do not go that well, so they buy some acid and begin melting the front gate. At this point the party warlock pops his head over, and promptly gets headshotted down to 0 health, and lies on the ground for the rest of the session. The rest of the party charges in and attempts to execute the gun wielding guards. A few misses later and the mission is not a success, but as always the party wins in the end, and they go streaming through the front door.

Here they find more guards, who are met with more difficulty due to the crime boss being armed with magical armerments, and peppering them with acid orbs and fireballs. The totemist gets all up in the face of the boss, and rips and tears his small guts into oblivion. The clean up is fairly routine after, with one of the rogues surrendering and joining up with the party. This is a new PC. The house is then set on fire by the totemist, and the rogue and engineer have to make a run for it with a heavy admantine safe while battling the remaining two guards, one of which gets a face full of safe, and the other manages to shoot himself.

One mansion burned to the ground and their job is complete, reward claimed, and ready for the next quest. This involves opening the safe. After many smashings, and a few more subtle attempts the rogue realizes he has several acid wands in his possession. Many failed UMD checks later and the safe is open, granting a large amount of money to the party, the first of this kind. The party dwarf now commits huri kuri, to be replaced by a shapeshipter a short while later.

Before this can happen they encounter a warblade that a few of them remember from before. He looks a little different, having been reincarnated as an orc, but is none the worse for wear, and puts up quite a fight as a druid casts entangle on the party, severely limiting their movement possibilities. The orc goes down, and up, and down, and up again, and finally the little rogue gets a few critical stabs in, and brings him down for good. That all wrapped up they can finally do what they had been meaning to and go investigate a disturbance in the sewers.

These sewers are different than the ones previously mentioned, and have some interesting new challenges awaiting them. They meet some kobolds on their way down, and that was where we left off, just a few kobolds hanging out with some trabs and some crossbows.

A Summary

It ha been too long since I've made a blog post, and a lot of stuff has happened. We have had a session for both groups, because real life so rarely allows for everything to go as planned.


The first group has now not only destroyed the keep, but have managed to get themselves arrested, and brought to the local ruler. This ruler will absolve them of all their sins as long as they do a task for him. This task is very simple, just go to another city, steal all their clerics, and come back. Do it within a limited time, or your heads go off.

Unfortunately when they were arrested they had several guard corpses in their guild, something the guards were not too happy about. This means that if they put one toe out of line they will promptly be arrested and sent to jail, or an early death. They decided to camp out at the lady they murdered before's house, because it was the most innocent place they could think of.

So this goes fine, they all have a nice rest, and then decide to see if the kobolds from before had anything of interest for them. And by thing of interest, I mean straight up murdering all of them, for the inevitable slight that results from a gnome diplomancing a kobold. So everyone attacks, the gnome, he's brought down, but the party come to the rescue. And with a new member now, as a prisoner of the kobolds breaks out and assists by punching his way through a large amount of kobolds.

The monk and the party combine to take down the group, though the knight is brought to unconsciousness and the bard is flung from his back, almost dying himself. Overall though, the fight is won, and they win a healthy reward from the looting of the kobolds. The session then ends and will continue next week.

The other party made some slow progress down the beach, as they defeated the crabs and ascended towards a new goal, one of prosperity. First however they had to defeat the crab in front of them, with aid from their theoretical opponent, the magistrate. His army of horse bombadeers assists quite a bit, and the crab is taken down, albeit with quite a bit of damage done to the party. The magistrate then rides off, but the party has a brilliant plan.

The druid summons a hippogriff, and sends it off to pick up the magistrate and drop him, hopefully for a KO. One failed grapple check later and the hippogriff is thrown off and slaughtered, and the magistrate comes back and delivers a talking to the party. They decide the obvious solution is to beat the druid to unconsciousness and to let the magistrate have his way. This doesn't quite work though, as the druid springs into the water on the edge of consciousness and lives to fight another day.

Both parties part then, with the slower PCs travelling along the shore on foot. This turns out to be a bad decision as they fight yet another crab after about a day, and narrowly defeating the baby crab they retreat to the forest to regroup. The druid has not returned, and will in all likelihood abandon them.

Continuing along the path because they have nothing better to do they run into some bandits, again narrowly winning the fight they slaughter the bandits, burn their tree hideout, and take all their loot. They then proceed to a city which they found after several days search. After climbing up the city they go for a night's rest and the session ends. Fin.

The Crabs, the Crabs!

The tomb continues to be frightening. But it is oh so enlightening. There are 3 skeletal champions still up, and the party is not in top shape. Luckily the totemist is a whirling frenzy of death, and pounces on a skeleton, missing all but one attack. Not the best start to a session. The rest of the party does alright though, the engineer and samurai doing decent damages against their respective skeletons. The fight is actually fairly easily won, and the loot that is had is good.

They gain one magical breastplate, and the warlock heavily considers a steel shield, though eventually decides against it. So they search around the room, and find a secret door, what a twist. The totemist manages a natural 20 to break it, and crumbles it into dust. The hallway they stumble upon is treated with immense distrust, and the warlock investigates the ceiling.

Unfortunately the trap contained the entire wall, up to and including the ceiling, and he is hit by several darts with dex poison. Even failing the two saves he still only loses two dex, so comes off fairly lucky. They now open the door at the end of the hallway, and find a priest of some kind praying at an alter to Nerull. They attempt some diplomacy, but it doesn't go too well. The warlock is hit by an inflict wounds spell, and falls from the ceiling at -8. The rest of the party rushes after him, and the totemist just about brings him down with a few attacks.

He then runs away,  but the party catches up and absolutely destroys him. The totemist smashes him into a wall several times, and the samurai cuts off his arm, leaving him far far from life. They then realize they are an enormous room with one to two hundred corpses, all filed away into coffins. The room is harrowing, and they all decide to not investigate, a move that was probably for their best.

They decide to camp out in the previous room with their bears guarding them from any nasties. Their sleep goes as well or better than expected, and they wake up fine. Then they leave and travel towards the beach. A few large eagles are waiting for them, and their flyby attacks prove to be quite troubling.

The eagles are dealt with through two occurrences, one the totemist with a worse grapple check successfully grappling and almost taking down one of them. And the other is a summoned wolf being tossed at the eagle by the engineer, dealing a large amount of damage. With those dealt with they yet again head to the beach. They arrive at it, and plan out their ambush of the magistrate.

The ambush is where the end of the session occurred, as just as it was being sprung, a giant crab scuttled its way out of the water.

To Me My Bears!

The session had to be shortened for various reasons, so this may be brief. The party hexblade rolled up a new druid, as pertaining to his recent death. This took about way too long, so there's that.

But we begin in the druid camp, with everyone getting ready to leave, with their bears. After a few more hours spent training bears they are ready to depart, and decide to try to cut off the magistrate or king at the pass. They travel through the woods, with some difficulty, because of their bears. They now encounter some frogs, larger than expected.

These frogs are not too difficult, the big ones die in a couple hits, and the small ones die in one. The small ones are also poison, dealing a small amount of con damage to the totemist. The giant frogs though were able to eat both the dwarf samurai and the party warlock, dealing minimum damage excluding the psychological trauma.

The next encounter is with some skeletons in a tomb, just outside of a long forgotten town. This crypt houses 4 skeletal champions, who deal a good amount of damage to everyone in the party. The warlock is damaged by the engineer smacking him across the face with a slab of concrete due to a critical fail. The druids new lizard is also severely damaged, even brought to the brink of unconsciousness. This is where we had to end unfortunately, so this is where we end.

Epitaph for the Fallen

The party began the day in a forest with 5 members, and ended with 4. The loss was not a major one emotionally, but physically the tole was felt. Even still it was not a bad day, even if no loot was to be had. It began with everyone strolling through the forest not a care in the world, who eventually ran into the scouts for a contingent of armed men. With these men, the king who they had been searching for. Excellent cried the party, this is wonderful.

It was not so wonderful though, as they realized when they had found him, in that there was no real reward to be had, and they had no real plan. What they did offer though, was to attack a town taken over by druids for him, as part of there ever lasting quest for rupees. They also managed to convince him to spare some of his men for their surprise attack. A cunning ploy really, unfortunately they forgot that druids were fairly well attuned with the trees.

So they managed to successfully get to the other side of the town, and sneak, sneak, sneak there way in. Only problem was, a large wood figure stood in the way. This wood figure would eventually lead to their downfall, him and his splinters. This wood figure was immune to the warlock's petty magics, and did not take kindly to being shot by one. He proceeded to charge in, smash some people, and explode with splinters, doing massive damage to everyone, and leaving him unharmed. This is when everyone got a little bit worried.

Still, they outnumbered him 15 to 1, they had a good chance so they said, we can beat him so they said, that won't kill me so they said. Everyone has their turns, volleyed are shot, and golems are thrusted at, but all in a vain attempt. The golem then smashes down the hexblade, leaving him on the wrong side of consciousness. He also dealt significant damage to the samurai, and prepared for an explosive finale the next turn. Now the attempts were even more desperate, with even the warlock resorting to his crossbow to damage it, and again, it all was for naught. One more explosion sent a good portion of the line sprawling, leaving few alive to tell the tale.

Those who were alive and conscious included the totemist and the samurai, as well as the warlock. Not alive including the PC, the hexblade. A rather unfortunate turn of events. This is when the golem decided this was a great time to smack them both, just putting them at -1 health. Now it was up to the final line of NPCs to deal with him, him having only one HP left. And that was the exact number of damage they dealt to him, one damage, just enough to bring him down.

Health potions shared all around, and everyone got up. They then planned a variety of shenanigans, ultimately resulting in them selling out the king to the druids. This worked wonderfully, resulting in only the king and a few personal guards alive, and a huge battlefield full of death. Hip, Hip, Horrah.

                                                   Like this, but times 100, and in a forest.

A Forest Full of Foul Fiends

Walking along paths is always fun, so we begin with that. The party marches on, and on and on, attempting to catch up with the "king" and his rupees. This plan goes alright, except for the little problems of the animals. As they continue going south they see more and more people traveling north, indicating perhaps that something is wrong. Turns out there are some crazy animals on the loose, and the destruction of everything they know has in fact driven them away.

The first  beast we encounter is an enormous boar, something like that there on the side. This thing attempts to impale one of them, but the zerg rush does enormous damage to him, and the pile is victorious. Unfortunately this is not very long lived, as four smaller boars slowly approach, not looking too happy This would actually not be too much of an issue if the party had any decent source of healing. So the boars all deal decent damage, about 30 or 40 to the party all round, but this is just a taster compared to what happens next. Soon they face what can only be described as the most fearsome creature in D&D.

But before we do that, we start with the carving of weapons, shoulder pads, and codpieces. A boar's tusk is nothing to be sneezed at, and  a weapon made out of that could be fairly deadly, so they begin with that. The warlock wants pauldrons made of the smaller boars skulls, unfortunately one botched craft check later and he has silly looking doodads sticking to his shoulders. The totemist then declares he needs a fierce codpiece made of one of the big boars tusk's, and one of the smaller's skulls. This is in fact a sucess, and it is given the affectionate name 'thrusty'. The other tusk is made into a decent sized club for the engineer.

The next fight was against the most terrifying beasts in all the land. Owlbears. Just two of them, but still a fairly difficult encounter with everyone already damaged. The fight didn't start off to well, with the totemist knocked out fairly early on, losing the primary source of damage. The warlock is again up a tree, firing eldritch blasts down, and missing a huge amount, a new feeling for him. Before any damage is dealt to the actual owlbears everyone but the engineer and the warlock are out, and the engineer is not doing too well. Surprisingly they do manage to win the battle, with only minimal assistance from a passing family. So with that encounter done everyone levels up and we end the session.

The Unbelievably Late Tales of Some Rooms

Sorry for such a late post, I lost quite a lot of ambition as the year dragged to a halt, and the ability to perceive things just kind of faded. But, assuming my memory has not completely died, I will try to recount what happened in the final sessions of the term.

So we began the session as we last left off, with the first party having just met up with some dwarves, making a party of 8, and 2 animals. The next obvious option was to go into the next room, by way of ladder. In the previous room lay the corpses of the recently slain abominations. So the druid is decided upon to go and check for traps, a decision made by no one but himself. As expected it did not go well. He fell down a pit, as did his dire badger, Mr. Snuffles.

So now he is in a jail cell, similar to one from a few weeks ago, and needs to find a way to get up the 15 feet. The rest of the party formulates a fairly exhaustive and much discussed plan and how to get across this pit, and after much derision, but no name calling, they decide to have the dragon shaman just kind of jump and float his way over, which he does admirably. Now the process of building a rope bridge begins.

Unfortunately down in the pit someone/thing has taken notice of Mr. Snuffles, and sidles over to the cage to investigate, slowly opening the door. Druid's response is fog, lots of fog, everlasting, all-enveloping fog. This goes exactly as well as planned, mayhaps even better for the druid, since he finds the rope the dragon shaman, threw down, and manages to climb out of the pit. Hurrah. So we now have 2 party members on one side of the pit, 6 on the other, and neither has any idea as to what is happening.

Luckily the druid has gust of wind prepared, so swoosh and much of the fog is gone, the party can see! Unfortunately there is still a fairly substantial pit in the way, and a rope bridge may not cut it. So they attempt to cross, but some fall in, oh no. So eventually all the PCs excepting the druid and scythe wielder are in the pit, and the druid is chucking stones down.

I do believe I forgot to mention the scythe wielder in my last post, he is skeleton warrior type, who likes to be referred to as death, and the party believes is the dragon shaman's pet, so he is accepted. This is the bard player's new character. So back to the pit, the druids throwing stones, hitting his allies a good chunk of the time, and just about everyone is missing down there. Eventually the beast does fall, with only minor cuts and bruises, and everyone manages to climb the rope to get out of the pit. So they then proceed to march to the next door, ever so cautiously open it, and see two enormous centipedes in the next room. Fin. I really hope to finish this to some degree of completeness soon.


The second party's tale is not quite so exciting, mainly consisting of wandering around for a few in game days, and finding out bits and pieces. The most eventful confrontation consists of a combat with 2 praying mantis, similar to the one before. These use a more open approach though, and charge straight at them, followed by the party counter charging. The samurai does his awesome charge smite attack, and manages to smite himself with his one. Not to be overshadowed by some puny mortals, the praying mantis manages to crit himself, followed by a 100 on the 100 sided die. This results in decapitation, with little chance of a saving throw. So he killed himself, but he killed himself really damn well.

We also had some journeys down the road, as the party charges towards certain...something, they're not sure quite what, and neither am I, but it sure as hell will be exciting. They meet with a merchant on the road, mug him, and drive his mule off, much to the consternation of certain party members. Sorry this was kind of a brief description, the session was kind of phoning it in, and to be honest I'm not really sure what happened, that week is mostly a haze for me.

Next Come the Flies

So the second party is now celebrating their victory over the innumerable zombies, and decide they they need to take the initiative, and and after healing up they strut out to finish off the necromancer for ever. This goes exactly as well as they expect it to, surprising everyone.

So they don't meet any opposition on their way to the necromancer, and find him, or something that could be him, discussing some matters of utmost importance with his comrades, some wolves. Using their keen senses they discover he is lamenting the absence of someone, or some large group of somethings, and they manage to convince themselves that full out Leroy Jenkinsing is the answer.

The more sneaky members, the rogue and totemist, try to sneak up behind while the others, samurai, warlock, and engineer just stand there pelting ranged attacks. This works well, until the rogue is sneak attacked by a zombie, and has a fight almost to the death with it. This is a cause for alarm, as the rest of the group grapples, literally in the totemist's case, with the wolves. Now the necromancer at this point has hit the warlock with a negative level, a decently long lasting debuff.

The totemist then springs out, grappling the dwarf, who being a wizard is not too good at hand to hand, biting him repeatably until he eventually crits his face off. The wolves at this point are heavily damaged or dead, and so are easily dealt with. Next comes the wolves, and they go down fairly easily, though the lone zombie manages his escape, a fairly might task for a mindless undead. Then comes the loot gathering, gaining one enchanted chain shirt, and one pair of enchanted bracers.

Now they find some more tracks leading them to a small shrine to Nerull, the death god. They are not immediately aware of this, and are not too weary of the pool of dark, almost black, liquid nearby. The warlock's first response is actually to drink it, followed by a confirmation of this request. This actually works out alright, even though he permanently poisons himself with the taint of evil, but gains the ability to make all knowledge checks, and gains a bonus to initiative. So they decide to stopper up a bottle of this stuff, just in case.

They then go back to town asking everyone they see if they can tell them what it is, but most people don't know, this is when they discover a kobold hiding away, with knowledge of just about everything adding at least +20 to his d20 die roll. This results in quite a few answers, though quite a few questions too. Also I feel I should mention that the party totemist is cursed to not see humans, by the necromancer, and it may take a while for this to be cured.

So they do all this, rest up regaining their spells and such, though the party warlock has a slightly less restful night than normal. So then they decide to go back to the shrine, and see what they can do from here. Unfortunately on the way there they are surprised by an enormous praying mantis, approximately the size of a horse. This surprise enables it to grab the rogue, shake him a bit, then have the rogue get hit by a javelin from the party, disposing of the now -6 health rogue. This rogue was also fairly high up, and took 2d6 falling damage from this, giving him a 90% change of dying. I decided he could roll for this, given that it was a life and death situation.


He made it, he got snake eyes, something in all other situations would be bad, but here saved his life. So he lived, but so did the mantis, and it soon flew over to the party warlock, picked him up, and flew away, then proceeded to drop him, bringing him all the way down to -6. The party samurai then threw his short sword with all his might, actually hitting and killing the mantis, resulting in it almost falling on the warlock, doing 3 damage and just about killing him. So this CR3 threat fighting a level 4 party managed to down 2 of them. It was fairly impressive. And then it was over.

Man, We Suck at Being Evil

So we begin the session in the midst of chaos, an enormous battle unfolding as the final fate of the town is decided. This did take a while to get off the ground, because painfully reassembling the exact locations from last week was not an easy task. But then it began the fight for guts and glory, and before the days end there were a lot of guts.

So the first focus of the action is on the ogre and the engineer dueling, one with a large stick, the other with an even bigger stick. There was an experienced fighter, but he lost a large quantity of his face to the first hit, so was quickly taken out of the fight. The engineer would have easily been brought down and killed, if not for the timely intervention of the High priestess, healing him for as much if not more than he was being damaged. This fight was joined by the totemist, three heads flailing, dealing a moderate amount of damage to the ogre. This fight lasted for a while, and a particularly strong hit from the ogre brought the engineer down to unconsciousness, though he was quickly revived by the priestess. The final blow was an enormously powerful hit from the engineer, severing the ogre in twain, giving the engineer a better, heavier, messier weapon.

On another side of the battlefield the party warlock ran into some trouble with a bear. This bear could climb, and climbed up to where he was, mauling him for significant damage. The warlock fled, as one does, and managed to evade the bear, leading to him landing right in the middle of the two other fronts, read to maul any who came near.

This leads us to the tale of these two fronts, one of wolves and one of humanoids. Be aware these are all zombies, and fast ones at that, think 28 days Later not Night of the Living Dead. So the samurai, with a cleric, fighter, and warrior try to hold off the five wolves, which is made difficult as their barricade is destroyed by fire. This was the result of an ineffective molotov cocktail, and led to just about everyone but the samurai being killed. The wolves smashed their way through the barricade, dealing fairly major damage to all present, excluding the cleric, and then proceed to systematically kill all but the samurai, who is a PC. One critical hits and eviscerates the warrior, another slowly rips apart the cleric, and the fighter is pursued by one as he attempts to flee. This is compounded by the bear.

The bear actually took its time getting down, enabling the other front to be defended for a small while. Six zombies versus a monk, hexblade (The PC), cleric, and warrior. The warrior is the first to go down, right at the same time the bear arrives, clambering over the barricade. He was ripped apart by one of the stronger zombies, after being healed by the cleric, just to hang on a little longer. The hexblade now maneuvers his way over to the bear, and attempts to damage it. These attempts are largely unsuccessful, missing at least twice as much as he hit. Once the monk went down over here it really started to collapse, as had the front line and main defence.

See the front line consisted of sword and shield guys at the front and longspeared commoners at the back, a decent plan, but their first action is to charge the zombies, two of them getting ones and falling or dropping their weapons, and the others missing completely. The zombies responded a bit better, doing significant damage and that was simply the warm up. When the peasants came in is when the real meat grinder started. With no PC backup they were fish food, even with the captain of the guard, he just didn't take up that much room. So the zombies managed to slip around and feast on these commoners, as well as batter down the front line, leaving little left alive. At long last the ogre was slain, and the totemist came to help, but it was pretty much over by that point, only the captain was left alive.

So this looks bad for the heroes, having defeated at most 1/4 of the zombies, and having lost most if not all their NPC help. But all is not lost, as the bear falls due to everyone concentrating on it, eventually simply swarming it, though the hexblade did lose consciousness, he was again brought back up, through all the healing concentrated on him. The zombies were also fairly easily defeated once the main threats had been dealt with, namely the ogre and the bear. So their was victory in the end, at the cost of 3 clerics, 5 commoners, 2 tavern owners, and 5 warriors.

The town leader, high priestess, one lower order cleric, and all the PCs manged to survive. And they leveled up, so all was happy in the end. Though there was still a little something to deal with... Oh right, the necromancer. But that will have to be left until next session, as the week comes to an end, as do the lives of many a brave man.

Night of the Dead

So today's, (Well yesterday's) session went fairly well, with everything I was hoping for to be accomplished. We started out by finishing off the few zombies from last week, with the cleric character changing back to a samurai, and the ninja changing to a rogue/fighter.

So the zombies are dead, but everyone is on low health, with absolutely no means of healing. Later they discover they have 2 healing potions, but right now they have nothing, and multiple people in the single digits. They press on anyway determined to kill whoever is causing this. Now they come up to a small stone bridge, which they are immediately suspicious of, based on the fact that I actually showed them what was here. So the brilliant warlock thinks there might be something hiding under the bridge, and so climbs his way, under the bridge.

This surprisingly does not go well, as he is attacked by zombies and almost pulled into the water. Here there are 4 zombies, and later a dire rat zombie all intent on killing the party. So two of the water zombies manage to grab onto the warlock, but with a manly scream the others come to help, and manage to pull him out. This is when the real fight starts.

Of course the warlock's first action is to run up a tree and hide. Something which he does admirably. The rest of the party then gets their weapons out and fights for their life. The enemies immediately gang up on the recently changed ninja, bringing him down to fairly low health. This is when the rat comes from behind for a sneak attack, doing a little bit of damage to the engineer.

Now the zombies do actually manage to bring the rogue down, and damage a few of the others bringing some doubt to the plan of continuing on. This is further enforced by the warlock's scouting, seeing at least a dozen zombies, including a bear. So running away is the obvious course of action.

They get back to the town and get healed up by the clerics, essentially running them all out of spell slots for the day. Then they hole up in the inn and prepare for sleep. The next day is when things really get serious, the town defence is prepared and a small militia is created. This consists of about 11 weak guys, 3 clerics, 2 lieutenants, and one leader cleric and one leader fighter. So they have a fairly formidable force, and manage to set up barricades to funnel the enemy down a chokepoint.

Now I had them make spot checks, lots of spot checks to see if they saw anything. This was an attempt to create some tension, I'm not sure how well it worked. Then boom, a large amount of zombies swarm. These aren't ordinary zombies though, they are faster than a normal human, as well as stronger. More like 28 days later than Night of the Living Dead. So they smack into the rogue who was used as bait, and he runs away, leading them into the small line of militia. Wolves now arrive from the west, and an ogre smashes through their barricade to the east. This is unfortunately where it ended, though I hope to resume next session with the same positioning and stuff through use of pictures.

So the party now consists of an engineer 3, Samurai 3, Rogue 1/Fighter 2, Warlock 3, and Totemist 3.

Undead Rising

So this week's sessions were surprisingly crime free, those this one did involve a rather large amount of zombies.

We started off in the small town of Eastbrook, located on the ground in a forest, and under constant assault. The culprits consisting of masses and masses of zombies, rampaging through the town every night for the past week, resulting in a terrified populous, and some adventurers sensing something to do. After asking around town for a while they discover that the town has tried and failed to fight back, and that the zombies have been coming from the east.

They also discover that there is a wizard living at the edge of town, someone they suspect may be involved. A visit to his house results in very little, as he tells them what they already knew, and offers no help nor safety. They wander around for a while, meeting up with a blacksmith who they claim is overcharging for his weaponry, and the party warlock goes off in a huff.

They decide to spend the night at the Wolf's tavern, and see for themselves what is going on. Everyone but the warlock falls asleep and heals, resulting in them ready to face the new day. Fortunately for them the huge swarm of zombies, at least dozens, rushing past are not interested in the tavern, and leave before the morning sun rises. After this, and some bargaining for holy water they set off in a hope to stem the flow of the zombies, putting an end to the worries of the town and hopefully earning a healthy reward.

After marching for about 2 hours with their top  tracker, the totemist, they find what appears to be a trap, in that they sprung the zombie trap, as zombies attacked. They were only 2 zombies, but they managed to do a good bit of damage to the party, at the very least shaking them up for the next encounter, which had a good more than 2 zombies.

See these were not ordinary zombies, not like the ones they faced before. These zombies where able to run and were more difficult to hit, as well as able to sustain an enormous amount of damage. So they defeated these leaving the ninja at single digit health, and continued on. The next encounter was with 6 zombies, and some howling in the distance which could mean anything.

It turned out the real villain here was the party's totemist, managing to damage not only himself, but the cleric and engineer too. See this totemist managed to roll 3 ones to hit, and a few more otherwise, dealing enough damage to down the cleric and engineer, though at different times. They still managed to survive with the warlock blasting down from a tree and the ninja shoving a healing potion down the cleric's throat so he could heal, but at the end of the session it was a fairly close fight, a bad indication for their probable future.

We ended the session here as it was getting late. I also would have posted this earlier but I was too busy playing this game, incidentally, I will pay five dollars to anyone who can finish level 19 on the game.

A Little Town Goes a Long Way

Not too much happened in today's session, we started back in the mountains. So after a good night's rest and a level up the party is ready to depart. After heading south for a significant amount of time they come upon a group of kobolds. After a little bit of talk, and deciding just to pass them by they attempt to depart.

This is the kobold's cue to attack, and a swarm of rocks come pelting the party's way. Everyone turns around and a fierce battle ensues. No one in the party actually gets knocked out, though the party ninja manages to miss with a lot of shurikens and the party totemist/grappler manages to be out-grappled by the kobold. The main effect of this was minor wounds to the party, prepping them for their next encounter.

What the party did do was take the kobold leader as their prisoner, tying him up and strapping him on the totemist's back. They proceed south and arrive in a forest, here is where they find the first town for a long time, and they don't think about the kobold, and cart him around the entire town, almost being driven out because of it. So now instead of sleeping in an inn or anything they camp a bit outside the town and settle down to sleep.

Zombies! The party leave the engineer to guard them, and he is sneak attacked by zombies because of his abysmal spot and listen. He figures he can take these two and tries to solo them with his spears. This doesn't end up working too well and he requests help from his sleeping comrades with great prejudice. So everyone is awake, but the battle goes on for quite a while because of the timely arrival of a zombie wolf.

 The zombies manage to bring down most of the party to single digits, but no one is actually knocked unconscious, and the rest of the night goes on uneventfully. After they wake up they decide just to kill the kobold that they had worked so hard to keep, because they couldn't decide anything else to do with him. The session started to break down at this point, with some people journeying in to town and others just wandering around.

Sorry that this was brief but I have had kind of a difficult week. So not much happened this session, but I hope for more next week.

Rocky Road

Second party today. We began with what many sessions begin with, the disposing of the body. Of course in this case it was the body of their comrade, the recently deceased warblade guard. The party decided it was not worth the thousand gold to reincarnate him, so off the city he goes. Now they realize they are wanted criminals, and should probably do their best to get out of town so it's time to hop off.

I don't think I've described the world before, so here is the basic description. In this world pretty much all the major cites are situated on the backs of giant animals, like really really big. For example the city this party is in is, called Innisfraught, is situated on the back of an enormous horse like animal. So getting off the city is a bit more involved than just leaving the gates. There plan was to simply jump off the back off the animal, with a friendly wizard casting feather fall so they don't fall to their deaths. Now normally feather fall would not work at such a distance, but this is a slight homebrewed version, such as my lower level create food and water which provides sustenance for the cities.

So they hopped off the city, and landed in the mountains at the northern part of the continent. Now these mountains are fraught with dwarves, kobolds, and gnomes, all fun to play out, and on their journey they met all of these. The party decides to head south, on the basis that the lord of Innisfraught is traveling south with a guard. They plan to help stop any would be attackers hopefully earning the lord's trust and his "rupees". Their first encounter would be with some troublesome gnomes.

See these gnomes were actually sorcerers who used color spray and silent image, which can be used to both knock out and confused the enemy, or in this case the party. So they arrive at a roadblock, (actually illusionary), and are accosted by a gnome, who demands 400 gold for the four of them, which they promptly refuse. They plan to come back at night, and as befits an evil party murder them in their sleep. So the ninja, totemist, and warlock go out to attack some gnomes, leaving the cleric behind to sleep.

This doesn't end so well as the tent they find contains one awake gnome, and after a few failed stealth checks and the ninja sticking his head through the flap resulting in a color spray to the face, and unconsciousness. The totemist then charges straight in, fails a grapple check to a natural 20, and gets color sprayed. The warlock then decides to just break the tent and stabs the gnome for max damage, which with his -2 strength is only 6, but enough to bring the gnome down.

After some cleanup with potions, everyone retreats back, and the warlock decides to hang out on the side of a mountain. I guess the totemist would want me to mention, he punted the gnome's corpse up a tree. So some non common speaking dwarves walk by, and the warlock fires a "non-hostile" eldritch blast over the dwarves head, and their response of throwing axes was very surprising to him. So the rest of the party wakes up and rushes out to fight and fairly easily defeat the dwarves.

Now it's late so I'll be brief. They then ran into the old warblade player playing a dwarf engineer in half plate mech armor. Then they kept going south, found some kobolds, talked to them, then wandered into a kobold's lair, triggered a few traps, found the kobold leader, then were shunted out and we ended it there with a level up. So everyone but the engineer is level 3, though both the ninja and totemist are taking a level of monk. Party now is Warlock 3, Cleric 3, Ninja 2/ Monk1, Totemist 2/ Monk 1, Engineer 2.

Instant Class Change

Today I had the second group again, though the classes are a little bit different this time. There is the original warblade, then a warlock replacing the duskblade, a cleric replacing the samurai, and a ninja replacing the rogue. Thus the title.

So we begin on the steps of the keep, just where we left off, with most of the party unconscious, and a few guard corpses around. After some small looting of guards, and a few convenient healing potions everyone was up, and ready to go. So the next course of action is of course to find the cheapest tavern in town, and spend a night there. After a relatively safe night, it was time to go out and get a job, so where would one acquire a job? Of course, at the tavern. Here they learn about someone who has been destroying buildings, and decide to murder him/it, as is the natural response.

So they arrive at the house where he was staying, though at this point they have a sort of a disagreement, as they can't decide whether they want to kill him, or see what his deal is. After knocking on the door, with the warlock spider-climbing his way up to a window. Now they meet the man, though all they can see is an enormous suit of armor, towering above them all by at least a head. This is actually an engineer using mountain plate as his mecharmor, but they don't know that. After the man questions why they're here they realize they don't actually know. So, surprise shurikens. Tink, Tink, no effect. Everyone rolls for initiative, ninja wins, slash slash, again no effect. Everyone in the party actually beat the guys initiative, so they all had their turns, ineffectively stabbing and shooting their way to no gain. The man then rips a huge chunk out of the wall, and smashes the warblade all the way down to 5 health.

This is when the warlock actually got a chance to attack the guy, and since he had 10 touch AC, he hit pretty much every time. This d6 damage didn't seem like a lot, but it did add up, and he began to get annoyed, running up and with one hit knocking the warlock down to -3, and bleeding. This is where the cleric really came in handy, healing the warlock and giving him another attack. Meanwhile the ninja has made many attacks, dealing a grand total of no damage, truly inspiring. The warlock however spider climbs his way up the building, not the best idea considering this guy's reputation, and looses another blast. As a natural response the guy, we'll call him Bill, decides to destroy a large part of the building, causing what I thought would be a fairly easy balance check, which was failed by the warlock. Now was the running time.

Running far, but not quite far enough, then charged down to -8, where he stayed. During this time the warblade was firing arrows at Bill, to little effect, but a lucky crit did enable a good amount of damage, so at this point the guy is almost dead, and is kind of flailing around, still doing damage, but not a great amount. Here comes the ninja again, nobody expecting much, but surprise, sudden strike shuriken and he actually takes Bill down. Now the warblade decides to drag Bill back to the keep, and claim the bounty. So he goes off alone, being the only one who is not a wanted criminal, but is unfortunately assaulted by 3 brigands, who I wasn't really expecting much of, but then I wasn't expecting a 1, and for him to toss his greatsword 50 feet away. So he goes down and unconscious, and loses just about everything but his life. This changes fairly soon.

So, he's pissed, and finds his party and they go on a crusade, busting down doors and such to find these guys. This has no real result, as they were already arrested, and gone. So their quest rendered moot, they go looking for others. They find one, in the case of a shop owner blackmailing another, a simple intimidate and beat up mission. This however goes horribly wrong, when they arrive at the door to find the man's wife, and before anyone can do anything intelligent the chaotic stupid ninja decides to spam shurikens, missing with both, how sad. The warblade then fails to keep the door open, as the woman screams and shoves the door shut. A careful application of force gets them through, and they charge into the basement, the only place she could really have gone. Here they find an ogre, what I though would be a fair challenge.

Well his first move is to just about knock out the warlock, bringing him down to 0 health. Both parties slogged it out, the ogre further knocking out the ninja with some fairly powerful swings. Then the warblade got what was his fifth one for this session, managing to critical hit himself, damaging his strength and con, and bringing him close to death. So the ogre, using his massive strength smashes the warblade right into the ground and down to -18. Death. Oops. They do manage to kill the ogre, and the man's wife, and knock out the shop owner, and this is about where we ended it. Next time they plan to go on a quest for a resurrection spell for their fallen comrade.

Second Party, First Session

Today we had the first meeting of our second group, this one consisting of 5 members. First thing we had to do was design one character and redesign another, resulting in another slow start, about an hour after we were supposed to. Hopefully this will get better the more we play.

The party consists of:
Garar, Lizardfolk Rogue 2 who had minimal success with his crossbow
Earl, Azurin Totemist 2 with a focus on grappling
Grimnir, Human Duskblade 2 who had extremely effective color sprays
Kirara, Dwarf Samurai 2 who had some fun with intimidation
Drake Bladestrider, Human Warblade 2 who they met later

We started the session off with a bit more excitement than last time, with the decision that they should all meet up in jail, then proceed to break out. This resulted in the need for a bit of improvisation on my part, given that I had had no plans for them to go to jail yet. We started with the duskblade using color spray on the warden, making him flop about uselessly for a bunch of turns, and the resident rogue picking the lock. Interestingly enough the rouge had neither search nor disable device, so traps will definitely be fun for the group with no healer. After getting out on a natural 20, they proceeded to get their weapons from a nearby chest, and tie up the warden.

Now there is only one exit to this place, and that is a stairway leading up, so they decide the best course of action is to have the Rogue scout ahead, and the rest of the party to come after , leading the warden up with a knife to his back. After a few botched stealth rolls at the top of the stairs, the guards in the next room both see and hear the rouge, and proceed with the stabbing. Now the rest of the party hears this, and kicks their prisoner down the stairs as they run up for a fight. With two guards standing back and shooting the party, and two at the front blocking for them, the combat was difficult, especially the with the limited maneuverability of the stairs.

A well aimed color spray late in the battle however turned the tide, as the remaining two guards were incapacitated and unconscious for about 10 rounds, an immediate death sentence. Before that however the Totemist, who killed the other two guards in one attack, managed to fall down and be color sprayed, to writhe on the ground inefficiently for the rest of the battle, and the dwarf Samurai managed to stab himself in the foot, halving his speed to 10 ft. for 10 minutes, which was incidentally the rest of the session. So after this basic combat, and the goes without saying looting, the party decides to exit through another door, into a courtyard. This is where we found the final member of the party, a disgruntled Warblade guarding a door, which after some quite painful to watch role-playing joined the party.

This next combat is where I first introduced guns into play, and showed just how powerful they can be, almost knocking out the Duskblade in the first shot, and actually doing it on the second, of course they do take a round to reload, and with non-proficiency for the players they really aren't that powerful. This was also an important combat because it showed just what the Warblade was capable of, missing his first two attacks and then critical failing himself all the way down to -8. After the wrap up of this combat, and some generous healing potions on the guards corpses they were on their way to the exit, only one door and two guards on the other side stood in their way.

Of course these two guards were much better than the level ones they had previously been facing, and though they outnumbered them 5 to 2 they still thought long and hard about how they were going to do this. Their first plan was for the Warblade to go out and convince one of them to come, but after some failed bluff rolls, and decent sense motive checks they had no chance of coming in and it was time to get creative. He boosted out of there and they decided to simply gank the guards, death by swarm and all that. So slowly opening the door, the rogue missed his sneak attack, but the Warblade's bow found his mark, as did the Samurai's sword. The Totemist tried to rush by but was knocked to 0 HP by the attack of oppuritunity, and with his last effort got a bite on the non-wounded guard. Through a combination of good rolls on the part of the guards and bad rolls on the part of the players it ended with only the Duskblade and the Warblade up, each with about 5 health, versus the guard with about 3. It was fairly close at the end, but a lucky critical fail by the guard resulting in him falling down and it was all over.

And that is where it ended, more than half the party unconscious, and the rest not in exactly good shape, no way to transport there nearly dead friends and standing at the gate of the castle with two corpses. We'll see what happens next time, I'm sure it will be entertaining at the least.