Team Adventure - Fun and Fungus

Alagon dived into the pool, using his ability to breathe underwater that he had acquired in the Tomb of the Holy Avenger. Alurax joined him and they investigated the silver disc. Gullhar checked the room for secret doors but found nothing. Then Larsh the polar bear joined the swim party.

Gullhar called Elysia into the pool to see if casting a Reduce spell would help. She did just that and together with the water, the entire party (sans Lydia) fell a hundred feet down a shaft into another room, forty feet high. Just below the ceiling of that room was a passageway, but they could not (initially) reach it. Elysia used a Fly spell to take Gullhar up to the opening. Unfortunately there were two large iron doors blocking the way, leaving only a five-foot ledge on which to stand. Alurax was flown up next and together with Gullhar, took hold of the rings on the doors and pulled hard. The doors fell forward and both characters leapt out of the way to avoid being crushed – only to fall over the edge and back into the water again.

Elysia then flew the party back up to the passageway again, taking Gullhar a little way beyond the doors. Larsh was turned back into a figurine so that he could more easily be carried. Some way down the passage, there was a pit, fifteen feet across. From it came a dull red glow and – so Alagon sensed – a strong feeling of evil.

Lydia suggested using both of the iron doors to narrow the gap so that they could leap across. This they did and moved ever onward, finding two alcoves that at first they thought were side passages. Through a process of experimentation, they discovered that the alcoves were zones of complete silence.  There did not seem to be much point to the alcoves, so the team ignored them and moved onwards. Meanwhile Alurax seemed to come over all weird but nobody else noticed.

At the end of the passageway, they came to a large octagonal room, with one other exit. In the middle of the room was a large pillar at its centre. The pillar was attached to the floor and ceiling and had pieces of jet and sapphire embedded all over it. Alagon sensed evil again but it was unfocused and he couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from. Using triangulation, he managed to locate its source somewhere beyond the wall of the chamber. How to get to it was another matter.

They took the exit passage and slowly moved along it. They came to what appeared to be a curtain of bronze fabric hanging from the ceiling and gingerly edged past it. Beyond that was another curtain, this time of silver fabric. Again, the party carefully slipped past, concerned about a trap. Finally, ahead Alagon saw a gold curtain hanging down and took out his ten-foot pole to probe it in case it was a danger to the party. Unfortunately for him, it was – a curtain of yellow mould which sprayed its spores straight at him as he poked it with his pole. His reaction was too slow to avoid the spores, which flooded into his lungs, killing him in a choking agony of sickly yellow sputum.

The party was horrified but had little time to react before Gullhar took out his time egg and used it to wind back time to the point at which Alagon was just examining the bronze curtain. He explained what had/was about to happen. Realising that they faced a grave danger, Elysia proposed that they retreat to the pillar room to consider their options.

Team Adventure - Nobody's Home

Saved from certain death by the time egg, Alurax began to investigate the contents of the library, finding the books on the evil Outer Planes very interesting. Gullhar made his way down one of the corridors that, according to the very artistic map he had been making, had not so far been explored. The rest of the party followed along and found that it led to a room that was completely filled with water, to a depth of about thirty feet or so. Beyond that room was another corridor, at the end of which were two golden doors.

Alurax, who had now rejoined the party, decided to swim across the pool but halfway there, a water weird materialised and attacked. It missed due to Alurax’s high armour class, but had another go – and missed again. Alurax, having found that his trident had little effect on the weird, climbed out of the far side of the pool, none the worse for wear. The rest of the party followed suit, Alagon swimming across and Elysia flying everyone else. The water weird did try to catch itself a victim but was simply unable to get anywhere near them.  On his crossing of the water, Alurax spotted a large metal disc in the middle of the floor of the pool but had no time to investigate it.

Alagon led the way to the golden doors, but found that he couldn’t open them as they appeared to be locked. He called on Gullhar to deploy Larsh, and the polar bear began to hammer on the doors, shaking them but not opening them. Finally, with the assistance of Alurax, the doors were pulled off their hinges and the party peered through the opening.

Inside was what appeared to be a bedroom of sorts. There was a huge fur rug on the floor, a large four poster bed, a bedside table with some paperwork on it and on the far side of the bed, a large metal chest. Nobody could decide whether to enter the room so Gullhar took the initiative and went in, heading for the chest, which – if the examples of the other rooms were anything to go by – was where the goodies would be found. However, he noted that there seemed to be no lock to the chest and its lid seemed to just slide off. He was about to do so when there was a flash of magical power and before the horrified eyes of the party, Gullhar crumbled to dust.

At once, Alurax deployed his time egg to wind back the previous five minutes and the party found itself on the far side of the golden doors again; Alurax explained what was about to happen and the party resolved to be more cautious when investigating the chest.  They tried various means of getting it open without touching it but found that it was impossible to do so. Having reached what appeared to be a dead end, they retraced their steps to the laboratory and took the other narrow passageway.

Alagon took the lead and after a couple of turns in the passageway, which was only five feet wide, he noticed a symbol on the wall ahead. He moved closer to see what it said and it suddenly glowed with a sinister magical power. He began to feel very confused, seeing weird visions of the rest of the party without faces, the walls sprouting tentacles and other strange hallucinations. Gullhar dragged him away and back to the laboratory, where he crawled into a corner, whimpering and gibbering.

Using her magical knowledge, Elysia deduced that what Alagon had seen was probably a Symbol of Insanity and there were only three ways around it – a heal spell, a wish or a restoration. She decided that the only way to get clerical help was to find Ferros and that meant a teleportation to Vergez.  She held on to Alagon, told the party to await her return and vanished.

She arrived in the city safely. Unsure as to where Ferros might be, she sent Relic to find him but the pseudo-dragon had no luck. Elysia then asked the guards at the city gate if they remembered a cleric and a horde of zombies and skeletons leaving at all. The guards at the western gate said that they had seen him leading his merry band up the western road and Elysia set off, having hired a couple of horses and tied Alagon safely onto one of them. 

Two days later, she arrived at a site where a large number of zombies and skeletons were working hard on digging foundations, clearing trees and transporting stone blocks. She swiftly found Ferros, consulting an architect on the progress of the new temple of Foik. He was pleased to see her but when she explained what she needed, he told her that he was not a high enough level cleric to cast any of the spells she was asking for. He recommended a friendly cleric in Vergez and after bidding him farewell, she rode back to the city again.

By now it was October 16th,  which meant that she’d been away for four days. She hoped that the rest of the party had been okay in her absence and had not wandered too far from the laboratory.  She found the cleric and after explaining the situation and mentioning Ferros’ name, they agreed a sum of 10,000 gold pieces to heal Alagon. The spell was swiftly cast and Elysia teleported back to the laboratory. To her great relief, the party was still there, having spent their time exploring the safe areas of the dungeon and reading the scrolls and tomes in the library.

The party decided that it would be best if they explored the passageway at a crawl so that they would not see the symbol that had caused Alagon so many problems. This approach worked, but as they neared the mid-point of the passage, Alurax crawled over a glyph of warding and it exploded beneath him, causing him a great amount of burn damage. The lead was taken by Alagon, who was keeping a keen eye out for suspicious looking glyphs and symbols. Thus it was that he spotted one ahead and managed to trigger it with a ten foot pole. It sprouted sickly green fronds, replete with barbs and thorns, which shimmered in the air for a few moments, before dissolving into nothingness.

The far end of the passageway debouched onto a long hallway, off which opened five doors. At the far end of the hallway, there was another five-foot wide passageway. Alagon tried the door nearest to him and found that it led into a bedroom which, from the state of the furnishings, had not been used for a long time. He searched it but found only perfumes and women’s clothing.

Gullhar sent Larsh through another door and the sound of clanging and crashing was soon heard. Once Larsh had come out, Gullhar went in and found that the room was a disused kitchen. A small passageway, only three feet high, led off it; he followed and found a low-ceilinged room where the withered skeletons of eight hobbits were chained. In the eighth compartment, a violet fungus waited for victims but it failed to hit the doughy elf and he – along with Alagon – soon hacked the malevolent plant to pieces.

The next door led to a large dining room with an oaken table, at which there was a large silver chair. Too big to be easily portable, the party noted it as treasure and moved on. They also investigated an old bathroom, but there was nothing of interest there.

Finally, they found another bedroom, in which were two beds and more female clothing. Alagon, whilst searching the bedside tables, found a large sapphire in a pouch, but sensed great evil coming from it. Alurax looked into the gem and sensed a malign intelligence therein, trying to establish mental contact.

With his elvish abilities, Gullhar detected a secret door in the wall opposite the door, which – when followed – led back to the bedroom with the metal chest.

There was only the narrow passageway to investigate now, and Elysia sent Relic up it to see what he could find. He reported that it led back to the library, and that there were two dangerous glyphs there, which the party wisely decided to avoid. 

Returning to the library, the party pondered their options. Finally, they decided to look again at the water room, where the mysterious silver disc suggested that there might be something underneath. But what?

Team Adventure - Catching Fire

The party’s first action was to knock on the bronze doors; well, it was worth a try, but there was no response. Then Alurax decided to see if they would yield to the party’s default solution of throwing oil bombs at them. Again, there was no effect – apart from some smoke marks on the bronze (that’ll take ages to get out!)

At this point, Gullhar decided to make use of Larsh, the polar bear; with Alurax’s help, the doors started to yield; they were barred on the far side but that was no obstacle to the bear’s formidable strength. Finally, they gave way and flew open. The party stumbled in and found themselves in a large room, at the end of which were two sets of green curtains. Halfway down the room on each side was an alcove, in which was a large stone statue.

Elysia was wary about moving into the room without checking it out thoroughly; she sent an Unseen Servant to pull the curtains aside and Relic to fly in and see what lay beyond them. He reported back that there were two rooms there; one had a red stone floor, the other a pale blue one. 

As the party moved towards the alcoves, the inevitable happened – the two statues animated and moved to attack. Gullhar and Larsh were facing one, Alurax and Alagon the other. Larsh tried to swipe and bite at the statue but his claws broke on the enchanted stone and he fell back, growling in irritation.

Alurax attacked with his trident, Alagon with Whitefyre and they damaged the statue that they were facing. Lydia tried to attack it but her sword bounced off the stone without doing any damage.

Gullhar took damage from a nasty stone punch. The doughty elf returned the favour and sent chips of stone flying off as his sword hacked into the statue.  The next round, he scored another hit and managed to dodge the return punch from the statue’s stony fist.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the hall, Alurax and Alagon attacked again; Alurax’s trident missed its mark but Alagon hit with Whitefyre and the statue shattered into hundred of chunks of rock.

Now the party’s attention switched to the statue that was facing Gullhar. Elysia fired a salvo of Magic Missiles at it but they bounced off the stone, having no visible effect. Alagon launched his attack, hitting the statue; it missed Gullhar, who was trying hard to avoid being hit. Unfortunately, his efforts were in vain as a crushing blow sent him sliding across the obsidian floor.  Alagon used this opportunity to hack again at the statue and this time, he succeeded in destroying it.

The party picked itself up and started to search the alcoves in which the statues had stood. They found several long-dead bodies and a collection of adventuring gear and magic items, which were squirreled away for later identification and use.

The party split up to explore the two rooms at the far end of the hall. Lydia and Alagon went into the room with the red stone floor and found that it was warm, whilst Gullhar and Larsh investigated the blue-floored room and found it to be very cold. The far end of the room was revealed to be not stone, but ice. As Gullhar and Larsh ventured onto it, the ice cracked and fell in, plunging them into a pit lined with brown mould. Alagon and Lydia rushed in to see what had happened. As the brown mould started to suck the heat from Gullhar, Elysia flew in and pulled him to safety; Larsh clambered out on his own. Alagon used his healing hands to repair some of the damage that Gullhar had taken.

They then decided to try the other room. Gullhar, ever adventurous, went down the passage on the far side of the room and found a strange dial mechanism which he began to turn this way and that. Unfortunately for the rest of the party, who were still in the main room, the floor vanished underneath them and they fell into a pit of white phosphorus. Due to the heat of their bodies, it ignited and they were all set on fire; Elysia flew out of the fire, taking Alagon with her. Alurax and Lydia clambered out of the pit, having been badly burned; the fire was also starting to affect Gullhar, who was rescued by Elysia, still using her Fly spell.

Having taken quite a lot of damage in the three rooms, the party decided that they would camp in the main hall while Alagon recovered his ability to lay on hands. They were now starting to realise the disadvantages of exploring dungeons without a cleric.

Eight hours later, they woke; in the outside world it was now October 12th.  Alagon and Lydia tried to use their healing powers but found out, to their discomfiture, that they could only heal half the damage that the party had taken in the phosphorus pit. The party, being down on health and the ability to take damage, needed to tread warily as they explored the rest of the dungeon. Gullhar tried the door past the ice room. He failed again to get the lock open but Alurax had better luck with the door beyond the hot room.

Beyond this door was what appeared to be an old abandoned laboratory. There were various shelves, flasks, jars, racks of manuscripts, scrolls and the like. A large metal cabinet proved irresistible to Alurax but as he opened it, a fire trap went off and he started to jump about, trying to put the flames out. Inside the cabinet were hundreds of glass bottles of various shapes, sizes and colours. All seemed to be locked shut by something.

Being elves, Gullhar and Elysia managed to find two secret doors but as they were examining them, something invisible tried to strike at Alurax. It missed but the party were now alerted to its presence. They tried to hit it but failed dismally. The invisible creature struck at Lydia, doing her significant damage. The party lined up across the laboratory to try and isolate it but it moved towards Elysia and attacked her. Relic then used his ability to see invisible objects and creatures and stung their attacker, putting it into a catatonic trance. As the party watched, the little pseudo-dragon perched on top of the comatose attacker, and – now being aware of its location, Alurax, Alagon and Gullhar hacked it to pieces. 

Believing the laboratory to be secure, the party investigated the secret door that Elysia had found. It led to a hidden chamber, in which there was a desk and a lever on the wall. Not being a man who can resist a lever, Alurax pulled it and the door slid shut again, sealing them in. On the desk was a mace, which – when touched by Alurax – tingled with magical power. Alagon got the impression that there was something evil about it.

In a drawer of the desk was a folded vellum sheet, which Alurax picked up and read. The explosive rune on it went off, blasting both Alurax and Alagon. Almost miraculously, the sheet was still legible and they realised that it was a guide to the bottles in the laboratory cabinet.

As well as the vellum, the drawer also contained a lump of amber with a black pearl inside it and a silver jar full of a strange liquid; Alurax took a sip of it and felt an incredible strength and power course through him.

Having seemingly exhausted the hidden chamber’s possibilities, the party decided to try the secret door that Gullhar had discovered. They moved down a passage, past a side branch and found the rear of another secret door that led them into a library. As they entered, a loud and continuous barking sounded, coming from nowhere in particular.

Alurax decided to move into the room but as he did so, something attacked him from behind, knocking him over and ripping into his armour. He very quickly fled the room and the barking stopped. A bit of experimentation revealed that the creature (whatever it was) only attacked its targets from behind. The rest of the party entered, kept their backs to the walls and began a search which soon revealed another secret door.

Beyond this one, there was another hidden room; this too had a desk in it but as well as that, a large rock in one corner. There was also a helmet on the desk, which Alurax picked up and tried on. There did not seem to be any immediate effect from wearing it.

Investigation of the rock soon revealed that it was hollow and it yielded to a few heavy blows from the party. Inside was a large collection of books and scrolls, which Elysia moved in to investigate. She was reluctant to examine them further because she sensed they might be magically booby-trapped.

Meanwhile, Alurax had got a bit bored and had wandered off down one of the corridors out of the library. Unfortunately for him, he walked straight into a fire trap which went off and killed him. On realising what had happened, Alagon decided to use his time egg that he had received at Christmas to wind back time five minutes so that he could prevent Alurax from going down the passageway in the first place. The impetuous fighter was admonished for splitting the party and getting himself killed. The party got the distinct impression that there were going to be many more opportunities for Alurax to do himself some serious harm before they left the dungeon.

Team Adventure - Turning Turtle

We rejoin the party having just finished the Tomb of the Holy Avenger.  Lydia the somewhat aged paladin (now in her forties as opposed to eighteen) got word that something called the Chrysalis was awakening. This was clearly serious enough to arouse her intense alarm and she at once declared her intention to set off south to the city where her order of paladins was based.  It was called Vergez and was a coastal city on the shores of the sub-tropical Southern Ocean.

It took them a week to get there and they arrived on October 3rd.  Although back home, it might have been autumn, here the climate was a pleasant Mediterranean one, with blue skies, sunshine and warm waters.

Lydia headed straight for the headquarters of her order, suggesting that Alagon accompany her as this was a matter that concerned paladins and all warriors of virtue.  On the way, Alagon had the strange experience of hearing a voice inside his head, urging him to attack and destroy anything evil. He realised that it was his sword, the Holy Avenger, talking to him telepathically. The sword identified itself as Whitefyre and told Alagon how much it was looking forward to smiting evil.

At the paladins’ HQ, Lydia vouched for Alagon as a fellow holy warrior, and they managed to get the others admitted. The senior paladin was surprised by Lydia’s appearance; he realised that she had encountered some serious undead and promised that if she survived the forthcoming mission, he would see if they could find some rejuvenating magic for her. This came as good news for Alagon; he had been forming a close relationship with Lydia but now had to come to terms with the fact that she was old enough to be his mother.

The senior paladin explained that nearly a thousand years ago, a powerful magic user had embarked on a process that would eventually lead to his becoming immortal and acquiring the powers of a devil. This process involved a chrysalis which would complete his transformation over a period of nine hundred years, a period that was now almost up. The party’s mission, if they chose to accept it, was to find the chrysalis, believed to be on an island in the Southern Ocean and destroy it. Lydia, of course, accepted immediately and Alagon was keen to join her quest. The rest of the party decided to go along for the ride.

Before they left, the senior paladin told them that the order had attempted a divination to find out more about the location of the chrysalis. It had not been particularly successful, but he gave them the short verse that had resulted from the spell. It read:

Ancient guardian lies in wait
Mongst the weeds, hard by the gate
Snapping mouth and vap’rous breath
Bring a searing, grisly death
Mighty Shassar is its name
Known by men as Sailor’s Bane

They made their way down to the docks to hire a boat and crew. On the way, they bumped into Ferros, who they had not seen since entering the city. He explained that he had not been allowed to bring his zombies and skeletons into Vergez and had eventually decided to leave them outside. Once he was in the city, he was contacted by a representative of the church of Foik, who informed him that he had been selected to set up a new temple nearby. He would therefore be leaving the party forthwith and would not be accompanying the party on their latest mission.

(DG note – this arrangement had to be made because Ferros’ player had chosen not to rejoin the campaign after the exams break. Along with Garry the Gnome’s player, they now had other commitments; we wished them well and thought it best not to NPC their characters, since they might want to come back at some point).

The party managed to find a ship for hire and a crew to go with it. After some argument about whether to pay a crew or steer it themselves (quickly abandoned when nobody had the right skills to do so), they set off on the journey into the Southern Ocean.

A week later, the lookout in the crow’s nest sighted land on the horizon; not a very large piece of land but land nonetheless. As they got closer, it became clear that it was a rocky island and waves were breaking some way from its shores. Alurax sent Eristar off to see what she could discover and send the results back to him. He reported that the island was surrounded by a coral reef, apart from one narrow entrance. There was also a small area of beach on one part of the island which suggested the party’s landing point.

Elysia was keen to use her Fly spells to ferry the party across the reef-enclosed lagoon but Alurax took the initiative and ordered the captain to sail through the gap in the coral and head for the beach. The ship slipped into the lagoon and as it made its way towards the beach, Alurax’s Trident of Warning started to pulse an alert. The fighter concentrated on what it was sending and soon realised that a huge dragon turtle was heading straight for the ship.

Awesome Mini or what?

Alurax fired arrows at the incoming target and Elysia blasted it with Magic Missiles but it seemed that this did nothing to deter the attack; the dragon turtle hit the ship and nearly knocked it over in the water. Gullhar and Alagon were thrown into the water and the dragon turtle turned and began another run. As the paladin and the elf scrambled to grab the ropes that had been flung to them (and the sailors who had shared their fate), the ship was hit again and this time it completely tipped over. Alagon and Gullhar were flung across the ship by the ropes and landed near one of the longboats that had become detached. They swam as fast as they could to get out of the water.

Elysia and Alurax clambered up onto the side of the ship as the dragon turtle headed towards them for a third attack. This time, it reared up its head and blasted Elysia and the sailors with scalding steam; because of the damage that it had already taken, this was not as bad as it could have been.  The sailors leapt into the water, as did Elysia. Alurax ran along the hull of the ship and leapt onto the dragon turtle’s head, trying to stab at it with his trident. He missed. Meanwhile, Elysia used a Polymorph Self spell to turn into a smaller dragon turtle so that she could communicate with the monster.  She pleaded with it to allow them to pass because they were trying to destroy an ancient and evil magic user. The dragon turtle declared that it was loyal to Maldred, who had given it the lagoon for its own and refused to aid the party. As it prepared to blast Elysia in the water, Alurax stabbed at it again with his trident and this time, he was successful. The dragon turtle sank down into the waters of the lagoon, taking the doughty fighter with it as he struggled to pull his weapon out.

Regular readers will recall that during the adventure in the Tomb of the Holy Avenger, the party had managed to gain several handy new powers, one of which was water breathing. This stood Alurax in excellent stead as he managed to pull his trident out and return to the surface.

Meanwhile, Gullhar and Alagon had managed to use the longboat to rescue Elysia and Lydia and as many of the sailors as they could fit in. They rowed the longboat to the beach and returned to pick up the rest of the crew. As they rowed in, they spotted, about forty feet beneath the clear waters of the lagoon, the wreck of an older ship that had clearly not been so lucky when it came to the attentions of the dragon turtle. Whilst the crew, Elysia, Gullhar and Lydia dried out on the beach, Alagon and Alurax decided to go down and see if they could bring up whatever it was that the ship had been carrying. They had a profitable time, with some precious metal ingots, jewellery, gems and magic items recovered.

Further up the beach, there was a cave entrance in the cliff. The party decided to investigate. Beyond the cave was a passage into the interior of the island. At the far end of the corridor, Alagon found a heavy iron door but beside that, there was an eerie obelisk made of a sickly green stone with sinister runes carved into it. He sensed it was evil but as soon as he approached, he found his strength leaching away and he could barely stand up in his armour. The party dragged him back and he found himself recovering, albeit slowly.

Nobody wanted to pass the obelisk after seeing what it had done to the paladin and Gullhar even tried to lasso it and pull it over, hoping that by doing this he could drag it down the beach and into the sea. However, it was firmly fixed to the floor and refused to budge, despite Gullhar giving it his best shot.
Lydia then suggested that if the loss of strength was all that happened if they approached the obelisk, perhaps they should just crawl past it and out of its influence on the far side. This is exactly what the party did, with Alurax going first, followed by the others. They found themselves in a large room faced with glassy black stone.

Probably the wrong Obsidian Chamber picture.

 A deep trench ran across the middle of the chamber, bridged by a slab of rock. Alagon approached the bridge and glanced down into the trench to find that there were two bodies at the bottom; one a human and the other a gnome. Knowing better than to move across the bridge without checking it out, Alagon and Gullhar decided to test it. Gullhar rolled a gold coin across the bridge and as it passed the five foot mark, it vanished, reappearing at the bottom of the chasm. They then threw another coin across the bridge, and this time it hit the far side with no problem.

Gullhar, in a flash of inspiration deduced that the bridge was an illusion beyond five feet and that this was clearly what had happened to the two adventurers whose bodies had been seen. Elysia flew the party across and they regrouped on the far side.

Unfortunately for them, the far side was already occupied by a pack of hungry shadows, eighteen in total who came swooping out of the darkness, eager for battle. Alagon and Lydia stepped forward and tried to use their ability as paladins to turn the undead. Alagon succeeded in turning six of them, but Lydia was less successful. Elysia used her Wand of Illumination’s Sunburst facility to reduce four more of the shadows to virtual impotence; they fled back into the darkness.

"Ooh look lads, they've got no cleric!"

The other eight attacked, but stiff resistance by the party and another Sunburst managed to wipe them out and the party took stock; only Lydia had been hit and had some of her strength drained but she soon started to recover again. Whilst Alurax climbed down on a rope to investigate (and loot) the bodies in the chasm, the rest of the party waited at the head of a long passageway lined with glassy black stone, sloping downwards into the dark.

Once Alurax had finished, he led the way down the passage, choosing to slide all the way down on the glassy stone. The rest of the party were a bit more circumspect and as such found a skeleton in the passage about thirty feet down. They checked it out and found some more magical items and money on it.  Alurax, in the meantime had discovered that at the end of the passage were two large bronze doors, which did not seem to open when he pushed at them. He decided to wait for the rest of the party so that they could try and get the doors open together. What was beyond them?  There was only one way to find out.

Team Adventure - The Ghosts and Christmas Presents.

Three ghosts down, one to go. The fearless phantom swept into the room and headed for Gullhar, who the party had pushed to the front, figuring that the age attack would affect him the least. Garry the Gnome stepped up to support the elf and Ferros came in from behind to joint the fray.

Ferros and Gullhar’s attacks missed, as did the ghost. Garry weighed in with his magic daggers and scored a hit. The ghost had been badly weakened by Elysia’s Sunburst and succumbed to the gnome’s attack, dissolving into a cloud of ectoplasm.

As the party gathered its forces, and Alurax went to pick up and bring back the ancient Elysia, Alagon’s paladin-sense began to tingle and he felt that there was certainly something worth checking out down the staircase in the middle of the room. Elysia cast Leomund’s Tiny Hut so that she could shelter therein, whilst the rest of the party headed down to see what they could find.

At the bottom of the stairs, Garry and Lydia went left, following the passage through an empty room. Whilst they were doing that, the rest of the party, ignoring Adventurer 101, went right and ended up in a room where there were two large stone heads carved into the north and west walls. As Ferros and Alagon stepped into the room, the northern head animated and told them that they must not, under any circumstances, waken the western head or they would be overwhelmed by doom. The cleric and the paladin crept very carefully out of the room, managing not to make any noise. However, Garry, who had been called back by the party managed to trip over his own feet and fall, clattering to the floor. At this point, the western head woke, opened its mouth and from it poured a sea of squirming, slithering and crawling insects, which headed straight for the luckless gnome. 

He hurled an oil bomb at them, which took out a fair few, but the rest just headed round the fire and continued to advance. He used more oil to lay a fire wall which held them up whilst the rest of the party scurried through the room and down the corridor on the far side.

At the end of the passageway, the party found a room in which an ochre jelly lived. It had been a long time since the jelly had eaten a square meal and so it headed straight for Alagon, who was first into the room. Garry rushed into the room and with a combination of arrows, swords and oil, they managed to drive the jelly back until it was against the far wall. Garry watched as it squeezed itself into small cracks in the wall. He deduced that there must be a secret door there and hammered at it until it began to open.

Beyond it was a narrow passage into another room, in which lay the corpse of a long-dead adventurer. While Ferros started to animate it, Garry noticed that there was a barred window on the far side of the room. Beyond the window was another chamber, in which could be seen two suits of armour, each holding a sword. Garry tried to bend the bars with his hammer, but failed miserably and suggested that perhaps Larsh might want to lend a paw. The polar bear lumbered up and ripped the bars from their fittings.

As the dust settled, Garry clambered through the hole and found that there were in fact four suits of armour, one at each corner of the room. A passageway led off both east and west; the eastern passage emitted a faint blue glow that interested the party. Meanwhile, Garry had decided to try throwing a stone at one of the suits of armour. This was greeted with dismay by the party but they were on the far side of the window and could not interfere.

What do I have to do?  Put a warning notice on it?

As soon as the stone hit the armour, it – and its three fellows – animated and advanced on the hapless gnome. Alagon clambered through to help his fellow party member, but the attackers had soon brought the gnome down, assisted by the fact that the wounds dealt by their swords continue to bleed after they had been inflicted. His increased dexterity following the incident with the iron throne helped Alagon to avoid the deadly swords but Lydia and Gullhar were less fortunate, although they did managed to whittle down the animated armour, with some key bowshots by Alurax to assist them.

Once their opposition had been overcome, the party moved down the passage towards the blue light. They had already discovered that Garry’s wounds could not be healed with magic, and so they left him behind, bandaged and semi-conscious. At the end of the passage, they were confronted with a figure, sitting on a crystal throne, a sword across its knees. It was bathed in a column of blue light.  Whilst they tried to work out how to get the sword without disturbing the light, Alurax edged around the outside of the room, finding that on the far side a gateway had appeared that had not been there when they originally entered the room. Fearing a trap, he returned to the party.

Nobody wanted to be the one to enter the blue light, so they used the zombie that Ferros had just animated. The zombie shambled forward into the light and picked up the sword. As it did so, the blue light flickered and went out. Simultaneously, a deep rumbling sounded from somewhere in the dungeon.  As if that were not bad enough, eight identical swords landed on top of the zombie, causing him to fall to the ground with the original.

Soon, water was pouring into the room, swirling around the knees of the party. Ferros ordered his zombie to throw the swords to him, one by one. As the water rose, the luckless zombie did just as instructed and Ferros passed the swords to Alagon to see if they were the Holy Avenger. The second sword turned out to be the right one and the party began to struggle their way back upstairs to Elysia. The water was rising all the while and once it had got to the chests of the gallant band, they decided to make use of Larsh to carry Garry and lead them to safety.

Making it back to the room where they had left Elysia, they found that the water was coming full force through one of the passages that led off the chamber. Leomund’s Tiny Hut was now a bubble of water-free space into which the party piled hurriedly. The torrent was roaring down the shaft up which they had come, and they realised that it would probably not stop until it had filled the entire dungeon. They only had about an hour or so before the spell failed and with that, they imagined that they would swiftly drown.

It was at this point that somebody remembered that the party had acquired the ability of water breathing during their encounter with the statues that sprayed golden dust, way down at the (now drowned) bottom of the dungeon.  With the urgency suddenly off, the party waited until the dungeon was completely filled with water, then moved the Hut to the influx point and swam through it into the bottom of the lake (you will remember – if I put it into that session’s write-up – that there was a lake behind the hill into which the dungeon was built.)  They managed to struggle ashore and lay there for a while, catching their breaths.

When they had recovered, they walked round the hill to find the old ruined temple, with their horses still waiting for them (and, presumably, Ferros’ zombies and skeletons). They pitched camp for the night and the next morning woke to find that Garry’s hearing had returned. His wounds were also slightly recovered.

Whilst they were getting breakfast ready, Elador returned. He had left Wolf at the town to see if the Council of Elders could do anything for him, and had now popped back to see how the party was getting on. Quite how he knew not to teleport into a flooded dungeon is anyone’s guess but he’s a high-level wizard; he knows a lot of things.  Shocked to find his sister an extremely elderly woman, he hit upon the plan of using Polymorph Other to turn her into an elven version of herself. She would then be a 113-year-old elf, which is the equivalent of a human teenager.

As this was taking place, a strange shimmering globe appeared, floating above the ground. It halted just outside the ruined temple and out stepped a very special visitor. It was the extremely high-level cleric from the Christmas-themed adventure.

This lovely little mini painted by Brian from Lead Legion.

He had come to visit them and bring them a special gift – an egg box. No, not an Xbox – a box with six crystal eggs inside it. He explained that there was one for each of them and that they were in fact crystallised time from another universe outside our own. If the members of the party were ever in a situation where they needed to reverse time, they could crush the egg and that time would be released into our universe, forcing the party back five minutes into the past. The party realised that this was a very effective present, and made a mental note to be frugal with the eggs.

As a special gift to the party, the cleric also invited them to visit his winter world for a day or so, to recuperate from their wounds and recover their strength. He then dropped them back at the ruined temple again. 

As the cleric was leaving, he suddenly remembered that he had a message for Lydia. He told her “the chrysalis is awakening”.  She suddenly appeared very alarmed indeed.  When the party asked her what it was all about, she explained that in her homeland, far to the south, there was a legend that an evil magic user had constructed a chrysalis to give himself immortality in his bid for power. Many had discounted the legend as mere fable but the paladins of which she is a member took it seriously and warned about the awakening. Now that day is close at hand and she needs to travel to her homeland and seek out the chrysalis so that it can be destroyed. Is Team Adventure up for it?  We shall have to wait and see.

Team Adventure - The Phantom Menace

The giant slug (for such it was) emerged into the room; Elysia fired a Fireball at it and although it damaged the monster, it didn’t stop it. Alagon swung into action, moving in to attack the slug as it got a volley of arrows from Alurax, Ferros, Gullhar and Garry. It tried to bite at Alagon but missed; the party then fired their second shots and Elysia let rip with a Magic Missile; at 9th level, she could deliver some powerful blasts of magical energy and those, combined with the arrows that had been fired, finished the horrible thing off for good.

The party now had to decide where to go next; after some indecision, Ferros took the initiative and led everybody off down the passageway from which the slug had emerged. He was accompanied by Alagon, Garry, Gullhar and Wolf, with the others bringing up the rear.

As they reached the corner of the corridor, Alagon suddenly sensed a strong feeling of evil from the darkness ahead.  Reluctant to enter, Alagon slowly edged round the corner, with the rest of the party providing back-up. Gullhar scanned the room with his infravision but could see nothing.

As the party stepped into the room, four sinister figures came out of the gloomy corners. They were almost transparent and radiated sheer malice. Nobody knew what they were but Ferros knew that they were undead and raised the holy symbol of Foik, which drove them back into the darkness again.
 

We'll be back!

Having cleared the room of opposition, Ferros spotted a dead body lying in one corner and before you could say ‘Foik’, said cadaver was part of the Undead Army. The party headed off down the passageway again, making sure that the sinister undead figures were not waiting for them.

At the end of the passageway, they came to a room where they saw two more bodies on the floor. Again, Ferros stepped in to animate them but this time, there was a nasty surprise waiting. As the two new zombies stumbled towards ‘Master’, Ferros and Alurax noticed that there were white worms writhing in the putrescent flesh. Ferros promptly turned them, which destroyed them and Alurax hurled an oil bomb in, roasting what was left of the bodies and the worms.

Ferros' new zombie henchmen were destined for a short unlife.

The team decided to exercise caution from thereon and checked the room out thoroughly. Alurax, who’d had experience of nasty things lurking on the ceiling, looked up and saw that there was a shaft opening directly above their heads. It was thick with cobwebs and darker objects moved within it. Alurax fired an arrow up into the webs and by chance, hit a spider which dropped down onto the floor, dead.  Alagon reached up and managed, by use of a torch, to burn the first few feet of cobwebs. 

Having explored the only other passage leading from this room, which took them back to the clay jar chamber, the party thought that they had run out of options and decided to do what they had done on the previous level – send Gullhar round to see if he could find any secret doors. The elf set off back up the passage but he had only gone a little way when he met the four sinister undead coming towards him. He shouted out and alerted Ferros, who ran down to join him. The cleric raised the symbol of Foik again but this time, either his faith was lacking or the undead had grown bolder. They were not stopped and Ferros decided that discretion was the better part of valour. The party beat a hasty retreat to the room with the spider shaft, where they decided to make a stand.
 

Told you so!

The party deployed for action, with Wolf, Alagon, Ferros and Garry in the front row. Elysia and Elador were thinking about using their Teleport spells to take the party out of danger but then realised that with the weight restriction of the spell, they could only take one person each.

As the undead came drifting into the room, Elador recognised them as spectres. Ferros tried to turn them again but he had no luck this time either.  Elysia readied her Wand of Illumination and cast Sunburst which damaged but did not destroy the spectres. They closed in on the front rank of the party and battle was joined.

The spectres failed to hit Garry and Alagon but poor Wolf was hit and drained. As his lifeless body hit the floor, an eerie mist rose from it and started to take on the shape of a spectral wolf. 

Bet you're wishing you'd taken me for more walks now, eh, FORMER master!

Just as one of the spectres loomed in with its claws to drain Ferros, Alurax fired a magic arrow from the back rank and the undead predator dissolved into the darkness, destroyed in a very lucky hit.

The next round, Alurax used the same tactic to destroy the spectre that had killed Wolf as it was moving in to attack Lydia. Elysia fired another Sunburst at the spectre that was trying to hit the very nimble Alagon and destroyed that.  The final spectre closed in on Garry and everyone thought the gnome was about to be drained but he managed to dodge the chilling grasp; Elysia tossed her wand to Elador who fired Sunburst again at the spectre and destroyed it. 

That left the problem of the spectral wolf – Elysia took back her wand whilst Elador grabbed the fallen body and teleported out with it. It was his aim to return to the town, many miles distant and see if the Council of Elders could do anything for the fallen familiar.  A final Sunburst took care of the spectral wolf. The party had triumphed but not without cost. 

Disturbed by the prospects of other monsters lurking on this level and waiting to attack, Elysia fired a fireball up the spider shaft, clearing it of cobwebs and other debris (including some human bones from less than fortunate previous adventurers), then cast Fly and carried the party up the thirty feet or so of shaft to a small room with a narrow walkway around the opening. A passage led off it and they followed this until it came out into a room in which there was a flight of descending stairs and two other passages. There were also three dead bodies in the middle of the room.  Ferros wondered who they were and decided to use Speak with Dead to find out. The corpses revealed that they were low-level adventurers and had been killed by the spiders from the shaft (Ferros had not really thought about the questions he was going to ask and only had two to use).  Satisfied that the bodies represented no threat, he decided to animate them. Unfortunately, not all threats are visible ones and as the bodies rose from the floor, their ghosts emerged from the mouldering bodies and advanced on the cleric who had the temerity to disturb them.

Ferros took one look at the advancing phantoms and shrieked, taking to his heels in terror – down one of the passageway that the party had not yet explored. He also aged ten years but that was the least of his worries. One of the ghosts followed him and the others homed in on Elysia and Lydia, who had assumed that their cleric would sort out this latest undead problem.  Elysia resorted to her usual tactic of Sunburst but unfortunately this did not destroy the ghosts fully. They struck at Lydia, turning her from an 18-year-old to a paladin in her mid-forties.  Elysia was touched by the second ghost and became 73.   She still had her wits about her because another Sunburst finished off the ghosts. 

Meanwhile, Ferros had fled into a room where the first ten feet of floor was black and glistening. He failed to jump it and ran through it instead. His boots started to char and corrode and as he ripped them off, he realised that he was in a dead end. His plight concentrated his mind and he recovered his wits, only to see one of the ghosts drifting down the corridor towards him.  He attempted once again to use the power of Foik, but said deity must have been busy elsewhere, because the ghost just kept on coming.

Just as Ferros thought his number was up, Elysia appeared in the room, having teleported in. She fired a Sunburst at the ghost, who appeared weakened, though not destroyed and used a Fly spell to pick up the cleric and soar past the ghost. As they did so, the ghost reached out and made a grab for them. He touched Elysia, who went from 73 to 113 in an instant. She crashed to the floor and Ferros ran into the main room to alert the party to their magic-user’s predicament.  Elysia, in her dotage, now lay on the floor whilst the ghost decided to attend to the rest of the party who were a greater threat; he could always come back and finish off the extremely elderly magic user for afters.

The party prepared to defend themselves against what they now recognised as some of the deadliest adversaries they had ever encountered.

Team Adventure - Gnome Comforts

Acting quickly – and unsure of how much longer the floor around Alurax would continue to support him - Gullhar (who had returned to the narrow corridor) pulled the doughty fighter out and onto firmer ground. Whilst he was busy doing this, Larsh detected somebody coming down the corridor behind him. It turned out to be a small figure armed with a short sword and wearing studded leather armour. He introduced himself as Gary the Gnome, a thief who had heard of a great treasure inside the dungeon and had come to investigate.

While Gullhar and Alurax were trying to work out what to make of the new arrival, he had skipped nimbly (but not as nimbly as Alagon now could) across the hazardous floor of the slime room, then bypassed Ferros and Alagon, who were still cleaning themselves up after the attack of the Shambling Mound.

On the far side of the Mound Room was another passage, down which the little thief now strode. The rest of the party followed on; Alurax and Gullhar managed to cross the slime room floor, disturbing more of the loose floor but not suffering any dire consequences.  Ferros’ two zombies which had only been created a few minutes earlier were dragged across on a rope, bits of them falling off as this happened, although nothing particularly important.

At the end of the passage, the party found a room with four statues on plinths at each point of a compass rose inlaid in the floor. In each plinth was a slot, about the size of a coin. Gary entered the room, approached the first plinth from behind, reached round and put a coin into the slot. The statue animated and sprayed out a golden dust onto the space in front of it. Gary touched and tasted the gold spray; it tingled when he touched it and didn’t taste of anything. Even as he watched it, the dust vanished like snow on a sunny day.

Ferros entered the room next and with Gary, tried to move one of the statues but it was very firmly fixed and neither of them could budge it.

Alurax’s idea was to get everybody to put a coin in each of the slots whilst one of Ferros’ zombies stood at the centre of the compass rose. This produced the same effect but as the zombie was not standing in front of any of the statues, the showers of gold had no effect.

The experimentation continued; the zombie was stood in front of each statue in turn so that he was showered with dust from each of them but there seemed to be no obvious effects on him.

By now, people were starting to get bored of the statues and their gold dust. They made plans to settle down for the night to regain spells and hit points, whilst Gary set traps at each door of the room to prevent unwanted incursions. Ferros deputed his zombies to stand sentry for a similar purpose.

Nothing disturbed the party during the night. However, in the morning (or so they believed, since they were deep below the surface of the earth), Ferros started to get telepathic messages, through Rufus, from Relic. Elysia, who had last been seen in the entrance to the dungeon, was contacting him to find out where they were.

The magic user had used her new spell, Teleport, to return to the Moat House in order to see if she could recruit additional firepower for the party in the form of Elador. However, she had not realised when doing so that she could only use the spell for one-way trips and so was stuck at the Moat House until she had rested up and relearned the spell. Now, she had teleported back to the last place that she had seen the party and needed to know where they were in order to rejoin them.

Thus guided, the two magic users made their way through the dungeon until they found the party, who were having a discussion about what to do next about the statues. Elysia was most interested in who Gary was, although his comments about searching for great treasure were met with a curt warning not to steal any of the party’s treasure.

Alurax had taken the initiative regarding testing the statues; he tried another gold piece in one of the statues, then decided to test Ferros' hypothesis that the plinth pulverised the coin and sprayed out the remnants. He tried to use a silver piece and the same gold spray came out, disproving that idea.

Finally, with no real idea of what the statues and their gold spray did, Alurax decided to use himself as a guinea-pig and stood in front of the eastern statue, placed a coin in the slot and waited. He was sprayed with the gold dust and somehow knew that he had acquired a particular power – the ability to put himself into a meditative trance and increase the efficacy of any healing magic cast upon him. Delighted by this, he then tried the other three statues and found that he had gained the ability to survive without harm at up to –20 below freezing, the ability to breathe underwater and the ability to summon a sandstorm in any desert and travel up to 30 miles in it.

When the rest of the party realised that far from having ill effects, the statues actually gave out good things, they all decided that they wanted a share as well.

Once they had all been sprayed by all four statues, they pressed on down the further corridor, which led to a small room with a single, iron-bound chest inside. Gary rushed in (no surprise, considering he was being run by Galadeus’ player) to check it out. He tried to break it open but it was so tough that he nearly broke his hammer. He turned his attention to the lock, which seemed very intricate, and got out his thieves’ tool kit. Unfortunately, whilst trying to pick the lock, he triggered a spray of gas against which he was able to save. With only slight irritation, he made a second attempt and this time, he heard the lock click open. He pulled the lid of the chest open and found inside a set of iron keys, each with a piece of coloured cloth attached.  The party was baffled by this discovery but they took the keys nevertheless, supposing that they had some significance and would come in handy later on.

They may be meaningless but the party's paranoia means they'll carry them around till the end of the campaign

The party had now explored every room and corridor and there seemed to be nothing further to find. If this was the case, it was a very small dungeon and they suspected that there was more to it than met the eye. Gullhar decided to see if he could find any secret doors or entrances that they might have passed by initially and moved through each room, checking and rechecking. Eventually, he found something in the narrow passageway that linked the slime room with the rat chamber.

Ferros, Gullhar and Gary gathered round the door and prised it open, finding beyond a room in which lay a dead body, a dagger in one hand. As Gary rushed towards it, another door opened in the far wall and through it came six shadows, heading straight for the hapless gnome. Ferros stepped forward and raised the holy symbol of Foik, which sent the sinister black floating shapes racing back through the doorway and off down the passageway beyond.  Alurax arrived and checked to see if Gary was all right; he also took the dagger from the corpse’s hand. The presence of a slash wound on the body’s arm showed that the knife had been used to end its owner’s life; perhaps he had no intention of becoming a shadow.

The party gathered and moved on down the passage, turning a couple of corners till the corridor virtually doubled back on itself. At the end of the passage, a flight of stairs headed upwards. Gary, in the lead, climbed them and at the top, was confronted by a passage running left and right. He took the left-hand one and it led him into a room where he found four clay jars sealed with pitch, in which were written intricate and mysterious hieroglyphs.

Clay jars - irresistible to gnomes.

 Ferros was soon on hand to read them, casting Comprehend Languages, and was able to announce that they were a warning not to open the jars. Gary ignored this and decided to throw one of his darts at the first jar. It clipped it and knocked it over; it smashed on the floor and out of it came a cloud of screaming phantoms who swirled around Gary’s head, howling into his ears. Only when they had disappeared into the darkness did Gary realise that he was now deaf. 

Inside the shattered jar was a bony snake-like creature with a human skull, which rose up and lunged at Gary. It bit him but he was able to resist the sinister power of the creature by dint of his gnomish resistance to all things magical. Alurax and Elysia stepped forward to deal with the creature – the combined effect of his trident and her Magic Missile blasted the thing into a mass of bony smithereens.

No, I am not undead, despite appearances to the contray, so turn on, cleric, turn on, hahaha!

The second jar held another set of keys with pieces of coloured cloth on them; the party filed these under E for Enigmatic. The third jar held 19 silver balls, each with a single hieroglyph on. Ferros’ Comprehend Languages was still running but all it revealed was that each hieroglyph was a single letter of an ancient alphabet.

That just left the fourth jar, which was broken open to reveal a small figurine of a scorpion. Gary decided that he wanted this and pocketed it; a bad move as no sooner had he done this than it started to grow, bursting out of his pocket and landing on the floor. It continued growing and attacked both Gary and Alurax, who had rushed in to help him. The two huge pincers missed the gnome but the sting caught Alurax, wounding him but failing to overcome him with its poison.

These guys are mean critters. I must use one on a low-level party one day.

Elysia flew in to pluck Gary out of the fray whilst the scorpion turned its full attention to Alurax, catching him with one of its pincers. Alurax returned the compliment and Ferros fired an arrow that finished off the huge monster.

The party started to clean up, Alurax chopping off the tail of the scorpion and trying to bottle its poison.

On the far side of the room was a solid stone door which Alurax started to investigate but could find no way of opening. Meanwhile, Gary started down another passage into a large chamber, in which was a flight of stairs going down, as well as a dead body surrounded by large purple fungi almost as tall as the gnome himself.  The rest of the party recognised them as shriekers and concluded that it was a good idea to send in somebody who couldn’t hear anyway and was therefore immune to the deafening sound they would make.  As Gary stepped into the room, a flagstone on the floor shifted under his feet and the stone door which Alurax had been checking out slid open. From the opening came four wraiths which headed for Elador, who was closest to them.  Ferros had been thinking about entering the shrieker room but when Gary had volunteered, he had stayed back. It was a lucky thing that he did so because he was perfectly placed to step forward and let the power of Foik and drove the wraiths back into their chamber again.

Wraiths show off this season's colours

Gary moved further into the room, setting off the shriekers and investigating the body. There was nothing particularly interesting about it and when Gary popped back through to report his findings, Alurax recommended that he destroy the shriekers, which he did with an oil bomb.

While the rest of the party remained in the room of the clay jars, Gary pressed on, finding another room on the far side of the shrieker chamber (he didn’t seem to be interested in the descending staircase). This had a passage leading off it and a mysterious trail of slime on the floor that led down the other corridor. In the far corner of the room was an open doorway and beside it, a lever mechanism which had six settings. Gary checked out the lever, pulling it up and down but nothing seemed to happen.  He also examined the slime but it appeared to have no obvious effect on him.

The rest of the party now came through the shrieker room and joined Gary; Alurax took a turn at moving the lever up and down but achieved no more success than had the gnome. The party decided that it might be worth setting up camp here and Gary started to get his traps out again. However, just as he was starting to do that, Elysia heard something further down the passageway down which the slime trail led. It was a sinister squelching and slithering and it was getting closer. Alurax fired an arrow but could not see where it had gone or even if it had hit something. He flung an oil bomb up the passage and its sudden blaze illuminated a huge bulk with what looked like antennae pushing its way down the corridor. 

It was big, it was horrible and it was heading straight for them.

Team Adventure - It's a tomb in a swamp but it's not THAT tomb in a swamp

Almost before the party knew what was happening, both corridors out of the chamber of the hydra had been closed off with walls of thick ice. Both Lydia and Alagon sensed a strong feeling of evil close by but nobody could see anything until Alurax looked up at the ceiling to see a sinister creature with clawed hands and feet and the head of a mantis looking down at him. Moments later, the creature had materialised next to him and struck before he could react. As he reeled from the damage that had been inflicted (and the shock that he had been hit at all), the creature dematerialised again and appeared next to Gullhar, giving him the same treatment.

Recovering the initiative, the party counter-attacked. Elysia let fly with Magic Missile, whilst Alagon tried to hit it with an oil bomb, but missed and caught Gullhar with it instead. From across the room, Lydia fired an arrow but just failed to hit it. Alurax launched his arrow and managed to hit the creature, dealing it a serious wound. 

The party managed to maintain the initiative but Alagon’s answer was another oil bomb, which missed again, catching poor Gullhar, who had not yet stopped burning from the last attack.  Elysia decided to use her remaining Fireball on the creature, but she found out when the flames had dissipated that it remained untouched by her spell. On the far side of the chamber, Ferros drew back his bow, determined to live up to his nickname and let fly with his arrow, scoring a direct hit and sending the creature crashing to the ground, where it dissolved into a mass of stinking, oily filth.

The remnants of the creature, now revealed to have been an ice devil, were examined by the still-smouldering Gullhar and Alagon -  they noticed that amongst the mess was a small shiny object. Neither of them fancied touching it but Alurax was not so squeamish and picked it up.

Nobody knew what the key might do, but they did notice that following the ice devil’s killing, the walls of ice that it had thrown up were starting to melt. Figuring that there was no time like the present, the party decided to bed down and recover their spells and hit points.

Eight hours later, they were ready to move on. The walls  of ice had completely melted by now and Lydia set off down the corridor from which the frost giants had appeared. The party had already found the giants’ treasure room but now a previously unexplored passageway led to a small chamber in which sat a chest of black wood. The key that Alurax had found fitted the lock exactly and Elysia used Unseen Servant to open it and remove its contents, which consisted of a hoard of gems, gold and platinum coins and three ornate pieces of jewellery. As well as these, there was the small figurine of a phoenix; Florin had been found but its owner was already dead and so it was decided to hold on to the figurine until they could think of what to do with it.

The party left the dungeon a man down, but with the knowledge that they needed to press on if they were to achieve their goal. This came closer by the end of the day when they reached the crest of the pass and looked down the western side of the mountains to the vast, grey-green swamplands that awaited them.

They camped at this point as darkness was falling and the next morning, set off down the slope towards the edge of the swamp. The date was 22nd September; barely a month had gone by since they had set off, bright-eyed and ready for anything from the Moat House. How much they had gone through since then and there was still much ahead of them to deal with.

It took them all day to reach the edge of the swamp; Elysia and Alurax sent Relic and Eris out to scout the terrain. Some time later, the hawk and pseudo-dragon returned to report that there seemed to be some sort of ruined temple far off into the marshes, and behind it a mound near a lake. Elysia decided that this sounded a likely prospect and the party resolved to set off in that direction the next day.

The day dawned grey and misty and the weather did not get any better as they pressed on into the swamp. After a while of travelling, they ran into marsh drizzle, a fine rain that drenched everything that they were carrying, including their leather, animals and food.  Once they had passed through that, they spotted some floating lights off into the gloomy mist but, having encountered the will-o-the-wisps before, they refused to be taken in by them.

Some time later, they spotted what appeared to be a figure in the mist; they cautiously approached it to find that it was a statue, larger than man-sized and covered in lichens and moss. It seemed to be standing on a pedestal but apart from that, there was nothing else that they could tell about it. Fearing that it might either animate or was a sign that medusae were operating in the area, the party moved on. However, not far away, they spotted two more statues, humanoid in form but with horns, claws and wings, perching on pedestals. The party rode by quickly but Gullhor, who was convinced that the statues were sinister in intent, glanced back and noticed that one had turned its head to watch the party go by.

"I'm getting sick and tired of being mistaken for Weeping Angels"

Dissatisfied with the progress that the party was making, Elysia used Fly to get to the mound and ruins that Relic and Eris had spotted earlier. By the time the rest of the party had arrived, she had already started to investigate the ruins. The others joined her to complete the investigation, finding that the bones of several donkeys and mules littered the area, some with the remains of rotted saddles and panniers on them.

The party had decided to camp down there and explore further in the morning (the sun having set on the far side of the mound by now) but Alurax managed to find a doorway in the side of the mound and beyond it a tunnel. He edged down it, the rest of the party following, bedding down forgotten about by now. 

The safety gate was put on to deter foolish parties of adventurers. Clearly didn't work very well.

 At the end of the tunnel was a room in the middle of which was a ten foot by ten foot shaft. The party ignored the passage on the far side of the room, believing the shaft to be by far the more important. Alurax hammered an iron spike into the floor and tied the last fifty feet of rope to it; Gullhar had already established, by doing a Pippin that the shaft was about fifty to sixty feet deep. Elysia used Fly to descend the shaft, whilst the rest of the party, with the exception of Ferros’ undead army, followed her down using the rope.

From the base of the shaft, a corridor ran deeper into the dungeon. The party followed it and emerged into a large chamber, in which were several stone sarcophagi, all of which were filled with fragments of shattered bones.  Certain members of the party remembered a situation many months ago in which a passage had been concealed by a similar sarcophagus and so Alagon, Gullhar, Alurax and Larsh (who was now able to be animated once again) set to moving the heavy coffins. They were puffing and sweating by the time they found out that two of the sarcophagi were in fact extensions of the wall and concealed secret doors, which Gullhar, with his elven senses, had detected.

The bold elf opened one of the doors and was confronted by a hideous stench of decay and death as two ghouls reached through the gap and tried to rake him with their claws. They failed to do so, allowing Alurax to hurl in an oil bomb, killing one, whilst Gullhar finished off the second.  It became apparent that the room beyond was full of the undead horrors and so, at Ferros’ request, the party members fell back, drawing four more ghouls into the large chamber. Ferros raised his holy symbol and the power of his faith blasted the four ghouls to rotting smithereens. 

"Let's get him, lads...oh wait, it's an elf"

The rest of the ghouls fell back and Ferros moved into their room, accompanied by the rest of the party. As Ferros moved down the passageway, the ghouls fell back further still, cowed by the power of Foik, as Ferros had now named his deity.

At the end of the passageway, they found another chamber. In this room was a dais on which sat a throne of iron. Around the dais was the inscription  ‘those who sit upon the throne and wish to experience its power will be truly changed, perhaps for the better, perhaps for the worse.’

It might be thought that nobody would risk sitting on the throne but of course, this was Team Adventure and they were not going to be put off by a dusty and cobwebbed-covered throne promising to change those who sat upon it. Alagon walked onto the dais and sat down. At this point, the power of the throne was triggered; Alagon now found himself a lot less attractive but very nimble and dextrous indeed.

(The throne randomly selected two attributes and then swapped them over. Alagon had 9 DEX and 17 CHA, which were now 17 DEX and 9 CHA. I know that technically he was now no longer qualified to be a paladin but I decided that this would not apply; if he had been facially injured in, say, a black dragon attack, would he lose his paladinhood?  I think only a deliberate move to evil might remove the status, rather than a reduction in Charisma. Anyway, here endeth my justification)

Alurax decided that he too wanted to experience the power of the throne but alas for him, his intelligence and wisdom were exchanged and since they were only slightly different to begin with, there was little appreciable difference.

Nobody else wanted to hazard a turn of the throne so the party moved onto the next room, which was occupied by two corpses. Ferros at once decided to animate them and add them to his undead army but as the bodies stirred and began to rise, a swarm of giant rats came scurrying out of the rotting torsos and headed straight for the cleric who had disturbed their resting place.

"I've only got half a hit die and I've bitten a 7th level cleric. Go me!"

Ferros killed one, Larsh laid low three. The surviving rats swarmed at Ferros, one managing to bite him. He killed another one, Larsh killed two and Gullhar spitted another one with his sword. Nobody took any further damage from the rats and the surviving three were finished off in short order.

The passage out of this room was only five feet wide and it was a tight squeeze for Larsh but the rest of the party had no trouble, although they had to go single file. At the end of the passageway, they found a small room into which Ferros stepped, only to feel the flagstones shift and wobble under his feet. He pressed on and although the other flagstones on which he trod did move, they did not give way. He made it to the exit on the far side of the room and looked into the room beyond, only to hear something large moving towards him. The rest of the party was stuck on the far side of the room with the shifting stones – unless they dared risk it to join the cleric.

Gullhar managed to get a spear point under one of the flagstones and tossed a torch down to reveal a pool of green slime waiting for unfortunate travellers. Meanwhile Ferros had discovered what was about to attack him – a huge Shambling Mound, which swiped him with one of its massive arms, nearly knocking him flying.

And remember, killing one of these counts towards your 5 a day

Gullhar decided to risk the shifting floor and moved to aid his comrade. By now, the Shambling Mound had managed to hit Ferros twice and pulled him into the grasp of the stinking tendrils that issued from its chest. As Ferros was being smothered, Gullhar swung into action but took a hefty hit from the Mound’s fist.

Alagon, with his new dexterity, decided to get past the blocking members of the party, none of whom seemed to want to risk the green slime, and climbed up and over them, then around the slime room’s walls to get to Gullhar’s assistance. By now, the valiant elf was being hard pressed indeed to hold his own. By the time Alagon had arrived just behind him, Gullhar had been knocked to the floor, falling back into the paladin who fell likewise – but not back into the slime room. He managed to get to his feet and realised that he had moments to save Ferros from being suffocated in the heart of the Shambling Mound. 

Both Alagon and the Mound missed each other, and then Alagon remembered that he had a magic axe that he had not used for a while. This seemed like the best time to use it and so he swung it at the hideous monster. Although he damaged it, he did not manage to kill it.

Alurax had now decided to join the battle, seeing that Gullhar was down. He stepped into the slime room but the floor gave way beneath him. He managed to grab hold of a firmer section of floor and stop himself falling right through but was stuck for the moment.

Finally, Alagon, with his superior reactions, got the first blow in on the Mound and managed to kill it, just in time to save Ferros, who was hauled, stinking and gasping for air from the vegetable embrace of one of the toughest monsters that the party had fought for a long time.

They were now beginning to realise that this dungeon was going to challenge them in ways that they had not been tested before and that the penalty for failure was likely to be considerably higher than a few lost hit points. 

Team Adventure - The Frost Giants' Slaughter

This was the first session after the long summer holiday and it certainly showed; it took some time for the players to regain their focus and to begin with, there were some very odd goings-on as Alurax climbed up the tower, Galadeus came down it and went into the main cave entrance (where Alurax had been standing a few minutes previously).

Galadeus heard strange snarling and growling noises from further up the tunnel. He tried to use his Ring of Mammal Control but to no avail. He threw a torch into the darkness and in the brief moments of flickering orange light, he spotted two side tunnels, two on the left and one on the right.

At this point, the rest of the party came back down the tower to see where their ranger had got to. They found him edging his way towards the first turning on the left. They followed on and Galadeus tossed an oil bomb through the entrance. As the burning oil died down, the party moved down the passageway to see a room beyond. Creeping carefully into the room, they were confronted by four trolls who had emerged from another room further beyond.

"Yeah, so now we're just orcs for high level parties."

Keeping a sensible distance, the party opened fire with arrows and then attacked with their weapons, Alurax managed to kill one of the trolls outright with a precise thrust of the trident. A second troll crumbled to overwhelming party attacks.  Alagon was horrified to see the third troll dodge Wolf’s attacks and rip the loyal creature half apart with its teeth and claws. The bloodstained wolf fell against one wall. Alagon launched his attack with a furious scream of rage. Elysia opened up with a magic missile and finishing off what Alagon had started. Alurax, Galadeus and Gullhar combined their efforts to bring down the final troll; in the meantime, Lydia had shown the presence of mind to set fire to the dead trolls to stop them regenerating.
The party then looted the trolls and their stash of treasure in the room beyond.

Alurax had noticed in the treasure room that there was a passage which led towards what appeared to be a faint light. He followed it for several yards and then found that it gave onto the roof of the left-hand tower where Florin had been snatched by the barbed devils. There was still a scorch mark there but no sign of the missing phoenix.

The party then went back through the troll rooms towards the main passageway while Galadeus decided to check out another side passage to which nobody else had paid attention – on his own.

As the voices of the party faded down the tunnel, he found that the passageway led to another room in which the smell of foul, festering corruption met his nose. A mound of rotten material lay on the floor, amidst which were several glinting objects. Enticed by the shiny things, Galadeus stepped forward to see what they were, at which point the roper, for such it was, rose up and launched its attack. Five of its six tentacles scored hits and the luckless ranger felt his strength ebbing away; the roper began to drag him towards its yawning mouth.

Is it me or does this guy look a bit like Kodos and Kang?

The rest of the party were just coming out into the main passageway when they heard faint cries for help from the tunnel behind them. Realising that Galadeus was in trouble (but not really surprised) the party turned back to see what was happening. 

Elysia hurtled into the room using a Fly spell and swiftly assessed the situation. She tried to cast Fear on the roper but her spell seemed to have no effect. Her nimble flying skills meant that the remaining tentacle flailed through the air and failed to hit her. Ferros, who was hot on the magic user’s heels, tried to Command the creature to die but again, his magic seemed to have failed. Alagon hacked at the creature with his hand axe and the rest of the party readied their attacks.

Running out of options, Elysia webbed the roper’s mouth to ensure that it could not begin to eat Galadeus, who had been dragged to the ravening mouth of the creature. Meanwhile, the last tentacle hit Ferros and the cleric, never the strongest of the party to begin with, found that he could barely hold on to his weapons now as he was dragged off his feet and towards the roper. He did, however, have the idea of calling on his zombies and skeletons to ‘help Master’ and that is exactly what they did, heading towards him and ignoring Galadeus.

Alurax drew a bead on the eye of the roper and fired an arrow which sunk deep into the monster’s body, then flung a torch at it, which made the roper shy away from the flame. Finally, Alagon managed to get close enough to fling his second hand axe which sailed through the air and buried itself in the creature's eye. It shrieked and collapsed in a pile of festering corruption, on top of Galadeus.  The party only realised that the ranger was still alive when they saw his feet sticking out of the pile of rotting muck and dragged him to freedom. Once they were clear of the roper, both Galadeus and Ferros felt their strength slowly returning.

The party returned to the point at which they had heard Galadeus’ cries for help. This time, they were torn between pressing on up the main passageway or investigating the other side passages. As they were deliberating about which way to go, Alurax and Ferros, who were bringing up the rear, heard a strange growling noise from further up the main passageway. Alurax, in what was rapidly becoming a new trend, flung a torch up the tunnel to see if it illuminated what was making the noises. He could see nothing apart from a huge shadow, parts of which were writhing worryingly.  Elysia decided to use the Illuminate function of her wand and lit up the cave so that the source of the noise could be identified. It was an eleven-headed hydra; the wisest tactic for this monster was to attack en masse so that it could not concentrate its bites on just one party member and pick them off one by one. Galadeus eschewed such a simple plan and instead picked an even simpler one – full-scale, frontal attack by ranger. On his own.

But with many more heads. All the better to kill you with.

Whilst Alurax, Elysia and Lydia scrambled to cover the other exit from the hydra’s chamber, down which two dark shapes were already lumbering, Alagon, Gullhar and Ferros fired their bows at the polycephalic peril. Although they hit it several times, this was not enough to stop it grabbing Galadeus and ripping him into a tattered and bloodstained scrap of ranger. Flinging his body aside, it turned on Ferros for seconds – within a few moments, the cleric was also savaged and inches from death. Alagon, with his paladin’s ability to heal by laying on hands, realised that he could only heal one of his comrades – by the time he had done so, the other one would be dead.

"Galadeus! What took you so long?"

He chose Ferros and managed to get the cleric back on his feet, albeit shakily. Gullhar had advanced on the hydra to provide a distraction for the paladin but this meant that he was in range of the fearsome heads. He raced in, wielding his longsword but as he plunged it into the creature’s heart, the heads snapped and did their terrible work, leaving the elf as a torn pile of green and crimson. The hydra was dead but it had taken a terrible toll on the party.  Ferros cast healing magic on Gullhar to bring him back to consciousness.

Meanwhile, Alurax, Elysia and Lydia braced themselves for the arrival of the two huge figures which they had seen coming down the passageway towards them. They turned out to be frost giants. Elysia cast a Fireball which exploded and caught the giants in a sea of flame; while the giants were still recovering from that attack, they were caught by Magic Missile and arrows from Alurax, Gullhar and Alagon which finished them off.

"This bodes well for G2"

The party heaved a huge sigh of relief. They had overcome some very tough opposition and had lost only Galadeus (a situation with which they were becoming increasingly familiar). They started to loot the hydra and found a chamber further down the passageway in which the giants’ treasure was stored. But even as they were counting the treasure out, they heard a sinister laugh echoing around the walls of the dungeon. Something was there, watching them. What could it be and what was going to happen next?