# Heroes of Spittlemarch



## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

**This storyhour is reposted from the old site.  All I'm copying is the story, no comments (there weren't many, anyway . . .).

I should say at the outset that if you're new to this storyhour, you should understand that the first several posts are dry. I was posting from memory of events that had passed long before our current sessions, and moving fast to get caught up. Read them for background, but just bear with me. It gets better as you go along.

The campaign is loosely set in the Dyvers area of Greyhawk. Loosely. For the most part the action is set in the heavily wooded areas south and west of Dyvers, where small farming communities are separated by long roads through dark, forbidding Gnarley Woods. 

I run a mix of home-grown and store-bought adventures, mostly based on how busy I am when it gets to be time to come up with something for my party to do.

-jpj


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*Getting started*

The party:
Eli, Elven Fighter/ranger (male), damn fine archer. Aspires to join a special order of elven archers (we’re still debating which prestige class to use) called the Order of the Shooting Star. [Note: His full elven name is Elianshanni Eletriel. So, we call him Eli. You would, too. At least most of the others in the party had the decency to take three letter names.]
Urk, Dwarven fighter (male), a whole lot of sharp nasty with his great axe. Likes to kill stuff.
Pah, Halfling rogue (female), likes sparklies. Searching for her long lost love, Um. (This player is a trombone player, among other things . . .)
(until he went missing)
Norham, Human Cleric/Fighter (serving Heironemous)
(eventually)Uri, Halfling Wizard/rogue, likes to cast web spells. 

Getting Started:

I’m going to start my account a little while after the campaign started. They’re all around 3rd and 4th level now, having just completed Sunless Citadel and a handful of home-grown adventures and side-treks. Their cleric, Norham, has been approached by a local temple that is looking for a party of adventures to keep on retainer, so through him they finally have a base of operations of sorts (this will be shortlived, like Norham, who arranged it). As their first mission, they’re sent to try to find out what’s going on in a nearby Barony, Spittlemarch, from which there has been no news for weeks.

Travling to spittlemarch, there they found that the baronial keep was under siege, the farming villages were empty and burned, and a large army, mostly mercenaries, lead by a cousin who is a pretender to the baronial fief. But the army wasn't working very hard to break the siege, seeming happy to bottle up the forces in the keep and wait for something to happen.

A little more exploring and investigating and let them to another military encampment in the nearby mountains. This was where most of the townspeople who were not dead ended up. They were being held in an armed camp run by dragonpriests, their followers, some mercenaries, some humanoids (kobolds, mostly). They're forcing the enslaved peasants to work in the mines, but all they are doing is bringing out rock, tons of rock.


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*A little background*

Background & History: The Dragonpriests and Anathe
The players have had a couple of run-ins with one dragonpriest previously. The Dragonpriests are a fairly new cult in the area, one that worships dragons, as the true living expressions of the divine in the world, and the world’s rightful masters. They’re mostly evil, and each dragonpriest chooses a color dragon to serve. When the party was preparing to enter the Sunlight Citadel adventure, they were approached by a white dragonpriest named Anathe. Anathe tells them that there is a very young white dragon that is a prisoner in the Citadel. He offers them a hefty sum to capture the dragon and bring it to him alive. Of course, Anathe wasn’t willing to leave much to chance, and hired a pair of half-orc ranger-rogues to help track the party, follow them, and try to make sure they got Calcryx (sp?) out alive. Naturally enough, in the course of things, the party killed the dragon. Urk got excited and chopped off its head, carrying it around with him for the rest of the adventure. After completing the Citadel the party clambered up to the surface again, dragging their battered bodies and a heap of loot that still included the dragon’s head. As they were mounting up and getting ready to ride for Oakhurst Anathe and his flunkies turned up. There was a brief battle, in which the party managed to kill the flunkies, though Anathe made a run for it. The party, battered and exhausted, slumped to the ground. That is, everyone but Urk, who was pissed off. Urk jumped up onto his horse, making some fantastic ride rolls with little or no skill, and rode off after the fleeing dragonpriest. 

I should point out that the party had entered sunless citadel at 3rd level, not first, and I’d beefed up the adventure considerably to adjust for that. 

Anyway, after running for a while, Anathe realized he was being pursued, but by a single rider. He turned to face Urk, and the two met in a clearing. Urk charged, waving his big axe over his head, but Anathe cast hold person. 

It was bad. This was one of those saving throws the PC is supposed to make, but he missed, and there really wasn’t much for Anathe to do at that point but slit his throat. Anathe was also pleased to discover that the dragon’s head, which Urk had been carrying around, was tied to Urk’s horse. Anathe took the head and left.

The party followed Urk slowly, and eventually found him dead in the road. They retrieved his body and took it back to their sponsoring church. They traded away magic items to pay to raise Urk from the dead, although for some reason (DM fiat, that’s why) Urk’s beard was not restored, still cut off crudely under his chin where his throat had been cut. Now there are lots of beardless dwarf jokes, and an enduring hatred for Anathe in the party.


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*Back to the adventure*

Back to the Adventure:
While exploring and scouting around, the party made contact with a scout team of four halflings, who were able to lead them into the keep through a secret tunnel. The Keep was in fairly bad shape. The clerics there were pushed to the limit, using their spells to heal and create as much food and water as possible, in order to spare the keep's stores. The keep is crowded, with some of the townsfolk who managed to escape, the normal garrison, and the only mercenary company that the Baron was able to hire -- The Shiremen, all halflings. In addition the Baron called in some favors from old adventuring buddies, so there's a party of older adventurer types there, including Avaros, an elven archer (and member of Eli's dream prestige class, The Order of the Shooting Star). 

The Shiremen are a good choice -- they do the tunneling pretty well, and don't take up as much room. But there is one major problem. They're shortbows don't have the range of the enemy's longbows, so they are little help in such a static ranged battle. The spellcasters on both sides are largely cancelling each other out, so the one figure that's making a difference for the defenders is Avaros, who has managed, thanks to his exceptional range (feats and special abilities), to keep the enemy crews away from their siege engines, at least while they're close enough to hit the keep. But even with his elven nature, Avaros was getting very tired.

There's one more wrinkle. Naturally, this whole thing involves dragons. The party is told enough for them to figure out what is going on in the mine -- the Dragon armies are trying to widen the mine passages to allow a huge red dragon -- a great wyrm -- to escape from underneath the mountain and into the outside world, where it can be a powerful ally for their faith. The Dragon has sent to the surface some of it's children, younger dragons that can fit through the existing passages. It's going to take a while, so the players have some time to do something about it, but it's going to be tricky.

Then Avaros sends for Eli. Avaros doesn't dare leave the walls for long, although the smaller dragons making strafing runs in the middle of the night makes that dangerous. But Avaros has an idea. There used to be a master fletcher, a gnome, that worked with his order in the old days. This gnome, named Solen, knew the secrets of making arrows of dragon slaying. Avaros has a vague idea where the gnome is now, and he sends Eli and his friends to go find the gnome, give him a token as an introduction, and ask him for some arrows.

The party was joined, at this point, by Uri, a halfling rog1/wiz3 who was one the Shiremen (a new player joined the group). The party was smuggled back out of the keep, and sent on their way. They were spotted by the attacking army and pursued by Anathe, a warband under his command, and one of the younger dragons. After a few days of running, they managed to set an ambush and kill most of the pursuit, including Anathe, but a rogue named Shimar managed to escape and began tailing the party, passing information through the dragon (which was not part of that attack) and even sending Anathe's body back to be raised. 

The party reached Dyvers where they needed to find someone to take them to the island where Solen, the gnome, has his laboratory. They discovered that the dragon cult was gaining power and followers very quickly in town, to the detriment of the other faiths. The rogue who was tailing them made contact with the temples there and arranged some surprises for them. They had a side adventure there, where they needed to rescue a smuggler, who was then in their debt and willing to take them to Solen's island. 

There they met Solen, who was quirky but good to them, served them waffles for every meal, gave them each a gift and showed them his new project (black powder and black powder weapons). Besides the individual gifts he gave them five arrows of dragon slaying. Pah got interested in the black powder (she calls is science, and the name stuck), talked Solen into a second demostration, and later stole (Traded without asking for a handful of gems she left behind) three small kegs and a brace of pistols. And a bag of holding to carry it all in. (This was expected, it plays in to what I'm doing down the line).


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*Goodbye Norham*

Goodbye Norham
On the boat trip back from Solen's tower, the encountered a ship with a huge dragon silhouette on the sail. It was from the dragoncult, and they were after the party. There was a blue dragon on board as well, who dove into the water.

This was my big move to take Norham out of the game. His player took a job in Hawaii, the bastard. 

While the dragonship closed, and Eli kept them busy using the fire arrows that had been his gift from Solen. The blue dragon suddenly sprang up from the water under their little smuggling skiff, snatched Norham off the deck (I actually rolled a natural 20, but I would have fudged it anyway). The dragon flew up, chewing on well-plated Norham, while Norham tried to escape. After a few rounds, Norham rolled well when the dragon didn't, and managed to pry himself free, only to find himself 100 feet above the water and far away from the boat. He fell, hit the water hard, and sank like an armor-plated stone. He never resurfaced (as there's no body, and there are some real long shot ways he could have survived, I can bring him back in the future if Drew comes back for a visit).

Then, while the Cultist's ship fell away, trying to put out several fires in their rigging, the dragon turned back to the little smuggling boat. It went into a big dive at the little smuggling boat, intent on trashing it. Eli turned to face the dragon, pulling the package of arrows of dragon slaying from his pack. He fired one shot, missed, then a second, which killed the dragon just before it reached the boat.

The characters tried to find some sign of Norham, but there was nothing to be found. They did manage to find the arrow that had missed, a few hundred yards away, floating in the water, and recovered it. Then they slipped away, hoping to avoid further contact with the dragonship on the way back to Dyvers.


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*The Journey back to Spittlemarch:*

The first step was getting back in to Dyvers. They were passengers on the smuggler’s ship (the one they’d helped earlier) and he was not free to just sail into the harbor, so they were delayed by a stop at a Rhennee barge-village, where they made the last part of their trip on a Rhennee trade barge headed for Dyvers. As they entered the port they saw that anchored there already was a fairly familiar ship with singed decks and rigging. They did their best to be careful, as they expected trouble from the Dragonpriests again. 

It turned out to be worse than they thought – they were being sought quite actively by the city guard. They managed to make their way fairly anonymously to the city gates, where there was a line of people being examined on their way out of the city. Pah snuck ahead and managed to figure out that the guards had a fairly accurate description of the party. 

Their plan for escaping from the city was to do their best to disguise themselves and pass through the gate one at a time, as the guard seemed to expect that they would be traveling as a group. Pah and Urk managed to get outside the gate without incident, but Uri was recognized while Eli was still within the gates, and all hell broke loose. 

Uri was dragged into the tower, while Eli and the others tried to figure out what to do. Pah hastily tried to make a couple of homemade grenades with her black powder, and she and Urk charged the tower, hoping to blow a hole in the wall to help Eli escape. The powder didn’t work as they’d hoped, they didn’t manage to make the hole they were looking for, so they charged on into the gate while Eli offered cover fire from atop a wagon. 

In the short fight that followed Uri managed to free himself and get ouside, tossing a web spell into the tower behind him, effectively cutting off pursuit for a few rounds. The Garrison did manage to get the portcullis down, though, and the party, after killing a few guards (Pah mostly running around shooting her pistols and making a lot of noise) they fled back into the slums of the city to try to regroup. 

Faced with the need to get out and knowing that the gate garrisons would be that much more vigilant, they were forced to go to a smarmy halfling rogue contact they made in town previously, a git who had a habit of hitting on Pah shamelessly. The thief was a member of the local guild, and he arranged to smuggle the party out of the city in some of their secret tunnels for a hefty fee. This took a great deal of debate, as part of the condition was that they be blindfolded. In the end the agreed, and were finally free of Dyvers.

They managed to pick up mounts and make their way back to the Spittlemarch area without further incident.


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*Back in the Keep*

The party made their way back to the keep, where they found things had been steadily deteriorating in their absence. Avaros was on his last legs on the walls, which were even more battered and scorched. They delivered their four remaining arrows of Dragon slaying. 

They also discovered Solen there, waiting for them, having produced a few more arrows and interested in “talking” to Pah about the missing “science.” 

Solen would have liked to force her to return the powder, but the one plan the party had to put an end to the siege depended upon the powder, so he left it in her hands. 

There were some reports from the halfling scouts about the work going on at the Mine. They had been able to discover that there had been a cave-in while the party was away, setting back work on the mine and killing many of the slaves, as well as some of the guards. A trio of dwarven engineers had been hired to come in and help direct efforts to shore up the new, wider passages necessary to allow the great wyrm to pass. Now parties of slaves were in the woods cutting trees and milling them into crude timbers to support the walls, in addition to the work being done in the mine itself. 

The scouts had also found a chimney, a rough shaft that a team of Halflings had used to try to enter the mines and scout around inside, but they had not come back out. 

The plan was for the party to enter the mine system through the chimney, find a place where they could use Solen’s powder kegs, now converted into bombs, to bring down the mine and try to seal it, so the dragon could not escape. Eli was equipped with two of the remaining arrows of dragon slaying, and the party set off.


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*Entering the Mines*

The party began the long climb down the chimney, trying not to cough too much on the smoke and steam that filled it. Pah, the rogue, was the first one down. Once at the bottom of the chimney she had a few moments to peek into the room from above. A pair of kobolds was working on some raw meat in one corner of the room. From time to time one would carry over a few chunks of meat and throw them into the large cauldron that hung over the fire, directly under the chimney. 
That would be about when Urk, the second PC coming down the chimney, failed a climb test and slipped, falling into Pah and dumping both of them into the stewpot below. There was a great deal of swearing involved.

The party moved as quickly as they could to kill the kobolds, but not before one managed to shout out an alarm. 

The once the rest of the group was on the ground and they had a moment to regroup, they discovered that the meat the kobolds were cutting up and putting in the stewpot was human – there were two half-butchered bodies in the corner. In another corner there were skeletons and bits of clothing that had been cast aside while preparing many previous meals – including four small, halfling-sized skulls.

The Kobold area in the mine system consisted of a series of rough, natural chambers connected by 5’ wide passages, all rough and winding. Listening at the couple of passages that left this room, they heard some shuffling coming from the more northerly passage, so they moved that way quickly. 

This passage led directly to the Kobold Chieftain’s bedchamber, where he, a few flunkies, and his pet dire weasel were waiting for the party. There was a quick, dirty little battle, in which the party made quick work of everyone but the chief, who managed to get by them all and run down the passage, looking for more help. Now, a kobold moves very fast for a little guy – base 30’ – and the only member of the party who could make that kind of time was Eli. So he took off after the chief, while the others started to poke around, checking out a locked chest and some of the other goodies in the room. They poked and prodded at stuff, eventually Pah got the lock on the chest open, and they were starting to divvy up the loot when Eli came charging back into the room, pursued by the newly healed up chief and more scaly reinforcements. 

I should point out that at this point Uri is only able to help carry loot and poke through things with his off hand – he’d cast a shocking grasp on himself and hadn’t managed to land a touch attack. He insisted on not dismissing the energy of the spell, and therefore wasn’t able to touch anything with that hand.

So began a large running battle with kobolds. The kobolds lived in a series of rough, small caves that connected to the main mine shafts. Urk cleaved through the little kobolds, while Eli tumbled around and tried to stay out of trouble. One of the Kobold adepts cast obscuring mist to cover their eventual retreat, which helped a few escape. When the mist cleared a few seconds later Urk was covered in gore, Eli was a little worse for wear, Pah had several kills under her belt, and Uri was still waving around a glowing hand with a shocking grasp spell he had not managed to discharge. 

The party drank heavily from their stash of healing potions and peeked out of the kobold caves to get the lay of the land. There were several exits from the kobold caverns. Several lead into the huge entry cavern, where they could see the surviving kobolds frantically trying to tell the mercary guards, dragonpriests, and a few others about the party. The other exits led to a larger mine passage that lead away from that room. 

A quick examination by Urk determined that the next room down the passage was the spot that had caved in previously. There were some temporary timber supports in the room holding the ceiling up, and a group of human slaves under kobold guard working to cart the last the debris away. They figured that one of their powder bombs places by the timber support in that chamber would bring the roof down, sealing off that chamber and hopefully the mine system. They didn’t have a lot of time – the bad guys were coming to investigate, so they charged, Uri leading the way with his glowing hand. 

It didn’t take long for the party to make short work of the handful of guards. They had a few seconds to talk to the slaves, but the slaves refused to try to escape without their children, held prisoner and hostage in the caves below. With little or no time to think about it, they sent the slaves out towards the main entrance, where they would slow down the bad guys (who would have to round them up again). Uri waved is STILL glowing hand at them to get them moving while Pah and Urk set the charge. With the fuse lit, the party ran down the passage, away from the pursuit, deeper into the mine. A few seconds later the bomb went off, brining the ceiling down and cutting off pursuit. It also, apparently sealed the party inside the mine with the dragon and it’s minions.

The party, knocked to the ground by the blast, dusted themselves off by the dim light of Uri's glowing hand.

Next post: the party splits up (great idea!) and someone gets all pruny.


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*Eli gets wet*

Okay, here’s the situation, The party’s mission was to ‘sneak’ in to the mine system through the chimney, find a place to plant a bomb to try to collapse enough of the mine system to prevent the big dragon, called Sear, from reaching the outside world. They fell down the chimney, had big noisy fight with kobolds (some of whom managed to escape), encountered slaves who wouldn’t revolt, and had to blow up a room behind themselves as they ran deeper into the mines to try to avoid a huge battle they couldn’t hope to win. Now, apparently cut off from the outside world by the pile of rubble they created with their first of three bombs (or, as Pah has always refered to the black poweder, "Science"), they dusted themselves off, getting ready to see what was ahead in the mines. 

Still coughing on the dust from the explosion, they began to move down the passage, which sloped down to a lower level. They did their best to move quietly and managed to get close enough to see what was going on in the chamber ahead without being seen. 

The passage they had come down had curved back underneath the upper levels they had already been on, and the chamber they were looking at was actually directly beneath the main chamber, where the kobolds had run for help. They had not had time to get a good look at that room, but now they could see that there was a large trap door that connected the main chamber on the upper level and the chamber in front of them. So, despite the bomb which had closed the passage behind them, there was still a clear passage from the depths to the surface.

The room before them was occupied by a handful of lizardfolk, one of whom was having an urgent conversation with someone on the upper level. The other lizardfolk were watching the shadowy passage where the characters were hiding. Eventually one, obviously a leader of sorts, spotted Urk. He stepped into the mouth of the passage, where he could not be seen from the trap door, and motioned for Urk to come over to him. 

Urk shrugged his shoulders and came out of his hiding space. Uri followed as well, not wanting to leave Urk out in the open alone. Meanwhile, Pah and Eli -- the two most able to hide, stayed in the shadows. 

The Lizardman introduced himself as Brantagh. He signaled for them to follow him, quickly. Urk and Uri complied, signaling for Pah and Eli to stay behind. 

"It’s a bad idea to split up the group," said Eli, but no one paid any attention.

Urk and Uri were lead down a mine passage to a place where rough natural passages intersected with the milled dwarven mine walls. They turned down the natural passage and soon found themselves in a guard chamber of sorts -- a half dozen lizardfolk lounged around this room, watching Brantagh lead the dwarf and halfling past, and through a crude bead curtain at the far end of the room. 

The room beyond, a huge open chamber, was the home of the lizardfolk tribe that had taken up residence on the second level of the mine. There were a handful of cookfires and sleeping areas, and some sign of the folk working to make this cavern feel a bit more like home. The vast majority of the folk in the room were non-combatants, but there was a core of warriors and leaders waiting as the two player characters approached.

The Chieftess waited for Bangrah to struggle through introductions, then began to explain the situation the Lizardfolk had found themselves in. 

*******

Meanwhile, things were getting complicated for Pah and Eli. Especially Eli. Despite some minor efforts by the lizardmen on the second level to slow things down, a crude basket lift lowered a dwarven engineer and a handful of human mercenaries down to the lower level. This group started to look around, and explore the mouth of the passage where Eli and Pah were hiding. The dwarven engineer spotted Eli and shouted an alarm. Eli, spooked, bolted back up the passage, looking for some better cover. Pah, hidden by excellent hiding skills and a cloak of elvenkind, stayed where she was and hoped for the best. 

The engineer waited a few more minutes for some more reinforcements, then led a large group into the passage, methodically hunting Eli down. Eli had found himself a boulder to hide behind, and was waiting for them to appear. When the vanguard of the soldiers became visible by the light of their own torches, Eli shot the first one. The rest took cover. 

Then the Dwarf shouted up to Eli, recommending that Eli surrender himself -- he couldn’t hold out against all of them, and he would only make it worse for himself. They bantered back and forth a bit, and finally Eli, taking a moment to hide a single dagger someplace he hoped they wouldn’t search (I didn’t ask -- do you want to know, really?) he surrendered to the Dwarf and his men. They disarmed him, but didn’t strip search him, so he was able to keep his dagger. Not that anyone else wanted it. 

Pah took the opportunity of the distraction further up the passage to slip off in the direction Urk and Uri had gone, hoping to find them, and tell them what had happened to Eli.

******

The Chieftess, Rarah, explained to Urk and Uri that the Lizardfolk were not happy with the situation they were in. They had lived for years in a nice, comfortable swamp, with tense but mostly peaceful relations with the neighboring folk. Then a dragonpriest had come to them, told them that the dragons were gaining power in the world, that they would reward the faithful and there was a place in the grand plan for the tribe if they were willing to help. The folk were convinced, at first, and joined the human dragonpriest, following him to the mines, where they prepared to help create a passage wide enough for the great wyrm to pass. 

At first the community was great -- an alliance with Kobolds and troglodytes and humans, working together to bring draconian power back to the world. But the tactics employed by the Dragonpriests, not to mention the shiftlessness of the kobolds and the depravity of the Trogs, left the Lizardfolk feeling far from safe. But, sandwiched as they were between the kobolds and humans above, and the trogs and dragonkin below, they had little hope of escape. 

The second level, garrisoned by the Lizardfolk, contained, among other things, the holding pens for the children of the slaves. The children were held there to insure the good behavior of the slaves, who drew lots once a day to see who would be allowed to deliver some meager food to the children. The lizardfolk are not great fans of humans in general, but they were aware that, had the children ended up in the care of the Trogs or Kobolds they would suffer much more horribly, and eventually been eaten. The Rarah was unwilling to leave the children behind to that fate, a decision which trapped her and her people in the caverns as much as it did the children. She has been hoping for an escape, and Uri and Urk (and eventually, Pah) might make it possible for them to take the children out of the caves and escape. 

The Lizardfolk had been doing some extracurricular digging, and had a small, secret passage to the surface. Rarah promised the party that if they could seal off the lower level, cutting off the dragon’s access, they would show the party the way out, and lead the children out as well. 

When Pah arrived, and was brought up to speed, she told the party that Eli had surrendered. Bangrah was sent to find out what would happen to him. The other three took some time to regroup, resting and preparing to head back into the mines, pouring over crude maps of the mine system that the Lizardfolk were able to provide. A little over an hour later, Brantagh returned with Eli’s story.

******

Eli was taken to the third level of the mine system, past the caverns where the troglodyte tribe made its home, through and entry chamber with a few human and a young dragon guard, into a huge vaulted natural chamber, through which an underground stream flowed from a spot on the wall near where Eli and his guards entered, towards the far end of the chamber where there was a huge chasm, more than 50’ across, with no bottom in sight. 

Situated near the chasm was a banquet table, laden with an emabarrassment of foods -- great roasted turkeys, hams, sides of beef, with wheels of cheese and a wide variety of fruit. Sitting at the table was Eldgrim, the half-dragon leader of the Dragonpriests, and son of the great wyrm, Sear. 

Eldgrim began questioning Eli, and almost immediately it was clear that things were not going to go well. To begin with, he couldn’t be charmed -- he’s an elf, so there was no charming him and trying to make use of him. To make matters worse, the dwarf had discovered the two arrows of dragon slaying in Eli’s quiver -- he didn’t recognize them for what they were, but the half-dragon sure did. Then, as if there were not enough evidence against him, the party's old adversary Anathe turned up, and identified Eli as a member of the party that had killed a couple of smaller dragons already -- and indeed had already killed Anathe once a few weeks before. (the last time the party had seen him they'd left him in a shallow grave along the side of the road). 

Of course, when they asked, Eli didn’t lie about it, either. 

So Eldgrim walked over to the edge of the chasm, where there was a large brass horn on a stand. He blew a single note towards the chasm, then idly picked at some of the food on the table. While they waited for something to happen, Anathe approached and gave Eli a punch in the ribs for old time’s sake. 

These plesantries were interrupted by the arrival of Sear, the great wyrm, flying up from the underdark with a great rush of dust and wind. The Wyrm took her son’s report, examined the arrows herself, and chastised him for not having destroyed them already. The arrows of dragon slaying were tossed onto the fire, where Eli watched them slowly start to burn, along with half of the party's hopes of success in their mission. 

Then Sear turned her attention to Eli. As she could see little or no use in keeping him alive, she killed him -- swiftly, efficiently -- impaled him with a long claw, and gave his body to the trogs for their dinner.

Bangrah watched, concealed his dismay, and returned to carry the news of Eli’s death to the rest of the party. 

There, the party was upset. They knew they needed to recover Eli’s body in order to raise him -- can you cast raise dead on a collection of Trog droppings? Once Brantagh understood that they hoped to recover his body to have him raised, he was able to offer a glimmer of hope. Troglodyte eating habits are a lot like crocodile eating habits. 

This didn’t mean much to the Halflings at first, so the Lizardman explained. Trogs, like crocs, like their meat soggy and decayed. They will kill something, drag it underwater and wedge it into a crevice, under a log, something that will hold lit in place for a few days while the corpse decays and soaks. It was more than likely that Eli wouldn’t be eaten right away, which meant his corpse could still be recovered and raised.

Still, his corpse would be, as his player put it, "Manky." He also spent a lot of time pointing out that he'd said splitting up the party was a bad idea. The short folk in the party tend to act as if this sort of criticism doesn't exist. Ho hum.

Next post: rescuing a dead body and bringing down the house.


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*Bring out your dead*

The party, now averaging much shorter without their token elf, examine the maps that the Lizardfolk are able to provide of the lower levels. The third level of the mine system is not especially complicated, and it looks like they'll be able to seal it off with their last two bombs -- and they might not even have to venture that far into the level, except that they have a second goal now. They have to get into the trog camp and recover Eli's body. 

More detail on the plan: The passage that leads to the third level leads directly to a fairly large, round chamber (entering from the west) with many small passages headoing off in several directions. A well-cut passage to the north leads to an old dwarven temple, rededicated to the Dragon faith by the dragonpriests. Directly south there is a dead end -- an unfinished passage that is the center of slave mining work on this level -- another 20 feet or so and that passage will reach into Sear's and Eldgrim's main audience chamber. For now, that main chamber is only accessible through a much smaller (5' wide) rough, natural passage.

To the east three different 5'wide rough passages lead to Trog country. The Lizardfolk don't have any maps of that area -- they believe it's another large open chamber, and know that there is an underground stream in it (the stream passes through the trog areas, through the guard chamber outside Eldgrim's audience chamber, through Eldgrim's chamber, eventually flowing over the edge of the chasm there into the Underdark.

The central room, if the supports could be blown out and the roof brought down, would cut the entire lower level off from the outside world. If they had no desire to do anything more than set the bomb and run for it, they could get it done fairly easily. But none of them expect recovering Eli's body to be especailly difficult. They will sneak through the central chamber, make their way into the trog encampment, recover Eli, run for the second level and blow the chamber on the way out. Simple as that.

Rarah, the Lizard chief, decided to send one of her lieutenants, Bangrah, who had already been some help to the party. Bangrah was a druid, had a pet giant lizard named Wowar, and was not there just because Eli's player had no one to play for the session, honest. Really. That was just a coincidence. Really. Honest.

Anyway, bolstered by Bangrah and Wowar, the party hitched up their shorts and made their way to the third level of the mine system.

Next post: I'll get around to the big battle on the third level, and whether or not they can rescue Eli, close the mine, kill Eldgrim and Sear, and still make it back to the keep in time for more of Solen's waffles.


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*Battle in Troglodyte Central*

The Heroes charged into the central room, the one they would have to blow to seal off the mines. There were four troglodyte guards loitering in the room, picking through some trash, while in the distance slaves worked listlessly on a tunnel. 

While Pah and Uri puked their guts out (the stench of Troglodytes takes a little getting used to), Urk and Bangrah made quick work of the trogs, and the party moved quickly, hoping to move fast enough to surprise the trog encampment. It nearly worked, too.

The passage they chose, the middle of three that lead into the trog camp, was just wide enough for them to pass single file. The party raced town the passage, through several turns, and ran out into a small alcove which opened up into the wider main cavern. There were a handful of trogs around the campfire there, as more deeper in the cavern, as well as many non-combatants. 

Pah was in the lead, followed closely by Urk. Pah stepped to one side once she’d entered the room and tried to make herself as inconspicuous as possible, while Urk screamed and charged directly into the first group of trogs. 

Uri stepped into the chamber and started to spread web around liberally. He managed to gum up a lot of the trogs in the area, and for once not trap Urk in the web, a rare bonus for the party. Bangrah also charged into the room, moving a bit further out to engage some trogs that had taken up defensive positions with an annoying stack of javelin. With Wowar (his lizard pet) at his side he tore into the trogs, only to see more, including a leader, moving in from the northern wing of the cave system.

Pah, largely forgotten in the face of much bigger threats, began the laborious process of hiding and moving silently – a tough challenge made possible by a lot of skill and elven cloak and boots – to try to get into a sneak attack position on the spellcaster trog that was coming to join the fray. 

Urk managed to finish the five he’d been working on, with a little help from Uri, and went chugging towards the trog adept on his stubby little legs. 

The Adept saw him coming. A quick dash of Urk’s favorite spell (Hold Person) left Urk paralyzed and vulnerable. The next round the adept attacked the now-immobile great axe in the dwarf’s hands, still smeared with gore – with a shatter spell. With a nasty grin he prepare to take a shot at the dwarf’s skull in the next round.

But Pah had finally made her circuit around the trog, unnoticed in the heat of battle. She close to point blank range, leveled an experimental “science” pistol at his kidneys, and . . . missed.

Urk, on the far side of the Trog, managed to look very scared, but Pah managed to save his life anyway, by drawing the Adept’s attention. Round after round, Pah backpedaled, fighting defensively, taking only a few hits, but hits that threatened to knock her out. Then, finally, the hold person wore off and Urk was back in action. In moments he’d dropped the remains of his axe, drawn his longsword (Shatterspike, from you-know-where) and gone after the Adept. Now flanked. The Adept was in real trouble, and took off running. 

Meanwhile, in the other end of the room, Bangrah and Uri were finishing the last of the other trogs. Both had taken a beating in the process, but it appeared that they had killed or driven off the last of the trogs, killing the last few by burning the webs that had imprisoned them, then finishing them with quick missile fire. 

The trog adept ran for a secret door, easily escaping the slow dwarf and halfling, who were both just as happy to see him take off running. 

An eerie calm settled over the trog cavern. Dead bodies and the last singed webs littered the room. Uri and Pah began searching for the secret door the the Adept had used to escape, with an eye out for treasure, while Urk poked through the bodies and whined about the loss of his axe. Bangrah went for a swim, retrieving the body of the dead elf, dragging it up to shore and tying it to Wowar, so he could keep his hands free for fighting. 

Uri and Pah found the secret door after some persistent searching. They opened the door, and were greated by the sound of armor-shod boots in the passage ahead. Uri, true to form, tossed a web into the mouth of the passage to seal it up, and started hollering for help. 

At about the same time Urk and Bangrah discovered more Trogs pouring into the room from the south. Each round a few more entered the room, tossing javelins and charging at the battered dwarf and lizardman, who tried desperately to hold the line.

Pah and Eli smelled the smoke first. Someone on the otherside of the web was burning their way through, and that wasn’t good. They backed off a bit, then a little more, then turned and ran when they saw the armed men and trogs pour through the last of the web, lead by Anathe, their dragonpriest nemesis. 

The party was left with one passage, the central one, through which to escape. With the Dwarf and the Lizardman trying to cover them, they tried an orderly retreat. Then Bangrah fell. 

Pah was at his side in moments, giving him a healing potion, while Urk did his best to cover them. Uri was out of web spells, and could do little more than lead Wawar into the tunnel as the vanguard on their escape. When the moment to run came, Pah was the last one into the tunnel, tossing a pair of tanglefoot bags at the ground to delay pursuit. 

With a quick few seconds to regroup and get their breath, the began the bolt for the exit. They followed the winding passage single file again, which eventually returned them to the Central Chamber.

Where Eldgrim was waiting for them.

When the report of the attack had come to him, Eldgrim acted quickly, rallying the trogs who had fled, bringing in his personal guard and some of his more devoted followers, including Anathe. He sent two parties around the two flanks, forcing the heroes into the center, where he was waiting for them. 

Eldgrim’s first action was his breath weapon. Uri and Urk were badly burned. Wawar had already run by, and was not in the cone of effect. Pah, towards the back, thanked the gods of third edition for her evasion ability, which saved her from any damage at all (and a damn good thing it did, as she was the one carrying two kegs of "science"[gunpowder] in a bag of holding). But Bangren was not so fortunate. He failed his save, taking the full brunt of the Half-dragon’s breath. 

Urk got mad. He let out an incoherent yowl and charged Eldgrim, while Pah and Uri headed for the exit. Pah took a few rounds to plant her charges while Urk fought Eldgrim, but the round she finished setting them, Eldgrim knocked Urk out with a devastating blow. 

Uri had one spell left. He stepped forward and touched Pah, making her invisible. She blinked out of sight, and Uri turned and ran for the surface. Eldgrim took a moment, savoring his apparent victory, and prepared to finish off Urk. But in that time Pah had reached Urk’s side, and slipped him a potion of healing. Urk, still prone, grabbed up Shatterspike and announced his recovery with a feeble swipe at Eldgrim’s legs. Eldgrim, looking at the now-visible halfling and the conscious dwarf, made an effort to finish the dwarf once and for all and . . . rolled a 1, then blew his roll to avoid a fumble, and tossed his sword across the room. 

Pah and Urk took Eldgrim’s momentary delay [going to retrieve his sword] as a last, desperate opportunity to escape. They stumbled for the exit, Pah lighting the short fuse on the kegs on the way out. 

A few seconds later they were knocked down by the explosion that shook the room and brought down the ceiling. Uri helped them make their way out of the field of falling rock. 

*********

They took a few rounds to chug what potions they had left, then made their way up to the second level of the mine, where they found the Lizardfolk were already evacuating the children. They were whisked out the secret passage, as promised, and fell to the ground in an exhausted heap outside the mines.

Next time: Romper room.


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*Out of the Mines, into Romper Room*

The party managed to escape the mine system with their new allies, the Lizardfolk, along with the hostage children of the slaves that the Lizardfolk had been guarding. Once outside the mine system, the Lizardfolk turned the children over to the heroes and began their long walk back to the swamps that they call home. The Lizards considered the death of Bangren a high enough price to have paid, and were not interested in being much more help to the characters.

As the lizardfolk filed away, the children, who had been cowed and well behaved around the imposing Lizardfolk, started to perk up and ask questions. A chorus of “who are you, where is my mommie, what happened to him (Eli), why are you so short, can we have something to eat?” and so on. Within minutes of the departure of the Lizardfolk the clearing the party was standing in with the children was boucing and lively as a halfling street festival. The children had been cooped up in the dark for weeks, and were enjoying being out in the open air. 

A few took an interest in Eli’s corpse, and it was all that Urk could do to keep them from playing with him like a puppet. Uri and Pah ran themselves ragged trying to keep the children from wandering too far into the woods, while trying to determine what their next move would be. Just when it seemed like they would lose all control of the situation, a shadow passed over the clearing. It was a dragon, one of Sear’s children, it’s scaly hide already pierced with several small arrows. The children, swept up with dragonfear, flew to Urk’s side, all trying to be the closest one to him. But the dragon keeps going, flying off out of sight in moments. 

The appearance of the Dragon gave the three heroes enough leverage with the children that they were able to get them moving towards Castle Spittlemarch in a fairly orderly, quiet fashion. 

After a short hike, the party was met by a team of four halfing scouts – they remembered one, Owen, from the keep. They compared notes, and Owen and his scouts returned to the Dragonpriest’s camp, outside the mine system, where the slaves are still cowering, despite the vastly depleted enemy forces, refusing to rise up against the dragonpriests until they know their children were safe. Owen and the other halflings refused to help babysit the children, snickering to each other at the trouble the three heroes were having.

The party continued on towards the keep. The scouts sent word on ahead to the keep, and the party was met by a priest and a few servants on the road near the keep. The servants took the children on ahead towards the keep, while the priest tended to the party’s wounds as best he could. 

The party learned from the priest that the besieging army, made up mostly of mercenaries, had packed up and left when they heard that the mine was sealed and there would be no payment for them from the Dragon’s hoard. The small contingent of Dragonpriests and their supporters left in a hurry trying to avoid being captured by the Baron’s forces. This had left the pretender and a few followers, who also hit the road, running for shelter somewhere, hoping to regroup.

The players entered the keep. At that point, things were still fairly subdued – there had been no news from the mines about the slaves, so victory did not seem complete yet. The party was taken to the chapel, where priests began to prepare Eli’s body to be raised. 

Soon, while those preparations were made, the news that the slaves were free, and the last of the dragonpriest forces were on the run, the whole story became clear – the actions of the Heroes in the mines had set in motion the chain reaction that dismantled the forces of the Dragonpriests in the area. The Baron ordered that Eli be raised with the last, rare, true resurrection scroll that the baronial family had, in a secret store room. This scroll was very old, having been scribed over a century ago, and kept as a hedge against the death of an heirless member of the Baron’s line. There was a great deal of protest, but the Baron insisted. In a few hours, Eli was back, in a bad mood. He smelling a little better, although his nervous flop sweat would always have that swampy rot smell to it, for the rest of his life. 

The Baron declared that there will be a feast the next day – a great celebration in honor of the heroes of Spittlemarch. The party, exhausted, slept until it was time to dress for the feast. 

At the feast, the party was honored, and given gifts by the Baron. 

Eli was given a familiar-looking Bow (actually Avaros’ bow, on loan. More on this later).

Urk is given an enchanted Axe (+1 Keen greataxe).

Pah is given a pair of small, well-made pistols. (I made a switch from the rules in the DMG for gunpowder weapons to those for privateer press’ Iron Kingdoms setting. Pah was given a pair of enchanted, +1 small pistols – small enough for her to train with and use reasonably, although they did slightly less damage (actually about the same on average, but at 2d4, it’s max isn’t quite so hight).

Uri is given a cloak woven of enchanted spider silk (Cloak of Arachnia).

Two of these gifts (cloak and pistols) came from Solen, while the axe came from the Baron and the bow from Avaros (as noted above – the bow is very special, and is only a loaner). 

Then a Bard stood up and sang the Ballad of the Heroes of Spittlemarch, something he’d written himself. It was obvious, as the rest of the people in the great hall sing along to the chorus, that they’ve heard it before, and it has captured their imagination, despite the fact that it’s clearly awful. The bard had done very little research – there was little sign of what had actually happened in the ballad, and the verse was so bad it had clearly been written quickly, probably over drinks.

Next time: The Ballad of the Heroes of Spittlemarch.


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*The Ballad of the Heroes of Spittlemarch*

FYI, I know this is awful. It's meant to be. 
******

The Heroes of Spittlemarch

Dark clouds gathered in Spittlemarch
Brought by the kin of the dragon

Great lizards and small, evil all
And it seemed that all hope was gone.

What would become of poor Spittlemarch
What would become of poor Spittlemarch

But four heroes came to the keep
Answering the Baron’s call for aid

Four from afar, most seemed quite short
But of no sterner stuff could they have been made


And they were the heroes of Spittlemarch
And they were the heroes of Spittlemarch. 


Kin to the stag and the twig 
The Elf, master of blade and bow

Struck fear and death into dragonkin
And arrows that laid dragons low

Call him Dragonbane of Spittlemarch
Call him Dragonbane of Spittlemarch

Brother to the roots of the mountains
The Dwarf swung his axe with great fury

Cut a path through the dark ones
With blows that no weapon can parry

Call him the Reaper of Spittlemarch
Call him the Reaper of Spittlemarch

Shadow and light, beauty and danger
The halfling lass and her science

Skulked in the shadows and Roared out
With fear drove dark minions to penance

Call her the Thunder of Spittlemarch
Call her the Thunder of Spittlemarch

Thunder’s brother, and kin to weaver
A halfling lad that bound evil in web

He filled the mines with his weaving
And turned the tide of evil to ebb.

Call him the Spider of Spittlemarch
Call him the Spider of Spittlemarch.

They went to Dragon Mountain
To face the ancient evil called Sear

Her servants and priest. Led by her son,
Eldgrim, a villain who ruled with evil and fear.

They were the doom of fair Spittlemarch
They were the doom of fair Spittlemarch.

The four who knew no fear did come
And brought new hope to the people

Dragonbane brought his great longbow
And Reaper swung his great axe

Spider trapped the minions of evil
And Thunder brought down the mountain.

They are the heroes of Spittlemarch
Thank the gods for the heroes of Spittlemarch.


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*R&R*

After a few weeks of rest, training, and relaxing, the party had begun to wear on their hosts, the Baron and his family, who were hard at work trying to rebuild Spittlemarch. The characters had finally reached 6th level, and were training – Pah took a level of fighter for the extra feat and the combat bonuses, Uri is getting very interested in item creation, etc. 

[I am using the Iron Kingdoms rules for small arms for Pah’s pistols, so she needed the Exotic Weapon (small arms) feat, as well as the skill Craft (small arms) to reload the pistols. She also took ambidexterity, so she can shoot with either hand, although if she were to shoot both hands at once she’ll still have the penalties for fighting two-handed.]

At one point, there was a break-in – someone snuck into the PC’s chambers in the castle and stole Pah’s old pistols and the last of the old gunpowder that she had. The party searched their chambers and the keep for some sign of what had happened, but didn’t come up with anything. In the end they went to Solen, who used some high level scrying, etc., to show them in a magic bowl the pistols in their current location, in the saddlebags of the henchman and valet of the Bard who had been on hand to write the doggerel that was still being sung in taverns around Spittlemarch. They scried on the pair long enough to determine that the were approaching a small city called Brindinford. 

Solen was very upset – he was concerned that the secrets of his “science” end up in the wrong hands, so he pushed the party to pursue the Bard and valet (named Hewit and Fiver, respectively). 

While they were there, Urk asked Solen to show him Anathe, their old nemesis. Anathe was walking in the underdark, single file, as part of a line of figures, mostly drow, that also included Eldgrim, who definitely looked much the worse for having a mountain dropped on him, but who was apparently still alive. Anathe sensed that he was being scried, and tried to turn the tables on Solen, so Solen broke the connection, but while the connection was fading, Urk made a series of obscene gestures for Anathe’s benefit. Urk also announced that he had decide to name his new axe Anathema.

Eli also had personal business in Brindinford. He has always wanted to join an order of elven archers called the order of the shooting star (it’ll be a prestige class that borrows heavily from the Order of the Bow, and a bit from Arcane Archer.) Avaros is a member, and has given Eli a letter of introduction to his master Maravos. That, and the bow Talia (which Maravos knows) will hopefully convince Maravos to take Eli into the order and begin his training. 

Talia is an intelligent, talking, +1 Mighty Composite Longbow (+2 str). She’s lawful good, speaks several languages, and grants her user the free use of Mobility and can detect evil at will. Obviously, such a rare bow will have to be returned, but Avaros is sending her with Eli as an observer, and she will offer an evaluation of Eli’s fitness for the order when Eli meets Maravos.

The party gathers their gear, saddles up quickly, and heads off to Brindinford in pursuit of the Bard and his flunky.

Next Post: the party starts The Speaker in Dreams


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*Brindinford (speaker in dreams part 1):*

The heroes entered Brindinford, trying to fight their way through the throngs in the street. Although there were a lot of halflings in the crowd, it was still quite difficult to see very far in this crowd, as the tallest member of the party was the elf, Eli, who as something just over 5 foot. It was going to be a long search (they are still looking for hewit and fiver). 

It also became clear fairly quickly that looking for a bard in the middle of a city-wide festival was also going to be a bit of a challenge as well. After just a little asking around they’d been given several false leads, although it did seem that the song of their exploits had made it’s way top Brindinford. They heard their song sung to them in several taverns, and had several locals buy them drinks, but other than the song there was little or no sign of Hewit and Fiver.

A few hours hours after beginning this search - and after some shopping with the local merchants (Pah’s player read the fine print on her character sheet, and discovered that she was proficient with blowguns - so suddenly she had to buy a blowgun, and wanted poison. She was able to buy a simple blowgun, but not the poison so far.)

Pushing their way through the crowd, suddenly they heard a commotion ahead, but could not see what was going on. Eli jumped up on top of a merchant’s cart to try to see better (while the merchant swore at him) while the two halflings hid behind Urk, who struggled to force his way towards the commotion against the tide of people running away. Eli tried to make a jump from the cart he was on - where he did not have a good view of what was going on up ahead - to the next cart up the road, but didn’t jump far enough, falling to the ground and catching his chin on the cart he’d meant to jump to. 

Eventually they came to a place that was clear enough that they could see what was going on - a handful of dire rats and ratmen were attacking merchants and a few guardsmen in the area. The party jumped into action. 

In a few rounds of quick action several of the rats and ratmen were webbed up, while the leader and a few other ratmen raced forward to attack the party. The ratmen who charged only fought long enough to protect the ratmen who had been trapped in the web - when they ran off, on the far side of the web spell, the ratmen and their leader split up, running down small alleys, all far faster than the heroes were able to go. 

The characters had noticed that the only weapons that had made scratches on the ratmen had been magic weapons, like Urk’s axe. This was enough to convince them that what they were facing was Wererats. But as most of the party was quite slow, pursuit was out of the question. Eventually the town guard turned up, questioned the players as well as the merchants and guardsmen they had saved. In the process it came out that the players were the heroes of Spittlemarch. That turned into a rousing chorus of their theme song (which is really starting to get old by now) and then the players were allowed to go on about their business, armed and unfetter with peace-bonds -- or any real leads, for that matter, except for some odd rumors about bloody murders going on in South Gate area. 

In south gate them came upon a bad street theater performance, which was thankfully disrupted by an attack of strange, savage, blind humanoids, swinging huge stone axes and expressing their displeasure with the performance. This time the heroes managed to kill a few of them before the rest took off running. With a little examination and asking around a bit, they were able to determine that these creatures were Grimlocks. Eli tried tracking the grimlocks, but lost the trail almost instantly. 

Talking to the guards, who eventually turned up, and a bit more investigation, left the party fairly sure that the grimlocks were in one of the many abandoned warehouses in this part of town, but they had some trouble deciding which one. So they started a systematic search. 

Eventually, deep in the early hours of the morning, they got it right. The party threw open the 20’wide loading doors on one end of the warehouse, and saw the Grimlock nest on the far side of the building, in and around a 7’ high platform. In side there were four grimlocks and a larger female grimlock that looked like trouble. 

The party started to get ready to face the grimlocks coming off the platform, but then the fight got interesting - Felga, the female grimlock, cast a spell, and the whole warehouse went dark. 

They were not sure what to do. Eli paused. Pah tried to pull back, looking for some sort of position where they could fight outside the pool of darkness. But Urk wasn’t going to let a little lack of visibility get in his way. He charged headfirst into the center of the darkness, hoping to find something that he could hit with his axe. 

The grimlocks were happy to oblige. The lone dwarf was quickly surrounded by four grimlocks, all slapping him around with their big stone axes. Felga was not apparently taking part in the ‘dogpile on the dwarf’ right away, but a few rounds later she stepped in and took a cheap sneak attack before pulling out again. Urk, battered but not affected by her poison, fought on, hollering for some help from his companions. 

Of course, the other three were not idle. Uri tried casting glitterdust, but it had no effect. Eli circled around the edge of the building, sticking to the inside wall, hoping to find some visibility. And Pah pulled a crossbow out of her bag of holding, and started plinking away at the noise she was hearing, without much effect. 

Things started to look up momentarily when Uri got the bright idea to cast a web spell centered on Urk. It sounded crazy at the time, but Urk managed to make his saving throw and stay active while two of the grimlocks failed, cutting down the threat to Urk. Then Uri took his cloak of arachnia on a spin going up the wall and even across the ceiling to try to find a safe place to cast from. 

What he didn’t know was that Felga was still out there looking for trouble. She cast spider climb on herself and joined Uri on the ceiling. While he was up there trying to figure out what he might do next, she closed in and reapplied some poison to her axe. Just when he though he was in a safe spot, just above where he thought the platform had been, she attacked. 

Pah and Urk were finally taking out some of the grimlocks (some had freed themselves, so in effect Urk continued to face two, missing a lot thanks to the darkness. 

Eli had circled to the far side of the room. He was luckily in the right place at the right time. Uri had been attacked by the female, who hit him several times - he’d failed his poison save, then been hit a few more times, been knocked unconscious, and fell into the ragpile that was the grimlock nest. Eli was there to give him a quick potion and bring him back to consciousness, but the next round Felga dropped down to the platform and started to smack Eli around with her axe, and he had to defend himself. 

Urk and Pah finally finished the Grimlocks they were fighting, and Urk tried to run around the area of the web spell to come to Eli’s aid. Of course, navigation was still difficult in the dark, and he managed to run through some of the web and get himself caught for a few rounds. 

Uri, after chugging down a few more potions, got the idea that there might be some help for the party in the chest they’d seen just before the lights went out. He though he remembered it beneath the platform so he dropped down to the lower level and started to paw around for the chest. Meanwhile Eli was taking a beating. Urk and Pah eventually made it to his side on the upper level of the platform, and the three pressed their attacks on Felga. 

After a round or two of being backed up against the wall by three opponents, Felga felt the need to get out of that situation and go back to taking advantage of the darkness. She tried to bolt past the three heroes to open ground. Each took an attack of opportunity on her, all missing, except Urk, who made a powerful backhand stroke that caught her in the spine, cutting her nearly in two. (He got a critical hit; in the end he did a total of 35 points of damage to her with one blow. She had 33 hit points at that point).

Uri, down below trying to open the chest he’d finally found, suddenly felt much more sick, and collapsed, shivering, sweating, and barely able to lift his head (failed his save, lost even more strength, down to a strength of 2). 

Uri’s friends, pawed around, trying to find him, following his trembling voice, and pulled him and the chest out into the moonlight outside the warehouse, where they gathered the meager loot they’d taken from the grimlocks and carried Uri away to find help.

Next time: Things will get better soon in Brindinford, really. Honest. For sure. No doubt about it.


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*Brindinford Part II. A Bad day for Uri.*

(note: I’ve recently discovered I’ve been spelling Irk’s name wrong – it’s Irk, not Urk. Stupid illiterate dwarves. Eventually I’ll try to go back and make the changes to the previous posts, but for now bear with me.)


The Party pulled themselves out of the dark warehouse into the street and took a few minutes to take stock. They were battered and mangled, exhausted after a night of searching warehouses for the Grimlocks and the eventual battle, and it was a few hours before dawn. They had some interesting loot but no real time to identify it. And Uri was weak as a kitten (Pah preferred the term pussy, and spent a lot of time meowing at him). They decided to look for some help.

There were two temples that they knew of in town. A shrine to Heirnomous and a temple to Pelor. Based on their old friend Norham, who was a priest of Norham before he ended up sunk to the bottom of the Nyr Dvy, they decided to head for the shrine. (imagine the road trip scene from Animal House – “hey, it’s Otis, he loves us . . . “)

So Irk picked up Uri and the four heroes started their hike to the to the shrine. As they go close, they saw that the shrine was surrounded by a thick cloud of fog. A bit closer, and they heard a woman’s voice calling for help from inside the fog. And then it got very quiet.

The party was in no mood to charge into the fog in their condition. Irk and Eli carried Uri to a spot close to the edge of the fog where they could find a little cover, and Pah stalked quietly, slowly into the fog.

Pah snuck up to the wall of the shrine and still couldn’t see anything, but heard some shuffling nearby, and stalked a little closer. A few steps deeper into the fog she spotted two robed figures trying to carry a woman in plate armor, struggling with her weight. Pah pulled a pistol from her belt, placed the muzzle against the lower back of the robed figure closest to her, and pulled the trigger.

Sneak attacks do a LOT of damage when you’ve got 5 levels of rogue. The robed figure was splattered all over the woman in armor he had been trying to carry and his partner. 

Outside the fogbank, Irk heard the shot go off, made an excellent listen check and managed to close with the fight and take a swipe at the other robed figure. Eli, the elf with the big ears, didn’t hear quite so well and ended up running up to the side wall of the Shrine and not having any opponents in sight. And Uri, well, Uri slumped against a rain barrel, wondering when his homespun tunic got so damn heavy. (Pah says Meow)

The remaining sorcerer, already nearly dead after Irk’s axe stroke, spun to face the dwarf and shot a color spray at him, but Irk shook off the effect. Then Pah took a shot with her other pistol, finishing the sorcerer.

The mist cleared in a few minutes, and the party was able to take stock. They were standing outside the shrine of Hieronemous over the bodies of two dead sorcerers in odd robes and a sleeping, gore-splattered woman – well, more girl than woman – in plate armor. They roused her, and she immediately started asking for Amien, her mentor and trainer, and the master of the Shrine, but she was no where to be round. 

The party talked to Torea, the paladin they’d rescued, and managed to get some information out of her. She recognized one of the dead sorcerers as someone who had been around the scene of a murder, the Reality Wrinkle, that Torea and Amien had tried to investigate the previous day. They didn’t know much, but had a bad feeling about the murder. And now they were attacked in the night and Amien was missing. 

She wasn’t able to help Uri, and was only able to offer a little lay-on-hands to help with their wounds. All things considered, the party still wanted some help, so they decided to head off to the temple to Pelor.

When they arrived at the temple it was still a few hours before dawn. They pounded on the doors, eventually waking an acolyte who came and let them in to the temple. He was eventually convinced to go wake the high priest, who turned up in a wrinkled robe and bad hair to see what he could do for the party. 

He talked to them a little, lamenting the terrible things going on in the city. He offered them what he could – a few healing spells and a single lesser restoration to help Uri get up on his feet again. (Meow, says Pah). Then the priest sends them on their way, telling them that the have a lot of preparations to make for the next day – the Baron was going to make a speech, and they needed to be ready to respond to the new directives he was going to give. The party could return after the speech for more healing, if they wanted.

And so, about an hour before dawn, they stumbled back out into the street, looking for an inn where they could get a room. And the finally managed to get some sleep.

The next day, right around noon, they all shuffled into the main tavern room in the inn and tried to figure out what sort of loot they had from the night before. Uri worked on trying to figure out what was on the scrolls they’d found. After a while they were approached by a young halfling in simple monk’s robes. He was a young man who, for a while, had been living with the halflings in and around Brindinford, but he wanted to be an adventurer, and when he heard that the Heroes of Spittlemarch were in Brindinford, and he decided to try to join them, to follow them, if he could. He was especially interested in the one they called the Spider of Spittlemarch, whom he eventually swore to serve faithfully. (Basically, Uri took the leadership feat and took a 4th level halfling monk cohort).

With Minimonk, the new cohort, carrying Uri’s scrolls and luggage, the party headed off to hear the Baron’s speech and then make their way back to the temple of Pelor. Traffic was moving slowly, but all heading for the Baron’s keep, and the party fell in and made their way. And then they heard a deep voice calling to them from a nearby alley.

“Hey there, Heroes of Spittlemarch. Wecome to town.” And then things got cold. 

The party was ambushed – a cone of cold flashed out from the alley and took the whole party. No one fell, but no one was happy about it. They turned and charged towards the alley, but the figure was already gone, apparently around the corner. They seemed to remember catching a glimpse of a huge humanoid figure, but he seemed to be already gone.

They found themselves in a series of alleys. Uri, feeling aggressive now that he was up to a strength of 7 after a night’s sleep, charged down one of the alleys looking for trouble. And he found it, when a pair of assassins stepped out of the shadows.

The two assassins flanked Uri and both tried sneak attacks on him. One rolled a 20, and one rolled a 1. The one that rolled a 20 did a critical, and did enough extra sneak attack damage to make it deadly. (In our campaign we use a set of fumble house rules, which came into effect in this case. The Assassin who rolled a 1 rolled to avoid the fumble and failed that roll, and had to roll on the fumble table. He ended up thrusting a bit high at Uri and stabbing the other assassin who had been lunging forward for his own attack at the same time. The other assassin, wounded by his partner, was fortunate to make his saving throw against his partner's poison. Uri also made is save, but the thrust he suffered was enough lay him low (just below 0 hit points). 

The rest of the party charged into the alley to try to keep up with Uri. Pah spotted the Ogre Mage on top of a building looking down at the party, and took a shot at him, scoring a critical hit. Irk and Eli used withering missile fire to put down the assassins standing over Uri’s bleeding body while Minimonk charged in to try to get some healing to his new master, whom he’d known for all of half an hour. It took a few rounds of sorting around in his master’s pouches looking for potions of healing, but he did manage to get Uri back on his feet. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the party was having some fun. A cleric and summoned devil thing (Lemure) came out behind the party and attacked. The Ogre Mage was spraying the street with intimidating but ultimately useless fire from his huge longbow. And a trio of rogues appeared with crossbows to continue to make life interesting. 

The Lemure shrugged off a shot from Pah’s other pistol thanks to its damage resistance. Pah was being pressed by attacks from the Lemure and cleric. When Irk came to her aid she slipped back out of sight to reload. 

Things took another bad turn when two of the rogues closed with Uri and Minimonk. The rogues set up flanking attacks on Minimonk, taking the cohort out of the action in a single round. Uri stayed in the fight, whipping out a wand of shocking grasp and preparing his hand for a game of tag. He managed to give one of the rogues a good shock, but the next round the two managed to flank him and take him out of the action AGAIN. 

Irk and Eli managed to take out the Cleric and Lemure, and Irk closed with the two rogues while Eli took a few shots at the Ogre Mage. Pah returned with a loaded pistol in time to be attacked by a flaming sphere, as a new opponent, a sorcerer, stepped out of the shadows. She managed to evade the ball of flame, taking a shot at the sorcerer and ducking for cover. The ball chased after her, and she did get a bit singed, but wasn’t too badly hurt. 

Eli turned his deadly archery on the rogues standing over Uri and Minimonk, taking the rogues out then charging over to administer some healing, enough to stabilize the two and bring Uri around. As there was still an Ogre mage and a rogue with a crossbow shooting at the party from the roof, Eli returned to his bow, trying to put down those threats, while Uri complained that he hadn’t been healed more. (Pah says Meow) 

Pah reloaded and charged down the alley where the sorcerer was taking cover. She took a shot, missed, and was peppered with Magic Missiles, enough to spook her into taking cover again. 

Eli finally managed to do enough damage to the Ogre Mage that he dropped out of sight.
The Sorcerer cast obscuring mist to cover his escape, but didn’t know that charging in blind is Irk’s specialty. Irk charged down the alley, coming out the other side in another open area, where he could see the sorcerer chugging a potion. 

Meanwhile, Pah slipped back out of the fogbank and set about reloading. As she was loading she was treated to a big surprise – the Ogre Mage, still badly wounded but very much alive, stepped out of the fog bank behind her and started to swing at her with his Huge Greatsword. Over the course of several rounds Pah tried to put some hurt on the big guy, while he slapped around at her, always managing to hit just where she’d been, missing over and over. 

Uri, having taken another potion and gotten back on his feet, tossed a Melf’s Acid Arrow at the Ogre mage. Suddenly near collapse again, and taking real damage he wouldn’t regenerate, the OM cast darkeness on the spot and headed back down the alley. A few seconds later Pah heard him collapse to the ground as he took another round of damage from the acid arrow.

Irk closed with the Sorcerer, who had just drunk a potion of fire breath, and managed to singe him a bit before the big axe made little pieces of him. And the others finally finished the last rogue, who had been sniping from the rooftop. Irk charged into the dark alley where the Ogre mage had fallen, waving his axe around, trying to hit something, when he heard a voice above him. “I’d get my affairs in order, if I were you,” said the Ogre Mage. “We’ll meet again, and I will kill you.”

A few seconds later Pah was at his side. “What did he say”

“He said ‘I’m a dick’,” replied Irk, looking up into the darkness expectantly.

Irk was not about the let things end that way. While the rest of the party slumped to the ground for a little rest, Irk tried to scale the wall to get up to the rooftop and pursue the Ogre Mage. It was a tough climb, but Irk was mad enough to punch holes for hand and foot holds in the plaster wall and managed to get to the roof fairly quickly. Up there, out of the darkness, he could see a cloud of gas that was roughly Ogre Mage shaped drifting away. Irk chased it to the edge of a rooftop, shouted some imaginative insults about the size of the Ogre Mage’s penis, and then returned to the party.

* * * * *
They gathered up the loot the could from the bodies scattered around the alley, cleaned themselves up as best they could, got Minimonk back on his feet, and then hit the streets again, heading for the Baron’s speech.

There was a huge crowd outside the Baron’s keep – roughly half the city was there. After a few minutes the Baron stepped out onto a balcony to give his speech. Pah spotted another dark figure standing behind the baron, although none of the others could make him out. Pah tried to fight her way forward, shouting that the Baron needed to look out, he was in danger, but before she got close enough to be heard, the Baron started his speech.

I’m not going to retype the Baron’s speech right here. But for those of you who don’t know it at all, he basically turned everything on it’s head. He outlawed the worship of Pelor, declared martial law and an abrupt end to the festival, sealed the city gates and forbade people to carry weapons in the street. 

As he finished his speech, a huge skeletal, scorpion-tailed figure appeared on the roof of the tower, and the party got a bit spooked. 

They got quiet, and decided to race to the Temple of Pelor for help before things got bad, but when they got close enough to see the temple, they saw a huge column of flame, 20’ wide, rising from the temple, through the shattered roof, and up into the sky. 

They decided not to go in. 

Instead, they made their way back to the Shrine of Heironemous, which they found abandoned. They shut themselves in, closed the doors, and hid. 

And that’s where the session ended. 

Next time: And you thought THIS week was bad . . .


----------



## Radiating Gnome (Jan 17, 2002)

*Brindinford part III: Pah has a bad day. Irk has some fun.*

The party of intrepid short folk spent the night in the apparently abandoned shrine of Heironemous. As the night wore on they saw some very frightening patrols drift by the shrine – militia, often (but not always) accompanied by the big skeletal scorpion-tailed devil thing, shadowy figures skulking around in the shadows, and even a pair of Barghests. It was ugly. But nothing seemed to take an interest in the shrine, or in what stayed indoors, so the party was safe over night. And thankful for the small amount of healing that afforded them (including one more point of strength for Uri). 

They found themselves in a tight spot. Although they’d leveled overnight, they found themselves badly in need of healing, and with only a handful of potions between them which they wanted to try to save to ward off death. But with the shrine’s occupants missing, and the temple of Pelor now a flaming pillar of radiant eeeeevil portal thingy, they didn’t know where to go. But Minimonk had an idea.

Before joining the party and dedicating his life to following Uri (for some mysterious reason no one has yet figured out), Minimonk was traveling with the riverboat Halflings who were moored just outside the city. If they hadn’t left yet, out of fear of the evil things afoot in Brindinford, the party might get some help from the spiritual leader of the group, a cleric of Yondalla named Dentheira. 

Given everything they might try to do in the city (check out the former temple/gate to hell, go visit with the Baron, investigate the Reality Wrinkle, and didn’t we run into some wererats earlier?) they decided to check out the Reality Wrinkle and then go to the halfling barge village and see if they could get some help.

Because they knew they were not permitted to carry weapons in the city, they ended up stuffing most of their weapons into Pah’s bag of holding (a tight fit, but they made it). Each tried to secret a few light weapons about their bodies, with varying degrees of success. Then, looking as much like an average group of villagers (if an average group of villagers could be imagined in heavy armor and in torn, blood-splattered clothing) they stepped out into the street. 

Once they were all outside the shrine and moving across the square things got weird. Space and time seemed to warp – everything got very wiggie, and then two huge worm-things with seven tentacles surrounding a sphincter-ish mouth appeared, one on either side of the party, and attacked. 

Everyone wanted the bag. Irk, who was carrying the bag, fished out his greataxe and tossed the bag to Eli. Minimonk, who still had only a bare handful of hit points from the day before, ran like mad for the shrine. Pah pulled a hidden pistol out and shot at one of the worms – hitting it, and getting it’s attention. Eli caught the bag and fished out his longsword. And Uri cast Melf’s Acid Arrow, which made absolutely no impression at all on the worm. Then the worms lashed out. 

The two worms primarily targeted Irk and Pah, the two figures that were closest and posed the most apparent threat. While Irk chugged a potion of enlarge (becoming BIG IRK) and spent a few rounds fending off tentacles and hacking away at his worm, Pah’s struggled was much more . . . odd. She would be attacked, get hit by a couple of tentacles, get grappled and picked up by the worm, then on her turn make her escape artist roll to escape the worm’s grasp before being stuffed in it’s maw. Then it would attack and grapple her again, starting the cycle all over again. Eli moved to the side of the worm, and went to work with his longsword and shortsword, and eventually managed to distract the worm from its frustrating efforts to eat Pah. As Pah scampered to Safety BIG IRK finished off his worm and moved over to help Eli finish the second. 

As the Battle raged on, Minimonk spotted a robed figure standing on the roof nearby, but before they could try to mount a short-legged pursuit the figure retreated from view. And, a few moments later, the corpses of the worm-things disappeared as well. 

No one had died – not even close – but no one was feeling very good. They decided at that point that their first stop should be the halfling barge village, and off they went. On the way they spotted a skulking assassin, confronted him, and killed him in a matter of moments. And then the passed through an arch and saw before them the collection of halfling houseboats that made up the barge village. 

There was obviously some sort of commotion going on – the Halflings were all crowded onto a central boat, where an elderly female and a young foppish male were arguing with some members of the crowd. Listening in the back for a short while, they were able to pick up the basics of the debate. Apparently many of the members of the community wanted to try to leave, but the couple of boats that had cut themselves free during the night had been attacked by some fiendish beast in the river. Those who wanted to leave thought that if the whole community took off at once most might survive, and that was worth the risk. But Dentheira wouldn’t accept that as a solution, arguing that Yondalla would care for them, that she had prayed and Yondalla would send help.

So Irk cleared his throat. “You say you’ve got a problem?”

After the usual round of introductions (and an brief chorus of ‘the Heroes of Spittlemarch’ in the background) they struck a bargain. Dentheira would cast what healing spells she could to patch up the party. Then they would deal with the river monster, and they would be rewarded with some potions she had been saving for a rainy day. So the party moved to the outermost rafts and took a look around. 

Every once in a while they could see the ridged back of a Loch Ness Monster-ish but red-eyed and clearly evil beastie swimming around in the murky water. 

So the Heroes of Spittle march decided to try something new. They made a plan.

What they most wanted to do was try to get flanking attacks on the creature – to take advantage of Pah’s sneak attacks. But that presented a problem – a flanking attack would be very difficult to arrange with the existing arrangement of houseboats. The party decided to remove one of the boats, creating a rough C shape, that, if they could lure the beast in there, would afford them an attack from two opposing sides. Irk set about cutting one of the houseboats free, until he was stopped by one of the Halflings. “What are you doing, that’s my home.”

“We need to make space here,” said Irk.

“But that’s my home, everything I own is there.”

“We need to do this. Trust me.”

“No, you can’t, that’s my home.”

Irk started to hack at the ropes again. The Halfling tried to stop him, so Irk punched him, knocking him out with one blow. Before things turned ugly, Uri and Eli stepped in and settled things down, explaining that the plan was NOT to just cut the boat out and let it go, but to try to tie it a bit further out in the river, creating a space and something they could swim to if they ended up in the water. With the understanding that the boat would be tied and not just cut free, the Halflings settled down and went back to watching the players work. 

Pah and Eli, both with sneak attack ability, waited on one side of the gap, while the others dangled a big hunk of bloody meat in the water, trying to draw the Beast. And, sure enough, after a little coaxing it took the bait. Most of the party (especially Irk) that had armor or heavy equipment that would interfere with swimming left that armor behind.

The snaky head of the beast broke the water as it lashed out and snatched at the bait. The party opened up with a surprise round of missile fire at the beast.

Most of the shots they fired at the beast did very little damage – and the poison Pah had treated all of their crossbow bolts with made very little impression at all. But Pah’s sneak attack shot with one of her pistols did make a nice hole in the back of the beast’s neck, and that got its attention. 

While the party tried to plink away at it, the beast turned on Pah, lashing out with its huge mouth, taking an impressive chunk out of her. The Young halfling warrior Modeir, who had been making eyes at Pah for a while, was also on hand with a crossbow, adding his shots to the fray. The beast seemed intent on Pah, which had her very scared. Irk pulled out his axe and moved around to a place where he could attack it, but was appalled at the poor penetration he was getting. When it nearly killed Pah with a bite, Irk bellowed “It bit Pah,” and took a running leap, burying his greataxe in the beast’s back and using that as a handhold – which he needed, as the beast, peppered with Eli’s deadly archery, chose that moment to dive for the river bottom to try to escape. Irk, who has been beefing up his ride skill while no one was looking, made a very impressive ride test to hold on to the axe and remain on the Beast’s back. 

With a massive constitution, Irk has the ability to hold his breath for roughly 8 years. And he was quite capable of holding on to the beast’s back while it raced along underwater, trying to escape the trap it had found itself in. The problem Irk found himself in was that he was not able to do much damage to the beast. He had a pair of throwing axes – one masterwork and one +1, but between doing half damage with a slashing weapon underwater and the beast’s damage resistance (5/+2) he wasn’t able to break it’s skin several rounds in a row, and eventually the beast stopped swimming and snaked it’s head around to try to bite him off it’s back. 

There rest of the party was at a loss for a few seconds, but quickly adapted to the change in plans. Pah and Uri snagged a halfling canoe and started to row out towards the churning water that was Urk’s underwater fight with the beast, while Eli moved up the riverbank to try to get a clear shot at the thing. 

Irk gave up with the hand axes, and pulled his crowbar out of his pack. Using the crowbar like a blunt spear, he jammed the crowbar into the existing axe wound and tried to wiggle it around a bit, which further aggravated the beast. With the beast continuing to peck at him (roughly 10 hit point pecks), Urk finally had to give up. He pulled his axe free and kicked for the surface, and the beast swam away. 

Urk spotted the canoe approaching him, and swam (slowly) towards it while Pah and Uri paddled towards him. As he was nearing the boat the water churned and rippled behind him, and Evil Nessie’s head broke the surface again, poised to take a final bite out of Irk. But Minimonk and Modeir on the Barges, and Eli on the shore, were covering him, and an arrow and two crossbow bolts flashed out in the nick of time. The last couple of shots finished the beast, which collapsed in the water, it’s corpse gently bumping up against Irk as he clung to the side of the tiny halfling canoe. “You call this a boat?”

The halfings rejoiced. Irk was towed back to the houseboat village, the beast’s body was butchered for trophies (several of the PCs wanted teeth for keepsakes) and the houseboat that had been cut out was recovered without damage. Four potions of cure moderate wounds were produced, and quickly poured down Irk and Pah’s throats. And then a low-key feast was arranged in honor of the heroes. 

Dentheira offered to house the heroes for a while, and over dinner they talked about the fights they had been having and some of the problems they were facing. Dentheira explained to them the need for well-enchanted items, powerful enough to cut easily through the hide of the beasts they were fighting – something none of their existing weapons seemed able to do (they had a collection of +1 weapons, but in many cases so far had needed +2 or better). This was going to be a problem, but Uri had an answer. As a 6th level wizard (as of the level they had gained the night before) he was able to create +2 weapons. It would take several days, but he could make one, given the expensive supplies and a masterwork weapon to work with. And the debate went on about what weapon made the most sense for him to enchant, and what they had on hand. It was eventually decided that he would work on a +1 battleaxe that they had recovered from Felga’s body (the Grimlock leader). Working with the existing enchantment on the axe would shave a little time and money off the procedure, and it was something Uri was capable of working on (the other two main enchanted weapons the party had, Shatterspike and Irk’s +1 Keen Greataxe already were enchanted beyond Uri’s abilities, so he was not able to build on those enchantments). He needed the party to head for the main shopping district in town to try to find the supplies he would need to complete the enchantment. Minimonk would travel with the others.

In the morning, while finishing her watch, Pah noticed a rat that was not acting much like a rat – just sitting in the shadows watching the halfing barge village. She pointed it out to Dentheira, but when approached the Rat disappeared into the shadows.

Modeir, who was obviously smitten with Pah, asked the party for permission to travel with them to prove his mettle. “Short help is better than no help at all,” said Irk, which was becoming a party motto. 

The party rested for the night, were treated again with another round of healing from Dentheira, and then the group – without Uri but with Modeir – headed into town for their shopping trip. The day was mostly uneventful – the caught and killed another skulking assassin on their tail, did their shopping with some terrified shopkeepers, and headed back for the halfling village. On the way then ran in to a group of four terrified militiamen, this time without eeevil escort. 

“H-h-hey, what are you doing with those w-w-weapons,” the leader stammered.

“What weapons?” said Irk, pretending that the axehandles under his tunic were not plainly visible.

“Those. Come on. You can’t be in the street with weapons.”

“Look, every time we go out into the street, we get attacked. We’re going to carry weapons.”

“You can’t. Now we have to arrest you.”

DM’s aside: Playing with Irk’s player is fun for many reasons, but this is one of the best. There are moments like this where this mild-mannered, award-winning poet, college professor and chair of an English department, works at a role-playing problem like this for a few minutes, trying to talk his way out of a situation chewing on fingernails and furrowing his brow. Then, like a break in the clouds, he remembers who he’s playing. A smile spreads out over his face, and he presents Irk’s answer to every debate. “I hit ‘em.”

Irk smiles. “I hit ‘em.” 

While the rest of the party rolls their eyes (actually, Minimonk tried to get in on the action but missed) Irk bursts into action, tossing fists around like they’re going out of style. With a surprise action and a regular action, Irk knocks out three of the militiamen before they can react. The fourth turns and runs away, screaming for help. 

“Nice,” said Eli, who didn’t mean it. 

Moving on, they returned with their shopping to the village. Pah spotted a rat again, and spooked it into disappearing. They gave the supplies to Uri, who was prepared to begin enchanting the axe, and then the group headed out again, this time to see what they could find out at the Reality Wrinkle. 

The party arrived at the Reality Wrinkle, and odd and distorted bookstore, and crowded into it’s small front room. There they met the Shopkeeper, who was glassy-eyed and vague. “Can I help you?”

“We were wondering if you knew anything about the odd things that have been going on in town?” Asked Irk.

“Odd? Really?”

“Yeah.”

Pah chimed in. “hey, do you have any books about sparklies?”

“Sparklies?”

“Yeah, sparklies,” she said, showing him the necklace she was wearing.

“Ah, yes, sparklies. Well, you see, we are sort of magic book shop, not a jeweler’s book shop – so not, not really.”

Irk pulled a book from his pack – something he’s been carrying around since Sunless Citadel(a very long time ago). “Can you tell me what this book is about?”

The Shopkeeper took the book from Irk and started to page through it, making a lot of “um” and “ahah” noises as he flipped through the pages. Finally, after a few minutes of very careful investigation, he passed the book back to Irk. “No, I’m sorry. No idea.”

Irk, to his credit, demonstrated a second diplomatic option. “How much would it COST for you to have an idea.”

While the rest of the party watched the shopkeeper poking through the book, Pah got bored and slipped through the curtain that separated the front of the shop from the back. In that room she saw more shelves full of books, a couple of doors and a staircase leading upstairs. From the door under the stairs she could hear an odd humming. She crept forward and, finding the door unlocked, opened it. 

And, of course, big ugly badness hopped out. She was faced with an amorphous mass of toothy mouths and bulging eyes. The mouths were making a terrible chanting noise which confused Minimonk and Pah, but the rest of the group rolled into action.

Pah, in her confusion, attacked the nearest creature, which was the Gibbering Mouther. She drew her pistols and shot at it, making a terrible racket and only hitting it once. Irk grabbed the shopkeeper by the beard (remember, Irk has beard envy) and started tearing bits of it out, threatening to kill him if he didn’t call off the monster. The others charged into the back room while the beast bit at Pah, chipping away at her and offering a replay of the grapple-and-escape-capades that the party watched while Pah was being mauled by the Worm monsters. Modeir drew his short sword and closed with the beast, trying to prove himself, while Eli peppered it with arrows. A robed figure appeared on the stairs, drawing some of that fire away.

Irk dragged the shopkeeper into the back room, still threatening him and trying to convince him to call off the beast. When the poor shopkeeper finally confessed that he was not able to, Irk decided to test his newest feat. “I have throw anything, right?” He waited for a break in the grapple-and-escape-capades and then tossed the shopkeeper into the Gibbering Mouther, which quickly chomped away and engulfed him, while missile fire from Minimonk and Eli finished off the robed figure on the stairs and the mouther.

While they checked out the body of the robed figure on the stairs for anything worth recovering, they heard a lot of movement upstairs. 

And that was where we had to stop the game session.


----------



## Radiating Gnome (Jan 18, 2002)

*Brindinford Part IV: Not a plans kind of operation*

We left our heroes last time on the ground floor of the Reality Wrinkle, listening to movement upstairs as the residents prepared for attack. 

One lone voice spoke up. Minimonk, not feeling particularly safe without Uri along for the ride, suggested “maybe we should go back to the halflings now?” 

Irk just looked at the halfling for a long moment, then hefted his axe. “I’ll go first.” And he hit the stairs at a run. Eli followed close behind, and the rest hurried to keep up.

Irk charged up the stairs and into the main room on the second level, where two sorcerers were waiting for him. Their spells went off, and the festivities began in earnest. Their opening gambit was a Melf’s Acid Arrow and Glitterdust. Irk shrugged off the blindness, but started taking damage from the acid. Right behind him on the stairs, Eli was blinded by the Glitterdust. He threw his back up against the wall and yelled for the others to go on by, while he stashed his bow and drew his long and short swords. Apparently he was less dangerous blind with swords than his bow. 

At any rate, what should have turned into a simple matter of Irk introducing two sorcerers to his axe, got more complicated quickly, as a stream of elementals started pouring down the stairs from the top floor of the building, cutting off Irk from the rest of the party, and facing Minimonk, who was the next member of the party to make it to the top of the stairs (ducking deftly under Eli’s blind blades). 

At the bottom of the stairs, Pah and Modeir stood. Pah tucked one pistol under her arm and began reloading the other. Modeir listened to the sounds of fighting, Irk’s steady stream of profanity and Eli’s fumbling on the stairs. He was obviously struggling with the decision to head up the stairs, not really wanting to go, but also not willing to appear afraid in front of Pah, who he seemed to have more than a crush on. 

“Well, get up there,” Pah said. 

Modeir gulped and charged up the stairs.

Soon, Irk was taking a beating. He continued to hack away at the sorcerers, while they stepped back each round and peppered him with Magic missiles. Between that and the acid arrow, he was taking a beating. He finished one, the other tried another glitterdust, and managed to blind him this time, but it didn’t buy the hapless sorcerer any more time against Irk.

The fight on the stairs raged on as well. Minimonk stood his ground round after round, trading near (and not-so-near) misses with the earth elemental, while Eli slipped by to help out from behind, and then Modeir slipped by to add his blade to the fight. By this time a total of four earth elementals and two air elementals were in the room making space very tight. Pah did her best to get into the action, but was repeatedly unable to tumble into a position where she could strike. A third Sorcerer had come down the stairs as well, who traded damage with Eli but was eventually put down. 

Then, while the fight with the small army of elementals was going on, there was a large thump on the floor above. No one had much idea what it was, but it didn’t take long to find out that it was another big worm thing with tentacles and a sphincter mouth. It slithered down the stairs a bit – just showing it’s head – and the first thing it encountered while the party was cleaning up elementals was poor Modeir, standing at the foot of the stairs and still trying to help Minimonk with the earth elemental. It was a matter of seconds before those brutal tentacles tore Modeir into little pieces. Tiny, mangled, lumpy, little pieces. 

This death, however, did make room for Pah to finally enter the room. She ended up, of course, in the one place she did not want to be – standing right over Modeir’s corpse and facing the tentacles herself. She took a shot at the worm, avoided being grappled by the biting tentacles, took another shot, and tumbled out of the way again, as Irk, finally having cut his way back to the party, closed with the worm.

Irk chopped away at it, everyone else did what they could, and a few rounds later it was a final shot from one of Pah’s pistols that finished the worm. 

The group took stock, standing amid piles of dirt, dead sorcerers, and the worm’s corpse, which returned to it’s own plane a few moments later. 

Pah took Modeir’s death harder than that the others, thinking more kindly of him now that he was dead than she had while he was alive and mooning over her. The party did their best to gather up the bigger pieces of his body to return them to his mother.

While they looted the bodies, they heard a pounding and the sound of broken glass coming from upstairs. Pah snuck upstairs to take a look. Peeking around the corner up there, she saw more trouble. There was a screen of earth elementals standing guard over another pair of elementals carrying the unconscious body of a woman in a breastplate, a fifth earth elemental that was trying to pound a hole in the wall (trying to make an exit where there was none) and the lead Sorceress overseeing it all. Pah gulped, pulled out her pistol, and took a shot at the Sorceress, over the heads of her screen of elementals. 

The rest of the party charged up the stairs, and despite the difficulty of the shot (lots of cover from intervening elementals) they managed to pick off the Sorceress before she was able to do much, and made short work of the elementals as well. 

They found themselves standing on the top floor of the now-empty house, all battered within an inch of their lives. They had some loot to carry, a dead body (or most of one) and the woman, who seemed mostly unconscious. They gave her their past potion of cure light wounds to try to revive her – and it did help get her on her feet, but she was till deeply altered, babbling gibberish. They put her on a leash and lead her out of the building. 

Once out on the street she seemed to recover her senses, and it wasn’t too long before she was able to talk to them, and tell them her name. Alein. A paladin, she was the one to operated the now-abandoned shrine the party had hidden in the night after everything went to hell in Brindinford. 

She didn’t have much to tell – she’d been trying to investigate some odd doings in town, then one night the shrine was attacked and she’d been the prisoner of the sorceress ever since. They told her about rescuing her apprentice, who was not missing, and the attack at the Shrine. And she had one more question.

“Have any of you seen a big white warhorse hanging around?”

“Uh, no,” said Irk.

“Well,” said Minimonk, “We did eat something last night that tasted a bit like horse.”

“That is not funny,” Alein insisted, waving a finger at Minimonk while the rest of the party laughed. “You’re a bad man.”

Anyway, on the way back they ran into a small group of militiamen that Irk scared off with a quick “boo.” And they limped back onto the Halfling raft village.

They took stock there. Alein was able to heal them a little, they drank the last of their potion stash, but things were definitely grim for the battered heroes. They decided to lay low for a while and try to recover.

They poked around with their loot a bit. They managed to figure out a few items without bothering with identify spells. In one case, Pah was making a simple jump from one raft to another, wearing a ring she’d claimed that was carved with a frog motif, and instead of jumping to then next raft, she jumped over the entire raft and ended up in the river beyond. The others quickly tossed a rope to her as the current pulled her by, and she started experimenting more carefully with the powers of that ring.

Later that night, Minimonk, on guard duty, saw some motion on shore. He snuck over to a position where he could get a closer look, and saw something very disturbing. A band of seven humanoid figures, in the darkness, were gathered and talking, gesturing at the halfling river village. While he was watching a huge, familiar figure – the ogre mage – stepped out of the shadows and began giving orders. 

That was enough for Minimonk. He slinked back to the party, woke them up, and reported what he’d seen. They quickly decided to alert Dentheira, who set some halfling lookouts. They managed to find enough silver daggers around for each member of the party who was without an enchanted weapon to have something to fight with. Uri was still working on the battleaxe, and was not available. 

There was a lot of discussion about what to do, including an attack on the group of villains while they were plotting their attack.

“That’s the Ogre Mage, we almost killed him last time,” said Pah.

“There’s a LOT of stuff we’ve ALMOST killed,” said Minimonk. “That’s like our stategery.” [sic – read this as “stra-tee-ger-ee, as Saturday Night Live’s Will Farrell said it as George W. Bush]

Thanks to Minimonk spotting the Wererats gathering early, the party had enough time to get in position to meet the wererat attack. There were seven wererats in all, and they raced into various gaps on the edge of the halfling village, where they were met by the hiding heroes. 

The two center areas were covered by Irk and Alein, who managed to hold their ground against a pair of wererats each, although putting the rats down was slow going. On the upstream flank Eli managed to stay hidden while the leader of the wererats went past him. He struck from behind, which got the leader’s attention, but in a moment another rat appeared behind Eli and he found himself flanked and in very dire straits. 

The Downstream end, where Minimonk and Pah were waiting, was the one gap that was not attacked with two rats – a single wererat attacked that flank, and Minimonk, sniping down from the rooftop, actually managed to hurt him with well placed silver-tipped crossbow bolts. Pah took a double move to take huge bounding leaps to try to move to the other flank to assist Eli, but was not able to reach him before he was reduced to 0 hit points by the rats. It looked grim for Eli, who decided to play dead. Pah, armed only with a dagger, showed up just in time to prevent a coup de grace, but was herself in bit trouble facing the pair of rats that had laid Eli low. 

At that moment, Minimonk, who had just finished the rat on his end, was turning to try to lend aid to the rest of the party, when the Ogre Mage suddenly appeared right behind him (had been invisible). The Big Beefy One cast Charm Person on Minimonk. Minimonk blew his save. 

Irk, who had finally finished the two who had attacked him, climbed to the roof where Minimonk and the Ogre Mage were talking, tried help Minimonk, but things were going badly up there. The Ogre Mage told Minimonk that the attack was a trap, that the Ogre Mage could take him to safety, if MM would come with the Ogre Mage. Minimonk was allowed a second save, as this was an unlikely request, but he failed again, and right before Irk’s startled eyes he jumped into the Ogre Mage’s waiting arms. Irk was able to take a swat at the Ogre Mage, but then the villain swept Minimonk up in his arms and flew away, over the wall and back towards the baron’s keep. 

And then the cavalry arrived (can you say deux ex machina? I knew you could). Pah was in real trouble, Eli was in not shape to help, Alien was still struggling with her opponents. A pair of arrows streaked out of the darkness, taking the Wererat leader out. Then another pair took out the other rat facing Pah. In moments the tide shifted against as the remaining heroes turned to help Alien and finish the last of the rats. 

The Mystery archer appeared while the party finished the rats, giving a potion of healing to Eli and introducing herself. She was Maravos, the tutor and member of the Order of the Shooting Stars that Eli had come to Brindinford looking for. While Eli rested against the wall of the houseboat, Maravos and Talia, Eli’s borrowed bow, exchanged notes about Eli. Apparently the bow had been along as an observer, evaluating Eli’s fitness for the order. And, with the exception of his bad habit of getting knocked unconscious in combat, Talia gave him a favorable report. 

But it wasn’t all good news. Most of the party was in very bad shape. Pah had been bitten, and was feeling feverish. Dentheira confirmed that she had been tainted by the bite, had contracted Lycanthrope. Dentheira was able to provide a dose of Belladona, which flushed the disease from her system, although it sapped Pah’s strength considerably. 

Uri said, “Meow.”

Another ugly discovery. In the closing moments of the fight, Pah had made an excellent spot check, and had noticed a residence near the river – a house that overlooked the halfling encampment. She saw movement, one of the curtains in the upstairs window being let go, falling closed again. 

The party waited for dawn, and the meager healing that Dentheira and Alein could provide. Dentheira held back a couple of spells she needed for her son Modeir’s funeral. Bolstered slightly, the party made a quick investigation of the house across the street. 

The door was open. They stalked into the house, and in the upstairs bedroom the found the entire family dead on the floor, killed in a gruesome way – their skulls had been crushed and their brains had been sucked out. None of them had seen anything like that before, but a crystal Pah wore around her neck, loot from a battle fought long, long before, grew warm in the room. 

[the crystal is a bit of loot from a fight with the local leaders of a cult of psions who were trying to drum up a religious furor against magic users. A fight that occurred long before the events detailed in this story hour. The crystal is a psionic item of some sort – no one around is able to tell much more than that. Pah has decided that it’s pretty, turned it into a crude necklace, and has been wearing it ever since.]

The investigators returned to the halfling village, and they compared notes. Mavaros and Dentheira were able to offer some additional information. To begin with, Maravos, an Elf who has been around for long time, was the only one who had seen this sort of thing before. The crushed skulls and missing brains meant one thing to her. Mind Flayers. And the warmth of Pah’s crystal seemed to support that. 

Maravos was not cheerful. “This is very bad. The mental powers of mind flayers are formidable. A mind flayer behind things here in Brindinford would explain a lot – the variety of allies the villain has drawn to his service, all charmed powerfully to do his foul bidding. It would also explain the Baron’s behavior. And, obviously, some sort of infernal pact is involved as well.”

“But what makes it all that much worse is that the Ogre Mage managed to abduct Minimonk. The mage and his master will take his mind apart, charm him powerfully into their service. You must assume that they know all of your abilities, and your plans, as intimately as Minimonk did.”

“That’s all right,” said Uri. “We’re not exactly a plans kind of operation.”

What the party needed most, at that point, was to regroup. They took the following day to hide out and wait for Uri to finish his work on the axe. And heal. And feel sorry for themselves. Eli and Maravos spent the day talking about archery, the order, and the philosophy behind it all. Uri took breaks now and then to Meow at Pah. Irk fidgeted. And they all were on hand for Modeir’s funeral. 

At the end of the day Maravos explained that she needed to leave. She gave Eli a small handful of enchanted arrows and wished him luck, but someone needed to go and report to more powerful figures, so that if the party was not successful someone could come and do something about the growing evil in Brindinford. She wished the party luck, and slipped off into the night. 

And, with a nervous watch set, the party slept through another night.

Next time: Minimonk, Minimonk, wherefore art thou, Minimonk.


----------



## Radiating Gnome (Jan 18, 2002)

*Brindinford V: Half a Season of Buffy?*

The second morning dawned grim and gray. The funeral of the blowhard Modeir, despite Pah’s efforts to cheer everyone up with odd, anachronistic lyrics that seemed like an ode in his honor (“Keep your Modeir running/Head out on the highway”), and the abduction of Uri’s Pal Minimonk, left everyone feeling a bit down. Morning came, and a few of the outlying rafts had apparently cut free in the night, making a run for safer territory. The streets of the city were becoming more and more dangerous, as there seemed to be a gradually growing infernal population. It became clear that the gate between worlds had to be closed. 

For that, they needed a cleric. They had two choices for Clerics. Dentheira, the ancient halfling healer and community leader who could barely hobble around with a cane, and Alein, the paladin. Luckily, Alein had a score to settle and didn’t mind the idea of trying to close the gate. So the party got healed up, geared up, and headed off to the temple.

En route they met a Bargest patrol, but managed to dispatch the beasts without difficulty. Irk was just getting used to the newly-enchanted +2 axe, and as he could use that one handed he liked that he could use a shield at the same time. Uri had a few new spells he wanted to try out. Pah’s guns were loaded, although she was concerned that without enchanted bullets she was going to be of limited use to the party. Eli had a small handful of arrows and Shatterspike. It would have to do.

Faced with the temple and several doors to choose from, the party selected one of the smaller side doors on the wing. The lock had to be picked, which Pah managed after a few tries, and then Irk led the way into the belly of the beast.

The party was faced with a hallway, a couple of doors, and another passage that clearly led to the main temple. 

“Well, let’s get in there,” said Irk.

“Wait,” said Eli. “Shouldn’t we clear out these rooms first.”

Pah fidgeted with a cocked hammer. Uri twiddled a finger in his ear. Alein, an NPC, was characteristically devoid of opinion. Irk looked longingly at the door to the main temple room, with it’s big pillar of fire and untold horrors. “Nah,” he said. “Let’s do it.” And so he led the way.

The main temple was dominated by the big fire. It was pretty damn hot. Oh, yeah, and there was an Osyluth, the big ugly devil thing that had appeared on the roof after the Baron’s speech a few days that seemed like decades before. The infernal creature started a spinetingling wail.

Irk wasted no time waiting for formal introductions. He charged the Osyluth, nearly laying it low with a single massive blow (rolled a critical). Alein, next through the door, moved in close enough to try to channel the power of Heironemous into the fire to try to close the portal. The heat burned exposed flesh, heating her armor, but she pressed forward, holy symbol threatening to melt in her hand.

Eli, worried, asked “How long can it take to close a hellmouth?”

Uri answered him. “Half a season of Buffy.”

The others stopped and looked around for a minute, wondering what the hell he was talking about. Then they got back to work.

The Osyluth fled from Irk, returning to the center of the great fire to hide, and called out into the abyss, bringing forth a cousin (probably an in-law) to help face the rest of the party.

Things got a bit interesting after that. The new Osyluth traded blows with Irk, while the wounded one, still within the fire, sensed the weakening of the gate and turned to face Alein, settling in to lash at the paladin with bite, claws, and tail, trying to drive her back before she could finish closing the gate. 

At the same time, responding to the wail of the devils, the rest of the temple perked up. A pair of hell hounds crashed through a door to one side, and a evil cleric on another, engaging the members of the party that were still in the hallway waiting to enter the room (Uri and Eli). Pah had slipped into the main chamber and was skulking around the edges of the fight, looking for an opening. 

Alein did her best, trying to close the gate, but between the fire, the heat in her armor, and the onslaught of the Osyluth, she had to pull back, stepping back to the doorway where she, to quote Wulf Ratbane, touched herself in her special way. The Osyluth, relieved that it had driven her back before the gate was closed, threw up a wall of ice to keep her out. 

In the hallway, things had started out looking pretty grim. Eli had pushed himself to the front, drawing his sword to protect Uri from the hell hounds, only to fall prey to a cause fear spell cast by the cleric. Eli turned and ran like the wind, as only a light-footed elf can run. Uri, on his own with a couple of hell hounds and a cleric to deal with, fell back on a trusted friend, web. He managed to immobilize the cleric and one of the hounds, and set about dealing with the other, with a couple of shocking grasps, and a little help from Alein, who ran back from the ice wall to help deal with the threat. The trapped hound breathed on the web in its frustration, and the web began to burn away. Alein and Uri dealt with the other hound and then the cleric in a few rounds.

Eli eventually stopped running, turned around, and started running back. 

While Irk was fighting the devil-in-law in the main room, Pah heard movement from a balcony above. She bounded up there, thanks to her ring of jumping, and was faced with the high priest of the temple, who had just cast a protection spell on himself of some sort. She took a shot at him, and he turned and came after her, swinging his huge flail around his head and smashing the rail behind her with a terrible blow. Not one to hang around someplace where she wasn’t wanted, Pah took a shot with her other pistol and jumped back down to the ground. 

At about that time Irk had hacked his way through the Osyluth-in-law and was looking for a way to get at the one hiding in the fire. Irk took a few rounds to hack a passage through the ice wall, only to find that Alein was not on the other side of the wall. The evil high priest jumped down to the main floor and engaged Irk, while yet a third Osyluth appeared nearby, although this one seemed to be behaving oddly. 

Pah lept back up to the balcony to try to spot more trouble coming. Uri appeared on the other side of the temple, spiderclimbing up the wall over the ice wall. From his perch he exchanged fire with an enforcer (Named Farji) that appeared on the balcony opposite Pah.

Irk, frustrated with the Osyluth in the fire that was doing its best to make his life difficult, picked up the corpse of the one he’d killed and tried to toss it at the one that was still living. (Irk’s player prefers a very loose interpretation of the feat Throw Anything). He missed, but enjoyed the effort anyway. Then he turned to face the high priest.

The Priest cast Hold Person on Irk, a spell Irk was painfully familiar with, but somehow this time he was able to shake off the effect and close with the Cleric, raining heavy blow after blow on the evil priest. The priest exchanged a few blows, then backed off to cast a spell, and was caught in a sleet storm spell cast by Uri from his perch above. 

An area of driving sleet took over the southwest section of the room, making movement and visibility difficult at best. Pah took advantage of the sleet for cover, moving to a spot near the wall where she could be easily out of sight and reload her pistols under the cover of her cloak. Irk, standing just outside the area of sleet, waited for the third Osyluth or the Priest to come out. The Osyluth was the first to move, stepping out of the sleet apparently unaffected. Irk hefted his axe and took a swing which passed right through the beast, scattering it in a puff of pixilated smoke (it had been an illusion). Meanwhile Farji dropped down to the main floor to try to help, where he fought Eli and eventually Irk. 

The surviving Osyluth, the original, still flying around the room and mostly hiding in the hellmouth, saw an opportunity to go after Uri up on the wall, It raced up to Uri’s position and started pounding on him. Uri managed to get off an acid arrow before being knocked unconscious and nearly killed by the beast, which would have escaped back to the healing flames of the hellmouth if it had not been for Eli with his bow and the lingering burn of Uri’s acid arrow. 


Alein, having made the circuit through the eastern wing of the temple, up to the second floor and out onto the balcony, dropped down to the ground level and returned to the work of trying to close the hellmouth. 

Davros Hellseeker, the high priest, had spent about four rounds slipping and falling around in the sleet storm. His visibility was practically nil, but he’d heard the death throes of the Osyluth and decided it was time to get out of there. He managed to find his feet and blindly made his way to the temple’s main doors. He bolted out into the street and started running for the Baron’s keep. 

Pah heard the door, and slipped over to it to investigate. Outside the door she saw the priest running for the hills, and fired a parting shot at him, hitting him, although it was not enough to slow him down it did give him something to remember her by.

Alein, meanwhile, poured the last of her energies into the Hellmouth, finally managing to close it before passing out due to severe burns and other wounds. With the Hellmouth closed the others were able to treat her wounds, and Uri’s and stabilze both of them, while Irk finished Farji. Then an eerie silence took over the temple. Without the roaring of the Hellmouth, and the screeches of the Osyluths, it seemed uncannily quiet.

It had been an ugly, long, confusing battle. Uri was mangled. Alein was in no condition to continue. Irk had taken a beating, although he was still ready for action, and Pah and Eli were still in pretty good shape, but the party decided not to take any chances and returned to the Halfling community, where they delivered Alein to Dentheira’s care, found a few potions for Uri, and headed back out to the Baron’s keep. 

The streets were also quiet, and the party saw no sign of the infernal patrols that had made life difficult for the past few days. From time to time they saw frightened militiamen in the distance, heading for their homes, staying out of the way of the party and jumping at shadows.

When they came to the Baron’s manor house they spent some time outside, peeking in windows and seeing what they could from outside the walls. The could see the Ogre Mage and the high priest talking in front of a fireplace. On a balcony they saw Minimonk going through his Kata with an eerie calm. And there was no sign of the Mind Flayer. 


They settled down to make a plan of attack, and we stopped for the evening.


----------



## Radiating Gnome (Jan 21, 2002)

*Brindinford VI, Endgame (?)*

Brindinford VI, Endgame (?)

When we last played over a month ago, the party was making plans to enter the manor house of the Baron of Brindinford to try to kill the various bad guys in the place, including the Mind Flayer behind the mess, his Ogre Mage and evil priest henchman, and hopefully not kill the two charmed figures, the Baron himself and Minimonk.  

The manor house itself was a two story sturdy stone building, with a three story tower on one end.  The roof of the main house was topped with a crenellated catwalk, and there was a parapet on top of the tower.  The heroes decided that the two characters with items that granted them spider climb (Uri and Irk) would climb to the top of the building, lower ropes for the other two, and then the entire party would enter the house through the top floor of the tower.  

What they DIDN’T do is take any sort of precaution to insure that they were not heard by the Mind Flayer and his minions.  It was Minimonk himself who heard the noise on the roof and altered Axom, the Mind Flayer, to the presence of the party.  

The party moved to the door of the tower, and found it locked, but easily picked.  Before actually opening the door Pah drank a potion of invisibility and a potion of non-detection.  Her plan was to sneak down into the main house ahead of the rest of the party and try to disable one or more of the targets with poisoned darts from her blowgun, which would help even the odds a little.  

They opened the door and found the Baron’s bedroom.  There was a huge bed, an armoi presumable full of clothes, a coatrack with an odd leather long cloak or coat, and a full length mirror.  And, cowering in the room was a well-dressed but bedraggled noblewoman and two children.  The three frightened nobles watched as the party pushed into the room.  

Pah was VERY interested in the leather coat/cloak and pulled it off the coatrack, forgetting that she was invisible for a moment and this would make for an interesting show for the nobles.  She put the coat on, but it did not resize to fit her, as most magic items will, so she began to investigate it further.  It was a strikingly well-made coat – the stitching was far finer and more even than any tailored work she had ever seen before.  It was black and leather and smelled good and had these cool epaulets on the shoulder and on the collar there were silver insignia – a square, in which there were a pair of ‘s’s shaped like lightning bolts. (DM’s note:  yes, Nazi SS insignia).  In the pocket of the coat she found a booklet of folded paper – all printed in a strange language she did not recognize, but again printed by a hand that was much smaller and more regular than any she had seen before.  She took the papers, and left the cloak, which Irk took from her and began to investigate himself.

The Baroness was trying to comfort her children.  All three were clearly terrified.  “Who are you?” she asked.  

Irk looked at her.  “I’m not going to tell you that.”

The Baroness nodded.  “He’s in my mind.”

That stopped everyone cold.  Pah stuffed the papers into a pouch without another thought and started to head down the spiral staircase to the lower levels of the house.

The Baroness looked the three remaining party members over.  “He wants me to tell you something.

This would be when the three heroes on this floor started to panic.  Pah’s panic would come in a few minutes.  

The Baroness continued.  “He says you shouldn’t have come.”

Irk had heard enough.  He stepped forward and punched her for all her was worth, knocking her through the doors of the armoire, where she ended up, very unconscious, in a pile of robes and gowns and broken cabinetry.  The two children began to scream bloody murder.

Eli, by now, was already running down the stairs after Pah, hoping to press the attack and not lose too much advantage of surprise, not realizing that the advantage had been lost when they scaled the wall in the first place.  Irk too a long look at the two screaming kids, but in the end couldn’t bring himself to hit them, even when one stopped screaming and got very calm.  

“Run,” said the child.  “Run run run run run run run run run run.”

Irk did, to the stairs after Eli.  

But Uri wasn’t going to let this go on much longer.  He stepped forward and punched the tyke in the face, knocking him out.  He turned to face the last of the children, but the sounds of screaming and combat on the lower floors convinced him that he was needed downstairs, and that there wasn’t anything left to protect by knocking children unconscious, so he ran downstairs.  

When Pah snuck downstairs initially, while the others were upstairs having social interactions with the noble family in the bedroom, she found a dining area on the second floor of the tower, with a sideboard that held the family silver and china.  She gave it a quick look, then returned to the task at hand.  She decided to go downstairs one more flight to the ground floor to make her move. 

The ground floor of the tower held a small kitchen, and like the other floors, a door that connected it to the main house.  She quietly opend that door and slipped into the main house. 

The main house itself consisted of two floors.  The ground floor, where Pah was standing, held a reception room and meeting area, with fireplaces and plush furniture.  This was the room where they’d seen most of the villains earlier, while observing the house.  Closer to the tower the sitting room was separated from a sort of den or office by a wall, but there was a simple arch, no door that separated the two rooms.  

The second floor was not complete.  Over the office, closest to the tower, there was another sitting area, into which the door from the tower dining room opened.  But there was a balcony which overlooked the main sitting room below.

Pah passed through the door and snuck over to the wall near the entrance to the main room, waiting for an opportunity to make a move, but things started to go badly for her.  She couldn’t help but hear the commotion upstairs as the rest of the group ran down the spiral tower stairs.  But then she heard the cleric, in the main room, starting to cast a spell. And then, all of a sudden, she could see herself again.  She was visible.  

That was when Pah started to panic.  Minimonk stepped into the doorway and started to hit her with his club.  

Finding herself holding a very flimsy blowgun and dart, facing minimonk, and behind him the Baron and the cleric, she decided that she wanted to be somewhere else very badly.  She ran for the stairs, taking another blow from minimonk in passing, and started screaming “IRK!”

By then of course, Irk was busy.  As was Eli.  

Eli had been the first one down the stairs to the second floor, right about the time Pah opened the door on the first floor, he opened the door on the second floor.  From the doorway he could see the Ogre Mage and the Mind Flayer, not at all surprised to see him.  He took a single shot at the Ogre Mage by way of introduction, and waited for things to start happening.  And they did.  

First Irk, flush after his victory over the noblewoman, charged past Eli into the room, and engaged the Ogre Mage.  The Ogre Mage, suddenly faced with two tough opponents in a straight line, fired off his Cone of Cold , which Irk managed to avoid the worst of, but Eli took full force.  Then Eli stepped into the room where he could have a clear shot at the Mind flayer, and sent off three arrows in rapid succession, each striking home in the Flayer’s center mass.  

Gaereth Axom, the mind flayer, was through playing around.  Terror and charm had it’s place, but this was getting deadly.  He sent off a telepathic command to the cleric to get up there and do some healing, and then stepped into a position where he could Mind Blast Irk and Eli without hitting the Ogre Mage.  And he let them have a blast.  

Once again, Irk managed to avoid the worst of it while Eli took it full force.  While Eli was stunned, reeling and trying to get his bearings for over a minute, Irk fended off a glancing blow from the Ogre mage and then set to pounding on the big blue bastard with his greataxe, knocking him out of action.  

Uri had appeared, and added to Axom’s troubles with an Acid Arrow spell, and then started shooting his crossbow from the cover he could find behind the stunned elf.  

The Cleric, down on the ground floor, and having just flushed Pah out of hiding with an invisibility purge spell, got the message from Axom and cast Air walk so that he could climb up to the balcony and heal Axom on his hext turn.  But Axom, seeing that Irk was finishing the Ogre Mage in record time, decided not to wait around for the dwarf to start pounding on him, and cast levitate on himself and skipped out into the air above the sitting room.  

Right about them Pah charged into the balcony, followed by the Baron and Minimonk.  Irk, not willing to let the Ogre Mage just regenerate for a few rounds and then hop back into action, spent a precious round pounding on the fallen figure, making sure it would be a few minutes before there would be any trouble from it again.  Pah, having shed her pursuit at the door, where the Baron was trying to do something about Uri, moved forward to try to find a chance to use her poisoned dart.  She saw the cleric had joined Axom out in midair at the far side of the room, where the cleric was healing the Flayer’s wounds while the flayer pulled out arrows and swore a blue streak.  She moved around Irk, who was still pounding on the inert Ogre Mage, stepped up to the balcony rail, and took a shot with her blowgun.  

Her dart hit the window behind the cleric and Axom.  She swore, and Axom looked up.  Seeing the crowd on the balcony, and the fallen Ogre Mage, he decided enough was enough. With a push off of the cleric, Axom positioned himself right next to Pah, where he could catch the entire party (and, incidentally Minimonk and the Baron) in the cone of his Mind Blast, and let loose with a second stunning blast.  

This blast was devastating.  Of the entire group of combatants on the balcony, only Uri and the Baron managed to make their saving throws.  Everyone else was stunned and stumbling around.  Actually, Eli, still stunned from the first blast, manage to make this saving throw, for what it was worth. 

Things were going very badly.  Uri, figuring that he needed to change the situation as much as possible, shut the door on the Baron (who was still standing in the doorway between the tower and the main house) and cast Sleet storm on the balcony area, providing concealment for the group.  But the next round, the Cleric dispelled it, and the Baron crashed through the door, sending Eli sprawling (Eli had been standing near the door when the Baron crashed through).  

While all of this was happening, Axom was worried.  He knew that this party had managed to close the hellmouth, his gate to his infernal allies.  Left with the Ogre Mage, who had fallen, the cleric, and a few charmed supporters, he didn’t think this was the best fight to try to stick out to the bitter end.  He needed to make his escape.  He sent off a quick command to the cleric, who cast shatter on the big window to allow the two to escape.  Then Axom reached over the balcony railing and picked up Pah’s stunned form, carrying her off with him as he escaped out the window, with the cleric close behind.   Axom figured Pah would make a nice snack before he left. 

When the cleric dispelled the sleet storm Uri was able to see the Flayer disappearing out the shattered window, with Pah under his arm.  By then the Baron was running around the balcony swinging his sword at the two standing figures, Irk (who was stunned, still) and Uri.  Uri, to avoid a beating, ran forward, towards the balcony, and used his spider climb ability to perch on the wall where he would be safe.  The Baron, left with just one target, started pounding on Irk, while Irk tried to figure out what was going on.

Uri, perched on the wall just under the roof, heard heavy footsteps above. He ran along the wall to the window, out the window and up the wall again to the crenellated rooftop walkway again.  Once there he found himself standing on one end of the roof.  On the other end, between Uri and the tower door, which was swinging shut, stood the cleric, who had unlimbered his huge flail, and was waving it around in front of himself.  Electricity arced from the head of the flail to the roof.  The Cleric beckoned Uri forward with his shield hand.  

Uri, despite his victory over the baron’s child, didn’t feel like a toe to toe fight with the cleric, and cast web instead.  The cleric failed his save and was cocooned between the crenellations on the walk, struggling to break free.  Uri ran past him and through the tower door.

Uri crashed through the door with his crossbow in hand.  There, in the bedroom, just in front of the mirror, Uri saw the mind flayer holding Pah, having attached three of his four tentacles.  

“GIT YER HANDS OFF MY PAH!” Uri shouted, shooting at Axom with his crossbow.  

That round, Pah managed to finally recover from the effect of the Mind Blast, and wriggled free from the Flayer’s tentacles.  Axom closed in again, attaching two tentacles and grapping with her again, and Pah managed to get free..

Downstairs, Irk shook off the effects of the Mind Blast and found himself bleeding from a couple of wounds and facing the Baron.  He punched the baron once (not enough to knock the baron out) and the ran for the stairs, following the sounds of Pah’s screaming, which was muffled one moment and clear as a bell the next.  

Axom had had enough.  He grabbed his coat off the floor by the coat rack and started to put it on, while he lashed out mentally.  First he spoke into her mind.  “We’ll meet again, my sweet.  And I will taste your brain.” Then he reached out mentally and charmed Pah.  “Protect me,” he said to her.

Uri saw trouble coming, and cast Web again, filling the tower, but not entangling anyone except the last standing noble child, who was still crying and screaming over her fallen mother and brother.  
Pah drew a pistol and took a shot at Uri, but missed.  

Downstairs, Eli of the fortunate saving throws, managed to recover from his initial stun.  He heard the commotion upstairs and started to head up there.  In the second floor of the tower he came upon Minimonk, standing there still stunned.  Eli grabbed some rope and began to tie up the little monk to take him out of the action.  Minimonk managed to recover from the stun a few rounds later, but Eli managed to get him bound and immobilized.

Irk reached the top of the stairs in time to see Axom step into the mirror, which suddenly was not reflecting the baron’s tower bedroom, bur another room, apparently far away, in which they could see two humans, dressed in odd grey uniforms and holding devices that he did not recognize.  Irk charged through the mirror/gate, but was driven back when the two SS guards laid down a heavy hail of suppressive fire through the mirror, covering Axom’s escape.  Bullets tore into the web in front of the mirror.  Pah turned, drew her other pistol and took a shot at Irk.  Irk hefted his axe above his head and smashed the mirror.

The Baron had been right behind Irk on the stairs, and charged into the room, but got hung up in the web.  When Irk smashed the mirror it severed the connection between Axom and his charmed subjects, releasing Minimonk, the Baron, and Pah, and bringing the battle to a close.  

Uri, the one member of the party able to move freely through the web, walked back out onto the catwalk, where the cleric was still trying to escape.  Uri looked at him, struggling in the web, trying to swing his big sparking flail.  Then Uri put one foot on the cleric’s chest, leveled his crossbow on the cleric’s left eye, and fired.  

Irk, once he was satisfied that things were stable on the tower, returned downstairs to the slowly regenerating form of the Ogre Mage.  He bundled the body up and dragged it outside.  Passing the Baron, who was trying to sort out what had happened and what he should be doing about it, Irk said, “got any marshmallows?”  

Irk dragged the Ogre mage outside, built a huge pyre beneath it.   Standing over the battered body, which each round was getting a little closer to whole, Irk found an eye and looked into it.  “Yer still a dick.”  With that, he thrust a torch into the pyre.

Pah, sitting on the floor by the shattered mirror, tried to sort out what had happened and to get the unclean feeling left behind by having the Mind Flayer in her mind, and trying to suck out her skull.  Tucked in a pouch, she found the papers she’d taken from Axom’s coat pocket, and wondered if he was going to miss those, wherever he’d gone.


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## Rune (Feb 1, 2002)

And...?  What happens next?


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## Radiating Gnome (Feb 1, 2002)

Rune said:
			
		

> *And...?  What happens next? *




It's coming, it's coming.  

-rg


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## Radiating Gnome (Feb 8, 2002)

*We're the Goonies!*

We’re the Goonies

It didn’t take long – there was still dank, acrid smoke from the burned Ogre Mage in the air, when the Baron started trying to convince the party to leave town.  He made it clear that he was in an awkward place – he arranged a quick feast in their honor, which was a meager celebration at best, and was pointedly not attended by the Baron’s family.  Apparently the Baroness, broken jaw and all, was refusing to be in the presence of the party, especially “that homicidal dwarf”, and insisted that the Baron execute the party.  The baron just thanked the party for saving his city, then asked them to leave and never return.  And he hoped they would understand.

Pah kept asking for a bath. "I feel dirty."

Uri smirked.  "That kind of dirty don't wash off."

Pah glowered at Uri.  

 While eating in the uncomfortable quiet of the feast, the party had a small delivery – a messenger arrived with a note from Solen, who begged that they wrap things up and make their way to Dyvers as soon as possible.  He had tracked down those who had stolen the pistols and things had become complicated.  He needed them there right away.

So they set out, and made their way without incident to Dyvers, this time passing through the city gates without incident.  Finding the inn where Solen had indicated he could be found, they waited until he returned at the end of the day.  He was pleased to see them.  But he quickly got down to business.

The situation was complicated.  It turned out that the two men who had stolen Pah’s old pistols from her room were in the employ of the Magister of Dyvers herself, and had delivered the weapons to her before Solen could catch up with them.  She was preparing to deliver the powder and weapons to her court alchemist, who would try to reverse-engineer them, when Solen arrived and tried to recover the items.  He explained that he had never intended for his gunpowder to fall into the hands of a kingdom – any kingdom – and shift the balance of power in the lands.  

The Magister was not about to return the powder to Solen, but did see the value in having it’s creator on hand to make the powder for her.  After days and nights of negotiation and debate, Solen and the Magister hammered out an agreement.  Solen would oversee the creation of a unit of 20 soldiers who would be trained to use Solen’s black powder weapons.  The would be provided with special uniforms, be attached to the Dyvers Free Army, and be called the Dyvers Dragoons.  

Solen described a very complex political situation – the Magister’s council of advisors was in turmoil, and the Dragon Cult was growing in power and influence, even though Sear’s resources were no longer at their disposal.  The high priest of the Dragon Cult in Dyvers now held a position on the council.  Solen saw this as a dubious sign.  The heroes agreed.

Solen, stalling desperately as the members of the elite unit were selected from the DFA, managed to hold back four positions for the Heroes of Spittlemarch.  He wasn’t sure how much longer he could have held onto those positions, so he was glad to have the party arrive when they did. 

The group was not exactly thrilled.  

“I don’t want to wear anything with a dragon on it,” said Pah.  (the tabards that made up the Dragoon’s uniforms were purple with a dragon head silhouette).

“We’re called the what?” asked Uri.

“The Dyvers Dragoons.”

Pah had a sudden flash.  “We’re the goonies!” No one shared her excitement.

Without much further discussion, Solen gathered his things and led the group to the barracks that had been appropriated for the Dragoons.  On the way he explained the basics of the unit.  There were sixteen others in the unit, led by a Captain Nikolai and Lieutenant Alexi.  The two officers had been training already and were overseeing the training of the rest of the men.  There was a group of four practicing shooting and loading as the party entered the compound.  

Solen introduced the party to Nikolai, the captain of the Dragoons, who was training the other soldiers.  Nikolai was clearly not impressed with the group, and made it clear that he was not happy that these four  . . . irregulars . . . were occupying a position in the Dragoons that could have been use by proper soldiers.  

Solen showed the heroes to their part of the barracks, and let them get settled in for a few minutes.  Pah spent her time trying to accessorize her uniform tabard – a knot here, a tuck here, a bit of jewelry there – anything to make it look a bit prettied.  She did her best, but was still frustrated with the uniform.  The others shuffled around a bit, while Minimonk complained about not being a member of the dragoons (no space had been held for him, he Solen did not know Uri had picked up a follower).  

Solen organized a big dinner to welcome the heroes into the dragoons and let everyone get to know each other. It was a stiff affair, something that made Irk very uncomfortable, and the Captain’s distain finally got to him.  Before long the two were squaring off in the training ground for a fistfight.  

It was a pretty brutal slugfest, but the dwarf’s stony build saw him through, an eventually Nikolai was stretched out on the ground.  Some of the men, excited to have the heroes of Spittlemarch in their unit cheered a little, but most were uncomfortable with the whole situation.

The executive officer, Lieutenant Alexei, pulled the heroes aside and had a talk with them in the kitchen over a few beers.  They had a long talk, and figured out a few things:  Things would be a little rocky with the Captain, after having beat him up in front of the men; Alexei was a devotee of the Dragon Cult, as were unnamed members of the unit but not Nikolai, and that while the heroes played their cards close to their chests, they might have more to worry about from Alexei than from Nikolai.  Alexei was of the opinion that the gunpowder should be used more widely.

After a few too many with Alexei, the group shuffled to their bunks and sacked out.

Next time:  And now for something a bit unusual


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## jkason (Feb 9, 2002)

Pop culture references from contemporary TV to 80's child-star comedies, jewel-bedecked military uniforms, having a smack-down with your commanding officer, and a pocketful of Nazi war secrets, and _ now _ we're in for something a little unusual?  

Monty Python would be proud. 

jason


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## nyllom (Feb 9, 2002)

Irk woulda' beat that guy alot faster if "Darling Nikki" hadn't taken a potion (meow). I did like it when all the pretty boys started singing my song though.

-pah


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## Radiating Gnome (Feb 9, 2002)

*Something unusual*

Yeah, things do get a little unconventional, and it's going to get worse.

What I meant by unusual this time around is that for the next couple of game sessions I'm not going to be the DM.  Eli's player wanted to try DMing a session, which (as you'll see when I post it) is going to stretch out into two sessions.  

For those two sessions I'll be playing a PC, and narrating from his point of view.  Then, perhaps, I'll take that PC and make him the NPC narrator of these heroes, or something like that.  I don't know.  I still have a few weeks to decide what I'll do with that.

-rg


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## Radiating Gnome (Feb 13, 2002)

*A shift in narrative style*

(Eli’s player asked to take over and run an adventure for the Heroes of Spittlemarch game. I created a character who will take over the narration from his point of view.  Eli is off training with his mentors in the Order of the Shooting Star, and is not available for this adventure.)

My name is Pavel.  I’m a itinerant brother in the service of Ehlonna, and I am currently attached to the newest elite military unit in Dyvers, the Dyvers Dragoons.  We’re a small company, just 20 soldiers and then some support personnel.  

I was excited to join the Dragoons – such an elite unit, selected from all the free armies, you know the slots in this unit were prized highly, even if some don’t trust the gnome’s invention as a weapon.  So far it seems to be quite powerful.

The Dragoons are a hardy bunch – at least, the 16 of us who are regular army.  Solen, the gnome, insisted loudly for weeks that we had to hold four positions in the unit for the original four who inspired the unit – the ones that awful tavern song was about, the ‘heroes’ of Spittlemarch.  Some heroes.  

Captain Nikolai is a good man – gruff, certainly, and hard on the men.  He’s burning through the powder like mad, training the men to shoot and reload, shoot and reload.  I can’t seem to wash away the acrid smell of the powder – it clings to my hair and clothes.  My ears are ringing, too.  The guns a quite loud, but I suspect that the noise is part of their power – it would be very intimidating to be faced with the full unit of dragoons firing at will.  

Then Solen brought in his friends.  And the trouble started.  There were actually five of them, although Solen was not aware, apparently, that a young halfling monk had started tagging along with the group.  That one, called Minimonk, is now one of the camp followers.  

The toughest, and most apparently useful of the Spittlemarch crowd is Irk, the dwarf.  He did something I’ve never seen done before – picked a fight with Nikolai and won.  That’s going to make things interesting.  I don’t know how the Captain will respond to the challenge to his command.

Then there’s the Elf – a good shot with a bow, and pretty light on his feet, but quiet.  He’s gone off on his own again – training, meditating, something like that.  

The only one of the four to actually use firearms is Pah, a halfling scout.  She has a pair of small pistols that Solen made special for her, and she’s very good with them.  She’s the one they call the Thunderer, and she doesn’t let anyone forget that there are songs written about her.  I hope she’s as good in a fight  as she’d have us believe.

The group’s spellslinger is another halfling, one named Uri.  His cohort Minimonk never leaves his side, and seems to be there mostly to laugh at all of Uri’s jokes.  I don’t know how this motley crew pulled off some of the things they’ve done – especially without a cleric around.

The group may be effective in their own way, but it looks like there’s going to be trouble – they’re too much free spirits, too irregular for Nikolai’s kind of army.  Nikolai’s second in command, a cretin named Alexei, has been very chummy with the group since Irk pounded the snot out of Nikolai, which doesn’t bode well, either. Perhaps he things that’s the road to command.  But that would be bad news. I fear.  

You see, Alexei has been seen around with some of the local Dragonpriests.  I don’t know how involved he is, but I don’t like those scaly bastards one bit, and if he’s getting into bed with them, I’d hate to see him in command of the Dragoons.  But the amazing thing is that Alexei is so chummy with the heroes, too – and not afraid to talk about the dragon faith with them.  Can it really be that he hasn’t heard the stories about these four, about what they did to Eldgrim, how they thwarted the plans of the great wyrm Sear, about how they killed that SOB Anathe?  Either he’s not too bright, or he’s up to something.

Anyway, I decided to get to know the heroes a bit better.  After all, I’m not exactly a regular myself.  We were sitting around a tavern having a quiet drink, talking about some of the specifics of their adventuring style.  I found that conversations with the troupe went something like this.  

Uri: I’m funny.
Minimonk:   Heh heh, yeah, you’re funny.
Pah: You know, I’m a legend.  There’s a song about me and everything.
Irk: (drinks)
Eli: (appears to meditate in the corner)
Uri: I mean it.  Really damn funny.
Pah: You’re only funny ‘cause I set you up.
Uri: Think what you like, honey.
Minimonk: he he he
Irk: (drinks)
Eli: (peeks with one eye to guide his hand as he takes a sip of white wine, then returns to meditating).
Uri: I’m funnier than you.
Pah: (looks at him with an arched eyebrow)
Uri: Really.  
Minimonk: Really.
Irk: (drinks)
Eli: (nibbles at a bit of dried fruit)
Uri: Are you saying you don’t think I’m funny? Because I am.

 And on like that.  I’m sure there’s something I’m not seeing here. They are not what I expected of the heroes of Spittlemarch.

So, anyway, one night I was sitting around having a quiet drink with the dwarf and the three halflings – Eli was off doing some secret elf training thing – and things got interesting.  It started with a dwarf named Warf, who rolled a whole keg over to our table and wanted us to drink with him.  Even those of us who were trying to drink sparingly at most wound up getting drunk – perhaps the beer was laced with something, I don’t know.  Anyway, we work up chained in a drunk tank.  Mind you, I’ve served with the Dyvers Free army for most of my adult life, this was not my first time in a drunk tank, but I thought I had left those years behind long ago.  

The cell stank of hops, as we lot of chained slobs sweat out the beer from the night before.  It struck me odd that they’d locked Pah, a young female halfling, in the cell with the men.  Perhaps they hadn’t noticed she was female (although, the cuts and adjustments she’s made to her uniform tabard to reveal and emphasize her cleavage should have been a dead giveaway.)

At any rate, while we were waking up and trying to get our bearings, a dark-clad rogue snuck into the jail and subdued the guards.  Apparently there was going to be some sort of jail break – and one that seemed supremely ill-informed.  After all, we had been informed by the guards that we would be released at noon, so there was precious little reason to risk becoming bigger criminals by trying to escape, or allowing someone else to try to break us out.  But the rogueish fellow insisted that we had to get out now, that he had come to rescue the drunken dwarf named Worf, and would take us too, all back to his ship so we could escape.  

Well, I can say quite proudly, that none of us were having any.  We weren’t getting on any ships, we weren’t going to be busted out of jail, and it seemed like the biggest danger we, as members in good standing of one of the most elite military units in the city would come from trying to escape with this little nutter.  So we said no. And as we were chained to the dwarf, that made taking the dwarf out that much harder.  

The breakout artist got jumpy.  He started to babble something about not having time for this, needing to get away before THEY got here, and that sort of stuff.  At the time, it seemed pretty convenient, and we sat right there, even after he insisted on picking the lock to our cell and opening the door.  

The debate went on a bit, and things started to get a little hairy.  Pah was trying to pick the locks on our chains so we could get a little more mobility if things got interesting.  Irk and Uri were arguing with the rogue, playing tug of war with him and his two henchmen over Worf.  Irk finally got fed up with debate and started throwing punches.  Then the back wall of the jail blew up.  

Just exploded, rocks and plaster blown all over the place, and a great big hole where there had been a wall before.  The Rogue ran.  Worf finally woke up, and found himself free of the chains (thanks to the breakout artist).  

I turned to face the hole in the wall, and found that we were being attacked from that side, too, this time by a half-dozen huge Hippo-headed humanoids with some sortof axe-gun thing and very dim looks in their eyes.  I turned to face them, to cover the other two halflings, and told them to run.  

I had recovered my weapons and holy symbol, and felt ready to face just about anything.  I had a moment to get a few spells cast, most importantly a fire shield, and then I drew Thorn, my longsword, and stepped up to meet the Hippomen.  Fire shield flickering around me, I called out to the Hippos.  “By the power vested in me by the City of Dyvers, I command you to stand down.”

My cellmates were clearly impressed. 
Pah jerked a finger in my direction.  “Lookit him.”
Irk said,  “He’s sparkly.”
Uri said, “I’m really gonna hate to see that guy die.”  

Then everyone jumped into action.

Worf took off running, and Irk and Pah were right behind him.  

While Irk and Pah managed to chase down Worf, arguing with him along the way and finally convincing him that the best way to prove that he was really on our side was to come back and help fight the Hippomen, I stood my ground in the midst of a terrifying hail of blows.  I was protected by the fire shield, so every time they landed a blow they suffered terrible burns from being so close.  I was forced to focus on continuing to call on the powers of Ehlonna to heal me of those wounds each round, so I was only able to take a few swings with Thorn, but the it was enough that the Hippomen were dimwitted enough to continue to break themselves against my fire shield, eventually killing themselves in a desperate attempt to kill me.  I killed 4 that way.  The other two gave up on me and raced past me to try to take the two halflings, but they ran out into the street, where they met the other three – Irk, Pah, and Worf, returning to help, finally.  I came up behind the pursuing Hippomen, in time to help the group finish the last two in short order and try to get our bearings.  

We were regrouping – checking out the Hippoman bodies and trying to get a sense of what we were up against.  None of us were very satisfied with the answers we were getting from Worf, who kept babbling something about getting to a ship and getting out of there before more of them (he called them Grifs, I think) turned up.  He seemed to think they were more than we could handle.  And perhaps he was right, but running off into the unknown rather than running back to our barracks and the cover provided by the rest of our unit seemed like a terrible idea.  He kept insisting, arguing that we needed to listen, we needed to come with him, and then – suddenly – more of the hippomen, the grifs, appeared – many more of them this time, and we were forced to run.  I had no more fire shields and only a little healing left, and didn’t feel like facing another onslaught like the one I had to finish the first four I killed.  While we were trying to evade the Grifs a large barrel-thing was lowered to the street below – some sort of flying device, a magical ship of great power, I’m certain – hovered above us.  Worf jumped right in and beckoned to us.  We followed, reluctantly.  I would much rather have been back in the barracks with the stink of gunpowder and more of Solen’s damn waffles for dinner that cooped up in that barrel, being pulled up to Ehlonna-knows-what by people dim enough to hire an alcoholic dwarf.  

And I wondered.  Here I am, dragged off into the unknown without a plan, without even the soldier’s comfortable sense that his superior officers have a plan and he only needs to worry about doing his job.  Is this what it’s really like to be an adventurer?  Jump feet first into every sticky situation and then improvise your way out?  No wonder so few adventurers survive to a ripe old age.  Perhaps I had misjudged this crew – looking at them, they were not what I would want with me on a formal field of battle, but perhaps they were much more suited to this sort of work, the improvisation, the chaos of their adventures and challenges.  Heroes like this, I imagine, are at their best when the plan goes to hell, when all seems lost, and I wondered for a few moments whether I could hold my own with this group.

Uri looked up at me.  “You killed a lot of them down there.  That spell kicks ass.  And you’re a cleric?”

I nodded.  Maybe we had a lot to teach each other.


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## Radiating Gnome (Mar 8, 2002)

*Pavel’s Journal, Part II (aka Something a little different)*

Pavel’s Journal, Part II

We were whisked up into the sky – a terrifying thing, let me tell you – in this odd airship.  By and large we were too distracted being angry with Worf and the others who had gotten us into this predicament to notice Dyvers getting smaller and smaller beneath us.  

We were, however, introduced to the rest of the crew.  There was a captain named Jimbo.  Other officers, whose duties I was never clear about, named Jordi, Weasley and perhaps more.  There was a Golem named Tiktok.  And the leader of the little troupe?  A maimed human named Commodore Pike, a legless, bearded lunatic who was carried about in some sort of chair, but a metal chair with 8 articulated, moving legs that walked him around, rather than the more normal, static four legs.  Oh, and the name of the ship?  Enterprise, of all things.  

Having finally met the man (half-man?  Demi-man? Manlette?) responsible for the whole show, we started demanding a few things, first and foremost that we be dropped off, back on solid ground, and released.  Naturally it wasn’t going to be that easy.

“But I need you,” Pike said. “I hired Worf, but he seems a bit too unsteady, a bit of a drunk.  But I must complete my quest, and you are the only ones who can help me.  Besides, I like you.”

“Oh,” said Eli.  “Everyone _starts out_  liking us.”

When Pike continued to carp about Worf being unreliable, Eli pointed out, “you know, you don’t look very smart, complaining about him being a drunk when you’re paying him in beer.”

Minimonk sniggered.

Pah asked,  “What’s in it for us?”

Irk added, “Is there gold?  We never get any gold.”

It became clear that we weren’t going to be taken home until we helped him with his quest.  And, being an adventurous lot, they started asking what the quest might be.  It turned out that Pike was after something called the Golden Fleece. So, yes Irk, there would be gold, of a sort.   And it wasn’t even on our world – there’s a heady concept.  We had all been so focused on the debate that we had not noticed that the ship had continued to climb, until not only Dyvers, but the world itself appeared to be small enough to carry in my hand.  And we grew closer to another planet, perhaps a moon.  And that was apparently the place where we would find the Golden Fleece.  

I was convinced that I was dreaming.  Some terrible, spoiled horsemeat-induced dream.  But the moon kept getting bigger.  I was terrified.  

While I was trying to get my bearings, Pike went on to jabber about a spider temple of some sort, an evil place that we could raid and loot, but I don’t recall the specific details.

I had to look away, to distract myself.  I wandered up to the Afterdeck, where the wheel was being manned by a gnome.  When I expressed some interest in how the ship was navigated through air and between worlds.  The gnome offered me a seat behind the great wheel, and I took it.

The Wheel felt smooth in my hands, but I was startled by an very unusual sensation, feeling that the wheel was somehow draining energy from me.  I found I was able to direct the ship’s movement mentally while I held the wheel.  It was easy, almost intuitive, but it drained away all of the spells I had memorized for the day, leaving me feeling quite uncomfortable.  I scowled at the gnome, weighing the possibility of tossing him overboard, but decided against it.  It was good to know that I could steer the great airship if necessary.  I only hoped that losing the spells was temporary.  

As we had some time in transit ahead of us, we decided to stake out some space for ourselves and get some rest.  We slept in shifts through the night, fitfully, and when morning came I was relieved to pray and find my spells restored.  

The ship had made great progress while we slept, and was flying above the surface of a great sea.  Ahead, in the distance, we could see a small Atoll, which turned out to be our target, the island on which we would find the fabled Golden Fleece.  

Pah had a new fixation.  Both Tiktok and Pike were wearing hats – black stiff hats with wide brims that curled up above the ears – and Pah wanted one of them.  Badly.  She alternated between asking for it (or just saying she wanted it) and trying to sneak up on Pike or Tiktok and trying to steal it.  She was never successful, something that was striking – such a gifted thief, to be completely unable to snitch a simple article of clothing . . . there was something special about those hats.  Perhaps that was why Pah was so fixated on them – maybe she had already sensed what I was only able to deduce from her behavior.  At any rate, I found myself wishing she would find a way to get her hands on one of those hats.  

We landed on dry land on the small Atoll, and joined the major players in the Enterprise’s crew in a trek inland to look for the Golden Fleece.  Our band took up the rear, trying to stick together and not be too close to or too far from the lunatics leading us into the jungle.  

We were met shortly after entering that jungle by an odd tribe of tropical gnomes.  The took us back to their village, held a great feast in our honor, and told us all about their great diety, the Sun God.  Then they prepared an offering and we waited in a huge ceremonial clearing for the arrival of their god.

Now, I am a religious man.  Every day I feel the power of the touch of my god, Ehlonna.  I see her in every leaf, every branch.  But I’ve never seen her, the "real" Ehlonna.  If a mortal can truly comprehend the presence of a god.  I don’t know many of the most devout in this world who have – and this whole goofy short society gets daily visits from their sun god.  Obviously I was a little skeptical that this creature would actually be a sun god.

But, at the same time, they see this creature as a sun god – and as I serve Ehlonna specifically in her Sun aspect.  I felt a kinship for these people, for their touchingly juvenile ritual, and their pure adoration of the Sun.  I found myself waiting among them, feeling like one of them, and looking at the crew of the Enterprise, wondering what I was doing.

Then the sun god arrived. It was a rodent the size of a roadside tavern, covered in glittering, golden fur that seemed to shine with an inner light.  Here was the golden fleece, the subject of Pike’s quest, in the body of the gnome’s sun god.  The great beast made it’s way into the clearing and started to munch away on the offerings of fruit the gnomes have left.  

I stepped forward, using my animal friendship ability to try to make a connection with it, and it was starting to work, but then Pike started shouting for us to attack it, there it was, get the fleece, and so on. When we didn't move fast enough, he cast a charm on Irk, who suddenly started to support the Commodore's position in the debate.  And that just wasn't going over well with the rest of the Dragoons.

So we attacked Pike and his men while the gnomes scattered and the sun god fled into the jungle.  

We concentrated our attacks on Pike and Tiktok, who started emitting a blinding cloud of smoke almost as soon as the combat began.  .  

I wasn’t going to let that stand any longer than I could.  I decided to give him a bit of a hot seat, casting heat metal on his chair and warning him that unless he released Irk “you are going to fry in your own ass carriage.” I thought it was pretty clever, but minimonk, plinking away with his crossbow nearby, didn’t snicker.  Maybe he only laughs at Uri’s jokes.  

Anyway, the fight shuffled on, Tiktok trying to protect his master, Pike trying to escape, the other Enterprisers not being very effective, Irk trying to break up the fight before someone got hurt, and our band trying to put big holes in the ever-fleeing Pike.  In the end, Tiktok fell trying to protect his master, while Pike escaped into the jungle.  I’d spent most of my spells again, the party wasn’t too badly hurt (although Irk was still a bit muddled).  

The good news?  Pah got Tiktok’s hat.  And what a hat it was.  When she pulled it off Tiktok’s body an illusion faced, and we saw him for what he was – yet another warrior, no golem at all, and Pah managed to figure out how to use the hat – a magic hat of disguise – in a few minutes.  

The gnomes had scattered, as had the sun god.  Pike was gone, as were the other survivors of his landing party.  But we knew one thing.  We were not in a footrace to get back to the Enterprise first, before we were marooned on this . . . place. 

More next time . . .


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## Radiating Gnome (Mar 20, 2002)

*Pike’s Peak*

Once we had gathered ourselves in back in the clearing, we figured we needed to make our way as quickly as possible back to the Enterprise – we didn’t want to be marooned here, however pleasant the environment was.  So, after a few quick taps from my wand of Cure Light Wounds, we took off at a run for the ship.

We reached the beach just in the nick of time.  A quartet of gnomes had started to turn the capstan, raising anchor, and the Commodore and his men were shuffling around the decks preparing to make sail.  For some reason, they had left a longboat on the shore, an oversight we quickly took advantage of, hustling ourselves and my two war dogs, Toblerone and Cadbury, into the boat while Irk and I took the oars.

We pulled as hard as we could, trying to close the difference between the two ships as quickly as possible.  Once Pike and his goons spotted us, the fun started.  A few were taking pot shots at us with crossbows, while someone on deck called up a storm to make rowing more difficult – a storm which eventually produced a bolt of lightning – a very odd bolt, one that signed most everyone in the boat – killing Cadbury and nearly killing Toby, who I managed to save with a tap from my wand.  But the boat itself took no damage at all.  

Still worried that we would not be able to get to the ship before they weighed anchor and left us behind, Uri got into action from the bow of the longboat.  He cast a thick web over the foredeck, where the gnomes were working on the capstan, effectively stopping them in their tracks.  Then he traded shots with the rest of the crew on deck until the boat was alongside the ship.

Now, boarding a large ship from a longboat is a tricky business – trying to attack up the steep sides of a ship while people are attacking you from above is practically suicide.  Of course, this group had it a lot easier than most.  Irk, who snatched up his axe, was the first to reach the deck, carrying Uri on his back.  He was wearing his slippers of spider slimb, and was able to charge up the side of the ship as if it were firm, level ground.  Within seconds he was on deck cleaving his way through the gnomes trying to repel boarders.  

Pah managed to reach the deck in a single bound – thanks to that ring of jumping – and began to dart around the deck taking shots of opportunity as they became available.

With the way cleared, Minimonk was also able to scamper up to the deck without difficulty.  Which left me, Toby, and Caddy’s corpse in the boat.  I knew there was no way I was going to get Caddy up there right away, so she would have to wait until after the battle.  I grabbed a rope and tried to haul myself up onto the ship.  

I fell the first time – nearly falling into the water, where my armor would have sunk me pretty quickly.  I hauled myself back into the longboat, and began trying to climb the side of the ship again, eventually hauling myself up there in time to see the battle in full swing.
Irk was making short work of the commodore’s flunkies, while the halfling trio bounced around and worked on the flanks.  Jordi and Weasley, two of Pike’s flunkies, fell quickly.  I charged up to the afterdeck, where Pike was trying to make a last stand, in time for the charm that Pike had placed on Irk to make life difficult again – Irk didn’t mind the idea of our attacking Pike’s men, but when we turned our attention to Pike himself, Irk balked at the idea, and did his best to keep us from fighting with him.  We had to distract Irk by sending him below hunting for treasure.

Pike himself turned out to be a tough opponent.  The legs of his metal chair lashed out at us, as we surrounded him and tried to finish him off with some flanking attacks.  He bolted for the lower deck, but Pah lept into the rigging and executed an amazingly acrobatic rope swing down to cut him off (her first level as an acrobat paying off).  Once we had him cornered again we managed to finish him off.  Pah pulled off his hat as well, revealing that he was some sort of monstrous insect humanoid, not the demi-commodore he looked like.  Weird.  We rolled his corpse into the water and set about clearing out the rest of the ship.  

We found a crew of gnomes hiding down below – perhaps connected with the gnomes that had been helping the Commodore run the ship and try to fight us off.  They surrendered to us without a fight.  They tried to convince us that they would just drop us off back at our planet, but Pah had decided the ship was her new home, and she wasn’t listening to a bunch of dwarves about it.  In the end, the Gnomes were dropped off on the Atoll, where we can only hope they were welcomed into the local tribe.  And then I got into the chair again to fly the Enterprise back towards Dyvers.  

The navigation was trickier than we thought it would be, but we were able, after a few false starts, to make our way back to Dyvers, where we sailed over the city, flying a makeshift Dragoon flag.  We decided to dock the ship in the Dragoon Barracks, rather than landing in the harbor, so the ship would be easier to protect, and we could work on repainting and renaming the ship.  For some reason the others were convinced that the wanted to call the ship the Mystery Machine.  Whenever the subject came up, Uri started telling Pah she was Velma, not Daphne, but I have no idea what any of that meant (although it did seem to aggravate Pah).

Next time: getting caught up on life in Dyvers.


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## Radiating Gnome (Mar 21, 2002)

*Goonies in Dyvers*

(Note:  Now that I have returned to the DM chair for our group, and Eli has returned to the ranks of the party, I think I’m going to not use Pavel as a narrator anymore – it worked while I was a player, but now that I’m DM again I think I’ll just go back to a more omniscient point of view)

The commotion caused by the return of the missing Dragoons, at the helm of a flying ship, quickly settled down, as more exciting things were happening in Dyvers.  In the heroes’ short absence the Dragon Priests had gained even more political power in the city, and hand managed to force the Magister to approve yet another special unit of guards, this one under the control of the Dragon Priests, and called the Claws of the Dragon.  Almost over night there were Claws patrols making their way through the city, meting out crude justice and demonstrating a great deal of power.  

Solen, while pleased with the return of the heroes, was especially relieved to see the Enterprise/Mystery Machine – and to absorb it into his plans for the Dragoons.  There was some resistance to the idea of making the ship the Dragoon flagship, but in the end Solen and the players agreed that the ship was the property of the players, but that the dragoons could make use of it.

Solen set about making some additions to the ship, including adding great crossbows to  the fore- and sterncastles, building a drydock in the barrack’s compound to park the ship in, and putting a store of powder and shot in the ship, ready if they had to make a move at a moment’s notice.

More news trickled in to the Dragoon compound.  The claws had a barracks already, their recruits were training, and there was a great deal of construction going on in the temple district – the Dragon Priests, with some recent, huge influx of capital, had bought up a huge area in the temple district, in and around their temple, and were building a huge complex there, having hired every mason, carpenter, and laborer in the city to work on their walls.  

There was one other bit of news.  A new officer had been seen in and around the Dragonpriest compound – in shining white armor.  Anathe was back. 

When Irk heard this bit of news he quietly excused himself and disappeared.  Knowing what he was probably up to, the rest of the heroes quickly tagged along.

Irk made his way to the Temple district, and found himself standing across a wide square looking at the construction site around the DP temple.  He stood there, as the others caught up, and watched as a unit of claws went through a training routine with their weapon of choice, the double-bladed sword.  

Shortly after the party arrived and started observing, just as the sun winked over the horizon, Anathe appeared – at the head of a platoon of Claws and some other, slim, robed figures.  They were marching towards the docks quarter.  

Irk stepped forward.  “Hey, Whitey!” he shouted, and turned and bared his stumpy, hairy buttocks at Anathe.  

Uri, acting quickly, wrapped an obscuring mist around the party, almost hiding Irk’s ass in time.  As Anathe’s form was lost from view in the mist, the party could see him scowl in recognition, but keep moving away.

The others managed to get Irk to return to the Dragoon barracks.  

Later they heard rumors that a great ship – with the blood-red sails of the dragonfaith – had sailed into port and unloaded a lot of passengers – soldiers and adventuring types, mostly, all already dressed in the uniform of the Claws, a uniform that had been approved less than a week before.    The party took a late night jaunt over to the docks and tried to investigate a little, but got little more than a slightly more detailed description of the arrival of the Dragonship’s passengers.  There didn’t seem to be much cargo on the ship, just the soldiers.  The Claws that had disembarked were a motley crew – a mix of all races, and even some fairly unusual ones.

They returned to the Barracks and had a few gloomy drinks with Solen.


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## Radiating Gnome (Apr 11, 2002)

*Goonies in Dyvers  II*

Goonies in Dyvers  II


The group settled in to a bit of routine for a few days.  Eli was putting the finishing touches on a homemade bow, Pah was showing off her shooting trickery to the other Dragoons, Uri poured over item creation books in Solen’s lab while Minimonk complied his list of his favorite Uri one-liners, and Irk . . . well, Irk sharpened his axe.

In tavern crawls after hours the group started to hear stories about a core group of the claws – a gang of mercenary adventurers lead by a vicious dwarf named Brottkil.  

One morning, things seemed odd.  The men were walking around, looking at the heroes a bit oddly, as if they were waiting for something to happen, some reaction to something.  No one was quite sure what to make of it.  After a while, most of the group was off doing their thing, when Uri shuffled off to the latrine for his morning constitutional, still puzzled by the wide berth the other Dragoons were giving him.  He shut himself in, squatted down on the worn pine seat, and looked up idly at the wall.  There he saw what the fuss was about.  A couplet had been carved into the wood.

Have you heard of the heroes of Spittlemarch
A short band of Rogues with no spines

Uri was incensed, to say the least.  

He raced back to the lab, grabbed a sheet of parchment and a bit of charcoal, and raced back to the latrine.  He took a rubbing of the carving to show the others, then took out a dagger and scratched it out, gouging up the wood something fierce.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party was trying to find out more about what was going on in and around the Dragon Temple.  A day of investigating allowed them to gather a great deal of information.  The dragon priests had bought or seized a great deal of land around their existing temple -- small temples and shops in the area were driven out of business and then the land bought from creditors.  A huge construction project was underway on the site -- every mason, carpenter, and laborer in the city had been hired away from other jobs, most making double their usual daily salary.  The construction site was confused and chaotic to the outside observer -- it seemed like everything was going up at once.

Using a hat of disguise, Pah was able to sneak into the site and steal a plan from a dwarven architect. The goonies slunk back to the Dragoon barracks to try to see what was going on.

Conferring with Solen and Nikolai, they looked over the map.  Solen was aghast at the audacity of the plan.  The Dragon Priests were building a walled city within Dyvers.  Dragon City would have it's own barracks, it's own mercantile and tavern district, a stableyard big enough to handle a great deal of livestock (much more than seemed necessary to mount all of the claws garrisoned there) and a much larger temple complex.  But more than that, there was a huge section of the walled area  -- an area with even thicker, taller walls than those that separated Dragon City from Dyvers.  And the notation on the map for that area read simply "Nursery."

Within the Nursery were the plans for a great tower -- something the remembered having seen the first four levels of already from outside the walls.  That tower looked like it would house the leaders of the cult the tallest building in Dyvers, and a more commanding presence than even the Magister's palace.

Solen was furious, and panicked, and he started to race about, composing three or four letters at once.  The party slipped back out of the lab.  It was getting on towards evening, and they weren't sure what their next move would be.  

Uri remembered the bit of verse from the latrine wall, and showed his rubbing to the rest of the group.  They were a bit disturbed, but didn't know what to make of it.  Then Olaf came back to the barracks from one of the nearby taverns, white as a sheet.  

He approached the Goonies.  "You had better get down to thy Slaked Throat. "

"Why?" asked Eli.

"Just go."

So they went.  There was a performer at the tavern -- a bard of mediocre talent.  the crowd was lively but a bit edgy once the party entered.  Then, someone towards the front, who hadn't seen the Goonies come in, begged the  bard to sing "it" one more time.  So the bard began to sing.

_
Have you heard of the heroes of Spittlemarch
A short band of rogues with no spine
They kill peasants in the fields for their breakfast
slaughter children in their beds when they dine
The dwarf is a burly whoreson called Geezer.
Breadless and old, he can't walk a straight line
A hobbit with guns called Thunderpants
who farts great green clouds when she dines
An elf with a bow they call Cherrypicker
He'll fight from a distance, but up close he'll surrender and whine
And the little wizard, a peck called Bugboy
He crals on his belly to find the roaches on which he dines
Those are the heroes of spittle march
A short band of rogues with no spine._

As the bard began a second reprise, Irk pushed his way towards the bar.  Over the sound of most of the tavern singing along, Irk ordered a small barrel of beer.  Once it came, he hefted it once, testing the weight and balance.  Then he threw it at the Bard.

The barrel smashed into the bard, crushing his lute and knocking him against the back wall in a pool of beer and sprung barrel staves.  While the crowd looked on in shock, and the bard tried to regain his feet, Irk bounded onto the stage, snatching up a footstool in one hand, and began to pummel the soggy bard with it.

The tavern cleared pretty quickly.  And it was only a matter of moments before the sound of the calls for the city watch could be heard.  So the other Goonies dragged Irk off the bard and dragged the two of them off into the night, looking for a new, quiet place, where they could question him.

Uri, who had stayed behind at the barracks to try to help Solen and do some more research, discovered the entire lyrics of the song carved into the latrine wall.  Convinced that there was trouble coming, he raced off to the tavern, looking for the rest of the goonies.  But his search took a lot longer than he expected, because the tavern group had skittered off to hiding with the bard.

The bard told them an interesting story, once they sat him down in a dark alley for questioning.  He had been hired -- for a huge fee -- to sing and play that song by a human male, wearing the colors of the claws of the dragon under a heavy cloak.   he knew nothing more, had though it a prank more than anything else, but clearly had not expected the sort of theater critics the goonies (by which we mean Irk) turned out to be.  

Uri failed to find the others, and returned to the barracks after a while.  there he made a terrible discovery.  Under the cover of night, with none of the goonies and only a few dragoons around, the Barracks area had been raided.  Two night watchmen were dead.  And the door to Solen's laboratory stood open.  

Uri peeked inside the lab.  There, on the floor, was Solen's body, a grey-black blade still thrust into his back.  He was dead -- had been dead long enough to be a bit cold already.

That alarm went up.  Uri ran about, barking orders and the last few Dragoons in the compound, trying to call back the others from their night revels.

Hearing the alarms as they headed back towards the barracks, the other goonies picked up the pace, racing back as fast as their stunty legs could carry them.  There they found Uri, Pavel and the just-awakened and still groggy Nikolai trying to sort out what to do next.  

Uri saw the rest of the group approaching.  He told them the outlines of the story.  "Solen's dead. 

Irk shrugged with bravado he didn't quite feel.  "We've been dead before."

The party examined the scene as best they could.  It was pretty clear that there had been two attackers, both very skilled, and that they had come at Solen from two sides, by surprise.  The most obvious clue was a dagger that the killers had left behind in Solen’s back.  The Goonies took turns examining the dagger, looking for something distinctive about the long, thin, grey-steel blade.  Then Eli got an idea, grabbed the dagger and ran outside into the dawn.  When the early morning sunlight hit the blade it turned to dust in an instant.  

“Drow?” asked Uri.

Eli nodded. Each remembered a time, a few months ago, after their victory at Spittlemarch, when Solen had used a magical water basin of scrying that had shown them Anathe, making his way through the underdark, with a Drow escort.  It appeared that Anathe had brought his new allies into Dyvers with him.  

Plans were made.  Pavel prepared Soeln’s body for travel, and left in the early morning hours to try to find a cleric outside the city that would raise Solen, carrying a fortune in the Goonie’s financial reserves to pay for the service.  At the same time, the Goonies themselves took up positions where they could watch the Dragonpriest compound, trying to figure out what was going on, and where the Drow assassins might behind.  

Using her hat of disguise, Pah snuck into the construction site and managed to make off with one of the master plans for the construction site.  The place was huge, and had a lot of different areas – a huge barracks area for the claws, the already complete temple, a small shopping and tavern district labeled Dragontown, and in one corner, designed to have thicker walls than the rest of the compound, there would be a area labeled the nursery.  Positioned in the middle of the nursery there was a plan for a great tower – it would be the tallest building in the city when it was completed.  At the moment it was only four stories tall, still quite an impressive building.  

While this investigation was going on, Irk was off on another project.  He had borrowed some pen and parchment from Pavel, and had been composing his own doggerel, which he then paid a handful of other bards to sing all around the city.  Here is a sample:
_
The claws are sneaky, no-neck goons
they kill at night by the light of the moon;
they're a danger to all good Dyvers Folk,
They'd choose heir own other for a poke
They come to build a secret town
to tear tradition, the old ways, down
Assassins, cowards, at odds with law
to all that's good -- anath . . . ema
_
A bit of poking around, gathering information in the drinking holes frequented by the construction workers and soldiers in the area revealed some interesting information.  To begin with, they heard that Anathe, Eldgrim, and several Claws (including Brottkill’s team) had left on the morning tide for parts unknown.  And the heard that Anathe had already been using the tower for his residence and offices, over the objection of some of the local leaders of the faith.  And one drunken guard talked about shadowy figures moving around the Tower after dark.  That was enough to get the party interesting enough to investigate the tower after dark.

And so, they girded their loins and hit the outer walls after dark.  Of course, scaling walls isn’t much of a challenge for most of the Goonies anymore . With two cloaks of arachnia, and a set of slippers of spider climb, most of the party was able to get up the wall with very little difficulty.  Irk was actually strong enough to carry Minimonk and Pah up (Halflings fit into big pockets for Irk.) 

Once in the nursery area, they found themselves in a garden under construction.  The ground was freshly plowed, there were plans and trees waiting to be put into the ground, and the area was deathly quiet.  

They made their way to the tower, and decided to scale the outside of the building and work their way in from the top, once again taking advantage of the spider climb abilities at their disposal.  

Once they hit the roof, though, things got ugly fast.  It turned out that they had not been as unobserved crossing the nursery grounds as they thought, and a pair of Drow assassins were waiting for them on the top level.  

The two drow assassins gave the party a healthy bit of exercise, first knocking Pah out with bolts from hand crossbows coated with sleeping poison.  They managed to aggravate the party before escaping to the lower levels.  The group took control of the top level of the tower, and then made their way down into the lower levels after the drow.  

The battle picked up again in the lower levels as the drow struck from hiding again and again, working to find flanking positions and take advantage of their sneak attacks.  In the end, though they took a beating, they managed to defeat the drow assassins and get a quick look around.  They found a chamber that looked like someone had been living in it and using it as a sort of bedroom/office.  On a table they found several letters.  (I’ll post the letters as separate posts).  

With the letters and other look they could carry away, they managed to escape over the walls again and return to the Dragoon compound.  Once there they found that the Dragoons that were left (only 8 and Nikolai, there was no sign of Alexei and four Dragoons that had been sent out into the taverns to gather a little information for the party) had moved their belongings onto the ship (the Mystery Machine, according to the freshly painted stern) and were peeking over the gunwales with their muskets, looking like armed yet terrified gophers.  They were relieved to hear that the drow assassins were dead, but they were not willing to leave the ship.

And that left the party, without Solen, and Pavel, to try to figure out what their next move would be.


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## Radiating Gnome (Apr 11, 2002)

*The first stolen Letter*

Anathe, my white son-

Eldgrim brings this letter with him – I can no longer keep him in the Underdark with me.  He is restless and angry, and speaks of nothing but finding those who hurt him.  

When he heard that you had reached Dyvers and found them there, and with their little gnome and a new unit of soldiers to support them, he would listen to reason no longer.  

He will want revenge, but I fear that if he is as imprudent as he is likely to be, he will only get himself killed, or make trouble for the dragonfaith in Dyvers.  You must keep a tight leash on him.

Your trip sounds like a good idea – take Eldgrim with you – the activity will do him some good, and it would be best to keep him out of Dyvers.  

Yes, I know of Ashardalon – she was an ancient wyrm when I was a mere kit.  Now, if she yet lives, she will sleep like mountains. But where there is one dragon there may be more, and I agree that this expedition sounds like a good risk, for the opportunity to bring back another powerful ally.  

But be careful.  The Others will let us play our games for a while, but eventually they will rise and take an interest in our machinations. You would think that the Others would enjoy the worship as we do, that the would support us.  But instead they wait, biding their time, so they can act only when they know they can control the outcome.  That is why we must never appear to weaken.  Be strong, let the faith grow, but not too fast.  And, foster parent to my seventh clutch, be a good mother dragon. 

Sear


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## Radiating Gnome (Apr 11, 2002)

*The Second Letter*

My Loyal Anathe-

I was gratified to hear of your return to Dyvers – we had heard of the debacle in Spittlemarch and thought to never hear from you again.  But you have survived, and with new allies as well, that is good news.  

I understand that the faith is growing in Dyvers – by leaps and bounds.  Of course, that is good news.  Of course, we are much freer here to worship as we see fit, but I can only imagine how difficult it is to build a temple system in a nation that is working against your faith, overtly or covertly.  I agree, it may soon be time for some big changes in Dyvers.  Gather your forces, your resources.  And if need be, you know you may call on me.

The band of meddlers you mentioned – the ones from the tale, the song – I know nothing more than what is in the stories about them.  You should take care, though.  They have popular support, clearly, and are resourceful, cunning, gifted opponents.  Move against them carefully – divide and conquer, ambush, only strike when you can be assured a victory.  Strike their allies and supporters.  Avoid a toe-to-toe battle unless you have a great advantage over them.

With that in mind, I am sending you some friends. A band of troubleshooters, mercenaries I have used before.  Their leader is a dwarf, Brottkill.  He and his companions are making their way to Dyvers as you read this, and should arrived within a few days, a week at most.  Were I you, I would make them Claws.  That would give them a lot of freedom and credibility in the city.

But what you need most right now is allies.  In my studies recently I have discovered some ancient mentions of another temple site of the old Dragon faith.  The site, the stories go, is inhabited by a great wyrm named Ashardalon.  He may still be there, or perhaps his descendents.  You should put together an expedition, go to the temple site and see if you can win yourself more Dragon allies.  Sear’s support is key, but while she is still trapped in the underdark she can do little more than finance your efforts.  And Eldgrim, even though he is her son and has great gifts, he is no strategist, and it sounds like he is a bit unhinged after being trapped in the rockfall when the Spittlemarch crowd dropped a mountain on him.  Perhaps he should not have been brought back.  

You need dragons.  Your plans are bold, but you will need the power of several old wyrms behind you to make it work.  I hope you can find some.

Good luck.  Trust Brottkill.  

-Sentagon


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## Radiating Gnome (Apr 12, 2002)

*The Third Letter*

Sear-

Eldgrim arrived yesterday, and you are right, he has not improved since our long march with the Drow.  I’m not entirely sure he does not blame me, somehow, for what happened to him.

The short folk have returned to Dyvers again – this time with a flying ship of some sort, telling wild stories about a trip to the moon to steal some fleece . . . the taverns are abuzz again, so much that I keep to my room as much as possible.  

The training goes well.  The Claws are already making patrols of the city, which will help our image, as we move on to the next phase of our construction in the city.  Your gifts will buy us the greatest temple complex this city has ever seen – a city within the city, -- and the new seat of our power in the region.  Thank you for your generosity.

As for the quest for Ashadalon, or her resting place, preparations are  --


(RG -- The letter ended there, incomplete.)


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## Huntsman (Apr 12, 2002)

[oops... double-post]


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## Huntsman (Apr 12, 2002)

Just wanted to say that I really enjoy your story hour.  I just randomly picked it up yesterday, and I find that the blend of adventure and off-the-wall OOC comments (like the reference to the Mystery Machine) is just right for my tastes.  

Then I noticed that you didn't have any other posters commenting on such a fun story hour, so I registered just so I could make a post.  

Keep up the good work!


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## Lazybones (Apr 13, 2002)

RG-
An interesting tale; I just spent the better part of a very slow Friday at work reading it.  A nice mix of action and humor.  The whole Enterprise bit seemed a bit over-the-top but otherwise I appreciated your spirited telling of your group's exploits.  

Game on,
Lazybones


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## Radiating Gnome (Apr 13, 2002)

*Roll With It*

Thanks for your comments, both of you.  It's nice to know someone besides the players is reading this once in a while.

Lazybones, you're right to notice the tone shift in the enterprise stuff.  One of the players took over running the game for those sessions, and there was a definite shift in tone -- can you tell he reads a lot of Terry Prachet?

Anyway, when I took over the game again it seemed like it would be more fun to absorb that material, rather than pretend it never happened.  And now that the new Dungeon/Polyhedron has come out, with updated Spelljammer D20 rules, that's even easier to manage.    Heaven forbid I should have to make any adaptions myself . . .

I hope you keep reading, and even more, I hope you still enjoy reading this story hour.

-rg


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## Radiating Gnome (Apr 25, 2002)

*The Goon Show takes it on the Road*

The Goon Show takes it on the Road

The heroes gathered on the deck of the Mystery Machine to lick their wounds and read through their booty.  They’d taken quite a beating from the pair of drow assassins, although it could have been a lot worse. Pah, who had slept through the entire battle after succumbing to Drow poison in the opening exchange of missile fire, was sore from being carried around under Irk’s arm, and itching for a little more action – especially since she wanted to try out a new sword they had taken from the Drow – oddly enough, a sword that was not of drow manufacture, so it had not turned to dust in the morning sunlight. 

The group read through the letters a couple of times, passing them, around and reading over each other’s shoulders.  Meanwhile Nikolai was drinking himself blind, Alexei was no where to be found, and the last seven Dragoons clutched their muskets and refused to do more than peek over the gunwales of the ship when they thought they heard something passing.  

While the debate was going on, they heard some movement and voices from down below the ship, in the compound where the Dragoons had trained earlier.  Looking over the gunwales they saw a cluster of men in the uniform of the Claws of the Dragon.  The leader, an officer and clearly a dragonpriest cleric (wearing blue-colored plate armor), looked up at the odd sight of a ship parked on dry land, in the middle of a city, and the faces peering out of it at him.

“Is this the barracks of the Dyvers Dragoons?” asked the officer.

“No.” shouted Irk.

“Yes,” shouted Pah.

Eli groaned and sat back out of sight, stringing his bow.

The officer introduced himself as Captain Thorvald of the Claws of the Dragon, official city watch of Dyvers and special investigator.  “I understand there was a murder here the other night, we have come to investigate it.”

“Hey, we’re the city watch, too,” said Pah.

“We’re investigating the Murder,” said Irk.

“He’s only mostly dead” said Eli. 

Thorvald looked a bit confused, with the three of them shouting down different things at him.  He considered for a moment, then started again.  “I have a charter signed by the Magister which gives me the authority to investigate murders within city walls."

"We have on too!" said Pah.  Then she turned to the others.  "We do have one, don't we?"  

They all shrugged.  

Thorvald was obviously getting impatient.  "Is this the victim's lab?  I understand he was found dead in his lab, I would like to investigate it. "

Irk, a little nearsighted like most dwarves, decided to get a closer look, and hopped down the gangplank to face the Claws.  Pah and Eli followed him down.  

Thorvald was unimpressed.  Perhaps it was the sight of the other dragoons, peeking sheepishly over the gunwales of the ship behind the trio of short folk standing in front of him.  

Thorvald held out his charter.  "Here are my credentials."

Eli grinned.  "We don’t need no stinking --

And Irk moved, quick as a snake, grabbing Thorvald's extended wrist and puling him into a grapple.  Pah and Eli whipped out bow and pistols to cover the other Claws as Irk used his favorite rhetorical techniques to convince Thorvald that he should have stayed in bed that morning.

The Claw sergeant, a grizzled veteran, tried to talk his way out of the situation first, while Irk wrestled with the cleric, grinding his face into the ground and taking a few shots with elbows and knees when the opportunities presented themselves.  

"Let him up."

Irk drove a thumb into the cleric's ribs.  "No way."

Pah and Eli surveyed Thorvald's retainers, who were itching to move.  Finally, the Sergeant couldn't take the tension anymore.  "Git em!" he yelled, and sprang forward at Pah.  

Pah's pistols went off.  Irk's bow twanged.  The Claws surged forward, a few dropping, but the rest closing, trying to drive Pah and Eli back so others could try to pull Irk off the Cleric.  Irk, meanwhile, shrugged off their hands and continued to pummel the struggling cleric into unconsciousness, bashing the poor man's forehead into the ground repeatedly.  

Eli managed to drop several of the Claw soldiers that tried to close on him and irk, while Pah emptied her pistols at the sergeant, who managed to avoid serious injury from them.  

Nikolai, swaying a bit, bellowed down from the deck above that everyone should freeze, but no one did.  He ordered the dragoons to fire, and an ineffective volley of gunfire flew overhead.  

The Sergeant, hoping to get the cleric up and into the fight to even the odds a little with divine magic, turned his attention away from Pah and gave Irk a quick poke with his double-bladed sword.  Irk looked up from his full nelson grip and scowled.  "yer next, sonny," which he punctuated by driving the cleric's forehead into the ground again.  With a crunch the cleric finally went limp, and Irk stood to face the sergeant.  At that moment Pah stepped up behind the man and lightly touched his inner thigh with the flat of her new shortsword.  "That's enough honey."  

The sergeant, feeling the cold steel a little too close to his favorite set of genitals, dropped his sword and surrendered. Eli covered that last couple of Claw solders, who dropped their swords and moved slowly to try to help their fallen comrades.  

In a few moments the group administered enough first aid to make sure than none of the claws that Eli had shot would actually die - - Eli went so far as to provide a couple of healing potions to the wounded guardsmen.  The sergeant managed to get the mangled Cleric Thorvald upright again, slumped over his shoulder, and the troop began to shuffle for the exit.  

Irk brushed some dust off his Dragoon tabard.  "Hey, I thought you wanted to see the Lab?"

Thorvald, barely conscious, peered out through one swollen eyelid at Irk, then they turned and left.

As the Claws limped away, the heroes saw that there was another figure standing in the open gate to the Dragoon compound.  A young man, dressed in the uniform of a paid messenger, and holding a small rolled piece of parchment.  

The boy told them he had a message to deliver to Solen.  Once they convinced the boy that they were Solen's seconds (after rejecting the next of kin argument) they sent the boy on his way and read the message.  It was from a person named Tivitha, the master librarian of the Dyvers Library in the university quarter, and one of the members of the Magister's council, and she demanded that Solen drop everything and come to see her in the library immediately.

The trio decided to go in Solen's stead.  Nikolai was not excited about letting them go, although he had never been able to exert any authority over the heroes, so he was hesitant to try to do so now.  He was also powerfully drunk.  

Pah yelled at him, telling him to get his men up and do something about securing the compound, and then the group headed off to go see Tivitha.
 # # #

Entering the library, Pah quickly spotted several figures who did not seem to belong there, despite their apparent interest in the books on the shelves.  They were men in armor, badly concealed in cloaks, and all in position to see the entrance.  Pah tucked her thumbs into her belt near her pistols and walked over to one of them.  "Hiya honey."

"Hello," he said, in a deep voice, pretending deep interest in the book he was holding.  

"Do you want to tell me where Tivitha is?"

"You mean the head librarian?  In her office, I imagine."

"You want to take me there?"

The man looked at her, hard.  "And who are you?"

"I'm Pah.  I'm a friend of Solen's."

"And the others?"

"Them too."

The guard looked around, made eye contact with a couple of other figures in the area, and then shrugged. " All right, lets go. "

The guard lead them up several flights of stairs, to the upper stacks of the library, which were reserved for special patrons and Library personnel.  There were many more guards along the way, to whom their escort nodded as they passed.  Then they entered a reading room, where a middle-aged human woman sat reading a large tome and studying some maps.  

"Master Tivitha," he said.  "These are friends of Solen."

Tivitha looked up.  "Friends of.  And where is Solen himself?"

"Dead." said Pah.

"Mostly dead." said Eli.

Tivitha was taken aback.  "I see.  And you are his champions?  The ones they call the heroes of Spittlemarch, I presume?"

Pah nodded.  "We have our own song.  Have you heard it?"

In a few moments the party explained the situation with Solen's absence -- and his hopeful return in the near future -- and Tivitha nodded.  "I hope he can return shortly.  But we need to act now, and it was about you that we wanted to talk to Solen, so we can speak directly to you."


"We?" asked Irk.

At that moment Magister Larissa, stepped out of the shadows, where no one had seen her before.  "We, yes.  We must be very careful, for the Dragonpriests have spies everywhere.  And their power grows every day."

The Magister and librarian were aware of some things -- like the recent arrival of Anathe, and his more recent departure on an important mission.  And his new allies, Brottkill and his goons.  They were not aware of Solen's death, nor of how close the Drow were to priest's actions, but they were not at all surprised.  Comparing notes and the letters that the party had recovered from the tower with the information that the librarian and Magister had, they were able to put together a fairly complete picture of what Anathe was up to.  He was traveling to the Bandit kingdoms -- now occupied by the empire of Iuz, to go to the great rift, where there was a great spire, an abandoned temple to an ancient dragon faith, that was rumored to be the home of the great wyrm Ashardalon.  Anathe was trying to find more dragon allies there.

It would be a long trip for Anathe, and a difficult one.  He would be able to cross the Nyr Dyv without too much difficulty, but once he was in the bandit kingdom he would not be able to travel openly as a dragonpriest.  Iuz and his evil empire had no use for religions other than the worship of Iuz as a god,  even if the faith were evil.  So Anathe would have to have some allies there, and would have to travel without the power of the Dragon Faith behind him.

It was the Magister’s idea that the Dragoons take the Mystery Machine and try to stop Anathe, and put a stop to his mission, get to his target before him and neutralize it if possible. 

Irk was game, and the others didn’t take any real convincing, either – they were already edging in that direction, anyway, with the clues they had been picking up in the Dragonpriest compound.  The Magister was very interested in the maps that Pah had stolen, and spent some time going over them in great detail.  Then, finally, it was time to go back to the Dragoon compound and get going after Anathe, who already had a two day lead.


At the compound they found that Nikolai had actually started to get some things done.  He’d pulled the last of Solen’s gear and powder into the ship and had supplied the ship for a long journey.  

There was another little surprise. Alexei was back, claiming to have spent the night with a barmaid, and that was why he hadn’t been around for so much.  The goonies didn’t believe him, and there were a few sharp words spoken.  Eli (who had some spellcasting ability as a ranger) took the helm and started to take off, as Irk pressed his debate with Alexei over where he had been and whether he was going on the trip with the rest of the dragoons. Eventually Irk settled the issue in standard Irk fashion, by grabbing him and tossing him over the side of the ship.  

Nikolai didn’t argue with Irk’s decision to leave Alexei behind.

The group did some planning, once they were in mid-air.  They wanted to give Uri some time to do some item creation while they were on the trip, but at the same time they had only two spellcasters on board, Uri and Eli.  Each could take a twelve-hour shift at the helm, but no more, and that meant they would travel several days only half of the day, until Uri was done with his item creation work.  

Tivitha had provided good maps of their goal, and although the trip took nearly two weeks, they managed to avoid a lot of trouble by flying high above the ground, out of reach of even most flying creatures.  As they neared the rift, deep in the heart of the Bandit Kingdoms, they began to search the area from above for some sign of the temple site they were looking for.

They saw several warbands below them, all very interested in the flying ship.  Those that had horses tried to keep up with the pace of the ship, which they were able to do until terrain or fatigue got in the way.  At one point a flock of Harpies took an interest in the flying ship, and attacked, but they were driven off fairly easily.  

After a few days of searching the Mystery Machine came upon a small camp at the mouth of a deep crevasse.  There were about ten humans in and around the camp, but horses for twice that number.  Far up the crevasse they could see the top of the tower that they had seen a drawing of in one of Tivitha’s book.  The humans on the ground stared up at the ship, and the goonies stared down, until Pah made an important observation.  The men all had double bladed swords, the trademark weapon of the Claws of the Dragon, even if they were not in uniform.  

Eli steered the ship closer, and the men scattered, running for horses.  Pah turned a small keg of powder into a crude bomb and dropped it over the side of the ship trying to disrupt their campsite, but only managed to wound a couple of Claws.  Then Uri cast Evard’s Black tentacles, managing to encompass half of the men on the ground and most of the horses.  By the time the ship was low enough to allow the party to hit the ground, those five Claws and the mounts had all been strangled to death.  

The goonies did manage to shoot down one more escaping claw, and then raced to his side to try to keep him alive for questioning, but they were not up to the task of keeping the gravely wounded human alive without magical help, so he died.  

Uri was especially proud of himself – Evard’s Black Tentacles is a nasty spell, and because he and the other Halflings are small creatures the tentacles leave them alone, so he was able to walk through the wriggling forest and check out the corpses of the Claws.  

In the baggage left at the campsite they found a little more evidence of whose camp this was, including a truck that included a set of formal white clerical robes that were clearly Anathe's.  

Irk relieved himself in the trunk.

Eli found a nearby formation that would hold the ship nearly upright and provide it a bit of cover from the weather.  Nikolai, always pragmatic, volunteered to stay behind with the soldiers and protect the ship while the goonies went on ahead to check out the temple complex, catch up to and kill Anathe, Eldgrim, Brottkill, and the others.  It sounded so simple, the way he said it.  

So the three Halflings, the elf, and the dwarf, started gathering up their dungeon delving gear and getting ready to head off to the temple.  

Next time:  Why do the locals call it Nightfang Spire?


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## Radiating Gnome (Apr 29, 2002)

*Story Hour Mirror*

Given all the server trouble these pages have been having, I wanted to point out to my small handful of readers that these session story hours are now also being archived on my web site, www.radiatinggnome.com/gaming/

check out the page -- for now it's woefully simple, and static, but it's there, and it won't be slow.


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## Radiating Gnome (May 21, 2002)

*Spire 1: New Allies*

While Eli parked the Mystery Machine against a ridge not far from the Spire, the rest of the group packed on their gear. Nikolai and the rest of the Dragoon regulars "volunteered" to stay behind and keep an eye on the ship while the heroes entered the tower and chased down Anathe. Everything seemed groovy. 

The five heroes wandered down the slope towards the menacing spire, tucked into a ravine in the side of the wall of the great rift. It was a gruesome place, walls covered with carved gargoyles and other threatening stonework. 

There was also the sign of a great battle outside the tower. The tower itself was blasted and charred in spots - it looked as if a couple of fireballs had detonated around the top. There was a single rope that hung down from the very top of the tower - about 300 feet in the air. And, also near the foot of the tower, there was the corpse of a huge monstrosity, a bit like a huge elephant-sized brain, with eyes, wings, and a variety of tentacles. 

The group decided to try circling the base of the tower, looking for an entrance. At one point there was a small hut built against the side of the tower, but Pah got a bad feeling about the vines that covered it. They seemed to be vibrating, and there wasn't enough wind to have caused it. 

Irk tossed a rock at the hut, but that didn't have any effect. 

Uri managed to spot the glint of something shiny up ahead, closer to the vines, and that was enough to push Pah past her skittishness about traps. She skulked forward until she was close enough to hear soft chime-like music coming from the vines. It was peaceful, delicate music that made her feel like just lying down and going to sleep . . . 

She shook it off, however, and saw ahead of her the corpses of several others who had not been fortunate enough to shake off the effects of the vine's music. She found a bit of shiny loot, and moved away from the vines as quickly as possible. 

This left only one obvious means of entrance to the spire - through the top. A quick shift of items that provided Spider Climb ability was enough get the party up to the top - a couple of Halflings riding on the backs of larger characters. 

At the top they found the nest of the great beast that was dead at the bottom of the tower. It looked like it had been hastily looted, and whomever had done it had left behind a pile of gold and silver, which the goonies quickly scooped into Pah's bag of holding. 

In the center of the nest there was a hole, about 8' in diameter, that lead to a lower level. The group lowered themselves into the room below, and started to look around.

They were in a small room, with many walls that had collapsed, making it a larger, more irregular chamber. There was a door in sight to the north, and Pah started to move in that direction to check it out when things turned ugly fast. 

Vampire spawn attacked, appearing out of clouds of vapor in the room and jumping at poor Pah while the rest of the party looked on. Pah tried to put her back to the wall, shrieking for Irk to come and save her. Irk charged ahead, trying to get to her side, but one of the Vampires turned and stared into Irk's eye.

"Hi there," said the vampire.

Irk gulped. "You're purty." 

"Don't let them hurt me." The Vampire said. 

"Of course not," said Irk. And things started to look grim. 

Then the door that Pah had been working her way towards opened, and out stepped a woman dressed in simple robes. She stepped to one side and cast a small spell at one of the Vampires attacking Pah. Her sidestep made room for a large mountain lion to bound out of the room. The Lion also attacked the vampires. The party, with Irk working against them, but with the help of the two strangers, managed to force the Vampires to retreat, returning to a gaseous form. 

While Irk tried to figure out on who's side he was supposed to be on, the others turned and looked at the woman and the mountain lion. She seemed familiar, in ways that didn't make anyone feel any better about things, despite the fact that the Lion and the woman had probably saved the day. 

So they got to talking, and Crysalis and her friend Ulrich told them their story . . . .


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## Radiating Gnome (May 21, 2002)

*Spire 2: Crys and Ulrich*

Crys and Ulrich were a pair of fairly-good intentioned mercenary adventures from Perrenland that had been traveling together since they were rookie adventurers. They fell in, most recently, with a dwarf mercenary named Brottkill. Brottkill ran a team of adventurers who were very effective -- they were all survivors of many campaigns and had the scars and stories to prove it. Brottkill was a brute, and purely self-interested, but as long as they were lined up on his side of the fence they were fine. They did some adventuring for hire, mucking about, trying to walk the line as much as possible between their sensibilities and the requirements of the work Brottkill found for them. 

And then the letters from Anathe began to arrive. Crys and Ulrich saw a few of them one night, when Brottkill left them out. Anathe wanted to hire Brottkill and the rest of the team to help on a quest -- and to help deal with a troublesome group of "meddlers." Anathe was a dragon priest -- a member of a faith that was also growing in strength in your neck of the woods, but not yet to the point where it was trying to eclipse other faiths. 

Crys and Ulrich, along with the rest of Brottkill's team, traveled by ship to Dyvers. It's an impressive city, but what was more impressive was the construction work going on at the time in the temple district. Their new employer, the Dragon Faith, was building a city within the walls of Dyvers, absorbing several blocks into a complex that would be larger and taller than the magister's palace when it was completed. 

While their ship approached the port, they were handed unifirm tabards -- crimson with a black claw figure embroidered on the front and back. Brottkill explained that while they were in Dyvers they were member's of the Dragon Faith's official city guard and military unit, the Claws of the Dragon. While wearing the uniform they would have very broad powers to create and enforce their own justice in the city, but they were mostly being provided to allow them to move freely in the city.

Crys and Ulrich were taken to a barracks of sorts, in the heart of the great construction project. Walls were going up everywhere, but the barracks area was one of the first sections of the site that had been completed. They were provided comfortable if spartan living quarters. 

The team was only in Dyvers for a few days. They went on a couple of patrols, mostly just long hikes around the city. Most people in the street gave them a lot of space on the street, and there didn't seem to be much trouble going on. 

THey met several NPCs that they would be working with in the future. Most importantly, they met Anathe, a Megolomaniac who dressed in white at all times and traveled with a pair of slim, heavily robed attendants that they later discovered were drow assassins. He was passionate about the faith, and was the driving force behind a lot of what was going on in Dyvers -- certainly, there were others in the faith, even some that outranked Anathe, but Anathe was the one who had the strong connection with the dragon Sear, still trapped beneath the earth's crust, who was financing the construction in Dyvers. Anathe had Brottkill and the rest of the team attend a opulent dinner once they arrived -- a dinner which made Crys and Ulrich very uncomfortable. Everything was grand -- the food was spectacular, the room, in the base of a half-constructed tower in the section of the dragon compound they were calling the Nursery (for reasons too chilling to consider). The evil that Anathe wore like an invisible cloak was troublesome enough, but even more problematic was the way the rest of their troupe of companions, including Brottkill, reacted. 

They were not bothered.

At dinner they learned from Anathe about the group of meddlers -- the "spittlemarch crowd", and a bit about their capabilities. Now they are calling themselves the Dyvers Dragoons. They have a pathetically small company -- more a squad or platoon -- and some popguns that Anathe dismissed (although you sense a bit of frustration and jealousy there). There are currently four of them -- and their supporters, the alchemist gnome Solen, the Cleric Pavel, and the wizard's Valet, Minimonk. The core members of the group are a Dwarf named Irk -- a terror with an axe that Brottkill was especially interested in, an Elven Arher called Eli, and a pair of halflings, a wizard named Uri and a burglar named Pah. Anathe bitches furiously about them -- about having seen Irk and Eli dead, and still they come back, time and again. They refuse to learn. And now they have a flying ship, which will make things very interesting.

Towards the end of dinner, one of the Drow attendants entered the dining hall and whispered in Anathe's ear. Anathe smiled, ushered the dark figure out of the room, then turned to the rest of the group. "It is time. We need to sail on the midnight tide. Gather your belongings and be ready to go in 30 minutes."

"We must make a long journey -- undertake an important quest for the faith and it's advancement. The flying ship gives the dragoons an advantage in getting to the site -- our advantages are surprise and knowledge, for the dragoons have only begun to try to determine where we are going. They will try to follow, but my agents have taken steps tonight to insure that they are distracted for a few days, if not more. We will face them eventually, of that I am sure, but we need to leave them here, if we can, and slip away tonight.

"As for our mission, I'll tell you more about it tomorrow morning, on the ship. 

Their group made it's way back to the barracks and gathered your things, while the regular Claws drank and diced and groaned in their sleep. Crys and Ulrich looked for an opening to try to break away from the group, but almost as if he suspected they might be a problem Brottkill was always on hand, herding them like sheep to the docks, and onto the waiting sloop.

Anathe was only a few minutes behind you, notably traveling without his drow companions, but with a new companion -- a half-dragon he introduced as Eldgrim. And if Crys and Ulrich had a bad feeling in the pit of their stomach before, this made them downright sick. Eldgrim, the son of the great Dragon Sear, was scarred and bent physically, but still strong and fierce, For most of the long journey north across the Nvy Dyv, the great inland lake, he paced the deck of the ship, not sleeping, muttering to himself. The only one who was able to get him to eat was Anathe, who was conciliatory to him but rolled his eyes behind Eldgrim's back. Elgrim was already a loose cannon, and things hadn't begun to get interesting.

It was a pretty terrible journey -- the ship was small and uncomfortable, the company was antisocial at best. The good news was that once they had left port and the journey was well under way, Anathe called all of his hired guns together for a meeting so he could explain the quest.

The bad news was the quest itself. He planned to head deep into the former bandit kingdoms -- now a heavily contested possession of Iuz and his empire -- to the great rift. There, in the great rift, he planned to find, in the ruins of an old temple of an ancient dragon cult, a great wyrm called Ashardalon. It was his intention to make contact with this great wyrm, wake it from its sleep, and bring it out into the world to help the new Dragon Faith to conquer the world. Sear was sending special greetings for Ashardalon in Anathe's care, Anathe was quite sure that it would only be a matter of his being able to speak a few words to the dragon to make it all work out.

Of course, it wasn't going to be easy. Part of what made the trip interested for Crys and Ulrich was that, while Anathe drove his team like crazy, trying to cover ground on the way to the rift, it was not possible to travel as members or employees of the Dragon faith. Iuz has made of himself a demigod, and within the borders of his land he tolerates no other gods. 

Luckily the way had been paved. They arrived in port, and the ship, stripped of all markings of the Dragon Faith, was greeted by a young, comley woman named Terressa. Terressa was an agent of Anathe's, and had been traveling the Bandit kingdom for weeks, preparing the way for Anathe and his team.

Their company consisted of 20 riders -- Anathe, Eldgrim, Brottkill, the Crys and Ulrich, and the rest of your team, and twelve hand-picked members of the Claws of the Dragon, each a master with the chose weapon of the claws, the double bladed sword. Anathe was given a map, some notes, and directions by Tereessa, who had struck bargains with local warlords here and there, to aid and speed your travels. Anathe used magical messengers to keep in touch with Terressa as you rode on. Crys and Ulrich gathered, piecing together clues, that Terressa was meeting with a network of spies she had developed, and was keeping an eye out for a flying ship, and plotting with several of the warlrds to try to capture the ship should it appear.

One day, just two days before they would reach your goal at the Nightfang Spire, Crys and Ulrich watched as the usual morning sparrow arrived with a tiny message for Anathe. Anathe, who had shown nothing to the group besides supreme confidence and assurance about the mission, blanched for a second, before recovering himself and putting on what was now clearly a show of bravado. 

Brottkill voiced what all were thinking. "News from Terressa?

Anathe grinned. "They're coming. They're here. They made good time to catch up with us, but that doesn't matter. We will beat them to the spire, and be waiting for them, and Ashardalon will make short work of them.

Two days later they arrived at the Spire. Anathe split off half of the group -- ten Claws -- and had them set up a base camp outside the spire. Then, as there seemed to be no way in to the spire except down from the top, the group began to scale the tower.

As they reached the top a tentacle reached out and grabbed on of the two claws traveling with the group, and rended him into meaty chunks in a matter of seconds. A terrible, other-worldly being Crys and Ulrich had never seen before flew out of the shadows at the top of the tower and attacked their party. The team managed to kill the thing, but the battle was fierce, and most, if not all of you were in bad shape after the battle. But Anathe pushed on, eager to meet the dragon. THey scaled the rest of the tower, entered from above, and found themselves in a central room.

And then they attacked from all sides -- Vampires -- mostly vampire spawn, some striking from the shadows, others appearing from clouds of mist right in the middle of their party. Eldgrim, in a panick, turned and breathed fire on one of the vampires next to him, and managed to catch several of your party members in the blast. Everything got crazy and confused, and Crys and Ulrich became separated from the rest of the party. The two friends ducked into a room with a door, shut it, and managed to hide while the fight drifted away down into the tower. Eventually the sounds of fighting died down.

Crys and Ulrich managed to heal each other, set up whatever defenses they could to protect themselves in their room, and holed up, not sure what they were waiting for, but sensing that they should stay right where they were. 

Then, about 12 silent hours later, they heard someone else dropping through the hole into the roof into the room beyond, and then the sound of fighting with the vampires.


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## Radiating Gnome (May 21, 2002)

*Spire 3: Back to Business*

The group listened to the story that Crys told, while the big cat rolled around on the floor, begging to have it's belly rubbed. Pah and the others were not entirely sure they should trust these two. 

"And all that," Pah said, "Puts you on the side of the good guys . . . how?"

But Uri made a good point. "Um, I'm not so sure we're the good guys." 

While the group gave that a little thought, trying to figure out what their next move was, the Vampires, this time with reinforcements, reappeared and attacked again.

This time the group managed to be a bit more successful. Irk managed, through a Herculean force of will to resist the charms of the Vampire Vixen that had dominated him earlier, and the Heroes of Spittlemarch fought side by side with the Crys and Ulrich to defeat them, driving them back to a room where their coffins were kept. Once there, they fashioned stakes and drove them through the Vampires, killing them once and for all. 

The battle seemed to have settled any question about whether Crys and Ulrich would become members of the party. 

Ulrich took the opportunity to transform into his Half-elven natural form and meet the party in person, before taking on the form of a great Grizzly, a form which proved to be very adept at opening doors.

In one of the rooms just off the Vampire Spawn sleeping chamber, the party discovered the Vampire's pantry - a room filled with the bodies of prisoners who had been bled to death slowly. While poking around, Irk discovered one body that was not quite dead - a woman, He roller her over. She was pale and looked drained, with several bite marks on her neck. She looked up at Irk with droopy, lazy eyes. "Aren't you a little short for a Vampire?"

They patched her up a little, and had a chat. She was able to tell them a lot of what was going on, and it didn't exactly make them happy. Apparently there was a Vampire in the spire, named Gulthias, who was obsessed with an ancient Dragon Cult - perhaps he had been a worshiper of it in his previous life - and he was here in the spire working to try to revive the Ancient Dragon Ashardalon. He had apparently harnessed some massive source of necromantic power, and was using that to create undead minions to support him and defend him - the spawn the players had just destroyed were a part of that. 

That, combined with the goals of Anathe, could only mean bad things for the world of the living should Anathe and Gulthias meet. Feeling that they must press on, the party helped Yesha, the victim, up through the hole in the ceiling so she could try to make her way down the side of the tower and escape. Then they pressed on. 

They encounter many shadows - most of which they handled easily, but a few hits here and there were taking their toll on the party, sapping their strength. Eli had to loosen the string on his bow, because he could no longer pull it at full strength, And Pah was dragging along, pretending that she wasn't feeling as weak as she was. 

They found a staircase that lead down, and took it.

On the second level down they picked up the trail of Anathe's group, and followed it through a door into a room full of sarcofogi standing on end. Near the foot of one the corpse of one of Ulrich and Crys's former compatriots lay dead. When they went over to investigate, specters sprang out of the shadows, and the casket at the end of the hall opened, and out stepped a terrifying sight. A mummy-monk, waving a Kama around in a complex Kata of death. 

Things got off to a quick start. The party managed to dispatch the Specters, taking a bit more damage from them but surviving. The Mummy was locked in fierce one-on-one combat with the Bear-Ulric, who was holding his own but would need help soon. Once the place was clear of specters the party gathered around the mummymonk, but they found that he moved too quickly, it was too hard to hit him. 

It looked as if everything was lost, and then the Mummy slipped and dropped his Kama, which went skittering across the floor. This left him no less dangerous, but it did give the party hope. Bear-Ulric decided to change the combat situation a bit and wrapped the Mummy up in a huge bear hug, hoping to hold him still so the others in the party could pound on him a bit. 

But the mummymonk was not going to put up with that. Sensing that things could go quickly bad in this situation, he wrestled around, pressing on hand into the bear's shoulder and another to the top of his Jackal-shaped helmet, speaking a word through gritted teeth, visible through dried, rotted lips.

And then he started to disappear. Ulrich felt himself being pulled along with the Mummy through the gate, but he threw himself back and managed to resist. And in a moment it was over, and the Mummy was gone. 

The party, sensing that things were more urgent now that ever, slapped a few healing spells on each other and headed for the door, hoping to catch up to the Mummy before things got really ugly. 

And that's where we stopped for the night.


-rg


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## Radiating Gnome (Jun 8, 2002)

*Spire 4: Dwarf-Tossing with the Apes*

Spire 4: Dwarf-Tossing with the Apes

We left off the previous session with the party about to charge ahead to try to catch up to the Mummy who had teleported away to try to get that Helm of teleportation.  They really wanted it badly.  

They charged out the door, following the bear’s nose as he tailed the previous Party (Anathe, Eldgrim, Brottkill, etc.).  The hall took a sharp turn, and the Ulric/Bear barreled around it and . . . dropped out of sight, falling through a trap door in the floor.  Before the others could react, the floor closed up behind him, and there was no sign of the Bear.  The tried listening to the floor –figured out what the dimensions of the hole were so they could avoid it themselves, and then tried to figure out how to open it up.  They pulled a oak door over, one that the Bear had knocked off it’s hinges, and tried to open the trap door and use the oak door to prop it open.  

The door opened, Irk shoved the wooden door into place, and the trap door swung shut again, with enough force to splinter the oak door.  While the door had been open there, for a few seconds, those who were in position couldn’t see anything that looked like the bottom of the shaft, or the body of a bear – just a chute that dropped down into darkness.  

While they picked splinters of wood out of their hair, they tried to sort out the next plan.  They went back to the room full of sarcophagi and found an iron one.  Their first idea was to try to use the iron lid to prop the door open, but then Uri got a funny look on his face.

“We could ride down in the coffin.  Like a sled, or a log flume ride.”

The others looked around at each other for a moment, most showing obvious misgivings.  Then Pah spoke up.  “That sounds like FUN!”

Within moments Uri and Pah were sitting in the iron coffin, begging someone to give them a push start, while the rest of the party chewed their lips and tried to come up with a better idea.  Soon the others had to step to one side so they could hear each other over the chant “push, push, push” coming from the coffin.  

Then, suddenly, Pah grew silent, and placed a hand over Uri’s mouth.  “Listen,” she whispered.  

In the distance, back up in the upper levels of the dungeon, they could hear a distant squawk.  There was some sort of bird up there, and it seemed to be making a lot of noise.  

Pah quickly pulled out her pistols and covered the passage behind them.  Eli was in position, bow ready, and the others were making similar preparations, but Crys whispered to them.  “Be careful.  It may be a friend.”

A few minutes later an Eagle hopped through the room full of sarcophagi and sidled up to Crys.  “It’s Ulric.”

Ulric, later, in human form, would explain that the pit trap was actually a razor-lined chute that dropped him outside the spire, and he would have falling well over a hundred feet to his death had he not shape-changed into the Eagle form and managed to fly to relative safety. While he had been gliding to safety he had heard an apparently disembodied voice whisper to him “Be more careful.”   He would also tell them that he had heard the sound of musket fire coming from the area where they had left Nikolai and the Dragoons with the Mystery Machine.  

“Goodbye, Nicky,” said Pah, almost managing to be wistful.  

Eli grimaced.  “It’s going to be a long walk back to Dyvers.  We need that Helmet.”

Pah and Uri were disappointed that there was no reason to try the coffin ride down the pit, but it was clear that they could move on. 

It was decided that they should check out the rest of this level before following Anathe’s tracks down the stairs to the third level.

There was one door which was carved with a cacophony of eyes and mouths – a truly gruesome portal that drew Pah’s attention immediately.  She and Eli opened that door, and saw a small room, with what looked like a big iron pressure cooker built into the floor.  And standing next to the pressure cooker was a slim humanoid figure, with big fangs and an even bigger bow. And the figure had an arrow nocked.  Before they could duck out of the way, it fired, taking Eli in the shoulder.  The arrow carried with it a charge of cold, and little frozen blood drops hit the ground at Eli’s feet.    

They jumped into action – Eli fired off a couple of arrows in return, but before they could act the vampire archer turned to gas and drifted away, out of sight, through cracks in the wall.

The rest of the party charged into the room, looking at Eli, who was poking a toe at the blood icicle on his tunic.  The group was quickly distracted from concerns about the return of the Vampire Archer by the contents of the room.

Set in the floor was what looked like a 5-foot wide iron pressure cooker.  Given the carvings on the walls and the doors in the area, many of the party members were reluctant to open it.

Pah wasn't reluctant. 

Of course, the lid was trapped, and touching it felt a bit like taking one's favorite toaster into the tub for a bath.  Bolts of lightning passed through her and into the wall behind her, leaving her panting, standing over the iron lid, hair standing on end, but somehow still alive.  

“Hey, Irk,” she said. “C’mere.”

The protection spell spent, Irk was able to touch the lid safely and force it open,  This revealed something they didn’t really want to see – a Gibbering Mouther slobbering all over itself at the bottom of a long Iron tube. 

This looked like it should have been difficult, but Irk simply walked down the side of the tube – his slippers of spider climb making the wall very much like flat ground for him.  Despite the close quarters he was able to slash and bash away at the thing enough, with the help of a few magic missles (the only spells or missle weapons at the party’s disposal that could find their target past the embattled Dwarf.

There was, of course, the wrinkle of the Mouther’s vampirism, but that was quickly dealt with as well.  

Wanting to press on rather than take their chances sleeping again, they pressed on down to the next level of the spire.  

At that level they found themselves faced with a choice of two doors. The one they chose led to a huge room that looked like it had once been the workroom of a stonecutter. the room appeared to be empty at first, but as they entered the room they spotted a pair of Girallons – huge, four-armed, vicious Gorilla things.  The girallons bellowed and attacked the party.  

Uri slowed them down a little with some web work, while Irk raced forward to meet them.  The rest of the party moved into the room, preparing to back Irk up.  Irk, in the first round, discovered just how deadly the Girallons could be – the pummeling and rending he took that round was enough to make him think seriously about backing down.

At about the time Irk was figuring out that he didn’t like getting hit by the rending attacks of the Girallons, things got a bit worse.  The other door they had seen at the bottom of the stairs flew open, and another six Girallons – bellowing an answering call to their compatriots – charged towards the rear of the party.  Behind them, leading from behind, was the Mummy-monk they had fought earlier, looking for trouble.

Things looked pretty grim.  Irk was taking a homeric beating.  Ulric couldn’t help much, as he was in human form and unable to shapechange anymore (he was used up for the day).  Pah moved around the edges of the fight, but wasn’t able to turn the tide on her own.  Minimonk prepared to throw minself away to protect the spellcasters, but it was the spellcasters, Uri and Crys, who saved the day.  

Uri started out by slowing things down with a couple of web spells.  It was disconvereting to watch the Girallons rip through the web fairly easily, but it was slowing them down, and that much helped.  Crys pulled out her Staff of Charm and started trying to make friends with some of the Girallons.  

In the end, Uri cast both of his remaining Evards Black Tenatacle spells on the Girallon reinforcements, which worked quite well to take many of them out of the fight – the first spell slowed many of hem down, but with the addition of the second spell, the handful that were getting caught by tentacles were each being held by several.

While the rest of the party fought the few who were not being held by the web and the tentacles, or those who had broken free, Uri spider climbed around over the top of the fight, scrabbling along the ceiling into the room that the mummy had just been in.  There he saw a Mohrg coming out of another room to join the fight.  

The Mummy and the big Alpha Male Girallon were not in the room when Uri got there.  They had taken around route around the fight, and at about that time they appeared on another flank, charging the remains of the party.  Irk met the Alpha male’s charge to buy the party some time, but was ripped apart – literally – when all four arms of the huge beast grabbed his limbs and ripped him literally limb from limb.  Crys’s charmed Girallons were able to get there the next round and save the rest of the party, teaming up to pummel the Alpha male, then turn their attention on the mummy.

The Mummy did it’s best to avoid the powerful crushing blows from the charmed Girallons, but was getting hit some, and he wasn’t going to be able to stand and fight.  Uri, who had scrabbled into the main room again, still on the ceiling, managed to make a flying leap, diving at the Monk’s head and trying to grab the helmet off it’s head.  His fingers grasped it momentarily, but as he tried to pull the Mummy pulled his head away and Uri missed.  Then, in a flash, the Mummy was gone.  

The Girallons made short work of what was left.  The Morgh was torn to bits, the last few Girallons squirming in he tentacles were ripped up, along with the tentacles that were holding them.  

Then, on the off chance that the Mummy had returned to his sarcophagus room, they charged back up the stairs, Girallons in the lead, and found him there, panting, his wounds already half- closed from the battle a few moments before.  

The Girallons charged back in again.  This time the Mummy-monk was not able to teleport away before he was torn to pieces again.  

The party, with two dead members (one dismembered member) gathered around the torn bits of the mummy and picked up the helmet. Uri put the helmet on anyway, grasped hands with the other party members, thought really hard about the Dragoon compound in Dyvers, and repeated the word they had heard the Mummy say both times he had teleported.  

Nothing happened.  

There were three stones on the helmet, which some of them remembered being lit with an inner glow when they first spotted the Mummymonk.  Now they were all dim.

Pah, Uri, Minimonk, Crys, and Ulric, all battered, bloodied, and spent, looked at each other, holding hands in a circle, clinging to the forms of their fallen comrades, and listened to the creaks and groans of the Spire.

Until next time . . . .

-rg


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## Radiating Gnome (Jun 20, 2002)

*Spire 5. Whether 'tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows . . .*

Spire 5. Whether 'tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows . . . 

The group shuffled into a vacant room, barricaded the door, and tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible for the night. At one point, they heard heavy plodding footsteps moving about in the hall, but after that it was quiet. 

When morning came, they found that Eli and Irk were beginning to stink a bit, but the three gems set in the Jackal-head helmet of teleportation were glowing again. Pah donned the helmet, the picked up the bodies and held hands, and Pah thought really hard about the Dragoon Barracks.

And "poof" they were home. Gotta love Teleportation when it works.

Of course, things seemed a bit different in the barracks. There were a couple of dozen young, pimply boys, dressed in Dragoon Tabards, marching around, sparring, and training with a couple of muskets, all under the watchful eye of Pavel. 

Once the initial shock of seeing the party appear in the middle of the parade ground wore off, most of the young recruits were very excited to finally meet the Heroes of Spittlemarch, the Dyvers Dragoons . . . and who were those other two, the half-elves . . . anyway, Pavel drove the youngsters back and took the party into Solen's lab, where they could have a private talk. 

The long and the short of the situation: Solen was alive, but off on some mission or errand of his own. Pavel had been left behind, and was trying to train some replacement troops. He was appalled to hear that Nikolai was presumed lost, with the Mystery Machine and the rest of the dragoons, but got used to the title of Dragoon Acting Captain pretty quickly. 

The party started to pool their resources, and managed to put together enough money and loot to pay for a true resurrection scroll to cast on Irk. Eli, they decided, could wait a bit, while they returned to the spire to raise a bit more cash. (Eli's player was going to miss this session)

Pavel went off to talk to his contacts about the scroll, and the rest of the surviving members of the party mucked around with re-equipping for a return to the spire.

A few hours later, Pavel returned. Later in the day, Irk walked out of the little Dragoon shrine Pavel had erected in the party's absence, and started putting his armor back on. He took the helmet from Pah, the five members of the party that were returning joined hands, and they teleported back into the Spire.

Irk chose the sarcophagus room as his target for the teleportation - t was a room in which they had spent a fair amount of time. They had been gone for all of about 12 hours - not enough time for much to have changed in the spire, at least, not on the levels they entered.

They began to make their way down the spire again, clearing a few specters out of some rooms as they worked their way around. 

They discovered a couple of embalming rooms, filled with jars of organs stored in viscous fluid. 

"Hey Irk," Uri said. "C'mere. Look. This one's a !"

Irk stared at Uri.

"That's funny," said Uri, holding up the jar. 

Irk stared hard at Uri. 

Uri pouted and put the jar back on the shelf

Ulric wondered aloud whether the organs might be worth something if sold back in Dyvers.

"I say we let the goo out," said Pah.

The party ignored her, talking about what organs might be worth money.

"I say we destroy them," said Pah, but instead the party decided th keep them, just in case. They yanked Pah's bag of holding away from her, and started stuffing jars into the sack. "Those are all sealed, right?" she asked. 

Once the jars were stashed Irk handed the bag back to Pah, who took it back with a hurt look. Then they moved on.

At one point they came to a door covered in runes of protection. A voice called out to them from behind the door. "Hey, you guys, can you hear me? You gotta help me. Get me outta here."

"Why are you in there." 

"They put me in here. Come on, you gotta let me out."

The group stood around in front of the door - Uri was trying to make some sense of the wards on the door, while Ulric and Crys explained that the voice they were hearing was not one of their former party members. 

While they were debating, they heard heavy footsteps coming from an area they had not investigated. While they bumbled around, trying to figure out what to do about the impending arrival of the heavy-footed something, the voice beyond the door said "Oh, yeah, look out for Mr. Stitches."

Mr. Stitches came around the corner - a massive half-dragon flesh golem. And the party rolled into action.

Ulric went all bearish and tried to face down the Golem, while the spellcasters in the party tried to cast spells on the beast that seemed to just wash off Mr. Stitches like oily rain. Irk, however, had a different plan.

He had picked up a pair of winged boots in one of the minor encounters earlier, and used them to fly around behind the beast, where he swooped in bare-handed and grabbed on to Mr. Stitch's Stubby tail. 

And thought long and hard about the bit of corridor where Ulric had fallen through the floor into the nasty chute trap.

And "Piff" they were gone. 

Ulric, Chrys, Pah, Uri and Minimonk were all relieved to have Mr. Stitches gone, until they noticed that Irk was gone with him.

Irk and Mr. Stitches appeared over the trap. Mr. Stitches failed many saves in a row - failed to hit with his opportunity attack to try to stop Irk from grabbing him (not technically a save), failed to resist being teleported, failed to avoid falling down the pit, and then tumbled down the chute, taking little cuts from the razors on the way down. 

The trap door closed below Irk's hovering boots. Then Irk chugged his way back to the party, who were standing around outside the warded door, trying to figure out what to do next. 

Irk told them what he had done. Ulric, still in bear form, had an indea, and started to mime something to the party, scratching out a crude map on the floor.

"What is it, boy?" asked Uri, "Is little Timmy in the well?"

But Irk got the point, and turned around and went back up the spire on his own, flying up to the very top where he could look down at the ground below. 

There, pacing back and forth at the base of the spire, was Mr. Stitches. 

Irk grabbed a boulder (Player: the feat is called throw anything, right?") and tried to drop it on Mr. Stitches from 300 ' up. 

The rock missed. Mr. Stitches looked up at Irk, and made some obscene gestures at him. Irk grabbed another boulder, missing again.

Mr. Stitches looked up at Irk again, scowling at his distant assailant, while Irk grabbed a third rock. Then, suddenly, Mr. Stitches shift his gaze to something over Irk's shoulder, and smiled a toothy, evil smile.

Irk, rock in hand, looked over his shoulder. There was the Vampire Archer, perched on top of a bit of broken battlement, bow in hand. He fired and arrow at Irk, which buried itself and it's bit of stored cold energy, in Irk's thigh. 

Irk was faced with a choice, holding a rock, faced with the archer and the enemy below, but he was never one to give up on a plan easily. He turned back to the edge and tossed his rock at Mr. Stitches again, missing for the third time.

The archer fired three shots in rapid succession, each one taking Irk in the back. He slumped against the battlement.

After a while, the rest of the party wondered what had happened to Irk, and found him at the top of the spire, alone, dead. Again.

The good news? The helmet was still there.

Until next time:

-rg


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## Radiating Gnome (Jun 27, 2002)

*Not Spire 6: A Deadly Interlude*

Not Spire 6: A Deadly Interlude

(Note: for this session half of the players were not able to attend, something we discovered at the last minute, so we ad libbed a bit . . .)

The party climbed the spire again, finding Irk’s dead body – still not even a whole day since he’d been raised from the dead the last time – and the exhausted helmet of teleportation.  They hunkered down in the same abandoned room they had hid in the last time, and waited for the dawn to recharge the helmet.  

Back at the Dragoon compound, they found themselves once again the object of a great deal of attention from the far-too-young, pimply-faced recruits that were training under Pavel’s watchful eye.  Pavel himself walked over to the group, looking at Irk’s corpse, shaking his head with dismay.  

Uri scowled back at Pavel.  “It was the new guy’s idea.”

Ulric and Crys looked a bit shaken by the experience of the past few days traveling with the dragoons.  They explained that they needed to make their way back to the Claw barracks and recover their personal effects – the luggage and gear they had left behind when they headed off to Nightfang Spire.

That left the Halfling trio to deal with raising money to bring Irk back again – and to continue to worry about bringing Eli back.  Money was getting very tight for the group – they pawned as much of their loot and gear as they could part with all over town, and managed to get close to what they needed, but it was still not quite enough.  

Pah did pull out the jars of organs and embalming goo that they had recovered from the tower.  “Do you think these are worth anything.”

Pavel examined the jars skeptically.  “What in the heck are they?”

Uri smirked.  “You know, when they make the McNuggets . . . “  

They set the jars aside and looked for anything else they might sell. Finally Pavel threw in his savings, and pawned a few items to get the cash together to raise Irk one last time.

Some hours later, Irk, just like the last time, hopped up off the table, shrugged out of the shroud he had been wrapped in for the resurrection ceremony, and started to put his battered armor back on.  

But Pah stopped him, pressing a probing finger through the small round holes that had been left by the Vampire Archer’s arrows.  “Um, Irk, honey?  We can’t go back right away.”

She went on to explain that they didn’t want to go back without Ulric and Crys, and didn’t really want to go back again without Eli, either – they had learned to miss the withering support fire from the Elf’s bow.   They needed money.  

Uri wanted spells.  And money.

Pah wanted sparklies.  

Minimonk wanted a new begging bowl and some peep show tokens.  

It was time to change gears.  They decided that the best idea for raising some cash fast was to steal it.  Of course, you can’t steal from just anyone – especially when you’re a dragoon, one of the city watch companies.  But they figured they could get away with stealing from the Dragonpriests.  Anyway, it had been almost a month since they had seen the construction site – where they had killed the Drow assassins and stolen some letters from Anathe’s chambers.  

Checking out the area, they saw that most of the construction was now finished – a remarkable feat of engineering just in having built what amounted to a small city in a few short weeks.  The new temple itself was a grand, but actually interested the party very little.  They were especially interested in Dragontown, the small mercantile district that existed behind the walls of the Dragonpriest Compound.  There they found a few shops that struck their fancy – a small jeweler’s shop, a blacksmith, and a magic shop.

They decided to split into two groups, making their way into Dragontown.  Uri and minimonk would make their way to the magic shop and case the joint, while Pah would check out the blacksmith and Jeweler, with Irk hanging around as her backup.  Uri and Pah used their hats of disguise to conceal their identity, while Irk made do with a heavy cloak and thinking subtle thoughts.  

Uri struck up an extended conversation with the magic shop shopkeeper, who had a handful of scrolls available in stock, could prepare some from a longer list, and had sources that could provide almost any.  After a bit of talking he also revealed a meager supply of other useful items – a couple of half-spent wands, a quarterstaff, and a few other goodies.  There was a back room to the wizard’s shop – much larger than the public area – that Uri assumed held the main of the Wizard shopkeeper’s goods.

Pah, meanwhile, presented herself as the child of some new Halfling nobles.  She wanted to buy a sword and have someone show her how to use it because they were cool.  The blacksmith, a gruff dwarf named Brottor, wanted nothing more that to get back to his hammering, but the little one kept asking questions, kept needling him, until he finally showed her his store chest of masterkwork weapons.  Bored with that, Pah wandered out across the street to the jeweler, where she found nothing but cheap glass costume jewelry.  

They returned to the barracks.

Pleased that they had completed some recon work without picking a fight or getting caught, they planned a raid for the early hours of the morning.  

This time the plan involved using the helmet of teleportation – which should allow them to hit and run without much trouble.  They actually planned three stops – first to teleport into the library in the Dragonpriest’s tower.  (This was the tower at which they had fought and killed the two drow assassins weeks before, when the tower was just four stories tall and incomplete.) After seeing what they could in the tower, they would teleport into the wizard’s shop, and  steal anything that wasn’t nailed down, make their way into the blacksmith’s shop (which was right next to the magic shop) and then teleport out to safety.

It sounded like a brilliant plan.

Their first stop was the library in the Dragonpriest Tower.  They teleported in.  Irk did his best to just stand in one place, touching nothing, and holding his breath, so that he would make no noise at all, while they sneaky folk tried to see what they could see.  

Pah checked out the stack of books that were out on one of the reading tables.  There were a collection of different books, all histories of the Dragon Cult that had built the Spire, and some regional histories of the bandit kingdoms.  She started stuffing books into her bag of holding.

Uri, meanwhile, stalked forward to the closed door that had led to Anathe’s private chamber when they were at the Tower last.  He found the door unlocked, and although the room was mostly just as they’d left it a few weeks before (Anathe had clearly not managed to return yet) he did find a few sealed letters addressed to him.  Uri slipped those letters into his tunic and returned to the main library.

In the center of the tower there was a ten-by-ten opening in the floor and ceiling – the hole led down to the ground floor and up to the sixth, where they had observed a very open balcony, obviously some sort of landing platform.  Down below, on the ground floor, they could see very little, except a long, large, lizard-like tail protruding from the shadows.  

They decided that they had pushed their luck enough in the tower and all joined hands and teleported to the Magic Shop.

In the magic shop they again mostly tried to stand very still and be quiet.  Uri pulled out his wand of detect magic and started waving it around pretty indiscriminately, getting positive results on both the outer door of the store and the door to the back rooms.  Pah went over to investigate the door to the back rooms.

Now, in Pah’s defense, magical traps are a lot more difficult to detect and disarm than mechanical ones.  It takes a very deft hand and a lot of luck to pull it off.  So no one should be surprised that the lightning trap set in the door went off.

The Bolt of lightning nearly caught Pah, but her evasion ability allowed her to avoid damage entirely.  Uri, standing behind her with his wand, was not so lucking, taking the bolt full in the chest.  

Irk, relieved to finally be rid of the prohibition against making noise, charged the door, now disarmed, and entered the room beyond, where the party could already hear incantations.

Irk crashed through the door with the halflings on his heels to find three figures in the room – a tiny, stinger-tailed Imp chuckling and chattering at them from a corner, an angry mage in a bathrobe casting spells as fast as he could.  Oh, and there was the huge Dire Ape taking up most of the room right in front of the party (which had just been summoned by the mage). 

Irk went to work on the ape, while Minimonk and the Imp squared off, Pah hit the ceiling and tried to take pot shots at the mage and Uri did his best to to try to bring things to a quiet end.  

Uri, still singed by the lightning bolt, was reluctant to take too many risks, so he hung back and tried his Evard’s Black Tentacles , placed to try to grab the Ape and the Mage but not Irk.  Uri’s favorite thing about the spell is that it ignores anything smaller than medium size, so the halflings in the group can run around in the forest of writing tentacles without worry.  The Ape was too strong for the tentacles, managed to shake them off, but between the deadly pistol fire from above and Irks consistent pounding, the Dire Ape did not last long.  

The other mage, however, wasn’t sitting on the sidelines.  Irk more than once shook off spell effects that were threatening to turn him into a fuzzy bunny rabbit, and even a few blasts from the wand of hold person that the mage was carrying.  But with his familiar and summoned Ape dead, and his spells not making an impression on the party, the mage needed a new plan.  He cast invisibility, moved to a trap door  in one corner of the room and opened it, but did not go down – he was hoping that one or more of the pcs would think he had gone down the hole.  No one took the bait.  Then he cast blink on himself, and stepped through the wall and to the street outside his shop, where he started yelling for the Claw City Watch to come to his aid. Then he removed the spell lock on the front door of the store.  

While he waited for the city watch to arrive, he kept bopping in to the shop, casting a spell or two and bopping back out.  He summoned another dire ape to keep the party busy.  Then the watch started to arrive.

While Irk held off the Claws, standing the doorway and cleaving his way through the ranks as the closed in on him, Pah and Uri raided the Wizard’s stash.  Pah found a locked, trapped chest at the foot of his bed and settled down in front of it to see what it contained.  

Pah, with the distraction of Irk’s massacre of the Claws going on in the background, managed to detect the magical trap on the chest and disarm it THIS TIME WITHOUT SETTING IT OFF (APPLAUSE), open the lock, and started shoving spellbooks, scrolls, potions, and a wand into her bag of holding.  Meanwhile, Uri found an Armoire in a corner and stole all the Mage’s clothes.  Then the group gathered behind Irk, touched hands, and teleported back to the Dragoon Barracks while the surviving Claws and the mage looked on helplessly.  

The next day the short quartet sorted through their loot – a pile of normal scholar’s clothing, mostly clean, a couple of spellbooks, a wand, and some potions.  They picked through what the might sell for cash while Uri poured over the spellbooks, trying to figure out what was there, what spells he might be able to scribe into his own spellbook.  

While he was poking around in the tomes, he got the odd sense, at one point, that he was being watched, but couldn’t figure out what the source of that feeling was.

The others spent the day pawning items and pestering the raw recruits in the compound.  Irk spent a lot of time fingering the holes in his armor, left by the Vampire Archer’s arrows, and sharpening his axe.  

When some of the off-duty recruits shuffled into the compound after an evening in the taverns, they told the Goonies about a halfling that had been asking questions about them in the taverns.  They got a little nervous, and decided to set up their own internal watch for the evening. 

The party had a large communal room on the second floor of the barracks.  Pavel, as acting company commander had his own room on that floor, and the rest of the dragoons slept in a large dormitory that took up most of the first floor.  

The attack came at about 3 a.m., and started very quietly. Irk heard the gate opening, and slipped downstairs to take a look.  He saw the two night guards prone near the gate, and the gate standing open, but no sign of any intruders.  He raced back up stairs to awaken the others.  

That was when the action picked up a bit.  A fireball streaked into the ground floor dormitory through the door that Irk had opened.  The blast killed about 2/3 of the mostly sleeping Dragoon Recruits in their bunks.  A door opened and an invisible swordsman started hacking his way through the rest of the Dragoons.

Irk had awakened the party, and he and Pah raced downstairs just after the blast, in time to see the invisible whirlwind swordsman taking the place apart.  Irk tried tossing a bit of Alchemist’s fire on him to help spot him while Pah perched on the ceiling and took pot shots from above.
Meanwhile, Uri and Minimonk had their hands full on the second floor.  Once Pah and Irk left the room, the wall facing the courtyard and gate disappeared in a cloud of ions, and the conjuror and his monk follower heard light footsteps land in the room, the owner obviously invisible.  

Uri reacted quickly, with glitterdust, which blinded and outlined the halfling rogue that hand entered the room.  Then Uri and Minimonk went to work on him, hacking at him with Rapier and Kama, trying to flank him and take him out while the suddenly frightened rogue tried to escape back out the way he’d come.  He called out to his attackers “just return the books and we’ll leave” but Uri and Minimonk pressed their advantage.

In the abattoir that had been made of the ground floor dormitory, the invisible swordsman had finished the recruits, and was dancing around Irk, who slashed about with his axe trying to find something to hit – and connecting occasionally.  Between his axe and Pah shooting at anything that looked like it might be a target, they managed to convince the invisible fighter to retreat.  As the invisible form headed for the door, Irk, unable to pursue fast enough, threw his greataxe at him, taking a chunk out of him but forcing Irk to switch to a smaller axe for the rest of the fight.

At about the same time the blinded, glitteringly visible rogue managed to drop through the hole in the wall to ground level, where Uri and Minimonk followed him, continuing to flank and abuse him.  Then Uri suddenly stood very still, the victim of a hold person spell.  The rogue continued to try to escape, and now that they were out in the open he had the help of his other party members, and Minimonk started to be peppered by Magic Missiles.  Minimonk tried to press the attack and finish the rogue, but was eventually knocked down by the enemy mage.  

Pavel finally made an appearance, running down, assessing the situation, and charging out in the the middle of the compound while casting Invisibility Purge, revealing the entire attacking party – two mages, including the one that had been robbed, the battered hafling, and the swordsman.  They were obviously trying to retreat, an effort that was hastened by their sudden loss of their comfortable improved invisibility.  Irk, in an attempt to deny their escape, moved to the gate and tried to cut them off, but failed a saving through and ended up held for a few rounds.  Uri, recovering from a hold, cast a web on the entrance to try to slow things down. Pah raced around outside, taking shots where she had them, saving Minimonk’s life with a well-timed potion of healing. The rogue, freed from Minimonk by the mage and nearly dead himself, squirted out ahead of the web spell and never looked back, running away.  The mage who had been robbed, left with very few spells after the previous fighting and without his spellbooks, could do little more than shoot off his wand of hold person round after round, despite the fact that it wasn’t working very well.  He had frozen Irk, and tried to close on him, through the web, to try to finish him off, but it didn’t work – he was slowed by the web, Irk managed to recover, and finished that mage with some axe work.  

The swordsman was also impeded by the web, and was finished by Irk and Pah, teaming up to pin him between Irk’s axe and Pah’s deadly sneak attacks.  The other mage, obviously the more experience and gifted of the two, cast fly on himself and took off.  Once he was out of the range of Pavel’s invisibility purge he was impossible to pursue.  

The Goonies look about them at the charred and mangled bodies of the raw recruits, the handful of small fires that the fireball had set in the blankets and bunks,  the huge hole in the wall of the second floor, and the bloody ground of the courtyard.  

Pah summed up their feelings.  “Solen’s gonna be piiiiiisssed.”

-rg


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## Radiating Gnome (Jul 24, 2002)

*Cannons on the right of me, Cannons on the left of me . . .*

Cannons on the right of me, Cannons on the left of me . . . 

As the sun rose over the smoky and bloody Dragoon compound, the party gathered to try to figure out what to do next.  

Crys and Ulric showed up a little after dawn, having gathered their personal effects and finished their business with the Claws of the Dragon.  At least, as members of the claws.  

When they entered the Dragoon compound they found the place a wreck.  Charred bodies everywhere, blood and other bodily fluids all over the training grounds, and the barracks were smoldering.  And, sitting in a small circle, the rest of the party was talking about what their next move would be.

Once they had been filled in with the full story, and looked down their noses a bit at the halflings, who were getting the blame for most of the trouble the group was in, the group began to take stock.  Pavel and Crys started to go over the legal situation carefully.  

As the one eyewitness to their burglary attempt at the magic shop was now dead, it would be hard to bring a case against the Goonies at this point.  Add to that the fact that the wizard had come after them himself, rather than going to the authorities, it was likely that they would not be able to go to the authorities now and make much of a case.  So the Goonies were more than likely not going to have to worry about legal proceedings.

However, the Claws knew who they were, and what had happened.  And the dead wizard’s master, the mage who had escaped from the battle, was still out there, as was the rogue.  They would not be safe in the Dragoon compound for a while, and as long as they were there they would draw trouble and get more and more young recruits killed. Pavel was of the opinion that the Goonies should make themselves scarce.

Of course, there was the problem of Eli, his dead body still soaking in a tub of brine (to keep it from decaying) and waiting for the party to put together the money they would need for a True Resurrection.  Pavel had already thrown in his savings to bring Irk back again, they were not in a position to buy another one right away.

Pavel made some inquiries, and then the compound was visited by an elderly priest, who was leading a small caravan of wagons and carts, all packed to overflowing.  The priest, Father Travet, served Pelor, and was one of Pavel’s colleagues in town.  Travet told Pavel that they had been forced to close their temple – they had lost too many faithful in the city, their acolytes were being attacked in the streets too frequently, and their guardians were all dead.  The city was shifting more and more over to the dragon faith, and smaller faiths were being squeezed out.  Travet promised to return, and bring Pelor back to Dyvers, but they needed time to regroup.  

He handed Pavel a pair of scrolls.  “Take these.  I prepared them last night.  I won’t ask for payment now – Pelor knows we would probably only lose it to bandits on the road to Greyhawk anyway.  Keep your Dragoons fighting the good fight here in Dyvers, and do not forget your debt to Pelor.  When we are ready to return, we will call on the Dragoons, and they will come to our aid, and do the things we require.”

The party agreed to those terms, and Travet left.  Within a few hours Eli had been revived again.  This time he was a bit more disoriented than usual – he had spent nearly a week in the afterlife, among the ancestors of his people, and the decision to allow himself to be drawn back to his body was a tough one.  Luckily he didn’t know the sort of trouble the group was in before he got there.

Not that he couldn’t have guessed.

Once Eli was back, dressed, and ready to go again, they decided that they should head back to the spire to try to stop Anathe.  They girded their loins, all held hands, and Irk thought really hard about the sarcophagus room.

And with a jolt they were there.  

The first thing the noticed was that there was something . . different. The place was still dark, dusty, dank, spooky, and creepy, but at the same time there was something a lot less foreboding about the place.  It wasn’t quite so evil, dark, and oppressive. 

The next thing Ulric and Eli noticed was that a lot of traffic had moved through the room – many footsteps, some apparently carrying heavy loads, heading for the upper floors of the Spire.  

It didn’t take long for the party to put together a theory of what had happened – Anathe, whose agents had stolen the Mystery Machine, and perhaps the denizens of the tower, had packed up their goodies onto the ship and headed out.  

While they were openly upset that the bad guys had gotten away, it did make it a bit easier to imagine that their foray into the lower levels of the spire would be a lot less deadly.  And that was always a good thing.  So they made their way down towards areas they had not yet explored.

They found themselves quickly standing in front of Rhunad’s door.  Rhunad, the voice beyond the door, was glad to hear from them.  “You’re back!” the small, weasely voice said.  “You’ve come back to let me out!”

“Where’s Mr. Stitches?” asked Irk, who had a few things he wanted to give to the Half-Dragon Flesh Golem.  

“I think he’s gone,” said Rhunad.  “I think just about everyone is gone.”

“But they left you here.”

“Yeah, I’ve been in here for a while.”
“So why should we let you out?”

“I can help you!  I know all about this place.”

And so on.  They opened the door (after Pah set off a lightning trap protecting it) and they discovered that Rhunad was vulturish humanoid, gaunt and nasty and evil. The party stood in the doorway, well, within earshot of Rhunad, and debated the merits of taking the demon thing on its word.  In the end, despite all the misgivings they could muster, they released Rhunad.  

Rhunad filled them in on the background of the place – he had been a prisoner for centuries, and had known the cultists that had served Ashardalon, especially Gulthias, who had imprisoned him.  He told them about the construction of the tower, about a lot of the little features, and then he told them about the heart.  

The Heart of Ashardalon is the mummified and empowered heart of the great wyrm, a potent necromantic artifact, and it was the heart that was the source of a great deal of Gulthias’ special power.  The party quickly figured that the heart had been taken out of the tower, and that would explain the shift in atmosphere they had all felt upon their arrival.

So, with Rhunad as their guide, they continued to explore the rest of the tower, finding room after room empty and abandoned.  In more than one place they found zombies and other undead inert on the ground, like puppets with their strings cut.  There was little or no sign of life.  

That is, until they entered a large, semicircular room on the fifth level of the tower.  There they found a huge pillar of fire, apparently some sort of furnace for immolating the dead.  

That’s what they thought it was until Pah took a few steps into the room, and the fire lashed out at her.   They were faced not with a huge magical fire, but a huge fire elemental.  That got their attention.

Irk charged in, standing toe to toe with the huge elemental, slashing away with his axe.  He was wearing a ring of fire resistance, and that allowed him to stand in and slug it out with the elemental while most of the rest of the party dealt with other problems.  

Not that the rest of the party new quite yet that they had other problems.  As the rest of the party started to roll into action against the Elemental, the hallway went suddenly black.  In the dark, Uri tried to cast a sleet storm into the room with the elemental, to try to take a bit of the heat of it, and found himself being slashed by claws from far too close to his skin.  

Rhunad had turned on them, and in the darkness slashed away at the relatively soft underbelly of the party while Irk was left with only Pah for support against the Elemental.  
Uri managed to summon a Lantern Archon, who proved to be useless in combat with Rhunad, but whose presence did counter the Darkness.  Then Uri spider climbed up the wall to try to escape from Rhunad. Ulric shape shifted into bear form, then realized he would need magic fang to hurt the demon, and shifted back to.  Crys turned invisible and moved on ahead to try to help Irk.  

Eli had moved ahead into the elemental’s chamber before Rhunad had turned on the party, and he had been trying to offer some archer support for Irk.  When Rhunad turned he moved into position to try to help out with him as well.  

Uri was feeling pretty confident up on the wall, watching Ulric waffle back and forth from one form to another, until Rhunad flew up into the air and took another big chunk out of him with a brutal slash.  He stood his ground on the wall, drew his rapier and tried to defend himself.  

Pah, seeing an opportunity, sprang into action, leaving her pistols behind and spider climbing up the wall behind Rhunad, where she could be opposite Uri. She managed a vicious sneak attack with her sword of subtlety before Rhunad noticed her, and the two halflings managed to finish him, exchanging sneak attacks before he had a chance to make an escape.

Irk, meanwhile, had been pounding away at the Elemental like John Henry craving a path through the mountain.  Crys had appeared nearby, where she fired off magic missiles repeatedly from cover.  She helped, and once Rhunad was dead Eli returned to providing cover fire for Irk, and eventually the huge flame-thing dissipated.

Irk, who felt like he’d been trading blows with the thing for the better part of an hour, sat down in the ash and bellowed for Ulric.  “MEDIC!”  

The others milled around, got patched up, and dug around in the ashes for some loot.  Then they moved on.  

They found a pair of shafts that descended down about 150 feet from the floor they were on – a depth that would put them well below the surface outside the spire.  Irk flew down to scout, then the rest of the party followed.  

They found themselves in a catacomb full of mummified corpses and ash.  They poked around, checking out rooms, until they opened a door that revealed a Girallon guard post.  Six Girallons stood at the ready – not charging in to fight, but ready for one if the party should attack.  

Irk and the others hesitated.  There was something different about these Girallons.  Each had a crude “E” painted on the fur of his chest with what looked like blood.  

Ulric stepped forward and tried a bit of animal empathy with the beasts.  One of them stepped forward, and they began to communicate with some crude hand gestures.  The Girallon signed that if they put up their weapons he would take them to see “E” (which he signed by pointing to the E on his chest.  He also had to trace the E out on the floor to get the point across).  

So they sheathed their weapons – Ulric had to leave his magic longspear behind, as there was no way to tuck it away, and then the Girallon spokesman led them through the far door.  

They passed through several rooms – a few more guard posts with squads of Girallons, and them a large living chamber with many more, including females and young.  As they passed through each room the group of Girallons that followed along behind gathered strength, until the party was no longer able to count them.

Opposite the mouth of a passage that ran south from the Girallon village chamber, there was a large female, wearing a bit more crude adornments than the others, staked out and dead on the floor.  

The spokesman lead them down that small passage, where they rounded a soft bend in the passage and were met by something they had not quite expected to see.

There was the predictable crude Girallon throne, the predictable but disturbing courtesan-girallon, fawning over the throne’s occupant, all four arms caressing and stroking him.

But it was the occupant of the throne that stopped everyone in their tracks.  

Eldgrim.  Half-dragon son of Sear, the dragon that was the mind behind the Dragon Faith.  The overseer of the mine work that had been intended to free Sear from the underdark and allow her free passage to the surface.  The insane, obsessed old enemy that the party had dropped a mountain on months ago, when they blew up the mines to keep Sear from escaping into the outside world. 

Crys and Ulric also knew him – having traveled with him for most of a month on the way to the Spire from Dyvers.  They knew him as the obsessive, maniacal, megalomaniac sidekick that Anathe barely kept under control most of the time.

Eldgrim licked his lips with genuine, lecherous pleasure.  “Well, look what the ape dragged in.”

-rg

Next update: It has to get easier soon, right?


----------



## Radiating Gnome (Aug 1, 2002)

*How could it get worse?*

Eldgrim, being caressed and fondled by a four-armed she-Girallon, snickered to himself and looked at the stricken faces of the party members.  “Welcome to my new kingdom.”

He looked at Ulric and Crys.  “I can see you’ve fallen in with a bad crowd since I saw you last.  Too bad, really.  Picking the wrong friends will be the death of you.”

Irk took a moment to casually look around behind the party.  There, crowded into the passage, were somewhere between 20 and 30 Girallon faces, jostling for position to see what was going to happen next.  The good news, he figured, was that Eldgrim wouldn’t use his breath weapon – it would be too likely to hurt his Girallon followers, too.  But, somehow, that seemed like cold comfort to Irk.  There were just too many.

Eldgrim laughed again.  “You’re just too late, you know.  They’re all gone.  Anathe has betrayed my mother, taken up with Gulthias, and thanks to your ship they’re on their way back to Dyvers to take over the Dragonfaith.  And it’s all your fault.  Again.”

Elgrim went off into the long story of Anathe’s betrayal of Sear’s vision for the dragonfaith.  It was apparent to some members of the party that Eldgrim, for all his malice, was excited to have an audience for his ramblings that could do more than grunt their incomprehension at him.  

Anathe and the others had fought their way into the spire, leaving party members where they fell.  Elgrim got separated from the group, and had become miffed that no one had come looking for him.  Anathe made it to the core of the spire and then began days to negotiation with Gulthias.  Eldgrim did not dismiss the theory that Anathe had been mentally dominated by the vampire lord, but that seemed to matter to him very little.  Anathe had come out after nearly a week of talking with Gulthias about the Dragon faith that was sprouting up around the world, but especially in Dyvers, and ideas for making a connection between that new faith and the old cult that Gulthias was the last vestige of.  In the end, Anathe and Gulthias send a message to one of Anathe’s agents, a spymistress who had arranged for the capture of the Mystery Machine, and the ship was brought to the top of the spire, where Anathe and Gulthias and most of Gulthias’s servants embarked for Dyvers, taking the long way around the Nyr Dyv to avoid extended travel over open water (which makes vampires edgy).  

Part of Gulthias’ luggage was the Heart of Ashardalon. Ashardalon had been a great wyrm centuries ago, but had died.  It’s heart had been mummified, and after centuries of dark rites had become imbued with necromantic power, and was now the source of a great deal of Gulthias’ extraordinary power.  That power, at the head of an army of faithful dragon worshippers, would more than likely finish the job of driving all other power and faith in Dyvers underground.  

But Eldgrim was not really interested in the fate of Dyvers.  He was bothered that Anathe had taken up with Gulthias and seemed to have forgotten about the patronage of his mother, Sear, the living red dragon that was financing the current dragon cult.  And he had his own plans.  There were hints of underdark connections in the catacombs of the spire, and Eldgrim was going to start efforts there to bring his mother up from the depths.  He had a community of faithful Girallons to do the work, and most of the opposition had packed up and left, so he was on his own, except that two vampires – the archer Ranar that had already made the party’s life a bit difficult (having killed both Irk and Eli once), and his dwarven companion, Brottkill.  The two vampires had been left behind and were making a home in another part of the catacombs, feeding on stragglers from Eldgrim’s tribe. 

Eldgrim actually proposed that the party go off and kill the vampires for him – he would hold Pah as a hostage to insure their compliance with his wishes, and send the rest off to go face the two vampires.  

No one in the group thought it was a good idea.  Eldgrim pressed the idea, and Irk said, “Mind if we talk it over amongst ourselves?”

Eldgrim, feeling cocky, agreed.  

“All right, huddle up,” Irk said.  He called the others to join him in a huddle.  “We’re getting out of here,” he whispered.

“Where to?” asked Eli.

“We can’t go back to Dyvers,” said Ulric, remembering the mess they’d left behind there.  

Irk thought for a second, then smiled.  “I know . . . “ and he grabbed for hands.

And they blinked away, hearing Eldgrim’s frustrated bellows echoing behind them.

They appeared in Solen’s lab – where they had met him the first time, in his tower on a secluded island in the Nyr Dyv.  Solen was there, hard at work, and was startled to see the party suddenly appear.  But after hugs and a few introductions, Solen was making waffles for everyone.

The immediate problem was that the Mystery Machine, packed with evil clerics, vampires, and tons of other bad things, was en route to Dyvers.  They were pretty sure that they couldn’t take on the passengers of the ship in a stand-up fight (DM: They were right) so they needed some other plan to try to stop them.  

They came up with a risky plan.  They would teleport on board the ship with a bomb, leave the bomb behind and that would bring the ship down.  They were taking risks – teleporting onto a ship that was moving was much more chancy than teleporting to a much more static location.  They raided Solen’s lab for all of the powder he had in storage – 170 pounds.  They fashioned a crude iron box to hold it, and tested some fuses to try to get delay that would give Irk (the teleporter) time to deliver the bomb and get out before it exploded, without risking that the bomb would be discovered and disarmed before it could go off.  They settled on about a 12 second fuse.  

They also chose a very specific location on the ship to teleport in to – belowdecks, in a passage between cabins, directly beneath the spelljammer throne that was the magical center of the spelljammer ship’s power.

They made all the preparations they could think of – they had figured that the trip back would take the Mystery Machine a month or so, and while they needed to hurry they had enough time to take a few days for preparation.  And then Irk donned the helmet, held the bomb, and gritted his teeth.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

With a slight pop he disappeared.  Pah counted out loud to twelve.  Then on to twenty.  Then she stopped.

When a whole minute had passed, they started yelling for Solen.


Solen pulled out every scrying trick in his book, and could not find Irk.  The ship was still there, slowly making its way towards Dyvers, but he couldn’t risk a longer look for fear that his scrying would be discovered.

He was able to trace Irk’s magical path, and saw that he had been diverted, somehow – what should have been an instantaneous trip through the ether seemed to take a sharp turn into the unknown.  Solen couldn’t guess where Irk may have ended up, but thought that he might be able to send the party along the same path – blind – to see if they could help him.  

No one thought it was a particularly good idea.  But no one was willing to give up on Irk, who had always been the bedrock of the party.  In the end, with a few macho diversions (Ulric said “He still owes me a magic longspear”) they decided that they needed to try to save Irk.  

Solen rummaged around in his lab for a few minutes and found a handful of amber amulets.  “These may help me locate you once you reach your destination.  There’s a chance I’ll be able to scry your location and find you – but don’t count on it.”

They took a little more time for preparation – not knowing what to expect on the other side – and then Solen sent them on their way.


Irk clutched the bomb to his chest and expected to appear in the familiar hall of the ship in a heartbeat.  

Colors swirled around him.  He smelled a series of odd scents -- lavender, then sulfur, then a strong earthy sweat.  Finally, it seemed as if he was drawing close to his destination.  

Irk saw, as if from above, a room -- a large room filled with odd devices and glowing balls of light.  He saw two figures in the room.  One was a man in a white jacket of some odd cut.  He was sitting at a sort of desk that was covered with knobs and buttons and switches.  He was working furiously at the controls.

Behind him, in a long leather coat with matching double lightning bolts in silver on his lapel, was a figure shrouded in shadow.  What Irk could see clearly was a pair of gray-skinned hands gripping the back of the man's chair with white-knuckled force.  Every few seconds the dark figure leaned forward and whispered in the man's ear.

Then he could see that the room was actually just a balcony overlooking a much larger space, which looked like a large, clean, empty warehouse.  The mirror that the man seemed so interested in was sitting against the wall of the great warehouse.  On the floor of the warehouse were many armed human figures -- soldiers, judging by the uniformity of their dress.  They wore daggers on belts and carried odd weapons that looked like clubs, or maybe crossbows without the bow.

Then, suddenly, one of the glowing balls of light exploded, sending a shower of sparks across the room, and Irk felt himself start to drift away from the room, like a ship with its anchor cable cut.  Seconds later he passed into the world again, appearing in a simple whitewashed Dairy barn, surrounded by cows that chewed idly on hay.  They seemed momentarily surprised by his arrival, but return to the work of chewing in a matter of seconds.

Irk, holding the bomb that should have exploded already in his arms (apparently time had not actually passed while he was going for the weird teleportation ride).  He cast about mentally, but could not find the locations he usually teleported to available to him – it was as if the world as he knew it was just in that simple dairy barn.  Seeing the fuse burning away, Irk settled for a more pedestrian escape, and threw himself through a stained window in the dark rural night beyond, scrabbling to get a little more distance between himself and the barn before –

boom.

Bits of barn and meaty chunks of cow splattered around Irk as he reached the nearby forest, where he hid himself as best he could in the underbrush and counted fingers and toes.  He stayed there, hiding, while the inhabitants of a nearby farmhouse came out to investigate, and were quickly ushered back in by the father, all jabbering in a language that Irk did not understand.  Minutes later a horse-drawn pump-wagon appeared – to Irk’s eyes a remarkable feat of engineering, and a handful lf lackluster peasants used it to hose down the last of the shattered ashes of the barn.  When only a few wisps of smoke were rising from the skeleton of the barn the wagon and its crew left, leaving the farmer sitting on his porch looking at the wreckage of his barn.  Eventually he stood and went back inside.


Next Time: There’s no place like home . . .


----------



## Radiating Gnome (Aug 8, 2002)

*He ain’t heavy, he’s my dwarf, part 1*

He ain’t heavy, he’s my dwarf, part 1

So Eli, Uri, Pah, Ulric, Crys, and Minimonk donned the amber amulets that Solen gave them and sent them on their blind teleportation-gate-planeshifty journey on Irks trail.  They felt the pull of the currents in the ether, the odd smells, and had some odd visions, and then they found themselves standing in a shallow crater in the soggy midst of a blasted, charred destroyed barn and the bits of dairy cow carcass that had been left behind by a day’s worth of scavengers.  

“Well, for one, thing, it looks like Irk was here,” said Uri.

Near the wreck of the barn there was a farmhouse, a road that wound out of sight to the east and west, and a clump of forest near the house.  The house looked deserted.  

The trackers immediately started looking around for some sign of Irk.  The ground around the barn was a muddy mess – the barn fire had been put out by a lot of water, and the ground was still pretty wet.  But a little beyond the muddy mess they found some tracks that must have been Irk’s feet.  They followed the tracks into the woods and found a spot where he must have hidden for few hours.  Then he moved on from there – at first slowly, then running.  Joining his tracks on the trail there were four sets of bare human footprints.  As Irk’s tracks indicated he’s started to run faster, the human footprints changed in a few strides into wolfprints.

They followed the tracks of the chase to a small clearing where Irk put his back to a tree and fought off the wolves.  Judging by the tracks leaving the area of the fight, Irk drove off the wolves, but he was limping as he move away.  

Then, a bit later, there was another fight – the wolves had returned, this time with an Ally of some sort, wearing boots, who stood near the fight but didn’t seem to get involved.  In this fight Irk fell, but there was no body. There was enough dried blood on the packed earth that it was hard to imagine Irk made a good getaway. The wolf tracks did not leave the scene, but four barefoot sets of human tracks did, and their prints were deeper now.  They were carrying a heavy load of some sort.

They followed those barefoot human tracks back to the farmhouse, where they walked right up to the road and disappeared.  

The party’s next avenue of investigation was the house.  Peeking in the windows at first, and then poking around inside, they found a house that had been ransacked and searched – perhaps a couple of times.  Most of the food in the kitchen was gone, the upholstery on the furniture had been slashed and just about everything had been over turned.  

There was a library, walls lined with bookshelves, but there were almost no books in the room – a few children’s books, and a reading primer, all in a language that they could not comprehend.  A careful searchof the room found a false panel behind one of the bookcases, in which they found another book in a very cryptic language, this one looked like math, but like no math any of them had seen before.

With the downstairs searched they moved upstairs. One of the first things Eli noticed up there was that the floor seemed inordinately high.  A little poking around revealed a trap door cut cleverly into the floor.  It was locked shut, so Pah set about trying to pick it.

The lock was a simple deadbolt on the other side of the door.  Pah looped some wires through the thin gap and started to move the bolt gently out of the way.  All of a sudden there was a sqeal – unmistakably the squeal of a young girl – and the bolt was quickly shoved back into place, almost breaking Pah’s tools.  Pah tried several more times, each time the bolt was shoved back into place before Pah could get it open.  Frustrated, she nodded, and Eli pulled the door open despite the lock, ripping up a few of the floorboards with it.

A young girl, perhaps 8 or ten years old, looked up at the party.  She was screaming already, but when she saw the strange faces looking at them – the little halflings, the elf, and the druid (who happened to have chosen Panther form to search the house) she screamed louder, uncontrollably, for many long minutes, while the party tried to calm her down.

Crys, who had been waiting out by the barn, keeping a lookout  while the party searched the house, heard the screams and came running.  When she saw the girl backed into a corner by the menagerie that was trying to calm her down, she pushed her way through, touched the girl’s arm, and cast Tongues.  

The first thing Crys noticed was a powerful drain – she felt her strength sap away as she cast the spell, but she ignored it and turned to talk to the girl.  

Once the girl had screamed herself hoarse, she finally allowed herself to be talked to.  Crys interpreted for the party, editing some comments out.  Her name was Gortie Benecek.

The girl didn’t know a lot about the night before.  The barn had exploded.  Neighbors had come with a pumpwagon to put out the fire on what was left.  Her parents had been very upset.  And then they’d heard the truck coming.

“Truck?” Pah asked.

Crys asked, and the little girl explained that trucks were like big cars.

“Cars?” Pah asked.

Crys asked, and the little girl explained that cars were like wagons, but had motors and could go on their own.

“Motors?” Pah asked, but no one got a answer from the girl that made any sense. 

When they had heard the truck, her parents had taken her up to the hiding hole and told her to stay there until one of her parents came for her.  She waited there, and her parents never came.

She had heard other people in the house – a couple of times – but never her parents.

The girl was able to lay out the rudiments of the history of the place – the Germans were the soldiers in the trucks, they were bad, worse than the Russians who had been here last year after they had invaded.  The germans had better tanks, and had been able to defeat the Poles and then the Russians to take over the country.

“Tanks?” asked Pah.

Crys asked, and the girl explained that tanks were like big cars with lots and lots of metal armor and a big cannon on top that spun around and machine guns and tracks not wheels and they were very very scary and bad.

“Hm,” said Pah.  “I want a Tank.”

They got a bit more information from the girl – about three different groups of germans.  Selinka, the town she lived near, was an R&R station for Wehrmacht soldiers, who wore grey uniforms and crosses.  There were lots of them getting drunk and sleeping a lot in Selinka.  Then there were the SS, called the Einsatzgruppe, who were supposed to be there keeping order and rounding up all the undesirables.  For a while they had been shooting the people they rounded up, but now things were better, they were just being put on trains and taken away by train to relocation camps, so they could be sent away.

“Undesireables?” asked Eli.  

Gortie explained that the Germans hated the Jews, and the gypsies, and anyone who was disabled, or weak.  

“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure they’re gonna hate us, too,” said Uri.

“Train?” asked Pah.  

Gortie described a train and tracks.  Pah preferred the idea of a tank.

And then there were the Gestapo, the secret police, who worked with the SS and who everyone was afraid of.  

The little girl asked if the Goonies were Roma.  When that didn’t mean anything to them, she said, “You know, Gypsies.”  They said they were not.  She went on to explain that Gypies were very outlandish people, who traveled around in wagons, who had all kinds of different shapes and sizes, much like the Goonies.  “Some are really big and fat, some are really small.  I saw a boy with a dog face once.  And some women with beards.”

“Bearded women?” Uri said.  “Irk is HOME.”


----------



## Radiating Gnome (Aug 13, 2002)

*He ain’t heavy, he’s my dwarf, part 2*

Part 2

The last thing they did before the spell wore off was to learn a little Polish, which sounded very similar to dwarven.  They all learned how to say “Hello,” “Goodbye,” and “Where is the toilet?”  On Pah’s insistance, she taught them “I want a tank.” (Potrzebuje Baszta)

Once they were done questioning her, they decided to walk the girl the four miles down the road she had to go to get to her grandparent’s farm.  Then they walked back to the farmhouse, reaching it just before dawn.  They hunkered down to rest and plan during the daylight.

During the day several watches were disturbed by passing trucks, and even what had to be a tank going by, but hid out with much trouble until one of the sentries spotted someone out in the woods near the house.  

Ulric,  still in panther form, and Pah, snuck out, circling around to investigate the figure in the woods.  They found a young girl dressed in fairly outlandish colors skulking around in the woods. When she saw the party  she bolted, but Ulric quickly chased her down and tripped her.  They were trying to get her to stop screaming when Crys, the translator, showed up again, cast her spell, felt the sudden fatigue again, and spoke to the girl.

Her name was Resa, and she was very reticent to answer questions.  She wanted to know what had happed to the girl in the house.  She insisted that she was not a gypsy, and they let her go pretty quickly.

They had figured out that they expected to find the relocation holding center near the train station in the town.  They expected to find Irk and little Gortie’s parents.  So they just had to get into town, get the prisoners out, and get away.  No sweat.

When it became dark, they slipped out of the house and headed for town, parallel to the road, but staying off it.  They passed and avoided a guard post at a fork in the road, and moved on towards the town.

Once they had the town in sight they circled around until they found the railroad tracks.  They tried to follow the train tracks into town, but saw ahead that there was a pair of guard emplacements on either side of the track where it entered Selinka.  The same was true of all of the roads that entered town – a pair of square fortifications made with sandbags, filled with a half-dozen soldiers each.  In the end they decided to make their way over the low wall that surrounded the town, hoping to avoid being discovered by the guards.  

And they nearly made it, too.  But Crys made a helluva racked getting up the wall, and one of the nearby guard posts heard something.  A german spotted her and pointed, and things got started.  

Eli opened with a quick arrow into the chest of the guard who was pointing at Chrys.  Pah, Uri, and Ulric charged the guard post, with the speedy Druid-in-Lion-form getting there first, finishing off the guards who had not been killed by Eli’s arrows.  

This particular guard post was matched by on nearby on the other side of a road that entered town.  The six guards in that post opened fire with rifles and grenades on the Lion, who took a beating.  But Eli and Uri provided cover fire, killing a few, while Pah circled the group and jumped into their midst, slashing about with her sword of subtlety. Minimonk tried to join her, but failed to clear the sandbag wall with his jump, and was shot in the chest by a german guard before Pah managed to finish him off as well.  

Pah snatched up a couple more of the Potato-Mashers (boy, does she wish she’d seen how they had worked!).  The alarm was up – the town seemed to be coming alive – but the six heroes, having take out all the germans in sight, took off down some dark streets, desperately looking for a place to hide.  

Ulric, the druid, was in bad shape, and the spellcasters, who had been casting support spells in the fight, were fatigued, trying to figure out why spellcasting was making them so weary in this world.  They finally found an abandoned house, broke in, and hid, breathing heavy and hoping to avoid discovery.

While they rested a few patrols went by their hideaway, but they were not discovered.


----------



## Radiating Gnome (Aug 15, 2002)

*He's not heavy, he's my dwarf, part 3*

Part Three

Things in town eventually quieted down a little, and they were able to sneak into a small park near the train station.  From the undergrowth there they were able to watch the station and it’s buildings, and work out a rough plan of attack.  

There were four buildings – a central station building, very open, two buildings on the west end that were guarded and had soldiers moving in and out of from time to time, and one building on the east end that was well guarded but no one went into or out of.  It was that building that the Goonies guessed was the relocation holding area, where they would hopefully find Irk and Gortie’s parents.  

They made a cunning plan.  They would wait for a train to roll into the station, bringing with it a lot of noise and distraction.  Then, on the west flank, Eli and Crys would take out the guards on that end and try to isolate and neutralize the threat on that side.  Ulric would move into the center and try to draw attention away from the east flank, where the three halflings – dressed as children in dresses taken from Gortie's wardrobe – would sneak up and take out the guards on that flank, break in to the Relocation pen, free the prisoners, get Irk, and get out of there.  

While they waited for the train to pull in they saw some interesting developments in the area.  A car pulled up to far building on the west end, and five figures got out – an SS officer and four very slovenly looking SS soldiers.  They went into the building there, then came out a few minutes later. The four soldiers took off their boots and handed them to the officer, who put them in the car and drove away. The four barefoot soldiers walked away from the train depot and into the town, out of sight.

The train brought a few surprises – they hadn’t though about the train itself being armed, but there was a makeshift machinegun nest on the front and rear of the train, each manned by a grizzled looking veteran.  As the train approached a figure in a long black coat walked out of the same office building where the barefoot soldiers had been, followed by four officers.  They were walking towards the relocation center.  

The Goonies rolled into action.  Crys put one of the two near guards to sleep, while the other went down with one of Eli’s arrows in his chest.  Crys and Eli, using the train to cover their actions, dragged the bodies out of sight and got ready to make their move across the track, while the rest of the party charged across the open ground to the various gaps between the boxcars that they had chosen.  

Parts of the plan went very well.  Minimonk moved to the front of the train and took on the veteran up there, spending most of the ensuing battle locked in a brutal knife fight with the much taller German.  Pah and Uri managed to cross the tracks and take out the two guards on the hidden, back side of the relocation center.  One guard, far off on the west flank, noticed one of the guards Pah killed falling, but before he could call much of an alarm he sprouted one of Eli’s arrows.  

Ulric crossed the open ground between the woods and the train in human form.  Then, still unobserved, he shifted into bear form and charged through the gap in the boxcars.  As he came around the corner into view he found himself faced with a pair of SS soldiers, another two SS Sergeants, and the Leader-type flanked by his four officer guards.  Ulric managed to maul a couple of them, but was enduring a heavy barrage of gunfire from the others.  The most shocking thing about that moment was that the leader type was casting spells – rapid-fire casting protection spells, something Ulric had not expected to see.  Ulric was forced back between the boxcars, and back across the open ground towards the woods.

Pah picked the lock (a exceptionally difficult lock, some of the finest gnome-like manufacture she had ever seen) and broke into the Relocation center from the rear while Ulric was being showered with gunfire on the other side of the building.  There, cowering in the room, were nearly twenty scared, shabby, skinny people, cowering against the walls.  A couple of them were dressed a bit more colorfully, like Resa had been.  And there was Irk, laying on the floor of the room.  When Irk did not rise to great them, Pah raced to his side.  He was mostly unconscious, his eyes lolling into and out of focus.  He had lost a lot of blood, and was clearly in a lot of pain.  As Pah and Uri dug around in their packs for a potion of healing, Pah noticed the truly bad news.

Irk’s left leg looked like badly gnashed up meat, and his foot was missing above the ankle.  

“Um, Irk, Honey?” she asked, pouring a potion into his mouth.  “Where’d you leave your foot?”


----------



## Radiating Gnome (Aug 15, 2002)

*He's not heavy, he's my dwarf, part 4*

Part Four

The battle raged on outside the "relocation center". Pah looked around at the terrified, perplexed  faces of the prisoners. They had just watched a wizened, tough-looking pair of children in blood-splattered dresses break into the room and run right over to the stunty, maimed foreigner and start pouring liquid down his throat-- and had seen that foreigner's wounds begin to close. The two children were both still carrying bloody swords.  Most were too confused to do more than gape.

Pah and Uri didn't waste a lot of time trying to communicate with the prisoners.  They did what they could to give Irk some strength and helped him towards the door.

On the west flank Crys and Eli were working very hard to hold off the waves of SS reinforcements that arrived every couple of rounds.

In the center Ulric, in bear form, had killed many SS guards but had been caught in front of a battery of Nazi soldiers and officers.  He was forced to turn and run for the woods.

Ulric was pursued by the Nazi sorcerer and a few soldiers. He shifted back to human form once he was out of sight, hoping to confuse the nazis and get off a few spells.  The sorcerer, under the influence of some sort of haste or speed magic was right on Ulric's tail 

When the Nazi sorcerer came upon the wounded human in the woods where he expected to find the bear he hesitated, pointing his pistol at Ulric and signaling for him to surrender.

Ulric raised his hands and said the first thing that came to mind.  "I want a tank!"

The enemy sorcerer grinned and started shooting.

Uri had left Pah behind to help Irk, and moved on ahead. He was at the train-line in time to see Ulric the bear run into the wooded park, followed quickly by the enemy sorcerer, and more slowly by a trio of SS soldiers. He quickly summoned up a bit of his trademark web at the tree line to trap the soldiers and cut off further pursuit. Then he dashed on through the web to try to assist Ulric.


He arrived in time to take a quick flanking poke at the nazi sorcerer, who turned and started shooting at Uri, giving Ulric the seconds he needed to cast a spell.

Ulric, battered and nearly dead decided to go for the gusto: Flame Strike.  With the added drain of spellcasting in this strange place the effort was enough to knock Ulric out. The pillar of righteous fire swept down from above and burned the Nazi sorcerer -- it wasn't enough to kill him, but it was enough to convince him that he needed to get off the battlefield.  He took advantage of Ulric's collapse and ran for cover disappearing down an alley near the park.

Uri slumped to the ground next to Ulric, fishing around in his pack for healing potions.  He drank a few himself used one to bring Ulric around, then pressed one more into Ulric's hand before dashing off to rejoin the fight.

Right about then the battling Nazis and heroes were all momentarily stunned silent for a few seconds by the roar, rattle, and squeak of an approaching tank  As if from nowhere a panzer rolled out into the open from the alley the Sorcerer had fled down.  The tank rolled into the clearing between the train and the wooded park cutting off Irk's avenue of escape and dividing the party. 

Pah helped Irk to a bit of cover behind one of the wheels of the train.  The tank's machinegun was spraying the woods with a volume of fire that the outsiders could not have imagined.  

Pah slipped out from under Irk's shoulder. "Back in a sec."

Irk was startled. "Where are you going?"

Pah looked back over her shoulder. "I want a TANK."


----------



## Radiating Gnome (Aug 15, 2002)

*He's not heavy, he's my dwarf, part 5*

Part Five

Pah user the boxcars for cover and made her way to a spot behind the tank.  Then, sword in hand, she leapt into the air, to land on top of the tank's turret.

When her feet touched the top of the tank, however, it disappeared in cloud of smoke and photons.  Pah landed hard on the ground where the illusion of the tank had been.

Although the tank ha been an illusion, the SS and Wehrmacht reinforcements that kept arriving were plenty real, and keeping steady pressure on Eli, whose steady stream of arrows was the one thing keeping the waves of soldiers away from Crys who continued to search the buildings around the train station for Irk's Equipment.  

Uri, relieved that the tank was not real moved towards one of the unexplored buildings. he opened the door and was greeted by a quartet of German officers and their pistols.  

While Uri dove for cover, Ulric, still holding the potion Uri had handed him.  When he saw Uri being shot at he looked for a moment at the potion he had not yet had the time to drink.  In a second the decision was made. and the potion rolled out of his fingers and his lips were moving again, calling down a flame strike on the building.  As he passed out again he heard the screams of the Nazi officers.

Pah made her way back to Irk, who was crawling across the clearing  Crys finished searching the buildings, not having found Irk's gear, made one last stop.

She ducked into the relocation center, where most of the civilians still cowered in fear.  The gypsy couple that Pah had seen was not there, but no one else had taken the opportunity to flee.

Crys grabbed a woman close to the door and cast tongues.  "You need to run away," she said.

The Jews didn't move. One of the spoke. "We can't. If we run, they will kill us, they'll kill our families."

Crys debated the issue for a few precious seconds, but they would not budge.  Finally she gave up, and shifted gears.  "I met a little girl named Gortie -"

A woman in one corner gasped. Crys pulled her out into the open. " can take you to your daughter."

"No- I-is she safe?"

"Screw this," said Crys under her breath.  She quickly cast a charm on Gortie's mother. "Follow me."

"Of course," agreed the woman, following Crys out.

Crys and her new friend fell back, stopping to help Ulric while Eli brought up the rear, still shooting down any soldiers that got too close.

The soldiers did not pursue, seeming satisfied to have reclaimed the station.  And the heroes limped back to their hideout.

Later, they heard an amplified voice calling out to the entire town.  Gortie's mother started to cry.  Crys reached over and touched her shoulder, casting Tongues one more time, and she was able to understand what was being said.

"Citizens of Selinka, we have tried to avoid this, but you leave us little choice. Today the terrorists and criminals that call themselves the Polish free army attacked the Selinka train depot and killed at least twenty of the brave soldiers helping to liberate your country from the depravations of the Russian Empire.  Now, with so many of the heroes of the Reich dead, you know that we have no choice.  The Fuhrer has declared that for every German soldier killed by partisans ten civilians will be put to death.  

"But I will show you that I can be merciful.  Tonight only twenty will die.  Tomorrow, at noon, another twenty will die, and twenty more at sundown -- at noon and sundown everyday twenty more will die until two hundred have died and the fury of the Reich has been satisfied.  That is they will die unless the Partisans responsible for this cowardly attack turn themselves in, or are turned in.

"But tonight, some must die for the sins of others.  How many more will die?  Only you know."


----------



## Radiating Gnome (Sep 10, 2002)

*I want a Tank*

The party listened to the barrage of machinegun fire that followed the German Officer’s speech, and settled uneasily down to rest and recover from the battle at the train station.  Crys, Pah, and Uri fussed over Irk.  

Crys and Uri conferred in hushed tones about some magical solution for Irk, but for the time being the best that could be done was to fashion a crude crutch for Irk from an old broom Eli found in a closet.  

Patched up as best as possible, the weary adventurers tried to sleep.  But it was a restless night.   For hours the sound of Soldiers marching through the city could be heard, but despite the worry of the sentries, none of the patrols that passed their hideaway took any interest in it.  

A few hours later, the town again explored with noise – it sounded like the whole town was mobilizing at once.  Many trucks and halftracks passed their hideout, heading out of town.  Then, when they were gone, it was quiet as death.

Those on watched waked their replacements and settled down for some uneasy sleep.  Irk was muttering dwarven curses in his sleep.  

Minimonk, on guard duty, spotted something moving in the still, dark, street.  A little girl was hiding behind a rain barrel not far from the hideout, peeking out and apparently looking at the house.  

Trying to see her more clearly, Minimonk peeked his head a bit further out the window.  There he saw more than a handful of stiff-legged, nearly silent silhouettes shuffling down the street towards him.  As they passed into a patch of moonlight it was clear that they were townsfolk, but dead ones, animated by some dark power and shuffling towards the party’s hideout.  

Minimonk shouted an alarm, and things started moving very quickly.

It was quickly apparent that the group of zombies that were shambling towards the party were not the only group – another half-dozen was coming up towards the party from the other direction.  

Ulric, wanting to explore a few other options, raced to the back door of the shop and threw the door open.  

It looked much worse in the back alley.

In the alley there were two horrifying figures, humanoid figures swaddled in writhing, slithering, hooked chains, chains that reached out in all directions like probing tentacles.  

Ulric shut the door.

They quickly decided to try to get past the Zombies.  Eli handed Irk a sword to fight with.  It would be slow, and awkward, to fight and hobbled along on his crutch, but it was much better than lying on his back waiting to die.  

They charged out onto the street into the wall of dead flesh.  

At first it seemed like they were making good progress against the undead, but as soon as a handful had been knocked down by flashing swords and singing bows, they rose again, in some cases short and arm or a bit of skull, but rising again to claw and grab at the party.  They fought on, slashing at the undead as the rose again for a third and fourth time.

Crys, who was trying to lead Gortie’s mother and keep her from harm, tried to sort out how the Zombies kept rising.  

Pah had a theory – always suspicious of children out after curfew, she jumped and tumbled through ranks of Zombies to try to get close to the young girl, but ended up caught in a swarm of zombies all alone when the Chain-men, the Kytons, finally made their way to the front of the street and joined the fray.  

The little girl, seeing Pah’s efforts to close, and enjoying the bravado, shifted into her true form, that of an Erinyes – an infernal seductress with bare breasts and leathery wings that she used to hover above the street.  

Eli and Irk, kneed deep in the recurring Zombies, called out to Pah.  Minimonk tried to fight his way closer but was cut off.  Then Uri whipped out his favorite big gun.  Evard’s Black Tentacles.  

The tentacles quickly immobilized the zombies around Pah, and a lucky pair managed to grab the kyton closest to Pah.  Pah skipped around to take advantage of the Kyton’s misfortune, driving her sword through the chains over and over again.  Her thrusts hurt the Kyton, that much was clear, but after a few rounds she could see that his wounds were closing and healing before her eyes.

Ulric, seeing Pah saved by Uri’s spell, decided to face off with the Erinyes hovering above the street. With a bound he shapeshifted into the form of a great eagle, pounded up into the air and screeched towards the Erinyes.

Meanwhile Crys, holding her own with her wand of magic missiles, figured that there must be another devil of some sort in the area, one that was reanimating the undead over and over.  She called out her theory to Uri, pointing to a likely spot, and Uri tossed Glitterdust at the spot.  

There, outlined in the bright, shimmering magical light was the form of another Erinyes, blinded by the spell.  Eli and hobbling Irk charged, forcing the Erinyes to teleport away to safety or be killed.  

With one Erinyes engaged by the great eagle, and the other driven off, the tide quickly turned in favor of the party.  The Zombies no longer got back up once knocked down, and the remaining Kyton was struggling under the weight of many swords.  Finally the remaining Erinyes also disappeared.  

The Party did not take time to enjoy their victory.  Leaving the Kytons badly wounded but slowly healing, they shuffled off towards the edge of town, hoping to make it out to the woods, where they thought they’d find a place to hide that felt less like a trap.

They dragged their battered selves to the edge of town and looked out.  And stopped in their tracks.

The soldiers in the town – hundreds of soldiers that had been sent to Selinka for a few days of R&R – had been pulled out earlier in the night.  But they hadn’t left.  The Army had set up a permimiter – trenches and fortified positions – in a ring that apparently surrounded the entire town, with a hundred yards of killing ground between the town walls and the first trench.  All eyes watched the city, waiting for something to peek out.  

Irk spat out a bit of bloody phlem and sat down on a crate.  

“F**k.”

-rg


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## Radiating Gnome (Sep 10, 2002)

*I want a Tank*

Part 2

The party moved around, just inside the city wall, looking for a break in the line that surrounded the town.  But there was nothing.  The spellcasters were looking through their pouches and scrollcases for some last ditch idea to get past the line, when they heard a door open nearby.  

“Psst!”  a handsignaled to them, calling them over to a shadowed alley.  

They shuffled closer.  They were met by the young gypsy that had escaped from the relocation center at the train depot when the party had attacked.  

A quick casting of Tongues later they managed to talk out a plan.  The gypsy knew a way to get them out of the city, but they would have to do something for his father in return.  They agreed.  

The gypsy led them into a building, down into the basement.  A few others were down there – some townsfolk, some gypsies.  They held open a section of wall that, when shut, would conceal the entrance to small tunnel.  

They followed the gypsy into the tunnel, crawling for hundreds of yards in the claustrophic dank, getting short of breath, until finally the tunnel turned upwards and they found themselves at the woodline, outside the army’s perimeter around Selinka.  

The young man, named Marek, led the party through the woods, doing his best to cover their trail.  Once Eli figured out what he was doing, the Elf joined him in the effort.  Eventually they made their way to a hidden cave.

Inside the cave they found a small community of hungry-looking gypsies, lead by a old man, Marek’s father, called Staszek.

Staszek saw to their needs immediately – food and rest and some precious water to clean themselves with.  He would wait to talk to them in the morning.

* * *

They slept through most of the following day, waking in time to share the evening meal with the gypsies.  Once they were done eating, Staszek surprised everyone with a small incantation of his own, touched Crys on the arm, and then started to speak to the party in their own common tongue.  

He told them that he needed their help – whether they were Americans, or Outlanders, or angels of heaven, he needed their help, and understood that they had made a promise in exchange for their escape from Selinka.  

What he needed from them was a bit of destruction.  He was no hero, no partisan, and his people had never been treated well in Poland or anywhere else in Europe.  Usually he had no reason to make this war his own, as long as he and his people could avoid the Einsatsgruppe and not end up in the camps.  Marek risked a lot – and had been captured, when the party freed him – to try to get information and food for the gypsies. 

But there was something much darker than a land war going on in Poland, and Staszek had no idea what to do, or who to tell, but information smuggled out of Treblinka led him inescapably to the conclusion that the Nazis there had made bargains with dark powers.

The infernal creatures – the Wehrwolves, the devils the party described to him – were, in and of themselves, frightening, but not all that new.  There had been reports of this sort of evil abroad for a few months now.  They were the work of a scientist called Hindenburg, who had his lab situated within the walls of Treblinka.  They were terrible, but in their current numbers would probably not be enough to turn the tide of the war.

But there was a factory near Treblinka.  It was run by those prisoners strong enough to work.  Until now it had been a munitions factory, but it was being retooled at the moment to mass produce Hindenburg’s summoning device – if the factory were to go into operation the swarm of devils would be unstoppable.  

The factory had to be destroyed.  At any cost.  But Staszek had no idea how it could be done, no way until the Outlanders arrived and proved that they could take on the devils and win.

The heroes had questions.  Staszek and Marek had not seen or heard of a SS officer named Axom, and shuddered at thedescription of the mind flayer.  They were certain, though, based on the party’s description, that he would be at Treblinka with Hindenberg.  

Crys wondered about the alliance with the devils – what payment could the nazis offer?  But Staszek only needed to offer a partial answer.  “They bring all the jews, and the Roma, and others, to the camps.  They burn the bodies, once they have been sucked dry, to hide the evidence.  The human ash falls on the ground for miles.”


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## Radiating Gnome (Sep 11, 2002)

*I want a tank*

Part 3 

Later, by the light of a few lanterns and candles, Irk hobbled around, sifting through the collection of junk the gypsies had offered him as items that might work to make a prosthetic.  With no proper forge or even a good fire he had no hope of forging something that he would be satisfied with.  

While he banged around and swore, Cyrs shuffled over to him with an idea.  She explained it to him.  “I think it’ll work.”

Irk looked up at her, a bit unsure.  “How about my beard, can you bring that back, too?

Crys shrugged.  “I don’t see why not.”

He grinned.  “Well, then, we’ll have to give it a try, then, won’t we?

Crys needed to prepare her spell, so Irk spent one more night moaning in his sleep. The next day they found a quiet corner of the cave and Cyrs tried her spell.  Polymorph other.  She polymorphed Irk into himself, but whole, with both his missing leg and the beard that had never grown back after he had been decapited and raised months earlier.  

Crys, patted Irk on the knee.  “There you go.  Good as new.”

Irk jumped up on both feet, jumped up and down a few times, testing his new foot the way customers test shoes.  Then he stroked his beard, stroking it like a prodigal pet.  “Damn, woman, we’ll keep you around.  Now I’m ready to kill some Wolves!”

As Irk stomped away, past gaping and stunned Gypsies, Crys chewed on her bottom lip with unspoken worry.

* * *

The gypsies agreed that the party could stay with them for a week – time they would spend trying to put together a plan and some resources.  Uri found a masterwork longsword among the party’s gear, and set about enchanting it to provide Irk with a more acceptable weapon.  

“Only ‘til I get my axe back,” Irk said, peering disapprovingly at the slim blade.  

As the days passed the party learned a bit more Polish, and the gypsies learned a bit of common, and they were able to communicate crude ideas without the help of spellcasting. The Gypsies were fascinated and unnerved by Uri’s ongoing project, convinced it would explode in their faces at any moment.

Marek continued to go out on information and food gathering missions.  Eli and Pah poked around in the woods outside the cave, waiting for him, bored with the inactivity.  After about four days Marek came skulking back to the camp with a worried look on his face, but when he spoke a few words to Pah on the way back to the cave, she reacted very differently.  She practically sparkled, bouncing into the cave.

“Hey, guys, he found us some TANKS.”

The full story, which came out with the help of some enchantment, was that there was a unit of four tanks (Panzers) parked at an abandoned farm a short way away from the cave.  The german tankers were waiting for resupply – fuel and ammunition (whatever that was) and taking a bit of a rest, away from the fighting on the front.  

The party quickly decided that Pah’s interest in Tanks wasn’t an entirely crazy idea – a tank would make many things a lot easier – like getting into Treblinka and the factory – so they worked out a plan.  

The plan would leave Uri at the cave, still working on the sword, but Minimonk would go with the adventurers.


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## Radiating Gnome (Sep 13, 2002)

*Poland 2*

Part 4


The party stalked up to the small abandoned farm that the german tankers were using as a parking lot.  They saw four tanks, all sitting still, while about twenty men in uniform lounged around, some napping on the tanks, some leaning up against the barn, and none of them looking particularly alert for trouble.  

This gave the goonies a rare opportunity to plan an attack.  They took it, for what it would be worth.  Minimonk and Pah would stalk around to the far side of the area -- the farmhouse side of things -- where they would enter the house as stealthily as possible and take out the officers who were resting in there.  Ulric cast a few spells to prepare the ground near some of the tanks -- spike growth, and then entangle, to make things interesting.  Then, while waiting for tankers to notice the writhing vines near one of their tanks, Ulric cast heat metal on the closest tank.

Irk, insisting he would move "real quiet -like" moved ahead through the narrow passage between the areas of effect of the entangle and spike growth spells until he was spotted and the action commenced.  

There was a great deal of confusion at first.  The one tank that was being heated began to glow red hot.  Irk was chraging the tankers, who were all shooting at him, while Eli tried to cover him with his bow.  Pah and Minimonk snuck into the house through a window, and started hacking down officers, who were trying to fight back, while tankers were all trying to dive for their tanks. 

Another tank was surrounded by a wall of fire.  The tankers inside were trying to get the engine on their tank going, and were pretty unnerved by the intense heat coming from the wall of fire.

The first tank, which was now glowing red hot, suffered a cook-off of one of it's High Explosive shells -- that explosion detonated the rest of the ammunition and the diesel for good measure -- the tank exploded in a huge fireball. Many nearby tankers -- and Irk -- were tossed to the ground by the huge explosion.  Irk was the only one to get back up again, still swearing and swinging his sword for all he was worth.

None of the officers managed to make it to their tanks, but the tankers that were able to get on board were starting their engines and shutting themselves in, and it began to look like the tide would turn.  Ulric managed a Flame Strike on the tank that was trying to drive thorugh the wall of fire, and the combined heat from the two fire sources was enough to destroy that tank as well, frying the tankers within.

That left two tanks, but thos two were on the move.  The tankers withing were driving and shooting, using their machine guns to drive off the party.  

Over the din of combat, Eli's sharp ears caught the sound of german voices from one of the tanks, calling for help, which didn't seem to make sense -- inside the tank, he dind't need to yell, and there was no one to help him.  Who could he have been talking to, and how?

The tanks were badly undermanned, and couldn't see everything, or do everything, at the same time.  They were driving in jagged loops around the barn and farm house, shooting at anything that got in front of them.  

One tank managed to catch Crys off guard, while barrelling around the barn.  She was forced to dive for cover into the area covered with Ulric's entangle spell.  (the tanks, not surprisingly, were not even slowed down by the spike growth or the enangle.)

Eli, Irk, and Pah managed to board one of the tanks, where they resisted the driver's furious attempts to dislodge them while trying to figure out how to get the hatch open.  Ulric, taking cover next to the barn, lashed out with a final flame strike on the other tank, but the spell was not enough to take that one out. It was enough, however, to get that tank driver's attention.  He turned around, headed back towards Ulric, and switched to his main gun. He fired an HE round at Ulric.

While the flame strike had not been enough to take out the tank, it had been enough to warp the tank's barrel -- not a lot, but enough to cause a catastrophic misfire which resulted in an explosion that destroyed the third tank.

That left one tank, which was still driving around trying to shake off it's passengers.  Irk tried and tried to force the hatch open, but wasn't strong enough.  But Pah was able to assist, removing pins from hinges, and finally Irk was able to pry it open.

What followed was a bit messy.  Pah dropped into the tank compartment, while Irk pulled one of the tankers out and snapped his neck.  

Pah killed the other tanker.  She was Joined in the tank cabin by Minimonk, while Irk held on up top and tried to pull the remaining body out.


They had a problem.  They had captured the tank, but had no idea how to drive it, and the tank was moving.  Chugging along at a fair clip -- as much as 15 miles an hour -- and there was a river in front of it.  Pah and Uri banged away at instruments and controls, desperately trying to find something that would turn or shut off the tank, and only barely managed to stop the tank before it tumbled into the river.

The engine stalled.  An eerie quiet settled over them.  After the terrible road of hte engine and the clank of the tracks -- not to mention the deafening explosions and gunfire -- it took a few minutes for the goonies, sitting on their trophy, to be able to head the sound of the engine ticking away heat and the gurgle of the river below.

As those who had not been along for the ride caught up to the tank, they all ended up with the same question.  What now?

-rg


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## Radiating Gnome (Oct 7, 2002)

*Poland 3*

Poland 3: Tank Soup

So, as Irk and Pah and Minimonk patted each other on the back, the rest of the party caught up and stood around, looking at the tank that had narrowly avoided tumbling down into a creek.  A pair of strips of torn earth made following the tank quite easy.

Pah stuck her head out of the hatch  "I got a tank!"

"Yeah," said Eli.  "What’re you gonna do with it?'

"I don't know, I just wanted one."

Some planning was in order. The tank, a valuable resource, would be very easy to track, so they did not want to take it directly back to the gypsy cave where Uri was still two days away from completing the enchantment of the only suitable weapon they had for Irk to use, a magic club whose enchantment he was improving.

They passed two days with the gypsies, resting and learning a few more words of Polish.  Then they said their goodbyes and set out for Treblinka.

It was slow going.  Even though there were roads to follow, their driving skills and limited vision made it nearly impossible to cover more than a 5-10 miles and hour.  They crawled along, in fits and starts, inching close to Treblinka.  

After a few hours of traveling they came upon an odd scene -- a truck pulled over on the side of the road, and a pair of peasants standing around.  The Goonie tankers decided to drive around the scene, giving it a wide berth, rather than risk what they suspected was some sort of trap.


After about 6 hours, having managed to cover 50 miles, the tank came to a shuddering halt, and no amount of beating on the controls on twists on the starter crank could awaken the engine.  

They had been warned that this might happen by the Gypsies -- something called diesel was necessary to power the tank.  There was a tank that held it, and a place to pour more in, but they didn't have any.  While most of the party sat around and complained, Ulrich took the shape of a great eagle again, and flew off ahead down the road, looking for a place where they might get some more diesel.  He returned and shifted back, reporting that there was a guard outpost at a crossroads ahead, where there were about ten soldiers and a halftrack -- the halftrack might have the fuel they required.  

The party worked up a quick plan -- with Crys and Eli dressed in captured uniforms, and Ulrich in the form of a draft horse, Irk and the halflings dressed as a peasant and some children (all  in the dresses they had taken from the little girl’s house).

The ruse managed to get the group close to the outpost.  The officer in charge and the soldiers were very suspicious -- Crys was not able to cast her tongues spell until she could touch the officer's arm, so there was not way to talk to the soldiers, but a few grunts and Jawohls got them close enough to spring at the soldiers.  

The fight was short.  Within a minute Uri and Pah were sitting in the front seat of the halftrack, trying to figure out how to get the engine started so they could drive it back to the abandoned tank.  

And then time started to drag on and on, as the halfings tried everything they could think of to get the halftrack started, but had no luck getting it moving for hours.  The other party members combed over the soldier’s bodies, wondering at little things like extremely lifelike portraits of girlfriends and mothers – the images must have been created with some sort of magic, because try as they might they could not look at them close enough to see the brush strokes of the artist who painted such lifelike pictures.  

Then, suddenly, after a couple of dull hours sitting around waiting for the little ones to get the halftrack moving, the party heard the deep, throaty rumble and clank of approaching tanks.


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## Radiating Gnome (Oct 15, 2002)

*Tank Soup part 2*

As usual, things got underway quickly.  And, cogent plans would not have been obvious to an observer's naked eye.  The first thing the group did, faced by four Panzers steaming towards them, was split up.

Ulric, in horse form stopped just long enough for Pah and Crys to jump up on his back before bolting right at the tanks -- and past them, -- galloping down the road back the way they had come.  Two of the tanks stopped in their tanks and spun in palce, to turn and pursue the horse and riders, while the other two continued on.

Eli and Irk stood their ground, seasoned warriors not quick to run, while Minimonk and his master Uri desperately tried one last time to get the halftrack's engine started.  And, through some stroke of luck, Minimonk beat his head against the ignition button and the engine rumbled into life.  They shouted, and started to drive off.  Eli and Irk were forced to run and catch up, Eli jumping lightly into the back of the truck and pulling Irk up behind him.

The hafltrack was moving -- not fast, mind you, but moving, and heading away from the outpost, in a direction exactly opposite the direction the Horse-Ulric had taken.  But the tanks, driven by experienced, trained drivers and not halfings with deep bruises in their foreheads from the ignition button, were moving much faster.  And in a few seconds the two pursuing tanks opened fire.

The first few shots missed.  A third shot struck the halftrack on it's suspension, with a deafening explosion that shook the whole vehicle but did no noticable damage to it.  Uri and Minimonk fought with the controls, trying to figure out how to get it to move faster.  In the back, Eli and Irk were forced to look back at the tanks in pursuit, wondering about the wisdon of staying in the machine, knowing that being out on the ground was not much better.  

Then the fourth shell struck.  The halftrack exploded in a oily diesel could of flame and smoke.

About a half a mile away, the horse was not able to run faster than the tanks could cruise, and the pursing tanks were eventually able to get close enough to open up with their machineguns.  

Clearly, Ulric, Pah, and Crys would have to turn and fight, they were not going to make any sort of get away.  Horse-Ulric stopped and knelt in the midst of a hail of gunfire so the two ladies could get off, then shapeshifted back into human form.  



While the tanks closed, Crys quickly cast invisibility on herself and Pah, but had none left for Ulric, who was starting to cast spells as the steel juggernauts closed on them.  Quick spellcasting knocked out one tank crew, and while that tank slowly drone away from the scene of the battle, Cyrs jumped up onto the other and started shooting a wand of magic missiles through a viewport.

While Crys and Ulric worked to disable the second of the two tanks that had come after them, Pah had seen the explosion coming from the distant halftrack, and ran as hard as shc could, still invisible, to try to help her friends, if she could.

***

Minimonk was thrown clear by the explosion.  He rolled onto the ground, made sure he was still in once piece, and them immediately looked up for his master.  His master, however, was not on the ground next to him.  Uri was still sitting in the front seat of the furiously buring wreck of the halftrack, unconscious and on fire.  Minimonk jumped up and pulled his master from the wreck, searching his scorched packs for potions of healing, barely managing to save his maser's life.  

On the far side of the wreck, where he could not see, the two enemy tanks clanked to a halt.

***

Irk landed hard and tasted dirt.  He was still alive, still have all his limbs (so it was a good day!) but he could hear the sound of the tanks approaching.  One hand reached around for the handle of one of the grenades tucked into his belt.   He did his best to lay as still as possible, waiting for an opening. Eli aslo feigned dead, lying on top of his bow.

The German tanks slowed and stopped  a few feet away.  The top hatches opened, and the tank commanders rose up through the hatches, peering through the black diesel smoke to try to spot some sign of life in the wreckage.  They could see two bodies on the ground -- Irk and Eli, neither of whom had been driving the halftrack.  As the officers looked to try to see some other bodies, Irk yanked on his grenades' fuse, rolled up into a sitting position, and tossed it at the open hatch.

It was one helluva toss -- right on the money - it landed right at the officer's feetin standing in his command chair.  The commander fumbled in panic atthe grenade, trying to get it out of the tank before it detonated.  

At the same mometnt Irk tossed his grenade, Eli sat up and took a shot at the officer in the other tank, wounding him, but failing to get a seond arrow into him to finish him before the tank commanded managed to get back under cover and shut his hatch.

The first tank commander failed to grab the grenade in time.  The grenade went off, pulping the entire tank crew in an instant.  The top half of the tank cmmander fell sideways out of the turret and hit the ground with a wet thud.  

Irk, seeing the second tank's turret turnign his way, it's machinegun spitting bullets pretty indiscriminantly, decided that he would fight fire with fire, and charged up the front of the grenaded tank and hopped inside.  He fumbled around at the controls, trying to figure out what he had seen the halflings doing tog et the othertank going before, the task made that much mroe challenging by the thick pasting of bloody gore that coated the inside of the tank.  

Eli, meanwhile, bought Irk a great deal of time to figure things out by sniping away at the viewports in the tank, sending arrows in at tank crew faces until they finally gave up and close the viewports to protect themselves.  

That was the good news.

The bad news was that the German tanker's turret stopped pointed directly at Irk's tank.


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## Radiating Gnome (Oct 23, 2002)

*tank soup part 3*

Things could only get better.  Without actually aiming, the tankers were shooting and missing, but would eventually hit Irk and his captured tank.  


Pah, who had been running as hard as she could, covering ground much more slowly than Ulric had as a warhorse, arrived on the scene and bounded into Irk's captured tank to assist, where she was joined by the revived Eli and Minimonk

This quikly became a comic gunbattle, as one tank full of competent gunners shot blind, trying to avoid opening their viewports, while the incompetent halflings and dwarf fumbled with the gore-splattered shells and controls to try to return fire.  The party's tank took a few hits, glancing blows that damaged the tank and made their ears ring, but that luckily did not penetrated the tank's armor meaningfully.  Pah managed to get the tank moving a bit, to throw off the german tanker's blind aim, but they were still not able to get the tank gun working rapidly enough.

Ulric and Crys, having finished with the other two tanks (and being woefully low on spells as a result) arrived on the scene to try to help take out the last tank.  Chrys jumped into the party's tank and added her fumbling to the efforts there, while Ulric joined Eli, who was still trying to keep the germans from getting a good look outside their tank.

Ulric watched the scene for a few minutes, and then came up with a plan, which he shared with Eli.  He shapedshifted again, this time into an asp.  Eli scooped him up and edged closer to the enemy tank.

Meanwhile, the Germans had heard the sound of their target moving, and had braved opening a viewport or two to get a glimpse at their target so they could adjust their aim.  They were pleasantly surprised that Eli was not shooting at them, and they got a bit brave, rolling forward to try to get the party's tank in view again.  

As they passed Eli's hiding place, he hopped up onto the tank and pressed the Ulric-asp into one of the viewports.

Eli jumped away from the tank, avoiding a burst of machinegun fire, and took cover.  At about thattime, Pah managed to get the party's tank turned around and facing the German tank again.  The Dragoon tankers had not seen Urlic and Eli's snake trick, and had no idea that Ulric was in the german tank as they opened fire again.  They fumbled and fired once more, missing, before they spotted Eli hopping around behind the german tank, signaling for them to hold their fire.

The snake went to work, writhing around in the controls while desperate Germans tried to stomp and shoot at him.  The german tank coasted to a halt as they succumbed to the snake's poison, delivered in many small bites.

Eventually the tanks quieted down, the dust settled. They took stock, managed to figure out how to transfer fuel and ammunition into the tank Ulric had just captured (the least wrecked of the tanks available) and they were ready to look for a place to hide out for the night.


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## Radiating Gnome (Oct 25, 2002)

Poland 4
Beginning of the End . . .
That night, hidden as best they could in a grove of trees, the sentires were surprised by a gypsy boy walking right up to their camp, as if he know it was there all along.
He told the party that he had been directed to find a group of outsiders in this very grove, and to bring them to his grandmother.  She was a very gifted fortunteller, he told them, and knew things that no one else could know.  
The goonies decided to leave Minimonk behind to watch over the tank, and followed the young boy to another secluded glade a few miles away.  There they found a handful of round gypsy horse-drawn wagons, all old and battered.  There were a few gypsies around, tending pots on fires and performing other camp chores, but they all avoided making eye contact with the party.
The boy led them to the wagon at the center of the camp, and held the door open for them.  The six party members crowded up into the wagon.
There the found a old woman sitting at a small round table, shuffling a deck of cards. She beckoned them all in to the wagon, and then started dealing cards out onto the table in front of her.  As the cards fell, she spoke. 
She explained that the cards had told her that there were outsiders coming to fight the great evil that was spreading across the land -- and that she was there to help them understand their role in this world.  
Then she started to read the cards for the party.
These things you know, and I can see in the cards: 

"You came here as outsiders -- not German, or Polish, Russian or even Roma.  You came here from far away, and wish to go back to your own world.
"You did not come here naturally -- far from it, you were brought here by a great evil.  You are the counter to that evil, like the other side of a coin, and your escape, your freedom from this world hinges on the destruction of that evil.  You balance their presence now.  Without  you, with the evil left in this world unchecked, this world will become an abyss.
"You must go to a place of great evil, and the instrument of that evil will be the instrument of your return home.
"Now the cards tell me things you do not know.  Future things. What the cards can tell me about the future is often a muddle of choices and paths you may or may not take.  Listen well.
"The cards tell me that the evil outsiders know you are coming and make haste to prepare for your attack.
"The cards tell me that what you choose to take from this world may serve you well in your own, but that you must choose wisely. 
"And the last.  The cards tell me that you will not all return.  One of you will stay that the others might return."  

Pah shrugged. "That sucks.  Is that all you've got?"


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## Radiating Gnome (Nov 11, 2002)

*Poland 4 - part 2*

Part 2

They hit the road again early in the morning, riding their new tank, full of ammo and fuel and everything they could think of that the might need.  

There was one last surprise on the road to Treblinka -- an ambush set by a platoon of wehrmacht soldiers, who were lying in wait, armed with a pair of Panzerfausts (german versions of Bazookas).

The tank rattled into the midst of the german ambush and the soldiers opened fire.  Riflemen took pot shots at the characters that were riding on top of the tank, while the Panzerfausts fired away at the heavily armored tank.  

The battle was short and bloody.  Even with the Panzerfausts, the germans were not able to do much damage to the tank itself, and within a few rounds the party had killed off most of the unit, an Ulric-tiger chasing down a few that tried to get away on foot.  Then the tank continue on towars it's goal.

Late in the day they came around a bend in the road and saw ahead the concentration camp and factory.  Rather than charge right in, spells and health depleted by the Wehrmacht ambush, they hid themselves in the woods a few miles away, using the night to make their plans and prepare.


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## Radiating Gnome (Nov 11, 2002)

*Poland 4 - part 3*

Part 3.

The plan was fairly simple.  They would drive the tank down the road towards the camp, using Obscuring Mist as they got closer to hide the tank in the morning mists.  There wasn't a whole lot they could do about the sound of the approaching tank, but it was a start.

The road to the camp actually passed between the camp and the factory, which fed into the party's plans.  Ulric, in Tiger form, and Pah, would ride into the area atop the mist-shrouded tank, then, covered by an improved invisibility and invisibility resepctively, they would make their way on their own into the factory to blow it up, while the rest of the party, in the tank, would attack the main camp, heading directly for the section of the camp where the laboratory was situated, rather than where hundreds of jewish prisoners were held.

So, shortly after dawn a clankling, sputtering cloud of mist rumbled down the road towards the concentration camp,  cruising along at something like 12 or 15 miles per hour (top speed for the outsider-driven tank)..  

Hardly surprised, the bad guys sent out a welcoming committee -- a trio of devils to take on the tank before it hit the compount walls.  

As planned, Ulric and Pah peeled off invisibily as the tank passed between the camp and the factory.  The others stayed inside the tank to avoid rifle fire from the guard posts around the camp and factory.  But they were not expecting the Osyluth's opening gambit, a wall of ice thrown up directly in the tank's path. 

At the moment the Ice Wall appeared, Pah was holding the barbed wire fence aside so the Tiger could slip through (a big stretch for a halfling!).  They saw the wall go up, but figured the party could handle what ever it was.

Oddly enough, the rest of the party, inside the tank, did not share their confidence.

"ICE," yelled Minimonk from the spotter's seat.

"Turn right!" yelled someone else.

"No, crash through!"

"Turn turn turn.!"

Uri slashed one drive lever up and the other down.  A sharp turn like that would have spun out a car if two things were not true in this situation.  First, that the tank was very heavy, on tracks, and clung to the road very well.  Second, that in all their days of driving the tank they had never, not even now, gotten the thing to go faster than 15 miles per hour.  At this point it was hurtling forward at something closer to 8 miles per hour, and sharp turns were not a problem for them.  

The tank turned  to face the barbed wire fenceline of the concentration camp.  Another Ice wall went up, this time again directly in front of the tank, blocking it's path to the camp, but the wall only lasted a few seconds, quickly dispelled by Crys.  The tank shuddered, crawling slowly towards the camp. 

Ahead of the tank a Kyton (one ofthe Chain Devils) appeared in front of the tank, and it hopped up on top and stared slashing and bashing at the tank's guns.  Irk wasn't about to let some devil scratch the paint, grabbed his club and went up top to get the thing off.  

Another side note: it should be noted that Irk still does not have much by way of equipment -- hs gear was all taken by the Mind Flayer, Ghareth Axom.  He has a normal greataxe he made in the Gypsy camp, and a club that someone else had been carrying, that had been +1 but Uri had improved to +2.  But Irk was still wearing borrowed clothes and little else to protect himself besides a bad look and strong smell.  

Irk at the Kyton set about bashing each other on top of the tank, while Eli took over the gunner's seat and started spinning the turret around, looking for a target.  Then, Irk was slashed at from behind, and the author of the Ice Walls became visible -- an Osyluth, standing on the ground behind the tank and slashing up at Irk from behind.  

Uri managed to hit the controls and the tank lurched forward.  Hearing Irk swearing, Eli spun the turret and caught sight of the Osyluth, standing now about 25 feet behind the tank.  Eli mashed a thumb on the button he was pretty sure fired the main gun, and it went off.  

There was a great deal of fire and smoke as the HE shell hit the devil squarely in the chest and exploded.  The battlefield was silent for a moment, until everyone could see again.  All that was left of the bone devil was a pair of skeletal feet and a twitching, scorpion tail.


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## Radiating Gnome (Nov 11, 2002)

*Poland 4 part 4*

Part 4







Everyone in the tank cheered.

On top of the tank, the sudden motion of the turret had nearly thrown Irk and Minimonk off the tank.  They had done a fair amount of riding atop the tank, and had come to expect the sudden shift of the turret, but the Kyton was not so experienced.  He fell off the back of the tank, chain-appendages still clinging to the tank.  The tank lurched forward a bit, dragging the writing devil along behind.  

Irk and Minimonk took advantage of the Kyton's disadvantage and hopped off the tank to pound on him -- they were not able to kill him outright, but they did damage him enough that they would not have to face him for some time.

The tank continued to roll forward, bulling its way up to the fenceline, pushing thrrough as barbed wire and fence buckled under the tank's treads.  

That was when the third devil attacked -- a Hellcat, invisible and toothy, started to slash at the handful of characters outside the tank.  

Irk stood in the Hellcat's way for a few rounds, trading blows, but loosing ground each round as many of his blows struck the empty air.  Eventually he had to back off, but was saved from serious hurt by the timely arrival of Ulric and Pah, returning from teh destruction of the Factory.  Ulric, now in Buffalo form and asl o invisible, charged the hellcat.  Onlookers were treated to a few rounds of dust spinning, agonized roars, and blood spraying the dirt from nowhere as Ulric finished the Hellcat.  

At about the same time the tank was slowling making it's way through a low wall (which it had blown holes through) and towards the central cement building in the compound.  This was complicated by sniper fire from one of the guard towers, whose bulltes were finding their way through the viewports of the party's tank with even more accuracy than Eli's arrows.  Spotters caught sight of one of the SS spellcasters up in the tower, casting a spell (true strike) and then shooting the rifle each round.  A bit of machine gun fire drove him out of the guard tower, down to the ground where Ulric and Pah teamed up to finish him.  

Eli, meanwhile, lead Irk and Crys around to the front of the central building, where Eli stopped and threw open the large main doors.  

A few steps behind, Crys and Irk could not yet see what Eli did -- but they saw the slack-jawed look on his face, for just a moment, before he reflexivly began to shoot his bow for all he was worth.

Irk turned the corner and saw what he Eli so spooked the second before.  

The space beyond was a large open area, the ceiling two stories high.  A sort of converted warehouse or motor pool.  Beyond the open area there were some door sthat lead into a handful of first floor rooms, on top of whihc was an observation platform that over looked the open ground floor.  

On that observation platform there were many odd devices and objects, a few of which looked oddly familiar to Irk (from the vision he had when he was being gated into this world).  Up on the platform there was a scientist in a lab coat, and the mind flayer, Ghareth Axom, who Irk had already faced twice in his short life.  The last time it had cost Irk a foot.  

On the ground floor, guarding the doors, were a pair of SS Vertrans with a evil ast to their skin.  And standing in the center of the room, in the midst of a large pentagram was a devil that dwarfed the little ones they had fought before -- A Cornugon, whose long, firely whip slithered along the floor as he turned to face the Elf and Dwarf that had opened the door, without knocking first.  

And the session ended there.


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## Radiating Gnome (Dec 24, 2002)

*Getting Caught Up*

The Heroes of Spittlemarch story hour has gotten woefully behind, but the campaign marches on.  

I'll be trying to get things caught up over the holidays, but here's a short synopsis of what's been happening in the campaign.

- They managed to escape from Poland, and kill Ghareth Axom in the process.  They failed to permanently destroy the gate on their way out, as that would have required that one of them stay behind to destroy it.  
- They didn't leave empty handed.  They left with a tank, a lot of ammo, especially for Pah, who has taken to weilding a pair of matched Walther PPKs in combat.
- They rescued about 2000 Jews, Gypsies, and others who were in the concertration camp Treblinka, taking them back to greyhawk with them.
- They returned to greyhawk.  

-more coming-


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 8, 2003)

*Another Placeholder*

Back in Dyvers

The party had a little time to kill between their return to Dyvers and the battle with their former spelljammer ship.  

The ship, which had been called The Mystery Machine, was now called the Herald of Ashardalon, and was bringing Gulthias, Anathe, the powerful necromatic artifact the Heart of Ashardalon (from Nightfang Spire), and a whole lot of undead and construct flunkies to Dyvers and the seat of the new DragonFaith in Greyhawk.

There are a lot of details to come here -- the party mucked around trying to come up with good ideas for dealing with the ship.  Pah got herself in trouble with a crime ring run by Rakshasa, and the party had to bail her out.  

And they met the Fangs of the dragon -- warrior priests of the Dragon Faith, trained to ride young red dragons into battle -- who would accompany the goonies when they went to face off with the Herald.  

They also found out that the Herald was being escorted by one more more white dragons, somehow loyal to Anathe despite his split from the dragon faith proper. 

And they got news from outlying towns -- the Herald had veered off course a bit, and was skimming close to the earth when it got near small settlements along the way.  As it neared those villages, the dead buried there were clawing their way out of theirgraves and rising up to kill the living in the village.  They had reports from several villages reporting the same sort of floor of zombies.  in preparation, the Magister had ordered the Dyvers army to set about digging up the dead in all graveyards and catacombs and destroying (burning, mostly) all bodies that they found.  The citizens were not happy about the solutionl, but it made the most sense at the time, as for centuries the poor had not been able to afford the sort of rituals and enchantments that would protect a body from being animated, and the city did not have the resources to perform those spells and rituals in the time left before the Herald's arrival.  

So, they had a lot to think about.  

-rg

This will all be fleshed out later . . .


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## Radiating Gnome (Jan 8, 2003)

*The Battle for the Herald of Ashardalon*

First, there was a surprise.

The Goonies were sitting around the Mangy Pup, an Inn that Solen had selected for its economy and proximity to the Dyvers halls of government.  Before them was a map of the countryside, a string of small towns marked with black X’s, tracing the path of the flying ship as it raised dead in droves and destroyed one village after another, making it’s slow way to Dyvers.  

The Goonies had been at this for days – trying to find a strategy that would cut down on the danger that they were facing.  There were various ideas being bandied about – some of them more crackpot that others, but in the end it seemed that they had a workable plan – and with the Giant Owls get them to the ship it seemed like it just might work.  

While they were chewing their fingernails, waiting for it to become time to attack the ship, news started to trickle in to the tavern of a man who had walked right out of the harbor – walked out of the water and up onto the quay, then in to the city.  He was supposed to be bronze-skinned – not like he had a tan, but a very metallic cast to his skin.  

And, shortly, after they heard about this, the bronze man walked into the tavern.  Pah, Eli, Irk, and Uri recognized him immediately, despite the changes he had gone through.  It was Norham, their old adventuring companion.  Still a bit damp, and with skin that looked like Bronze that needed a bit of a polish, he walked into the tavern common room and approached the table where the Goonies were standing.  

“But you’re dead!” said Pah.

Norham smiled enigmatically.  “Nope.”

Irk looked at Norham mistrustfully.  “How?”

Norham beamed.  “Mystery and magic.  Mystery and magic.”

“Bollocks,” said Irk.  Oathbreaker, his talking axe, agreed with him.  

Uri tried to get him to spill.  “Really, Norham, how can you be here?

“Norham.  Yes, that’s what I was called.  That was my name.”

Uri grimaced.  “This all sounds vaguely familiar . . . “

Norham went on.  “I come to you now, at the turn of the tide . . .”

“I don’t know,” said Uri.  “I still say I’ve heard all this before . . .”

Norham’s story was an odd one indeed – when he fell from the blue dragon’s maw into the Nyr Dyv he was rescued, underwater, by a Bronze dragon named Ham El Ton.  Ham the dragon took him to an underwater lair, where he infused Norham with some of his own essence – Norham became Half dragon.  Then Norham was taken to a council of Metallic Dragons.  

At least that’s what he said.  The Goonies didn’t believe much of what he was saying, despite the bronze cast to his skin.  

He claimed that the Metallic dragons were watching them – that they were aware of the rise of the chromatic dragons, the dragonfaith, and the one called Sear especially.  They were waiting for heroes to arise – as they have always done in ages past – and all of the portents point to the Goonies – but that left the Dragons very confused.  The Goonies didn’t act much like the heroes of times past, and the dragons found that troubling.  They needed an emissary to go to the party – one who would be familiar to the party, who could get their attention and convince them that they had an important role to play in the world.  But, as it turned out, the new, Bronze-skinned Norham was no more convincing and evocative than the previous one – perhaps the infusion of Dragon essence did not include any sort of diplomatic ability.    

Still, the band of pseudo-heroes were happy to have another cleric along for the ride when they faced off with a flying ship full of Undead, and accepted Norham for his willingness to fight at their side, even if they didn’t want to listen to him preach much about heroism and the struggle against the elements of evil rising in the world.  

They returned to their scheming, and planned their attack.

The Battle

The day finally came, and the Goonies suited up, most mounted up on the Giant Owls that had arrived to carry them to battle, while Ulric shapechanged into an eagle, and Crys polymorphed into a sparrow.  They were as ready as they were going to get.

They elected to attack by day, and managed to catch most of the undead on the ship hiding away from the sun.  The Goonies were joined by the five Fangs of the Dragon, the elite dragon-riders of the Dragon Faith.  The five dragonfaith warrior priests, on their red dragon mounts, were an intimidating sight, until they came into view of the Herald, and its escort of two white dragons, both older and larger than the small reds that the Fangs rode into battle.  Still, the Fangs peeled off and engaged the two whites in an aerial battle that took them away from the Herald, leaving the slow-moving ship without escort.

The Goonies climbed high, and them approached the ship with the sun at their backs, using the bright light to hide their approach – a tactic that prevented the figures on deck from spotting the approach of the Goonies until they were right on top of the ship.  

Then the battle began in earnest.  

The plan was to take over the Spelljammer chair and the control of the ship – and to that end they concentrated their boarding on the stern of the ship, where a lone figure paced back and forth behind Anathe himself, who was at the helm. As they closed with the ship the figure on the poop deck disappeared (Redbone, the Wight assassin from Nightfang Spire, cast Improved Invisibility on herself). But there wasn’t time for Anathe to do more than yell for help as the Goonies hit the deck and went to work.  

Uri and his new cohort, a halfing cleric named Geiger, stayed on an Owl, circling the ship and casting spells to support the fighting on the ship.  Eli and the new Bronze Norham did the same, providing their support for those who boarded the ship and engaged the enemy. 

The boarding party moved quickly to isolate Anathe.  The foredeck was the nest and post of the handful of Girallons that traveled with Gulthias – and on the main deck stood Mr. Stitches, the half-dragon flesh golem, two normal golems, and the Tombstone golem.  Golems and Girallons moved quickly to try to move to protect Anathe, but quick spellcasting blocked their path – a potent mix of Web, Wall of Thorns, and then Evard’s Black tentacles slowed things down considerably.  

Irk jumped down from his Giant Owl mount and moved quickly to stand before Anathe, who was torn between his desire to stay in the chair and pilot the ship, although it meant taking terrible risks.  Irk pounded on him mercilessly, and Anathe finally had to give up the chair and try to protect himself, only to be jumped from behind by Pah, who attacked him from the poop deck, above and behind him, slipping a locking garrote around his neck.  Anathe failed to cast a spell in time to save himself, and collapsed.  

Redbone, the invisible Wight assassin, had been holding back, studying Irk so that she could make her death attack when she had an opening, but when Anathe was clearly in such great trouble, attacked by the halfling from behind and the dwarf  in front, she stepped up and delivered a devastating sneak attack to Pah.  Pah turned, and tried to defend herself, but would not have lasted long had Ulric not saved the day.  

Ulric, himself invisible, shape shifted again from half-elven form into his polar bear shape, and then started to sweep his great paws about, looking for the Assassin.  A few lucky blows dragged the struggling Wight into a painful bear hug – a hug that threatened Ulric with the Wight’s energy drain every round, but eliminated his advantage for being invisible.

While Ulric was doing that, the little sparrow that was Crys shaped changed back into her natural form and took Anathe’s place in the Spelljammer chair.  Once there she put the Goonie’s secret plan into effect.

She started a laborious roll, turning the ship over slowly, while disabling the magic that would keep passengers from falling off the ship. The heavy golems started to slide a bit, while the girallons used their extra limbs to grab for handholds as the ship turned.  
Further forward, a pair of night hags had stepped out of the forecastle and had taken an interest in the Goonies that were circling the Herald offering ranged spell and bow support to the boarding party.   Their best effort was a pair of ray of enfeeblement spells that they cast on the Giant Owl that was bearing Bronze Norham.  The spells robbed the Owl of almost all of its strength, and it could no longer carry Norham and stay airborne.  The two began to fall.  

Norham, hoping someone would get to him soon, jumped off the falling Owl, which was then able to slip into a slide that would allow it to land safely.  But Norham was still falling.

Eli, seeing Norham in trouble, tucked his Owl into a power dive, and managed to catch up to Norham before he picked up too much falling speed.  His owl snatched him out of the air, a claw on each upper arm, and the now-laden owl began the long climb up towards the Herald’s elevation. 

As they flew up, creatures began to fall past them, some screaming.  

On Deck.

The Deck of the Herald was a mess – the combined effects of the Web, Evard’s Tentacles, and the Wall of Thorns, made it difficult for the Golems and Girallons to get to the heroes who had taken over the Poop Deck and the Spelljammer Chair.  A few of the girallons managed to push through the mess and get to the party, but Irk handled them quickly.  

Mr. Stitches, frustrated with his inability to fight through the web and thorns faster, used his dragon breath weapon to try to burn a path – it cleared a lot of the web and the last few tentacles, but the wall of thorns was made of sterner stuff.

One Girallon was in the rigging, swinging from mast to mast to get to the stern of the ship while avoiding the spells on deck.  Then Crys’s roll started to happen, and things got interesting quickly.  

Pah and Ulric were still on the poop deck, behind the Spelljammer Chair, trying to do something about Redbone.  Just as Crys turned the ship into it’s roll, Ulric, in Bear form, managed to get a grapple on the Wight – which threatened to drain him levels each round – then took advantage of the shifting deck, and leapt overboard into the open sky, still holding Redbone.  

Redbone swore a blue streak in undercommon.  Ulric let go, pushed away from the Wight and shapeshifted into an Eagle, but was not able to get himself oriented in time to avoid a clumsy crash into the ground, where he landed with a terrible crash, just a few seconds after Redbone landed.

The Herald continue to turn, shifting until had turned completely upside down.  The Girallons, all six limbs grasping at rail and rope and the last shreds of web and thorn, were mostly able to cling to the ship, but the less agile Golems were not able to get a grip and hold on, and started falling.  

The tombstone Golem in particular was having trouble.  When the deck had started to shift, it had moved to the mast and held on for dear life.  But by the time the ship was inverted the massive stone construct was sliding towards the top of the mast, breaking away ropes and stays that had never been designed to hold its weight.  Then, with a final snap of one last line, it was falling. 

Irk did not waste any time worrying about the ship’s orientation.  Wearing his slippers of spider climb, he had moved to the side of the ship – over the rail and actually stood on the underside of the ship while it was on it’s side – and put Oathbreaker to work in a way the axe had never really been intended.  He started to chop wood like mad.

The surviving Girallons and Flesh Golems were clinging to the side rails of the ship, where they had slipped when the ship had started to turn.  Irk moved along the rail, chopping it away with powerful axe strokes.  The first victim of his woodcraft was Mr. Stitches, who screamed “NOT AGAIN” as his last handhold was chopped away and he, too, fell to the earth.  Irk moved down the rail, cutting it away, sending the surviving Girallons and Flesh Golems after Mr. Stitches.  

Ulric, on the ground, had been nearly killed by the fall.  He struggled to catch his breath, thankful that the improved invisibility he was wearing kept him relatively safe from the badly wounded Golems that were shuffling around where they had fallen, looking for something to bash.  As more Golems and Girallons fell, those on the ground were hard pressed to avoid being struck by falling monsters.

Crys continued to turn the ship as fast as she could, turning it up on it’s end, in a power climb, trying to shake the last few of the creatures on the outside of the ship off.  Geiger, the hapless halfling cleric who had recently signed on to Uri’s service, was desperately clinging to ropes and rails, holding on for dear life as the ship turned and cavorted.  

While the ship was tying it self in knots, Eli, Uri and Norham were having their own bit of fun with the night hags.  The hags shapeshifted into gargoyles when the ship started to turn over, then took off and started chasing Eli and Uri’s Owls around, while Uri and Eli tried to defend themselves.  The Hags peppered Uri with Magic Missiles – nearly killing him.  Uri was forced to allow himself to fall from his mount, playing dead, and count in his feather fall to save him once he hit the ground.   He had made a good accounting of himself against the hags, though, and that made it possible for Eli to finish them – Eli had been shooting at the Hags for all he was work, needing to score criticals to actually do damage because of the Hags’ damage resistance.  In the end, though, Eli managed to evade the Hags long enough to shoot them out of the air.  

While the Hags and Eli and Uri were swirling around each other, poor Norham was still clutched in the Owl’s claws.  Norham was caught up in such a way that he was unable to move his arms to cast spells, so he wasn’t able to do more than shout encouragement to Eli.  Eli offered several times to drop Norham off on the ship, but Norham refused.

But, once the Hags were dealt with, Norham reconsidered.  The ship was still flying straight up into the sky, and the decks had been cleared.  Irk and Pah were moving towards the open hatch to the lower decks, where the undead who were sensitive to sunlight were hiding – the vampires, including Gulthias.  Norham, finally seeing the chance to join the fight against the great undead, ordered Eli and Eli’s owl to drop him off at the hatch – an order which amounted to having Norham tossed into the hatch, as the Owl had to do it while flying by.  

Norham was tossed into the hatch, and he fell to the end of the main hold compartment that was oriented down at that moment.  There, in the hold, he found himself surrounded by a half-dozen Morghs.

On the ground, Ulric patched himself a up a bit, and work on finishing off the golems and Girallons that were not killed by the fall.  When Uri arrived, falling the last few feet as gently as a feather, he Joined Ulric in that effort.

Pah and Irk, seeing Norham tossed unceremoniously into the hold, yelled for Crys to return the ship to it’s normal orientation and entered the hold to try to help Norham.  Once the ship was level again, Geiger shrugged his way out of the ropes and raced forward to help.

Floating in the center of the hold was the heart, a huge black flaming organ the size of a wagon.  Its oppressive power seemed to dim the sunlight that drifted into the hold from above.

Once in the hold, they found things had gone very badly for Norham – there were bits of him all over the hold, blood streaking the walls in odd patterns as the ship had turned and twisted back to level.  The remaining morghs and vampire spawn turned to face Pah and Irk.  

As Irk and Pah started to go to work, Geiger stuck his head into the hold from above, turning undead for all he was worth, but the power of the heart bolstered the strength of the Morghs, and they were not turned.  

As the fight in the hold moved on, Irk slashing Oathbreaker through the Morghs like so much wheat, Gulthias himself emerged from the Heart, and made a quick movement towards Pah.  He gazed into her eyes, batten an eyelash, and in a heartbeat she was his to command. He sent her into a back room, then engaged Irk.  

Gulthias’s toe to toe fight with Irk lasted a few rounds.  Oathbreaker was singing some obscure dwarven battle aria while Irk slash and feinted at the vampire, forcing him back a step at a time.  Finally, it became clear to Gulthias that he could not continue the fight – and, as much as he hated to give up on centuries of work on the heart, he would have to leave it behind if he were to survive.  But he wouldn’t leave open handed.  He ducked into the back room a few steps ahead of Irk, called Pah into his arms, and the two teleported out of the ship.  

Irk charged into the room after Gulthias in time to see the vampire and his halfling thrall disappear in a wink.  

Irk slumped to one knee.  Oathbreaker spoke for both of the.  “Pussy.”

Aftermath

What was left was a little mopping up.  Uri and Ulric had finished of those that fell to the ground and returned to the ship.  Irk and Oathbreaker returned to the main part of the hold and saw the heart.  A few rounds after Gulthias made his getaway the flame on the heart winked out for some reason none could fathom, but Irk took it as the opportunity he needed to vent his frustrations on the heart itself, hacking it into tiny bits.  

As the Goonies gathered on deck, and everyone got up to speed on Norham’s death and the abduction of Pah, they saw a lone red dragon, bearing the two surviving Fangs of the Dragon, limping back towards Dyvers after their battle with the White Dragons.  

The ship itself was a mess – bits of web and thorn remained, much of the deck had been badly burned by Mr. Stitches’ breath weapon, and then there was the rail and spars that Irk had hacked away to cut Girallons and golems loose.  The ship would take a lot of repair before it would be the Mystery Machine again.


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## Radiating Gnome (Mar 11, 2003)

*A Fine Mess:  Return of the Goonies*

A Fine Mess:  Return of the Goonies

It has been quite some time since this chronicler has been able to record the travels and deeds of the band of adventurers known as the Heroes of Spittlemarch by some, the Dyvers Dragoons by others, and the Goonies by those who know them best,  Much has happened -- some of it heroic, some less than heroic, but all of it remarkable.  

Catching up:

Until quite recently, the Goonies had faced some powerful opponents -- including Anathe and Gulthias, and the Heart of Ashardalon, and an army of Gulthias' undead minions.  They were joined for that battle by the Fangs of the Dragon, Fighter-Clerics and dragonriders, the pride of the DragonFaith, with whom they had forged a very tenuous alliance.  

In the battle with Gulthias' horde, all being flown to Dyvers on board the Goonies' flying ship (which Gulthias had stolen from them), the Fangs drew the White Dragons that were flying escort for the goonies, riding giant owls, attacked the ship itself.    They managed to recapture the ship, and kill Anathe, but Gulthias escaped, teleporting back to the Nightfang Spire, taking Pah, the halfling rogue, back with him as his charmed prisoner.  

So, once the ship was recovered  and the danger to Dyvers averted, the Goonies had to race back to the Spire and rescue Pah.  Which they did.  

Finally they were able to return to Dyvers, to the Tavern their patron Solen was using as his headquarters,.

But there was little time to relax and enjoy their success.  Pah, always at the center of a whirlwind of trouble, had enemies in Dyvers that were looking for her.  Prior to the battle with Gulthias and his minions, Pah had been trying to help find some form of flying that would help the Goonies get on the ship.  She was directed, by contacts in the thieves guild, to the manor house of an elven merchant who had a device they promised would help.  IN the process, Pah was killed by a poison trap, although she managed to get out of the house before collapsing.  The rest of the party was able to rescue her, and revive her using the Staff of Life, but the damage was done -- Pah had a new enemy, a Rakshasa sorcerer that has been posing as an elven merchant and trying to take over the territory of the thieves guild in Dyvers.  

There were, of course, other issues.  The goonies had been joined, in their attempt to rescue Pah, by a young gypsy girl named Neesha, one of the refugees from Treblinka.  Neesha had agreed to go along with the rescue, as long as the party agreed to return the favor and rescue the jewish refugees from the Dragon Priests, who had taken them in as a humanitarian gesture, but turned around and put them to work in an underground scriptorium, making copies of Dragonetics, the holy book of the dragon faith. They're being worked in two 12 hour shifts, scribbling away their lives, locked up in filthy dungeons the rest of the time.  Neesha had fought her way out and come to the Goonies for help.  

On top of that, the political situation in the city was getting worse and worse for the Magister, who was trying to play by the rules, but also stem the tide of the Dragonfaith, which had spread like a virus in the city, squeezing out all other faiths and threatening to take over the city, and the nation.  

With all this going on, the Goonies were trying to sort out what their next move would be.  They were actually trying out a few new concepts – planning ahead, strategizing, that sort of thing – trying to figure out what they would do with 2000 refugees once they were rescued – how they would get them out of the city, where they would take them, what it would cost to take care of them until they were able to care for themselves, that sort of thing.

Then visitors started coming in to the Tavern, calling on some members of the party.  The first visitor was an elf woman, in traveler’s clothing, who wanted to speak to Eli.  The two elves found a private table, and she told him some grave news – that his master, Avaros, who had trained him in the secrets of the Order of the Shooting Star, was dead, killed by the Order’s ancient enemy, Dark elves.  She also told him that he was the last of the Order, and that the future of the order rested on his slender shoulders – it would die with him if he did not do something to rebuild it.  She delivered to him a book – an ancient tome, the Codex of his order, a manual that held the secrets of thousands of years of the Order.  The only other thing she could tell him was that his bow, the intelligent bow that Eli had carried for a few weeks when he was being evaluated for the order – was lost when Avaros was killed, and is presumed to be in the hands of the Dark Ones.

Eli returned to the group, tucking the book under his arm, and obviously deep in thought.  Soon after that visit, another pair of elves ducked into the tavern, this pair looking for Pah.  They told her that they were representatives of the thieves guild, and they needed to set up a meeting with her in the slums quarter of the city.  Pah agreed to the meeting.  A bit later she left for the meeting, taking Irk along as her protector.  A few other members of the party tagged along at a distance, to provide a bit of cover in the event of some sort of mischief.

The meeting was an ambush – one orchestrated by the Rakshasa that Pah had angered.  The two elves were apparently waiting for the dwarf and halfling in an intersection.  When Pah and Irk arrived the elves quickly disappeared from sight, while a half-dozen gnomes stepped out of the shadows and started to attack the pair.  

This didn’t look like much of a fight, but looks were clearly deceiving.  

But the Elves were not gone – only invisible.  One of them started casting spells.  Seeing Irk for the wrecking machine he is, she cast Insanity on him, and Irk was quickly reduced to a random set of tics and reactions to the world around him – and very little help to Pah.  

Then, while Pah was trying to hold off what was left of the gnomes, the Rakshasa hit her with a spell as well – a Geas.  Pah stood stock-still for a few seconds, receiving her directions for the Geas.  Then the Rakshasa disappeared again, and the surviving gnomes disappeared into the shadows, leaving a dangerously deranged Irk behind, and Pah standing there absorbing the implications of her new mission.  

Her geas?  She had been ordered to destroy the thieves guild in Dyvers. 

Very briefly, things degenerated from there.  Irk and Pah, in their own insane ways, divided the party. Irk clearly needed to be disarmed and kept out of trouble – which was accomplished by Eli and Ulric, who managed to take his axe, hide it in Eli’s glove of storing, then truss him up and dump him into a wheel barrow so he could be taken away.  Crys and Pah ran off together, with Pah leading the way, suddenly full of purpose.  

It was quickly determined that the only source of clerical power in Dyvers strong enough to save Irk from his insanity was the dragonfaith.  So Ulric came up with a plan, dumped Irk back in his wheelbarrow, and presented himself to the dragonpriests, the prodigal druid (for he had come to Dyvers, originally, as a mercenary hired to be one of the claws of the dragon), and beg to be taken back, and to have his friend restored to sanity.  They were quickly dumped into a cell in the dungeon beneath the temple while the priests tried to figure out what to do with them.

Meanwhile, Crys tagged along with Pah while Pah started interview contacts to try to find the hideout of the thieves guild.  In conversation with one such contact, Crys made it clear that she wasn’t interested in attacking the guild, as Pah was.  The conversation turned adversarial, and Pah decided that she could complete her mission better on her own – so she took off running.  Crys tried to stop her, thinking fast, and cast Polymorph other, but made an unfortunate choice, turning her into a tabby cat – a cat that quickly slipped away into the shadows and was gone.  

Crys returned to Solen’s tavern to find Ulric, Irk and Uri also gone.  

That is, roughly, where we were before our most recent session.


Latest session:

Here's what happened in the latest session . . . 

Pah found one of the main Thieves' Guild hideouts and snuck in, still in cat form.  She puttered around, looking for something she could do -- some way to cause trouble -- when the thieves started to prepare for a meeting of some sort.  A few minutes later, a team of four adventurers teleported into the room.

This was especially shocking, because one of the things in the Pah's background that hasn't been used yet in the campaign is that she's on a search for her long lost love.  And this lost love was one of the four adventurers -- a halfling rogue.  There were also a fighter, ranger, and wizard in the party with him.  

The meeting got underway -- the adventurers were clearly mercenaries, and had been hired by the guild to try to deal with the Rakshasa problem.  The Pah wasn't content to watch the meeting happen, though -- she sidled over to her Oom and started to rub up against him.  

Anyway, Oom tried to get rid of the cat, but it kept coming back, and this insistence drew the attention of the Wizard -- who had true seeing cast, and saw her for what she was.  When the thieves wouldn't fess up to knowing anything about the fairly insistent cat, he cast dispel magic on Pah, and this time it worked, returning her to her own form.

The thieves were instantly shocked, but Oom, her long lost love, was able to keep them from doing anything to her, while he tried to figure out what was going on.  Then wizard announced that they knew what they needed to know, and would return to their hideout.  Oom begged, and they too Pah along for the ride.  

Meanwhile, things were not looking good in the dungeons under the Dragon Temple, where the Irk and Ulric (and Uri, invisible and hidden from view) were being questioned by various members of the dragonfaith -- claw officers, priests, etc.  

Ulric’s line of bull -- to try to convince the dragonpriests to cure Irk and accept that the two of them want to join the claws -- involved being deeply in love with Irk, and refusing to leave him behind in the cell.  This struck the priests as a shockingly hard to believe story -- but it amused the Archbishop enough that he decided to meet the two himself -- and then, to see how far the Ulric was willing to go, offered to marry the two, right there, before they met their fate.  Ulric, playing his bluff to the bitter end, agreed.  

So there was a small ceremony in the dungeon cell.  Irk, rolling his 1d10 every round to determine his behavior (the player was having a grand time with this, and I can't tell you how cool it is to have players that will enjoy something so frustrating, and make it fun) while Ulric dressed him up as best he could as a bride -- including pink ribbons in his beard.  

Once the ceremony was complete, the archbishop, surprised that they had gone all the way through with it, and still convinced that they could not be trusted, ordered that their cell be walled up, trapping them in marital bliss, Cask of Amontillado style.  And it would have worked, too, had Uri wizard not been there to dimension door them out of the cell.  

While all of this was going on, the party members who were left were NOT shopping for wedding presents.  They were working to try to nail down arrangements with Rhennee barge-folk and smugglers to get the refugees out of the city once they were freed by the party.  

This group was also on hand when a fire broke out in the Magister's palace.  They raced to the scene, and tried to charge into the fire to rescue the magister (or see if they could find any sign of her).  In the fire they encountered a couple of the fangs of the dragon, crashing about in the fire, but the fangs escaped, leaving Crys and Eli in the fire hiding in the relative safety of a hearth, while the rest of the building burned around them.  Crys tried a teleport spell to escape, but rolled very badly. 

She had been thinking of the bridge of their own ship, the Mystery Machine, recently recovered in the battle in the sky with Gulthias.  But the pair ended up in a similar location, miles away, on the bridge of a ship  -- a troop ship, carrying a surprisingly reptilian army, dressed as claws of the dragon, just one ship in a fleet of others, sailing slowly towards Dyvers.  

A few seconds later, before the ship's captain could bark an order to his crew, they teleported back out.  

Back at the tavern, they tried to scry on the magister, with Solen's help, and saw her battered and bound, in the presence of a Tiefling, who was sitting there toying with a dagger, and the massive form of Sear, who spotted the scrying attempt immediately and scared them off with a menacing blink.

Also, Eli, at one point, was alarmed by a feeling of insistence from the dwarf's intelligent Axe, Oathbreaker.  Oathbreaker had been tucked away, in an effort to keep Irk from hurting anyone, into the Elf's glove of storing.  Now the elf could feel the Axe's empathic need to get out and speak.  So, when they had a private moment, they pulled the axe out.

The axe insisted that it had a solution to Irks' problem -- he could take over Irk, in his mentally weakened state, and keep the insanity at bay.  

The party discussed it a little, and Eli wasn't keen on trusting the axe, and then Crys delivered my favorite line, ever.  "Will you swear, on your honor as a magic item, that you will help him and serve the party?"

The axe, Oathbreaker, shrugged his non-existent shoulders.  "Uh, sure."  And so it was settled.  When they met back up at the tavern, with the recently escaped Uri, Ulric, and still insane Irk, they locked the dwarf in the basement with the axe for a while, until, finally he seemed to settle down.  When the dwarf reappeared he had a smoky, dark look on his face and very little sense of humor.  He would prove to be a bit on the senselessly bloodthirsty side for a while, but the fighting would come later.

Meanwhile, Pah, the halfling, was in the lair of the other party, Oom's band of mercenary adventurers, who were bustling around, digging through chests and armoires and bookcases, preparing for a battle with the Rakshasa.  Pah, recovering from the shock of seeing her long lost love for the first time in years, realized that she had a very important mission.  The destruction of the guild.  She begged Oom to join her, to help her destroy the guild, but he had his own work to do, and she couldn't stay.  He saw that he couldn't keep her there, so he gave her a ring (a ring of invisibility) that had been his own, and told her that he would be able to use it to help find her again.  Then, finally she raced out of the hideout, into the  . . . sandy street of a city she didn't recognize.  A bit of investigation later, she found out that she was hundreds of miles of desert and mountains and water away from Dyvers.  

She raced back to Oom's hideout, but the party was already gone.  

Over the next few hours she managed to find the library of magic, and bargained away some very valuable gems for a teleport back to Dyvers.  

So, she found herself in Dyvers, shortly after the party had given the axe to Irk.  She used the ring of invisibility to sneak into Solen's tavern, snuck into his lab and stole his entire supply of gunpowder (stuffing it into her bag of holding) and then headed out for the headquarters of the thieves guild.  

She planted a huge bomb and blew up the guild's safehouse.  The party, hearing the explosion, hurried to the scene, arriving in time to see the city block going up in a huge fire.  the cohort cleric cast invisibility purge, and they discovered Pah, watching her handiwork from a nearby rooftop.  They tried to talk her into coming down, but spooked her again, and she too off running.  They tried to follow her, desperately trying to keep her within the range of the invisibility purge, but she lost them and disappeared into the night. 

While the party had been chasing the escaping halfling, the dwarf, under the control of the axe, turned his attention to the various thieves and cutpurses pulling themselves out of the battered, burning buildings.  And started killing them, just for the fun of it.  

The party, having lost the halfling, spotted a new threat on the horizon -- the fangs appearing in the sky, riding their red dragon mounts.  A few were already circling the tower in dragontown, waiting for the rest to get airborne.  Once all five were in the air, they wheeled in formation and headed towards the wreckage of the guild safehouse.  The party, having talked Oathbreaker into giving up on his bit of fun and coming with them, ran for cover, ending in the basement of a nearby house.    

Pah, having satisfied her need to destroy the Dyvers thieves guild, at least for the day, ran non-stop for the rakshasa manor house outside the city, where she found no sign of Oom , but the wreckage of a massive battle.  

The rest of the party decided that things were degenerating enough in the city that it was time to give up on subtlety and get the jews out of the temple.  The enchantress shapeshifted into Umber Hulk form, and started the slow process of digging an underground path to the warrens under the temple.  

On the way they opened a small hole in the roof of a huge underground chamber.  Through their hole they could see and army of kobolds, troglodytes, lizardfolk, and drow, marching up a long trail.  They covered the hold they had created and kept moving.  

On the surface, the fangs determined to their satisfaction that the destruction was the result of the famous powder that had been invented by the Magister's pet wizard, Solen.  They used this as their excuse to go after Solen, burning his tavern to the ground.  In the confusion, Solen disappeared.  

And that's where we left it -- Pah poking around in the ruined manor house, the party digging towards the dungeons beneath the Dragon Temple.  And several parts of the city of Dyvers burning out of control.




*A Fine Mess:  Return of the Goonies*


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