I got to be a player!!!

Very shortly after I posted the character that I would play if I ever got to, one of my players suggested that we get together a few of us, and do some off-beat rolling of the dice, when there was the time for it, in addition to our weekly game, run by yours truly. I wonder, does he read my blog. Merely coincidence I hope.

Anyway, I ran Zzaz by the DM, and it was all good. The other player was going to make a dwarf (laser) cleric, so he decided to adopt the faith of the Raven Queen, in order to facilitate some common ground.

After leaving the temple, Zzaz had adventured some, along with 3 other companions. Not long ago, they were charged with clearing a forest of goblins (it can't have been a lot of goblins, since Zzaz was still level 1 ). Unfortunately (for them anyway), all of his friends died. Zzaz collected the pay, and roamed around on his own for a while. One day, he came to a small (unnamed) village on the edge of civilization. There, he ran into the local herb-woman (Witch? warlock? poisoner? these days, an old woman could be just about anything, but really, who cares...) called Madam Mim (chuckle) who needed a love letter transported to the man she loved. He worked in a mine-town (literally, a town down in a coal-mine).

So Zzaz took off, at his usual leisurely pace (10 str + plate + heavy shield tends to do that) and headed down to deliver the love letter (can you imagine the look on the guy's face when a tiefling delivers a love letter). Anyway, returning to the village with no name, with an answer, Zzaz is disappointed when he finds that Madam Mim is not at home. But, asking around (the local tavern), he finds out that it is fairly common for the Madam, err for Madam Mim to take week-long trips to a secret place, in order to collect some herbs which the towns uses to brew it's world?-famous brew - Something with 70% alcohol (that's 140% for the US guys I believe).

With no options, Zzaz installs himself at the Inn of the town, a few hours from Madam Mims house. There, after a few days, he meets and drinks with Grib, a fellow follower of the Queen.

Grib comes up from the south, where he has been searching for a necromancer that kidnapped some of his former friends' (they are dead now) family.

While sitting there, drinking the world?-famous brew, they overhear a local farmer complaining that one of the other farmers hasn't shown up with the sheep that he (the first farmer) has bought of him (the second farmer). As he (the first farmer) hails from a farm near Madam Mim's, Grib and Zzaz offer to check it out, as they are heading to Madam Mim's anyway.

As they arrive at the farm (Madam Mim wasn't home either), they find a starved dog chained to a wall, a broken door that has been kicked in, a bloodstain that looks like someone has had their head smashed into the floor, as well as a general sign of combat.

Despite neither Grib nor Zzaz being especially apt at finding and following tracks, they still manage to find some horse tracks that leave the farm and head west, towards a wood. Having made a new friend (the dog was fed), all three head out to the wood, which lays a few hours away. As they enter it, darkness begins to fall, and a camp is made.

Just in case there are wild animals around, they decide to collect a lot of spare wood. No sooner are they done collecting and eating, before the first howls begin. They (the howls) go on for a while, and Grib and Zzaz get ready to rumble. As the 3 wolves jump out of the shadows, Grib drops his torch, and creates a protective circle of flames, keeping one of the wolves at bay. After a short but fun battle, the wolves are all dead, but the dog has run away.

The next morning, the odd pair return to town. There they encounter a woodsman/guide (ranger) that is in the middle of telling the interested towns-folks of his brush with death. Until a few days? ago, he was leading a caravan from the south, up north. About a day's walk from the wood to the west (the one with the wolves) they were traversing a river, when suddenly he hear some noise from one of the boxes the horses were carrying. Before any of the guards or the owner noticed, he opened the box, and found there to be a man inside. The he was noticed by his employer, and had to flee in order to stay alive.

The 6 horses carried 18 human-sized coffins/boxes..

Grib and Zzaz, smart as they are, immediately put two and two together, and realized that some of the people missing from the area, probably had been kidnapped, and were in the boxes. Especially after Zzaz made one of the other local farmers describe the missing farmers to the ranger. One of them definitely sounded like the man he saw in the box.

Grib and Zzaz quickly promised to find the missing people, and had the ranger draw them a map to the place (an old Keep) he was supposed to lead the group.

After traveling the rest of the evening, Grib and Zzaz once again came to the wood where they had encountered some wolves the day before. The next day, they turned north and as it was time to make camp once again, they came to the river where the ranger had discovered his employer's secret. They found a really nice spot, with cover, overlooking the river. As they began to cook, they could hear the thunder starting. Hours passed, and the thunder grew louder, even though there was still no rain. Suddenly Zzaz (Grib was sleeping) realized that the smell of smoke was getting quite a bit too powerful for such a small campfire. Climbing up and looking over the rocks they had camped behind, he could see that the savanna was on fire. and there was goblins coming their way, fleeing from the fire. Of course, this (the fire quickly approaching) didn't really stop the goblins from taking a shot at Grib and Zzaz.

Although Zzaz managed to wake up Grib before the goblins (there was 5 of them) closed in on them, there was no way to get his armor on him in time. Fighting without his trusted scalemail and shield proved quite hurtful on Grib, and none the less, they managed to dispatch the goblins, right before (as in seconds) before the fire overtook their camp. Having little choice, they had to jump out into the river, which btw had quite a strong current here.

Zzaz, even though wearing his trusted plate, managed, after getting his head underwater 2-3 times, to swim and climb onto a rock about 25 feet out in the river. Grib had more trouble (good thing that he wasn't wearing his armor) and he was about to be overtaken by the current, when an almost miraculous throw by Zzaz landed a rope in his hand. By the help of the rope, he got to the shore, as the fire had died out near the shore, where there wasn't much that could burn for long.

Now, you would think that this was it, but as soon as Grib got to the shore, Zzaz spotted another danger. A crocodile was closing in on Grib, and Zzaz had all but the time to warn him. So, the crocodile grabbed Grib's leg, and tried to pull him out in the river. Zzaz was still standing on a rock, about 40-45 feet from Grib, and in the middle of the river. The crocodile was almost crushing the life out of Grib, who was only still alive due to his dwarven resilience and his magical healing, so Zzaz so no choice, and jumped into the water, getting close enough to the other two, so that he could use his holy powers to attract the attention of the crocodile, while getting near enough to actually attack it. At the end, the odd pair prevailed, but it was very very close that the dwarf had joined his Queen in the Shadowfell.

They decided to rest a bit longer, so that at least Grib would rested. Zzaz was still a bit worn out from the night's extreme waterfun, but they decided (naturally) to press on.

The next day, they quickly found a place where one could traverse the river on foot, and on the other side, they found tracks of the horses. They followed the tracks into a forest, which apparently was inhabited by elves, because suddenly they were faced with 3 elves who had mutilated themselves) shooting arrows at them. The dwarf, a man of nature (cough) noted that this was something that elves did when they faced a great sorrow. Luckily Zzaz could speak elven, and since he had an extremely well gifted tongue, he naturally tried to calm the elves, and explain that whatever had them cut themselves wasn't his nor his dwarven friend's fault. Either those elves didn't listen, or they simply didn't understand Zzaz' very polished elven, because they kept attacking, and actually hurting both Zzaz and Grib quite badly.

Naturally, neither had any plans on meeting their Queen face to face anytime soon, so the elves were killed.

After leaving the 3 dead elves behind, Grub and Zzaz soon stumbled over an empty elven village. They noticed that there were few corpses, and one of the huts/houses was burning. As they approached it, they heard the sound of eating. They found 4 man-sized beetles in the process of devouring a dead elf.

Both figured an easy fight, but it turned out that the savage beetles could breathe fire, much like a dragon. Zzaz thanked his ancestors many times after that fight, because had he been any other race, he would have been dead several times over.

They once again started to feel the weight of the day's battles, but decided to keep going. The theory was that the necromancer that Grib originally was looking for was somehow connected to all this, and that the kidnapped people were taken to this keep, to be turned into undeads.

After a few more hours of following the trail, it started to lead underground, in what Grib identified as possibly a Green Dragon cave. Following the trail inside, Grib and Zzaz got sidetracked when they suddenly heard noises from a barred door. Unfortunately for Zzaz, there were no beautiful human or elven virgins behind the door, but instead a ravenous ghoul!!! That died as well. (End)