Wing Three

ADVENTURE 36 - HELLSPIKE PRISON

PC Roster:
Binked In:
Hellspike Prison was a standalone adventure written by Matthew Sernett and published by Wizards of the Coast as part of their "Fantastic Locations" line. It came with two large, foldout, double-sided maps, of the same type as those which my players had enjoyed in "Fields of Ruin."

This adventure was memorable for a couple of reasons. First of all, it was only the second time that two different PCs opted to "bink back to Guild Headquarters" in the same adventure. Jacob had originally decided to run Chalkan through this adventure, wanting to build him up so he could start increasing his level (at this point, Chalkan was a Ranger 4/Cleric 2/Sorcerer 1/Arcane Archer 2), since he was the lowest-level PC of the group. (This was due mainly to Jacob having preferred thus far to run Slayer, who was the highest-level PC of the group at the time.) Having looked at the arcane archer prestige class and Chalkan's low levels in three different core character classes, I decided that in this campaign at least I'd be allowing arcane archers to gain a full level of arcane spellcasting - in Chalkan's case, sorcerer - with each arcane archer level. In that way I could at least attempt to balance Chalkan's overall power level with those of the other PCs in the campaign, and give him more spell options to go along with his "imbue arrow" class ability. And it wasn't likely that any of my other players would ever want to become an arcane archer in this campaign, so I didn't have any concerns about opening up a can of worms that I'd later be regretting.

In any case, fairly early in the adventure, Chalkan realized he was in a little above his head (I believe he had been spooked by a wave of vargouilles), and he opted for the bink, being replaced by Slayer, who not only fared much better but had the shining moment in the spotlight at the very end, where closing a gate to the lower planes depended on somebody getting the powerful weapon out of the hands of the powerful devil really quick-like. Slayer delivered.

The other bink was on a sadder note, as Feron was slain in battle. One of the devils had a scorching ray spell-like ability, and at the time, the only logical target for him to use it on was Feron Dru, currently flying around wildshaped as an eagle. (She had chosen the Natural Spell feat, and thus was able to cast spells while in a wildshaped form.) After I had declared the decision, I realized that the devil would be getting four scorching ray attacks that round against her; all four hit, I believe, and she was flash-fried in a second. I ruled that she reverted to her normal form upon her death, which allowed one of her companions to activate her Guild ring, teleporting her back to Guild headquarters and allowing her to be replaced by Delphyne, who finished out the adventure.

Back in these days, those binks were expensive, too - the Guild rings were rechargeable one-shot items, and the Guild charged 3,300 gp to recharge a ring that had been used. I think it was this adventure that made me rethink this policy, and in a later adventure I had the Guild take everyone's rings away for one adventure as they were being upgraded to self-recharge one full day after use.

And Feron's wasn't the only death, either: Akari's bonded mount, Tenuma, was slain protecting his master from none other than Slayer, who had been charmed by one of the devils. The other PCs had to beat Slayer into unconsciousness to keep him from killing anybody else in the group. Akari, of course, then had to go through a span of time before he could summon another mount, but he was high enough level that he would eventually replace Tenuma with a griffon.

There's a beholder in this adventure, which was the first time the group had ever faced one of these iconic monsters. I made some foolish choices as to which eyestalks would be focused on which PCs in the heat of battle, and Akari's elvish heritage allowed him to avoid the sleep ray altogether and resist the charm person ray. Oh well, I suppose this particular beholder, living underground, had had little contact with elves and was thus unaware of their resistance against enchantments. I can't really say that he learned his lesson, either, as they killed him.

ADVENTURE 37 - CRYPT OF THE AVENGER

PC Roster:
I wrote this adventure specifically to take advantage of some cool D&D Miniatures we had accumulated over the years. (And when I say "we," I pretty much mean "Logan," who had been bitten by the collectible minis bug and enjoyed buying them by the box to see what he'd get. I was less willing to purchase minis sight-unseen, but I did buy them second-hand at my local comic book store, and I discovered Auggie's right here on EN World and made a few purchases of my own, where I knew ahead of time what I'd be getting.) Anyway, I had this concept of a powerful, good-aligned weapon being buried in a paladin's tomb, and a cavern nearby that was the lair of a pair of drider sorcerers, and then having a purple worm tunnel through both areas, connecting the two. So it would be part tomb delve, part drider lair fight, and there'd be a purple worm in there to fight as well. Alas, all of my planning was for naught, as I'll get to after the "story" part of this writeup.

To set the stage, I used Altamaic the Calm, an NPC cleric of the Temple of Boccob who had been used as a plot hook dropper in several previous adventures by now. Here's the setup: the Temple of Boccob is doing a survey of the Cairn Hills, where many crypts and tombs have been located throughout the years. The team recently discovered what looks to be a natural cavern entrance that’s been covered over with a magical stone wall. The wall bears engravings that mark it as a likely tomb or crypt, and a symbol at the top that looks to be an ancient emblem of Pelor. Altamaic did some research in the Archives and thinks it’s very possible this is the Crypt of Joniah the Avenger, a paladin of an older sect of Pelor. He was renowned several centuries back as a fierce battler against the forces of evil, and was said to wield a very powerful weapon which, to date, has never been unearthed. It’s Altamaic's belief that the weapon lies behind that wall in the Cairn Hills, and naturally, he thought of his friends at Wing Three, who have been so helpful to his order in the past. The legends say that Joniah never passed his weapon on at his death, believing it was better to allow it to pass on to someone truly worthy of wielding it. There are likely to be trials waiting in his crypt that must be overcome to prove one's worthiness to wield the weapon. Altamaic can provide the group with a map leading to the wall in the Cairn Hills believed to be the entrance to Joniah’s Crypt.

- - -

The trek to the Cairn Hills was uneventful, and the group had no trouble following Altamaic’s map. After half a day’s travel by horseback, the group stood before a stone wall sealing up what looked to be a natural cavern. Before they could examine the carvings on the wall, however, an arrow came screaming from the scrub-brush higher up the side of the rocky hill.

"Take cover!" commanded Akari, leaping from his horse and whipping out Hoardmaster in one fluid movement. He pulled Old Clem from his mount and ushered him back as far as the wall would allow, trusting that the shallow depression in the side of the hill was the best cover currently available. Feron, meanwhile, had spotted their foe, a drow woman sniping at them from behind a thick scrub of wiry bushes growing from the opposite hillside ledge. The drow had the advantage of height over the adventurers, as her perch was about thirty feet above the ground. The two sides were fighting in a small-scale box canyon, with precarious stone ledges and near-vertical surfaces preventing them from rapid climbing. Feron cast a call lightning spell, which caused a blast of electricity to arc out of the sky and hit the drow. She retaliated with a summoning spell that dropped a pair of large spiders amongst the group. Fang immediately attacked one of the spiders, and was bitten for his efforts. Fortunately, he was the only one of the group that was bitten, and the spiders were slain without too much effort by Cal's mace and Slayer's greatsword.

Feron continued to call lightning strikes down upon the harried drow, then, when it looked like she was trying to scramble to a different position, she used an entangle spell on the scrub brushes to grapple her and keep her in place. Akari and Slayer tried climbing the rock face to get up to her, with little luck, until Slayer had Fang jump up against the rock on his back legs, and he used his dire wolf as an impromptu ladder to get up to the nearest ledge. When he got up to the drow, he was surprised to see that she was only a drow woman from the waist up; her lower body was that of a bloated spider. Unstrapping his bow, he put a couple of arrows into her head and she fell over, dead. Feron released her entangle spell, allowing Slayer to get close enough to loot her body, but she didn't have much on her beyond her short bow and a quiver of arrows. The bow was magical, at least, causing its arrows to deal cold damage to foes they struck (as Akari had learned the hard way during the brief combat).

Scrambling back down to ground level, Slayer joined the group in examining the wall, but they were looking at the words that were inscribed upon it, and words held no interest (or meaning) to the half-orc barbarian. He tussled around with his dire wolf while the rest of the group figured out what the words said.

There was a saying engraved in the stone wall, but many of the letters had been filled in over the long years with dirt and sand. Cleaning the dirt out of the way, the following message was revealed:

THERE’S NOWHERE ELSE I’D RATHER BE
UNDER THE LIGHT OF PELOR’S GAZE
REMEMBER, OH REMEMBER ME
NOW THAT I’VE REACHED MY END OF DAYS
HERE NOW I LIE, MY BATTLES DONE
EACH CARE A THING OF THE FAR PAST
REMEMBER ME AS PELOR’S SON
EVIL’S OPPONENT TO THE LAST

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Akari and Cal read the inscription, then turned to Feron to puzzle out its meaning. She looked at it long and hard, but it was finally Akari who grasped its meaning. "Stand back," he advised, pulling out his holy symbol of Hieroneous and presenting it toward the wall. He channeled a blast of positive energy at the wall, which suddenly shimmered like a mirage and became insubstantial. Akari put his hand entirely through the wall, then walked forward into the tomb. The others followed, leaving Old Clem behind with the horses and Fang to act as a guard-beast. "We'll be back soon, I hope," Feron called to Old Clem as she too passed through the wall. Seconds after she had done so, the wall coalesced into apparent solidity again. "So how did you figure out to do that?" asked Cal.

"First letter of each line," replied Akari, smiling. "'Turn here.'" Feron rolled her eyes and mentally chided herself for not having figured that out before the others.

The group was in a low passageway that curved away to the left as it descended deeper into the earth. The group readied light sources (a sun rod for Akari and Cal, an everburning candle for Feron, nothing for Slayer who didn't need to bother with such things) and started down the passageway when their way was suddenly blocked by an angelic presence. Appearing in the blink of an eye was a winged figure, a slender humanoid with a decidedly eaglelike look about him. "Ah, you must be contenders to wield the weapon of Joniah the Avenger!" he beamed, obviously delighted at the prospect. "Very good, very good! Well, you’ll be pleased to know that you have come to the right place. However, before you are allowed to take the weapon as your own, you’ll have to prove your worthiness, by the simple act of killing me.

"Now, before you ask, yes, I am a celestial being, and yes, I am asking you to try to kill me. How better to test your battle prowess and readiness to take up Joniah’s mantle? Rest assured, I, in turn, will do my very level best to kill you all.

"'What?' you ask, 'A being of goodness and light trying to kill us for attempting to take a weapon that will aid us in the fight against evil?' Yes indeed, my good friends. First of all, I’m doing this as a personal favor of Joniah, and this is how he wished to test the worthiness of the candidates who would wield his weapon after his death. Second, I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but there’s a war on in the Outer Planes between the celestials and the fiends. Those of you I kill will be reborn into your respective afterlives, and if your souls are deemed worthy, you may very well become a member of the Celestial Army tasked, like myself, with fighting back the Hordes of Evil. So no, I’m not particularly troubled at the thought of killing you. However, I will only kill those of you willing to fight me for the chance to wield Joniah’s weapon; those of you who wish to turn back now may do so with no hard feelings.

"Finally, should you manage to kill me, I will merely discorporate and reform back in the Celestial Realms, so no real harm done. This is actually a bit of a vacation for me. So, what do you say?" He beamed at the group, head cocked slightly to one side in query.

"Sounds fine to me," replied Slayer, who didn't particularly care who he fought if there was a cool weapon at the end of it. Cal and Akari were a bit more hesitant, but in the end everyone agreed to the fight, and the avoral didn't even seem upset that the battle would be four against one in his enemies' favor.

"Are you all ready?" he asked. "Then we’ll attack on the count of three. One--" and with that, he sent a bolt of lightning hurling at the group, catching all four in its path.

"What, did you expect me to play fairly?" he asked in astonishment. "Do you think the demons and devils you’ll encounter will play by the rules? No, my friends, they’ll use every trick they can think of to gain an advantage, and you’d best be prepared for it!"

Celestial being or no celestial being, the avoral's tactics got Cal in a righteous fury, and he roared to the attack. Slayer and Akari were right behind him, while Feron, less eager to strike at an angel, held back. The fight was an infuriating one, for the avoral was unflinchingly polite during the course of the battle. "Ooh, almost!" he encouraged, after Slayer's greatsword whizzed by an inch away from the avoral's body. "Perhaps next time, try to steer your blade less with your fury and rage and more with your instincts and intellect!" Cal managed to slam his mace into the side of the avoral's head, and received verbal praise for a good job, which only infuriated the cleric all the more. The avoral skipped back a few steps and let fly with another lightning bolt, once again catching all four in its path in the close quarters of the narrow passageway, and this caused Feron to respond with some ranged spells of her own. "Oh, well done!" commented the avoral as the four adventurers eventually cut him down. "You may prove yourselves worthy yet!" And with a flash, his battered body disappeared from view in an explosion of sparkles.

"I hated that guy!" groused Cal, as he cast healing spells on the group.

Moving down the sloping passageway, the group entered a square chamber that had obviously been carved from the cavern network, most likely – given the smoothness of the walls, floor, and ceiling – using magic. In the center of the room stood a stone coffer with the carved image of a man in a suit of plate armor on its top. There was a 5-foot-diameter hole in the wall furthest from the entrance, near the ceiling, and below it stood a scattered tumbling of stones and earth. There was another hole, this one a 10-foot square, on the floor in the far corner to the right. Finally, a doorway opened on the left wall into another darkened chamber.

Examining the carving atop the coffer, Akari noted that, defying normal convention, the armored warrior was not depicted holding a weapon; rather, his outstretched right hand held a valuable-looking gem that glowed a soft red. The ceiling directly above the gem held another one seemingly identical in all ways. Experimentation showed that the two gemstones each projected a gravitational effect, such that anything placed directly above the gemstone in Joniah’s palm levitated at the midpoint between the two gems.

"It's likely that his weapon was here, floating above his coffer," observed Akari.

"So where is it now?" Slayer wanted to know.

"It looks like someone tunneled a way into the crypt through there," commented Feron, pointing to the hole in the wall. "Still, let's look around." She peered into the open doorway. This smaller side-room had the look of a former library, with bookshelves carved by magic into the very stone walls of the chamber. However, there were only stains showing where a pile of ashes once stood – apparently all of the books and scrolls from the shelves were burned in a pile many years ago.

Slayer, meanwhile, had wandered over to the pit in the corner and peered down. "It's deep," he called back, looking down the vertical shaft with his inherent darkvision. "I'd say a good sixty feet or so."

A new voice called out from the tunnel at nearly ceiling height, as another drow face appeared from the shadows in the hole. “Begone from here, topworlders! These caverns are not for the likes of you! Go frolic under your sun and suckle cows! Raise your radishes and turnips and steal the eggs of chickens for your sustenance! Do not stumble around like blind things in the lightless caverns of your betters!” And with that she cast a cone of cold spell that caught all but Slayer in its area of effect.

With that, the battle was on. The drow used the safety of the tunnel to her advantage, casting a spell and then scooting back into the shadows of the cramped passageway where she couldn't be seen and thus couldn't be targeted. Feron opted to find a solution to that; noticing the tunnel had been carved through stone, she summoned an earth elemental to enter the tunnel and pound the drow, knowing that the elemental could use its earth glide ability to fit in such cramped quarters. It reported back that this was a drider, not a drow, but cheerfully pounded it nonetheless. The drider tried scurrying back down the passageway, but the elemental, on Feron's orders, popped out of the passageway and reappeared further down, preventing the drider's escape. Then Feron used her boots of spider climbing to walk up the wall to the hole's entrance and blast the drider with a few flame-based spells of her own. The drider, trapped and under assault from two sides, was soon slain.

That left only the deep, square pit to check out. Slayer picked up a rock from the pile underneath the burrowed tunnel and dropped it down the shaft to see what it would do. It floated steadily for a moment, then gradually floated down the vertical tunnel; apparently there was a feather fall effect on the entire shaft. Slayer, pleased that he had figured it out on his own, jumped into the center of the pit and floated serenely down the shaft. The others, seeing that no harm had fallen to him, followed suit.

Slayer's darkvision allowed him to see the entire bottom level at once before the group brought down their light sources and muddied everything up. There was an upright sarcophagus against the far wall, with a chest next to it. In the corner at his right was a clump of what looked like wet mud, and coiled in the center of the room was an immense worm. It looked his way as he entered, then opened up a yawning chasm of a mouth and headed Slayer's way. By the time the others got down the shaft, they could just see Slayer's feet dropping down the gullet of the monster worm as he slid down its throat headfirst.

Akari was the next down, and he raced at the beast's side with Hoardmaster gripped in his hand. Cal called down a flame strike spell on the worm, hoping that the worm's outer form would prevent Slayer from taking any of its effects. Feron called down some more lightning bolts to strike at the worm, and it did its best to gobble up the others, but the one humanoid it had already swallowed was being a bit of a problem. Rather than just lying there and being digested like a proper meal, Slayer had been carving his way out of the worm's belly with his greatsword. He emerged from a sudden slit in the side of the purple worm, sliding down the creature's muscular body in a puddle of stomach acid. Then, roaring with rage, he gripped his trusty sword and made a bull rush at the vile worm.

The worm flipped its head over his way at the last moment and swallowed him up again. It was almost comical, hearing Slayer's roars of rage and frustration echoing from deep within the worm's throat.

In all of the maneuvering to fight the worm, Akari strayed a little too close to the sarcophagus and it activated, shambling forth on stubby legs while a preprogrammed message started running, courtesy of a long-cast magic mouth spell. Unfortunately, the centuries had not been kind to the spell, which came out garbled and inaudible at parts. "Beware...iah...Itch-King is impr...in. He is unable...ape, but...leased...sells destruction," it intoned incomprehensibly as it attacked. A black beam of energy darted out at Akari, striking him and weakening him as it drained his life energy.

Fortunately, by this time, the purple worm was not much of a threat. Slayer, turned all around in the creature's gullet once more and unable to find his original hole, was forced to cut his way out from scratch again, and this left him in as irritable mood as the others had ever seen him. But by the time he slid out a second time from the worm's side, it crashed to the floor of the room, having been slain by the combined spells of Feron and Cal. The group turned its attention to the ossuary golem that was even now attacking a grumpier-than-ever Slayer. Its garbled message repeated as it fought, but it was no match for four seasoned adventurers, and the stone construct was soon destroyed.

Unfortunately, that proved to be a really, really bad idea. As the sarcophagus fell apart in pieces, in its place was left standing a human skeleton wearing tattered rags that were once royal-looking robes. The thing's head swiveled around slowly, as if just now noticing its new environment, and it started laughing.

"Free...?" it croaked, head swiveling around to take in the sights. "I'm free? I'M FREE! After centuries of imprisonment, I am finally free of Joniah's accursed trap!" And the lich pulled its head back and laughed uproariously, as the adventurers cast worried glances at each other and tried to remember just which of them had cast the final blow that had destroyed the lich's ambulatory restraint.

Weary from their battle and low on spells, the group readied for a battle with a lich of unknown power. Fortunately, they didn't have to worry, for the lich, laughing all the while, said he bore the group no ill will, and in fact owed them a debt of gratitude for his release. He stated that he'd been captured after a furious battle with Joniah, who, having destroyed him many times before in the past but never able to unearth his phylactery, had taken to imprisoning the lich instead. The lich, Nakariah the Lich-King, was too depleted of spells from his centuries-old battle with Joniah the Avenger to want to waste its new-found freedom battling a group of folks he didn't even know, and with a quick word, teleported away to parts unknown.

"This is not good," commented Cal sheepishly. "I'll bet you anything this is going to bite us big time on the butt."

Akari, meanwhile, had focused on the muddy pile in the corner of the room. Acting on a hunch, he thrust his hands deep into the glop and felt around. With a cry of delight his fingers touched the haft of a weapon, and he pulled it out. It was an ornately-carved hammer, whose inherent power could be felt by touch. Akari swung the hammer around his head a couple of times, then sent it hurtling at the purple worm's carcass. It crashed deep into the vermiform corpse, then reversed course and returned to Akari's outstretched hand.

Feron had been examining the pile from which Akari had pulled the weapon, and shook her head in affirmation. "Worm castings," she explained. "It must have tunneled through the wall upstairs, swallowed the levitating weapon, crawled down the shaft, and then remained down here until we disturbed it."

Akari was cleaning the side of the hammer's head with his hand, trying to make out the word that was carved into its side. "What's it called?" asked Cal, certain that the inscription would be the weapon's name.

"Deathstriker," replied Akari in awe, reading the ancient letters.

"Poohammer," corrected Slayer, once he'd realized that the muddy pile in the corner had been the purple worm's castings.

- - -

We cut the adventure short there. I had created a drider lair on the other side of the purple worm tunnel, some several hundred feet away, but I just handwaved the tunnel as having collapsed behind the second drider, Naelandi, after she had crawled over to Joniah's tomb. The reason? The PCs had already dispatched the two driders, who were the main antagonists of that area (although they did have some guardian beasts and a bunch of treasure that the PCs could easily have made use of), but more importantly I was just frustrated and ready to call it a session. This adventure had gone fine up until the lower level of the crypt, when Slayer got swallowed by the purple worm. I had made what I thought ws a pretty cool purple worm out of purple construction paper: I had a head section, a tail section, and a whole slew of ovals with a slit at each end, so the whole thing could be assembled in a string and take the worm's form. This allowed me to use the worm logically, having its head strike those within reach and its tail strike those over at that end, rather than just using the default 20-foot square that the Monster Manual entry called for.

When Slayer got swallowed the first time, Jacob had an absolute fit, and was literally screaming at the other players to save him before he was dissolved by stomach acid. After I explained that Slayer could still attack while inside the worm's gullet (I relaxed the normal rule about using only small weapons, allowing Slayer to use his greatsword to cut his way out) he wasn't quite as frantic, but he still was demanding that everybody free him NOW! He breathed a sigh of relief when Slayer emerged from the hole he had managed to cut through the worm, but then collapsed into a crying fit when Slayer attacked the worm's head end immediately after getting free and made himself the obvious choice for the worm's subsequent bite (and swallow whole) attack. He stormed out of the kitchen and slammed into his room. I let Dan and Vicki handle it, and just continued on with the game. When Slayer's turn came around again, I just sat there with the Slayer initiative card on top of the deck, and sat patiently staring off into space. Vicki got Jacob and forced him back into the room, he took his turn, and settled down after it was obvious that Slayer wasn't going to die and his magical greatsword wasn't going to dissolve into a puddle of acid. But by then I was sick of the whole drama - Jacob was about 12 by this point, and well beyond the age where such histrionics were appropriate, I thought - and we called it a game session.

That night, though, when I sent out my email to all of the players detailing the XP everyone had gained, I also mentioned that there had been a whole second adventure site that I excised from our game session due specifically to Jacob's outbursts. I pointed out the hours of effort that had gone into creating the drider lair, hinted that there were treasures there that the party would now never see, and suggested that if these outbursts were going to be a normal part of the sessions from now on I could probably save myself a lot of effort and frustration and devote my free time elsewhere. I got an official email apology from Jacob the next day, and we haven't had any similar problems since then. He said he was just worried that he was going to lose Slayer's greatsword, which by that time he had upgraded to a +2 flaming burst silver greatsword. I pointed out that when Rale lost his magical shortsword due to being eaten by a fiendish kraken, I specifically created an adventure that would get him a replacement, and assured Jacob that had Slayer lost his sword I'd have done something similar.

Oh, and the chest that had been next to the ossuary golem in the lower level of the crypt? That held a blood pudding, an undead wizard in ooze form that could enter a living body and take it over. Joniah had found it equally difficult to destroy, and thus had imprisoned it with Nakariah. The whole two-story crypt had originally been one of Nakariah's lairs; the burned library upstairs was due to Joniah ensuring that the lich's evil notes could never be used by others to sow discord and terror. (Nakariah had created the "invisible elevator" between the two levels; it granted a feather fall spell on those entering from the top and a levitate spell on those entering from the bottom.)

Anything else I'm missing? Oh yeah, the corrupted magic mouth spell on the ossuary golem. (I should also point out that I found the ossuary golem as the "monster" entry of one of the entries of Paizo's annual "RPG Superstar" contest, thought it was a cool concept, and decided to incorporate it into my adventure.) The full message is as follows, with the parts that still survived over the years being underlined:

"Beware, for Nakariah the Lich-King is imprisoned within. He is unable to escape, but will be released upon this vessel’s destruction."

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Heh heh heh - I said "ape butt."

ADVENTURE 38 - THE FALL OF GRAYMALKIN ACADEMY

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Binked In:
"The Fall of Graymalkin Academy" was an adventure by Mark A. Hart that appeared in issue #140 of Dungeon. It deals with multiple adversarial groups having taken over a magical academy, and fighting amongst themselves as to who gets control of the school. I thought it was a cool way to get the PCs to fight a pretty wide assortment of monsters, and the fact that it was a wizardly school meant that I could plug Telgrane directly into the plot hook. In fact, having recently learned of the spell attune form (which Gwendolyn Fine had made use of on the Negative Energy Plane in "The Negabomb") and realizing its general usefulness, I decided that Telgrane had graduated from Graymalkin Academy and thought one of his old professors there might know of the spell. So a group of Wing Three adventurers would head out to the school, find it under attack by three different groups, and have to wade in and take matters into their own hands.

Sadly, as Telgrane-focused adventures go, this one was pretty much a bust. I talked to Logan about using the adventure to build up Telgrane's background and he was cool with it, but as it turned out Telgrane wasn't really tough enough to go through his own adventure. He ended up in way over his head, and had to "bink" out fairly early in the adventure, so Akari finished off the adventure for him - rather awesomely, as it would turn out.

One of the factions in the school was headed up by a rakshasa - a creature that the group had never faced before, I might add, but both Dan and Logan were well aware that these guys were pretty tough, and that they'd be in for a big fight. Not so much, as it turned out, as Akari made a charge attack into the room the rakshasa was hiding out in, used one of his daily allotments of smite evil with Hoardmaster, which at this point had been upgraded to a holy weapon, and confirmed a critical hit with it. One attack, one crit, one smite evil, and my rakshasa was no more.

Rale also "binked" out of the adventure, but this wasn't due to Rale's otherwise imminent demise (as had been the case for Telgrane), but rather because Dan realized that Cal's healing and turning abilities would be much more useful under the given circumstances.

I took the opportunity of having a few surviving professors in the school, but many slain ones as well, to reinforce Delphyne's "witch" status. Deciding that one of the slain professors was a witch herself, and that her religion forbade her being resurrected, the grateful surviving professors granted Delphyne the slain witch's remaining belongings (those that hadn't been destroyed or used up in the attack and subsequent siege of the school), which included a broom of flying. To indicate Delphyne's broom of flying on our battlemats, I printed out a scale picture of a straw broom and taped it to the bottom of a clear plastic dice box. When Vicki wants to indicate that Delphyne's on her broom, she places her Delphyne figurine on the overturned clear plastic dice box, which has the added advantage of allowing a figure to be on the battlemat directly below her. It's worked out pretty well for us.

I also realized that it was fairly easy to create modified monster tokens using my Paint program. This adventure called for several gray render zombies, and I didn't even have a normal gray render miniature, so I was going to have to use tokens anyway. Then I realized I could take the picture of the gray render I was going to use for a token, open it in Paint, erase chunks of flesh from the picture, draw in white bone showing where the flesh was missing, and then paint in blotches of red for raw meat and blood, and I had a pretty convincing gray render zombie. I would end up using this concept many more times in the future, when I didn't have an approximate picture of a monster I needed to use as a token.

Oh, and Telgrane's old professor did in fact have a copy of the arcane version of the attune form spell, which he graciously allowed both Telgrane and Delphyne to learn. They've both since used that spell to good effect.

ADVENTURE 39 - SLOTH

PC Roster:
"Sloth" was a Dungeon adventure from issue 91. Written by J. Bradley Schell, it was one of a number of short adventures named after one of the seven deadly sins. (I had sent Stuart and Logan's PCs through another of his, "Rage," in our original 3.0 campaign.) This was also a bit of an experiment between Logan and I, as we had noticed that Telgrane was way behind the other PCs in the experience department. Not that this was any surprise, as Akari was a much more useful character all in all, and thus went on many more adventures than Telgrane did. Also, we were both wishing that we could play D&D more often than the schedule allowed, so we thought we might try running Telgrane through an occasional solo adventure, and "Sloth" was our first attempt at trying this out.

As an adventure, it went fine. It was a standard "go check out the wizard's house, because I think some magical accident happened in there" adventure, which I had modified a bit to account for the fact that Telgrane was a conjurer and I knew he was going to end up with a bunch of summoned monsters doing all of his dirty work for him, so I added a few monsters that would give him stuff to worry about all at once. Since Telgrane had a fire elemental familiar, I gave the missing wizard a water elemental familiar, something that could cause Infernia a bit of grief.

No, the adventure went fine, but this still ended up being the only time we ran Telgrane through a solo adventure and we jointly decided to scrap the idea. The problem, we soon realized, was that while we didn't mind "buffing up" Telgrane a bit in the XP department, we didn't like the fact that I couldn't really give him much in the way of treasure; I didn't want Telgrane showing up with some cool magic gewgaws that the other players had never seen before. Likewise, I didn't want to put Telgrane into a situation where he could be killed, because that would have immediate plot ramifications that would require me to redo all of my plans for what the next adventure would be for the whole group. So it was ultimately a bit of an unsatisfying situation, and we decided to just scrap it from then on, and Telgrane would have to earn his XP as part of the group.

(However, to get in some gaming between the too-far-apart sessions of our D&D campaign, Logan and I started up a new one-on-one Champions campaign, where he ran an Iron Man type of superhero named Jetstar. The superhero genre was much more suited for solo play in any case. We only play in that campaign sporadically, with just 11 adventures under our belts thus far, but it keeps us off the streets.)

Away missions not yet fatal. Gotten up to about session 32, just I wanted to say this is still really interesting and fun reading.

Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it. I was a bit concerned that this would be pretty dry reading until I got past all of the Dungeon adventures and such, and it became more of a "standard" Story Hour.

Johnathan

ADVENTURE 40 - THE KIDNAPPING OF EDMONT STANWYCK

PC Roster:
The Guildmaster of the Greyhawk City Adventurers Guild was a rotund individual by the name of Farthingale. He generally kept busy behind the scenes, spending a great deal of time either in his office at Guild Headquarters or elsewhere in the city, making contacts with those individuals who could be counted upon to keep the Guild running smoothly. Therefore, it was a bit of a shock for the assembled members of Wing Three to receive an early morning visit by him in their communal living quarters.

"We've received an immediate summons," huffed Farthingale, winded from his rush down the hallway from his office. "One of our biggest backers, Lord Spencer Stanwyck, has requested a group of adventurers for a delicate operation he needs handled. He's sending a carriage around front, and I want you to go do whatever it is he needs done. I don't need to remind you of the importance of keeping our financial backers happy! Now go, quickly, don't keep him waiting!"

The group of four was shooed out of the building, exiting just as a carriage was pulling up. The group piled in, the driver flicked the reins, and the twin horses trotted them off to one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Greyhawk City, coming to a stop at an elegant mansion. There, a liveried butler escorted them into an elegant library, where Lord Stanwyck greeted them curtly.

"I’m told that you’re good at your jobs, and discrete," he said without preamble. "I find myself in immediate need of people with your skills. This morning, my only son, Edmont, was kidnapped from his own bedroom. A note was left detailing how much it would cost to get him back alive.” Lord Stanwyck tossed a crumpled piece of parchment onto the table before the group. “Five thousand in diamonds, to be brought to a specific alleyway in the Styes, at midnight tonight. I’ve got the ransom right here," he said, pulling a velvet bag from inside his vest. "I want you to deliver it for me."

As Rale reached for the bag of diamonds, Lord Stanwyck continued. "I won’t mention names, but this exact set of circumstances has occurred to another nobleman of Greyhawk in this past month. Apparently, somebody has decided to make a good living out of kidnapping and ransom. Well, I won’t hear of it!" He slammed his fist down on the top of his desk in anger.

"I want to make one thing perfectly clear here. I am not hiring you to deliver the ransom and get my son back to me safely. I am hiring you to deliver the ransom, find out who is behind these deeds, and slaughter every last one of them, down to the last man! You do that, and you can keep that ransom for yourselves." Almost as an afterthought, he added, "And try to bring my son back to me safely, if possible. If not, I'll pay to have him raised."

He looked over the group standing before him with a critical eye, starting with Slayer, who had weapons bristling from his belt, back, and boots. "Too tough looking," he commented to himself, then moved his gaze over to Telgrane. "Too fancy-pants," he dismissed, frowning at the ornate piping on the young wizard's cloak and robe. "Too girly," he said of Feron, whose tight-fitting dragonhide armor enhanced her half-elven figure. Finally, he settled his gaze on Rale, and smirked. "Perfect," he grinned. "You, you're team leader on this mission. You look low-life enough to blend in with the scum of the Styes. I want you to be the face of the group; the others will be invisible - I'll have Carstairs provide you with three potions of invisibility. I want those low-life kidnappers thinking they're only dealing with one scrawny punk instead of a group of seasoned adventurers." Rale bristled at the description, but swallowed down the comment he was going to make.

Lord Stanwyck summoned his butler with a bell, and upon his arrival dismissed the group from his office. Carstairs filled the group in on what they needed to know. According to him, Edmont was six years old and was taken from his room on the second floor of the manor some time between nightfall and this morning. He was discovered missing when a nanny went to wake him, only to find him gone and the note left on his pillow. The note was a composite, made up of different words apparently written on different sheets of paper by different people using different handwriting and glued together on to a single sheet of paper – probably as an anti-scrying aid, as any attempt to scry the message could lead any one of a dozen different ways. Lord Stanwyck believed the group responsible was some kind of cult, for the previous kidnap victim was returned alive after his ransom was paid, but he fled his home willingly several days thereafter. Lord Stanwyck wouldn’t authorize the release of the previous victim's family name - no need to drag their good name down with an embarrassing scandal, after all - but Carstairs did say the victim was a boy of ten years or so. He also said Lord Stanwyck believed the boy was probably brainwashed into returning to the cult of his own free will.

Upon request, the butler led the group to Edmont's room to look around, passing by a portrait of the young lad on the way so that the group could see what he looked like. Feron was aghast at the sparseness of the boy’s room: there were no toys or decorations, merely writing utensils and paper, books (mostly on nobility, coats of arms, and the history of Greyhawk City), and a wooden desk with a stiff-backed chair, besides the bed and dresser. Carstairs, uncomfortable with criticizing Lord Spencer or his attitude on child-raising, merely stated that the Master had the child’s best interests at heart. He also mentioned that Lady Stanwyck had died when Edmont was two years old, and that Lord Stanwyck had never remarried.

Rale examined Edmont’s window and found a mark where it had been pried open with a knife from outside. To Rale's practiced eye, the outside wall looked like it would be difficult to climb, although certainly possible by someone trained in such things.

The group took the three potions of invisibility from the butler, thanked him for his assistance, and promised they'd do their best to get Edmont back safely. From what they had seen, Edmont's safety was a much bigger concern to the elderly manservant than it was to his own father. Carstairs thanked them, wished them the very best of luck, and returned to the manor, while the carriage returned the group to Guild Headquarters to make their plans for the evening.

During the day, their Guild rings were confiscated from them, as they were being magically upgraded; upon their return, they would be able to be used once per day, automatically recharging 24 hours after use. But in the meantime, they wouldn't have the comfort of being able to "bink" back to Headquarters if things got rough during their present assignment.

At midnight, the group was in the alley prescribed by the ransom note - Rale waiting impatiently, the others nearby and invisible. All was quiet, and nothing happened for a good five minutes or so (during which time the other three started worrying about how much more time would pass before their potions wore off), when suddenly a cloaked figure approached. "I am to give you this," he said, passing over a sealed envelope. Underneath his hood, he was identifiable as a kenku - a member of the Collectors, as it turned out, a group of information brokers that the adventurers had dealt with in the past. The kenku introduced himself as K'klawk, and volunteered that he had been paid to deliver the envelope, but had no idea who hired him (and wouldn’t give out information on a paying client in any case) or what was in the envelope. And with that, he turned away and vanished back into the shadows of the alleyways.

Rale opened the envelope and squinted to read its contents by the light of the moon. It directed him to enter the sewers via the manhole at the opening of a nearby alleyway and wait there for the exchange. The manhole opened to a metal ladder leading down into the darkness. Not liking the idea of open flames in the sewers, Rale had Feron pass him one of her everburning candles, and climbed down into the darkness. The others followed, still invisible. About ten feet down there was a platform along the side of a slow-moving current of dark, dirty water.

Soon after the group entered the sewer, a figure approached from the edges of the magic candle's illumination. It was a fat, upright toad-man, standing upon an enormous, floating crocodile. The toad-man held a filthy bag over one shoulder, which wriggled as its inhabitant tried in vain to escape. "Throw the ransom over here, now, and no tricks!" he croaked.

"I want to see the boy first," replied Rale calmly.

"First the ransom, or I drop the kid in the water and let my pet gobble him up," replied the bullywug.

"Fine, fine," responded Rale, and deliberately tossed the bag of diamonds in a high arc, forcing the bullywug to look up to ensure he caught it. While his attention was thus diverted, Slayer let loose with an arrow from his bow, turning visible in the process. He had shot at the crocodile, not wanting to accidentally hit the kidnap victim in the bag if he missed a shot at the bullywug. Telgrane likewise became visible as he shot off a magic missile spell at the bullywug, confident in that spell's infallibility as far as targeting went. However, the toad-man staggered under the assault, and he dropped the bag in his attempt to catch the bag of diamonds. The bag, and its squirming contents, hit the crocodile's broad back and plunked into the filthy sewer water.

Feron made a face about what she was about to do, but leaped into the sewer to rescue the boy. She got a grip on the bag and struggled to disentangle the boy from it. She got his face to the surface, where he gasped greedily for air.

Meanwhile, the bullywug had not been alone. Several others of his kind popped up out of the rancid water and attacked with halfspears. However, the original toad-man, Ribbort, now free of the bag, made a much easier target for the heroes. He was soon peppered with arrows and magic missile spells, to the point where he fell over backwards behind his crocodilian mount. Rale immediately dived in after him, leaving the massive crocodile to Telgrane and Slayer as he desperately made a grab for the bag of diamonds. "Got it!" he cried in triumph, then came to a disheartening realization: as the holder of the ransom, he was the number one target for the other bullywugs. He scrambled to get back on the ledge and out of the toad-men's element. The giant crocodile soon followed Ribbort in death, attacked by arrows and spells from the relative safety of the sewer ledge.

With Ribbort and the giant crocodile slain, the other bullywugs apparently saw that they were overpowered and swam back the way they'd come. Rale, Slayer, and Telgrane started following them along the sewer ledges, until a massive, bloated form lumbered into their way, stepping out from an intersection. It slammed tentacles at the group, pulling Slayer into the water and trying to drown him, but while the half-orc held his breath, he didn't bother holding on to the rage that was building up inside him - rather, he let it loose, and swung his greatsword into the bloated body of his enemy. Telgrane blasted spells into the thing as well, and Rale even aided in the fight once he realized that the other two bullywugs had escaped into the darkness of the sewer. It wasn't likely they'd be easy to track down here. The otyugh was soon dealt with, and a disspirited trio returned back to Feron and Edmont.

"Well, at least we've saved the boy," said Feron, pulling Edmont up out of the water. He clung tightly to her, his face buried into her chest. Telgrane gave her a hand, pulling her up out of the water and back onto the ledge. He was wearing a frown.

"What's the matter?" asked Feron, giving reassuring pats on Edmont's back and hugging him tightly to her.

"That boy is giving off an aura of illusion magic," replied the young conjurer. He'd recently cast a permanent arcane sight upon himself, giving him the ability to perceive magical auras within 120 feet. It was already looking like it had been a pretty smart move.

"He's not the kid?" asked Slayer, stowing his bow across his back and grabbing up a longsword, which he poked in what everyone thus far had thought was Edmont Stanwyck's direction. Rale held a dagger to the boy's throat. "Who are you?" he snarled.

"I'm Edmont Stanwyck, and I want to go home!" wailed the young boy, clinging tighter to Feron, who was starting to worry about just who it was she had pressing his face into her bosom.

"Not buying it!" snarled Rale, pushing the point of his dagger into the boy's neck until it drew blood.

"Okay, okay!" yelled Edmont, whipping his face up. "Calm down, everybody calm down, no need to get hasty here. It's all cool, okay? And if you kill me, you'll never get to Edmont in time!" At the threat of his immediate dismemberment, "Edmont" admitted that he was really Billibuck Bandicoot, a halfling rogue with a seeming spell cast upon him to give him Edmont’s appearance. He was a member of a halfling thieves guild which laired in the sewers, and they had a pretty good gig working with a group of bullywugs called the Mudswimmers: the rogues kidnapped the human child of a well-to-do member of Greyhawk City's elite; they passed the victim off to the bullywugs for whatever nefarious purposes they had going; in the meantime, after collecting the ransom, a fake "rescued victim" was returned to the wealthy parents, and said "victim" cased the joint and made off with a mass collection of valuables, never to be seen again. However, Billibuck was willing to take the group back to his thieves guild, where they'd be able to show them where the bullywugs had been taking the kids. The group agreed, but bound the halfling's arms tightly behind him and held him at swordpoint as they traveled the sewers.

Billibuck led them past a locked grate (he had the key on a chain around his neck), and up to a closed door, where he said he'd have to give the daily pass-phrase to get them in. The group agreed, and they knocked at a door with a much smaller door at head-height to a halfling. "Vocabby 'bugaboo,'" said Billibuck. "Deez forby fee-fyfum. Underhill the pork-pie wiffa eight-foured starters, seemsa argee." And with that he took a sudden dive sideways off the ledge and into the dark sewer waters.

It took Rale only a moment to translate the Thieves Cant he had just heard, as it was in a slightly different dialect than that he was used to: "The password is 'bugaboo.' These four are foes. Kill the orc guy with the greatsword first, it looks like it's silver." He yelled out "Trap!" just as a small marble was tossed out of the peekhole door. It broke on the ledge, exploding into a fireball; Billibuck was happily underwater by that time and doing his best to squirm out of his bonds while kicking away down the sewers. He snickered at how easily he had fooled the seasoned adventurers, and was still smirking when he came up for air. It was his last smirk, though, for as soon as his head surfaced, Slayer put an arrow into the back of it. Billibuck dropped back under the surface of the sewer water and didn't come back up.

Meanwhile, Telgrane, who had taken the least amount of punishment from the fireball bead - no doubt due to the ring of fire resistance he wore, practically a necessity when one has a Small fire elemental as a familiar - opened his tinder box and blew an ember through the still-open peekhole door. As it fell into the room on the other side, it expanded in form; by the time it hit the ground Infernia had taken her normal shape and was gleefully attacking the halfling guards she found there. Telgrane, Feron and Rale stepped aside as Slayer kicked the door in for them, then the four adventurers followed the fire elemental into the thieves guild complex.

Cleaning out the halfling thieves guild was fairly straightforward. The toughest section was at the far end, where the guild's leaders were found. Guildmaster Troiden "Silverwhiskers" Brandibott; his seneschal, the gnomish Pandobar Dinkletrousers; and the four highest-ranking halfling lieutenants were all wererats - which explained Billibuck's concern over Slayer's silver greatsword. Such concern was greatly founded, as the half-orc used it to finish off more than a couple of the wererats in their hybrid form. The halflings also had a water naga ally, Sludgescale, who was responsible for the magical support such as the seeming spells used to grant a halfling rogue the appearance of a kidnapped child. All fell before the adventurers' blades and spells.

The Guildmaster's study held some interesting oddities. For one thing, he had a collection of stone rat carvings on his bookcases, many of them very detailed and lifelike. Feron uncovered a ledger detailing the monies gathered by the thieves guild in their recent kidnapping schemes (naming the families they had targeted, five now in all, the two most recent being Kelvyn Adderhorn and Edmont Stanwyck). It also showed that the guild had paid out money and transferred the kidnap victims to the Mudswimmers and referenced their lair as a partially collapsed and condemned public bathhouse in the northeastern part of the Styes. Another book of maps of the area allowed Telgrane to pinpoint their probable location.

Rale, meanwhile, had unearthed what looked to be a treasure map with some details about a wand, a gem, and a stone that could be combined to form a powerful artifact. There was a rhyming verse on the back, with handwritten annotations, likely by the Guildmaster himself. It looked like he might have been considering sending a group out to check out the treasure hoard; now that he was dead Rale was certain the Guildmaster wouldn't mind Rale checking the place out for himself. He slipped the map in his pocket with dreams of future riches.

There were two other areas of interest in the thieves guild, one of them particularly disturbing. That was the interrogation room, where victims were apparently strapped down to a table and injected with various chemicals by a crazed derro, Torturemaster Divixio Vandercrag. Realizing that many if not all of his previous victims had been the kidnapped children, not even Feron was fazed when Vandercrag was given a taste of his own medicine: his wretched life ended strapped to his own torturer's table, injected with a needle filled with a green vial of powerful acid. Fortunately, it looked like the majority of the vials he used here were the blue ones, which when injected into a victim caused them to be lethargic and immobile, no doubt as a precaution before transport over to the Mudswimmers. There were cells nearby, showing signs of recent use. Feron's stomach turned at the thought that poor Edmont had probably been processed through here earlier the same day.

The other area of note was the treasury, where the thieves guild's ransom monies were stored, as well as the valuables looted by the halflings disguised as the missing children and returned to their "parents." Stored here were paintings, jewelry, gold bars, small carved statuettes, and the like, valued at a total of 35,000 gold pieces. The gold bars were all stamped with a family crest, showing them to be the property of Lord Adderhorn, a well-to-do member of the Greyhawk nobility. Much to Rale's dismay, Feron insisted that they would be returned to their rightful owners. The loot was stored inside Feron's handy haversack while Rale muttered to himself about the young druid being "no better than the damn paladin" when it came to property allocation.

Soon the guild had been cleared, and the group returned to the sewers in search of the Mudswimmers, Telgrane reading the map of the sewer layout they had taken from Guildmaster Brandibott's rooms. Suddenly, Slayer's keen eyes spotted an unmoving figure up ahead. It was a rat, like the scores the group had seen while traversed through the subterranean pipes, but this one seemed unafraid of their approach. The reason why became obvious when Slayer reached down and picked it up: it was a stone carving, like the dozens found back in the halfling guild. "Why would...?" the half-orc started to ponder aloud, when a horrendous hissing alerted the group to a large, reptilian predator approaching from a side pipe. It was an Abyssal basilisk, and suddenly the reason for the numerous rat carvings was made abundantly clear.

Faced with the possibility of being petrified, Telgrane and Feron jointly decided the dangers of pockets of flammable sewer gas were a risk worth taking, and he sent a fireball at the multilegged basilisk while Feron followed up with a flame strike. Slayer and Rale followed with their blades, reasoning the quicker they dispatched the beast the less likely it would be able to petrify any of them. The group got lucky, and dispatched the beast without incident.

Eventually, the sewers led to a section of dry tunnel; this was once an aboveground street before it sank into the earth, as so much of the Styes had done over the years. Ahead was the bathhouse, its floor once paved with elegant marble, but much of it now cracked and crumbling away. Behind a large statue of a pair of classical style bathers, there were two dark archways marked "Men" and "Women." A bullywug stood on guard duty here; upon the group's approach he grabbed up a hefty tower shield and blocked the doorway on the right, pulling it tight against the doorway as he backed into the anteroom. The shield was wider than the door, and a chain hung through the shield's arm-strap and hand-hold, which the bullywug pulled taut and attached to a hook on the far wall. The outer surface of the tower shield was coated in animal fat, making it slippery. Slayer tried tugging at the shield, but had little success. Telgrane's lament that Cal wasn't with them only made Slayer tug all the harder, but it was no use - the way to the right was blocked to the group, so they'd have to go through the door to the left, which meant the alert would no doubt be raised by the time they got to where Edmont might be held.

Rushing through the left door, the group passed a men's changing room and a huge room holding a large, open bath filled with rancid-looking, algae-covered water. A door in the back crossed over to the other side of the building, from which the group could hear a croaklike chanting. Crossing to the right side of the buried bathhouse, the adventurers discovered a similar-sized bath, this one originally intended for women but now filled with oozing, gloppy mud. Standing chest-deep in a circle in the middle of the mud-filled pool were five bullywugs, the largest one holding a dazed and drugged Edmont, his six-year-old head encompassed on both sides by the toad-man's webbed fingers. Behind him stood a much fatter bullywug; this was Mud Lord Buglump, the one responsible for the chanting the group had heard upon their approach. With a triumphant crescendo, he signaled to the lead bullywug, and an awful snap was heard as the toad-man violently twisted Edmont's head to one side. Feron let out a scream as the bullywug released Edmont, whose lifeless body sunk slowly beneath the surface of the mud. She sent a bolt of electricity from a call lightning spell screaming down at the Mud Lord, but it was too late. Edmont's sacrifice, the last of five such, had been deemed worthy by the Mudswimmer's demonic patron, and the mud started bubbling and boiling within the confines of the circle of bullywugs. A sudden stench filled the room, nauseating not only the adventurers but apparently the bullywugs as well, as a large, toadlike presence rose up from the mud pool.

"Arise, Blurghus, and lead your worshipers on a blissful, chaotic rampage upon the dry-walkers in the city above!" cried Buglump in a fit of sacrilegious fervor. The hezrou grinned a crooked grin filled with razor sharp teeth. "So I shall," he croaked, biting the head from the nearest bullywug.

The remaining bullywugs were horrified at this sudden betrayal, as if the very thought of a demon acting in such a chaotic manner was completely unheard of. Feron continued her barrage of lightning strikes at the Mud Lord, her eyes filled with vengeance at the toad-man who had ordered Edmont's death. Slayer used his composite longbow to good effect, peppering the hezrou with arrows from a distance. Telgrane summoned a celestial lion to the scene, thinking that the creature's inherent goodness could be used to counter the demon's evil, then let it do the brunt of the physical attacks against the slippery hezrou while he blasted the demon with magic missiles from afar. Rale decided that demonfighting was a bit more than he was up for, and concentrated his attacks on the bullywugs that were even now scrambling up out of the pool. Infernia ducked and dodged between the toad-men, providing a distraction that allowed Rale to put his ability to sneak attack to good use.

The Mud Lord summoned a fiendish crocodile to try to keep Feron at bay, but it wasn't long after he had done so that he finally succumbed to one lightning bolt too many, and fell backwards into the mud pool, never to resurface. Feron redirected her lightning bolts at the crocodile, and it too was soon slain. A wall of fire cast by Telgrane sealed off the exit for the retreating bullywugs, and Rale, Infernia, and Slayer soon made quick work of them, so everyone was able to concentrate their attacks on the most dangerous foe in the room, the demonic hezrou. Fortunately, while by this time the celestial lion had been slain and its form returned to the upper planes of its birth, he had weakened Blurghus considerably. Despite the gagging and choking that came with getting close to the hezrou, the group was finally able to slay it, and its fiendish body discorporated in a puff of rancid smoke.

Feron jumped immediately around in the pool of mud and felt around with her arms until she found Edmont's body. Cradling it to her, she waded back over to the pool's edge. There was no doubt about it, the poor lad's neck was cleanly snapped; the only good thing was that it had been a quick and hopefully painless death, and that Lord Stanwyck had said he would have the boy raised if necessary. Having slain everyone in the halfling thieves guild and all the members of the Mudswimmers, the weary - and filthy - members of Wing Three crawled out of the mud and made the long trek back to Stanwyck Manor. Feron carried Edmont's body the whole way, wrapped in a clean blanket from her handy haversack.

Lord Stanwyck was visibly elated at the group's success, and considered the death of his only son merely a small - and temporary - setback. He gladly allowed Rale to keep the bag of diamonds that had been Edmont's ransom, and dismissed the group with a hearty chuckle at the thought that he had succeeded where four other noble families had not. The Wing Three members managed to keep the disgust off their faces long enough to exit the manor without insulting what Farthingale insisted was an important Adventurers Guild backer.

- - -

It was days later that word of Edmont's final fate trickled back to the group. Apparently Lord Stanwyck was furious; when his own clerics had cast a raise dead upon Edmont's body, the six-year-old spoke with them briefly through his own dead lips but refused to return to his life. "Do I have to come back?" he asked. "I like it better here. There are other kids here to play with, and nobody beats you for not studying hard enough. I don’t think I want to come back. But could you do me a favor, please? Tell Cook thanks for being nice to me and sneaking me food when Father was punishing me. Tell her I’ll miss her. Okay, I’m going to go play with the other kids now. Bye." And with that, the child’s dead eyes glazed back over, and his animating spirit was gone, leaving the flustered clerics with his sad, abandoned body.

"Serves Lord Stanwyck right," snarled Feron when she got word of the events. "You take care, little Edmont."

- - -

I used the Map of Mystery from issue #128 of Dungeon magazine, "Sewer Stronghold of the Thieves Guild" by Christopher West, for the halfling thieves guild headquarters. Likewise, the Mudswimmers' ruined bathhouse came from a mini-adventure card that was included in the original "The City of Greyhawk" boxed set, one of the few things I've actually used from that game product (as I shamelessly mold and twist my own Greyhawk City and its immediate environs as needed).

ADVENTURE 41 - TRIBE OF THE BLOODY HAND

PC Roster:
The map and poem that Rale found in the previous adventure was the plot hook to "Ex Keraptis Cum Amore," a Dungeon adventure that I wanted to run. However, I wanted to do a series of adventures in a row with the same cast of characters, and I also wanted to run my players' PCs through another standalone adventure from Goodman Games' "Dungeon Crawl Classics" line, "The Vault of the Iron Overlord." So I thought I'd send the group on a map quest to the mountains to the north for the former adventure, and then have them hit the latter adventure on the way back. I didn't want them to just "bink" back after the first adventure was over, so I found a way to ensure they'd need to stop in the town where the latter adventure took place, so that was all set. (Piddilink Dundernoggin had a cousin who ran a potion shop in the capital city of Kordovia, and asked the PCs if they'd drop him off some supplies on the way to their adventure and pick up some potions from him on the way back.) But while I was at it, I wanted to do some filling in of Slayer's background.

We had already determined that Slayer was born into an orc tribe and was now an adventurer, but there was very little else in his history to explain anything about him. Again, this wasn't unusual, given that this whole campaign hadn't started as much more than a series of unconnected dungeon crawls with little in the way of character history or development. I thought now would be a good time to try to change this a bit.

By this time, we had been playing this campaign for about three years, which would put Jacob at around 11 years old. He was already regretting naming his character "Slayer," and asked if he could rename him "Galrich." I said sure, and suggested that "Galrich" (pronounced "GAL-rick," not "GAL-ritch," by the way) was the Orcish word for "Slayer," and that his human mother had died while giving birth to him, hence the name. So Jacob's half-orc barbarian was renamed Galrich Slayer, and he answered to either name.

I told Jacob that I was working on an adventure or two that would feature some elements from Galrich's history, and asked him to come up with the following:

• The name of the orc tribe Galrich had been born into.
• The name of an orcish bully who had always tormented Galrich when they were growing up together.

Jacob did exceptionally well, coming up not only with "The Tribe of the Bloody Hand" for the former and "Brogek" for the latter, but also a plausible explanation for why the tribe got that name: they leave the bloody hand prints of elven victims on trees to mark the bounds of their territory, and nail severed elven hands to trees to mark the locations of their campsites.

So I created a little backstory for Galrich and emailed it to Jacob for his approval. I suggested that Galrich had been picked on during his whole life in the tribe for bearing the "taint" of human blood from his mother. The others called him "Half Human" and constantly ganged up on him, beating him to a bloody pulp in six-to-one fights, since he grew to be so much bigger and stronger than the others that they didn't dare fight him fairly, one against one.

There was a manhood ritual in the tribe, wherein the teenaged orc candidates were sent out alone into the forest to survive on their own for a week. Those that returned alive were welcomed back into the tribe as full adults, and those who returned with the heads of elf victims were afforded great status as brave warriors. When it came time for the manhood ritual of Galrich, Brogek, and their peers, Galrich headed off in one direction by himself and never returned. Screw the manhood ritual; this was his chance to escape the tribe and see the world for himself. He discovered a human city, met up with a human named Cal Trop who accepted him as an equal, and they started adventuring together.

Jacob approved of Galrich's new history, so I informed him that the map Rale had found led to a mountain chain to the north, and that to get there they'd have to pass through the Vesve Forest, where the seminomadic Tribe of the Bloody Hand had lived when Slayer had grown up amongst their number. If Feron was going to be going on this adventure and they met up with Galrich's old tribe, her life would be in serious danger. That was all it took; Jacob decided he'd be running Galrich Slayer through "Ex Keraptis Cum Amore," so he'd be in the group when I sprung a little mini-adventure on them while they were traveling to their adventure site.

I won't write this up as a bit of fiction, since it's really just a single combat encounter on a forest road (using the foldout map from "Fields of Ruin" that I've mentioned I'm so fond of), and I have no recollection as to who specifically was fighting who. (If you've noticed, I'm usually pretty generic in my combat descriptions of adventures that I write up many years after I ran them.) But the gist of it is this: the group is traveling by horseback through the Vesve Forest when Galrich, on point, spots first a bloody hand print on a rock by the side of the trail, indicating they're in Bloody Hand territory, then the severed hand of an elf nailed to a tree, indicating that there's a Bloody Hand campsite nearby, hopefully of just a hunting party and not the whole tribe, which numbered around 80 orcs back in Galrich's day. As they round a bend in the trail, several arrows come streaking their way - it's an ambush by a Bloody Hand hunting party, led by none other than Brogek astride a dire boar. Four other orcs are with him, riding horses. When Brogek recognizes Galrich, he calls out to him disdainfully, belittling him for failing his manhood test, whereas Brogek has risen to importance within the tribe. He believes the boar to be his totem animal and demonstrates his powers by assuming a half-orc, half-boar shape. (Years ago he was bitten by a wereboar and survived; it's this affinity with boars that allows him to ride a dire boar as a willing mount.)

The other orcs continue shooting arrows at the group until the spells start flying, at which point they decide to close with the party. (Several of them call "Dibs!" on Feron once they see her elven heritage.) The PCs fight them off successfully, and Slayer kills not only Brogek but his dire boar as well, his silver greatsword aiding him greatly in the former endeavor. Then the PCs loot the bodies, leave them contemptuously where they fell, and continue on to the north, following Rale's map to the mountains.

ADVENTURE 42 - EX KERAPTIS CUM AMORE

PC Roster:
Binked in:
"Ex Keraptis Cum Amore" is a sequel of sorts to the "White Plume Mountain" module of D&D's early days. It was written by Andy Miller and appeared in Dungeon #77. While written for AD&D, I found it relatively easy to convert to D&D 3.5, and I got to use some "original" creatures that I had greatly missed thus far in 3.0/3.5, like piercers. The plotline was simple: maps to the dungeon had been seeded all over to lure adventurers to gather the three pieces of a powerful artifact that would prove to be beneficial to an undead being calling himself the legendary Keraptis who dwelt on an extradimensional plane. A "good" undead lairs in the dungeon as well, guarding the pieces from being disturbed. I liked the adventure because it had numerous illustrations to be shown to the players as "this is what your PCs see" handouts, it had some interesting foes and a good selection of monsters, and it was a true old-school dungeon crawl of a type I hadn't run recently.

One memorable incident was Telgrane's use of a line that he has since been forbidden to utter by my group without immediate recrimination. Telgrane was a conjurer with the stated goal of eventually exploring the Elemental Plane of Fire, and thus had a wide selection of fire-based spells available (as well as Infernia, his Small fire elemental familiar). When faced with a pair of mummies he stepped forward, ahead of the group, and stated smugly, "I've got this," confident that the mummies' vulnerability to flames would prove to be their immediate undoing. Well, he was partially right: the wall of fire he cast in front of them did destroy them all; however, it also released the vampiric mists that had been magically held within the mummies. The mists were immune to fire, drained enough blood out of the smug conjurer that his Constitution score dropped to the low single digits, and he had to "bink" back to Headquarters to save his life. It turned out that Telgrane didn't "got this" after all. Akari "binked" to the group to replace Telgrane, and thus he finished this adventure in Telgrane's place.

This was not a good adventure for Telgrane. Earlier, after carefully traversing past a deep pit with green slime in the bottom, Telgrane came afoul of a fear effect from one of the undead denizens of the dungeon and went fleeing back down the tunnel, falling straight into the green slime pit in his haste. He almost didn't make it out alive from there; only a quick rescue from the pit by the others and his familiar's ability to burn the slime from his body kept him from dying.

The group found all three of the pieces to the artifact, but opted to keep them as separate items. Cal still has the gem of seeing, which he uses frequently. Feron has the stone of life, which she has yet to use to this day, but it's sitting in her Heward's handy haversack somewhere. And Telgrane has the wand of shooting stars. He's frustrated, because he desperately wanted the three pieces put together to form the artifact (which their map calls the "rod of the gods" and which Telgrane believes simply has to be more powerful than the crappy wand he got stuck with - it only works underground, for one thing; Telgrane disparagingly calls it his "sparkly wand" and only used it once before putting it away in disgust). Cal, ever the suspicious one, cast a divination spell on whether or not assembling the wand was a good idea, and did it between sessions so I could craft up a suitable rhyming prophetic verse about what they could expect if they assembled it, which further convinced everyone (except Telgrane, who's willing to take his chances) that assembling the rod of the gods is not an avenue they want to pursue. Which, in a way, is kind of a shame, because I've been carrying around a synopsis of what happens if they assemble it, along with the initiative cards of the monsters involved, and the miniatures of the monsters involved - two of which I purchased specifically for use with this adventure - for literally years now.

This was our 42nd adventure. As I type this up, our most recent adventure was #63, and Logan finally had enough with this stupid wand of Telgrane's. For one thing, Telgrane just took his first level in archmage, and he'd like to buy a robe of the archmage but is a little short on funds. So in yesterday's game, he asked if the group was ever going to assemble the three pieces to the rod of the gods, because if they weren't, he was going to sell his piece. The rest of the group held their ground, so it looks like I'm never going to get to run the very tail end of this adventure after all.

Oh well, I've already written another adventure that will make use of the two minis I bought for this adventure, that have yet to see the light of day in our campaign. But they won't get to see any campaign use until adventure #65, the adventure after the adventure I run next.

In the meantime, the "good" undead was a baelnorn named Daestas, which I only mention because he'll make another appearance much later in the campaign. The PCs destroyed him, but as a lich variant, when they failed to destroy his phylactery they allowed him to eventually reform and start trying to track them down. (He'll show up again in adventure #61; it seems I have an unfortunate tendency to allow plot hooks to wait around in the wings for a good long time.)

After successfully completing this adventure, the PCs started making their way back home, passing through the town in the small kingdom of Kordovia where Dundernoggin's cousin had a potion shop. They took a day to rest up there, which allowed Akari to "bink" back to Guild Headquarters so Telgrane could go through the next adventure; Logan was determined to increase Telgrane's levels, since at the time he was tied with Chalkan for the lowest-level PC in Wing Three.

ADVENTURE 43 - VAULT OF THE IRON OVERLORD

PC Roster:
"Vault of the Iron Overlord" was module #50 of Goodman Games' "Dungeon Crawl Classics" line. Written by Monte Cook and Søren Keis Thustrup, it had a cool dungeon feature: the Vault of Rings was made up of three concentric rings around a circular center, all of which could be moved by various methods from inside the dungeon. The whole thing was to have been a "training ground" on the proper running of the Kingdom for the next heir to the throne, but the king and queen are both slain without heirs, and the magic item, the scepter of succession - which will indicate who the next rightful ruler is to be - is stored at the center of the Vault of Rings. The PCs are hired to enter the Vault of Rings, fetch the scepter of succession, and return it to a grateful kingdom.

I used the actual dungeon pretty much as-is, but I changed a lot of the background information. I didn't like the name of the kingdom, as I felt "Eslan" sounded too much like "Aslan," the eponymous lion from "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" - so I changed the kingdom to Kordovia. In the module, the king and queen are slain on the same night; for reasons that will become apparent later on, I changed that to the queen having died two decades before, and the king putting all of his efforts (and a great deal of the kingdom's treasury) into the completion of the Vault of Rings; he never remarried, has no heirs, and thus the need for a group to penetrate the Vault of Rings remains intact.

Finally, the temporary regent, Lord Niel Hammersh, had a name that seemed incomplete, so I made it Lord Niel Hammershard. And I added another dignitary, Lord Targus Vandergrotten, as a schemer in the politics of the kingdom. I also wrote a quick section to the beginning of the module and another to the end. So this will be a weird little writeup, as I think I'll do the parts I added as fiction and leave the actual adventure pretty much undescribed, for the benefit of those who will eventually run through the module themselves. (It is a pretty cool adventure.)

- - -

Having successfully returned to the volcanic mountain range where the group left Old Clem, Fang, and the horses, it was a simple matter to retrace the path back to the small kingdom of Kordovia. Piddilink Dundernoggin’s cousin, Winkidew Dundernoggin, seemed pleased to inform the group that the elixirs of love that Piddilink commissioned were ready to go, and the little gnome handed them over to Feron carefully, each in a felt sleeve to help prevent breakage.

"Hey, while you’re here," mentioned the gnome, "I heard tell that Lord Hammershard's looking for experienced adventurers. Piddilink speaks highly of you guys – maybe you should go check it out." Winkidew gave them directions to the castle and the group decided to check out the situation while they were there.

Lord Niel Hammershard seemed a pleasant fellow. He informed the adventurers that their ruler, King Arsidan, died three days ago, after the group had left the kingdom to head up to the volcanic mountains to the north. As his wife, Queen Kathenta, had died many years earlier and there was no heir to the throne, there was currently no direct descendant to automatically assume control of the kingdom. Fortunately, he explained, Kordovia had a magical scepter of succession that would point out the next legitimate ruler of Kordovia. The scepter was a minor artifact said to show the will of the gods in the matter of the lawful rulership of the kingdom. In the meantime, Lord Hammershard was acting as Temporary Regent.

Unfortunately, in the past several years, King Arsidan had become increasingly concerned about his eventual successor, and had a mighty Vault of Rings constructed, inside which the scepter of succession was placed. No one but the king and the artisans who constructed the Vault of Rings knew of the details of its construction, but it was said to be a series of concentric rings, with the scepter stored in the very center. Allegedly, the intended successor would learn much about the kingdom’s history and the lessons of good rulership while traveling through the Vault of Rings. In the past two days, three separate groups of adventurers had entered the Vault of Rings to retrieve the scepter of succession, and thus far none had returned.

Lord Hammershard offered each adventurer 2,000 pieces of gold from the kingdom's treasury if they could enter the Vault of Rings and bring the scepter of succession back to him. In addition, they would be free to keep any items they found in the Vault of Rings that weren’t from the treasury itself, housed in the central section of the Vault. Cal agreed on behalf of the group and said they'd give it their best shot.

As Lord Hammershard was explaining all of this to the group, a sour-faced wizard in black and purple robes entered the audience chamber and scowled at the adventurers. "So, these are the latest bumblers you’re sending into the Vault, Hammershard?" he sneered. "I doubt they’ll fare any better than our own home-grown, so-called 'adventurers,' especially if they count among their number a mongrel orc like this one! I say enough of this nonsense – I’m the logical choice to rule this nation. It would be best to just declare me the next king and be done with it!"

Lord Hammershard, naturally, refused to go along with the wizard's plan, and made arrangements for the group to be taken to the Vault of Rings and have its sole entrance unlocked for them. Before they left, however, Vandergrotten took Cal aside, under the guise of wishing them luck. "Listen," he said in a hushed voice. "I know that old fool Hammershard has offered you, what, 2,000 gold apiece if you return with the scepter? Well, there’s an extra thousand in it for you if, when you return, you bring the scepter to me instead of to him. I don’t trust him; I'd like to be able to examine the scepter myself to make sure there’s nothing...untoward going on with it. Just have a page take you to Lord Torgus Vandergrotten upon your return, and you'll be well rewarded." Cal gave a noncommittal grunt that Vandergrotten seemed to take as an affirmation, for the wizard spun on his heels and exited the chamber.

With that, the group was ushered over to the Vault of Rings, and a dwarven guard took a keyring from his belt and unlocked a door set into a small stone building in an out-of-the-way corner of the castle's courtyard. "Good luck to ye," he said, opening the door and waving them inside. "Just knock when ye get back; one of us is on station here at all times." Cal led the way through the doorway and down the stairs that led to the Vault, and the dwarven guard closed and locked the door behind them.

- - -

[The PCs make their way through the three rings of the Vault and into the central treasury, where they do indeed find the scepter of succession. They return to the entrance, pound on the door, and are greeted by another dwarven guardsman, pleased to see the group's success. He fetches a page to deliver the group - and the scepter - to Lord Hammershard.]

- - -

A large gathering crowded into the largest audience chamber of the castle, everyone eager to see who the kingdom’s next ruler would be. Lord Hammershard, the Temporary Regent of Kordovia, seemed just as eager to proceed, perhaps wanting to pass the responsibility of running the kingdom to its new legitimate king or queen. He motioned for silence, and the crowd’s murmurings ceased.

"Fellow citizens of Kordovia," he intoned, "We are gathered here today to seek the will of the gods as to who the next rightful ruler of this small nation shall be. At this time, we acknowledge the kind assistance granted to us by these proud adventurers from the Kingdom of Greyhawk, many leagues to the south of us, who risked their very lives to retrieve the scepter of succession from the Vault of Rings, placed there by our own King Arsidan, may he rest in peace."

"May he rest in peace," intoned the crowd in unison – although Cal noticed that Lord Vandergrotten failed to reply, his black scowl expressing his desire to just get on with it.

"Gods of light, show us the next lawful ruler of Kordovia!" called out Lord Hammershard, then swung the scepter behind him and tossed it underhand up into the air. Every eye was upon it as it tumbled end over end on its way up, then it seemed to hover motionless in the air for a brief moment at the apex of its arc – and then, surprisingly, it made a beeline straight into Galrich's hands! The startled half-orc grabbed it, then looked over at Cal with a look of confusion on his face.

"What treachery is this?" thundered Lord Vandergrotten. "How convenient that one of the low-born adventurers who retrieved the scepter is suddenly indicated as our next ruler? And a gods-be-damned orc at that? This will not stand, Hammershard! It’s obviously a feeble attempt to grab rulership of a nation by an unworthy – uh, what in the...?"

Lord Vandergrotten’s rant was cut suddenly short as a ghostly figure materialized in the middle of the audience chamber. It was a slight woman, dressed in tattered rags of deerskin. "Please forgive the intrusion, my loyal subjects," she said, "But I will not take up too much of your time."

"Your Majesty!” cried Lord Hammershard, quickly dropping to one knee. The rest of the crowd belatedly followed suit, amidst startled cries of "It's Queen Kathenta!" Lord Vandergrotten looked shocked – perhaps too shocked to genuflect as the others around him did.

"I, who have been dead these many years, have been granted this boon by the Gods Above, to appear to you now in your hour of greatest need," continued Queen Kathenta. "I wish there to be no fighting amongst factions, and no doubting, for standing before you is indeed your future king...my son, Galrich." Galrich stared at the ghostly woman with a mouth hanging open in shock.

"As most of you know, I went missing and was presumed dead when my carriage was attacked in the Vesve Forest on my way to visit my ailing mother these many years ago. I know King Arsidan spent many long months searching for me, and was eventually convinced of my death when so much time had passed and no ransom demands were ever sent.

"My carriage was attacked by a band of orcs, and I was carried away as a trophy. I, who entered this life as a commoner and was elevated as a young woman to the level of Queen by the love of good King Arsidan, spent my last year of life as slave to a brute of an orc in a tribe of barbarians. Eventually, some twenty years ago, I died in childbirth, bringing my only son, Galrich, into this world."

She turned to face the astonished half-orc, who at this point had his head lowered and was muttering to himself, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry..." in a quiet voice. "Galrich, I deeply regret I was not there for you during the terrible days of your childhood, but rest assured I have watched you from the heavens above, and I could not be any prouder of the way you turned out. You have taken the strength and fierceness of the orc race and put it to good use. Twice already, you have held back the forces of evil that were ready to overcome this very world and remake it in their own twisted image.

"Citizens of Kordovia, by the will of the gods, my son Galrich will be your next king. And he will be a good king, and a wise king...but only when the time is right for him to take on the mantle of king. My son, you have lived the life of an adventurer, and performed a great many deeds, but I must tell you now that the time has not come for you to retire to the Kingdom of Kordovia and live out the rest of your days as ruler. The gods have many more tasks for you in the days and years ahead, tasks in which you will serve much more than a mere kingdom, but rather this whole world itself. You will know when it is time for you to return to Kordovia and assume the crown. In the meantime, I would ask you, Lord Hammershard, to continue on as Regent, until such time as Galrich is ready to relieve you of your burden." Lord Hammershard nodded his agreement with tears in his eyes at the sight of his beloved queen.

"Alas, my subjects, my time here among you is now spent. I return now to the heavens, where I am once again reunited with my dear husband, King Arsidan. Live your lives well, and peace be with you all. And you, my son," she said, reaching out to Galrich, "May you continue to make me proud. I will be watching...."

And with those final words, the ghost of Queen Kathenta was gone.

A complete and total silence covered the crowded audience chamber. Everyone turned and stared at Galrich, still holding the scepter of succession at his side and unsure what to do or say. Everyone was still on one knee, and it was slightly comical as the crowd scooted around on one knee to face their new half-orc liege. Everyone, that is, but Lord Vandergrotten, who stood there in silent fury, muttering under his breath.

Then, just as suddenly as she had disappeared, the ghost of Queen Kathenta returned, only this time she looked furious. "Are you all serious?" she demanded. "That was a test of your worthiness – a test most of you have failed miserably! Do you really think the Kingdom of Kordovia should be ruled by a gods-be-damned orc, of all things? Lord Hammershard, I am disgusted by your apparent willingness to give a savage, subhuman beast the keys to our kingdom! You are summarily dismissed from this realm – be gone from its borders by midnight, never to return! Lord Targus Vandergrotten, by the decree of the Gods Above, you shall be our next king, effective immedi--"

That was as far as she got, because Cal noticed Vandergrotten's lips moving during "Queen Kathenta's" second speech, and summarily punched the wizard in the gut with the full force of a cleric of Kord, God of Strength. Vandergrotten doubled over in pain, and his illusion spell froze up when he was unable to concentrate on it. The image of Queen Kathenta stood unmoving, then winked out in mid-sentence.

"Nice try, Vandergrotten!" sneered Cal. Lord Hammershard called forth the dwarven guard, and had the wizard taken away in chains. He was to be placed in a special antimagic cell to prevent him from doing any further mischief until he could be sentenced for attempting to violate the will of the gods and assume the mantle of King of Kordovia for himself. He was unable to put up much of a fight, as he was still doubled over in pain from Cal's gut-punch. The assembled crowd threw boos and catcalls his way as he was dragged off in disgrace.

With that unpleasantness finished, Lord Hammershard invited the group to spend as much time as they liked in the castle. He offered to tell Galrich (whom he referred to as "Your Majesty") everything he knew about his mother, the late Queen Kathenta. Furthermore, while his stated intention was to honor Queen Kathenta’s wishes and allow Galrich to return to his adventuring career, he insisted upon sending one of the elite dwarven castle guards with him as a personal bodyguard. Aerik Battershield stepped forward from the ranks and was assigned as Galrich’s personal bodyguard, entrusted with keeping Galrich safe until such time as he returned to Kordovia to assume the crown as king.

- - -

And that was pretty much the turning point in this campaign. I had turned a beer-and-pretzels series of unconnected dungeon crawls into a full-fledged campaign pretty much with this adventure. Everyone at the table was astonished ("gobsmacked" might be a better word) at the turn of events. Jacob, of course, was thrilled at the idea that he was getting a kingdom of his own to run, but I informed him that he would assume leadership of Kordovia exactly at the very end of this campaign, once everyone was at 20th level and we decided to retire it and start a new campaign up with 1st-level PCs. Vicki's reaction was funny; she was as shocked as everyone else at the revelation, but her first words to Galrich (as Feron, once the PCs were alone again) were, "Well, don't expect me to call you 'Your Majesty!'"

Aerik became our first adventurer NPC (Old Clem was used frequently, but he always stayed with the horses), who accompanied Galrich on all of his adventures and whose main concern was for his liege's safety. We started out allowing Jacob to run both Galrich and Aerik. but he seldom wanted Aerik to put himself in harm's way to protect Galrich, so we eventually had Dan and Logan take turns running Aerik. Once Jacob saw the way of things, he took ownership of Aerik again and started running him true to the dwarf's character.