Wing Three

ADVENTURE 76: BLACK HOLE SUN

PC Roster:
"We have been expecting you," said Father Mendicus. "Please join us on the upper deck. We have our clerics and monks assembled there to hear your tale."

The five adventurers followed the elderly cleric through the opened gates of the temple of Pelor and into the building's interior. It was a simple two-story structure, rectangular in shape but with a rounded front, from which two observation platforms jutted forth on either side of the heavy wooden front gates. The heroes passed through a tunnel of sorts, with the ground-level sections of the temple on either side of them and the second story directly above, and entered an open courtyard taking up the middle third of the temple's length. The back section was a full two stories, with about a dozen young men standing in orderly rows looking at the approaching group expectantly. A set of stairs led up to the upper level, and Father Mendicus escorted the group before the rest of the temple's current inhabitants. Delphyne, the only woman in the group of heroes and, she nervously noticed, the only woman in the temple at all, felt more than one pair of eyes upon her, some being mere sideward glances and others a bit more blatant in their open stares. She shifted somewhat uncomfortably, pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders.

Cal made the introductions, taking time to explain a bit of Akari's backstory to allay any suspicions the Pelorians might have about his fiendish appearance. The fact that Cal openly wore the trappings of Kord and Akari proudly wore the symbol of Hieroneous did much to calm any worries they might have. He also took the opportunity of having everyone assembled together to examine them through his gem of seeing, to ensure the clerics and monks were all as they appeared to be. Cal then explained their reason for being there, informing the group at large about Nakariah, his plan to extinguish the sun as a way to avenge himself on Joniah the Avenger, and the notations about this temple they had discovered in his lair.

"But why would he be coming here?" asked Brother Jacori, Father Mendicus's second in command.

"Well, there's the obvious tie of Joniah having been an adherent of Pelor," explained Akari.

"More than that," interrupted Father Mendicus. "Joniah did some of his initial training right here, in this temple, shortly after he took his vows. I'm certain we have something about it in our central records, below."

"We might want to look through those, if you don't mind," said Cal. "But more importantly, we believe he might be coming here to retrieve a sphere of annihilation. Is it possible you have such an artifact here, stored away to keep it safe from the outside world?"

"We have nothing like that here," replied Brother Jacori.

Cal looked to the high priest of the temple. "Are you certain?" asked Cal. "What we found in Nakariah's library indicates he plans on using a sphere of annihilation to destroy the sun, but we saw no evidence of him having such an artifact. And divinations reveal that he's headed this way, traveling below the surface of the sea."

"I know of no such artifact," repeated Father Mendicus. "But you are welcome to look through our records, if you like." He led the group back down the stairs, past a series of three outhouses, and into a door that led to a chapel. In the back of the chapel stood a small meditation room, with a small library just beyond. The heroes pored through the scrolls and tomes, looking for any indication the temple might have once housed a sphere of annihilation. Chalkan and Thunderwolf, not particularly thrilled with the idea of reading through temple records for the next several hours, asked for a tour of the building, so they could determine the best way to defend it against attack. This temple of Pelor was situated near the top of a small cliff side, with the sea to the north. The large, open deck at the back of the temple was not only where the monks trained in their fighting techniques, but was also where all of the temple inhabitants performed their daily rituals at sunrise and sunset.

There was not a whole lot more to see. The cleric and monk quarters were on the ground floor on either side of the massive wooden gates that were the only entry into and out of the temple. Above that area, accessible by a pair of ramps along the outer wall, stood a semicircular section where the two guards held their station and the temple inhabitants grew some of their own food in an artificial garden. Underneath the back deck, there was a small kitchen and a larger dining area, with a bathing facility jutting out into the open courtyard in the middle of the temple.

"Are there any hidden ways into the temple?" asked Chalkan. The acolyte who had been assigned as his guide replied in the negative. Thunderwolf led them back up to the northern section of the upper deck and looked over the temple walls to the sea at the bottom of the cliff below. "Nakariah and his forces will be coming from that direction," he said. "We should marshal our forces on the northern side, but they'll have to either climb the temple walls or break through the gates to get in."

"Remember, though, he's a lich," argued Chalkan. "He might just fly his army right over the wall, for all we know. We'll have to be ready for just about anything."

Back in the temple library, Father Mendicus had shown the others the documents that revealed a young Joniah as having been enrolled as a temple acolyte several centuries ago. "He was one of a small number of our faith who went on to become an adventurer," said the head priest. "For the most part, we tend to lead simple lives, aiding those in need and bringing word of Pelor's light to those who would hear His words."

Several hours later, Akari, Cal, and Delphyne had been through everything the small library had to offer, with no indications that there might be a sphere of annihilation on the premises. They gratefully accepted Father Mendicus's offer to join the temple in the noontime meal, which consisted of vegetables from their second-story garden and the results of a create food and drink spell. Over lunch, the group discussed their strategies. They learned from the elderly high priest that the temple was protected by a hallow spell, which would grant them some protection from the undead. As for their undead foe, the divination Cal had cast the day before indicated that Nakariah and his forces would likely reach the shore in the late afternoon; just to be sure, they decided to try scrying upon the Lich-King. Cal unpacked the crystal ball they had taken from Nakariah's own treasure hoard and attempted to find the undead being in the spherical lens of the orb, with no luck.

"His whole lair was protected by a nondetection spell," reasoned Akari. "It's likely he's got a similar effect on himself as well. Why don't you try scrying on Dragon Turtle Goruka instead?" That worked much better, although the image appearing the crystal ball was a sad one, for Dragon Turtle Goruka, once the mighty protector of the Lady Dorca's merfolk tribe, was now a skeletal monstrosity paddling through the ocean with dark shapes all around him and a blurry, obscured image standing upon his undead shell.

"That's got to be Nakariah," said Cal. "And I assume those are more eel-men traveling with him. Judging from the sunlight, they're not too far below the water's surface." Or at least Dragon Turtle Goruka wasn't; the anguillians, disliking bright lights, tended to remain further below the water's surface, in the darker depths.

"So what do we do for now?" asked Delphyne. "Just wait here for him to show up and attack?" It was a question asked out of helpless frustration, but it ended up being the best option for the moment. Akari summoned Tsukitora from the Beastlands and sent him flying back and forth over the beach, keeping an eye out for any movement. Delphyne sent Iggy on a similar patrol, and then fretted away the next several hours, waiting for something to happen.

Time passed, excruciatingly slowly. Late afternoon arrived with no waves of enemies rising up out of the sea. Cal volunteered to prepare dinner for the temple's inhabitants and his own group of heroes, by means of a heroes' feast spell he had prepared that morning for such an occasion. The heroes joined the temple inhabitants for the sundown ritual on the upper deck, and still there was no sign of Nakariah. The sun went completely behind the horizon, and the half-moon offered little illumination, but still there was no attack. Cal suspected that Nakariah would attack at the darkest time of the night, and suggested the clerics and monks grab a few hours of sleep. He was certain that once battle commenced there would be noise aplenty to rise them from their slumber, but he also had determined that most of the clerics and monks were new to their respective training and would be able to offer little assistance against a highly-powerful lich. In truth, he'd have preferred they abandon their temple and leave the Wing Three adventurers in place to face the threat without them getting in the way, but there was no real tactful way to suggest this.

Thunderwolf, tired of waiting, opted to grab a few hours of sleep himself and curled up on one of the dining tables in full armor. "Wake me if anything interesting happens," he told the others.

Cal tried scrying again, but the image he received of Dragon Turtle Goruka was too dark to make out any detail - not surprising, with the sun down and the undead beast likely remaining underwater. It was difficult to make anything out, but it didn't even look like there was much motion going on - almost as if Nakariah had reached his destination and was sitting in one spot, waiting.

"This is infuriating!" complained Chalkan. "What's he waiting for?" The half-elf just wanted combat to begin so he could actually start doing something. He started casting getting-ready-for-combat spells upon himself, protecting his body and equipment from fire. Cal and Delphyne followed suit, the cleric having determined it was probably close to midnight by now, and that Nakariah could strike at any moment - if they were lucky, for truth be told he was getting mighty tired of waiting as well.

Word of the attack began with a loud screech, which Akari immediately recognized as belonging to his bonded mount Tsukitora. The griffon's screech was a warning, for the beast had detected movement on the narrow beach below the temple.

"What's going on?" Delphyne asked across the empathic link she shared with her familiar. She received a feeling of dread and fear in return, and looked over the northern wall of the temple from the upper deck as Iggy landed softly on her shoulder. "Undead," the raven spoke to his mistress. "Many undead."

Several dozen undead forms had indeed risen up from the sea below. They didn't shamble around like zombies, but rather approached the cliff face with a steady determination and began climbing rapidly. Behind them strode a much larger form, easily three times the size of the others. It was difficult to make out in the darkness, but all of the forms rising up out of the sea seemed to have glistening, oddly-shaped hats of some type upon their heads.

"Here it comes!" cried Cal from the garden section at the front of the structure. "Somebody go wake up Thunderwolf, and then the Pelorians!"

"On it!" cried Chalkan, running across the courtyard to bang upon the dining room door. Thunderwolf snapped immediately awake and grabbed up Xanthros. "Prepare yourself for glory!" called out the sentient sword. Above him, Tsukitora landed by his master on the upper deck at the back of the temple.

The giant undead was the first to arrive, for it didn't bother climbing up the cliff like its human-sized counterparts but simply levitated up the cliff face. Then he cast a chain lightning spell at Delphyne, who, at the western edge of the upper deck, was perfectly situated so that arcs of electricity could flash out from her body to strike everyone else but Cal, who was too far away at the garden end of the temple, and Thunderwolf, who had yet to exit through the closed dining room. The cleric and monk acolytes were still in their respective living quarters, and thus were spared a blast of magical energy which would likely have killed them all. But the hardened adventurers shrugged it off and returned fire. Delphyne led with a magic missile strike, wanting to cast something she was sure would hit her foe. Cal cast a flame strike upon the giant, and in the illumination provided by his spell the group got a good glimpse of three things: their large foe looked to be an undead storm giant, with pale, sickly-looking green skin; the first wave of human-sized undead had made it to the top of the cliff walls and were advancing menacingly; and the "oddly-shaped hats" each of the undead wore was a jet-black octopus, glistening wetly in the moonlight.

One of the smaller undead swung a gangly arm up and made a gesture, and the temple wall between the upper deck and the ramp to the gardens simply vanished; Delphyne had time to note the gesture made corresponded to that of a disintegrate spell. "One of them's a spellcaster!" she called out to the others as the wights started altering their course to rush into the breach in the temple wall.

Above, Akari raised his holy symbol and funneled the power of Hieroneous through it; a handful of the nearest wights exploded into dust, octopus-hats included. Cal followed suit from the other end of the temple, causing another handful to be blown to pieces. But the storm giant wight was unaffected, and it strode forward into the temple with a horrible purpose, its hefty spear in one hand ready to strike. Lesser wights raced in all around it. Thunderwolf practically exploded out of the dining room to meet this tide, Xanthros cheering him on with each strike. The fighter's flashing sword tore into undead flesh while the unarmed wights howled in pain and tried reaching the swordsman with their wicked claws. Akari sent Tsukitora down to the courtyard to assist the fighter against the small horde of wights, and the griffon obediently tore into the undead opponents with beak and claw. Chalkan, in the meantime, had returned to the upper deck and used his White-Wood Whisperbow to send a flurry of arrows into every wight within range.

Another wight from one of the back ranks made some arcane gestures, and suddenly an enormous scorpion popped into existence just outside of the temple. From the surprise on the wight's face, Delphyne got the distinct impression that the spellcaster had intended for the Gargantuan scorpion to appear behind the heroes on the deck - no doubt the temple's hallow spell had prevented that from occurring. However, the creature was big enough it could simply walk up the side of the building and make a grab for one of the heroes positioned there. It grabbed up Chalkan in a massive claw before the half-elf archer could even think of dodging.

Fortunately, Delphyne was right there by his side, and a hold monster spell quickly prevented the scorpion from doing the archer any further harm. Chalkan painfully extricated himself from the massive arachnid's clutches, just in time to gain the benefit of a mass bear's endurance spell Cal cast from the other side of the temple, encompassing all of the heroes.

On either side of the front half of the temple, doors opened up and out spilled the clerics and monks, all in their battle gear. The head monk, Cornelius, roared a challenge and led his half-dozen young monks into the brawl with the wights that had made it into the courtyard - but then he and the monks he led, along with all of the heroes but Cal (who was again out of range), were caught in the arcs of electricity emanating from Akari, who had been the primary target of yet another chain lightning spell cast by one of the wights. Judging from the extra pain he felt from the spell's effects, Akari judged that this casting of the spell had been maximized, and only Cal's previously-cast mass bear's endurance spell allowed several of the heroes to remain on their feet.

Not so for Cornelius and his monks; they all dropped immediately from the spell, their charred corpses releasing little clouds of smoke as they fell.

"Vengeance!" cried Brother Jacori, leading his half dozen frightened clerics racing up the steps to the deck to deal with what the cleric took at first to be the biggest threat: the massive scorpion whose pincers hung over the temple wall and seemed to menace Delphyne, Chalkan, and Akari - in the heat of battle, he failed to realize the scorpion had been completely immobilized by the young witch's spell. Father Mendicus, too old for racing into battle, hobbled over towards the storm giant wight and prepare to cast a spell.

It proved to be unnecessary, for the storm giant was cut down before his very eyes. Chalkan was filling the giant's left side with arrows. while Cal cast a mass heal which did much to seal up the wounds his adventuring companions had sustained thus far in the fight, but more importantly flooded the undead wight's unliving flesh with positive energy, eating away at the corruption powering the giant's body. The undead storm giant fell to the ground with a crash, his oversized "octopus hat" plopping onto the ground with a wet squelching noise beside him.

By this time, most of the invading wights had been destroyed as well, those having been turned by Akari and Cal exploding into dust, while those slain by more conventional means - like Chalkan's arrows or Thunderwolf's sentient sword - having fallen to the ground, the blackened octopi from their heads crawling around on the ground in confusion. Thunderwolf took a moment to put them to the sword as well; whatever they were, they couldn't be good. Tsukitora flew over to the garden area by Cal, and the cleric mounted the griffon, ready to fly into battle if needed, but Chalkan's arrows cut down the remaining wights as he did so.

"So is that it?" asked Delphyne in confusion. "Where's Nakariah?"

She got her answer, as an undead form teleported onto the back deck of the temple. In the light of the sunrods Akari had dropped to the floor - no use in not having illumination now that the battle was on - the heroes could recognize the bony features of the Lich-King they had inadvertently freed from his centuries-long prison years before in Joniah's Crypt, where Akari had unearthed Deathstriker, the undead bane returning warhammer he currently wielded in his right hand. Oddly enough, a glistening, black octopus was centered atop Nakariah's skull as well, and Akari, facing him, began to suspect that the wights had not been spellcasters after all, merely members of a hive mind that the lich had used as convenient pawns from which to strike out without exposing himself to danger. He also noted an object hanging from the Lich-King's belt, a small metal hoop attached to a rod the size of a sword's hilt, and immediately recognized it as a talisman of the sphere.

"I had not expected such resistance," intoned the Lich-King ominously. "I suppose I must take matters more directly into my own hands." He raised a hand, and from the bony fingers flew a polar ray spell targeted at Akari - for the Lich-King had indeed spotted Deathstriker in the paladin's hand, and recognized the tiefling as the inheritor of the hated Joniah's primary weapon and thus the primary inheritor of the lich's undying wrath. Akari writhed in pain under the unexpected blast of frigid air. Tsukitora cried out in alarm at the sight of his master dropping to one knee in torment, and the snow-white griffon flew over to attack the lich, taking Cal with him, much to the cleric's consternation - he'd have been perfectly fine throwing spells at the Lich-King from a distance.

At the stairs, Brother Jacori and his clerics stopped their forward charge, a magical and quite unnatural fear flowing down their spines at the very sight of the Lich-King's undead form. But the heroes were unaffected, and Delphyne blasted at the lich with her wand of magic missiles while Chalkan let loose an arrow fortified with a true strike spell effect, causing it to fly directly into one of Nakariah's empty eye sockets. The Lich-King cried out in pain - or possibly just frustration - and pulled the offending arrow from his eye socket, as Chalkan nimbly leapt forward and grabbed up the talisman of the sphere from the lich's belt. Nakariah didn't seem to notice, and stepped forward towards Akari and the white griffon which had just landed protectively at the paladin's side. Reaching out at the two of them with a pair of bony claws, he attempted to paralyze them with his mere touch - but was then grabbed from behind by an unseen force. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that he was caught in the powerful grip of a Kord's crushing hand spell that Cal had cast from upon Tsukitora's broad back. The massive fist squeezed, and Nakariah felt bones crushing in his ribs.

"You think you have defeated me?" cried Nakariah as he struggled to free himself from the oversized hand. "Even if you destroy me today, I'll be back! You can defeat me time and time again, but I have only to win but once for eternal victory to be mine!" Another rib snapped in two, and he gave a grunt of pain.

Seeing the lich wouldn't likely escape from one of Cal's most powerful spells and was being slowly crushed to oblivion, Akari unbuckled the pouch at his side and removed a badly damaged silver chalice. He held it up tauntingly before Nakariah, who reacted as if punched in a nonexistent gut at the sight of his shattered phylactery. "Really?" asked the paladin innocently. "Without this?"

Nakariah lashed out at Akari with a bony claw and managed to make contact, scoring a minor victory as he saw the hated paladin's body freeze up in paralysis. But his victory was short-lived, for the Kord's crushing hand spell crumbled the Lich-King into bone shards. Nakariah's last word was a plaintive "Noooooooo!" as he fell to a permanent death from which he would not rise again.

Cal restored Akari's ability to move with a remove paralysis spell, and the paladin thanked him, thanked his faithful steed, and released the latter back to the Beastlands from which he had come. The group dragged the bodies of the wights - those that hadn't been scattered to ashes by successful turning attempts, that is - out of the temple and over the side of the cliff, before Cal patched up the building's open breach with a wall of stone spell.

Delphyne spent some time with the clerics, assuring the proud Brother Jacori that freezing up in battle against a lich was nothing to be ashamed of, and that the effect was magical in nature. The acolytes seemed appreciative of her words, although Brother Jacori seemed less than mollified. Father Mendicus prayed over the bodies of the monks who had been slain.

But there was still one loose end that was bothering Cal. "Nakariah had the talisman of the sphere," he said. "It only stands to reason that if he was going to destroy the sun with a sphere of annihilation, and he came here with the talisman, then the sphere must be around here somewhere!" He turned to Father Mendicus. "Are you certain you don't have a sphere nestled around here somewhere? Is there maybe an underground vault or something we don't know about?"

"There is nothing like that," replied the priest firmly. "And there are no levels below the temple. The only thing below the temple is the pit beneath the latrines."

"You don't think..." began Delphyne.

"Nega-dibs!" cried Chalkan. "I'm not checking it out!"

"It's the only place we haven't looked," replied Cal, turning to Akari. The paladin gave him a look that said "You want me to do what?" But Cal was merely looking to borrow one of the paladin's many sunrods. (Piddilink Dundernoggin had had a sale on the things some months past, and Akari, realizing their general usefulness, had purchased his whole stock out from under him.) Cal chose an outhouse at random and dropped the sunrod down the hole. It made a noise as it clattered against a rock wall - and then it disappeared, taking its illumination with it.

"Well?" asked Chalkan.

The cleric of Kord lifted his head from the hole in the outhouse seat, from which he had been watching the sunrod's descent and subsequent obliteration - while holding his breath, for obvious reasons. "It's down there," he affirmed, then turned to face Father Mendicus. "Tell me," he asked, "You haven't had to relocate these latrines at all for years, have you?"

The elderly priest's face showed his sudden understanding. "There are no records of this temple ever having to do so," he confirmed. "I never thought to question why the pit had never gotten full...."

"Well, I guess it's as safe there as anywhere," replied Delphyne. The group agreed, and with their duty there having been completed, they thanked Father Mendicus and the clerics for their assistance and then, with five touches of five Guild rings, disappeared from view.

"An unusual bunch," commented Father Mendicus after their departure. "All in all, I am rather glad I never took up the life of an adventurer." The other clerics - even Brother Jacori - couldn't disagree with the sentiment.

- - -

I think I've mentioned before the span of time we generally have between adventuring sessions. Having completed this adventure many months before I had an opportunity to run it, I decided it would be cool if I did up a three-dimensional temple of Pelor in much of the same fashion as I had done up Vandergrotten Keep. This time I used two large sheets of white poster board, because I liked the "clean" look this would give a temple devoted to the Sun God, and also because I was drastically running out of the cardboard backings of old desk calendars from work. Knowing I'd be having the wights disintegrate a portion of the wall for entry, I built the front and back parts of the temple as separate pieces, then made two connecting walls which "plugged" into the other parts but could be easily removed. (This also made it easier for me to stash the whole thing when it wasn't in use, as my man cave downstairs is already being overrun with Vandergrotten Keep and its Castle Shatterhope expansion, the Planar Scout, a tower keep, the platform rising up above a fiendish zaratan, a lizardman step pyramid, and the wooden platform which rose up from the shell of the Death-Beast from the Deep.) During the temple's construction, I cursed myself for having designed the front part as a half-circle, because that made it much more difficult to build (especially to get the crenelations to line up nicely and have a 1" grid over everything that lined up correctly), but once it was finished I was pleased with the results. I even printed out a couple of Pelor symbols to stick on the temple's front, on either side of the double doors of the front gate. (I used normal cardboard for the gates, and printed off door stickers in full color to give my white temple a bit of color.) And as cool as a "protect a building from attack" adventure can be, I think having a 3-D building to scale with use with the PC miniatures only enhanced the experience.

For the temple inhabitants, I used a new method I've taken to using for "groups of mooks." I print pictures of the people I want to use (which meant hitting up Google Images for images of "Pelor monk" and "Pelor cleric") onto sheets of large white labels, cut them out, and stick them onto cardboard (or, in this case, yellow poster board) rectangles with triangular sides so they can stand up. I make sure the images are all 1.25 inches tall, which roughly corresponds to the size of a human D&D Miniature, so they're to scale.

I did the same for the 20 wights in this adventure, although the image I used allows me to use them as wights, zombies, or pretty much any human-sized corporeal undead. I had done the same thing for "Ambrosia Red," making a couple dozen generic tavern denizens (including serving girls and a bouncer), and a similar number of vampire spawn. (The reason they're pretentious vampire spawn is because I found I got the best results from Google Image when I searched for "vampire costume" instead of just "vampire," which had gotten me image after image of Edward and his minions from the "Twilight" movies, with the occasional Buffy thrown in for good measure.)

Multiple copies of the same type of creature get numbered in the corner of the sticker, so I can better keep track of them on my monster stats tracking sheet. And I've taken to keeping these homemade "stand-up tokens" separated in these little plastic containers with lids, which if memory serves are old baby food containers from when my nephew Harry was just a baby. (I knew they'd come in handy someday!)

ADVENTURE 77 - [REDACTED]

PC Roster:
I really hate to do this, but I had a sudden, nasty idea recently and ran a one-on-one session with my son Logan, in which he ran his tiefling paladin, Akari. And due to the fact that the rest of the party isn't aware of what happened during this session, I'm going to keep the events of this adventure a secret as well for the time being. Once this campaign is over (or the other PCs find out on their own what happened), I'll come back and fill everybody in on what occurred.

In the meantime, I've sworn Logan to secrecy about what happened to Akari, so the other players aren't going to find out any time soon, either. In fact, as this adventure took place the evening before the next session, I suspected that the PCs wouldn't even notice his absence, but I was wrong about that.

Logan plans on running Telgrane for the rest of the campaign, for reasons that will eventually become clear.

Just not, you know, necessarily anytime soon. Sorry about that.

[Edit: Okay, it turned out that the other PCs spent some time investigating his sudden disappearance after all, and as a result they all now know what happened to Akari. I posted the events of this one-on-one adventure over in post #95 as a "flashback sequence." Those of you just now reading your way through the events of this campaign are encouraged to continue reading along in the posted sequence so you'll remain as in the dark as the other PCs were at the time, knowing that in just a few posts from now all will be revealed. Those wishing to "jump ahead" can go read post #95 and then come back here.]

ADVENTURE 78: 30 FINGERS

PC Roster:
NPC Roster:
A Guild page entered the Wing Three common living area with a nervous-looking man in a hooded cloak. "A visitor to see you," the page announced, then turned on his heels and departed.

The man approached the assembled group and blurted out, "You've got to help me. My cult is going to do something horrible tonight!"

"Your...cult?" asked Delphyne, intrigued. She looked around for Akari, so the paladin could use his innate ability to detect the evil in others to give them an initial assessment of their visitor, but nobody had seen him since the previous evening, when he had gone to meet the Head Cleric of the Greyhawk City Church of Hieroneous.

"Perhaps you might like to start from the beginning," suggested Cal.

The intruder looked around nervously, as if making sure nobody else was within earshot, then began his tale.

"My name's Thurman," he began. "I'm kind of a member of this evil cult of demon worshipers. And if the others knew I was here, they'd probably have me killed, so I gotta make this quick and get out of here before I'm noticed."

"Hold up," interrupted Cal, then quickly intoned the words to a zone of truth spell. "I'm sorry," he said pleasantly once his prayer was complete. "Please continue."

"What was that?" Thurman wanted to know.

"Merely a spell to indicate whether what you say is truthful or not," the cleric replied, smiling.

"Oh, okay - I get that," answered Thurman, before picking up his tale. "Okay, here’s the deal. For some time now, we've been examining this evil tome one of the cult members brought to our attention, trying out the rituals in an attempt to increase our personal power and influence. So far, it's been little stuff – you know, minor curses against our rivals, that sort of thing. But tonight it's going to get a whole lot worse.

"There's this ritual we're scheduled to try tonight in our secret lair, a series of hidden rooms in the sewers. There's this demon, the Lady of Serpents, who we're going to try to conjure up, who's said to bestow incredible power to those who summon her, if the sacrifice is sufficient. And that would be fine with me, I'll tell you right now, except the ritual has each of us cut off one of our fingers! I'd be okay with, you know, like sacrificing a goat or a cat or whatever, but I’m not really sure I want to cut off one of my own fingers for this, you know?

"So now I'm in kind of a bind. If I don't go through with this, they'll kill me. If I try to hightail it out of town, they'll kill my family in retaliation. And I can't really uproot my family and skip town with them without, like, giving them a good explanation, and I'd really rather not get into my demon-worshiping cult business with my parents, you know? So, I figure, like, maybe I tip you guys off so you can show up early, like, and put a stop to the whole deal before we get to any fingers getting cut off, okay? Here, I brought a map I drew up." Thurman pushed a hastily-sketched map of the sewers leading to their hidden lair; the adventurers were not surprised to note that the demon cult was situated in the sewers under the Styes, the seediest part of Greyhawk City. "Midnight tonight's when we’re supposed to start the ritual," Thurman added, "so if you could get there before then, that would be great."

"So you'd be perfectly okay with unleashing a demon into our world, except for the fact that you'd have to cut off one of your own fingers - is that it?" asked Delphyne, incredulously.

"Well, yeah, that's like it totally," agreed Thurman, glad to see that these heroes understood the situation perfectly and would likely be able to extract him from the predicament he had foolishly gotten himself into. Delphyne gave a look to the others that expressed quite clearly, Is this guy for real?

Cal opted to press him for more details. "Tell me about this demon," he commanded.

"I don't know a whole lot about her," the young cultist admitted. "She's called 'the Lady of Serpents,' that’s pretty much all I know. Although I saw a scaly lady the other day at a café of all places, sitting there as bold as you please, with snakes instead of, you know, hair. A medusa, I think they're called. I dunno for sure if she's tied up with this demon or what, but it kind of fits. Is there a demon kind of medusa? Anyway, I really gotta go. See you guys tonight, okay? And don't kill me with the rest of the cult, right? I'll, like, be the guy that drops straight to the ground when you show up and covers his head with his hands. Okay? Cool." He began to usher himself out of the room with a sigh of relief. With any luck, these heroes would get him through the night with all ten of his fingers intact. However, Cal pushed Delphyne over to intercept him, and asked her to kindly escort Thurman out of the Guild Headquarters. Puzzled, the witch grabbed up Thurman's arm and led him down the stairs, looking questioning back at Cal and receiving a look which said he'd explain later.

"So what do you think?" asked Thunderwolf, amazed at the audacity of the young cultist and a little surprised that they didn't hold him for further questioning.

"Well, first of all, everything he told us is true," admitted Cal. "It looks like we'll need to show up and put a stop to this little summoning ritual tonight." He looked at the map Thurman had given them, studying the pentagram drawn in the largest room under the sewers, accessible by ladder from an upper level of the sewer system.

"Then let's go!" suggested Galrich, grabbing up his arsenal of weapons. Behind him, Aerik followed suit. Cal had to explain to the hot-headed barbarian that showing up too soon would alert the cultists, and make it more likely that some of them would escape to go on to do further mischief. The cleric of Kord wanted to get them all at once, which meant allowing them to gather together for their midnight ritual.

"Let's check up on our little cultist," suggested Cal as Delphyne returned to the common area. "Delphyne, now that you've had first-hand contact with Thurman, would you mind scrying on him for us?" He nodded over to the crystal ball they had unearthed in Nakariah's lair, which was perched on a stand on the low table in front of their sofa. Delphyne sat before the globe, ran her hands over it, and an image slowly formed in the crystal's interior. The others gathered around her and watched as Thurman crossed a street and approached a merchant's wagon, buying an inexpensive lunch of cheese and hardbread before heading back to the Styes, eating as he walked. He made it to what was apparently his parents' living quarters in the slums of the Styes, before crashing onto a bedroll in the corner and covering himself up with a tattered blanket. "Yeah, rest up," suggested Delphyne, watching the young cultist with disgust. "You've got a busy night ahead of you."

The group came up with several possible plans of attack. Galrich and Aerik were for the simple approach: bursting into the ritual chamber with weapons drawn and killing everyone in a cultist robe. Telgrane suggested possibly infiltrating the cultists by disguising themselves as new recruits; this was ultimately rejected once it was pointed out that a group of demon-worshipers would not likely invite new, untested recruits to join them in their first major attempt at summoning a powerful demon. Eventually, the adventurers decided to have Telgrane head into the sewers alone, carrying with him the Door That Doesn't Belong, inside which the others would be stationed. Telgrane would unroll and attach the Door to the wall of the upper sewers, the others would disembark, and then they'd climb down the ladder to the ritual room. Figuring the cultists would likely start assembling by 11 bells, they chose to have Telgrane enter the sewers about an hour earlier, giving the group plenty of time to reconnoiter.

There was some discussion about whether Telgrane should try disguising himself as he walked the streets of the Styes in the dark of the evening, but the group assumed that nobody would interfere with a man who had flames jetting out of his hollow eye sockets - and it turns out they were absolutely right, for Telgrane encountered no difficulties in making his way to the sewer opening that Thurman had indicated on his hand-drawn map. Sliding the manhole cover back over the opening in the street above him, Telgrane climbed his way down a short ladder and found himself in a winding mass of sewer passageways, lit only by the flames emanating from his own eyes.

He turned the corner, headed towards a passageway in the back where they likely wouldn't be seen by any cultists using this route to get to their hidden lair, turned another corner - and was spotted by a shadowy, winged figure that headed his way with a grin filled with sharp teeth.

Telgrane's initial assessment was that this was a gargoyle, for it was the same shape and general build, its hulking form barely fitting in the narrow sewer tunnels. He quickly cast a Mordenkainen's sword spell, causing a blade of black energy to manifest and strike at the beast - only to have it fizzle away into nothingness upon contact. Then the conjurer felt a shiver of soul-sucking cold run down from the creature's very gaze, and he had to focus on the ability to pop open the top of the tinderbox he wore strapped to the belt on his hip. This is no mere gargoyle, he thought to himself.

A stream of glowing embers arced out of the metal box, and Infernia stood between her master and the nabassu demon approaching. "I will deal with him, master!" she assured the wizard.

"Will you?" the demon asked, as he popped out of existence - and then popped back into existence directly behind Telgrane. However, rather than striking out at him, he merely cradled the wizard's chin with a massive hand filled with razor-sharp claws, and gave him a wicked smile filled with too many teeth to count. Telgrane jumped back in shock, his left hand still holding the rolled-up Door he was supposed to be deploying.

Inside the extradimensional space that was the interior of the Door That Doesn't Belong, Delphyne was getting antsy. "What's taking him so long?" she asked the others, unpacking the crystal ball she had taken with her. Focusing on an image of Telgrane, she cast her will through the sphere and tried to get an image of what the conjurer was up to.

Facing the nabassu and trying to get out of the way so Infernia could squeeze past her master, Telgrane suddenly felt an itching in his skull that experience told him was an attempt to scry on his location. Fearing it might be the cultists, he successfully blocked it with the power of his own will, and Delphyne sighed in frustration and put the crystal ball back away in its carrying case. "We should have worked out some kind of communication protocol," she said.

"There's not much we can do from in here until Telgrane gets the Door attached to a straight surface," said Cal. "Hopefully, whatever's taking so long doesn't take too much longer."

In the sewer tunnels, Infernia struck out at the nabassu and scored a direct hit, but then frowned as it seemed to disregard the flames engulfing her body. How the fire elemental disliked fighting enemies who were resistant to her flames!

"Just hold him off a bit longer!" advised Telgrane as he gave the rolled-up Door a quick snap and flipped it up against the wall of the sewers. But having done so, he found himself face-to-face with the nabassu again, the demon having teleported away from Infernia to attack the conjurer - and, inadvertently, stand directly in the path of the Door.

Galrich was standing in the vestibule behind the Door That Doesn't Belong with his hand on the doorknob, when the knob, which had been resisting his efforts to turn, suddenly gave way. He swung the Door open, only to see what looked like a gargoyle standing directly in front of him. He swiped at it with his greatsword, dealing a cut across the creature's abdomen. The nabassu turned to direct his gaze upon the impudent barbarian, and Galrich felt his life-force dissipating away.

Delphyne stood directly behind Galrich, and managed to target the nabassu around Galrich's bulk with a wand of magic missiles. Normally, this kind of attack was a sure-fire thing, but to the young witch's dismay the screeching missiles simply vanished upon striking the demon, leaving it untouched and unhurt by her attack. "It's resisting my spells!" she called to the others.

"Let's see it resist this one!" called back Telgrane, as he used his knowledge as an archmage to channel a mere cantrip into an arcane blast of pure magical energy. The bolt of arcane energy hit the nabassu - who, oddly stood with arms spread out as if welcoming the blast - and the demon grinned at the sight of Telgrane hunched over in pain as the exact same damage that hit the demon also manifested itself onto the conjurer's form. "He's linked himself to me somehow!" the archmage called to the others.

Cal had just called forth a spiritual weapon, which manifested as a glowing greatsword of the type favored by Kord, and sent it crashing into the demon. It was too late to stop the attack, but fortunately the sword bit into the nabassu and left Telgrane unaffected. "It looks like you're only linked to the damage you cause it yourself!" the cleric called out of the Door to Telgrane, for the demon still blocked their way and the other heroes had yet to find a way to exit their extradimensional space.

"Then it should be safe to have someone attack it my stead!" replied Telgrane, summoning an elder earth elemental which rose up out of the ground and pounded away at the nabassu. The demon teleported away out of sight, allowing the other heroes to exit the Door and enter the constricting sewer tunnels. Thunderwolf immediately broke left and flanked around behind the demon, shooting a flurry of arrows into its broad back. Galrich and Aerik took the more direct route, while Delphyne tried again with her wand, this time with success. But it was the massive fists of the earth elemental that struck the final blow, causing the demon's battered body to crumple into a grisly paste with bone fragments sticking out in all directions.

"It didn't disappear upon death," noted Cal. "It must have been called, or gated, rather than summoned."

"Funny how Thurman failed to mention they had a guardian in the sewers," noted Delphyne. "Is this whole thing a trap for us?"

"Most likely," admitted Cal. "It's still early, though; I don't know if I want to go burst into their ritual room if the whole cult hasn't shown up."

"I do," countered Galrich.

"Let's send in a reconnaissance force," suggested Telgrane, giving instructions to the earth elemental he had conjured to the sewers. After the archmage spoke to it to in its own guttural language, the mighty being of stone nodded once and sank back into the floor of the sewer. In the meantime, the spellcasters started preparing their standard buffing spells - a luxury they had had to do without during their fight with the nabassu. Several stoneskins and death wards later, Telgrane announced over his newly-established Rary's telepathic bond that all was in readiness.

The elemental reported back after a few moments, telling Telgrane that there were several dozen robed humans standing around a pentagram, each with one hand thrust above the five-pointed star and the other clutching a dagger.

"They're starting early!" yelled Telgrane. "They must have heard the ruckus we caused with our fight with the demon! Come on, we've got to stop them!"

The archmage was close; hidden invisibly in the far corner of the sewer network was a quasit, who had watched the heroes battle the nabassu with great relish, telepathically informing his master, the cult master Charnex below. Realizing they were standing just above them, the cult leader nodded to the others and they began the chanting ritual that would gate in the Lady of Serpents.

Delphyne scried upon Thurman through the crystal ball, knowing his will to be a fairly easy one to overcome. She saw him clearly in the globe, looking around frantically in fear, then wincing and cutting off the little finger of his left hand with the dagger in his right, as those around him did the same. The expression on his face said he couldn't believe it had actually come to this, but it was better than dying.

Telgrane sent the elder earth elemental back down to the lower level with instructions to pop up out of the floor and destroy the pentagram as he did so. The stone creature attempted to obey, but after sinking below the floor of the ritual chamber, it was surprised to find the floor above him resisted his ability to glide through solid stone - it was as if the interior of the carved pentagram had suddenly become a sheet of solid force through which the elemental could not pass. The creature attempted to follow its direct orders a second time, with the same results.

Galrich was the closest to the hatch on the floor that led down to the ritual room; while the elemental was having its difficulties with the ritual chamber's floor, Galrich swung up the hatch, took the fifteen feet of ladder at a jump, and raced into the chamber. The leader, as evidenced by his fancier robe, was standing not 20 feet directly in front of him, so the barbarian stoked the fires of his rage and charged him, his greataxe held high, as the chanting voices of thirty cultists echoed around the chamber.

He got a full ten feet into the room before crashing into the invisible wall of force, rebounding, and landing on his back with a look of utter surprise on his face and a torrent of blood gushing out of his broken nose.

Aerik was there behind him, pulling his liege back up to his feet as a form suddenly coalesced in the center of the pentagram, lit by the flickering torches in sconces around the chamber's farthest three walls. "Who dares summon Gorrogon, the Lady of Serpents, to this backwater world?" the six-armed fiend demanded in a voice sounding like thunder and the hissing of a teapot set to boil. Her left eye was white and unseeing, with a prominent scar from forehead to cheek explaining its blindness.

"I, Charnex, lead this cult," responded the cult member with the more ornate robe. "Great Lady of Serpents, we crave your demonic boon, and in return, we offer up these six adventurers and their mighty weapons, to add to your own personal arsenal!" Unnoticed behind the demon, one of the cultists at the back of the room fell flat upon the floor and covered his head with his hands, one of them now missing a finger. "Behold: a hammer of frost wielded by a cleric of Kord; a giant bane icy burst dwarven waraxe wielded by a follower of Moradin; the longsword Xanthros, wielded by--"

"XANTHROS?" interrupted the marilith, and Charnex froze in mid-sentence, unsure if he had angered his demonic patroness. "It was the accursed Xanthros who took my eye from me! It will bring me great pleasure to defeat its current wielder and use it against my enemies!" And with that, she headed directly for the group, her six longswords gleaming in the flickering torchlight.

At the same time, Xanthros was yelling directly into Thunderwolf's mind. "Gorrogon!" it cried, loud enough to make the young fighter wince and almost stumble down the ladder to stand behind Aerik and Galrich. "To battle, young Thunderwolf! We must defeat this foe at all costs!"

The three remaining spellcasters dropped down the ladder to enter the chamber as well, and Telgrane's magical arcane sight allowed him to see that the wall of force didn't extend the entire length of the room, but left two 5-foot passageways on either side of the chamber. He passed the information to the rest of the group via the Rary's telepathic bond. Then he cast a wall of fire in a circle around the pentagram, changing the flames into sonic energy at the last moment and encompassing all of the cultists but the cowering Thurman. The cultists screamed out in sudden pain and fell to the floor, dead; only Charnex seemed to have been made of sterner stuff, for he staggered away from the circle of sonic death with a trickle of blood leaking out of one ear.

Gorrogon wasted no time with the other heroes, focusing her full attention on Thunderwolf and his hated longsword. Not even bothering to slither the length of the chamber, she instead teleported to Thunderwolf's side and struck out with six longswords. Xanthros expertly deflected the first, but the other five got past Thunderwolf's defenses and he suddenly felt wounds opening up on both sides of his torso, both legs, and his left arm. Then, before anyone could react, the snarling demon lashed out with her tail, grabbing Thunderwolf up in its coils and squeezing the very life out of him. The fighter's vision began to blur, and he realized that to pass out now would mean he would never awaken. "Resist her!" demanded Xanthros, as black dots obscured the young fighter's vision. Then Cal invoked the words to a mass heal prayer, and a surge of life energy coursed through Thunderwolf's body, reknitting the ribs that were on the verge of breaking and sending new vigor into the fighter's limbs. He wrenched his right arm free and hacked away at Gorrogon's body, his sentient sword exulting in glory with every successful strike.

The elder earth elemental suddenly popped up out of the floor in the center of the pentagram; the ritual having been completed and the etchings on the floor no longer an active gateway between two different planes, it had resumed the consistency of normal stone and no longer resisted the elemental's advances. In accordance with its last orders, the massive being ripped up great chunks of the floor, destroying the pentagram permanently. Its stony brow furrowed as it noticed it was surrounded by a nearly-complete ring of sonic energy, some of which was chipping bits of gravel away from its stony exterior; noticing this, Telgrane belatedly dismissed his wall of sonics spell, causing Thurman to look up in surprise from his prone position on the floor. The cultist opted to stay where he was, though - it seemed the safer of his limited options.

Cal dropped Charnex with a flame strike spell, leaving Gorrogon as the only active foe against six angry heroes, a Large fire elemental, and an even larger earth elemental. The demon attempted to better her odds by mentally calling back to her home plane, telepathically trying to summon a nalfeshnee demon which owed her a favor. She hated to have to cash it in for something as trivial as combat with mere mortals, but she was well aware that her having been gated to the Material Plane rather than just summoned meant her death here - should it occur - would be permanent, and she was not about to let that happen.

As it turned out, she had little control over the matter. Before she could summon the willpower to return to her own Abyssal plane, her physical body, already damaged by the few spells that made it past her resistance and the accursed sword Xanthros, was pummeled by the boulderlike fists of the elder earth elemental Telgrane had summoned to fight the nabassu one level of sewers above. Gorrogon, the Lady of Serpents, gave a final hiss of indignation before her body was crushed beneath the elemental's stony fists, her six demonic blades clattering to the floor around her. Xanthros gave a mental cheer as Thunderwolf extricated himself from her coils.

"Like, it would have been nice if you'd have showed up a littler earlier," groused Thurman from the back of the room as he regained his feet, his left hand cradled in his bloodstained robes as he tried to staunch the bleeding from his severed pinky finger.

"C'mere, you," snarled Cal as he approached the cultist, hammer in hand. Thurman belatedly realized these heroes could easily do him as much harm as could have his former fellow cultists, and hurried to obey.

"Um, yeah?" asked Thurman, a trickle of fear in his voice.

"You've got some atoning to do," replied Cal, pointing with a finger at the floor by his feet, indicating that Thurman should kneel before him. Eager not to antagonize the musclebound cleric of the God of Strength, Thurman hastily dropped to his knees. "Is this going to take long?" he asked warily.

"Not at all," assured Cal, as he brought his hammer down upon the cultist's head, killing him instantly.

A quick check through the rest of the complex revealed little else in the way of threats. Charnex kept a small room just off the ritual chamber, inside which the group discovered the evil tome from which the nabassu and the marilith had been called to this plane. They took it with them for safekeeping, to be burned when they got back to their headquarters.

The adventurers were quite surprised to see a hefty vault door just off the room where the cult members apparently ate their meals, and wondered just how such a construction came to be, here beneath the sewers of the Styes. But secret lairs such as these were scattered throughout the lower layers of the Styes; likely the cult had discovered it and made use of it rather than installing it themselves. In any case, the elder earth elemental's last job before it returned to its own realm was to pull the vault doors off of their hinges, triggering a magical trap in the process that sent bolts of lightning coursing along the length of its craggy body. Inside the vault they found a chest of coins and the corpse of a Hieronean paladin - Delphyne was relieved to see to was a human in chain mail, not Akari as she had first feared - along with the materials needed to animate him as a skeleton or zombie servitor; apparently the evil cultists thought it would be funny to have an undead former paladin catering to their needs. Cal had a raise dead spell prepared, and seeing as the corpse was slain a mere handful of days before, Cal was able to restore the paladin's life. He thanked the group for a chance to continue to serve Hieroneous.

Returning to their Headquarters well after midnight, the heroes were dismayed to discover that Akari had yet to return from his meeting with the leader of his church. Delphyne attempted to scry upon him through the crystal ball, but got only gray static.

"That's odd," she remarked to her companions. "I wonder where he's gone?"

- - -

We played this adventure at our house on New Year's Day, followed by a two-family dinner cooked by my wife Mary. It was a good way to usher in the new year, we all decided. It was only after they had left, and I had tucked my nephew Harry into bed for the night that I realized I had missed a cool opportunity - this adventure would have been the perfect time for Xanthros to manifest the holy weapon property, especially after it had helped permanently destroy Gorrogon.

A little backstory, which was transmitted mentally from the sentient longsword to Thunderwolf: Xanthros was a holy fighter during his lifetime, basically the equivalent of a nonspellcasting paladin. He was celibate, as per the rules of his order, never marrying and having no children. Upon his death, his spirit entered his longsword, which was passed down to his brother's son. At that point, the longsword was named Xanthros, and it gained the abilities it has today.

Over the decades, Xanthros has been handed down from father to son in the bloodline of the original Xanthros's brother. However, some 30 years or so ago the sword's wielder was slain, and Xanthros was lost until it was discovered by Thunderwolf. (The sentient sword sensed Thunderwolf's bloodline; that was what caused it to initially call out to him telepathically.)

Xanthros's nephew, the first wielder of the intelligent longsword, was the one who put out Gorrogon's left eye. She never forgave him for the deed, and while she was unable to take her revenge upon him (as he's long since dead), she was more than happy to punish Thunderwolf in his stead. In this way, Gorrogon sought to "balance the damaged scales" by punishing Thunderwolf for his ancestor's actions. And Thunderwolf is literally "the blood of Xanthros" – the man, not the sword - all of which tied in rather nicely to the prophecy Thunderwolf received from the "crazy old woman" at the Pit-Fight back in adventure 74.

So anyway, I emailed the players and let them know that Xanthros had just become a holy weapon. I'm sure that Joey will be pleased.

ADVENTURE 79: MESSAGE FROM AKARI

PC Roster:
NPC Roster:
The adventurers of Wing Three were starting to get worried: they hadn't seen Akari in days, and nobody knew where he was. He had last been seen heading off to his Temple of Hieroneous, to help train a batch of new cadets, so that was the likely place to start in trying to track him down. A brief interview with Father Justinian, the head cleric of the Temple of Hieroneous, confirmed that Akari had been there several days ago training the new recruits until sundown, after which time he had talked to Father Justinian about Akari taking on the job of head weapons instructor at the new Temple being built across town. The Temple wouldn't be finished for another half-year or so, but they parted with the understanding that Akari would give Father Justinian his answer by the end of the month. He left after that, and none in the Temple had seen Akari since.

Delphyne used the crystal ball they had acquired from Nakariah's lair to try to scry upon the paladin, with no success: the image in the globe was merely a misty, gray-black curtain of shifting shadows, preventing her from making out any details. After several seconds of this, the image abruptly disappeared. The young witch allowed both Telgrane and Feron to attempt it, with the same results.

Rale assembled his troops and got them searching the area around the Temple of Hieroneous; his trusted lieutenant, a roguish type going only by Streetweasel, assured his boss they'd leave no stone unturned, although couldn't hazard a guess as to how long it would take to track down any information on Akari's whereabouts. Fortunately, with his horned tiefling features, Akari was a rather distinctive-looking individual, not easily forgotten.

Galrich and Chalkan gathered up their respective lupine companions, Fang and Toronaus, and allowed them to smell some of Akari's clothing left abandoned in his room at Guild Headquarters. Then, once the wolves had his scent, the adventurers took them to the Temple of Hieroneous (causing a small wave of panic among the passersby at the sight of the massive dire wolf) to pick up the missing paladin's scent. They caught Akari's trail almost at once, despite the several days that had passed since his last sighting. However, after entering the cobblestoned street and taking a lefthand turn (not coincidentally, the way Akari would have gone had he been heading for Guild Headquarters after leaving the Temple of Hieroneous), they suddenly and inexplicably lost the scent a few hundred feet down the street. The two wolves circled the area several times, but were unable to pick up the scent again. It was as if Akari had literally just vanished from the spot.

Delphyne continued trying to scry on Akari through her crystal ball each day, with the same frustrating results. On the third day of their investigations, however, Streetweasel reported back that they had unearthed a rather dubious potential eyewitness, in the form of one Toothless Clara, a notorious ageing drunkard. She claimed to have seen an "obviously sloshed figure" in armor (matching Akari's description) staggering around and striking around at nothing, before collapsing to the ground. Clara's attention was then diverted to the client she was entertaining in the alleyway, but there was a bright light a few minutes later, and the armor-clad individual was gone. Toothless Clara claimed it looked like he was trying to fight ghosts, except that made no sense, because "everybody knows there's no such thing as ghosts."

Feron went to the spot where the homeless drunkard claimed to have seen Akari staggering around and cast a stone tell on the stone wall of a building facing the street. She then asked the stones if they had seen a tiefling paladin acting as Toothless Clara had described. After confessing they didn't know what "tiefling" or "paladin" meant and getting a more helpful description from the druid, the stone wall was able to confirm that it had indeed seen such an individual behaving in such a fashion. Feron asked what happened after he had collapsed, and the stone wall described Akari hovering about three feet above the street, and disappearing into an upright circle of light that disappeared itself several seconds later.

Armed with this information, Cal cast a commune spell and asked Kord's intermediaries the following series of questions:

"Is Akari still alive?"

"Yes."

"Is Akari still on the material plane?"

"No."

"Is he on an Elemental Plane?"

"No."

"Is he on an Outer Plane?"

"Yes."

"Is he being held against his will?"

"Yes."

"Was he captured by an enemy previously known to him?"

"No."

"Is he being used as bait to try to lure us into a trap by trying to rescue him?"

"No."

"Is he being held by the forces of Hextor?" This was a logical guess, since the churches of Hextor and Hieroneous were sworn enemies.

"No."

"Is he being held by devils?" Now Cal was just throwing out guesses, but the commune spell required him to continue firing off questions without pause or be cut off.

"No."

"Is he being held by demons?"

"Yes." Ah, thought Cal. Now we're getting somewhere.

"Is Grottlepox the Puppeteer still alive?" The adventuring group had read a message, "We killed Grottlepox," scrawled in ashes upon Akari's shield when it was returned to them from the nalfeshnee's Abyssal realm, but you never knew with demons - maybe he had returned to life, or maybe the message had been some sort of demonic hoax of some type.

"No." That was a relief.

"Is Akari being held on the Muckmire Fens?"

"No."

"Was he captured specifically because of who he is?"

"Yes."

"Is a demon lord involved in his capture?"

"Yes."

"Crap!" added Rale. "I'm out! I'm not going up against a demon lord!"

"Sssh!" chided Delphyne, who didn't want Rale breaking Cal's concentration.

"Are we likely to be able to rescue Akari from his current location?" asked Cal.

This time, there was a delay in the response, as if the responder were calculating the odds. "...No," came the final reply.

That was all Cal could think of to ask. He allowed the spell to dissipate, and looked at the other adventurers grouped around him. Their expressions showed fear, horror, and trepidation. There wasn't much more they could do that day, other than hit up their friend Brother Altamaic at the Temple of Boccob and try to get a handle on the various demon lords. It was almost a futile attempt, though - the Abyss was said to be a plane with infinite layers, which meant an infinite number of potential demon lords; even if the number were pared down to 666 layers (as some scholars insisted), that didn't do much to cut the number of potential demon lords responsible for Akari's abduction down to a manageable size. Delphyne vowed to try another scrying attempt the following day - it was all she could think to do.

- - -

The next morning, the others surrounded Delphyne in the Wing Three living quarters, looking over her shoulder as she attempted to capture Akari's image in the crystal ball. Even Dez was there, talking nervously to her boss, Rale, in the corner.

Delphyne passed her hands over the glass globe, concentrating fiercely on Akari's image. The image appeared as it had before: a shifting, swirling mass of shadows that prevented anything from being seen clearly. This time, however, instead of being shut off after several seconds, a furious, powerful voice boomed out "ENOUGH!" Immediately thereafter, the crystal ball shattered into a million shards, cutting the flesh of those in the vicinity. There were shrieks of surprise and pain from those assembled around Delphyne, and then Thunderwolf cried out "Look!" while pointing to their kitchen area.

Following the young fighter's pointing finger, the adventurers saw the space in their living quarters leading to the dining room and kitchen area stretch in some unknown way, causing an infinite corridor leading off into the unknown. From the far end of this eternal corridor rode an armored warrior astride a thin, black horse. They came to an abrupt stop in the living quarters, and the armored figure leapt off from his mount. Those closest to the intruders could see hunks of flesh missing from the ebony body of the snorting mount, and maggots writhing through its flesh. Icy mist streamed from its blowing nostrils, and emanated from its mane and hooves; the carpet around where it stood immediately started icing over. Then the horse-thing started fading from view, leaving only a ghostly afterimage that likewise faded from view after a few seconds.

Thunderwolf and Chalkan had notched arrows to their respective bows and pointed them at the intruder, Chalkan jumping up onto the sofa, the better to be able to shoot over the heads of his companions. Aerik hefted his axe and stood protectively between the black-armored man and his liege, Galrich. Dez cast a quick seeming spell that made Rale and her look like insignificant Guild pages, hopefully keeping them from being targeted by this unknown enemy. Nobody attacked directly, waiting to see what the strange intruder would do, and a few of the adventurers looking over at Cal, their unofficial leader, for orders.

None of the group recognized the spiked, black armor the man wore, the horned helmet atop his head, the stylized screaming skull on his shield, or the ebony longsword strapped to his hip. However, when he removed his helmet they recognized at once the face of Akari, their erstwhile tiefling companion. He wore a cold expression, his red eyes burning brightly in sharp contrast to the pale ivory of his skin.

"Be still!" commanded Akari, raising his black-gauntleted left hand to the group at large. As one, each of the heroes felt their bodies locking up, their minds willed into instant obedience. Even Cal, who prided himself on having a willpower great enough to overcome just about any attempts at domination, felt himself unable to move a muscle against Akari's command.

"Your attempts to track me down, to find out where I have gone, are proving to be irritating to my new Master," Akari said, "and he has sent me here to put a stop to it. So stop it I will."

Akari looked across the room at each of the heroes in turn, as if making a painful decision. Then he spoke again, his decision apparently made.

"Delphyne, come stand before me," he commanded to the young witch.

Delphyne took a hesitant first step towards Akari, fear evident on her face. It was perhaps this very fear that gave her the strength to break free from the mass domination effect; instead of meekly complying with Akari's orders, she spoke the words to a magic circle against evil spell, sending an invisible shield ten feet in all directions from her body that freed her and her companions from Akari's mental sway. Or almost all, anyway - Dez and Cal were both outside the radius of her protection, and thus remained immobile as the others were freed to let loose with their attacks. Arrows clanged off of Akari's shield and armor, as Thunderwolf and Chalkan put their bows to good use. Feron summoned a greater air elemental behind Akari, hoping it would be able to grapple him into submission without harming him. Seeing this, Aerik chose to hold his liege back, not wanting to fight this unknown version of Akari, for the dwarf could see Akari's pale skin hung tightly to his skull, and feared that the former paladin was now some type of undead monstrosity - and he didn't want Galrich to face an undead foe without knowing more about the enemy.

Akari saw immediately that his plans of making an example of Delphyne - he had planned to drain her to unconsciousness while the others watched helplessly, before leaving them with a warning to stop seeking him out - were no longer viable. So while dodging the air elemental's blows, he turned to Cal, currently unprotected by Delphyne's magic circle, and commanded him to dispel the witch's spell. Cal moved immediately to obey - fortunately, he had two dispel magic spells currently in his spell inventory - but failed to overcome the witch's magic, and the spell remained in effect.

Delphyne came to an immediate decision. She knew that moving forward would leave Chalkan unprotected up on the sofa, but she had come to the inescapable conclusion that they needed Cal, so she pushed forward until the cleric of Kord was encompassed in the radius of her magic circle against evil spell. Just as Chalkan froze back up, Akari's previous orders to "Be still!" taking up residence in his brain once again, Cal found himself able to move and act again.

He had several options before him. He could fight, with any of a dozen powerful spells that could do Akari a great deal of harm or with the strength of his Kord-powered muscles wielding his hammer of frost, but instead opted to appeal to reason. "Hold up!" he called to the others, raising his right hand for attention. Those capable of movement did so, looking to see what Cal had in mind.

Cal stepped forward towards Akari. "What are your intentions here?" he asked the black-clad warrior.

"As I have stated," replied Akari. "To convince you to stop looking for me, as you are irritating my new Master."

"You can't have chosen this!" argued Delphyne. "This was done to you against your will! You have to let us find a way to restore you back the way you were!"

"The man I once was is no more," responded Akari. "Weep for him if you like...rail against the cruel fates if it makes you feel any better...or cuss...but the Akari you knew is dead forevermore. Seek me out no further. I live now in the vastness of the Outer Planes, and will not return to this mortal world of yours again, if I am given no cause to do so."

His red eyes narrowed into slits as he glared at his former companions, letting his gaze focus on Delphyne's bare neck. "Do not give me cause to return to this world."

"So you'll leave us alone?" asked Cal for confirmation. "And we'll leave you be?"

"No!" Delphyne yelled. "He never would have left us to such a fate, if the roles were reversed! We have to help him!"

"I am beyond your help," replied Akari, raising his hand and summoning his undead mount. It remanifested in the same spot in the general living quarters, and the others began to suspect it had been standing right there this whole time, observing events from the Ethereal Plane.

Akari the blackguard leapt upon the undead frost nightmare with a single motion, then twisted the mount away from the heroes. The space towards the kitchen expanded away into infinity again, and the blackguard rode down the eternal corridor, becoming a mere speck in the distance until the distance returned to its normal configuration and the kitchen was as it once was.

The only physical sign of Akari's visit was a patch of ice on the carpet in the living quarters, already beginning to melt. But that didn't matter; Akari had come to send a message to his former friends, and that message had definitely been sent.

- - -

This was a fun mini-adventure to run. I think Vicki figured out it was Akari a mere second or two before he took off his helmet, and almost let out a profanity quite unlike her normal behavior. And the plan was for Akari to have made Delphyne approach him, so he could sink his fangs into her neck and drain her of blood until she slipped into unconsciousness. I had specifically targeted Delphyne because of her background; with both of her parents having been slain by vampires, it just added that extra little bit of creepiness. Of course, giving her a new command also meant giving her a new saving throw, and she rolled a natural 20 exactly when she needed it, which gave her an opportunity to cast that magic circle against evil spell that pretty much ruined all of my plans. (I figured we'd spend about an hour on finding out what happened to Akari and then move of to the "real" adventure I had prepared; instead, we spent two and a half hours of our 6-hour game session on "Message from Akari.")

But it was worth it.

FLASHBACK - ADVENTURE 77: SERVANTS OF ORCUS

PC Roster:
Okay, now that the other PCs in the Wing Three campaign have found out what came of Akari, there's no reason to keep the rest of you in the dark about it. The following is what happened when I ran Logan through a solo adventure with his tiefling paladin, Akari.

- - -

"Thank you for meeting me," offered Father Justinian, head cleric of the Temple of Hieroneous, as Akari stood before him across from his desk.

"But of course," replied Akari. He carried his helmet at his side but was otherwise in full armor, having just finished a combat training session with some of the younger recruits of the church.

"I watched you train with the acolytes," began Father Justinian. "I was very impressed. They can learn a lot from you."

"Thank you, Holy Father. That is certainly my intention."

"You enjoy training the acolytes?"

"I do."

"Would you consider doing so on a more...permanent basis?"

Akari cocked his horned head to the side, puzzled. "Sir?" he asked.

"As you know, we are in the beginning stages of construction of the new Temple, across town. The building itself won't be finished for another six months, but once it is I expect all of the acolytes intending to tread the path of cleric or paladin to undergo combat training at our new facility. And I'd like to offer up the position of head weapons master to you, Akari."

Akari snapped to full attention. "That is quite a compliment, Holy Father," he said.

"I can think of no better man for the position," replied Father Justinian. "Now, I understand you still have duties at your Adventurers Guild, and I don't want to take you from those duties - good heavens, you've just recently prevented the sun from being extinguished! So we'll have to find a way to work around your adventuring schedule, but I'm sure we can figure something out. And I don't need an answer right away from you, so think it over. But I'd like an answer by the end of the month, so we have time to make other arrangements if you decide otherwise."

"As you wish, Holy Father," replied Akari. Then Father Justinian bid him goodnight, and he turned and exited the Church of Hieroneous, his thoughts a blur over what he had just been offered. Absently flipping his helmet over his head, he turned and headed towards the Adventurers Guild, thinking over the ramifications. He'd have to talk to Telgrane, his "bink partner," to see how he would feel about possibly adventuring without a backup. He'd need to talk to Guildmaster Farthingale, of course. And he should at least talk to the others in his Wing, to get their inputs....

His train of thought was suddenly interrupted by a series of clinks emanating from the chestplate of his armor. Looking down, he saw a small collection of crossbow bolts clattering down onto the cobblestones of the street, and belatedly realized he was under attack.

Akari raised his shield in the direction the bolts had been fired, but was hit from either side as well. Peering over his shield and seeing no enemies in the open street with him, he concentrated on his ability to detect evil and got a clear sense that there was an entire arc of evil centered around him, immediately before him and to either side. As he realized he was nearly surrounded by invisible foes, bolts continued to strike him from all sides, but none were able to pierce his magical armor, which covered him from head to toe.

At the same time, he also felt that the crossbow bolts weren't the only means of attack, for he felt a tingling in his head that experience taught him were attempts to capture his willpower via spells. He couldn't tell if these were hold person spells or dominate person spells, but they felt like something along those lines. Fortunately, he was able to steel his mind against such attacks, and the spells failed to take hold.

Akari pulled Deathstriker from his belt, swung it over his head, and released it, aiming for what he determined would be chest level of a standard-sized person standing directly ahead of him. The magical warhammer flew true, coming to an abrupt halt in midair some 20 feet away to the sounds of a "Whoof!" of pain and surprise. There was the sound of a body hitting the street as Akari opened his hand and Deathstriker obediently returned. But at the same time, a spell finally made it past the resistance provided by Akari's shield, and he found himself suddenly blind - granted, no worse than he had been, considering his opponents were all cloaked in greater invisibility spells, but disconcerting nonetheless.

"This isn't working!" cried an unseen voice. "Get him!"

Akari suddenly felt a body attempt to tackle him from the front; he steadied his stance and remained upright, giving his invisible assailant a steel gauntlet in the face for his trouble. Another invisible attacker plowed into him from his left, followed almost immediately by another from the right, but it wasn't until a fourth attacker dropped and grabbed the paladin's legs from behind that the unseen assault force managed to topple Akari onto his back.

An unseen dog-pile then began, with body after body jumping onto Akari's arms and legs and holding him down. The paladin felt someone trying to pry Deathstriker from his hand, but he tightened his grasp and held onto his weapon. Clinks along his armor told him that they were still trying to stab him with the crossbow bolts, but were unable to puncture through his armor.

The assailants figured this out as well, and soon some were pulling off Akari's helmet while others tugged at the paladin's boots. "Here!" cried a voice from near Akari's legs, as the paladin felt the cool evening air on his left foot - they had managed to remove his sock as well as his boot.

Akari's left foot suddenly became the choice target of his unseen foes, and the paladin felt a series of puncture wounds on his ankle and foot as the still-invisible crossbow bolts were stabbed through his skin. The tiefling could feel the poison coursing through his system soon after, as the strength left his limbs. And still, while all of this was happening, he could feel a constant barrage of assaults against his mind, as spells were cast from unseen lips. Akari realized he was in actual danger and started to make the mental call to his loyal griffon in the Beastlands when everything suddenly froze for the paladin - his limbs had no strength at all, and his mind no longer wanted to resist his assailants. He lay there in a blissful lethargy, no longer having to make decisions about what to do, no longer having to do anything at all. His new masters would take care of him.

"Man, that was a close thing!" called out the unseen voice that apparently was directing the others. "Okay, gather up all of his stuff, and let's get him to Orcus."

Hidden in the shadows on a nearby alleyway as well as by the greater invisibility spells cloaking their forms, Tiatianna and Justaine looked on, Tiatianna's magically-enhanced eyesight allowing her to see invisible creatures. She watched as the Orcus cultists gathered up Akari, his weapons and shield, his helmet and boot, and the crossbow bolts that had been scattered in the attack, the heads of the latter each liberally coated in the venom of a purple worm. Then the leader opened a gate, and the group stepped through.

"This doesn't feel right," Tiatianna said, watching them leave and dropping the greater invisibility spell cloaking her form. Her elven eyes glowed with power, radiant energy spilling out from the valkyrie she had imprisoned in her lithe body.

"It's necessary if we're going to take down Orcus on his own plane," responded Justaine gruffly, returning to visibility as well. He was a cleric, ostensibly of the deities of good, but he had sworn to take down Orcus by any means necessary and this was all part of the best path to achieving their goal.

"Hey, we discussed this, kiddies," said Benny the Devil, stepping up behind them and putting an incorporeal arm around - and occasionally through - their shoulders. "Orcus spends a week torturing a good-aligned paladin, and at the end of that time he's got a self-loathing undead servant who'll do anything he commands while hating himself for doing it. But most importantly, the Unhallowing ceremony will weaken Orcus significantly - and that's when we'll strike. It's our best chance."

"I know," said Tiatianna sadly.

"C'mon, you grumpy lot," said Benny. "We've still got lots of work to do, and now only a week to do it in. Let's go back to the calcified remains of our Elder God on the Astral Plane, and see about raising you guys that army of devils! We're gonna need 'em to fight off the army of demons and undead in Orcus's realm if you're going to have a chance to take down the Big Guy! But I know you guys will come through! You always come through!" The information devil reached into his vest pocket and brought out a piece of chalk as he talked. Concentrating furiously on the chalk until he was able to manifest it in the material world, he hastily started scribbling arcane formula onto the cobblestones of the street, centered around a circle he had drawn.

"There we go!" Benny said proudly after finishing his gate. "Last one in's a rotten egg!"

The trio stepped into the chalk circle and were gone.

- - -

Okay, I imagine this is going to require a little extra explanation. "Wing Three" is only one of two campaigns I'm currently running. When 3E first came out, I started up a campaign with my two sons, Stuart and Logan. We decided that we'd have each of the two players run two different PCs concurrently, and that if anybody got killed (in the early stages before resurrection was a possibility) any replacement characters had to be a new class that we hadn't used before, so we could get a good "feel" for the 11 classes of 3E. The boys probably ran through 4-5 PCs each, but Justaine was one of Stuart's original PCs, and Tiatianna was one of Logan's "first replacement" PCs - in fact, she was the sorcerer daughter of one of his original 3E PCs, an elven paladin named Lhorgan.

In the course of our campaign, we ran an adventure from the pages of Dungeon magazine called "Headless." Written by none other than James Jacobs himself, it dealt with a plot to create a Deadgate, which when constructed and activated would shunt the souls of the recently-slain not to their earned afterlife, but directly to Orcus's realm, thereby increasing his power. We'd gone through quite a lot of adventures by that time, but "Headless" gave us our first TPK.

However, due to the specific plotline of "Headless," I realized that the TPK didn't necessarily have to spell the end of that campaign. Instead, I had the slain PCs (at that point, they were Justaine the cleric, Tiatianna the sorcerer, Veridian the druid, Soriah the fighter, and Kane the awakened dire wolf) "wake up dead" at Orcus's feet on his Abyssal plane of Thanatos with no memories of their former lives. Orcus, the Demon Lord of the Undead, informed them that they were demons - his trusted lieutenants, in fact - who had failed in an attempt to overthrow Orcus and take his throne for themselves. However, rather than kill these upstart demons, he decided to imprison them in the bodies of mortals and make them earn their way back into his good graces. Not knowing anything at all but that what they were told by Orcus, these evil PCs (now named Germtongue, Titmouse, Vilechild, Snakeheart, and Karkass) went on a series of missions for Orcus to prove their value.

I think I had them run through three adventures believing themselves to be evil demons in mortal form before they ran across Tiatianna's father Lhorgan, who after his death had become a deva and was there to stop these "demons" from accomplishing their goals. Recognizing his daughter and Justaine (with whom he had adventured with during his life), he called out to them by name; hearing their true names restored the memories to both, but the others escaped and reported back to Orcus before Tiatianna and Justaine could do the same for them.

The next three adventures were spent trying to undo all of the damage they had done while "demons" - "Germtongue" had, for example, gated in a succubus and a marilith demon to assist them in one of their Orcus missions, and left them roaming Oerth after said mission was over. (And as I recall, on their very first mission as "demons," their very first act upon being gated naked and weaponless to the material plane was to ambush a pair of Hieronean paladins for their weapons and armor.) But by this point, our campaign - which up until "Headless" had simply been a series of unconnected adventures from Dungeon - now had an overarching goal: Stuart and Logan (mostly Stuart) wanted to take down Orcus in his castle in Thanatos. We decided our final adventure in this campaign would be an assault upon Thanatos when the PCs were both 20th level.

To that end, I introduced a new NPC: Benny the information devil. Benny was a bureaucratic sort, basically the Hellish equivalent of an office drone, spending his days scrying upon mortals and making assessments on which ones would be ripe for temptation and the selling of their mortal souls. All would have been fine for Benny had he not been caught poaching - in the harem of an Archduke of Hell. Benny was sentenced to permanent incorporeality - unable to affect the material world in any way. However, Hellish law allows for an "escape clause" to any punishment, so the Archduke gave him one he thought would be impossible to achieve: take down Orcus, the Demon Lord of the Undead.

However, being an information devil, Benny had a means of checking up on mortals, and he soon found that Justaine and Tiatianna had the same goal, so he appeared before them and offered to join forces. He never tried to hide the fact that he was a lawful evil devil, but played heavily on "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," and assisted the two in undoing the evil they had perpetrated as "demons." (He was responsible for trapping the marilith "Germtongue" had brought to Oerth into a chalk circle that gated her to the Upper Planes, ultimately leading to her certain destruction, for example.)

Stuart and Logan both eventually went off to college, and this campaign crawled to a near halt, as we could only advance the plot when they were both at home. So while "Wing Three" progresses along at about an adventure a month or so, "The Orcus Campaign" (as we call it) only progresses at one or two adventures a year.

In any case, by the time "Wing Three" was up to its 77th adventure, in "The Orcus Campaign" this was the plan to take down Orcus:

• Have an extradimensional tattoo placed upon Justaine's chest. (Done.)
• Go to the Nine Hells and retrieve a holy longspear of fiendslaying that had once been used to kill an Archduke of Hell. Once retrieved, place the longspear in the extradimensional tattoo. (Done.)
• Go to Ysgard and earn the services of a valkyrie willing to help take down Orcus. (Done: Hildebrun the Valkyrie is now resident inside Tiatianna's body, waiting to be unleashed at Orcus at the proper time. We've determined that Hildebrun's kamikaze sacrifice will weaken Orcus to the point he should be able to be overcome by the PCs.)
• Have a pair of drone constructs built by Bindlestaff the Animator, which can be "piloted" to Thanatos without being detected, as Benny the Devil cannot draw a chalk gate to anyplace he hasn't already been to or at least "seen" through some type of scrying device. (Done.)
• Find the calcified remains of an Elder God floating in the Graveyard of the Gods in the Astral Plane, and learn to pilot it. (Done; they found what is likely to be Cthulhu.)
• Obtain a magic chain from the Cyclops metalsmith in Tarterus responsible for imprisoning gods and titans; use it to create a superpowered version of iron bands of Bilarro capable of wrapping around Orcus's hand, imprisoning his rod of Orcus during the upcoming fight, preventing its use against the PCs.
• Hire the services of an army of devils willing to extend the Blood War directly into Orcus's Realm.
• Summon the Hellcow to calcified Cthulhu to fortify the PCs so they can temporarily exist without harm in Orcus's Abyssal Plane.
• Pilot calcified Cthulhu through an enormous chalk gate leading directly above Orcus's castle in Thanatos, exiting before it plummets into the castle and making one Hell of an announcement of "We're here, and we'd like a word with you."
• While the army of devils fights off the army of demons and undead, the PCs make it to Orcus and take him down. After Brunhilde weakens Orcus and the Destroyer (a marut working with the PCs) deploys the enchanted chain to bind the rod of Orcus, Justaine makes the killing blow with the holy longspear of fiendslaying.

So that's the plan, anyway. But Benny recently learned of "The Unhallowing," a ritual that Orcus performs on a good-aligned paladin or cleric, which weakens him after a week of torture and siphoning of his undead essence into his new unwilling slave. Learning that Orcus had entrusted the capture of a suitable host to one of his human cults, and fearing that those bozos would likely mess it up, Benny convinced Justaine and Tiatianna that they needed to assist with the capture of the paladin, quietly behind the scenes so as not to tip off the cult that Orcus's stated enemies were actually assisting them.

And that is where the two campaigns suddenly collided. As Benny, I convinced the chaotic good cleric Justaine and the chaotic neutral Tiatianna that this was a necessary evil that would ultimately help pave the way to a bigger good: the total destruction of Orcus, Demon Lord of the Undead. I was sure to point out that the main goal was to get Orcus to his weakened state so they could more easily kill him, and that after Orcus had been slain, they would be able to slay the undead paladin (if he even survived the assault upon Orcus) and then resurrect him back to his pre-undead state. So they agreed on this plan of action.

So then, out of the blue, I asked Logan if he wanted to run a quick encounter with Akari, setting it up as a discussion with the high priest of Akari's Church of Hieroneous about a possible follow-on position at the end of the campaign. (The "Wing Three" campaign got its first 20th-level PC, Cal, one adventure ago, so we're starting to think about wrapping up loose plotlines and deciding on post-campaign careers for the PCs.) Logan was fine with the combat against invisible enemies up until the final words of the invisible head cultist, and realized that his PC in the Orcus Campaign had just authorized the destruction of his PC in the Wing Three campaign.

So here's a fond farewell to Akari, who started out as a human, was reborn as an elf, was forcefully transformed into a tiefling, and ultimately became a self-loathing vampire under the direct command of Orcus, the Demon Lord of the Undead. He'll be there when Justaine, Tiatianna, Benny, and the Destroyer storm Orcus's castle on Thanatos, doing his best to destroy those who would harm Lord Orcus and hating his every action as he does so.

ADVENTURE 80: VLINDARIAN'S VAULT

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Binked In:
Wow, it's been awhile since I ran a published adventure - way back to adventure 51, when I ran "Beyond the Light of Reason." That's a string of 28 adventures written specifically for my gaming group - not a bad record. (And it's certainly a record for me, whose gaming career up until this campaign consisted almost exclusively of published adventures.)

But this next adventure is where I broke my own streak, although I did so by running my group through a published adventure that I had written myself: "Vlindarian's Vault," from Dungeon #141. It was written for 4 PCs of 18th level, and I had decided I wanted to dust it off and send the Wing Three PCs through it when they were of appropriate level, because I wasn't going to get a chance to do so again for some time. (I figure in another year or so, this campaign will be finished up and we'll all start up again with 1st-level characters.)

I did change a few things from the way this adventure was written, though. Actually, I should say I changed a few things back to the way they were originally written - or at least "originally written under its current title," as the core of the adventure was originally written as "Return to Gorgoldand's Gauntlet." James Jacobs, the editor of Dungeon at the time, liked the core concept but had me rewrite about 75% of it because WotC had "gone to the 'Return to' well a few too many times" and he felt they had used half-dragons too frequently at the time in the adventures published in the magazine. (I had a half-dragon as the daughter of the main villain, an ogre mage with additional spellcaster levels.) So it got a major overhaul, and became "Vlindarian's Vault," an adventure in which the PCs had to infiltrate a secure storage area to rescue an individual held captive there.

I sent in my reworked adventure, heard nothing back for about half a year, and then out of the blue received a contract in the mail. When it was published, I was surprised to see the vast number of changes that had been made. Vlindarian originally wore the form of a blind medusa (for reasons that actually made a sort of logical sense); that was done away with in the published version. (They even changed the logo for the business from a blindfolded medusa's head to a sunken treasure chest.) I had a bunch of human fighters providing security; these were turned into a band of monsters from the Monster Manual of the appropriate CR. Likewise, I used a pair of deathstalkers as guards in my original manuscript; these were turned into a pair of fiends from the Monster Manual of the appropriate CR. As a trap/guardian towards the end of the adventure, I used a monster from Monster Manual III; this was replaced by a fiend of the appropriate CR from the pages of the Monster Manual. I know why the changes were made to my monster selection: it saves space on the printed page to delete a full stat block and replace it with "[Monster Name] (2): hp XX, XX; MM/page YY." But I was a little bummed nonetheless.

So anyway, when I ran my players through this adventure, I restored a bunch of the monsters back to my original choices. Vlindarian once again wore the form of a blind medusa (and I even planned what she'd say to the PCs if they approached her before they tried assaulting the Vault, but alas, they opted not to try that approach). I got rid of the ultroloth (I never really liked those guys) that had replaced my original monster in the area where the captive had been stored.

And, perhaps most importantly of all, I changed who was trying to hire the PCs to rescue the captive spirited away to the Vault, and who had been captured in the first place. My original manuscript called for a man named Glistern to hire the PCs to rescue his mentor Sandilgrover; the published version has Glistern trying to retrieve his mate, Sumerthain; the version I ran for my players had Sandilgrover hiring the PCs to rescue his mentor, none other than Gorgoldand himself, which in a way brought the whole adventure full circle back to the "Return to Gorgoldand's Gauntlet" adventure I had originally planned. And that in itself is rather cool, as circles play a somewhat important part in the adventure as written.

Anyway, without giving away details of the adventure as published (don't worry about me letting on that Vlindarian's "blind medusa" form is a fake - the point never even comes up in the published version, and the PCs only meet up with her in her normal form, if at all), the PCs were hired by Sandilgrover and snuck into the Vault by magic (but did so in a way that left two of them stranded there shortly after gating into where Gorgoldand was kept, forcing the other PCs to try to break into the Vault in a completely different way to try to get them back, while the two "stuck" PCs struggled to find a way back out of the Vault on their own). The whole thing ended up in a massive clash of forces there in the administrative sections of the above-ground "Vlindarian's Vault" office area, where Delphyne was eventually slain by being in the area of effect of one too many spells, and Dez had to activate Delphyne's Guild ring to "bink" her back to HQ, to be replaced almost immediately by Feron Dru, who then finished out the rest of the adventure. Likewise, Thunderwolf was petrified in the final battle, so Joey ended up running Aerik for the rest of the adventure.

But the PCs were ultimately successful, Gorgoldand was rescued, and the group earned 50,000 gp from a grateful Sandilgrover. Gorgoldand had a pretty good idea about who had had him kidnapped and why, and said he wanted to check out a few things before getting back to the PCs with an opportunity to go on a quest for a powerful artifact. (As you might expect, that was a future plot hook; adventure 83 is due to be the adventure where they go fetch the artifact that was worth kidnapping Gorgoldand over.)

We did learn that Vicki absolutely hates Desdemona "Dez" Honeytongue, referring to her as "that whore" throughout the adventure. The image I used for her initiative card is of a fairly buxom female human spellcaster in a low-cut peasant blouse with a magic staff in one hand. Vicki turned down an offer to run Dez after Delphyne was slain, because she didn't want to be responsible for killing another player's cohort NPC (although she did specify that she'd be perfectly fine if Dez were killed; she just didn't want to be the one running her if she were - which ended up being unintentional foreshadowing on her part, as it turned out).

Anyway, I don't have any plans to run any more published adventures in this campaign, although you never know. The next four, in any case, are all ones I wrote specifically for this campaign.

INTERLUDE: AKARI'S MEMORIAL

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Immediately after we finished up "Vlindarian's Vault," during the same game session, we took a brief interlude between adventures so that Vicki could spring a surprise she had planned. She had decided that her two PCs, at least, wanted to have a wake for their fallen adventurer-in-arms, Akari. Vicki had contacted me via email with this plan, and I thought it sounded awesome. She didn't want to do anything fancy, just have Delphyne say a few words about how much Akari had meant to the group; Feron's contribution would be to sing an elven lament in the background. (She quickly specified that she'd be willing to read Delphyne's words to the group, but wasn't up to singing in Elven as well, and suggested having some music in the background filling in for Feron's role.)

As an incentive to carry through with this plan, I offered up an XP bonus for Delphyne and Feron if Vicki went through with this. She wrote out some brief notes about what Delphyne was to say, and before starting the adventure that followed "Vlindarian's Vault" we explained to the group that there was to be a brief memorial service for Akari. It was just a small gathering, consisting of the Adventurers Guild members and Akari's mother, Rezuma Naruchi (who was touched that her son had made such an impression upon the group of powerful heroes). Feron's elven lament was interwoven with a summon nature's ally V spell at the end, in which she had included Tsukitora's name, so Akari's faithful griffon mount made one last appearance on the Material Plane, flying in a wide circle overhead before disappearing into the sunset.

And then, after Delphyne's speech was over and Feron's song had finished (we decided the Dead Can Dance song, "The Host of Seraphim," made for a suitable elven lament - it's the song that plays at the end of "The Mist" right before the tanks roll in, if it doesn't otherwise ring a bell), Dan got up from his chair and, in character as Rale, started passing out mementos to each of the players, "in remembrance of Akari."

Naturally, the "mementos" took the form of a tea bag.

I ended up giving Rale bonus XP as well. How could I not?

ADVENTURE 81: THE YELLOW GREEN BLUES

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Farthingale wore a concerned expression on his face as he bid the group of Wing Three adventurers to sit down around their own kitchen table. "We have a problem," he began. "Four members of Wing Seven are out in the field, and they recently sent word they had unearthed a cache of evil weapons they were bringing in to be destroyed. However, they are overdue by several days. All attempts to scry upon them have failed. I want to send you in to find them, find the evil weapons they discovered, and bring them all back here safely."

"What more can you tell us?" asked Thunderwolf, eager as always for adventure but wise enough to have learned that the well-prepared hero was the one most likely to return home intact.

"We know the following," responded the Guildmaster to his nephew. "They were traveling through the Suss Forest by wagon when they sent word - via a sending spell - that they had unearthed at least a dozen weapons, most of which radiated strong auras of evil. That was the last we heard from them. I've had some of our Guild spellcasters trying to scry upon each of the four missing adventurers, their horse, and even the wagon, all without success.

"One of our more powerful Guild wizards cast a contact other plane spell, which revealed the following." Farthingale passed over a piece of parchment, upon which a series of questions and answers had been hastily scrawled. Feron took the proffered sheet and read it aloud to the others. It read:

Q: Are the missing Wing Seven adventurers still alive?

A: Yes.

Q: Are they still in the Suss Forest?

A: Yes.

Q: Have they been taken captive?

A: Yes.

Q: Are the evil weapons they had with them responsible for their current predicament?

A: No.

Q: Are the evil weapons still with the Wing Seven adventurers?

A: Near.

Q: Can the Wing Seven adventurers escape from their predicament without outside help?

A: No.

Click to expand...

"Which members are missing?" asked Feron, putting the parchment back down on the table, where it was quickly snatched up by Galrich, eager to practice the new "reading" skill he had picked up, over many painful months of study, from his dwarven bodyguard, Aerik.

"Morgana, Ivan, Caspian, and Bellachunk," replied Farthingale, rising up from his chair. "I'll leave you now to your planning. I have full confidence in your abilities. Report back to me upon your return." And with a broad smile to his favorite nephew, the rotund Guildmaster nodded his farewell and returned to his office.

"So, a rescue mission," remarked Telgrane. "I'm in." Of course, this was pretty much a given, as Telgrane's "bink-partner," the paladin Akari, had recently been permanently slain on the Outer Planes and no replacement had yet been assigned to fill the gap - no doubt due to the scarcity of adventurers of a similar power level as the current Wing Three lineup, who together represented some of the most powerful heroes in all of Greyhawk City. As such, Telgrane had pretty much resigned himself to going on all assigned adventures, without backup, for the indeterminate future.

"What's the plan?" asked Thunderwolf.

"First off, we need more data," replied Cal, the group's unofficial leader. "I'll cast a discern location spell, and we'll hopefully find out the exact location of the Wing Seven group. Hopefully, they're all still together in one place." He held his holy symbol of Kord in his hands, closed his eyes, and started chanting softly to himself.

"This'll take awhile," remarked Rale, getting up from the table and motioning for the others to follow him out of the kitchen so as not to disturb Cal's lengthy spellcasting. "Well, I'm up for some dashing heroics. Who else wants to go?"

"I'll--" began Chalkan, only to be cut off by Galrich's emphatic "Dibs!" The archer scowled over at the burly half-orc, but Galrich was in no mood for negotiations. "A bunch of weapons," he said in way of explanation, which in reality was all the explanation needed - the half-orc barbarian was well known as a walking arsenal, and he wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to add to his collection, evil or not. Aerik, standing at his side, said nothing but stared down the half-elf, daring him to argue.

"Fine," sighed Chalkan, unwilling to pursue it any further.

Delphyne and Feron talked it out civilly amongst themselves, and jointly decided that the druid's healing magic would likely come in handy, especially if Rale would be going - which meant Cal, their most powerful healer, would not. And Thunderwolf, grafted into Wing Three as a favor to his uncle, would naturally be accompanying the group. They all talked quietly until Cal abruptly stopped his chanting and called out in a strong voice, "Messengers of Kord, Lord of Strength! I seek to learn the current whereabouts of Morgana Shadowbrook, elven mage, member of Wing Seven of the Greyhawk City Adventurers Guild. Guide your servant to her side!" Feron hid a smile at the realization that of the four missing adventurers on which to focus, Cal had consciously chosen the hot-looking elven maiden over the other three.

Cal responded to his own question with a voice not his own; his lips mouthed the words, but the voice was much deeper, and otherwordly. "Morgana Shadowbrook, and her three companions, are in the refuse pit of the lair of Antharvalos, behind the Jewel River Waterfall, in the Suss Forest." Cal, in his normal voice once again, thanked the messenger of Kord for his assistance, then turned to the others. "Anybody ever hear of this 'Antharvalos' guy?" he asked.

Nobody had. But that was no matter, for they had a friend in the Church of Boccob who loved looking up things like that in his expansive Temple Library. In less than a half hour's time, Brother Altamaic had an answer for them. "Antharvalos," he said, reading from a dusty tome, "is the name of an old green dragon rumored to lair somewhere in the Suss Forest, to the southwest of Greyhawk City."

"A dragon!" exclaimed Thunderwolf, visibly excited at the prospect of fighting such a fearsome beast.

The group thanked Altamaic and returned to their headquarters, where they began making their preparations. "Green dragons breathe out a caustic gas," warned Telgrane. "I would suggest we prepare spells that protect us against the effects of acid." The spellcasters prepared their spells while the others gathered up their gear, and Galrich went racing down to the Guild stables to fetch Fang, having decided the dire wolf needed a forest outing. Telgrane cast a Rary's telepathic bond on most of the group; he was not yet powerful enough to link together more than six individuals, so Dez and the animals (Fang; Feron's eagle companion, Felix; and Dez's mouse familiar, Mr. Whiskers) were left out - as was his own familiar Infernia, but he had his own empathic link with her. The archmage then followed with a greater teleport spell. Lacking a way to successfully scry upon the dragon's lair, Telgrane instead chose to send the group to the Jewel River Waterfall, which at least was a known location, as there was only one waterfall of any decent size along the part of the Jewel River within the Suss Forest. The group winked out of existence...

...and immediately found themselves standing at the bank of a river. High above them, a massive cascade of water leapt down from the top of a rocky cliff, the roar making it difficult to hear anything else.

"Good thing we've got our telepathic bond going," thought Feron to the others, with a smile at Dez, who was out of the link.

"So where's this dragon's lair?" asked Thunderwolf, also over the link. "I know it's behind the waterfall, but it could be anywhere behind there." He indicated the vast area covered by the cascading water, which fell a good 120 feet from the cliff and created large clouds of mist and spray along its bottom, which formed a large pool and then meandered its way through the Suss Forest behind them.

"What are you saying?" yelled Dez, oblivious to the group's mental discussion. Rale just gave her a "shooshing" gesture with a finger to his lips, then asked the group, "Anyone want to try flying around through the waterfall?" He indicated his drow floatdisk shield, and those carried by the majority of the others.

"I have a better idea," replied Feron, wildshaping into an earth elemental. Felix flew off her shoulder as she did so and alit on a tree branch. "I'll be right back," Feron said, walking into the side of the cliff face.

"Keep us up a running monologue!" advised Rale over the link. "Let us know what you see!"

"Nothing so far," advised Feron, using the inherent earth glide ability of her newly chosen form. The solid stone of the cliff-side parted away before her body, then closed back up behind her as she walked through the solid rock. She popped her head back out of the rock from the far side of the waterfall. "The cave opening must be higher up!" she reported as she stepped up to a higher level and then reversed course, traveling back the way she came but some 10 feet higher than her first pass.

After several such passes, Feron found her head popping up out of the floor of a large, open cave. The cave was unlit but for the sunlight streaming in through the roaring waterfall, which served as an aquatic wall sealing off the cave from sight. Feron guessed at the dimensions, but realized it was definitely large enough for a dragon to fly through it, if he knew its exact location.

That wasn't Feron's only realization. Standing in the middle of solid rock with only the top half of her head poking up from the stone cavern floor, she also suddenly realized she wasn't alone - for on either side of her half-exposed head were massive, green feet.

Feron's heart jumped in her chest as she initially thought she might have the green dragon itself standing over her, but she calmed once she saw that the feet were composed of vegetable matter - twigs, leaves, and matted grasses. Looking up at the twin beasts flanking her, she saw what could only be a pair of shambling mounds, although these weren't shambling at all; rather, they stood in almost blissful contention, silently soaking up the mist from the raging waterfall just beyond the cave's ledge.

Feron ducked her head back down before she was spotted by the sentient plants, scooted back to where she thought the side of the cavern should be, elevated herself up, and popped her head out one of the cavern's side walls. She verified there were half a dozen of the shambling mounds, all facing the water, spread out in a line blocking the cavern entrance, six immobile sentries making the best of their guard duty.

Feron silently reported back to the others that she had found the entrance, and gave a rough description of how high up she was, if they wanted to try flying through the waterfall on their drow floatdisks.

"I think I'd rather just dimension door everyone up there," replied Telgrane over the link. "But why don't you try to scout the place out a bit more? Maybe we can figure out where the Wing Seven guys are. Is there a refuse pit around there?"

"I'll check," replied Feron, ducking back into the wall and moving further back down the cavern, before popping back into the open space. She didn't notice it, but in stepping into the back half of the cavern, she activated a silent alarm spell. In a room hundreds of feet deeper into the cavern network, a reptilian head raised up in surprise, its eyes narrowing at the thought that someone would dare to invade his lair.

"Sure enough, there's a refuse pit," Feron reported over the link. She was emerging her upper torso through the side of the cavern wall, looking down at a lower section of the cave network below her. The entry cave, in which the shambling mounds were basking in the spray from the waterfall, had a similarly sized cavern directly across from it, but between the two ledges was a 40-foot section that sank down a good 30 feet below the level of the higher ledges. This lower level was strewn with rocks of various sizes, from scattered pebbles to small boulders. Intermixed with the rocks were bones from a great many different creatures, ranging from human-sized to deer and a few horses. Oddly, a small mound of dirt rose up in the middle of the lower chamber, upon which was perched a scraggly-looking plant with yellow, orchidlike flowers and a halo of vines reaching out in all directions. Shambling around in the back of the room were four humanoid figures. Feron's eyes adjusted to the gloom of the cavern, and she could verify that these four were roughly the same size and build as the four missing adventurers. Oddly, Morgana seemed to be wearing one of the flowers in her hair; upon closer inspection, the flower seemed to be growing out the side of her head. Feron shuddered and passed on what she had seen to the rest of the group, who advised her to check out the back platform.

Feron did so, using the powers of her earth elemental form to glide through the solid stone of the cavern walls until she had reached the back cavern. She spotted some bloodstains on the floor, some recent, some obviously from a long time ago. And then a bolt of lightning came streaking out from the shadows of the passageway in the back of the cavern. Feron was far to the side of the passageway, so the blast of energy went nowhere near her, but it crossed the top of the refuse pit, striking a pair of the shambling mounds who guarded the cave's entrance. Oddly, they did not seem at all discomfited by this attack; they merely turned to face the back of the cavern and started meandering that way. Another blast hit a different pair, and they too seemed energized by the electrical power.

Feron dropped through the cavern floor and popped out at the bottom of the refuse pit, along the northern wall where she had seen a trio of small tunnels at ground level. Choosing the middle one at random, she ducked down and explored its contents. It wound around like a drunken worm's trail, but towards the back she found a grotesque-looking mushroom of some type, easily seven feet tall and glistening in a slimy mucus. As Feron started backing away from the foul-looking thing, its cap exploded in a wet shower of slimy spores, and a terrible odor assailed Feron's senses. She felt her gorge rising, and stumbled back down the twisting passageways, unable to do anything but try to flee from the nausea-inducing stench of the foul fungus.

Telgrane had heard enough. "Refuse pit, or one of the ledges?" he asked the others over the link.

"Well, we know what happened to the Wing Seven guys," remarked Rale. "Let's deal with them last - it doesn't look like they're going anywhere. We've got powered-up shambling mounds in the front, and a spellcasting dragon somewhere in the back. I say we deal with the dragon while we're all at full strength. Agreed?"

"Sounds like a plan," said Thunderwolf, readying his bow. Galrich and Aerik gripped their weapons and gave terse nods to the archmage, the half-orc telling his dire wolf to hang back out here by the waterfall for their return. "Feron, how far back is the back ledge from the entry cavern?" Telgrane asked over the mental link. Feron, despite trying to keep her breakfast from coming back up, was able to respond with a brief mental description of the size, shape, and orientation of the back cavern. "Here we go, then!" called Telgrane, casting a dimension door spell on the collected heroes.

They popped into existence in the northern section of the back cavern, where it jutted out away from the tunnel in the back that led to darkness. Almost simultaneously, the green dragon Antharvalos stepped into view from the back tunnel, eyes blazing in anger that his sleep had been interrupted by intruders. He snaked his head to the right, catching the entire group in a caustic exhalation of his breath weapon.

Fortunately, before they had even teleported to the bank of the Jewel River, the spellcasters among the group had protected their numbers with a handful of resist acid spells, to go along with the stoneskins that Feron and Telgrane habitually cast upon themselves when battle seemed imminent. The green dragon's cloud of caustic vapors rolled over the heroes' forms, doing a minimal amount of damage.

The heroes wasted no time in their counterattacks. Thunderwolf shot arrows at the green dragon, covering Rale as he leapt away from the others, trying to keep them from being bunched up. Telgrane followed suit, stepping away from the others and releasing an incendiary cloud spell centered on the green dragon. He then popped open the top of his tinderbox, the better to allow his fire elemental familiar to exit. A line of cinders arced out from the tinderbox and onto the stone floor, bursting into full flame as they did so to reveal Infernia's horned form, standing nine feet tall and poised to protect her master.

Antharvalos saw that there was still enough of the group gathered together to make a lightning bolt strike his best bet, and caught Thunderwolf, Dez, Aerik, and Galrich in the spell's area of effect. Dez immediately dropped to the floor, unnoticed by any of the others but Thunderwolf, who had been just behind her. The young fighter bent down to feel her neck for a pulse, and found none. Snarling in vengeance, he reached for another arrow and notched his bow, eager to attack Dez's killer. However, Antharvalos stepped back into the protective confines of the back tunnel, away from the incendiary cloud, his massive form and thrashing wings preventing any of the heroes from getting past him, even if they dared enter the burning vapors of Telgrane's spell. But Telgrane didn't need to get past the dragon to attack him from that quarter; casting one of his many summon monster spells, he saw the green dragon suddenly back-lit from the flames of a greater fire elemental taking form in the cavern behind Antharvalos. It called a greeting to the human spellcaster in Ignan before battering the dragon with a pair of flaming fists.

"I'm going to cast a cloudkill at it next!" yelled Telgrane, speaking aloud for Dez's benefit, in case she had been thinking of moving forward towards the dragon. (From his vantage point he was unable to see that Dez had already fallen in battle, and since she had never been in the telepathic bond he didn't notice her absence there, either.) But the elder fire elemental called back to Telgrane, "Do not, young wizard! There is an elf back here, swollen with child! She will be caught in your spell!" Telgrane immediately translated the fire elemental's warning to the others over the telepathic link.

"Feron!" he called. "We need you!"

"Coming!" replied the druid, climbing her way up through the solid rock in her earth elemental form, still fighting off the effects of the nausea-inducing spores.

Antharvalos soon found himself sorely wounded by the combined attacks of seven separate opponents and altered his strategy. Casting a dimension door spell, he vanished from the back cavern and remanifested in the front cavern among his shambling mound guardians. He snarled a command at them to climb onto his back and tail, intending to fly back to the cavern he had just left, to confront the heroes anew, but this time with half a dozen individual bits of disposable cannon fodder. The plant creatures scrambled to obey.

But now Antharvalos stood in bold silhouette against the sunlight streaming in through the waterfall covering the entrance to the dragon's lair - a rather remarkable target for Telgrane, who likewise adjusted his tactics to counter the dragon's last stratagem. For the first time in his adventuring career, the young archmage cast a meteor swarm spell, sending four burning spheres hurtling across the chasm to strike the proud dragon before he could return to combat in the midst of the heroes. The dragon roared in pain as the spell got past his innate spell resistance and made him the center of an explosion of fire. Two of the nearby shambling mounds were instantly incinerated in the blast; the other four were hurtled away from the dragon and staggered away, stunned.

Antharvalos had not survived for as long as he had by fighting needless battles to the death. Although it galled him to abandon his lair to a group of mere adventurers, it certainly beat being slain by them, and the wise old dragon assessed that to be the likely result of extended combat with this particular group. Hissing in exasperation (and not a little pain from his burns), he spun about and leapt through the sheet of cascading water, taking wing upon exiting the waterfall - but not without taking several more arrows to his flanks as Galrich and Thunderwolf let loose their final barrages.

"We can't let him get away!" called Thunderwolf, as Feron rose up from the stone of the back cavern and resumed her half-elven form, the nausea from the stinkgnarl fungus having finally worked its way through her system. As the fighter fumbled in his backpack for his ebony fly figurine, hoping to follow Antharvalos before he got away for good, Feron focused her ears on the sounds of pain coming from the back recesses of the cavern from which the green dragon had originally emerged. Telgrane pulled out his drow floatdisk, leapt aboard, and set it on a crash course through the waterfall, flying high enough that he avoided the remaining shambling mounds. He called back to his summoned elder fire elemental to take care of the remaining shamblers, wanting to keep her useful in the time remaining here on the material plane. She easily leapt the chasm and started to work on the plant-beasts, who truth to tell were on their last legs in any case, the meteor swarm spell having weakened them to near uselessness.

Rale and most of the others, realizing that Telgrane was pretty much their only hope of killing the dragon at such an extended range, turned their attention to the back cavern, where Feron had discovered a 20-foot sheer cliff leading down into a cramped, semicircular pit. There, lying on her back in a crude bed made of filthy straw stuffed into the bottom half of a dragon's egg, was a disheveled elven woman, her face contorted in the pain of her latest contractions as she readied herself to give birth. Feron was by her side in a moment (having unstrapped her own floatdisk and put it to good use), and did what she could to ease the woman's ordeal. In the meantime, Thunderwolf took a moment to cover Desdemona's body with her own cloak, while Rale led the rest of the group to the back cavern in search of the dragon's treasure hoard, for he knew there had to be one back here somewhere - who ever heard of a dragon's lair that wasn't filled with riches?

Aerik immediately sensed that something was wrong with the back cavern upon entering it; it seemed too small by half for the echoes of their clomping footsteps rebounding off the stone walls. A quick perusal of the back wall revealed that it was an illusory wall spell, covering the farthest half of the back cavern, upon which there was a higher ledge some 50 feet up. Drow floatdisks were once again deployed, bringing the heroes to the dragon's hoard they sought: a mound of loose coins and gems, upon which sat a wooden wagon with draconic claw marks upon its edges, now nothing more than a trophy of Antharvalos's most recent plunder. The weapons unearthed by the Wing Seven adventurers, which they had been bringing back to the Guild for destruction, were propped lovingly on small ledges jutting from the walls. (And the eventual inventory of the loot would unearth four Guild rings, each carved with the names of one of the missing Wing Seven adventurers.)

By the time Telgrane made it back to the others - he had made it outside in time to spot the fleeing dragon and take him down with a delayed blast fireball without the delay - landing his floatdisk next to Feron in the pregnant elf's prison-pit, the druid had helped to bring a new life into the world. It was a girl, whose delicately-pointed ears told of her elven heritage. However, her green-tinged scales, tail, and the horn-buds on her forehead told of a draconic heritage as well.

"I name her...Kaelanna," whispered the exhausted mother; Feron silently noted the name was Elven for "green dragon child." "Now I must ask of you one more favor," the elf said, looking up at her daughter, cleaned up and wrapped in a blanket from Feron's haversack. She pointed at the baby, quietly sleeping in Feron's arms. "...Kill it," she commanded.

Feron took a step backwards, as if to protect the baby from an attack by her mother, but the elf was too exhausted to even rise from her makeshift bed. Galrich took a step forward and took the baby from Feron; he had come to borrow her extradimensional haversack to load up all of the dragon's treasure hoard, but had stuck around and cooed at the newborn, intrigued by its beastly appearance. "Nobody's hurting the baby," he announced, and his tone made it perfectly clear that anyone even thinking of such a thing would have to get by him first.

The elf, it turned out, was named Nimashkihel and hailed from an elven village in the Suss Forest, having been grabbed up by the dragon almost a year and a half ago, shortly after her pregnancy began; she was sure her husband and the other villagers had given up all hope for her by now. But for reasons known only to Antharvalos, the dragon had taken steps to imprint her unborn daughter with his own draconic heritage, not only by having her sleep in the egg of one of his own dragon offspring, but also by grinding up his own scales and adding them to the ground meal from which she was allowed to make her daily gruel. She was grateful for the heroes' assistance and asked to be taken back to her village, but under no condition did she want anything to do with the "abomination" she had birthed.

Cleaning up the loose ends of this adventure took some time. Rale binked back to Guild Headquarters so Cal could take his place, and the cleric of Kord not only confirmed which of the weapons from the dragon's treasure were the evil ones from Wing Seven's wagon but also that Kaelanna was not herself inherently of an evil nature. Antharvalos's hoard was packed away into Feron's extradimensional haversack, the yellow musk creeper was burned to a crisp by Infernia, and then Cal cast heal spells upon the yellow musk zombies, transforming them from plants back into their normal humanoid forms. Nimashkihel was returned to her village, where she was enthusiastically hailed by her people. (However, they too wanted nothing to do with a half-dragon baby, and tended to look upon Feron with some mistrust and no small portion of disdain, as the druid was not a pure-blooded elf but had been "tainted" by the blood of her human father.) Rale financed the cost of a true resurrection of Desdemona from his share of the dragon's hoard, grumbling at the cost but realizing he'd never hear the end of it if he scrimped on the very best means of restoring his cohort to life. Finally, Galrich insisted upon taking Kaelanna to the Kingdom of Kordovia, where he entrusted her to the care of his regent, Lord Hammershard, who was visibly looking much more tired than when the heroes had last seen him. Apparently the weight of rulership was taking its toll on the elderly man, but he smiled at his liege and promised that Kaelanna would be provided a good life in the castle.

"Are you sure you want to raise her to adulthood?" asked Feron. "She is, after all, part green dragon - there's no telling whether her intrinsic evil tendencies might someday come to the forefront."

"Yeah, well I'm part orc," responded Galrich, daring the druid to continue on with that line of thinking.

"Besides," he reasoned, "it's like raising a pit bull - they're not all killers. It's all in how you raise them."

Feron frowned in concern, but pressed the issue no further. Only time would tell if her fears were well-founded or not.

ADVENTURE 82: DUDE, WHERE'S MY BODY?

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Delphyne was once again the first one to rise in the morning. She put on a robe over her nightgown and padded quietly down the stairs to the Wing Three communal living area. Crossing the living room, she made her way to the kitchen to start up a fire and get some tea brewing.

She stopped in the dining room, though, her tea momentarily forgotten. There on the dining room table was a folded piece of parchment; on top of it was a silver ring bearing the Adventurers Guild crest. Delphyne moved the ring aside and unfolded the parchment. it read:

Guys,

I'm taking a leave of absence from the Adventurers Guild, effective immediately. I should probably only be gone for a week or two, perhaps even up to a month. But it turns out I have a great uncle – the father-in-law of my birth father, Lord Spencer Stanwyck – whose health is rapidly deteriorating (no surprise there, as he's seen over 90 summers). I have been asked to see to his comfort in the last days of his life; in return, I will inherit his estate upon his death, as he has no other living relatives.

I hope you'll forgive the abruptness of all this, but I was first contacted late last night by his estate. I've spoken to Guildmaster Farthingale and gotten his okay on my leave of absence. I'll be contacting the Church of Kord as well and letting them know that my time will be spent seeing to my great uncle's well-being as best I can for the handful of days he has left on this mortal coil.

I'll leave my Guild ring here in case you or Farthingale wants to replace me in my absence. (Make sure any replacements are only temporary, though – I'll be back!)

And when I return, I should be filthy rich! That'll be a welcome change!

Best to All,

Cal

Click to expand...

Delphyne picked the ring back up and peered at the engraving on the inside of the ring. Sure enough, it was inscribed "CAL TROP."

"What've you got there?" asked Feron, walking into the dining room. Delphyne passed the letter on to the druid and told her to see for herself, then turned to get the tea started.

- - -

An hour later, the rest of the Wing Three adventurers were all awake and gathered around the dining room table, eating the remains of their breakfast and discussing Cal's sudden disappearance.

"Do you think this is on the up-and-up?" asked Chalkan, clearly concerned. The last time one of their number had suddenly disappeared, he'd been transformed into an undead minion of Orcus, Demon Prince of the Undead. That's the sort of thing that only has to happen once to make a person somewhat uneasy.

"I'll go check with my uncle," suggested Thunderwolf, heading off to Guildmaster Farthingale's office.

"Should we try scrying on him?" asked Feron. The general consensus was that it might not be a bad idea, so Delphyne went back upstairs to her room and returned shortly with her crystal ball. She'd known Cal for long enough that it was no trouble at all conjuring his image in her scrying sphere; within seconds, an image formed in her crystal ball, one of Cal sitting in a chair, reading from a thick book. Lying in a bed next to him was an elderly man, liver spots sprinkled on his nearly-bald head. He lay on his pillow with his eyes half-closed, and a slight smile on his face.

"Everything looks pretty straightforward," commented Rale.

"Agreed," replied Delphyne, dismissing the image with a wave of her hand.

- - -

Two rather uneventful days passed, with the only bit of excitement being Galrich complaining of violent nightmares. Then, on the morning of the third day, the group was once again gathering around the table for breakfast when an audible "pop" sound emanated from the living room. Aerik and Galrich happened to be the closest at hand; they turned and saw an unusual sight: there, sitting in the middle of the living room floor, was a wrinkled figure in a soiled nightshirt. A manacle encompassed each thin wrist, with a short strand of chain dangling from each manacle. He sat upright on the floor, looking around wearily with squinting eyes.

"Cal..." he wheezed in a voice barely loud enough to hear. "Cal...Trop...."

"He's not here," replied Galrich, seemingly unfazed by the fact that an old man had just teleported into his living room.

"No," the old man said with obvious effort. "I'm...Cal...." Then he collapsed backwards on the floor, his strength obviously spent.

Telgrane had caught the old man's sudden appearance, but hadn't been close enough to make out any of his words. Still, he was at the old man's side in a flash, and held his hand out to the burly half-orc. "I need a healing potion," the archmage commanded, knowing full well that Galrich spent most of his time in full armor with as much adventuring gear on his person as was generally feasible - even when simply dressing for breakfast. Galrich grumbled, but passed over a healing potion to the archmage. Telgrane popped off the cork, lifted the old man's head up, and carefully poured its contents between the old man's parched lips.

"He says he's Cal," remarked Galrich.

"What?" asked Telgrane in astonishment.

"'S'true," confirmed Aerik. "That's what he said, anyways."

"It is true," replied the old man, as everyone gathered around him. "I'm Cal Trop."

"You're the old man Cal was reading to," replied Delphyne. "We saw you, in my crystal ball."

"That was a screen spell," the old man replied. "Lord Byron Partridge...my great uncle...swapped bodies with me. He's got a pet wizard...name of Nornabar, casts that spell every day."

"If you are Cal," said Telgrane warily, "then I'm sure you'll understand that we'll need some way to confirm that you're really you. Tell us something only he would know."

The old man closed his eyes wearily in thought, and was silent for long enough that the group started to wonder if he'd fallen asleep. Then he snapped his eyes back open, and replied, "Musclebutt."

"Musclebutt?" repeated Feron in confusion.

"That's the name...the Prime Fool put in his guest book...the nickname he gave me."

"That's true," confirmed Delphyne. "That's what he called him. And that wouldn't have been put into any official report."

"Wow," said Telgrane. "You really are an idiot. How'd you let a ninety-year-old man get the better of you?"

Slowly, painfully, Cal - trapped in the body of Lord Byron Partridge - began to tell his story. Telgrane quickly took pity on Cal's pathetic attempts to catch enough breath to speak, and cast a Rary's telepathic bond so that he could tell his tale without having to constantly gasp for breath. Everything in the note Cal had left was true; he had in fact written it shortly after having been approached by Partridge's lawyer, a man named Renquist. Upon taking Cal to Lord Partridge's manor home, the cleric of Kord had met his great uncle for the first time. Lord Partridge was propped up by pillows in a large bed centered in a dark room that had apparently originally been a living room, but all of the other furniture had been pushed against the walls to make way not only for Lord Partridge's bed but a comfortable-looking chair sitting alongside it. A single candle burning in a holder on a bookcase was the only illumination in the room, for while the back wall was covered in windows all of the heavy curtains were pulled shut. The three men were not alone in the room, for standing around the bed, chanting in unison, were half a dozen robed figures; Renquist explained them as clerics doing their best to keep Lord Partridge alive and comfortable in his final days. Cal was introduced to his uncle, and then Renquist got straight down to business, showing the cleric of Kord the paperwork that would leave all of the Partridge fortune to him upon his great uncle's death.

"And you signed it?" asked Telgrane aloud is disbelief.

"It was legit," replied Cal over the telepathic bond. "Completely legal. No illusions, I checked."

What he had failed to notice - not surprisingly, given the dim illumination in the room - were the concentric circles carved into the floor, one set centered on the bed and another centered on the chair at its side; had Cal been able to inspect them (had he even seen them at all), he'd likely have recognized the runes carved around the circles as being similar in nature to the ones carved for the bodyswapping rituals in the stone giant caves the halfling wizards had used several months ago. In any case, shortly after having signed the legal documents, Cal experienced a flash of dizziness, seemed to pass out for a moment, and woke up in the elderly Partridge's body. Lord Partridge, now in Cal's body, quickly forced a sickly-smelling liquid down what until moments ago was his own throat, and Cal lost consciousness almost immediately. He didn't feel the manacles being attached from each thin wrist to the metal bed frame.

"So how'd you escape?" asked Rale.

"I was kept drugged," replied Cal, "and even so, I was trapped in an old man's body requiring a lot of sleep. They took my spell components from me, so I was limited to what spells I could pray for, and cast. But eventually, I managed to stay awake long enough to pray to Kord for a word of recall spell to return me here." He had used his daily feat of strength - available to him regardless of which body he was currently inhabiting, fortunately - as a cleric of the Lord of Strength to break the manacles' chains and cast his spell to return to the Wing Three living quarters.

"So Lord Partridge is running around in a body containing the blood of Kord, while Cal here's trapped in a feeble old body that's likely to expire in days," recapped Rale. He shook his head sadly. "You're a doofus."

"We're going to need to get Cal's body back," determined Telgrane. He turned to Cal, who was starting to drift off to sleep, this having been more excitement than Lord Partridge's body was equipped to handle. "Hey, wake up!" he said, shaking Cal gently. "Do you know where you were being held? And can you draw us a map of the manor house, give us an idea of who all we might encounter there, that sort of thing?"

Cal hadn't seen much of the manor house's interior, just the short path from the front door to the repurposed living room where he had been chained to the bed once he had been unwittingly bodyswapped, but he was able to tell the group how to get there and who else lived in the manor. Besides Renquist and the wizard Nornabar, there were about a dozen servants, all dressed in Far Eastern garb - Lord Partridge had spent quite a bit of time in the Far East, and in fact that's where a lot of his trading business was located. The servants were all very deferential to Lord Partridge, even more so once he wore Cal's powerful body. But then, having proven that the bodyswapping ritual was a success, Cal imagined the promise of a younger, more powerful body once their original one wore out would be a very good incentive towards loyalty to Lord Partridge's retainers. (He was convinced that had already been considered by the wizard Nornabar, whose long white beard spoke of many decades of life thus far.)

The group got Cal comfortable in his own bed - if not in his own body - and then decided who was going to go pay the Partridge manor house a visit. Rale, Telgrane, and Thunderwolf were a given, as they had no "bink partners," and Aerik and Dez would naturally be accompanying their respective leaders. Feron offered to look after Cal, so Delphyne gathered up her gear and the group headed out to the Partridge Manor, in one of the richest quarters of Greyhawk City. Once there, they huddled behind a large shrub and decided on a course of action. Rale took the lead, and donned one of the pair of the group's scout goggles, giving the other pair to Delphyne. Then he and Dez walked up the cobblestone path to Partridge Manor, confident that Delphyne would be watching their progress from a distance and the group would be able to bail them out if need be. With a Rary's telepathic bond spell keeping everyone able to communicate with each other (except Dez - Telgrane still couldn't manage to link more than six people, but he was working on it), they were confident that they had taken all of the precautions they could.

The two stepped onto a broad porch, flanked by two large, stone sculptures of fierce-looking samurai, swords drawn menacingly. Rale knocked boldly on the door, which was answered in a few seconds by Renquist. He looked bewilderingly at the pair and asked, hesitantly, "Yes?"

"Good morning to you, sir," replied Rale. "We're from the Greyhawk City Fine Arts Department, and I wonder if we could have a few moments with Lord Partridge about sponsorship of an upcoming play I believe he would be greatly interested in."

"I'm very sorry," Renquist replied. "Lord Partridge is currently indisposed." He started to close the door.

"No matter!" responded Rale, sticking his foot in the door and more or less forcing his way into the manor's foyer. "Perhaps we could speak to you on his behalf, and you could set us up with an appointment to see Lord Partridge at his convenience!"

"I really don't--" sputtered Renquist, but a quick suggestion spell from Dez changed his mind at once. "Uh, very well, this way, if you please." He led them to an antechamber, and asked them to wait there while he fetched Nornabar. But almost immediately, a door to the north opened - the door leading to the living room where Cal had been imprisoned, according to Cal's hastily-scribbled map of the parts of the house he had seen - and a Far Eastern woman stepped through, closing the door quietly behind her. She scrutinized Rale and Dez without a word. "Uh, these two--" began Renquist, but was cut short by the serving girl's loud "Haaaaai!" and instant combat stance, one arm raised above her in a striking stance, the other balanced before her to block any incoming blows, and her slender weight balanced easily on the balls of her feet. Her combat scream was echoed from the other side of the foyer; apparently it had been an alarm to the rest of her servants that there were intruders in the house.

"Uh, I really don't believe--" began Renquist, before the serving girl attacked. The lawyer scrambled back out of the way with a startled cry as the young lady began a flurry of blows against Rale, who did his level best to dodge them. "The jig's up!" called Rale over the telepathic bond, but Delphyne had seen all and responded by teleporting the rest of the group directly into the antechamber with Rale, Dez, and the others. The servant monk seemed unfazed by the sudden arrival of the adventurers, concentrating on striking out at Rale. Renquist took the opportunity to duck back into the library through a southern door, as the door from the foyer opened up and at least half a dozen other monks came screaming towards the intruders.

Delphyne responded with a Bigby's crushing hand spell, pushing the incoming monks back down the hallway from which they had come. Then, having cleared some room, she followed into the foyer, where it was far less crowded. Behind her, Aerik fought the furious servant monk, eventually killing her, while Dez stood on the sofa staying out of the way. Galrich and Thunderwolf headed into the corridor to take on the monks even now fighting their way past the giant hand-shaped energy wielded by Delphyne. In the back of the monks' formation, Nornabar was able to cast a mass hold person, affecting Galrich and Thunderwolf and holding them fast. The nearest monk took the opportunity to assault Thunderwolf repeatedly, but the tough fighter seemed able to shrug off the blows even while magically immobilized.

Telgrane cast a shaped cloudkill down the narrow corridor, catching a row of monks even now struggling to make their way to the combat. Unseen by the archmage, Nornabar was at the rear of the line, but he quickly hightailed it once the cloud of poison gas started heading his way. Telgrane released Infernia from her tinderbox, and the Large fire elemental went bounding down the cloud-filled corridor, unaffected by the poison gas, searching for the spellcaster who would dare to try to harm her master.

Delphyne cast a magic circle against evil which allowed Galrich and Thunderwolf to regain their mobility - as long as they stayed close by her. Aerik and Rale dashed into the library to see if there were any enemies to be found there, but all they saw was Renquist cowering behind a cot - apparently, he had been sleeping here in the library during the recent events involved in swapping bodies between Lord Partridge and Cal. While Aerik concentrated on trying to beat - or scare - information out of the frightened lawyer, Rale eased open a window and slid out onto the front lawn, thinking to sneak up behind the group of monks and strike from an unsuspected side.

One of the monks popped out of a door at the far side of the house, which apparently led to the stables, and called some words in a language none of the heroes had ever heard before. Rale had the best view as the two samurai statues suddenly lurched into life. They spun to the front door, one of them wrenched it off its hinges with a powerful tug, and then they started attacking the heroes in the foyer.

Back in the house, Infernia caught up to Nornabar and grappled with the elderly wizard, engulfing him in her fiery embrace. As his robes started smoldering, he realized he wouldn't get to experience a new replacement body for himself if he burned to death in Lord Partridge's manor, and surrendered immediately. Infernia, unsure of what to do in such an instance, continued grappling the wizard but suppressed her flames - something she'd been working on since Telgrane gave her the ring of fire resistance - and dragged him back through the cloudkill spell to her master.

Delphyne repositioned her Bigby's crushing hand to assault one of the animated samurai statues. Rale sent a few arrows at the last remaining monk, which caused him to spin around and race back indoors. Rale chased him inside, to find that it was a stables, of sorts - only the horses were all skeletal. The monk was opening the stall doors and commanding the undead horses in the same musical language he had used to activate the samurai statues, but Rale caught up to him and quickly dispatched him with his two short swords, then hurried back outside and slammed the stable door shut again. The undead horses didn't follow.

Inside the house, the combat was dying down. One of the statues had already been smashed to rubble; once the second samurai stone golem had been destroyed, all sounds of combat ceased in the area. A quick search of Partridge Manor verified that Nornabar and Renquist were the only survivors of the manor house battle, and the lawyer quickly spilled all that he knew. While he was unsure of Lord Partridge's exact current whereabouts, he listed off a number of likely possibilities, consisting mostly of pubs and cat-houses (the elderly man making the very best use of Cal's powerful body and his sudden return to youthfulness) that Lord Partridge had been frequenting of late.

After several hours of searching the establishments on Renquist's list, the group found themselves standing outside the Pit-Fight, and heard Cal's unmistakable voice roaring in drunken laughter, among the sounds of what was clearly a bar fight. Dez cast a quick seeming spell on the group, to hide their identities from Lord Partridge (who, according to Renquist, was an Adventurers Guild patron and had read all of the files on the Wing Three adventurers, and thus knew what they all looked like). Not everyone was particularly thrilled with Dez's choice in disguise: Telgrane now looked like a gnome; Rale a skinny girl and Delphyne a skinny boy; Aerik looked like a chubby human barman; Galrich was now, to all appearances, a busty tavern wench; and Dez looked like a fat male merchant. Only Thunderwolf truly appreciated his illusory disguise, for he looked like a half-elf assassin. "Bad-ass!" he said in approval.

The group entered the Pit Fight, and sure enough, there was Lord Partridge in Cal's body, holding a bloody bar patron - and a half-finished bottle of wine - by his collar with one hand, while the other punched him repeatedly in the face. He roared in drunken appreciation of the spectacle, while two groaning bodies behind him gave witness that Lord Partridge's current punching bag had not been his first. Spotting the newcomers, some of which were (apparently) women, he tossed the bleeding victim aside and gave his full attention to the ladies. Then, surprisingly, he broke into an impromptu haiku:

"Ladies, don't be shy
I'm willing to share my love
The line starts right here"​

Click to expand...

He helpfully pointed at the floor immediately before him, then gave Rale a focused look, shaking his head as if not understanding what he was seeing, for he saw not only the skinny girl of Rale's image but also the true form of the male human rogue hidden underneath. Scanning at the various newcomers in turn, he broke out into a broad grin, and, looking directly at the "skinny boy," said:

"Babelberi chick
I'll bet you'd like to find out
What this bod can do"​

Click to expand...

He thrust with his pelvis suggestively, never breaking eye contact with an astonished Delphyne. Then, suddenly, he realized what the sudden appearance of the Wing Three adventurers meant, and did his drunken best to patch over his cover story. "Hey! What are you guys doing here? Uh, my great uncle said he was going to get some sleep, and, uh, told me I could go take a break for awhile...."

Telgrane responded in the most direct way possible. Standing over by the tavern door (having been one of the last to enter), he cast a polar ray directly at Cal's chest. Lord Partridge roared in drunken fury, then made eye contact with Telgrane and spoke.

"I am gonna wipe
That confident grin of yours
Off your stupid face"​

Click to expand...

Not surprisingly, combat erupted in the Pit-Fight. Belligrose had been rounding the bar with a heavy club in his hand, intending to try to deal with a drunken Cal by himself, but gratefully stepped back behind the bar and allowed the seasoned adventurers to deal with him instead. He gestured for some of the other bar patrons to get out of the way, and many of them did just that, not wanting to get in the middle of a bar fight between powerful heroes.

Aerik had stepped up with his axe at the ready, but Lord Partridge dropped something from his pocket and said a word or two in the Far Eastern language his servants had also used back at his manor house. A jade dragon figurine hit the floor and immediately expanded to a coiled, serpentine dragon spanning some 20 feet or more. It bit at Aerik; Galrich, having intended to strike out at Lord Partridge, redirected his attack to save his loyal bodyguard instead.

Dez cast a hold person at Lord Partridge, hoping to nip this combat in the bud quickly. Instead, her spell rebounded off of one of the ioun stones orbiting Cal's head, and she found herself frozen stiff instead. Almost at the same time, Delphyne tried a similar tactic, casting a baleful polymorph spell that would have turned Cal's body into that of a bunny rabbit, but it also rebounded and struck her instead; fortunately, she was able to resist the effects of her own spell and remained quite human.

Lord Partridge was feeling pretty confident, for he realized the heroes wouldn't want to kill him, while he had no such compunctions against killing them. He called out, in sudden inspiration to the group at large:

"If you want what's Cal's
See if you can take it back
Without causing harm"​

Click to expand...

Then, inspiration struck again, and he followed up with:

"Yeah, I might be drunk
But don't get any ideas
I can take you all!"​

Click to expand...

And he whipped out another item from his belt, this one a short rod with an expensive-looking diamond on the tip. Pointing it at Telgrane, he activated it and a lightning bolt went tearing across the tavern, catching Aerik, Rale, Infernia (who had just been released from her tinder box mere moments before), and Telgrane.

Telgrane responded by casting a meteor swarm spell, this time targeting the black-scaled dragon, which had been lining itself up for what was likely to be an unknown breath weapon attack catching most of the heroes in its area of effect. The meteors plowed into the dragon's body and then exploded into flames that caught only Lord Partridge in its blast radius - for again, the archmage had shaped his spell to avoid putting his comrades into the area of effect. However, the fiery explosion had no effect on Lord Partridge, for he carried a pearl of fire resistance that absorbed the flames. Aerik and Galrich renewed their efforts against the serpentine foe, and Thunderwolf sent several arrows deep into the dragon's body. Delphyne, seeing that the group was desperately concentrating on the dragon, sent a few blasts from her handy wand of magic missiles as well, and the dragon quickly reverted to its jade statue form, clattering to the floor. Galrich had the presence of mind to cry out "Dibs!" before turning to face Lord Partridge - while still wearing the illusory image of a busty tavern wench.

Rale grabbed one of his little-used weapons, a cursed item he had kept from the Lockpick Dungeons that he had dubbed "the whip of nudity." It was an enchanted bullwhip with a dweomer that helped steer its leather end to its target - but turned the wielder's clothes invisible while doing so. (It was never known whether Rale was counting on Dez's seeming spell to keep him "clothed" in illusory clothing, or whether he just didn't care that he was flashing the bar with his attacks. Of course, with Rale, it might not have been "he didn't care" so much as "he actively enjoyed the side effect.") Rale snapped three rapid strikes of the whip at Cal's body, hoping to trip the drunken bodythief, but Lord Partridge grabbed the end on the third strike and yanked it out of the rogue's hand, casting it contemptuously behind him.

Another polar ray from Telgrane caught Lord Partridge in the chest, mere moments before Galrich's charge across the tavern ended with a meaty, half-orc fist fueled by the fires of rage delivering itself squarely into Cal's face. Lord Partridge went flying backwards to land on a wooden table which immediately collapsed under his weight. Delphyne approached cautiously, and saw that the bodythief was out cold.

"When Cal gets his body back, he's going to have a broken nose," she observed.

- - -

Cal did indeed get his body back, for Quiffington, now back in a human body and powered by the mind-fragments of four different wizards, had studied the bodyswapping ritual extensively and was willing to return Cal and Lord Partridge to their respective bodies. And better yet, Lord Partridge had already prepared the runes on the floor of his living room, so it was a simple matter of placing Cal, in Lord Partridge's body, back into the bed from which he had escaped that morning, and a trussed-up Lord Partridge, in Cal's body, back in the chair at his side. Quiffington performed the ritual, and the two souls returned to their rightful bodies. Cal was released from his thick chains after he provided the simple word, "Musclebutt," while Lord Partridge had slightly more to say. Waking up to find himself back in his old body, he opened his rheumy eyes, and recited:

"Ninety-four summers
Closer to death than to life
I don't want to die!"​

Click to expand...

A single tear slid down his cheek before his heart, overburdened by the excitement, silently gave out.

- - -

Cal was pleased to be back in his own body, but was irritated not only by the broken nose but also by the burning sensation in his loins the first time he urinated. "That bastard!" he cried out from the men's room of the Wing Three living quarters.

Still, overall, the events had played out to his favor. Lord Byron Partridge's plan to swap bodies after having signed his entire fortune over to Cal had been intended as a way to prolong his own life while "inheriting" all of his own worldly goods and sticking Cal with his worthless, dying body, but once the two had been returned to their own normal forms, the documents he had signed were still perfectly legal. Cal found himself with 250,000 gold pieces of readily-available cash, as well as the owner of a merchant fleet of ships that did steady trade with the Far East.

And one quick heal spell took care of both the broken nose and the case of the clap that Lord Partridge had left him with.

ADVENTURE 83: VANDERGROTTEN'S VENGEANCE

PC Roster:
NPC Roster:
This was a short adventure; we played it during the same session where we finished up "Dude, Where's My Body?" since all that was left of that one was the final fight at the Pit-Fight tavern, and I suspected that we could complete that and run this adventure in its entirety, which would set us up for the beginning of a multi-session adventure for the next time we met. This was another one where I assigned each player the PC he or she would be running, and in the case of Joey I informed him that he'd be running Aerik this session instead of his own PC, Thunderwolf. As is usual when I do such things, I promised him that any XP he earned as Aerik would be likewise provided to Thunderwolf, so that he didn't get "cheated" out of any XP for the session.

I also did something I'd only done once before, and that was for the "Player Challenges" that weren't really D&D adventures: I started the adventure by having the players start out in Joey's bedroom with a radio on so they couldn't hear what was going on in the kitchen, and then brought them in one by one as their PCs entered the adventure. In Vicki's case - as she was the only one who would be running a different spellcasting PC than the one she had run in "Dude, Where's My Body?" - I had her bring her Feron Dru PC folder into Joey's bedroom with her so she could prepare a set of "generic" spells (those Feron would likely have prepared without knowing the specifics of what adventure she'd be going on). As in-game this adventure took place the very same evening as the end of the previous one, there would be no regaining spells that had been previously cast, and in Cal's case, he'd have had no time to pray for spells in the scant time since he had gained his original body back, earlier that evening. (We decided that he'd have spent some time preparing enough healing spells to get everyone back up to full hit points, and that was about it.)

So, I started out with Aerik and Galrich in the adventure, with Dan, Vicki, and Logan confined to Joey's bedroom with plates of snack food, sodas, and the Feron Dru PC folder, and I gave Joey and Jacob their starting status: the evening after Cal got his original body back, everyone in Wing Three hit the sack somewhere between ten and eleven o'clock at night. Aerik, as Galrich's personal bodyguard, slept in his own bed close by the only door in Galrich's extradimensional bedroom. (As a reminder, all of the bedrooms in the Greyhawk Adventurers Guild are 15 feet wide and 15 feet deep with 10-foot ceilings, but each is a "pocket dimension" - as a result, the bedroom doors are all lined up right next to each other along the same hallway, much closer than they could possibly be if it weren't for the rooms' extradimensional natures. Because the bedrooms are not on the Prime Material Plane and the doorways are the only conduits between the two, they are effectively soundproof unless you interact with the door; knocking on a door would be heard from inside the bedroom, but standing outside the closed door and screaming generally would not.)

I think that's about all the setup needs. Let's get to it!

- - -

The pounding woke Aerik at once, as he had trained himself to be a light sleeper, the better to see to the safety of his liege. His dwarven eyes saw perfectly well in the absolute darkness of the extradimensional room, which had no light sources. Out of force of habit, he gripped his dwarven war axe as he got out of bed; he dutifully left it propped up against the bed when he slept so it would always be at hand, and even though he had no reason not to believe that he and Galrich were perfectly safe in the confines of the Adventurers Guild, it never hurt to be ready for action. Axe in hand, Aerik opened the door to see who was knocking in what felt like must be the middle of the blasted night.

In the feeble light spilling in from the Wing Three general living area - for the majority of the group was human, so they used an everburning candle on the coffee table in front of the sofa as a night light - Aerik got quite a fright, for there, standing before him, was a rotting, skeletal corpse with yellowish-mottled skin stretched tightly over its bones and twin motes of red glowing in its otherwise empty eye sockets. Once it began to speak, Aerik felt a shiver run up his spine, not only because it meant he was likely facing a lich instead of a mere skeleton, but also because he recognized the voice as that of Lord Targus Vandergrotten.

"I have come to slay the gods-be-damned orc who would sully our throne with his mere presence," the lich proclaimed, moving as if to begin casting a spell.

Behind Aerik, Galrich snored contentedly, oblivious to the dire threat at his bedroom door.

Aerik slammed the door and called out a warning to his liege. Galrich woke at once at the racket and, mirroring his bodyguard's instinctive actions, grabbed up the greataxe leaning against the side of his bed. He was on his feet and ready for action before even fully awake.

Aerik, in the meantime, was surprised to see that the door wouldn't close all the way. Looking down, he saw a small rock, about the size of his fist, lodged between the door and the doorjamb. He kicked it away irritably - How the hell did that get there? - and slammed the door shut; Aerik quickly activated the bolt from the inside, hopefully preventing the lich from getting in for long enough to grab up a shield or an extra weapon. However, Vandergrotten apparently had no need to get into Galrich's bedroom, as proven by the sudden cloud of vapors expanding from the center of the room, filling the entire room within mere seconds. "Cloudkill!" Aerik called out, realizing the stone had apparently been put there to allow the lich enough time to cast the spell in the room. "We gotta get outta here, m'liege!"

Galrich was at his bodyguard's side in a moment, coughing from the poisonous vapors. "It's Vandergrotten--he's a lich!" Aerik explained, his hand disengaging the bolt he had just engaged mere seconds ago. "Are ye ready?"

"Let's get 'im!" exploded Galrich, fully awake and ready for some payback.

Aerik pulled on the door...

...and it refused to open. He tugged again, to no avail.

"It's locked!" he said, stating the obvious. And indeed, the door had had an arcane lock placed upon it mere seconds after the cloudkill spell had been cast into the room.

Galrich tugged at the door, raging against the thought of dying here in his bedroom, but even his half-orc physique offered no advantage. Together, choking and hacking as the poison gas entered their lungs, Galrich and Aerik opted to chop their way out. Orcish greataxe and dwarven war axe took turns chopping into the wood of the heavy door, as the two adventurers raced to cut through their bedroom door before the cloudkill spell ended their lives.

- - -

Cal awoke groggily at the sound of the pounding on his bedroom door. Now what? he thought, this having been an extraordinarily tiring several days, what with having had his body stolen out from under him and all. He swung out of bed, grabbing up his holy symbol from the nightstand by his bed and putting the chain around his neck as he squinted in the light of the everburning candle to find his enchanted mace of frost. After all, although one might expect that Guild Headquarters would be as safe as possible, Cal had learned from past experience that all sorts of miscreants had made their way into the place, from doppelgangers to Orcus-spawned vampires.

"I'm coming," he grumbled as he swung open the door.

He wasn't prepared for the sight that met him on the other side. Two figures faced him. Standing in the back behind his master was a white-bearded wizard, while directly in front of Cal stood a wizened old man - one whose face had been burned into Cal's memory in recent days.

"Don't think you're getting away that easily," cackled Lord Partridge, as Nornabar began the words to a spell behind him. "It's time to swap bodies again!"

Instinctively, Cal ducked and rolled, barreling into Lord Partridge and sending him bumping into Nornabar to disrupt whatever spell he had been casting. Or at least, that was the intention; what really happened was that Cal went barreling through the illusions of the two nocturnal visitors, who winked out of existence upon contact with the cleric of Kord. And disrupting the illusions did nothing to prevent additional spells from going off, for a cloud of poisonous vapors started spilling out of Cal's room and pooling around his legs as he stood up.

Cal glanced around the Wing Three living quarters in the dim light but saw no intruders. He reached over and pulled his bedroom door shut behind him, not wanting the cloudkill spell to spill out into the hallway, and rationalizing that the spell would probably run its course and then dissipate - hopefully harmlessly - in the confines of his room. But logic dictated there was an unseen enemy about, and Cal was determined to find him.

As proof that an enemy was still in the vicinity, a tingling throughout Cal's body indicated that someone had just cast a spell on him; by the way his skin started feeling tough and unyielding before he mentally shrugged it off, he surmised the unseen spellcaster had just tried turning him to stone. "Show yourself!" Cal cried out to the living room, gripping his mace of frost in a powerful fist.

The only response was another attempt at catching Cal in a spell; this time, the cleric felt a familiar leeching of his life energy and managed to mentally deflect a good chunk of its power away from him, but he nonetheless recognized it as a harm spell. The unseen caster was attempting to drain him of the majority of his very essence, but had fortunately only sapped Cal of a small portion of his vitality.

Cal suddenly became aware of a pummeling sound, and spun to face its source, thinking perhaps his enemy was finally showing himself. But no, the noise was coming from Galrich's bedroom door. As Cal watched, a crack appeared in its center, sending splinters showering down into the hallway. Seconds later, another crack ripped vertically through the wooden door, and Cal realized Galrich and Aerik were trying to chop their way out of the room. Suspecting they had been ambushed in the same way as he had, Cal summoned all of the might of a cleric of the God of Strength and started battering his way through Galrich's bedroom door. Between the three of them, they had the door smashed into kindling - but not before Cal was forced to shrug off the effects of both another harm spell and another flesh to stone spell. Whoever was casting these spells was likely getting frustrated at Cal's ability to basically ignore their effects.

Choking and coughing, Aerik and Galrich spilled out of the extradimensional bedroom, staggering into the hallway and followed by billowing clouds of sickly-green vapors.

"We're under attack!" Cal informed them, stepping sideways away from the billowing cloud.

"We noticed!" Galrich responded with a growl, looking for an enemy - any enemy - to hit.

Without warning, a wall of fire rose up along the length of the upper hallway, catching all three heroes in the path of flames and blocking all eight of the Wing Three adventurers' bedroom doors. The heroes howled in sudden pain and leapt from the vertical sheet of flames, their sleepwear smoldering.

- - -

Feron awoke from a disturbing dream in a state of fright, but the details of the dream dissipated immediately upon waking and she spent a moment in the dim light of her room, listening. She heard nothing. Still, unnerved by her dream and uncomfortable in not knowing what had awakened her, she pulled on a robe over her nightwear and opened her bedroom to see if everything was all right.

She was immediately struck by a wave of heat and flames, the fire covering the entire space of the bedroom doorway sending a blast of heat not unlike that found in a furnace.

Feron staggered back, slamming the door shut as she did so. Wide awake now, she grabbed up her pouch of spell components, slung it over her shoulder, and released the mental energy allowing her form to wildshape into another. Her body grew in size and stature, igniting into flames as it transformed. When she opened her bedroom door again, the hand that did so was that of a Large fire elemental. Feron walked untouched through the wall of fire and stood in the hallway, looking around. All she saw were Aerik, Galrich, and Cal, standing in their fire-scorched night clothes, each wielding a weapon and looking around for an unseen enemy.

Feron could have done likewise, but she assumed the others had been there awhile and had made no progress along those lines. Instead, she thought through the problem for a moment - apparently, they were up against an invisible foe who could cast spells. The wall of fire would have no effect upon the other Guild members still in their bedrooms, as long as they stayed in there. However, the four heroes currently awake could undoubtedly use the assistance of another spellcaster on their team, especially one with enchanted eyes capable of spotting the various auras of magic, and who was just as immune to flames as Feron was in her current form.

She walked briskly down the hallway, past the three infuriated heroes, and banged a fiery fist upon Telgrane's bedroom door.

"Whoa!" exclaimed Telgrane a moment later, opening his door in his sleeping gown and nightcap and seeing a sheet of flames and beyond that, what looked suspiciously like his own familiar, Infernia, only without the curving horns. He reached back into his room, grabbed up his tinder box, and stepped through the flames unscathed, opening the metal box and releasing Infernia.

"What is happening, Master?" the fire elemental asked, taking full form after arcing out of her metal box.

Feron replied for him. "We're under attack by an invisible spellcaster." Telgrane turned this way and that, casting his arcane sight along the entirety of the Wing Three living quarters. "I don't see anyone," he replied. "If they're invisible, they're likely using greater invisibility."

Galrich suddenly roared in pain. Aerik looked over at his liege in concern. "Something bit me!" cried the half-orc.

Telgrane decided to do something about the wall of fire and cast a delayed blast fireball - minus the delay, and converting the energy to cold as he voiced the arcane syllables of the spell - and took out three-quarters of the wall's length. Feron moved over to the next of the bedroom doors and pounded on it now that it was no longer blocked by flames, and seconds later a bleary-eyed Chalkan stood in his open doorway, wondering just what was going on. He grabbed up his bow and joined the others.

That was a few too many heroes for the comfort of the invisible force sent to kill Galrich and those most likely to be able to return him to life before he could be dealt with on a more permanent basis. A chain lightning spell caught the burly half-orc in the chest, then arced out to reach the rest of the assembled heroes. That was enough for Galrich. It was bad enough being nearly choked to death in his bedroom and then burned to a crisp in the hallway, but now he was being bitten on the back of the calf by something he couldn't see and being targeted by an unseen spellcaster? Galrich was tired of being cramped in the upstairs hallway; leaping over the railing, he landed on the living room floor just in front of the couch and kicked the coffee table out of the way so he could have some room to fight. The everburning candle toppled onto the floor, but fortunately its flame was merely an illusion and the carpet did not catch fire as a result. Then the furious half-orc started swinging his axe in all directions about him; hopefully, he'd connect with whatever invisible monster they were fighting.

Feron and Telgrane took a different approach. "Did you see which way the spell came?" the burning druid asked the young archmage.

"Over there, by the top of the stairs," replied Telgrane, casting another non-delayed delayed blast fireball spell in that general direction, deciding to see if whoever had cast the wall of fire really liked fire that much. Chalkan followed suit with a scorching ray spell of his own, cast in the same general direction. The explosions erupted and the angry, hissing sound like that of an enormous teakettle exploded from the corner; almost immediately afterward, a coiled, serpentine body came into view, its sinewy body now loose and flopping around in death. It unspooled from the railing on the stairway leading up to the bedroom hallway and collapsed onto the stairs; Feron recognized it as a naga but was disturbed by its too-human face, frozen into a snarl even in death.

"Got it!" exclaimed both Chalkan and Telgrane triumphantly, in unison, before glaring at the other for trying to take credit for what was obviously his kill.

"It's not the only one!" called back Galrich, who had just been bitten again on his other calf and was frantically swinging his axe around, trying to hit whatever was biting him. Aerik leapt over the upstairs hallway railing to land by his liege and assist in the hunt, as did Chalkan and even Infernia, upon her master's urging. But four foes in a tight grouping was apparently too good not to take advantage of, for the billowing vapors of yet another cloudkill spell spilled out from between them, catching the four in its area of effect. Infernia, as a fire elemental, was immune to the spell's effects, but Aerik and Galrich returned to the familiar coughing and wheezing they had experienced in their bedroom upstairs. Beside them, Chalkan succumbed to the spell's effects as well.

Feron, unable to target an invisible foe and not able to shape her spells around her allies as Telgrane could, took the opportunity to do what good she could by casting several mass cure wounds spells on her friends. It was likely the difference between life and death in several cases, as Galrich and Aerik especially were in dire straits, their respective constitutions having been severely compromised by the time caught in the confines of the two separate cloudkill spells.

Spreading out away from the cloud of deadly vapors, Aerik felt his axe cut through flesh over by the stairwell and called out to the others that there was something over there. Galrich ran over by his bodyguard, standing in the corner of the living room, swinging his axe up by the stairs. Stepping back for another swing, he bumped into something invisible behind him. Glad for the opportunity to punish his enemy, he spun to attack it - but found out the hard way it was a wall of force that had imprisoned him in the corner, sealed in by himself and away from his allies. He snarled in increasing fury as he and Aerik tried cutting their way through the invisible spell effect with no luck.

"We need a way to see what we're fighting," reasoned Telgrane. He didn't have a glitterdust spell at the ready, but he had the next best thing....

Casting a summon monster spell, four salt mephits popped into existence and asked his wishes. "We're looking for an invisible foe," he told them. "Use your breath weapons there, there, there, and...there."

The salt mephits hurried to comply, sending small clouds of stinging particles where Telgrane had indicated. Sure enough, the salt revealed another serpentine figure, as the outline of another naga took form. It was crawling its way to the top of the stairs, past the body of its spirit naga partner, so it could lob spells at Galrich, trapped now in a triangular area bounded by two living room walls and a diagonal wall of force. The half-orc barbarian, looking up to see the salty outlines of a giant serpent-thing peering down at him and beginning the whispery, sibilant words to another spell, frantically double-tapped his Guild ring and binked out of his prison.

Of course, the rings had each been designed to return its wearer to the relative safety of his own living quarters, so Galrich found himself teleported a mere 15 feet away - out from behind the wall of force, true, but smack-dab back in the middle of the cloudkill spell. Cursing as only a half-orc barbarian could, he staggered out of the misty vapors yet again.

However, now that they had a target to focus upon, Telgrane and Feron could cast spells directly at the suddenly-revealed dark naga. The creature, looking up from the now-empty triangular prison - it had intended to drop another cloudkill onto Galrich in the confined space and watch him choke to death - saw two determined spellcasters (one of them made of living flame, the other with twin jets of fire streaming from his eye sockets) with outstretched arms, each targeting it with a particularly powerful spell. The dark naga didn't even have time to curse before being blown to bits.

"Dammit!" cried out Galrich, after being bitten a third time on the leg. He spun around at his unseen attacker, the swish of his axe cutting through the air but failing to hit anything solid. Infernia bent down and felt her hand contact a cool, scaly body; she grabbed it up and squeezed it with all of her might. A furious hissing resulted, as the invisible viper cried out in pain.

"No!" hissed Vengeance. "I cannot fail my dead master! The gods-be-damned orc must not be allowed to take the throne--"

It probably had more to say, but by that time all of its attention was focused on the burning pain as its invisible scales caught fire. It cried out in agony, then was still. Infernia dropped the creature, watched as its now-dead body returned to visibility, and ground it beneath her heel for good measure.

"Is that it?" asked Galrich, looking around for further enemies to fight. "Are there any more?"

But that was it - there were no more.

- - -

This was all kinds of fun for me, for several reasons. First of all, since we often go weeks or even months between game sessions, our campaign tends to be very episodic in nature, and this was a rare opportunity for one adventure to flow seamlessly into another. This also had the added benefit of having the PCs at less than full power, especially in the case of the spellcasters, who were either short on spells (Cal and Telgrane) or hadn't been able to prepare spells geared toward the mission at hand ahead of time (Feron) - but even the combat types were without their armor or shields. (It was effectively a fight to the death in pajamas!)

In any case, many of our adventures nowadays start out with a briefing at Guild HQ, so the PCs know exactly the types of danger they're likely to encounter. I liked the fact that this time they were "going in cold" with no prior knowledge, and that they weren't going to all start the combat session buffed up with stoneskin and protection from energy spells. Even Dan mentioned the fact that this was a completely different kind of adventure for them. And I actually did damage! Those cloudkill spells were brutal - I had Galrich down to a 4 Constitution by the end of the adventure, and several of the three-digit-hit-point PCs/NPCs (Cal, Galrich, and Aerik) were each down to the teens if not single-digit hit points at various points throughout the session. It definitely brought back a feeling of vulnerability!

In any case, for those wondering about the specifics of the backstory, Lord Targus Vandergrotten - unbeknownst to the PCs - had a viper familiar named Vengeance, who he had swear to avenge his death (should it occur) by doing everything possible to permanently kill Galrich and prevent him from becoming the next King of Kordovia. To that end, Vengeance got assistance from a spirit naga and a dark naga, who traveled the many miles between Kordovia and Greyhawk City. They spent a week living inside an extradimensional space from a rope trick hidden in the ladies bathroom (not because they were pervs; merely because that was a good way not to be detected by Telgrane's arcane sight - it helps to have a dark naga on the team capable of reading thoughts). They studied the heroes (the dark naga occasionally exited the rope trick hiding place and hid underneath the sofa, where it could read the minds of those in the vicinity), determining what illusions would most likely cause a suddenly-awakened hero to slam the bedroom door in fear in the middle of the night, allowing one spellcaster to cast a readied cloudkill spell in the bedroom during the time the door was open and another to seal it shut with an arcane lock spell once it had been closed back up. The plan was to kill Galrich (naturally), as well as Cal and Feron (whom the serpents had determined were the two most likely to be able to resurrect Galrich). Then the two nagas were going to swallow Cal and Feron, after which time the three serpents would perform a ritual summoning another nagalike creature, this one a skull-faced horror called a soulslayer, to devour Galrich's body - after which time, he'd be unable to be returned to life, and Kordovia would be spared the horrors of a half-orc king.

Cal pretty much ended that plan by not jumping back into his room as expected, and then it all kept unravelling further and further. Of course, I could have easily run through the adventure with just Jacob, Joey, and Dan running their characters; the only reason I had Feron wake up with an uneasy feeling was because I felt bad leaving Vicki and Logan stuck in Joey's bedroom for so long. (After choosing Feron's spells, Vicki spent the time cleaning up Joey's room.) When I went to get her, I tossed Logan the novel he had been reading at home so he wouldn't be completely bored, and contrived to get Telgrane into the adventure as soon as possible. (Once Vicki decided to have Feron start opening doors, I suggested she start with Telgrane's so Logan could join the adventure.)

All in all, it was pretty fun, and a decided change from the norm.